Category Archives: sculpture

Lydia Venieri: The Last Conflict

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Can a cornucopia of fake flowers, shiny things, dolls, dolphins and unicorns escape being twee? The Lydia Venieri exhibition The Last Conflict: Retrospective: Sculpture, Video, and Photography is, as the title suggests, a mixed media installation that occupies the majority of Stux Gallery’s space that begs the question.
Her bubble sculptures, supported by tree trunks or suspended from the ceiling, depict hyperbolically natural flora and fauna. The materials mix the organic (moss, wood) and plastic. The miniature ecosystems seem like the baubles of fairies from a bad production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Authenticity is hardly the point, however.

The exhibition also featured satin digital color prints from the artist’s “Planet Exodus” series. In them, wide-eyed dolls pose like models.

Their large eyes reflect the manmade surroundings, and suggest a (fake?) innocence in the face of natural devastation. The worlds Venieri portrays in the dolls’ eyes, and in the video installation as well, suggests the world of man in conflict with the natural world.

That message comes differently from the mouths, so to speak, of the little plastic people that Venieri employs.

Rather like a Japanese Lolita, Venieri’s exhibition tweaks twee on the nose, and manages to seem coy about the darkness underlying her plastic arts.

Up through June 25th at Stux Gallery.

Richard Tuttle at Pace Gallery

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Installation View
What’s the Wind is a collection of seven new sculptures that artist Richard Tuttle calls ‘systems,’ and this description makes some sense after seeing the delicate balance of discrete, rough hewn elements. The disparity of parts adds some whimsy as do the simple colors and forms. Existing within the wooden platforms, the pieces create an environment almost like a ecosystem in a terrarium. I expected the parts to move like a Jean Tingley sculpture, but alas, they are frozen in a system that does not move, and is in fact dead. 
So what are these systems we are looking at? The press release describes them as “intensely self-referential,” but perhaps we can deduce something by the helpfully descriptive names if not the works themselves.

System 4, Hummingbird, 2011

The title Hummingbird suggests a flurry of intense movement that turns into a blur of motion. Here we have a duct tape spire rising high over an internal core of small parts flanked by two enormous boards. Or, we have a long beak, small fat body, and two strong wings keeping the hummingbird afloat.

Detail of System 4, Hummingbird

The body of the sculpture is open, and these little circles and plinths seem to me like they should be free moving rather than fixed.

System 3, Measurement, 2011

Measurement has large, candy colored suspended balls hovering over a circle. Here the fixed structure works to create tension as the balls seem to defy gravity. I had the rather more unfortunate impression of a banana split melting into a waiting mouth. Off hand, I’d say the ice cream isn’t going to fit in the “mouth” below, if that was what Tuttle was trying to measure.

Richard Tuttle’s Whats the Wind up at Pace Gallery through July 22.

Apollo and Daphne

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Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne at the Villa Borghese

It’s a beautiful Spring. Perhaps we should all get chased through the forest and pray to be turned into trees?


I still contend that Daphne gets the better end of the “tree-woman” (see my Huldra’s post) stick in art history, and this statue testifies to that. Bernini tells the myth of Daphne being turned into a tree to escape the God Apollo beautifully, and I remember when I saw it in person at 15 being awestruck by the movement and softness of the sculpture. It is still one of my favorites.