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| Photo-topography, Carlos Garaicoa. Galleria Continua at the Armory Show 2012. |
It looked like styrofoam in person, but apparently artist Caralos Garaicoa transferred photographs to polyspan (I suspect a material a lot like styrofoam) to create these white images.
Garaicoa is a Cuban artist who tends to explore Cuba’s identity and politics through its buildings. These archetectural scenes were clearly composed, but the precision of them crumbles away as you look closer.
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| Installation View |
Continuing from the small exhibition of Twombly sculptures at the Art Insitute, MoMA has dedicated a small space to showing the late artist’s sculptures as well, which (joy!) I saw over the weekend. Perhaps simply in relief to the garishly colorful, incredibly large deKooning exhibition, looking at these seven white constructions felt like an oasis of calm.
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| Untitled (Jupiter Island), 1992. Wood, plaster, plastic leaves, wire, cloth, sand, and paint. |
I’m not sure how clear it is in these photos, but the white stood out beautifully from the blue night outside the window. The roughness of the bottom contrasts with the smooth vertical white shape with its unexpected dip at the top.
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| Untitled (Funerary Box for a Lime Green Python). 1954. Wood, palm leaf fans, house paint, cloth, and wire. |
The delicacy of the fans make this my favorite of these works. It’s the earliest sculpture shown, and the fanciful description he gives the title disappears in most of his later works.
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| Untitled (Lexington), 2005. Plaster, paint, wood, cardboard, metal, paper, cloth, twine, and pencil |
Although I say they are white, in his later works Twombly began adding a dash of bright color. Here the very tip is a bright pink. I love the balancing act implied by the varying degrees of narrowness of the different objects.
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| Untitled (Lexington) from a different angle. |
I tend to think of Cy Twombly more as a painter than a sculptor, although the artist has created sculptures throughout his career, as can be seen in this intimate exhibition at the Art Institute. Twombly’s sculptures tend to be composed of everyday found objects, put on a pedestal, and unified by a coat of white paint. This formalizes the objects as works of art, and gives them a timeless feel that is ethereal even while it is rough and tough. While the spare constructions are evocative of archaic relics, the presentation is absolutely modern. Their names of times and places suggest journal entries, sculptures of memories.
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| Untitled, Bassano in Teverina, 1989 Wood, plaster, nails, traces of red and blue paint, glue, and white paint |
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| Untitled, New York, 1955 Wood, cloth, nails, and house paint |
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| Untitled, Lexington, 1948 Wood, porcelain and metal knobs, cloth, and house paint |