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Assemblage:
Joseph Cornell, Kurt Schwitters Mertz,
others After his first exposure to Surrealist collage in 1931, Joseph Cornell began to work in that format, eventually extending it into three-dimensional box structures. Unlike many European Surrealists, however, he was less interested in disturbing the viewer than in evoking enchanted worlds past and yet to come. Cornell incorporated printed images and found objects into his boxes, which were often conceived in series. Space Object Box: “Little Bear, etc.” motif is part of the Winter Night Skies series, which includes fragments of celestial maps of the northern sky. The focus of the map fragment in Space Object Box is the constellation Ursa Minor—the “Little Bear” of the title. The “etc.” refers to the other personifications of stars that the artist has colored, including Cameleopardalis, the giraffe, and Draco, the dragon. The blue cork ball and the ring suggest the moon and its orbit; their movement along the two metal rods alludes to the unending cycle of celestial change. The toy block with a horse on its face is probably a punning reference to Pegasus, a square constellation. Andromeda appears in a box from the Hotel series, Untitled (Grand H�tel de l’Observatoire), which also contains an image of the head of Draco on a small cylinder hanging from a rod along the roof of the box; the cascading chain could refer to the long trail of stars called the Dragon’s Tail. Mottled royal-blue pigment in the glistening white paint evokes the sparkling of stars in the sky. By incorporating the names of Grand Hotels, cut and pasted like hotel stationery in a scrapbook, Cornell nostalgically recalled the souvenirs of travelers. This box seems to promote the heavens as a place of respite, a view that may reflect the artist’s education as a Christian Scientist. Mary Baker Eddy, the charismatic founder of the religion, believed that modern scientific theory holds a key to understanding our world. In a book that Cornell called the most important to him after the Bible, she wrote, “The astronomer will no longer look up to the stars—he will look out from them upon the universe.” Cornell, who lived most of his life on Utopia Parkway in Queens, never went to Europe, although his boxes are often filled with tokens of European culture. He could no more visit the 19th-century Old World of his imagination than he could visit the stars, but he could dream about these places and invoke them in his boxes. Jennifer Blessing http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_works_32_0.html http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cornell/ assemblage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assemblage_%28art%29
Entanglements – Ben Bunch, Evan Levine
Ben Bunch
“Pop-Up”, 2010 Foam, wire, chipboard and glue 32” x 32” x 15” ENTANGLEMENTS will be the first exhibition in our new space to
present two contemporary artists currently represented by The Proposition:
Ben Bunch and Evan Levine. The exhibition will feature Ben Bunch’s sculptures
and paintings by Evan Levine, each artists’ work
involving intense layering and construction, mixing de-construction and
re-construction into a staggeringly delightful blend of color and space. Following
are excerpts by the artists on the works in the show: BEN BUNCH “Pop-Up” came out of an experience of working on the insides of old
coin operated arcade boxes. The vision I had was of an arcade box
unfurled and becoming alive where the guts could keep the machine standing on
its own, even though the skin had been removed. This imaginary deconstruction
represented the power that these machines used to have transporting their
users into another world. Even though most of these machines have been retired
and disused I wanted to portray the nostalgia of that experience as still
potent.”
Ben Bunch “Drill, Baby, Drill”,
2010 Foam, wire, chipboard and glue 17” x 17” x 20” “Drill, Baby, Drill” combines two extremes of my practice: making
objects that appear abstract and realistic. On one side is the invented
object and on the other is the realistic object. In this case there is a
faithfully represented video game controller from the 1980’s Atari game
system. A foam cord connects it to another object. The other object is a
playful machine like abstraction. This machine looking object is made up of
mechanical parts such as cogs, buttons, switches and a drill auger, which are
symbolic of mechanical functions. Delicately balanced like a top, the
abstract machine is tethered to the game controller, which gives the
impression that it can be manipulated. The machine and controller
relationship within the piece speaks to more general theme about extensions
of the body. The game controller acts as an extension of the user to navigate
an area otherwise inaccessible without the controller.”
Ben Bunch
“Force-Field-Donut-Hole”, 2010 Foam, foam core and glue 26” x 26” x 8” ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: EVAN LEVINE “In order to push the limitations of my seemingly systematic
process, I play with color and shape as a solution to any confines, giving
richness to the painting that fights my often heavily systematic approach.
The fluid shapes in these paintings are translated into graphic, flat
sections of color yet they retain an organic flow that contrasts them sharply
with the strict geometry of the horizontal or vertical bands in a graph.
These shapes reflect a very direct kind of mark-making that is intended to
give the paintings a personal, hand drawn quality which lends the paintings a
unique character-adding irregularity and randomness to the paintings. The way
in which the paint is applied is neat and maintains a sort of sterile
artifice, however upon closer observation there are clear inconsistencies and
fractures in the surface of the final painting that clearly reveal the object
as handmade.
Evan Levine “Center Sand”, 2010 Acrylic on canvas, 80” x 80” Repetition is also something I wanted to explore thematically in this
work-how it may generate a further connectedness between and/or overlapping
systems created from the shapes in the paintings to spaces, things, or places
in the visible world. Because of the greater density in details in the
painting, it is much more difficult to define or distinguish between figure
and ground. The color, flat patterns, and playful quality in my work may be
subconsciously rooted in my early interest in textiles, ancient imagery,
patterned and color-striped clothing (including men’s formal and knit wear,
sweaters), children’s books (particularly mythology) and early video game
imagery. “Center Sand” was an attempt to explore my continued interest to
explore the construction of space through an illusion of layering. It is the
second painting in which text is eliminated and the work is completely
abstract. Here there are clearly sectioned off areas, such as a few dense
areas of dots, which interact less with other elements of the composition
than in my other painting in this show.
Evan Levine “Leopard”, 2010 Acrylic on canvas, 80” x 80” In “Leopard” a much higher frequency of visual information in terms
of color and form are used to combat the mechanical nature of the process.
The composition itself becomes chaotic and as the forms become smaller, they
are less isolated from one another. This painting really came as an attempt
to add fluidity and life to my painting, despite the very self-conscious
mechanical process by which I work. This painting is almost like a
microscopic section of “Center Sand,” then blow up. If “Center Sand”
were an overhead Google Map of a place, than “Leopard” would be a few steps
zoomed in so that more richness of detailed and complexity is made visible.” THE PROPOSITION 2 Extra Place (East 1st Street, Offf Bowery) New York, NY 10003 +1 212.242.0035
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