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Assemblage:
Joseph
Cornell 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. Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) Kurt Schwitters was born in Germany
in 1887. Originally concentrating on painting and poetry, he began
experimenting with collages and assemblages – which he called Merzbilder (The word derives from a fragment of the word Kommerz, used in an early assemblage) – after meeting
members of the DADA movement. He went on to use the word Merz
to describe his work, saying in 1919: “The word Merz denotes essentially
the combination, for artistic purposes, of all conceivable materials, and,
technically, the principle of the equal distribution of the individual
materials … A perambulator wheel, wire-netting, string and cotton wool are
factors having equal rights with paint. Merzbau Merzbau reconstruction 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
Bart Woodstrup http://www.bartwoodstrup.com/work/index.htm 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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