patternsthatconnect

I noticed that destructions has been a theme for my art viewing recently

I saw this wonderful sculpture by Gustav Metzger at the Whitworth, Manchester entitled Flailing Trees

It is in the process of de constructing itself slowly over time

whereas, Aeneas Wilder’s Untitled # 155 at Yorkshire Sculpture Park will be kicked down at 4PM on Thursday 3 November 2011

and at the Mission  Gallery blog you can see this wonderful video by Natalia Dias entitled Vida e Morte

In her upcoming show at Mission, from 3 to 31 October 2011, a video and installation, the viewer will be presented with the opportunity for a real-time experience of Vida e Morte “which expresses the brittle transience of life and its humble beauty, from the minute of its installation to its imminent end”. (I don’t think that means they will get an opportunity to actually live and die during the show.)

Aeneas Wilder’s Unitled # 155 is showing at the Longside Gallery at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until Thursday 3 November 2011. It is an installation, made especially for this space, constructed through the careful placement and balance of uniform lengths of recycled Iroko wood, used for parquet flooring.

There is something architectural about it, temporary and delicate but architectural just the same. You can see it from a (slight) distance, you can see it close-up and then walk around it and you can enter it through a doorway, seeing it from inside and out like a building. But it isn’t held together by anything other than balance and gravity, no glue, no nails, no permanent fixing. So it is also time dependant, like a performance, it will exist for a certain time, and to end the installation the artist will deconstruct it in only a few seconds, the final curtain close taking the form of a kick down.

You can reserve a place for the kick down scheduled to take place at 4pm on 3 November.

I am interested in the use of colour in sculpture. Here’s a picture of one of Eva Rothschild’s at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, entitled Someone and Someone , 2008

Colour is both physical and non-physical (optical) at the same time. It has the power to de-materialise the material as well as bring it to our attention.

At the Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Aeneas Wilder has installed Untitled # 155, which I will post about another day. In the side gallery there is this Untitled Drawing (2011), a mandala shape made of carefully placed straight strips of wood (they remind me of lollypop sticks)

straight means, curved ends!

I love Deer Shelter Skyspace, 2006 by James Turrell, at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It is a large square chamber with an aperture cut into the roof, through which you get a “heightened vision of the sky, seemingly transformed into a trompe l’oeil painting”.
 

I interpret it as a hallowed space, I feel the necessity to speak in hushed tones when I am in there, and I notice that others seem to do so too. However, today, asking others about their experience I realise that this is not universally so. I was going to suggest that the sacred space is always an aesthetic (immanent) rather than a spiritual (transcendent) experience.

When I visited today, my brother pointed out that rain had caused the Skyspace to be ‘mirrored’ on the ground. My gaze was so directed towards the sky that I had not seen it before.

I have written before about signs and art.

This sign is art

Leo Fitzmaurice, Arcadia (one of a series scattered around YSP)

whereas this sign is not

Just because it is at Yorkshire Sculpture Park does not mean it is art

The function of the Leo Fitzmaurice sign is different to the function of the caution sign. However this could simply be that they are differing kinds of sign. One is a label and the other is a warning.

Though Arcadia is a label sign, the thing (or place) labelled is absent, bringing our attention to its absence. It reminds us that the map is not the territory, the name is not the thing named (Korzybski).

The Arcadia sign refers to a past, almost forgotten, inaccessible reality (or myth) and elicits action which is more like not-acting: the act of reflecting. For me, that makes it different to other label signs.

In one way the caution sign is similar, it requires a ‘slowing down’ a reflectiveness of sorts. Though its hardly a reflection on signs and their relationship to our experience, or on art and life. If the caution sign were to elicit this kind of reflectiveness it would have failed to do its job, we would no longer be proceeding with caution.

Here’s another sign from YSP (again not art)

Warning sign alerting us to read signs!

It is a sign about signs! (You might need to click on the image to get the smaller print.)

It reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons where Homer gets obsessed with putting up safety signs and eventually resorts to putting up signs exhorting us to take note of the signs.

The sign says

"Please do not climb on the Sol LeWitt"

yet the art work says

"Please climb on me"

The meaning of the communication is the response it elicits, not necessarily the intention of the communicator.

My guess is that  Sol LeWitt knew that one of the meanings of this piece would become  “climb on me”, maybe it is the message of all public sculptures ( some more than others).

The sign not to climb, the verbal communication, is incongruent with the non-verbal communication, the sign that is the art work itself. Possibly, that’s why people ignore it, or notice it after they have already transgressed! I suppose it’s a lot like “do not walk on the grass”.

In our visit to the sculpture park our party got separated for a short while. There was Luke, Charlie and I wondering where the other four had got to, and when we met up they told us about how they had negotiated 71 steps. I asked if the 71 steps had been art. Yes, it was a piece by David Nash.

They had also been in a viewing gallery that was not art. David described it  as “like a cage within a cage” and told us how he had feared he would not be able to get out. He kept telling us how it had felt to be ‘trapped’ inside. It started to sound like an art experience to me.

“Is that the viewing gallery over there?” I asked, pointing to a structure in the distance.

viewing gallery (?)

Yes it was…

…and yes it was art. It was Basket #7 by Winter/Horbelt.

Did their not knowing it was art make it an even more interesting experience?  Was it more art the less they knew that it was art?

At YSP the other day (see yesterday’s blog), I was amazed at how much the sheep seemed to appreciate this Barbara Hepworth (or is it by Henry Moore?)

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Sheep can’t read the sign that says “please do not climb on the sculptures” but they do seem to be able to read the non-verbal ‘sign’ that says “walk around me”.

I didn’t want to watch a wedding on TV,  so to somewhere outdoors with art….. Yorkshire Sculpture Park.  Surely, the most accessible modern and contemporary art venue in the UK.  I went with six members of my family, some of whom were less interested in art than others. We did get some of the usual comments resembling “anyone could have done that” along with genuine surprise to find that certain pieces were actually exhibits. And just for a moment Arcadia, my favourite piece, took me by surprise. I mistook it for a real sign! (I don’t believe I am admitting to that, and it was only for  moment).

Leo Fitzmaurice, Arcadia (one of a series scattered around YSP)

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On the way back to the railway station my son said that he had become conditioned to seeing sculpture in with the landscape and was expecting to be surprised by an exhibit here and there on the journey. No exhibits, but lots of signs, none of them for Arcadia. I  missed the sign for the railway station.