Image via jackshainman.com. |
Trains of
Thought
October 18 – November 15, 2014
524 West
24th Street
New York,
NY
From
jackshainman.com:
Jack
Shainman Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by El
Anatsui. Continuing to employ his primary medium of metal in the form of liquor
bottle caps, printing plates and copper wire, Anatsui transforms the material
into both draping wall pieces and three-dimensional works that hover between
painting and sculpture.
Throughout
his oeuvre, Anatsui has focused enormous attention on the language of his
materials. Through folds and twists he pushes the metal parts beyond
themselves, transforming them from microcosmic elements into sutured surfaces
that are at once commanding and delicately intricate. Radical in his approach
to abstraction, Anatsui circumvents traditional approaches to the picture plane
through shape and dimensionality borrowed from and imposed upon, the material.
Along with
his use of found aluminum and copper wire, Anatsui has additionally worked
small pieces of newspaper printing plates into his iconic hanging sculptures.
First seen in Waste Paper Bags (2004)
the printing plates, discarded by local newspapers, have been cut down to
create the same visual effect as the folded bottle caps, but with added
strength enabled by their thicker composition. When creased or crumpled, the
printing plates contribute a new layer of complex texture to the work, creating
both slashing disruptions across the surface or speckling it with an
expressionist impasto.
With a
career spanning nearly four decades, Anatsui’s transformation and interrogation
of material endures throughout his practice. The new work, with its evolutions
in chromatic statements and continuous shifts of form are exquisite
manifestations of the idiom he has made all his own.
El Anatsui
was born in Ghana and currently lives and works between Ghana and Nigeria.
Upcoming solo exhibitions include Gravity
and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui, at the Museum of Contemporary
Art, San Diego, from March 5 – June 28, 2015. This exhibition was organized and
previously on view at the Akron Art Museum, Ohio, Brooklyn Museum, New York,
the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa and the Bass Museum of Art in Miami, Florida.
Anatsui has been featured in international exhibitions, including the Venice
Biennale (1990 and 2007) and the Paris Triennial (2012). Recent large scale
public installations include Broken
Bridge II, commissioned by High Line Art and presented by Friends of the
High Line (2012-2013), and Tsiatsia –
Searching for Connection, which was installed on the façade of the Royal
Academy of Arts in London in 2013.
Anatsui is
included in numerous private and public collections including the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou,
Paris, France; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, Washington; the Akron Art Museum, Ohio; St. Louis Art
Museum, Missouri; Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf; the Setagaya Museum, Tokyo,
and the British Museum, London, England.today’s digital generation. Hassan
empowers these abandoned objects and guides our memory toward past shared
experiences without losing the direction of a changing time.
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