Thursday, June 19, 2008

Tim Noble & Sue Webster at The Goss-Michael Foundation


Sublime, ecstatic, whatever you call it, art occasionally rises up even beyond the intentions of the artist who made it. This happens briefly in the current exhibition at The Goss-Michael Foundation, a selection of works from the Brit duo of Tim Noble & Sue Webster on view there through September 30th. Yet, just as quickly, it drifts back into the ordinary, akin to the ebb and flow of the sexual play to which much of their work alludes.

The scene is set upon entering the darkened gallery, with the flickering fountain of chromatics entitled Excessive Sensual Indulgence, beckoning from across the room. Moving nearer the piece, the heat given off from the lights begins to bridge the physical space between viewer and work.

That moment is the first clue, hinting at the best of what the two are up to. The undeniable spectacle of the physical medium giving way to the immaterial sensation of energy flow between object and observer.

Moving into the main space, this first high quickly ratchets down to a rather ordinary neon piece, Fucking Beautiful. A repetition in white light of the title phrase taking the form of an "I Love You" heart, and no I'm not talking about the now ubiquitous "<3" of text messaging fame. Please, can someone, anyone do something interesting with neon after Bruce Naumann?

Nearby, Dirty Narcissus sports an earth-toned mass of rubber atop a soiled pedestal. A turbulent repetitive grouping of male genitalia gripped by a woman's fingers, the piece feels like futurism run headlong into a porno scene. The artists however, are not content to "let it ride" with this compelling physical presence.

Taking it one step further, they use light to project a shadow of the piece onto the nearby wall, revealing a two-headed silhouette of the artists. And there, in all its glory, is the "magic and illusion" of which their bio speaks, which does illicit a momentary "how did they do that?" moment, just before it gives way to a "you know, that was a cool piece before they got fancy and tried to say something profound with it" feeling.

Rounding out the main room is another lighted sculpture, Metal Fucking Rats, which deftly accomplishes what the prior work strives for. A seemingly random grouping of welded scrap metal which sits on the floor transforms into a shadow of two rats getting it on, en flagrante delicto.

This, my friends, is that moment of transcendence, connection and meaning rising up from a pile of garbage on the floor. Flesh giving way to spirit, in the unlikely form of copulating rats, life itself emerging from the chaos.

After viewing the sculptural work, the framed grouping, The Joy of Sex comes across almost as an afterthought. A series of prints based ostensibly, on the book, the works show the two artists naked, in various forms of coupling and display. While well drawn, the images bare no intensity, no passion, not even the basic lust of the internet porn variety. Ironic yes, but also like watching two sex workers doing their jobs in earnest 'til clock out time.

With all its ups and downs, this exhibit shows a gifted team, who to their credit, are not taking the easy road of superficial glitz that some of their YBA counterparts have ridden to fame. Having said that, the best of their work hints at the possibility that they may be able to shed the lingering residue of cliche that even the best give in to on occasion, and ride their own idiosyncracies into the orgasmic unknown.

Tim Noble & Sue Webster (images)




"Metal Fucking Rats"

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

(2007)

courtesy of The Goss-Michael Foundation








"Dirty Narcisuss"

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

(2007)

courtesy of The Goss-Michael Foundation








"Excessive Sensual Indulgence"

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

(1996)

courtesy of The Goss-Michael Foundation

Monday, June 2, 2008

Fernando Gallego at the Meadows Museum, Dallas


The Meadows Museum plays host through July 27th to "Fernando Gallego and His Workshop: The Altarpiece from Ciudad Rodrigo", an altarpiece show, whose drama extends beyond the biblical narratives played out on the walls, into ongoing studies which reassigned authorship to many of the works on view. Research during the course of the project revealed Maestro Bartolomé as a major artist in his own right, showing that twelve of the panels on display belong to his hand.

Dating to the 1480's, twenty-six panels survive of the original twenty-nine, which formed a massive backdrop to the altar of the Cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo in Castile. The remaining works made their way to the University of Arizona Museum of Art in the late 1950's as part of the Samuel H. Kress Collection.

In a compelling installation at the Meadows, twenty-three vertical format panels are dispersed around the semi-circular gallery on terracotta walls. The three surviving portraits of the apostles stand alone on pedestals at the gallery's center. The wall-mounted works display narratives drawn primarily from the Gospels, with a sprinkling of Old Testament themes, all driven by pre-Reformation era Catholic ideology.

"Christ Among the Doctors", attributed to Gallego and his workshop, depicts the adolescent Jesus at the top of a compressed proto-Renaissance perspectival space flanked by the Jewish scribes and elders. Having just heard his teaching, the elaborately dressed doctors of the synagogue tear the pages of their own scriptures with contorted faces, in what is presumably a jab at their supposed ignorance.

The Devil gets similar short shrift, depicted in Bartolomé's "The Temptation" as an elderly robe-clad tempter in veridian knee-high dragon claw boots. A perturbed looking Christ waves off his sales pitch with a wary peace mudra. Further back in the exaggerated space, Satan has no better luck trying to convince the Saviour to leap off the high city walls, or to give him the kingdoms of the world.

A surreal and crowded "Last Judgement" shows the victorious Christ seated amongst archangels and apostles looking down on the masses of humanity as they are sorted into the ubiquitous "saved" and "damned" categories. The players in this drama, tip forward and almost into the room in the flattened stacked perspective of the scene.

Most startling is Bartolomé's "Chaos". It stands, almost postmodern in its pastiche of various motifs. At top center sits God the Father enclosed in a mandala flanked by angels and archangels in a yantra target of concentric circles. Below this, the Greek god Chaos gets naming rights to the primordial "soup" of creation, and the Latin word "NILLE" (nothing or void) is the spoke at the center of it all. Depicting concepts such as the eternal Godhead prior to the world's creation is problematic by any means, but here Bartolomé has constructed a blend of western rationalism and eastern abstraction that pulls it off.

An accompanying display of backlit infrared photos of the paintings depict the working process of underlying sketches and compositional revisions. Of particular interest here is "The Creation of Eve", which shows how the original position for Eve, alongside a very Christ-like creator, was moved to a subordinate position and replaced by a camel. The reworking no doubt took place at the behest of a clerical advisor.

This revealing exhibit came together as a collaborative effort between The University of Arizona Museum of Art, which housed the collection, the Kimball Museum, where chief conservator Claire Barry oversaw restoration and the infrared research, and the Meadows Museum, whose director Mark Rogland and assistant curator Amanda W. Dotseth co-edited the accompanying book on the project.

Fernando Gallego and His Workshop (images)



"The Temptation"

Maestro Bartolomé

(after 1493)








"Christ Among the Doctors"

Maestro Bartolomé

(1480-88)








"The Last Judgement"

Fernando Gallego, Francisco Gallego and Workshop

(1480-88)