Newest Entries

London

Clemens von Wedemeyer

BARBICAN ART GALLERY
Silk Street
May 29–August 30

In 1971, the “discovery” of a Stone Age–style society living on the Philippine island of Mindanao triggered an international media buzz. Purportedly, the Tasaday people existed untouched by technological advances. Fifteen years later, they were found to be living in far more modern conditions than first reported, which led to still unresolved accusations of a locally orchestrated hoax. This is the starting point for Clemens von Wedemeyer’s new commission by the Barbican, which, in a series of eight films of both original and appropriated materials, embeds the fascinating mystery of the Tasaday within broader questions about the blurring of fact and fiction in cinema.

The viewer’s move through the dark, tunnel-like gallery—punctuated by projection screens of varying sizes—is paralleled by a growing confusion in the narrative. A seemingly straightforward 1983 documentary composed of original photo stills, moralistically narrated by an American journalist, and von Wedemeyer’s own found-footage compilation are countered by the artist’s self-produced reels, including aerial footage of the forest and a short scene of a fictionalized Tasaday woman disjunctively transplanted to an urban concrete landscape. The show’s greatest moment comes with Against Death, 2009, a nine-minute loop set in an apartment looking out at London’s night sky, in which a tormented explorer commits a violent self-inflicted assault to prove the improbable immortality that has resulted from his contact with an unnamed culture. This reads as fiction until the viewing of von Wedemeyer’s earnest interview with one of the characters, further unhinging any stable reality. Beyond raising questions about truth, von Wedemeyer also attempts to interrogate theatrical conventions by contributing his own films of a supposed enactment of Tasaday culture on the Barbican stage and a subsequent afterparty. This turn to the stage, however, muddies the project, which has more than enough material in the compelling Tasaday chronicle and its filmic dissemination, enlivened by the artist’s refusal to provide any ultimate conclusion.

— Margaret Ewing

Clemens von Wedemeyer, The Fourth Wall, 2009. Performance view. Photo: Sheila Burnett.

Carter

HOTEL
77A Greenfield Road, Whitechapel
May 21–July 21

Carter’s Leg Model, 2006, serves up an analogy relevant to the majority of the works in this exhibition, titled “And, it, the, constant, although.” In the video, a set of legs walks across the screen, only for one to move aside and reveal the other to be a floundering prosthetic replica. The notion of the double or copy becomes a significant motif in this current body of work and highlights similar themes in Carter’s Polaroids, which are also on view and date from 2004 to 2006.

Two sculpted heads, both titled Likeness, 2009, sit on plinths at either end of the gallery, turned away from each other as if participating in some sort of passive showdown, linked by a track of carpet that runs across the floor between the pair. Here, Carter’s similar works invite direct comparison, while at the same time suggesting they be considered as a whole. Likewise, Constant Abstract (double erect placement with profile), 2009, comprises a diptych of canvas grounds layered with digital prints on which Carter has drawn and painted. The two are broadly alike but fundamentally different in their details, an approach that resonates with the graphical nature of Carter’s practice. Other works such as Untitled (area), 2009, apply this same aesthetic and suggest a Pop-art affinity with the multiple, as well as a cynicism toward the way in which Pop-inflected work is viewed. In these instances, the audience’s engagement becomes about a direct interplay between attention to detail and acceptance of the body of work in its entirety, whether or not pieces are deceptively presented as singular.

— Steven Cairns

View of “Carter,” 2009. From left: Likeness, 2009; Untitled (Shifting), 2009.

Adrian Ghenie

HAUNCH OF VENISON
6 Burlington Gardens
May 15–July 25

In Adrian Ghenie’s paintings, drips and pours of paint, smeared surfaces, and indistinct masses make up his canvases, but figuration predominates in “Darkness for an Hour,” the Romanian painter’s first UK solo show. Depictions of Dada, and Duchamp in particular, appear like camouflaged figures rising out of wreckage. This layering involves a considerable degree of dexterity; Ghenie shifts elements into and out of focus, successively offsets darker hues with brighter colors, and subverts perspective, creating an impression of depth and fluidity. This approach prompts the viewer to nearly sink into the cavernous paintings (Nickelodeon, 2008, Turning Point, 2009, and Duchamp’s Funeral II, 2009) hung in the first room of the gallery. Ghenie also alternates thick, clotted brushstrokes with more delicate daubs. In Duchamp, 2009, the finely honed features of the French Dadaist’s face reflect the artist’s technical verve. A series of smaller, beautifully structured paintings titled “Pie Fight Study,” 2009, are similarly accomplished.

These technical merits work in tandem with the dark, brutal thematic undercurrents of extremism, disenchantment, enforced exile, and the abuse of power. Ghenie brings together diverse personalities, from Dada personages to Laurel and Hardy, creating a reminder of the lamentable state of humanity. He reaches new levels of absurdity by referencing the slapstick Hollywood entertainers; there’s nothing more comic than a tragic pair of comedians. The artist’s universe may well be a distressing, pathetic place—but at least it’s astutely and skillfully executed.

— Gareth Harris

Adrian Ghenie, Nickelodeon, 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas, 165 x 94 1/2".

Glasgow

Thomas Houseago, Dieter Roth, and André Thomkins

THE MODERN INSTITUTE, GLASGOW
Suite 6, Floor 1, 73 Robertson Street
May 30–July 11

The contrasts at play in this collective exhibition of works by Thomas Houseago, Dieter Roth, and André Thomkins offer a kind of aesthetic parenthesis that contains a diverse set of reference points. The wall-based and sculptural works on view span from 1959 to 2009 and establish significant affinities between the artists that divert the pieces from their original contexts. Roth’s Faltened Bust of a Poet, 1969, is a curious inclusion, rendering in sculptural form the nightmarish physicality of his drawings. This work brings to mind an immediate and flattering comparison to the younger Houseago’s Coin Mask, 2008, as well as to his Untitled, 2009, which furthers Houseago’s empathetic references to Naum Gabo in these abstract portraits. Roth’s most resonant works in the exhibition, however, are the suite of thirty framed drawings collectively titled 30 Monsters from Danneckerstrasse, 1969. These works depict, in twisted cartoonish imaginings, his pencil-drawn visage and suggest a melancholia that can feasibly be applied to the psychology of the other artists.

The intergenerational dialogues between the works here establish a contemporary relevance for the older works on view. For example, André Thomkins’s unique Lackskin-on-paper pieces maintain their experimental and aesthetically alluring nature despite their dates of origin (1958–81). These technically curious pieces are illuminated by documentary footage that plays on a monitor, which depicts the methods he used and acts as an effective bridge between his production and the media’s potential in the present. Such references provide the youthful Houseago with a historically rich heritage in which to position his practice.

— Steven Cairns

View of “Thomas Houseago, Dieter Roth, and André Thomkins,” 2009. From left: Thomas Houseago, Coin Mask, 2008; André Thomkins, Untitled, 1959–64; Dieter Roth, 30 Monsters from Danneckerstrasse, 1969.