Jannis Kounellis
Marian Goodman Gallery | New York
There was something perversely nostalgic and mournful about Jannis Kounellis’ untitled installation. A kind of last-ditch demonstration of a dead, or at least fading history, the work was at once a graveyard and a synthesis of Modernist ideas: first and foremost, the plane, systematically repeated (a Minimalist monumentalization of flatness) followed by geometry, especially that of the economical Suprematist square, and finally, by Abstract Expressionist gesture, also peculiarly succinct. It is as if, for Kounellis, both square and gesture must be rationed so that they maintain their value and