EUTOPIA

The State of the Arts

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Cooper Union, State of the Arts

The State of the Arts
The Annual Exhibition of Students’ Work
Cooper Union New York, NY [link]
May 22-June 10th, 2018

Isolation is decidedly solitary- in social terms: withdrawn, distant, non conformist, resistant, … etc. Qualities that have served the school to set itself apart: on the one hand devising a pedagogical framework unfazed by the proliferation of spectacular images of a pseudo-technological stance;  on the other hand in stark contrast to the increasing venues of garish art fairs and such the show is a hinged décollage of architecture, art, and engineering departments foregrounded as a singular collaborative act that -together with its tentative onlooker- reveals the patent rift between genuine enquiry versus an intrinsically kitsch itinerary of culture industry.

~ Ali Soltani
Photos : Soltani+LeClercq

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Louise Lawler

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Louise Lawler
Why Pictures Now [link]  (through July 30th, 2017)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Thirty years after her first show at MoMA, Louise Lawler continues to challenge the notions of authenticity, authorship and judgement by revealing the mechanics of art and its reception. The strategies of multiplication using mass culture, titling, cropping and reframing are still present, however in “Why Pictures Now” the show’s title not only serves as a supplemental mirror image of art in the age of digital production, in referencing an earlier work it acts as -or enacts- an inside out installation effectively producing a reversal where the viewer in her contingent role as co-author retraces and reframes the work.

~ Ali Soltani
images courtesy of MOMA and Soltani+LeClercq

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John Hejduk

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John Hejduk
Jan Palach Memorial [link]
Cooper Union, New York

House of Suicide and House of Mother of Suicide

As architectural meditations, John Hejduk’s constructions are uncharacteristically rootless- tentative inhabitants that stir a moment till eternity, elusive appearances that despite their eventual departure, are forever marked in memory. Inspired by David Schapiro’s poem, two spiky structures at a distance mark an immutable act – paying tribute to Jan Palach who in 1968 set himself on fire in protest of the Soviet’s occupation of Czechoslovakia, and to his mother. Concurrently, against a newly deleterious milieu imbued by demoralizing declarations of intolerance, they are the incarnated spirit of freedom; and in New York, finally, a binding reminder of events and memorial.

~ Ali Soltani

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Laetitia Soulier

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The Fractal Architectures series

Laetitia Soulier “The Matryoshka Dolls 2″_40in x 80in_C Print, courtesy of Claire Oliver Gallery

 

Laetitia Soulier
Fractal Architectures
Claire Oliver Gallery, New York [link]
February 26- April 9, 2016

I am reminded of the perspectival loom of the Quattrocento period in early Renaissance when viewing the pictures of Laetitia Soulier as though experiencing a subliminal stroboscope that rapidly alternates between a still shot and it’s underlying mathematical lattice-work on which it is constructed. The viewer is plunged into a kinematic rotorelief of pulsating fractals and figures that through a juxtaposition of contrasting scales is effectively internalized, subject to the same perceptive inquisition it employed to examine things. The installation serves as a threshold to an un-folding itinerary from where one emerges like a charged Baudlairean kalaidoscope gifted with consciousness.

~ Ali Soltani
images courtesy of the artist and Claire Oliver Gallery

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Marco Maggi

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Marco Maggi_Two Pages, 2015, Self-adhesive archival paper on wall, Dimensions variable, view two

Marco Maggi_Two Pages, 2015, Self-adhesive archival paper on wall, Dimensions variable, view two

Marco Maggi
Unfolding Marco Maggi
Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York [link]
September 10 – October 24, 2015

Entering the work of Marco Maggi is not too unlike the dichotomous trajectory of a Zeno’s paradox where the elusive sight of knowledge always lies half a step ahead. The intriguing force of the granulated opalescent field that draws the gaze to its orbit is as though the intricate construction of signs that inscribe the space they inhabit, are the molecular building blocks of some gigantic meta-language; the pencils like the needles of a seismograph machine are there to record the slightest slippages and we’re brought in to witness the immaculate silence of language before it erupts into a scream.

~ Ali Soltani

Images courtesy of the artist and Josée Bienvenu Gallery

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Plural: 9/11 Memorial

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memorial3

9/11 Memorial
Michael Arad (architect), Peter Walker and Partners (landscape architects)
New York, New York

The 9/11 Memorial is an unfortunate success. Vast dual cubic wounds swallow torrents of water, forming inverse fountains guarded by the names of the lost. The names, a gesture towards humanization, spark an abstracted empathy quickly obstructed by smiling tourists posing for selfies: social capital trumping intent and decorum. The site functions as grand destination park, nominally about remembrance and devoid of mourning, except within the distastefully toppling museum providing commoditized relief. The scale echoes the symbolic, versus statistic, value of the tragedy, flexing green-space to life against a voracious market, signaling vast power in the economics of loss.

~ Ryder Richards

Ruins are self evident historical palimpsests fundamentally different than designed memorials.  Here the opportunity to mark and preserve the sacred site of an epic calamity and the memory of those who lost their lives is given to a flattened corporate park surrounded by a haphazard display of new skyscrapers. The awe at the sight of the reflecting pools at the footprint of towers owed to their massive scale is a short lived spectacle; having seen one, the casual visitor might peek, but is unlikely to pause for a redundant scene which nullifies the whole idea of reflecting let alone memorialization. 

~ Ali Soltani

images by Ryder Richards

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