Postcards from CONDO
Published on elephant.art.I began my pilgrimage at The Approach – thankful to not be the first to have entered the pub this morning – whose annexe space is shared by the works of Leroy Johnson and Olivia Jia of Margot Samel, New York. Johnson’s three house sculptures (condominiums, if you will) are layered and balanced to perfection, pasted with faded hues and detailed with collaged images of his hometown and friends and promiscuous magazine cutouts, each holding within them the varied connections he has to Philadelphia – its people and its architecture – and his attention to and love for their contradictions.
After getting a coffee and being handed a brochure from the London Buddhist Centre, I headed to Rose Easton, who is hosting Milan’s zazà to present the Mexican artist Arlette and the postwar composer Sylvano Bussotti in what the galleries describe as a two-person encounter. Both artists deal with transformation, Arlette through framed metal sculptures that, over time and experience, accumulate meaning within their very composition – that is, melted-down past works. Meanwhile, Bussotti’s experimental music scores encompass the visual and sensorial sphere as much as the sonic one – his sheets and collages at once reminiscent of star constellations and mathematical equations. I adore a line in the press release that describes the surfaces of his scores as seeming “to yearn to become a scene.” Both bodies of work in this exhibition have been left unstable and unfinished by the artists, inclined as much towards performance as to object, to notation as to complete works of art, and to fragmentation as method rather than deprivation. For a conceptually vague show whose density was overwhelming upon that visit that afternoon in the rain, the open-endedness of this pairing has remained in my mind, though I admit that I have yet to sit through one of Bussotti’s dissonant and impenetrable pieces until the end.
Not too far up the road, Women’s History Museum’s first solo exhibition in London is presented by Company Gallery at Soft Opening. Three PVC strip curtains printed with the faces of the Museum’s co-founder, Mattie, in various expressions of bliss and seduction line the space’s furthest wall. High-heeled, gold-skinned and very well-dressed mannequins adorned with intricate belts, gowns, bralettes, headdresses, and furs seem to guard her, either headless, blindfolded, or eyes downcast. One figure that brings to mind Mendieta’s Siluetas lies in the corner of the room, her torso punctured by porcupine quills and legs constructed from antique perfume and poison bottles, dried leaves surrounding her. Had they not been looking so glum – not to mention menacing – I would have stripped these stunning garments from their backs and bolted for the door. But that isn’t the point. Women’s History Museum reflects on the historical uses of fashion and engages clothing – from fetish garments to antique and exotic accessories – as a medium with which to, in turn, reflect on the present psychological conditions of working within the industry, as its “fantasy spirals into darkness when you confront your own role as a cog in a capitalist hellscape.” Alright!
Next: another intergenerational duo exhibition at Emalin, hosting Peter Freeman, Inc. Upon entering, I was pleased to see that my coral-red nail polish (shade Too Too Hot by Essie) matched Dan Flavin’s Untitled (to V. Mayakovsky) 1 – a work composed of six rightward-leaning fluorescent lamps whose base rests lightly on the floor, and whose light casts red onto Anna Clegg’s work on a nearby wall, a painting of a schoolchild crouched over his desk, light streaming across the floor through what we imagine as the window. Upstairs, Flavin’s inarguably phallic Untitled (to Rainer) 2 stands opposite Clegg’s Interior 19, which depicts the artist’s elbow bent and raised to mimic a boner beneath a soft, synthetic-looking blanket.
There is something incredible about these artists together – a surprising yet clear overlap between the sensitivities and interests of both, though expressed in opposite forms. It is also clear that both appreciate a nice dose of irony and innuendo. Flavin was a sentimentalist who loved and lived in craft, leaving behind a cluttered collection of ceramics and Hudson River School paintings, and had an interest in the pathos of the tragic artist, to whom he often dedicated his works. Clegg often translates images from her personal life and popular culture onto canvas, expressing experiences wrapped in memory and narrative through succinct, spacious images and a pared-back palette. Maximalist effect through minimal form: this is also what Flavin accomplished with colour, light, form, and system, redefining space and the boundaries of an artwork, while paying homage to those who came before him and so much more. I loved this exhibition, and I have never been more aware of my retinas.
Just around the corner at Maureen Paley: Studio M, Gordon Robichaux is presenting sculptures by Agosto Machado, an artist whose materials lists are as incredible and varied as his past. Tinsel, false eyelashes, knives, teeth, feathers, wishbones, jewellery, coins, and a metal Mexican skeleton compose shrines dedicated to Machado’s friendships with celebrated figures of downtown New York’s political counterculture since the sixties. Trans activist Marsha P. Johnson and influential filmmaker and performance artist Jack Smith are remembered through these intimate talismanic objects – testaments to their importance and individuality to both the world and the artist himself.
Further west to Ginny on Frederick, hosting City Galerie Wien and presenting Albert Dietrich’s worn wooden furniture scattered throughout the space, concealed by stark white panels but for their top surfaces that peek out. The walls bear Sophie Giraux’s cast rubber works that look like they would be cold and metallic to the touch, like aluminium moulds of my grandmother’s tea towels and table cloths – or maybe this was just thanks to the contrast with the warmth and geometry of Dietrich’s works. Warm and cool, horizontal and vertical, dense and sparse – I enjoyed this interplay and its innocence.
I decided to take a detour through some World War I destruction around the corner at Saint Bart’s Hospital, marked on my now-dog-eared CONDO map by the letter Z, for Zeppelin Raid Damage. This is the last site of Issac Rangaswami’s alphabetical London recommendations, a varied and unexpected list that charts the capital’s charms, from an Italian sandwich bar to a wooden manhole cover – the commission of the decade. The ugliness and abjectness of the design of this map are almost excusable thanks to its detail and refreshing from the cleanliness of the usual art marketing – one fit for such a chaotic treasure hunt.
Then a short bus to Brunette Coleman hosting Milan’s ZERO…, where artists Paride Maria Calvia, Hubert Duprat and Irene Fenara are occupying the space with an installation of pig-hair balls that look like the product of an oversized dung beetle, three large fibreboard panels coated with calcium carbonate, three miniature larvae cases of gold and pearls and rare stones, and a screen looping a recording of surveillance footage showing cars headlights moving down a road at dusk. The result is beautiful and poetic, and the space somehow quieter than those I had just visited before – I felt surveilled, as if the creatures that had helped fabricate these balls and precious charms were hiding around the room, watching in silence as I inspected their handiwork.
After countless steps and puddles stepped in and press releases hoarded, and a few more galleries that I didn’t love enough to mention, it was time to go home. But as always in London, the journey is never complete and there is much to return for: greengrassi and Modern Art, Union Pacific and Carlos/Ishikawa, of course, where it all began – not to mention the rest of the extensive recommendation list of dreams from dear Isaac. This enormous exhibition is an annual reminder of London’s openness, one that feels increasingly at risk as of late – a reminder of what a privilege these collaborations are, and what a joy it is to have these artworks brought here. As Agosto Machado writes of his 1973 visit to the capital in his press release: “There was a feeling in the air, a new freedom, and travelling around London during that time, I felt myself very much a part of it.”