More Christmas Art

Ai Weiwei

Cornelia Parker

Martin Creed

David Hockney

Urs Fischer

Cory Arcangel

Susan Hiller

Drawing Surrealism at LACMA

The inclusion of drawing-based projects by contemporary artists Alexandra Grant, Mark Licari, and Stas Orlovski, conceived specifically for the exhibition, aims to elucidate the diverse and enduring vestiges of surrealist drawing.

Tacita Dean's Christmas Tree

Transcription:

Tacita Dean:
When I was asked to do the Christmas tree, to be honest, it was a rather instantaneous idea.  I live in Berlin, and the one thing that is very striking about how the Germans behave with Christmas is that it’s very understated, and still rather beautiful.  It’s a hell of a palaver lighting them, so we decided to bring in the performative aspect of it, so it would just be lit at dusk every day from now until when the Tate closes before Christmas.

For me it’s not a nostalgic thing, this Christmas tree, it’s just actually making something that’s just so simple and very beautiful.  Because there is nothing more beautiful than a candle, really, like there’s nothing more beautiful than an open fire.  And so in our research to try and find out about how you attach the candles, they use these weights to keep them upright.  I found images of these from Victorian Christmas trees, and the weights in fact became the baubles that we use today.  Also, the funny thing about that was trying to find something for the top of the tree.  But in the end, because I called it Weihnachtsbaum, which means Christmas tree in German, that we should just use the very simple kind of Christmas tree top, as they call it.

The candles were made by a wax chandler in Brighton called Michael Marchant, handmade, each one, in traditional beeswax, because the paraffin wax ones are what we are all used to, the white ones, but the beeswax were the original material.


Michael Marchant:
My name is Michael Marchant, and I’m a wax chandler, a maker of medieval candles, as they were made 400 years ago.  And the product is a hundred per cent beeswax, and they burn with a golden light and they don’t drip.  And I use my own filtering technique that goes back 400 years.  I don’t use beeswax that is washed through water.  It contains the honey and pollen within the product, so that’s why it’s a hundred per cent natural, and produces the most beautiful aroma.  It’s astonishing.  I never realised that it would be such a brilliant idea to start with, from the artist – it’s fantastic.  And everyone involved has been absolutely amazing, to get it organised.


Tacita Dean:
Well, what is so nice about this tree is that it’s a domestic scale tree, almost.  So it’s in proportion to the candles.  Usually the trees are bigger in that space, so this is a smaller, more intimate situation.  And I was afraid that the scale was going to make it look a bit like Spinal Tap, but actually it works very beautifully – it actually works very well.  It’s proportionally quite beautiful in that space.  But mind you, I should say, please don’t try this at home!  I don’t want to be the cause of domestic fires all over Britain this year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

It is the holiday season, and I am taking a hiatus until after the New Year. This post was originally posted in 2010. I've decided to re-publish it again for all to enjoy. 2013 is going to be a big year. I am looking forward to bringing you the best in art from Los Angeles and around the world. I wish all my readers and followers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!! In the meantime, please enjoy this Christmas art.

Adoration of the Magi by Bloemaert 

The Nativity by Rubens

The Nativity by Botticelli

Christmas Flood by Jennifer Pastor

Zimmer mit Weihnachtsbaum (Room with Christmas Tree) by Roman Signer 

Christmas (with Double Boy on Crutches) by John Baldessari

O Tannenbaum by  Sarah Ortmeyer

A Christmas Tree designed by Fiona Banner at the Tate Britain

"KOTTABOS" a one-night group show curated by Marina Pinsky in Los Angeles, California

December 15, 2012

Kottabos is the name of an ancient Greek drinking game, and the name of a one night group show in a vacant storefront.

The game involves throwing wine at a target and shouting the name of one's object of desire while doing so. To quote François Lissarrague, "These two examples make it quite clear that kottabos is more than a game of skill. Whatever form it may take, it involves true aim and the disruption of equilibrium, whether it be of a disk on a pole or of a little saucer floating in water. When the balance is upset, something capsizes or falls with a crash, and this symbolizes that love has been assured. The break in equilibrium is the physical sign of the uncertainty that takes hold of a lover in the presence of the beloved."

This exhibition is centered around the disruption that takes place in the presence of the beloved. Specifically, it seeks to be emblematic of the uncertainty of aesthetic love, arrived at through a drawn out passion, that is channeled into an art object. The artworks shown here share a bodily connection - they ooze the stuff of life.

Featuring the work of:
Kelly Akashi
Michelle Kim
Kathleen Ryan
Chase Wilson
David Zuttermeister

Imi Knoebel at LACMA

Figur, 1986

Figur 20, 1986

Latinist: Vivimus, 1987

Latinist: Vivit, 1987

Latinist: Vivis, 1987

(Left to Right) Figur 48, 1987 and Figur 49, 1987 

Under the Moon of Love, 1993

Figurbuild, 1988

Latinist: Vivitst, 1987

Kathryn Andrews "D.O.A./D.O.B." at David Kordansky Gallery, Culver City, California

Kathryn Andrews juxtaposes legacies of pop art and minimalism, creating works in which the experience of materials prompts the viewer to reconsider how subjectivity is constructed in contemporary culture. Her work often combines fabricated forms with readymade objects sourced (or seemingly sourced) from Hollywood prop shops, memorabilia stores, party supply outlets and other commercial venues. Rife with socio-economic associations, these readymades pit popular and/or symbolic value against experience of the sculptural whole as material artifact.

The title of the show, D.O.A. | D.O.B. (dead on arrival / date of birth), points to the creation and annihilation that is at stake when images, physical forms, and personae are understood as fixed versus non-fixed entities. It will feature three floor-based sculptures and three wall-based sculptures that incorporate polished stainless steel forms which support, surround, and complicate both found and fabricated objects. Their mirror-like surfaces, meanwhile, transform each into a visual essay on the act of viewership itself, and implicate both viewer and artist as active agents in each piece.

Still Life (Woman with Fruit), for example, consists of a human-scaled stainless steel tube that supports a headdress made of artificial fruits and vegetables. From afar, the object sets up a humorously paradoxical relationship between the industrial, polished cylinder and the ersatz organic matter perched on its 'head'. However, the sculpture is in fact designed to serve as the site of a performance, in which the activated work becomes a complex composition of interiors and exteriors, tangible and projected presence, and lineages of both sculpture and painting.

Painting is also addressed in a series of three inter-related wall sculptures that resemble windows. In these works, the line between fabricated and existing forms is complicated by the stickers that adorn them; each features a unique image of a clown surrounded by imagery specific to one of the four seasons, thus raising questions about how the passage of time can become an active part of otherwise static objects. Based on manipulated versions of found imagery, the stickers represent condensed moments of painterly composition within the rectilinear window frameworks. Furthermore, they are modeled after decals used to alert emergency responders to the presence of children (each work is titled Tot Finder), so that an implied body behind the window competes with the viewer's experience of his or her own reflection upon its surface.

Throughout the show, images and reflections are intimately fused to the materials on and in which they appear. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Lethal Weapon, a work which at first seems to be no more than a tall stainless steel cylinder with a small hole. Looking into the darkness of the cylinder's interior slowly reveals that it contains a pistol pointed at the viewer, and only upon reading a description does he or she realize that this is a gun used on the set of the film that shares its title with the piece. The formal vocabulary of minimalism conceals the most loaded and symbolic of popular objects, and the absences represented by the tube's opening and the gun's barrel threaten to override an otherwise overwhelming experience of materials and cultural references.

In 2013, Kathryn Andrews will be the subject of a solo exhibition at Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Earlier this year she was included in Made in L.A. 2012 organized by the Hammer Museum and LAXART, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; First Among Equals, ICA, Philadelphia; and When Forms Become Attitudes, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (traveling to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit). Other recent exhibitions include American Exuberance, Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Modify, As Needed, MOCA, North Miami; and George Herms: Xenophilia (Love Of The Other), MOCA, Los Angeles. She has also created numerous performance works; in 2012 these have included Voix de Ville at Art 43 Basel and Fork Hunt at Graystone Mansion, Los Angeles (organized by LAXART). Andrews lives and works in Los Angeles.


David Kordansky Gallery
3143 S. La Cienega Blvd. Unit A
Los Angeles, CA 90016
Tel. 310-558-3030
Fax. 310-558-3060
http://www.davidkordanskygallery.com/