AUTUMNAL ROUND UP
Jenny Holzer, London galleries and the RA
October & November 2017
Since I last wrote, autumn has come to call and is already starting to give way to winter. In the mornings, the fields have been filled with a low fog, the grass frozen into crystals, and the weak sun has been rising gradually, slow to burn off the mist. These first cool days mean the return to cosy sweaters and thick scarves, but for the art lovers of the world, they bring something else too— a new season of fairs, sales, and blockbuster exhibitions. If this post is a bit tardy, rest assured that it’s only because I’ve spent all my spare time running around London, trying to eek out as much of the excitement as I can.
I won’t spend too much ink writing about the Frieze fairs, as wonderful as they were. By this time, I think enough column inches have been filled with the post-game recap. Instead, I’m going to start with my favourite exhibition that opened during Frieze week— Jenny Holzer at Bleinham Palace.
During the first few evenings the exhibition was open, light projections were displayed in the inner courtyard of the palace. I went along with my husband to one of the first nights, and we were both utterly transfixed. Texts were scrolling up almost every surface of the facade, all narratives of war. Projected from a distance, the words skated across the flagstones, abstracted, to find their full form
against the building.
They were the modern words of injured soldiers and the poems of refugees (Holzer worked with the Not Forgotten Association to gather the testimonies of over 50 veterans). They told of violence and suffering unflinchingly. The contrast between form and content— the beauty of the moving lights and the horrors they told— made this one of the most powerful Jenny Holzer pieces I’ve ever seen. I certainly can’t think of another that’s so well integrated with its surroundings. After all, Bleinham itself, like so many public monuments and historical sites, is a product of the spoils of war, a grand beauty built from violence. Here, the experiences of those who suffer most and gain the least are brought to bear, reminding us that this was a building for the few that only exists because of the pain of many.
Later in the month, I returned to Woodstock to see the work inside of the palace. Incorporating pieces from the many and varied forms of her practice— censored paintings, sound art, bone installations, LED lights, stone benches— Holzer permeated the space in a way that contemporary art exhibitions in historical spaces often fail to do. Her work was able to fit almost seamlessly into the palace rooms while at the same time completely undermining the grandeur and opulence. When I first arrived for example, back in the central courtyard in daylight, I was specifically looking for her stone benches, sure that they would be included in the show. It took me ten minutes to notice that they were all around me, lining the perimeter of the square; the stone colouring of Holzer’s work was a such a perfect fit with the original masonry that they looked as though they had always been there. “I have seen heroes and that’s what I must tell,” one reads.
Through these careful insertions, Holzer has created an incredibly affecting tribute, examining the wars and horrors of our present through implicating our obsession with the wars and spoils of the past. She shows how distant violence can be too easily abstracted from lived experience and how they shape our reality even as they fail to touch our daily lives. I won’t be able to see Bleinham the same again.
These past weeks, I’ve also been spending lunch breaks on little gallery outings, dipping into two or three exhibitions a week, eager not to let all of the Frieze week goodness slip away without a fight. Situated as I am right in St James, it’s just too good an opportunity to miss. There’s a lot of incredible things to see, as always, but today I’ll limit myself to my most recent lunchtime trip— “Hiroshi Sugimoto: Snow White” at the Marian Goodman Gallery. I wandered in on a whim. I was in the area and knew that they had recently put up a new exhibition. I walked through their doors blind, not knowing what to expect.
What I found were an absolutely stunning series of photographs by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. As soon as I saw the first image, I was immediately brought back to my Art History lectures, reminded that I had studied him before. They are just unmistakable. Throughout the galleries, large format black and white images of theatres fill the walls, ranging from small drive-in cinemas to large Italian opera houses to ruins of theatres, long forgotten. In the centre of each image, directly on the stage in most cases, is a starkly white screen.
They seem simple enough, but they hide the truth of their construction. Rather than simple snapshots, these photographs have been created using an incredibly long exposure time; when creating the series, Sugimoto would play a film on the screens, keeping the shutter open for the total running time. The frames melt together, leaving nothing but a pristine white canvas.
So much is captured in these photos but in the final result, so little of it is legible. In this way, as much as these images comment on the photographic process, they comment equally on the realities of our existence. They’re about how we experience and remember time just as much about how we can render it. They’re about our social spaces and our communities, about history and creativity. They’re about all the hidden things that exist, unaccessible, around us all the time. So much is left unremembered. So much history is invisible.
Another recent lunchtime outing found me at the Royal Academy’s “Dail to Duchamp” exhibition. At first, it seemed to me to be a completely random pairing. How much did they really have in common? As I’ve always loved Duchamp and never really cared for Dali, I almost bristled at the connection. Still, it didn’t take long for me to come around. By the first room, I was convinced. Even putting aside the fact that they were apparently friends, even consulting each other on new projects, there is after all common threads in their practice and in their interests. It wasn’t enough to bring me entirely around to Dali, but it was enough to make me consider him in a new light.
This is just a scratch on the surface, but as I implied, it’s been a busy month! My to do list grew very long, and even as I’ve made a sizeable dent in it, I’ve still got lots to do. I’m hoping to spend this coming Saturday in full on art geek-out mode, squeezing in as much as I can manage. Right now I’m planning a trip to the Tate Modern for the Ilya And Emilia Kabakov exhibition, to Lisson’s 50th anniversary show on the Strand, and to the Barbican to see John Akofrmah’s installation in the Curve— three things on my mental list of ‘unmissable’ exhibitions. I’ll let you know what else I manage to squeeze in before I fall right off my feet.
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