Tony Cragg, Runner, 2009. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art London.
Tony Cragg
Video: Tony Cragg, Runner, 2009. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art London.
The potential of materials and form are at the heart of Tony Cragg’s practice, and a concept is explored time and again in the dynamism of his work. Figures defy their stillness as though an indiscriminate energy were dared to give itself a form. “I’m looking for a system of belief or ethics in the material,” the artist notes. “I want that material to have a dynamic, to push and move and grow.” An exceptional example of that vitality, Runner pits movement against perspective, form against disorder and achieves an incredible fluidity as a result. Cragg’s material mastery is also evident in the tactility of the bronze fabrication and the artist’s embrace of negative space, again creating an abutment for weight to bear on a floating field — one that Cragg describes as a “dialogue” in visual quality between objects and their environment, revealing the “inner structure of things.”
Joseph Yaeger
Joseph Yaeger, In helpless longing to get close you must destroy what's close, 2020. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art London.
In this work, we find much of what characterizes Joseph Yaeger’s lauded painting practice: a carefully framed image, often sourced from historic film stills, newspaper clippings, or YouTube videos, is used to prod our sense of memory in a cinematic whirl of allusions that is as captivating as it is unsettling. But it’s his use of watercolour on gessoed linen that lends his works their distinctive visual appeal. The fluid pigments float above the surface, here echoing what they depict. The watercolour and gesso oppose each other like blood seeping out of pores and flowing like tears across the face. As the materials settle, a cracked surface emerges, which functions as a device to antagonize our sense of time and memory and suggests the uneasy sensation of the figure’s pierced skin. All told, it’s difficult to look away, so it’s easy to see why Yaeger’s works have caught the attention of collectors and art lovers worldwide, as evidenced by the resounding success his works have achieved at Phillips in recent seasons.
Jennifer Guidi
Jennifer Guidi, Light on the Mountain (Painted Green Sand #7A, Light Pink-Pink-Orange-Yellow Sky, Dark Purple-Blue Mountain, Green Ground), 2020. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art London.
Jennifer Guidi’s expansive approach to colour, texture, and light results in an inviting glow in her paintings, made all the more enveloping by the tactile quality of her canvases, which seem to optically radiate to the viewer. The artist’s travels to Morocco and a Hammer Museum exhibition of Tibetan sand mandalas inspired the wide-reaching use of materials that lies at the heart of her practice. Light on the Mountain takes its subject to a remarkably serene height, at most taking up a sliver of the canvas and suspended between an imminent sunrise and a cool darkness. Although primarily composed of a dusky foreground, Guidi’s meditations on colour allow us to see the coming breakthrough — even in its absence, light finds a way to make its presence known.
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Lavoro - Autocisterna, 2008–2011. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art London.
In 1961, while at work on a series of self-portraits inspired by Francis Bacon, Michelangelo Pistoletto caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the black ground of his canvas. “The objectivity of it brought me into a new way of looking at portraiture, as well as pictorial space,” the artist recalled. The next year he began his Mirror Paintings series, which has become his most lauded body of work. Across all these works, the laws of objective reality are his primary subject, as viewers themselves are brought into discourse with the elements rendered on each work’s surface. This work comes from an early 2000s series of Mirror Paintings that depict industrial machinery, placing the viewer directly within the context of construction labor and bringing themes of transformation, space, and social class to the fore. From January to March this year, the artist’s lifelong practice was celebrated in the sweeping solo exhibition Michelangelo Pistoletto: To Step Beyond at Lévy Gorvy Dayan in New York.
Cai Guo-Qiang
Cai Guo-Qiang, Poppy Series: Animals No. 2, 2016. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art London.
What could be a more unpredictable medium than the behavior of lit gunpowder? However, in the hands of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, gunpowder becomes a tangible embodiment of Daoism and a poignant symbol of the cosmic forces emerging from the intricate dance of opposing elements. Viewing this work, we’re thrust into the mesmerizing confluence of order and chaos as the disintegration of gunpowder gives rise to the exquisite forms of delicate poppies and animals. The moment Cai Guo-Qiang lights the gunpowder is often a kind of performance, the actual fireworks producing a fleeting image in the air. What’s left behind on the surface is the scent of the image, rather than a direct depiction. This confluence is further charged by the Western misunderstanding and misuse of natural materials from historic Chinese culture. Where gunpowder was developed in China as an attempt to create a life-sustaining force, and where poppy plants were refined into a substance to improve strength and vitality, each has become a destructive force when harnessed by the West. This work helps us see another way.
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer, Die Donauquelle (The Source of the Danube), 1978. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art London.
Throughout Anselm Kiefer’s remarkable body of work, he has deployed a multitude of symbolic physical materials, from gold leaf, to lead, tree roots, burned books, and more. The artist’s book Die Donauquelle (The Source of the Danube) is no different, with its exterior hand-embellished with oil paint, sand, and burlap. But there’s a layer deeper we can go, as the photographic images inside the book document an artist’s palette emerging from a pool of water in a complex web of associations that seem to span the fields of photography, painting, literature, history, and natural science. Keifer’s works are characteristically ambiguous, and this one exemplifies his ongoing enquiry into mythology, religion, and the darker corners of German history and identity. It’s also markedly personal, as Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen — the source of the great Danube River.
On the occasion of Kiefer’s 80th birthday this year, several prominent exhibitions are bringing his practice into focus worldwide. In London, the Royal Academy of Arts will present Kiefer / Van Gogh from June through October, with a solo exhibition at White Cube occurring concurrently.
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