Curly Red Hair 1969 Acrylic and sand on canvas 79x55in. (200x140cm) Private Collection Photo: Alain Speltdoorn

By Kiša Lala

The paintings of Domenico Gnoli are drawn with scrupulous. almost clerical detail – and yet they capture a feeling of  wide-eyed wonder and whimsy. In 1970 Gnoli died at the young age of 36, and his legacy lay dormant for four decades –  his works having been secreted away in obscure private collections until this rare retrospective at New York’s Luxembourg & Dayan gallery.

Chemisette Verte by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from a private collection

'What is a Monster? Ostrich in Car' by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober Collection, Malllorca, Spain

'What is a Monster? Snail on Sofa' by Domenico Gnoli, 1967, from Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober Collection, Malllorca, Spain

Early videos from the 1960s show Gnoli and his wife, artist Yannick Vu, cruising the Riviera and jetting between New York and Majorca, living a charmed life . Vu was present at the opening, pleased to share this large collection of her former husband’s paintings publicly for the first time. She reflected on Gnoli’s whimsical perspective and affinity for children’s fantasies, though they had no children of their own. His drawings from his series “What is a Monster?” are a treat for fans of absurdist children’s book illustrations.

Gnoli’s subjects are quotidian bedspreads, garments and human hair in which he evinces vast patterned landscapes. Often the peaks and valleys in the folds of the fabric drape Botero-like physiques. They are an intimate scrutiny into plaits, pleats and pant creases, a domain exclusively feminine with its attention to domestic detail. They shed loving light on the fastidious rituals of attire, on the neatness of pinstriped collars and pearl buttons, and painted with a mix of sand and pigment, they have a gravelly, tactile feel in imitation of textiles. Gnoli’s headless and faceless subjects remain sartorially prim, and his obsessive eye for aesthetic detail – elevates mundane rituals to an art form.

Braid 1969 Acrylic and sand on canvas 71x59in. (180x150cm) Private Collection Photo: Adam Reich

Red Dress Collar 1969 Acrylic and sand on canvas 59 x 67 in. (150 x 170 cm.) Private Collection Photo: Alessandro Vasari

Striped Shirt Lapel 1969 Acrylic and sand on canvas 57 " x 44 " in. (146 x 113 cm.) Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf Stiftung Sammlung Kem

Italian Painter, Illustrator, and Stage Designer Domenico Gnoli with his wife. This photograph was taken in December, 1969, just months before his death.Original photography by Jack Robinson. www.robinsonarchive.com

Domenico Gnoli’s Paintings On View At Luxembourg & Dayan through June 30 in New York
www.luxembourgdayan.com

Frieze New York art fair on Randall's Island, Manhattan. Photo by Linda Nylind. 4/5/2012.

Frieze New York has camped at Randall’s island with 180 contemporary galleries under its enormous white skeletal snakelike tent designed by SO-IL architects. The fair which is like a pop-up village also includes Frieze Projects, curated by Cecilia Alemani, with artists John Ahearn, Latifa Echakhch, writer Rick Moody and Tim Rollins & K.O.S. among others specially commissioned to create outdoor installations around this unique location.

There is also Frieze Sounds, which features audio works by artists Martin Creed and Rick Moody, and also a Frieze Sculpture Park with works by Christoph Büchel, Ernesto Neto and Tomás Saraceno – who is also on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art currently.

Nicholas Hlobo, 'Tail' Stevenson Gallery Frieze New York 2012

Detail from Damian Hirst's I Want You Too 1993 Melanine, Glass, Perspex, Fish and Formaldehyde 48x96x12 in. Showing at White Cube Gallery Booth at Frieze NY 2012

John Ahearn - Commissioned and produced by Frieze Projects New York 2012 Frieze New York 2012 Photograph by Linda Nylind Courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze

Hans-Peter Feldmann, Ohne Titel, Triptikon - Galerie Francesca Pia Zurich at Frieze NY 2012

Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler - SEVEN - Nicole Klagsbrun at Frieze NY 2012

Frieze New York art fair on Randall's Island, Manhattan. Photo by Linda Nylind. 4/5/2012.

Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled 2012 (Karmer and Newman make sausage) Frieze New York 2012 Photograph by Linda Nylind Courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze

Frieze New York 2012

Frieze New York 2012

Frieze New York 2012

Frieze New York 2012

Frieze New York 2012 has many pop-up cafes on the waterfront including a Soho House lounge for members and thirsty New Yorkers

Many galleries and exhibitions are coinciding with Frieze – notably:

PULSE New York, May 3 – 6, 2012 The Metropolitan Pavilion 125 West 18th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues)
NADA New York Chelsea Center 548, 548 West 22nd Street (May 4-7)
The New Museum is showing works by Phyllida Barlow and Tacita Dean among others. (May 6th)
Helmet Lang at 24 Washington Sq North, co-curated by Neville Wakefield and Mark Fletcher (May 5 ― June 15, 2012)
Jeremy Kost, Of an Instance, Presented by Hugo Boss in partnership with The Andy Warhol Museum – 150 11th Avenue (May 4 – 31, 2012)
Kehinde Wiley at Sean Kelly Gallery ‘An Economy of Grace’, opening reception: May 5, 6-8pm (May 6 through June 16, 2012)
Storefront for Art and Architecture Capital C Performance/cabaret – 97 Kenmare Street – 6–9pm May 6
Shepard Fairey, Pace Prints – 521 West 26th Street, 3rd & 4th Floors Opening Saturday May 5, 12-8pm, (May 5-June 16 2012).
Chelsea Night block party – 26th Street will be closed to cars 6-9pm
The Clocktower Gallery 108 Leonard Street, 13th Floor with Mary Heilmann & Tony Oursler & Lawrence Weiner etc. Open studios and galleries Sunday May 6 6–9pm
Frieze Downtown Night Various Locations, 6:00 p.m. – 2:00 a.m. Sunday May 6

More information: Frieze New York Randall’s Island Park, New York, NY http://www.friezenewyork.com

Hook and Eyes, LucyandBart - a collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess

Lucy McRae and Bart Hess have been bending and revising the body with simple low-tech alterations. Their works builds on fashion forms combining it with everyday technologies like safety-pins, Q-tips.

Bart Hess has been exploring the effect of new materials on the body using animation and photography. And Australian artist, Lucy McRae was trained as a ballerina, which has helped her to become a visual architect of the body, playing with its symmetry to create alien yet organic deviations. Together they play with the human silhouette, the body grows fur or gills, attenuates, hyper-extends, balloons or shrinks. Their work is also inspired by new developments in genetic manipulations & plastic surgery.

Evolution, a Lucy McRae and Bart Hess collaboration

Hunt For High-tech (above)

Chlorophyll Skin is a film experimenting with color, movement, absorption and the body – using Q-tips

A mini music video made by Lucy McRae for a forthcoming book and DVD entitled Black material with music by Spencer Product in collaboration with Champagne Valentine

Dripping Color, LucyandBart - a collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess

Bart Hess presents a performance inspired by the Photoshop filter that allows you to “liquify” images at Exit festival in Paris. 2012

Germination Day One, LucyandBart - a collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess

Germination Day Eight, LucyandBart - a collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess

Lucy Mcrae at 2012′s TED conference

Lucy McRae was invited to participate in 2012’s TED conference in California, where she spoke about using stockings, safety-pins and simple everyday objects to transform or grow a second skin to create animal textures and change colors, chameleon-like. Wanting to blur the edges of her skin, she sprayed her arms with a garden hose to watch how the water dripped and was inspired to create a textile made out of water tubes with different colored waters. She has worked on commercial projects for companies, one of which involved developing ideas on swallowing a perfume pill that would alter the body’s scent.

A collaboration between stylist Alister Mackie, artist duo LucyandBart, and Nick Knight

For more information:

http://lucyandbart.blogspot.com/
www.barthess.nl
www.lucymcrae.blogspot.com

Artist Not Vital in Agadez, Niger - Mekafoni. Camel, 2003 - Courtesy of the artist and Sperone Westwater Gallery New York

Raised on the dizzying slopes of the Engadine region in Switzerland, nomadic artist Not Vital takes delight in alighting on equally liminal perches on the new Pangaea of the 21^st century, peppering the planet with sculptural architecture from Patagonia to Agadez. Vital and I had a conversation about his migratory life while circling the artifacts of his recent peregrinations exhibited at Sperone Westwater gallery. Though his creations arise from emotional encounters and passionate collisions with other cultures, they are often born smooth and shiny in their egg-like perfection. Linked to Vital’s personal journeys, they become vehicles for an idea and transport one - which is the underlying root meaning of the word metaphor.

House to Protect Against the Wind, Agadez, Niger - © Not Vital. Courtesy of the artist and Sperone Westwater Gallery

© Not Vital, Tongue, 2008 stainless steel 310 1/4 x 65 3/8 x 65 3/8 inches; Edition 1/3 - Courtesy of Sperone Westwater Gallery

Cow Tongues

Vital has had an obsession with these after finding the severed organs in an Italian butcher shop. Since then, he has cast them in various sizes in bronze or steel, a signature element of his shows. The tallest to date at nearly 8 meters is a totemic and virile looking specimen of hand-beaten, smooth steel. Tongues are tools for tasting what’s tangible, but underappreciated as prehensile appendages. A cow’s tongue maybe an edible delicacy for some, but my own experience of being licked by a cow, a quick exploratory flick, was shock. Its unforeseen alien and erotic invisibility, hidden length and roughness in a creature of otherwise harmless bovine temperament, was an epiphany.

Presque vu, sequentially related to déjà vu, is to almost grasp, like something on the tip of the tongue – could be an attempt to describe Vital’s ever-probing steel antennae: a tongue that desires to taste that which can never be completely known.

© Not Vital, Installation view of Hanging and Weighting, 2010, Plaster and Stainless Steel- Photo: Eric Gregory Powell, Courtesy of Sperone Westwater Gallery

Hangings and Weightings

White plaster sculptures hang slug-like on tenterhooks and seem to capture a state of uncertainty; all hang from a similar height. Vital tells me that his upbringing in the Engadine, with its backdrop of snowcapped mountains, had fixed his contemplative gaze at a certain height.

“When the sun goes up, the people in the Engadine are looking up,” explains Vital, gesturing above eye-level. “If you look at old people in Italy they look down. Growing up there – and we are formed very early – vision is always fixed up there. When I was in New York, my first apartment didn’t have much light, but it was the tallest I could get because if I had to concentrate on something, it would be up there… at 3m 30cm,” Vital recalls, his gaze fixed at the exact height of his reverie.

Marbled Landscapes

Growing up in lands bleached of colour, Vital’s work is largely monochromatic and sensitive to the nuances of white; he argues with assistants who cannot see the subtleties of something incompletely white. “Half the year, it’s 2 meters of snow – your eyes become sensitive to light. If I was in Brazil and India, my work would be much more colourful.”

Excavated from Dali, in Yunnan district of China, Dali marble, which might as well be named after the Surrealist, is sliced to reveal hidden landscapes that mysteriously mirror both the terrain from which they are taken and the landscape of Vital’s birthplace. Finding the right rock and cutting the marble is an intuitive task and tensed with unpredictability; one must sense when to stop, or the stone crumbles. One takes a gamble and may find there is nothing inside.

A Cave Dweller in Patagonia

Vital tells me that four years ago he came across an island in a remote part of Patagonia in Chile, which he purchased. “The entire island is white marble. It is beautiful but you could not build anything on top… so I had to come up with something else, by going inside it. What I did was to tunnel inside 50m, with an opening in the west; the whole floor is one piece of marble.”

He named the island NotOna after himself and the naked natives that once lived there. It recalls the simplest, ‘primitive’ dwellings of the troglodytes who were masterful cave architects.

Rendering of island in Patagonia 'NotOna' with excavated entrance and exit, 2011 - © Not Vital. Courtesy of the artist and Sperone Westwater Gallery

Makaranta School, Agadez, Niger - © Not Vital. Courtesy of the artist and Sperone Westwater Gallery

Architecture for Sky-Watchers

On a whim, the artist went to the desert city of Agadez in Niger and built a house there to watch the sunset. The sky is an endlessly fascinating substitute for TV in the desert where stars are used to orient one self. “The concept was to build a house to watch the sunset in the poorest country in the world; at four storeys high, it is the biggest building in adobe in the whole region; it was a big challenge.”

Then he built a school: “The Tuaregs – the nomadic people of the region, were very much against the school because they believed if children learned to read and do mathematics, they would not be able to read the stars anymore.”

The Tuaregs now have towns and are only semi nomadic, but I was curious as to how they got around national borders when roaming the desert. “They go over them…but the borders are completely wrong,” said Vital with frustration. “They are [vertical], so insensitive. The Tuaregs move East-West, and the borders are cut North-South. So you have to go from Niger to Burkina Faso to Mali to Senegal, instead of in a flow.”

Death and the Tuaregs

Sensing his wanderings cultivated a detachment for material things, I asked Vital whether he had any philosophies guiding his understanding of death.

“I have experienced how a mother can lose a child, and two hours later it is buried and forgotten. Not forgotten, but she has moved on. You show a photograph of the daughter and she laughs, she smiles, and that is something that shows strength, that you can really learn from. Of course I am not a Tuareg…If you have nothing you have nothing to lose. With these accumulations that we have in the west, it is never enough, and much more difficult to leave; It makes the prospect of dying much more difficult.”

Bedroom, Agadez, Niger residence - Mekafoni © Not Vital. Courtesy of artist and Sperone Westwater Gallery

Luggage for the Nomad

Though his family had been in the Engadine for many generations, Vital grew up close to the earth, valuing commonsense, with farmers as neighbours, and animals in the cellars to heat up the house. Hunting and forestry were the natural way of life.

“Even though we had very little information and no TV from being too high in the mountains,” Vital tells me, “we had 5 months of vacation: From April to the beginning of October we didn’t have school. During this time, as children, we had to do something with our time – so that we weren’t bored.  At six years of age we were on our own and wanted to be on our own. We would go into the woods and survive in this harsh environment – and it was done with enormous passion. Afterwards, I read Italo Calvino’s Baron on the trees, and felt, I had done that.”

I said to Vital, that I recalled that the desert traveler, Wilfred Thesiger used to say that possessions made one weak.

“Yes, love him. He is a great wonderful writer and photographer. I wanted to go to Oman just because of him. I never met him, he just died; Of course I wanted to. Some time back I got another book of his from Richard Long’s girlfriend.”

© Not Vital, House to Watch the Sunset in Agadez, Niger - Courtesy of Sperone Westwater Gallery

© Not Vital Installation view of Piz Nair, 2011 Stainless steel, coal - Photo: Eric Gregory Powell, Courtesy of Sperone Westwater Gallery

Meditations on Black Mountains of Coal

Vital had selected whole chunks of coal from batches shipped in from Mongolia that are slices of Chinese landscapes like Shen Shui paintings.  Vital described them as riddles… from carved rock. These inflammable rocks seemed to inspire something similar to the Daoist contemplation of landscape, intended not for the eye, which is concerned with appearances but for the viewer’s mind, a physical bridge that transcends one to a metaphysical place.

“That’s good,” Vital says to me, “I wanted to put two chairs here…Last week I went to see the Rothko Chapel. I was there for 3 hours…”

I told him about Alain de Botton’s plan for a Temple to Aetheism, and he said that incidentally, de Botton’s father had lived in the Engadine, and been a collector of his artworks.

Though a polyglot and master of seven European languages, including his mother tongue of Romansh, Vital still chooses to live around people who do not speak them…Now that he has settled into his studio in Beijing’s 798 Zone, he has bought another house to renovate in Rio. But it’s not always about being a wanderer he claims, sometimes it’s about engaging people. In Beijing he has even started painting, “I have much more time, I see all these people…and with all these assistants, you can just live, and not go out.”

I asked if he felt attached to his homes. “I am asked why I have so many houses? These areas are just places I visit and like to stay in even for a night. I would have a house to watch the sunset even if I could only spend one night there. Next day it could have crumbled, and it would have been fine, because I had this one night of an experience….”

© Not Vital, Makaranta School in Agadez, Niger - Courtesy of artist and Sperone Westwater Gallery

Artist Not Vital standing in front of his Cow Tongue sculpture at Sperone Westwater, 2012 photo: Kisa Lala

The show entitled 十 五 – fifteen – written in Chinese characters – refers to the number of works in the current show.
Not Vital: 十 五 3-31 March 2012, Sperone Westwater Gallery 257 Bowery, New York, NY 10002

Phlegm painting at an old abandoned school in Sheffield, UK © Phlegm

UK street artist Phlegm has been changing the face of Sheffield’s abandoned lots, transforming them into galleries of black and white murals.

Phlegm has a unique talent for adapting to the surfaces of his dilapidated surroundings, allowing his characters to evolve in situ; the walls appear to have been constructed just to inhabit his creatures.

Phlegm painting at an old abandoned school in Sheffield, UK © Phlegm

In the above images Phlegm painted the walls at an abandoned school in Sheffield. “Spend a week on your own in there and you can literally watch nature eating it’s way through it, claiming it back,” says the artist of his experience of working at the school

Phlegm at Work © Romany WG

Phelgm in Sheffield, UK photo: © Romany WG

“This big robot is painted on the back of some abandoned substation just outside Sheffield,” says Phlegm

Falling - Phlegm, Sheffield, UK, February 2012

This above mural is part of a brilliant series of falling men in which Phlegm’s enigmatic creatures are suspended mid-motion in the act of falling. It recalls Georg Baselitz’s inverted paintings in which the world seems temporarily disrupted and turned upside down.

Phlegm, Outside Sheffield, UK. 2011 - from unurth.com

Phelgm Zombies, Sheffield, UK 2011

Phlegm painted this wall while they were filming a zombie movie at the location.

Phlegm paints a Telescope or Eyeglass at an abandoned site in Sheffield, UK

Phlegm paints a warehouse in Sheffield, UK December 2011

Harnessing of the Giant Squids Sheffield, UK

Read more:
Phlegm Website
Photographer Romany WG

Alain de Botton – A Temple for Atheists Image: Thomas Greenall & Jordan Hodgson

The writer, Alain De Botton, famous for his musings on Proust and the nature of happiness, has always had an interest in the way humans are impacted by architectural spaces. De Botton has explored transitional places and the way they affect human emotions – and he has lived in an airport continuously for a week for research on his book A Week At the Airport. But, for his latest project, De Botton has been inspired to create an edifice for atheists to counter the millions of monuments that exist for gods.

For the scores of glorious cathedrals and mosques built by architects there appears to be none that had been built for atheists. Places of worship have been built for Jesus, Mary and for the Buddha, but temples can also be built for love, friendship and calmness…

Alain de Botton – A Temple for Atheists Image: Thomas Greenall & Jordan Hodgson

De Botton intends to build his tower in London at a symbolic height that reflects a scale of 300 million years of life on earth. He explained in the Guardian, “Each centimeter of the tapering tower’s interior has been designed to represent a million years and a narrow band of gold will illustrate the relatively tiny amount of time humans have walked the planet.” De Botton’s idea is to encourage contemplation. He also added, “the exterior would be inscribed with a binary code denoting the human genome sequence.”

Alain de Botton – A Temple for Atheists - Image courtesy of Thomas Greenall & Jordan Hodgson

The Secular Retreat designed by Peter Zumthor, in South Devon for Living Architecture concept for 2012

De Botton has said that he finds Richard Dawkins‘ and Christopher Hitchens’ approach to atheism too aggressive and destructive, and not positively persuasive to people who are just not that interested in religion but not aggressively opposed to it.

He believes that a temple for atheists fits into a tradition of secular places such as Rothko’s chapel. De Botton also manages Living Architecture, which is an organization that invites people to rent and holiday at some of the most innovative spaces designed by contemporary architects, and recently Peter Zumthor has designed a new building for Living Architecture, “Secular Retreat” which will be available to renters later in 2012

Alain de Botton - researching airports

The Balancing Barn, Alain De Botton, Living Architecture

Alain De Botton has a new book out, Religion for Atheists, which poses the idea of whether religions are neither all true or all nonsense – http://www.alaindebotton.com/religion.asp

Tomás Saraceno Observatory/Air-Port-City Hayward Gallery,London, 2008. Gesamthöhe: 9,6 m Courtesy: The artist and Andersen's Contemporary,Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, pinksummer contemporary art. Foto: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Photo: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno’s visionary exhibition Cloud Cities at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin is a hall of floating spheres and webs inspired by utopic visions of hanging settlements or cloud cities that can migrate across the globe.

Saraceno builds on his knowledge of architecture and astronomy to create artwork inspired by soap bubbles and the tensile configurations of spider webs.  Viewers at the museum can interact and enter the bubbles to experience their translucent, trans-dimensional qualities. The Mother Bubble, features an undulating plastic base for visitors to lounge on.

Photo: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Tomás Saraceno Observatory/Air-Port-City Hayward Gallery,London, 2008. Gesamthöhe: 9,6 m Courtesy: The artist and Andersen's Contemporary,Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, pinksummer contemporary art. Foto: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Photo: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Tomás Saraceno Biosphere, Installationsansicht Statens Museum for Kunst, Kopenhagen, Dänemark, 2009 Foto: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno, Produced by National Gallery of Denmark 2009

In an interview, Saraceno explained his project of creating cities like mobile platforms or habitable cels that float in the air. “These change form and join together like clouds.” His ideas of nomadic architecture are inspired in part by Buckminster Fuller. The artist explained his vision, “Up in the sky there will be this cloud, a habitable platform that floats in the air, changing form and merging with other platforms just as clouds do. It will fly through the atmosphere pushed by the winds, both local and global, in an attempt to equalise the (social) temperature and differences in pressure. It will be a sustainable and mobile migration. These aerial cities will be in a permanent state of transformation, similar to nomadic cities. After all, gypsies never go back to the same place simply because the place is constantly changing.”

Photo: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Photo: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno

Cloud Cities runs until February 9 2012.

© Shane Vincent, Stay Connected, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

© Shane Vincent, All Directions, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

Nineteen year old street photographer Shane Vincent has an eye for capturing those ephemeral moments when the changing light transforms the mundane into the sublime.

The project, Stand in Line, came about when Vincent began photographing utility poles in the streets of North London where he lives: “The series started at a time where the sky looked pretty cool,” he says. “It was autumn so it would change constantly. It caused me to look up a lot.” The outcome of his first photograph, Stay connected of a utility pole “with wires coming out at all directions,” was captivating enough, recollects the young photographer, that it caused him to pay more regard to the perpendicular poles and lampposts which most take for granted and which habitually punctuate the urban horizon. By isolating them against the vivid autumnal sky, and shooting them from an anamorphic perspective, Vincent enhanced their geometric abstractions.

© Shane Vincent, Change Direction, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

© Shane Vincent, IPhone, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

© Shane Vincent, 25th Hour, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

Never having been formally trained in the field, Vincent fell into photography as a hobby. Soon, his spontaneous street images brought him enough attention as a photographer to develop his dabbling to a more serious professional level. Initially, he says, he began by experimenting with 35mm because he liked the grain and quality of the images, but because of the expenses of printing, he later gave way to digital, whose more crisp, modern feel led him towards a contemporary vision.

“Visually, film has had the greatest influence,” the photographer tells me, remarking on his inspirations, “mainly those that show futuristic visions.”

“The interest in the future, dystopian and utopian sides is shown in the series, in the colours and moods particularly,” Vincent elaborates. “I decided to shoot them from a similar angle, straight up through the centre, fading and distorting towards the peak. It struck me as a most intimidating perspective.”

© Shane Vincent, Diagonal, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

© Shane Vincent, Heavy Support, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

© Shane Vincent, Stab Wounds, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

© Shane Vincent, Straight Up, from 'Stand in Line' 2011

For more information on Shane Vincent’s photography: www.shaneellisvincent.com

Tom Sachs, Photograph by The Selby

After a few years of tinkering in his studio, Tom Sachs has resurfaced with a new show entitled Work at New York’s Sperone Westwater gallery filling three floors with art exploring as many creative tangents: a series of pyrographic works, using a wood burning-etching technique; a foamcore crafted collection based on Sevres porcelain; and a series that pays homage to James Brown, with a JB listening station, his Last Supper packed in a microwave, and a framed array of JB’s hair products.

Sachs had cited James Brown’s work ethic as an inspiration for the show, so I took him to task for being late for our meeting and disappointing Brown’s high standards for punctuality.

“When Brown fined his workers for being late it was contributing to a culture of punctuality,” explained Sachs in defense of the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. “He fined them for missing a beat, he used punctuality as a percussive element: to be on time, to keep time; not miss a beat.”

Sachs runs his Vulcan smithy of  tinkerers like a boot camp, with red beans and rice every Monday. “Rather than a prison fantasy it’s more a utopian fantasy. More Amish.  You can leave,” he forewarns me,  “but you might find that the outside world may not be as inviting.”

Tom Sachs' tribute to James Brown: © Tom Sachs 'Please, Please, Please', 2011 mixed media 64 x 22 x 14 inches 162,6 x 55,9 x 35,6 cm overall Courtesy Sperone Westwater Gallery

Tom Sachs James Brown's Last Supper, 2009 mixed media 68 x 42 x 22 1/2 inches 172,7 x 106,7 x 57,2 cm Courtesy of Sperone Westwater Gallery

Tom Sachs, Photograph by The Selby

Many of Sachs’ artworks retain a quasi-functional element, and he often appropriates objects to demonstrate rituals in people’s lives. I ventured that his use of diagrams, maps, floor plans and lists might hark back to his childhood, playing with models perhaps?

“I want to use this opportunity to debunk the myth immediately that I’m as organized as I might look,” he tells me, further shattering any suspicions I might have had of his discipline. “It’s my way of battling entropy. I live an incredibly chaotic life. In recent years, I’ve made an incredible effort to eliminate chaos from my life. But it’s also where I find inspiration, so it’s a question of finding balance. I don’t know what Donald Judd’s life was really like because I never met him – but I imagine someone with furniture like that would have a very ascetic existence.”

“I grew up very unhappy and learning disabled, a terrible athlete, failing classes constantly, always having to go to summer schools, profoundly unsuccessful,” Sachs summed up his childhood, “It might have been diagnosed as dyslexia or ADD – but when I think back, it’s really that I hadn’t found my calling yet.”

Might he have found his calling in architecture school to channel his wavering interests? Sachs scoffed at this, “No, architecture training was completely worthless. Sculptural building is where I learned all that…and I spent some time as a construction worker.”

Sachs can afford to thumb his nose now at architects too lofty to get their hands dirty with any kind of actual building. At the Architectural Association in London, where he studied, Sachs remembers how his classmates tried bribing him to finish their technical studies project for them. “I told them to fuckoff, so they probably hired someone else to do it.  But I bet those are the bitches out their making terrible buildings.”

Tom Sachs Spade, 2010 - 2011 camouflage cloth 78 3/4 x 4 x 3/4 inches 200 x 10 x 1,9 cm Courtesy of Sperone Westwater Gallery

Our conversation meandered into Ant Farm, the Design Build movement and the corrosive action of urine on corner walls of fancy architecture, but I thought James Brown might have disapproved of our attention dissipating, parenthetical digressions so I returned our swerving line of query back to the ubiquity of branding, and its impact on our cultural consciousness: Sachs, has a scaled-up version of a Macdonald’s coffee stirrer in the show – it’s like a paddle with a weaponized spade-tip that could be used in agriculture or war… but Sachs is likely taking a dig at its proletarian usage, “for cocaine.”

“I’ve been repulsed by the promises and the perceived obsolescence that advertising creates in our lives, the insecurities of not having something – and that buying the product might make our lives better – but simultaneously, I’m attracted by the glamor, beauty and power of brands. I’m not exclusively critical of them – I’m a complicit critic. A participant in the cycle.”

Tom Sachs, Photograph by The Selby

If not entirely immune to the latest Prada handbag then, Sachs is far more consumed by his next project of a make-belief odyssey, ‘Space Program 2.0: Mars,‘ about to transform the cavernous interior of the Park Avenue Armory in New York next year. Sachs also makes seductive cabinetries for his NASA projects, with knobs and dials exquisitely detailed from an era of machine hardware, rendering them as fetishized historical artifacts. He speaks wistfully about the golden age of machine design, which he considers to have been dead by 1974. “So discouraging for me to see how amazing the software has become and how degraded the hardware has become, and how we’ve kind of given up.”

“When I was in architecture school – I thought I could contribute to the world by making beautiful buildings. I got discouraged and dropped out and said fuck it – I was going to enjoy my life and make what I really love to do…make the best sculptures I can – and communicate the way I do things as ethically as possible – building things to last,” said Sachs earnestly. “I make things out of paper, foam-core and non-durable materials but I do everything in my power to imbue them with value and meaning so that they can live on beyond me.”

Tom Sachs Swans, 2011 epoxy resin on mixed media 14 x 16 x 16 inches 35,6 x 40,6 x 40,6 cm Courtesy of Sperone Westwater Gallery

Coming full-circle, back to Sachs’ original cobbled-together hot-wired artifacts he’s best known for, is his new series of beautiful foam-core bricolage that imitates the highly coveted 18^th c. porcelain collections produced by a factory in Sevres, founded by Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV (c. 1745). Known for her fashionable tastes, she set the Jones’ ablaze with envy, starting a mad collecting rush that inflated prices and resulted in buyers paying more for a tea set than an entire farm. The huge inequity eventually led to the Goldman Sachs 1% of the 18^th c. losing their heads in the revolution. But later, even Napoleon, not without vanity, ordered his customized set in Empire style for his empress Josephine.

The value of cultural artifacts will rise and fall with the times, and Sachs is particularly interested in why. At the Met, the value of objects, ornamental and functional, many thousand years old, seem to converge. “So many hierarchies shift,” says Sachs, “History paintings were the most valuable, like Oath of the Horatii, a work by French artist Jacques-Louis David (1784), then below that were landscape paintings and portraits, and below that, the genre paintings of poor people. It wasn’t until Manet did a portrait of a prostitute, elevating her, that it threw that hierarchy on its head…today, anything functional is super downgraded.”

“If I use something that can be used as a chair, it’s worth a lot less than a painting I would make.” A chair is more accessible to the public, lacking the mystique associated with art.

Tom Sachs, Photograph by The Selby

How did you manage to get James Brown’s hairbrushes? I asked, referring to another set of functional objects, their value skewed by another form of mystical reverence.

“That’s something that happened accidentally because when the vampiric auction house took the worldly possessions of a historic figure to capitalize on his infamy – letters from prison, shameful objects that should have been thrown away, I tried to rescue some of the things that capture his greatness. It was a garbage bag full of crappy hair products.”

“The entire piece is a frame for that photograph of the top of JB’s head. And you can imagine him taking it to his hairdresser, telling him to make it look like this…”

I blasphemously questioned whether it was all his real hair. Not a wig, then? Though Brown hadn’t been feeling well he was a man that visited his dentist the day he died; it was  real hair.

“He said all man needs is good hair and good teeth,” said Sachs approvingly. “They are like reliquaries – it’s not about the artist recontextualizing it – it’s all about him and his greatness,” said Sachs, reflecting on the divinity of the Grandfather of Soul. “It’s no difference than going to Turin and seeing the shroud – putting a euro in the box at church so it lights up…” JB would no doubt have found Sachs’ tribute a perfect stage for a second coming.

James Brown memorabilia - Tom Sachs, Photograph by The Selby

At Tom Sachs' studio, Photograph by The Selby

At Tom Sachs' studio, Photograph by The Selby

The first air show at the Grand Palais in Paris, France. September 30th, 1909. Photographed in Autochrome Lumière by Léon Gimpel

While art fairs have become common, attracting patrons the world over – they are still a long way off from the extravagant theatricality of events from the past century.

An example is Paris’ Grand Palais, a building that was designed as the venue for singular happenings in the 19th c. and became a host for world fairs for over a hundred years.

Salon de locomotion aerienne 1909 - Grand Palais, Paris

Anish Kapoor Leviathan at Grand Palais, 2011

The pictures here show some of the exhibitions at Grand Palais over the last century, from the very first industrial air shows of the early 20th century to recent sculptural installations by Anish Kapoor and Bulgari’s Black Diamond.

The Air Show in the Grand Palais. Paris, October 1910. © Jacques Boyer / Roger-Viollet

Salon de l'Aviation au Grand Palais. Paris, octobre 1910.

The first Motor Show in the Grand Palais, 1901. © Mondial de l’automobile

Art Paris 2009. Art Paris viewed from the Great Staircase. Events © Collection Grand Palais, François Tomasi

Bulgari, 125 years of Italian magnificence (December 2010 10 - January 12 2011) a huge 30-foot black diamond… © Collection Grand Palais, François Tomasi

Jours de fêtes 2009. The 2nd edition was ablaze with colour © Collection Grand Palais, Cosimo Mirco Magliocca

More information: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/