Alone In Nature

Wilkinson Gallery on Vyner Street in London is presenting an exhibition of Japanese artist Makiko Kudo. Her colorful paintings reflect her own imagination while referencing classical Japanese imagery and modern manga comics in luscious landscapes. They also bring to mind Claude Monet’s impressionist depiction of water lilies.




















There is a lone childish figure in the midst of nature in each of these paintings. It represents the isolated youth of Japan in the 90s, when Kudo was growing up as part of a generation living in escapism in a depressed economy, and resisting the traditional social structures of her parents' generation. 

Floating Island below reminds me of the paintings of Hernan Bas, her generational peer growing up in Miami, also painting similar scenes of isolation in nature.

Kudo, like her peers, consumed manga comics and computer games, finding escape  in the alternate worlds of these mediums. These influences are reflected in the cartoonish, childish characters in her paintings, who seem to resist the constraints of adulthood and suffer from loneliness.

Spotted: Yayoi Kusama

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama was in attendance at last night's opening of her exhibition at Victoria Miro Gallery. It is the companion exhibition to Tate Modern's highly anticipated retrospective of her work, which also opened yesterday.

It was a rare and unexpected sighting as she does not travel much due to her declining health. She was a piece of art herself in her red wig and colorful outfit.

This exhibition continues her exploration into her personal obsessions in a sensory explosion of forms and colors.

The paintings are bursting with flat images of eyes, her signature dots and abstract forms in psychedelic colors, all traced back to the hallucinations she first experienced in her childhood as a result of mental illness. Her work reflects what she experiences in her hallucinations, letting the viewer into an imaginary world that is in no other way accessible.

In "Love, Birth And Death, And Illness, And What is Happiness?" below, eyes look like fish swimming together in a marine environment with other biological forms pulsating with movement

In "Standing on the Riverbank of My Hometown I Shed Tears" below, the canvas is filled with layers of cell-like dots, eyes and eyelashes.

In her work we experience her world through her unique vision.

In the canal behind the gallery mirrored balls covered the water adding to the optical experience.

Bombshell

Stephen Friedman Gallery in London is showing work by Scottish artist David Shrigley.

The front of the gallery has an installation of ceramic sculptures representing missiles. They are shaped just like bombs seen in cartoons, in their iconic, simplistic form.

The bombs are made out of ceramic with a glazed surface. The material takes the bombs out of their destructive context and gives them a fragile feel. Their shiny and simple forms make these objects alluring to the viewer still mindful of their original intended purpose.

Future Map 11

Future Map is the annual exhibition of artists graduating from the University of London. It is hosted by the Zabludowicsz Collection. This year presented a wide range of art, industrial design and fashion design projects. I wanted to highlight one artist whose work I found the most compelling.

Karin Soderquist, a Swedish artist exhibited 3-dimensional illustrations telling the story of two sisters taking a trip to the North Pole. From a distance, this work, with its pastel colors and cartoonish figures, looks innocent and tells a folk tale that starts innocently, but ends in a tragic scene.


































In the first scene you see the girls leaving their home and their parents.

In the second scene, the sisters are on a boat on top of wild waves.

In the final scene the viewer encounters a camp site with a polar bear and a tent. Upon close inspection the viewer notices what's inside the bear. The sisters have met their tragic end. This dark ending gives the piece tension and emotional weight.

Black Mirror

Doug Aitken has a film installation called Black Mirror, at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London. The film stars Chloë Sevigny, travelling across the desert, on a beach and what looks like Mexico, in constant motion and engaged in short snippets of communication, representative of the fast pace of contemporary life. In this video, Aitken tries to create a landscape where despite the hectic pace of life the viewer tries to find a connection through the familiar images of the airport terminal, the hotel lobby and the car rental kiosk.

The multi-channel film projection itself is viewed inside a small structure with its walls covered with tinted mirrors. They create multiple reflections which magnify the impact.

I recorded scenes from the video in 2 parts as below.

The exhibition also has a series of light boxes and wall-based text works featuring iconic words, numbers or dates - One, Utopia, Riot, 1968, 1980 - referencing historical moments through the use of commercial signage as a medium.

Eyeball Massage

Hayward Gallery in London currently has an exhibition by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist. The show presents an immersive experience with video projected on walls, layers of sheer screens draped from ceilings and on the floor, accompanied by ambient music.

At the entrance there is a light installation with video projected on pieces of underwear which were given to Rist by her family and friends.

The entrance gallery features an installation where a model of a suburban home is set against a wall covered with a collage of packaging material in white. On this wall images of buildings and trees are projected. On the window of the suburban home (not pictured) another projection reveals what is going on inside in somewhat unexpected ways, in conflict with the calm and bland impression of the setting itself.

The next set of images are from the same looping video that is projected onto 3 adjacent walls surrounding the viewer. Viewers lie back on cushions on the floor to experience this video that takes them into Rist's imagination. Her work often features the female body which she seeks to liberate through her work. 

 

The section below shows bright, saturated colors to create a visual environment that envelopes the viewer. Rist's camera gets very close to its subjects as if its  researching each subject down to its finest detail.

Curtain Call

Ron Arad, the artist, architect and industrial designer has a new installation at the Roundhouse, a concert/performance space in London. For this installation he created a curtain made of silicon rods, suspended from a large ring on the ceiling. The curtain is used as a 360 degree screen for projecting videos by artists and designers he collaborated with for this project. The audience experiences the projection inside the curtain surrounded by and immersed in video, sound and light. Below are excerpts from 3 of the 12 pieces shown in this installation.

Animation by Babis Alexiadis is below.

The next piece is an animation by Javier Mariscal.   

 

The final piece is by Greenaway & Greenaway reflecting the architecture of the Roundhouse