Exhibition Reviews

exhibit); in Feedback Blue Time vs. Suspense

(2009), two maquettes reproduce some of the
sculptures in miniature form within the context
of a model stadium stage. Elsewhere headphones
allow one to hear the recording of a rehearsal
session staged during the opening of the
exhibition in a closed-of gallery space. Guests
were privy to the false starts and jamming, but
musicians remained out of sight.
Two works hint at the artists specifc
reasons for being interested in music, however
(each also seem to reference Felix Gonzalez-
Torres). In Suspense (2013) two clocks are mounted
side by side, their faces masked by black tape.
For Everyday (Le Progrs) (2013), a new copy of
the local newspaper is added to a daily-increasing
pile. These establish an interest in time passing to
the work and fag up popular musics durational
form: its ability to commandeer and sculpt a
momentary period through its emotional
resonance. Evidenced by the harking back to
previous, memorialised events in the artists
personal history, this packed show which itself
colonises the aural and visual senses acts as a
moody ode to those emotional shadows, imbued
with popular culture, that cling to our own pasts.
OLIVER BASCIANO
Tomie Ohtake:
Correspondncias (Correspondences)
Instituto Tomie Ohtake, So Paulo
7 February 24 March
Its hard to overstate the impact of Tomie
Ohtakes oeuvre on So Paulo, or the aptness of
its abstract beauty in this most visually eclectic,
jumbled of cities. If youre familiar with them,
works by the ninety-nine-year-old painter,
sculptor and printmaker are everywhere in the
city: in private homes and as prints in institutions
and businesses, and in public works that
include lavish mosaics on the metr, and a
stunning sculptural monument to the citys
Japanese immigration beside the Centro Cultural
So Paulo.
It would have been an obvious move for
the curators of this exhibition, the frst of three
planned this centenary year at the institute that
bears Ohtakes name, to have sought out direct
Sadane Aff:
Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time
Institut dArt Contemporain
Villeurbanne/Rhne-Alpes
1 March 28 April
Sadane Aff s work is preoccupied with an
aestheticisation of popular music. The French
artist avoids referencing particular artists or
tracks, however (and therefore avoids the pitfall
of nerdish fandom), and instead composes lyrics
and compositions from scratch (or gets a bevy of
artist and curator friends to do so), which are then
nodded to within the multitudinously varied
sculptural forms that predominate in this survey
of his practice from 2004 onwards. The frst works
the visitor encounters introduce this playful,
hermetic setup. Various posters, each displaying
a typeface and design that is typical of and
graphically resonant with a particular music genre
(a curled faux-traditional font denoting nu-folk;
a background tricolour of red, yellow and green
signifying reggae), are displayed on the walls and
via foor-to-ceiling frames. Instead of touting
gigs, however, each was made contemporaneously
with previous shows or events staged by Aff (one
space is left empty for a poster that will be
produced following a closing performance). In
the recognisable format of a gig lineup, other
artists are mentioned if the exhibition in question
was a group one; otherwise, the lines credit the
curator or collaborators. One poster, blue and
white with block type reminiscent of a techno
fyer, bills a 2010 event with the participation of
Tom Morton, Jrg Heiser, Mick Peter and Lili
Reynaud-Dewar, headlined as if they were DJs
and not writers and artists respectively.
Reynaud-Dewars name is present
throughout the exhibition, as the author of a
ballad lamenting unrecognised musical talent,
the lyrics of which are spelled out on the wall in
holographic foil (the rainbow glint recalling the
verso of a CD). This installation is repeated in
several of the gallerys spaces. In one room it is
joined by further poignant song lyrics written by
more of Aff s peers. Elsewhere, melancholic
recordings varying from structured songs to
abstract soundscapes spill throughout the venue
from sculptures, amps or, in one case, a digital
radio. In one room stands an acoustic guitar in a
vitrine (as though in a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
traces of Ohtakes infuence on the artists that
have accompanied her 60-year trajectory.
Instead, with obvious pleasure, they freely
associate shape with shape, colour with colour,
and Ohtakes subtle lines with the gestures of
some 45 Brazilian artists, from 1950s
contemporaries like Flavio-Shir through Mira
Schendel and Cildo Meireles, to 2013 successors
like Chiara Banf and Tiago Judas. The exhibition
is loosely split between colour, gesture and
material; but the relations are way more fuid,
intuitive and witty than that.
Its the tiny connections you make as you
draw close and notice soft purple and yellow
bruises glowing through a rich blue Ohtake 2000
canvas (the artist refrains from titling any of her
work), alongside a pair of boxes (2011, 2012) by
Srgio Sister, pink winking though pale grey slats.
Its the reared-up sinuosity of a 1999 tubular steel
piece by Ohtake, the centrepiece in the hall
between the exhibitions two salas, and the white
slither across the foor of Fantasma (1998), a Jac
Leirner sculpture in paper and steel wire. That
points in turn towards a pair of dark paintings,
red and black (1984), in which Ohtakes precise
quarter-circle gestures are hung beside a flm
documenting the creation of Carla Chaims
wall-painting Nova Lua (2013), her body a
compass, the sweeping circles on the wall an
inexorable function of the length of her arm as
she draws them.
The efect of the Ohtake pieces being
interspersed with works by so many others is to
provide a moments distance between her
artworks: you leave refecting on images made
by many of the artists; but the main event is
indisputably Tomie, and particularly her later,
large-scale paintings with their subtly wielded,
insistent power and volume.
On the surface, among the works with
which Ohtakes have least in common are the
almost invisibly delicate deliriums created by
Fernanda Gomes. A ball of natural fbres no more
than 8cm in diameter haunts the wall its hung
on, casting the wisp of a shadow. In a second work
by Gomes, a tiny magnet hung by thread from a
pin in the wall meets a threaded needle attached
to another magnet, the pair looping and spinning
in miniature space. Beside it, a huge canvas by
Ohtake contains a round painted mass, textured
taupe on cream like a pudgy Plasticine planet.
Aside from some slight correspondences of shape,
what they share, and what Ohtakes work
epitomises, is being art from the heart: shapes
and masses out of wordless waking dreams; and
weights, colours, textures and volumes that have
been subtly felt and deduced, rather than ever
heard or seen.
CLAIRE RIGBY
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ArtReview
Sadane Af
Insallation view, 2013. Photo:
Blaise Adilon. Courtesy Insitut
dArt Contemporain,
Villeurbanne/Rhne-Alpes
Tomie Ohtake
Untitled, 1978, oil on canvas,
100 x 100 cm. Private collecion
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