Baseball, Jazz, and the Anticipation of Happiness:
pa.per.ing
in the Lobby Gallery at Deutsche Bank New York
There's
a group show in the Lobby Gallery at Deutsche Bank New York that sets the
tone in the true sense of the word. With its ten different positions,
pa.per.ing not only documents how up-to-date drawings and works on paper
currently are. The show also proves that a young, conceptually oriented
generation of artists is coming to fore in New York that will have to be
reckoned with internationally in the near future, says Oliver Koerner
von Gustorf .
Alejandro
Cesarco,
When I am Happy
Drawings, since 2002, Copyright Alejandro Cesarco
Unhappiness
has seldom been portrayed in such gay colors: "When I am happy I won't
have the time to make these anymore" can be read in glowing letters on Alejandro
Cesarco's "When I am happy drawings." The Uruguay-born artist has been
working on his series since 2002. Hundreds of colored-pencil drawings have
arisen on which he lovingly and conscientiously writes the same words
again and again in different color combinations. Even if it's only one
section of the series that can be seen in the Lobby Gallery at Deutsche
Bank New York, the impression it makes is overwhelming. Cesarco's
sentences cover the wall like a shimmering pattern, with single letters or
words catching the eye for a few seconds, only to disappear again just as
quickly into the colorful mass. For all its childlike cheerfulness,
Cesarco's work suggests that fundamentally he is not happy. And it also
suggests that his art production is pointless, because it doesn't succeed
in making him happy – an absurd Sisyphean work that may never arrive at
its goal.
|
Carrie Moyer, For Sister Corita, v.
1, 2004
|
"We have to imagine Sisyphus as a happy person," wrote the
existentialist writer and philosopher Albert
Camus in his Myth of Sisyphus. In his portrayal of the antique
hero who was damned by the gods to roll the same rock up a steep cliff
again and again, Camus posits precisely the extreme and obdurate
meaninglessness of this effort as a token of human self-realization.
Cesarco's works do not express this existential attitude through an image
or painterly gesture, but through the mechanical act of repetitive
drawing. While his series addresses the transformation of words, signs,
and language in all its miniscule variations, it also resembles a diary of
his efforts. "I think neo-conceptualism has a lot to do with infiltrating
the work with biographical references", says Cesarco. "At the same time, I
don’t think I am really making any new, original statements, I am just
making connections."
|
Chitra Ganesh, The Question Mark, 2005
"Openness"
is a concept that could also describe the thematic essence of pa.per.ing.
The exhibition, curated by Holly Block and Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy,
deliberately resists creating a homogenous overall image. The traditional
definition of "drawing" is juxtaposed with a variety of approaches to the
medium of paper that include biographical, narrative, and conceptual
strategies as well as a critical investigation of art production and
authorship.
|
Jennie C. Jones, from the series
Record & Listen in Yellow and Brown, 2004
|
At a time when paintings by young artists are commanding
top prices, and the question as to when the bubble is finally going to
burst excites both markets and art scenes, pa.per.ing comes across as
amazingly unexcited, reduced, and fresh – if not to say cool. Yet the
history of the exhibition's development has also surely played a role:
pa.per.ing arose out of a collaboration between Deutsche Bank and "Art
in General," a non-profit organization in Lower Manhattan that
supports young artists living in New York as well as the presentation of
their works. In order to finance the exhibition, around 65 works from the
company's collection were auctioned off in the summer of 2005 to the staff
of the bank headquarters on Wall Street. A committee will use the proceeds
to purchase a selection of works from the current exhibition for the Deutsche
Bank Collection.
Mika
Rottenberg, Dough (Video still), 2005-2006
|
© courtesy the artist & Nicole
Klagsbrun Gallery
|
The value of supporting the local scene is proven by the
exceptional quality of the show. Like Alejandro Cesarco, other artists
represented in pa.per.ing will certainly be making their appearance on the
international scene very soon. The young Israeli artist Mika
Rottenberg just received the Cartier
Award 2006, which includes a solo show at the next Frieze
Art Fair in London. In her videos and installation works, she shows
women in box-like structures performing simple and often bizarre work in a
kind of home industry.
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
|
