Latest news with #WhiteCube
Boston Globe
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Nothing is ever resolved in this suspense-packed movie, and that is the point
This is 'Doors,' the aptly-named new filmic mash-up by Christian Marclay, making its North American premiere at the ICA (it debuted in London in 2023). One door closes, another opens — over and over in the 55-minute amalgam of in-between moments, across a gamut of film history that lodges you, the viewer, firmly and forever in liminal space. The film manufacturers a perpetual compulsion to anticipate something that never comes. It's unnatural, uncomfortable, and exactly the point: 'Doors' leaves the mind unconsciously searching, scrambling to assemble narrative from fragments unlinked by anything other than its key device: a door and a jump-cut, the central artifice of film for its entire existence. In a heartbeat, viewers can leap moments, or years, mere steps, or miles. Marclay's defiance of expectation, hardwired by generations of film-viewing, is where its power lies: a flatline of edge-of-your seat anticipatory drama, without beginning or end. Advertisement A still from Christian Marclay's "Doors," 2022. Christian Marclay/White Cube Advertisement Marclay, equal parts movie nerd and high-concept formalist (his early creative forays were as a DJ in New York in the 1980s, specializing in radical remixes of music history), has been down this road before. He's best-known for 'The Clock,' his 2010 magnum opus that plundered decades of film history for clips of every minute of a 24-hour day and knit them together in precise 60-second snippets so that the piece actually told the time . It was a bona fide sensation, the rare combination of deep conceptual rigor and broad popular appeal. In 2010, people 'Doors' operates on the same premise. It extracts hundreds of moments from generations of cinema, linked together by the intuitive logic of entry and exit. It's tempting to consider it 'The Clock' lite, but that isn't giving the conceptual challenge Marclay sets for himself the credit it deserves. 'Doors' is virtuosic in its own right, razor-sharp in its rhythm and timing; with such pronounced seams — black and white to color; 1930s to 1990s — it nonetheless appears seamless. Fluidity of motion is matched by sound, the sonic environment of each clip melting into the other, smoothing the flow. 'Doors' could easily be jarring; its core device is abruptness and transition. Instead, it reaches altitude quickly and stays there; the only turbulence is by design. Advertisement An installation view of Christian Marclay's "Doors," at the ICA. Mel Taing Where 'The Clock' was relentlessly linear — minute by minute, not a millisecond out of place — 'Doors' has no such guiding logic. Its rhythm is irregular, but propulsive. In crafting his tease of narrative, Marclay sometimes deploys the same clip twice or more as it suits his narrative tease (I watched Sidney Poitier burst out of his classroom and into a clutch of eavesdropping students in 'To Sir, With Love' at least three times, re-linked to other comings and goings). And narrative — non-existent, impossible — is the central deception of the whole affair: Marclay strings together clips with comparable emotional tenor — furtive, jubilant, terrified — that tempts a mind hungry for story to craft one where none could possibly be. Different viewers will take different things from 'Doors.' Encyclopedic film buffs can take it almost as a trivia challenge: Identify actors and movies by name, score points for all your right answers. Don't get me wrong: Whatever else it is, 'Doors' is great fun. I'm no film buff (though I know John Travolta in 'Urban Cowboy' when I see it, and I did), which makes 'Doors' about something more for me: a sustained emotional state. Advertisement A still from "Doors." Christian Marclay/White Cube 'The Clock' was heady — we go to the movies to be transported from real time, a respite; here was a movie, fantastical and star-studded, that pinned you down, and made real time inescapable. 'Doors' is more visceral, a transporting, immersive experiment in forced hyperacuity. The whole is more — far more — than the sum of its parts. Sidney Poitier bursting into that hallway is dynamic, nostalgic, and stirring. But it's just one element of a more potent brew. Marclay is a master of dramatic tension; he expertly tightens the screws and slackens them off. But there is never respite, or pause. All is motion, transition, an edge-of-your-seat, what-happens-next on permanent lock. It's not normal, or natural. It's also exhilarating. The dramatic core of 'Doors' isn't doors, or film, at all. It's you. CHRISTIAN MARCLAY'S DOORS Through Sept. 1. Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, 25 Harbor Shore Drive. 617-478-3100, Murray Whyte can be reached at
Korea Herald
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Intersection of spirituality, art
Exploring how an artist's spirituality and philosophy are embedded in their art is an intriguing aspect of fully appreciating one's oeuvre. The following exhibitions in Seoul offer visitors the opportunity to contemplate not only the creator's spirituality woven into their art, but also their own inner world. Korean art master Lee Kang-so at Thaddaeus Ropac Following his major exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul is offering a comprehensive showcase of Lee Kang-so's works at an exhibition titled 'Dwelling in Mist and Glow.' The exhibition marks the artist's first show at the gallery after the European gallery last year announced it would be representing the artist. Encompassing Lee's paintings, prints, sculptures and installation, the exhibition offers a glimpse into his decadeslong artistic career. Lee has developed an intuitive approach, starting his career as an avant-garde artist in the 1970s. Borrowing the title of the exhibition from a classical Korean poem written by Yi Hwang, a 16th-century Confucian scholar, Lee's art resonates with the poet's sense of unity of nature. The exhibition runs through Aug. 2. Chinese abstraction artist Zhou Li at White Cube Chinese artist Zhou Li has a solo exhibition in Seoul for the first time at White Cube in Gangnam, featuring 14 new paintings made over the past year. Expressive line-making and abstract forms in her paintings often emerge from meditative reflections on emotions, encounters with people or events with an introspective and fluid process, the gallery noted on the artist's works. After studying oil painting at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, China, in 1991, Zhou moved to France, where she lived and worked until 2003. Her works are considered in dialogue with contemporary Western art and Chinese calligraphy masters, such as seventh-century artist Zhan Ziqian and fourth-century writer Wang Xizhi. The exhibition, 'Seeing the World in One Flower, a Universe Unfolds,' is on view until Aug. 9. Abstract art since 1970s at Lehmann Maupin Prominent abstract artists McArthur Binion, Chung Sang-Hwa, Stanley Whitney and Yun Hyong-keun are brought together at Lehmann Maupin's exhibition 'Nemo,' curated by Tae Um. The artists at the exhibition have explored abstraction in depth since the 1970s, spanning cultures and geographies, responding to turbulent times in their respective countries through their own distinctive approaches. The exhibition title 'Nemo' originates from the Korean word for square, while simultaneously referencing the Latin word that means 'no one' or 'nobody.' In this context, 'nemo' functions not only as a geometric shape, but also as a symbol that transcends boundaries of identity and narrative, the gallery noted. "Nemo" runs until Aug. 9.
New York Times
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Unlocking the Mysteries of Antony Gormley's Art
The British sculptor Antony Gormley is a native Londoner who has been a fixture on the city's art scene for decades and the subject of many museum shows all over the world, including a 2019 survey at the Royal Academy of Arts. He won the prestigious Turner Prize in 1994 and was even knighted in 2014, gaining enough fame along the way to occasionally get the tabloid treatment from the British press ('Gorm Blimey: Statue by Sir Antony Gormley branded 'hideous' and a 'waste of money,'' read a 2020 headline in The Sun.) 'I'm one of the ones they like to beat on,' Gormley, 74, said with a laugh on a video call in April from his country house in Norfolk, northeast of London. Not that it has scared him from the limelight. Indeed, Gormley likes to talk about his art and its meaning, one on one or to a crowd. His latest show, 'Antony Gormley: Witness, Early Lead Works,' is on view until June 8 at White Cube gallery's Mason's Yard space in London, and he spoke at the Art for Tomorrow conference in Milan last week on topics that included art's origins as a collective enterprise, the importance of collaboration and his own drive to create. 'I don't have a choice about what I do,' he said. The gallery show is a skeleton key that helps to unlock some of the mysteries of his art, and most of the works are not for sale. Although he became perhaps best known for figural sculptures — including the large public work 'Angel of the North' (1998), a stylized, winged figure, which overlooks the A1 highway in Gateshead, England — his art is rooted in the Conceptual art of the 1970s. 'The show starts with five works that were all made prior to using my own body,' Gormley said, referring to a pivot point in 1981 that helped define the rest of his career. 'They deal with found objects in one way or another, but always using the medium of lead.' Those works include 'Land Sea and Air I' (1977-79), which at first glance looks like three stones of similar shape; actually, the forms are oxidized lead cases, one of them surrounding a stone he brought back from Ireland. One is filled with water and one is empty, or 'filled with air,' as Gormley put it. 'This was me investigating the distinction between substance and appearance, or between the skin of the thing and its mass,' Gormley said, adding that at the time it was made, there was widespread anxiety about nuclear proliferation. By using the basic element of life, he said, it was a way of highlighting 'the seeds of a future world beyond potential nuclear destruction.' Artistically, it was a breakthrough. 'I was so excited the night that I made that piece, I couldn't sleep,' Gormley recalled. 'I thought, 'This is where I want to go. This is the foundation of what I'm going to do with my life.'' Jay Jopling, a longtime dealer of Gormley's and the founder of White Cube, recalled his first encounter with the artist some four decades ago. Jopling was only around 20 and studying art history, and he arranged to meet Gormley, whose work he already admired. Over a cup of tea, the young Jopling asked Gormley about the meaning of his work. 'He said, 'My work is about what it means to be alive and alone and alert on this planet,'' Jopling said. 'It was a nice, succinct answer.' As his work was getting critical attention in the early 1980s, Gormley was not alone. Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain, noted that British art of the 20th century has always been particularly strong in sculpture. Farquharson said that Gormley was 'a key figure in a generation of several sculptors who emerged in the early '80s — Anish Kapoor, Richard Deacon, Tony Cragg, Alison Wilding and others.' The White Cube show includes several works on paper from the 1980s, and has five lead sculptures from that decade and the following one; they show Gormley's evolution toward his own version of figuration. The sculptures include 'Home and the World II' (1986-96) a striding figure with an 18-foot-long house where its head should be, and 'Witness II' (1993), a figure seated on the ground with its head tucked into folded arms. The materials for both include lead, fiberglass, plaster and air, but they could almost include Gormley himself, given that at the time, he had to be encased in a plaster mold to make them. 'It was really messy,' he said of a process that had him covered in cling wrap for protection, and then plaster, for an hour or two with a hole at his mouth to breathe. Meditation and breathing exercises were employed, skills that he first gleaned on a two-year stint in India that came between his graduation from Cambridge University and his art degrees from Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Fine Art. Some earlier training also helped. 'I had a good Catholic upbringing, so I knew how to be obedient,' Gormley said. Once he was out of it, the completed plaster mold was then covered in fiberglass to 'harden it up,' Gormley said. Finally, the work was covered in thin sheets of lead, which he and an assistant pounded with a rubber hammer, a highly exertive way of making art. Around two decades ago, Gormley began to move toward 3-D scanning. But he said that using his own body was the essential element, not the particular process. 'I wanted to cut out that artist-model distancing device,' he said. 'I've stuck with the idea that my particular example of the universal human condition is good enough for me.' Despite his renown in Britain, Gormley has had less exposure in the United States. But his first solo museum survey in the country will be on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas later this year, from Sept. 12 to Jan. 4. 'He's one of the chief practitioners who has expanded how we think about the figure and the body,' said Jed Morse, the Nasher's chief curator. For viewers, the Nasher show will help complete the picture of Gormley's trajectory after the early 1990s, which saw him embark in new directions. In some works at the Nasher, like the Corten steel sculpture 'Model Model II' (2022), Gormley turns his body into a series of boxy forms — in a way that could be seen as Cubist or pixelated, or both. Gormley is constantly working, and drawing is a key activity for him. He pulled out a small notebook from his jacket pocket, full of sketches of bodies. 'I couldn't live without this,' he said. Having his artistic process result in heavy lead sculptures, as seen in the White Cube show, may be even more resonant now, much further along in the digital age than when they were made. 'Sculpture can bring you back to something firsthand and palpable,' he said. 'These are existential objects that hopefully can be used as instruments to investigate your own experience.'
The Guardian
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Antony Gormley review – here come the Gorminators, those welded warriors for humanity
If you think nostrils are just holes to breathe through, you've not spent enough time with Antony Gormley. A figure lying on its back, in this show of his early works, is made of solid sheets of lead, welded neatly into the form of a man, based like so much of his work on the dimensions of Gormley's own body. Two small holes at the nose are the only perforations in an otherwise uniform metal structure. They're not nostrils though, oh no: 'Two holes at the nose reinforce the notion of the body as a conduit between physical and transcendent realms.' Gesundheit! It's the kind of overblown over-justification that has always blighted the work of Gormley. His body forms dot the country, peering out to sea along Crosby Beach, standing with wings spread at Gateshead, looming out at you from the lobbies of countless bank HQs. For the past 30-odd years, Gormley has been everywhere, his simple, stark figures acting as cyphers for the very act of existence in the modern world. Where you see a Gorm, you see yourself, you see humankind, persevering, surviving in nature, in the sea, in banks. White Cube is focusing on his first steps towards becoming a household name, with early experiments in lead. These are the first footprints left by a giant of contemporary British art. The earliest, Land Sea and Air from 1977-79, is three boulder forms plopped on the ground, all grey and weathered and wrapped in lead. One is a granite rock from a beach in Ireland, the other two are water and air from the same place, though you'll never know which is which unless you pick them up or give them a quick toe punt (don't try it – the security guards are extremely vigilant at White Cube). Despite its obvious poisonous qualities, the lead wrapping acts as a form of preservation, saving these elemental materials from destruction. And destruction at the time the work was made must have felt imminent, with Europe haunted by the cold war, nuclear annihilation a constant threat. So Gormley turned to lead, the material of bullets, to save, record and preserve what we are. The middle of the gallery is filled with objects arranged in size, starting at a pea then a banana, a grenade, a lemon, a lightbulb, a club, a squash, a ball, each wrapped in lead. Next to it, lead bullets have been left a pile, a grey shape on the wall is a lead-wrapped machete. Violence, death, injury – Gormley saw it everywhere. The symbolism is incredibly heavy-handed, appropriately enough for lead, but it works. Downstairs things get more familiar, as the gallery gets filled with Gorminators, the body-shaped statues that have become his signature. One lies face down with legs spread on the cold concrete, another pulls its knees into its chest and buries its head in its arms. The largest, a walking figure in the middle of the space, has had its head swapped for a huge 5m-long building. Each work is made of lead, the welding lines acting like enormous scars across their bodies. They're desolate, desperate things. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion The messaging might seem clear, but Gormley always pushes for grandiosity, and I think that's a shame. These can't just be left as bodies preserved against imminent death. Instead, he says things like: 'I have always thought of the darkness of the body as being equivalent to the darkness of the universe.' The insistence on the universal and transcendent, the idea of Gormley's body as a metaphor, a stand-in for wider humanity, has always grated. It pulls it all out of the real and shoves it into the realm of existential nonsense. It makes the reasoning behind the work so vague and overblown, leaving it pretty meaninglessness in the process. Which is a pity, because if you can manage to wade through the fog of waffle that engulfs these early pieces, there's something quite special here. These are works of profound fear and paranoia. The lead that has replaced the flesh on these bodies is the material of war. They are human munitions now, bullets waiting to be fired, shields ready to be sacrificed. They cower in fear or lie prone waiting for inevitable annihilation. Everywhere he looks, he seem to see death looming. The work might be a product of its time, but it still feels upsettingly relevant today Anthony Gormley: Witness is at White Cube, London, until 8 June
South China Morning Post
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Showtime: 4 unmissable art exhibitions to keep you cultured
Emma McIntyre: Among My Swan Tiepolo pink (2024) by Emma McIntyre. Photo: courtesy Emma McIntyre / Château Shatto (Los Angeles) / David Zwirner (New York) New Zealand-born, Los Angeles-based artist Emma McIntyre presents 'Among My Swan', her first solo show in Asia. Known for vivid, chromatic abstractions, McIntyre's paintings blend oils with unconventional materials such as oxidised iron to create deeply textured, transformative works. This series explores the alchemical possibilities of painting, drawing connections between the artist's instincts, the forces of nature and art history. Each piece is part of an evolving network of discovery, reflecting her protean and experimental approach to the medium. David Zwirner, 5-6/F, H Queen's, 80 Queen's Road Central, March 25 to May 10; Lynne Drexler: The Seventies Lynne Drexler, Burst Blossom (1971). Photo: White Cube/ Frankie Tyska White Cube presents the first Asian exhibition of works by the late American painter affiliated with the second-generation abstract expressionist movement. 'Lynne Drexler: The Seventies' features never-before-seen chromatic landscapes created during a transformative decade in her career. Influenced by impressionism, fauvism and classical music, Drexler's tessellated compositions radiate kinetic energy and reflect her deep connection to the natural world. This exhibition follows her solo show at White Cube's Mason's Yard in London, marking a continuation of the gallery's representation of her archive.
