Joel Shapiro: New Prints at Gemini

As a follower of Contemporary art, Joel Shapiro happens to be one of my favorite sculptors. I am no where near an expert on his work, but I became familiar with his sculptures through a previous job, where an art collector had one of his large sculptures in her yard. Although Shapiro's sculptures in their basic form are pared down rectangular shapes, the balance and contrast of perceived movement in the work is impressive. The way he creates the sculptures, to me, they look like people in different states of motion. There could be a person balancing on a hi-wire, or someone kicking a soccer ball. I imagine this one to be a person taking a happy and triumphant stroll down the street swinging their arms:


It was to my great pleasure to learn of the edition of nine prints he created with Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles. Luckily for us New Yorkers, Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl has these prints on display in a show titled "Boat, Bird, Mother and Child" in their gallery on 980 Madison Avenue. From the website: "Shapiro's prints explore an elegant intersection between reductive geometric formalism and energetic figuration."

MY EXPERIENCE
I attended the opening of the show, and I must say, the screenprints are much different then I would have guessed. Before I viewed the prints, I would have wagered the prints would look similar to his rectangular sculptures, only this time they would be in 2-D. Instead, he still uses geometrical shapes, but as you can guess from the title of the exhibition, the prints look much more like boats, mothers, birds and children then his sculptures do. Similar to laying in the grass and imagining shapes in clouds, his forms can be viewed subjectively; one's imagination can run wild with what it perceives as the subject of each print. I always enjoy this type of art, as it is unique experience for each viewer.

Here is an example of one of the screenprints:

Boat, Bird, Mother and Child (d) , 2009 ( JS09-5322 )
5 color screenprint
28 1/2" x 36"
Edition of 38

Gemini at Joni Moisant Weyl
980 Madison Avenue, 5th Floor
New York, NY. 10075

Laurie Fendrich: Drawings From the South of France

Wednesday I was privy to an opening for a wonderful artist named Laurie Fendrich at Gary Snyder Project Space. For this series, she received a Brown Foundation fellowship and was off to the south of France to begin her endeavor. What she accomplished over the month was a series of drawings, Rayogram* like in appearance, but done all by hand and with black conte crayon no less. The dialog begins to be apparent after viewing several of the drawings together. The small, intimate drawings take on a life of their own with what appear to be repetitious characters that fade in and out of the dark and light compositions:





According the gallery director, she did one drawing per day, which after seeing the depth and detail of the work is pretty amazing. Along with the 32 drawings, the exhibition also included one of her paintings which used similar unique alien caricature forms, although this time they were in color. I found this quote about her work done a few years ago, “A salute to Russian Constructivism, a nod to Art Deco, a bow to 30’s American Modernism, more than a dash of loony cartoony pop culture. But the combos actually work, forming crisp compositions whose bright toylike colors, suave matings of geometric with biomorphic forms, and skilled painting give the work a decorous pizzazz.”

— Grace Glueck, The New York Times
January 17, 2003

Project Space

250 West 26th Street
4th Floor
New York, NY 10001
phone: 212 929 1351


*If you are unsure of what a Rayogram is, it is a series of photographs done by Man Ray using photo paper and the light projection machine. He placed various materials on the photo paper and exposed them to the light machine. He would then move them around, creating interesting light to dark ratios. Please find an example here: http://www2.kenyon.edu/artgallery/exhibitions/9899/douthat/manray.htm