San Francisco-born, New York-based artist Tauba Auerbach has described her work as an attempt to reveal “new spectral and dimensional richness…both within and beyond the limits of perception. ” Engaging a variety of media, ranging from painting and photography to book design and musical performance, Auerbach explores the limits of our structures and systems of logic (linguistic, mathematical, spatial) and the points at which they break down and open up onto new visual and poetic possibilities.

In her acclaimed series of Fold paintings, first introduced in 2009, Auerbach presents powdery trompe lʼoeil surfaces that register the traces of their former three-dimensionality. Painted with an industrial sprayer, the works draw attention to the physical properties of pigment imitating light. Alongside new Fold paintings, this exhibition will include a new series of Weave paintings, presented for the first time in the United States. As with folding, Auerbach uses weaving to reassess and thoroughly transform the flat picture plane. Elusive topographies emerge from the monochromatic works, bringing the viewer into a subtly shifting world of ruptures and continuities, reliefs and recesses.

In addition to the paintings, the exhibition will present new photographs and sculptural objects, including Onyx, a deconstructed material volume printed and bound in book form. As Auerbach once observed, “A book is an X-axis. The format is almost always linear; the content, bound in a prescribed order, marches single file. ”1 Inspired by a desire to upend this theory, Auerbach resorts to tomography (the method of producing images of the internal structure of an object), allowing the viewer to slice through a solid block of onyx layer by layer, revealing the twists and turns of a mineral narrative.

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at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

until June 9, 2012

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Above – Untitled (Fold), 2012; and Bent Onyx, 2012

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Untitled (Fold), 2012

Glass I, 2012

Slice II, 2012

Untitled (Fold), 2012

Prism Scan I, 2012

Double Prism II, 2012

Slice I, 2012

All images –  © Tauba Auerbach. Courtesy: Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

1.    Structures are still being removed right now. New movement happening! Watch its destruction.

3.    The debris netting used comes from acts of repair and rebuilding in 2012. Practically, the material is used when constructing and reconstructing to keep loose objects and fragments from falling and endangering those below while providing pseudo windows for the workers. btw speaking of debris…
the largest concentration of marine debris is 135°W to 155°W and 35°N to 42°N.

11.    a hole = a depression.

10.  (To peel something away/off) remove or separate a thin covering or part from the outside or surface of something.

9.    And one can see through to the wall.

4.    Things need our support. We build Walls for that. We reinforce them. We mount shelving. We maintain the crumbles. We repair. We dream of, and are terrified of the destruction. What means are we supporting? What structures are we helping to build? What do we want to see ourselves without?

12.    be at peace. want not. have all. no good need. me happy. life ok. feel good. have happy thoughts. food good. sex good. me happy.

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at Thomas Duncan Gallery, Los Angeles

until May 26, 2012

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Valerie Snobeck, “They Seem Removed,” installation views, Thomas Duncan Gallery, Los Angeles

Sissi’s solo exhibition “Aspiranti Aspiratori”, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, takes its name from a larger project that the artist created in collaboration with Elica and Ermanno Casoli Foundation over about a year. The idea for “Aspiranti Aspiratori” stems from the need of the company, world leader in the production of cooker hoods for household use, to generate new reflections on the theme of air purification.

In line with her aptitude for renaming and classifying reality, Sissi began by formulating a new concept, Organindustry, from which came a methodology capable of enabling communication between art and industry. The artist is housed inside the factory, familiarises herself with the environment until making it at one with her body and fills it with content. Then comes the start of an ongoing osmotic exchange between the company, transformed into the body of the artist, and the artist herself.

Over the space of a year, Sissi produced drawings, collages, reflections and sculptures that contribute to the narration, with a mythological slant, of the birth of ten “Aspiranti Aspiratori”, ten prospective objects intended to purify the air. Their genesis is told by an animated video entitled Casting, which will be shown at the exhibition.
In accordance with the selection process that underlies the theories of evolution and that is applied in this case to the machines, the artist has created three of the ten “Aspiranti Aspiratori”.

The exhibition will be enhanced by an artist’s book entitled Aspiranti Aspiratori, published by Corraini, which will retrace all the stages of the project, explaining the new interpretation that the artist has given to the industry: a body that hosts and feels, an Organindustry.

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at Elica AirFactory, Milan

until May 19, 2012

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Sissi, “Aspiranti Aspiratori”, intsllation views, Elica AirFactory, Milan, 2012. Photo: Ela Bialkowska, Okno Studio

The Modern Institute presents ’If you don’t like this book you don’t like me’, an exhibition of works by the artist Paul Thek and ‘Dresden’, Michael Wilkinson’s inaugural show of the new exhibition space at Aird’s Lane, Glasgow.

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Paul Thek

‘If you don’t like this book you don’t like me.’

The Modern Institute Osborne Street, Glasgow, 20/04—02/06/2012

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The Modern Institute presents an exhibition of works by the artist Paul Thek for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2012. A selection of 35 notebooks is accompanied by artworks which give the context of time and location. The notebooks were made by Thek after the extremely successful Technological Reliquaries series he made between 1964 and 1967, and were a reaction to the creation of these rarified isolated art objects he had been making. Although later he saw the Technological Reliquaries as incredibly perfect for the time. The selection is in no way definitive but lets you into the mind and daily life of Thek through drawings writings and found images as he contemplated life and meaning. Some of the writings and works seem extremely personal while others appear to be statements. There are ideas for artworks realized and others which may have been part of a stream of consciousness.

‘Thek located his own notebooks within the context of a larger, sometimes misunderstood and overlooked body of work.’

‘At the time of his death there were close to a hundred notebooks among the artist things, mostly black and white composition books of the sort used by school children. Like most      journals, they reveal deeply personal thoughts about friends, relationships and sex, as well as Thek’s private shames and insecurities and his efforts like prayers to be better in every way, most especially as an artist.’

‘As private as the notebooks are, Thek anticipated an audience, though it is often expressed as an uncertain anticipation, in a voice forlorn, like a message in a bottle.’

Tina Kukielski,‘Thek’s Notebooks: A Selection’, Paul Thek, Diver, published by Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 2012

Thek’s works will be accompanied by photographic collaborations with Peter Hujar and collaborative works with Edwin Klein. Together they give an insight into the working processes of the artist and describe the subtlety and context of the work Thek produced.

Unlike that of his contemporaries in the 1960s who were making work regarded as minimalism, Paul Thek’s work was messy, representational and auto-biographical and involved personal insight and spirituality. A sculptor, painter, and one of the first artists to create environments or installations, Thek came to recognition showing his sculptures in New York galleries in the 1960s. The first works exhibited, Technological Reliquaries, which he began making in 1964 are sometimes referred to as ‘meat pieces’ as they were meant to resemble flesh. At the end of the sixties, Thek left for Europe, where he created extraordinary environments, incorporating elements from art, literature, theatre, and religion, often employing fragile and ephemeral substances, including wax and latex.

Paul Thek’s exhibitions include Paul Thek: Diver, A Retrospective, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2010; Paul Thek, Luzern 1973/2005, Kunstmuseum Luzern, 2005; Paul Thek, Camden Arts Centre, London, 1999; and Paul Thek: The wonderful world that almost was, Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam 1995. Before his death in 1988, he exhibited extensively, and was included in the 1976 La Biennale di Venezia, Venice; Documenta 4 and 5, Kassel (1968 & 1973) and The Obsessive Image 1960-1968, The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Paul Thek, b. Brooklyn 1933 – d. New York 1988.

This presentation has been made possible by Alexander and Bonin, New York and the Watermill Center Collection. If you don’t like this book you don’t like me. is presented with the support of Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, 2012.

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Installation view, The Modern Institute Osborne Street, Glasgow, 2012

All images – Courtesy: The Modern Institute, Glasgow

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Michael Wilkinson

‘Dresden’

The Modern Institute Aird’s Lane, Glasgow, 20/04—02/06/2012

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Michael Wilkinson’s third exhibition, ‘Dresden’ at The Modern Institute is also the inaugural show of the gallery’s new exhibition space at Aird’s Lane, Glasgow. A former glass factory Aird’s Lane will be a new permanent space for The Modern Institute housing a flexible programme of shows each year alongside its Osborne Street space.

‘The fire-storm that resulted from the bombing of Dresden in 1945 is the most sensitive issue in any examination of English conduct in the Second World War. Its use as a basis of the shop’s design indicates McLaren’s increasing ambition to take on the Establishment.’
England’s Dreaming, Jon Savage, Faber and Faber, 2005, p 284

‘The economic crises of the early 1980s recreated mass-unemployment for the first time in 40 years, at all events in Europe. In some ill advised countries the crisis
produced a veritable industrial holocaust, Britain lost 25% of its manufacturing industry in 1980-1984.’
The Age of Extremes 1914-1991, Eric Hobsbawm, Abacus, 1995 p 304

Failing to source the original images of Dresden used by Malcolm McClaren for the interior of his shop Seditionaries, Michael Wilkinson has recast Liverpool as the bombed German city. A series of details showing damage around the Victoria Monument, during the 1941 Liverpool blitz, are displayed on canvas that also includes acrylic, bees wax, verdigris and string.

Michael Wilkinson’s solo exhibitions include, ‘Never Works’ Le Temple, Paris, 2011, ‘Lions After Slumber’, The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd (2009) and Wrong Gallery, New York, 2004. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Rubble Stir’, The Glue Factory, Glasgow, 2010; ‘Wayfinders’, 135 Castlebank Street, Glasgow, 2006; and ‘All That Is Solid Melts Into Air’, FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, 2004. His book 1979- was published by Blackdog Publishing, London.

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Installation view, The Modern Institute Aird’s Lane, Glasgow, 2012

Michael Wilkinson, No title, 2012

Michael Wilkinson, No title, 2012

Michael Wilkinson, Vitrine 3, 2012

All images – Courtesy: The Modern Institute, Glasgow