Sweetheart

Ian Davenport & Sue Arrowsmith

Midnight Moonlight, 2012

SWEETHEART

Artist Couples

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery

An excited buzz was going on when I arrived at the Pippy Houldsworth gallery last week, the feeling of a show that has gone right was in the air. Good reviews in the papers, feels rightly deserved after a few years in the making. It was not easy to put up this show I was told, a lot of artists got put off by the title, not finding the humor and the irony. But with the once who did you could feel the excitement of working together, either the tension or the artistic pull. 

Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy saying it was easier to work than driving a car together, signing off with a heart on the tree. Combining Rosa Loy's use of animals with Neo Rauch's take on social realism the painting really stands out.

The Ian Davenport and Sue Arrowsmith's work ended up being a layer upon layer painting where he began with the circle and she added the tree silhouette, and with that fulfilling each other.

Neo Rauch & Rosa Loy

Die Jagdegesellschaft, 2012

Anthony Gormley and Vicken Parsons

Relational Aesthetics 2012

With Gormley and Parsons you get a combination of her abstract work and his sculptures based on DNA. A dreamy piece of how we try to relate to each other, never really touching completely? But staying in the same universe.

Rem Koolhaas & Madelon Vriesendorp

Captive Globe Revisited, 1994

Madelon Vriesendorp, 

Flagrant Delit, 1975-2008

The skyscrapers sharing the same bed somehow really hit home for me. Since I fell in love with a man who builds skyscrapers himself, I could just see us lying there in the middle of Manhattan, and with the beach image in the background (where we also moved to). 

These drawings were also part of the inspiration for the Sweetheart show.

It is always interesting to find out how couple works, will it create intrigues or inspiration? closer or looser bounds?

As I am just starting the renovation of my Gallery today, I am sure grateful that I have that close bond to my architect husband, I am not sure how I would do it without him:)

With Love

Kristin

JUST KIDS

Patti Smith

Just Kids

While reading this book I was thinking about how much Patti Smith's music has meant to me. Not only the music but her attitude, hey, after seeing the cover of the Album "Easter" I did not shave my underarms for a long time... not that it was much needed, young as I was, but it was a symbol of the strong Female and I being a teenage feminist (who thought that meant "I can carry my own suitcase") took this seriously.

Many years later I was lucky enough to see Patti Smith play for a smaller audience at the American Patrons of Tate Artist's dinner in New York. Enthusiastic as I was, I was the only standing ovationer, and since it would have been too embarrassing to sit down again, I stood there for quite a long time, thinking should one not stand when it's a dinner? But deep inside I felt that they all wished they could stand too... Right? Well it was that good to me.

Patti Smith is bearing it all here, I admire her honesty! The book is personal, touching and inspiring.

Reading about her and Robert Mapplethorpe's meeting, love affair and their life-long friendship makes you think of how a chance meeting can be life transforming.  

They struggled together, surviving on small jobs, even hustling (Robert) and at the same time brought out the best artistic traits in each other through an endless amount of support.

They knew they wanted to be artists, there was no way they would not be, but how and with what followed a long set of trials from drawing to writing, acting, and spoken word. To become one Rock Star and one revolutionary Photographer.

"We were Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the World."

Patti Smith

The road travelled is described here from Patti's childhood to their first meeting and ends with Robert dying of AIDS in 1989.

"There were days, rainy days, when the streets of Brooklyn were worthy of a photograph, every window the lens of a Leica, the view grainy and immobile. We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until exhausted, we fell into bed. We lay in each other's arms, still awkward but happy, exchanging breathless kisses into sleep."

Patti Smith

...  last letter:

Dear Robert,

Often as I lie awake I wonder if you are also lying awake. Are you in pain or feeling alone?

You drew me from the darkest period of my young life, sharing with me the sacred mystery of what it is to be an artist. I learned to see through you and never compose a line or draw a curve that does not come from the knowledge I derived in our precious time together. Your work, coming from a fluid source, can be traced to the naked song of your youth. You spoke then of holding hands with God. Remember, through everything, you have always held that hand, grip it hard Robert, and don't let go.

The other afternoon, when you fell asleep on my shoulder, I drifted off, too. But before I did, it occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.

Patti

I presume that I don't need to invite you to read this beautiful love story, you will just have to!

With Love

Kristin

Tangerine

PI Tangerine, 2009

(Tinted Polyurethane)

LYNDA BENGLIS

Thomas Dane Gallery

The Thomas Dane Gallery is not the easiest gallery to find, if you are not on the lookout I don't think you would have bumped into it. Located on Duke street, very close to White Cube, Mason´s yard, but on the second floor with only a small plaque outside.

At the moment the Thomas Dane Gallery presents a solo exhibition of the American Artist Lynda Benglis. Lynda Benglis is probably most know for a one page advertisement in ArtForum, that she did in 1974 for an opening at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. Lynda Benglis posed nude with a large dildo, in protest to the male controlled art world, in return she has and will never be forgotten.

At this show though you think more about what materials has been used and what art forms she is borrowing from and also inspiring.

Baby Contraband, 1969

(Poured pigmented latex)

Figure 4, 2009

(Bronze, black Patina)

Sparkle knot IV, 1972

(aluminium screen, bunting, plaster, paint and sparkles)

Hoofers, 1971-72

(aluminium screen, red cotton bunting, plaster, gesso)

Lynda Benglis cult status still proceeds, and she keeps on inspiring younger artists, but I think this exhibition was rather tame...

With Love

Kristin

Powerless Structures

"Powerless structures, fig. 101"

Elmgreen and Dragset

Trafalgar Square

Most of my time these days go to organizing practical things for the Gallery, so I have to apologize for not being more up to date on my blogging. Here is therefore a quick post about the new sculpture that is up at Trafalgar Square. The Norwegian-Danish duo is known for their sharp and humoristic pieces. This time they got their chance to show their ideas at the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square an empty pedestal that is being used as a platform for contemporary art and changed out every 18 months. Taking over from artists like Gormley and Yinka Shonibare, Elmgreen and Dragset added their statue the 23rd of February and it will be standing until April next year.

The golden bronze boy on the rocking horse is a fun reflection to the parallel statue of King George IV that is proudly sitting on his horse close by. The boy rides victoriously but is still on a stand still as a reflection of the new area of Britain? Not the war hungry colonists anymore but more playful and perhaps responsibility for other parts of the world is on a hold. There are many ways to interpret this rather simple sculpture, but it does tickle my heart.

"Why do we have this tradition to put people on horse back if they have won a battle? What do we want to say by doing that? We thought maybe we should celebrate some generations to come and hope that there will be a future where we won't have to have so many war monuments," Elmgren and Dragset (To the Telegraph)

With that I am riding into the city, unfortunately not on a horse 

but the rather convenient double decker bus...

With Love 

Kristin