Magdalena Abakanowicz the Reality of Dreams at Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art
Mon, Dec 22nd, 2008
Magdalena Abakanowicz: The Reality of Dreams at Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern Academy
September 26 to December 14, 2008
40 Arts Circle Drive
Evanston, Illinois, 847 491 4000
Magdalena Abakanowicz is a contemporary sculptor renown for her groups of headless figures standing in rows and or striding as a mass, impelled past a compulsion that relates to the tragic elements of human instinct. She grew upwards in Poland where she experienced the chaotic violence of life during the Second World War. She first distinguished herself every bit a cobweb creative person and would later on transfer a disturbing primordial organic sensibility, displayed in this before work, to surfaces of cast bronze. Currently she lives and works in Warsaw. Northwestern University's Block Museum has arranged a compelling exhibit of her piece of work, consisting mainly of Abakanowicz'south drawings created over three decades. These reveal a fascinating graphic empyrean that the creative person cultivated in conjunction with her sculpture.
In her drawings lines act like the ropes and woolen fiber used in her early woven pieces. These monumental drawings consist of interwoven lines made with charcoal or gouache that tangle and bind together to course foreign organic beings. Forms allude to a tree trunk, a human torso, a flower, or an insect; they explore the ambivalence between nature's capacity to produce the mysterious pulsating of life which is simultaneously haunted by the treachery of death. This malevolent side of nature is made explicit in the workDrawing: Inside of Stray Tree (1988-1992), where the central torso has sprouted flailing branches that comprehend and devour all surrounding space on the page.
Throughout the showroom Abakanowicz repeats the apply of egg shapes represently the swelling of a pregnant man abdomen, or the ovoid course of a flower or fly. In the three drawingsBody 81 A (1981), Body 82 A (1981), and Drawing from the Cycle Corps (1996) a monolithic unisex body looks similar a tree trunk, with cervix and arms reaching beyond the limits of the paper similar outstretched branches. Strange stirrings in its abdomen expand to a full pregnancy. As its championship suggests the blackness body ofCorps looks burnt and dead, even equally of the intimations of life swell inside it. TheFlower (1999) drawings depict black blooms that also insinuate to the female genitalia. Once once more the human female person organ that refers to the creation of life merges with a predestined tragedy and decease.
Accompanying the drawings is a single installation of twelve burlap and resin figures from the creative person'sRagazzi series entitledFlock (1990). These figures differ significantly from Abakanowicz's massive outdoor sculptureAgora, her gift to the city of Chicago recorded in Agnes Masters documentary movie that was shown in conjunction with the exhibit. Unlike the figures inAgora, these creatures do not belfry or stride forward in a chaotic array of aimless aggression. They remain the headless bodies of immature adolescents reaching shoulder top and continuing direct with arms at their sides, like attentive cocoons in a pupal stage of evolution. Though more innocent and vulnerable, they seem to be doomed by fate.
The drawing seriesFaces Which Are Not Portraits (2004 – 2005) offers the vestige of a human face as a response to the headless figures that haunt the gallery. Egg shapes, echoed in other drawings, become phantoms of the homo confront. While the faces in this serial reflect some of Abakanowicz's features, they face the viewer as depressed or terrified existential masks with hollowed eyes, sometimes expressing a deeply detached sense of withdrawal and inwardness. Their graphic ability resides in the artist'south use of brusque strokes of black and white gouache that grasp at fleeting moments of intense emotion. The gestures are primitive and immediate, equally though barely able to clear and give form to the hurting they bear witness to. TheFaces are stark reminders that the exhibition's title,The Reality of Dreams refers to the trauma and existential anxiety embodied past Abakanowicz's life experiences and her disturbingly unforgettable symbols of the man condition.
impress
Source: https://artcritical.com/2008/12/22/magdalena-abakanowicz-the-reality-of-dreams-at-mary-and-leigh-block-museum-of-art-northwestern-university/
0 Response to "Magdalena Abakanowicz the Reality of Dreams at Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art"
Post a Comment