New PARKETT with Allora & Calzadilla , Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Mark Grotjahn and more
www.parkettart.com
Parkett is pleased to announce that Bettina Funcke has joined its editorial team as Senior US Editor.
Parkett’s explorations and investigations of important international contemporary artists continue in vol. 80, featuring Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Mark Grotjahn, and Allora & Calzadilla.
Also in the new issue: texts on Marcel Broodthaers (by Wilfried Dickhoff), Joanne Greenbaum (by Lyle Rexer), Ian Kiaer (by Christian Rattemeyer), Auguste Rodin (by Sascha Renner) and Jack Sal (by Jan T. Gross). The Insert is by Ryan Gander, the Cumulus essays come from Lynn Crawford and Adrian Notz.
For Lyotard, it was not only the philosopher’s job to provide us with a text, but also to give us something to look at. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s sparsely furnished “chambers”–in which one might find a mirror, ottoman, chair, bed sheet on the floor, single unframed picture pinned to the wall–provide such a philosophical mise-en-scene. But her work’s most recognizable element may be its elegant sense of emptiness. As Daniel Birnbaum notes in the pages of this issue, Roland Barthes might have considered such blankness a form of Zen writing–writing, that in the absence of meaning, creates an exhibition of space itself. For her Parkett edition, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster has created a calendar that spans twelve years–but each year of her calendar has only one month. A meditation on stretching our sense of time, on pondering what day, week, month year it would be if we slowed down pace, perception of time, and existence. Texts by Daniel Birnbaum, Philippe Parreno, and
Pamela Echeverria.
In Mark Grotjahn’s dramatic paintings, “bands and chevrons jostle for control of the surface plane like fractured tectonic plates poised to rupture…” (Garry Garrels). Grotjahn’s paintings boldly hold the wall with an intense, almost suave physicality that harkens back to Abstract Expressionism’s epiphanic realizations of painting’s potential. But for Douglas Fogle, Grotjahns iconic pinwheel motif–his version of the sublime–resides somewhere between the cosmic and the idiosyncratic. According to Fogle, “it is as if John Ford had asked a Russian Constructivist to make him graphic renditions of the wide-open spaces of Monument Valley”. For his Parkett edition, Grotjahn has made unique, hand-painted poker guard coins in sterling silver and 18 carat gold with a variety of miniature color images ranging from portraits, to pornographic close-ups, and to luminous abstract motifs. Texts by Douglas Fogle, Gary Garrels, and Hans Rudolf Reust.
Sculptor-interventionists Allora & Calzadilla create politically charged works for the gallery and for the street. Take for example, their table turned upside down, equipped with an out-board motor, and used as a speed boat, or bugle installed on the tailpipe of a moped–both function as sculptural rallying cries. In their recent subversive CLAMOR (2006), one first encounters a life-size concrete military bunker only to find a trombone slide poking through one of its embrasures. After performing a host of classic war songs, marches, and battle hymns, the hidden band brings down the house with a particularly brassy rendition of Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” a favorite of American forces during the 1989 invasion of Panama. For their Parkett edition, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla have filmed a silent portrait of two palm trees side by side with the wind mysteriously blowing through. Texts by Patricia Falguières, Yates McKee and Jaleh Mansoor, and Hamza Walker.
For more details on the new Parkett, its artist editions, as well as for subscriptions and back issues, please go to www.parkettart.com.
Please visit us at Frieze Art Fair in London from Oct 10 14 at booth M2.
