Sunday, February 1, 2009
Imi Knoebel @ Mary Boone Gallery
Imi Knoebel @ Mary Boone Gallery
Imi Knoebel’s work is a bright spot in a dark world. Like the ad says,…’Add color to your life and your décor’. Not a bad thing to be in this, our hopefully long overdue, brave new world,…Maybe these are the first flutterings, the signs of a spring here,…Well Imi Knoebel is not a wound too tight kind of guy, or trussed up like Glenn Brown, or wound down to sludge but more like a lotus sprung bright out of fertile mud,…And he’s definitely from some mixed fertile beginnings, soil from the likes of Blinky Palermo, Sigmar Polke and Joseph Beuys. Imi Knoebel’s work goes casual, loosens it up, springs from the board of classic, lean modernism but more sprightly, louder and way less demanding,…uncomplicated. Like when you see orange and black, it doesn’t mean Halloween,…It’s just black as black and then orange as orange and yellow as yellow, green as green, etc.,…Stop looking for a problem to solve, a way in,…Take these paintings at face value,…Rootless no, cut loose from meaning, yes! Freshen up, press your re-fresh button now.
Like opening up your first box of fresh crayolas,…not iconic as Ellsworth Kelly or even wanting, needing to be now,…Knoebel makes that ethos seem frozen, while his organic, lung-ta’s fly round the gallery,…His forthright simple geometries of real color,…a pleasure. Front and center, suspended,…not so rigorous and chock full of the life that is not codified, structured or honed to a master plan,…presages new beginnings, keep it opened up,…anemones floating,…Simple, adroit,…It’s about the color!
Stephanie Bell Behnke
Imi Knoebel’s work is a bright spot in a dark world. Like the ad says,…’Add color to your life and your décor’. Not a bad thing to be in this, our hopefully long overdue, brave new world,…Maybe these are the first flutterings, the signs of a spring here,…Well Imi Knoebel is not a wound too tight kind of guy, or trussed up like Glenn Brown, or wound down to sludge but more like a lotus sprung bright out of fertile mud,…And he’s definitely from some mixed fertile beginnings, soil from the likes of Blinky Palermo, Sigmar Polke and Joseph Beuys. Imi Knoebel’s work goes casual, loosens it up, springs from the board of classic, lean modernism but more sprightly, louder and way less demanding,…uncomplicated. Like when you see orange and black, it doesn’t mean Halloween,…It’s just black as black and then orange as orange and yellow as yellow, green as green, etc.,…Stop looking for a problem to solve, a way in,…Take these paintings at face value,…Rootless no, cut loose from meaning, yes! Freshen up, press your re-fresh button now.
Like opening up your first box of fresh crayolas,…not iconic as Ellsworth Kelly or even wanting, needing to be now,…Knoebel makes that ethos seem frozen, while his organic, lung-ta’s fly round the gallery,…His forthright simple geometries of real color,…a pleasure. Front and center, suspended,…not so rigorous and chock full of the life that is not codified, structured or honed to a master plan,…presages new beginnings, keep it opened up,…anemones floating,…Simple, adroit,…It’s about the color!
Stephanie Bell Behnke
Thursday, January 1, 2009
'Oh Happy New Year 2009' 'Consciousness, Cracking It Up and Get Your Wonder Back'
Oh Happy New Year 2009
‘Consciousness, Cracking It Up and Get Your Wonder Back’
What is it that Kate Gilmore, Pipilotti Rist, Gemma Smith and Urs Fischer all have in common,…??? They are charged energy, cracking it up, moving it out, crashing through walls and pushing us out of the box,…over the precipice, out through the garden, over the walls, under the earth, to the land of random, out of bounds, out of range, out of time and space and into the great beyond, a heady start for this auspicious new year,…change you can feel,…the uncategorized all coming at you,…Out with the old, visors off, eyes glinting from a wide opened sun filled retina…What does it mean,…Consciousness opened out,…Implications global,…old, worn out, political and social institutions giving way,…On all levels, artists are on the loose, moving out and heading toward each other, breaking away from the ancient pedigrees, turf wars,…fences are breaking. We are inexorably charging past the old markers, not charting the passage and claiming the universe as our infinite territory. Does that have us in free fall, bounding through space, no attachment, no state, no homeland,…A big resounding YES,…YES, YES!!! Will instinct rule, a Darwinian feed forward, survival of the fittest, vile Zombies with heat and no morals,…NO,…NO, NO!!!…Does the big bang look back,…Do the Zen masters not jump off the 100 foot pole. This is not chaos but the kind of life giving momentum that pulls us all off the sofa, out of the ditch, to a universal table large enough to feed, propagate and spread the life energy throughout the universe,…Get out your pick axes, your propellers, open your eyes wide artists and get going. Consciousness is waiting,…
Stephanie Bell Behnke 2009
‘Consciousness, Cracking It Up and Get Your Wonder Back’
What is it that Kate Gilmore, Pipilotti Rist, Gemma Smith and Urs Fischer all have in common,…??? They are charged energy, cracking it up, moving it out, crashing through walls and pushing us out of the box,…over the precipice, out through the garden, over the walls, under the earth, to the land of random, out of bounds, out of range, out of time and space and into the great beyond, a heady start for this auspicious new year,…change you can feel,…the uncategorized all coming at you,…Out with the old, visors off, eyes glinting from a wide opened sun filled retina…What does it mean,…Consciousness opened out,…Implications global,…old, worn out, political and social institutions giving way,…On all levels, artists are on the loose, moving out and heading toward each other, breaking away from the ancient pedigrees, turf wars,…fences are breaking. We are inexorably charging past the old markers, not charting the passage and claiming the universe as our infinite territory. Does that have us in free fall, bounding through space, no attachment, no state, no homeland,…A big resounding YES,…YES, YES!!! Will instinct rule, a Darwinian feed forward, survival of the fittest, vile Zombies with heat and no morals,…NO,…NO, NO!!!…Does the big bang look back,…Do the Zen masters not jump off the 100 foot pole. This is not chaos but the kind of life giving momentum that pulls us all off the sofa, out of the ditch, to a universal table large enough to feed, propagate and spread the life energy throughout the universe,…Get out your pick axes, your propellers, open your eyes wide artists and get going. Consciousness is waiting,…
Stephanie Bell Behnke 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
