Hollie Mackenzie: My Practice

Joseph Beuys was a German Fluxus, Happening and performance artist as well as a sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art. His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his “extended definition of art” and the idea of social sculpture, for which he claimed a creative, participatory role in shaping society and politics. 

From roughly the 1950s through the early 1980s, Beuys demonstrated how art might originate in personal experience yet also address universal artistic, political, and/or social ideas (i.e. topical issues of the day). This is part of the meaning to be gleaned from his 1965 solo performance, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, in which materials of personal significance (one foot wrapped in felt, the cradling of a recently deceased animal) poetically suggest the healing potential of art for a humanity seeking self revitalization and a sense of renewed hope in the future (one should recall that Beuys came of age in the immediate postwar period, when many Germans were just coming to terms with many traumatic aspects of their recent past).

Beuys suggested, in both his teaching and in his mature “action” and sculptural artworks, that “art” might not ultimately constitute a specialized profession but, rather, a heightened humanitarian attitude, or way of conducting one’s life, in every realm of daily activity. In this regard, Beuys’s work signals a new era in which art has increasingly become engaged with social commentary and political activism.

Urs Fischer’s Untitled (2011) consists of three burning candles representing his office chair, his friend Rudolf Stingel and, spectacularly, a full-scale replica of Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women. Created from a 3-D scan of the original sculpture, it is made entirely of wax, pigment and wicks, and over the course of the exhibition it will melt down to a puddle on the Arsenale floor. 

Le Cercle Fermé, Martine Feipel & Jean Bechameil

The notion of space is central to their work. The observer is presented with a single idea: the obvious necessity of finding a new type of space. 

At the root of their work is an awareness that sensorial perception has physiological limits—and that our conception of space is historically dated. Henceforth, in the wake of the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, it is a case of trying to go beyond the limit of a place to find a new one. This comes down to thinking about the meaning of the limit and the meaning of space, which is mainly the result of tradition. The important thing is not to overstep or transgress the law by crossing the limit but to ”open” a space at the very heart of the former space. This opening does not create new space to occupy, but rather a sort of pocket hidden inside the old meaning of the limit. It is about an opening in space according to the principle of slippage. This internal slippage and the recreation of space always implies the destruction of an institution. The meaning of the word “space” is profoundly destabilised. In this, our two artists are very topical because the management of space is in crisis. This space we think of as living space is simultaneously a space of action, orientation and communication. The development of science and technology, the erosion of particular visions of the world and traditional value systems, the structural crisis of the economy and the exacerbation of the issue of logic question a traditional conception of space and management that only thinks in terms of fields of competence and is obsessed with the constraints of growth and valorisation. We live in a period of mutation in which past models of orientation and action no longer work.

The complete lack of orientation leads to sudden dizziness, in these aligned rooms too, any stable relationship to the space seems to melt away. We are immersed in a pure, white, abstract and simultaneously thoroughly concrete Arcadia full of subtle shivers. If, having just escaped the halls of mirrors and undulating walls at Ca’ del Duca, we look at the watery mirror of the Grand Canal, the environment simultaneously reveals itself as a subtle commentary on the beauty of Venice’s architecture and the veduta painting that glorifies it. As in the water, here too the façades of the proud palazzi blur into fleeting silhouettes that ebb away like waves. The space we are in is real, yet Venice is imaginary. The point where the two experiences merge is where the crisis of space becomes tangible.

Martine Feipel & Jean Bechameil mainly produce installations that react to the context in which they are presented. From drawings and sculptures that serve as models, the couple tries to create spaces; by crossing and fragmenting volumes, they recreate a dislocated, rickety universe that is, a priori, completely illogical.

For the 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the artist Monica Bonvicini conceived a series of three new sculptures.

The title of the series of stairway sculptures is 15 Steps to the Virgin and refers to the number of steps in Tintoretto’s painting La Presentazione della Vergine al Tempio. A pink curtain and two light installations complement the mixed-media sculptures. Monica Bonvicini thereby creates references to both Bice Curiger’s presentation of Tintoretto paintings in the Biennale’s main pavilion in the Giardini and the title of her show, Illuminations. The three sculptures are made of plywood, pressboard, mirror plates, and other construction material. They vary in size and design.

Victor Horta

a Belgian architect and designer. John Julius Norwich described him as “undoubtedly the key European Art Nouveau architect.” Indeed, Horta is one of the most important names in Art Nouveau architecture; the construction of his Hôtel Tassel in Brussels in 1892-3 means that he is sometimes credited as the first to introduce the style to architecturefrom the decorative arts. The French architect Hector Guimard was deeply influenced by Horta and further spread the “whiplash” style in France and abroad.

Commissioned to design a home for professorEmile Tassel, he transfused the recent influences into Hôtel Tassel, completed in 1893. The design had a groundbreaking semi open-plan floor layout for a house of the time, and incorporated interior iron structure with curvilinear botanical forms, later described as “biomorphic whiplash”. Ornate and elaborate designs and natural lighting were concealed behind a stone façade to harmonize the building with the more rigid houses next door. The building has since been recognised as the first appearance of Art Nouveau in architecture.

Victor Horta was one of the leading architect and designer of Art Nouveau and his style inspired many modernist artists all over Europe. He also influenced the aesthetic ideals the avant-garde group of artists in Belgium, such as “Les Vingt” and “La Libre Esthétique”. 

Inspired by nature, his style was swirling and linear, like the stems of plants. Tending towards unity, every material, surface, ornament, inside or outside, was harmoniously assembled with great fluidity and highly detailed by innovative shapes and lines. The houses are especially significant for their interior architecture: the irregularly shaped rooms open freely onto one another at different levels; the natural design of an iron balustrade is echoed in the curving decorative motifs of the mosaic floors or plaster walls.

Slightly erotic its elements seem to unfold with the design throughout the house. The stairs treads seem to open up and thrust out upon the landing giving a sense of movement and not forgetting allowing light to flood through.

The organic forms of Belgium Art Nouveau architecture as established by Victor Horta generated revolutionary ideas and marked the beginning of modern architecture and design. Plant-like forms and sensuous double curves,that would later be known as “the Belgian line”, were adapted to every detail of the building from the main structure to whole interior decoration elements, as colored window glasses, lamps, wooden furniture, wrought-iron and metalwork, door handles and even the house bell. 

John Heartfield

A pioneer in the use of art as a political weapon. His photomontages were anti-Nazi anti-Fascist statements. 

June 19, 1891 - April 26, 1986

John Heartfield, a political photomontage artist affiliated with and influenced by the Dada movement, was born Helmut Herzfeld in Berlin, Germany.

An active communist in 1920s and 30s Berlin, Heartfield undermined Nazi propaganda through his use of satiric artistic representation. By appropriating and reusing photographs to political effect, he transformed photomontage into a powerful form of mass communication.

do ho suh’s sculptures are architectural environments,
beautifully and meticulously crafted. whether addressing
the dynamic of personal space versus public space,
or exploring the fine line between strength in numbers and
homogeneity, he constructs site-specific installations that
question the boundaries of identity.

Do Ho Suh leads an itinerant life, hopping from his family home in Seoul (where his father is a major influence in Korean traditional painting) to his working life in New York. Migration, both spatial and psychological, has been one of Suh’s themes, manifested through biographical narrative and emotionally inflected architecture.

James Casebere

For the last thirty years Casebere has consistently devised increasingly complex models and photographed them in his studio. Based solidly on an understanding of architecture as well as art historical and cinematic sources, Casebere’s abandoned spaces are hauntingly evocative.  His table-sized constructions are made of simple materials, pared down to essential forms.

Early bodies of work focused on images of the suburban home. He followed this with both photographs and sculptural installations dealing with the myth of the American West.  In the early 1990s, Casebere turned his attention to the development of different cultural institutions during the enlightenment, and their representation as architectural types. With his photographs of prisons in particular, he critically addressed contemporary attitudes and approaches to incarceration, as well as metaphorically pointing to relationships of social control, and social structure in the broader society.

Tom Ormond’s paintings carefully select idealized English landscapes and inject a sense of the surreal or fantastical into them. Nostalgia pervades many of his canvases in which the vision for a better life is articulated. 

Recently, Ormond has expanded his practice to include etching, the results of which are found in Eight Horizons. The prints display the artist’s fascination with the potential and outcome of the drawing, doodling and sketching processes. In his own words, ‘Faced with myriad possibilities, each choice, decision and colour has the potential to take the doodler-sketcher-planner, and their ad hoc shelter-come-planet, to a new realm. One colour may suggest a specific medium implying particular associations, another may draw out aspects of the structure’s Heath Robinson make-up, and propel it into a certain timeframe or genre.’

The etching process takes the doodle, sketch or plan to another level. It allows for multiple and varied versions, options not so simple with the one off drawing.
The mechanical and chemical processes of etching are tangible, and allow the directness of a hand-produced line to be retained.

 Tom Ormond’s paintings contrast a utopic vision of technology with the grime of the everyday. In a murky urban underworld of forgotten places, a digital stream of information is born, an elegant waterfall of blue light, both sinister and sublime.