EXHIBITIONS | white cube: states and conditions - antony gormley

Antony Gormley's exhibition ended in Hong Kong just days ago. I wish I had the opportunity to visit more than once. Good thing I had my camera with me the first time I visited. His work is so amazing to look at.

"With ‘States and Conditions, Hong Kong’, Gormley turned the entire gallery architecture into a psychic and physiological testing ground, using sculpture to animate space and activate the built environment. The exhibition was designed to resonate within the dense urban conditions particular to Hong Kong. 

Dispersed tactically throughout the gallery and its connecting stairways and passages, the works in the exhibition invited the viewer’s active projection. Using dramatic changes in material and scale, both the body of sculpture and that of the viewer are included and excluded, made solid and dematerialised, allowed to displace space but also to identify with it. 

The works invite circumnavigation and are catalysts for a choreography of movement. This process is initiated by the first work the viewer encountered, Ease (2012), which obstructed the main entrance from the street. This massive iron ‘Blockwork’ sculpture suggested an awkward occupation of the gallery architecture, and encourages an awareness of our position in space and time." (via White Cube)

EXHIBITIONS | white cube: evian - sergej jensen

Glad I stopped by White Cube's amazing space a few days before the end of Sergej Jensen exhibition.

Here's a Jensen's bio excerpt from White Cube:

"Sergej Jensen’s work draws on a wide range of materials and formal references. Primarily known for his textile works, his lyrical compositions incorporate a variety of fabrics, from burlap and linen to silk and wool. Working within the idiom of minimalist painting, Jensen takes its material support – the canvas – and sews, bleaches, stretches or stains the cloth to create works that waver between abstraction and representation. The principle of the readymade and recycling also suffuse his practice; off-cuts from previous works often re-appear as motifs for new paintings; hand-knitted lengths are sewn or pulled over stretchers; sections of fabric are left outside to let the weather alter its surface. His practice draws attention to seemingly incidental details such as flecks of wool or frayed edges, and his muted palette and gestural mark-making, whether applied in paint or stained with bleach, point as much to negative space as to delineated forms. Although the imagery can be hard to read, the titles given often allude to their point of origin in recognisable forms, such as ‘Tower of Nothing’ made from recycled moneybags, or ‘Eye of the maker’ featuring various banknotes of different currencies, which point to his unabashed relationship to the commercial market."

More information regarding the exhibition on [ White Cube's Website ]

PLACES | gagosian gallery

Jumper - American Apparel // Scarf - Weekday

Had a lot of fun goofing around/taking pictures inside the { Gagosian Gallery } in Chelsea. Their current exhibition features an artist by the name of Richard Serra, whose known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. I know that there has been some { controversy } in the past with Serra's work--and a little part of me agrees his installations do look rather odd/in the way in outdoor settings (to each their own, I guess), but I think they look magnificent in the minimalist spaces of galleries.

photo_004+_005 by Kelly

INSPIRATION | sou fujimoto x serpentine pavillion

"The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013 is designed by multi award-winning Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto. 

He is the thirteenth and, at 41, youngest architect to accept the invitation to design a temporary structure for the Serpentine Gallery. The most ambitious architectural programme of its kind worldwide, the Serpentine's annual Pavilion commission is one of the most anticipated events on the cultural calendar. Past Pavilions have included designs by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012), Frank Gehry (2008), the late Oscar Niemeyer (2003) and Zaha Hadid, who designed the inaugural structure in 2000. 

Widely acknowledged as one of the most important architects coming to prominence worldwide, Sou Fujimoto is the leading light of an exciting generation of artists who are re-inventing our relationship with the built environment. Inspired by organic structures, such as the forest, the nest and the cave, Fujimoto's signature buildings inhabit a space between nature and artificiality. Fujimoto has completed the majority of his buildings in Japan, with commissions ranging from the domestic, such as Final Wooden House, T House and House N, to the institutional, such as the Musashino Art Museum and Library at Musashino Art University. 

Occupying some 350 square-metres of lawn in front of the Serpentine Gallery, Sou Fujimoto's delicate, latticed structure of 20mm steel poles will have a lightweight and semi-transparent appearance that will allow it to blend, cloud-like, into the landscape and against the classical backdrop of the Gallery's colonnaded East wing. Designed as a flexible, multi-purpose social space - with a café sited inside - visitors will be encouraged to enter and interact with the Pavilion in different ways throughout its four-month tenure in London's Kensington Gardens."

I am beyond excited to see this installation in person when I'm in London. I absolutely love love love minimalistic, graphic look. Not the mention, all the three dimensional negative space makes for a very interesting piece to look at in all angles. I think I'll be visiting this installation twice: once during the day, and once during sunset for some light and shadow drama! I also love modern architecture against natural backdrops--the juxtaposition between sharp whites and soft greens really helps with the visual aesthetics. The white makes the green more beautiful and vice versa. Less is more.

Designed by { Sou Fujimoto }
Words by { Serpentine Gallery }