September 8 – October 8, 2011
529 West 20th Street, 3rd Floor
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11-6
Richard Serra – Junction / Cycle
September 14 – November 26, 2011
555 West 24th Street
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10-6
September 8 – October 22, 2011
540 West 26th Street
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10-6
Space can be defined as the unlimited or incalculably great three-dimensional realm or expanse in which all material objects are located and all events occur. In Chelsea, three separate exhibits show the work of artists that individually deal with this defined idea of space, yet in completely different manners.
At Ricco/Maresca gallery, Argentinian artist Sofia Silva‘s panoramic photographs capture the landscapes of suburban space. Finding geometric shapes and lines within the structure of houses and parking lots as well as revealing a bland color palette of green from manicured lawns to dull off-whites of shopping center shops, the deserted feeling that emanates from the photographs leaves one in a state of emptiness with a lack of filled space, which is perhaps what suburban life has become.
However, Richard Serra wants to reveal space plainly to the viewer by making it distinct — almost physical – rather than offering a feeling. Two new sculptures, Junction and Cycle, at Gagosian Gallery show Serra’s ability to manipulate structures to make one confront the actual space between the structure of his works. After all, it is Serra himself who said he considers “space to be a material.”
Perhaps the most introspective and personal of the three shows, Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s works deal with the memory of a space. Keying off of his own feelings of displacement when he arrived in the U.S. to study art in 1991, Suh began to measure spaces where he lived to create relationships with his new surroundings. He later used these measurements of the places to replicate and transport them. The most striking and awe-inspiring piece in the show, Fallen Start 1/5, comes from a narrative of his journey from Korea, in which Suh felt “as if he was dropped from the sky.” For it, he re-built a house in Providence, Rhode Island to impressive detail — one can see detail down to the brand of detergent in the laundry room to the color of the paints used in the art studio room–bisected for the viewer to examine its contents on one side. On the other side, his house from Korea has crashed in the corner, almost fully intact, except for the point of collision, with a parachute laying on the ground next to it. In the related piece, Home Within Home, instead of a messy and haphazard melding together of the two spaces and identities as in Fallen Start 1/5, Suh carefully reconstructs the Korean home into the Providence one, using the measured spaces in an attempt to reconcile his dual homes and cultural displacement.
-Janet Kim
Image:
DO HO SUH, Home Within Home – Prototype, 2009-2011
photo sensitive resin
86.14 x 95.69 x 101.12 inches
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York
