El Anatsui in Akron -- 4

Much as I love El Anatsui's works in metal, I was also intrigued by several of his older wood sculptures on display in Akron.  Just as he now gets metal from discarded cans and bottles, he used to work with discarded wood, which he further distressed with chain saw cuts, drilled holes, wire wrapping, scorching, and occasionally some paint.

Although all the works hang on the wall, they're certainly 3-D, with lots of texture and bas-relief depth. He frequently made his sculptures in separate panels, which can be rearranged in different ways for display.  This format references African kente cloth, in which narrow woven strips are sewed together to make wider panels.

Currents

Sagging Pants

Trying on Faded Jeans, detail below

Yida (Comb)

Conspirators

Amewo (People)

Seers (detail below)

El Anatsui in Akron -- 3

All the El Anatsui works I showed you in previous posts were hung against the wall, even though many of them bulge and drape into a third dimension.  In fact, some were suspended quite a ways out on various hooks and supports.

Amemo (Mask of Humankind), 2010, detail


















But some were adamantly 3-D all the way.

Here's a whole room full, one work with three separate panels that you can walk around.  The whole work is titled "Gli," which can mean wall, disrupt or story.  Anatsui has said, "I think that walls are human constructs that are meant to block views, but they block only the view of the eye -- the retinal view -- not the imaginative view.  When the eye scans a certain barrier, the imagination tends to go beyond that barrier, so in that sense, walls reveal more things than they hide."

The curators apparently had fun hanging this piece.  One of the panels is irregular and curvy, and turns a corner at one end.  It's hung with a knee-high open space at the bottom.

Another is dead straight, dividing the room on the diagonal and stopping smack at the floor.

Behind it, the third panel is hung against the wall but spills out onto the floor.

The adjoining room is full of huge shopping-bag sculptures, made out of the aluminum plates used to print newspapers, advertising flyers and other ephemera.

Waste Paper Bags, 2004-10, detail below

Finally, here is just part of an installation made of the rusting lids of milk cans.  All of the parts are made of lids wired together into flat sheets, as with his larger wall pieces, but the lids are big enough that they will support each other when pulled up into peaks.  (There's a double-entendre: Peak is also the brand name of the milk.)  Other parts were displayed lying relatively flat on the floor.

Peak, 2010, detail below

Stay tuned -- in a later post I'll show you several of Anatsui's early works in wood.

El Anatsui in Akron -- 2

When you see work by El Anatsui you hardly know which to look at first -- the long view, vast expanses of his metal "draperies" that cover entire walls (or sometimes entire buildings), or the close-up view of the small bits.  As I looked at his great show at the Akron Art Museum, I noticed how many different shapes he made from basically the same raw material.  And I liked to find the junctures where one shape/size/texture gave way to another.

I'll show you more tomorrow.

El Anatsui in Akron -- 1

I've written before about my love for the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui, who makes vast textile-like hangings out of metal liquor bottle caps and milk tin covers.  Last week I had the pleasure of seeing a huge exhibit of his work at the Akron Art Museum and it was spectacular even beyond my expectations.

First the overview:  he collects up a bazillion or so bits of metal (originally picked up from the streets where they were discarded by drinkers, now gotten in bulk from the factories without the intervening consumer stage) and wires them together into big sheets.

And I mean BIG -- covering whole walls of museum galleries, or even bigger.

Gravity and Grace, 2010

Sometimes the sheets hang relatively flat; sometimes they billow and bulge away from the wall like poufy drapery.

In fact, Anatsui is known for his practice of letting the local museum staff decide how to hang and display his work.  Seen today in Akron, a piece may droop out dramatically from a central pivot; seen next year in Brooklyn, who knows!  It may hang flat against the wall or spill out onto the floor.

Some of his pieces are subdued and monochromatic, like these two, facing one another in a dark room:

Red Block, 2010

Black Block, 2010

Others are exuberantly varied in shape, size color and texture:

Drifting Continents, 2009

I'll show you more of the exhibit in subsequent posts, but let me tell you right now: the show ends on Sunday.  If you're anywhere within a reasonable distance from Akron, this is a must-see.  Don't you really need a little art vacation this week?

El Anatsui -- my hero! (Berlin museums 1)

Rats! I’ve been scooped! One of the highlights of our 15-museums-in-two-weeks tour of Germany last month was a monumental work by El Anatsui, one of my favorite artists, outside the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. I was planning to tell you all about it as soon as I had some time to sit down at the computer and digest my notes and photos. But when the latest issue of Art in America appeared, here was the installation on the cover.  Or actually a detail shot, very much like this:

Unfortunately this was the special museum guide issue of AiA, so the cover art was not accompanied by an article. I would have loved to hear what they said about the exhibit, but not to be. You’ll have to settle for my comments.

El Anatsui is from Nigeria and started as a sculptor in wood, but in the last few years has become famous for his massive constructions that he calls “metal cloths” – small bits of post-consumer waste such as liquor bottle caps or evaporated milk cans wired together to make huge curtain-like expanses. His installations at the Venice Biennale in 2007 got a lot of publicity but I think I was aware of his work even before that. Although I missed his work in Kansas City last year in conjunction with the Surface Design Association meeting, I have seen his permanent installation at the St. Louis Art Museum and a small piece at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

The installation in Berlin is part of a show featuring five prominent African artists whose works, not surprisingly in this context, comment on colonialism and its lasting effects on both sides of the relationship. Anatsui’s piece drapes the huge classical façade of the museum in metal detritus, contrasting the bold label “Der Deutschen Kunst” (German Art) with a barrier of junk. From a long view, it looks kind of like a big ratty T-shirt hung out to dry in the sun.

Being one who likes to go up close and see how things are made, I was delighted that the work was set off from visitors only by the gentlest of barriers, and I could get awesome close-up shots. They show how painstakingly the small bits of metal have been folded and wired.

Indulge me in a little ego trip now as I point out the parallels between Anatsui’s work and my own – at least in my own mind. I like to think I’m following in his giant steps when I sew little rectangles of fabric into “postage” quilts like the ones in the right-hand margin of this page. I didn’t get my idea from him in the first place, but I have felt a kinship with his works for some time. In particular I admire the way his “cloths” don’t hang straight – they droop and bulge and are definitively 3-D, as you might expect from a sculptor. In the future I want to achieve this effect with my quilts.

But I digress. Anatsui’s work was magnificent in every way, including its vast scale. It was actually two huge expanses of hanging “metal cloth,” accompanied by a smaller piece that sat in a pile on the veranda. I thought the smaller piece was an afterthought, not sure what it added to the whole. But that’s nitpicking; the two big hangings were so powerful they had to overshadow everything in sight, including the building – and by extension, German Art – itself.