SculptureCenter is hosting its benefit exhibition from February 3rd through 5th at New York’s Maccarone gallery at 98 Morton Street.
SculptureCenter has become increasingly known for its dynamic exhibits in its newly expanded Long Island City space and it’s decidedly liberal definition of ‘sculpture’. The show will (hopefully) fund the future of SculptureCenter for the next fiscal year. The line up was impressive and the art was highly varied, appealing to a range of tastes. From Tom Burr’s “Rectangled Restraint”, composed of stained plywood and used shutters to Richard Serra’s enormous “Double Rift II”, to Judith Hopf’s cheeky “Flock of Sheep”, which feels like something of a riff off of Lalanne’s sheep series that last made an appearance in 2013’s inauguration of art collector/real estate developer Michael Shvo’s ‘Getty Station’, in Chelsea.
The show stealers, both sold by preview time, included Carol Bove’s effortlessly lush ‘Untitled’, made of hundreds of peacock feathers on linen, tidied in lines, cut at the edges of the canvas with machine-like precision, evoking a sheet of wallpaper, ready to be applied.
Finally, and perhaps the most successful work was Wade Guyton’s “Untitled (Paper’s Defiant Muhammad Cover Raises New Tensions)”. The piece, simply an 8”x6” printout of a New York Times webpage with a photo of a early 1940’s sculpture juxtaposed upon it with 50% opacity, speaks volumes about the current state of art as a whole. The work, conceived in 2015, moves the new aesthetic in a new direction- one of organic beauty and worn value, impermanence and dissolvability. The title lends itself as a bit of a time capsule, which, as the pace of ‘things’ quickens, moments are so much more easily forgotten. There is a raised nature to the work, that is to say an intentional flawed cut and a management of shadow that is so minimal it’s nearly hidden, but present enough to add an element of sculptural spirit. How fitting for the occasion.
Other artists include Sanford Biggers, Louise Bourgeois, Petah Coyne, Dan Graham, Camille Henrot, Louise Lawler, Margaret Lee, Nate Lowman, Adam McEwen, Haley Mellin, Claes Oldenburg, Coosje Van Bruggen, Martin Puryear, Blake Rayne, Ugo Rondinone, Sterling Ruby, Richard Serra, and more.
