Made a trip to the Chelsea galleries today. There were some great shows on. . Below are some highlights from the day.
James Cohan Gallery- Tabaimo: DANDAN
Tabaimo is from Japan and famous for her hand drawn animations. Below is some footage of the exhibition.
DANDAN
A projection onto three angled panels that run vertically from the floor to the ceiling creating a deep perspective.
Here the viewer is shown a cross-section of both a modern and a traditional housing complex. Throughout the animation strange happenings occur in these spaces.
A women spins in a washing machine, birds fly inside, the peck of a bird's beak causes blood to flow from a bed and a man walks into a refigerator.
GUIGNORAMA
Shows veined, colourful hands grasping each other and frenetically flashing on and off the screen. The pulsating blood vessels create an emotionally fraught landscape.
Tabaimo's recurring motif of hands have come to represent the boundary between interior and exterior worlds.
BLOW
Displays projections onto a curved half-pipe ramp. It shows human bones, organs and blood vessels surface from a watery world and morph into forms that recall the origins of life emerging from the primordial soup.
While walking through the gallery I had DJ Krush's album Jaku (meaning: quiet, lonely) playing on my ipod. It went perfectly with Tabaimo's enigmatic animations which portray a dark side of modern Japanese society.
Lehmann Maupin Gallery- DO HO SUH
Nick Cave's Soundsuits at Mary Boone
I remember doing a post about this exceptional artist over a year ago now when I came across his soundsuits on a website. So when I walked in the Mary Boone Gallery and saw a whole room of them my eyes lit up.
When wearing a soundsuit one can not determine the race, gender and class of the wearer, forcing the viewer not to pass judgement based on these terms. The amazing pieces consumed me with their intense release of colour and chaos. If I had $85,000 I wouldn't mind getting one of these babies for my room!
