Volume 80 of Parkett features Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Mark
Grotjahn and the team of Allora & Calzadilla.
Lyotard spoke of the philosopher who gives us something to look at.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's "chambers" do just that--providing a sort
of real-life mise-en-scène expressed in open-ended rooms with sparse
furniture arrangements. In Los Angeles painter Mark Grotjahn's suave
strokes of frozen color, "bands and chevrons jostle for control of the
surface plane like fractured tectonic plates poised to rupture..."
according to essayist Gary Garrels. Grotjahn's surfaces boldly hold the
wall with an intense physicality that harkens back to Abstract
Expressionism, where the proportions of the canvas and the physicality
of the paint itself fully engaged the viewer. Sculptor-interventionists
Allora & Calzadilla create politically charged works for the gallery as
well as the street. In one recent work, we encounter a life-sized
concrete military bunker with a trombone slide poking through one of its
embrasures. The hidden musical ensemble performs a host of classic war
songs, marches and battle hymns as well as an odd rendition of Twisted
Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It." With texts and contributions by
Hamza Walker, Patricia Falguières, Pamela Echeverria, Philippe Parreno,
Daniel Birnbaum, Gary Garrels, Douglas Fogle, Hans Rudolf Reust, Yates
McKee and Jaleh Mansoor, Christian Rattemeyer, Lyle Rexer and Adrian
Notz and an insert by Ryan Gander.
