Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at David Zwirner of new work by Andra Ursuta. I was interested in the technique of the works. The pictures were created using objects from her studio which she arranged and then took photographs of. This was meant to mirror the early idea of ghost photographs. The rather complex description on the website also quotes various art historic precedents but I found the language over complex and my brain switched off. I like layers of meaning but this was too much. It had been a long day of looking at art. There were also sculptures made of lead-crystal but   I found them hard to engage with. I also have a gripe that the show was over three floors with a steep staircase and the lift was out of action. It had no sign on it just a notice to say you should ask to use it. When I asked I was just told no I couldn’t as it was broken, no apology for that so I’m afraid I walked out without doing the upper floors. As I said it had been a long day! I did notice th...

Fun and insightful exhibition at David Zwirner of new work by Ebecho Muslimova. The show featured mainly drawings of Fatebe, a cartoon like character described in the press release as “a plump and exuberant personality”. This naked female figure manipulates her body and allows the artist to “explode the social expectations of the female body”. The pictures make you smile but also leave you with ideas and issues to think about. There were also two paintings which initially looked like crude cartoons but I loved the fine painting of some of the details such as this psychedelic skeleton. Closed 23 December 2021    

Interesting exhibition at David Zwirner of new work by American artist CT Gavin. These were large landscapes in bright colours and with textured surfaces. As these were done in lockdown they mainly show the area around the artists home in upstate New York. The press release said that they were also “conduits for larger themes” including race and memory which I must admit I didn’t get from them. The works initially look quite rough but the more you look the more detail you see such as a modernist house on the skyline of a forest. I loved the square seascape shown here which reminded me of Winslow Homer because I had recently done a talk on that artist’s seascapes which also had layers of meaning which you don’t get from an initial view. I also learnt from the press release that Gavin is sometimes playing with an optical phenomena called the Purkinje effect in which the eye favours blue tones in low light conditions and I am off to Google that now and find out more. Closed 23 No...

Interesting exhibition at David Zwirner of new work by Luc Tuymans made during lockdown. Most of these works were sketches, many done when Tymans was unable to get to his studio. They did give a sense of someone getting back to their creative roots in lockdown. The core of the show was a painted animation featuring two monkeys including a toy one from his childhood alongside sketches for its production. I loved some of the delicate drawings including a sketch of a Holbein portrait and a wonderful picture of a tulip. My favourite was the street seen shown here with the symbol for a video on the top which makes you want to touch it and watch it move. It will be interesting to see what develops from these spontaneous works in the future. Closes 22 May 2021

Charming exhibition at David Zwirner of a selection of work ay Antiguan artist Frank Walter. These were all small pictures of a variety of subjects and including abstract works. I like his strange, heraldic animals on red backgrounds but my favourites were his peaceful landscapes often evoking the island he came from. From reading the press release I didn’t really understand the work I was looking at, but a useful article in the Evening Standard filled in the gaps. The work at face value is pretty and quite naïve so I wasn’t sure why they had got to a leading London art gallery. However in reading the article I found that Walter had suffered from mental health issues and part of his therapy was to paint on anything he could lay his hands. A lot of these works are small because that are painted on the back of packaging boxes. He produced over 5000 works but rather than concentrating on individual works they need to be seen as a reflection of his mind and emotions. The heraldic pi...

Vibrant exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery of work by the Indian artist Benode Behari Mukherjee from the 1950s and 60s. These were bright abstracted collages putting you in mind of Matisse but most intriguing was that Mukherjee was blind when he made them. He shaped and organised the pieces but touch and dictated the colours to assistants. The pictures made with paper, news print, string and bits of material, were full of action and life. I loved the pictures of street performers. Even more remarkable were the drawings on show, all also done after he had gone blind. They were expressive pictures of people and animals with no hints that they were produced from memory and gesture not sight. Closes 22 February 2020 Review Guardian

Beautiful exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery of work by Ruth Asawa, the first major show of her work outside the USA. I loved the wonderful hanging sculptures made looped wire which reminded me of salad dryers. I particularly like the ones with shapes within shapes and they were beautifully hung here as a collection you could walk around setting up interesting vistas through them. There were also examples of her tied wire work where a group of wire were divided out like the branches of tree, starting with a clump of all the wires at the centre and dividing off in groups until there was just the single strands at the periphery of the work. The commentary said that these were based on a desert plant but they reminded me of lungs. The works were surrounded by Asawa’s sketches for them and photographs of her working on them in her studio. Closes 22 February 2020 Reviews   Guardian Telegraph

Interesting exhibition at the David Zwirner Gallery of stripe pictures by Bridget Riley from all periods of her career. These works were beautifully displayed over three floors but I have to confess I find them very hard to look at. The press release said they are “at time triggering optical sensations of vibration and movement” and that is certainly so for me. I don’t find the blue ones too bad but the orange ones seem to jump off the wall and wiggle around! As for the white one with red and blues strips I had to leave the room! I do actually like the pictures and find the fact that they have this effect fascinating. There was one sketch where a very precise measurement was being worked out and the plan was that the lines weren’t evenly spread they were varying by a millimeter in an uneven pattern. I did wonder how many of the others used this technique but didn’t feel I could get close enough up to measure them! Review Guardian