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Plastic Show
Almine Rech Gallery, Grosvenor Hill, London
February 09 -
Review by Neil Zakiewicz
View of the exhibition ‘Plastic Show' at Almine Rech Gallery, London. Courtesy of Almine Rech Gallery. Photo by Melissa Castro Duarte
This small survey of work emerging from California, mainly done in the 1970s, felt
to me, on a cold, dreary winter afternoon, like a restorative light therapy session
for seasonal affective disorder (SAD). It is wonderfully incongruous that this work
,by five members of the Light and Space movement (the ethereal west coast cousin
of New York's more earthy and quotidian minimalists), has landed in central London,
seemingly from another universe. It is not the first time that work by these artists
has been seen here -
The starting premise of the exhibition is that all the works by Mary Corse, Robert
Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John McCracken and DeWain Valentine are made in forms of pigmented
plastic, be they acrylic, polyester resin or fibreglass. The exhibition was organised
by Valentine who, as a former course leader of plastics technology at University
of California, was a pioneer of the use of plastics as an artistic medium, and in
this sense the exhibition is a celebration of that formative experimentation. Knowing
this historical context is important, yet the works seem incredibly prescient and
uncanny, not least in their visual resemblance to the latest computer product design
and retail interiors. Might Corse's Untitled (White Light Series) 1966, for instance,
with its semi-
Despite a close association with the Land Art artists, whose particular response
to the big open spaces of the USA was to install work in the landscape, the works
here cannot be imagined anywhere other than in a hermetic white cube. These quintessentially
white cube artworks demand a finely balanced relation to the space, and ambient lighting.
Anything else in their vicinity is a contaminant. This sets up a fascinating tension,
where any imperfections, be they internal or external to the work, actually become
the main focus of interest. McCracken, in an interview for Art Monthly, said: “I
do not try to get flaws in my work, but I accept them if they are not distracting.
The thing really is the idea, or it is the non-
Mary Corse Untitled (White Light Series), 1966. Wood, plexiglass, fluorescent tubes. 182,9 x 168,9 x 26,7 cm. Courtesy of Almine Rech Gallery. Photo: Melissa Castro Duarte
While plastic is the superficial theme, the overall sense that unifies the work is
actually that of polish. The work has popularly been described as the ‘finish fetish
aesthetic’ and it is the extraordinary level of surface smoothness on what are actually
hand-
View of the exhibition ‘Plastic Show' at Almine Rech Gallery, London. Courtesy of Almine Rech Gallery. Photo by Melissa Castro Duarte
That Irwin, at the time he made Prism, banned photography of his work (he later agreed
for his work to be documented by an approved photographer) explains his determination
to emphasise the viewer's contingent role as an active participant. Yet this moratorium
seems strange, at a time when galleries and museums have relaxed their rules around
visitors' use of digital cameras to take 'selfies' with artworks (most galleries
are as savvy about PR as any other institution). Visitors to this exhibition will
be seduced by the visual effects of light passing through and reflecting from surfaces,
and the bright colours. They might want to capture the experience on their iPhones,
yet it will be like trying to capture a phantasmagoria. No photograph can replace
actively putting your head into the bowl of Valentine's Concave Circle, Purple (1968-
View of the exhibition ‘Plastic Show' at Almine Rech Gallery, London. Courtesy of Almine Rech Gallery. Photo by Melissa Castro Duarte
All the works are monotone or clear acrylic, which might suggest that these artists
are disinterested in colour, or negate colour in favour of surface, yet there is
nothing dull about the colours in this exhibition. For example, Craig Kauffman's
piece in the exhibition Macopa (2007) is a vacuum-
Neil Zakiewicz, March 2017
View of the exhibition ‘Plastic Show' at Almine Rech Gallery, London. Courtesy of Almine Rech Gallery. Photo by Melissa Castro Duarte