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Dutch artist Annesas Appel is in the process of re-envisioning the covers of the 429 books that comprise her personal library. In one project she is organizing them according to color and in the other by the letters in their titles.
In these photogravures, based on McElheny’s photographs of the chandeliers at the Metropolitan Opera House, the subject are in some places recognizable as earthly objects, but elsewhere could almost be traces of explosions, or, in the artist’s words, “galaxies inhabiting the universe.”
Polly Apfelbaum’s recent prints with Durham Press exhibit her characteristic chromatic exuberance—as she as said, “I can’t imagine too much color.”
By Faye Hirsch
Würth’s latest feat is a nine-part portfolio of engravings that stem from his recent extensive investigation of decorative ornament books in various European archives. Here we see his signature style, in images composed of a spare, well-controlled line that seems to breathe on the page, and plenty of unmarked areas that feel nonetheless inhabited, a combination that imparts to every sheet a subtle vitality.
Carolyn Thompson, whose work is largely concerned with the visual presentation of text, has taken Truman Capote’s short story “Music for Chameleons” and blacked out everything with the exception of rectangles where a colour has been referenced in the story, offering windows of coloured light in an otherwise black void. Black Mirror encourages the private one-to-one intimate engagement of handling and turning each sheet in turn, a metaphor itself for the fragility of existence.
American Alphabet is a project more than twenty years in the making. Cottingham’s 26 letters are a collection, salvaged from a variety of mid-century American commercial signs; most are neon, a handful are molded plastic.Cottingham describes them as “portraits of odd, colorful characters I found hanging out downtown.”
The process behind Carsten Höller’s Birds and Canaries poses challenging ethical questions about what it means to be a creator. For centuries the goal of artists was to represent nature; many even attempted to locate divinity there. Höller has gone further, edging into the realm of Bio Art by generating his own species, and the knowledge that his birds were born to be extinct adds a tragic character to their portraits.
Witho Worms photographs coal slagheaps in Northern Europe and then, using coal from the site, makes contact carbon prints from his negatives. The prints are thus both image and substance, icon and index of the place. These are elegiac landscapes documenting the loss of nature and the death of industry.
The nine floral etchings of Escapades are all personal inventions—none was drawn from life. Smith neither mocks the floral cliché nor embraces it. These nine blooms are in various stages of maturity—some flaunt a spectacular mane of petals, some are gone to seed.
In his new prints Richard Woods plays with the language of real and artificial, which is such a signature aspect of his DIY-inspired work. Here, a sheet of plywood shutter board provides printed woodgrain into which cartoonish representations of wood, such as one might see in The Simpsons, are laid.
