Tag: language

Hayal Pozanti at Timothy Taylor Gallery

Although it’s their vibrant color that leaps out, Hayal Pozanti’s oil stick paintings of the natural world rely on shape to reinterpret the landscape as a conduit to emotional states.  Over many years, Pozanti has devised her own language of forms, here rendered in curving and organic masses as blushing, enormous pink flowers. Via her new, large-scale paintings at Timothy Taylor Gallery’s new Tribeca location, the artist not only celebrates her recent move to the Vermont countryside but explores how intense color can release strong feeling. (On view through May 27th).

Hayal Pozanti, Magic Music We Make With Our Lips, oil stick on linen, 2023.

Glenda Leon at Bienvenu Steinberg & Partners

Cuban artist Glenda Leon’s conceptual artwork varies from a grid of colorful used soaps decorated with line drawings made from hair, to a textile depicting the molecular structure of controlled substances that appear to be constellations in the night sky; in its own way, each piece makes poetic reference to the human body.  Both soap and textile works are included in her current solo show at Bienvenu Steinberg and Partner in Tribeca, along with this Remington typewriter, its keys covered with pieces of chewed gum.  Coming from the mouth, origin of the spoken word, to arrest the written word that might otherwise be created with this typewriter, the gum represents a form of sticky control.  (On view in Tribeca, through June 30th).

 

Glenda Leon, Chewed Words, 2018-2021.Remington Portable #3 typewriter, chewing gum.

Rosa Barba at Luhring Augustine Gallery

Rosa Barba’s ‘Language Infinity Sphere,’ a form created from old letterpress blocks now on view at Luhring Augustine’s Tribeca space, speaks with its circular form to the ongoing output of these blocks over the years. Other text-related work in the show includes handwritten words on a filmstrip that rotates around a lightbox cube and a 35mm film depicting images and text from the Library of Congress’ massive campus, the largest media archive in the world.  Language appears in unexpected forms in this show, even as marks on the landscape in a film showing disposal sites for radioactive material in the western U.S.  (On view through May 21st).

Rosa Barba, Language Infinity Sphere, lead letters on steel, unique, diameter 18 1/8 inches, 2018.

Tauba Auerbach at Paula Cooper Gallery

Helix, wave and vortex forms have inspired Tauba Auerbach to create an array of painting, glass sculpture, woven work, video and more informed by natural forms and logical systems.  The ‘Ligature Drawings’ in her latest solo show at Chelsea’s Paula Cooper Gallery consider joined and curving forms, exploring language as a system of structured meaning.  (On view through Dec 15th).

Tauba Auerbach, installation view of Ligature Drawings, ink on paper with date stamp, each approx. 34 x 27 inches, 2016 – ongoing.

Julie Bena at Chapter NY

Whether they’re teeth or a quadrupled epiglottis, the line of metal balls in each of these three mouth sculptures by Julie Bena suggests ways in which language might follow Newton’s laws.  If each of these joyous, dismayed or just loud mouths spoke, would their words have a momentum that wouldn’t diminish?  How would the energy of each person’s thoughts change form as it manifested in each individual?  (At Chapter NY as part of the multi-gallery group exhibition Condo New York.  Chapter is hosting Adams and Ollman).

Julie Bena, installation view at Chapter NY, July, 2018. Foreground: 3 Mouths Are Largely Enough (Hearthy), powder coated metal, 8 ¾ x 11 x 2 ¾ inches, 2017.