{"id":1153,"date":"2012-06-05T15:08:13","date_gmt":"2012-06-05T19:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/?p=1153"},"modified":"2012-07-22T15:15:52","modified_gmt":"2012-07-22T19:15:52","slug":"aaron-curry-buzz-kill-at-michael-werner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/05\/aaron-curry-buzz-kill-at-michael-werner\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaron Curry, ‘Buzz Kill’ at Michael Werner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Aaron<\/a>
Aaron Curry, installation view of ‘Buzz Kill’ at Michael Werner, 2012. Photo courtesy Michael Werner Gallery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When asked how he felt about his imitators in a 1962 interview, Alexander Calder replied, \u201cThey nauseate me.\u201d Aaron Curry\u2019s recent sculptures\u2014which continue to blatantly quote the biomorphic forms pioneered by Calder, Frederick Kiesler and other High Modernists\u2014suggest he wouldn\u2019t mind irking his art-historical predecessors. The show\u2019s tongue-in-cheek centerpiece, Buzz Kill (a hot-red rendition of a Calder-like stabile in aluminum), as well as other sculptures featuring curvy interlocking shapes \u00e0 la Kiesler and Noguchi, seems eager to take down modernism\u2019s utopian ideals without offering much in their place.<\/p>\n

The space-hogging Buzz Kill\u2014along with a grainy black-and-white wallpaper of Minimalist collage patterns that plasters the space, floor and ceiling included\u2014hints at a major statement by aggressively altering the gallery\u2019s townhouse setting. But the work fails to go beyond a kill-the-father treatment of modern art. A recurring image within the wallpaper resembles a straight razor at first glance, and a disembodied cardboard \u201chead\u201d briefly conjures dread, before the limp phallic protrusion it dangles from disperses any serious reaction.<\/p>\n

The pieces in the foyer (small paper collages featuring a sci-fi sex-goddess type atop a primitive sculpture, and an alien head affixed to a nude female totem) prime viewers for a transgressive punch that the exhibition fails to deliver. Instead, we get more of the artist\u2019s now-signature wooden sculptures composed of organic, interlocking shapes, including Dezvil, which doesn\u2019t resemble an evil presence so much as a goofy moose with someone clinging to its back. The modernist hope of creating a harmonious society through art may be dead, but stasis and pastiche aren\u2019t suitable replacements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When asked how he felt about his imitators in a 1962 interview, Alexander Calder replied, \u201cThey nauseate me.\u201d Aaron Curry\u2019s recent sculptures\u2014which continue to blatantly quote the biomorphic forms pioneered by Calder, Frederick Kiesler and other High Modernists\u2014suggest he wouldn\u2019t mind irking his art-historical predecessors. The show\u2019s tongue-in-cheek centerpiece, Buzz Kill (a hot-red rendition of … <\/p>\n

Read more “Aaron Curry, ‘Buzz Kill’ at Michael Werner”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24],"tags":[200,202,190,201,146],"class_list":["post-1153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-aaron-curry","tag-buzz-kill","tag-contemporary-sculpture","tag-michael-werner-gallery","tag-new-york-galleries"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BDOD-iB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1153"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1158,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153\/revisions\/1158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}