Still photo from "Burning Car" (2009). Courtesy of Superflex and Peter Blum Gallery.
Superflex
Flooded McDonald’s
Peter Blum Gallery – 526 West 29th Street
until March 20, 2010
El Anatsui
Jack Shainman Gallery – 513 West 20th Street
until March 13, 2010
Leonardo Drew
Sikkema Jenkins Gallery – 530 West 22nd Street
until March 6, 2010
1. Superflex
Superflex, a company and artist collective, was conceived of by 3 Danish artists. While attending university they incorporated, set up a phone number and named the group after a trucker they met called Superflex Bravo (dropping the Bravo to sound more serious). The company provides a flexible identity for the group, one that is not tied to a single artist’s reputation or agenda. By creating a company, their philosophy was inline with notions of working within the dominant economic and social system, not trying to create an alternative to capitalism or simply criticizing it.
“As a whole we learned and took different aspects that fit into our own practice—that of not criticizing but questioning, creating models, examples where you can intervene in or reflect society, or even go much further by actually creating a product or object that you can enter into an economic or political system, or personal system, a one-to-one system. So in that sense there’s a link to an action-minded aspect that is an important part of most of our activities. With the “Biogas” project, for example, we don’t criticize our relationship with Africa, Asia and so on, we actually go there and propose our project to the people in each country, and thereby take part, offering the people in their respective cultures opportunities to criticize us, which I often think is equally important, so we are not dogmatic, we don’t have a manifesto, we only work with the situations we are in. It’s the direct or practical application that really is our primary concern.” – Christiansen
One of the most important ideas behind the group’s production is that ‘everyone is a potential entrepeneur.’ They encourage people to question, to build, and to create in an attempt to affect their role as an obedient consumer in a capitalist system. A couple examples highlight this idea:
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Superflex. Free Shop, 2009.
Free Shop: In various places, the group worked with convenience stores to change the power of the consumer. When a shopper brought their items up to the counter to pay, the sum for the items was always zero. One shopper in Tokyo called his friends to tell them about the store, and then took only a very inexpensive bowl of rice.
- Guarana Power Project: In Brazil, the group met farmers who cultivate a caffeinated berry called Guaran. They developed a new soft drink that is sold in Denmark and other places. The farmers benefit from these sales and challenge the normal power structures involved.
In two of the works on view at Peter Blum Gallery, the group engages the viewer (albeit passively) in a dialogue about symbols of economic and social power, while in a third they provoke a psychological inquiry.
Experience it…
Burning Car, 2009.
The automobile is a symbol of individual freedom all over the world. People are dependent on them in all parts of their life and cars are often tied to a person’s sense of identity, as status symbols and tools for changing status. Across Europe, the group witnessed the burning of cars as a tool or at least a symbol of rebellion. Burning a car in this context of political upheaval evokes a sense of anarchy, an alarm set off by the powerless.
At the current moment in the US, seeing a burning car evokes the economic struggle of which we are all a part. For many, this is a struggle for survival and the image is tied to the relationship between corporations that are no longer able to support a growing body of workers.
Burning Car from Superflex on Vimeo.
Think about it…
- In this context, how would you describe the economic or social relationships that the car symbolizes?
- What do you notice about how the film was shot – about the cuts, pans, transitions, focus, etc? What similar film techniques are used as in mainstream movies?
- The film lasts just 10 minutes, from the first spark to the bubbling of paint and the melting of tires. What effect does showing the entire event have?
- How does this piece relate to the group’s intention of questioning current economic structures?
Superflex, Flooded McDonald’s, 2008, stills from a color film, 20 minutes.
Experience it…
Flooded McDonalds, 2008.
An empty restaurant looks recently abandoned as a stream of water begins to flow in beneath a door. As the floor is covered and food wrappers start to float, the viewer anticipates the chaos to come. Shortly, the water reaches a foot and the tall, plastic Ronald McDonald begins to bob around the store, waving as he goes. Soon, the garbage cans are overtaken, french fries left on the tables float off one by one and the chairs are lifted from the floor. This drama continues until the water reaches the ceiling and the camera is submerged. Again, a smooth editing job on the film turns a slow and anti-climatic vignette into something akin to a feature film.
Flooded McDonald’s from Superflex on Vimeo.
Think about it…
- What is happening to the McDonalds? What does the flood symbolize – destruction, cleansing, ???
- In some of their projects, like Free Shop, there is a invisible or unknown power acting on the situation. In Flooded McDonalds, the source of the flood is never revealed. How does this add or detract from the piece?
Experience it…
Financial Crisis, 2009
“As for “The Financial Crisis,” we wanted to treat the ongoing financial crisis as a psychosis and have a hypnotist guide us through our worst nightmares.”
The Financial Crisis - trailer from Superflex on Vimeo.
Think about it…
- How is this film similar or different from the group’s other films – how does it deal with time, crisis, power?
Do something about it…
- What power do you have within the capitalist power structure?
- What are ways in which you can affect some sort of change?
2. El Anatsui
El Anatsui. Installation image, Jack Shainman gallery. 2010.
Experience it…
According to the press release, Lisa Binder, the curator in charge of the El Anatsui exhibition points out that ‘traditional African objects, unlike European paintings and sculpture, are often highly adaptable, designed to be reused.’ -
The sculptures on view remind the viewer of cloth, and are often related to Kente cloth – traditional wraps made in Ghana and Nigeria. Some of the sculptures even appear to be woven like cloth, but are in fact metal bottle tops connected with tiny wires. El Anatsui has a team of assistants who work to collect, fold and and piece together the structures.
In this collaboration with his assistants, the artists states that he can recognize the way each assistant handles the metal. Because of their structures, the sculptures are flexible and malleable, changing with each hang. The artist is really asking the curators and collectors of his work to collaborate with him too – every time they hang it, the sculpture will fold or drape differently.
The works on view here take many forms, some stretch the length of the wall, some reach down to the floor, some billow, some drape.
- How would you describe the way these works are presented?
El Anatsui. Installation photo, Jack Shainman Gallery, 2010.
The bottle tops are originally found on bottles of alcohol which have a relationship with to the western world. El Anatsui states that he can work only from what his environment presents him with and has created sculptures out of wood, clay and metal.
“At the back of my mind, I think about things concerning the conditions in my environment but sometimes I simply let the medium or the process lead me on. These are the two approaches which, I guess, all artists use; with one you attempt to impose your ideas onto the media, with the other the medium leads you on.”
By referencing Kente cloth, El Anatsui is relating his work to a traditional medium and, ultimately, to a cultural heritage of which he is a part.
“If I seemed concerned with history, it is not that I want to relate history per se. I think I’m more like trying to play around with the effects of that history or where that history is eventually consigning the continent and its people to. Rather than recounting history, my art is telling about what history has provoked.”
Take a moment to identify the colors and patterns used in the work.
El Anatsui. Installation photo, Jack Shainman Gallery, 2010.
Think about it…
The colors that make up the work are found colors – those used in the branding of different types of liquors. In the sculptures, the colors take on a new meaning. Gold (gold mines too) and silver play a large role in the history of western Africa – it’s pre-colonial and colonial history.
Other colors—red and purple specifically—may relate more to people. Sometimes the red parts look like dripping blood, in some works it becomes a twisting piece of rope. In this way, the sculptures are quite formal representations of a historical narrative.
Do something about it…
Look at materials you would usually throw out or recycle. Is there anything that you consume a lot of that could be cut up, molded, recombined and transformed into something new? Develop a strategy using pattern and color and think about how your finished works will be displayed.
3. Leonardo Drew
Leonardo Drew. No. 134. 2009. Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins gallery.
Similar to El Anatsui’s work, Leonardo Drew’s sculptures become more than the sum of their parts through accumulation, repetition, and variety. As a conscious effort to move away from a reliance on drawing and representation, Drew developed this body of work in the late 80’s and began realizing its potential in ‘88 with the work called “No. 8” that incorporated animal pelts, skulls and rope. Soon after he began artificially aging the materials to create a unifying color and texture.
Experience it…
Materials in the work on view at Sikkema Jenkins tend toward the organic - twigs, wood blocks, and paper, all of which he collects from the city he’s working in (mostly San Antonio and New York). “I push my grocery cart out there and it’s like shopping.” These materials have been discarded by others and he works on them to bring out certain colors and markings to enhance the worn out or used look. The finished pieces are suspended in this moment of decay in an ordered and structured way, usually on a grid, and so the decay appears to be part of some larger system.
Perhaps because he’s mining the materials that others have used his work draws on the collective conscious. Drew says that his work has an emotional weight, that he lets historical memory and life experiences filter through him and become part of the work.
Here you can listen to an interview with the artist made during a mid-career retrospetive of his work at the
Two big themes that are evident in each of the works are restructuring and regeneration. The work called “No. 134” contains many different kinds of materials all coated with a dark matte stain. Most of the work is affixed to the wall while other elements rest on the floor and lean back against it. There are many protruding elements and the piece as a whole does not seem to have any boundaries – as if it could keep materializing outward, taking over more of the gallery space.
Think about it…
- This work utilizes both order and chaos; growth and decay. How is this evident in the work?
- How have the elements in this work been restructured? What order is evident in different parts of the work?
- There are different organizing principles at work in the piece – longer wooden pieces are grouped together while a square of branches sticks out from the top. How might this structure reflect or symbolize life experience?
Leonardo Drew. No. 130, 2009. Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins Gallery.
Some works in the show are reminiscent of islands, echoing the shape of Manhattan: bits of wood float around the island, while longer pieces protrude from it like a skyscraper. Other works take the form of a tension-filled illusionistic curve – the closest (and widest part) at the bottom of the work, the rest curving upwards and away from the viewer, while twigs and bits of board extend outward toward the viewe.
- What other dominant forms do you notice in the work?
The artist prefers to leave the meaning of the works open-ended, stating: “Your mind can give you better special effects than a movie. I try to give you that same sort of experience. I think that these works really do operate as mirrors and that each individual has their own take. You can get so many different levels of response, from a mental collage to stepping back and being completely overwhelmed by the energy that we all have in common. I try to leave it at that.”
- In the end, what do these works mean for you?