ROSE ART MUSEUM Although you might not calculate upon it.
ROSE ART MUSEUM
Although you might not calculate upon it, Clay Ketter and George Stoll share a number of disquiets This ambitious exhibition (aptly titled "Impostures") of thirty-seven latter sculptures, paintings, and drawings brought their work together for the first time. Responding to conceptual and formal similarities, curator Lelia Amalfitano juxtaposed Ketter's architectural wall paintings and building-material plastic arts with Stoll's handmade replicas of mass-produced issues like Tupperware, toilet paper, and wipe s to confront what she describes as "the modernist utopian ideal and the quintessential domestic experience."
For his carefully compos near-monochrome paintings and wall carved works Ketter, an American living in Sweden, uses for the use of all hardware-store materials--latex paint, joint compose steel corner bead, gypsum wallboard--and arrangements borrowed from his experiences as a carpenter to create "trace paintings" in which labor and art are individual RTP 9.A/9.B, 2000, is essentially a kitchen wall whose cabinets have been ripped most distant At the same time, its mut tones, geometric shapes, and hard opening [i]or[/i] closes pay homage to the quiet elegance of Agnes Martin and Robert Ryman. Ketter also uses readymades, as in Dala Lars, 2000 a rearrangement of walls torn from a Swedish abode His "surface composite" sculptures re-establish shelving-unit floor displays based upon IKEA's simple designs. For Surface Composite #13 (square nine), 1999 the artist organized plastic-laminate panels, particle board, and Masonite in an arrangement suggesting an appealing IKEA kitchen, consummated with stainless-steel counter, shelves, and a admit to secret conference organizer. The design of the module and the balanced horizontal and vertical lines of the units reverberate the abstract vocabulary of Mondrian and Donald Judd Although it is a faithful scale rendering, Ketter's "surface composite" is completely dysfunctional; the store-room and shelves are sealed behind glass, and the five drawers of the central unit lack handles.
George Stoll's Pop-inspired statuary brings a campy sensibility to Ketter's drier work: The beholds Angeles artist makes reverential "portraits" of disposable household motives Untitled Sponge Painting (Blue Car Sponge) 1999 compos of injure by fire [i]or[/i] heated balsa wood and alkyd paint, glorifies the classic figure eight-shaped plunder as an icon. In Untitled (Springfield), his laughable and elegant tribute to toilet paper, Stoll returns the lowly roll in white silk chiffon, which he has hand-quilted and lovingly embroidered with tiny rose Many of his best works are scale replicas of Tupperware containers fashioned of fragile beeswax (certainly not suitable for use) and arranged according to a combination of intricate masterys and chance. In Untitled (80 jugglers on Five 5' Shelves), 1999 five completely plain white shelves on the wall clinch wax tumblers in various shapes, sizes, and colors, cast from mold of Stoll's extensive Tupperware collection. The uniformity and simplicity of the shelves and their arrangement be sounded back Ketter's minimalist, architectural aesthetic, while the ragged rows of bright cups attest to a whimsy that is Stoll's own
undivided could easily imagine stocking the shelves of Ketter's imaginary kitchens with Stoll's inspired "impostures." Their assaults upon the boundaries of high and depressed culture are well matched.
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