Anodyne
Sunday, June 30, 2013
 

ACT (Aesthetically Claimed Thing): Jimmy Robert, Reprise, 2010

"Robert’s performance coupled with its remaining ephemera will be accompanied by his sculptural installation Reprise (2010). The work references artist Jeff Wall’s photograph A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) (1993), which captures four figures physically responding to a strong wind. The composition in Wall’s work is a recreation of Japanese painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai’s woodcut Ejiri in Suruga Province (Sunshū Ejiri) (1830–33). The theatricality in the movement of the figures in both works acts as a point of departure for Robert’s Reprise. Here, he captures in large-scale photographs the movements of dancer Shiho Ishihara with gestures akin to those seen in Hokusai’s and Wall’s pieces. Depicting movement in both the dancer’s body as well as in the installation of the photographs, Robert demonstrates the ability for objects to become performative. Together with his live work, Reprise offers new possibilities for movement and performativity to exist outside a live event."

Contrast Reprise with 90% of the bookworks cataloged in MIT's new Various Small Books Referencing Various Small Books By Ed Ruscha, which I flipped through last week in Fairhaven, growing more and more frustrated as I went.  The question of reprise vs. reproduction.  Deploying the same ground rules doesn't -- can't -- equal aesthetic success.  Because then you either have a billion micro-genres, or a new "genre of individual works," and genres are always the enemy of ambitious art.

But isn't Boys Walking, & etc...?

I hope not.  Identical places, but different methods (amateur tools!) & points of concern.
- posted by cjb @ 4:18 PM


<< Home

Powered by Blogger

.post-title { display: none!important; }