Andrea Zittel: Clasp
Nicola McCartney, Monday, 9th August 2010
The run of ‘Andrea Zittel: Clasp’ at London’s Sadie Coles HQ has been extended until 14 August. Visually and physically engaging, with just enough hints of the real word, ‘Clasp’ is a series of multi-media works exploring the notion of experience, which the artist believes can be broken down into four separate modes: the pure, the representational, the ideal and the physical. In layman’s terms, this includes large paintings depicting geometric shapes and diagrams, indicating some kind of coded system of belief, superimposed on the Californian desert landscape where Zittel lives and works. Described as ‘new age iconography’, they bring to mind modes of language we use to teach, and how, in an age of Scientology and instant messaging, we might try to make sense of an increasingly estranged society. Upstairs shows a video installation of the artist and her son’s hands entwined and playing with each other, acting out the thin lines between nature and nurture in their games of teasing and control.
The most prominent work, The Bodily Experience of a Physical Impracticality (see above), is a textile sculptural piece reaching from the four corners of the room to form a cross shape in the centre. This piece, unlike the other works in the show, provokes an experience by default of its physicality, which demands the gallery-goer to navigate around it and challenges the assumption that a public space should be obstacle free. Watching willing participants limbo, hop and straddle the work makes it the most provocative and fun of ‘Clasp’.
‘Andrea Zittel: Clasp’ is at Sadie Coles HQ, London, until 14 August 2010
www.sadiecoles.com
Image credit: copyright the artist, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London.
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