Owusu-Ankomah at Skoto Gallery

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Skoto has been a treasure in Chelsea for many years – often featuring the engaging and thought-provoking work of contemporary African artists. Currently they have an amazing show by Owusu-Ankomah, an internationally exhibited artist originally from Ghana.

This artist’s paintings are covered in various symbols which seem to have been inspired by the ancient Adinkra symbols of the Asante people. Since seeing the show I’ve been reading a great deal about these symbols and, if you get a chance, and are also interested in semiotics, history and culture, you might enjoy looking into this as well. Each symbol seems to represent a concept or even an aphorism. These symbols are often printed on fabric for clothing in Ghana but some have even been used in advertising. My favorite symbol is ‘tamfro bebre’ which seems to mean: “Don’t worry, the enemy will stew in his own juice.” A symbol that looks like two crossed leg bones means: “God never dies and therefore I cannot die.” 

If you look closely, though, at his paintings, you see that there are very powerfully built male figures that are somewhat camouflaged among the signs.  At times the symbols on a figure’s body correspond to a couple background symbols but then conflict with others. Is the figure deliberately searching for a correspondence between the patterns on his body and the patterns behind him? Does he believe that finding the right place so that his body and background naturally blend will lead to something?  Has he memorized the symbols that cover him so completely that he is now locked through symbols and memories of symbols into a type of artificial process divorced from real experience and the opportunities real experience gives for self-transformation?

The implication might be that these guys believe there is a ‘correct’ sequence, pattern or order of symbols which already exists in a perfect arrangement and once one recreates or adapts to this sequence, the end of symbolism becomes possible and the beginning of a wholly new process can begin. So the theory seems to be: succumb to symbolism to overcome symbolism. This would seem to fit in with the artist’s concept of the ‘microcon’ – a belief that there is a ‘super-symbol’ or a symbol that represents a ‘confluence’ of symbols that would reveal the nature of symbolism so clearly that we would be freed from figurative bondage and wallow completely in the muddy waters of full experience.

Crank a fish and discover the origins of consciousness at ISE Cultural Foundation in Manhattan

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Spiritual fulfilment has often been represented by the union of the masculine and feminine.  The wandering, tormented male (Odysseus, Dante, Faust) symbolizes the desire for a higher-level life that overcomes the base and animalistic, while the perfect, pure or eternal feminine (Helen, Beatrice, Gretchen) represents the fulfilment to be obtained by that desire.  

Mayu Shiomi seems to parody this hilariously at the current ISE Cultural Foundation group show.  To represent the male who desires perfection, she chooses Ronald McDonald. The eternal feminine becomes Wendy from the Wendy’s food chain. Ronald seems enervated and spent, his long dangling schlong having done its duty. Wendy seems to be in an ecstatic trance like the famous Maenad (follower of Dionysus) by the ancient Greek sculptor Skopas. Our heroes are not warriors, poets or scholars – they are fast food icons.

Yutaka Kamiyama has made amazing wooden sculptures of various types of ocean fish for this show.  What is absolutely mind-boggling is that he has cranks and levers and you can turn one of these levers to make the fish move in an uncannily close approximation to its natural movement in the sea.  How did he do this!!!!? I stood there for 30 minutes cranking all of his fish in total wonderment.  

Anthony Burgess used the term “A Clockwork Orange” to represent the capacity to turn the natural into something mechanical and we see that process here. The cranks and levers and cogs and wheels represent the immense effort needed to even approximate a natural process. We see an intense appreciation and longing for the natural as well as a Herculean but futile attempt to capture and control these processes ourselves.

Manju Shandler seems to be parodying the concept of nationalistic pride and especially a nationalistic pride based on the concept of a democratic form of government that might be used to justify anything.  You see various ancient Greek busts covered with national flags and even icons of democracy, like George Washington, covered with diverse national flags.  This ancient concept of Greek democracy is often used to justify the corrupt operations of various governments, including, perhaps, our own.  

Truth be told, if you look at history outside of the context of your World Civ 101 class, the “tyranny” of Cyrus the Great and his Persian offspring seems to have been a golden age for most of the world, while Athenian ‘democracy’ was in fact demagoguery which lead to horrors, such as the execution of Socrates and greedy and brutal imperialistic conquest (until the Spartans put an end to all that).

Isa Ho takes photos in which she holds the camera facing upwards so that we often see buildings soaring toward the sky. Yet she also includes some type of visual element as if it is on a horizontal plane through which we are looking at the sky – she might have a fish or cupcakes or other stuff.  The buildings frame the sky in a manner which implies the need or desire for ascendancy while the (often) goofy item or items on the horizontal plane might imply what’s keeping us from that ascendancy.  

The cupcakes could be a type of sugary self-satisfaction while the fish is clearly not in any visible water – as if we, like the fish, are submerged and not even aware of the ocean around us. Yet, even though the camera is pointed up in the air, the photo is presented so that we are looking directly at the sky in front of us – the buildings seem to stretch forward and this has a type of tunnel effect.

Shu Ohno uses the accretions of various small objects to create hyper-complex ornamental pieces. The original object is like a center of gravitational pull or one could take a different perspective and draw the conclusion that all the extra stuff has grown from the original item, often rendering it useless – but not in the case of a musical instrument on display or the new type of body armor worn by a male figure.  To me these objects are absurd in the way Meret Oppenheim’s fuzzy bowl is absurd.  Each object seems to be growing a fungus or leprosy of minutiae.  

A handgun, for instance, is covered by, among other things, little figures that could be at war.  So each object could be covered by items comprising a narrative of the object so we get what we might call a type of narrative leprosy – the object has lost its meaning and purpose through some entirely theoretical process which has caused these leprous growths.

Finally there’s a very funny and thought-provoking series of videos by Tomoo Nitta in which a string of little golden balls interacts with natto – a bean-like Japanese breakfast food. The golden balls possess a frenetic inherent energy which makes them do all kinds of things to the natto. The natto is, for instance, categorized in various ways by the balls: there is the natto which is “here” and the natto which is “there”. However, despite the wishes of the golden balls, the “here” natto is conquered by the “there” natto and the “here” becomes the “there”.  

Nitta even attempts to explain the origin of consciousness through the interaction of the golden balls and these beans.  All in all it’s a pretty funny piece in an amazing show. 

I did not learn of this show until recently and you may only have a day or two to go, but if you get a chance to go, you should.  Crank the wooden fish and witness the birth of consciousness among a Japanese breakfast food. 

6 Korean artists at a group show at Elga Wimmer-Hyun Contemporary

Inside and Out is a group show curated by Suechung Koh at Elga Wimmer Hyun Contemporary. The connecting thread through the show seems to involve the experience of new, immigrant, upwardly mobile New York City dwellers and how their new city provides novelty, excitement, and challenges for growth while also providing experiences of immense anxiety, concern and even defeat.

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For this show, Kyunghan Kim has created large pieces which consist of vertical, parallel stitches and groups of stitches, of various lengths. The stitches actually correspond to words and word patterns in specific New York Times articles.  The work was born of Kim’s frustration, after arriving in the USA, of not having a sufficient command of English.  He saw lots of interesting looking folks reading the NY Times and wanted to do it, himself, knowing that there was meaningful and engaging content to be absorbed and he realized that reading the Times was a symbol of enculturation into a certain type of American social class. Unfortunately, like many folks who come to New York looking for a better life, he was initially locked out from this experience due to a lack of English fluency. Indeed, for many ambitious immigrants, being able to read the Times is a measure of full integration and success.

So his pieces can have various interpretations. He shows that, more than anything, integration into a society involves interpreting, embracing and embodying symbols. So, the piece could even be a type of protest – Kim could be saying, “Let these strange symbols of the American dominant culture remain locked. I can live without them.  They are like stitches - too binding and limiting anyway.” The artist could also be making a statement about the nature of language itself.  The stitches are empty proxies for words, sentences and paragraphs. Their emptiness forces us to think about what, exactly, language really is. What can and can’t language accomplish? What is it that gives these alphabetic symbols such engaging potency, and just how potent or limited are these symbols?  What power do these 26 letters have that stitches do not have? Language, moreover, also is a stich-like process…it penetrates and fixes/stabilizes…it kills direct experience to convey this experience in a different form. Language is born from but then divorced from reality but creates a new reality which then influences experience and reality through a bizarre and continuous feedback loop.

Hongseok Kang presents aquarium fish which have died. In Koh’s program notes she states that the fish, to the artist, are like city dwellers dismissed from a company, abandoned by others, lost, forgotten, marginalized. In a large city we become accustomed to viewing each other in such a way – we lose touch with our own humanity and lose feelings of sympathy or compassion for the actual human beings around us. Our sympathy becomes directed toward people on TV thousands of miles away while we have real, significant suffering outside our doors.  So in the piece you see here, we see the dead fish surrounded by a type of now useless medication.  The fish is against a two-toned background signifying an underlying reality of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’, perhaps signifying the endless competition we are subjected to in the city, or maybe even the concept of a type of spiritual development that might be possible once one is expelled from the rat race.

Jeonghee Park presents humorous depictions of animals which have transgressed into human spaces. Here we see a group of lions in someone’s posh apartment.  The trappings of our lives are supposed to pacify us – those comfy couches are meant to make us docile and well heeled.  The lions, to me, are our form of protest. Underlying the comfort and self-induced tranquility bought from high end furniture and interior decorators we still retain the capacity to demonstrate moral and socially transformative power.

Heesoo Kim lives in New York City and seems to be following in the Art Brut tradition of presenting child-like drawings/paintings.  Yet, unlike a lot of art brut work, Kim’s stuff is very engaging, bright and optimistic.  This work takes delight in New York City life where, to the newcomer (I am now a grizzled, disgruntled veteran), everything radiates excitement, novelty and passion.

Inbu Pyo’s work contains uncountable small pieces of paper packed together in small spaces.  Like the millions of people who live in a large metropolis the individual pieces of paper can be bent by the wind but not easily displaced.  To me the individual pieces of paper, being potentially moved in relation to the surrounding pieces, represents the communal emotional response often felt by city dwellers.  We are all packed next to each other, we are all connected via TV and the internet, and every world event or crisis has the type of ripple effect of the wind. We all bend and move together – we are temporarily forced to respond, and we often respond uniformly, but resume our normal posture soon thereafter.

If we think of this show as being about the individual in New York City, Inhee Yang’s work seems to represent the permanence and transition that epitomizes the city.  You have strong, stable forms combined with circular lines which seem to imply continual motion.  The constant, apparently eternal forms are the city, or society, we are in the faint lines that intersect or go silently around these sun-like orbs that would seem to represent the structures and institutions that we need to acknowledge for our own survival within a huge social group.