Thomas Joshua Cooper: Messages

John Ruskins' the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature"

A Premonitional Work , The River Findhorn (Message to Timothy H. O’ Sullivan)
Morayshire, Scotland, 1997-1999
Gelatin Silver Print
Image: 43 x 60 cm, Mount: 71 x 91 cm

Photos: A Premonitional Work (Message to Friedrich and Frith), Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, Wales (Gelatin Silver Print, Image: 43 x 60 cm, Mount: 71 x 91 cm), 1992; Ritual Object (Message to Donald Judd and Richard Serra), Derbyshire (Gelatin Silver Print, 12 x 17 cm), 1975; The Promise of Apple Trees, (Message to Paul Strand and Agnes Martin) Galaestro, Santa Fe County, New Mexico, USA (Gelatin Silver Print, 16 x 23 cm), 1999/2000 - 2002. Courtesy: Haunch of Venison London.

José Parlá: Broken Language

Parlá's calligraphic abstractions are a record of the city as a living thing, a palimpsest of layers of human activity and meaning, a cacophony of histories, inscriptions and expressive gestures made by time and by humans.

José Parlá's exhibition Broken Language at Haunch of Venison (New Bond St.) 2012
Acrylic, oil paint, ink, enamel, plaster on canvas
182.88 X 365.76cm (6 x 12 feet)
© Artist Rights Society, New York. DACS UK

Photos: Rajasthan Night Drive and Sign of the Times (Acrylic, gesso, oil, plaster, collage, ink on canvas, 121.92 x 182.88 cm (4 x 6 feet)), 2012. © Artist Rights Society, New York. DACS UK. Courtesy: Haunch of Venison London.

Joana Vasconcelos

Full Steam Ahead (Fotomontage)

Joana Vasconcelos
Haunch of Venison, Londres
exposição individual
11.10.2012 > 17.11.2012
inauguração | 09.10.2012 | 18h-20h

«Vasconcelos proposes an ambitious set of new works, specifically conceived for her first solo exhibition at Haunch of Venison's renovated London space. Two large scale pieces and two sets of medium-sized works will interact between themselves and dialogue with the space.

On the upper floor, room 1-01 will host Valkyrie Crown, an enormous, organic textile body, suspended in the skylight; its many tentacles trail up and down the staircase, reaching the ground floor. There, on room 0-02, the tentacles connect with the tubular volumes - also textile and colourful - which pierce through constructivist-inspired structures, whose monumental version - Tetris 17th Century (the other three versions are Luso Tetris, Tetris Waves and Tetris Keil) - can be seen in the adjacent room (room 0-01). Entirely covered in colourful tiles, these structures result from the combination of different parallelepipeds, resembling the popular video game Tetris or Lego constructions. The rigid surface of the tiles is pierced by different textile arms, ellongated and soft, that run through and meander around the works' angular shapes.

Full Steam Ahead (Red #1) will be presented on the first room of the exhibition path (room 0-03). These unlikely robotised fountains built with steam irons reinterpret the behaviour of a flower's petals: the irons open and close repeatedly in order to expel steam, thus resulting in a surprising domestic-inspired, synchronised sci-fi choreography. Full Steam Ahead (Red #1) opposes and parodies other robotic universes prone to belligerent transformism.

In the exhibition proposed by Joana Vasconcelos, the mechanical structures undergoing a cyclical metamorphosis, or even the bodies that invade and adapt to the space, interacting in a viral and colourful logic, seem to resonate with the complex adaptation processes of beings to their external conditions and to their surrounding environment.»

Nancy Holt

«It places emphasis on the mechanisms of perception, on ideas about place and time and consciousness, and in particular a profound sense of cosmic relativity.»

Nancy Holt
Ruin View, 1969
Temple of the Sun, Palenque
Inkjet print from original 126 format colour
transparency; printed 2012
55.9x55.9cm