Things about other countries

http://www.new-york-art.com/Mus-Whit-Hawkinson.htm
米アーティスト、ティム・ホーキンソン（１９６０-）。初の回顧展を見にホイットニー美術館に行った。
電気仕掛けやビデオ、写真、ボール紙、彫刻、ペインティングその他、日常生活の中で見つけたオブジェクトなど、いろいろなメディアを使った大型インストレーションが主。自分の体に関心に強い人で、「デッドスポット」と呼ばれる自分では見えない体の部分を写真にとってつなげたり、若々しいユーモアに溢れたものが多い。ホイットニービエンナーレに２００２年に登場しているとのこと。

ーーアメリカ人の友人が彼の大ファンで、付いていったのだが、私には少し手に余った印象。大型インストレーションなど、作品というより遊園地の乗り物ようにも見えた。ポップで電気仕掛けで大掛かりなところ、発想のユーモラスなところなど、いい意味でも悪い意味でも、「アメリカ人の好むアメリカ人の作家」という感じ。この作家は今４０代半ばで、１０年前から注目されているというが、この後、老成して大人の作品を作っていくのだろうか？　それとも、今が彼のピークなのだろうか？　若さ重視のアメリカ文化で作家が老成していくことは可能だろうか？

たぶん、２０代の私なら、こういう仕掛けの多いインストレーションをおもしろがってみたような気がするが、今は一枚の白黒写真を見ている方が面白い。途中で飽きてしまった。


この後、アジア・ソサエティでインド人現代美術家の展覧会を見る。現代作家でも、ヒンズー教のモニュメントを扱ったり、色味も極めて「インド的」なので意外だった。インド人はインド風のモダンアートを創り、アメリカ人はアメリカ風のモダンアートを創るということか。
http://www.whitney.org/exhibition/feat_hawk.shtml

The Whitney presents two decades of work by one of Americaﾕs most singular and inventive sculptors in Tim Hawkinson, the artistﾕs first major museum survey, opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art February 11, 2005. The show, organized by the Whitney and the Los Angeles County Museum of Artﾑwhere it will be seen after its New York presentationﾑoffers a fascinating cross-section of Hawkinsonﾕs body of work, including meticulously detailed drawings, minute constructions, inflated latex casts, and uncanny mechanical contraptions.ﾊﾊ

ﾒTim Hawkinsonﾕs fantastical works suggest the profound strangeness of life, matter, and time. Interweaving images of bodies and machines at scales that vary from the monumental to the nearly microscopic, Hawkinson conjures a world that teeters on the cusp between the real and unreal,ﾓ remarks exhibition curator Lawrence Rinder, adjunct curator at the Whitney and dean of graduate studies at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. From his compelling miniature sculptures of a bird and a bird egg entirely made from his own fingernail clippings, to his huge, sprawling mechanical wind instruments constructed of inflatable plastic tubes and ducts, Hawkinsonﾕs oeuvre is a meditation on nature, machines, the body, and human consciousness.

Best known for his large-scale kinetic and sound-producing sculptures, Hawkinson has also created important works in photography, drawing, printmaking, and painting.ﾊ Anticipating the do-it-yourself aesthetic that has recently become ubiquitous he has, since the late-1980s been using found objects and handcrafted materials and machines to create idiosyncratic works that are intensely personal yet seemingly scientific in the rigorousness of their processes. Virtually all of his works are made with common found or store-bought materials, endowing his pieces with a mysterious sense of familiarity and accessibility. He brings to these familiar materials, however, a sense of inventiveness that inspires surprise, wonder, and even awe.

The central subject of Hawkinsonﾕs work is often his own body, which he inflates, measures, weighs, reflects, and animates. Eschewing conventional self-portraits, Hawkinson uses his own physical form as a starting point for investigations into material, perception, and time. His analytical approach is often balanced by a suggestion of spirituality, as in Balloon Self-Portrait (1993, refabricated 2004), a life-size, inflated latex cast of the artistﾕs body that been inflated and hovers over the gallery floor like an apparition. In other works, though, Hawkinson reduces his self to a simple machine effect, as in the kinetic sculpture Signature (1993), which ceaselessly inscribes the artistﾕs own signature.

Throughout his career, Hawkinson has been interested in varieties of pattern, texture, and form. His early monochrome paintings, for example, created distinctive patterns through the orientation of their brushstrokes, while a more recent animated sound sculpture, Drip (2002), creates complex percussive effects through a series of computer-controlled drops of water. His work also explores variations of texture; for example, he has used aluminum foil both to replicate an elephantﾕs wrinkled skin and, in another work, to suggest the almost supernaturally smooth surface of a CD.