Last weekend I attended the opening reception at Ace Gallery with some gallery associates to see what we thought would be a show of Carl Andre's work. Having written my senior thesis at Berkeley on Ana Mendieta, I was curious to see some of his work-with the intention of walking all over it with my boots. After we entered a crowded entryway and managed to maneuver the old-school elevator we walked into a gallery space which soon revealed itself as a cacophonous vault of nooks and crannies jammed full of art and the art-elite on-lookers of Los Angeles.
It is important to note, that although we received invitations to Carl Andre's opening, we also received separate e-vites for shows of the other artists mentioned in this review. Well played ACE- you tricked me into believing I would be able to see more than one Andre work in one place.
John Millei
Ace Los Angeles is more than a gallery; it is a museum space. There are multiple rooms and hallways, each with small chapel-like rooms that were each filled with smaller works by John Millei. Although the paintings were efectively executed and were curated well, we could not get past how Willhelm de Kooning they were in their rendering of women. Also, my assistant felt torn between Picasso and de Kooning. There is nothing more annoying than a derivative work, especially when there is so much of it.
Carl Andre's installation of Rise however, lived up to our expectations and left us wanting more. Each panel was slightly displaced from it's surrounding pieces so that a sense of disorder was injected into a piece that appears at first to be completely homogeneous in design. Gallery attendees were allowed to walk behind the wall and find that the metal continued onto the floor in large L-shapes. The pieces were tall enough so that people looking at the work from the front could not see who was behind. The work speaks to Andre's interest in utilizing materials of the common laborer and mass produced industrial objects. We were in awe.
We did not feel the same however about the endless work of Ed Moses which seemed to be caving in on us in all directions. Although I have never understood his work, this time I felt a strong aversion to the ceaseless rendering of shapes and colors I can never separate from textile designs. Don't get me wrong; I love fabric, but everything just seemed to look so tacky after experiencing the minimalist bliss of Andre's work. The rest of the night I felt like I was running from garage sale militants because my husband commented that the work reminds him of camouflage. He hates camouflage and always has. Moses' work will never look the same to me again. Nonetheless, it would have been a shame if in the crowded hallways of Ace someone were to spill their wine on one of the works while trying to squeeze past the crowds- or would it?
The unexpected star of the show turned out to be Mary Corse, with her white-on-white glass bead paintings. Upon entering the room, my husband warned us that he found this room to be "extremely boring". Of course that got my attention, but after years of examining images everyday I have become a true fan of white-on-white works. Maybe it is because they offer a sense of space and clarity in my visual world. Each work appeared to be identical at first look. After spending a great deal of time in front of one piece, we began to notice differences in the strokes that shone through the glass beads. The works look different from each angle and in different light. How I would love to see one of these at home, as my orange curtains cast their pinkish glow upon my room in the morning. I can really appreciate a work that tricks my eye as I pass it, or appears totally new with each hour of the day. Also, in the past I have found that the use of these glass beads on a surface of a work can make a piece appear rather tacky and cheap. Finally, an artist has employed these beads as a medium of their own, allowing light to play freely across thier surface so that the viewer is drawn in. I love art that makes me want to understand it, yet is smart enough to deceive my understanding.
