Wolfgang Tillmans, Atair, installation view, Image copyright Andrea Rosen
Anyone else notice hanging art anywhere but eye level is in fashion? I’ve written a piece for The L Magazine this week which discusses this Chelsea trend. You’ll find the teaser below, but will have to click through to read the full piece.
From the look of Chelsea I gather we're giving a half hearted good-bye to exhibitions hung at standardized viewing heights. Don't get me wrong, I'm still seeing traditionally installed painting shows, but I increasingly find myself looking at art on the highest or lowest spots of a wall, searching the gallery for hidden objects as though their discovery were a testament to my astuteness as a viewer. Citing only a few of countless recent exhibitions that come to mind, Jules De Balincourt's Unknowning Man's Nature at Zach Feuer featured more than one painting near the ceiling of the gallery, mid career artist Wolfgang Tillmans currently shows an array of photographs at various heights at Andrea Rosen Gallery, as did Matt Keegan earlier this fall at D'Amelio Terras.
These artists do a reasonable job of hanging their shows in this manner, but those who have a true gift for this kind of installation easily separate themselves from the crowd. 36 year old mixed media artist Ian Kiaer tackles this set of problems with the greatest degree of success I've seen in years (his last exhibition in May at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery not with standing) gracefully balancing the most unexpected pairings of objects and paintings. A masterpiece of spatial arrangement, Kiaer's homage to architects Claude-Nicholas Ledoux and Frederick Kiesler, in Endless Theatre Project / Ledoux: House of Agricultural Guards (white), 2003 beautifully marries an unstretched Korean landscape hung low to the ground, polystyrene in four parts on the floor in front, and a ping-pong ball placed to its side.
To read the full article click here.
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