Entanglements

Judy Pfaff at Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe through October 16

No information on the gallery website for this work 

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As an artist who finds inspiration in the order of the grid, I can get a bit twitchy around tangles. Judy Pfaff and Jennifer Steinkamp both have solo exhibitions in Chelsea in which entangled elements are the essence of the work.

Judy Pfaff’s show, Five Decades, I love. No twitching here. In the front gallery of Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe four large wall-hung sculptures push out into the center of the room. I wish the space were larger so that each work could have more breathing room; on the other hand, the proximity of the works pulls you into an intimate relationship with each one. There’s nothing you can do but get up close and personal. And for Pfaff’s work, that means getting to peer past the burgeoning form into the structure of the work itself.
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Detail of the work shown top

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Judy Pfaff: Es Possible, 1989, painted wiggle board and steel, 96 x 144 x 48 inches. Detail below:

The show is a survey, with work from the Seventies on. The hallway features prints, including some with encaustic, which give them a materiality in two dimensions. The back gallery, illuminated by a large skylight, holds  two works, one a single free-hanging work, linear and volumetric, rather more like dimensional drawing than scuplture. Five Decades is up through October 16.

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Judy Pfaff: Los Voces, 1992, lacquered steel, steel, aluminum wire, 96 x 123 x 96 inches

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Jennifer Steinkamp’s installation at Lehman Maupin, on the other hand, made me twitch. Normally I enjoy Steinkamp’s work. This time, not so much (though I love the simplicity of the installation). Three videos, one projected on each of the gallery’s walls, feature video animations of  kinetic interlacements. My first association was to knitting, but as the blue and red strands slithered and undulated across the screen, the associations became more organic—veins and arteries, then worms and eels. It’s not a show you want to see when you’re tripping, I’ll tell you that. It’s up through October 23.

Above and below: Jennifer Steinkamp at Lehman Maupin

 Both works are from the Premature series

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By chance, at the James Cohan Gallery across the street, one of Ingrid Calame’s paintings  featured a similar—and altogether more inviting—tangle. While the exhibition features some of Calame’s tradmark tracings, the artist also showed oil-on-aluminam-panel paintings derived from the markings on a factory floor. The show, Swing Shift, ran through October 9. 

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Ingrid Calame at James Cohan Gallery: Arcelor Mittal Steel Shipping Building One, Right Nos. 274, 275, 277, 2010, oil on aluminum, 36 X 72 inches
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Installation view below 

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