circular
passages




























circular passages

1. michael smith
2. michael amato for urban electric



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Gio Ponti
vs
Gabriel Orozco

"I have built a hotel in Sorrento" wrote Gio Ponti "And, although there wasn't really any need, I wanted each of the hundred rooms to have a different majolica pattern on the floor''.






-------------------

" The circle for me is a very useful Instrument in terms of movement,
in relation to gravity and erosion. It's the tendency of objects when they're
in movement and are eroded by friction..."

Gabriel Orozco

Gio Ponti
vs
Gabriel Orozco





1. Have you ever seen a floor more beautiful?
Parco dei Principi in Sorrento, Italy
The luxury hotel remains as Gio Ponti intended. He designed everything in the hotel, from the pale wood furniture upholstered in blue fabrics in the bedrooms to the 30 different geometric patterned blue and white tiles that adorn the floors to the design of the blue ceramic pebbles and tiles that cover the walls next to the lifts and the pillars in the lobby. Even the crockery is specified as Melotti majolica plates..




2. "What is most important is not so much what people see in the gallery or the museum, but what people see after looking at these things, how they confront reality again." - Orozco

Gabriel Orozco's MOCA show here in Los Angeles 10 years ago changed the way I look at art. I left the building that afternoon in silence. These circles, the toilet paper spinning on the fans, tables full of ceramics and memorabilia of some sort of journey left me confused. Ever since, I've been looking for wet tire marks on the pavement. Simple delights after a city's summer rain.

image above: From the Samurai Tree series, IM (2006), egg tempera on red cedar panel with gold leaf, 21 5/8 x 21 5/8"














----------------------------

The best
way
out is
through.

" Chance of course plays its part,
dictating the way in which different dyes
will react and determining the extent of irregularity
in the the staining at the rings' edges."

The best way
out is through


1. michael phelan, the best way out is through (No. 18),
2006 Dye on linen.. here
2. michael dopp, kinkead contemporary, here..





"The considerable size of the works is rooted in the Abstract Expressionist heroism of Jackson Pollock, Barrnett Newman, and those that followed them, while their palette abandons the acidic psychedelia traditionally associated with tie-dye imagery in favour of the lyrical hues reminiscent of Colour Field artists such as Morrris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler and Kenneth Noland. Continuing the experiments begun by Turner, Kandsinsky and Albers, this latter group was interested in the atmospheric effects of colour, enveloping the viewer in an impersonal and unashamedly two-dimensional environment on a monumental scale.

The dominant motif in each of Phelan's works, a target, is similarly borrrowed from the Color Field lexicon, specifically the paintings made by Noland between 1958-62. They were not intended to be read as targets per se, unlike those that Jasper Johns was producing at around the same time. Rather, the target functioned as it had several decades earlier in the work of Robert Delaunay: as a purely formal device, devoid of narrative or overtly personal expression and well suited to the artist's investigations into abstraction."

----

RINGS

rings:
separate,
together,
and apart.
































































































rings:
separate,
together,
and apart.


1. Isa Genzken
2. Carlo Scarpa
3. Feliz Gonzalez Torres
4. Vintage Still Rings, "A great pair of vintage gymnastic mens still rings. Time worn and weathered with warm leather wrapping and beautiful hand stitching. "