8 May 2008 to 3 July 2008
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10 - 6 p.m
Private View May 8, 6-8 PM
Paul Kasmin Gallery
293 Tenth Avenue at 27th Street
NY 10001
New York, NY
New York
North America
p: +1 (212) 563-4474
m:
f: +1 (212) 239.2467
w: www.paulkasmingallery.com
Petroc Sesti, Vanishing Point, 2008 polymer, turbine, white oil, and plinth 86 5/8 x 47 1/4 x 47 1/4 inches, 220 x 120 x 120 cm
Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to announce an upcoming exhibition of an installation by Petroc Sesti, Vanishing Point. In Sesti's first exhibition at the gallery, he will transform the 511 West 27th Street space into an illusory space of eye-trickery. Black stripes on the four walls of the space will be contorted into curvilinear lines as the viewer gazes through a transparent sphere of plith, turbine, and optic fluid, situated in the center of the room.
Animated with at once a furious and sedating rhythm, by an ever-changing vortex at its core, Vanishing Point is one in a series of sculptures in constant, but variable motion: both static and fluid, dynamic and stable. Taking liquid curvature as its subject, this kinetic sculpture comprises a vast bell jar filled with a mercurial liquid which acts a 'crystal ball', consuming and reconfiguring the landscape in which it arrives. Conceived in the city for the city, Vanishing Point seeks to develop a dialogue between architecture and sculpture; it is a liquid lens through which human architecture is compressed, distorted�liquefied�acting as an interface between the solid forms of the cityscape and the public's daily flux.
WALTON FORD
Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to present an upcoming exhibition of Walton Ford's recent watercolors. This will be Ford's first exhibition with the gallery since his traveling retrospective, Tigers of Wrath, and the publication of Pancha Tantra, a comprehensive monograph of his work.
With meticulous detail, Ford's work depicts animals embodying degrees of personification in the context of isolated historical events. Transient moments recalled in Ford's work comment on, in his words, "the cultural history of our relationship with animals." Ford is especially interested in the perceptions of animals by humans as evidenced by documentation. After researching specific stories, Ford offers his interpretation�sometimes exaggerating the animal's supposed humanness and in other instances, stripping the animal of imposed metaphors, and thereby restoring the candor of the animal's bestial state. The anthropomorphic nature of Ford's animals is often compared to the work of artist, John J. Audubon, one of Ford's many influences.
Loss of the Lisbon Rhinoceros, shown above, references the story of a rhinoceros that was illustrated by D�rer in 1515. After the rhinoceros died in a ship wreck en route from Lisbon to Pope Leo X, D�rer produced a woodcut of the animal based on an unknown draftsman's brief description and sketch. Ironically, subsequent illustrations of rhinoceroses bore resemblance to D�rer's fanciful print for nearly three centuries. In Loss of the Lisbon Rhinoceros Ford shows us the doomed rhinoceros that D�rer never saw at the moment it passed from a living animal into a mythic, art historical image. This piece will be on view alongside several other recent paintings by Ford.
Walton Fords work may be found in a number of collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art
