Ariel Schlesinger Selected Press
Selected Press 2017
30/11/2017
Winning a Sculpture Competition, an Israeli Artist Will Install 36-Foot-Tall Interlocking Trees in Frankfurt | artnet News
Art World (https://news.artnet.com/art-world)
Winning a Sculpture Competition, an Israeli Artist Will Install 36-Foot-Tall Interlocking Trees in Frankfurt An international jury unanimously selected the sculpture by Ariel Schlesinger. Kate Brown (https://news.artnet.com/about/kate-brown-671), November 29, 2017
Ariel Schlesinger. Courtesy of Ariel Schlesinger.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/jewish-museum-sculpture-frankfurt-1162982
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30/11/2017
Winning a Sculpture Competition, an Israeli Artist Will Install 36-Foot-Tall Interlocking Trees in Frankfurt | artnet News
Artist Ariel Schlesinger’s sculpture of embracing skeleton trees has won the competition to appear as the cornerstone in a large-scale renewal project at Frankfurt’s Jewish Museum. Five artists were invited to send proposals, but the Israeli artist’s sculpture ultimately nabbed the top spot by the international jury’s unanimous vote. Schlesinger’s Untitled consists of two interlocking skeleton trees, appearing in a matte bone-like surface, that mirror each other horizontally, their branches held in a twisted embrace with one set of roots extending into the air and the other’s planted in the ground. Poured with aluminum casts from a single tree in Italy, the entire sculpture will tower 36 feet high. In one view, the work is representative of the changing dialogue between Jewish history and the city’s cultural present, says Frankfurt’s cultural affairs director Ina Hartwig.
Model for Ariel Schlesinger’s Untitled (2017/2018). Photo: Marcus Schneider © Jewish Museum Frankfurt
The sculpture will find its home in the foyer that bridges the museum’s historic Rothschild Palace and the large contemporary extension designed by Germany’s staab Architects, which is set to be unveiled in 2019 (at a cost of around €50 million). The production and installation of Schlesinger’s work is estimated to cost €350.000 ($413,870), an expense made possible by a donation from Rothschild, a British-French multinational investment banking company.
The descendants of the Rothschild family have roots in Frankfurt, tracing back to the 18th century where Mayer Amschel Rothschild founded the banking dynasty, having grown up in the city’s Jewish ghetto.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/jewish-museum-sculpture-frankfurt-1162982
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30/11/2017
Winning a Sculpture Competition, an Israeli Artist Will Install 36-Foot-Tall Interlocking Trees in Frankfurt | artnet News
The work is being constructed in Italy this winter and is expected to appear in Frankfurt next fall.
Ariel Schlesinger, "Untitled" (Trailer)
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https://news.artnet.com/art-world/jewish-museum-sculpture-frankfurt-1162982
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REVIEW - 13 OCT 2017
Primordial Saber Tararear Proverbiales Sílabas Tonificantes Regen Projects, Los Angeles, USA BY J O N AT H A N G R I F F I N
In the large main gallery at Regen Projects, jam-packed with artworks large and small by 21 artists and pasted from oor to ceiling with colourful reproductions from an illustrated world map, the rst thing likely to catch your eye on entering is a belch of orange ame at the back of the room. Fire, especially indoors, is hard to ignore. The ame is produced, intermittently, by one of two virtually identical sculptures by Ariel Schlesinger, benignly titled Untitled (Bubble machine) #1 and #2 (2017). Tanks of hydrogen blow soap bubbles, which – if they don’t pop rst – oat down onto a grid of live wires, igniting the gas in spectacular fashion. The installation is mesmerizing and beautiful, but also grim: it recalls the gas ares that burn above petroleum re neries and chemical plants, and the alarming, jury-rigged infrastructure one sometimes encounters in developing countries where concern for the environment or personal safety is considered a luxury. Schlesinger, born in Israel but now living in Mexico City, is emblematic of the agnostic approach of the show’s artistcurators – Mexicans Gabriel Kuri and Abraham Cruzvillegas – to the geographical parameters of their exhibition, part of the Getty’s Paci c Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. The impractically long title – ‘Primordial Saber Tararear Proverbiales Sílabas Toni cantes Para Sublevar Tecnocracias Pero Seguir Tenazmente Produciendo Sociedades Tántricas – Pedro Salazar Torres (Partido Socialista Trabajador)’, o cially and near-nonsensically translated as 1/5
Primordial To Know How To Humble Toni cant Syllables To Suggest Technocracies And Keep Tenaciously Producing Tantric Societies - Pedro Salazar Torres (Socialist Worker Party) – is acronymic for PST repeated over and over, poking fun both at the arbitrariness and the boosterism of the project. No single work bears on its shoulders the representation of the entire Latin American region, but en masse they contribute to a picture that feels both coherent and ready to overrun its borders.
'Primordial Saber Tararear Proverbiales Sílabas Toni cantes Para Sublevar Tecnocracias Pero Seguir Tenazmente Produciendo Sociedades Tántricas – Pedro Salazar Torres (Partido Socialista Trabajador)', 2017, installation view, Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Courtesy: Regen Projects, Los Angeles; photograph: Brian Forrest
The awkwardness of the anachronistically attening term ‘Latin America’ is agged immediately by the exhibition’s wallpaper, which consists of collaged reproductions of six murals commissioned from the Mexican illustrator Miguel Covarrubias for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. The murals show a map of the entire Paci c region – appropriated, dissected and reordered by the curators – annotated with quaint, borderline o ensive images of purportedly typical regional dress, modes of transport, agricultural products and so on. (Is the Getty to Kuri and Cruzvillegas what the organizers of the International Exposition were to Covarrubias?) Radically, nearly half of the artists in the exhibition are not Latinx at all. New Zealand-born Michael Stevenson’s rusting model of a national economy, The Fountain of Prosperity (2006), takes pride of place in the middle of the gallery, in dialogue with Schlesinger’s bubble machines. Another New Zealander, Louise Menzies, contributes an orange banner proclaiming LABOUR & FREE WILL, LOVE & REVOLUTION (2007). Sometimes it seems as if artists are being typecast for their nationality: Mr. President (2006) by Llyn Foulkes – a portrait of George Washington obscured by the face of Mickey Mouse – is hung high on the wall, lording stupidly over the room.
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29/11/2017 Advertisement
'Primordial Saber Tararear Proverbiales Sílabas Toni cantes Para Sublevar Tecnocracias Pero Seguir Tenazmente Produciendo Sociedades Tántricas – Pedro Salazar Torres (Partido Socialista Trabajador)', 2017, installation view, Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Courtesy: Regen Projects, Los Angeles; photograph: Brian Forrest
In other instances, one witnesses the translation of Anglo-American forms into a Latin American vernacular. Ben Rivera, born in Honduras but now working in Los Angeles, pays homage to Charles Ray’s Untitled (glass-chair) (1976) with his own Chair with glass (2017), employing a chair that Rivera’s aunt in Honduras took from one of her tenants in lieu of rent. While art forms, like people, migrate unstoppably across borders, it is problematic, to say the least, to situate art by non-Western artists primarily within Western artistic coordinates. In this regard, an artist such as Germán Venegas – a leading gure in the 1980s’ Neomexicanismo movement – seems refreshing. His carved wooden sculptures at rst appear to spring from an indigenous mythical tradition. Then, reluctantly, I consider the sculpture of Thomas Houseago; in an accompanying text, Cruzvillegas cites CoBrA, Titian and Picabia among Venegas’ in uences. The tough lesson hidden in this enjoyable exhibition is that it is impossible to consider the former colonial territories of Latin America as separate from Europe or North America. Even if life there is subject to certain unique realities found nowhere else. Main image: 'Primordial Saber Tararear Proverbiales Sílabas Toni cantes Para Sublevar Tecnocracias Pero Seguir Tenazmente Produciendo Sociedades Tántricas – Pedro Salazar Torres (Partido Socialista Trabajador)', 2017, installation view, Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Courtesy: Regen Projects, Los Angeles; photograph: Brian Forrest
https://frieze.com/article/primordial-saber-tararear-proverbiales-silabas-tonificantes
3/5
29/11/2017
The global economy, summed up in these two bubble machines - LA Times
Review The global economy, summed up in these two bubble machines By Sharon Mizota SEPTEMBER 18, 2017, 3:40 PM
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t’s hard to beat a bubble machine. Two such contraptions by Ariel Schlesinger are a highlight of Regen Projects’ contribution to Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, the Getty-led exhibitions throughout the region looking at the dialogue between Latino and Latin American art.
Schlesinger, who was born in Jerusalem but now works in Berlin and Mexico City, is also an exemplar of the exhibition’s disregard for conventional definitions, boundaries and borders. The show is a satisfying exploration of the conditions and notions that undergird and upend categories like “Latino” and “Latin American.” Curated by artists Abraham Cruzvillegas and Gabriel Kuri, the exhibition has the ridiculously long title “Primordial Saber Tararear Proverbiales Sílabas Tonificantes Para Sublevar Tecnocracias Pero Seguir Tenazmente Produciendo Sociedades Tántricas — Pedro Salazar Torres (Partido Socialista Trabajador)” which translates to something about knowing how to subvert technocracies and produce tantric societies. More important, if we turn the title into an acronym, it reads “PST” over and over. I think they are trying to tell us something. At any rate, the show’s overarching theme might be summed up as transnationalism, for better and for worse. For the better, of course, is the array of artists and points of view that the show (and the global art market) bring into contact. Japanese artist Shimabuku contributes a tin can playing a samba beat of raindrops; Venezuelan Spanish artist Patricia Esquivias offers a video saga about a Mexican cactus’ journey to Expo ’92 in Seville, and Bob Schalkwijk, who was born in the Netherlands but lives in Mexico, presents striking photos of the demolition of a housing project after it was disastrously damaged by the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. For the worse: the seamless capitalist landscape explored by many artists in the show. L.A. artist Llyn Foulkes slaps a Mickey Mouse face on a portrait of George Washington, commenting on how consumer media has become our national, indeed global, heritage.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-regen-projects-pst-20170924-htmlstory.html
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29/11/2017
The global economy, summed up in these two bubble machines - LA Times
Llyn Foulkes, "Mr. President,” 2006. Oil and acrylic on wood, mounted on canvas. (Brian Forrest / Llyn Foulkes and Regen Projects)
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-regen-projects-pst-20170924-htmlstory.html
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29/11/2017
The global economy, summed up in these two bubble machines - LA Times
Michael Stevenson’s “The Fountain of Prosperity” is a re-creation of Moniac, an analog computer invented in 1949 that used water flowing through a series of funnels and tanks to model the flow of capital in a national economy. A picture of the original, wall-sized device appears in a spread from Life magazine; Stevenson’s version is decidedly less pristine. It’s running, but rusted, the water pooling in unattractively brackish tanks.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-regen-projects-pst-20170924-htmlstory.html
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29/11/2017
The global economy, summed up in these two bubble machines - LA Times
Michael Stevenson, "The Fountain of Prosperity,” 2006. Plexiglas, steel, brass, aluminum, rubber, cork, string, concrete, dyed water, pumps and fluorescent lamps. (Brian Forrest / Michael Stevenson and Regen Projects)
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-regen-projects-pst-20170924-htmlstory.html
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29/11/2017
The global economy, summed up in these two bubble machines - LA Times
And then there are the bubble machines. Each includes a slim, bubble-blowing arm attached to a large hydrogen tank. The machine blows perfectly spherical soap bubbles, one at a time, that drift down onto a field of buzzing and sparking electrified wire. As each bubble hits the wires, it bursts into flames, an effect that is startling, dramatic and hilarious. It’s hard to avoid metaphoric associations with bubble economies popping and burning all over the world. Most of these works and many others are presented in a room lined with wallpaper inspired by the world map murals of Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias. Created for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, these maps presented distinct categories of animals, plants, people, building types and natural resources, indicating their locations around the globe. They are as beautiful as they are reductive, presenting a fantasy of total global knowledge. But Cruzvillegas and Kuri have broken the maps into segments and installed them out of order so that the pieces do not form a seamless image. The result is a literal remapping of divisions once thought to be discrete, but now in question. Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A. Through Oct. 28; closed Sundays and Mondays. (310) 276-5424, www.regenprojects.com
Installation view of "Primordial Saber Tararear Proverbiales Sílabas Tonificantes Para Sublevar Tecnocracias Pero Seguir Tenazmente Produciendo Sociedades Tántricas," Pedro Salazar Torres (Partido Socialista Trabajador). (Brian Forrest / Regen Projects)
SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter » Support coverage of the arts. Share this article. MORE ART: The godfather of Chicano art — and the son who's keeping his memory alive Did you spot the egg-shaped museum cruising L.A.? Next stop: LACMA Kusama 'Infinity Mirrors' frenzy prompts the Broad to offer 40,000 more tickets http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-regen-projects-pst-20170924-htmlstory.html
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Selected Press 201ϱ
24/08/2016
Terremoto | TEMPLE [or charged gift]
Terremoto | TEMPLE [or charged gift] by Rivet (Sarah Demeuse & Manuela Moscoso) An interview with Ariel Schlesinger that delves into his experience of learning artisanal crafts and the influence of that training in his work.
http://terremoto.mx/article/arielshlesinger/
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24/08/2016
Terremoto | TEMPLE [or charged gift]
Portrait of Masao Sato. Archive image. Courtesy of Masao Sato and Ariel Schlesinger.
A conversation between Ariel Schlesinger and Rivet.
http://terremoto.mx/article/arielshlesinger/
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24/08/2016
Terremoto | TEMPLE [or charged gift]
Rivet: In 2013, Israeliborn artist Ariel Schlesinger received the surviving parts of a Japanese temple from Masao Sato, a Japanese master carpenter living in Santa Cruz who was also his former mentor. The temple, after being partially damaged by El Niño, had been taken down by its owner and had been returned to Masao, the original designer and builder of the structure in 1986. Prior to going to art school, Ariel had learned from Masao the craft of Japanese carpentry, characterized by the use of wooden joints instead of bolts or nails, in a setting that recalls the disciplinary strictness, strong interpersonal bond, and frustrating slowness of Karate Kid’s Okinawa and Daniel.The gift led to a new project by Schlesinger: the reconstruction of this building as an artwork in Schloss Solitude’s patio (Stuttgart, Germany), to be completed in spring 2016. This coming full circle where the pupil reengages the materials and shapes left by the master, brought Rivet to inquire about the actual processes and relations behind learning (learning a skill, learning an art, learning about life) and actual making.Where Schlesinger’s sculptural work often tinkers with, or “jailbreaks,” readymade manufactured objects, this project of the temple is equally a reinvention of a traditional temple, but is uniquely charged with past relationships having to do with learning, rhythm and cycle, authority, selfdevelopment and interpersonal dynamics. As a project, this Temple is, for Rivet, a special case in point to observe artistic thinking, as a muddle made of material and personal relations, collaboration with the institution, and a thing called craftsmanship.
http://terremoto.mx/article/arielshlesinger/
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24/08/2016
Terremoto | TEMPLE [or charged gift]
Wooden joints, detail. This is how wooden joints are made in Japanese carpentry. Courtesy of Masao Sato and Ariel Schlesinger.
What follows is a hyperdetailed narration (because detail is important) by Schlesinger himself that highlights method, process, and destiny. He touches upon questions that don’t necessarily show in this ongoing work or in past projects, but that are nonetheless valuable to bring to the fore when we try to understand the
http://terremoto.mx/article/arielshlesinger/
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24/08/2016
Terremoto | TEMPLE [or charged gift]
choreography of head and hand, reason and labor, theory and practice.(Impressions shared between Japan, New York, and Mexico City) Ariel Schlesinger: Masao was born in Tokyo in an upper class family in the early 1950s, his father was a powerful man, an important banker. As the family’s second son, Masao was considered less important than his older brother, and he didn’t really fit into his father’s life vision. He ended up a school dropout and moved to Kyoto, then a hippie paradise and magnet for spiritual people from all over the world. There, Masao met similarminded people, as well as his American wife, mother of his only daughter. He started to work for a local master carpenter, moving old temples and building traditional houses. A few years later, in the ‘80s, he moved to Santa Cruz, California and he brought his craft skills with him. I met Masao Sato at the age of 16. That was in 1996, the year I broke away from home in Jerusalem. Nothing was wrong at home; I just wanted to explore. When I arrived in Santa Cruz, I saw one of his works, a traditional Japanese farmhouse.
Temple. Archive image. Courtesy of Masao Sato and Ariel Schlesinger.
The perfection and care for details in the house made a strong impression on me. I then approached Masao and asked him to be my teacher. He first heard my request, thought about it, then the following week invited me to his studio. Although he didn’t know much about me and had no clue about my abilities, he took me as an apprentice. I then felt my destiny was to become a Japanese carpenter. When I arrived in Santa Cruz I enrolled in a school so I could have a student visa. I didn’t care much about attending. When I met Masao I was immediately enthusiastic about working in his studio. I think he knew my story and felt connected–after all, he was also a school dropout. Even though Masao was an openminded person, he was foremost a traditionalcarpenter master, and not a friendly guy. He was very serious and distant. I guess he thought it was the role he had to play in that position. He had to lead and explained me I had to be “an empty cup.”
http://terremoto.mx/article/arielshlesinger/
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24/08/2016
Terremoto | TEMPLE [or charged gift]
I was also quickly turning into a sort of hippieactivistforestdweller like the rest of my friends. However, with Masao my position was very clear and there was little room for interpretation: I was an apprentice, and I had to do what I was asked to do, and most of the time that meant watching him work. For instance, during my first week I was asked to sit on a chair and look at books. They were all in Japanese, but had fascinating drawings and diagrams of wood joints, structures, measurements, and layouts of old houses.
Ariel’s image book. Courtesy of Ariel Schlesinger.
He then asked me to sweep the floor. The main routine was cleaning —well, observing and cleaning. It took some time before I was building things, because I was not allowed to use his tools. I gradually purchased some tools of my own: a chisel, a planer, and a saw. My first project was a pair of workbenches and a toolbox. I copied the legs that Masao made. Later I placed a board on top and that functioned as my working space. The making was not that easy because I had to build some strange angles, but somehow it was not that hard either. I was happy with the result. I remember that Masao praised my work. He asked me if I had done this before; I told him that my grandfather was a carpenter for part of his life and that I had watched him as child. I eventually made some more complicated things like a precious box for sacred things and a bath stool, both without nails, just joints; I was then asked to give them as a gift to Masao’s teacher. I remember that as a really painful thing: I worked on that box for a few weeks, it came out so perfect, and then when I presented it to Masao, he told me to go and give the box to his spiritual teacher. It felt like I had lost all my hard work, and it felt unfair.
http://terremoto.mx/article/arielshlesinger/
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24/08/2016
Terremoto | TEMPLE [or charged gift]
When I arrived at the workshop, I would go to my desk and continue from where I had left off the day before. Usually this meant I had to cut a wood piece, then work on the details such as the connection parts or finish a surface. For achieving this, you have to keep super sharp tools, and here is where Japanese carpentry differs from Western carpentry: the problem is to keep the tools consistently sharp. I actually spent a fair amount of time learning how to sharpen my chisels and my planer. It was a lot of work and I hated it. You have to use a stone and water and you have to slide the blade in a certain way. You often end up hurting yourself. Sometimes I would ask Masao for advice, and then continue with my project. Sometimes we would stop for ‘meshi’ (a lunch). Sometimes I would need to stop and give Masao a hand, to move something or to hold something. When the day ended I had to clean the workshop. He would never ask my advice on anything. I learned that Japanese carpentry is a way of life, since all we did there was so total. Everything was very serious, starting from choosing the tree that will be cut down, dried, and then later be used for a post in the house, to the way the tools were taken care of. Each part felt very important. That is why the result is so stunning: it feels like you are doing the most important thing in the world. There is a significant connection to personal life when you learn from a master. The project we are doing now is a good example: that temple was a turning point in Masao’s life. When he received the pieces of the temple back after it had collapsed, his life pretty much fell apart, too. His daughter grew up and left home, he separated from his wife, he had a car accident, his spiritual master died. For Masao, as master carpenter, the collapse of the temple and his life were a single event. When my student visa expired after two years, I needed to take a decision: I could either continue with him or go back to Jerusalem. In order to continue I had to apply for an apprentice visa and that scared Masao. He felt that was a next level step. It was something that gave him a greater responsibility, and, if you know Masao a bit, this weighed on him. If Masao does something, he does it until the end and takes it very seriously. In his culture and as traditional carpenter, responsibility relates to how the work is done. Without shortcuts, without bending corners, just as with his houses: it has to be perfect. At that time, I was also more engaged in adventures with friends: my focus drifted away towards other things. He felt it too. Masao and I actually had a meeting with a lawyer and afterwards he told me that he didn’t think it would work out. Things started to feel tense between us; he was stressed at that time and I preferred to explore other things. When my visa expired, I went on a crazy trip in France and I didn’t return to Santa Cruz until 3 years later, when I was 21 and was studying art as an exchange student at SVA in New York.
http://terremoto.mx/article/arielshlesinger/
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24/08/2016
Terremoto | TEMPLE [or charged gift]
roken Temple. Archive image. Courtesy of Masao Sato and Ariel Schlesinger.
Rivet: Even if you also became a fullfledged craftsman at the end of this mentorship, you took a route out. One could argue that a craftsman (and a skill) only continue to exist as such by actively continuing the work. What do you still carry with you from this intense learning experience and the perfecting of carpentry? How does the fact of (nearly) perfecting the craft of Japanese carpentry, continue to play a role in what you do, or in how you do things now? AS: After learning from Masao, I realized that I do everything as an amateur. The approach to carpentry is so integral: if you really want to do something in a perfect way, it is a lifetime of work, and it concerns everything. It is about how you eat, move, about the way you interact with the world. Now, when I do something with my hands, deep down I know it’s not serious, because I know I will not achieve perfection. Although, to me, that’s not a problem as it would be to a master carpenter. During all those years apart, he had ups and downs and I had them too. But most importantly, thanks to him, I discovered ways of working that still inform my own work. Some years ago he told me he had lost interest in building and I was shocked. For me, Masao was a carpenter; he wanted and needed to build. How could he lose interest? I then understood that a master is human as well. Years later, when I showed up again in 2013 for a longer stay in Santa Cruz, Masao gave me the parts of the temple. He felt they brought him bad energy. I think he felt it was destiny: the fact that the parts were still in his shop and that I had showed up. In fact, he concluded that he had to give them away in order to prompt a change in his life. I became the recipient of this charged gift. Masao said I could do whatever I wanted with it, and he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. When I received the pieces I shipped them to Berlin, where I had my studio. I knew that if I wanted to do something with this, I should have it around at the studio. When I http://terremoto.mx/article/arielshlesinger/
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Terremoto | TEMPLE [or charged gift]
received the shipment, many parts were missing. Basically, I have a huge puzzle where each part fits into another only if one follows a specific order. I realized that if I wanted to put the temple back together I’d have to have Masao on board. I got in touch with him, and he agreed to help under the condition that he would not do any carpentry work on the temple. For him, that chapter had been concluded. He was comfortable with the idea of being an advisor on this project, since he knew the order and connection of the pieces. We have involved other experts, too. Stephanie Choi, an architect, is working with 3D rendering tools before we actually make the wood structure.
Render image made by Architect and project collaborator Stephanie Choi. Image Courtesy of the Ariel Schlesinger and Stephanie Choi. 2015.
We recently met to work at Masao’s place. Since all the parts are now in Berlin, we focused on reconstructing the structure from drawings and photos. I found some old pieces that weren’t shipped overseas and we also decided to get some new redwood beams, in case we need to use them for emergency while constructing. Due to scarcity, the price of old growth redwood, the wood Masao used, has actually skyrocketed. That particular wood is very dense with a tight grain. The temple is probably made from wood 400 years old. Masao and I are now equal contributors: my opinion is as valuable as his. Even if there is a lot of negotiating and dealing with the psychological charge of this actual temple, when he gave me the wood pieces, he let go. And he also opened other possibilities. The way I see it now, this project is giving him new energy, and might make him go back to carpentry, but maybe in a new way. Rivet: The second life of this temple, and the imperfect remake highlight the temple’s own idiosyncrasies — it is a true sliver of Californian life from the late 1970s/1980s, an environment that was also an incubator for http://terremoto.mx/article/arielshlesinger/
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Terremoto | TEMPLE [or charged gift]
transplanted traditional skill. The legwork needed to enable the remake —from the shipping logistics to collaborating with and convincing Schloss Solitude to make an outside semipermanent art installation —are also integral parts of the reconstruction. The apprentice’s learned and persistent respect for the material, the craft, and the individual go well beyond the traditional narrative cycle of transferring authority: the construction at Schloss Solitude may very well reanimate the master and set him back on track, but it is equally the result of a significant letting go, of the hand and single mind of the master, of the original design, but most importantly of the sense of perfection. This dynamic of straying from the model narrative, also applies to Ariel’s approach to traditional craft. Contemporary art’s turn to artisanal work and craft came as reaction to complete computerization of production processes. Ariel’s rebuilt temple, however, doesn’t obey this pattern of oneortheother: the digitized rendering that now underpins the carpentry work is based on the concrete and detailed wood shaped through traditional means by Masao. It doesn’t operate in an empty 3D space; but craftsmanship, still a crucial element, is now turned into the proverbial empty cup instead of the alldefining factor.
http://terremoto.mx/article/arielshlesinger/
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Selected Press 201ϰ
REVIEWS
israel
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to assume the role of a doubting Thomas – referring to the to the Biblical story of the apostle Thomas, who refused to believe in the resurrection until he could examine firsthand the wounds Jesus Christ had suffered on the Cross. Similarly, Stuart places on her viewers the onus for experiential verification. We are asked to consider conceptual linkages and their possibility for embodied dialogue: the massive multi-coloured paintings seemed like hybrids of paint and fabric and resembled vast breathing tablets that spoke to and signalled like semaphores. A brilliantly subversive work of visual theatre in which the ‘set pieces’ that constitute the ‘scenery’ evoke the history of Modernism as if it was a work of Restoration comedy – or Jacobean tragedy. This maverick artist – equally deft in writing, painting, ceramics, textiles, and sculptural installations – is also an imaginative, revisionist historian of Modernism whose still-evolving body of work is singular, strange and compelling. James D. Ca mpb ell
Wilfredo Prieto and Ariel Schlesinger Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv The collaboration between the Berlin-based Israeli artist Ariel Schlesinger and the Cubanborn Wilfredo Prieto seems natural. In their post-minimal conceptual practices, both artists transform everyday objects through minor gestures and interventions. While some are authored individually, most of the works in this show, almost all newly commissioned, were developed collaboratively. The works – some almost hidden in the cavernous space of the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv – seem like the debris of daily existence, but come to life in curious ways. Humour is an animating force: Ascension (2014), for example, consists of used teabags, glued upside-down to the ceiling of the entrance, threatening to fall onto the head of the invigilator
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sitting behind the reception desk. In the next room, a used can of chopped tomatoes, produced by a well-known brand of Israeli processed foods, lies on the floor. Suddenly, it starts to roll around the room. This piece seems to refer so directly to a contemporary Israeli reality that it is surprising to find out it was created by Prieto. Titled Drone (2014), it parodies the use of armed drones by the Israeli military. The unseeing tomato tin, hitting the walls while trying helplessly to find its way, reflects the blindness of the machinic drones, programmed from afar, as well as that of their use, which is deliberately hidden from the public eye. As in Prieto’s most famous work, Apolitical (2001–08), in which he reproduced all the flags of the states designated by the UN in shades of grey, the artist cleverly turns something emblematic of a nation against itself. Blindness and secrecy are also evident in Safe Box (2014), in which a safe is tucked into a cardboard box, disguising itself as an object of little or no value. The same game of hide and seek is also present in works by Schlesinger: a glass filled with water is placed within a paper cup, which is torn at the edge to reveal the translucent container beneath – an optical illusion that makes it appear as though the water is standing on its own (Untitled [Pair], 2010). Less illusory is a roll of duct tape that has been coiled inside its cardboard holder (Enjoy Your Problems, 2014). A black umbrella is also turned inside out, seemingly broken by a strong wind. Its handle is bent backwards, keeping the shape of the umbrella intact as if an attempt has been made to make it functional again. Schlesinger often refers to his works as prototypes – objects built quickly to communicate an idea. But his prototypes are made from mass-produced objects through an act that he refers to as ‘reverse engineering’, by means of which he explores the hidden possibilities of ready-made devices. Most of the time, these ‘possibilities’ produce impossibilities – the duct tape rolled inside out can’t be used and the umbrella will no longer function as a shelter from the rain. Martin Heidegger’s distinction between objects that are seen as devices, ready for use, as opposed to objects that are – or have become – useless and can therefore be examined for what they are, comes to mind. For Heidegger, art can provoke the transformation between these two perceptive states, which is why even simple gestures can have great aesthetic value. One of the most delicate on show here was Copy/Paste (2014), in which Schlesinger has carved out an A4-sized piece of paint and plaster from a wall on the ground floor and pasted it onto a wall on the second floor, and vice versa. The work is reminiscent of Elmgreen & Dragset’s The Named Series (2012), which consists of various wall paints taken from prominent museums and galleries around the world. However, Schlesinger’s act is much more minimal, lighthearted and personal, uncovering the wall as a wall, rather than reflecting on its function. Prieto and Schlesinger chose to title the exhibition ‘Hiding Wood in Trees’ to hint that art is all around us and all we need to do is look. Their clever works may disguise themselves as part of the mundane, but they effortlessly transcend it. Ker en G ol d b e r g
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Sarah Oppenheimer and Ariel Schlesinger
Sarah Oppenheimer and Ariel Schlesinger
Share Kunsthaus Baselland present the works of the New Yorkbased artist Sarah Oppenheimer (b. 1972) and the Berlinbased artist Ariel Schlesinger (b. 1980). Sarah Oppenheimer, born 1972 and living in New York, presents her first institutional exhibition in Europe at the Kunsthaus Baselland. Developed in response to preexisting architectural conditions, 33D reconfigures the interior space of the Kunsthaus along the building’s structural grid. Two large glass sheets are mounted at a 45degree angle to the external skin of the building. Each glass plane creates a traversable threshold, mapping unexpected trajectories for visitor movement through the space. These sheets function as both wall and projection screen, reflecting sightlines within and without the museum. Oppenheimer’s interventions disrupt the experience that we, the visitors, have of the succession of spaces within our built environment. Her work modifies existing architectural elements and alters our perception of the overall building plan. This perceptual instability is further accentuated by the changes in light conditions at different times of day and year. Instead of a linear experience of space and time, Oppenheimer creates a reshuffled experience of the two; instead of visitors and viewers, we become direct participants in a situation. In recent years Ariel Schlesinger has repeatedly garnered attention thanks to his astonishing works and spatial interventions. He has now installed his largest institutional solo exhibition to date at the Kunsthaus Baselland. The artist, who was born in 1980 in Jerusalem and currently lives and works in Berlin, has become known for minimal, always extremely precise, interventions into everyday objects which—appearing to have become functionless—demonstrate new possibilities for dealing with those things. Ariel Schlesinger works with objects that he takes from the quotidian, which he alters through sophisticated or sometimes radical interventions, thus transforming them into something that rarely strips them of their form, but does take away their given character—and in return bestows them mystery and fascination. The artist employs a kind of destructiveconstructive strategy in many of his works; he intervenes, changes, transforms the object into something new and enables surprising discoveries for the viewer within something that seemed utterly familiar. Occasionally it seems as if the artist wants to raise that which is gone, broken or http://www.eflux.com/announcements/sarahoppenheimerandarielschlesinger/
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Sarah Oppenheimer and Ariel Schlesinger
dead to new life, to rescue it from disappearing and to revitalise lost certainties through his precise interventions. There are numerous works that one encounters as if with a slight shock of recognition, as they draw in the viewer’s full attention. Sometimes the new objects that emerge from this seem threatening, or even dangerous in the context in which they are presented. Only little by little, with careful observation, do they become more logical, intelligible and comprehensible. On the condition that one engages with the dense chain of reflexive thought and fantasy that helps one, by simply viewing, to get closer to the bottom of things —and to see more behind everything, to discover more than one had expected before. A publication on Ariel Schlesinger will appear in June from the Christoph Merian Verlag, edited by Ines Goldbach. It contains texts from fellow artist Jonathan Monk, the art and architecture historian Robert Ginsberg, as well as an indepth interview with Ariel Schlesinger. With special thanks to von Bartha (courtesy), Basel, Annely Juda Fine Art, London & P.P.O.W, New York (for Sarah Oppenheimer) and Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv & Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin/Ljubljana (for Ariel Schlesinger) We warmly thank our partners kulturelles.bl, Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank, Gemeinde Muttenz, werner sutter & co. ag and the supporters Botschaft der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, Novartis (for SarahOppenheimer), Hans und Renée MüllerMeylan Stiftung Dr. Georg und Josi GuggenheimStiftung, Alfred und Ilse StammerMayer Stiftung (for Ariel Schlesinger) as well as all the other partners and sponsors of the exhibition.
http://www.eflux.com/announcements/sarahoppenheimerandarielschlesinger/
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24/3/2014
Artis: Artist Profiles: Ariel Schlesinger
Ariel Schlesinger View an example of Ariel Schlesinger's work here (http://www.artiscontemporary.org/videos_detail.php?id=6) , and an interview with Schlesinger here (http://www.artiscontemporary.org/videos_detail.php?id=13) , a part of the Artis video series (http://www.artiscontemporary.org/videos.php) .
Ariel Schlesinger (born 1980, Israel) has been living in Berlin and recently relocated to New York to attend the Columbia University MFA program. His solo and group exhibitions include the Herzliya Museum for Contemporary Art; CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, Spain; Kunstverein Freiburg; Swiss Institute, New York; Museum Tinguely, Basel; Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York; De Appel Art Center, Amsterdam; Hayward Gallery; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Contemporary Art Center, Tel-Aviv; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Schlesinger previously attended the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem and the School of Visual Arts, New York. Schlesinger reinvents everyday objects, such as bicycles, packing tape, paper, and printers, into agents of romantic and daring fantasy. His imaginative sense of play comes through in interactive sculptures such as a household printer re-jigged to print directly on walls, a chair with “padding” shaped by a large stack of curved paper, and sidewalk blocks that reconfigure lanes painted on them. His series of conjoined objects, such as two letter-size pages moving and touching one another as if making love, rolls of masking tape united like Siamese twins, and two biscuits “spooning” can be seen in a romantic light, but Schlesginer also has dangerous side. His numerous works using gas and flames explore risk and neuter a hazardous situation into one that is beautifully controlled. Ariel Schlesinger is represented by Dvir Gallery (http://www.dvirgallery.com/artists/works_selected.asp? artistID=27&contentPageID=5) , Tel Aviv.
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Selected Press 201ϭ
[July 15th, 2011]
MEET THE ARTIST: ARIEL SCHLESINGER
Ariel Schlesinger with Untitled (Bubble Machine), 2006
Included in the third installment of Under Destruction is the miraculous Untitled (Bubble Machine) by Ariel Schlesinger. The eye catching sculpture gradually signals its own destruction through its repetitive and inflammatory nature. Consisting of a hand-drill mechanism placed on top of a wooden ladder, the machine periodically drops bubbles of soap onto an electrified field of coils, which in turn makes the bubble burst into a fleeting sphere of flames. The piece is on view until August 7. Gallery hours are Wednesday to Sunday, 12 to 6PM. Hometown: Gilo, Jerusalem Current City: Berlin and soon New York Astrological Sign: Not sure, I was born on April 2 1980 (This makes Ariel an Aries) Currently Reading: Huckleberry Finn Favorite Exhibition: I just saw a retrospective of Goran Petercol works in Zagreb, Croatia. It blew my mind to discover that some of his most amazing pieces were made even before April 2 1980, and are still so fresh, even today. Greatest Influence: My Buddhist mentor, Masao Sato When I was 14, I wanted to be: A punk, I didn’t wash myself or my clothes much. However, everybody kept calling me a “useless hippie,” which was very frustrating.
13-16 : שבת, שישי,11-14 :'ה-' ג,36-5000446 פקס,36-3306336 'טל,36536 תל אביב,11 נחום 11 Nahum St., Tel Aviv 63503, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
24/08/2016
SOMA Magazine » Archive » Three to Watch
SOMA Magazine » Archive » Three to Watch The only constant about the artistic landscape in Berlin is that nothing stays the same. Sure, there are common practices in the city: a rich culture of artistrun project spaces, hybrid/mixedused venues and an unusually high concentration of artists who regularly DJ. However, mostly due to the financial precarity of earning a living here, it’s a city on the move. A large percentage of artists and cultural workers “based” in Berlin keep their studios and offices here while largely earning their income outside of the city. In recent years, Berlin has become an international crossroads of sorts. Although the financial incentives to work here are limited the city still possesses a magnetic draw for young creatives, hosting a large, semimigrant community of young international artists who come here postMFA in search of an affordable and relatively peaceful place to develop their practice. Not everyone stays, but the influx and efflux of creative energy combined with the capital’s cultural legacy and strong base of institutions, exhibition spaces and adventurous cultural producers has made Berlin a dynamic hub for contemporary art. SOMA is pleased to introduce three emerging artists whose influence is felt both in Berlin and beyond.
Ariel Schlesinger, Untitled (bicycle piece), 2008
Ariel Schlesinger | Oxford’s English Dictionary defines reverse engineering as “the reproduction of another manufacturer’s product after detailed examination of its construction or composition.” The Israeli, Berlin based artist Ariel Schlesinger repurposes massproduced objects to startling and poetic effect. Working with everyday materials like bikes, printer paper, rolls of masking tape and tea biscuits, Schlesinger’s subtle interventions create a mundane sort of magic: two cookies twist in a gentle embrace, a repurposed lighter is transformed into a gaslamp and a paper cup is torn to reveal liquid still contained inside. After two solo exhibitions with the Berlin and Ljubljanabased gallery Gregor Podnar, the artist has been included in a http://www.somamagazine.com/threetowatch/
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SOMA Magazine » Archive » Three to Watch
string of solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe. His autodestructive Untitled (Bubble Machine) is included in the upcoming exhibition Under Destruction at the Swiss Institute in New York City in late June, the artist’s third exhibition in the United States.
Petrit Halilaj, The places I’m looking for my dear are utopian places, they are boring and I don’t know how to make them real, 2010
Petrit Halilaj | At the 6th Berlin Biennale, the work of the 25yearold Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj’s installation stood out for its subtlety and scale in an exhibition full of heavy hitting political art. A number of rooms at KunstWerke were dedicated to the young artist’s work, including his massive installation The places I’m looking for, my dear, are utopian places, they are boring and I don’t know how to make them real, which greeted visitors in the museum’s entry hall. Made from reconstructed beams, the wrylyromantic work was an outsize replica of his parents’ new home, its halffinished quality simultaneously evoking the ruins of their prior home, which was burned to the ground in the Kosovo War. Halilaj’s participation in the Berlin Biennale made critical ripples: Centre Pompidou curator Christine Macel selected him as her pick for Artforum’s Best of 2010 and The Places I’m Looking for… featured prominently in the lion’s share of critical responses to the Berlin Biennale, quite an accomplishment for the exhibition’s youngest artist. Halilaj will present with Chert Gallery at Art Basel’s Art Statements, a section for solo presentations by emerging artists, and will open a solo exhibition at the Kunstraum Innsbruck in September.
http://www.somamagazine.com/threetowatch/
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SOMA Magazine » Archive » Three to Watch
Painting competition hosted by Leila Pazooki and Galerie Christian Hosp in Dafen, China
Leila Pazooki | Imagine Manet’s Olympia, her gaze direct as ever. Only this Olympia has none of the original’s brazen directness or nudity, instead she is clothed in what looks like a strange black jumpsuit. Leila Pazooki’s Aesthetics of Censorship, an ongoing research project that documents the censorship of art textbooks in her native Iran is only one facet of a multidisciplinary practice that explores the elision and transformation of cultural, aesthetic and geographic borders. Pazooki’s neon work Moments of Glory struck a chord with critics at the recent art Dubai, spelling out a catalog of clichés familiar to nonWestern artists and curators like “the Iranian Jeff Koons” and “Japan’s Andy Warhol.” The artist’s most recent project, Fair Trade, explores the relationship between artistic production and its reception in a globalized art world. Currently on view at Galerie Christian Hosp in Berlin, the exhibition presents the results of a painting contest the artist held in Dafen, a Chinese village home to factories where local artisans churn out copies of art historical masterpieces for hire. Alongside a recreation of the London National Gallery’s room 17a, Fair Trade includes 100 copies of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s 1537 painting, “Allegory Of Justice,” ranging from meticulous replicas to childlike renderings. Look closely and on some you’ll see impressions from bubble wrap on stillwet paint. – Jesi Khadivi
http://www.somamagazine.com/threetowatch/
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24/08/2016
Ariel Schlesinger | Frieze
REVIEW - 01 JUN 2010
Ariel Schlesinger BY MARK PRINCE
Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin, Germany
Ariel Schlesinger, 2009, Installation view.
The act of placing a car in an art gallery forms a minor tradition of it own: Gabriel Orozco sliced a Citroën DS in half and removed the central section; Tobias Rehberger commissioned relatively unskilled workers to build a Porsche 911. More recently, Alexander Laner made a symmetrical butter y con guration out of two Mercedes https://frieze.com/article/arielschlesinger
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Ariel Schlesinger | Frieze
coupés with their wing doors open to be viewed from above. The basic conceit is that of the art object as synonymous with the consumer item, which is rendered dysfunctional by the artist’s modi cations and by the object’s adopted role as art – a new sculpture but a crippled commodity. Israeli artist Ariel Schlesinger’s A Car Full of Gas (2009) puts a contemporary political twist on the gesture. A propane gas tank occupies each of the front seats of an original black Mini Cooper, with a ame as small as a lighter’s emitted from a valve in one of the car’s side windows. The constellation of signs refuses to settle into an order: the old Mini was a Mod icon, but is now a collector’s item. Schlesinger makes of this ambiguous inheritance a potential terrorist’s car bomb or suicide trap. Capitalism has been converted into a weapon; a countercultural relic has rediscovered its rebel spirit. Although the original Mini is no longer produced, it remains a desirable design object. Leaning back in the seats, the orange bottles somehow make the pert car look more turbo-charged and aerodynamic. It may be threatening, but it is also endearing and faintly ridiculous – a little rocket with its lick of ame. The object shuttles between potency and weakness, modernity and nostalgia, without nding equilibrium. Schlesinger’s works tend to seem purely conceptual at rst, as though their physical realizations were almost incidental, but they possess details that make them speci c as sculptures. In Untitled (socks holder) #3, #5, #9 and #10 (all 2009) four di erently coloured socks are threaded through holes in four cards bearing an identical sepia image of a man’s suit and tie ensemble. The socks’ fabric emerges from the holes to substitute for the tie and handkerchief in the image. You might expect them to be new to articulate the sharpest stand-in for formal silk, but they are worn and dirty. As in Richard Wentworth’s series of photographs ‘Making Do and Getting By’ (1980) – whose inventive opportunism Schlesinger’s work often resembles – a serendipitous con ation of ideas turns out to be implicated with messy, contingent life. The longer you look at Oil Lamp (2010) – a disposable lighter tted with a bespoke glass handle and a burning wick protruding from the side – the more it escapes and replaces the customer standard which it serves to customize. The dark glass handle, as organic as a bone, seems to come from another era to the generic metal lighter’s head cobbled onto it. While the Mini’s alterations make it a mere stub to generate a tiny ame, this balance is reversed in Oil Lamp, where the lighter’s handle outweighs, in presence, the ame it is there to produce. Untitled (pair) (2010) is a glass teacup tted ush inside a paper cup and lled to the brim with water, so that when the paper is torn away the liquid’s meniscus appears to be held vertically as well as horizontally. The water is sparkling, emphasizing its uidity: it could not be mistaken for ice. Schlesinger’s destabilization of habitual perception makes previously reliable matter seem vulnerable, unpredictable, even humanized. The boxy Mini appears helpless in the face of its newly aggressive capability. It recalls the poet Joseph Brodsky’s recollection of his astonishment at rst seeing a Citroën 2CV in Leningrad in 1960: ‘It stood there, light and defenseless, totally lacking the menace normally associated with automobiles. It looked as if it could easily be hurt by one rather than the other way round. I’ve never seen anything made of metal as unemphatic.’
MARK PRINCE
Mark Prince is an artist and writer living in Berlin. https://frieze.com/article/arielschlesinger
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Selected Press 20Ϭϵ
ALIX RULE'S TOP 10 SUMMER SHOWS IN BERLIN
BY ALIX RULE | SAATCHI
Ariel Schlesinger (APT Berlin) The works in this group show are diverse - and kinetic sculpture doesn't quite cover it, unless you take that pretty loosely - Elmgreen and Dragset's computer-animated skit 'Drama Queens', for example, is about sculptures that move around. A few of the works seem in dialogue with cinema, or more precisely, somehow deconstructing it (here Zilvinas Kempinas, who was responsible for the Lithuanian pavilion at Venice this year, and Robert Barta, are more and less successful). Another cluster engages with new media, like Julius Popp's dot-matrix light machine, Thomas Baumann's wall-mounted silver square, which contracts in random constellations, and less literally, Johanna Smiatek's jittery full-length mirror. The simplest piece, Ariel Schlesinger's 'L'Angoisse de la Page Blanche' - two pieces of A4 paper, which both support and compete with one another as they rotate in tandem on a plywood plinth - is a favorite.
13-16 : שבת, שישי,11-14 :'ה-' ג,36-5000446 פקס,36-3306336 'טל,36536 תל אביב,11 נחום 11 Nahum St., Tel Aviv 63503, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
Selected Press 20Ϭϴ
Ariel Schlesinger GREGOR PODNAR Lindenstrasse 34/35, March 14–April 26 Visitors to Israeli artist Ariel Schlesinger’s first solo exhibition in Germany find a scenario in which the artist has cast himself as a magician, inventor, and archaeologist. The show offers a selection of objects, mostly made with everyday materials (a stack of paper, a cardboard box, an ashtray, rolls of masking tape), all of which have been subjected to playful interventions in ways that divorce them from their typical functions. The paper pile becomes a torqued sculpure; the ashtray has a small light glowing, like a sign of life, amid the ashes; the cardboard box is sealed with wax. Additionally, there are two small
Untitled (football players), 1999, mixed media with high-voltage transformer, 5/8 x 11 3/4 x 15 3/4".
apparatuses: an antique Plexiglas box featuring soccer players connected to a high-voltage transformer so that, when the visitor presses levers to make them kick, a spark appears between them; and a “magic” table on which, seemingly without any outside force, two sheets of white paper spin and move toward each other. Framing, and in contrast to, these small, loosely arranged objects are two large works from the artist’s series “Burned Turkmenistan Carpets,” 2008, which open up a dialogue between beauty and destruction. Inspired by burned antique tapestries that he encountered in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Schlesinger set fire to a number of rolled-up carpets that, when unfurled, show “scars” burned in patterns. Charged with low-tech and DIY attitude, Schlesinger’s works are like snapshots of his developing thought processes. His artistic practice can be thought of as a catalyst, one that animates things usually considered lifeless. —Barbara Buchmaier
13-16 : שבת, שישי,11-14 :'ה-' ג,36-5000446 פקס,36-3306336 'טל,36536 תל אביב,11 נחום 11 Nahum St., Tel Aviv 63503, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
17/2/2014
Frieze Magazine | Shows | Ariel Schlesinger
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Ariel Schlesinger GALERIJA GREGOR PODNAR, BERLIN, GERMANY
About this review Published on 01 /05/08 by Emily V erla Bovino Share this article:
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In Ariel Schlesinger’s Untitled (2008) two tea biscuits lean against each other, propped up to form what seems to be the pitched roof of a tiny refuge. Windows cropped at the top of the photograph bathe the breakfast table scene in a cold white light; their presence reminds us that should they be opened, wind and rain would threaten the liv es of hundreds of crumbs scattered on the tabletop. Dipped in the still steeping tea that stands nearby , the top of the tiny sculpture has been pinched and bent ov er to stabilize its acute angle. Schlesinger references the spontaneous engineering of food play but transforms what would otherwise hav e been a precarious ‘house of cards’ design into a small monument to random acts of creativ ity . Freakish mutants, staged resurrections and peculiar inv entions; Schlesinger’s works are weird science for the sake of the beautifully uncanny . In Forever Y oung (2005), a single ash burns perpetually in a cracked ashtray at the gallery entrance. A soggy cardboard box , Zu Erinnern und Zu V ergessen (To Remember and To Forget, 2008), holds a shallow puddle of water that somehow nev er seeps out onto the gallery floor. Rolls of masking tape, joined – like Siamese twins – at their cardboard cores, stand on a pedestal in Untitled (Masking Tape) (2008). For L’Angoisse de la page blanche (The Anguish of the White Page, 2007 ), two sheets of standard-size copy paper are pressed up against each other as they spin in circles on a low table. A homemade arcade game, Untitled (Football Players) (1 999) is poetic play with fear and dread, child-like toy ing with the idea of death: when the v iewer-play er pushes down
https://www.frieze.com/shows/review/ariel_schlesinger/
Fredrik Værslev Angela Bulloch Zündkerze Sum m er Cam p Ciprian Mureşan Mark Wallinger Em il Holm er Rineke Dijkstra
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Frieze Magazine | Shows | Ariel Schlesinger
on two metal lev ers cov ered in duct tape, a high v oltage transformer sends buzzing charges up and down the bodies of two metal footballers. The game’s apparently haphazard construction disguises a deliberate design, which is calculated down to details such as the decorativ e quality of ply wood panels at its base and a strip of packing tape around two edges of its Plex iglass case. This is also the case in Untitled (Burned Turkmenistan Carpet III and IV ) (2008), for which the seemingly casual act of burning two rolled-up oriental carpets creates a series of long, repeated lacerations that play off of the detailed geometric designs in the carpets’ intricate weav ing. As art historian Rudi Fuchs writes in the note to his lecture ‘Conflicts with Modernism or The Absence of Schwitters’,1 ‘in the end, art-making is a process of magic.’ Schlesinger calls attention to the magic nature of the artwork but purposefully rev eals all of the secrets to his tricks. Two white wires taped to the gallery floor lead from a low platform, where Forever Y oung is display ed, to a wall socket, giv ing away the fact that the glowing ash is actually the end of an optic fiber. The two white pages of L’Angoisse de la page blanche perform their courtly dance on a table whose legs are fashioned from tipless spray cans. The battered cans draw attention to the table’s underside where a small motor is rev ealed as the dy namo driv ing the paper’s animation. The flaps at the bottom of the cardboard box in Zu Erinnern und Zu V ergesse (The commemorable and the forgettable, 2008) are not tightly closed but leav e gaps from which water should be leak, but oddly it doesn’t. This small detail prov ides a clue that inv eigles its way into the mind of the attentiv e observ er and betray s the illusion: the box ’s bottom is not saturated but coated with water-resistant wax . As phenomenologist Francois Cheng ex plains in Five Meditations on Beauty (2006), the beautiful is nev er a static way of being, ‘giv en once for alway s’ for ‘its ability to captiv ate lies in its rev ealing itself […] in its emergence.‘2 In Schlesinger’s oeuv re, trauma and disaster are the spells that call objects forth from their quotidian hiding into the realm of the artist’s sorcery , a magic of constant rev elation. 1 Ru di Fu ch s, Conflicts w ith Modernis m or The Abs ence of Kurt Schw itters , Ber lin : V er la g Ga ch n a n g & Spr in g er , 1 9 9 1 , p.2 5 2 Fr a n cois Ch en g , Cinq Méditations s ur la Beauté, Pa r is: A lbin Mich el, 2 0 0 6 , p. 7 0 (t r a n sla t ion pr ov ided by t h e r ev iew ’s a u t h or )
Em ily Verla Bov ino
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