Tag: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Olafur Eliasson Tests the Complexities of Our Visual and Psychoacoustic Perception at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Installation view, “Your psychoacoustic light ensemble” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Photo by Pierre Le Hors Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles

From colors and qualities of light we cannot perceive accurately to frequencies of sound inaudible to our ears, a significant portion of the phenomena in the cosmos remains out of reach to us. Moving between aesthetics and physics and working at the intersection of art and science, Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson is known for exploring ephemeral phenomena in his work with dynamic materials like light, color and frequency, which shape our experience of reality even though their complexity often surpasses the limits of our senses.

In his newly opened show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, “Your psychoacoustic light ensemble,” Eliasson delves even deeper into the fringes of perception, playing with light frequencies and exploring sounds and vibrations—an often underrated medium in art—as an essential part of human experience and the universe’s composition. Observer enjoyed an exclusive walkthrough of the show with the artist, who shared insights into the processes and themes his new works examine, challenge and deconstruct to create awareness of how we orient ourselves in this world.

The exhibition’s central installation is an immersive spatial soundscape, an engaging synesthetic experience that harmoniously blends visual and sensory elements. This work is the result of a complex orchestration that translates light into sound through shared frequencies that align with the universe. In this way, circles of light move, expand and interlace in the dark room, tracing the wavelength of sound itself.

“This is a piece of music that is made from the light to the sound, not from the sound to the light,” Olafur explained to us. To achieve this effect, he first crafted and adjusted the exact light composition with mirrors, refining the colors and gradients until they created the desired “painting” of this synthetic environment, which he then completed with sound. Once again, Eliasson demonstrates his ability to use waves and frequencies—whether light or sound—as the primary medium for his compositions.

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While light and sound operate in distinct ranges of the electromagnetic and acoustic spectra, the invisible factors of wave frequency and length determine whether we hear a particular sound or see a specific color. Sound is a mechanical wave that travels through a medium (such as air, water, or solids), with the frequency determining if it will produce a low-pitched sound (e.g., bass) or a high-pitched one (e.g., treble). For light, however, it is the frequency or wavelength of the electromagnetic wave that determines color, as Eliasson explains during our walkthrough. He elaborated that every “surface and material has its vibrancy, which regulates the relation with the space.” This synesthetic experimentation creates a meditative, harmonious sequence that transports visitors to another realm, allowing them to sense a hidden harmony within the universe. “It is eventually harmonious; it has this beautiful sense of harmony, like an inhaling and exhaling.”

This installation, which engages both the psyche and the senses through frequencies, lends itself to the show’s title, focused on the concept of “psychoacoustics.” This theme addresses Eliasson’s interest in the inherent relativity of perception and how our senses and their psychological processing shape our experience and understanding of the world—despite the inherent limits that keep many phenomena beyond our full comprehension.

At the gallery entrance, one of his suspended sculptures, Fierce Tenderness Sphere, expands into the space, decomposing light into its spectrum across innumerable quadrangles. With every viewer’s movement, the sculpture shifts, creating an interplay of light, color and form that offers a multifaceted and layered experience, revealing new perspectives and meanings within the same shape.

The works on the second floor continue Eliasson’s investigation of color phenomena, a central concern for much of his work across all media. Photo by Pierre Le Hors Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los AngelesPhoto by Pierre Le Hors

Upstairs, Olafur continues his exploration of color phenomena and how they are perceived and accessible to us, depending on the wavelengths of light that objects reflect, transmit, or emit. As in many of the artist’s works, and much as with sound, humans can only perceive a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum due to our eyes’ receptors (cones) that respond to only specific wavelengths, allowing us to perceive only specific colors. However, this does not mean that this is the only way vision might work in the universe—especially when viewed from a different perspective or with advanced tools.

The concept of color as reflection, emanation or transmission is central to the processes from which the artist’s works originate. “Color does not exist in itself, only when looked at,” he said. “The unique fact that color only materializes when light bounces off a surface onto our retinas shows us that the analysis of colors is, in fact, about the ability to analyze ourselves.”

In the first gallery, the artist is presenting a new body of work: a vibrant watercolor piece in which shades of green and yellow expand circularly and fluidly, as though something has collided at its nucleus and spread outward. Olafur explains that this piece results from a partially intuitive process: allowing an ice cube, along with bleach, to melt on a surface treated with watercolor and ink. Over time, the melting ice activates a transformation of pigments, which expand across the canvas in different gradations, transforming black into green and, eventually, yellow. Here, black—the absence of light and wavelength—is symbolically interrupted by the bleach’s aggressive chemical reaction, allowing color to reemerge as the ice melts and alters the composition.

In a nearby dark room, the artist has installed a band of light containing all colors in the visible spectrum, appearing as a reflection—similar to sunlight hitting glass or the rainbow formed by raindrops. By using bright white light on a colorful arc, he creates a flat reflection resembling a horizon or boreal line that shines out of the darkness. “It’s in darkness that you understand the need for some light,” Olafur enigmatically noted. By staging this light reflection, the artist essentially “paints” within the space with a single, precise stroke that captures all the colors contained in any natural light ray, achieving with scientific precision the “illusion of light” long pursued by painters throughout art history.

Large watercolor works conjure the evanescent luminosity of a rainbow on paper. Photo by Pierre Le Hors Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles

In Tanya Bonakdar’s main sky-lit gallery, the artist has hung large watercolor works that evoke the fleeting luminosity of a rainbow on paper. Here, the interplay between light, color and paint becomes even more nuanced: ethereal watercolors suggest the hues in the visible light spectrum, akin to sunlight reflecting off a white surface. Bathed in the full range of colors, these works attempt to capture something our senses often struggle to fully perceive. As the artist explained, here he is painting “the impossibility of what we can see, painting something that is beyond vision, or saying something that we almost can’t see.”

The works begin with grey paint underneath; when multiple colors accumulate densely, they blend and return to grey. These watercolors are painted on wet surfaces, applied in delicate, repetitive layers in an almost ritualistic manner, allowing colors to emerge only to fade back to grey. “It’s like white paper bouncing through the middle of the color,” Olafur said. The result is works that have a special glow, as if the colors have absorbed the light spectrum that bathed them and now transmit it to the viewer’s eye. This vaporous, diaphanous effect surrounds the viewer, filling the room with color—like sunlight bathing the paper and translating wavelengths into hues and tones that expand through the space.

By challenging and testing viewers’ perceptions of color and light, and this time incorporating sound, Eliasson has crafted an immersive exploration that allows us to understand how perception of these elements shapes our environments. Highlighting the complex relationship between the senses and psyche, Olafur reveals how we navigate them, consciously or otherwise, within an interplay of frequencies and wavelengths that silently and invisibly surround us. This work links all these experiences to a perpetual cycle of energy and particles governed by the cosmos’s largely impenetrable rules. Acknowledging the limitations of sensory perception, Eliasson offers a glimpse into the vast realm beyond our immediate awareness, emphasizing that our understanding of the world is inherently relative.

Olafur Eliasson’s Midnight Moment

Lifeworld by Olafur Eliasson, presented in Times Square as part of the Midnight Moment series. Courtesy of the artist and Times Square Arts.

In addition to the exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar, Olafur Eliasson will present a work in New York City’s Times Square throughout November as part of the Midnight Moment program. Every night from 11:57 pm to midnight, his piece Lifeworld will transform the iconic billboards with a mesmerizing sequence of floating light forms that mimic the cityscape’s vibrant energy. In this work, Eliasson seeks to capture and abstract the essence of the iconic spot by filming its screens from various perspectives, creating an intentional blur that suspends these light stimuli in time and space. Removed from their usual meanings and messages, these stimuli become pure atmosphere, with shimmering abstract shapes and dancing colors inviting viewers to slow down and creatively reimagine the urban landscape.

“It’s a thrill, but the environment also determines my actions—driving me mostly to spend or to consume,” the artist said in a statement. “Lifeworld shows the immediate site anew, and its hazy qualities may prompt questions. If you are suddenly confronted with the reality of having a choice, you might ask what cities, lives and environments we want to inhabit? And how do I want to take part in them?”

This Midnight Moment marks Eliasson’s first project as guest curator for WeTransfer, which has partnered with CIRCA as an exclusive Digital Screen Partner. “By abstracting the energy of Times Square itself, Eliasson’s Lifeworld offers a rare moment of meditation—a poetic gesture on a monumental scale that holds the potential to ground us in a place designed to economize our attention perpetually and in a political climate that offers little psychic reprieve,” said Jean Cooney, Director of Times Square Arts. “We’re excited to present this timely and distinctive Midnight Moment and join this global collaboration.” Coinciding with the Times Square display, Lifeworld also appears every evening at 8:24 p.m. local time through December 31 on Piccadilly Lights in London, K-Pop Square in Seoul, Limes Kurfürstendamm in Berlin and online 24/7 on WeTransfer.com.

Olafur Eliasson’s “Your Psychoacustic Light Ensemble” is on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery through December 19. The show is timed with the November presentation of his work “Lifeworld in Times Square, part of the “Midnight Moment” initiative.

Elisa Carollo

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November 1, 2024
Monica Bonvicini Sees an Ongoing Need for Feminist Discourse in Art and Life

“Put All Heaven in a Rage” is at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, through October 12. Photo by Pierre Le Hors Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles

A set of metal chains, black leather and mirrors sets the tone of Monica Bonvicini’s “Put All Heaven in a Rage,” her first solo show with Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Bonvicini, an Italian artist based in Berlin, emerged from the radical German art scene of the 1990s with a powerful voice, provocative humor and clever use of language. She is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of her generation, particularly known for her exploration of the relationships between architecture, gender, and power dynamics.

In this exhibition, Bonvicini stages a critical interaction between the viewer, the mirrors and the space, creating an unsettling sense of vulnerability. This interaction critiques the ways specific objects and environments psychologically and sometimes physically influence behavior. In an upstairs installation, an entire room of mirrors overlaid with pink text challenges stereotypes and celebrates female resilience, power and the multiple roles women navigate throughout life. Bonvicini also extends her critique to language, using black-and-white drawings that feature fragmented quotes from literature, poetry and politics to underscore how linguistic structures shape and control meaning.

As the exhibition nears its final weeks, Observer caught up with the artist to discuss how her work addresses society’s increasing polarization, the threat of rising violence and the ongoing need for feminist discourse and celebration despite progress made in the ’60s and ’90s.

Let’s start with the show’s title, which is quite evocative. What inspired it, and what kind of reading of the show would it suggest?

Some years ago, I did a series of works, primarily drawings, related to the concept of rage from a contemporary feminist point of view, which are presented in the catalog “Hot Like Hell” from 2021. The quotation I chose for the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery show is one that I stumbled upon back then but didn’t feel right about using until now. The title comes from the well-known poem by William Blake, Auguries of Innocence.

I like how the sentence sounds, how impossible it is, how sculptural “Heaven” seems to be if you can literally take it and put it somewhere, like an object, a body that you can put in a closet, in a box, in a cage or in wherever or whatever the space is in which rage reigns. It makes me think of rash movements, storms or even hurricanes, and all those associations are in my works, like the pneumatic sculpture Breathing, 2017; the installation A Violent, Tropical, Cyclonic Piece of Art Having Wind Speeds of or over 75 mph, 1998; the ongoing series of drawings Hurricane and other Catastrophes; or the architectural sculpture As Walls keep Shifting from 2019.

Monica Bonvicini in her studio. ALBRECHT FUCHS

For the show in New York City, I wanted to create that tension, the impossible speed I read in the quotation that can be pinpointed down to an immobilized moment of concentration. The show is about that moment, a concentrated change. For that, I created the installation Buy Me a Mirror at the entrance of the main exhibition space, which closes the view to the show while opening it to the street. Once over the edge of the wood and mirror installation, the show displays different works and mediums I work with, from the colored mirror works Gorgeous, 2024, and the large-scale print Marlboro Man Praire, 2021, to the hanging sculptures Latent Combustion, 2015, and Chainswing Rings and Stripes, 2024, or the new black and white drawings.

Your practice has long explored the connections between architecture, gender, and both physical and psychological violence. How do you feel this exploration has evolved, especially with the rise of new surveillance technologies and tools for self-representation?

The roots of the relationships you are talking about remain the same, and what is added around can powerfully alter and improve the core of problems or obstruct them in a kind of endless fata morgans of images.

“Put All Heaven in a Rage” serves as a profound critique of the structures that govern our lives. Photo by Pierre Le Hors. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles

Your work is characterized by a cold, hardcore, almost surgical aesthetic that highlights mechanisms and frameworks of control and suppression. Can you identify particular life experiences or cultural and societal elements that inspired that?

There are, for sure, some experiences that determined the aesthetics of my works and the process I am going through while working on them. I think it is necessary to be as precise as possible in formulating the artwork; contrary to what might be a cliché, you cannot do anything in art and expect it to be good. As an artist, I reflect in my practice what is happening around me, but I do not want my works to be journalistic or moral, didactical, or only personal. I used to do a little climbing when I was younger, and I have been to alpine peaks, where my attention was not on the magnificent views but just about to stay in equilibrium, not to fall, because of the little place you had under your feet. There is so much physical concentration in such moments. I also know, out of experience, the feeling of being powerless in front of injustices and violence. It’s an emotion that stays with you and gets into your body for some time. To be able to distill that into a work that implies all the explosive possibilities and scenarios and make them understandable without teaching about them is what I try to do.

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Much of your work functions as a critical device, a nonfunctional machine that metaphorically explores societal and psychological dynamics between individuals and society. How do you define sculpture, and how would you describe your approach to this medium?

I never studied sculpture in the classical sense of the word. I studied painting in Berlin, got into making objects and small models with Isa Genzken while she was a guest teacher there and started making installation and performative sculptures while I was in Cal Arts. Michael Asher and Charles Gains were my mentors, so those places and people greatly influenced my work. I have a conceptual approach to sculpture. I see my works very close to what architecture is; installation art is also a way to define spaces and systems of power, and it can subtly do that. We are all surrounded by walls; we all use doors or look out at windows. There is nothing so universal as the concept of a house.

I understand sculpture and installations as ways to question perceptions of given structures, which makes you think about them from a different angle. I also think art is not there necessarily to cure all the maladies of the world but to point them out, to dig them up and to make them visible.

Bonvicini’s works draw their materiality and imagery from cultural associations and power dynamics, particularly as perceived through sexual stereotypes. Photo by Pierre Le Hors. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles

Your work often intersects feminist and institutional critique. Given that you were one of the few women artists working in a male-dominated European art scene, particularly in Italy and Berlin, how do you see the role of feminist critique today? Do you think gender-based power dynamics are evolving within and outside the art world?

When I did the video installation Wallfuckin’ back in 1995 or Hausfrau Swiging in 1997, I didn’t call it a feminist work because I thought that feminism had won its battles already. I understood the gender theory of the ‘90s as an excellent example of how successful feminism had been. Yet there is still a need for a feminist elaboration and celebration decades later. The battle is never won. There is always a need to define and address existing imbalances; we see them everywhere, in the art world and outside. Europe is still pretty misogynistic. Even if things changed for the better, they didn’t change enough. I want to see more women’s works in museums’ collections, more solo shows by women, identical rages on working places, more equality and less violence.

In Bonvicini’s black-and-white drawings, quotes from literature and poetry become compelling commentary on political concern, division and the pursuit of personal and collective agency. Photo by Pierre Le Hors. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles

Monica Bonvicini’s “Put All Heaven in a Rage” is on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York through October 12.

Elisa Carollo

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September 26, 2024
Frieze Brings Glitter and Gloss to New York But Takes Few Risks

Paintings from Sterling Ruby’s TURBINE series presented by Gagosian. Casey Kelbaugh

Frieze New York has arrived with all its “I’m the art fair” glory. Expect long, awkward lineups snaking around poorly placed escalators and a general three-story mall vibe. I hate to say it, but it’s much easier to peruse art in a venue like the Javits Center because there’s just so much more space. Here, too many galleries are packed across three floors, and even getting through the double doors can be a squeeze.

But this May art fair does offer up a much-needed splash of color for spring—mainly in the form of sparkles galore, iridescent Plexiglas and gradients that seem perfectly aligned with our screen-based lives (even the offline feels online). Led by director Christine Messineo, this Frieze edition features displays from more than sixty galleries, along with solo booths featuring Alex Katz (paintings of trunks and branches), Sterling Ruby (splatters of muddy, manpower colors) and childlike paintings by Hiroshi Sugito, among others.

A series of new paintings by Alex Katz. Casey Kelbaugh

My favorites are those colorful and unpretentious works that speak to the fact that spring has finally sprung in the city. That includes untitled paintings from 2024 by Chris Martin (not the singer of Coldplay, but the New York-based artist) with Anton Kern Gallery, filled with sequins and glitter. More of the artist’s glitter-infused paintings are on view at David Kordansky Gallery’s booth, where Martin shows some of his latest pieces like Morpheus and Magenta Burst. Honestly, this is the only part of Frieze that feels like a party. The rest is comfortably numb, and even corporate, but Martin brings a breath of fresh air, and I’m grateful for that.

Another highlight is the glossy abstract paintings by Hasani Sahlehe, which are on view at both the Canada Gallery booth and at Tif Sigfrids, a gallery from Athens. Clearly a rising star, broad swaths of color are brought together in a poetic way that doesn’t feel like it’s imitating anything else with its own brushstroke.

Glossy abstracts by Hasani Sahlehe. Casey Kelbaugh

Sleek, glossy abstraction continues in the Matthew Marks Gallery booth, which has a painting called The Dreaming (2023) by Gary Hume. It’s enamel paint on aluminum, and technically has a few animal figures in the piece, but still represents a type of abstraction we’re seeing more of. It’s also very anti-1990s, as we’re in a time of FaceTune, glossing over details with the swipe of a finger.

Everything is clean and flawless, not only our selfies, but in art, too. That cleaned-up vibe can be found in the illustrative pieces by Matthew Brannon at Milan’s Gio Marconi booth. His silkscreen Reassuringly Expensive creates a montage for modern luxury, something that has become a mirage for the money-hungry on Instagram. It’s done elegantly, though, through the window of an airplane seat, surrounded by luxury objects.

‘Foam SB 103/17p’ by Tomas Saraceno. Casey Kelbaugh

Iridescent hues are a lasting trend, especially in sculpture. Tanya Bonakdar Gallery has Foam SB 103/17p, a hanging geometric sculpture by Tomas Saraceno made of steel and iridescent Plexiglas. Apparently, it ties into climate change, but it also just looks cool. Speaking of optical illusions, the gallery also has Olafur Eliasson’s The Dewdrop Agora, a 2024 sculpture of glass spheres and 24-karat gold leaf, which is part of the artist’s “exploration of optical devices, mirrors and lenses.”

Olafur Eliasson’s ‘The Dewdrop Agora.’ Casey Kelbaugh

Carpets are in. Tina Kim Gallery has Seoul artist Suki Seokyeong Kang’s carpet-made wall piece Day #24-75, made of dyed wool and thread on a wooden frame. It’s so rare for an artist to be able to pull off such a domestic material, but Kang has given an old medium new meaning. Meanwhile, a set of gradient paintings by Rob Pruitt—A Month Of Sunsets (February 2024)—is on view at Massimodecarlo gallery, tapping into our need for the fresh, and almost, the empty.

But the third floor is worth avoiding altogether. The “Partner Activations” likely funded the fair but feel like too much of an exercise in logos and branding. And sadly, that’s the direction things are going overall. I expected more from the Focus presentations, too, which felt predictable and not very cutting edge.

Choosing the safe route—i.e., what will sell—instead of what is fresh feels very 2024. This year’s edition of Frieze New York proves we are indeed in a recession, and that the arts aren’t exempt from snipped budgets and a real thirst for sales. Overall, it’s risk-averse, though there were those gallerists who took a risk on what truly stands out and cuts through the noise. Hopefully things will change soon, but until they do, consider this yet another example of what it takes to keep art alive in hazy, uncertain times.

Frieze New York 2024 runs through May 5 at The Shed.

Nadja Sayej

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May 2, 2024