TUESDAY IN THE TROPICS 193
14th May 2024
Dear friends and colleagues
Firstly, may I say that I have just put interviews with Louie Cordero and Ian Woo on the website – arttalksea.com
Sarah Awad, Pinaree Sanpitak etc. at Met Museum 2024
Jade Fajotumi, Katharina Grosse, Cecily Brown, A’Driane Nieves @ Met Museum 2024
And now I want to say something about an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. No, not the one in New York, but the one in Manila. It has recently moved close to Mo_Space in BGC (Bonifacio Global City – an upmarket area of Manila near the US war cemetery). It has the second and third floor of a tower block, large spaces but with, for a museum, very low ceilings. The exhibition was of female abstract painters from the US, UK, Germany, China, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines
The exhibition title Wild referenced the book by Cheryl Strayed – you may have seen the movie based on it starring Reese Witherspoon. But I wish there had been an essay where the curator, Kathy Huang, had discussed fully why she had chosen this title and reference. There was no catalogue nor any curatorial essay. Only a shortish wall text – see below:
You can find faults with the selection: why was Cecily Brown represented by a painting from 1991 when she was 22 and still at the Slade? Why was Canadian Filipino Sara Jimenez only represented by small sketches? It would have been great to see paintings by Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler the predecessors mentioned in the curatorial statement, or by Lee Krasner, but such works are now hideously expensive to borrow and travel. More to the point it would have been good to have, if not an example, some reference to who I would argue is, if not the greatest, the most visionary female abstract post-war painter, Agnes Martin. If you have read Prudence Peiffer’s excellent book The Slip you will know she was as “wild” and nature orientated as anyone else in this show. But more importantly, she represents a key strand in abstract painting that you could call it minimal or meditative. Only Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak here could be described as representing that strand.
Pinaree Sanpitak. Breast vessel 2015
But this is to cavil unduly. In a country which so rarely sees art from overseas such a show as this is invaluable. There are two excellent paintings by British Jadé Fadjotumi, a very good painting by the German Katharina Grosse, interesting paintings by artists I have never heard of such as A’Driane Nieves.
Jade Fadojutimi. Maybe this is a rough sketch of happiness. 2020
Katharina Grosse. Untitled. 2022
A’Driane Nieves. I remain a conglomerate of truths that both liberate and ruin (1) 2023
An oddity of the labels is they say the artists from the USA come not from the USA but from California or Vermont or in Nieves’ case Texas. Has the Union finally broken up into fifty smaller nations? If so, I think we should be told.
When I went there weren’t many visitors but those that were, when not doing the obligatory selfie, were doing a lot of serious looking.
Zhang Zipiao, Jane Lee etc (from left) at Met Museum 29024
Keka Enriquez. Untitled. 1990s?
Not only was this show genuinely global but several Filipina artists were embedded in it, Keka Enriquez (who moved to San Francisco 25 years ago but has recently started painting again), Nicole Coson and Corinne De San Jose. There could have been more – Maya Munoz, for example, who is wilder than the other three.
Maria Cruz at Drawing Room
At Drawing Room there was an exhibition of paintings from 2000-2006 by Maria Cruz. These small text paintings were all derived from song titles by Yoko Ono. Shown en masse they recall in a strangely unironic way the Utopianism of the Lennon/Ono moment. And in their crispness were aesthetically very pleasing. They also could be seen to represent a more conceptual strain in paintings by women. Something absent in the show at Metropolitan. One could argue of course these paintings are not focused on wild nature.
Aina Zukueta-Valencia at Drawing Room
The other artist showing at Drawing Room Aina Zulueta-Valencia certainly does focus on wild nature, or on being wild in nature. They remind me of the expressionist paintings made by Kirchner, Heckel and Pechstein (Die Brücke group) around lake Moritzburg 1909-1911 of people trying to be in and at one with nature, in ecstasy. The figures in Zulueta-Valencia paintings however, unlike the Germans, keep their clothes on. Her paintings are also more abstracted than anyone in Die Brücke – and some of the artists in Wild.
If there had been a catalogue, even an e-catalogue to Wild we would have an opportunity to discuss such interesting but problematic subjects as femininity in art, women’s greater (?) closeness to nature, the validity of expressionism, or expressive paintwork. So overall, a very welcome exhibition but also a bit of a missed opportunity.
Speak soon
Tony
TUESDAY IN THE TROPICS 193
14th May 2024
Dear friends and colleagues
Firstly, may I say that I have just put interviews with Louie Cordero and Ian Woo on the website – arttalksea.com
Sarah Awad, Pinaree Sanpitak etc. at Met Museum 2024
Jade Fajotumi, Katharina Grosse, Cecily Brown, A’Driane Nieves @ Met Museum 2024
And now I want to say something about an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. No, not the one in New York, but the one in Manila. It has recently moved close to Mo_Space in BGC (Bonifacio Global City – an upmarket area of Manila near the US war cemetery). It has the second and third floor of a tower block, large spaces but with, for a museum, very low ceilings. The exhibition was of female abstract painters from the US, UK, Germany, China, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines
The exhibition title Wild referenced the book by Cheryl Strayed – you may have seen the movie based on it starring Reese Witherspoon. But I wish there had been an essay where the curator, Kathy Huang, had discussed fully why she had chosen this title and reference. There was no catalogue nor any curatorial essay. Only a shortish wall text – see below:
You can find faults with the selection: why was Cecily Brown represented by a painting from 1991 when she was 22 and still at the Slade? Why was Canadian Filipino Sara Jimenez only represented by small sketches? It would have been great to see paintings by Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler the predecessors mentioned in the curatorial statement, or by Lee Krasner, but such works are now hideously expensive to borrow and travel. More to the point it would have been good to have, if not an example, some reference to who I would argue is, if not the greatest, the most visionary female abstract post-war painter, Agnes Martin. If you have read Prudence Peiffer’s excellent book The Slip you will know she was as “wild” and nature orientated as anyone else in this show. But more importantly, she represents a key strand in abstract painting that you could call it minimal or meditative. Only Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak here could be described as representing that strand.
Pinaree Sanpitak. Breast vessel 2015
But this is to cavil unduly. In a country which so rarely sees art from overseas such a show as this is invaluable. There are two excellent paintings by British Jadé Fadjotumi, a very good painting by the German Katharina Grosse, interesting paintings by artists I have never heard of such as A’Driane Nieves.
Jade Fadojutimi. Maybe this is a rough sketch of happiness. 2020
Katharina Grosse. Untitled. 2022
A’Driane Nieves. I remain a conglomerate of truths that both liberate and ruin (1) 2023
An oddity of the labels is they say the artists from the USA come not from the USA but from California or Vermont or in Nieves’ case Texas. Has the Union finally broken up into fifty smaller nations? If so, I think we should be told.
When I went there weren’t many visitors but those that were, when not doing the obligatory selfie, were doing a lot of serious looking.
Zhang Zipiao, Jane Lee etc (from left) at Met Museum 29024
Keka Enriquez. Untitled. 1990s?
Not only was this show genuinely global but several Filipina artists were embedded in it, Keka Enriquez (who moved to San Francisco 25 years ago but has recently started painting again), Nicole Coson and Corinne De San Jose. There could have been more – Maya Munoz, for example, who is wilder than the other three.
Maria Cruz at Drawing Room
At Drawing Room there was an exhibition of paintings from 2000-2006 by Maria Cruz. These small text paintings were all derived from song titles by Yoko Ono. Shown en masse they recall in a strangely unironic way the Utopianism of the Lennon/Ono moment. And in their crispness were aesthetically very pleasing. They also could be seen to represent a more conceptual strain in paintings by women. Something absent in the show at Metropolitan. One could argue of course these paintings are not focused on wild nature.
Aina Zukueta-Valencia at Drawing Room
The other artist showing at Drawing Room Aina Zulueta-Valencia certainly does focus on wild nature, or on being wild in nature. They remind me of the expressionist paintings made by Kirchner, Heckel and Pechstein (Die Brücke group) around lake Moritzburg 1909-1911 of people trying to be in and at one with nature, in ecstasy. The figures in Zulueta-Valencia paintings however, unlike the Germans, keep their clothes on. Her paintings are also more abstracted than anyone in Die Brücke – and some of the artists in Wild.
If there had been a catalogue, even an e-catalogue to Wild we would have an opportunity to discuss such interesting but problematic subjects as femininity in art, women’s greater (?) closeness to nature, the validity of expressionism, or expressive paintwork. So overall, a very welcome exhibition but also a bit of a missed opportunity.
Speak soon
Tony