"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." - Dorothea Lange

Sunday, March 17, 2013

gravity and grace




I'm deviating from photography here, but felt this video just had to be shared. Ghanaian artist El Anatsui is celebrating a major retrospective of his work; it's now showing at the Brooklyn Museum. (Perhaps you've seen his High Line piece in NY?) This exhibition looks positively majestic.

Anatsui converts found materials into a new type of media that lies between 
sculpture and painting, combining aesthetic traditions from his birth country, 
Ghana; his home in Nsukka, Nigeria; and the global history of abstraction.


Included in the exhibition are twelve recent monumental wall and floor sculptures, widely considered to represent the apex of Anatsui’s career. The metal wall works, created with bottle caps from a distillery in Nsukka, are pieced together to form colorful, textured hangings that take on radically new shapes with each installation. Anatsui is captivated by his materials’ history of use, reflecting his own nomadic background. Gravity and Grace responds to a long history of innovations in abstract art and performance, building upon cross-cultural exchange among Africa, Europe, and the Americas and presenting works in a wholly new, African medium.
Read this NYT article about El Anatsui if you want to know more.

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