In particular, Eli Anatsui's visually arresting show at Jack Shainman Gallery proved to be more an encompassing experience rather than a mere passive art exhibition. The Ghanaian artist's richly textured pieces, comprised of thousands of discarded bottle caps and twisted foil wine wrappers strung together with copper wires, vibrate with life and history. Rather than hung flat, the artist requests that they be draped on the walls at the gallery's discretion so that each piece can never be exhibited exactly quite the same way again. This organic quality of the pieces is further enhanced by the strong visual of the cloth-like works snaking sinuously across the gallery walls. Denouncing the geometric perfection of the space, they challengingly hang with jagged edges in some places, softly rounded corners in others.
The dominant use of reds and golds with punctuated areas of silver (revealing the underside of the aluminum wrapping) in Anatsui's fabric-like works are reminiscent of kente cloth, which is traditionally reserved for important family or community events. Through myriad combinations of patterns, designs and color, the cloth depicts specific details of a wearer's heritage, family, culture and role in the society. Anatsui has turned this revered tradition on its head by replacing cloth with found metal debris. The artist gathered these found discarded pieces in Nsukka, Nigeria, where the artist has lived and worked for the last 28 years. The magnitude of this task and the massive resultant metal "cloths" are pointedly a testament not to a culture or or individual's rich history but to, sadly, the Western infiltration of commercialism, consumer nature and a throw-away mentality.
Jack Shainman Gallery
513 West 20th Street, New York
February 11th-March 13th, 2010
