ART CITIES:N.York-Jordan Wolfson
Jordan Wolfson’s practice in the past 12 years has included video, film, installation, performance, print photography. Since 2009 he has focused on an ambitious series of animations that could be considered a trilogy, “Con Leche” “Animation Masks” and “Raspberry Poser”, in 2014 he presented “Female figure” an animatronic sculpture at David Zwirner Gallery.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive
Jordan Wolfson produces ambitious and enigmatic narratives that frequently revolve around a series of invented, animated characters. Dancing before a large mirror in a private room in the gallery, which visitors could enter two at a time, “Female figure”, in a revealing white dress, thigh-high vinyl boots, a green witch mask, and covered in dirt, the slightly disturbing blonde android dances in front of a mirror and uses facial recognition software to make eye contact with viewers and speak to them in Wolfson’s pre-recorded voice. In his new solo exhibition he presents the “Colored sculpture” at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. The red hair, freckles, and boyish look of “Colored sculpture” draw associations to such literary and pop cultural characters as Huckleberry Finn, the pioneer in children’s television programming Howdy Doody and Alfred E. Neuman from Mad magazine. Highly polished in appearance, the work is suspended with heavy chains from a large mechanized gantry, which is programmed to choreograph its movements. The sheer physicality of the installation, which fills the entire gallery space and includes the work being hoisted and thrown forcefully to the ground, viscerally blurs the distinction between figuration and abstraction, while furthering the formal and narrative possibilities of sculpture. The sculpture’s eyes employ facial recognition technology to track spectators’ gazes and movements, thereby adding another layer of interactive corporeality to the work. Using fiber optics, its eyes also intermittently display a range of imagery and video footage, including the artist’s own animations and filmed footage, and other found visual material, all of which seem to mine the subconscious preoccupations and desires of our society and consumer culture. The accompanying soundtrack further underscores the complex tensions and distortions that the artist establishes between reality and artificiality, subject and object, meaning and sense.
Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 525 West 19th Street New York, Duration: 5/5-25/6/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.davidzwirner.com
