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Exposition El Anatsui
www.paris-conciergerie.fr/Actualites/el-anatsui-revisite-...
La Conciergerie
Paris, France
San Francisco, California, USA
Detail of "Hovor II," 2004,
A very large wall hanging of aluminum bottle caps bound together with copper wire,
by Ghanian artist El Anatsui.
( Please View Full Screen ... )
TAKPEKPE (Conference) 2006
El Anatsui
Ghanian, Born 1944
Metal tops of liquor bottles and evaporated milk cans, aluminium and copper wire ...
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington State ,,,
Excerpt from rbg.ca:
AG+BA (AR) by El Anatsui
b. 1944, Ghana
Lives and works in Nigeria
El Anatsui’s iconic bottle-cap installations are created from thousands of aluminum bottle-tops wired together with copper, thereby catalyzing the transformation of familiar, mundane objects into startlingly poetic works of art. The frugality of the materials stands in contrast to the shimmering and grandiose effect they accumulate through the artistic process and manner of installation as large-scale hanging sculptures.
For this exhibition, a two-part work has been translated to AR, inserting light movement into the flexible materials. Installed in the open space of the gardens, the work accumulates gentle movement, as if soft breezes blowing through the gardens play over its surfaces. Like many of Anatsui’s pieces, the work addresses both artistic and political issues, and resonates with notions that confound art and craft, high and low, center and periphery.
Anatsui’s works are held in major international collections, including The British Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; de Young Museum, San Francisco; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf; Tate Modern, London; and many others. Large-scale external installations include: Ozone Layer and Yam Mound at the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2010); Broken Bridge I at Musée Galliera, Paris (2012); Broken Bridge II on the High Line, New York (2012/13); and TSIATSIA – Searching for Connection (2013), his largest bottle-cap work to date. This shimmering tapestry of light embellished the façade of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, during its 245th Summer Exhibition.
Berlin-Mitte, Neue Nationalgalerie, Friedrichwerdersche Kirche und Hamburger Bahnhof, kommt mit und lasst die Bilder des 2. Tages auf euch einwirken! Es waren zwei anstrengende Tage. Beschreibungen sind hier glaube ich überflüssig!
Part of an exhibition of the artist’s work at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2019. The large work is made of small metal pieces of aluminum that have been tied together with wire.
191/365 pictures in 2019
34 - A work of art, for 52 in 2019
These are flattened strips of aluminum taken from the necks of discarded liquor bottles. Strung together they form this textile-like sculpture that recalls the woven and pieced designs of "kente", a traditional type of African Asante or Ewe royal cloth
Born in Ghana, El Anatsui currently lives in Nigeria. His work reflects his awareness of both the international contemporary art market and what he terms "classical" African art.
Photographed on display at the De Young Fine Arts Museum in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California
Large installation in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London.
"Behind The Red Moon"
Artist: El Anatsui
Excerpt from excal.on.ca:
Anatsui’s tapestries are “so different from everything,” said Francisco Alvarez, managing director for the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the ROM. “[They’re] a luxurious beauty.”
The pieces are made from alcohol bottle caps that are flattened, twisted, scrunched or folded, and then sewn together using copper wire. These tapestries are one of the primary reasons for Anatsui’s growing fame – they are beautiful, unique and meaningful.
The bottle tops are also significant for their history: alcohol was brought to Africa by European settlers and used to negotiate with the native people living there. Using bottle caps in his artwork today allows Anatsui to honour and remember his nation’s history while creating new identities for his countrymen.
One of the most fascinating pieces in the exhibit is Straying Continents, a bottle cap tapestry commissioned by the ROM specifically for the exhibition, now on display at the very beginning of the museum’s Africa section. Straying Continents is dazzling to look at. The tapestry looks like a flattened map of the world: the land masses are made of closely sewn bottle caps while the oceans are made of folded caps netted together. The display is meant to change over time due to gravity and age.
Straying Continents will remain in the museum after “When I Last Wrote to You of Africa,” and is worth seeing even without the context of El Anatsui’s independent exhibit.
One of the many very cool pieces by El Anatsui at the exhibit in the San Diego Museum of Contemporary art. He uses recycled material for all his pieces. San Diego, California, USA
As I walked off the escalator at the Broad, the first thing I noticed was this wall hanging, made with scrap aluminum from liquor bottle tops. I immediately recognized it as a work by the same Ghanaian artist whose art I had seen in New York at MOMA and along the High Line, and at UCLA’s Fowler Museum.
El Anatsui (°1944), Red Block, 2010, found aluminum and copper wire, 5.1m x 3.34m (16'9" x 10'11")
«Several thoughts went through my mind when I found the bag of bottle tops in the bush. I thought of the objects as links between my continent, Africa, and Europe. Objects such as these were introduced to Africa by Europeans when they came as traders. Alcohol was one of the commodities brought with them to exchange for goods in Africa. Eventually alcohol became one of the items used in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. They made rum in the West Indies, took it to Liverpool, and then it made its way back to Africa.
I thought that the bottle caps had a strong reference to the history of Africa.» — El Anatsui
In Africa, where resources are much more scarce, recycling is a way of life and no scrap of material goes to waste. These are flattened strips of aluminum taken from the necks of discarded liquor bottles. Strung together they form this textile-like sculpture that recalls the woven and pieced designs of "kente", a traditional type of African Asante or Ewe royal cloth
Born in Ghana, El Anatsui currently lives in Nigeria. His work reflects his awareness of both the international contemporary art market and what he terms "classical" African art. Emerging as an artist during the vibrant West African post-independence art movements of the 1960s and 1970s, El Anatsui has gone on to receive international acclaim for his constantly evolving and highly experimental sculpture.
Photographed on display at the De Young Fine Arts Museum in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California
Just in case one has to be 21+ to admire an artwork made from liquor bottle caps...;-)
I first saw an artwork by El Anatsui at the MOMA in New York City last August, and now I ran into this one at the Fowler Museum on the UCLA campus. [Looks better if you’re not too close to the screen.]
El Anatsui (°1944), Versatility (2006), aluminum and copper wire, detail.
From the Smithsonian website:
As Anatsui notes, his metal cloths “encapsulate the essence of the alcoholic drinks which were brought to Africa by Europeans as trade items at the time of the earliest contact between the two peoples.” To create these cloths, Anatsui uses labels from local Nigerian brands of whiskey, rum, vodka, brandy and other potent libations with names such as Chairman, Dark Sailor, King Solomon, Makossa, 007, Top Squad and Ecomog (named after the multilateral, though largely Nigerian, armed force established in 1990 to intervene in the Liberian civil war). A motif that appears in both adinkra and kente cloths is visible in the patterning of this work and is referenced in its title, Versatility, which according to the artist, suggests the notion of adaptability and the twists and turns of human existence.
Kente is a strip-woven cloth that is made by the Asante peoples of Ghana and the Ewe peoples of Ghana and Togo. It is a festive dress for special occasions — traditionally worn by men as a kind of toga and by women as an upper and lower wrapper. Adinkra is a system of graphic symbols that appear as two-dimensional designs on dyed and stamped textiles and as three-dimensional motifs ornamenting carved and cast objects, including jewelry. Dark-colored adinkra cloths are funerary attire, while those of brighter hues may be worn on other special occasions. Both kente and adinkra patterns communicate cultural and philosophical meanings, social codes of conduct, religious beliefs, political thought and aesthetic principles. On a global level, kente cloth has become an overriding symbol for African-ness.
Looking back at his work over the course of his artistic career, Anatsui recalls that his father and his brothers wove the more muted kente of the Ewe peoples, and he speculates about the unconscious influence of family and cultural history upon him, “I have discovered only much later ... that cloth has been a recurring theme or leitmotif, and it is featured in so many dimensions.”
This spectacular metallic “cloth”, whose surface suggests a woven structure, is constructed from thousands of flattened and sewn strips of pliable aluminum that once wrapped the necks of discarded liquor bottles.
San Francisco, California
corner of "Hover II," 2004,
a very large wall hanging of aluminum bottle caps bound together with copper wire,
by Ghana artist El Anatsui,
now in gallery #16 at the deYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park.
Rush right over and see it without the poster edges filter.
El Anatsui, 2006, Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Central Park, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA, sculpture
When I awoke to this story on NPR this morning, I remembered having seen an artwork at MOMA by the Ghanaian-born artist who was subject of the story, so here it is:
El Anatsui (°1944), Bleeding Takari II (2007), aluminum (bottle caps, foil seals) and copper wire, 4 x 6m (13 x 20ft.)
Now I notice that I could have seen the exhibit they talked about at the Brooklyn Museum last month! And I did not even notice his work near the High Line, though one of the photos I took there had his work in the background! Oh, well, at least I recognized it at UCLA and at the Broad...
By: El Anatsui, 2019 Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (ES). Material: discarded liquor bottle tops.
www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/the-collection/works/rising-sea
San Francisco, Californiadetail of "Hovor II," 2004,a very large wall hanging of aluminum bottle caps bound together with copper wire,by Ghanian artist El Anatsui
(presented here with a filter that gives extra texture/definition)
San Francisco, California
detail of "Hovor II," 2004,
a very large wall hanging of aluminum bottle caps bound together with copper wire,
by Ghanian artist El Anatsui
These totems, created by West African sculptor El Anatsui, came from charred timbers recycled from a part of Falmouth docks which was destroyed by fire. They started their life as trees in West Africa.
Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of large-scale sculptures by internationally acclaimed artist El Anatsui. Several monumental wall sculptures made from thousands of discarded bottle tops, will be on view. Anatsui transforms simple materials into large shimmering forms by assembling elements into vibrant patterns with a unique visual impact. An astute observer, he composes his sculptures with meticulous orchestration, masterfully managing material and color. Here Anatsui’s palette ranges from black and red to silver and gold.
Fluidity of form is a significant quality inherent to the sculptures. As Alexi Worth from the New York Times Magazine pointed out in a recent feature on Anatsui from Spring 2009, Their most peculiar feature is that they are physically unfixed: Anatsui insists that his hangings be draped rather than hung flat, but he doesn’t insist on draping them himself, and in fact is perfectly happy to have galleries or museums do so. He has preferences — horizontal ripples are better than vertical ones — but he doesn’t regard any particular arrangement as final. Naturally, professional curators are disconcerted by this freedom; Anatsui has little patience with their scruples. Museum people are trained not to be creative, Anatsui complains. I find that very frustrating. To Storr, the provisional, shifting shape of Anatsui’s art is one of the keys to its originality. In the catalog to the coming Museum for African Art retrospective, Storr argues that Anatsui’s work is fundamentally anti-monumental: it does not stand its ground. . . . Rather it takes the shape of circumstances and so epitomizes contingency. For Storr, that is no minor innovation: Anatsui opens a new chapter in the history of sculpture. It’s possible that the appetite for contingency that Storr praises is particularly African. Lisa Binder, the curator in charge of the Anatsui exhibition, points out that‘traditional African objects, unlike European paintings and sculpture, are often highly adaptable, designed to be reused. Anatsui’s work brings this adaptable, unfixed quality into sculptural practice — as jazz brought an African unfixedness into Western music.
El Anatsui was born in Anyako, Ghana in 1944, and holds degrees in sculpture and art education from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. He is Professor of Sculpture at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he has lectured since 1975. His work has been exhibited extensively in international solo and group exhibitions, including the 1990 and 2007 Venice Biennales, the 1995 Johannesburg Biennale, the 2004 Gwangju Biennale, Prospect.1 New Orleans in 2008, and the 2009 Sharjah Biennale. A solo show, Gawu, traveled throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. His work is in numerous public and private collections throughout the world including The British Museum, London; The Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City. Most recently, Anatsui created an installation on-site at Rice Gallery at Rice University, Houston, TX, on view through March 14.
A major retrospective of Anatsuis work, When I Last Wrote to You About Africa, curated by Lisa Binder from the Museum for African Art, New York, begins a North American tour at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, on October 2, 2010, followed by its presentation at the Museum for African Art, New York, as one of the inaugural exhibitions at the museums new building.
This is El Anatsuis second solo exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery. A hardcover catalogue is available.
Upcoming exhibitions at the gallery include Ross Rudel and Todd Hebert opening March 18, on view through April 17, 2010, and Lynette Yiadom Boakye and Carrie Mae Weems opening April 22 on view through May 22, 2010.
www.jackshainman.com/exhibitions79.html
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The Armory Show is the United States’ leading art fair devoted to the most important artworks of the 20th and 21st centuries. In its twelve years, the fair has become an international institution. Every March, artists, galleries, collectors, critics and curators from all over the world make New York their destination during Armory Arts Week.
The Armory Show 2010 also features The Armory Show – Modern, specializing in modern and secondary market material on Pier 92. Pier 94 continues to be a venue to premiere new works by living artists. With one ticket, visitors to The Armory Show on March 4–7, 2010 have access to the latest developments in the art world, and to the masterpieces which heralded them.
Piers 92 and 94 on 55th Street and 12th Avenue, NYC
March 4-7, 2010