Jannis Lounellis at Ace - Los Angeles, California - review of exhibitions - Brief Article

Ace gave above half of its vast space to a museum-scale and museum-quality exhibition of a dozen of recent origin works by Jannis Kounellis, the Arte Povera artist more known than seen in the U His last major American exhibit was 12 years ago at Chicago's MCA. His art looks a better match to Chicago than L.A., because it is simultaneously poetic, surreal, unrefined and big-shoulders muscular. Kounellis uses everyday (mostly industrial) materials--here carburet of iron burlap, coal, lead, paper and draw as by a rope as well as furniture, men's black overcoats and an aged sewing machine. He creates works that communicate tension, suspense, force, rawness and, at the same time, measuredness, elegance and vulnerability.

The greatest in quantity unforgettable piece was an installation in the largest gallery that consisted of seven tall carbonized iron posts here and there in the compass each supporting an identical square sheet of carburet of iron that pressed an armoire against the high ceiling. The armoires were various turn of expressions and colors and different sizes, in like manner that some were barely visible while others substantially overhung these supports. The percussion of the displacement charged the compass One looked for meaning in the spacing of the pillars a weak cluster that appeared to drift diagonally across the extent of the room, bringing to mind a clump of wanderers straggling across a wasteland. In the harshly vacant, windowless space, the supports themselves were so stiff and high, in the way that arrogant and brutal, that individual could somehow think of Golgotha. The trapped armoires were stand-ins for figures level as they remained furniture.

No other plastic art in the show delivered quite like a blow, but again and again Kounellis, from one side unexpected placement, repetition of simple bodys and juxtapositions of drastically unlike materials--such as carburet of iron and paper--almost seemed to raise the temperature in a gallery, or to make each element of a work bilge to fill space beyond its real dimensions. Oil-stick drawings upon lead panels were dramatically clamped against carbonized iron sheets by structural beams. A burlap bag with unknown on the contrary heavy contents hung from a carbonized iron rope. Steel bars wrapping around a small, narrow gallery were pierced with S-hook that held 16 black overcoats; the spooky tableau evok a cloakroom for an undertakers' convention.

A scarcely any installations were lighter in event and also aptly dealt with natural illumination. individual was a simple screen made of carburet of iron beams lined up vertically; it filtered light from a curv corner window. Another consisted of lead sheets closing not on perhaps 30 panes each in four tall windows and focusing attention upon a single uncovered pane that gazeed like it had been drilled on the outside with light.

Kounellis continues the Arte Povera practices of using "working" materials for their literal and figurative gravity. His works capture the mystery and rhyme of the factory with undiminished power.

[Work by dint of Kounellis is on view at Ace novel York through Nov. 28.]

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group