Raggedy Ann's Foot

Nick Cave, Amalgams and Graphts, at Jack Shainman. The press release shares the artist's motivations and process clearly, so I quote it liberally.

According to the press release, amalgams are "contemporary monuments (that) create a positive, inclusive and resilient alternative to the plethora of public art that has often misrepresented history, silenced diverse voices and commemorated war and conquest. The Amalgams are an evolution of Cave’s iconic Soundsuits, which were created in response to the brutal beating of Rodney King by police in 1991. They concealed race, gender and class to force the viewer to engage without preconceived judgment. In the new Amalgams Cave fuses casts from his own body with natural forms such as flowers, birds and trees with similar effect."

It also defines "Cave’s newest series, Graphts. These mixed media assemblages situate needlepoint portraits of the artist amongst fields of florals and color constructed from vintage serving trays. While Cave has often used his own body within his artwork, this is the first time that he has revealed a recognizable self."

Cave's inclusive, over-the-top Maximalist aesthetic and production on the scale of public art changes the game for gallery exhibitions, as does the just-opened Laura Owens show. A one-artist gallery exhibiiton, in these cases, is produced on an institutional scale.

"Cave’s choice of materials creates an interplay of double meanings. The needlepoint is associated with upper class gentility and was a common way to pass the time in these households. Conversely, the patchwork of serving trays evoke quilting traditions prevalent in the Black community, a form of creativity born out of necessity. The vintage trays themselves are embellished implements of servitude that ask us to consider the role that aesthetics have historically played in concealing and perpetuating hierarchies. An additional layer of meaning is introduced by the phrase “to serve,” which in ballroom culture is a directive to act with confidence and attitude. " (Pres release)

The work aggregates these quasi-humble sources within a majestic installation, housed in a former bank. Commissioned, fabricated, and funded, it redefines an artist as producer, arranger, and conductor of a layered social message carefully planned. Antecedents of this scale include rap music (in that many artists perform a single song, and members of a record company forming a talent team), immersive digital environments (such as the Van Gogh exhibition), and more traditional settings such as castles or private museums. Cave's show is as sumptious and incredible as any grand achievement, yet its opulence engulfs the ratio of body to work. The body is instead subsumed into the work, swallowed by the artist's vision.

https://matthewmarks.com/exhibitions/laura-owens-02-2025

At Matthew Marks, Laura Owens' first NY show in eight years is epynomously titled. The press release speaks to her love of fabrication (and fabricators--Owens has had assistants since grad school). Here, we enter the second room of a three-room installation, between the anteroom where a gallery assistant sits at a vintage desk and a second immersive, wallpapered room.

In this room prints, patterns, dollops of paint, cutouts, and reversals coalesce in 130" high paintings. They're light in palette and restrained in touch, Matisse-ean with charcoal lines in some.

Minute dots, echoing the effects of spray, are carefully painted or applied to the wall next to canvas to ensure subtle transitions between painting and wall.

Source material for Owens' printed wallpaper derive from vintage patterns

and the artist's drawn or textural interpretations of them.

Asked if the wallpaper were from the artist's personal history, the gallery indicated no. However, the patterns maintains Owens' vernacular source material, which includes children's illustration, receipts, even bicycle wheels.

Cutaways, overlays, weaving, adding, stamping, adorning, Owens' arsenal is on full display.

The final room, housed behind secret doors in the second room, recalls Frances Hodges Burnett's Secret Garden. This room summarizes Owen's vision, which can be summarized in the overheard comment, "It was defiantly feminine!" Yes, it is! Owens immerses us into girlhood, full throttle--through painting, not photography or sculpture, as is more readily accepted. She posits feminine experience ambitiously, on a scale previously the province of men. And she succeeds. From small children to the woman who exclaimed "defiantly feminine," the work resonated.

Behind us in the photo another door opens to a video playing high on the wall, two birds on a fence discussing male and female roles throughout society's history through voice-overs and captions.

Magic window boxes reveal variations of printed imagery and paint.

I think of Womanhouse in LA (1972), its collective of women creating room-size installations of the female experience, as a precursor to Owens' singular vision. Her dense, interwoven, inter-related elements add up to something rich, fecund; in the currently white-male-dominated values sweeping society perhaps redefined as indulgent, but no matter what, newly strange. Owens' 1970s aesthetic embraces the deep knowing that derives from staring at decorated surfaces, over and over again. This knowing is a default experience for many women.

The vintage desk in the anteroom, where the gallerist sits.

On the desk, embroidered sketchbook of printed tracings.

And artist sketches included in a wallpaper sample book, sized to the body, reigning us in.

Similar to Cave at Shainman, the scale and scope of Owens' exhibition exceeds the human body, with the deleterious effect of sweeping one's physical presence away. Yet touchstones such as flowers, trays, fabric books, and transitions invite pause. Both shows engulf so much space in their tsunamis of desire that questions of production and funding arise. Their bodiless feeling reflects the effects of digital and global culture, yet feels new in the arena of made objects. In their proliferate use of material culture, both shows are right up my alley. Yet their excess feels daunting in view of the grand theatrics of politics right now. They beg the question whether freedom lies in the margins or gestalt.