Matthew Higgs’ Everyday Abstract/Abstract Everyday Reviewed by Sara Blazej

Everyday Abstract/Abstract Everyday
Curated by Matthew Higgs
James Cohan Gallery
June 1, 2012 - July 27, 2012

(Everyday Abstract – Abstract Everyday, Curated by Matthew Higgs. June 1 - July 27, 2012. James Cohan Gallery, New York. Photographer: Jason Mandella.)

On entering Everyday Abstract/Abstract Everyday, a curatorial project by White Columns director Matthew Higgs, viewers are greeted by a thin rod of metal pipes fused together end to end, both crowned and footed with two illuminated glass light-bulbs. This two-headed oddity (LW4EAAEMH by Andy Coolquitt) leans lazily against a corner, both silently welcoming visitors into the space and standing as a befitting introduction to the assortment of equally idiosyncratic objects that lay beyond. Featuring 37 visual artists including David Hammons, Sergej Jensen, Judith Scott, and Andy Warhol, Everyday Abstract/Abstract Everyday includes a range of works, comprised of re-purposed once-pedestrian items as non-representational images and objects, which examine the complex relationship between abstract art and everyday life, or what Higgs terms “everyday abstraction.” Uniting the show—as the duality of the title signifies—is the fine balance between the ordinary and the unusual, the everyday and the abstract. The symbiotic relationship between the two conditions ensures that no work is entirely one or the other, but a strange and curious combination of both.

Past the entrance is Gallery One, where Michel François’ wide sheet of plain, wrinkled blue paper, Bleu Ciel, hangs at 8 ft. high by 12 ft. Bleu Ciel covers most of the wall, casting authority over the room as its creases reach over one another, creeping across a horizontal plane. Visible through the window from the gallery’s exterior, Blue Ciel immediately captivated my attention, first for its size and simplicity and then for the striking aptness of its title: It is neither literal, like Bill Jenkins’ Bed with Rope and Fence, nor riddling and esoteric. This instance of minimal materiality and uncomplicated imagery paired with the most basic descriptive language resonated with me as a moment of poignancy in which something so straightforward and direct takes on a poetic sincerity, a sentiment which threads itself throughout the show.

(Everyday Abstract – Abstract Everyday, Curated by Matthew Higgs. June 1 - July 27, 2012. James Cohan Gallery, New York. Photographer: Jason Mandella.)

Laid out on the floor before Bleu Ciel are three relatively small sculptures, the smallest and most compelling by Ann Cathrin November Høibo. Easily the wittiest piece in the show, Høibo’s Untitled #06 is a life size bronze cast of an uncooked package of instant noodles. Lying modestly below Bleu Ciel, it perfectly balances the light and sweeping blue expanse with a compact solidity that is as amusing for the content as it is for the incongruity between subject and medium. It is, after all, a floor-bound, pocket-size statue of a to-go meal—a bronze single-serving monument to the budget-friendly artists’ diet. Here, Higgs’ clever grouping of objects successfully underlines the humor and charm inherent in not only re-examining the mundane, but also in applying that subject matter to common processes and materials.

The next two rooms contain a diverse array of works, some hanging, others free standing, and a few placed atop pedestals. Al Taylor’s broomsticks jut out of a metal mount on one wall in Untitled: (Rinse), its painted poles vertically fanned like a poor man’s sunburst. Judith Scott’s misshapen mass of string and tubing sits candidly on a podium, basking in its biomorphic glory. Like many other works in the show, David Hammons’ juice-splattered KOOLAID DRAWING defies classification: it resembles a rose colored, saccharine, abstract expressionist painting, but the titled claims it is a drawing. It hangs on a wall in a frame like traditional painting or drawing, but is partially draped with cloth, as if it were installation or sculpture. KOOLAID DRAWING shares a wall with Hannah Wilke’s S.O.S. Starification Object Series (#2), a framed grid of 16 sheets of rice paper, all adorned with used chewing gum, shaped into tiny vaginal forms. Where Hammons uses KoolAid to create a painting that isn’t really a painting, Wilke uses gum to create sculptural objects that aren’t exactly sculpture, and presents them as a picture. Shinique Smith’s bundle of clothing (Bale Variant No. 0022) towers toward the ceiling, bound with shoelace and ribbon, prompting a meditative orbit as one inspects the garments, possibly the most quotidian of all the materials in the show, second only to the urine deposits of Andy Warhol’s Oxidation Painting.

Matthew Higgs’ premise for this exhibition was initially conceived as a proposal for the 2008 Berlin Biennial. Today, Everyday Abstract/Abstract Everyday is the culmination of Higgs’ development of this early proposal; It is the fruition of a four-year undertaking to organize a collection of works that individually and collectively endeavor to reach that intangible place where the conventional, routine and commonplace deviate and transform to become the strange, indefinite and abstract.

***Sara Blazej is currently an Exhibitions intern at ICI. She received her BFA in Theory, Criticism and History of Art, Design and Architecture from Pratt in 2012.