Saturday, April 24, 2010

Modern Times - Responding to Chaos at the De La Warr Pavillion

The filmmaker, painter and curator Lutz Becker has put a beautiful exhibition together called Modern Times - Responding to Chaos.
First it was shown at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge and now it's at Bexhill-on-sea, with one critical difference and that is that one of Simon's videos has joined in at the De La Warr Pavillion which made our trip very exciting.

Becker has curated a show that has the feel of a personal collection. The title alludes to the chaos of living in the 20th and 21st centuries and in this show Becker is celebrating the courage of artists to express their individuality and independence in such times. It's mostly about Drawing, not sketches and scribbling of subjects but proper drawing as an experimental art form, notations of experiences and ideas plus the concomitant investigations in moving image too. He identifies two abstracting procedures of artists in the 20th century, those who make expressive marks and those who derive their sense of order and spirituality from geometry and he creates a non chronological dialogue between them. It's a big show, with 80 artists represented in the exhibition with one work each, they included Agnes Martin, Julije Knifer, Paul Klee, Norman McLaren, Phillip Guston and Simon Payne. The exhibition is on until June and it makes a lovely day trip, the culture, the sea, the chips and the crazy golf.


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