Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Michel Blazy, Piero Gilardi, Tetsumi Kudo, and Anicka Yi, four artists whose work is united by an interest in the natural world, and its interaction with the artificial. Combining unconventional, and often organic materials with those that are manmade, the works in the exhibition investigate the conflicts, and harmonies that exist between our ecology, and the development of technology.
Michel Blazy (b. 1966, Monaco) often incorporates perishable and living materials alongside readymade objects in his sculptures. In his work Les Spirogyres, 1997, suspended structures resembling meteorites sprout plants over the course of the exhibition, suggesting life forms from another realm. Blazy lives and works in Paris. His work was included in Viva Arte Viva, curated by Christine Macel, the 57th international art exhibition of the Venice Biennale, 2017. Solo exhibitions of his work include Living Room II, Maison Hermés Tokyo, 2016 and Post Patman, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2007, among others.
Piero Gilardi (b. 1942, Turin) is one of the pioneers of ecological art, and his work encompasses political activism and community based endeavors. His series of Tappeti-natura or Nature-carpets was initiated in the mid-1960s - floor installations and wall reliefs made of meticulously molded and painted polyurethane that take the form of rocks, plants, and other natural elements, each becoming their own study of a fragile ecology. In 2017, Gilardi’s work was the subject of a survey at MAXXI, Rome. Other solo exhibitions include Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, 2013, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2012, and Castello di Rivoli, Turin, 2012 among others.
Tetsumi Kudo’s (b. 1935, d. 1990, Tokyo) work spanned sculpture, installation and performance, and was characterized by a disillusionment with the modern world. His dome works from the 1970s suggest environments that fuse the ecological and the mechanical, marked by acrid and polluted colors. Since his death in 1990, exhibitions of his work include Your Portrait: A Tetsumi Kudo Retrospective at The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan, 2013, which toured to The National Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan, 2014 and Aomori Museum of Art, Aomori, Japan, 2014, and Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2008.
Anicka Yi’s (b. 1971, Seoul) work draws on scientific techniques and processes, creating fictive scenarios that question the often hidden workings of our society. Her work Deep State, 2017 is comprised of two lightboxes with photographic prints of bacteria cultures taken from the offices of Raven Row, London, which reveal the unseen ecosystems underlying the everyday. Yi was the recipient of the 2016 Hugo Boss Prize, with an exhibition of her work at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2017. Other solo exhibitions of her work include Fridericianum, Kassel, 2016, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, 2015, and List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge, 2015.