Art in America - March 2016_

144 MARCH 2016 EXHIBITION REVIEWS

plex or the Forbidden City palace in Beijing. Both sites

reinforcemetaphysical beliefs about power and immortality

through geometrical precision, their ordered layouts both

comforting and imposing.

On my way out of the show, I paused at the amply stocked

bookcase, which normally houses catalogues for gallery artists.

his time it held, instead, 50 or so titles from Auerbach’s own

library, arranged as neatly as the tabletop items in the main

room. Titles likeSpace Structures: heir Harmony and Counter-

pointandhe Algorithmic Beauty of Sea Shellshelped solidify the

casual association I had made between the sculptures and the

two famous cultural sites: these shelves were packed with books

proposing relationships between mathematics and the eternal.

Claude Bragdon’sPrimer of Higher Space(1913) andProjec-

tive Ornament(1915), both of which were recently reprinted

by Auerbach’s Diagonal Press, occupied prominent positions

among the other titles. he latter work, which inspired the

show’s title, “Projective Instrument,” argues for the importance

of basing modern ornamentation in geometric form. Bragdon

grafts esoteric, mystical mathematics to interior design, endeav-

oring to summon architecture back to the realm of nature or

“divine transcendence,” according to the show’s press release.

Four paintings from Auerbach’s “Weave” series (2011-16)

hung in the entryway gallery. In lieu of paint, their surfaces

are covered with complex patterns of canvas strips that appear

to be woven by machine rather than by hand. Rendered in

muted neutral colors, the works’ motifs subtly materialize

upon close inspection and bear a vague resemblance to com-

puter motherboards. heir titles (likeChiral Fret (Meander)/

Extrusion/GhostandShadow Weave—Metamaterial/Slice Ray),

however, pay homage to ancient Greek meanders (early paragons

of math-based decoration) and to metamaterials

(engineered substances with unnatural properties). In the

main gallery, a second series, “Grain” (2015-16), served as a

itting backdrop for the table sculptures. For these paintings,

single smears of paint have been raked across vibrant, speckled

surfaces with a tool of the artist’s own design, the varying

textures and weights attesting to a range of gestures.

Auerbach’s practice, which encompasses album artwork

and jewelry in addition to her ine art and publishing venture,

explores the kind of decorative and commercial qualities

generally considered suspect by art purists who wish to keep

design relegated to a separate sphere. Her works often occupy

a middle ground between the utilitarian and the aesthetic,

rejecting the perennial debate between the values of form and

function by championing both in equal measure.

—Julia Wolkof

GUO FENGYI

Andrew Edlin

Guo Fengyi’s ink drawings of fantastical creatures are completely

alive, as might be expected from an artist whose work began with

studies of qi, or life-energy. Born in the Xi’an province of China

in 1942,Guo retired from her factory job at age 39 and turned to

igures. In another untitled collage from the series (ca. 1969-70), he

explores a triangular composition, as if he imagined these comic-

book fragments adorning a classical pediment. One might place

Yoshida’s collages in a genealogy from Kurt Schwitters to Öyvind

Fählstrom, though Yoshida would have wanted us to also consider

vernacular precedents, perhaps including Victorian parlor collages,

an example of which was displayed in the rear gallery.

Yoshida’s paintings and drawings from the early 1970s were

deeply informed by his comic-book investigations, though he

completely transformed and repurposed this source of inspiration into

his own mysterious formal language. Some of these works feature

rows of jagged and lumpy forms rendered with bold black outlines;

resembling torn paper, the forms might be interpreted as cartoon-

ish depictions of his comic-book cutouts—a self-relexive joke. he

stratiied arrangement and palette of grays and browns might also be

his attempt to draw a parallel between the episodic structure of comic

strips and that of ancient stelae, with their rows of pictographs.

Stripes and strata are a central motif in Yoshida’s other works

from this period. An untitled oil painting (ca. 1970) presents a sober

composition of blue, gray and purple horizontal bands—possibly a

nod to the prominent use of stripes in abstractions by Frank Stella

and Gene Davis. Felt-tipped pen drawings (ca. 1972) portray vision-

ary landscapes and igures with wavy, multidirectional stripes that

share the hallucinatory quality of the concentric lines employed by

certain self-taught artists that Yoshida championed, such as Martín

Ramírez. Outward-emanating lines are also used in comics to convey

motion or invisible energies. In keeping with his teaching philosophy,

Yoshida did not directly quote or copy any particular source, but

synthesized diverse visual languages into a singular aesthetic.

—Antonia Pocock

TAUBA AUERBACH

Paula Cooper

One recent afternoon I stood dumbly looking down at a low

blue table laden with 3-D-printed objects fastidiously arranged

by Tauba Auerbach. Black, white and gold forms might have

been machine parts, but they seemed largely decorative. he

tableau, one of three tabletop displays in this exhibition, to me

resembled schematic illustrations of the Giza pyramid com-

Tauba Auerbach:
Altar/Engine,2015,
3-D-printed nylon
andplastic,15by
108by108inches;at
Paula Cooper.