Contributed by Sharon Butler / Gedi Sibony continues to repurpose and recycle objects, but his new work moves considerably beyond the abject provisionality of earlier work. In Greene Naftali’s bunker-like new ground-floor space on W.26th Street, Sibony presents huge pieces of metal cut from a stash of decommisioned semi trailers. The logos and advertising text are painted out (redacted), and the metal flats are presented as traditional paintings, humbly hung on the wall like any other painting exhibition.
At first glance when I walked into the gallery, I thought Sibony, known for propping and draping slight objects in compelling arrangements, had opted for a more traditional route, exploring an unexpected combo of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism akin to Jacqueline Humphries’s large-scale paintings.
enormous metal slabs for the last five years–an undertaking which, considering the labor, effort and storage costs involved, is anything but casual.
“Gedi Sibony,” Greene Naftali, Chelsea, New York, NY. Through November 8, 2014.
Related posts:
By Any Other Name: Casualism at DODGE
The Casualist tendency
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Fantastic site, just discovered it.