Artwork
Emily Steer
Grey Wielebinksi, set up view of “The Purple Solar is Excessive, the Blue Low” on the ICA London, 2023. Courtesy of the ICA.
Artist Grey Wielebinski describes a lot of his work as collage, together with immersive conceptual installations. His observe, which additionally consists of extra conventional collage works with minimize and pasted paper, focuses on how and why we inform collective tales, from the parable of up to date Americana to the paranoid narratives of the Chilly Battle, and references all the pieces from summary portray to kids’s cartoons and subcultural nightlife areas. Mixed, these components convey the disjointed expertise of Twenty first-century picture consumption. The artist, who was featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2020, additionally performs with the visible enchantment of cultural myths, which regularly depend on compelling imagery to seize the creativeness.
“I begin with analysis, broad themes, finally: energy,” the artist mentioned in an interview at his Soho studio forward of a brand new exhibition at London’s ICA (“The Purple Solar is Excessive, the Blue Low,” operating by December twenty third). “I’ve been pondering loads concerning the materials foundations of nation-state constructing and mythology, significantly the American empire.” Born in Texas, Wielebinski graduated from his MFA on the Slade College of Tremendous Artwork in London in 2018. He has since had solo exhibitions at Hales Gallery (2021), Seagar Gallery (2019), B. Dewitt Gallery, and Gazelli Artwork Home (each 2018).
Portrait of Grey Wielebinski by Suzannah Pettigrew. Courtesy of ICA London.
Grey Wielebinski, element of The Finish #2, 2023. © Courtesy Hales Gallery. Copyright Grey Wielebinski.
In “The Purple Solar is Excessive, the Blue Low,” Wielebinski explores the messily intertwined nature of personal and public areas. Sandwiched between vital websites in London (the Mall, Buckingham Palace, St James’ Park, and the Admiralty Citadel), the ICA’s location is loaded with monarchic and political energy. The World Battle II–period fortress of the Admiralty Citadel has had a very sturdy affect on the present. “It’s coated in ivy as a result of Winston Churchill known as it ‘an unlimited monstrosity’ and it was described as ‘the ugliest constructing in London’ in a Home of Commons debate in 1955,” he mentioned. “It’s nonetheless utilized by the Ministry of Defence, however you possibly can’t see inside it.” Whereas many individuals have a transparent picture of what authorities and conflict rooms appear like, this largely comes from their well-liked depiction on display: Wielebinski cites Dr. Strangelove particularly.
The proximity of the Citadel led the artist to consider doable readings of Don DeLillo’s phrase “males in small rooms” from his 1988 guide Libra. “‘Males in small rooms’ might be understood as a psychic dreamscape, which I’ve made work about earlier than, or the imagined Americana of locker rooms and homoeroticism,” he mentioned. “But it surely can be the political nefariousness and violence being abstracted by males in small rooms making choices that the general public isn’t aware of.”
For the present, Wielebinski has whitewashed the ICA’s home windows in reference to U.Ok. authorities tips in the course of the Chilly Battle to guard homes from nuclear apocalypse. “It was a tragicomic, futile suggestion, which couldn’t actually assist,” he mentioned. “I used to be additionally pondering of this very gestural markmaking. The tradition wars between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. led to the U.S. bolstering Summary Expressionism in opposition to Socialist Realism, as a result of it confirmed the utmost artistic freedom that the U.S. and the West might allegedly supply.”
Grey Wielebinksi, set up view of “The Purple Solar is Excessive, the Blue Low” on the ICA London, 2023. Courtesy of the ICA.
Wielebinski painted the home windows to be able to spotlight the shift of accountability from governments onto people in instances of disaster. The artist challenges the dearth of communal pondering that’s typically concerned in planning for the apocalypse, and the exhibition encompasses a bunker set up: a darkened room with illuminated lockboxes damaged open at common intervals across the partitions. “I’m vital of bunkerism,” he mentioned. “As an alternative of embracing the current, it’s making ready for a future that’s about sequestering your self and conserving everybody out as an alternative of being with the messiness of the now.”
Adjoining to the home windows, the artist has painted a choice of solar motifs in numerous colorways. The work is typical of the advanced layering of which means all through the present. The form of the suns is impressed by the closing credit of Looney Tunes, whereas their method calls to thoughts minimalist summary portray. The works reference the setting solar as an apocalyptic signifier inside science fiction narratives; Wielebinski was significantly impressed by the writing of Samuel R. Delany, in addition to the diaries of Zoe Leonard. Hung in steel frames, these solar motifs additionally appear like capturing targets.
There may be additionally a basketball scoreboard, that connects the recognizable aesthetics of the North American sport with the doomsday clock and depersonalized signage in conceptual artwork, equivalent to Jenny Holzer’s LED signal takeovers. “Basketball was the game I performed most once I was youthful, so it’s a really mundane on a regular basis object,” he mentioned. “It’s additionally a lovely sculptural object which is able to maybe be ominous on this context. And it’s international, in that it’s not so recognizable within the U.Ok.”
Grey Wielebinksi, set up view of “The Purple Solar is Excessive, the Blue Low” on the ICA London, 2023. Courtesy of the ICA.
Earlier works have delved into the aesthetics of sports activities as a means of exploring gender, sexuality, costume, and energy. For instance, the 2022 set up Ache and Glory (proven as a part of the present “Love” at London nonprofit Daring Tendencies) featured a mechanical bull surrounded by stained glass home windows replete with glory holes and fencing that includes butt plug–esque adornments. The physique of the viewer performed a central position, whether or not they have been merely watching or selected to work together with the work by driving the bull.
“[The work] explored what it means to have a second alone in public, however there was additionally performativity, pleasure, and subversion of what we assume the facility dynamics of wanting and being checked out are,” he mentioned. “You go into this sanctuary house while you’re on the bull. You possibly can’t take note of the folks watching; you’re so concentrated in your physique, which goes in all these other ways. I used to be desirous about the right way to summary transness or universalize it; what it means to affiliate or dissociate; or be embodied or not. Additionally, the ambivalence of being witnessed in that.”
Grey Wielebinski, Privateness Display, 2022. Photograph by Deniz Guzel. Courtesy of Hannah Barry Gallery.
Sasha Gomeniuk, senior director at Hales Gallery, which represents Wielebinski, first encountered the artist’s work on the Slade graduate exhibition. “I walked right into a dimly lit house that resembled a sports activities locker room and, having spent only some minutes in there, I used to be fully blown away by the maturity of the work,” she mentioned. “It felt full, thought-about and, as a viewer, I felt positioned on the centre of it. That has been the widespread thread in all of the initiatives Grey has achieved. By his work he manages to talk to the viewer in a really clear, comprehensible means about a variety of vital, critical topics. It boils all the way down to a typical denominator: It’s humanistic in its nature whereas additionally encouraging introspection.”
For the artist, his observe responds to the instances we reside in, by highlighting each the messiness and inherent connections that uphold the multitude of narratives that completely different teams imagine concerning the world. “We’re on this time of reality and determining what that’s,” he mentioned. “Doubtlessly the job of artwork is to have a powerful perspective and viewpoint, but additionally to have an openness. My work is strongly political however I’m giving folks sufficient belief that they’ll come to their very own conclusions.”
