Orly Genger: Whole

http://www.imamuseum.org/explore/exhibitions/orlygenger
Indianapolis Museum of Art - IMA

Orly Genger: Whole

Known for transforming common nylon climbing rope into elaborate monumental sculptures, New York-based artist Orly Genger has created Whole, a unique site-specific installation, in response to the IMAs Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion. Gengers project for the IMA is her largest and most ambitious to date, incorporating thousands of feet of rope, which she hand-knots, paints and stacks, creating immense sculptures that confront the viewer.

Looped and knotted by hand, Whole evokes the normally intimate processes of knitting and crocheting, yet expands them to a newly epic scale. Gengers work challenges typical associations with craft and textile through its intensely physical creation process, in which the artist wrestles rope into knots and amasses it into powerful sculptural objects. The resulting works are intended to provoke a visceral physical response from viewers, challenging them to reconsider their relationship to the normally unobstructed space around them and forcing them to navigate the space in new ways. Comprised of nine different sculptures, Whole is impossible to fully grasp from a single viewpoint, and in its interplay between its fragmented parts calls into question the nature of wholeness itself.

In its reductive abstract vocabulary, Whole responds to the legacy of Minimalist art, and particularly the muscular abstractions of artists such as Richard Serra. Yet by using pliable rope to weave these monolithic forms, Genger also draws on the Post-Minimalist legacy of artists such as Eva Hesse and Lynda Benglis. Gengers sculpture embodies an elemental tension between obdurate mass and empty space, between hard-edge geometry and organic softness.

Special thanks to the Efroymson Family Fund, a CICF Fund, for their generous support of this project. And to Larissa Goldston Gallery and Universal Limited Art Editions.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Orly
• Genger
• Indianapolis
• Museum
• of
• Art
• IMA
• contemporary
• rope
• sculpture
• installation
• time
• lapse
• oval
• entry
• Efroymson
• Family
• Entrance
• Pavilion

[wilsocn]

I was just at the museum and im sorry but I just didnt like it. The display talked about obstructing opening spaces and making us think about that, but that happens everyday without the need for modern art.

I guess I just miss the days of art involving a high degree of technical skill to complete something that the common person cant replicate.

BTW your Caravaggio painting should be advertised more. It is the best part of the musuem. ;)

[plexdave]

As you say, I can see how each layer is built, but this is not like seeing the layers of the earth, as I can't see those.

I do like your explanation of the concept that you can't see the nine objects the same from one view, but I must agree with "wilscon," isn't this common in everyday life with ANY object a person encounters. Even a piece of paper appears vastly different from different angles, the need for art to embrace this idea seems unnecessary and wasteful.

[plexdave]

you're attempting to make a sculpture from the beginning to the end? as opposed to going backwards in time and uncreating it?

And aren't most objects by their very nature whole?

I see what you mean about being honest with the viewer by revealing the structure of the piece, but there are many parts of this structure hidden, like its middle and bottom. It's not made of glass, for then nothing would be hidden.