The Curated Object

Exhibitions NYC. Fish Forms: Lamps by Frank Gehry. The Jewish Museum, NYC. The Curated Object

Frank Gehry, Fish Lamp, 1984, wood, wire, light, ColorCore, glass marbles.  Collection Jasper Johns. Photograph by John Lund.  

Frank Gehry, Fish Lamp, 1990, glass and silicone with glass and wood base.  The Jewish Museum, New York:  Purchase: The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Fund and Ruth Rose Fund.  

Frank Gehry, Fish Lamp, ColorCore, wood, silicone, c. 1983.  Philadelphia Museum of Art:  Gift of Marion Stroud Swingle, 2008.
   

Fish Forms: Lamps by Frank Gehry

August 29 - October 31, 2010

By JoAnn Greco

Although fish have Christian connotations in art history, architect Frank Gehry — born Frank Goldberg — has long taken inspiration from the form. Growing up Jewish in Toronto, he'd shop with his grandmother for the carp that she'd later turn into gefilte fish. And notwithstanding the fact that he's since discounted that anecdote, it makes for a tidy, if ironic, explanation for the fascination that the fluid swoop and textured scales have held for him.

It's those characteristics — the zen-like continuity and the organic curve — that eventually were to show up again and again in Gehry's increasingly deconstructed buildings. Fish embodied his desire to create motion in architecture, he's said; they represented, too, a perfection of form that he could never realize in buildings. (One look at some of those structures, with their disregard for pesky details like walls and front doors, serves as confirmation!)

"It was by accident that I got into the fish image," he's said. "My colleagues were starting to replay Greek temples. Y'know in the post-modern thing . . . . that was hot, everybody was re-doing the past. I said, if you want to go back, if you're insecure about going forward, dammit, go back three hundred million years. Why are you stopping at the Greeks? So I started drawing fish in my sketchbook. And then I started to realize that there was something in it." 

His love for the form also appeared in the thirty or so "fish lamps" — crafted of glass, silicone, and wood — that he created in the mid-1980s, eight of which on view here. Brilliantly white, these odd creatures take to their adapted luminous use like, well, fish to water. While certainly functional, they resemble sculptures more than anything else. And like much of Gehry's work they stem from experimentation, in this case a competition held by the Formica Company to that asked designers to illustrate the properties of a new material called Colorcore. This fascinating exhibit takes a little known part of Gehry's lengthy career and finds in it a wellspring that has gone on to define much of his work. 

For more information please visit: thejewishmuseum.org

Exhibitions Wilmington. Modern Morphism: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture. The Delaware Museum of Art. The Curated Object

Jumping Dog, 2008, Melody Ellis, Earthenware, slips and glazes, steel, 7 1/2 x 3 1/2 x 8 inches, courtesy of the artist

Unspoken Series: Maybe, 2010, Peggy Fowler, Stained porcelain, stoneware, cone 6, 3 1/2 x 5 x 2 1/4 inches, Courtesy of the artist, photograph by Pamela Theis

LURE (albiflora), 2010, Leigh Taylor Mickelson, Porcelain, glaze, under glaze, steel, 69 x 15 x 15 inches, courtesy of the artist

 

Modern Morphism:  Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture

August 7, 2010 – October 3, 2010

Part of the Museum’s Outlooks Exhibition Series, the Delaware Art Museum presents Modern Morphism: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture. This exhibition encourages viewers to explore the interconnectedness of art and nature. Clay was sculpted into forms based in nature, and then further transformed by the artists’ imagination into something unreal. The works can be organized into the following groups: anthropomorphism (imbuing the form of an animal or inanimate object with human features or behaviors), biomorphism (having a nonrepresentational form or pattern that resembles a living organism), and rhizomorphism (comprising a root-like structure). This exhibition includes 18 works by 13 artists drawn primarily from the region. The guest curator is Jacqueline Jrolf.

Sponsors: This exhibition is made possible, in part, by grants from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.This exhibition is supported, in part, by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

About the Outlooks Exhibition Series

Modern Morphism:  Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture is part of the Delaware Art Museum’s Outlooks Exhibition Series, which encourages community involvement in the creation of exhibitions that will be hosted by the Museum.  The Delaware Art Museum accepts proposals for Outlooks exhibitions from organizations, community groups, and residents of our surrounding area, contributing to the Museum’s mission of providing an inclusive and essential community resource.  All Outlooks exhibitions are displayed in the Ammon Galleries on the Museum’s second floor.  

For more information, please visit The Delaware Museum of Art