Yet more on suspended pieces. Damián Ortega, a Mexican-born artist working in Berlin, creates a number of suspended works.
While Ortega's career was launched with deconstructed vehicles that are then rebuilt in mid-air, "Cosmic Thing", the exploded VW that made it to the Venice Biennale in 2003 looks little more than an instruction manual drawing, despite its underlying critical view of the nagging legacy of the Beetle.
On the other hand, the elegant "Materialista" (2008) is a 24-foot (6 m) constellation of the chrome parts of a tractor trailer. The name derives from the term used for trucks transporting cement and other heavy construction materials; the clean, crisp chrome and glass components of the truck actively combat the weight of its imagined contents. Leeji Choi wrote of it in 2009: "this materialism is related not only with the power of matter and antimatter, but also with the logic of values in the art market where the value is attributed to the objects not always visible".
Some are more abstract works like "Champ de Vision", a suspended mosaic of 6,000 discs in translucent colors that can be ambled through, but from a distance, form an open eye. I'll write about this piece in another post.
"Controller of the Universe" (2009) is an assembly of used hand tools Ortega acquired at garage sales. It was installed at different locations and I can't tell from the various exhibition images if the installation was identical each time. In the photograph from the installation at the Cleveland Museum of Art through September 29, the work appears to be an explosion, frozen at a decisive moment, whereas the image above gives the impression of being able to walk through an onslaught of hardware repurposed as weapons. Both send stirring, if contrasting messages on the relationship between a builder and how/what is built and the society that plays the hinge pin between the two.
References:
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/damian-ortegas-incredible
http://www.clevelandart.org/events/exhibitions/damián-ortega
While Ortega's career was launched with deconstructed vehicles that are then rebuilt in mid-air, "Cosmic Thing", the exploded VW that made it to the Venice Biennale in 2003 looks little more than an instruction manual drawing, despite its underlying critical view of the nagging legacy of the Beetle. 
On the other hand, the elegant "Materialista" (2008) is a 24-foot (6 m) constellation of the chrome parts of a tractor trailer. The name derives from the term used for trucks transporting cement and other heavy construction materials; the clean, crisp chrome and glass components of the truck actively combat the weight of its imagined contents. Leeji Choi wrote of it in 2009: "this materialism is related not only with the power of matter and antimatter, but also with the logic of values in the art market where the value is attributed to the objects not always visible".Some are more abstract works like "Champ de Vision", a suspended mosaic of 6,000 discs in translucent colors that can be ambled through, but from a distance, form an open eye. I'll write about this piece in another post.
"Controller of the Universe" (2009) is an assembly of used hand tools Ortega acquired at garage sales. It was installed at different locations and I can't tell from the various exhibition images if the installation was identical each time. In the photograph from the installation at the Cleveland Museum of Art through September 29, the work appears to be an explosion, frozen at a decisive moment, whereas the image above gives the impression of being able to walk through an onslaught of hardware repurposed as weapons. Both send stirring, if contrasting messages on the relationship between a builder and how/what is built and the society that plays the hinge pin between the two.References:
http://www.clevelandart.org/events/exhibitions/damián-ortega
Kool...
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