About
George and Jørgen are pleased to present the first London exhibition of the work of American
sculptor Will Corwin. Corwin produces site-specific sculptures that play with the architecture they inhabit, while also combining a poetic historical narrative redolent of Kiefer combined with a pure abstract aesthetic reminiscent of Nicholson in St. Ives and Twombly in Rome. For this exhibition, he will create two structures within the gallery, one a diorama entitled "Diet of Worms, Part 2" and the second a shelving piece based on the Last Judgment mosaic in the Cathedral of St. Maria Assunta in Torcello, and will also exhibit several smaller shrine pieces and drawings.
Corwin's recent "Diet of Worms" installation at the Hudson Guild Gallery in New York played with the idea of a diorama/viewing box that stringently forced the spectator into a series of prescribed picturesque/dystopian views, vaguely similar to a Capability Brown garden or a 19th century light box show. Greg Volk wrote in a review, "Corwin's structure is wilfully awkward, uncomfortable, and ungainly and it forces one to scrunch down or contort oneself in order to peer through the peepholes. Yet this experience reveals sophisticated, oftentimes riveting, views which tend to scramble one's orientation and apprehension. At all points Corwin's meticulous arrangement of materials in a restricted space seems peculiarly expansive, embracing cycles of aspiration and failure, regeneration and decay." Corwin's less claustrophobic "Library" sculptures, pieces that play with the idea of hidden spaces as well as "sculpture as furniture," often tantalize the viewer with a wealth of visual information, yet tease the viewer more with what is not shown. Max Weintraub wrote of the work, "Corwin's cluttered collection of stacked tablets tease the visitor with only partial views of their colourfully illuminated surfaces. As such, our experience of the work quickly devolves into a playful exercise inand ultimately a meditation onunfulfilled spectatorial desire, as the contents of the shelved tomes remains elusive, and our attempts to salvage meaning from them are thwarted at every turn."
Will Corwin has shown at numerous alternative spaces in the New York area--he started with a series of regular shows from 1998-2005 at the LaMama Gallery (the visual arts branch of the famed LaMama etc. Theater), and has worked with The Theater for the New City, chashama, Gallery Aferro, The Flushing Town Hall (a Smithsonian Affiliate), The Hudson Guild and The Michael Steinberg Gallery. Internationally he has exhibited at The Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, The Taipei Artists Village, Taiwan, Kunstlerhaus FRISE, Hamburg, and currently has an online Drawing Residency at The Centre For Recent Drawing, in London. He is in the collections of Mr. Robin Vousden, Kimberly and Stephen Quinn, Mayor of London Boris Johnson, and Zubin Mehta, Alanna Heiss and James Al Fayed in New York. He is slated to do a project with the Clocktower Gallery in New York in 2011-12, which most recently had an exhibition of the work of James Franco.
