January 3–10: Screening of ‘Large Scale Projects: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’
To coincide with the final week of the gallery’s exhibition of work by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, stream the 1992 film by Lana Jokel and Nicholas Doob, examining the artists’ creative partnership.
Lana Jokel and Nicholas Doob, Large Scale Projects: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, 1992, color, 56 min.
He’s reserved and quietly driven; she’s energetic and outspoken. Together they explore the mystery and power of everyday objects by changing their sizes, shapes and textures in surprising and unsettling ways. Jokel and Doob’s film “Large Scale Projects: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen” shows various works from conception to installation including “Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels” in Miami, “Spoonbridge and Cherry” in Minneapolis, “Knifeship” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and “Binocular Building” in Venice, California.
Learn more about filmmaker Lana Jokel here.
The screening of Large Scale Projects: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen coincides with Paula Cooper Gallery’s exhibition of work by Oldenburg and van Bruggen titled “There is no such thing as a perfect lamb chop.” On view through Sunday, January 9, 2021, the presentation marks the inauguration of the gallery’s new seasonal pop-up in Palm Beach at 243A Worth Avenue.
The artists first began their working partnership in 1976 and, over the course of the next three decades, produced an extensive body of drawings, sculptures, and public commissions. The gallery’s exhibition includes examples from these important collaborative years, as well as works by Oldenburg made before their meeting and after van Bruggen’s passing in 2009. With a focus on the artists' representations of food, sport, music, and other articles of pleasure, the selection celebrates the vibrant life of Palm Beach and the surrounding area. These striking images reinvent quotidian objects, using line and form to playfully merge natural elements with the irreverent and the fantastical.
Many of the exhibited works relate to the artists’ monumental public sculptures—such as their 1988 drawing of a broken bowl out of which orange slices and expressively cut peels appear to tumble and bounce off the ground. As seen in Jokel and Doob’s documentary, this anti-hierarchical form was their proposal for a public commission in Metro-Dade Open Space Park in Miami—a response to the eclectic architecture of the site where the finished sculpture still stands today. In the film, Oldenburg explains: “When you look closer at the sculpture you discover that the chaos of the sculpture is actually very organized unlike the chaos around it […] which is what sculpture is supposed to do—it’s supposed to do something constructive about the unpredictable surroundings that you find in the city.”
Also on view in the exhibition is a drawing study for the artists’ outdoor sculpture Plantoir—a monumental garden trowel with editions installed in Parque de Serralves in Porto, Portgual; Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, MI; and downtown in the capital city of Des Moines, IA. Another work, a scattered pyramid of ripe pears and peaches, is a 2001 model of their celebrated large-scale work in the collection of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta titled Balzac Pétanque. By creating a small disturbance in the form of toppled fruit, Oldenburg and van Bruggen invite viewers to discover the links between object, environment, and memory. Oldenburg explains in the film: “One thing will pick up another thing and that brings a kind of harmony, or echoes through the landscape […] Our work is full of suggestions, and what we hope is that people pick up suggestions and make them into their own ideas, and develop them. That way our work, when it’s placed into a particular place, acquires all kinds of meaning that we don’t even know about.”
Click here to explore the 360° VR Experience of “Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen: There is no such thing as a perfect lamb chop.”
Installation view, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen: There is no such thing as a perfect lamb chop, Paula Cooper Gallery, 243A Worth Avenue, Palm Beach, FL, December 5, 2020 – January 9, 2021. Photo: Zachary Balber. Foreground artwork: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Scattered Pyramid of Pears and Peaches – Balzac/Pétanque, Model, 2001, polyurethane foam, hardware cloth, canvas; coated with resin and painted with latex, variable height on area, 53 1/2 x 89 inches.
Images: © Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.