Uri Aran zero point everything at Sadie Coles HQ Bury Street May 8th – June 15th

Uri Aran uses material as a way to form a poem. The title Zero Point Everything makes me feel like the mindset of the artist is that there is no point in anything If it is not poetic. Also, these works are about everything.

A peach frozen in time, protected from aging. Googly eyes stuck to ceramics that are reminiscent of being a child. Whilst the materials may evoke memories, we are also aware that they are pure material at the same time. The first thing that struck me when I walked into the gallery was two fairly large works on paper, in red pastel maybe. These quite dramatic and expressive drawings seemed to display a different energy to the more still sculptures on the table in front of them. I liked this contrast in scale and speed. Maybe the sculptures were not necessarily made with a slow approach, but the way they were sat down, lying on the table made them more mellow.

When you go downstairs in the exhibition you find a wall of many sketches, hung by small black bulldog clips and clear plastic push pins. Some may be inclined to perceive some of this work as a kind of disapproval of the art world. The use of non “art” materials, is a craftier way of hanging. But it is not pure craft language it is complex and intertwined with painting and drawing. The mixed use of material is not supposed to bring us into a certain world though, as the premise of this work is that there IS no point. The materials may happen to come from a particular place but now they are just matter. Mater-ial.

A shiny thing complimenting a rough thing in just the right balance. A piece of lace perfectly adorned with a squished ceramic. I love squished things. To feel the artists had made the perfect move at the perfect moment. But the cookies, made me feel uneasy. The turtle food lined up on the outside of the gallery perfectly random, but completely uninterpretable, almost like a joke. Yet I get the sense that the artist is content with making people feel uneasy and isolated. Because there is zero point.

The childlike element is important, as there are some references to childhood.  I feel as if there is a distinction between childhood and not childlike. A yearbook? A child’s passport photo, googly eyes. Childlike play suggests a complete surrender, whereas Uri a seasoned artist can surrender just the right amount, not letting the jug spill over, but slanting it at just the right angle. It is a matter of touch and sensitivity to material. What may be the sweetest colours, a peach on a table, wrapped in wax? Buttons, lace, and a childhood photo can also quickly turn unnerving. I got a big sense of childhood being pure and sweet, peachy, and at the same time dirty, scratchy, messy, and fragile.

Not only are we treated with contrasts in liquidity and dryness, but I also adore seeing different scales of mark; For example, a big wire arch performing as a thick swooping line, rough grainy intaglio paint marks, delicate pencil marks scratched into ceramics. The materials are like daily interventions, objects have been sucked together, pulled from across the room, and conjoined themselves by divine fate. A tear in a paper, a thick gloss of resin. Uri Aran’s work could also be described as a collage. Artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Rita Akerman come to mind. Rauschenberg for his freeness with materials being brought together onto one plane, and Rita Akerman with different speeds of line combined into a painting. Uri uses the gallery space as a plane perhaps more than the rectangle of a frame.

In the first room, there is a music stand, perhaps referencing some performances Uri has orchestrated in the past. This sensitivity to subtleties in material crossed over into the subtleties of movement in performers. Hanging from the music stand are curtain trimmings, cream silky balls that also feel a bit like eyeballs. It feels so fresh, not manipulated. The eyeballs are delicately placed onto the stand in such a way that you can imagine them rolling off the stand like notes dropping off of a sheet of music.

There is a work on paper that is printed with what looks like a yearbook page. The paper is layered with washes of colour, becoming no longer just images but a built-up weathered surface. Coming forward are circles of thick impasto paint. Kind of like how you would circle a job advert, quickly, rapidly, or cross out someone you don’t like. There is a juxtaposition between the freshness and newness of the thick white paint and the history of the photos and processes underneath. The paper is delicately hung with bulldog clips which, in relation to the other works on the wall feels more labored as the paper is heavier. There is something about the hanging that is saying “I am not a genius”

I am a restaurant….

A restaurant is where people come in and out of. Maybe we don’t notice everything that is behind the scenes but we keep going back to a place that leaves us with a feeling. A restaurant is about ambiance, just like Uri’s work is about the feeling of a room or a gallery space. A restaurant facilitates interactions. A restaurant also is fast-paced, and full of action, just like these works. Uri says I am a restaurant, a restaurant is humbler than the role of an artist. A restaurant can have prestige but in the end, there will always be dirty dishes ( or brushes).

I must not forget to mention the Lazy Boy armchair. This is represented in the form of a print, and also an old-school projector onto the wall. I have seen this in American movies where a dad is glued to the chair all day, stagnant, wearing down the animal skin over years and years, creasing it, folding it, grinding it down. This idea of stagnancy is scary, a stuckness. This is contrasted by the enigmatic drawings on thin paper. And the projector performing as still yet live.

Sadie Coles HQ’s press release discusses how the title of the show was inspired by the Roland Barthes book Writing Degree Zero (1953) describing the text as one that “….attempts neutrality, or a ‘zero degree’ of style, is still a product of its form.” I think this describes how important the materiality of the work is and that it is not forced, it is more spontaneous. When I was walking through the exhibition, I overheard people trying to “pick a favorite work”. This may sound snobbish because of course any way of viewing art is acceptable, but I think maybe this is what Uri would hate as it is Isolating a single work from an exhibition that is supposed to be a whole symphony. I think you can however isolate a moment. It might be an intersection where pen meets paper, a hidden moment of pencil under a ceramic glaze, the soft layer of skin of a peach laying atop some melted wax, the imprint of knuckles pushed into clay. These are the moments I hold on to; unforeseen moments, choreographed by happenstance, channeled through, and steered by the artist. I heard Uri speak in an artist talk where he said that people either love or hate his work. I love his exhibitions because they do not have a macho energy of claiming their power over the walls, instead they are open pockets.

I cannot explain how a piece of lace without context brings us to a certain feeling.  like how we are not thrown into a specific time or place, leaving it open to us. For me, I feel the material gives me a visceral reaction which I then associate with a memory. Just like a pencil mark on a ceramic, made permanent by a glaze is sort of like a tattoo, a marking on the object specific to a time and place the viewer would not know but can somehow Intuitively feel.