reviews MIRCEA CANTOR
MirceA cAntor:
A Free sMile
Rosace (detail), 2007, plexiglas,
YvON LA MbERT, NEw YORk
soda cans, 400 cm (diameter). © the
artist. Courtesy the artist and Yvon
6 SEpTEM bER – 1 OCTObER Lambert, paris & New York
The gallery lights seemed dim when I first saw Rosace (all works 2007), the form of a string of barbed wire lined along one of the gallery’s walls. And
centrepiece of the new show by the Paris-based Romanian artist Mircea finally, in the exhibition’s title piece, With a Free Smile, all light is extinguished
Cantor. That seemed strange, given that the sculpture is a reinvention with a hollow laugh: lying on the floor is a ruddy, waxen terracotta coffin
of the medieval rose window; and also alarming, since, at a distance, with a little slot at its centre for visitors to make a donation. Minutes into the
its surface appears to be petalled with lightbulbs. I was reminded of the show’s opening, one satisfied reveller had already donated a dollar.
Paris audience who attended Relâche, in 1924, at which Picabia installed a Cantor has recently spoken of his frustration with the market’s
blinding backdrop of lightbulbs and reflective discs. In fact, I was quite safe, demands for continual novelty – for new shows with new work. He has said
as Cantor’s window is a lightless husk: the circles that I thought were bulbs that he prefers to see his work growing rather than accumulating, with new
are actually the dull curving bases of soda cans; the colour of the window’s pieces perhaps changing the status of the old, and new shows offering
petals comes from the singing hues of the logos blazoned on the sides of opportunities to set out new contexts. It’s an approach deployed to great
the cans, which have been laboriously cut down for the purpose. effect by Ugo Rondinone. Well, unfortunately, when you enjoy exposure in
There is no emphatic unity of theme or media in Cantor’s show, a major commercial gallery, you have to play by the rules, and so all works
but one can trace out unifying threads. If absence of light is the concern in here are indeed new. Nevertheless, there is a quality of disconnection
Rosace, it is also the subject of the artist’s 16mm film, Shadow for a While, between the works which suggests that Cantor may simply be adding to
which depicts the shadow thrown on the ground by a burning flag: the his inventory. There is the interplay of darkness and light, perhaps of death
ground is a featureless bleached foil for the flag, which looms up like a and resurrection, but the works don’t bind to create a unified mood, instead
smoking graphic. Smoke is also the medium for the written words ‘cielo swinging between the mordantly comic and the stern and severe. The show,
variable’ in the eponymous text piece that Cantor has installed above the then, is disappointing, even if the work is intriguing, but one looks forward
gallery’s entrance. Inky fingerprints have created Chaplet, which takes the to seeing Cantor exhibiting again on different terms. Morgan Falconer
201 Artreview
November_REVIEWS.indd 201 26/9/07 13:40:58
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