Artist:
Jill Magid (born 1973 in Bridgeport, CT, USA; lives and works in New York City, USA).
Materials:
Oil on hardboard.
Description:
“In Homage Magid considers the eschewal of intellectual property rights in favor of sharing. This concept is explored through the mutually respectful relationship between the Bauhaus modernist Josef Albers and Mexico’s pre-eminent modernist architect Luis Barragán who were both especially renowned for their use of colour. The title of the exhibition borrows from Albers’ famous painting series, Homage to a Square, whilst considering Barragán’s particular homage to Albers — his ownership of two unlicensed reproductions of Albers’ works. Allegedly bought for just a dollar each from a strip mall in the United States, these cheap reproductions printed on fabric differ substantially from the original oil paintings which they purport to be. Yet it is a commonly held myth that Barragán displayed two original Josef Albers’ paintings in his house and photographs depicting one of these reproductions hung above the table in the architect’s living room have become iconic. Such was Albers’ admiration for Barragán that rather than disapproving he was said to be pleased.”
—”Jill Magid: Homage,” RaebervonStenglin website, 2014.
“In this group of works—by the time of his death, Albers had created more than a thousand of them—the artist used a reduced geometric compositional scheme as a basis for testing the interplay of individual colors. On their backs, Albers wrote meticulous notes about their technical details, such as the works’ dimensions and the oil paints that were applied unmixed. Taking this information, Magid has created 12 paintings of her own in accordance with Albers’ parameters. Her titles, such as Homage to the Square, 1963, After Josef Albers (2014), refer directly to the works’ templates. In a second series – exhibition catalogues hung on the wall, open to show the same works framed by Magid – another layer of representation is added. These pieces are hung like the paintings, suggesting equivalence, but direct comparison with the painted duplicates – which diverge in some ways from the originals despite their identical coloring – is avoided through the precise arrangement of the works spread over two rooms. Magid’s appropriation-based approach may initially come across as a tribute—a literal homage—but she situates this within a larger, far more complicated context: in the ongoing project The Barragán Archives, which she began in 2012, Magid explores the reception of Luis Barragán (1902–88), a pioneer of Mexican modernist architecture.”
—Anna Francke, “Review: Jill Magid at RaebervonStenglin,” Frieze, August 23, 2014.
