Mark Leary's Kandinsky-Inspired Mobile Series @ The Milwaukee Museum of Art
I’m honored (and excited) to announce the Milwaukee Museum of Art invited me to create a series of “inspired by” mobiles to celebrate its upcoming Kandinsky retrospective.
Running from June 5 to September 1, the exhibition is a
grand tour of Wassily Kandinsky’s lifetime of creativity — showcasing over 130 of his finest
pieces from the Centre Pompidou,
Paris, and the Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley Collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Spanning his time in
Der Blaue Reiter, Russia, and the Bauhaus, the
works I chose to explore range from oil to watercolor to color lithographs:
Simple (Einfach), 1916
Small
Worlds II (Kleine Welten II), 1922
Violet (Violett), 1923
Thirteen
Rectangles (13 Rechtecke), 1930
Fragment
I for Composition VII (Center), 1913
Squares with
Concentric Circles, 1913
As you can see in the images below, the depth, dimension,
and extraordinary movement found in each of the originals is truly exceptional …
naturally inviting a 3D interpretation.
After sitting with each piece of artwork, the mobile designs
seemed to emerge one by one from the images … as if they’d been there all along.
Then, using a variety of subtle (and not-so-subtle in the case of Squircles) painting techniques, I was able to transform the flat surfaces of the
mobile blades into textured layers reading more like paper or canvas than
metal (can't really see this nuance in the small-ish attached images).
If
you are in the Milwaukee area this summer, I highly encourage you to check out
the exhibition and experience Kandinsky’s genius for yourself. And, if you do,
be sure to visit the outstanding Museum Store to see my mobiles for yourself (before they’re gone, of course).
Thanks
again to the MAM for this amazing opportunity to celebrate such an important and
inspiring artist.
