Nada House Cole Lu, Littlewhitehead Governors Island, New York
Installation views
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Press release (ENG)
NIR ALTMAN is proud to present a two-person presentation by Cole Lu and littlewhitehead for NADA House 2021. The project features a large sculpture and two wall pieces by Cole Lu, a painting and two sculptures by littlewhitehead.
Cole Lu's freestanding centerpiece is composed of a burnt wood door with a half-buried 30th Anniversary of First Man in Space aluminum medal, made from metals flown on board from a Soyuz TM spacecraft. Lu's work questions the private/cosmos space and its temporal conditions, transforming the space into a portal to a dimension where fiction intertwines with the historical artifacts. Two carefully engraved mahogany mirrors depict a cautionary tale of a long history of collective amnesia against apartheid.
littlewhitehead’s sculpture resemble 13th century Chinese cong vases, vases that were themselves imitations of neolithic jade cong. Structurally fractured, they house wilting anthropomorphic brass plants, sugar spilling through the cracks and gathering like drifting snow. The reimagining of artefacts continues in littlewhitehead’s accompanying painting Rain Trace. A screenshot of a Shin-hanga woodblock print was manipulated in photo editing software, the resultant image broken down into layers and turned into codes that control a CNC airbrush which in turn paints the distorted image.
The presentation by Cole Lu and littlewhitehead in the colonial revival architecture surroundings negotiate the sentiments of private and public, historical and personal temporalities.---
Cole Lu (b. 1984, Taipei, Taiwan) is an artist and writer based in New York. His work is an active engagement of shifting and reframing the value and worth of what is subject to Others. His work has been exhibited at The Drawing Center (New York), Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Contemporary Art Museum (St. Louis), and La Casa Encendida (Madrid). His writing has appeared in Coffee House Press (Minneapolis), WONDER (New York), and The Seventh Wave (New York). His publication Smells Like Content (Endless Editions, 2015) is in the artists’ book collection of the MoMA Library, New York. littlewhitehead (Craig Little, b.1980 Glasgow, Blake Whitehead, b. 1985 Lanark) make installations composed of handmade work. They begin by creating versions of things that already exist, though this is never replication, but rather the process of taking a borrowed form to the point where it becomes derelict or devoid of function. By making various subverted objects simultaneously, they look to find connections between things that enable them to recombine the recognisable in unexpected and more meaningful ways. These sculpture are the palette from which they compose spaces: multi-layered landscapes that hint at ambiguous moments beyond technology.
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Works
Cole Lu - This is no small matter. Who gets to be the narrator is neither a simplistic nor an arbitrary decision. He lives in days he mistreats Time while he keeps asking for its rescue. (First Pylon) Burnt pine, aluminum from Soyuz TM 80 x 78 x 20 inches 2021 
Littlewhitehead - Dead leaves lie, Glazed porcelain, brass, sugar, 8.5 x 8.5 x 20 in, 2019 
Cole Lu - And there is us, we who look at the ruins and genuinely believe that civilizing mission was buried in them forever, we who see our memory fading and act as if we have cause for hope anew, as if we truly believed that it belongs to only one time and only one country, we who overlook what's happening around us and do not hear that the cry never falls silent. (Sleep) Drexel-Heritage Bishopsgate oak mirror, glass each mirror: 49 x 20 x 1 1/2 inches 2021 
Littlewhitehead - Rain trace, Acrylic on canvas, 35.5 x 29.5 in, 2021