Obsessions in Art: the accumulators.

3:06 p.m.

The city of Buenos Aires is hectic these days due to the invasion of Yayoi Kusama's dots and repetitions. Let's meet other artists that make art with accumulation...
One of those is Sarah Sze (USA, 1969) who builds intricate installations and sculptures with daily life objects. As a patchwork, her compositions reflect the improvisation needed in very usual situations: when something breaks, we usually fix it with whatever we have in hand...

Triple Point 2013, by Sarah Sze
Venice Biennale - United States Pavillion

The artists uses objects we all know and groups and connects them in obsessive order.

Triple Point 2013, by Sarah Sze
Venice Biennale - United States Pavillion

All the works shown here belong to United States Pavillion at Venice Biennale. Each room presents a different on-site installation. The term to name them all was taken from thermo-dinamycs: triple point refers to a certain combination of temperature and pressure in which all three states of matter (solid, liquid, gas) exist in equilibrium.

Triple Point 2013, by Sarah Sze

Venice Biennale - United States Pavillion

Another accumulator is photographer Todd McLellan (Canada,1967), who disassembles objects and then puts all the pieces in order with obsessive tidiness. A 3D object, as for example a bike, a piano or a photo camera, becomes a surprising array of pieces on a canvas.

1980 Raleigh bike, by Todd McMellan
893 components

McLellan skill for composition is what makes those tiny rows of components so harmonious.

Sony Digital SLR Camera, by Todd McMellan (2012)
580 components.

These images show the respect and admiration the artist has towards all those persons who take part in the production and assembly of the objects we use every day, in a time when everything is quickly tossed away and replaced.

Gerhard Heintzman 1912 Upright Piano, by Todd McMellan
1842 components.

Speaking of accumulation and obsessive detailing, Argentine art also has a splendid example: Cándido López.

Vista interior de Curuzú, mirado de aguas arriba, by Cándido López (1891)

MNBA

López depicted, right from the battlefield, Paraguay's war with extreme details. This soldier-painter "chronicled" a historic event and reproduced it with precision. He wasn't aiming at a perfect visual image of what was happening but at a visual idea of reality. He decided to portray the military exercise of all the Argentine Armed Forces in a specific time: the collective achievement rather than individual heroes.