Willie Cole - beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary

Willie Cole
Willie Cole (American, born 1955) is best known for assembling and transforming ordinary domestic and
used objects such as irons, ironing boards, high-heeled shoes, hair dryers, bicycle parts, and recycled
plastic water bottles into imaginative and powerful works of art and installations.
Cole’s widely recurring symbolic and artistic object that was initially brought to the attention of the art
world in the 1980s has been the steam iron. His unique approach of imprinting the steam iron’s marks on
a variety of media result in a wide-ranging decorative potential of his scorchings, to be viewed as a
reference to his African American heritage. Through the repetitive use of single objects in multiples, Cole’s
assembled sculptures acquire a transcending and renewed metaphorical meaning, or become a critique
of our consumer culture. Cole’s work combines references and appropriation ranging from African and
African American imagery, to Dada’s readymades and Surrealism’s transformed objects.
Willie Cole’s first Museum solo exhibition was 1998 at MoMA New York, and today his work is in the
permanent collections of over 70 US Museums, including the Museum of Modern Art MoMA; the
Whitney Museum of American Art; the Guggenheim Museum; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York; among others.
At ARCO, beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary will present a selection of new shoe sculptures, as
well as an important large scale Bronze, titled The Worrier, and Gas Snake Studies, a rare ca. 1995
Polaroid-based collage and drawing, commenting on our society’s dependence on oil, and a unique glass
and photograph work, Spirit of the Mask (image above), using his iconic iron-shaped imagery in the form
of sand blasted glass, revealing the artist’s portrait similar to an African mask, and commenting on his
ancestry, having been brought over from Africa to the Americas as a slave.
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
!2
Bronx Bambi
2015
shoes, nylon thread, stainless steel wire, screws
ca. 56 by 43 by 28 cm (ca. 22 by 17 by 11 in.)
Goldylicks
2015
shoes, nylon thread, stainless steel wire, screws
ca. 43 by 38,8 by 21 cm (ca. 17 by 15.25 by 8.25 in.)
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
!3
Pussycat
2015
shoes, nylon thread, stainless steel wire, screws
dims N/A
The Worrier
2015
Bronze
pictured is #2/5 (dark brown) from an edition of 5+1AP
(each bronze in a different and unique patina / color combination or finish)
ca. 96 by 37,5 by 51,5 cm (ca. 37.75 by 14.75 by 20.25 in.)
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
!4
The Worrier
2015
Bronze
pictured is #3/5 (polished/bronze) from an edition of 5+1AP
(each bronze in a different and unique patina / color combination or finish)
ca. 96 by 37,5 by 51,5 cm (ca. 37.75 by 14.75 by 20.25 in.)
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
!5
Spirit of The Mask I
Spirit of the Mask II
2015
sand blasted glass panels, photographs, wooden shelf
ca. 35,5 by 61 by 10 cm (ca. 14 by 24 by 4 in.)
This new work is a unique version of the 1998 work GE Mask and Scarification shown hereunder, which
was on the front and back cover of the 1998 publication “Anxious Objects: Willie Cole’s Favorite Brands”
GE Mask and Scarification, 1998
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
cover of Anxious Objects: Willie Cole’s Favorite Brands
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
!6
MBF (Man’s Best Friend) III
2014
shoes, nylon thread, stainless steel wire, screws
ca. 53,3 H by 49,5 by 19 cm (ca. 21 H by 19.5 by 7.5 in.)
MBF (Man’s Best Friend) IV
2014
shoes, nylon thread, stainless steel wire, screws
ca. 43,1 H by 38,1 by 55,8 cm (ca. 17 H by 15 by 22in.)
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
!7
Gas Snake Studies
ca. 1995
Polaroid photographs, and felt-tip ink marker on watercolor paper,
three sections, framed together
overall framed dims ca. 30 by 42 cm (ca. 12 by 16.25 in.)
reproduced in the following publications:
Anxious Objects: Willie Cole’s Favorite Brands, 1998
and
Complex Conversations: Willie Cole Sculptures and Wall Works, 2012
beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary
ARCO Madrid 2016 Stand 9D11
!8