January 13, 2006
A good idea takes root a second time
Top: Zoe Leonard, Tree, 1997. Two installation views at Paula Cooper Gallery. (Photo: ArtSeenSoho.com) Bottom: Anya Gallacio, One Art, 2006. Installation view at SculptureCenter. (Photo: G. Paul Burnett/the New York Times)
Though the exhibition took place before I came to New York, images of Zoe Leonard's 1997 show at Paula Cooper's gallery have left an indelible impression on my mind. Now London-based artist Anya Gallacio has recapitulated the idea (albeit on a larger scale) in an exhibition that just opened at SculptureCenter in Long Island City. One can't assume that Gallacio knew of Leonard's work before conceiving her own, but the resemblance is even more uncanny than those "copies" that do raise hackles among art world cognoscenti, which makes it all the more surprising that neither Ken Johnson, in his otherwise thoughtful review of Gallacio's exhibition in today's Times, nor the SculptureCenter employee I spoke with last Friday knew of Leonard's project. I'll admit that Leonard is known more for her photographs than her sculptures, but has this (seemingly spectacular) '97 sculpture sunk from collective memory? (Holland Cotter did mention in in two Times "Art Guide" columns in September of that year.) It would seem to me a shame, as it has always held a prominent place on my "shows I wish I had seen" list.