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 cover of Anxious Objects: Willie Cole’s Favorite Brands

beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary 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