Ishan Clemenco - Squarecylinder.com – Art Reviews | Art Museums

Ishan Clemenco, “n.T. calipers: [A T O M I C F I E L D: HIROSHIMA/NAGASAKI 1945/2025] 2025 To the People of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” carbon steel student calipers, adapted Starrett adjustable leg caliper, found aluminum straps, 3 U. S.- issue red 5 gallon gasoline canisters, steel plates, vintage aluminum blue flight case, vintage yellow iron workers tool box, stainless steel rod, brass rod, metal tubing, concrete floor anchors, shaft collars, found maple mop handle yahazu, vintage “three-in-one” wall holder, dimensions variable. All images courtesy of the artist. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick.

by S. Anne Steinberg
Continuing through November 1, 2025

With each piece Ishan Clemenco presents in his exhibition titled “Calipers,” ideas fly. So much so that the number of works (six of them) can be matched with an equal number of themes. Far from being self-absorbed or inaccessible, the artist’s works are forthright, in conversation with each other and with the work of predecessors. Plus, the exhibition is a visual delight.

Ishan Clemenco, “n.T. [piano: transverse chalk-line extension: 6 lines; irgazine yellow/turquoise/titanium white] 1998/2025 for Terry Fox (1943-2008),” de-constructed baby grand piano, old hardwood card table, vintage Strait-Line chalk-lines, hand ground pigment, stainless steel pipe, galvanized brackets, 58 x 146 x 59”. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick.

The show’s most obvious theme is re-purposing the tools of war into not just domestic tools (“plowshares”), but art. In the exhibition’s most prominent work, three Jerry cans (iconic red fuel or water containers adapted during World War II by the US military from a German design) form the central visual element. The cans, a vintage yellow toolbox and a repurposed blue flight case each have been fitted with metal rods extending to an overhead “I” beam. Suspended around the rods are varying arrangements of calipers, measurement tools whose original purpose was to assess bullet size, as reflected in their name, a variation on caliber.

Touch a rod and its corresponding calipers fall, whirling, back and forth, then around. Simultaneously a low, ominous sound is heard, courtesy of the cans which act as resonators. Although Clemenco suggests that the swirling calipers echo the flapping wings of cranes, they more closely resemble helicopter blades. Because the calipers’ journey is short, and, after they fall, they must be returned to the ceiling with a special tool, the piece doesn’t seriously function as music. Still, the work’s intellectual intricacy is a pleasure.

Ishan Clemenco, “n.T. [blue sky: chalk-line wall drawing: 2 lines; titanium white] 2025 for Blinky Palermo (1943-1977),” house paint, chalk, on wall, 88 x 452”. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick.

A second work consists of International Air Force emblems arranged in asymmetric clumps of five or six, another war-to-art re-purposing. For a third work, a long rectangular swath of wall has been painted a wonderful sky blue. Two closely spaced vertical chalk lines are asymmetrically placed on the blue field. Whereas the lines are perfectly straight, they are also smudged; the whole and the broken, seen together.

A 4-minute video loop titled “n.T. [toy globe: vapour trails…Hiroshima/ Nagasaki] 2018 ‘for Nanao Sakaki (1923-2025)’” is shown on an iPhone ensconced in a wooden wall-mounted box. The video shows incense smoke emerging from two holes drilled into a toy globe where Hiroshima and Nagasaki are indicated. The world was and still is on fire, but the video is strangely peaceful. Two lines of smoke dance in intricate but messy swirls, fast at first, then slow. The video’s ambiguity leaves us room to remember the events of eighty years ago, and to ponder the lessons we might learn from those events.

Ishan Clemenco, “n.T. [toy globe: vapour trails…Hiroshima/ Nagasaki] 2018 ‘for Nanao Sakaki (1923-2025)’”.

In an adjacent room, we see a grand piano has been relieved of its legs and cover, turned on its side and attached via six colored threads to the top of an old card table, also on its side. The antiquity of the piano, with its stained keyboard, and the table, with its battered surface, brings time to the fore. What have these objects been witness to? The piece also plays with lines: the strings of the piano, the asymmetrically colored threads, the stripe-y embellishments on the table. The worn imperfection of the materials, caused by time, lends the piece its gravitas.

The final work here consists of a Venetian doorbell that is wired to activate tractor brake lights mounted around the corner. The gallery text suggests that we try using the apparatus to signal “No War” in Morse code. In this piece, the by-now familiar re-purposing of materials leads to the juxtaposition of elements from the usually separate spheres of home and work, producing a Surrealist frisson.