Illusions Diva Belleza y Felicidad Gallery, Buenas Aires (AR)

ILLUSIONS by Diva from October 14th to November 20th at Belleza y Felicidad gallery

CHRISTOPH RUCKHÄBERLE until 4.11. Kanton/Feuer Gallery LA (USA)

In addition to the new body of work exhibited at Kantor / Feuer Gallery a billboard of one of Ruckhäberle’s prints will be displayed on the roof of the gallery. The theme of billboards carries throughout the show. In one of the paintings, several figures are displayed and placed in front of a billboard. In others, the images in the prints included in the exhibition appear on the billboard in the painting. This provides continuity in the show where all things circle back into the primary idea.Christoph Ruckhäberle was born in 1972 in Pfaffenhofen, Germany. He received his MFA from Hochschule fur Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, Germany with professor Arno Rink. Ruckhäberle has had previous solo exhibitions at Zach Feuer Gallery, New York and Galerie Kleindienst, Leipzig. He has also been included in exhibitions at the Prague Biennial, MASS MoCA, the Cleveland Museum of Art and Museum der bildenden Kunste, Leipzig.

Liu Ye: Temptations

Sperone Westwater is pleased to announce the U.S. debut of the Chinese painter Liu Ye. Born in Beijing in 1964, Liu Ye studied industrial design and mural painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts before moving to Germany to pursue an MFA at the Fine Arts University in Berlin. His work has been exhibited extensively in China and Germany, and is well represented in the Uli Sigg Collection of contemporary Chinese art in Switzerland, but has never before been shown in North America. Sixteen new paintings will be on view in the artist’s first exhibition in New York.

Liu Ye’s lush canvases, painted in primary colors, reflect the "forbidden" imagery passed down from his father, who was a children's book author during the Cultural Revolution, when political censorship controlled all visual and written materials. Young girls with small bodies and large moon-like faces populate these paintings, schoolgirls dressed in matching green skirts and white blouses and sporting uniform haircuts, and slim, semi-nude women who carry whips which allude to a darker sexual truth behind their youthful façades. According to art historian Pi Li, “Liu Ye’s work implied the arrival of a new era concerned with invidualism and the self.” Indeed, in the mid-1990s, when Liu Ye returned from his studies in Europe, China was transitioning into a market economy and these changes manifested themselves in many ways, including increased artistic freedom and a general shift from collectivism to individualism. Liu Ye’s paintings reflect this changing national legacy with their myriad references to both popular "pulp noir" and classical Chinese landscape traditions. As a result, the richly atmospheric canvases seem nearly timeless, their pictorial language belonging simultaneously to the past, present and future.

Liu Ye spent most of the 1990s in Europe, first in Germany and then in Holland, where he spent time as an artist-in-residence. It was here that the artist first encountered works of art by Mondrian and Vermeer, two artists whose use of color, line and composition would inform Liu Ye’s own paintings throughout his career. The cast of characters in Liu Ye’s work often find themselves standing in front of a Mondrian painting, an object which the artist identifies as “a balanced, graceful and pure picture that projects a sense of serenity.” However, despite their cheery primary palette and varied art historical references, Liu Ye’s paintings have a darker undertone. In “Night,” a topless young girl sits ensconced in a sea of dark blue wearing only white underpants and one red shoe; in “Sword,” two identical young girls face each other across a blood red vista, each with dagger in hand. There is a strong sense of innocence lost in these paintings, no doubt the result of growing up in the throes of Mao’s China where childhood was controlled and often compromised.

The realities of his youth led Liu Ye to become fascinated with the imaginary world of fairy tales, and three works inspired by the stories of Hans Christian Andersen are included in the exhibition. “I have an equal passion towards both fairy tales and philosophy,” the artist has written. “Fairy tales are illusioned and sensational whereas philosophy is about strict and rational thinking. My paintings ramble between these two opponent spheres.” However, Liu Ye’s work is about more than simply the juxtaposition of east and west, history and national identity; indeed, the artist has found his own artistic idiom by presenting the obvious and mixing recognizable symbols and signs with elements of surprise, subversive humor, and absurdity.

Chenfei and Luohiu until 12.11 Tokyo Gallery , Beijing

Chenfei and Luohiu until 12.11 Tokyo Gallery , Beijing

Marcelo Pombo Ruth Benzacar Gallery, Buenos Aires (ARG)

Hay un verso en La Tempestad, de Shakespeare, que resume uno de los puntos centrales del budismo: “Estamos hechos de la materia de los sueños”. Para el Gran Vehículo o Mahayana (la corriente esotérica del budismo) el universo nos presenta continuamente formas, colores, olores, sonidos y sensaciones, pero detrás de esas apariencias no hay nada. El universo es ilusorio y vivir es soñar.
Muchos artistas produjeron sus obras a partir de esa creencia: detrás de las apariencias no hay nada. Pero las conclusiones que sacaron fueron múltiples y contradictorias: tan ricas como el arte. Entre esos artistas se encuentran los maestros del ukiyo-é o “pinturas del mundo flotante”. En el Japón del siglo XVII hablar de “mundo flotante” era la forma irónica de referirse al “mundo doloroso”, que era la expresión con la que se nombraba al plano terrenal, el del dolor, en el budismo. “El mundo flotante” es una reivindicación mundana de los efímeros placeres de la vida cotidiana.
A comienzos del siglo XIX, Katsushika Hokusai -el último gran maestro del ukiyo-é- quedó fascinado al descubrir la perspectiva en las primeras pinturas occidentales a las que tuvo acceso. Entonces comenzó a estudiar a los artistas franceses del siglo XVIII; en especial, Watteau y Fragonard. Ese descubrimiento de un arte totalmente diferente influirá en su obra, pero de una manera tan sutil que es casi invisible: sus grabados (como los de la serie “36 vistas del monte Fuji”) entremezclan genialmente la perspectiva occidental con la organización formal de la tradición pictórica japonesa. También su trazo se hace más abstracto y fluido, siguiendo las esfumaturas rococó de Fragonard.
Cumpliendo casi un círculo perfecto, sus grabados llegaron rápidamente a Occidente y fueron admirados por los impresionistas franceses. Desde entonces su influencia se hará sentir en ambos lados del mundo y su obra será citada por muchos: desde el Matisse de comienzos del siglo pasado hasta el Warhol de los 60. Y, más en espíritu que en estilo, está en las entrelíneas de las obras que Marcelo Pombo viene pintando desde hace unos años. Especialmente, en las que presenta en esta muestra.
Sin inspirarse directamente en los artistas del ukiyo-é, los cuadros de Pombo tienen cada vez más el sabor de la sabiduría del “mundo flotante”. En ellos se celebra la inevitable levedad de todo lo humano. Como un Hokusai de las pampas, Pombo devela que estar hechos de la materia de los sueños no es impedimento para gozar de la belleza. Y como en el caso de Hokusai, Pombo encuentra en los trazos esfumados de Fragonard el estímulo para dejarse llevar por el delirio de la forma.
En algunas de las leyendas budistas el mundo literalmente flota. Lo sólido se apoya y se desvanece en el agua, que a su vez se desvanece en el aire. Hay un chorrear de las iluminaciones que termina uniendo todo con todo. En esta serie de Pombo el agua y el aire aglutinan las imágenes, sostienen los paisajes, diluyen los fondos.
Hokusai fue de la imagen plana a la perspectiva. Pombo sugiere una perspectiva que se desvanece en puro plano frontal. Cada uno de sus cuadros es un fogonazo. Un disparo o una iluminación. No hay una historia que conocer o un secreto que develar sino un entregarse al goce de la forma, como en la Gran Ola, de Hokusai: ¿Importa saber en qué suelo se apoya el árbol que sostiene a los músicos? ¿De qué sueño proviene esa cabeza enjoyada? ¿Y esa trama de piedras que semejan una tela escocesa? El Bodhisatva feliz lo sabe. En el mundo acuático -en los pequeños placeres y dolores de la vida cotidiana- lo que importa es flotar.
En la obra de Pombo todo flota, todo fluye. Y algo se eleva: es el globo de mimbre, esa invitación estática al viaje psicodélico (por lo demás, un Pombo de pura cepa, que retoma la tradición de objetos que viene realizando desde los 80). Ese globo recargado de falsas joyas tan hermosas, ese globo es la más pura invitación a despegarse
del suelo, a fluir y flotar a la vez. A dejarse arrastrar por la vida. Ruth Benzacar Gallery

Catalina Estrada opening 19.10 Iguapop Gallery, Barcelona (ES)

Colombian artist Catalina Estrada shows her works in Iguapop Gallery, Barcelona. The show opens on the 19th of October.

Miriam Wania until 7.10 Berlin

At Galerie Lena Brüning, Berlin until 7.10.

Armen Eloyan until 14.10. GALERIE BOB VAN ORSOUW, Zurich (CH)

Armen Eloyan’s large-format impasto paintings, presented here in his first solo exhibition in Switzerland, have sinister, cryptic titles like Disaster and Bend Over. Though they are painted in dark colors, their dense content is always leavened by irony or wry humor. Familiar cartoon characters—Mickey Mouse, Pettersson and Findus, and a figure that looks like Scrooge McDuck—populate the canvases of this thirty-nine-year-old Armenian, who lives in Amsterdam and Zurich. These characters have ended up in very strange places, among them a dark field, where a demented Mickey tramples another character. It is a battlefield straight out of Goya; behind Mickey a white rabbit lies in its own blood, an arrow piercing its heart. There is also an oppressive interior, in which a leather-clad dominatrix bends over an anonymous figure lying on a bed. Though these bodies are often suggested by only a few brushstrokes, their corporeal presences and the thickly applied paint are very powerful. In contrast, other sections of the paintings—usually open windows or television screens—are painted thinly and somewhat brightly, like peepholes onto a more noble world. Eloyan loves a theatrical performance: Executing his paintings is a fiercely physical, intense act, and his figures always seem to be on stage, positioned according to the laws of classical perspective. The enigmatic details, hidden among the shadows of the display-cabinet curtains, reveal themselves only after two or three looks. Anna Schindler Artforum