CULTURETV Gallery blog

The Art World, Feinkost, Berlin

2007-12-24T17:12:00.000-08:00

The Art World

Ad Reinhardt, Alan Phelan, Balthasar Burkhard, Ben Gavin, Charles Gute, Christian Jankowski, IRWIN, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Matthieu Laurette, Pablo Helguera, Rainer Ganahl, REP Group, SOSka Group, et al.

November 25 to January 10.

PATRICK HUGHES THE PRINTS IN BETWEEN until 17.11.07 Flowers Graphic, London

2007-10-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

The artist adopts a variety of different motifs in these works - stars, roses, rainbows, hearts, eggs, ghosts, phones, cocks, crosses and keyholes appear in various guises whilst themes of paradox and oxymoron remain a fixed preoccupation.

This exhibition features two rainbow prints - a recurring image in his work. In his use of the rainbow Patrick Hughes, was interested in making substance of an experience - something evanescent made permanent. With his opaque, fixed rainbow he continually approaches the idea of creating something tangible out of a chance happening. In Colour Process 1984, the rainbow curls into an early computer screen, and in Falling Blossom 1984, the confetti, already a paper confection of images of bows, bells, hearts and horseshoes, happens to fall into a rainbow arrangement. Stardust 1983 and Paper Roses 1985 (pictured above) use this same notion of solid light. This idea was first developed in Hughes' Sunshine 1974 in which a beam of solid yellow light pours itself as an object through a window.

The set of eight prints published in 1986 - Beach Heart, Cobweb, Egg in the Sky, Ghost on the Line, Jigsaw, Keyholes, Telephone at the Door and This Way Up originate from watercolours made by the artist during a move towards a more fluid working method. This period of experimentation led to Hughes' 'reverspectives' - an ongoing series of 3D constructions on the theme of reverse perspective for which he is perhaps best known. We also see the beginnings of this body of work in the etchings of 1988, Bend in the Road, Highways and Byways and The Republic of the Road where infinity takes centre stage. A rich source of paradox, infinity lies at the back of Hughes reverspectives as they always seek and sometimes find the ubiquitous vanishing point.

DREAMS AND ILLUSIONS: The Photography of Lynn Goldsmith

2007-10-09T18:22:00.000-07:00

What is real? What is true? What separates truth and fiction? These are the questions asked by the highly-acclaimed and multi-talented photographer Lynn Goldsmith in her works on view at the Contessa Gallery.

The Contessa Gallery at is excited to bring to collectors and the general public the art of the famous photographer whose works have appeared on the covers of such magazines as LIFE, Newsweek,Time, People, Rollingstone etc. Lynn Goldsmith’s subjects have varied from entertainment personalities to sports stars, from film directors to authors, from the extra-ordinary to the ordinary man on the street. Her thirty years of photography have not only been an investigation into the nature of the human spirit, but also into the natural wonders of our planet.
She is recognized as an acclaimed portrait photographer who worked with such people as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, The Police, Miles Davis and countless others. During her creative career she experimented as a director, and a recording artist, but lately she has turned the lens on herself in a new series of photographs entitled “In the Looking Glass”.In this work Goldsmith uses the artificial environment as a seed for a narrative that she then brings forth by transposing her own visage into the scene thus mixing the real and imaginary worlds into one that is both and neither. As she describes it,“I want my work to help enlighten me. I’m interested in multiple meanings and a kind of ambiguity that frustrates any attempt to pin it down... I wanted to take what I had learned in my career to show how we are made up of multiple selves”.
The resulting images feel, at first glance, deceptively familiar. Many of the scenes still closely mimic
advertising displays they were originally based upon but have a heightened surrealistic quality. Others echo familiar fairytales and myths. They possess the unsettling strangeness of the ordinary subtly transformed nto a new unknown quantity.
The “characters”, as Goldsmith refers to her fictitious selves, hover in a space between the animate and the inanimate, between subject and object.
Also on display will be several of Goldsmith’s rock mosaics, another of her signature media. To create them,she assembles over 2000 individual photographs into extraordinary portraits (based on a Chuck Close grid.

Haluk Akakçe until 06.10. GALERIST, Istanbul

2007-09-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

Haluk Akakçe, who is known for digitally generated videos that draw from painting, sculpture, and architecture and often feature emotion-inducing sound tracks, is one of the best-known contemporary Turkish artists. His time-based works are caught in a cycle of endless transformation, their abstract details changing with an almost somnambulistic rhythm that moves between the seductive and the threatening. In this exhibition, the artist engages an unusual subject: the meaning of the word definition, which, he posits, has shifted from the rigidly codified to the fluid. Akakçe translates language into his characteristic floating shapes, complementing his video works with drawings and wall reliefs—each an attempt to condense the “constant changes” he identifies into a single object. The forms of the classical media in the exhibition range from severe to gentle, keeping the viewer at a distance. The videos, on the other hand, pull one ineluctably into their visual world. Their floating, slowly mutating shapes encourage in the viewer associative reveries, which are frequently interrupted by violent visual moments. Does this represent the static aspect of definition coming apart? If so, this change in its meaning would, unequivocally, entail a kind of liberation—and the optimism of such a promise is experienced throughout this visually and conceptually convincing exhibition. Sabine Vogel Artforum

Sara Sze until 22.09. Victoria Miro Gallery, London

2007-09-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

The installation – Sze’s first with the gallery – spans both floors. The work on the ground floor is new to the gallery, while the piece on the second floor incorporates a reconfiguration of a recent work – Tilting Planet – initially shown at Malmö Konsthall, Sweden. Since the late 1990s Sarah Sze’s signature sculptural aesthetic has presented ephemeral installations that penetrate walls, suspend from ceilings and burrow into the ground. Creating immense, yet intricate site-specific work the artist utilises a myriad of everyday objects in her installations – cotton buds and tea bags; water bottles and ladders; light bulbs and electric fans. Each piece is subject to Sze’s careful consideration of every shift in scale between the humble and the monumental, the throwaway and the precious, the incidental and the essential. In this new body of work Sarah Sze organizes space as if it is a remnant of human behaviour discovered by accident. The formal construction of the pound-store objects as rafts, nests, tents, and escape routes mimics the necessities that emerge from various survival mechanisms and states of refuge. Like an entire ecosystem, these individual objects participate in larger systems of interaction performing a role beyond their commonplace function.

Anne Berning CAC Malaga until 19.08.07

2007-08-05T15:57:00.000-07:00

CAC Málaga, the centre for contemporary art run by Málaga City Council, presents the first solo exhibition at a Spanish museum or art centre by the German artist Anne Berning. Her theme is the world of painting and the stereotyped way in which it is classified in art books and catalogues, explored through the painted spines of large books in which the artists appear according to the pictorial style they represent. The exhibition, which will be open at CAC Málaga until August 19, comprises a site specific painting installation accompanied by a series of other paintings exploring the same theme.

Under the title “Encyclopaedic incompleteness”, CAC Málaga presents this show by Anne Berning, featuring a series of superb paintings exploring the way this well-known German artist sees art.

According to Fernando Francés, Director of the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, “In her painting, Anne Berning seeks to provoke a reaction to the phenomenon of the visual that confronts society today. Anne Berning presents her work as an open, changing reality in which parts can be added, moved or removed as the society surrounding the work advances.”

Taking as her point of reference the archives of art history, Anne Berning works with such different materials as photographs and films. In her view, today’s art requires a preliminary critical analysis of non-contemporary art. In Berning’s own words, her paintings are “a kind of collection of fragments, contrasts, lists and parallels.”

Rorschach Shopkeeper Works－Ken Lum, Tang Contempary Art, Beijng

2007-07-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

Ken Lum: Rorschach Shopkeeper Works is the last of a series of three exhibitions held in Tang Contemporary Art Centre in Beijing. Similar to the preceeding shows Surplus Value (June 2006) and Accumulation (September 2006), this exhibition tries to question the relevance of artistic creation and the value of the individual in Chinese high-speed consumer society, its possibilities to define itself aside from the logic of the market. While 揝urplus Value?looked at the art work in particular in an environment where art is considered a kind of indicator for and factor of social and economical productivity, 揂ccumulation?searched for a space of artistic intervention free from dominant discourses, putting forth the aspects of communication and cooperation as a major potential of artistic creation. In Rorschach Shopkeeper Works, his first solo show in China, Ken Lum now reflects upon the question of identity related to the production of images - signs - in urban society, thus focusing on the constitution of the subject.

New Directions from China Plug.in, Basel

2007-06-03T12:03:00.000-07:00

Group show with media art from China Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, Huang Shi, Miao Xiaochun, spylab, Wu Juehui, Jin Jiangbo, Lu Yang. Curator: Zhang Ga The Exchange between Artists from China and Switzerland was made possible by the generous support by Pro Helvetia. Curator’s statement The rapid development of media and communications technologies in China in recent years and the increasingly extensive exchange and dialogues prompted by various international new media art exhibitions and symposia in the Mainland have sparkled new inspirations in art making among Chinese artists. No longer satisfied with mere mental perception and a transfer of meaning confined within a singular and closed environment, many Chinese artists have in the past few years ventured out to experiment with a participatory art experience and to renegotiate space and time with audiences to explore an open system that expends the production of meaning, in which chance and instability, vulnerability and possibilities emerge as the contingent mirror image of the complexity of contemporary life. Employing sensing devices, network schemes, telecommunications protocols and other technologically enabled media, these artists, much like their global peers, set out to advance the legacy of social interaction advocated by the Fluxus and the Happenings, with tactile interactivity and indeterminate offspring. Though familiar to their western counterparts insofar as technologies are concerned, the new works from China inherit a particular sensibility that alludes to social critique and reflection on the very tradition to which all these artists are indebted and suggests an evolving tactile aesthetic that is deceptively alien from the Chinese cultural tradition, yet its allegorical embeddedness and nuanced emotive resonance reveal an amorphous kinship with the past and leave much to be imagined. “New Direction from China” is the first attempt to bring an exhibition of Chinese artists working exclusively in the area of new media to the European audience. The exhibition is comprised of works from both established as well as emerging artists from Mainland China. By presenting a body of exemplifying works, it is my hope to introduce to the West a glimpse of the new direction of artistic endeavor from China, though nascent, yet already manifesting great potential and refreshing vitality. The exhibition is conceived to inspire active dialogues among media art communities and to embark on a discourse of the open art work seen from culturally and historically disparate contexts and traditions. Zhang Ga

Francois Chaignaud until 09.06 Yukiko Kawase, Paris

2007-05-28T15:34:00.000-07:00

Francois Chaignaud (b. 1983, lives and works in Paris France. He began at 7 dance classes at the Conservatoire National de Région in Rennes, continued at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse (CNSM) in Paris, from which he graduated in 2002 with honors "outstanding". He started collaborating with various choreographers such as Boris Chamatz, Emmanuelle Huynh and Gilles Jobin... Since 2004 he has performed on different stages at Fondation Cartier, La Générale, or private apartments. He is currently (2006-2007) working with Cécilia Bengola on the project PAQUERETTE. In addition, he studies for an Master in contemporary art history at Paris X. You can further reach him on his blog: http://reliefsouterrain.blogspot.com/

KILLING TIME: An exhibition of Cuban artists from the 1980s to the present

2007-05-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

Killing Time, curated by Elvis Fuentes, Yuneikys Villalonga, and Glexis Novoa, focuses on the work of over seventy contemporary Cuban artists that have approached the subject of time. “The Revolution has been a symbolic intervention on Cuban Time. In return, time has shaped discourses of and on the Cuban Revolution,” said curators. Time patterns: Rewriting History, Productive Journey vs. Free Time: From Diversion to Subversion, and Aging and Decaying: An Archaeology of Utopia, are some of many subjects explored in different media, including performances, installations, photographs, videos, drawings, paintings, sculpture, murals, prints and ephemera. This exhibition spans from late 1970s to the present, and provides a timely context for Cuban artists whose work has had little or no exposure in the United States. Many of these artists have metaphorically recorded some of the tensions in the cultural, social and political landscape of the past three decades, and have often been dismissed by the official discourse on the Island or stereotyped by narrow conceptions of identity. A special section of the exhibition features the origins of Performance and Conceptual art in Cuba, through original works and documentation materials never before shown in the United States. In addition to the exhibition, this show will include extensive public programming and a catalogue.

ARTISTS

Francis Acea, Pavel Acosta, Jairo Alfonso, All Stars Team, José Luis Alonso Mateo, Alexandre Arrechea, Arte Calle, Magdiel Aspillaga, Juan Pablo Ballester, James Bonachea, Ricardo Brey, Saidel Brito, Tania Bruguera, La Campana Group, María Magdalena Campos Pons, Iván Capote, Yoan Capote, Consuelo Castañeda, Nilo Castillo, Sandra Ceballos & Espacio Aglutinador, Raúl Cordero, Arturo Cuenca, Ángel Delgado, Felipe Dulzaides, El Soca & Fabian, Enema Collective, Henry Eric, Antonio Eligio Fernández “Tonel”, José A. Figueroa, Coco Fusco, Carlos Garaicoa, Fernando García, Pavel Giroud, Alejandro González, María Elena González, Juan-si González, Abdel Hernández, Hexágono Group, Tony Labat, Francisco Lastra, Glenda León, Alejandro López, Rafael López Ramos, Janler Méndez, Manuel Mendive, Beverly Mojena, Maritza Molina, Glexis Novoa, Antonio Núñez, Ernesto Oroza, Cristina Padura, Alain Pino, Humberto Planas, Segundo Planes, Provisional Group, Aldo Damián Menéndez, Ernesto Pujol, Rigoberto Quintana, Ritual Art-De Group, Rubert Quintana, Fernando Rodríguez & Francisco de la Cal, René Francisco Rodríguez, Carlos Rodríguez Cárdenas, Joel Rojas, Yali Romagoza, Lázaro Saavedra, Leandro Soto, Ezequiel Suárez, T&T, José Ángel Toirac, César Trasobares, Hárold Vazquez, Aaron Vega Granados, Liudmila Velasco & Nelson Ramírez de Arellano, José Ángel Vincench, Ramón Williams.

Martin Creed until 29.07 Hauser & Wirth, London

2007-05-08T06:32:00.000-07:00

A major solo exhibition by MARTIN CREED. The show will feature an extensive selection of new work, including monumental wood and metal sculptures, film, paintings and a composition for chamber orchestra which will premiere on the opening night. MARTIN CREED's work is known for its elemental directness, economy of means and friendly, deadpan absurdity. ‘My world is a soup of thoughts, feelings and things all mixed up together. Working is a way of trying to cope, to separate the soup and escape; to get from the inside out.’ Creed forms pared-down exaggerations, expressionistic gestures distilled and refined to an extreme point. Rigorous geometry and rhythmic structures create frameworks within which things can move freely and change. Work No. 329, in which half the volume of the exhibition space is filled with balloons, is a kind of ultimate sculpture, constantly in flux, which takes the shape of the space it is in and the people interacting with it. Exhilarating and unpredictable, it is typical of Creed's hard-edged, soft-hearted minimalism. For MARTIN CREED art is ‘always a background to people; colours and shapes brought alive in their use by people’. Creed was born in Wakefield, England in 1968, and grew up in Glasgow, Scotland. He lives and works in London and Alicudi, Italy. He has exhibited extensively worldwide, and in 2001 won the Tate's Turner Prize for ‘The lights going on and off’. This last year has seen him touring with his ‘Variety Show’, a theatrical production which combines words, music and dance — most recently showing in New York with the Public Art Fund. His first film, ‘Sick Film’, was premiered last October in London. He is currently working on an architectural project for the London Library. Following Coppermill Creed has a solo survey show at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in New York, opening Saturday 7 July, and a solo show at Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin beginning 5 October. In addition, Creed is working on an extensive publication that will present a survey of his oeuvre. Reproducing every one of his works, and with comprehensive essays by Germaine Greer and Massimiliano Gioni, MARTIN CREED COMPLETE WORKS 1986—2007 will be published by STEIDL Hauser & Wirth this winter. Creed performs regularly with his band, and they can next be seen at Goldsmiths College Student Union, London, on 11 May. MARTIN CREED is the last of three exhibitions held at Coppermill, Hauser & Wirth’s East End space. The exhibition follows from Christoph Büchel’s Simply Botiful, October 11 2006 – March 18 2007, and Dieter Roth / Martin Kippenberger, May 26 – August 27 2006.

Modern Solitude - Group Show until 19.05, Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam

2007-04-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

Group exhibition with:
Eylem Aladogan, Natalia Benedetti, Job Koelewijn, Gabriel Lester, Renzo Martens, Shana Moulton, Magali Reus and Berend Strik

'However, contrary to what Nietzsche had in mind, no new values arose to take the place of the rejected Christian doctrines. As a result, we now live in a fairly nihilist society: we have thrown off the yoke of Christian dogmas, but what has replaced them is little more than a vacuum.'
Michel Houellebecq, Elementaire deeltjes, Singel Pockets, 2004. p.80

The individual is the greatest good of our age - in fact it has become our modern religion. That is a consequence of modernity; it is one of the fruits of emancipation and Enlightenment. In our time, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is another, potent and unexpected side to this individualism. For the modern individual is solitary: a solitude that does not just imply singularity or loneliness, but that can exist precisely amid a pluralist world. It is this multiformity, or perhaps the lack of direction and inconsistencies of the present-day world, which are at the root of modern solitude.

The exhibition Modern Solitude deals with various facets of the modern individual's solitary existence. These facets include the urge to inject meaning into life through spirituality, sexuality and physicality - which cannot ultimately fill the void - and the impossibility of ever experiencing 'the other', because of the great differences in ways of life. But most important of all is the instrumental approach to others, to nature, and to everything that can provide life with purpose, as a result of which present-day human beings are thrown back on their own resources. The freedom that modernity promises proves to be a solitary freedom.

Jean Lowe at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, LA

2007-04-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

For her third exhibition at the Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Jean Lowe stages another parable of cultural criticism. Several freestanding bookcases made of enamel paint on papier-m�ch� house over 200 books also made of enamel paint on papier-m�ch�. With fictional titles such as Achieve and Maintain a More Powerful Delusion and The Taking of South Coast Plaza, or in some cases real titles such as The Power of Positive Thinking (remapped onto what looks like the cover of a romance novel) and Contemporary Genocide, Lowe�s installation takes us from the humorous to the dire through the perilous micro-economies of desire and self-worth that frame the complacency of our hyper-individualized consumer culture. Elsewhere in the gallery four landscape paintings in enamel on masonite lift us out of the mire of our individual concerns only to bump us up against the ceilings of the mega-stores that nurture and contain them. In the project room a series of large, beautifully rendered, three-dimensional mandala paintings surround a baby grand piano that doubles as an ice chest.

Collage until 22.04 Chinese Contemporary Gallery, Beijing

2007-04-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

Beijing's emergence as a global city has given rise to some of China's boldest architecture and most innovative advertising. In Collage, Chinese Contemporary Gallery will show the works of four of Beijing's most prominent architects and advertisers, Ma Yongsong, Wang Yonggang, Yang Haihua and Zhou Rong. Ma Yongsong, best known for his design of the Absolute Tower in Mississauga, Canada, has created a rainbow for this exhibition. With this rainbow, he hopes to reunite urbanism, technology and human emotion. Wang Yonggang's work, New Taihu Stone, boldly redesigns the Taihu stone and addresses the ways in which modern architecture structurally redefines and reinvents traditional architectural forms. Yang Haihui takes a comical turn in his work, "Audio and Visual Aids." His performance will provide viewers with a self-administered audio-visual test in the form of plates flung like discuses against a concrete wall. Lastly, Zhou Rong playfully critiques the construction of and the motivation behind Beijing largest and most important urban landmarks in his works, Shang-Jing Banquet and Shang-Jing Sketch

Trevelyan Clay until 03.03. Neon Parc Gallery, Melbourne

2007-02-21T17:39:00.000-08:00

Profound Statement Trevelyan Clay

2007
Oil on linen
168 x 137 cm
Neon Parc Gallery, Melbourne

Aaron Morse until 10.03. ACME, Los Angeles

2007-02-13T17:47:00.000-08:00

AARON MORSE Born 1974 in Tucson, AZ Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA EDUCATION 1998 MFA, The University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 1996 BFA, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2006 Guild and Greyshkul, New York, NY 2005 ACME., Los Angeles, CA 2003 Origins, ACME., Los Angeles, CA 1998 Tangeman Gallery, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 1999 Designs for Storybook, Film, Animation, 840 Gallery, The University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 1996 Tyrant Figures, Union Gallery, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2005 The General’s Jamboree, Guild and Greyshkul, New York, NY Liquid Los Angeles: Currents of Contemporary Watercolor Painting, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, CA L.A. Times, Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston, MA 2004 Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC American Stars n’ Bars, Chapman University, Orange, CA Some Forgotten Place, Matrix 213, UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA Nature, Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2003 Women Beware Women, curated by David Rimanelli, Deitch Projects, New York, NY ACME. @ Inman, Inman Gallery, Houston, TX Inside Scoop, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA Miles Coolidge, Kevin Hanley, Darcy Huebler, & Aaron Morse, ACME., Los Angeles, CA California 10 Contemporary, Judy Saslow Gallery, Chicago, IL International Paper, UCLA Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA Papers, ACME., Los Angeles, CA 2002 New Art from L.A., Marvelli Gallery, New York, NY

Philippe Parreno The Ultrasonic Scream of the Squirrel until 10.03 Aire de Paris

2007-02-04T07:58:00.000-08:00

Air de Paris is pleased to be presenting a solo exhibition by Philippe Parreno that includes the photographs of his performance with a ventriloquist, luminous labels and the Stories are Propaganda installation created with Rirkrit Tiravanija. These works index a language close to that of dreams, together with forms drawn from world of entertainment and its magic. On 18 September last, in place of an exhibition at Air de Paris, you may have been present at Parreno's The ultrasonic scream of the squirrel. For an hour Studio 28, with its Jean Cocteau décor, was host to Parreno's "exhibition" with ventriloquist Ronn Lucas. After showing his skills, Lucas questioned the artist about what had brought them together. The exchange led to a "retroprojective" sequence for which Parreno chose to read two of his texts, The Underground Man and Alien Seasons. The performers' voices mingled disturbingly as the performance provided a staging of their meeting and, notably, of the form a joint work takes in raising the question "who's speaking?" This event was conceived as a studio situation, an experiment out of which something would ultimately emerge. Parreno opted for still photography as the best way of distancing an event by pointing up the silence, the audience and the staging. In the room on the left a flashing label showed the two performers in close-up as they read The Underground Man, while the text appeared on another label. The reading of the image and the reading of the text are subjected to different light rhythms that stimulate the memory process and give the viewer the chance to project his own stories into the work. Already shown at the Lyon Biennale in 2005, Stories are Propaganda is a film made with Rirkrit Tiravanija. It was shot in Guangzhou, China's most urbanised area, and its images conveying their wanderings and their thoughts sets the film's strangely melancholic tone. "This is a journey through an infinite urban landscape. A series of banners setting up fragments of a parallel world, a feeling of suburbia. [...] Information's that glows before fading away." As in Fade to Black, the reading time is limited, each image being quickly replaced by the following one. The film is made up of stills - a TV show, an albino rabbit, a snowman made of sand... - and the sound is the voice of a child recalling the good old days, "Before cappuccino and sushi and ruccola went global / When every second person was not a hero / Before music became our soundtrack..." In the installation the dated codes of the cinema - a manually operated red velvet curtain - are immediately contradicted by the title, a graffito sprayed directly onto the curtain. At the end of the film the curtain is drawn and the viewer can leave with a head full of images, stories and memories.

McDermott & McGough Please don't stop loving me ! until 15.03 Galerie Jerome de Noirmont, Paris

2007-01-28T10:01:00.000-08:00

Please don’t stop loving me !, the gallery’s 4th personal McDermott & McGough exhibition, will present, in exclusivity, the latest paintings by the couple of dandies who constantly define our contemporariness society through images resurfacing from the past. Like their deliberately historically accurate photographic work, their painting draw inspiration from the metaphorical value of images that live on in our collective subconscious. This new exhibition is the counterpart of the exhibition early in 2006 at the Cheim & Read Gallery in New York on the theme of hidden sexuality with canvases only portraying men. In this new series, the subjects are only women, the artists wishing to present here a feminine vision of life, more spiritual than the first: My inspiration was from « B » female film stars. Most who never made it and 1950’s romance comic books. But this crying, desperate women series is not about actresses, film or kitsch. Its not a nostalgic look to what was. I feel the moment that these images are frozen in (the film still or comic drawing), is about change, an opportunity to take pain, heartache, fear and desperation to another realm of possibilities. Somewhat how the Buddhist’s see order in chaos. This new series of some 15 paintings is constructed according to the same iconographic structure, similar to that of comic strip plates, confronting or juxtaposing portraits of women, scenes from Hollywood films or sentimental comic strips of the 1950s, in a paradoxical duality, underpinned by the contrast between realism and fiction, between black and white and colour. Fixed on canvas and cut off from the narrative context from which they stem, showing desperate women, all paintings have a strong dramatic impact that the artists intensify by choosing highly evocative titles: With an anxious heart, Now after all those things you told me, There wasn’t a thing left to say, How could it end like this ?... The design of the canvas, its image and its story seem to be based on Magritte’s interpretation of words and images, on the fragmentation and the mystery of its images. Considering that all periods cohabit the present, McDermott & McGough refuse the diktats of contemporary time and “live” in the period that they feel to be the most favourable, that is to say the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. They invite us to share their vision of the illusion of time as they recreate the atmosphere of a specific period. They take us with them in their travel back in time through a scrupulous and meticulous reproduction of vintage documents to give their works the greatest possible authenticity, like a lost treasure miraculously preserved in a buried world. They go as far as giving dates to their images from the period, such as here: 1963, 1965… McDermott & McGough make the Freudian undercurrents of American society in the 1950s resurface in this exhibition. Behind the appearance of a world of idealised beauty there is hidden despair, solitude, murder and adultery, things that make you tremble. In these paintings, women are beautiful, well dressed, in lush interiors, but living in deep sadness – all this beauty seems, suddenly, about to fall apart… The artists give us their vision of this traditional American theme, in the same way as the current TV series Desperate Housewives. In the image of Pop Art but paradoxically always through a very contemporary theme, McDermott & McGough examine in this exhibition America’s marriage of spic-and-span consumerism with sex and violence.

Victor Grippo until 04.02. Camden Arts Centre, London

2007-01-14T09:52:00.000-08:00

This is the first ever large-scale exhibition in London of the work of influential Argentinean artist Victor Grippo (1936 - 2002). His sculptures and installations transform everyday materials through alchemical power. The humble potato (a universal food of the poor) becomes a symbol of dormant energy in Grippo's hands and represents the potential of suppressed peoples. Originally trained as a chemist, Grippo emerged as a painter and engraver in the politically-charged climate of 1950s Argentina. caption: Victor Grippo, Naturalizar al hombre, humanizar a la naturaleza, o Energia vegetal, 1977, Fundacion Victor Grippo, copyright the artist, courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York.

Brazilian Acquisitions Sandra Gamara, Galeria Lema, Sao Paulo, Brasil

2007-01-07T09:09:00.000-08:00

Sandra Gamarra, peruvian - the artist has become known for having created her own imaginary museum - LiMac - (Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Lima) - where she explores and appropriates herself of the works of others, making her own previous selection. In this exhibition, LiMac presents at Galeria Leme some of its recent acquisition - works by brazilian artists.

The idea around this show is not to make a resume of brazilian contemporary art. The exhibition of these works seek a new dialogue, through the same medium - painting - signalising other areas of encounter and disencounter.

Gamarra has painted pages from catalogues and books compiling the works of distinct artists such as Sandra Cinto, Vik Muniz, Leda Catunda, Iran do Espírito Santo, Nelson Leirner and various others.

"Video Killed the Painting" until 03.02.07 , Yoshiko Matsumoto Gallery , Amsterdam

2006-12-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

Yoshiko Matsumoto Gallery is pleased to present ‘Video Killed the Painting’, an exhibited curated by Bart de Koning Gans, which will be on view from December 27, 2006 until February 3, 2007.Our language of immediacy has made us hungry for quick imagery, however video art teaches us to 're'-observe by taking our time to look. True it is very annoying when it is bad but when it is good the reward is worth the wait. Video forces us to view, listen and take time to adjust. Paintings and sculptures can more easily be divided into bad and good with a brief glance, yet with video it demands your time. This exhibit features 4 video artists whom interpret various stages of the human mind and its behavior.

Ed Templeton , Tim van Laere Gallery, Antwerp (B)

2006-12-26T16:44:00.000-08:00

Templeton’s Time Machine

Ed Templeton (°1972) documents his life, and the lives of the people around him, in a rich stream of images - images of himself and his wife, Deanna, in their day-to-day lives, and images of others (usually youths), at home in Orange County (California), or during the many tours he makes as pro-skateboarder and artist. Photography is a significant constant in his work, but, in recent years, paintings and drawings have started to take an ever more prominent place in the oeuvre.

Templeton likes to present his photos, drawings and paintings in a non-hierarchical manner, large quantities all mixed up together at once. He’ll often hang clusters of works in the shape of “image clouds”, against a coloured background on which are yet more painted clouds. In these installations, the to and fro of the clouds feels like a metaphor for the appearance and disappearance of images, like those of a traveller acquiring countless new impressions every day. In Templeton’s way of seeing we also recognise something of the fascination of the passer-by, the transient, gripped, at some unexpected moment, by the “extraordinary of the ordinary,” the exceptional and surprising existential qualities of daily life.

Raised in the “New World”, his photographic work shows him to be, primarily, a chronicler of both the day-to-day life of urban American youth and the not-so-day-to-day life of the, frequently very young, touring pro-skateboarders. Sexuality and vulnerability are recurring themes and the way in which they are portrayed is a testament to deep empathy: “Nothing human is foreign” seems to be the motto. It is fascinating to realise that, probably, it is precisely this humanist glance that gives these images that not-so-day-to-day quality.

Human vulnerability is also an important theme in Templeton’s paintings and drawings. This particularly applies to the works populated by zombie-like human figures, who seem to have escaped from some medieval tableau of the Last Judgement. Which brings me to another observation, namely that, even though his more realistic portraits undoubtedly display an affinity with the work of David Hockney, many of the qualities of Templeton’s paintings evoke 15^thcentury paintings by figures like Hans Memling, Hieronymus Bosch and Rogier van der Weyden. That this isn’t just an unconscious fascination for Templeton, is apparent in, among other things, his recent experiments with painted tryptich panels and the emergence of photographs of 15th century paintings and sculptures in his work. But, for me, more important than these formal references is the intrinsic relationship between Templeton’s work and the work of his 15th century predecessors in the “Old World”- a relationship I would like to describe as a profound and timeless engagement with the universal parameters of being-human - and that his work is miles away from the cold, aloof intellectualism of much contemporary mainstream art.

the new baroque until 13.01,07 Nice & Fit Gallery, Berlin

2006-12-17T14:45:00.000-08:00

THE NEW BAROQUE
Anton Stoianov, Nate Peter, Jan Bünnig, Fawn Krieger, Simon Rühle,
Ralf Dereich, Sophie-Therese Trenka-Dalton, Frederic D. Baroque’s inventions (17th century) include multiple viewpoints, waves coming from the East, from Greece, Rome, Classical (modern), Goth, the Romanesque (11th-12th century). Material excess, individualism, religious ecstasy, big hair, curves, the collapse of the frame, repetition ad infinitum, counterpoint, contraposto are also invoked. Allegory, illusion, theater, mechanics, façade/interior, also. the new baroque? A tail without the cat, Babylon (Iraq), Tiepolo, tape, Grace Jones, wings, forest, Penthouse, unorthodoxy, anarchy, ascension and descension. “The baroque artist knows well that hallucination does not feign presence, but that presence is hallucination”, (Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque”, 1993.)

South African Art Now until 06.01.07 Michael Stevenson´s Gallery, Cape Town

2006-12-10T15:10:00.000-08:00

Michael Stevenson's annual exhibition of South African art is an unrivalled event on the collector's calendar, and this year will run throughout the holiday season. For the first time in 11 years, the exhibition will focus exclusively on the work of contemporary artists, in recognition of the increasingly high profile of the gallery's artists.

Among the major works on exhibition will be a huge shark-shaped drum by Samson Mudzunga, a performance piece and new mixed media works by Nicholas Hlobo, recent sculptures by Wim Botha, a large-scale wall painting with glass roundels by Conrad Botes, and Anton Kannemeyer's Alphabet of Democracy shown in its entirety for the first time. Photographic works include previously unseen photographs of the Congo's Mai Mai militia by Guy Tillim; Pieter Hugo's portraits of boy scouts in Monrovia, Liberia; recent colour South African landscapes by David Goldblatt and new portraits by Zanele Muholi. Mustafa Maluka, Deborah Poynton and Tracy Payne will all show new paintings.

Parallel to this is an exhibition of recent ceramics by Hylton Nel, whose idiosyncratic works are sought after by collectors across the world. This year he will be showing a series of plates which are wall-hung in particular patterns, inscribed with his characteristic quirky and polemical images and phrases. Also on exhibition will be new vases and small sculptures.

These exhibitions take place at the end of an extremely successful year for the gallery's artists. Among their achievements, David Goldblatt won the Hasselblad Prize for 2006; Guy Tillim was awarded the first Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography by Harvard University; Pieter Hugo was named the Standard Bank Young Artist for 2007; Churchill Madikida's 2006 Standard Bank Young Artist exhibition embarked on its national tour; Nicholas Hlobo won the Tollman Award for 2006 and Zanele Muholi was awarded the first BHP Billiton/Wits University Visual Arts Fellowship. Berni Searle has survey exhibitions at the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida in Tampa, USA. Tillim, Goldblatt and Wim Botha are included on the international touring exhibition Africa Remix which was seen in Tokyo and Stockholm this year. Conrad Botes showed on the Havana Biennale and Hugo, Tillim and Mustafa Maluka were selected for the São Paulo Bienal.

LIU JIANHUA - Anomalous thoughts, Galleria Continua, Beijing

2006-12-03T06:52:00.000-08:00

This exhibition features Liu Jian Hua, who commenced the evolving process of nurturing his aesthetic development and métier as a sculptor early on in his career. Subsequently he succeeds in refining several of his signature motifs that are embedded in his entire body of works. The purity of line created by the use of white porcelain ceramics and his alertness to his mercurial environment render artworks that are artistically and socially relevant.

Liu Jian Hua’s artworks present an unflinching illumination of the all too intimate relationship between materialism and humanity. These questions and issues that are raised in his artworks are for instance evident in works like “Do You have an answer?” This artwork is a mixed-media piece wherein Liu Jian Hua uses both stainless steel sculpture and technology to create a singularly unique work. A projection of text comprised of rhetorical questions is tantamount to the stainless steel books themselves. This work has the goal of stimulating the viewer’s own insights on the current state of contemporary Chinese Society. These are questions that penetrate the fabric of day-to-day modern Chinese life. They also suspend our former assumptions on contemporary Chinese society for the more important issues it raises, such as how Modernity and rapid urbanization are defined within the specific context of Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, or any other major Chinese Cosmopolis?

The artwork “Floating Object” is likewise a piece that evokes a myriad of interpretations pertaining specifically to the forum of Chinese political life. A floating glass sculpture of an island is set against the projected backdrop of Eastern Asia; the island being a clear representation of Taiwan. When viewers venture in for a closer look at the glass Taiwan, mini ceramic sculptures of pandas are seen inhabiting its terrain. This artwork in fact has significant correlations to actual events. Pandas, one of the most prominent symbols for China were given to Taiwan as a political gesture to promote more friendly ties. Like his other works, the interpretative dialogue remains open for viewers to arbitrate a meaning on their own.

“Reflection-Mirror Illusion”, made from white porcelain celadon, is a 12 metre long sculpture depicting the hyper-cosmopolitan skylines of Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. This piece is hung on a white wall, with site-specific spotlights to render a silhouette effect. The sculpted buildings, upon closer examination, are in fact crooked, to symbolize the fact that they are a mere reflection of the west. Like a true reflection, the silhouette is temporary and transient, giving the overall piece an ominous veneer. This piece exudes again highly relevant issues such as massive rapid urbanization and its effects on traditional Chinese architecture and modernization.

“Beijing Olympic Commemoration” is a painting by Liu Jian Hua that satirizes a photograph taken during the Olympic games in Greece, with the intention of dedicating a pastiche to the German painter Gerhard Richter.

Time and again, Liu Jian Hua’s artworks delve into subjects that are at the heart of current Chinese culture. The visual and cognitive experience of viewing a Liu Jian Hua work is immediate, and often evocative of the animated and multi-valent relationships between people and their surroundings. Through his sensitivity and powers of observation that are evident in his works, Liu Jian Hua comments lucidly on the changing world.

Liu Jian Hua is exhibiting for the first time with Galleria Continua in Beijing. His presence confirms the continuation of Galleria Continua’s mandate of preserving and nurturing the dialogue between the east and the west.