Hammer and Nail
Jacob Dahlgren (SE), John Kørner (DK) og Atle Hynne (NO)
30 Januar - 15 March 2009
Opening friday 30 January 7 pm - 8 pm.
All three artists will be present at the opening.
The opening will continue at Kampen Bistro (storsalen) Bøgata 21.
The Gun Ladies
VORSPANNKINO
54 titles of an exhibition
A stunning beauty weightlessly floating through space. As she gradually unveils words emerge and descend, covering her body like fig leaves. At the climax of this intro Barbarella delightfully floats before our eyes in paradisiacal nudity.
Umbral apparitions of uneven forms in the dark. Rhythmically to the ethereal play of a violine, the orifices of a face emerge as if reflected in a distorted mirror. The black gorge of a wide-opened throat engulfs our gaze and threatens to devour the titel Seconds.
The extraordinary challenge of combining writing, image, and sound to introduce a theme without giving too much away has majorly ushered and defined the emergence and style of a whole genre. Showing more than 50 opening and closing titles, the exhibition VORSPANNKINO (cinema of titles) is a premiere to honor this special form of film.
Elaine & Saul Bass, Kent Bateman, Samuel Beckett, Maurice Binder, Stan Brakhage, Robert Brownjohn, Marc Bruckert, Jörg Buttgereit, Penny Causer, Jean Cocteau, Kyle Cooper, Jeremy Dawson, John De Bello, Friz Freleng, Sandy Dvore, Pablo Ferro, Wayne Fitzgerald, Stephen O. Frankfurt, Jean-Luc Godard, Shan Hua, Teruo Ishii, Olivier Kuntzel & Florence Deygas, Dudley Murphy, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Dan Perri, Horst Piehler, James S. Pollak, Lotte Reiniger, Christoph Schlingensief & Norbert Schliewe, Orson Welles, David Wojnarowicz & Tommy Turner
Berlin Biennale
ALYSSA PHEOBUS
LAY IN THE REINS
BELLWETHER is pleased to announce Alyssa Pheobus's first solo show, LAY IN THE REINS. The exhibition features a group of large-scale text drawings that excavate the lyrics of love songs and other fragments of language through an elaborate process of performative inscription. Positioning her disciplined and labor-intensive drawing practice as an analog to other subjective performances of text, Pheobus both "covers" and "samples" in an attempt to engage her source material critically and libidinally.
Many of the texts that Pheobus "performs" through drawing are stirred by a fascination with the threatening eroticism of violent sexuality. They also mark intersections between the language of aggressive desire and the hyperbolically "masculine." Juxtaposed with escape fantasies in which acts of abandonment become expressions of agency, these themes remain carefully contained within a system that imagines both the limits of language and the experience of desire as prison-like. The perpetual chafing against captivity that is a palpable subject in Pheobus's work is mirrored by her drawing practice, which is at once restrained and workmanlike, compulsive and devotional.
The tactile surfaces of Pheobus's drawings, composed on cobbled-together sheets of handmade cotton rag paper, are incised with stitch-like graphite characters that form the building blocks for an austere visual language. This idiosyncratic graphic vocabulary simultaneously evokes instruments of confinement-barbed wire, cells, cages, nets, straps-and the psychic calendar of tally marks scratched upon a wall.
A native of Maryland, Alyssa Pheobus received her MFA from Columbia University in 2008. Her work has recently been featured in group exhibitions at Tracy Williams, Ltd., Exit Art, and Dieu Donné in New York. Pheobus lives and works in Brooklyn.
Bellwether Gallery
MARIA VON KÖHLER
MAYBE A HERM
6 FEBRUARY - 15 MARCH 2009
PRIVATE VIEW 5 FEBRUARY 18:00-21:00
Maria von Köhler - Maybe a Herm is a new site-specific solo exhibition developing von Köhler's fascination with the grotesque in both sculpture and painting, and the sinister relations between expectation and reward.
Maria von Köhler graduated from the Royal Academy in 2003 and lives and works in London and Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions include National Geographic, Faggionato Fine Art, Larry's Cocktails, Gagosian, Right-on Write-off, Chapman Fine Arts, Timeline, Seeline Gallery, Los Angeles, MOCA Fresh Auction, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and When we Build, Let Us Think That We Build Forever, The Zabludowicz Collection at BALTIC. She has recently also had the solo exhibitions The Mother of all Babies, SEVENTEEN, London, and at See Line Gallery. She is currently exhibiting in the group show Booth 1812 at See Line Gallery, Los Angeles.
Image Music Text
MARK TITCHNER
FEEL BETTER NOW! (Apathy and the New Sincerity)
Performed by Jonny Woo with Jeanette
Originally commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery, London in 2008, Peres Projects, Berlin presents an expanded version of this text based performance work. This multi voiced work is presented in the various guises of two of London's best loved alternative performers.
Alternatively humorous and disturbing this manifesto like assemblage, composed of fragmented found texts, aphorisms and axioms, examines how the failure of mass protest in the last decade has led to a nostalgic retreading of past failures. Focusing on the use of the polemical style in entertainment and media and how this consequently diverts social change towards individual selfishness. Disembodied and contradictory voices pile upon each other from crescendo to silence.
Peres Projects
CHARLIE ISOE "WILL BE HOME LATE - LEAVE THE LIGHT ON"
Charlie Isoe’s pictorial compositions are based largely on his personal experiences and observations he makes of his immediate social surroundings. Isoe left school at the age of sixteen and immersed himself in a world of graffiti, skateboarding, travel, and life on the streets. As he entered his twenties, already well traveled, rich in experiences with highs and broken bones, he went back to attain a high school diploma, and subsequently a Degree in Fine Art. For the last three years, Isoe has been living in Europe as a freelance artist, observer and wanderer. His work has been seen on the streets of Australia, Thailand, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Czech Republic and Germany.
Circleculture Gallery
Uncommon ground
Paul Becker Jorn Ebner Mark Epstein Nadia Hebson
Matthew Smith Alison Unsworth Flora Whiteley
Vane
Chinatown invites you to an open art night this Saturday January 24th from 7 to 10pm. This event marks the inaugural Art Night, a quarterly event showcasing contemporary art, clothing, furniture, music, design and performance.
Participating spaces include:
Acuna-Hansen
Bonelli Contemporary
The Box
Charlie James Gallery
The Company
Chung King Projects
David Patton Los Angeles
David Salow Gallery
Fifth Floor
Jail Gallery
Jancar
Happy Lion
North Hill Exhibitions
Sam Lee Gallery
Soloway Jones
Mesler + Hug
Sabina Lee Gallery
Welcome Hunters
The Box
The Box
Shepard Fairey
Iconic 24×36″ limited edition print by Shepard Fairey
Signed & Numbered
Price: $500.00
ON SALE 1/23 at 11am PST
PURCHASE YOURS FRIDAY HERE
Limited 1 set per person/household
Limited Edition Shepard Fairey Commemorative Inaugural Print Released
Artist Behind the “Hope” Poster Creates New Image Marking the Inauguration of Barack Obama
WASHINGTON, D.C. - A limited edition print designed by Los Angeles artist Shepard Fairey in honor of President-elect Obama’s Inauguration is now available for purchase on the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s website. A run of only 10,000 numbered prints have been made of this special illustration commemorating the Inaugural occasion.
“Shepard Fairey has captured the hope and excitement that is building across the country for President-elect Obama’s Inauguration,” said PIC Spokesperson Brent Colburn. “We are honored that he has offered his unique talent and vision to help mark this historic event.”
Shepard Fairey’s red, white, and blue “Hope” illustration, replicated on thousands of t-shirts, signs and buttons during the 2008 campaign, was one of the most identifiable symbols of Barack Obama’s historic run for the White House. Just yesterday, the Smithsonian announced that Fairey’s original work will become a permanent part of the Smithsonian’s collection and be displayed in the National Portrait Gallery by Inauguration Day. Fairey also designed the portrait of President-Elect Obama featured on the cover of Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” issue last month.
OBEY
James Jessop
The obvious question with the work of James Jessop is how does a notorious graffiti artist (whose distinctive trident tag and 'Tek 33' signature that swathe the streets of North and East London where the artist lives and works) translate this side of himself into his painting? But if we ask this question we have already taken a wrong turn in understanding how Jessop operates. If you ask Jessop what motivates his prolific graffiti excursions he'll tell you that he does it for the buzz, that he has a passion for spraying up walls and trying not to get caught, and that he has a deep love of graffiti art circa 1980's New York. And if you ask him the same question about his painting you'll receive a similar answer, except this time he'll mention artists as diverse as Peter Paul Rubens, Vincent Van Gogh, and Tal R.
Jessop's practice as a painter and his relationship to graffiti can be understood in terms of 'approach' and not 'translation' from one practice to another. This approach or tactic, this line of attack when approaching the canvas, is one that embodies the energy of the act of graffiti; it's frenetic, free form, improvisational bombilation, or as the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri would call it: lines of flight. Graffiti's power is its sense of resistance and rupture in the ever increasing corporate sterilization of urban landscapes. The aesthetic that graffiti takes from; that of mass culture, whether that be comics, film, television, magazines and advertising, is likewise Jessop's index for what kind of subject matter is allowed into his work. Jessop's use of the equipment and technique; the spray can as a brush, the modified paint pen, the calligraphic rhythms that you find in tagging, open up and inform his approach to painting.
Tom Christoffersen
'We're All Gonna Die - 100 meters of existence'
Simon Hoegsberg
Michel Auder - Heads of the Town
Michel Auder has seldom neglected to record an event in his life and, over the course of these
40 years of filmmaking, he has slipped into a variety of roles: silent participant, obsessive
voyeur, discreet accomplice, or simple observer. Auder’s singular approach has earned him
worldwide recognition. His films are found in the Anthology Film Archives in New York and have
been exhibited in major international museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New
York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2008 his
works were shown at the European Kunsthalle in Cologne, at the Statens Museum for Kunst in
Copenhagen and at the Berlin Biennale.
In November 2008 he won the New Vision Award at the CPH:DOX Film Festival in Copenhagen
for The Feature, an artistic collaboration with director Andrew Neel. In his role as the fictional
protagonist, Auder reflects on the stations of his real life as a filmmaker, junkie, and partner of
Warhol’s muse Viva and, later, the artist Cindy Sherman. The French experimental filmmaker,
who lives in New York, was present for The Feature’s world premiere at the 58th Berlinale and is
now returning to Berlin one year later in time for this year’s film festival.
Heads of the Town, Auder’s first solo show in Berlin, employs installation to realize a unified
vision of sound and video. Although these recent works have little in common with the
seemingly “authentic” documentary style of his video diaries, Auder’s current approach – at
times reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard’s Passion – remains self-referential in its treatment of
the work of art and the medium of film. All the same, Michel Auder has never viewed himself as
a documentarist. The artist Jonas Mekas wrote about Auder: “And yes, Auder is a poet; he isn’t
a realist. A poet of moods, faces, situations, brief encounters, tragic moments of our miserable
civilization, the suffering. And yes, also human vanity, ridiculousness.”
Aurel Scheibler
PRESS RELEASE
Ulrik Heltoft: Elements from a Nightmare
Opening: January 23rd, from 5-8 pm.
It is a great pleasure to announce Ulrik Heltoft’s third solo exhibition at the gallery: Elements from a Nightmare. The exhibition consists of a new video work, photography, and an object, and continues Ulrik Heltoft’s familiar, original yet subtle universe.
Apparently fatally injured and trapped in a mysterious room, a man, played by Ulrik Heltoft himself, investigates his surroundings with a paradoxical, trance-like attention. He staggers around the room, looks out the tower window, observes the furniture and the objects in the room, and finally collapses on the sofa. The actual room dissolves itself and converge with a hallucinating internal experience of the room, which extends into a kaleidoscopic sense of an abyss. The video Voyage autour de ma chambre (Voyage around my Room) is Ulrik Heltoft’s interpretation of the French author Xavier de Maistre’s 1794 novel of the same title. de Maistre wrote the novel during 42 days of house arrest, to which he was sentenced after participation in a duel. In the novel de Maistre describes his stay in the cramped keep as an adventurous, imaginary journey to an exotic and foreign world. Furthermore de Maistre praised this inner journey: it didn’t cost anything and could therefore strongly be recommended to the poor, the infirm, not to forget the lazy.
A mental extension of a physical space may take on unreal, unrecognizable or even nightmarish dimensions. Such places: at once concrete and imaginary, are the subject matter for also the remaining works in the exhibition.
The photo series White-Out, shot in the Arctic ice landscape captures the weather phenomenon
“white-out” - the polar landscape and the sky converge into an almost monochrome
white surface. The result is a strange, vague, and disturbing dream-like space. In this hyper-arctic landscape mental conceptions of dizziness and vertigo replace the normal physical points of reference.
The large photography Old Mine shows the entrance to an abandoned gold mine in California. While pebbles and the mountains’ rock structure appear in almost palpable clarity, the gaze is lost in the impenetrable darkness of the deep, dark shaft, where both light and the recognizable world disappears. The mine is a one-man work, and a picture of the paradoxical relationship between a very concrete and physical project (as digging a hole in the ground) and all the hopes, fantasies and dreams associated with this activity.
The sculpture Deception Island is a large architectural object made from super-light and ultra-reflecting planes. By a very simple design principle Ulrik Heltoft achieves a highly refined effect: at once logical and yet completely incomprehensible, the mirror image reflects the room - and oneself – upside down!
Ulrik Heltoft (b. 1973) is educated from the school of visual arts at the Royal Danish Art Academy 1995-1999 and from Yale University 1999-2001. He has recently had solo shows at Raucci e Santamaria in Naples and at Wilfried Lenz in Rotterdam, and moreover
he recently had a screening at the New Museum in New York.
Kirkhoff
Anna Lena Grau I Frank Hesse I Eske Schlüters
Der Satz “Es steht geschrieben.” (The phrase “It is written.“)
A quotation from the late work of Ludwig Wittgenstein “about certainty“ applies to a central concern of the three artists and is used as the title of the exhibition. The phrase “It is written.“ vouches in a biblical context for the truth of the following narration. Disassociated from this context, however, it loses this certainty and discloses other, new viewpoints such as, an auto-reference of the phrase on a visual level. Anna Lena Grau, Frank Hesse and Eske Schlüters search archives looking for forgotten or unknown stories. In their artistic work, they investigate philosphical and scientific methods looking for the extraordinary viewpoint in what is already known.
Frank Hesse´s (1970) work walks a fine line between scientifically precise examination and art. With his great appreciation for nuances he tells stories whose dramaturgy mirrors the highly topical discourse on the visual language in art and science.
In his two-part work ”De Ou Par Marcel Duchamp (2008)” Frank Hesse refers to the legendary father of conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp. His research led him to Duchamp’s childhood. In order to mark his favourite place in the garden of the house where he was born, Duchamp, at the age of 12, carved his name and the year on a beech tree: Duchamp Marcel 1901. The present owner of the property had to fell the tree in 1993 because it would otherwise have toppled. He did, however, keep the piece with the inscription and it is still in his garage. The treetrunk object was documented by Hesse in accordance with the artistic and contextual allegations in the first edition of the ”The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp“ by Arturo Schwarz. Frank Hesse supplements the catalogue raisonné; the two pages – a painting and an index section- are inserted by means of a thin silver chain.
Eske Schlüters’ (1970) videofilms are a game of words, sounds and individual images redolent of their metaphorical character and the greater context which has been lost. By using film material from films made by other directors, Schlüters is writing a personal history of film in which complex atmoshpheres unfold in brief flashes. By using single and multiple projections, she researches the ”comprehension“ of moving pictures which are not governed by a strict narrative structure. Her open narrative method plays with conceptual thinking, agitating it and discovering new meanings.
Eske Schlüters latest film ”After the Rehearsal (2007)“ is based on a documentation of the shooting of Chatal Akerman’s film ”Jeanne Dielmann“ and focuses on the rehearsal of what are essentially everyday activities. The defamiliarisation effect inherent in cinematic dramaturgy is spotlighted by the isolation of the scenes where the actress rehearses her role for the camera. Eske Schlüters reflects the actor’s task of genuinely embodying the role, also on the level of sound when she translates from various languages texts on theatre theory and assembles them into an autonomous composition.
Anna Lena Grau’s (1980) interests are dominated by natural scientific areas as well as history of art. Her small-sized glass objects, the „Quallengläser 2008“ formally follow the inner moulding of a jellyfish, transfer its specific method of locomotion to the technical possibilities of glass blowing. The inversions and protuberances of the jellyfish glass objects are created by heating selective points of the viscous blow glass. For very large inversions, additional glass is partially melted which, with the aid of flow strength and additional suction in the blow tube, is then stretched. In her examination of scientific phenomena she educes formal structures from existing image associations, makes them independent, connects, layers, superimposes them freely associated with similar formations to then return them to the object.
“I am not interested in unambiguousness,“ writes Anne Lena Grau, “I examine moments in which the logical comprehension of familiar situations becomes confused, moments when the ambiguousness of the world becomes apparent. My work therefore consists of finding exemplary surrogates whose perception is able to split kaleidoscope-like, who experiences his own perception echo-like and floating.
Art Agents
Born in Denmark in 1974, Jeppe Hein works out of Berlin and Copenhagen.
Jeppe Hein’s works are fun. One of his installations is a labyrinth made from mirrors that confuse the viewer's visual and spatial perception, transforming the surrounding scenery through mirrored reflections while at the same time melting into it as the reflections provide camouflage. Another work is made from variously shaped benches that resemble playground equipment, some slanted, others twisted. Yet another presents the mysterious spectacle of a flame crowning a jet of water. In another water sculpture, water columns form labyrinths. When people enter, the walls of water sense their movements and react by rising and falling, luring them from one room to another and trapping them within the fountain.
Using a humorous perspective as his first point of contact, Hein's works naturally draw the viewer in, creating opportunities for communication. Although the materials he uses and the forms he creates are simple and minimal, they stimulate the visual and bodily senses that we use to interpret the world around us. This stimulation of our basis for cognizance provides both a playfulness that that leads to spontaneous interaction with the viewer and a depth that leads to profound experiences. The works of Jeppe Hein may exist as physical objects in themselves, but they are also abstractions of the perceptions and physical and psychological experiences generated when viewers encounter them, as well as venues and opportunities for meaningful dialogues with the work and the space it is placed in.
This social nature, allowing and encouraging the viewer to interact, is a characteristic of Hein’s art. In addition to exhibits presented at art museums and international exhibitions, he has created many large public installations. A huge project combining a solo exhibition at Denmark's ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum with public art throughout the city planned for 2009 is already garnering much attention. Jeppe Hein has also opened an art bar in Copenhagen called Karriere, incorporating commissioned work from numerous artists to create a new space for expression and for thinking about communication.
As an artist, Hein is fascinated by how communication between his work and the viewer plays out in different ways under the influence of cultural differences. Naming his second solo exhibition at SCAI "Kuru Kuru" (Japanese for "round and round"), he has chosen to exhibit circular and spherical works as a basis for approaching Japanese culture, in which the circle can symbolize enlightenment or truth.
By interacting with these works made of neon lights, mirrors, stainless steel, and other materials, viewers of the exhibition will find their perceptual and cognitive logic shaken from various perspectives and enjoy a wide variety of experiences, from refreshing surprise to a sense of frustration or confusion. While exposing the object-observer relationship between his works and the viewer, this exhibition also presents the viewer with an opportunity to consider the uncertainty of that relationship. We hope that the exhibition will allow many people to experience and interact with Jeppe Hein’s art, and to enjoy it on many levels.
Scai The Bathhouse
"The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs." -Marie-Jeanne Roland 1754-1793
Schroeder Romero Gallery is pleased to present The More I See of Men, the gallery’s third solo show by Michael Waugh – with work that bridges the gap between two great American events, the inauguration of a new president in January and the Westminster Dog Show in February.
The drawings that comprise this show continue Waugh’s exploration of the drawing technique called micrography, through which tiny hand-written words are used to build up visual images. As Waugh’s work continues to evolve, the drawings have become denser and more expressive; yet they remain deeply engaged in politics and the rhetoric of official history.
The work presented in The More I See of Men, uses the text of reports commissioned by U.S presidents as its starting point. These reports, which often serve the purposes of political propaganda, present research on issues as diverse as the attacks of 9/11, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the privatization of social security. Waugh uses these texts to create a dizzying filigree of bureaucratic documents that coalesce into the form of dogs – waiting to serve their masters. Rich with allegory and dark humor, these drawings subvert the obvious, optically shifting between image and text, figure and ground. These are drawings that transcend their source by reminding us that viewing is not passive.
Dogs are a common subject in popular art; and, after portraits of people, portraits of pets are the second most commissioned subject. Part of the critique inherent in this series of drawings is a comparison between the banality of such artistic commissions and the banality of commissioned propaganda. The knowledge that dogs have been bred to serve us, to listen and do our bidding unquestioningly makes the critique more biting. The centerpiece of the show, entitled The Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties, is over eight feet tall and almost ten feet wide; it contains over 300 pages of handwritten text; it took six months to complete. Such vast amounts of labor given over in service to such specious propaganda cannot be felt easily. Like the history of the country into which this work delves, this show overflows with generosity, with a contradictory, heartbreaking beauty.
Michael Waugh received his MFA from Texas State University. His work has been shown at Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY; OKOK Gallery, Seattle; The Morris Museum, NJ; and at The University of Connecticut, among others. New work will be included in Solution, a group show curated by Janet Phelps at DiverseWorks, Houston, TX in March. He received a residency from the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers University in 2008 and is a Joan Mitchell fellowship recipient at the Vermont Studio Center for 2009. The Artist would like to thank Argosy Books for its support of this project.
Schroeder Romero
Port de Suisse Winter Season Opening: Friday, January 16, 2009, 5–8 pm
LOUKIA ALAVANOU - BERTA FISCHER
LAURINA PAPERINA - REBECCA THOMAS
To kick off Zurich’s Galleries Winter Season’s Opening, HAAS & FISCHER presents works by four young European artists. The artist-quartet connects a playful lightness and experimentation in dealing with content, material and form.
Rebecca Thomas will live-perform at the opening.
Haas Fischer
I wanted to let you know about a show of Ukrainian American artist Adriana Farmiga. The show just opened last week and is getting a lot of attention.
Farmiga is known for her conceptual sculpture that has been shown at the Socrates Sculpture park and La Mama Art Center.
I am sending few images of her available pieces.
NP Gallery
