Friday, February 27, 2009
Art in America
Art in America
Kamrooz Aram: Uneasy Delights
Kamrooz Aram's paintings have a lot going on in them—explosions, showers of light, flights of nimbus-headed angels, flapping flags and pennants, whizzing snail-shaped clouds, flowers spraying from camouflage, flames shooting from vegetation and looming falcons, slurries of color drooling and dripping through spaces, shreds of bright matter wheeling in glistening skies.
Velocity and visual amplitude typify this artist's canvases, as if he were fixing as many elements of a rapidly mutating dream as he could remember. Not that they're formally chaotic (or invariably packed with incident); Aram is usually partial to symmetry and internal pictorial logic. Crypto-Abstract Expressionist veils and drips combine with things that are unmistakably things; the style of his work as well as its manifest content effect a hybrid-ization we could liken to a familiar but not-quite-nameable, liquefying plant, maybe one that swallows live prey.
Aram was born in Iran in 1978 and has lived in the United States since age eight. His work riffs on imagery found in Persian miniatures and carpet patterns, Shiite posters and Arabic writing, but this material figures in contexts where original cosmological systems or hortatory meanings dissolve, or blend with Western analogues. There isn't a pointed collision of cultures in Aram's pictures, but rather the fluid synthesis artists conjure from what they encounter in waking and dreaming life, which can be events of trauma or epiphany or, just as easily, the casually registered minutiae of a walk down the street. (Excerpt from Kamrooz Aram: Uneasy Delights By Gary Indiana. For the complete article please click the link above.)
Perry Rubenstein
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
F O R E V E R H A U N T Y O U
F O R E V E R H A U N T Y O U
Like his relationship to the viewer which is preconceived distortions, Burdin obfuscates any conformability of the familiar as avoidance to the static and mundane leaving his creations critically and psychologically challenging, long past the last note of exhibitions end. Burdin’s stealth routing between fact and fiction feels both deliberate and sincere. He leaves you with no choice but to succumb to his trip, which appears as a very abstract and subversive concerto. Once you're in or locked out the door - sometimes you just cant get in - the adventure begins.
For this exclusive bi-coastal exhibition, a first in the history of contemporary art, Burdin will simultaneously exhibit in two separate spaces, large scale pencil drawings, stenciled paintings, textile works, sculpture and two video pieces. Both, world premier video works have never been screened since their conception. One, a very early Desert Mix episode, A le UNK Autopsy (1999), events a vague subversion correlating the absurd faux-reality UFO/alien television hoax with notions of contemporary art hierarchy, and the underground existence where Burdin primarily records and produces.
The center piece of the exhibition involves an installation/performance which can be viewed in the Los Angles location where Burdin has never had a solo show -This bi-coastal event keeps that track record - untainted. In claustrophobic display, the ghostly structure JUNK TOMB CRYPTOS VII IV VIII -VII IV IX (2009) , surreally houses the lore and legends appropriately blanketed in dust.
The exhibition will be on view over a two month period beginning Sunday March 1st, where it launches in Los Angles and tremors next to the New York sector, grand opening Friday March 6, with all venues closing May 1st .
Benevento Los Angles
DIRITTO ROVESCIO
DIRITTO ROVESCIO
Including
Tom Dixon
Dante Donegani
Nathalie Du Pasquier
Janet Echelman
Giovanni Lauda
Claudia Losi
Freddie Robins
Patricia Urquiola
Patricia Walzer
Marcel Wanders
Benji Whalen
Anne Wilson
Tokujin Yoshioka
Triennale
Benji Whalen
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Mathilde ter Heijne
We are pleased to announce the fifth solo exhibition by Mathilde ter Heijne with Arndt & Partner. Beside an installation which is based on ter Heijne’s work Mosuo Fireplace Goddess realized during a residency in China two years ago, new pieces from her recently founded fashion label Goddess Labe will be shown. A special thanks goes to the fashion label von Wedel & Tiedeken.
Arndt Partner
Hew Locke work on show at Museums Sheffield: Graves Gallery
Hew Locke’s magnificent portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, Medusa, 2007, purchased last year by The Arts Council Collection, is currently on show for the first time as part of A Picture of You? The show explores identity in British contemporary art and runs until 2nd of May at Graves Gallery, Sheffield.
The exhibition also features work from British artists Grayson Perry, Gillian Wearing and Mona Hatoum and is the first in a series of exhibitions at Museums Sheffield, devoted to the exploration of identity and nationality through British art.
Over the next four years, Museums Sheffield will turn the spotlight on the British nation as a whole, in order to ask what its historic and contemporary art reveals about the people who live in it.
A Picture of You? is part of The Great British Art Debate, a four year collaboration with Tate Britain, Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service and Tyne & Wear Museums, exploring what it means to be British in the run up to the 2012 Olympics.
Hales Gallery
Monday, February 23, 2009
Cut & Paste
Cut & Paste
Martin Erik Andersen
Peter Callesen
Arturo Herrera
Emil Westmann Hertz
Yoshiaki Kaihatsu
Ann Lislegaard
Pernille With Madsen
Per Mølgaard
Kirstine Roepstorff
Rosemarie Trockel
Jasper Sebastian Stürup
Lawrence Weiner
Troels Wörsel
Susanne Ottesen
Sunday, February 22, 2009
SIMON EVANS Island Time
James Cohan Gallery is pleased to introduce Simon Evans, a London-born artist, who currently lives and works in Berlin. Former pro-skateboarder and writer, Evans found his voice as a visual artist and has been exhibiting his work since 2003. This is the artist's New York gallery debut show.
Simon Evan's delicate text-based works are collaged and assembled from prosaic materials including found paper, scotch tape, pencil shavings, colored pencil and white out. They describe a world poised between two poles of earnestness and irony. With his anxieties laid bare and his wry brand of melancholy, Evans presents us with a veritable laundry list of drawings that take the form of diagrams, charts, maps, lexicons, diary entries, inventories, cosmologies and epistolary entreaties that plunge the viewer into alternate states of pathos and hope.
The exhibition Island Time will be installed over two galleries with titles such as Escape and Rescue Plan and Everything I Have that point to inspiration taken from both the mundane and personal. The title of the show Island Time is a reference to Robinson Crusoe and the hand-made objects that were critical to his survival on a desert island-a metaphor that draws connections between the state of being shipwrecked, to the role of the artist as an outsider, to the artist's personal biography living as an ex-patriot in a foreign city. Evident in the work is Evan's preoccupation with counting and charting-an activity also key to survival as a castaway.
In the main gallery, the drawing Green City presents an exact copy of a tourist map of Berlin redrawn in green ball point pen and white out. Evans says that, "Tracing things is a way of making something mine in a world which feels already filled with too much." He goes on to describe the significance of the color green in this exploration as a reference to naiveté and a utopia unspoiled by experience while at the same time making an allusion to the flip-side which is Berlin's darker history. Green also marks the season in which the drawing was made-it took an entire summer in a very green Berlin to trace this map. The companion piece Home Country is a map of the London Tube made of woven paper. This depiction of the artist's hometown, with all of the Tube lines drawn in black, communicates a web of ideas and reflections about the notion of homeland. Other works in the show will include One Hundred Mix CDs for New York which is a collection of mix CD's that are arranged together in one frame. In this sprawling work, Evans attempts to encapsulate his feelings about art and music, in particular regarding the gesture of exchange that typifies the making of mixed CD's.
Simon Evans currently lives and works in Berlin. His work was the subject of solo exhibitions in 2005 at the Aspen Art Museum (Aspen, CO) and White Columns (New York, NY.) He has participated in the 2006 Sao Paolo Biennial (Sao Paolo, Brazil) and 2004 California Biennial (Orange County Museum, Newport Beach, CA.) Evans' work has been included in international group exhibitions most recently at the Fotomuseum Winterthur (Winterthur, Switzerland); the Tate Modern (London, UK); the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, Japan); and the Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt, Germany).
James Cohan
John Bock "No Time No Screws"
John Bock
"No Time No Screws"
Eleni Koroneou Gallery is pleased to present for the fourth time the new work of John Bock in his second solo exhibition. John Bock born in Gribbohm, Germany, lives and works in Berlin.
John Bock uses the form of performance as artistic medium, combining theater, video, installation and sculpture. Most of his early actions or performances were termed "lectures" and originated in the idea of an academic lesson on economic concerns. Starting out from that basis he has developed over time increasingly complex, large-scale installations in which he employs simple everyday objects and materials, like wood, fabric, wire, cotton wadding, toothpaste, shaving cream, cleaning products, and food, which he treats and combines in unusual ways in order to create simple structures of life as well as art's evolution into abstract forms and paranoid models.
In his lectures Bock combines speech, dramatic elements with these everyday objects, which are transformed into sculptures. His performances are various and most of the time he uses amateur actors. After each lecture, the objects that he has used are left on stage creating a theatre-collage. The language he uses is not very clear, it is a mutation language that flows on the sculptures. The sculptures as objects are more relicts, vehicles, instruments, which try to combine the artist with the audience and the outside world. This auction comes from a personal utopia of the artist who wants to share it with the audience, hoping that this utopia will influence it. Significant role in the work of Bock plays this interactive connection with the public
The current exhibition with the title "No Time No Screws" presents the new installation work of John Bock, which consists of transformed parts of a bus. These refer to a lecture-performance that Bock did in a city bus, invited by XYZ last October, traveling through the streets downtown Athens. The video, documenting the performance, is also central part of the show.
John Bock has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the Athens Biennale (2007), Venice Biennale (1999 and 2005), Documenta 11 in Kassel (2002), and Manifesta 5 in San Sebastian (2004). He has exhibited worldwide in Museums and Art Institutions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2000); the Museum Bojmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2003); and the ICA in London (2005); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (2006); Shirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2007); Graz Kunsthaus, Graz (2008).
Eleni Koroneou Gallery
Friday, February 20, 2009
ANDREAS JOHANSSON ’STUDIES OF AN IMAGINARY PLACE’
ANDREAS JOHANSSON ’STUDIES OF AN IMAGINARY PLACE’
In his paper-collages Andreas Johansson exposes his imaginary and nihilistic project and invites the spectator behind the constructed perspective of his landscape sceneries.
It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to our second solo show with the Swedish artists Andreas Johansson. At the exhibition 'Studies of an imaginary place' Andreas Johansson will be showing seven large paper collages, made out of photography’s he has taken of areas from his close environment.
At first glance Andreas Johansson’s 2-D paper-collages appears to be photography’s of deserted and demolished places, where al human civilization seems to have left the dilapidated concrete- and iron-constructions to the mercy of mother nature. Wild bushes and weed perforate the asphalt in front of the towering – almost roman-like – concrete columns. The graffiti-painters have long since decorated all vertical surfaces of the ruins and a (very) clear blue sky lies on top of an ever-seductive horizon. Although a closer inspection reveal that these landscapes – on one hand quite and on the other hand grand sceneries – are meant to be just as illusory, just as full of poetry and pent-up feelings, as the landscape paintings of the Romanticism. Andreas Johansson’s paper-collages are not only a deconstruction of the real existing places in his environment. They are also a re-construction of new imaginary places. A kind of 'non-places'. Places that without a pre-existing history are left open to an almost nihilistic kind of perspective.
In Johansson's sculptural paper-collages it becomes even more evident, that landscape sceneries are always (more or less) a construction of the artists mind and the spectators point of view. In his sculptural paper-collages his illusory way of playing with surfaces and depths becomes evident in the simplest way imaginable. The third dimension of the sculptural collages reveals that only from one angle, and one angle only, are things perceived in the right perspective. If the spectator takes one little step to the left or right, the illusion is broken and the reality of the distorted perspective becomes evident. In the sculptural collages Johansson exposes his imaginary and nihilistic project and invites the spectator behind the constructed perspective of his landscape sceneries.
Andreas Johansson (1977) live and work in Malmö, Sweden. He is a graduate from the Art school Idun Lovén and The Art Academy in Malmö (2006). He has previously been exhibiting at Kunstverine Hannover, I.A.S.P.I.S. in Stockholm and the Photo Festival in Arles, France. He is also represented at Malmö Art Museum and several other public institutions.
Bendixen
Thursday, February 19, 2009
BENANDSEBASTIAN ’MADE IN RUINS’
BENANDSEBASTIAN ’MADE IN RUINS’
Bendixen contemporary art is pleased to announce the opening of the solo exhibition Made in Ruins by ‘benandsebastian’.
The artists / architects behind the inter-disciplinary group ‘benandsebastian’ are Ben Clement (GB) and Sebastian de la Cour (DK). At their first solo exhibition at bendixen contemporary art they'll be showing a new architectonic sculpture that once again invites the spectator to explore benandsebastian's characteristic and complex universe.
benandsebastian's fascination with urban and architectural subjects is evident in the exhibition Made in Ruins, where they examine the fragmented qualities of a deconstructed ruin.
'benandsebastian' have created a beautiful and well-crafted spindle staircase, which doesn't seem to lead anywhere; on the contrary, it seems to fall apart. Underneath the stair's functional steps there exist complex, underlying constructions with their own extensive urban structures. In this very spatially-orientated sculpture, the inner, complex constructions appear in a wonderful and yet disturbing contrast to the solid and coherent baluster, casing and skirting boards.
As the title Made in Ruins reveals, the subject of time is of great importance. Even though the the broken spindle staircase stands as if frozen in time, the exposed parts of the sculpture leads the imagination past the frozen present and towards unknown tales of a past and a future.
In many ways Made in Ruins seems to trifle deal with questions about the power struggle between the inner and outer constructions, between construction and deconstruction, and finally between beauty and decay.
The inter-disciplinary artist group 'benandsebastian' are able to embrace the boundaries between art and architecture in a very characteristic way. This is not only due to the fact that they can excite the curiosity and fascination of the spectator in a superior manner; 'benandsebastian's works of art become architectonical and sculpturally interesting because they can play so brilliantly with different scales, materials and have a high standard of craftsmanship. There works of art also become artistically interesting because they not only focus on aesthetics, but are also able to incorporate political, ethical and cultural motives in their sculptural works.
Ben Clement (1981) and Sebastian de la Cour (1980) live and work in Copenhagen and are both graduates from The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College in London. They have been working together for the past three years as the artist duo 'benandsebastian' and in 2008 received several national prizes and awards for their artworks. 'benandsebastian' were the exhibition designers for the recent Fifty/Fifty SE exhibition and will be participating at several other exhibitions this year, for example at the Museum of Modern Art (Roskilde), Kunsthal Charlottenborg and Riot Pilot (Copenhagen). Just recently they have also contributed to the artists' paper Internationalistisk Ideale #2, which was released in connection to the exhibition Utopia, at Arken – Museum of Modern Art.
Bendixen
ERIK PARKER CRISIS CREATION
ERIK PARKER CRISIS CREATION
Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to announce an upcoming exhibition of Erik Parker's new paintings, entitled "Crisis Creation" from February 26th- March 28th, with an opening reception on March 5th, 6-8 p.m. This exhibition marks the artist's first at Paul Kasmin Gallery, and the artist's first solo exhibition of new paintings in New York City since 2005.
Employing a unique amorphous architecture to his work, Parker creates bold and graphic semi-portraiture. These paintings begin with a bright, geometric background, layered upon with seemingly-random drips, dollops, beads and blotches. The result is an anthropomorphic figure, composed of various shapes, which only hint at conventional countenance. Facial features emerge from gaping portholes, rising to the foreground, while contemporaneously melting into one another. The dichotomy inherent to his visual vocabulary is stunning –vividly colorful forms stretching towards the viewer, hallucinogenic visuals come to mind, yet all the while keeping a sense of chaotic coalescence. Amidst these polarities, Parker impressively cultivates a unique visual experience for the viewer.
While maintaining his individual sense of space and dynamism, Parker is deeply influenced by a variety of subcultures ranging from underground comics, illustration, graffiti and music. The fluid, intense visuals of Parker's works are informed in part by the patchwork of musical sources he listens to, none more evident than psychedelic rock. Furthermore, in his studio, Parker is often listening to lectures and discussions on conspiracy theory – the ultimate foray into layered accounts and suggestions of human participation. Consequently, the obvious shapes and colors, with cartoon-like doodles combine to create a vocabulary of "ordered disorder" – here, Parker's talent continues to blossom in this new collection of work.
Based in New York, Erik Parker was born in Stuttgart, Germany and studied at the University of Austin, Texas, and SUNY Purchase. He has exhibited throughout the world, most recently in Amsterdam, Tokyo, Copenhagen and Zurich. Parker participated in "Greater New York" at P.S.1 in 2000, and is included in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York (The Judith Rothschild Foundation's Contemporary Drawings Collection).
Paul Kasmin Gallery
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
It’s Raining Men...!
It’s Raining Men...!
Jesper Just, Martin Erik Andersen, Alexander Tovborg, Ferdinand Krag, Simon Dybbroe Møller (Maria Loboda), Ulrik Heltoft, Ulrik Møller, Ulrik Weck, Peter Holst Henckel, Kaspar Bonnén, Troels Sandegård.
Christina Wilson
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Elmgreen & Dragset
Trying to Rembember What We Once Wanted to Forget
MUSAC brings artist pair Elmgreen & Dragset to Spain with Trying to Remember What We Once Wanted to Forget, their largest show to date
Title: Trying to Remember What We Once Wanted to Forget
Artists: Elmgreen & Dragset. Michael Elmgreen (Copenhagen, 1961) and Ingar Dragset
(Trondheim, 1969)
Curator: Agustín Pérez Rubio
Coordinator: Eneas Bernal
Venue: MUSAC, Halls 1, 4, 5, 6 and Hall 1 courtyard
Dates: 31 January – 21 June 2009
Celebrated Scandinavian artists Elmgreen & Dragset are to open their latest exhibition on 31 January 2009 at MUSAC. In an extensive site-specific project made up of twelve striking large-format installations, six of which they have developed specifically for MUSAC, the artist pair shall take over a total floor space in excess of 2,500 m2, making their forthcoming show a milestone in their career, if only in terms of its sheer size. Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, working with their curator, have developed a project that tackles the fine line between the personal and the collective, exploring the problems we face when our voracious public sphere encroaches on the private. Trying to remember… plunges viewers into a domestic environment, where they are confronted with the idea of community and with the ambivalence between nostalgia and desire.
Elmgreen & Dragset
Michael Elmgreen (Copenhagen, Denmark, 1961) and Ingar Dragset (Trondheim, Norway, 1969) started earning themselves a name as artistic partners in the early 1990s with their socially and politically engaged action art and installations. Amongst their most renowned pieces are their Powerless Structures, a series of works developed over time where the artists examine the concept of space and its multiple possibilities in terms of meaning and function. By inverting these terms, in the sense defined by Foucault, they put forth a compelling critique of art systems as seen through architecture, revealing a number of gender issues related to gay identity and aspects of youth and art-world subcultures. The issue of constructing meanings both in the private and public or institutional spheres, and their sexual connotations therefore stand as a key theme in Elmgreen & Dragset’s work. By transferring a given space into a new context that redefines its meaning and simultaneously applying calculated interventions to the way that very meaning operates, Elmgreen & Dragest manage to strip spaces of their conventional significance and open up new possibilities in terms of perception and appreciation. Their work thus provides a compelling demonstration of the alterability of established structures.
Their acclaimed shows at Tate Modern (London), Bonen Foundation (New York), Serpentine Gallery (London), Marfa (L.A.), and their contributions to a number of biennials, including Sao Paulo, Venice, Sydney, Yokohama, Berlin, Istanbul or Skulptur Projekte Munster 08 have earned them leading awards including the Berlin Hamburger Bahnhof’s Preis der Nationalgaleirie für Junge Kunst, solidly establishing their presence on the international art scene. Based in Berlin, they are currently working as artists/ curators for the Danish and Norwegian pavilions at the forthcoming Venice Biennale, where for the first time in history two countries will put forth a joint project.
Trying to Remember What We Once Wanted to Forget. The exhibition
Elmgreen & Dragset, in close cooperation with their curator, have developed a project for MUSAC that tackles the fine line between the personal and the collective, exploring the problems we face when our voracious public sphere encroaches on the private. Trying to remember… attempts to involve the viewers, confronting them with the ambivalence between nostalgia and desire and forcing them to peer into a private or domestic environment from their standpoint in a public space. Alongside their critical perspective on the system adopted from a position of otherness, the artists add a certain exercise in “looking back”. Trying to Remeber… builds on the discourse that underpinned This is the first day of my life at the Malmo Kunsthalle (2007), still pragmatically compromising, yet now bolstered by a degree of self-revisionism. The pair engages in a close examination of their lives so far, in order to construct an ongoing present, which they achieve by inquiring into the domesticated private space we all have in common. This backward gaze draws less on irony and humour than their previous work, being more openly driven by existential angst. The artists focus on our most intimate doubts, including miscommunication, loneliness, isolation, the morning after, the trials and tribulations we face in constructing our identities, or our dashed hopes and fears. These are the themes that the artists are concerned with in their artistic maturity, certainly present in their previous work but now brought to the fore as the very core of their show. Trying to Remember… is haunted by a more cautious, reflexive approach to life, still touched by their trademark joie de vivre but more acutely aware of the hangover that living leaves us with – an enlightened gaze on how these individualistic times affect each individuals.
From the very first moment, Trying to Remember… sets out to destabilise the viewer. The point of entry forces the public to choose their own route through the show, deciding whether or not to step into the domestic spaces created specifically for the show that house each installation. The artists have created a collective transition space that confronts aspects of intimacy (the small domestic structures that hold each installation) with the collective idea of private space, where architecture and domestic space become the guiding vector from one episode to the next, combining microhistories that define the way we see ourselves within the community. This is an idea that runs through the entire exhibition, made up of twelve installations, many of which were conceived and produced specifically for the show, alongside previous works, displayed in line with the artists and curator’s overall approach to the project. Stepping into the exhibition space is to plunge into a succession of situations where a set of architectural and sensorial factors generate a confrontation between the public and the private. Hotel corridors with vestiges of an event; a courtyard where a party really did take place as part of the exhibition project, with the leftovers becoming a part of the artwork itself; domestic interiors where we become entangled in the owners’ intimate relationships; children gripped by a fear of the unknown; rooms haunted by solitary beings whose sense of loneliness is not soothed by digital communication overkill; dreams and desires that make the trappings of our daily lives fade away in our yearning for the other; chambers where a given time is the same in different places; labyrinths crammed with hundreds of images of our past, where we become engulfed in a surge of information and loose our sense of past and present; or two lovers suspended in the vacuum in an endless search for the “other” – all force us to question our experience of who we are, what has happened and where we stand.
Musac
Santiago Sierra
Santiago Sierra @ Magasin 3:: Stockholm Konsthall:::
Santiago Sierra makes the main exhibition at Magasin 3 this spring. Since the 1990s, Santiago Sierra has worked to create socially critical actions. He has represented Spain at the Venice Biennale where he bricked up the entrance to the Spanish pavilion, he has worked with drug addicts and prostitutes, and has created an income index related to skin color. Sierra’s works leave no one unmoved. By means of formal presentations or staged events, he places focus on and reminds us of societal conditions. The actual events, their traces and their documentation constitute the works. The artist uses the titles of the works to describe precisely what we are seeing and thereby invites us to look beyond the form or the action being performed.
Santiago Sierra will focus on the location of Magasin 3 in the free port when creating two new works. Transport and trade, exemplified by the port area, are important subjects in his artistic practice and will be the focus of the exhibition. The artist will show his most comprehensively challenging sculptural work to date, a piece from 2006-2007, and will extend the exhibition to billboards around the city.
Magasin 3
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Compound Editions presents
Compound Editions is a collaborative fine art multiples publishing venture between Schroeder Romero and Winkleman Galleries.
Compound Editions is very pleased to announce the release of our second multiple, All Your Eggs, by Vermont-based sculptor Andy Yoder. Known for his sculptures of everyday objects made from unexpected materials that trigger childhood memories, tweak well-known metaphors, and offer a very American critique of social values, Yoder here combines a series of popular financial aphorisms into one fantastic piece of jumbled advice. Resting in a nest of shredded US currency, these gorgeous gold-gilded eggs hidden in a humble wooden case reference a series of folksy epigrams, from "Protect your nest egg" to "Don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg," from "Put something away for a rainy day," to "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." Solid advice in any economic climate, but particularly good to remember in these challenging times.
Schroeder Romero
HREINN FRIDFINNSSON
HREINN FRIDFINNSSON
Galerie Nordenhake is pleased to present an exhibition with new works and elaborations of previous projects by Icelandic artist Hreinn Fridfinnsson. His work could be described as discreet tributes to the poetry of small gestures.
Fridfinnsson gained prominence as a leading figure of the Icelandic avant-garde after co-founding the artist group SUM in 1965. A major retrospective of Fridfinnsson’s work, organized by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, documenting his ongoing influence for a younger generation of artists, was on view at the Serpentine Gallery in London and the Reykjavik Art Museum in 2007 and traveled to Bergen Kunstmuseum and the Malmö Konsthall in 2008.
Fridfinnsson’s art is rooted in the memories and experiences of his native Iceland and its contrasting landscapes. At times, he echoes the lyricism of a wandering bard, recounting legends, rumours, secrets, and dreams, sometimes telling a story, other times describing a place or an event. All these aspects are embodied by his new photographic series Second House. The images are a documentation of a further development of his House Project from 1974, an installation inspired by the tale of an eccentric Icelander who built a house inside out.
Fridfinnssons’s work can take almost any form: crystal turning to stars; frottage that evokes the artist’s own studio; a silvery pencil rubbing of Cezanne's Mont St Victoire. In Whatever Time We Choose (1999), for example, the artist creates an installation made out of an undefined number of crystals that recalls an imaginary constellation of stars. Alongside this work Fridfinnsson presents From Mont Sainte-Victoire (1998), a series of fifteen frottage works, lovingly tracing the very ground of Cezanne's muse as if he were making a brass rubbing. The same kind of technique has been deployed by the artist in reproducing the visual patterns composing his studio’s floor. A pile of these drawing is then gently agitated by two small fans thus allowing the artist to give the illusion of a minimal action and its time. In both works the historically charged technique of the frottage connects the everyday and the magical through the poetic and ironic presence of the! artist. The diversity of media, which Fridfinnsson utilizes consistently reflects the artist's complex visual language, each work imbued with simultaneous instances of humour and wonder.
Born in 1943 in Baer Dölum, Iceland, Hreinn Fridfinnsson has been living in Amsterdam since 1971. He has had solo exhibitions at: Malmö Konsthall (2008); Reykjavik Art Museum and Serpentine Gallery, London (both 2007); Domaine de Kerguehennec, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Bignan, and Kyoto Art Center (both 2002). In 1993 he exhibited at the National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik (1993) and represented Iceland at the 45th Venice Biennial. His work has also been featured in group shows including Material Time/ Work Time/ Life Time, Reykjavik Arts Festival (2005), Eblouissement, Jeau de Paume, Paris (2004), Norden, Kunsthalle Wien, the Carnegie Art Award, (both 2000), Sleeping Beauty–Art Now, Scandinavia Today, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1983). In 2000, the artist was the recipient of the prestigious Ars Fennica prize. Hreinn Fridfinnsson has been exhibiting with Galerie Nordenhake since 1989! .
Nordenhake
Friday, February 13, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Naoya Hatakeyama “Maquettes / Light”
Naoya Hatakeyama “Maquettes / Light”
Taka Ishii Gallery Kyoto is pleased to announce our fifth solo exhibition with Naoya Hatakeyama entitled “Maquettes/Light”. For this exhibition, the gallery will present 20 photographs from Hatakeyama’s “Maquettes/Light” body of work including previously unreleased images, bringing a conclusion to this series. The body of work, which has already been exhibited in abbreviated form at several museums including The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, will next be on view at “Recontres d’Arles 2009”, France from July 7th in its entirety. Hatakeyama has for years been questioning the very nature of the modern world under the theme of “urbanity”. His varied photographic series, which received incomparable recognition upon their debut, bring interrogation of the credibility of reality to the fore by mirroring the urban city and even transforming it through photography. “Maquettes/Light” duplicates the emissions of urban city lights. The work transcends the limits of “image” and proposes a new aspect of the photograph as a medium by acting in place of depicted “reality”. The exhibited series of photographs explores a new frontier within photography, and strongly engages the conceptual aspect of an image. I photographed urban city lights. When I was watching the developed print, I felt something was missing. Then, I put the print on a light box. The entire print glimmered in grey. I thought “this is not it”. I printed the same image on a transparent film, and attached it on the back side of the print. Then only the images of light were illuminated. Of course, it stands to reason, but I had never seen this reason. It is merely a tautology of reality, in which characteristics of photography, conversion and metaphor are de-legitimized. I thought that I cannot title this anything but “Maquette”. Naoya
Taka Ishii Gallery
TAUBA AUERBACH / CAMILLA LØW / EMILY WARDILL “ALMOST ALWAYS IS NEARLY ENOUGH”
TAUBA AUERBACH / CAMILLA LØW / EMILY WARDILL
“ALMOST ALWAYS IS NEARLY ENOUGH”
STANDARD (OSLO) is proud to present the exhibition “Almost Always Is Nearly Enough”, including
works by Tauba Auerbach, Camilla Løw and Emily Wardill. Neither title nor any theme have been
employed to equip the exhibition with a categorizing framework. Rather the five works here on
display share an interest in a possible collapse of categories and cognition alike – inviting a
discussion of the animation of the artwork.
“Something that is taking shape in my mind and will sometime come to consciousness.”
– Robert Barry
“I can shoot pool, and I can play ping-pong. I'm pretty good at those games.”
– Thelonious Monk
The ability that jazz pianist Thelonious Monk claimed to have as a player of both pool and ping-pong is hardly surprising given his conviction that all musicians are in fact mathematicians. “Subconsciously”, he added, knowing that listening to his performances in order to pin down any attempt at translating the trigonometry of pool into music would be pointless. After all, eccentricity characterized his music as much as any loyalty to logic. Nevertheless, Monk would be right in claiming that the abilities to predict and project necessitate the possibility to play. Only then is there a chance to deviate and tweak standards with
dissonant harmonies, uneven bar structures, doubling of tempo mixed with abrupt, dramatic use of silence and hesitation. Wrong is made right, but only if you had it right in the first place.
Camilla Løw's two sculptures in the exhibition equally seem to rely on rigid rules that are then subjected to hesitation. Suspended from the ceiling is the work “14 Days”, a trapeze made from oiled oak bars and nylon strings. The idiosyncratic form in combination with the title may suggest the collapse of a calendar, but less specifically the work seems concerned with the collapse of solid configuration. “14 Days” is a balancing act; its configuration an instable moment of movement and one that will inevitably alter with every new mounting of the work. This element of chance is also investigated in the adjacent work, “White Steel”, where Løw is applying force to merge the geometric and organic. A powder coated white sheet of
steel has been hammered haphazardly, leaving it at an in between stage of flatness and form. As sculptures they are both contradictions: being interested in how two-dimensional they can appear although inevitably being three-dimensional works.
Similarly concerned with matters of flatness and depths are the works from Tauba Auerbach's recently developed series “Crease” / “Crumple”. The two paintings may be seen as continuing her research on ambiguity constructed from unambiguous parts. From focusing at the binary programming language of computers with her “50/50” series, Auerbach is this time looking at raster graphics (“halftone”) as a tool for translation of images. As indicated by the titles Auerbach takes an interest in the raster graphics ability to render a relief form on a flat surface. Entering the space and viewing the painting at the end wall of the gallery, one is capable of grasping the motif of a crumpled piece of paper. But when moving closer the
motif dissolves, the dots of the raster start pulsating and producing a sheer nauseating physical sensation of the work having an internal space. The paradox remains that when studying a fragment from up close one is able to recognize the transparency of form while also recognizing that information has been made opaque.
Emily Wardill's contribution to the exhibition is the film Born Winged Animals and Honey Gatherers of the ,dating back to 2005. The mere 9 minutes long 16 mm film merges tableaux from the East End of London with the sound of the church bells of St. Anne in Limehouse, but its subject matter in prologue to Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality(1887). Here Nietzsche argues that humans have never been able
to find out who they really are and even in the attempt to do so they inevitably lose themselves:
“Rather, much as a divinely distracted, self-absorbed person into whose ear the bell has just boomed its twelve strokes of noon suddenly awakens and wonders, ‘what did it actually toll just now?’ so we rub our ears afterwards and ask, ‘what did we actually experience just now?’ still more: ‘who are we actually?’ and count up afterwards, as stated, all twelve quavering bell strokes of our life, of our being – alas! And miscount in the processes.”
Weaving together the staccato rhythm of the church bells and recorded snapshots of everyday life in this area of east London, the film revisits Nietzsche’s without literally referencing its source. However, as claimed by curator Katharine Stout, “Born Winged Animals and Honey Gatherers of the Soulharnesses the visceral impact of bells tolling, and juxtaposes this with evocative realist film footage to both suggest and dissolve Nietzsche’s symbolic description of an individual’s attempt to gain self-awareness”.
Tauba Auerbach (b. 1981) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include “Passengers” at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, “Yes and Not Yes” at Deitch Projects, New York, and “The Answer/Wasn't Here”, Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, in addition to group exhibitions such as “No Information Available” at Gladstone Gallery, Bruxelles; “Words Fail Me” at Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; “Beneath the Underdog” at Gagosian Gallery, New York, and “Panic Room” at the Deste Art Foundation, Athens. Throughout the duration of the exhibition Tauba Auerbach's works can also be seen in the SECA Award Show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Camilla Løw (b. 1976) lives and works in Oslo. Recent solo exhibitions include “Straight Letters” at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee / Pier Arts Centre, Orkney; “Broken Windows” at Elastic, Malmö; and “Henriette Grahnert / Camilla Löw” at Sutton Lane Paris, in addition to group exhibitions such as “Language of Vision” at Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesborough; and “Standard Sizes”, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. Throughout the duration of the exhibition her works can also be seen in a
solo exhibition at Gallery AHO, Oslo and group exhibitions “Constructivismes” at Galerie Almine Rech in Bruxelles and “The Thing” organized by MuHKA, Antwerp, in Mechelen, Belgium.
Emily Wardill (b. 1977) lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include NKV Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London and Jonathan Viner / Fortescue Avenue, London. Her works have also been included in group exhibitions such as “Lightbox” at Tate Britain, “Ballet Mecanique” at Timothy Taylor Gallery and “An Ambiguous Case”, MUMOK, Vienna. Wardill will this autumn have a solo exhibition with De Appel in Amsterdam and will also feature with a new film work in STANDARD (OSLO)'s two-person presentation (with Oscar Tuazon) at Art Basel this summer.
Standard Oslo
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