November 14, 2009 - February 20, 2010
Opening: November 13, 2009, 7 - 9 p.m.

The Michael Janssen Gallery is pleased to host the first comprehensive solo exhibition of Gianfranco Baruchello (*1924) in Berlin. The extensive and complex oevre of the 85 year old Italian artist goes back to the 60's. The Berlin exhibition focuses on work from the last twenty years. The Michael Janssen gallery shows paintings and drawings from 2007 to 2009, his "showcases" from the 70's up to today and a retrospective selection of his films. An installation, the especially for the gallery space developed garden represents an essential part of the exhibition for Baruchello.

The key work of the exhibition is a showcase consisting of eight smaller boxes that are joined together. It bears the title La formule, or "The Formula", after which the entire exhibition is named. The assemblages or "showcases" are an important part of Baruchello's artistic expression. He assembles cutouts and small objects such as toy cars, coins or silverware in boxes made of wood and Plexiglas. He often combines clippings from magazines with self-painted paper cutouts, creating showcases that offer the viewer a glimpse into another filigree universe.
This idea of the formula is crystallized in a recent interview with Maurizio Cattelan, as well as in Baruchello's extensive published writings. Baruchello believes to have found a formula, in accordance with which his art always functions. His sources of inspiration were never pictorial or visual art, but originate from the written word, from literature. On the one hand it was German philosophy of the 18th Century, with Hegel and Kant, on the other, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Yet Baruchello was clearly influenced by visual artists, most decisively by Marcel Duchamp. The two were good friends in Paris and Baruchello often dedicated works and essays to him.

Baruchello's paintings of the last years are spread with microscopic elements which seem like animal tracks, maps or maybe instruction manuals of some sort. The paintings give the deceiving impression to be "readable". Baruchello's painting has changed and developed over time. In the 60s he created colorful, abstract and freely composed images. In the 80s the motives become denser, and are very carefully and precisely structured, representing figurative subjects. The next phase, which can also be seen in the current images, sees a more radical exploitation of surface.

In another room of the gallery grow poisonous plants. This installation developed by the artist reflects his playful, experimental and at the same time provocative nature. The installation is entitled Poison, Danger!. On one hand it is meant to amuse people, but also to show them how quickly their lives can be threatened by - often pretty and harmless looking - plants.

One last important part of Baruchello's oeuvre are his videos and films. Michael Janssen gallery shows a selection of from very poetic, animated, black and white pictures in the 1960s, to the narrative, colorful and sometimes demanding compositions of recent times.

Gianfranco Baruchello (*1924 in Livorno) lives and works in Rome and Paris. His work has appeared in many individual and group exhibitions since the 1960s. In 1977 he was invited to Documenta 6 in Kassel and in 2008 he took part in his last major group exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice ( "Italics", curated by Francesco Bonami). His numerous solo exhibitions have primarily been held in Italy. Occasionally, his work has been shown in Munich (1971, Galerie Buchholz, 1975, Lenbachhaus, 1998/2005, Galerie Michael Hasenclever), Paris (1967, Yvon Lambert, 1982, Galerie Le Dessin, 1993, Galerie Krief) and Brussels (1967, Palais des Beaux Arts, 2006, Galerie Greta Meert).

 

Galerie Michael Janssen
Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse 26
10969 Berlin
+49 (0)30 25 927 250

 

 

 

November 13, 2009 - January 02, 2010

Artist(s): Hildur Bjarnadottir, Hreinn Friofinnsson, Guony Rosa Ingimarsdottir, Haraldur Jonsson, Noriko Ambe, Atsushi Saga, Katsuhiro Saiki, Yuken Teruya

Opening Reception : Friday, November 13, 6-8PM
Artist Talk: Saturday, November 14, 2-4PM

One view of catastrophe. This had happened. Who would have expected such a thing. Never, never. No one. It is the worst. And if the worst, then unique. Which means unrepeatable. Let's put it behind us. Let's not be doomsayers. The other view. Unique for now: what happens once can happen again. You'll see. Just wait. To be sure, you may have to wait a long time.
We come back. We come back. - From Susan Sontag's "The Volcano Lover"

ISE Cultural Foundation is pleased to present "Volcano Lovers - from Iceland and Japan" collaborative exhibition of Icelandic curator Birta Guojonsdottir and Japanese curator Shinya Watanabe.

Although the historical connection between Iceland and Japan has not been close in the past, these two island nations share obvious cultural and geographic parallels. They are located at the west and east poles of Eurasia, respectively, and have both been greatly influenced by having volcanoes as a prominent part of their natural terrain. For this exhibition we are interested in looking beyond these likenesses and exploring further the common ground manifested in current ways of living in Japan and Iceland, and what these cultural elements can mean for the inhabitants of these two nations today.

The science of plate tectonics has shown how Iceland was created through a split along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the boundary between the North American and Eurasian Plates, which created a new crust on both sides of the diverging boundary. Japan was, however, created on the triple junction of the Pacific, Philippine, and Eurasian plates, and this caused the formation of high mountains and a deep ocean trench.

In other words, earth is created in Iceland, and perishes in Japan. Both nations share an experience of the power and energy of earth's transformation, construction, and deconstruction. Their volcanic geographies and island cultures share certain affinities in their geopolitical traditions, and in both places there is a strong influence of animism, as shown by satru in Iceland and Shintoism in Japan.

Quoting the title of Susan Sontag's novel The Volcano Lover, this exhibition aspires to capture the energy and emotions that lie under the surface of minimalist expressions for these two different nations with similar backgrounds. These works subtly explore sensory experience, relativity, and the complexities of daily rituals.

From there, we can expand our understanding of creations which are heavily inflected by nature and geographical influences, even within the seemingly mundane realm of everyday life. We hope that this exhibition can be a platform for all of its participants and our guests to research those elements individually and collectively through future artistic practices and inspiring experiences.

Volcano Lovers exhibition is supported by the Consulate General of Iceland in New York and the Consulate General of Japan in New York. This exhibition is sponsored by ISE Cultural Foundation, Center for Icelandic Art (CIA) and the Kao Foundation for Arts and Sciences.

 

 

ISE Cultural Foundation
555 Broadway
New York, NY 10012
+1 212 925 1649

 

Volcano Lovers 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 29 - December 5, 2009

The wall drawings and wood sculptures that make up the core of Olaf Breuning's exhibition are based on the content and imagery of his small, childlike pencil drawings that "speak about the simple questions one could have about life." These drawings are typically produced in concentrated episodes of self-imposed isolation; prior to this exhibition Breuning spent five days alone drawing in his room aboard the Queen Mary II. In their translation to a larger scale, Breuning's humorous and earnest philosophical aphorisms are presented with a directness that is poignantly faithful to their source drawings. The wall drawings use broad black lines painted directly on the white walls. Their sculptural counterparts are essentially three-dimensional drawings made of wooden blocks painted black such as "Me, Me, Me, You and Me," which depicts a human head in profile with each egocentric thought illustrated inside: a dozen "me's" and a single "you". In "Yesnoyesno",  the viewer is literally confronted with a wall of indecision.

In contrast to the existential, stark, black and white works, the third gallery is devoted to "color studies," a series of works based on paint and primary colors. Breuning's play with dripping, splattering and spraying paint is documented in these sculptures and photographs. Experiments that began as diversions in the studio evolved into Breuning's active engagement with painting and abstract art-issues he never before considered.

Breuning's one-person exhibitions include the Migros Museum, Zurich; New Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City; Musée de Strasbourg, France; MAGASIN: Centre d'Art Contemporain, Grenoble; Chisenhale Gallery, London; and the Swiss Institute, New York. The work has been included in group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona; Museum of Modern Art, New York; 2008 Whitney Biennial, New York; Hayward Gallery, London; 2007 1st Athens Biennial; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Ellipse Foundation, Portugal; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; 2005 Prague Biennale; and Jeu de Paume, Paris.

Olaf Breuning was born in Switzerland and lives and works in New York City.

 

 

Metro Pictures
519 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
+1 212 206 7100

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 31 - December 19, 2009 

Elizabeth Dee is pleased to present Anabases, Eric Baudelaire's second solo show at the gallery, which is at once a continuation and a departure from Circumambulation, his 2007 inquiry into the cyclical and hypnotic relationship between image and event. Once again, the work presented is part of a greater cycle where pieces in different media are federated by an allegory of movement. But where Circumambulation navigated around a space left empty by a particular event that unfolded on September 11th, and the ensuing effect it had on our lives and our relationship to images, the ambulation at work in the current cycle stems from a literary motif inspired by Xenophon's Anabasis. And yet, it isn't so much a story or a destination that the show refers to. Instead, Anabases is an inquiry into the idea of a movement, the internal logic of which is embedded in the structure of the works on display.

 

What kind of movement is inscribed in Anabases? One that originates in Xenophon's historical epic, also known as the Persian Expedition, which recounts a leaderless retreat of ten thousand Greek mercenaries in search of a way home through unknown lands following the unexpected death of the Persian prince who had retained them. The itinerary becomes more allegorical in its many adaptations, including those by the poets St John Perse and Paul Celan, the 1979 cult film Warriors, its imminent Tony Scott remake, an Xbox game, and a lecture by Alain Badiou who employed the idea in his seminary on the 20th century at the Collège International de Philosophie. What the various incarnations of anabasis have in common is a principle of wandering, the notion of a journey into the new which isn't a simple return because it forges its own path without knowing whether it leads towards home. Badiou defines anabasis as "a free invention of a meandering which will have been a return, a return which, prior to the wandering, did not exist as a return." (1) And in tracing this undecidability, he notes that the notion of a disjunctive synthesis of will and wandering is embedded in the Greek etymology of the word itself since the verb αναβανειν ("to anabase," as it were), means both "to embark" and "to return."

This idea is at the heart of the works in Anabases: either allegorically, in terms of process, or in their conceptual structure, they each inhabit the idea of an uncertain movement that fundamentally changes in status or in meaning as it reaches its endpoint. The meandering becomes a return, but before being a return, it was an undetermined wandering. And while this essential transformation occurs at the end, it retroactively alters the nature of the movement that had taken place until that point.

Since 2005, Baudelaire's practice has been rooted in an ongoing exploration of images and documents. With pieces like The Dreadful Details (2006) and Sugar Water (2007), he worked less as a photographer than as a factographer, fabricating images that tended towards the real, false documents that created a mimesis of events as a device to decode the modes of fabrication, dissemination and consumption of images.

With Anabases, the practice is reversed; instead of creating fictions that appear to be documents, Baudelaire uses real documents to extract fictions. Here, the documentary materials are strictly sampled from the real, the gesture consists in their assembly, reproduction or recontextualization, which opens up new narrative spaces or initiates original forms.

Anabases encompasses a series of heliogravure prints sampling pages of western art magazines from which genitalia has been scratched out by Japanese press distributors (Of Signs and Senses), vitrines of found film stills matched to bits of narratives from un-made Antonioni film treatments (The Makes), photographs printed from rolls of traveling unexposed film (Anabasis X-rayograms), and Wall Street Journal clippings from September 2008 in which verses from a Paul Verlaine poem are revealed (Chanson d'automne). A booklet titled Anabases: Source Documents can be taken away as a memento and serves as a libretto for the show, reproducing the original materials from which the works originate and contextualizing them with a chronology of Anabases-related events. These narratives of disjunctive synthesis inside the gallery are signaled with a broken neon-sign on the façade (THE ROSE), and developed further with two new films ([sic] and The Makes) that depart from the strictly documentary nature of the rest of the works, linking back to Baudelaire's factographic practice.

The Anabases cycle was initiated during an eight-month residency at the Villa Kujoyama, in Kyoto, Japan, in 2008, and received support from the French consulate in New York City.

Eric Baudelaire lives and works in Paris, France. He graduated from Brown University in 1994. Since 2005, his work has been exhibited throughout Europe and North America. Anabases at Elizabeth Dee Gallery will run simultaneously with its counterpart at Galerie Greta Meert in Brussels.
(1) Badiou, Alain, Le Siècle, Paris: Seuil, 2005, Chapter 8

 

Elizabeth Dee Gallery
545 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011
+1 212 924 7545

 

 

 

 

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