Adrian Navarro
COMMON PEOPLE

3 Oct 2008 to 19 Oct 2008

Artist Adrian Navarro presents a new series of works combining painting and screen-printing on canvas at the exhibition Common People which will take place at Ada Street Gallery in London between the 3rd and 19th October 2008. In contrast to his previous work, the outcome of intimate studio-based painterly activity, the Common People paintings are individual and group portraits of urban character which arise from the artist's direct contact with the city of London.

The use of screen-printing has added direct graphic value to these new works by Adrian Navarro: the presence of the photographic image has served to reproduce the faces and looks which he has encountered whilst walking through the streets of London. In Panda Band, for example, he places us before a local London scene (in the East End) where a group of young people meet and interact in a concert. Something similar is happening in Butp in which a series of figures observe the viewer from different urban locations.
The flâneur has paced the streets, observed and listened to the city; he has gathered information, gone back to the studio and renders it on the canvas. Along the way he has acquired an impression, in the strictest sense of the term. As the artist himself has indicated, "painting for me is a means, not an end". A means which, in this case, may combine street art, graffiti or collage techniques, but which, all said and done, is clearly single-minded in its purpose: aiming to show a specific angle on the world that surrounds him, contemporary street-life and its protagonists, the city as it is now.

In Common People Adrian Navarro enters into dialogue with the photographic and even the cinematographic experience by inserting the figure in a context where it moves from being a static image to an image in movement. One often forgets that in cinema, in order to create movement, the image has to be frozen first twenty-four times per second. What the cinematographer captures are thousands of instantaneous photographs or snapshots which later the projector activates by way of a rotor and a beam on the screen. When Navarro goes out to pace the streets of London, his eye is concentrated on taking instantaneous shots which later he activates through screen-printing and pictorial work. Recreating movement on the canvas, without the help of a projector, implies a challenge which works such as Babylon or Victor y Maria have dealt with in different ways: the multiplication of the screen-printed portrait, the abrupt changes in scale, the outburst of the curves, the proliferation of colour, the division of the canvas into a diptych or a triptych..

Adrian Navarro (Boston, 1973) lives and works between London and Madrid. His most recent individual exhibitions include: Galaxia, UBS Bank Madrid (2007); Hombres y salvajes (Men and savages), Galería Artificial, Madrid (2006) and De Diario, Centro de Arte de la Comunidad de Madrid (2002). Highlights from recent collective exhibitions include Ilumini, The Crypt Gallery, London (2008); Salon 07, Seven Seven Contemporary, London (2007) and Hernández, Mastretta and Navarro, Galería Heinrich Ehrhardt, Madrid (2003). His works can be found in numerous public and private collections, including the Fundación Caja Madrid and the UBS Bank collection.
 
 
Image:
Adrian Navarro
BUTP, 2008
Oil, acrylic and digital printing on canvas
2,00x1,85 m
Courtesy of the artist

 
Ada Street Gallery
2a Ada Street
London, E8 4QU
+44 (0) 7958181898 
 
Adrian Navarro

 

Adrian Navarro on re-title.com 

 
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Martin BRUNEAU
MIRABILIS

19 Sept 2008 to 25 Oct 2008

In partnership with Maubuisson abbey, the Isabelle Gounod gallery, presents an exhibition of Martin Bruneau's recent work, correlated to two monumental works shown at the abbey.

 

For the past fifteen years, Martin Bruneau has revisited the great masters. Between homage and interpretation, these works involve the contextualization of signs, questioning the notion of continuity and disruption, opening a space for critical analysis left to the opinion of viewer.

 

Born in 1960 in Canada, his work is present in the collections Frac Ile-de-France, Centre International d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, Musée d'Art de Joliette and private collections in France, Canada and USA.
 
Mirabilis exhibitions :
At the Isabelle Gounod gallery in Paris : 19th Sept. 25th Oct. 08
At the Maubuisson abbey in Saint-Ouen l'Aumône : 1st Oct.- 5th Nov. 08.

 

 

Image:
Martin Bruneau
Galerie Isabelle Gounod
13 rue Chapon
75003, Paris
+33 (0) 1 48 04 04 80

Galerie Isabelle Gounod

 

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Ann Worthing                        
In the Studio..

Friday, October 3 - Sunday, October 5

In the late sixties, multimedia artist Bruce Nauman promoted a definition of art that included the activity of the artist in his studio, which he valued more than any resulting product. And yet forty years later, artists¹ studios remain remote from the final works displayed in galleries and museums. This October, we have the rare opportunity to view artworks in their original context: In the Studio, an exhibition of Ann Worthing's paintings curated by her long-time dealer Aron Packer, is on view at the artist's Ravenswood studio.
 
The earliest works included are from Worthing¹s 2006 series, Post, which began with the discovery of 30-year-old letters from friends, family, and ex-lovers in her damp basement. After affixing each letter to a custom-sized wood panel, the varied patterns of handwriting guided explorations of form and color. In some works, lines of text form the skeleton of delicate grids and boxes. In others, the curve of the script is echoed in organic shapes and arabesques. Language dissolves into the abstract that to which we cannot assign a name. A feeling of intimacy is tempered by illegibility, hinting at the ultimate mystery of even our closest companions.
 
In a new series, The Missing Hours, Worthing continues to use collage as a basis for small-scale abstraction. Sumi-e paintings on gauzy rice paper crinkle and shimmer against wooden supports. The simple black strokes hint at language without forming explicit characters. Trapezoids frame empty space and color is almost entirely drained from the surface. The hum of obscured words that emanates from Post is replaced here with silence.
 
Paintings based on the view outside of the artist¹s window capture a similar quiet beauty and bleakness. The formless haze of open sky breaks against the rigid grid of a neighboring building. The even rhythm of bricks evokes the drone of white noise. The absence of human figures allows the viewer to experience the scene directly as its sole protagonist. Light, pattern, and implied sounds captivate before words come to mind.
 
A final body of work features animals emerging from organic swirls of paint on panel. Overwhelming lushness proves just as ineffable as the spareness of Worthing¹s other paintings. The quasi-vegetative chaos in which her animals reside materializes a fear of the unknown and un-nameable. We face Worthing¹s lemurs and turtles as creatures whose inner lives we can never access.
 
Worthing insists that style must be content driven, an ethos that allows her to shift seamlessly between minimalism and expressionism as she articulates the limits of language and the momentary experience of absurdity in the familiar.

Antonia Pocock 2008

 

Friday, October 3 - Sunday, October 5
Saturday and Sunday Show Hours: 12-5pm
 
Artist's Reception:
Friday, October 3, 5-8pm

Where:
1770 W. Berteau at Ravenswood, 3 blocks West of Ashland

Packer Schopf Gallery
942 W. Lake
Chicago, IL 60607
312.226.8984

 

 

 

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