25 October - 19 December 2008

Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie are pleased to announce their collaboration with Andy Denzler (*1965 Zurich) on the occasion of his one-person show Short Cuts. The gallery represents Andy Denzler exclusively in Switzerland. In allusion to Robert Altman's film of the same title, Denzler presents snap shots from the parallel or loosely intertwined lives of fictive contemporary protagonists populating a plot of his own imagination.

The works in this show belong to the artist's Motion Painting series imitating the apparent streaking of rapidly moving objects in a still image. Painted in oil and acrylic in a wet on wet technique, they focus on the restlessness and constant sense of movement defining present-day urban life. On show are a juxtaposition of large multi-figure canvases and close-up portraits.

Denzler's multi-figure canvases are a painterly distillation of street shootings taken by the artist. They offer a painter's view of what for instance Beat Streuli does in film and photography and bring to mind Peter Handke's silent stage productions with people walking or rushing across the scene in pursuit of some unknown to do. Denzler is a cautious colourist, preferring whites and greys, with occasional accents placed in earthy tones. The colour palette stems from a time when the artist did colour field painting. Concrete compositions now serve as architectural backdrops to these large works, replacing any indication of place or time.

The strangely sensual portraits, by contrast, enable a sudden focus on the individual and an escape from anonymity. The viewer is confronted with images of persons in the grip of extreme emotions, dancing, mad, in trance. Extreme close-up views and a dramatic chiaroscuro rendition give them a sculptural presence and make apparent the artist's fascination with Andy Warhol's Screentests of visitors to his studio with 'star quality'. The distorted contours of Denzler's figures, however, escape any precise interpretation. Their life is perceived in passing, their moment of joy or agony a mere fleeting impression. Many of the original images used for Denzler's portraits result from photo sessions with his friends. He instructs them to act either like a movie character, such as Jessica Tandy in Hitchcock's The Birds or Jack Nicholson in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest,or else to cite a general film-cliché similar to Cindy Sherman in her Untitled Film Stills. Also found images from contemporary mass media, publicity, and pictures from social internet platforms provide templates for his close-ups. Denzler is fascinated with the concept of the Lost-ID generation, the teenagers who try to define themselves via their webcam to an unknown audience and get personal with no one in particular.

Pop-culture images provide Denzler with an artistic, ready-made vocabulary. He paints the 'images trouvées' with precision only to distort them when complete. With his technique, Denzler manages to visualise the act of painting, the creative and the destructive part, thus also highlighting his own role as the maker and 'narrator' of the depicted scenes and stills in the show.

Andy Denzler lives and works in Zurich. He trained at Kunstgewerbeschule Zurich and F&F Schule für Gestaltung, Zurich, at University of California, Los Angeles, the Art Center of Design, Pasadena, and received his Master of Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, in 2006. Andy Denzler has had solo and group shows at commercial galleries all over Europe and in the US (Los Angeles, New York). Works by Denzler are included in national and international public collections, amongst which the White House Washington DC, Museum Würth in Schwäbisch Hall Germany, the Burger Collection Switzerland and Hong Kong, the White Cube Collection, London.

 

 

Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie
Limmatstrasse 270
CH 8005 Zurich
Switzerland
+41 (0)44 440 40 18

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 Nov 2008 to 22 Nov 2008

Tomoko Nagai depicts the magnificent narrative world with abundant motifs that could be said as the eternal girlishness. All the animals, bears, cats, sheeps, horses and young girls along with strange imaginary animals, and colorful trees and mushrooms scatter around like a toy box turned upside down, onto a theatrical stage with classical ballet theater-like backdrop. The artist's imagination expands forever and ever, from the decorative interior that resembles one that the artist herself used to daydream in her adolescence playing with dolls, to dark forest that we often see in fairy tales, to outer space. Nagai seems to ardently create the one and only "doll's house" for her, since she not only paints on flat surfaces but also challenges herself to making installation works.
She is patiently waiting for us spectators to open the door and enter her dramatically and freely directed cosmos, placing props like a fake fur, shining chandelier, stuffed animals, beautiful mirror, playing cards and world map.

In this first solo show by the artist at Tomio Koyama Gallery, we will be showing 10 large scale paintings and many small paintings and drawings. There will also be various doll houses on display that seems to have been popped out of the artistic world of hers, and drawings in decorative photo frames that are usually used to display family portraits, and installation of miniature dolls. Please come see them on this occasion.

Tomoko Nagai was born in Aichi Prefecture in 1982. She graduated from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music in 2006, majoring in Oil Painting. She now works and lives in Tokyo. She won a prize at Tokyo Wonder Wall in 2006, and her exhibition highlights are "Bara mo Uma ni Uta ni Midori mo Niwa" at Tokyo Wonder Site Hongo, Tokyo in 2007, "Project N33" at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Corridor, Tokyo in 2008. From November 22, 2008 to March 1, 2009, her works will be included in a group show curated by Vik Muniz in Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya, that's accompanied by a solo show by this Brazilian artist.

 

Tomio Koyama Gallery
1-3-2-7F Kiyosumi
Koto-ku
135-0024
Tokyo
+81 3 3642 4090

 

 

 

 

 

TOMMA ABTS

October 30 - December 23, 2008
525 West 19th Street

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Tomma Abts. This will be the artist's debut exhibition at the gallery. Earlier this year, the New Museum in New York hosted the artist's first solo presentation at a U.S. museum; the exhibition is currently on view at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (closes November 9th). The 2006 recipient of the Turner Prize, Abts has had one-person exhibitions at Kunsthalle Kiel, Kiel, Germany (2006); Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2005); and Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2005); among others. Her work has been included in major international exhibitions such as the Berlin Biennial (2006) and the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh (2004), as well as a two-person exhibition with Vincent Fecteau at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands (2004).

Abts makes complex paintings whose subject is ultimately the process of their creation. The artist starts each work without a preconceived composition. Guided largely by intuition, she nevertheless works within rigid parameters: all canvases are 48 x 38 cm and vertical. Their evolution is evidenced by ridges and uneven texture-the result of methodical overpainting and reworking of the image.

The obsessively worked paintings display a sharp attention to details of shading and coloration. Without obvious optical device, the artist creates intense illusions, rendering shadows and highlights that challenge any single or realistic light source. The resulting works achieve a paradoxically fractured holism, ultimately conveying balance and movement, while maintaining a sense of uncertainty akin to memory.

As critic Adrian Searle has noted, the intimate works and their "upright rectangular proportions recall domestic portraiture." The titles, drawn from a dictionary of first names, emphasize each painting's individuality and impart a sense of history, albeit unknown, to the canvases. Despite some connections, Abts' works ultimately do not fit into any movement or recognizable historical moment. Furthermore, the artist is distinctly uninterested in a dialogue about abstraction or the history of abstraction in her work; in contrast Abts has expressed a desire to transcend the past or present and point to an "art of the future."

 

 

 

David Zwirner
525 West 19th Street
New York, NY 10011
+1 212-727-2070

 

 

November 1 - December 6, 2008

Karen Heagle will exhibit a series of new paintings in the artist's second show at I-20, entitled She'll Get Hers.

Heagle employs varied subjects in these works including portraits of women, landscapes, and images of animals and birds, most prominently vultures, which have come to symbolize elements of consumer culture and aspects of the current economic mood. Snakes also inhabit Heagle's narratives as traditional symbols of evil or temptation. Heagle's subjects also reflect the individual's inner turmoil and the negotiation of personhood within a broad social context.

In many of these works, Heagle explores the artist's role within the complex framework of modern morality and the realities of modern life. In The End of Abundance (2008), two vultures pick through a huge pile of rubbish and discarded goods. Within the pile-up there is a bucket of brushes referencing the artist's studio. Other props of the studio appear in the paintings including brushes and blobs of paint on a palette.

Through this body of work Heagle also examines the underlying eroticism found in images of death. As Georges Bataille has argued, sexuality and death are indivisibly intertwined and we have seen artists throughout European history employ this idea in their work. Painters such as Goya and Soutine have utilized the depictions of dead animals as symbols of life and death, highlighting the erotic undertones of the imagery. In She'll Get Hers Heagle continues to explore the twists of erotic imagery and both its sublimation and numerous permutations in our time.

Karen Heagle was born in Tomah, Wisconsin in 1967. She was educated at the University of Wisconsin and received her MFA at the Pratt Institute. Recent group shows include The Guys We Would Fuck, curated by Nayland Blake, Monya Rowe Gallery, New York; No New Tale to Tell, 31 Grand, Brooklyn; Men, curated by Ellen Altfest, I-20 Gallery; You Have to be Almost Gifted to Do What I Do, curated by Oliver Newton and Steven Stewart, Alexander and Bonin, New York; and Panic Room, the Deste Foundation of the Arts, Athens. Her works are in many collections, including the Judith Rothschild Contemporary Drawing Collection at the Museum of Modern Art. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

 

 

 

 

I-20 GALLERY
557 West 23rd Street
New York
+ 1 (212) 645-1100

 

 

 

 

 

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