8 Jan 2009 to 7 Feb 2009

 

Robert Miller Gallery is pleased to announce its first exhibition of the work of Paul Miller. In 2008 Miller went to Antarctica to shoot a film about the sound of ice, and ended up creating an installation out of the journey. For Robert Miller Gallery, Paul Miller recasts the epic detritus of the art and other cultural worlds as skillfully handled archival video samplings, digital prints, and drawings, calling into question the value of appropriation and the status of the copy. Finding inspiration in historic documents and films like James F. Cook's infamous 1912 film "The Truth about the Pole" (a false narrative made by the "explorer" using the North Pole as a film studio, Cook tried to portray himself in a documentary he self-financed as the true discoverer of the North Pole), and rare images of Admiral Byrd's 1939 voyage to the South Pole, Miller explores the range of "truth" in modern portrayals of the explorer's path. In 2007-2008 Miller spent four weeks in Antarctica re-tracing several explorers' journeys and with his "North/South" show at Robert Miller gallery, he reconstructs a collage of their journals and ephemera in multiple contexts. Using materials as diverse as John Cage's 1938 "Imaginary Landscape #1" as an inspiration (it was the first composition written for turntables) Miller looks at how documents and archival materials influence perception of history and the search for the explorer's goal of defining new frontiers. In "North/South" he deftly recontextualizes the rhetorical tropes of music notation and graphic design to mine the intersection of public and personal.

A deejay and writer, Miller maps his ongoing relationship with the past, present, and future of music, using record collections, musical taxonomies, and play-lists as impetus for portraits and cultural critiques to blur the lines between how composers create and artists design work based on a seamless dialog between "sampling" and originality. This exhibition of new work will incorporate digital prints, works on paper, and a video installation to define a sonic landscape/timeline that begins around the turn of the first millennium and projects centuries ahead into the future for concepts such as "A Manifesto for a People's Republic of Antarctica." Drawing on a history of music's ups and downs in terms of mountains and valleys, water and above all, ice, Miller expands on the tradition of landscape portraiture, creating a topography of music spanning across every wall of the gallery. North/South is comprised of four sections: 1) Notations - a contemporary response to John Cage, 2) Appropriation of O, a collaboration with artist Ann Hamilton, 3) Rodchenko, Revisited - an exploration of Miller's graphic design of prints for a fictional revolution in Antarctica, and 4) North/South - a video installation juxtaposing Admiral Byrd and James F. Cook's respective voyages to the South and North Poles, with historical documents of other famous and infamous voyages to Antarctica and the Arctic. Miller translates the possibilities of music's futures into graphic terms of an almost science-fictional account in images of a revolution in Antarctica. His backward and forward glance, though, embraces its own subjective account, bringing Miller's own thoughts on history (and its representation) to the forefront. His "People's Republic of Antarctica" does not attempt to be a definitive narrative on music's relationship to revolution, but instead one that exists at the interface of his personal vision and that of a shared popular culture.

Miller's video installation is an acoustic portrait of Antarctica's relationship to the "Great Game" of national interests in claiming the wilderness of the South Pole. Miller's composed score for the video materials is based on gamelan shadow theater, and electronic music's ability to re-define geography's relationship to "authenticity" - natural sounds versus their reconstruction in digital media are motifs for the composition that accompanies the installation. While using sound within installations has a tradition in contemporary art, Miller conflates its use within a fine-art context with other ways in which music reaches the public. Miller postulates that you are your own archive. His composition "Terra Nova" was written while he was in Antarctica for 4 weeks, and it offers an extended trip through Miller's sound art palette.

Paul Miller was born in 1970 in New York. In 2004, his exhibition Rebirth of a Nation, a remix of D.W. Griffith's infamous "Birth of a Nation" was installed as "Path is Prologue" where it premiered at the Paula Cooper Gallery, and then traveled as a live multi-media opera to over fifty widely acclaimed venues, such as the Herod Atticus Theater at the base of the Acropolis and the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. His works have been performed at locations as diverse as the Tate Modern and The Guggenheim and he has had numerous exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including solo shows at the Annina Nosei Gallery and he has also curated group exhibits at Jeffrey Deitch gallery. In addition, Miller has been included in the 1997 and 2002 Whitney Biennial, the 2004 Venice Biennial of Architecture, and 2007 Venice Biennial's "Africa Pavilion." In 2004 he published a critically acclaimed and award winning book "Rhythm Science" about the relationship of graphic design and contemporary music, and in 2008, he edited an anthology of writings on sound art, digital media, and contemporary composition entitled "Sound Unbound" (both, MIT Press), featuring Pierre Boulez, Steve Reich, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Brian Eno, Moby, Chuck D, Saul Williams, Jonathan Lethem, Daphne Keller (Senior Legal Counsel to Google) and many others. In addition to his art works, he tours the world constantly as Dj Spooky - a very "in-demand" world famous dj. He currently lives and works in New York.

Terra Nova, the composition based on Miller's journey to Antarctica will be premiering in NY as a headlining event of Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival 2009, and will tour opera houses for the next several years.

Robert Miller Gallery
524 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
+1 212.366.4774

 

 

 

 

10 January - 15 February 2009
Private view 9 January 2009, 6-8pm

One cold April afternoon in Cologne I spent a few hours at the studio of an artist I had recently been introduced to. We drank coffee and ate large slabs of gateau whilst discussing painting, Palermo and the Cologne scene in the 1980's and 90's. All the while I was flicking through a large pile of photographs of the artist's work from the last few years, all of which were quite remarkable. What was more remarkable was that Thomas Kalthoff, despite being friends with Krebber since the late 1970's and having mixed with many of the German heavyweights from the Cologne period, was little known outside his close circle of friends. Even more remarkable was that he had quite happily kept his work to himself for all these years. This exhibition of new works by Thomas Kalthoff at MOT INTERNATIONAL will be the artist's first in the UK. Below is an abbreviation of our conversations around his work, but viewing this work is the only way to discover Thomas Kalthoff.

CH: When did you start to paint the cube\box and what is its' significance in your work?

TK: I started to paint monotone grey boxes on small canvases around 1992-3 for the Friesenwall 120 exhibition. At around 1995 I painted lots of organic formless canvases using only three colours. This developed into grids, rectangles and squares. I rediscovered and started painting boxes again in about 2002.

The significance: I remember that I was very early (1979) inspired by packing cases of washing machines and refrigerators. This not necessary as art but its' imposing presence in the room. I did not immediately follow this up since I was not interested in commenting on design or packaging at all, but its ambiguity. When I re-discovered the boxes in the 90's I wanted to explore this vacant quality I had earlier discovered.

CH: What made you move to rendering the boxes as sculpture? Also how do these works relate to the paintings?

TK: I started to make the 3D boxes around 2004. While I had been painting these boxes I had often brought my groceries back from the supermarket in cardboard boxes and they seemed to accumulate in my house. One day it occurred to me to build, out of wood, a 3D version of what I'd been painting. The result fascinated me and I built more to explore this dimension. This in retrospect seems to be a completely natural development. The boxes and paintings are of equal value.

CH: Could you tell me a little about the method of display, the use of home made tables and plinths?

TK: I felt it was very important that every box needed space all around it, It is not just a question of presenting the boxes more officially. The boxes in the paintings for example have to have the space around it. They need their own space. Similarly the 3D boxes could sit on the floor or on a white plinth, but that didn't seem to be enough. Each box needed its' own unique stand or table to be displayed on. I felt this accented the character of the boxes.

CH: tell me about colour in the work, do you consider yourself a colourist? Where do the colours come from?

TK: I don't consider myself to be a colourist. I am not interested in the beauty of the colours themselves. My choice of colour is extremely related to a tension between harmony and discord, accord and disharmony in the relations of the colours to each other. This tension is to find a balance in the colours in each image or box where the colours resonate with each other. I use colours to get a result that creates both conflict and resolution.

There is no model that I use to choose and select the colours. I have a palette of fifty colours and I mix them sometimes with each other but mostly I use them straight from the tube or mix them with white.

CH: How do you place your work in relation to Palermo or anyone else?

TK: I find it very difficult to compare myself to someone who is so well known. I find a great affinity with artists where their work is monochrome and/or the form simple. For example Palermo, Morandi, Tuymans, On Kawara, Zobernig, E. Kelly, De Keyser,West,Gober

Thomas Kalthoff was born in Essen in 1954. He started studying mathematics in Berlin 1975 - 1976 before changing to art school and in 1979 went to art school Karlsruhe for 1 semester, meeting Michael Krebber. Back in Berlin Kalthoff saw, for the first time, a catalogue by Palermo and everything changed. He found it impossible to paint and spent much of the 1980's traveling or working in various jobs. In 1988/89 He moved to Cologne, where his friends Krebber and Strothjohann introduced him to the scene there and he was able to start painting again. In 1993 he had his first solo exhibition with about 20 grey box- paintings(fuse- boxes ) and 3 Wittgenstein- house paintings. In 1997 he was in a group show at Galerie Daniel Buchholz with small house paintings and in the same year started to make the grid paintings. In 2002 he had a couple of two-person exhibitions at kjubh Kunstverein. (with Strothjohann) and from this time on was painting mainly the box motif. Kalthoff has remained elusive over the years, showing rarely apart from a few group shows such as at Galerie M 29 in Cologne in 2004. Choosing not to self promote and to concentrate solely upon his work makes Kalthoff unique and this is a great opportunity to discover an artist who has, until now, remained hidden.

 

 

 

 

MOT INTERNATIONAL
Unit 54 / 5th floor, Regents Studios
8 Andrews Road
London, E8 4QN
+44 (0)207 923 9561

 

 

 

 

 

 

ADELA LEIBOWITZ

January 15th - February 21st, 2009
Opening January 15th 2009 7-9 pm

 

33 Bond Gallery is proud to start the new year with a collection of new paintings by New York based artist Adela Leibowitz, on view at the gallery through February 2009.

With her new series Leibowitz takes the viewer on a voyeuristic journey somewhere between The Shining and Alice in Wonderland. The work focuses on the female psyche and draws its' imagery from romantic 19th century literature scenery as well as vintage horror movies. The vignettes presented in the paintings depict at times rich and dramatically opulent interiors and at others simple denuded outdoor settings. Whether in socially enticing and oppressive interiors or free and seemingly more pure outdoor environments, the characters (exclusively women) all seem involved in role-playing. Occasionally blindfolded, masked, or nude, the women reenact childhood games, violent or sexual acts, cultural rituals, or tales of morality.
Influenced by Jung and Freud's theories, Leibowitz plays with women's counteracting primitive and developed, socially conscious instincts. Each painting contains a certain polarity, highlighting paradoxical elements - repulsion and beauty, fear and comfort, children and violence, etc- delivering complex psychological dramas.

In this exhibition "the artist covers new ground, introducing experiments with dimension and scale, working smaller than she ever has before, which allows her to focus upon the actions of her characters as much as the settings and details which surround them. [...]Taken on first glance, we are greeted with a world of fantastic happenstance and narrative in these paintings, divorced from the mean and the mundane. Leibowitz has the innate ability to connect with degrees of metaphor, which have not been typically allowed into the interactions of daily life, which are usually buried under academic models of psychology or sociology, or repressed in such quarters for being essentially metaphysical or perverse. Her images invade the real while they accrue meaning, giving us due access to both the language of artistic influence, and language of female reflection, and a profound link to the sources of consciousness. " (David Gibson)

Adela Leibowitz
A native of New York, Leibowitz received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2000 and has since exhibited domestically and internationally, notably with The Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama, Parisian Laundry in Montreal, HPGRP in Japan, Bo-Lee in Bath, UK and Holster Projects in London, UK. She has currently been awarded a studio residency with Chashama. Previous residencies include P.S. 122 in New York and The Millay Colony in Austerlitz, New York. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, NY Arts Magazine, The Village Voice, New American Paintings, and American Art Collector. Leibowitz lives and works in New York.

33 Bond Gallery is located on Bond Street between Bowery and Lafayette.

The opening reception will be Thursday, January 15th from 7 to 9 PM.
 

 

Adela Leibowitz
History of Sin, 2008
oil on linen
14x17 inches
Courtesy of 33 Bond Gallery, New York


33 Bond Gallery
33 Bond Street #1
New York, NY 10012
+1 212 845 9257

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SISTER Presents at COTTAGE HOME:

 

 

 

 

13 - 24 January 2009 // Launch event: 14 January 6-11pm

Frank Abbott & Duncan Higgins UK // Annexinema UK // Annual General Meeting (AGM) IT/DK // Ryosuke Akiyoshi JP // Blaffert & Wamhof DE // Blu UK // Young-hae Chang KR & Marc Voge USA // Jim Brouwer & Chris Cousin UK // Andrew Brown & Katie Doubleday UK // Burd & Scarr UK // Sebastian Craig UK // Glenn Davidson (Artstation) UK // Siân Robinson Davies UK // Dis-locate JP/UK // Nisha Duggal UK // Patrick Farmer UK // Niklas Goldbach DE // Hatch UK // Tiffany Holmes USA // Candice Jacobs UK // JODI NL/BE // Miska Knapek DK/SE // Dominic Lash UK // Lone UK // Lovebites UK // Keaver & Brause UK // Folke Köbberling & Martin Kaltwasser DE // Son Woo Kyung JP // Tea Mäkipää FI // Lucie Marsmann DE // MIDSR UK // Matt Milton UK // Leona Misu JP // Yuko Mohri JP // Suzanne Moxhay UK // Erhan Muratoglu TR // Ian Nesbitt UK // Christian Nold UK // N55 DK // Chris Oakley UK // Origami Biro & The Joy of Box UK // The Owl Project UK // Plankton AU // paiR UK // Simon Raven UK // Paula Roush PT/UK // Rustie (Warp) UK // Scott Jon Siegel USA // Spamchop & Metaphi UK // Stanza UK // Igor Stromajer SI // Akihiko Taniguchi JP // David Theobald UK // John Timberlake UK // Trampoline: Platform for New Media Art DE/UK // Michiko Tsuda JP // Visual Correspondents NL // John Wall UK // Mizuki Watanabe JP // Shunsuke Watanabe JP // James Snazell UK // Marcelina Wellmer DE // Wounded Knee UK // Mattias Wright DE // Lin Yilin CH // ZimmerFrei IT

The 4th Radiator festival & symposium, Exploits in the Wireless City, aims to instigate discussion and debate based on the understanding that the development of digital networks are transforming our notion of (public and private) space.  In its critique, Radiator will question the opportunities, future strategies and implementations that artists and communities face when learning to act within these new city spaces.  Through its artistic interventions, Radiator will put theory into practice with projects and events that both position and challenge the dominant forces at work in the urban environment and explore the new territories opened up by hybrid space.

The Going Underground project, investigates this infrastructure by placing 5 artists into the urban confines of British cities: Glenn Davidson (Artstation) (UK), Folke Köbberling & Martin Kaltwasser (DE), Ian Nesbitt (UK), Christian Nold (UK), N55 (DK).  These artists will act as sleeper agents, observing and gathering information from a range of different sources including; architects, planning departments, city council offices, surveillance, monitoring centre's and the Police to create new work in response to their research.

The Radiator festival is curated by Anette Schafer & Miles Chalcraft from Trampoline. Trampoline has hosted and curated events in both Nottingham and Berlin since 1997.

 

Symposium // Exploits in the Wireless City
15-16 January // Broadway Media Centre // Nottingham
Bringing together artists with architects, urban theorists, computer scientists, sociologists and fellow citizens, the symposium will explore, question and play with a new urban landscape where the re-conceptualizing of the public sphere in the regeneration developments of the East Midlands mirror those around Europe.

 

 

 

Coming Next

 

 

 

 

 

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