3 April 2008

re-title.com newsletter - Sculpture, Installation & Mixed Media April 2008

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Daneyal Mahmood Gallery New York Thomas Dane Gallery, London Branch Gallery Durham, NC Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers London Tanya Bonakdar Gallery New York B-Store London Keith Talent Gallery London Next Newsletters         sign up!

Daneyal Mahmood Gallery New York Stephen J Shanabrook licking your wounds 27 Mar - 3 May 2008 Daneyal Mahmood is very pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by Stephen J Shanabrook. Known for his expression of beauty on the threshold of death and disaster, Shanabrook mixes an impressive array of materials - from chocolate, in his sculpture of a suicide bomber and his acclaimed Morgue Chocolates, to various melted plastic objects in his Lollipop series. Shanabrook gives a new and often disturbing meaning to substances otherwise associated with comfort and happiness - chocolate, toys and lollipops. The artist has created an innovative process of melting and pressing together ready-made plastic producing a fossilized still life of contemporary culture. " What does it mean when a person sacrifices his life for a cause? In times of high individualism, when a person perceives his own life and his body as the ultimate work of art as well as a commercial venture which is supposed to bring them the new mantra of today - self-fulfillment - it looks as if sacrificing one's life for an ideal is passÈ. Stephen j Shanabrook's show "Licking Your Wounds", however, reflects that death and sacrifice are very much present in today's fight for higher ideological causes. The chocolate figure of the suicide bomber reminds us that those who use their bodies as tools of destruction somehow believe in the sweet doors of heavenly enjoyment beyond life here and now. But the bones that decorate the flag entitled "These Colors Don't Run" make us remember that sweet idea of exporting one's ideals comes at a heavy price. If melted bones make us feel anxious because of the violence and war they symbolize, then the lollipop sculptures in a reverse way return us to the innocence of childhood. However, when we observe that this plastic sweetness actually covers up the threat of violence, we get an uncanny feeling that even the most innocent consumer objects can be just masks of death and destruction. Chocolate melts at the temperature of the living body. In Shanabrook's art melting has come to a stand still. What we are left with are the fossils of what used to be life, but is now just a remnant of it - an emblem. The suicide bomber and the flag are two very different symbols, however, they are both whispering the Siren's song. They both offer the promise of immortality. But as we know from the Odyssey, the island of the Sirens is heaped with bones melting in the sun. " by Renata Salecl Stephen J Shanabrook has exhibited throughout the world in numerous solo and group exhibitions, included Drawing Center / New York, Swiss Institute / New York and 1st Moscow Biennale. In addition to New York show this year Shanabrook has solo shows at Charlotte Moser / Geneva, Orel Art /Paris, and The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Image: Stephen J Shanabrook On The Road To Heaven The Highway To Hell cast chocolate suicide bomber Approx 29 x 12 x 35 in, edition of 3, 2008 Courtesy of Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, New York Daneyal Mahmood Gallery 511 West 25th Street 3rd Floor New York NY 10001 Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, New York Read on... Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, New York

Thomas Dane Gallery, London MICHEL FRANÇOIS 4 Apr - 3 May 2008 The directors of Thomas Dane Gallery are pleased to announce the first exhibition in London of Belgian artist Michel François. This is a sculpture show. Michel François has produced a body of work which critiques the formal rhetoric of sculpture in an age of installation. In an investigation of the etymology of sculpture through materials, Francois has made sculptures which oscillate between a delicate fragility and industrial resilience. In one room a bespoke shelf skirts three walls at desk height, upon which a seemingly disparate array of forms are placed. From a grill of household aluminium dipped in white plaster to an upstanding metal armature coated in fine polystyrene beads, these table pieces become maquettes, or small scale models made to study the potential of materials. The main gallery then becomes a laboratory to test how these models react when expanded from their domestic scale: a massive intertwined structure of a single 300 metre long tube will fill the space. Included in the exhibition is a recent film of a man juggling wine glasses an exercise in balance and weights and breakages. Materials are pushed and pulled both internally and externally until they reach their critical limit, or at times, their breaking points. Michel François' sculptures are as much in dialogue with each other as they are with the historic sculptures of Naum Gabo, Antonie Pevsver and Anthony Caro and also with the complex conceptual works of Marcel Broodthaers. Questions of the grid are re-opened but only in so much as the grid is there to be collapsed or expanded or functions as a register of density and gravity. The result is a body of works which are neither open nor closed, but stand as sculptural experiments, inviting failure as much as proving themselves. Michel François was born in 1956 in Saint- Trond, Belgium. His recent solo exhibitions include Bortolami Gallery, New York and MC Project, Los Angeles. Past solo exhibitions include Frac Haute-Normandie, Rouen; Frac Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France; CCStrombeek, Belgium; Maison de la culture d'Amiens, France; Art Pace Foundation, San Antonio, Texas; De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, The Netherlands; Space Vox, Montreal; CCA Kitakyushu, Japan; Westfalischer Kunstverein, Munster, Germany; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Center for Photography, Geneva, Switzerland and Fondatión Miró, Barcelona, Kunsthalle Bern, and Haus der Kunst, Munich. François's work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions such as, "Recent Video from Belgium," Philadelphia Museum of Art, The 49th Venice Biennale - where he represented Belgium together with Ann Veronica Janssen, the São Paolo Biennal XXII, and Documenta IX. The artist currently lives and works in Brussels. Image: Michel François Self-Portrait at Etna, 2007 colour photograph 40 x 27 cm copyright the artist, courtesy Thomas Dane Gallery, London Thomas Dane Gallery 11 Duke Street St. James London SW1Y 6BN Thomas Dane Gallery, London Read on... Thomas Dane Gallery, London

Branch Gallery Durham, NC Taiyo Kimura, Propagation Joshua Abelow, Mystic Truths 5 Mar -19 Apr 2008 Branch Gallery is pleased to present the first US solo exhibition by Japanese artist Taiyo Kimura, Propagation. Kimura's work explores the idiosyncrasies and anxieties of modern existence. With wit and humor, Kimura crafts refreshing, engaging, and at times unsettling work that reveals the absurdity of daily life. Often using the body as a starting point, the artist plays with the disconnected and confused nature of modern human relationships. In Untitled (milk box - Meiji Oishi-Gyunyu) (2008), we are presented with a row of identical blue and white milk cartons. From afar, the rhythmic colorful patterns created by the cartons seem an alluring, visually arresting presentation of seemingly mundane objects. Further inspection reveals that the milk cartons are filled with miniature clay people who multiply in each successive carton until the last, in which they have all disappeared. A reference to unconscious group behavior, commodification, and consumption, this piece once again brings to light the ridiculousness of existence in contemporary society through Kimura's trademark use of simple materials and black humor. Kimura is based in Tokyo and received his BFA from the Sokei Academy of Fine Art and Design in 1995. Kimura's work is currently featured in the exhibition "Laughing in a Foreign Language" at the Hayward Gallery, London, and has been exhibited in venues including the 10th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa, Japan; and the Wuerttembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany. Branch is also pleased to present an exhibition of new work by artist Joshua Abelow. His work is eccentric, hypnotic, and often self-conscious, playing on contradiction and visual tension to expose the foolishness of our own self-perception in ways that are both comical and perplexing. Visually, Abelow's work is imbued with a strong sense of flat, two- dimensional space which reflects the artist's interest in geometric shapes and graphic line. While at first his work may seem playful and even whimsical, the artist's use of shape, line, and color ultimately undermine this perception. The artist's most recent work, Mystic Truths (2007), borrows its title from the well-known Bruce Nauman light sculpture "The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths"-a reference to the disjoint between language, form, and meaning in art. Abelow's installation is composed of seventy-two, 16 x 12 inch oil on linen paintings on which the artist has alternately painted the vibrantly colorful words "Har Der Fas Ter" or "HANG ME, HANG ME,HANG ME, HANG ME". Mystic Truths overwhelms the viewer in size, visual stimuli, and seemingly contradictory meanings. The work comes out of new questions as to the purpose of making and buying art, and thus speaks to feelings of futility and frustration. Abelow received his BFA with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998, and is an MFA candidate at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (2008). Abelow's work has been included in exhibitions at venues such as the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Exit Art, New York, NY; Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, NY; and PM Gallery, Toronto, Ontario. Image: Taiyo Kimura, 2008 Propagation (install view) Courtesy of Branch Gallery Branch Gallery 401c Foster Street Durham, NC 27701 Branch Gallery, Durham, NC Read on... Branch Gallery, Durham, NC

Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers London Astrid Klein 'Les tâches dominicales', 1980 2 Apr - 3 May 2008 Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present Astrid Klein's exhibition 'Les tâches dominicales'. Born in 1951 and trained as a painter and sculptor, Klein is a manipulator of the photographic medium. Her photographs, paintings and installations contaminate, deconstruct and revive the relationship between the photographic image and text and can be interpreted as a metaphor for the estranged personal self and its representation in society. Like the work of Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman, Klein's art is an expression of the burgeoning media culture of Western society in the 1970s. While her work is well established in Germany, the exhibition 'Les tâches dominicales' (Sunday Work) at Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers is her first solo show in Britain since her 1989 exhibition at the ICA (curated by Iwona Blazwick and Andrea Schlieker). The current show consists of a series of collage-based works Klein made in Paris in 1980. The title refers to the artist's concept of making a collage every Sunday. Upon entering the exhibition the viewer is greeted by his/her own image: a large mirror, placed on the opposite wall, presents visitors with their own reflection. This reflection, however, is distorted since the mirror surface has been smashed so that our image becomes fragmented and estranged. Next to this work, entitled Don't look at me, is a series of large photo collages from 1980 which have never been presented outside Germany. During her residency at the Cité des Arts, Klein appropriated the so- called 'photo roman', a highly popular form of pulp fiction fusing the seductive imagery of cinema and the narrative structure of the comic strip. Combining elements of the romantic novel and spy stories, the representation of the female character in the 'photo roman' was highly charged with problems of the scopophilic voyeurism of the male gaze and the fetishisation of the female body. These images provided Klein with the opportunity to analyse questions of representation and perception of women in mainstream culture, which at the time were being discussed by theorists such as Laura Mulvey. Klein, who calls herself 'a feminist by genetics', was fascinated by the power of the female in the films of John Cassavetes, Jean-Luc Godard and R.W. Fassbinder. Yet, it is the combination of the boldness of the photo-roman imagery and the uncanniness of image-text relationship that makes her work so compelling and unique within the classic German art canon of the post-modern era. Unlike her German contemporaries, who in the mid to late 1970s followed the Düsseldorf Bechers School, which would eventually establish the 'new sobriety' aesthetic of German photography in the 1980s, Klein chose a different path. What is so unique about her oeuvre is its engagement with identity politics and German history while exploring a highly original aesthetic, based on the reduction of colour to black and white, the combination of different media (screen print, photography, installation), and references to popular mass media imagery, which is symptomatic of a post-modern approach to art. While her earlier works deal particularly with the representation of women in mainstream media (and these include film stars as well as the 'Baader-Meinhof' group), Klein developed a more subtle abstract approach in the 1980s, whereby the manipulation of the photograph and the relationship between word and image became increasingly complex. The layering of different materials, the enlargement of the photographic grain and the play with the negative image lead to a new series of works, which dealt with issues of perception and estrangement. When Klein returned to text-based works in the 1990s, she experimented with new materials such as neon light tubes and glass plates. In her recent paintings she further blurs the boundaries between word and form. Klein's work is characterised by the tension between meaning and language (visual and textual), a profound interest in the uncanny quality that underpins all forms of representation, and a deep passion for the poetry of the language. Klein has participated in a number of key exhibitions, such as the important Von hier aus, Düsseldorf (1984), the 42nd Venice Biennale (1986) and Documenta 8 (1987). She took part in a number of major photography exhibitions, such as Photography in Contemporary German Art 1960 to the Present at the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis (1992), Photographie des 20. Jahrhunderts, Ludwig Museum, Cologne (1996) and Deutschlandbilder, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (1997). Recently she has been included in major exhibitions on German history, including the RAF exhibition (Zur Vorstellung des Terrors. Die RAF Ausstellung, Kunstwerke Berlin, 2005), and the show Klopfzeichen, which investigated the relationship between East and West Germany in the 1980s (Klopfzeichen: Kunst und Kultur der 80er Jahre in Deutschland, 2002). In Britain Klein's work was included in a number of exhibitions in the late 1980s, such as a solo show at Gimpel Fils (1987) and the ICA (Astrid Klein: Photoworks 1984- 1989) and the group exhibition Shifting Focus at Arnolfini Gallery and Serpentine Gallery (1989). The film screening 'Not the Girl Who Misses Much: female filmmakers around 1980' presents major works by key artists including Chantal Akerman and Pipilotti Rist as well as the British filmmakers Jean Matthee and Tina Keane, who will be available for a discussion after the screening. This event has been curated by Maxa Zoller and will take place on the 22nd of April at 7pm. Image: Astrid Klein Que reste-t-il de nos regards..., 1980, Detail Courtesy of Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers 7A Grafton Street London W1S 4EJ Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers London Read on... Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers, London

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery New York TOMAS SARACENO 22 Mar - 19 Apr 2008 Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is very pleased to present Tomas Saraceno's Galaxies Forming Along Filaments, Like Droplets Along the Strands of a Spider's Web, an exhibition comprising a large-scale installation and new sculpture. This is the artist's second solo exhibition at the gallery. Tomas Saraceno's installation, sculpture and photography challenge the conventional restrictions on the human habitat, and suggest new ways of perceiving nature. Futuristic urban models of floating metropolises suggest the possibility of moving cities from the earth's surface into the air and serve as a central theme in the artist's practice. Continuing in the tradition of visionary architects before him, including Buckminster Fuller, Gyula Kosice, Archigram and the Ant Farm Collective, Saraceno's concerns are born of the contemporary anxieties over the depletion of world resources, conservation and immigration. Saraceno is working towards realizing these futuristic urban models as a practical solution to the crowding of the earth's surface. Fully realizing the philosopher Felix Guattari's "ecosophy" the artists brings together the three related ecologies of the environmental, mental and social worlds into a methodological practice. Having applied principles of engineering and physics as well as architecture to further develop his ideas, recent projects have included Museo Aerosolar, a web 2.0 collaborative project where expansively scaled solar balloons are constructed to become spontaneously weightless and take flight. Fabricated using reclaimed plastic shopping bags from around the globe, on which the participants have made drawings, Saraceno sees these sculptures as flying canvases that raise questions as to how national and socio-political boundaries might be overcome. In this new installation Saraceno takes the spider's web as a starting point. Investigating how the gossamer thin filaments of these intricate webs are able to suspend life by way of intricate geometry, Saraceno suggests at a conceptual architectural proposal that relies on this most delicate and prehistoric system of life to take us into our future. Of particular interest is the application of this phenomenon throughout the history of time. A keystone to Saraceno's fascination with these web constructions was the recent discovery that suggests the early universe was a sponge-like form, with galaxies forming along filaments, like droplets on a spider's web. Elsewhere, the cosmos, macro and micro concerns, and the beginnings of life inform a number of smaller scale sculptures and photographic works. One solar powered 'planet' that takes it's shape from the repeated forms in nature, harnesses the light in the gallery throughout the course of the opening hours and lights the gallery through the night. Conscious that the energy provided from the sun and from the artificial lights of the gallery is the same continuing energy from the birth our galaxy, Saraceno proposes the history of time might be literally grasped and utilized for our own advancement to the skies and beyond. Born in Argentina, and currently working in Frankfurt, Germany, Saraceno's recent exhibitions include: Greenwashing - Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2008 (group); Tomas Saraceno, Matrix 224, University of California at Berkeley, 2007 (solo); Air- Port-City, De Vleeshal, Netherlands, 2007 (solo); The History of a Decade that Has Not Yet Been Named, Lyon Biennial, 2007 (group); Still Life. Art, Ecology, and the Politics of Change, Sharjah Biennial 8, U.A.E., 2007 (group); The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2006 (solo); 27th Bienal de São Paulo, 2006 (group). Forthcoming projects include: Psycho Buildings: Architecture by Artists, the Hayward Gallery, London opening 28th May 2008; Grandeur, 10th Sonsbeek International Sculpture Exhibition 2008, Arnhem, The Netherlands opening June 13th 2008; The Liverpool Biennial 2008, opening 20th September and Artists-in- Residence: Tomás Saraceno, Walker Art Center, September - October, 2008, which will be followed by a solo exhibition in 2009. Image: Tomas Saraceno Galaxies Forming ALong Filaments, Like Droplets Along the Strands of a Spider 2008, elastic rope, installation dimensions variable Courtesy of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York Tanya Bonakdar Gallery 521 West 21st Street New York NY 10011 Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York Read on... Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

B-Store London Nicholas Elliott 'The Gates of the Gods' 14 Apr - 10 May 2008 B- STORE is pleased to present a solo exhibition of installation - The Gates of the Gods by Nicholas Elliott. The show is made up of two installations one named after the title of the exhibition and 'Prometheus series 2008. Prometheus one of the Titans, an immortal God of fire, (creator of man) was punished by Zeus for stealing fire, and thwarting his attempt at destroying man which is how he came to be bound and tortured. Of Prometheus " Not only did he give fire to humans but, according to Aeschylus, he was responsible for a host of other cultural benefits he taught man to build houses, to distinguish the seasons and understand the signs of the stars, to use numerals and letters, to yoke oxen, to tame horses, to sail ships, to manufacture medicines, to foresee the future, and to interpret dreams and other warnings, Humans previously as helpless as children, were taught by Prometheus to think and see. (Prometheus Bound 422-506) During the day an eagle would consume his liver only for the organ to grow in time for the next dawn. The piece seeks to reinterpret this myth, the gift of fire by Prometheus to Man is seen to symbolise technology, and in the installation Prometheus is represented as a man-like machine. Prometheus is the culmination of mans technological revolution, inorganic made no longer from flesh and blood humanities complete devolution from Nature. In response we see the battle between the natural world and the machine. 'The Gates of the Gods' is the sight of ritual between two spectral skeletons. The piece is an amalgamation of different forms of worship. Shamanic ideas lack the institutional framework and the centralization that other forms of worship have and in doing so can be adapted for any place and time which is apt for the society we live in which bastardisation of culture is rife. The work conveys that death and birth are cyclical parts of nature. The Knight kneels on the back of a turtle shell. The turtle is regarded differently in a number of religions in the Far East, the shell was a symbol of heaven, and the square underside was a symbol of earth and so was seen as an animal whose magic united heaven and earth. In the West, early Christians viewed them as symbolizing evil forces during war and in Greece, turtles were once believed to be citizens of hell. The Shaman who stands over the Knight is healing or initiating him. The two crows are symbolic more of the spiritual aspect of death, or the transition of the spirit into the afterlife, although they have long been associated with death and pestilence and as harbingers of doom for there diet of carrion within European folklore. The scarab beetle is an Egyptian symbol for regeneration and resurrection. The installation looks at our western appropriation of variant culture for the creation of our own homogenised belief systems. Image: Preliminary photo of 'The Gates of the Gods' by Nicholas Elliott / 2008 Courtesy of the artist and B-STORE, London B-STORE 24a Savile Row London B-STORE, London Nicholas Elliott Read on... B-STORE, London

Keith Talent Gallery London Hokey Cokey Chokey New work by Shaun Doyle and Mally Mallinson 3 Apr - 11 May 2008 Cocaine, once the drug of the rich, is now the most popular drug of the masses and this wonderfully socialist sharing of pleasure and vice is celebrated in, 'Hokey Cokey Chokey'. Set in the toilet block of a prison wing, 'Hokey Cokey Chokey', could be compared to Hogarth's, 'Gin Lane' 1750, but without any moral stance its comment on drug use and the cult of celebrity remains ambiguous. Six figures, chained together and wearing prison orange boiler suits dance round a toilet piled high with the white stuff. Each of the figures is taken from a previous work by Doyle and Mallinson - (the Pinocchio- like wooden boy from 'Black Forest Ghetto', the skinhead from 'Fascist Fruit Boys' and the bishop from 'Tanky Monk' etc.), a 'greatest hits' of recent shows. The origins of the Hokey Cokey are obscure but Tillotson has speculated that the dance is a mockery of the Catholic mass. The Hokey Cokey refers to the 'hocus pocus' and gesticulations of the Catholic priest, who, during Eucharist, with his back to the congregation signs the words 'hoc est corpus'. These words of consecration accompany the elevation of the host, the point at which, according to traditional Catholic practise, the transubstantiation takes place, a belief mocked by Puritans and others as a form of 'magic words'. Other sources conjecture that the dance is based on folk dance or Morris dance origins, such as the Hock-Tuesday Play. What is certain is that the Hokey Cokey was first recorded as a dance tune in 1942 by Jimmy Kennedy, also responsible for such songs as, 'We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried line' and 'Teddy Bears Picnic', 'Hokey Cokey' becoming tremendously popular during wartime Britain, particularly in London's East End as a morale boosting dancehall knees-up. 'Hokey Cokey Chokey' is both a critique of organised faith and a social comment on recent history, taking elements of folk art, British politics and personal religious experience as its basis. As with Doyle and Mallinson's other works, its aesthetic is consciously 'home-made' and amateurish, marrying second hand found materials with rapidly made sculpted forms. Doyle and Mallinson have worked collaboratively since 2004. 'Hokey Cokey Chokey' is their second solo show at Keith Talent, London. They have recently had solo shows at John Hansard Gallery, UK. MOT, UK and Odapark, NL. Image: Shaun Doyle and Mally Mallinson 'Hokey Cokey Chokey' Courtesy of Keith Talent Gallery, London Keith Talent Gallery Unit 1 266 Cambridgeheath Road London E2 9DA Keith Talent Gallery Read on... Keith Talent Gallery, London

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