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issue 2 : PAINTING |
| International Painting highlights this month |
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Emily Tsingou Gallery, London
Mathew Weir
Emily Tsingou Gallery is pleased to announce the first one-person exhibition of eagerly-awaited new work by the London-based artist Mathew Weir.
The strange beauty of Weir's canvases is insidiously seductive, engaging a benign enjoyment which collides powerfully with the often politically provocative content. The source of their violence is illusive, seeming to reference issues of race and exploitation yet occupying an ambiguous position, refusing to be defined by these categories, or a given 'message'. The deeply tragic characters in these recent works have a sad, lonely playfulness, as they pose as if to entertain the viewer. Exploring narrative and amalgamating references such as nineteenth century costume, porcelain figurines ones might find discarded in a brick-a-brack store, or computer-enhanced graphics, the works delve into the imagination of the viewer for their interpretation.
Weir's images interrogate an aesthetic that is simultaneously seductive and grotesque, uncovering a dark menace within somewhat familiar subjects by re-presenting them as contemporary works.
'My paintings draw attention to how the meaning of objects changes when rendered in paint and re-interpreted within a contemporary context.'
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Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens, Cologne
Stephan Jung
Despite the fact that this involves an artist who paints and his paintings, it would a waste of effort to approach the paintings via the painting operation. Stephan Jung is not interested in painting except as a means to an end and his paintings are not picturesque. They are not improvisations, there are no competing coatings and motives superimposed, no action-orientated superimposition, juxtaposition or interwovenness, in other words no ascertainable painting activism. His way of painting can be compared with the flat copying or imitating of the photo-realists. Painting becomes a variable game with colour and motif by means of a frame. Established parameters such as technical procedures, limitation to certain motifs and standardised formats, on which new motif cut-outs are tuned, make series possible where colours, structures and forms change in fine and hardly perceptible gradations. The same thing is always different and diversified. The sum of the parameters produce the style which has become typical for Jung.
Giti Nourbakhsch in Cat. "Stephan Jung",
Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens, Stuttgart 1997 |
Stephan Jung, Host #4, 2004. Oil on canvas. 104 1/3 x 90 1/2 inches (265 x 230 cm). Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens |
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Justin Faunce, Meet Guy Debord’, 2003, acrylic on canvas, Leo Koenig, Inc, New York. |
Leo Koenig Inc, New York
Justin Faunce
Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Justin Faunce entitled “Thanks for All the Memories”. Faunce's paintings are a labyrinth of color, pop imagery, cultural iconography with an underpinning of socio-political critique. Deceptively cheery, the paintings appear to be brightly colored, glittering confections. However, soon the imagery asserts itself as an incongruous juxtaposition between an ostentatious giddiness and a brooding malevolence. One sees alongside Vegas showgirls and charming cartoon characters, the emblems of corporate America, heroes and villains of our recent cultural past and reminders of the violence of our foibles. As to further illustrate this point, Faunce's compositions are done using a mirror image or Rorschach technique. One side of the canvas mimics the other, though upon closer inspection, one realizes that this is not altogether true. Within the mandala-like intricacies, there are glitches in the reflection, we are not seeing the reverse of the image, but its doppelganger.
Faunce's technique is one of obsessive precision. Using a method of meticulous stenciling and applying layers of paint, the artist begins by assembling and arranging an enormous array of found images, both familiar and obscure. Faunce relates the sifting through this imagery as extracting something meaningful from the information void. Like so many of us, Faunce believes that the magnitude of information that we are bombarded with in contemporary life has become incomprehensible. The sheer force of its volume has made it impossible to form cogent narratives from our aspirations. What we are often left with amounts to a collective attention deficit disorder and personal histories reduced to sound bites. |
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Galerie Bob Gysin, Zurich
Andreas Leikauf
Andreas Leikauf uses the infinitely multicoloured imagery of the mass media in his paintings, but without reflecting the glitzy abundance of Popular culture.
Like other artists of his generation he concerns himself with and tests himself against the media world, thereby understanding the possibilities of painting, which becomes an aesthetic parallel world in relation to everyday reality. But not in the way of stressing high art against the popular.
The work of Andreas Leikauf consists of medium sized paintings which reflect comic aspects of the Media. Leikauf works text quotations, which are taken from newspapers and magazines, into the picture scenes. These function frequently as a paradoxical contradiction or like the slogan of a emblem or logo.
Leikauf has participated in Art Basel many times but this is the Viennese artist’s first one man show in Switzerland and at the Galerie Bob Gysin he will be showing approximately 50 paintings from his last year‘s work. The numerous pieces produce complex pictures which can be read as a whole wall or as individual works. |
Andreas Leikauf, Style is all you Need, Acrylic on Board 2003. 45 x 35 cm. Galerie Bob Gysin. |
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Constellation (2004) Mika Kato, White Cube, London |
White Cube, London
Mika Kato
White Cube is pleased to present a new exhibition of paintings by Japanese artist Mika Kato . Kato (born 1975) makes intensely rendered oil paintings of young girl's faces, close-cropped and hallucinatory in quality, they create a portal into a fantastical and psychologically disturbing world.
Kato's technique is interesting since she starts not by sketching but by sculpting a doll out of clay, dressing it and then making a painting from that which is laborious and studied, a kind of evolving alter ego. “I wanted something that people had never seen before” she explains, “and that is how I came to be attracted to using doll faces as my starting point”.
Kato's portraits are precisely and beautifully painted, almost hyper-real, but this imminent reality is countered by their composition, a looming and close cropped image that makes the girls appear distorted, as if viewed through a bulbous fish eye lens. Huge, gaping eyes become liquid pools of black that appear like holes in the canvas, deflecting as much as absorbing the viewer's gaze. These figures have an overly articulated beauty made up of its idealised components: large eyes, perfectly oval faces, small noses and mouths. Their physique is almost ironic, a kind of mutated idea of what perfect beauty should be, an aberration comprised of perfectly formed parts. |
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Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York
Don Doe
“My subject is a fantasy of a sexual identity in the make-believe life of a pirate. The theme came to me as a contradiction while reading bedtime stories to my son. Pirates represent freedom, the power to act out our impulses, and serve as a pervasive icon in our culture. However, the image my son carries of the pirate’s life is empowering. In marrying this ideal with a burlesque humor and Disney-like fantasy, the combination is alternately teasing, provocative, tender, and inviting.
Swiping images from Fragonard, fashion, comic strips, history books, pornography and illustration genres these images attempt to create a flawed world where women are dominatrix “Pirate Gals” and men are as ships in a bottle. These phallically potent “Pirate Gals” celebrate pinup representations and wear their sexuality as an identity.
I also draw ideas from my youth, where some of my friend's parents decorated their homes in a faux Mediterranean fisherman, or Mexican adobe style that spoke of adventures they would never have. I thought about the idea that a person could live a fantasy of adventure and conquest while doing everyday household chores.
Aware of the influences of Pulp Fiction novels, erotic aura is built up by the stressing of luminous color display. I explore the limits of rendering, and use seductive color to intensify the imagery. Alluding sometimes to runway fashion as role-playing, my characters are treated with psychological complexity while remaining candid. The “Pirate Gal” is a phallic goddess and a rite de passage turning toward a new identity.”
- Don Doe |
Don Doe, T'was Honest Gained, 2004. Oil on canvas, 40x36 inches. Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York.
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For an A - Z of all current listings, please click "Exhibitor" then "search" on any re-title page. |
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Painting exhibitions February 2005
303 GALLERY, New York : Laylah Ali
A Arte Studio Invernizzi, Milan : Alan Charlton and David Tremlett curated by Francesca Pola
Annina Nosei Gallery, New York : AFTER : Tsibi Gava
Arndt & Partner, Berlin : Lisa Ruyter - A Lady Mislaid
Bodybuilder & Sportsman, Chicago: JEFF McMAHON
Bowie van Valen, Amsterdam : JCJ VANDERHEYDEN
Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff : James Aldridge
Charles Cowles Gallery, New York : Beatrice Caracciolo : Shelter Lines
Christian Nagel Köln : Markus Selg - Das Testament
CRG Gallery, New York : Sandra Scolnik
DCKT Contemporary, New York : Kim Krans…but whatever it was, it came out of the trees
Dollhaus, Brooklyn : Michael J. Bowman
Embassy, Edinburgh : Ronnie Heeps : Frankie and other Stories
Flaca, London : Prophet Royal Robertson
Galerie Gitte Weise, Berlin : Renate Anger
I-20 GALLERY, New York : Louis Cameron
IBID Projects, London : Milena Dragicevic - Falsifikacija
Jablonka Galerie, Cologne : FRANCESCO CLEMENTE
James Cohan Gallery, New York : Manfredi Beninati
João Ferreira Gallery, Cape Town : Nicholas Hales : Portals
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Galerie Kamm, Berlin : Gabriele Basch : Trip
Galerie Kapinos, Berlin : Mantalina Psoma
Galerie layr:wuestenhagen, Vienna : Svenja Deininger: mit dir bis zum geht nicht mehr
Lisa Boyle Gallery, Chicago : South : New Works by Francis Fitzpatrick
martin van zomeren, Amsterdam : alexandra leykauf-hotel des grottes
Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm : Nils-Erik Gjerdevik
One in the Other, London : Joel Croxson
Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard, Paris : Hervé Huerzé : watercolours
Sadie Coles HQ, London : NICOLA TYSON
Sandroni Rey, Los Angeles : Lia Halloran : And the Darkness Implies the Vastness
Galerie Schafschetzy, Graz : Alfred Klinkan ; 1950 - 1994
SCHUSTER, Frankfurt : Jutta Rossmann
SixFriedrichLisaUngar, Munich : Peter Vogt - Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Kindheit, Bilder 2003/4
STEFAN STUX GALLERY, New York : Julian Stanczak | Cris Gianakos
Susan Inglett Gallery, New York : CHRISTOPHER ULIVO
The Approach, London : Dan Coombs
Galerie Vera Gliem, Cologne : Alex Müller / Peyman Rahimi
Wilkinson Gallery, London : Paul Housley : New Ways to be Alone
Zach Feuer Gallery, New York : Gallery 1: AARON SPANGLER Gallery 2: RYAN JOHNSON
Galerie Zurcher, Paris : Alix Le Meleder |
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