7 February 2008

re-title.com newsletter - Painting & Drawing February 2008

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Bank Los Angeles Galerie Voss Düsseldorf Hudson Franklin New York Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art San Francisco Momenta Art New York Arndt & Partner, Berlin Kirkhoff Copenhagen Next Newsletters         sign up!

Bank Los Angeles Ann Diener Growth 19 Jan - 8 Mar 2008 LOS ANGELES TIMES AROUND THE GALLERIES January 25, 2008 By Christopher Knight Drawings capture dangerous energy Ann Diener uses pencil, gouache, ballpoint pen and collage to render nonlinear narratives at once exciting and ominous. Birds flit through the underbrush, bees jostle for position with beetles and spiders, and leaves rustle in unseen winds. Force fields are shot through with jagged, swirling vectors. Diener's 12 recent works at the Bank gallery range from sketchbook pages to mural-size sheets. In the wake of the 1970s revolution of Conceptual art, drawing has assumed near-equivalence with painting, partly because of the immediacy with which it registers thought. Two drawings are executed on buffed-gesso canvas over board, the way a painting might be, and Diener carries off the technique skillfully. Several dense compositions are organized around voids, yielding a curiously sexual friction. There's something of Lee Bontecou's fusion of organic sensuality and mechanistic threat in these volatile works. Their energy is also reminiscent of Zaha Hadid's architectural renderings and of paintings by Julie Mehretu (who is becoming a generational touchstone). But Diener is fabricating fantastic voyages distinctly her own. The natural world engages in combat with intimations of a built environment, in drawings that temper dark apocalypse with wild exhilaration. image: Ann Diener Enshrouded Land, 2007 Graphite, prismacolor, goucahe and cut paper on paper 96 x 80in Courtesy of Bank, Los Angeles Bank 125 W. 4th St. Ste 103 Los Angeles 90039 Bank, Los Angeles Read on... Bank, Los Angeles

Galerie Voss Düsseldorf Davide La Rocca Strange Object 8 Feb - 22 Mar 2008 From February 8th on, Galerie Voss shows new works by Davide La Rocca. Having until now excusively used film stills from David Cronenberg's movie "Existenz" as motifs for his works, he now extends his oevre by using new motifs as well as new techniques. Alongside his known paintings in different shades of gray, that are calculated by the computer and applied on the canvas point by point just like pixels on the screen, the exhibition "Strange Object" will show works, that are quite related to the principle of Op Art. Those works are consequently painted in black on white or white on black and combine abstract, optical paintings - the artist himself calls them "strange objects" - with portraits of people in everyday situations. But Davide La Rocca does not only rely on motifs that are to be found in every day's life. He arranged a great part of his new samples on the computer himself by combining digitalised picture components to collages. The quite technic way of painting underlines the in every sense fantastic choice of motif. The exhibition will end on March 22nd. Image: Davide La Rocca Grace fondo nero, 2008 Oil on Canvas 53 x 94 cm Courtesy Galerie Voss, Düsseldorf Galerie Voss Mühlengasse 3 D-40213 Düsseldorf Galerie Voss, Düsseldorf Read on... Galerie Voss, Düsseldorf

Hudson Franklin New York A Loaf of Bread, a Carton of Milk, and a Stick of Butter Curated by Andreas Fischer and Nicole Francis Anna Bjerger Munro Galloway Mairead O'hEocha Anders Oinonen Allison Schulnik 15 Feb - 15 Mar 2008 Hudson Franklin is pleased to present A Loaf of Bread, a Carton of Milk, and a Stick of Butter, a group exhibition featuring the paintings of Anna Bjerger, Munro Galloway, Mairead O'hEocha, Anders Oinonen, and Allison Schulnik. This exhibition includes paintings that rely on the relationship between representation and the basic material ingredients of the medium. The artists who create these works are not preoccupied with challenging conventional painting materials. They focus their efforts primarily on the familiar: paint, medium, canvas texture, and the variety of manipulations possible with these. Nor are these artists highly interested in relying on illusion to coax us beyond material reality. They can all be referred to as representational painters but use only enough representational cues to indicate a point of reference or departure. The innovation of these artists lies in their ability to uncover meaning through their use of paint and to generate significant experiences that depend on our hovering between representation and material, between the what and the how, between otherness and presence, between icon and index, or between any number of related tensions. In his book Painting as Model, Yve-Alain Bois envisions 'the possibility of a materialist formalism, for which the specificity of the object involves not just the general condition of its medium, but also its means of production in the slightest detail.' Bois's examination of material and process is expansive and in this sense applies to the work in A Loaf of Bread, a Carton of Milk, and a Stick of Butter. As these artists deal with the deceptively expansive interplay of representation and traditional painting ingredients, they unlock deep experiential potential for viewers. Image: Allison Schulnik Fish Head, 2006 oil on canvas, 24" x 24" Courtesy of the artist and Mark Moore Gallery Hudson Franklin 508 West 26th Street, #318 New York NY 10001 Hudson Franklin, New York Read on... Hudson Franklin, New York

Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art San Francisco JORDAN EAGLES New Blood Paintings 7 Feb - 21 Mar 2008 Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art is pleased to present new works by New York-based artist Jordan Eagles in his West Coast solo debut exhibition. Eagles has been using animal blood in his multidimensional works for nearly a decade. Utilizing the material's unique chromography and reflective and refractive qualities, these new works-many on a monumental scale-explore themes of regeneration and the physical and intangible connections between body, spirit, and nature. Eagles applies blood to clear and white Plexiglas and then permanently preserves the organic material with layers of resin, allowing the high-gloss surfaces to suspend the fluid, organic forms. The renderings often resemble inkblot test patters, cellular details as well as large-scale photographic images of planets. In the presence of light, the blood's translucency is revealed under and between the multiple layers of clear resin, retaining and vibrating the light and illuminating pools of reds/blacks and proteins with sealed-in air bubbles- the results are remarkable luminous and often breathtaking as the blood permanently maintains its rich color and natural texture. Eagles' recent solo shows include: Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT, Touchet Gallery in Baltimore, and Merge Gallery in New York City. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Village Voice, Architectural Digest, and Baltimore City Paper, and is currently on view at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT. Image: Jordan Eagles PHASE 9-10 (2007) Blood, resin, preserved on Plexiglas Courtesy of Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, San Francisco Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art 49 Geary Street Suite 202 San Francisco 94108 Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, San Francisco Read on... Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, San Francisco

Momenta Art New York Rochelle Feinstein 25 Jan - 25 Feb 2008 Momenta Art is pleased to present new work by Rochelle Feinstein. This is her first solo exhibition in five years. Rochelle Feinstein focuses on creating beautiful, uncanny paintings that employ light as a medium both literally and metaphorically, connecting subject matter from vastly different realms of experience. Her recent Hotspot paintings present images that reference both reflective mirror balls and globes, commemorating each year of U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whether the "Hotspot" signifies a lens flare, WiFi access, a whiteout, a point of intense heat or radiation, or a site of political upheaval, its virtuality is offset by the visual slowness of dutifully hand-made, old-media halftone dots - effectively grounding the technological, social and political in the physicality of paint. These Hotspot paintings connect to another series; this one painted or printed directly onto mirrored tiles. These works reference Yoko Ono and John Lennon's "War is Over" anti-Vietnam War campaign, as well as the earlier WWII newspaper headline that Ono and Lennon appropriated. Feinstein adapts this highly politicized historical declaration by adding another subjective layer - turning the phrase into "Love is Over!" and referencing the languages of twelve ex-lovers. She then disempowers her own words' negativity by physically turning the works on their sides. In other recent paintings, made on outdated TV screens, televised light from the news, soap operas, and talk shows is filtered through a still image, altering perceptions of the barrage of commentary. In these and the above mentioned works, the one-way channel of media information begins to flow in reverse, re-inserting the interpretive (and revolutionary) act of dialogue into a top-down world of consumption. This reversal ultimately provides the viewer with a sense of hope, made possible through the filter of one life and the imperfections of the painted world. Rochelle Feinstein lives and works in New York. She has exhibited her works nationally and internationally and has been a professor of painting at the School of Art, Yale University, since 1995. She will be having two solo exhibitions in January 2008; at Momenta Art, Brooklyn, NY, and at The Suburban, Chicago. Feinstein has had solo exhibitions at Ten in One Gallery, 2002, Max Protetch Gallery, 1997, Bill Maynes Gallery, 1996, , in New York, among many others. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, TimeOut, Tema Celeste, Artnews, Art in America, The New York Times, The New Yorker Magazine, and other publications. Image: Rochelle Feinstein Courtesy of the artist and Momenta Art, New York Momenta Art 359 Bedford Avenue Brooklyn New York NY 11211 Momenta Art, New York Read on... Momenta Art, New York

Arndt & Partner, Berlin Adam Adach Cheap History 23 Jan - 14 Feb 2008 Arndt & Partner are delighted to present Adam Adach's first German solo show Cheap History in Berlin. Adam Adach's paintings seem eerily timeless. We gaze at moments of condensed stillness that are overlaid with a silvery veneer of melancholy. Inevitably, we are reminded of old photographs or movie sequences, in which the passage of time is revealed through scratches and marks, although it is difficult to determine when exactly they were produced. The artist draws on either old photographs or newspaper clippings he finds at flea markets and his own contemporary photographs as source material for his paintings. Thus all his images have been filtered through the lens of a camera. Though his compositions are based on photographs, their rendering is decidedly painterly. Much like the early Gerhard Richter, he makes conscious use of distancing elements in his painting and thus accords a dimension of permanence to these fleeting moments in time. In Cheap History, for example, Adach selects - with the practiced eye of a professional flâneur - a random detail view of a flea market stand. The array of wares is a motley assortment, with rubber boots, books and irons side by side. But right in front, almost inconspicuously, there is a black emblem with the imperial eagle and a swastika, and among the books in the background we can, upon closer inspection, make out a history book and a publication on Pope John Paul II. This apparently random arrangement is not simply a reference to the mindless selling off of history; Adach is telling us here about the dangerously heterogeneous interest groups in contemporary Polish society, in which ultranationalists and religious conservatives are increasingly gaining a foothold and holding back the country's integration into a multicultural Europe. However, Adach is no political activist. He is rather a quiet, sensitive observer, a traveler in time who manages to distill collective tendencies, dreams and moods into brief moments and gives them a frame that transcends time. Furthermore, the artist cleverly draws on the leaden past and the ever-changing present to piece together a hybrid post-modern reality. Adach's competence is also shown the portrait series from 2007. Each picture depicts an individual, whose name provides the title of the work. These portraits show people in seemingly private, unobserved moments of self-absorption. They appear isolated, though they are united as a group by the "and" in the paintings' titles. However, what actually unites them much more is their pose. They appear insecure, unstable and full of doubt. In And Ewa the portrayed, wearing a suit jacket, arms crossed in front of her chest and eyes closed, seems lost in a private reverie; Julia, her pigeon-toed pose betraying indecision, clutches a cell phone in her right hand as she stares into the distance; Bob is perched on a radiator, his back to the window, taking a drag from a cigarette, tense and pensive. Adach uses rapid, dynamic brushstrokes to transport these characters to the canvas. While their contours are clearly delineated, their surroundings seem to dissolve into agitated lines. The world around them is in motion, yet they appear frozen in static poses. Their names suggest they might be Polish, like the man who painted them. The artist's native Poland has been undergoing rapid societal and political transformation since the breakdown of the Communist system. This state of flux is clearly reflected in Adach's most recent works; the poses depicted in these portraits, in particular, reveal uncertainty and doubt in the face of the new and unfamiliar. Also showing at Arndt & Partner Berlin is a joint exhibition by Karsten Konrad and Tim Trantenroth in the Gallery 2nd Floor. Image: Adam Adach On the Borders of Europe and Asia, 2008 oil on canvas 170 x 190 cm / 66.93 x 74.8 inch Courtesy of Arndt & Partner, Berlin Arndt & Partner Zimmerstrasse 90 - 91 Berlin 10117 Arndt & Partner Read on... Arndt & Partner, Berlin

Kirkhoff Copenhagen Thorbjørn Andersen "Mørk Formalisme" (Dark Formalism) 19 Jan - 1 Mar 2008 It is a pleasure to announce the opening of Thorbjørn Andersen's solo show at Kirkhoff Contemporary Art in Copenhagen. Entitled "Mørk Formalisme" (Dark Formalism), the show presents new paintings on wood and glass. The paintings are abstract, geometrical, dense and transparent at the same time. The colours are dark. A few glowing colours form a contrast to the background where the tree rings are visible through the layers of acylic paint. In the emphasis on surface and form, the expression moves from the painterly to the sculptural. An installation runs as diagonal through the space and along the walls. In all its simplicity, it makes the viewer conscious of him/herself and of the space itself as an extra and existential dimension. The installation also functions as the paintings' extended frame. The exhibition investigates both the relationship between space and form, and geometry in itself - geometry which to Plato was sacred, visionary, mysterious, sublime. A cosmic space of generic forms, blending the rational with the irrational. In general, these works are related to Modernism and in particular to the German art's hermetic and alchemical tradition: the antroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau, Emma Kunz and Joseph Beuys. The view of cosmos through geometry is very visible in Thorbjørn Andersen's paintings on glass in found old window frames: A reference to the sacral mosaics of Christian and Islamic culture. Because of the frames' old nature and the more contemporary painting, the pieces' age is hard to determine. Time is an important factor in the show where the ambiguity of the window pieces is repeated in the emphasis of the tree rings in the paintings. Accentuating the space the installation functions as a here-and-now experience opposite the abstract work's ability to transcend time and space. One last piece in the show is an abstract painting on star shaped glass, lying on the floor. Being a geometrical form and a cosmic phenomenon, the hexagonal has many diverse meanings in various cultures and contexts. In Islamic culture, it symbolizes organic life. A meaning which is reflected in the small found objects on this star's surface. The objects are painted bones, washed up on the shores of the river Thames. Thorbjørn Andersen (b. 1977, lives and works in London and Copenhagen) has graduated from Slade School of Fine Arts in 2006 and from The Royal Danish Art Academy in 2007. In 2007 he was a co- curator of the exhibition Match Race in Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum, Denmark. Image: Thorbjørn Andersen Orbit, 2007-08 Acrylic on wood Framed: 62x102 cm Courtesy of Kirkhoff Contemporary Art, Copenhagen Kirkhoff - Contemporary Art Sturlasgade 12B DK - 2300 Copenhagen Denmark Kirkhoff, Copenhagen Read on...Kirkhoff, Copenhagen

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