29 February 2008

re-title.com newsletter - Painting February 2008

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Van Horn Düsseldorf mai 36 galerie Zürich Freight + Volume New York Pippy Houldsworth London Nettie Horn London David Zwirner New York Saltworks Gallery Atlanta GA Next Newsletters         sign up!

Van Horn Düsseldorf VANESSA CONTE & WOLS DUST 15 Feb - 5 Apr 2008 VAN HORN is delighted to present Vanessa Conte in her second solo-exhibition at the gallery in which she shows her new works on canvas for the first time. The paintings are accompanied by a selection of watercolors by the german Informel-artist WOLS (1913-1951). Conte employs a variety of mark-making techniques in these new works derived from the spontaneous methods used by surrealists and artists working during what is now called 'art informel'. WOLS was one of the first artists to use these techniques with his contemporaries, developing a body of work that depicted an inner verses outer vision. In a series of intimate oil works on canvas, Conte continues to explore the connection between an infinite interior cosmos and the nature of the ever changing and regenerative exterior world. Biological imagery of human and animal orifices and body parts as well as fantasy creatures are organically interlaced with landscape, cellular forms and stellar bodies. Conte's dynamic surfaces articulate a language of ebbing and flowing energy between interior and exterior worlds. Vanessa Conte *1977 Tarrytown, NY. Lives and works in Dusseldorf since 2004. She studied at New York University and received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work was included most recently in Der Pinselhieb der Natur oder die Betrogene Flaeche, KIT and in Regarding Dusseldorf II, 701 e.V. WOLS (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze) *1913 Berlin +1951 Paris, was a german painter and photographer. Noted for his watercolors and etchings and for use of stains (taches) of colour dabbed onto the canvas. Although almost unrecognised in his lifetime, he pioneered a new style of expressive abstraction. In 1955-1964 Wols' works were exhibited posthumus at documenta 1, documenta II and documenta III. Wols is valued as important pathfinder and representative of Tachisme and Informel. image: VANESSA CONTE & WOLS DUST Installation View, VAN HORN, Düsseldorf Courtesy of VAN HORN, Düsseldorf VAN HORN Beuthstr 14 / Entrance Schirmerstrasse 40211 Düsseldorf VAN HORN, Düsseldorf Read on... VAN HORN, Düsseldorf

mai 36 galerie Zürich Pia Fries : gutzgauch élévateur 1 Mar -5 Apr 2008 We have pleasure in presenting new paintings by the Swiss artist Pia Fries (born in Beromünster in 1955, lives and works in Düsseldorf) at our next exhibition. Her work has recently been exhibited in the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne, the Bernard Jacobson Gallery in London and the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop. In May/June 2007, the Kunstmuseum Winterthur dedicated a comprehensive overview exhibition to work by this ex- pupil of Gerhard Richter. Her work is also included in important private and public collections in Switzerland and abroad, for example the Kunsthaus Zurich, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Folkwang Museum Essen and the Neues Museum, Nuremberg. About painting by Pia Fries - gutzgauch élévateur: A painting does not begin with an untouched canvas, on a white plane. The picture surface is always so cov- ered with existing ideas that it must first of all be wiped clean, washed down, even torn to strips. It is better to forget than to remember when starting a painting. Thus the image carrier shows its multiple natures, oscillates between surface and background: incessant change. The ground of the painting is crucial: as motivation, motive and motion. A painting is not a book one reads in order to shine. Colour is not a container for mental constructs, trains of thought or points of view. Colour does not clothe alien forms, it creates them. Colour does not obey alien orders, it has its own intentions. Colour shows its body in different consistencies. Colour is: desire. Gutz-gauch, the curious chameleon figure, high flyer and deliverer of turbulences, differences. Its tone, its alluring sound, calls and guides the searching, wandering gaze while it whirls, prepared for flight, vivacity - and fall. [Pia Fries] Image: Pia Fries Schwindach, 2008 oil, screenprint on wood 100 x 70 cm Courtesy of mai 36 galerie, Zürich mai 36 galerie Rämistrasse 37 CH-8001 Zürich mai 36 galerie, Zurich Read on... mai 36 galerie, Zürich

Freight + Volume New York OPHRAH SHEMESH I and Thou 23 Feb - 29 Mar 2008 For her first solo exhibition at Freight + Volume, and her third in New York, Israeli-born Ophrah Shemesh will present a selection of new large-scale paintings that offer themselves as complex and eroticized explorations of the gaze. The arresting psychology of her pictures evokes the effects of predecessors and contemporaries alike, such as Renoir, Balthus, Kitaj and Clemente. Her emotionally charged scenarios of women - aloof, vulnerable and seductive - are carefully rendered using a fresco-like palette and a chalky buildup of painted surface. Ophrah Shemesh's subjects are simultaneously submissive and empowered. She addresses notions of objectification, narcissism, and the male/female psychodynamic. Her figures appear with an ambiguously fixed stare - never directed or confrontational, but always to a third party - or to oneself looking inward. These portraits could be considered eloquent depictions of either loneliness or independence. "Quite lightly they embody the very freedom of vision itself; for the implicit in these seemingly weightless and free-floating figures is a declaration that the sexual gaze is, in the end the liberated gaze. In the pictorial vagueness of the extremities of these figures, in their apparently arbitrary location in the undefined space of these pictures, they insist, paradoxically, on the eye's ability to roam freely and pleasurably in space. Yet at the same time they recall to us the precision of the focused gaze." - David Freedberg Shemesh's newest suite of paintings I and Thou are based loosely on the poignant '70s art house film Night Porter, a tragic love story starring Charlotte Rampling who turns tables, years later, on her Nazi captor. But these iconic male and female images only use the film as a starting point, in their almost Balthusian investigation of transcendent themes of love, strength and vulnerability, opposite attraction, domination and submission, and ultimate redemption between the sexes. In Does the Meeting Come About, we see a tranquil figure, head tilted back and eyes closed, her lover's head resting on her shoulder - but her arms are bound, alluding to a narrative that is not outwardly transparent. In I-It, a young woman reaches towards the viewer, a cup in hand, as if making an offering of a revelation - her powerful, vacant gaze looks out to the unknown. The Man to Whom I Say Thou is an erotic portrayal of a woman caught in a moment between pain and ecstasy, painted with a flurry of wistful, loose brushstrokes. She lies, her mouth agape with deep red lips, and the hand that clutches at her neck could be that of a lover or her own. Ophrah Shemesh received her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and continued her studies at the New York School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture (NYSS). She has had solo exhibitions at Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Baumgartner Gallery, New York, NY; Guy McIntyre Gallery, New York, NY and Mario Diacono Gallery, Boston, MA; and has also shown in Italy and Israel. Her work has been featured in Flash Art, Art In America, artnet.com, Bomb Magazine and ArtNews. She is currently teaches at NYSS and runs the Visual Arts Italy program in Gaeta, Italy. Image: Ophrah Shemesh Does the Meeting Come About oil and egg emulsion on linen 96 x 60 in 2004-2007 Courtesy of Freight + Volume, New York Freight + Volume 542 West 24th St New York, NY 10011 Freight + Volume, New York Read on... Freight + Volume, New York

Pippy Houldsworth London Cosmopolis: Yutaka Inagawa & Adam King 29 Feb - 12 Apr 2008 Pippy Houldsworth is very pleased to present a two-person exhibition of works by Yutaka Inagawa and Adam King, two London based artists pilfering the everyday to create the extraordinary. Kleptomaniacs of societal debris, King and Inagawa force recognition of the forgotten and ignored. The result an exhibition of beautiful decay. Adam King's installations burst from the gallery wall with abundant energy yet intricate detail, cascading to the floor in a riot of colour. Yet despite their mock baroque aesthetic these controlled explosions reveal themselves to be constructions of our consumer detritus techni-coloured entanglements of tat. In opposition to their kitsch appearance King's reliefs offer a weighty criticism of our modern throw-away culture. The appropriated imagery powerfully depicts the excesses of a seduced society. For his collages, King ransacks magazines, catalogues and advertisements to create sublime 'landscapes' of the familiar and unusual. Whilst the colour and imagery in these works allude to the works of Paul Nash or Yves Tanguy, King's own voice speaks loud and clear in his investigation of the here and now. Yutaka Inagawa's paintings are equally imbued with an overload of visuals, signs and motifs. In his partly abstracted collages, and use of photo- transfers, he explores the dystopian repercussions of urban life with disarming delicacy. Inagawa draws on collected and recollected imagery from his own photo- documentation and the overflowing image library recalled from memory. The fragmented recovery and combination of techniques reflects the chaotic foundation of the works. Inagawa views the modern city as a site of confusion whereby the grotesque has invaded our ideals to the extent that we no longer recognise it as such. Like the surrounding landscape the works are montages of clashing idiosyncrasies; artificial dreams and awakening nightmares. Adam King won the Dundee Contemporary Arts Print prize (2002), was shortlisted for the Pizza Express Prospects Prize (2002), and was a finalist in the Celeste Art Prize both in 2006 and 2007. He is one of a number of emerging talents to have had several works acquired recently by Charles Saatchi. He is represented by Lounge Gallery, London. Yutaka Inagawa, Japanese and living in London, studied at Chelsea College of Art, has had solo shows in France, Korea and New York, and is currently featured in Wound Magazine 07/08. Image: Yutaka INAGAWA Kennelkibosh 2008 acrylic and fabric on panel 99 x 120 cm, 39 x 47.2 in Courtesy of Pippy Houldsworth Pippy Houldsworth Pall Mall Deposit 124-128 Barlby Road London W10 6BL Houldsworth, London Read on... Pippy Houldsworth, London

Nettie Horn London Mike Newton My Private Idaho 15 Feb - 16 Mar 2008 NETTIE HORN is pleased to present My Private Idaho, a solo exhibition of new works by British painter Mike Newton. Newton's evocative scenes stem from drawings, photographs and found objects coming together to create emotive and narrative images often addressing themes of melancholia and nostalgia. In his new body of work Newton uses the reclining figure as the subject in his large scale canvases, each depicting someone overwhelmed by excessive daytime sleepiness. For Newton, sleep is suggestive of a temporary death and is associated with an early childhood memory of finding a dead animal and being told by his parents that it was simply asleep, not dead. This theme was brought into focus by the River Phoenix character in Gus Van Sant's film "My Private Idaho" which follows and explores the journey of a narcoleptic and which is loosely based on Shakespeare's Henry IV, who falls asleep as a defence mechanism when his thoughts turn to memories of his lost mother. The film is referenced most directly in the haunting painting Falstaff in which hooded figures loom over a sleeping form, all set against a background of Episcopal purple. Whether the hooded figures are threatening or simply intrigued Newton's work dwells on the bleak realities of modern society and reference his own experience as a teenager, which he recalls as a time suspended, waiting for something to happen. Exploring issues of memory and loss, Newton recalls and reinvents specific half remembered scenes with issues of ennui, ritual, role- play, stereotypes and confusion about identity concurrently playing a part. Taking inspiration from the styles and techniques of Titian, Goya and Munch to more contemporary painters such as Glenn Brown, Wilhelm Sasnal and Elisabeth Peyton, Newton develops an immediate style of painting which has a freshness of execution despite the melancholic themes. Painting directly onto the canvas, Newton works from a number of preparatory oil studies and combines transparent oils in traditional glazes which are applied with loose immediate brushstrokes on a highly reflective ground. "I wish it was the Sixties..." is typical of this lively approach and the resulting image is evocative of a backlit transparency which references the idea of a projected film. Newton's use of colour and the luminosity of his paint are often borrowed from films and the palette in each of the exhibited paintings is sampled from stills of the Gus Van Sant's movie - using colour combinations and acidic tones to create an unsettling and unnerving mood. Victor Hugo defined melancholy as the pleasure of being sad and Newton clearly takes pleasure in exploring this emotional state in his painting which, through historical painting references and an evident cinematic influence, is surrounded by the halo of the sublime. Image: Mike Newton Paradise Lost, 2008 Oil on canvas, 80 x 100 cm Courtesy of NETTIE HORN, London NETTIE HORN 25b Vyner St London E2 9DG NETTIE HORN, London Read on... NETTIE HORN, London

David Zwirner New York LUC TUYMANS: FOREVER 14 Feb - 22 Mar 2008 Opening on February 14, David Zwirner is pleased to present new work by Belgian artist Luc Tuymans. The artist is currently the focus of a retrospective traveling from Mucsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, Hungary (closes February 10) to Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (March 2-May 12) and Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland (May 30-August 17). Tuymans has recently been the subject of one-person exhibitions at Kabinet für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremerhaven, Germany (2007); MuHKA Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium (2007); Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2006); Musee d'Art Moderne et Contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva, Switzerland (2006); and the Tate Modern, London, England (2004). In 2009, the Wexner Center for the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will mount the artist's first US retrospective, which will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art. A pivotal figure in the field of contemporary painting, Tuymans has explored diverse themes ranging from the colonial history of Belgium, the effects of images from 9/11, to the elusive power of the Jesuit order. In his seventh solo exhibition at the gallery, the artist will focus his exacting gaze on the globally influential, yet distinctly American phenomenon of Disney. Founded in the early 1920s as a small animation studio, The Walt Disney Company has become one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. A conscious purveyor of family values and the virtue of American industry, Disney has vigorously defended its role in the creation of what the artist has termed a "spiritual utopia." With characteristic intensity, Tuymans explores the transformation of entertainment into ideology, while at the same time offers a critique of the hegemonic control of economic and cultural capital and the implicit dangers in a reality based on the production of magic. The exhibition will include eight new paintings and eight new drawings, in which Tuymans puts forth the image of a disintegrating utopia. Largely depicted in flat, muted hues, an uneasy sense of nostalgia pervades, which shuns the obvious and circumvents easy interpretation. In a key painting entitled Turtle, we are confronted by the looming image of a mechanical float in Disneyland's famous, now-defunct attraction, the Main Street Electrical Parade. Divorced from the bright lights and whirring excitement of the parade, the familiar childhood favorite is rendered gruesome and hollow by Tuymans' broad brushstrokes and anemic colors. Clear from a distance, the image dissolves into abstraction upon close view. Integral to the artist's practice is the reliance on existing visual materials, including drawings, photographs, and film stills. Referencing a 1960s promotional film, the work W presents a shadowy vision of Walt Disney before his original, unrealized plans for an expansive residential project known as EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). Employing discomfort as a formal device, Tuymans crops the corporate leader's actual body from view, thus raising questions of control, labor, and invisibility, while simultaneously suggesting a latent grim reality that undermines the proposed fantasy ideals. Large drawings continue to explore the two- dimensional plans for EPCOT, which consisted of a complex tunnel system for covertly supplying the imagined, carefully controlled community; through repetition the images metamorphose from practical proposals into disassociated patterning. A striking aura of concealment emerges from the collection of works in the exhibition, as Tuymans explores the history of Disney's adamant and complex entertainment agenda. For example, one of the smaller paintings depicts a set from The Carousel of Progress, an attraction that Disney developed for the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair. An unabashed celebration of the history of electricity and American domestic improvements, the attraction notably depended on theatrical scrims to hide multiple rotating stages. The painting and exhibition's shared title, Forever, seemingly refers to the endurance of an ideology and a timeless, fairytale paradigm. Rife with paradox, it simultaneously proposes the practical opposites - anachronism, mortality, and dissolution. In these works, plans fail, memories fade, and perception is clouded by illusionism. A fully illustrated catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition. Image: TUYLU0295 Luc Tuymans Wonderland, 2007 Oil on canvas 138.98 x 215.35 inches 353 x 547 cm Courtesy David Zwirner, New York and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp David Zwirner 533 W. 19th St New York , NY10011 David Zwirner, New York Read on... David Zwirner, New York

Saltworks Gallery Atlanta GA Conor McGrady Green and Pleasant Land 23 Feb - 5 Apr 2008 Saltworks is pleased to present Green and Pleasant Land, a solo exhibition of new works by Conor McGrady. Executed primarily in black and white, McGrady's paintings take on an ominous tone with their depictions of uniformed officers enforcing the rule of law or menacingly still landscapes and city streets. Beautiful in their elegant use of line, the works have a stark quality as the contrast between purity and darkness pervades the work. Born and raised in Castlewellan, Northern Ireland, McGrady has experienced first-hand the sense of civil unrest and social tension evidenced in his work. His works are an examination of the role of authority in contemporary society and how power manifests itself in individuals, nation states and through their public and social policies. In his most recent works, McGrady incorporates images of animals that embody the most predatorial aspects of human nature, such as vultures, symbolizing ritual and death; and packs of wolves embodying group mentality and implicit violence. The title of the exhibition, derived from the poet William Blake's Jerusalem, expresses the irony of the lengths to which societies will go in order to preserve the integrity of their idealized community. While the poem was written as an indictment of the power structure of Blake's time, it has since been co-opted by conservative elements in Britain to create a sense of national mythology. In such cases, the abuses of power imposed by nation states are buried beneath the romanticized façade that characterizes the creation of societies built on utopian ideals. Conor McGrady received his MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998. In 2000 and 2002 McGrady was awarded a Community Arts Assistance Program Grant from the City of Chicago. In 2002 he was selected to participate in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2003 he completed a five-month residency in the Woolworth Building, New York, through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Studio Program. His work was recently included in the Spectral Evidence exhibition at Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn in 2007. McGrady currently lives and works in New York. Image: Conor McGrady Courtesy of Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta GA Saltworks Gallery 635 Angier Avenue NE Atlanta GA 30308 Saltworks Gallery Read on... Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta GA

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