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3 May 2007 | Painting May 2007 |
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 Houldsworth,
London Kounosuke Kawakami New Paintings and Collages Houldsworth presents a solo exhibition of paintings and collages by young Japanese painter Kounosuke Kawakami from 17 May to 18 June 2007. Running concurrently at APT Gallery, Deptford, Kawakami's works have been selected by Matthew Collings and Emma Biggs as part of Creekside Open Part One during May; and by Victoria Miro as part of Creekside Open Part Two in June. Kounosuke Kawakami has a reverence for the old masters - he wants to achieve the same sense of painting that obfuscates the artist's hand. He wants his worlds to resonate like these paintings of a bygone era, which hang in timeless suspension in sacred spaces. This is an unlikely declaration - Kawakami's works seem much more influenced by the prints and images from his native Japan, than the chiaroscuro of renaissance scenes. And yet there is a sense of baroque filigree in his paintings and, in his collages, more than a hint of a classical sensibility. The historical influences and aspirations towards a self-effacing perfection found in the hand of the grand tradition, belies the exceptional immediacy of these works, which are undoubtedly influenced by the possibilities of computer collage and CGI worlds. However, the only part the computer plays for Kawakami is to create a fine analysis of colour palate for each piece. As is often true the most successful imaginings of the contemporary world occur in relation to the new media of the age and not through it. Hence the artist's hand and eye is ever present in these intricate collages and finessed paintings, but what they capture is a world of nightmarish disjointed fantasy - the experience of the technological extended self. Flat planes of carefully layered colour sit against the deep perspective of computer style architectural models. However, these places are very real; they are inspired by holiday brochure villas and industrial excesses of dams and factories. As Susan Sontag said of the cinema of the 60s, at its best there is "a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret," so we may give the same accolade to the best collage and drawing of the digital age. The medium of painting and collage (especially when combined) relates so intimately to the interface of the computer screen, that we are able to put aside interpretation and enter sensory abandonment. After all there can be no greater Claude Glass for our age than our own internet browser. Kawakami guides us with rare pleasure through a melted world, which is so removed from time, place and the politics of identity that we can only tentatively feel our way. He becomes the wizard of our dreams, lulling us deeper into white trees, painterly screensaver back drops and vertiginous architectures. Kawakami's debut at Houldsworth was in Chaotic Order with Hiraki Sawa, Laura Ford and Robert Platt in October 2006. From 24-29 July 2007, he will be part of Tech-Mac-Mayacom at the Frank Lloyd Wright Building, Myounichikan, near Ikebukuro, Tokyo. An interview with Kawakami appears in this month's Useless Magazine, and he is also featured in the May issue of Dazed & Confused, Japan. Image: Kounosuke Kawakami Exotica 2, 2007 acrylic, oil, plaster collage on canvas 120 x 160 cm Courtesy of Houldsworth, London Gallery website Read on... Houldsworth, London |
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 Daniel Hug, Los
Angeles Marcus Selg "Delphi - The Human Rainbow" 27 Apr - 26 May 2007 Daniel Hug is pleased to present a solo exhibition of German artist Markus Selg in the main gallery together with an exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Brett Lund in the project room. "Delphi - The Human Rainbow" will be Markus Selg's first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. In order to find a truth regarding the world, the earth, the universe and the own part one plays in it, the people of Greek antiquity preferably used to consult the oracle of DELPHI. However, Pythia's prophecies (this was the name of the female oracle) required more than the visitor's mere physical presence at the temple of Apollo. An internal access, encapsulated in the Delphic saying "Know Thyself", was needed if one wanted to extract any meaningful advice or wisdom from the multiplicity of possible interpretations of Pythia's prophecies. One of the metaphysical gates of DELPHI is certainly the idea that all external appearances are colourized by that which lives within us. This gate has remained open throughout the millennia in the form of mythical narratives about the oracle. The site was rediscovered only by the end of the 19th century. Up until today, its ruins have been subject to speculations about their original nature and the ritual practices connected to the site. At the heart of Markus Selg's exhibition entitled "DELPHI - The Human Rainbow" is a work of the same name. On the surface it has little to do with the archaeological remains of the temple of Apollo. Selg's DELPHI is both a concrete and an abstract place. Greenish withered tiles cover the external walls of a building, the front part of which looks like the entrance to a fantastical realm. The walls and a tower are made of wood and plaster, and their illusionism pays tribute to the irresistible pull of spacious film scenery. The walls could be the city-walls of a majestic city salvaged from the sea, a fragment of the outer circle of the utopian Atlantis, perhaps. From the side views, the building remains abstract. A cubic interior space is visible. Its facade is covered with green fabric and enclosed by the tiled walls, as if they were the wings of a flying object beyond space and time. From the back as well, Selg's DELPHI remains an abstract magnitude, except for the small sculpture of a female figure which stands on a socket projecting from the wall. The figural representation of Pythia identifies its environment as a temple, thus establishing a link between Selg's DELPHI and the historical oracle. The interior space, however, remains inaccessible. The passage to Selg's DELPHI must remain a journey of mind and imagination. A gate is provided: the architecture of the front part involves a picture, which is cut into two wing-like halves by the tower. We can see a landscape. It is empty, and so is the sky. Colourful robes skirt the sky like a rainbow, strangely headless figures who appear like friendly spirits welcoming and guiding the visitor. A painting of the Last Judgment by the Flemish painter Petrus Christus from 1452 provided the foil for Selg's painting. But unlike Petrus Christus' painting, it is emptied of menacing judges and the Christian battle between archangel and the Devil, thus inviting us on an unhindered journey, which is further encouraged by little steps in the tower. The dense interplay between architecture, sculpture, and single painting designates DELPHI as a "Gesamtkunstwerk" which has thrown negation out of the picture so as not to block a way for a more hopeful vision of the future right from the beginning. Image: Markus Selg Architekturentwurf (Delphi I), 2007 Piezodruck auf Papier, gerahmt (Piezo print on paper, framed) 40 x 33 cm Courtesy of Daniel Hug, Los Angeles Gallery website Read on...Daniel Hug, Los Angeles |
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Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne 
Fergus Feehily A Darker Definition 19 Apr to 26 May 2007 A Darker Definition is at first glance a title slightly at odds with the work Fergus Feehily is known for. His mainly smallscale work is often seen as modest, unassuming and gently poetic. All this is true, yet as the title of this show indicates there are some pins piercing the surface, not all is as it seems, not all is as quiet as we might first imagine. The title is in many ways paradoxical, what is A Darker Definition, how can a definition be in fact darker, would this not lead us to assume that it is less than clear, less defined? Like an earlier show title, Tender Analysis, it combines both the analytical and the emotional, the rational and the less understood. If we are expecting works dark in hue, then Feehily is too peculiar an artist for that and his lightness of touch remains a key element of this new work. Given time, there is an undertow of anxiety and ambiguity in this new work, an unsettled searching in it's making. Feehily's work is an odd yet intriguing experience, his work twists and turns- just when you think you are sure what you are getting, it shifts again and takes another avenue. Recently, Feehily has been making some of his most overtly representational work to date. These works continue his longterm preoccupation with blurring the boundaries between non-representation and image, text and drawing, painting and print. An apparently non- representational painting reveals a complex image; a drawing on paper shows itself to have been printed, apparent systems slowly reveal themselves to be random and intuitive. The work is at once universal and specific. Feehily will show concurrently at the Irish Museum of Modern Art's exhibition (I'm Always Touched) By Your Presence, Dear - New Acquisitions, April-November and will also have a solo exhibition at The Return, the gallery of The Goethe Institute, Dublin in May. A Darker Definition is Fergus Feehily's first solo show in Germany. Image: Fergus Feehily Courtesy Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne Gallery website Read on...Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne |
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 National Academy
of Sciences, Washington DC Strange Weather: New Paintings by Joy Garnett "Strange Weather," an exhibition of paintings by Joy Garnett depicting environmental catastrophes, will be on public view from May 8 through July 30 at the National Academy of Sciences' headquarters, located at 2100 C St., N.W., Washington, D.C. Joy Garnett gathers photographs of man-made and natural disasters from the Internet and renders the images as richly textured oil paintings. In the process, she locates tensions between the visceral power of paint and the fleeting nature of images in the mass media, addressing the evolving role of art in an information-saturated society. Curated for the National Academy of Sciences, the exhibition focuses on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In 'Strange Weather,' Garnett takes widely distributed news images of a devastated New Orleans and recasts them as paintings in which geological, political, and sociological weather are inextricably intertwined. Lucy Lippard writes: "'Strange Weather' is an astute understatement for what the world is undergoing. Equally strange is the apathy with which news of cataclysmic change is being received. Garnett's work reflects that change in a deceptively conventional manner.. Landscape painting contains its own paradoxes in these days of photographic ascendancy, when photographs have finally been recognized as no more 'truthful' than any other medium. Curiously, the distance afforded by a painting permits a more intimate experience of the effects of Katrina than the fragmented, momentary blitz of media photography. By reinventing her photographic sources, Garnett gives us time to be there, in place, on solid ground, however terrifying that may be." Based in New York City, Joy Garnett studied painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and received her MFA from the City College of New York. Her paintings were recently exhibited in "Image War," organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art , New York City, and "Run For Your Lives!" at DiverseWorks, Houston. In 2004, she received a grant from the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation. Garnett will attend the 2007 iCommons Summit in Dubrovnik, Croatia as Artist in Residence. She serves as Arts Editor for the journal Cultural Politics. For more than 20 years, the Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences has sponsored exhibitions, concerts, and other events that explore relationships among the arts and sciences. Image: Joy Garnett Flood 5, 2006 oil on canvas 54 x 60 inches Courtesy of the artist Artists' website Gallery Website website Read on... National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC |
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 Goff+Rosenthal,
New York Cornelia Renz SubRosa May 5th - June 8th, 2007 Goff+Rosenthal is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Berlin-based artist Cornelia Renz. Entitled Sub Rosa, this body of work incorporates Renz's style of layered painting with imagery reminiscent of Italian Renaissance masterpieces by Botticelli, Bronzino, and others. Sub Rosa, a Latin term originating from Greek mythology, implies confidentiality, usually with illicit connotations. The Rose, a symbol of silence, was often seen in Renaissance Rome above banquet tables as a visual reminder to guests of their freedom to speak candidly as all conversations were "under the rose" and thus in confidence. For this exhibition, Renz interprets the term Sub Rosa as an abuse of this silence, depicting unscrupulous women and their exploitation of the familial hierarchy behind closed doors. Renz's previous works focus on young, almost prepubescent, girls in carnivalesque attire and ironically misogynist situations, "These young women are not unknowing Alice-like innocents, there is no 'sugar and spice and all things nice' to be appended to these Justines, Juliets or Lolitas..They challenge the stereotypes and male-dominated assumptions, the patriarchal constructions that men attempt to impose on women."1 In Sub Rosa, Renz turns her focus to matriarchies and the private sphere. "In the private sphere, as opposed to the public sphere, power is more often exercised by women- the mothers or grandmothers. In modern families the father is becoming more and more absent leaving no one to control the female authority and allowing a shift of power from male to female and, inevitably, an abuse of power, but by the female." In Renz's latest series, the male subjects are shown in passive positions-sleeping in the nude, breast- feeding- but each work is imbibed with a sexualized undercurrent, bringing into question the roles of these female "nurturers". By reversing the gaze from female to male, Renz's Sub Rosa is truly feminist in theory, although she also reveals the women as manipulators, exploiting and enjoying their position of power within the private family sphere. Renz meticulously builds each work as a unique art- object. She paints on two separate surfaces, a front one of transparent acrylic and a back one that is either white acrylic or white polyurethane foam. Her medium is self-made, a mixture of pigments poured into empty magic marker casings. She applies the paint with her markers, adjusting the felt tips to get different qualities of line. Renz makes each frame always in white polyethylene, containing the individual work as if it were a Pandora's Box. The final effect is three- dimensional: part drawing, part painting part sculptural box. Renz studied in Leipzig at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (Academy of Visual Arts). She was included in the book, Berlin Art Now, written by Mark Gisbourne and published last year by Thames and Hudson. This will be her second solo exhibition in New York. The artist lives and works in Berlin. Image: Cornelia Renz Skyrider, 2007 Pigmentmarker + collage on paper 24.4 x 17 inches 62 x 43.2 cms Courtesy of Goff+Rosenthal, New York Gallery website Read on... Goff+Rosenthal, New York |
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 StART SPACE,
London Christopher Campbell Epoch 20 Apr - 3 June 2007 StART SPACE is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by British artist Christopher Campbell. Entitled Epoch and consisting of about 40 paintings Christopher explores further the feeling of a brooding malevolence that has always been present in his work. In Epoch a sense of disquiet and alienation is created, with the placing of animal life in landscapes both rural and urban. These are not like the paintings made in the 18th and 19th Centuries to record the cattle and livestock belonging to rich farmers and landowners, nor are they the rather neurotic looking horses depicted by George Stubbs. These paintings are concerned with menace and threat. The usual boundaries that define the territories of humans and animals have been disturbed and unbalanced. The animals now have the upper hand. What are the stories that inform these paintings? There is a collection of pre-existing stories that I feel the work does have reference to, made, intentionally or not, by the artist. Those are the stories or rather themes contained in the books of the Old Testament, in which a warlike God uses the forces of nature, and interestingly, particular animals to punish humankind for their collective 'sins' or as an act of revenge. For instance, the separate plagues of frogs, flies, and locusts sent to punish the Egyptians for their enslavement of the Jews, from the Book of Exodus. And of course in the story of Noah's Ark told in The Book of Genesis, all humankind is destroyed by a worldwide flood. All that is, except Noah and his family, with Noah being given, like Adam before him in the Garden of Eden, stewardship of the animal kingdom. Has the presence of the animals in Campbell's paintings to do with the destruction of human kind by a God-like force, who now bestows the contemporary world to the animal kingdom, a return to an idyllic Garden of Eden, but before the creation of Adam, and of Eve? Campbell himself is not interested in the particular symbolism, religious or secular, of the animals and birds that he places in his paintings, wanting only that they should each appear to be 'believable' that they may have wandered in from 'a few fields over'. Image: Christopher Campbell Turf War oil on linen 95 x 130 cm Courtesy of StART SPACE, London Gallery website Read on...StART SPACE, London |
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 Oliver Kamm/5BE
Gallery, New York Seonna Hong Our Endless Numbered Days 27 Apr - 26 May 2007 We are pleased to announce Seonna Hong's second solo show with Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery. "Our Endless Numbered Days" is a darker, more introspective step into the world of a girl where ominous black birds, bears and horses loom and languish as harbingers of some kind of doom. These silhouettes, outlines of our actual selves, cause tumult and discomposure in the mind of the protagonist. But it may be that this chaos is the appropriate provocation for change, forward momentum, and even hope. Working on canvas, Hong continues to use a flat painterly style. Large areas of negative space, left raw and unfinished, push up against smaller moments of obsession represented in the details of embroidery. Cut pieces of canvas add to the texture and feeling of these pieces, creating subtle dimension and depth. In a series of smaller untitled paintings, Hong uses more abstract imagery - a shadowy representation of transition and movement. Hong was a recipient of a 2006 Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, and opened her first solo museum show as a part of the "Suburban" series at the Knoxville Museum of Art. We are also pleased to announce that Seonna Hong will show with Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. in Japan in 2008. Founded by Takashi Murakami in 2001, Kaikai Kiki is a multilateral art enterprise. Its goals include the production and promotion of fine art, as well as the management and support of select young artists, and the organization of art-related events and projects. This will mark Kaikai Kiki's first exhibition with a US based artist in Japan. Image: Seonna Hong, Retreat, 2006 Acrylic, charcoal and thread on canvas 60 x 48 inches Courtesey of Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York Gallery website Read on...Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York |
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 Kate MacGarry,
London Luke Gottelier Dart Paintings 20 Apr - 20 May 2007 At the end of 2004 Luke Gottelier undertook a residency in the Amazon. This new series of paintings is the result of work begun in a remote part of Brazil. The installation and paintings explore the themes of Victoriana, pub culture, James Ensor, Aubrey Beardsley and the grotesque. The use of darts, thrown into the sides of the paintings, is ambiguous. They are a contradiction between the exotic and the low, and an absurd extension of the tradition of hammering tacks in the side of paintings. They reference St Sebastian iconography (the patron saint of archers and pinmakers) and draw on the quotation attributed to Henry Fuseli when remarking on a student's drawing in the Royal Academy "It is bad; take it into the fields and shoot it, that's a good boy."* The darts in some way acknowledge the historic parochialism of English painting and at the same time are icons of Englishness. *Peter Ackroyd, Blake, p.105, Minerva, 1995 Some of the paintings are completely blank, others are simple drawings, receding as if threatened by the darts that bristle around the canvas edge. The black backgrounds hold the objects and figures as if they are emerging from within it. Some of the images are utterly implausible, some as mundane as a garden hose "It is a matter of natural selection, the survival of the fittest, that settles whether they become paintings or not." Luke Gottelier has also commissioned a jungle booklist from the writer Tom McCarthy, the founder of the International Necronautical Society. The books will be displayed on a shelf made by Brian Griffiths. An excerpt from the reading list: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are; Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater; Bernard-Marie Koltes, La Nuit Juste Avant les Forets; William S. Burroughs, The Yage Letters. Image: Luke Gottelier The Prophecy, 2007 acrylic and tungsten darts on canvas 88 x 83cm Courtesy of Kate MacGarry, London Gallery website Read on...Kate MacGarry, London |
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