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Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Boston
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4 Sept 2008 to 12 Oct 2008
The judi rotenberg gallery is
excited to announce our second solo exhibition of new work by
sculptor, Dave Cole. All American will
be open to the public beginning September 4, 2008.
All
American is the latest chapter in Cole's exploration of
American Identity, this time through the lens of war. Much of
Cole's work transforms banal objects of American life into
powerful sculptures that blur the intersection of civilian and
military experience. The pervading question after considering
Cole's new body of work is: At what point does culture feed
war, and at what point does war feed culture?
The
association with games is not lost when considering Cole's new
sculptures. A tricycle tows a little-red-wagon, which has
become a portable machine-gun nest. Repainted in the color
scheme of desert warfare, these artifacts of childhood have
become an ominous suggestion of alternate reality. The
familiar decals have been replaced with crude military
stencils, and the tricycle bears a military stock number. This
piece, along with the infant clothing made from bullet proof
Kevlar, and the baby bottles resembling hand grenades,
manifests Cole's signature blend of whimsical nostalgia and
unflinching seriousness.
From Cole's perspective, the
innocence of children playing war-games is superimposed with
the reality of young people engaged in conflicts with deadly
consequences. By changing the prism of how we consider the
impact of violence in our American culture, Cole reveals the
tragic potential of living in a marshal society, laying bare
all of the terrifying implications.
In the two years
since Trophies and Monuments (judi rotenberg gallery,
September 2006), Cole's career has taken flight. His work has
been featured in two major international exhibitions, at the
Haifa Museum in Israel, and at the National Museum of Art
Norway. In addition to this international exposure, Cole's
work has been in a number of traveling exhibitions, including
the critically acclaimed Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting
show that originated at the Museum of Arts and Design in New
York City.
Image:
Dave Cole Knitting with Loaded Shotguns (Safeties Off),
2008and Kevlar Snowsuit, 2008
spun statuary bronze with 12 gauge shotguns and
Kevlar (used Gulf War bullet proof vest) cut, sewn, and hand
knit
72" x 66" x 10" and 21" x 19" x 6"
Courtesy of www.caseymcnamara.com and judi rotenberg
gallery
Judi Rotenberg
Gallery
130 Newbury Street
MA 02116
Boston,
MA
+1 617 437 1518
Judi Rotenberg
Gallery
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Aeroplastics Contemporary,
Brussels |
GAVIN TURK
+
TOBY CHRISTIAN, TOM CRAWFORD,
ROSS DOWNES, JIM HOLLINGWORTH:
YOU KNOW I KNOW HE KNOWS
WE KNOW
New Art from London
20 Sept 2008 to 8 Nov
2008
AEROPLASTICS Contemporary
has the pleasure to present, for the first time in Belgium, a
selection of works by British artist GAVIN
TURK. In parallel Gavin Turk has invited the public
to discover the work of four young London-based artists in an
exhibition entitled « I know, you know, they know, we
know ». The sculptures of Toby CHRISTIAN explore the
concept of artifice, the installations of Tom CRAWFORD examine
the conceptual manipulation of the pictorial image, Ross
DOWNES introduces us to his art « Brit Povera », and Jim
Hollingworth (JIMP) draws morbid fascinations from daily
life.
Gavin Turk's exhibition on the ground floor and 1st
floor of the gallery brings together a painstaking selection
of his works, from sculptures depicting himself in wax to
recent works in painted bronze, while also casting an eye to
his self-portraits silkscreened on canvas and his
aquarelles.
His work questions the value, the authenticity, the
originality and the integrity of art. To this end, the artist
parodies famous contemporary art-works, and examines the
validity of personality cults devoted to certain of his
confrères. What is the influence of celebrity on how art is
seen? Can a work of art still have intrinsic
value?
Entering the arena of this debate, Turk cultivates
ambiguity. Yes, he is the apparent subject of his oeuvre. But
who is really hiding behind this de-multiplied image of Gavin
Turk, be it via his superb wax self-portraits (Somebody's Son)
or his silkscreens (Elvis Dyptich)?
Furthermore, the artist draws from everyday street
life, once again, casting an ironic eye on the question of
value and appearance. He works bronze and polyester to
hyper-realistic effect, here revisiting the most trifling of
objects, not to have them exist as souvenirs but to underline
the contradiction of their existence and to call into question
received ideas and beliefs born of habit. The tube from a
toilet-paper roll (Manzonian Tube) is far from being the piece
of cardboard that is seems to be, and his sleeping bags
(Habitat - Ziggy Purple) are heavy with all the weight of this
society that ignores its homeless habitants.
Here, too, we have an artist revealing to us the
finesse of a watercoloured cardboard box (Open Box), and
exploits the urinary stream upon metallic paint as just
another mode of anointing the canvas (Untitled Anthropomorphic
Piss Painting).
In sum, if one knows nothing of him, the man, obscure
behind this alter-ego that is Gavin Turk, the artist, the
range of works on view at AEROPLASTICS Contemporary offers a
fine panorama of the history of contemporary art, from Marcel
Duchamp, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Marcel Broodthaers, Joseph
Beuys, to Andy Warhol.. among others.
Gavin Turk was born in England in
1967, and continues to live and work there. He studied at
London's Royal College of Art, an institution which refused to
validate his work for the year 1991, consisting simply of a
plaque (like those seen outside historic buildings)
commemorating the artist's presence within the school's walls
between 1989 and 1991. This work, and its consequences,
secured him immediate notoriety. As one of the Young British
Artists (YBAs) he participated in numerous group exhibitions
(from « Sensation Young British Artists from the Saatchi
Collection », Royal Academy of Arts, London (1997), « Century
City », at the Tate Modern, London (2001), « Remix:
Contemporary Art and Pop », at Tate Liverpool (2002), «
Superstars! The Celebrity Factor. From Warhol to Madonna » at
Vienna's Kunsthalle (2005)) and individual shows (Jay
Jopling/White Cube, London; the Centre d'Art Contemporain de
Genève; Sean Kelly, New York; Krinzinger, Vienna; Magasin,
Grenoble).
Image:
Gavin Turk, Diptych Silver Elvis, 2007
Silkscreen
on canvas
129 x 184 cm
Courtesy of Aeroplastics Contemporary,
Brussels Aeroplastics
Contemporary
32 rue Blanche Brussels
1060 Belgium +32 2 537 22 02
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Caroline Pagès Gallery,
Lisbon |
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Armanda
Duarte
Subtracções
September 25 - October
31, 2008
Entitled Subtracções (Subtractions),
this exhibition by Portuguese artist Armanda
Duarte offers a body of work revealing situations
that focus on the specific, where experience is not the result
of chance, but rather the fruit of a close observation of life
and the construction of things. The approach to selected
objects occurs through various installations which have been
carefully chosen, in which they and the moments in which they
occur are part of and represent a particular system of
established relationships. The works are explorations
constructed from a series of imperceptible steps governed by a
logic and rules of their own, embracing a timeframe, which
although essential to the artist for their creation, is not
necessarily their own. Between the colour and the design
itself - the main motivation for the juxtaposition of three
adjacent perspectives - and the conceptualization of the
scene, condensed in terms of subject matter and composition,
the works selected formalize the gathering together of
elements that provide a structure for each object, whether as
a form of mental or physical exercise.
Armanda Duarte has paid close attention throughout
the work to the mathematical principles that underlie the
essence of each object. Submitting parallel processes to an
almost scientific logic, the works become on the one hand
subjects of study, and on the other, producers of this
perspective to which, in fact, exercises in subtraction and
addition or the reference to units of measurement are
frequently associated as an elementary form of organization
and an ordering of the materials used. In so far as these
mathematical exercises allow, at the level of the sciences,
wherein alternative responses, observations and ideally
conclusions can be found, so in the artist's work there exists
the intention to equate the perception that develops from the
real, without, however, ignoring the possibilities defined by
the senses. Circumscribing the situations and places, the
creation of limits according to the outcome of cycles sets up
an urgent tension, from which the sentient/emotional world
cannot disassociate itself. As a result, the design emerges as
a privileged instrument of investigation, essential to the
process of abstraction through which conceptual evidence is
strengthened, projecting it structurally in a preferential
amplitude of pre-existing formal possibilities, but one which
Armanda Duarte lays open to discovery.
Armanda Duarte (1961) completed her
degree in Communication Design at the Lisbon Faculty of Fine
Arts (FBAUL). Since the late eighties, her work has been shown
regularly in institutions, biennials, galleries, and
independent spaces in Portugal and abroad. Among the recent
exhibitions, one can distinguish her latest solo exhibition at
the beginning of 2008 at the space Plataforma Revolver in
Lisbon (Uma Combinação, curated by Francisco Vaz Fernandes),
her two solo exhibitions at the National Museum of Natural
History in Lisbon (Sala do Veado, 1993 and 1999), and her
latest two collective exhibitions: one at the Lagos Cultural
Centre (Armanda D., Ângela F., Ana V., Fernanda F., Maria L.,
Susanne T., curated by Alexandre Barata, 2007) and the other
at the Presidential Palace in Belém (Jardim Aberto, curated by
Filipa Oliveira, 2007). Since 2000, the artist took part in
many collective exhibitions among which the one at the JAP
Modern Art Centre in Lisbon (Meeting Points, 2004), the ones
at Culturgest Lisbon (Mediterrâneo: um novo muro?, curated by
Fátima Ramos & António Pinto Ribeiro, 2001 and Um oceano
inteiro para nadar, 2000), the ones at Culturgest Porto (A
colecção Ivo Martins, 2004 and Novas aquisições da CGD, 2002),
and the one at the D. Luis I Foundation in Cascais (City Desk
Sculpture Prize 2001).
Her work can be seen in the public collection of the
Caixa Geral de Depósitos (Culturgest Portugal) and is
represented in the private collections of Ivo Martins and
artist Pedro Cabrita Reis as well as of other collectors in
Portugal.
Rita Santos, June 2008
Caroline Pagès
Gallery
Image:
Fragment of Sobras de Uma Combinação and
Menos Quinze
© Armanda Duarte, 2008
Caroline Pagès
Gallery
Rua Tenente Ferreira Durão, 12 - 1°
Dto. 1350-315 Lisbon Portugal +351 213873376
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CRG Gallery, New
York |
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TONICO LEMOS AUAD
Silent
Singing
SEP 13 - OCT 18
CRG begins its season with the first New York solo
exhibition of London-based Brazilian artist Tonico
Lemos Auad. The installation includes an arrangement
of cast graphite pigeons on the gallery floor titled "Quatro
Ventos" four winds. In this work some of the dulled metallic
birds are mounted atop loaves of blackened burnt bread while
others, that form an interactive component, are loose and
meant to engage the viewer -who is invited to use them to draw
or write on the gallery wall. In addition, a series of
portraits, also depicting pigeons, hang on the gallery wall,
each adorned with a semi-irregular bulging picture frame made
from baked bread. Other works include an arrangement of
sprouting sweet potatoes that spell out the word
"CLAIRVOYANT".
Auad engages the transitory through the use of
materials that we take as succinctly impermanent and fading;
incorporating such things in the past as fruits, vegetables,
and plants into his works. The fragile and ethereal presence
that these objects provide is amplified even more so by his
delicate treatment of them. While such precedents exist like
Yoko Ono's distinctively stark "Apple", 1967 -not wholly
dissimilar in its quiet and poetic placement, Auad's hand is
clearly present in his work that has its foundation in the
essentialized creative act of mark making or drawing.
Sometimes conventionally and other times not so. With such
seminal works as "Drawings on Banana" 2001 -where Auad used a
needle to prick the skin of bananas causing them to ripen in
areas, revealing over time blackened tattoo-like drawings on
the fruit's surface that eventually disappeared as the fruit
continued to ripen. Auad's process might seem to focus on the
momentary with a capricious disregard for its need of
continual replenishment in order to exist at times, though
like Ono, that is precisely the point that makes his work
resonate with such lucid, though perhaps inaudible, clarity..
"Silent Singing" as it might be. His works are
engagements with his environment on the most intimate of
levels, even seemingly accidental at times; as if through the
busy fray of daily life something as innocuous as a forgotten
potato on the kitchen counter -revealed many weeks later to
have begun sprouting and perhaps for a moment suggesting an
auspicious vision. It is the beauty of the commonly overlooked
that can, through Auad's delicate placement and treatment,
yield such poetic repositories of a shared personal experience
that in their slow impermanence become like memories that have
been caught just long enough to appear as if stopped
altogether.
The works in this exhibition mark a significant
culminating point for Auad where his range of personal process
and medium have become combined and accessible through an open
invitation with the viewer. The focal work "Quatro Ventos"
extends Auad's talent for transforming the everyday through
alchemical means to a dialogical one where the viewers
themselves become an active agent in the transformation;
dissolving the representational object into the abstract and
gestural quite literally -as the pigeons eventually will
disappear into a specific and current cultural script within
the gallery space that eventually vanishes over time as
well.
Image:
Tonico Lemos Auad
"Quatro
Ventos"
cast graphite pigeons
Installation view at CRG Gallery, New York
Courtesy of CRG Gallery
CRG Gallery
535 W 22
ST New York, NY 10011 +1 212 229 2766
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Gladstone Gallery, 530 W 21st Street, New
York |
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Mario Merz
18 Sept 2008 to
25 Oct 2008
Gladstone Gallery is pleased to
announce an exhibition of historic work by Mario
Merz. A major figure in the Arte Povera movement of
the 1960s and 70s, Merz's use of both organic and industrial
materials was at the forefront of the movement's artistic
identity. Roughly translated as "poor art," Merz along with
counterparts such as Alighiero e Boetti and Luciano Fabro
wanted to separate the art object from consumer capital,
emphasizing conceptual process and everyday forms as the most
transcendent methods of universal communication. Best known
for his igloos and neon Fibonacci sequences, Mario Merz's
shamanistic installations become spaces both primal and
technological, where the scientific basis of organic life
confronts the roaming imagination of man.
The igloo began appearing in Merz's work in 1967 and
continued throughout his life. He saw the mobility of this
typical shelter for nomadic wandering as an ideal metaphor for
the space of the artist. Delineating interior and exterior,
the igloo allows the artist domain anywhere, and for any time,
along the spectrum of human existence. In this exhibition, the
gallery will show two igloos that incorporate Merz's signature
use of metal, neon lights, and animal forms. Often bringing
together disparate ideas or forms, the igloos straddle
dichotomies: as Merz said: "I work with contradiction - neon
and canvas, glass and wax, electrical technology and mud.
Everything is a contradiction because without that there is no
life."
In addition to the igloo, Merz was fascinated by the
Fibonacci sequence, the mathematical pattern (named for the
Italian monk who discovered it) that reveals the growth rate
of many organic materials (the nautilus shell, leaves,
pinecones, antlers, etc.). The pattern is identifiable as a
sequence of numbers in which any given number is the sum of
the two numbers that precede it: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc., ad
infinitum. Fashioned in neon and draped along walls, often
punctuating the hemispheres of his igloos or marking the
facades of buildings, Merz's use of the Fibonacci sequence
speaks to the artist's strong belief in the potentiality of
growth and the ability to transform through eternity. His
belief in the omnipresent domain of the human experience, its
continuing power to grow, and his transformation of waste into
the conduits of his concepts speaks directly to his empathic
embrace of life.
Mario Merz was born in 1925 and died
in 2003. He was awarded the Ambrogino Gold Prize, Milan; the
Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Vienna; and the Arnold Bode Prize,
Kassel. He was the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at
institutions around the world, including Fundação de
Serralves, Porto; Welhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisberg;
Fundación Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona; Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, New York. His work is currently on view as part of
"Life on Mars: 55th Carnegie International" in Pittsburgh, PA.
The Fondazione Merz in Turin, Itlay, regularly displays both
the works of its namesake and sponsors exhibitions by living
artists.
Image:
Mario Merz
Le case girano intorno a noi o noi
giriamo intorno alle case?, 1994
Metal structure, glass,
stone, clamps, neon
236 1/4 inches diameter
(600 cm
diameter)
Copyright Fondazione Merz
Courtesy Gladstone
Gallery
Gladstone Gallery
530 West 21st
Street
New York
+1 212.206.9300
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September 24-25 - Painting & Drawing
October 1-2 - Photography, Film & Video
October 8-9 - Sculpture & Installation
October 15-16 - Painting & Drawing
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