re-title.com Features

Galerie Emmanuel Post, Leipzig

Sebastian Gögel
come rain or come shine

 

Opening reception: 8 pm, Thursday, June 5, 2008

June 6-28, 2008

What expresses itself in Sebastian Gögel's many drawings, paintings and tattoos as drastic images of penetration and gestures of perforation attains a new metaphysical level in the artist's new sculptures. Here, Gögel affords insight into the mental tools, subsidiary forms and primal creatures constituting his visual world. Far beyond apologetic attempts at celebrating beauty within ugliness, the grotesque within the purportedly normal (and vice versa) by means of zealous technical mannerism on the verge of kitsch, Gögel demonstrates in ruthless precision what he is dealing in and what he wants us to look at:

A stalagmitic, upward-growing liquid creature attempts - sopping - to free itself from the shackles of gravity: A great struggle indeed that strains and ultimately succeeds in forcing the nape of this gelatinously supple humanoid into a horizontal position. Yet tautologically, it depends on the Earth's attractive force to get into shape, to further continue its tragicomic growth flow and to excrete its pore deep by-products. In psychogrammatic terms, we are not only shown the liberation of the suppressed, but experience the metallic ossification of a dark force defying instrumenttalism, yet fuelling the convulsions of expression. It is something else which urges us to establish contact, yet what?

The cubature of a simple, insulated wooden box condenses into a psychological riddle as to the meaning of open-mindedness and denseness. The box - variously reminiscent of a refrigerator, coffin, laboratory cabinet, toolbox or architectural model - lies as if marooned, on the floor, its six door flaps wide open. Emanating a positive albeit mysterious presence, the cube has landed underfoot like a visitation from another planet, bringing new air and a different light. In this state of hyperventilation, the capsule forfeits its function as a once-useful box, yet paradoxically attains the status of a receptacle for aesthetic subject matters.

The mirror as the very instrument of self-reflection and, if one is fortunate enough, of self-realization, appears in Gögel's work as an ecstatically crafted vase job. In its shape visibly utilitarian as a mock neoclassicist vessel (perhaps useful as a flowerpot, a champagne bucket, a font, a tennis ball receptacle or a paint brush holder), the object generates optical pandemonium however, as if causing disco and junk recuperated from the Romans by military commander Hannibal to short circuit. In any case, this self-devouring, glass-eating Vorticist vase-flower would garnish perfectly the terrazzo terrace of any German who has been to Italy ('Noodles Make Him Happy') and who fancies the good life, perhaps even likes to paint. It seems to embody the psycho-ornamental symbiosis of two cultures competing between North and South. Yet naturally, it can offer no more than fragmentary particulars of this mystic union - and of the way we look when we think we've got it.

Oliver Kossack, 2008 (artist, lives and works in Leipzig)

 

Sebastian Gögel, born in Sonneberg/Thuringia, Germany, 1978, lives and works in Leipzig. Studied Painting/Graphic Arts, Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, 1997-2002. Master student with Prof. Sighard Gille, 2002-2005. Since 2005: HAGEL - artistic collaboration with Paule Hammer.

Current exhibitions: 'Past-Forward', Zabludowicz Collection / 176, London (15 May - 3 August, 2008), and solo exhibition at the GEM, Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hague, The Netherlands  (July 12 - Oct. 5, 2008).
 
Exhibition of the award winner of Leipzig's 14th annual exhibition
The award is dedicated to the nobel prize winner Wilhelm Ostwald
and is sponsored by the Sachsen Bank
 
Image:

Detail Sebastian Gögel.

Figur  2008

aluminium 

height 49 cm 

Edition: 5+1 

Courtesy Galerie Emmanuel Post, Leipzig

 

Galerie Emmanuel Post

Windmühlenstraße 31b
04107 Leipzig

 

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Nohra Haime Gallery, New York

LEOPOLDO MALER
SILENCE

28 May 2008 to 25 July 2008

 

"Maler is one of the very few artists of the 70s who have tried to make truly imaginative use of the available technology, and the effects he has conjured up have been some of the most genuinely magical of the decade"
Edward Lucie-Smith, Art in the Seventies

Silence, an installation by Leopoldo Maler first exhibited at the Camden Art Center in London in 1971, will be shown at Nohra Haime Gallery. A seminal piece in Maler's development as he moved from theater staging to art, utilizing forms that would become part of the new art vocabulary: installation, video, performance.
In a darkened room, the viewer encounters a single bed constructed of blue neon. On the bed lies an elderly woman which is projected onto the bed. A live nurse sits knitting in a bedside chair.

Silence: a moment of reflection. It is a psychological process where Maler uses these images to unchain these processes. It evoques presences and absences. Maler is moved by the human body, horizontal and in repose. All anxiety of everyday life disappears and everything in our reality looses its value. The nurse's appearance gives a physical dimension next to the filmed image which now become The reality.
Silence is as fresh and haunting in the 21st Century as it was in 1971.

Born in Buenos Aires, Maler studied Social Sciences and Law. He moved to London in 1961 where he started to experiment with his new ideas about mixed media, integrating films into sculptures and installations. In 1977 Maler was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship for the Arts and moved to New York until 1983 when he became the first Dean of the Parson's School of Design in Santo Domingo. Maler's work has been exhibited at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Whitechapel, and Hayward Galleries in London among others. He represented Argentina in the 14th Sao Paulo Biennial and in the 1986 Venice Biennale. His works are in important collections worldwide.

Also on view in the side gallery will be selections of Maler's more recent paintings/ assemblages. These works are personal dialogues with extreme depth and social consciousness. 

 

Image:
Leopoldo Maler
Silence
1971
Courtesy of the artist and Nohra Haime Gallery, New York 

 

Nohra Haime Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY10022

 

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Pippy Houldsworth, London

Matt Franks
It's so hard to tell who's going to love you the best

23 May 2008 to 28 June 2008

Pippy Houldsworth is delighted to present a show of new works by Matt Franks, whose first solo exhibition Transcendent Plastic Infinite at Tate Britain's Art Now space in 2002 brought him to prominence in the UK. At Houldsworth, Franks will display his latest body of work comprising a series of hybrid sculptures developed from his typically mock baroque aesthetic.

The exhibition title is borrowed from a folk song by Karen Dalton, reflecting the artist's ongoing tumultuous love affair with his work. The anxiety which underlies the process of making is founded on the desire for success. Yet, no matter the planning, there is always an element of improvisation, putting the artist's association with the work beyond his control. As with any relationship there can be no certainty of the outcome.

References to modernism are prevalent in the works in their theatrical posturing. Despite this, Franks opts for materials that deny the works the monumentality of their modernist predecessors, instead preferring styrofoam, mdf, plastic and yak hair. Similarly the development of the surface contradicts archetypal sculpture. The materials themselves, which are soft and rich, belong to luxury goods and interior design. The surface texture therefore disputes the autonomy of the art object whilst raising questions of taste.

Matt Franks graduated from Goldsmiths College with an MA in Fine Art in 2000 and is currently Head of Sculpture at Camberwell College of Arts. Since his show at Tate Britain Franks has been part of numerous important international exhibitions including Tailsliding, a British Council international touring exhibition 2001-03; Into My World: New British Sculpture at the Aldrich Museum, Connecticut in 2004; Metropolis Rise: New Art from London, ICA London, Diaf06 Beijing and Shanghai in 2006; and 8x8x8, LON/MSP/NYC, The Soap Factory, Minneapolis 2006.

Franks' first public installation for an exterior site, Fooooom!!! 2007, a three metre high white exploding cloud, commissioned by the Contemporary Art Society was on show at the Economist Plaza in 2007 and toured to Blickachsen 6 at Galerie Scheffel, Bad Homburg, Germany, courtesy of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

 

Franks is currently working on a major outdoor commission for Biedermann, Germany to be installed in June 2008.
 

Image:
Matt Franks
Installation View at Pippy Houldsworth, 2008

Courtesy of Pippy Houldsworth

Pippy Houldsworth
50 Pall Mall Deposit
124-128 Barlby Road
London W10 6BL

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Exitart, New York

Charles Juhasz-Alvarado: Complicated Stories
Sculptures and Written Testimonies, 1998-2008

May 17 - July 12, 2008

Charles Juhasz-Alvarado: Complicated Stories will present the artist's past and present bodies of works as an ongoing dialogue on social consciousness and cultural identity. Charles Juhasz-Alvarado's elaborate site-specific installations engage the viewer through narrative, performance, audio, and sculpture to introduce a fantasy world that serves as an acute and humorous allegory of today's multicultural society and the artist's own background.

The artist was born in 1965 on Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines to a Hungarian father and a Puerto Rican mother. He grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, attended Yale University in Connecticut, and now resides in Puerto Rico. These socio-cultural influences are addressed in his works, which often allude to his varied background and the historical and political conditions of those places.

Juhasz-Alvarado's works are playful monoliths, combining monumental size with biting satire and political humor. In I-Scream (resist!), 2004, the artist complicates the history of Puerto Rican-American relations through the depiction of the 1983 robbery of a Wells Fargo van by the Macheteros (a pro-independence Puerto Rican organization) with an ice cream truck complete with a Mount Rushmore-shaped Popsicle. The Garden of Forbidden Fruit / Zona Franca is a complex installation exploring how the merging of divergent cultures creates desires and consequent limitations through a hilarious depiction of a Puerto Rican airport. The airport becomes the ultimate allegory for the opposition of the Puerto Rican and American experiences. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a new, commissioned work titled Winged Termite. This massive installation, made rather ironically from wood, references Leonardo daVinci's idea to build a flying mac hine modeled on the shape, proportions and mechanics of flying animals such as birds, bats or, in this case, a winged termite. Hanging from the ceiling of Exit Art, the work invites the viewer to climb inside the machine and act as the 'conductor'.

In this age, where many artists work with assistants or even hire out their work for other people to produce, Charles Juhasz-Alvarado has mastered the literal crafting involved in constructing his visions. He works hands-on, asserting his complete control over all aspects of his imagination. The artist himself is not only seen in the concept, but manifests himself in the shaping of steel, in the shaving of wood, so that when the viewer enters the installation, the works involve the viewer in one coherent thought.

This major project, Charles Juhasz-Alvarado: Complicated Stories, will be a vital opportunity to survey the work of this important contemporary artist and to introduce him to American audiences, where he has had limited exposure.

Curated by Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo.

Image:
Charles Juhasz-Alvarado
Drawing for Winged Termite: Flying Machine, 2008

Courtesy of the artist

EXIT ART
475 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY

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ROEBLING HALL, New York

David Ellis - Dozens

22 May 2008 to 28 June 2008

 

Roebling Hall is pleased to present its first solo exhibition of new work by New York-based artist David Ellis, entitled Dozens. The title of this exhibition, taken from the slang "playing the dozens" to describe good-natured verbal sparing, is more than just a piece of poetic musing. David Ellis does, in fact, make trash talk, or at least makes it sound funky and he uses language and cadence as integral parts of his art making.  Weaving rhythm, cultural landscape, conceptual art, a variety of collaborators and a myriad assortment of materials, Ellis's art evokes both the participatory spirit of Allan Kaprow- watch and see what happens- and the mechanical wonderment of Jean Tinguely.

 

For this exhibition in the gallery's main room Ellis installs a large pile of garbage and discarded objects scavenged from the gallery's Chelsea neighborhood. Ellis places player piano actuators inside the debris. Using his ear to determine each object's inherent resonance, Ellis provides cues for collaborator and composer Roberto Lange to create musical compositions that transform the otherwise dormant pile into a kinetic instrument of percussive funk. A pile of garbage one minute, an extraordinary beat-box sculpture the next.  This is the largest example to date of Ellis's Trash Talk installations, an ongoing series of work with Lange.

 

In the gallery's foyer Ellis debuts a new sculpture entitled Oh, Superman. Paying homage to Laurie Anderson's iconic 1981 song and performance, Ellis repurposes an IBM Selectric typewriter into a new fangled player piano. Here, Anderson's lyrics are magically typed onto a scroll of paper to the repetitious beat of the song.  Ellis uses the mechanical device to call attention to the prophetic verbally sparse lyrics: "Here come the planes, they're American planes, made in America, smoking or non-smoking?..."

 

Ellis fuses his mechanical wizardry with his long established technique of time-lapse photography, works that he calls motion paintings, in a new installation in the gallery's project space. A new motion painting is projected onto the tops of ten art storage crates arranged on the wall according to the Fibonacci mathematical golden rule principal. Next to the projection, inside the actual crates, piston actuators bang and vibrate a collection of discarded studio debris that creates the soundtrack for the adjacent projection.

 

Also included in the show are twelve new paintings. "Ellis paints onto collaged pages comprised of his to-do lists and hardware store needs, papers from the daily grind, as well as things he finds on the street. Ellis then responds to the pages by painting in and on them, rhythmically providing a pulse. The painted layer is graphic, loose and flowing. Ellis calls his signature painting form-a graphic wave in silver and black- "flow," representing motion in air and water. There is an unconscious, visual catalog below the surface of the final work-an archaeological, archival underpinning inside the painting, submerged below grade."
(Dara Meyers-Kingsley)

 

This is Ellis's third solo exhibition in NYC and his first solo exhibition at Roebling Hall. Ellis has participated in numerous prestigious group shows, including P.S.1's Greater New York (2006), Ensemble, curated by Christian Marclay at the ICA (2007) in Philadelphia. His Motion Paintings have been screened at the MoMA.

 

Image:

David Ellis

Dozens

Courtesy of the artist and Roebling Hall

 

ROEBLING HALL
606 West 26TH Street
New York, NY 10001

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Sam Still, Long Island City, NY

Sam Still, Open Studio

 

 

12-07 Jackson Ave

Long Island City

NY 11101

USA

Saturday, May 31 and Sunday, June 1, 1:00 - 6:00 PM

Drawings available from 20.00 -12,000.00 USD

Free Signed Open Edition Print; see artist's website for more information:

 

Sam Still
 

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Robert Mann Gallery, New York

Aaron Siskind: The Egan Gallery Years, 1947-1954

May 15 - June 28 2008  

Robert Mann Gallery presents a selection of photographs by Aaron Siskind that draw upon the four seminal exhibitions the artist had at the Egan Gallery between April 1947 and June 1954.  Included are a selection of prints believed to have been presented in the original exhibitions.

At the recommendation of his friend Barnett Newman, photographer Aaron Siskind paid a visit to art dealer Charles Egan, one of the few gallerists in New York devoted to contemporary art at the time.  The result was four exhibitions at the Egan Gallery.  Siskind's photography had begun moving away from social documentary, flattening the picture plane as everyday objects moved into abstraction. Placing Siskind in an exhibition program that included Robert Rauschenberg and provided the first American venue for Willem de Kooning, Egan recognized the importance of the photographer's work in the contemporary discourse of visual arts. From a 1948 press release: "Mr. Siskind's discernment of the poetic in the casual and passed-by aspects of every day reality are rich in their eloquence of line and shape and take their place with the serious expression of the modern American artists." While the first show at Egan endeared Siskind to many of his colleagues in the painting community, it drew the ire of critic Clement Greenberg. Leaving the exhibition together in an elevator, Greenberg insisted to Siskind that he couldn't do that with photography, photography had to be anecdotal, to tell a story. In spite of Greenberg's judgment, Siskind's work became an integral part of the American art historical and photographic canon. 

These four exhibitions were crucial to solidifying Siskind's place as the photographer in the American abstract expressionist movement. While it would be easy to assume that Siskind observed what was happening in painting and simply translated it to photography, the record shows that aesthetic exchange went both ways. In an essay that accompanied the 1951 exhibition, Elaine de Kooning called Siskind "a painter's photographer".  Such mutual affinities are evidenced by Franz Kline's painting Siskind, 1958 and the incorporation of motifs from the photographer's work into Willem de Kooning's Woman series.  The richness of visual material developed by Siskind during this period astounds: fragments of wrought iron coils, found dÈcollage street posters, suggestions of figuration in grease-stained paper bags-all toward the development of a unique style and sensibility.

Aaron Siskind (1903-1991) is included in numerous major museum collections. The Aaron Siskind Centennial Celebration took place during 2003-2004 with exhibitions at more than a dozen institutions across the country, each devoted to a different period or theme of the his life and work. Among these was Robert Mann Gallery's exhibition, Aaron Siskind 100.

 

Image:

Aaron Siskind
Untitled, c. 1950
14.5 x 20 inch vintage silver print
 

© Aaron Siskind Foundation 
 

 

ROBERT MANN GALLERY

210 Eleventh Avenue
New York, NY 10001

 

 

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Victoria Miro Gallery, London

Jesper Just
A Voyage in Dwelling

20 May - 14 June 2008

Victoria Miro Gallery is delighted to announce the first solo exhibition in the UK by Danish artist Jesper Just. The exhibition will premiere the newly commissioned film trilogy A Voyage in Dwelling in addition to a selection of earlier works, including Just's acclaimed film A Vicious Undertow.
 
The new trilogy - consisting of the eponymous work A Voyage in Dwelling, A Room of One's Own and A Question of Silence - stars renowned Danish actress Benedikte Hansen whose character, a woman in middle age, embarks on a psychological journey of displacement to unravel her sexuality. The films register as an uneasy mapping of female desire, as they chart the slippage between one woman's actual and imagined sexual self. Just sensitively explores the idea that "the received paradigm of a man's journey is that he always returns to the point of departure expecting to find his home and wife unchanged, unaffected. Benedikte's experience, by contrast, is one of pleasurable displacement - she becomes a nomad in her own mind, never returning to her former status quo." Shot on a remote island and on a dilapidated Polish ferry, the trilogy also features an original soundtrack by Theremin composer Dorit Chrysler and American transgender singer/songwriter, Baby Dee.

Over recent years, Just has crafted his own signature breed of filmmaking characterised by glossy production values and emotionally-pitched soundtracks. He has created a unique cinematic language, but one which is deeply informed by film history, eliciting comparisons to Tarkovsky, Resnais, Bergman and Antonioni. His works are unified through their careful elision of narrative climax, leaving the viewer emotionally seduced but without a sense of resolution.

Just's videos attempt to dissect the nature of human interaction and the awkwardness of relationships. As in A Vicious Undertow (2007) - a seductive pas de trois between a middle-aged woman, and a younger woman and man - Just often seeks to emphasise the absurdity of gender roles and the way which cultures generate them. He presents charged relationships that could be perceived as perverse and endows them with beauty and dignity. With little, if any, dialogue, Just's repertory casts unpredictably sing in chorus, embrace, and weep, creating suggestive yet ambiguous situations.

A Voyage in Dwelling has been generously supported by Outset Contemporary Art Fund and the Danish Arts Council.

The artist would like to credit sound engineer Jakob Garfield, cinematographer Kasper Tuxen and actors Benedikte Hansen, Johannes Lilleore and Peter Hesse Overgaard.

Born in 1974 in Copenhagen, Jesper Just is a graduate of the Royal Academy Of Fine Arts, Copenhagen and currently resides in New York. Just has exhibited widely, with recent major solo presentations at Witte de With, Rotterdam, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, S.M.A.K, Ghent, The Moore Space, Miami, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington and the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. He will present a significant solo exhibition at The Brooklyn Museum, New York in the autumn of 2008 and will be included in both the upcoming Liverpool Biennial and Copenhagen Quadriennale.
 

Image:

Jesper Just
2008
A Voyage in Dwelling
Super 16mm transferred to DVD

 

Courtesy Victoria Miro Gallery
Copyright © Jesper Just
 

Victoria Miro Gallery
16 Wharf Road
London
N1 7RW

 

 

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VAN HORN, Düsseldorf

ANDREA BOWERS
SANCTUARY

 

11 Apr 2008 to 14 June 2008

For almost a year Andrea Bowers followed the story of Elvira Arellano in the press. On August 15, 2006, Arellano entered into sanctuary at the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago, IL. She began her vigil against a deportation order to avoid being separated from her eight year old son Saul, who is a U.S. citizen. She refused to return to Mexico because she would not leave behind the child that she had raised by herself for most of his life. Bowers interviewed Arellano two weeks prior to her one-year anniversary in sanctuary. Less than three weeks later, Arellano was separated from her son and deported to Mexico. While involved in one of the most contentious political debates in the U.S. - that of immigration - Arellano's courage and dignity drew me to her story.

This exhibition, Sanctuary, continues Bowers' exploration of direct action and non-violent civil disobedience enacted through the lives of women. She presents the stories of activists to express her belief that dissent is essential to maintaining a democratic process, as well as to illustrate the importance of a political strategy that stands in opposition to violence and war. In this body of work she continues to consider the intersections between aesthetics and political protest. Bowers investigates the role of art in the reconsideration of historical records, storytelling and documentation. Included in the project are a 16 mm film and photographs.

The film Sanctuary focuses on the genre of portraiture, employing the gaze to confront the social and political scrutiny that occurs in spectatorship. Arellano was the first undocumented immigrant to publicly acknowledge her situation. Most people in her circumstances, for obvious reasons, feel they must stay in hiding. Andrea Bowers found her decision to publicly refuse her deportation courageous and this is conveyed through the eye contact she makes with the viewer. In Sanctuary the subjects Elvira and Saul Arellano do not speak, and as a result the judgments and assumptions made during the act of viewing are fore-grounded. The film makes the viewer's internal dialog conscious, turning the traditionally objectifying gaze on the female subject into a situation for ego identification and mirroring for the viewer.
 
 
Image:
Andrea Bowers
Sanctuary
Installation View at VAN HORN, Düsseldorf  - until June 14, 2008
Courtesy of Van Horn, Düsseldorf

 
VAN HORN
BEUTHSTR. 14
ENTRANCE SCHIRMERSTRASSE
D - 40211, Düsseldorf

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Inter Art Center and Gallery, Beijing

All the Things Between - Photography and video from Europe and North America

13 - 26 June 2008

Alison Dalwood (UK), Stephan Hausmeister (Germany), Sam Jury (UK), Tim Van Laar (USA),
Isidro L-aparicio (Spain), Stefan Sulzer (Switz), Sebastian Utzni (Germany), Michael Wright (UK)

'all the things between' a major exhibition of photography by eight artists from Europe and North America who all, in their distinct ways, critique the nature of global media representations and the ability of photography and film to serve as an all-encompassing mediator of reality. By exploring and debunking the ubiquitous imagery of slick consumerism 'all the things between' seeks to question the narratives that overlay and homogenize culture and location.

In a visually saturated age, our perceptions of truth and experience are mediated and made uncertain by our capacity to vicariously absorb knowledge through images. Our understanding of the world is dominated by iconic media images and photography and video is seen as a tool to record what is the truly newsworthy, grandiose and momentous. 'all the things between' explores the gaps or fissures between these so-called events, whether it is the objectification of the seemingly mundane or a re-imagining of a time and place seen through improbable circumstances. Collectively the artists in this show share a dialogue that gives visual form to questions about our expectation of realism and the reading of imagery in the age of globalization, suspending the spectator in the space between.
 
Image:
Stefan Sulzer video installation with 14 monitors
Courtesy of the artist
 
Inter Art Center
Sevenstar Main Street
798 ArtZone
No.4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District
Beijing, 100015 China 
 

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