October 23rd to January 4th 2010 Opening Reception: Saturday, October 23rd from 5-8pm
Kavi Gupta is pleased to present it's first solo exhibition with Curtis Mann titled everything after. This is Curtis Mann's first U.S. exhibition since his inclusion in the 2010 Whitney Biennial.
In Mann's most recent works, found photographs of conflicted and historically complex places throughout the Middle East are subjected to a process of selection and erasure. By painting on portions of enlarged color photographs with a clear varnish and then bleaching away unprotected portions of the image, new and abstract meanings are sought from appropriated snapshots, travel photographs, and casual documentations. The photograph is physically and contextually altered; as a result, the work oscillates between image and object, photography and painting, real and imagined.
In a recent interview Mann states, "I am constantly trying to force these found images to function outside of their initial utility and use photography's inherent, malleable nature as a way of coming to an ulterior understanding of the complex and the unfamiliar. Coming from a mechanical engineering background, I have always been curious about the paper, the chemicals and the inks used to produce photographic images. They are the birth of the image and their manipulation holds a lot of potential for disrupting the powers of the flat, conventional image."
For his exhibition at the Kavi Gupta CHICAGO, Mann will present a selection of new works, including large chemically altered mural grids, panoramic landscapes and haunting distorted figures.
Mann was born in 1979 in Dayton, Ohio, he lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Recent exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial 2010, curated by Francesco Bonami, something after, Galerie Almine Rech, Brussels, Altered Sates, Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art Kansas City, MO and New Artists/New Work, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
Gallery 2: JAMES KRONE Trickle Down Ergonomics
October 23rd - January 4th, 2010 Opening Reception: Saturday, October 23rd from 5-8pm
Kavi Gupta Gallery is proud to present Trickle Down Ergonomics, the debut Chicago exhibition by the Berlin artist, James Krone. Comprising the exhibition will be select works from Krone's Ceremonial Painting (2010), a suite of paintings and chairs entitled Chair Paintings (2010).
Krone's Ceremonial Paintings (2010) relate the repetitious role of painting in an artist's life to the historical indexing of the modern black painting. The works problematize the rigid interpretations often produced by art history's associative patterns. As what the artist calls 'paintings in drag', Krone's Ceremonial Paintings are freed from the immediate and standard references to Stella or Reinhardt. Instead, they bring the entire process, whether it be the individual who makes work in the studio or the combined effort to historize art, under scrutiny.
With a similiar approach Krone created the suite of Chair Paintings (2010). Rather than treating the production of art as an exploration into all the outlying possibilities, the Chair Paintings delineate a single banal event; specifically, the making four paintings to correspond to the floral patterned cushions on four chairs in the artist's studio. Like the extended activity that contextualizes the Ceremonial Paintings, this suite of floral paintings calls into question how one defines finitude and specificity.
James Krone (b. 1975 in Chicago) lives and works in Berlin. Recent exhibitions include Vivere Country Group Show (2010) at the Grimm Museum in Berlin, The Wilderness Is The Witches Leash (2010) at Country Club Projects in Los Angeles, and Ayran & Yoga, the first edition of the Berlin-Kreuzberg Biennale (2010)(Galerie Im Regierungsviertel). Upcoming exhibitions include Mein So Called Kampf (2011) with LA artist Justin Baner Hansch at Preteen Gallery in Hermosillo, Mexico.
