13 Mar 2010 to 17 Apr 2010
Gallery hours
Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00 - 5:00
The Kopeikin Gallery
8810 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood
CA. 90069
Los Angeles, CA
California
North America
p: +1 (310) 385-5894
m:
f: +1 (310) 385-7964
w: www.kopeikingallery.com/
March 13th � - April 17th, 2010 Opening Saturday March 13th from 6:00 - 8:00
The Kopeikin Gallery presents an exhibition of photographs by Andy Freeberg http://andyfreebergphotoart.com titled "Guardians." It's a dryly humorous and heartwarming essay on the women guarding various Russian Art Museums. The series asks viewers to contemplate the lives of these women and how they relate to the artwork on display. In fact, the artwork often becomes peripheral as the focus settles upon these comfortably seated, musing characters.The exhibition opens on Saturday March 13th with a reception and book signing http://guardiansbook.com with the artist and continues through April 17th.
In the art museums of Russia, women sit in the galleries and guard the collections. When you look at the paintings and sculptures, the presence of the women becomes an inherent part of viewing the artwork itself. Andy Freeberg found the guards as intriguing to observe as the pieces they watch over. Then in conversation they told him how proud they are to work among Russia's great art. A woman in Moscow's State Tretyakov Gallery Museum said she often returns there on her day off to sit in front of a painting that reminds her of her childhood home. Another guard travels three hours each way to work since she would rather be at the museum people watching and surrounded by the history of her country than at home sitting alone.
Andy Freeberg was born in New York City and studied at the University of Michigan. He began work as a photojournalist with assignments for Rolling Stone, TIME, and Fortune. Known as a consummate professional, Freeberg alternates between the fine art and assignment worlds bringing a consistently original vision to his work. His prior project "Sentry" (Gallery Desks in Chelsea) which led into the present series was shown in New York and received critical acclaim in the New York Times, The New Yorker and many other publications.
William Steiger: Drawings
March 13th � - April 17th, 2010 Opening Saturday March 13th from 6:00 - 8:00
The Kopeikin Gallery presents the first west coast exhibition of drawings by New York based artist William Steiger whose subject matter are icons of the American landscape, including grain elevators, tramways, railroad cars, roller coasters and ferris wheels. The exhibition opens on Saturday March 13th with a reception for the artist and continues through April 17th.
Steiger's drawings are never populated, focusing rather on the chiseled geometry of recognizable structures of 20th century ideology. The reduced forms offer neither a romantic modernist view, nor an ironic look at a lapsed technology. There are elements of the stark photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher in the deadpan approach, but Steiger bathes his structures in a background palette of subdued industrial tones, giving the works a soothing, seductive aura. The combination of the muted atmosphere, the graphic style and the undefined and, therefore, limitless space of these works implies endless narrative without supplying story line.
Steiger is able to push his work to a new conceptual level by employing a repertoire of recognizable images. The structures depicted are often compilations of various forms altered to accomplish the compositional goals of the artist. The removal of naturalistic elements, a shadow or a horizon line for example, and the recent inclusion of brighter hues, test the boundaries of visual recognition.
William Steiger received an M.F.A in painting from Yale University in 1989. His works have been shown extensively in the United States, and included in exhibitions in Europe and Korea. Pace Editions recently published a new print by the artist. His works can be found in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, as well as many prominent corporate and private collections.
