DJORDJE OZBOLT

Posted on 2015-01-26

Central to the exhibition is Ozbolt’s new work ’50 ways to leave your lover’ (2014), a major installation – and the largest work created by the artist to date – of 50 paintings presented in a continuous horizon line on the gallery’s second floor, where viewers are invited to follow a path through the artist’s rambunctious imagination. In the middle of the space is a custom-built trolley designed to hold and transport all 50 paintings.

Assembled from found wood and scrap material, this cart functions both as quasi-Modernist sculpture and a portable repository for the artist’s work. The subjects of paintings in ’50 ways to leave your lover’ (which takes its title from Paul Simon’s 1975 hit song of the same name) derive from pop culture and politics, and the history of art and abstraction. Some are painted in bold, bright colours, while others are rendered in mute monochromatic hues. Offering up images from found and fantasy scenes, the paintings reveal a glimpse into the random effusions of Ozbolt’s subconscious, teetering between, and often spilling into, the theatre of the absurd.

This series of 50 works was painted within a three-month period and can be read diaristically as a sketchbook of the artist’s moods and associations at a particular moment in time. Flitting between solid, geometric block painting and scratchy, gestural markmaking, ’50 ways to leave your lover’ playfully illustrates Ozbolt’s droll humour and mastery of paint.

Opposite – Delivery, 2014

Exhibition runs through to February 21st, 2015

Hauser & Wirth
32 East 69th Street
New York
NY 10021

www.hauserwirth.com

  

TAM OCHIAI – EVERYONE HAS TWO PLACES

Posted on 2015-01-26

Tam Ochiai will present a group of paintings that contend with the idea of travel in both its literal and metaphorical configuration. Entitled Everyone Has Two Places, the works in this series employ a premise that initially seems suspiciously oblique: the names of two cities painted on formally divergent canvases. Our understanding of each painting is alternately affirmed or radically altered by the individual parenthetical titles that accompany them, some of which include the names of dead writers, artists, actors and musicians both historical – as in T.S. Eliot (London, St. Louis) – and fictitious – Humbert Humbert (Paris, Parkington).

Further investigation reveals that some of these paintings contain the birth and death cities of their subjects, bookends that not only chart the movement of the body but likewise bracket the volume of a life’s work. Others are more mysterious in their text-sources, often taking their two locations from details of Ochiai’s own life – such as the start and endpoints of a transnational train trip. By proposing that the movement between two places can function as index – both geographical and temporal – these paintings trigger a steady avalanche of connotations both shared and deeply personal.

Opposite – New York, New York (there are many examples), 2014

Exhibition runs through to February 15th, 2015

team (gallery, inc.)
47 Wooster Street
New York
NY 10013

teamgal.com

  

THE IRON GIANT DELUXE FIGURE

Posted on 2015-01-26

The Iron Giant Deluxe Figure is the most highly detailed Iron Giant collectible to date! Created using the actual digital files used in the film, the figure features over 30 points of articulation, two interchangeable heads with a light up feature, magnetic “S” that can be detached from its sign and attached to his chest, switch-out “War Arm,” Hogarth mini-figure, and a girder to munch on! In addition to this, the figure also includes a sound feature, with Iron Giant quotes from the film!

Expected to ship 3rd Quarter of 2015.

mondotees.com

  

LORE KRUGER – A SUITCASE FULL OF PICTURES

Posted on 2015-01-26

Lore Krüger’s photographs are strongly influenced by the “New Seeing,” a movement that emerged within the Bauhaus context, but also by other artistic movements such as Cubism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. She was among the Paris artists who sought to expand the visual language of photography from a purely reproductive to a productive medium. In Paris, Lore Krüger studied with the great photographer and Bauhaus graduate Florence Henri, and it was there that she acquired her photographic skills and developed her free, experimental approach to the medium. She conducted darkroom experiments with the techniques of montage, the photogram, and multiple exposure. She soon moved away from the pure, aesthetic studio photography of her teacher and turned her attention toward real life on the street. This led to her series “Gitans” on the pilgrimage site Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and to sociological reportage photography on provincial life, workers, and the bourgeoisie in France.

Not muse or model but artist: Lore Krüger is representative of the new emancipated women of the avant-garde of the 1930s and 40s. As a photographer, she ranks among the pioneering women artists of her time, including Sonia Delaunay, Hannah Höch, Florence Henri, and Claude Cahun. Her politicization through events in Germany and her experiences in exile contributed further to her development. She engaged in intense discussion with the intellectuals of the time—Anna Seghers, László Radványi, Walter Benjamin, and Alfred Kantorowicz. And in New York, she was actively involved in the founding of the anti-fascist exile newspaper “The German American,” which published the work of numerous famous writers.

Opposite – Portrait, 1938

Exhibition runs through to April 10th, 2015

C/O Berlin Foundation
Amerika Haus
Hardenbergstr 22-24
10623 Berlin

www.co-berlin.org

  

CARLETON WATKINS – YOSEMITE

Posted on 2015-01-26

Carleton Watkins (1829–1916) was the consummate photographer of the American West. Born in Oneonta, New York, he moved to California in 1849, taught himself the new medium of photography, and established his reputation in 1861 with an astonishing series of views of Yosemite Valley. It was partly due to the artistry and rugged beauty of these photographs that President Lincoln signed a bill on June 30, 1864, declaring the valley inviolate and initiating the blueprint for the nation’s National Park System. In the middle of the brutal Civil War and its destruction of man and land, Lincoln saw the preservation of a small but extraordinary piece of America’s wilderness as a progressive goal to share with the republic.

Watkins was a virtuoso practitioner of the difficult wet-collodion process, and the remarkable clarity of his “mammoth” prints (18 by 22 inches) was unmatched. He rendered with exquisite finesse the vastness and grandeur of Yosemite’s glacial valleys, dramatic waterfalls, massive rock faces, and majestic trees. Watkins produced this work wrangling a dozen or more mules carrying roughly two thousand pounds of equipment, including his oversize camera, large glass plates, and flammable chemicals. It is in itself a miracle that any photographs survived these travails.

Opposite – Upper Yosemite Fall, Yosemite, 1865–66

Exhibition runs through to February 1st, 2015

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York
NY 10028-0198

www.metmuseum.org

  

SWATCH – GRAN TURISMO COLLECTION

Posted on 2015-01-25

The collection inspired by racing heroes from decades ago and where race cars seemed to have wings and the times did as well! Gran Turismo imitates a stylish suave time machine reflecting the spirit of this golden age.

The collection features models like the ‘Red Brake’ and ‘Destination Madrid’, the concept blends Swatch’s’s modern approach to design with the functionality and utilitarian foundation of a watch. Materials range from plastic and silicon to stainless steel and leather.

www.swatch.com