NICOLAS PARTY – THREE SEASONS

Posted on 2017-06-05

Swiss artist Nicolas Party has executed two site-specific murals that transform the interior while creating a singular environment for a recent group of large-scale pictures and bronze sculptures. Working exclusively in vivid, highly-pigmented chalk pastels – either directly on the walls or primed canvases – Party invites us to rediscover this once popular but now often neglected medium. Respectful of the traditions that precede him on the one hand, but radically extending them on the other, the artist’s handling of the medium is anything but academic. Here, all associations with drawing, delicacy and fragility have been supplanted by a fresh, graphic sensibility and a technique more akin to painting. Unlike paint, however, pastels are blended directly upon the support: a task that requires great exactitude and foresight.

While the popularity of pastels has waxed and waned over the centuries, their physical properties remain unchanged. From a seventeenth-century portrait to an Impressionist landscape, up to and including Party’s contemporary iterations, works in pastel are distinguished by a single unique quality: their luminosity. The velvety, seductive glow is caused by the myriad facets of loosely bound mineral powder scattering and diffusing light across the surface of the work. But whereas pastels were historically prized for the life-like flush they lent to portraits, or utilised for their ability to convey atmosphere and mood, Party veers in completely the opposite direction and uses them to create a coruscating artificiality. The intense colours are also specific to the medium, which is manufactured from a surprisingly small range of pigments (typically those used for oil paints) and different amounts of filler. This allows the production of innumerable tints with only the subtlest of variations. Party can consequently work in gradations of tone rather than in colour mixtures, thereby attaining a dazzling brilliance.

Exhibition runs through to July 15th, 2017

Xavier Hufkens
107 rue St-Georges | St-Jorisstraat
B – 1050 Brussels
Belgium

www.xavierhufkens.com

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THOMAS SCHUTTE

Posted on 2017-06-05

Approaching his practice as a “seismograph” of the world around him, Schütte deals in ambiguity and paradox. His sculptures, architectural models, watercolors, and photographs, which have transformed in scale and medium over the last 40 years, repeatedly return to certain motifs. Within this realm, there is one concept that is invariably applied to Schütte’s work regardless of subject matter or material: his sharp observation and interpretation of the human condition. For this exhibition of work created over the last six years, Schütte revisits familiar themes, including human countenances, groupings of figures, and architectural studies. Unrestricted by medium or dimensions, his pieces are rendered in steel, Murano glass, bronze, and ceramic, in forms ranging from small tabletop models to woodcuts to looming sculptures. In this selection, Schütte directs his attention towards the otherness of the face and the body: whether as authoritative grotesques or modernist abstractions, he navigates reductions in form to achieve studies that are fragmented, silent and singular, even when presented in groups. What ultimately remains is the essence of the figure as a reflection of some perceived characteristic only the artist is privy to. There is always a touch of tenderness in the grotesque, strength in the vulnerable, and humor in the monstrous. What is startling, and at the same time reassuring, is that the work doesn’t mirror life in the black and white terms of contemporary pop culture imagery. Rather, Schütte’s work strikes a harmonious balance between the nuances of our precarious reality and the figures that he has shaped as a reflection of our existence within it.

Opposite – Gartenzwerge (Glas), 2017

Exhibition runs through to June 7th, 2017

Carlier / Gebauer
Markgrafenstraße 67
D-10969 Berlin
Germany

www.carliergebauer.com

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NICOLA TYSON – A TENDENCY TO FLOCK

Posted on 2017-06-05

Adopting an intuitive approach, Tyson begins by drawing. She works quickly to “stay ahead of rational decision making”, not knowing what will appear but trusting that the “discovered” images will resonate with a complex range of meanings and associations. Selected sketches are then worked up into paintings through a slower, more deliberate process. Tyson’s expressive paint application is nevertheless characterised by a ‘one-chance only’ approach – that of using a dry brush to produce a sense of immediacy and dynamism of movement, in addition to her chromatically-heightened pallet of unlikely colour combinations, alternately perverse and beautiful.

Tyson draws influence from artists such as Bellmer, Bacon, Bourgeois and sources beyond, reformulating these precursors in the pursuit of an independent and idiosyncratic visual language. Her approach to her medium, and to the genre of figuration, has been compared with that of the pioneering Austrian painter, Maria Lassnig (1919-2014), who coined the terms Körpergefühl (body sensation) and Körperbewusstsein (body awareness) to describe her own approach. These twin concepts aptly reflect the combination of physicality and introspection which informs Tyson’s work. Her ambivalence about titling her works (often preferring numbers or minimal annotations) reflects her reluctance to guide the viewer towards any specific reading. She has stated: “for me, a successful drawing or painting is one that I don’t recognise… that surprises me”. Accordingly, the title of the exhibition — A Tendency to Flock — references nothing specific, save an urge to gather together. Like the paintings, the title elicits a gentle yet absurd humour.

Exhibition runs from June 22nd through August 19th, 2017

Sadie Coles
1 Davies Street
W1K 3DB
London

www.sadiecoles.com

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