MAGNUS PLESSEN

Posted on 2019-06-10

Magnus Plessen creates works that combine diverse painterly methods and approaches to reality (systems of representation) within an image. The limbs of the figures are generally outlined fragmentarily, while the hands are freely sketched and placed within an otherwise undeveloped plane in a way reminiscent of a sculptor’s preparatory or volumetric sketch. Other elements approximate reality, whereby the artist attempts to achieve what amounts to the impossible in the medium of painting, namely an imprint of the real. Still other areas are painted with free brushstrokes. What most of these painterly methods have in common is that the paint is partially removed and taken back by being scraped with a palette knife, wiped with a cloth, removed with sticky tape or rubbed with printing paper.

Opposite – Untitled (Rotation), 2019

Exhibition runs through to August 3rd, 2019

Mai 36 Galerie
Rämistrasse 37
CH-8001 Zürich
Switzerland

www.mai36.com

  

DERRICK ADAMS

Posted on 2019-06-10

A continuation of Adams’ Deconstruction Worker series (2010–), the constructed portraits depict the everyday with a style drawn from Modernism and the idealized and exaggerated forms of traditional African sculpture, also taking inspiration from contemporary pop culture and vernacular scenes from the artist’s life. Rendered in a cubist style, the subjects are framed by abstracted city streets on which miniature model automobiles break free of the two-dimensional plane. The city grid speaks to the paradox of movement and progress—both individual and collective—within the confines of existing paths. Whether posed or caught in motion, the subjects are surrounded by an environment that adjusts to accommodate each individual. For Adams, the works suggest that “we are who we are because our presence is strong enough to also inform the spaces we occupy.”

With this work, Adams continues his ongoing project of creating space to imagine alternative narratives; he seeks to empower his viewers with fulfillment and dignity, proposing that awareness of one’s own cultural capital can be foundational to Black autonomy.

Opposite – Figure in the Urban Landscape 34, 2019

Exhibition runs through to July 6th, 2019

Rhona Hoffman Gallery
1711 West Chicago Avenue
60622 Chicago
USA

www.rhoffmangallery.com

  

SVEN LUKIN – OBJECTS IN SPACE

Posted on 2019-06-03

Much has been made over the last decade about the increasingly blurring lines between fine art and design, as function and creative innovation meld to produce compelling new kinds of objects. In this context, artist Sven Lukin’s painting-sculptures of the 1960s feel utterly at home and enticingly contemporary. Inspired by the work and vision of acclaimed architect Louis Kahn, Lukin’s enigmatic works are all volumetric forms, geometric fields of color, and illusionistic lines and perspectives.

Opposite – Model XB, 1965


Exhibition runs through to July 12th, 2019

Hollis Taggart
521 W 26th Street, 1st Floor
NY 10001
New York

www.hollistaggart.com

  

STELLA POPULIS BY BLONDEY

Posted on 2019-06-03

The exhibition, Blondey: Stella Populis, includes photography, digital illustration and installation, and is a study in the manifestations of super-fanaticism relating to both religion and pop culture in an attempt to draw parallels between the two.

Included in the exhibition will be Epiphanies, a series of 25 laser etched portraits on toast. In a twist to the clichéd images of Christ that are perceived as concrete proof of his existence, the series features pop culture celebrities from footballers to Disney stars to the Kardashians and others, cast in the role of Christ himself.

Also featured will be the diptych Queen Di, a convincing coronation portrait of the ‘People’s Princess’ and undisputed Goddess of pop culture, Lady Diana Spencer.

Opposite – Rihanna. Since Sliced Bread, 2019

Exhibition runs through to August 31st, 2019

Ronchini Gallery
22 Dering Street,
Mayfair
London W1S 1AN

www.ronchinigallery.com

  

SETH PRICE – SELF AS TUBE

Posted on 2019-06-03

The exhibition will include a series of mixed-media paintings and back-lit photographic works presented as light boxes and light tubes. For his new paintings, Price uses printing, collage, paint, and photographic techniques. Some belong to the artist’s recent series of “Social Space” paintings, which are based on photographs of people that he took in the New York streets and subways, while others feature objects at once strange and familiar, created with 3D modeling software. All works are manipulated by way of chemicals and pigmented polymer fluids on plastic.

Opposite – Subway: Entering Social Space, 2019

Exhibition runs through to July 20th, 2019

Galerie Chantal Crousel
10, rue Charlot
75003 Paris

www.crousel.com

  

SALLY ROSS – MATERIAL MATTERS

Posted on 2019-05-27

The story of painting is told and retold (as its own witness or as appropriation), each relying on memory, ours as well as that of the storyteller. It may be fictionalized or reportorial (abstraction, representation), may follow the contours of the everyday or the fluidity of the unconscious (realism, surrealism), even the awake dream, lost in thought by the light of day. It has protagonists, whether seen or unseen, hovering above the canvas (figuration, action painting), maps the space and situations they inhabit or haunt (a landscape, the picture plane), relies on or abandons plot structure (geometry, the monochrome), delivered by a narrator whose voice is resonant or elusive, sometimes using painting’s language and means to question itself: painting considered as both material witness and evidence.

Opposite – Interrompante, 2018

Exhibition runs through to July 6th, 2019

rodolphe janssen
Rue de Livourne 35 Livornostraat
B-1050 Brussels
Belgium

www.rodolphejanssen.com