NATHAN HYLDEN – SO DOING

Posted on 2018-10-01

A recurring subject in Nathan Hylden’s paintings is the artist’s studio, his studio specifically, as seen in his last exhibition at Art : Concept in 2014. Through the history of the modern painting, the artist’s studio has developed as a signifier of the superiority of creative activity by the representation of its trivial realities. Seen as what might be the first tautological figure in the rhetoric of art, the artist’s studio as subject can be a site where the myth of the artist is at once invoked and deconstructed.
Hylden’s new paintings depict crumpled balls of paper on the studio floor, like castoff ideas. The crumpled paper balls, repeatedly photographed, are pure pretext for formal experiments using light effects and cast shadows, duplication, notions of emptiness and fullness, painting and luminous effects, in an exercise of sublimation which, since Vermeer, can be seen as a waste object.

Opposite – Untitled, 2018

Exhibition runs through to November 17th, 2018

Art : Concept
4, passage Sainte-Avoye
Access: gate at 8, rue Rambuteau
75003 Paris
France

www.galerieartconcept.com

  

MIRCEA CANTOR – HISTORY IS JUST A BULLET ON YOUR TIMELINE

Posted on 2018-10-01

An acute visitor will notice that the coloured arc on the exterior façade of the gallery – entitled “Double rainbow” –, which marks the beginning of the exhibition doesn’t assume the Parnassian dimension that it would seem to incarnate. Indeed, we are first challenged by the barbed wire pattern that forms these chromatic arcs. Then, an addition of interrogations linked to the notion of identity burst in while the visitor realizes that these iron brambles are painted from the tip of the artist’s fingers as he meticulously affixed his fingerprints next to each other. If the mathematical sense of identity is defined by two confounded elements that nothing can dissociate, contemporary societies more often prefer the antonymic definition referring to what differentiates and separates us from each other. These are the same societies in which each fingerprint ends up opening this or that access, this or that door but can also be used to identify a Human being and define his freedom and even sometimes his destiny. If the rainbow metaphorically expresses for some the symbol of the alliance between God and men, the artist’s interpretation seems to underline the profound antagonisms in which Humanity often dives into and of which the barbed wire are the sad material evidence.

Opposite – Tableaux, 2014-2018

Exhibition runs through to November 17th, 2018

VNH Gallery
108 rue Vieille du Temple
75003 Paris
France

www.vnhgallery.com

  

DAVID RATCLIFF – BASEMENT PSYCHEDELIA

Posted on 2018-09-24

History is destined to repeat itself, though our ability to record and process events is struggling to keep pace with the increasingly rapid rate at which that repetition occurs. Drawing on an archive of pulp and subculture scraps, Basement Psychedelia captures a contemporary sense of dread; the anticipation, fear, and anxiety of the present moment as defined by an endless cycle of an American imperative defined by male entitlement, insatiable indulgence, and immediate gratification.

Basement Psychedelia presents a new body of contemporary history paintings animated by a frenzied energy and a newly colorful palette. Ratcliff has steadily expanded the formal range of his painting practice, and the new pictures evince a loose virtuosity with a more direct presence of the artist’s hand and increasingly painterly effects. Gestural brushwork and fluid paint introduce new material and surface qualities while underlining the exigent suspended motion of Ratcliff’s signature stencil spray-painting.

Opposite – Untitled, 2018

Exhibition runs through to October 21st, 2018

team (bungalow)
306 Windward Avenue
Venice
CA 90291

teamgal.com

  

STERLING RUBY – WIDW AND DRFTRS

Posted on 2018-09-24

Ruby’s DRFTRS and WIDW series are two ever-evolving bodies of work that bear witness to the artist’s intense relationship with materials and his interest in issues such as sociocultural evolution, popular culture, and violence. Executed on paper, the DRFTRS (an acronym of ‘drifter’) are hybrid collages in which cut-and-pasted images occupy expressionistic landscapes. These nomadic elements, drifting through painterly space, are extracted from a vast image bank compiled by the artist. They reveal a myriad of current preoccupations including protest posters, horror movies, arts and crafts, album covers, orchids and poppies, snakeskins, stalagmites and stalactites, skulls and bones, prisons, archaeological excavations, and ancient artefacts. The painted backdrops, in palettes of red and green; red, white and blue; oranges; yellows; and murky blacks, veer from dense and apocalyptic to sparse and vibrant. Combined with the photographic images, they create a psychological tension that channels the contemporary zeitgeist. Ruby has described collage as an ‘illicit merger’, thereby highlighting the transgressive nature of the medium. He makes a visual and conceptual link, for example, between those incarcerated in the American prison system, and images from archaeological sites, equating both to burial. In this sense, the collages are analytical and emotive, an exercise in social dissection that inhabits a haunting formalism, heightened by stark and splattered brushwork, and a visceral use of colour.

Opposite – WIDW. RED SPITTING., 2018

Exhibition runs through to October 20th, 2018

Xavier Hufkens
St-Jorisstraat 6 Rue Saint-George
B – 1050 Brussels
Belgium

www.xavierhufkens.com

  

ALBERT OEHLEN – SEXE, RELIGION, POLITIQUE

Posted on 2018-09-24

Since the 1980s Oehlen has been probing the possibilities of painting through an everevolving style and technique. At the core of his practice are the limitations he imposes on himself as a point of departure, in order to have ‘something to push against’ and thereby expand and redefne our understanding of painting. In this new body of work, Oehlen demonstrates the consistency of his approach in setting narrow parameters to create stark and powerful imagery that highlight his will for constant renewal. “Freedom for me means playing. It does not mean to be in a void and make crazy moves. It means to play with your own rules.” In the new paintings eccentric shapes and forms fLoat untethered on the open surface. The self-appropriation of the tree motif and an allusion to the Fingermalerei (Finger Paintings) paintings is consistent with Oehlen’s continual quest to reveal the process of painting and what occurs on the pictorial surface during that process. The tree motif fIrst appeared in Sturmschaden in 1981 and again in the late 80s. It was at the same time that Oehlen was exploring the formal possibilities of the tree that he made his fIrst purely abstract paintings in 1988.

Opposite – Bam Bam, 2018

Exhibition runs through to December 21st, 2018

Galerie Max Hetzler
57, rue du Temple
75004 Par

www.maxhetzler.com

  

GARDAR EIDE EINARSSON – FLAGWASTE

Posted on 2018-09-17

In November of 2016, Hillary Clinton was widely presumed to be the frontrunner in the American presidential election. During the early evening hours of the eighth, however, it became clear that her opponent would be declared the victor. Shortly before the election, Team Gallery had opened a solo show by Gardar Eide Einarsson at its project space on the West Coast. Included in that exhibition was a work entitled Flagwaste, a substantial sculpture that consists of remnants from the production of American flags. The materials had been obtained directly from U.S. factories, the residual waste of the flags’ fabrication process. The factories contacted were asked simply to sweep the floors at close of day, box the refuse and ship them to the gallery. The red, white and blue material was displayed as a giant, contiguous mound in the center of one of the gallery’s spaces.

Opposite – Installation view

Exhibition runs through to December 1st, 2018

team (gallery, inc.)
83 Grand Street
NY
NY 10013

teamgal.com