JUSTIN JOHN GREENE – WELCOME TO OUR MESS

Posted on 2018-09-03

This new suite of paintings offers a panorama of a sun-washed, tragicomic barbeque with scenes set against the background of an oddly utopic neighbourhood, in which themes of conflict and romance are paramount.

In these works, subject matter drawn from Greene’s personal surroundings – portraits of friends and family, plant-life and scenery from his life in Southern California – are juxtaposed with fictional elements that recall stylistic approaches and imagery drawn from other paintings, murals, films, and advertisements. His paintings present a collision of art-historical styles, referencing a diverse group of influences, including Baroque genre painting, social realism, Diego Rivera’s murals, Stanley Spencer’s religious paintings and R. Crumb’s satirical and scathing cartoons of American life. In these paintings, the artist brings together these numerous and seemingly disparate allusions in a series of tableaux. Greene stages the idea of the backyard barbeque as a mythical vision and reveals a tension between the imaginary and the real, the spiritual and the mundane, propaganda and truth. While his style evokes a sense of realism, his subject matter propels the viewer into another realm, at once strangely familiar and completely alien.

Opposite – Welcome to Our Mess, 2018

Exhibition runs through to September 28th, 2018

Simon Lee Gallery
12 Berkeley Street
W1J 8DT London
UK

www.simonleegallery.com

  

MICHEL FRANCOIS – UNE HETEROTOPIE

Posted on 2018-09-03

François transforms seemingly uncomplicated objects and materials, or traces of past events, into deeply resonant carriers of meaning. His sculptures can be seen as explorations of cause and effect, and the ways in which simple gestures can change the status of an object or have important consequences.
Une Hétérotopie presents new video installations and a series of related sculptural works. The exhibition derives its title from Michel Foucault’s notion of the heterotopia: a space of otherness that is both physical and mental. Such places, which function as counter-sites that simultaneously represent, contest, and invert other real sites within a culture are “capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are inthemselves incompatible.” Various echoes and mirroring ripple throughout the exhibition.

Opposite – Souffle perdu (couple / after party version), 2018

Exhibition runs through to September 15th, 2018

Carlier I Gebauer
Markgrafenstraße 67
D-10969 Berlin
Germany

www.carliergebauer.com

  

JOSÉ MARÍA YTURRALDE – LOGOS Y MITOS

Posted on 2018-08-27

This exhibition about scientific and cultural knowledge in the West that arises from a mythos centred on “the ambition of overcoming opposites, including also a synthesis embracing both rational understanding and the mystical experience of unity”. In the words of the artist: “My intention in these paintings is to unite concepts that come from Western culture with images whose influence is clearly Eastern and to establish relationships, parallels, and corollaries between their meanings. For me, the wisdom, the spirituality, that comes from both cultures is universal as both merge at the deepest level”.

This selection of new paintings speaks eloquently of Yturralde’s creative vitality both through their monumentality and their chromatic sensuality—Fernando Castro Flórez’s terms to describe the work of this painter so crucial to Spanish abstract art. The beauty of light and its variations are central to his reflections about overflowing the limits of painting towards immateriality, and the path of the sublime, the void and the infinite leads us to a creative spirituality which can be associated with the symmetrical resonances of mandalas and the expressive conciseness of haikus.

Opposite – Installation view

Exhibition runs through to September 12th, 2018

Galería Javier López & Fer Francés
Guecho, 12 B
28023 Madrid
Spain

www.javierlopezferfrances.com

  

PIETER VERMEERSCH

Posted on 2018-08-27

Beyond any sense of fading light or imminent sunrise, paintings by Belgian artist Pieter Vermeersch veer away from seeing the world in simple terms. Instead, they abstract its image through materiality, picturing the world as a series of carefully controlled encounters. Their restlessness and curiosity seek out the unexpected and unknown. Towards the end of Eric Rohmer’s film Le Rayon Vert (1986), a restless Delphine (Marie Rivière) and curious Jacques (Vincent Gauthier) wait for a flash of light said to magically appear as the sun drops behind the horizon. This fading light is briefly exchanged for a moment of genuine connection between the two, while daybreak on the other side of the world creates its own sense of resolve, with Ryunosuke Akutagawa describing the Japanese rising sun as a quieting influence over the restless conflict of sleep. To Sol LeWitt these opportunities picture the world anew. “Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach” … leading, as he says, to new experience. This new exhibition at Perrotin Tokyo, the first solo exhibition for Vermeersch in Japan, reinvigorates the artist’s previous work by applying it to new territory. Paintings move beyond the picture frame and photographic image. Which partially explains why his paintings are not really paintings at all.

Opposite – Installation view

Exhibition runs through to September 12th, 2018

Perrotin
Piramide Building, 1F, 6-6-9 Roppongi, Minato-Ku
106-0032 Tokyo
Japan

www.perrotin.com

  

LU SONG – THE ROOM UPSTAIRS

Posted on 2018-08-27

The artist creates evocative acrylic landscape paintings, inspired by 19th century German Romanticism, which focus on the conception and depiction of an idealised place of safety or comfort and the connections and disconnections between humans and nature. For The Room Upstairs the artist has created a new series of canvases that are inspired by the novel 1984 – the dystopian political masterpiece written in 1949 by George Orwell. The author was deeply disturbed by the widespread cruelties and oppressions he observed in communist countries, and was particularly concerned by the role of technology in enabling oppressive governments to monitor and control their citizens.

Opposite – Eight-thirty, 2018

Exhibition runs through to September 22nd, 2018

Massimo De Carlo
55 South Audley Street
W1K 2QH London
England

www.massimodecarlo.com

  

PER KIRKEBY – HOMMAGE À PER KIRKEBY

Posted on 2018-08-20

With the recent passing of Per Kirkeby, we lost the artist and friend who was the direct reason for founding Galleri Bo Bjerggaard back in 1999. Over the next nearly 20 years, Per never ceased being a source of inspiration and a reference point for all the things we work with and for.
His wide ranging interest in culture, and in visual art above all, made him a highly enlightening person to talk with. But he enlightened us not only through the spoken word. His poetry and his many books on existential issues of art-making and other artists’ work make us smarter about life – and about Per Kirkeby. An artist first of all, Per produced the most important body of work by a Danish artist since Asger Jorn.

Per’s work is multi facetted. His ability to express himself in many different media is legendary. While a large part of his vocabulary was conceived back in the 1960s, it continued to evolve all the way up to 2013, when his illness tightened its grip on him. This exhibition showcases selected works in most of the media Per incorporated into his art. For the first time ever, we are using the whole gallery for an exhibition, and still there is not room to accommodate all of Per’s practices, though most will be represented: masonites, large charcoal drawings, blackboards, bronze models, silkscreens, watercolours of Greenland, gouaches, bronze sculptures and, not least, paintings.

Opposite – Untitled, 2009

Exhibition runs through to October 20th, 2018

Galleri Bo Bjerggaard
Flæsketorvet 85 A
DK-1711 Copenhagen
Denmark

www.bjerggaard.com