CHARLES LONG – HUSBANDS SONS FATHERS BROTHERS

Posted on 2018-07-23

The four works which make up the exhibition were born within the circumference of the artist’s major installation, paradigm lost currently on view in the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA. If paradigm lost offers a place to contemplate a new paradigm amidst the aftermath of an imagined patriarchal apocalypse, husbands fathers
brothers sons presents the prologue—the paradigms of identities we still must contend with before they can be properly abolished and transcended. What these two distinct bodies of work do share is a relentless common denominator: a sole motif divined by Long from an anatomical cross-section of human male genital anatomy,
which also resembles a kind of ancient mask.
Each of Long’s four new works are presented in their own gallery and assigned one name from the four identities within husbands sons fathers brothers. Long explains that “the spark that lit the fuse came when I questioned not only the patriarchal order but also the need for any identity or relationship paradigms in my life and the world I relate to. I felt more comfortable with myself with every limiting label I dispensed with. While it was one thing to become aware of and question the unexamined hereto-normative, monogamous or other hegemonic ideologies I have previously acquiesced to, when it came to my biology I was up against the mystery of my physical and chemical self. I explored this physical specificity in drawings of the cross-section of the penis, which then revealed to me a face or mask that looked back at me with its own questions. Suddenly the new work spilled out from this tear in the fabric of my being with myriad images and forms of this open body.”

Opposite – fathers, 2018

Exhibition runs through to August 18th, 2018

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
1010 North Highland Avenue
CA 90038 Los Angeles
USA

www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

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CAITLIN LONEGAN – POINTS OF VIEW

Posted on 2018-07-23

Lonegan’s compositions are based on sketches and drawings, the markings and traces of which are translated into large-scale pictures. These marks refer to the history of (abstract) painting and also reflect her personal reaction to the site.
“Caitlin Lonegan’s paintings exhibit a specific kind of gestural abstraction that eschews the grand, one-off gestures of mid-twentieth-century abstract expressionism. In a way, there’s nothing heroic about her process: each painting emerges as an accrual of marks built up slowly over time. She works on multiple canvases concurrently; some take more than a year to complete. Over these periods, the paintings migrate around her studio, from the floor to the wall and back again. Equipped with a basic arsenal of paint, linseed oil, and spirits, she relies on a heap of borrowed tricks, such as frottage, resist, or embossing to build up the surfaces. While her techniques allow for occasional chance effects, each mark is a calculated gesture, appropriated from smaller studies and then copied and refined on larger canvases.

Opposite – Untitled (Part of P.O.V., 2015-2018), 2018

Exhibition runs through to September 1st, 2018

Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder
Grünangergasse 1
1010 Vienna
Austria

www.schwarzwaelder.at

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VINCENT FECTEAU

Posted on 2018-07-16

Five sculptures made from painted papier-mâché in a process developed by the artist over the last two decades are included in the exhibition. As Fecteau has described it, “There are forms or curves that I can only imagine making out of papier-mâché. It’s amazingly flexible and endlessly additive and reductive.” Arranged on pedestals, the sculptures include some of the artist’s largest works to date, yet they retain the uncertain sense of scale that is a central component of his art: “I long for the form that exists free of so-called understanding and that operates in a purely abstract, maybe unconscious way. Yet this utopian desire hinges on an idea of abstraction that not only might be impossible but, in the end,
might even be undesirable.”

The collages are installed on the wall. They combine images (clippings from architecture magazines, photographs by the artist) with materials such as cardboard and found pieces of wood or rope to create shallow reliefs. The effect is often an ambiguous sense of depth and an oscillation between abstract and domestic space. Like his sculptures, they admire the notion of the impossible: “I’ve often fantasized about making a form that would be so incomprehensible that it couldn’t be seen.”

Opposite – Untitled, 2014

Exhibition runs through to September 29th, 2018

Matthew Marks Gallery
1062 North Orange Grove
90046 Los Angeles
USA

www.matthewmarks.com

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TOBIAS PILS – ANTIPAROS

Posted on 2018-07-16

Tobias Pils’ paintings and graphic works are almost not interpretable. His process of painting is formed by a planning that negates itself throughout the process of being carried out. As a result, representation flips into abstraction, figurativeness turns into composition. Pils’ work creates an uncanniness of interpretation and challenges the notion of subjectivity in painting: His way of painting follows intuition and is created in the context of the everyday of the painter. Yet, he never fulfills his plan but rather turns in different directions while painting. In doing so, he produces manifold forms within one painting. Nevertheless, his practice is always accompanied by technical precision and pictoral thought. In doing so, Pils creates a work whose attraction lies in the ambivalence of interpretative uncanniness, discontinuity, and technical brilliance.

Opposite – Antiparos 5, 2018

Exhibition runs through to August 26th, 2018

Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Kastro
840 07
Antiparos
Greece

www.presenhuber.com

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CHEN ZHOU – BLUE HOLE

Posted on 2018-07-16

Projected in four-channel HD digital, it features a female protagonist lost inside a blue cave, her mobile phone providing the only connection to the outside world. Two other young girls search for a friend lost in a forest, while they discuss the loneliness they experience in the virtual world. Their search stirs up childhood memories, taking them back to an earlier time when, although their paths had crossed, they had been unable to recognise each other’s faces.
Blue Hole describes a world where we are all connected and disconnected at the same time, exposing how the small space between the real and the virtual world remains the only place where alienation can be kept at bay. The ubiquitous social media network is mistakenly seen as a haven within our reach, our phones a ‘hole’ that beckon with the faint glow of a blue light. Chen suggests that beneath our modern exterior we are all simply restless, isolated souls attempting to express our feelings and signaling for help via electronic gadgets. Blue Hole draws inspiration from social media platforms, in particular a public WeChat account that the artist came across which records the dreams and thoughts of a Millennial teenage girl.

Opposite – Installation view

Exhibition runs through to August 25th, 2018

Matthew Marks Gallery
1062 North Orange Grove
90046 Los Angeles
USA

www.whitecube.com

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EMERSON WOELFFER – FORTY YEARS

Posted on 2018-07-09

A prominent figure linking Abstract Expressionism to Los Angeles, Woelffer was a highly influential artist, educator, and mentor to a generation of Los Angeles artists including Ed Ruscha, Mary Corse, Joe Goode, Larry Bell, Llyn Foulkes, and Allan Ruppersberg. Woelffer stands out as one of the most historically significant artists in Los Angeles by bringing an international discourse to what was a growing art community.
Emerson Woelffer (1914 – 2003) was born in Chicago to a middle class family. After studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago he joined the WPA Arts Program in 1938 followed by a job in the U.S. Army Air Corps topographical survey program. In 1942 Woelffer was hired by Lászlo Moholy-Nagy to teach painting, photography, design, and sculpture at the recently founded New Bauhaus in Chicago. During this time Woelffer developed his interest in Surrealist automatism through drawing and playing the drums in jazz groups, two activities that sustained Woelffer’s painting practice the rest of his life.

Opposite – Untitled, 1977

Exhibition runs through to September 1st, 2018

Ibid
670 S Anderson Street
(entrance on Sunrise St)
CA 90023
Los Angeles

ibidgallery.com

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