JONATHAN MEESE – DIE NACKTESTE FREIHEIT DER KUNST

Posted on 2018-04-16

For this exhibition the artist, born in Tokyo in 1970, has used for the first time canvases without any primer—quite literally “naked.” “The delicate aspect of his painting,” as his studio puts it, “can thus generate a different impact while at the same time, naturally, encountering something hard as well.” Shades of red, pink, yellow, and orange dominate the new paintings. A surprising gentleness and a sometimes almost “girlish” figuration are characteristic of a great deal of Jonathan Meese’s recent pictorial production. The textual messages so typical of his works, sometimes ironic, sometimes brutal, now appear in a new light. In any case, the artist seems to have discovered his feminine side. For example, we encounter a “FRÄULEIN MESSI” wearing a white dress painted on a black backdrop. In her hand, she holds an attribute with a clearly female connotation, but it remains unclear whether it is a mirror, a cooking spoon, or a huge lollipop.

Opposite – Installation view

Exhibition runs through to May 12th, 2018

Sies + Höke Galerie
Poststrasse 2+3
40213 Düsseldorf
Germany

www.sieshoeke.com

  

GOUTAM GHOSH

Posted on 2018-04-16

Goutam Ghosh lives and works in Santiniketan, India. This is his second solo exhibition with the gallery. Selected recent exhibitions include: “Markers”, David Zwirner Gallery, London (2017); “Modernités Indiennes”, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017); Project 88, Mumbai (2017); “Between the Ticks of the Watch”, The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2016); “Thinking Tantra”, Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, India (2016); “…ASCRIBING TO THEM BIRTH, ANIMATION, SENSE AND ACCIDENT…”, STANDARD (OSLO), Oslo, Norway (2015); “Dal Dizionario”, Galleria Raucci/Santamaria, Naples, Italy (2015).

Opposite – Trick in the tent, 2018

Exhibition runs through to May 5th, 2018

STANDARD (OSLO)
Waldemar Thranes Gt 86 C
N-0175 Oslo
Norway

www.standardoslo.no

  

ANDRE BUTZER

Posted on 2018-04-09

Distanced from subject matter, narrativity and the subjective, Butzer now delves deep into pictorial questions related to colour and light. Despite presenting a body of work dominated by paintings that are entirely black, though not monochrome, with their respective nuances, tonalities and subtle appearances of whitish hues, for Butzer black is part of the road he has embarked on towards the essential. Far from how they might be interpreted, these paintings do not constitute either a beginning or an end. They are vast painted surfaces in search of a spiritual balance which consciously flees from both idea and corporality. The painter himself has stated, with regard to earlier works, a prelude to the ones on display here, that “I did not need ideas, I wasn’t looking at anything specific, but rather the painting emerged on its own”, alluding to a certain faith or intuition that is present in his actions.

Opposite – Installation view

Exhibition runs through to May 26th, 2018

Galería Heinrich Ehrhardt
San Lorenzo, 11
28004 Madrid
Spain

www.heinrichehrhardt.com

  

PAULO NIMER PJOTA – MEDLEY

Posted on 2018-04-09

Continuing his research into the iconographic structures that comprise the collective imagination of art history and inhabit the universe of mass culture, the artist uses metal plates and raw canvas as a support for the constellations of images that surround him, an exercise of appropriation and co-relations.

At a first glance, the set of Western icons that move through popular and erudite culture are part of the artist’s purpose to bring together the maximum amount of references that represent institutional authority. The icons are drawn in a hyper realistic way and bring to mind stickers that have been glued on metal plates that are often found in the streets. The mobility of these stickers reveals the fluid values and interpretations these icons can have whether they are sacred or ordinary. Placing them in a new context results in a rhythmic temporal displacement that include images of Sumerian gods and cartoon characters from the 90s.

In the work Cada cabeça uma sentença, three god’s heads from different periods of antiquity are painted with a specific blue pigment from Chefchaouen, a city in the north of Morocco. Inhabitants of the city, that is known for being covered in the blue paint, believe that the color brings them closer to God, the same God who is responsible for the ‘sentence’ that lends its title to the work.

Opposite – Nem Tudo Que Reluz é Ouro, 2018


Exhibition runs through to May 17th, 2018

Mendes Wood DM
Rua da Consolação 3368, Jardins
SP, 01416 000 São Paulo
Brazil

mendeswood.com

  

GEDI SIBONY – THE KING AND THE CORPSE

Posted on 2018-04-09

For over two decades, Gedi Sibony has excavated the discarded byproducts of commerce and, through subtle interventions and specific installation, transformed the pedestrian into the lyrical. For his fifth show at Greene Naftali, The King and the Corpse, Sibony simultaneously magnifies and contracts this gesture, extracting and restaging a single, large scale structure from the built environment he has long mined for details. With the exhibition’s central maneuver, Sibony proffers a reconsideration of the found object: unbounded by scale, yet still an itinerant entity redefined by its placement in the exhibition space. Consisting of four sculptures, The King and the Corpse heightens the social implications of a hallmark of Sibony’s practice—the residual and derelict mechanisms and vessels of production—availing it not only to art historical legacies, but to social issues of power and capital.

The exhibition is titled for its central sculpture, The King and the Corpse, which consumes the volume of the ground floor space. The King and the Corpse originates as a castoff of the commercial landscape, a dispossessed, prefabricated building.

Opposite – The Spell Blinder, 2018

Exhibition runs through to May 5th, 2018

Greene Naftali
508 West 26th Street
NY 10001
New York

www.greenenaftaligallery.com

  

CLEON PETERSON – SHADOW OF MEN

Posted on 2018-04-02

This winter, MCA Denver will dedicate its second floor to the work of Cleon Peterson. The installations will introduce Peterson’s murals, paintings, and sculptures to a new audience and will transform the museum inside and out.

Cleon Peterson: Shadow of Men gives visual expression to the artist’s own troubled past. Much of the work is borne of Peterson’s wrestling with such personal struggles as his dysfunctional family, a history of addiction, and his multiple experiences in the penal system. Stark black and white figures appear entangled and attenuated, with their bodies caught in moments of rage, violence, and mercy. The contrast of light and shadow, however, suggests a metaphor of two sides within each person: The shadow that perpetuates violence can be seen as an expression of one’s darkest, most repressed behaviors. As difficult as it might be, this visual representation of violence calls out a disturbing though fundamental element of society, something the critic Walter Benjamin noted when he wrote: “Every document of civilization is at the same time a record of barbarism.” The exhibition squarely addresses the nature of violence at a time when this subject seems increasingly uncomfortable, yet urgent.

Opposite – Installation view

Exhibition runs through to May 27th, 2018

The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
1485 Delgany Street
Denver
CO 80202

mcadenver.org