ANDREA ZITTEL

Posted on 2017-05-29

Furthering her core investigation of structures that shape our reality fields, Andrea Zittel mines simultaneous sites of gallery and landscape to activate a specific, continued exploration of the vertical plane. Coalescing recent manifestations of two distinct, yet interrelated bodies of work—Planar Configurations and Planar Pavilions—this two-part exhibition embodies Zittel’s evolving symbiosis between art object and active living environment, and inaugurates the artist’s newest permanent public installation in Joshua Tree, California.

Organized in linear sequences within the main gallery, Zittel’s three variations of Planar Configurations take on more intimate physical and psychological space. Whereas previous variants emphasized the hierarchy and functionality of active horizontal planes, and the division of larger spaces into specific supportive environments, these sculptures turn our focus inwards, establishing private rooms or containers nested by corners. Together, the repeated forms accumulate in groupings of two, three, and four identical sculptures in parallel succession. Intimating office cubicles, motel rooms, or restaurant booths, they are both autonomous and contingent on one another, creating and completing suggested spaces by the nature of their proximity.

Exhibition runs through to August 12th, 2017

Regen Projects
6750 Santa Monica Boulevard
CA 90038
Los Angeles

www.regenprojects.com

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FRANÇOIS MORELLET – VISUAL MAPS

Posted on 2017-05-29

The gallery’s collaboration with the French artist started with Dadamaino Morellet Uecker, its inaugural exhibition in 1994. Over the years, it has led to many solo exhibitions both in Italy and abroad and now, a year since the death of the great master, this exhibition intends to put the spotlight on his unique and highly personal approach to the creation of art, retracing the last decade of his artistic career.
The last works he made in 2016 can be seen in the first room on the upper floor. These formed part of his “3D concertant” series, in which the main broken black lines along different angles permeate the white space of the canvas and lead the eye towards an optical illusion of the third dimension. The combination of systematic precision and an insatiable curiosity for experimentation, which appears throughout Morellet’s art, is also clear to see in the “Desarcticulation” series (2012). Here the surfaces and painted semicircle come together and overlap on two different canvases placed together, concealing reality with geometry and opening up to multiple visual avenues.
By means of a combination of dissimilar visual solutions, of which the titles are a fundamental component, François Morellet creates a sense of continuous disorientation, which leads to ambivalent visions, as in the case of Lunatique neonly 4 quarts n. 11 (2002). Here the neon tubes, the shapes of which suggest four segments of the same circle, intersect on the canvas, which is also circular, and end up in a wry play of visual cross-references and perceptive illusions

Exhibition runs through to July 12th, 2017

A arte Invernizzi
via D. Scarlatti 12
20124 Milan
Italy

www.aarteinvernizzi.it

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BRENNA YOUNGBLOOD – THE GAME OF LIFE

Posted on 2017-05-22

With her new exhibition, The Game of Life, Brenna Youngblood presents around fifteen previously unseen paintings linked to her daily life and urban surroundings. The artist is able to capture the pulse of the city and her paintings vibrate with the rhythm of the ‘City of Angels’. Her work clearly shows the contrast between the two faces of Los Angeles, the glamorous Hollywood side and the trashy South Downtown, an area which was made famous through films, hip hop culture and gangsta rap.

Brenna Youngblood gathers different elements in her work just like a city gathers populations of various social and cultural origins. From this mix, the artist sources the inspiration and force which characterise her work. She recycles and sticks different materials such as wallpaper, ribbon, cardboard, material or linoleum with fake wood and brick on the painted canvas. This forms an original blend which reminds us of the famous ‘combine paintings’ by Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008, United Kingdom). Another example of the Neo-Dada and Pop Art influence can be seen in Brenna Youngblood’s work when she inserts manufactured elements like printed letters into the compositions. Just like David Hammons (born in 1943 in Springfield, United States), a leading figure of the afro-american art scene, she creates work using puzzles. Brenna Youngblood steers away from figuration and moves towards conceptual art by choosing objects in a precise context.

Opposite – Heaven, 2017

Exhibition runs through to June 10th, 2017

Galerie Nathalie Obadia
8 rue Charles Decoster
1050 Brussels
Belgium

www.nathalieobadia.com

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MAMMA ANDERSSON

Posted on 2017-05-22

This is the first time that Andersson has reimagined her unique visual language through woodcut print. Each depicts an animal, person, place or object delicately and laboriously hand printed onto fine Japanese paper. This is an important step for Andersson who has long created wistful landscapes and domestic scenes. Each print is unique as the texture of the wood, the viscosity of the ink, and the placement of the woodblock cannot be repeated more than once. Andersson rejects the history of print-making and its
aspiration of image reproduction. Instead she embraces the elements of chance involved in hand printing, using the slight slippage and misalignment of the images as part of the work. This creates a series in which the prints are all related, but in each the thick oily pigment tells a different story.
Andersson cultivated the idea for these prints at her summerhouse in Gotland, a wild and small island off the east coast of Sweden. The arrival of an old printing press gave the studio ‘a new heart’. The hares, red deer, black cats and tall trees bending in the breeze provide a window into Andersson’s beginnings as a landscape painter and the countryside of her childhood. Hunting and fishing remain a central part of Swedish culture and these references allude to Andersson’s concern with the slippage of time and
the ever-present desires of humanity.

Opposite – Cave, 2016

Exhibition runs through to May 27th, 2017

Stephen Friedman Gallery
25-28 Old Burlington Street
W1S 3AN
London

www.stephenfriedman.com

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JAY HEIKES – KEEP OUT

Posted on 2017-05-22

For Keep Out, Heikes expands on his “Music for Minor Planets” drawing series, first started in 2013, releasing the delicate, graphite compositions from the two-dimensional confines of paper and wall and transforming them into a large-scale sculpture. The three copper sculptures, each measuring 10 feet in height, 15 feet in length, and 10 feet in width, visually references sheet music and will occupy much of the gallery’s floor space. Its bars, made of bent wire, expand and contract within and beyond their frames, engaging the surrounding space and seemingly reacting to unseen forces. Its musical notes, appearing as wax orbs, are in some instances affixed to the bars and in others have fallen to the floor, scattered. The work at once compels and repels the viewer, contributing to the overarching sense of tension. The sculpture takes inspiration from some of Heikes’ favorite musicians like Terry Riley, and highlights the power of additive intervention to change and alter artistic intention and experience.

Opposite – The Devil Has Left My Building, 2015

Exhibition runs through to June 17th, 2017

Marianne Boesky Gallery
509 West 24th Street
NY 10011

www.marianneboeskygallery.com

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ED RUSCHA – CUSTOM-BUILT INTRIGUE

Posted on 2017-05-15

Throughout decades of formal experimentation, Ruscha has explored the role of language in painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, and bookmaking through a singular, sometimes oblique use of words. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, he honed his distinctive drawing practice to create some of the most compelling works of his career. The text drawings from this period, exquisitely rendered in pastel, dry pigment, and various edible substances, from spinach to carrot juice, bridge the spirited Pop art for which Ruscha first gained renown with the cerebral Conceptualism to which his work was essential.

The exhibition features a decade of drawings (1974–1984) towards the end of which Ruscha reintroduces the element of imagery. With the inclusion of one work on paper from 1986, we can see a clear shift to another stage of his drawing practice.

Drawing has long been considered the most direct process by which thought is transferred into image; but Ruscha almost completely conceptualizes his images prior to making them. Using a reverse-stenciling graphic technique, Ruscha cuts out stencils in the shape of letters and places them on paper. He then applies pigment around the covered area with unconventional tools, such as cotton puffs and Q-Tips, to create his typography utilizing negative space rather than line. Selectively trawling words and phrases from the American vernacular, with little regard to their prescribed meaning or intention, Ruscha subverts the symbolic system of language altogether. Words and phrases severed from specific time, location, or context resonate with just as much vitality and pathos as when the drawings were created.

Opposite – He Enjoys the Co. of Women, 1976

Exhibition runs through to June 30th, 2017

Gagosian
980 Madison Avenue
NY 10075
New York

www.gagosian.com

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