TOBIAS PILS

Posted on 2017-05-15

The exhibition will be comprised of new paintings. Pils complex compositions present a field that is neither entirely legible nor abstract, but rather exists (and evolves) between these seemingly disparate states of representation. The result are compositions that continually agitate and shift between surreal-like, anthropomorphic forms and more hard-edge abstractions, challenging the notion of a stable image or perception.

“His compositions of marks have no representational intent to guide them yet often result in suggestive figuration. He likens a section of one of his recent paintings to the fronds of “palms”, while another, which displays a similar sequence of feather-like branching, contains a section that becomes to his eye an “arrow”. An entirely natural, virtually absent-minded stroke of the brush, a gentle curving motion that seems hard-wired into the functioning of the human hand-leads to such figurative resemblance. The representational associations that appear to Pils arrive after the fact, or perhaps even during the process of painting, but without guiding the outcome. Depending on how the curves cluster or branch, they may suggest feathers, leaves on a stalk, or hair. Or nothing.”

Opposite – Untitled (city), 2016

Exhibition runs through to June 17th, 2017

Galerie Eva Presenhuber
39 Great Jones Street
10012 New York

www.presenhuber.com

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CHARLINE VON HEYL

Posted on 2017-05-15

Charline of Heyl creates paintings that act as self-refreshing visual events, as enigmatic presences that seduce or disturb the viewer without a word. They are often funny, but they have no fear of poetic depth or even pathos. Activate the colors: they move, drain and recharge, depending on the time of day and position of the viewer. Interference colors, whose nature is paradoxical with the light to act, bring the hierarchy of tonality together. Copper, aluminum, dirty pastel colors, coal powder, fluorescent, but also graphic black and white are applied in unstable and broken layers, which creates different moods and emotions.

Drawing is an important element, although the lines and gestures are more likely to be stuck in outline than in their autonomous assertion. By repetition patterns are created, by movement or stabilization, tension or resolution. The narrative elements create their own energies, but they never break the promise. Together, composition, colors and lines slow down the view, stretch or deform the moment of vision, thus transforming time into space and making the picture an object.

Heyl is more concerned with visual effects than with the direct effect of a haptic surface. In doing so, she draws the practicality of acrylic the seductive nature of Impasto painting and oil. Brush strokes are not recognizable, which means that the image is often almost as printed. From a completely smooth surface, the work expands or contracts back into itself. Painted “stickers” destroy illusion with illusion where there is the danger that the painting might fall in love with itself.

Opposite – “Great Train Robbery”, 2017

Exhibition runs through to June 3rd, 2017

Capitain Petzel
Karl-Marx-Allee 45
10178 Berlin
Germany

www.capitainpetzel.de

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RAYMOND PETTIBON – TH’ EXPLOSIYV SHOYRT T

Posted on 2017-05-08

Pettibon’s work embraces a wide spectrum of American high and low culture, from the deviations of marginal youth to art history, sports, religion, politics, sexuality, and literature. Taking their point of departure in the Southern California punk-rock scene of the late 1970s and 1980s and the do-it-yourself aesthetic of album covers, comics, concert flyers, and fanzines that characterized the movement, his drawings have come to occupy their own genre of potent and dynamic artistic commentary.

Opposite – No Title (In a wrestless…), 2017

Exhibition runs through to June 24th, 2017

David Zwirner
519 West 19th Street
NY 10011
New York

www.davidzwirner.com

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ELIAS SIME – TWISTED & HIDDEN

Posted on 2017-05-08

Elias Sime’s work is a meditation on connectivity and transformation. His unorthodox materials include reclaimed cell phone bodies, Soviet-era transistors, computer motherboards, brightly colored electrical wires, sections of plastic keyboards with other e-waste that has been discarded and sent to trash heaps across the African continent. This technological flotsam eventually washes up in the open-air markets of Addis Ababa, where Sime repurposes it into artworks. The works on view are part of an ongoing series entitled “Tightrope,” which refers to the contemporary balancing act between technology and tradition, humanity and the environment.
Sime achieves effects from dense narrative to austere modernist abstraction. Some works recall pure color-field painting while others refer to architectonic geometries, textile patterns and information flows. Figurative moments emerge in some – a human face, a bird wing, a frog leaping from a tree branch. The artist resists the collagist’s shorthand of using discarded objects as poetic stand-ins for individual lives and instead finds renewal everywhere, taking the greatest interest in new ways that objects and ideas connect. The emphasis is on the transformative power of human creativity.

Opposite – Tightrope: Narcissism, 2017

Exhibition runs through to June 17th, 2017

James Cohan Gallery
291 Grand Street
NY 10002
New York

www.jamescohan.com

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GÜNTHER FÖRG

Posted on 2017-05-08

The centre of the exhibition is formed by a six-part series of paintings by Günther Förg from 2003. The canvases show vertical stripes and structures in various hues of grey, repeatedly interrupted by light traces as well as red and pink dashes. Every brushstroke is visible and changes from dense, opaque colour fields to nearly transparent areas. Although the brushwork appears expressive and the paint is seemingly applied intuitively, it immediately becomes apparent that the paintings underlie a precise composition and elaborated balance. The six paintings appear like repetitions, offering variations of the same structure on each canvas and are, as if in rhythmic motion, constantly developing.

Alongside this series the exhibition presents a selection of small-sized paintings on wood and canvas from the same time. The classic form of the grid appears repeatedly. It structures the surface and units geometric strictness with Förg’s expressive, seemingly spontaneous application of paint. Although abstract, the works evoke associations of landscapes and constantly shift their focus between foreground and background. Some of the works of this selection remind of Förg’s earlier series of the so-called “Fenster-Aquarelle” (window watercolours) that can be found in the artist’s oeuvre already in the mid 80s. They suggest a glimpse out of the window which never truly allows a direct view. Black dominates the image structure in most of these works and the overlapping areas dissolve into impalpable, vague planes. Occasionally, only a few coloured spots light up and recall lights in dark street scenes. Especially a small painting on wood captures this approach in a particular way. Between two broad, dark areas a light, yellowish part shines through in which one seems to recognize a nocturnal scenery and a hazy figure in front.

Opposite – Untitled, 2003

Exhibition runs through to June 3rd, 2017

Galerie Max Hetzler
Bleibtreustraße 45
D-10623 Berlin
Germany

www.maxhetzler.com

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MARTHA JUNGWIRTH, ALBERT OEHLEN

Posted on 2017-05-01

This exhibition is a project between Martha Jungwirth and Albert Oehlen. As I know Albert now quite for a long time, I asked him if he wants to do an exhibition with Martha Jungwirth. Aware that he honours Martha’s work a lot. Albert Oehlen was choosing the works of Martha what you see in the exhibition.

Opposite – Martha Jungwirth, Ohne Titel, 2014

Exhibition runs through to May 13th, 2017

Galerie Mezzanin
63, rue des Maraîchers
CH-1205 Geneva
Switzerland

galeriemezzanin.com

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