BEN SLEDSENS – PULLING ROPES AND RINGING BELLS

Posted on 2016-05-02

His practice divides, consciously if not skillfully, into traditional genres such as portraits, interiors and landscapes. Sledsens invites us to consider the thoughts of the people, places and events that populate his vivid scenarios, whether they exist in private or public realms, in personal or shared experiences. His tempting contexts seduce by intertwining multiple narratives in a single work, making the viewing that much more entranced and involved. Sledsens translates his personal subject matter into poetic or romantic images, with an open beginning and ending, meant for interpretation by the spectator. In his work Unexpected Journey one might see a metaphor for the process of painting, measuring the gaps between painting as an individual pursuit and a shared experience, while another viewing conjures an equally dynamic emotion or narrative. All his works hide subtle links to each other, which only amplifies the works’ underlying ambiguous significance while he creates a bigger fictitious world together.

Central to the work is his profound understanding of painterly tradition. His large format canvases exist in a long tradition of painting that reference Henri Matisse, Henri Rousseau, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, yet his works are part of a bigger poetic universe that is all his own.

Opposite – Bye Bye Dog, 2016

Exhibition runs through till June 18th, 2016

Tim Van Laere Gallery
Verlatstraat 23-25
2000 Antwerpen
Belgium

www.timvanlaeregallery.com

  

UGO RONDINONE – SEVEN MAGIC MOUNTAINS

Posted on 2016-05-02

Renowned Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone’s colorful large-scale, public artwork Seven Magic Mountains is a two-year exhibition located in the desert outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, featuring seven thirty to thirty-five-foot high dayglow totems comprised of painted, locally-sourced boulders.

Visible across the desert landscape along Interstate 15, Seven Magic Mountains offers a creative critique of the simulacra of destinations like Las Vegas. According to Rondinone, the location is physically and symbolically mid-way between the natural and the artificial: the natural is expressed by the mountain ranges, desert, and Jean Dry Lake backdrop, and the artificial is expressed by the highway and the constant flow of traffic between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Seven Magic Mountains is produced by the Art Production Fund, New York and Nevada Museum of Art, Reno. Approximately 10 miles south of the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and St. Rose Parkway in Henderson, the installation site is a short distance from Jean Dry Lake where Michael Heizer and Jean Tinquely created legendary land art works in the 1960s. Many of the project’s public programs will take place at ARIA Resort & Casino, and partner locations in Nevada, including the Marjorie Barrick Museum on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The exhibition opens May 11th, 2016 and will be on view for two years.

sevenmagicmountains.com

  

JÉRÉMY DEMESTER

Posted on 2016-05-02

His practice divides, consciously if not skillfully, into traditional genres such as portraits, interiors and landscapes. Sledsens invites us to consider the thoughts of the people, places and events that populate his vivid scenarios, whether they exist in private or public realms, in personal or shared experiences. His tempting contexts seduce by intertwining multiple narratives in a single work, making the viewing that much more entranced and involved. Sledsens translates his personal subject matter into poetic or romantic images, with an open beginning and ending, meant for interpretation by the spectator. In his work Unexpected Journey one might see a metaphor for the process of painting, measuring the gaps between painting as an individual pursuit and a shared experience, while another viewing conjures an equally dynamic emotion or narrative. All his works hide subtle links to each other, which only amplifies the works’ underlying ambiguous significance while he creates a bigger fictitious world together.

Central to the work is his profound understanding of painterly tradition. His large format canvases exist in a long tradition of painting that reference Henri Matisse, Henri Rousseau, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, yet his works are part of a bigger poetic universe that is all his own.

Opposite – Original Zeke, 2015-2016

Exhibition runs through till May 28th, 2016

Galerie Max Hetzler
57, rue du Temple
75004
Paris
France

www.maxhetzler.com

  

LAURA POITRAS – ASTRO NOISE

Posted on 2016-04-25

The title, Astro Noise, refers to the faint background disturbance of thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang and is the name Edward Snowden gave to an encrypted file containing evidence of mass surveillance by the National Security Agency that he shared with Poitras in 2013.

For the exhibition, Poitras is creating an interrelated series of installations in the Whitney’s eighth-floor Hurst Family Galleries. The exhibition expands on her project to document post–9/11 America, engaging visitors in formats outside her non-fiction filmmaking. Instead she will create immersive environments that incorporate documentary footage, architectural interventions, primary documents, and narrative structures to invite visitors to interact with the material in strikingly intimate and direct ways.

Exhibition runs through till May 1st, 2016

Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street
New York
NY 10014

whitney.org

  

MICHAEL NAJJAR – OUTER SPACE

Posted on 2016-04-25

Outer space explores the latest development in space travel and how it is shaping future life on earth and in near-earth orbit. Informed by Najjar’s training to become the first civilian artist to fly to space, the series of large-scale photographs capture an intense and immersive futuristic world, inspired by cutting-edge aeronautic technologies and the nascent space tourism industry. The potential of the photographic image is pushed to new frontiers as realistic elements fuse with fictitious realities to make visible what is invisible or beyond human perception.

Central to outer space is Najjar’s personal experience with space flight and the performative aspect of the exhibited images. As one of the pioneer astronauts of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Najjar has been undergoing an intensive, multistage cosmonaut training in Star City, Russia, since 2012, and is scheduled to board SpaceShipTwo in the near future. The artist uses the actual experience of training (zero-g flight, centrifuge training, stratosphere flight, and underwater space walks, to name a few) to create complex and never-before carried out photos that examine vital connections between humans and technology. Reality and simulation are so intertwined that they become indistinguishable, allowing for novel ways of seeing. Video artworks based on Najjar’s extreme training will be shown as part of the exhibition.

Opposite – Europa, 2016

Exhibition runs through till May 14th, 2016

Bonni Benrubi Gallery
521 West 26th Street
second floor
New York
10001

www.benrubigallery.com

  

JULES DE BALINCOURT – STUMBLING PIONEERS

Posted on 2016-04-25

Stumbling Pioneers, the second solo exhibition at the gallery by Jules de Balincourt, which explores the frontier as a charged concept in contemporary culture. Painted on return to his hometown Los Angeles after a 20-year interval, these works road-trip through the mythic and geographically sprawling metropolis with an eye for man’s uncertain relationship with his environment.

Perched on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, Los Angeles has, since the pioneering age, been the limitless repository of America’s dreams of the frontier, of desires that saturate the sunsets, freeways, canyons and swimming pools that de Balincourt paints. This landscape, a disjunctured synthesis of the human, the architectural, and the organic, seems to temper idealistic energies: rather than striding boldly into the unknown, the figure drifts aimlessly through sunlit pockets of space, leisurely waiting for some ultimate opportunity for freedom. Here, the promise of the frontier – the hope of progress and the better life it inspires – coexists with a muddled reality of blurred boundaries between man and nature in a landscape that seems comprehensively colonised.

Poised between the strange and the familiar, the works that make up Stumbling Pioneers are rooted in the unmistakeable vibrant landscape of California, yet shaped by dreamlike associations that interconnect large-scale canvases and smaller works. Almost-transparent washes of paint build gradients of colour and form on these carefully constructed surfaces, on which the abstract remains visible amidst defined areas of representation.

Opposite – Truck Stop Blues, 2016

Exhibition runs through till May 14th, 2016

Victoria Miro Gallery
16 Wharf Road
N1 7RW
London

www.victoria-miro.com