KIRSTEN EVERBERG

Posted on 2015-11-30

Everbergʼs latest body of work takes the working and living space of film director and writer Ingmar Bergman on the remote island of Fårö, Sweden, as a point of departure to explore the ways in which creative spaces are constructed and operate as sites of production. The new paintings presented continue Everbergʼs interest in the history and practice of filmmaking, thereby exploring the interplay between memory, fragmentation, photography, cinema and the subjective nature of perception.

Exhibition runs through to January 9th, 2016

Galeria Leme
Av. Valdemar Ferreira 130
05501-000
Sao Paulo
Brazil

www.1301pe.com

  

ZILVINAS KEMPINAS

Posted on 2015-11-30

Verticals is an installation of unspooled VHS tape, constituting the entire gallery space, evenly dividing and filling it symmetrically. It is a controlled environment, defined by uniformity and monotonous order. Despite its geometry, Verticals sustains a kinetic character and occasionally is animated by natural air circulation in the gallery or by vortexes of air caused by passing visitors. Once the air calms down, the piece comes back to its original stance.

The strips of magnetic tape are suspended above the gallery floor at the same distance; they do not extend all the way to the ceiling, but “stop” at the same height evenly. Their ultra thin edges are facing the same direction. Vertical black pieces of magnetic tape represent elements of time. Barely there, they occasionally disappear out of sight completely, depending on a viewer’s position in the gallery’s space.

In the middle of the floor there is a black shallow box-like object with its surface exposed to the viewers. There are thousands of small steel bearings laid down in oil on its surface. At first they are perceived as one solid formation, but from closer inspection, one may notice an occasional movement here and there – the bearings are slowly moving, one by one, rearranging and re-positioning themselves into an infinite “drawing in progress”.

It is a kinetic sculpture, capable of regenerating itself every time, creating new shapes out of solid metal. The final result (form) is not an objective here, but instead the very process of “becoming”, the act of change and the beauty of chance are at the core of the piece.

Opposite – Bearings, 2015

Exhibition runs through to January 9th, 2016

Galeria Leme
Av. Valdemar Ferreira 130
05501-000
Sao Paulo
Brazil

galerialeme.com

  

KIM YE – SPORTSWOMAN

Posted on 2015-11-23

Ye’s oeuvre can be seen as reflections and manifestations of how the mind and, integral to this, the body responds to preordained constructs such as behavioral norms, human-made environments, and collective rituals. Acting within and pressing against the pressure towards orthodoxy, Ye’s work describes the latent psychic forces that provoke an individual’s desires to experience the strange, the new, and the unexplored.

For the current project, Ye directs her attention to ideas and objects specifically related to sports and athletic training–locating their analogs in artistic practice and BDSM culture. All rule-based disciplines, they constitute a significant role in the artist’s personal history as competitive athlete, visual artist, and professional dominatrix. In each of these fields, there is the expectation that participants acknowledge and operate by an agreed-upon code, though it is often in transcending or bending this very code that one emerges victorious.

Themes of discipline, mastery, endurance, and power exchange run through the show. Taking into account the gendered experience of the athlete/artist/dominatrix, Ye examines how these delineations within the quest for personal glory informs one’s concept of self and reverberates through interpersonal dynamics. The work questions whether this ritualistic practice/training is in preparation for competition, or if the very notion of competition itself is a collective fiction that facilitates practice.

Opposite – Athleisure, 2015

Exhibition runs through to January 17th, 2016

JAUS
11851 La Grange Ave
Los Angeles
CA 90025

www.jausart.com

  

COREY BARTLE-SANDERSON – HOMEWARE_UPDATE

Posted on 2015-11-23

Artist’s Statement:

The inexpensive but highly valued material foundations of my photographs, (aka Beer Feet et al) will no doubt persuade you to invest your emojis in expanding my rapidly dwindling life resources. That’s not corporate thinking, its corporeal. C-type stands for affect enhancing qualities, AKA Feel more and think more purposively as a direct consequence. Discourses which privilege the object over the image miss the fundamental point that the image is no less an object than the object would have been if I hadn’t thrown it away. Although both trashcans are full, I have decided that despite the marginal and at times imperceptible difference in quality that distinguishes them, some of my objects should not in fact be drag and dropped, but rather elevated to a fetish-not-withstanding commodity form. Used here, the phrase ‘commodity form’ refers to the kind of experience from which we are all as yet unable to detach ourselves but through which various anomalies arise and come to appear as systemically disruptive and potentially meaningful. Whilst ‘the artist’ acknowledges that such potentially transformative anomalies will and probably already have been both captured and put to work within the ‘money-making-machine’, he nevertheless upholds the view that the MMM, (sometimes referred to as the Subject) is not, and cannot be, fully cognizant of its modus operandi and that as a consequence, certain residues of his materials, thoughts, actions and affects survive the apparatus which would otherwise employ them for its own ends. Ultimately the artist hopes that his work, or at least elements of it, will thus contribute to the feelings of wellbeing that most of us feel from time to time and which, if directed in a mindful and egalitarian way, help to enhance our capacity to form genuine not-for-profit relationships with material, image-based and living human objects.

Opposite – HOMEWARE_update, 2015

Exhibition runs through to January 23rd, 2016

Block 336
336 Brixton Road
London
SW9 7AA

www.block336.com

  

SZYMON KOBYLARZ – FIBONACCI CHAOS

Posted on 2015-11-23

In his latest exhibition, Fibonacci Chaos, Kobylarz focuses on mathematics, and in particular the way the Fibonacci Sequence, the “φ” (phi) numeral, fractal geometry, and the golden ratio appear in natural constructions: from the DNA code, through human proportions, the height of plants, the shape of a snowflake, hurricanes, and the shape of galaxies. This phenomenon is commonly known (theories about this are particularly popular on Youtube), yet to this day it has no known explanation.

In his works from the Fibonacci Chaos series, Kobylarz transfers precise numbers onto simplified forms that imitate nature. He builds models of bushes and trees out of wood, while the length, thickness, and angle of their branches is calculated and determined by a formula. This is how the “perfect tree” models are made. Nonetheless, despite very precise premises, the final effect is beyond control: “I believe that with these works I am showing the inconstancy of the human hand as compared to the precision of numbers, mathematics, and computers, which deal much more quickly and precisely with such simple figures. The mistakes I make while sculpting these works, however, are much the same as what the wind is for the trees,” says Kobylarz. The calculated aesthetic component is an essential part of the project. All the works are based on the Fibonacci Sequence, and as such, are directly linked with the number “φ” (phi), also known as the golden ratio, which is deeply rooted in our culture. When we use it we inevitably find harmony and eye-pleasing proportions.

Opposite – Untitled (Branch)

Exhibition runs through to January 9th, 2016

ZAK | BRANICKA
Lindenstr. 35
D – 10969 Berlin
Germany

www.zak-branicka.com

  

A SEASON IN HELL

Posted on 2015-11-16

Our imagination is not powered out of a void. It is driven by inputs and sources that surround us: vivid memories and experiences, fears and desires, films we’ve seen, books we’ve read, and stories we’ve been told. A Season in Hell brings together eight artists that have made a creative leap to reconfigure the logic of reality in their work. They twist, distort and amplify sources and subjects alike. They play with the conventions of dreams and hallucinations, as a fluid and elusive state that in its absurdity is sometimes closer to the truth.

The exhibition assembles a collection of old and recent work made out of canvas, celluloid, wood, paper, linen and plastic. Some artists have taken their queues from the explosion of mass media and online images to explore the gulf between what we see and what we comprehend. Basim Magdy’s work resembles a dramatic still from a fantasy animation, heavy with allusions to a shadowy industrial civilization. Ahmad Sabry explores the tension between image and text and the loss of meaning in a series of needlepoint on linen works. With a hyper-saturated palette, Hany Rashed presents psychological scenes from the streets of Cairo, while Marwa El Shazly mines her archive of personal nightmares. Conversely, Ranya Fouad’s dreamy works play on tranquility, stillness and subtle change.

Another group of work branches out of a figurative tradition. Doa Aly explores the fine line between resistance and flow through a series of pencil on paper drawings that make use of bone illustrations from Gray’s Anatomy. Amr Kafrawy’s triptych contrasts spectral figures against a shaky cityscape and Nada Baraka’s paintings are tumultuous and explosive, sinuously moving from organic to industrial, from deliberate to spontaneous.

The show pays homage to the spirit of Arthur Rimbaud and borrows its title from his influential poem A Season in Hell published in 1873.

Opposite – Nada Baraka, Untitled, 2015

Exhibition runs through to January 20th, 2016

Gypsum Gallery
5 Ibrahim Naguib Street, Apt 2
Garden City
Cairo
Egypt

gypsumgallery.com