PETE HAWKINS – I SEE YOU SEE

Posted on 2015-03-09

As the title suggests, the solo presentation explores individual perception and engagement with the world that surrounds us, occupying a realm between reality and imagination. Hawkins’ highly intuitive series investigates the qualities and possibilities of childhood dreams and our subsequent desire to return to the security of days gone by. The painter seeks to illustrate the underlying tension between innocence and experience, naivety and knowledge, extending his wider narrative practice and contemporary social commentary.

Storytelling has always been intrinsic to Hawkins’ research process, transforming the mundane into the fantastical, fuelled by an avid curiosity of the past and sub-conscious notions relating to modern life. There’s a distinct contrast between Hawkin’s sensitive oil painting style and the rough hewn surfaces scarred by the course of history, with contrasting worlds and emotions operating in eerie harmony. While his art dwells in the imagination of our past the emerging artist leads us through a journey of humanistic issues with an effect of shifting meanings and experiences.

Exhibition runs from March 13th to April 9th, 2015

Lazarides Rathbone
11 Rathbone Place
London
W1T 1HR

www.lazinc.com

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HREINN FRIDFINNSSON – ECHOES AND REFLECTIONS

Posted on 2015-03-02

Friðfinnsson is considered by many the father of Icelandic conceptual art. As a reaction to the Abstract Expressionism of the 1960’s Friðfinnsson returned to the extraordinary qualities of the Icelandic topography and atmosphere that had traditionally been represented in landscape painting. His focus was on the most ephemeral and fleeting qualities of the world around him: light, reflection, wind, water, the passing of time. He also embraced other subjects of transient nature; for years he has collected the secrets of strangers, re-enacted unlikely myths, made artworks of borrowed materials (a sculpture of his neighbor’s door, photographs of his cousin’s horses), appropriated the wares of industrious spiders, saved and pressed Autumn leaves picked up in the early 1980’s. Friðfinnsson’s response to these inscrutable subjects developed into works characterized by a lyrical, stark poetry, an exquisite lightness of hand and an often self-diminishing humor.

In the exhibition Friðfinnssonn returns to his mythical House Project – a project based on the story of an old eccentric Icelander who intended to built a house inside out. In 1974 Friðfinnsson built the house based on the story in a remote area of the Icelandic volcanic tundra. Inversed, the wallpaper, curtains and framed pictures hanging on the outside, the house thereby contained the whole world, except itself. Since 1974 Friðfinnsson has returned to the work and developed new chapters in the life of the house thereby maintaining the mythology around it and adding new layers.

Opposite – Illustration, 2015

Exhibition runs through to April 2nd, 2015

Galerie Nordenhake Stockholm
Hudiksvallsgatan 8
SE-113 30 Stockholm
Sweden

www.nordenhake.com

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PASCALE MARTHINE TAYOU – BOOMERANG

Posted on 2015-03-02

The first solo show in London by Cameroon-born, Belgium-based artist Pascale Marthine Tayou. The exhibition will include new work made specifically for the Serpentine and introduces audiences to a range of works that serve as powerful expressions of individual and national identity in an age of inescapable global consumption.

The exhibition will see the Serpentine Sackler Gallery populated by a diverse mix of sculptural forms that demonstrate Tayou’s unique visual language based on archetypes, made and found objects and traditional craft. Mysterious human forms and fantastical beasts – such as the 100 metre snake of Africonda – incorporate materials such as cloth, wood, plastic, glass, organic matter and consumer waste combined with an artisanal skill. Tayou, who began studying law before deciding instead to become an artist, began exhibiting in the early 1990s – a time of political and social upheaval across West Africa. With works often produced in situ, Tayou is renowned for combining found and discarded objects and materials, often sourced locally with a skilled and playful sense of craftsmanship.

Opposite – Octopus, 2010

Exhibition runs from March 4th to May 17th, 2015

Serpentine Sackler Gallery
West Carriage Drive
Kensington Gardens
London
W2 2AR

www.serpentinegalleries.org

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PALERMO – WORKS 1973-1976

Posted on 2015-03-02

Although often associated with particular twentieth century art historical practices and discourses—including abstraction, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art—Palermo’s diverse body of work defies easy classification. Throughout his brief and influential career, Palermo executed paintings, “objects,” installations, wall drawings, and works on paper that addressed the contextual and semantic issues at stake in the construction, exhibition, and reception of works of art. His handling of form, color, and composition comprises a complex and experimental investigation of aesthetic concepts and of the semiotic possibilities of visual language.

The exhibition will include significant examples of the artist’s objects, a self-coined category of work comprised of three-dimensional forms that hang or lean on a wall and seem to simultaneously occupy the realms of both painting and sculpture. Among these works is Objekt mit Wasserwage (Object with Spirit Level), 1969-1973, a shaped canvas that incorporates a leveling tool, thereby physically referring to the construction and installation of the artist’s work, while also pointing to the surrounding architectural and exhibition context.

Opposite – Osten-Westen III (East-West III), 1976

Exhibition runs through to April 11th, 2015

David Zwirner
519 & 525 West 19th Street
New York
NY 10011

www.davidzwirner.com

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KENNY SCHARF – BORN AGAIN

Posted on 2015-02-23

This wide-ranging show traces the evolution of Scharf’s diverse artistic practice, presenting a selection of rarely shown early videos and collages. Also featured will be a salon-style installation of paintings from the artist’s new Born Again series, in addition to never before exhibited wall-based assemblages. A fully illustrated catalog will accompany the exhibition.

Though Scharf is best known for his exuberant iconography, his work also contains underlying themes that reflect his ongoing commitment to social and environmental concerns. For Scharf, the embrace of fun is an act of defiance, his considered use of unconventional materials, bright color palette, and playful shapes a protest against restrictive cultural conditions. In his latest body of work, the Born Again paintings, Scharf encapsulates this notion of transforming the mundane by inserting his familiar characters and motifs into found amateur paintings. Akin to his earlier customizations of mass-produced objects like phones, washers, and televisions, here it is the discarded artwork that is repurposed. While still humorously absurdist in tone, some of the works such as FUKISHIMA LANDING and TAR BEACH, with their lurking monsters and dark blobs interrupting peaceful seascapes and nature scenes, also reference the artist’s longstanding themes of anxiety in the nuclear age and the effects of pollution. Also included in this exhibition are the Space Vomit assemblages, where surfaces are embedded with defunct objects, fragments of toys, ads, and other miscellanea collected over the years. Frozen in various states of visual erosion, the surfaces both find inspiration from, and are commentary on the detritus of contemporary American culture.

Opposite – Self-Portrait with Cadillac, 1979

Exhibition runs from February 28th to April 4th, 2015

Honor Fraser Gallery
2622 South La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles
CA 90034

www.honorfraser.com

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SARAH MORRIS – GALERIA DO ROCK

Posted on 2015-02-23

Morris’ work examines the culture and ideology of late capitalism as it effects architecture, urban planning and social bureaucracy, engaging with what writer Bettina Funcke has identified as ‘the hyper-intensity of our time’.* She describes Morris’ paintings and filmmaking, parallel activities within her practice, as a way of investigating, tracing and playing with ‘urban, social and bureaucratic typologies’.

In Morris’ new series of paintings she focuses on the city of São Paulo, drawing her inspiration from a wide range of sources such as the city’s urban typology, its modernist buildings, iconic landmarks and unique geographical landscape.

In these abstract paintings, which are all household gloss on canvas, Morris employs doubling, symmetry and compression to build tension within her compositions, using an evocative palette of violet, orange, canary yellow, azure blue and black in forms that repeat, splinter and fall apart. Like her films, the paintings emerge from an amalgamation of diverse influences and have a sense of energy and restless movement, remaining unfixed entities that rely on notions of language, fluidity and play. Circular shapes seem to proliferate, as if open-ended reflections on urban density either contained within horizontal bands of colour or fragmented and bisected, recalling the patterning of lunar charts. In some works, such as Fura-Fila [São Paulo] (2014), Morris refers to specific aspects of the city – in this case, the experimental and controversial monorail, that for many years remained an unfinished, skeletal presence within the city.

Opposite – Total Solar Eclipse [São Paulo], 2014

Exhibition runs through to March 28th, 2015

White Cube São Paulo
Rua Agostinho Rodrigues Filho 550
Vila Mariana
São Paulo

whitecube.com

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