MARIANA MAURICIO

Posted on 2014-12-01

“During the process I’m always reading, trying to make theoretical connections, and seeking similarities. I made these works thinking about domestic space, guilt and the weights that we carry. However, I only realised that after the work was done. First the work materializes, then I find meanings.

About a year ago, in addition to photographs, I started collecting things Iencountered in my daily life, mainly found along the paths I walk. Sometimes I walk seven, eight hours, whole days, seeking something indeterminate – until I find it. It has no predetermined order and no tangible rule.

My studio today looks like a hoarder’s house – and it is!

The process of finding things and photos, in that space, is a second step after collecting things in the street (The third step would be to start making combinations / assemblages). My workspace consists of 5 tables. The objects and photos go from one to the other as the combinations are being formed, in a process of simplification. There is the table of the excluded, the table of the chosen, the table of those who are already “grouped”. There is even a table for the tests that went wrong and could potentially turn into something else.

Opposite – Doméstico, 2014

Exhibition runs through to December 6th, 2014

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

galerialeme.com

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MAYA BLOCH – FEELS LIKE HOME

Posted on 2014-12-01

Bloch continues her study of the interplay between abstraction and the figure, and for the first time, showing a new body of work of pencil drawings on canvas.

The large paintings on view include three abstracted figurations and one still life. Expending on her familiar painterly processes, Bloch’s new figure-works incorporate thick brushstrokes, washes, and at times collage elements. Compared with her earlier work, the palette of the new paintings is somewhat reduced and the compositions are simplified.

In the painting “Untitled (The Viewers),” a group of seven anonymous characters is playfully arranged on the canvas. Some of them direct an intense gaze outward, others appear as silhouettes or shadows of themselves. One can only guess if the painting’s title refers to the figures depicted on the canvas or to the gallery visitors viewing it.

Bloch’s estranged characters also make an appearance in her new set of pencil works. The ten pieces included are smaller in scale, drawn in black and white with touches of color, and just as surreal. In “Shirt Man” a crowd of people surrounds a headless figure in a dark space. “Elephant” depicts a figure with an elephant head, and “Painter,” perhaps a self-portrait of sorts, portrays an artist on the backdrop of a dream-like swirl.

Opposite – Untitled (The Viewers), 2013

Exhibition runs through to December 21st, 2014

Thierry Goldberg Gallery
103 Norfolk Street
New York
NY 10002

www.thierrygoldberg.com

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PER DYBVIG

Posted on 2014-11-24

Per Dybvig is a traveller of the imagination, exploring white areas on the map and on the white drawing paper where no one has laid their hand before: unconventional arrangement of pictorial space, distortion of perspective and scale, strange details that defy the limits of realism, and almost virtuoso drawing techniques. Dybvig seduces us with precise craftsmanship to enter a world of imagery both beautiful and sinister, like scenes in an absurd play, or like fables where Aesop has lost his train of thought and forgotten the point of the story long ago.

The inspiration for the animations and the drawings that show variations on the hare theme comes from a woodblock print dating back to 1535: The Hunter Caught by the Hares, by Georg Pencz, where the hunter has been hanged from a tree and the hares are preparing for a feast. Dybvig distorts the stylised image of the Renaissance into vivid, rough drawings in his films and into delicate, sophisticated pen drawings. The bizarre, the twisted, and the carnivalesque are established as natural phenomena beyond this world, as André Breton points out in the catalogue for a 1921 Max Ernst exhibition: “Who knows if we are not in this manner being prepared for escaping the principle of identity?”

Opposite – Untitled, 2014

Exhibition runs through to December 23rd, 2015

Christine König Galerie
Schleifmuehlgasse 1A
1040 Vienna
Austria

www.christinekoeniggalerie.com

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JAKOB KOLDING – MASQUERADES

Posted on 2014-11-24

Taking masquerades as a starting point, the works playfully combine a wide range of influences. From renaissance sculptures to surrealism, psychoanalysis and dream interpretation to modernist theatre, dioramas and classic literature to hip hop culture and pop music, post-structuralist identity theory and back again to pre-modern myths and fables. In the process, a world of constantly shifting, changing and overlapping positions is constructed.

Often using only a few elements–in some works just one or two–a wide range of possible meanings are opened up. What at first hand might look like a symbol with a certain significance gradually turns to suggest multiple readings, oscillating between different positions and seeming contradictions, creating an ambivalent state of radical openness that is, at the same time, liberating as well as frightening–a state of existential drama that is loaded with a dream-like ambiguity.

Central to the exhibition is a large installation composed of individual sculptures of life-sized figures made from prints on wood cutouts. A landscape of people, trees and animals create a scenography that lies somewhere in between theatre scene design, 19th century dioramas and amusement parks. As the spectator walks among the figures, the basic stage prop construction becomes obvious. It’s a scene that can be entered, but which at the same time shows its own one-sidedness. It invites the spectator to become a part of it, while simultaneously introducing considerations on its very construction, making evident the slippery slope between the real and the imaginary. Or indeed, between the “real” and the performed.

Opposite – The Raven, 2014

Exhibition runs through to January 10th, 2015

Galerie Martin Janda
Eschenbachgasse 11
A-1010 Vienna
Austria

www.martinjanda.at

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JONATHAN MONK – I ♥ 1984

Posted on 2014-11-24

Jonathan Monk revisits narratives drawn from his own biography and transforms historical works by artists that have also proved to be personal, formative influences. A new wall-hung assemblage of stitched-together souvenir tea towels, entitled My Life Within the Lives of Others II (2014), marks every year and indeed every day since his birth so far, with 46 anachronistic cloth calendars showing different species of Australian birds, Swiss chalet exteriors and other kitsch scenes. Fragments of his parents’ 1970s curtain material are rendered in photographic works that return them to framed, window-like settings, despite the fabrics clearly being discarded as drop cloths for subsequent domestic re-decoration.

Among the moving portraits of Monk’s family is a slideshow that magnifies one image of them 80 times over, through which the artist is reflected in his child’s gaze – as titled, Monk is literally Searching for My Father in My Sister’s Eyes (2002) – while a series of childhood or holiday snaps, Same Time In A Different Place, are each juxtaposed with a vintage invitation card, for shows by the likes of Dan Graham, Sol LeWitt or On Kawara, sourced from the same date.

Opposite – Senza Titolo V, 2012

Exhibition runs through to January 17th, 2015

Lisson Gallery
27 Bell Street
NW1 5DA
London

www.lissongallery.com

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CHRIS OFILI – NIGHT AND DAY

Posted on 2014-11-17

“Chris Ofili: Night and Day” spans the artist’s influential career, encompassing his paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Over the past two decades, Ofili’s practice has become identified with vibrant and meticulously executed artworks that meld figuration, abstraction, and decoration. The artist’s diverse oeuvre has taken imagery and inspiration from such disparate, history-spanning sources as the Bible, hip-hop music, Zimbabwean cave paintings, Blaxploitation films, and the works of William Blake. As the title of the exhibition suggests, Ofili’s practice has undergone constant changes, moving from boldly expressive to deeply introspective across an experimental and prodigious body of work. The exhibition features over thirty of Ofili’s major paintings, a vast quantity of drawings, and a selection of sculptures from over the course of his career.

Opposite – Afronirvana, 2002

Exhibition runs through to January 25, 2015

Poppy Sebire
All Hallows Hall
6 Copperfield Street
London
SE1 0EP

www.newmuseum.org

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