HENRI MATISSE – THE CUT-OUTS

Posted on 2014-08-04

In his late sixties, when ill health first prevented Matisse from painting, he began to cut into painted paper with scissors to make drafts for a number of commissions. In time, Matisse chose cut-outs over painting: he had invented a new medium.
From snowflowers to dancers, circus scenes and a famous snail, the exhibition showcases a dazzling array of 120 works made between 1936 and 1954. Bold, exuberant and often large in scale, the cut-outs have an engaging simplicity coupled with incredible creative sophistication.
The exhibition marks an historic moment, when treasures from around the world can be seen together. Tate’s The Snail 1953 is shown alongside its sister work Memory of Oceania 1953 and Large Composition with Masks 1953 at 10 metres long. A photograph of Matisse’s studio reveals that these works were initially conceived as a unified whole, and this is the first time they will have been together in over 50 years. The exhibition also places side by side the largest number of Matisse’s famous Blue Nudes ever exhibited together.

Opposite – The Snail, 1953

Exhibition runs through to September 7th, 2014

Tate Modern
Brooklyn Museum
Bankside
London
SE1 9TG

www.tate.org.uk

  

AI WEIWEI – ACCORDING TO WHAT?

Posted on 2014-07-28

Ai Weiwei is one of China’s most prolific and provocative contemporary artists. Featuring over forty works spanning more than twenty years, Ai Weiwei: According to What? explores universal topics of culture, history, politics, and tradition, showcasing the artist’s remarkably interdisciplinary career as a photographer, sculptor, architect, and activist.

These works spotlight issues of freedom of expression, as well as individual and human rights both in China and globally. Many use minimal forms and methods, while others manipulate traditional furniture, ancient pottery, and daily objects in ways that question cultural values and challenge political authority.

Ai is best known for projects such as his collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron on the 2008 Beijing Olympic National Stadium, as well as his embrace of the Internet and social media as a platform for his activism. Despite his arrest and eighty-one-day detention in 2011, Ai has continued to create art that transcends dualities between East and West.

Exhibition runs through to August 10th, 2014

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn
New York
11238

www.brooklynmuseum.org

  

AIKO – SWEETHEART

Posted on 2014-07-28

Street art darling Aiko will be gracing the banks of the river Tyne this summer with Sweetheart, her debut exhibition at The Outsiders Newcastle.

After managing the studio of contemporary art giant Takashi Murakami in the late 90s, Aiko went on to join renowned New York based street art collective FAILE, creating work for both street and gallery settings. After leaving FAILE in 2006 to pursue her own personal career, Aiko has seen success exhibiting her work in major museums and galleries internationally, even appearing in Banksy’s Oscar-nominated documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Aiko’s paintings bridge Eastern and Western cultures with a fusion of traditional Japanese aesthetics which seamlessly combine with bright and bold imagery reminiscent of the pop art that sprung from 1960s New York.

Sweetheart features both a number of large-scale mixed media paintings and a selection of smaller works executed in Aiko’s signature stencil-based style. The innocence of romance takes form in this new body of work with the exhibition exploring themes of love, femininity and sexuality through the artist’s vast visual library of provocative symbolism.

Exhibition runs through to September 6th, 2014

The Outsiders
77 Quayside
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 3DE

www.theoutsiders.net

  

JEFF KOONS – SPLIT-ROCKER

Posted on 2014-07-28

Consistent with Koons’s persistent fascination with dichotomy and the in-between, the inspiration for Split-Rocker came when he decided to split and combine two similar but different toy rockers, a pony belonging to his son and a dinosaur (“Dino”). The slippage or “split” between the different halves of the heads gives an almost Cubist aspect to the composition. As the model was enlarged to the scale of a small house, the split became an opening, a profile, and a light shaft. In contrast to his legendary Puppy of 1992, which was presented by Public Art Fund at Rockefeller Center in the summer of 2000, Split-Rocker suggests the idea of a fantasy shelter. Whereas the singular form of Puppy is closed and sculptural, the combined form of Split-Rocker is architectural and hollow.

Split-Rocker evokes a piece of classical topiary work, yet its technical construction is the result of a twentieth century invention, inspired by the small-scale floral sculptures found in certain vernacular festivals. The steel is hidden from sight other than where the disparate sides of the head join, while its vast surfaces are “painted” with many thousands of live flowering plants—begonias, geraniums, petunias, fuchsias, and many more. Its internal structure also supports an extensive irrigation system.

Jeff Koons comments, “I love the dialogue with nature in creating a piece that needs so much control—How many plants should be planted? How will these plants survive?—while at the same time giving up the control. It’s in nature’s hands, even though you try to plan everything to make the plants survive. This sense of giving up control is very beautiful. The balance between control and giving up control reminds us of the polarity of existence.”

Exhibition runs through to August 10th, 2014

Rockefeller Center
45 Rockefeller Plaza
New York
NY
10111

www.gagosian.com

  

BROOMBERG & CHANARIN – DIVINE VIOLENCE

Posted on 2014-07-22

While visiting the Bertolt Brecht archives in Berlin, Broomberg & Chanarin discovered a remarkable artefact: Brecht’s personal bible. The object caught their attention because it had a photograph of a racing car stuck to the cover. Inside the pages they discovered that the German playwright had used his bible as a notebook; pasting in images, underlining phrases and making notes in the columns. This was the inspiration for their own illustrated Holy Bible, which they realised first in book format (published by Mack, 2013) and now, on show at MOSTYN in its UK premiere, as a full-scale exhibition. For this project, the artists have combined images taken from The Archive of Modern Conflict – the largest archive in the world dedicated to images of war and conflict – with phrases in the text, which they have underlined in red ink.

A short essay by the Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir underpins the exhibition endeavour. In his writing, Ophir observes that God reveals himself in the bible predominantly through acts of catastrophe, and considers the biblical text as a parable for the growth of modern governance. With this exhibition, for the first time Broomberg & Chanarin make this parable powerfully explicit.

Exhibition runs through to November 2nd, 2014

MOSTYN
12 Vaughan Street
Llandudno
LL30 1AB

www.mostyn.org

  

JAMIE LAMBIE – ANSWER MACHINE

Posted on 2014-07-21

Jim Lambie brings together an array of new works which interweave elements of sculpture, painting and installation. Diverse in scale and ranging in media, they extend the artist’s long-term use of found objects as catalysts for sensuous studies in colour, form and materiality. Music remains a pervasive influence in Lambie’s art. It is reflected both in his raw materials and his works’ dynamic shifts in mood and medium. In three paintings, he has
plugged lengths of electrical cable into the works’ surfaces. They trail onto the floor in multi-coloured cascades, as if the streaming rivulets of a Morris Louis painting have taken on physical form. The high-gloss paintwork meanwhile incorporates paint-drenched sections of men’s shirts and trousers.

In both cases, the language of painterly abstraction merges with the lowly aesthetic of Italian arte povera – resulting in works that are both literal and exuberantly lyrical. Suspended the middle of the gallery, Ultratheque (Poppers remix) comprises a cluster of fine chains made from interlocking safety pins. These terminate at either end with a designer shoe, and have been threaded with multiple pairs of sunglasses using gaffer tape. Seemingly bouncing off the floor and ceiling, the glittering pendants recall the space’s origins as a nightclub, evoking the shimmer and energy of a dance floor. The motley contents and seductive surfaces of Ultratheque (Poppers remix) find a parallel in an installation of eight ladders faced with tinted mirrors. Leaning at different angles against the wall, they reflect the struts of the pitched ceiling, a nod to their lost function.

Exhibition runs through to August 16th, 2014

Sadie Coles HQ
62 Kingly Street
W1B 5QN
London

www.sadiecoles.com