HITO STEYERL

Posted on 2014-04-07

Berlin-based artist and writer Hito Steyerl is one of the most critically acclaimed artists working in the field of video today. Steyerl’s work focuses on contemporary issues such as feminism and militarisation, as well as the mass proliferation and dissemination of images and knowledge brought on by digital technologies.

This exhibition offers a selected survey of Steyerl’s work. Presented here are five videos, each installed in a distinct manner. The first film encountered is titled Liquidity Inc. (2014). This new work looks at a financial advisor called Jacob Wood who lost his job during the last financial crisis, and who then embarked on a career in mixed martial arts. How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013) mocks an instructional film on the idea of becoming invisible in the digital world. Finally, her video Guards (2012) deals with museum officers with a background as law enforcement officers or military personnel. Two recorded lecture performances – I Dreamed a Dream and Is the Museum a Battlefield? – filmed live in 2013 at the 13th Istanbul Biennial and Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin respectively are presented here in the exhibition.

Exhibition runs through to April 27th, 2014

ICA
The Mall
London
SW1Y 5AH

www.ica.org.uk

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ELLA KRUGLYANSKAYA – HOW TO WORK TOGETHER

Posted on 2014-04-07

Kruglyanskaya’s cartoon-like characters are friends and ‘frienemies’ down at the beach, out-and-about, running from a menacing presence: enforced neighbours butting against each other in the tight space of the stretched canvas. These buxom women anticipate an audience, exaggerating both voyeurism and exhibitionism, confronting cultural tropes with bawdy humour. Kruglyanskaya’s paintings vigorously play with the female form, female sexuality and social interaction.

For her Studio Voltaire commission, Kruglyanskaya is working in residency in the gallery creating an interior wall-mural and a series of large-scale oil paintings depicting women engaged in labour and work: “grooming, brooming, and bricklaying”, her exuberant and cartoon-like paintings running onto the gallery walls. The exhibition will also include multiple preparatory works on paper. The façade of the gallery will be taken over by two of Kruglyanskaya’s ample females, leaning seductively on the peaked roof of the building, taking a cigarette break whilst their peers are busy at work inside the gallery. The artist’s use of deft, fluid brush strokes and an exuberant palette make her paintings, and indeed her subjects, irresistible forces.

Opposite – Singing Maids, 2014

Exhibition runs through to June 8th, 2014

Studio Voltaire
1a Nelson’s Row
London
SW4 7JR

www.studiovoltaire.org

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GRAYSON PERRY – THE VANITY OF SMALL DIFFERENCES

Posted on 2014-04-07

The Vanity of Small Differences is a series of six tapestries by Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry. They explore his fascination with taste and tell a story of class mobility.
The tapestries were created alongside his 2012 TV series All in the Best Possible Taste and feature a number of people, events and objects he experienced during the filming.

Exhibition runs through to May 11th, 2014

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
Chamberlain Square
Birmingham
B3 3DH

www.bmag.org.uk

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JEAN-LUC BLANC – FAUX-ROMAN VISAGE

Posted on 2014-03-31

In order to understand Jean Luc Blanc’s work, it is necessary to question the place occupied by images and more particularly the representation of the human figure, as well as the way in which the artist deals with it both in his choice of colors and in the construction of his drawing. By their occasional coarseness, the drawings often manage to undergo a process of de-subjectivism and break free from the average editing processes of contemporary imagery. Nowadays images at once belong to everybody and to no-one, a 15th Century Icon or any simple picture in a contemporary tabloid-magazine both find their triviality increased, while the lack of mystical aura tends to exhaust their power to “ speak to us and generate desire” (1), but what kind of desire are we referring to? In his work on images, Jean Luc Blanc redefines the idea of desire by operating a detachment between his subject and its context while at the same time introducing a notion of absurdity that will allow him to alter not only the tragic aspect of the vast process leading to the excess of global media coverage and the dumbing down of society, but also, by means of a highly developed and often cynical sense of humor, to express the resulting forms of social distress and the human behavioral disorders that it provokes.

This work tackles notions of absurdity, a sense of dismay, as well as reflections on the disgrace of a given epoch, but also the symbolic value of an image by means of the disjunction between what we see and what we feel. Akin to film-making mechanisms, especially to the techniques used by Marguerite Duras when, in her films, a voice-over describes things that the spectator cannot see, allowing him to create his own images; Jean Luc Blanc’s images leave us free to find multiple interpretations and go beyond the pre-established codes linked to painting in general, and to portrait-painting in particular. In his work, we won’t find “up to the waist” or “full length” classically framed figures; and academic rigidity is soon left behind; the framing of these frowning, plaintive and disquieting faces is strange.

Opposite – L’immortel prémice, 2014

Exhibition runs through to April 23rd, 2014

art: concept
13 rue des arquebusiers
75003 Paris
France

www.galerieartconcept.com

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FRIEDRICH KUNATH – THE TEMPTATION TO EXIST

Posted on 2014-03-31

This exhibition explores the decade-long collaboration between Dieter Roth (1930 – 1998) and Arnulf Rainer (b. 1929). From 1972, Roth and Rainer worked together intermittently, producing pieces in tandem or exchanging works in progress which were then completed independently.

Roth and Rainer worked across media, producing drawings, collages, prints, films, live performances, sound works, over-worked photographs and poster designs. This exhibition focuses on a large group of works on paper, unveiling Dieter Roth’s share of the collaboration which has never been previously exhibited. A selection of the artists’ major film works will also be on view. The exhibition is curated by Björn Roth, son and longstanding collaborator of Dieter Roth

The group of almost 80 works on paper reveals an artistic dialogue full of creative tension. As opposed to the harmonious nature characteristic of artistic collaboration, these works depict two egos battling for ultimate victory within the creative process. Their intellectual rivalry is evident in the voracious spirit that emanates from the resulting works.

Opposite – We Better Stop Pretending, 2014

Exhibition runs through to April 26th, 2014

Andrea Rosen Gallery
525 West 24th Street
10011 New York
USA

www.andrearosengallery.com

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ALEX KATZ – 70S / 80S / 90S

Posted on 2014-03-31

The exhibition explores the progression and distillation of Katz’s distinct style through the 70s, 80s and 90s, and focuses on the thematic significance of ‘town and country’ during this period.
Katz’s distinctive portraits and landscapes are noted for their flat surfaces, even light and finessed line. Determined to pioneer a style that set him apart from his contemporaries, Katz’s interest in scale, style and American life has remained constant throughout his influential and extensive career.

Alex Katz’s work is instantly recognisable: large scale, visually pure and often cropped. In Ada, Ada, 1991, a double portrait of Katz’s wife who remains a constant presence in his work, the vocabulary of film is evident – dramatic framing, cinematic cropping, and the repeated figure suggestive of the progression of a filmstrip. The flat, blank background of the deepest aquamarine is characteristic of the absolute immediacy of Katz’s formal technique.

Katz’s subjects, from his friends and family, and the stylish New York intelligentsia that is his social circle, to vacant buildings and parks shrouded in the darkness of night – become icons, celebrated and refined to a singular clarity. His economy of line and nuanced use of colour speaks of a confidence and lucidity of vision that has evolved since the 50s.

Opposite – Vincent and Vivien, 1987

Exhibition runs through to April 17th, 2014

Timothy Taylor Gallery
15 Carlos Place
W1K 2EX
London

www.timothytaylorgallery.com

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