LUTZ BACHER – BLACK BEAUTY

Posted on 2013-09-30

Black Beauty is the first major solo exhibition in the UK by American artist Lutz Bacher. Occupying an important position in contemporary art practice, Lutz Bacher’s work is receiving increasing levels of international recognition. Black Beauty provides a unique opportunity to see Bacher’s new works made specifically for the ICA together with recent work for the first time in London.

Since the beginning of her career in the 1970s, Bacher has drawn upon disconnected information from popular culture and her own life, producing works that play with the interchangeability of identity, sexuality and the human body. Bacher uses images and objects in a physical, sometimes visceral manner, conducting arrangements of seemingly disparate entities and allowing them to interact in new ways. The artist’s expansive work explores human identity as it is defined through gender, sexuality and the human body. Lutz Bacher is as elusive as her work is ambiguous, perhaps preferring not to dictate how her works should be viewed.

The exhibition at the ICA presents new and recent works which combine striking installations with film, sound and sculpture. At the core of the exhibition is Black Beauty (2012), several tons of coal slag which will flow throughout the lower gallery. This piece is paired with a sound work, Puck (2012) which envelopes the viewer as they move through the space. The audio recording of the character Puck at the conclusion of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is repeated with different emphases and pronunciations. Black Magic (2013) is a new site specific work made from black vibrating ‘astroturf’ that will be displayed along the full length of the concourse in the lower gallery.

Exhibition runs through to November 17th, 2013

Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall
London
SW1Y 5AH

www.ica.org.uk

   Tweet

IFEOMA ANYAEJI – TRANSMOGRIFICATION

Posted on 2013-09-30

Ifeoma Anyaeji’s recent sculpture employs a virtuosic ability to create elegant forms drawn from architecture and domestic furniture design through the reconstruction of found objects such as the ubiquitous plastic bags and bottles.

She utilizes a process that is physically and conceptually steeped in memory, history and the passage of time to create work that radically put into question conventional notions of what sculpture is. Using hair plaiting technique known as Threading from her homeland, she threads and braids discarded plastic bags into plasto-yarns which she combines with strong compositional organization to create complex yet lyrical assemblages of everyday objects that reflect subtle understanding of context and awareness of the relationship between function and experimentation.There is an abiding urge in her work to highlight the relevance of social responsibility to the environment in today’s hyper-consumer society as she engages with the cyclical nature of production, accumulation and regeneration in the creative process, and as stated by the artist “My concept of material reuse through the transformation of an object’s physical state, is to echo the environmental implication of accumulation and the extensiveness of a politicized archeology of modernity’s consumptive system”.

Exhibition runs through to November 2nd, 2013

Skoto Gallery
529 West 20th Street, 5FL
New York
NY
10011

www.skotogallery.com

   Tweet

JACK VETTRIANO – A RETROSPECTIVE

Posted on 2013-09-23

This retrospective exhibition showcases such key paintings as Dance me to the end of Love (1998), Mad Dogs (1992), Long Time Gone (2006), Bluebird at Bonneville (1996) and The Billy Boys (1994). Alongside these classic, romantically themed paintings for which Vettriano is perhaps best known, this exhibition will also feature extensive examples of his powerfully erotic works such as Game On (1999), The Parlour of Temptation (1996), An Imperfect Past (2000), Fetish (1998 )and Night Geometry (1996). All the paintings featured in this exhibition are on loan from private collections and many are going on public display for the first time in close to 20 years.

Jack Vettriano said: “I was deeply touched when approached by Kelvingrove Art Gallery about staging a Retrospective exhibition for me, having long since been an admirer of their collections and overall ethos. Exhibiting in such majestic surroundings is a great honour and one for which I am extremely grateful. I look forward to spending some time in Glasgow and renewing my acquaintance with some of my favourite paintings in Kelvingrove’s Collection, works by the likes of Van Gogh and the Scottish Colourists that, in many ways, inspired me to become an artist at the outset.

It will not be without some considerable emotion that I will also be reunited with some of my own paintings; works that span 20 years of my career and many of which I have not seen in years. I’ve been very lucky that my works have found their way into a diverse range of private collections around the world over the years and I am most grateful to the owners for so kindly loaning their paintings back for this special exhibition.”

Opposite – The Sparrow and the Hawk, 1999

Exhibition runs through to February 23rd, 2014

Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum
Argyle Street
Glasgow
G3 8AG

www.jackvettriano.com

   Tweet

WENDY WHITE – PICK UP A KNOCK

Posted on 2013-09-23

Furthering her concept of the Sports Moment and addressing specifically the inclination in professional soccer toward “flopping,” Wendy White has created an installation of 5 single canvas paintings and 4 large-scale inkjet printed photographs on vinyl. The painting installation is completed with wall-to-wall white Astroturf installed on the gallery’s floor.

Flopping, or as Spanish-speaking countries refer to it, clavado (literally meaning nailed), is a strategy used to trick the referee into calling a foul. While other participating countries have long accepted this regular occurrence, Americans have long been reticent towards such a strategy, as it defines them as the underdog and is a sign of weakness. Our longstanding global position as one of power and winning is antithetical to the idea of failing as a means towards success. It has become so ubiquitous in the game that an aerosol pain medication, often referred to as Magic Spray, is now widely. When a player flops, trainers rush out and spray them, then they return to the game as if nothing happened.

In counterpoint, White investigates the history of her own gym in the Chinatown neighborhood of NYC, where numerous older patrons work out on broken equipment. The building housing the gym was raided a year ago for illegal gambling and fake doctors prescribing medicine without a license. The location is 35-37 E. Broadway, the same street where the first aerosol pain medication was invented in the 1860s, at the height of the E. Broadway gang activity.

Exhibition runs through to November 2nd, 2013

Andrew Rafacz Gallery
835 W. Washington
2nd Floor
Chicago
IL
60607

www.andrewrafacz.com

   Tweet

HEATHER GWEN MARTIN – PATTERN MATH

Posted on 2013-09-23

Pattern Math is Heather Gwen Martin’s third solo exhibition with the gallery and continues her exploration of abstraction in painting. Martin’s work eschews conceptual strategies in favor of a very personal and intuitive approach that allows for a broad reading and interpretation. Thoughtful and straightforward, it combines a near-scientific sense of control over a number of formal and organic elements that direct the viewer onto multiple paths of experience. Her paintings can be seen to function as experimental fields?dynamic, spatial environments where energies and forces from the real world and the otherly imagined are brought into play, imposing upon and affecting one another. These forces are not necessarily measureable or quantifiable; rather they enliven the field through a complex matrix of factors: bold colors animate closely shifting hues and values; fluid, sinuous lines expand and contract in and out of intumescent shapes, bending space and creating precisely sculpted forms. Numerous layers of finely applied paint conceal and reveal, leaving ghostly, fragmentary traces and producing residual effects that challenge the eye and the mind.

Since first taking advantage of UCSD’s renowned cognitive studies program as a student, Martin continues to be interested in how we respond to stimuli and different interfaces in the world. “This particular interest in perception and visual processing”, says Martin, “points to a focused concern on the understanding of abstraction, relating to composition with the nuance of shapes and relationships between forms that leads to making connections and associations from within the painting itself or from external influences. As the responses to my paintings reverberate from real and imagined instances where disparate forces come together for but brief moments, they function as a means of communication and an experience in physical reality not obstructed, altered, or interrupted by technology and artificial/non-physical interaction.”

Exhibition runs through to October 12th, 2013

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
2635 S. La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles
CA
90034

www.luisdejesus.com

   Tweet

STANLEY DONWOOD

Posted on 2013-09-16

Far Away is Close at Hand in Images of Elsewhere showcases Stanley’s ambitious ink and pencil pieces featuring hidden country footpaths, Known as Holloways, and other arboreal scenes. These are featured in Stanley’s hit book of the same name, published by Faber and Faber earlier this year. The large canvases to be shown alongside them formed the official artwork for Radiohead’s latest LP, The King of Limbs, named after an ancient oak tree in Savernake Forest, Wiltshire. Holloway lanes are characterised by an over-arching avenue of fauna that creates a natural tunnel effect. Mysterious and melancholic, their botanical beauty inspires both awe and a liberating sense of feral mindfulness. Stanley’s artworks depicting holloways on display will range from miniature woodcut prints and studies to large works on paper. The King of Limbs canvases were created using oils and spray paint.

“In the lead up to making these pieces I became fascinated with the idea of a cathedral of sound,” says the artist, “I was working with Radiohead on the record that was to become The King of Limbs, and my early hearings of the music seemed to suggest an overarching canopy of detail.” The band’s ambitious compositions triggered a synaesthetic vision in Stanley. “I had a kind of memory that the fluted columns and ceiling tracery of medieval churches owed its inspiration to the northern forests of Europe; the tall tree trunks, the interlaced branches above, the majesty of the woods. I wanted to take this caged spirit of the trees back into the forests, where sounds were free and un-tethered by religion, where the spreading branches supported the sky, not the roof of a church. I began to paint trees, bright, coloured trees, through which dark mists could percolate.”

Exhibition runs from September 20th to October 19th, 2013

Lazarides
8 Greek Street
Soho
London
W1D 4DG

www.theoutsiders.net

   Tweet