GERT & UWE TOBIAS

Posted on 2011-12-26

Gert & Uwe Tobias’ exhibitions often incorporate wall paintings, large-scale woodcut prints, collages, type-writer drawings and ceramic sculptures. Their works embrace eccentric figuration, geometric abstraction, and the typographic. The brothers’ interest in folklore and regional mythologies provides a contextual framework for their practice that simultaneously draws on personal biography, cultural identity and popular culture.

Gert & Uwe Tobias have exhibited widely throughout Europe and the USA. Recent solo exhibitions include: GEM Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2011; Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany, 2010; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK, 2010.

Exhibition runs through to February 15th, 2012

Maureen Paley
21 Herald Street
London
E2 6JT

www.maureenpaley.com

  

ROBERT SAGERMAN – IT’S TIME

Posted on 2011-12-26

For all their sensuality and tactility, Sagerman’s paintings are not merely a thicket of color to capture the eye. As he works, the artist maintains a log of the number of strokes in each painting, the minutes spent with each color, and the total time a piece takes to complete. This uniquely personal form of meditation stemmed from Sagerman’s study of medieval Jewish mysticism, where the act of assigning numerical values to the letters of holy writings and the ritualized combining and recombining of these numbers brought the meditator closer to a state of divine clarity. This counting action most clearly defines Sagerman’s objective for his work: “For me,” he explains, “the numbers themselves are the most direct expression of my work activity; it is they that suggest the immaterial essence of the work.”

The new body of work for It’s Time accentuates the tension between the sensual and the immaterial elements of the work. The lush colors that once merged with one another to create an overall glow of tone now at times shift from one edge of the canvas to the other, gradating dramatically and creating subtle landscape references. In some, marks are no longer made in a uniform direction, but radiate from a central point. The visual, visceral essence of the work is heightened by the increasingly complex spiritual substrate buoying it.

Exhibition runs through to February 11th, 2012

Margaret Thatcher Projects
539 West 23rd Street
Ground Floor
New York
NY 10011

www.thatcherprojects.com

  

PAINTING CANADA – TOM THOMSON

Posted on 2011-12-19

In the early twentieth century in Toronto, Canada, the first stirrings of a new movement of painting were being felt. A group of artists started to engage with the awesome Canadian wilderness, a landscape previously considered too wild and untamed to inspire ‘true’ art. Tom Thomson paved the way for this artistic collective, the Group of Seven, and their works have become revered in Canada. This exhibition will reintroduce their stunning impressions of the Canadian landscape to the British public for the first time since the 1920s

Opposite – Tom Thomson, The West Wind, 1917

Exhibition runs through to January 8th, 2012

Dulwich Picture Gallery
Gallery Road
London
SE21 7AD

www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk

  

STEPHAN DOITSCHINODD – NOVO ASCETICISMO

Posted on 2011-12-19

Doitschinoff creates a unique visual language and style by embracing his eclectic influences. Themes in his work are inspired by an informed spiritual history and heritage, rich in symbolism and often accompanied by Latin text. In Novo Asceticismo (New Asceticsm), he reflects on the sacrifice and deprivation necessary for modern man to live purely, without feeling alienated or falling into vices, mental traps and social conditioning of contemporary society. He explores concepts constituting new forms of practicing austerity in regards to self-discipline in manners of sexuality and the body as well as contemporary Shamanism. The work is permeated by themes of Asceticsm, redefined to reflect political issues of our times.

To research for this exhibition, Doitschinoff traveled to Portugal, studying cultural festivals of the northern region and the traditions of caretos who wear Ibera masks. These ceremonies and masks were the artist’s main inspiration in Lisbon where he created an installation in the form of a temple to serve as the site for his performance piece, Briho do Sol (Sunshine), documented in a short film which will be shown for the first time during Novo Ascenticismo.

Opposite – Luzes Retas (Straight Lights)

Exhibition runs through to January 7th, 2012

Jonathan LeVine Gallery
529 West 20th Street
9th floor
New York
NY 10011

jonathanlevinegallery.com

  

GORDON MOORE

Posted on 2011-12-19

The current group of large scale paintings further develops the abstracted format and reduced palette of the works exhibited in Moore’s previous shows. Notably, these new paintings reflect the artist’s interest in photography, positing dimensional space next to drawn space. Moore combines three or more distinct spaces within a single canvas with drawn lines that vary from deliberate to random. Moore describes himself as an empiricist and the paintings reveal an abstract but very tangible world.

The works on paper in this exhibition are, as the title implies, ink and acrylic on photo-emulsion paper. Here the tangible meets the abstract as the incidental photograph of a broken umbrella or a bent coat hanger converse with the drawn lines and the painted areas.

Opposite – Hood, 2011

Exhibition runs through to November 2nd, 2012

Betty Cuningham Gallery
541 West 25th Street
New York
NY 10001

www.bettycuninghamgallery.com

  

OMID DELAFROUZ

Posted on 2011-12-12

Omid Delafrouz builds his images through a meticulous process. They are charged with references tied to our age and more particularly to the young generation that grew up during the last twenty years of 20th century, in a popular culture obsessed with images, surface and consumption. His detailed images are filled with time-markers, where every individual element relates to other parts of the work and jointly create layers of meanings and narratives.

A fundamental idea for Omid’s work is an attempt to express the zeitgeist with its own means. He depicts people and places in his own surroundings with the same means and tools as the types of images his generation grew up with.

Exhibition runs through to December 22nd, 2011

Andréhn-Schiptjenko
Hudiksvallsgatan 8SE-11330
Stockholm
Sweden

www.andrehn-schiptjenko.com