JONATHAN YEO – YOU’RE ONLY YOUNG TWICE

Posted on 2011-12-12

For his first UK show since 2008, Yeo makes a departure from his renowned portraits and collages to explore the fast-growing phenomenon of cosmetic surgery. Over the last 18 months, Yeo has been observing the work of leading cosmetic surgeons in the UK and US to produce a collection of work that uncovers the processes and results of pre and post-operative procedures on women.

Surprisingly gentle in his depiction, the artist shuns controversy in favour of the physical transformations and the black ink lines the surgeons draw directly onto the body prior to such operations. The result is a series of scientific images seen through a painter’s eye which pose questions about our aspirations, vanities, the lengths we will go to in the pursuit of perfection, and the role of surgeons as 21st century sculptors of the physical form.

Exhibition runs through to January 21st, 2012

Lazarides
11 Rathbone Place
London
W1T 1HR

www.lazinc.com

  

PEDRO CABRITA REIS

Posted on 2011-12-12

In his work, Pedro Cabrita Reis uses building materials (brick, fluorescent tube, electric cable, double glazing…) as well as “found” items (doors, windows, benches, ladders…), that he brings together and assembles into sculptures. The essence of Pedro Cabrita Reis’s work is to be found in the very act of construction. Although he always initiates a dialogue with the spaces he inhabits, his goal is not to suggest new architectural forms. His sculptures act as vectors for emotions: they create imaginary territories, evoking familiar architectural landscapes, of which only traces seem to remain. Faced with his work, the spectator experiences feelings of absence and silence, characteristics which run through the whole of the artist’s oeuvre.

While Pedro Cabrita Reis is perhaps best known for his sculpture, the artist has defined himself through painting: “I see myself as a painter, in the classic sense of the word….It is as a painter that I relate to the world.…All that I have ever done are paintings; some of them lighter, hung on walls, then heavier ones, set on the ground, and even some that encompass whole spaces.

Exhibition runs through to January 21st, 2012

Galerie Nelson – Freeman
59 rue Quincampoix
75004 Paris
France

www.galerienelsonfreeman.com

  

SAYRE GOMEZ – WINDOWS AND MIRRORS

Posted on 2011-12-05

Debut exhibition in his Chicago gallery of new work from the Los Angeles based artist Sayre Gomez. On view are the artist’s new works on canvas, thirty small works on paper, and a single graphite drawing. By mining images and texts from various blogs and image archives, Gomez’ new works are an extension of the artist’s inquiry into how aesthetics inform perception and how meaning is disseminated and contextualized.

Selecting images on a solely formal criterion, Gomez states that he seeks “Images that imbue a sense of familiarity yet remain difficult to place, this begins to create a dialogue about an images’ legibility and thus the frameworks through which we use to digest them. Through the incessant re-constitution and re-experiencing of any number of said images, a lapse in their contextual foregrounding becomes apparent. They begin to resonate with viewers in variety of ways, and can begin to function more as abstractions… While the previous generation’s engagement with image culture was primarily through television and print media, the images being absorbed were contextually bound to their original sources implicating the process of appropriation as something definitively politicized. While these implications may still be present the appropriative process here is intended to be less political and more populous..”

Opposite – Lorem Ipsum Painting (Citations of Thirst), 2011

Exhibition runs through to January 28th, 2012

Kavi Gupta Berlin
Kluckstraße 31
10785
Berlin

kavigupta.com

  

BILLY CHILDISH – I AM THE BILLY CHILDISH

Posted on 2011-12-05

A modern day renaissance man, prolific artist, writer, and musician Billy Childish truly embraces and encompasses the expression “walking to the beat of his own drum.” Over thirty-five years of continual creative activity, Childish has gained a cult status world-wide, writing and publishing over forty volumes of confessional poetry, recording over one hundred LPs, and painting several hundred works, all the while refusing to conform to the contemporary art world’s standards and placed importance on the market.As a poet, novelist, and painter, Childish has explored throughout his work, and often with a startling honesty, his struggles in coming to terms with addiction, abuse, and a childhood spent in a dysfunctional family setting.

Presented in two sections, curator Matthew Higgs highlights Childish’s recent body of work and places it alongside his music, literary and polemical projects. The first section of the exhibition focuses on the artist’s recent paintings that depict volcanoes and mountain-climbing scenes, influenced by the last climb of mountaineer Toni Kurz. These works will are juxtaposed with paintings of pastoral landscapes such as “Sibelius Amongst Saplings.” The exhibition continues upstairs with a survey of the artist’s music and literary projects, including fifty of Childish’s albums and a collection of poems and books written by the artist.

Opposite – Erupting volcano, 2011

Exhibition runs through to January 28th, 2012

Lehmann Maupin
540 West 26th Street
New York
NY 10001

www.lehmannmaupin.com

  

JOAN MITCHELL – THE LAST PAINTINGS

Posted on 2011-12-05

This show brings together 13 works, dating from 1985–1992, that represent Mitchell’s exploration of painting in the last decade of her life. The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color catalogue with a text by Richard D. Marshall.

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) moved from Chicago to New York in 1947. Early in her career, she was included in the historically significant 1951 Ninth Street Exhibition. Organized by Leo Castelli, the show was renowned for its championship of Abstract Expressionism, and positioned Mitchell with older, mostly male painters: Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline among them. Mitchell met de Kooning early on—inspired by his painting, she sought out an introduction and was a rare female participant in artistic debates at the notorious Cedar Tavern. In 1952, she had her first solo exhibition at the New Gallery.

Exhibition runs through to January 4th, 2012

Cheim & Read
547 West 25th Street
New York
NY 10001

www.cheimread.com

  

MARTIN ASSIG – SCHREIHALS

Posted on 2011-11-28

The Berlin artist shows five large-format and two small-sized works from 2010 and 2011. All paintings are made of encaustic and tempera on wood. Martin Assig’s pictures “are physically present and transpersonal. Something in these pictures seem extremely familiar, yet it has never been seen before. These pictures need no regional or time-bound artistic style-classification; they catch your eye and stay in mind”. Assig’s pictures consist of elements full of tradition and history, but in these pictures they appear in a state of innocence, like objects that are seen totally new, that are unknown. The viewer can revive the pictorial bodies of Martin Assig. So that they can be new, time and again.

Opposite – Die Nacht, 2010

Exhibition runs through to January 21st, 2012

DIEHL
Niebuhrstrasse 210629
Berlin
Charlottenburg

www.galerievolkerdiehl.com