MARA DE LUCA – SALTUS FIDEI | LEAP OF FAITH

Posted on 2011-10-31

Titled the Sipario series (Italian for theatrical curtain or scrim), Mara De Luca’s exciting new paintings are a reflection on a contemporary sublime that is profound in its absolute superficiality and theatricality. The Sipario paintings are inspired by the aesthetic and emotional experience of daily life in Los Angeles, a city of visual contrasts and contradictions: stunning natural beauty coexisting in a cultural climate of facile content, saturated digital aesthetics and air-brushed, synthetic effects. The works address the existential through a romanticized and hyper-analog translation of digital media and contemporary imaging tropes particular to mass media and visual culture.

In the Sipario paintings, constructed landscape and atmospheric imagery present a mirroring of process and content – their exaggerated artifice reveals and disguises the processes by which they have been made, and a relationship between picture and craft is evident. Ranging in color from bright, glowing artificial to a natural and grayscale palette, the picture planes are vast and vacuous, evoking the emotional emptiness of unflinchingly optimistic, success-oriented Hollywood values and self-improvement ideology. Iconographic elements – appearing as recurring texts, rainbows, moon and stars – point to themes of faith, hope and desire. Visual “faith”, or suspension of disbelief, is required of the viewer throughout and is a thematic thread connecting the diverse works.

Opposite – Odette, 2010

Exhibition runs through to November 18th, 2011

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
2685 S. La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles
CA 90034

www.luisdejesus.com

  

ANDREW SALGADO – ANXIOUS

Posted on 2011-10-31

This is Andrew Salgado’s first solo exhibition in New York City, sees the artist drawing upon historic masculine portraiture handled with an experimental, painterly sensibility, suggesting themes of displaced identity and an overriding technical love for the medium. Salgado’s paintings are an exploration of the concept of masculine identity through an assertive, gestural approach to figurative representation.

The works reference Classical archetypes found in figurative masculine portraiture, while prioritizing a disregard for what Salgado views as the ‘parameters’ of figurative painting; Salgado himself recounts artists as diverse as Caravaggio, Veronese, Bjarne Melgaard, Francis Bacon, and Daniel Richter as influences. As a result, the works resonate with a frenetic, nearly schizophrenic energy, suggesting both a serene recollection of memory and convalescence (a number of the works feature mouthless boys, perhaps suggesting Salgado’s victimization in a 2008 hate-crime assault in which he lost his teeth,) but move beyond mere solipsism in favor of metaphor, narrative and aggressive, abstract brushwork.

Opposite – The Patience, 2011

Exhibition runs through to November 18th, 2011

Tache Gallery
547 W 27 Street No.602
New York
NY 10001

www.tachegallery.com

  

JOSH KEYES – MIGRATION

Posted on 2011-10-24

On the subject of his show title, in the artist’s words, “Migration and displacement were ideas that continued to surface in my mind while I was painting these images. I was thinking about the effects of climate change and the way some ecosystems that thrive in a specific range of temperatures—like polar or tropical climates—are experiencing a shrinking of their boundaries. Ecosystems that were separate are now slowly merging and overlapping one another, causing disruptions in the food web and increased competition for food and space among species. Some become displaced and are forced to migrate, in order to survive.”

Keyes’ imagery in this exhibition pushes the potential consequences of ecosystem clashing to a climax that wavers on the surreal. A bright orange tiger rests contently on top of a graffiti covered dumpster, staring intensely at a pack of wolves, scavenging whitetail deer scraps from the tiger’s morning hunt. Below the smooth floodwater surface, glides a great white shark. A pair of giant pandas, marooned on a submerged jeep, watch with curiosity as the shark’s fin circles by. Deer, elk, wolves and other animals form a stampeding herd, charging through a city street, leaving upturned cars and ruptured pavement in their frenzied wake.

Opposite – Tangled IV

Exhibition runs through to November 19th, 2011

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

jonathanlevinegallery.com

  

KATHARINE KUHARIC – POUND OF FLESH

Posted on 2011-10-24

Taking stock pictures (“unsolicited images” from junk mail, newspapers, magazines and other sources) Kuharic meticulously re-collages images to create reconfigured histories. Her paintings are multi-layered, hyper-real, and highly keyed to an almost hallucinogenic pallet making them overwrought, sensual, and alluring. Seventeen distinct works highlight investigations into American celebrity, pop and suburban culture as well as her personal angst.

In both Jack’s Original and Ladue News, Kuharic takes residents of St. Louis and Ladue respectively and has them reposed on absurdist constructions. In Jacks Original, the grouped figures are given extra girth and she gives them a gesture of shame by having each person cover their genitals and waistlines. The people represented in Ladue News are from a society magazine with the same name. The posed pleasantness amidst the collapsing structure creates a despotic tension.

Pound of Flesh is an ongoing series where Kuharic tracks her weight loss and gain through repeated symbols and motifs. The years accumulate in yellow eggs laid across the bottom of the painting and her corresponding weight is recorded in red balloons above. In the center of the painting is a tangle of holly hocks, the symbol of female ambition. In addition to the measure of weight, these paintings also show the lost possibility of fertility and represent all that is fecund. Flora and fauna are depicted throughout as well as graphics of the Weight Watchers frozen dinners. This contrast of nourishment and hollow, empty food is the key metaphor for the painting.

Exhibition runs through to November 12th, 2011

P.P.O.W.
535 West 22nd Street
3rd Floor
New York
NY 10011

ppowgallery.com

  

LEA ASJA PAGENKEMPER – THE LOVER AND THE MAGICAN

Posted on 2011-10-24

The exhibition “The Lover and the Magician” presents the latest works by Baselitz master student L. A. Pagenkemper. Her paintings focus on symbolically charged landscapes which, beyond any realistic illusionism, are committed to moments that lyrically render the atmosphere.
The artist places iconic elements from daily life in utopian landscapes. This is done to symbolically present human situations of love and Eros, magic and disillusion, excess and decay. In addition to these references to the painting of a Munch or Gauguin, Pagenkemper’s simplified and original manner of representation discloses a quest for expression and feeling that resists the deceptive illusionism of (media) reality, to ultimately put forth a different option, that of a changed subjectivity.

Opposite – The Magican, 2011

Exhibition runs through to November 30th, 2011

Galerie Jette Rudolph
Strausberger Platz 4
D- 10243 Berlin
Germany

jette-rudolph.de

  

WES LANG – LIFE AND HOW TO LIVE IT

Posted on 2011-10-17

The exhibition offers, as the title indicates, a personal reflection on how to navigate life. It is not a self-help or how to guide. It is an interlinked series of meditations on being. Being Wes Lang and being all of us. The subject matter is personal universal, complex and mundane; friends and mentors, dead, alive or both. Good times, bad times and the value of each. The hazards of living, enjoying life, cigarettes and drink, in the light of our impending death. Love for one, for many and briefly for all. The rage and acceptance of not going gentle into that good night.

The works reference a diverse and eclectic selection of artists and thinkers such as Walt Whitman, Ram Dass, Bob Dylan, Cy Twombly, The Grateful Dead, Glenn Gould, Chet Baker, Martin Kippenberger and Jean Michel Basquiat amongst others. In Wes Lang’s work, these references bleed into a song about appreciating life. Be here now. A path through uncertain times, a personal letter expressing confidence in self doubt, beauty, ugliness and human abilities. The letter ends with the words ”Eyes Of The World – Best Wishes” in the painting titled “Freedom Machine” featuring a large portrait of the grim reaper.

Exhibition runs through to November 12th, 2011

V1 Gallery
Flæsketorvet 69 – 71
1711 Copenhagen V
Denmark

v1gallery.com