RON ARAD – CURTAIN CALL

Posted on 2011-08-22

As part of Bloomberg Summer at the Roundhouse, internationally renowned artist, architect and designer, Ron Arad has invited his favourite artists, musicians and friends to create unique work for his 360° interactive installation.
Arad’s constant experimentation with materials and his radical approach to form and structure have put him at the forefront of contemporary design. For Curtain Call, he’s responded to the Roundhouse’s spectacular Main Space by creating a curtain made of 5,600 silicon rods, suspended from an 18 metre diameter ring – a canvas for films, live performance and audience interaction.

Exhibition runs through to August 29th, 2011

Roundhouse
Chalk Farm Road
London
NW1 8EH

www.roundhouse.org.uk

  

KLARA KRISTALOVA

Posted on 2011-08-22

For this exhibition Kristalova presents new works in various mediums including ceramic, bronze, and works on paper in a setting envisioned to reflect the artist’s concept of an unsettling space. Kristalova has crafted the environment to create a surreal atmosphere that places viewers in a flux between a dreamy and surreal place, and an ordinary space where conversations and interactions occur. To achieve this effect, the artist has focused on lighting and has furnished the gallery with second hand furniture found at local flea markets.

Klara Kristalova draws inspiration from music, current events, and her daily surroundings to create figurative ceramic works that often mirror imagery from myths and old folk tales, and address themes surrounding oppression, anxiety and the sub-conscious. Exuding both an innocence and horror, Kristalova’s uncanny sculptures portray adolescent girls and boys, often marked with exaggerated features or in the midst of transformation, and bring to mind memories of childhood fantasy, dreams and nightmares.

Opposite – Very Dark Deer, 2011

Exhibition runs from October 27th to January 28th, 2012

Lehmann Maupin
540 West 26th Street
New York
NY
10001

www.lehmannmaupin.com

  

EMORY DOUGLAS

Posted on 2011-08-15

Emory Douglas is a pivotal figure in the development of political graphic art. Appointed ‘Minister for Culture’ for the Black Panthers in 1967, he became in-house illustrator for the quasi-revolutionary civil rights movement’s eponymous newspaper. Douglas’ instantly recognisable graphics filled the incendiary journal and would form its back page, a ‘cut out and paste up’ propaganda poster.

A cornerstone of the Black Panthers until their dissolution in the early 1980s, Douglas was one of the first agitants to use the visual language of the right wing to express the ideas of the left. His powerful pieces swapped hand-wringing for aggression and victim status for insurgency. Using a strong but consistent, simple yet brutal visual style Douglas’ artwork defined the Black Panther’s pride, resourcefulness and charisma. The illustrations’ accompanying battle cries, including ‘all power to the people’, ‘in revolution one wins and one dies’ and ‘seize the times’, entered the lexicon of a generation.

In and out of youth detention as a teen, Douglas kept busy working in the print shop of Ontario’s Youth Training School. Encouraged to draw by social workers, he went on to study commercial art at San Francisco’s community college, where he learned to use collage and what would today be called ‘found media’ to create high-impact pieces using minimal time and money.
Employing a ‘DiY’ ethos to make potent, populist imagery re-enforced by slogans is a defining characteristic of many of today’s heralded street artists.

Exhibition runs from August 18th to September 10th, 2011

The Outsiders
London
Soho
W1D 4DG

www.theoutsiders.net

  

LYNDA BENGLIS

Posted on 2011-08-15

This travelling exhibition spans the range of Lynda Benglis’s career, including her early wax paintings, her brightly colored poured latex works, the Torsos and Knots series from the 1970s, and her recent experiments with plastics, cast glass, paper, and gold leaf. It features a number of rarely exhibited historic works, including Phantom (1971), a dramatic polyurethane installation consisting of five monumental sculptures that glow in the dark, and the installation Primary Structures (Paula’s Props), first shown in 1975.

Alongside her sculptural output, Benglis created a radical body of work in video, photography, and media interventions that explore notions of power, gender relations, and role-playing. These works function in tandem with her sculpture to offer a pointed critique of sculptural machismo and suggest a fluid awareness of gender and artistic identity. They also contribute to an understanding of the artist’s objects as simultaneously temporal and physically present, intuitive, and psychologically charged.

Opposite – Fling, Dribble, and Drip, February 27, 1970

Exhibition runs through to October 10th, 2011

MOCA Grand Avenue
250 South Grand Avenue
Los Angeles
CA
90012

www.moca.org

  

MAKE SKATEBOARDS

Posted on 2011-08-15

Make Skateboards is a group exhibition and pop-up skate shop conceived as a throwback to the days when art took precedence over branding and a welcoming vibe met you at the door. The show will be a playful take on running a skateboard shop, transforming I-20 into a functional retail space offering a custom line of artist-designed skateboards, skate-related ephemera and accessories, original artwork, vintage objects, custom furniture and clothing by up-and-coming New York designers.

A true working skate shop, Make Skateboards will offer decks that are fully skate-able yet designed to an artistic standard. Two types of boards will be available: affordable, limited-edition silk-screened skateboards; and one-of-a-kind decks altered and embellished by hand, including several conceptual takes on the idea of skateboarding itself.

Exhibition runs through to September 17th, 2011

I-20 Gallery
557 West 23rd Street
New York
NY
10011

i-20.com

  

DAN FISCHER

Posted on 2011-08-08

The drawings of Dan Fischer, meticulous graphite-on-paper recreations of widely known images of artists and their work, from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, are remarkably simple propositions that ask some of the most complex and profound questions about art and contemporary visual culture. Whether based on iconic portraits of acclaimed artists, such as the photograph of Bridget Riley in the mid-1960s by John Goldblatt, or instantly recognisable images of an iconic artwork itself, such as Kurt Schwitters’ The Merzbau, each drawing by Fischer takes a photographic image with unmistakable currency, circulation and meaning within narratives of contemporary art history, and refashions it as an object of art.

Opposite – Duchamp Behind Glass, 2011, Graphite on paper

Exhibition runs from September 9th to October 8th, 2011

Alison Jacques Gallery
16-18 Berners Street
London
W1T 3LN

www.alisonjacquesgallery.com