RON ENGLISH – SKIN DEEP

Posted on 2011-06-13

Painter, Pundit and Prankster Ron English presents Skin Deep, an exploration of the intersections, discrepancies and synchronicities of personal mythologies on display in our public personas. The exhibition presents multi-layered portraits of some of his most iconic characters, tracing the arc of their inner lives.
Often using his children as models, English chronicles the soul’s sojourn through Pop dioramas of fear and appetite, aspiration and rage. While paying homage to the great art before him, English maintains his very personal point of view, transforming the public to intimate and the universal to specific.

Using a mixture of imagery, medium and process referenced from great masters such as Warhol, Pollack and Picasso, combined with irreverent cherry-picking of populist totems from fast food to cartoons, English creates complex running narratives of his many alter-egos butting headfirst into the Grand Illusion, where unstated cultural norms are exposed and analyzed.

Exhibition runs from June 24th to July 21st, 2011

Lazarides
11 Rathbone Place
London
W1T 1HR

www.lazinc.com

  

SHERRIE LEVINE – THE DESERT

Posted on 2011-06-13

In this new series of works, Levine continues and extends the conceptual trajectory of this act of referencing. Bobcat and javelina skulls cast in bronze recall her 2007 exhibition at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, where the artist has made a home, and where she showed a series of cattle skulls in clear reference to paintings by O’Keeffe. Here too the source of the work is a found object, and the artist shows the javelina skulls as a series, six sculptures from the edition in a row. Through this repetition, the sculpture becomes a reference to itself, and calls attention to the seriality central to the artist’s work.

Sherrie Levine came to prominence as one of a generation of artists who, during the 1970s and early 1980s, became known under the label of postmodernism. One of the characteristics of her work that drove critics at the time, Craig Owens in particular, to identify it as such was its use of appropriation. In his influential 1980 essay: The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism, Owens saw Levine’s use of appropriation as a strategy working against the Modernist imperative of originality and artistic genius.

Opposite – Bobcat Skull, Cast bronze, 2010

Exhibition runs through to July 16th, 2011

Simon Lee Gallery
12 Berkeley Street
London
W1J 8DT

simonleegallery.com

  

FRANZ GERTSCH – SEASONS WORKS 1983 -2011

Posted on 2011-06-13

This retrospective features 30 large-format paintings and woodcuts by Franz Gertsch, one of Switzerland’s leading contemporary artists. The exhibition, entitled ‘Seasons’, brings together in the large exhibition gallery his realistic works from the period between 1983 and 2011, culminating in his recently completed ‘Four Seasons Cycle’. Gertsch is one of the most important Swiss artists of the present day. He rose to international fame in the 1970s with his hyper-realist paintings, and works from this period have fetched top prices at recent auctions.

Opposite – Summer , 2009

Exhibition runs through to September 18th, 2011

Kunsthaus Zürich
Heimplatz 1
CH–8001
Zurich

www.kunsthaus.ch

  

NELLEKE BELTJENS – THEY DON´T KNOW EITHER

Posted on 2011-06-06

Since her first show “Fragments of the Parts” (2009), the artist has been consistently developing her unusual and idiosyncratic approach to drawing. Among the basic principles of her work is the fragmenting of the line, which is questioned as a fundamental drawing element, the artist breaking it up into numerous short marks that stand perpendicular to the extension of the line, thus transforming it into a rhythmic structure.In turn, as a result of the countless superimposed “lines” running parallel and crosswise, structures come about that are difficult to define in terms of concept. They are full of movement, characterized by abrupt changes in direction and different degrees of intensity and density, whereby the positive forms are always confronted with the negative areas of the white drawing paper in a way that attributes both an equal value.

It is essential to the artist that her works may not be completely comprehended from any perspective view. Standing further away, the drawings are perceived as being rather vague due to the atmosphere they exude, though from close up they break up into countless individual elements, which we may no longer relate to one another.

Exhibition runs through to July 30th, 2011

Galerie Christian Lethert
Antwerpener Straße 4
Cologne D-50672
Germany

www.christianlethert.com

  

JIM GAYLORD – SPOILERS

Posted on 2011-06-06

Gaylord’s work draws upon abstracted imagery found within high-speed action sequences in motion pictures. He creates compositions by collecting film stills of fleeting shapes and special effects, using a computer to superimpose several frames together at once. These studies become the source material for paintings, resulting in something like a painted collage.

The title of the exhibition, Spoilers, refers to the concept of revealing plot elements in a film or story that give away the outcome, in part or in its entirety. Pitting this idea against itself, Gaylord’s work foils the entire narrative format, offering specificity of form, while withholding information that would allow a traditional, linear understanding of the picture.The source films range from period action dramas, such as “Troy” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” to MTV’s “Jackass,” “The Waterboy” and “World Trade Center.” The genres of armed conflict and sports suggest a quasi pun for Spoilers, as in the “spoils” of war.

Opposite – Throne, Overthrown, 2011

Exhibition runs through to July 1st, 2011

Jeff Bailey Gallery
625 W 27th St – Ground Floor
11th & 12 Ave
New York
NY
10001

www.baileygallery.com

  

KATHARINA GROSSE

Posted on 2011-06-06

Grosse’s most recent canvases combine a complex artistic vocabulary. Patterns of diagonal hatchings and closely set strips of color cross with delicate, almost transparent lines to form the basic rhythm. At the edges of the paintings, the structures open up, providing a view on their ground. One type of shape that frequently appears in Grosse?s works is the ellipses, which she employs as a convex, vaulted sculpture or as an image.On the canvas, physical forces seem to affect its form. It can take on the soft appearance of a drop, apparently flowing vertically across the painting. Set in motion, it practically begins to swing, developing a palpable dynamic. With the help of ellipses-shaped stencils, individual areas are left open, while in other places, they overlap and permeate each other, becoming so dense that they seem to be imploding.

Exhibition runs through to July 16th, 2011

Barbara Gross Galerie
Theresienstr. 56, Hof 1
80333 Munich
Germany

www.barbaragross.de