JONGSUK YOON – YELLOW TO PINK

Posted on 2022-06-06

Traces can run parallel, cross each other, or be superimposed. In Jongsuk Yoon’s work, traces of condensed temporality, corporeality, memory, and biography intersect and result in idiosyncratic pictorial worlds that dis-play an impressive range of colors. The paintings by the artist, who was born in South Korea and has been living in Germany since the early 1990s, fuse the traditions of Asian landscape painting with a Western canon of art that is defined by abstraction, translating these elements into abstract landscapes that consist of large, overlapping forms.

Opposite – Installation view

Exhibition runs through to August 27th, 2022

Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder
Grünangergasse 1
1010 Vienna
Austria

www.schwarzwaelder.at

  

MICHAEL WILLIAMS – FROGS 1 – 9

Posted on 2022-06-06

In past bodies of work, Michael Williams has developed a suite of interconnected paintings out of a drawing, not uncommonly focused on a human figure or surrogate. In the case of Frogs 1 – 9, the source is Untitled (Frog) (2019–2020): a small sheet given over to a greying man-cum-jester, hollowed nostrils shaped like an electrical outlet and mouth agape, forming an unlikely heart. There, in his domestic sanctum, he dons a bell-tipped fool’s hat, historically, the triangular protrusions recapitulated asses’ ears—and gaudy checkered sweater. His thumb and middle finger pinch a splayed frog that stares back at its reciprocally confounded wide-eyed captor. The tone is jocular as befits its comic protagonist. But it also recalls the morality play of Puritan theology, as exemplified by Jonathan Edwards’ sermon equating the precarity of human life to that of a spider dangling over a fire (a none too subtle analogy for the proximity of Hell). The jester and frog reappear in related sketches suggesting defeat, Untitled (Wipeout) (2022) literally spells this out—and the cap ‘n’ bells transmogrifies into a fleshy body atop a goldrimmed plate in Untitled (Mar-A-Lago) (2022), a perfectly horrible cannibalistic feast.

Opposite – Frogs 1, 2022

Exhibition runs through to July 23rd, 2022

Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Lichtenfelsgasse 5
A-1010 Vienna
Austria

www.presenhuber.com

  

WHITNEY BEDFORD – VEDUTE

Posted on 2022-05-30

The artist’s latest series brings together what she calls Vedute , a set of landscape paintings inspired by paintings by masters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – from Degas to Sérusier, Klimt or Van Gogh. As with her paintings of shipwrecks, icebergs or tropical forests, the Californian artist reappropriates this historical heritage and uses it as references for her autobiographical landscapes, contemporary allegories of social and environmental experiences.

Opposite – Veduta (Munch Red Rocks), 2022

Exhibition runs through to July 24th, 2022

Art : Concept
4, passage Sainte-Avoye
Access: gate at 8, rue Rambuteau
75003 Paris

www.galerieartconcept.com

  

TURSIC & MILLE – THE THING

Posted on 2022-05-30

Ida Tursic and Wilfried Mille have been working together since 2000, delving into the contemporary world’s overload of images to approach the question of how to paint in the present age. Known for their joyfully eccentric paintings and sculptures which combine an awareness of art history with a wide spectrum of motifs, Tursic & Mille simultaneously act within and challenge the tradition of the medium, with a playful mixture of ‘high’ and ‘low’ references. Instinctively culled from different media, especially the Internet, the elements within their work alternate as a language in themselves, or guide the viewer through scenes, reflecting on the practice of painting.

Opposite – Walter Benjamin, 2016

Exhibition runs through to August 6th, 2022

Galerie Max Hetzler
Bleibtreustraße 45
10623 Berlin
Germany

www.maxhetzler.com

  

MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO

Posted on 2022-05-30

Simon Lee Gallery is proud to announce a solo exhibition of new and recent works by Michelangelo Pistoletto. For his fifth exhibition at the gallery, the artist presents a series of mirror paintings that reflect on themes of captivity, isolation and restriction at a fractured moment in contemporary history.
Pistoletto is widely recognised as one of the most influential contemporary artists of his generation and a central figure within the Arte Povera movement. From early in his five-decade career the mirrored surface has been an instrumental element of his practice. The artist gained prominence in Italy during the 1960s and 70s against a turbulent socio-political background characterised by unstable leadership, economic downturn and social upheaval.
Amidst this tense political atmosphere, he used his art to reflect on the radical ideologies gaining currency amongst a younger generation struggling to find their place in a broken society, exploring subjects from student insurrection and incarceration to anti-government feeling and political demonstration. His mirrored surface offered the perfect vehicle to implicate agency on the behalf of the viewer, whose fleeting presence in the work vacillates between active participant and passive spectator. This critical attitude is by no means isolated in Pistoletto’s practice, which has continued to function as a zealous site for political interrogation to the present day.

Opposite – Donna che guarda attraverso le sbarre, 2018

Exhibition runs through to July 2nd, 2022

Simon Lee Gallery
12 Berkeley Street
W1J 8DT
London

www.simonleegallery.com

  

DAVIDE SGAMBARO – NOPE!

Posted on 2022-05-23

The exhibition consists of four bodies of work that form a single narrative and explore the limits an individual has when confronted to precarious situations. Using an irreverent tone, Davide Sgambaro invites us to face playful scenarios with sculptures and installations relating to the world of entertainment, idleness and to certain clichés linked to youth.

Thanks to the irony always present in his work, which contrasts with a certain melancholy, Davide Sgambaro creates intriguing narrative paradoxes that can depict extreme and precarious situations by evoking memories and common imaginaries.

Opposite – Père, pardonne-leur car ils ne savent pas ce qu’ils font…, 2022 (2016)

Exhibition runs through to July 1st, 2022

Galerie Alberta Pane
47 Rue de Montmorency
75003 Paris

www.albertapane.com