RICHTER PORTRAITS

Posted on 2009-03-02

Gerhard Richter Portraits is the first major exhibition to show a selection of Richter’s portraits across the entire span of his career. (Opposite Gilbert and George by Gerhard Richter 1975) Dating from the 1960s to the present, it includes important early black-and-white paintings made from magazine photographs, works based on private snapshots, a special installation of his celebrated series 48 Portraits, and a never-previously exhibited portrait of his daughter Ella.
Richter is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading contemporary artists, a complex figure whose work from the early 1960s has moved between photographically derived figurative imagery and brightly coloured abstract painting.

From the outset portraiture has been a key aspect of Richter’s art but until now exhibitions of his art have focused on the wider sweep of his activity including his abstract work and, as a result, the richness of his portraits has been neglected. This exhibition represents a major advance in the understanding and appreciation of the artist’s achievement by examining his portraits in detail. The exhibition will comprise around 35 key paintings lent from major international public and private collections. Organised chronologically, Gerhard Richter Portraits will also highlight particular themes that focus on the sources of Richter’s imagery in order to draw out the artist’s principal preoccupations and main lines of development. These themes include The Most Perfect Picture (which focuses on Richter’s early use of photographs from newspapers and magazines), Devotional Pictures (which examines his use of amateur photographs from family albums), Persistent Uncertainty, (the exhibition’s central section in which the photographic sources of Richter’s imagery are progressively obscured and manipulated), Art History, (focusing on images of Richter’s associations within the art world), and Private Images, Personal Portraits (in which the artist’s preoccupation with his family and his own image take centre stage).

The exhibition runs until May 31st 2009

The National Portrait Gallery
St Martin’s Place
London
WC2H 0HE

www.npg.org.uk

   Tweet

HYPE, HUSTLE, RIP-OFF

Posted on 2009-02-23

Bill McMullen’s work is at the locus of control between contemporary culture’s learned helplessness and mass production’s planned obsolescence. The seduction of immediate consumption, along with its resulting hand-to-mouth futurism, are analyzed by McMullen as one half civics lesson and one half the jouissance of the advertising age running its ultimate course. The tail-eating snake that hides in this era’s economic deluge becomes McMullen’s inspirational void from which both political and artistic action springs forth.

Hype, Hustle, Rip-Off is more than just a critical look at the learned obsolescence and planned helplessness of Post-Cold War capitalism. It is a glimpse at the post-pop art world’s potential trajectory—beyond the simple needs of political poster simulacra branding, venal location based parochialism, and the corporate shilling that uses a contrived cloak of cosmopolitan surrealism. McMullen’s work ultimately resonates because it does more than brand, copy, market, and elevate, since he understands that all of these actions are mutually exclusive.

The exhibition runs until the 28th of March 2009

The Constant Gallery
2673 S. La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles
CA
90034

www.theconstantgallery.com

   Tweet

KINETIC ART FAIR

Posted on 2009-02-23

Robotic, sound and solar sculptures, mechanical writing machines, laser and subliminal installations are just some of the incredible exhibits at Kinetica Art Fair, the world’s first art fair dedicated to kinetic, robotic, sound, light and time-based art. Carnivorous art, man-animal-machine hybrids, mechanical drawing machines, subliminal installations, pole dancing robots, light sculptures and cybernetics are just some of the exhibits to be found at Kinetica Art Fair, the UK’s first art fair dedicated to kinetic, robotic, sound, light and time based art which opens in London on Friday 27 February.

More than 25 galleries and organisations specialising in kinetic, electronic and new media art are taking part with over 150 exhibiting artists. The Fair will be like no other with living, moving, speaking and performing art. The Fair provides unparalleled opportunities for the public and collectors alike to view and buy work from this thriving international movement and to participate in the programme of talks, workshops and performances. Kinetic art is art that has a life of it’s own. Pioneered by world famous artists such as Maholy Nagy, Jean Tinguely, Marcel Duchamp and Alexander Calder during the early 1900s, modern contemporary kinetic and electronic artworks utilise and warp technology itself, to explore, nurture and comment on our evolutionary processes and challenge scientific and universal exploration.

The exhibition runs until the 2nd of March 2009

P3
35 Marylebone Road
London
NW1 5LS

www.kinetica-artfair.com

   Tweet

THE LONG WAY HOME

Posted on 2009-02-23

Honor Fraser is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by KAWS. (Featured opposite, Kurf (Tangle) 2009, Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 96 inches)

The Brooklyn-based artist will be presenting new painting and sculptural work in his first solo show in Los Angeles. KAWS’ technique acts as a sieve of modern culture, filtering and re-contextualizing the images and information that he comes in contact with daily. His process is all encompassing, embracing popular culture and the visual landscape of the familiar. The work can be thought of as an overarching brand; however it is also immediate and organic. This energetic immediacy can be felt in the selection of works that he is presenting. New large paintings included in the exhibition feature his usual cross-section of familiar cultural icons painted with precise execution. The resulting pieces feature the trademark graphic quality inherent in his work. A large life-size Chum acts as a sentry in the space, watching over the works while also playing with scale and proportion.

KAWS roots began as a graffiti artist in the early 1990s, and since then he has built an identity that had its genesis in guerilla imagery added to billboards and bus shelters. He converts familiar visuals into affronting works of art. Through his company OriginalFake he has released limited edition works. He has also collaborated on design projects with Commes Des Garcons, Marc Jacobs, and A Bathing Ape. Most recently he has worked with Kanye West to create the cover art for Kanye’s current album. This reworking of popular culture has grown KAWS into a multi-faceted, multi-pronged endeavor that has ventured into the realm of contemporary art. KAWS situates himself at the crossroads of media and art; a vanguard in the new frontier of the 21st century artistic discourse.

The exhibition runs until the 4th of April 2009

Honor Fraser Gallery
2622 s. la cienega boulevard
Los Angeles
California
90034

www.honorfraser.com

   Tweet

LE CORBUSIER

Posted on 2009-02-18

Le Corbusier – The Art of Architecture at Barbican Art Gallery is the first major survey in London of the internationally renowned architect in more than 20 years. This timely reassessment charts how the work of Le Corbusier – a pseudonym of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris – changed dramatically throughout his career. Spanning a period of 60 years the exhibition includes early works inspired by his native Switzerland, the iconic white cubic buildings of the 1920s such as the famous Villa Savoye (1928-31) and culminating in the late works of the 1950s and 60s of which the Chapel of Ronchamp (1950-55) and the buildings for the Indian city of Chandigarh (1952-64) are key examples.

The exhibition focuses on Le Corbusier’s unique multi-disciplinary approach, and brings together a wealth of his paintings, films, sculpture and books alongside vintage photographs, original architectural models and interior settings. It also features important works by his collaborators and artistic contemporaries such as furniture designers Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé, and artists Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant.

The exhibition runs until 21st May 2009

Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London
EC2Y 8DS

www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery

   Tweet

FUTURISM

Posted on 2009-02-18

One hundred years after the publication in Le Figaro on February 20 1909 of the Futurist Manifesto, signed by the ‘jeune poète italien’ Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection celebrates this revolutionary avant-garde movement with the exhibition Masterpieces of Futurism at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, curated by Philip Rylands, director of the Venetian museum (from February 18 through 2009). The exhibition also serves as an homage to the foresight of Gianni Mattioli, one of the great collectors of 20th century art, who accumulated a comprehensive presence of Futurism in his collection. This includes works by Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Gino Severini, Ottone Rosai, Mario Sironi and Ardengo Soffici.

Masterpieces of Futurism at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents key paintings of the movement such as Materia and Dynamism of a Cyclist by Boccioni, Mercury Passing Before the Sun by Balla, The Galleria of Milan by Carrà, Blue Dancer by Severini, three works from Peggy Guggenheim’s collection (Severini’s Sea = Dancer, Balla’s Abstract Speed + Sound, and Boccioni’s sculpture Dynamism of a Speeding Horse + Houses), as well as loans from private collections by Balla, Boccioni, Carrà and Sironi. This will also be the debut of a recent gift to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Sironi’s early masterpiece The Cyclist (1916). The exhibition includes three of Boccioni’s four extant sculptures: in addition to the mixed media Dynamism of a Speeding Horse + Houses, bronze cast of his celebrated Development of a Bottle in Space and Unique Forms of Continuity in Space.

The exhibition runs until December 31st 2009

Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Palazzo Venier dei Leoni
701 Dorsoduro
30123 Venezia
Italy

www.guggenheim-venice.it

   Tweet