Art : EXIT

JOHANNES KAHRS – SLEEP

Posted on 2020-11-30

Perception’s analysis and images’ manipulation are at the core of Johannes Kahrs’ reflection. The subjects of the German author’s artworks present themselves in all their human indecipherability, shaken by pressures and malaise: the monstrous yet familiar realism of Kahrs’ paintings provokes entangled empathy and reveals the hidden and violent side of humanity. Starting from images collected from magazines, the internet, newspapers, advertisements, amateur and feature films, but also from photographs taken by himself, Johannes Kahrs releases the image from its original context, depicting fragmented and isolated scenes and escaping a coherent narrative. By cutting the image, enlarging its details and disconnecting it from its original embedded context, the artist emphasizes the symbolic meaning of the scene to reveal its deeper and mysterious contents.

Opposite – Untitled (nose mouth eye), 2017

Exhibition runs through to January 16th, 2021

Massimo De Carlo
55 South Audley Street
W1K 2QH
London

massimodecarlo.com

AL HELD – THE SIXTIES

Posted on 2020-11-30

Focusing on paintings made in New York during the 1960s, the selection includes key works which exemplify Held’s unique exploration of hard-edge geometric abstraction. Featuring large-scale paintings and works on paper, the exhibition reveals the artist’s dedication to developing his own distinctive graphic language. As the poet Frank O’Hara saw it, Held was ‘one of the most controversial and powerful painters’ working in New York at that time.

The Sixties were a decade synonymous with an explosion of new styles and ideas aimed at expanding consciousness and bridging the gap between aesthetics and technology. During this period, Held became widely recognised for his individual approach to abstraction, leading fellow painter Alex Katz to comment of his 1960s works: ‘Some of them are as good as anything painted on the planet at that time.’ Held’s rigorous exploration of hard-edge geometry to distil the decade’s tumult into elemental forms and relationships resulted in two of his most well-known bodies of work: the ‘Alphabet’ paintings (1961–67) and the ‘Black and White’ paintings (1967–78).

Opposite – I Beam, 1961

Exhibition runs through to December 12th, 2020

White Cube
144-152 Bermondsey Street
SE1 3TQ
London

www.whitecube.com

SUE WILLIAMS

Posted on 2020-11-30

From her early works as feminist provocatrice, to her middle period as tongue-in-cheek expressionist and her more recent paintings that symphonize critiques of American power structures with formal and chromatic experimentation, Williams has attuned herself to the insidious and unavoidable truths that stick in the craw of our supposedly benevolent universe.

In 2020, the brutal reality of living in the waning days of American Empire has allowed Williams to consider how we might have arrived at this point. Her new paintings are suffused with images of colonial times: disembodied Pilgrim clogs, Tudor cabins, horses outfitted with blinders, the literal nuts & bolts that prefigured the industrial revolution, Betsy Ross as a dinosaur. The suggestion that America is founded on violence and manipulation, that the post-truth, post-Trump, post-COVID world is not an anomaly but a continuation of a status quo built over the past 400 years, doesn’t seem far-fetched. A painting titled “Land Of Profit and Coincidence” would resonate equally in 1620 or 2020.

Opposite – Pilgrims Progress

Exhibition runs through to January 30th, 2021

303 Gallery
555 W 21st Street
NY 10011
New York

www.303gallery.com

CHARLOTTE HERZIG – IT HAS NO NAME, SO I STYLE IT “THE WAY”

Posted on 2020-11-23

The world appears to move in rhythm, says Charlotte Herzig. Through her painting practice, she has the power to transform this intuitive feeling into a gesture and freeze it. Forms, spaces, and lines merge into bright compositions. One’s gaze becomes curious and explores the various movements found in her work.
It has no name, so I style it “The Way” is Herzig’s first solo show in Basel. For this exhibition, the artist explored different techniques to create works in varying dimensions. As in several of her exhibitions, Charlotte Herzig does not hesitate to imagine murals as multilayered, colorful environments. More than the simple immersion of the visitor in her universe, this process allows Herzig to make evident the effects of repetition in her formal vocabulary. Indeed, one can divide Herzig’s works into motifs. In the style of musical improvisation, the sequences and modules she employs set a specific tone. The mural acts as an atmospheric backdrop to the show.

Opposite – Flashback I have a Flashback, 2020

Exhibition runs through to December 12th, 2020

Wilde
37 Angensteinerstrasse
CH – 4052 Basel
Switzerland

wildegallery.ch

BRIAN CALVIN – WAITING

Posted on 2020-11-23

Faces abound, energizing the first and second floor galleries with hyperbolic color, mosaic eyes, and varnished lips. The cool neutrality of their expressions brings an equal and opposite force; a stillness to the space. Otherworldly as they are, this group of 23 new works cannot be untangled from the time within which they were created. These paintings were born out of the global pandemic, which brought life as normal to a halt.

Life as a painter in Ojai, California, is solitary. The isolation of the Ojai Valley provides a lifestyle that dovetails nicely with Calvin’s daily painting process. However with the forced suspension of his routine due to the lockdown, isolation took on a new meaning. It presented time to reexamine self-imposed boundaries in his work, including what it means to paint a figure.

Opposite – Committee, 2020

Exhibition runs through to December 5th, 2020

Anton Kern Gallery
91 Walker Street
10013
New York

www.antonkerngallery.com