A weighty stone plinth sits on Joss Bilton’s shoulders. Bilton at once becomes an inanimate object but one that denotes power and status, a human monument. Without a face, his personality is eradicated and his body yields to the stone edifice behind him. It is a peculiar sight but one that immediately connects us to the theme of Undersong. This new show, part of Bilton’s ongoing work concerns self, body and land causes us to reflect on the significance of Portland Stone, a limestone quarried on the Portland peninsula in Dorset. Conveying a sense of power and authority, the stone was used extensively as a building material to construct many of London’s landmarks including the Bank of England and St Paul’s Cathedral. The artist considers whether it is possible to find other meanings in Portland Stone besides its usual connotations?

 

Undersong is a lyrical work incorporating sound, video and a guided walk through Hackney. It takes the viewer on an exploration of the stone through sound, sight and touch, both in the gallery and out into the cityscape. In Bilton’s video, an intense crackling sound begins as chalky hands strive to release themselves from the strictures of partially dried clay. Eventually, the crackling ceases and gives way to an eerie undercurrent of intoned voices. A clay mask is formed from the contours of the artist’s face and becomes a monument, balanced precariously on a plinth.

 

The scene changes to the site of the Albion Stone workshop where water cascades over the vast blocks of stone. A large cutting wheel saws its way through an enormous block of stone. It takes a long time to cut but implores you to see it through. Smaller stones, now audible above the din of the water clink melodically. The dedication of the work coupled with the clinking of the stones creates an almost monastic ambience. It is a very beautiful sound.

When the video closes, it is time to take a piece of Portland Stone from the gallery and follow the route to the bell tower. An audio of sounds and poetry accompanies you on your way through the crumbling grave stones where

“You
can try and read the inscriptions
by your hand, find the lip of tar
or thin edge of white paint
covering the south sur-
face or between the
two where a wild
patch of grass,
the fuck you so delicate
in biro
buries”

Extract from Cairn poem by Holly Corfield Carr

24 June – 17 September 2016 | 129 – 131 Mare Street, London E8 3RH | www.spacestudios.org.uk

The imaginative work of Hiraki Sawa appeals to a subjective mind. This exhibition invites us to contemplate the significance of memories and how they shape our identity. The artist interiorises these themes within the context of domesticity, mingling real life experiences with fictional narratives. These very personal recollections are difficult to empathise with but the aura they impart creates an immersive and sometimes uncanny experience for the viewer. Man in Camera conveys the theme of memory through film, installations, sculpture, drawings and photography.

His surreal video installation, Man in Camera situates Sawa in the context of his studio where memories infiltrate his art. Introducing his occupation as an artist, the film conveys his state of mind through recurring motifs.  A time-worn place with peeling timbers, damp walls and antiquated plumbing, the interior provides a subdued backdrop for his hand-drawn fantastical animations that pepper the scene of his activities. In Sawa’s imaginary world, pencils, lines and ladders spring to life, appearing and disappearing in a rythmical sequence that intensifies the notion of interiority. A tinkling soundtrack suggests that these recurring elements are metaphors for the artist’s creativity. The latter is symbolised by the animated whorls of an enlarged finger print that hovers over him while he works. The recurring motif appears again in his strangely contrived stamp collection of modified family photographs depicting ladders, hatched faces and strangely shrouded cars. Whereas Magritte’s shrouded faces evoke mystery, Sawa’s hatched faces reference concern for the effects of amnesia where memory is literally ‘stamped out’.

Sawa’s interest in the history of photography is evident as the exhibition continues. In his video installation, Envelope  the full-sized bodies of dancing women can be glimpsed through a large mirror on the wall acting as a portal to the developing scenario. Shadowed by their own image as they dance, the women’s conjoined skirts form a whirling hourglass. Their ghostly  doubles recall the concept of the Victorian stereoscope whereby separate images of the same scene are viewed as one three-dimensional image. The recurring theme of the candle in the film becomes an object of meditation as women with darkened faces attempt to recall lost memories.

In Sawa’s Sleeping Machine series, goats wander the cityscape like a dream sequence while cogs, dials and gauges tick away the present to form new memories. Perhaps as time erodes some memories, our identity sadly errodes with it.

 

15 July – 17 September 2016 | 18 Woodstock Street, London W1C 2AL | www.parafin.co.uk

 

 

 

LONDON

Kenji Yamada | Smurfed remain | Chelsea College of Arts
Kenji Yamada was part of the Chelsea College of Art Exchange Residency Program. Being intrigued by the Morpeth Arms’ underground basement tunnel, a new art project was formed. The public’s attraction to the live CCTV images in the former prison, made Kenji researching this kind of interaction. This week a number of talks will be projected in the tunnel, which will in turn be seen in the pub upstairs.

16 John Islip Street, SW1P 4JU Londen | July 25 – 29, 2016 | https://www.facebook.com

Collaboration In Progress | Lewisham Arthouse
Wimbledon MFA graduate Marion Phillini is the key figure in this exhibition, but is definitely not doing it on her own. Amongst her own work, she’s inviting you to be part of this ever-changing one week exhibition. This week is the outcome of an experiment on collaboration, in collaboration with Wimbledon MFA Students. Expect Digital and video installation, shifting down the blacked out project space. Growing and evolving, following the input of the audience.

140 Lewisham Way, London SE14 6PD | July 22 – 29, 2016 | http://www.lewishamarthouse.org.uk

Yuri Pattinson: User, space | Chisenhale Gallery

London based Yuri Pattinson is inspired by science fiction and Modern architecture, two opposites one would think, but it works. Resulting in an entirely new body of work, architectural sculptures and out of this world digital art. It sometimes feels like stepping into an abandoned  futuristic office. Pattinson is the produce of the 18 months Chisenhale Gallery Create Residency.

64 CHISENHALE ROAD, LONDON E3 5QZ  | July 7 – August 28, 2016 | http://chisenhale.org.uk

Babak Ghazi | Arcadia Missa

Everybody knows the feeling of spending dreamy moments in the attic/basement going through old boxes of memories. Imagine this feeling transported to a gallery space under the railway, sometimes surrounded by cute little dogs, finding boxes full of binders containing pictures of more dogs. And people. Basically Babak Ghazis life in pictures, through which the audience can create its own stories.

69 Lyndhurst Way, London SE15 4RF | July 1 – 30, 2016 | http://arcadiamissa.com
Stephane Graff: A Catalogue of Errors | Almine Rech Gallery
The works by Stephane Graff look like they’re spreads taken out an art catalogue. The double pages hold works by icons like Andy Warhol and Picasso. Giving it a closer look, the texts are as memorable. Combining existing visuals and words to new pairs, gave both text and image a new point of view.

11 Savile Row, 1st floor, Mayfair W1S 3PG London UK  | May 19 — July 30, 2016 | http://www.alminerech.com

 

NEW YORK

Daydream from 2013 | CANADA
Curated by Matthew Flaherty, ‘Daydream from 2013’ shows works by Sam Anderson, Olivia Erlanger, Anna Glantz, Rose Marcus, Alissa McKendrick, Marlie Mul, Libby Rothfeld. As confusing as the name of the gallery already is, the theme through the exhibition remains quite vague as well: ‘Regarding human presence and obsolescence.’ Although I have to say this sounds quite intriguing already, daydreaming always is. It means transporting yourself to another world where everything is possible. Works that are trying to translate this feeling, creating a new world all together.

333 Broome St, New York, NY 10002 | July 22 – August 26, 2016 | https://www.canadanewyork.com
Sexting | Kate Werble Gallery

The phenomena of sexting is a big thing nowadays. Sending your naked body away from the safe haven called home. Floating through to virtual space to -hopefully- end up with the right person. Carmen Winant once said “[O]ur sexts…careen through virtual networks by the millions per day”. She is one of the artists showing sexting related artwork in this exhibition. What is ‘sexting related’ art? Is it more than ‘naked body related’ art? It is when taking some of Winant’s questions in mind: “When else in history have we been both author of, and witness to, our own bodies in sex?” and “How far away can we get from ourselves?”.

83 Vandam Street, New York | July 21 – August 19, 2016 | http://www.katewerblegallery.com

Katherine Bauer: Of the Quarry Land | Microscope Gallery

This is Microscope Gallery’s second solo exhibition by Katherine Bauer. She works essentialy with 16mm film. With this series she is focusing on nature and abandoned industrial quarry, and the interaction between those two. For example the quarry has springs beneath it that were once considered sacred.

1329 Willoughby Avenue, #2B Brooklyn, NY 11237 | July 1 – August 7, 2016 | http://www.microscopegallery.com
Crystal Z Campbell and Richard Garet: SOUND 1 | Cindy Rucker Gallery
Sound 1 is the first of two exhibitions exploring sound as a medium to create art. In stead of entering a gallery filled with visual arts, the art is more hidden here. The few microphones and headphones we see are not the work, only the messenger. A certain tension is created, imagine entering a dark room where you can only hear sounds, knowing that in a few seconds the light will turn on and you will see where that sound is coming from. Feel the tingeling tention yet? Crystal Z Campbell fuses historical narratives with contemporary issues and Richard Garret’s work brings -accidental- background sounds in the limelight.

141 Attorney Street, New York, NY 10002 | July 19 -August 12, 2016 | http://www.cindyruckergallery.com

Tarantallegra | Hester
Be ready to enter a room full of organic wooden shapes. Those are not the sculptures or art work, but the pedestals, definitely contributing to the work itself. Once you’re past the wonders of the overall look, it’s time to dig deeper. You will find yourself in between curiosities, treasures and quirky artefacts.. Sculptures, drawings, collages, even pieces of clothes seemingly random, but oh so perfect in he whole composition.

July 7 – august 7, 2016 | 55-59 CHRYSTIE ST, SUITE 203, NEW YORK, NY 10002 | http://hester.nyc

The work of Sam Austen, Marte Eknaes and Andrew Mealor combines in an absorbing new exhibition at Laure Genillard in London. The group show is curated by Hana Noorali and Lynton Talbot and comprises sculptural works, video installations, found objects and unconventional interior detailing. Embellished or unmodified, mundane objects and dull corners find their moment, linking interior with exterior and gallery with grime. Consequently, meanings blur as irreverent materials and some less familiar items are displaced from their usual contexts and associations which together or on their own produce unexpected scenarios.

The show opens with Sam Austen’s ‘Somehow Eaten in the Dark’, a striking video installation of clipped wire fragments that systematically build, double-up and disappear. Intermittent strobing jars the eye as his harmonious barbs seek order from an entangled mass. Things soon turn sickly, though as the wires begin to enmesh impudent slogans, and poke through goo. As the exhibition progresses, Austen’s scaffolding of wiry filaments form larger structures in empathy with concurrent themes.

 

Marte Eknaes is inspired by escalators, plastic bollards and bristles on revolving doors. Here, bristles from her loaded toothbrush oscillate a whirling pattern of curly hairs. The busy motif continues in Angel Pubes where her eccentric aluminium wall coverings enliven a store cupboard door. Downstairs, the artist’s humour turns sour. Overbearing and ominous, two dark inflatable rings carry warnings for summer fun. Further on, a flaccid yellow tube wriggles its chemical contents to stave off an imminent disaster. Andrew Mealor’s battered cabinet has been  carelessly left unlocked. A seepage of spilt chemicals kill the company Christmas tree as they merge towards the ‘sock’.

 

9 July – 3 September 2016 | Laure Genillard Gallery, 2 Hanway Place, London W1T 1HB | www.lglondon.org

LONDON
I Found This Supernova In Your Summer House | The Dot Project
How does summer look like? Hot? Dreamy? Steamy? Both Goia Mujalli and George Rouy do quite good at translating the summer into art. Their dual painting show bring our favourite season in one room. The reference to a supernova can be seen as an explosion in the vivid images, as though they could never be still, but always moving. Another element their work has in common is the use of layers, as if your looking from behind a see-through screen, observing from a distance.

94 FULHAM ROAD, LONDON, SW3 6HS | July 7 – August  31 | http://thedotproject.com/exhibitions
Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick | Somerset House

Film makers, musicians and  contemporary artists have been been invited to respond to Kubrick’s work. A scene, a movie, a character influences new artistic creations. Certainly not to be missed is the VR installation, transporting you to the 2001:A Space Odyssey Space Capsule. No worries even without the VR glasses you’ll be part of Kubrick’s interior, if you recognise the carpet. The exhibition is supported by Mrs. Kubrick.

 

Strand, London WC2R 1LA | 6 July – 24 August 2016 | http://www.daydreamingwith.com | https://www.somersethouse.org.uk
JIM HODGES | STEPHEN FRIEDMAN GALLERY
Not only his work is eye candy, also the way his paintings, drawings and sculptures are presented. Stepping in a black room where the only light comes from tree paintings, surely gives you the feeling of being in a mysterious forest. Alone, and surrounded by green. All contributing to the theme of time, fragility and temporality, expressed through concepts of nature.
11 Old Burlington Street, London | June 10 – July 23, 2016 | http://www.stephenfriedman.com/
JEFF GILLETTE: POST DISMAL | LAWRENCE ALKIN GALLERY

The artist that prefers Dismaland over Disneyland exists, and no it’s not Banksy. The so called ‘demusement park’ was originally inspired by the work of Jeff Gillette, because it shared a similar theme overthrow of disney and its characters, as Banksy had in mind. Now the roles are reversed when Gillette shows 15 paintings, inspired by Dismaland. Although he has been creating this kind of post-apocalyptic scenes (and visiting them) for over 20 years now, this is his first UK solo show.

42 New Compton Street, London WC2H 8DA |June 24 – July 23, 2016 | http://www.lawrencealkingallery.com
MIKE DARGAS | Opera Gallery
German artist Mike Dargas isn’t a photographer, but a painter. His work might trick you with it’s extreme realistic details and precision. His large scale portraits all have a certain sensuality over them, mostly created by unidentified liquids flooding his subjects faces. This might not sound as sensual as it looks, but believe me it’s true.

134 New Bond Street, London W1S 2TF | July 6 – 20, 2016 | http://www.operagallery.com
NEW YORK
The Female Gaze, Part Two: Women Look At Men

The female gaze: part one, was ‘Women looking at women’ in 2009. With “Would we react different if portraits were made by men?” as the main question. Women are often seen as the oppressed, which results in feminist art, by strong independent female artists. This exhibition is taking a step further. 32 women fix their gaze on men and translate it in paintings, photographs and sculptures, making them ‘the oppressed’. Intimidating? Not really. Interesting? Yes. Mostly surprising that artworks still have to be read through the artist, and not be judged on the quality of the work itself. This exhibition shows some inspiring and innovative artworks, that should be the reason to give it a look.
547 WEST 25TH STREET NEW YORK, NY 10001 | June 23 – September 2, 2016 | http://www.cheimread.com
MELODRAMA, ACT 2: NEW YORK | LUXEMBOURG & DAYAN

Melodrama, is taking place in the London (Act one) and New York (Act two) gallery of Luxembourg & Dayan. A melodramatic play composed by six sculptures, a series of photographs, and one video. Amongst the characters are Vincenzo Gemito’s 19th century wax Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi and Jeff Koons’ Italian Woman, demonstrating their lifelong drama since departed. Another pair going hand in hand are Urs Fischer’s ‘Foxtrot’ and Richard Serra’s Hand Catching Lead. This chair sculpture and black and white video are crossing two- and three-dimensional media, ‘instigating a movement between grounding and uncertainty’.

64 EAST 77TH STREET NEW YORK NY 10075 | 14 JULY – 17 SEPTEMBER 2016 | http://www.luxembourgdayan.com
SCHOOL’S OUT! | MIKE WEISS GALLERY

School’s out! Freedom! What does this mean to artists Deborah Brown, Thrush Holmes, Jerry Kearns and Liao Yibai? For them it is playfully breaking from the ordinary and letting the imagination run wild. Their works also have a certain innocent childish expression, which gives the title more meaning than just a link to freedom.

 

520 West 24th Stree, NY | June 28 – August 8, 2016 | http://www.mikeweissgallery.com

No Free Tax Art Month | 247365

Artists Gavin Brown, Leah Guadagnoli, Henry Gunderson, Scott Keightley, Nathaniel de Large, Christina Leung, Molly Lowe, Raúl De Nieves, Walter Price, Benjamin Reiss bring contemporary sculptures, paintings, mixed media to the traditional gallery space. Sculptures on white pedestals, paintings on white walls. Vibrant and fresh, as if they want to rip loose from the classic setting. The American patriotic poster contradicts the dreamy sugarcoated art.

57 Stanton St. NY 10002 |July 1 – 31, 2016 | http://twentyfourseventhreesixtyfive.biz
Radical Plastic: Curated by Rachel Reese | Cue Art Foundation
‘Radical Plastic: Curated by Rachel Reese’, is the winning selection from 2015-2016 call for curatorial projects. Rachel Reese is the founder of ‘Possible Projects’ in Brooklyn and brings now together artists Becca Albee, Carolyn Carr, Catherine Czacki, Rachel Debuque, Carson Fisk-Vittori, Michelle Grabner, Mia Goyette, Ria Roberts, and Carolyn Salas. The exhibition’s themes are the problematics of bodies and gender based constructs. This is hard to find when giving the works a first look, it is more in the way they are constructed. The crossed identity of the in-betweens is expressed by crossing media and subjects.

137 West 25th Street, Ground Floor, NY 10001 | July 16 – August 20, 2016 | http://cueartfoundation.org

When Laure Prouvost woke up to find her Stong Sory Vegetables had fallen from the sky she was imagining things. This time the artist’s humble legumes have tumbled below stairs to join a medley of curiosities at Found, a new show curated by Cornelia Parker for the Foundling Museum in London. The exhibition is about the significance of the found object, an entity that has fired the imagination and re-kindled the memories of more than sixty artists. The curator gave them one condition, “In order for something to be ‘found’, it has to be at some point in its history been ‘lost’ ’’.

Fading on the wall above mildewed playing cards is Vicky Parson’s unframed painting depicting a scrap of yellow blanket. Bright on one side and worn on the other, it is a timely reminder of the ‘tokens’ or scraps of fabric given by fallen women who gave up their babies to the Foundling Hospital, which is now the museum. The other half of the token was retained by the mother to present as proof on her return, if her situation became more favourable. The archives of the Museum are filled with these tiny scraps.

Phyllida Barlow’s painted household rubbish embodies the found object as an artist’s material. In fact, Mona Hatoum created her fine wire sculptures when no other material was to hand. As the exhibition progresses, it becomes apparent that the idea of the ‘found’ object becomes more subjective, even in the way of finding yourself or even love. What started as a plausible statement, now becomes blurred in the myriad of found definitions that these artists unearth. Was Dorothy Cross’s Tube Worm Bottle with strange, fossilised tentacles once lost? Or was its barnacled body just a discarded item? Found suddenly becomes an absorbing subject.

Artwork either contains found items or is simply deemed as ‘found’ because the artists have re-discovered their pieces years later. With that revelation, they have discovered a new meaning or story. John Smith reveals a very poignant narrative in Dad’s Stick, an item that he kept all his life as a souvenir after redundancy. His found ruler revealed much about his father’s mind-set.

An object’s initial discovery is a moment treasured by Jeff McMillan. His Man with a Necktie was top and tailed in paint to partially conceal the image from the viewer. Likewise, Tacita Dean’s reversed her purchased embroidery to hide its words and present a new story for her Found Fortress. Some found objects have less appeal, such as a lost strand of hair drooping under a bit of Cello tape. Once lustrous and bouncy on a woman’s head, perhaps it ended up in her soup.

40 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ | May 27 – September 4, 2016 | www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk

A sudden deluge of rain ushers in unsuspecting visitors to the gallery. Inside, it is quiet and dry but smells faintly of tobacco. The faint aroma draws the patter of wet footsteps towards a high shelf where a strange Heath Robinson style contraption pumps smoke from a Toscano cigar. Massimo Bartolini’s new exhibition begins here, taking its name from a famous place in London known as Golden Square. Enthused by its fascinating history, the sculptor develops his extraordinary findings in an unusual and evocative way. The real Golden Square is bound to a gloomy and desperate time in London’s history for beneath this oasis, in the hubbub of Soho lies a mass grave for victims of the Black Death. A temporary homage to this melancholy narrative, Bartolini’s new works impart an ecclesiastical and otherworldly quality. Grey, stately and respectful, the ghostly ambience of this transient mausoleum is broken only by the dulcet sounds of a vinyl record, playing beneath a golden cube. The sculptor has made mechanical pieces before, in particular Afterheart, a curious organ which plays a melodic and haunting tune.

Vast like a tomb and central to the space is Georgius. On first sight, its irregularity simply resembles geographical features until the story unfolds. Haphazardly carved from a marble slab, it is a tribute to an undervalued aspect of the sculptor’s artistry, the base of a statue where a form begins. This idea connects to Golden Square’s George II outside, a statue of painted lead weathered through rain and time. Bartolini deliberately leaves what he describes as ‘footnotes’ or particular pieces that bare no relation to one another. Oddly, they do connect via a strong pervading theme of past human activity and departing souls present in a trail of empty birdcages, dust-coated drawings and blood red graffiti.

25 May – 30 July 2016 | 17 – 18 Golden Square, London W1F 9JJ
http://www.frithstreetgallery.com

(The exhibition, Golden Square also continues at 60, Soho Square, London)

LONDON

David Hockney: 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life | Royal Academy of Arts

Remember picture day, where the photographer stands behind his camera, ready to push the button hundreds of times. Every single student in the same chair, in the same pose, but each with a different story. CLICK. next. CLICK, next. Looks like Hockney went through a similar proces. His portraits show 82 people in the same chair, people who were in his life the last two years. New work that is as colourful and breathtaking as his old work.

Burlington House, Piccadilly London W1J 0BD | July 2 –  October 2, 2016 | http://www.artfund.org

Peter Howson: A Survey of Prints | Flowers Gallery

These sturdy, dark drawings are quite the opposite from what we just saw from Hockney. Peter Howson also chooses to portray people in his lithographs, focussing on the underdog types. Work from over four decades will be presented at the Flowers Gallery, including his Bosnian war works.

 

21 Cork Street, London W1S 3LZ | July 6 – August 6, 2016 | http://www.flowersgallery.com

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE | Tate Modern

Although she made her debut  about one century ago, Georgia O’Keeffe’s vibrant flower paintings still look very contemporary. We all know her as the woman that stood strong in a world of male painters, and it’s definitely a unique chance to see her work, since it’s the only in public collections in the UK, for now.

Bankside, London SE1 9TG | JULY 6 – OCTOBER 30, 2016 | http://www.tate.org.uk

ALMA HASER: COSMIC SURGERY | The photographers’ gallery

Another portraits series, this time by German born Alma Haser. She makes stunning collages, using special origami techniques. Small adjustments give the subjects in these soft sober portraits an over worldly vibe.

 

16 – 18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW | 8 July – 14 August 2016 | http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk

MIKE MEIRÉ OUTSIDE THE VISIBLE | Bartha Contemporary

The Bartha Contemporary shows a solo exhibition by German Mike Meiré. Expect everyday objects from an artist’s point of view, translated through classic art media: paintings and sculptures. For example this newspaper in bronze shows the beauty of its simple yet elegant shape.

25 Margaret Street  London W1W 8RX  | July 8 – October 17, 2016 | http://www.barthacontemporary.com

NEW YORK

Rodney McMillian: Landscape Paintings | MoMa PS1

What does Rodney McMilian need to put class & identity and gender & sexuality to the question? Nothing more than twelve bedsheet paintings, and one video. The second hand fabrics hold their own stories, which is an important detail for the artist. They have a soul and a past, giving a certain power to the non visual side of the works.

 

22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, NY | April 3 – August 29, 2016 | http://momaps1.org

Beauty―Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial

 

The fifth Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial brings us design in all its formats: fashion, architecture and even some tech (game) design. 63 designers stick together for this years Beauty themed edition. The title refers to the shiny materials designers ought to use.

 

2 East 91st St, New York, NY, 10128 | Until August 21 | http://www.cooperhewitt.org

Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive | MoMa

Frank Lloyd wright, the designer who was always experimenting with new techniques and embracing the ever evolving technology, was so eager that MoMa can now present us over 450 of his works. Arching different media, put next to each other and taking the best out of this enormous archive.

11 West 53 Street, New York | June 12 – October 1, 2017 | http://moma.org

SUMMER ANAGRAM | NURTUREart

It keeps raining summer exhibitions, a fact that can confuse, and apparently so can ’Summer Anagram’. “You shouldn’t think to much about it”, is what NURTUREart suggests. This show is put together with the sumerfeeling on top of the mind. Easy, breezy, but an ever high quality.

With works from Cortney Andrews, Courtney Childress, Theresa Daddezio, Amanda Friedman, Rachel Phillips and Cheon Pyo Lee. Curated by Marco Antonini.

56 Bogart Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206 | July 1 – August 28, 2016 | http://nurtureart.org

The Woman Destroyed | PPOW Gallery

A group exhibition named after Simone de Beauvoir’s 1967 book, showing work of  Elizabeth Glaessner, Lauren Kelley, David Mramor, Allison Schulnik, Jessica Stoller and Robin F. Williams. The approach to woman and feminism found in the book, is brought into their artworks. That is what connects them, keeping a interesting mix.

535 West 22nd Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10011 | June 30 – July 29, 2016 | http://www.ppowgallery.com

Vibration of Space focuses on the painting of Patrick Heron, Nicholas de Staël, Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages, British and European artists working within the style of lyrical abstraction after the Second World War. These artists sought to find new ways to define pictorial space through their bold gestural brushstrokes, emotive use of colour and textural application of paint. The exhibition opens with Hartung’s frenzied mark-making reminiscent of nought and crosses. A distant watery light beyond the earthy brown foreground evokes a strong sense of depth suggestive of a landscape.

 

Heron, also an art critic, was initially sceptical about the emerging work of American abstract expressionists, regarding it as prescribed and lacking spontaneity. He believed that content was an important ingredient in non-figurative work and that an illusion of depth and form could be conveyed by colour.

Square Leaves was his first attempt at abstraction, a painting in predominantly neutral colours in which thick slicks of paint give the impression of depth on the canvas. In the mid-1950s, Heron returned to live in Zennor in Cornwall, an area of rugged landscape where he grew up. He began to experiment with abstracted forms by painting wide stripes in autumnal hues. These works covered the entire canvas in a carnival of vivid tangerine, mauve and lime green. At the time, his stripe paintings were regarded by some as too simplistic, and as one critic remarked ‘many of the canvases contain nothing but…bands of colour’.

 

The illusion of depth is more successful in Green on Blacks 1956 in which shades of turquoise and terracotta are glimpsed behind a cascade of dark dripping streaks of paint. White Vertical May 1956 alludes to an over-painted door that attempts to conceal the cracks and scrapes of its perpetual use.

 

The artists’ preoccupation with the materiality of the paint prevails throughout the exhibition. This is evident in the heavy black statements apparent in the work of Soulages and the delicate impastoed surface of de Staël’s breezy seascape. Whether overbearing, familiar or nostalgic, these particular paintings both impart a strong sense of place.

 

 

Vibration of Space: Patrick Heron, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, Nicolas de Staël  is at Waddington Custot Galleries, 25 May – 9 July 2016 www.waddingtoncustot.com

 

 

 

 

LONDON

ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES | ICA

In this exhibition, connections between 80s-90s art and design in the UK are explored. The main artist here is Judy Blame, other works on display are by artists who were inspired by him or linked to him. Linked in both a personal and artistic way. Works range from film to graphic design and photography.

Charles Atlas, Dave Baby, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Malcolm Garrett, Derek Jarman, Barry Kamen, Jim Lambie, Mark Lebon, Linder, John Maybury, Jamie Reid, Peter Saville, Juergen Teller, Trojan, Nicola Tyson and Tim Noble & Sue Webster.

The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH | June 29 – September 4, 2016 | www.ica.org.uk

HUNTING SEASON | GEDDES GALLERY

The Geddes Gallery is a POP UP gallery in what was previous ‘K C Continental’, the local Italian Deli of artist Jim Geddes. Exhibitions there are always very short, yet very powerful. For ‘Hunting season’ they chose to show a mix of video, sculptures and paintings.

Andrew Saunders, Flora Grosvenor-Stevenson, Wes Gilpin, Jordan Mouzouris & Andrew Wyatt, Thomas Jon Walker , Cecelia Johnson, Joe Richardson , George Bularca 

26 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DT | 27 – 29 June, 2016 | geddesgalleryblog.com

MARK GROTJAHN: PINK COSCO | GAGOSIAN GALLERY

 

Mark Grotjahn has practices various styles during his career. In ‘Pink Cosco’, visitors see a series of large-scale masks. These painted (predominantly yellow and pink) bronze sculptures present tall stretched faces, complete with date. Because there is always a certain time or history connected to a work or object, no matter the style.

20 Grosvenor Hill, London W1K 3QD | June 24 – September 17, 2016 | www.gagosian.com

LEWIS TEAGUE WRIGHT: YEAH WE SELL HALF PINTS, BUT YOU HAVE TO ORDER TWO | WESTMINSTER WASTE

Westminster Waste isn’t only a recycling station, but also an art gallery. Their current show is a solo exhibition of Lewis Teague Wright. Just like his long titles, his work contains a lot of humor. No obvious clowny slapstick humor, but combining found objects with metal and wood into smart, simple sculptures.

Ilderton Wharf, Rollins St. London SE15 1EP | June 25 – July 5, 2016 | www.westminsterwaste.biz

ART BELOW | The Tabernacle

Submissions for this 10th year of ‘Art Below’ had been extended because of its grand succes. In the end the organisation made a good selection of emerging and established international artists. All selected works are on view in the Tabernacle (originally built as a church), and also pictured on billboards across London tube stations.

Nasser Azam, Jim Anderson, Louise Barrett, Holly Carlson, Olly Chaplin, Noah Da Costa, Anthony Ferreira, Nina Fowler, Carne Griffiths, Keith Haynes, Natalie Ioannou, Antoon Knaap, Robert Lee Davis, Anson Liaw, Alex Lovell, James Mylne, Ernesto Romano, Eloise Wall, Amanda Wigglesworth, Kerry Zacharia

June 28 – July 3, 2016 | 34-35 Powis Square, London W11 2AY | www.artbelow.org.uk

NEW YORK

STUDIO JOB MAD HOUSE | MAD MUSEUM

Studio Job was originally founded in 2000 in Antwerp, Belgium. Conceived uniquely for MAD, this artist couple is bringing an immersive installation which contains art objects, furniture, sculpture, lighting, interiors, and wall and floor coverings, to New York. Interdisciplinary pieces that are difficult to put in one specific category, creating the modern version of a cabinet of curiosities.

JEROME AND SIMONA CHAZEN BUILDING, 2 COLUMBUS CIRCLE, NEW YORK, NY 10019 | March 22 – August 21, 2016 | madmuseum.org
PUBLIC, PRIVATE, SECRET | ICP Museum

The premiere ‘New Museum of Contemporary art’ has new neighbours: ICP Museum. ‘Public, Private, Secret’ is their premiere exhibition. Curator Charlotte Coton brings together artists that explore privacy in visual culture, with familiar (some surprising) names as Kim Kardashian, Andy Warhol, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman and other promising active artists like Natalie Bookchin (video) and Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin (gelatin silver prints). The exhibition should be seen as a physical experience.

250 Bowery, New York, NY 10012 | June 23, 2016 – January 8, 2017 | www.publicprivatesecret.org

SCREENS SERIES: AGNIESZKA POLSKA | New Museum of Contemporary arts

Just like its new neighbour, The New Museum brings a wind of change. ‘Screens Series’ is introduced: every Wednesday video works by emerging contemporary artists are screened.
On now are Agnieszka Polska’s dreamlike films.

235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002  | June 29 – August 3, 2016 | www.newmuseum.org

WHO WILL WEAR MY TEETH AS AMULETS? | MOTEL

In collaboration with BunkClub (BE), Motel hosts a solo exhibition of Aline Bouvy. Drawings, digital paintings, photography  and sculptures represent details of the human body in a non classical way. The work feels very personal, yet universal.

1078 Dekalb Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11221 | June 25 -July 24, 2016 | bkmotel.org
BJÖRN MEYER-EBRECHT: PLACES FOR PEOPLE | STUDIO10

Another solo exhibition, this time with work of Björn Meyer-Ebrecht. Collage-like large scale ink drawings, copying found images of public architecture, where tape functions as a barrier between them.

56 Bogart Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206 | June 17 – July 17, 2016 | studio10bogart.com

LONDON

RA School Show 2016 | RA Schools Studios

Exams are finished and summer is in sight, starting of with the Art School Show season.
One you can’t miss is the Royal Art Academy’s Final Student’s exhibition.
Every year The Academy selects a maximum of 17 students, who once a year open their studios to show paintings, sculptures, installations, videos and performances. This is the perfect opportunity to spot upcoming talent at the beginning of their career.
Burlington House, Piccadilly,

London, W1J 0BD | 23 June — 3 July 2016 | https://www.royalacademy.org.uk

S.T.A.T.E. | The Drawing Room

This solo exhibition by Viktor Timofeev shows installations based on digital aspects going from interactive games to digital generated images or performances. S.T.A.T.E. is the 2003 title given by Timofeev to the installations and the drawings that were the basics of these inventions. S.T.A.T.E. is a psychological platform and will remain the title of Timofeev’s oeuvre through its development.

Unit 8 Rich Estate, 46 Willow Walk, London SE1 5SF | 19 June – 14 August 2016 | https://drawingroom.org.uk

Making & Unmaking | Camden Arts Centre

This exhibition is the last one in a series of artist-selected shows. Making & Unmaking is curated by  fashion designer Duro Olowu, and contains a combination of antique textiles with his own fabric designs. In total more than 70 artists from over the world are represented, producing an eclectic mix of colours and cultures, carefully curated. At the same time influences that can be found in his own work.

Arkwright Rd, London NW3 6DG | June 19 – September 18, 2016 | http://www.camdenartscentre.org

Undergraduate Summer Show 2016 | Wimbledon College of Arts

Another Art School show. There are so many of them, but we kept it down to these two, very promising looking exhibitions. This time it shows the work of BA students in sculpture, costume design, painting and print. More information about the presented courses can be found on their website.

Merton Hall Road London, SW19 3QA | June 16 – 25, 2016 | http://events.arts.ac.uk

In Darkness, Light | The Print Space

A series of photographies by Lawrence Watson show the faces of several victims of addiction. The portraits are the result of a collaboration with charity Spitalfields Crypt Trust. Raw black and whit images reflect the thoughts and life of these people, not that much different from who we are.

74 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DL | June 17 – 27, 2016 | http://blog.theprintspace.co.uk

NEW YORK

Long Lasting Loveliness | MOIETY 

Long Lasting Loveliness is a collaboration between sound artist Cammisa Buerhaus and fine arts artist Lia Lowenthal. It still is a mystery how the exhibition exacty looks like, all we can say is it’s compared with the presence and absence of the language of consumption as a ghost, translated in piano music.

166 NORTH 12TH STREET, WILLIAMSBURG BROOKLYN  | June 18 – July 17, 2016 | http://moiety.nyc

Tony Oursler: Imponderable | MoMa

Imponderable is a film, a 5D experience containing the  intersection of technological advancements and spirit world over the last two centuries.
This experience goes back to a technique called Pepper’s ghost: the 19 century version of the now known hologram, that made 2pac and Michael Jackson come back to life.
In this film many great actors (Kim Gordon is one of them) represent famous characters and Oursler’s family members. Imponderable is in conjunction with ‘Tony Oursler: The Imponderable Archive’ in the Center for curatorial Studies.

11 WEST 53 STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10019 |  June 18, 2016 – January 8, 2017 | http://www.moma.org

Joseph Buckley: The Demon of Regret | ISCP

Buckley showcases four new works, including writings, video and sculptures.
Influenced by both science fiction and daily -mainstream- life, Buckley’s bright coloured cartoons  come alive in the exhibition space. The space itself is seen as a battleground between two opposing but interconnecting forces.

1040 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 | June 16 – July 22, 2016 | http://iscp-nyc.org

DANNY LYON: MESSAGE TO THE FUTURE | Whitney Museum of American Art

Lyon’s message to the future is a series of street Photography and related films, where social political issues and their influence on individuals are the main subject. His motivation is to show an other view on ‘the american life’ as we know it through mainstream media. ‘Message to the Future’ is the first overal presentation of Lyon’s career in 25 years.

99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014 | June 17 – September 25, 2016 | http://whitney.org

Martin Creed: Understanding | Brooklyn Bridge Park

Martin Creed’s installation is part of ‘Art in the Park’, where both experimental and traditional art is shown in many park locations. Creed is inspired by neon road signs and advertising logos, and wants to sell a word, rather than a product. He is making people think and create an own story or interpretation behind the word. Understanding is literally seen in different perspectives when rotating with an ever changing computer-defined speed.

Pier 6, Brooklyn Bridge Park | May 24 – October 23, 2016 | http://www.publicartfund.org

Etel Adnan believes that ‘Images are not still. They are moving things. They come, they go, they disappear, they approach, they recede, and they are not even visual – ultimately they are pure feeling’. For some years, she has been painting Mount Tamalpais, a spectacular mountain that surveys the Pacific Ocean. At times, a cumulus of milky white masks its green body as rocky outcrops give way to wildflowers and waterfalls. Adnan, a Lebanese artist has lived in California for several decades and regards the mountain as an intrinsic feature of her homecoming, a static entity but an image that alters with the moods and mists of the seasons. Adnan paints Tamalpais in bold curvaceous slicks of colour using a palette knife. Sweeps of verdant green appear to float towards each other like platelets while shadows haul wedges of berry red or corn yellow over its steep slopes. The Weight of the World is not an onerous theme but one that absorbs the mystery and nature of the landscape, a place of comfort and spirituality for Adnan and one which she has personified. This exhibition is about gentle transformation rather than change, which she regards as more permanent.

 

An untitled watercolour from the 1960s reveals a smooth shape like a mountain and a curios motif, a small block that is a recurring motif in the artist’s work. Often high in the sky, its bright form is suspended like a celestial body over cellular landscapes or settlements. Recently, Adnan produced a series of small circle paintings in a myriad of bright pastels and darker hues. Visually, her cheery globes appear to pop out and in again like suns as they vie for space along the wall.

Apart from painting, Adnan is also an activist and prolific writer of literature and poetry. Many of her thoughts, poems and memories are relayed in inky text along the crisp folds of water coloured leporellos. In Barga Toscania, her mountain appears again but this time, concertina-style. A black inky outline brightens to a watery blue as her day clears.

 

Serpentine Sackler Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA |
2 June – 11 September 2016 | http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/

 

 

 

LONDON

Summer Exhibition 2016 | Royal Academy of Arts

It’s that time of the year again: RA’s annual open submission exhibition opens its doors.
This wonderful mix of established artists and new talent fill the gallery perfectly. Every possible medium is represented. Almost everyone of them is for sale, the perfect moment to invest in art. To get you fully prepared, it is now possible to browse through all (over 1,200) works online. Although the online catalogue doesn’t come with the candy pink walls, so better head over to the RA in real life.

Burlington House, Piccadilly London W1J 0BD | 13 June – 21 August 2016 | https://www.royalacademy.org.uk

Daisy Parris, Alistair Leys, Rachel Povey & Sol King | Papa Bear

Papa Bear, especially known as a retro furniture store, has now a summer pop up art space. Gallery Sensei (NY) is the first to bring art to the temporary exhibition venue. Visitors can expect works by Daisy Parris, Alistair Leys and Rachel Povey, featuring a performance by Sol King.

32 Nunhead Green, SE15 3QF London | 13 Jun 2016 – 15 Jun 2016 | https://www.facebook.com/events

Hussina Raja: 80S TO LATELY: A QUEER CELEBRATION | Rich Mix

Rich Mix, located in a former leather factory, is now hosting Hussina Raja, celebrating being queer. The world is still not there yet, as the recent Orlando attack shows. The more the word gets out, the better. Through photo, video and audio Raja shows us portraits of the everyday life of ‘the queer’. Intimate profiles from the 80’s and the next generation now. On the opening day you can enjoy readings and a performance by Raja.

35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA | JUNE 15 – 28, 2016 | https://www.richmix.org.uk

Tate Modern Opening Weekend | Tate Modern

We’ve all been waiting for this moment. After months of staring at the enormous scaffolding, building more suspense everyday, the new Tate Modern building is finally ready to open. From Friday til Sunday visitors are spoiled with visual art (of course), performances, workshops, talks and more. Visitors can become part of and experiment with performance art and on Friday there’s a late night event announced. It’s hard to find a detailed programme of the weekend, so you’ll just have to go and see.

Bankside London SE1 9TG | June 17 – 19, 2016 | http://www.tate.org.uk

Power and Architecture | Calvert 22

As part of the Power and Architecture season, Calvert 22 presents an exhibition made up of 4 parts. Artist from across the New East Region come together to show their art, going from photography to installations, architecture and film. Both artistic reflections and activation of public space. The first of four parts is titled ‘Utopia and Modernity’.

22 Calvert Avenue, EC2 7JP London | June 12 – October 9, 2016 | http://calvert22.org/

NEW YORK

Fresh Cuts | Eric firestone Gallery

Fresh Cuts is a group exhibition, dedicated to the flower as a symbol. Flowers are the symbol of many things: life, death, growth, renewal… All represented in the varying paintings and sculptures. Not the style or medium, but the subject is what holds this exhibition together.

4 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, New York, 11937 | May 28 – June 19, 2016 | http://www.ericfirestonegallery.com

Sara Murphy: How to Read a Room | Cleopatra’s

Sarah Murphy examines the relation between space and object. By combining drawings and sculptures, this New York artist translates one word or object in function of a room or space. Simple black strokes on white paper form a wireframe that holds everything in place and gives it all a certain sense.

110 Meserole Avenue, New York 11222 | May 29 – Jun 27, 2016 | http://cleopatras.us

NICOLE EISENMAN | Anton Kern Gallery

Through different drawings and one sculpture, Nicole Eisenman shows us the daily life in New York City. In this solo exhibition we will see less of the city itself and more of the inside of New York houses. Informal moments between friends and family make the visitor an observer. Paintings that could be created ages ago, if it wasn’t for certain modern or digital objects in the unique, yet recognisable scenes.

532 West 20th Street, NY 10011 | MAY 19 – JUNE 25, 2016 | http://www.antonkerngallery.com

STUART DAVIS: IN FULL SWING | Whitney Museum of American Art

Stuart Davis definitely had his say on American modernism. His abstract, yet dynamic paintings contain bold colours and are thereby, according to the artist himself, a unique piece of modernism. In his more recent work, Davis re uses the abstract shapes from his older work.
This solo exhibition is about the first to show his latest works next to the old works that served as inspiration.

99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014 | June 10 – September 25, 2016 | http://whitney.org/

George Henry Longly: We All Love Your Live | Red Bull Studios

Art and Red Bull aren’t often used in the same sentence, but the New York Red Bull Studios want to prove us otherwise. Being a ‘multidisciplinary contemporary art space’, they host George Henry Longly’s solo exhibition, inspired by the book ‘A House in Space’. Longly has created environments for all kinds of astronauts’ daily activities through sculptures, video, music and performances. Visitors become part of this new created world between ground control and space station. Seems like red Bull does give you wings.

220 W 18th Street 10011 New York | June 9 – July 31, 2016 | http://www.redbullstudiosnewyork.com

 

 

Maisie Broadhead’s theatrical portraits whisk the viewer into a liminal space where fakery and reality mingle between the Seventeenth Century and the present. Employing the device of re-enactment, she creates sophisticated photographic reconstructions of historical paintings which are both uncanny and compelling. Formerly a jewellery designer, the artist switched to photography after her success with the exhibition, Bottom Drawers during the London Design Festival. Slipped knowingly between Hogarth prints at Sir John Soane’s villa in Ealing was her own family portrait, a photographic take on the Rake’s Progress entitled She Pulled My Heir.

At this exhibition, strings of pearls mysteriously weave in and out of the portraits, either hanging their victims, controlling them like puppets or as an encumbrance to the wearer. As pearls roll out from the portraits they appear as cheap useless adornments. Broadhead’s models assume a demure and subservient pose, capturing well the lack of empowerment for seventeenth century women. Trapped within a patriarchal society, women continued to be controlled by male relatives even after their husbands died. Affluent young women were often painted in plush surroundings with few accoutrements, unlike men who were depicted with items signifying their intellectual accomplishments. Broadhead’s women have no possessions; just bored beautiful creatures that appear to have accomplished nothing.

The eyes of her women assume a downward or averted gaze as a sign of their subordination. However, the postures in some of these portraits are suggestive of the female non-conformists of the time, like Lady Arabella Stuart who challenged James I to the throne or Aphira Behn, the first woman to make a successful career from writing. The woman in Broadhead’s portrait, Hung seems confident and almost defiant, such as the seventeenth century artist, Judith Leyster who audaciously depicted herself in a leisurely posture. Either way, Broadhead’s beautifully executed re-enactments provide an intriguing and wonderful way to discover more about women’s history.

 

Gallery S O 92 Brick Lane, London E1 6RL | 10 – 30 June 2016 | www.sarahmyerscoughgallery.com

LONDON

Ruben Grilo: Proof of Concept | Union Pacific

Here you have to stop thinking about what an artist actually means with his work, what social or political context he want’s to reflect on, or what he wants you to feel. All Ruben Grillo had to say, was that all of this is not his responsibility. At all. That means no profound explanation here. You will see and smell chocolate, hay, clay, plastic and more, put together into large, structured sculptures.

17 Goulston Street, London E1 7TP | May 20 – July 2, 2016 | http://unionpacific.co.uk

Keith Sonnier | Pace

Keith Sonnier is overtaking London. First as a piece in the Tate Modern permanent collection, then in the Whitechapel Gallery Light Works exhibition, and last but not least in Pace Gallery. Two of his installations are now presented in the first floor gallery. Being his signature medium for almost 50 years, the bright neon keeps on shining and interacts with art and architecture.

6 Burlington Gardens, London W1F 0LB | June 9 – June 23, 2016 | http://www.pacegallery.com

Gerry Judah: Fragile Lands | 235 Westbourne Grove

Indian Illustrator and sculptor Gerry Judah documents destruction in his extremely detailed maquettes. Artworks that engage with geopolitical issues such as climate change or conflict. For this exhibition, the main focus goes to India and how the environment is changing and being treated over there. Fragile Lands shows sculptures made from partly coal and ash, which are part of a series called Bengal, amongst some of Judah’s 3-dimensional paintings.

235 Westbourne Grove, London, W11 2SE | May 25 – June 22, 2016 | http://www.encountercontemporary.com

O JUN, Yoshu Chikanobu, Takashi Ishida: 14 years 119 years later | Danielle Arnaud

Work from three artists are on display at Danielle Arnaud. O Jun invited Takashi Ishida to be part of his first UK exhibition. The performance video shown, was a collaboration between the two Japanese artist. The third artist is 19 century traditional painter Yoshu Chikanobu. Thirty of his woodblock prints, representing female beauty are shown and form the basis of the exhibition.

123 Kennington Road, London SE11 6SF UK | 11 June – 10 July 2016 | http://www.daniellearnaud.com

Olivetti: Beyond Form and Function | ICA Fox Reading Room

This is exactly what you think it is: aan exhibition dedicated to one of the leading typewriter brands of the 20th century. Machines so graphic and architectural, they could be artworks. No boring walk through the history of the typewriter, but a walk through typewriters paradise, created through photographs, films and ephemera relating to Olivetti’s graphic and spatial design. As well as architecture, since the exhibition is part of the London Festival of Architecture.

The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH | May 25 – July 17, 2016 |  https://www.ica.org.uk

NEW YORK

LAURETTA VINCIARELLI: Light Unveiled | Totah

Summer is in town, and what to match better with the sun than bright watercolours. Totah presents a selection of Lauretta Vinciarelli’s work made over two decades. Through her abstract, colourful works you are able to spot the playfulness of the ink. Transparant glowing objects take you away to another world.

183 Stanton Street, New York, NY 10002, USA | June 9 – September 18, 2016 | http://www.artnet.com

NICOLE WERMERS: GIVERS & TAKERS | Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

This exhibition is as much about the found object as it is about urban/private space. Wermer translates her view on art history through the use of modern objects. Both statement and visual entertainment are important. Objects interact with each other. A walk through the clean and empty looking room, will activate the energy and change that thought quite quickly.

521 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10011 | June 1 – July15, 2016 | http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

James Turrell: 67 68 69 | PACE

Same Gallery, different City. Head over to PACE NY this week for  James Turrell’s exhibition. When the hype over Drake’s Hotline Bling video has finally gone, it is time to have a look at the real work. Coinciding with another Pace Gallery (Palo Alto), James Turrell’s light installations certainly get the attention they diserve. Although the original projections date from the late 60’s, they still bring the modern vibe. Light, colours, action.

32 East 57th Street – 534 West 25th Street, New York NY 10022 | May 6 – June 18, 2016 | http://www.pacegallery.com

Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony | The Noguchi Museum

This is the first time The Noguchi Museum shows work by an artist other than Noguchi. The title refers to the traditional Japanese tea ceremony ‘chanoyu’, which will be represented by the artist through different installations. Sachs builds an actual teahouse in the garden of the museum, surrounded by Noguchi’s stone sculptures. You can see his actions live, and relive them by browsing the 280-page artist’s book.

33rd Road (at Vernon Boulevard), Long Island City, NY 11106 | 23 Mar 2016 – 24 Jul 2016 | http://www.noguchi.org

Aidan Koch, Ieva Kraule: The person you are trying to reach is not available | Hester

Through a combination of masks, sculptures and murals, this duo portrays a faded presence of a person now gone. Soft pink coloured cut-outs give a vague remembrance of limbs, and almost empty rooms makes us feel that last breath. Because of the use of pastel and playful lines, this is a more happy scene than one would expect.

55-59 Chrystie street, suite 203, New York, NY 10002 | June 3–July 3, 2016 | http://hester.nyc

LONDON

LAURA CALLAGHAN: ASPIRATIONAL | KK OUTLET

KK Outlet is up for another opening this week. The -all too familiar- world where we are surrounded by inspiring quotes on life, but also have to fight the impossible beauty standards at the same time, is the main inspiration for these colourful paintings. Aspirational is about  the dreams young people create, based on the perfect social media lives of others. We get taken into the lives of insecure girls, feeling their struggle and feeling uncomfortable, watching the cry for help in the intimate setting of the teenage bedroom.

42 Hoxton Square, London N1 6PB | June 2 – July 2, 2016 | http://www.kkoutlet.com

PABLO BRONSTEIN | TATE BRITAIN

The long, elegant Duveen Galleries at the centre of Tate Britain are again the home for a British artist and his work. Pablo Bronstein has clearly been inspired by architecture, it is shown in his dances, performances and drawings. The next coming months, Bronstein will present us a continuous live performance, inspired by the architectural Baroque period. Dancers and architecture will become one in a very casual or nonchalant way.

Millbank, London SW1P 4RG | June 1 – October 9, 2016 | http://www.tate.org.uk

ALEX KATZ: QUICK LIGHT | SERPENTINE GALLERY

Selecting Alex Katz’ work isn’t an easy thing to do. Over five decades after his first exhibition, this New York artist has produced a lot of paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings. The Serpentine took the plunch and went through his archive, focussing on his bold coloured, simplified landscapes. There’s the connection with Kensington Gardens, where the serpentine is located, and the work being shown inside as well as outside, that makes this an absolute must see.

Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA | June 2 – September 11, 2016 | http://www.serpentinegalleries.org

DORA MAUER: 6 OUT OF 5 | WHITE CUBE

This exhibition shows several signature black and white photographs by Hungarian artist Dora Mauer, accompanied by frontage drawings from the 80s and paintings from the 90s, all focussed on geometry and mathematical systems in general. To top it all off Mauer brings two huge wall installations, made especially for this exhibition.

25-26 Masons Yard, London SW1Y 6BU | May 24 – July 9, 2016 | http://whitecube.com

HELEN MIRRA and ALLYSON STRAFELLA: SUCHNESS | LARGE GLASS

Large Glass can be found off the traditional gallery circuit. It follows Marchel Duchamp’s advice by ‘creating a place where contemporary art can be shown through a particular and uncommon lens, presenting individually conceived and curated exhibitions on a diversity of themes’. For this exhibition the contemporary art consists of tapestry by Hellen Mirra an drawings by Allysin Strafella, both from New York and both have been awarded multiple times for their work.

392 Caledonian Road, London N1 1DN | April 15 – June 24, 2016 | http://largeglass.co.uk

NEW YORK

KIRK MANGUS: A POT, A JOKE, A RYTHM, A THEORY | JAMES COHAN GALLERY

This is Kirk Magnus’ first show in New York. Despite his international reputation, his colourful dramatic ceramics are not that known overhere. Magnus was inspired by traditional Asian ceramics, cave art and modernist abstractions, an interesting combination, what gives his work their specific style.

533 WEST 26 ST, NEW YORK NY 10001 | May 20 – June 26, 2016 | http://www.jamescohan.com

CAIO FEI | MOMA

More Asian influences in New York, presented by MoMa. Bejing film and installation artist Caio Fei translates experiences of young Chinese citizens in video installations mixing fantasy and reality. Inspired by Surrealism and pop aesthetics, Fei creates photographs, sculptures and more, all to be found on MoMa PS1’s First Floor Main Galleries.

22-25 Jackson Ave. at the intersection of 46th Ave. Long Island City, NY 11101 | April 3 – august 29, 2016 | http://momaps1.org

MICHAEL NETTER: CRYPTOGRAPHICS | ACA GALLERIES

Sony Portopak, the world’s first portable video system, was Netter’s big inspiration in the 70s. From that time on he’s been producing videos and later on he also got involved in the painting and branding world. Cryptographics is showing his different works from the 70’s until now.
529 W. 20th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10011 | June 2 – July 29, 2016 | http://www.artnet.com

LASZLO MOHOLY-NAGY: FUTURE PRESENT | GUGGENHEIM

The artist that sees art and technology as a perfect combination, is now showing his work in New York for the first time in fifty years. The room of the present and Light prop for an electric stage are two installations that will be on view, accompanied by -some never shown before- collages, drawings, ephemera, films, paintings, photograms, photographs, photomontages, and sculptures. All together more than 300 works from this multi-talented artist.
1071 5TH AVE, NEW YORK, NY, BETWEEN 88TH & 89TH ST. | May 27 – September 7, 2016 | https://www.guggenheim.org

EVA KOT’ATKOVA: A MOUSE’S HOME IS THE SNAKE’S BODY | MACCARONE

A concrete firm gallery filled with large steel sculptures, the industrial vibe is definitely present here. Children’s drawings symbolising their fears inspired the Prague artist to build her wireframe works. The whole exhibition can be seen as a huge sketchbook where drawings and sculptures become one.

630 Greenwich Street, NY | May 3 – June 18, 2016 | http://maccarone.net

Lisa Milroy’s little black dress is very desirable but alas, unwearable. A canvas of falling flowers topped with a quirky veil, this silky number isn’t a dress after all but the object of a still life painting. Its pattern and form play with our perception thereby concealing its true meaning. Milroy renders pattern as a rhythmical, decorative and repetitive element but one that constantly shifts across surfaces or enters imagined scenarios. The exhibition, Out Of Hand explores the nature of patterns, their spatiality and their capacity to create an appearance of movement. Either framed or unframed, Milroy’s paintings include textiles, sartorial constructions, ceramics and everyday objects.

Best known for her skilfully executed paintings of shoes, light bulbs and household objects, Milroy takes inspiration from a variety of subject matters including landscapes, buildings and store fronts. Her animated dress mannequins assume peculiar poses, either toppling forwards or peering inquisitively through shop windows whilst pressing their white gloved hands against panes of glass. In mirROr, 2011 sense of ease or tension occurs as reflections that hover on the glazing create patterns, drawing the eye first towards the window and then to the imagined scene beyond and back again.

 

Milroy’s ‘Weaving Paintings’ are constructed like rush matting but made instead from brightly coloured strips which generate a myriad of configurations that can either support, fill or even mirror the woven baskets in front of them. The baskets sink anonymously into their backgrounds like women’s patterned dresses in 19^th century interiors. Other patterns are busier and appear almost pixelated, forcing the eye to dance back and forth energetically.

 

Structural patterns of a different nature also fascinate Milroy but not in the conventional sense. Intrigued by their irregular proportions, she paints layered images of ladies’ dress patterns to invent her own version of flat patterns, thereby disregarding their true purpose as precursors to three dimensional forms. Most delightful of all are her bra and knicker paintings stitched in gathered paper trimmed with china blue frills and bows. Jiggling on tatty wire coat hangers, their lively brushstrokes bob up and down sporadically creating further patterns and possibilities.

 

Laure Genillard, 2 Hanway Place, London W1T 1HB | 30 April – 25 June 2016 | www.lglondon.org

LONDON

Bert Hardy : Personal Collection | The Photographers Gallery

This exhibition shows vintage photographs from Bert Hardy’s private collection. He had them stored for decades and it is the first time these rare black and white pictures are displayed to the public. Hardy was known for his photojournalistic skills when he was working as chief photographer at the Brittish Photogenic magazine. Those photos pictures war and post war time in britain, with a lot of empathy for the subject’s stories.

The Photographers’ Gallery, 16 – 18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW  | 13 May- 3 Jul 2016 | http://www.thephotographersgallery.org.uk

Alberto Giacometti and Yves Klein : in search of the absolute | Gagosian Gallery

We here have a risky pairing between Alberto Giacometti and Yves Klein, The two artists both lived in Montparnasse. In their own ways, they were a true radicals, Giacometti a genius of figurative sculpture, Klein a man who invented colours (his famed International Klein Blue) and upset the art world with his monochromes and exhibitions of nothing. The difference is that Giacometti used art to find new ways of looking at the body, while Klein used the body to find new approaches to art.

20 Grosvenor Hill, London W1K 3QD | APRIL 27 – JUNE 11, 2016 | http://www.gagosian.com/

Nikhil Chopra: The Black Pearl – the City to the River | Southbank Center

Nikhil Chopra is a performance artist whose work centres on the intersections of personal and collective history, and on the nature of processes of transformation. This time he will be incarnating The Black Pearl, Nikhil arrives at Alchemy by boat, starting a performance of ritualised movements that unfold on several days. As the performance progresses, the enigmatic Black Pearl weaves memories from the rivers and canals of London into large paintings on the windows of Royal Festival Hall.

FOYER SPACES Level 5 Foyers at Royal Festival Hall | May 26, 2016 – Sep 1, 2016 | http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/

Dubuffet: Late Paintings | Timothy Taylor Gallery

Timothy Taylor presents an exhibition of Jean Dubuffet’s late works which maintains the gallery’s interest in late-period European Modernism. Well-known for founding Art Brut, Dubuffet championed, throughout his life, the need to continually question the established conditions of art, culture and society. He consistently challenged the canon and convention, and for this reason, Dubuffet’s work and ideas remain compelling and relevant.

15 Carlos Place, London, W1K 2EX | 20 MAY–2 JULY 2016 | http://www.timothytaylorgallery.com

David Cheeseman: Slime Mould Logic | Tintype Gallery

Scultures,installations and photographs that are mixing mathematical geometry, cellular biology and computer algorithms. In this way, Cheeseman tries to show us interdisciplinarity by focusing on methodology andthe materiality of science.

107 Essex Road, London N1 2SL | 20 May – 18 June 2016 | http://www.tintypegallery.com

 

NEW YORK

Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann: Empire Builder │ Gallery nine 5

Empire Builder is the second solo exhibition of the artist Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann. Inspired by aesthetics unique to Chinese cave murals, Mann emulates the colorful, enveloping Dunhuang Caves with her paintings. Walking through the exhibition, the viewer feels like they are entering a haven of both chaos and neurotic control, the size and vibrancy of the art works create a true sense of landscape. Another motif in Mann’s work is of layering and weaving and her use of collage in her artwork harkens to the historical significance of Dunhuang in China, a cultural crossroad and apex of the Silk Road.

24 Spring Street New York, NY 10012 | May 5, 2016 – June 12, 2016 | http://www.gallerynine5.com

Mary Ellen Mark: Attitude : Portraits │ Howard Greenberg Gallery

Mary Ellen Mark, who passed away last year, is known for her photojournalism, documentary photography, and notably, her portraiture. This exhibition shows photographs by Mary Ellen Mark, spanning the breadth of her dazzling career, it celebrates nearly 40 years of Mark’s most enduring images. Mary Ellen Mark often photographed individuals who, despite being on the fringes of society, projected an unusual degree of self-confidence. They had strong personalities, with a clear sense of self. Through her work, Mark “got you to feel, without telling you what or how to feel”.

The Fuller Building 41 East 57th Street Suite 1406 New York, NY 10022 | MAY 5 – JUNE 18, 2016 | http://www.howardgreenberg.com

Tracey Emin: New Monotypes │ Carolina Nitsch Gallery

Tracey Emin’s New Monotypes is a series of recent unique prints, some with additional hand painting. For Emin, transferring her texts and drawings has often been an important aspect of her practice. This body of work coincides with her newest series of figurative works which illustrate her shifting sensibilities of passion, love and permanence ; themes of provocation and sexuality are apparent in many compositions while others speak of unrequited love, suffering, longing and desire.  The works in this series are overtly classical yet deeply personal ans Emin’s affinity to Egon Schiele is unmistakable and it is from this modernist sensibility that she draws and expands upon.

534 West 22ND Street, NEW YORK, NY 10011 | May 5 – July 1 , 2016 | http://www.carolinanitsch.com/

Alex Dodge: Love may Fail, but Courtesy will Prevail │ Klaus Gallery

This exhibition shows a new series of paintings made with an entirely unique process that Dodge has developed; imagery is generated in 3D-rendering programs and stenciled with thick oil paint onto canvas. Each painting features a patterned fabric optically drafted to imply volume, perspective and gravity. Some fabrics are draped over objects, while others seem to be filled with a gelatinous liquid that oozes out of openings in the cloth.  Dodge’s paintings are subversively elegant : the shrouded cloths are mysterious and the forms are defined by absence. In using these patterns to define his subject matter, he is invoking the body with a bit of the macabre.

54 Ludlow Street, New York, NY 10002  | April 29 – June 5, 2016 | http://klausgallery.com

Anish Kapoor: Today You Will Be In Paradise │ Gladstone Gallery

Anish Kapoor’s two-part exhibition demonstrates Kapoor’s ongoing exploration of the formal and conceptual framework. At once intimate, imposing, and refined, Kapoor’s work dually, he confronts and expands conditions of matter, perception, and metaphor. In Kapoor’s syncretic practice, organic forms and materials are juxtaposed with polished, geometric sculptures that both expand and compress a viewer’s sense of space. Both minimal and heavily worked surfaces prevail, as opposing forces retain and reflect light with resounding formal and phenomenological effect.

New York 24th Street, 21st Street | May 4 – June 11, 2016 | http://gladstonegallery.com

 

Elly Thomas’ imaginative sculptures are magical, animistic forms assembled like a strange underwater garden. Some appear as tall majestic stalks with sprouting fronds, and others become wobbly fruits or giant rhizomes and roots that tumble in and out of makeshift architectural spaces. Her work has a playful quality that permits undecided outcomes; constantly emerging, obscuring or reappearing within the confines of the gallery. Thomas explores sculpture through the idea of childhood play whereby her work becomes part of a spontaneous and continually changing process. Thomas initially drew inspiration from Roland Barthes’ theory which defines how a child’s imagination is unlocked through the process of building blocks.

Thomas is interested in investigating how the activity of play, growth and repetition can inform the adult artistic process, and how play encourages the imagination to transform or even animate an object into something else. This approach also enables the artist to realise sculpture as an ongoing activity that is both uninhibited and improvised.

Her sculptures are unexpectedly beautiful with intriguing textures that appear pitted or crystallised. Thomas utilises a variety of methods and materials to create her works including papier-mâché and acrylic paints, pre-sewn, filled fabric shapes or moulded latex mixed with oil paint. Her installations are site specific so she contrasts her hand-made sculptures with manufactured found objects such as venetian blinds, discarded heaters and shoe racks which she leaves in their original state. The scene resembles the way in which a small child might negotiate an adult space where heights, shapes and sizes fail to correspond ergonomically. Instead, exciting hideaway spaces, precarious surfaces and textures create a desirable setting for imaginative play.

The discarded structures also provide a key for the objects thereby creating endless possibilities for further compositions. The installation can be viewed in its entirety or as individual groupings which the artist rearranges throughout the course of her residency.

Elly Thomas was awarded a PhD from the Slade School of Art in 2013 in her practised –based thesis, Play as Evolving Process in the Work of Eduardo Paolozzi, Philip Guston and Tony Oursler.

ACS Gallery Chaplin Centre, Taplow House, Thurlow Street, London SE17 2DG
11 April – 3 June 2016

http://www.ascstudios.co.uk

 

Simon Mullan’s latest solo show, Die Fläche explores the concept of surface as an entity that can be visibly disrupted or subverted. Mullan, a Berlin based artist, is interested in the veneer of subcultures, observing their presence as either volatile or vulnerable groupings in the context of current events. Occupying the site of a former car park, PM/AM provides a fitting venue for Mullan’s artistic oeuvre, comprising new and recent tile works, quilted textiles, installations and film. Above the hard-core and strip-frayed hatching, his brittle surfaces and stark quilts punctuate the grey walls like reflective markers, conveying a prevailing undercurrent of edginess, tension and unrest. Grey walls are currently a recurring feature for the artist and are due to appear progressively darker in his subsequent work.

Mullan is fascinated by the social coding of bomber jackets, a garment manufactured by Alpha Industries for the US Airforce but a design also favoured by Neo Nazis and other youth subcultures. Mullan constructs quilts from the outer fabric and linings of these garments, thereby attempting to devalue their association with aggressive masculinity. He regards these quilts as ‘experimental’, meticulously seaming their monochrome colours in a grid-like pattern and replicating their industrial details with precision, echoing the daily grind of Alpha’s female machinists. On the other hand, Mullan’s film, Teaser captures in slow motion the macho-aesthetic of a male pole-dancer, thereby presenting a different the notion of masculinity.

Mullan appropriates tiles as an artistic medium to represent ‘labour’, a theme pursued waggishly in his video of a brickie, A: Coffee or Tea Darling? B: Cocoa You Cunt? His work for a recent exhibition in Berlin, Die Fuge explored the material in relation to high culture, whereby the entire gallery was covered from floor to ceiling in white tiles. In Die Fläche, Mullan uses the white tile again in order to reference the subcultural tension within such spaces. On an aesthetic level, he arranges his network of tiles of varying lengths and dimensions in a composition akin to buildings in a cityscape, juxtaposing diagonal elements within seemingly random patterns to impose a disruptive effect. His new works utilise the dark tiles from his Popularis series in a dynamic and expanded form by extending the tiled plane three-dimensionally.

Mullan cunningly describes the tall grid-like installations central to this exhibition as ‘room dividers’ gesturing with his hand to demonstrate their spatial quality. The distorted shadows cast by these cellular structures appear to reference the surveillance camera, tracking the invisible ‘heat’ of his ‘skinned’ bomber jackets; or perhaps the presence of subcultural activity around the Deep Dark Web. By concealing his own meaning behind these ‘props’, he encourages others to make their own interpretations.

PM/AM 259 – 269 Old Marylebone Road, London NW1 5RA | April 29 – May 30, 2016 | http://www.pmam.org/

 

LONDON

NEW YORK

Cindy Sherman | Metro Pictures Gallery

We are all familiar with Cindy Sherman and her many personas shown in self portraits. After what has been another long break since 2012, she is now back with new work, shown in the Metro Pictures Gallery. Age becomes the subject and question in these new series of portraits. ‘How does society portray women when they get older?’ Old meets new when the presentation of her work changes due to modern printing techniques and digital manipulation.

519 West 24th Street, NY 10011 | May 5 – June 11, 2016 | http://www.metropicturesgallery.com

Final week:
JIM JOE | LOOK MEANS MEMORIZE | The Hole

Jim Joe –the New York based street artist who calls himself a general idiot– is very clear when it comes to describing his exhibition at The Hole NYC. ‘The show consists of 30 small paintings, 1 large painting and a wall text’. When you read further it won’t be very hard to have a vivid picture of Jim Joe’s second solo show. Especially when you’ve seen Gilbert & George’s ‘The Banners’ at White Cube Bermondsey.

312 Bowery, New York 10012  | April 28-May 22, 2016 | http://theholenyc.com

Nina Yuen | Narcissus | Jane Lombard Gallery

At first glance, the work of Nina Yuen seems to be an obvious autobiography. We see the artist appear in her films and photographs. Playing both protagonist and narrator, we start to get where the title is coming from. While taking it all in, the spectator realises that there is more than only ‘Nina Yuen’ in this world she shows. The person in the photographs is functioning as the presentation of the self, showing the different relationships one can have with it.

518 West 19th Street, NY 10011 | May 19 – June 24, 2016 | http://www.janelombardgallery.com

Final week:
MARTIN KLIMAS | SOUNDWORKS | Foley Gallery

Can we only hear sound? Or can we see it too?
Don’t worry if you never thought about this, Martin Klimas has. His work is the result of the search to displaying sound. It’s not so hard to picture soundwaves, but Martin Klimas goes further than the arctic monkeys single string. Klimas translates well known songs by Daft Punk and Miles Davis into lenticular prints. Photographing the movement of sound through water is another technique Klimas uses to visualise sound.

59 Orchard Street, New York, NY 10002 | APRIL 20 – MAY 22, 2016 | http://www.foleygallery.com

Haim Steinbach | Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Haim Steinbach’s is not just showing art. His creations and displays are the result of thinking, overthinking and simplifying. He shows us the world through his eyes and brain. Found objects form the basis, they go through his transformation before ending up in the customised displays in the gallery. His roots in Minimalism and Color Field painting are clearly present. By taking existing objects out of their context, visitors are forced to rethink their function.

521 West 21st Street, NY  10011 | April 21 – May 27, 2016 | http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

The new show at Tate Britain explores the important period in British history, which changed the way we think about art to this day. At the start of the 1960s, emerging British artists such as Bruce McLean and Richard Long began resisting traditional art thinking by creating works in which the focus was placed on concept and ideation, as opposed to form and beauty. The exhibition demonstrates the radical, provocative, and politically engaged nature of this defining period in art history, showing how conceptual art evolved in Britain.

Comprised of experimental photographs, prints and large-scale installations, the show features 70 works by 21 influential figures, including Sue Arrowsmith, Braco Dimitrijević, Hamish Fulton, Margaret Harrison, Roelof Louw, and John Hilliard, among others.

The exhibition opens with Roelof Louw’s pyramid of oranges, titled Soul City, comprising 3,303 pieces of golden fruit and invitation to take one. It’s a reminder that, for the conceptualists, art was a verb not a noun. Focusing on activity rather than outcome, these artists were committed to the creative process rather than the end product. By taking part in the work we are helping to destroy it, in other words consuming its presence.
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One of the particularly bizarre highlights of the display is An Oak Tree by Michael Craig-Martin, which is actually a glass of water on a clear, bathroom-style shelf accompanied by text written by the artist. He claims that the glass has been turned into an oak tree, without changing the outward appearance or properties of the glass. Craig-Martin is trying to get the viewer to start questioning art in general and the ways in which we view and value artworks.

Conceptual artists think beyond the limits of traditional art, often using text and photography to place in question the material, aesthetic and philosophical conditions and purpose of art. They want us to read art, rather than look at it, by employing theory and philosophy to produce work that invites analysis rather than just observation. Some viewers may wonder why work hard to understand what a particular image or text wants us to perceive. Conceptual art may often seem pseudo-philosophical, where relatively simple ideas are made needlessly complex but the exhibition is not about accessible art and that’s the beauty of it. It’s strange, riddled and challenging. It’s about artworks that take their meaning from the idea behind them, rather than their materiality or figurative content. Many works on display require explanation, raising more questions than they answer, sometimes leaving the viewer wanting more and in some cases, less.

Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1P 4RG London | until August 29 | tate.org.uk

France’s renowned contemporary artist, Francois Morellet’s marks the momentous event of his 90th birthday with a new exhibition, comprising a lively fusion of jaunty shapes, wriggly tubes and a carefully calculated degree of mischief. Morellet’s unique approach to Geometric Abstraction requires the adoption of simple mathematical formulas to inform his reductive style. He prefers only to make one or two decisions incorporating a tilt here or a swivel there and an element of chance. As Morellet’s delicate works appear effortless, it is easy to forget the skill required for such measured precision considering his preferred choice of materials involving painted canvas, neon and metal strips.
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In the 1960s, Morellet founded GRAV, a like-minded group of artists who regarded the idea of the sole artist as outmoded, favouring instead the idea of public participation. Shortly after, amused by neon’s tacky associations with dubious nightlife and striptease shows, Morellet boldly set aside his canvas and paintbrushes in preference of the fluorescent tube. He liked its capacity to be switched on and off, its extended luminance and the fact that it was a manufactured item. Another preference is black sticky tape which he famously adhered to the classical sculptures at the Museum de Fine Arts in Nantes.

His recent exhibition displays a range of his recent and new works displaying delightfully playful and lyrical forms in lines, circles and superimposed shapes. However, according to their testy titles, his pieces appear to be suffering quite a fiasco! Metal tubes looked frazzled with exhaustion and bandaged squares appear forlorn as the narrative continues from wall to wall. At times, the condescension of certain lines cause heavier ones to engage in a cantankerous confrontation but occasionally, there’s light of a reconciliation, as layered squares and shared curvaceous sweeps meet in harmony. It’s all fun and terribly French…

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Annely Juda Fine Art 23 Dering Street, London W1S 1AW5 | April – June 24, 2016 | www.annelyjudafineart.co.uk

V&A opens the first major retrospective in the UK of the work of the American photographer and film maker since his death in 1976. Featuring more than 200 objects the exhibition explores Strand’s entire career, including his breakthrough trials in abstraction and candid street portraits, close-ups of natural and machine forms, and extended travel photography across America, Europe and Africa. Also on display are his notebooks, short films, sketches and even Strand’s own camera.

It’s fascinating to follow the photographer’s career from his experiments with abstract images and avant-garde films, to political messages and social documentaries across the world. The works on display differ strongly from one another, showing how Strand’s style changed over the decades as photographic technology developed.

From his early career he was breaking away from the Impressionist-inspired soft focus aesthetic that was popular in the early 1900s, and combined documentary with fine art practice to capture New York’s financial district and factories in a radical style, producing among the first abstract pictures made with a camera. The small-format, black-and-white photographs on show are mesmerising in their use of contrast, carrying across to Strand’s experiments with filmmaking.

﷯The exhibition is approaching the photographer’s career chronologically and geographically, following a fascinating pattern from his early print and film experiments to travel photography and rustic images of France in his final years.

As Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photography at the V&A and the curator of the exhibition, explains; ‘The exhibition will not only explore the life and career of Strand, but also challenge the popular perception of Strand as primarily a photographer of American places and people of the early 20th century.’

The photographer’s original silver gelatin prints, included in the exhibition, demonstrate the influence of fine art on his work. Prints were developed and produced by Strand himself, and the quality of production is astonishing.
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The exhibition is cleverly designed, interfering as little as possible with the works on show. The wall colours for each section are taken from the photo books that Strand designed over the last few decades of his career and all the images are presented in unpretentious white frames, as Strand himself chose to display his work. The achieved effect is nothing but elegant and sophisticated.

By far the most powerful photograph in the exhibition, also used as the book’s cover, is a strong image of an Italian mother and five of her eight sons. The Family is a study of solidarity and intimacy as well as family structures.
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The exhibition may require patience, but it is restrained and dignified and certainly rewarding whether you are a first time viewer or a long-time admirer of Paul Strand’s work.

Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL | until July 3, 2016 | www.vam.ac.uk

By Amalie Knuth-Winterfeldt and Jenny Lund

LONDON

New Scottish Artists | David Roberts Art Foundation

 

New Scottish Artists presents fifteen artists who graduated in 2015 from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Edinburgh College of Art, Glasgow School of Art and Gray’s School of Art.

Works by Euphrosyne Andrews, Leo Arnold, Scott Baxter, Emily Binks, Miriam Chefrad Edward Humphrey, Rosanna Lee, Jamie Limond, David Evan Mackay, Hannah Murray, George Ridgway, William Spendlove & Bros. (Painters & Decorators), Josephine Sweeney, Guy Titterington, Felix Welch and Hamish Young go from painting to sculpture to video and performance.

The exhibition also displays the work of this year’s winner of the Fleming-Wyfold Bursary, George Ridgway (Glasgow School of Art) whose practice includes performance, music, painting and sculpture.

Symes Mews, NW1 7JE London | 21 March – 6 May | www.davidrobertsartfoundation.com

Barjeel Art Foundation Collection: Imperfect Chronology – Mapping the Contemporary I | Whitechapel Gallery

The Barjeel Art Foundation holds an extensive collection of art from the Arab world. This display looks at the rise of media-based practices among a generation of artists who emerged in the 1990s. Dealing with issues of migration, the aftermath of war and media representations of history and culture, artists such as Lebanon-born Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari construct real and imagined archives out of Beirut and Cairo, while Yto Barrada maps and photographs her hometown of Tangier tracking border crossings and those who hope for a better life across the Mediterranean.

77-82 Whitechapel High Street, E1 7QX London | 26 April – 14 August | www.whitechapelgallery.org

Ways of Living: Curators’ Series #9 l David Roberts Art Foundation

This exhibition looks at artists who have sought practices inverse to the individualised, satellite modes in which we are increasingly expected to work, using materials and situations contingent to the places they live, no matter how internationally connected they may be. In doing so, these artists actualise, imagine or politicise the spaces in which they find themselves; fostering a still-needed sense of locality and producing directed responses to problems definitive of their time, place and situation.

Symes Mews, NW1 7JE London | 15 April – 23 July | www.davidrobertsartfoundation.com

Guan Xiao: Flattened Metal in association with K11 Art Foundation l ICA

Xiao’s work is occupied with our incomprehension of the past, and the way in which the unknown gives rise to intriguing discussion in the present. She juxtaposes references from the past and present (or future), weaving visual and audio material (including video clips found on the internet), digital rendering techniques and objects, alongside so-called primitive and high tech elements, creating distinct and evocative installations. In this way, she offers fresh perspectives on what we perceive as the ‘new’ and the ‘old.

12 Carlton House Terrace, SW1Y 5AH London | 20 April – 19 June | www.ica.org.uk

Martine Syms: Fact & Trouble l ICA

Fact & Trouble is an exhibition by American artist Martine Syms that examines the space between lived experience and its representation. Syms’ video series Lessons (ongoing), is a long, incomplete poem in 180 sections. Each piece is thirty seconds in duration and articulates a lesson from the tradition. One of these lessons is painted on the gallery walls. The videos use the idea of inheritance as a departure point, simulating the private-public unconscious of television shows, advertisements, animated GIFs, police cams, surveillance footage, Vines and other digitally-circulated formats.

12 Carlton House Terrace, SW1Y 5AH London | 20 April – 19 June |  www.ica.org.uk

 NEW YORK

Marcia Hafif: The Italian Paintings | 1961 – 1969 | Fergus McCaffrey

Featuring almost fifty paintings and works created between 1961 and 1969, these virtually unknown paintings created by Marcia Hafif will finally be revealed to the people of the United States. This will be the first public exhibition of a body work essential to an account of American art of the 1960’s.

514 West 26th Street, NY 10001 | April 21 – June 25, 2016 | http://fergusmccaffrey.com/

Madeline Denaro: The Space Between Yes and No | Cheryl Hazan Gallery

The Space Between Yes And No is a solo exhibition by Madeline Denaro, displaying paintings that seamlessly move between large blobs of chaotic colours and concentrations of patterns, giving a sense of stillness. Her most recent work truly shows her skillful manipulation of materials that have become somewhat of a quintessential when encountering her work.

35 N. Moore Street, NY 10013 | April 27 – June 4, 2016 | http://www.cherylhazan.com/

Pedro Wirz: The Horse Who Drank Beer | Kai Matsumiya

In his US debut at Kai Matsumiya, Pedro Wirz presents The Horse Who Drank Beer. Taking inspiration from folklore, mythical stories and legends from Pindamonhangaba, an area in the Paraiba Valley, Brazil, he created sculptures and wall works to invite the viewers to muse about the complex interplay between mythology and reality in modern society.

When? April 24 – June 5, 2016

Where? 153 1/2 Stanton Street New York,NY10002

Website: http://www.kaimatsumiya.com

Philip Guston | Hauser & Wirth

Philip Guston, Last Piece, 1958,  @artnet

Exploring a decade in which Philp Guston challenged aesthetic concerns of the New York school, making others question what it means to paint abstractly. This exhibition sheds light on a series of work that have not been fully appreciated by its peers.

When? April 26 – July 29, 2016

Where? 511 W. 18th Street, 10011, New York

Website: http://www.hauserwirth.com

Paul Resika: Recent Paint | Lori Bookstein Fine Art

Paul Resika, Red Pompeii, 2015–2016, @artnet

Focusing on variations of a specific still life theme; a pitcher and two shells, Paul Resika introduces his most recent paintings. All paintings feature the same objectives, but in various different styles, which as a result giving us a diverse impression of a pitcher and two shells.

When? April 28 – June 4, 2016

Where? 13810th Avenue, New York,NY 10011

Website: http://www.loribooksteinfineart.com/

If you think the recent arrival of hefty ropes, rings and roly-poly exercise balls at Bloomberg Space constitute a strange, new kind of gymnasium, you might be disappointed! These bland edifices are Eva Grubinger’s Five Problems, gargantuan versions of disentanglement puzzles, activities that originate in antiquity from Chinese, Asian and African cultures. The task of releasing metal or string loops from an object is designed to be both challenging and absorbing but can also develop a participant’s spatial awareness and logical thinking. As an installation, Grubinger’s enlarged puzzles are initially uninspiring but pose some really interesting ideas about how our perception of disentanglement puzzles change once they are enlarged on a grand scale. Grubinger has treated familiar objects in this way before, evident in her menacing black telephone headset from her series, Dark Matter (2003) or her over-sized, luxury-look fishing tackle in Decoy (2011).

Dissimilar from real life problems, disentanglement puzzles ensure a challenge that has a certain outcome; one that can be eventually solved. They present the opportunity to resolve an interesting challenge that may not be available in our working life but one that is relaxing and even pleasantly addictive. So once enlarged, can these puzzles become easier to resolve? Actually, they seem to have the reverse effect. Grubinger’s enormous puzzles require the head to crane and strain to resolve them thereby, eliminating not only their ability to relax the problem solver but also the participant’s pleasure in manipulating a traditionally tactile object. Therefore, her objects appear less as puzzles and more as sculptures, a situation that turns our attention to wider issues.
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Disentanglement puzzles are traditionally made from metal, wood, beads and string but for her enlarged pieces, Grubinger has replaced these materials with rope, acrylic-coated balls, chains and chrome-plated metal. For example, on the floor of the gallery lies a wonderfully chunky pair of chrome links: an outsize luxury version of the familiar wire puzzle that spills from a Christmas cracker when pulled. Likewise, beads are swapped for a black shiny ball on a thick chain suspended dramatically from the ceiling. As a seemingly masculine symbol, the heavy ball is displayed at a distance, perhaps intentionally, from the apparent femininity of the chrome links. In this way, both objects exude power but their separation might also suggest gender inequality.

Equally, the flawless appearance of Grubinger’s monolithic pieces appear to reference the manufacture of disentanglement puzzles. Most of her sculptures resemble immaculately fashioned factory pieces, whereas her smooth wooden disc with a neatly threaded rope reference the finely-crafted high end of the market. Either produced cheaply as Christmas cracker contents or manufactured as intriguing gifts, perhaps disentanglement puzzles remain objects not because they are tactile but because they cannot be easily adapted digitally.

Bloomberg Space, 50 Finsbury Square, London EC2A 1HD | April 1 – May 28, 2016 | http://www.bloombergspace.com/

The new exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in collaboration with Moderna Museet (Stockholm) presents the work of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), who is now regarded as a pioneer of abstract art.

Not many people are familiar with af Klint’s work because her paintings were not seen publicly until 1986, although she was working in the early 20th century, pre-dating the first abstract masters such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich. Painting in near isolation from the European avant-garde, af Klint stipulated in her will that her work should be kept out of the public eye for 20 years after her death, fearing that it will be misunderstood by her contemporaries. The paintings were hidden from the public until a 1986 Los Angeles exhibition and brought to a wider audience only in 2013 at Stockholm’s sensational exhibition, Pioneer of Abstraction. Painting the Unseen at the Serpentine Gallery in London is set to give the artist deserved recognition and celebration of her work.

The show curated by Melissa Blanchflower is depicting various series spanning over 60 years of the artist’s life. Flawless wall text clearly annotates the paintings without distracting from it allowing wonderful colours translate immediately from small to large in all the paintings.
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The artist’s central body of work is the monumental series titled The Paintings for the Temple. Claimed as the first European abstractions it’s predating by several years any such works by Kandinsky, Malevich or Mondrian, as the official birth of abstract art is dated to 1910.

Consisting of 193 paintings in various series and subgroups, they all symbolise a path towards harmony between the spiritual and material worlds. Even more interesting that the work itself is the actual story behind the artist’s works. Fascinated by the occult in the late 1890-s, af Klint founded a group of female artists, The Five, in order to talk to spirits that could supposedly communicate through the act of drawing. “The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict,” Klint explained in one of her diaries.
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Lines and spirals depicted in the paintings seem to indicate movement, along with words, letters and different forms, such as a spiral shell, a snail and waves. Af Klint’s notebooks contain a vague explanation of colours, images and text that are used in her works. The blue colour or the lily for instance, represents femininity, whereas the use of yellow stands for masculinity.

The show is dynamic in colour and form and mystical in its abstraction, presenting the artist who dared to think beyond her time, stepping out of what was commonly accepted. Whether it was through her spiritual séances or not, she clearly had visions about bigger contexts trying to understand the world.

Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA | March 3 – May 22, 2016 |
www.serpentinegalleries.org

Barry Flanagan’s pile of sand, one ton corner piece, would have raised a few eyebrows in 1967 but it set the precedent for changing the nature of sculpture at the time. Like many of his contemporaries, Flanagan criticised the British art school’s conventional approach to teaching sculpture which he regarded as limiting to artistic development. While Gilbert and George were entertaining the masses with their ‘Living Sculptures’, Flanagan explored alternative materials for his pieces choosing sand, plaster, hessian and metal. Experimental and independent, he was fascinated by the properties of materials, their capacity to contain other materials and respond to light. His early textural works, made from pre-sewn bags which he packed with sand, allowed the sculptures to take their own form. In order to convey the process of sculpture, he produced a film of a girl lying under a continuous stream of sand which gradually covered the contours of her body.

Flanagan’s artistic life was without pretence; he appreciated a range of technical skills such as building, frame-making and baking learnt prior to his art training at St. Martin’s School of Art. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral has taken its title from Flanagan’s first solo exhibition of conceptual art at the Rowan Gallery, London in 1966. Curated by Dr Jo Melvin, this exhibition focuses on the sculptor’s early work from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s comprising concrete poetry, sketches, log books film and photographs.

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Flanagan often took inspiration from everyday items including his wife’s airing cupboard; his controversial piece, pile 3 ’68 was essentially a pile of blankets. The different textures of his marble and stone sculptures, developed from his earlier textile experiments, sometimes display an element of ambiguity. Her Warm Tit Rolls, originally modelled in clay, recalls the spongy quality of a snail but with the dimpled appearance of older female skin. His fascination for hares stemmed from his interest in their mythology and peceived enigmatic nature. His bronze hare sculptures expressed human elements and an almost cartoon-like quality, a combination which he felt conveyed geater expression particularly in relation to the animals’ ears.
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The most interesting part of this exhibition are Flanagan’s preliminary sketches of hares and working drawings for his sculptural pieces. He used his curly snail symbol to experiment with a variety of materials either to create majestic coils of copper or graceful spirals of rough hessian or even to achieve the appearance of cardboard such as his ‘torn’ steel sheet sculptures. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral imparts a fascinating insight into Flanagan’s enthusiam for materials, his thought process for his projects and preparation for later work.

Waddington Custot Galleries, 11 Cork Street, London W1S 3LT | March 4 – May 14, 2016 |
http://www.waddingtoncustot.com/

The new show at London’s Barbican explores Britain as seen through the eyes of international photographers. Curated by iconic British photographer Martin Parr, the exhibition includes everything from social documentary and portraiture, to street and architectural photography by leading photographers of the 20th and 21st century. The big names include Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and David Glodblatt, as well as a range of artists who are less well-known outside the photography world.

In the mid-20th century, photography was used as a force for social change. The works on display demonstrate a vivid canvas of Britain’s social, cultural and political identity offering an interesting reflection of how the country is perceived by those outside its borders over the last 80 years. Martin Parr explains: “the exhibition will reveal a very different take on British life than that produced by British photographers. It is both familiar and strange at the same time.”

Captured in each photographer’s own distinctive style, the works explore different characteristic of life and perspectives on British life, from the busy capital to the rustic north.

The show starts in the mid-1930s with Edith Tudor-Hart’s images of London’s East End to the slum housing areas of Tyneside. Photographs capture the child welfare, unemployment and homelessness in a very realistic way, introducing a naturalistic style that shows people in their own environments.
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Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photographs of the Coronation of King George VI in 1937 show Britain enjoying the relief between the World Wars. The photographs are sheer joy: the crowds lining the streets in cheery celebrations and posing proudly in front of Trafalgar Square, a man fast asleep in a pile of newspapers in the middle of the crowd, ‘Gawd Bless Yer’ daubed on an East End wall.

Some of the images are shot in the nation’s less-documented places, such as Robert Frank’s portrayal of life alongside the coal mining towns of South Wales in the early 1950s, the conflict in Northern Ireland recorded by Giles Peress and Akihiko Okamura; and desolate 1980s Glasgow as seen by Raymond Depardon.

The show also includes works made right up to the present day. American photographer Bruce Gilden takes grotesque close ups of people unexpectedly as they walk down the streets of Midlands and Essex. The portraits are far from flattering, in fact they are quite intimidating, revealing every line, blemish and pore. Showing harsh reality of people’s every day lives, these large-scale images are repulsive, making the viewer feel uncomfortable.

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Strange and Familiar gives a real insight into Britain, as seen from the outside, reaffirming a number of cultural clichés about the nation and portraying the fascinating evolution of both Britain and photography.

Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS | Until June 19 |
http://www.barbican.org.uk/

The obscured features of Jessica Rayner’s mystical landscapes are like a blue gas flame enveloped by a warm glow. By reworking the images of simple beach scenes using polarising filters, she plays with our capacity to process light and imagery. Rayner produces images that are not visible to the eye using a selection of man-made and natural lenses, methods that are unrevealed to the viewer and which therefore retain an element of ambiguity throughout her work. Her unusual compositions demonstrate how the power of the lens can magnify, enhance or intensify our experiences of the world around us. Rayner uses natural lenses as a subject matter in her Solsten lightboxes, a recursion of weathered sunstones backlit to enhance their contrasting symphonies of brilliant blues and emerald greens. Other work references the use of Fresnel lenses used in lighthouses whose spherical prisms produce a strong beam. Luminous Flux takes its name from the quantity of light energy in visible wavelengths and presents an imaginative array of photographs, installations and delicate designs on glass or textile whilst also concurrently drawing attention to the history of the lens.
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Rainbows were depicted by early artists as an earthy signifier to the celestial body of Christ. On a more recent note, the Icelandic artist, Olafur Eliasson produced a shimmering rainbow with a perforated hose to explore spatiality. However, Rayner is fascinated by our perception of the rainbow as just a visible arc of colours but has counteracted this notion by producing a circular rainbow with the use of a telescopic mirror for her work, As Seen Below the Horizon. This work and her Optical Aberrations series underlines the 18th Century problem associated with the early design of the telescope in which glass lenses created chromatic halos around the objects they magnified. Although distorted by their centre of curvature, Sir Isaac Newton’s mirrored lenses corrected this issue at a later date.
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Central to the exhibition is a wall projected video of a glass marble rolling inside the rim of a petri dish which is refracted at timed intervals by a revolving glass prism, causing the moving image to diverge into shadows and embryonic forms. Geometric patterns appear in Rayner’s sun capture series developed by the digital manipulation of sun prints. The petal like quality of Untitled II produces a similar image to her work, Rate of Decay produced by another technique involving time-lapse photography. The last exhibit echoes the watery blue tints of her photographic work, a slither of printed silk draped like a reel of film revealing a repeating pattern of diffused orbs and blurred outlines.

Christine Park Gallery, 35 Riding Street, London W1W 7EA | March 11 – April 30, 2016 |
www.christinepark.net

After navigating my way around the bright labyrinth of corridors that make up the Barbican Centre, on entering the dark, unusual space that houses Imran Qureshi’s latest exhibition my senses became instantly disorientated. The only light came from the beams that shone on each piece, making for an unsettling opening impression. But this initial sense of confusion is a deliberate device used to enhance the disorder that feeds into Qureshi’s work.

The 35 new miniature paintings commissioned by the Barbican, are rich with gold and red epitomising the opulence and vibrancy of his home of Lahore in Pakistan. The pieces are exquisite each the product of a labour of love and intense attention to detail. Qureshi’s practise was perfected by the Mughal masters of South Asia over five centuries ago and is the demanding tradition that forms of the basis of his work. The composition of each scene, featuring flowers, leaves, birds and trees, stays faithful to the convention as Qureshi attempts to incorporate a sense of his heritage into contemporary art.

Where the Shadows are so Deep is displayed in the Curve Gallery; with the curved space creating the desired feeling that Qureshi’s work spans cultures and is part of a distillation of hours of passionate toil. A major part of Qureshi’s practise involves playing with scale and surprising the viewer, which he achieves through bringing a sense of chaos to proceedings by splattering paint across the room in a seemingly violent outburst.

The miniature paintings are hung against a backdrop of crimson red paint splashed across the white walls, and even the miniatures, which drips across the floor like the aftermath of a brutal crime scene. The blood like pools added to my feeling of unease, as even the gallery attendant was diligent in her reminder that you ‘mind the work on the floor’, creeping around as if I was an illegal observer at risk of contaminating the scene. But as you look closer at the angry red splatters there are white flowers sitting delicately amongst the chaos, a subtle reminder of the fragility of the meticulous tradition in a nod to the Mughal masters.

Qureshi’s work effortlessly combines tradition and a subversion of painting conventions, as paint spills out from beyond the canvas. The echoing Curve gallery creates a sense of vastness that gives the miniatures an intense impact, as Qureshi undermines the viewer’s anticipation of something purely decorative with something more disturbing. His work is powerfully provocative as he attempts to create pieces where life and death work together, as the initial violence becomes something poetic on closer inspection.
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The Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS | 18 February – 10 July
http://www.barbican.org.uk/

For the first time the works of two giants of mid-to-late-20th century visual art, Richard Avedon and Andy Warhol are juxtaposed at Gagosian gallery in Britannia Street, one of the most elegant art spaces in London. Avedon and Warhol, both post-war American artists, who ultimately changed art with their parallel creative outputs that sometimes overlapped.

The show is connecting dots between the fashion photographer and pop art master in a very inspiring and reflective way, showcasing more than 50 artworks that span from 1950s to 1990s. The works focus on common subjects in the two artists’ lives, including social and political power, mortality, and the glamour, celebrities and show business. Together, Avedon and Warhol provided a unique account of post-war American pop culture, the era when legends were born and icons were made.
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The paths of two artists crossed repeatedly, but they weren’t friends as such. In fact, Warhol described Avedon as “horrible” in his diaries. Nevertheless, both artists realised the creative potential of repetition and mass production. Their most notable images, produced in response to changing cultural values, are now considered icons of the twentieth century.

The show is about duality. Two different lives, two mediums and two sets of outcomes displayed side by side to reach one objective. It is interesting to see and compare how both artists portrayed one iconic figure, such as Marilyn Monroe for instance, in two completely different ways. Information labels don’t exist here because the faces are so famous they don’t need presentation.
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As well as celebrities and show business, another shared concern was the tyranny of political power that both artists expressed in their works. The highlights of the exhibition include Avedon’s The Family (1976). Sixty-nine portraits of members of the elite political power in America in the 1970-s, commissioned by Rolling Stone. This can be compared to Warhol’s enormous silkscreen portrait of chairman Mao Zedong, showing a great deal of interest in the Chinese political situation in 1971.

Artists’ professional lives crossed briefly when Avedon photographed Andy Warhol and members of The Factory, Warhol’s crew of aspiring actors and directors in 1969. The Factory, was a well-known gathering place for distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, celebrities, and wealthy patrons. A giant multiple photoshoot was the result of Avedon’s experiments with eight-by-ten inch view camera on a tripod in order to yield images with extreme detail.
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Warhol’s painted and printed artworks are unusual, unexpected and original when first seen. In contrast, Richard Avedon’s black and white photographs are carefully composed portraits of people posed in his studio, against white background. The success of the show is easily explained by its ability to appeal to viewers who admire glamorous black and white photography as well as those preferring funky pop art.

Gagosian Gallery, 6-24 Britannia Street, London | Until April 23, 2016 |
www.gagosian.com

LONDON

Blair Thurman: Mature Blonde | Almine Rech Gallery

Hailing from New York, Blair Thurman, the artist best known for his large neon-installations and paintings on shaped canvases and wood, showcases his first solo exhibition at Almine Rech gallery. Hailed by many in recent years as one of the hottest contemporary artists on the scene, Thurman’s new work comprises of more vibrant ‘pop minimalist’ geometric shaped canvases, drawing from mechanical and metallic elements of car culture.

11 Savile Row, 1st floor, Mayfair, London W1S 3PG | 31 March – 14 May | http://www.alminerech.com

John Kørner: Apple Bombs | Victoria Miro

On show in Mayfair’s Victoria Miro gallery, the Danish artist presents Apple Bombs. A new body of work, Kørner’s wet-into-wet paintings create blurry, mismatched scenes of everyday life suspended on two dimensional planes. Previously taking on issues involving sex workers and Danish soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, the hazy, surreal settings only add to the messages of uncertainty, whilst dipping into dialogues concerning human relationships, survival and consumption.

14 St. George St, London W1S 1FE | 8 April – 14 May | http://www.victoria-miro.com

Keri Uematsu: Invisible Force | Simon Lee
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Keri Uematsu, Vertical Position, gelatin silver print, 1973

Despite a longstanding international career, this is Japanese conceptual artist Keiji Uematsu’s first show in the UK. This exhibition features a collection of sculptures and photographs over the past 45 years, tracing Keiji Uematsu’s fun experiments with gravity and the sculptural possibilities of the human body.

12 Berkeley St, London W1J 8DT | 8 April – 6 May | http://www.simonleegallery.com

David Shrigley: Drawings and Paintings | Stephen Friedman
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David Shrigley, Untitled, 2016, oil stick on canvas

Working with oil stick for the first time, Shrigley’s unmistakable line is put alongside thick, brightly-coloured paint, bringing the characteristically cartoonish style into another dimension. As if to comment on the simplicity, the dry humour of Shrigley’s satisfyingly mundane situations are captioned with lines like ‘Look At This’, remarkably appropriate considering it is this simplicity of style that is so uniform to Shirley.

44 – 46 Riding House Street, London W1W 7EX | 11 March – 8 April | http://www.joshlilleygallery.com

Spencer Finch: The Opposite of Blindness | Lisson Gallery
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Spencer Firth, Sunflower (Bee’s View, Full Sun Improved), pastel and pencil on paper, 2016

The title of the exhibition, a line taken from Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, refers to the notion of a broach approach to seeing; trying to get beyond what we normally think of as vision. Through a new installation, watercolours and pastels on paper, Finch tests the limits of objectivity, pursuing poetic ends with scientific clarity, and analyses the points at which conventional vision vanishes to become something else.

27 and 52 Bell St, London NW1 5BY | 1 April – 7 May | http://www.lissongallery.com

NEW YORK

Alexis Rockman: Bioluminescence | Carolina Nitsch Project Room
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Alexis Rockman ,Untitled (Coronet Medusa), Gouache on paper, 2013.

Rockman, who has said his work was inspired by childhood visits to the American Museum of Natural History, emerged in the 1980s with fantastical paintings of flora and fauna, often portrayed in post-apocalyptic setting, limned in a style that married dire ecological warnings with magic realism. His career has included work for Hollywood, most notably the concept drawings he created for Ang Lee’s film of Life of Pi. His latest show plunges into the briny deep with images of bioluminescent sea creatures lighting up gouaches on black paper.

534 W 22nd St, New York 10012 | 1 April – 30 April | http://carolinanitsch.com

Bernard Frize: Dawn Comes Up So Young | Galerie Perrotin
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Bernard Frize, Doine, acrylic and resin on canvas, 2015.

Bernard Frize occupies a unique position in the discourse of abstract painting. By using the colour in an experimental, or technical-mechanical manner, Frize draws attention to painting as a handicraft, while also discounting the idea of artistic creation. The resulting pieces, alluring and locked at the same time, have become a trademark of his oil-slick painting style.

909 Madison Avenue & 73rd Street, Upper East Side, New York 10021 | 03 May – 18 June | https://www.perrotin.com

Serge Poliakoff | Cheim & Reid
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Serge Poliakoff, Composition Abstraite, 1962

Cheim & Read exhibits a survey of paintings by one of the foremost post-war European abstractionists, the Russian-born Serge Poliakoff (1900–1969). A product of the Russian diaspora that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, Poliakoff fled to the West, educating himself in the art schools and museums of London and Paris. He painted every day while raising a family, supporting this life by playing Russian folk songs on guitar in Parisian nightclubs.

547 W 25th St, New York 10001 | 31 March – 30 April | http://www.cheimread.com

Gerasimos Floratos | White Columns
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Installation view Gerasimos Floratos, White Columns 2016.

As objects, Floratos’s paintings appear slapdash with their crooked stretcher frames and puckered canvases. But this funky presentation nicely compliments the artist’s quasi-abstracted, cartoonish style and penchant for squashed compositions depicting an odd range of subjects, from New York street characters and scenes to Greek mythology.

320 W 13th St, entrance on Horatio St, New York 10014 | 1 March – 16 April | https://whitecolumns.org

Ibrahim El-Salahi: Alhambra | Salon 94
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Installation view Gerasimos Floratos, White Columns 2016.

Alhambra, the inaugural exhibition of Ibrahim El-Salahi at Salon 94, will feature new works by the Modernist master painter and pioneer of Sudanese art. Recognised as the father of African and Arab Modernism, El-Salahi’s paintings and works on paper harmonise African, Arab, and Islamic visual sources with twentieth century European art traditions. Born in Omdurman, Sudan in 1930, his remarkable career has had a profound influence on succeeding generations of artists from the region and across the globe.

243 Bowery, New York 10002 | 1 March – 23 April | https://www.salon94.com

Das Institut is a collaborative project between Adele Röder and Kerstin Brätsch, artists from different aesthetic practices who share the same vision or ritual in which humour and play predominate over daily life. Utilising the force of cosmic abstraction, they present a mystical brew of experimental pieces produced by combining their own work with that of other artists, craftspeople, sound and filmmakers thereby rejecting individual artistic creativity. The result is a cacophony of experimental ideas exploring the effects of light and transience on the human body incorporating a whole gamut of materials (neon light, stained glass and even cake ingredients to name a few). These artists are not interested in presenting their vision clearly but delight instead in uncertainty, presenting their installations within seemingly unconnected zones thereby promoting a sense of discord and puzzlement. Their opening gesture, a pair of cheeky neon breasts swaps tiresome intellectual chuckles for a refreshing change of the obvious.

The bodies of Röder and Brätsch feature in their work throughout, appearing initially in Am Sonntag (2016) from their series ‘When you see me again it won’t be me’, a crazy slide projection of nibbled away faces, knowing looks and nutty postures.
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Blobs of ‘cytoplasm’ skim the surface of the Absolution Well (2016), an optical illusion of depth and infinity devised by concentric hoops of blue neon interspersed with stained glass shelves. This particular piece introduces the many possibilities afforded by combining Röder’s minimalist light installations with the neo-expressionist stained glass work of Brätsch. Further on, neon tubes draggle around a succession of portraits bearing medieval-inspired characters with algetic expressions and deformities formed from uncut gems and a sugary confection of enamel and lead. The haphazard positioning of neon in the latter is slightly less successful and more of a superfluous than complementary element but acts as an effective warm up to the theatrics of their next installation, North Tomb (2016).

Inspired by the tension and sporadic release of droplets, Brätsch’s majestic array of marbled panels denoting the entrance to the tomb presents a swirling mass of moss drenched inks suggestive of human forms. Within, the artists’ collaboration is exposed at full throttle against the sound track of Sergei Tcherepnin’s migraine mix of morphed jungle beats. Röder’s slick of neon glows gently in the dark beneath Brätsch’s lurid suspension of animalistic images, spidery members and psychedelic tongues fulfilling an apparent desire for chaos.

Outside the tomb, the sight of Röder’s restful solar prints depicting recumbent body postures provide contrast from the throng. The outcome of lying on light-sensitive linen combined with a fascination in the similarities between her own body and the position of exhumed human relics has resulted in an attractive set of images.
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Serpentine Sackler Gallery, West Carriage Drive, Kensington Gardens, London W2 2AR | March 3 – May 15, 2016 | http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/

From fervent students pouring over bowls of fruit to artists incorporating natural materials into their practise, nature has long been a central theme within art and design. As the human footprint continues to encroach upon our environment, art is used by some to explore how humanity interrelates with natural order. A topic full of breadth with the potential to create room spanning installations or intricate studies, yet artists still fall into the trap of presenting work that moves dangerously close to becoming completely two dimensional.

For conceptual artist Julian Charrière the ‘humans versus nature’ debate informs his work, which during the first decade of his career took him to some of the remotest corners of the earth. The Swiss-French artist explores the inherent tension between what occurs naturally and what is due to human activity as part of giving a platform to ecological and environmental issues. Charrière’s work is diverse featuring film, installation and sculpture as he scrutinizes our constant demand for technological advances that have vast implications for the future of our ecological system.

The Parasol Unit Foundation, a non-profit institution that is committed to artists and their creative endeavours, is internationally recognised for its thought-provoking exhibition programme. The work of Charrière echoes the Foundation’s philosophy for pushing the bounds of the medium, becoming the most recent addition to the list of exhibitors with his first UK solo exhibition For They That Sow the Wind. The series of work takes the viewer on a journey through the isolated regions Charrière travelled to as part of creating each piece. From the glaring white prehistoric lake, Salar de Uyuni, in Bolivia to the haunting landscape of Stalin’s nuclear test sites in Kazakhstan, Charrière’s work is driven by an adventurous curiosity that becomes inescapably infectious.

The film ‘Somewhere’ and accompanying photographic series ‘Polygon’ document the devastation at the result of human hands in Semipalatinsk, the site where between 1949 and 1989 the Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests. A landscape that when described still evokes a sense of horror that has become rooted within the remaining wasteland. But not only does Charrière bring a flicker of past into the present, he also humanises even the most alien of landscapes. The hazy quality of the photographs in ‘Polygon’ was achieved by Charrière exposing them to radiation before development, each bearing a physical trace of radioactivity. The resulting images are scarred with cloud-like shapes bursting across the sky, taking an event that happened years ago and making it seem mysteriously futuristic.

‘We Are All Astronauts’ injected some vibrancy and playfulness into the exhibition an installation featuring various globes, dating from 1890 to 2011. The globes speckled with muted tones and flashes of turquoise appeared to be floating, a fantastical piece that has a strong political message at its core. Charrière sought to represent equality through eliminating geographical divisions between countries and continents by sanding the surface of each globe, letting the dust intermingle underneath.

Julian Charrière is an artist that presents beautiful objects amongst stark scenes, with the most fascinating quality about his work this ability to seek out an element of splendour in even the most barren of places.
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Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, 14 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW | http://parasol-unit.org/home http://julian-charriere.net/

In 1882 the 12th Duke of Hamilton was forced to sell his grandfather’s immense collection of paintings, prints and decorative arts. The Berlin Kupferstichkabinett (Prints and Drawings Museum) bought many of the prints and manuscripts from Sotheby’s before they even went to auction, despite objections from John Ruskin and the Royal Family. At the heart of this collection was a set of illustrations of Dante Alighieri’s famous epic poem, The Divine Comedy, by Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli.

The Courtauld Gallery offers an exceptional opportunity to explore the great master’s interpretation of one of the canonical texts of world literature. The exhibition presents a selection of thirty exquisite drawings from around 1480 – 95, in which Botticelli depicted scenes from Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise as envisaged in the poem. Ten works capture each of its three parts; in hell Dante encounters moneylenders, corrupt clergy, evil sorcerers and other sinners, in purgatory he watches as the negligent and gluttonous perform penance, and in paradise he finds his lost love from youth, Beatrice. The masterful drawings are accompanied by a rare selection of manuscripts from the time of Botticelli, including the monumental ‘Hamilton Bible’ and Courtauld Gallery’s own collection, which includes the master’s large altarpiece of The Holy Trinity with Saints John and Mary Magdalene, dating to the same years as the Dante series.

Spanning a vast emotional, technical and narrative range, Botticelli’s illustrations represent an absolute embodiment of Renaissance achievement and conception of the artist as an individual creative genius. It took Botticelli almost 20 years to bring the drawings to a state of near-completion.
Biographer Giorgio Vasari described Botticelli as a man, who was “obsessed with the project, bringing infinite disorder into his life by neglecting work”.
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Botticelli’s lines are as fine as spider’s silk, sometimes barely seen at all. The first impression is that they are very faint and sketchy, but once you look closer, you discover marvellous and delicate figures, most in nude, scattered at different angles, in animated poses. Often characters are depicted several times in the same drawing, as a way of illustrating their movement through a scene. In one image, Dante’s figure has two heads, to show that he is turning to see over his shoulder.

While working on the illustrations, Botticelli was exploring the perspective and the position of the figures in a three-dimensional space. A macabre highlight is the artist’s gruesome full-length illustration of Lucifer, shown gorging on the souls of three arch traitors. For this depiction of Satan, Botticelli used two pieces of vellum stitched together – a double-fold centre-spread of evil.
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Some of the drawings have traces of colour, suggesting that they were initially all going to be completed with colour, but instead they remained a fragile pen lines on a blank cream background. The final page is unfinished and there is a theory that it was because Botticelli couldn’t visualise Dante’s conceptual text. It is difficult to understand what effect Florence’s rough times had on Botticelli’s work. One thing certain is that these fragile drawings show a spiritual and artistic journey, not only of the great Dante, but also of Botticelli.

Courtauld Institute Of Art, Somerset House, The Strand, London WC2R 0RN | February 18 – May 15, 2016 | courtauld.ac.uk

Spontaneous and radical, graffiti has annexed the walls of Somerset House bringing the unauthorised art of the crowded metropolis into the legality of the gallery space. This fascinating exhibition, comprising seventeen street artists, challenges the homogenised view that graffiti is an act of vandalism motivated by human misery and focuses instead on its utopian element. The curator, Dr Rafael Schacter, anticipates that these artists’ graffiti-inspired work from around the world will create a new genre that bridges the gap between street and contemporary art.

A community based art, graffiti transmits its subversive messages through pithy imagery without the need for technology thereby bypassing the limits of state censorship. In some ways, the displacement of graffiti to the art gallery from its context within the cityscape gentrifies its imagery thereby losing its sense of power and immediacy. If the work within this exhibition can be regarded as utopian or not, it still reveals an interesting collection of optimistic viewpoints. Individual works are metaphorically connected throughout by Brad Downey’s sporadic wall plugs which convey brilliantly the cryptic element of graffiti, underpinning the independent thinking behind street art.

Horfée’s imagery, influenced by early twentieth Century cartoons, are positioned within the unorthodox landscape of the graffiti artist transporting the viewer on a vibrant and hallucinogenic trip of wobbly splurges and magic mushrooms. Petro’s High-Visibility Graffito alludes to the guise of the neon vest, the graffiti artists’ ticket to inaccessible places. Remediated, Revok’s vibrant assemblage work appears computer generated but in reality, reveals manually-applied sticky tapes referencing his own vision of utopia, positioned beyond technology in pursuit of the hand-made.

In excess, graffiti letters or ‘tagging’ is seen by authorities as a provocation to criminal activity and attempts are made to remove it as soon as it appears. The chalky effect of Russell Maurice installation adheres to this transient nature of graffiti. His cheeky cartoon figures in MDF reclaim space where they can, their gagged snouts popping up out of their papery home sprawled across the floor. Saeio also reflects the temporary nature of graffiti in his video, Nolens Violence, a sequence in which the artist’s work is eradicated as soon as it is created.
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Although graffiti is free from the confines of the architectural space it is restricted by the dingy fabric and textures of the street. Mike Ballard’s grey ‘urban hieroglyphics’ reference paving slabs, bearing the lumps of encrusted bubble-gum, layers of city grime and tarmacked joints left by utility companies. Ballard regards these as the positive effects of the continuous redevelopment and regeneration of the city. The ordered geometry and fuzzy lines of Six Paredes’ Futurismo Series appear the most optimistic, conveying utopia as a harmonious interaction between different cultures combining the universe in one common language.
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Somerset House, Strand | London WC2R 1LA | March 3 – May 2, 2016 |
www.somersethouse.org.uk

To celebrate the 160th anniversary of both the National Portrait Gallery and Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery, the two institutions have organised a unique cultural exchange. Some of the main pieces of the Russian collection come to London, while the Tretyakov Gallery simultaneously hosts an exhibition of portraits of British icons from the National Portrait Gallery.

For the display in London, curators have put together a collection of portraits of Russia’s most eminent figures. Paintings of Russian artists, philosophers, composers, writers and patrons spanning 1867-1914 and highlighting an artistic golden age for the nation. The exhibition not only serves as an introduction to the key figures in Russia’s cultural history, it also provides an interesting insight into the development of Russian art. Combining Realist, Impressionist and Symbolist pieces, the collection gives credit to some notable Russian artists that are not so widely known in Britain.

Achievements of great Russian writers including Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoevsky, helped develop an extraordinary and rich cultural scene in Russia before the Bolshevik takeover in 1917, putting a tragic end to a cultural golden age. The display is a unique opportunity to explore Russian culture through the people who made it great, giving an idea and insight of the development of the country from a historical, creative and artistic perspective.

I was very pleased to notice that the selection of Tretyakov’s highlights is not only displaying works by famous Russian painters like Ilya Repin and Valentin Serov, but also introduces the remarkable Russian artists that are not very well known in the west. Nikolai Ge’s portrait of Alexander Herzen and Vasiliy Perov’s depiction of Fyodor Dostoevsky are very good examples.
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The paintings are grouped by field and include portraits of writers, musicians and patrons, with each category reserving a few highlights. The theatre section focuses on a detailed and very realistic portrait of Chekhov and a large full-length painting of Maria Ermolova, one of the greatest actresses in the history of the Maly Theatre in Moscow, depicted by Valentin Serov. A section rightfully titled The Three Great Novelists, shows Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev. Dostoevsky’s portrait certainly stands out, as it is the only likeness of the author to have been painted from life. The image has gained cult status in Russia and is still being produced on stamps and different merchandise.
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Through the stories of each portrait, the painter and the person depicted, you can get a sense of the political atmosphere and the shifting dynamics within Russian society between 1867 and 1914. These artists of the age of Tolstoy share the sensitivity, honesty and the searching unease of the writers and composers they portray. Tatiana Karpova, Deputy Director of the Tretyakov gallery pointed out that “this art belongs not only to Russia but to all humanity.”

National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, WC2H 0HE London | March 17 – June 26, 2016 |
www.npg.org.uk

LONDON

Now on:
Unexpected Eisenstein | GRAD

Unexpected Eisenstein, an exhibition that sheds new light on the life and achievements of pioneering Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. This immersive new exhibition invites audiences to consider Eisenstein beyond his cinematic achievements. Bringing together nearly seventy sketches, designs and printed materials, Unexpected Eisenstein offers a rare opportunity to see this varied and surprising collection of work and for the first time explores his often overlooked relationship with England.

3-4A Little Portland Street, London W1W 7JB | 17 February — 30 April | https://www.grad-london.com/whatson/

Now on:
Apostolos Georgiou: The Same Old Fucking Story | Rodeo

Apostolos Georgiou’s large paintings dominate Rodeo’s tiny gallery space and adding to the aptly named title -The Same Old Fucking Story. Georgiou’s painting style is sketchy and blocky, the figures portrayed with thick, jittery outlines, blurring any detailed or identifiable features and creating rather sorrowful nameless figures. Although rather than having any distinct politically driven images, Georgiou sets stages for grey suited, white-collar workers, making subtle references no doubt to the ongoing economic and social crises in his home country of Greece.

123 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0EW | 19 February – 30 April | http://rodeo-gallery.com

Now on:
El Anatsui: New Works | October Gallery

40 year veteran Ghanaian artist El Anatsui is best known for his shimmering, contorted, sheet-like sculptures made of bottle tops sewn together with copper wire, which have clad the façades of buildings like the Royal Academy and Venice’s Palazzo Fortuny. His new work at October gallery, Russell Square although smaller in scale, the almost incandescent sculptures will be no less mesmerising.

24 Old Gloucester St, London WC1N 3AL | 27 January – 24 April | http://www.octobergallery.co.uk/index.shtml

Now on:
Sterling Ruby: Workwear | Sprüth Magers

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Each time a piece of artwork is finished by Sterling Ruby, the multi-media artist who is well known for recycling scrap materials in his work, a new set of unique one-off garments are made as a conclusion to the project, indexing the clothes Ruby wears in the studio alongside the art itself. In this exhibition, from the fabrics that are hand-dyed and hand-treated in Ruby’s studio yard, to the exotic enzyme washes researched and sourced from LA’s rich garment production industry, these carefully crafted artworks in their own right are on display.

7a Grafton St, London W1S 4EH | 11 March – 09 April, 2016 | http://www.spruethmagers.com/home/

Now on:
Tori Wrånes: Drastic Pants | Carl Freedman Gallery

Winner of the ‘Best Exhibition Title of the Year’ award? With an array of prosthetics and props, Norwegian artist Wrånes creates performances that are often as funny as they are haunting. For her first major exhibition in London, she’ll be showing a number of floor- and wall-based works, including thick, blotchy abstract paintwork with mixed materials, suspended beanbags and floating ghost-like, headless figures.

29 Charlotte Road, London EC2A 3PB | 25 February – 02 April, 2016 | http://www.carlfreedman.com

NEW YORK

Now on:
Hedda Sterne: Machines 1947-1951 | Van Doren Waxter

Van Doren Waxter is pleased to present Hedda Sterne: Machines 1947 – 1951, an exhibition of mid-century paintings and works on paper by this preeminent figure of the American post war period. Hedda Sterne began her “Machines” series in 1947 after encountering farming machinery on a trip to Vermont. The result: Anthropographs, abstracted machines with a humanlike nature. Sterne, a recent emigre from Romania, was deeply affected by the cultural and aesthetic shift she discovered in the United States.

23 E 73rd St, New York 10021 | 09 March – 28 April, 2016 | http://www.vandorenwaxter.com

Now on:
Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible | The Met Breuer
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The question, “When is a piece finished?” Is addressed in The Met Breuer’s inaugural show using juxtapositions of ‘Old Master’ works with examples of modern and contemporary art. The show presents artworks that were clearly left incomplete alongside others that are deliberately unfinished as an interrogation of the artists’ creative processes. The unfinished has been taken in entirely new directions by modern and contemporary artists, among them Janine Antoni, Lygia Clark, Jackson Pollock, and Robert Rauschenberg, who alternately blurred the distinction between making and un-making, extending the boundaries of art into both space and time.

945 Madison Ave, New York | until 4 September | http://metmuseum.org

Now on:
Rachel Harrison: Perth Amboy | Museum of Modern Art
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Named after a town in New Jersey where an apparition of the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared on the window of a two-story house, Rachel Harrison’s room-sized work Perth Amboy exemplifies a cross-disciplinary approach to making art. The work comprises 21 photographs, individual sculptural assemblages, and an open-ended labyrinth made from cardboard.

11 W 53rd St, New York 10019 | until 5 September, 2016 | http://moma.org/

Now on:
Raoul De Keyser: Drift | David Zwirner
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Raoul De Keyser: Drift is organized around a group of twenty-two works completed shortly before his death in October 2012, and known as The Last Wall. Together, they revisit some of the major subjects that occupied the artist throughout his nearly fifty-year long career, including the landscape of the Belgian lowlands where he grew up and lived his entire life and the inconspicuous things close at hand. Shown together for the first time in David Zwirner London last year, these paintings, will be accompanied by a careful selection of works from the 1990s onwards that are likewise representative of these subjects.

537 W 20th St, New York City 10011 | 18 March – 23 April, 2016 | http://www.davidzwirner.com

Now on:
Carrie Moyer: Sirens | DC Moore Gallery
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Rife with visual precedents, Moyer’s compositions reference Color Field, Pop Art and 1970s Feminist art, while proposing a new approach to fusing history, research and experimentation in painting. Sirens marks Carrie Moyer’s first exhibition with DC Moore Gallery and her sumptuous paintings on canvas explore and extend the legacy of American Abstraction while paying homage to many of its seminal female figures among them Elizabeth Murray, Helen Frankenthaler, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

535 West 22nd Street, second floor, New York | 18 February – 26 March, 2016 | http://www.dcmooregallery.com

At the ICA this spring, Betty Woodman takes center stage with her playful works. One of the most important contemporary artists working with sculpture, painting and ceramics, Woodman presents a vibrant collection of mixed media created within the past ten years, including new pieces made especially for the ICA. The exhibition’s title, Theatre of the Domestic, relates quite comfortably to Woodman’s distinctive exploration of domestic space. Combining wallpaper, vases and other domestic objects seems to subvert how the home is occupied and used, discovering decorative forms and their purpose within the domestic space.

Betty Woodman has been working and creating with clay for almost 70 years, since she took a one-off pottery class in high school. “I still have the naive belief that having beautiful things around you might make you a better person,” she shares. Bringing together vases, paintings and drawings in theatrical dialogue, the Institute of Contemporary Art presents the opportunity to experience and interact with Woodman’s fascinating creations. What I personally love about Betty Woodman, her work doesn’t tease or provoke, it just puts a happy smile on your face as you walk through her wonderful ceramic artworks.
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The artist playfully combines two-dimensional paintings and three-dimensional vessels, breaking the boundaries of form. A series of experimental “wallpapers” with over three hundred glazed ceramic fragments, leftover from the vessel making process, prove just that. The abstract patterns seem to flow across the walls, almost growing through the space.

Painting, particularly in recent years, plays a key role in the work of the artist. Inspired by Egyptian art, Greek sculpture and Italian Baroque architecture, Woodman’s colourful drawings on handmade paper or canvas combine graphite, ink and lacquer with wax. The show’s largest piece is the four-part painting taking an entire gallery wall, titled The Summer House. It depicts a Pepto-Bismol pink table full of pots and plates and vases, recalling Woodman’s vibrant Manhattan loft.

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Another important part of the artist’s collection, ceramic vases, are displayed in different locations, some directly on the floor and others one the platforms. Woodman has been experimenting with vases for many years, giving them new forms and meanings. Berry Woodman’s vase can be a vessel, a human body, a metaphor or an art-historical reference. Circle around each piece and the surface of the vase will undulate and veer – one of Woodman’s creative tricks.
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All works by Betty Woodman relate to her ceramics, their decorative design, and unusual use of various media that can be seen as a way of exploring her inner sensibility as an artist. Cheery palette of colours and quirky forms throughout the show make it easy to enjoy and admire the artist’s work in a pleasant, effortless way.

Institute of Contemporary Arts, 12 Carlton House Terrace SW1Y 5AH London |  February 3 – April 10, 2016 | ica.org.uk

[By Oliver Roche]

LONDON
Now on:
Renee So | Kate McGarry

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Shoreditch town’s Kate McGarry exhibits the Hong Kong born, Melbourne raised, Londoners’ third solo exhibition at the gallery. A collection of new tapestries and ceramics repeating motifs such as disconnected limbs. Drawing from the traditions of antiquity and historical portrait busts, spherical curls of Assyrian beards and lit cigarettes play across both tapestries and ceramics. Elephants feet, anthropomorphic cocktail glasses and giant cigarettes are suggestive of dream logic, the golden age of American advertising and upturned moments of leisure.

27 Old Nichol St, London E2 7HR | 16 March – 16 April | http://www.katemacgarry.com/

Now on:
Santiago Montoya | Halcyon Gallery
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Contemporary Colombian artist, Santiago Montoya gives us Money Talks, his exhibition at Halcyon Gallery, West End. This brand new body of work is part of an ongoing exploration into currency, history and socio-political issues. Combining the pop vocabulary of Warhol and a multitude of rolled international banknotes, Montoya uses the world’s leading currencies as his aesthetic arena.

144-146 New Bond Street, London W1S 2PF | 16 February – 2 April | http://www.halcyongallery.com/

Now on:
Armand Boua: Les Zinzins | Jack Bell Gallery
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The street kids of his hometown are the subjects of this Ivory Coast artist’s paintings. Built up in textured layers on scrap cardboard, Boua’s works may feel rough-handed, but the socio political issues of West Africa are handled with sensitivity

13 Mason’s Yard, St. James’s, London SW1Y 6BU | 4 March – 18 March | http://www.jackbellgallery.com/

Now on:
Harmony Korine: Fazors | Gagosian Davies St
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Large-scale, colour-filled, concentric circles – inspired by sun motifs from the 60’s and 70’s – make up Korine’s ‘Fazor’ series. Paintings alluding to the phaser effect, these images are symbolic of oscillating sound and hypno-psychedelic effects.

17-19 Davies Street, London W1K 3DE | 15 March – 24 March | http://www.gagosian.com/

Now on:
Julian Charriére: For They That Sow the Wind | Parasol Unit
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Parasol Unit foundation for contemporary art showcases the first solo exhibition in the UK by French-Swiss artist, Julian Charriére. Including sculpture, documented performance, installations, photographs and film – Much of his work is concerned with time, the continuous cycle of past, present and future, as well as sudden and gradual physical transformations that have occurred naturally or due to human activity. Creating works while exploring ecological and environmental issues in specific locations, Charrière examines how humanity interrelates with the natural order.

14 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW | 15 January – 23 March | http://www.parasol-unit.org/

NEW YORK

Now on:
Anna Ostoya: Slaying | Bortolami
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Bortolami is pleased to announce Slaying, Anna Ostoya’s third exhibition at the gallery. In her new paintings and photomontages, the artist deploys Artemisia Gentileschi’s iconic work, Judith Slaying Holofernes, as an image of violence inherent in art and in life. The original painting depicts the story of Judith, a Jewish widow who saves her people besieged by the Assyrian army. With the help of her maidservant, she plies Holofernes, the army general, with alcohol and then beheads him in his drunken state.
520 W 20th Street, New York, NY 10011 | 25 February – 23 April | http://bortolamigallery.com

Now on:
Nicola Tyson | Petzel Gallery
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A British artist working in New York, Nicola Tyson is sometimes compared to Francis Bacon as both artists pursue a gnarly Expressionistic style of figurative painting in which the human form becomes almost unrecognizable through warping, twisting and other depredations. Tyson, however, is more of an abstractionist, investing much her of energy in color, though she works just as compellingly in black and white. This show offers some of both with works on paper in acrylics, as well as graphite.

456 W 18th Street, New York 10011 | 2 March – 23 April | http://www.petzel.com

Now on:
Tim Wilson: Something Rather Than Nothing | Sardine
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Something Rather Than Nothing consists of a grouping of Wilson’s recent paintings of small floral still lifes and large-scale abstractions. Due in part to their size, the all-encompassing fields of shifting colour in the larger works envelop one’s body within a center-less universe, recalling the well-traveled histories of abstraction and the color field. This effect is undercut by the inclusion of small, deftly rendered flowers that invite an interior contemplation in the even longer western tradition of nature morte.

286 Stanhope Street, Ground Floor, Brooklyn, New York 11237 | 5 March – 10 April | http://sardinebk.com

Now on:
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Try to Altar Everything | Rubin Museum of Art﷯

Try to Altar Every Thing is a new, site-specific artwork by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge that incorporates small personal offerings from visitors. These objects will be arranged and rearranged throughout the gallery by the artist for the length of the exhibition. The installation enacts the concepts of devotion, exchange, and community that are at the heart of the artist’s multidisciplinary practice.

150 West 17th Street, New York, NY 10011 | 11 March – 1 August | http://rubinmuseum.org

Now on:
Global/Local 1960-2015: Six Artists from Iran | Grey Art Gallery
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Comprising of paintings, sculpture, drawings, mixed-media installations, and video, Global/Local 1960–2015: Six Artists from Iran features works by three generations of Iranian artists born between 1937 and 1982. The exhibition presents some ten works each by six artists—Faramarz Pilaram, Parviz Tanavoli, Chohreh Feyzdjou, Shiva Ahmadi, Shahpour Pouyan, and Barbad Golshiri—examining their individual artistic practices through shared aspects of their Persian heritage, such as ornamentation, poetry, architecture, and Sufism.

100 Washington Sq East, New York | 12 January – 2 April | https://greyartgallery.nyu.edu

Encumbered with big doleful heads and spindly legs, Emma Talbot’s melancholy characters narrate the recollections and missed opportunities along her life’s journey. Unravel These Knots comprises a selection of her ink drawings, screen printed textiles and hand-made objects which display the content of her dreams, her subconscious self and sexual fantasies. Her scenes, sometimes presented in the manner of a storyboard, depict her relationships within domestic scenarios against the backdrop of her Northern upbringing in Newcastle. Her lithograph, Vanishing Point, exemplifies the linear but also cyclical nature of her work in which she conveys the contents of her mind at any given moment. She prefers to leave the faces of her characters blank in order to suggest that elements of her own personal experiences might also reflect those of others.

Freud’s consulting room was furnished in the manner of a domestic interior in order to relax his patients during psychoanalysis. He attempted to reconstruct the interior in detail at his study in Maresfield Gardens in response to his sadness in leaving his home at Berggasse, Vienna after fleeing the Nazis in 1938. Within a plethora of worn rugs and faded velvets, the sightless eyes of Freud’s treasured Egyptian relics loom from this now darkened room. Sometimes yellow, turquoise or charcoal brown, the colours of his jaded book jackets are picked up in Talbot’s carpet drawing, Unravel These Knots, a distressed and patched up piece of decorative motifs and despondent messages enlivened here and there with Pharaohs’ gold. Her storyboard of sexual fantasies is strewn like a ‘Jackie mag’ on Freud’s legendary couch like the remnants of a therapy session, an urgent tale of grab-it-where-you-can.

In Anna Freud’s room sits Intangible Things: Dreamer, a stuffed ‘head’ disguised as a cushion; its vastness an incongruity on a child’s couch. Tightly packed like Louise Bourgeois’ Femme Couteau, its form conveys the state of passivity during psychoanalysis. Separated from its mind, lies a heap of dark tubular forms suggestive of the restless positioning of legs during treatment as a patient might search for its missing ‘body’ or childhood memory.
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In Freud’s essay, Screen Memories which in part inspires Talbot’s work for this exhibition, Freud emphasizes the importance of analysing the fragments of dreams rather than viewing them in their entirety. A vivid silk screen print presents fragmented scenes from Talbot’s early life which envelop Freud’s dining room wall in waves of psychedelic colour. At odds with his traditional Bavarian furniture, the print’s jazzy hues appear to characterise the many personalities he dealt with on a daily basis. In Talbot’s troubled world, figures precariously walk along walls, make love hastily above banks of dahlias or desert the family home, bag in hand. Behind these scenes, her superstitions are symbolized by a fragmented window pane as a portent to further events.

Where: Freud Museum, 20 Maresfield Gardens, London NW3 5SX
When: 10 February – 10 April 2016
Website: www.freud.org.uk

The way we view art is constantly evolving as artists and curators strive to create impactful exhibitions that challenge the viewer. In London, a city completely saturated with galleries, glimmers of innovation are found in exhibitions that subvert conventional models of curating. The stuffy gallery space attracts a niche crowd of art enthusiasts, some as institutionalised as the static white gallery walls. A factor that is fuelling the art community’s desire to make the arts ‘more accessible’ in hope of diminishing the surrounding pretence. In my eyes the gallery space is arguably as important as the art itself and frequently there is an overarching static quality to London-based exhibitions.

In opposition to this rigid template for the gallery space comes a stream of artists and curators attempting to break the sanctity of the sited exhibition. One such example can be seen in the work of Vitrine, a gallery that has artist experimentation and development at its core. The programme of exhibitions presents site-specific installations that seek to undermine the permanence of traditional gallery spaces.

A theme at the centre of Jamie Fitzpatrick’s work, an emerging artist represented by Vitrine, as he disrupts not only the nature of how his work is viewed but also symbols of social authority. (Loudly) chomp, chomp, chomp is a refreshingly energetic solo exhibition anchored by absurdist theatre and the tradition of ‘Punch and Judy’ as part of a satirical exploration of indecency in the face of authority.

Fitzpatrick was not limited by the 16-metre vitrine in which his work is exhibited, with the comical wax figures appearing completely absurd as part of destabilising social status and the totems of authority. The grotesque, cartoon-like waxworks are set against the backdrop of a three-part play written by Fitzpatrick, combining his growing passion for writing, whilst injecting a strong narrative element into his work.

Vitrine exists to support artists such as Fitzpatrick, who used the platform to continue to develop his artistic practise. The exhibitions are viewable 24/7 and seek to stretch beyond the parameters of the space. The madness of Fitzpatrick’s messy, comical work, that features motorised figures, seeps into the surrounding public domain, placing transgression at the centre.
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Located VITRINE, 15 Bermondsey Square, SE1 3UN London
Until 9 April 2016
http://www.vitrinegallery.com/

Mark Wallinger’s first exhibition in London in ten years has opened at Hauser & Wirth, displayed prominently in both of its Savile Row galleries. ID is inspired by Sigmund Freud’s work and his terms. Id, as the primitive and instinctive component of personality, ego – a part of id that has been modified by the external world, and finally superego – the values and morals of society learned from others. In his show, Wallinger presents new paintings, sculptures, photographs and multi-media works that explore the position of the self within society.

The works are thematically grouped around the varying aspects of the mind, opening with a playful recreation of Michelangelo’s famous painting of Adam and God. The piece titled Ego features Wallinger’s own hands in a pair of coincidental iPhone photographs, that he tacked together on his kitchen wall. In Wallinger’s representation of the famous painting, he is, obviously, both Adam and God.
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The key of the show is a monumental series of 17 works that grew out of Wallinger’s self-portraits, that he called ID. Black on white canvas and what seems perfectly symmetrical at first glance, paintings immediately suggest the resemblance to giant Rorschach’s inkblots and brain scans. Made without brushes, Wallinger painted them using his own body and paint covered hands, working over canvases specially made to his body’s dimensions, recalling the bilateral symmetry of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

‘The paintings are made with instinct, sometimes blindly, intuitively and/or in a dialogue,” Wallinger explains in the exhibition catalogue, “as human beings, we operate between our instinctual urges, our attachment to our identities, and the ways in which we judge ourselves as members of a certain culture”.

In the same way that Leonardo da Vinci advised artists to stare at a wall until their imagination could fill in the details, Wallinger leaves it to the viewers to decide what it is exactly they see in his paintings. It is a great exercise to recognise parts of our consciousness that are unknown to us, yet crucial in the way we construct our personalities and interact with people around us.

One of the video works, Orrery, is a film about the Oak tree in Fairlop, near where Wallinger was born. The film was made with an iPhone video camera, tacked to the driver’s side window, capturing the tree that had stood in Hainault Forest for centuries.
Wallinger has been filming the Oak tree at the centre of the roundabout and the surrounding area for a whole year. Presented on four screens it encourages the viewer to see the work with the same motion as a car has been going round and round. By naming this work Orrery, a model of the solar system, Wallinger makes a comment on our personal and national identity, history and society by emphasising and exaggerating every day moments that can otherwise pass us by.
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The final piece, Superego, represents Wallinger’s latest sculptural work. It features a mirrored version of the revolving Scotland Yard sign as a symbol of an all-seeing, ever-present eye that controls our behaviour, just like Superego does.

“The superego acts to perfect and civilise our behaviour,” says Wallinger. “It works to suppress all unacceptable urges of the id and struggles to make the ego act upon idealistic standards rather than upon realistic principles. The New Scotland Yard sign is a brand, a logo, the seat of authority, the all-seeing eye, omnipresent and omniscient.”
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In 1923, Sigmund Freud presented an important idea and multiple aspects of the human psyche that fuel our basic, instinctual drives – id, ego, and superego. Mark Wallinger’s new exhibition is about the artist looking inwards, exploring himself and his place in the world. It raises many questions regarding our personal behaviour, place within society, and the way we relate to ourselves, making me think, how our actions and thoughts are influenced by the world around us.

Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, London, W1S 2ET | 26 Feb – 7 May 2016 | www.hauserwirth.com

LONDON

Now on:
Victoria Arney, Ian Chamberlain, Liz K. Miller: Timeline | Bearspace
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Finishing this week, Deptford’s Bearspace Gallery hosts a group of works by the British artists exploring the ways that contemporary etchers utilise this historical process, often combining graphic, symmetry and concept to represent space and form in temporal and evocative ways. Each etching is taken from a form of architecture, be it within cities or our natural surroundings and the result in all three artists works are finished pieces that denote the process, both of the artist’s area of investigation and method of production.

Where: T152 Deptford High Street, London, SE8 3PQ
When: 29 January – 4 March
Website: http://www.bearspace.co.uk

Now on:
Contemporary Visions VI | BEERS London
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Featuring ten emerging artists, Contemporary Visions group exhibition has sought to identify current trends in contemporary art and in its sixth year, the show once again features more distinct promise. Comprising of abstract paintings, installation art with sculptures and mixed media that is captivating in every aspect. Jonathan Lux’s ‘Dreamette’ stands out as well as Mikey Cook’s works that use rows of perfectly straight lines intersected by curved and soft shapes to emphasise space and different objects.

Where: 1 Baldwin Street, London EC1V 9NU
When: 19 Feb – 19 March
Website: http://www.beerslondon.com

Now on:
Channa Horwitz | Raven Row

Channa Horwitz, one of the pioneers of late 60s and 70s Californian minimalism and close friend/contemporary of Sol LeWitt. This exhibition reconfigures the first survey of Horwitz’s work at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, in 2015 and although largely overlooked over the course of her life, Horwitz quietly pioneered her own brand of West Coast minimalism – often deploying rules, numbers and structures in conjunction with colour codes, Horwitz used this system to depict time and movement. Her outstanding series titled Sonakinatography can be understood in terms of notation, for instance for music or composition.

Where: 56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS
When: 10 March – 1 May
Website: http://www.ravenrow.org

Now on:
Annie Lapin: How to Bury Your Stuff | Josh Lilley
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Starting this Friday, the LA-based artist Annie Lapin’s smudged, semi-abstract paintings are on show in How to Bury Your Stuff. Lapin’s energetic paintings are described as abstract imitations of realism, like loosely rendered collages of paint and akin to, in many ways, the Romantic landscape tradition.

Where: 44 – 46 Riding House Street, London W1W 7EX
When: 11 March – 8 April
Website: http://www.joshlilleygallery.com

Now on:
Gabriel Hartley: Light | Studio Leigh
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On Thursday the London-based artist Gabriel Hartley turns his hand to a new medium. Haled as an artist that redefined abstract expressionism, Hartley is now moving away from his history of painting and installation sculptures. In this solo show of his recent work Hartley uses glass to portray hazy, blurred environments with loose figures that take advantage of the differences in opacity and transparency – using light to create sense of depth from within the painting itself.

Where: 64 Garden Walk, London EC2A 3EQ
When: 10 March – 23 April
Website: http://studioleigh.com/

NEW YORK

Now on:
James Nares: Portraits | Paul Kasmin Gallery
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British artist turned New Yorker, James Nares has been a regular to the scene since the late ’70s. In recent years, he’s been recognized mostly for elegantly expansive paintings centered around single brushstrokes made with what must be a gargantuan brush (or maybe a mop). Also a filmmaker, his latest show also involves slow-motion video, like his previous video titled Street, (scored by Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore), but now as a medium for portraits of friends and family captured in high-resolution detail. The results exist somewhere between still and moving pictures, where individual instances are able to be observed and analysed for stretched amount of time, adding nuances that would otherwise be ignored.

Where: 4293 Tenth Ave, New York 10001
When: 3 March – 23 April
Website: http://paulkasmingallery.com

Now on:
Karen Kilimnik | 303 Gallery

In new paintings and collages, Kilimnik creates richly enigmatic narratives, inscribing her images with references to histories of representation and myth. In her new paintings and a selection of new collages, Kilimnik mines the vernacular of tapestry reproductions of Baroque and Renaissance painting, with unexpectedly evocative notions introduced into art-historical scenarios simultaneously fantastical and plebeian. The use of tapestries as portals to enchanted worlds, rendered from classical landscapes, reveals the potential of reference that vibrates through Kilimnik’s work.

Where: 507 W 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
When: February 18 – March 26
Website: http://303gallery.com

Now on:
Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play | Greene Naftali﷯

The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning Monday, explores intersections between photography and crime, from 19th-century “rogues’ galleries” to work by contemporary artists inspired the criminal underworld. Featuring around 70 works, ranging from the 1850s to the present, the camera’s role in police work is examined in the selection of mugshots, crime scene and forensic photos as well as news photographs related to criminal cases. Highlights include Alexander Gardner’s documentation of the events following Lincoln’s assassination as well as a study of John Dillinger’s feet in a Chicago morgue from 1934.

Where: 51000 Fifth Ave, New York 10028
When: 7 March – 31 July
Website: http://www.metmuseum.org

Now on:
Flatlands | Whitney Museum of American Art

This exhibition brings together paintings by five artists—Nina Chanel Abney, Mathew Cerletty, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Caitlin Keogh, and Orion Martin. Highlighting an engagement with representation among some emerging artists, the works in this group conjure, like the illusionistic scenery flats used on stage and movie sets, a sense of space that is dimensionless and airless. Each of these artists fills their compositions with objects, environments and bodies that exaggerate and recontextualise, thus ‘real’ scenes become simplified and flattened. Imbued with references to the uncertainty of our sociopolitical moment as well as the seductive quality of consumerism, the paintings in Flatlands invite the viewer to reflect on the potential ambivalence of contemporary life.

Where: 99 Gansevoort St, New York 10014
When: 14 Jan – 17 Apr
Website: http://whitney.org

Now on:
Hiro | Pace/MacGill gallery

Pace/MacGill is currently exhibiting a retrospective of works by the illustrious photographer Hiro, showcasing colour fashion images from the 60s and 70s alongside celebrity portraits and personal projects. Infused with an elegant sense of Surrealism, Hiro’s images embrace the use of bold colour, dynamic design, experimental lighting and unconventional compositional juxtapositions to transport viewers to illusory realms.

Where: 510 W 25th St, New York 10001
When: 25 February – 16 April
Website: http://www.pacemacgill.com

Originally an illiterate maid from a peasant background, the physic medium, Eusapia Palladino attained a status unimaginable to 19th century society. Attracting prominent figures such as Tsar Nicholas II and Madame Curie, she preyed on their vulnerabilities with her eerie utterances and levitating tables. Although her psychic powers were genuine, Palladino’s séances were habitually based on trickery, thereby creating a parody of her gullible participants…

Palladino is a favourite of the performance artist Chiara Fumai whose enactments reveal a medley of eccentrics contrived by swapping the narratives of historic individuals and thereby making them her own. Inspired originally by the fake identities of the New Romantic Dance Movement, Italo Disco, Fumai delights in the personas of terrorists, activists, philosophers and freaks and from here, she assumes her feminist stance within the protection of her various guises. The Book of Evil Spirits, her latest installation comprises film, collage and found objects.

Housed in vitrines, the artists’s colourless paraphernalia suggest the ghastly vibes of a funeral parlour. Here lie the props for her performance and the accoutrements of her immoral spirits; flesh coloured gloves, a blindfold, the silky beard of Annie Jones, Dope Head’s shisha pipe and the ghostly attire of Zalumma Agra. Conveyed in sign language or alphabetic codes, Fumai’s urgent message whips up a state of confusion. Her collages, a compilation of magazine clippings with faceless females, cold-blooded familiars and automatic scribblings appear to reference the misrepresentation of women within patriarchal society. Likewise, her radical feminists, symbolised by a typed list of female assassins, poisoners and thieves, prepare to construct a new ‘language’ to overthrow existing systems.
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In the film, a freak show depicts a séance in which the artist assumes the role of a medium and sits blindfolded at Palladino’s table conjuring up the dead in a hypnotic trance. Among the ghosts appears Zalumma Agra, a white Circassian beauty with an abundance of dark hair who once played a speechless act for P.T. Barnum’s circus. Performing in an Afro wig, Fumai gives Zalumma lines to mouth a feminist rant. Narrating in the background is the bearded Annie Jones, another of Barnum’s curiosities on which Fumai bestows the dignity of an Orthodox priest. Fumai’s crazy scenario causes one to reflect on another freakish spectacle disguised as the ‘medical’ documentary. A grisly show which nourishes its reality TV audience with a stream of embarrassing bodies, oversized folk and other human oddities.

Where: Waterside Contemporary, 2 Clunbury Street, London N1 6TT
When: 28 January – 23 April
Website: http://waterside-contemporary.com/

Tate Britain undertook the ambitious task of presenting a retrospective of work from arguably one of the greatest painters still alive today. Frank Auerbach, an artist whose depictions of people and landscapes near his London studio painted in a zealous style, has been compared to masters such as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. This clear prestige is echoed in the opening exhibition blurb that described the work Auerbach produces as some of the ‘most resonant and inventive paintings of recent times’, reinforcing his position as an influential figure in the contemporary art world. Despite the critical acclaim, that in itself draws crowds to the Tate, curator Catherine Lampert was presented with the challenge of creating a showcase that reflected the uniqueness of each of Auerbach’s piece. As although he has continually painted the same sitters and often returns to a particular location in London, every painting is considered to have its own merits, not being attached to a series or time period.

It is this deliberate avoidance of chronological narrative that makes Auerbach such an intriguing painter in my eyes. His work turns tradition on its head, as his paintings are not grounded in a desire to achieve perfect perspective or the meticulous placement of objects as part of a pre-planned composition. Instead every painting gives a snapshot of the borough of London that has been Auerbach’s home for years, providing an insight into his world painted with a clear passion for the ever-changing landscapes. Each of his canvases ooze texture, with layer upon layer of oil paint creating thick, robust pieces, that spark a desire to reach out and touch the craggy surfaces. The ferocity of brushstrokes that create a rich consistency are not concerned with capturing a true likeness of buildings or figures in the way our own eyes perceive them, but instead projecting part of the soul of a place or person onto canvas.

The exhibition features 70 paintings and drawings, making it Auerbach’s first major show in the UK since he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 2001. Lampert sought to put the spotlight straight onto Auerbach’s distinctive work; spending little time discussing his biography and letting his paintings talk for themselves. There is no doubt that Auerbach is a master of his trade, but the real beauty lies in his sumptuous landscapes with paint seeming as if it were just about to slowly seep off the canvas before your eyes. Although you cannot take Auerbach’s work as a literal interpretation of urban scenes, as there are no distinct structures, the energy of city life is injected into his work through the depth of texture and frantic brushstrokes.
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Frank Auerbach (b 1931), Head of William Feaver 2003, Painting, Oil paint on board, 451 x 406 mm, Collection of Gina and Stuart Peterson. © Frank Auerbach, courtesy Marlborough Fine

Auerbach’s work possesses a certain resonance and majestic quality, with every piece as energetic as the last. It may be hard to believe that every painting bears no connection to another, yet when you view the vast selection of work for yourself, it is clear that each has its own charisma. I can safely say Lampert is triumphant with a truly inspiring exhibition depicting art’s reckless revolutionist at his best.

Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG
Until 13 March 2016
http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain

Sergei Eisenstein’s highly influential creations of cinematic and propaganda masterworks such as Battleship Potemkin (1925), Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944-46) are strong patriotic films about philosophical issues, social justice and revolution.

The new and intriguing exhibition at the Gallery for Russian Art and Design in London (GRAD) focuses on the unexpected aspects of Eisenstein’s work, exploring his talents not only as a film director but also as a graphic artist and media theorist, discovering the director’s work beyond his cinematic achievements. Unexpected Eisenstein looks at some of the less known facts about the ground breaking Soviet director and for the first time discusses the significance of the British culture in his career.

Curated by famous film historian Ian Christie, the exhibition brings together over sixty rare items including sketches and designs for film and theatre performances costumes, printed materials and even Eisenstein’s personal letters in English.
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British culture and Eisenstein’s relationship with England was a significant yet often neglected long-term source of the director’s interest and inspiration. In 1928 he took an official journey around Europe, U.S. and Mexico to acquire and share experience in cinema worldwide. During his six-weeks stay in London he explored British culture and gave some lectures that made a lasting impression on British Filmmakers and audiences.
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According to the exhibition catalogue, Eisenstein refused to explore London’s touristic attractions suggested by his tour guide. Instead, he asked to take him on a tram journey to see the Embankment where he completed a whole circle route. Exhibition’s audio guide called Eisenstein’s Circle is based on directors own journey around London, inviting visitors to join and follow him to explore the city together. Accompanied by Eisenstein’s voice, the guide starts inside the gallery, moving around central London. Not a typical audio guide normally offered to visitors in museums and galleries, this one is rather special, almost an imaginary soundscape.

Elena Sudakova, the director and principle curator of GRAD explained Eisenstein’s great passion for all things English: “Eisenstein’s interest in British culture began at a young age and writers such as Dickens, Conan Doyle, D.H. Lawrence and Kipling all contributed to his artistic and intellectual development. He was also greatly interested in the Elizabethan world of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Many of these sources can be detected in the drawings on display in the exhibition.”
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It is incredibly fascinating to discover a different side to renowned Soviet director, picking up on connections between cinema, theatre and literature. Looking at Eisenstein’s drawings and his correspondences with the Anglophone world we can see futuristic suggestions of Sherlock Holmes and Macbeth, as well as unfulfilled designs for his later masterworks. Unexpected Eisenstein is offering an extraordinary opportunity to learn how the great filmmaker was simultaneously thinking, theorising and creating on many levels.

3-4a Little Portland Street, W1W 7JB London  | February 17 – April 30, 2016 | www.grad-london.com

[By Oliver Roche]

LONDON

Now on:
Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art | National Gallery
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Placing Delacroix alongside contemporaries such as Courbet and Chassériau, this exhibition traces 50 years of Delacroix’s legacy, exploring the profound impact he had on generations of artists to come. A true original who, at the time of his death in 1863, was the most revered artist among the avant-garde in Paris. Drawing inspiration from British art and literature, his real and imagined travels to North Africa, and biblical scenes; every chord of human passion can be found in Delacroix’s paintings – stories of love, murder, violence, and war. Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art is a long-overdue homage to France’s leading exponent of Romanticism

Where: Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN
When: February 17 – March 22
Website: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Now on:
Mick Peter: Pyramid Selling | Drawing Room
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The Glasgow-based artist’s sculptures resemble quick hand drawn sketches, mimicking hand drawn doodles that have been cut from paper and brought into three-dimensional space. This playful installation transforms imagery derived from fiction, illustration and graphic design – Pyramid Selling immerses visitors who unwittingly become active participants in this animated environment.

Where: Unit 8 Rich Estate, 46 Willow Walk, London SE1 5SF
When: January 17 – March 13
Website: https://drawingroom.org.uk

Now on:
Dean Melbourne: This Myth | Coates & Scarry
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With his skilful handling of oil paint and gloss paint, Melbourne builds luscious surfaces, using bright colours typically off-set by deep, black tones that infer a more superstitious atmosphere. The works comprising This Myth offer new and nuanced perspectives across a range of cultural anchor points from the past and the present day, paintings that create new myths – a personal collection of tales in which we can all share.

Where: 8 Duke Street, St James’, London SW1Y 6BN
When: February 28 – March 12
Website: http://www.coatesandscarry.com

Now on:
Betty Woodman: Theatre of the Domestic | ICA
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The Institute of Contemporary Arts exhibits the first UK solo presentation of works by one of the most important contemporary artists working with ceramics today. This exhibition focuses on work Woodman has created in the last ten years, including a number of major new mixed media pieces. Throughout her career, Woodman has constantly explored new techniques and media and this conceptual boldness alongside her ambitious experimentation have generated a unique series of innovations that have, most significantly, resonated with younger generations of artists.

Where: The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH
When: February 3 – April 10
Website: https://www.ica.org.uk

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Sarah Hughes: One Dozen and Zero Units | South London Gallery
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Concluding her year-long residency, ‘Embedded,’ artist and composer, Sarah Hughes, presents One Dozen and Zero Units – this exhibition presents combinations of found, adapted and hand-made objects and the grouping of traditional and contemporary materials making reference to the gallery’s historic connections to the Arts and Crafts movement and its more recent programming of contemporary art. The artistic and social concerns that connect both its founding principles and current standing in the local community are seen as components of a composition, in a manner similar to Hughes’ approach to musical performance.

Where: 65-67 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH
When: March 1 – 6
Website: http://www.southlondongallery.org

NEW YORK

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Kazuo Shiraga | Mnuchin Gallery
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Tracing the evolution of Shiraga’s signature “foot painting” method over his entire career, the exhibition will feature 20 examples spanning nearly five decades, beginning in 1959. Throwing away his brushes and rejecting his hands as too trained, Shiraga began painting with his feet, which enabled a fresh and direct mode of expression. Starting with paper or canvas laid out on the floor, the artist would deposit copious amounts of oil paint on the surface, and paint with the movements of his bare feet, sometimes hanging from the ceiling by a rope.

Where: 45 East 78 Street, New York, NY 10075
When: February 10 – April 11
Website: http://www.mnuchingallery.com

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Al Held: Black and White Paintings | Cheim & Reid
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The “B/W series” is comprised of Held’s first fully realised canvases in his new style, combining various geometric forms, arranged in multiple perspectives, but within the strict confines of a black-and-white palette. As with his earlier work, Held painted on a monumental scale and the majority of these canvases measure over nine feet tall, adding to the attractiveness of the overall simplicity in shape and colour.

Where: 547 West 25th Street NewYork, NY 10001
When: February 18 – March 26
Website: http://www.cheimread.com

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Hans Breder | Greene Naftali
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As early as 1964, Breder had documented his own artistic “interventions” placing a rectangular mirror in a riverbed and photographing the play between the real and reflected worlds. From 1969 – 1973 Breder focused on creating multiple series of works that would come to be collectively known as “Body/Sculptures”. It is these works that Danziger Gallery is presenting in a photographic context for the first time. Seen in this light, they both add to the medium’s tradition of the transfigured body as well as bridging the gap between photography and the performance and body art of the late 60s.

Where: 521 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011
When: February 29 – April 2
Website: http://www.danzigergallery.com

Now on:
Olivo Barbieri: Adriatic Sea (staged) Dancing People | Yancey Richardson
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Internationally known for site specific installations, a ten-year series investigating contemporary urban spaces, along with The Waterfall Project 2006/7, Dolomites 2010, and Alps – Geographies and People 2012, projects which investigate manʼs behavior in relation to the spectacle of nature, Barbieri has now shifted his focus to the Italian coastline of the Adriatic Sea. These series of aerial shots in this colourful environment, some with characters erased from the scene, brings the photograph into the artificial, turning this real-life scene into a surreal one.

Where: 525 West 22nd Street, New York NY 10011
When: February 4 – March 19
Website: http://www.yanceyrichardson.com

Now on:
Mika Tajima: Embody | 11R
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Featuring a new series of transparent paintings, mood light sculptures and abstract woven portraits that address the imaging of bodily activities through material forms. Tajima’s recent work invokes technologies developed to control and affect the body, focusing on techniques that shape bodily experience of space and time in a built environment where work and leisure spaces have meshed.

Where: 195 Chrystie St, New York, NY, 10002
When: February 13 – March 13
Website: http://www.11rgallery.com

Eyeliner tutorials, cocktail straws and…dreary curtain linings – three emerging artists Marie Lund, Rallou Panagiotou and Mary Ramsden offer their perceptive and often comic observations on the vanilla of everyday objects. A selection of new and recent minimalist works in painting and sculpture, Vanilla and Concrete is part of the Tate’s ongoing Art Now series.

Marie Lund delights in our impact on materials, objects and their previous uses. At first sight, Lund’s bloated rucksacks gorged with concrete appear as morbid and cadaverized offerings lacking the emotion conveyed by Ron Mueck’s Dead Dad. On a lighter note, they recall the portable home of the proverbial human tortoise. Turning unmindfully to alight the Tube, it whacks a hapless commuter for six. Lund’s burdensome bags also personify the rucksack as the all too familiar selfish itinerant who hogs a vacant seat.

Rallou Panagiotou ponders the commodity value of the everyday object. In Outdoor Shower Cameo Blue, the artist swaps Les Grandes Baineuses for ‘lively’ Mykonos. Revamped with a lick of car paint, the familiar seaside object reclines provocatively on its side. The small luxuries in life are emphasized by My Toe which changes the conventional notion of the luxury as an item of extravagance. Clear-cut and compact in grey marble and acid yellow lacquer, it defines nail polish as the essence of modest luxuries. The snappy logo style alludes to the coercion of brands forcing us to constantly update these modest luxuries for new.
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Mary Ramsden’s work concerns the significance of painting within the virtual world. Her work, *hurls not girls references the relationship between digital technology and human intervention. Ramsden’s painterly strokes denote the ‘finger smudges’ left after scrolling the silky smooth screens of tablets or cell phones. Her orderly layered squares suggest the process of remediation represented by multiple screen windows directing the user’s gaze to the ambiguity of ‘no space’. The dirtiest selfie at 50pt (part1) comprises a fluted form in Memphis pink, its grubby countenance played out by two black acrylic sweeps. Ramsden’s selfie is a cheeky ‘celebrity self’ at variance with the subject’s true persona.
Classy, elegant and cordoned off, Mary Lund’s sculpture Raising the Vessel, appears at odds with the rest of the objects, but its perceived status disguises one of the most obvious of materials, copper, a component of the everyday pipe, coin and electrical cable.

Where: Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
When: 9 November 2015 – 19 June 2016
Website: www.tate.org.uk

Colour technology was considered a cheapening threat to formalism in the 1950’s when everyone was mainly using black and white photography. As a leading pioneer of colour photography, Saul Leiter was highly criticised for going against the documentary and art traditions of the day and did not receive due recognition until later in his life. Famous depression era photographers like Walker Evans and even MOMA shared the prejudice that colour photography is vulgar and unfashionable. In 1992 Jane Livingstone, chief curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, included Leiter in her book The New York School: Photographs 1936-1963, which finally gave his work some acceptance.
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Leiter’s retrospective at the Photographers’ Gallery is the first major solo exhibition in the UK and a belated but much needed celebration of his work.

Featuring over 100 photographs, a small representation of paintings and sketchbooks, the exhibition also holds a selection of Leiter’s commercial works for famous fashion magazines like British Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle. The display opens with Leiter’s early black and white images from the 1940-s and 50s, continuing to his paintings and concluding with the radiance of his later colour photography. The photographs have been hung in lines really close to each other creating a cosy, poetic atmosphere. It feels like the peacefulness of the gallery space fits perfectly with his works.

The wonderful fusion of street photography, fashion and architecture is so relevant even today that it reminds me of someone’s beautiful and artistic instagram. Leiter spent over 60 years living in New York capturing movement of the city in accidental, fleeting moments. There is a poetic juxtaposition between chaotic energy of New York and Leiter’s dreamy, soft-focused images. It’s important to note that photos also provide a delightful window into the fashion and architecture of New York City in 1950’s.
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Most of Leiter’s images are not bright and vivid but more of a soft and muted combination of dull brown, red and yellow hues. Even the fashion shots for glossy magazines are not hyper-defined, but airy and subtle, creating a distinct and unique style of photography – perfect antidote to overly glamorised pictures.

Using Leika and Kodachrome colour slide film Leiter deliberately distorted the reality of his images, muting colours in the process to bring an abstract painter’s sensibility to the medium of colour photography. “I like it when one is not certain what one sees. When we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion,” he explained.

The absence of clarity and the reduction of depth is Leiter’s masterful technique to capture such simple subjects such as shop windows, passers-by, cars and signs in a delicate and romantic way where figures become ambiguous forms maintaining beautiful colours.

The Photographers Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies St, W1F 7LW London | 22 January – 3 April, 2016 | http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk

LONDON

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Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen | Serpentine Gallery

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Knightsbridge’s Serpentine Galleries displays a body of work by the Swedish painter, Hilma af Klint. Drawing in the most part from The Paintings for the Temple series (1906–15), af Klint’s work from this period is in the most part influenced by science and religion, specifically ideas surrounding harmonies between the spiritual and the real. Surreal environments, geometric shapes and bold colours that do seem to give off a strange sense of familiarity despite being, apparently, illogical. These are examples of some of the earliest expressions of abstract art as we know it today, alongside those of Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich.

Where: Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA
When: 3 March – 15 May
Website: http://www.serpentinegalleries.org

Now on:
Champagne Life | Saatchi Gallery

﷯Despite taking its name from a painting featuring Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, Champagne Life features a range of paintings and sculptures from an all-female lineup of emerging international artists. Looking past the Pommery champagne sponsorship, this exhibition tells a far more accurate story about serious artists developing imagery and ideas. Favourites include Stephanie Quayle’s Two Cows and the colossal bobbin of copper thread in Alice Anderson’s sculpture Bound.

Where: Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Road, London SW3 4RY
When: 13 January – 9 March
Website: http://www.saatchigallery.com

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Intellectual Barbarians: The Kibbo Kift Kindred | Whitechapel Gallery
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The Whitechapel Gallery is currently exhibiting a small collection of images and artefacts associated with the Kibbo Kift Kindred movement, an active organisation in ’20s and ’30s Britain that combined the anti-industrialist sentiments of the nineteenth-century Luddites and an appreciation of nature and handicraft. The remarkable aesthetic the group assumed is on display in the form of colourful tabards and banners alongside hand carved totems and staffs – all greatly influenced by Egyptian, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Native American cultures.

Where: 77-82 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX
When: 10 October – 13 March
Website: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org

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Painting Norway: Nikolai Astrup (1880-1928) | Dulwich Picture Gallery
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Regardless of being one of Norway’s most popular and important artists, Nikolai Astrup is overshadowed by the more melancholy and more stereotypically Nordic, Edvard Munch. In the artists first major UK show, the Dulwich Picture Gallery displays a collection of over 90 oil paintings and prints, including works from private collections never exhibited before. Astrup’s work transforms the rugged Norwegian landscape into a mythical, living entity. Exploring the luscious, colourful paintings and radical innovation in printmaking that defined the Norwegian artist’s career.

Where: Gallery Road, London, SE21 7AD
When: 5 February – 15 May
Website: http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk

Now on:
Mark Wallinger: ID | Hauser & Wirth
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The Turner Prize-winning artist is exhibiting across both of Hauser & Wirth’s Savile Row spaces. Developed around Freudian ideas of the subconscious being divided into id, ego and superego, the show features new paintings and mixed-media works that encourage a contemplation of the self within a society in which behaviour and personal identity come under increasingly closer scrutiny. The loosely figurative and chaotic, rorschach-esque paintings are particularly grabbing. The mad, explosive but also melancholy scenes go along way in describing different peoples experiences with the self.

Where: 23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET
When: 26 Feb – 7 May
Website: http://www.hauserwirth.com

NEW YORK

Now on:
Munch and Expressionism | Neue Galerie

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Neue Galerie looks back at Edvard Munch’s impact on Expressionism and it’s impact on Munch. With the remarkable The Scream (1985) on display beside Puberty (1914–16) and Madonna (1895/1912–13) as well as pieces by German and Austrian contemporaries—Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Egon Schiele, you’ll kick yourself for missing out.

Where: 1048 Fifth Avenue (at 86th Street), New York, NY 10028
When: February 18 – June 13
Website: http://neuegalerie.org

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Jack Early | Fergus McCaffrey

﷯Having done it all as a grown up, it’s natural that the iconic New York pop-artist, Jack Early’s latest work should turn to his childhood. The artist’s memories of childhood are recalled here in bright, punchy paintings and sculptures, however, brought into the mature, Early blends the sexual and suggestive with unsubtly phallic popsicles and vintage porn scenes.

Where: 514 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
When: February 18 – April 9
Website: http://fergusmccaffrey.com

Now on:
Helen Marten: Eucalyptus, Let us in | Greene Naftali

﷯The Chelsea based gallery is currently exhibiting a complex array of large wall-mounted mixed-media panels and rambling sculptural installations by fast-rising British star Helen Marten. As a dedicated maximalist for instance, Marten incorporates fur, rope, silk, sequins, rubber, ceramics and a dozen other ingredients in a hectic mix of function and uselessness. Despite the incongruity and unpredictability, it stops short of being outlandish, but is on the other hand more about the transition from one part to the next, rather than the individual meanings of each object.

Where: 9508 W 26th St, ground and eighth floors, New York
When: February 23 – February 25
Website: http://greenenaftaligallery.com

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Günther Schützenhöfer: As I See It | Ricco Maresca Gallery

﷯As a long-term patient in various psychiatric institutions, Günther Schützenhöfer was encouraged to explore art as a form of therapy and with reference to the title, the Austrian artist’s depictions of everyday things in scribbled graphite patches with the occasional dash of coloured pencil truly display a character within themselves. The drawings come across as from an extremely unique perspective, made apparent with the portrayal of benign objects and this gives the exhibition a nuance of a wider look into the experiences of Günther Schützenhöfer and how these interplay with his works.

Where: 529 W 20th St third floor, New York
When: 22 January – 5 March
Website: http://www.riccomaresca.com

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Richard Aldrich: Time Stopped, Time Started | Gladstone Gallery

﷯Aldrich’s paintings are layered with the process of their own creation as well as the inspiration of everyday life and experiences and like memory itself, his pieces often seem incomplete or evanescent. Photos and odds bits of collage and objects are tossed into pieces that straddle the line between abstraction and representation. Stunning!

Where: C515 W 24th St, New York
When: 29 January – 5 March
Website: http://gladstonegallery.com

The subject of waste invokes a plethora of issues. Rubbish disposal at landfill sites or its potential for recycling immediately springs to mind but we might also think about the tragedy of India’s waste pickers or the dumping of radioactive waste in Germany’s salt mines. Occasionally, waste surfaces in an art gallery. So what makes ‘curated’ waste so appealing? We might marvel at Dirty White Trash and its canny shadow created by Tim Noble and Sue Webster or debate about the impact of brands on developing countries via David Poston’s Coca Cola Cross. The associations connected with rubbish manifest differently once recycled as a medium for art and displayed away from the gallery space. This is why the bedazzling and titanic tapestries of El Anatsui, a Nigerian artist from Nsukka, are so thought- provoking. Constructed painstakingly from a myriad of metallic beer bottle tops and labels tied together with copper wire, they elevate their humble origins to a truly majestic level.

El Anatsui is concerned with constructing physically attractive forms but also those that are meaningful. His impressive work, Tsiatsia draped casually over the RA façade like a chic throw jazzing up a pre-loved sofa, displayed bottle top aluminium for what it has become; a humble throwaway item littering the landscape. In this way, we can consider the versatility of the material and also its wider implication as an item of waste on a grand scale. Once El Anatsui’s tapestries are viewed within the aura of a gallery space, the materials of these magnificent art pieces become stripped of their original associations.

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However, El Anatsui’s current exhibition at the October gallery draws the spectator closer, enabling him or her to admire the many inventive ways the artist has manipulated his medium. Five shimmering tapestries billow out from the gallery walls bearing their own individual characters or ‘stories’, each invisibly pinned in an arbitrary fashion. Preferring the interest value afforded by an indefinite outcome, El Anatsui leaves the instalment of his work at the discretion of the curator. These works differ from the graceful swathes of Gli, exhibited at the Brooklyn Gallery in 2013. Gli’s elegant crochet effect appears sporadically in Dzi II but the delicacy and transparency of this particular structure is lost owing to the gallery wall’s proximity. Warrior suggests a military precision; its darker hues and elongated segments forcing it to hang in a more structured manner. Focus, one of the most innovative by design, samples numerous techniques including the intricate pleating and shaping of aluminium into a cluster of crescents. Shiny pin wheels, silvery squares and polished rings all vie for position here, either as luminescent clumps of colour or spontaneous ensembles, creating an extraordinary visual feast the eyes.

Where: October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AL
When: 4 February – 2 April
Website: http://www.octobergallery.co.uk/

Long has art been a medium that provides a space to challenge, stimulate and excite the imagination, whilst exploring social tensions. The Wellcome Collection seeks to bridge the gap between scientific thought and creativity, curating exhibitions that spark curiosity. The work displayed is a mix of historic artefacts and contemporary artwork, charting the connection between medicine, life and art.

The reception area is a hive of activity, creating a lively atmosphere that sets the scene for a thought-provoking collection of exhibitions. As part of a changing series of installations States of Mind: Tracing the Edge of Consciousness seeks to examine the human consciousness displaying a variety of perspectives from artists, neuroscientists, philosophers and psychologists. On paper the exhibition is an interesting concept, showing how art can be used to respond to complex scientific ideas. It also provides further evidence to support the growing popularity in using the arts as a supplementary treatment to help boost wellbeing as a result of the unrestricted expression it allows. On entering the glass display cabinets were a static, underwhelming opening with the balance very much favouring scientific material. As with every exhibition visual impact and making a lasting impression is an important factor, but despite the enlightening supporting information I could not help being disappointed by the lack of variety. I was excited by the prospect of a broad range of intellectually stimulating pieces with the nature of the human consciousness being characteristically complex and expansive, yet there was no real diversity.

A defining feature was Clara MacKinnon’s video installation ‘Squeezed by Shadows’ created in 2013 as part of ‘The Sleep Paralysis Project’. The large marbled cylinder created a welcomed spark of interest, as I peered through the tiny eyeholes to witness a disturbing but strangely hypnotic film. The piece, repurposed for States of Mind, recounts the surreal hallucinations people with sleep paralysis experience in a kaleidoscopic series of black and white images. As I stood engrossed in the video there was a real sense of the entrapment sleep paralysis creates as sufferers wake trapped in a dreamlike state, as I myself began to feel a heaviness weighing down upon my chest.
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The promise of the Wellcome Collection being ‘a destination for the incurably curious’ in my eyes falls short with States of Mind as I was left feeling underwhelmed. The mind is such a rich plethora of thoughts and complex ideas that can be hard to comprehend. The potential for a dynamic exhibition exploring consciousness and the process of thought was there, however the at times dry medically orientated pieces outweighed installations such as MacKinnon, failing to present anything new.

Located 183 Euston Rd, London, NW1 2BE
Until 16 October 2016
https://wellcomecollection.org

Damien Hirst’s Newport Street gallery in south London is the fulfillment of his long time aspiration to showcase his very own art collection of over 30,000 works known as the Murderme Collection. A terrific 37,000 sq ft White Cube-style space was converted from scenery-painting studios with towering ceilings and lofty skylight.

The inaugural exhibition is celebrating British artist John Hoyland, presenting over 30 large-scale paintings drawn from Hirst’s art collection. Power Stations is a first major exhibition devoted to John Hoyland since a retrospective of his work at Tate St Ives in 2006. The impressive selection of artist’s expansive abstract works, dating from 1964 to 1982, is proudly displayed throughout all six of the gallery’s pure white spaces. Geometric forms, sometimes heavily textured, are spread across vast fields of fluctuating colours. The exhibition is arranged somewhat chronologically, taking the viewer from the large colour-field works of the 1960s, to the more spatially complex paintings of the early 1980s.
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John Hoyland may be one of Britain’s leading abstract painters, as the exhibition catalogue reads, but he was also provocatively unfashionable and outdated. Strongly influenced by American Abstract Expressionism in the late 1950s, it seems he was simply imitating the works of his friends and acclaimed American artists of the time including Mark Rothko, Barnet Newman and Robert Motherwell.

The Power Stations exhibition is revisiting Hirst’s roots as a curator, a role that helped launch his career in 1988 when he organised the famous Freeze exhibition in London. On the choice of Hoyland for Newport Street’s first exhibition, Hirst plainly commented: “The space will set the paintings off brilliantly and the paintings will set the space off brilliantly.” The gallery’s space is indeed fantastic and a perfect setting for large paintings but unfortunately there is nothing striking about Hoyland’s works apart from the fact that they are trying to recall Rothko. The question is: why would a famous artist invest in something so ordinary?
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Tim Marlow, artistic director at the Royal Academy of Arts, is addressing this in his interview with Hirst, mentioning that John Hoyland is not the most popular painter of the contemporary British art world. It is quite a surprise to discover that Hirst has been an admirer of Hoyland’s work since he first encountered it in Leeds Art Gallery as a student. “John Hoyland is an artist who was never afraid to push the boundaries. His paintings always feel like a massive celebration of life to me,” Hirst explains without hesitation. Is his choice for the first gallery’s exhibition a genuine admiration or just another provocative move?
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When: 8 October 2015 – 3 April 2016, Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 6pm
Where: Newport Street Gallery, SE11 6AJ
Website: www.newportstreetgallery.com

As a generation of screen junkies we have experienced first hand the unstoppable growth of the Internet. Contemporary society has become one big dump of data, a digital-driven civilisation that is constantly sharing, liking, downloading and scrolling their way through each day. But with every tweet or Facebook post our digital footprint spreads further, as technology continues to embed itself into everyday life.

As part of Somerset House’s commitment to remaining an influential creative hub in the heart of London, Big Bang Data is an exhibition that charts the impact of the rapidly expanding online culture. From the sheer beauty of data to the looming threat of 24-hour surveillance and cyber terrorism, Big Bang Data visualises the history of data and how it has transformed everyday life.

On entering the exhibition, the greeting low hum of generators and dim lighting set the scene for a technologically rich display. As you venture further into the exhibition you find yourself stumbling into a pitch-black room, suddenly faced with the hypnotic work of Ryoji Ikeda. A Japanese visual artist who feeds on bewilderment, with large-scale audio-video installations that present sound in raw states alongside graphics constructed with mathematical precision. My gaze became instantly transfixed by the ebb and flow of the dust like particles, as I gradually found myself drawn in momentarily stuck in a state of hypnosis.

Moving fluidly through the history of data, but at times sticking too rigidly to a structured approach with defined sections and walls of text. The most intriguing work lay in the latter part of the exhibition, which confronted the more sinister undertones of the Internet. Abruptly reminding us of the criminal activity that has begun to seep out of the dark web, threatening to tarnish digital society.

The visually provocative project ‘Facial Weaponization Suite’ by Zach Blas presented a gothic representation of the growing net that government surveillance is throwing over our Internet freedom. Blas’s work was one of the most interesting series on display, with the visually assaulting metal masks appearing as if designed to be part of a brutal form of torture. The materialisation of surveillance taps into our fear of the Internet, which still very much remains uncharted territory. Not only does Blas distort the familiarity of the human form with the cage-like objects but works to unsettle and empower you in his protest against the oppressive ‘all-seeing’ eye.

It is hard to shake the feeling that you are being watched as you are confronted with the extent of the reach of technology. Despite the flourishes of colour from the playful use of data to create beautifully vivid pieces, there is a lingering darkness fuelled by Blas’s dystopian work. Data remembers everything but will it ever forget us?

Located Somerset House.
Strand, London, WC2R 1LA
Until 20 March 2016

The work of American artist and pioneer of kinetic sculpture Alexander Calder, shown at Tate Modern, is playful, poetic and refreshing. Using motion and balance, Calder gave joyful three-dimensional life to the abstract shapes pioneered by his fellow modernist artists Joan Miró, Fernand Léger and Piet Mondrian. While Calder’s work was suggested too playful to be taken seriously by some critics, this exhibition reveals how he combined movement, choreography and sound to fundamentally transform the principles of modern sculpture. “He came from this very serious avant-garde background,” explains exhibition curator Ann Coxon. “What he was doing was ground breaking; he was a pioneer of his time.” Bringing together a selection of over a hundred works from the early 1930s to 1961, the show celebrates Calder as an artist who revolutionised sculpture, proving that art should not remain static.

The show is chronological and opens with whimsical wire sculptures from the 1920s that Calder used in performances he called the Cirque Calder. Three-dimensional line drawings include dancers and acrobats, as well as caricatures of his fellow artists and friends Joan Miró and Fernand Léger. The artist was deeply interested in the increasingly popular circus and set up his own miniature circus of animals in wood and wire while living in Paris in the mid 1920s. It was originally just for pleasure but quickly became more popular, drawing attention from the city’s avant-garde, including Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian and Jean Cocteau, who were among the first audiences.
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The exhibition continues Calder’s experiments with motorised dynamic sculptures, which he started developing in 1931 after his visit to Mondrian’s studio that converted him to abstraction. Colourful spheres and discs attached to wood and wire look like three-dimensional versions of Miró’s surrealist paintings. With disappointment, they have been frozen still for the exhibition and can only be seen functioning in videos, for reasons of fragility.

One of the highlights is the Two Acrobats sculpture that has been reassembled especially for the Tate Modern exhibition. The original work, displaying a male performer and a female acrobat, was damaged in its first showing in 1929 and the two figures were separated for more than eight decades before being reunited again as a complete mobile sculpture. A demonstration of the musical sequence however is only shown in a short video footage and cannot be experienced live.
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By 1932 Calder abandoned the mechanical in favour of organic movement. His sculptures started to move by chance and air in random motion. “Calder’s art is the sublimation of a tree in the wind,” said Marcel Duchamp, who also gave the name “mobile” to describe Calder’s moving sculptures.

The final rooms reach a majestic crescendo bringing together sixteen mobile sculptures in primary colours that are held in elegant balance. Calder’s monumental Black Widow is proudly displayed in a separate room. The four meter tall piece is on loan for the first time since Calder donated the sculpture to the Institute of Architects in Brazil, where it has hung drifting in the lobby since 1948.
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Model of Alexander Calder Mobile by Matt Granick
Calder’s last retrospective was held in 1943 at the Whitney Museum in New York. Tate Modern’s exhibition brings together major works from museums around the world, as well as showcasing Calder’s collaborative projects in various fields such as film, theatre, music and dance. Curator Ann Coxon is suggesting that the childlike implication of Calder’s work has impacted the public impression: “I think Calder tends to be one of those artists people accept, or think they know. He saw sculpture as something that could move — that could perform.”

Performing Sculpture exhibition is a refreshing change to static canvas shows, offering the viewers an airy lightness of Calder’s originality. It’s incredibly calming to watch wonderful sculptures come to life and throwing shadows in their gentle movement.

“To most people who look at a mobile, it’s no more than a series of flat objects that move”, Alexander Calder once said. “To a few, though, it may be poetry.”

Tate Modern, Bankside
London SE1 9TG
11 November 2015 – 3 April 2016
www.tate.org.uk

LONDON

Now on:
Mario Cravo Neto: A Serene Expectation of Light | Autograph ABP | Rivington Place

Shoreditch visual arts centre, Rivington Place, are currently hosting the influential Brazilian photographer’s debut solo exhibition in the UK. A Serene Expectation of Light includes twenty, large-scale black and white studio portraits from The Eternal Now series produced during the 1980s and 1990s, focusing a on a small religion local to his native region of Bahia, once a hub of the West-African slave-trade. Alongside this are twenty colour prints from the Laróyè series produced in the 2000s, before his unfortunate death in 2009. Trained as a sculptor, Mario Cravo Neto’s trade permeates through his work, using light to create strong contrasts.

Where: Rivington Place, London EC2A 3BA
When: 15 January – 2 April
Website: autograph-abp.co.uk

Now on:
Avedon Warhol | Gagosian Gallery
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The Gagosian Gallery in Kings Cross are exhibiting a unique, dual presentation of works by iconic American post-war artists Richard Alvedon and Andy Warhol. Centring on portraiture and depicting many of the same faces – Marella Agnelli, Bianca Jagger, Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, they used celebrities to draw attention to certain characteristics about culture changes over time. Highlights include Avedon’s Brandenburg Gate portfolio, capturing the moments during the fall of the Berlin Wall and Mao, Warhol’s oversized portrait of the North Korean leader.

Where: 6-24 Britannia Street, London WC1X 9JD
When: 9 Feb – 23 Apr
Website: www.gagosian.com

Now on:
Chillida: Rhythm-Time-Silence | Ordovas
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Savile Row based gallery Ordovas are currently exhibiting sculptures by Eduardo Chillida, the prominent and internationally acclaimed Spanish artist and designer of an extraordinary portfolio, stretching half a century . Eight monumental works on view reflect the intimate and universal themes that characterized Chillida’s vision, a central figure in European post-war sculpture. His works, although massive and monumental, suggest movement and tension inspired by the difficulties during his upbringing in the Basque region of Spain.

Where: 25 Savile Row, London W1S 2ER
When: 09 February – 23 April
Website: www.ordovasart.com
Now on:
Tell It Slant | Frith Street Gallery
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Tell It Slant is an eclectic grouping of works to explore ideas about abstract drawing where line and a sense of structure are fundamental, using examples from artists working in cosmopolitan cities but also in more peripheral places, with not only line and paper but a variety of materials, including found objects, and some who transcend the page entirely. Featuring pieces from throughout the 20th century from artists including Polly Apfelbaum, Zebedee Armstrong, Massimo Bartolini, Hector Alonzo Benavides, Julius Bockelt and Louise Bourgeois.

Where: Frith Street Gallery, 17–18 Golden Square, London W1F 9JJ
When: 12 February 2016 – 29 April 2016
Website: www.frithstreetgallery.com

Now on:
Mariele Neudecker: Plastic Vanitas | The Nunnery
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Mariele Neudecker’s photographs of plastic fruit, drinks bottles and other insignificant objects, all collected during her residency at the Museum of Design in Plastics, are framed in the 18th century German style of still-life painting, vanitas. Using the powerful genre of vanitas to re-stage each object, subtly altering the viewers perception, Neudecker uses the style as a parallel, to make statements on topics such as modern consumerism, the environment, waste and sustainability.

Where: The Nunnery, 181 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ
When: 15 Jan – 27 March
Website: bowarts.org

NEW YORK

Now on:
Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey, 1934–1954 | Museum of Modern Art
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The Museum of Modern Art has resurfaced a variety of Pollocks work to tell the story of his progression and shifts in direction as an artist. From his loose abstractions that he is most famous for, to his early figurative pieces, pieced together are 50 works – paintings, drawings and prints, within which hangs Pollock’s One: Number 31, 1950 (1950). Widely considered his masterpiece and largest canvas, although rare and little-known engravings, lithographs, screenprints, and drawings are also included and offer an insight into a less publicised side of the artist.

Where: Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019
When: January 15 – March 13
Website: www.moma.org

Now on:
Laura Poitras: Astro Noise | Whitney Museum of American Art
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The director of Citizenfour, the winner of the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitras is making her museum debut with an interactive installation. As you might expect, it is focused on the serious issues raised with regards to surveillance and the secession of privacy and rights, Guantanamo Bay, the war on terror and the U.S drone program. The installations incorporate documentary footage, architectural interventions, primary documents, and narrative structures to invite viewers to interact with the material in intimate and direct ways.

Where: Whitney Museum of Art, 99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014
When: until May 1st
Website: whitney.org

Now on:
Monique Mouton: More Near | Bridget Donahue
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The local artist exhibits engaging, washy, abstract compositions on paper and wood. Mouton’s works have a pictorial semblance, masses of colour, floating points and rigid margins hosting excesses of fingerprints and errant pencil lines – no symbolism, but what someone could imagine as scenes of different moments or thoughts.

Where: Bridget Donahue, 99 Bowery, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10002
When: January 23 – March 20
Website: www.bridgetdonahue.nyc
Now on:
Marcel Dzama and Raymond Pettibon: Forgetting the Hand | David Zwirner﷯

Dzama and Pettibon pay homage to the exquisite corpse game, the game originated by the Surrealists that every school kid is familiar with, of which the results are inevitably rude and bizarre. By taking turns to finish different parts of individual paintings, the two of attitudinal art’s finest draftsmen naturally come up with some pretty intriguing scenarios.

Where: David Zwirner, 533 W 19th St, New York
When: 9 February – 20 February
Website: www.davidzwirner.com

Now on:
Izumi Kato | Galerie Perrotin
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Lenox Hill’s Galerie Perrotin showcases Izumi Kato’s anime-style paintings and sculptures. Like Yoshitomo Nara and Takashi Murakami, Kato uses the fantastical and overtly spirit focused Japanese subculture but the combinations of the mysterious and curious have echoes of Picasso, Constantin Brâncusi and Paul Klee, albeit through a recent medium, they still draw attention to the cusp of reality and dream-like states.

Where: 909 Madison Avenue & 73rd Street, Upper East Side, New York, NY 10021
When: 7 January – 27 February
Website: www.perrotin.com

The work of Saya Kubota concerns memory and physical traces of the past existing in time and space. Her solo exhibition presents mixed media, montage and abandoned objects which are reworked through the application of fractal stones, gold leaf, paint and modern materials. The artist considers what her found objects might have seen had they existed longer. Although objects may be altered or even lost, it is their material existence or traces that she believes remains. Flowing like a river, objects become temporal by nature of their materials. Kubota appears to contrast this temporality with the idea of permanence, thereby informing her choice of historical and quasi-religious references.

Central to the space, a bejewelled relic sits on a circular mirror like a precious vestige from a lost kingdom. Its tiny reflection on an expanse of water, it invites the viewer to liberate the mind. Below the glass, shimmering with modern marcasite, an ancient earthenware vessel signifies Man as the conveyor of stories and recollections. An antique oil painting, its gaudy colours framed like a sentimental souvenir hangs conventionally above the mantelpiece. One half is repainted brighter as a mirror image: the intensity of the subject’s gown illuminating the past. Situated within the familial centrality of the hearth lie Kubota’s gilded binoculars, their compound eyes fixated, watching memories unfold. In other spaces, ecclesiastical references, suggestive of saints’ individual stories, signify a notion of permanence. Their faces either overlaid, backlit or iconised and embellished with marcasite or a string of pearls. Two portraits, spliced and staggered appear to recall shared memories. Maybe a triptych with a third, invisible character: a physical image misplaced and now confined to the imagination.
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Once memories become messages, they can remain afloat via Kubota’s project, the Missing Post Office. Originally sited on the island of Awashima, it was managed by especially appointed postmasters whose uniforms are currently displayed as relics. Suspended in time and space, the postcards were never sent; a collection of private admissions, promises and missed opportunities, they now lie waiting in the gallery for others to interpret. A child’s school desk, complete with a hole for an inkwell, invites the visitor to leave his own response. Hand-written and stamped, the postcards appear as novelties alongside the photographs of the island post office, its film footage and a scattering of pink shells.

Saya Kuboto is a research candidate for Tokyo University of the Arts and also, an artist in residence at City & Guilds of London Art School. She was awarded the Terada Art Award in 2014.
Material Witness is curated by Eiko Honda.

20 January – 22 February
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
13/14 Cornwall Terrace (Outer Circle)
London NW1 4QP

LONDON

Now on:
Marie Jeschke: Can’t Remember Always Always| l’étrangère
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East London’s gallery l’étrangère hosts the Berlin-based artists first ever solo exhibition, Can’t Remember Always Always. Here Jeschke combines site-specific installations and photography to create an immersive and multifarious environment exploring ideas of memory and archiving. Warping and distorting personal images and photographs, such as the 40 year old collection of her biologist Grandfather’s archival pictures, Jeschke invites you to think about the relationships between object ontology, memory and identity.

Where: l’étrangère, 44a Charlotte Road, London, EC2A 3PD
When: 29 January – 5 March
Website: www.letrangere.net
Now on:
Frank Auerbach | Tate Britain
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A retrospective of works by this iconic artist that needs little introduction, Auerbach’s deeply stylised, brilliantly bold and resonant paintings are on display in Pimlico’s Tate Britain. Auerbach was known to spend months and even years on one painting, continuously returning to the same subjects and the urban landscape surrounding his Camden Town flat. A chance to see works described as revolutionary as those of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.

Where: Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG
When: 9 October – 13 March
Website: www.tate.org.uk
Now on:
Chantal Joffe | Victoria Miro
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Londoner Chantal Joffe exhibits new work at Mayfair’s Victoria Miro gallery.
Addressing preconceptions of self-disclosure and intimacy in the making of work, Joffe places acclaimed writers alongside personal friends and family members. Drawing from people met in the flesh and on the page, the artist practices painting and drawing as a loving collection of subjects. A must see.

Where: Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road, London, N1 7RW
When: 22 January – 24 March
Website: www.victoria-miro.com
Now on:
Sergej Jensen: Moneybags | White Cube Bermondsey
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For over a decade New York based artist Sergej Jensen has used canvas bank bags, sewn together to form geometric patterns on his paintings. The aptly named Moneybags is Jensen’s first exhibition dedicated to this concept, merged into simple grids, Jensen uses the uniformity and natural wear and tear of the bags as a basic material, often discarding the use of paint to draw the observers attention to the subtle differences in shade, size and texture.

Where: White Cube Bermondsey, 144 – 152 Bermondsey Street, London, SE1 3TQ
When: 3 February – 17 April
Website: www.whitecube.com
Now on:
Gabo’s Monoprints: A Family Collection | Alan Cristea Gallery
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An exhibition of over 30 rare woodblock monoprints from the personal collection of Russian artist Naum Gabo’s daughter, Nina Williams, including Gabo’s first print. As a pioneer of constructivism, Gabo’s prints reflect the same movement and sense of space that you find in his sculptures and kinetic art. A romantic coalescing of personal history and the innate beauty of his works.

Where: The Alan Cristea Gallery, 31 Cork St, London W1S 3NU
When: 4 February – 12 March
Website: www.alancristea.com
NEW YORK

Now on:
Sharon Butler | Theodre:Art
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The renowned blogger and artist from the U.S exhibits new work described by herself as the culmination of finally arriving in a permanent work space after years of unsettled drifting between different residencies and studios. Expect abstract, heavy use of colour and brushwork masquerading subtle imagery. On display for a short time only, catch it while you still can.

Where: Theodore:Art, 56 Bogart St, Brooklyn
When: January 8 – 14 February
Website: www.theodoreart.com
Now on:
Jonathan Lasker | Cheim & Reid
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The New York based artist returns to Cheim & Reid, exhibiting recent work alongside a variety of black and white drawings. Accredited as one of the artists to reinvent abstraction in the 1980s, Lasker’s latest continues to focus on ways in which paintings are constructed and perceived. The artist himself describes his careful arrangement of abstracted elements as an invitation to “make the viewer see him or herself in the act of viewing” and ponder “how we construct a picture in our mind.”

Where: Cheim & Reid, 547 W 25th St, New York 10001
When: January 7 – 13 February
Website: www.cheimread.com
Now on:
Hiroki Tsukuda: Enter the O | Petzel Gallery
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In his U.S gallery debut, Petzel Gallery exhibits Japanese artist Hiroki Tsukuda’s works on paper, sculpture and installation. Tsukuda draws his inspiration from his imaginings during his youth on Shikoku Island – with a deep influence from science-fiction, the artist has created his own futuristic, dystopian, mechanical and non-sensical worlds. A personal favourite.

Where: Petzel Gallery, 456 W 18th Street, New York 10011
When: 14 January – 20 February
Website: www.petzel.com
Now on:
Moira Dryer | 11R
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A collection of abstract paintings on wood panel aside a selection of never before exhibited water colours, collages and gouaches from the late Canadian artist between 1985 and 1992, the year of her death from cancer. Dryer largely rejected typical trends of the time such as Neo-Expressionism and Appropriation Art, opting for a softer, nuanced take on abstraction. Now in it’s final week of viewing.

Where: 11R Gallery, 195 Chrystie St, New York, NY, 10002
When: 11 January – 7 February
Website: www.11rgallery.com
Now on:
Katherine Bradford: Fear of Waves | Canada Gallery
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Hailing from local Brooklyn, Katherine Bradford has been a staple of the New York scene for years and Fear of Waves showcases an apex of her transformation away from pure abstraction that has taken place over the last 20 years. This collection of works is by far her most figurative to date, depicting swimmers in playful but often profound scenes, in surreal, milky and dream-like worlds.

Where: Canada, 333 Broome St, New York, NY 10002
When: 9 January – 14 February
Website: www.canadanewyork.com

Concealed within an old attic in Copenhagen, lie the alchemic endeavours of T.E. Smith, interpretations of a strange manuscript, the Saga of the Event. According to legend, after a virginal transformation, the author of the manuscript, Lady Marianne Notewell mysteriously disappeared and the esoteric Hunting Society was founded in her name. In the passing of time, certain renowned figures have sought its membership adding a note of credibility to this elite guild.

Curated by Stine Niken Ljungdalh, the exhibition, Hunters of the Invisible requires a heady dose of the imagination in order to confront the ambiguity of the Zone, a theatrical interplay where reality meets the intangible. Spectators are invited to partake in ‘a parallel blueprint of creation’, an inspection of eclectic (and previously ‘unseen’) objects from the Hunting Society’s archives. These are interspersed with photographic imagery depicting the Society’s events, scientific curios and other installations by the feminist artist and film maker, Charlotte Bergson. Her ‘relics’ and more crudely fashioned artefacts appear to confuse the spectator’s perception of authenticity but with humorous intention.
What dark ideology lurks behind the Hunting Society’s alchemal media? There is much to decipher. Tipp-Exed scripts appear to translate as
taxi on our way from the port and more eerily, conscious of its shoulder on another hand. Spectators are reminded of the Divine Mother Herself at work in the recurring symbols and gilded sugar crystals as ‘remedies for the ritual’. And what might be the Society’s clandestine events? Fencing contests and the ever-present games of solitaire…

A research candidate at the Contemporary Art Research Centre at Kingston University, Bergson’s interest concerns metafiction, a way for expressing the different viewpoints of an event. She combines this methodology with philosophy, science and alchemy to stage her ongoing development of imaginary happenings and her characters’ identities. Her previous work includes Other Fictions at Photographic Centre (2013) and GamingGaming at new Shelter Plan (2014).
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Stanleypickergallery
Facaulty of Art, Design & Architecture
Kingston University, Knights Park, Kingston upon Thames KT1 2QJ
14 January – 15 March

‘The one thing we share—exhaustion—makes us an inoperative community, an exhausted community, or a community of the exhausted.’ Jan Verwoert

Use/User/Used/ is the new exhibition presented at the Zabludowicz Collection that looks at the societal pressures of continuously performing in a 24/7 working culture.
Displaying works in a variety of media, including live performance and dance, the exhibition reflects on what it means to be exhausted. Use/User/Used/ explores the automatic system and endless connectivity, mass production and digital technology. The exhibition presents a variety of works that criticise and investigate life at a million miles an hour, often through a humourous and ironic detachment from it.

Part of the Innovative Testing Ground programme, the Zabludowicz Collection has worked with emerging artists and curators for over eight years in order to create opportunities for creative and professional development by producing experimental exhibitions and events which test out new ideas and modes of practice, Use/User/Used/ is one of the results of this collaboration.
Use/User/Used presents works from the Zabludowicz Collection including Nick Darmstaedter, Nicolas Deshayes, Alex Dordoy, Matias Faldbakken, Lizzie Fitch, Yngve Holen, Josh Kline, Nikki S. Lee, Rachel Maclean, Kris Martin, Tobias Madison, Seth Price, Lucy Tomlins, Kirstine Roepstorff, Jack Strange, Artie Vierkant, and Gary Webb. As well as newly commissioned live works by Lea Collet and Marios Stamatis, Filippo Marzocchi, and Laura Yuile.

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Participating curators include Luis Araujo, Mattia Giussani, Jose Iglesias, Lorna McDowell, Giovanni Rendina, Celine Roblin-Robson, Alexine Rodenhuis, Angela Sanchez del Campo, Duarte Sequeira, and Kirsty White.

176 Prince of Wales Road, London
Until 21 February

LONDON

Opening Soon:
Electronic Superhighway (2016 – 1966) | Whitechapel Gallery

The Whitechapel Gallery opens its doors this week to a major exhibition, exhibiting over 100 works, showing the impact of computer and Internet technologies on artists from the mid-60s to the present day. The exhibition brings together new and rarely displayed multimedia works by 70 artists spanning 50 years including Cory Arcangel, Jeremy Bailey, James Bridle, Constant Dullaart, Oliver Laric, Roy Ascott, Judith Barry, Lynn Hershmann Leeson and Ulla Wiggen.

Where: 77-82 Whitechapel High St, London, E1 7QX
When: 29 January – 15 May
Website: www.whitechapelgallery.org

Opening Soon:
Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse | Royal Academy of Arts
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Using the work of Claude Monet as a starting point, the Royal Academy of Arts introduces a landmark exhibition, which examines the role gardens play in the evolution of art from the early 1860s through to the 1920s. Including over 120 works by Renoir, Cezanne, Pissarro, Manet, Sargent, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, Matisse, Klimt and Klee, Painting the Modern Garden explores how the garden gave artists the inspiration and freedom to produce masterpieces.

Where: Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BD
When: 30 January – 20 April
Website: www.royalacademy.org.uk

Liquid Life | Work at Home
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Liquid Life explores the potential of an exhibition within a domestic setting by asking a diverse selection of practitioners to present a curated selection of works within a home. Working within an ‘open-house’ policy, the exhibited artists demonstrate an ethos to work outside the boundaries of production and the rules of an exhibition.

Where: 72 Median Road, London, E5 0PN
When: Until 20 February
Website: www.wah.gallery

Opening Soon:
Rana Hamadeh: The Sleepwalkers | The Showroom
﷯The Showroom presents the first solo exhibition in the UK of Lebanese artist Rana Hamadeh. The Sleepwalkers, a major new film commission, is the latest chapter of Alien Encounters, Hamadeh’s on going project which aims at further complicating the notion of ‘alienness’, understood broadly as the condition of estrangement with regard to the law.

Where: The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, London, NW8 8PQ
When: 27 January – 19 March
Website: www.theshowroom.org

For One Week Only:
Bread and Jam IV: Modern Mirror | 52 Whitbread Road
The inhabitants of 52 Whitbread Road announce Bread and Jam, a unique series of exhibitions created and exhibited in a gutted and soon to be refurbished house in a Victorian terraced street in Brockley. For the 4th instalment of the exhibition, Bread and Jam bring together the past and present, inviting 9 contemporary artists to make or present work in response to international artists active between the 1950s to the 1970s.

Where: 52 Whitbread Road, Brockley, SE4 2BE
When: Open 30th and 31st of January from 12-6pm
Website: www.breadandjamwhitbread.wordpress.com

NEW YORK

The Eccentrics | SculptureCentre

The sense of the theatre is the sense of the rope, the sense of accident.
A healthy, joyful elasticated tension of our entire being, of our total life energy. When your breath fails, when it chokes in your gullet, when little red devils dance in your brain. Like at the circus. Right under the big top—as if hung by a thread—hangs the trapeze artist and the entire audience is frozen, with bated breath…and…and…a bit more! Gasp! Enough! – Enough! – Enough!
—From the Factory of the Eccentric Actor manifesto, 1922*

Featuring work by Sanya Kantarovsky, Adriana Lara, Ieva Misevičiūtė, Eduardo Navarro, Jeanine Oleson, Georgia Sagri, Zhou Tao, and Tori Wrånes – the participating artists embed images and objects with performativity, each work comprising a single act within the show. The Eccentrics has been curated by SculptureCenter Curator Ruba Katrib.

Where: 44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City, NY 11101
When: Until April 4
Website: www.sculpture-center.org

Desiring to be Data for Others: New Work by Amanda Turner Pohan | FiveMyles
FiveMyles presents an exhibition of new works by Amanda Turner Pohan. Based on scientific manipulation of chemistry, her installations present seemingly minimalist clarity through methodical order. In reality Pohan is attempting to quantify the unquantifiable through creative processing, packaging, and ordering, conjuring a self-portrait that becomes a metaphor for the bodied and disembodied nature of human response.

Where: 558 St Johns Place, Crown Heights, Brooklyn
When: Until February 21
Website: www.fivemyles.org

Cheryl Donegan: Scenes and Commercials | New Museum
﷯New Museum presents an exhibition of work by Cheryl Donegan. Working across video, painting and performance, Donegan explores the production and consumption of images in mass culture and art history.

Scenes and Commercials has been curated by Johanna Burton, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement, with Sara O’Keeffe, Assistant Curator.

Where: 235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002
When: Until April 10
Website: www.newmuseum.org

Chris Burden: Buddha’s Fingers | Gagosian Gallery

It’s about trying to frame something. And draw attention to it and say, “Here’s the beauty in this. I’m going to put a frame around it, and I think this is beautiful.” That’s what artists do. It’s really a pointing activity.
—Chris Burden

Gagosian New York presents Buddha’s Finger by the late Chris Burden. Buddha’s Fingers (2014–15) is a dense cluster of thirty-two antique cast-iron vernacular street lamps, electrified with cool, bright LED bulbs and standing almost twelve feet tall. The title refers to the fingered citrus fruit “buddha’s hand”, a recurrent still-life motif and subject in classical Asian art, and a religious symbol of happiness, longevity, and good fortune.

Where: 980 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10075
When: Until February 20
Website: www.gagosian.com
Carla Gannis: A Subject Self-Defined | TRANSFER
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TRANSFER presents A Subject Self-Defined, a new body of work by Carla Gannis that addresses issues of branded identity; age and body estimation; catastrophe culture; and online agency via static, dynamic and interactive “selfie” imagery.

Gannis commented, ‘the culmination of this body of work as a solo exhibition of large-format looped moving images takes its title from Joseph Kosuth’s 1966 neon sculpture that spells out and is eponymously titled ‘A Subject Self-Defined.’ He belonged to a group of artists involved in stripping down the art object, reducing it to ideas and information that were detached from personal meaning. Forty-nine years later, when we find art in the age of networked identity and digital dematerialization, I am perplexed by subjecthood and self-definition in relationship to the “personal” when performed publicly.’

Where: 1030 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211
When: Until March 12
Website: www.transfergallery.com

“It is absurd to divide humanity into men and women. It is composed only of femininity and masculinity.”

Valentine de Saint Point
‘Manifesto of the Futurist Woman in response to F.T. Marinetti’, 1912

“In the end every definition of male and female is personal, and it’s that idiosyncrasy we value, need and hope to encourage. Who do we think we are?
A work in progress ♂♀”.
Vince Aletti, ‘Male Female’, 1999

Federica Chiocchetti, founding Director of the Photocaptionist, has been invited to guest curate Photo50 at the 2016 London Art Fair – an exhibition of fifty works by contemporary photographers. Feminine Masculine: On the Struggle and Fascination of Dealing with the Other Sex presents an unfinished exploration of the dynamics that occur between men and women, through the voice of a female curator. Loosely inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 classic film Masculin Féminin, the exhibition looks at men and women in relation to one another through a suggestive, transitional visual journey. Chiocchetti offers one perspective on a topic, which she commented, often seems ‘beyond the camera’s reach.’

Divided into five sections – He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, Till Death Do Us Apart, Ennui and Obsession, Carrying On Without Them and Wrap Thee With Fluctuant Wings – the exhibition explores the different parts of a ‘conventional’ relationship and maps the journey from start to finish, from trying to figure out whether someone likes you to learning how to move on from them. Chiocchetti comments, ‘perhaps lurking behind this year’s theme there is an unconsciously self-critical message to pay homage to certain women’s somewhat comical habit of over-analysing everything, which is probably what scares/bores the average man.’
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Photo50 presents work by sixteen contemporary photographers including work by Laia Abril, Ekaterina Anokhina, Jo Broughton, Natasha Caruana, Elinor Carucci, Francesca Catastini, Martin Crawl, Discipula, JH Engström, EJ Major, Timothy Prus, Maya Rochat, Paul Schneggenburger, Francesca Seravalle, Maija Tammi and Mariken Wessels.

Located Gallery Level 2 at the London Art Fair, Business Design Centre.
52 Upper Street, London, N1 0QH
20 – 24 January

“As a medium reliant on how the natural world appears to it, can a photograph ever be truly abstract? Yet what process is more abstract than collapsing mass, depth and time into a single surface?” – Harvey-Regan

The dictionary definition of the term ‘erratic’, in a geological sense, is ‘a rock or boulder that differs from the surrounding rock and is believed to have been brought from a distance by glacial action’, in other words, a rock that differs from its surrounding environment and has not been formed where it has been found. Darren Harvey-Regan’s series of works, titled The Erratics, executes this act of lifting something out of context in a similar way to the geological term, by presenting natural chalk rock formations that have been removed from their original location and meaning.

In his sculptural compositions, Harvey-Regan uses chalk collected from the rock falls of England’s South Coast and carves smooth planes within them, resulting in a man-made interference within a naturally eroded surface and, in doing this, the artist alternates the perception of the chalks natural form. In his photographic works, which he shot with a large format film camera, Harvey-Regan explored Egypt’s Western Desert to find monolithic chalk formations. Through these photographs, registered against his sculptural works, he exposes organic and inorganic forms through their abstraction and asks his audience to contemplate the single surface.
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www.copperfieldgallery.com

The Copperfield Gallery presents Darren Harvey-Regan: The Erratics
6 Copperfield Street, London, SE1 0EP
until the 5th of March

A pop-up exhibition of new works by renowned American photographer Annie Leibovitz is preparing for an around-the-world tour, which is starting its journey in London this January at the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station. WOMEN: New Portraits by Annie Leibovitz is a continuation of an on going project, which started over 15 years ago as a collaboration between the photographer and Susan Sontag. Leibovitz’s world tour premieres new photographs, commissioned by UBS, of Amy Schumer, Caityln Jenner and Venus and Serena Williams, as well as a number of other portraits of notable female figures, displayed alongside pieces from the initial 1999 iteration, including portraits of Cindy Sherman, Louise Bourgeois, Yoko Ono, Agnes Martin and Patti Smith.

Hubertus Kuelps, group head of communications and branding at UBS, said: ‘Annie Leibovitz is the leading portrait photographer of our time and we are excited to be bringing this project to a global audience. It fits with our long-standing support of projects that encourage engagement in contemporary art and we hope it will inspire people to create.’ Leibovitz added: ‘it is extraordinary to do this work for UBS on a subject that I really care about. It is such a big undertaking and a broad subject – it is like going out and photographing the ocean.’

The curators of the exhibition have made a conscious decision to not exhibit the works within a museums or gallery space but instead exhibiting Leibovitz’s work in a number of unusual, undisclosed venues across the world – the first being a disused power station in Wapping. The organisers have supported this decision by noting the potential of putting on a series of shows in original spaces, spaces not usually accustomed to housing art, and how it encourages the viewer to have an unexpected encounter with the artworks, unpremeditated by the environment in which it is viewed.

The project, in Sontag’s words, was a series of “photographs of people with nothing more in common than that they are women.” The addition of new works to the collection refreshes and reflects upon the changing role of women, as well as some of the attitudes towards gender roles in modern society, especially poignant as the exhibition is due to travel and to be encountered by cultures with radicially differing conceptions of gender and gender roles.
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WOMEN: New Portraits by Annie Leibovitz
at the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station (Wapping Wall, London E1W 3SG)
from January 16 – February 7
www.ubs.com

LONDON

1. Rose English: A Premonition of the Act | Camden Arts Centre

The realisation of a 10-year project, Camden Art Centre presents
A Premonition of the Act, a multidisciplinary exhibition, which maps the career of performance artist Rose English. At the core of the exhibition is a new sound work, Lost in Music, a 70-minute sound installation and the precursor to a yet-to-be-realised performance which will include a chamber opera, an art installation and a circus.

Where: Arkwright Road, London NW3 6DG
When: Until 6 March 2016
What: www.camdenartscentre.org

Opening soon:
2. Champagne Life | Saatchi Gallery
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To mark its 30th anniversary, the Saatchi Gallery introduces its first ever all-female exhibition, Champagne Life. Virgile Issah, a French artist whose work features in Champagne Life commented on the recent interest in women-only exhibitions, stating, ‘I think it’s interesting that collectors who are the same generation are doing this at the same time, it shows that the identity of the artist is weaker in the work. Today, to be a woman artist is not as important. We are in a more genderless society.’

Showcasing 14 emerging international artists, Champagne Life includes works by Mequitta Ahuja, Alice Anderson, Marie Angeletti, Jelena Bulajic, Julia Dault, Mia Feuer, Sigrid Holmwood, Virgile Ittah, Seung Ah Paik, Maha Malluh, Suzanne McClelland, Stephanie Quayle, Soheila Sokhanvari and Julia Wachtel.

Where: Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Road, London, SW3 4RY
When: Open the 13th of January until the 6th of March
What: www.saatchigallery.com

3. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa: God’s Reptilian Finger | Gasworks
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Gasworks presents the first UK solo exhibition by Guatemalan artist Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, God’s Reptilian Finger. Exhibiting a selection of new sculptural works by the artist, including a glowing replica of God’s Finger, Ramírez-Figueroa’s practice explores folklore and dreams, conspiracy theories, ancient mythologies and magic.

Where: 155 Vauxhall Street, London, SE11 5RH
When: Until 7 February
What: www.gasworks.org.uk
Opening Soon:

4. Sculpture 4tet | Marian Goodman Gallery
A selection of works by Luciano Fabro, Jan-Luc Moulène, Bruce Nauman and Danh Vō, the Marian Goodman Gallery poses the question ‘how can contemporary artworks benefit from a reflection of the term sculpture?’ in the new exhibition Sculpture 4tet. Curated by Jean-Pierre Criqui, Sculpture 4tet, explores the etymology of the term sculpture through a variety of three-dimensional objects, complimented by drawing, photography, moving image and electric light.

Where: 5-8 Lower John Street, London, W1F 9DY
When: Open the 12th of January until the 20th of February
What: www.mariangoodman.com
Opening Soon:

5. Park Seo-Bo: Ericture 1967-1981 | White Cube Mason’s Yard
White Cube Mason’s Yard presents an exhibition of paintings by Korean artist Park Seo-Bo, his first solo exhibition in the UK. Ericture traces the origins of his practice, presenting 16 works painted between 1967 and 1981.

Seo-Bo commented on the meaning of his work as, ‘related to the oriental tradition of space, the spiritual concept of space. I am more interested in space from the point of view of nature. Even though my paintings may represent an idea about culture, the main focus is based on nature […] I want to reduce the idea and emotion in my work to express only that. I want to reduce and reduce – to create pure emptiness.’

Where: 25 – 26 Mason’s Yard, London, SW1Y 6BU
When: Opening the 15th of January until the 12th of March
What: www.whitecube.com
NEW YORK

1. Rob Halverson, All Repeat | Soloway
Artist-led space, Soloway, presents an exhibition of work by Portland-based artist and curator Rob Halverson. All Repeat is a multidisciplinary exhibition that engages with a range of formats from drawing and prints, to sculpture and curation, and flips the relationship between artwork and viewer by dealing with issues of perception and reflection.

Where: 348 South 4th Street, Brooklyn
When: Until 14 February
What: www.soloway.info

2. Is/Is Not | Con Artist Gallery
The Con Artist Collective presents Is/Is Not, an exhibition and artistic experiment that challenges the necessity of objectifiable subject matter and celebrates the joy of pure mark-making. A showcase of raw emotion and vibe, the exhibition is a documentation of the senses by way of an absence of colour, form and mood.

Where: 119 Ludlow Street, New York, NY 10002
When: Until 16 January
What: www.conartistnyc.com

3. Stupid Cartoons to Pass the Time in the Desert | Transmitter
“Don’t have the hubris of being the comedian. You are the straight man in this farce; the universe is the funny man.” – Lars Iyer, from “Nude in Your Hot Tub, Facing the Abyss: A Literary Manifesto After the End of Literature and Manifestos”

Transmitter presents Stupid Cartoons to Pass the Time in the Desert, an exhibition of works, by Joey Parlett, Stephanie Snider, Adam Douglas Thompson and Crys Yin, which use the format of the comic to explore an accumulation of representations through alternative narratives.

Where: 1329 Willoughby Avenue, 2A, Brooklyn, NY 11237
When: Until 14 February
What: www.transmitter.nyc

4. Coco Fusco | Alexander Gray Associates
Alexander Gray Associates presents an exhibition of videos produced over the last two years by interdisciplinary artist and writer Coco Fusco including her latest installation Confidencial, Autores Firmantes (2015) examining Cuba’s systematic censorship of literary voices during the 1970s. Featuring works between 1990 and 2015, Fusco’s exhibition examines the politics of identity, military power, the history of racial through, and post-revolutionary Cuba.

Where: 510 West 26 Street, New York NY 10001
When: Until 6 February
What: www.alexandergray.com

5. Michael Ballou: Mud and Toys | Pierogi
Returning to the Pierogi Gallery in Williamsburg after 12 years, Michael Ballou presents a body of recent works as part of his new exhibition Mud and Toys. Inspired by the renovations of the old buildings and the high-rise developments he encounters on his daily travels around Brooklyn, Mud and Toys looks back at the artist’s oeuvre through a collection of works he refers to as ‘brute’.

Where: 177 North 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211
When: Until 7 February
What: www.pierogi2000.com

‘…I wanted to see if the experience of what I saw would have any correspondence to what I felt — the intimacy of the lovemaking…And I wanted to put into that materiality of film the energies of the body, so that the film itself dissolves and recombines and is transparent and dense — as one feels during lovemaking… It is different from any pornographic work that you’ve ever seen — that’s why people are still looking at it! And there’s no objectification or fetishisation of the women.’ – Carolee Schneemann on Fuses

In 1965, Carolee Schneemann produced a semi-autobiographical, self-shot silent film titled Fuses which showed the artist and her then partner composer James Tenney performing sexual activities witnessed by the artist’s cat, Kitch. Schneemann actively protested the presentation of sex and sexuality in art, prior to and during the 1960s, when traditionally the woman was thought of solely as an object of heterosexual male desire and aimed to present female desire on an equal part with male desire. A result of the sexual revolution of the sixties and the new wave feminism that amounted from it, Schneemann’s 16mm film Fuses presents a man and a woman consummating their sexual relationship outside of the boundaries of marriage. She commented about the work, ‘the necessity was to investigate the absence in my culture of a visual heterosexual intimacy that corresponded to my own experience… the culture obfuscates lived experience, the female erotic and the sacredness of sexuality.’ Fuses acts as a positive appraisal of sex and the woman but purposely criticises the restrictions of female pleasure during sex particularly representative within the porn industry.

Schneemann’s earlier work Meat Joy (1964) was first performed at the First Festival of Free Expression at the American Center in Paris and later in the Judson Memorial Church in New York where it remained a similar performance to the original. Meat Joy comprised of a collective mélange of men and women tackling gender roles and sexuality through kinetic theatre and dance-like- choreography alongside the interaction between the human body and dead animals. Schneemann wrote, Meat Joy is an erotic rite — excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chicken, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, ropes, brushes, paper scrap. Its propulsion is towards the ecstatic — shifting and turning among tenderness, wildness, precision, abandon; qualities that could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, repellent.’

WORK Gallery proudly celebrates the release of a new book, Carolee Schneeman: Unforgivable, by exhibiting ten films at the gallery from Schneeman’s oeuvre including Fuses and Meat Joy, as well as Interior Scroll and Kitch’s Last Meal. The films have been presented alongside a collection of items, including contact sheets and photographs owned by the artist, which aided in the research of Schneemann’s book.

Carolee Schneemann: Unforgivable is on display at WORK Gallery until 11 March
10A Acton Street, London WC1X 9NG

To mark its 30th anniversary, the Saatchi Gallery introduces its first ever all-female exhibition, Champagne Life. Named after exhibiting artist Julia Wachtel’s work of the same title, the exhibition reflects on the art that has been made by women and exhibited and collected by the Saatchi Gallery over the last 30 years. Bringing together 14 emerging contemporary artists who work in a variety of mediums and on a variety of subjects, the Saatchi Gallery attempts to represent the diverse practice of female artists, without forcing a feminist statement.
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Soheila Sokhanvari, one of the artists exhibited, describes her work as a “cultural collage between East and Western philosophy.” Born in Iran, Sokhanvari’s work presents political commentaries through often whimsical and playful visual metaphors. Moje Sabz (above) shows a taxidermied horse mounted onto a jesmonite blob. Through the denaturalisation of the horse, Sokhanvari encourages interpretation through open-ended narrative, with the intention of encouraging discussion about worldwide political systems.

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Julia Dault has precariously contorted and manipulated strips of plexiglass and tambour to create Untitled 19, 3:00pm – 8:30pm, February 4, 2012 (above). The specificity of the title, which catalogues the exact time of the works creation, implies a short life span, as the materials will eventually resist their unnatural reshaping and spring back into their original forms. Dault emphasises the importance of her engagement with these uncooperative materials explicitly through the physical bending and distortion of the medium.

The artists discussed here are only two of the fourteen artists exhibited in Champagne Life, yet they represent the diversity of the work and the multifaceted nature of an exhibition that will, hopefully, enable a gender neutralised dialogue between the viewer and the work of art.

Champagne Life includes works by Mequitta Ahuja, Alice Anderson, Marie Angeletti, Jelena Bulajic, Julia Dault, Mia Feuer, Sigrid Holmwood, Virgile Ittah, Seung Ah Paik, Maha Malluh, Suzanne McClelland, Stephanie Quayle, Soheila Sokhanvari and Julia Wachtel.

Opens at the Saatchi Gallery on the 13th of January
Duke Of York’s HQ, King’s Rd, London SW3 4RY

LONDON

1. Roberto Almagno: Suspended in Space | Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery
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The Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery presents Suspended in Space, an exhibition of work by Italian artist Robert Almagno. Working almost exclusively in wood, Almagno presents a new body of work that defies the limits of the materials character qualities, contorting and bending it like string. The artist explores the themes of balance and precariousness, fixing the sculptures as though suspended in space.

Where: 37 Rathbone Street, London W1T 1NZ
When: Until 13 February 2016
What: www.rosenfeldporcini.com

2. Smile Orange | Cubitt Gallery
﷯Who am I? Who are we? What is a nation?
These are some of the questions posed at the group exhibition Smile Orange currently on at the Cubitt Gallery in Angel. This exhibition of painting, photography and video works explore ideas about identity and the formation of personal, communal and national perspective.

Curated by Morgan Quaintance
Featuring: Russell Newell, Karl Ohiri, Ben Sanderson

Where: 8 Angel Mews, London, N1 9HH
When: Until 17 January 2016
What: www.cubittartists.org.uk

3. Maisons Fragiles | Hauser & Wirth
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Maisons Fragiles at Hauser & Wirth explores themes of fragility, vulnerability and protection through various manifestations. Through the examination and exploitation of materials each artist uniquely explores these key themes in unique ways. Spanning 60 years of artistic practice, the exhibition includes work by Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Richard Serra, Alexander Calder, Isa Genzken, Robert Gober, Roni Horn, Gordon Matta-Clark and Fausto Melotti.

Where: 23 Savile Row, London, W1S 2ET
When: Until 6 February 2016
What: www.hauserwirth.com

4. Fernando Casasempere – A Death | Parafin

Parafin presents an exhibition of new work by Chilean-born artist Fernando Casasempere. A sculptor mainly working in ceramics, Casasempere uses the traditional material of pottery to produce works that examine the landscape and environment. He takes his inspiration from the Chilean landscape and the processes by which that landscape has been used.

Where: 18 Woodstock Street, London, W1C 2AL
When: Until 30 January 2016
What: www.parafin.co.uk

Last Chance to See:
5. Ann Veronica Janssens: yellowbluepink | Wellcome Collection

As part of the changing exhibition States of Mind: Tracing the Edges of Consciousness, the Wellcome Collection presents Ann Veronica Janssens’ yellowbluepink. Now in its final week, yellowbluepink is a new installation, which explores light and colour by filling the gallery with coloured mist. On entering the space, the visitor is disorientated and caught in a state of suspense as all details of the environment are obscured.

Entrance into the space is limited. Queuing is likely and timed ticketing may be in operation. Last entry will typically be an hour before closing.

Where: 183 Euston Rd, London NW1 2BE
When: Until 3 January 2016
What: www.wellcomecollection.org
NEW YORK

1. DEVOTION | Catinca Tabacaru Gallery
﷯DEVOTION is a thought experiment about art created as a means of dealing with the hereafter and a discussion of one of the greatest question of human existence – what happens after death? A multidisciplinary exhibition at the Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, DEVOTION presents a body of work within a space resembling a chapel and aims to examine religious devotion in a now predominately agnostic society.

Co-curated by William Corwin
The exhibition includes works by Joe Brittain, Mike Ballou, William Corwin, Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels, Elizabeth Ferry, Rico Gatson, Elisabeth Kley, Rachel Monosov, Roxy Paine, Joyce Pensato, Katie Bond Pretti, Carin Riley, Paul Anthony Smith, Justin Orvis Steimer, Gail Stoicheff and Sophia Wallace

Where: 250 Broome Street, New York, NY 10002
When: Until 17 January 2016
What: www.catincatabacaru.com

2. Frank Stella: A Retrospective | Whitney Museum of American Art
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The Whitney Museum of American Art presents the most comprehensive presentation of Stella’s career to date with approximately 100 works showcasing his career from the mid-1950s including paintings, reliefs, sculptures and drawings. The highly anticipated exhibition maps the evolution and development of Frank Stella’s career through some of his best-known works and some rarely seen examples loaned from collections across the world.

Frank Stella: A Retrospective has been organised by Michael Auping, chief curator, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, in association with Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and with the assistance of Carrie Springer, assistant curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Where: 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014
When: Until 7 February 2016
What: www.whitney.org

3. Annette Lemieux: Things to Walk Away With | Fisher Landau Center for Art

The Fisher Landau Center for Art presents Things to Walk Away With, an installation of objects, which have been collected by Annette Lemieux over the last 30 years. Each object, arranged in a grid pattern on the floor, reflects Lemieux’s ongoing exploration of memory and meaning, and invites viewers to expand the narrative of the objects through their active participation in a shared interpretation.

Where: 38-27 30th Street, Long Island City, NY 11101
When: Until 4 January
What: www.flcart.org

4. David Raffini. INSULAE #1 | Shin Gallery

INSULAE #1 is the first instalment in a series that follows a man who acquires a box of mysterious intent. David Raffini, a French painter and videographer, thematically constructs assemblages of work into a narrative that explores the themes of isolation and solitude felt when living in a densely populated city.

“Art is not on the canvas. Art is not in the mind of the viewer.
Art is the empty space between the artwork and the spectator.”
– David Raffini

Where: 332 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002
When: Until 3 January 2016
What: www.shin-gallery.com

Last Chance to See
5. Anthea Hamilton: Lichen! Libido! Chastity! | SculptureCenter

The SculptureCenter presents London-based artist Anthea Hamilton’s first solo exhibition in the United States. Lichen! Libido! Chastity! investigates cultural appropriation and pop culture through a series of sculptural and video works. Hamilton’s works question the representation of cultural phenomenon through popular media, often through the presentation of works that verge on the absurd and ridiculous.

Where: 44 – 19 Purves Street, Long Island City, New York, NY 11101
When: Until 4 January 2016
What: www.sculpture-center.org

The Random Darknet Shopper is back (after its brief time in police custody in Switzerland) and is currently purchasing knockoff designer clothing and sending them to a gallery in South London. Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo, also known as !Mediengruppe Bitnik, programmed a laptop to randomly purchase items off illicit Tor-enabled websites, also known as the dark web. With a budget of $100 (£66) a week in Bitcoins, the automated online shopping bot chooses items from Alpha Bay, currently the largest dark marketplace. The purchased items are then shipped from across the world to the Horacio Junior gallery in Rotherhithe where they are put on display alongside the laptop.

Weisskopf, one half of the Swiss art collective, commented on the project, ‘The arts should be able to mirror something that is happening in contemporary society in a contemporary way.’ She stated, ‘we really want to provide new spaces to think about the goods traded on these markets. Why are they traded? How do we as a society deal with these spaces? At the moment there is just a lot of pressure, but not a lot of thinking about stuff, just immediate reaction.’
﷯The Random Darknet Shopper project aims to explore the idea of criminal culpability and question whether a robot programmed with a randomised software agent can be held responsible for the purchasing of illegal goods. The collective confront contemporary concerns about whether authorities really have any control over actions taking place over the Internet and the repercussions of societies obsession with getting online.

The Random Darknet Shopper runs until February 5th 2016 at the Horacio Junior, 66 Canon Beck Road, SE16 7DN London, United Kingdom

To keep up to date with what the Random Darknet Shopper is purchasing,
follow !Mediengruppe Bitnik on Twitter @bitnk

Is Gilbert and George’s new exhibition worth the hype or is it an overpublicized interrogation for ranting? What seems like a room ready to undergo anger management lessons ‘The Banners’ are electric with their forwardness. ‘FUCK THE PLANET’ after reading the miseries of global warming, FUCK HIM when someone’s going past, ‘BURN THE BOOK’ after reading a book review, whilst the most outrageous ‘GOD SAVE THE QUEEN’. Now these boys are just playing with fire, but they sure as hell won’t burn themselves knowing the game so well.
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So are G&G just messing with us? Initially I sense a slight hint of ridicule, expected from us to rear in these banal banners as art: should we be offended in the writings’ foul language? Or the fact that they are simply sheets with just atrocities deemed as ‘art’? As soon as that feeling came along it vanished. The exhibition poses a prophetic character in regards to London’s societal and political frustrations, with Gilbert and ‘George being truthful in their naughty behavior. With every banner inscribing ‘Gilbert and George say…’ followed by the shocking texts you would be surprised at just how powerful the content is in which they manage to deliver. Are the words meant to be the vessel into Gilbert and George’s mind, or is this their confession on the collective frustration for what the British are thinking? In retrospect they are prayers from the gutter. It is emancipation for the English language, in all its uncensored glory where these writings may hold the next slang we text.
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In their rare alchemy to present us with these banners the quotes are still memorable, lingering over a fine line waiting to be misinterpreted. It is not for the faint hearted, but rather the bold as they successfully attain a reaction from even the most demurred. The risk is an honorable move from this trouble-starter duo who know how to stir even the calmest of waters.
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25 Nov – 24 Jan
The BANNERS is on display at White Cube, Bermondsey.
For more information check out: www.whitecube.com

‘Being deaf in a world of sound is like living in a foreign country blindly following the cultural rules, customs and behaviours without ever questioning them…Sound is almost like money and power. It’s so powerful that it could either disempower me and my art, or empower me. I chose to be empowered.’

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A deaf artist making sound art…sounds like a joke right? Rustle Tustle is the new exhibition at Carroll/Fletcher Gallery where Christine Sun Kim borrows other’s voices in order to explore the political and social aspects ingrained in the use of voice. Drawings, video and an interactive installation all investigate sound using a musical, graphic and American Sign Language notation. The exhibition is not to be undermined despite its initial quiet air when first walking in. Challenging the ownership of sound it is a question we’re not sure how to answer. Is it a self-defeating cause for a deaf artist to make sound art or is it a proclaiming that anything is possible?
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At first glance the exhibition looks poor from the white on white ensemble of the few line drawings showcasing Kim’s attempt to record sound through some writing. The Velcro strips spanning across the room when you first walk in the gallery are idle with their use unknown, whilst a lingering sound emanating from the back of the gallery creeps into the front room where we stand. Given a large device resembling an old radio-set which could have been conjured from a mad scientist’s lab we are instructed to attach our device to the Velcro strips. What sounds like a cacophony of noise, deep obscured voices, unrecognisable in their words, we soon realize why this piece is called ‘Game of Skill 1.0’. It is a balancing act to say the least, with our heads bent backward trying to ungracefully attach the device atop of the Velcro strips whilst still trying to concentrate at the grunting noise bouncing off the speaker. Supposedly it is Kim manipulating the voice of her interpreter as she tries to communicate verbally. Feeling like we’re just learning how to listen it is an act that makes us unskillful in concentrating to the various tangled words.
Whether it was that we were so caught up in the act of decoding the speaker’s speech behind the megaphone, we felt that we brushed off the line drawings. Lacking the impact from the game we were so caught up in playing.
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As we felt that playtime was over with we moved to the next room providing the video work Close Readings (2015) playing clips from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Kim consulted four deaf friends for this piece in order to caption the possible sounds for each screen. We are thus pre-assigned sounds that may not correlate to the scene playing, often ranging from literal to conceptual. Precisely Kim’s point we know or assume the sounds that we were supposed to be hearing through the films, but now we are given the ‘ghost’ of audio, with the background noise of rustling paper or anything we would otherwise brush to the side becoming the sole focus of its ideophone.
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Unaware whether it was the fact that we knew beforehand that this exhibition of sound was made from a deaf artist- and that that in itself might be a bizarre relationship to explore- we left feeling a bit more aware of the sound of the door closing behind us with the muffled voices echoing from the next explorer reaching out for their DIY-sound-device.

27 Nov – 30 Jan
Carroll/Fletcher Gallery, Oxford Circus.
For more information check out: www.carrollfletcher.com

 

What exhibition wouldn’t be worth going to if it gave you the shot at some point in your day to say: ‘Remember that one time we went to see booze in Art’? Whilst a cynic’s definition of an alcoholic is someone you don’t like but really drinks as much as you, the exhibition carries 18th century art alongside quirky contemporaries such Gilbert and George. A stimulating, yet modest exhibition, the show gives the social lubricant its spotlight as the imbibing addiction has squirmed its way into glorifying masterpieces –seeding paintings such us the infamous 1751 Gin Lane by William Hogarth with babies plummeting to their deaths to Richard Billingham’s photography in the 1990’s domestic life as he snaps pictures of his alcoholic father staring in the distance as his wife gives him an earful. A catastrophic affair of insightful grimy history, the exhibition holds an evident pro-temperance tone. A storyline of the way artists use alcohol in a narrative, rather than the way alcohol affects art or artist, TATE Britain hosts the devious iteration of drinking in a small cavernous orange room.

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The collection emphasizes the role of alcohol in shaping the lives of the majority of Victorian British homes. By no means does the exhibition present a dazzling display of colors or the glorification of booze. Despite the exhibition offering a few moments of merriment with dancing people raising their glass in toast the overall demeanor of the exhibition is bleak, with images of crying women due to their husbands drunkenness, desolate children without parents and a family losing their possessions. As George Cruikshank spoke, whose work The Worship of Bacchus (1862) is on display: ‘…no artist, nor author, dare attempt to represent or describe, to the fullest extent, the horrible crimes and disgusting deeds that are committed under the influence of wine, beer, or spirits. No it cannot, it dare not be done.’

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The atmosphere is eased with notorious Gilbert and George’s Balls: The Evening Before The Morning After. With 114 deliberately amateurish photos collaged together to form a colossal blurred montage of what could well have been the impaired vision of a drunken night, the piece itself is intoxicating. If you distance yourself enough and squint your eyes ever so slightly, the correlation could mimic a liver…a pretty damaged one in this case. The pictures, all taken in the former Balls Brothers Bar in Bethnal Green Road in east London show the progressive effects of alcohol. The photographs captured were developed in various sizes, with their clarity distorted mirroring the alcohol’s effect.
Facing towards the other side of the room is the vast pandemonium of George Cruikshank, ‘The Worship of Bacchus’ (1860-62). The painting, walking the line of insanity due to its unsubtle nature, depicts babies endangered, people beaten and shot whilst others gather around statues of Bacchus, demonstrating a world of frenzy and menace.

This small exhibition is thought provoking, with aesthetic considerations becoming less and less omissible. How can you not wonder the odd opposition between G&G’s drunken memoir, across pieces that took half a century in their making such Cruikshank’s? The woes of drinking, and sufferings seem to have completely changed in the 21st century as the interpretation of alcohol takes a lighter note to the older representations of it- seeing the artists hand shift towards a comical-take, rather than the elaborately detailed and dark paintings in the 1800’s.
In conclusion, TATE Britain raises questions of art to moralize. Either way the most bizarre and interesting stories come from the drunken tails of the ‘fallen’ so if you have the talent what kind of observer would you be if you did not depict its influence?

16 Nov – Autumn 2016
Art and Alcohol on view at Tate Britain.
For more information check out: www.tate.org.uk

It’s coming up, It’s coming up, It’s HERE! Jamie Hewlett, co-creator of the re-known virtual band Gorillaz is presenting the inner workings of his psych at Saatchi Gallery entitled ‘The Suggestionists’. Of course the theme is anything but conventional; a peep show of intricate line drawings of trees, coupled with 70’s erotic Rated B posters, finished off with good-old-fashioned Tarot cards. Makes sense, right? I didn’t think so either. But nothing is basic with this rebel artist, and we wouldn’t expect anything other than an eccentrically creative show after all the virtual concerts he has managed to pull-off. So what does The Suggestions have to suggest? Put on your best Clint Eastwood expression of puzzlement, and let’s figure out which of these three shows is your match.
﷯ ﷯The Suggestionists consists of three bodies of work titled: ‘Tarot’, Honey’ and ‘Pines’. Humorous and bizarre, the exhibition offers a glimpse into a psychogeographic journey. Initially with no intention of corresponding to each other, the body of work diverges down the same path due to their suggestive qualities. With Tarots hinting towards your future, Honey’s cheeky erotic nature and Pines where the shadows of the trees transform into something else we are left to make up the end of the story ourselves.
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One thing the exhibition has in common in the seemingly disparate subjects-other than their common thread for their suggestive nature-is their comic-like character. Tarot features an over-sized deck of cards of 22 figures drawn in watercolor. The era is Hewllianesque, as they distinctly possess the designer’s signature expression of his cartoons with an underscored humor. The artist, influenced by his wife, who offered him a reading the first time they met, found himself intrigued by all the hidden signs within the cards. Using the same deck as de Caunes – the Tarot of Marseille- and influenced by tarot obsessive and filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, Hewelett gives us a spin for our fortune.
Passing the tarot card readings comes Honey, exploring the sleazy ambiance of 70’s erotic cinema. A genre not often put in the limelight, and a backdrop of an adult cinema lobby, overt the children to stick with their tarot card findings. A buzzing of Quentin Tarrantino’s art direction in Pulp Fiction comes to mind when viewing the colors boldly displayed off Hewellet’s actress wife (posing as the model in the posters). Trashy, where X clearly marks the spot, the posters put the female body in the forefront. Sex sells after all, denoting the woman in a minimal color scope. The designs mildly poor, the intentions sketchy and the visual badly collaged the pieces transcend us back to the risqué posters once on display that were considered as an inappropriate iconography.
If you’re still lingering to view intricate drawings from the illustrator then Pines won’t disappoint. The series displays the illustrator’s patience and keen eye for detail. It presents large black and white hyper-realistic illustrations, with shadows casting altering forms of imaginative shapes. The series comes from Hewlett’s enamoring interpretation whilst living in the South of France.

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Hewlett emphasizes the reasons behind the thematic approach his has taken, referring to the audience always having things ‘over-explained and everything is delivered to us in a high-definition graphic overkill. Which is robbing us of the ability to imagine what happens up next for ourselves.’ The exhibition shifting to a didactic meaning of triggering our imagination rather than being spoon-fed what we observe, we can draw up conclusions for ourselves. As if learning to take our first steps to connect the pieces together, Hewlett won’t hold our hand with his underlining themes- not because we are incapable of understanding but because we are encouraged to make our own opinion.
So Honey wake up and smell the Pines at Saatchi cause the cards predict this is an exhibition not to be missed.

18 Nov – 2 Dec The Saatchi Gallery.
For more information check out: www.saatchigallery.com

Behind the glass vitrine of Sadie Cole’s Gallery, lit up amid the busy Kingsley Street, individuals enter and quickly disappear up the staircase. What show is there you ask? At first glance the body of work, invisible to its existence on street level, finds safe haven on the second floor of the gallery’s space. Rudolf Stingel’s paintings, which could easily belong in the National Geographic’s archives, portray photorealistic images of animals. The capacity of the pieces to interchange from paintings to photographs is mind bending, as the artist dilates our perception and questions our memory.
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A seal, fox and warthog are a few of the animals captured in their natural landscape-snapshots of spontaneity. Reproduced in a magnified scale they are spread across the space, which feels empty even with the artwork on display. Despite the meticulous composition and time undertaken to produce each piece, you can’t help but feel withdrawn from any emotional attachment. The starch white walls, and lighting make the environment feel sterile, highlighting the subdued grisaille or faded color from the paintings. The aesthetic of photorealism is soon diminished when you step closer to the paintings, as they reveal their imperfections to us. The ideal image is shattered as the paint granules unevenly protrude from the canvas and the pigmentation sieves the manual construction of its character. It is indeed fascinating that our mind assembles these images as a unified projection, but in fact it is all part of a temporal rouge- a blotchy picture of multiple layerings.
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The source for Stingel’s inspiration is as quirky as the approach he uses to paint- a vintage German calendar where each image serves as a different month. The guise of his intention revolves around a specific time frame assigned to each animal- as each canvas is assigned a temporal duration for their being.
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Past the moment of painterly intricacy, the work lacks any form of further revelation. The awe seems to belong in the past, just as their initial character, and we are left wondering what it is these pieces can further hold, other than long hours for their making. The impasto ‘surface interference’ attests to a nostalgic nature, as the quality of ‘pastness’ is imbued in the surface texture. There is a striking contrast in the subjects timid content and vivid enlargement, and the accumulation of time that separates them from the current state they exist-the present. The ambiguity of this unresolved tension accomplishes to distance the canvases with the viewer in the present moment.

The nostalgia is unveiled by bringing the memory forth in such a grandiose scale. But the deadened pictures transcribe no emotional weight, so why would you be nostalgic for something, which you cannot be attached with?

04 November-18 December
Rudolf Stingel Exhibition on view at Sadie Coles Gallery, 62 Kingly Street London W1
For more information check out: www.sadiecoles.com

“This is disgusting” – were the words of a middle-aged man as he fled the scene of Eddie Peake’s solo show Forever Loop at the Barbican Curve. Indeed, Eddie’s work is essentially synonymous with nudity nowadays, so I did expect wobbling willies and bouncing boobs, yet this gentleman’s strong reaction, I did not.
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Stepping into the space, you enter a maze of plasterboard corridors – the path is dark and ominous but nothing compared to the climax that is to come and in the pit of my belly, I felt the suspense rising. Along the way, peepholes provide a window to view screens looping (comparatively tame) videos of dancers performing a choreographed routine, spliced with sequences of an underground radio studio and home shots of Peake as a toddler playing in the bath. Moments of shock turn to awe and “aww” instantaneously.
A top the scaffolding tower, I gazed at the chaos underfoot – at this point is when I first spied the two nude performers and heard the boorish statements of the astounded man. The performers, completely butt-naked except for sparklingly white trainers, pose and traverse the space all the while mirroring the scenes within the videos. I stand mesmerized by the jiggling flesh and deafened by their war cries of “Who dem bitches tryna tell me about time and space? Suck my dick!”
Add on top of all that, a florescent pink wall mural, Perspex bears with scarves, a metal figure with a box head filled with the crap of everyday life and a lady in a sheer bodysuit gliding around on a pair of roller-skates – like our own Guardian angel.
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However, I keep going back to that guy’s words. What is disgusting? Is the human body disgusting? Skin is skin, and yet because it is not disassociated by screen, it becomes repulsive or horrifying. The only bit that made me squirm was the piercing stare of the performers – we watch them and they watch us. As our eyes lock in a moment of intimacy, the positions of vulnerability switch and I find myself shifting awkwardly. Nevertheless, their nudity is necessary to probe the conditions of sexuality (or lust) in our own skin and the contemporary landscape – which clearly has a lot more room for change as these women continue to be condemned for what God gave’em.
A labyrinth of works and a labyrinth of ideas; the only fault I can find in Forever Loop is its potential to be ‘too much’. When you throw up so many issues into such a small space, there is bound to be some that fall short. Even now, I struggle to weave connections and unravel the complex network of concepts. Although overwhelming, Eddie Peake triumphs in creating work that is the antithesis of passive and overall, it left me questioning for days – a sign of success.
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Francesca DiMattio’s exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, entitled Confection, looks like our grandma’s porcelain China wear got stolen and re-invented by the Mad Hatter. Donnie Darko might as well make the cut for the guest list in DiMattio’s distorted body of work. Consisting of large warped vases, violently disrupted and twisted to become almost unrecognizable as to their 17th Century French China wear origins, the artist creates stark contrasts of destabilized forms. The backdrop to all these grueling vases- that I fearfully feel they are about to tip over before we even manage to go around them? Paintings of aggressive collaging depicting furnishing and objects being part of a room with disheveled wallpaper. The surface of the canvas looks torn, tortured and then glued back together to make a virtual reality. DiMattio’s intention is to question feminine appropriation that objects hold. We vigorously begin to speculate these weird forms, trying to decipher which part to start looking at. So we chose a fold in the first ceramic piece and rolled with it.
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The distorted vases, mimicking gutted ceramics with spewing textures as if they are uncontained fungi, seemed to be growing on me. The delicacy of the vases and ‘Rococosque’ flowers that signify femininity is broken through a jarring exposure of rough forms. The ominous effect of gold highlights and intricate detailing exposes a sense of fragility. In contrast, the forms themselves provide a scratching disturbance in the latter. The objects are optically unfamiliar in their morphed anatomy, whilst their materiality is ambiguous. The sculptures seem to be on the verge of collapse, leaping to find their balance since they seem to have everything and anything stuck onto them. In Confection the ceramics act as tiers of cake pasted together, smothered with icing, seemingly melting away and losing their once glorified beauty. So is it pretty now? Unsure, as to whether these vases are beautiful or not DiMattio accomplishes to question whether we are in awe or simply repulsed by what we are staring at; they are grotesque but sophisticated, smooth but disruptive, rough but delicate. Whether it be that I was already mesmerized as to the juxtaposition of the sculptures acting as threatening presences in the low lit gallery, like thorns poking out from their structure, the glistening smoothness from the surface made me want to reach out and touch them.
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In addition, the paintings in the gallery space dynamically held a pulsating physicality. Pattern Paintings appear to act as architectural contrasts of the possible space where these sculptures had previously inhabited. Heavily collaged, with clashing wallpapers of disoriented direction, torn, withered, in an attempt to break from the canvas my eyes keep bouncing off from the multiple layers. The heterogeneity of textures and prints successfully manage to create formal cohesion.
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The instability and controversies are eminent from the beginning in this exhibition. The flowers within the sculptures seem to be feasting on the ceramic smooth surface and infesting the forms. DiMattio flourished in this exhibition as her compilations still maintained an organic tone.
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Staring down at the sculptures we begin to become part of the disruption in the clean and intimate space of the gallery, so let’s tiptoe out and eat some cake with regular icing.

Francesca DiMattio’s Exhibition will be on view at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery
from 12th October 2015 to 14th of November 2015.
For more information check out: www.houldsworth.co.uk

Jonas Wood makes it personal in his impersonal reality. I wasn’t expecting to be submerged into a space quite as the one manufactured by Wood over at the Gagosian Gallery in London. Who would in any case want to see interior spaces in flat rendering? Child like brush strokes, stylistically drawn in blocks and surreal collaging of nuance domesticity, sounds as mundane as a child drawing the sun in the corner, a square house and calling it a day. However, Wood is anything but pictorially adolescent. The work achieved undergoes a coming of age by succeeding to create an immersive 2D site through tonal maturity and a declared angle of concise calculation. Intrigued, not only by how much I kept discovering in the details from each painting, but that I actually preferred it if all spaces looked like the world of Wood.

Before you let your thoughts run to the stereotypical notion ‘I could’ve done that’ lets call it truce and uneasily fess up to our inability to even make these seemingly basic paintings. You would never expect a compilation of influences as diverse as Wood’s to make sense. From interiors by great artists such as Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard and David Hockney, alongside Chinese and Japanese still-life, ancient Greek pottery and textiles by Josed Frank. All compacted into one show, but how well to they all interact?
The reduction of the images to their initial visions and their assemblage in a re-imagined collage made from Woods personal photographs, comes his interior spaces.
Surprisingly a coherent vision of luminous perplexity.
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The more you stand across from the large scale pieces, the lavisher the palette range appears. Each piece owns a different texture, where tactility and brush stroke become more investigative, with a weight to their purpose and precision. Wishing I was an owner of such constructed interiors, whereby even a garage becomes an intricate distortion and a birdcage is an exaggerated grid, enticing the viewer to lean in, all caught me going back for a second glance. The viewer is pre-assigned a standpoint in the space to run into. Authority is stripped from our side, and you become consumed by the task of observation at our selected spot, with the urge to make a panoramic investigation of the space.
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The show continues into another room where large-scale canvases depicting ceramic pottery devour the walls. Their impact, though, is weaker than the collages, failing to catch my eye as the previous space. The eye is no longer looking for the variations of textures but my attention fades fast in its investigation of the isolated grey, black and white background that Wood employs. In Grey Greek Pot, classic art figures drawn in a black and white interpretation, are next to Grain Pot with Night Bloom whereby a pot with leaves drooping from the side, reminiscing Matisse, are in the same line for viewing. How strong is the linear style to hold this room together with such disheveled themes? The detraction from textural detailing and lack of colour variation, is not as successful as the room beforehand. The contrast, however, of making the interior space onto smaller canvases and the ceramics magnified is in itself an exciting idea.
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I went into the Wood’s and was fixated by the process of piecing together the seams left visible by the artist. The exhibition allows you to get an insight of the artist’s life, one that seems to have entered into the contemporary world, and it’s one I would like to live in.
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Exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery
from October 13-December 19 Brittania Street, London