-Alice Pelot Brad Phillips’ painting Memoir Study (Mottled Green) (2011), hung above the front desk at Toronto’s Division Gallery, is the cover of a would-be Penguin-published book titled “Personal Work”, a nod to the highly edited fictions that comprise his autobiographical body of works. In the gallery’s front space are Phillips’ hyper-realistic oil paintings of unusual floral arrangements, witty word play, and intimate scenes of his partner Cristine Brache. Brache appears in his works in an obscurely sexually romantic, and yet not out-rightly erotic, way. The paintings capture their personal relationship and Brache’s consent in Phillips’ practice as implicated through titles like Mess Made by Request 2 (2016) in which Brache has peed her jeans. The exclusion of her face and inclusion of known fetishized props such as shoes allows Phillips’ admitted perverted ventures to be confessional while also contributing to a mysterious persona onto which we might also project our own vulnerability or shame.
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- Alice Pelot Birch Contemporary
David Hanes, Fabienne Hess, Lorna Mills, Louise Noguchi TENDERPIXELS.CORRUPTEDFILES July 21 – August 27, 2016 What is the potential of a pixel as a conceptually and virtually malleable form? As early as 1966 in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow Up, we see the photographer protagonist lose his mind over a cluster of pixels revealing a potential murder. The further he zooms in on/blows up these pixels, the more unclear they become and the less he can put faith in his medium of photography as a form of documentation. In our contemporary cloud of images, we have more faith in their probable manipulation than in their truthful documentation. Could a pixel actually be used to hide something such as the form of a body? Taking as her inspiration meta tagging and computational photography and well beyond the acceptance of photography’s documentarian failures, artist and writer Hito Steyerl suggests a way around surveillance and permanent cloud footage. In Steyerl’s video How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational MOV. File (2013), she cheekily suggests that short of dropping off the grid we become smaller than the size of a pixel. More realistically, a pixel may be worn by or applied to the subject of an image as a mask or used to distort private information even as it travels at high digital velocity. -Emma Murphy Slapping jelly arses, chowing down on quail eggs and being privy to the finest rendition of Eminem’s Stan this side of the Millennium, the old East End staple Matt’s Gallery’s is finally leaving for pastures anew - South of the river. A veritable feast as random and exhilarating as its 23-year stay in Mile End, owner Robin Klassnik did not disappoint his loyal and rowdy cohort in this final foray as an East End boy. From art world glitterati to art student groupie, they partied hard and lubricated up into the small hours. Artists Behind Bars saw the artist as performer, the spectator become the customer and the artwork what was consumed. Named after his – one would assume – long deceased dog, Klassnik in 1979 established Matt’s Gallery as a charity to fostering emerging and established artists. Having certainly achieved this, Klassnik has done far more besides. Heavy hitters Jimmie Durham, Willie Doherty and Susan Hiller have shown tough, decidedly non-commercial exhibitions in his space. Outlandish and utterly spectacular displays from Lindsay Seers and Mike Nelson solidified their careers and cemented Matt’s Gallery as a staple in London’s notoriously unyielding art scene. Moving temporarily to Bermondsey until a permanent residence opens up on the South Bank in 2020, Klassnik, and more importantly his artists, will continue to have a playground to push accepted social boundaries for the foreseeable at least. As the art world chic descended upon Mile End one last time, raucous requests came in the form of a Preacher Man to jump into a child’s paddling pool and be reborn a follower. We are Robin's flock already, there really was no need. This closing party was a group show like no other, and exactly what our East End boy deserves as he leaves for pastures new. - Alice Pelot The proclaimed Famous New Media Artist Jeremy Bailey presents us with theNext Big Thing at Pari Nadimi Gallery. The Toronto based artist, represented by Pari Nadimi, has well travelled art works appearing at the ICA and Southbank Centre in London, The Stedelijk Museum and Mediamatic in Amsterdam, the Tate Liverpool and the New Museum in New York to name a few. Bailey’s works are a departure from first wave New Media art. His works do expose some underlying systems of our technologies, and even occasionally appropriate symbols from their many interfaces, but his works also incorporate performance. Bailey’s practice as a New Media artist uses parody and joke to undermine the space between our bodies and screens as we perform the maneuvers required using them.
Hung on the gallery walls are five printed works of abstract blobs on a pleasantly lilac background, and identified as ‘gestural paintings’. The thin layers of shading that compose the forms seem deceptively like watercolors, but given the glossy sheen of the paper surface, the works are more probably printed to resemble the reflective qualities of a screen. - Alice Pelot Beginning with personal history, the themes in Howard Podeswa's recent series of paintings expand in one direction into Dante's multi-layered Inferno, Art History, personal anxiety and existential speculations about the end of time, and in the other direction into natural disaster, astrophysics and Stephen Hawking's quantum theories. The format of the exhibition at Artscape's Koffler Gallery is concentric. In the central space and facing each other are his master works Heaven (2015) and Hell (2013). Hell is an enclosed circle swirling with fierce waves, burying cars, engulfing people like an epic Turner shipwreck. Skeletal and monstrous faces appear from the blackened, smoky background surrounded by guns and teeth. The work is composed of three panels forming a triptych. Heaven, on the other hand is painted on one complete, large panel. Floating across the white space are small circles, bubbles, constellations or portals into beautiful dimensions. For the most part, the images encircled by white paint are abstracted details of what may be a larger landscapes. Surfacing from behind the white paint are the rest of the encircled scenes as though to imply distance. The two year difference between Heaven and Hell, from one all consuming dark circle (or black hole) to a constellation of vibrant scenes insinuates the liberation from a dark fixation back into the world. Around the central space are five works titled Study for Hell in which the sources and details for Hell are more explicit. In Study #1, the figures are from a nightmarish carnival lead by an empty-eyed ringmaster. Study #3 is the tar-black cave of a bat-eared, skull-topped spider, and Study #4 seems to be a rendition of a natural disaster. Observing the studies in relation to Hell as portrayed by Podeswa and Dante, they not only feel like thematic layers of fear and despair, they also bring up relations to a process of grief. Acting as book ends to his studies are two small untitled works, one across from the other. Painted in 2014 one work resembles a crumpled up ball of black paper on a white surface and the other, from 2015 resembles a dark tunnel with a shinning light at the end. Both inspire further metaphor of loss and hope. At the front of the space the only acrylic painting Watching Goya's Colossus in my Sorels makes the most direct Art Historical statement and personal cameo. The Colossus (controversy of authorship aside) is documentation of suffering during Spain's war of independence. Colussus is missing from the work, but as the largest figure with his back turned to us, Podeswa in his winter gear seems to walk towards the crowd of displaced huddled people, perhaps joining their pilgrimage. His presence in this work allows for his presence throughout the space. Not only are Podeswa's references accessible and layered, but the the curation also successfully reflects the celestial duality of his subject including both the spiritual and scientific.
- Emma Murphy Whitechapel - Harun Farocki, Parallel I-IV (2012-14) 15 December - 12 June 2016 Harun Fraocki (b.1944) explores the evolution of the technology used in video games over the past 30 years in this 8 screen video installation. Shown in conjunction with Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966) (an exhibition of over 100 works to open on January 28th), both displays aim to delve into the world of computer technology and the omnipresence of the Internet. Parallel I-IV (2012-14) is an astute mediation on a world blighted by tension and the latent potential of terrorism. Displayed through snippets of real time, often violent scenes from video games, this installation is sporadically overlaid with voiceovers and cutting damnations of society’s current state of affairs. A highly recommended exhibition. Carlos / Ishikawa: - Condo 16 January – 13 February 2016 Condo is a collaborative exhibition by 24 young galleries hosted across 8 London spaces. Carlos / Ishikawa features installs by Essex Street, New York; Mathew, New York & Berlin; and Freymond-Guth, Zürich. The entrance cum gallery space is hung more like a nightmare haute couture shop cut straight from the world of a slightly optimistic Donnie Darco. Helen Marten and Magali Reus’s contribution comprises of stockings hewn from material reminiscent of animal intestines with threads and beads hang in a humorous attempt to “dress up” the internal organs. A sarcastic nod perhaps to a culture perpetually desiring women to abide by certain unattainable standards. The exhibition proper is a mishmash of groupings, from dildo inspired glass hanging from the ceiling, paintings of ghostly figures rather brashly depicted in cobalt blues and cut outs from feminist magazines attached directly to the gallery wall. The clothing shop – an installation by Carlos / Ishikawa themselves - is by far and away the most exciting display here. Marian Goodman – Sculpture 4tet
12th January – 20th February Luciano Fabro, Jean-Luc Moulène, Bruce Nauman, Danh Vō, curated by Jean-Pierre Criqui Taking the premise of ‘sculpture’ as its starting point, curator Jean-Pierre Criqui brings together four generations of men in an attempt to understand our current relationship with such a broad and all-encompassing term. Each artist is designated their own separate area, giving the overall impression of four distinct displays. Italian Luciano Fabro (1939-2007) pays homage to Michelangelo by reimaging the façade of a famous Palladian church into a collaged layering of architectural drawings pasted directly to the wall. His Sisyphus, 1994 consists of marble rolled across flour strewn on the gallery floor is a confident, bold sculpture reminiscent of both the readymade and land art. Bruce Nauman’s (b. 1941) idiosyncratic neons and linear drawings share this ground floor space. As so often in Nauman’s works, he tenaciously ponders life and death, pleasure and pain. It is Danh Vō, who arguably has been designated the least desirable of the gallery spaces - nestled upstairs behind the offices, who presents works that critique the notion of sculpture today. His dynamic display includes vulgar text etched into a mirror, a small image of space and a medieval, beautifully degraded wooden Madonna precariously balanced atop a contemporary stone plinth. This biblical statue on her geometric plinth reimagines a hybrid form that is both old and new, readymade and constructed. Vō brings to mind Rosalind Krauss’s seminal 1979 essay and the decimation of sculpture as an easily identifiable genre through these varied works. Sculpture 4tet is admirable in its ambition, albeit disappointing in its lack of interrelationships between artists and generations, but worth the trip all the same. The approach - Is this living? 10th January – 7th February “Leftovers waste and residue”, the press release states, “are the themes of Is this living?” A group exhibition in Bethnal Green’s The approach. This premise is however the most enticing element to this show. A dreary mishmash including bones dredged from the Thames by Hannah Lee are hung like a sadistic giant’s necklace, Holly White’s hording of objects left over from a nights camping are stuffed into a plastic canopy and Helene Appel’s small paintings of internal organs covered with wax are an unsatisfactory attempt at the macabre and grotesque. This exhibition disappointingly lacks in any sort of cohesive or dynamic display, merely becoming a stagnate attempt of exploring the clichés of death through the living. - Alice Pelot David Hockney “Painting and Photography” @ Annely Juda Fine Art 15 May – 27 June Multiple vanishing points dissect David Hockney’s photo-collaged paintings in his solo exhibition Painting and Photography at Annely Juda Fine Art. The singular vanishing point popularized by Italian Renaissance architect Brunelleschi produces distance between the image and viewer like the thin space of the iPhone between photographer and subject. Photography’s single perspective is intimately familiar. It accurately reflects our experience of media images, but it is not a realistic representation of our otherwise mobile lives. Artists such as Jeff Wall challenge the single perspective by composing images from many photographs. Each photograph with a single perspective gives the whole image a rich, cinematic Imax quality through the resulting multi-point perspective. Similarly, Hockney’s detailed close up photographs, each with their singular vanishing points, compose figures leaning on crooked tables or floating in vast, furnished rooms. Hung among his painted portraits, Hocney’s collages of large rooms with their high definition quality are extensions of the gallery space inviting us to join the photographed crowd and examine his works as collaged behind the multi-perspective visitors. Alice Pelot The Barbican: Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector 12 February 2015 - 25 May 2015 Artists: Arman, Peter Blake, Hanne Darboven, Edmund de Waal, Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Dr. Lakra, Sol Lewitt, Martin Parr, Jim Shaw, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Andy Warhol, Pae White, Martin Wong/Danh Vo The works of fourteen artists are being shown alongside their collectible scarves, artworks, and fossils, a perplexing number of kitsch cookie jars, and lurking, mythical taxidermy until May 25th at The Barbican's exhibition Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector. The proposed relationship between each individual artist's works, the objects they collect and their motivation for collecting is thoroughly supported in text and in curation, but another, more subtle transformation takes place between artwork and collectible. The transition from private, personal collection, to public gallery space where objects are collected and displayed to build and transmit knowledge, and shown next to art works, validates the objects with immense cultural value. To ask of the collected evidence: How do you inspire your collectors? as a Barbican visitor is not enough. A further question needs to be addressed. There is no quantifiable way to measure the cultural value granted an object by its inclusion in an artistic process, or the power an institution has to validate readymade objects as artworks (although the topic of readymades will be excused here as the collected objects are differentiated from the artist's works). So, a more personal question might be asked faced with the magic and mystery that is creative inspiration. How do we (the viewers) feel about the artist's works in the the presence of their inspiration? And how do artists affect the objects they collect? Alice Pelot Raven Row: 56 Artillery Lane, London, E1 7LS East end gallery Raven Row on Artillery Lane has just ended their exhibition Real Capital - Production of German artist KP Brehmer's works from the 60's. Aside from encouraging people to make Raven Row a regular item on art-centric itineraries, I would like to acknowledge Brehmer's deep appreciation of colour. Quoted in the exhibition's accompanying text, Brehmer stresses the importance of colour to his practice. " I AM ONLY INTERESTED IN THE COLOURS AND WHAT THE BEHOLDER DOES WITH THEM[...] THERE ARE VARIOUS COLOURS ON OFFER [...] AND I AM INTERESTED IN WHICH LANDSCAPE THE BEHOLDER COMPOSES FROM THEM, WHETHER HE USES THESE COLOURS AT ALL AND MAKES HIS OWN IDEAL LANDSCAPE FROM THEM." Emma Murphy Hauser & Wirth Gallery: 23 Savile Row, W1S 2ET November 27th 2014 - January 10th 2015 The potential for rot lurks precariously close to the surface in Met Tere Huid/Of Tender Skin, an exhibition by Ghent native Berlinde De Bruyckere, on show at Hauser & Wirth London until January 10th, 2015.
Consisting of both sculptural and wall based works, De Bruyckere anthropomorphises her fleshy works in an abject representation of attraction and disgust. Constructed from layers of wax, pigment, cloth, metal and wood, the luscious surfaces of the Belgian's sculptures are as fascinating as they are repellant. The limbs – reminiscent of both human and tree – create a basterdised hybrid, an unsettling amalgamation of animate and inanimate. These dark, earthy assemblages are stained with pigment, as if blood runs deep through their fleshy core. |
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