Stan Douglas, Musée canadien de la photographie contemporaine, Ottawa - Le Détroit

Stan Douglas : Le Détroit
Musée canadien de la photographie contemporaine, Ottawa
19 mai - 17 septembre 2000

Le Musée canadien de la photographie contemporaine (MCPC) présente Stan Douglas : Le Détroit, une exposition de photographies de l'un des artistes les plus connus du Canada

Dans cette exposition, Stan Douglas capte résidences et commerces abandonnés de Detroit en 28 grandes photos couleur. Loin de représenter la ruine de l'urbanisme moderne, ces images évoquent plutôt l'oubli constant de l'histoire et la puissance régénératrice de la nature.

Fruit de plusieurs années de recherche et de documentation dans la ville et son voisinage, Stan Douglas : Le Détroit révèle la fascination profonde qu'exerce sur Stan Douglas l'échec des utopies. L'artiste s'est intéressé, tout au long de sa carrière, à des épisodes historiques précis liés au colonialisme, au développement urbain et à la mémoire culturelle. Résident de Vancouver, Stan Douglas jouit d'une réputation internationale. Son travail a fait l'objet d'importantes expositions collectives et individuelles, dont la rétrospective que lui a consacrée la Vancouver Art Gallery, actuellement en tournée mondiale, et lui a valu plusieurs prix prestigieux ainsi que de nombreuses publications.

Stan Douglas : Le Détroit a été organisée par Helga Pakassaar, conservatrice de l'art contemporaine à l'Art Gallery of Windsor. 

MCPC - MUSÉE CANADIEN DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE CONTEMPORAINE
1, Canal Rideau, Ottawa K1N 9N6
www.cmcp.gallery.ca

J. John Priola, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

J. John Priola

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

May 18 - June 24, 2000

Fraenkel Gallery presents photographs from three recent bodies of work by J. JOHN PRIOLA. Conceptually related to those works around which J. John 1998 monograph Once Removed centers, these photographs chart the artist's evolving sensibility.

The work bridges the space between literal and metaphorical, belonging at once to both one frame of reference and the other. Each of J. John Priola's compositions focus on a decisive, tangible and familiar object or place, each a precisely delineated world.

But as Andy Grundberg describes in his introduction to Once Removed: "For what is traced in these photographs is not merely the object, or the sign of its residual physical presence avant the photograph, but the echo of its historical resonances and place in time." This is true as well of the new work. Each object or site suggests its history of narratives.

These narratives center on a dialogue about what generally goes unseen; what, in contrast to its historical significance, now dissuades attention.

The three bodies of work exhibited are white walls, numbers, and graves. One of the white walls, Nail, describes a place where a picture once hung but which is now defined by the lack of that object; without the object there, the stark site is often overlooked. Perhaps more explicit, the grave images focus on the absence of the people buried therein. It is J. John Priola's project to garner notice for these objects. Photography, for J. John Priola, is a vehicle for making visible what is not visually attended to.

FRAENKEL GALLERY

49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

fraenkelgallery.com

Frank Tam Retrospective, Art Beatus Gallery, Vancouver

Frank Tam: Restrospective
Art Beatus Gallery, Vancouver
May 5 - July 30, 2000

Art Beatus Gallery presents a solo exhibition of works by artist, Frank Tam. Included in the Retrospective are ink paintings from the early years and mixed media installations created later in his career.

Frank Tam was one of the most remarkable artist to which he demanded a critical examination of Eastern and Western cultures. Frank Tam's study of traditional Chinese ink painting with Chao Siao-eng, a great master of Lingnan school enabled Frank Tam to gain a full understanding of traditional Chinese painting techniques and because the Lingnan school was the first to incorporate a Western influence into traditional Chinese art he was aware of Western Art practices.

Frank Tam immigrated to Canada in 1972, and his art began to grow substantially. He became dissatisfied with traditional Chinese media and began to consciously question Eastern and Western traditions and discovered a link between Eastern and Western philosophy's. The purpose of Chinese painting is not to explain the world, but rather to achieve a universal balance between nature and the artist. It follows that the creation of art must be natural yet spontaneous. Only in this state can the spirit of the soul travel. Frank Tam found similar ideas in works by Western artists Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Brice Marden. By studying these artists Frank Tam reaffirmed a strong artistic belief.

Art Beatus presents a showcase of Frank Tam's works created in his early to late career. The Ink on paper works in the manner of his early training hang easily beside the mixed media on canvas works created up until Frank Tam's death in 1998.

ART BEATUS GALLERY, VANCOUVER
888 Nelson Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2H1
www.artbeatus.com

David Bomberg & Peter Lanyon, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London

David Bomberg & Peter Lanyon
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
3 - 27 May 2000

To celebrate the launch of the first major monograph on Peter Lanyon written by Professor Chris Stephens, a curator at the Tate Gallery, published by 21publishing, the Bernard Jacobson Gallery is exhibiting work by David Bomberg and Peter Lanyon. This exhibition features two of the greatest British landscape painters of the twentieth century. Their style and approach to landscape painting were very different, but they are united by an intensity of vision and purpose in their work and in their teaching and the influence this had on the artists who knew them and their work.

DAVID BOMBERG, once a radical modernist linked to the Vorticist group of the early teens, severed all links with what he considered a bourgeois and pretentious bunch in the early twenties and left England for Palestine where he started to paint in a topographical landscape idiom. From this new beginning David Bomberg developed his mature style. Taking a cue from Cezanne his painting became more and more about trying to get down on canvas the power and awesome beauty of the landscape of central and southern Spain where he now found himself. The work became more and more expressionistic as he tried to find what he called “the spirit in the mass”. His travels led him to Cyprus and later on in his life he returned to Ronda where he had spent perhaps his most fruitful time in the 1930’s. Time spent away from England was interspersed with less happy times back in London. It was here though that his influence was felt. He was a great teacher and through his teaching at the Borough polytechnic inspired many young artists, among them Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. Beyond his immediate group, his influence can be seen in the work of Lucien Freud, and Euan Uglow.

David Bomberg died in 1957 tragically unrecognised by the Art establishment, despite the importance of his position to the future of British art.

PETER LANYON was a native of St Ives and a true Cornishman, this however did not stop him becoming perhaps the most internationally minded of his generation of British painters. He started his career as a pupil of Ben Nicholson and his early work is very reminiscent of his teacher. But after a major falling out Peter Lanyon rejected Nicholson and started to make paintings which were very much his own. He was in love with the Cornish landscape but very aware of its sometime violent side. His paintings deal with the mythical as well as the physical aspects of the landscape which surrounded him. He seemed to want to immerse himself into it. As his development continued Peter Lanyon's work became more abstract and often would appear to be a view of the land from above. It was this interest that led Peter Lanyon to take up gliding. This allowed him to see for real what he had been painting and also to allow him to immerse himself in the landscape of the air. Peter Lanyon like David Bomberg spent a good deal of time in other countries including Italy, Czechoslovakia and, perhaps most importantly, America where he had a good deal of success and became friendly with the Abstract Expressionists. As a teacher Peter Lanyon too was influential. He taught Howard Hodgkin at the Corsham School of art. And by his links to American art influenced peoples like Richard Smith and Robyn Denny.

Peter Lanyon’s life was cut short at 46, when he died in a glider accident in 1964.

Thousand of artists have subsequently used elements of the work of David Bomberg or Peter Lanyon as a starting point for their own work, it was these two artists who in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s set the agenda for British landscape painting right up to the end of the 20th Century and beyond.

BERNARD JACOBSON GALLERY
14A Clifford Street, London W1X 1RF
www.jacobsongallery.co.uk

Joel Shapiro, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco - Sculpture and Works on Paper

Joel Shapiro: Sculpture and Works on Paper
John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
May 4 - July 1, 2000

John Berggruen Gallery presents an exhibition of sculpture and works on paper by Joel Shapiro. 

Internationally recognized American artist Joel Shapiro continues his investigation of the connection between line and form. This exhibition consists of approximately six large scale cast bronze sculptures, one painted wood construction, and several recent pastels on paper. Shapiro's reductive geometrical forms are suggestive of figurative abstraction. His works evoke feelings and imply movement, gesture, emotion and energy. 

Joel Shapiro's sculpture and drawings have been extensively exhibited and are included in numerous public collections such as The British Museum, London; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, Friuli, Italy; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; The Tate Gallery, London; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.

JOHN BERGGRUEN GALLERY
228 Grant Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94108
www.berggruen.com

Updated 06.07.2019

Bruce McGaw, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco - Early Paintings, 1957-1966

Bruce McGaw: Early Paintings, 1957-1966
John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
May 4 - July 1, 2000

John Berggruen Gallery presents an exhibition of paintings by Bruce McGaw.

The exhibition features paintings by Bay Area native, Bruce McGaw, that range in date from 1957-1966. Bruce McGaw was a student of Richard Diebenkorn's at the California College of Arts and Crafts where he became very close to Diebenkorn and with whom he developed a very strong rapport which continued after he left CCAC. Referred to as one of the second-generation Bay Area Figurative artists along with Joan Brown and Manuel Neri, Bruce was the youngest artist and only member of the "second-generation" to be included in the pivotal 1957 exhibition, Contemporary Bay Area Figurative Painting, at the Oakland Art Museum of Art. 

The collection of paintings in this exhibition display Bruce McGaw's skill of juxtaposing intense patches of color and playing with the perspective in his early still lifes, portraits and landscapes. Bruce McGaw began teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1957 and continues to teach painting and drawing there today.

JOHN BERGGRUEN GALLERY
228 Grant Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94108
www.berggruen.com

Updated 06.07.2019