Jacques Tourneur Une rétrospective au Centre Pompidou

Rétrospectivre Jacques Tourneur 

Centre Pompidou, Beaubourg, Paris 

3 décembre 2003 - 29 janvier 2004

Du 3 décembre 2003 au 19 janvier 2004, les Cinémas du Centre Pompidou présentent, pour la première fois en France, la rétrospective intégrale des films de Jacques Tourneur (1904-1977). Cet hommage rendu au réalisateur de La Féline (1942), permettra au public de (re)découvrir ce cinéaste franco-américain polymorphe, à travers films noirs thrillers, westerns, films de cape et d’épée, en passant par de véritables chefs-d’œuvre du film fantastique. Le travail sur la lumière, la concision du découpage, la maîtrise du hors-champ, une mise en scène suggestive du mystère et de la peur, une vision désenchantée et parfois mélancolique de l’existence ont contribué à faire de Jacques Tourneur l’un des cinéastes les plus modernes de Hollywood.

Près de 60 films seront présentés : les premiers réalisés lors de son retour en France entre 1929 et 1935 (Tout ça ne vaut pas l’amour (1931) avec Jean Gabin), les courts métrages, quelques épisodes de séries télévisées, et bien entendu les classiques hollywoodiens : La Féline (1942), L’Homme-léopard (1943),  Vaudou (1943), La Griffe du passé (1947), Nightfall (1956), Rendez-vous avec la peur (1957). Ce film inédit en France (titre anglais : Night of the Demon), présenté en copie neuve, est projeté à cette occasion. 

Les Editions du Centre Pompidou accompagnent cette rétrospective de la publication du premier livre en français sur le cinéaste, Jacques Tourneur ou la magie de la suggestion, par Michael Henry Wilson, réalisateur et historien du cinéma. 

JACQUES TOURNEUR OU LA MAGIE DE LA SUGGESTION DE MICHAEL HENRY WILSON, AUX EDITIONS DU CENTRE POMPIDOU

A Hollywood, Tourneur fut l’un des « contrebandiers », peut-être le premier, qui ont subverti le récit classique de l’intérieur. Un explorateur de l’autre côté, en quête des «passages» qui ouvrent sur      d’autres dimensions. Un poète attentif à l’inquiétante étrangeté de notre décor quotidien lorsqu’il révèle ses fractures. Un promeneur  extraordinairement solitaire, poursuivant à l’insu de tous, protégé par son humilité même, une expérimentation qui a transformé le cinéma en profondeur. 

Né et éduqué à Paris, MICHAEL HENRY WILSON est un Français de Californie. Cinéaste, historien du cinéma, collaborateur de la revue Positif depuis trente ans, il a publié, notamment, Le Cinéma expressionniste allemand, Voyage de Martin Scorsese à travers le cinéma américain et Raoul Walsh, la saga du continent perdu. Ses deux passions, le cinéma et l’histoire, se marient dans ses scénarios (Investigating Sex d’Alan Rudolph) et ses réalisations (A la recherche de Kundun). Après le Voyage à travers le cinéma américain, sa collaboration avec Scorsese se poursuit avec un documentaire sur le cinéma britannique.

Relié sous jaquette

192 pages format 23 x 27 cm

150 illustrations en bichromie

prix : 39,90 euros

Editions du Centre Pompidou 

Date de parution : 3 décembre 2003




Mise à jour 05-2011

Garry Sollars at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Gary Sollars

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

27 November - 7 December 2003

An oil painting by Liverpool-based artist Gary Sollars, My partner, Philip Munro. Died 13.1.89. Aged 34, is on display at Walker Art Gallery since 27 November through 7 December 2003 to coincide with World Aids Week.

This moving memorial painting represents the moment of death of the artist`s partner of 13 years from an Aids-related illness. It was painted five years after Philip Munro`s death and so has a stillness that has been achieved through the passage of time.

Gary Sollars not only depicts his partner`s death but also his attendance at his bedside. To the left, the picture is dominated by two naked men trailing a red ribbon – the figures symbolic of their relationship. The painting also features flowers and the grieving faces of Philip`s sister and Gary`s mother. Gary Sollars says: "This is a painting that should be shared by anyone who has lost somebody – not necessarily through Aids."

Originally from Chester, GARY SOLLARS lived in London and Brighton before moving to Liverpool three years ago. He showed work at both Liverpool Biennials and has also exhibited twice at the National Portrait Gallery. As well as painting, he produces installation and video work. Gary Sollars is planning projects for next year`s Biennial and is looking for a venue for a one-man show.

Walker Art Gallery
William Brown Street
Liverpool
L3 8EL

Louise Bourgeois, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin - Stitches in Time

Louise Bourgeois: Stitches in Time

Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

26 November 2003 - 22 February 2004

The first large-scale exhibition in Ireland by Louise Bourgeois, one of the greatest and most influential artists of our time, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Louise Bourgeois: Stitches in Time includes an extraordinary group of life-size sewn fabric busts, a series of cell-like vitrines, housing curious scenes of torture and ecstasy, and a small group of totemic figures, reinterpreting in fabric Bourgeois’s very first sculptures of the late 1940s and ‘50s. Over 20 pieces, most created in the last three years, are accompanied by a selection of the artist’s graphic work including 'He disappeared into Complete Silence', 1946, her first major suite of etchings and poems in which she unfolds tales of loss and loneliness.

Born in 1911, LOUISE BOURGEOIS was one of the first artists to assert the importance of autobiography and identity as subjects for contemporary artists. Her family background and childhood in the suburbs of Paris and the traumatic relationship between her father, mother and governess have continued to underpin her work throughout her long career. 'Seven in a Bed', 2001, for example, seems to distil the artist’s memory of far distant weekend mornings when she and her siblings would tumble into bed with their parents, but the Janus-like addition of extra heads warns us that things, especially people, are not always what they seem.

In the 1980s Louise Bourgeois began making a series of theatrical spaces entitled 'Cells', representing different types of pain – “the physical, the emotional and the psychological, and the mental and the intellectual”. The 'Cells' are self-contained or partial enclosures which can be experienced either by entering the space or by encountering it close up through mesh walls, doors or windows. These works are the anthesis of Bourgeois’ famous monumental installations, such as the three vast towers, 'I do, I undo, I redo', commissioned for the opening of Tate Modern in 2000.

Some of the most arresting of Louise Bourgeois’ recent works are a series of extraordinary upright and front-facing fabric heads, of which three can be seen in the exhibition. Sewn with a crudeness that belies their structural sophistication, they are nevertheless uncannily lifelike – open mouths appear moist from exhalation and their eyes apparently focus directly on the viewer, or seem to deliberately glance away. These are difficult works to confront; a difficulty compounded by the mute and resistant glass cases which encase them.

Born in Paris during the heyday of Cubism, Louise Bourgeois moved to New York following her marriage to the American art historian Robert Goldwater. Her first exhibition of sculpture took place in 1949. Although her early work was respected by contemporaries, it was not until she was 71 that she received wider acclaim for her first major retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition revealed a sculptor of startling originality and a unique ability to work with many different materials, from marble and bronze to latex and fabric. The event gave Louise Bourgeois the confidence and opportunity to set out, in fascinating detail, not only the domestic dramas of her childhood but also the architecture, furnishings and artefacts which had surrounded her as the child of a mother whose family had been engaged in the Aubusson tapestry industry and a father who was a dealer in restored tapestry and antique furniture.

Now in her 92nd year Louise Bourgeois’s artistic practice has spanned the best part of the last century. She has always led the field of innovation, often working at more than one remove from the well-known avant-garde movements of her lifetime: Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop, Minimal and Conceptual art.

The exhibition is selected by Frances Morris, Senior Curator, Tate Modern, and is co-curated by her with Brenda McParland, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA.

A catalogue published by IMMA and August Projects, with an essay by Frances Morris, accompanies the exhibition.

IMMA - IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 

Military Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 8

www.modernart.ie

Llewellyn L. Berry III and Alex Downs, Parish Gallery, Washington DC - LewLex

Llewellyn L. Berry III and Alex Downs: LewLex

Parish Gallery, Washington DC

November 21 - December 3, 2003 

Parish Gallery presents an exhibition of recent works by local photographers, Llewellyn Berry and Alex Downs entitled “LewLex”. 

Llewellyn Berry was a teacher in the DC Public Schools for 32 years where he taught Photojournalism, Radio Production and Broadcast Journalism, media related courses and English. In retirement Llewellyn Berry continues his work as a photographic artist.  “I have long had a fascination with black and white images. I prefer black and white films of the 30’s and 40’s because I grew up with them and early on they made a profound stylistic impression on me.  In my own exploration of photographic images, many elements excite me.  I like structures with dynamic line and shape configurations.  I am particularly enamored of landscape photography in the tradition of Ansel Adams, the rural studies of PH Polk, the urban studies of Black Americans by James Van Der Zee and the photojournalistic style of Henri Cartier Bresson. Chiaroscura, the use of light and dark or highlights and shadows in photography, make everyday objects and visions profound in the way shape and texture, juxtaposition and conscious placement of objects define the world in which I live.”

Alex Downs is an artist who works across a range of media from photography, film and audio, to print, motion graphics and video.  He is a design veteran with over seven years experience in print and new media design.  He enjoys creating photographs which are concurrently provocative, elegant, combustible, exquisite and sumptuous. Born in Ohio during the twilight of the sixties, he now lives and works in the Metropolitan DC area.  His photographic career commenced while he was studying at Morehouse College in Atlanta, which in turn eventually led to a BFA from the Corcoran School of Art.

PARISH GALLERY - GEORGETOWN

1054 31st Street, NW, Washington DC 20007

www.parishgallery.com

Sophie Calle, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Beaubourg - SOPHIE CALLE. M'AS-TU VUE

SOPHIE CALLE. M'AS-TU VUE

Centre Pompidou, Paris

19 novembre 2003 - 15 mars 2004

Le Centre Pompidou consacre une importante exposition à l'oeuvre de Sophie Calle. Présentée sur 1100 m2, cette manifestation est la première exposition d'envergure de l'artiste dans un musée français depuis plus de dix ans. L'exposition offre l'occasion de réunir des travaux anciens, depuis 1979, dont certains très peu montrés en France. Elle propose aussi un important corpus d'oeuvres nouvelles et inédites, dont la plupart ont été créées pour l'événement, notamment l'ensemble de Douleur exquise (1984-2003) et l'oeuvre récente Unfinished (2003).

Née en 1953 à Paris, Sophie Calle part au début des années 70 pour un long périple à travers le monde. C'est lors d'un séjour en Californie en 1978, qu'elle prend ses premières photographies « sans vocation » : des tombes portant les inscriptions « Father » et « Mother » . Elle vient de découvrir ce qui pourrait « plaire à son père ». À son retour à Paris, elle commence ses premières filatures d'inconnus dans la rue, dérive contrôlée dans la ville qu'elle agrémente de photographies et de textes, consignés dans des carnets. Le travail de Sophie Calle a pu être ainsi apparenté à celui des artistes des années 60-70, où le statut de l'image photographique concernait la trace, la preuve objective de leurs expériences et de leurs performances.

L'oeuvre de Sophie Calle se donne à voir depuis plus de vingt ans sous la forme d'installations de photographies et de récits, dont l'articulation et l'agencement se rapprochent davantage d'un art narratif issu lui aussi des années 70. En réalité, les oeuvres de Sophie Calle constituent l'aboutissement et le prolongement de situations mises en scène et vécues sur un mode autobiographique. Le sillon dans lequel s'inscrivent ses premiers travaux reflète une relation entre l'art et ta vie singulièrement distincte du registre neutre, distancié et informatif des oeuvres conceptuelles. Sophie Calle s'est engagée dans les années 80 dans une voie spécifique, qui donne une place importante à l'affect et au sentiment . L'artiste construit des règles du jeu et des rituels dans le but d'améliorer sa vie, de lui rendre sa dimension existentielle.

SOPHIE CALLE . M'AS-TU VUE : Thématiques et oeuvres de l'exposition

Cette exposition permet pour ta première fois de croiser l'ensemble des thématiques développées par l'artiste depuis vingt ans. Le parcours s'articule principalement autour du thème du lit, déployé tout d'abord à travers le premier travail de Sophie Calte, Les Dormeurs (1979) . Pour ce projet, l'artiste avait convié durant une semaine plus d'une vingtaine d'inconnus et amis à venir dormir dans son lit, à raison de huit heures chacun.

L'ensemble des photographies et récits des Dormeurs fut montré à la XIème Biennale de Paris en 1980, première exposition de Sophie Calte qui décide alors de « devenir une artiste ». Le lit est au centre de la Chambre à coucher (2003), dans laquelle on rencontre les emblèmes de ses Autobiographies développées depuis 1988 . Le Voyage en Californie (2000-2003) est une installation narrant le périple outre-Atlantique du lit de L'artiste à l'attention d'un inconnu désirant y vivre le deuil d'une histoire sentimentale.

On retrouve ce leitmotiv en filigrane dans un grand nombre d'oeuvres, notamment dans la magistrale Douleur Exquise (2003), produite en français et montrée ici pour la première fois. Ce projet, déployé en trois volets, est fondé sur l'expérience exhumée d'une rupture sentimentale remontant à 1984 et vécue alors par l'artiste comme le moment le plus douloureux de sa vie . Enfin, le fil conducteur du «lit» trouvera son prolongement avec la projection du film No Sex Last Night/Double Blind (1992), road-movie aux Etats-Unis réalisé avec Greg Shephard.

Les problématiques de l'absence, de la disparition et du manque traversent également toute l'exposition . La Filature, commandée en 1981 par le Centre Pompidou pour une exposition consacrée aux « Autoportraits photographiques », est le récit à double-voix de l'enquête d'un détective sur une journée de l'artiste. Sophie Calte réitère l'expérience en 2001, à la manière cette fois d'un bilan de sa vie d'artiste, lorsqu'elle réalise Vingt ans après selon l'initiative de son galeriste Emmanuel Perrotin.

Après avoir suivi, filé, « inquiété » des inconnus, Sophie Calle poursuit sa démarche en repoussant le regard au-delà. Les Aveugles (1986) évoquent la question de voir sans être vu, mais aussi la délicate notion de la beauté, en tant que représentation mentale. « Quelle est selon vous l'image de la beauté ? » demande l'artiste à des aveugles de naissance. Quelques années plus tard, il s'agit alors de comparer les descriptions de peintures monochromes faites par des aveugles, avec les écrits théoriques de leurs auteurs : Sophie Calte réalise La Couleur aveugle (1991) et questionne « l'expérience du monochrome ». La disparition et le manque sont toujours au coeur de son oeuvre Last Seen (1991), où l'absence physique de tableaux dérobés au Musée Isabella Stewart Gardner de Boston, fait place aux descriptions des conservateurs, gardiens et autres permanents du musée concerné.

Mais c'est surtout avec une oeuvre inédite, Une jeune femme disparaît (2003), que l'artiste place le point d'orgue de toutes ses thématiques . Un fait divers a croisé le destin de Sophie Calte, lorsque ta presse a mêlé son nom à celui de Bénédicte V., disparue après l'incendie de son appartement de Ille-Saint-Louis en 2000. L'artiste exhume des cendres les photographies réalisées par la jeune femme, agent d'accueil au Centre Pompidou, qui admirait Sophie Calte . L'avis de recherche de la disparue est dispersé dans différents espaces du Centre Pompidou, hors des limites de l'exposition elle-même.

À la fin du parcours, le visiteur est confronté à des images de distributeurs automatiques de billets - images de visages anonymes dont Sophie Dalle tente en vain, à plusieurs reprises, d'exploiter les qualités esthétiques. Elle réalise pour l'occasion une vidéo inédite, Unfinished (2003) qui devient le récit et la mise en scène de cet échec, mais aussi de la relation à ce qui fait oeuvre, à travers la problématique du «style» de l'artiste.

L'itinérance de l'exposition SOPHIE CALLE . M'AS-TU VUE est prévue, en 2004, à l'Irish Museum of Modern Art de Dublin, au Martin-Gropius-Bau de Berlin ainsi qu'au Ludwig Forum de Aachen.

Commissaire : Christine Macel conservateur pour l'art contemporain en charge du service Création Contemporaine et Prospective. Musée national d'art moderne. Centre Pompidou.

CENTRE POMPIDOU - BEAUBOURG - PARIS

www.centrepompidou.fr

Janine Antoni & Paul Ramirez Jonas, Miami Art Museum

Janine Antoni And Paul Ramirez Jonas
Miami Art Museum
November 14, 2003 – January 18, 2004

Miami Art Museum (MAM) presents the first museum exhibition in the United States of collaborative works by artists JANINE ANTONI and PAUL RAMIREZ JONAS. The exhibition is organized by Miami Art Museum and curated by Lorie Mertes, MAM curator, as part of the museum’s New Work series of projects by contemporary artists.

Janine Antoni and Paul Ramírez Jonas presents two major works, one of which has been commissioned especially for this exhibition by MAM and is the first piece visitors are encounter upon entering the gallery. Titled Mirror, the work is a massive sculpture that dominates the center of the space and consists of a stairway made from 26 stacked wood beams – each beam 12 x 12-inches -- and a free-standing curtain that is seven-foot tall and runs for 25 feet. Made of heavy red fabric, the curtain spans the length of the space dividing the room in half by appearing to magically enter and exit cleanly through the middle of the stairs. Visitors can negotiate their path through the gallery by walking around the curtain or by using the imposing stairway. The title, Mirror, refers to the physical nature of the piece and the viewer’s participatory experience. The second work, Always New, Always Familiar, is a room-sized video installation that consists of two views of the seascape filmed simultaneously from the front and back of a moving boat.

In each of these works there are distinct points of negotiation between two separate and sometimes disparate elements that combine to create a single work. While physically very different, each of the works are similar in that they map or diagram aspects of a relationship, stressing separation as well as union.

Janine Antoni and Paul Ramírez Jonas are internationally recognized artists each known for their distinct bodies of work. Less well known is the fact that the married couple, with family ties to South Florida, has been creating collaborative videos and photographs since 1999. Focusing on process, the passage of time and the trace of the body, their collaborative works serve as poetic metaphors for the nature of relationships.

“I have long admired the work of each artist and was very intrigued when I discovered that they had collaborated over the years,” said Curator Lorie Mertes. “It’s not unusual for artists to collaborate in order to explore ideas and processes that may not evolve from their individual work. The results of these collaborations vary widely, however. In the case of Janine and Paul, I was excited at how this particular melding of artistic sensibilities resulted in something entirely new and compelling.”

JANINE ANTONI

Janine Antoni was born in Freeport, Bahamas in 1964. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and earned her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989. Antoni has had major exhibitions of her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; S.I.T.E. Santa Fe, New Mexico; and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. The recipient of several prestigious awards including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship in 1998 and the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 1999, Janine Antoni currently resides in New York.

Antoni is known for works that blur the distinction between performance art and sculpture. Transforming such everyday activities as eating, bathing, and sleeping into ways of making art, Antoni uses her own body as the primary tool for making sculpture. She has chiseled cubes of lard and chocolate with her teeth, washed away the faces of soap busts made in her own likeness, and used the brainwave signals recorded while she dreamed at night as a pattern for weaving a blanket the following morning. For her most recent work she learned to balance and fall from a tightrope.

PAUL RAMIREZ JONAS

Paul Ramirez Jonas was born in 1965 and raised in Honduras. He received his BA from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and earned an MFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design in 1989. Ramírez Jonas has exhibited nationally and internationally with solo exhibitions at: Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK; Beaver College Art Gallery, Glenside, PA; Postmasters Gallery, NY; White Cube, London; White Columns, New York; and Artists Space, NY. Group exhibitions include: Pictures, Patents, Monkeys and More...On Collecting at the ICA, Philadelphia in 2002; Every Day, Public Art Fund, New York; Globe>Miami

Ramirez Jonas’ work, using various media, deals with the inevitability of time and its consequences: memory, attention, and expectation. In works that combine scientific inquiry and the inevitability of futility, the artist has done everything from recording his climbs to the highest points of each state in the country and remaking Thomas Edison’s first recording machine to making an attempt at stopping time by waking up at dawn and chasing after the sun by driving as far west as possible before it sets—all the while questioning whether progress resides in the future, and history in the past.

About the Curator: MAM Curator LORIE MERTES has been with the museum since 1994. She has curated solo exhibitions by artists such as Jim Hodges, Liisa Roberts and Alexis Smith, as well as curating New Work Miami: Robert Chambers and Frank Benson, New Work Miami: Dara Friedman and Robert Thiele, and mantle, a special project by the critically acclaimed artist Ann Hamilton commissioned by MAM in 1998.  LorieMertes recently served as the MAM Curator for the American Tableaux: Many Voices, Many Stories, Shirin Neshat and Roberto Matta: Painting Drawings of the 1940s traveling exhibitions and is overseeing the Kerry James Marshall exhibition that opens in February 2004. Her additional projects in process include a solo exhibition by California-based artist Russell Crotty that opens at MAM next March and New Art, the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship winners for September 2004.

MIAMI ART MUSEUM
101 West Flagler Street, Miami, FL 33130
www.miamiartmuseum.org

Stephan Balkenhol, Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm

Stephan Balkenhol
Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm
November 15 - December 5, 2003

Galleri Lars Bohman presents an exhibition of new sculptures and drawings by the German artist STEPHAN BALKENHOL. In his third exhibition at the gallery, Stephan Balkenhol continues his investigation of the figurative sculptural tradition, updating a classical impulse from a present-day perspective.

Stephan Balkenhol deploys a vocabulary from traditional sculpture - carved wood, pedestals, polychrome - to singular, very contemporary ends. His subject is the human figure, but his intention is to reflect on the present, not commemorate the past. This vitality can be seen in what the artist calls ‘the adventures of the small man in white shirt and black pants,’ an ‘everyman’ who always maintains a serene presence even in the face of frequently outrageous circumstances.

Stephan Balkenhol creates figures that are ordinary rather than idealised, and anonymous rather than heroic, this is further emphasised by his use of wood rather than marble or bronze. His sculptures convey a universal humanism, and his colourfully painted figures may be seen as the familiar strangers that occupy our everyday lives, young men and women wearing ordinary clothing and introspective expressions, without any explicit reference to profession, function or social status.

Stephan Balkenhol’s unconcern with meticulous realism is corroborated by his emphasis on the production process, which can be perceived in the evidence of a usually hasty handling of the surface. Stephan Balkenhol’s sculptures and pedestals are hewn from one block of wood (often soft woods such as wawa or poplar) and then the surface is hand-painted, except for the flesh of the figure which is left natural. The wood is carved so that every bite of the chisel is visible and these splintered and chisel-marked surfaces suggest a raw fragility. Whether sculpting humans, animals, or scenes from his imagination, there is always something strange and enticing about his mute, reserved and peacefully contemplative figures. The artist’s presence is discernible in every mark, reinforcing the humanity of his enterprise.

These works acknowledge the ever-present complexities between the individual and the universal. Neal Benezra, Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, has stated: ‘At a time when all manner of political, social, and cultural dogma seems open to question, it may just be possible for Stephan Balkenhol to breathe new life into figurative sculpture.’

STEPHAN BALKENHOL was born in Fritzlar/Hessen, Germany in 1957, and lives and works in Meisenthal, France. He attended the Hochschule för Bildende Künste in Hamburg and studied for Ulrich Ruckreim. He is professor at the Academie für Bildene Künst, Karlsruhe, Germany.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany; Le Rectangle and Goethe Institute, Lyon, France; Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London in 2003. Begegnungsstätte Kleine Synagoge Erfurt, Erfurt in 2002. Kunstforum Baloise, Basel, Switzerland; Centro Galego de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago de Compostela, Spain and Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig, Germany in 2001.

GALLERI LARS BOHMAN
Karlavägen 16, 114 31 Stockholm
www.gallerilarsbohman.com

Philip Guston: Mind and Matter, McKee Gallery, New York

Philip Guston: Mind and Matter 

McKee Gallery, New York 

November 11 - December 23, 2003 

From Plato to Descartes to the present time philosophy's inquiry into the duality of mind and matter was the basis for explaining human individual and social existence. The events of the mental world were absolute, pure and superior; the events of the physical world, received through the senses and nourished by our appetites, were impure, clumsy, chaotic. Although both mind and matter were parts of the human composition, mind was considered the higher order in life.

At the time Philip Guston broke through the prescriptions against figuration, mind was considered the higher order in art as well. Abstract Expressionism had a spiritual momentum and then Color Field dogma narrowed the artist's realm of possibilities. But Philip Guston had much more to say. He opened the door, believing that the whole truth of human existence, the world of the mind and the world of the senses, was the proper subject of art, and it alone could satisfy him as a human being and as an artist. He was comfortable in the perfect realm of the intellect, but he was a man in time and space as well, where the everyday life of painting, sleeping, eating, politics, his wife Musa, were essential.

The inspiration for this show is a painting called Pyramid and and Shoe 1976, currently on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in which Philip Guston accepts the duality of mind and matter and redresses the imbalance. The pyramid is the symbol of absolute pure thought and the clumsy shoe stands beside it as an everyday imperfect object. They are on equal footing. From 1968 until his death in 1980, Philip Guston continued to paint forms derived from the intellect and forms derived from the material world. Unlike some critical assertions, he never abandoned either source as a fertile terrain for painting.

The first section of this exhibition is devoted to Matter: the physical world. Paintings such as Painter's Head 1975, Anxiety 1975, Eating 1977, Alfie in Small Town 1979, and drawings Untitled (pasta) 1969, Objects on Table 1976.

The second section is Mind: forms of the intellect. Balance 1979, To J.S. 1977 (the Surrealist poet, Jules Supervielle), Martyr 1978, Aegean 1978.

The third room includes work with related forms. Wall Forms and Blue Sea 1978 is the more mental version and Rock 1978 the more material one; Untitled 1968 and Untitled 1980, relate in the same way.

Philip Guston's figuration, now widely admired as some of the greatest work of 20th Century American art, was revolutionary in the 1970's. Guston wondered why people didn't understand the paintings, since, after all, they are about us.

A retrospective exhibition is currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until January 4, 2004. It was organized by the Museum of Modern Art at Fort Worth, and will continue on to the Royal Academy, London, opening January 20, 2004.

MCKEE GALLERY

745 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10151

www.mckeegallery.com

Yitzhak Golombek, Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv - “Gaya”

Yitzhak Golombek - “Gaya”

Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv

November 8 - December 13, 2003

"Exhibited is a garden surrounded by cardboard sculptures, each a still life, about the height of a three-year-old. The objects – packaging, sewing notions and ornaments – which are piled up into towers or strewn on the floor like archeological ruins, are from a home where nothing is thrown away 'in case it might come in handy some day.' The back garden sits on a balcony belonging to a family of refugees. A universe of three generations huddling together and clinging to one another while holding on to inanimate objects that harbor the touch of the father, the son, the daughter. At the same time, the exhibit aims to achieve maximal receptiveness to materials and forms, and to construct from the compressed parcels the alphabet of an independent sculptural language."

Yitzhak Golombek

DVIR GALLERY

11 Nahum st., Tel Aviv 63503

www.dvirgallery.com

Roland Colorip 2.0 RIP Software

Roland DGA Corporation today introduced Roland Colorip 2.0 - the latest and most powerful version of its RIP software bundled with VersaCAMM, EX and Pro II Series inkjets. "Roland Colorip 2.0 will boost inkjet productivity for both expert printmakers and beginners," said Patrick Chen, Roland product manager. "Right out of the box, it makes printing fast and easy with enhanced production features and color controls."

In a single dialog box, Roland Colorip 2.0 now integrates complex output settings such as device selection, ink type, connection, media and print mode. A Master Queue window displays RIP and Print jobs for all four print configurations, making it easier to track the status of multiple jobs.

For Roland customers who demand complete color control, Roland Colorip 2.0 features a Color Transforms window that integrates all color controls. The new graphical feature makes it easy to edit all pertinent ICC Profiles, linearizations and ink limits. Roland Colorip 2.0 also offers RIP & Print capability, enhanced color management, contour cutting and several unique layout options. In addition to Postscript jobs, the RIP lets graphics professionals print directly from TIFF, JPEG, EPS, PS, PDF 1.4 and DCS 2.0 files.

COLORIP 2.0 Features Easy-to-use interface Print directly from TIFF, JPEG, EPS, PS, PDF 1.4 and DCS 2.0 files. ICC profiles for Roland coated and uncoated medias Full Adobe Postscript 3 compatibility CMYK plus LcLm and OrGr printing support Simultaneous RIP-and-Print capability Supports precision contour cutting Automatic or manual cropping, nesting and tiling Robust color management features Spot color replacement to fine tune custom colors Unlimited color databases to organize custom colors Built-in out-of-gamut alert

COLORIP 2.0 is currently shipping will all VersaCAMM, EX and Pro II Series inkjets. Beginning in December, current owners will be able to upgrade to the new bundled software free of charge.

Roland Digital Group America

Jonah Freeman & Michael Phelan, John Connelly Presents, New York - "The Giving Tree"

Jonah Freeman & Michael Phelan 

"The Giving Tree"

John Connelly Presents, New York

November 7 — December 13, 2003

John Connelly Presents announces the first solo exhibition of the collaborative work of Jonah Freeman and Michael Phelan. In keeping with previous efforts, Freeman and Phelan use disparate means to explore the contemporary cultural landscape. References to nature, autobiography, popular culture and banal architectural forms are meshed into an installation of painting, video, light and sculpture.

At the center of the installation "The Giving Tree", 2003 offers us the holy grail of absurd 21st Century convenience in the form of a ready-made rotisserie chicken and BBQ. As the rotating heart of the exhibition, the rotisserie is both contained and reflected by the mirrored surfaces of the sculpture's core. The geometric intersecting planes of "The Giving Tree's exterior reflect and diffract the rest of the works that infiltrate the gallery space, including "Love is Colder Than Death", 2003 a large wall drawing of throbbing black and white lines. This reference to the synthetic manipulation of perception and space found in "Love is Colder than Death" is also echoed in a suite of sixteen small, colorful paintings on an opposite gallery wall, each titled after a different street name of LSD.

The disorientating, op-art vibrations of "Love is Colder than Death" are taken to the extreme in "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters", 2003 where two video monitors are matched tête-à-tête in a futile dialogue between technology and nature. One pulses endlessly with the black and white blips of 300 indistinguishable and relentless sonic beats per minute while the other captures a lone but talkative prairie dog in a desolate field. The dialogue between these two disparate subjects is both humorous and heart breaking.

Other sculptural works reflect the collision between culture and nature that is a central theme in the exhibition. "Soul Man", a sturdy piece of drift wood turned into an endearing sidekick with two small carefully placed plastic eyes; and "A Season in Hell" liberates nine resilient penguins from a cardboard box of shimmering faux snow.

Jonah Freeman's work has most recently been shown at the Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York City; Public Art Fund at the Brooklyn Public Library; Galerie Edward Mitterand, Geneva, Switzerland; The Prague Biennale I, Prague, Hungary and the Cheekwood Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.

Michael Phelan's work has most recently been included in "Social Fabric", Lothringer 13, Munich, Germany, "Painting as Paradox", Artist Space, "How Come", Stephan Stux, New York, NY, "High Desert Test Sites", A-Z West, Joshua Tree, CA., and at Leo Koenig Gallery in New York City.

JOHN CONNELLY PRESENTS

526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.johnconnellypresents.com