Résultats enchère Sayed-Haider Raza à Drouot

Marché de l'art > Enchères > Résultat des ventes > Sayed-Haider RAZA (né en 1922)

 

Drouot Richelieu, 25 janvier 2006

Massol SA

Le 25 janvier 2006 à Drouot Richelieu, la société de ventes Massol organisait une vente d’art contemporain dans laquelle on a pu noter deux belles enchères pour l’artiste indien Sayed-Haider RAZA (né en 1922).

Sans titre, 1977,  une acrylique sur toile, signée en bas à droite, est ainsi partie à 157.986 € (130.000 € sans frais) tandis que La terre, 1971,  une autre acrylique sur toile, signée en bas à droite, a été adjugée 78 993 € (65 000 € sans frais).

Roger Ballen Shadow Chamber Exposition Photo

« Shadow Chamber », la seconde exposition personnelle de Roger Ballen à la galerie Kamel Mennour, s’ajoute à la débordante actualité de ce photographe reconnu à l’échelle internationale. Les photographies présentées font partie de la série « Shadow Chamber ». Roger Ballen nous entraîne dans le secret de ces personnages issus du "petit peuple". Ces espaces donnent accès à leur monde intérieur sans pour autant provoquer l'apitoiement ou frôler l'exhibitionnisme. Chaque « chambre » est une sorte de prison dont les occupants auraient peut-être eux-mêmes bâti les cloisons.

Du 17 février au 30 mars 2006 - Roger Ballen « Shadow Chamber » est présenté à la galerie Kamel Mennour, 60 rueMazarine - Paris 6e, du lundi au samedi, de 11h à 19h30.

Video Art Exhibition – Istanbul Modern

Nothing Lasts Forever

Video Art Exhibition

ISTANBUL MODERN

Feburary 1 - May 12, 2006

Nothing Lasts Forever, the 3rd Video Programme at Istanbul Modern presents a selectiorı of significant works by Hussein Chalayan (Turkey), Fischli & Weiss (Switzerland) and Sam Taylor-Wood (Great Britain). These art works are relevant examples of how photography, cinema and video are inexcusable seed-beds for shaping our contemporary iconosphere. Such media have forged their artistic identity reworking representational techniques derived from previous creative traditions. Pictorial composition, theatrical stage sets and the fabling function of the novel are thus updated and transformed to shape our new visual and narrative models. Placing the accent on time and duration, the selected video works heighten out awareness of the fleetingness of time and the lack of eternal truths. They also evince the disappearance of boundaries between artistic disciplines such as painting, sculpture and fashion, and prove how art is able to embody the interactions between different fields of knowledge. 

HUSSEIN CHALAYAN

Hussein Chalayan (Cyprus, b. 1970) links fashion and performance to explore the politics of beauty in relation to the conflicts of his time. 

"Aeroplane Dress" (1999) is a video in which a fashion model directs her gaze at the spectator while different elements of her white metallic dress open up as if she is about to depart creating a powerful image of travelling bodies. "Afterwords" (2000) refers to the painful situation of having to flee your home at a time of war and having to conceal your most treasured possessions; as the artist says, "I wanted to somehow turn a horrific situation into something more poetic." 

FISCHLI & WEISS

The Swiss duo, Peter Fischli (Zurich, b. 1952) and David Weiss, (Zurich, b. 1945), has been working together since 1979 in the field s of sculpture, installation, film and photography. Their work, which is humorous, emotional and deeply metaphysical, explores the relationships between order and chaos, the everyday and the sublime, arousing a feeling of fascination in the spectator, who is invited to discover "the small miracles in everyday life". 

"The Way Things Go" (1987) is a film on a 100-foot long kinetic structure with everyday objects such as old tires, bottles, ladders and even soapsuds that were joined together. When the sculpture was set in motion, a controlled and surprising chain of reactions started creating an amusing happening, The work plays with the laws of physics and chemistry, deals with inevitability and chance and discovers the cosmic magic of a universe in precarious circumstances. 

"Büsy (Kitty)" (2001) presents a cat drinking milk in a dish. The work is a proposal for us to slow down and see how nice it is to just contemplate everyday life. There is a moment of marvel and peace in the fact that nothing or almost nothing is happening and no one is explaining anything. 

SAM TAYLOR-WOOD

Born in London in 1967 and trained as a sculptor at Goldsmiths College, Sam Taylor-Wood asserts that photo and video were a natural development in her research. Her work relates to human vulnerability and contemporary ennui. Many of her pieces are like tableaux vivants where the camel a has a fixed viewpoint and things take place within a unique frame. 

'Still Life" (2001) presents a classic and iconic arrangement of fruit that recalls a painting by Caravaggio or Zurbaran. The pieces of fruit, filmed in time-lapse at very high speed. blossom with mould before putrefying completely and turning into dust in front of viewers' very eyes. This accelerated process reveals the beauty of decay and its surprising and astonishing vitality. 

A Little Death" (2002) is a living composition arranged to appear as a seventeenth-century painting. The body of a dead hare hangs from its leg nailed to the wall, its head resting on a table beside a rosy peach. As the body of the hare begins to rat the animal seems to come alive again thanks to the unremitting movement of the maggots suggesting that life steams out of death. This piece was shot over nine weeks and one of its most intriguing aspects -the resolutely unaffected peach- was in fact an unforeseen accident: an out-of-season fruit that remained whole amidst its surrounding putrefaction.

This video art exhibition was curated by Rosa Martínez

With the Contribution of Caylon - Credit Agricole Group

Kathleen Gilje, Texas Gallery, Houston - Likeness & Beyond: Portraits

Kathleen Gilje, Likeness & Beyond: Portraits
Texas Gallery, Houston
January 24 – February 25, 2006

Texas Gallery presents the work of Kathleen Gilje, the New York based painter, in an exhibition titled Likeness & Beyond: Portraits. The art historian Linda Nochlin has written this about Kathleen Gilje’s work: “her wickedness is bound up in the very reality of the Great Masterpieces themselves and the Great Minds who interpret them. These are fierce and often funny paintings…” (Art in America, March 2002). This statement was prompted by the nature of the work which is painting as re-interpretation, re-creation, and “re-storation” of classical icons by the likes of Rembrandt, Ingres, Velasquez, Holbein, Van Eyck and van Dyck. Trained as a conservator of old master paintings, Kathleen Gilje has utilized her skill and historical knowledge to create a body of work that amazes, challenges and amuses the viewer. It is startling to see a copy of a well-known painting such as Rembrandt’s “Portrait of Agatha Bas”, full scale and perfect in its rendering. However, it is even more startling that in Kathleen Gilje’s version the subject is rendered as a nude. An intervention by the artist creates a strong sensation of the familiar made completely unfamiliar. In addition new issues, both aesthetic and political, are raised immediately. Suddenly the conventions that have been taken for granted and the received historical wisdoms are questioned and a masterful copy becomes a strong and original statement, beautiful and intelligent.

In the most recent painting included in the show, the famous diptych of “Adam and Eve” by Jan van Eyck is recreated to scale with a subtle difference. The artist illustrates carnal knowledge by the falling away of the fig leaves that the figures grasp to their respective groins in the original piece - a brilliant change that is lyrical but profound. The leaves float down lightly but they represent “heavy” meaning which the artist is able to indicate through a simple “restoration”.

TEXAS GALLERY
2012 Peden, Houston, TX 77019
www.texgal.com

Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York

Jeroen de Rijke / Willem de Rooij 
Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York 
January 19 - February 18, 2006 

Friedrich Petzel Gallery in NYC presents the first solo exhibition in New York by Dutch artists, JEROEN de RIJKE and WILLEM de ROOIJ. This show features a slide projection titled Orange, a bouquet of flowers and its black-and-white photographic representation, Bouquet IV, as well as two large-scale photos, titled Light Studies V and VI.

The slide projection, Orange, consists of a series of 81 monochrome slides, projected in succession on a white wall. Because the color orange, when used in a photographic realm, tends to altar skin tones towards an unrealistic pink hue, film is frequently developed to avoid the color orange in its spectrum. Through the use of an orange filter, this piece captures a range of orange shades through layering papers, sheets and gels.

"Our initial aim was to approach the color of overalls worn by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay... At the same time, we are confronted with nationalist sympathies gaining importance in post-populist neo-conservative Holland on a daily basis. While Dutch immigration policies reached an unprecedented ideological extreme as the Balkenende administration came to an agreement in February 2004 to expel 26,000 illegal immigrants from the country, popularity polls indicated 84% approval among Dutch citizens of monarchy as the ideal form of state. Not since World War II has there been such interest in Queen Beatrix and her family, the House of Orange." 

Bouquet IV, which consists of a specific flower arrangement, as well as a black and white photograph of the arrangement in a matte aluminum frame, "was organized so that its colors in black and white reproduction translate into a relatively small range of grey-shades, resulting in an even spread of tones from which high contrasts and extremes on either side of the spectrum are excluded." This conceptual play on the black and white image, which is typical of traditional photography, also characterizes the works Light Study V and Light Study VI.

De Rijke / de Rooij make work that revolves around questions of representation relating to imagery taken from cultural and historical artifacts, socio-political forms, as well as images from both media and artistic sources. Through the use of photographic images, and the play of reality and virtuality, the artists blur the lines between what is seen and what is perceived.

The artists have been working together since 1994. Their collaborative work has been the focus of gallery, museum, and institutional shows in the United States and throughout Europe. Recently, their film, Mandarin Ducks, was featured in the Dutch pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale and they were nominated for the 2005 Hugo Boss prize. In late 2005, they had exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Vienna Secession, Austria.

Jeroen de Rijke was born in 1970 in Brouwershaven, Holland, and Willem de Rooij was born in 1969 in Beverwijk, Holland. Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij both studied at the Rietveld Akademie and then the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. The artists currently live and work in Amsterdam.

The exhibition opens in FRIEDRICH PETZEL' NEW GALLERY SPACE, 537 W 22 S, NYC 10011

www.petzel.com

John Szarkowski, Pace/MacGill Gallery, NYC

John Szarkowski: Now 

Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York 

January 19 - February 18, 2006 

I don’t have a schedule. I just take my camera outside. Some days I go to the pond and some days I don’t. Some days I look at the apple trees, and some days I find other things. I love it even more now, because these are my trees. 

- John Szarkowski 

Vanity Fair, January 2005 

Pace/MacGill Gallery presents an exhibition of recent photographs by JOHN SZARKOWSKI. Comprised of single, gelatin silver prints and a large multi-part work consisting of twelve 11 x 14 inch photographs, the exhibition elaborates upon John Szarkowski’s ongoing exploration of the American landscape with a special emphasis on trees. Taken during his travels around the country and on everyday meanders near his home in upstate New York, John Szarkowski’s photographs are careful studies of the natural world that surrounds him. Whether capturing the monumental glory of the primeval redwoods populating Rockefeller Forest in California’s Humboldt State Park or a generous tangle of branches on a favorite backyard Tomkins County King apple tree, John Szarkowski’s photographs emote a lyricism grounded in an awareness of time and place. John Szarkowski’s newest multi-part work, “Graft,” provides twelve different views of grafts he has undertaken between varieties of apple trees. Images include supple branches extending Shiva-like from a sturdy trunk and the triumphant emergence of new buds. His pictures are observations and documentations of the continuum innate to nature - life and death – and they ultimately pay homage to its remarkable and regenerative power.

Pace/MacGill’s exhibition coincides with the traveling retrospective “John Szarkowski: Photographs” on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from February 1 through May 15, 2006. The exhibition was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and opened there in February 2005. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will be the final venue for the retrospective (June 18 through September 10, 2006). 

JOHN SZARKOWSKI (b. 1925, Ashland, Wisc.) attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison and received his undergraduate degree in the History of Art. Soon after his graduation, John Szarkowski joined the staff of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis where he was hired as the museum photographer (1948-51). He had his first solo show there in 1949 and other one-person exhibitions promptly followed. He quickly established a strong reputation as a practicing photographer and continued in that direction for over a decade. During that time the monographs The Idea of Louis Sullivan (1956) and The Face of Minnesota (1958) were published. Appearing on the New York Times best-seller list for eight weeks, The Face of Minnesota was reprinted in 1964.

In 1962 John Szarkowski was chosen to succeed legendary curator Edward Steichen as the Director of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. During his nearly 30-year tenure in that post, John Szarkowski expanded upon the major accomplishments of his predecessor, giving solo exhibitions to Andre Kertesz, J.H. Lartigue, and Diane Arbus, among others. Unanimously acknowledged for his curatorial vision and articulate advocacy of the photographic medium, John Szarkowski authored numerous books and catalogs while establishing one of the most comprehensive collections of photography in the world. Following his 1991 retirement from MoMA, John Szarkowski resumed work as a photographer. Recent monographs include Mr. Bristol’s Barn: With Excerpts from Mr. Blinn’s Diary (1997), and John Szarkowski: Photographs (2005).

John Szarkowski’s work can be found in numerous collections, including the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass.; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hallmark Art Collection, Kansas City; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Princeton University Art Museum, N.J.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. 

PACE/MACGILL GALLERY

32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022

www.pacemacgill.com

High Museum of Art Atlanta

 

The High Museum of Art was founded in 1905 as the Atlanta Art Association.

With over 11,000 works of art in its permanent collection, the High Museum of Art has an extensive anthology of 19th- and 20th-century American art; significant holdings of European paintings and decorative art; a growing collection of African American art; and burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, photography and African art.

As the leading museum in the Southeast of the United States, the High Museum of Art is dedicated to supporting and collecting works by Southern artists and is distinguished as the only major general museum in North America to have a curatorial department specifically devoted to the field of folk and self-taught art.

The High's Media Arts department produces annual film series and festivals of foreign, independent and classic cinema.

For more information about the High, visit www.High.org

The High Museum of Art is a Division of the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The Woodruff Arts Center is a not-for-profit center for performing and visual arts.  It also includes the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Young Audiences and the 14th Street Playhouse.

ArtRage 2.0 Painting Sofware Updated

Ambient Design adds new tools to ArtRage 2.0.

The new airbrush tool makes use of tablet tilt and pressure to allow realistic spray strokes. The paint tube and paint roller give you new ways to apply oils. The glitter tool works with the new Metallic Paint option to create sparkles on your canvas. Users can paint on multiple layers, and export or important layered Photoshop documents.

Canon produces 30-millionth EF lens

Canon announced the achievement of a new lens-production milestone as production of the company's EF lenses passed the 30-million mark

Production of interchangeable EF lenses for Canon EOS-series AF (autofocus) SLR cameras began in 1987 at the company's Utsunomiya Plant. Canon produced its 10-millionth EF lens in August 1995, its 20-millionth in February 2001 and, a mere five years later, has now reached the 30-million plateau. This achievement reflects users' high level of satisfaction with the performance and quality realized by EF lenses, as well as the service offered through Canon's marketing operations.

Canon's proprietary EF (electro-focus) lens, which combines a large-diameter fully electronic lens mount and an internal autofocus motor, was born in 1987.

In November of the same year, Canon introduced the industry's first [1] Ultrasonic Motor (USM)-powered lens: the EF 300mm f/2.8L USM.

In September 1989, the EF 50mm f/1.0L USM, featuring the world's largest aperture [1] of f/1.0, was launched and in September 1995 the EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, equipped with the world's first [1] Image Stabilizer to correct for the effect of camera shake, made its debut.

Further, in December 2001, Canon delivered the world's first super telephoto lens incorporating a diffractive optical element for camera lenses [1]: the EF 400mm F4 DO IS USM.

In conjunction with the launch in September 2003 of the highly acclaimed EOS Kiss Digital SLR camera, which has achieved outstanding success worldwide with sales to date surpassing 1.2 million units, Canon expanded its EF lens lineup with the introduction of the EF-S series of lenses, optimized for use with digital SLR cameras that incorporate APS-C size (22.2 x 14.8 mm) image sensors.

Canon's current EF lens lineup comprises 60 [2] models, the most comprehensive selection*3 in the industry. Canon EF lenses span the gamut from ultra-wide 14mm to super-telephoto 600mm lenses and include standard and super-telephoto zoom models, large-aperture lenses, and TS-E lenses, which are equipped with a special tilt-shift mechanism that permits the manipulation of image perspective and distortion. Canon EF lenses have garnered high praise from a wide user base, from professional and advanced amateur photographers to novice photo enthusiasts, and earned Canon top share of the interchangeable lens market.

Also, as EF lenses are ideally suited for use with Canon's EOS D-series of digital SLR cameras in addition to its 35mm film SLR cameras, the company aims to continue developing the lineup as the core of the EOS system.

[1] For 35mm AF SLR cameras

[2] Including EF-S lenses and two EF lens extenders

[3] As of January 17, 2006.

Florian Maier-Aichen, 303 Gallery, New York

Florian Maier-Aichen
303 Gallery, New York
January 14 - February 25, 2006

303 Gallery presents the New York debut of photographic work by Florian Maier-Aichen.

Florian Maier-Aichen works with varying degrees of "straight" photography and digital intervention to create work that challenges our visual understanding of the photographic image. For this exhibition, Florian Maier-Aichen has chosen primarily views of the sea and landscapes as subject matter. In the work "Untitled (Insel Vilm)", an ocean liner is on the way to its destination on very still waters. After closer examination, the scale of the ship appears much too small and the ocean appears much too still, establishing a structure of disbelief.

"Above June Lake" 2005, an aerial view of a mountain, recalls a detail of an abstract painting. The ski trails carved in the earth could be understood as a simple cryptic drawing. These and other works highlight Florian Maier-Aichen's unique preoccupation with the ambiguity of space in the viewer's perception. In addition, Florian Maier-Aichen utilizes photographic methods ranging from the Albumen print process, that dates back to the 19th century, up through contemporary computer based means. In this way, Florian Maier-Aichen begins to dismantle the heritage of German color photographers with his intimate use of digital technology and labored handmade attention.

Florian Maier-Aichen was included in "Set Up: Recent Acquisitions in Photography", at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY in March 2005. In 2002 his work was included in "Anti-Form: New Photographic Work from Los Angeles", curated by James Welling at the Society for Contemporary Photography, Kansas City, MO. In 2001, Florian Maier-Aichen was included in "Snapshot: New Art from Los Angeles' at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA. Florian Maier-Aichen lives and works in Cologne, Germany and Los Angeles, California. His work will be included in the upcoming Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, 2006 and he will have a one-person exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in 2007.

303 GALLERY
525 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
www.303gallery.com

Giorgio Morandi - Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal - Morandi’s Legacy: Influences on British Art

Morandi’s Legacy: Influences on British Art

Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal 

12 January – 25 March 2006

This exhibition explores Giorgio Morandi’s influence on British artists, past and present, by juxtaposing drawings, paintings and etchings by Morandi alongside works by 20th century and contemporary British artists, including David Hockney, Tony Cragg, Rachel Whiteread, Michael Craig-Martin, Patrick Caulfield, Paul Winstanley, Paul Coldwell, Christopher Le Brun, Victor Willing, Ben Nicholson, William Scott and Euan Uglow. Many of these artists have pointed to Giorgio Morandi as being an influence, but for some the relationship with their work is tangential. The aim of the exhibition is not to illustrate direct influences or particular references to Giorgio Morandi in the selected works, but rather to set up ‘conversations’ between his work and that of contemporary British artists, addressing themes that have become central within contemporary art practice, including negative space, the recording of the passing of time, and art as process.

The exhibition includes important drawings, paintings and etchings by Giorgio Morandi on loan from public and private collections in Britain and Europe, including several works from Italian collections including Museo Morandi in Bologna and the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo. Other major loans include works from the British Museum, the Arts Council Collection, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh.

GIORGIO MORANDI (1890-1964) is one of the most admired Italian painters of the twentieth century, known for his contemplative still life paintings of familiar objects: vases, bottles and boxes, painted in subtle combinations of colour using a narrow range of tones. Morandi never visited Britain during his lifetime, and yet the popularity of his work has grown steadily here since the 1950s. His intimate still life paintings were first seen in this country in the 1950 Arts Council exhibition of Modern Italian Art at the Tate, and since then he has been the subject of many solo and themed shows in major British galleries.

The exhibition has been curated by the artist Professor Paul Coldwell, Postgraduate Programme Director at Camberwell College of Arts, and organised by the Estorick Collection in collaboration with Abbot Hall Art Gallery. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, published by Philip Wilson, which includes an essay by Paul Coldwell and interviews with some of the aforementioned artists, discussing their interpretations of Morandi’s work. The exhibition will travel to The Estorick Collection between 5 April and 18 June 2006.

HABBOT HALL ART GALLERY

Kendal, Cumbria LA9 5AL

www.abothhall.org.uk

Exene Cervenka @ DCKT Contemporary, NYC - America the Beautiful

Exene Cervenka: America the Beautiful

DCKT Contemporary, New York

January 7 – February 11, 2006

DCKT Contemporary presents EXENE CERVENKA's first New York exhibition. On view in America the Beautiful are journals and mixed media collages dating from 1974 through 2005 by one of the founding members of the seminal Los Angeles punk group, X. The exhibition was originally organized by the Santa Monica Museum of Art and guest curators Kristine McKenna and Michael Duncan.

The exhibition features a selection of journals from the collection of approximately 100 that Exene Cervenka has completed over the past thirty-one years, as well as over twenty collages. Exene Cervenka’s journals combine rough drafts of songs and personal reflections rendered in a baroque calligraphic script with photographs, drawings and scraps of ephemera found while traveling as a musician. Similarly, the collages are created from found materials to form an interpretative composite portrait of the country she’s come to know through her life experiences on the road.

An icon of Los Angeles’s seventies punk scene, Exene Cervenka is known internationally for her work with the critically acclaimed band, X. Today she continues her musical career with X as well as in solo performances and participation in bands such as The Knitters, Auntie Christ and The Original Sinners. A visual and spoken word artist for more than thirty years, Exene Cervenka has also published four volumes of poetry.

DCKT CONTEMPORARY

552 West 24th Street, New York, NY

www.dcktcontemporary.com

Katy Grannan, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Katy Grannan

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

5 January - 29 February, 2006

KATY GRANNAN’s striking, large-format, color portraits capture the desire of her subjects to offer themselves up to the camera lens. Katy Grannan’s previous series—“Poughkeepsie Journal,” “Dream America,” and “Morning Call”—began with a simple ad placed by Grannan in local newspapers: “Art Models. Artist/Photographer (female) seeks people for portraits. No experience necessary. Leave msg.” After an initial telephone conversation, Katy Grannan travels to the caller’s home where she captures each element of their domestic settings: wood paneling, patterned wallpaper, and other mundane but often telling details. In Katy Grannan’s recent Mystic Lake series, she moves the exercise outdoors, using a public lake and its banks as her backdrop. Even though the parkland that serves as her set brings the private encounters of her earlier series into the public landscape, she maintains a delicate – yet increasingly charged – sense of intimacy.

KATY GRANNAN was awarded the Aperture Award to an Emerging Artist in 2005 as well as The Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers in 2004. Model American: Katy Grannan, the artist’s first monograph, was recently published by Aperture. This is the first solo exhibition of Katy Grannan’s work at Fraenkel Gallery. The artist’s photographs are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

FRAENKEL GALLERY

49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

fraenkelgallery.com

Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

 

Faking Death
Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination

Jack Shainman Gallery, NYC

January 6 - February 4, 2006

The Jack Shainman Gallery presents Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination, an exhibition which features contemporary and historical works by more than 50 established and emerging Canadian photographers. All are working in a variety of genres, exploring issues of representation, gender, cultural identity, and a deeply felt concern for the environment.

Among those included in the exhibit are such internationally-renowned art practitioners as Vancouver-based Rebecca Belmore, an Anishinabekwe artist who represented Canada at the 2005 Venice Biennale, and whose work addresses history, place, identity, and the elusive nature of memory; Jin-me Yoon, whose stills and video works grapple with the realities of Canadian immigrants, legal and illegal; Jeff Wall with his large scale lightbox creates a heroic tableaux making reference to the old masters paintings. The Holocaust Memorial in the Jewish Cemetery, 1987 is a seminal piece in Walls oeuvre; modern-day photographic explorer Edward Burtynsky, whose spectacular large-scale photographs, currently the focus of a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, confront nature transformed through industry; Geneviève Cadieux, whose haunting, fragmented images of the body explore relationships between the sexes and the registering of psychic pain on human flesh; Toronto-born painter, photographer, sculptor, musician, and filmmaker Michael Snow, creator of such celebrated works as the Walking Women series of paintings and the seminal underground art film Wavelength; and the Vancouver artist Rodney Graham, whose photographs of up-side-down trees reflect his long-term obsession with the world as seen through the camera obsura; and Raymonde April, winner of the prestigious Paul-Emile Borduas Prize, whose moving, open-ended narratives have been instrumental in forging a uniquely Québecois photographic aesthetic.

“Each of the gifted artists featured in the exhibition brings a singular, distinctive, and dynamic perspective to his or her work, and it is a thrill for us to showcase this exciting and significant exhibition”, says Jack Shainman, director of the Jack Shainman Gallery.
The exhibition was co-curated by critic and author Penny Cousineau-Levine, Professor of the History and Theory of Art, and Chair of the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa in Canada’s capital city. The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Cousineau-Levine’s groundbreaking examination of Canadian photography entitled Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination, in which she examined the work of Canadian photographers, revealing the specificities of the Canadian identity and world-view. By bringing together this many Canadian works, the exhibition Faking Death, like the book, provides a stunning visual introduction to one of Canada's most vibrant and internationally recognized artistic media.
“An exhibition of this scope permits the viewer to experience the astonishing diversity, richness, and energy that is Canadian photo-art,“ explains co-curator Claude Simard of the Shainman Gallery. “And what a wonderful opportunity it is to present these important and influential Canadian artists, many of whom enjoy international success and acclaim, together in New York”.

Jack Shainman Gallery
513 W. 20th Street, New York, NY 10011
www.jackshainman.com

The Women of Giacometti, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

The Women of Giacometti
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
January 14 - April 2006

The Nasher Sculpture Center presents The Women of Giacometti, the first Alberto Giacometti exhibition presented in Dallas since 1979. The Women of Giacometti features 48 works, including 34 sculptures and 14 paintings, which explore the artist’s long-standing fascination with the female subject, from his mother, sister, and wife to various models. The works range from very early naturalistic portraits, to Surrealist-inspired and Cubist-influenced works from the 1920s and 1930s, to Alberto Giacometti’s well-known tall and slender figures including all nine cast bronze Women of Venice (Femmes de Venise) from 1956, on view together for the first time in the United States since the landmark 1958 Giacometti exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York.

Alberto Giacometti (b. 1901 Switzerland – d. 1966 Switzerland) worked as a youth in the studio of his father, the painter Giovanni Giacometti, and studied briefly at art school in Geneva before moving to Paris in 1922 to pursue his career. By age 12 he had completed the first portrait drawings of his mother, Annetta, who would continue throughout her life to play a key role in his art, and at 14 produced his first sculpture, a bust of his brother Diego.  His sister Ottilia also appeared in numerous early works.

Even as Alberto Giacometti began to absorb the strong influences of Cubism and Surrealism in Paris, he continued to work in a figurative vein, as seen in the exhibition in a plaster Head of Ottilia from c. 1926 and the plaster and bronze heads of Flora Mayo, an American art student with whom Giacometti had a tumultuous affair. Such outstanding monuments of Alberto Giacometti’s Surrealist period as Spoon Woman, Reclining Woman Who Dreams, and Woman with her Throat Cut, with their primitivized and fetishistic approach to female anatomy, date from the late 20s and early 30s.  Stylistic change soon followed, and the two heads of Rita from 1935-38 and three portraits of Isabel from 1937-39 show Giacometti’s return to the investigation of human physiognomy. Rita Gueyfier was a hired model, and Isabel Nicholas Delmer was an English model, sometime art student, and familiar figure in the Parisian art world with whom Giacometti lived briefly. 

When Alberto Giacometti returned to Switzerland in 1942 to escape the German Occupation, he made the acquaintance of Annette Arm, who joined him in Paris after the war. They were married in 1949.  For 20 years, Annette played a crucial role in his life as companion and muse and is depicted regularly in his post-war signature explorations of fragile, elongated, elusive figuration.

Caroline Poiraudeau came into Alberto Giacometti’s life in 1959. Her wild and defiant character held a strange fascination for him, and she soon became both lover and model for a lengthy series of highly expressive paintings and busts. The portrait Caroline in Tears shows the frontal and symmetrical Egyptian pose, loose brushwork combined with sharp linear rendering of head and features, and intense personal examination that characterize many of his later paintings.  Often in these late works, individuality gives way to a generalized, iconic vision of woman as mysterious life force.

The work of Alberto Giacometti has long been of interest to Raymond and Patsy Nasher, and the Nasher collection now encompasses 13 sculptures, two paintings, and one drawing. Several of these are in the exhibition plus masterpieces spanning the artist’s career, such as Spoon Woman (1926, cast 1954), Woman with Her Throat Cut (1932), Tall Figure (1947), and The Glade (1950).

“It is an honor to present so many outstanding works by this great master of modern art at the Nasher Sculpture Center,” said Raymond Nasher. “The show directly complements and expands upon the many other Giacomettis in our collection.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Véronique Wiesinger, Director of the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation in Paris, and Paola Caròla, a friend and model of Giacometti whose portrait bust is in the exhibition.

“Our show contains a number of works that have rarely or never been publicly exhibited before,” said Director Steven Nash. “These objects and the two catalogue essays help advance our knowledge of Giacometti, whose biography has sometimes proven as elusive as the meanings behind his evocative figures.”

The Nasher Sculpture Center’s display of The Women of Giacometti is presented by Chase. The exhibition was made possible with the help of several generous loans from the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, private collectors, and institutions including: the Alberto Giacometti Foundation, Zurich; The Beyeler Foundation, Basel; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Before the Nasher Sculpture Center, the exhibition was presented at the PaceWildenstein gallery in New York from October 28 to December 17, 2005.

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