Edi Hila @ Galerie Mitterand, Paris - Tirana-Versailles

Edi Hila : Tirana-Versailles
Galerie Mitterand, Paris
Jusqu'au 23 décembre 2017

La Galerie Mitterrand présente la troisième exposition personnelle du peintre albanais Edi Hila. Cette exposition, intitulée Tirana-Versailles, intervient à la suite de la participation de l’artiste à la dernière documenta à Cassel et Athènes et est l’occasion pour le public parisien de découvrir un ensemble de peintures réalisées entre 2001 et 2015. L’artiste bénéficiera prochainement d’une grande rétrospective au Musée d’Art Moderne de Varsovie (mars-mai 2018).

Figure majeure de la scène balkanique, Edi Hila témoigne depuis plus de vingt ans des profonds changements vécus par les sociétés postcommunistes européennes. Ayant refusé d'émigrer vers un pays économiquement plus riche, il vit à Tirana, où il développe un travail de réflexion sur la nature transitoire de l'histoire de son pays (frontière naturelle entre occident et orient) et sur la position de la peinture albanaise dans l'histoire de l'art méditerranéenne.

L’exposition Tirana-Versailles présentée à la Galerie Mitterrand réunit une sélection d’oeuvres d’Edi Hila provenant de différentes séries qu’il a réalisées depuis le début des années 2000. Ces peintures mettent l’accent sur l’environnement urbain et plus particulièrement sur l’architecture qui est, selon l’artiste, le lieu d’expression privilégié de l’identité albanaise. C’est à travers sa représentation qu’il matérialise visuellement et symboliquement le pouvoir politique, l’héritage culturel et le climat psychologique de son pays. L’exposition réunit des réalités sociales opposées. Les bâtiments officiels du régime autoritaire communiste - dans les oeuvres Pyramides, Monuments, Municipalité de Tirana - côtoient certains édifices modestes comme dans Périphérie ou à l’abandon dans la peinture Maison III. La référence à Versailles est présente dans la série récente des Boulevards notamment exposée dans sa totalité lors de la dernière documenta. Dans cette série, où sont représentés les principaux édifices publics qui bordent le Boulevards des Martyrs de la Nation, à Tirana, Edi Hila, établi un parallèle entre l’organisation urbaine et architecturale de l’âge classique, avec notamment le plan géométrique et la grandiloquence ornementale de Versailles et l’expression autoritaire du pouvoir communiste dans l’urbanisation et l’implantation de ses bâtiments officiels. De Tirana à Versailles, l’artiste nous sensibilise, avec sa peinture délicate et mystérieuse, aux relations complexes qui nouent notre histoire, nos identités et notre environnement.

Edi Hila est né à Shkodër, en Albanie, en 1944. Depuis 1991, il enseigne la peinture à l'Académie des Arts de Tirana où il forma notamment des artistes comme Adrian Paci et Anri Sala. Il a participé à de nombreuses expositions internationales telles que la Biennale de Venise (1999), After the Wall au Moderna Museet à Stockholm (1999), au Hamburger Bahnhof à Berlin et au Ludwig Museum à Budapest (2000), Blood and Honey, The Future's Balkan sous le commissariat de Harald Szeeman au Essl Museum à Vienne (2003), la Biennale de Liverpool (2010) ou encore la documenta de Kassel et Athènes (2017). Ses oeuvres sont présentes dans les collections du Musée national d'art Moderne - Centre Pompidou, du FRAC Pays de la Loire, du Fonds Municipal de la ville de Paris, de la Neue Gallery à Cassel et du Musée d’Art Moderne de Varsovie.

Galerie Mitterrand
79 rue du Temple - 75003 Paris
www.galeriemitterrand.com

Peter Kogler @ Galerie Mitterrand, Paris

Peter Kogler
Galerie Mitterrand, Paris
Jusqu'au 23 décembre 2017

La Galerie Mitterrand présente une nouvelle exposition personnelle de PETER KOGLER. A cette occasion, l’artiste autrichien présente une installation visuelle et sonore (son de Franz Pomassl) ainsi qu’un ensemble de collages récents.

Peter Kogler est un artiste pionnier de la création assistée par ordinateur. Toujours à la pointe de la technologie, il décline depuis une trentaine d'années une série de motifs récurrents qu’il matérialise sous de nombreuses formes : impressions bi et tridimensionnelles, sculpture, mobilier, papier-peint, dispositifs lumineux, collages et autres installations. Son iconographie, constituée depuis ses débuts de fourmis, cerveaux, globes terrestres, ampoules et lignes ondulatoires, est une métaphore du réseau, des flux et du lien social.

Pour sa nouvelle exposition à la Galerie Mitterrand, Peter Kogler présente une installation visuelle et sonore créée en 2016, produite et exposée par la Fondation ERES à Munich la même année et au K21 à Düsseldorf en 2017. L’oeuvre est une boîte de H 240 x 230 x 270 cm dans lequel le visiteur est invité à entrer. A l’intérieur, les murs composés d’écrans LED et de miroirs reflètent à l’infini une animation vidéo kaléidoscopique créée par ordinateur. L’image du visiteur se reflète et fait partie intégrante de cet univers psychédélique et mouvant. Cette immersion dans un environnement abstrait et hypnotique est caractéristique des installations vidéo que Peter Kogler développe depuis le début des années 2000. Toutefois, pour la première fois, Peter Kogler a conçu une installation vidéo qui n’est pas techniquement in situ et donc éphémère. Il s’agit cette fois-ci d’un dispositif vidéo à la fois sculptural et par conséquent déplaçable. Cet forme hybride pourrait être envisagée comme une sorte de Dream Machine du XXIème siècle.

Un ensemble de collages réalisés spécialement pour l’exposition est aussi présenté. Ces oeuvres, pensées comme des « mood-boards », sont composées d’images collectées par l’artiste au cours des 30 dernières années. Celles-ci sont assemblées selon des protocoles fixés par l’artiste et combinées avec son iconographie personnelle. Elles constituent une sorte de paysage mental, une fenêtre sur le processus créatif spécifique de Peter Kogler.

Peter Kogler est né à Innsbruck en 1959 et vit et travaille à Vienne (Autriche). Peter Kogler a fait l’objet de nombreuses expositions internationales notamment à la Documenta IX (1992) et X (1997) à Kassel ainsi que dans le pavillon autrichien de la Biennale de Venise (1995). Il a bénéficié d’expositions personnelles dans de nombreuses institutions telles que le MAMCO de Genève (2007), le MUMOK de Vienne (2009), le Museu Colecção Berardo à Lisbonne (2009) et plus récemment au MSU – Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2014), au Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienne (2015) ou encore à l’ING Art Center, Bruxelles (2016).

Galerie Mitterrand
79 rue du Temple - 75003 Paris
www.galeriemitterrand.com

Miwa Ishiba @ Gallery MoMo Projects, Tokyo

Miwa Ishiba: I Want to Listen to You
GALLERY MoMo Projects, Tokyo
Through 16 December, 2017

GALLERY MoMo Projects presents the second solo exhibition by MIWA ISHIBA entitled I Want to Listen to You.

​In her early works, Miwa Ishiba used to paint animals and plants with the brush stroke like Japanese painting and has depicted mainly portrait since 2006. Portrait: Haru in 2009 seems to foresee the birth of her own child because it is reminiscent of her son even though he was born after the work. The artist’s motif is mostly the portrait of children and depicts controlled feelings with delicate brushwork. Her child has just flown to the new world through her works as a model within a radius of three meters.

​After the great earthquake and the nuclear accident happened in Japan in 2011, Ishiba could not dispel concerns about the future of her child; she attempted to create the incredibly cheerful paintings. Even though her child has grown up without any problems, she cannot help receiving the influence from the events and appearing it to the colors.

​The Japanese political issues give many parents the concerns over the future of their children. In contrast with her hopes and ideals that she felt from her son in everyday life, Ishiba reflects her concerns that many parents in Japan have to the face expression in the portraits of children. The works of Ishiba tell a lot of things that many people feel in the society. Ishiba succeeds in describing the fears she feels not only as an artist but also as a mother.

​In this Exhibition, Miwa Ishiba attempts to create her own world with subdued color and black lines by pencils and acrylic. The earth-toned works remind the old book illustrations like by Arthur Rackham and Aubrey Vincent Beardsley. Drawing several sketches for a work, Ishiba pursues her world she wants to express. The children portraits with various costumes seem to be for introduction for characters in a story and their facial expressions and their eyes show the story.

​Miwa Ishiba was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1973. After she dropped out Musashino Art University Junior College of Art and Design, she started to produce mainly illustrations. Ishiba, however, switched over to her career in a painter because she got attention at “GEISAI #6” in 2006. She has joined the group exhibitions and had the solo exhibition since 2008. This is her third solo exhibition at this gallery.

GALLERY MoMo Projects
2F 6-2-6 Roppongi Minato-ku Tokyo 106-0032 Japan
www.gallery-momo.com

Patrick Faigenbaum and Joan Roca @ La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona

Patrick Faigenbaum and Joan Roca: Barcelona, Besòs View
La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona
Through 4 February 2018

Barcelona, Besòs View is the outcome of an unusual collaboration between a photographer and a geographer to produce a unique “urban portrait”. Undertaken in Barcelona and Paris, it is a testimony about the transformation of the eastern waterfront of the city of Barcelona in the early years of 21st century, looking from the periphery—the Besòs River—towards the centre.

The first photographs were taken in 1999, and the last in 2007. It aspired to do much more than simply expose a zone of the city or a community: it was about offering a synthetic and general representation of an urban development process as pictured in the minds of the citizens, but from a peripheral perspective, that of the neighbourhoods on the north-eastern waterfront.

According to Joan Roca, “constructing a vision that was locally rooted—but not “localist”—has been a way of contributing to a new perception of the ‘local’ and the ‘global’”.

La Virreina Centre de la Imatge
Palau de la Virreina
La Rambla, 99. 08002 Barcelona
http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/lavirreina/en/

Marianne Mispelaëre @ Martine Aboucaya, Paris

Marianne Mispelaëre : Echolalia
Martine Aboucaya, Paris
Jusqu'au 21 décembre 2017

Pour sa première exposition personnelle à la galerie Martine Aboucaya, Marianne Mispelaëre a choisi de travailler sur les disparitions des langages.

Les langues nous font voir. Celle que que nous parlons conditionne notre regard sur le monde : en tant que système, elle détermine une façon spécifique de comprendre ce qui nous environne, elle influe sur notre capacité à penser et à agir. Ce n'est pas seulement un outil de communication, c'est aussi un filtre actif qui donne une tonalité à la réalité, un point de vue.

L’écholalie implique un comportement répétitif de la parole. Par ce titre, l'exposition redouble les oeuvres et les actions.

Dès l'entrée, AUTODAFÉ propose des phrases qui ont toutes un lien avec la vision, la perception. Les messages invitent à regarder au-delà des apparences, des clichés, à percevoir et à comprendre plutôt que de voir frontalement ce qui est présent devant nos yeux. Le dessin mural est généré par un système d'écriture en réserve.

L'oeuvre Palimpseste, déjà présente dans l'exposition précédente, s'est agrandie. Une grande fenêtre d'effacement à la gomme bleue s'ouvre à nous.

Dans la Bibliothèque des Silences, nous faisons face à une liste de 52 langues dites « mortes », ne comportant plus aucun locuteur natif. Ici les noms de ces langues, la date précise ou approximative de leurs disparitions, toutes ces informations sont dessinées, puis seront effacées à nouveau. La gomme rendra le texte presque invisible, pourtant elle le conservera dans sa propre matière. Elle en est la mémoire.
Il s'agit ici de langues disparues au XXIème siècle. A l'échelle d'une année, nous pouvons imaginer que chaque dimanche, une langue s'est évanouie.
Cette oeuvre murale fonctionne avec une table d'orientation qui reprend en étoile les dernières personnes à avoir parlé une de ces langues. Hommage à ceux dont la mort a également éteint un langage.

La video Standpoint est aussi un point de vue. C'est une prise de position individuelle.
La conversation entre Margaret Two Shields, Marcus Heim et Marianne Mispelaëre a été enregistrée en août 2017. Les images ont été tournées en mars et en juillet 2017 dans la réserve des natifs américains de Standing Rock (Dakota du Nord, États-Unis), à l’aube de la mise en route du Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Cette femme cherche ses mots dans sa langue maternelle, mais ne les trouve plus. Elle en parle pourtant, avec fierté et en images, mais en anglais...

Mais une langue est aussi un moyen simple et complexe pour "parler". Deux grands dessins au trait reprennent des conversations intellectuelles ou amoureuses. L'artiste les retranscrit en temps réel de l'écoute. Quand deux individus se parlent, ils s’associent et chacun succède à l’autre avec ce qu’il a de complexité, spontanéité et expériences, dans le but de construire ensemble, par strates, une idée, une conviction.
Et dans ces dessins, les silences deviennent des points.

MARTINE ABOUCAYA
5, rue Sainte-Anastase - 75003 Paris
www.martineaboucaya.com

Alfredo Volpi @ Gladstone Gallery, New York

Alfredo Volpi
Gladstone Gallery, New York
Through December 22, 2017

Gladstone Gallery presents an exhibition of historic works by Brazilian painter Alfredo Volpi (1896 – 1988), the first solo presentation of his work in the United States. Alfredo Volpi is regarded as one of the most influential and celebrated Brazilian painters, who the preeminent public intellectual Mario Pedrosa called “the master of his time.” Honing his craft during the rise of modernism in Brazil, Volpi has made a lasting impact on the history of art through his signature approach to depicting the forms of everyday experiences—from festival banners to common row houses—in vibrantly chromatic abstraction.

Tangentially connected with Concretism, the mid-century Brazilian artistic movement that included Tarsila do Amaral, Waldemar Cordeiro and others, Alfredo Volpi occupied a liminal space between naïve and fine art, as a selftaught artist with a distinct aesthetic style that distinguished his work from the academic painters of his time. Alfredo Volpi emigrated from Lucca, Italy to São Paulo, Brazil as a child, spending the remainder of his life in Cambuci, which inspired the city and seascapes that filled his oeuvre. Volpi first explored the medium of paint as an apprentice to a wall decorator, where he not only perfected a craftsman’s ability to prepare surfaces and mix pigments, but also became interested in architecture and urban space. In the 1930s, Volpi began to paint in his free time, turning to subjects that were immediately at hand—namely Cambuci and the surrounding area. However, it was not until the end of that decade when he began to fully develop a signature style of painting. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Volpi began to depict building façades and rudimentary flags in his paintings using a parti-colored array of tempera paints. Volpi’s evocative and thoughtfully considered color palettes transformed these everyday scenes and subjects into abstract patterned landscapes, connecting his fine art practice with his early work as a designer. This initial impulse to deconstruct and reshow elements of everyday life through his unique style of painting also demonstrated his early attempts at pushing the boundaries of early modern art practices.

This exhibition focuses on the different aspects of his practice during his most engaging phase between the late 1950s and mid 1970s. Gathering major works, many of which have never been exhibited outside of Brazil, the paintings on view survey the façade, banner, and nautical paintings with which he is most associated. On this occasion, the first major monograph in English of Volpi’s work has been published which includes a new essay on his work by scholar Rodrigo Moura and historical writings on the artists by Aracy de Amaral, Willys de Castro, and Mario Pedrosa, translated into English for the first time.

ALFREDO VOLPI

Alfredo Volpi was born in 1896 in Lucca, Italy, and died in 1988 in São Paulo. Throughout his lifetime, Volpi had solo exhibitions at Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil, Porto Alegre, Brazil; Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Campinas, Brazil; Biblioteca Municipal Mario de Andrade, São Paulo; Companhia do Metropolitano de São Paulo - Metrô; and Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro. Subsequent to his death in 1988, many institutions have shown Volpi’s work, including Paulo Kuczynski Escritório de Arte, São Paulo; Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo; Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Belgium; Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro; Instituto de Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo; Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro; Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Espaço Cultural Banco Central, São Paulo; Museu de Valores do Banco Central, Brasília, Brazil; Centro Cultural São Paulo; Museu Nacional de Belas-Artes, Rio de Janeiro; Centro Cultural Laurinda Santos Lobo, Rio de Janeiro; and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. In 1953, Volpi won the prestigious Grand Prix for Brazilian painting at the second São Paulo Art Biennial. Volpi was also included in the Venice Biennale in 1950, 1952, 1954, 1962 and 1964.

GLADSTONE GALLERY
130 East 64th Street
New York, NY 10065 USA
www.gladstonegallery.com

Ville Kylätasku @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

Ville Kylätasku: Music Box Of The Soul
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki
November 17 – December 22, 2017

Electric energy meets vulnerable sensibility in the latest paintings by VILLE KYLÄTASKU (b. 1979). The exhibition was inspired by rave culture and the clubs of Berlin: Kylätasku’s neon colors glimmer like strobe lights on a dance floor, shining like glossy plastic, accentuating a palette laced by heavy blacks and matte whites, each canvas radiating its own gleaming aura. In his personal retake on Action Painting, Ville Kylätasku pushes his technique in a more expressionistic direction. The airy paintings collectively transform the gallery into a self-contained narrative space in which the canvases engage in both two-way dialogues and also in a broader conversation pulling together the entire group of works.

Painted on sheets of PVC, Ville Kylätasku’s paintings have an immaterial, well-nigh metaphysical quality. His work is inspired by his personal philosophy embracing the positive emotions invoked by art. The artist believes that society is on the brink of a spiritual revolution that will transform humanity in unprecedented ways. Feeling that we focus too much energy on external realities, the artist strives to redirect our attention toward our inner world. His work ponders perennial issues such as the challenge of confronting and accepting oneself: the artist sees life as a self-invented illusion with the ultimate goal of self-discovery. After that moment of self-enlightenment is attained, he believes that we become genuinely good human beings, albeit that everything ultimately begins and ends with a mystery.

In addition to studying art, Ville Kylätasku studied design at the Lahti University of Applied Sciences, which inspired his long-term explorative interest in experimenting with various materials. His work is represented in collections including the Artists’ Association of Finland and the Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art as well as numerous private collections around the world. The artist lives and works in Berlin.

GALERIE FORSBLOM
Lönnrotinkatu 5 / Yrjönkatu 22
00120 Helsinki, Finland
www.galerieforsblom.com

Jannis Varelas @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

Jannis Varelas: The Pomegranate Circus / Under The Chair
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki
November 17 – December 22, 2017

The Greek artist JANNIS VARELAS (b. 1977) unveils the surprising side of banal elements in everyday life. Playfully fusing abstraction and realistic representation, his paintings explore lived spaces through a myriad of collage-like details. He constructs the reality from fragments: like in archeological excavations, lived moments are presented to us in a seemingly arbitrary composition of random traces. We are shown a lighter lying on a packet of cigarettes, a small stained cloth resembling the head of a mythical creature, food leftovers shaped as a happy face: when seen from a specific perspective, these insignificant remnants suggest a different reality that can open up to a new dimension, full of possibilities.

The custom-made pink carpet stretched across the gallery space brings together a series of paintings, a sculpture and a four-channeled video installation. The Great Cleaner is a sculpture that stands as a metaphor for the contemporary Western obsession with cleanliness, which, according to the artist, does not allow for the accidental to define modern narration.

In the four-channeled video installation The Noodle Eater, the topography of the living space takes the form of a psychological portrait. One of the video panels features the remembrance of an empty bed, while another panel shows a protagonist eating noodles wearing a cast of Jannis Varelas’ own face. The scene resembles a commercial audition, while the visitor hears a voiceover narrating the chronology of the human species interwoven with that of the history of noodles.

The signs and symbols in Jannis Varelas’ work resemble automatic painting or children’s drawings, with added dynamism deriving from the artist’s highly physical, expressive technique. His work reflects on social issues and the plight of humanity in world history, but the thematic content is expressed in a web of subtle allusions that spontaneously follow the artist’s irrational trains of thought. Jannis Varelas’ work has been exhibited widely around the world at venues such as the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, London’s Saatchi Gallery and the Kunsthalle Wien. The artist divides his time between Los Angeles, Vienna and Athens.

GALERIE FORSBLOM
Lönnrotinkatu 5 / Yrjönkatu 22
00120 Helsinki, Finland
www.galerieforsblom.com

Michael John Whelan @ Grey Noise, Dubai

Michael John Whelan: The Good Soil
Grey Noise, Dubai
November 8 - December 30, 2017

Deep inside a sandstone mountain on a remote Arctic Archipelago, seeds of the world are stored in the refrigerated vault of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, only to be withdrawn in the event of war or natural disaster. Over three thousand kilometres away, hidden in the churchyard of a remote Welsh village, is a 5,500-year-old tree. As a sapling this Taxus baccata or Yew tree took root 1,000 years before the first Egyptian pyramids were built. Although poisonous to humans, over centuries material from the tree was removed to make talismans. In recent years, votive offerings of personal belongings have been hung from the tree. 

These and other places, scientists and organisms are visited in Michael John Whelan’s new film The Good Soil, where he continues his investigation of the phenomenology of nature and temporality. Utilising an essay film narrative, three different perspectives are woven together symbolising fixed past, fluctuating present and undefined future. By allowing them to be intrinsically linked, our mutable relationship with the natural world is explored. Slow paced cinematography in combination with an immersive soundscape and voiceover create an intimate and at times poetic journey. 

Informed by long-term research, Michael John Whelan’s latest works examine the historical resonance of diverse places and their potential to influence or be consumed by future realities. Recent projects include Darkness had no need (2017) where Whelan documents the darkest locations in the world through sound and durational analog photography, and the film From the Mountain (2014) that deals with the killing of the last wolf in Ireland in 1786. 

MICHAEL JOHN WHELAN

Michael John Whelan was born in Dublin, Ireland. His work has been exhibited and screened internationally in institutions, galleries and project spaces, including solo exhibitions (selection) at Rua Red, Dublin; Grey Noise, Dubai; Kunstverein Bochum and Boetzelaer|Nispen, Amsterdam. Group exhibitions and screenings (selection) include Kunsthall Stavanger; Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna; Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland; Dortmund Kunstverein; Kiasma, Helsinki; Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Museum Bochum; Noorderlicht Gallery, Groningen; Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin. He received a BA in Fine Art from IADT-DL, Dublin in 2002 and an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design (University of the Arts London) in 2004. He has had two books published: ‘The sun shone on the nothing new’, published by Grey Noise/Lismore Castle Arts and ‘Red Sky Morning’, published by Argobooks, Berlin. He is represented by Grey Noise, Dubai and has work in a number of public and private collections.

This exhibition is supported by Culture Ireland.

GREY NOISE
Unit 24, Alserkal Avenue Street 8, Exit 43, SZR Al Quoz 1, Dubai, UAE
www.greynoise.org

Garth Weiser @ Casey Kaplan Gallery, NYC

Garth Weiser

Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York

November 2 – December 23, 2017

Casey Kaplan presents new paintings by GARTH WEISER, marking his seventh exhibition with the gallery.

Garth Weiser’s large-scale compositions resume an ongoing concern for spatial abstraction and perspectival deviations. His canvases are meticulously crafted and built through a unique process of taping, spraying, cutting, and scraping. Intricate layers of crisscrossing paint emerge in an evocation akin to neural pathways of the brain. Trapped underneath grated layers of enamel, oil and gold leaf, Garth Weiser’s preliminary gestural markings act as physical traces of memories embedded in a matrix of synaptic connections.

Garth Weiser's new paintings reveal distinct patterns, idioms, logos, and symbols beneath striations of paint. His turbulent under-paintings are achieved through recent material experimentation. Incorporating elements of collage and repurposing cut sections of t-shirts, Weiser is alluding to the ubiquity and inevitable commodification of subcultural ephemera. In one painting, entitled The Walking Dead (2017) a humorous, yet uncanny smiley face, rendered in a post-apocalyptic neon sludge, flickers underneath a thick network of paint. In other works, swathes of tie-dye form a pseudo-countercultural backdrop for passive or even complacent slogans, such as “every little thing is going to be alright” and “l ? DC”. These disparate segments are hybridized into the canvases and then buried by several layers of oil and spray paint. The underlying elements re-emerge only after multiple coatings and excavations. Through this process, the paintings accumulate densely textured surfaces, further obscuring their legibility. Small ruts, recalling the welded markings of excavation-hole covers, fuse with dyed cotton and intersect with larger, burn-like scars. Grooves rise into peaks where the paint coagulates.

The resulting works function as visual riddles with no single solution. The collaged systems appear as though intertwined — vibrating between foreground and background, unclear as to where one ends and another begins. Each composition remains in a constant state of flux, triggering multistable perceptions. In effect, ambiguous sensory information confounds our cognitive ability to process the divergent visual outputs.

GARTH WEISER (b. 1979, Helena, MT) lives and works in New York City and Hillsdale, NY. Garth Weiser was recently the subject of a major retrospective at The Contemporary Austin Art Museum in Austin, TX, with an accompanying monograph published on the occasion. Other recent solo exhibitions include: Altman Siegel, San Francisco, (2014); Casey Kaplan, New York, (2013); and White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO, (2010). His work has additionally been included in numerous group exhibitions, such as: The Campaign for Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2016);l Pattern: Follow the Rules, the Eli and Edythe Broad Museum at Michigan State University (2013); Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2012); Nothing Beside Remains, curated by Shamim Momin, Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), Marfa, TX (2011); Seeing is a Kind of Thinking: A Jim Nutt Companion, curated by Julie Rodrigues Widholm, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL (2011); and Big New Field: Artists in the Cowboys Stadium Art Program, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX (2010). Garth Weiser’s work is held in collections of prominent institutions, including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Whitworth, University of Manchester, Manchester, England; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum: Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

CASEY KAPLAN

121 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.caseykaplangallery.com