Julian Charrière: Towards No Earthly Pole @ Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

Julian Charrière: Towards No Earthly Pole
Sean Kelly Gallery, New York
January 31 - March 21, 2020

Sean Kelly presents Towards No Earthly Pole, JULIAN CHARRIÈRE’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Recognized as one of the most innovative and prominent artists of his generation, Julian Charrière is renowned for a complex discipline that links artistic and scientific inquiry, coalescing ecology, geology, archaeology, physics, historical inquiry, and nomadic exploration. Centered around the US premiere of Julian Charrière’s video work of the same name, the exhibition continues Julian Charrière’s exploration into how human civilization and the natural landscape are inextricably linked.

Julian Charrière conceived the film, Towards No Earthly Pole, while aboard a Russian research ship for the first Antarctic Biennale. The powerful impression made on him by the Antarctic landscape and his readings of accounts of early 20th-century exploration led him to focus on Iceland, Greenland, the Rhône and Aletsch glaciers and Mont Blanc in France. This meditative 102-minute film, the result of a series of expeditions made between 2017-2019, combines footage taken from each of the locations. Filmed at night, the dazzling landscapes Julian Charrière captured are dramatically lit by a spotlight carried on a drone; as light tracks across the dark terrain, incredible shapes and tonalities of an almost otherworldly nature are revealed. Towards No Earthly Pole offers a unique vision of polar landscapes, inviting a unique consideration of their mythos, delicate ecology, and fraught geopolitical condition.

Exhibited in conjunction with the film are four sculptures titled Not All Who Wander Are Lost, 2019. A series of perforated boulders, which rest atop beds of core samples that were drilled and removed from each mass, reflect on the movement of matter. They were inspired by a geological paradox Julian Charrière encountered on several occasions during his travels. Referred to as “erratics,” these large boulders, found in the middle of otherwise empty fields, differ in size and type from the rocks native to the surrounding area. An enigma to previous civilizations, scientific study has revealed that these peculiar objects are deposits left behind by glacial ice as it glided across vast distances. In addition to these sculptures and a suite of related photographs in the front gallery, Julian Charrière’s film And Beneath It All Flows Liquid Fire, 2019 will be on view in the lower gallery. Filmed in Lugano, Switzerland, the video shows the Antonio Bossi Fountain in the Piazza Riziero Rezzonico at night, spewing fire to create a sense of ambiguity. Society has regarded fossil fuels as limitless, however, the exhaustion of these resources and the consequences of their destructive forces becomes inevitable. Julian Charrière’s fountain combines these themes to stress the coexistence of both elements and forces. Throughout the exhibition, in direct and complex ways, Julian Charrière juxtaposes fire and ice, harnessing their oppositional nature to symbolize change and transformation. 

Born in Morges, Switzerland in 1987, JULIAN CHARRIÈRE currently lives and works in Berlin. A participant of the Institut für Raumexperimente (Institute for Spatial Experiments), Julian Charrière has exhibited his work – both individually and as a part of the Berlin-based art collective Das Numen – at museums and institutions worldwide, including MAMbo- Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Italy; MASI Lugano, Switzerland; the Parasol Unit Foundation for Art, London; the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, Switzerland; the Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Thyssen-Bornemizsa Art Contemporary, Vienna; the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; the Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland; the K11 Foundation, Shanghai; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo amongst others. His work has been featured in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India; the 12th Biennale de Lyon, France; the 13th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice; the 57th Venice Biennale, Venice; the inaugural Toronto Biennial of Art, Canada; and the 14 Bienal de Artes Mediales de Santiago, Chile. In 2013 and 2015, Julian Charrière was awarded the Kiefer Hablitzel Award / Swiss Art Award and in 2018, was the recipient of the GASAG Art Prize.

SEAN KELLY GALLERY
475 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
skny.com

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Quentin Tarantino, Fourth Annual Kodak Film Awards: Lifetime Achievement Award

Fourth Annual Kodak Film Awards to Honor Quentin Tarantino With Lifetime Achievement Award

QUENTIN TARANTINO

Photo by Art Streiber

Tyler, the Creator, Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig, Melina Matsoukas, Dan Mindel, Rodrigo Prieto are also honored.

The fourth annual Kodak Film Awards takes place at the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Clubhouse on Wednesday, January 29, 2020.

Academy Award® winning director/writer/producer Quentin Tarantino receives the Kodak Lifetime Achievement Award for his incomparable contributions to the industry, with all of his films having been shot on film. His ninth and most current film Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood has been heavily lauded throughout this season and is nominated for ten Academy Awards®.

The multi-talented artist/musician/producer/director/designer Tyler, the Creator receives the inaugural Maverick award. Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story) and Greta Gerwig (Little Women) each receive Auteur Awards for their directorial work this year, while Melina Matsoukas (Queen & Slim) receives the First Feature Award. Dan Mindel (Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker) and Rodrigo Prieto (The Irishman) receives Lumiere Awards, in recognition of their career work in the field of Cinematography, and HBO’s Succession receives the TV Series of the Year Award.

Kodak has seen a substantial increase in film sales each year for five consecutive years and has invested in film processing labs across the world to meet the excitement and demand surrounding film. 

“It has been a banner year for film,” says Steve Bellamy, President of Motion Picture and Entertainment, Eastman Kodak Co. “This year, movies shot on film represent five of the 10 productions nominated in the Academy’s Best Picture and Cinematography categories, and a total of 37 Oscar® nominations. This is a great testament to the intrinsic value of film to the motion picture arts. We are excited to celebrate these extraordinary filmmakers at the Kodak Film Awards this year.”

The 2020 Kodak Film Awards will also celebrate all of the highly recognized motion pictures shot on film in 2019, including:

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Academy Award, Golden Globes, BAFTA, Critics Choice)

Marriage Story (Academy Award, Indie Spirit, Golden Globes, BAFTA, Critics Choice, Gotham Awards)

The Irishman (Academy Award, Golden Globes, BAFTA, Critics Choice)

Little Women (Academy Award, Golden Globes, BAFTA, Critics Choice)

The Lighthouse (Academy Award, Indie Spirit, BAFTA, Critics Choice, Gotham Awards)

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Academy Award, BAFTA)

Ad Astra (Academy Award, Critics Choice)

Bait (BAFTA)

Sorry We Missed You (BAFTA)

Apollo 11 (Indie Spirit, BAFTA, Gotham Awards)

Uncut Gems (Indie Spirit, Critics Choice, Gotham Awards)

Luce (Indie Spirit)

Give Me Liberty (Indie Spirit, Gotham Awards)

Premature (Indie Spirit)

Her Smell (Indie Spirit, Gotham Awards)

The Souvenir (Indie Spirit)

Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé (Emmy) 

Succession (TV) (Golden Globes, Emmy, Critics Choice)

The Painted Bird (Camerimage, Venice)

With his vibrant imagination and dedication to richly layered storytelling Quentin Tarantino is one of the most celebrated filmmakers of his generation. Tarantino made his directorial debut with RESERVOIR DOGS, a film which made an auspicious debut at the Sundance Film Festival and marked Tarantino’s first trip to Cannes (out of competition). Following RESERVOIR DOGS, Tarantino co-wrote, directed and starred in one of his most beloved films, PULP FICTION, which won numerous critics’ awards, a Golden Globe and Academy Award® for Best Screenplay, and the Palme D’Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. He then made JACKIE BROWN, KILL BILL VOL. 1 and VOL. 2, and DEATH PROOF. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, Tarantino’s World War II epic released in 2009, garnered numerous nominations including six BAFTA, four Golden Globe and eight Academy Award® nominations. In 2013, Tarantino won his second Oscar® for Best Screenplay for DJANGO UNCHAINED. The film was also nominated for five Golden Globe Awards (with a win for Tarantino for Best Screenplay), five BAFTAS (with another win for Tarantino) and five Academy Awards®. In 2015, Tarantino wrote and directed THE HATEFUL EIGHT, which received BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for the film’s screenplay. Tarantino’s most recent film, ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD, was nominated for 5 Golden Globes, (winning Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, Best Supporting Actor and Best Screenplay for Tarantino), 10 BAFTAS, and 10 Academy Award nominations including: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.

Tyler, The Creator is a 28-year-old auteur. A recording artist, songwriter, producer, director, designer and more, he first emerged in 2007 as co-founder of the collective Odd Future before going on to co-create and star in the cult TV show Loiter Squad on Adult Swim with his Odd Future cohorts. This was just the beginning for Tyler — since then he has become a Grammy Award winning artist, releasing five studio albums, launching an internationally acclaimed music festival (Camp Flog Gnaw) that has sold out 8 years running, creating two clothing brands (Golf Wang and Golf Le Fleur) that have collaborated with heritage brands like Converse, Lacoste and more, as well as creating two more TV shows (The Jellies! for Adult Swim and Nuts & Bolts for Viceland). His latest album IGOR debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart, saw him crowned GQ’s Man of the Year and Wall Street Journal Magazine’s Innovator of the Year in addition to being named Best Rap Album at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards just this past weekend.

Noah Baumbach was born in Brooklyn, New York. His films include Kicking and Screaming, The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg, Frances Ha, While We’re Young, Mistress America, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), and the documentary, De Palma.

Greta Gerwig is an Academy Award nominated director and writer who has established herself one of Hollywood’s most important voices. Gerwig’s second film LITTLE WOMEN starring Saoirse Ronan, Timothee Chalamet, Florence Pugh and Eliza Scanlen has been nominated for six Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards as well as PGA and WGA awards. Her first film LADY BIRD was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a nomination for Gerwig in the Best Director category, and the first to be nominated for a debut film. Gerwig is also a prolific actor, who received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in FRANCES HA, which she also co-wrote with Noah Baumbach. Her additional acting credits include JACKIE, MAGGIE’S PLAN, 20th CENTURY WOMEN, LOLA VERSUS, DAMSELS IN DISTRESS, and MISTRESS AMERICA. In Spring 2020, Gerwig will also appear on stage in Sam Gold’s Off-Broadway production of Anton Chekhov’s THREE SISTERS at The New York Theatre Workshop.

Melina Matsoukas’s brand of provocation comes from a unique, inherently multicultural point of view that flips existing narratives to normalize the inclusion of women and people of color in spaces where they previously were not represented. Matsoukas made her powerful feature directorial debut with the November 2019 release of QUEEN & SLIM starring Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith, which she also produced. Matsoukas began her television career as an executive producer and frequent director of the critically acclaimed HBO series INSECURE. She went on to direct MASTER OF NONE’s Emmy-winning “Thanksgiving” episode. She has brought her singular vision to music videos for Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Solange, Rihanna, Snoop Dogg, Lady Gaga and earned her second Grammy Award for Beyoncé’s “Formation”. Melina’s recognizable visual watermark has also landed her in the director’s chair for the global campaigns of major commercial clients such as Stella McCartney and Nike.

Born in South Africa, Dan Mindel, ASC, BSC, SASC, studied in Australia and in Britain and began his career as a camera loader. After working his way up to assistant cameraman, he came to the attention of directors such as Ridley and Tony Scott, who quickly recognized his talent and dedication. In 1997, Ridley Scott asked Mindel to be the second unit Director of Photography on his film G.I. JANE, opening the door for him to become Director of Photography on Tony Scott's 1998 action-thriller, ENEMY OF THE STATE. Mindel’s continued work with Tony Scott on films such as SPY GAME and DOMINO allowed him to enlarge his visual palette and break new ground through experimentation and innovation. In 2006, director J.J. Abrams selected Mindel to be Director of Photography on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III, marking the beginning of another exciting, and extremely successful creative alliance, including STAR TREK (2009), STAR WARS: EPISODE VII – THE FORCE AWAKENS and most recently, STAR WARS: EPISODE IX – THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. Mindel’s unique artistic approach to his cinematography, as well as his use of analog film are responsible for the signature look of the productions to which he lends his talents.

One of the most respected and acclaimed cinematographers in the world, Rodrigo Prieto is known for his meticulous setups, unconventional camerawork, rich use of color and creating a moving, visceral experience for the audience. Nominated for three Academy Awards for his work on BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2006), and Martin Scorsese’s SILENCE (2017) and THE IRISHMAN (2019), he has also been recognized with American Society of Cinematographers, Independent Spirit, BAFTA, and Online Film Critics Society Awards. Passionate about his work as a cinematographer, Rodrigo also directed his first short film, LIKENESS, starring Elle Fanning, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2013. Rodrigo is a frequent collaborator with Martin Scorsese, Ang Lee, Oliver Stone and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. His first collaboration with Inarritu, AMORES PERROS (2000), is widely hailed as the cinematographer’s breakthrough, and spurred Rodrigo’s relation from Mexico to Los Angeles. This movie, along with their next two projects, 21 GRAMS and BABEL, are regarded as the three films that have led the renaissance of Mexican cinema. Other notable films Rodrigo has shot include PASSENGERS, ARGO and THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.

kodak.com

Max Ernst: Collages @ Kasmin Gallery, NYC

Max Ernst: Collages

Kasmin Gallery, New York

January 23 - February 29, 2020

Kasmin prsents an exhibition of paper collages by German surrealist MAX ERNST (1891–1976). Staged in collaboration with the Destina Foundation, Collages features approximately forty collages on paper, ranging in both scale and subject matter, and spanning 1920 to 1975. Many of the works, with a focus on the 1960s and 70s, have never before been exhibited.

According to art historian Werner Spies, nearly everything in Max Ernst’s oeuvre can be traced back to collage. Bringing the fracture and disassociation of post-World War I existentialism into pictorial form, collage complements Ernst’s equally novel adoption of frottage and assemblage. The uniquely illusionistic quality and contextual depth of Ernst’s collages speak to his ability to seamlessly create new realities formed upon the Dada and Surrealist tenets of poetry, imagination, and dream.

Using source materials that include illustrations, periodicals, catalogs, newspapers, and scientific journals, these collages are often further altered using painting and drawing. They reveal fundamental aspects of Ernst’s art-making—the uncanny juxtaposition of unassociated forms and images. The exhibition consists of early works such as Loplop présente (1931), a superb example of Ernst’s use of indirect self-portraiture through his alter ego Loplop, who appears for the first time during the early 1930s and recurs throughout his oeuvre. Loplop is recognizable by his division into head, showcard, and feet, and calls to mind the structure of the cadavre exquis, the exquisite corpse.

A selection of collaged lettrines, or drop-caps, created by Ernst primarily for inclusion in artist books, are a focal point of the exhibition and demonstrate the artist’s range and fluidity of style within the medium of collage. Originating in European medieval illustrated manuscripts, lettrines acted to introduce a decorative flourish to the text and to indicate the beginning of a new chapter. In Lettrine D (1948) the forking branches of a tree intersect with an eel and a prehistoric winged creature to form the body of a Frankensteinian figure that frames the capital D. This particular lettrine was made for inclusion in a limited-edition catalogue designed by Ernst and published on the occasion of his 1949 retrospective at the Copley Galleries in Beverly Hills.

Eight of the works on display were originally presented at Alexander Iolas’ Paris gallery in 1971, the same year in which Max Ernst celebrated his eightieth birthday. Titled Lieux Communs, the exhibition featured twelve original collages and eleven poems by Ernst, highlighting his aptitude as an artist of both images and words. The collages and poems were also published as a limited edition print portfolio. Lieux communs translates directly to “truisms,” or more generally to “banalities,” or “trivialities,” reflecting the quotidian nature of the imagery selected by Ernst. Utilizing repeating patterns and dense cross-hatching, the artist folds the curvilinear shapes of the natural world—including animals such as Loplop—into scenes defined by the geometric structures of both classical and modern architecture. His composition of intimate domestic interiors, household objects, and indicators of bourgeoisie living are subtly unsettling. For example, Les Filles La Mort Le Diable (1970), translated as “Girls, Death, and the Devil,” can be demarcated into three vertical columns. Whilst at first glance the contents signal legibility, on closer inspection, it is clear that they misalign: the world has been rearranged by Ernst.

As articulated by Werner Spies, “Collage is the thread that runs through all of his works; it is the foundation on which his lifework is built. Once we have realized this, Max Ernst takes on the stature of an artist who opened the collage process—the combining of existing visual material—to possibilities that completely transformed its meaning, both technically and ideologically.”

Timothy Baum and Dr. Jürgen Pech contribute to the research and preparation of the exhibition.

MAX ERNST (1891–1976) was a German painter, sculptor, poet, and printmaker celebrated as one of the primary pioneers of Dada and Surrealism. Working in Europe during the heyday of Modernism, and in the US from 1941 to 1953, Ernst developed a style that melds metaphor, mythology, and memory, and draws upon the depths of the irrational and unconscious mind. His masterful illusionistic techniques and uncanny juxtapositions transform impossible compositions into unsettling realities. Whilst the menacing atmosphere of both world wars loom large in his work, Max Ernst's oeuvre is more accurately defined by an abundant life-force born out of a combination of the fanciful logic of dreams, the recurring and dynamic presence of animals, and Ernst’s enduring biting humor.

KASMIN

297 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10001

www.kasmingallery.com

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T. J. Wilcox: Spectrum @ Gladstone Gallery, NYC

T. J. Wilcox: Spectrum
Gladstone Gallery, New York
January 18 – February 22, 2020

Gladstone Gallery presents Spectrum, an exhibition of new works by T. J. Wilcox. For this show, Wilcox debuts a six-part silent film based on different colors of the rainbow. In its installation, each hue blends together and elaborates a figure or event that has been seminal to the artist’s experience in becoming an artist and as a gay man. The works in this show explore the artist’s maturation and identity in ways that are both deeply personal and universal. Alongside the film, T. J. Wilcox presents a series of new photocollages on silk based on the video works that comprise Spectrum, adding this new material to his expanding practice. 

The elliptical narratives from Spectrum transform a series of visual fragments into dissected fractions of light that delve into a variety of topics significant to T. J. Wilcox’s identity and research interests. Drawing from a range of cultural sources, from documentary to mythic, the single projection film investigates T. J. Wilcox’s cathexis towards objects of popular fixation and their significance in the formation of the artist’s queer identity. With Hyacinth and Apollo and Taglioni’s Dance, T. J. Wilcox references figures engaged in the act of preservation, of cultivating their own legends. Both Apollo’s invention of the hyacinth to memorialize his lover and prima ballerina La Taglioni’s habitual reenactment of her starlit dance over the snow parallel Wilcox’s process of reconstructing a memory through the use of emblematic imagery. In the works that derive from documentary sources, Garden in Hell, Grapefruit, and Green Carnation, T. J. Wilcox similarly manipulates significant anecdotes—gathering archival footage of Vogue editrix Diana Vreeland’s red living room, meditating on green carnations as a stand-in for Oscar Wilde’s flamboyant persona and as a reference to his prosecution for gross indecency, or Yoko Ono’s book of life instructions—in order to deconstruct the process by which history is distilled from embodied living experiences. Often, T. J. Wilcox’s evocative images hold queer double-meanings, and the same holds true in Monarch Butterfly which follows the eponymous creature, commonly associated with gay men and thought of as delicate and frivolous, as it completes one of the most complex migratory events in the natural world, traveling over 8,000 miles on its paper-thin wings. Exhibited simultaneously as looped videos that are projected onto a long, narrow screen, each film has differing durations. The resulting projection creates a seemingly never-ending viewing experience within the structurally complex exhibition space T. J. Wilcox has constructed. The narratives and colors bleed into one another, creating an optically compelling story that can be read or experienced as six different films or a single image. This complexity and careful attention to creating an immersive environment is further demonstrated through the monumental scale of the single screen and the cascading rainbow that appears beneath the projection, continuing to envelop the viewer into a space that is both vibrant and contemplative.

Alongside each film, T. J. Wilcox has made a series of multi-ply silk hangings, printed with a photo-collaged images that references the source materials from each new video work. The collages borrow from documentary sources, Wilcox’s own photography, illustrations, and found imagery to construct portraits of the historical subjects or natural world. Recalling both the omnipresent flag of queer liberation and the importance of the color spectrum in the optics of film and photography, Wilcox’s hanging photographs explore both process and history with a subtle biographical edge. 

T. J. Wilcox was born in 1965 in Seattle, Washington, and lives and works in New York. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Grand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan; Carthage Hall, Lismore Castle Arts, Waterford, Ireland; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Kunstverein Munich, Munich. T. J. Wilcox has been included in group exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musee d’art et d’histoire, Geneva; Centro Galego De Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany. His films have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Tate Modern, London, and he participated in the 2015 Biennale de Lyon and the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

GLADSTONE GALLERY
515 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
gladstonegallery.com

Robert Motherwell @ Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London - A Survey of Prints

Robert Motherwell: A Survey of Prints
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
17 January - 29 February, 2020

Bernard Jacobson Gallery presents an exhibition of prints by the American Abstract Expressionist artist Robert Motherwell (1915-1991). The exhibition is the most comprehensive show of his editioned work to date. It assembles around 80 of his best prints ranging from very early experimental pieces, to images from the groundbreaking collaboration with Ken Tyler and the more intimate and rare editions produced in the artist’s studio. Unique trial proofs are on display as well as preparatory works for the colourful collaged prints.

Throughout his long and distinguished career, Robert Motherwell produced a remarkable body of work that ranks among the most notable achievements in post-war American art. In addition to creating his celebrated paintings, drawings and collages, Robert Motherwell was a renowned and innovative printmaker, producing more than 500 works.

Robert Motherwell first learned about printmaking through the surrealists, who having emigrated from a troubled Europe to the States had established workshops there for artists to work together and exchange their ideas and thoughts.

His interest in printmaking was re-ignited in the 1960s. Having worked in large workshops such as Universal Art Editions and Hollander Workshop and gaining extensive experience in the various printmaking techniques during this period, Robert Motherwell decided in 1973 to buy his own etching and lithography press for his studio in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he was able to work independently and unburdened by the constraints of a large, commercial workshop. 

During the fruitful collaboration with Ken Tyler Robert Motherwell introduced his famous Elegy to the Spanish Republic theme into his printmaking. Five of these rare and powerful images will be on display in the show. These are shown alongside light collages of wine labels, cigarette packs which Robert Motherwell created later in his life. 

 “I do not smoke Gauloises cigarettes, but that particular blue of the label happens to attract me, so I possess it. …For a painter as abstract as myself, the collages offer a way of incorporating bits of the everyday world into pictures.”

Robert Motherwell’s inspiration through literature led him to create many livres d’artiste. Robert Motherwell describes his idea of collaborating with poets: “My vocabulary works only with poetry, that is to say with non-narrative writing to which my visual metaphors can be matched with verbal metaphors springing from the same kind of source…not illustration, but a series of explosions of fireworks, or oppositely, a kind of restrained silence”, Octavio Paz who like Robert Motherwell moved in surrealist circles in the late 40s was through his psychic automatism in literature the perfect inspiration for this artist book “Octavio Paz. Three Poems” which will be shown in the exhibition for the first time. The 27 lithographs were produced sparing no expensive and had gone “beyond bookness” as Robert Motherwell characterised the ambitious project. 

This exhibition at Bernard Jacobson Gallery is a comprehensive display of the visual vocabulary of Robert Motherwell’s oeuvre. Elegies, motifs from the open series, gestural prints and collages show the wide range of Robert Motherwell’s art and the creativity in his printmaking which make him one of the most prolific and adventurous printmakers of his time.

BERNARD JACOBSON GALLERY
28 Duke Street St. James's, London, SW1Y 6AG
jacobsongallery.com

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DEATH CULT & Nightmare @ Torrance Art Museum

 DEATH CULT and Alptraum (Nightmare)

Torrance Art Museum

January 18 – March 14, 2020

SKULLS. MOTORCYCLES. A MOMENT OF IMPACT.

Torrance Art Museum (TAM) examines the human fascination with skulls and mortality throughout the history of art and its intersection with motorcycle sub-cultures in the Main Gallery and Dark Room exhibition DEATH CULT. Gallery Two hosts a traveling exhibition of 239 artists from 21 countries called Alptraum (Nightmare).

Main Gallery & The Dark Room – DEATH CULT 

The obsession with Death has always been a fundamental pivot for much of art throughout history and across geographical boundaries. As Western contemporary culture moved into a period of youth sub-cultures in the mid-1950s the skull took on various signifiers for myriad groups and has continued to maintain that tradition with greasers, punks, contemporary skaters, and others making use of the skull as a motif. 

This exhibition focuses on the ubiquitous human skull and sub-cultural expression of ‘the American Dream’, with a particular focus on the motorcycle world lifestyle, as its participants have one of the largest mortality rates amongst these sub-cultures. DEATH CULT explores the link between the sub-cultural yearnings for freedom expressed through the motorcycle, its movies, its tropes, and the vanitas nature of skull related art works – a reminder of our own mortality, memento mori. 

Artists: William Arvin ,Wayne Martin Belger, Matthew Brannon, Liz Craft, Jesus Max Ferrandez, Amy Granat, Drew Heitzler, Roger Herman, Matthew Day Jackson, Jacob Kassay, Wes Lang, Robert Lazzarini, Olivier Mosset, Mark Mulroney, Frank Orozco, Don Porchella, Ronald Price, Jason Ramos, Blake Rayne, Jono Rotman, Allison Schulnik, Marcus Sendlinger, Ushio Shinohara, Meghan Smythe, Nick Veasey, Ben Venom, Cindy Wright, and others.

Curated by Max Presneill with Sue-Na Gay

Gallery Two – Alptraum (Nightmare)

A touring show of 2D works by 200+ artists, from 21+ countries, conceived and organized by Marcus Sendlinger (Germany) that has been travelling through the world since 2010. 

The title was inspired by the paintings of the Swiss artist Johann-Heinrich Füssli (1741 Zurich - 1825 London) who painted different versions of Incubus (Nachtmahr). Inspired by ghost stories, Füssli made the world of dreams and visions the subject of his paintings. This exhibition reflects on various artistic, social and cultural circumstances individually concerning nightmares - and each artists’ interpretation or reflection in drawing, collage, photography or works on paper. 

The 200+ artists invited to contribute to this exhibition have been asked to only submit works which they have had a direct hand in creating, so physical contact and mark making on the surface of the material is implied in a manner akin to the scryer, an ‘automatic writer’, a pyromancer’s stirring of the hot embers, an ectoplasmic medium – the hand that re-creates the subconscious wanderings of its owner. 

TORRANCE ART MUSEUM - TAM

3320 Civic Center Dr, Torrance, CA

www.torranceartmuseum.com

Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s @ Grey Art Gallery, New York University -"Taking Shape" Exhibition + Other Venues

Taking Shape 

Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s

Grey Art Gallery at New York University

January 14 – April 4, 2020

Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s explores the development of abstraction in the Arab world via paintings, sculpture, and works on paper dating from the 1950s through the 1980s. By looking critically at the history and historiography of mid-20th century abstraction, the exhibition considers art from North Africa and West Asia as integral to the discourse on global modernism. At its heart, the project raises a fundamental art historical question: How do we study abstraction across different contexts and what models of analysis do we use?

Examining how and why artists investigated the expressive capacities of line, color, and texture, Taking Shape highlights a number of abstract movements that developed in North Africa and West Asia, as well as the Arab diaspora. Across these regions, individual artists and artist collectives grappled with issues of authenticity, national and regional identity, and the decolonization of culture. 

Drawn from the collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, the exhibition features nearly 90 works by a diverse group of artists such as Etel Adnan, Shakir Hassan Al Said, Kamal Boullata, Huguette Caland, Ahmed Cherkaoui, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Rachid Koraïchi, Mohamed Melehi, and Hassan Sharif, among others. On view are works produced by artists from countries including Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and United Arab Emirates. The exhibition was curated and organized by Suheyla Takesh, Curator at the Barjeel Art Foundation, and Lynn Gumpert, Director of the Grey Art Gallery at New York University.

Taking Shape investigates the principles and meaning of abstraction in the context of the Arab world during the 1950s through the 1980s, a period that was significantly shaped by decolonization; the rise and fall of Arab nationalism(s); socialism; rapid industrialization; multiple wars and subsequent mass migration; the oil boom; and new state formations in the Arab/Persian Gulf. By the mid-20th century—and in parallel to growing opposition to Western political and military involvement in the region—many artists in the Arab world began to adopt a much more critical viewpoint toward culture, striving to make art relevant to their own political, cultural, and historical contexts. New opportunities for international travel during these years, and the rise of the circulating exhibition, also gave way to new forms of cultural and educational exchanges that allowed artists to encounter multiple modernisms—including various modes of abstract art—and to consider the role of the artist in the contemporary international landscape. “Via a critical examination of abstraction in the collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation, the exhibition invites a (re)consideration of the attribution of abstraction’s emergence to a single historical moment.” Takesh explains. “In its own way of emulating the artistic practices of the time, the exhibition is also a vantage point on how contemporary discourse on global modernisms and decentralized genealogies of abstraction is unfolding or, in a nod to the title of the show, taking shape.”

Lynn Gumpert adds, “The Grey Art Gallery takes great pride in partnering with the Barjeel Art Foundation. It is very appropriate that, as a university museum, the Grey broadens vistas and looks closely at art made over the four decades in question by individuals that come from so many different nations, with different belief systems and histories. We chose an exhibition title, Taking Shape, that recognizes and conveys to the public that our approach to abstraction in the Arab world is not static—even with regard to the art of this defined time frame—but is, rather, in formation.”

A major facet of abstraction in the Arab world is linked to a fascination with the artistic and formal potential of the Arabic letterform. In a departure from classical Islamic calligraphy, a new art movement called Hurufiyya was born, which engaged with the Arabic language as a visual and compositional element. Formal explorations of Arabic alphabets emerged concurrently in several parts of the Islamic world in the 1950s, and Iraqi artist Madiha Umar is often cited as a progenitor of the movement. Umar’s work features manipulated letterforms, deconstructed and overlaid on top of each other to create curvilinear compositions that echo the swirls and rhythms inherent to the script and the gesture of writing itself. While classical Arabic calligraphy is traditionally associated with religious Islamic texts, Hurufiyya artists transformed Arabic letterforms into abstract compositions that could be more readily appreciated by diverse audiences. As scholar Nada Shabout notes, “Liberating the [Arabic] letter from calligraphic rules detached it from the sacred and allowed it to be seen for its plastic qualities.” Yet many artists, including Egyptian Omar El-Nagdi and Sudanese Ibrahim El-Salahi, did not completely divorce themselves from religious or spiritual undertones. El-Nagdi’s artistic explorations between the early 1960s and late 1970s were inextricably linked to Islamic thought and Sufi rituals, characterized by rhythmic abstractions that bear formal semblance to the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, alif, also the first letter in the word Allah (god). El-Salahi’s rhythmic articulation of Arabic alphabets and abstraction of African sculptural forms in his 1964 work The Last Sound references the final sound of a soul’s passage from the corporeal plane to the spiritual plane, and underscores the artist’s commitment to creating art through a spiritual process. Distinct from other artists presented in the exhibition, the Palestinian painter Kamal Boullata engaged not just with individual Arabic letters, but whole phrases, which were often well-known verses derived from Islamic and Christian sacred texts.

New artist groups arose across the Arab world during this period to address the issue of how to localize and recontextualize existing 20th-century modernisms. The Baghdad Group for Modern Art, founded in 1951, sourced Mesopotamian archeological objects and locally-found motifs—such as ancient cuneiform symbols—to inform their aesthetic. Shakir Hassan Al Said, one of the group’s most prominent members, also displayed an affinity with Hurufiyya. In the 1960s, when Al Said become interested in Sufism and the spiritual potentialities of art, he published the “Contemplative Art Manifesto,” in which he advocates for a meditative and transcendental approach to art. Al Said’s work during this period manifests his practice of scratching, carving, burning, and otherwise altering the artwork surface to create amorphous compositions that appear to reference the cosmos itself.

The Casablanca School in Morocco, an avant-garde artist collective founded in 1965, promoted inquiry into local heritage to cultivate authentic visual languages and material palettes suited to their cultural and political contexts. Formed by artists including Mohamed Chebaa, Farid Belkahia, and Mohamed Melehi, among others, the school’s philosophy centered on its commitment to the study of local Islamic and Amazigh culture, which its members saw as inherently tied to nonrepresentational modes of expression. Through examination of Morocco’s traditional geometric painting, engraving, mosaic ornament, and carpets, as well as Islamic patterns and Amazigh tattoo symbols, the Casablanca School’s turn to abstraction was driven by a desire for a methodology that had historical relevance and recalled the local culture that existed prior to colonization. Chebaa’s highly geometric works evoke architectural plans and schematized topographies; his 1970s work Composition is rendered as a wooden relief sculpture, underscoring the school’s link to artisanship and crafts. Belkahia turned to the craft traditions of the medina for his work, using natural dyes painted on vellum and animal skin rather than oil on canvas to create his contemplative compositions. The brightly colored curvilinear compositions of Melehi reflect both the form and movement of sea waves and the gesture of inscribing Arabic calligraphy.

Similar to that of the Casablanca School, the work of the Aouchem group based in Algeria sought to reinterpret local symbolism and body art through abstract compositions. The group, whose name means “tattoo” in Arabic, was active for a short period from 1967 until 1971. While not a signatory of the Aouchem manifesto, Mohammed Khadda echoed the group’s central ideas of contemplating the mystical dimensions of runes and symbols of Amazigh culture. His works feature graphic signs evocative of calligraphic pictograms, painted over a surface of earth tones.

For many 20th-century artists in the Arab world who were making nonfigurative work, geometry and mathematics were guiding principles. These artists often drew inspiration from Islamic decorative patterns, architecture, carpets, and textiles.  Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair developed her own unique language of abstract, interlocking forms that had no specific reference to objects, place, or language. Choucair’s geometric canvases and organic sculptures reveal a deeply intellectual and holistic approach that combines influences from mathematics, philosophy, science, architecture, and spirituality. As Suheyla Takesh notes, “Mathematics served as a practical tool for artists in search of these paragons, both for its precision and for its potential to curtail human error.” The geometric still lifes by Palestinian artist Samia Halaby, produced following the artist’s trips to Egypt, Syria, and Turkey in 1966 to study Islamic architecture and geometric design, explore how the color of painted volumes affects the illusion of depth. Lebanese artist Saliba Douaihy, a contemporary of Choucair’s who emigrated to the U.S. in 1950, produced hard-edged and brightly colored geometric compositions that were also influenced by landscape. Douaihy cites the Mediterranean Sea as a source of inspiration for many of his minimalist abstract paintings. Etel Adnan, another Lebanese painter, also created works influenced by landscape, particularly locations that held personal significance. Writer Kaelen Wilson-Goldie notes the significance of abstracted landscapes among these artists: “It may be the Arab world’s particular take on the art of landscape that it must be abstracted because it has been lost—lost to Adnan and Douaihy, lost more recently to generations of Palestinians and Iraqis and Syrians.”

Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s

Exhibition Catalogue: Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s is accompanied by a 256-page publication. Co-published by Hirmer Publishers and the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, the book was co-edited by Suheyla Takesh, Curator at the Barjeel Art Foundation, and Lynn Gumpert, Director of the Grey Art Gallery, New York University. Also featured are essays by Iftikhar Dadi, Associate Professor in the History of Art and Visual Studies department and Director of the South Asia Program, Cornell University; Salah M. Hassan, Goldwin Smith Professor of African and African Diaspora Art History and Visual Culture, Director of the Institute for Comparative Modernities, Cornell University; Hannah Feldman, Associate Professor of Art History, Northwestern University; Anneka Lenssen, Assistant Professor in the History of Art department, University of California, Berkeley; Salwa Mikdadi, Associate Professor, Practice of Art History, NYU Abu Dhabi; Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, founder of the Barjeel Art Foundation and lecturer and researcher on social, political, and cultural affairs in the Arab Gulf States; Nada Shabout, Professor of Art History and Coordinator of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Initiative (CAMCSI), University of North Texas; Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, a writer based in Beirut and New York; and Suheyla Takesh. The book also includes biographical entries on each artist.

Tour: After debuting at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University, Taking Shape will travel to the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, where it will be on view from April 28 through July 26, 2020, and then to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University from August 22 through December 13, 2020. In 2021 the exhibition will travel to the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, where it will be displayed from January 25 through June 6, and will shortly thereafter be on view at the University of Michigan Museum of Art from June 25 through September 19, 2021.

GREY ART GALLERY, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

100 Washington Square East, New York, NY 10003

greyartgallery.nyu.edu

Ismo Kajander @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

Ismo Kajander
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 
January 10 – February 9, 2020

In a bold and exceptional career spanning six decades, Ismo Kajander (b.1939) has earned acclaim as a legendary Finnish avant-gardist and pioneering New-Realist. Ismo Kajander’s years in Paris from 1961 onwards and his discovery of Neo-Dadaism had a lasting formative influence on his art, which, like Dada, engages in close critical scrutiny of artistic conventions and established aesthetic preferences. Ismo Kajander weaves together art and everyday life, eschewing pomp in favor of celebrating the dignity of daily existence. This exhibition marks the artist’s 80th birthday and the continuation of his steadfast rebellion against all forms of narrow convention.

Ismo Kajander examines reality through the lens of mundane objects. The items he incorporates in his assemblages invoke both private and collective memories. Most of them consist of the artist’s dilapidated personal artifacts, their banality heightened by their emphatically material presence. While the majority of works featured in this exhibition are small in scale, the centerpiece is a four-meter-long wooden boat. Enlivened by elements such as sound, steam, and moving parts, the show is a cavalcade of sharp social commentary and observations on art history.

Ismo Kajander formerly taught at the Helsinki University of Industrial Arts and served as the principal of the Turku Drawing School. He is the winner of the 1981 State Award for Public Information, the 1988 State Award for Photography, and the 2014 Pro Finlandia Award. Ismo Kajander is represented in numerous notable collections and he has held solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, the Turku Art Museum and the Museum of Finnish Photography.

GALERIE FORSBLOM
Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki
galerieforsblom.com

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Arno Rafael Minkkinen @ Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC - Fifty Years

Arno Rafael Minkkinen: Fifty Years
Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York
4 January - 8 February 2020

Edwynn Houk Gallery presents Arno Rafael Minkkinen: Fifty Years, an exhibition of black and white photographs commemorating the artist’s half a century long career. Selected from his expansive oeuvre, these fifteen images encompass every decade since Arno Rafael Minkkinen began photographing in the early 1970s and span the globe, featuring his native Finland, his later homes of New York City and Andover, Massachusetts, as well as locations ranging from China to Portugal. 

Celebrating fifty years since Arno Rafael Minkkinen embarked on his epic exploration of the central theme of his nude body in nature, the exhibition illustrates his work’s continuous capacity for innovation and self-reflection. Relying purely on the primal abilities of his own body, Arno Rafael Minkkinen contorts his limbs into gravity defying poses that often appear physically impossible. The artist never digitally manipulates his negatives and works alone using a simple 9-second shutter release, affording him just a few moments to pose for each photograph. The resulting images are characterized by stillness and tranquility, but the process can be quite difficult or even dangerous, as Arno Rafael Minkkinen pushes the limits of his body to capture each shot.

Deeply inspired by nature, Arno Rafael Minkkinen allows the organic forms in his outdoor surroundings to guide the compositions of his images and the shapes his body assumes. He creates surreal self-portraits by seamlessly blending his own body with the natural elements so that each photograph becomes a visual puzzle of where the landscape ends and his limbs begin—as he “makes communion” with nature. His works are a reminder of the fickle nature of perception, and his process is a meditation on the interconnectedness of humans and nature, and how we experience the world around us through our physical bodies. Arno Rafael Minkkinen’s photographs are at once visceral and poetic, each one a new discovery in what he describes as his “continuity of vision.”

Arno Rafael Minkkinen received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1974 and is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The recipient of the 2006 Finnish State Art Prize in Photography, the Lucie Award for Achievement in Fine Art in 2013, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2015, Arno Rafael Minkkinen has also been knighted by the Finnish government with the Pro Finlandia Order of the Lion medal. Arno Rafael  Minkkinen’s work has been the subject of eight solo monographs—most recently Minkkinen, a 300-page retrospective of his career released in November 2019—and has been exhibited internationally with over 100 solo shows and nearly 200 group exhibitions in galleries and museums worldwide. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; High Museum, Atlanta; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Kiasma-Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki; Museo Nazionale Alinari della Fotografia, Florence; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

EDWYNN HOUK GALLERY
745 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10151
www.houkgallery.com