Frank Auerbach @ Luhring Augustine, New York - Selected Works, 1978–2016

Frank Auerbach 

Selected Works, 1978–2016

Luhring Augustine, New York

October 31, 2020 – February 20, 2021

Luhring Augustine Chelsea presents a solo exhibition of FRANK AUERBACH’s paintings and drawings that celebrates the mature career of a singular artist. Spanning from the late 1970s to recent works, the selection of his portraits and landscapes on view underscore Frank Auerbach’s great achievements in painting in the post-war era. The first show of his work in New York of this scale since 2006, the exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Frank Auerbach’s work exists outside of any specific period or style. Employing an energetic impasto technique to render his subjects, he creates figurative paintings through an intensive daily regimen. The exhibition highlights portraits of a group of his devoted sitters, some of whom he has been painting since the 1970s and still pose for him regularly today. The paintings are often the result of months of labor: at the end of a day of work, he will frequently scrape down the entire surface of the piece in order to start anew in his next attempt; each rejected endeavor a pursuit toward the final expression. The landscape paintings are derived from sketches Frank Auerbach makes in locations close to Mornington Crescent in Camden Town, London, the area near the studio where he has worked since 1954. With his distinct idiom Frank Auerbach imagines the quotidian scenes of parks, streets, and buildings around his familiar neighborhood.  

LUHRING AUGUSTINE CHELSEA

531 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011

www.luhringaugustine.com

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Jarmo Makila @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - Land of Shadow

Jarmo Mäkilä: Land of Shadow

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

October 23 – November 15, 2020

JARMO MÄKILÄ (b. 1952) has spent the past few years immersed in childhood's imaginary landscapes. In this new exhibition, he reflects on the end of childhood, asking whether childhood ever truly ends or whether the child lives on, hidden inside the man. Jarmo Mäkilä reflects on what manhood ultimately means, asking when, exactly, boyhood's innocence is displaced by the burden of manhood.

The paintings in his new exhibition depict contrasted locations with different emotional resonances: open forests and confined interiors. The forest is the bedrock and spiritual home of Finnish mythology. It represents boundless freedom – an open domain where boys escape the watchful gaze of the mother. They return as young men and look upon their childhood home from afar as if observing a world lost to them.

By contrast, his interiors are constricting. Jarmo Mäkilä paints strong, sturdy men in lyrically brutalist, dream-like places, whether taking jabs at a punching bag, flexing their muscles, or displaying tattoos like a victory sign – flaunting classic symbols of masculinity. Jarmo Mäkilä presents us with mythical images of manhood, telling the story of boys growing into men and letting the narrative unfold with the mythical force of ancient legend. The viewer, too, is gripped with the desire to pound a punching bag, tattoo their life story on their skin, and feel the life force pumping through their veins. Each one of us has a story. Each one of us is unique.

All the paintings in this new exhibition have one feature in common: the power to inscribe a narrative in the viewer’s mind. Every detail appears to have a deeper significance than is visible at first glance. A hidden world lies concealed behind what we see on the canvas. The artist poses the questions: Are boys just boys or children? Can a man ever be just a human being?

A trailblazer who has followed his own artistic path throughout his career, Jarmo Mäkilä ranks among Finland’s most accomplished artists. He has exhibited widely worldwide and held solo exhibitions at venues including the Amos Anderson Art Museum, Helsinki City Art Museum HAM, Sara Hildén Art Museum, and Pori Art Museum. He was the first Finnish artist to hold a solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in 1998. Jarmo Mäkilä received the Pro Finlandia medal in 2002.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22 - 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

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Elmgreen & Dragset @ Pace Gallery, East Hampton, New York

Elmgreen & Dragset 

Pace Gallery, East Hampton 

Through November 15, 2020 

Elmgreen & Dragset

Doubt, 2019 

© Elmgreen & Dragset, courtesy of Pace Gallery

Pace Gallery presents Berlin-based artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset’s first exhibition with the gallery since joining Pace in June 2020. On view at Pace’s location in East Hampton, the presentation features five recent and new works as well as an offsite outdoor sculptural installation. Viewers are invited to create their own narratives, responding to implied actions and emotions suggested in the selection of works, where traces of presence and absence are finely balanced and where gestures both bold and intimate are interwoven.

Among the most renowned and widely exhibited artists in Europe, Michael Elmgreen (b. 1961, Copenhagen) and Ingar Dragset (b. 1969, Trondheim, Norway) challenge and readdress how art is presented and experienced with an often playful and subversive approach. The artist duo pursues complex questions of identity, sexuality, and belonging in their work. Often radically re-contextualizing everyday objects or transforming exhibition spaces into unexpected new environments, Elmgreen & Dragset draw on both lived experience and the context in which their works are shown. 2020 marks the 25th year of their collaboration, which has continued to call into question established power structures in society and deal with fundamental, existential questions.

On view in the exhibition is Couple, Fig. 19 (2019), part of an ongoing series of paired diving boards, which exemplifies this play with perception—shifting the role of the object by removing it from its functional setting and calling into question the significance of environment. The materiality of the work also defies the immediate reading of it as readymades, as each element is crafted by hand. Since their first diving board sculpture in 1997, the motif of a swimming pool has frequently appeared in their work. One key example was their 2016 installation Van Gogh’s Ear at the Fifth Avenue entrance of the Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center in New York, which featured a large ear-shaped pool structure with an iconic, cyan-blue interior, lights, a diving board, and a stainless-steel ladder. Similarly, the duo’s Bent Pool (2019)—the 20-foot-tall installation in Pride Park outside the Miami Beach Convention Center—takes the form of an oval pool, bent upright into an inverted U-shape.

Elmgreen & Dragset

Black Socks, 2019 

© Elmgreen & Dragset, courtesy of Pace Gallery

Elmgreen & Dragset’s Black Socks (2019) subverts traditional notions of objectification and desire. The visual appearance of this sculpture responds to Peter Hujar’s black and white photograph Christopher Street Pier #2 (Crossed Legs) (1976) in both form and color. The position of the crossed legs of the sculpture is drawn directly from the subject in Hujar’s iconic work, and the colors of the sculpture mimic the black-and-white tonality of the photographer’s image. Just as queer experiences play a profound role in the work of Elmgreen & Dragset, Hujar’s work frequently and powerfully captured queer life in New York City.

As part of the presentation Pace also shows Short Story (2020), a new outdoor installation situated on a tennis court incorporating two figurative bronze sculptures of young boys following the conclusion of a tennis match—one victorious, the other defeated. The expressions of the figures invite viewers to call into question the idea of competition and its reverberations in society, and more broadly the nuanced notion of situational fairness and outcomes. This installation is available for viewing by appointment only. Tied to the exhibition, Pace also debuts a conversation between Elmgreen & Dragset and friend, collaborator, and fellow Pace artist Fred Wilson as an introduction to the gallery’s global audience. 

Pace’s presentation coincides with Elmgreen & Dragset’s new solo exhibition, 2020, at EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Finland. On view through January 17, 2021, the exhibition features a selection of site-specific, new, and familiar sculptures by the artists, presented together in a format that transforms Finland’s largest museum into a surreal car park, incorporating real cars, road markings, and a selection of Elmgreen & Dragset sculptures—several of which are seen for the first time. The melancholic, half abandoned parking lot that makes up the exhibition seems to beg the question: What will happen to intimacy after 2020, a year of social distancing and heightened fear of sharing physical space?

Other recent solo exhibitions include Elmgreen & Dragset: Sculptures at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas, which was presented from September 2019 – January 2020 and marked the artists’ first major museum presentation in the U.S. Installed throughout the interior and exterior spaces of the Nasher, the works on view exemplified the artists’ use of multiple aesthetics and working methods, and drew upon Minimalism, conceptual strategies, and the figurative sculpture tradition.

Elmgreen & Dragset have been described as subtly infiltrating art institutions from the inside with their critical gaze, frequently using museum and gallery architecture as both subject and material, laying bare the social and cultural systems that expose the fiction of neutrality trafficked by the white cube. “…But instead of using the traditional methods of institutional critique we rather change the identity and the actual physical appearance of the white cube” says Dragset. Elmgreen & Dragset have used such a strategy on numerous occasions. At UCCA in Beijing they turned the vast exhibition hall into a whole art fair mimicking a conventional fair layout with gallery booths in a fishbone grid, a café, a bookstore and an information desk, but only displaying works by themselves which were not for sale. In Seoul, Elmgreen & Dragset turned Samsung Museum of Art’s venue Plateau into a dysfunctional airport, and outside Marfa, Texas, they erected perhaps their most well-known project: Prada Marfa, a forever closed luxury boutique in the middle of the Texan desert.

Elmgreen & Dragset have produced several public sculptures, often addressing tensions between public and private, intimacy and alienation, power and powerlessness. Such projects include The Mayor of London’s Commission for the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square in 2012, a temporary installation for which they created a bronze figure of a boy on a toy rocking horse. The infantilized figure offered a humorous counterpoint to the militarized masculinity of equestrian statuary, epitomized by the sculpture of King George IV that famously sits on the plinth opposite. Their Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime was commissioned by the German federal Government in 2008 and is permanently located in Berlin’s Tiergarten next to the Holocaust Memorial.

In 2017, Elmgreen & Dragset curated the Istanbul Biennial. In 2015, they received an honorary doctorate from NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. For the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, the artists curated and staged The Collectors, an exhibition in the Danish and Nordic Pavilions that transformed the pavilions into a domestic living space inhabited by an art collector and featured works by 24 artists. In 2002 the duo won the German art prize Preis der Nationalgalerie and in 2000 they were shortlisted for Guggenheim Museum’s Hugo Boss Prize.

Elmgreen & Dragset’s most recent monographic publications include: Elmgreen & Dragset published by Phaidon, 2019; Sculptures published by Hatje Cantz and Nasher Sculpture Center, 2019; and This Is How We Bite our Tongue published by The Whitechapel Gallery, 2018.

Visitors are required to schedule their visit in advance. To schedule your visit, go to Pace's website.

PACE GALLERY

68 Park Place, East Hampton, New York

pacegallery.com

Robert Indiana: A Legacy of Love @ The McNay Art Museum, San Antonio

Robert Indiana: A Legacy of Love

The McNay Art Museum, San Antonio

October 15, 2020 - January 24, 2021

Robert Indiana: A Legacy of Love honors the life, art, and resounding legacy of the late Pop icon through more than 75 paintings, prints, sculptures, costume designs, and digital artworks. A self-proclaimed “painter of signs,” Robert Indiana shaped a highly original body of work that explores American identity; his own personal history; and the power of abstraction, symbolism, and language.

Surveying Indiana’s art in conversation with works by his contemporaries and successors, this exhibition examines the innovative foreground of text and symbol within visual art during the postwar era. With artworks that at once call on the viewer to “see” and to “read,” Robert Indiana pioneered a triumphant union of text and image that remains undeniably relevant today.

“Some of the most iconic artworks in this exhibition speak to the human emotions that unite us all, often through a single word, like love and hope,” said Richard Aste, McNay Director and CEO. “The art of the late Robert Indiana, and that of today’s artists who lean into his legacy of love, will uplift our community and offer hope and inspiration to every San Antonian in these challenging times.”

Known as one of the leaders of the Pop art movement of the 1960s, Indiana’s prolific career extends well beyond this period. The artist created paintings, prints, and sculptures characterized by clean lines and saturated color until his passing in 2018. Robert Indiana: A Legacy of Love invites you to explore the artist’s multidecade career, from his iconic LOVE compositions to his larger-than-life painting style.

“Character counts, photo captions, and text messages fill our daily lives now more than ever,” said René Paul Barilleaux, Head of Curatorial Affairs. “In his unique approach to image-making, Indiana’s art really anticipated the global digital moment we’re experiencing today with short, direct, text-based bursts of communication.”

From Pop artists including Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, to contemporary artists including Mel Bochner, Deborah Kass, Glenn Ligon, Stephanie Patton, and Jack Pierson, this exhibition presents examples ranging from 1963 to the present in conversation with shared themes in Indiana’s artwork. Of particular interest are examples by artists with ties to San Antonio, including Jesse Amado, Alejandro Diaz, Chuck Ramirez, Ethel Shipton, and Gary Sweeney. Robert Indiana’s lasting impact on the history of contemporary art remains profound, as his images take on new meanings in the present day.

The exhibition is organized into five “chapters” exploring the artist’s impactful combination of text and image through different lenses: Icons, Pop Art, Robert Indiana and Marsden Hartley, Performance, and A Legacy of Language. The works of art on view are drawn primarily from the strong Indiana representation in the McNay’s Collection, due primarily to the friendship between the artist and San Antonio collector and McNay patron Robert L.B. Tobin. Select loans from the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas Austin, Ruiz-Healy Art, and various private collections are also included throughout each section.

A first for the McNay, this exhibition features a major commission of six digital artworks to live both online and in the galleries. Created by Brooklyn-based poet, designer, and artist Annika Hansteen-Izora, the text-based images speak to the power of language, hope, community care, and the role of art in our current digital age. Visitors will also enjoy the extension of the exhibition throughout the McNay’s 26-acre grounds, with outdoor sculptures by Robert Indiana, Alejandro Martín, and Gary Sweeney, each investigating language in visual art.

Robert Indiana: A Legacy of Love is organized for the McNay Art Museum by René Paul Barilleaux, Head of Curatorial Affairs, and Alexis T. Meldrum, 2019–2020 Semmes Foundation Intern in Museum Studies, with Lauren Thompson, Assistant Curator, and Edward Hayes, Exhibitions Senior Manager/Registrar.

McNAY ART MUSEUM

6000 N New Braunfels Ave., San Antonio, TX 78209

www.mcnayart.org

Kiki Smith @ MCBA Lausanne - Hearing You with My Eyes

Kiki Smith. Hearing You with My Eyes

Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne

9 octobre 2020 - 10 janvier 2021

L’oeuvre de l’artiste américaine Kiki Smith fait l’objet d'une grande exposition au MCBA de Lausanne. Avec une sélection de près de cent oeuvres, dont certaines sont présentées en Europe pour la première fois, ce parcours couvre près de quarante années de création, selon un axe thématique central, mais encore peu exploré jusque-là : la perception sensorielle.

Intitulée Hearing You with My Eyes (« T’entendre avec mes yeux »), cette exposition de Kiki Smith (née en 1954) offre au public l’occasion de se familiariser avec les grands thèmes qui traversent son oeuvre et qui prennent leur source dans l’observation du corps humain. Depuis le début des années 1980, l’artiste s’intéresse au corps et à son fonctionnement, à ses significations symboliques comme politiques, à ses représentations et à son statut dans l’espace social. Elle s’est d’abord attachée à le décrire, fragment par fragment. A l’appui de livres d’anatomie, elle a commencé par copier les organes et les systèmes du corps humain, posant ainsi un regard objectif sur cette structure qui lui était si familière et si étrangère à la fois. Elle a ensuite traité le corps à partir de son enveloppe de peau, ce qui l’a conduite à la figure. Elle a alors inauguré un répertoire de personnages, essentiellement féminins, tirés des récits bibliques et mythologiques ainsi que des contes, conférant à son oeuvre une dimension plus narrative. Ces personnages, auxquels elle a parfois prêté ses traits, lui ont permis de revisiter un bagage culturel commun et fondateur de nos imaginaires. Avec un regard contemporain et engagé, Kiki Smith interroge les notions de nature et culture, portée par la volonté d’affirmer la puissance du féminin, la vulnérabilité et la force simultanées de l’être humain, et la symbiose avec le règne animal.

L’importance accordée aux sens est visible dans cette évolution du microscopique au macroscopique, et c’est sous cet angle que le MCBA propose de découvrir cette oeuvre qui se décline dans une grande variété de techniques. Kiki Smith rappelle que les sens sont un moyen de connaissance. Elle met en avant leur interconnectivité dans les phénomènes de perception — tel que le titre de l’exposition le suggère —, et explore toute une variété de sensations, impliquant celles des visiteuses et visiteurs pleinement engagés dans leur confrontation aux oeuvres. Enfin, elle recherche dans les matériaux, très tactiles, et en particulier le papier, une équivalence avec les qualités du corps humain.

En replaçant l’être humain au coeur du vivant, en relation avec les autres espèces animales, mais aussi avec le règne végétal et le cosmos, Kiki Smith livre un vibrant plaidoyer pour le respect de la nature et pour l’expérience harmonieuse et joyeuse que l’on peut en faire, de la même manière qu’elle invite à prendre conscience de sa présence au monde et de son appartenance à un tout. Son oeuvre trouve ainsi un écho particulier dans l’actualité et notamment la prise de conscience de la fragilité des ressources naturelles.

Hormis quelques oeuvres présentées dans des expositions collectives, Kiki Smith n’avait plus exposé en Suisse depuis 1990, à l’occasion de sa première exposition monographique internationale au Centre d’art contemporain de Genève, en partenariat avec l’Institute of Contemporary Art d’Amsterdam.

Commissaires de l’exposition : Laurence Schmidlin, conservatrice art contemporain.

Catalogue :

Kiki Smith 

Hearing You with My Eyes

Laurence Schmidlin (éd.)

avec des essais d’Amelia Jones,

Lisa Le Feuvre et Laurence Schmidlin

192 p., 126 ill. couleurs, français/anglais

Coédition Zurich, Scheidegger & Spiess, 2020

MCBA - MUSEE CANTONAL DES BEAUX-ARTS

Place de la Gare 16, 1003 Lausanne

www.mcba.ch