Summer Exhibition @ Ayyam Gallery, Dubai - Asaad Arabi, Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik, Farzad Kohan, Mouteea Murad, Tammam Azzam, Thaier Helal

Summer Collective: Strata 

Asaad Arabi, Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik, Farzad Kohan, Mouteea Murad, Tammam Azzam, Thaier Helal 

Ayyam Gallery, Dubai 

Through 10 September 2021

FARZAD KOHAN

Migration Stories #21, 2016

Mixed Media on canvas, 148 x 116 cm

© Farzad Kohan, courtesy Ayyam Gallery

Ayyam Gallery presents “Strata” a collective exhibition featuring works by Asaad Arabi, Abdul-Karim Majdal Al-Beik, Farzad Kohan, Mouteea Murad, Tammam Azzam, and Thaier Helal. 

The word “stratum” comes from the Latin meaning “something that has been laid down”; a stratum is a layer, whether abstract like the social strata of humanity or one of several physical parallel layers arranged one on top of another like cells in an organism. What the exhibition’s multi-media artworks have in common is the focus on strata. Not only does each layer reference significant themes in each artists’ work, but it also highlights essential techniques from each artists’ practice.

The physical layers of acrylic paint, glue, sand, collage, and paper are metaphors — each stratum becomes abstract, representing emotion and memories. In MOUTEEA MURAD’s work, each color illustrates a sentiment and point of view. The contrasts create a more extensive timeline, emitting a broader picture of reality and the artist’s struggles and triumphs. At times the layers represent chronology, layers of moments and instances. Just like sedimentation catalogs the globe’s past, the artists catalog their lives in the artworks. THAIER HELAL’s Untitled sculptural works echo strongly with this idea, as a matter of fact, the work is strongly influenced by the physical attributes of natural settings. ABDUL-KARIM MAJDAL AL-BEIK’s works archive stories by depicting Middle Eastern walls through the years, recording layers of posters, papers, and graffiti - creating a storyline. 

TAMMAM AZZAM and FARZAD KOHAN’s works highlight the idea of “Strata” through style. Both artists focus on collage in their practice, whether digital or conventional, Tammam Azzam’s introduction of material against the cityscape backdrop creates a function, aesthetic, and process. Farzad Kohan and ASAAD ARABI make out their shapes and figures through superimposed color while focusing on narratives of identity. 

AYYAM GALLERY

B11, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Dubai

www.ayyamgallery.com

Sam Gilliam @ Pace Gallery, Hong Kong

Sam Gilliam 

Pace Gallery, Hong Kong 

July 22 – September 2, 2021

Pace presents an exhibition of SAM GILLIAM’s paintings in Hong Kong. Following its launch at Pace’s newly expanded space in Seoul, this presentation continues to mark the artist’s debut in Asia. The Hong Kong exhibition features new works by Sam Gilliam. 

Sam Gilliam, who is now in his eighties, is widely considered one of the great innovators in postwar American painting. He emerged from the Washington, D.C. scene in the mid-1960s with works that elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color Field painting and expanded the frontiers of Abstract Expressionism. A noted activist and aficionado of American jazz music, Sam Gilliam extended the possibilities of picture making in a society undergoing dramatic change.

All of the paintings in the exhibition were created by the artist in 2021. These pieces build on a body of beveled edge abstract paintings that Sam Gilliam has been continuously developing since the 1960s. Sam Gilliam’s early approach to painting built upon the staining technique that was adopted by Washington School colorists in the late 1950s and early ’60s, including Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland. At this time, Sam Gilliam began experimenting with different techniques and materials, staining and pouring paint and other materials directly onto the canvas while folding and crumpling its wet surface to create variegated compositions with luminous color and depth.

In 1966 he began to work with acrylic on unprimed canvases, later stretched on specially made beveled edge frames. The beveled frame – often as deep as six inches – offered an illusion of flatness that disguised the physical depth of each work. The paintings appeared to float, or emerge from the wall itself, creating a three-dimensional relationship beyond the surface of the canvas. Sam Gilliam’s early beveled edge canvases explored the phenomenology of space through painterly means. During this same period of radical experimentation, Sam Gilliam also began to work with draped or freely suspended canvases. Extending the dynamic presence of radiant polychromic color fields into the gallery, the Drape paintings marked a groundbreaking moment in the history of American abstract art and deepened Sam Gilliam’s exploration of dimensionality.

The new paintings on view in this exhibition reflect Sam Gilliam’s ongoing experimentation with beveled edge canvases. With acute attention to surface, alchemy and volume, these paintings offer a rich constellation of texture, materials, and sublime composition. Sam Gilliam’s approach to abstract expression is profound and energetic, often involving folding, soaking, and staining the canvas before applying thick layers of paint mixed with materials such as pure pigment, sawdust, tin shot and other detritus from the studio floor. Using rakes, steel brushes and other tools, Sam Gilliam then exposes layers of color glowing below like fire coming through volcanic ash.

In his most recent work, Sam Gilliam has made radical changes with the introduction of new materials and techniques. In his layering process, he builds up surfaces by draping thin pieces of fabric on top of the collage and debris. Like an archaeologist, he then digs into the surfaces to reveal layers of color glowing below like fire coming through volcanic ash. Always an alchemist, Gilliam’s paintings take us to a new concept of space as form.

The dizzying magic of Sam Gilliam’s paintings is the result of chance and response, as much as design. Dexterously reacting to the movement of paint and the compositions that emerge at every stage in his process, Sam Gilliam likens his approach to abstraction to the improvisational tenets of jazz music, a grounding presence in the artist’s life and a strong influence on his creative output. He cites jazz saxophonist John Coltrane as an influence on his approach to painting: “It’s time that matters: listening and realizing what happened with the music, my experience of sound established these references in painting.” (Interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Sam Gilliam: Existed Existing, 2020, page 47.)

SAM GILLIAM (b. 1933, Tupelo, Mississippi) is one of the great innovators in postwar American painting. He emerged from the Washington, D.C. scene in the mid 1960s with works that elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting. A series of formal breakthroughs would soon result in his canonical Drape paintings, which expanded upon the tenets of Abstract Expressionism in entirely new ways. Suspending stretcherless lengths of painted canvas from the walls or ceilings of exhibition spaces, Sam Gilliam transformed his medium and the contexts in which it was viewed.

As an African-American artist in the nation’s capital at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, this was not merely an aesthetic proposition; it was a way of defining art’s role in a society undergoing dramatic change. Sam Gilliam has subsequently pursued a pioneering course in which experimentation has been the only constant. Inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, his lyrical abstractions continue to take on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials.

In addition to a traveling retrospective organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2005, Sam Gilliam has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1971); The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1982); Whitney Museum of American Art, Philip Morris Branch, New York (1993); J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, Louisville, Kentucky (1996); Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2011); and Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018), among many other institutions. A semi-permanent installation of Sam Gilliam’s paintings opened at Dia:Beacon in August 2019. His work is included in over fifty public collections, including those of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in Washington, DC.

PACE GALLERY HONG KONG

12/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong

www.pacegallery.com

_____________

Olga de Amaral @ MFAH, Houston & Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills - To Weave a Rock

Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

July 25 - September 19, 2021

OLGA DE AMARAL

Brumas (Mists), 2013

Acrylic, gesso, and cotton on wood

Courtesy of the artist

© Olga de Amaral / Photograph © Diego Amaral

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock, the first major touring retrospective of the prolific, visionary Colombian artist whose pioneering visual language has helped to transform the fiber arts movement. Co-organized by the MFAH and the Cranbrook Art Museum, the exhibition traces Olga de Amaral’s architectural investigations of the woven form through some 50 works created during the past six decades, ranging from her early Muros (Walls) series to the more recent immersive installation Brumas (Mists).

“This retrospective allows audiences to see the six decades of my work side by side for the first time,” Olga de Amaral said. “To have it open at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is a great honor, as they hold leading collections in both decorative arts and Latin American art in the United States. The exhibition was also co-created with Cranbrook Art Museum, the museum of my alma mater, Cranbrook Academy of Art, which is such an important part of my creative history and where I met my husband, the artist Jim Amaral. This retrospective and publication have been years in the making, and I feel they are a wonderful showcase of my life’s work.” 

An “alchemist artist,” Olga de Amaral has experimented radically with material, composition, and space, transforming flat-woven tapestries into forms that defy the confines of any genre or medium. Co-curators Anna Walker, Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design at the MFAH; and Laura Mott, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art and Design at Cranbrook Art Museum, chronicle Amaral’s career through four thematic sections: “Radical Materialism,” “Rebel Warp,” “Alchemy,” and “The Line.” They also devote two galleries to the artist’s immersive Brumas (Mists) and Estelas (Stele) series.

“Olga de Amaral is a leading figure who continues to push the boundaries of the fiber arts movement. Deeply rooted in her Colombian heritage and architectural training, Amaral’s sculptures command our attention with their exploration of color, texture, and structure,” said Gary Tinterow, Director, the Margaret Alkek Williams Chair, MFAH. “We are delighted to partner with the Cranbrook Art Museum to present this comprehensive survey and highlight Amaral as a seminal artist of the last 60 years.”

“Amaral has developed a language all her own within the fiber arts movement through experimentation with the loom and her transformational use of materials,” Walker said. “The MFAH has established the most comprehensive collection of her work in North America. It’s a thrill to present these works alongside other important examples that exemplify her creative spirit.”

Exhibition Overview

After earning an architectural drafting degree in her native Bogotá, Colombia, Olga de Amaral (born 1932) attended the fabric and design weaving program at Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art in the mid-1950s. There, she studied under the renowned Marianne Strengell, who emphasized textile design’s relationship with interior space and its use as an architectural material. When she returned home, Amaral applied Strengell’s philosophies to woven works that also were informed by her environment.

• “Radical Materialism” explores Olga de Amaral’s unconventional use of horsehair, wool, gold leaf, plastics, and other materials that reflect the landscape and culture of Colombia while also utilizing texture, color, and light to create dimensionality and structure. A notable example, the Luz (Light) series from the mid-to-late 1960s, features tapestries of cascading, layered polyurethane that depict water flowing across the Colombian terrain.

• The “Rebel Warp” section illustrates how Olga de Amaral has investigated scale and challenged traditional weaving traditions with innovative plaiting, wrapping, coiling, and warp manipulation. The parallel rods of her groundbreaking series Muros tejidos (Woven Walls) support vertical, lattice-like loops to form distinct structures and shapes; principles she also applied to free-standing sculptures such as Columna en pasteles (Column in Pastels) (1972).

• Embracing the spiritual significance of gold in Colombian culture, Olga de Amaral has made gold leaf a signature material. The “Alchemy” section presents selections from Alquimia (Alchemy), her acclaimed 1980s series of wall-hung tapestries composed of individually woven linen squares lacquered with gesso and gold leaf. Also especially notable are works from Amaral’s immersive series Estelas (Stele), whose suspended structures evoke upright stones.

• The works of “The Line” section incorporate painted, free-hanging threads. Highlights include pieces from the Nudo (Knot) series, whose long, loose linen fibers anchored with knots resemble monumental, draped tassels of magenta, turquoise, and gold. Another work, Agujero Negro (Black Hole) (2016) initially suggests a black void painted on gray fringe, but as viewers pass by, threads waft to reveal a sliver of gold paint that glimmers like sunlight. The immersive Brumas (Mists) (2013), a series of three-dimensional, suspended forms, engulfs viewers in vibrant colors and geometric shapes.

OLGA DE AMARAL

ToWeave a Rock

Exhibition Catalogue

Publication: This exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock, authored by co-curators Laura Mott and Anna Walker and co-published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Arnoldsche Art Publishers. 

Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Cranbrook Art Museum. After Houston it will traveling to the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in October 2021.

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON - MFAH

1001 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas 77005

www.mfah.org

Picasso. Baigneuses et baigneurs @ Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Picasso. Baigneuses et baigneurs

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

15 juillet - 3 janvier 2021

Le musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon propose une relecture du thème de la baigneuse dans l’œuvre de Pablo Picasso avec, en contrepoint, des œuvres d’artistes du passé, comme Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Paul Cézanne ou Auguste Renoir, qui ont influencé Picasso dans le traitement de ce sujet. Des artistes modernes et contemporains seront également présentés car ils se sont intéressés aux baigneuses picassiennes et ont trouvé en elles une source d’inspiration ou le prétexte à une confrontation.

L’exposition est organisée en partenariat avec le Musée national Picasso - Paris et avec le concours de la Peggy Guggenheim Collection de Venise. Les trois institutions possèdent chacune une œuvre quasiment jumelle, exécutée en février 1937, quelques semaines avant que l'artiste ne travaille à Guernica.

L’exposition « Picasso. Baigneuses et baigneurs » a été conçue en grande partie à partir du fonds exceptionnel du Musée national Picasso - Paris. Elle présente près de 150 œuvres issues d'importantes collections publiques en Europe et au Canada ainsi que de collections particulières. Elle s’accompagne de la présentation de pièces d’archives relatives aux différents séjours en bord de mer effectués par Picasso et est rythmée par toute une série de photographies de l’artiste et de ses proches, dues notamment à Dora Maar et à Eileen Agar.

A l’origine de l’exposition, Femme assise sur la plage, 10 février 1937, un tableau de Pablo Picasso légué au musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon en 1997 par l’actrice-collectionneuse Jacqueline Delubac. Ce tableau iconique est devenu un véritable emblème des collections. Les trois Baigneuses de 1937 ont été réunies en 2018pour la première fois depuis leur création à la Fondation Peggy Guggenheim dans l’exposition « Picasso on the Beach », puis au Musée national Picasso - Paris en 2018 dans l’exposition « Picasso. Chefs-d’œuvre!  ».

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

20 place des Terreaux - 69001 Lyon

www.mba-lyon.fr

Maj. 26.12.2023

Robin Kid @ Galerie Templon, Paris - It's All Your Fault

Robin Kid a.k.a. The Kid

It's All Your Fault

Galerie Templon, Paris

4 septembre – 23 octobre 2021 

ROBIN KID (a.k.a. THE KID)

It’s All Your Fault - V, 2021 

(preview dans l’atelier)

Huile sur toile montée sur aluminium

267 x 607 x 4 cm / 106 x 239 x 1 2/3 in.

© Robin Kid, courtesy Galerie Templon

Pour la première fois à la Galerie Templon, l’artiste ROBIN KID (a.k.a. THE KID) présente, dans l’espace de la rue du Grenier-Saint-Lazare, une nouvelle exposition intitulée It’s All Your Fault.

“Dans le monde réellement renversé, le vrai est un moment du faux.” 

Guy Debord, The Society Of The Spectacle (1967)

« Montée des nationalismes, lockdowns, émeutes dans les rues, 5 millions de likes pour un chat qui joue du piano, Corona virus, meurtres par la police, l’Homme en route pour Mars, cancel culture, enfants enfermés dans des cages, changement climatique sur le point de non-retour, rediffusion des Muppets et un Muppet sans doute de retour pour la présidentielle dans quatre ans...

Les news nous arrivent au creux de la main 24 heures sur 24.

Et on a celles dont on a envie, de la couleur dont on a envie.

Et les news sont mauvaises, nous submergent et nous désensibilisent. L’infotainment surgit « über alles » rendant floue la frontière entre vérité et fiction, information et propagande, essentialité et banalité, démocratie et hypocrisie. Pourtant je suis accroc, je crois qu’on l’est tous.

Et comme pendant la grande dépression des années 30 où les gens avaient envie de regarder Fred Astaire et Ginger Rogers virevolter dans des décors scintillants et vivre dans un monde rêvé, moi aussi je ressens le besoin de créer mon propre monde où m’échapper et essayer de donner du sens à tout ça. Un monde construit à coup de fragments des récits culturels du quotidien de ma génération et de ma mélancolie pour un hier sans soucis.

Un temps suspendu entre le monde de l’enfance et de l’âge adulte, entre innocence et corruption. Un monde rempli de questions mais sans réponses. Un monde où le futur semble déjà vieux.

En prenant le Zeitgeist d’aujourd’hui et en le fracassant sous forme de peintures murales, de sculptures et d’installations défragmentées, j’essaie de capturer le désespoir et la répulsion de ma jeune génération et donner un coup de batte de baseball à tout le reste. »

ROBIN KID (1991), a.k.a. THE KID, est un artiste néo-Pop autodidacte multidisciplinaire aux racines hollandaises. Ses œuvres détournent une variété d’imageries sociales, politiques et traditionnelles du passé et du présent en leur donnant des connotations parfois choquantes de rébellion, de religion et d’imaginaire. Il tire instinctivement du monde de la publicité, de l’internet, de l’industrie du divertissement et de ses souvenirs d’enfance pour créer des narratifs ambitieux et énigmatiques, suscitant la réflexion et interrogeant le monde polarisé du 21ème siècle.

GALERIE TEMPLON

28 rue du Grenier Saint-Lazare, 75003 Paris

www.templon.com

Corita Kent @ Andrew Kreps Gallery, NYC – "heroes and sheroes" Exhibition

Corita Kent: heroes and sheroes

Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York

July 8 – August 13, 2021

Andrew Kreps Gallery presents heroes and sheroes, an exhibition of artworks by CORITA KENT at 22 Cortlandt Alley. Centered on Corita Kent’s series of the same title made between 1968 and 1969, the exhibition marks the first time heroes and sheroes has been exhibited in New York in its entirety.

In the summer of 1965, following the Watts Uprising in Los Angeles, Corita Kent reproduced the front page of the Los Angeles Times within her work my people. While in previous years, Corita Kent had appropriated text from consumer and mass culture, my people is the first example of Kent using appropriation as a direct response to the socially charged events of her time. The paper’s headlines were rotated and partially obscured by a swath of red, in which Corita Kent handwrote a text attributed to Maurice Ouellet, a priest and civil rights activist who participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches earlier that year. Ouellet’s words form a rebuttal to the paper’s racially charged headlines describing the Uprising as a “Blood Hungry Mob.”  In response, Ouellet’s quote reads: “Youth is a time of rebellion. Rather than squelch the rebellion, we might better enlist the rebels to join that greatest rebel of his time-Christ himself.” 

In the years following, Corita Kent continued to create singular compositions, in which bold and colorful text promoted messages of faith, acceptance, and love. Simultaneously, Kent rose to national prominence as a public figure - she was named Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year in 1966 and featured on the December cover of Newsweek in 1967. With this exposure came increased scrutiny of Kent’s outspokenness as the conservative Archdiocese of Los Angeles mounted intense pressure on both Kent and her order, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, over the changes they were making under the directives of Vatican II. In the summer of 1968, Kent would take a sabbatical from Immaculate Heart College, subsequently leaving the order and seeking dispensation from her vows.

This would mark a key turning point in Carita Kent’s work, as she began heroes and sheroes later that same year. Reflecting on the social and political movements of the time, much like my people before it, heroes and sheroes demonstrates not only Kent’s advocacy but also her acute awareness of how these events were framed and disseminated through mass media. Collaging images appropriated from newspapers and magazines with poetry, song lyrics, quotations from figures within the religious left (such as Daniel Berrigan and the Catonsville Nine), and Carita Kent’s own writings, heroes and sheroes addresses issues such as the civil rights, labor, and anti-war movements, nuclear disarmament, and the political assassinations that defined the 1960s. Works like the cry that will be heard reflect the urgency of the moment, imploring the viewer to “give a damn about your fellow man.” Other works, notably american sampler, position themselves as acerbic critique. Utilizing the colors red, white, and blue, Kent riffs on the tradition of the “sampler”, a piece of embroidery used to demonstrate a variety of needlework techniques. Here, Corita Kent’s sampler repeats the words AMERICAN, ASSASSINATION, VIOLENCE, and VIETNAM in stacked lines that resemble the stripes of the flag, using shifts in color to highlight different combinations of words such as SIN, I, and NATION. Prompting the viewer to consider their own individual and moral responsibility, the work’s last line poses the question “WHY” next to the answer: “WHY NOT.”

Filling the main gallery at 22 Cortlandt Alley, the twenty-nine prints comprising heroes and sheroes reflect the enduring spirit that gave rise to Corita Kent’s nickname—“Joyous Revolutionary.” The series simultaneously highlights the potential of new life, a belief in the power of collective action, and the joy that exists in the everyday. Shying away from optimism, Kent instead emphasized the importance of hope in works like a passion for the possible, employing the image of an energetic crowd of demonstrators, arms extended upwards in peace signs. Positioned above the photograph is a text from activist and clergyman William Sloane Coffin, which still resonates over fifty years after its making: “...hope demands that we take a dim view of the present because we hold a bright view of the future; and HOPE AROUSES AS NOTHING ELSE CAN AROUSE A PASSION FOR THE POSSIBLE.”

CORITA KENT (1918–1986) was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. Earlier this year, Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to designate Corita Kent’s former studio at 5518 Franklin Avenue as a Historic-Cultural Monument. Corita Kent’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; SFMOMA, San Francisco; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; mumok, Vienna; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Frac Ile-de-France, Paris; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, among others. Notable exhibitions include: Corita Kent: Get With The Action, Ditchling Museum of Art+Craft (2019); Corita Kent and the Language of Pop, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (2015); Someday is Now, Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY (2013); People Like Us: Prints from the 1960s by Sister Corita, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2007).

This exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Corita Art Center, Los Angeles.

ANDREW KREPS GALLERY

22 Cortlandt Alley, New York, NY 10013

www.andrewkreps.com

Close-Up @ Fondation Beyeler, Riehen / Bâle : Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Lotte Laserstein, Frida Kahlo, Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Cindy Sherman, Elizabeth Peyton

CLOSE-UP

Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Lotte Laserstein, Frida Kahlo, Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Cindy Sherman, Elizabeth Peyton

Fondation Beyeler, Riehen / Bâle

19 septembre 2021 – 2 janvier 2022

MARLENE DUMAS

Teeth, 2018

Huile sur toile, 40 x 30 cm

Collection privée Madrid 

© Marlene Dumas 

Courtesy the Artist and David Zwirner

Photo: Kerry McFate

BERTHE MORISOT

Jeune femme au divan, 1885

Huile sur toile, 61 x 50.2 cm

Tate, London

Bequeathed by the Hon. Mrs A.E. Pleydell-Bouverie

through the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1968

Photo © Tate

L’exposition présente des œuvres de neuf femmes artistes dont l’œuvre occupe une position éminente dans l’histoire de l’art moderne depuis 1870 jusqu’à aujourd’hui. C’est l’époque où, pour la première fois, il devint possible à des femmes en Europe et en Amérique de développer une activité artistique professionnelle sur une large base.

Au centre de l’exposition figurent des artistes qui ont en commun leur intérêt pour la représentation d’êtres humains, le portrait dans ses différentes déclinaisons et l’autoportrait. La Française Berthe Morisot et l’Américaine Mary Cassatt, toutes deux actives dans les années 1870 et 1880 à Paris, qui était alors la capitale de la création artistique la plus avancée; l’Allemande Paula Modersohn-Becker de 1900 à 1907 entre la petite ville provinciale de Worpswede, dans le Nord de l’Allemagne, et la métropole parisienne; l’Allemande Lotte Laserstein de 1925 à 1933 dans le Berlin de la République de Weimar; la Mexicaine Frida Kahlo depuis la fin des années 1920 jusque vers 1950, à Mexico City, pendant la période mouvementée de la consolidation de la révolution mexicaine; l’Américaine Alice Neel depuis la fin des années 1920 jusqu’au début des années 1980, d’abord à Cuba, puis à Manhattan, de Greenwich Village au Upper West Side en passant par Spanish Harlem; Marlene Dumas, née en Afrique du Sud, qui a grandiau Cap au plus fort de l'Apartheid, et vit depuis 1976 à Amsterdam; en même temps l’Américaine Cindy Sherman à New York, pôle occidental d’une nouvelle génération d’artistes contemporains; et enfin l’Américaine Elizabeth Peyton depuis les années 1990, entre New York et l’Europe de l’Ouest.

L’exposition s’intéresse particulièrement au regard posé par ces artistes sur leurs environnements, tel qu’il s’exprime dans leurs portraits et leurs tableaux de figures. La réunion de certaines de ces œuvres permet de découvrir comment ce regard a changé entre 1870 et aujourd’hui et par quoi il se caractérise.

FONDATION BEYELER

Baselstrasse 77, CH-4125 Riehen

www.fondationbeyeler.ch

Kiki Kogelnik: Falling @ Kayne Griffin Gallery, Los Angeles

Kiki Kogelnik: Falling

Kayne Griffin Gallery, Los Angeles

July 10 - August 28, 2021

Kayne Griffin presents an exhibition of paintings by Austrian born artist KIKI KOGELNIK (1935–1997) titled “Falling.” This presentation marks Kiki Kogelnik’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, California, displaying a selection of never before shown early 1960s works.

The exhibition title, Falling, is inspired by a painting, Falling in Love Again, created in 1962. Falling draws from Kogelnik’s free and monumental spirit—an evolutionary narrative of the artist and person. These paintings are exceptional examples of Kogelnik’s use of color and form that brings together the language of figuration and abstraction. Her use of broad gestural brush strokes to produce a variety of angular shapes and curved arcs, circles, and semi-circles is evident in these works, both reminiscent of, and a departure from, a form of European abstraction.

Falling marks a period of Kiki Kogelnik’s life that involved a series of travels and moves. While the artist eventually relocated to New York in 1962, Kiki Kogelnik’s American travels included landing her to the West Coast, initially in Santa Barbara, before moving for a short period to Billy Brice’s Neutra-designed Plywood House in Los Angeles. Beginning a relationship with the artist Sam Francis in Venice, Italy during the Biennale of 1960 led to Kiki Kogelnik spontaneously introducing the color pink to her existing paintings, as seen in California Man (1960). In an unsent letter dated November 1964, she acknowledges his influence on her life:“You really made the whole world pink for me – now I know.” Kiki Kogelnik’s work from this period gains a painterly urgency as her color palette expands and its application gains a new fluidity.

Departing stylistically from her gestural paintings, Marilyn (1961) is heralded by a series of oils on paper that are studies of groups of figures, both standing and reclining, each brushstroke defining a limb or curve. Female (1962) replaces the Matisse-like background of Marilyn for the aggressive striped glare of the lights of Broadway. It conveys the rush of speed, both exhilarating and dangerous, three black bombs aim downwards while time is marked by the different phases of four floating moons. This painting marks the first appearance of many of the signature motifs that would come to populate her paintings of the 60s. Kogelnik’s reaction to the death and autopsy of Marilyn Monroe allows an acknowledgement of the corporality of the body whereas previously she had focused on its form and its sexual potency. This work contains the suggestion of mechanical augmentation and the creation of the artificial human, ideas that would obsess her throughout her career. Untitled (1962) is similarly about establishing new forms and ideas. This two-panel work was begun on the West Coast, before she traveled cross-country by train to settle in New York.

It is not clear that in titling the painting Falling in Love Again (1962) if Kogelnik is referring to her relationship with Francis, but it is an indication of a degree of personal biography that she would sometimes include in her paintings. Despite their subject matter, Kogelnik’s work remains resolutely bright, colorful, and optimistic—her imagined worlds playful in their understanding and imagery, as seen in Untitled (Still Life with Globe) (c. 1963), Untitled (Still Life with Hand) (c. 1963) and Hands in the Moon (1964). Outer Space (1964) looks forward to a world without commodities, consequences, regrets or bombs, a place (for a moment) of escape from the realities of life. A place just to be free.

Kiki Kogelnik is widely considered to be one of the most important Austrian born artists. She is associated with the pop art movement—the connection with its American form she contested during her lifetime. In establishing herself amongst her contemporaries, including artists Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wessleman and Andy Warhol, she had the distinct advantage of being a recently arrived European amidst all the Americana of the time—bringing forth a more jaundiced eye to the mechanization of culture.

The exhibition is accompanied by a digital catalogue with an essay by Stephen Hepworth, Director of the Kiki Kogelnik Foundation.

KIKI KOGELNIK (1935–1997) was born in Austria and lived and worked in New York and Austria. Recent solo museum shows include Kiki Kogelnik: Inner Life (Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway); Kiki Kogelnik: Fly Me to the Moon (Modern Art Oxford, UK); and I Have Seen the Future (Kunstverein in Hamburg, Germany). She was the subject of major retrospectives at Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna, Austria, in 1998 and at Kunsthalle Krems, Austria, in 2013.

KAYNE GRIFFIN GALLERY

1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019

www.kaynegriffin.com

Alban Corbier-Labasse @ Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille - Directeur général

Alban Corbier-Labasse, directeur général de la Friche la Belle de Mai à Marseille

Friche la Belle de Mai à Marseille

Photo courtesy Friche La Belle de Mai, Marseille

Alban Corbier-Labasse a été nommé directeur général de la Friche la Belle de Mai à Marseille, lieu incontournable de la scène culturelle marseillaise. Il prendra ses fonctions au mois de septembre.

ALBAN CORBIER-LABASSE

Photo courtesy Friche La Belle de Mai, Marseille

Agé de 52 ans, Alban Corbier-Labasse a occupé plusieurs postes dans le domaine de l’action culturelle des collectivités territoriales : il a dirigé Le Séchoir, scène conventionnée de la Réunion ainsi que plusieurs établissements culturels français à l’international, parmi lesquels l’Institut Français de Dakar et celui de Casablanca. Depuis 2018, il est coordinateur général de la mission de coopération culturelle Afrique & Caraïbes à l’Institut français à Paris.

FRICHE LA BELLE DE MAI

41 rue Jobin, 13003 Marseille

www.lafriche.org

Edward Quinn @ Michael Hoppen Gallery, London - Online exhibition - Edward Quinn's Dublin, 1963

Edward Quinn's Dublin, 1963

Michael Hoppen Gallery, London

Online Exhibition

Through 15 July 2021

EDWARD QUINN

Two Boys on a Bicycle, Dublin 1963

Vintage silver gelatin print 

21.9 x 26.2 cm

The Michael Hoppen Gallery presents an online exhibition of vintage pictures of Dublin by Irish photographer, EDWARD QUINN, which have never been shown together in the UK.

Edward Quinn is best known for capturing the lives of celebrities on the Côte d’Azur during the 1950s and 60s and for recording the enduring friendship with Picasso that enabled him to record the artist at work and play over the last two decades of the artist’s life. There have been numerous exhibitions and publications celebrating Quinn’s career but his 1963 photographs of his hometown of Dublin, have not received the attention they deserve.

Edward Quinn describes how he “rambled around Dublin from dawn until dusk, but instead of catching and noting words and phrases, I caught the little incidents of the people’s daily life and the atmosphere of the places, with a small unobtrusive camera”. These images would eventually be published in Edward Quinn, James Joyce’s Dublin, with selected writings from Joyce’s works, in 1974. 

All of the prints in this online exhibition were taken by Edward Quinn in Dublin during the early summer of 1963. They were hand-printed by the photographer and have a rich tonality that is typical of a photographer who is at one with his medium of choice. Some of the images were included in the 1974 publication and these have accompanying text by Joyce, as selected by Quinn.

MICHAEL HOPPEN GALLERY

www.michaelhoppengallery.com