Isshaq Ismail @ HdM Gallery, Beijing - Allure

Isshaq Ismail: Allure

HdM Gallery, Beijing

20 September - 11 October 2022

Born in 1989 in Accra, Ghana, where he still lives and works, Isshaq Ismail is one of the most original figurative artists to have emerged from the African continent. Describing his portraits as “infantile semi-abstraction”, Ismail’s artistic practice tries to reduce the human figure to its most basic characteristics. He uses thick patches of bold colors dominating the surface of the canvas to give the impression of larger-than-life beings that are endowed with an almost three-dimensional aspect. Painted in red, purple, black or maroon, they question the audience’s expectation of figurative depiction and instead create the impression of a parallel world peopled with grotesque creatures both similar to human beings but different in appearance. 

Isshaq Ismail’s influences are many and varied. The legacy of modern art and its deconstruction of the human figure obviously comes to mind, as are the menacing features of African ritual masks. Finally, the Western tradition of silhouette portraits and caricature also looms large when one attempts to interpret Ismail’s figures. Isshaq Ismail has declared in the past that he is “interested in breaking the mould of painting by subverting and interrogating the preconceived notion of the idea of beauty within the canon of painting, and challenging the perception of aesthetics”.

 

A graduate from the Ghanatta College of Art and Design (Accra, Ghana), Isshaq Ismail has already been widely exhibited. Besides a solo show at Nicholas Roman Fine Art, New York, he has participated in group shows at Christies New York, Ross-Sutton Gallery, Choose Gallery (Stuttgart, Germany), Ghana’s National Museum and Absa Gallery (Johannesburg, South Africa).

HdM GALLERY

798 Art District, No.4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District, 100015 Beijing

hdmgallery.com

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Peter Bradley @ Karma, Los Angeles - Ruling Light: Paintings from the 1970s - Organized by Dieter Buchhart - Inaugural Exhibition of Karma Gallery, LA

Peter Bradley

Ruling Light: Paintings from the 1970s

Organized by Dieter Buchhart

Karma, Los Angeles

September 29 – November 5, 2022

Karma presenst a major exhibition of work by Peter Bradley, Ruling Light: Paintings from the 1970s, organized by Dieter Buchhart. This show brings together works from a critical decade of Peter Bradley’s career and is the inaugural exhibition for Karma’s Los Angeles gallery.

In the early 1970s, the young painter Peter Bradley expanded the formal and material constraints of abstract painting. Bradley was an early adopter of gel-acrylics, which he valued because they allowed him to paint with immediacy and gave him a nearly infinite range of chromatic possibilities. Instead of traditional brushes, Bradley favored the speed of commercial grade equipment. In 1965, Bradley had started to use a spray gun, which made him among one of the first artists to use the technology. [1] The effect was potent, swift and open. A leader in the development of the Color Field movement, Bradley’s central concern was to release color from its pictorial bounds; he remains unconcerned with labels. 

In the early 1970s, Peter Bradley favored the empty warehouses that proliferated across Downtown Manhattan, where he worked in the same buildings with artists William T. Williams, Kenneth Noland, Joel Shapiro and Mark Rothko. Bradley lay his canvases on his studio floors, applying color from above. During this period, Bradley was friends with musicians including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakely. He continues to listen to jazz while he works, applying the same spirit of spontaneity and improvisation to his artistic practice. 

Peter Bradley’s explorations with abstract painting were featured in significant exhibitions including the 1973 Whitney Biennial. The young painter’s robust practice fostered a friendship between essayist Clement Greenberg and painter Kenneth Noland. In 1971 they would join him in Houston where, with the backing of philanthropist and collector John de Menil, Bradley would curate one of the nation’s first racially integrated exhibitions of abstract art, the De Luxe Show. In later interviews, Bradley puzzled over why the show had been deemed so radical; what mattered to him was a belief in abstraction, and the dedication of an artist, regardless of race. During the show’s run, he marveled at the way school children interacted with the works on display. “This is all airy and light and free,” he said of their openness, untouched by critical debates which swirled around his pathbreaking curation. [2]

Bradley selects the titles of his paintings from his expansive interests which include astronomy, jazz, luxury sports cars, and cultural icons. Nix Olympia (1973) takes its name from the highest peak in the solar system, a mountain on Mars, and is likewise atmospheric and otherworldly. Starmaker (1972) looks to the cosmos in a sublime gradient of primary color. Supersqualo No. 1 (1972) sports a monumental swell of peach and hot orange, named in reference to a model of Ferrari.

PETER BRADLEY was born in 1940 in Pennsylvania. After attending the Society for Arts and Crafts in Detroit he would make his way to New York City in the 1960s, working in the installation department at the Guggenheim and later as the associate director at Perls Gallery. In the 1980s, Bradley would spend time making sculptures in South Africa, as part of the Thupelo Workshop. Bradley continues to work from his studio in upstate New York, laying canvases on the ground and applying color, freed from formal constraints.  

A solo exhibition of recent paintings by Peter Bradley was exhibited at Karma in 2021 in New York. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Dallas Art Museum, Dallas, Texas; The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas; African American Museum, Dallas, Texas; African American Museum, Los Angeles, California; and Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina, among others. Ruling Light: Paintings from the 1970s is accompanied by a  fully-illustrated monograph, including new texts by Hilton Als, Dieter Buchhart, Mia Matthias, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Nancy Princenthal. Karma LA will host a conversation between Dieter Buchhart, Jessica Bell Brown, Adger Cowans, Mia Matthias and Joel Shapiro on September 30th. 

Dieter Buchhart, born in 1971 in Vienna, is a curator and art theorist. Buchhart holds a PhD in art history and science (restoration), and has worked as a curator of many exhibitions in renowned international museums and art spaces. From 2007 to 2009, he was director of the Kunsthalle Krems near Vienna. Since 1999, Dieter Buchhart has written art criticism, monographs and interviews for Kunstforum International and other art magazines, and has contributed catalog essays, magazine articles, and lectures as an art theorist. His research foci range from art around 1900 and Expressionism, to art from the 1980s and contemporary art.

[1] Darby English, 1971: A Year in the Life of Color (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), [2]

[ 2] Darby English, 1971: A Year in the Life of Color (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), [204]

KARMA

7351 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90046

karmakarma.org

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Photographer Dorothea Lange Family Collection @ Philips, New York

Dorothea Lange: The Family Collection

Phillips, New York

2 - 13 October, 2022

DOROTHEA LANGE

White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, 1933

Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000

Courtesy of Phillips

DOROTHEA LANGE

Street Demonstration, San Francisco, 1933

Estimate $8,000 - 12,000

Courtesy of Phillips

DOROTHEA LANGE

Kern County, California (Olson for Governor), 1938

Estimate $7,000 - 9,000

Courtesy of Phillips

Phillips announces the sale of Dorothea Lange: The Family Collection, a trove of over 100 photographs coming directly from the descendants of this seminal American photographer. The collection will be sold in two separate online offerings scheduled alongside Phillips’ October 2022 and April 2023 Photographs auctions in New York. The first of these two online-only sales will be exhibited at Phillips’ Park Avenue galleries in New York from 2-13 October, with bidding open on 3 October.

The two sales feature some of Dorothea Lange’s most indelible images from her multi-decade career in photography, as well as many images which will be new to collectors. All were in the photographer’s collection at the time of her death, passed along to her descendants, and represent the entirety of her career, from the first socially-conscious images she made outside her portrait studio in San Francisco, through her work for the Farm Security Administration during the Depression, to her post-war documentary projects, much of it done in the company of her husband and collaborator Paul Taylor.

DOROTHEA LANGE

Shipyard Worker and Family in Trailer Camp, Richmond, California, 1944

Estimate $6,000 - 8,000

Courtesy of Phillips

DOROTHEA LANGE

New York City (Man in Raincoat), 1952

Estimate $4,000 - 6,000

Courtesy of Phillips

DOROTHEA LANGE

Selected Images from The Public Defender, 1955

Estimate $18,000 - 22,000

Courtesy of Phillips

DOROTHEA LANGE

Procession Bearing Food for the Dead, Egypt, 1963

Estimate $3,000 - 5,000

Courtesy of Phillips

Highlights of the October offering include a print of one of Dorothea Lange’s earliest and most decisive documentary images, White Angel Breadline, whose central figure embodies the poverty of the Depression and the grit to overcome it. The sale will feature a suite of 16 images from Dorothea Lange’s celebrated Public Defender series of 1955, in which her detailed portrayal of a public defense attorney and his clients set the template for a new kind of photojournalism. It is the largest group from this series to appear at auction.

The sale also includes an unprecedented selection of her international photography, begun in the 1950s, when she traveled with Paul Taylor to Ireland, Egypt, and Asia, creating a panoramic portrait of humanity across all cultures.

Estimates do not include buyer’s premium; prices achieved include the hammer price plus buyer’s premium.

Auction: 3 – 13 October 2022

Auction viewing: 2 – 13 October 2022

Location: 432 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022

PHILLIPS NEW YORK 

432 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022

www.phillips.com

Called to the Camera: Black American Studio Photographers @ NOMA - New Orleans Museum of Art

Called to the Camera: 

Black American Studio Photographers

New Orleans Museum of Art

September 15, 2022 – January 8, 2023

The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) presents Called to the Camera: Black American Studio Photographers, a major exhibition focusing on the artistic virtuosity, social significance, and political impact of Black American photographers working in commercial portrait studios during photography’s first century and beyond. Organized by NOMA, the exhibition focuses on a national cohort of professional camera operators, demonstrating the incredible variety of work that they produced and their influence on the broader history of photography. Featuring more than 150 photographs spanning from the 19th century to present day—many of which have never been publicly exhibited and are unique objects.

The exhibition explores how Black studio photographers operated on the developing edge of photographic media from its earliest introduction in the United States. They produced affirming portraits for their clients, while also engaging in other kinds of paid photographic work exemplary of important movements in art like pictorialism and modernism. Called to the Camera features work by over three dozen photographers located across the country, demonstrating how the Black photography studio was a national phenomenon. The exhibition includes an interspersed selection of works by modern and contemporary artists, illustrating connections between the historical legacy of Black photography studios and what we consider to be fine art photography today.

Photographers whose works are featured in Called to the Camera include James Van Der Zee and Addison Scurlock, who worked on a national stage, as well as photographers who were active regionally, among them Florestine Perrault Collins and A.P. Bedou (New Orleans, LA), Reverend Henry Clay Anderson (Greenville, MS), Morgan and Marvin Smith (New York City), and Robert and Henry Hooks (Memphis, TN). Among the contemporary photographers included in the exhibition are Endia Beal, Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., and Polo Silk. 

The exhibition features a range of different types of images, from some of the earliest daguerreotypes of significant Black Americans (such as Frederick Douglass) to early hand-painted gelatin silver prints and panoramic photographs, as well as camera equipment, studio ephemera, and an immersive re-creation of a noted studio’s reception room.

“Chief among NOMA’s goals is to support important projects that amplify the histories of under-represented communities,” said Susan Taylor, Montine McDaniel Freeman Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art. “Called to the Camera does exactly that: it articulates a story that is both local and national, centering the importance of Black photographers in their communities and in the history of photography.”

“As we continue to build our notable photography holdings to make our collection and our exhibition program truly reflect our audiences, this thoughtfully researched national exploration of Black American studio photography is a vital contribution to this work,” added Russell Lord, Freeman Family Curator of Photographs at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Brian Piper, exhibition curator and Assistant Curator of Photographs at the New Orleans Museum of Art added, “Building on the foundational work of scholars like Dr. Deborah Willis, this exhibition gathers original works by a professional class of Black photographers linked by a shared set of visual and cultural concerns. By bringing these objects—many never before exhibited—into the art museum, we can help reframe the history of American photography and place Black photographers and sitters at the center of that story. Called to the Camera is, in part, an argument for a reconsideration of how historians and institutions evaluate and display photography.”

The exhibition is organized into five sections across 6,000 square feet that proceed chronologically and thematically from the 1840s to present day. The first section emphasizes the pivotal role Black American photographers played in photography during the 19th century, focusing on the establishment of commercial studio practices in the United States by photographers like James Presley Ball and the Goodridge Brothers. The second gallery evokes early 20th century commercial studios and domestic interiors, providing a contextual framework that illustrates the ways in which Black Americans used photography after 1900 to shape both private lives and public expressions of self. From there, the exhibition focuses closely on the practices of a half-dozen photographic studios, providing insights into both similarities and differences across geographies and exploring how these artists used a range of photographic processes and aesthetic styles through the end of the 1960s.

As a whole, the exhibition considers other work that portrait studio photographers engaged in during this time, including photojournalism, advertising, and event photography. Beyond portraits, Called to the Camera demonstrates how Black American studio photographers worked on the vanguard of fine art photography and argues that the business of the studio cannot be divorced from the rest of these photographers’ practices. 

Called to the Camera: Black American Studio Photographers is curated by Dr. Brian Piper, NOMA’s Assistant Curator of Photographs. The exhibition draws works from both NOMA’s institutional holdings as well as works loaned from both notable public and private collections including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; National Museum of African American History and Culture; the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University; and Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Called to the Camera

Black American Studio Photographers

Exhibition Catalog

Available for pre-order, arriving October 2022

Called to the Camera is accompanied by a catalog distributed by Yale University Press featuring over 100 color plates and essays by leading scholars of photographic and Black American history including Dr. John Edwin Mason, Carla Williams, Russell Lord, and Brian Piper.

The exhibition is sponsored by Catherine and David Edwards; Kitty and Stephen Sherrill; Andrea and Rodney Herenton; Tina Freeman and Philip Woollam; Milly and George Denegre; and Cherye and Jim Pierce. Additional support is provided by Philip DeNormandie; Aimee and Michael Siegel; and the Del and Ginger Hall Photography Fund. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Research for this project was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

NEW ORLEANS MUSEUM OF ART - NOMA

One Collins C. Diboll Circle, City Park, New Orleans, Louisiana 70124

noma.org

Xavier Veilhan @ Nara Roesler, Rio de Janeiro

Xavier Veilhan

Nara Roesler, Rio de Janeiro

September 10 - October 29, 2022

XAVIER VEILHAN 

Marine n° 1, 2 and 3, 2022

Birch plywood and acrylic paint

78.7 x 41.3 x 2 in each

© Courtesy of the artist and Nara Roesler

Nara Roesler presents Xavier Veilhan's first solo show in Rio de Janeiro. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to see all-new works by a leading figure in French contemporary art, highlighting how his work explores the realms of two and three dimensionality, as well as exploring his particular interest in creating spaces and contexts that alter the experience of space and the perception of time.

On September 12 the cinematheque at the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio) hosted a screening, notably premiering Xavier Veilhan’s new short film titled, Le Film de l’Est, along with two other pieces by the artist, in dialogue with short-films by artists including Isabelle Cornaro, Carlos Adriano, Cris Miranda, Cao Guimaraes and Raul Mourao. The presentation was followed by a conversation between Xavier Veilhan, participating local artists, and head curator Keyna Eleison.

Xavier Veilhan (b. 1963, in Paris, France) is known for a body of work that ranges from sculpture, painting, installation, performance and video to photography. Integrating the collections of institutions such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, and having represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2017, his work pays homage to the inventions and inventors of our time through artistic language that intertwines industry and art. For the artist, art is “a visual tool through which we must look to understand our past, present and future”.

In 2022, invited by Virginie Viard to create the visual universe of the last two seasons of Chanel Haute Couture shows in Paris, Xavier Veilhan developed an installation that combines virtual and physical spaces with monumental geometric sculptures, mobiles and sculptural ‘wheels’. The latter pieces which consist of circular kinetic sculptures made of wood, entwine the visual poetics of the mobile and of the Cocardes, which are presented at Nara Roesler Rio de Janeiro alongside other works characteristic of his practice.

Xavier Veilhan also presents examples of his recent sculptural work, which is firmly rooted in the practice of portraiture. In this sense, famous personalities such as music producers Brian Eno, Quincy Jones, Rick Rubin and Tom Moulton, portrayed in the Producers series, or architects such as Le Corbusier and Richard Neutra for the Architectones project, as well as people close to the artist, such as close friends and studio assistants, give an emotional dimension to the work.

The process of making these figures incorporates traditional methods and materials combined with current technology. Xavier Veilhan scans the bodies of his subjects, to manipulate the image before its completion. Although the digital scan makes it possible to make a sculpture identical to the model, Xavier Veilhan operates, almost always, without the intention of achieving a faithful representation, but rather seeking to insert elements of the artificial, either through the geometry of the form, or by proposing effects that alter the viewer's natural vision of it. 

In this sense, Xavier Veilhan uses a wide variety of materials in his practice, notably including silver, solid wood, plywood and mineral mortar. The latter was recently used by the artist in order to minimize the environmental impacts of his work, a concern that also led him to use non-polluting varnish in the finishing of several pieces.

Finally, the exhibition includes works from the Marqueteries series, which capture images based on photographs of the artist's faceted sculptures. According to the artist, the works capture a tension between representation and the existence of the image as an object. Referring to the technique of marquetry, Xavier Veilhan resorts to a formal approach in which he uses chromatic surfaces – some of them opaque, others with visible wood grains –, which fit together and create the illusion of three-dimensionality with an impressive blend of both craftsmanship and technology.

On the occasion of the exhibition, Brazilian artist Lucia Koch interviews Xavier Veilhan, addressing the similarities between their respective artistic approaches, which have architecture and space as guiding concepts in their practice.

XAVIER VEILHAN

Since the mid–1980s, Xavier Veilhan has created an acclaimed body of works—sculpture, painting, installation, performance, video and photography—defined by his interest in both the vocabulary of modernity (speed, motion, urban life, etc.) and classical statuary, reinterpreted from a contemporary vision. His work pays tribute to the inventions and inventors of our modern times, through a formal artistic language that mixes the codes of both industry and art. He mixes a great variety of techniques and material to produce tridimensional portraits and landscapes, bestiaries and architectures that swing between the familiar and the extraordinary.

For Xavier Veilhan, art is ‘a vision tool through which we must look in order to understand our past, present, and future’. Frequently investing in public space, his exhibitions and in-situ interventions in cities, gardens and houses question our perception by creating an evolving space in which the audience becomes an actor. Their aesthetics reveal a continuum of form, contour, fixity and dynamics, that invite the spectator to a new reading of the space and so creating a whole repertory of signs, the theatre of a society.

NARA ROESLER

Rua Redentor 241, Ipanema 22421-030, Rio de Janeiro RJ

www.nararoesler.art

Strange Clay: Ceramics Contemporary Art @ Hayward Gallery, London

Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art 

Hayward Gallery, London

26 October 2022 - 8 January 2023

Beate Kuhn 

Glasbaum, 2001 

Stoneware, porcelain, thrown, assembled 

24 x 40 x 37 cm 

Courtesy the Estate of the Artist. 

Photo: Tony Izaaks

Lubna Chowdhury 

Sign 7, 2021

Glazed ceramic, wooden board

132 x 242 x 4 cm

© Lubna Chowdhary. Courtesy the artist. 

Photo: Andrew Judd

The Hayward Gallery presents Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art, the first large-scale group exhibition in the UK to explore how contemporary artists have used the medium of clay in inventive ways. Given the recent surge of interest in ceramics by artists around the world, as well as countless people who enjoy sculpting clay as a pastime, Strange Clay offers a timely reflection on this vital and popular medium. Featuring 23 international and multi-generational artists, from ceramic legends Betty Woodman, Beate Kuhn, Ron Nagle and Ken Price, to a new generation of artists pushing the boundaries of ceramics today, the exhibition explores the expansive potential of clay through a variety of playful as well as socially-engaged artworks.

Strange Clay features works by Aaron Angell, Salvatore Arancio, Leilah Babirye, Jonathan Baldock, Lubna Chowdhary, Edmund de Waal, Emma Hart, Liu Jianhua, Rachel Kneebone, Serena Korda, Klara Kristalova, Beate Kuhn, Takuro Kuwata, Lindsey Mendick, Ron Nagle, Magdalene Odundo, Woody De Othello, Grayson Perry, Shahpour Pouyan, Ken Price, Brie Ruais, Betty Woodman and David Zink Yi.

Curated by Dr Cliff Lauson, Strange Clay features eccentric abstract sculptures, large immersive installations, fantastical otherworldly figures and uncanny evocations of everyday objects. The artworks vary in scale, finish and technique, and address topics that range from architecture to social justice, the body, the domestic, the political and the organic. Regardless of background or route into the material, all of the artists in the exhibition celebrate the sheer possibility and versatility of clay.

Ron Nagle  

Schmear Campaign, 2012

Ceramic, Glaze, Epoxy resin, China Paint

17.7 x 7.6 x 9.5 cm

© Ron Nagle 

Courtesy the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery / Modern Art  

Photo: Don Tuttle

Ron Nagle  

Ms. Artismal, 2018

Ceramic, catalyzed polyurethane, epoxy resin, acrylic

17 x 10 x 10 cm

© Ron Nagle. 

Courtesy the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery / Modern Art 

Photo: Don Tuttle

Among the highlights of the exhibition is the work of Ron Nagle. Born in 1939 in San Francisco where is live and work, this talented artist is know for its colourful abstract expressionist ceramics. For more information on this artist, you can read the posts on two exhibitions (among others) that Matthew Marks Gallery (New York), which represents him, devoted to Ron Nagle : Ron Nagle: Necessary Obstacles (2021) and Ron Nagle: Getting to No (2019).

In a brand new commission for the exhibition, titled Till Death Do Us Part (2022), Lindsey Mendick explores the domestic realm as a site of conflicts and negotiations. A reflection on the ambivalence of domestic settings and relationships, the home is represented as a battleground where vermin infiltrate every corner of the house.

David Zink Yi

Untitled (Architeuthis), 2010

Burnt and glazed clay

29 x 575 x 115 cm / 11 3/8 x 226 3/8 x 45 1/4 inches

© David Zink Yi. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth 

Photo: Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich

David Zink Yi’s giant ceramic squid, Untitled (Architeuthis) (2010) sprawls across the floor of the gallery, spanning more than 4.8 metres and lying in what appears to be a pool of its own ink. Fascinated by the extreme biological differences between humans and squids, he explores the relationship between myth-making and the construction of identity.

Takuro Kuwata

Untitled, 2016

Porcelain, glaze, pigment, steel, gold, lacquer

288 x 135 x 130 cm

Courtesy: Alison Jacques, London 

© Takuro Kuwata; photo: Robert Glowacki

In his ceramics sculptures, Takuro Kuwata radically reinterprets the shape of a traditional Japanese tea bowl or chawan – a vessel used to prepare and make tea for traditional ceremonies. Greatly varying in scale, the artist’s sculptures are glazed with elaborate colours and textures that evoke organic forms, pushing traditional techniques to create something entirely unique and surprising.

Klara Kristalova

Installation view of Klara Kristalova: Camouflage, 

Perrotin, Paris, September 7 – October 7, 2017

Courtesy Perrotin. Photo: Claire Dorn

Klara Kristalova

Wooden girl, 2021

Stoneware, 62 x 25 x 31 cm

© Klara Kristalova and Perrotin. 

Courtesy Perrotin. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley

Fantastical creatures are displayed in a botanical installation from Klara Kristalova, featuring plants and ceramic sculptures. Roots, moss, grass and branches evoke the forest surrounding the artist’s studio in the Swedish wilderness and the woodland setting of fairy tales.

Woody De Othello 

Won’t Tell, 2018

Ceramic, glaze, acrylic paint, resin, 135.9 x 48.3 x 48.3 cm

© Woody De Othello. Courtesy of the artist; 

Jessica Silverman, San Francisco; and Klarna, New York, NY 

Photo: John Wilson White

Woody De Othello

on and ON, 2020

Ceramic, underglaze, glaze, 43.2 x 43.2 cm

© Woody De Othello. Courtesy of the artist; 

Jessica Silverman, San Francisco; and Klarna, New York, NY 

Photo: John Wilson White

Woody De Othello’s surreal clay sculptures modify the shapes of traditional household objects into over-sized, twisted and sometimes anthropomorphic forms. With his distinct approach to ceramics, Woody Othello reimagines the mundane with a humorous twist while offering a serious reflection on society and race.

Dr Cliff Lauson, Curator of Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art, says: “Strange Clay brings together some of the most exciting artists working in ceramics in recent years. Using innovative methods and techniques, they push the medium to its physical and conceptual limits, producing imaginative artworks that surprise and provoke in equal measure.”

Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, says: “Vibrant, playful and provocative, Strange Clay brings together a diverse range of artists - from across the world as well as the UK - whose work is inventively redefining the place of ceramics in contemporary art. Their work celebrates the medium’s special characteristics in order to explore an array of timely concerns.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Dr Cliff Lauson and Amy Sherlock, texts by Allie Biswas, Jareh Das, Hettie Judah and Jenni Lomax, and a roundtable discussion with four of the artists in the exhibition chaired by Elinor Morgan, co-published by Hayward Publishing and Hatje Cantz.

Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art is curated by Dr Cliff Lauson with Assistant Curator Marie-Charlotte Carrier and Curatorial Assistant Suzanna Petot.

HAYWARD GALLERY

Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London

www.southbankcentre.co.uk

The Art Show 2022 Solo Exhibitions

The Art Show 2022 Solo Exhibitions

Park Avenue Armory, New York

November 3 - 6, 2022

THE ART SHOW

Photo Courtesy the ADAA / The Art Show

On the occasion of its 60th anniversary, the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) announced the 34th annual edition of The Art Show, one of the longest-running art fairs in the USA. This year, The Art Show features a record number of booths from 78 ADAA member galleries. Of these, an impressive 55 booths features solo presentations that explore the work of just one artist, allowing visitors thoughtful, curated experiences akin to those found in galleries––also a record for the fair.

The 55 booths offering solo presentations––promoting an atmosphere of closelooking and one-on-one conversations with dealers and artists––feature a wide range of artists, and showcase key art historical figures of the 19th century alongside emerging voices in contemporary art from diverse, international locales including Brazil, Côte d'Ivoire, and Beijing. They include:

• Drawings and sculptures by Ricardo Brey, presented by Alexander Gray Associates.

• An exhibition from Anthony Meier Fine Arts of paintings on vintage museum sheets created over the past decade by Sarah Cain.

• A dozen new large-format paintings by Zio Ziegler, presented by Almine Rech, from the artist’s Essential Figures series, which features improvised linework and layers of amorphous forms.

• Anton Kern Gallery’s booth of work by Marcus Jahmal, whose interiors, landscapes, and portraiture are united by the artist’s deep brushwork and unique sense of color.

• Felt works by Robert Morris (1931-2018), presented by Castelli Gallery, where the artist first exhibited this same body of work in 1968.

• A selection by Cheim & Read of rare Lynda Benglis Lagniappe sculptures from 1976-1979, which represent a direct, eccentric, and erotic response to Minimalism.

• A presentation by David Kordansky Gallery of new paintings by Raul Guerrero, who has made work informed by his experiences as an American of Mexican ancestry in Southern California.

• Significant watercolors on paper by Alice Neel (1900-1984), presented by David Zwirner.

• Garth Greenan Gallery’s presentation of works from 1969-1971 by Gladys Nilsson, a member of the Hairy Who, which features her silver ink on black paper drawings and a rare early large-scale painting.

• A show of sculptures by the American master ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu (1922-2011), presented by James Cohan.

• An exhibition presented by James Fuentes of work by Trinidadian-America painter, photographer, dancer, choreographer, actor, composer, and costume designer Geoffrey Holder, curated by Hilton Als.

• New work by South African artist Nicholas Hlobo, who uses tactile materials such as ribbon, leather, wood, and rubber that he melds and weaves together into hybrid objects, presented by Lehmann Maupin.

• A monumental painting from Liu Xiaodong’s Shaanbei project, Reforming Loafers 1 (2018), presented in Lisson Gallery’s booth, alongside works on paper and sketchbooks.

• New and historically important works by William Kentridge in a booth presentation by Marian Goodman Gallery, featuring works on paper, sculpture, and prints.

• An exhibition by Mitchell-Innes & Nash of Antônio Henrique Amaral (1935-2015), a key figure in Brazilian and Latin American art who came of age under military dictatorship in Brazil in 1964.

• A presentation of new mixed-media paintings by Erik Lindman in Peter Blum Gallery’s booth that will feature the artist’s process-driven practice through which he creates multilayered and tactile non-representational work with repurposed found materials.

• New paintings by Ross Bleckner, presented by Petzel, including those that feature flowers as a recurring motif as well as others more closely aligned with pure abstraction.

• A focused presentation by Sperone Westwater of recent photographic works, several of which were created specifically for The Art Show, by artist Joana Choumali from Côte d'Ivoire.

• A new body of work by Sprüth Magers’s gallery artist Louise Lawler.

• A presentation of historical works by artist Julio Le Parc by Nara Roesler, which focuses on the artist’s iconic Alchimie series and is punctuated by a kinetic sculpture.

The remaining booths at The Art Show are no less rigorous in their curation, and feature an outsized number of presentations that focus on female artists. Highlights from those multi-artist booths include:

• An intergenerational cohort of women artists from GAVLAK’s program, spanning more than 75 years, which continues the gallery’s commitment to expanding the contemporary art discourse to be more inclusive of the contributions of female artists.

• A survey of work by eight women photographers who focused their gaze on the streets around them, presented by Howard Greenberg Gallery.

• George Rickey’s (1907-2002) kinetic sculptures and Robert Motherwell’s (1915-1991) celebrated Drunk with Turpentine series, which, presented together by Kasmin, muse on movement and gesture.

• A cross-generational presentation with Washington, D.C.-based artist and former gallerist Alonzo Davis and Vancouver-based artist Christine Howard Sandoval, presented by parrasch heijnen.

• A booth on the theme of "Realism: Then and Now," organized by Jill Newhouse Gallery following a series of exhibitions showing the influence of 19th century art on contemporary art.

• A selection of works by artists from Matthew Marks Gallery, including Leidy Churchman, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015), Simone Leigh, and Charles Ray, among others.

• A presentation by Paula Cooper Gallery focusing on staple works from the 1960s and 1970s by gallery artists such as Carl Andre, Mark di Suvero, and Claes Oldenburg, as well as other major figures from the period.

• Five contemporary female American artists working within abstraction, presented by Rhona Hoffman Gallery, which will feature: Torkwase Dyson, Julia Fish, Judy Ledgerwood, Martha Tuttle, and Amanda Williams.

THE ART SHOW

The Park Avenue Armory

Park Avenue and 67th Street, New York

theartshow.org

ADAA

205 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10016

artdealers.org

Outsider Art Fair - OAF Paris 2022

Outsider Art Fair Paris - OAF Paris 2022

Atelier Richelieu, Paris

15 - 18 septembre 2022

Fondée à New York en 1993, l’Outsider Art Fair (OAF) est la première foire artistique exclusivement consacrée à l'art autodidacte, à l'art brut et à l'art outsider. Elle présente à la fois des maîtres de réputation internationale, tels que James Castle, Aloïse Corbaz, Henry Darger, Thornton Dial, William Edmondson, Martín Ramírez, Judith Scott, Bill Traylor, et Adolf Wölfli, et des artistes contemporains comme M’onma, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Frank Walter et George Widener. Très vite reconnu pour son non-conformisme, l’OAF a joué un rôle crucial dans le développement d’une communauté de collectionneurs passionnés et dans la reconnaissance accrue de ces formes d’art hors réseaux sur la scène artistique contemporaine.

En 2012, l’OAF a été acquise par Wide Open Arts, une société créée par le galeriste new-yorkais Andrew Edlin. L’édition 2013 de l’OAF, acclamée par la critique, triple son nombre de visiteurs par rapport à l’année antérieure. Fort de ce succès, Wide Open Arts a décidé d’exporter sa foire à Paris en octobre 2013, donnant ainsi un souffle nouveau à une riche tradition parisienne pour l’art brut. OAF Paris se tient d’abord pendant deux ans à l'Hôtel Le A, à proximité du Grand Palais, et déménage en 2015 à l'Hôtel du Duc, un hôtel particulier situé dans le quartier de l'Opéra. Depuis 2018, la foire se tient à L'Atelier Richelieu, dans le 2e arrondissement.

Pour sa 10e édition à Paris – la première édition en présentiel depuis 2019 – OAF Paris revient à l'Atelier Richelieu du 15 au 18 septembre 2022, avec 30 exposants de 24 villes représentant 13 pays, et est l'édition inaugurale sous la direction de Sofía Lanusse. Des galeries de renom sont de retour, notamment la galerie du marché (Lausanne), la Galerie J-P Ritsch-Fisch (Strasbourg), la Andrew Edlin Gallery (New York) et Creative Growth (Oakland). The

Gallery of Everything (Londres) fait ses débuts à l'OAF Paris avec son propre stand, en plus d'une co-présentation avec Rizomi (Pavie) des sculptures de l'artiste toscan Pietro Moschini (1952-2011).

Parmi les points forts de la foire, citons les œuvres de l'artiste français Francis Palanc (1928-2015) à la Galerie Arthur Borgnis (Paris) et Babahoum à Escale Nomad (Paris). Les œuvres d'artistes de renommée internationale comme Aloïse Corbaz, Carlo Zinelli, Madge Gill, Henry Darger, Martín Ramírez et James Castle sont également exposées.

Parmi les nouveaux exposants, notons suns.works (Zurich), qui présente une sélection d'œuvres de l'artiste suisse Hans Krüsi (1920-1995) et celles du légendaire producteur de musique et artiste Lee Scratch Perry (1936-2021). À la GRYDER Gallery (Nouvelle-Orléans), on trouve une sélection d'artistes de la Nouvelle-Orléans, dont Andrew LaMar Hopkins et Dapper Bruce Lafitte. À la Galerie Vidourle Prix (Sauve), on découvre les œuvres d'artistes du sud de la France et à Yataal Art (Dakar), un solo show de l'artiste sénégalais Pape Diop.

 

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein

No. 818, July 3, 1959, 1959

Oil on masonite, 24 x 24 inches

© Estate of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, 

courtesy Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York

Cette année, l'OAF Paris accueille deux expositions : I Wish I Could Speak in Technicolor sous le commissariat de Maurizio Cattelan et Marta Papini (organisatrice artistique, Biennale de Venise 2022), qui s'articule autour de la vie et de l'œuvre d'Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983) qui, en plus de la photographie, de la céramique, des dessins à l'encre et de la sculpture en béton, est connu pour ses peintures abstraites kaléidoscopiques des années 1950, créées à l'aide de ses doigts ainsi que de bâtons, de peignes, de feuilles et d'autres ustensiles de bricolage qu’il utilise pour faire glisser la peinture à l'huile sur la surface de planches de masonite ou de morceaux de carton provenant de boîtes d'emballage de la boulangerie où il travaillait. 

La seconde exposition, The Underground is Always Outside, est organisée conjointement par la dessinatrice Aline Kominsky-Crumb, pionnière de comics de la scène underground, et Dan Nadel, auteur et commissaire indépendant. Leur présentation met à l’honneur les comics originaux de figures canoniques du genre, notamment Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Bill Griffith, Art Spiegelman, Spain Rodriguez, Robert Williams et S. Clay Wilson, aux côtés de leurs pairs féminins tout aussi fascinants, bien que moins connus, dont Phoebe Gloeckner, Diane Noomin, Willy Mendes et Sharon Rudahl.

Enfin, l'OAF Paris accueille Rodovid Gallery (Kiev), qui présente une sélection d'œuvres relevant de l’art folklorique ukrainien, dont celles de la légendaire Maria Prymachenko (1909-1997), incluse dans l'édition actuelle de la Biennale de Venise. Parmi les autres artistes présents à Venise qui peuvent être vus à Paris, notons Shuvinai Ashoona, Minnie Evans et Sister Gertrude Morgan.

Liste des exposants :

Bilbao Formarte, Bilbao; Galerie Arthur Borgnis, Paris; Copenhagen Outsider Art Gallery, Copenhague; Creative Growth Art Center, Oakland; Estudio Debajo del Sombrero, Madrid; Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York; Galerie Escale Nomad, Paris; The Gallery of Everything, Londres; The Goma, Madrid; GRYDER Gallery, New Orleans; Libraire de la Halle Saint-Pierre, Paris; Galerie Atelier Herenplaats, Rotterdam; HEY! - galerie OUTSIDER POP, Paris; Galerie Atelier De Kaai, Goes; Galerie Pol Lemétais, Saint Sever du Moustier; Lue Lu, Poznan; galerie du marché, Lausanne; Maroncelli 12, Milan; galerie du moineau écarlate, Paris; Galerie Frédéric Moisan, Paris; Galería MUY, Chiapas; Galerie Polysémie, Marseille; LA POP GALERIE, Sète; Project Onward, Chicago; Galerie J-P Ritsch-Fisch, Strasbourg; RIZOMIarte, Pavia; Rodovid Gallery, Kiev; suns.works, Zurich; Galerie Vidourle Prix, Sauve; Yataal Art, Dakar

Horaires d’ouverture

Vendredi 16 septembre et samedi 17 septembre : 11h - 20h

Dimanche 18 septembre : 11h - 18h

OUTSIDER ART FAIR PARIS

L’Atelier Richelieu

60 rue de Richelieu, 75002 Paris

www.outsiderartfair.com

Rindon Johnson @ François Ghebaly Gallery, NYC - Cuvier

Rindon Johnson: Cuvier

François Ghebaly Gallery, New York

September 7 – October 15, 2022

RINDON JOHNSON

Slick meddling elbow deep errant ornament (canyon), 2022 (detail)

Stained glass, patinated steel frame 

78 x 60.5 x 23 inches (199 x 153.5 x 58 cm)

© Rindon Johnson, courtesy of François Ghebaly Gallery

François Ghebaly presents Cuvier by Rindon Johnson, the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery’s New York space. Following his presentation at the 2022 Whitney Biennial, Rindon Johnson’s latest body of work offers homage to Ziphius cavirostris, or the Cuvier’s Beaked Whale and features new sculptures in stained glass, a work in cow leather and bleach exposed to the elements, and a new video game that places players in the perceptual apparatus of the whale.

The Cuvier’s Beaked Whale is among the deepest divers in our oceans. In temperate and tropical waters across the globe, the whales hunt for squid at depths of over 800 meters. Their bodies are uniquely adapted for such feats: scientists postulate that with each dive they dilate their lungs to handle the pressure of such an altitudinal shift. A rare sight in the wild, the whales were first thought to be a wholly extinct lineage based on the unique rostral cavities that French naturalist George Cuvier observed in skull fragments. These superlatives make the whale a mysterious subject among marine biologists—apt for the sorts of throughlines that guide poet and multidisciplinary artist Rindon Johnson’s conceptual acumen.

In their new (and first) video game, Rindon Johnson and artist Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork draw on fragmentary data to speculate a firsthand visual and acoustic account of the beaked whale’s hunting habits. Not unlike modern first-person shooters, gameplay is situated from the whale’s point of view; players use the joysticks of an Xbox controller to harmonize their sonic movements in attempts to catch their squid prey gliding between egresses of the deep submarine Great Bahama Canyon. Like other cetaceans, Cuviers use highly developed aural sensory organs to navigate their underwater environment. The whale’s sight, though poorly understood by scientists, is thought to be nearly vestigial. They see as an afterthought. The resulting visual design is stark and monochromatic, forcing players to rely overwhelmingly on the game’s immersive soundscape.

Speculative animation has proven a generative discipline for Rindon Johnson. In his 2021 two-part exhibition Law of Large Numbers, Rindon Johnson presented the digital work Coeval Proposition #2: Last Year’s Atlantic, or You look really good, you look like you pretended like nothing ever happened, or a Weakening (2020-2021), which used climate data and Unreal Engine software to visualize the “North Atlantic cold blob,” a temperature anomaly in the North Atlantic caused by climate change. Data (itself an abstraction dependent on its referents) becomes the poetic link for the artist’s critical investments in virtual reality and the organic world. To Rindon Johnson, this polarity between what we see as virtual and what is considered actual does not exist, and this belief regularly informs his artwork titles and other writings.

By focusing on these waters, Rindon Johnson returns again to the mid-Atlantic triangular trade and his interest in the history of live stock. Shown in the far corner of the gallery, As nearly like the day. (2022) is the newest in Johnson’s ongoing series of durational cowhide works. Using the so-called ‘byproducts’ of our contemporary livestock industry, namely cow leather, the artist exposes his works to both intentional mark-making and the randomizing of natural elements. The animal surfaces become sites for the study of embodiment, elongating his discussions on intimacy, colonial violence, and the complexities of bearing witness. Scholars like Rebecca Giggs point to the evolution of commercial whaling in the 19th and 20th centuries as our initial template for the full scale industrialization of nonhuman animal bodies. Relatively speaking, whales and bovines even share a recent common phylogenetic ancestor. For Rindon Johnson, continuities such as these are ready footholds.

Rindon Johnson (b. 1990, unceded Ohlone and Coast Miwok territories, San Francisco, California) currently lives and works in Berlin where he is an Associate Fellow at the Universität der Künste Berlin. Rindon Johnson is the author of four books of essays and poetry, The Law of Large Numbers: Black Sonic Abyss (SculptureCenter/Chisenhale Gallery, 2021), Shade the King (Capricious Press, 2017), No One Sleeps Better Than White People (Inpatient Press, 2016), and the virtual reality book Meet in the Corner (PublishingHouse.Me, 2017). Recent solo exhibitions include The Law of Large Numbers at SculptureCenter, New York and Chisenhale Gallery, London; and The Valley of the Moon at François Ghebaly, Los Angeles. His work has been featured at the New Museum, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the 2022 Whitney Biennial, New York. Alongside Cuvier, Rindon Johnson will release his newest book, Ever Given (Inpatient Press, 2022)—a compilation of his poetic practice over the last four years.

François Ghebaly Gallery

391 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002

ghebaly.com

Amy Beager @ Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London - Swann Maidens

Amy Beager: Swann Maidens

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London

19 September – 29 October 2022 

Dreamy female forms appear amid vivid, swirling landscapes, their limbs entwined with the translucent, ghostlike silhouettes of swans. British artist Amy Beager draws on the language of fairy tale and myth to create darkly romantic scenes that blur the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, fantasy and reality. Swan Maidens, her first solo exhibition with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, centres around the story of a woman – half human, half swan – torn between the mortal and immortal worlds. At once haunting and beautiful, the paintings envision different interpretations of the folklore reflecting on ideas around power, seduction, desire, entrapment, freedom and loss.

While Amy Beager may plan the rough positioning of her figures, the overall composition, the colours, lines and textures, develop through the painting process, allowing her the freedom to experiment with different ways of conveying the narrative. This approach results in fluid, sweeping brushstrokes, rough pastel gestures, translucent layers of paint and soft, undulating forms that appear to melt into one another, confusing our sense of perspective and creating a powerful impression of movement. In this latest body of work, natural elements – waterways, trees, long grasses – converge with the supernatural to create a liminal space, an in-between. This is perhaps most apparent in large scale diptych Glow. On the left hand side of the canvas, there is a voluptuous female figure, rendered in rich tones of orange and pink while on the right hand side there are two barren trees with their branches reaching upwards in thin spikes. The woman is almost godlike in scale and yet her body is obscured by thick, wide brushes of paint – as if she is being engulfed by the landscape. Here, the luminous, spectral silhouette of the swan, its wings spread and neck reaching into the distance becomes a powerful symbol of longing.

Elsewhere the swan appears more abstracted, its presence hinted at through a plume of white feathers, a floating head, rough touches of white. The Sink, for example, depicts the woman’s body submerged in a green liquid-like substance. We see the outline of her face turned upwards at the bottom of the canvas, while her arms reach into the pink sky. Though the swan itself is absent, the woman’s hands appear bathed in a strange white, luminous light, perhaps indicative of a fading supernatural power as she falls into another world. In this sense, the spirit of the swan is both a curse and blessing: it is a form of entrapment but also a life source, it is what makes her unique. This is the crux of the swan maiden’s romantic tragedy but it also reflects on real world issues around gender politics and belonging. Indeed, though each painting possesses a distinct emotional narrative, they share a sense of restlessness or rather, a refusal to be still.

KRISTIN HJELLEGJERDE GALLERY

2 Melior Place, London SE1 3SZ

kristinhjellegjerde.com

________________

Soheila Sokhanvari @ The Curve, Barbican Centre, London - Rebel Rebel

Soheila Sokhanvari: Rebel Rebel

The Curve, Barbican Centre, London

7 October 2022 – 19 February 2023

Soheila Sokhanvari 

Wild at Heart (Portrait of Pouran Shapoori), 2019

© Soheila Sokhanvari. Courtesy of the artist and Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

Soheila Sokhanvari 

Rebel (Portrait of Zinat Moadab), 2021

© Soheila Sokhanvari. Courtesy of the artist and Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery

Barbican Art Gallery presents Rebel Rebel, a site-specific installation for The Curve and the first major UK commission by Iranian artist Soheila Sokhanvari.

The exhibition features a series of 27 exquisite portraits of feminist icons from pre-revolutionary Iran, painted in egg tempera onto calf vellum with a squirrel-hair brush. Each of Sokhanvari’s miniatures – hung against a hand-painted mural based on Islamic geometries decorating the 90-metre gallery – is a labour of love, as she transforms The Curve into a devotional space in which these rarely told feminist histories can be contemplated.

The exhibition title, Rebel Rebel, borrows from David Bowie’s 1974 cult pop song and pays tribute to the significant courage of these 27 female icons, who pursued their careers in a culture enamoured with Western style but not its freedoms. These women include Roohangiz Saminejad, the first unveiled actress to appear in a Persian language film; the controversial modernist poet Forough Farrokhzad; and the leading intellectual and writer Simin Dāneshvar. The title also serves as a lament to the fate of these women, after the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent establishment of a conservative Islamic theocracy, left them with a stark choice: to renounce any role in public life, or be forced into exile.

Flowing through the exhibition is a new soundtrack, composed by Marios Aristopoulos, which weaves together songs by celebrated Iranian singers from the mid-20th century, including Ramesh and Googoosh – a poignant gesture given that it remains illegal for a woman’s voice to be broadcast in Iran. Rebel Rebel culminates in extravagant sculptural forms, made of mirror and featuring internal projections drawn from classic Iranian cinema. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication featuring an interview with Barbican curator Eleanor Nairne, alongside a new text by Dr Jordan Amirkhani.

Soheila Sokhanvari said: ‘The Curve has always been a magical space for me, where artists are given the freedom to tell stories in an immersive way. When I was invited for this commission, I knew immediately how I wanted to respond: with a body of work that would transport visitors to the pulse of life in pre-revolutionary Iran and to the women at the heart of that culture.  I hope that visitors will revel in the opportunity to learn about the lives of these formidable women, who gave up everything to pursue their creativity.’

Soheila Sokhanvari’s previous work has addressed the pervasive influence of Western culture in the Middle East. Portraiture has been an enduring concern, from a series of expired passports adorned with handmade stamps drawn from vintage advertising slogans – ‘Just for men – won’t let you down’ and ‘reveal your inner goddess’ – to paintings of her father Ali Mohammed dressed as the Hollywood actor James Dean. Humour is always just beneath the surface, as a subversive means to consider the violent legacies of Western politics in Iran.

Eleanor Nairne, Curator, Barbican said: ‘I am delighted that we have commissioned Soheila Sokhanvari to make this ambitious project for our free programme in The Curve. Soheila’s dazzling reimagining of the space, in which visitors can commune with these extraordinary creatives from pre-revolutionary Iran, will no doubt be a revelation for many.’

Soheila Sokhanvari was born in Shiraz, Iran, and currently lives and works in Cambridge, where she is a studio artist at Wysing Arts Centre. Sokhanvari has exhibited internationally, with recent projects including participation in The NGV Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2020-2021); Addicted to Love, a solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2019); Salam Salam, an installation commissioned by the Magic of Persia Foundation (2018); LDWN, an installation at Victoria Station, which was a collaboration between the Tate Collective and City Hall (2018); Heart of Glass, a solo exhibition at the New Art Gallery Walsall (2017); Paradise Lost, a solo exhibition at Jerwood Project Space (2017); and Homeland at the Kunsthalle Osnabrück in Germany. In 2018 she won the Derek Hill Foundation Scholarship at the British School at Rome. Her work now features in major permanent collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Saatchi Gallery Collection. Sokhanvari gained her postgraduate diploma in fine art from Chelsea College of Art and Design and her MFA from Goldsmiths College. She has been represented by Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery since 2012.

The exhibition has been commissioned by the Barbican, and is supported by the Bagri Foundation, Arts Council England, and the Soheila Sokhanvari Exhibition Circle: Marie Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (Spirit Now London), Sayeh Ghanbari, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Elizabeth and J. Jeffry Louis, Pat and Pierre Maugüé, Hugh Monk, and those who wish to remain anonymous.  

An exhibition catalogue will be available.

BARBICAN CENTRE

Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS

www.barbican.org.uk

Jammie Holmes @ Marianne Boesky Gallery, NYC - What We Talking About

Jammie Holmes: What We Talking About

Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York

September 8 — October 8, 2022

JAMMIE HOLMES

Gold Geneva, 2022

Acrylic, oil pastels and glitter on canvas

84 x 60 inches / 213.4 x 152.4 cm

© Jammie Holmes, courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery

Marianne Boesky Gallery presents What We Talking About, Jammie Holmes’s debut solo exhibition in New York. Holmes, a self-taught artist, creates complex allegorical works that draw on personal memory, self-portraiture, recurrent motifs, and intersocial relationships to investigate and illuminate themes of Black life across America. 

Jammie Holmes examines and repositions perceptions, experiences, and themes of Black life as they relate to both African American history and contemporary realities. Various signifiers of status and power, luxury and appropriation, acceptance and exclusion are significant themes in the artist’s work. Ornate gold frames simultaneously reference the exclusivity of art museums (Holmes did not visit one until he was an adult), and the colonial looting of gold from Africa, foregrounding the historical complexities of power and the difficult history behind much cultural presentation in institutional contexts.

When Jammie Holmes was first teaching himself to paint, he studied Gordon Parks’s photographs, Rashid Johnson’s complex abstractions, and Kevin Williams’s iconic paintings of African American culture. As Holmes says, he studied faces, and the ways artists rendered them, until the organization and structure of the features clarified in his mind. This emphasis on faces is a leitmotif of Jammies Holmes’s work: Many of the paintings include a self-portrait, where the figure of the artist himself stands in, metonymically, for the presence of Black men in U.S. society.

Parallel to Jammie Holmes’s incorporation of portraiture into his painterly vocabulary, the paintings and video on view in What We Talking About reflect his ongoing engagement with contemporary and historical artistic practices: Jammies Holmes has recently been studying works from the Dutch Golden Age and the Italian Baroque. Visually, the influence of Caravaggio is evident in the deepening black of his palettes, while Holbein’s famous memento mori is recontextualized in a representation of Black southern life. The social themes of luxury as well as bourgeois life that pervade the works that he is studying parallel the artist’s formal and narrative explorations. Underlying this exploration is an intrinsically troubling or unsettling question: How to engage with the traditions of Old Master painting when the word Master is so violently charged in the history of American racism? 

This capacity to simultaneously draw in and unsettle is exemplary of Jammie Holmes’s work. Scenes of warm, quotidian social interactions –– a game of dice, a gathering at a kitchen table –– also include figures of violent surveillance, from the allusive presence of unnamed white men, to outright confrontations with police. The theme throughout is resilience and vibrancy, a particular vision into a culture that evolves and endures.

JAMMIE HOLMES (b. 1984, Thibodaux, Louisiana; lives and works in Dallas, Texas) is a self-taught painter. Following his graduation from high school, Holmes spent more than a decade working in an oil field. He relocated to Dallas in 2016. His work has most recently been presented in exhibitions at Library Street Collective, Detroit; Deitch Projects, Los Angeles; Marianne Boesky, New York; Nassima-Landau Projects, Tel Aviv; Dallas Museum of Art; and Dallas Contemporary, among others. His work is also included in the permanent collections of the Aïshti Foundation, Brooklyn Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, ICA Miami, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, New Orleans Museum of Art, Perez Museum of Art, X Museum, and The Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art.

MARIANNE BOESKY GALLERY

507 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011

www.marianneboeskygallery.com