American Outsider Art @ Philadelphia Museum of Art - Of God and Country: American Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection

Of God and Country: 

American Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz  Collection 

Philadelphia Museum of Art 

May 19, 2023 – January 1, 2024 

Josephus Farmer

Cotton Kingdom,1987

Paint and enamel on carved wood

Collection of Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz

Jon Serl

Between Two Worlds, 20th century

Oil on board, artist-made frame 

Collection of Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz

Elijah Pierce

Untitled, 20th century

Paint, glitter, and varnish on carved wood 

Collection of Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is presenting an exhibition devoted to an important group of works by artists historically marginalized or excluded from traditional narratives of art history and typically described as “Outsider artists.” Of God and Country: American Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection explores their work through themes ranging from history to daily life, including the nation’s legacy of enslavement and racism, the landscape, and meditations on death and mortality. The exhibition features voices that variously critique and celebrate American life, often expressing ambivalence toward both the past and present while strong faith in the future, whether in this life or the next. Each work is drawn from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection, including gifts, promised gifts, and loans to the museum. 

Sasha Suda, the George D. Widener Director and CEO, said: “Surrender your ideas of genre as you enter Of God and Country and allow yourself to let codified art hierarchies and categories melt away. That is the special pleasure of this collection of work often called Outsider Art.  We are immensely grateful to Jill Bonovitz, and to our longstanding museum Trustee Sheldon Bonovitz, for this remarkable array of works. Not only did they generously present the museum with a major promised gift of their collection in 2011, but the Bonovitzes have continued to collect with insight and passion and have generously contributed additional gifts during their shared adventure.”

Many of the artists represented in the exhibition ultimately achieved considerable reputations. Martín Ramírez and Bill Traylor are considered iconic figures. Sister Gertrude Morgan, Rev. Howard Finster, Joseph Yoakum, and Purvis Young are also widely known, while others remain less well recognized practitioners in the field of 20th century American art, including Jon Serl, Bruno del Favero, and S.L. Jones.

Purvis Young

Untitled (Truck & Protesters), Late 20th century 

Mixed media, paint on wood construction 

Collection of Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz

Herbert Singleton

The Enemies Within, Late 20th century

Enamel on carved found wood

Collection of Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz

The exhibition includes a broad range of media, sizes, and styles, and is organized in four sections, beginning with U.S. History & Life in America, which contains potent symbols of the US, including the flag, Uncle Sam, and portraits of figures ranging from Abraham Lincoln and Dwight D. Eisenhower to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Some works highlight positive aspects of American life while others, such as Jail was Heat, by Purvis Young (1943-2010) and The Enemies Within, by Herbert Singleton (1945-2007), contain themes of discriminatory policing and incarceration policies that target Black communities.

Joseph Yoakum

Mt Willow in Ozark Range, Jefferson City Missouri, 

Early to mid-20th century

Watercolor, pen, and ink on paper 

Collection of Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz

A section called The American Landscape contains lively images of people and animals, agrarian life, and mountain ranges. Many of the artists represented here grew up in rural communities, often working on farms, while others traveled widely. Works by Martin Ramirez (1895-1963) include Horse and Rider, which evokes mineshafts and tunnels that the artist would have known working as a miner and railroad worker in California. Another drawing, by Joseph Yoakum (1891-1972), evokes dreamy mountains, rivers, gorges, and rocky outcroppings, suggesting an anthropomorphic vision infused by memory and imagination.

Sister Gertrude Morgan

The Lamb and his Bride, 20th century

Ink, acrylic, and crayon on repurposed Tide laundry detergent box 

Collection of Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz

Christianity and Spirituality reflects a history of American evangelicalism, as these artists often felt divinely inspired to make art and used their work to teach religious devotion. The section contains a focused grouping of works by street preacher Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900-1980), who established a gospel mission in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans. She represented herself as the bride of Christ there in New Jerusalem Highway, a painting also populated with images of angels.

Howard Finster

People and Time Come Together . . ., #16,977, 1990 

Paint on wood cutout

Collection of Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz

Death and Mortality, the final section, reflects upon life’s fragility and Christian afterlife. In People and Time Come Together, Rev. Howard Finster (1916-2001) offers us a scaly dinosaur, painted on wood, surrounded by warnings of apocalypse; he dedicated himself to art at age 60, following a vision, and produced thousands of works, often evoking the urgency of end times. Another highlight is St. Helena First Black Embalmer John, painted on a corrugated iron sheet by Sam Doyle (1906-1985). He often rendered Black celebrities, such as Ray Charles or Joe Louis, but here focuses on a man practicing his craft as an embalmer, readying the deceased for the next journey.

The exhibition is organized by Louis Marchesano, Audrey and William H. Helfand Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs; Jessica Smith, Director of Curatorial Initiatives and Susan Gray Detweiler Curator of American Art; Jun P. Nakamura, former Suzanne Andree Curatorial Fellow; with contributions from Monique D'Almeida, Margaret R. Mainwaring Curatorial Fellow and Kendra Grimmett, former Carl Zigrosser Fellow.

“This exhibition is devoted to works created by people who operated far from the world of galleries, museums, and art schools, and yet they created astonishing works of art," said Louis Marchesano. “Of God and Country argues for a much wider, open-ended and more inclusive consideration of artistic vision in the United States of the 20th century and today.”

This exhibition is made possible by Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz.

About the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection

It is considered one of the finest private collections of works by American self-taught artists, and Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz assembled it over the course of several decades before making part of it a promised gift to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2011. Including 177 works of art, it contributed significantly to establishing the Museum as one of the primary centers for the study of artists who once rarely found a place in American museums, many having operated without academic training and outside traditional artistic discourse. The works in the Bonovitz collection were often produced in remote places using unconventional methods and materials such as reclaimed wood, sheet metal, house paint, and stove soot. These works draw upon the artists’ own experiences, immediate surroundings, and popular culture. In 2013, in association with Yale University Press, the Philadelphia Museum of Art published Great and Mighty Things: Outsider Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection, on the occasion of a major exhibition of the same title.

PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART

2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130

philamuseum.org

Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen @ Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen 

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco 

May 6 – June 24, 2023 

Lee Friedlander 

Sweden, 2005 

Gelatin silver print 

20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm] 

© Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery 

I found it a daunting task to choose just a few images from Lee Friedlander's vast career. Where to start...?

—Joel Coen

Fraenkel Gallery presents Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen, an exhibition of Friedlander’s photographs curated by the widely acclaimed filmmaker. Rather than focusing on a single subject or period, Joel Coen’s selection concentrates on Friedlander’s singular approach to composition. Through the approximately 45 images in the exhibition Joel Coen surveys the range of Lee Friedlander’s 60+ year career, bringing many lesser-known images into the equation. The selection evidences an unexpected affinity between Lee Friedlander and Joel Coen, both of whose work explores the sly power of images. 

A new hardcover publication, with an introduction by Coen and an afterword by the actor Frances McDormand, accompanies the exhibition.

Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen

Hardcover, 12.75 x 11.75 x 0.9 inches

136 pages, 70 tritone illustrations

Introduction by Joel Coen, Afterword by Frances McDormand

Fraenkel Gallery, 2023

Lee Friedlander, Joel Coen, and Frances McDormand, long admirers of each other’s work, met in the spring of 2022 at Friedlander’s home in Rockland County, New York. During the day-long visit the artists studied hundreds of photographs, ultimately leading to the selection that constitutes the book and exhibition.

I was present when these two guys met for the first time and observed a familiarity that comes from their lifetimes of singular and eccentric visions… Neither would naturally refer to himself as an Artist. Yet they have honed their crafts over decades of practice, and those of us who cannot see the way they see have no other way to describe what they do but “art.”

—from the afterword by Frances McDormand

Joel Coen’s selection focuses on photographs that are dense and off-kilter, often bisected by stop signs and utility poles, car doors and windshields, trees and shadows. “As a filmmaker, I liked the idea of creating a sequence that would highlight Lee’s unusual approach to framing—his splitting, splintering, repeating, fracturing, and reassembling elements into new and impossible compositions,” Coen writes. 

Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen will be on view at both Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, and in New York at Luhring Augustine (May 13 to June 24). Both exhibitions will be accompanied by a special projection created by Coen, sequencing Friedlander’s images in unexpected and revealing ways. The book that accompanies the exhibition is published by Fraenkel Gallery and includes an expanded selection of 70 works. It will be available on both galleries’ websites.

Lee Friedlander (born 1934) began photographing in 1948. His work was included in the influential 1967 exhibition New Documents at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by John Szarkowski, among countless other exhibitions. His more than 50 monographs include Signs, Self-Portrait, Cherry Blossom Time in Japan, Letters from the People, At Work, and Sticks and Stones, among others. One of the most important living photographers, Friedlander’s prints are held by major collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others.

Joel Coen (born 1954) is celebrated as one of the most visionary and idiosyncratic filmmakers of our era. Combining thoughtful eccentricity, wry humor, arch irony, and often brutal violence, the films of Coen (working with his brother Ethan) have become synonymous with a style of filmmaking that pays tribute to classic American movie genres—especially film noir—while sustaining a firmly postmodern sensibility.

Frances McDormand (born 1957) is an acclaimed American actor and producer. McDormand has won numerous accolades including four Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, three BAFTA Awards, two Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award, making her one of the few performers to achieve the “Triple Crown of Acting.”

FRAENKEL GALLERY

49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

fraenkelgallery.com

Mark Rothko and William Scott @ Anita Rogers Gallery, New York - Continuing the Dialogue

Mark Rothko and William Scott 

Continuing the Dialogue

Anita Rogers Gallery, New York

April 26 - June 3, 2023

Anita Rogers Gallery presents Mark Rothko and William Scott: Continuing the Dialogue, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by two twentieth-century masters, offering new insight into their relationship and mutual admiration, influence, and respect. Large-scale works on canvas are complemented by preparatory drawings, as well as correspondence between the two artists. Mark Rothko (1903-1970), one of the most prominent of the American abstract painters, and William Scott CBE, RA (1913-1989), a leader in the Modernist movement in the UK, met in 1953 and consequently grew close through letters and visits. By including the artists’ works and words together, the gallery hopes to share the story of this friendship.

Mark Rothko and William Scott first met through gallerist Martha Jackson in New York in 1953 and kept in contact through letters, sharing personal moments from their lives, as well as details on their artistic endeavors and topics then weighing on their minds. Both painters had roots in figurative painting and had moved into abstraction by the time they met, although Scott would return to and reference figuration throughout his long career. In the summer of 1959, the Rothko family stayed with the Scotts at their cottage in Somerset and here they discussed concerns over the issues of placing art in public places, as well as their mutual experiences as immigrants - Mark Rothko, as a boy, had moved to the US from Latvia; William Scott, after winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools, had moved to England from Ireland.

It was also at the time of this meeting that both artists had embarked on commissions for murals: Scott’s was for the Altnagelvin Hospital in Ireland, the first National Health Service hospital ever to be built, and Rothko’s was a series of paintings for the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York.  The luxury restaurant, set within Mies van der Rohe’s celebrated Seagram Building, was designed by Philip Johnson and catered to celebrities and the very wealthy.

The commissions presented new challenges, both physically, and artistically. Both were very different kinds of projects, for different purposes and different audiences, and this posed a great contradiction for Rothko who allegedly said, “I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room.” The gallery will display preliminary paintings and drawings for both murals, offering a glimpse into their working processes.

For William Scott, whose finished mural would measure 108” x 540”, tackling a piece on this scale was a monumental task. However, he was emboldened by his exposure to Mark Rothko, as well as to the other American abstract expressionist painters whose work he had first discovered in 1953. While these influences are certainly evident post-1953, they also convinced Scott that his origins were in Europe, in Matisse and Bonnard.  He then very much made the commission his own through references to ancient Irish art, architecture, and symbolism.

Meanwhile, Mark Rothko, accustomed to working on a larger scale, was faced with creating a site-specific project for the first time. Mark Rothko struggled with the placement of the series in the luxury restaurant from the beginning and shortly after his return from Europe and following his conversation with William Scott, Rothko finally withdrew from the contract, sharing the news with Scott in a letter dated 14 December 1959, on view in the exhibition. While Rothko revealed no hesitations whatsoever about the decision, he lamented to Scott that “there really is no real place for them” [the murals].  The paintings were offered to the Tate Gallery but initially turned down; afterwards, the paintings spent a handful of years in the artist’s studio. Scott was instrumental in making the work of Rothko known to other artists in the UK, specifically Patrick Heron, and in 1970, the Tate accepted the paintings into the collection, including the conditions for display set out by Rothko.  Now the Seagram murals have a celebrated home in the Tate Modern in London, where they are on view to this day.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the gallery publishes a full-color catalog featuring an essay by David Anfam, art historian and author of the catalogue raisonné Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas, as well as writer and curator of Abstract Expressionism (Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2016-17) - the largest survey of its kind ever held in Europe.

In 2019, the gallery hosted a major solo exhibition of 1950's – 1980's paintings and drawings by William Scott. This is the gallery’s first exhibition including works by Mark Rothko.

ANITA ROGERS GALLERY

494 Greenwich Street, New York, NY 10013

www.anitarogersgallery.com

Mark Bradford @ Hauser & Wirth NYC - You Don’t Have to Tell Me Twice

Mark Bradford 

You Don’t Have to Tell Me Twice 

Hauser & Wirth New York 

13 April – 28 July 2023 

MARK BRADFORD 

Fire Fire, 2021

Mixed media on canvas

3 panels, overall: 346.4 x 687.7 cm / 136 3/8 x 270 3/4 in

Left: 345.8 x 190.8 cm / 136 1/8 x 75 1/8 in

Middle: 345.8 x 275 cm / 136 1/8 x 120 1/8 in

Right: 345.8 x 191.1 cm / 136 1/8 x 75 1/4 in

Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

© Mark Bradford

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

MARK BRADFORD 

Johnny the Jaguar, 2023

Mixed media on canvas

305 x 285.1 cm / 120 1/8 x 112 1/4 in

Photo: Joshua White / JWPictures.com

© Mark Bradford

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

MARK BRADFORD 

Death Drop, 1973

Single-channel video, no audio

20 second loop

© Mark Bradford

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth presents ‘You Don’t Have to Tell Me Twice,’ a major solo exhibition by Mark Bradford. Filling the entirety of the gallery’s 22nd Street building, the artist’s first show in New York since 2015 sees the artist embarking upon a deeply personal exploration of the multifaceted nature of displacement and the predatory forces that feed on populations driven into motion by crisis. Primarily known for his unique style of ‘social abstraction,’ Mark Bradford has recently turned his attention toward figures, including his own, and has created sweeping new works where flora and fauna––predators and prey––move within dense, dreamlike abstracted landscapes, masses of material, color and line.

The first floor of the exhibition includes a group of recent paintings informed by the history of European tapestry and their socio-political significance, as symbols of the greatest opulence of European aristocracy, and, by extension, their relationship to power. Shown here for the first time since their premiere at the Fundação de Serralves in Porto in late 2021, these works are complemented by new tapestry-like paintings focused upon plant and animal species indigenous to the area around Blackdom, an early 20th century African American homesteader settlement founded in the New Mexico desert, at a remove from the reach of the Jim Crow South. The central figure in these richly layered, monumental tableaux is the Chihuahan desert’s apex predator, the jaguar (Panthera onca), the only living member of the genus Panthera native to the Americas. The symbolic antagonist of Mark Bradford’s exhibition nicknamed ‘Johnny the Jaguar’ by the artist, the roving beast comes to stand in for several kinds of historical predation explored through the exhibition. 

The juxtaposition of paintings from the two series of tapestries generates a strong connection between history and the present day, suggesting that the medieval period is a resonant metaphor for modern conflicts and social tensions that have been happening for centuries and remain intractable today. In formal terms, Bradford’s tapestry-like works shift the perspective in his celebrated oeuvre from the aerial bird’s-eye view of the cityscape familiar in his work since the early 2000s, to an interpersonal perspective that puts the audience on an eye-to-eye level with his allegorical world of survival, violence, and desire. This important shift in orientation implicates the viewer in the chase and constitutes a departure in Bradford’s work that puts the figure as the starting point of his abstraction.

The exhibition also presents a group of monumental canvases––including the show’s namesake painting ‘You Don’t Have to Tell Me Twice’ (2023)––that continues Mark Bradford’s ongoing exploration of the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South, perhaps the largest movement of people in the nation’s history. Based on a chart showing travel distances between railroad centers in the United States from the 1920s, these paintings feature gridded numbers and city names created with oxidized paper and caulk, forming a veritable parallel landscape of the continental United States. In these works, the vibrant palette of Mark Bradford’s tapestry paintings give way to more muted tones of stained canvas and paper oxidized to soft grays, tans, and whites in a sober evocation of the urgency in uprooting oneself in the face of catastrophe. The paintings’ titles invoke an imaginary, but just as resonant and historically riven, embodiment of the South, William Faulkner’s fictional Yoknaptawpha County, the Mississippi setting for all but three of Faulkner’s novels, beginning with ‘Sartoris’ in 1929, a place of postbellum brutality, racism, family ties and entangled histories. 

Two self-portraits placed at different locations within the exhibition anchor an overarching narrative drawn from the artist’s persistent awareness of his own body and its particular vulnerability. ‘Death Drop, 1973’ (1973)––a scene taken from a Super 8 film directed by Mark Bradford at age 12––portrays himself falling as though struck by a bullet. The slow-motion clip loops in a gallery on the building’s second floor. Three floors above, ‘Death Drop, 2023’ (2023)––a larger-than-life sculpture of the artist’s body positioned in the iconic ‘death drop’ pose popularized in gay ballroom culture––gestures again to the intersection of performance and persecution. Together the works form autobiographical bookends that pull focus from the natural landscape of the paintings to a figure fleeing across them, locating the socio-critical authority and impact of the exhibition within the artist’s lived experience.  

In partnership with Culture for One––a non-profit organization committed to improving the lives of New York City children and young adults living in foster care by providing them with arts opportunities and exposure to local cultural communities––Hauser & Wirth and Mark Bradford have devised a learning program to accompany the exhibition that engages with a group of young people, ages 18 – 24, from the foster care system. Participants work directly with Mark Bradford to build a framework for a series of public engagement events, helping them to build confidence and acquire new skills as they lead members of the public on guided visits of the exhibition.

Additionally, the gallery has partnered with StoryCorps Studios to create a welcoming environment where local residents can come together and record authentic stories centered around belonging, home, displacement and migration––themes found throughout Bradford’s exhibition––as told through conversations between students, neighbors, friends and family. 

MARK BRADFORD

Mark Bradford (b. 1961 in Los Angeles) is a contemporary artist known for his large-scale abstract paintings created out of paper. Characterized by its layered formal, material, and conceptual complexity, his work explores social and political structures that objectify marginalized communities and the bodies of vulnerable populations. After accumulating layers of various types of paper onto canvas, Mark Bradford excavates their surfaces using power tools to explore economic and social structures that define contemporary subjects. His practice includes painting, sculpture, video, photography, printmaking, and other media. In addition to his studio practice, Bradford engages in social projects alongside exhibitions of his work that bring contemporary ideas outside the walls of exhibition spaces and into communities with limited exposure to art.

Mark Bradford received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in1995 and his MFA from CalArts in 1997. He has since been widely exhibited internationally and received numerous awards. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art; Hauser & Wirth, Menorca; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Hauser & Wirth, London; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; and Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai. 

HAUSER & WIRTH

542 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011

www.hauserwirth.com

Van Gogh’s Cypresses @ The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Van Gogh’s Cypresses

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

May 22 – August 27, 2023

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Photo courtesy of The Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents a groundbreaking exhibition of some 40 works by Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). Van Gogh’s Cypresses is the first show to focus on the unique vision the artist brought to bear on the towering trees—among the most famous in the history of art—affording an unprecedented perspective on a motif virtually synonymous with Van Gogh’s fiercely original power of expression. A range of stunning works illuminates the extent of Van Gogh’s fascination with the region’s flamelike evergreens as they successively sparked, fueled, and stoked his imagination over the course of two years in the South of France: from his initial sightings of the “tall and dark” trees in Arles to realizing their full evocative potential (“as I see them”) at the asylum in Saint-Rémy. Iconic paintings such as Wheat Field with Cypresses and The Starry Night take their place as the centerpiece of this historic exhibition, which is only presented at The Met.  

“The show is a dream come true,” said Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director of The Met. “Marking the 170th-anniversary year of his birth, this highly focused survey unpacks Van Gogh’s distinctive vision of the commanding cypress trees. A once-in-a-lifetime gathering of works presents both an overview and an intimate glimpse of his creative process, challenging prevailing notions with fresh insights.” 

Juxtaposing landmark paintings with precious drawings and illustrated letters—many rarely, if ever, lent or exhibited together—this tightly conceived thematic exhibition offer an extraordinary opportunity to appreciate anew some of Vincent Van Gogh’s most celebrated works in a context that will reveal the backstory of their invention for the first time.

Anchored by The Met’s Wheat Field with Cypresses and Cypresses, highlights of the exhibition includes The Starry Night (Museum of Modern Art, New York), A Wheatfield, with Cypresses (The National Gallery, London), and Country Road in Provence by Night (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo), as well as drawings from the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, and Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Susan Alyson Stein, Engelhard Curator of Nineteenth-Century European Painting at The Met, added: “To an extent that has gone unrecognized, Van Gogh brought his trademark ambition, determination, and a rare degree of consideration—and reconsideration—to giving signature form to the storied cypresses in works as striking for their originality as for their continuity of vision.”

Van Gogh’s Cypresses is curated by Susan Alyson Stein, Engelhard Curator of Nineteenth-Century European Painting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press,

The Met Fifth Avenue, Gallery 199

www.metmuseum.org

Keith Haring Exhibition @ Akron Art Museum - Against All Odds

Keith Haring: Against All Odds

Akron Art Museum

April 15 - September 24, 2023

KEITH HARING

Untitled, 1982

Acrylic on vinyl tarpaulin

180 x 180 in. (4750 x 4570 cm)

Collection of the Rubell Museum

Keith Haring artwork copyright © Keith Haring Foundation

KEITH HARING

Untitled, 1984

Ink on leather

35 x 42 in. (89 x 106.7 cm)

Collection of the Rubell Museum

Keith Haring artwork copyright © Keith Haring Foundation

KEITH HARING (Collaboration with LA II) 

Untitled, 1982

 Acrylic and ink on fiberboard

 Collection of the Rubell Museum. 

Keith Haring artwork copyright © Keith Haring Foundation

The Akron Art Museum presents Keith Haring: Against All Odds. Organized by the Rubell Museum and the Akron Art Museum, this show provides a sweeping overview of the height of Keith Haring’s career and includes more than 110 original objects made between 1981 and 1990. The Rubell Museum holds one of the largest private Keith Haring collections in the world. Many of the works that are on view at the Akron Art Museum were acquired by the Rubell Museum shortly after Keith Haring created them and around the same time as they were first presented publicly. 

Keith Haring’s career in art took off through chalk drawings in New York City subway stations and, during the 1980s, exploded into paintings, drawings, large-scale murals, fashion, and pop culture. The artist channeled his newfound popularity and his signature style of bold and energetic outlines into expressions of love and positivity. He also used his art to make political statements against war, environmental destruction, racism, and more, and to advocate for gay rights and AIDS awareness. 

“The exhibition [...]  highlights Haring’s commitments to art and politics, as well as his relationships with artistic peers like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. We are looking forward to sharing Keith Haring’s work, his ideas, and his personality with our visitors,” said Jeff Katzin, Ph.D., Curator for the Akron Art Museum.   

In 1986, Keith Haring opened his Pop Shop in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood selling shirts, posters, and other items to break down barriers between fine art and broad audiences. While many artists shy away from commercial enterprises, Haring was committed to making his art more accessible. The Museum have an area that has been hand-painted by local artist Ron Copeland in the style of Keith Haring’s Pop Shop, providing an exciting, immersive environment for reflection, education, and programs. 

Keith Haring’s monumental painting of two figures dancing around a heart and his Statue of Liberty sculpture created with Angel Ortiz will be on view through May 14. After their limited time at the Akron Art Museum, they will head to the West Coast to join a traveling exhibition. These two works were part of Keith Haring’s debut exhibition at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York City in 1982. This was his first show at a commercial gallery, and the success of the exhibition cemented his place in the world of fine art.  Two additional works, courtesy of the Keith Haring Foundation, will be on view starting May 16.    

“We are honored to be showcasing Keith Haring’s work on a grand scale here in Akron. His unique imagery is immediately recognizable around the globe, even for those who are not familiar with his story,” remarked Executive Director and CEO Jon Fiume. 

AKRON ART MUSEUM - AAM 

1 South High Street, Akron, OH 44308

akronartmuseum.org

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith @ Whitney Museum of American Art, New York - Memory Map

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

Memory Map

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

April 19 - August 13, 2023

This exhibition is the first New York retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), an overdue but timely look at the work of a groundbreaking artist. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map brings together nearly five decades of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s work engages with contemporary modes of making, from her idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to her reflections on American Pop art and neo-expressionism. These artistic traditions are incorporated and reimagined with concepts rooted in Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s own cultural practice, reflecting her belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.” Employing satire and humor, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s art tells stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s approach importantly blurs categories and questions why certain visual languages attain recognition, historical privilege, and value.

Across decades and mediums, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith has deployed and reappropriated ideas of mapping, history, and environmentalism while incorporating personal and collective memories. The retrospective will offer new frameworks in which to consider contemporary Native American art and show how Smith has led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues around land, racism, and cultural preservation—issues at the forefront of contemporary life and art today.

This exhibition is organized by Laura Phipps, Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, with Caitlin Chaisson, Curatorial Project Assistant.

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014

whitney.org

Mythos @ Adler Beatty Gallery, NYC - Curated by Ana Benaroya

Mythos

Curated by Ana Benaroya

Adler Beatty Gallery, New York

April 18 – June 10, 2023

Adler Beatty presents Mythos, a group exhibition curated by Ana Benaroya (b. 1986). Participing artistes are Ana Benaroya, Felipe Baeza (b. 1987), Leyla Faye, Austin Lee (b. 1983), Anna Park (b. 1996), with engravings by Jan Harmensz Muller (1571-1628) and Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617).

The world of myth, one filled with body-gorgeous gods and goddesses, occupies the pages of these Netherlandish Mannerist engravings; their bodies elongated, distorted, and stylized. The perspectival landscape is flattened and compositional choices become more decorative. Cross-hatching and line work precisely shape each muscle bulge, each tuft of flowing hair and floating cloud. 

The narratives portrayed in these engravings are violent and passionately chaotic, the gods are flawed like mere mortals. Their stories are not forgotten but infrequently referenced by many contemporary artists especially when compared to the art of the past or the lineage of Western art. Whereas social commentary of the past is focused on the biblical and mythological, today’s artists look to contemporary life and the reality they occupy as a source for new myth-making.  

With a series of Netherlandish engravings as a point of departure, artists working today have been asked to respond with their own voice and vision. All the artists invited to use the transformative power of imagination and fantasy to depict contemporary life through their own lens. Through the new work created for this group show, we might begin to understand how myth has stayed with us, how it has evolved into many voices and stories, and how so many contemporary stylizations of the figure have a conversation with the exaggerations seen in Mannerism.

ADLER BEATTY

34 East 69th Street, New York, NY 10021

www.adlerbeatty.com

_____________

Liu Jianhua Exhibition @ Pace Gallery Seoul

Liu Jianhua 

Pace Gallery Seoul 

March 31 – April 29, 2023 

LIU JIANHUA

A Unified Core, 2018 

© Liu Jianhua

Pace presents an exhibition of sculptural installations by LIU JIANHUA at its arts complex in Seoul. The presentation focuses on Liu’s mastery of porcelain, a material he has been experimenting with since 1977, when he began working as an apprentice in the Jingdezhen Pottery and Porcelain Sculpture Factory—the oldest established center of ceramic production in China. Significant series form the artist’s oeuvre figure in the show in Seoul, including A Unified Core (2018); The Shape of Trace (2016–2022); Blank Paper (2009–2019) and Lines (2015–2019).

Through his works across sculpture and installation, Liu Jianhua explores themes of accumulation and impermanence, using ceramics, found objects, artifacts, and detritus as means to examine to Chinese history and culture. His longstanding engagement with porcelain can be understood as part of centuries-old craft traditions in China. Liu Jianhua also uses this material as marker of contemporary development within the context of globalization.

The bodies of works included in Pace’s exhibition underscore the artist’s increasingly philosophical approach to form and abstraction, which has characterized his practice in recent years. In 2008, the artist moved away from the sociopolitical themes that had previously informed his work, focusing instead on simple, pure forms to meditate on histories of visual culture in China. This approach has resulted in the sculpture series Blank Paper, in which thin sheets of white porcelain are hung on the wall, as well as the series Lines, for which the artist creates coiling ribbons of porcelain that intersect and collide at various points on the wall.

Liu Jianhua’s 2018 installation A Unified Core, also on view in the show in Seoul, comprises approximately 500 white teardrop- shaped pieces of porcelain suspended from the ceiling. As viewers walk around the work, they experience an immersive environment that encourages deep, serene contemplation.

Other highlights of the exhibition include the artist’s recent series The Shape of Trace, which serves as an investigation of various threads of human cultural development throughout history. Through its lyrical form, this porcelain work evokes the passage of time and the long arc of history. The material of this sculptural installation has great significance within the history of the artist’s own practice—as such, Liu Jianhua’s use of porcelain for the work aligns with its conceptual focus on evolution and progress.

Liu Jianhua participates in the 14th Gwangju Biennale in Korea, April 2023.

PACE GALERY SEOUL

267 Itaewon-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul

www.pacegallery.com

Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody @ The Broad, Los Angeles + Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto + Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody

The Broad, Los Angeles

May 27 – October 8, 2023

KEITH HARING

Untitled, 1982 

Baked enamel on steel, 43 x 43 inches, 

The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection, Los Angeles

© Keith Haring Foundation

KEITH HARING

Red Room, 1988

Acrylic on canvas, 96 x 179 in. (243.8 x 454.7 cm) 

The Broad Art Foundation 

© Keith Haring Foundation

The Broad presents a special exhibition Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody. Organized by The Broad, this show is the first ever museum exhibition in Los Angeles to present Keith Haring’s expansive body of work and will feature over 120 artworks and archival materials. Known for his use of vibrant color, energetic linework and iconic characters like the barking dog and the radiant baby, Keith Haring’s work continues to dissolve barriers between art and life and spread joy, all while being rooted in the creative spirit and mission of his subway drawings and renowned public murals: art is for everybody.

Following its debut in Los Angeles, Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody will travel to the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, from November 11, 2023 to March 17, 2024, and then to the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, from April 27 to September 8, 2024.

Born in 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania, Keith Haring moved to New York City in 1978 to study art. He quickly became a staple within the downtown New York arts community with the likes of artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf and Andy Warhol. Keith Haring’s output in the coming decade can be understood in the spirit of the countercultural and nightlife scenes of the 1980s, often organizing exhibitions at the Club 57 nightclub and other alternative venues. This sensibility is palpable in his subway drawings–of which he created over 5,000 throughout his career–where his visionary use of line could be experimented with in quick movements, available to the wide public who took the New York subway. Eli and Edythe Broad, who first began to collect contemporary art deeply in the 1980s, were drawn to the social and political nature of Keith Haring’s work early on, first entering the collection in 1982. Forty years later his legacy continues to garner international acclaim and recognition.

“Keith Haring’s global influence and enduring impact are profound, and The Broad is thrilled to bring our audience in Los Angeles this sweeping exhibition of his work,” said Joanne Heyler, Founding Director of The Broad. “It is our distinct pleasure to share a deep and varied representation of his emblematic visual language and to highlight the prolific ways he spoke through his art and activism about social issues while celebrating joy, solidarity, community and hope.”

Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody explores both his artistic practice and life, with much of the source material for the exhibition coming from his personal journals. Works presented span from the late-1970s when he was a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York up until 1988, just two years before the artist died from AIDS-related illness at the age of 31. Keith Haring’s participation in nuclear disarmament and anti-Apartheid movements are featured prominently in the show, as well as works that take on complex issues that remain crucial today from environmentalism, capitalism, and the proliferation of new technologies to religion, sexuality, and race. In the last gallery, significant works from the late 1980s is accompanied by framed posters illustrating the artist’s activism within the HIV/AIDS crisis. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph catalog published by the museum in collaboration with DelMonico Books and features essays by The Broad’s Curator and Exhibitions Manager Sarah Loyer, Kimberly Drew and Tom Finkelpearl; a roundtable conversation with Patti Astor, Kenny Scharf, and Kermit Oswald; and reflections by George Condo, Ann Magnuson, Bill T Jones, Julia Gruen and Gil Vazquez.

“Keith Haring’s belief that art should be accessible to all is central to the exhibition and integral to The Broad’s mission,” said Sarah Loyer, Curator and Exhibitions Manager. “With this exhibition, our audience will have the opportunity to dive deep into Haring’s work, both as an artist and as an innovator who completely shifted the landscape of contemporary art to this day.”

Divided into ten galleries in total, the expansive exhibition will feature the breadth of mediums Keith Haring worked within, including video, sculpture, drawing, painting, and graphic works, as well as representations from the artist’s enormous output of public projects, from the subway drawings to his public murals. Major works held in the Broad collection such as Untitled, 1984 and Red Room, 1988 will be on view in addition to key loans from many institutional and private collections, including art, ephemera and documentation provided by the Keith Haring Foundation in New York, established by the artist in 1989. The show features immersive elements, such as a gallery lit by blacklight soundtracked by playlists created by the artist himself. Additionally, the Shop at The Broad will be transformed, taking inspiration from Keith Haring’s artistic retail space The Pop Shop, which first opened in 1986 in the SoHo neighborhood of New York. Much like its original format, The Broad uses this component of the exhibition to make Keith Haring’s line accessible to the widest possible audience.

“Much like the work of Keith Haring, his idea that Art Is for Everybody is as profound in its simplicity as it is in its complexity. We invite everyone to The Broad museum for a closer look at why his practice, activism, courage, and accessibility continue to resonate, perhaps now more than ever,” said Gil Vazquez, Executive Director of the Keith Haring Foundation.

Additionally on view for free in The Broad’s third-floor galleries throughout the exhibition will be works by contemporaries of Keith Haring including Jean-Michel Basquiat, George Condo, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf, and Andy Warhol, among others.

THE BROAD

221 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012

www.thebroad.org

Shen Wei Exhibition @ Flowers Gallery, London - A Season Particular

Shen Wei: A Season Particular

Flowers Gallery, London

5 May - 3 June 2023

SHEN WEI 

Untitled, 2020 

Chromogenic print 

© Shen Wei, courtesy of Flowers Gallery 

SHEN WEI 

Celosie 9909, 2021 

Chromogenic print 

© Shen Wei, courtesy of Flowers Gallery 

Flowers Gallery presents A Season Particular, a solo exhibition by New York-based Chinese-American artist SHEN WEI. This exhibition of sensuous photographs explores notions of gender, form and desire, reflecting a practice which Shen Wei describes as “finding the spiritual and abstract similarities between our bodies and nature and emphasising the harmony, fragility, and interconnectedness of both.” In this exhibition, closely cropped figurative forms are interspersed with images of plants and blossoms, evoking a dreamlike sense of contemplation and calm.

According to Shen Wei: 

“The unique beauty and interplay between the human body and nature aim to elicit a sense of awe, wonder, and appreciation for the world around us, as well as a way to explore more profound spiritual and philosophical questions about the nature of existence and the purpose of life."

SHEN WEI

Born in 1977 and raised in Shanghai, Shen Wei is based in New York City. He is known for his intimate portraits of himself and others, as well as his poetic landscapes and still-life photography. His work has been exhibited internationally, with venues including the Museum of the City of New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, China, the Hasselblad Foundation in Göteborg, Sweden, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, CNN, Aperture, ARTnews, Paris Review, Financial Times, Le Figaro, and American Photo. Shen Wei’s work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Library of Congress, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Museum of Chinese in America, CAFA Art Museum, and the Ringling Museum of Art, among others. Shen Wei is a recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Arts Residency, the Asian Cultural Council Arts & Religion Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Arts Grant. He holds an MFA in photography, video, and related media from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and a BFA in photography from Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Related post on Wanafoto: Shen Wei: Self @ Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong, 2021

FLOWERS GALLERY 

82 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DP 

www.flowersgallery.com

Melanie Bonajo Exhibition @ Art Brussels 2023 - Presented by AKINCI, Amsterdam

Melanie Bonajo

AKINCI, Amsterdam

@ Art Brussels 2023

20 – 23 April 2023

MELANIE BONAJO 

‘When the body says Yes’, Big Spoon, 2022 

Ultra chrome, canson Lustre, museum glass, 62 x 110 cm

Courstesy the artist & AKINCI

Discovery SOLO project by MELANIE BONAJO (they/them/theirs). The focus is on Melanie Bonajo’s recent project When the body says Yes (2022), an immersive video installation. In the Discovery Booth for Art Brussels melanie bonajo would like to give a glimpse into the totality of this immersive project that approaches touch and intimacy shown at the Venice Biennale. They present photographs arranged around the video still as a wall-covering poster at the back wall. The viewers are invited to experience tactility and comfort by sitting on the specially composed seats that the artist has made in collaboration with Théo Demans. The photo works are still photographs by the artist of the film When the body says Yes, a project that involved a group of international gender queer people. Through the presentation at Art Brussels 2023 the artist carries the message further and create a moment of reflection about when the body says Yes and what it means to give consent to the senses.

AKINCI

Lijnbaansgracht 317, 1017 WZ Amsterdam

akinci.nl

www.artbrussels.com

Lucia Di Luciano @ Art Brussels 2023 - Presented by 10 A.M. ART, Milan

Lucia Di Luciano

10 A.M. ART, Milan

@ Art Brussels 2023

20 – 23 April 2023

LUCIA DI LUCIANO

Curve and straight. The line in Italian abstract-kinetic research

Courtesy 10 A.M. ART, Milan 

Photo by Mattia Mognetti

For Art Brussels 2023, 10 A.M. ART Gallery presents a solo show by LUCIA DI LUCIANO, invited to the 59th Venice Biennale International Art Exposition, curated by Cecilia Alemani.

Lucia Di Luciano is an artist of primary importance in Italian Programmed Art. The role of Italy, in the developments of the “New Tendency” exhibition held in 1961 in Zagreb, was very important. This is the context in which Lucia Di Luciano has her place. Her research is directed towards explorations and conclusions involving logic and mathematics, towards the definition of geometric modules that allow her artistic activity to be combined with architecture and industrial design. The work produced by Lucia Di Luciano takes its cue from an analysis of visual processes originating from Gestalt theory, and they are placed in an approach which we could describe as structuralist, featuring painting-based investigations of a mathematical nature. The desire to conform to rigorous geometric rules led, in the works from the 1960s, to the development of a mark as image in which colour, as a potentially emotive and subjective factor, is banished. What is dominant are the mere operational processes that create form. The works of this period present a sort of fundamental alphabet, articulated alternatively in accordance with rhythmic progressions and structurations of geometric modules produced by lines, squares and rectangles.

On the one hand, these cancel all distinction between figure and background, generating a perceptual instability between positive and negative. On the other hand, however, they engender an effect of overlapping grids that give the image a clear multidimensionality. The works created by Di Luciano explicate at the highest level, in their black-and-white severity, in the modular and reiterated nature of the forms-cum-marks, the utopia of an art that aims to reflect on its own function in the context of a new society founded on technology. Painting thus becomes an epistemological metaphor, in which the central idea is the procedure, rather than the result: indeed, the possibility of controlling and preordaining the visual result, of programming it on the basis of a method of construction of the image that is rigorous and objective, goes hand-in-hand with the activation of a virtual movement that the observer is led to follow and complete by taking part, by means of their own perceptual and mental mechanisms, in the generation of the work itself.

Later, there was a return to colour also for Lucia Di Luciano: in a non-systematic way between the 60s and 70s, and thereafter, down to her more recent works, with the gradual introduction of primary hues. This would not be a betrayal of her original propositions, but an inevitable continuation of an investigation into optical perception, as Di Luciano put into practice, for example, in the “Gradienti” series, images full of imaginative verve combined with scientific rigour.

10 A.M. ART Gallery

Corso San Gottardo 5, 20136 Milano

www.10amart.it

www.artbrussels.com

Exposition Max Ernst @ Aix-en-Provence : Hôtel de Caumont-Centre d’art - Max Ernst, Mondes magiques, mondes libérés

Max Ernst, 

Mondes magiques, mondes libérés

Hôtel de Caumont-Centre d’art, 

Aix-en-Provence

4 mai - 8 octobre 2023

MAX ERNST

MONDES MAGIQUES, MONDES LIBÉRÉS

Affiche de l'exposition

Artiste érudit et prodigieux expérimentateur, MAX ERNST (1891-1976) traverse le siècle des avant-gardes avec une insatiable soif de création et laisse derrière lui une oeuvre complexe et très personnelle. Artiste associé au groupe dada et au surréalisme, il suit un itinéraire personnel en se détachant des modalités du groupe et réalise des oeuvres visionnaires et pleines de lucidité. À travers près de 120 oeuvres, cette exposition revient sur les traces de ce génie créateur en tant que personnalité libre et singulière, et mettra notamment à l’honneur le lien étroit qu’il entretenait avec la nature, le jeu, la magie et la liberté.

Si la portée de son oeuvre reste encore méconnue du grand public, l’extravagance et la polysémie de la production de Max Ernst sont impressionnantes. Né en Allemagne, il crée en 1919 une communauté Dada à Cologne avant de rejoindre Paris où il participe dès le départ au développement du surréalisme d’André Breton. Il crée de nombreux collages et invente de nouvelles techniques, comme le frottage - qui consiste à passer une mine de plomb sur un papier posé sur des surfaces rugueuses. Après avoir été interné au début de la seconde guerre mondiale non loin de l’Hôtel de Caumont (au Camp des Milles d’Aix- en-Provence), Max Ernst fuit la France et se réfugie aux Etats-Unis. Il rentrera en France en 1953 et continuera de travailler intensément la peinture, le dessin, la sculpture et l’orfèvrerie.

Max Ernst n’aura eu de cesse de se réinventer tout au long de sa carrière. Son oeuvre est nourrie de philosophie, de psychanalyse, de science, d’alchimie, de l‘histoire de l’art, de littérature et de poésie. Cette exposition se concentrera sur les grands thèmes des mondes créés par Max Ernst en illustrant la récurrence des thématiques qui traversent son oeuvre. Une section centrale de l’exposition fait recours aux quatre éléments – l’eau, l’air, la terre et le feu – qui, selon la tradition philosophique ancienne et l’alchimie, composent l’ensemble de la matière du monde naturel.

L’univers de l’artiste déconcerte et étonne. Grand intellectuel et artiste humaniste – au sens néo-Renaissance du terme -, il défie continuellement la perception en combinant la logique et l’harmonie formelle avec des énigmes insondables, tandis que l’onirisme et le fantastique coexistent pour créer des paysages aux mystères impénétrables. Forêts de pierres, animaux chimères, masques incarnés ou oiseaux anthropomorphes, la beauté énigmatique et parfois même ironique des oeuvres de Max Ernst nous plongera dans l’extravagance de ses mondes, magiques et libérés.

Cette exposition bénéficie notamment de prêts exceptionnels du Centre Pompidou, de la Tate, du Guggenheim Venise, du Musée Cantini, du Max Ernst Museum de Brühl et de nombreux collectionneurs privés souhaitant garder leur anonymat.

HÔTEL DE CAUMONT CENTRE D'ART

3 rue Joseph Cabassol, 13100 Aix-en-Provence

www.caumont-centredart.com

Ina Gerken Exhibition @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - A Journey

Ina Gerken: A Journey

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

28 April – 28 May 2023

When Ina Gerken (b. 1987) sets to work on a new painting, she has no preconceived plan, concept or idea of how the piece should look when it is finished. Working on pure intuition, she strives to look at the unfolding piece with no preconceived notions of where it should end up. Instead, she tries to intuitively discern what it needs, as quickly as possible, so as not to overthink her next move. Thanks to the rapidly drying acrylic paint, she can spontaneously modify the content at will, keeping the process alive and exciting. Ina Gerken describes painting as a dialogue between herself and the canvas. She allows herself to drift and meander into the unknown, until finally the invisible becomes visible. Ultimately, the image takes shape like a creature that evolves out of nothing.

Ina Gerken sees a painting as being simultaneously a snapshot, a frozen moment, and a memory complete with multiple layers, emotional responses and embedded discoveries. Like all things extant, every painting is different: each one is unique in how it was created, how long it took to complete, and how many layers it contains. Each painting plays by its own rules, has its own language and possesses a unique character.

In recent years, Ina Gerken has begun to favor larger formats. She paints large canvases flat on the floor, which enables her to literally get inside the painting. Ina Gerken says that the bigger the painting, the more likely she is to get lost inside it – in a positive sense, because working large makes her more reliant on intuition and feeling.

Ina Gerken is a german painter who studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. She has held numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia, Australia and the USA. She lives and works in Dusseldorf, Germany.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com