Lee Ufan, Musée d'Art Moderne, Saint Etienne

Lee Ufan 

Musée d'Art Moderne, Saint Etienne 

9 décembre 2005 - 19 février 2006 

L’exposition de l’artiste coréen Lee Ufan, né en 1936, regroupe une quarantaine de peintures et de sculptures, selon un parcours et une sélection décidés par l’artiste.

Les peintures de la série « Correspondance », commencées il y a une dizaine d’années, présentent une ou deux touches gris-bleu sur un fond blanc infiniment vide, puisqu’il se prolonge dans le mur blanc du musée. Le minimalisme apparent relève en fait d’une composition gestuelle dans laquelle le peintre confronte sa présence à l’espace sur lequel il agit. Parallèlement à la peinture, ses sculptures exaltent des matériaux comme la pierre et la plaque de fer et jouent sur les notions d’espace, de vide, d’intermédiaire et de confrontation entre le naturel et le pensé.

En limitant l’acte de faire et en le combinant avec des choses non-fabriquées, Lee Ufan laisse entrer et interférer l’extériorité, et nous invite aux « confins » du visible et de l’invisible, du fini et de l’infini.

Catalogue Lee Ufan, 64 p., 40 illustrations. Co-édition Musée d’art moderne, Saint-Etienne Métropole / Communic’Art. Bilingue français/anglais. Texte d’Okyang Chae-Duporge, « L’espace non-agi dans l’œuvre de Lee Ufan ».

Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole

www.mam-st-etienne.fr

Osvaldo Romberg au MAM de Saint-Etienne - Exposition Architectures narratives

Osvaldo Romberg – Architectures narratives

Musée d'Art Moderne, Saint Etienne

9 décembre 2005 - 19 février 2006

Le Cabinet d’arts graphiques du Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint Etienne poursuit sa vocation de montrer les œuvres sur papier d’artistes contemporains avec une exposition consacrée à Osvaldo Romberg, déjà présent dans l’exposition Domicile : privé/public.

Les 67 aquarelles présentées à l’occasion de cette exposition ont été réalisées à partir de plans d’architectes. La réflexion autour de l’architecture comme métaphore d’une narration est une thématique particulièrement chère à l’artiste, que ce soit à partir des plans d’édifices religieux de la Renaissance ou de l’époque baroque, ou autour de plans plus récents et plus proches du Musée, comme ceux de Le Corbusier à Firminy. En retravaillant ces plans, Osvaldo Romberg donne à voir le travail de l’architecte comme une œuvre d’art – au-delà de sa dimension fonctionnelle – en même temps qu’il interprète chaque structure pour mieux montrer le sens sociologique que la forme détient en elle-même, créant ainsi une étonnante narration à partir de figures familières.

Catalogue : Osvaldo Romberg, 48 p., 15 ill., bilingue français/anglais.

Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Métropole

www.mam-st-etienne.fr

Joan Miró, Galerie Sandrine Mons, Nice - Graphics

Joan Miró: Graphics

Galerie d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Sandrine Mons, Nice

10 décembre 2005 – 18 février 2006

La Galerie d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Sandrine Mons à Nice présente une sélection d’œuvres graphiques par l’artiste catalan, Joan Miró (1893-1983). 

L’œuvre de Joan Miró n’est pas seulement gigantesque, fruit d’une vie entière consacrée à la création artistique, elle perdure dans sa capacité à nous interroger, à nous fasciner. Elle fascine parce qu’elle cache plus qu’elle ne révèle, concilie l’infime et l’infini. Elle présente des couleurs et des formes dont les harmonies rythmiques et suggestives allient l’humour et la fraîcheur enfantine à l’intuition du surnaturel. 

Celui dont André Breton disait qu’il est le plus surréaliste de tous n’aura de cesse de chercher à « atteindre le maximum d’intensité avec le minimum de moyens » (Joan Miró). 

Grâce à l’épuration de sa rhétorique visuelle et l’alliance des mots, il créa un langage plastique singulier qui fera de lui une figure à part dans l’histoire de l’art du XXème siècle. En constant dialogue avec ses contemporains, il dit préférer l’écriture à la peinture et fait de sa collaboration avec des écrivains l’une de ses principales activités. 

Joan Miró est à l’origine d’une multitude d’œuvres sur tous supports dont la production et la distribution s’écartent des réseaux traditionnels liés aux Beaux-Arts. Il crée des livres, des affiches,  des estampes, des œuvres qui peuvent circuler et faire de son art un bien commun. Dans l’exposition présentée par la Galerie d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Sandrine Mons, ces pièces révèlent combien ces œuvres de distribution plus large ne forment pas seulement un écho de son œuvre picturale mais constituent le cœur même de la pensée artistique de celui qui dira qu’« un brin d’herbe est aussi gracieux qu’un arbre ou une montagne ».

Catherine Somzé, Amsterdam 2005

Galerie d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Sandrine Mons

8 rue Dalpozzo, 06000 Nice

www.galeriemons.fr

Exposition Wolfgang Laib, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen / Bâle - "L’éphémère, c’est l’éternité"

Wolfgang Laib 

L’éphémère, c’est l’éternité 

Fondation Beyeler, Riehen / Bâle 

27 novembre 2005 – 26 février 2006 

Né en 1950 à Metzingen en Allemagne, Wolfgang Laib est à ce jour le plus jeune artiste auquel la Fondation Beyeler ait consacré une exposition particulière. Celle-ci est née en étroite collaboration avec l’artiste. Par sa sobriété, l’espace de la Fondation Beyeler, conçu par Renzo Piano, permet une approche particulièrement intense de l’œuvre de Laib.

La création tout à fait singulière de cet artiste, qui repose sur l’emploi de matériaux naturels, fait de Laib une des personnalités marquantes de l’art de ces trente dernières années. Après les expositions que lui ont consacrées plusieurs galeries et musées suisses (dont, en 1990, le Kunstmuseum de Lucerne et plus récemment, en 2003/04, la Galerie Caratsch de Pury & Luxembourg de Zurich), la Fondation Beyeler est le premier établissement suisse à présenter une rétrospective, prenant ainsi en compte tous les aspects de son œuvre. Wolfgang Laib, qui travaille notamment avec du pollen, du lait, du riz et de la cire, se concentre sur un petit nombre de séries dont il poursuit le développement sous forme de cycles. Présentées dans cette exposition, elles révèlent pleinement les dimensions inhabituelles que les installations de cet artiste confèrent à l’espace d’exposition moderne. Ces dimensions sont indissociables de la profonde spiritualité de Laib et de la fusion entre éléments orientaux et occidentaux qui caractérise son œuvre. Médecin de formation, Laib est tout aussi marqué, en tant qu’artiste et en tant qu’homme, par les rites, les formes et la sagesse orientaux que par la mystique d’un saint François d’Assise ou par des artistes modernes comme Mondrian, Malevitch, Brancusi ou Joseph Beuys.

On découvrira dans cette exposition vingt œuvres spatiales ainsi qu’une trentaine de dessins et de photographies, dont certains travaux qui n’ont encore jamais été présentés en Suisse. Chronologiquement, l’exposition s’ouvre sur l’un des deux Brahmandas (Œufs-mondes) en pierre massive, que l’artiste a réalisés au début des années 1970 et qui marquent le commencement de sa carrière artistique. Suivent les Pierres de lait (Milchsteine), premières pièces de musée de Laib, qui voient le jour à partir de 1975 et qu’il continue de décliner aujourd’hui. Les Pierres de lait sont des objets d’une grande sobriété, installés à même le sol. Sur leur partie supérieure, les blocs de marbre rectangulaires présentent une légère déclivité, quotidiennement remplie de lait. Le marbre blanc et le lait se fondent ainsi en une unité indissociable de solidité et de fluidité. Suivent les célèbres Champs de pollen, dont on a déjà pu découvrir certains lors d’expositions temporaires de la Fondation Beyeler (La Magie des arbres, 1998 et Le Mythe de la fleur, 2005). Ils sont constitués de poudre de pollen éclatante, répandue sur le sol du musée où elle dessine des rectangles d’une luminosité magique. L’artiste le recueille lui-même dans les prairies et les forêts de pins de sa Haute Souabe natale. La mise en place du pollen, conservé dans des récipients de verre, fait l’objet d’un processus méticuleusement défini. Sur les photographies publiées dans des catalogues ou des articles de journaux et qui conservent la trace de ce processus, l’artiste apparaît comme un Jackson Pollock méditatif, éparpillant une abstraction spirituelle de pure nature dans le White Cube profane, l’espace d’exposition classique de l’art moderne.

Dans des œuvres comme les Pierres de lait ou les Champs de pollen qui invitent à une contemplation paisible, l’artiste enrichit la salle de musée d’une nouvelle dimension de perception. Il faut attendre les séries ultérieures pour le voir commencer à s’évader du calme statique de l’œuvre et envahir l’espace. C’est le cas, par exemple, des Repas de riz (Reismahlzeiten) – assiettes de laiton remplies de riz, disposées longitudinalement, – ou des petites Cinq montagnes que l’on ne peut escalader (Die fünf unbesteigbaren Berge), réalisées à partir de tas de pollen. Ici, l’œuvre nous invite à la longer et à mesurer à son rythme l’espace dans lequel elle est présentée. Cette tendance à une dynamique spatiale s’accentue considérablement dès que l’artiste se lance dans des travaux de plus grandes dimensions, qui partent également, et de façon croissante, à la conquête de la verticalité. On peut citer, à partir de 1995, les tours qui se dressent sous forme d’escaliers des Ziggourats (Zikkurats) et les Bateaux de cire (Wachsschiffe), qui parcourent l’espace sur de hauts châssis de bois. Les Ziggourats citent des formes d’architecture religieuse orientale, qu’elles traduisent dans un langage que l’on peut appréhender dans l’espace du musée : tandis que notre regard suit la topographie des tours, l’espace du musée se transforme sous nos yeux en lieu d’ascension métaphorique, dont la nature n’est pas exclusivement esthétique. Cette idée de mouvement est encore plus perceptible dans les Bateaux de cire, dont certains, sur leurs châssis de bois, conduisent déjà d’une salle à l’autre. Ici, Wolfgang Laib nous présente le White Cube du musée comme un lieu dont les frontières ne sont pas infranchissables. Jadis récipient d’un statisme artificiellement animé, il devient lieu de départ d’un voyage mythique. À la Fondation, les Bateaux de cire trouvent un lieu d’exposition spectaculaire au Foyer du musée, où ils rencontrent une œuvre monumentale de l’UBS Art Collection, exposée simultanément au musée, mais dans un autre espace.

L’exposition permet à découvrir également des exemples majeurs d’œuvres se présentant elle-mêmes comme espaces, un sommet de la création de Laib. Citons d’abord les Chambres de cire (Wachsräume) créés dès la fin des années 1980, dont on peut découvrir ici un exemplaire. Ne se contentant plus de l’espace (de musée) existant, Laib façonne lui-même des espaces oblongs revêtus de cire mais vides par ailleurs, auxquels la présence du spectateur apporte un complément idéal : l’œuvre elle-même se transforme en lieu. La même observation s’applique à un nouveau travail, la Chambre de laque (Lackraum), fait de laque noire et cinabre tirée de résine de thitsi originaire de Birmanie (Myanmar). Mais si les Chambres de cire et la Chambre de laque transportables sont conçus comme un espace dans l’espace, un dernier pas est franchi comprenant de tels espaces qui sont directement intégrés dans la nature : l’art de Laib s’y émancipe entièrement du White Cube. Il n’existe que deux de ces Chambres de cire, dont l’un a récemment vu le jour sur un terrain appartenant à l’artiste. Il n’est pas accessible au public et figure pour la première fois sous forme de photographie dans le catalogue de l’exposition de la Fondation Beyeler.

On peut également découvrir d’importants travaux du cycle des Maisons de riz (Reishäuser) en forme de coffres, un escalier de laque recouvert de laque birmane et une œuvre murale faite d’éléments de cire triangulaires, qui n’a encore jamais été présentée. Un choix de dessins et de photographies de l’artiste complète l’exposition. Alors que les dessins permettent à Laib d’élargir son travail spatial par des méditations à la fois précises et libres sur papier, les photos témoignent du regard artistique qu’il pose sur des paysages, des monuments et des objets (souvent sacrés), originaires pour la plupart du Proche et de l’Extrême Orient et qui sont d’un immense intérêt pour la compréhension de son œuvre. Ces travaux témoignent en même temps des affinités singulières de Laib avec la dimension du religieux et du contemplatif. Ce lien a conduit certains auteurs à percevoir chez lui une forme d’antagonisme, l’aspect conceptuel et artistique du concept de Laib s’inscrivant, selon eux, dans la pensée occidentale, contrairement à son aspect idéologique et religieux, qui relèverait de l’Orient.

Tel n’est pas l’avis d’Harald Szeemann, particulièrement proche de l’artiste. Il considère que ces deux composantes sont déjà réunies et anticipées par d’autres artistes, dont il considère Laib comme le successeur : Kandinsky, Mondrian et Brancusi. Selon Szeemann, Wolfgang Laib « … n’est pas un européen indianisé qui sert du contexte de l’art, mais il est un contemporain conscient qui indique à travers des gestes sculpturaux minimes, des espaces intérieurs gigantesques ».

Ce ne serait évidemment pas possible sans la position personnelle tout à fait particulière de l’artiste qui réunit des forces extrêmement différentes — depuis une figure comme Bouddha en passant par François d’Assise pour aller jusqu’au mystique soufi Jelaluddin : Laib se présente donc comme un artiste contemporain qui, depuis plus de trente ans, s’accroche au concept radical d’une unité inclusive. Un peu de ce radicalisme résonne dans le sous-titre de l’exposition, inspiré de propos de Laib : — « L’éphémère, c’est l’éternité ».

Les éditions Hatje Cantz ont publié un catalogue bilingue (allemand, anglais) de 124 pages et 50 illustrations en couleurs (CHF 68. –). Il contient des contributions de Christoph Vitali, Katharina Schmidt, Philippe Büttner et Ulf Küster.

FONDATION BEYELER

Baselstrasse 101, 4125 Riehen/Basel

www.beyeler.com

PULSE Miami 2005 - Contemporary Art Fair

PULSE Miami

December 1 - 4, 2005

An invitational contemporary art fair, PULSE, will premiere during the upcoming 2005-2006 international art season coinciding with Art Basel Miami Beach and The Armory Show in New York. PULSE will present over 60 galleries, reflecting the latest developments in contemporary art, in a program where international galleries and U.S. galleries are equally represented. The fair will feature a curated contemporary art program with emerging and established artists from around the world invited by a committee of arts professionals.

According to Director Helen Allen who conceived PULSE as a way to bridge the gap between established and alternative art fairs, “PULSE is an opportunity to highlight the work of international artists as well as reflect the cultural richness of the host cities as a complement to the programs now in existence.” The goal of PULSE is to establish a global as well as local cultural partnership with young gallerists, dealers, and collectors, while engaging an audience of art patrons, enthusiasts, critics, curators and academics through the presentation of new artistic trends and exhibition concepts.

PULSE will feature a select group of artists from over 60 galleries in a multidisciplinary art program to include drawing, painting, sculpture, installation art, photography, and video art. Each participating gallery will present the works as a curated project.

PULSE will also include a special “Impulse” section, open to younger galleries through a special application and selection process.

The PULSE Invitational Committee is comprised of an international roster of curators, gallerists and dealers, including Natasha Boas (San Francisco-based Independent Curator), Catharine Clark (Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco), Valerie Cueto (Galerie Valerie Cueto, Paris), Andrew Mummery (Andrew Mummery Gallery, London), Janet Phelps (New York-based Independent Curator), Margaret Thatcher (Thatcher Projects, New York), Ken Tyburski (DCKT Contemporary, New York), and Gwenolee Zurcher (Galerie Zurcher, Paris).

Each PULSE will feature a guest curator who will present a special exhibition comprised of local artists from the host cities of Miami and New York. During the December and March programs, the committee will present the PULSE Prize, a cash grant given to an artist featured in the guest-curated exhibition and awarded during the opening night reception. Tampa-based independent curator Jade Dellinger has been selected as the guest curator for the inaugural PULSE.

PULSE Miami will premiere December 1-4, 2005, coinciding with Art Basel Miami Beach, and will take place in a 30,000-square-foot marquee in the Wynwood District. PULSE will also run concurrently with The Armory Show, New York, March 10-13, 2006, and will be held at the 69th Regiment Armory building.

PULSE MIAMI

The Tent, 2700 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami, FL

www.pulse-art.com

Maria E. Pineres, DCKT Contemporary, NYC - A Rogues' Gallery

Maria E. Pineres: A Rogues' Gallery 

DCKT Contemporary, New York 

November 19 – December 17, 2005 

DCKT Contemporary presents A Rogue’s Gallery, a new series of work by MARIA E. PINERES. With her signature medium of stitched needlepoint images, Maria E. Pineres confronts media-saturated contemporary culture’s favorite guilty-or-not-guilty pleasure: the celebrity mug shot.

Celebrity culture exists today almost completely without boundaries. In adversity to the tightly controlled studio system generated publicity of Hollywood’s golden era, nothing today is off-limits. There is hardly any distinction between public and private - and the more private, stark, and embarrassingly real, the better. In the 1940’s and 50’s, readers of Confidential and other such scandal sheets collectively gasped a joyfully naughty, voyeuristic breath and eagerly wrung their hands at the novel site of police-file mug shots of Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra. The publication of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon (1958) furthered the airing of Hollywood’s dirty laundry into a cultish pastime and created an outlet for a scandal-loving subculture. Today, especially given the access-all-areas manner of internet-disseminated information, such images are commonplace.

In A Rogue’s Gallery, Maria E. Pineres captures an eerily doll-like Michael Jackson and a seemingly helpless Lizzie Grubman among many others. All are depicted in the police station after the initial brush with the law, yet before the indignant publicist denials and the ensuing round of post-release talk show appearances. In her new work, Pineres goes one step further from her previous series. Homespun grandmotherly needlework, already turned on its ear, is taken into the world of stars which have crashed and burned, darkly glowing through the atmosphere, onto the decidedly non-lunar surface of central booking. Both the dazed Nick Nolte and snarling Sid Vicious are given true VIP treatment: vertical diptychs featuring kaleidoscopic serial imagery of their respective mug shots with hallucinogenic multicolored backgrounds—a conscious mirror image of the windmills of her iconic subjects’ addled minds. We see a variety of emotions in these faces, rather then blank slates: guilt or embarrassment sometimes, but, more often, defiance, smugness, sweetness and, most often, rebelliousness.

This is Maria E. Pineres’ second one-person exhibition in New York. Her work has been shown in one-person and group exhibitions at DCKT Contemporary and, recently, in group shows at both Sara Meltzer Gallery and John Connelly Presents.

DCKT CONTEMPORARY

552 West 24th Street, New York, NY

www.dcktcontemporary.com

Duane Michals, Pace/MacGill Gallery, NYC - The Adventures of Constantine Cavafy & Ukiyo-e: Pictures from the Floating World

Duanes Michals:

The Adventures of Constantine Cavafy

Ukiyo-e: Pictures from the Floating World

Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

November 17, 2005 - January 14, 2006

Pace/MacGill Gallery presents an exhibition featuring two new bodies of work, “The Adventures of Constantine Cavafy” and “Ukiyo-e: Pictures from the Floating World,” by DUANE MICHALS. The “Cavafy” series (2003-05) is comprised of multiple picture sequences; each sequence includes, on average, ten gelatin silver prints measuring 5 x 7 inches with hand written text. Inspired by the writings of Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933), the series depicts fictitious scenes from Cavafy’s life as imagined by Duane Michals. Michals’s friend, actor Joel Grey, is cast as Cavafy. Also on view for the first time are pictures from the series “Ukiyo-e: Pictures From the Floating World” (2005). Composed of single, 11 x 14 inch chromogenic photographs, the series explores what Duane Michals describes as “the real world of appearances in which we live” and reflects the aesthetic and philosophical spirit of traditional Japanese prints. Adjacent to the photographs Duane Michals has written epigrammatic prose and poems to accompany the images.

Rather than illustrating Cavafy’s poems, Duane Michals adopts a writer’s role and authors visual stories and text about Cavafy himself. Duane Michals’s sequences depict the unfolding of moments or events in which the poet is envisioned to participate. Duane Michals’s own identification with Cavafy adds a personal dimension to an already intimate body of work: the “Cavafy” series explores religion, friendship, the creative process, and erotic desire. This is Duane Michals’s second series to focus on Cavafy as a subject; his first was “Homage to Cavafy” (1978). Although he has previously used color film for commercial projects, “Ukiyo-e: Pictures from the Floating World” marks the first occasion that Duane Michals has used color in his private work. Images from this series describe discrete moments with the powerful brevity of Japanese haiku: a bird is freed from its cage, a man plays cards, a sudden breeze passes, a flower blossoms, an actor becomes sad. 

DUANE MICHALS (b. 1932, McKeesport, Pa.) received a BA from the University of Denver in 1953 and worked as a graphic designer until his involvement with photography deepened in the late 1950s. Duane Michals made significant, creative strides in the field of photography during the 1960s. The sequences, for which he is widely known, appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format. Comprised of single, small-scale gelatin silver prints, each sequence depicts the unfolding of an event or reveals various perspectives on a specific subject. Duane Michals has also incorporated text as a key component in his single and multipart works. Mixing fragility with strength, gravity with humor, and the mundane with the unexpected, Duane Michals’s work touches upon universal themes such as love, desire, memory, death, and immortality.

Over the past four decades, Duane Michals’s work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, hosted Duane Michals’s first solo exhibition (1970), and a year later the George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y., mounted another (1971). More recently, he has had one-person shows at the Odakyu Museum, Tokyo (1999), and the National Gallery of Canada, Ontario (2000). In 2005 his photographs were featured in “Big Bang: Destruction and Creation in Art of the 21st Century,” at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and “Recent Acquisitions: Some Versions of the Portrait” at the International Center of Photography, New York.

In recognition of his contributions to photography, Duane Michals has been honored with a CAPS Grant (1975), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1976), the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Art (1989),and the Foto España International Award (2001). Duane Michals is also an officer of the Order of Arts and Letters, an award bestowed by the French Government in 1993.

Duane Michals's work belongs to numerous permanent collections in the U.S. and abroad, including the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His archive is housed at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. 

PACE/MACGILL GALLERY

32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022

www.pacemacgill.com

Pierre Alechinsky, Galerie Sandrine Mons, Nice - Encres et Estampes, 1969-2004

Pierre Alechinsky 

Encres et Estampes, 1969-2004

Galerie d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Sandrine Mons, Nice

4 novembre – 3 décembre 2005

A l’occasion de son inauguration, la Galerie d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Sandrine Mons présente une sélection d’œuvres d’un des artistes emblématiques de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, Pierre Alechinsky. 

Sont exposées des aquarelles, encres et autres estampes qui rendent compte de la diversité technique et thématique de l’ensemble de l’œuvre de cet artiste né à Bruxelles en 1927 et qui depuis la fin des années 1940 fait histoire. 

A  22 ans, Pierre Alechinsky se lança corps et âme dans l’aventure CoBrA, mouvement dont le nom est l’acronyme des trois villes - Copenhague, Bruxelles et Amsterdam- et autour duquel gravitent Dotremont, Appel et Jorn pour ne citer que quelques uns des illustres comparses de ce courant.   

Tant du point de vue de la forme que du contenu, Pierre Alechinsky n’a eu de cesse d’expérimenter le substrat instinctif de l’être libéré des normes et valeurs du monde civilisé, dans l’espoir idéaliste de voir surgir des traits vifs de couleurs primaires. Il s’empare des traditions et des formes d’expressions les plus diversifiées : du folklore à l’histoire de l’art et de la calligraphie aux fameuses trouvailles et rencontres de hasard d’héritage surréaliste. 

Pierre Alechinsky a clairsemé l’imaginaire occidental d’êtres fantastiques qui le plus souvent se reposent sur les lettres typographiques du papier d’imprimerie, ne constituant que l’une des multiples impressions que reçoit le support improvisé. 

Il mêle entre autres l’écriture aux beaux-arts et la finesse formelle japonaise aux explosions d’acrylique de l’après-guerre.

Les œuvres de l’exposition qui donne le coup d’envoi de la Galerie d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Sandrine Mons, sauront se faire apprécier des amoureux de liberté et de spontanéité.

Galerie d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Sandrine Mons

8 rue Dalpozzo, 06000 Nice

www.galeriemons.fr

Sarah McCourbey, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia - Signs of Life

Sarah McCourbey: Signs of Life

Locks Gallery, Philadelphia

November 4 - December 17, 2005

Locks Gallery presents new paintings by the artist SARAH MCCOUBREY. Signs of Life, Locks Gallery's third exhibition of Sarah McCoubrey's work, consists of twenty paintings and drawings depicting the landscapes of rural New York and Ireland. Sarah McCoubrey paints intricately detailed images of her environment that reflect the unique influence of time, both human and ecological on these spaces. She uses the technique of glazing to gradually build up the surfaces of her paintings, creating depth and intimacy in the picture plane that the viewer's eye can travel about in. Her landscapes come from imagination and memory, as well as photographs and on-location sketches, representing a delicate blend of the real and the created environment. Large skies, expansive vistas, and a milky atmosphere are characteristic of Sarah McCoubrey's works.

A devoted landscape painter, her work evokes the Hudson River School tradition as well as 19th century European landscape paintings; however, run-down sheds, signposts, and other signs of human presence often make an appearance in her paintings, subtly reminding us of a contemporary time and place. Aware of the weight of history on the genre of landscape painting, Sarah McCoubrey's body of work speaks for its remnants as well as for art's enduring fascination with nature.

Sarah McCoubrey received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and is an Associate Professor of Art at Syracuse University. She is the recipient of several grants, including the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting, a Milton Avery Foundation Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and a New York State Council on the Arts Grant. Sarah McCoubrey’s work was included in the 2002 Everson Museum of Art Biennial and in recent exhibits at Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University; Tyler Art Gallery, SUNY Oswego; and the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Gallery, Auburn, NY.

LOCKS GALLERY

600 Washington Square South, Philadelphia, PA 19106

www.locksgallery.com

Stephen Dean, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY - Volta

Stephen Dean’s Volta
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
November 4 - 20, 2005

The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University presents Stephen Dean’s Volta, a façade projection which will be seen from sunset to 11:00 p.m. November 4 to 20, 2005.

French artist Stephen Dean (b. 1968) is known for exploring the experience of color in his films. His previous work, Pulse, was shown as part of the 2002 Whitney Biennial, and several of his videos are currently on view in “Always a Little Further” at this year’s 51st Venice Biennale.

“Stephen Dean’s videos really expand the definitions of painting in that they are concerned with color via the aesthetic qualities of the social and religious rituals that he chooses to film,” said Andrea Inselmann, curator of modern and contemporary art.

Volta, named after the soccer term for an offensive maneuver leading to a spectacular goal, was shot in Brazil at numerous different games, and begins with a close-up of rippling fabric, pulled away to reveal hundreds of Brazilian soccer fans, like the curtain rising before a performance.

The fans remove their colorful shirts, transforming the sea of bright colors into flesh tones. A fabric bunting is passed hand-to-hand through the cheering throng, then disappears. Fists pump the air to an incessant drumbeat. The viewer does not see any of an actual ball game—just the sounds and colors of the fans in the stadium. Humans, passionate and unpredictable, become the medium rather than the subject. Volta is not about a story, but about rhythm.

Stephen Dean’s work is held in many private, corporate, and public collections, among them the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Collection Jumex, and the Israel Museum. He is represented by Henry Urbach Architecture in New York.

This is the sixth façade projection since 2002 at the Johnson Museum. The previous exhibitions were Janet Biggs and Robert Cmar’s Untitled (September 25, 2001: Floors 75 through 110), Haluk Akakçe’s White on White, Jennifer Steinkamp’s X-Ray Eyes, Asta Gröting’s Parking, and Maria Friberg’s blown out.

HERBERT F. JOHNSON MUSEUM OF ART
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-4001
www.museum.cornell.edu

Danny Clayton, Texas Gallery, Houston - Ten Years of Paintings

Danny Clayton: Ten Years of Paintings
Texas Gallery, Houston
November 1 – 15, 2005

Danny Clayton is having the first show of his paintings in Houston in a decade at the Texas Gallery. The installation of the paintings on paper is configured as an altar piece in the back room of the gallery. There are many references to sources as diverse as antique textiles, the I Ching, icongraphic symbols from the writings of Joseph Campbell and Paleolithic artifacts from Arkansas. Danny Clayton creates an intense, obsessive personal iconography which is re-iterated by the painstaking rendering by hand of each work, which often take a year for the artist to complete. Reminiscent of the work of an iconoclast such as Bruce Conner, the pieces are a personal version of mandalas for meditation or hallucination. The artist refers to the works as “yantras” which is a word that could reside somewhere between a mantra and tantra. Of particular significance is a repeated octagonal form that is the center of most of the works and which is an elaboration on a hexagram of three lines… one vertical and two diagonals. This form is the glowing shape in the very center of each work and from which all other elements radiate outwardly.

Danny Clayton was born in Houston, Texas, and currently resides and works in Mexico City. In recognition of his adopted cultural base, Danny Clayton opened the show on November 1, to coincide with the celebration of the Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead.

TEXAS GALLERY
2012 Peden, Houston, TX 77019
www.texgal.com

Tony O’Malley, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin - A Major Retrospective

Tony O’Malley

Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

26 October 2005 - 1 January 2006

A major retrospective of the work of the Irish painter Tony O’Malley, one of the most important and best-loved Irish artists of the past 100 years, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition, entitled simply Tony O’Malley, focuses particularly on certain core aspects and key moments in an extraordinarily productive career. It covers Tony O’Malley’s early years as an amateur artist painting the landscape of his native Co Kilkenny, through his years in St Ives and the Bahamas and his return to Ireland in 1990, to some of his last works, created shortly before his death in 2003. The exhibition comprises more than 60 works, drawn mainly from private collections. Tony O’Malley is curated by the curator and critic Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith. 

Born in Callan, Co Kilkenny, in 1913, Tony O’Malley was until the late 1950s a part-time artist working, from 1934 to 1958, with the Munster and Leinster Bank in various branches around Ireland. Although suffering chronic ill-health, he continued painting throughout the 1950s, developing his craft through a process of trial and error and through studying, in reproduction, the works of the great masters such as Cezanne and Van Gogh. A number of works in the exhibition date from these early years. Winter Landscape, Arklow (1953) and Winter Landscape, New Ross (1957) present the viewer with bleak, geometrical landscapes where small houses huddle together against the elements, reflecting something of the economic and social conditions in the country and of the personal losses O’Malley suffered – the deaths of his mother and brother – around that time.

In 1960 Tony O’Malley moved to St Ives in Cornwall, which he had already visited on a number of occasions and where he was to live for the next 30 years. The change wrought in his work by his new circumstances and surroundings – St Ives had been a well-known artists’ colony since the 1930s – can be seen in two self-portraits painted just two years apart.  In Self-Portrait, Heavy Snowfall at Trevaylor (1962-63) the artist is depicted in muted tones, in a solemn, ordered studio as the snow piles up outside. In Bird Painter (1965), by contrast, he is suffused with an elemental energy, poised to transform nature into art, his interest in birds, present from the start, having taken on a new life in St Ives. This leitmotiv recurs again and again in a variety of works, including the powerful The Hawk Owl (1964) and in Hawk and Quarry in Winter, in Memory of Peter Lanyon (1964), his tribute to his close friend and fellow painter Peter Lanyon, who died in a gliding accident in1963.

In the early 1960s, Tony O’Malley began one of his best-known series of pictures, which he continued until the late 1990s. Painted every Good Friday and frequently drawing on images from local Kilkenny tomb carvings, they address, often obliquely, the theme of Christ’s passion. These ranged from Wooden Collage, Good Friday (1968), a strikingly simple evocation of the Crucifixion in blackened fragments of wood and slate, to Good Friday Painting (1994), which bears the expanded repertoire of gesture and colour resulting from his visits to the Bahamas in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Tony and his wife, Jane – the Canadian artist Jane Harris, whom he had married in 1973 – made their first visit to Jane’s family in the Bahamas in 1974. This radically different environment initially posed some challenges for Tony O’Malley, more especially in terms of the vastly different nature of the Caribbean light. However, Tony O’Malley’s legendary persistence won out. In Bahamian Butterfly (1979) the formal idiom developed in gloomier climes is expanded to accommodate the visual resplendence of his new surroundings. During this period Tony O’Malley’s work began to be exhibited much more regularly in Ireland, particularly at the Taylor Galleries. In 1984 he had a retrospective in Belfast, Dublin and Cork. A solo exhibition by the Newlyn Gallery in Cornwall toured to a number of English and Irish venues. The inclusion of four of his larger Bahamian canvases in the 1988 ROSC came as a considerable surprise to those whose knowledge of his work was confined to his paintings from the 1960s and ‘70s. The first exhibition of Tony O’Malley’s work at IMMA was held in 1992-93. Following receipt of a major body of his work on loan from George and Maura McClelland in 2000, a further exhibition from that collection, was held in 2001. Since then the Museum has received a heritage donation from Noel and Anne Marie Smyth of 60 of the Tony O’Malley works from that collection to add to those already in its Collection. 

This new chromatic range was carried over into Tony O’Malley’s later Irish paintings, following his permanent return to Ireland in 1990. Undeterred by failing eyesight, he found new modes of expression in works such as Sense of Old Place (1997) in which the watery depths of the pond spread out to encompass the entire landscape. Tony O’Malley continued working almost up to the time of his death in January 2003, true to his feelings, expressed in an interview with The Sunday Tribune in 1984, “I have no time for people who mess about, doing nothing when it suits them …There’s so much to do. If I run out of canvas I just paint over something I’ve already done. I’m an old man and I started painting late. I don’t want to waste any time”.

A major publication with an introduction by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, essays by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith and Catherine Marshall, Head of Collections, IMMA, and an interview by writer and critic Brian Fallon, accompanies the exhibition.

IMMA - IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Military Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 8

www.modernart.ie

Michael Reafsnyder at Las Vegas Art Museum - MORE, Painting and Sculpture 2002-2005

Michael Reafsnyder

MORE, Painting and Sculpture 2002-2005

Las Vegas Art Museum

October 1 - December 31, 2005

The Las Vegas Art Museum (LVAM) presents MORE: Michael Reafsnyder, Painting and Sculpture 2002-2005. This comprehensive survey of the works created by California artist Michael Reafsnyder since 2002 constitutes the first installment of LVAM’s newly created Contemporaries Series, an ongoing series of exhibitions dedicated to presenting works by emerging and internationally recognized contemporary artists. This is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition, and his Las Vegas debut.

Michael Reafsnyder is known for brilliantly colored abstract paintings executed in oils or acrylics, in an exuberant painterly style. The artist painted in oils from 1996 through 2004. These works generally feature frenetic, densely filled compositions executed with a combination of thick brush strokes and skeins of paint squeezed directly from the tube, with some passages flattened with a squeegee. They usually include primitive-style representations of “smiley face” extraterrestrial creatures, and occasionally scribbled words, which are formed by skeins of paint or scratched into the painted surface.

The acrylic paintings, which the artist began making in 2004, retain the figurative elements and rich color of earlier works, but have greater clarity of form. For the most part, the skeins extruded from tubes are replaced with broad, multicolor brush strokes that create fluid movement in the compositions. Recently, Michael Reafsnyder created a small number of works produced by casting the deeply articulated surface of a painting in bronze. After the casting, the painting is discarded. The More exhibition includes most of these relief sculptures. It also features several free-standing sculptures and relief sculptures in glazed clay, which represent a new addition to the artist’s repertoire, and which have never before been exhibited. Michael Reafsnyder lives in Orange, California, and has been exhibiting in Los Angeles, New York, and various European cities since 1996. 

Michael Reafsnyder is among the small but prominent group of artists who revived painterly traditions in the late 1990s. Critics have described his works as having “Dionysian exuberance,” and as constituting “eloquent arguments against the idea that visual overload necessarily leads to diminished attention spans.” 

“Reafsnyder’s bright palette, exaggerated painterly style and figuration meld the expressive power of Abstract Expressionism with the cool of Pop, two primary styles of American art traditionally considered to be polar opposites,” explains Libby Lumpkin. “With uncommon technical refinement and with rock-and-roll energy, Reafsnyder demonstrates the malleability of the painted gesture idiom and asks the viewer to reconsider conventional attitudes toward an acquisitive culture that always wants more — more fun, more food, more paint.” 

More is curated by Libby Lumpkin, LVAM Consulting Executive Director and Director of Design Discourse, International Institute of Modern Letters at UNLV. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with color reproductions of selected works and an essay by Libby Lumpkin.

LAS VEGAS ART MUSEUM - LVAM

9600 West Sahara Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89117

www.lasvegasartmuseum.org

Updated Post

Sam Gilliam: A Retrospective at Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Sam Gilliam: a retrospective 

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC

October 15, 2005 - January 22, 2006

Sam Gilliam: a retrospective marks the first full-career retrospective of Sam Gilliam and the most extensive presentation of his work to date. Sam Gilliam first achieved widespread acclaim in the late 1960s with his groundbreaking Draped paintings, which blur distinctions between painting, sculpture and architecture. Now into his fifth decade as an artist, Sam Gilliam, who has been described as the most prominent African American abstract painter, continues to create innovative approaches that influence younger generations of artists. A retrospective reveals the hallmarks of Sam Gilliam’s constantly evolving aesthetic: exploration, risk and formal invention. The exhibition features monumental paintings, elaborate mixed-media constructions and installations. Sam Gilliam: a retrospective is organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art and accompagnied by a catalogue.

“Sam Gilliam’s concentrated focus on painting and his belief that, as a discipline made up of objects, it is essentially no different from sculpture radically distinguishes him from his contemporaries who were also interested in furthering the modernist tradition, including color-field painters such as Helen Frankenthaler and the artists associated with the Washington Color School, such as Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland,” notes Jonathan P. Binstock, exhibition organizer and Corcoran Curator of Contemporary Art. “Gilliam’s ambition was, and still is, not just to reinvigorate the modernist tradition, but also to create new possibilities by thinking outside the dominant critical modes through which modernism is generally understood.”

Featuring approximately 45 works dating from 1967 to the present, a retrospective highlights Gilliam’s early beveled-edge and Draped paintings, his White and Black paintings of the 1970s, metal and wood constructions of the 1980s and 1990s and monochromatic Slatts of recent years. His early Slice paintings are distinguished by the rhythmic patterns of their painted creases, which he made by folding acrylic-soaked canvases like accordions and allowing them to dry before unfurling them to see what he had made. Deep beveled-edge stretchers create the impression that these paintings, with Gilliam’s sybaritic color combinations, are emerging from the wall as objects of weight, substance and sculptural presence.

To create his renowned Draped, or suspended, paintings, Sam Gilliam discarded the stretcher completely, allowing his soaked and stained canvases to sag and hang from gallery ceilings and to interact with sculptural elements, such as handmade sawhorses or site-specific architectural details. Sometimes monumental in scale, these lyrical works swing through space, on occasion enabling viewers to walk under and through them, giving individuals the opportunity to be literally enveloped by painterly color.

In the past, critics have tended either to explain Sam Gilliam’s achievements as a Washington Color School artist or to situate his work within the confines of an African American art tradition. To concentrate too much on either account is to miss the brilliance and scope of his remarkable career, and his significant contributions to abstraction.

“While he is African American, he is not necessarily a maker of black art,” adds Jonathan P. Binstock, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Gilliam and has worked with the artist for many years. “In the late 1960s, Gilliam himself argued adamantly against applying the term ‘black art’ to his work. Indeed, because of its abstract qualities, his work was often criticized at the time for not adhering to the so-called socially responsible aesthetic then popularized by the Black Power movement. Nonetheless, certain works do engage an African American significance, such as Composed (formerly Dark As I Am) (1968 - 74). An extraordinary painting and one of the most important self-portraits of the era, Composed (formerly Dark As I Am) was created as an expressive response to certain kinds of political wrangling that Gilliam believes are out of place in discussions of art.”

A Washington, D.C. resident, Sam Gilliam has been included in numerous museum and gallery shows and his career was effectively launched in a group show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1969. His first solo museum showcases were in 1968 at The Phillips Collection and in 1971 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was one of six artists to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1972. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Whitney Museum of American Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, among other notable institutions, collect his work. Sam Gilliam’s art is also represented in public collections abroad, including the Louisiana Museum, Denmark; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; and the Tate Gallery, London.

SAM GILLIAM: A RETROSPETIVE

Exhibition Catalogue

University of California Press, 2005

The exhibition is accompanied by the first fully illustrated in-depth scholarly publication, published by the University of California Press, devoted to Sam Gilliam. The 237-page catalogue documents the works in the exhibition, as well as other Gilliam projects, including examples of his public commissions, site-specific temporary installations and a stage set design. Complete with more than 75 full-color images and 30 black-and-white illustrations, the catalogue features an essay by Jonathan P. Binstock, the exhibition’s organizer and Corcoran Curator of Contemporary Art. Dr. Binstock explores the artist’s career and discusses his influences, antecedents and contributions to the history of art in the context of late-twentieth century political and social developments. Renowned curator and early Gilliam champion Walter Hopps, who died in March 2005 and who held curatorial positions at the Menil Collection, Houston, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, among other institutions, wrote one of the catalogue’s two Forewords. The other is by Jacquelyn D. Serwer, the Corcoran’s Chief Curator. The catalogue also includes an illustrated chronology, bibliography and other relevant support material. 

Curator: Jonathan P. Binstock

CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART

500 Seventeenth St., NW, Washington, DC 20006

www.corcoran.org

Updated 26.07.2021

History of The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

History of The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum 

In 1964, Larry Aldrich (1906-2001), fashion designer and passionate collector of contemporary art, purchased the historic “Old Hundred” at the top of Main Street in Ridgefield, Connecticut, to hold his growing collection of art. Originally constructed in 1783 by Joshua King and James Dole, two lieutenants in the Revolutionary War, the building was nicknamed “Old Hundred” because it served as a grocery and hardware store from 1783-1883. It was also Ridgefield’s first post office.

In 1883, Grace King Ingersoll, a descendant of Lieutenant King, remodeled the building and it became her home. From 1929-1964, it served as Ridgefield’s First Church of Christ, Scientist. Mr. Aldrich purchased the eighteenth-century structure because of its high-ceiling rooms and the extensive backyard that would be suitable for the year-round sculpture garden he envisioned.

The Larry Aldrich Museum opened in November 1964 as one of the country’s first museums devoted exclusively to the exhibition of contemporary art. In 1967, the Museum was incorporated as a nonprofit organization and was renamed The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, with an original Board of Trustees that included Alfred Barr, Joseph Hirshhorn, Philip Johnson and Vera List. To better focus on its founding mission to exhibit only contemporary art, the Museum’s Board voted in 1981 to deaccession Mr. Aldrich’s permanent collection.

Foremost in Mr. Aldrich’s vision was that the Museum should make contemporary art accessible to a variety of audiences. Over the course of its forty-year history, it has become renowned as a national leader for its presentation of outstanding new art, the cultivation of emerging artists, and its innovation in museum education.

In 2001, The Aldrich Board of Trustees, with Larry Aldrich, chairman emeritus, in attendance, voted to proceed with a major renovation and expansion. Groundbreaking took place in April 2003, and the Museum was closed to the public until its reopening in June 2004. The grand reopening of the expanded Aldrich coincides with the Museum’s fortieth anniversary.

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum continues to champion its original mission: to take risks that distinguished the life of its founder, Larry Aldrich, to exhibit provocative and significant contemporary art, and to offer innovative educational programs that now serve as national models in museum education.

THE ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM

258 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT

www.aldrichart.org

Huang Yong Ping Retrospective, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis + Other Venues - House of Oracles

House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

October 16, 2005 - January 15, 2006

Celebrating an artist who offers alternatives to a Eurocentric world view, the exhibition House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective navigates the divide between East and West, tradition and the avant-garde. The first retrospective of this Chinese-born, Paris-based artist premieres at the Walker Art Center, before traveling to Massachusetts next year and to international venues to be announced. House of Oracles showcases drawings, sculptural objects, and installations from 1985 to the present, including the Walker-commissioned Bat Project IV, a re-creation of a section of the U.S. surveillance plane that set off an international controversy in 2001 when it collided with a Chinese fighter jet.

Working across diverse traditions and media, Huang Yong Ping has created an artistic universe comprised of provocative installations that challenge the viewer to reconsider everything from the idea of art to national identity to recent history. Once the leading figure of the mid-1980s Xiamen Dada movement—a collective of artists interested in creating a new Chinese cultural identity by bridging trends in Western modernism with Chinese traditions of Zen and Taoism as well as contemporary reality—Huang continues to confront established definitions of history and aesthetics. His sculptures and installations—drawing on the Western legacies of Joseph Beuys, Arte Povera, and John Cage, among others, as well as traditional Chinese art and philosophy—routinely juxtapose traditional objects or iconic images with modern references.

An important presence in the global art world since he participated in the groundbreaking 1989 exhibition Magiciens de la terre (Magicians of the Earth) at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Huang has shown his often breathtaking sculptures and installations in major contemporary art venues and at prestigious festivals in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. He was invited to the 2004 São Paulo Biennale, the 2003 Venice Biennale, the 2001 Yokohama Triennale, the 2000 Shanghai Biennial, and the 1997 Gwangju and Johannes Biennales. He has been included in group exhibitions at, among many others, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, P.S. 1 and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. He represented France (with Jean-Pierre Bertrand) at the 1999 Venice Biennale and was a finalist in the biennial Hugo Boss Prize, held at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1998. Huang is represented in the Walker’s collection and was included in its 1998 exhibition Unfinished History.

The Walker’s retrospective exhibition began to take shape following deputy director and chief curator Philippe Vergne’s visit to Huang’s studio three years ago. There, Vergne paged through notebooks that meticulously catalogued ideas, commentaries, and documentation of two decades of the artist’s work. This visit was “an overwhelming experience, revealing the extent to which the work was consistent, ambitious, sarcastic and humorous, and sharply subversive,” recalls Vergne. “It also confirmed that Huang’s work, which seems to question all my certitudes about art and artmaking, was not geared towards easily achieved success or recognition, but aimed at changing, shifting the nature of aesthetic discourse.”

The resulting exhibition, House of Oracles, was conceived as a “total work of art,” a singular, immersive sculptural environment that is a hybrid of fun house, diorama, and menagerie. Realized in collaboration with Vergne and assistant curator Doryun Chong, the exhibition was designed by Huang as a metaphorical—and sometimes literal—journey through the “belly of the beast.” One of the first works viewers come upon is a monumental sculpture of an elephant mounted by a snarling tiger, a commentary on hunting safaris of bygone colonial days. Following this are passages formed by cages once inhabited by lions, with routes marked by light boxes reminiscent of an airport immigration checkpoint: “National” and ”Other.” The “spine” of the installation, a 50-foot wood python suspended from the ceiling, leads viewers to a replica of a Beaux Arts-style bank building from 1920s Shanghai, molded from 40,000 pounds of sand and concrete and slowly disintegrating during the exhibition’s run. The final section is dominated by the Walker-commissioned Bat Project IV, a 40-foot tunnel made from the cockpit of a decommissioned military plane—adorned inside with 300 stuffed bats—bamboo scaffolding, and plastic construction fences.

At the core of Huang’s work is a challenge to the accepted notions of art and what it does. The exhibition’s title, shared by one of the works on view, suggests the stimulating and awe-inspiring—perhaps even unsettling—experience the viewer might have. For when one enters a house of oracles, one does not exit without being profoundly changed by the experience.

House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective will be accompanied by a 250-page fully illustrated catalogue, the first to address the full range of Huang Yong Ping’s artistic accomplishments. Included will be an anthology of the artist’s writings translated for the first time into English; essays by Vergne and critic-curators Hou Hanru and Fei Dawei; and a conceptual map and dictionary on the artist’s work by Chong.

WALKER ART CENTER

725 Vineland Place, Minneapolis, MN 55403

walkerart.org

Diane Arbus, Revelations at V&A, London

Diane Arbus: Revelations 

V&A Museum, London

13 October 2005 – 15 January 2006

“Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It’s what I’ve never seen before that I recognize.” Diane Arbus

The V&A presents a major exhibition on Diane Arbus, the legendary New York photographer whose work captured 1950s and 1960s America and transformed the art of photography. Diane Arbus Revelations is the largest retrospective of her work ever assembled and is the first international Arbus exhibition for over 30 years. 

The exhibition consists of nearly 200 of the artist’s most significant photographs – making it the most complete presentation of her work ever assembled. Prints are drawn from major public and private collections throughout the world and include many images that have never been exhibited publicly. Among the works on display are such iconic images as ‘A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y. 1970’, ‘Identical twins, Roselle, N.J. 1967’, ‘Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962’ and ‘A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C. 1966’. Benefiting from new research, the exhibition also reveals the artist’s methodology and intellectual influences through an innovative presentation of contact sheets, cameras, letters, notebooks, and other writings, as well as books and ephemera from Diane Arbus’s personal library.

Mark Jones, the director of the V&A, said: “Diane Arbus changed the face of photography with her powerful and moving photographs which captured 1950s and 1960s America. She has had a profound influence on photographers ever since and on the way we look at our fellow human beings. This is a long overdue retrospective which shows her work is as compelling as ever."

Diane Arbus (1923–1971) was born in New York City and found most of her subjects there. She was a photographer primarily of people she discovered in the metropolis and its environs. Her “contemporary anthropology” - portraits of couples, children, carnival performers, nudists, middle-class families, transvestites, people on the street, zealots, eccentrics, and celebrities – stands as an allegory of postwar America and an exploration of the relationship between appearance and identity, illusion and belief, theatre and reality.

For Diane Arbus photography was a medium that tangled with the facts. Many of her subjects face the camera implicitly aware of their collaboration in the portrait-making process. In her photographs, the self-conscious encounter between photographer and subject becomes a central drama of the picture.

DIANE ARBUS: SHORT BIOGRAPHY

“That is what I love: the differentness, the uniqueness of all things and the importance of life … I see something that seems wonderful; I see the divineness in ordinary things.” — excerpt by Diane Arbus from a high school essay on Plato

Diane Arbus (born Diane Nemerov in New York City in 1923) first began taking pictures in the early 1940s. While working in partnership with her husband, Allan Arbus, as a stylist collaborating in their fashion photography business, she continued to take pictures on her own. She studied photography with Berenice Abbott in the 1940s and with Alexey Brodovitch in the mid-1950s. It was at Lisette Model’s photographic workshop circa 1956, however, where Diane Arbus found inspiration and began seriously pursuing the work for which she has come to be known.

Her first published photographs appeared in Esquire in 1960. During the next decade, she worked for Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, The Sunday Times Magazine and other magazines.

In 1962 - while searching for greater clarity in her images and for a more direct relationship with the people she was photographing - Diane Arbus began to turn away from the 35mm camera and started working with a square format (2 1/4-inch twin-lens reflex) camera. She began making portraits marked by a formal classical style that has since been recognised as a distinctive feature of her work. 

She was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1963 and 1966 for her project on “American Rites, Manners, and Customs.” She augmented her images of New York and New Jersey with visits to Pennsylvania, Florida, and California, photographing contests and festivals, public and private rituals. 

Notable among her late works are the images from her Untitled series, made at residences for people with mental disabilities between 1969 and 1971. These images echo much earlier works, such as Fire Eater at a carnival, Palisades Park, N.J. 1956; Child in a nightgown, Wellfleet, Mass. 1957; and Bishop by the sea, Santa Barbara, Cal. 1964. In 1970, Diane Arbus made a portfolio of original prints entitled A box of ten photographs, which was meant to be the first in a series of limited editions of her work.

Diane Arbus committed suicide in 1971. At the time of her death, Diane Arbus was already a significant influence - and something of a legend - among serious photographers, although only a relatively small number of her most important pictures were widely known. While her reputation continued to grow through the publication of several books and a few select shows, not until Diane Arbus Revelations has it been possible to view the complete range of her work. Diane Arbus had a remarkably original and consistent vision and her pictures remain as powerful and controversial today as when they were first seen.

Diane Arbus’s gift for rendering strange those things we consider most familiar continues to challenge our assumptions about the nature of everyday life and compels us to look at the world in a new way. By the same token, her ability to uncover the familiar within the exotic enlarges our understanding of ourselves. Her devotion to the principles of the art she practiced – without deference to any extraneous social, political, or even personal agenda – has produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity, in its bold commitment to the celebration of things as they are. 

After the V&A, the exhibition will travel to Fundación “la Caixa”, Barcelona (February – May 2006) and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (July – October 2006). It has already been on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany.

This exhibition has been organised by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The international tour was made possible by the Evelyn D. Haas Exhibition Fund and Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. The exhibition has been co-curated by Sandra Phillips, SFMOMA senior curator of photography and Elisabeth Sussman, guest curator. At the V&A, Martin Barnes, Curator of Photographs, organised the exhibition.

Diane Arbus Revelations

Published by Jonathan Cape (Random House), 2003, 336 pages

V&A Museum

Cromwell Rd, London SW7 2RL

www.vam.ac.uk

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Timothy Tompkins, DCKT Contemporary, New York - Manifest Destiny

Timothy Tompkins: Manifest Destiny

DCKT Contemporary, New York

October 15 – November 12, 2005

DCKT Contemporary presents an exhibition of new paintings by TIMOTHY TOMPKINS. Manifest Destiny takes its title from a rhetorical document written in 1839 by John L. O’Sullivan which advocated the belief that it is America’s God-given right to expand outwards and dominate the continent in the name of economic and political security. On a global level, Timothy Tompkins’ paintings exist within the framework of the current political climate manifesting itself today where certain disturbing parallels and connections could be made between the Jackson Administration and the Bush Administration. From continental expansion to the current presence in the Middle East, the desire of this nation to extend itself outwards in the name of self-interest and protectionism is a defining and controversial character trait unchanged since the 19th century.

Timothy Tompkins begins by digitally altering his own photographs, breaking the images down to between 12 and 15 core colors and blurring the contours. He then uses high-gloss commercial enamel sign paint on aluminum panels to execute the paintings. The quick-drying nature of the paint, manufactured by 1 Shot, enhances its expressive liquidity and materiality. Often, the contours of the underdrawing and small areas of the aluminum support are still visible, as if the image is still forming.

The Interstate Sublime series of paintings take as their foundation a re-investigation of the Hudson River School artists and the idea of national identity expressed through landscape. The paintings began with a series of photographs taken during several road trips. The scenic environments range from mountain to ocean. With the point of view as that of the driver the viewer becomes a participant and conspirator within the landscape, in contrast to the 19th century ideal of simple observer of the landscape. In the past the emphasis was on the awe-inspiring and untamed beauty of nature. Now that same nature has been tamed and the landscape can be perceived as an inconvenience and something to be passed through as quickly as possible.

The Empire painting series plays with the idea “American Imperialism” as represented through the iconic building. The structure that seems to define the nation’s character juts syringe-like into the sky, at once beautifully imposing and increasingly pretentious in name, it is also represents a modern vulnerability. Referencing Monet’s “series” paintings, the Empire State Building is painted in varying light conditions ranging from sunrise to evening.

Timothy Tompkins’ work was recently on view at The 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan and in Oil Paintings at White Columns, New York, NY. In 2003, his work was seen in New American Talent: The Eighteenth Exhibition, curated by Dominic Molon (Associate Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago), which traveled extensively through Texas. Timothy Tompkins is in the collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA.

DCKT CONTEMPORARY

552 West 24th Street, New York, NY

www.dcktcontemporary.com

Bestiaire médiéval - Enluminures - Exposition à la BnF- Site François-Mitterrand, Paris

Bestiaire médiéval - Enluminures

BnF- Site François-Mitterrand, Paris

11 octobre 2005 – 8 janvier 2006

Sculpté aux chapiteaux des églises, brodé sur les tentures des châteaux, l’animal peuple au Moyen Âge les manuscrits enluminés. Il dit les merveilles de la Création et les mystères de la foi. Il enseigne la morale et le savoir hérité des Anciens. Il est porteur des rêves de pouvoir et de conquête. L’exposition donne à voir, à travers quatre-vingts manuscrits, trésors de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, l’animal dans les livres au Moyen Âge, ses représentations et les croyances qui y sont attachées.

Défilent alors les pages enluminées de l’histoire sainte : l’arche de Noé, la bête de l’Apocalypse, saint Gilles et sa biche, saint Antoine et ses tentations. Des histoires extraordinaires charment le regard, celle du lion qui, de sa queue, efface ses traces, de la licorne dont la corne purifie l’eau des rivières, de l’araignée qui fut autrefois une belle jeune fille. En suivant Gaston Phébus, l’on se prend à rêver de chasse à courre, de chasse au vol, faucon au poing. Avec Lancelot, l’on poursuit le cerf blanc. Sur les traces d’Hercule, l’on part à la conquête du monde. Dans les marges des livres d’heures, des oiseaux aux ramages multicolores chantent l’amour de Dieu et la beauté du monde.

Dans la pensée chrétienne médiévale, chaque élément du monde réel porte en lui un message qui renvoie au monde spirituel. L’animal n’y existe donc pas pour ce qu’il est – on ne l’étudie pas scientifiquement comme aujourd’hui – mais comme porteur d’une multiplicité de sens. L’exposition décline les modes de représentation de l’animal dans les quatre secteurs qui constituent l’univers médiéval : la foi chrétienne, le savoir, la société, la chasse. Elle se conclut sur la vie quotidienne. 

L'exposition montre comment, au sein d’une conception éminemment symbolique qui fait de l’animal un support privilégié de la prédication, s’insèrent insensiblement quelques éléments naturalistes, nés de la redécouverte de l’Histoire des animaux d’Aristote au XIIIe siècle et de l’observation de chasseurs expérimentés, comme l’empereur Frédéric II de Hohenstaufen ou le comte de Foix, Gaston Phébus.

Commissariat : Marie-Hélène Tesnière, conservateur en chef au département des Manuscrits

BnF- Site François-Mitterrand

Quai François Mauriac, 75013 Paris

www.bnf.fr

William Wegman, Texas Gallery, Houston - New Paintings

William Wegman: New Paintings
Texas Gallery, Houston
October 11 – November 12, 2005

Texas Gallery presents a show of new paintings by William Wegman. It is the artist’s eighth show at the gallery since 1973. William Wegman was recognized as an innovator in the early 70s when an artist was able to be recognized for work in more than one medium. Much like Rauschenberg with his experimentation in painting concurrent with his involvement in photography, dance and performance, William Wegman moved between performance, installation, drawing, video and photography. The underlying connection has always been the artists touchstones of oblique humor and slanted references that were conveyed in his influential videos (made in the artists studio with his dog Man Ray) or in his dead pan drawings on typing paper that were illustrated non-sequiturs. In the early 90s the painted photographs of the dogs and watercolor collages made from vintage greeting cards evolved into a series of collaged and illustrated paintings, many very large in scale. As usual there were off beat and strange references and enigmatic scenes though certain themes recurred throughout the last 15 years as the artist has devoted more time to the more traditional mediums of painting and collage. Exploration, travel, the dream world of disjunctive landscapes, and architectural forms that collapsed space and time with abandon were found in the paintings on canvas and these same themes have evolved into the new collaged paintings on board where suddenly the postcard image of the Guggenheim museum leads directly to the Seven Pools in Hana, Maui, Hawaii, or where Mt. Fuji leads one directly to a castle on the Rhine. The works combine both the fantasy of children’s games and a surreal overview of the world as we know, remember and imagine it.

William Wegman lives and works in New York City and eschews most travel. A comprehensive survey show of the work of the last 35 years will open at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in March of 2006.

TEXAS GALLERY
2012 Peden, Houston, TX 77019
www.texgal.com