Juergen Teller Photographs Exhibition at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

Photo exhibition: Juergen Teller 

Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York 

10 February - 17 March 2012

Presented in three parts, this exhibition highlights three recent series, demonstrating Juergen Teller’s dynamic and diverse oeuvre. Featuring the controversial photographs of Kristen McMenamy and seductive portraits of Vivienne Westwood, juxtaposed with intimate portraits of his family and close friends, this exhibition displays an amalgam of subjects and personalities.


The exhibition starts with Juergen Teller’s controversial series of photographs featuring Kristen McMenamy, shot in the home of Carlos Mollino. Drawing inspiration from the eccentric architect, Teller recalls Mollino’s fascination with the erotic, capturing McMenamy in provocative poses. Although the series garnered controversy for its alleged “pornographic” nature, it demonstrates Teller’s skilled storytelling and fearless approach to his medium.

The exhibition continues with a selection of images from Keys to the House. Composed of recent photographs taken in and around his home in Suffolk, the series includes deserted landscape shots alongside intimate portraits of Teller’s family and closest friends. 

The third section of the exhibition features photographs from Men and Women, including portraits of Vivienne Westwood and photographer William Eggleston, as well as Teller’s son, Ed. As a whole, the series has been read as a representation of masculinity at two stages –coming of age and loss of virility – contrasted with a strong feminine power.

JUERGEN TELLER SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Born in Erlangen, Germany in 1964, Juergen Teller studied at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für fotographie in Munich, Germany before moving to London in 1986. His work in influential international publications such as W Magazine, I-D and Purple nurtured his own photographic sensibility, which is marked by his refusal to separate the commercial fashion pictures and his most autobiographical un-commissioned work. Juergen Teller has been working with Marc Jacobs on his advertising campaigns for the past 14 years and in 2009, Steidl collated the work, publishing “Marc Jacobs Advertising 1998 – 2009.” Teller has also had long collaborations with other designers and fashion houses over the years including Helmut Lang, Yves Saint Laurent and Vivienne Westwood.

Juergen Teller has exhibited at The Photographers Gallery, London (1998); the Kunsthalle Wien (2004); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2004); the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris (2007); the Tate Modern, London (2008); Le Consortium, Dijon (2010); Daelim Museum, South Korea (2011); Man with Banana, at Dallas Contemporary, Texas (2011); Texte und Bilder, at Brukenthal Museum, Romania (2011). In 2003 Teller was awarded the Citibank Prize and in 2007 represented Ukraine as one of five artists in the 52nd Venice Biennale. Juergen Teller lives and works in London, England.

LEHMANN MAUPIN GALLERY, NEW YORK, NY 10002

At 201 Chrystie Street Gallery's space

www.lehmannmaupin.com

Thomas Scheibitz: A Panoramic VIEW of Basic Events at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

Thomas Scheibitz: A Panoramic VIEW of Basic Events
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
Through February 18, 2012

A Panoramic VIEW of Basic Events is an exhibition of new paintings, sculptures, drawing/collages, and prints by THOMAS SCHEIBITZ on view through February 18 at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery . For his seventh solo show with the gallery, Scheibitz continues to draw from classical painting and architecture, the contemporary urban landscape, and the influence of popular culture. Filtering these sources through his own lens, he creates evocative and powerful pieces that blur the line between abstraction and figuration.

In a palette of murky grays, smoky purples, and pale blues, paired with sharp primaries and vivid neons, the new paintings and sculptures in A Panoramic VIEW of Basic Events are full of recognizable componentsÑthe numeral "1," a backwards comma, a peering eye - interwoven with the artist's own invented geometric assemblages. Culled from his archive of ephemera, which includes newspaper clippings, snapshots, magazine ads, plates from art books and historical texts, as well as other cultural artifacts, Scheibitz's imagery is pared down to its barest formal properties, then recombined, layered, and expanded upon. For the first time, Thomas Scheibitz shows the viewer how he works with his cache of source material to build compositions: pairing seemingly incongruous found images in collages, he then adds drawings that riff on their formal properties, and hint at how all these components might be synthesized into a painting or sculpture. These "worksheets," and in fact the installation as a whole, serve as an investigation of composition across disparate media, as the artist shows us how each element of his practice relates to the others. Breaking down his formal vocabulary into its constituent parts, Scheibitz lets us into his creative cosmos, showing the viewer the connections within this new constellation of works.

Organizational systems, such as maps, graphs, and charts, have long been of interest to Thomas Scheibitz, and have served as the starting point for many of his most iconic pieces. In this new body of work, instead of using the map as a formal point of departure from which to create an abstract composition, Scheibitz creates a map of his own process -- an overview that demonstrates how each piece fits into a cohesive whole. While existing autonomously, each image can also be connected to the other works in the show. The collaged drawings are displayed on a table made by the artist that resembles both an independent sculpture and a pedestal, and each of these collages reference one of the sixteen small paintings installed on the walls of the main space. In some of the collages the finished painting even appears as an element, complicating the notion that the works on paper are studies for the paintings. Rather, each is its own related but independent final product.

Installed in the back room, and seemingly a composite of the smaller works in the front gallery, the main work in the exhibition, unfurls across the wall. In this piece, from which the show takes its title, Scheibitz explores how imagery can be recombined; compositional elements that might have existed autonomously as small paintings become details within a larger work. The endless reconfiguration of imagery is the basis of the series of prints installed in the gallery's entryway as well. Titled for A.G.C.T., the four nucleic base acids that make up human DNA, these pieces similarly represent the foundations of Scheibitz's practice. In lush color, the prints depict combinations of objects and images from Scheibitz's archive, precisely arranged in unexpected combinations and juxtapositions. These prints also refer to the concept of "Schlagbild" or pictorial slogans images that convey as much meaning as a headline, or a block of text. While each image is important, its arrangement is equally crucial; and in his careful composition of these pieces, Thomas Scheibitz references Aby Warburg, a 20th century professor who created a non-heirarchical approach to image classfication. Like Warburg, Scheibitz employs his own methods of visual organization to create works that are at once readable and enigmatic.

Based in Berlin, THOMAS SCHEIBITZ has upcoming solo exhibitions at MMK, Museum für Modern Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany and at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus Ohio. Notable recent exhibitions include Thomas Scheibitz: Lineage ONE / Stilleben & Statistics, Jarla Partilager, Berlin, 2011-2012 (solo); Thomas Scheibitz: Il flume e le sue fonti/ The River and its Source, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy, 2011 (solo); Surveyor: An exhibition of human exploration, observation, and construction of the landscape, organized by Curator Heather Pesanti, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 2011 (group); If Not in This Period Of Time - Contemporary German Painting 1998-2010, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil, 2010-2011 (group); A moving plan B - chapter ONE, Selected by Thomas Scheibitz, The Drawing Room, London, 2010 (group); Der ungefegte Raum, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, Austria, 2010 (solo); among others.

TANYA BONAKDAR GALLERY, New York, NY 10011
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

Anthony Caro: Upright Sculptures, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NYC

Anthony Caro: Upright Sculptures
Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York 
Through December 11, 2010

ANTHONY CARO, Head, 2008/9, Steel rusted, jarrah wood and brass
Courtesy of Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NYC

 

An exhibition of new work by Sir ANTHONY CARO is on view in the Mitchell-Innes & Nash's Chelsea gallery. Upright Sculptures is a series of 43 works created over the past two years, of which several will be on view in Chelsea. This will be the gallery's fourth solo exhibition of Caro's work.

For this new body of work, Caro has used materials including rusted and painted steel, cast iron, wood and stone. The work employs the vocabulary of abstract sculpture that the artist has developed over many decades, while also making visual allusions to the figure. Some suggest totems or monoliths; others relate to architectural forms or machines. They share a strong sense of weight and compression that demonstrates Caro's focus on interiority. Caro has said about the new series, 'Now that making sculpture abstract is no longer a hurdle, I feel free to explore a breadth of possibilities.'

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue featuring an interview with the artist by Tim Marlow. A five-volume book set of Caro's work is launched by Lund Humphries to coincide with the exhibition. In addition to the exhibition at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, selections from the series were also recently exhibited at Annely Juda Fine Art in London and at Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris.

ANTHONY CARO BIOGRAPHY
Caro was born in 1924. After studying sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools in London, he worked as assistant to Henry Moore. Since his groundbreaking show at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1963, his work has continued to evolve in new and different directions. Now in his 80s, the artist continues to be extraordinarily productive. He was the subject of a Tate retrospective in 2005, and recently completed a major commission at the Chapel of Light at Bourbourg in northern France. Anthony Caro played a pivotal role in the development of twentieth-century sculpture. His career spans more than five decades, during which he has received numerous honors, critical acclaim, and widespread renown as Britain's most important living sculptor. His work is represented in over 150 museums and other public collections worldwide and he received a lifetime achievement award from the International Sculpture Center in 1997.

MITCHELL-INNES & NASH
534 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001

www.miandn.com  

11-04 > 12-11-2010

Upcoming exhibition at Mitchell-Innes & Nash: Jacob Kassay, Robert Morris, Virginia Overton, December 17, 2010 - January 29, 2011