Maysha Mohamedi @ Pace Gallery, Tokyo - "yesterday I was a tiny tube of toothpaste" Inaugural Pace's Tokyo Gallery Exhibition + Book

Maysha Mohamedi 

yesterday I was a tiny tube of toothpaste

Pace Gallery, Tokyo

September 6 – October 16, 2024

Maysha Mohamedi with sketchbook 

and corresponding painting (Bait, 2023) 

at her Los Angeles studio 

Photo by Megan Cerminaro

© Maysha Mohamedi, courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery

Pace presents an exhibition of new, never-before-exhibited paintings by American artist Maysha Mohamedi to mark the grand opening of its Tokyo gallery in the city’s Azabudai Hills.

The show, titled Maysha Mohamedi: yesterday I was a tiny tube of toothpaste, showcases the artist’s ability to use color and calligraphic abstraction as means for storytelling. To accompany this exhibition, Pace Publishing produces a facsimile of the studio sketchbook she used for the works in her Tokyo show, featuring a new text by writer Brian Dillon.

Maysha Mohamedi

yesterday I was a tiny tube of toothpaste

PACE PUBLISHING, 2024

Text by Brian Dillon

Design by Tara Stewart

Spiral Bound Softcover, 72 pages, 11.6 x 9.5 in.

© Image courtesy of Pace Publishing 

Maysha Mohamedi—whose work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami—is a self-taught artist raised in San Luis Obispo, California, who trained as a neuroscientist before pursuing a career as a painter. Now based in Los Angeles, she is known for her atmospheric abstractions that reflect her own thinking about universal ideas and experiences. In her paintings populated with idiosyncratic, spirited forms that unfold, unspool, and reveal themselves over time, she explores relationships between color, shape, language, matter. Invention and discovery lie at the center the artist’s approach to mark making, and her paintings are invested in a kind of excavation, in which she carves out space around and through contour. A subtle mystery resides in the core of each of her works—for Mohamedi, this essence is what guides her towards different forms in her painting process, leading her to a sort of untouchable, sacred truth that defies easy articulation and rationalization.

Functioning as maps of cognition and experience, Maysha Mohamedi’s compositions are made up of her uncannily crisp brushstrokes and painterly flourishes, which she builds up intuitively and contemplatively. Moments of rupture and embrace can be traced across her abstractions, forged through collisions of her own hand and body with the surfaces of her canvases. Using memories, ideas, words, and feelings as origins for her painted abstractions, she draws from a personal lexicon of geometric shapes to express details and anecdotes from her own life in ineffable, intangible, and universal terms. Mohamedi’s approach to color also grounds her works in her own world—‘collecting’ and archiving colors for her paintings as part of her daily experiences and observations, her chromatic storytelling animates her canvases with a sense of vitality and harmony.

Maysha Mohamedi’s first solo show in Japan and all of Asia, this presentation spotlights paintings produced in 2023 and 2024. For these works, she drew inspiration from her diary chronicling her brief time working in Japan two decades ago. In creating her new paintings—half of which are named for people and places that she encountered and wrote about in her journal during that trip—the artist reentered and reactivated the psychic space of her 20s, weaving together coincidences and serendipitous situations from her formative experience abroad and the present circumstances of her life. In this way, the works on view in Tokyo will shed light on one of the hallmarks of Maysha Mohamedi’s practice: her use of abstraction to forge a patchwork of stories and scenes from her daily life and interpersonal relationships.

Vibrant and playful, MAYSHA MOHAMEDI’s (b. 1980, Los Angeles) innovative practice points toward a new mode of atmospheric abstraction that registers certain conditions specific to Los Angeles—and American life as a whole—in the early 21st century. Reflecting her personal history, everyday experiences, and key constellations in her own cultural matrix, her palette is both purely abstract and directly connected to the patchwork of landscapes, objects, and environments that comprise her life. These range from an Ojai, California playground the artist visited with her children, clippings from cookbooks and magazines, to sea glass found on the shore. Maysha Mohamedi’s works are reflections of her own thinking, crystallized as moments of haptic communion. The artist’s academic background in neuroscience is found in the liveliness and expansiveness of her paintings. Liberated from the constraints and dictates of the threedimensional world, her immersive works exude a sense of freedom and illimitability. For Maysha Mohamedi, the viewer is an equal creator in this shared universe of boundless possibilities.

Maysha Mohamedi received a Bachelor of Science in 2002 from the University of California, San Diego, where she studied cognitive science, specializing in neuroscience, and she earned a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2011. Maysha Mohamedi’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery, Los Angeles; Massimo De Carlo, Paris; and The Lodge, Los Angeles. She has also been included in group exhibitions at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, Oregon; Mu.ZEE, Ostend, Belgium; and other spaces. Mohamedi lives and works in Los Angeles.

PACE GALLERY TOKYO

1F; Azabudai Hills Garden Plaza-A

5-8-1 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo

www.pacegallery.com

Artist Travis Walker @ Tayloe Piggott Gallery West, Wilson - "Right at Home" Exhibition

Travis Walker: Right at Home

Tayloe Piggott Gallery West, Wilson

22 December 2023 - 21 January 2024

Tayloe Piggott Gallery presents Right at Home an exhibition of paintings by local artist Travis Walker. This is the gallery's first exhibition at its additional space on the west side of Jackson Hole town- 3465 North Pines Way, Wilson, Wyoming. 

 

Travis Walker questions the notion of America and what it means to be American by portraying the shared but often separate experiences of the iconic American western landscape. Ever-considering how this vast landscape shapes and frames American culture, Walker observes the world changing around him and eternalizes these moments through painting, drawing, and printmaking. Following in the footsteps of American regionalists Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, and Maynard Dixon, Walker embeds a profound sense of place and culture in each work he creates. In doing so, he captures the timeless, playful, and often juxtaposed spirit of different regions across the United States, most often in the American West.

Travis Walker is drawn to places and images that feel timeless, as if somehow caught between eras. Inspired by both nature and other objects of culture, such as film and comic books, Walker often blends found imagery with his observation of the western landscape. In these acts of autofiction, Walker creates his own, often surreal, scenes in which the familiar often becomes somewhat estranged—a bricolage of what Walker has seen, felt, and imagined. In creating his compositions, Walker also turns to cinema for inspiration. He studies the angles and perspectives the cinematographer or director has chosen. On occasion, Travis Walker says, he even lifts characters from the silver screen and transplants them into a Jackson landscape.

Travis Walker often works on location in Jackson Hole, capturing the seemingly mundane, quiet scenes of an old western town at a critical juncture. In Walker’s works, these places feel empty yet still inviting, as Walker’s colors create a near-dreamlike quality. By reducing the intricacies of peaks and crevices, solitary doorways, and deserted streets, Walker clears the way for a new kind of narrative—one that exchanges pioneers in covered wagons and romanticized cowboys for travelers in recreational vehicles. Using a style reminiscent of Hopper—a regionalist as well as a modernist who depicted the isolation of progress—Walker, too, evokes the voices of those left behind to document the convoluted pathways to tomorrow. “A lot of my work has to do with America,” Travis Walker says. “I love the West, and I love the land. I moved out here following a dream, and every day I think about the landscape here, what direction I want to go.”

TRAVIS WALKER was born in Tokyo, Japan, and grew up as an Air Force brat whose nomadic childhood was filled with comic books, science fiction, and drawing. After graduating with a degree in Painting and Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University, the allure of the western landscape drew him to the valley of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he has lived and worked for nearly 20 years, blending contemporary landscape painting with the fictional worlds of his past. Walker was a 2013 panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts' Artists Communities Grant. He was a 2013 Artist in Residence at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, and in 2012, he won the "Rising Star Award" from the Cultural Council of Jackson Hole. His work has been featured in SouthWest Art Magazine, Big Sky Journal, Mountain Living, Forbes, and The Guardian. He is the founder of the nonprofit Teton Artlab, an Artist In Residence program based in Jackson Hole.

TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY WEST

3465 North Pines Way, Wilson, 83014 Wyoming

www.tayloepiggottgallery.com

Henry Taylor @ Hauser & Wirth Paris – FROM SUGAR TO SHIT

Henry Taylor. FROM SUGAR TO SHIT 

Hauser & Wirth Paris 

14 October 2023 – 7 January 2024 

Henry Taylor

I got brothers ALL OVA the world but they forget we’re related, 2023

Acrylic on canvas, 213.4 x 243.8 x 7.9 cm / 84 x 96 x 3 1/8 in

© Henry Taylor. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Keith Lubow

Henry Taylor

Father, Son, Fun, 2022

Acrylic on canvas, 182.9 x 152.4 x 4.4 cm / 72 x 60 x 1 3/4 in

© Henry Taylor. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Jeff McLane

Hauser & Wirth’s inaugural exhibition in Paris debuts new works by critically acclaimed Los Angeles artist HENRY TAYLOR, whose major career survey arrives at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York today. Henry Taylor’s exhibition in Paris comprises a wide range of paintings and sculpture encompassing the remarkable breadth of his practice. Throughout his four-decade long career, Henry Taylor has consistently and simultaneously embraced and rejected the tenets of traditional painting, as well as any formal label. Combining figurative, landscape and history painting, alongside drawing, installation and sculpture, Henry Taylor’s vast body of highly personal work is rooted in the people and communities closest to him, often manifested together with poignant historical or pop-culture references. In this exhibition, with a guiding sense of human connection, Henry Taylor leads us through a multifaceted narrative in sculpture and painting.

In the lead up to this show, Henry Taylor extended his studio practice to Paris for a residency in the city during the months of June and July 2023. During this time, Taylor has drawn inspiration from the unparalleled array of historical art collections contained in the city, such as the Musée d’Orsay where he was surrounded by the work of French Impressionists, Expressionists and Fauvists who have inspired him since an early age. Henry Taylor’s studied awareness of his art historical predecessors is continually prevalent throughout his work, having previously painted versions of works by Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Philip Guston, Gerhard Richter, David Hammons and Glenn Ligon, among others. 

Henry Taylor

One tree per family, 2023

Mixed media, 457.2 x 152.4 x 121.9 cm / 180 x 60 x 48 in

© Henry Taylor. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Jeff McLane

Henry Taylor

Rimmed Up, 2022

Mixed media, 320 x 167.6 x 154.9 cm / 126 x 66 x 61 in

© Henry Taylor. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Jeff McLane

Sculpture plays an important role in this exhibition and as part of Henry Taylor’s practice. The process involves energetically building, stacking and affixing a vast array of collected objects together, from bottle caps to toilet paper rolls, to create a holistic record of his everyday routine and the materials that define them. Referring to this highly intuitive process as ‘hunting and gathering,’ the artist is able to simultaneously merge multiple references—historic and contemporary—into sharp focus. Examples featured in the Paris show include assemblages made using milk bottles, bicycle wheels and baseball bats which recode the forms and symbolisms of found materials to comment on enduring art historical tropes, echoing an almost Duchamp-esque approach to readymade sculpture. When paired with Taylor’s paintings depicting various figures throughout history, these works reveal the artist’s voracious sourcing of subjects and materials, as well as his encyclopaedic command of historical knowledge. Also on view in the exhibition is a monumental sculpture entitled ‘One tree per family’ (2023), a towering 15ft tree trunk with a large afro for foliage. 

Henry Taylor’s work is primarily about relationships and how they impact our lives. While people figure prominently in his work, the artist rejects the label of portraitist. The paintings in this exhibition include subjects from all walks of life and historical context, frequently featuring family members, as seen in ‘I got brothers ALL OVA the world but they forget we’re related’ (2023), a group portrait of Taylor’s brothers painted against a graphic backdrop displaying the word ‘VICTORY,’ resembling the logo of the classic American bubble gum brand. Taylor is known for his playful visual and verbal punning, as symbols slip between different representations in his work: the allusion to bubblegum is a nod to the subjects’ youth, while also celebrating their graduation day. Additionally on show, ‘Father, Son, Fun’ (2023) depicts Martin Luther King Jr. playing baseball with a child, ‘‘Another country,’ Ben Vereen’ (2023) portrays American actor, dancer and singer Ben Vereen and a painting made during Henry Taylor’s time in Paris in homage to Josephine Baker, the American-born French dancer, singer and actress, often considered to be the first Black superstar. Taylor’s choice of subject—from memory and archival materials to the live sitter—is firmly dependent upon his sense of connection driven by empathy. His sumptuous depictions, painted rapidly and loosely, capture his subject’s nuances and mood with gestures and passages of flat, saturated acrylic colour offset by areas of rich and intricate detail. The intensity with which he paints is reflected by his brushwork: a network of kinetic strokes that seek to capture a feeling before it flees. Taylor’s subjects, which range from members of the Black community to symbolic objects representative of historical struggle, span the breadth of the human condition; each work is a holistic visual biography and permanent record of a person or people’s history.

Henry Taylor

For those... who ask, ‘Do you paint white people?’, 2022

Acrylic on canvas, 122.2 x 91.4 x 3.8 cm / 48 1/8 x 36 x 1 1/2 in

© Henry Taylor. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Jeff McLane

HENRY TAYLOR lives and works in Los Angeles CA. Taylor’s work has recently been featured in US group exhibitions ‘i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times,’ at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston MA and ‘Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America’ at New Museum, New York NY. In 2022, a major survey exhibition dedicated to Henry Taylor, ‘Henry Taylor: B Side,’ his largest to date, was recently exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA and will travel to The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY from 4 October 2023 until 28 January 2024. Henry Taylor has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in the United States and internationally, and his work is in prominent public collections including the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, France, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx NY, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh PA, The Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston MA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA, Museum of Fine Art, Houston TX, Museum of Modern Art, New York NY, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham NC, Pérez Art Museum, Miami FL, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York NY, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY. In 2018, Henry Taylor was the recipient of The Robert De Niro, Sr. Prize in 2018 for his outstanding achievements in painting. Hnery Taylor’s work was presented at the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY in 2017 and the 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy in 2019.

HAUSER & WIRTH PARIS

26 bis rue François 1er, 75008 Paris

www.hauserwirth.com

Lari Pittman @ Lehmann Maupin, Seoul - Opaque, Translucent and Luminous

Lari Pittman

Opaque, Translucent and Luminous

Lehmann Maupin, Seoul

March 15 – May 7, 2022

Lehmann Maupin announces the opening of its new and expanded gallery space in Hannam-dong, Seoul and its inaugural exhibition, Opaque, Translucent and Luminous, a presentation of new work by Los Angeles-based artist LARI PITTMAN. 

The artist's first exhibition in South Korea, Opaque, Translucent and Luminous inaugurates the opening of Lehmann Maupin’s new home in Seoul, a 2,600 square-foot venue that dramatically expands the gallery’s previous imprint in the city. Designed by the award-winning firm Society of Architecture (SoA), the space occupies two stories in the Hannam-dong neighborhood and also boasts an outdoor terrace to exhibit sculpture. Spanning both floors of the gallery, Opaque, Translucent and Luminous offers an homage to big cities, reaffirming their vitality, dynamism, and importance in the face of the destabilizing effects of the global pandemic on urban life.

Lari Pittman’s decades-long practice reflects his enduring fascination with human nature, the construction of political histories and mythologies, and sociocultural relationships. His unique visual aesthetic—with skillful layering of signs and symbols, varied painting techniques, and rich, intricate patterns—has established him as one of the most significant painters of his generation. 

For his first exhibition in South Korea, Lari Pittman turns his gaze outward from examining primarily Western histories and cultural pathologies towards a wider evaluation of our common global psyche. With consideration to the collective effects of the last two years, Pittman’s newest body of work aligns itself with the visionary, positive, and ebullient, using art to envision a viable alternative to our current state of affairs and another, brighter version of the present or future. Organized in three titular cycles meant to be experienced in sequential order, the work in Opaque, Translucent and Luminous argues that the essential theater of humanity continues to play out in the world’s largest metropolises, affirming the centrality of the urban over the rural despite the many recent setbacks to city living. Fittingly, many of the works in this series are crowded with construction—buildings sit on top of buildings, bridges stretch between competing skyscrapers, and architectural styles span from the medieval to the Victorian, industrial to postmodern. Other works depict creatures of the city, with birds resembling pigeons, swallows, or starlings, and insect-like beings with delicate legs and pincers sprawling across the canvas. 

Eggs, a recurring symbol throughout Lari Pittman’s oeuvre, are present in many works in Opaque, Translucent and Luminous. In some paintings they seem to represent pure possibility, filled with potential that could emerge at any moment. In others, they masquerade as light sources, their shape and placement recalling street lamps, or they appear elevated, standing in for public monuments. In one work, three eggs are positioned diagonally across the canvas, serving as focal points that provide a way in for the viewer. The central egg appears monument-like, its shape and placement echoed in the framing devices surrounding it, while the lower egg appears to be mounted on a lamppost, encircled with a leafy pattern that could be imagined in wrought iron. The blue tones of the painting suggest large bodies of water, locating the scene in a coastal city, while the towering bridge suggests the verticality of capitals like New York, Hong Kong, or Shanghai. In his envisioning of alternative presents or futures, Lari Pittman’s eggs gender our renewed cities as female, contrasting the traditional conception of metropolises as innately masculine or the predominance of statues exalting male figures in our civic spaces.

Timelines and narratives are layered throughout the paintings in Opaque, Translucent and Luminous. In his signature style, Lari Pittman presents multiple perspectives and picture planes within a single composition, mirroring the way a city can contain a multitude of divergent and overlapping stories, all occurring simultaneously. Filled with orbs, apertures, and eyes, the works seem to watch all that is unfolding within their frame. Rigorous in its approach and ambitious in its breadth, Opaque, Translucent and Luminous presents a vision of the future, fully enmeshed in, and built out of, the remains of the past. 

A select work from Opaque, Translucent and Luminous will also be on view during Frieze Los Angeles (February 17–20, 2022), and a monumental, six-part painting, Crystalloluminescence (2022), will be presented at Art Basel Hong Kong (March 22–26, 2022). 

LEHMANN MAUPIN

213 Itaewon-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul

www.lehmannmaupin.com

_____________

Pace Verso: NFT platform of Pace Gallery - Inaugural Program

Pace Verso: NFT platform of 

Pace Gallery

Inaugural Program

Lucas Samaras 

XYZ 0868 (Chinoiserie), 2012/2021 

© Lucas Samaras, courtesy Pace Gallery

Glenn Kaino

Invisible Man (Ceremony), 2021 

© 2021 Glenn Kaino Studio, courtesy Pace Gallery

Pace Gallery announces the inaugural program on its new NFT platform, Pace Verso, which launches November 22 with a first drop of digital artworks from Lucas Samaras’s XYZ series. On November 29, to coincide with the physical presentation of NFTs in Pace’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach, Pace Verso will release works by Glenn Kaino and DRIFT artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, who collaborated with DJ and digital art pioneer Don Diablo on their first NFT.

An early champion of artists engaged with technology, Pace has long held innovation as a core value. The development of Pace Verso aligns with the gallery’s history of supporting boundary-pushing artists and their projects, and it underscores the gallery’s commitment to the advanced studio practices of artists within and beyond its program. The platform is helmed by Online Sales Director Christiana Ine-Kimba Boyle.

Marc Glimcher, President and CEO of Pace Gallery, says: “We became interested in creating a dedicated NFT platform for Pace when our artists expressed curiosity about making NFTs, and after we supported their first few NFT projects with other platforms. Our philosophy is to build the tools our artists need, and Pace Verso is now a core strand of our NFT programming. Alongside offering artists the opportunity to show and sell NFTs on our own Pace Verso platform, we will continue to support standalone NFT projects with other partners. We are thrilled to launch Pace Verso with Lucas Samaras, one of the very earliest artists to join the gallery and the grandfather of digital art, as well as a pioneering new AR work by DRIFT, and two NFTs by Glenn Kaino, who has revolutionized the NFT model to achieve social change on a grand scale.”

Pace Verso was created in partnership with the Palm NFT Studio on the Palm Network, a new NFT-optimized blockchain network for culture and creativity, built by and for the open Ethereum ecosystem. The Palm Network offers low gas costs, fast transaction finality, and a 99.99%+ reduction in energy consumption when compared to Proof of Work systems.

Palm Co-Founder and Palm NFT Studio CEO Dan Heyman says: “Our goal is to create a platform with Pace that removes barriers for artists. We built our sustainable and scalable infrastructure so that, as organizations like Pace grow, they only have to think about how blockchain can amplify creativity, not their environmental impact or gas fees.”

Glenn Kaino

Salute (Generations), 2021 

© 2021 Glenn Kaino Studio, courtesy Pace Gallery

DRIFT 

Block Universe, 2021 

© DRIFT, courtesy Pace Gallery

PACE VERSO Inaugural Program

LUCAS SAMARAS

Following the gallery’s successful presentation of two NFTs derived from Lucas Samaras’s XYZ series earlier this fall, Pace Verso will spotlight a second suite of digital XYZ works in its first exhibition. These NFTs will be made available in multiple drops over the course of the coming weeks, with the prices of the works increasing incrementally with each new release. NFTs in the first drop are priced at $10,000 USD each and those in the second drop will be $20,000 USD each. Every NFT will be accompanied by a physical 11 x 17 inch framed print. A QR code embossed on the backs of the frames links to a web page displaying an image of the NFT and Lucas Samaras’s stream of consciousness writings.

Lucas Samaras is a pioneering figure in photography and digital art. He has been at the forefront of these mediums throughout his career, working in the digital realm well before it was widely associated with fine art. Deeply engaged with Lucas Samaras’s longtime experimentations with image making, works in the XYZ series feature psychedelic formations rendered in electric colors.

GLENN KAINO

The two new NFTs by Glenn Kaino that will be made available on Pace Verso are part of his Legacy Team project, a longstanding collaboration between the artist and the Olympic track and field athlete Tommie Smith. These digital works include Invisible Man (Ceremony) (2021), which is inspired by the opening ceremony of the Olympics and features a custom soundtrack by David Sitek and Just Blaze, and Salute (Generations) (2021), which is based on Glenn Kaino’s sculptural series Salute and references the long-lasting impact of Smith’s salute for human rights at the 1968 Olympic Games.

Glenn Kaino has cultivated an expansive, activist-minded practice that spans painting, sculpture, installation, performance, monumental public art, theatrical production, and feature film.

At Art Basel Miami Beach, Pace will present a hologram from Glenn Kaino’s digital art project Pass the Baton, which comprises baton NFTs inspired by Smith’s storied career, including his record breaking 1600-meter relay race in 1966. Launching in December, Glenne Kaino’s Pass the Baton project uses NFTs to facilitate a generative crypto-giving structure that directly funds social justice efforts and organizations.

DRIFT

An NFT created by DRIFT artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta as part of their collaboration with the DJ and digital art pioneer Don Diablo will be presented on Pace Verso. The NFT is part of the artists’ augmented reality work Block Universe (2021), which is on view in their solo exhibition at Pace’s New York gallery through December 18. The NFT comprises a one of one mp4 video file rendering of Block Universe with a soundscape by Diablo. A physical component of the work includes a handheld custom display showcasing the NFT in an infinite loop.

DRIFT is known for their research-based practice that explores the relationships between nature, technology, and humanity. The duo’s NFT will be presented in Pace’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach in addition to the gallery’s digital platform. 

PACE

www.pacegallery.com

Eric Fischl @ Skarstedt Gallery Paris - "My Old Neighborhood" - Inaugural Exhibition of the Paris Gallery

Eric Fischl: My Old Neighborhood

Skarstedt Paris

October 18 - December 18, 2021

Skarstedt announced the inauguration of its new Paris gallery, renovated by Jacques Grange, at 2 Avenue Matignon with My Old Neighbourhood, the exhibition of recent paintings by Eric Fischl.

In My Old Neighborhood, Eric Fischl stages moments of human interactions set outdoors, on daylit sidewalks and front yards of suburban streets. One of the central themes in the artist’s oeuvre, the vision of American suburban life has fuelled some of his most resonant and provocative works. Here, Fischl’s protagonists are sharing moments of improbable intimacy and proximity in the public space - the realm, distinct from the sense of privacy permeating the artist’s earlier explorations of the other side of the American Dream. Engaged in personal reflections, the characters appear exposed, as if driven to the street by an unknown force. Houses and cars form a grid-like backdrop of angular colour fields yet look unused and detached from the scenes unfolding in the foreground. 

Constructing inexplicable emotional tension, Eric Fischl’s poignant compositions portray mundane scenes of a residential neighborhood which border on the sense of emergency.

Citizens of suburban dystopias, Fischl’s characters rarely make eye contact, struggling to connect with each other. Often shown naked amid clothed street observers, the figures project a sense of fragility and unease. In Private Property, an unclothed woman is confronted by policemen, the bright sunlight shimmering on the skin to exacerbate her defencelessness and the strangeness of the scene. In The Old Man Stays Behind, three masked individuals attend to the naked protagonist suggesting a promise of human connection, yet emphasising one’s feeling of vulnerability among others, transformed and heightened by the events of the past eighteen months.

Using photographs and collage as starting point, Eric Fischl constructs compositions which oscillate between collective dramas and individual renderings of human nature, pinpointing moments imbued with unresolved conflict and existential angst. Generating diverse narrative associations by juxtaposing various layers of signification, the works in My Old Neighborhood present affecting situations which retain a degree of uncertainty and evade direct social or political interpretation. As the artist explains: “I paint from a position of not knowing. I’m guided by association and intuition, and I am in search of an experience filled with meaning.” Capturing deeply personal reflections on American society today, the works are thus quasi-autobiographical, an aspect further highlighted by the title of the series.

Executed on large scale, the paintings envelop our visual field, triggering a visceral, almost bodily response which draws the viewer into the scene. In Cul de Sac, two figures turn towards the running woman from the extreme foreground of the composition, as if inviting us to enter the pictorial space and join them as characters of the script. Observing the woman as she runs to an apparent dead end, we feel involved but helpless, bewildered and acutely conscious of anxieties of the present moment. 

As Eric Fischl observes, “What you see in My Old Neighborhood are a series of scenes in which something inexplicable or surprising or irrational is taking place. In most of the paintings the audience is triangulated with male observers who are confused witnesses to the event. The audience shares their confusion and the feeling of being frozen in place by what is going on. When something occurs outside of the expected or hoped for and the nature of it strips you of your armour, this is the definition of tragedy. Ambiguity is at those moments the only way to process understanding.”

For the first time in Europe and with the support of the Louvre, Skarstedt also presents Eric Fischl’s sculpture titled Tumbling Woman, in the context of FIAC Hors Les Murs at Tuileries Gardens. The new series of paintings and this emblematic sculpture embody Fischl’s mastery in the representation of the human form. FIAC Hors Les Murs opens to the public on Tuesday 19th October and Tumbling Woman will be on view from 8th October - 20th November 2021.

SKARSTED PARIS

2 Avenue Matignon 75008 Paris

www.skarstedt.com

Michael Wolf @ Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong - Inaugural Exhibition

Spotlight on Michael Wolf
Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong
Through 8 August, 2020

Flowers Gallery announces a new gallery space in Hong Kong, its first location in Asia. The new gallery opens in the city’s Sheung Wan district, with a spotlight exhibition of works by the celebrated German photographer Michael Wolf (1954 - 2019), who lived and worked in Hong Kong.

Established in 1970 in London by Angela Flowers, Flowers Gallery is one of the longest-running international contemporary art galleries, celebrating its 50th Anniversary throughout 2020. The gallery currently represents more than 50 international artists and artist's estates. The Hong Kong space complements the global programme of exhibitions with a dedicated series of Spotlight exhibitions to introduce international gallery artists to the region. 

MICHAEL WOLF

Industrial #26, 2015

Chromogenic Print, 177 x 251 cm

© The Estate of Michael Wolf, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery

The inaugural exhibition Spotlight on Michael Wolf showcases examples of his extensive investigation of the lives of ordinary Hong Kong inhabitants. Michael Wolf devoted his career to exploring the complexity of life in megacities, focusing in particular on the dense urban environment of Hong Kong. The exhibition presents examples of iconic works, including the internationally renowned series Architecture of Density, presenting an abstracted view of Hong Kong’s seemingly endless residential and industrial facades. Alongside the large-scale photographs are works from Informal Solutions, a series of photographic typologies and vernacular sculptures that show an intimate perspective of the city from within its hidden network of back alleys. 

The exhibition also includes Cheung Chau Sunrises, Michael Wolf's last project before his death in 2019. Marking the end of his intensive focus on the confined metropolis, in which the sky was conspicuously absent, Michael Wolf's discovery of the horizon in this contemplative series can be understood as a gesture of liberation from the modern city, representing the hopeful prospect of peace and renewal. Every morning over two years, Michael Wolf photographed the rising sun from his home above the Cheung Chau shore, capturing the transient daily spectacle in a state of boundless transformation.

MICHAEL WOLF

Cheung Chau Sunrises 17, 2018

Archival Pigment Print, 101.6 x 76.2 cm

© The Estate of Michael Wolf, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery

MICHAEL WOLF

Cheung Chau Sunrises 57, 2018

Archival Pigment Print, 101.6 x 76.2 cm

© The Estate of Michael Wolf, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Managing Director Matthew Flowers says: "Our expansion into a permanent location in Asia reflects the development of strong relationships with artists, collectors, curators and Museums in the region. Hong Kong is an extremely vibrant and influential global hub, connecting collectors with art from around the world. Timing this opening with the gallery's 50th anniversary demonstrates our commitment to build a new and exciting future while celebrating the achievements of the past."

ABOUT MICHAEL WOLF

Michael Wolf is known for capturing the hyper-density of cities, such as Hong Kong, Tokyo and Chicago in his large-scale photographs of high-rise architecture and intimate studies of the lives of city dwellers. Michael Wolf’s work on life in cities was always driven by a profound concern for the people living in these environments and for the consequences of massive urbanization on contemporary civilization. This commitment and engagement remained central throughout his career, first as a photojournalist and then as an artist. Born in Munich in 1954, Michael Wolf grew up in Canada, Europe, and the United States, studying at University of California, Berkeley and under Otto Steinert at the Folkwang School in Essen, Germany. He moved to Hong Kong in 1994, where he worked for eight years as a contract photographer for Stern Magazine, before moving on from photojournalism in 2003 to focus on his personal work. Michael Wolf published over 30 books, including the critically acclaimed titles Tokyo Compression and Architecture of Density.

Michael Wolf won first prize in the World Press Photo competition in 2005 and 2010 and received an honourable mention in 2011. In 2010 and 2016 he was nominated for the Prix Pictet photography award. His work features in many permanent collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag and M+ Museum, Hong Kong. Wolf’s first major retrospective, Michael Wolf - Life in Cities, was held in 2017, premiering at the prestigious Rencontres de la Photographie festival in Arles, then moving on to The Hague Museum of Photography (2018), the Fondazione Stelline in Milan (2018), Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2018 - 2019), and Urania, Berlin (2019). His work has also been exhibited at the bienal de arquitetura, Sáo Paulo, Brazil; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Gallery of the Goethe Institute, Hong Kong, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

FLOWERS GALLERY HONG KONG
49, Tung Street, G/F - Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
www.flowersgallery.com

Chart Gallery Inaugural Exhibition: Reductive Seduction

Reductive Seduction - Inaugural Exhibition
Chart, New York
May 2 - June 29, 2019

SHEREE HOVSEPIAN 

Whole Other, 2018

© Sheree Hovsepian - Courtesy Chart, New York

CHART announces the inaugural exhibition of its new dynamic program and Tribeca location. Founded by former Paul Kasmin Gallery Partner, Clara Ha, CHART will establish a collaborative platform that offers different perspectives from art world professionals by presenting special projects, exhibitions and site-specific installations. For its inaugural exhibition CHART invited Simone Joseph of SGJ Fine Art, to co-curate Reductive Seduction, featuring the work of Jean Arp, Louise Bourgeois, James Lee Byars, Loie Hollowell, Sheree Hovsepian, Deborah Kass, and others.

The inaugural, co-curated exhibition sets the tone for CHART as a collaborative platform and establishes a precedent for a cooperative dialogue between visual thinkers and creators. Clara Ha’s extensive experience and knowledge of the changing landscape of the art community led her to reconsider the traditional gallery model.

Reductive Seduction is a transgenerational group exhibition exploring the ways in which sensuality can be expressed through a minimal formal language. Bringing together a selection of works from the mid-20th Century to the present, the group of works create a dialogue of sensual depiction that was once more typically associated with Baroque gestures, that is replaced here by refined and incisive accumulation of elements and materials. These works utilize drastically refined and distilled form to evoke corporeal sensation and somatic charge.

Reductive Seduction includes works by Jean Arp, Louise Bourgeois, James Lee Byars, Dadamaino, Suzan Frecon, Marcia Hafif, Loie Hollowell, Sheree Hovsepian, Deborah Kass, Nevine Mahmoud, Carmen Herrera, Maximilian Schubert, Leon Polk Smith, Vincent Szarek and Alice Tippit.

Founded and owned by Clara Ha, CHART will present exhibitions of emerging, and established artists engaged in interdisciplinary practices. A collaborative platform, CHART’s objective is to highlight diverse perspectives in contemporary art. Projects will include site specific installations and special exhibitions organized with guest curators.

CLARA HA is a gallerist with more than twenty years of experience in the art world. A former partner at Paul Kasmin Gallery, Ha has worked with artists such as Walton Ford, Robert Indiana, Deborah Kass, Claude and Francois- Xavier Lalanne, Kenny Scharf, Frank Stella and numerous estates such as The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Estate of Morris Louis and The Estate of Robert Motherwell amongst others. Ha has worked on various public projects including Will Ryman “The Roses” on Park Avenue and most recently Hangang Art Park, Seoul, S. Korea.

SIMONE JOSEPH has spent over twenty years working in the international art world. She has been the director of several prominent art galleries, and produced numerous exhibitions and independent projects including: David Hockney: Portraits, Louise Nevelson: Black Wall Constructions and re:construction: Interplay between Form and Function. Joseph founded SGJ Fine Art LLC, New York, in 2011, a professional art advisory service.

Courtesy of designer and dealer Malcolm James Kutner, CHART presents a selection of French Reconstruction era furniture throughout the gallery.

CHART
74 Franklin Street, New York, NY, 10013
chart-gallery.com

Michel Parmentier: Paintings & Works on Paper @ Ortuzar Projects, New York - Gallery Inaugural Exhibition

Michel Parmentier 

Paintings & Works on Paper 

Ortuzar Projects, New York 

February 16 – April 7, 2018 

Ortuzar Projects presents its inaugural exhibition, Michel Parmentier: Paintings & Works on Paper. Featuring works produced between 1966 and 1993, this is Michel Parmentier’s first solo show in the United States.

Grounding his practice on a denial of gesture and narrative, MICHEL PARMENTIER (1938–2000) was an active and influential figure within the postwar critique on traditional modes of art-making. He is best known for the highly standardized, horizontally-striped canvases that he painted between 1965 and 1968. These works, produced through the pliage technique of folding the ground before the color is applied, are comprised of perfectly even, 38-centimeter bands which Parmentier varied in color annually (blue in 1966, gray in 1967, red in 1968 and black after 1983).

In January 1967, Michel Parmentier formalized his attack on painterly subjectivity when he co-founded the group subsequently known as ‘BMPT’ with Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset and Niele Toroni. Fusing minimalism and institutional critique, Buren, Mosset, Parmentier and Toroni interrogated what they collectively considered to be bourgeois artistic sensibility in a series of four painting-performance ‘manifestations’. Parmentier broke from this collective in December 1967 and, in August 1968, from painting altogether. His practice remained dormant until 1983, when he resumed with a series of black paintings.

By 1986, Michel Parmentier had turned his focus to large-scale, freehand work on paper. Utilizing graphite, charcoal, pastel and oil stick, this body of work broadened his practice while remaining committed to the same motivations that had fueled his career in the 1960s.

MICHEL PARMENTIER studied at the École des Métiers d’Art and both lived and worked in Paris, France. He is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; FRAC Bretagne, Rennes; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes; Fondation La Caixa, Spain; and the François Pinault Collection, Paris. Michel Parmentier was the subject of major retrospectives at the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris (1988) and Villa Tamaris Centre d’art, La Seyne-sur-Mer (2014).

A select number of works in the exhibition will subsequently travel to the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University for Michel Parmentier’s first US institutional retrospective. The exhibition is accompanied by the English translation of an expanded edition of Michel Parmentier, Décembre 1965 – 20 Novembre 1999 – Une retrospective (ed. Guy Massaux), co-published by Ales Ortuzar and Éditions Loevenbruck, Paris.

ORTUZAR PROJECTS

9 White Street, New York, NY 10013

www.ortuzarprojects.com

Art Wynwood 2012 - Inaugural Art Fair, Art Miami Pavilion

Art Wynwood 2012 - Inaugural Art Fair 

Art Miami Pavilion 

February 16 - 20, 2012 

Art Miami, LLC. announces its confirmed exhibitor list in association with the launch of Art Wynwood, taking place President's Day Weekend, February 16 - 20, 2012. Held in the spacious 100,000-square-foot Art Miami Pavilion, which attracted more than 55,000 attendees during the 2011 edition of Art Miami, the inaugural five-day International Contemporary Art Fair will showcase a compelling array of cutting-edge, contemporary and modern artwork by both emerging and established artists from more than 50 galleries, including “the flying murals of Wynwood” commissioned by the district’s own Tony Goldman. 

Art Wynwood 2012 features paintings, photography, sculpture, art video and new media, conceptual art and urban street art by 500 artists from 13 countries: Argentina, Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Spain, the Netherlands, Venezuela, United Kingdom and the United States. With representation from 100 cities from around the world, including 50 across the U.S., Art Wynwood will further distinguish the Wynwood Arts District as a leading cultural destination for acquiring contemporary art. 

“This is a very exciting time and opportunity for the Wynwood Arts District, as well as Miami, our organization, exhibitors and the international community of art collectors who vacation or call South Florida home during President’s Day Weekend,” said Nick Korniloff, Director and Partner of Art Wynwood. “Art Wynwood will further ignite the Wynwood Arts District urban revitalization by providing a high quality, standalone International Contemporary Art Fair that will garner international recognition for the district and deliver a positive economic impact for many years to come.”

Capturing the essence of what the Wynwood Arts District and the Miami Art scene have to offer is paramount. Notably, Tony Goldman, who has been a driving force in the evolution of the arts and warehouse district of Wynwood, will exhibit what he describes as “the flying murals of Wynwood” in the fair’s VIP Lounge. Under his guidance, six 8’ x 24’ murals by international artists, including a Retna work from the Janet and Tony Goldman Collection, an existing piece from How & Nosm, as well as new murals from DAZE, Aiko and Futura, will be installed. Goldman will also be an integral part of Art Wynwood’s soon-to-be-announced host committee, which will be comprised of industry leaders in the art, design and media worlds from Miami and beyond. He states, “We applaud the organizers of Art Wynwood for their decision to launch a new art fair in Miami next month. This is a wonderful example of how Miami – and specifically Wynwood – has evolved into a year round arts destination.  I think I speak on behalf of the entire Wynwood community in welcoming and supporting Art Wynwood.”

The following galleries have been confirmed for participation:

101/exhibit, Miami

532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, New York

ACA Galleries, New York

Aldo de Sousa Gallery,Buenos Aires

Alfredo Ginocchio Gallery, Mexico City

Arcature Fine Art, Palm Beach

Art Nouveau, Miami

Ascaso Gallery, Caracas

Bakehouse Art Complex, Miami

Barry Friedman Ltd., New York

Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami 

Black & White Gallery, New York

BlueLeaf Gallery, Dublin

C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore

Cernuda Arte, Coral Gables

Contessa Gallery, Cleveland

Cynthia-Reeves, New York

David Lusk Gallery, Memphis

De Buck Gallery, New York 

Dean Project, New York

Denise Bibro Fine Art, New York

Dot Fiftyone Gallery, Miami

Durban Segnini Gallery, Miami

Forum Gallery, New York

Galerie Leroyer, Montreal

Galerie Von Braunbehrens, Munich

Hardcore Art Contemporary Space, Miami

Hollis Taggart Gallery, New York

Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte  

Juan Ruiz Galeria, Maracaibo

Kavachnina Contemporary, Miami

Lausberg Contemporary, Dusseldorf

Leslie Smith Gallery, Amsterdam

Magnan Metz Gallery, New York

Mark Borghi Fine Art, New York

Mike Weiss Gallery, New York

Mindy Solomon Gallery, ST. Petersburg

Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York

Now Contemporary Art, Miami

Olyvia Fine Art, London

Pace Prints, New York

Pan American Art Projects, Miami

PRIVEEKOLLEKTIE, Heusdenaan de Maas

Rudolf Budja Gallery LLC, Miami

Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York

The Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London

Tresart, Coral Gables

Unix Fine Art, London

Villa Del Arte Galleries, Barcelona

Waltman Ortega Fine Art, Miami-Paris

Waterhouse & Dodd, London

Westwood Gallery, New York

Witzenhausen Gallery, Amsterdam

ART WYNWOOD

www.art-wynwood.com

Updated 29.01.2023

Kristen Morgin, Zach Feuer Gallery, NYC - New York Be Nice

Kristen Morgin: New York Be Nice

Zach Feuer Gallery, New York

November 6 - December 18, 2010

Zach Feuer Gallery presents New York Be Nice, the first solo exhibition of work by Kristen Morgin in New York. Morgin’s show inaugurates the gallery's new 4,800 square foot ground-level space in the historic Dia Building on 22nd Street.

Kristen Morgin’s sculptures, comprised primarily of fired and unfired clay, are true to scale objects. Her works, which include "Wrecked Spyder", a crashed Porsche 550 Spyder, appear to be unearthed or abandoned objects in varying states of ruin. Several sculptures, such as "The Repeating Table", which consists of toys, books and comics, present her rendition of an object alongside its original counterpart.

Using unassuming materials to render readily accessible objects, Morgin’s work captures the complexity of the present by way of the past. The corroding surfaces of her objects not only capture the here and now but protrude fragility, mortality and decay.

KRISTEN MORGIN was born in 1968 in Brunswick, GA. Her work was featured in "Unmonumental" at the New Museum in New York, "Thing" at UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, "Red Eye" at the Rubbell Family Collection in Miami and currently "Huckleberry Finn" at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art in San Francisco. Kristen Morgin lives and works in Gardena, CA.

In addition to exhibitions in the main gallery, Gallery 2 showcases exhibitions by artists separate from the main gallery program. Open, first Gallery 2 exhibition, is a group show of gallery artists in addition to a preview of upcoming Gallery 2 shows. The artists featured in this exhibition include Tamy Ben-Tor, Sister Corita, Nathalie Djurberg, Mark Flood, Stuart Hawkins, Anton Henning, Dasha Shishkin, Dana Schutz, Johannes VanDerBeek and Phoebe Washburn as well as Alisha Kerlin, Kate Levant and Florian Schmidt.

ZACH FEUER GALLERY

548 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011

www.zachfeuer.com

Louise Lawler at Metro Pictures, New York - Paint, Wall, Pictures: Something Always Follows Something Else She Wasn't Always a Statue

Louise Lawler

Paint, Wall, Pictures: Something Always Follows Something Else She Wasn't Always a Statue

Metro Pictures, New York

February 1 – March 15, 1997

Metro Pictures presents an exhibition by Louise Lawler. This is the gallery's inaugural exhibition at it's new 9,000 square foot location at 519 West 24th Street in Chelsea. The new location features two main exhibition rooms on the street level as well as two smaller gallery spaces, one on the main level and another on the second floor. This provides Metro Pictures with the opportunity to present smaller, informal exhibitions in addition to its regular program.

The centerpiece of Louise Lawler's show is a series of large-scale (roughly 48 x 60 inches) photographs taken at the gallery's new premises before and during renovation. The lushly abstract new images are reminiscent of Color Field paintings. These, as well as the other works exhibited, continue the artist's involvement with artworks, their presentation and treatment. Louise Lawler's photographs of artworks in museums, galleries, private homes, auction houses and storage areas track the art object through various situations and comment on the relationship between the object and the worlds of commerce and consumption, as well as the museums and collectors who own and present it. As always, Louise Lawler exhibits humor and an appreciative eye for the art depicted. 

The exhibition also includes Fixed Intervals, a collaboration with artist Allan McCollum which consist of series of brass plated steel "ding bats" which are placed (either on the wall or a pedestal) as a surrogate to mark the absence of a work of art. 

Louise Lawler is also show a work from 1995 consisting of 80 drinking glasses placed on shelves on the wall. Each glass is etched with the word "Word."

Louise Lawler has had one-person museum exhibitions at the Wadsworth Antheneum, Hartford (1984); The Museum of Modern Art, New York ("Projects," 1987); The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1990); Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany (1993); Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva (1994); Munich Kunstverein, Munich (1995). Louise Lawler collaborated with Douglas Crimp on the book On the Museum's Ruins published by MIT Press in 1993. The artist is based in New York City and has exhibited at Metro Pictures since 1982.

On The Museum's Ruins

Douglas Crimp with photographs by Louise Lawler

MIT Press, September 1993

368 pp., 7 in x 9.5 in

© The MIT Press

METRO PICTURES GALLERY

519 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011

www.metropictures.com

Upadated 02.12.2021