New York City Gallery Review

Danziger Projects Gallery -> Andy Warhol: Polaroids of Sports Champions, Greatness

2009-11-24T13:18:00.007-05:00

"Three Stars or more" "★★★"

Review of Danziger Projects Gallery -> Andy Warhol: Greatness, Polaroids of Sports Champions:

Andy Warhol... do I have to say more? (just kidding) This show is an interesting example of the relativity of art. Now I'm not sure where you stand on Warhol. I'm not even sure where I stand on Warhol, but we can agree that he isn't known for his Polaroids and the fact that these are selling for $10,000.00 or more is why this show gets interesting. Furthermore this show is interesting because of what Polaroids are and that an "instant picture" can gain worth due to fame and popularity. Maybe that is why Warhol took Polaroids? We will never know. what I am sure of is that he would be pleased that these Polaroids are being displayed in the fall of 2009! These Polaroids are both unique and cannot be reproduced. The intrigue of these celebrities are so alluring and seductive that I absolutely must have one! Say goodbye to my kids college savings! It was quite a novelty to see the original Polaroids in person, but be warned the pictures themselves are very small and only hold conceptual social value. Rare celebrity art like this will defiantly impress anyone who visits your house! If you are in the area you should see check it out.

Press Release of Danziger Projects Gallery -> Andy Warhol: Greatness, Polaroids of Sports Champions:

Greatness: Andy Warhol Polaroids of Sports Champions

October 31 to December 12, 2009.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

As an iconic member of the pop movement of the 1960's, Warhol gained fame and recognition for his depiction of recognizable objects and faces, from brand names to bananas to faces of the rich, famous, and powerful.

In 1977, Richard Weisman, an art collector and a friend of Warhol's, commissioned a series of paintings of ten great sports figures of the era, now known as the "Athlete Series". The group of athletes was selected by Mr. Weisman, and included stars of a variety of sports: Muhammad Ali (boxing), Pelé (soccer), Dorothy Hamill (figure skating), Tom Seaver (baseball), Jack Nicklaus (golf), O.J. Simpson (football), Chris Evert (tennis), Willie Shoemaker (horse racing), Rod Gilbert (ice hockey, NY Rangers), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (basketball).

Four additional sports portraits taken later are also included in the show – Ron Duguay, John McEnroe (with then-wife Tatum O'Neill), Vitas Gerulaitis, and Wayne Gretzky.

While Warhol may not have selected the ten athletes for the series, their status as champions in their respective sports, with faces and names that are recognizable decades later, coincides with Warhol's interest in images of celebrity and greatness.

Taken with Warhol's favored "Big Shot" Polaroid Camera, these images were used by Warhol to be silkscreened on to canvas as the basis of each painting. This show provides a look at this process by displaying three different takes from each sitting, shedding light on Warhol's willingness to experiment and interact with his subject within his planned conception of the final image. For this reason each Polaroid is unique and different and there are only three complete sets of the original 10 athletes.

In recent years, Warhol's Polaroids have gained attention and respect in exhibitions and books, both for their centrality to his portrait practice and as works in their own right. While Warhol is not best known as a photographer, he loved the medium, and it was an apt one for the artist due to its repetitive, mechanical nature and its ability to confer a sense of star-power on its subjects.

Proving that the simplest tools are no impediment to creativity, Warhol's Polaroids of athletes are both a celebration of greatness and an intriguing look at the cleverness behind the façade Warhol so often used to disguise the intelligence and innovation of his work.

For more information please call 212 629-6778 or e-mail info@danzigerprojects.com

Mike Weiss Gallery -> Maya Gold: Wake, NYC exhibit

2009-11-24T11:05:00.004-05:00

"★★★★★"

Review of Mike Weiss Gallery -> Maya Gold: Wake

I could not find a darn thing wrong with this show! I think my hope in the art world is being renewed! The fact that a gallery in Chelsea would pick up a quirky art show like this in NYC is fantastic! Just like it says in the press release the paintings "offer several meanings at once". The paintings are an over head view of people from a perpendicular angle looking straight down on top of the subject. This angle is so unique and even somewhat uncomfortable that I would have liked the works even if they were ugly! Gold uses this approach to her painting in tandem with gloomy overcast weather colors that are wonderfully atmospheric and at the same time dreamy. All this gives the viewer a bit of spectral ethereal manifestation within the painting. The fact that these contemporary paintings are large also draws the viewer in. I look forward to more exhibits from Maya Gold in New York City. Even though this is a five star show I'm not sure if you really need to experience the paintings in person, but you definitely have to check out the website at the bottom of the press release!

Press Release of Mike Weiss Gallery -> Maya Gold: Wake

Maya Gold: Wake
October 29, 2009 - January 9, 2010

Mike Weiss Gallery presents Wake, an exhibition of new oil paintings on canvas by Israeli artist Maya Gold. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York and at Mike Weiss Gallery. Her use of a combination of soft, nearly see-through backgrounds and precisely executed subjects in the foreground blend the genres of abstraction and figuration and challenge the viewer to make that distinction.

This series of paintings is greatly influenced by the artist’s time spent living in Israel and her proximity to the sea and urban landscape. In some works, a female figure dressed in a bikini the colors of the Israeli flag stands alone in a vast empty field of muted gray or blue. She is throwing a life preserver out into the empty space or crouching on the shore arranging the seashells on the sand in futile exercises to call for help. In one work the same figure holds a large beach umbrella, attempting to pierce the ground with its tip seemingly unaware that she is standing on a brick walkway. In some works the figure is unrepresented and its presence, either male or female, is completely obstructed by open umbrellas that play across the surface of the canvas like a bag of scattered marbles. The artist composes the works so that they are a visual trick to behold, undefined, offering a several meanings at once.

The title of the exhibition, Wake, is meant to conjure the same curiosity as to which particular meaning it denotes. All at once, Wake is a reference to the shape of water when it parts behind a boat after it passes, the time after dreaming when we slip into present consciousness, and the services that are attended by friends and family after the passing of loved one. The viewer, hovering, peering down ghostlike above the world below is left to guess from where they are supposed to be viewing this world. It is the ambiguity of the moment, the uncertainty of the time that the artist captures on the canvas.

The surfaces of the canvas, although rich with detail are surprisingly flat. The artist begins by laying in a translucent wash of color over the white canvas to indicate the sky, water or brick. Each element, the background shadow or figure, is painted from start to finish in one sitting to keep the texture of the paint and the canvas even and flat. The figures or subjects are painted in last with delicate and almost photographic realism. The artist does not however take her subjects directly from photographs and instead works from various imagery and is most reliant on her own memory. In the end, what we are given is a composition that is contrastingly different in its appearance and meaning, at once minimal in its imagery but also riddled with the clues to a deeper story and symbolism.

Maya Gold lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel. The artist received her Bachelors of Art at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in Tel Aviv and continued with post graduate studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College of London and the Bezalel Academy. The artist was the youngest recipient of the Gottesdiener Award, which resulted in a solo exhibition of her work at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The artist has exhibited previously in Tel Aviv, Israel and this is her first exhibition in New York.[Mike Weiss Gallery -> Maya Gold: Wake]

Tyler Rollins Gallery-> Sopheap Pich: The Pulse Within Solo show

2009-11-24T10:41:00.006-05:00

"★★★★★"

Review of Tyler Rollins -> Sopheap Pich: The Pulse Within Solo show

I was delighted to hear that a Cambodian artist was going to be exhibiting in
NYC so I rushed over to the Tyler Rollins Fine Art Gallery with high expectations! It is always, always, always very refreshing to see art that has organically come out of different cultures especially ones that we don't get exposed to very often. Also its nice when art is not steeped and buried by art history and can be approached without an MFA. This is exactly why Pich's work is so exciting for me. Deeply symbolic without loosing its message or emotion. This show is a success! The Pulse Within even though it is a small show is very engrossing. Pich is going to be remembered as a great artist. I really recommend reading the press release section below because we get a real insight into Pich's creative reasoning and creative process. Even without the press release the same message gets conveyed which is very hard with sculpture. ADD THIS ART SHOW TO YOUR LIST.

Press Release of Tyler Rollins -> Sopheap Pich: The Pulse Within Solo show

It is with great pleasure that Tyler Rollins Fine Art presents Sopheap Pich’s first New York solo exhibition. Pich has been very active on the international stage in recent years, and he is now considered to be Cambodia’s most prominent contemporary artist. But although his works are now exhibited around the world, he remains firmly rooted in Cambodia. Its vibrant culture and often tragic history continue to inspire his work.

His exhibition for our gallery is a particularly personal one, as it is inspired by his childhood recollections of life during the Khmer Rouge period (1975-79). The physical and psychological hardships of this traumatic period were seared into the artist’s memory. With The Pulse Within, Pich has looked deep into himself – and also into the psyche of Cambodia – to investigate the troubling currents swirling beneath the surface of daily life.

Issues of time, memory, and the body are integral to Pich’s work. For this exhibition, he has created a dynamic group of sculptural forms derived from the internal organs of the human body, such as the heart, lungs, and intestines. These function as visceral reminders of the past and of the intimate, physical connections between human beings.

In a time when Cambodia and its people are focused on the realities of daily life and the challenges of economic development, Pich carves out a space of reflection upon the deeper issues that underlie Cambodian society. He returns to the fundamental physical basics of the human body, which he relates to the social body of the nation. Its internal scars and painfully raw wounds are exposed to view, and yet through this process some hope of healing is suggested.

This year has been an exciting one for Pich. In addition to completing a major outdoor sculptural installation at the King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia, he is being featured in two of Asia’s most prestigious art events: the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale in Fukuoka, Japan; and the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia. We are very proud to introduce him to New York.

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PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VIEW A VIDEO ABOUT SOPHEAP PICH.
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ARTIST STATEMENT BY SOPHEAP PICH

At the end of 2002, I decided to return to Cambodia for the first time since fleeing the country with my family in 1979. I was born in Koh Kralaw, a rice-farming town in Battambang Province, in northwestern Cambodia, but during the Khmer Rouge regime, my family and I were moved to different towns and villages in the province. We ended up in refugee camps in Thailand before settling in the United States. It was there that I began my studies, going on to receive a BFA in Painting at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an MFA in Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Back in Cambodia, I had several exhibitions of paintings over the next couple of years. Then in 2004, I made my first rattan sculpture of a pair of lungs, which I had intended to cover with cigarette packages. But, after having taken advice from the director of the French Cultural Center at the time, I decided against it. That piece opened a totally new approach to my art practice, and I have continued to make works using rattan, bamboo, and metal wire ever since. At the end of 2005, I stopped painting completely. I felt at that point that painting was not enough, that I was too concerned with making an image on a limited space. To create a three-dimensional object from the beginning to the end is to take a journey, to discover something new without erasing the footsteps, the evidence. It was not very practical, as my objects tended to be large, and there are other issues that come with working with natural materials – but characteristically, each successful work has a life in it that is somehow a reflection of where it comes from.

Most of the forms I started using were of human organs: the liver, lungs, stomach, etc. I was not interested so much in copying the form but rather in finding something else in it or something else it could become – or rather some meaning it could suggest. Hive, for example, started out as a liver but became a kind of corridor and stood vertically on the floor. One could walk in and out of it. For Cycle, I connected two stomachs together to suggest a kind of movement or family ties, old to young again. Many other works, such as Stalk and Upstream, were not inspired by the body but by nature and culture. Ripple was born out of the process of making sculpture itself – of wanting to “see what happens.” In the end, all the works had the thread of common meaning: that of poverty, inside/outside ambiguity, fragility, monumentality, lightness, of strength by way of holding on to each other with simple means.

The whole process is completely hand-made, so there were imperfections, from the cutting of the rattan strands to the distance of the grids. I still go to the countryside to cut my own bamboo. I rarely use rulers or measuring tape – only at the end in order to know the size of the work. Although I have a particular idea before I start, I rely more on instinct than a specific plan as a way to work.

In 2003, I formed a small artist group called Saklapel (a play on the Khmer word Sel’pak, which means “arts”). Two years later, the group organized a big exhibition in the capital, Phnom Penh, called Visual Art Open. Many people considered this an important event because it brought a lot of press, and we had a fairly comprehensive website which opened doors for many of the artists involved. The year after, I started a small art center, Sala Art Space, with Dana Langlois, who owns the well-known Java Café (where I had my first solo show in 2003). I guided a kind of theoretical class for a group of ten young artists. Most are still showing their works today. After about one year, the center folded, and as my work was beginning to attract different shows and residencies, I retreated from the art scene and dedicated my time fully to my work.

In the past year I have been working on two different bodies of work for two exhibitions: one at the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia; and the other at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in New York City. For Australia, I have done an installation, entitled 1979, that contains eleven sculptural objects made predominantly with bamboo, rattan, and burlap, along with five carved wooden buffaloes. In this work, I wanted to tell a story of a time in my childhood just at the end of the Khmer Rouge period. My memory is very strong about growing up in that time, so I have many stories based on factual events. But as I get older, they have become more and more allegorical, or I am finding in them meanings and ideas that inform my understanding and my relationship to present-day Cambodia. So this group of sculptures is an attempt to visually describe what I, as a child on that particular journey, had experienced.

The second body of work, for the New York exhibition, is more of a continuation with what has been my preoccupation since I started making sculptures – the attempt to reveal certain aspects of the socio-political condition of Cambodia. In this respect, my feelings in the past five years have not changed much, so some of the works still bear similarities to the early works. At the same time, new questions began to appear, and so new steps or experiments were taken: I began to use other materials – burlaps, farm tools, wood, plastic, paints, etc. There was a need to put a more distinct “subject matter” in the objects.

In and around Phnom Penh at the moment, there is much development – new high rises are going up, bridges are being built, land is being sold at unimaginable prices, traffic is getting impossible on the main boulevards as cars are getting bigger, and car dealers are popping up on every major junction.

How did these things get here? What have we produced that is so profitable? The last time I heard, we are still one of those countries in the world where the vast majority of the population still survives on about one dollar a day. What do we consume on a dollar a day? What do those products with the label “For Export Only” mean? It was recently in the news that some chopstick makers were found to be using a certain anti-fungus chemical to keep their chopsticks from attracting molds. Since everything has to be cheap, nothing can be wasted. How do we know if what we are consuming is real since most of it is not even made here? And are those shiny cars really new cars?

In the countryside, along the national borders, people collect old military remnants to sell as scrap metal. Everyday people push huge carts of junk materials across the borders to be recycled. Cambodia was one of the most heavily mined countries during the late 1960s, and many bombs were dropped but did not explode. We often heard news of people who got maimed or died while trying to disassemble these objects. For many people along the borders, this is one way to make a living. On the Thai-Cambodian border, carts and tricycles filled with all kinds of scrap materials are pushed and pulled by handicapped people every day to sell to Thai factories.

Now, when I see the new high rises and shiny buildings being constructed, I can’t help but think about what the materials were. And when I see the workers building the buildings, it is as though I’m looking at the same people who scavenge for metals.

Cambodia is a complex place, a hard place – and for me also an inspiring place. It informs my work. It gives it a sense of place. I call this latest group of works The Pulse Within to indicate that it is my exploration of the underlying aspects of the country. It is also a continuation of my search for new forms and new meanings, testing the limit of what I know as a person and as an artist.
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SILENCE AND CYCLE:
ARTIST STATEMENT BY SOPHEAP PICH

Cycle was one of my earliest works as sculptor. In fact it was the second one after the breakthrough piece called Silence, a small set of lungs done with rattan and steel wire.

I was painting at that time and was getting ready for the group show at the French Cultural Center in Phnom Penh. It was my third year back in Cambodia, and I felt the need to make works that were more accessible by Cambodian people. My paintings were too limited. Because health was a major issue of people around me, forms of the human organs as a starting point seemed obvious.

The process of making Silence felt like I was tracing back to my childhood – figuring out how to make things to use and play with. Along with problem solving came also that reflective moment: a sense of joy and adventure in working slowly and repetitively, and trusted that it would lead somewhere. Rattan and wire were chosen because both were around and cheap and required very few, simple, hand tools. It also taught me something about art, as I had never understood before. There was a sense of truth and completeness in the simple, imperfect skeletal forms of the lungs. The director of the French Cultural Center told me that it gave him goose-bumps looking at it.

After finishing Silence, I wanted to make a piece whereby all the technical problems I would encounter would be solved. It needed to be large enough that I would understand what it would take, physically and time-wise, to make a work.

A major issue in Cambodia, as I knew it, has always been the stomach. It was either that everyone’s concern was to fill it or to cure its diseases. Cycle took the shape of a stomach as a starting point to symbolize society in general. Connecting two stomachs together then suggested ideas of strong family ties or a society held together by simple means. It was also about fragility, controlled chaos, movement, and the ambiguity of the interior and the exterior. So there were questions about identity: am I inside? or outside?

When displayed correctly, Cycle has that kind of suggestive tendencies. But it remains a sculpture; it doesn’t try to tell a story. It appears both strong and tragic at the same time. It’s humble and occupies its space. It’s monumental yet is easily shaken by a slight gust of wind.

That sense of being open yet able to hold one’s own, was a good space for me as an artist to work in. Cycle then, is a major work because it changed my understanding about what it takes to make works and what it means to be an artist. People gravitate to it, and it’s been published by numerous local and international publications, including a sculpture dictionary being arranged in France. A larger version of it in bronze is being built for the King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia by the foundry, Urban Art Projects, in Brisbane. Cycle is a defining piece from me up to this point.
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OF TEXTURE AND TACTILE MEMORY:
SITUATING SOPHEAP PICH’S WORK IN A GLOBAL AND LOCAL PERSPECTIVE

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE ESSAY BY BORETH LY

It has been a long struggle for Sopheap Pich to find his voice and the right medium of artistic expression. This struggle to find his sense of self, an individual and cultural identity, can be attributed in part to the trauma of displacement. Pich was born in Koh Kralaw, a rice-farming town of Battambang, Cambodia on May 9, 1971. He and his family left Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge period (1975 to 1979) under which 1.7 million Cambodians were killed by the regime headed by Pol Pot. Thus, they left Cambodia as political refugees and finally settled in the United States in 1984. Like many political and economic refugees who were compelled to leave their homes, Pich seemed to suffer from the trauma of linguistic, cultural, physical and geographical displacement. This displacement was eventually made manifest in his work and shaped the specific media of his artistic expression.

Looking back, Pich recalls: “In 1993, I took school trips to photograph Mayan ruins in Mexico and Guatemala. It was during this time that I first realized that I had to return to Cambodia one day. It was the sound and smell of the forest and the temples at Tikal that conjured up so much childhood memories.” He started making sculpture using rattan, bamboo, and metal wire in 2004. These materials are embedded in his childhood memories of growing up in the rice-farming community where he observed his relatives making fish traps, baskets and other utilitarian objects out of these very same materials.

Pich enrolled at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1990 as a pre-med student. At the end of the second year, against his father’s wishes, he changed his major to art, concentrating in painting. Subsequently, he received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. Like many transnational and global contemporary artists of Southeast Asian descent, Sopheap Pich now has a kind of flexible citizenship, moving and working around the world. His sculptures and drawings have gained great visibility internationally and have been exhibited in museums and galleries on four continents. Institutions such as the Singapore Art Museum and the Queensland Art Gallery in Australia now own large pieces by him, while the King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia has commissioned two major works, Moon Bearer and Upstream, that were recently installed there in a spectacular outdoor setting. He is also featured this year at both the Fukuoka Asian Art Trienale in Japan and the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Australia. The Pulse Within, now on display at Tyler Rollins Fine Art, marks his first solo exhibition in New York. Pich is, in short, not only one of Cambodia’s leading artists, but clearly one of the rising stars in the global art world.

The tactile memory of the weight and texture of rattan and bamboo began to materialize in Pich’s art and creativity in 2004, when he made his first rattan sculpture of a pair of lungs. Metaphorically, the artist’s first sculpture signifies his moment of artistic break-through, when he finally found his formal language of artistic expression by using natural materials that hearken back to his childhood working and playing on the farm. In retrospect, he was waiting to exhale, and he finally released his potent pulse of creativity and sense of self and cultural identity — a liberating moment for Pich.

Interestingly, his initial longing to return “home” was provoked by “the sound and smell of the forest and the temple at Tikal.” One tends to think of memory as an experience that is purely visual and intangible. However, smell, hearing, and touch are also senses that register our experiences and thus create memory. I would like to single out touch and tactile memory as a particularly apt way to understand Pich’s works. Not surprisingly, the title for his first solo exhibition is The Pulse Within. To take a pulse, one has to touch the body in order to make an assessment of the heartbeat. More important, Pich is interested in assessing the pulse of the Cambodian nation. In one of our exchanges, he related how he patiently accepted the current pulse of Cambodia, and that it has its natural momentum. One of the great challenges for him is how to expose what is underneath this surface, something he refers to as the “the pulse within.”

One of the poignant pieces included in The Pulse Within is Caged Heart. We see a sculptural form shaped like a heart. The artist has covered parts of it with dyed burlap and imprisoned the heart in a cage-like structure. Moreover, we see lots of wear and tear, suggesting that this is not a young heart, but an old one. Placed inside the small cage are tools used by farmers and other manual laborers. Clearly, Pich intended it to have multiple layers of meanings. We can interpret this old heart as that of a good-hearted farmer or any blue-collar worker, but it could also be the heart of a wealthy, greedy, and ungenerous man whose heart is damaged and thus corrupt. Moreover, the metaphorical and linguistic reference to a good versus a bad heart (as a way to characterize a person’s ethical and moral standing in society) is a common assessment in Cambodian culture. Caged Heart critiques and captures this specific cultural value. For instance, there is a saying in the Khmer language that “it is alright if a house guest feels that your house is small and claustrophobic as long as he/she does not feel that his heart is small and claustrophobic.” In other words, a small space provides an opportunity for kinship, intimacy, friendship, but a suffocatingly small and claustrophobic space is not good.

Drawing from Traditions, Tensions, and Innovations
I visited Pich’s studio, located in Beng Kok, one of the poorest parts of Phnom Penh, on August 11, 2009. During our conversation, I asked him why he wants to be an artist, and he replied: “I want to be independent and to have the freedom to make something out of nothing.” When asked to name some of the artists whose work he admires, he mentioned Van Gogh and Brancusi, then went on to add: “I never know how to read colors. For example, ‘red equals sadness’ — all foreign to me. I prefer drawing and lines because they are far more expressive and energetic to me. Moreover, drawing is a Zen Buddhist process that required meditative focus and concentration.”

Indeed, his sketchbooks are filled with drawings that serve as initial ideas and inspirations for his large-scale sculptures and installations. We also see traces of his drawings on the walls of his studio, where he plays with different dimensions, depth, and shadow. One sees this expressive energy in his hand-drawn lines in schematic sketches of ideas that are eventually transformed and materialized into sculptures made of rattan and bamboo joined together by metal wire. The result is a display of light and shadow that creates the effect of a volumetric space. A case in point is a huge installation piece, entitled Raft, that is now on display at the exhibition at Tyler Rollins Fine Art.

Ways and Means: Making Visible the Politically Invisible
Raft is a critique of the displacement resulting from global investment and real estate development in the Beng Kok area of Phnom Penh, where his studio is located. Beng Kok means “Reed Lake” in the Khmer language (beng means lake and kok is a type of reed). Herbs and aquatic vegetables are grown and harvested by the local people. In addition, they fish in the lake, but this it will soon be completely filled in to make room for redevelopment. Each family living in the neighborhood has been given $8,000 US dollars by an “unknown” real estate investment company to move elsewhere so that a futuristic and global city can be built there. Most of the houses located around the lake are built on stilts over the water. Pich’s studio is situated around the edge of the lake. All these houses, including Pich’s studio, will soon be demolished. Raft is composed of what looks like a tall building supported by what look like elongated boats or bombs. The artist has intentionally couched his formal language ambiguously so it lends itself to multiple readings. Naturally, the two boats supporting the tall edifice remind us of the soon-to-be filled in lake behind the artist’s studio, where Pich and his two assistants, Sophai and Toma, watch their neighbors paddling their boats to fish and to harvest vegetables. Moreover, the water from the lake generates cool breezes on a hot and humid day while Pich creates his works. On the other hand, the two objects supporting the skyscraper in Raft could also refer to the bombs that were dropped during the American bombing of Cambodia and Laos. In fact, the metal wire that Pich uses to join and stitch rattan and bamboo strips together is made from melted-down shelf casings and unexploded bombs.

Pich informed me in one of our conversations that in his earlier body of works, he was very interested in achieving a perfection of form, texture, and surface – and so he rarely left his works unfinished or exposed. However, now that he lives in Cambodia full time, he has a different political and social perspective on the country. There seems to be a shift from the younger artist concerned with formal questions to that of an artistically mature and potent artist who is now able to detect and to assess the pulse of this nation. More significantly, he wants to expose what is underneath – “the pulse within.”

Like the wear and tear found in Caged Heart, Junk Nutrients makes visible what is underneath the tourist and investment-friendly image that Cambodia projects to the world. This piece is shaped like twisted intestines and coated with burlap. The intestines are left exposed, with junk spilling out of them. The junk consists of such items as plastic tubes, bottles, and other discarded materials that Pich gathers from Beng Kok Lake. The nutrients that one is supposed to find in the soil of Phnom Penh or below the surface of the lake are clearly not organic or natural but simply plastic waste. A conceptual parallel can be drawn between Pich’s desire “to make something out of nothing” and that of the poor folks living in the slums of Phnom Penh whose livelihood is sustained by collecting and selling this junk to recycling companies. In brief, Pich’s sculpture exposes the unhealthy pulse underneath the seemingly normal and tourist-friendly Cambodia that is increasingly displaced and destroyed by global investment.

One of Pich’s worries is that he has failed to live up to his father’s expectations because he has chosen to pursue his dream of becoming an artist rather than entering the more lucrative profession of a medical doctor. Clearly, he has never left behind what he learned when he was a pre-med student, but has simply integrated his knowledge of the human body and medical science into his art and creative process. The integration of these disciplines and professions is evident in Suture, which is composed of what looks like a pair of kidneys joined by a tube of some sort that has perhaps been sutured into place. Once again, as in much of the work in The Pulse Within, Pich has us look simultaneously at what happens within and what can be detected through surfaces.

Boreth Ly is Assistant Professor of Southeast Asian Art History and Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and was educated in Paris and the United States. He is currently writing a book on trauma and the contemporary arts of Southeast Asia and its diaspora.
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Special thanks to Vandy Rattana for taking many of the photographs of the works for The Pulse Within exhibition catalogue. Please click here for more information.[Tyler Rollins-SopheapPich:The Pulse Within website]

Nicholas Robinson Gallery -> Florian Sussmayr: Interieurs

2009-11-24T10:10:00.009-05:00

"★★★"

Review of Nicholas Robinson Gallery -> Florian Sussmayr: Interieurs Solo show:

Florian Sussmayr's work was very good as I walked into the Nicholas Robinson Gallery, this was not surprising since I have been fairly impressed by this gallery's shows. As you can see by the thumb-nail Sussmayr has a wonderful grasp of light and atmosphere. I would guess he is either very talented or he paints on top of photographs. either way the end product is both moody and realistic. There is also a surprising contemporary painting in this art show that looks as if the artist framed a real tile wall within the actual frame, but upon closer examination the wall turned out to be painted! Despite these accomplishments this Nicholas Robinson gallery ultimately fails on the side of content an curating. The subject matter of Sussmayr's paintings was so fractured and disconnected from painting to painting that the show seemed like a random drawing out of a portfolio that show cases the artist's talents. Furthermore, by the end of the show we get the impression that Sussmayr has attended upper class gatherings and events and suggests a life of indulgence. Despite these underlying imperfections Sussmayer has accomplished very good paintings. If you are in the Chelsea area this show is worth a quick look.

Press Release of Nicholas Robinson Gallery -> Florian Sussmayr: Interieurs:

Nicholas Robinson Gallery is pleased to present its second solo exhibition of new paintings by Florian Süssmayr. The current exhibition, entitled Interieurs, focuses both the artist’s and viewers’ attention on various iterations of interior spaces, one of the traditional genres of art history. Frequently de-populated and executed with the artist’s characteristic somber palette of monochromatic dark browns, Süssmayr’s interiors create an evocative atmosphere that is simultaneously disquieting, banal, and even, on occasions, gloomy or sinister. His fleeting glimpses of these spaces are often ambiguous - both artist and viewer participate in the viewing of the scene and yet are somehow also clearly excluded from belonging in them. It was the culture of punk rock, drink and drugs, soccer matches, underground movies, libertarian expression, and leftist political thought. The works in the show are documentary, yet expressive, evidence of the artist’s participation in life on the fringes of bourgeois society – they are ‘realistic’ and matter-of-fact depictions of this milieu, and are executed without cynicism or irony.

A number of the paintings tackle another traditional genre – that of the self-portrait. The artist is depicted either as a reflection in a surface in which he is photographing himself, or as part of a pin-board collage containing an image of himself and other biographically relevant images or references. The depiction of self is thus never direct, and continues the theme of detached observation and exclusion.

Florian Süssmayr has his roots in the social and political subculture pervasive in Germany in the 1980s. Originally a musician in the leftist post-punk scene, he has also been a film cameraman, and began painting in the late 1990s. Süssmayr has had a solo exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and has participated in numerous other important gallery and museum exhibition in the last five years.

Florian Süssmayr was born in 1963 in Munich, Germany, and lives and works in Munich.[source]

We are looking for Contributors to write more reviews!

2009-11-17T15:13:00.002-05:00

Hey everybody!

Tired of the art world ignoring what you have to say? Can't get a gallery show exposure? Just saw a show and want to tell the world about it? Fed up with rich crappy artists running the creative world? LET YOU BE HEARD!

NYCGalleryReview.com is looking for fresh voices and second opinions on art from around the NYC! Lets break the silence!

Brooklyn Museum: Who Shot Rock & Roll

2009-11-09T18:28:00.003-05:00

"Four Stars" "★★★★"

Review of the Brooklyn Museum exhibit: Who Shot Rock & Roll:

This Exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum was put together very well and gave a pretty good view of Rock and roll through the photographer's perspective. The inclusion of some musicians was a bit questionable but I'll let Amy Winehouse pass just because I'm in a good mood. The Brooklyn Museum's resources must have been limited because I'm sure many more musicians could have been included in the show. Despite this you get a very well rounded picture of rock and roll. I was helpful that the curator divided up the show into separate categories of pictures like "crowds" or "performances" showing how a photographer and a musician would have to adapt to different situations. The photography was all great; capturing timeless moments that would have slipped away from our memory had it not been for the photographer. It's definitely worth a trip to Brooklyn to go see this exhibit especially if you are a fan of music. I would have given this show five stars. You see, the show is on the 5th floor and its the only exhibit on the floor, so I was expecting a huge show. The show is pretty big for Gallery standards, but not for museum standards. What is taking up the rest of the floor you may ask? Nothing but a HUGE gift shop with posters, studs, earrings, and other rock and roll paraphernalia. It was very disappointing to come out of a refreshing show and then get bombarded with "BUY, BUY, BUY" I'm used to a small gift section after a show, but this gift show was the same size as the show itself, if not bigger! So just be prepared when you are finishing up for a five minute walk through a crowded gift shop. One redeeming factor was that right as you come out of the show there is a little room with magazines that you can cut up with scissors and glue together an album cover. A little sill though because it was filled with 25-30 year olds giggling with excitement like a preschool arts and crafts class. Like I said before, The photography is really good, just don't expect to become enlightened or anything like that. There are some other great exhibits at the Brooklyn Museum right now so you should still make that trip!

Press release of the Brooklyn Museum exhibit: Who Shot Rock & Roll:

October 30, 2009–January 31, 2010
Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 5th Floor
Who Shot Rock & Roll is the first major museum exhibition on rock and roll to put photographers in the foreground, acknowledging their creative and collaborative role in the history of rock music. From its earliest days, rock and roll was captured in photographs that personalized, and frequently eroticized, the musicians, creating a visual identity for the genre. The photographers were handmaidens to the rock-and-roll revolution, and their images communicate the social and cultural transformations that rock has fostered since the1950s. The exhibition is in six sections: rare and revealing images taken behind the scenes; tender snapshots of young musicians at the beginnings of their careers; exhilarating photographs of live performances that display the energy, passion, style, and sex appeal of the band on stage; powerful images of the crowds and fans that are often evocative of historic paintings; portraits revealing the soul and creativity, rather than the surface and celebrity, of the musicians; and conceptual images and album covers highlighting the collaborative efforts between the image makers and the musicians.

Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present is organized by the Brooklyn Museum with guest curator Gail Buckland.

ERNEST RUBENSTEIN GALLERY -> HOPE LIVES: Artists of the Lower East Side group show

2009-11-06T18:36:00.010-05:00

"Five Stars""★★★★★"

Review of HOPE LIVES: Artists of the Lower East Side, group show:

This was a wonderful and engaging show exhibiting twelve artists who have lived in the Lower East Side for many years. When you first walk in you are greeted by a group of wonderfully organic wood sculptures cleverly crafted from old tree Branches and twigs that were then woven into a meaningful narrative. After this lovely greeting you are taken though a great and diverse set of work ranging from architectural photos to Vampire anatomy drawings to woven quilts to abstract gold leaf pieces. Despite the enormous variety in the show everything came together both visually and emotionally. Overall you leave the show with a very satisfied creative stomach after witnessing such solid and grounded work. I could really tell this show was not about making political statements, about bringing to light a controversial subject or about exposing some injustice. This show was about artists who are fulfilling the creative void that exists in the world and about doing the kind of art that is fulfilling instead of selling out. I highly recommend this art show!

Artists: Kuki Gomez. Deborah Holcombe, William Holton, Katherine Jackson, Tim Lomas, Jill London, Tim Milk, Paul Nowell, chev d'orange, John Pavlou, Suchitra Van and April Vollmer.

Press release of HOPE LIVES: Artists of the Lower East Side, group show:

EXHIBIT:HOPE LIVES: Artists of the Lower East Side
Curated by chev d'orange
Exhibition dates: November 5 to December 17, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 5, 6-8pm

Artists in the exhibit: Kuki Gomez. Deborah Holcombe, William Holton, Katherine Jackson, Tim Lomas, Jill London, Tim Milk, Paul Nowell, chev d'orange, John Pavlou, Suchitra Van and April Vollmer. Curated by chev d'orange

Hope Lives at The Ernest Rubenstein Gallery features artwork by artists who are long time residents of the Lower East Side. These artists have weathered the economic and social changes of the neighborhood. They have chosen to stay in this culturally and historically rich neighborhood while others have moved on to more popular “art neighborhoods” like Soho and Williamsburg. In conjunction with the exhibit, there will be special events including gallery talks and a special visit to the artists’ studios. The exhibition and opening reception are free and open to the public. This exhibit is made possible, in part, with funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. The Website

Claire Oliver -> Beth Cavener Stichter: On Tender Hooks

2009-10-24T20:14:00.007-04:00

"Five Stars" "★★★★★"
On Tender Hooks Press Release (PDF)

Review of Claire Oliver -> Beth Cavener Stichter: On Tender Hooks Art show:

This show was spot on! Wonderfully skilled artist Beth Cavener Sticher really stole my night's attention. Her sculpture is not plaster but actually hollowed out clay which shows her extream attention to detail. Aside from the OOOhs and AAAhs of her craftsmenship is her subject matter. A starving rabit or two gay goats and some equally charged sculptures "On Tender Hooks" is a wonderful confrontation of large issues that plaugh our would today. Its always a relife when an artist doesn't present the matter in a pretentious higher than thou manner, but instead takes the more subtle route. That's exactaly what Stichter does and then takes it to anouther level by not only documenting issues that go on forgotten but she recontextulizes them into a creative bizare yet powerful way. The artists emotion is ratiating from the peices, i mean how could it not if you spend so many hours and days working stroke by stroke on a peice of art. I highly recomend heading over to the Claire Oliver Gallery for a look! Even though there aren't many peices its still worth the trip!

Claire Oliver -> Beth Cavener Stichter: On Tender Hooks website

Jenkins Johnson Gallery -> Rene Lynch: Behind the Garden Gate

2009-10-24T19:33:00.006-04:00

"Three Stars" "★★★"

Review of Jenkins Johnson Gallery -> Rene Lynch: Behind the Garden Gate:

Very nice. The Internet pics are enough for me...I'm not a fan of the whole coming of age/ loss of innocence theme. Nice show! Boring subject unless you are into this type of thing. The Paintings do set up a nice atmosphere. Some of the models were at the show. *whispers* The paintings make them look better than they do in real life. *end whisper*

Jenkins Johnson Gallery -> Rene Lynch: Behind the Garden Gate website

Cavin-Morris Gallery ->Lidia Syroka & Tim Rowan: Nomadic Bodies & Stone Ridge Alchemy

2009-10-24T19:25:00.010-04:00

"★★★"

Review of Cavin-Morris Gallery ->Lidia Syroka & Tim Rowan: Nomadic Bodies & Stone Ridge Alchemy:

This show was confusing for me. The art was well crafted and had a great amount of depth and certainly accomplished it's purpose. But, (there's always a but) some how the pieces seemed commercial like maybe you could find the same stuff in a home furnishings store in Tribeca.I just couldn't shake this feeling like the artists created the sculptures and paintings with the intent on selling for income. I'm probably wrong about that, but you'll have to see for yourself. Maybe I've seen similarly themed work appear in so many "bohemian" garden magazines and on the walls of "raw" "artistic" lofts that I've become so jaded and brainwashed so that when somebody who lives on the upper east side says "I designed my house, its so bohemian" I just think of the kind of art work that is in this show. That's not to discredit the work. They way it was displayed in the gallery was also odd considering the gallery's "L" shape. Visit at your own risk or if you want some great art for your roof garden.

Press Release for Cavin-Morris Gallery ->Lidia Syroka & Tim Rowan: Nomadic Bodies & Stone Ridge Alchemy

Cavin-Morris Gallery is pleased to present the work of two artists: Lidia Syroka and Tim Rowan, who create in two vastly different mediums, but who are consummately joined at the soul. Lidia Syroka's drawings shown on the walls and Tim Rowan’s subtly monumental ceramic sculptures are displayed on the floor of the gallery.

Their subjects could not be more disparate. Syroka is out in the world as an artist wandering nomadic Asia; her drawings, as opposed to her previous mixed media weavings of paper and pigment, use the body as a highly aestheticized, and therefore a ritualized vehicle of growth and decay. The structure is spiritual and thus decay manifests as transformation. Her black ink and walnut stain drawings on hand-made Nepalese paper create stark scenarios of bio-organic 'transmutation' as the artist calls it, a sort of visual alchemy. The body’s structure receives the restless permutations of the souls meanderings.

Born in Poland in 1956 Syroka moved to Paris at age 25, and began collecting Art Brut. She traveled to Mongolia, Siberia, India, Pakistan and Nepal, Tibet and China. The intense visual and cultural impact of these travels gave her an implicit permission to explore common chords in her own work.

Tim Rowan embraces the nexus points of Home, Place, and the skeleton Earth itself. Though he studied with iconoclastic ceramic Master Ryuichi Kakurizaki in Japan, his use of clay still reflects a combination of Japanese respect for technique and his own presentation of clay as the alchemical bones of Place. If you visit Rowan's studio you will walk on the stone strewn grounds and soon realize that the differentiation between the sculptures he has placed all over the land and the natural formations offered up by the dark leaves piled ground itself have blurred.

The earth is also a body and decays. Clay and earth are the means to larger sculptural statement for Rowan. For this exhibition of mostly new pieces we chose from the broad spectrum he explored in firings this past summer, range from small to massive.

Both artists dissect inner and outer environments and tease the edges of what holds the earth and body together. Deconstruction helps realize a grander reconstruction. It is a human obsession to take the world apart and put it together again. These two powerful artists are no exception.

For further information please contact Shari Cavin, Randall Morris, or Mariko Tanaka at 212-226-3786, e: Blugriot@aol.com.Cavin-Morris Gallery ->Lidia Syroka & Tim Rowan: Nomadic Bodies & Stone Ridge Alchemy website

Mary Ryan Gallery -> Yvonne Jacquette: The Complete Woodcuts: 1987-2009

2009-10-24T19:16:00.010-04:00

"One Star"★"
DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE(PDF)

Review of Mary Ryan Gallery - Yvonne Jacquette: The Complete Woodcuts: 1987-2009:

This art show was a perfect example of how the use of wood in your art can have the complete opposite affect that the Megumi Nagai art show had. (which I reviewed yesterday) Yvonne Jacquette's employment of wood cuts transferred absolutely no emotion onto the paper. it looks like some of the prints were even mass produced as tourist post card. I was bored. Sorry not much to say about this one. The online pics have more life than the originals.

See the on line art Gallery for Mary Ryan Gallery -> Yvonne Jacquette: The Complete Woodcuts: 1987-2009

Susan Inglett Gallery -> Hope Gangloff: Solo Art Show

2009-10-24T18:58:00.007-04:00

"Two Stars" "★★"

Review of Susan Inglett Gallery - Hope Gangloff: Solo Art Show:

The paintings were great technically and Inglett's style was on point and uniform through out but the purpose of the work was way too self serving for me. The whole process of painting her subjects did not do anything to enhance them. Inglett might as well have taken a photograph and added some fancy filters in photo-shop and she would have gotten the same impact in her work. I feel like if Ignlett applied herself to a subject for a specific reason instead of casually then I think the out come would be wonderful. Just because somebody is a good painter doesn't mean they are a good artist. To expand on that idea, just because a painting looks good doesn't mean it should hang in a gallery. Art that has a message and purpose that can stand the test of time is what deserves exposure. The paintings looked like over-sized snapshots of somebody who sees something interesting to them and then uses their camera phone to upload it into their myspace. That's not to say I do not praise the time that it took for Inglett to paint these works and they are probably extremely meaning full to her and her group of friends, and that's the problem there is no broad application of this work. It feels like its not serious. The Internet photo's are just fine instead of going to the gallery.

Press Release for Susan Inglett Gallery - Hope Gangloff: Solo Art Show:

HOPE GANGLOFF
22 October - 25 November 2009

Susan Inglett Gallery is pleased to present the work of Hope Gangloff in her third solo exhibition with the gallery from 22 October to 25 November 2009. Concurrently, Gallery II will feature new work by Gavin Anderson. A reception for the artists will be held Thursday evening, 22 October from 6 to 8 PM.

Hope Gangloff is a collector of moments, moods, objects, and patterns. Primarily portraits of her friends, Gangloff’s work glamourizes the mundane with a signature style. She describes her role among friends as observer, documenting daily activities, exchanges, and reflections. Objects and patterns that she finds visually compelling also figure into her compositions, rendered with the precision of a master draftsperson. Through this body of work, Gangloff offers a tantalizing glimpse into the lives of others—her fragmented narratives leave the viewer longing to know more.

After her first solo exhibition at Susan Inglett Gallery in 2006, Hope Gangloff went on to have solo exhibitions in Los Angeles and Rome, in addition to participating in group exhibitions at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, The Art Center of South Florida, and with Susan Inglett Gallery at the 2009 Armory Show. She is a graduate of Cooper Union.

Susan Inglett Gallery is also pleased to present the work of Gavin Anderson in Gallery II. Most recently shown at Kidd Yellin in the summer of 2009, Anderson’s light-filled canvases are dreamlike meditations on collective experience.

The exhibition will be on view at the gallery located 522 West 24 Street Tuesday to Saturday 10 AM to 6 PM. For additional information please contact Susan Inglett Gallery at 212/647-9111, fax 212/647 9333 or info@inglettgallery.com.
Susan Inglett Gallery website

Lehmann Maupin -> Teresita Fernandez: Solo Art Show

2009-10-24T18:49:00.011-04:00

(this is not the actual installation pic, at the gallery theres some impressive additions to the walls)

"Five Stars" "★★★★★"

Review of Lehmann Maupin - Teresita Fernandez: Solo Art Show:

Sculpture at its best! I think this is the third great review I'm writing this week. Don't be fooled There are some less than amazing shows I went to I just didn't write the reviews yet. That said the show at Lehmann Maupin Gallery was wonderfully put together. The space, the art, and the feeling, the emotion, the craziness! (OK maybe I'm getting carried away) Honestly though for me this show was like an epic short film with a wonderful still movement to it. The absolute coolest think was that everything was made of graphite! I never knew the stuff inside a pencil could be so impressive. Fernandez has produced something elemental and raw as f she dipped her hand into the earths core and pulled out one of her thoughts. Set in the sparsely renovated Lehmann Maupin Gallery, the space compliments the work in a setting of plausible post WWIII setting. You should set some extra time in your tour to let this art show seep into your consciousness for a lovely exploratory journey. I enjoyed this Chelsea art show the most out of my tour on October 22nd. Must see!

Press Release forLehmann Maupin - Teresita Fernandez: Solo Art Show:

Lehmann Maupin is pleased to present a group of new works by Teresita Fernández for her fourth exhibition at the gallery's Chelsea location. Made entirely of graphite, the works in the exhibition establish a unique and unconventional vocabulary with the material itself. Referring to Borrowdale, England where graphite was first discovered and mined in the early 1500s, Fernández pushes the boundaries of this once sought-after and coveted material. Reimagining the graphite landscape of Borrowdale, her works reflect elements of sculpture and installation and redefine the notion of precisely what constitutes a drawing.

In Drawn Waters (Borrowdale), precision-machined, polished panels of graphite and massive fragments of the raw, mined material are assembled to create a large-scale sculpture of an undulating, dissolving waterfall. Alluding to Leonardo da Vinci's studies of moving water as well as to Robert Smithson's land pours, Fernández turns the idea of a drawing into tangible form, making a solid sculpture that is in effect a three-dimensional gestural graphite drawing, a line dragged through the gallery space. For Fernández, to assemble the sculpture is to engage in the act of drawing.

In her Nocturnal Series, Fernández creates works that are at once landscape painting, conventional drawing and sculptural relief. From afar these suggest dark, monochrome minimalist paintings. As viewers approach, the works slowly reveal detailed and lustrous romantic landscapes. Like a drawing over a drawing, the graphite--carved, polished, layered and drawn on--reflects light to depict luminous night scenes of oddly familiar but mysteriously displaced sites. In Passaic Pour Fernández again nods to Smithson; the iconic Great Falls of Passaic are reinvented as a grand nocturnal scene of an immense pour.

The surrounding white walls of the gallery become the ground for pieces such as Epic. Made of swarms of tens of thousands of small pieces of graphite attached to the wall, the lustrous, gem-like pieces cast what appear to be shadows that are actually soft graphite marks drawn directly on the wall. Object and process morph to become both the act of drawing and the finished mark, verb and noun. The entire dynamic composition recalls sweeping atmospheric clouds, grand natural phenomena or epic meteor events.

Teresita Fernández was born in 1968 in Miami, Florida and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions internationally and abroad at sites including the New Museum of Contemporary, New York; the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malaga, Spain; the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia; Site Santa Fe, New Mexico, Castello di Rivoli, Torino, Italy; the Witte de With in Rotterdam; and the Miami Art Museum, Florida. Fernández has completed numerous public commissions including one at the Louis Vuitton Maison in San Francisco, California and another at the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park, where her work Seattle Cloud Cover allows visitors to walk through a covered skyway while viewing the city's skyline through tiny holes in multicolored glass.

In January 2009, The Blanton Museum of Art unveiled Stacked Waters, a site-specific installation created for the cavernous entrance of the museum. Her new permanent commission Blind Blue Landscape opened in September 2009 at the renowned Benesse Art Site in Naoshima, Japan. Also completed in September 2009 is Starfield, a large-scale commission for the new state-of-the-art Dallas Cowboys Stadium. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards both in the U.S. and abroad, including the 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 1999 Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award. Her work is included in numerous major private collections as well as the permanent collections of the St. Louis Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, the Miami Art Museum, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Sammlung Goetz in Munich, Germany and the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York. A solo exhibition of new and older works recently on view at the Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida, will travel to the Blanton Museum of Art in Texas opening 1 November 2009. The exhibition will travel on to the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art in 2010. A new monograph edited by David Louis Norr with essays by Dave Hickey, Anne Stringfield and Gregory Volk published by JRP Ringier and the USF Contemporary Art Museum accompanies the exhibition. In early 2010, Fernández will begin a residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute.

For more information please visit our website, www.LehmannMaupin.com, or contact the gallery at 212 255 2923 or Bethanie@LehmannMaupin.com. Teresita Fernandez: Solo Art Show website

Ziehersmith Gallery -> Stephane Calais: Flowers for America art show

2009-10-23T20:21:00.000-04:00

"Four Stars" "★★★★"

Online art Gallery of Ziehersmith Gallery -> Stephane Calais: Flowers for America

Review of Ziehersmith Gallery -> Stephane Calais: Flowers for America art show:

This art show has tons of different types of work in it, even plants! It was almost four separate installations in one. In this sense it was a roller coaster ride! Very complex stuff here guys. I didn't get enough time at the show to really figure it all out. I definitely saw the juxtaposition of the portraits next to the flowers and that was enough for me. I felt like the show was a success because the artist really took into consideration of alot of different facts in the layout display and construction of the show. The one thing that didn't fit was the title "flowers for America."
I saw the floral aspect of the show, but I didn't see the America part. I was a shame because maybe that was why I had a hard time figuring the show out and ultimately took away from my viewing experience.

Press release for Ziehersmith Gallery -> Stephane Calais: Flowers for America art show:

Composites both practical and conceptual are at the center of the Stéphane Calais’s process in his second exhibition with ZieherSmith Flowers for America. The installation features paintings and sculpture as well as the artist’s own multifaceted approach to drawing.

In Pleiades, Calais morphs by superimposition eight watercolor drawings of “famous” men from three centuries into a sequence of eighteen pulsing, frenetic silkscreen portraits. Hanging in a formidable grid, their antique stateliness is, in fact, a mockery of identity and power, each sitter’s visage illegible; crumpled into seven others like last week’s news. These apparitions also question traditions in portraiture drawn by hand, considered by some today as almost quaint. The individual value of each precedent artist’s work and the sitter themselves are equally dismissed and enhanced, each silkscreen acting as a reverse palimpsest. This process could be seen as a critique or demystification, an understanding of tradition as cumulative, or as sheer delight in the capabilities of having everything at once.

In a series of sculptures Calais calls Ornaments, crimes and delights, macramé plant hangers filled with basketballs, feathers and plastic leaves hang from the ceiling like storks delivering Calais’s creative spawn. These collages of found and repurposed materials embrace lowly, crafty supplies and employ a symbolic, embroidered veil for the toy at the center of a multi-billion dollar industry. Undaunted by the decorative, Calais also approaches the ornamental with exuberant floral still lifes executed in tondi form and collectively titled Flowers for America. Not your typical flora, these abeyant blooms appear to smoke cigarettes, implode and spontaneously combust at once. They float on backdrops of dueling color amalgamations, blurred as though seen through a prism, laid over with vectors of saturated color. .

Calais turns away from handy categorizations, urging “It’s better to be incomprehensible,” embracing aspects of a playful, absurdist tradition. Here he translates into French e.e. cummings’s lines “since the thing perhaps is/to eat flowers and not to be afraid.” The text piece acts as an anchor to the installation, as the wall drawing continues in a splatter of black paint on a length of white carpeting that buckles and heaves along the floor, extending the long poem of his perpetual creative evolution. Recognition tends to drift from painting to painting, sculpture to sculpture. Soon plants become portraits, ready-mades turn organic, and the printed page becomes a graffito wall in which poem begets drawing that morphs into the sculpture of the very ground beneath us.

Stéphane Calais was a finalist for the 2008 Marcel Duchamp prize and has exhibited widely at an international list of galleries and museums. In 2009, he has also had solo exhibitions at the Ashdod Art Museum, Israel and, in Paris, at Galerie des Multiples and at Espace Claude Berri.

Onishi gallery -> Megumi Nagai: Face

2009-10-23T15:08:00.009-04:00

"Five Stars" "★★★★★"

Review for Onishi gallery -> Megumi Nagai: Face solo exhibit:

Really, Really, Really Good! Just like it says in the press release, Nagai's works come alive using wood pieces as a canvas for her intricate colorful etchings. Aside from the technically interesting process of Nagai's work, there is a deeply emotional as well as symbolic message embedded within the art. Nagai's launching point for her style of old feudal Japanese artwork is obvious but it doesn't over power the work with traditionalism, instead it enhances the beautiful aesthetics and also the dreamy surrealism surrounding her subjects. The images are so fantastic and full of narration that they seep into the back of your mind and stick there vines creeping up an old stone garden wall. Displayed in a less intimate setting the work may have been less impactful due to their small and concise scale, but since the Onishi gallery is small and extremely cute I was drawn into the work even more. These pieces would be a perfect compliment to a small studio apartment or artsy bathroom or den Or any room with moderately low ceilings. Surprisingly affordable for such a great caliber of work I think Nagai under values her creative process and could easily raise her pricing tenfold (but I'm not sure how well she is recognized in the art world.) This would be a great show for any body who likes great art! Must see these in person, their power don't get conveyed over the Internet.

Press Release for Onishi gallery -> Megumi Nagai: Face solo exhibit:

Megumi Nagai
FACE
October 22 – November 14, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 22, 6 – 8 pm

Onishi Gallery is proud to present Megumi Nagai in FACE, a solo exhibition, featuring a series of new pieces that focus on vivid depictions of faces. Each piece incorporates facial imagery to illustrate shifting outward appearances and what they reveal about inner realities. Megumi has created powerful, exquisitely-detailed, ultra-realistic, yet infinitely surreal pieces. Strongly inspired by the natural world and the naturalistic art of Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Katsushika Hokusai, each of Megumi’s finely articulated renderings has the power to captivate and transport the viewer into a self-contained universe full of life.

Through this show, Megumi seeks to provide each member of her audience with a unique viewing experience. By looking at the works from different angles, the viewer should become aware that “faces are fluid, and depending on one's perspective, they will reveal different aspects of the work." Megumi concentrated on the face in particular because she felt it was a strong symbol of the facets of ourselves that we show to the world and the different ways in which the world interprets what we choose to reveal and hide.

Specifically in her “Paradise” series (I, II, III, and IV), Megumi has depicted her own versions of heavenly environments. Through her incorporation of facial imagery in these pieces, she reveals both a connection and a dichotomy between previous pieces that used subtly similar imagery to depict visions of hell and the underworld.

As in previous years, Megumi works in oil paint and mixed media on multiple types of wood. She possesses a deep respect for wood as a medium, believing that “Wood contains spirit; it is alive, an element.” Her style and technique change according to the wood she uses, varying based on texture, grain, color, and the irregularities that make each piece unique. In doing so, she combines ancient Japanese artistic traditions dating from before the Heian period (c. 794-1185) with Western techniques to express her own singular vision of the world. As Elizabeth Sackler, President of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, explains about Megumi, “Her artistic process is reminiscent of the great surrealists…What does result, again and again, are artworks of unusual beauty and power.”

Megumi was born in 1951 in Japan. She received her degree in 1975 from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and was chosen in 2008 by NHK Japan Broadcasting Corporation for inclusion in a book featuring select graduates of the university. Her work has shown in numerous exhibitions in New York and Tokyo and has been selected for inclusion in several competitions. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.Onishi gallery website

Ramis Barquet Chelsea Gallery-> Rashaad Newsome: Standards solo exhibit

2009-10-23T14:46:00.008-04:00

"Five Stars" "★★★★★"

Review of Ramis Barquet Chelsea Gallery-> Rashaad Newsome: Standards solo exhibit:

Rashaad Newsome is just a fantastic artist who is producing fine and well thought out work that is socially and politically relevant. The press release offers some wonderful insight to the deeper meaning of Newsome's work. Both the art and the video definitely accomplished what they set out to do. And like a cherry on the top of a sundae, there was a killer coat of arms in the back room of the gallery through a set of silver (or possibly platinum) gates which changed the common usage of the gallery space from an exhibit place into a mysterious landscape in which you are a guest and you should feel privileged to get access. The symbolic magnitude of this show is way to echoing and far reaching for me to cover in this short review. The general feel for the show is not about emotion or even trying to evoke any kind of reaction. It was educational and a clear personal formulation of idea's. I was impressed that it didn't come across at in an arrogant or posh manner but instead the work was well grounded in the real world. I just realized this review is really vague...so to cut my confusing rambling short: I liked the show and I think you will too.

Press release of Ramis Barquet Chelsea Gallery-> Rashaad Newsome: Standards solo exhibit:

Rashaad Newsome: Standards
October 22 – November 25, 2009

Reception: Thursday October 22nd from 6–8pm

Ramis Barquet Gallery is pleased to present Standards, Rashaad Newsome’s first solo exhibition. The show will feature new collage, sculpture and video.

Newsome’s work examines the visual language of power and status, juxtaposing high and low references to challenge received notions of social protocol and hierarchy. In his own words: “My works dismantle power structures, one shiny block at a time.” Sampling heavily from hip-hop and Pop culture, Newsome selects and appropriates a disparate array of visual components, restructuring them into recognizable statements and symbols. In so doing, he challenges established ideas of cultural ownership, and illustrates an acutely contemporary understanding of the way socially specific signifiers convey meaning.

In his collages, Newsome creates powerful status symbols using pieces of cut paper taken from discarded music magazines and auction catalogues. Skillfully appropriating the historical language of blazoning, Newsome acts as the herald of a new generation of fictional armigers, drawn from the world of hip-hop and black youth culture. Gold chain, chrome rims and video girls replace lions, unicorns and coronets; Newsome fashions the coats-of-arms of a bling-centric culture, elevating “ghetto” imagery to the highest status level.

This same language is present in The Conductor (Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi) and The Conductor (Primo Vere, Omnia Sol Temperat), the first and second parts of an ambitious 6 part video installation that sets Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana against a video montage of expressive hand gestures, extracted from popular rap videos, and a musical background of hip-hop beats. As Orff’s iconic oratorio opens with O Fortuna, a closely edited sequence of bejewelled gestures appears to conduct the music.

Rashaad Newsome was born in New Orleans, Louisiana where he received a B.A. in Art History at Tulane University before studying Film at Film Video Arts in New York City. Newsome has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including; The Kitchen, NY; The Project Gallery, NY; Fondation Cartier, Paris; The Veletrzni Palace, Prague; and K.U.E.L., Berlin. Recent Commissions, awards and lectures include: “Shade Compositions 2009” (LMCC Downtown Dinner), 7 World Trade Center, NY; 2009 BAC Community Arts Regrant; 2009 Harvestworks Van Lier Grant; 2009 Summer/Fall Artist in Residence Program, Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, NY; 2009/2010 Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program, Brooklyn; 2008/2009 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Artist Residency Program, NY; 2009 BAC Community Arts Regrant, Brooklyn, and New Music Greats, New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY; Rema Hort Mann Foundation Visual Arts Grant, New York, NY.

For more information or images contact Ana Vallejo at avallejo@ramisbarquet.com.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10-6 PM.

______________

Artist Statement — Rashaad Newsome

My works dismantle power structures one shiny block at a time. Using the equalizing force of sampling, I craft compositions that frequently surprise in their associative potential and walk the tightrope between identity politics and abstraction. I draw heavily from Hip-Hop and Pop culture in general as the base units for these amalgams, referencing music videos and such cultural icons as “Bling” jewelry, Vogueing and “Ghetto” expressions. All of the touchpoints of my work exist in a relative system that depends on recognition and context to establish power - the language of hip hop culture is often very self-referential. In all of the work cross-cultural parallels abound. Using various media I pick apart power structures and recombine them, eliciting emotional and visceral responses that can be universally recognized and felt.

Collage/Sculpture:
My work in collages and sculptures arose from my study of 14TH to 19TH century European architecture, and specifically the use of ornamental coats of arms. During my study, I observed that Heraldry is essentially a way of creating an image by combining different symbols that represented social, economic and warrior status. I applied this discipline of creating heraldic images to the hip hop community – first determining what would be their representative social, economic and warrior related symbols. Using symbols from popular black youth culture I began recreating historical heraldic images.

Video:
“The Conductor (Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi)” and The Conductor (Primo Vere, Omnia sol temperat) are the first and second part of a 6 part video installation. Both digital video loops are made up of footage from various hip-hop videos. All the footage is digitally enhanced and re-edited to track the motion of the hands of the artists. The audio is a composite of sounds consistently heard in the music of artist and producers deemed Hip
Hop music greats from a survey conducted with local New York radio stations Hot 97 and 105.1 These sounds are then weaved in and out of Carl Orff’s “Carmina
Burana”. The seeming fluidity of the image belies the painstaking nature of the production process: over 5000 individual video frames have been enlarged and repositioned to create the moving image.

Rashaad NewsomeArt Show website

Winston Wachter Fine Art Inc -> Andreas Kocks:Current Events

2009-10-23T14:36:00.010-04:00

"Three Stars" "★★★"

Review of Winston Wacher Fine Art Inc-> Andreas Kocks:Current Events:

The Winston Wachter Gallery was not on my agenda Thursday night when I started my weekly gallery tour of Chelsea, but as always there were some more galleries that I didn't know about that had their doors open with a huge crowd of socialites doing what they do best (socializing). When I walked in I was greeted with a huge peice of graphite covered paper on the gallery wall cut out into an intiguing design. The whole galler was covered in graphite paper feathers and splaters and goo and blood. The title "Current Events" made tied the whole art show together. Kocks made full use of the Winston Wachter's interesting roomy layout and was a sucsess! The only thing thatwas lacking was a deeper emotional conection with the viewer which wasn't comunicated through the work. This coulb be that the work was an not an emotional reaction to the work but rather a conceptual one leaving a tad sense of being forced. The show was still sucessful and I would love to have Kocks set up some work in my condo! (I would be soooo cool!)Gotta see this one. NOTE: The pic above is not from the exhibit.

Press release of Winston Wacher Fine Art Inc-> Andreas Kocks:Current Events:

Winston Wächter Fine Art is pleased to announce its first solo show entitled Current Events with German sculptor Andreas Kocks (born 1960, Oberhausen, Germany). Kocks’ work focuses on the integration of fine art and architecture. His favorite medium is heavy watercolor paper. By cutting into it and installing multiple layers on the site, he transforms the “contained architectural box” into a territorial surface. The entire gallery feels physically activated as he redefines existing boundaries. The walls of the architecture no longer define the space. Instead, Kocks modifies the conventional cube by removing its innate banality and replaces it with an immediate cerebral experience. In a deliberate way Kocks has “tagged” the walls with his papercuts but has also left an implied trace of the viewer’s passive action. Moreover, he invites the viewer to move and change their position thus modifying his or her viewpoint.

Kocks' cut and carved paperworks impress with their exceptional skill and materialism. Possessing preternatural grace and exquisite surfaces they shimmer, twist and curl, forcing natural light to make subtle shadows over the lines of each bas relief.

The main installation at Winston Wächter Fine Art is entitled Splatter. Here inky graphite splashes spill up the wall and surround the viewer, as if they have been playfully or aggressively thrown from a distance. Thus creating a palpable feeling of energy coursing through the work, perhaps signaling a beginning or an end, a bursting open or a falling apart. Also included in this show are some of Kocks’ smaller scale framed works, which are carved rather than cut. These smaller scale works offer a more intimate, reflective experience and with these Kocks demonstrates his mastery of subtlety and process.

We are delighted to announce that Andreas Kocks will be featured at a concurrent exhibition in New York at the Museum of Art and Design. The show is entitled Slash: Paper Under the Knife and includes approximately 50 international artists. The exhibit will run from October 13, 2009 to April 4, 2010. Slash is curated by MAD’s chief curator, David McFadden.

Andreas Kocks received his MFA from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. His work has been shown in galleries and museums in Europe and in the United States. He received the Pollock-Krasner Grant, New York in 2006/07.

For further information, please contact Amanda Snyder at 212-255-2718.
Andreas Kocks: Current Events art show website

The Reviews Are In! Visited Twelve Gallery Receptions on Oct.15th!

2009-10-18T12:20:00.005-04:00

With some good and bad there are some MUST SEEs in Chelsea

Wow. October the 15Th was a rainy and cold evening, but that didn't stop art aware New Yorkers from flocking to Chelsea for fall gallery openings, free booze and (sometimes) intellectual conversations. After some intense observations, deep feelings, and eye opening realizations (OK I might be dramatizing this a bit) the reviews have been written! Browse through the blog archive of check out the recent posts list on the left sidebar. Then get out to Chelsea, there are some shows that you'll regret missing if you don't make it there before Nov 14Th which is when most of them close. Happy gallery-going!

Gana Art New York -> Shigeru Uchida: Vague Hazy Transparent Wavering

2009-10-16T03:06:00.020-04:00

"Five Stars" "★★★★★"

Review of Vague Hazy Transparent Wavering:

The Gana Art center really out did themselves with this high profile show of Shigeru Uchida. Uchida is one of the designers today with lots of high profile grants and awards who has been producing for over 30 years! This exhibit was incredible and multi-faceted. For one thing, the attendees at this show were much more interesting than the other receptions that evening, some even wearing traditional feudal Japanese outfits. When I walked in I was greeted with somebodies lovely perfume (typically I don't notice perfume) and it was very pleasant. In a way the pleasant sweetness of the perfume foreshadowed the exhibit.

One of the first things you see when you enter is the large wooden trees (pictured above) and there is a small description on the left wall about some traditional Japanese concepts which set the tone of the lens that you will view the rest of the installation with. It's hard to describe the show really, you'll just have to see it for yourself! Any self respecting art connoisseur cannot miss this opportunity to see Uchida's contemporary works! The first floor also had pools of water which were lit from the bottom casting out a mystical wavering light onto the walls. Also littered throughout the show were these little white creature like benches (also above). On the second floor were some intricate shelving designs that looked like they came right out of a photo sequence. In the same room there was watery light projected onto the floor with more white creatures. Overall Uchida really created an amazing atmosphere that captured some of the essence of Japanese culture and also provided a great sense of tranquility with multi layered meaning. This is a MUST MUST MUST MUST SEE! Enjoy the show!

Press Release for Gana Art New York's Shigeru Uchida: Vague Hazy Transparent Wavering show:

New York-- Gana Art New York is proud to present Vague Hazy Transparent Wavering -- a solo exhibition of designs and furniture by Shigeru Uchida, an internationally acclaimed Japanese architect and designer of furniture and interiors. The exhibition will showcase a lighting design inspired by the ever-changing qualities of light titled "Dancing Water." Infinitely variable and diffuse according to time of day, season, and clime, light plays a vital role in the ambience[SIC] of interiors, especially in Japanese homes screened with native shoji paper. Also on display will be a range of unique book-shelves and organic wooden sculptures that reflect Uchida's cool and restrained aesthetic style.

Uchida has been one of the most influential trend setters of design in Japan for over 30 years. He is a pioneer of the simple and serene interiors that have now become the hallmark of Japanese contemporary design. Since the early 1980s, Uchida has continued to build and expand upon his quietly elegant designs. His oeuvre includes homes, public spaces, contemporary tea-ceremony rooms and globally established retail stores.

The signature combination of light, air, restraint and elegance in Uchida's compositions is modern yet firmly rooted in Japanese tradition. Uchida has always been moved by the tension between Eastern and Western cultures, and probes how differing traditions and life patterns -- such as removing shoes and sitting on the floor--directly impact the design of interior fixtures, lighting and furniture. The modest quality and simplicity of Uchida's interiors underscore perhaps the single most important factor in all of his designs – that of quietness.

Uchida's works are included in numerous museum permanent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Uchida has also worked on a wide range of important architectural and urban planning projects as well as a series of comprehensive interiors. His most notable commissions include the WAVE building in the Roppongi section of Tokyo, Japan; boutiques for Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake and ESPIRIT, USA; and the Kobe Fashion Museum, Kobe, Japan.

Sputnik Gallery -> Oleg Videnin: The Journey Home

2009-10-16T02:50:00.017-04:00

"Four Stars" "★★★★"

Review of The Sputnik Gallery's exhibit:

This was a very small reception in a small gallery. This show is not of small importance it is of great importance on so many levels. The show consisted of portraits of people living in rural Russia and the portraits were a small selection from Oleg's first book. These are just great portraits! Even though the selection was of mostly younger children Each portrait is very intriguing and accomplishes what they set out to do. There is a certain closeness that we can see in the photographs that breaks through to the viewer. Aside from the great portrait aspect of this exhibit is the interesting implications of the world a large. They ask questions like "What is Russia?" and things of that sort. The most fascinating thing about the work is that they looked very similar to many American rural portraits especially reminding me of some shots from the great depression and the dust bowl. There could be some very interesting commentary and symbolism going on. Oleg's book is probably really good. I enjoyed the show thoroughly and I recommend it.

Press Release of Oleg's The Journey Home:

Opening Reception and Book Signing with the artist October 15 from 6-8 pm

Videnin's striking portraits allow us to glimpse into the intimate emotions of his regular but extraordinary subjects from the forgotten corners of today's rural Russia. Videnin was recently featured in the NYTimes LENS photography blog, and his "Valentina in White" has been selected to be exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London in connection with the Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize contest.

The opening of "The Journey Home" is timed to coincide with the release of Oleg Videnin's first book titled "Обратный маршрут" ("The Return Route").

DANESE -> Andy Harper: Recent Paintings and Works on Paper

2009-10-16T02:40:00.012-04:00

"Five Stars" "★★★★★"

Review of Andy Haper's recent paintings and works:

The DANESE gallery is super impressive with super tall open ceilings and huge oak exposed rafters and a skylight! Also the gallery has lots of floor space. If you walk into this gallery and there is mediocre or sub-par art on its walls the space will totally overpower it.

This was not the case with Harper's recent paintings! The gallery has a perfect mix of scale and grandeur that complimented Harpers paintings perfectly which were large and extremely detailed. He featured colorful intricate leafy patterns in exquisite detail that covered the whole canvass leaving no empty space or white space. Beautifully reminiscent of royal medieval tapestries, the paintings made a grand and kingly impression. These would be equally fantastic sitting in a museum, or in the lobby of a high end doctors office, or in the den of a Soho condo. This kind of presence for paintings is hard to get in today's art world. My guess is that Harper put so much dedication to detailing his patterns that the time and dedication of the artist somehow got infused into the paintings themselves. (a very new age theory, even for me, but you'll know what I mean when you see them) Fantastic work! Another MUST SEE! You can preview Andy Harper's paintings but you should see the show in person!

Press Release for Any Harper's solo show:

ANDY HARPER
Recent Paintings and Works on Paper

October 16 – November 14, 2009
Opening Reception: October 15, 6-8 pm

Danese is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition of paintings by Andy Harper. The opening reception will be held Thursday, October 15 from 6 to 8pm.

Andy Harper’s paintings enchant and bewitch, drawing viewers into a terrestrial labyrinth – a world subsumed by a web of invented fauna punctuated and relieved by coves of light, and imagery that implies a visual relationship between the substructure of the human anatomy and botanical specimens. Leaves, trees, tendrils stretch across the entirety of the canvas, providing little opportunity for rest and air as nature’s endless tapestry rises to the surface. Interwoven and complex, Harper’s paintings reconsider and employ a broad range of art historical references: Medievalism, the condensed imagery of Breugel and Bosch, the longstanding theme of memento mori, painting of the Victorian era, and England’s tradition of botanical classification.

Rendered with extreme detail and an ineffable sense of both reality and the fantastical, Harper’s works are arenas for discovery and camouflage. The visual lexicon – flashes of light from unidentified sources, the enumerable vegetal forms entwined with limbs of human anatomy, and the wan ivory vertebrae – marks the exuberance of growth as well as its inevitable companion, death and decay. It is a world known and imagined, familiar yet suspenseful, for it is the very progress of life that flourishes before our eyes.

Andy Harper was born in the United Kingdom. He received his BA from Brighton Polytechnic in 1993, a Master’s Degree in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art in 1995, and an additional Master’s Degree in Visual Culture from Middlesex University in 1999. Mr. Harper lives in London and has exhibited extensively throughout Europe. This is his first solo exhibition in the United States.

An online catalogue for this exhibition can be found at www.danese.com. For further information please contact Carol Corey or Alexandra Woodworth at 212/223-2227 or alexandra@danese.com.(from www.danese.com)

Marlborough Chelsea -> Steven Charles: The Upstairs Room

2009-10-16T02:28:00.010-04:00

"Five Stars" "★★★★★"

Press Release(pdf)

Review of Marlborough Chelsea: Steven Charles's The Upstairs Room:

Wow! Open up your eye's for this juicy and amazing show! This was by far the best show I saw on Oct 15th when visiting receptions in Chelsea. The Internet pics definitely do not give Charles credit for the complexities of his work. He uses enamel in all of his work, dipping paining and splattering making some parts of the frame 3D; actually popping out of the canvass. Furthermore, he does not limit himself to the canvas including old shoes and miniature trees in his pieces. There was even an actual pop-up book enameled to the painting in one of the pieces! That's not including the three contemporary monolithic sculptures that were presented. Not only is the enamel layered, so is his works meanings. "The Upstairs Room" really touches on a range of themes from religion to sex! Combine intensely enamel graphics, a plethora of topics, some awesome colors and an old sneaker with some empty cleaning containers and you get whats in "the upstairs room". These works seem to reflect on persons perceptions of the world or rather they reflect that persons reflections of his or her perception of the world and whatever else is on their mind. This show could set a new trend for expressionism with a twist! Each piece has an almost visceral impact on the viewer forcing them to take in these snapshots and depictions due to the totally unique presentations. All of the work has no kind of contrived feeling, but rather its all very natural and organic feeling. I would guess that Charles is a very genuine person in real life (didn't get to meet him unfortunately).

If you go see one show this fall THIS IS IT! MUST SEE!

Marlborough Chelsea -> Red Grooms: Dancing

2009-10-16T02:16:00.012-04:00

"Two Stars""★★"
Press Release (pdf)

Review of Marlborough Chelsea's Red Grooms:Dancing show:

This show was not up to par for me coming from Marlborough. The sculptures were very straight forward, so straight forward in fact that they lost their personality and intimacy. Furthermore the craftsmanship of the pieces didn't lend to the art's overall meaning. The fact that they were made in this way was pointless; they could have been carved out of marble and the meaning would bee the same. Marble would have looked nicer and it would have been more impressive as well as immortalized the subjects, while this cardboard looking construction will crumble the first chance it gets. The show had an additional video installation of some dance groups work from the 80's and 90's that Red Grooms assisted with painting the background. That was interesting even though i looked like it took place on the set of an avant guard Sesame Street. Worth a quick look if you are in passing. The video below is more entertaining....

Doosan Gallery -> Moo Kwon Han: Discoverer

2009-10-16T01:55:00.006-04:00

"Four Stars" "★★★★"
Moo Kwon Han's Bio

Review of Discoverer by Moo Kwon Han:

Doosan Gallery In NYC pretty recenly opened and is geard twords emerging artists. Han is definatly an emerging artist! Deeply philisophical Han's work consists of two video instalations in Discoverer that are very interesting and thought provolking. The reception was crowded with a pretty young crowed that was alive with chattering. The first video features a man who is also the narrator superimposed onto diferent landscapes representing the diferent landscapes of life as well as the varied landscapes of philosophy. Very witty and subtle at the same time discussing serious topics in a very light and casual way. I am looking forward to Han's furture shows! If you are looking for some art that will gain value as time goes on THIS IS IT! both in context of the artist's work and of the social subconsious. I recomend veiwing this exibite especially since you can't see it online.

Lennon Weinberg Inc. -> Group Show: Before Again

2009-10-16T01:41:00.011-04:00

"Four Stars" "★★★★"

Review of Before Again:

Very well attended, this show's reception was a sucess! What a wonderful snap shot at contemporary abstract painting! W see here a very vairied group of work centered perfectly around the theme of abstract! I don't know where to start...all the work was good and relevent to the show. going from painting to painting was like changing the channel from Showtime to HBO to Cinemax etc. you got all of the premium channels and they were all playing something entertaining and engrossing. This is a must see, plan our some extra time to take in each peice since the work is varied. (you have to watch a movie for a few minutes to figuer oout what it's about) I leaft the show with a very full and satisfied pallet of abstract thoughts. I recomend seeing this show!

Press release for Lennon Weinberg Inc.'s Group show called Before Again:

Before Again

Joan Mitchell, Louise Fishman, Harriet Korman, Melissa Meyer, Jill Moser, Denyse Thomasos

October 15 – November 28, 2009

Tuesday-Saturday 10-6
Opening reception Thursday, October 15, 6-8 pm
For additional information, contact Mary Benyo at 212 941 0012, mary@lennonweinberg.com

The six artists in this exhibition have each pursued an individual approach to abstract painting through cycles of development and evolution over many years. They span a range of generations and their works demonstrate areas of common interests within a framework of diverse practices and processes.

Joan Mitchell first earned recognition during the era of Abstract Expressionism. She juxtaposes forceful gesture with atmospheric areas within a dynamic spatial structure. Already evident in her paintings of the 1950s were portents of later works that depart from the historical canon and extend the range of her innovation.

Louise Fishman has created a body of work that emphasizes the physicality of the medium of oil paint and its capacities as a medium of expression. Her paintings achieve a union of substance and application in compositions that harness both grid and gesture.

Harriet Korman is an inquisitive painter who periodically revises the ground rules within which her work is generated. The parameters that determine the end results have come to moderate the role of freehand gesture and advance the organizing elements of plane, shape and color.

Melissa Meyer establishes compartmentalized structures of calligraphic gesture over patchwork blocks of sheer tones. Meyer subordinates the physical properties of oil paint and pushes the medium towards radiant color that achieves the luminosity of watercolor.

Jill Moser’s work is built on a foundation of line and space, its development propelled by an inseparable connection between painting and drawing and a commitment to the performative aspect of mark-making. Her works are simultaneously refined and impure, precise and unpredictable.

Denyse Thomasos challenges the abstract-representational divide and constructs blocky units of space and volume. Oil paint would be too slow for her. Fast-drying acrylic allows her to build layer over layer with controlled spontaneity - revising, repainting and restructuring until the painting finds its unsteady balance.

We have borrowed the title “Before, Again” from a 1985 series of Mitchell paintings for its poetry and temporal connotations. Exhibitions of works by these six painters chart a timeline through the gallery’s history during our two decades in three locations. Within the boundaries of a diverse program that includes sculpture,
video, photography and digital media, the gallery is recognized for its commitment to painters.(quoted from lennonweinberg.com)