The Yellow Light at 6pm @ Galerie Max Hetzler

Left to right: Günther Förg, Vivian Suter
Installation view: Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, 23 June – 19 August 2023
Courtesy the artists and Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris | London, Photo: def image 

Galerie Max Hetzler explodes into colorful, ethereal questioning with a group show featuring work by Darren Almond, Georg Baselitz, Glenn Brown, André Butzer, Sarah Crowner, Carroll Dunham, Hedwig Eberle, Ida Ekblad, Günther Förg, Katharina Grosse, Alex Israel, Melike Kara, Alex Katz, Friedrich Kunath, Beth Letain, Jake Longstreth, Tal R, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, David Schutter, Sean Scully, Ben Sledsens, Mònica Subidé, Vivian Suter, Liliane Tomasko, Tursic & Mille, Rinus Van de Velde, Grace Weaver, Emma Webster, and Toby Ziegler.

Despite Cézanne’s insistence that the world, with all its strangeness, only becomes present, comprehensible and recognizable in images, the onset of modernity initiated a disappearance of nature and landscape in the course of a rational logic of progress. Matisse, Munch or Klee were already only able to preserve them in pictorial form. With 30 individual views on landscape and nature, the group exhibition das gelbe Licht 6 Uhr nachmittags (the yellow light at 6pm) maps out the hazy mosaic of a frail present: whether as a melancholic reminiscence of man-made devastation, a stoic contemplation of the fragile fabric of everyday life or a daring invention of an uncertain future yet to come.

The work is largely without people. Yet, as the exhibition title, a line of poetry by the late Rolf Dieter Brinkmann suggests, we, looking and empathizing, are ourselves the missing human reference. For the question of how we want to fit into the world arises again and again.

the yellow light at 6pm (das gelbe Licht 6 Uhr nachmittags) is on view until August 19th at Galerie Max Hetzler, Bleibtreustraße 45, 10623 Berlin

Alex Israel At the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino

Alex Israel lives and works in Los Angeles, where he was born in 1982. Deeply entwined with his home town, Israel’s art explores the iconography of L.A. and Hollywood, and the cult of celebrity. It posits L.A. as central to an understanding of American culture and the American dream. The exhibition ”Alex Israel at The Huntington” places 16 of Israel’s paintings and sculptures, as well as two site-specific murals, among the works in the historic Huntington Art Gallery, which once served as the residence of Gilded Age collectors Henry and Arabella Huntington and, since 1928, as the gallery for a celebrated European art collection. Intended to spark a dialogue between the new and the old, this intervention of Israel’s work within the Gallery creates a discourse on place and identity, two things fundamental to understanding Henry Huntington’s own love of Southern California, a region whose identity he helped to forge. Alex Israel at The Huntington will be on view until July 11, 2016 at the The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, 151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA

10 Must See Art Shows Around The World That You Really, Really Need To Check Out

1. Consumption, sexuality, violence, voyeurism, discomfort, guilt, loss of control, and fantasy at Paul McCarthy’s exhibition at Schinkel Pavillon – on view until November 22 in Berlin, Germany 2. Brad Phillip’s erotic Honeymoon Rehearsal at Rod Bianco opening on November 20 in Oslo, Norway 3. See Niki de Saint Phalle’s psychedelic world at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan – on view until December 14 4. Alex Israel’s cool, cool world at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas 5. See the late Dash Snow’s posthumous retrospective at the Brant Foundation in Greenwich, Connecticut 6. Misha Hollenbach and Cali Thornhill Dewitt team up for Hot Fire in Milan, Italy 7. Pablo Picasso’s sculptures are on view at The Museum of Modern Art In New York City, New York 8. The Avant-Garde Won’t Give Up at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles, California 9. Josh Jefferson is putting his Head Into The Trees at Gallery 16, opening on November 13, in San Francisco, California 10. Gilbert & George’s subversive banners will be on view at White Cube starting on November 25 in London, Englan

Sightings: Alex Israel @ The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas

For his Sightings exhibition at the Nasher, Israel presents new sculptures and paintings, some related to his first feature length film, SPF-18, currently in production. The work explores the genre of the teen surfing movie, using visual and narrative conventions common to the after-school special, a series of made-for-TV movies for adolescents. Israel's installation combines new sculptural objects derived from Hollywood movies, his own and others', with self-portraits incorporating classic images of Southern California to create a quasi-narrative installation within the gallery. Israel has also made an intervention in the Nasher Collection Gallery upstairs, placing sky and decorative backdrops among the works. "Sightings: Alex Israel" will be on view until January 31, 2016 at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas. photographs by Ouitney Lorin

Alex Israel Emits Summertime Vibes in His Second Solo Exhibition at Galerie Almine Rech in Paris

For his second solo exhibition at Galerie Almine Rech in Paris, Alex Israel presents a series of recent works, entitled "Lenses," which are essentially large scale renditions of sunglass lenses that look as if they have been removed from the frame and propped against the wall. It is a nod to the easy breezy lifestyle of Los Angeles - a city that the artist romanticizes through multiple conceptualizations and mediums that range from sculpture to set backdrops to self portraiture to found objects and even a talk show. The show, entitled "As It Lays," features the artist in dark sunglasses asking off the cuff questions to the likes of Bret Easton Ellis, Larry Flynt, Vidal Sassoon, Rosanna Arquette and more - all against a backdrop of canvases painted with bright shades of orange in a depiction of a California in the throes of a permanent Summer sunset.  In fact, the "Lenses" in this exhibition are the same color as some of the backdrop paintings, for which Israel is known, that are also included in this presentation. You will also be able to find a miniaturized prop car - a Chevy Corvette - parked next to a tiny cactus; set against the fire orange backdrop painting, it gives the sense that you are riding off into the sunset in a classic Hollywood movie. Alex Israel "Summer" will be on view until July 27, 2015 at Galerie Almine Rech in Paris.

Alex Israel First Solo Show in Italy

Peres Project, Il Giardino dei Lauri and Citta' della Pieve are present Alex Israel's first solo show in Italy, at the Museo Civico Diocesano di S. Maria dei Servi in Citta' della Pieve (PG), Umbria until October 1st, 2012. Continuing with Property, an ongoing body-of-work, Israel has rented his newest prop sculptures from the legendary Italian film studio Cinecittà. He selected an array of replica Styrofoam and fiberglass antiquities and objects, iconic and anonymous, drawn from an amalgam of cultures, eras, and narratives, and composed them in dialogue with each other and with the unique venue.