SASHA GREY How do you deal with doubt?
MAURIZIO CATTELAN I doubt myself all the time. I consider it a friend of mine. It grounds me and I question myself a lot. In the end, I always go with my gut. I move forward even when I feel like I am skating on thin ice. I have come to find: the thinner the ice, the less I doubt myself.
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David Zwirner presents an exhibition of recent paintings by Mamma Andersson, to be on view at 533 West 19th Street in New York. This will be the artistβs fourth solo show with the gallery. Characterized as a unique combination of textured brushstrokes, loose washes, stark graphic lines, and evocative colors, Mamma Anderssonβs works embody a new genre of landscape painting that recalls late nineteenth-century romanticism while also embracing a contemporary interest in layered, psychological compositions. Her often panoramic scenes draw inspiration from a wide range of archival photographic source materials, filmic imagery, theater sets, and period interiors, as well as the sparse topography of northern Sweden, where she grew up: mountainous backdrops, trees, snow, and wooden cabins are recurrent elements within her works. Yet, rather than conveying specific spatial or temporal reference points, they revolve around the expression of atmospheres and subjective moods and frequently appear to merge the past, the present, and the future. Mamma Andersson "The Lost Paradise" At David Zwirner In New York will be on view until April 11 at David Zwirner in New York. Installation images Courtesy David Zwirner
photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
UTA Artist Space presents Arcmanoro Nilesβ first solo show on the West Coast, titled I Guess By Now Iβm Supposed To Be A Man: Iβm Just Trying To Leave Behind Yesterday.
In the central gallery space, Niles debuts a series of seven large-scale paintings that explore personal journeys at various stages of life. Underscoring how our relationships and experiences shift our attitude over the course of our lifetime, the series opens with a child absorbed in the workings of a model train set and ends with an elderly man in a doctorβs office, hands clasped as he weighs the heavy notion of mortality.
Niles takes us room-by-room through his highly saturated interiors to show figures in states of deep introspection: a young adult is slumped against a bathtub; a couple is in the intimate surroundings of their bedroom; and a middle-aged man contemplatively faces his reflection in a mirror. Some seem aware of our presence and meet our gaze with a challenging stare, while some appear more vulnerable with heads bowed or turned away. Each painting is disrupted by Nilesβs signature βseekersββsmall, outlined creatures representing an impulsive force influencing his charactersβthat break Nilesβs traditional portraiture compositions and add to the otherworldly feel.
Niles additionally presents a series of new small-scale portraits depicting friends and family members, and a number of paintings he has made over the past three years. While his other paintings offer cinematic narratives, often rendered to human scale, these intimate portraits allow a closer examination of his subjects as individuals.
On view until March 14 at UTA Artist Space, 403 Foothill Rd. Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Sam Andersonβs sculptures resemble prototypes, directly expressed and emptied of unnecessary detail that might over-define their meanings. The showβs title implies a potential, singular narrative, yet Anderson privileges a plurality in which no one protagonist drives the plot. Objects and ideas are collected and arranged in spite of their differences in materiality and characterisation.
Sculptures with titles such as βImaginationβ and βOpportunistsβ illustrate these hard to depict concepts. They do not narrativise them, aiming rather to define them visually. The faceless figures strung together in βOpportunistsβ move backward and forward, both entering and exiting an open door frame. Likewise, the features of the two sandwich-board men, who serve as the emblem for βImaginationβ are so rounded that it is easy to confuse which direction they face. A negotiation takes place between determinate and indeterminate elements. The implication of language paired with minimal gesture creates an evocative psychological space wherein the audience fills in the finer details.
I Never Loved Your Mind will be on view throughout March 7 at Tanya Leighton KurfΓΌrstenstraΓe 156 & 24/25 10785 Berlin. photographs courtesy of the gallery
photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
In Anna Lea Huchtβs What are you doing the rest of your life?, the artistβs interest in material surfaces remains a driving force. Continuing her series of still lifes, she allows us to participate directly in the highly-charged relationship between photography and painting. Her still lifes are only recognizable as paintings upon detailed inspection, so close is their similarity to the photographic originals in black-and-white. Isolated from space and time, objects thus stand in the centre of the pictorial event where, additionally staged with a realistic interplay of light and shade, they shift the focus of the visitor onto the wholly distinctive and particular aesthetics of the world of things.
Alongside her intensive ongoing concern for objects, the artist is exhibiting four watercolors, which, inspired by the same curiosity concerning structures, examine the nature and regularity of fur. The fable-like creatures, whose faces and legs are furry, find themselves positioned opposite and in rich contrast to a watercolor of a hortus conclusus, out of which a dog stares, whose skin is not worked out in detail. In the background, however, the beholder can study the jungle-like plant world of the garden. As so often in Huchtβs oeuvre, we gaze here into a fantasy realm in which the known and the unusual are combined in a willful, idiosyncratic manner.
What are you doing the rest of your life? is on view through March 7 at Meyer Rigger Schaperstrasse 14 10719 Berlin. photographs courtesy of the gallery
Part of the Cluj School, Mircea Suciu (b. 1978) is regarded as one of Romaniaβs leading artists. During his formative years he witnessed the countryβs tumultuous transition after the only violent overthrow of a communist government in the 1989 revolutions. Describing himself as an image creator rather than a traditional painter, Suciu mines and references art history and contemporary imagery, reducing down the elements and adding color-coded symbolism. He has βhis own complex way of making things in which painting, photography, drawing and print all cooperate while playing their individual parts.β
Inspired by his former studies on the restoration of Baroque paintings, Suciu has developed a process he calls βmonoprintingβ. A photographic image is split into a grid of A4 surfaces, each one printed on an acetate sheet, onto which a layer of acrylic paint is applied. The paint acts as a βglueβ that adheres directly to the canvas and once dry, the acetate sheet is peeled off. The result is a transference of the printed image with associated faults and imperfections, which Suciu then 'restores' by re-painting with oil and acrylic paint. Sometimes, as with works in the Disintegration series, he overlays the image multiple times using various colors until he creates a surface that is barely recognizable from the original. As a final stage the whole image is repainted. This multi-layered process creates compositions of reinvented images which allude to history, memory and the eventual dissolution of all things.
Universal Fatigue is on view throughout February 22 at Blain | Southern 547 W 25th St, New York, NY. Courtesy the artist and Blain|Southern. Photo by Cooper Dodd:
Witch Women, the first group show at Thank You For Asking, features 8 female artists and visually embodies the spirit of this unique gallery. The show was born out of a desire for connection and trust among women, to heal wounds from the past, and to rebuild the coven by listening to eternal female intuition. Each artist chosen for this show presents work that has a distinct, vibrant, and empowered feminine energy. Curated by and featuring works from Jade Wolf and Rebecca Holopter, Witch Women also features artists Deedee Cheriel, Nikki McCauley, Amanda Faber, Kim Baise, Samantha Wilson, and Jade-Snow Carroll. Thank You For Asking is the creation of artist Jade Wolf, a new kind of gallery and event space focused on art, spirit, and humor. Beyond featuring artists and creators, this space holds movie screenings, art workshops, and weekly healing classes, including Multi-Dimensional Breathwork, Kundalini Yoga For Creativity, and The Best Experience: A journey through movement, breath, sound, and meditation.
Witch Women will be on view through March 27th at Thank You For Asking 8663 Venice Blvd, LA CA 90034. Call or email for appointments. photographs courtesy of Cynthia Alexandra
Sisson exhibits their sixth body of work, COTTON, divided into two parts, Phase 1 is the first in this series.
Beginning in 2018 with a bag of gossypium (cotton) seeds delivered by mail from their uncle, these seeds sparked a dialogue between the artist and their partner. Those conversations were the catalyst to COTTON.
The body of work in this installment includes paintings, a tapestry, and quilts that the artist learned to make in Mississippi under the mentorship of the Gees Bend masters.
The artist explores the changing shape of slaveryβs influence through a plant, tended to by enslaved millions who built Americaβs superpower economy and shaped its cultural, systemic, and social landscapes.
The plant provided an entry point, through which the artist could develop and explore a personal and direct relationship. Over a year and a half, they grew more than 600 cotton plants on the roof of their home and studio. The remainder of the recently devastated crop are now presented as living sculptures.
SISSΓN: COTTON [Phase 1] is on view throughout February 16, 2020 at Wilhardt & Naud 1667 North Main Street. Los Angeles, CA. photographs by Lani Trock
Peter Hujar and Paul Thek met in 1956. Until Hujar's death, the two artists remained close friends - a strong connection on both a spiritual and artistic level, which influenced the artistic work of both artists.
The life and art of Peter Hujar (1934-1987) are closely connected to New York. He moved in the intellectual environment of avant-garde dance, music, art and drag performances. Originally coming from the field of commercial photography, Hujar became more interested in depicting real life from the early 1970s onwards and from then on photographed people, animals and plants, still life, landscape and city, with the portrait taking a central place in his work.
Paul Thek (1933-1988) was an American sculptor and painter. Besides the sculptures and installations for which he is best known, he also created paintings and drawings. In the early 1960s Thek travelled to Europe, where he created extraordinary environments that were shown in important international exhibitions. In them, elements from the fields of art, literature, theatre and religion were intertwined, broadening the concept of work at the time and questioning the perception of art and life.
The group exhibition will be on view throughout March 14, 2020 at Mai 36 Galerie Raemistrasse 37, Zurich, CH. photographs courtesy of the gallery
Acceleration is accelerating. We are faster, stronger, better. We are digital. We are artificial. We are intelligent. We donβt have enough space but we have enough experience. We are connected, we are loud, we are confident. We have all the info we need. We have time. We manipulate time. We know the past, we know the future. We are the future, but somehow, we canβt even predict the weather. If the world has become wretched and damaged, if humanity is futile, βhow shall we dress for the occasion?β
This exhibition, featuring artists Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Deniz Tortum, Kathryn Hamilton and PΔ±nar YoldaΕ, considers our obsession with future scenarios and how we try to make sense of personal mortality, technological progress and environmental collapse, simultaneously. Are we experiencing the βend of the futureβ or the βend of historyβ? How do we fight the accelerated passage of time? Why do we take measures to undo the effects of time? How does it feel to worry not only about our personal time but how much time the generations to come will have on earth? How do we think about the relationship between value and time, when there is an expiration date to humanityβs existence on earth? How shall we dress for the occasion? invites the audience to contemplate our multiple, contradictory experiences of time.
How shall we dress for the occasion is on view throughout March 22, 2020 at 601Artspace 88 Eldridge St. New York, NY. photographs courtesy of Etienne Frossard
The common-sense theory of language is that it says what it means. Or that it means what it says. Perhaps thereβs a difference; perhaps not. Put simply, it comprises statements that are either true or false, and questions that help ascertain whether statements are true or false. Because truth, in the end, is what language is supposed to be about. The learned-sense theory of language is that it is a social construction, it changes according to who you are, with whom you are conversing and according to all the experiences they have accumulated, it changes through history, it changes with geography, it changes according to context. These days, everyone knows that language is a very slippery thing. Thatβs what happens when you try to express an infinity of ideas with a limited set of symbols. On one level, Vaughn Spannβs art explores much of the same territory, no more so than in his current exhibition, The Heat Lets us Know Weβre Alive.
The Heat Lets us Know Weβre Alive will be on view throughout February 22, 2020 at Almine Rech 39 East 78th Street, 2nd Floor New York, NY. photographs courtesy of Almine Rech
Rouyβs approach to the body and his overall pursuit of painting is one of contradiction, harmony, and perpetual transformation, criss-crossing gender, form, and disposition. His work is a fever dream of amorphous and fluid embodiments depicting rhapsodic portraits of 21st century desire that is continuously refilled with physical dissonance, mystery and secrecy, ecstasy and turmoil.
Each work is liberated from established ways of being and becoming which examine the essence and meaning of encounters, drawing equally from the here-and-now, the internet and the machine, as well as more primordial expression and classical demands of color and form. The human figure has always preoccupied artists; its story dominates the history of art. In its imagination and in its image-making, we find clues as to how artists have engaged with the political and socio-cultural conditions and sentiments of their moment. Now we are in a time of renewed and committed interests in figurative painting, Rouy uses the figure as a multi-sided prism to examine and interrogate the contemporary crucibles of gender, fiction and technology.
Maelstrom will be on view throughout February 14, 2020 at Peres Projects Karl-Marx-Alle 82, Berlin, Germany. photographs courtesy of the gallery
An All Colored Cast is an exploration of color theory, popular culture, the development of Pop Art, Color Field painting, Minimalism, and the Hollywood film industry. In this new body of work, Thomas examines the portrayals of gender, race, and identity through the lens of film, performance, and color motion pictures.
Using color theory and screen color calibration charts as an aesthetic starting point, Thomas re-examines the language surrounding βcolor correctionβ and βwhite balanceβ in order to demonstrate the charged language of color, particularly around the time of desegregation and the proliferation of Technicolor in America.
An all Colored Cast is on view throughout March 7, 2020 at Kayne Griffin Corcoran 1201 S La Brea Ave. Los Angeles, CA. photographs courtesy of the gallery
The Optimates presents three distinct scenes: a person stands at a podium; a man, seen from behind, speaks to someone unknown; and a group of men huddle in conversation at a window. The works are large in scale; some exceed life-size. All are made with charcoal, graphite and pigment on paper. Two are mounted on panels, and the other is presented loose, pinned to the wall.
Baker crops her images to draw attention to specific details. It isnβt immediately apparent in every work who the subject is, but signifiers indicate the immense power the subject wields. They wear dark suits and crisp white shirts, and several are pictured in richly adorned rooms. These are the people, we are meant to intuit, who possess wealth, class, and authority. They are also, clearly, all middle-aged or older white men, and Baker provides just enough context clues to suggest that they are either the focus of attention, or the ones cutting the back room deal. The exhibition title is a further nod to their status; the Optimates in ancient Rome were conservatives who favored rule by oligarchy and opposed immigration and assistance for the urban poor.
The Optimates will be on view throughout February 22 at Cristin Tierney 219 Bowery, Floor 2 New York, NY. photographs courtesy of the gallery
The first comprehensive survey in the United States of drawings and works on paper by the Los Angelesβbased artist Paul McCarthy (b. 1945, Salt Lake City), Paul McCarthy: Head Space, Drawings 1963β2019, reveals a rarely examined aspect of the artistβs oeuvre. Produced in thematic cycles, McCarthyβs drawings share the same visual language as the artistβs sculptural and performance works, addressing themes of violence, humor, death, sex, and politics, and featuring extensive art historical and pop-cultural references. By presenting his expansive career of more than five decades through the focused lens of drawing, the exhibition offers a greater understanding of this influential artist and social commentator.
Paul McCarthy: Head Space, Drawings 1963β2019 features 600 works on paper selected from McCarthyβs archive. The works incorporate and utilize a variety of mediums, including charcoal, graphite, ink, marker, and collage, as well as more unorthodox materials such as ketchup and peanut butter. A consummate and accomplished draftsperson, McCarthy approaches his daily drawing practice as a way of thinkingβa blueprint for projects and a tool to flesh out complex ideas. Since the 1970s, McCarthy has also incorporated drawing into his performances, implementing it as part of an action and often drawing in character. In recent years, this practice of drawing in character has become central to his large-scale video performance projects, such as WS White Snow (2012β13), CSSC Coach Stage Stage Coach (2017), and NV Night Vater (2019β). In a process McCarthy terms βLife Drawing, Drawing Sessionsβ the artist and his actors produce drawings in costume among the props and simulacrum of his film sets. These works bring together the materials and crude gestures that have been present in the artistβs work for the greater part of his career.
Paul McCarthy: Head Space, Drawings 1963β2019 will be on view throughout May 10, 2020 at The Hammer Museum 10899 Wilshire Boulevard Los Angeles, CA. photographs courtesy of the gallery
