ART NEWS: Jan.01

“Ambient Jukebox & Other Stories” is an exhibition of new work by multidisciplinary artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Atmospheric, dreamlike, and theatrical, the duo’s work often explores how sound affects perception. In “Cosmic Disco”, tiny points of light reflected from altered mirrorballs fill a darkened room to create the illusion of slowly moving galaxies, accompanied by a soundtrack drawn from recordings of planets and moons made by NASA’s Voyager I and II. The piece immerses viewers in illusory reflections and otherworldly sounds, encouraging contemplation of the universe and humans’ place in it. A range of more intimate works populate the third gallery. Combining paintings, found materials, soundtracks, and audio musings, these works explore the ways in which narrative, music, and sound influence the viewer’s interpretation of visual elements. Playful sculptural collages, made in part from studio scraps left over from earlier works, are inspired by constructivist ideas. In one, a collage made from rough wooden shapes, pieces of torn paper, and a tuft of blonde hair spins on a round pedestal as speakers play a hypnotic soundtrack of layered voices. Other works juxtapose moody oil paintings with fragments of found text, exploring the power of words even when inaudible.  Info: Fraenkel Gallery, 49 Geary Street, 4th Floor, San Francisco, CA, USA Duration: 11/1-9/3/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:30-17:30, Sat 11:00-17:00, https://fraenkelgallery.com/

Bennett Miller in his first solo exhibition in California presents new images produced using a DALL•E image generator. With these works, Miller continues to link the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) with the history of the photographic image, posing questions around the contingent and enigmatic nature of perception. The results are imbued with a melancholic aura that manifests from the experience of loss and the inexorable passage of time. With their sepia tones and grainy textures, the prints intimate a liminal state of a world in flux. Their subjects, whether figures gazing outward or landscapes bearing silent witness to time’s passage, are quietly surreal, their distinct ambiguity and ethereal qualities resisting reasoned interpretation. A central image of the exhibition is that of a Melvillean whale whose body rests on a theatrical stage, an anonymous figure in silhouette standing before it. The scenario evokes a jarring dislocation from the natural order and the disquieting application of human intelligence and ingenuity. Info: Gagosian, 456 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, CA, USA, Duration: 11/1-10/2/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:30, https://gagosian.com/

The group exhibition “Wonderland” unites works by Guimi You, Hyun Nahm, Ken Gun Min, and Mie Yim—four Korean-born artists based in the United States or Korea. The show takes its title from Lewis Carroll’s novel “Alice in Wonderland, which describes a fantastic “wonderland” of anthropomorphic creatures. Inspired by the tale, Wonderland synthesizes work by artists of diverse ages, genders, and regions who, in their own distinctive ways, depict imagined contemporary landscapes. In doing so, the artists explore universal questions about what an ideal world might look like. In the exhibition painting and sculpture unfold in brilliant compositions, gesturing towards a futuristic utopia saturated with vivid color. The works on view are deeply invested in nostalgic reminiscence, drawing viewers into contact with intangible memory—something forgotten and vanished that one longs to remember. Transcending temporal and spatial boundaries, Wonderland evokes the mysterious and familiar at once. Across the exhibition, artworks both converge and conflict in a non-verbal collision. The works on view encompass diverse narratives of diasporic experience, gesturing towards a universal discourse beyond the region of Korea. The exhibitions’ unique dialogue also explores the boundaries between the visual languages of figuration and abstraction, experiments with new materials, and questions established artistic tradition. Together, the artists in Wonderland pursue the utopian and dystopian possibilities offered by their material and conceptual collisions. Info: Curator: Tae Um, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 213, Itaewon-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, South Korea, Duration: 11/1-24/2/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com/

Astrid Klein, one of Germany’s most distinguished conceptual artists, has played a crucial role as a European counterpart to the American Pictures Generation since the late 1970s and is considered a female pioneer of large-scale photography. Astrid Klein’s first solo exhibition in New York, focuses on two historical bodies of work: early “photoworks” (1979) alongside canvases from her “White Paintings” (1988–93) that together showcase the core ideas of her alluring and complex oeuvre. Entering the gallery, visitors encounter well-known faces: the glamorous women of 1960s and 1970s French New Wave and Italian cinema. Klein has detached them from their original context in film and mass media and merged them into new pictorial worlds by overlaying them with text fragments, adhesive tape elements, and pen markings. The process results in photographed collages, so-called photoworks, all shown for the first time in the USA. A striking example is “Untitled (je ne parle pas, …)” (1979), featuring two depictions of Brigitte Bardot. One faces the viewers frontally, while the other twists around, casting a coquettish glance over her right shoulder. This bodily torsion creates a sculptural, multi-perspectival quality and emphasizes the curvy female attributes, while the inner rotation presents the figure as a dynamic and autonomous entity. Info: Sprüth Magers Gallery, 22 East 80th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 13/1-24/2/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://spruethmagers.com/

In “New works”, his upcoming exhibition in Paris, Richard Deacon presents sculptures and drawings from three groups of works, each characterised by the distinct use of a different material, spanning glazed ceramic, stainless steel and pencil on synthetic vellum. The artist’s work is invariably marked by his experiments with diverse materials and his deep-rooted interest in their specific consistencies and qualities. He remains faithful to the principles of craftsmanship that have driven his practice since the beginning of his career and constitute an integral part of his aesthetic. Among his most recent works are a group of sculptures in ceramic, a medium Deacon has been associated with for over 20 years. Marked by their shiny, glass-smooth finish, these works are entitled “Made of This”, after the 1983 Eurythmics song, as the artist explains, because ‘they are rather succulent as objects. A lot of the ceramics I’ve made haven’t been quite so delicious, so sweet.’ The polygonal shapes are accentuated by prominently colored rims, some of which have been rendered in contrasting hues. The final effect of the glazed surfaces is only revealed after the firing process, introducing an element of chance to his practice, otherwise usually governed by control. Info: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, 7 Rue Debelleyme, Paris, France, Duration: 13/1-24/2/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, https://ropac.net/

In his essay “Lines: a brief history” (2016), the anthropologist Tim Ingold groups lines into two categories: threads and traces. He also maintains that modernity has emphasized the straight line to the detriment of gesture. However, when our attention shifts to the period that follows (“contemporary” or “post-modern”) his concern may be questioned. The threads and traces remain, but lines also call upon gesture, even when they are straight. We also note that artists, whether abstract or figurative, focus in particular on the “limits” of the demarcation, physical or conceptual. What happens when we alter the boundaries drawn, twisting them, making them go beyond the frame, discontinuing them? When the surface disappears in favor of the line? The works of the eight artists presented in the exhibition “A line is not a border” are inhabited by these questions. Their aesthetic proposals differ but they use the line and the notions it covers to open new fields of perception, instead of circumscribing them. Participating Artists: Marco Maggi, Matthew Porter, Philippe Ramette, Kevin Rouillard, Lucas Samaras, Michael Scott, James Siena, Takis. Info: Xippas Gallery, 108 Rue Vieille du Temple, 75003 Paris, France, Duration: 13/1-24/2/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.xippas.com/

In a new exhibition, titled “A Crack in My Cosmic Egg” centering around the impossible drawings in Sébastien Léon’s book “Psychodessins” (Hat & Beard Press), Léon combines the long work of his inner travels with physical manifestations of the insights he discovered—is still discovering—in the realm of the psyche. In an expansive suite of mixed media works on paper, Léon has been channeling the automatic drawing process popular among André Masson and other Paris Surrealists. These works embody the energy of waking dreams, organic color washes spread like waves as energetic ink drawing teases out emergent figures and images from the archetypes of the collective subconscious, and the inner truth of the artist. Serpents, mountains, stars, musical notations, elements of nature and architecture, scenes from childhood, text in many alphabets, faces, angels and demons, body parts, animals, vehicles, planets, water—so much water, rivers and lakes, seas and rain, warm showers and salty tears—and through it all the motif of a single man in silhouette, always on the move. The elusive balance between flow, instinct, and control that animates these remarkable works feels like an allegory for existence itself. And like a studied Jungian, Léon is keenly aware that in these drawings the recurring characters all represent himself, all his own contradictory aspects and the inter-dimensional observers with whom we all share space in our minds. Info: Praz-Delavallade Gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Duration: 13/1-15/2/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.praz-delavallade.com/

Passionate about old master and modern art from a very young age, Sophie Kuijken aims to develop a body of work that is personal, far removed from imitation. After studying painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Ghent (K.A.S.K.) in 1988, the artist spent twenty years isolated in her studio, painting, locked away from prying eyes. This radical approach was accompanied by a complete break with the art world, exhibitions, newspapers and magazines that could influence her work as an artist. Her solo exhibition brings together a selection of never-before-seen oil paintings and drawings on plaster, most of which are shown to the public for the first time. The works on display are a continuation of the artist’s research on portraiture, testifying to her fascination with faces and gazes. A persistent mystery clings to the depicted figures, who look at once foreign and familiar, even though it is quite impossible for us to have come across them before. The portraits are chimeras, constructed from multiple photographic fragments. In an ultra-contemporary approach to painting and drawing, the artist groups together, cuts and superimposes images of legs, eyes, fingers and accessories she gleans from the internet. Info: Galerie Nathalie Obadia, 3 rue du Cloître Saint-Merri, Paris, France, Duration: 20/1-26/3/2024, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.nathalieobadia.com/