ART NEWS:May 03

The first solo exhibition of Joel Morrison the Netherlands is on presentation at Reflex Gallery in Amsterdam. High and low, street and science, the future and the present. All these ideas suggested and explored in his work. But Morrison isn’t forcing the point, he invites the viewer to draw their own conclusion, to enjoy the work on whichever level they land at. Just as Morrison explores concepts of high and low art, his own production methods contain that same dichotomy. Morrison came to the idea of stainless steel out of a fascination with a certain ‘60s west coast movement Light and Space,  and wanted to explore the idea of reflective surfaces in his work. The beautiful, highly polished reflective surfaces of his work, constantly reabsorbing and refracting their surroundings are, as he puts it “far from monochrome. These are paintings that are always changing – appropriately for our ADD, time-poor world”. Info: Reflex Gallery, Weteringschans 79 A, Amsterdam, Duration: 6/5-11/7/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, https://reflexamsterdam.com

Slater B. Bradley in the occasion of the 57th Venice Biennale presents “Sundoor at World’s End”. Since 2015, Bradley has created a body of framed abstract paintings he calls “Solar Shields”. Using a gold marker, the artist covers each shield with tens of thousands of marks, line by line, thereby imbuing his energy into the shield. The paint of the marker forges with the photographic image that forms the ground of each work. The root images function as visual recordings sourced from journeys focusing on the metaphysics of spiritual ascension undertaken by the artist. Hidden completely by the artist’s hand or left partially uncovered revealing location fragments and compositional details, the shields transmute into an etheric gold energy field, evoking electromagnetic waves, spiritual waters and inner auric light. Info: Curators: Alessandro Possati and Don Gianmatteo Caputo, Chiesa della Maddalena, Venice, Duration: 11/5-25/11/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 10:00-18:00, http://zueccaprojects.com

Fresh and funny, in harmony with contemporary cultural codes, Monica Kim Garza’s paintings, in the exhibition “Rock the boat”, worship the feminine body, sensual, warm and undulating. Stemming from her own image and cultural heritage (Mexican/Korean), Monica Kim Garza creates work that celebrates the female form and various interactions within the world. Painting and sculpting women, primarily in the nude, Monica draws from her own memories and cultural artifacts, often placing her dark skinned full bodied models in contemporary situations. The characters are at play in a variety of reoccurring scenes based on the artist’s own memories and fantasy of the mundane and minuscule aspects of life she finds interesting and relatable. Info: Lily Robert, 3 rue des Haudriettes, Paris, Duration: 12/5-17/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.lilyrobert.com

To coincide with the 57th Venice Biennale, the Palazzo Grimani Museum is staging “Evocative Surfaces”, an exhibition by Beverly Barkat. It features site-specific installations of large-scale paintings created especially for the spaces of the palazzo. Barkat has created a site-specific installation in response to the interior architecture and the natural light that floods the space. It features 12 monumental paintings on semi-transparent PVC sheets, hung near the windows and suspended from the wooden beams of the ceiling to the floor. The sheets are painted on both sides and present an overlay of images that combine to recall the pastoral landscapes of the palazzo interiors. The dual painting surface evokes ideas of transparency, mirroring and fluidity that engage with the Venetian context and create a contemplative space. Info: Curator: Sally Haftel Naveh, Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Ramo Grimani, Venice, Duration: 13/5-26/11/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.evocativesurfaces.com

In the exhibition “Substance and Shadow” are on presentation Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures and their Photographs by Peter Lindbergh. In 2016, Lindbergh was invited to photograph bronzes and plasters by Giacometti held in the collection of the Kunsthaus Zurich, that is the largest and most important collection of Giacometti works in a museum, including one hundred and fifty sculptures, as well as key paintings and drawings. Giacometti’s work presents an unprecedented visual discourse on the figure and its relation to space. His highly distinctive entities, molded in plaster or cast in bronze, charge the spatial voids that surround them. Lindbergh’s potent black-and-white photographs assiduously capture the mood and texture of Giacometti’s sculptures. In images of single sculptures and assembled groups, Lindbergh positions Giacometti’s works as both subject and object. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 6-24 Britannia Street, London, Duration: 19/5-22/7/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.gagosian.com

“Family Friendly” is Eirik Sæther’s first institutional solo exhibition in Scandinavia is on presentation at Unge Kunstneres Samfund. Sæther’s practice is a constant negotiation, creating thick layers of collaged material catalyzed by the different sociolects and visual realms he encounters. To be family friendly is a benevolent marker. Yet in a corporate culture, it is a double bind since it also shows a cynical motif: selling the product, i.e. hijacking the family for commercial employment and tuning the cultural output to its spectators by censoring away the world’s horrors. Toying with these layers, a central element in Sæther’s exhibition is a series of elevated platforms displaying baby-doll casts that recall the 1988 horror movie “Child’s Play” in which a doll breaks out of its amicable role. Info: Unge Kunstneres Samfund, Kunstnernes Hus, Wergelandsveien 17, Oslo, Duration: 19/5-18/6/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 12:00-16:00, www.uks.no

Tatsuo Kawaguchi’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles is entitled “Early Work 1964-1975”. In 1965, Kawaguchi established himself as a key figure in the postwar Japanese Avant-Garde by co-founding Group “i”, a collective that sought to eliminate emotion and subjectivity from their work in favor of an “impersonal,” cerebral art. In his early paintings (1964-65), Kawaguchi relies on rigid systems and a vocabulary of largely-geometric shapes to activate the intellect rather than simply appeal to the senses. Each of the works in the “Interrelation: series (1967-69) consists of a network of brightly colored vinyl wires snaking between Plexiglas-covered nodes on a rectangular wooden frame. To Kawaguchi, a single colored wire can be thought of as a single human life, allowing us to chart how each person relates to others—as well as how the larger, abstract entity we call a society relates to its individual members. Info: Kayne Griffin Corcoran, 1201 South La Brea Ave, Los Angeles, Duration 19/5-8/7/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.kaynegriffincorcoran.com

“99 Cents or Less” is a major group exhibition of 99 artists based in the United States, this exhibition addresses Detroit’s ongoing economic crisis and its 2013 bankruptcy, the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in the history of the United States. Four years after a federal judge approved Detroit’s bankruptcy-exit plan the city’s financial present and future are still in flux. This exhibition is a reflection on the realities of a city that was once one of the country’s wealthiest and most diverse. Speaking to Detroit’s place as a global industrial powerhouse by using materials from 99 cent stores, the exhibition hopes to make the connection between past, present, and future centers of production, and point to ways that artists can address how mass production has changed and will continue to change and evolve. As the consumer’s relationship with their everyday items has changed, so has the application and approach that artists take when incorporating these items in their work. Info: Curator: Jens Hoffmann, Assistant Curator: Scott Campbell, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), 4454 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Duration: 19/5-6/8/17, Days & Hours: Wed & Sat-Sun 11:00-17:00, Thu-Fri 11:00-20:00, http://mocadetroit.org

Karishma D’Souza belongs to the new generation of Indian artists. In the work of D’Souza, memories of places, stories and people are containers of a psychological world. Drawn from the anchor of lived experiences, the paintings are places of acknowledgement of the dignity of journeys, of stitched together personal realities. In her solo exhibition “Ancestors” she paints in a simple and poetic way intertwining what she has seen and experienced. As a designer she embeds stories in her paintings, revealing their scenes and what they evoke.Slightly surrealist, they are almost like a comic strip of her life. She draws her inspiration from poemsthat cross time and from Mughaland Pahari miniatures where she finds the joy of lifeand the peace that animates it. Info: Xippas Gallery, 108, rue Vieille du Temple, Paris, Duration: 20/5-29/7/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-13:00 & 14:00-19:00, Sat 10:00-19:00, www.xippas.com

From the Cubist Avant-Garde to his commitment to communism, Fernand Léger’s painting remains associated with a vision of humanity transfigured by the machine and mass production. The retrospective “Beauty is everywhere” sheds new light on the manner in which the artist reinvents painting by opening himself up to the other arts. Without ever ceasing to be a painter, Fernand Léger contributes to realms as varied as book illustration, theatre sets, mural painting, experimental cinema and photomontage. Organised on a territory which bears the marks of its industrial past, the exhibition represents one of the great events of the 40th anniversary of the Centre Pompidou. It serves as a reminder of the convergence between the artist’s humanist ideas and the founding missions of the establishment: an openness to creation in all its forms, the ambition for an art for everybody and the desire to fully reconcile the modern and the popular. Info: Curator: Ariane Coulondre, Centre Pompidou-Metz, 1 Parvis des Droits de l’Homme, Metz, Duration: 20/5-30/10/17, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Thu 10:00-18:00, Fri-Sun 10:00-19:00, www.centrepompidou-metz.fr

“UNPACKING” is the inaugural exhibition of The Maurice and Paul Marciano Art Foundation draws from the Foundation’s Collection of over 1,500 artworks, bringing together an international, multigenerational roster of artists who are among contemporary art’s leading creative and critical voices. Two underlying thematic threads lead the viewer: one focusing on works that emphasize the process of their creation and another to the artists’ archaeological impulses. The abundance of process-based works connects the artists in the collection to an artistic legacy that characterized much of the art of the late ‘60s, while the archaeological impetuses point to a prevailing tendency by artists to operate in an investigative mode, mining complex ideas of the artwork’s site and temporality. Info: Curator: Philipp Kaiser, The Marciano Collection, 4357 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, Duration: 25/5-24/12/17, Days & Hours: Thu-Fri 11:00-17:00, Sat 10:00-18:00, https://marcianoartfoundation.org

20 photographs of natural subjects taken in Rome and Gaeta between 1985 and 2008, and a bronze sculpture by Cy Twombly,  are on exhibition in Athens. From his days as a student at Black Mountain College during the early ‘50s until his death in 2011 at the age of 83, Twombly captured his daily life in photographs. He recorded the verdant landscapes of Virginia and the coasts of Italy; close-up details of ancient buildings and sculptures; studio interiors; and still lifes of objects and flowers. Beginning in the early ‘90s, Twombly used specialized copiers to enlarge his Polaroid images on matte paper, resulting in subtle distortions that approximate the timeless qualities of his paintings and sculptures with their historical and literary allusions. Recalling the Pictorialism of photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz, the expressive nature of Twombly’s prints transcends the mechanical aspects of the medium. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 3 Merlin Street, Athens, Duration: 25/5-29/7/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-15:00, www.gagosian.com