Tag: Mike Weiss Gallery
Sofi Zezmer
SOFI ZEZMER @ Mike Weiss Gallery
Stefanie Gutheil
Mike Weiss Gallery presents Kopftheater, a new exhibition of paintings by Berlin based artist Stefanie Gutheil. This is the artist’s first exhibition in New York and at Mike Weiss Gallery. Stefanie’s bold, multi-dimensional paintings are tactile depictions of her own life. The patterns of unexpected fabrics and aluminum foil adhere to the oils, acrylics and spray paint applied to the surface and come together to form scenes from the artist’s excessive imagination, both playful and grotesque. Her paintings provide the cast and set for her own kopf theater, or theatre of the mind.
Born and raised in a small conservative town in southwest Germany, Stefanie moved to Berlin ten years ago and since that time has witnessed the growth of Berlin’s contemporary art scene; an international mish-mash of artists converging on the city after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her monsters and creatures, both miniature and giant, are gross caricatures of the people in her daily life; artists, musicians, dancers, poets and revelers in the city of Berlin. Tucked into the center of the city’s nightlife pocket, the scene around the artist’s studio provides the visual fodder for what becomes her larger than life imagery.
Influences from the chaotic and cramped compositions of Bosch and Brueghel are evident. In Berg I and Berg II, a massive heap of excrement and bodies rises up from the marred landscape of skulls and stumps; pyramid shaped in subtle homage to Brueghel’s The Tower of Babel. Mostly dirt colored in appearance; the landscapes are punctuated by flecks of silvery aluminum foil and hints of glitter and cheeky floral fabrics. In Kopftheater, for which the exhibition is titled, a Boschian landscape of monsters and gnarled animals peek and crawl out of the angular cave-like structures, one losing its eye in a cinematic projectile thrust from its socket.
The applications of materials to the canvas denote object and action. Sticky, dripped acrylic froths from the mouths of radioactive dogs; globs of oil, shot like bullets at the canvas, spew vomit from the mouths of behemoth monsters; stark geometric, bright floral or swirling blue textiles glued flat and then painted on top of indicate plant life, sea and sky or rooted structure. The diverse stylistic processes used on each painting’s surface bond the chaos within the imagery. Through their variety, they are united, much like the characters in Stefanie’s own life that inspired these scenes.
Stefanie Gutheil lives and works in Berlin, Germany. The artist received her Masters of Art and Bachelors of Art at the Universität der Künste, Berlin. She has exhibited previously throughout Germany and Europe and this is her first exhibition in New York.
Maya Gold, Wake @ Mike Weiss Gallery
Mike Weiss Gallery is excited to present 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.
Maya Gold / Untitled, 2009 / Oil on canvas / 55 x 94 inches / MG-020
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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.
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Maya Gold / Untitled (detail), 2009 / Oil on canvas / 55 x 94 inches / MG-020
Maya Gold / Untitled, 2009 / Oil on canvas / 58 x 69 inches / MG-029
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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.
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Maya Gold / SOS, 2009 / Oil on canvas / 59 x 79 inches / MG-026
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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.
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Maya Gold / SOS (detail), 2009 / Oil on canvas / 59 x 79 inches / MG-026
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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.
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Yigal Ozeri
Desire for Anima – Yigal Ozeri
Opening Thursday September 10, 2009, 6 – 8pm
September 10 – October 24, 2009
Mike Weiss Gallery presents Desire for Anima, an exhibition of new oil paintings on paper by Israeli artist Yigal Ozeri. His paintings of young women are unusual for their uncanny realism and psychologically engaging presence. This is achieved by Ozeri’s using both still photography and video in their initial stages, and painting the final works with thousands of tiny brushstrokes which animate the paintings’ surfaces.
This series of paintings explores portraits of young women, either standing together nude in dense grass fields, or posed alone, often wearing a pink diaphanous and lace gown. Many appear like film still, caught, unawares, unselfconsciously laughing, or moving through the lush backgrounds. Others gaze directly at the viewer in a somewhat challenging and unsettling manner. In some, all that is visible are fragments of the girls’ body – faces, limbs, richly textured garments. In every painting, Ozeri captures the vulnerability of the girl’s bodies, at the transitional age between youth and maturity. For the artist, the results of his paintings express his feminine “anima”, Carl Jung’s concept of the essential woman. This psychological presence is the hidden essence of his work.
Ozeri begins his process for these paintings by bringing a photographic crew to verdant landscapes in which he places the young women within the final composition in order to get precisely the results he is seeking. After choosing among the resulting images, he takes these and begins the painting process. The results are cinematic portraits of almost photographic realism. Their carefully staged, conceptual installations reflect the high-definition realism that today pervades media including television and movies; while their almost invisible brushstrokes, in the manner of traditional tromp l’oeil painting, play on concepts of perception and illusion.
Yigal Ozeri has exhibited extensively throughout Israel, Europe and the United States, and his work can be found in many prominent collections, including Albertina Museum, Vienna; Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Westchester; Kennedy Center for the Arts, Washington DC; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; Nerman Museum, Kansas City; Scheringa Museum of Realist Art, Netherlands; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; and The Jewish Museum, New York. The artist lives and works in New York City.