Bob and Roberta Smith | Art U Need Book Launch


Bob and Roberta Smith, Hales Gallery, Commissions East and Black Dog Publishing and would like to invite you to the launch of Bob and Roberta Smith’s new book Art U Need; My Part in the Public Art Revolution.

At 7.30pm there will be a reading by Bob and Roberta Smith from his new book and he will reveal the truth behind his incredible proposal for Trafalgar Square currently on show at the National Portrait Gallery.

This event will coincide with Jane Wilbraham’s solo show Ignoble Rot and the First Thursdays timeout event at Hales Gallery.

The book features: Lucy Harrison, Andrea Mason, Milika Muritu, Hayley Newman, Jane Wilbraham.

Tuesday 5 September 2006
“I am live on-air with a journalist. He says, “Art U Need? How much is it costing?” I tell him it’s going to cost at least the price of two kidney machines. He says “Wouldn’t the money be better spent on a kidney machine?” I tell him in the past kidney machines used to be really interesting looking, with all sorts of pipes and taps, but these days they are just a big white box that bleeps. Anyway, they would still get ruined if you left them out on a roundabout…”
Bob and Roberta Smith, 2006

Art U Need; My Part in the Public Art Revolution is a refreshing addition to the public art debate, telling the story of how Bob and Roberta Smith set about changing the world-or at least a bit of it.

Hales Gallery

EVERYDAY LIFE


By showing the group exhibition EVERYDAY LIFE Galleri Tom Christoffersen welcomes you to a humane small talk with an edge. The stories, in the simple figurative paintings by Harry Pye (UK), Krista Rosenkilde and Andreas Schulenburg (D/DK) are told at eye level and through elements known from caricature drawings, fairy tales and comic strips.

“You looks good you must be doing fine” – “Yes I have had a haircut I am feeling just fine actually”. The grammatically incorrect quote is from a conversation full of commonplaces between a fox and a hen, which in the series “Reven og hønen” (The fux and the hen) by Andreas Schulenburg ends up in a fatal result. Harry Pye uses text in his works as well. The paintings are often collaborative pieces done with his friends. Among friends happen to be a comedian who have stopped being funny, young British Muslims who’ve been shot at by the police, a former chess champion who has lost his concentration and a magician who has lost his confidence. With a sense of humour and a caring approach Harry Pye presents characters in the middle of existential contemplations. Krista Rosenkilde is like Andreas Schulenburg and Harry Pye not afraid of using the banal. But she puts certain cultural identities into play by working from a distance instead of up close. She paints bittersweet symbols on tradition and everyday life as she works with classical oppositions such as culture vs. nature and dangerous vs. harmless etc. It is exactly between these categorical oppositions and in the middle of the many clichés on everyday life that Rosenkilde points at the grey zone of contemporary living. A condition of “both-and” as incarnated by he idyllic safety of “The Shire” and it’s at the same time closed and excluding character.

EVERYDAY LIFE touches upon a certain kind of national identity and petite bourgeois self-conception and ways of acting. Or minor life-crises, joys and reflections, which prevents outlook and displaces an interest in problems affecting humanity on a larger scale. Despite the edgy issues the paintings are light and clear rather than condemning. Exactly this humoristic “go-happy”-strategy seems in all its absurdity to lower the parades and dissolve the facades from within.

Harry Pye (1973/UK) is represented by Sartorial Contemporary Art, London. The artist graduated from Winchester School of Art in1995.
Krista Rosenkilde (1981/DK) is represented by Galleri Tom Christoffersen. She will graduate from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen in 2009.
Andreas Schulenburg (1973/D+DK) is represented by Mogadishni. The artist graduated from the Royal Academy of fine Arts, Copenhagen in 2005.
Heinz Schmöller (1975/D) exhibits in Cube. He is repesented by Komet Berlin. The artist graduated from HfBK Dresden in 2006.

Tom Christoffersen

Eline McGeorge


Eline McGeorge
Travelling Doubles 2

Friday April 25th from 5-8 pm

Exhibition period is April 26th – 31st of May

Shortly after the opening, documentation of the show will be available on
the website. The press release in English is here:
Kirkhoff

Wes Lang


New work from my friend Wes Lang, it looks so nice…

Daniel Lergon nimbi


Daniel Lergon
nimbi

16 Apr – 25 May 2008

We are pleased to announce the second solo exhibition of Daniel Lergon (born 1978, living in Berlin) in our gallery. The exhibition is titled “nimbi”, which the Latin plural of nimbus. The exhibition continues the artists pictorial examination of the interaction between light and surface.

In a part of the exhibition the artist uses the special qualities of a technical texture as painting matter to produce pictorial light appearances, who under appropriate conditions beside others also create the impression of nimbus-like light coronas. The emanations of this matter are of profane nature, they merge with the irrational visual worlds of painting.

In contrast to those there are works on dark textile matter. Painting on different image carriers here is understood as a dialogue between single elements of shape, in both cases supported by the possible light appearances. Thereby imaginative associations are opposed to physical and technical categories.

The exhibition is divided in two rooms with three pictures in each, which differ in size, but always are of quadratic shape. They are ordered in a strict rhythm of a big (250×250 cm), a medium (200×200 cm) and a small (100×100 cm) dimension.

The pictures in the first room are painted on retroreflective material. It has the quality to reflect light always back to where it came from, other than mirroring surfaces. The viewer, who has got a light source in his back, can see his own shadow on the texture. Around his heads shadow a more or less shining light corona, similar to a nimbus, gets visible. This phenomenon also can be found in nature, for example on grassland covered by dew, when the sun is shining on it at the same time. This phenomenon is also called “the heiligenschein” in English language. The texture is painted with clear coat and produces prismatic colour effects at certain areas and fortifies or reduces the process of retroreflection and so also of the nimbus.

Because to the light appearances also belong those of shadow and darkness, there are presented contrasting works on umbra brown textile in the back room. This texture is painted with clear coat, just like the retroreflective pictures. While in the front room, depending on point of view, the viewer either is surrounded by brightness or by greyness, here he thematically is confronted with impressions of gradual, coloured darkness and subtle shadows. Here are also produced reflecting surfaces, but in contrast to the retroreflecting paintings they are mirroring. Here the effect of a heiligenschein is not existent.

Christian Lethert