Month: November 2008

New gallery in Copenhagen:::
Dask Gallery

Wes is getting ready for the show friday:::
V1

Gallery Poulsen

I hereby want to invite you to the opening of the groupshow MULTIANIMA
presenting works of vienna artists:

Bella Angora
Alexandra Berlinger
Susanne Eybl
Judith Fegerl
Barbara Husar
Deborah Sengl

curated by Bella Angora

Stalke

Artist Reception: Saturday November 15th 7-11 pm Gallery Three is pleased to present the first West Coast solo exhibition of New York based artist Erik Foss. A deftly crafted mixed-media mélange of painting, collage, drawing, photography, assemblage and sculptural installation components, Smokem If You Gotem lays bare the personal demonology of Foss’ visual obsessions along with the greater social pathology of our culture on the brink. At once eminently seductive and deeply disquieting, Foss iconography of cultural critique collapses the perceptual boundaries between pornography, poverty and politics to underscore the collective anxiety and violence of our time. An intrepid scavenger of visual artifacts in which memory, melancholia and madness invoke a visionary topography where the mortality of dreams engender germinal quotients of relativist understanding, Erik Foss locates the fearful symmetries lurking within the miasma of pop culture at the nexus where representation and witness converge. With the raw vernacular of the streets, Foss makes fine art fodder of the smug complacency and delusional democracy by which our failing empire lulls itself to terminal sleep. How else might we read his bold re-imagining of our national emblem, the American flag, as a composite of needy pleas and desperate amusements culled from the signs of begging homeless? His is the itinerant semiotics of national shame reeking behind spectacle of patriotic glory. In conjunction with his exhibition at Gallery Three, D. A. Arts (located next door at 135 Sixth Street) will concurrently be presenting an ambitious new installation Erik Foss is producing especially for the space. Entitled Arizona Graves, this haunting elegy for the tangible presence of loss is at once an interpretive recreation of a Native American burial ground near where the artist grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and a mythopoeic invocation of the darker legacy of the American Dream.

Fuse Gallery

Galleri Tom Christoffersen is pleased to present Berlin-based, Greek-German artist, Christina Dimitriadis in her first solo show in Copenhagen. For this exhibition, the artist has carefully selected a group of some of the most important photographs that she has created over the last years, from 1996 to the present.

Dimitriadis uses the medium of photography to articulate a very personal expression of space; one that is often autobiographical and based on her close personal and family relationships. With these works, she continues her examination of the self, time and space, place and history, interpreting each of these subjects in her own particular way. Her images are a meditation on the quotidian reality of existence that poses questions about how we occupy our most intimate and familiar spaces.

For the most part, these works remain ambiguous, eschewing any straightforward reading or interpretation. Individual works, such as The Trap however, may be related to larger historical context. These cold, minimal images create a sense of poetic silence that is intimate, yet they do not allow for the proposal of any specific personal narrative. These concise and elegantly articulated photographs always keep the viewer at arm’s length, maintaining an underlying impenetrability and crystal clear beauty throughout.

Christina Dimitriadis is born in Greece (1967) and lives and works in Berlin. She is trained in New York at the Parsons School of Design and New School for Social Research (graduated 1992) and from F.V.A (graduated 1993). Of previous exhibitions can be mentioned: Dystopia, (solo) Kanazawa Citizen’s Art Center, Kanazawa (2006). Open Closed Doors, (solo) Eigen+Art Gallery, Berlin (1997), Transexperiences, 798 SPACE, Beijing (2008), Neue Heimat- Contemporary Art in Berlin, Internationale Kunst im Neuen Berlin, Berlinische Galerie, (2007), Wir Haben keine Probleme. Kunsthall Bergen (2007) Turbulance, 3rd Auckland Triennial, Auckland, (2007), The Passion and The Wave, 6th International Istanbul Biennial, (1999), La Casa, Il Corpo, Il Cuore, Museum Moderne Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, (1999), Greek Realities, Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense (1997).
Christina Dimitriadis is represented by Curators Without Borders, Berlin.

*Tom Chrisoffersenk

DUNK! / LOPPETJANS
A solo exhibition by Zven Balslev.

DUNK! is ready with the last show of the year.
DUNK! puts up a fabulous solo show by Zven Balslev.
DUNK! proudly present the exhibition LOPPETJANS.
LOPPETJANS is a Danish word signifying a very easy-going type of job.
LOPPETJANS is graphic art camouflaged as painting.
LOPPETJANS is drawing camouflaged as photography.
LOPPETJANS is photography camouflaged as painting.
LOPPETJANS is absolute top class art manipulations.
LOPPETJANS is an odyssey into visualized human decay.
LOPPETJANS is creepy and uncanny mysticism at a peak point.
LOPPETJANS is a blinding noisy graphical dream of an exhibition.

ZVEN BALSLEV is an incredibly original artistic genius who has taken drawing as a solid base and reference point for journeys into different kind of medias such as graphic art, ceramics, painting, conceptual art, installation and photography. In his work he unfolds a phenomenal mix between the aesthetics of underground comics and a wild form of controlled expressionism resulting in profound outlets of dark and morbid
humor balancing on the edge of insanity.

EXTRA:
At the opening of LOPPETJANS DUNK! has the pleasure of presenting a brand new and flashy 3D-edition made by the Hanoi based Danish artist JES BRINCH.

PLUS:
At the opening SMITTEKILDE RECORDS throws a release party for the CD Single WELCOME TO THE CRISIS by the very same JES BRINCH.

*Dunk

PAPER, SCISSORS, STONE
Curated by Gyonata Bonvicini

TAUBA AUERBACH
KERSTIN BRÄTSCH
KNUT HENRIK HENRIKSEN
RAY JOHNSON
REE MORTON
SCOTT OLSON
R.H. QUAYTMAN
FLORIAN SCHMIDT

‘Paper, Scissors, Stone’ brings together the work of nine international artists who share an artistic language primarily interested in painting, without necessarily integrating it as a medium or a tool. In this way, the artists offer a model that eludes the incessantly returning discussion about the relevance of painting without doing away with the significance of painterly concerns.
 
The title for the exhibition is borrowed from the English name of one of the most popular games played using only the hand. Invented in Japan as Jan-ken-pon in the late 19th century, the game is based on an extreme economy of signs and their interchangeability. This reflects the fluidity of the artistic process, its anti-hierarchical patterns, but also implies a confrontational tension and a kind of shifting equality of values in the diverse media.
 
This group of artists investigates painting’s contemporary potentials by taking up specific discourse from previous decades, so pinpointing the historical conditions of each medium and the associated ideological approaches. The inclusion of Ree Morton and Ray Johnson reflects an attempt to historicize the positions of a younger generation of artists, and is not simply for the sake of revivalism. Rather, the strength of such reflection is that, from a distance, key works of the past can shed new light on contemporary attitudes towards abstract painting.
 
‘Paper, Scissors, Stone’ can be seen as an attempt to offer manifold examples of abstraction’s inventive potential and will suggest varied reasons why it remains vital and essential to the contemporary critical debate.

Gyonata Bonvincini was born in 1972, in Milan, Italy. He has worked as a freelance curator based in London and is currently the director of Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin. In 2007 he won the international award for Young Curator at Marco Vigo.

Tauba Auerbach, born in 1981, recently relocated to New York from San Francisco. She is currently exhibiting in the inaugural exhibition of Barbara Gladstone Gallery in Brussels, curated by Francesco Bonami. In February 2009 she will be presented in a solo show at MoMA New York.

Kerstin Brätsch was born in Hamburg in 1976. In February 2009 she will be included in a group show curated by Massimiliano Gioni at the New Museum in New York.
 
Knut Henrik Henriksen was born in 1970 in Oslo and is currently Berlin-based. Simultaneous to Paper Scissors Stone he is exhibiting in a two-person show with Hans Arp at Galerie Würth in Hagan, Norway.

Ray Johnson (1927- 1995) was a seminal figure of the Pop Art movement. Somewhat of a cult figure, little is known of his life and the circumstances of his death. In 2002 an award-winning documentary produced by John Malkovich was made on Johnson’s life and work including interviews with his friends and fellow artists such as Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and Jeanne-Claude and Christo. Johnson’s work is currently included in Looking at Music, MoMA, New York
 
Ree Morton (1936-1977) died while still young and in her prime. Surviving her is the product of seven years of artistic activity. The significance of her influence has been reflected in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1974) and the Guggenheim Museum, New York (1985). A major retrospective of her work opens at the Generali Foundation in Vienna in December.

Scott Olson is based in Ohio and was born in 1976. He recently presented solo exhibitions at Overduin and Kite in Los Angeles and Taxter and Spengemann in New York.

R.H. Quaytman was born in 1961. Based in New York, she is founder and director of the artist-run space Orchard in New York. She has an upcoming solo show at Vilma Gold in London in December and Miguel Abreu in New York next year.

Florian Schmidt was born 1980 and lives and works in Vienna. This year he has exhibited with a solo shows at New Galerie de France in Paris and Andreas Huber in Vienna.

*Nordenhake

*Elastic Gallery