Allison Cortson
The Happy Lion is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Allison Cortson. Using her friends as subjects, Cortson’s intimate portraits are exquisitely rendered using her signature materials of dust and oil. Cortson gathers dust from the environments pictured and re-situates her subjects in the reconstituted spaces. Cortson has also added powered paint to her repertoire of particles, with several works using this material in place of dust. Allison’s unique approach to representation results in portraits that feel concrete yet ephemeral, evoking the timelessness of matter. Allison Cortson was born in Santa Monica, California. She received her B.A. in Art from the University of California, Los Angeles and her MFA from the California Institute for the Arts. She has had solo shows at Galerie Michael Janssen in Berlin, Germany and at Galerie Filomena Soares in Lisbon, Portugal. Recent group exhibitions include Painting a Better Present, Pictures from the Diezy7 Collection at Sala Naos, Santander, Spain and L.A. Potential, at HangART-7, in Salzburg, Austria. Allison Cortson lives and works in Los Angeles.
Seen//THE KING
Studio visit//Andreas Schulenburg
KUP// Hans Alf
Fade Into You//
‘Dear …….,’.
As a newcomer in the Danish artworld I am unqualified to curate an exhibition of Danish painting. This is the premise of the exhibition ‘Dear …….,’.
I selected a painter based in Denmark and sent them the following letter of invitation.
‘Dear …….,
I am putting together a show of ‘Danish’ painters. It will work as a game of tag. As a newcomer here I am outside the history and politics, gossip and rumour of the Danish art world. Which in many ways is a great benefit and in others a disadvantage. This exhibition will acknowledge my naivety and release me from my usual dictatorial position of choice within my gallery. I am handing over responsibility of choice to the artists. It will give me a crash course in contemporary Danish painting (hopefully).
It will work like this – I will choose a painter who lives and works in Denmark, then, they will anonymously choose a painter who lives and works in Denmark, then, they will anonymously choose a painter who lives and works in Denmark. etc. This will carry on until the same painter is chosen twice or somebody says no. So, the show will be a random, meandering journey through what is being made here. I will then curate the show by visiting each artists studio and selecting the work(s) to be shown. These might be brand new or earlier works. The show will open here early March (March 5th).
You have been anonymously selected by another painter to be in the show. All you have to do is say yes to being in the show and choose someone else to be in the show. I will then approach them and send them this text. You can select anyone painting here in Denmark now. Someone you think represents what is happening now, or is forgotten, or overlooked, or needs reappraising, or deserves their first break, or is busy showing but their work is so great we should show it some more…just remember that they will then anonymously select someone else.
ROBERT MELEE @ DAVID KORDANSKY GALLERY
Martin Bigum
This exhibition consists of three large paintings hanging from the ceiling, slowly turning around, like mobiles. Although every painting is an independent work, new meanings occur when the three paintings are taken away from the traditional installation on the wall. The visual energies and the symbols evokes a “dance macabre” of meanings. The work becomes more intense for the viewer, as it slowly passes by. It requires a new way of looking at the works, and as it reveals the back of the canvas, with signature, title and stretchers, new peculiar dimensions are added to the old media that painting is.
The main inspiration for the show is the theories by Swiss philosopher Carl Jung on “synchronicity”, which is “the experience of two or more events that are causally unrelated, occurring together in a meaningful manner. To count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance”.
To the artist the exhibition is an investigation of vision and inspiration, and how the two phenomenon’s weaves in and out of each other in the artistic process.
Alongside the spinning paintings, three photographs are presented, each showing the motif that was the original inspiration for the painting. Or was it the other way around? When does a vision come alone and when is a vision an inspiration? When do we think we know what lies behind a work of art and when is it just a visual and symbolic coincidence?
Three videos are also presented, showing the artist dancing with each of the three paintings: Yet another example of how one genre of art can inspire another, these dancing videos also inspired the idea of letting the three large canvases spin.
Through the theories of Jung, the idea of a “SynchroniCity” has occured: A place, where, just for a moment, a city of dreams are built, without its inhabitants ever meeting each other, besides in a small glimpse.
Martin Bigum belongs to the part of the Copenhagen artscene, that has gained great international recognition through the 90s and 00s.
In the recent years MB have had soloshows at Air De Paris (FR), BFAS in Geneva (CH) and Wohnmaschine in Berlin (DE), and is represented in several international collections.
He is a well-established artist in Scandinavia, with representation in 16 museums and 9 museum solo exhibitions.
Martin Bigum ist bekannt für seine cartoonhaften Gemälde, ist aber auch als Fotograf, Video-künstler, Dichter und Schriftsteller aktiv. Im Alter von 15-22 war Martin Bigum Cartoon-Künstler für die dänische Ausgabe des amerikanischen Satire-Magazins MAD.
Easily transgressing one mode of expression to another, the artist deploys a form of complex allogegory to which there is no real equivalent on the contemporary art scene.
Copenhagen Graffiti (S Trains)
New trains//
