THE MENTOR SHOW
Sofie Bird Møller – Günther Förg
Andreas Schulenburg – Finn Thybo
Søren Hüttel – Anette Abrahamsson
June Pilaiporn Pethrith – Peter Bonde
Mie Mørkeberg – Elmer
Jonas Hvid Søndergaard – Nils Erik Gjerdevik
Ida Kvetny – Anette Abrahamsson
Troels Carlsen – Asger Carlsen
Trine Boesen – Daniel Richter
Jon Stahn – Jens Jørgen Thorsen
Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by Les Rogers entitled Last House.
In previous work, Rogers has incorporated quotation and appropriation from a variety of sources, both historical and popular. In this show, Rogers continues to move away from this, creating his own visual dictum, eschewing quoting particular works while instead making gestural references that give cues to a variety of antecedents
The exhibition Last House is partly inspired by new surroundings. Moving between the diaphanous haze of memory and the sharp focus of the immediate, Rogers creates paintings that beguile with possibilities. Originating with a glance at something vaguely familiar, the paintings unfold themselves to the viewer gradually. The large and medium scaled works allude to wide genus of painting ranging from landscapes to interior scenes; still lifes to nudes. Rogers’ approach encourages a sort of mimetic syncopation, providing a palette that is at once comforting and slightly foreboding,
In the fragmentary nature of this body of work, we are given snippets of information, slivers of light that illuminate a transitory moment, but the “whole” is never revealed. Form gives way to atmospheric perspective, as the canvases present narratives that are open-ended and questioning. The artist’s effortless merging of abstraction and realism; the familiar and arcane, allows entry into a world that the viewer can ultimately make his/her own.
Les Rogers holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. He has exhibited internationally, most recently at galleries such as Galleria Marabini, Bologna, Italy, Galeria Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain, Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris, France, and Karlheinz Meyer, Karlsrue, Germany. Les Rogers lives and works in New York City.
We are happy to present ‘Hope Springs Internal’ – the first one person show at POVevolving Gallery by artist John Casey. The show will feature a collection of new pen and ink drawings and a large scale installation.
John Casey is obsessed with fictitious human morphology, which he explores in his ink drawings and small sculptures. At first glance, his works seem to portray a menagerie of deformed creatures. A collective analysis reveals this array of oddball creations to be a series of psychological studies — self-portraits of the artist’s inner psyche in all of its multifaceted incarnations. Some sad, some horrific, and some whimsical, these characters evoke responses from laughter and sympathy to disgust and discomfort. While one might call Casey’s work the exorcising of inner demons, his creations inspire more empathy than they do loathing. By depicting the grotesque as pitiable, John Casey illuminates the darkest corners of the mind, seeking redemption for all of us.
In the project room of the gallery, we are very happy to present ‘Odd Populi’ – A collection of works by a small group of artists carefully selected by John Casey to accompany him in his debut at POV. Artists include Martha Sue Harris, Bill Dunlap, Kerri Lee Johnson, Billy Sprague, and Mike Lay.
New works from the cold North:::::
Charlie James Gallery is pleased to announce the gallery’s first solo show of Bay Area conceptualist Lizabeth Eva Rossof. In “Hey, China!” Lizabeth will exhibit paintings and sculptures commissioned and fabricated by workers in the People’s Republic of China. Uniting all of the paintings in the show is the politically sensitive subject matter depicted throughout. There are images from the Tiananmen Square massacre (otherwise known in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the “June 4th Incident”)), images concerning Tibetan liberation, the Falun Gong spiritual movement, as well as images culled from pornographic websites blocked in the PRC. In point of fact, every painting in the show is of content deemed illegal in the PRC, with the source images taken from websites currently blocked in the PRC, made by workers in the PRC.
Another thread in the show is American media’s global influence, and the PRC’s industry of counterfeiting the copyrighted properties held by American media. Lizabeth playfully delivers these concerns through the presentation of a revised Terra Cotta Army consisting of 50 eighteen-inch soldiers on a riser in the center of the gallery space. The soldiers are quite authentic in their composition and detail, and they take five discrete poses: Kneeling Warrior, Warrior Priest, and three Infantry poses. Distinct from the warriors of the First Emperor of Qin, discovered in 1974 by farmers in Xi’an, China, the members of Lizabeth’s Army have had their heads replaced with those of notable figures from American popular culture. A Warrior Priest may have the head of a Disney character or of a mascot from a fast food chain. The heads of recognizable figures from television shows, comic books and films complete the ensemble.
The engagement of Chinese artisans in the creation of these paintings and sculptures adds a performative element to the show. These “Master Painters” in China dutifully reproduced every image Lizabeth sent to them, despite very real legal risks, which prohibit the mention of the painting firm by name in this release. Subsequent to the painting and sculptural fabrication, which Lizabeth supervised via Skype from her home in San Francisco, the paintings had to be effectively smuggled out of the country. The unstretched canvases were carefully packaged amongst reproductions of famous paintings arranged carefully to be the first images seen if the package was opened in Chinese customs, which it was.
This extra-legal aspect serves as a conceptual flourish that unites all of the works in the show. The daring ruse that brought them into being expands their definition as art objects and elevates their commentary on the PRC.
Lizabeth Eva Rossof’s (b 1973, USA) work examines the distribution of personal, political, economic, and sexual power and freedom in the digital age. Her artworks are experiments; they are projects and investigations. Lizabeth has been the recipient of many prestigious academic awards including the Thomas J. Watson Award and the Jacob K. Javits Award, as well as several artist honors including The San Francisco Art Commission’s Murphy Award, C5’s Gran Prix at ISEA 2006. Lizabeth exhibited in Takashi Murakami’s GEISAI Miami. She has completed residencies at Montalvo Center for the Arts and Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and has been awarded residencies at Cite International de Paris and CAMAC: Centre des Artes Marnay in France. Lizabeth’s artwork has been exhibited in Berlin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Miami, New York, Oaxaca, Osaka, Aspen, and at the National Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow.
Leopards in the Temple
Lothar Baumgarten, Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, Nina Canell, Latifa Echakhch, Aleana Egan, Patrick Hill, Nina Hoffmann, Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder (DAS INSTITUT), Lucas Knipscher, Kitty Kraus, João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, Lucy Skaer, Kathrin Sonntag. Curated by Fionn Meade
Leopards in the Temple is a parable by Franz Kafka that reads as follows:
“Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony.”
The group exhibition of the same name focuses on moments of metamorphosis, paradox, and formal adjacency, borrowing from the parable an ability to promote multiple readings of succinct forms and extraordinary occurrences. Protean moments where materials elide, transform, and overlay take place in the work of Lothar Baumgarten, Nina Canell, Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, and Kitty Kraus, while the rules of image production are triangulated and problematized in the painting configurations of Patrick Hill, Lucas Knipscher, and Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder’s DAS INSTITUT. Kathrin Sonntag and Nina Hoffmann (working in collaboration) and the collaborative duo João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva present slide and film projections that explore the uncanny through acts of magnetism, doubling, and transference. And sculpture is framed and distributed as an effaced and often fictional artifact in the work of Latifa Echakhch, Aleana Egan, and Lucy Skaer. Gathering together an international group of artists, the works in this exhibition share an extra-linguistic interest in moments of translation and a resistance to fixed forms.
