CHARLEY HARPER: WORKS ON PAPER 1961-1970
FEBRUARY 23rd– MAY 3rd, 2008
RECEPTION, SATURDAY FEBRUARY 23rd, 6-9 PM

Cincinnati, Ohio – Charley Harper: Works on Paper 1961-1970 is the second exhibition
for the Cincinnati-based gallery, Country Club. This exhibition features original
illustrations and paintings from classic books such as The Golden Book of Biology
(1961, Golden Press) and The Animal Kingdom (1968, Golden Press). Also included
in the exhibition will be original illustrations for Ford Times, Sohioan and various
other publications from that time period. Most of this work has never been seen
outside of Harper’s Studio.

Charley ng his unique, modernist
style to a wide range of publications. Harper’s work is beloved in his adopted
hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, though his influence has stretched across the
world. He is best known for his unique style combining straight and curved lines
and flat areas of carefully selected colors. Through his work for Ford Times
and the publication of Charles Harper’s Birds and Words (1974, Frame House Gallery)
together with his work for the U.S. National Park Service, Harper brought an
entirely new perspective to the chosen subject matter of birds and wildlife, a genre
dominated by naturalism and realism. Harper referred to his approach as “minimal
realism.” Recent publications and exhibitions have introduced Harper’s modernist
vision of nature to an entirely new generation of artists and critics. His work resonates
as fresh and contemporary as any painter’s of his generation.

A versatile artist fluent in many techniques, Charley Harper: Works on Paper 1961-1970,
adds another layer to Harper’s impressive career. The paintings and illustrations
Harper completed in the years surrounding his work for Golden Press demonstrate
a confident and entirely matured style highlighted by unusual, dynamic perspectives
and lines that are simultaneously precise, lyrical and expressive. Harper’s work is even
more remarkable given the fact that his sophisticated and decidedly minimalist approach
to his subjects was applied to children’s books and corporate promotional literature.
Harper’s exceptional skill and creativity elevated any book, advertisement or brochure
to a true work of art.

Country Club Gallery

My old body have made a very good show, check it out….

Hales Gallery is pleased to announce Hew Locke’s second solo show at Hales Gallery.
How do you want me? is a series of studio photographs Locke has been developing for the past three years,  resulting in a parade of sinister figures; corrupt kings, generals, tyrants and bandits. They echo the portraits of aristocratic ancestors and nobility that are a staple in museums and stately homes.

Hew Locke grew up in Guyana and this new series has allowed him to explore a mixture of national identity, personal fantasy, and socio-political caricatures. The duality of Hew’s characters is integral to the work; whilst he is playing a part, he is also parodying himself.
Tyger, Tyger, is a costume derived from the famous Redcoats of the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars.  Adorned with trophies of war, self-awarded medals, scalps and babies’ heads, it alludes to shrunken heads, or child soldiers.  They are a reminder of how many he has killed to reach this point of power.  The cheap fabric patterned backdrop is a pirated Versace design based on heraldic imagery.

Congo Man, so called after a controversial Trinidadian calypso comedy song by The Mighty Sparrow, (a wildly perverse pastiche on African roots, interracial revenge, interracial sex, oral sex and cannibalism). Banned from the radio until 1989, the song plays with the sexual stereotypes of white and black, and also the cultural tensions between black Africans and Afro-Caribbeans.

How Do You Want Me? is the question many people ask when posing for their portrait for posterity at a high-street photographer’s. Studio photography is an obvious inspiration – whether from Africa, from studio photos of the Maharaja’s, photographs of the Black Panthers, or the video statements and familiar imagery from hostage-takers and terrorists.
Several of the works reference ideas of Albion and Arthurian legend. Some contain the Queen’s motto Honi soit que mal y pense (Evil be to him who thinks Evil of it), a constant mantra throughout Locke’s work. They also resemble images of the Black Jacobeans (such as Toussaint L’Overture, the leader of the slave revolution in Haiti).

Most importantly, the series knits together several strands of Locke’s previous work; re-presentations of civic statues in the Natives and Colonials series, the drawings improvised from Velasquez and Goya portraits of the Spanish Royal family and his Menace to Society sculptures.
Hew Locke was born in Edinburgh, lived in Guyana for 24 years and is now based in London. Hew has been commissioned to design a permanent artwork for the New Art Exchange in Nottingham and is part of the forthcoming group show Now Then at the Bluecoat Art Centre, Liverpool. Recently, Hew participated in Infinite Island: Contemporary Carribean Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. His works are included in several prestigious collections such as the Brooklyn Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum drawing collection, the British Museum and the Henry Moore Institute.
 
Hales Gallery

People and Places

Jasper Sebastian Stürup, Søren Behncke, Peter Funch, Knud Odde, Hans E. Madsen, Lars Bukdahl
Drawings, sculpture, photography, painting, light, text

Curated by Mikkel Amby

People and Places

The theme of the groupshow, People and Places focus on people and their realationship to the environment. The six Danish artist, both established and emerging artist, embrace some of the most interesting tendencies of contemporary art.

The paintings of Knud Odde takes off in an emotional and exspressive form with motives of people and places coming from music and litterature. In comparation Jasper Sebastian Stürups drawings appears fragile and fail with scenes of people in abstract environments and landscapes.

Hans E. Madsen creates sitespecific installations of light, that is oscillating between illusion and reality, while Søren Behncke works with the universal signs from cardboadpacking and litter, wich he alters into pictures, scupltures and streetart. In this way he opens up for dialog between the public and the private.

Peter Funch works with documentary scenes between reality and manipulated settings. In his photographies of streetcorners in New York, he freezes the people and samples the motives into new corealations.

For the exhibition, the author Lars Bukdahl, has created a literary work displayed in gallery.

Charlotte Fogh

Thursday the opeing of the artist Zevs new show @ Glyptotek.
Glyptotek
Zevz

MARIUS ENGH: “LYCANTHROPIC CHAMBER”
21.02.-29.03.2008 / PREVIEW: 21.02.2008 / 19.00-21.00 /
—–
SCENE I & SCENE II
—–
“Homo Sum; Nihil humani a me alienum puto”. [“I am a man; Nothing human is alien to me.”]
– Terentius (185 – 159 BC), “Heauton Timoroumenos”
—–
“In vain he attempted to speak; from that very instant!
His jaws were bespluttered with foam, and only he thirsted!
For blood, as he raged amongst flocks and panted for slaughter.!
His vesture was changed into hair, his limbs became crooked;!
A wolf, he retains yet large trace of his ancient expression,!
Hoary he is as afore, his countenance rabid,!
His eyes glitter savagely still, the picture of fury.”
– Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD), “Metamorphoses”
—–
“We have to distinguish two classes of instincts, one of which, the sexual instincts or Eros, is by far the more
conspicuous and accessible to study…. The second class of instincts was not so easy to point to; in the end
we came to recognize sadism as its representative. On the basis of theoretical considerations, supported by
biology, we put forward the hypothesis of a death instinct, the task of which is to lead organic life back into the
inanimate state; on the other hand, we supposed that Eros … aims at complicating life and at the same time,
of course, at preserving it. Acting in this way, both the instincts … would be endeavouring to re-establish a
state of things that was disturbed by the emergence of life. The emergence of life would thus be the cause of
the continuance of life and also at the same time of the striving towards death; and life itself would be a
conflict and compromise between these two trends.”
– Sigmund Freud, “The Ego and the Id”, 1960

Standard Oslo

RY FYAN
I CAN GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT

New York (February 14, 2008) – Perry Rubenstein Gallery is pleased to present I Can Give You What You Want, the first New York solo exhibition by Ry Fyan.

Working primarily with painting, Fyan creates and explores numinous landscapes where material and metaphysical realms co-mingle. Culling specific cultural and spiritual icons such as the pyramids of Gyza, Tibetan mountains, and ritualistic masks, Fyan presents a hybridized worldview within the framework of his practice. These elements, meticulously painted in a photorealistic style, act in opposition to their expressionistic backgrounds built up from multiple layers of oil, enamel and spray paint. The end result creates shifts in compositional style that ultimately evokes a sense of ambiguity in the works.

At first glance Fyan’s illusory spaces appear to be structured from a matrix of narratives that allude to archeological and cultural highs, however the appropriated pop elements and product labels discovered throughout these landscapes create a humorous polarity between these highs and the social lows of consumerism and mass consumption. Sampling Colgate ads, Pepto-Bismol labels and Young Jeezy album covers, Fyan evokes a feeling of the familiar, albeit with a daringly new sensibility. Often mistaken for collage, these tangled elements beautifully distort and blur the line between allegory and representation.

Ry Fyan completed his BFA in painting at the Pratt Institute in New York, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn and. Recent exhibitions include ‘Panic Room’ at the Deste Foundation, Athens; ‘Mail Order Monster’s’ at Peres Projects, Berlin and ‘Bitten’ at Lightbox Gallery, Los Angeles.

Perry Rubenstein

Ken Kagami