DETAIL of The Lay of the Land, 2007
ink on mylay.

My Fellow Americans, 2007
video still

My Fellow Americans, 2007
video still

MICHAEL WAUGH
Lead Me Astray

February 16 – March 17, 2007

Schroeder Romero Gallery is pleased to announce Lead Me Astray, by Michael Waugh, which will include large-scale drawings, video, performance documentation, original texts, and archived materials. This is his second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Waugh’s large-scale drawings are composed of thousands of miniscule words written out by the artist, with the text condensing into vast, romanticized landscapes, rife with political and religious allegory. One suite of these drawings utilizes every US presidential inaugural speech, chopped-up and re-written by the artist to subvert their rhetoric – then rendered virtually unreadable by these obsessive drawings. The speeches written for these drawings are also used in Waugh’s video, entitled My Fellow Americans. In this video, a wide range of people play the role of president, delivering dead-pan renditions of Waugh’s speeches, revealing how authority can be conveyed even when the actual message lacks logical cohesion.

The newest piece in the show will respond to a different set of texts and another form of authoritative rhetoric: the academic papers being delivered at the College Art Association’s annual conference, which opens on February 14th. And a final piece in Waugh’s show consists of an archive of art fair materials collected by the artist this past December in Miami. Waugh will present those texts unaltered along side another of his text-drawings, this one of Cabeza de Vaca, who began the first long-term exploration of what would eventually be the southern United States after being shipwrecked in Florida.

What emerges from this diverse body of work is an exploration of how history is made, how the vast stores of original documentation created every day collapse into one another as we try to make sense of and connect with the past – a task made all the more difficult as each of us tries to find our own meaning behind events, while we try endlessly to see ourselves reflected in history.

Waugh’s first solo exhibition, Inaugural-2005, comprised of text-based drawings and watercolors, coincided with George W. Bush’s second inauguration. The show received reviews from The New York Times and Art in America. Waugh has been included in the recent group exhibitions, The Nightly News, curated by Kathleen Goncharov at Luxe Gallery, New York (open through February 18) and Text Formed Drawing, curated by Barry Rosenberg at the Contemporary Art Galleries at the University of Connecticut. Waugh holds degrees in Creative Writing from Southwest Texas State University and in Visual Art from New York University.

Schroeder Romero

Erik have the best works @ Faurschou.
Opening to night.

Faurschou

Johannes Wohnseifer
Recent Sex / Love Works

To day Friday, March 9, 2007 from 6 to 9 p.m.

Johann König, Berlin
Dessauer Str. 6-7
10963 Berlin

Johann Koenig

It was in Alma-Ata (now Almaty in Kazakhstan) where Almagul Menlibaeva began her career as a painter, occasionally using felt as a resource. Though felt, a material par excellence in nomadic cultures, can never be limited to any ordinary medium. Being traditionally crafted by women, it unleashes a lyrical sensibility and dramatic tension in this Kazakh artist.

In the video that marks her artistic maturity, it is obvious where Almagul’s imagination finds its power, which could not have been anywhere other than the steppe. As a place of visual minimalism par excellence with its flat configuration, deprived of any vertical presence, it becomes a ‘Baroque Steppe’ when fired by her wild imagination. Inhabited by ‘Snow-Women’ or women as old as the world, it emerges as a magic space depicting an eternal symmetry of eroticism. Almagul’s works are fairy tales besieged by history in action, and even her most realistic video, set in a labyrinthic and rainy Alma-Ata, portrays the ultimate female fairytale archetype, the bride; essentially still a virgin escaping the violations which, from Duchamp onwards, she has been subject to.

Baroque and symmetrical, Almagul’s visual world was established in the wake of the crisis and later the collapse of the ‘East-Soviet Empire’ (1991). In an era of overwhelming changes, it regains both modernity and its ancestral origins. The characteristic naked body at the core of her work challenges the formalism belonging to a long history of Soviet art. Beauty and violence are continuously aestheticizing one another. However, the process is paradoxically ideological in the sense that it appropriates values such as the avant-garde and shamanism, which were forbidden in the Soviet era and are still very unfavourable to the new regimes in Central Asia. This young Kazakh artist makes such values pulsate with life through an unrestrained vitality that constantly clashes with the reality of a post-Soviet disaster. In a recent work (the video ‘On the Road’) the steppe is burning around a Sufi-shaman artist; an old, naked and unkempt man, who is in reality the artist Moldakul, a protagonist in the Kizil Traktor Group; the first post-Soviet avant-garde in the Golden Horde (1994). Alongside the man, two young, also naked, women dance and embrace each other, while the landscape is so extremely rectilinear and torrid that escape appears impossible.

In an earlier video-cycle of photographs entitled ‘Wagon’, the recurrent theme of naked bodies is set between the geometric power of an iron carcass that was once a railway carriage and a vast and imminent steppe. Almagul instils drama in the relationship between an eternal steppe and the ruins of a Soviet iron age, which seem more archaic than cities like Sairam, distroyed from Mongols in XIII century and whittled away by the wind.

In the ‘Baroque Steppe’ trilogy, which afforded her international attention, she plays with refractions and symmetries portrayed against the backdrop of an Islamic cemetery, as captivating as a fairytale castle. Dionysius and Apollo, primal chaos and pure formal organization, here meet in an absolute realm on the Central Asian steppe.

In an ideological return to her origins, Almagul seems intent on overcoming that Islamism which never made much headway among the nomadic peoples of Central Asia, or at best wants to seize it in – as Valeria Ibraeva describes referring to the best Kazakh art – ‘a wild and deviant Sufi figure’. Yet in front of the great mausoleum of Saint (Khodja) Yasawi in Turkestan (a masterpiece of Timurid architecture), the artist looks beautiful and elegant in a multicoloured Ikat; above all she covers herself and aims a non-reconciliatory look. The title of this work is ‘Jihad’.

Davidegallo

Monique Meloche is pleased to announce Kalup Linzy’s first solo show in Chicago!
Kalup Linzy
Conversations wit de Churen
March 16 – April 21, 2007
video still from Conversations wit de Churen III: Da Young and Da Mess, 2005
opening reception for the artist Friday March 16th 6-9pm

www.moniquemeloche.com

“Kalup Linzy’s clever and unique voice lampoons and satirizes various forms of film & television such as Hollywood tearjerkers and soap operas. He deals with highly charged themes such as gender, sexuality, race, class, and popular culture. His takes on these issues are eloquently fused into his delightfully raunchy videos and performances like Conversations Wit De Churen and Diva in Distress. Multi-tasking as a writer, director, actor, and editor, his film approach recalls the early styles of John Waters, Andy Warhol, and George C. Wolfe. Using multi-layered characters and subplots that weave through the works, he constructs powerful critiques of the laws of romance and desire, family and trust, truth and hypocrisy. He manages to go for the jugular with uproarious humor, while at the same time his keen sense of truth is unwaveringly present. We the viewers are forced to confront the ways we deal with our own yearnings and acknowledge the dirty little secrets that everyone knows.” Whitfield Lovell, visual artist

For his exhibition at moniquemeloche Linzy will feature Conversations wit de Churen — a multi-part video project that began in 2003. Linzy, along with a cast of friends of various ethnic backgrounds, don over-the-top drag costumes and perform an “…endless parodic relay that disrupts conventional categories of gender, sexuality, and race.” Debra Singer Artforum Jan. 2007 The exhibition will open with the most recent installment As da art world might turn (2006) projected in the main space of the gallery alongside a series of drawings made by Linzy’s alter-ego Katonya. There will be a weekly rotation of the videos (changing each Saturday) so that the entire project can be seen in succession. The video schedule is as follows:

Mar 16-23 V: As da Art World Might Turn 2006
Mar 24-30 II: All my Churen 2003
Mar 31-Apr6 III: Da Young and da Mess 2005
Apr 7-13 IV: Play wit de Churen 2005
Apr 14-21 V: As da Art world Might Turn 2006

Kalup Linzy (b. 1977 Florida, lives NY) received both his MFA and BFA from the University of South Florida (2003/2000) and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2002). His first major solo show at Taxter & Spengemann Gallery in NY last fall received rave reviews, including a best of 2006 nod Artforum. His work will be included in the Moscow Biennial 2007 “Uncertain States of America – American Video Art in the 3rd Millennium.” In 2006 alone, his live performance were featured at Art Basel Miami, KunstFilm Biennial Art Cologne, PS1 Contemporary Art Center NY, Center for Contemporary Art Glasgow, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Linzy was the recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant in 2005 and was just awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2007-2008. Linzy will be speaking at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago as part of their Visiting Artist Program on Wednesday, March 28th www.saic.edu/vap.

Monique Meloche

Crazy Danish Girls.

Ingen Frygt

Opening friday 9 March.
This is the first Day of My Life

Malmø Kunsthall

gustavo acosta

One of the most interesting painters in his generation Acosta won several important awards in Cuba during the decade of the 80s and has participated in the Havana, Chile and Sao Paolo Biennials. He established himself in Mexico in 1991 along with the significant number of Cuban artists who left their home country at that time and participated in numerous collective shows such as The Prodigious Decade at The Chopo University Museum (1992). He currently resides in Miami and has maintained a constant and growing presence in the panorama of Latin American plastic arts in America and in Europe.

josé bedia

Miami based internationally renowned Cuban artist José Bedia is a defender of simple ways of life, nature and spirituality. His profuse use of religious and spiritual symbols specially taken from primary sources alongside with a deeply energetic painting has generated a unique, exceptional reflection on what is a collective past. The most important elements in his works are the juxtaposition of African, Asian, and indigenous American cultures and values with the deteriorating forces of contemporary society, industrialism and wars. Some of Bedia’s most celebrated works include the design for the floors and railings of the Opera House and the Concert Hall at the Performing Art Center in Miami, inaugurated in 2006. He has presented his extensive body of work in different memorable exhibitions like 10 Floridians at the Miami Art Center (2003), Contemporary Narratives in American Prints at the Whitney Museum of Art (2000), Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) (1993) and Magiciens de la Terre at The Centre Georges Pompidou (1989).

ángel delgado

Delgado recently participated in the First Biennial of Canarias 2006 and in 2004 he was granted with a residence for new installations at the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh. He is a Cuban contemporary artist who transcended in the decade of the 90s when he was sent to prison for realizing a politically incorrect performance. His work has been marked by reflecting upon his personal experience. He uses non-conventional materials such as soap to produce installations and sculptures and color pencils with cold cream to draw on handkerchiefs.

rené francisco rodríguez

He will be participating in the 52nd Venice Biennial next June, representing his country. A very important artist in the history of Cuban contemporary art he has transcended various generations. Together with Eduardo Ponjuán, he was one of the principal members of the Generation of the 80s in Cuba; later he participated in the Generation of the 90s where he founded and directed the celebrated Grupo DUPP, which marked the epoch. Today René Francisco’s work continues to attract international interest.

atelier morales

Formed as architects, Teresa Ayuso and Juan Luis Morales are currently at the forefront of contemporary Cuban artists in exile. The Atelier Morales opened in Paris in 1997 through a desire to collaboratively reflect on art, vernacular architecture, and design. Their work transcends the limits of Cubanness as their concerns can be seen as universal. They have worked primarily through the use of photography as a mediating tool. Using highly poetic and critical articulations the artists reflect in general on social and economic inequities which cause the loss of heritage and patrimony and global migrations. Their series Los Bohíos was exhibited at the I Prague Biennale, curated by Lauri Firstenberg. This year, Atelier Morales will have a Solo Exhibition at the Heidelberger Kunstverein in Germany, presenting the Viaje Equinoccial series.

rodolfo peraza

One of the most intelligent young Cuban contemporary artists, Peraza reflects upon private situations and represents the interior world of a person in an unusual way. He uses signs and public signals as support for his images. The graphic man, which he calls “Hombre Concreto”, thus represents the universal man in the language of signposting, designed to organize the individual within public spaces. Peraza recently showed his work in a collective show at the MOCCA, Toronto, curated by Magda González.

manuel piña

Even as Manuel Piña graduated in mechanical engineering from the Vladimir Polytechnic Institute in Russia, in 1983, he became instead one of the most recognized and respected Cuban artists in exile. The main focus of his work is photography, but also installation, audio and video. He usually explores the urban space, full of evidence of its history, past and present. Collecting and manipulating these evidences and composing his own narratives through them, is a common exercise. His work –shown through different solo exhibitions in Vancouver, Milan, Vienna, Mexico, New York and Cuba- is part of the renowned Daros Latinamerican Collection in Switzerland.

sandra ramos

Sandra Ramos is one of the best known female contemporary artists in Cuba. Her work, which includes various techniques such as installation, painting, engraving and drawing, is based on the recuperation of the social and the individual memory and is linked to the difficulties of everyday life in Cuba as well as to themes like loneliness, migration and the manipulation of history and memory. There is great international interest in her work; shown by the fact, that it part of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary.TBA21.Vienna Collection. She has exhibited at The Mattress Factory, Pittsburg and has recently realized the curatorial project Havana Factory for the experimental space A’Chocolatería, in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

martín soto

Martín Soto’s work reflects a constant aesthetic observation of daily-life objects. Instead of only contemplating the beauty of a simple object, he highlights the subtle aesthetics that lie behind the veil of the usual. Thus, Soto’s artworks are experiments with compositions in a determined space, playing with infinity of visual, mental and spatial propositions. He had been granted awards and residencies but had never wanted to exhibit in a commercial space. In 2006 he decided he was ready; participated in the MACO art fair and had a solo show, both through nina menocal gallery, Mexico City; from then on he has had solo shows at Broadway 1602 in New York, 2006 and Vilma Gold, London, 2007 and has participated at the international fairs Liste, Basel and Artíssima, Turin.

Nina Menocal

Nicola Von Senger

In her exhibition “Walking Between” Melou Vanggaard has created a visual, expressive and suggestive installation of paintings in Galleri Christoffer Egelund’s large front room, where she explores the narrative potential of paintings in a metaphorical short story style.

The exhibition introduces us to, amongst other things, a series of colour-intensive glazed landscapes and human beings painted with quick strokes of the brush, whose blurred faces reduce their vague bodies to nothing but movement and action. The many different forms, sizes and formats of the paintings, all expressed in Melou Vanggaard’s characteristic expressive and energetic imagery, explore the field of possibilities embodied in the ambiguities and spaces between the abstract and the narrative, between impulse and control, text and figuration. The result is a giant collage of experiences, lyrical images and narratives whose motivic inspirations are impressions of the artist’s own surroundings or drawn from media images and Albrecht Dürer’s graphical world.

Thus the narrative structure of the exhibition moves through different thematic phases, from the loneliness of the motel room depicted in American road movies to desperate party nights in the bars, where images, language and narrative interact, telling an open-ended story. It is the atmosphere between the pictures; the feeling of silence before the storm in places where life unfolds between the decisions in the search for turning points – on the road towards something else.

In the back of the gallery, Melou Vanggaard has invited five artists to exhibit who all work in a very personal artistic universe, although with highly different expressions: In a series of blood collages, Mikkel S. Andersen (DK) deals with themes such as bitterness, sarcasm, mental catastrophes and general weltschmerz. Zven Balslev’s (DK) expressive black/white pen-and-ink drawings are highly influenced by underground cartoons and musical subcultures such as black metal, punk and noise, that often profess an extreme black humour and elude the norms of mainstream culture. In her installation and performance, Line Skywalker Karlström (SE) deals with different problems related to normality, above all coupled to hierarchies of values related to gender, sexuality and class. With his free and expressive imagery, Erling Viktor (DK/D) works very formally with paintings in a searching investigation of the expression, kinetics, contrast and composition of colour. Kerstin Wagener (D) works with a multifarious aesthetic impression, with inspiration from pop, trash and glamour.

Young Egelund