Tag: US
Chris Johanson
Kasper Sonne // Pure Colors
Cordy Ryman @ DCKT Contemporary
DCKT Contemporary is pleased to present CORDY RYMAN’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. RYMAN manipulates and reconstitutes an inherited visual language, defining himself in relation to it. His intuitive and spontaneous process is propelled and determined primarily by the characteristics of his media. Manipulating materials such as wood, metal, velcro, Gorilla Glue, staples and scraps from his studio floor, RYMAN’s assemblages are physical and humorous.
A number of new works created for this exhibition, including Trapped Wave, are recycled from Third Wave, a monumental installation work exhibited in RYMAN’s first show with the gallery. The careful consideration of the painted wood and its contours guides the artist in the geometric patterning of his reconstructions. RYMAN’s paintings and sculptures address elements of architecture with rich texture and a vivid color palette. RYMAN’s process allows the work to dictate its own direction and evolution, oftentimes referring back to other pieces or ideas and often referencing the materials used.
RYMAN also works in an architectural mode where he creates a dialogue between his work and its surroundings. These spaces can be specific in location or as common as a 90 degree corner. In the sculptural installation Red Bricks, RYMAN stacks and steps multitudes of painted wood chunks to envelope the gallery’s front window facing wall. Wrapping around the existing wall and facing into the gallery is Scrap Wall, a year’s worth of leftovers monumentally recycled. The works respond to the unique aspects of their placement in a three dimensional manner. The space in many ways becomes a canvas.
RYMAN’s previous solo exhibitions include Kavi Gupta Gallery (Chicago, IL), Mark Moore Gallery (Santa Monica, CA) and Lora Reynolds Gallery (Austin, TX). Previous group exhibitions include Aberrant Abstraction, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS), One More, Esbjerg Museum of Modern Art (Esbjerg, Denmark) and Greater New York 2005 at P.S. 1 Contemporary Arts Center (Long Island City, NY). His work is included in the Microsoft Art Collection (Redmond, WA) and the Rubell Family Collection (Miami, FL).
“UNTITLES”
Newman Popiashvili Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition of eight artists curated by Michel Auder. As an active visiting artist and professor in several art schools in the US and abroad, Auder has encountered these talented artists in different points of their careers. He has selected the work for the show without trying to unite them under a theme or preconceived idea. It is a recollection of “good work” that he has seen, thus the title of the show – Untitles. The exhibition brings together artists working in all media and styles as well as varying explorations from personal histories to the social critique.
Michael Stickrod represents a convergence of the two perspectives: personal and social. Often taking the form of vacation movies, family photographs, crafted pottery and other “amateur” practices that tend to be relegated to attics and basements, Stickrod’s artworld pedigree, completely flips how these objects are read. Laura Marsh’s work further extends the cultural portrait of our society through combining imagery from advertisements. The artists inserts advertising media into drawings, sculptures, paintings and video, thus augmenting commercial images and stretching the life of everyday materials to manifest characters that bare an objectified gaze. The Korean artist Myeongsoo Kim explores an interest in defining the cowardliness, which may act as a self defense mechanism, accompanied by a cynical perspective of oneself and the surrounding world. The artist’s frustration in dealing with the gap between personal beliefs and the respective responsibilities expose a materiality of its own through his work. Sam Anderson’s figurines refer to imagined and existing cultural narratives. In the exhibition, the sculpture Sylvia is both fragile and combative and the warrior stance adds tension to the work. Caroline May’s photographs focus on the customary re-enactment of stereotypes of masculinity that are commonly embraced by both heterosexual and gay mainstream culture. May utilizes photography as a commentary on the reinvention of identity. The Brooklyn based artist Mariah Robertson composes spontaneously with collaged negatives and other objects on irregularly cut sheets of photo paper. The artist often employs processes from “the age of extinction,” films, chemistries and equipment that are being discontinued. Matt Connors’ paintings also harken back to earlier artistic modes of production and the refreshingly simple abstract canvases are, in fact, formally quite sophisticated. Arild Tveito questions ideas of appropriation and originality versus the facsimile. The foot sculpture featured in the show is cast from an Auguste Rodin sculpture that is on display in Oslo, Norway. The actual sculpture was relegated to a non-focal part of the city due to its questionable authenticity, Tveito, secretly cast the foot of the sculpture and reintroduced an “original” art work into the artistic community.
Santiago Sierra
10 Years of Fecal Face //
JEFF SONHOUSE @ MARTHA OTERO GALLERY
Martha Otero is pleased to present New York based artist Jeff Sonhouse’s exhibition, ‘Better Off Dead,’ Said The Landlord. For his Los Angeles solo debut, Sonhouse deconstructs the accepted theories of ownership and invites us to reexamine how we interpret relationships of power, as tenants of an overbearing architect. With alluding portrayals of glorified facades, he creates a frictional energy of immortality.
The exhibition will include Sonhouse’s recent portraits of oracular figures that evoke familiarity, such as Papi Shampoo, bearing a Jesus like stance and demeanor. We’re instantly drawn to the silky smooth satin textured vestment and its vividly deep aquamarine and violet colors. Draped over a brash black and white pinstripe suit with ashen hands in an iconic Pantocrator posture. The background palette harmonizes burgundy with black, phthalo blues and rich purples into a contemporary vision of a halo. Maintaining his ingenious approach to mixed media, we see meticulous hair constructed of matches and steel wool combined with composite figures of oil paint. Sonhouse’s unorthodox use of materials successfully disorients the viewers prescribed sense of space. Even more irresistible are Sonhouse’s masks and the intense gaze concealed behind them.
Jeff Sonhouse was born in 1968 in New York where he currently lives and works. He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and his MFA from Hunter College in 2001. He has exhibited at The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada; Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, NY; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, NY; Samson Projects, Boston, MA; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA; The New York Historical Society, New York, NY.
Clayton Brothers: Inside Out
MADISON, WI – Clayton Brothers: Inside Out, a new major exhibition at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, presents twenty-six paintings and three mixed-media installations created collaboratively by Rob and Christian Clayton. The Clayton Brothers construct complex narratives that introduce memorable characters and comment wryly on contemporary life. The exhibition, which is organized by museum director Stephen Fleischman, will be on view in the museum’s main galleries from September 12, 2010, through January 2, 2011.
Clayton Brothers: Inside Out is the first museum survey of the brothers’ work. It presents works from the six major series created collaboratively by Rob and Christian Clayton since 2001, beginning with the installation piece Tim House (In Green Pastures)–in the collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art–and concluding with the bold, large-scale canvases of the Jumbo Fruit series. Series titles suggest the disquiet or irony–or often both–that characterizes the individual works. Works in the As Is are connected by the concept of people, like houses or other objects available for purchase, being presented in “as-is” condition, while the Patient series portrays the subjects and ramifications of the medical industry with both humor and dismay.
Stephen Fleischman says the work of the Clayton Brothers has “consistently been informed by vivid color and an eccentric cast of characters. The result is an obsessively rich body of work that strikes universal chords, but remains deeply personal. Front and center are the unique people, animals, and places that occupy the outskirts of the American psyche.”
