Month: October 2007

Spitting Image @ V1


Spitting Image

Group show with:
Asger Carlsen (DK/US), Julian Röder (DE), Kasper Sonne (DK/UK),
Peter Sutherland (US), Peter Beste (US), Peter Funch (DK/US),
Marie Jan Lund & Nina Jan Beier (DK/UK), Nicholas Prior (US), Syoin
Kajii (JP)

BENNY DRÖSCHER & BENJI WHALEN


BENNY DRÖSCHER (DK): “A STRONG PRESENCE BENEATH THE TREES”

MOGADISHNI CPH is proud to present the second solo exhibition in the gallery by Danish artist Benny Dröscher.
Dröscher is well-known for his sculptural expressions, but for the first time he solely presents paintings. The new works are centred around curious floating spaces with tilting perspectives. Recurrent elements from the natural world in Dröscher’s paintings are big pine trees, moonlit lakes, butterflies, birds and circular forms in combination with seemingly coincidental looking colour formations. Put together these elements – which are placed on the surface like objects in a spatial room – form carefully composed meetings between the figurative and the abstract. The circular form and the circular movement in the compositions keep everything floating in the paintings, and an almost romantic spherical feeling is created leaving the viewer in a state of meditation and daydreaming. There is no clear-cut narrative in the paintings, merely established conditions of wonderment and spiritual investigations. The spectator is offered a glimpse of a metaphysical dimension, into another world where things float in a weightless condition. With a free fall of vivid associations. ”A STRONG PRESENCE BENEATH THE TREES” invites you to participate in a beautiful daydream.

Benny Dröscher has recently had a solo exhibition in the London-based gallery Rokeby and will in the coming year have solo exhibitions abroad in Bergen Kunsthall, Norway and in Blindarte contemporanea, Naples, Italy among others. MOGADISHNI will be showing paintings by Dröscher at Zoo art fair, London and Pulse art fair, Miami.

Benny Dröscher will be present at the opening.

BENJI WHALEN (US): “CLAUSTROTOPIA”

MOGADISHNI CPH is furthermore proud to present the second solo exhibition in the gallery by America artist Benji Whalen who will be showing a wide spectrum of his artistic expressions. The works presented in the exhibition will be his well-known stuffed fabric arms embroidered with colourful tattoo imagery, polymer clay sculptures, watercolour and oil paintings plus a sculpture of stuffed fabric and clothing. Whalen’s work often fuses the feminine and the masculine. In his art he points to a so called “female tradition” but by fusing this with an aggressive imagery it forms a clash in the viewers mind between the soft and the hard – and therefore his works surprisingly infuse the traditional feminine craft of needlepoint with an attitude of bold machismo. The soft sculptures of arms also pose an identity question to the viewer about its absent owner and one can invent a suitable identity for this hidden character.
The new clay and fabric sculptures are absurd piles of human beings in fights with body parts sticking out. We both crave and fear the company of others, as the exhibition title CLAUSTROTOPIA suggests. The entangled bodies in the sculptures are physically close to such a degree that it borders on claustrophobia and causes aggression, and the notion of togetherness and peaceful coexistence therefore becomes a utopia. As always in Whalen’s work, optimism and pessimism, faith and dejection, adoration and disgust, and most importantly humour and sadness are always simultaneously present.

Later this year Benji Whalen will participate in a group exhibition called “Pricked: extreme embroidery” at the Museum of Arts & Design in New York.

OBEY


For everyone across the pond who missed out on Shepard‚s momentous exhibition in June in New York City, here is your chance to experience the OBEY phenomenon in person. Shepard and crew will be in LONDON, November 1st with an exhibition of works entitled „NINETEENEIGHTYFOURIA‰, Presented by STOLENSPACE Gallery at the Thurman Brewery. Do not miss this exhibition!

STOLENSPACE PRESENTS “NINETEENEIGHTYFOURIA”
New Works by Shepard Fairey

Opening Reception – Thursday November 1st, 6:30pm – 9:30pm
Exhibition Dates – November 2nd – 25th, 2007

StolenSpace Gallery
Old Truman Brewery
91 Brick Lane
London
E1 6QL






Christopher Patch


Christopher Patch
Matinicus October 19 – November 24, 2007

“I have done a number of pictures this summer which have not arrived in my mind from direct impressions but are creations of fancy arising out of my knowledge and experience of the facts employed. The result, while in continual danger of becoming either illustration in a bad sense or melodrama, has nevertheless evolved into very rare pictures.” George Bellows describing his trip to Matinicus Island in a letter to Robert Henri 1916

American painting has a long historical and aesthetic relationship to the landscape. This relationship often viewed as romantic has developed our idea of the natural landscape both as a cultural artifact in painting, but also as a philosophical construction of nature. In the 20th century such painters as George Bellows, Marsden Hartley, Fairfield Porter and Alex Katz explored this heritage as a way of creating an American identity. Mantinicus Island off the coast of Maine was specifically attractive to artists because of the hard working local fisherman and the “unspoiled corner of rustic America” that was still intact in contrast to the industrialization of modern America. Naturally this was a perfect place to react and respond to the landscape with a direct eye.

For his second solo-exhibition at Monique Meloche Gallery, the New York based artist and Maine native Christopher Patch, boarded a single engine Cessna aircraft, with his paints and the hope of re-capturing some inspiration of the exiled island of Matinicus. After one week of walking and making observational en plein air studies it was revealed that behind the typified American mirage, exists a more complex place. The island has gained a hostile reputation for it’s violent behavior between rivaling lobstermen, and it’s aggressive attitudes toward non-residents. With an alarming rise of guns, drugs and all-terrain vehicles, Matinicus is a microcosm of contemporary rural culture. The island’s picturesque beauty, though still intact, serves as a backdrop for interpersonal struggle and severe isolation..

Influenced by this time spent on the Island, Patch went back to his studio in New York and created a series of new images of Matinicus. The artist has crafted paintings that are at once visual documentations but are also intense formally inventive works that are expanding his uncanny ability for detail. While putting this observable natural landscape through a lens of wobbly graphic drawing and an exquisite painterly touch, Patch has created highly ambitious pictorial conundrums. In the studio he works in a refreshing dialogue with representational painting in a continuum as far reaching as the Transcendental Landscape Painters of the 19th century to Robert Crumb.

Christopher Patch (b. Maine 1974, lives Brooklyn) had his 1st solo exhibition at moniquemeloche gallery in 2003. Since that time he relocated from Chicago to Brooklyn and has exhibited in group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Contemporary Vancouver Art Gallery, Portland Museum of Art, New York Institute of Technology, Bronx Museum of Art, and Centre for Maine Contemporary Art. His work is included in the traveling exhibition Poets on Painters organized by the Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita Kansas with a full-color catalogue including artists Mequitta Ahuja, Abel Auer, Jules de Balincourt, Nina Bovasso, Echo Eggebrecht, James Benjamin Franklin, Joanne Greenbaum, Mark Grotjahn, Angelina Gualdoni, Laura Owens, Christopher Patch, Lamar Peterson, Sam Prekop, Monique Prieto, Christoph Ruchaberle, Anna Schachte, Dana Schutz, Sandra Scolnik, Amy Sillman, and Whiting Tennis. Additional venues include Herron Galleries, Herron School of Art and Design, Indianapolis, IN; University Galleries, Illinois State University, Normal IL; Queens Library Gallery, Jamaica NY; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln ME. Patch received his BFA from Maine College of Art in 1997 and his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2000.

Lykke Andersen and Stephanie Donsø


It is with great pleasure that peter lav PHOTO GALLERY presents the exhibition:

Lykke Andersen and Stephanie Donsø
med blade, der skygger for lyset [with leaves shading the light]
Oct. 18 – Nov. 17, 2007

Please join us on Thursday, October 18, from 17 – 20, for the opening reception.
Bedste hilsner/Best regards,