Month: February 2008

Young artist seeks audience to enjoy poly-conscious attempts at post-medium condition production. 
Must enjoy race mongering, disparate disconnected thoughts and sunsets (really).  Familiarity with the work of Sun Ra, Joseph Beuys, Rosalind Krauss, Richard Pryor, Hans Haacke, Carl Andre and interest in spelunking the death of identity a plus.  I’m looking for an audience with a good attention span that is willing to stay with me through the good and the bad.  I enjoy creating videos, producing sculptures, and making photographs.  My interest are costuming, Sam Greenlee novels, Godard films and masturbation.  Ability to hold conversation using only rap lyrics, and a sense of humor a must.

— Rashid Johnson
Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery is pleased to present The Dead Lecturer, the first New York solo exhibition by Rashid Johnson, running from February 22 to March 29, 2008. An opening reception will be held on Friday, February 22, from 6-8 pm.
Titled after a book of poems by LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), the exhibition reflects Johnson’s multifaceted engagement with what David Hammons termed “cultural abstraction.” Using sculpture and tightly cropped photographs, the artist explores the semiotic systems and iconography of a mythic secret society of African-American intelligentsia within a metaphysical landscape removed from time and history.
Functioning as investigative reporter and archivist as well as artist, Johnson deploys materials including steel, shea butter, black soap, wax, mirrors, wood, together with found objects to form an installation that effortlessly shifts between media, emphasizing the poetic cadence of his work.   Mysticism and nostalgia create interplay among smoke-shrouded portraits, symbolic substances, and menacing forms.
Rashid Johnson studied at Columbia College, Chicago (1996-2000) and the School at the Art Institute of Chicago (2004-2005).  His exhibitions include Freestyle, curated by Thelma Golden (2001, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY); A Perfect Union…More or Less, curated by Hamza Walker (2004, Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, IL); and recently, Color Line, curated by Odili Donald Odita (2007, Jack Shainman Gallery, NY).  Upcoming exhibitions include the Magdeburger Kunstmuseum, Magdeburg, Germany (2008, solo) and the Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati (2008).  He lives and works in New York.

Nicole Klagsbrun

Falkener Project

Eddie Martinez & Chuck Webster mad this together.
‘Lionhert’ oil, ink and spraypaint on panel 2007-2008 40 x 40′

Very very good show, it a must to see.
Glyptotek

Manfred Kuttner

Works 1961-64

It is with great pleasure that we are able to present a second solo exhibition of the work of Manfred Kuttner (1937-2007).

The Dresden and Düsseldorf art academies during the early 1960s, the popular class of Karl Otto Goetz, student friendships with Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Konrad Lueg (who would become the group Realistischer Kapitalismus in 1963) and a first, self-organised group exhibition in a Düsseldorf display window space – all in all a good start to the artistic career of Manfred Kuttner, who died last year at the age of 70. In 2007 the Tate Modern in London featured his work along with that of Anselm Reyle and Thomas Scheibitz in the exhibition The Artist’s Dining Room.

After emigrating to West Germany with his wife in 1960 to flee the repressive circumstances in the GDR, Kuttner produced a body of work with a distinctive formal vocabulary of its own in only four years, from 1961 to 1964. This was described by contemporary critics as “kinetic painting” because he brought an abstract rhythmisation to his canvasses – or to old curtains and other fabrics – in the way he applied the then newly available neon paints. He himself said that he was concerned with achieving immediacy with colour composition, and was particularly taken with Yves Klein’s use of colour. Some of Kuttner’s images do indeed have an almost magnetic visual “pull”, but he was not interested in the mechanical, fastidious precision of Op Art. His painting is more nonchalant, often reduced to simple grids, and is more reminiscent of the compositions of Mary Heilmann. Reduction and rhythmisation are frequent strategies in his paintings, as well as his drawings – some of them executed on newspaper – which are exhibited here for the first time.

In his other artistic activities, Kuttner focused on the objects of the contemporary world around him, applying neon paint to various (plastic) toys, a typewriter, the academy piano, and the chair and bicycle saddle exhibited here. This work suggests Dada and Pop Art, and is no less visually compelling.

The work that perhaps unites all his interests most strikingly is the 8mm film entitled A-Z. Kuttner’s formal approach was to expose each frame of the film as a photograph and to hand-colour a number of interjacent unexposed frames. His subject matter is street signs, advertising, private images, artworks produced by his friends – all of it arranged into a walk through Düsseldorf from his flat to his studio at the Academy. In 1965 Kuttner decided for the “A” of the film – i.e. to provide for his family by earning a regular income as an advertising graphic designer – as there were very few collectors for his work at the time. Those who did know his work, as he himself said at the time, assumed that this “newfangled neon painting” would never last for more than a year and were hesitant to buy. As it turned out, it has now lasted for more than 45 years.

Johann Koenig

FINISSAGE ‘BERLINER STRASSE’ EXHIBITION
SEVEN POSITIONS ON CONTEMPORARY STREET CULTURE.

WITH THE ARTISTS ANTON UNAI / NOMAD / MAROK / JAYBO aka MONK / ADRIANA CIUDAD WITZEL / DANIEL TAGNO / NEON 

YOU’RE WELCOME TO CELEBRATE WITH US THE CLOSING OF A CHAPTER IN THE RISING BERLIN FINE URBAN ART MOVEMENT. 

AND WE ARE HONOURED TO PRESENT LIFE FROM LOS ANGELES: “THE SADS” – THE BAND OF STREET & ART CURATOR AARON ROSE AND HIS FRIENDS.
Circle Culture Gallery
Circleculture
The Sads

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