Month: May 2008
Robert Elfgen
Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers London is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of the German artist Robert Elfgen.
A student of John Armleder and Rosemarie Trockel, Elfgen graduated in 2001 and has been showing internationally since 2005. Working with a wide range of media, his practice encompasses painting, sculpture and installation. Whilst his veneer works of forest animals are beautifully crafted, the D.I.Y. aesthetic of Elfgen’s sculptures and installations is indicative of the artist’s artisanal, hands-on approach to art. Elfgen explores his subject matter, nature and particularly the symbolism of animals from a highly romantic point of view, which can certainly be located in the tradition of German idealism, but which is also indicative of the artist’s biography. Growing up in rural Germany, Elfgen refers to the rituals of childhood and the anthropomorphic powers of his pets in order to open up a vocabulary of symbolic images which is at once personal and universal. Appropriating the surrealist method of displacement, the artist seeks to re-create nature’s symbolic order in the gallery space.
Elfgen’s installations are arranged as metaphorical systems, in which objects and animals are carefully positioned in relation to each other and to the viewer. For the current exhibition Antriebswelle (Driveshaft), Elfgen has transformed his own car, a former ambulance, into a sculpture. The vehicle, which has accompanied Elfgen throughout his artistic career, first as a mode of transportation and finally as his artwork, is a work-in-progress, changing colour and meaning every time it is displayed. Recycling his old car by turning it into art shifts the notion of the consumer object into a new political context, which in an era of climate change and environmental threat, radically changes the wider implications of the ready-made in art. The surrealist act of de-contextualising everyday objects has been key to a number of his works, such as the video Schutzman (Constable), in which Elfgen sent an old policeman dummy down the river Rhine and Motorschaden (Engine Breakdown), which presented Elfgen’s motorcycle as sculpture.
Elfgen’s keen interest in the social and architectural systems of beehives and their cultural meaning in Western history has lead to a new and intriguing body of work, also on display in the exhibition. The life of bees has been central to European culture, ranging from Cicero’s idea that memory is structured like a beehive, to Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes and Joseph Beuys’ Honey Pump. Further exploring the cultural meaning of bees, Elfgen has produced a series of wood veneer panels showing swarms of bees in front of an abstract background. The panels have been painted with industrial car paint, which creates a dark, shimmering effect. The relationship between the black spots of the bees and the spatial depth of the abstract patterns create an optical effect oscillating between two- and three-dimensional space, between figuration and abstraction. In addition, Elfgen has placed a number of small and large stains on the gallery floor. The shiny surface of the stains, which again have been produced by car paint, recall the mesmerizing look of oil stains but could also be interpreted as pools of honey. For Elfgen, the stain has a crucial meaning, since its abject character symbolises the human aspect in today’s over-industrialised world. As their titles suggest, these stains stand for hope (Hoffnung), love (Liebe) and memory (Gestern).
Robert Elfgen’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Westlondonprojects, London (Expedition) 2006, Kunstverein Bonn(1+1=3 Elfgen Technik), 2005 and at the Kulturzentrum Antwerp in 1999. Group exhibitions include The Class of Rosemarie Trockel at the Kunstverein Gelsenkirchen, 2002 and Lieber Friedrich at the Kunstverein Kassel, 2006. He has also collaborated with Kai Althoff in Paul Thek. Werkschau im Kontext Zeitgenössischer Kunst which was shown at the ZKM Karlsruhe, 2007 and Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg, 2008. He has been exhibiting with Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers since 2004 and was this year awarded the Junger Kunstpreis, NRW (Nordrhein-Westfalen).
Wes Lang
New works from Wes Lang the man….
Zieher Smith
“Hollow Ground and Fals
MOGADISHNI AAR is proud to present the exhibition “Hollow Ground and False Guidance” by American artist Bradley Castellanos (b. 1974). The exhibition has been realized through the kind collaboration of Caren Golden Fine Art, NY.
Bradley Castellanos is fascinated by the unattractive environments of New York City, its boroughs, and rural America (Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and New Hampshire). He shows us urban landscapes, fall-apart places and dystopic toxic landscapes. The process begins when he sets out to explore the landscape in search of a subject or to gather materials that he brings back to his studio to arrange for a photograph. Dependent upon his intentions the subject could be urban, industrial, pastoral or a combination thereof. Castellanos shoots the photographs with a large format camera, occasionally works with them in Photoshop and then has prints made. The trashy urban and rural settings are further ripped apart and destroyed when Castellanos meticulously cuts out the photographs that he has taken then glues it onto his paintings. He adds resin and oil paint in acidy colors which put together, transforms into post-apocalyptic yet romanticized landscapes on his canvases.
The beauty of decay has been brought forward before by romantic painters of the 19th Century in their love of ruins in beautiful landscapes. These works have a sense of romantic nostalgia leading back to a classical era. Castellanos’ ruins, however, is found in urban landscapes reflecting on the interior, political, and environmental landscapes of contemporary life.
Castellanos’ source material includes literature and non fiction (Albert Camus, Don Delillo, Cormac McCarthy, Mark Twain, Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, The New Yorker and many others), National Public Radio, film and movies, and contemporary and past painters (Chinese Landscape Painting, Casper David Friedrich, Hudson River School, Francisco Goya, Gerhard Richter, Fred Tomaselli, Daniel Richter, Peter Doig and many others). Despite the dystopic images Castellanos’ works succeed in seducing the viewer by its unique tactility and overall aesthetic.
Bradley Castellanos has among other places exhibited at David Zwirner Gallery in NY, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, NY, and later on this Year his works can be seen in the exhibition “Future Tense: Reshaping The Landscape” at Neuberger Museum of Art, NY.
Stefan Mauck
Saskia Leek
Saskia Leek
Thick Air Method
May 10-31, 2008
The Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco is pleased to present a solo exhibition by New Zealand-based painter Saskia Leek.
Saskia Leek began exhibiting her paintings in the early 1990s, her subject matter being drawn from real and imagined memories of growing up in Christchurch. Her naïve, almost childlike style established her reputation as an artist who was willing to question accepted principles of ‘good painting’. Initially the works appear crude and amateurish; her naïve style is often absent of scale and perspective. Leek’s choice of media, acrylic on board, as well as the flatness with which she depicts her subject matter evokes a second-hand quality.
This exhibition introduces Leek’s most recent work. While the paintings abandon specific references to time and place, they convey an autobiographical dimension and suggest things from Leek’s past, both real and imaginary – drifting sailboats, perched cats, and crystallized landscapes; things left behind but not forgotten. Her bleached palette even recalls the faded colors of memory – pastel yellows, faint blues, washed out greens and hazy pinks.
Saskia Leek was born in 1970 in Christchurch, New Zealand. From 1988-1991 she studied at The Canterbury School of Fine Arts, Christchurch, where she obtained a BFA. Leek has shown widely throughout New Zealand and recently had a solo exhibition at Darren Knight Gallery in Sydney, Australia. She currently lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand.
Tim Roda / Living Large
Tim Roda / Living Large
We are pleased to present our second solo show with photographs by Tim Roda.
Tim Rodas black and white family portraits are filled with reverberations of his own childhood memories and family traditions as a site for individual and communal mythmaking. Incorporating his son and wife into his photographs while enacting familial scenes, Roda collapses the past and present as well as private and public. He positions his family in elaborately staged arrangements, which he builds out of rough and simple materials like wood, clay, paper and everyday items. His latest work explores themes of transition, whishes and dreams as well as the isolation of immigrants. Like memories the images are fragmented narratives, in which familiarity and strangeness blur. His technical process seems appropriately unfinished. He roughly cuts the borders of his photographs so that they look vulnerable and he allows or even creates chemical splashes and other technical flaws. This treatment of the pictures adds to the atmosphere of hand crafted, not at all valuable and is in contrast to usual clean-cut photography. The invalidation corresponds with the content. Rodas work is beautiful and alarming.
Tim Roda was born 1977 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA.
Please see “Introducing Tim Roda”, by Dan Torop in Modern Painter Issue 56, May 2008
New works from Jesper Dalgaard
Michael Smith
Hales Gallery is pleased to announce Michael Smith’s second solo show at the Gallery.
Since 1979 Smith has concentrated on his prescient, tragicomic persona, the clueless and ever hopeful everyman, Mike. Mike, a.k.a. Blandman, has developed into an ongoing character in a series of comedic performances, videos and installations, and has become Smith’s primary vehicle for commenting on discrepancies in the social and cultural landscape. One is constantly reminded of recognizable models and formats, such as sitcoms, commercials, game shows and the Internet banners; however familiar, Smith’s work persists to be destabilizing, as it focuses on Mike’s plodding and inadvertent reflection on themes of failure and loneliness in our technologically sophisticated world.
School Work brings together two pieces of work most recently shown in the 2008 Whitney Biennial.
Portal Excursion (2005-07) is a 10-minute video piece about Mike’s quest for knowledge and learning after his introduction to MIT’s OpenCourseWare, “a free and open educational resource for self-learners around the world”. Mike is attempting to combine a long time interest in mnemonics with his newly found passion for on-line studies. Although his method for learning appears to be highly specious, it is clear he has figured out a way to cope with his mid-life struggle, keeping himself busy and fully immersed in the ever-expanding field of distance learning.
Over the past thirty years both Smith and his persona, Mike, have been ageing in real time. Smith’s ongoing series Sears Class Portraits (1999-2008) highlights this process more succinctly than in any other work to date. These photographs taken with his various classes at Sears Portrait Studios are both mementos and records of his teaching and ageing process. Each year his students seem to stay the same age whilst Mike shows sign of wear. This glimpse into the artist’s personal life through the ironic visual language of tacky studio photography subtly fuses Smith’s identity with that of Mike’s.
Michael Smith has an extensive performance and exhibition history that began in the mid 70’s. He has shown in venues as varied as The New Museum, MoMa, Carolines Comedy Club (New York City), Dance Threatre Workshop, Cinemax, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Pompidou Centre. Smith has collaborated with numerous artists including William Wegman, Seth Price, Mayo Thompson and Mike Kelley, and for the past ten years has broken new ground in immersive installation art working in collaboration with Joshua White.
Smith has produced several artists’ books and an impressive collection of drawings and sketches that detail his creative process; many of which were published recently in MICHAEL SMITH Drawings: Simple, Obscure and Obtuse (NY: Regency Arts Press).
