UNA ESTACA EN EL LODO, UN HOYO EN LA CINTA.


A Stake in the Mud, A Hole in the Reel. Land Art’s Expanded Field 1968–2008′

Borrowing its title from the writings of Robert Smithson, the programme revisits a selection of moving-image works that form part of the historical memory of Land Art, through and alongside more recent productions by contemporary artists. Indeed a concern with remoteness, together with the powerful allure of specific sites, weaves throughout the films’ itinerary, which includes the sewers of New York and Vienna (Gordon Matta-Clark, Hans Schabus), the deserts of California (Mario Garcia Torres), the mountains of the Basque country (Ibon Aranberri), and the beaches of Taveuni (Nikolaj Recke).

Maria Thereza Alves · Francis Alÿs · Ibon Aranberri · Marinus Boezem · Donna Conlon · Jan Dibbets · Barry Flanagan · Cypriem Gaillard · Mario García Torres · Nancy Holt · Richard Long · Walter de Maria · Gordon Matta-Clark · Dennis Oppenheim · Damián Ortega · Nikolaj Recke · Thiago Rocha Pitta · Hans Schabus · Gerry Schum · Robert Smithson · Jordan Wolfson

Curated by Latitudes

Caac

Naoto Kawahara


Naoto Kawahara
“Ouroboros”

Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to announce our fifth solo exhibition
“Ouroboros” with Naoto Kawahara. Around five new paintings will be shown
in this exhibition.

In 2005 Taka Ishii Gallery hosted Kawahara’s “NU” exhibition. Kawahara
then participated in the group exhibition “Attention to Detail” (The FLAG
Art Foundation, New York) curated by Chuck Close in 2008. Kawahara will also
participate in the group exhibition “Diana und Aktaion: Der Verbotene Blick
auf die Nacktheit” (Museum Kunst Palast, Dusseldorf) this October. He has
been active internationally and his works have attracted increasing
attention in recent years.

“This time, I worked as though painting an unorthodox Vanitas while
thinking about the ominous atmosphere in daily life and the compelling
instinct that enables us to constantly forget and paralyze it. Although my
expression is realistic, rather than depicting the subject itself, I hope to
express it like an image emerging in the mind.”

Naoto Kawahara

In this solo show entitled “Ouroboros” (referring to a serpent that formed
a circle by swallowing its own tail, and a symbol of Ancient Greece),
Kawahara quotes the works of Munch, an artist whom he feels “paradoxically
depicts images of death, whilst also expressing life through themes such as
sexuality and puberty.” In this exhibition he reexamines these paintings,
which are infused with both energy and despair.

Kawahara has produced distinctive realist paintings that precisely reproduce
photographs of people and landscapes drawn from his surroundings or scenes
from films. In recent years, he has been creating paintings that reinterpret
scenes extracted from classic masterpieces by artists such as Durer,
Balthus and Rembrandt. Through such “re-envisioned paintings”, Kawahara
pursues the theme of “creating a sense of deja vu through the repetitive
use of old masters’ themes, while reflecting on archetypes of images valid
today,” and presents this theme in his exhibition.

Taka Ishii Gallery

New works from Stephen Palmer



Hi Jens-Peter

I just thought you might like to see some images of new paintings by Stephen
Palmer that we have at the gallery:

Stephen Palmer, Self portrait with badges, 2008, oil on canvas.
Stephen Palmer, Make of free at last, 2008, oil on canvas.

Vane


Bettina Buck


German artist Bettina Buck’s first solo exhibition at the gallery opens 27.06.2008.

Using such diverse and commonplace materials as foam, carpet, latex and clay the artists’ recent sculptures oscillates between beauty and repulsion and structure and formlessness to create intimate, delicate moments of uncertainty.

An conversation between the artist and Vincent Honoré, curator of the David Roberts Art Foundation, London, is available to read on the website.

Axel Antas has new work included in Nowhere is here at The Drawing Room. The exhibition which also includes Nogah Engler, Franziska Furter, Reece Jones and Damien Roach, taps into the capacity of drawing to capture the contingent quality of the natural environment and our complex relationship with it.

Nowhere is here runs till 21.07.2008 at The Drawing Room, London.

Antas’ solo exhibition at Spacex, Structures for the Unseen runs till 12.07.2008. The exhibition consists of a new body of work including film, large scale drawings and a series of photographs alongside a selection of earlier works from Antas’ Intervention series.

Erica Eyres is currently included in a group exhibition NO BORDERS (JUST NEWS) at the Contemporary Art Center of Thessaloniki, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Greece. The exhibition gathers the works of twenty nine young artists from twenty two European countries and will close its tour in Lisbon later this year.
which inverts the truisms of the contemporary imagination.

Rokeby Gallery

Ciaran Murphy & Jason Loebs & Andrew Falkowski


Ciaran Murphy, Monkey with Eyeshadow, 2008, oil on cotton, 19” x 16”

Kavi Gupta gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in the United States of Dublin-based artist Ciaran Murphy.

Ciaran Murphy creates paintings that borrow their imagery from a myriad of sources spanning subject matter that can reach from a tropical landscape to an animal eating its prey. His choice of disparate and sparse singular vignettes alludes to the intrinsic and imperative connection of Murphy’s world of images as they relate and interact as a whole. Though quiet and poetic, his subject matter encompasses humor and violence, romance and utter mystery all at once.

Murphy’s paintings are predominantly modest in size and are marked by a subdued palette of neutral painterly and often gestured mark making. Some images are barely recognizable such as a painting of a cloud of passing smoke while others are as straight forward as a perched monkey showing off her blue eye makeup. The array of imagery does seem to eventually focus on a few recurring motifs as Murphy gravitates towards scenes of nature. Piles of twigs, uprooted trees, animals and lightning storms describe a few of these examples though this tendency does not reveal to the viewer a sign of a clear narrative, or a key to unlock a specific story. It leaves one to imagine Murphy’s paintings as a trail on an infinite journey of one artist to define for himself his own world and its surroundings.

Ciaran Murphy (b. 1978) lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. Murphy has had solo exhibitions at mother’s tankstation in Dublin, and has exhibited and been an artist in residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Selected group exhibitions include shows at Massimo Carasi in Milan, Rubicon Gallery, Dublin; Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin and the RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin.

Andrew Falkowski and Jason Loebs

Kavi Gupta Gallery is pleased to present the work of two painters whose work divergently explores the histories of painting through fundamentals of both art history and the personal mythologizing and readings of past events, objects, images and reference points.

Andrew Falkowski creates hyper-realistic paintings of lost historical prerogatives. Several works in this exhibition describe delicately flowing and thoughtfully specific arrangements of sheets of cloth. The images are taken from photographic backdrops yet naked of their posed subject becoming “portraits” in themselves. They are placeless, ‘nowhere’, evoking melancholic atmospheres, while their centrally focused light emphasizes the absent portrait, the missing still-life. As a counterpoint, a seductively romantic portrait of a heroic persona harkens to a sense of displaced optimism.

Jason Loebs works with painting as well as collage and other mixed media to explore the way one constructs the present by reconfiguring our past. Some images Loebs is drawn to are iconic such as those taken form art history textbooks where faint stains and imprints of paintings such as Manet’s Olympia can be deciphered. Others hint to our history through their use of old pages from books culled from many sources spanning science, literature, law and art. Materiality also comes into play as often linen is left uncovered, tape is visible, and cracks and stains take the form not only of a symbol of deteriorating ideals but also of one’s relationship to the retelling of what has already been.

Andrew Falkowski (b. 1973) lives and works in Chicago. He has had solo exhibitions at The Suburban in Oak Park, IL and Rosamund Felsen in Santa Monica. Recent group exhibitions include Kristi Engle Gallery, Los Angeles; and MK12 Gallery in Kansas City. An upcoming show at Hudson-Franklin in NY is also scheduled for 2009. Falkowski received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

Jason Loebs (b. 1981) lives and works in Brooklyn. Loebs recently received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been included in exhibitions at Jack the Pelican Gallery, Brooklyn; and Voxpopuli, Philadelphia.

Kavi Gupta