Month: August 2008

Americana Playground


Americana Playground

Kristian Kozul (born 1975 in Munich) is a Croat artist, who held his first showing at Galerie Anhava in 2005. The theme at the time was the processing of mundane objects related to nursing and disabilities into glimmering opulent sculpture with the aid of glass mosaics, beads and feathers.

Kozul later moved to New York and the title of his present exhibition “Americana” addresses the iconography of the American West, which Kozul – like us – views on the one hand as an outsider and on the other hand as almost everyday material presented in films and other popular culture. The stirrup boots, wide-brimmed hats, lassos and saddles of cowboys are covered with the colours of the American flag employing sequins, feathers and chrome-plated spikes. They are magnificent sumptuous objects, symbols of the American dream and crystallizations of the archetypal American aesthetic. But they also reflect the ironic and distanced attitudes of a critical outside observer of American society regarding the glossy surface of American culture. This phenomenon can be recognized from another context: a super-professionally produced American show will arouse grudging admiration, while the viewer knows that it is only an extremely finely honed illusion. Reality lies elsewhere, and it is of completely different appearance.

Works by Kristian Kozul have been on display in numerous solo and joint exhibitions in many European countries and Japan. He has held solo exhibitions at the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, TZR Galerie Kai Brückner in Düsseldorf and the Goff + Rosenthal gallery in New York.

Anhava

GARDAR EIDE EINARSSON: “NO CHAOS, DAMN IT!”

GARDAR EIDE EINARSSON: “NO CHAOS, DAMN IT!”

STANDARD (OSLO) is pleased to announce its second solo exhibition with gallery artist Gardar Eide Einarsson. Entitled “No Chaos, Damn It!”, the exhibition returns to the motif of the ‘outlaw’ and continues Einarsson’s survey of the ‘tragic ideal of individualism’.

This is the bad dream of modernism, as I say: that however urgent the impulse had been to recast aesthetic practice and move out into uncolonized areas of experience, all that resulted from a century’s activity was a thickening – a stiffening – of the same aesthetic mix.

– T J Clark: A Farwell to Ideas, 1999

What is distinctly ‘American’ is not necessarily the amount or kind of violence that characterizes our history but the mythic significance we have assigned to the kinds of violence we have actually experienced, the forms of symbolic violence we imagine or invent and the political uses to which we put that symbolism.

– Richard Slotkin, from Rhodes, Joel P.: The Voice of Violence, 2001

Gardar Eide Einarsson’s works commonly appear to be as motivated by humanism as they stem from cynicism. On the one hand, Einarsson’s artistic production has predominantly been addressing the utmost basic aspect of human condition: the concept of individual freedom and the various attempts at accomplishing that. On the other hand, these works present us with failed attempts. Even more so, they are mechanically measuring the distance between the ideals imagined and the results of fairly futile attempts. Adding to this cynicism is the very appearance of Einarsson’s works; muted, excerpted and always borne out of the same limited palette. While the viewer may recognize these objects as contingent – capable of conveying meaning – they are rarely apparently readable. The willing restraint of information gives these works the appearance of inept and provisional props – reenacting how things went wrong.

“No Chaos, Damn It!” equally takes an interest in epic and inevitable defeats when driven by the desire for opposition or complete individual freedom. Whereas Einarsson’s previous exhibition, entitled “Population One” (2006), investigated the political paranoia of American right wing movements – the artist shifts focus to the early stage of post-war American avant-garde art. With the ‘outlaw’ as a pivot figure Einarsson addresses overlapping notions of artistic and moral transgression, which in post-war America – with the establishment of a New York school of painting – would have critics such as Harold Rosenberg making the claim that: “The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value — political, aesthetic, moral.” (“American Action Painters”, Artnews, 1952). The five works on display reexamine in different ways the iconography of the infrastructure supporting the mythology of this historical moment, exposing the ghostly persistent imaginary of the avant-garde.

Gardar Eide Einarsson (b. 1976, Oslo) lives and works in New York. His recent solo exhibitions include Frankfurter Kunstverein (2007), Frankfurt am Main and Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2008). Earlier this year his works were also included in the Whitney Biennial, New York. Other recent exhibitions include Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo (2008); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007); The Sculpture Center, New York (2007); PS1 MoMA, New York (2006), Kunsthalle Bern, Bern (2006); Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich (2006); and Witte de With, Rotterdam (2006).

Standard Oslo

Summer break and India-series


Galerie Krinzinger will be closing for its summer break on August 16. During this time the gallery will be busy preparing a series of exhibitions on Indian art.

We would like to take the opportunity to inform you about this ambitious project. For fall 2008 we have planned a series of shows presenting Indian art which will be continued into the next year. The exhibitions will take place both at our main venue on Seilerstätte and at Krinzinger Projekte on Schottenfeldgasse.

On September 18 we will be opening a big solo exhibition focusing on Sudarshan Shetty at the Galerie Krinzinger on Seilerstätte. On October 30 another comprehensive show featuring work by artists Sakshi Gupta, Zahir Hussein, Srinivasa Prasad, Navin Thomas and Avinash Veeraghavan will be opened at Krinzinger Projekte. On three exhibition levels the artists will be working on five different projects as artists in residence. All artists will be present.

Galerie Krinzinger

Jennifer West


Vilma Gold is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by American artist Jennifer West. This will be West’s first solo exhibition in London.

Ever heard that green M&M’s and mezcal worms are aphrodisiacs or that Kurt Cobain used to dye his hair with red Kool-Aid? Urban myth or ’absolute truth’ the backdrop to these apocryphal stories is contemporary American culture. In using the products that provoked these stories in the development process of her films and referencing the stories that have heightened their appeal in the film titles, Jennifer West’s new work explores how the cultural framing of such myths have entered the common consciousness. The permutations that are referenced in this dual process are sensually explored through the textual layers that make up her films.

‘Electric Kool-Aid and the Mezcal Worm’ brings together four new films by West that continue her exploration of the “psychosensual”, a sensual investigation of the psyche through visual means. With film captions that read like experiments in alchemy, West lists everyday solvents, alcohol, energy drinks, make-up and perfume as ingredients in the development process. The film stock, negative and leader used by West have been subjected to multiple physical manipulations, the celluloid sometimes set alight, cooked, skateboarded over and scribbled on. The resulting films depict mesmerizing streams of colour bound together with footage taken by West of autobiographical events or recreations of found material.  Installed together in the gallery West’s films play off each other, both in content and in their physical presence, within the gallery. This physical quality is accentuated through the use of a mirrored prism that shifts the projected frame of the work so that the projection appears as if it has ‘lost its corner’.

The exhibition is centered upon West’s new 35mm film, ‘Electric Kool-Aid Fountain Swimming Film’ (35mm movie negative submerged in LA’s Mulhulland Fountain, dripped with Kool-aid and liquid LSD…*).  In this film, the hallucinogenic brightly coloured drips of Kool-Aid and liquid LSD run over filmed images of West and her friends swimming at night in the red and orange glowing fountain, an iconic image of Los Angeles.  The narrative suggested by the title evokes the urban mythologies surrounding Kool-Aid whilst the images recall cultish ritual, libertine activities, laser shows, raves and the film, Spinal Tap. This is the first film that West has shot using 35mm film and will be the third film in a trilogy of films evoking libertine American west coast culture with the backdrops of hippie nudist hot springs and skinnydipping in the ocean. The final three films in the exhibition were made using 70mm, allowing a greater command of detail and a much faster speed with frames running through the film gate at 398 perforations per second. ‘Jam Licking & Sledgehammered Film’ (70MM film leader covered in strawberry jam, grape jelly..) references the “performative” remnant of the iconic Kaprow piece ‘Household’, ‘Seriously Film’ (70MM film leader soaked in Viagra and MSG..) and ‘Green M&M’s & Mezcal Worm Film’ (70MM film leader with a mezcal worm..).

West was born in Topanga Canyon, California, USA and lives and works in Los Angeles. She has exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2008) and White Columns, New York (2007) Museum exhibitions include Tate St Ives (2007) touring to CAPC Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2008); The Drawing Centre, New York (2008); MOCAD, Detroit (2007) and ZKM Museum for New Media, Karlsruhe (2007). West has an upcoming solo show at MARC FOXX (2009) and will also be participating in: Now You See It, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2008), Angles of America, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, Illinois (2008) and an exhibition on the influence of Nirvana’s music in art at the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle (2010).

Vilma Gold