Month: January 2009

The South London Gallery presents a new film work by Danish collective Superflex entitled Flooded McDonald’s. Despite their international track record over the past 15 years, this will be their first solo show in London. From large-scale installations, through to long-term process-based projects and, more recently, films, Superflex’s work is founded in economic and political awareness. They create works inspired by the points where definitions and possibilities of art become blurred.

Flooded McDonald’s is a new film work in which a convincing life-size replica of the interior of a McDonald’s burger bar, without any customers or staff present, gradually floods with water. Furniture is lifted up by the water, trays of food and drinks start to float around, electrics short circuit and eventually the space becomes completely submerged.

Flooded McDonald’s is Superflex’s second film, the first, entitled Burning Car, 2008, made in the wake of the civil unrest in Paris and Copenhagen in 2007, shows a dead-pan observation of a car going up in flames. Both films avoid the high drama of disaster movies, but never quite echo a documentary style, making their position within established frameworks of cinematic genres or of artists’ films intentionally ambiguous. Without being didactic, Flooded McDonald’s hints at the consumer-driven power and influence, but also impotence, of large multinationals in the face of climate change. Without pointing the finger at anyone, the film questions with whom ultimate responsibility lies.

Superflex describe their practice as the provision of ‘tools’ which affect or influence their social or economic context. Previous projects include paying visitors to enter their exhibition, the development and marketing of a new beverage – Free Beer – and the production of a self-sufficient, portable biogas unit to provide energy for a family. Their projects are often rooted in their particular local context and invite participation from the visitor. Superflex work outside traditional art contexts collaborating with designers, engineers, businesses and marketers on projects which have the potential for social or economic change. As such they remain difficult to pigeonhole yet continue to be innovative in their approach to engaging with current issues.

South London Gallery

Ken Kagami “TOYS“A”SS”

Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to announce our third solo exhibition with Ken Kagami,
“TOYS“A”SS”. This latest exhibition will feature several sculptures made of plastic and
plush toys. Kagami’s debut solo exhibition, “MILK MAN” included drawings and sculptures presented
in the viewing room of Taka Ishii Gallery (2003); Kagami’s second exhibition “penis” took
place in gallery.sora. (2005).

Kagami’s distinctive works are characterized by their simple expression of conflicting ideas.
Pure and virginal plastic and soft toys created for babies and children are boldly combined
with objects, which represent sex, violence and excrement. These two worlds, which
naturally never crossover, merge and transform objects into giggle-inducing, amiable, yet
bizarre pieces of art which invoke a horrific, natural human instinct. This is achieved
through Kagami’s sharp sense of color, form and pure ideas.
“Toys look indecent and sexual to me.” Ken Kagami
Kagami’s work humorously confronts social taboos and has received glowing reviews not
only in Japan, but also overseas. His international solo exhibitions include “SNOOPee” at
The Journal Gallery, New York (2008) and “HELLOWIEN” presented by KRINZINGER
PROJEKTE in Vienna (2006). Kagami’s work has also inspired San Francisco based
independent rock group, “Deerhoof” (KILL ROCK STARS) and has served as stage,
costuming and album concept material.
Kagami often uses skulls as a primary means to express his ideas; however, he
concentrates on plastic and plush toys for this exhibition – as the title “TOYS“A”SS” implies.

Taka Ishii Gallery
Ken Kagami

Signe Vad
Positions of Infinity
15 January– 21 February 2009
 
PL Gallery

Martin Bigum
Structure Beneath Skin

Wohnmaschine is pleased to announce the exhibition ‚Structure Beneath Skin’, the first soloshow in Germany by the Danish artist Martin Bigum.

The show presents large-scale paintings, wall-papers by the artist, drawings, photographs and an outside installation. The show invites to a poetic journey to grotesque and mythological vision.

Bigum is searching constantly for new inspiration throughout his environment, and sometimes the inspiration itself is the content of an artwork. Especially his photographs should be seen as evidences of moving through a fascinating world, leaving testimonies, catching the poetry of moments. ,What I can not write I must paint, and what I can not paint I must write’, as the artist says. The same can be said about what can not be photographed, well, it can be painted, and what can not be painted must be photographed.
Martin Bigum is primarily known for his comic-style paintings but also is active in poetry and writing. From the age of 15 – 22 Martin Bigum was a cartoon-artist for the Danish version of the American satirical MAD magazine. Quitting this job to pursue his own art the artist for many years did not want to be linked to neither cartoons nor MAD, but in his 42nd year of living, sees that a circle has been drawn.

Martin Bigum is born 1966 in Copenhagen, where he lives and works. Since his debut in 1990 Martin Bigum has been broadly shown in Scandinavian institutions and is collected by various Scandinavian museums, among these ARoS, Arken-Museum of Modern Art, Statens Museum for Kunst, Malmö Konstmuseum, Reykjavik Art Museum.

A 72 – pages catalogue in full color will be available from the end of January 2009, featuring all the works in the exhibition as well as poems, drawings and sketches.

The exhibition has been made possible through Peter Amby Contemporary Art Agency

Check the show out::::
V1
Urik Crone

The Approach

Vilma Gold is pleased to present a new exhibition of work by Danish artist Thomas Hylander. This will be Hylander’s first solo show in a commercial gallery in London.

For this exhibition Hylander presents a series of new paintings that seek to capture the fleeting quality of memories arising from a return journey, by the artist, to a place of his childhood. There is a quixotic character evident in the work’s ambition to recall the sense of place Hylander holds but also, conveyed in the work’s muted tones, is an awareness of the trappings of reflection. The form captured in the painting ‘Lost again in the new house’ could be interpreted as a literal framing of this idea. In this work a sense of reverie and nostalgia has been seemingly frozen in the shape of an amulet, like the lock of hair in a locket, yet even here the evanescent quality of recall seems to disallow rigidity of form to occur.

Working with acrylic on canvas Hylander has been described as using ‘painting as archaeology’. In his work paint is applied and scraped away in equal measure to create mesmerising dreamscapes of interiors and still lives. Reworking these traditional genres of painting, Hylander is able to create scenes that are briefly tangible before they blur into a sea of emotive textures and forms. There is a ghostly aura in the subdued tones and use of light in the work that induce this shift. Through Hylander’s dry use of colour the paintings are imbued with a sense of transience, as if the works are merely whispers of memories not quite fully grasped, revisited through Hylander’s delicate command of the brush. This glimmer of perceptible objects and scenes is carefully crafted through the excavation of every inch of the canvas. In submitting his canvases to this meticulous process Hylander appears to be undertaking a kind of ontological study of the environments and objects that surround us. The worn quality that the paintings possess, as a result of this prolonged investigation, is seemingly at odds with the fragility of the imagery depicted and yet, somehow it strengthens the work’s ability to suggest that memory is not fixed but instead it can change through the abstraction of its retelling.

Thomas Hylander was born in Denmark in 1970 and moved to the UK in 1997 after a period as a guest student at the Academy of Fine Art in Warsaw, Poland. In 2004 he graduated from the Royal College of Art with a MA in Fine Art. Hylander participated in Bloomberg New Contemporaries as part of the Liverpool Biennale that toured to the Barbican in 2004-5, London and also participated in ARTfutures in 2005. In 2007 he had a solo show at Henningsen Contemporary at Green Square, Copenhagen and is currently participating in a group show at Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Los Angeles. He lives and works in London.

Vilma Gold

Morten Schelde

– WISH YOU A VERY HAPPY 2009!!!

From
Julie Nord

NEW HOMEPAGE:

Julie Nord

Rehnberg paints in oils on sand-blasted acrylic
sheeting. He squeezes the paint on a wide putty
knife leaving the colours unmixed at this stage.
Then he goes on to paint in an unbroken movement,
either vertical or horizontal, creating a single
gesture with all its properties leaving their
mark on the painting. This action is one of
internal contradiction, wavering at the
borderline of control and unintentionality. After
this the painting cannot be altered or corrected.
It can only be accepted or rejected.

Rehnberg is a widely read and erudite man. His
works can proceed from or be spurred by the
philosophy of Plotinus, a painting by Caspar
David Friedrich or Titian, a novel by Henry James
or the writings of Hölderlin. Thought and the
selection of the “theme” precede the act of
painting and set its mood. The appearance of the
painting is a synthesis of experience, skill and
feeling, and things that are not completely under
the artist’s control, ones that simply happen.

Håkan Rehnberg’s paintings are wonderful. The eye
is allowed to wander in their multi-based
networks of rich, breathing colour, even
endlessly. To focus on different heights and
parts, to enjoy their tensions, calm breathing,
joy and anxiety, ultimately released as beauty.

Håkan Rehnberg is one of Sweden’s most highly
esteemed and successful artists. A member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts since 2000, he
has held a large number of exhibitions in Sweden
and elsewhere in Europe. His works are included
in many public and private collections both in
Sweden and abroad. Rehnberg’s works were last
seen in Finland at Galerie Artek in 1995.

Anhava