Month: September 2009

I Don?t Believe You, It Used To Be Like That And Now It Goes Like This



LIKE THAT AND NOW IT GOES LIKE THIS

Curated by Ingrid Chu and Savannah Gorton

Forever & Today, Inc. is pleased to present I Donʼt Believe You, It Used To Be Like That And Now It Goes Like This, an exhibition by Danish artist Jasper Sebastian Stürup including three new works created specifically for the exhibition as well as a free artist book edition. Autobiographical elements not only link the works on view together, but point to a critical juncture in the artistʼs practice.

The large ink on paper drawing, It Used To Be Like That And Now It Goes Like This (2009), depicts a hallucinogenic montage of stacked objects and figures appearing like totem poles that allude to sculptures made of differing hard and soft materials. Among the varying forms are a continuous metamorphosis of cacti, faceless disembodied heads, frozen water, an abstract fur shape served on a plate, a cooked soufflé, a rabbit, mushrooms, diamonds, emanating rays of sunlight, and the artist himself in the act of drawing. Didnʼt Anybody Tell Her (2009) is a short video of cherry blossoms floating along the gently rippling waves of the Sumida River that runs through central Tokyo. This momentary transition of time and place during the artistʼs travels is touched upon in a simple and visually abstract manner, as points of light glint upon the petals in the water, creating dancing lines and stars. The small fur sculpture displayed under a glass dome, Came So Far For Beauty (2009), was created from the fur collar of a winter coat formerly worn by Stürup. Relating to the transformation of a foxʼs fur from a living creatureʼs coat to adorning a collar and ultimately becoming an artwork, the preciousness of this exquisite remnant and its uncanny appearance as a fetish-like object is preserved for contemplation. Significantly, a parallel reference is made to the artistʼs own journey of departing his home country in Scandinavia to reside in New York.

JASPER SEBASTIAN STÜRUP (b. 1969, Denmark) relocated from Copenhagen to New York in early 2008. Stürup received his MFA degree from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 1999, and in addition to his work as an artist, he has self-published over 20 artist books since 1994 through Fluens Forlag (The Flyʼs Publishing Company). Stürupʼs recent solo exhibitions include Horsens Konstmuseum, Horsens, Denmark (2008). Group exhibitions include CCAA, Tokyo, Japan (2009); U-Turn Triennial, Copenhagen, Denmark (2008); Helsinki Biennial, Helsinki, Finland (2008); Friendly Fire independent publishers area of the NY Art Book Fair, New York (2006, ʼ07, ʼ08, ʼ09); Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2007); Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Macedonia (2006); Library of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt (2006); Sixth Sharjah International Art Bienniale, Sharjah, UAE (2003); Carnegie Art Award, Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland (2002); Tenth International Print Triennial, Finland; and Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö, Sweden (2001).

FOREVER & TODAY, INC. is a new non-profit initiative that is a sponsored organization of the New York Foundation for the Arts. Currently inhabiting a 100 square foot storefront on the cusp between New Yorkʼs Lower East Side and Chinatown, Forever & Today is a mere thumbprint on the ever-expanding demographic of contemporary art that offers a unique set of circumstances for artists to create new work and engage the public.

Forever and Today

Gilbert & George


The Baronian_Francey gallery has the enormous pleasure and honour of announcing the exhibition of works from the latest series to date by Gilbert & George: Jack Freak Pictures.
In this latest series, which contains the largest number of pieces so far, Gilbert & George continue to explore themes that have been precious to them for a number of years. For them, everything concerning life is a potential subject for their art. In these recent works they have continued to break down the rules of social propriety with a calmness and a detachment that are very English.

In these images, the English flag, the map of the district of East London (Fournier St.) where their studio is located, trees, graffiti and medals are all subjects from which they draw an intriguing and universal narration. As very often happens in their work, the artists are once again protagonists of the pieces. Their faces and their bodies appear in numerous images. Thanks to computer processes they are represented in a stylized and often distorted way in a metaphor of human beings attached to their social, religious and sexual norms. Some of these new pieces make the images explode into fragments before melting them down again into new fascinating kaleidoscopic shapes mixing the monstrously grotesque with an ornamental jumble reminiscent of sacred art.

Gilbert, born in 1943 in Italy in the city of San Martino, and George, born in 1942 in Devon, England, met in 1967 in the sculpture courses of Saint Martin’s School of Art at Oxford. For more than 40 years, they have lived and worked together in London, the two making up a single artist, Gilbert & George.
In 1969 they created their first Singing and Living Sculptures in which they were simultaneously subject and object, refusing to separate their performances from their everyday life. By this act, they revolutionized the very practice of sculpture.
The first black and white photographs appeared at the beginning of the 1970s: large photo-montages consisting of panels geometrically divided into rectangular boxes defined in black in the style of stained glass windows. It was these photos that brought them international renown.
Around the end of the 1970s, they decided to introduce the colour red into them, and in the 1980s the colours evolved, as yellow, pink and blue made their appearance, while the imagery became more complex and the levels of meaning multiplied. These photos generally contain portraits of the artists themselves and are an opportunity to turn taboo subjects such as sexuality, race, religion, national identity, politics, etc. into irony.
During the last few years their retrospective has travelled in Europe and the United States, from the Tate Modern in London to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, appearing also at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2005, they represented Great Britain in the Biennale of Venice.

Baronian_Francey Gallery