DAVID LAMELAS


David Lamelas “London Friends (Lynda Morris)”, 1974
Black and white photograph
Detail from the contact print
© David Lamelas

DAVID LAMELAS
September 6 – 29, 2007
Opening: Thursday, September 6, 6 – 8 P.M.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to announce an exhibition of Argentinian-born artist David Lamelas. With both Lamelas´ seminal film installation “Film Script (Manipulation of Meaning)” (1972) and the photo series “London Friends” from the following year, the show focuses on two works the artist realized during his residency in London from 1968 to 1977.

David Lamelas is one of the pioneers of Conceptual Art and the related practice of institutional critique which developed during the 1960s and 1970s. Born in Buenos Aires in 1946, he emerged in the early sixties with an arsenal of artistic strategies and a clarity of concept that at the time had not previously been formulated within any cultural context in Europe and the United States.

Characteristically, his use of different media is wide ranging, and has included sculpture, site specific installation and performance, as well as drawings, photographs and film, the latter of which he is perhaps most known for. What unifies this wide range of medium is the artist‘s focus on the transmission of “information”: the conditions for the production of art and its perception, the notion of “time” and “space”, the role of the viewer, and perhaps more crucially the generation and manipulation of meaning in contemporary mass media.

In 1968, the year he represented Argentina at the Venice Biennial, Lamelas also moved to London where he studied sculpture at St. Martin´s School of Art and stayed until 1977. It was during this time that Lamelas created his seminal installation work “Film Script (Manipulation of Meaning)”, consisting of the simultaneous projection of one film and three slide sequences. The first presentation of the work was held at Nigel Greenwood‘s gallery in 1972. Filmed within the gallery itself with Greenwood’s assistant Lynda Morris playing the leading role, the plot and location of this film was intriguingly self-referential. The film projects a running accumulation of scenes that may just as well be documentary as fictional. The first slide projector shows the action in a sequence of stills; the second shows two of the pivotal sequences of the film in a different order; while the third cuts out key moments of the action. Thus Lamelas varies the ways in which action is being manipulated, which in turn affects narrative development and influences its reception.

In the second work on display, “London Friends”, 1973, Lamelas explores the narrow space between fiction and reality. Having invited a number of friends to a photo-session in a studio to have their pictures taken by a professional fashion photographer, Lamelas found that his subjects naturally took on glamorous poses embodying an image of fictionalized portraits of famous personalities. The resulting images, being simultaneously personal portraits and “fashion” photography, become a striking portrayal of the London scene at the time.

David Lamelas lives and works in Buenos Aires and Los Angeles.
Recent solo exhibition of Lamelas’ work have been held at the Secession, Vienna; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; and Neue Kunsthalle St. Gallen. Lamelas´ work ´The Violent Tapes of 1975´ is currently on view in “Panic Attack”, the Barbican´s survey on art in the punk years.

  • Pruethmagers
  • Graham Hudson@Rokeby

    For Hudson’s second solo exhibition at Rokeby the artist will present one work, which will extend from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall, installed during August, over a five week period prior to the opening.

    Crossing between sculpture and installation, Hudson’s practice and materials evolve in response to places and events. His forthcoming installation will include the discarded and overlooked objects of London’s streets and cheap mass-produced goods, constructed with both energy and wit.

    Hudson’s practice is concerned with the politics of materiality. The use of every day and redundant objects as viable artistic material has recurred throughout the 20th Century and has its roots in the work of pivotal artists such as Kurt Schwitters and in Duchamp’s ready-made. In his recent large installations parallels can be drawn to the sprawling spaces of Hirschorn, and Takahashi.

    Hudson comments on the issues of the day as well as the history of modern life and art in installations that employ the formal analysis of minimalism with the joie de vivre of the baroque. His work, often in an apparent state of ruin and of monumental fragility, remind us of the chaos of daily perception. He glorifies the mundane and celebrates in formal simplicity, all the while communicating on the ageless themes of love, life and death.

    Since completing his six month Parade Ground residency, supported by the Henry Moore Foundation Fellowship, Hudson spent two months in Nairobi and has since been based in Los Angeles. Solo presentations have included Monitor, Rome, Zinger Presents Amsterdam, and Liste, Basel. Commissions have included the Scholl Collection, Miami and Comme Des Garcons in London and Tokyo. Forthcoming commissions and exhibitions include the Zabludowicz Collection, London, Locust Projects, Miami and an installation as part of BodyCity, the Docklands, Dublin.

  • Rokeby
  • ::: Jack Hanley Gallery :::

    Leslie Shows Book Launch Party

    Wednesday, August 22 6-8PM
    Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco

    Headlands and Jack Hanley Gallery invite you to a party in honor of Leslie Shows: Heap of Elements, a limited edition artist book. This artist book was produced in conjunction with Leslie Shows’ 2006-07 Tournesol Award Residency at Headlands, and in support of the next phase of her rapidly emerging career. The 54-page limited edition book features detailed views of Shows’ paintings, accompanied by related texts and clad in dust jackets hand-painted by the artist.

    san francisco | CURRENT EXHIBITIONS:

    The Innocent Gaze
    Hisham Bharoocha, Ted Riederer, Leslie Shows, Chris Sollars, Erika Somogyi, Edmund Wyss
    curated by Dina Pugh
    August 3 – 26, 2007

    —————
    Jack Hanley Gallery
    395 Valencia Street
    San Francisco, CA 94103
    415.522.1623 p.
    415.522.1631 f.

  • Jack Hanley
  • CRES 1

    This Panel piece was original made in the 80’ties by CRES 1 and Goofy from Whap Gang.
    It is of course gone now, so they made a recontruction on a olde train.
    CRES 1 went to the trainyard and bought a piece from a old train to the recronstruction.


    Wet Paint

    Sabe, More, Cave, Sketch, Even, Cres & Isoe and some more of the best Danish graffiti artist have a show this week in Copenhagen.