painting

Open Studios @ YSA, Apr 6

3 April 2014

On April 6, the Yale School of Art, one of the nation’s highest-ranked art schools, opens its doors to the public with Open Studios, an exhibition featuring the master’s degree projects of a large selection of its second-year students.

Spread over three venues, the studios and exhibition spaces are divided into three areas of focus, including graphic design in the Holcombe T. Green Jr. Hall, painting and printmaking at 353 Crown St., and sculpture and photography in the Sculpture Building.

During the exhibit, a free shuttle bus will be running continuously between the New Haven train station and the three studios, allowing easy accessibility. To find out more about Open Studios, visit aqnb‘s event listing.**

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Robin Mason @ Block 336 reviewed

17 May 2013

The Deepest Darkest journeys into Welsh born artist Robin Mason’s autobiographical past in a series of spectacularly surreal works set against Block 336 Gallery’s stark Brutalist backdrop.

Within the basement space Mason’s story begins to unfold against white walls and cold concrete floors. Soaked in the strip light’s harsh glare a disco ball’s reflection meditatively spins a showbiz sparkle over the amusement arcades of yesteryear. Each is outdated, yet their resonance is accentuated against the backdrop.

Every one of them has inescapable charm. A wooden slot machine takes a dime to predict your future; The Super Love Test lets you know you’re the jealous type, while a “Multi Horn – High Fidelity” valve-operated jukebox awaits your choice from a selection of chart hits, like Jimi Hendrix ‘s ‘Purple Haze’ and Altry Inman’s ‘Be Bop Baby’. It’s the barebones of a vintage theme park. In a sense, it is Mason’s childhood fairground; the place where he worked as a young man, watched revellers gamble their fortunes and collected his winnings. Now Mason invites us in to play the same games, follow his footsteps and slowly become enthralled by the curiosities his mind has paced over time and again.

Robin Mason, The Funfair and the Altarpiece 2. Image courtesy of BLOCK 336.

Arrows out number any other symbol in The Deepest Darkest by ten-to-one. Across etchings and paintings, their simple black lines guide us through. Most obviously, a curved white arrow, adorned with colourful gem-like bulbs, leads us from one room to the next. More plainly, scribbled in a font commonly used by American diners, the word “Journey”, in bright neon acrylic paint, illuminates the appropriately titled painting ‘Search and Journey’. Travelling through worlds past and present, real and imagined, the discovery of missed details, the loss of old joys; these are the things Mason obsesses over. Across etchings, astroturf lawns, even mini-museums of exhibitions contained in hut-like structures, he rekindles memories and relives them. Most masterfully, in a behemoth canvass christened ‘The Funfair and the Altarpiece’ worlds touched on across the exhibition all collide.

A homage to Mattias Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece, where Christ is crucified in a contemporary landscape suffering from the same ergotism that caused plague victims’ to hallucinate, ‘The Funfair and the Altarpiece’ is a deliberate clash of Northern European medieval art history’s iconography with Mason’s own theatrical lexicon of pink English rock candy alongside wood-cut etching collected as he relived a childhood journey in 1968 from Porthcawl, South Wales, to the Black Forest in a search for his roots and the core of his identity as an artist.

As the exhibition unfolds, triptychs replace readymade arcades, small sharp works glean out of hidden nooks; colourful orange and pink paints descend on voids left by bold monochrome patterns. Darkness falls, a short animated film plays, and the viewers own journey into the dark forest begins.**

Robin Mason’s The Deepest Darkest is running at Block 336 until Friday, June 7, 2013.

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Anthology prize winner

31 August 2012

A couple of weeks ago finished this year’s “Anthology” Art Prize exhibition, the second edition of Charlie Smith London‘s very own art prize which in its second year has doubled the quantity of the prize (£2000 in cash for the winner +others) and this year’s winner, French artist Eric Manigaud, will not only receive a few other valuable prizes but also will have six pieces placed in The Saatchi Collection.

'Crime Scene (Houdon 1)' - 2007 © Eric Manigaud
‘Crime Scene (Houdon 1)’ – 2007 © Eric Manigaud (photo via CSL)

Those disturbing drawings have certainly had quite an impact in the London art scene when presented @ this year’s Anthology. That nearly extremist attention to detail when reproducing Alphonse Bertillon or Marcel Monnier’s photographs always give the impression that Eric knows the subject better than the photographer itself, and without falling into the hyperrealism-or-not discussion, his “duplicates” are always new and unique. For when a new solo show in the UK?

Tokyo, 1945' - 2012© Eric Manigaud
Tokyo, 1945′ – 2012© Eric Manigaud (image via CSL gallery)
Eric Manigaud, Gueule Cassee #1, 2003 © Eric Manigaud
Eric Manigaud, Gueule Cassee #1, 2003 © Eric Manigaud (image via CSL gallery)
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Nearby Olympics

18 August 2012

Some say London is a bit gray…  and they’re right, there’s an inexplicable grayness that covers & invades every corner of the city… to contrast with this depressing note there’s always the flashy and colorful attires many of its citizens wear… and then you have Fabio Coruzzi‘s paintings to emphasize this mix.

Nearby Olympics by Fabio Coruzzi - 2012
Nearby Olympics by Fabio Coruzzi – 2012

He also got shocked when landing into the city over a decade ago, and with time & practice he’s certainly managed to represent (sometimes by exaggeration) that very unique social contradiction of the London environment.

Naked in London by Fabio Coruzzi
Naked in London by Fabio Coruzzi

A vintage naked bike race, a sketchy Assange or some faded East-London sunsets are some of the many impressions this Italian-born artist constantly blurs for us, and while his last exhibition is already 2 months old we shall keep visiting his metropolitan portraits whenever we feel nostalgic for that “cool” greyness.

Morning in Old Street by Fabio Coruzzi
Morning in Old Street by Fabio Coruzzi
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Zeppelins & bunnies

28 May 2012

In this world of pop surrealism and particular combinations there’s always room for more. Take Nico Kos‘ zeppelins & bunnies series as the latest example of an absurd narrative style taken out of a James Bond movie from the 60s. Who are those bunny-masked engineers, what are they posing for, which Asian hidden island and most important… what are they building all those zeppelins for?

Untitled2 by Nico Kos
Untitled2 by Nico Kosi
Untitled4 by Nico Kos
Untitled4 by Nico Kosi

 Clearly influenced by his time spent in Japan, dutch-painter and teacher Nico Kosi has been producing some exotic landscapes over the past year, and while we haven’t heard about any upcoming exhibitions in his native Bergen or Amsterdam, we’re really looking forward to it. More info and bunny secrecy on his webpage.

Untitled3 by Nico Kos
Untitled3 by Nico Kosi
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Ulrich Kochinke’s beliefs

7 April 2012
Ulrich Kochinke (Fruehsorge gallery)
Ulrich Kochinke (Fruehsorge gallery)

One another  highlight from last weekend’s Drawing Now Parisian fair were some of the works presented by the Berlin-based contemporary drawings gallery FruehsorgeUlrich Kochinke pencil on paper drawings occupying big part of the gallery stand space were amongst the most captivating pieces of the event mixing good doses of realism, pop and religious elements in his drawings.

Ulrich Kochinke - Ankunft - 2010 (Image via Fruehsorge gallery)
Ulrich Kochinke - Ankunft - 2010 (Image via Fruehsorge gallery)

One of the few times his works travel & get exhibited outside Germany for the Gronau-born artist whose  catholic theology studies (just before his art studies) play a sometimes perturbing influence on his works.

Large format (almost) life-sized pencil drawings combining holy & profane, spiritual & worldly, old memories and personal impressions in highly coded compositions that examine and question the   contradiction of faith and world order.

Ulrich Kochinke - Ohne Titel - 2010 (Image via Fruehsorge gallery)
Ulrich Kochinke - Ohne Titel - 2010 (Image via Fruehsorge gallery)

Even though Drawing Now is over, you can still get to see his works @ the Berlin gallery or until may @ Meißen’s Kunstverein Meissen gallery too. Enjoy the weekend prayers!

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Blendlauf

31 December 2011
BlendLauf by Jonas Burgert 2011 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios
BlendLauf by Jonas Burgert 2011 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios

Jonas Burgert‘s new exhibition won’t open until next April @ Berlin’s BlainSouthern Gallery but 2011 saw four more theatrical pieces of this German’s attempts at explaining human life.

In its impossible quest to resolve our nature origins, he opens doors to every sphere of reason, imagination and desire. Oversized canvases are peopled with fantastical creatures of unlikely proportions. Some are towering, gigantic figures, others as small as infants. The cast includes monkeys and zebras, skeletons and harlequins, amazons, children, sometimes even the painter himself.

Spatzschlag by Jonas Burgert 2011 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios
Spatzschlag by Jonas Burgert 2011 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios

A contemporary El Bosco (Bosch) with a particular passion for masks, acid colors and inexplicable baroque darkness.

According to Burgert, humanity’s need to find a meaning in existence beyond the corporeal creates an intense desire for an overarching narrative; a unifying theme that invests our lives with purpose: “In our mind, we create existences as heroes, gods or clowns. They lead unbearably loud, malicious, cynical, witty and passionate lives, in wonderfully strange or terrible places. In my art, I merely try to paint the scene of this ongoing process of debate and negotiation, with all its peculiarities.”

Affenfalle by Jonas Burgert 2010 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios
Affenfalle by Jonas Burgert 2010 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios

He’s probably read Stephen King’s IT too many times when adolescent, and while his late April exhibition arrives to south-west Berlin we’ll try ourselves to find some universal meaning  in Burgert’s work. It’s “always the same painting, in the end” as he puts it, so it can’t be that complicated…

Zeit Schleicht by Jonas Burgert 2011 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios
Zeit Schleicht by Jonas Burgert 2011 - photo by Lepkowsky Studios
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Absurd Cinema

27 December 2011

Rudolf, as a good contemporary painter includes many elements of our modern world to introduce not always evident criticisms of our current civilization and globalized world. Besides his real-world element impressions he also tends to explore abstract representations of the environment and the new school.

Eastern European schools you know…  too hard to understand sometimes.

Inner look by Rudolf Janák
Inner look by Rudolf Janák

After graduating from the Academy Of Fine Arts in Prague last year, 2011 marks a particularly successful year in his extensive list of shows with the ARS 51 exhibition last summer @ Záhorská gallery. You may not buy it, but his take on colours choice for spatial objects representation is deeply engaging, then, you have some abrupt introductions of pop art elements which look anything but terrifying.

Homo Ludens by Rudolf Janák
Homo Ludens by Rudolf Janák
Dangerous Game by Rudolf Janák
Dangerous Game by Rudolf Janák

Native of Senice (1985) completed his undergraduate studies at AU in Banska Bystrica (doc. Stanislav Balko), and finished his Masters at the Academy in Prague with Michael Rittstein (2008-2010), where he now operates. Many more of his abstract works (including installations & mixed-media) on his page.

Imperial Foot by Rudolf Janák
Imperial Foot by Rudolf Janák
Absurd Cinema by Rudolf Janák
Absurd Cinema by Rudolf Janák
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Chains, Chains, Chains

22 December 2011

Only one week left (or better yet…the very last few days left this year has) to enjoy the vivid and always intense universes Katharina Ziemke brings to her canvases.

The sparrow by Katharina Ziemke
The sparrow by Katharina Ziemke

She choses her subjects randomly, found photographs or new images from the media are the basis of her canvases, and just as varied are her subjects and themes represented – portraits, landscapes, genre scenes… – or the views she applies to her works.

There is a certain logic that manifests itself throughout her works, always suggesting a “different-fact”, or at least a situation resulting from an indeterminate event.

Sleep - 2010 by Katharina Ziemke
Sleep - 2010 by Katharina Ziemke

The “suspense” expressions and perceptions become the identifying elements of her works defining a “state of things” to come, those things seem to be connected at another level. Her art and techniques don’t use any particular recipe or ingredients (wax…) to bring a glaze effect and freeze the image with the characteristic density easily recognizable in her works.

White Noise Twins by Katharina Ziemke

White Noise Twins by Katharina Ziemke

Eternal moments we highly recommend you visit Galerie Zürcher before the end of the year if you’re around Paris. Only a week! Keep it in mind! More info on how to get there this way.

Mississippi River by Katharina Ziemke
Mississippi River by Katharina Ziemke
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short story with hoes

29 November 2011

Tom‘s life is anything but ordinary. Despite  being brought up with solid farm principles in the context of WW II, Spiel was taught the most traditional American values and he was directed to believe the Great American Dream: that “Everything Will Turn Out OK.”

The church by The Poet Spiel
The church by The Poet Spiel

Not everything turned out that way, he become an artist. A very prolific one who wouldn’t stop exhibiting all across the US from the 60s up to the mid-90s, when he became deathly ill. But eventually, he was informed that he was not going to die so he retook his frenetic activity.

The big quiet by The Poet Spiel 2008
The big quiet by The Poet Spiel 2008

In 2007, he began “The Museum Paintings” Series (a few of which are in this post). He signed and exhibited them as Spiel. Each of the paintings shown by The Poet Spiel in The Saatchi Online is derived from many sessions with his psychotherapist.

Chronic expulsion by The Poet Spiel 2009
Chronic expulsion by The Poet Spiel 2009

From misfits within misfits to public taboos The Poet Spiel has many times been considered as an American iconoclast satirizing the simplicity of its society; luckily enough for us he’s now decided to share & upload many of his latest works to the net.

Short story with hoes by The Poet Spiel 2010
Short story with hoes by The Poet Spiel 2010
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Ahmed Alsoudani @ Haunch of Venison

19 November 2011

A bit too late to include this exhibition in our events section (as it finishes in exactly one week), but if you really have the chance to pass near Haunch of Venison’s Yard gallery (hidden in the right hand side of the courtyard) near London’s Bond St tube station, this should be your November gallery must.

Ahmed Alsoudani brings his first solo show to the UK & keeps exploring the always complex & harsh results of war conflicts…. their physical atrocities, psychological monsters…. but with a cartoonist & joyful style that makes it enjoyable while morbid.

Untitled2, 2011 - Ahmed Alsoudani, Haunch of Venison Gallery

Untitled2, 2011 – Ahmed Alsoudani, Haunch of Venison Gallery

Ahmed’s love for grotesque makes his latest charcoal drawings dramatic as always but amazingly playful. A colorful & surreal war with a “unique pictorial language” he claims to have developed on his own from his personal experiences of growing up in Baghdad under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Resistants, combatants & lots of souls that bring a lot of turbulent scenes into Venison’s big empty white spaces, maybe the Iraq pavillon @ this years Venice Biennale was a much more adequate environment for all those organs, eyeballs & skinless creatures; but again, if you have the possibility, GO.

Untitled, 2011 - Ahmed Alsoudani, Haunch of Venison Gallery

Untitled, 2011 – Ahmed Alsoudani, Haunch of Venison Gallery

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It’s all a blur

26 October 2011

To most people in the art world, the name Gerhard Richter is synonymous with blurry photo-realist paintings with echoes of post-war East Germany. Yet, as Panorama, the retrospective exhibition at the Tate Modern demonstrates there is a lot more to Richter than a bit of blur.

Dead - 1988 by Gerhard Richter
Dead - 1988 by Gerhard Richter

Unexpectedly, the gallery known for its resistance to the more traditional curating strategies adopted a chronological hang to structure the body of more than 50 years of painting, photography and sculpture. Starting with the photorealism of the 1960s, the exhibition slowly ushers the visitor into Richter’s thought process. He reveals himself to be a contrary character who has adopted this particular aesthetic that will become his signature as a means to distinguish himself from all the painters in thrall with abstract expressionism at the time. Continue reading It’s all a blur

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The Passions

17 October 2011

I had the opportunity to admire Martin Wittfooth’s Fish Market more than a year ago when it came along with many other American paintings to Bristol’s city museum. That mix of wild diabolic nature, possessed fauna and apocalyptic sceneries. Human horrors or nature errors?

Memento, oil on panel - Martin Wittfooth
Memento, oil on panel - Martin Wittfooth

Flying monkeys, deadly hummingbirds, perturbed and perturbing creatures …  Canadian artist Martin Wittfooth just opened his newest (and first) solo exhibition @ New York’s Lyons Wier gallery last week.  “The Passions” comes to represent the religious imagery of saints suffering throughout the animal kingdom… the new martyrs of our human environmental infection. You may probably remember Martin from  Hi-Fructose Vol. 19 cover, and with this first NY exhibition he’s surely earning a lot of attraction and attention from the U.S. collectors.

Sacrifice, oil on canvas - Martin Wittfooth

Sacrifice, oil on canvas – Martin Wittfooth 

If you happen to be in the U.S. or will travel to NY before November 13th make sure you pass by the gallery and pray for all these tormented beasts, they need a few Lord’s prayer. For when a European exhibition Mr Wittfooth?

A Candle for Orphans, oil on canvas, 2009 - Martin Wittfooth
A Candle for Orphans, oil on canvas, 2009 - Martin Wittfooth
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Over The Edge

3 October 2011

Maybe Valerie has seen The Shining far too many times, probably The Omen (the original one) or even The Exorcist; the thing is her young characters always seem to be in rather macabre situations…

Over The Edge by Valerie Patterson
Over The Edge by Valerie Patterson
Twilight by Valerie Patterson
Twilight by Valerie Patterson

Well, the young, and the not so young.

Valerie Patterson brings staggering watercolors straight out of Saranac Lake (New York) bordering and playing with the most disturbing situations humans could live. Apparently her works chronicle her life (somehow) but also the world we all live in.

Woman Is The Other by Valerie Patterson
Woman Is The Other by Valerie Patterson

Besides portraying babies with voodoo dolls or the 9/11 aftermath, Valerie brings the very essence of New York (and big part of America consequently) on her surrealistic series, but only on her free time of course. More info & even downloadable images on her personal website.

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