Israel Martínez Arredondo / Arozarena
Israel Martínez, Reticence, 2017, Installation, 10 photographs, vinyl and turntable, Arredondo \ Arozarena, Mexico City
In this piece called Reticence (2017), Israel Martínez leads the public towards a reflection on the paradoxical relationship between noise and silence, the surreptitious and interspersed paths of auditory manifestations. He provides a twofold presentation: as a metaphor for social life and at the same time as a proposal of aesthetic nature, where the subject is the matter of the endeavor. The philosophical aphorism with which the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein concludes the Tractatus Logicus-Philosphicus, “About one can not speak, one must remain silent”, has a mouth to mouth communication, or rather a of a mouth to an ear communication in a chain. But this message chained by the voice and the whisper stops when someone decides to break the sequence. Someone using his/her own will decides to stop. The message is cryptic, it refers to the situation itself and not to something external, “the medium is the message”. The message only contains a dictum and its result is silence. In this way, Martínez advances towards the aesthetics of stealth, a message and a form that lead or suggest an action, the inscription of silence. Simultaneously, a vinyl record has the same phrase engraved in transparent letters and the repetition of the message is in its rings. The vinyl record with its in its 45 rpm is a mute object if it is not reproduced.
However, it carries the message, it becomes a latent object until it is operated and set in motion in the repetition of a message at the limit of the audible environment. The assertions of this piece are explained in the performance Stealth and murmur (2017). In this act the performers sleep with a megaphone. When they get up and get together they do not use the megaphone but the secret, they share it with the spectators that are present. They use murmur to transmit what otherwise would be impossible to hear. It is about the death and the violence in which we live, at the same time, about the forgetfulness of the successive violence, its aberrant ordinariness and our habituation to it. However, history and memory arise as a scream and as a murmur, while both exist in the individual and the collective body. The megaphone, which is useless in this action, represents the scream, while the secret represents that memory which is impossible to avoid. It opens a space to a new chain which is different from that of the piece called Reticence, it opens the possibility of a community where bodies and feelings appear. The quiet listening is what allows the message to be pronounced and, therefore, heard. The way in which computer hackers dismantle and break, without traceable evidence, into the most impenetrable codes, stealth appears as a political action that manages to get into the smallest spaces of speech and the ever prevailing noise, placing it where it does not want to be heard.
Sarah Charlesworth Campoli Presti
Sarah Charlesworth, Teapot, 2002, Photography, Fuji Crystal Archive print with lacquered wood frame, Campoli Presti, London
Sarah Charlesworth was born in 1947 in East Orange, New Jersey. In 1969 she received a BA from Barnard College, New York, where she studied with the Conceptual artist Douglas Huebler. Her own turn to Conceptualism was influenced by the text-free publication Xeroxbook(1968) by Robert Barry, Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, and Lawrence Weiner, which she saw when it was exhibited in 1969. Charlesworth’s undergraduate thesis project, also a Conceptual artwork devoid of text, was a 50-print study of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. After graduating, she worked as a freelance photographer and briefly studied under Lisette Model at the New School for Social Research in New York.
In 1975 Charlesworth and Kosuth founded the art-theory magazine The Fox, which ran for three issues until 1976. Charlesworth continued to bridge the gap between fine art and critical practice in her own work. A series of Conceptual photographic projects that followed used preexisting media images to forward a critical thesis. Modern History (1977–79) examines the values and interests of Western culture through photographs of the capture of Italian prime minister Aldo Moro by the militant group Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades) from the pages of 45 different newspapers. In The Arc of Total Eclipse, February 26, 1979 (1980) Charlesworth again appropriated front-page photographs, this time to chart the movement of an eclipse across the night sky, from the Pacific Northwest to Canada and Greenland, as it was recorded in local newspapers. The series Stills (1980) comprises seven 2-meter-tall images of people falling in mid-air, rephotographed from various newspapers. Taken out of context, it is impossible to tell whether these people are attempting to save or end their lives. Later works are marked by an increased interest in subjectivity and art-historical references. The series Objects of Desire (1983–88) explores sexuality, power dynamics, and material and metaphysical desire. Each silver-dye bleach print features one or more isolated image, taken from magazines and rephotographed by the artist, set against a solid, sumptuous color field with a matching lacquer frame. In the series Renaissance Paintings and Renaissance Drawings (both 1991), Charlesworth combined imagery from disparate Italian Renaissance paintings and drawings to make new, often ironic paintings and drawings. Several of these feature self-consciously Freudian imagery, as in Vision of a Young Man (1991), which shows its subject, appropriated from a Raphael painting, lying asleep, with a tall tree growing between his legs.
Charlesworth taught photography at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence and the School of Visual Arts in New York. She received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (1976, 1980, 1983) and the New York State Creative Artists Public Service Program (1977), as well as a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for Visual Art (1995). Her work was the subject of more than 40 solo exhibitions at venues including the Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva (1977) and the Queens Museum of Art, New York (1992). A traveling retrospective of her work toured the United States through the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art (1997); the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (1998); the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (1998); and SITE Santa Fe (1999). Her work was included in the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1985), and the Venice Biennale (1986). In 1995, she cocurated Somatogenies at New York’s Artists Space with Conceptual artists Cindy Sherman and Laurie Simmons. Charlesworth died June 25, 2013, in Falls Village, Connecticut
Tom Wesselmann Galerie Gmurzynska
Tom Wesselmann, Nude with Bouquet and Stockings (#5), 1985, Other Materials, Enamel on laser-cut steel, Galerie Gmurzynska, Zurich
Tom Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 23, 1931. He attended Hiram College in Ohio from 1949 to 1951 before entering the University of Cincinnati. In 1953 his studies were interrupted by a two-year enlistment in the army, during which time he began drawing cartoons. Wesselmann became one of the leading American Pop artists of the 1960s, rejecting abstract expressionism in favor of the classical representations of the nude, still life, and landscape. He created collages and assemblages incorporating everyday objects and advertising ephemera in an effort to make images as powerful as the abstract expressionism he admired. He is perhaps best known for his Great American Nude series with their fat forms and intense colors. In the seventies, Wesselmann continued to explore the ideas and media which had preoccupied him during the Sixties. Most significantly, his large Standing Still Life series, composed of free standing shaped canvases, showed small intimate objects on a grand scale. In 1980 Wesselmann, using the pseudonym Slim Stealingworth, wrote an autobiography documenting the evolution of his artistic work. He continued exploring shaped canvases (first exhibited in the 1960s) and began creating his first works in metal. He instigated the development of a laser-cutting application, which would allow him to make a faithful translation of his drawings in cut-out metal. The 1990s and early 2000s saw the artist expanding on these themes, creating abstract three-dimensional images that he described as “going back to what I had desperately been aiming for in 1959.” He had indeed come full circle. In his final years he returned to the female form in his Sunset Nudes series of oil paintings on canvas, whose bold compositions, abstract imagery, and sanguine moods often recall the odalisques of Henri Matisse.
The abstract works in the last years, 2001-2004, underwent a further change with a retum to compositions, with firmer lines and a chromatic range that favored primary colors, making clear reference to Mondrian: Manhattan Beauty, and New York City Beauty (both 2001). Works were shown at the Pop Impact! group exhibition, at the Whitney Museum, and at the Les Années Pop exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Pans. He started working on the Sunset Nude series in which he went back to a pictorial classicism that shows the influence of Matisse’s nudes with Pink and Yellow Tulips, in Sunset Nude #3, which is dominated by the juxtaposition of swathes of flat color. the absence of chiaroscuro and an intricate play of lines in which it is possible to see continuous cross-references of positive and negative shapes. It is the mixture between background and figure, the simplification and concision of the details, and the linear compositional skill that Wesselmann takes from the works of Matisse.
The female icon of the new millennium is painted but not described, the decoration enchants, the compositional planes overlap, the borderline between the two most significant areas of his work, figurative and abstraction, is diminished. In these last ten years Wesselmann’s health was showing the consequences of heart disease, but his studio work remained constant. He made Bedroom Breast, 2004, a painted metal relief, referring back to his earlier work, and also Man Ray at the Dance, a large canvas painting, at more than eight by six feet, and eight Sunset Nudes including Sunset Nude with Frame, a painted metal work. Following surgery for his heart condition, Tom Wesselmann died on December 17th of that year.
John Giorno Elizabeth Dee
John Giorno, JASMINE BURN, 2017, Painting, Acrylic on canvas, Elizabeth Dee, New York
John Giorno is a poet and visual artist. Born in 1936 in New York City, Giorno attended Columbia University and worked as a stockbroker for a short time before meeting Andy Warhol in 1962. A romantic relationship ensued, and Giorno was featured in Warhol’s first film, Sleep (1963). The influence of pop art and Warhol’s Factory are evident in Giorno’s work, which developed out of verbal collages of appropriated texts drawn from advertising and signage.
Giorno’s close friendship with the artist Robert Rauschenberg, who was then experimenting with art and technology, inspired his next set of works. In the 1960s, Giorno began to record his poetry, distorting the recordings with synthesizers to produce installations he called “electronic sensory poetry environments.” In 1965, he founded Giorno Poetry Systems, a nonprofit production company designed to introduce new, innovative poetry to wider audiences. In 1967, Giorno called upon fellow artists and friends, including William S. Burroughs, Frank O’Hara, and Patti Smith, to record poems for his Dial-a-Poem project, which used the telephone to connect listeners to recordings of poems. The recordings made during this project were later united to considerable critical acclaim in a 1970 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
In 1971, following a trip to India, Giorno converted to Tibetan Buddhism. In his later years, he has become well known for his confrontational readings and his contributions as a gay rights activist; he founded the AIDS Treatment Project in 1984. In 2010, he had his first solo gallery show, Black Paintings and Drawings, which focused on the development of poem painting. He currently lives in New York City. the legendary artist, performer and poet. Perfect Flowers introduces twenty-five original compositions on the theme, expressed in metaphorical dimensions that illuminate the physical senses. The Perfect Flowers series explores new content that the artist began working on in the early 2000s, expanding on previously known lines and cadences around the topic. The result is a series of luminous new paintings with enriched surfaces that elevate the artist’s recent writings.
Elisabetta Benassi Magazzino
Elisabetta Benassi, Mimetica, 2016, Sculpture, Artificial Palm Tree, steel, resin, natural fiber, polypropylene, Magazzino, Rome
Elisabetta Benassi, 1966, Rome, is a modern Italian artist. She actually is aligned using the conceptual custom, having a plurality of press and methods that reference creative traditions from the twentieth hundred years, her personal background, aswell as broader politics and cultural styles, including psychoanalysis and social memory space. What emerges in her oeuvre is definitely a critical study of modern identity as well as the circumstances of modernity. As well mainly because incorporating concepts about modernity in her function, Benassi has explored the usage of mixed press, machinery, and sculpture. In her function, Suolo No. 3 (Floor #3), Benassi offers photographed the bottom of a car repair center which contains a variety of metallic objects on to the floor.
The picture can easily become recognised incorrectly as a couple of dirt. Actually, Benassi has mixed both of these contrasting conceptual suggestions to display cohesion between your objects, exemplifying an equilibrium between them despite the fact that they are therefore different. (Metallic: shiny, sterling silver items juxtaposed with dirt: globe tones, smooth). These photos are large size, forcing the audience to handle the assorted items head on. Benassi lives and functions in Rome, Italy, and she actually is currently represented by Magazzino d’Arte Moderna, Rome.
徐渠 XU Qu Antenna Space
徐渠 XU Qu, Sir Harry Smith Parkes 《巴夏礼公爵》, 2017, Mixed Media, Ceramic glaze (Imitation of Qing Dynasty style), brass, marble 仿清代陶瓷着釉、黄铜、大理石, Antenna Space, China
XU Qu born in 1978 in Jiangsu, China. Graduated from Nanjing Art Institute, Bachelor Degree in 2002. Between 2005 to 2007, he studied of Fine Arts at the Braunschweig University of Art in Germany and he studies under professors John M. Armleder and Birgit Hein, Diplom. Between 2007 to 2008, “Meisterschueler” (postgraduate study program) under Prof. John M. Armleder, now working and living in Beijing. Known for his original multiform approach and richly varied work, Xu Qu is one of the most interesting creative talents from the new generation of young Chinese artists who grew up in the 1980s.
For over several years, Xu Qu has been exploring a wide range of mediums, such as videos, paintings, sculptures and installations that are questioning the reality of our global world and displaying an obsession with attraction for power relations. Known for his original multiform approach and richly varied work, Xu Qu is one of the most interesting creative talents from the new generation of young Chinese artists who grew up in the 1980s. For over several years, Xu Qu has been exploring a wide range of mediums, such as videos, paintings, sculptures and installations that are questioning the reality of our global world and displaying an obsession with attraction for power relations.
José Lerma Kavi Gupta
José Lerma, Rigo as Julio Iglesias as Emmanuelle, 2017, Painting, Acrylic on canvas, Kavi Gupta, Chicago
Lerma’s work is focused on painting and works about paintings. In a unique style and aesthetic Lerma folds the personal into the historical and art historical. He says “that all art is about other art or about your parents.” His canvases are often thick with globs of paint that create the shapes of portraits with no likeness. Born in Seville in 1971, Spain. Currently works and lives in Brooklyn, NY and Chicago, IL.
He is a professor of painting at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and is represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York. Drawing inspiration from his personal history, as well as historical figures and events, José Lerma incorporates research and an inventive approach to the traditions of painting and portraiture. Using varying methods and alternative materials, Lerma’s gestures and depictions continue to unfold upon investigation––what appear to be bold, expressionist gestures slowly reveal themselves to be meticulous collages of silicone; or almost vibrating acrylic surfaces come into near focus as infinitely layered drawings. Finding ways within painting to collapse the historical and the personal, Lerma functionalizes our contemporary desire for beautifully rich painting as a way to encourage the possibility of a deeper engagement with the content and narrative embedded in the work.
Nolan Simon 47 Canal
Nolan Simon, Pellegrino, 2017, painting, oil on linen, 47 Canal, New York
Nolan Simon is an American artist born in 1980. Nolan Simon’s paintings may look like rather straightforward representations of ordinary people and objects, but they are not portraits, nor Romantic landscapes nor bourgeois still lifes. Consisting of painterly brushstrokes and figurative elements that look suspiciously familiar, these images are drawn from a broad range of modern sources easily accessible to the artist: tumblr, 4 chan, gallery press release, popular magazines etc. References to Symbolism, Painting, the Hudson School and architecture are sourced then channeled through a projector onto a canvas to be realized in paint. Certainly, thinking through the complexities of what digital sharing does to contemporary image making is no new idea for artists today; yet unlike most artists who subvert these ideas, Simon celebrates and embraces the experiences that come with an expanded culture and communications system.
Camille Henrot König Galerie
Camille Henrot, Telepathic Lovers, 2015, work on Paper, Chinese ink on paper, framed, König Galerie, Berlin
Born in 1978, Camille Henrot lives and works in New York. Henrot’s diverse practice combines film, drawing, and sculpture. Taking inspiration from subjects as varied as literature, mythology, cinema, anthropology, evolutionary biology, religion and the banality of everyday life, Henrot’s work acutely reconsiders the typologies of objects and established systems of knowledge.
A 2013 artistic fellowship at the Smithsonian resulted in her film Grosse Fatigue, for which she was awarded the Silver Lion at the 55th Venice Biennale. Developing themes from the film, The Pale Fox installation was first shown at London’s Chisenhale Gallery in 2014 and traveled to Kunsthal Charlottenburg, Copenhagen; Bétonsalon, Paris; and the Westfällischer Kunstverein, Munster. A catalogue for the exhibition was released in January 2016. Henrot has forthcoming solo exhibitions scheduled at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Fondazione Memmo, Rome.
She has had solo exhibitions at the New Museum, New York; Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin; New Orleans Museum of Art; Musée du Jeu de Paume, Paris. Her work has been included in group shows at MoMA, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and SculptureCenter, New York; as well as the 2015 Lyon Biennial and the 2016 Berlin Biennial.
She is the recipient of the 2014 Nam June Paik Award and the Edvard Munch Art Award 2015. In her work, Camille Henrot has engaged subjects and inspirations as diverse as ethnographic film, the zoetrope (a pre-film animation device from the 19th century that produces the illusion of motion), telephone hotlines, andikebana (the Japanese art of flower arranging). Born in Paris in 1978, Henrot studied film animation at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs before spending brief periods assisting mixed-media artist Pierre Huyghe, working in advertising, and making music videos. Now based in New York, she produces compelling works in a variety of mediums, including film, sculpture, installation, and painting. Henrot’s work reflects her interest in philosophy, literature, and anthropology; her creative process often involves exhaustive research. Henrot’s interest in the collection and structuring of information and knowledge is most directly explored in her 2013 video Grosse Fatigue, which she created as part of the Smithsonian Artists Research Fellowship Program in Washington, DC. The 13-minute-long video is set on a computer desktop, where countless windows containing images, data, Web pages, and videos continually open, accumulate, and close. This dense visual experience is propelled by a soundtrack of rhythmic beats and a spoken word–style narration of the history of the universe told through a cross-cultural amalgamation of creation myths. Like much of Henrot’s work, Grosse Fatigue layers the historic and the contemporary, drawing on a wealth of sources to create a poetic exploration of information overload in the digital age.
Caroline Achaintre Art : Concept
Caroline Achaintre, Finnbar, 2017, sculpture, enamelled porcelain, framed, Art : Concept, Paris
Caroline Achaintre, born in 1969 in Toulouse, France, she lives and works in London. Achaintre cites German Expressionism and post-war British sculpture as influences on her work. These movements are known for their crude aesthetics which conveyed the trauma of a war-time generation. Her work also draws from ‘Primitivism’, a style of early 20th century art that incorporated imagery from tribal cultures. Achaintre is interested in these periods because they present junctures between the ancient and modern, psychological and physical, exoticism and technology. Achaintre likens her work to anthropological museum displays, where objects are removed from another place or time and are brought into a contemporary context.
Caroline initially started making tufted objects as a way to translate drawings into real space. To make her work Achaintre tufts each individual piece of yarn into a woven canvas base, a process which she likens to painting in wool. The length, texture and colour of each thread takes on the qualities of expressionist painting. Achaintre uses wool because of its physicality, its attractive but sometimes also repulsive attributes. Its natural fabric suggests something primitive, but also the technological precision and connoisseurship of post-industrial craft. These ideas are reflected in her compositions, which look like futuristic tribal masks. She is interested in masks because they represent duplicity: whether used for shamanism, theatre, or carnival, masks suggest a state where reality and the fantastical can exist at the same time.