new works by Abel Auer

"They are dream worlds, parallel worlds,
contrary to the artist’s own urban living environment."

Abel Auer: In the future
till 10 December 2010 at Sies + Hoke

"The American philosopher David K. Lewis says that everything we can think of inherently contains the possibility of existence. Abel Auer goes one step further. He constitutes a possible world not only on the intellectual level, he shows it to the viewer in his paintings. The question of whether this world is parallel, alternative or contrary to ours remains unanswered. The unshakable duration of this reality is based on his use of unreal colors, bizarre shapes and distorted perspectives, culminating in the borders of arabesque crochets.

..

Sentimentalism and nostalgia are manifest in his paintings, the longing and the substitute for a lost nature. At once they are personal and reaching to an universal level of human understanding. The figures creeping through fantastic landscapes are reminiscent of heroic characters in the works of Poe, Kafka, Baudelaire or Ensor’s paintings. The strange other-worldliness and unity of the self-contained, hermetic world is drawing the viewer into the narrative, testing his or her sensitivity. 
Abel Auer’s images are an exploration of 19th Century landscape painting... They are dream worlds, parallel worlds, contrary to the artist’s own urban living environment."


all text taken from here..








--------------------

Upon his return from the exhibition,
the young artist vowed to become a “modern” artist. "

Stuart Davis, 1913

Stuart Davis (1892-1964)
Torso and Head of Two Figures, 1928 Ink and pencil on paper

"In 1913, he was invited to participate and attend the International Exhibition of Modern Art (also known as the Armory Show). Davis later recalled that he was “enormously excited by the show” and was deeply affected by the post-Impressionist works by Gaugin, Van Gogh, and Matisse that were on display. Upon his return from the exhibition, the young artist vowed to become a “modern” artist. "


(from here)

American landscape 1932

"Gloucester … was the place I had been looking for. It had the brilliant light of Provincetown, but with the important additions of topographical severity and the architectural beauties of the Gloucester schooner. The schooner is a very necessary element in coherent thinking about art. I do not refer to its own beauty of form, but to the fact that its masts define the often empty sky expanse. They function as a color-space coordinate between earth and sky … From the masts of schooners the artist eventually learns to invent his own coordinates, when for some unavoidable reason they are not present."




-Stuart Davis










----------------------

black grid
light grid.

centered upon
the motif of the grid.



































black grid
light grid.

centered upon
the motif of the grid.




1. Sol LeWitt, Wall drawings #792 ,at Gladstone Gallery, Brussels,
2. interior image from Freunde Von Freunden,




"Conceived in 1995, Wall Drawing #792: Black rectangles and squares underscores LeWitt's early interest in the intersections between art and architecture, which he distinguished and admired as a practice structured by predetermination, empirical logic, and collaboration. Spanning the two floors of the gallery, this major work consists of varying combinations of black rectangles, creating an irregular grid-like pattern that is representative of LeWitt's use of the elemental shapes and geometries found in the abstractions of the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism.


While aesthetically uniform, the differing scale, design, and dimensions of the gallery’s walls demand that each composition consider the unique architectural conditions of the site itself. On view in the garden is a concrete block structure from 2001, which acts as a compelling three-dimensional counterpart to the ideas demonstrated in LeWitt’s wall drawing.


Motivated by this practical model of architecture, LeWitt developed a framework for identifying the artist as primarily that of a thinker bound to the processes of conceptualization rather than execution, a move that separated him from the romantic tradition of the artist as maker. Rejecting the ideological imperatives of Abstract Expressionism, LeWitt and his fellow allies established a counter polemic constituted by attitudes towards issues of non-hierarchy, repetition, and serialism, which centered upon the motif of the grid.

Through both his elegant charting of the axiomatics of the surface space as well the stoicism of his concrete structure, LeWitt invites us to reflect upon the phenomenological effects of our unfolding experience, marking his continual insistence upon capturing the indomitable presence of the human mind."






black grid
light grid.

centered upon
the motif of the grid.

-------------------

Bojan Šarčević
Comme de chiens et des vagues
13 October – 13 November, 2010

She, 2010, onyx

via Modern Art London


"Occupying a room to itself is a sculpture carved from a large single block of Persian onyx. To acquire the stone, Šarčević travelled to the ancient Silk Route city of Yazd in central Iran, from where the block of raw stone was transported by road to Britain for carving and finishing. Precisely worked with rectangular, square cut shapes and cavities, it suggests a semi-functional form, while its sensuous materiality and ambiguous purpose lends a disquieting presence.

The interplay of shape and man-made geometry effects properties of change and transformation, while revealing the fundamentally unchanged and highly aesthetic qualities of this rich and elemental material. Its presence offers a constant reflection on sculptural tensions: fragility and resilience, weight and gravity, shape and texture, geometric and organic form, organic and mineral flesh."




from here...





Bojan Šarčević
Comme de chiens et des vagues
13 October – 13 November, 2010

when blocks become us.
aka
limited internal space and unlimited external space.
aka
the artist has left the continent for good.

"A painting is an object which has an emphatic frontal surface. On such a surface, I paint a black band which does not recede, a color band which does not obtrude, a white square or rectangle which does not move back or forth, to or fro, or up or down; there is also a painted white exterior frame band which is edged round the edge to the black. Every part is painted and contiguous to its neighbor; no part is above or below any other part.
There is no hierarchy. There is no ambiguity. There is no illusion.
There is no space or interval (time).



- Jo Baer (above)




----------

Immediately following her midcareer retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1975, Jo Baer relocated to Ireland. Her self-imposed exile coincided with the moment of her greatest critical recognition. For her, the search for a more substantive art required establishing a keen distance not only from the values, ethos, and ideologies that had dominated the New York art world in the 1960s but also from its wider sociopolitical matrix.

She has resolutely maintained this distance, both literally and figuratively, in succeeding years.


via here....

Through a string of events yesterday, I was directed to this entry on Dan Graham.... His work left a huge impact on my last year when it was shown here in Los Angeles at MOCA. Luckily for us here in Los Angeles, Regen Projects is about to open their new show, of Dan Graham's works on October 30th. His work surrounds ideas of architecture, space, memory, scale, mirrors, and interior architecture. In his entry, it states:

"Minimalist art stripped art down to only its fundamental and bare essentials. Rarely were pictorial or illustrative imagery were seen in minimalist works. Minimalism focused on the experience the artwork created for the viewer. The artist purposefully disconnected himself from the artwork. Even in the face of a chaotic world, minimalism was a calm, cool, and stable art form. This minimalist aesthetic was seen not only in visual art but, throughout the art world in literature, music, architecture, and fashion."

"The soul of sculpture is in the center of space and every piece of sculpture is a fragment that recomposes the center. Sculpture is the fullness which opposes the emptiness inside and outside the environment. The full form opposes the emptiness of a room, it is interpreted in a way opposite to that in which one interprets the walls which make up the architectural box. Thus sculpture defines by compressing itself in a silent expansion into both limited internal space and unlimited external space. When the volume of a work of art can be called sculpture, then it is soul. Today it clearly and surely is, because it has been recomposed and resuscitated. "


Michelangelo Pistoletto,
go here...

when blocks become us.
aka
limited internal space and unlimited external space.
aka
the artist has left the continent for good.



1. Jo Baer
2. Talisman London, vintage mirrored cabinet
3. Michelangelo Pistoletto,
4. Rachel Whiteread
5. ROLU Studio







----------------------------

D O U B LE S

double up
double up







Quint Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the opening of Double Up Double Up, which opens on Friday, June 11 and runs thru July 3, 2010.

We are excited to include three artists new to the gallery Tavares Strachan, Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation, and Haim Steinbach. The exhibition will also feature works by Mel Bochner and Roy McMakin.

To recall what one has seen is to pull from memory, either consciously or subconsciously. One of the more basic fundamental devices of committing something to memory is repetition. In Double Up Double Up the viewer is invited to explore this principle of memory through works that deal with some form of repetition.

The eclectic group of artists in this exhibition examine repetition in unique ways with the use of parallel universes (Stachan), word repetition (Bochner), framing devices (Steinbach), ontological complexities (McMakin), and memory and longing (Sussman). These forms of repetition reveal themselves in double images, duplication, and pairings.





via quint gallery here.




------------------------

Sigmar Polke
1941-2010

Sigmar Polke,
via NYTIMES



Sigmar Polke, an artist of infinite, often ravishing pictorial jest, whose sarcastic and vibrant layering of found images and maverick, chaos-provoking painting processes left an indelible mark on the last four decades of contemporary painting, died yesterday in Cologne, Germany. He was 69; the cause was complications of cancer, according to Gordon Veneklasen, a partner at the Michael Werner Gallery New York, the artist’s chief American representative.

"Sigmar Polke is an artist whose work defies easy definitions. He is one of the most significant painters of the post-war generation, yet his career has by no means been confined to painting. Since the early 1960s Polke has experimented with a wide range of styles and subject matter, bringing together imagery from contradictory or unexpected sources, both historical and contemporary, and using a variety of different materials and techniques. In fact Polke’s artistic diversity, and his resistance to any form of categorisation, has been seen as the only consistent theme in his work."

via the tate
modern....






--------------

Fergus
Feehily
@ Misako
and Rosen












Fergus Feehily
June 6 Sun - July 4 Sun 2010
Misako and Rosen, Tokyo


Modest in scale and material, often incorporating found items and generally pale in palette, the works of Fergus Feehily gently, yet persistently, embody complexity while prompting patience. On first appearance soft, subsequently subversive, Feehily's work engages viewing. Subtle geographies, both psychic and physical, the paintings and objects in assorted media (sculpture, book) play- re-enacting process while activating space.

Less perceptual puzzles than possible conversations, Feehily's works elude closure; many of the recent paintings either contradictorily presenting the hidden (painted surface partially obscured behind another surface) or exposing, counterintuitively, the subtle or as he refers to it, "lower-case" violence used in their making, paintings, for example, screwed to the wall through, rather than behind, their surface.





------------------------

YHBHS Interview with Jeffrey Scott Mathews

....
"The new (ancient) age"

Untitled (/x\) 2010

I think it was one night not too long ago. Late, late into the night, when I first
found myself staring at Jeffrey Scott Mathew's paintings. Maybe my eyes were exhausted from staring at the screen, but Jeffrey's paintings seemed to be melting in front of my eyes. Perhaps it was Max Richter's score that was lulling me into a dream state, or maybe it was just the hour.

Their lines blurry, and fuzzy, bouncing upon the surface almost like an analogue melodic beat might. Their strong geometric lines reminded me of fantastic wallpapers, or some
sort of psychedelic tapestry that would be draped over a chair.


Yet their painted surfaces seem to be destroyed with these metallic puddles of good(evil)ness!?!



Bi83, I wondered wtf?
and Binary rainbows,and twilight thinkers, I was hooked!
Sign me up for this afterlife, please.




-----------------

Untitled (Drctnl Decomposition), 2010

What is bi83 and marker bleed? Will you talk about your process for making this series of work? Bi83 is the name for the heavy metal bismuth as it is found on the periodic table of elements. Bismuth has a rich cultural history as both a metaphysical healing property and as an element with many commercial applications(it is the active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol). The reason that I choose to work with the material is that it forms stair-step or hopper crystals as it cools. It has a low melting point so it is possible to drip and draw with the material on linen or canvas. As the molten metal cools, crystals form and the material forms a bond with the linen. I appreciate the component of organic structure occurring after chaotic and almost expressionistic gestural painting.

Untitled (Binary Rainbow), 2010

The marker-bleed refers to my use of markers on linen that are compromised by water or chemical agent, allowing the pigment to bleed and saturate into the linen. I see this as another level of the process or systemic organization being disrupted by natural phenomena. Due to the fact that I work with chance there is always a high possibility of failure. This makes things both exciting and precarious as I am constantly building things up in order to break them down. I think this collaboration with nature is vaguely reminiscent of my background in experimental processes with photography.

The work is both a recording and an experiment. Ultimately, each work is the residue of an ongoing investigation with infinite possibilities. who are you inspired by? I'm heavily inspired by the sort of formal enthusiasm typified by late 60's minimalism where artists were working with space-age industrial materials in order to subvert their function within the military industrial complex. I'm also inspired by the science fiction writing of JG Ballard and his elemental cycle, which encapsulates positivist ideas about geophysical change and its relevance to psychological transformation.




You seemed to be drawn toward the 11 x 14 format. Any particular reasons? I feel like the scale of an 11x14 inch painting makes it more personal and less monumental. I am not opposed to monumental works, but the scale seemed appropriate for the intricacy of the crystals that form on the surface of these paintings. I am, however, constantly learning new ways to manipulate the bismuth, so I think a scale upgrade will occur when I am capable of cultivating larger crystals. As the means of control grow, so grows the system.

Untitled (Scapeland), 2010

Is your home messy or neat? I live in an apartment in Brooklyn with my girlfriend who is also an artist. We keep things neat when we can, although she is in the early stages of initiating a rooftop garden, so dirt is everywhere.

I also work from home, so my studio vacillates between being organized and efficient and adversely sloppy and crystal laden, much like my paintings!













Talk about twilight thinker, and binary rainbow... where do you titles come from? I title the works "Untitled" with parenthetical titles for descriptive or reference purposes. The referential titles are sometimes formally descriptive, and sometimes arbitrary. "Twilight Thinker" is actually a chapter in (Anti-) philosopher Emil Cioran's book "A Short History of Decay", which I am currently reading.

In this chapter Cioran states " Finding ourselves at a point symmetrical to the agony of the ancient world, a victim of the same sicknesses and under similarly ineluctable charms, we see the great systems destroyed by their limited perfection... We have come with our own death to the doors of philosophy: rotting on their hinges, having nothing more to protect, they open of their own accord..."















If you could have one dream next door neighbor, who would you want to move in next door? I think my dream neighbor would have to be either tolerant of noisy drone music or deaf, because my current neighbors are definitely not down with the kind of music i listen to. Maybe I would want the neighbor to be an intellectual musician Tony Conrad, Terry Riley, or Steve Reich. Music is important to me because it is all process. I like experiential sounds that inspire a sort of be-here-now existentialist state of mind. So, yeah some kind of new age person...



------------------------







thank you Jeffrey for having this conversation!
see more of Jeffrey Scott Mathews' work here..









-------------------------------

Gregory Michael Hernandez

Gregory Michael Hernandez
Rebuilt Homestead

LAX ART
May 22nd, 2010 - June 26th, 2010
Opening reception: Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 7-9pm

Gregory Michael Hernandez
I've seen his photo:sculptures overs the years,
and I've been mesmerized. Almost flashbacks
to Buckminster Fuller or a trip from a past life.

This new work just looks stunning.
Curious to find out more about the reworking and rebuilding
of the homestead. (via laxart in culver city.)



The homestead rebuilt.

domestic scene..

"Social climbers at the frontier
But I refuse that climb
You're leaving just in time
You're leaving just in time
Leaving just in time

Domestic scene do I belong?
Seemed like a good idea at one time
But now it's all wrong
Already declined
You're leaving just in time
You're leaving just in time
Leaving just in time"

radio dept lyrics, domestic scene.

The homestead rebuilt.

Gregory Michael Hernandez
Rebuilt Homestead

LAX ART
May 22nd, 2010 - June 26th, 2010
Opening reception: Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 7-9pm

We Care About You.

Andy
Coolquitt
at
Lisa
Cooley,
NY

second souffle
2010

Andy Coolquitt’s abstract, linear sculptures made of joined pipes, broom handles, discarded lighters, beer bottles, light bulbs, straws, and crayons, are minimalist, ordered rearrangements of the raw world from which their components are sourced. Human-scaled and oddly anthropomorphic, Coolquitt’s work relates to the body in scale and form. Many times the works are functional, but Coolquitt is more interested in their dysfunction and their tenuous relationship with practicality.

We Care About You includes significant new sculptures that plumb Coolquitt’s alchemical bricolage. attainable excellence #2 is a lanky rod of transformed pipes that leans against the wall. A u-shaped pipe at the bottom forms two feet, and four light bulbs create an illuminated halo. The sculpture has a refined DIY aesthetic that channels its titular optimism.

Coolquitt shows these discrete sculptures alongside non-art objects, reinvestigating a theme in his practice of immersive environments. Found objects hang from the ceiling and commune with the finished works. The former are not “ready-mades”, which would both steep them in art history and claim them as Coolquitt’s own. Instead, he calls them “somebody mades” because “another human designed and constructed them” Also included are “inbetween objects” which are in the process of becoming – or resisting becoming – resolved pieces.

The result juxtaposes what Coolquitt terms “three levels of the life of the object.” Among these ruminations on objecthood, Coolquitt revisits a work from 1991.Titled a nice soft place for meeting people…, a plush shelf at elbow height encourages viewers to lean, converse, and interact. This shared experience embodies the connections between both people and materials that define Coolquitt’s oeuvre.




go to Lisa Cooley
site here..





--------

Matt Connors

LACE
auction
online...
here..

Untitled, 2009,
Oil and pencil on paper, 11"x14"

Matt Connors' paintings have been praised for their "appealing economy and spontaneity" and their subtle gestures that comment on the act of painting itself. Connors' recent exhibitions include solo shows at Cherry and Martin in Los Angeles (2010), CANADA in New York (2010 & 2008), Luttgenmeijer in Berlin (2008) and the Breeder in Athens (2007). His work has also recently appeared in group exhibitions at Praz-Delavallade in Paris (2010); Cirrus Gallery, Parker Jones Gallery and Karyn Lovegrove Gallery in Los Angeles; and Sikkema Jenkins in New York. Connors received his MFA from Yale University in 2006. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

------------

Jorge Pardo

colored
architecture.

some see colors
some see numbers
some see both!

Jorge Pardo
go here for more info.


there is something certain about the way in which
Jorge Pardo is able to incorporate color,
geometric shapes, architecture, lighting,
into an artistic practice.










------

ALICE NEEL : Los Angeles

I like it not only to look like the person, but to have their inner character as well,
and then I like to express the Zeitgiest.

-- Alice Neel

Alice Neel:
Paintings In association with Jeremy Lewison Limited
20 May - 26 June 2010
Opening reception, Thursday, 20 May, 6 - 8 pm

"Fiercely independent, free-spirited, and working at a time when figurative painting was unfashionable, Alice Neel pursued her art fearlessly. Painting in relative obscurity into her 60s, Neel received acclaim late in life, and is now valued as one of the most important American painters of the 20th century. Neel’s subjects were her sons, grandchildren, friends and acquaintances, art world figures, and sometimes people she encountered on the street. While some of her sitters were, or became, people of renown, most were simply those who caught her eye.

In her art, Neel sought to convey the individual, and to reveal their inner life. Neel described the experience of painting: “I become the person for a couple of hours, so when they leave and I am finished….I have no self.” As Lewison states, “Neel entered into them, exploring their folds, creases and idiosyncrasies with her brush, sculpting them as though they were extensions of herself.” Neel’s paintings are imbued with a powerful understanding of her subject within an incisive temporal and social context.

Alice Neel:
Paintings In association with Jeremy Lewison Limited
20 May - 26 June 2010
Opening reception, Thursday, 20 May, 6 - 8 pm

At LA Louver Gallery







---

Jason Irla

Salutation
and
Farewell
in a Single Glance















Jason Irla
Salutation and Farewell in a Single Glance
Two channel video installation
2010


"I am concerned with the process of looking and, more importantly, seeing. Looking being the recognition of that which acts on a surface level. Seeing functioning as the ability to discern that which is below the suface and which may not be actively visible with the eye alone. Each piece attempts to challenge our relationship with the visual detritus to which we are subjected on a daily basis. Rooted in personal observation, I employ an extreme economy of means to create situations that reward slow careful looking, providing a space for a contemplative sensory experience. Through conceptual and phenomenological investigations, I am trying to understand what it means to be in the moment, and how individuals relate to the space of a moment. I define “moment” loosely as an unfixed unit of measurement for quantifying time. From a fraction of a second or many decades long, a moment can be defined as many things within the context of time. By providing a space for recognizing the subjectivity of time, my work emphasizes the passive exchange of the perceptible moment. "






------

New Work

west coast
east coast.

_____

perfect
mismatch

________

Ken Weathersby
28 May, 2010.
Exhibition Dates
28 May - 27 June, 2010

PIEROGI
177 North 9th Street,
Brooklyn, NY




Ken Weathersby's solo show at Pierogi!
If in New York, don't miss this show.
These paintings are beautiful and sublime online,
but the work sings in person!
If you are in Los Angeles in the next month,
Ken's work is at LACE, as part of
the 2010 auction.









----


go to ken weathersby
site here

C h r i s M a r t i n

chris
martin
at
daniel
weinberg
may 1 - may 29

CHRIS MARTIN
Tree
1986-2009
Oil on canvas 38" x 24






----




"It's like being inside and outside at the same time. On the one hand you are in trance, on the other hand you are watching yourself paint. And I think the key is that when you are watching yourself paint you don't judge, you just watch. The less I judge the more I can actually create and see what I'm doing. "



-------




"I wish we could all wish for not knowing what we are doing. But in a good way. I think there's a sense of freedom that comes from everybody not being too sure what they're doing. Someone once said about New York in the early 1950s, late '40s, after Expressionism was sort of bursting onto the scene, "There was a moment, maybe six weeks or so, when no one had any idea how to make a painting." And that's a lovely idea, that we don't know what we're doing…"






(I missed the show last summer at Micthell-Innes and Nash,
but really excited to see Chris Martin's work here in Los Angeles.)







Chris Martin....

-------

W A D E G U Y T O N

homes,
tumblers,
and
the
black.



























homes,
tumblers,
and
the
black.

1. Wade Guyton
2. Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker: Tumblers A set of six glass tumblers by artists Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker, printed with metallic patterns. Bottoms up! SOLD OUT! (boo!)
via ooga booga store here in los angeles!




...

Rust

A
Rhapsody
in
Rust!

While watching "A City of Lost Children" this weekend, I remembered Dennis Lootweg's rusted furniture. Feels like it was lifted out of that gorgeous film. Denis's furniture haas this strange sense of timelessness. go here for the full collection!

"In Dennis Slootweg’s collections, old materials that are marked by the ravages of time – such as industrial waste, often metals - ,are given a surprisingja second life. Not through assembling, but genuinely custom-made. In his own words: ‘I like to play with expectations. Completely new products, like my Rust Cupboards made of old metal, thus still invoke a feeling of recognition – almost immediately followed by the sense that there is more at stake.’

"Gascard developed the technique of rust relief art, during the 1990's in Berlin, Germany. She had long integrated found metal objects into her work, but with the fall of the Berlin Wall she began collecting iron bits from "no man's land," and allowed these to further decay onto linen. Reflecting the carnage associated with the origin of this iron, she gave some of her rust works strong figurative components.

Reinforcing the composition, the finish of these panels creates the effect of translucent skin. The average duration of iron decay for producing these works is over one year. As of 2008, she has been exploring the integration of Arabic calligraphy into her works."

Rhapsody in Rust!

(images, top to bottom.)

1. Sarah Nance, rusted metal, here..
2. Dennis Lootweg, furniture, via yatzer, here..
3. Lorettann Gascard, "Rhapsody in Rust" 2008, rust on linen
4. Corey D' Augustine, rust on canvas, 2009, here..
5. A rusted door!






------

rama
lama
ding
dong

























rama
lama
ding
dong


1 Dan Colen
2 Richard Jackson


"Dan Colen’s text paintings, such as Rama Lama Ding Dong, are a practical response to his time consuming realist work. Quickly scrawled in spray paint over plywood boards which are built up with sanded layers of moulding base and acrylic, they retain a tension between immediacy of expression and perfection of surface. Spelling out song lyrics, random thoughts, or absurd slogans Colen’s texts create a form of urban poetry, conjuring effete images through word association and bereft aesthetics. Often times Colen hand-renders these works, creating the effect of aerosol through painstaking brush technique."






----