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13 October 2011
  Photography, Film & Video  
YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY, New York
CHRISTINE KÖNIG GALERIE, Vienna
JAMES COHAN GALLERY, New York
WILKINSON GALLERY, London
 

 
YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY, New York
 
 
Hellen van Meene, Untitled #366, 2010
 
Hellen van Meene
Untitled #366, 2010
Chromogenic print, 11.5 x 11.5 inches, edition of 10
Courtesy of Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York
 
 
HELLEN VAN MEENE
 
Until October 22, 2011
 
The Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Hellen van Meene, continuing the artist's decades-long exploration into photographic portraiture. The exhibition includes several new portraits of adolescent girls, each one characterized by the artist's extraordinary use of light and elicitation of her subject ' s psychological state. Notably, the selection also includes a series of formal portraits of dogs, a distinctly new direction within the artist 's oeuvre. This is van Meene' s third solo exhibition at the gallery.
 
The intimately scaled female portraits in the exhibition were all shot in Russia and in the artist's hometown of Heiloo, The Netherlands. Characteristic of van Meene' s style, the portraits reflect an introspective mood, unveiling a moment of acute psychological poignancy. In Untitled, St. Petersburg (above), van Meene has returned to a model she previously photographed, whom the artist met in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2007. Formerly a girl in the midst of awkward adolescence, she appears now both physically and psychologically exposed as a nude young woman, bright red lipstick and black wig her only staged adornment. Directly engaging the viewer, the model's coolly blank expression and brilliant blue eyes offer an intriguing glimpse into her psyche.
 
Van Meene has elsewhere sought to expand her study of photographic portraiture by turning to dogs as subjects. As with her earliest portraits of teenagers, the artist has created an outdoor studio with a simple background in order to focus on the character of each dog and to highlight their idiosyncrasies. Using a navy or crimson backdrop and an antique Persian carpet, van Meene imbues the dogs with a measure of rank and respect, while drawing out of them the same psychological potential as her human portraits.
 
Born in Alkmaar, The Netherlands in 1972, Hellen van Meene lives and works in Heiloo, The Netherlands. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in the collections of major museums worldwide including the Stedelijk Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, MoCA Los Angeles, Museum of Photography, The Hague, Guggenheim Museum, New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Previous publications include Hellen van Meene: Portraits (Aperture, 2004) and Hellen van Meene: Japan Series (The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago and De Hallen, Haarlem, the Netherlands, 2002)

 
YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY
535 West 22nd Street 3rd floor
New York, NY 10011
T: 1 646-230-9610
 
 
 
 

 
CHRISTINE KÖNIG GALERIE, Vienna
 
 
Lady Jaye Breyer and Genesis P-Orridge
 
Lady Jaye Breyer and Genesis P-Orridge
Photo: Marie Losier
Courtesy of Christine König Galerie, Vienna
 
 
GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE
Blood - Sex - Magick
 
curated by Thomas Miessgang
In cooperation with VIENNALE - Vienna International Film Festival and INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York
 
Opening: Tuesday, October 25, 2011, 7 pm. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is present.
October 26 - November 5, 2011
 
From the gallery's CONVERSATIONS series:
curator Thomas Miessgang and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
Saturday, October 29, 2011, 12 pm
 
The Viennale honors the legendary artist with a special program of film, concert and an exhibition.
 
Genesis P-Orridge and his band Throbbing Gristle were described as destroyer of civilization by an assemblyman of the parliament in the seventies. But what was intended as an insult, became an artistic guideline. For 45 years Genesis P-Orridge stood in for aesthetic extremism. Part of his microcosm are the industrial prime fathers Throbbing Gristle, the psychedelic sounds of Psychic TV and performance activities that remind of Viennese Actionism in terms of their taboo breaking.
 
Marie Loisier, currently living in the US, has made a film about the artist’s career in front of the development of the radical existentialist Pandrogeny project. Genesis and his late life partner Lady Jaye Breyer, who passed away in 2007, wanted to transcend their love through plastic surgery: they changed their bodies till a point where they looked alike almost like a reflection.
 
In an exhibition curated by Thomas Miessgang in the Galerie Christine König Genesis P-Orridge will present photos, collages, record covers and films showing his metamorphosis from he into s/he, but also a look back into the time of Power Electronics and the trouble areas with society in Great Britain.
 
A concert under the motto “Eternal Music” by P-Orridge together with the film maker and minimal music pioneer Tony Conrad as well as Edward O’Dowd offers the rare opportunity to see the artist in an improvised space for the first time in Vienna. (October 29, 11 p.m., Porgy and Bess)
 
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, born in Manchester in 1950, lives and works in New York.
1969 Member of the Exploding Galaxy/Transmedia (w/ David Medalla, Derek Jarman); Founding of COUM Transmissions (w/ Cosey Fanni Tutti); 1973 Begins Mailart, regular contributor to Fluxshoe; 1975 Founding of Throbbing Gristle (w/ Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Christopherson, Chris Carter); Co-edits Contemporary Artists (w/ Colin Naylor); 1981 Founding of Psychic TV (w/ Alex Fergusson); 1982 Co-curates the Final Academy (w/ William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin).
 
Selected exhibitions:
2011 Readykeulous: The Hurtful Healer: The Correspondance Issue, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York; You and Now, Balice Hertling, Paris; 2010 Spillage, Rupert Goldsworthy Gallery, Berlin; Marathon Map, The Serpentine Gallery, London; Decadence Now! Visions of Excess, Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague; I Punk, You Punk, We Punk, Galerie Ahlers, Göttingen, Germany; Dead Flowers, Participant Inc., New York; Brooklyn is Burning, P.S.1, New York; 2009 30 Years of Being Cut Up, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York; 2008 It's Not Over Yet, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York; Punk. No One is Innocent, curated by Thomas Miessgang, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Keeping Up With the Joneses, Schroeder/Romero Gallery, New York; Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years, Barbican Art Gallery, London; 2007 Believers, Mass MOCA, Massachusetts; The Perfect Man, White Columns, New York; Womanizer, Deitch Projects, New York; 2006 We Are But One, Participant Inc., New York; 2004 Painful But Fabulous Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; None Of The Above, Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art, New York; 2002 Violence The True Way, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich; 2001 Candy Factory, Centre Of Attention, London; 2000 Volume, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Live In Your Head, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London

 
CHRISTINE KÖNIG GALERIE
Schleifmuehlgasse 1A
A-1040  Vienna
Austria
T: 43 1 585 74 74
 
 
 
 

 
JAMES COHAN GALLERY, New York
 
 
Tabaimo, BLOW, 2009
 
Tabaimo
BLOW, 2009
video installation, 3'42' loop
Installation view at James Cohan Gallery, New York, September 2011
photo: Jason Mandella
 
 
TABAIMO
DANDAN
 
Until October 29, 2011
 
James Cohan Gallery is proud to present DANDAN, a solo exhibition by Japanese artist Tabaimo opening September 15th and running through October 29th, 2011. This is the third solo exhibition at the gallery by the 35-year old Tabaimo, who is recognized as one of Japan’s leading artists and is well-known for her hand-drawn animations whose coloration bring to mind traditional ukiyo-e prints.
 
Currently, Tabaimo is representing Japan at the 54th Biennale di Venezia with the work teleco-soup, an immersive multi-media environment that transforms the Japanese Pavilion into the interior of a well, where the reflected world is inverted and boundaries between water and sky, self and world, real and imagined are fluid.
 
Taking on both the role as social critic and voice of those born in the mid 1970’s, Tabaimo strives to understand the space between the generations. As globalization has reached the island nation that once prided itself on its isolationism, the traditional communal life is breaking down and the contemporary desire towards individualization is taking over. Tabaimo’s work offers an unblinking look at contemporary Japanese society as a mirror in which to view herself and the other members of her generation caught in the crossfire of these societal shifts. Her works capture the anxiety that is a constant reality in a land whose terra firma is less than stable, while their tone remains abstract and detached. Recurring motifs including cityscapes, interior spaces, hands, brains, hair, insects, plants and water hover between the elegantly rendered and the disturbingly surreal.
 
Two of the works on view at James Cohan Gallery BLOW and danDAN were first shown in Tabaimo: Danmen, a solo exhibition that originated at the Yokohama Museum of Art in 2009 and travelled to the National Museum of Art, Osaka. These two works are multi-channel video and sound installations presented on elaborately built stage sets. In addition, the exhibition features guignorama which is a single-channel work first exhibited in the artist’s solo exhibition at the Hara Museum in 2006. This gallery exhibition marks the first time these works are shown in the United States.
 
The central work in the main gallery, BLOW, 2009, depicts a watery world projected onto a curved, half-pipe ramp. The viewer is invited to walk through the seamless, multi-channel projection that moves across this bowl-shaped cross-section, in which human bones, organs and blood vessels emerge from a watery world and transform into flower blossoms that recall the origins of life emerging from the primordial soup.
 
In Gallery 3, danDAN, 2009, is a work projected onto three angled panels that run vertically from floor to ceiling to create a deep perspective. It portrays the interior space of a housing complex of multiple dwelling units with a cut-away view into different apartments - the viewer peers into traditionally-styled apartments with tatami mats sharing walls with apartments with more modernized conveniences. In these spaces, strange events happen: birds fly inside rooms, a woman spins in a washing machine, a man walks into a refrigerator, the peck of a bird’s beak causes blood to flow from of a bed, and clothes turn into birds and fly away.
 
In the front gallery, guignorama, 2006, is a single channel work projected on a wall where blue-veined hands grasp, grapple and lock together in an ever-moving diorama - the pulsating blood vessels creating an emotionally fraught landscape. The artist has suffered from severe eczema and as a result, the recurring motifs of hands and skin have come to represent the boundary between interior and exterior worlds - individual and communal, self and society.
 
Tabaimo was born in Kobe, Japan in 1975. Her work has been exhibited and collected widely around the world. Recent important solo exhibitions include: Tabaimo: teleco-soup, Japanese Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, 2010; Tabaimo: Boundary Layer, Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London, 2010; TABAIMO: Danmen, Yokahama Museum of Art, Tokyo, (travelled to the National Museum of Art, Osaka) 2009-10; Tabaimo, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2009; Tabaimo, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, 2006; YOROYORON: Tabaimo, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2006. International group exhibitions include: the Yokohama Triennale, 2001; the Sao Paolo Biennale, 2002; the 15th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, 2006; and the 52nd International Venice Biennale, 2007. Among the museums that have collected Tabaimo’s work are the Yokahama Museum of Art, Tokyo; National Museum of Art, Osaka; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; MUSAC, Spain; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

 
JAMES COHAN GALLERY
533 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
T: +1 212-714-9500
 
 
 
 

 
WILKINSON GALLERY, London
 
 
Joan Jonas, Volcano Saga, Installation, Queens Museum of Art
 
Joan Jonas
Volcano Saga, Installation, Queens Museum of Art
Queens, New York, 2003-04
Photo: Ari Hiroshige
 
 
JOAN JONAS - VOLCANO SAGA &  DRAWING LANGUAGES
 
10 October to 20 November 2011
Opening: Saturday 15 October, 6 to 9pm
 
Wilkinson Gallery is pleased to present two concurrent exhibitions with the internationally acclaimed artist, Joan Jonas. In the Lower Gallery, Jonas will present Volcano Saga, 1985/1994, one of the most important installations existing from the artist’s oeuvre.
 
I see Volcano Saga as the beginning of my synthesizing the development of female character, the story as mirror, and the volcanic landscapes as representation of narrative. Here, Iceland, was the connection of the psyche to the elements. As in “Wind”, the elements become character. I chose as my story the 13 th Century “Laxdaela Saga”. This story is about a woman who married four times. The book begins with a historical account, tracing the characters’ ancestry, then continues with the woman, Gundrun, who tells four dreams to a seer who then interprets the dreams. The second part of the saga involves the actual marriages and the carrying out of the prophecy.
A film crew recorded the landscapes on video. I photographed it, and on returning to New York, I developed a solo performance with video and slide projections of the different mostly volcanic landscapes that for me represented parts of the story – the four dreams. I finally turned the live performance into a 30-minute narrative for television broadcast, with Tilda Swinton playing Gundrun and Ron Vawter playing the seer Gest.
I developed a way of telling the story in video with the foreground shot in the studio against the Icelandtic landscapes as backdrops. Gundrun tells her dreams to Gest as they sit together in the hot springs – a beautiful blue lagoon with wond, mist, and black volcano rock. Sitting in the steamy blue made the relationship of the characters in the story erotic. I liked this added level of closeness in relation to our own ideas about how and when we tell our dreams to others, and how they are interpreted. To frame the story in the present I began the tape by telling my story of an accident that actually happened, in which my car was blown off the road by the wind. Otherwise I played a small part. The tape ended with an old couple talking about how the fishing net was invented. By a woman, probably, they say.
 
- Joan Jonas in Joan Jonas: Performance Video Installation, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2001
 
This installation of Volcano Saga, first displayed at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1994, consists of all the original elements from the performances including the props and two sets of performance drawings, original slides, the final video work, and a video made from footage of a performance at The Art Institute, San Fancisco, 1986. The slide projection consists of images of the performances and from the photographs Jonas made when she first visited Iceland before developing her first performance of Volcano Saga at De Appel, Amsterdam in 1985.
 
Volcano Saga, 1985-89 cultivates themes of the re-translation of story telling, the inquiry into female character and notions of nature and myth, which define Jonas’ performance practice. Jonas often derives the narrative for her performances from ancient texts and through a process of interpretation re-communicates them into a contemporary context. Through the translation of established tales, Jonas enters the stories, uncovering layers, re-imagining and re-interpreting their accompanying myth and symbolism.
 
Jonas’ discerning approach to performance and video has established her as a pioneer of performance and video art; she is one of the most important and influential artists to have emerged from the New York art scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Her work can be situated within this era of exploration and re-definition of the representation and role of women. Jonas was part of a movement of artists that questioned the predetermined definitions of femininity, breaking down myths and cultural ideals through socially and politically engaged artistic practice, providing a new public space for the interpretation of notions of femininity and identity.
 
Joan Jonas (b. 1936, New York City, NY, USA) lives and works in New York. Jonas has become one of the first female performance, installation and video artists to become formally accepted by the institutional museum world with major solo exhibitions throughout Europe, the US and globally over the last 25 years. These include solo exhibitions at Bergen Kunsthalle, Norway (2011); Centre d’art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland (2008); MACBA - Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain (2007); The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, USA (2004); Queens Museum of Art (2003); Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, Germany (2000); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1994/1979); PS1 Contemporary Arts Center, New York (1982); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1979). Recent important performances include The Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010), Dia: Beacon, New York (2005), Tate Modern, London (2004). Jonas is also a professor of visual arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A major new monograph edited by Joan Simon and published by Gregory R. Miller & Co. will be available in 2012.

 
WILKINSON GALLERY
50-58 Vyner Street
London E2 9DQ
T: +44 (0) 20 8980 2662
 
 
 
 
 

 
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