October 31-December 19, 2009

 

"When the fact fails him, he questions his senses / when the fact fails me, I approve my senses."

The artist Natalia Stachon engraved this passage from a poem by the British poet Robert Graves into two of the elements in THINKING, a group of sculptures. At first glance, one does not notice them. As if to protect them against possible injury, the texts are hidden in the deeper layers of the sculptures, which consist of fifty two-meter-tall Plexiglas stelae distributed among the two rooms of the exhibition space. The stelae leaning on the wall and assembled on the floor appear to be waiting for something. But for what exactly? The lines from the poem suggest it, but a possible answer only emerges during the time the viewer dedicates to the interplay between THINKING and the other elements of the exhibition: both the form of the objects and installations made of Plexiglas, drywall, and copper and their arrangement in the space results in a vexingly provisional atmosphere. Everything suggests that all the constellations could shift at any moment. Do the individual objects fuse into a large context? Do the pencil drawings titled TERRITORIES turn out to be plans for an architecture of the future? Yet the opposite course would be conceivable as well: the sculptures can slip and break, then someone would come to sweep up the shards and remnants of copper and thus remove the last remaining elements of a building that is breaking down. Stachon's works revolve around the brief moment in which everything seems possible: the time in which emerging and disappearing hold hands like twins.

This is the second solo exhibition by the artist at the Loock Galerie, the sequel to the exhibition for the opening of its new gallery spaces last year. In coming months her works will be shown at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich and at the Galeria Leme in São Paulo, Brazil.

Natalia Stachon (b. 1976 in Katowice, Poland) lives and works in Berlin.

 

Loock Galerie
Halle am Wasser
Invalidenstraße 50/51
DE-10557 Berlin
+49 30 2462 7690

 

 

 

 

31.10.09 - 23.12.09

For their first collaboration with Mitterrand+Sanz the Chapuisat brothers present Radiant fragmentation of a wandering spirit, a strange scenery for a narrative just as strange, from which only some loose indications escaped. Fragmented shapes, unfinished, like interrupted in their development. This exhibition suggests their curious becoming.

But this intermediate state of suspension is also the place where all possibilities are united. This corresponds to the advanced hypothesis by Giorgio Agamben when he describes the indetermination of Herman Melville's character Bartleby, who keeps repeating "I would prefer not to": « No wonder, then, that he remains so stubbornly in the abyss of possibility and does not appear to have any intention to leave. » in Bartleby ou la creation.

A little bit like that foam ball turning on itself to the rhythm of the river which the Chapuisat brothers filmed for several minutes. Without a determined goal, it stays open of going all paths.

Or furthermore, this construction made based on hardwood blocks which appears not like a model holding the accomplished shape of the building, but like the suspended hypothesis of an expansive architecture. In the words of Gilles Tiberghien "departing was never permitted to go nowhere" in Le principe de l'axolotl.

Radiant fragmentation of a wandering spirit states thereby the possibility of an immobile wandering, from which one always returns to the image of hundreds of circles drawn simultaneously on the gallery wall. « I would prefer not to », « I would prefer not to », « I would prefer not to », etc.

The Chapuisat Brothers live and work in situ. In Switzerland they have showed exhibition objects at the Saller Crosnier in Geneva, Kunsthalle Bern, Kunsthaus Zurich, Neue Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Stadtgalerie Bern, Swiss Awards in Basel and the Lucy Mackintosh galerie in Lausanne. Abroad their work has been on display at Vilnuis Contemporary Art Center in Lithuania, the Swiss Institute in New York, Villa Arson in Nice, Crédac in Paris with Attitudes, l'Estuaire 09 in Nantes, in the Jardin des Tuileries at the FIAC 09 and in the LES gallery in Vancouver.

The Chapuisat Brothers are represented by Mitterrand+Sanz, Zurich.

 

 

 

Mitterrand+Sanz
Limmatstrasse 265
8005 Zürich
Switzerland
+41 43 817 68 70

 

 

 

11 November to 13 December 2009

Marietta Davis, Marc Elsener, Justin Hibbs, Tom Humphreys, Caroline McCambridge, Jordan McKenzie, Elodie Pong, Gill Ord, Sally Osborn, Magali Reus, Elisa Sighicelli, John Strutton, Shaan Syed

Baker's Dozen is the last in a series of six exhibitions organised for CGP over the past two years by Clare Goodwin and Liz Murray. It's curious, perhaps, that given free rein to do exactly as they wished both these artist-curators have opted to communicate their interests and concerns via that ubiquitous curatorial vehicle - the themed group show. One might interpret Goodwin's use of this, the final slot in the programme, as a reaction to the process, or an open letter of admiration from one artist to a group of others. By refusing to actively stage a game of conceptual ping pong between the works of this 13 strong international dozen, Goodwin allows a sense of the fragile interdependency - between artwork and exhibition concept; curator, artist and viewer - to surface.

Video artist and photographer Marietta Davis uses the self-portrait as a device through which to examine female identity and the personal and societal factors that shape it. Stereotypical characters and ideas appear to free-fall through, or become snagged upon, absurd, strangely charming time-based narratives.

Marc Elsener's landscape paintings are loaded with unexpected details. The pastoral status quo is ruptured time and again by the raw hues of his palette and facets of urban reality that appear to have recently landed within each picture plane.

Modernist and Brutalist architectural encounters meet geometric painterly ones in the collages of Justin Hibbs. Found or borrowed photographic images form the basis of his investigation into the 'real' as contestable representational territory.

Tom Humphreys' objects, paintings and prints hover in the mind's eye between states like thoughts in formulation or fixed ideas cracking under the demands of a stress test. His humorous and parodical handling of materials and techniques lead one in and out of various dilemmas on taste and the politics of production.

Caroline McCambridge takes an improvisational approach to the selection, assembly and positioning of stuff. 'Monkey Monday' 2008, is a hanging cluster of familiar materials - the anthropomorphic and frame like qualities of which make an associative thaumatrope of the object-context relationship.

Jordan McKenzie's performance, 'Monsieur Poo-Pourri Takes a Stroll', might be seen as something of a gift or goodwill gesture in the spirit of the 'Baker's Dozen', given that it will only exist for the duration of the private view. Mackenzie will turn the Situationist notion of the derive on its head, for his fictional flâneur does not walk to cover ground but illustrate the inherent absurdity of this act of 'leisure'.

Gill Ord makes partially abstract paintings that challenge perception of familiar symbolic and representational motifs. The drawing shown here, of an architectural structure in the landscape, situates the viewer between the plan and the sketch: an assumption made about, or an impression garnered from, a physical space.

There is a fragility to Sally Osborn's minimal sculptural practice - the slight placement of ephemera removed from original context or cut out of material origins - that leaves one thinking less of form and substance than the decisions and actions that brought them into (and could just as easily usher them out of) existence.

Video artist Elodie Pong frames human relations and cultural conventions as if manipulable facets of an absurd contemporary play. In her 2006 film 'Je suis une Bombe', clichéd perspectives on female desire are undermined by the antics of a panda-suited dancer.

Sculptor Magali Reus walks a playful, strategic line between the happy accident and high formality. 'Random Stranding', 2009, is at once a simple, if aesthetically fortuitous, arrangement of metal-workshop off cuts and an evocative minimal landscape fraught with sculptural tension.

Elisa Sighicelli makes video works that confound expectations - on the behaviour of light, the parameters of image making and the representation of time. In 'Untitled (The Party is Over)', 2009, a video projection of a firework display in reverse, sparks of matter appear sucked through, rather than projected upon, the doily-blanket histology of the night sky.

Stream-of-consciousness commentaries on music, art and social history veritably sputter out of the painting-and-prop-laden installations of John Strutton, as if from a sprinkler on the brink. This new commission for CGP involves a technological journey in and around works recently made.

Shaan Syed's recent paintings bear testament to the spectacular particulars of the music event: the vertiginous architecture of an arena, perhaps, or in the case of his 'Shoegazing' series in evidence here, the hyper-real chromatics induced by the hot, emotional and light-saturated situation within.

 

CGP LONDON
Southwark Park
London
+44 (0)20 7237 1230

 

 

 

November 7 to December 23, 2009
Opening: Friday, November 6, 6 - 8 pm

Galerie Eva Presenhuber is pleased to announce the opening of Eva Rothschild's second show at the gallery. Born in Dublin in 1971, Rothschild studied at University of Ulster in Belfast and Goldsmiths college. In recent years, Rothschild has earned a reputation as one of Britain's leading sculptors. She was awarded the 2009 Duveens Commission by the Tate Britain, and her large scale installation 'Cold Corners' can be seen there until November 29th.

For her show at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, she has created a new body of works which draw on her continued interest in sculptural form and perceptual confusion. The act of making and the transformation of materials are fundamental to Rothschilds practice, and she is always interested in the expansion of her sculptural vocabulary through the introduction of new processes. For Rothschild the complications surrounding the physical presence of each piece are key, she is always keen to explore the gap between the physical manifestation and the visual perception of the work.

Central to her practice is the question of how the work will be transformed by the eye, body and consciousness of the viewer. Here, alongside her leather and wooden works, she will present new pieces made using resin, ceramics and found objects. Two large screens held together by a tangled mass of woven leather will dominate the gallery, creating a temporary centre around which the other almost domestic scale objects orbit.

 

 

Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Limmatstr. 270, P.O. Box 1517
Located in: Löwenbräuareal, 8005
CH-8031 Zurich
Switzerland
+41 43 444 70 50

 

22 October - 19 December 2009

 

Lehmann Maupin is pleased to present a group of new works by Teresita Fernández for her fourth exhibition at the gallery's Chelsea location. Made entirely of graphite, the works in the exhibition establish a unique and unconventional vocabulary with the material itself. Referring to Borrowdale, England where graphite was first discovered and mined in the early 1500s, Fernández pushes the boundaries of this once sought-after and coveted material. Reimagining the graphite landscape of Borrowdale, her works reflect elements of sculpture and installation and redefine the notion of precisely what constitutes a drawing.

In Drawn Waters (Borrowdale), precision-machined, polished panels of graphite and massive fragments of the raw, mined material are assembled to create a large-scale sculpture of an undulating, dissolving waterfall. Alluding to Leonardo da Vinci's studies of moving water as well as to Robert Smithson's land pours, Fernández turns the idea of a drawing into tangible form, making a solid sculpture that is in effect a three-dimensional gestural graphite drawing, a line dragged through the gallery space. For Fernández, to assemble the sculpture is to engage in the act of drawing.

In her Nocturnal Series, Fernández creates works that are at once landscape painting, conventional drawing and sculptural relief. From afar these suggest dark, monochrome minimalist paintings. As viewers approach, the works slowly reveal detailed and lustrous romantic landscapes. Like a drawing over a drawing, the graphite--carved, polished, layered and drawn on--reflects light to depict luminous night scenes of oddly familiar but mysteriously displaced sites. In Passaic Pour Fernández again nods to Smithson; the iconic Great Falls of Passaic are reinvented as a grand nocturnal scene of an immense pour.

The surrounding white walls of the gallery become the ground for pieces such as Epic. Made of swarms of tens of thousands of small pieces of graphite attached to the wall, the lustrous, gem-like pieces cast what appear to be shadows that are actually soft graphite marks drawn directly on the wall. Object and process morph to become both the act of drawing and the finished mark, verb and noun. The entire dynamic composition recalls sweeping atmospheric clouds, grand natural phenomena or epic meteor events.

Teresita Fernández was born in 1968 in Miami, Florida and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions internationally and abroad at sites including the New Museum of Contemporary, New York; the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malaga, Spain; the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia; Site Santa Fe, New Mexico, Castello di Rivoli, Torino, Italy; the Witte de With in Rotterdam; and the Miami Art Museum, Florida. Fernández has completed numerous public commissions including one at the Louis Vuitton Maison in San Francisco, California and another at the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park, where her work Seattle Cloud Cover allows visitors to walk through a covered skyway while viewing the city's skyline through tiny holes in multicolored glass. In January 2009, The Blanton Museum of Art unveiled Stacked Waters, a site-specific installation created for the cavernous entrance of the museum. Her new permanent commission Blind Blue Landscape opened in September 2009 at the renowned Benesse Art Site in Naoshima, Japan. Also completed in September 2009 is Starfield, a large-scale commission for the new state-of-the-art Dallas Cowboys Stadium. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards both in the U.S. and abroad, including the 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 1999 Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award. Her work is included in numerous major private collections as well as the permanent collections of t he St. Louis Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, the Miami Art Museum, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Sammlung Goetz in Munich, Germany and the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York. A solo exhibition of new and older works recently on view at the Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida, will travel to the Blanton Museum of Art in Texas opening 1 November 2009. A new monograph edited by David Louis Norr with essays by Dave Hickey, Anne Stringfield and Gregory Volk published by JRP Ringier and the USF Contemporary Art Museum accompanies the exhibition. In early 2010, Fernández will begin a residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute.

 

LEHMANN MAUPIN
540 WEST 26TH STREET
New York, NY 10001
+1 212.255.2923

LEHMANN MAUPIN

 

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