November 19th -January 28th, 2012 Opening: Saturday, November 19th from 4-7pm
Kavi Gupta is proud to present a new exhibition of work by renowned American sculptor Tony Tasset. The homecoming exhibition marks the artist's first gallery exhibition of new work in Chicago in 15 years and presents two works, Hot Dog Man (2011) and Mood Sculpture (2011).
A bit raunchy and without doubt a guilty pleasure for the eyes, Tasset's Hot Dog Man (2011) is a mash-up tribute to famous irreverent cartoonists like Basil Wolverton and Don Martin as well as the legacy of the psychedelia and surrealism as it extends through modern art. More so, Hot Dog Man (2011) is a bonafide confidence man. Like the hustling, shady characters that populate Melville's famous midwestern novel, The Confidence Man (1857), Tasset's Hot Dog Man (2011) echoes back to a savage era that still lingers in contemporaraneity in every incandescennt-bulb-lit hot dog stand and every subway game of Three Card Monte. Hot Dog Man (2011) is a beautiful paradox, a tribute and critique of classic Americana.
I think I feel purple, purplish-red. Based on diagrams used to identify emotional well-being Tasset's Mood Sculpture (2011) takes an iconic form, drawing out then clear relationship between the simple emoticons of the information age and totem-pole-styled mythmaking as it's existed since the dawn of culture. Mood Sculpture (2011) brings into question the various forms we employ to reflect on our pursuits for happiness and satisfaction with life, are we successful in being happy? If our methods for testing aren't made by any but ourselves, how could we possibly know?
Tasset was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1960. He received his B.F.A. at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and his M.F.A. at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago. His recent Museum exhibitions include 'War All the Time' at the Rochester Art Center, MN; Rewind:1970s to 1990s, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; 'Farbe im Fluss', Weserberg Museum fur Modern Kunst, Breman, Germany; 'The Smithson Effect', Utah Museum of Fine Art, Salt Lake City, Utah. Recent gallery exhibitions include 'Judy', Leo Koenig, New York, NY and 'Selected Works 1986-1996', Kavi Gupta, Chicago. In 2012 Tasset's work will be a part of 'This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980's', curated by Helen Molesworth, which begins at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and then travels to the Walker Art Center and the ICA, Boston.
GALLERY 2 SAYRE GOMEZ Windows and Mirrors
November 19th -January 28th, 2012 Opening: Saturday, November 19th from 4-7pm
Kavi Gupta is proud to present Windows and Mirrors, the debut exhibition in the Chicago gallery of new work from the Los Angeles based artist Sayre Gomez. On view are the artist's new works on canvas, thirty small works on paper, and a single graphite drawing. By mining images and texts from various blogs and image archives, Gomez' new works are an extension of the artist's inquiry into how aesthetics inform perception and how meaning is disseminated and contextualized.
Selecting images on a solely formal criterion, Gomez states that he seeks "Images that imbue a sense of familiarity yet remain difficult to place, this begins to create a dialogue about an images' legibility and thus the frameworks through which we use to digest them. Through the incessant re-constitution and re-experiencing of any number of said images, a lapse in their contextual foregrounding becomes apparent. They begin to resonate with viewers in variety of ways, and can begin to function more as abstractions... While the previous generation's engagement with image culture was primarily through television and print media, the images being absorbed were contextually bound to their original sources implicating the process of appropriation as something definitively politicized. While these implications may still be present the appropriative process here is intended to be less political and more populous.."
Naturally, Windows and Mirrors is also the artist's nod to the classic dichotomy of the divergent metaphorical narratives in the history of painting. Painting here is seen simultaneously as a window through which a pictorial space is created - a virtual theatre - and conversely, through its use of an appropriative discourse, can be thought of as a reflective autonomous object unto itself. In Gomez' own terms, "in the works included the images and phrases fluctuate between subject and substrate."
A site specific installation of the same title will run concurrently at New Capitol, an alternative space located in the warehouse district of Chicago's West side.
Sayre Gomez holds a BFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago (2005) and an MFA from CalArts (2008). Recent exhibitions include ZZYZX, at Las Cienegas Projects in Los Angeles, Self Expression or Fog and Other Works at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Berlin, Germany. Recent group exhibitions include Sayre Gomez, Sean Townley and Bobbi Woods at Luis De Jesus in Los Angeles, Other People's Projects at White Columns in New York, and The Awful Parenthesis curated by Aram Moshayedi at Cirrus Gallery in Los Angeles. Gomez is also included in the new book published by Lawrence King, titled 100 New Artists, he was born in Chicago in 1982 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
For further information and/or images, please contact the gallery at 312.432.0708 or [email protected]
Kavi Gupta CHICAGO | BERLIN
CHICAGO 835 West Washington Blvd. Chicago, IL 60607 312.432.0708
Tuesday - Friday, 10-6PM Saturday, 11-5PM
BERLIN Kluckstraße 31 10785 Berlin Germany +49 302 180 77 48
