Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects
6006 West Washington Blvd
Culver City
CA 90232
Los Angeles, CA
California
North America
p: 310.837-2117
m:
f: 310.837-2148
w: www.vielmetter.com
MICKALENE THOMAS "Put A Little Sugar In My Bowl" May 8 - June 12, 2010
May 8 - June 12, 2010 Reception: Saturday, May 8, 6 - 8 pm
In her second solo exhibition at the gallery, Thomas presents a series of larger than life portraits of black women in ornate 1970's style interiors. Using shiny enamels and glittery rhinestones to built her colorful surfaces, Thomas' situates her characters with unabashed gusto in art historical contexts traditionally reserved for white women, amidst exuberant surroundings of boldly patterned fabrics and visually overflowing settings. In comparison to earlier works, Thomas engages more freely with the composition of these new portraits by breaking up the representational space into complex layers. Moving further toward abstraction and fracturing the picture plane shows an effort to depict a more complicated psychological and representational space. And yet the work always comes back to the women: the way each one engages with the artist during the photo shoot and how she works to communicate their particular sensuality and self-possession in the paintings.
Mickalene Thomas received her MFA from Yale University in 2002. She was invited for residencies at the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, and Yale Norfolk Summer of Music and Art, Norfolk, CT. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at La Conservera: Centro de arte contemporaneo, Murcia, Spain; Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis, IN; at Rhona Hoffma Gallery, Chicago, and at Lehmam Mauping Gallery, New York. She has been included in "Posing Beauty" Newark Museum, Newark, NJ, and University of Southern California's Fisher Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; "Pattern ID", Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH; in "Extended Family: Contemporary Connections", Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; in "Dress Codes", The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video, International Center of Photography, New York, NY; in "Undercover: Performing and Transforming Black Female Identities", The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; in "30 Americans", Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL; in "Black Is, Black Ain't", The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; in "Frequency", Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and in "Greater New York 2005", P.S.1/MoMA, Long Island City, NY. A commissioned work is currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She is preparing a solo exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art for 2012.
MARY REID KELLEY
"Sadie, the Saddest Sadist"
May 8 - June 12, 2010 Reception: Saturday, May 8, 6 - 8 pm
Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects is pleased to present works by Mary Reid Kelley in her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. On view will be "Sadie, the Saddest Sadist" and "The Queen's English", two recent video works in which the artist combines live-action video with stop-motion animation.
The First World War era and its art forms serve as a setting and model for Mary Reid Kelley's work. During this time of upheaval, technologies capable of destroying entire armies and the meltdown of longstanding gender roles were matched by new, "modern" art forms that expressed a deep fragmentation of body and culture. Poetry and popular verse of the time recorded a profound crisis in language and meaning. Using a combination of rhymed verse similar to the doggerel of British stage theater and a black and white "cartoon" background, Kelley performs a variety of characters that are confronted with the trauma of war.
Alternating between nurse, sailor, and factory worker, her characters speak in the public language of rhymed verse, whose form degrades their authority as individuals. Their clarity of meaning is further compromised by the euphemisms, clich�s, and puns which riddle their speech and trap them between tragic and comic interpretation.
"The Queen's English" is a narration of loss: the death of a soldier, as observed by a nurse. Confronted with the trauma of war, she defaults to euphemistic, fragmented speech. This concept of fragmentation is visually reinforced by the stop-motion animation of small geometric shapes or "units". "Sadie, The Saddest Sadist" narrates the travails of a female munitions worker in Britain. The story is ultimately about exchange: Sadie trades her labor for patriotic satisfaction and money in the munitions factory and then gets into a different type of exchange with Jack, a sailor she meets on the street. In keeping with the themes of exchange and war, the visual and verbal languages of Sadie are systems of shared, public meaning: the cartoon and doggerel poetry.
Mary Reid Kelley graduated with a MFA from Yale in 2009. She has received numerous awards including the Alice Kimball English Travel Grant, Yale University, the CAA Visual Arts Fellowship, and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Fellowship. Her work has been shown in exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and at Fredericks Freiser Gallery, New York. She will be included in "The Dissolve", the SITE Santa Fe Eighth International, Biennial, Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is her first exhibition at the gallery.
Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects has moved. The new address is 6006 Washington Blvd in Culver City, 1 block west of La Cienega at Sentney Avenue. Gallery parking is available in the parking lot across the street from the gallery off of Sentney Avenue. Gallery Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 am - 6 pm and by appointment.
KUNST HALLE SANKT GALLEN presents David Renggli - Scaramouche
17 August - 27 October 2013
David Renggli - in some respects a prodigy of the Swiss art scene - has repeatedly aroused the curiosity of the public for more than ten years thanks to a unique mixture of themes and forms, of spectacle, humour and poetry.
The Showroom, London presents Ricardo Basbaum: re-projecting (london)
12 July - 17 August 2013
The Showroom is delighted to present re-projecting (london), a major new commission by Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum, and the first significant presentation of his internationally renowned artwork in the UK.
