PISSED ELEGANCE

Stephen Cohen Gallery is pleased to announce, “Pissed Elegance,” a group show of abstract works.  The exhibition will showcase a variety of media including painting, photography and sculpture. Featured artists include Arthur Siegel, Arthur Ou, Bronlyn Jones, James Gobel, Ben Lord, Bob Magahay, Enrique Martinez Celaya, Chad Kleitsch, Jason David, Robert Stivers, Monique Prieto and Danny Jauregui.  An opening reception will be held Saturday, May 14 from 7 to 9 p.m.  @  Stephen Cohen Gallery  – 7358 Beverly Blvd –  Los Angeles, CA  90036

http://www.stephencohengallery.com/

Above : Arthur Siegal , Untitled  ca 1940

Author : Redazione

05/11/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

TEENAGE GIRL’S SHOUT, CAJSA VON ZEIPEL

Cajsa Von Zeipel, born 1983 Sweden , is one of the few contemporary sculptors I really admire . Despite her young age and a glamourous image which is not usual for an artist , she has already presented a number of impressive large scale works in Sweden. An exhibition at Modern Museet , one at The Royal Academy ( both in Stockholm)  and  a  permanent space in the Gothenburg Museum of Art Collection where a 8 meters tall pole dancer sculpture  called “Seconds In Extasy” will be present  during the entire year 2011. Young girls , as you can see,  are the main subject of Von Zeipel  works which aim to explore  the human body, proportions, ideals and identity. Apparently  classic sculptures are charged with a new contest, marking the importance of popular culture in forming the identity of young girls and women. Exposed flat stomachs, ponytails, platform shoes, baseball caps ,  these girls dive into pop  in search of an identity . But why do Von Zeipel creates in such a large scale ? Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

05/03/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

CONFESSIONS OF A RADICAL TRADITIONALIST

Isis will present work by Alice O’Malley, Jamie Reid, Fabrice Cazenave, Martin Erik Andersen, Hans de Wit, Ruth Marten and Martin Griffiths in a freeform presentation entitled Confessions Of A Radical Traditionalist.

Trajector Art Fair – Brussels – over the weekend April 30th/May 1st during the forthcoming Brussels Art Fair.

Author : Redazione

04/28/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

FROM TOMORROW ON

If you are in Berlin, don’t miss the fabulous atmosphere of the Gallery Weekend. It’s a feist, an opening after the other, a walk from gallery to gallery in search of treasures. Berlin shines at his best for three days, we recommend the Gallery Weekend  warmly.

http://www.gallery-weekend-berlin.de/

Author : Redazione

04/28/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

FROM EAST TO WEST, HAYV KAHRAMAN

Hayv Kahraman is a young and talented artist from Iraq who tells tales with a demure grace through her beautiful paintings. Her practice engages with very difficult issues: female identity in her homeland, how women are victimised within their own culture, how they’re made subservient to men. Her images depict the scriptural story which is central to the Islamic culture and language. Her figures seems to always reside in a precarious state of terrifying contingency. Concepts of gender, the diasporic culture of the middle east, war. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

04/22/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

TONY CRAGG

Tony Cragg, born in Liverpool in 1949,  has begun his artistic career  picking up plastic leftovers to recycle and assemble them into new forms and new ideas . Recovery and new life, that was his starting point . In his works, space and  time are filled by the subject without abstraction. A sculpture made by the British artist most of the times stands for  desire and  has a  strong tendency to expansion : the  search in the  outside  with boundless dynamism.

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Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

04/17/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

TAKE ME INTO YOUR SKIN

Maristella Colombo,  curated  by Francesca Sacco

12th  April – 11th Maggio 2011
Opening  12th  April  at 7.00 pm  @ Apollo Spazio Cinema  Galleria De Cristofori 3 – 20100 Milano  

 

Author : Redazione

04/11/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

PAINT IT BLACK, RICHARD SERRA

Richard Serra,  American minimalist sculptor,video maker,  famous for his large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. His installation are well known all over the world. In 1966, his first sculptures out of nontraditional materials such as fiberglass and rubber saw the light. Known for his minimalist exterior steel constructions from large rolls and sheets of metal going through an initial oxidation process, to a  patina of the steel which settles to one color that remain relatively stable over the piece’s life.

But since 1971, Serra has focused not only on sculptural works, but also onlarge-scale drawings on paper using various techniques. His drawing material is the paintstick, a wax-like grease crayon. A first retrospective of drawings by this contemporary genius at the Metropolitan Museum of Art , will contain a comprehensive overview of some forty years of drawing activity. Tracing the development of drawing as an art form independent from his sculptural practice. Drawing for Serra has always been a mean of exploration of formal and perceptual relationships between the artwork and the viewer. His innovative ideas have transformed the traditional understanding of drawing as a form against a background of the paper and expanded the definition of modern drawing through novel techniques.

Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

04/05/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

TOMOAKI SUZUKI – SOLO SHOW

Opening Reception: APRIL 14, 2011 6.30pm

MUSEO MARINI – piazza san pancrazio
50123 Firenze, Italia
t +39 055 219432

Author : Francesca Querci

04/01/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

COMPUTER SCIENCE, JONATHAN VINER

 

Paintings by Jonathan Viner, I  never have enough. I remember I fell in  love , it was 2008, with  a series of paintings  called “Russian Harem”. It was all about marvellous girls  from Russia with headphones in the most languid poses. Ecstasy and beautiful bodies, I can’t forget it.

Viner, born in 1976 in New York ,  comes back with an exhibition called “Computer Science” opening today at Sloan Fine Art.  As a children, the artist  spent hours visiting the robotics lab at the New York Institute of Technology  where his father was working.  Memories of “computer nerds”  conversations came back to his mind and  suddenly hunting online for class photos of computer science majors from the 1970′s came naturally. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

03/30/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

MATTHEW CUSICK

                    

Born in 1970, Matthew Cusick lives and works in Dallas. He re-contextualizes images, words and number creating new story lines. Maps always tickled the sense of many artistic and creative illustrators and New Yorker  Matthew Cusick is a virtuoso of collages and pages of old books.  People, natural and urban landscapes, marine expanses are his subjects but also  pages from old schoolbooks  altered by sanding and scraping away everything except the page number, an illustration, and a few chosen words. The art of reinterpreting something existing gets to the next level.

http://www.mattcusick.com/

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Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

03/24/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

SHTART, SHARE THE ART

 

Art has always been created to be shared: from the statues of the Greek temples to the Renaissance frescoes in the Italian churches, the public showing of the artworks has always been considered essential to its existence. In the various stages of wealth and decadence,  the economic progress of our society has often allowed a growing number of people taking private the artworks. However, even if kept private and often architectural part of the house (such as the mosaics of Villa Romana del Casale di Piazza Armerina) in the past centuries masterpieces have always been enjoyed by many people, since the houses were part of the social events. Today the world of social networks increased the number of contacts but limited the use of our houses as meeting places. The home remains a private and intimate place, where many of our best Internet friends are generally not allowed to come in. Details »

Author : Redazione

03/19/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

ANDREW GRASSIE

Andrew Grassie is a Scottish artists born in 1965. His work is focused on highly detailed painting on paper copies of photos, his intent is to turn photography into painting.  Disorienting, sometimes cold and melancholic , his work can be as precise as  surgery

Maureen Paley is pleased to present Grassie’s  second solo exhibition which represents a move away from a set of imposed rules determining the images in the paintings. The challenge was to create a not themed “show” and a particular selection of the images was done . These, in fact, were chosen from a bank of thousands of the artist’s  photographs, his ‘outtakes’, as it were. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

03/16/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

NANCY SPERO

“I guess maybe my art can be said to be a protest. I see things a certain way, and as an artist I’m privileged in that arena to protest or say publicly what I’m thinking about. Maybe the strongest work I’ve done is because it was done with indignation. Considering myself as a feminist, I don’t want my work to be a reaction to what male art might be or what art with a capital A would be. I just want it to be art. In a convoluted way, I am protesting- protesting the usual way art is looked at, being shoved into a period or category.”

Nancy Spero (1926-2009) was born in Cleveland, Ohio. After receiving a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and honorary doctorates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Williams College, she pioneered feminist art and activism. Spero rejected the dominant post-war movements of formalist Abstraction and Pop Art in the 1950s, developing a more ephemeral way of working that used paper and collage, gouache and printmaking. Her work is a statement against the pervasive abuse of power, western privilege, and male dominance. Executed with intensity on paper and in installations, her work comes from historical events such as the torture of women in Nicaragua, the extermination of Jews in the Holocaust, and the atrocities of the Vietnam War. Spero was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006. She always viewed art as inseparable from life. Polemical but symbolic, she combined drawing and painting as well as craft-based techniques. Spero’s work can stand outside and above the biography, theory and reportage and leave one quivering.

Nancy Spero at Sperpentine Gallery, London until May the 2nd.

 

Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

03/09/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

BARNABY FURNAS

Barnaby Furnas and his huge paintings always had a big space inside my heart. I dind’t know that the painting above, Untitled Flood 2007, had been recently acquired by The Albright-Knox Gallery Of Buffalo – NY. From February the 18th till June the 5th, it will be displayed under the section “Surveyor” which is a special section of the collection presenting modern and contemporary artists whose  works are rooted in the exploration, observation and perception of landscape. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

02/28/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

JOHN STEZAKER AND THE SURREALISTIC WEDDING OF PICTURES

 

British artist  John Steazaker definitely has a space in my heart. I’d  have one in my collection  if only I could.  Steazaker  is a great ; he explores something familiar like the subversive force of found images . It is the same feeling that happens when you first peeped into  your mother secret Photoalbum or the same voyeristic feeling you have any time you go to a vintage market and pass hours shifting in a smelling box.  The simplest and basic of our feelings  , the never ending allure of memories. Not strange that   Stezaker’s  first retrospective at WhiteChapel Gallery in London was so successful.  Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

02/23/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

NORMAN ROCKWELL, TOO KIND TO BE AN ARTIST,TOO FINE TO BE AN ILLUSTRATOR

We all remember or have in mind his works. He is most famous for cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine for more than four decades. He has always been called an “illustrator” instead of an artist by some critics, a designation he did not mind, as it was what he called himself. “Some people have been kind enough to call me a fine artist. I’ve always called myself an illustrator. I’m not sure what the difference is. All I know is that whatever type of work I do, I try to give it my very best. Art has been my life.”  In fact, Norman Rockwell’s work has been dismissed by serious art critics through out his lifetime. Many of his works were considered overly sweet in modern critics, especially covers, which tended toward sentimentalized portrayals of American life.”Rockwellesque” was conceived a deprecatory adjective. Rockwell has never been considered a “serious painter” by some contemporary artists, who often regarded his work as bourgeois and kitsch. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

02/15/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

KENICHI HOSHINE, DELICATE VULNERABILITY

 Kenichi Hoshine  is absolutely stunning. He is simple and realistic yet detailed and haunting. He was born in 1977 in Japan, moved to the Us and raised in New Jersey. He’s been educated at the School of Visual Arts in New York City where he currently lives and works.His elements of realism mesh with cloudy forms that echo shapes of abstract expressionism. Kenichi Hoshine works in layers of graphite, charcoal, paint, wax, and tea, creating glimpses of fragmented figures. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

02/01/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

THE 6TH IS ALMOST READY. LA CONSERVERA

La Conservera Contemporary Art Centre (Ceutí/Murcia Spain) and Sala VerónicasFebruary 2nd and Thursday February 3rd respectively. (Murcia-Spain) open their sixth series of exhibitions on Wednesday

On view to the general public from February 4th, this latest project features individual shows by the artists Pilar Albarracín (Seville, Spain, 1968), William Cordova (Lima, Peru, 1971), Kalup Linzy (Florida, USA, 1977) and Francesco Vezzoli (Brescia, Italy, 1971). Starting with this series, the Sala Verónicasgallery becomes La Conservera’s fifthspace, with an exhibition by the French artists Brice Dellsperger(Cannes, France, 1972) and Jean-Luc Verna (Nice, France, 1962). This show will open on Wednesday February 2nd. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

01/26/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

STITCH LOVE, NOT WAR – GHADA AMER

Traditionally,  embroidery and stitching or even sewing, have always been identified as “female” techniques. Ever since they have been used by feminist artists since the 1960s as an ironic or subversive commentary on the male dominated techniques of painting and sculpture, especially as heroic traditions. Gender and sexuality. Female nudes in art history rather than human beings with a sexuality and eroticism of their own.

Ghada Amer, born in Cairo, Egypt, but raised in France, earned a B.F.A. in 1986 and an M.F.A. in 1989 from École Pilote Internationale d’Art et de Recherche, Villa Arson, Nice, France. Despite the differences between her Islamic upbringing and Western models of behavior, Amer’s work addresses universal problems, such as the oppression of women, prevalent in all cultures. Her painting is influenced by the idea of shifting meanings and the appropriation of the languages of abstraction and expressionism. Her prints, drawings, and sculptures question clichéd roles imposed on women and feminine activities. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

01/19/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

CELEBRATION OF A SIMPLE LIFE

Michael Elmgree & Ingar Dragset are the winners of the Fourth Plinth, one of the most significant public art commission in Britain. The work Powerless Structure, Fig. 101 is, as they say, a celebration of simple things . Taking the most common of the objects and assemble it in a different way is the process, as easy as it is . Au contraire impact of this  and previous works by the Scandinavian duo  is never low key, or poor in concepts.  In this sculpture, which will be exhibited  in Trafalgar square in  London in 2012, I see the most poetic of  all the peace messages. If only humanity would have gone to battles in rocking horse, if only weapons would had never been invented.

http://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/_32/

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

01/14/2011
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

OZBOLT, SURREALISM AND MYTHOLOGY

A distinct surrealist style with mythological references,  Djordje Ozbolt  reveals the delirious nature of society, the spirit of the painter as a supernatural hero from the artistic tradition. Ozbolt envisions his subject in a  state of slow disappearance like in  ‘The Bubble Man’, whose  allegory  exposes  fragility and romanticism at the same time.  ‘The Madness of Comrade Lenin’instead , shows a traditional portrait of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin painted with a muted palette. In contrast to the serious expression  of Lenin, a Communist flag and an acid-house smile-face are imposed on to the subject’s pupils. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

12/19/2010
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

TERRA COGNITA, BEFORE IT’S OVER

I was running around the city for some  presents all by myself . A mad walk with those usual thoughts tossing in mind :  my wife won’t like this black bag I’ve got , my son is going to hate this video game I’ve ordered  4 weeks ago. A normal frustrating pre  Christams afternoon in Paris , with my  Ipod  dashing happy music and me , au contraire,  in a very  bad mood. A  coffee, I needed a coffee.  The Excelsior Braserie of  Rue du Renard was so near  that I decided to stop  and  order  my black one (no latte ,nor nothing). I  told the damned Ipod to shut up, sent Jobs to hell  and started watching  out of the window. Oh Paris, oh  le Centre Poimpidou, oh that American tourist wearing a strange hat, oh … Gabriel Orozco exhibition closing on the 3rd of January!  What ?  Oh no no no , I haven’t seen it, it’s not possible. My god  time passing too  fast and we are getting older. Christmas holiday  near  and I won’t make it,  and there is no future or  past but…now!  Oh no I have an appointment with my dentist in 30 minutes,  but what about a merrychristmas/ happynewyear phone call to Teeth-Doctor  and , yeah, see you in January ?  A simple action and I was into  Orozco’s world  for 45 minutes . The exhibition  really worthed  all the missed pain and an innocent lie.  80 works, mostly never showed before  in France : a travel  marked by the elements of urban landscape and the  human body. Paradoxes and  poetry , that  passion for  bluring  borders between works of art and daily environment, between art and reality. That  superb movement between geometry and organic, one of Orozco’s  constants in 20 years of work, was very satisfactory and I walked home in a better mood . I told my wife the dentist was painful and went to bed with my private own  joy : geometry of life is choosing the right time.

http://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/gabriel-orozco/

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

12/08/2010
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

LA TRADITION DE BEAUX ARTS, JEAN-LéON GéROME

As I’m French, I firmly believe in two things. The former is that I won’t let anybody tell me Let them eat cake if I’m starving. The latter is that I can’t deny to my family and I the once-or- twice-a-year-trip to our Ville Lumière, Paris. It’s something we all deserve and ought to do. It’s a trip to culture, revolution and beauty.  After leaving my wife and son at la maison de la tante Justine (my sister-in-law’s), I made my way to the Musée d’Orsay, invited by a curator friend and University colleague.  His aim was to make me change my mind upon the consideration I had on Jean-Léon Gérome, the painter whose current exhibition will take place until January the 23rd 2011. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

11/25/2010
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

SERBAN SAVU, ART IN ROMANIA

There is a thin line between the old and the new. Serban Savu is a figurative painter. His canvases capture the daily existence of contemporary Romanians at work and leisure. He remains elusive with his interior scenes depicting people unaware of our external gaze and absorbed in their own worlds, viewed through glass. His exterior rural landscapes often portray solitary figures in the middle-distance, isolated and overwhelmed. It’s the Romanian contemporary society, where the collapse of the communist utopia has paved the way for capitalism to emerge. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

11/19/2010
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

WHEN ART COMES TO YOU

  

VIP Art Fair is the first art fair to mobilize the collective force of the world’s leading contemporary art galleries with the unlimited reach of the Internet. Its inaugural fair will take place exclusively online for one week only, January 22-30, 2011.  An unprecedented event, VIP Art Fair gives contemporary art collectors access to artworks by critically acclaimed artists and the ability to connect one-on-one with internationally renowned dealers—from anywhere in the world and without leaving home. VIP Art Fair gives contemporary art collectors access to artworks by critically acclaimed artists and the ability to connect one-on-one with internationally renowned dealers—from anywhere in the world and without leaving home.

http://vipartfair.com/open

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

11/15/2010
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

TOUCHE’ PAR LE FEU, MARTIN D’ORGEVAL

On the 1st of February 2008, Deyrolle, an  historic entomology and taxidermy shop in the heart of Paris got burned. Thousands of rare butterflies and insects, stuffed animals from all over the world went  in flames.  Started in 1831, Deyrolle got destroyed in few hours and Martin d’Orgeval, née in Paris 1973, didn’t just hit  the site  to document  destruction.  If everything starts and dies, this is not  a rule at Deyrolle  where people worked hard to deliver  eternity. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

11/10/2010
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

DAWN MELLOR

A  glorious Sant Martin’s School graduate,  maybe one of the the best English contemporary painters.  Dawn Mellor, class 1970,  is the example that painting is still a  complete way of expression. For the past twelve years, in fact, Mellor had been working (obsessively) on celebrities, trying to explore the territory of  grotesque and shocking, carrying the classical portrait to a new level. Violated, encrusted by graffiti, terrorized, distorted, mortified, celebs  lose their allure under aritst’s  hands and acquire new and deep meanings. Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

10/26/2010
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS

DAVID HOCKNEY

The most highly publicized British artist since the Second World War. Born in Bradford, England, in 1937. David Hockney was an art student at the Royal College of Art in London when he firstly tried his hand at abstraction, but found it barren. He then had a rapid self-discovery on both artistic and personal levels, coming to terms with his own sexuality, and at the same time searching for a style. Hockney’s ebullient personality soon made him well known, even outside the Royal College. He was part of the new Pop movement in Britain, and (apparently) as one of its leaders.

Details »

Author : JeanLuc Ciquot

10/19/2010
Category: / EMPTY CANVAS