Category Archives: London

London: A. Giacometti and Yves Klein at the Gagosian

June 23, 2016 butterfly

Gagosian Gallery in London is currently presenting the first-ever exhibition to pair key works by Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) and Yves Klein (1928–1962).

At first glance, Giacometti and Klein, artists born a generation apart, could not be more different: Giacometti was a master of material form, and of the representation of the figure; Klein was an influential theorist whose art married the conceptual with the cosmic. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the two artists lived and worked within a mile of each other, in Montparnasse, Paris, but there are few clues in their work to suggest that they shared the same artistic milieu. What they did have in common was an acute consciousness of the catastrophic effects of the Second World War and its aftermath on European culture. Each dealt with it in his own way: in his sculptures, Giacometti struggled to evince a vital human presence from nothing; Klein shunned the personal, autobiographical mark, attempting to dematerialise painting to the point of pure saturated colour.

Curated by Joachim Pissarro, Giacometti’s nervously modelled figures and heads are confronted by Klein’s intense and expansive colours. Each artist is generously represented by works on loan from the Fondation Alberto Giacometti, the Yves Klein Archives, the Beyeler Foundation, and distinguished private collections.

A. Giacometti & Yves Klein

View the full set of pics here

Alberto Giacometti and Yves Klein
In Search of the Absolute
Gagosian Gallery
20 Grosvenor Hill
London W1K 3QD

London, Shows, Uncategorized

Collaboration with the Donmar Warehouse

June 2, 2016 butterfly 1 Comment

Logos

We are pleased to announce an artistic collaboration between Butterfly Art News and the Donmar Warehouse Theatre in London.

Differents artists will create a visual interpretation of the current show played at the theatre. Their artwork will be on view for the duration of the show at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre, 41 Earlham Street, Seven Dials, London WC2H 9LX.

ELEGY: Until 18 June 2016

By Nick Payne, directed by Josie Rourke, with set design by Tom Scutt, lighting by Paule Constable and sound by Ian Dickinson for Autograph.

“What if every neuron in the human brain could be mapped and decoded? Every act of human behaviour catalogued and wholly understood? Elegy imagines a very-near future in which radical and unprecedented advances in medical science mean that it’s now possible to augment and extend life. Elegy explores a world in which the brain is no longer a mystery to us. But at what cost?”

Featured Artist: Hisham Echafaki

Hisham Echafaki is a London based artist with a fascination for the animal world.
His work focuses on surrealist compositions and often examines the impact of humankind on nature and issues of conservation.

**Sea Ballet** – Acrylic on Canvas, 100 x 100 cm

Elegy 01 - 500 — **Elegy Cast: Barbara Flynn, Zoe Wanamaker and Nina Sosanya**

Elegy 03 - 500

Elaine - 500 — **Thom Petty and Elaine Cassidy**

Donmar Warehouse Theatre
41 Earlham Street, Seven Dials,
London WC2H 9LX

London, Shows

London: Yayoi Kusama @ Victoria Miro

June 1, 2016 butterfly 1 Comment

Yayoi Kusama

Victoria Miro is currently hosting a new exhibition by Yayoi Kusama. Spanning the gallery’s three locations and waterside garden, the exhibition features new paintings, pumpkin sculptures, and immersive room experiences, all made especially for this presentation. This is the artist’s most extensive exhibition at the gallery to date, and it is the first time mirror rooms have gone on view in London since Kusama’s major retrospective at Tate Modern in 2012.

85 years old avant garde multidisciplinary artist Yayoi Kusama has developed a practice which resists any singular classification, though it shares affiliations with Surrealism, Minimalism, Pop art, the Zero and Nul movements, Eccentric Abstraction and Feminist art.

Her iconic dots patterns, pumpkins and mirror rooms is a lifelong exploration of the self’s relationship to the infinite cosmos. Her installations place the viewer within a universe of varying proliferating reflections.

New paintings displayed alongside these immersive rooms continue an enduring preoccupation with multiplying polka dots and dense scalloped ‘infinity net’ patterns – Kusama’s obsessive repetition of these forms on canvas, which she has described as a form of active self-obliteration, responds to hallucinations first experienced in childhood. The pumpkin, another motif that she has returned to throughout her career, is also present in the form of new mirror polished sculptures.

Yayoi Kusama

View the full set of pics here

Yayoi Kusama @ Victoria Miro
Until 30 July 2016
16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW
14 St George Street, London W1S 1FE

London, Shows

London: Richard Prince ‘Cartoon Over Cartoon’ @ Sadie Coles

May 27, 2016 butterfly

Controversial artist known as the master of re-appropriation, Richard Prince is currently exhibiting at Sadies Cole in London. ‘Cartoon Over Cartoon‘ is a reprisal of the artist’s work with jokes and cartoons via collage and the re-contextualisation of the nude in painting. According to Prince the art of the joke is ‘in the re-telling’.

Juxtaposing humorous text and jokes with lewd cartoon nudes, Richard Prince highlights the inauthenticity of the image.

Richard Prince - Cartoon over Cartoon

“Richard collected some nudist cartoons by this guy John Dempsey. He inked jetted them up and drew a kind of hippie drawing over the collected cartoon… kind of like his hippie drawings that he did back in the late eighties. He turned the nudist cartoon into something about free love. Richard always wanted to be part of a commune, but knew that kind of utopia would never work out. At least that is what he figured. It was a good idea, the commune… but in the end…he ended up painting the commune” – Joan Katz.

View the full set of pics here

Richard Prince: Cartoon Over Cartoon
until 18 June 2016
Sadie Coles HQ
Kingly Street
London

Books, London, Shows

London: Francis Bacon Six Studies in Soho

May 26, 2016 butterfly

Francis Bacon - Six Studies in Soho

To celebrate the forthcoming worldwide publication of ‘Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné’, a one day pop-up exhibition ‘Francis Bacon: Six Studies in Soho’, opened to the public in London Soho on 25 May.

Upon entrance, visitors could enjoy a black and white portrait of Francis Bacon by John Deakin alongside five Bacon paintings as well as the Triptych, 1987.

Francis Bacon - Six Studies in Soho

Eager visitors were flicking through the first editions of the Catalogue Raisonné in advance of the global release on 30th June 2016. Published globally by The Estate of Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné is a landmark publishing event that presents the entire oeuvre of Bacon’s paintings for the first time and includes many previously unpublished works.

The impeccably produced five-volume, slipcased publication, containing each of Bacon’s 584 paintings, has been edited by Martin Harrison FSA, the pre-eminent expert on Bacon’s work, alongside research assistant Dr Rebecca Daniels. An ambitious and painstaking project that has been over ten years in the making, this seminal visual document eclipses in scope any previous publication on the artist and will have a profound effect on the perception of his work.

In addition to the 584 paintings, the catalogue contains illuminating supporting material, from sketches by Bacon, photographs of early states of paintings, images of Bacon’s furniture, hand-written notes by the artist, photographs of Bacon, his family and circle to fascinating x-ray and microscope photography of his paintings.

Francis Bacon - Six Studies in Soho

View the full set of pics here

The Catalogue Raisonne contains around 800 illustrations across 1,538 pages within five clothbound hardcover volumes and is priced at £1,000 | $1,500 | €1,400.
For sales information please contact enquiries@henipublishing.com

‘Francis Bacon: Six Studies in Soho’
25 May 2016
6-10 Lexington Street
London W1F 0LB