Category Archives: London

London: Yoshitomo Nara @ Stephen Friedman

May 23, 2016 butterfly

Following recent solo exhibitions at Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan; Asia Society Museum, New York; Asia Society Hong Kong Center and Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland, Japanese artist, Yoshitomo Nara is returning to the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London for a fourth exhibition of new works .

This show features new paintings on canvas, paintings on cotton mounted wood panel and the largest collection of new drawings on paper.

Adolescent characters and animals are depicted with nuanced considerations of alienation, anger and curiosity. Juxtaposed with slogans and often salty language, they are at once cheeky, vulnerable and threatening.

Yoshitomo Nara @ Stephen Friedmann

Yoshitomo Nara mentions “This solo exhibition is comprised of ‘paintings’ (on canvas), ‘billboard paintings’ (patched cotton mounted on wood panel) and ‘drawings’ (on paper). These new paintings on canvas are more painterly than other works I have shown previously. They are marked by a conscious use of colour and subtle layering, which has become important in my recent practice. In contrast to my work on canvas, I originally called the paintings on wood panel ‘billboard paintings’, due to their catchy and iconic imagery and the use of flat planes of colour that is reminiscent of the style often used on billboards. Although the ‘billboard paintings’ in this show are still evocative of this style, these ones which are rendered on patchwork cotton are much more painterly, with many layers of colour.

Drawing is natural to me. Without being conscious of the eventual audience, I usually follow my emotions and just draw. For this show I am exhibiting a series of drawings that I think of as being mental images without colour. It is probably the first time that I have shown so many of these drawings all at once. I work in sculpture and installation, but for this exhibition I became very conscious of showing myself as a painter.”

Yoshitomo Nara @ Stephen Friedmann

In parallel to the show Yoshimoto Nara created a large scale billboard, visible from the Waterloo bridge, as part of a new project called the Waterloo Billboard Commissions by the Hayward Gallery where Nara exhibited back in 2009. The humorous, manga-influenced piece, titled Marching on the Butterbur Leaf, depicts a young girl playfully encouraging passers-by to fall in step.

Yoshitomo Nara @ Stephen Friedmann

View the full set of pics here

Yoshimoto Nara – New Works
Until 1st June 2016
Stephen Friedman Gallery
London

Art Fair, London

London: ART16 Highlights

May 21, 2016 butterfly

ART16 London

The global art fair Art16 returns to Olympia London from 20 – 22 May 2016, showcasing work from more than 100 galleries worldwide and exhibit contemporary art from around 30 countries.

It will be the fourth show since the original ART HK, founded by Tim Etchells and Sandy Angus. As with previous years, the fair strongly promotes work from emerging talent and galleries with two programmes Emerge and London First, curated by Jonathan Watkins

From Retna, Space Invader, Cleon Peterson to Damien Hirst, Pearl Lam and Katrin Fridriks, discover the highlights from this year’s fair.

Art16 London

ART16 until 22 May 2016
Olympia, Hammersmith Road
London W14 8UX

London, Shows

London: Jeff Koons NOW

May 20, 2016 butterfly 1 Comment

Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery just opened ‘Now’, a solo exhibition of work by American artist Jeff Koons (b.1955). While the Parisian institution Centre Pompidou dedicated a major retrospective to the the artist in 2015 in Paris (covered), ‘Now’ is the first major UK exhibition to be devoted to Koons since the Serpentine Gallery’s 2009 show, ‘Jeff Koons: Popeye Series’.

Spanning thirty-five years of the artist’s career, the exhibition features thirty-six paintings, works on paper and sculptures dating from 1979 to 2014. Drawn from Damien Hirst’s collection, a number of these works have never before been shown in the UK.

The Gallery 1 features early works from Jeff Koons like the Inflatable Flowers (1979) , the NEW (1980 -1986) with vacuum cleaners sculptures.

The Gallery 2 features a shiny giant Balloon Monkey (2006-2013) in a mirror polished stainless steel with transparent blue colour coating. ‘ It constantly reminds viewers of their existence, it’s all about you. When you leave the room, it’s gone.’ The monumental sculpture evoques of sensuality with its seductive polished finish and phallic tail.

The next gallery hosts some of the erotic works from “Made in Heaven’ , from monumental sculpture of a Bowl with Eggs to large portraits of Jeff Koons and his then wife Ilona Staller.

The Gallery 4 contains iconic works from the basketsballs floating in a glass tank (1985) to works from his series ‘ Luxury and Degradation’ with Jim Bean- JB Turner Train (1986) in stainless steel and the bust of Italian Woman (1986).

Koons 18
Jeff Koons - NOW

From the ‘Popeye’ series, inflatable pool toys that interact with ready made objects are designed to fool the eyes. Looking like vinyl, they are cast in aluminium and meticulously painted to appear exactly like the real thing.

Jeff Koons - NOW

The last gallery features Jeff Koons’s ongoing Celebration’ series from 1994 to 2014. The illusory Elephant (2003) and Titi (2004 -2009) appear to be fragile, air -filled inflatables, but are cast in heavy-weight stainless steel that mirrors the viewers. The most technically challenging work of his career Play Doh (1994-2014) faithfully reproduces (in an enormous size) a small lump of modelling clay fashioned by his son. The twenty seven individual pieces are cast in aluminium and held together with their own weight.

Jeff Koons NOW Jeff Koons - NOW

View the full set of pics here

The BBC just conducted an interview with both Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst

Jeff Koons – NOW
Until 15 Oct 2016
Newport Street Gallery
London

London, Shows

London: Katrin Fridriks – Macrocosm

May 14, 2016 butterfly

Icelandic conceptual artist and abstract painter Katrin Fridriks returns to Lazarides Rathbone in London for a new solo exhibition entitled ‘Macrocosm‘.

Alongside the 2014 installation Perception of the Stendhal Syndrome – Gene&Ethics Master Prism with a giant magnifying glass, the exhibition features a whole new body of works, with canvasses bursting with vibrant and swirling energetic coloured shapes of splashing paint.

The role of the magnifying glass is to enhance the intensity of the experience of being overwhelmed by the artwork, evoking a phenomenon that is called “beauty nausea”.

The two dichotomies contained within the gallery space represent the elusive philosophical idea of macrocosm with one canvas being a micro particle of the other. ‘Macrocosm’, originating from Ancient Greek philosophy, refers to everything that exists, an infinite, complex structure that can be regarded as a universe, or the cosmos. The microcosm, however, is just a small representative part of it. Since the time of Plato, human imagination has been drawn to an idea of an analogy between the macro and the microcosm. Thus ‘as above, so below’ was a leading motto in the doctrine of ‘correspondences’ between the two dimensions.

The spatial arrangement of this show invites viewers to participate, to adopt various viewpoints, and to discover new perspectives and hidden depths within the paint through the magnifying glass.

   Katrin Fridriks - Marcrocosm

View the full set of pics here

Katrin Fridriks – Macrocosm
Until 16 June 2016
Lazarides Rathbone
London

London, Shows

London: Charming Baker ‘Sweet Nothing’ @ S|2

May 12, 2016 butterfly

Charming Baker - Sweet Nothing

Sotheby’s Contemporary art gallery in London. S|2, is currently showing an exhibition of new works by Charming Baker (covered) entitled ‘Sweet Nothing’, featuring canvasses and a series of studies on paper, and large scale drawings.

Known to purposefully damage his work by drilling, cutting and even shooting it, Baker intentionally puts into question the preciousness of art and the definition of its beauty, adding to the emotive charge of the work he produces.

Working towards his new exhibition Sweet Nothing, Charming Baker has described his overriding influences as “…Schrödinger’s cat, Pavlov’s dog, bitter nostalgia, sex, joy, folly, loss, Don Quixote, tended gardens, gypsum foundations, concrete ideals, loose morals, nature, nurture, sweet nothing…”

Charming Baker - Sweet Nothing