Category Archives: London

London, Shows

London: Yayoi Kusama @ Victoria Miro

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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.

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Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama
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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

Richard Prince - Cartoon over Cartoon

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.

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“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.
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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

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.

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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.

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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

London, Shows

London: Yoshitomo Nara @ Stephen Friedman

Yoshitomo Nara @ Stephen Friedmann

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.

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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
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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

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