Paris: Okuda – The Dream of Mona Lisa

August 1, 2017 butterfly 1 Comment

Anna Dimitrova from Adda Gallery and Montana Gallery and Valériane Mondot from Taxie Gallery join forces to celebrate a collaborative new gallery ADDA & TAXIE and present a monographic and the first Parisian exhibition of Spanish artist OKUDA SAN MIGUEL called ‘The Dream of Mona Lisa’.

Inspired by the city of Paris, according to Okuda, the enigmatic Mona Lisa dreams of human figures and muses of the great classic masters. Being a creator and contemporary master, Okuda interprets these icons through his own surrealist prism using intense psychedelic colors and geometric harmonies.

Blending rainbow geometric landscapes with organic shapes, headless animals, figures, and personal iconography, his works produces mental stimulation and visually pleasing content. The artist continuously tries to balance the gray scale with his vibrant palette, using colors as a symbol of life and nature and the latter as a symbol of cement, death, dust and the material of classic sculptures.

In his latest series, Okuda San Miguel expresses his own vision of what the human being is made of. Humans are confronted with their roots, between its natural and ideal part, represented by trees and different types of animals and the capitalist society, represented by bricks. Showing us the world where human beings and animals are created equal, the artist distils his own personal vision of God. This conceptual research is the result of his journeys and continuous contact with different environments. The artist sums up the contradictions between existentialism, universe, infinite, freedom, modernity and the meaning of life as an inextinguishable thirst.

View the full set of pics here

In parallel Okuda painted a monumental portrait of Mona Lisa in the 13th District of Paris (covered here)

Okuda -The Dream of Mona lisa
Adda & Taxie Gallerie
Until 29 August
35 Avenue Matignon, Paris

Paris, Shows

Paris: Xu Zhen – Civilization Iteration @Galerie Perrotin

July 28, 2017 butterfly

‘Civilization Iteration’ is the first solo exhibition of Chinese artist Xu Zhen at Galerie Perrotin in Paris, showcasing Xu’s important series of works since 2013 when he started a brand in his own name. Iteration refers to the way of achieving a desired result through repeated feedback. The exhibited series shows how an artist, amidst increasing globalization and networking of art, can approach the future of art with his own formula.

As early as 2001, Xu participated in the 49th Venice Biennale, then the youngest Chinese artist to exhibit works at this international art event. Having made a name at 20 as an artist, he has since created a large number of works based on his own consciousness. In 2009 he decided to establish the art creation enterprise MadeIn Company in Shanghai. Since then his works have been produced in a corporate fashion and his “artist” identity has been plunged into the center of controversy. Meanwhile, Xu’s creative focus has begun to shift to the relationship between art and business.

From the “individual artist period” when he concerned himself with the consciousness of identity, to “Xu Zhen brand”, Xu has moved on to repeatedly examine the current culture and transition as a reflection of the tremendous changes in human history over the past decades. Admittedly, the extension of consciousness unleashed by the Internet has eliminated temporal and spatial disparity. Yet, in the process, cultural learning in the traditional sense has been destroyed by information overload, giving way to recurrent cultural stagnation and dysfunctional standards. The information highway makes one feel unreal, and boundaries between meaning, values and reality gradually blur. In the course of time, after endless destruction and reconstruction, the boundless reformulations and iteration are opening up a new paradigm for civilization in the present.

The Rmn – Grand Palais moulding workshop is a little-known source of inspiration and a production workshop for artists searching for the classical canons (Xu Zhen today, Klein 50 years ago, Picasso and Dali 70 years ago, Rodin a century ago, etc.). After the Winged “Victory of Samothrace” inverted on the head of Buddha exhibited at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in winter 2015-16, the Perrotin gallery is currently presenting several works by Xu Zhen, two of which include reproductions from the Rmn – Grand Palais moulding workshop: “Aphrodite Holding Her Drapery” and “Belvedere Torso” from the “Eternity” series.

XU Zhen – Civilization Iteration
Galerie Perrotin
Until 29 July
76 rue de Turenne 75003 Paris

London

London: Festival Iminente 2017

July 20, 2017 butterfly

This Summer, a European cultural invasion hits the heart of Brexit Britain as the very first UK edition of Festival Iminente opens at London’s Old Truman Brewery. A two-‐day festival of explosive and experimental Portuguese art and music, Festival Iminente brings the soul of Lisbon to the heart of London, following its successful debut in the Oeiras region of Lisbon in September 2016.

Curated by Portuguese artist Vhils and Lisbon’s Underdogs Gallery, Festival Iminente not only offers Brits mourning Brexit a chance to immerse themselves in the most innovative new music and art from Portugal but also enlists some of Europe’s most creatively exciting artists to invade the capital with their best work. The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, London will overflow with art from a line-‐up of Europe’s hottest visual artists, creating immersive and in some cases, political pieces tackling the state of Europe and the current human condition. Enter through European Border Control, policed by Portuguese interventionist artist Mais Menos and prepare to party in an alternative European Union of art, music and creativity.

Artists include: Add Fuel (POR), AKA Corleone (POR), Andre da Loba (POR), Ben Eine (UK), Bordalo II (POR), Conor Harrington (IRL), Draw & Contra (POR), Halfstudio (POR), Mais Menos (POR), Mar (POR), Pixel Pancho (IT), Sick Boy (UK), The Caver (POR), Vhils (POR), Wasted Rita (POR)

The 93 Feet East live music venue gives a platform to urban underground musicians from across Europe, but with a strong Portuguese flavour. Full line up: 28th July: DJ Glue (PT), DJ Kking Kong (PT), DJ Big (PT), Francis Dale (PT), Slow J (PT), DJ Ride (PT), Shaka Lion (PT), Batida (PT/AO), DJ Nigga Fox (AO) 29th July: DJ Glue (PT), DJ Big (PT), Cachupa Psicadélica (CV), Chullage (PT), Halloween (PT), Scuru Fitchadu (CV), Novelist (UK), Rita Maia presents Migrant Sounds (PT), LV & Joshua Idehen (UK), DJ Firmeza (PT)

Festival Iminente combines the best new music with new art in an experience of intense collective intimacy, with food trucks and a bar that only accepts Euros. We’ll see you there. *****************

FESTIVAL IMINENTE -‐ 28 & 29 JULY, 2017 BRICK LANE YARD & 93 FEET EAST OLD TRUMAN BREWERY 91 BRICK LANE LONDON E1 6QL

Tickets on sale at www.buytickets.at/iminentefestival
Afternoon £10, Evening £15
www.festivaliminente.com

Paris

Paris: Chiharu Shiota ‘Destination’ @Galerie Templon

July 17, 2017 butterfly

Following her eye-catching project at the Bon Marché Rive Gauche in Paris in early 2017, Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is returning to both Galerie Daniel Templon‘s spaces with a spectacular site-specific installation and a series of new sculptures.

She has likened her artistic practice with yarn to that of a calligrapher. It’s a fitting parallel: Chiharu Shiota trained in painting before gravitating toward three-dimensionality. Having studied in Braunschweig, Germany, under Marina Abramović, she moved to Berlin in 1997 where she lives today. Her immersive environments and intricately wrought objects, enigmatic yet deeply physical, are the results of painstaking labor.

Her protean artistic practice explores the notions of the body, temporality, movement, memory and dreams. Her site-specific installations are often the theatre for performances designed by the artist to engage mentally and physically with viewers.

‘Destination 2017’, is a site-specific, room-engulfing labyrinth that has the sprawl of an uncontrollable fungus, a haywire cat’s cradle, or a webbed cathedral in red. Like her installation The Key in the Hand, 2015—made from second-hand keys ensnarled in massive amounts of scarlet string for the Japan pavilion at the Fifty-Sixth Venice Biennale—the work engages directly with the volume of its surroundings.

She explains: “I have been using boats since my exhibition at the Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015; I wanted to create one oversized boat representing the topics I have touched on in my most recent works. Ships carry people and time. They feature a defined direction, with no other choice but to keep moving forward. Though we may not know where we are heading, we can never stop. Life is a journey of uncertainty and wonder, and the boats symbolize the bearers of our dreams and hopes.”

A huge 5-metre boat, the frame of its hull resembling a human skeleton, floats in a sea of red yarn. Following on from this environment, the Skins painting are depicting ambiguous yet poetic representations of the body, its surface, its networks of connections.

A series of yarn sculptures envelops various objects, such as a chair and loose papers floating in space, creating an ensemble that raises the metaphysical questions that face us as humans, the difficulty we have understanding the world, and the complex relations that link us.
‘During humanity’s early years, death used to be connected to human life’s destination. It could be easier to find an answer to the question of our purpose in life. We were more aware of the creative process and the different steps along the way. Nowadays, we build and create on a massive scale, including things we don’t need, with no clear goal in sight, at a vertiginous speed…’

View the full set of pics here

To mark Le Havre’s 500-year celebration, from May 27 to October 8, 2017, Chiharu Shiota will be presenting Accumulation of Power, a site-specific installation at the famous St. Joseph Church in Le Havre designed by architect Auguste Perret.

Chiharu Shiota – Destination 2017
Until July 22
Galerie Daniel Templon
30 rue Beaubourg, Paris

London

London: Harland Miller – One Bar Electric Memoir

July 10, 2017 butterfly

UK artist Harland Miller, renowned for his satirised Penguin paperback paintings, is returning to the White Cube this summer for a new exhibition called ‘One Bar Electric Memoir’. Featuring two series of paintings, the works on show are a continuity of Miller’s investigation into the relationship between viewer, text and image.

The first series of large-scale works is based on Miller’s extensive archive of psychology and social science books, dating from the 1960s and ‘70s. Characterised by their bold and colourful abstract covers, these books embraced a positive attitude and the possibility of ‘fixing’ disorders through a process of self-help. The geometric cover designs reminded of contemporary abstract paintings but also provided a foil to the darker aspects of social neurosis addressed by the books’ content.

In another series of fictional book cover paintings, Miller depicts the outlines of letters in a range of typefaces and colours, intersected or layered over each other to create short, enigmatic words such as ‘Up’, ‘If’, ‘Ace’, ‘Pot’. With their bold, saturated colours, these paintings reference American abstraction and, in particular, Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Ruscha’s use of vernacular signage and motifs.

The shapes stand out from the saturated mute backgrounds, as do the paired fictional but witty titles such as Reverse Psycology Isn’t Working, 2017. In both series of paintings Miller uses his own name as author. The inclusion of his own name, not only alludes to his authorship of both image and text, but to the fine line that exists between fiction and reality.