Tag Archives: butterflyartnews

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

Shows, streets, Toulouse

Preview : ROSE BETON Festival (Toulouse)

May 29, 2016 butterfly

We are pleased to partner with the ROSE BETON Festival in Toulouse (FR), curated by la Mairie de Toulouse and the 50Cinq. The second edition of the festival is paying tribute to Graffiti, with a selection of 14 international artists.

Le Château d’Eau will be showcasing an historical flashback on the New York graffiti scene with pictures from legendary Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, while French photographer Sylvain Largot will be presenting his snapshots from the current underground scene.

Martha Cooper Martha Cooper Remix

Works by Futura , Craig Costello, Tilt, Mist and Boris Tellegen will take over the Musee des Abattoirs with impressive installations.

Boris Tellegen - Surface

In parallel, international artists will be painting a series of murals across town including Ben Eine, Miss Van, Hendrik Beikrich, Honet, Reso and Aryz.

Eine Mr Freeze - 50cinq Hendrik Beikirch aka ECB - Tracing Marocco Mulafest - Aryz Mapping the City - Somerset House

To finish this incredible line up the week end of 11 -12 June will be celebrated with the Open Summer Festival (covered) and a graffiti jam featuring 20 artists from the local and European scene that will take over the space at the 50cinq as well as walls across the pink city.

Participating artists include: Logan, Zeus, Pencil, Opium, Dizer, Katre , Aroe, Sike, Jober, Poes, Wow, Maye, Ofuske, Demon, Satone, Nes, Rokse, Orcke, Toncé, Macs, Oster, Eps, Stus, Padre, Atom, Panks, Redy, Stop, Ja, Reks, Oko, SweetUno, Seno, Mile, Corail, Momies, Zest.

Check the full programme below:

ROSE BETON – TOULOUSE (FR)
June – August 2016

Photographies – Chateau D’Eau
Martha Cooper / Henri Chalfant/ Sylvain Largot
2 June – 27 June / Opening 10 June

EPOXY Exhibition at Les Abattoirs
Futura / Craig Costello / Tilt / Mist / Boris Tellegen
15 June – 28 August / Opening 10 June

Open Summer Festival – 50cinq
11 – 12 June 2016

So do not miss the 10-11-12 June in Toulouse and stay tuned as we go behind the scenes of ROSE BETON!

Berlin

Berlin: Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art

May 24, 2016 butterfly

MARKUS TERBOVEN (GEWOBAG), THOMAS WILLEMEIT (GRAFT), YASHA YOUNG (URBAN NATION), TIM RENNER (UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR CULTURAL AFFAIRS) HENDRIK JELLEMA (BERLINER LEBEN) (Small)

Director Yasha Young has officially revealed the start of building work on the future URBAN NATION MUSEUM FOR URBAN CONTEMPORARY ART, a project that will enrich both Berlin’s diverse cultural landscape and the international art scene. In the coming months, a globally unique new centre for exhibitions, research and exchange focussed on one of the most important art forms of the 21st century will emerge.

Berlin’s secretary for cultural affairs, Tim Renner, was on hand to congratulate the initiators of this ambitious plan on behalf of the city government.

Since 2013 URBAN NATION has been working on building the first independent and non-commercial home for urban contemporary art. With more than 200 artists, URBAN NATION is already turning Berlin into a huge outdoor Museum ( Check our previous coverage of projects M).

In mid 2017 the vision is finally getting reality. The URBAN NATION MUSEUM FOR URBAN CONTEMPORARY ART will offer an independent room for debates, research, interdisciplinary projects and creative exchanges.

Based on the motto “Connect. Create. Care.”, the museum, directed by Yasha Young and co-funded by the LOTTO-Stiftung Berlin (LOTTO Foundation) in Bülowstrasse 7 Berlin-Schöneberg, will host the growing and already unique URBAN NATION collection at the venue. Furthermore, the museum will be home to the unique book collection of legendary photo-journalist Martha Cooper: her pictures document the creation and development of urban art over the last decades, right up to today.

TIM RENNER (UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR CULTURAL AFFAIRS), MARKUS TERBOVEN(GEWOBAG),YASHA YOUNG(URBAN NATION) THOMAS WILLEMEIT(GRAFT), HENDRIK JELLEMA (BERLINER LEBEN) (Small)

Tim Renner, secretary for culture of the city of Berlin, Markus Terboven, board member of Gewobag, Yasha Young, Director URBAN NATION, Thomas Willemeit, Founding Partner GRAFT, Hendrik Jellema, chairman of the board of “Berliner Leben”. (left to right) © URBAN NATION

Check out a virtual visit of the upcoming URBAN NATION MUSEUM FOR URBAN CONTEMPORARY ART

London, Shows

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

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