Tag Archives: contemporary art

Paris: Lee Bae ‘ Black Mapping’

May 15, 2018 butterfly

Perrotin Gallery in Paris is currently showing “Black Mapping” by Korean contemporary artist Lee Bae and looks back to the creative period of Lee Bae marked by the work of charcoal, in the form of paintings, sculptures and installations.

Since the early 2000’s Lee Bae is best known for his acrylic paintings associating a thousand variations of black and creamy white. Perrotin Gallery has chosen to highlight a lesser known creative aspect from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, which focused on the use of charcoal.

Lee Bae’s charcoal achievements are a crucial moment in the Korean artist’s career when he arrived in Paris in 1990, and the discovery of this new material is a turning point in his practice.

The choice of charcoal is due to several reasons: references to the China ink and calligraphy, but is also deeply rooted in the Korean tradition and reminded him of its origins.

Charcoal would allow Lee Bae to combine and align the two subjects that had always motivated him: a reflection on the material and a quest for blackness. In other words, on one hand the material in itself, for its sculptural qualities, and on the other hand, the material as a means of achieving tonality.

The installations of the Fire series are juxtaposed elements of raw material, burned and glued on canvas. Working the surface and revealing shadows, gradients and highlights, charcoal is a powerful creative element both literally and figuratively.

Check a video by Simone Hoffman for Arte Metropolis that looks behind the scenes.

Lee Bae – Black Mapping
Until 26 May 2018
Galerie Perrotin
76 rue de Turenne
75003 Paris

London, Shows

London: Ashley Bickerton – Ornamental Hysteria

August 6, 2017 butterfly

NewportStreet Gallery is currently showing a retrospective of works by US artist Ashley Bickerton.

‘Ornamental Hysteria’ spans more than three decades of Bickerton’s career and features 51 works, including a significant display of new and previously unexhibited pieces. It is the artist’s first UK show since 2009 and runs throughout all six spaces at Newport Street Gallery.

Bickerton moved to New York in 1982 and after working as a painting assistant to Jack Goldstein, he emerged as a key figure on the newly exploding East Village art scene. Within the context of the culture of commodification sweeping America he rose to prominence as part of an amorphous movement that was branded ‘Neo-Geometric Conceptualism’. Alongside artists such as Haim Steinbach and Jeff Koons, Bickerton endeavoured to reframe the practice of art production in response to the new, seductive mechanisms of desire at work in society.
Bickerton abandoned New York in 1993, eventually settling in Bali, where he still lives and works.

Throughout his career, Bickerton has challenged what we consider or define a painting
Multidisciplinary artist, Ashley Bickerton uses a variety of medium, from photocollage, digital image, paint and sculpture to create technical assemblages on the themes of opposition and duality: representation and reality, creativity and commodity, nature and artifice, idyll and apocalypse.

The gallery 1 presents a critique of contemporary consumer culture and the commodification of the ‘art object’ via steel and aluminium wall-mounted ‘Culturescapes’ from the ‘Logo’ and ‘Non-Word Word’ series.

The monumental 5 Snake Heads in the Gallery 2 showcasing a five-bodied, technicoloured serpent is a parody of the mythological figure of a self portrait of the artist.

Colourful paintings like ‘Smiling Woman’ based on distorted and retouched photographs, illustrate models, family members and friends with heavy make-up as an overtly satirical and lurid vision of life on a generic Pacific / Caribbean island.

Galleries 3 and 4 feature Bickerton’s ‘Sea’ and ‘Landscapes’ – offering a tragic view of the devastating impact of man on the ecosphere.

View the full set of pics here

https://vimeo.com/215645083

Ashley Bickerton – Ornemental Hysteria
Until 20 August 2017
Newportstreet Gallery London

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.

View the full set of pics here

Harland Miller – One Bar Electric Memoir
Until 9 September 2017
White Cube, Mason’s Yard, London

Auctions, London

London: Phillips Contemporary Art Auction

February 9, 2014 butterfly

London auction house Phillips is hosting a contemporary art auction featuring works by major contemporary artists. It is a great opportunity to see works by Warhol, drawings by Keith Haring, sculptures by Marc Quinn, an installation by Barry McGee, pictures by Ed Templeton and more. Last but not least, viewers can also enjoy Banksy Happy Shopper and Rembrandt that were shown at the Bristol Museum vs Banksy 2009 exhibition (featured here)