LOUIS VUITTON – ASTRALIS

Posted on 2014-02-03

Since time immemorial, artists have experimented with visionary experience by diving into the Astral depths. Nevertheless, this distinctive act of creation is rarely tackled. Astralis, the 23rd exhibition at Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, takes visitors on a journey into this strange reality by exploring unfathomable and inaccessible worlds. They are the great purveyors of visions.

The ‘Astral’, another term for the ‘Invisible’, conjures up celestial, elusive, and otherworldly themes. It touches on both a journey within ourselves, and the mind’s journey outside of the body. These mysterious dimensions have led to some troubling scientific research and are finding a remarkable resurgence in artists’ works. Astralis is devoted to exploring these questions, visions, and artistic powers by turning a contemporary art exhibition into a kind of initiatory journey designed by a dozen international artists who have created their own landscape and antechambers.

Artists involved –
Marion LAVAL JEANTET and Benoit MANGIN, David ALTMEJD, Rina BANERJEE, BASSERODE, Charley CASE, Damien DEROUBAIX, Jean-Luc FAVERO, Vidya GASTALDON, Siobhàn HAPASKA, Myriam MECHITA, Chloé PIENE, Børre SAETHRE.

Exhibition runs from February 7th to May 11th, 2014

Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton
60 Rue de Bassano
75008 Paris
France

www.louisvuitton-espaceculturel.com

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ROBERT BECHTLE

Posted on 2014-02-03

Throughout his career, Bechtle has returned to motifs such as the streets of his native San Francisco, automobiles, self-portraits, and his family to portray the American landscape. Drawing on the art-historical tradition of photorealism, Bechtle creates complex compositions that flawlessly depict fragments of everyday life.

For this exhibition, Bechtle will present a series of watercolors and charcoal drawings of San Francisco’s tree and car-lined streets, as well as a number of self-portraits. Often using a photograph as his point of departure, Bechtle explores different ways of framing an image, cropping scenes to include only part of the presumable subject matter or orienting the works slightly off-center – compositional effects that serve to heighten the impact of the scenes he is portraying. In several works, he enhances the hilly topography of his neighborhood, Portrero Hill, by closely cropping the picture and omitting any sky or horizon line, thus complicating the viewers’ ability to orient themselves in the work. Often moving the supposed subject of his work – including cars, trees, and row houses – to the margins, he subtly challenges both our understanding of what the subject is, as well as the assumption that the composition’s center should be prioritized over the edges of the work.

Opposite – Bob’s Sebring, 2011

Exhibition runs through to February 22nd, 2014

Gladstone Gallery
515 West 24th Street
NY-10011 New York
USA

www.gladstonegallery.com

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SAGE VAUGHN – NOBODY’S HOME

Posted on 2014-02-03

Featuring the birds and butterflies with which his work has come to be synonymous, the artist’s focus on wildlife is transformed into fresh settings, both material and metaphorical.

Vaughn explores the physical and abstract associations of the phrase Nobody’s Home through an examination of stale interiors and the vacancy with which society unquestioningly consumes objects and occasions of mass appeal. Beautifully executed birds permeate the lackluster domiciles dictated by interior designers and home and lifestyle magazines as the ultimate domestic dream, packaged for sale en masse as the height of ‘tasteful’ urban living. A coffee table and pile of books sit clinically where the birds, unknowingly interrupt the viewer’s expectation, bringing vibrant life and colour to their staid habitats.

Exhibition runs through to March 1st, 2014

Lazarides Rathbone
11 Rathbone Place
London
W1T 1HR

www.lazinc.com

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