E-VAPOR-8 – CURATED BY FRANCESCA GAVIN

E-Vapor-8 is a group exhibition, curated by writer, editor and curator Francesca Gavin, looking at the influence and relationship between contemporary art and rave music from the early 1990s. It traces a fascination with rave culture and happy hardcore by young British and American artists, many of whom are absorbing and re-appropriating a cultural moment they were too young to participate in.

The exhibition, named after a 1992 single by the band Altern 8, touches on how the hedonism and cultural upheaval of rave has passed. Ideas around intellectual and physical freedom, rebellion and myth-making are all at play.

Participating artists are: Fatima Al Qadiri and Sophia Al-Maria, Harry Burden, Rhys Coren, Petra Cortright, Jeremy Deller, Adham Faramawy, Alexandra Gorczynski, Marisa Olson, Hannah Perry, Christian J. Petersen, Travess Smalley, Lucy Stokton, and Daniel Swan.

Exhibition runs from June 7th to August 16th, 2014

Site Gallery
1 Brown Street
Sheffield
S1 2BS

www.sitegallery.org

RUI MOREIRA – LA NUIT

Rui Moreira’s work takes its roots in his travels and he chooses his destinations with great care. From India to the South Moroccan desert, and through different regions of his native country Portugal, he carries out an intense work of observation and investigation. The artist tries to feel the physical and psychological changes inherent to the territories he visits. This intense feeling of time is at the heart of the structure of Rui Moreira’s drawings. Thus, they truly become inner landscapes, captured states of mind. Back in his studio, Rui Moreira tries to recreate always renewed propitious conditions to artistic creation, like what he has been living during his travels. Indeed, his works result from repeating a simple action: the artist patiently, lengthily, tirelessly fills each contours until his body is exhausted. The aim is to loose every point of reference until creating a more deep visual experience.

Exhibition runs through to July 18th, 2014

Galerie Jaeger Bucher
5 & 7 rue de Saintonge
75003 Paris
France

www.galeriejaegerbucher.com

CHARLIE BILLINGHAM – TENDER 2 THE SUNSHINE ROOM

This exhibition realizes an expanded presentation of his recent series of small-scale paintings and sculptural pieces, both inspired by silhouettes of boats, as well as several new, large canvases, which depict glass houses. The boat paintings hang on top of grid-patterned backdrops, which Billingham executes directly onto the gallery’s walls. These wall paintings create a visual network that serves to arrange his intimate pieces within a greater context – a relative place for them to exist.

Technically, as a painter, Billingham’s practice focuses on pigment, texture, and surface; he uses acrylic, oil, or both, applying the paint to polyester, linen, tapestry, canvas, or wood panel, depending on his desired outcome. Beyond his broad understanding of the medium, his gestures and compositions demonstrate how painting possesses the ability to be completely subjective. Accordingly, Billingham looks to personal and shared experiences as a source for his topics and imagery. His series of approximately 30 small-scale paintings are abstracted seascapes, depicting two boats floating at sea, inspired by summer holidays by the ocean. The boats’ proximity to each other, as well as the negative space surrounding them, opens a psychological dialogue – symmetry can read as balance, but it can also create tension.

Exhibition runs through to June 28th, 2014

OHWOW
937 N. La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles
CA 90069

oh-wow.com