GLEN E. FRIEDMAN – MY RULES

Posted on 2014-11-10

Friedman’s photographs are rich in action and intensity and have stood the test of time – many have become the definitive portraits for their subjects. Since the mid-1970s as a young teenager, Friedman has been chronicling quintessential subjects in underground and counterculture movements like no other. Capturing the pivotal and defining moments in music and street movements that were largely unknown or ignored by the mainstream.

Friedman’s My Rules serves as a testament of integrity for the three powerhouse countercultures of skateboarding, punk, and hip-hop.The energy and rebellion shine through – the accompanying book by Rizzoli features over 300 images; it is Friedman’s 7th published monograph.

This exhibition comprises of over 50 colour + black and white fine art photographic prints – many of which have never been exhibited before. Classic images from Friedman’s last UK exhibition at the ICA in 1997 are also included, now printed larger and better than before. After the premiere in London, the My Rules exhibition will continue to tour worldwide.

Exhibition runs from November 23rd to January 18th, 2015

14 Henrietta Street
Covent Garden
London
WC2H

www.14henrietta.com

  

CARLA VAN DE PUTTELAAR

Posted on 2014-11-10

st known for her luminous nude studies characterized by their exquisite use of light and subtle color, van de Puttelaar’s pictures engage the sense of touch almost as much as the sense of sight. Human skin becomes its own landscape – a place where every freckle, crease, and mark is a noted event.

This exhibition showcases work from 1998 to the present where van de Puttelaar’s photographs, whether of women or flowers, tread a fine line between the sensual and an almost medical dispassion. Shot against darkened backgrounds, and illuminated by the special quality of natural Dutch light, the works create a daring fusion of beauty and realism enabled by the artist’s careful control of composition.

In a 2009 interview with the writer Joerg Colberg, van de Puttelaar explained “The female body is my source of inspiration. I have my own tale to tell, which is different from what nude images the media want to show. I am especially interested in the skin, the sensations that give away somebody’s mood. I also like the differences in women’s bodies as a whole, which show their individuality and their many different forms of beauty. I often hear from both men and women that my work could only be made by a woman and that is the biggest compliment I can get. I certainly believe that most of nude photos we see are made from the typical male point of view. Through my photos of women I can express myself as a woman. Again very autobiographical.”

Opposite – Untitled, 1998

Exhibition runs through to December 20th, 2014

Danziger Gallery
521 West 23rd Street
New York
NY 10011

www.danzigergallery.com

  

THE DROP

Posted on 2014-11-10

Based on a screenplay from Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone), The Drop follows lonely bartender Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy) through a covert scheme of funneling cash to local gangsters, “money drops”, in the underworld of Brooklyn bars. Under the heavy hand of his employer and cousin Marv (James Gandolfini), Bob finds himself at the center of a robbery gone awry and entwined in an investigation that digs deep into the neighborhood’s past where friends, families, and foes all work together to make a living – no matter the cost.

In theatres November 11th, 2014

www.thedrop-movie.com

  

SAM SAMORE – ACCUMULATION OF SHAPES

Posted on 2014-11-10

Sam Samore presents a new series of portraits of the French actress Juliette Dol. Each work consists of two images, apparently sequenced a few frames apart, which are cropped and then joined together with a narrow black line of separation. Directly referencing the cinematic device of the split screen, the resulting works not only engage both the formal and conceptual relationships between film and photography, but also serve as in-depth investigations into obsession, inconclusive narrative and the complex psychological corridors of desire.

Each photograph depicts Dol in the process of an immediately identifiable but mysterious action: we see her recumbent on a bed, fully clothed in a bathtub full of water, approaching a doorway, navigating through a dark space by flashlight with eyes fixed on an indeterminate point in the distance. By cleaving together two slightly different images, Samore makes a clear reference to the physicality of film cells. Slight variations in the subject’s position or the camera’s depth of field imbue the images with a kinetic quality that reinforces the unsettling sense that we are accessing only fragments of a whole. The coupling of known and unknown quantities pays direct service to the Film Noir trope of doubling, though Samore is careful to disrupt the narrative experience by ultimately withholding even the suggestion of conclusivity.

Exhibition runs from November 23rd to December 21st, 2014

team (gallery, inc.)
47 Wooster Street
New York
NY 10013

www.teamgal.com

  

KEIICHI TANAAMI

Posted on 2014-11-10

The upcoming exhibition will include large sculptural works in addition to new paintings, including the title piece, Cherry Blosooms Falling in the Evening Gloom, a large painting measuring 3 meters in width. His new sculptures are part of a series of new works that incorporate the motif of his 2012 work Red Drum Bridge, and include a powerful piece in which characters riding in a plane sit atop an uncrossable bridge. Tanaami says that, “it is in my personality to take even the dark experiences of the past and transform them into positive expressions,” however, the world depicted here may be a vision of Tanaami’s own ultimate paradise, transcending both good and bad, suffering and fear.

Many works contain many motifs associated with Tanaami’s childhood experience of war. Glowing, grotesque creatures personify bombs and the light of their explosions. Beams of emanating light are the searchlights of Japanese troops keeping watch for American bomber planes. The skeletal monsters that appear in his works represent war casualties, and at the same time function as figures of us, ourselves, who know no fear. A recurring character based on a motif that comes from Tanaami’s wartime memory of goldfish also frequently appears in his works, and is deeply connected to the sight of the light from the American bombs reflecting off of the scales of the goldfish his grandfather kept. Pine trees, seemingly pregnant with animal-like life forms, are based on hallucinations Tanaami witnessed when he nearly died from a pulmonary edema at age 44.

Exhibition runs through to December 13th, 2014

Nanzuka
2-17-3 Shibuya Shibuya-ku
Shibuya Ibis bldg. #B1F
150-0002 Tokyo

nug.jp

  

MATTHEW BARNEY – CROWN ZINC

Posted on 2014-11-10

Barney’s sculptures translate motifs from River of Fundament into autonomous works of art, bearing witness to these set-piece performances while recasting their themes of decay, regeneration and alchemical metamorphosis. Crown Victoria is a zinc cast of the third vehicle’s undercarriage, the prototype for which was created in an elaborate hieratic ceremony, BA (performed in New York in 2013). Sprawling and skeletal, it emanates the melancholic grandeur of an abandoned ruin or sarcophagus. Loops of corrugated tubing, arrayed like ribs along the chassis, evoke mummified remains; a large coiling pump speaks simultaneously of biological systems and insensate machinery. Marooned on blocks, the object stands both as a decimated vehicle and a body undergoing reincarnation: deposits of salt crystals at the two ‘poles’ of the sculpture seemingly presage a new transmutation.

In Crown Zinc a smaller fragment of the same vehicle has been cast in zinc and plated with gold. It is modelled on the grill from the Crown Victoria – an object that travels and transfigures over the course of River of Fundament. After being removed from the police car, it becomes the crown for which the Egyptian deities Set and Horus ritualistically compete. At several points in River of Fundament, a vehicle part is melted to produce a molten cast of an Egyptian Djed column (the symbol for Osiris’s spine, related to the Egyptian hieroglyph representing eternity and stability). This symbol finds a subtle manifestation in the mottled gold ‘pillar’ that clings like a shrunken fist or arcane seal to the immaculate plated surface of Crown Zinc.

Exhibition runs through to December 13th, 2014

Sadie Cole
62 Kingly Street
London
W1B 5QN

www.sadiecoles.com