JONAS WOOD

Posted on 2014-12-08

Each room will focus on a genre within his painting practice: plants, sports cards, and portraits. Also featured will be a salon-style installation of works on paper, dating from 2007 to the present, closely related to the paintings on view.

Among the paintings, Wood will debut a new series of large-scale pictures of solitary plants in painted pots. Referred to as “landscape pots”, each image pairs a “clipping”––a plant form isolated from a preceding work by Wood––with a vessel shape that is, itself, a painted view––a cityscape, park, or jungle-like foliage. Compositing images of objects, perspectival spaces and external surfaces, as well as textures, scales, and temporalities, the pots exemplify Wood’s montage-based practice, and its evocation of nostalgia and the uncanny.

Accordingly, Wood increasingly draws not only from his growing collection of photographic images and “readymade” portraits such as trading cards, but also the history of his own practice. In tandem with his paintings, he has produced a breadth of preparatory and companion works on paper, through which he resolves elements of each composition and which he later mines for future works. In this sense, the exhibition’s installation of drawings approximates a view of his studio, functioning as a matrix to understand Wood’s process, and also his greater visual universe.

Exhibition runs through to January 10th, 2015

David Kordansky Gallery
3143 S. La Cienega Blvd, Unit A
Los Angeles
CA 90016

davidkordanskygallery.com

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MARTIN BOYCE – STELLAR REMNANTS

Posted on 2014-12-08

Martin Boyce’s sculptures, photographs and installations are informed by his involvement with Modern art, architecture and design. Boyce compresses the gap between utopian ideals and the reality of Modern visions into dark and poetic images. In his works beauty and failure as well as protective interior and natural forces are collapsing into each other.

For the exhibition at Johnen Galerie, Martin Boyce has for the first time developed a sculpture based on the form of a fireplace. This ‘fireplace’ opens up to another space, giving the secure feeling of the ‘fireside room’ an ambivalent atmosphere, reminiscent of Surrealism. One of the references that come to mind is René Magritte’s painting ‘Time Transfixed (La Durée Poignardée)’, in which a steam locomotive emerges from the inside of a mantled chimney into a room. Furthermore, the fireplace is mounted higher than usual, which reminds us of the perspective trickery of Carlo Mollino’s fireplace at Casa Mollino in Turin, Italy.

Mobiles with rusted chains increase the described uncertainty in atmosphere through associations with trees, transience and the inescapability of natural processes. The works of Martin Boyce resemble melancholic poems, even more so as the titles and texts of the works echo this mood.

Exhibition runs through to January 24th, 2015

Johnen Galerie
Marienstrasse 10
10117 Berlin
Germany

www.johnengalerie.de

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ÁNGELA DE LA CRUZ – TRASPASO

Posted on 2014-12-08

This artist deftly breaks the link between the wall and the painting, so that the gallery walls act as a support to lean her works against and the floor becomes the base for what might have been a painting but is presented to us as sculpture. Were it not for the meticulous finish of every one of her works, the way they are folded so perfectly and the order underlying their composition, we might think they were failed paintings, rejected and somewhat tortured.

The “Nothing” series consists of pictures reduced to the bare minimum, producing little spheres about to unfold. The “Roll” pieces are rolled-up canvases leaning against the wall, and the largest work, “Drop”, is marked by the tracks of the artist’s wheelchair. When Ángela de la Cruz decides to hang her works, it is as if they were dissatisfied with their role and were trying to dissociate themselves from the wooden frames that bound them.

As well as paintings that aspire to be sculptures, De la Cruz presents her “Throw” series, sculptures that aspire to be paintings. To be precise, they are monochrome skeuomorphs in aluminium of what looks like a folded cardboard box. In this series, trompe l’oeil comes into play, and what appears soft is in fact hard. This time, in her play of inversions, she really does hang on the wall what we are actually used to seeing on the floor: cardboard boxes.

Opposite – Throw V (Turquoise), 2014

Exhibition runs through to January 3rd, 2015

Galería Helga de Alvear
Doctor Fourquet, 12
28012 Madrid
Spain

www.helgadealvear.com

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CNN: ONES TO WATCH – RISING STARS OF STREET ART

Posted on 2014-12-08

Legendary American street artist Shepard Fairey, renowned for his ‘Obama Hope’ poster and influential OBEY clothing line, alongside former Banksy associate turned art-dealer, Steve Lazarides, act as this month’s ‘masters’, pointing viewers in the direction of the boldest new names in street art.
As one of the most influential figures within street art, Shepard Fairey has spent a lifetime creating pieces of work that are destroyed shortly after. For this reason, he believes upcoming street artists need a tenacious personality in order to become successful.

Fairey tells the programme: “What I think it takes to break through as a street artist is a tenacity, a willingness to go there put work up and have it cleaned, have it covered by other artists, and not be too precious about it, to accept that street art is ephemeral. Of course, finding good places and making imagery that is unique and sets your work apart from other people is really important, but tenacity is crucial.”

CNN Ones to Watch’ airs at the following times on CNN International
Friday 12 December at 1030 GMT/ 1130 CET and 1630 GMT/1730 CET

edition.cnn.com

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