BIG EYES

Posted on 2014-12-15

Directed and produced by Tim Burton, Big Eyes is based on the true story of Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz), who was one of the most successful painters of the 1950s and early 1960s. The artist earned staggering notoriety by revolutionizing the commercialization and accessibility of popular art with his enigmatic paintings of waifs with big eyes. The truth would eventually be discovered though: Keane’s art was actually not created by him at all, but by his wife, Margaret (Amy Adams). The Keanes, it seemed, had been living a lie that had grown to gigantic proportions.
Big Eyes centers on Margaret’s awakening as an artist, the phenomenal success of her paintings, and her tumultuous relationship with her husband, who was catapulted to international fame while taking credit for her work.

In theatres December 25th, 2014

bigeyesfilm.com

  

UNBROKEN

Posted on 2014-12-15

Adapted from Laura Hillenbrand’s (Seabiscuit: An American Legend) enormously popular book UNBROKEN brings to the big screen Zamperini’s unbelievable and inspiring true story about the resilient power of the human spirit. Angelina Jolie directs and produces UNBROKEN, an epic drama that follows the incredible life of olympian and war hero Louis “Louie” Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) who, along with two other crewmen, survived in a raft for 47 days after a near-fatal plane crash in WWII, only to be caught by the Japanese navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.

In theatres December 25th, 2014

www.unbrokenfilm.com

  

DUMB AND DUMBER TO

Posted on 2014-12-15

Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels reprise their signature roles as Lloyd and Harry in the sequel to the smash hit that took the physical comedy and kicked it in the nuts: Dumb and Dumber To. The original film’s directors, Peter and Bobby Farrelly, take Lloyd and Harry on a road trip to find a child Harry never knew he had and the responsibility neither should ever, ever be given.

In theatres December 19th, 2014

www.dumbanddumberto.co.uk

  

DEXTER DALWOOD – LONDON PAINTING

Posted on 2014-12-15

The ‘London Paintings’ signal an exciting shift in Dalwood’s formal approach towards a more fluid, personal and interpretative working method. These paintings provoke consideration of how history is painted and how it might continue to be painted. Historical references and quotations are increasingly mediated through the painting process, resulting in images of a world that can never be quite settled upon or interpreted. The paintings refuse to coalesce into a space or place, demanding from the viewer a longer and more involved process of looking. The satisfaction of recognition is denied, instead a space is created whose function – purely through its painted reality – is to produce a strong sense of time, site, memory and history – the very things that make up a sense of place.
Somewhere between the title, the fragments of imagery and the viewer’s subjectivity, each work acquires its meaning.

Moving with ease between the subjective and the specific to create a rich and individual language, Dalwood expertly combines elements from painting’s past to produce something startlingly original in the present: a body of work that continues to re-invigorate and re-invent contemporary history painting.

Opposite – The Thames below Waterloo, 2014

Exhibition runs through to January 24th, 2015

Simon Lee Gallery
12 Berkeley Street
W1J 8DT
London

www.simonleegallery.com

  

MARTIN PURYEAR

Posted on 2014-12-15

Puryear’s abstract organic forms are rich with psychological and intellectual references that explore issues of ethnicity, culture, and history. His new sculptures incorporate a diverse range of materials, from bronze, cast iron, and mirror-polished stainless steel to a variety of woods, including red cedar, tulip poplar, maple, holly, Alaskan yellow cedar, walnut, and ebony. Puryear’s sculptures, typically made by hand with labor-intensive methods, often require months to complete. His techniques, developed over a forty-year career, combine practices adapted from many different traditions, including wood carving, joinery, and boat building, as well as recent digital technology.

Big Phrygian, a large sculpture made of red cedar painted a vivid red, directly evokes the cap from the engraving, recreating its creases and folds with meticulously applied layers of wood veneer. A wall sculpture, Phrygian Plot, derives it shape from the same cap, tracing its profile with a gently curved silhouette composed of alternating bands of black ebony and white holly. The possibilities of this form are further explored in Up and Over, a sculpture cast in ductile iron.

Opposite – Big Phrygian, 2010-2014

Exhibition runs through to January 10th, 2015

Matthew Marks Gallery
522 West 22 Street
10011 New York
USA

www.matthewmarks.com

  

WALTER SWENNEN – WORKS ON PAPER

Posted on 2014-12-15

A new exhibition dedicated to the graphic work of Walter Swennen (b. 1946, Brussels). The presentation focuses on the last three decades of the artist’s career and brings together over 130 works on paper in a variety of media.

Walter Swennen is a painter and a draughtsman in equal measure. While his works in oil often engage with the complex questions inherent to the art of painting – its potential and limitations; what, why and how to paint – his works on paper can be read as the laboratory that not only fuels his ideas, but also points to possible answers. Like his paintings, Swennen’s sketches take the form of enigmatic compositions of recognisable elements: words, letters, pictograms, heraldic devices, strip cartoon figures, advertising slogans, geometric forms, animals, stereotypical characters and everyday imagery. Although this gives rise to obvious visual correspondences between certain paintings and drawings, and a sketch might form a springboard for a larger work, his graphics are always autonomous creations. Often executed in layers and in mixtures of pencil, ink, watercolour, pen or crayon, they can be viewed as a visual compendium of ideas, insights, discoveries, juxtapositions and associations.

Opposite – Untitled, 2012

Exhibition runs through to January 17th, 2015

Xavier Hufkens
107 rue St-Georges | St-Jorisstraat
B – 1050 Brussels
Belgium

www.xavierhufkens.com