MICHAEL BORREMANS – BLACK MOULD

Posted on 2015-08-03

Black Mould includes small- and large-scale paintings that feature anonymous, black-robed characters. Alone or in groups, they perform mysterious acts within monochromatic spaces reminiscent of an artist’s barren studio. Seemingly behaving according to a symbolic language of their own, they pose alone or interact in communal dances, with some figures holding torches and others exposed naked from the waist down. Their facelessness opens up ambiguous narrative possibilities, like empty canvases with which to construct meaning.

Exquisitely painted with dramatic contrasts between light and dark areas, the series reaffirms the tension between the real and the imaginary that exists within Borremans’s oeuvre. The solemn yet playful mood feels inexplicably up-to-date, with the almost cinematic sequence of paintings constituting an allegory of contemporary society. The lack of context or details provides a neutral, yet psychologically charged atmosphere. Like archetypes capable of embodying shifting meanings, the blank figures become a mold for the human condition, at once satirical, tragic, humorous, and above all, contradictory.

Opposite – Fiery Limbs, 2015

Exhibition runs through to August 14th, 2015

David Zwirner
24 Grafton Street
W1S 4EZ
London

www.davidzwirner.com

  

WILLEM DE ROOIJ – LEGAL NOSES

Posted on 2015-08-03

Known for working in a variety of different media, including film, installation, sculpture, weaving, and exhibition making, de Rooij has developed a stringently precise practice, which addresses some of the most fundamental components of art making, such as meaning, color, authorship, labor, and time. Yet for all its conceptual rigor, apparent elegance and self-referential concision, his work is full of play, encouraging and ultimately engaging issues of interpretation, from the political to the social as well as the aesthetic (the title of the show, for instance, like many of the artist’s shows, is an anagram). Functioning predominantly through protocol, de Rooij’s work is often developed in collaboration with artisanal specialists– in the case of this exhibition, finishers, weavers and a florist– making it such that aesthetic decision-making is depersonalized and outsourced to a co-producer. He essentially liquidates the so-called personal touch of the artist, making every effort he can to distribute not only the production, but also, and even more importantly meaning as broadly as possible. And while virtually every aspect of de Rooij’s production is conceptually and pragmatically accounted for, nothing, paradoxically, is closed or shut down– everything is left wide open.

Opposite – Gemischt gross, horizontal, 2015

Exhibition runs through to August 9th, 2015

Regen Projects
6750 Santa Monica Boulevard
CA 90038
Los Angeles

www.regenprojects.com

  

SARAH CHARLESWORTH – DOUBLEWORLD

Posted on 2015-08-03

Her influential body of work deconstructed the conventions of photography and gave emphasis to the medium’s importance in mediating our perception of the world. Charlesworth’s practice bridged the incisiveness of 1970s Conceptual art and the illuminating image-play of the later-identified “Pictures Generation.” She was part of a group of artists working in New York in the 1980s—which included Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and Laurie Simmons, among others—that probed the visual language of mass media and illuminated the imprint of ubiquitous images on our everyday lives.

This exhibition at the New Museum features Charlesworth’s poignant series “Stills” (1980), a group of fourteen large-scale works rephotographed from press images that hauntingly depict people falling or jumping off of buildings. The installation of “Stills” marks the first time that the complete series has been displayed in New York and is presented alongside other prominent works by the artist: her groundbreaking series “Modern History” (1977–79), which pioneered photographic appropriation; the alluring and exacting “Objects of Desire” (1983–88) and “Renaissance Paintings” (1991), which continued Charlesworth’s trenchant approach to mining the language of photography; “Doubleworld” (1995), which probes the fetishism of vision in premodern art; and her radiant latest series, “Available Light” (2012). The title of the exhibition is taken from one of her photographs, Doubleworld (1995), from the series of the same name, which presents two nineteenth-century stereoscopic viewing devices, each holding a stereophotograph depicting two women standing side by side.

Exhibition runs through to September 9th, 2015

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery
New York
NY 10002

www.newmuseum.org

  

EVERYTHINGS

Posted on 2015-08-03

EVERYTHINGS, a three-person exhibition with Hayden Dunham, Parker Ito and Timur Si-Qin. EVERYTHINGS encompasses simultaneously a concept of all information imbued within “everything”, while suggesting a multiplicity or variant of the concept itself.

Through what feel very much like three new and significantly diverse installations, aesthetic perspectives and material languages, this exhibition introduces a conceptually expansive approach to thinking about and realizing artworks; exposing a unique potential for objects—and the experience of objects—to be imbued with information, as well as addressing an expanded, non-linear sense of time. Meaning and material are allowed to exist in multiple states at once, advocating the perception of a stagnant object as a moving one—as a transformative product that communicates, and is malleable. Together, Dunham, Ito and Si-Qin retain a clear responsibility to how we engage, and commitment to the role of an art object and how those objects move through time, while each possessing such distinct perspectives of what an object can be.

Exhibition runs through to August 14th, 2015

Andrea Rosen Gallery
525 West 24th Street
10011 New York
USA

www.andrearosengallery.com

  

ANONYMOUS: THE HISTORIES OF FOUND PHOTOGRAPHS

Posted on 2015-08-03

This collection of found pictures is both curious and recognizable. Film based photos arrive with much surprise and disappointment as they are made through a developing process and never indicated on the back of the camera. The collaboration between the photographer and subject is less sure and more hopeful. The results, many unfocused and filled with formally unnecessary elements, are collected and appreciated, spared the harsh critique of the art world. The fortuitous accidents created by camera “mistakes” give many of these images a heightened sense of artifice and nostalgia. The photographs assume the role of abstracted symbols of life lived and enjoyed, and imply innocence of the future.

And now they have found their way into an art gallery, taking on the added weight of irony and conjecture. Their original makers have been forgotten, authorship assumed by the images’ collectors. How are we, smart phones comfortably available on our persons, to understand the smile of a proper gentleman posed before a photographer hidden behind a black cloth? How do we see a couple dressed in the laughable outfits of the 1970’s smiling on a cruise ship deck? Perhaps with relief, the pressure of creative ownership lifted, the experience of looking, filled with mistaken omnipotence.

Exhibition runs through to August 30th, 2015

Dina Mitrani Gallery
2620 NW 2nd Ave
Miami
FL 33127

www.dinamitranigallery.com

  

BACK TO THE FUTURE MONOPOLY

Posted on 2015-08-03

Monopoly gets a “McFly” makeover with everything from the box to the money and of course, the playing tokens. The box is bright yellow and “radioactive,” while digital font accents the money and tokens include a DeLorean, a hoverboard, Doc Brown’s dog Einstein, Marty’s hat, the clock from the Hillvalley Clocktower and the iconic Nike Air Mags. Lastly, with every special edition, the board undergoes changes customizing the property spaces. They include the McFly residence, Doc’s Blacksmith Shop, Mansion and Lab, as well as the 1955 and 1885 Clocktowers.

www.hasbro.com