ALEX ISRAEL – ALWAYS ON MY MIND

Posted on 2020-01-27

A native of Los Angeles, Israel mines the cultural mythos of his hometown with polished optimism and calculated cool, melding nostalgic feelings with lucid perceptions of California living and the American Dream.

Israel has cultivated a close partnership with Warner Bros. Studios, beginning in 2010 when he rented Hollywood props from the studio’s warehouses and exhibited them as readymade sculptures. He has also collaborated with the studio’s scenic painting department on numerous large-scale series, including his dreamy, pastel-tinted Sky Backdrops, architecturally inspired Flats, and slick, vibrant Waves. The film industry has continued to play a central role in Israel’s work; in 2017, he made his directorial debut with SPF-18, a feature-length teen rom-com that pays tribute to classic surf movies.

Opposite – Self-Portrait (Wheel of Fortune), 2017

Exhibition runs through to March 14th, 2020

Gagosian
20 Grosvenor Hill
W1K 3QD
London

gagosian.com

  

ELINE MUGAAS – NØDVENDIGHETEN AV LEDDSETNINGER

Posted on 2020-01-20

Eline Mugaas collects. She collects her own and others’ pictures, or snippets of pictures in pictures, of the arms that carry, of the box that closes around things, the hands that embrace. A rotating gesture is central in this exhibition which includes the installation she made for the Lorck
Schive Art Prize at the Trondheim Art Museum in 2019. In a film from Brancusi’s studio, a woman dances on a low pedestal, twisting her body as she moves her arm over her head. The gesture reminded Mugaas of elements from art history, from the Caryatids, pillars shaped like women’s bodies carrying temples on their heads, or mourners from ancient jars that raise their arms over their heads to tear at their hair as an expression of grief, to the twisted female bodies in Matisse’s paintings. It also made her think of the movement when swinging an object up to your head in order to use the body’s vertical axis to carry the weight, or when lifting a child.

Opposite – Wheels on Wall, 2019

Exhibition runs through to March 8th, 2020

Galleri Riis
Arbins gate 7
NO-0253 Oslo
Norway

galleririis.com

  

ISABELLA DUCROT – SUBJECTS

Posted on 2020-01-20

In the five work groups, which are all very different from each other, ranging from landscapes and vases to teapots, one theme persists: presenting the same things, repeated many times. The old kitchen towels Fazzoletti are all decorated with circles, a kind of invocation as in mantras or prayers, the erotic images Erotici are black-and-white and the pots Vasi are reduced to simple geometric forms.

Opposite – Fazzoletto, 2007

Exhibition runs through to March 21st, 2020

Galerie Mezzanin
63, rue des Maraîchers
CH-1205 Geneva
Switzerland

galeriemezzanin.com

  

JONATHAN MEESE – DR. 50/50FITTYMEESE

Posted on 2020-01-20

Jonathan Meese (°1970 Tokyo, lives and and works in Berlin and Hamburg) is renowned for his multi-faceted work, including wildly exuberant paintings, installations, ecstatic performances and a powerful body of sculptures in a variety of media. Apparently effortlessly, he has developed in all
genres an independent and at the same time unique vocabulary that gives his work a variety, visual energy and quality which, according to Robert Fleck, has been unheard of since Picasso. All of Meese’s work share a humor tending towards the grotesque, as well as a powerful, original creative will. Both are driven and supported by a striving for a rule of art, the Dictatorship of Art.

Opposite – MEIN CHEF CHEFT K.U.N.S.T.!, 2020

Exhibition runs through to March 12th, 2020

Tim Van Laere Gallery
Jos Smolderenstraat 50
2000 Antwerp
Belgium

www.timvanlaeregallery.com

  

FIONA RAE – ABSTRACTS

Posted on 2020-01-13

On the occasion of this exhibition, the artist shows a new collection of canvas paintings and more intimate works on paper, her Abstracts, in line with her recent formal research. Her preliminary work in gouache and watercolour, less well known and more rarely exhibited, constitutes a set of ideas from which she creates her paintings and thus allows us to catch sight of their deve- lopment. The artist has chosen to present these two practices in a fixing that takes into account their mutual contributions and correspondences.

Fiona Rae’s work incarnates an abstract-pop universe, filled with references to modern and contemporary painting, to pop culture, and to digital technology. Biomorphic forms float at the paintings’ surface and bring to mind the surrealist visions of artists like Yves Tanguy, side by side with figurative elements borrowed directly from manga, comics, Walt Disney, Dr Seuss—quirky and playful resurgences that recall the work of Philip Guston and Takashi Murakami. The gestural, although organized treatment inscribes it in a form of painterly abstraction, while certain pictorial effects simulate the possibilities offered by Photoshop, revealing a painting practice that is resolutely anchored in her time.

Opposite – Abstract 5, 2019

Exhibition runs through to March 7th, 2020

Galerie Nathalie Obadia
18 rue du Bourg-Tibourg
75004 Paris

www.nathalieobadia.com

  

KENICHI HOSHINE – THE MAGICIAN AND THE THIEF

Posted on 2020-01-13

Inspired by a wide range of subjects, from film and television, to theatrical sets, to found imagery, Hoshine’s painting practice is grounded in the experiences of his daily life. Expressed in abstract forms and gestures, however, these everyday references are imbued with newfound emotion and narrative quality. For his upcoming exhibition at Hollis Taggart, Hoshine will present a selection of new paintings on wood panel that capture his converging fascinations with theater, poster design, and the occult.

Opposite – Wurlitzer, 2019


Exhibition runs through to February 15th, 2020

Hollis Taggart
521 W 26th Street, 1st Floor
NY 10001
New York

www.hollistaggart.com