MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO – RESPECT

Posted on 2018-05-28

This exhibition presents a series of installations “Respect (2016)” and “South China Sea – Love Difference (2005)” brought to Hong Kong from Paris and Italy will be first major appearance of this widely known Italian master in Asia.
In October 20th 2016, Pistoletto staged a spectacular performance in Paris, where the artist used a wooden hammer to smash mirrors and invited the audience to participate in exposing the hidden message behind each mirror. The installation is called “Respect” as after being shattered, each mirror exposed the word “respect” in one out of 23 languages. If some people explain the multiplicity of languages as the fruit of divine intervention intended to “confound” disrespectful humankind (cf. the myth of the Tower of Babel), here they unite to promote, in a symphony of vivid colors, a fundamentalvalue that knows no borders.

Opposite – Respect (Japanese), 2016

Exhibition runs through to June 16th, 2018

Tang Contemporary Art
10/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen’s Road Central
Hong Kong
China

www.regenprojects.com

  

ANTONY GORMLEY – SUBJECT

Posted on 2018-05-21

Devised for the new galleries and spaces at Kettle’s Yard, ‘SUBJECT’ highlights many of Antony Gormley’s interests, including how sculpture can activate both the space that it occupies and the body of the viewer. The exhibition offers a series of physical and metaphysical encounters, exploring our relationship to space and our sense of self.

‘SUBJECT’ will encompass both galleries, the Learning Studio and the Research Space. The exhibition includes the first in a new series of works, Subject (2018), from which the title of the show derives, and the first UK showing of Infinite Cube II (2018), made of one-way mirror glass and 1,000 LED lights.

Exhibition runs through to August 27th, 2018

Kettle’s Yard
University of Cambridge
Castle Street
Cambridge
CB3 0AQ

www.kettlesyard.co.uk

  

HATTIE STEWART – DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS

Posted on 2018-05-21

Commissioned by Kaia Charles, NOW Gallery’s Cultural Curator, this new exhibition of Stewart’s work will allow the viewer the opportunity to engage with it like never before. Fully immersive, I Don’t Have Time For This invites viewers to participate intimately with Stewart’s legendary doodle-bombing illustrations, becoming part of an illustrated fantasy world that results in a short and memorable break from reality.

The crux of the exhibition is a bold, escapist, large scale floor- based artwork that invites the viewer to make time. Recline, look up and cross over into Stewart’s fictional universe. Made up of Stewart’s subversive style references; psychedelic art of the 60’s and the comic absurdity of hybrid post-modern classics like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, this large scale installation features a mix of characters, patterns and galaxies, giving the feeling that the artwork is alive. Through densely packed mirrored illustrative detail, the viewer will be able to float in space, lie in a field of flowers and even ‘fly’.

Exhibition runs through to June 25th, 2018

NOW Gallery
The Gateway Pavilions
Peninsula Square
Greenwich Peninsula
London SE10 0SQ

nowgallery.co.uk

  

WANG JIAJIA – POP THE CHAMPAGNE

Posted on 2018-05-21

Wang Jiajia, born in the mid 1980s, whose coming of age like many of his generation, was eclipsed with the popularization of the television, the advent of the Internet, and the ubiquity of popular cultures. With the accessibility of these visual registries, his paintings draw elements from art history, 80s and 90s comics, animation and pop cultures from Asia and the U.K., to reveal a strong personal universe of intense colors mixed with abstractions and figurations.

In his most recent series, Adventure (2016-), are composed of digitally sketched collages, gestural abstraction paintings as well as silkscreen techniques. Among them, one finds the motifs of video games from the 80s, logos from British television show “Top to the Pops”, the aesthetics of football jersey design, with which Wang hopes to articulate a strong sense of immediacy that is synonymous to the prevalent “click-bait” culture in the virtual reality of social media. The thick impasto and vivid colors underlain with digitally edited background imageries on the paintings, in certain cases coated in resin to provide a glossy quality, screams “look-at-me” to the viewers. This multi-layering process and choice of motifs suggest a deliberate narrative on the omnipresence of digital imageries of the contemporary landscape, beckoning the spectators to embark towards a frantic, angst-ridden and lustful journey where one longs for digital imageries.

Opposite – 666, 2018

Exhibition runs through to June 24th, 2018

Boers-Li Gallery
D-06, 798 Art Zone
No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District
100015 Beijing
China

www.boersligallery.com

  

ADAM MCEWEN – NIGHTHORSES

Posted on 2018-05-14

As McEwen’s title suggests, anxiety resides even in the most common images and objects. His art draws attention to the vestigial dramas of daily life; the forgotten is memorialized, the subliminal laid bare. Narrative flow is tempting to seek yet impossible to find.

The centerpiece of Nighthorses is a series of narrow, perfectly rectangular frames mounted on the wall. Rendered individually in graphite, brass, steel, and phosphorescent resin, they recall the serial geometries of Minimalism—only that the latchkey positioned inside the base of each frame suggests the back end of a truck, pared down to a schema. In another series, images of rumpled beds are printed onto sheets of vividly colored cellulose sponge and thus transformed into scaleless, undulating landscapes. Paired with life-size graphite objects fixed to the surface—an oar, a ladder, a hand dryer, and a lavatory cistern—they generate a sense of psychological dissonance. Moving on from Andy Warhol’s notorious Disaster series, McEwen’s image of the aftermath of a car crash, printed on yellow cellulose sponge and supporting two smooth graphite drum cymbals, offers a perfect visual tautology.

Opposite – Hunter Gets Captured By the Game, 2018

Exhibition runs through to June 9th, 2018

Gagosian
456 North Camden Drive
CA 90210 Beverly Hills
USA

www.gagosian.com

  

ELIZABETH MAGILL – HEADLAND

Posted on 2018-05-14

Elizabeth Magill is one of her generation’s leading painters. Headland will present a body of new work and will introduce her developing practice to a new and established audience. Headland is a touring exhibition, with shows taking place to date at Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA); Wilkinson Gallery, London and the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), Dublin.

“A kind of concentrated ambiguity regarding the natural world …. characterizes Magill’s paintings. Throughout her career, Magill has been drawn to the language of painting using nature and landscape. She draws from them a gorgeous and engrossing multiplicity of visual and sensory description” – Declan Long.

Magill’s work is redolent of her sense of place – the Glens of Antrim – which has preoccupied and informed her relationship with her native landscape and her visual response to it. Her approach to painting is always experimental, allowing for previous techniques to give way to newer ones to form an unfolding process.

Opposite – Multi-Storey, 2017

Exhibition runs through to September 23rd, 2018

Ulster Museum
Botanic Gardens
Belfast
BT9 5AB

www.nmni.com