Blog
Guy Bourdin
Bourdin, born in Paris in 1928, was one of the most radical and influential fashion photographers of the twentieth century. His unique blend of surreal and erotic imagery filled the pages of international magazines such as French Vogue during the 1970s and also became synonymous with the revolutionary advertising campaigns for Charles Jourdan. Rejecting the typical ‘product’ shot in favour of staging unsettling scenarios that hint at consumption, sex and desire, his photographs sought to shock and play on viewer’s curiosities.
This exhibition introduces rarely-seen before, limited edition work of some of his most captivating images - including a selection from his renowned series for the Pentax Calendar of 1980. Michael Hoppen Gallery is the exclusive representative of the Estate of Guy Bourdin.
Through March 10, 2012
David Shrigley – Brain Activity
David Shrigley is best known for his humorous drawings that make witty, wry and sometimes dark observations on everyday life. His deliberately crude graphic style has an immediate and accessible appeal, while simultaneously offering insightful commentary on the absurdities of human relationships.
Brain Activity is Shrigley’s first major survey exhibition in the UK and covers the full range of his work, extending beyond his drawings to include photography, taxidermy, sculpture, animation, painting, and music. In addition, Shrigley presents a number of new works created especially for Hayward Gallery, all of which are characterised by their varied use of humour and his abiding impulse to ‘communicate as simply and directly as possible’.
Through May 13, 2012
Hi – Lo by Summer Wheat
Samsøn is pleased to announce the 1st solo exhibition by New York-based artist Summer Wheat.
Hi – Lo, on view from February 3rd to March 17th, is a comical, yet crucial comparison of upper and lower classes. This body of work encourages broader understanding of these extreme classes. Caricatures of aristocrats and peasants are “perfect deformities” of the timeless and incredibly real issues regarding class structure. The paintings suggest similarities between these seemingly different people. This sameness is apparent in Wheat’s smart, confident use of color. There is equilibrium between horror, vulgarity, bastardization and sophistication, eloquence and retainment.
Wheat explores a varied range of textures and patterns from observing southern antebellum quilts, transforming the grotesque into elegant passages of ornamentation and amplified color. The few verse the many conspiring to comment and corporatize all demeanors—high, low, and the mud in between. Rilke described the disinherited as “ones to whom neither the past nor the future belongs.” Wheat, a humorist and slight satirist, combines what humans find innately funny with the thrill and disturbing nature of horror to create a full-bodied commentary on class in our society. Disharmony, is there anywhere where there is none? These works are not divorced from the capacity of people to act.
Backyard Oasis
As part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945-1980 regional initiative, Backyard Oasis examines swimming pools in photographs from 1945 to 1982 as visual analogs of the ideals and expectations associated with Southern California.
Backyard Oasis will contain approximately 135 framed works of archival photography and significant exhibition prints along with selected ephemera and film clips presented through DVDs on flat-screen monitors.
Through May 27, 2012
Joel Sternfeld – First Pictures
Luhring Augustine is pleased to present First Pictures by Joel Sternfeld. This exhibition is comprised of four distinct bodies of work made between 1971 and 1980, the majority of which have never before been published or exhibited. In these bodies of work, Sternfeld develops conceptual and formal strategies that are fundamental to his practice over the past four decades. Such strategies include the building of narrative, elements of humor and irony, a politicized view of America, as well as a concern for community, social conditions, and the environment. In making this early work Sternfeld began to experiment with the Bauhaus-based idea of building a work of art out of two or three dominant hues of relatively equal density; this approach became the central chromatic organizing principle of American Prospects (1978-1986).
Through February 04, 2012
Sol LeWitt – LES
As of this past Tuesday, a collection of 120 photographs of New York’s Lower East Side taken by Sol LeWitt in 1979 has been installed on the side of the Mondrian SoHo. It is a permanent installation, so you can take a stroll there anytime. The hotel partnered with the Paula Cooper Gallery on the project.
Gentleman’s Relish
Casey Kaplan is extremely proud to present the gallery’s first solo exhibition Gentleman’s Relish with New York based artist, Matthew Brannon. Utilizing our three separate gallery spaces, the project presents: new silkscreen and letterpress prints, paintings, sculptures, and a series of collaborative artworks with the designer and artist, Carlo Brandelli. These artworks suggest various props, personas, sets, dialogues, and scenarios of an unpublished noir mystery narrative(written by Brannon) – the plot of which involves a sexually frustrated private detective who is hired to investigate a murder whose prime suspect is a sexually deviant dentist.
Through December 17, 2011
Walton Ford
Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of nine new, large-scale watercolor paintings by Walton Ford, on view for the first time, at 293 Tenth Avenue. The most monumental watercolors that Ford has painted to date, three of the works measure approximately 9 x 12 feet on a single sheet of paper.
These nine paintings are grouped into two series of work: one comprising three portraits of King Kong; and the other six meditations on a passage from the memoirs of the ornithologist John James Audubon (1785- 1851). Both series were painted in 2011, and are consistent with Ford’s practice of expanding the visual language and narrative scope of traditional natural history painting.
Through December 23, 2011
The Future of the Photography Museum
Four different concepts, four different guest curators, four visionary presentations and one museum that offers them a stage. Foam, celebrating its tenth anniversary, has invited four different experts from the cultural field to realize a challenging proposal on how a photography exhibition can be presented in the future. All four results are radical, provocative and presented within the same building at the same moment. By doing so Foam specifically addresses the issue of its own future and how a museum can do justice to a medium as versatile and varied as contemporary photography.
Guest curators: Jefferson Hack, Lauren Cornell, Erik Kessels, Alison Nordstrom
Through December 07, 2011
KARMA at ICA
Join KARMA at ICA for a two-day pop-up shop and a special presentation at 4pm on Saturday, Nov. 12. Located in New York City’s West Village, KARMA is a bookstore, gallery, and publisher specializing in artist publications founded by Brendan Dugan in spring of 2011.
Institute of Contemporary Art
University of Pennsylvania
118 S. 36St Philadelphia, PA 19104
Rasha Kahil & Liane Lang
Both Rasha Kahil and Liane Lang’s artistic practices deal with the human body as form that is alien in its contextual landscape – their work is sometimes confrontational or unsettling, often beautiful and always compelling.
Each of their works shown in this exhibition is irreverent in its own way – in Kahil’s body of work “In Your Home: 2008-2011″ she subverts the domestic sanctity of other peoples living spaces as she covertly disrobes and documents her fleeting nudity in a series of unlikely looking living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms.
Liane Lang’s series “Spectres” utilizes a more reverential environment – the classical cast museum at Heidelberg, Germany – in which to interject. In and around the pure-white casts of Herculean & mythic figures she places finely crafted mannequins, creating intimate and subversive relationships.
Through November 12, 2011
Matthew Stone
Optimism as Cultural Rebellion
The Hole is pleased to announce the first comprehensive gallery exhibition in the United States by British artist Matthew Stone.
The exhibition will focus on the intersections between the ideas, photography and sculptures that define Matthew’s work. Alongside his sculptural installations of photography, he will also be presenting a performance at the gallery titled “Anatomy of Immaterial Worlds” (November 3rd at 9pm) as part of the visual art performance biennial PERFORMA 11.
Through December 10, 2011
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Surface of the Third Order
An exhibition of new objects by Hiroshi Sugimoto, with work from the same series presented concurrently at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. The exhibition will feature two bodies of conceptual three-dimensional work: intimately-sized crystal pagodas inlaid with images from Sugimoto’s iconic Seascape series and large-scale aluminum sculptures based on mathematical functions.
Through December 23, 2011
Swiss Photobooks from 1927 to the Present
The Swiss Foundation for Photography (Fotostiftung Schweiz) is marking its fortieth anniversary by presenting a fresh view of Swiss photography – a tour d’horizon covering a range of illuminating photobooks in which not only the great themes of photography are reflected but also the development of photographic styles and modes of expression.
22 October 2011 to 19 February 2012
Fotostiftung Schweiz
Grüzenstrasse 45
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zürich)
Pharma
The Herb Lubalin Study Center at The Cooper Union examines the influence and impact of graphic design on the pharmaceutical industry in PHARMA, a new exhibit featuring original and rarely seen works by luminaries including Andy Warhol, Lester Beall, Will Burtin and Herb Lubalin. PHARMA’s exploration begins with the avant garde promotionals of the 1940’s, when a market need emerged to promote “miracle” drugs, such as Penicillin, to the medical industry. In a compelling and thought provoking way, PHARMA presents the relationship graphic design has had with the pharmaceutical industry ranging from the federal government’s increased regulations to new marketing tactics where the everyday consumer, not the doctor, is considered the target audience. While the exhibition provides examples of past and present, the public is encouraged to reflect and question how graphic design is used to market drugs and design has transformed these commodities into objects of desire.
Herb Lubalin Gallery, 41 Cooper Square, New York NY
Exhibition Dates: November 01 - through December 03, 2011
Bartholomew at 12 Mail
The art space 12 Mail is pleased to announce Bartholomew, a group show dealing with adolescence in the 90’s, curated by “Je suis une bande de jeunes”. JSBJ is committed to the promotion of contemporary photography by producing zines as well as larger collaborative, photographic publications and exhibitions.
Through November 16, 2011
André Thijssen
If there is such a thing in photography as a “decisive moment”, the term coined by Henri Cartier-Bresson, then there must also be the opposite – the casual, corner of the eye event. These, almost unnoticed events are what photographer André Thijssen captures.
Thijssen literally looks beyond the obvious subject. He is a photographer who concentrates on the periphery of the frame, he sees beauty in things that most people aren’t interested in. Thijssen’s work provides access to parallel worlds, of which we are occasionally also aware, however we prefer to ignore these unfathomable moments in time.
A selection of images and short films will make up Thijssen’s exhibition at KK Outlet. Fringe Phenomena One & Two are published collections of Thijssen’s work and will both be on sale throughout October.
Through October 29, 2011
Peter Hujar
Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Three Lives: Peter Hujar, Paul Thek, & David Wojnarowicz, an exhibition of photographs by Peter Hujar (1934-1987). The exhibition, at 523 West 24th Street, includes 30 photographs made between 1958 and 1985.
Focusing on some of Hujar’s most intimate photographs: self-portraits and portraits of his lovers and fellow artists Paul Thek (1933-1988) and David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992), the exhibition includes many works that will be shown for the first time.
Through December 23, 2011
Agnes Martin: The ‘80s: Grey Paintings
An exhibition of more than twenty grey paintings from the 1980s, reunited for the first time in more than two decades. During the ‘80s Martin concentrated on horizontal divisions of six-foot square canvases, discovering endless permutations by dividing the canvas with pencil lines and varying the tonal range within a palette of greys. The works serve as a bridge between the artist’s early and late works.
Through October 29, 2011
de Kooning: A Retrospective
This is the first major museum exhibition devoted to the full scope of the career of Willem de Kooning, widely considered to be among the most important and prolific artists of the 20th century. The exhibition, which will only be seen at MoMA, presents an unparalleled opportunity to study the artist’s development over nearly seven decades, beginning with his early academic works, made in Holland before he moved to the United States in 1926, and concluding with his final, sparely abstract paintings of the late 1980s. Bringing together nearly 200 works from public and private collections, the exhibition will occupy the Museum’s entire sixth-floor gallery space, totaling approximately 17,000 square feet.
Through January 9, 2012