It Isn’t Important, It’s Only Art… at Arsenal Gallery, Białystok, Poland

The exhibition It Isn’t Important, It’s Only Art… at Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, Poland, presents works from the collection of Arsenal Gallery and Podlaskie Association for the Promotion of Fine Arts. The collection consists mainly of works by Polish artists and artists from other Eastern European countries. In this video, the curator of the show, Monika Szewczyk, talks about the concept of the exhibition, the works on display, and the history and development of contemporary art in Poland and Eastern Europe.

It Isn’t Important, It’s Only Art… at Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, Poland, presents works by the artists Azorro, B.Badalov, R.Bujnowski, V.Bukovec, O.Dawicki, D.Diao, P.Dziemian, J.Ferri, I.Gustowska, E.Jabłońska, Z.Janin, A.Kakhidze, K.Kozyra, M.Kurak, N.Leto, Z.Libera, Magisters, M.Maciejowski, J.Malinowska, A.Molska, T.Mróz, E.Partum, L.Pawela, A.Polska, J.Rajkowska, R.E.P., Sędzia Główny, M.Sobczyk, P.Susid, Twożywo, J.Wójcik, K.Zdunek

It Isn’t Important, It’s Only Art… at Arsenal Gallery, Białystok, Poland. September 21, 2012. Video by Ania Ejsmont, Jakub Gryzowski.

M.A. Peers at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica, California

M.A. Peers reviewed in the Los Angeles Times

For the last 500 to 600 years, art and individuality have got on well with each other. The former has fanned the flames of the latter and the latter has expanded the parameters of the former, at least since the Enlightenment.

At Rosamund Felsen Gallery, M.A. Peers throws a monkey wrench into these developments. Both deadpan and curious, sensitive and flat-footed, her paintings make you wonder why we think that art and individuality have anything at all to do with each other.

It isn’t difficult to mistake Peers’ exhibition for a group show. That accounts for the delicate drawings of life-size show dogs in the first gallery, the disquieting portraits of an anonymous man in the second gallery, and the ghostly abstractions in the third — which appear to have been made by like-minded collaborators or a lone artist who doesn’t trust her first impulses and is even more suspicious of what happens with second looks, second thoughts, second guesses.

Something similar takes shape when you spend a little quality time with Peers’ paintings. The longer you look, the more her apparently disparate series, styles and subjects seem to be cut from the same cloth — not in a way that highlights the artist’s unique touch or creative genius, but in a way that strips things down to the basics, in which a humbling sense of attentiveness holds everything together, barely and precariously.

Neither egotistical nor self-impressed, Peers’ paintings on canvas and paper open onto a world too elusive to be tied to a signature style and all the more potent when it is shared with strangers.

-David Pagel

 October 26, 2012

Rosamund Felsen Gallery
Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Ave # B5a,
Santa Monica, CA 90404
http://www.rosamundfelsen.com/

(310) 828-8488

Edith Beaucage "Bidibidiba" at CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles, California

The girl with "je ne sais quoi"...is Bidibidiba!

Bidibidiba, Edith Beaucage’s second CB1 Gallery exhibition is a figure of speech for love, pleasure, sentimentality, and fun...this is Bidibidiba! Bidibidiba is where characters are built with painting activation in mind. Multicolored brush strokes are used to build abstractions that are part of the figure. The imagery is built with paint that reverts the figure/ground conversation to a figure/figure construction by building what used to be "ground" onto the same plane as the figure so they can interact.

Edith Beaucage’s exhibition Bidibidiba consists of “idealistically” bound portraits of diverse characters including girls and philosophers, art students (both fictional and real), hipsters with mustaches, Egyptian girls, princesses, knights, dragons, musketeers, wigged women, bearded men, and dandies. They are sometimes in conversations or simply doing their jobs of being portraits and holding the paint together.

Bidibidiba, is the title song of the 1970 movie “L’ Homme Orchestre” (“The Orchestra Men”) with French comedian Louis De Funes. Specifically, the Bidibidiba dance within this comedy had the effect of molding a desire in the Beaucage for a modern and colorful life. Bidibidiba is light, entertaining, new, and full of sentimentality. Also influencing the artist is Roland Barthes who wrote Le Plaisir Du Texte (The Pleasure of the Text), a book he was hoping would influence other thinkers, philosophers and researchers to consider pleasure within the critical discourse. In a 1973 interview, Roland Barthes talks about his book and explains very simply that the notion of pleasure is on “the right”, attempting to convince his friends on “the left” that pleasure should not be dismissed and actually included into criticality. He later took on the subject of love in the same manner in 1977 with his book Fragments d’un Discours Amoureux (A Lovers Discourse).

Born in Canada, Edith Beaucage now lives and works in Los Angeles. She is a 2010 MFA graduate of Otis College of Art and Design, having studied at Palazzo Spinelli, Centro per L’arte e Il Restauro in Florence Italy and received her BA from Bishop’s University in Quebec, Canada. Her work is in many public and private collections including the collection of Creative Artists Agency, Los Angeles, CA.

CB1 Gallery
207 W. 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
213.806.7889
http://www.cb1gallery.com

Hours:
Wednesday through Saturday, 11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Sunday, 1:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Or by appointment
 

Franz Ackermann at Faena Arts Center, Buenos Aires

German artist Franz Ackermann’s most recent work is a 2800 square feet site-specific work. The piece that he created for the Molinos Room of Faena Arts Center in Buenos Aires consists of 20 panels of painted wood. It’s Franz Ackermann’s biggest mural ever. For this artwork, Ackermann spent several weeks in Buenos Aires to get to know the city, photographing it, and conceiving the piece.

Franz Ackermann was born in Neumarkt St. Veit, Germany, in 1963. He studied art at the Akademie er Bildenden Kunste in Munich and Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Hamburg. To create his works, he uses photographs and sketches. Traveling is one of the fundamental parts of his work. He creates mental maps, which then are transformed into compositions of color and form. He has had solo exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Bonn, Irish Museum of Modern Art, National Museum Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, among others. His works can be found in important collections such as Daimler Contemporary Berlin and Inho- tim Center of Contemporary Art, Minas Gerais.

Franz Ackermann: Walking South at Faena Arts Center, Buenos Aires. Opening reception, November 9, 2012. Video by Roberto Rey, Milos Deretich, Luciana Zothner, and Ángel Sánchez.

"Paint Can" a group show curated by Mike McLain. Pomona Packing Plant, Pomona, California

Experience what paint can do in the hands of 14 contemporary artists.

Tania Jazz Alvarez
Joshua Dildine
Clifford Eberly
Philip Espinoza
Kristin Frost
Steven Hampton
Scott Jamieson
Aragna Ker
Mihyang Kim
Phil Kim
Eric Lue
Julie Orr
Gabriel Luis Perez
Seth Pringle