Maria Lassnig Retrospective at MoMA PS1, New York

The Austrian artist Maria Lassnig (b. 1919) is recognized as one of the most important contemporary painters and can be seen as a pioneer in many areas of art today. The exhibition at MoMA PS1 in New York presents works by Maria Lassnig from all periods of her career, most of them never previously exhibition in the U.S. and spanning her early involvement with graphic abstraction in Paris and Art Informel, to her later shift to figural representation. The show features approximately 50 paintings drawn from public and private collections and the artist herself, as well as a selection of water colors and filmic works. The exhibition runs until May 25, 2014.

Maria Lassnig at MoMA PS1, New York. Press Preview, March 7, 2014. Video by Shimon Azulay

Berlin Superposition - Marcel Buehler, Jens Hanke, Cornelia Renz, Peter Ruehle, Torsten Ruehle, Goethe Institute, Los Angeles, California

Berlin Superposition - 

Marcel Buehler, Jens Hanke, Cornelia Renz, Peter Ruehle, Torsten Ruehle

Five positions of contemporary art

Exhibition
Friday, March 7th - March 28th 2014, 6:30 - 9:00 pm
Goethe-Institut Los Angeles,
5750 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 100, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Free Admission
Info: +1 323 5253388

In physics, the term “superposition” refers to the convergence or overlay of similar values of two different phenomena. For example, two opposing wavelengths, traveling along the same line, converge in the middle, “superpose,” or overlap, and continue on their course undisturbed. It is with this principle in mind that artists Marcel Bühler, Jens Hanke, Cornelia Renz, Peter Ruehle and Torsten Ruehle present their individual perspectives of contemporary art. Although different in form and content, the individual pieces share a commonality that is revealed when their works are presented together. What emerges is a type of “positive interference,” whereby each individual artist’s position is supported by that of the others.

About the curator and artists:

Curator Susanne Wedewer-Pampus is a freelance art critic and curator, and is the Bay Area correspondent of the "KUNSTZEITUNG" since 2011. From 2005 – 2010 she was the director of the Kunstverein Leverkusen, a non-profit organization focusing primarily on younger, not yet established artists. She has published numerous entries for catalogues and art magazines and, amongst others, for "Kuenstler", an encyclopedia for contemporary art.

Cornelia Renz was born in 1966 in Kaufbeuren, Germany.
After studying Art Education, Art History, German Language, Literature Studies and Psychology at the University of Augsburg, she studied Fine Arts at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig from 1993 until 2001.
She has had several solo exhibitions in Berlin, Gran Canary, Konstanz, Essen, Frankfurt/Main and New York.
She lives and works in Berlin.

Marcel Bühler was born in 1969 in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany.
He studied from 1994 until 2002 at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig. He has had several solo exhibitions in Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt/Main and has previously collaborated with Cornelia Renz. In 2006 and 2007 Bühler created stage settings at the Staatstheater Mainz. Bühler lives and works in Berlin.

Peter Ruehle was born in 1975 in Dresden, Germany.
After living and studying in Dresden, Gießen, Iceland, Florence and New York, he now lives and works in Berlin.
He has had several solo exhibitions in Berlin, Darmstadt and Frankfurt/Main and has participated in art fairs in Berlin, Madrid, New York, Zürich or Beijing. In 2007 he won the prize of “Darmstädter Sezession”.

Torsten Ruehle was born in 1975 in Dresden, Germany.
From 1994 until 2000 he studied in Dresden and Hamburg.
He has worked on several projects with his brother, Peter Ruehle. Torsten Ruehle has had solo exhibitions in Berlin, New York, Amsterdam and Cologne. In 1998 he founded the arts society “eiland” with Peter Ruehle and Daniel M. Thurau. He lives in Dresden and Berlin.

Jens Hanke was born in 1966 in Eilenburg, Germany.
From 1985 until 1990 he studied at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig.
Following his studies, he taught at Columbia College Chicago. In 2011 Hanke won the art Karlsruhe prize. His works are presented in public collections such as the collection of Sparkasse Leipzig, SPD Zentrale Berlin and HypoVereinsbank. He lives and works in Berlin.

Presented in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut San Francisco and the Consulate General of Germany, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The exhibit “Berlin Superposition” is on view during the Goethe-Institut’s business hours and events.

Torsten Ruehle

Cornelia Renz

Jens Hanke

Jens Hanke

Jens Hanke

Peter Ruehle

Peter Ruehle

Marcel Buehler

Marcel Buehler

Marcel Buehler

Torsten Ruehle

Torsten Ruehle

Torsten Ruehle

Cornelia Renz

Peter Ruehle

California Landscape into Abstraction: Works from the Orange County Museum of Art, at the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California

California Landscape into Abstraction: 
Works from the Orange County Museum of Art
With masterpieces from OCMA's collection, exhibition explores how California artists have transformed the genre of landscape into abstraction and then back again.

Curated by Dan Cameron

Closes March 9, 2014.

The Orange County Museum of Art presents an in-depth study into the changing modes of landscape representation in modern and contemporary art. Drawn entirely from OCMA’s collection, the paintings, photography, video, and sculpture—among other media—explore how artists on the West Coast have produced work in which landscape evolves into abstraction, and in some cases transforms back again. California Landscape into Abstraction: Works from the Orange County Museum of Art presents more than 120 artworks that, with a few exceptions, range in date from the 1920s through the present day, and includes works by Ansel Adams, Peter Alexander, John Altoon, Elmer Bischoff, Vija Celmins, Jay DeFeo, Llyn Foulkes, Joe Goode, Tim Hawkinson, Drew Heitzler, Dorothea Lange, Helen Lundeberg, Lee Mullican, Agnes Pelton, Ken Price, Ed Ruscha, Millard Sheets, James Turrell, Edward Weston, and Paul Wonner, among others. The exhibition is on view December 15, 2013, through March 9, 2014.

"A persistent theme in California art over the past century is the charged relationship between abstraction and landscape," states OCMA Chief Curator Dan Cameron. "A schism of sorts opened in the 1930s and 1940s between naturalist landscape painters and those of a more modernist inclination, and that resulting breach proved to be a catalyst for a lot of adventurous ideas over several decades. Today it's still considered heresy to connect California Impressionism to later abstract, minimal, and conceptual art, but as a museum that collects from both ends of the spectrum, if seemed like there was more we could bring to the conversation."

California Landscape into Abstraction includes fine examples of 19th and early 20th century landscape painters such as Frank Cuprien, Elmer Wachtel, and James Milford Zornes. By the 1940s, the stylistic tension between the two schools seems to be fully in place with the Modernists—including Oskar Fischinger, Helen Lundeberg, Agnes Pelton, Frederick Wight, and Stanton McDonald Wright—approaching the landscape as a vehicle for expressionist, surrealist, or hard-edge influences.

At the heart of this exhibition are dozens of outstanding examples of mid-century California paintings in which the effort on the part of their makers to incorporate elements of landscape without recycling art historical stereotypes is a thread connecting several styles and genres. Artists such as Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Hans Burkhardt, and Oskar Fischinger—who relocated to the Los Angeles area after years abroad—were working concurrently with Angelenos Edward Biberman, Nicholas P. Brigante, Helen Lundeberg and Lorsen Feitelson. Outnumbered and lacking a cohesive style, this generation was initially unable to compete with the plein air artists, whose vision of a life devoted to rendering luminous waves and sunsets had yet to be surpassed.

The steady influx of modernists into Southern California may have signaled the beginning of the end of the hegemony of California Impressionism, but landscape as subject never went away. Although some of those modernists fell into relative obscurity during the 1950s and 1960s, another avant-garde rose in its wake, centered on the artists associated with the Ferus Gallery (1957–66), including John Altoon, Llyn Foulkes, Kenneth Price, and Ed Ruscha. Defining the landscape by way of Northern California bohemia were several painters based in San Francisco: Elmer Bischoff, Jay DeFeo, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, and Paul Wonner.

The exhibition also features many examples of OCMA’s strong holdings in photography by artists active in the 1970s and 1980s who helped redefine the issues of representation and landscape. By taking an often critical look at the growing industrialization of landscape, such artists as Lewis Baltz, Laurie Brown, John Divola, Lee Friedlander, Anthony Hernandez, Richard Misrach, John Pfahl, Stephen Shore, and Arthur Taussig helped push the boundaries of landscape by bringing civilization into the picture in an often unflattering way.

At the other end of the spectrum, certain artists showed an ongoing commitment to painting, especially in cases where the practitioners pursued an idiosyncratic or maverick approach to the history of the medium. In the early 1960s, Laguna Beach resident Roger Kuntz achieved critical attention for tightly cropped images of freeways and overpasses with occasional glimpses of nature in the margins; ten years later, muralist Terry Schoonhoven was employing trompe-l'oeil techniques at architectural scale representing slices of local nature dramatized within unexpected formats and location. California Landscape into Abstraction also showcases paintings by Carlos Almaraz, Larry Cohen, and John Lees.

Throughout the installation, California Landscape into Abstraction incorporates more recent developments in landscape interpretations, with digital and photographic work by Walead Beshty, Katy Grannan, Shirley Shor, Diana Thater, Mungo Thomson, and Amir Zaki. Painters working today who are interpreting the landscape genre in even looser reading include Brian Calvin, Brian Fahlstrom, Pearl C. Hsiung, and Mary Weatherford.

Instead of a chronological installation for the exhibition, Cameron has organized the works in a thematic design that dissolves some of the barriers between historical styles. Each gallery focuses on a particular theme—albeit with diverse approaches—presenting key selections for visitors to explore and better understand how the landscape interpretations evolved over the decades. The section devoted to Color and Light, for example, includes works by artists separated from each other by a span of many decades—but nonetheless exploring comparable issues. Other thematic groupings include Mapping, Marking, and Measuring; Language of the Land; First Impressions, The Modernist Variations; Occupied Vistas; A Backyard Eden; Paradise Endangered; Manmade Landscapes; and Fictional Histories.

MUSEUM INFORMATION

Orange County Museum of Art is located at 850 San Clemente Drive in Newport Beach, California. Hours are 11 am to 5 pm, Wednesday through Sunday, with extended hours Thursdays from 11 am to 8 pm. Admission is $12 adults; $10 seniors and students; children twelve and under and OCMA members are free. There is no charge for parking. All facilities are handicapped accessible. For more information, call 949.759.1122 or visit www.ocma.net.

"Season of Spring" - a group show curated by Daniel Rolnik at Flower Peper Gallery, Los Angeles, California

Opening: Saturday, March 1st from 6 pm - 10 pm
Exhibition: March 1st - April 4th, 2014

"春" is the symbol of Spring and this March at Flower Pepper Gallery we are welcoming in the season with a group show curated by the world's most adorable art critic - Daniel Rolnik. Fresh flowers and awesome art will blossom into your imagination and fill your hearts with happiness at the not-to-be-missed opening reception on March 1st, 2014 from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm.

"I believe there is a wonderful connection between a work of art and the artist that created it. So, I have travelled the globe to put together this all-star group of artists with positive attitudes, happy hearts, and beautiful images that I can't wait for you to see! YAY!!!" - The World's Most Adorable Art Critic - Daniel Rolnik

Artists:
Aaron Axelrod, Aaron Brown, Adam Roth, Adrienne Adar, Alex Schaefer, Alexander Laccarino (That Kid Who Draws), Alisa Yang, Allison Krumwiede, Allison Smith, Almighty Opp, Amy Yung, Andre Miripolsky, Anne Faith Nicholls, Anthony Ausgang, Ben Tegel, Bob Dob, Brad Tinmouth, Bradford Lynn, Brook Meinhardt, Bruce Lee Webb, Cam Wall, Camilla Taylor, Camille Banchad, Chilin's Pinstriping, Chris Rexroad, Clark Walter, Claudia Kleefeld, Collin van der Sluijs, Comet Debris, Cosmic Nuggets, Dev N Gosha,
Douglas Alvarez, Dr. Cream, EARS, Ellen Schinderman, Ellen Stagg, Emmett Potter, Erik Flores, Erin Burrell, Erwin Recinos, Esther Pearl Watson, Ethan Turpin, Fausto Fernandez, GATS, Ghost Ghost Teeth, Gina Phillips, Graham Curran, Huseyin Sami, Isabelle Alford-Lago, Jacob Arden McClure, Jacob van Loon, James Van Arsdale, Jamie Dean, Jason Brammer, Javier Rameriz, J.A.W. Cooper, Jay Erker, Jay Ryan, Jeni Yang, Jennie Cotterill, Jesse Tise, Jessica Dalva, Jon Bernad, Jon Stich, Joseph Remnant, JT Steiny, Jud Bergeron, Jules Muck, Julian Callos, Keith Dugas, Kelly Allen, Kevin Russ, Kimberly Hahn, Kio Griffith, Kristin Bauer, Laura Krifka, Lauren Von Gaugh, Leah C. Dixon, Liberated Objects, Lilstickyrice, Little Friends of Printmaking, Liz McGrath, Lizzi Kresteller, Lukaz Belcarski, Lyndsey Lesh, Luis "Guava" Arevalo, Haunted Euth, Hieronymus, Homo Riot, Malcolm Stuart, Malka Nedivi, Manly Art, Mark Bieraugel, Mark Todd, Mary Delioussina, Mashanda Lazarus, Max Neutra, MEGA, Michael C. Hsiung, Michelle Devereux, Mike Egan, Mike Reynolds, Miri Chais, Moss All The Time, Nervis Wreck, Nicole Bruckman, Numskull, Om Bleicher, Orson Oblowitz, Pamela Grau, Poppy Lawman, Porous Walker, Quam Odunsi, Quentin "Shplinton" Thomas, Reed Seifer, Rick Morris, Robert Fontenot, Ryan McIntosh, Salao Coboi, Sarah Harkey, Scott McPherson, Septerhed, Sinae Park, T. Fail, Tami Demaree, Teddy Kelly, Terri Berman, Toby Goodshank, The Radioactive Chicken Heads, Rebecca Manson, Rebecca Rose, Trace Mendoza, TSF, Victoria Warehem, XVALA, Yevgeniya Mikhailik, Yuri Hasagawa, Zio Ziegler

www.flower-pepper.com
contact@flower-pepper.com
626-795-1895

Flower Pepper Gallery
121 E Union Street
Pasadena, CA 91103

See Parking info on gallery website.


Curator's Statement

"I sent 138 artists from all over the world blank art packs, which they filled with at least two original works of art as well as complimentary bonuses like pencil sketches, zines, buttons, books, rings, and all other sorts of awesome art objects. When you buy an original piece from one of the artists in "The Season of Spring" at Flower Pepper Gallery, you also get a bunch of surprise goodies that come with it. Most of which are hidden from view until you actually get home and unwrap the packaging.


It's a show for art fans, just like me, and so I wanted the experience of coming to the gallery and purchasing the artworks to be unlike anything anyone has seen before. I've always wanted to buy art from a show like this and it's amazing that I've been able to make it happen. I owe an eternal heartwarming hug of gratitude to all of the artists that agreed to be in the show. Especially, since I asked a lot from them. I mean, they've all done two original pieces with surprise goodies and offered them at a price point that fans can afford."


- Daniel Rolnik