MATT CONNORS, ROBERT CUMMING AND FLORIAN MORLAT at Cherry and Martin, Culver City, California

For this exhibition, Matt Connors and Florian Morlat invited Robert Cumming to exhibit the photographs he made in Los Angeles in the early and mid-1970s. Like many conceptual photographers, Cumming embraced the photograph as an objective tool to document his narrative conceptual impulses. However, his photographs are separated from those of his peers John Baldessari and William Wegman by his interest in the construction of the photograph itself, especially with regard to the picture plane. At his house and in his backyard, Cumming built elaborate set-ups that when photographed resolved themselves to present odd tableaux that were concise and open-ended, serious and funny, obvious and mysterious. The photographs he took resonate today with the same uncanny wit and authority they had when they were made. The exhibition, Matt Connors, Robert Cumming, Florian Morlat, presents an open-ended dialogue concerning the structure of art objects and how we look at them.

Matt Connors’ work is currently the subject of a two-person exhibition with Fergus Feehily at the Dallas Museum of Art. In the fall of 2011, Connors will have concurrent solo shows at Lüttgenmeijer and Veneklasen Verner (both Berlin). He has had solo exhibitions at Cherry and Martin (Los Angeles), Canada (New York) and The Breeder (Athens). His work has been reviewed in the New York Times and Artforum. Connors received his BFA from Bennington College in 1995 and his MFA from Yale University in 2006. He lives and works in New York.

Robert Cumming’s works are in the collections of such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Baltimore Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Denver Art Museum; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu. Cumming lives and works in Massachusetts.

Florian Morlat will have a solo exhibition at Cherry and Martin in February 2012. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Galerie Ben Kaufmann (Berlin), Rowley Kennerk Gallery (Chicago) and Daniel Hug Gallery (Los Angeles). Significant group exhibitions include YBA, curated by Ali Subotnick, Mauritzio Cattelan and Olaf Metzel, Berlin Biennale (Berlin); Florian Morlat and Thaddeus Strode, Michael Hall Gallery (Vienna); Abstract Art Now—Strictly Geometrical?, Wilhelm-Hack Museum, (Ludwigshafen, Germany); and Home Show, Revisited, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (Santa Barbara). Morlat studied at the Akademie der bildenden Kuenste, Munich, received his diploma from the Kunstakademie Duesseldorf in 1996 and his MFA at University of California, Los Angeles in 1999. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

2712 S. La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, California
90034
Phone 310 559 0100
Fax 310 559 0120
info@cherryandmartin.com
www.cherryandmartin.com

Alison Rash / Chris Trueman: The Suspended Literal at Autonomie Projects, Los Angeles, California

In their new show at Autonomie gallery in downtown Los Angeles, Alison Rash and Chris Trueman engage in a dialog between form and line, color and composition, and pattern and design. Rash's works on paper consists of line and form, interspersed in pattern and design. The works are well done. Rash visually engages in the viewer's belief of form and design in a playful manner that teases and challenges at the same time. 

Trueman's paintings are Rothko-esque in their composition and color. The paintings challenge the viewer into looking deep into the painting while taking the viewer to another dimension. They are airy and almost mystical in nature.  However, unlike Rothko, Trueman's paintings formulate shape and composition so that the viewer recognizes the strategy of what the artist wants to convey. The paintings communicate a structure that demands of the viewer its attention. Both Rash and Trueman take different approaches to abstraction and engage the viewer and each other of specific strategies on painting. A wonderful show and I highly recommend seeing it. 

Autonomie Gallery

333 South Spring Street, Unite E4., 

Los Angeles, CA 90808

Email for hours: autonomie333@gmail.com

Chris Truman

Allison Rash

Allison Rash

Allison Rash

Allison Rash

Chris Trueman

Chris Trueman

Chris Trueman

Allison Rash

“Through a Glass Darkly” Tim Braden, Daniel Pitin, Ciprian Muresan and Hugo Wilson: Group Show at Mihai Nicodim Gallery, Culver City, California

Curated by the British art critic and curator, Jane Neal, the exhibition brings together four of the most dynamic and intriguing young artists working in Europe today: Tim Braden, Daniel Pitin, Ciprian Muresan and Hugo Wilson. The title of the show is taken from a verse in the Bible (1 Corinthians 13). It references the blurry confusion of life in light of the future clarity of heavenly perspective. The phrase also served as the title for Ingmar Bergman's 1961 film involving four characters, each of whom offers an insight into the mind and actions of the others, thus serving as a kind of “mirror”.

Taking place on a bleak Swedish island over an intense, 24 hour period, the film charts the descent into madness of Karin, the main protagonist, and witnesses the often desperate actions of the remaining three characters: Karin's husband (and psychiatrist), her absentee father and her highly-strung brother. Karin's obsessive watching of the wallpaper in her room, and her “fate” at  the hands of the men in her life has prompted comparisons to be drawn with Charlotte Perkins Gilman's chilling short story: The Yellow Wallpaper (first published 1892).

The artists in this exhibition were all aware of both the Biblical verse and the film. The intention behind the show was not to call the artists to respond directly to either verse or film, but for them to have in mind something of the atmosphere or motivation of each. The four artists work in distinctly different ways: Braden in paint, Pitin in paint and film, Muresan in drawings, film and sculpture and Wilson in paint, drawing and sculpture; yet each is concerned with something of the sensibilities outlined above.

Mihai Nicodim Gallery

3143 South La Cienega Blvd, Unit B, 

Los Angeles, CA 90016

T: 310.838.8884 

info@nicodimgallery.com 

www.nicodimgallery.com

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday
11 – 6 pm

Lesley Vance at David Kordansky Gallery, Culver City, California

June 25, 2011 — August 13, 2011

Vance's compositions, activated by illusionistic plays of light and wet-on-wet brushwork, function as vessels for the movement of paint itself: for hue, viscosity, and the relationship between hand and medium. The work is defined by this simultaneous action, one in which paint can be seen both for its intrinsic properties and for its ability to imply fictive spaces.

While Vance's process begins with the observation of actual objects that she arranges and lights in the studio, the paintings are records of an evolution of materials, and of the transformation from one set of objects and light effects to another. In Vance's work abstraction is a force that establishes alchemical relationships between artworks and the circumstances that give rise to them.

The new paintings often depict attenuated, dispersed shapes rather than consolidated ones, as if to call attention to light's calligraphic movement across the visual field. They also chart unexpected connections between the lineage of the still life genre and a host of other archetypes and movements throughout the history of art. In particular, some of the new works conjure the otherworldly light, perforated spaces, and strange familiarity that the surrealists brought to painting during the first half of the twentieth century.

A body of new watercolor works on paper represents another material expression of these concerns. Like the paintings, they are documents of a multi-phased process of looking and legislating the transition of light from one medium to another. Their brushwork, however, occurs at a smaller scale, and brings out more intimate aspects of the forms and their relationships to the overall composition. The differences that separate the watercolors from the paintings are differences of degree rather than essence. In this sense they are not representations of pre-existing things, but essays on light as the basic force of representation.


David Kordansky Gallery
3143 S. La Cienega Blvd. Unit A
Los Angeles, CA 90016
Tel. 310-558-3030
Fax. 310-558-3060

Hours

Tuesday thru Saturday

11am - 6pm

www.davidkordanskygallery.com

TateShots at the Venice Biennale 2011: Markus Schinwald at the Austrian Pavilion

Ben Lewis navigates Markus Schinwald's physically unsettling installation, and finds out why the Austrian artist is obsessed with legs.

TateShots at the Venice Biennale 2011: Allora and Calzadilla at the American Pavilion

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla have been collaborating since 1995, their work spans many mediums - sculpture, photography, performance, sound and video. The Tate Museum interview Allora and Calzadilla for their show at the American Pavillion in 2011 Venice Biennale.

Happy 4th of July

Summer Group Show: "Six Pack" at Richard Telles Fine Art

 Six Pack
June 25 - July 30
Chris Ellis
Patrick Jackson
John McCallister
Jon Pestoni
Ryan Sluggett
John Williams

Richard Telles Fine Art   
7380 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036,
Tel 323 965 5578, Fax 323 965 5579
info@tellesfineart.com
Gallery Hours, Tues-Sat 11AM-5PM and by appointment