Judith Hopf and Falke Pisano at Praxes Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin

Since August 2013 PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art presented only four artists: namely Gerard Byrne, Jutta Koether, Falke Pisano and Judith Hopf. The concept is built on a six monthly cooperation between the Center, curators and the artists themselves. For each cycle always two artists are invited, who have each one floor. During each period of the exhibition the concept is changed three to five times. On its website, PRAXES provides documents which are related to artists and to particular exhibitions.

In this video we attend the opening reception of the exhibition Judith Hopf: Untitled (4), and directors Rhea Dall and Kristine Siegel provide us with an introduction to the concept of Center and talk about the exhibitions of Judith Hopf and Falke Pisano. The show runs until 14 June, 2014.

Falke Pisano and Judith Hopf at PRAXES, Berlin; Interview with Rhea Dall & Kristine Siegel (founders & directors); May 16, 2014. Video and interview by Frantisek Zachoval.

Salomón Huerta at Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, California

Salomón Huerta

May 10 - June 28, 2014

The power of images cannot never be underestimated. Pictures have an allure that both reveals and attracts the viewer to its subject matter. In the recent work by Solomon Huerta at Christopher Grimes Gallery, Huerta departs from his earlier work of anonymous portraits of men, to more tangible, recognizable subject matter. The subjects include Buddhas, boxers, flowers, a gun, and a beautiful woman named Brenda. Each image has an allure that brings the viewer into the world of the artist.

Huerta wants the viewer to experience opposites and compliments. There are things and people who are desired because they both compliment and oppose each other. Among Huerta's paintings, there is a strange dichotomy where the violent and the beautiful live beside each another, the sacred and the profane. It is a Yin and Yang that exists within the works. There is the feminine and masculine with the portraits of Brenda as the feminine and the boxer as the masculine. The violent (painting of the gun, "The Grey Gesture") resides along with "Lavender" (a painting of the Buddha statute in the garden) as a symbol of beauty and peace. The themes of identity and irony linger in the final analysis of Huerta's recent work. These paintings offer the viewer a meditation of ideas that both attract and oppose each other. Huerta is inviting the viewer to ponder the condition of life and how life itself is both ironic and conflicted.    

Salomón Huerta (Tijuana, Mexico, 1965) lives and works in Los Angeles. His work has been included in the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, and exhibitions at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, and a solo exhibition of his paintings at Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX. Huerta's paintings are in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA and Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA, among others.
Christopher Grimes Gallery
916 Colorado Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90401 USA
phone 310.587.3373
fax 310.587.3383
http://www.cgrimes.com/
Tuesday - Saturday 10 - 5:30

Deep Maroon
2013, oil on canvas on panel, 33-1/8 x 31-1/2 inches, 84.1 x 80 cm,

Brenda with Flowers
2014, oil on canvas on panel, 34 x 22 x 1 inches, 86.36 x 55.88 x 1 cm

Lavender
2014, oil on panel, 46 x 30 x 1-1/8 inches, 116.8 x 76.2 x 2.2 cm

Brenda Portrait
2014, oil on canvas on panel, 14 x 12 x 3/4 inches, 35.56 x 30.48 x 2.54 cm

Purple, Brown with Green
2013, oil on canvas on panel, 48 x 33 inches, 122 x 84 cm,

Untitled (flowers)
2014, oil on canvas on panel, 21 x 17 x 1 inches, 53.34 x 43.18 x 2.54 cm

Gray
2013, oil on canvas on panel, 62 x 44 x 1-1/2 inches, 157.5 x 111.8 x 1.3 cm,

Brenda
2013, oil on canvas on panel, 26-7/8 x 18-1/8 inches, 68.3 x 46 cm

Red
2013, oil on canvas on panel, 65 x 43 inches, 165.1 x 109.2 cm

Blue Eye Shadow
2013, oil on panel, 18-3/8 x 15-3/8 x 1 inches, 46.7 x 39.1 x 2.54 cm 

Blue
2013, oil on canvas on panel, 26-1/2 x 22-5/8 inches, 67.3 x 57.5 cm

Blue, Green with Red
2014, oil on canvas on panel, 12 x 14 x 3/4 inches, 30.48 x 35.56 x 2.54 cm

Gray Gesture
2014, oil on canvas on panel, 8-1/2 x 11 x 3/4 inches, 20.62 x 27.94 x 2.54 cm

Raffi Kalenderian and Nick Aguayo at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, California

Raffi Kalenderian

Kalenderian’s intimate portraits are concerned with process, solitude, and psychological states. These new paintings continue to feature the artist’s friends, often other artists, musicians, and writers. Kalenderian’s close relationships with the subjects of his paintings elevate their intimate mood. While Kalenderian does occasionally paint from photographs, most of his subjects sit for their portraits. Some are painted in private spaces, amongst their belongings and personal affects. Others sit for Kalenderian at his studio, and in these works we see a playful referentiality — his subjects among the canvases, either freshly prepped or in allusion to works in progress — illuminating the studio as a site of both creative and contemplative interaction. These paintings within paintings allow not only for an opportunity for an artist to crystallize a moment in the studio, but also to reveal the process itself as an open, yet personal system.

Kalenderian’s new body of work exhibits a new refinement and maturity, not in the familiar content, but on the surfaces of the paintings themselves. The canvases are thick with impasto, stain, and glaze. The process of applying the paint is slow and diligent, charging the paintings with emotional information and creating a palpable atmosphere around his often languid and melancholic figures. It makes for an unconventional portraiture, concerned less with the body of its muse as with the fragility of their psyche, the details of its surroundings, the relationship between inner and outer states and the phenomenology of the mundane.

Raffi Kalenderian graduated with a BFA from UCLA in 2004. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany; Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Switzerland; Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy; Marc Jancou Fine Art, New York, NY; and at the Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles, CA. Kalenderian’s work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; University Art Museum, Long Beach; Kunstmuseum St Gallen, St Gallen, Switzerland; Eleven Rivington, New York, NY; Co-Lab, Copenhagen, Denmark; and at Kantor/Feuer Gallery, Los Angeles.

Nick Aguayo

Aguayo’s new works are an attempt to dissect the compositions he develops, like an anatomy lab for painting. Aguayo achieves a particularly tactile, matte surface by mixing marble dust into the paint, thus enhancing the handmade aspect of his compositions. His compellingly layered abstract works reveal an inventive approach to the materiality and physicality of paint. Emphasizing the performative aspects of dragging, pressing, brushing, and rolling paint onto canvas, Aguayo layers hand-rendered geometric shapes, building his compositions around the tensions between erasure and transparency, accumulation and excavation.

Aguayo received an MFA from the University of California Irvine in 2012 and a BFA from UCLA in 2007. His work has been featured in exhibitions at Samuel Freeman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; Post Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; LAXART, Los Angeles, CA; Autonomie, Los Angeles, CA; and the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA.

Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects is located at 6006 Washington Blvd in Culver City, 1 block west of La Cienega at Sentney Avenue. Gallery Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am - 6 pm and by appointment.

SUSANNE VIELMETTER LOS ANGELES PROJECTS
6006 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
p: +1 (310) 837-2117
f: +1 (310) 837-2148

Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday 10 am to 6 pm and by appointment.

Mark Ryden "The Gay 90s West" at Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, California (REVIEW)

Mark Ryden's latest exhibition at Kohn Gallery's new space in Hollywood is a visual delight. Ryden's work is well rendered and intelligent on so many levels. In his latest show, Ryden explores the sentimentality of the 1890s and the underlying themes that are hidden from such sentimentality while making references to contemporary pop culture.

When entering the gallery, one is stunned by the pink colored walls that cover the gallery. Pink both matches the works on the walls and provides a calming effect on the visitor. The works make reference to art history, American history and lore, late 19th century Victorian and current pop culture. There are portraits of Abraham Lincoln along with portraits of a doll figure wearing a meat dress, referencing Lady Gaga. There is a portrait of Katy Perry sitting along with various cute animals wearing a garden dress. The artist wants to make both an analogy and allegory about the Victorian and the current state of contemporary society.

The artist explores Victorian decorative design, clichéd notions of “Main Street USA,” small business and immigration (“The Meat Shop”), and vaudeville shows with a dark and complex sentimentality. Integrating the Christ figure and Abraham Lincoln with his wide-eyed, petticoat clad ingénues, Ryden presents the viewer with an unreal and very oddly camp version of American history. His is an exploration of what becomes cliché, what becomes kitsch and what becomes forgotten. Yet through it all Ryden makes some of the most richly rendered, beautifully glazed, idealized yet disturbing works of contemporary art. Like his contemporaries John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage and Neo Rauch, Mark Ryden uses a skillfully honed technique to render his polished and emotionally charged works.

The most compelling work is a large scale piece titled "The Parlor (Allegory of Magic, Quintessence and Divine Mystery):" a 96 x 120 inch painting with a wooden frame hand-carved in bas-relief. This work, I think, encompasses the entire thesis of the show. The idea behind the show is that a false nostalgia exists that places an innocence in the 1890s and in the past. The 1890s may have been a time of innocence, but it was also a time when society began to explore esoteric and occult ideas. There were dark undertones that prevailed behind the alleged innocence of the 1890s. Dracula, Jack the Ripper, and the Symbolist art movement all began or were popular during the 1890s. In the parlor, the scene portrays both a group of young women in a parlor hand various visitors mingle in a seance like setting. The center of the floor shows a baby with a device that has esoteric writings on the spinning wheel. The figures in the background are those myth including the snow yak, the evil eye, a snake, and an unrecognizable creature. Joining the party is death, standing on the left hand side carrying a tarot card. The bas-reliefs make reference to Egyptian and Esoteric symbols. In the rest of the exhibition, various pieces of Americana and objects referring to the "Gay 90s" are prevalent in the show.

The "Gay 90s West" is a smaller version of a show in New York. Ryden's beautifully rendered works are both dream and nightmare. The works mirror a society that longs for a golden time, yet the artist reveals something that both horrifying and beautiful that is hidden from the viewer in a society. I think Ryden's approach to subject matter is very similar to Japanese contemporary artists such as Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara. Like Nara and Murakami, Ryden employs child-like innocence and nostalgia to hide a sinister aspect to human behavior. To Ryden, the innocence of the past only hides the dark truth of history and society.  This is a wonderful show, and it is highly recommended. Go see.


MARK RYDEN THE GAY 90s: WEST

Opening Reception for the Artist: Saturday, May 3rd, 2014, 12pm to 6pm
Exhibition will continue through June 28, 2014

www.kohngallery.com

1227 North Highland Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90038

T 323 461 3311
F 323 461 3312

Gallery Hours

Tuesday - Friday
10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Saturday
11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Lynn Chadwick at Blain Southern, Berlin

On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin 2014 Blain Southern presents a solo exhibition with works by Lynn Chadwick. In the center of the show and presented on the ground floor of the gallery space is the Beasts series, dating from 1989-1991. A number of Lynn Chadwick’s bronze works from the 1950s and 1960s such as Encounter IV, Watcher V or Two Reclining Figures are presented on the upper floor. Jess Fletcher (assistant curator) talks about the concept of the exhibition and the developing process of the Beasts series. Eva Chadwick (the artist’s widow) shares a personal story related to the sculpture Stranger II (1956) and explains the uniqueness of Lynn Chadwick with the work Maquette IV Moon of Alabama (1957).

Lynn Chadwick: Retrospectives at Blain Southern, Berlin. Gallery Weekend Berlin (2014); Interview with Eva Chadwick (widow of Lynn Chadwick) and Jess Fletcher (assistant curator); May 2, 2014. Video and interview by Frantisek Zachoval.

"Unity" by Komar and Melamid, US Bank Tower, Los Angeles, California

One of the most beautiful and provocative public art works is located in the lobby of the tallest building in Los Angeles (and west of the Mississippi). The work is called "Unity" by Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, also known as Komar and Melamid. Komar and Melamid immigrated from the former Soviet Union in the 1970s. The duos work is known for their art about the Soviet Union using both conceptual and postmodern strategies.

For Los Angeles, Komar and Melamid reflect on both the founding of Los Angeles and the current state of a multicultural Los Angeles. The lobby portrays three angels, each perched on the 3 walls that welcome both visitors and tenants to the US Bank Tower. The angels are based on ones found in Renaissance art. The center angel is dressed in blue and gold. The halo is based on  African, Asian, and Native America motifs and symbols. The side angels are rendered in a energetic manner where they appear floating in a storm of intense energy. While the side angels are floating is a storm like environment, the center angel seems at peace with the symbols from various cultures uniting in the halo. This unity is what Komar and Melamid is trying convey to the viewer. The angel, in which the city of Los Angeles is named after, is at piece when the cultures are unified.The lower side plaque gives the story of the founding of Los Angeles. This public art work is a well worth the time to see.

Located at 633 West 5th Street, Los Angeles, California in the lobby of the US Bank Tower.