Archives For Exhibitions

The Final Art Work of Sigmar Polke

August 7, 2014 — Leave a comment

With his beautiful, crazy, confusing, monumental and must see retrospective winding down at MOMA I could not help thinking about the final project Sigmar Polke spent the most time on. Forget that everyone has found it impossible to decode his enormously confusing body of work (see review links below). It turns out Polke use to be a stained glass artist and he spent the last 3 years of his life designing stained glass windows for the Grossmünster Church in Zurich using a variety of techniques including thinly sliced geodes. Much like the MOMA retrospective that Peter Schjeldahl calls, “the most dramatic (and important) museum show of the century to date”, the final stained glass works are a wonder. 

Sigmar Polke

sigmarpolke_kf_gm_03

Sigmar Polke Elijah Chariot

 All Images via http://www.grossmuenster.ch/polke.html

 

A PDF (from the church web site) explaining the entire project can be viewed here.

via Sigmar Polke – Church Windows Grossmünster Zürich from ikonoTV on Vimeo.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/04/28/shock-artist

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/05/12/many-colored-glass-2

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117806/sigmar-polkes-alibis-reviewed-jed-perl

http://galleristny.com/2014/03/connecting-polkes-dots-moma-decodes-the-work-of-a-tricky-postwar-master/

 

 

The Final Art Work of Sigmar Polke

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Joel-Peter Witkin & Jerome Witkin: Twin Visions

June 30, 2014 — Leave a comment

Most are familiar with the incredible photographic tableaux’s  of Joel Peter Witkin but until this exhibition I did not know there was an equally talented yet estranged twin brother named Jerome Witkin. Take a few minutes and soak in the exhibition of a unique moment in the history of art; Separated twin artists reunited for the first time over 70 years later.

(Check out the video….Very interesting to see how their work (which is equally visionary in many respects) compares and contrasts).

Las Meninas, 1987. Gelatin Silver Print, 30 x 40 inches ©Joel-Peter Witkin & Courtesy of Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles

Las Meninas, 1987. Gelatin Silver Print, 30 x 40 inches
©Joel-Peter Witkin & Courtesy of Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles

 

Twin Visions: Jerome Witkin & Joel-Peter Witkin

An historic exhibition united two celebrated artists – identical twin brothers – Jerome Witkin & Joel-Peter Witkin

March 1, 2014 at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in Los Angeles.

Jerome Witkin and Joel-Peter Witkin are acknowledged as two of the greatest contemporary artists in their respective genres. Jerome Witkin is a painter cited by critics and curators as the finest narrative contemporary artist. Joel-Peter Witkin is equally regarded as a master of his genre – a groundbreaking photographer famous for masterfully conjuring his uniquely surreal images. These identical twin brothers, artistically estranged, have enjoyed remarkable success during their respective careers spanning more than fifty years, have never exhibited together. Until now.

via Jack Rutberg Fine Arts

 

©Jerome Witkin THE GERMAN GIRL, 1997 Oil on Canvas Courtesy of Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles

©Jerome Witkin
THE GERMAN GIRL, 1997
Oil on Canvas
Courtesy of Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles

 

JOEL-PETER WITKIN & JEROME WITKIN : TWIN VISIONS

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Hiroshi Sugimoto and The Last Supper

June 8, 2014 — Leave a comment

Back in 1999 Hiroshi Sugimoto made a very large set of images depicting The Last Supper, which were photographs of wax models from a wax museum based on Di Vinci’s famous painting. (He did an entire series of portraits of wax models called Portraits and this work is from that series). This particular piece was in storage in a basement in New York when hurricane Sandy hit. The piece was severely damaged by the waters in the flooded basement. Instead of destroying the work Sugimoto has deemed it an act of God and is selling as such with a new title: The Last Supper: Acts of God now showing at the Fraenkel Gallery.

When god is your partner in making an artwork how can you go wrong in turning what is actually a destroyed work into an even more collectable piece? I will let you be the judge….

“I chose to interpret this as the invisible hand of God coming down to bring my monumental, but unfinished Last Supper to completion. Leonardo completed his Last Supper over five hundred years ago, and it has deteriorated beautifully. I can only be grateful to the storm for putting my work through a half-millennium’s worth of stresses in so short a time”. 

Hiroshi Sugimoto 

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto, The Last Supper: Acts of God, 1999/2012. © Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Hiroshi Sugimoto, The Last Supper: Acts of God, 1999/2012. © Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

The Last Supper: Acts of God (detail), 1999/2012 © Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery,

The Last Supper: Acts of God (detail), 1999/2012 © Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery,

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto and The Last Supper.  All photos and quotes via the Fraenkel Gallery.

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Sarah Charlesworth: Objects of Desire: 1983-1988

May 16, 2014 — Leave a comment

During her long illustrious career Sarah Charlesworth has explored a haunting and beautiful body of work about the power of the image. In her legendary series Objects of Desire her minimal presentations translate to a very powerful body a work that explores how images and our subconscious attractions collide.

It’s been a long, long time since these wonderful works have been on view. Most are from private collections.  Not to be missed.

SARAH CHARLESWORTH
Objects of Desire: 1983-1988
April 25, 2014 – June 21, 2014

Maccarone Gallery, 630 Greenwich Street, NYC   http://www.maccarone.net/

c AM

Via the artist’s website

“There’s something about the surface of a photograph, how it acts, and about the coherence of photographic illusion that both fascinates and disturbs me. To me, there’s something mysterious about what’s physically there and how it acts on our psyches…how it connects us to some other thing-to a chair, a human being, to a different reference point, a moment in time, and finally, to desire itself.”
Interview with David Deitcher, Afterimage, Summer 1984

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Via the artist’s website

 

 

SARAH CHARLESWORTH: Objects of Desire: 1983-1988

 

 

 

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Contemporary Arab Art & Photography at FotoFest 2014

May 10, 2014 — Leave a comment

The biggest biannual photography event in the USA is FotoFest. It is the birthplace of photographic careers; Just ask my good friend Thomas Kellner. But this year its all about Arab Photography, Video and Art but mostly its about and breaking down all our western assumptions about the Middle East. They did a great job bringing in a busload of artists to exhibit their work all over Houston. Hats off to the the folks at FotoFest who do it better than just about any other arts organization when it comes to opening minds and hearts through the power of ART.

Artist: HASSAN HAJJAJ

FotoFest has commissioned German curator Karin Adrian von Roques as
the Lead Curator for the Biennial. Ms. von Roques is known for her work,
over the past 20 years, bringing contemporary Arab art to international
museums and galleries throughout the world. She is working with FotoFest
Co-Founder and Senior Curator Wendy Watriss to organize the 2014 Arab
exhibitions.
“Our focus on Arab art was not motivated by opportunism related to the Arab
world’s current prominence in the media, but rather by a genuine conviction
that the U.S. and Western audiences should have the opportunity to hear from
more voices in the region and see the Arab world in more nuanced ways,” says
Ms. Watriss. “Finding high quality art from around the globe that engages with
the issues of our world is what FotoFest does.”

via FotoFest

Want to see more? Check out these Arab Galleries:

FOTOFEST 2014 BIENNIAL ARAB ARTISTS
(alphabetized by last name with country of origin)

Ebtisam AbdulAziz (UAE)
Khalil Abdul Wahid (UAE)
Ammar Al Beik (Syria)
Manal Al Dowayan (Saudi Arabia)
Shadia Alem (Saudi Arabia)
Reem Al Faisal (Saudi Arabia)
Sadik Alfraji (Iraq)
Tarek Al-Ghossein (Palestine/Kuwait)
Boushra Almutawakel (Yemen)
Khalifa Al Obaidly (Qatar)
Sheikh Khalid Bin Hamad
Bin Ahmad Al-Thani (Qatar)
Jowhara AlSaud (Saudi Arabia)
Sama Alshaibi (Iraq)
Karima Al Shomely (UAE)
Sami Al-Turki (Saudi Arabia)
Tammam Azzam (Syria)
Lara Baladi (Egypt)
Hicham Benohoud (Morocco)
Ayman Yossri Daydban (Saudi Arabia)
Shady El-Noshokaty (Egypt)
Ayman El Semary (Egypt)
Lalla Essaydi (Morocco)
Mounir Fatmi (Morocco)
Lamya Gargash (UAE)		 Abdulnasser Gharem (Saudi Arabia)
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Lebanon)
Khaled Hafez (Egypt)
Hassan Hajjaj (Morocco)
Rula Halawani (Palestine)
Nermine Hammam (Egypt)
Hazem Harb (Palestine)
Hazem Taha Hussein (Egypt)
Georges Fikry Ibrahim (Egypt)
Noel Jabbour (Palestine)
Ahmed Jadallah (Palestine)
Mohamed Kanoo (Bahrain)
Mohammed Kazem (UAE)
Huda Lutfi (Egypt)
Maha Malluh (Saudi Arabia)
Ahmed Mater (Saudi Arabia)
Hassan Meer (Oman)
Samer Mohdad (Lebanon)
Youssef Nabil (Egypt)
Ayman Ramadan (Egypt)
Steve Sabella (Palestine)
Faisal Samra (Saudi Arabia)
Wael Shawky (Egypt)
Camille Zakharia (Lebanon)

Contemporary Arab Art & Photography at FotoFest 2014

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