Pornucopia

February 04 – March 11, 2011

Opening reception
Friday February 4th, 6-9PM

Featuring:

Ryan Alexiev , Josh Atlas, Ion Birch, Alison Blickle, Paul Brainard, Amanda Church, Duncan Hannah, Catherine Howe, Stephen Irwin, Will Kurtz, Sarah Kurz, Daniel Lyons, Panni Malek, Kara Maria, Tom Sanford, Lyle Starr and Prudence Whittlesey

THE PRESS RELEASE:

Allegra LaViola Gallery is pleased to present “Pornucopia”, a group exhibition featuring painting, works on paper, video, sculpture and installation pieces.

The exhibition takes the idea of plenty as its starting point. Once a notion so incredible it was given as a gift by the Gods, the idea of abundance is now an every day experience. Supermarkets are filled with brightly colored packaged foods that never rot and barely dressed women are used to sell everything from toilet paper to toothbrushes. In this world of excess, what do we use to fill the void?

In Ryan Alexiev’s The Wizard of O’s we are introduced to a shockingly bright landscape of breakfast cereal. Referencing the poppy induced journey that Dorothy and her friends undertook, Alexiev builds a city out of neon dust; just as the Wizard in the story turned out to be just a little man behind a curtain, so too the fantastical scenery here is only air with additive colors. Our sweet tooth is indulged again by Josh Atlas, whose “Donut Spa” is blackly humorous: the usual image of a svelte woman surrounded by celery is replaced by the revolting overabundance of sugary donuts, so many that the man in question is engulfed by the tide of dessert.

Junk food makes an appearance in the work of Paul Brainard, whose paintings and drawings combine the advertiser’s artful positioning with an onslaught of provocative images. Like navigating a video game or super highway, information is thrown at us from every angle, asking us to pause and indulge before being replaced by another equally captivating vision. Advertising also makes an appearance in Duncan Hannah’s cheeky collages, though what is on offer is not a straightforward as it seems. Similarly, the kaleidoscope world of Kara Maria, where aging naked women guzzle gasoline, is couched in the static world of TV and advertising. Images once used to be alluring are transformed into horrifying combinations, no longer seducing, just frightening. Tom Sanford does not shy away from transforming the ignoble into the stately, either. An unappealing trio of celebrity women are named The Three Graces, and the simple beer can and rolled bill are changed from mere tools of indulgence to monumental icons. The celebration of beauty and elegance comes up empty when what is venerated is hollow.

Taking a more delicate approach, Catherine Howe presents richly constructed still lives that vibrate with veiled energy. From deep within the fecund arrangements, small ghosts manifest and then disappear as our gaze shifts. There are no preservatives here: the bounty is real, but rotting. The classical also informs the work of Alison Blickle, Sarah Kurz *and *Panni Malekzadeh, whose beautiful women frolic indoors and out. Though the characters seem complicit in their seductive gestures, their cinematic allure is all for an audience of no one. Like the airbrushed women who wink from the pages of pornography magazines in solitary splendor, these figures are performing for the viewer alone.

The more graphic sexual content of pornography is embraced by Stephen Irwin, whose works are the classic embodiment of “know it when you see it” pornography. Even with the choice bits missing there is no question what is going on here. Ion Birch’s cartoon romps seem innocent from afar, but viewed for more than a second leave no doubt as to what is going on. Amanda Church and Daniel Lyons also thrust the explicit at us, leaving little doubt as to how we approach and commodity the bodies presented as objects. And if it is action we are after Will Kurtz, Lyle Starr and Prudence Whittlesey do not shy away from delivering the goods.

As we give ourselves permission to satisfy every desire or craving with a quick fix, we must ask what we give up in the process. Trading the real cornucopia for the plastic version doesn’t preserve us forever, it merely staves off the inevitable. But we certainly will have a good time getting there.

For my part, Morten will show my newest painting, “Sexy Monument (after Guston)”. It is my updated, and super sexy version of the great Philip Guston painting, “Monument”(1976), that hangs at the Tate.

If you happen to be in Copenhagen this December, please go check out the show.

“The Poulsen X-Mas Show 2010″

OPENING Thursday December 2nd, Reception 5-8PM @ GALLERY POULSEN

Flæsketorvet 24, Kødbyen
1711 Copenhagen V

Featuring:

Tom Sanford (US) Aaron Johnson (US) Smike Käszner, Peter Ravn, Olafur Eliasson, Kristleifur Björnsson (IS)
Liv Carlé Mortensen, Debra Hampton (US) Vuk Vidor (F) Jeanne Susplugas (F) Lars Grenaae, William Anastasi (US)
Dove Bradshaw (US) Jeppe Hein, Javier Aguilera (ES) Christian Finne, Mihael Milunovic (SRB) og Artstamp.dk

The traditional Christmas exhibition at Gallery Poulsen has in other words a lot of fine art for its guests and offer a chance to purchase an exclusive Christmas gift to you or your dearest. The art that is shown is all selling at a modest sum.
We are shooting in “The Poulsen X-Max show 2010” Thursday, December 2nd at 5 pm. All of the Gallery´s permanent artists is presented and shows their new and interesting work. It is names that have performed well in 2010 and whom are expected to do even better in 2011. As an extra spice, we will surprise with other artists; The exhibition includes work that is done by World Stars, Olafur Eliasson, Jeppe Hein, Dove Bradshaw and William Anastasi. All four are represented at world greatest museums and are among today’s acclaimed and popular artists.
2010 has been wonderful and an eventful year for Gallery Poulsen. New location, new daring exhibitions and new artists. With the Christmas exhibition we review the past year and look forward to 2011, which will be an even greater year!

Welcome

From October 16th to December 30th at the GALERIE JEAN-LUC+TAKAKO RICHARD « THE INCOMPLETE – PARIS » will present a selection of American contemporary art from the last two decades made by one of New York’s greatest art collector: Hubert Neumann.

Galerie JEAN-LUC+TAKAKO RICHARD
74 Rue de Turenne / 3, Impasse Saint-Claude, 75003 Paris

October 16 – December 30, 2010
“The Incomplete – Paris”, artists
from the Neumann Family Collection

ABNEY BEVILACQUA BESSELAAR BICKERTON BUSBY CHASTAIN-CHAPMAN CRAUN EDWARDS ELROD ESNOZ GLADSTONE HOWARD JOHANSON KILIMNIK MUNRO NARTEN PARKER ROBERTS RONAY SAMSON SANFORD SCHUMANN SIMON UEKAWA VAISMAN VEILHAN WILLIAMS
A “collective” exhibition
The 28 emerging or established artists who preseet 45 recent artworks are all supported and collected by Hubert Neumann, collector and now curator too.
The gallerists Jean-Luc and Takako Richard, in collaboration with twelve international galleries and some of the artists themselves, have made up the exhibition in France. “THE INCOMPLETE -PARIS” gives the opportunity to see the latest works of some of the best – and still relatively unrecognized in France – contemporary artists well exhibited in New York City. Ultimately it heightens the role of the collector in the contemporary art world.

It began with a meeting
It all began in March 2010 at the Pulse Art Fair in New York when Hubert Neumann (one of the 200 most influent art collectors according to Artnews magazine’s rating) met the gallerists Jean-Luc and Takako Richard specialists in American Contemporary Art. As it happens, they all share the same passion for some artists such as Benjamin Edwards, Ashley Bickerton or Jeff Elrod. Hubert Neumann invited them to visit his family art collection the next day. Jean-Luc Richard recalls an unforgettable aesthetic experience “seeing such a big art collection and so many masterpieces from the 20th and 21st century that have been gathered over two generations in his townhouse …” He then puts forward that Hubert Neumann should select among the artists from his art collection those whose work it would be the most interesting to show in Paris. THE INCOMPLETE – PARIS exhibition was born out of this meeting. It shows the unique vision of a collector on New York latest art trends.

A certain idea of how to collect
Jean-Luc Richard and Hubert Neumann share a passion for contemporary art that is not based on rates or trends. Hubert Neumann’s collection is first and foremost the trace of meetings made over the years as well as journeys in France and the United States. His father was also a great contemporary art lover but at that time, when Morton Neumann came to Paris in order to follow the work of young unknown artists, those were named Picasso, Dubuffet, Miro, Giacometti, Gris, Braque or Léger… Nowadays, with unaltered passion and freethinking, Hubert Neumann keeps on completing the family collection.

An “INCOMPLETE” and “NON-MODERNIST” exhibition
Why “THE INCOMPLETE”? “A collection is an unending quest and therefore never completed. It goes on through generations“. On a conceptual point of view, Hubert Neumann explains that “we live in an uncompleted world and that lack of definition or closure is reflected in all aspects of our lives that feed and perpetuate the ever-mutating organism that have become the contemporary art world“.
“THE INCOMPLETE” illustrates a new artistic vision that Hubert Neumann defines as a “non-modernism”. The “non-modernism” is neither a movement nor a clearly definite term, but expresses “a fundamental rupture from modernism of an overwhelmingly diverse character”. The artworks, either at the gallery or in Hubert Neumann’s collection, demonstrate the possible coexistence of divergent, and sometimes incongruous, ideas.

The gallerist point of view
According to Jean-Luc Richard, “the most interesting aspect of this collector lies in its spirit of constant discovery and absolute confidence. This enables him to present on an even level artists whose fame still greatly differs”.

THE INCOMPLETE – PARIS includes works by the following artists: Nina Chanel Abney, Michael Van Den Besselaar, Ashley Bickerton, James Busby, Sydney Chastain-Chapman, Devon Costello, Justin Craun, Benjamin Edwards, Jeff Elrod, Manuel Esnoz, Wendell Gladstone, Ridley Howard, Chris Johans Johanson, Karen Kilimnik, JP Munro, Stan Narten, Erik Parker, Charlie Roberts, Matthew Ronay, Justin Samson, Tom Sanford, Christian Schumann, John F. Simon Jr., Aya Uekawa, Meyer Vaisman, Xavier Veilhan, Kelli Williams.

50 Ways To Keep Your Lover: 4 Sep – 10 Oct 2010

Galleri S.E.
Kalfarveien 76,
5018 BERGEN

artists: Unni Askeland, Heather Bennett, Ingrid Berven, Bjørn Bjarre, Gio Black Peter,  Pavel Büchler, Bjørn Carlsen, Anja Carr , Nicola Costantino, Stanislav Ginsburg,, Line Hvoslef , Brian Kenny, Dominik Lejman, Maleonn Ma, Slava Mogutin, Trine Lise Nedreaas, Richard Pasquarelli, Thomas Pihl, Erik Sandberg , Tom Sanford , Federico Solmi, Nicola Verlato, Ronald Versloot, Eric White, Simon Willems, Santiago Ydáñez

NEW PAINTINGS

Opening Reception: Saturday, August 21st 6-8pm

Exhibition Hours: Saturday, August 21st 12-8pm
Sunday, August 22nd 12-6pm
560 Broadway 3rd fl. suite 305

“New Paintings” is a two-day pop up exhibition comprised of 18 New York based artists. All paintings have been created within the last year and range thematically from physical landscape to political powers. This exhibition creates a dialog among disparate works, offering an exciting view of current painting.

Ali Banisadr, Erik Benson, Megan Bisbee-Durlam, Guillermo Creus, Ariel Dill, Jeffrey Gibson, Vera Iliatova, Dan Kopp, Greg Lindquist, Francesco Longenecker, Amy Longenecker- Brown, Gina Magid, Andy Piedilato, Eulas Pizarro, Nathlie Provosty, Carlos Roque, Tom Sanford, Wendy White

BIG PICTURE
Organized by Ryan Schneider & Tom Sanford
Priska C. Juschka Fine Art
Opening July 8th, 6-9PM

In simplest terms BIG PICTURE is just that, a show of big pictures. The pictures – all paintings – are big in terms of size, subject matter, energy, ambition and visual generosity. Many are aggressive or even garish in the color, they are often over worked, heavy layer upon layer of paint, combining dissonant styles and subject matter. These paintings are big in that there is a hell of a lot to look at. Some of the pictures are so big in scope that they seem unresolved, open ended, too big for the canvas they are on.

We (Schneider & Sanford) organized this show to make a case for a young generation of New York picture-making painters who have emerged over the past decade. We asked each of 19 painters that we invited for one big picture that would serve as a strong argument for that artist’s position. Ostensibly, these paintings vary widely and wildly in style, subject matter, and point of view. However, when we look at the show, we like to view it in terms of the big picture.

These are all painters who make pictures of things, in that they all refer to the culture at large; their paintings are about painting, but they are about other things as well. The pictures deal with the biggest of universal themes, like Love, Sex and Death. The big subject matter is often juxtaposed with more idiosyncratic information about subculture or the extremely personal, political or emotional.  These are painters of a generation to whom irony and collage-like juxtapositions are second nature, where high/low cultural distinctions are meaningless, to whom technology allows access to every image that has ever been seen or even imagined. These are painters who take advantage of the vastness of their surroundings, the open-endedness of their culture, and this Big Picture is reflected back in their work.

The artists in BIG PICTURE: Kamrooz Aram, Colleen Asper, Paul Brainard, John Copeland, Holly Coulis, Justin Craun, Van Hanos, Daniel Heidkamp, Aaron Johnson, Emily Lambert, Wes Lang, Liz Markus, Eddie Martinez, Brian Montuori, Lisa Sanditz, Tom Sanford, Ryan Schneider, Michael Williams & Jeremy Willis.

BUSHWICK SCHLACHT! Half Germans, Half Americans – a battle royal of painters to see once and for all which country is the super power of contemporary painting.

The is no better place to do this than the urban war zone that is Bushwick Brooklyn, SATURDAY APRIL 3RD, 6-10PM, 245 Boerum Street, Brooklyn NY.

Exhibition hours: Sunday April 4th, 12-7pm and Monday April 5th, by appointment.

Here is a Loren Monk/Kalm James video interview with Guillermo & Marcel in front of the installation of paintings.

Gregory Amenoff, Axel Anklam, Kamrooz Aram, Abel Auer, Josh Blackwell, Christophe Boursault, Nicholas Buffon, André Butzer, Brendan Cass, Amanda Church, Elizabeth Cooper, Holly Coulis,  Ariel Dill, Hannah Dougherty, Raynald Driez, Sven Drühl, Dawn Frasch, Sven Drühl, Brian Faucette, Bella Forster, Tine Furler, Rico Gatson, Alicia Gibson, Torben Giehler,  Andrew Gilbert, Tamara Gonzales, Sebastian Gross-Ossa, Stefanie Gutheil, Michelle Hailey, Daniel Heidkamp, Andreas Hofer, Richard Holland, Ridley Howard, Alexa Hoyer, Marcel Hüppauff, Eric Jahnker, Aaron Johnson, Dorota Jurczak, Benjamin King, Henning Kles, Shawn Kuruneru, Molly Larkey,  Christopher Lee, Erik Lindman, Brett Lund, Duncan MacKenzie, Chris Martin, Eddie Martinez, Stefan Marx, Paul-Aymar Mourgue d’Algue, Brian Montuori, Jan Muche, Jeanette Mundt, Aakash Nihalani, Richard Phillips, Humberto Poblete-Bustamente, William Powhida, Orlando Mostyn-Owen, Aaron Ribeiro, Benedikt Richert, Ted Riederer, Les Rogers, Daniel Rosenbaum, Christoph Ruckhäberle, Adam Saks, Sam Salisbury, Christian Sampson, Tom Sanford, Ryan Schneider, Thomas Schumann, Markus Selg, Astrid Sourkova, Juli Susin, Mamie Tinkler, Maria Walker, Wendy White, Jeremy Willis, Thomas Winkler, Ulrich Wulff, Michael Wutz

I am in a group show of several generations of contemporary painters:

The Antidote
Claire Oliver Fine Art
513 West 26th Street, NYC 10001
January 28th – March 6th, 2010
Opening: Thursday January 28th, 6-8PM

The photos shows the three small paintings that I will be exhibiting in the Antidote: Susan Boyle (2010) , The Salahis (2010) & Tiger Woods (2009).

Artists: William T. Wiley, Herb Jackson, Ulf Puder, Rina Banerjee,
Jessee McCloskey, Aaron Johnson, and Tom Sanford

In the 160 years since French painter Paul Delaroche
proclaimed “from today painting is dead”, many scholars
and critics of art have echoed his sentiments. As each new
concept or movement in the visual arts comes to the fore,
judgment is passed on all that came before it. In
Delaroche’ time, the advent of photography changed the
usefulness of painting as documentation, in the 20th
century, modernist painting transitioned paint from a
representational two dimensional medium to art grounded
in codes rather than images. In our contemporary culture
of instant access and short attention spans, painting has
once again reinvented itself.

By examining the validity and variety of painting in the post-modern era, The Antidote shines light on paint’s continued potential for innovation and influence. Uninhibited by traditionally expected technique, these artists have developed their own processes in order to best execute their
contemporary concepts in this historically rich medium. The Antidote features new works painted for
this exhibition by three generations of artists embracing paint as their medium of expression: William T.
Wiley, Herb Jackson, Rina Banerjee, Ulf Puder, Tom Sanford, Aaron Johnson and Jesse McCloskey.

Joann Moser, Senior Curator of the Smithsonian American Art Museum says of William T. Wiley’s work: He has created a distinctive body of work that addresses critical issues of our time. Art, politics, war, global warming, foolishness, ambition, hypocrisy, and irony are summoned by Wiley’s fertile imagination and recorded in the personal vocabulary of symbols, puns and images that fill his objects. His wit and sense of the absurd make his art accessible to all with multiple layers of meaning revealed through careful examination. Wiley’s works employ a playful treatment of language and image, producing a nonlinear mix of words, gestures, and figures to convey his concepts.

William T. Wiley is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. and many other important museums and institutions. Wiley was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 2004.

Herb Jackson’s paintings are built up in many layers which are scraped off as they are being applied. Shapes and marks come and go as the painting develops to a hundred or more layers. There is an unmistakable dissonance between the luminous, often pearlescent colors and the raw sense of corrosion and violent gesture which Jackson’s compositions and surfaces combine to convey. The final outcome is the result of a process of discovery Jackson says is similar to the life experience itself. Herb Jackson has had over 150 one-person exhibitions and his paintings are in the permanent collection of over 100 Museums including The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. Jackson’s work was included in the first exhibition of contemporary American art, curated by Donald Kuspit and presented in the former USSR in 1989.

Ulf Puder belongs to the first tier of famous graduates of the Leipzig’s Academy of Visual Arts. Along with his peer, Neo Rauch, Puder has created a new vocabulary that combines the neo-realism prevalent in the former Eastern Germany with a surrealistic bent. The artist skillfully balances comfort and ruin as well as reality and abstraction. His assemblage of squares, symmetrical triangles and rectangles each add a different texture to a controlled sense of imminent disaster. By locating his scenes on smooth, sandy plains or glassy lakes and recording them in soft grays and purples Puder’s orderly chaotic world is both two and three dimensional, constructed and deconstructed, present and imagined.

Tom Sanford says of his work that he “hopes the subject becomes dated even before (He) finishes the painting”. Using painting, a “slow food” visual medium, the artist creates advertisement like posters of the latest tabloid gossip. By juxtaposing tradition and our throw-away contemporary society, Sanford has created his own Modern-day history paintings.

Rina Banerjee is an Indian born New York based artist whose work explores the aesthetics of exotic beauty, physical illusion and ornamental object. Her imagery stems from her dual cultural history of both eastern and western art. Banerjee seeks to transform everyday objects (and their cultural identity), recreating their identity as a thing of beauty cultural gap. Says the artist of her work: The global place is a garden made out of travel – both real and imagined – and is my illusionary world. Banerjee has exhibited her works in the Greater New York Show, PS1 MOMA, and at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.

Jesse McCloskey’s work is certainly representational, yet he considers himself and abstract artist. He begins each work by making several large colorful abstract paintings which he then cuts into hundreds of exacting abstract shapes. These small pieces of painted paper are then painstakingly applied to a stretched canvas, layer by layer, building up dimension, color, impact and design. Influenced by a childhood full of gothic New England legends, the final work is representational, haunting and mysterious and can be twenty to thirty layers thick.

Aaron Johnson’s frenetic patterning, drips, psychedelic swirls and iridescent globs collage to create a singular apocalyptic universe of grotesque figures and carefully controlled painterly excess. Johnson creates a strikingly effective fusion of paint, process, and image that oozes evil. In his latest series of works, the artist takes on the old masters, reinventing an established vocabulary of imagery while creating a dichotomy of old/new, east/west, painting/design. New York Times art critic Roberta Smith says of the work: if you look carefully it is all there in works that are visceral, beautiful and flamboyantly timely, which is saying a lot.

Aaron Johnson’s work has been exhibited at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO, Art House Texas, Austin, TX and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY.

For more information:
www.ClaireOliver.com
Tel:212.929.5949

I’m in another group show curated by Guillermo Creus. It is only open two days, but there are some really excellent artists in the show – so it’s worth the trip to Bushwick if you have the time.

FORTRESS TO SOLITUDE a portrait show

November 7th and 8th, 2009

Opening reception November 6th, 6-9

245 Boerum Street,

Brooklyn NY 11206

Participating artists:

Mauricio Alejo – Jonathan Allen – Lucas Blalock – Phong Bui – Katie Commodore – Peter Dobill – Glen Fogel - Sebastian Gross-Ossa – Karen Heagle – Andrew Hurst – Barney Kulok – Anne Kunsemiller – Christopher Lee - Lauren Monk – Antony Patti – William Powhida – Don Pedro Pablo – Tom Sanford  – Ash Sechler - Alfred Steiner - Pablo Tauler – Cibele Vieira

Curated by Guillermo Creus

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