Robert Therrien - William Eggleston
dal 10/1/2014 al 19/2/2014
Segnalato da
10/1/2014
Robert Therrien - William Eggleston
Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills
Therrien's work has clear links to the generation of Pop and Conceptual artists that preceded him, yet embodies a distinctive mix of his affinities for folk culture, cartoons and American design. Eggleston developed his distinct oeuvre from the immediate world around him, incorporating all shades of life into his vivid photographs, and pioneering an approach that derives its power from a refined form of spontaneous observation.
Robert Therrien
Gagosian Beverly Hills is pleased to present a major installation by Robert Therrien.
Therrien’s work has clear links to the generation of Pop and Conceptual artists that preceded him, yet embodies a distinctive mix of his affinities for folk culture, cartoons, and American design. Working in two and three dimensions and with great attention to the effects of scale, he transforms elements from the culture of everyday life into artworks that evoke classical archetypes. His art invites psychological interpretation, given its evident concern with childhood narratives, while remaining firmly objective due to its uncanny proximity to the real and its relationship with the minimal.
A significant breakthrough for Therrien came in 1993 with No title (Table leg), marking a shift from previous, less representational works. Shortly thereafter, Under the Table (1994), a colossal wooden kitchen table and chair set, further defined what was to be a pivotal moment in his career. By recreating everyday objects true to their original appearances but on an exponentially larger scale, Therrien dramatically altered the relationship of viewer to artwork. No title (Folding table and chairs, green) (2008) comprises four enormous and uniformly rusted chairs and one card table in pale institutional green. Given their great scale, the viewer can walk around and beneath them. The shift in perspective and dwarfing experience renders a familiar domestic situation suddenly intimidating and surreal. Other sculptures renew Therrien’s familiar leitmotifs, including a playful yet imposing black storm cloud whose silhouette sprouts a series of four faucets.
Inspired by Therrien’s personal collection of ubiquitous folding steel furniture, No title (Folding table and chairs, green) stands, literally, as a monument to industrial design. Although viewers are immediately conscious of the enlarged scale of the furniture, the perfect replication of each specific feature prolongs the fantasy. Actual rust has been created across the surfaces to match the wearing patterns of the originals on which the art is modeled. The printed vinyl tabletop, which is all but invisible from below, is similarly convincing. True to the original designs not only in appearance but also in functionality, each enormous component is foldable. To fully encounter this deadpan though marvelous installation in all its veracity is to suspend disbelief. As with all great storytellers, the ultraprecision of Therrien’s approach transcends fiction.
Robert Therrien was born in Chicago in 1947, and lives and works in Los Angeles. Public collections include Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate Gallery, London; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Recent solo museum exhibitions include Kunstmuseum Basel Kupferstichkabinett (2008); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2010); Milwaukee Art Museum (2010); De Pont Museum, Tilburg, The Netherlands (2011); Tate Liverpool (2011); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2011); and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2013). Since 2009, Therrien’s work has toured with the “ARTIST ROOMS” collection of international contemporary art.
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William Eggleston
At Zenith
I was interested in photographic works that were very much about photography, but certainly—hopefully—were grounded in painting.
—William Eggleston
Gagosian Beverly Hills is pleased to present “William Eggleston: At Zenith.”
A Memphis native, Eggleston developed his distinct oeuvre from the immediate world around him, incorporating all shades of life into his vivid photographs, and pioneering an approach that derives its power from a refined form of spontaneous observation. A modern-day flâneur, he captures compelling fragments, events, and personalities of the ordinary world.
Eggleston is largely credited with legitimizing color photography as a fine art form. More than a century after the advent of color film, and a decade after popular media fused with contemporary art, his first museum exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1976 was also the first time that color photography had been considered in this context. Thirty-eight years after this historic moment, Eggleston continues his innovations in photography. In recent years, advances in digital processes allow him to print images on a much larger scale, at times even surpassing the quality of color saturation associated with dye-transfer, the vibrant and exquisite printing process which is his hallmark.
In the late 1970s, during a road trip from Georgia to Tennessee, Eggleston photographed the sky from the car window. The resulting images evoked small fragments of classical frescoes. The following day, he lay on the ground and continued to shoot the sky above using a Mamiya 6 x 9 format camera. “At Zenith” presents a selection of pigment prints from the Wedgwood Blue cloud series, in which Eggleston takes celestial zenith—the point of sky directly overhead—as his exclusive subject. Taken in 1977 and 1978, these meditative images of wispy clouds interspersed with cerulean blue are painterly variations on a universal theme that has inspired artists from John Constable to Gerhard Richter. The photographs represent a broadening of Eggleston’s quotidian subjects—an exploratory, sky-gazing caesura within the lush panorama of his oeuvre.
The exhibition follows the release of the fully illustrated Steidl edition William Eggleston: At Zenith and the concurrent exhibition at Gagosian New York from October–December 2013.
William Eggleston was born in 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee. His work is included in the permanent collections of Art Institute of Chicago; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Foundation Cartier, Paris; and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, among many other institutions worldwide. Major exhibitions include “William Eggleston and the Color Tradition,” J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (1999); “William Eggleston,” Foundation Cartier, Paris (2001, traveled to Hayward Gallery, London, through 2002); “Documenta 11,” Kassel, Germany (2002); “William Eggleston: Los Alamos,” Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2003, traveled to Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Portugal; National Museum for Contemporary Art, Oslo; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; Albertina, Vienna; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Dallas Museum of Art, through 2005); and “William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video 1961–2008,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008, traveled to Haus der Kunst, Munich; Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and Art Institute of Chicago, through 2010).
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Opening reception: Saturday, January 11th, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm
Gagosian Gallery
456 North Camden Drive - Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Hours: Tue–Sat 10-6