calendario eventi  :: 

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15/4/2014

Two exhibitions

Massimo De Carlo, London

Massimo De Carlo is pleased to announce the gallery’s first exhibition in London of Max Bill, the preeminent visual artist as well as designer, architect and writer of the 20 th century.
The exhibition Squares and Sculptures 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s combines a rare selection of artwork and design objects spanning his prolific career by focusing on two seminal themes: the square and the sculpture.

An ‘Uomo Universale’, Max Bill is considered the most fruitful stimulator and progressive innovator of the Bauhaus student generation. Born in 1908, he spent his formative years at the Bauhaus in Dessau under the tutelage of Josef Albers, László Moholy - Nagy, Paul Klee and Vasily Kandinsky . Having returned to Switzerland after his studies, Max Bill laid the foundations of Concrete Art, an abstractionis t movement that evolved out of Modernism and De Stijl . The term Concrete Art was coined by the artist Theo van Doesburg in his Manifest of 1930, which was re formulated by Max Bill in his exhibition catalogue for Zeitprobleme in der Schweizer Malerei und Plastik in 1936. Concrete Art does not abstract or distort natural models, it is purely based on the harmony of lines, surfaces and colours. In other words, Concrete Art must be free of any symbolic association with nature; lines and colours are powerful enough to stand on their own and create an independent reality.

The current exhibition’s goal is to establish Max Bill’s significance in sim ultaneously innovating design, sculpture and painting. The design objects Ulmer Stool (1954), Dreirund Table (1949) and Quadratrund Table (1949) directly resonate the sculptures and paintings in their clarity, simplicity and mathematical logic. Max Bill’s success as a designer led him to experiment with sculptures after his friend Marcel Breuer asked him to create an object that would accompany a fireplace. The task ended in the acclaimed sculpture Endless Ribbon (1935 – 1937) and revealed Max Bill’s true ge nius as a visual artist. The gold plated sculpures Sechseckflaeche mit vollem Kreisumfang (1953) and Schleife durch Bewegung verwandelt (1977) exemplify how the minimal gesture of twisting a line can result in a powerful composition. After working in three dimensions, Bill soon began to translate the Concrete thinking of the sculptures to painting. Correspondingly, the subtlety in form and colour of Bill’s early paintings herald a radical new kind of abstraction. From the early work Acht Farbgruppen (1947) to 2 x 1 bis 3 (1970 - 72) we can observe a fascination with the square shape. During the next 30 years Bill revisited the square through different geometric compositions until he rotated the canvas to a diamond shape as in Vier Zonen im Weiss (1967), thereb y accentuating the shape’s predominance throughout his career.

By the time of his death in 1994, Max Bill had established himself as one of the main protagonists in European Modernism with a revolutionary vision overarching art, design, architecture and p olitics. Through his extensive travels and international network Max Bill led the way to introduce a new generation of artists, especially in Latin America, to European geometric abstraction.

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Home/sculpture
Thomas Grünfeld, Rashid Johnson, Rob Pruitt, Josh Smith, Kaari Upson, Andra Ursuta

Massimo De Carlo gallery in London is happy to present a new collective exhibition that reflects on the notions of art and design through sculpture, and questions the boundary that lies in between these two fields.
Home/Sculpture presents a variety of artworks that recall the home environment and at the same time pay homage to the concepts of ready - made art and object trouvé creating a transfer of the domestic meaning of the object to the sphere of the gallery, generating a virtuo us circle that enhances the dialogue between high and low culture, intellectualism and voluntarism, critical theory and pop culture, idealism and everyday life. For the exhibition the gallery itself has been transformed into an aesthetical allegory that m imics the likes of a design or a furniture shop, highlighting the subtle symbolism of sculptures that are shaped as everyday objects.

The sculptures presented in this exhibition are made by a group of artists that all have different geographical and soc ial backgrounds, and who work with different references and inspirations. Some works are enticingly raw, and are bound to awaken the viewer’s sensitivity, such as Rashid Johnson’s and Andra Ursuta’s art works: both artists often tackle identity and commun ity related issues in their practice, here using sculpture as the medium to translate these issue into icons and embodiments of the social or inner conflicts of today. In her body of work Kaari Upson reflects upon the notion of displacement and propriety: the series of casts of found mattresses, rugs, and couch selected for this exhibition, with their worn out appearance seem to highlight and question the journey of the object itself.

Thomas Grünfeld’s minimalist and debonair choice of materials and shapes, which recall the Bauhaus designs, are here in contrast with the playful and colourful sofas created by Rob Pruitt, whose work, that is composed by a complex and meticulous series of vibrant and irrev erent drawings, aesthetically challenges the conception of post - pop art. Josh Smith’s ceramic sculptures are crafty objects that one can imagine being on the shelves of a cabinet of wonders: food cans, soap bottles, masks, and other home appliances have b een remodelled as unusual and inaccurate artisanal pottery.

Home/Sculpture at Massimo De Carlo gallery aims to invite the viewer to take part in the debate that surrounds the everlasti ng concept of the found object and how it is re - questioned in the rea lm of today’s art.

For further information please contact Larkin Erdmann: erdmann@massimodecarlo.com +44 (0)20 7287 2005

Opening: Wednesday 16 th of April 2014 6.00pm

Massimo De Carlo
Audley Street London W1K 2QH
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10:00am–6.00p.m.

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