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2/3/2015

Two Exhibitions

Serpentine Gallery, London

Pascale Marthine Tayou
Boomerang

Serpentine Galleries presents the first solo show in London by Cameroon-born, Belgium-based artist Pascale Marthine Tayou. The exhibition will include new work made specifically for the Serpentine and introduces audiences to a range of works that demonstrate the artist’s unique ability to combine issues of individual and national identity and global consumption.

The exhibition, his first in the UK since 2008, will see the Serpentine Sackler Gallery populated by a diverse mix of sculptural forms that demonstrate Tayou’s unique visual language based on archetypes, made and found objects and traditional craft. Mysterious human forms and fantastical beasts – such as the 100 metre snake of Africonda – incorporate materials such as cloth, wood, plastic, glass, organic matter and consumer waste combined with an artisanal skill.

Tayou, who began studying law before deciding instead to become an artist, began exhibiting in the early 1990s – a time of political and social upheaval across West Africa. With works often produced in situ, Tayou is renowned for combining found and discarded objects and materials – often sourced locally – with a skilled and playful sense of craftsmanship.

Tayou has exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Fowler Museum at UCLA (2014); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2014); MACRO, Rome (2012); MUDAM Luxembourg (2011); Mac Lyon (2011); Malmö Konsthall (2010).

This exhibition at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery is part of the Serpentine’s Spring Programme, which includes a major survey by American artist Leon Golub that runs concurrently at the Serpentine Gallery.

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Leon Golub: Bite Your Tongue
Oppression, violence and the misuse of power

Serpentine Galleries presents Leon Golub: Bite Your Tongue at the Serpentine Gallery this spring. This survey exhibition of the American figurative painter, his first in London since 2000, will highlight key aspects of the artist’s oeuvre from the 1950s until his death in 2004.

Throughout his career Golub was guided by his belief that art should have relevance. His works are profoundly psychological and emotive – often painted on a huge scale – and return again and again to themes of oppression, violence and the misuse of power. His paintings from the 1950s depict universal images of man and reference the classical figure found in antiquity, while his highly political series of the 1970s and ‘80s draws on the Vietnam War, American foreign policy and the rise of paramilitary soldiers in places such as South Africa and Latin America. His work from the 1990s incorporates slogans, text, graffiti and symbols into dystopian scenes of urban existence.

Golub experimented with scale, and the works assembled for this exhibition range in size from the smaller works on paper to monumental, unstretched canvases that will extend from floor to ceiling at the Serpentine Gallery.

Born in Chicago in 1922, Golub began painting in the figurative style in the early 1950s. Labelled as a ‘Chicago Imagist’, he was a member of the post-war artists’ group known as Monster Roster. Several members of the group, including Golub, served in World War II, subsequently obtaining fine arts degrees as a result of the American GI Bill. During a time when abstraction was hailed as the future of contemporary painting, the group created works rooted in the external world, with the human figure and contemporary events informing their style and content.

This exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery is part of the Serpentine’s Spring Programme, which includes an exhibition by Cameroon-born artist Pascale Marthine Tayou presented concurrently at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery.

Image: Africonda – series, 2014
 Wash cloth, mask, dry hay, wood
 Photo: Lorenzo Fiaschi Courtesy : GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Les Moulins

Press Contact:
Rose Dempsey, RoseD@serpentinegalleries.org

Opening: Tuesday 3 March 2015, 10am-12pm

Serpentine Galleries
Kensington Gardens / +442072981515 / serpentinegalleries.org
Tue - Sun 10am to 6pm

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