calendario eventi  :: 

X

6/2/2008

London Confidential

Mews42 / Vanessa Suchar, London

On November 24th, 2007 Vanessa Suchar and Jesper Thomsen opened MEWS42, a magical and unusual gallery located at 42 Princes Gate Mews, in South Kensington, London, close to the Victoria and Albert Museum. For this third show, Vanessa has decided this time to present the exhibition in a type of “Royal Academy Summer Show” where only a few pieces by each artists will be on the wall; It will be a 19th century Salon atmosphere where anyone can wander and look for a treasure… far away from the minimal hanging Mews42 has been keen on up to now.

Lindsey Adelman enters a meditative state when creating the obsessive ink drawings. Repeating tiny loops and gestures in an endless field is a way of holding onto time in a sense; an activity that can last for hours, free from “decision-making.” The cumulative effect of the marks produces an organically modelled surface, one that often seems as if it is still growing. Jean-Paul Albinet, who was part of the group UNTEL in the Seventies, has been working with code bars for years. His work takes into consideration slogans from well-known companies, interpreting signs and language in a very specific ways

Laure Bertin’s images recall, without being imitative, the paintings of Edward Hopper. They have the same sense of bodies caught in moments of stillness amidst distinctive colours and in unremarkable contemporary city settings—a girl at a table against a blue wall that perhaps suits her mood; a man framed in a doorway; a girl standing in front of a shop window in which we see the street, a tree, power poles and the girl herself reflected, framed by yellow columns and red walls. Nicholas Bodde is committed to the tradition of geometrical art of the first half of the century. The inner form as well as the choice of colours is always spontaneous. The surface of each colour plain is treated differently. He uses strategies of constructivism by defining the structure of his painting to be more able to concentrate on the characteristics, light value, tone grading, quantity and surface structure of the colours. His pictures reveal themselves differently from close-up than from distance. When viewed from a distance of some metres, they can clearly be joined to constructive-geometric tendencies. But from close proximity, one notices that his main objective is painting and not construction. In his effort trying to create interplay between colour qualities and quantities within an exacting style of composition Bodde still dreams of the picture with colours, nobody has seen before.

Able Brown began drawing when the muscles in his hand began working. He is reputed for making animal shapes with apple sauce as a child and painting his entire room with big horn sheep and not much has changed since then. He sees his drawings as "contemporary pictographs" full of tradition, dreams, smiles, broken arms and full hearts that are not an escape from life, but are life. He is influenced by Lupine, Comte De Lautreamont, the Scissor-tailed flycatcher, Edward Abbey, the Tuliptree, Pitseolak, Lame Deer, the Great Grey Owl, and the Moon. Drawings of his can also be found in Arthur Magazine and Bonnie "Prince" Billy's "Summer in the Southeast" a record that is thunder! He currently works as a Park Ranger at Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge and lives by the quote, "Things that go bump in the night are alright."

The acrylic paintings in Carol K. Brown’s new Pedestrians series seem “more real” than many photographs we see in our daily lives, in spite of her obvious manipulation of realty. In her work, Brown combines and alters multiple photographs, often of the same person, and then meticulously reproduces them in paint. The resulting images reflect relationships that never existed, but appear plausible, nonetheless. The paintings seem photographic at first glance. They are small and upon close inspection reveal the tiny brush strokes of acrylic paint.

Luisa Caldwell uses the tiny stickers that come on fruit to make paintings of bold flowers and organic patterns, often reminiscent of oriental textiles. The fruit stickers are transformed into flower petals. The stickers draw people’s awareness into the work, as does the lush imagery and colour. As much as the work is about colour and composition, the materials reflect larger cultural concerns such as consumption and abundance, adding content beyond traditional decoration.

Cedric Christie had a busy summer which included the sale of the work Still Life now installed on the Strand London and the completion of the Disciples of History European Tour which led him to supervise 12 cars across Europe in convoy leaving from London to Basel then to Documenta Kassel then to Munster and back to London. Cedric will be exhibiting at MEWS42 works from the Disciple of history tour which will be model cars 1/18 scale representing the cars that did the actual road trip. On the expedition Cedric had drivers and passengers from all aspect of the art world from Gavin Turk to Dominic Berning and Richard Strange.

Lili Fantozzi’s works can be defined as kitsch, or recycling of consumer societies outdated elements. Found in flea markets, attics and churches, the Virgin Mary, Saints and sculptures of all origins are given a new life. Each expresses her sensibilities regarding life on the 21st. century. Painted in wild colors, the Virgin Mary is transformed into a seductive free woman, while Emperor Cesar, sprinkled over with pills and tablets symbolizes illness, the need for medication as well as for snake-oil remedies. These painting are our portraits and hers, asking questions about the evolution of mankind in this material world of ours. It is the need for open-mindedness, tolerance and truth that feeds Fantozzi’s inspiration, painting, and passion.

Tom Fecht likes to listen with his eyes. Land and seascapes sometimes share their musicality and communicate like the body of a dancer to him. These moments are rare and short. His photography determines the scale of a landscape by its distance to paradise. Some images translate a landscape’s notations of dusk and dawn, seasonal cycles, traces of tides, wind, humidity, accidents, visitors and/or other irreversible impacts of civilisation. His colours respond to simple melodies or questions written up in the sky, simultaneously exploring inner and outer space, “soundscapes” moving into the open. Fecht works as a photographer and sculptor in London and Berlin, his work is represented in the National Gallery in Berlin, his European land art project Mémoire nomade started at Documenta IX. His recent synaesthetic experiments photo acoustic installations in collaboration with Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. He currently conducts long term research on projection and photography as a design tool and heuristic toy at the Royal College of Art in London

After years in comic’s publishing Sacha Goerg moved back into painting. He started with the watercolour series inspired from found photos on the web. He used to select pictures for their sharp flash light and the kind of oppressed intimacy that could be revealed by transposing them into paintings. The point to which an image can be real despite its lack of technical realism fascinates him. In the course of a journey, cultures reach out for each other, people meet, sacredness resurfaces, time evolves… The journey turns into a time of silence and sounds. Caroline Halley des Fontaines’ photos depict a journey into the human soul, into ancestral cultures, encompassing a series of images and videos that explore archetypes, rituals and everyday life in mythic places in Asia as well as in Africa.

Micrography has a rich tradition in Judaism, used either as decoration or for the transcription of holy texts, but Moroccan-born artist Jacob El Hanani embraces it for its own sake. His is a process-oriented type of drawing, as much about the gruelling levels of concentration and physical dexterity involved as about the final product. The extreme nature of these technical tours de force is subsequently transferred to the process of viewing the works, which are overwhelming despite their relatively small size. Since one has to come so close to appreciate their obsessively intricate details, the drawings, in turn, fully envelop the viewer's perception. They are less objects to observe than phenomena, temporal and spatial experiences made manifest by the intense scrutiny they demand.

Heir to the stars, possessor of some dreams, Hervé Saint-Hélier knows exactly the time when the light starts to capture things, such as to receive its kiss. His imagination can see the fossil radiance of the universe, reveal the unseen visibility, and penetrate the supra-tangible world. He’s not a narrator of landscapes or men. He prefers to visit the nearby distances: city lights, churches. Dance of golden lights, pink angel, extravagant ghost of woman or statue… his photos are not geographical designations: they are music and colors, dreams, mystery and magic. (From a text written by Charlotte Leouzon)

Linda Karshan, a trained dancer at the beginning of her career, started intuitively to redesign her way of drawing and opened up her stance to support her hand better while drawing. Thus it was necessary to “begin again”. Much has been written about Karshan’ practise. Writing about the first appearance of the “figure” in 1994, she said “for me, the piece is a self portrait”. The same might be said of each subsequent work The vertical, rectangular format of her grid has always been associated in the artist's mind with a human body standing gracefully upright and alert.

Shay Kun’s works are an infusion, a hybrid of absurdities. Drawing on the style and subject matter of the Hudson River School, particularly Thomas Cole’s reverent paeans to nature and Albert Bierstadt’s awestruck visions of the sublime in the American West, these works captures the grandeur of nature. Despite acquiring a newly cultured look, these landscapes that were made with all the sincerity and attention, are transformed into a juxtaposition of nature and its human invaders, who appear in the guise of tourists or adventure seekers. The contrast between these contemporary characters and their stylized environment is abrupt and, despite their small scale, they’re an almost offensively inadequate substitute for the deities or characters of noble bearing that filled their place in painting of the past centuries.

A Moulin Rouge soloist dancer for ten years, Vlada Krassilnikova plunges us backstage, allowing the viewer to catch a glimpse behind the scenes and to share the intimacy of the dancers. More than just documenting this unknown world, the artist, in her own words, pays homage "aux plus belles filles du monde". She captures the dancers' personalities while revealing an emotional dimension never seen before in works devoted to the French cabarets. Krassilnikova is drawn to feminine beauty, the physical movement of the body and facial expressions Eric Michel expresses his passion for light and colour. Following a path opened by Yves Klein and James Turrell, his work, and particularly his fluorescent neon installations, creates a vibrating space, in search for immateriality.

As a painter Holly Miller has always been interested in the hybrid of life and art. By combining paint with different materials she tries to convey concepts and metaphors that relate to life within the vocabulary of abstract painting. She combines thread and paint to make lines and marks. By puncturing the painted monochromatic surface of the canvas, the artist “draws” with threaded lines. The punctured hole is followed by a painted dot which is repeated and becomes a dotted line. She tries to emphasize the hybrid of sculpture and painting, the tactile and the optical. The thread creates a subtle shadow which emphasizes the relationship between material and illusion. Its delicate and linear properties have a suggestive association to connection, continuity and tension while retaining an ethereal and poetic quality. The paintings and drawings are fresh and vibrant yet subtle and suggestive. They convey an energy that is explosive while retaining a certain restraint. I try to express an emotional sensibility that conveys a reflective coolness while maintaining a playful lightness.

For over a decade, Renato Orara's medium has been ballpoint pen on a small piece of paper; depicted is a single item. Similar to the Zen meditation that he has studied, his artistic practice is an exercise in contemplation – both in the time each piece takes to make and for the viewer. Though his subject matter is uncomplicated – a vegetable, a toy, a tool – his interest and the outcome has its own transcendent reality. The definition of the object represented is secondary to the many associations that Orara's drawings conjure, due to what the object is or, more simply, the shape that it is. Attended to with results similarly seen in scientific renderings, Orara's deft and meticulous touch nods to the historical role of documentation that drawing has occupied. However, because of his unapologetically compulsive execution and his choices of subject and placement the whole is very much outside of science and quite emotional in effect.

Paul Raguenes’ paintings are saturated of pigments and appear on first glace as pure monochromes before they start to change silently colors, questioning our perception to make us look closer - much closer. The way his work transmits colour fools every perception; his use of pigments recalls the ephemeral quality of an aura, which prefers voluntarily to disappear when curiosity gets close or too close - like his paintings which are literally destroyed once touched. The same can be observed with his unique Monospy sculptures. Due to their intriguing reflections they tend to transform immediately into site specific Interventions, silent catalysts between the gallery, the viewer and the works shown in the space. In her work Sophie Smallhorn explores colour, volume and proportion. The forms of her wall works are small, simple, clean and geometric. Geometry and saturated colour are centre stage in her compositions, combined and contrasted depending on her intuitive sense of play. There is no theory, science or system in her approach. Texture is not admitted - the chance element of light and the controlled juxtaposition of form, volume, weight and colour are all she requires to make these complex scenarios that are journeys for the eye and mind.

Without ever creating any narrative environment, Jeanne Susplugas invents her own staging. Photos, drawings, installations, videos. Through a very close framing of the subject, she leans over it, breathless. The work in progress then gets very close to physical endurance, thanks to which the artist manages to grasp the expression of her inanimate models in a very singular way. Jeanne Susplugas shifts the subject and isolates it. She gets into the body of the object. From a text by Leonor Nuridsany Emmanuelle Villard prefers to weave the surface of her canvas with possible ornaments or physical irregularities, questioning the validity of painting today, stimulating feminine evolution in life and artistic creation. No one can escape the seduction in Emmanuelle Villard’s work. Her paintings, flashy and colourful, produce a shop-window effect, like sweetshop or clothes shop windows or stalls at a fair. You want to eat them.

Lamia Ziadé offers us the chance to re-explore the nature of desire, with a hint of humour and a taste of obsession. Born in Beirut in 1968, she moved to Paris in 1987 to study graphic art at Penningen. She then gained a solid reputation in the fashion world (fabrics for Jean-Paul Gaultier and Issey Miyake); in the advertising world (CD covers, movie posters etc.); and in magazines throughout France and Japan including Vogue, Jalouse, Spur, Libération, Beaux-Arts, Aden , Nova magazine, and artpress. After producing many books for children, she published in 2001 "L'utilisation maximum de la douceur", a small book dedicated to sexual exploration and erotic self discovery, with a text by Vincent Ravalec. Her work was exhibited in 2003 and 2006 at the Kamel Mennour Gallery, and at the FNAC in Paris.

Grateful thanks to you our generous sponsor, Ketel One Vodka that possesses a refined elegance, distinctive smoothness and unmatched quality.

Private View: Thursday February 7th, 6 to 9 pm

Vanessa Suchar - MEWS42
42 Princes Gate Mews - London

stampa

permanent link