calendario eventi  :: 

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9/12/2004

Two exhibitions

White Cube, London

Fred Tomaselli
White Cube

“(an) inquiry into utopia/dystopia – framed by artifice but motivated by the desire for the ‘real' and the transformative – has turned out to be the primary subject of my work.” Fred Tomaselli (Monsters of Paradise, Edinburgh: 2004)

White Cube is pleased to present a new group of paintings by American artist Fred Tomaselli . Tomaselli is a painter who makes exquisitely rendered images composed from an array of unorthodox materials such as medicinal herbs, prescription pills and hallucinogenic plants, all suspended in a thick layer of clear, epoxy resin on wood panels. Dazzling forms and compositions are created using carefully combined images of natural and reproduced symbols: flowers, birds, butterflies and limbs are arranged in intense patterns that, although controlled, seem to spread over the surface of the painting like beautiful viruses or growths. Tomaselli sees painting as a window onto the sublime; a conduit out of reality. His pictures, with their painstaking network of detail, disrupt any notion of the ‘natural' world, conjuring up unstable, narcotic visions.

Tomaselli's work presents compendia of data that surround us, although organised without the hieratic order of any scientific system of reference. The artist amasses thousands of images cut from popular printed sources, accumulating them into subject-related archive sheets before transferring them into his abstract or figurative compositions. Rent from their original scales or contexts, these images are organised into new, larger forms, created through their grouping and doubling. A line of noses, eyes and hands in different gestures, for example, arc from top to bottom of Doppelg a nger Effect (2004). The picture forms an imperfect Rorschach from left to right that expands out from miniscule, vertical threads of pills, jewel-like paint and flowers in its centre to the very edge of the panel. Like gorgeous torrents of glittering rain, the work constantly shifts in its field of focus, an effect that is furthered, by its mirage-like, transparent surface.

Some of Tomaselli's paintings recall stellar constellations, where dark, glossy grounds are punctuated by gleaming spots of colour. Others have more restrained groupings of images, such as Eyes Inverted in Endless Audio (2002) with its seemingly continuous vertical lines of plant leaves or Colony (2003) with its organic structure of mutating cells. Tomaselli has recently incorporated allegorical figures into his work, such as Adam and Eve in Us and Them (2003), or the Grim Reaper in Field Guides (2003). The figures are described anatomically so that their organs and veins are exposed, in the manner of a scientific drawing, yet these organs are made up of metaphorical matter. In Metal Destroyer (2004), for instance, a work that borrows from Buddhist sculpture, a multi-armed god-like figure has a head composed from thousands of eyes. In this way, detail is often used metonymically, where small eyes or arms are amassed to create a singular eye or arm, or else, as a symbol in a chain of images making the eye rove over all corners of the work. At other times it is metaphoric or literal, joined by delicate, precise painting.

Tomaselli grew up in Santa Monica, California next door to Disneyland, an experience that has deeply informed his work. For him ‘artificial, immersive, theme park reality' was a normal part of everyday life. The idea of a ‘contaminated' image haunts his work, with its post modern borrowing from high art sources such as Masaccio's Expulsion from the Garden of Eden or Hieronymus Bosch's ghoulish figures combined with a punk, counter-cultural approach. His pictures incorporate multiple reference points and perspectives, effectively condensed into spectacular, dystopian images.

Fred Tomaselli has had numerous exhibitions internationally. A current survey exhibition organised by Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, has travelled to Domus Artium, Salamanca, and will continue on to IMMA, Dublin and The Rose Art Museum, Massachusetts. His paintings have been included in the Whitney Biennial (2004) as well as the Liverpool Biennial (2002) and the Berlin Biennial (2001). Solo exhibitions include Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, Buffalo, New York (2003), Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art (2001-2002), Florida, Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris (1999), New York and Indianapolis Museum of Art (2001), Indiana.

Image: a work by Fred Tomaselli

10.12.04 - 15.01.05
Opening Thursday 9 December 6-8pm
White Cube, 48 Hoxton Square, London N1 6PB
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Steven Gontarski
December Morning Prophecy
Inside the White Cube

Inside the White Cube is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by American artist Steven Gontarski . Gontarski is a sculptor who deals mostly with the human figure, using a sleek, elegant and fetishised aesthetic that borrows from both Classical sculpture and the flamboyant excess of Baroque as much as from underground music and alternative youth subcultures.

Gontarski, based in London, began his career making sewn figures: amorphous, fluid forms that were executed in shiny silver material, their soft bodies elongated and sublimated to create reduced and sexually charged sculptures. More recently he has been working with fibreglass in rich, luxurious colours; attracted by its brilliant gloss finish, where the viewer's gaze is both reflected and deflected by the mirror-like surface. Since 2002, Gontarski has been making sculptures and drawings under the title of ‘Prophets' ­- quasi-spiritual, quasi-fantastical nude figures that are both aspirational and fictional, weaving possible gothic narratives with an eroticism that seems at once decadent and impure in its direction. Prophet Zero (2003) is a slightly larger than life-size male figure, struck in a dramatic and romantic pose, arm shielding face, nude but for its medico della peste beaked mask. The work points to dark myths such as the Venetian doctors who wore birdlike masks during the plague years, or the infamous ‘patient zero', a Canadian airline steward who introduced AIDS into North America. The body of this figure is anti-natural in its heightened realism, its legs too slim and feet willowy and toeless. It is both theatrical and funereal, its face shrouded by a swathe of fabric evoking not only luxurious sexuality but also the veil of mourning. The sculpture alludes to a certain spirituality but is highly ambiguous, hinting at possible narratives and silencing others.

The Fourth Prophet (Through the Eyes of the One Left Behind) I (2004) is Gontarski's most ambitious sculpture to date, a corroded and partial male figure that seems consumed and eaten away by its own passion. An arm twists and disappears, only to reappear, attached to ultra-slim hips in an elegant hand, its finger pointing in benediction-like fashion to a place in the distance. Apocalyptic and terrifying but also a figure of pure, eroticised fantasy, The Fourth Prophet sits somewhere between the conscious and the subconscious, desire and its own destruction.

Gontarski has always been interested in antique sculpture and, in particular, the way that drapery was employed to enhance an already perfect physique. In these works, the physique is not one of muscular power but rather a Bowie-esque androgyny that is not absolutely out of place in its classicism despite its stylised references to the willowy anti-heros of gothic music read through the decadent ruins of JK Huysmans.

Steven Gontarksi has had several international solo exhibitions including Le Consortium, Dijon and Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Los Angeles (both 2003) and Kukje Gallery, Seoul (2004). A solo exhibition of his drawings will be presented at Groninger Museum, Groningen in 2005.

10.12.04 - 15.01.05
Opening Thursday 9 December 6-8pm
Inside the White Cube, 48 Hoxton Square, London N1 6PB

Inside the White Cube is open from Tuesday to Saturday, 10am – 6pm. For further information please contact Honey Luard or Susannah Hyman on 020 7930 5373.

White Cube is open from Tuesday to Saturday, 10am – 6pm. For further information please contact Honey Luard or Susannah Hyman on 020 7930 5373.

White Cube, 48 Hoxton Square, London N1 6PB

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