Two exhibitions
dal 27/2/2007 al 2/6/2007
Segnalato da
27/2/2007
Two exhibitions
Irish Museum of Modern Art - IMMA, Dublin
Alex Katz: New York comprises some 40 paintings and aquatints, focusing mainly, as the title suggests, on his relationship with his native city. The show presents many of his celebrated portraits, including those of his family. Thomas Demand. L'Esprit d'Escalier comprises 19 large-scale photographic pieces. The artist is best known for his unique approach to photography: the subjects of his images are painstakingly constructed three-dimensional, life-size models of architecture and objects, devoid of human presence.
Alex Katz: New York
28-2 / 20-5 2007
curated by Juan Manuel Bonet and Rachael Thomas
Alex Katz: New York, a large-scale exhibition of the work of Alex Katz one of the most influential American artists of the past 50 years, comprises some 40 paintings and aquatints, focusing mainly, as the title suggests, on his relationship with his native city. It is the first exhibition to concentrate primarily on this aspect of Katz’s work. The exhibition presents many of his celebrated portraits, including those of his family – his wife and lifelong muse, Ada, and his son Vincent – and of his distinguished circle of friends, including poets, writers and artists, many shown against the backdrop of New York City. The exhibition also includes architectural views of the city, with its famous Manhattan sky line and Modernist architecture.
Katz is best known as a painter of people, and the wide cross section of his portraits featured in the show demonstrate the variety which he has brought to the genre. They include dramatic variations in scale, abrupt cropping of images, and such subtle artifices as appearing to place his subjects in a luxuriant outdoor setting, which is, in reality, another Katz painting. Pride of place among the portraits goes to the poets and writers, many from the New York School, who made up the artist’s circle of friends and whose names constitute a veritable who’s who of New York cultural life.
Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1927 and studied at The Cooper Union in New York and at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. His work has been the subject of nearly 200 solo exhibitions internationally since he first exhibited in 1954. He became widely known internationally following a large-scale retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1986 and a print retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1988. These were followed by major exhibitions of portraits and landscapes at the Saatchi Gallery, London, 1998, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento, 1999, and Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 2002, and elsewhere. In the summer of 2003, the first European exhibition devoted solely to the artist's celebrated portraits opened at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice. Alex Katz's work can be found in numerous public collections worldwide.
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Thomas Demand: L’Esprit d’Escalier
28-2 / 3-6 2007
curated by Rachael Thomas
This exhibition presents an overview of the work of one of Germany's most innovative contemporary artist Thomas Demand. L’Esprit d’Escalier comprises 19 large-scale photographic pieces, plus a new screening device, designed by Caruso St. John Architects, London, specially for this exhibition at IMMA to show the work Rolltreppe (Escalator), 2000. Ranging from 1995 to date, the exhibition presents such familiar works as Archiv (Archive), 1995. Others have never been shown before - including Landing, 2006, Demand’s photographic response to a mishap in January 2006 at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge when a visitor fell down a staircase, crashing into three 18th-century oriental vases, among the most important artifacts at the museum, smashing them into hundreds of pieces. Another new work being shown for the first time is Shed, 2006.
The intriguing title of the exhibition, L’Esprit d’Escalier, derives from the French phrase which literally means ‘wit of the staircase’ and refers to the regret one feels after missing an opportunity to deliver a witty comeback or parting shot. Demand is best known for his unique approach to photography – the subjects of his large-format photographs are painstakingly constructed three-dimensional, life-size models of architecture and objects, devoid of human presence. Once they have been photographed, the models are destroyed. Demand also makes 35 mm films, setting his cinematic still images in motion. Thomas Demand was born in Munich in 1964 and lives in Berlin. He represented Germany at the Bienal de São Paulo in 2004 and his work was the subject of a mid-career survey at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2005. He has exhibited widely and recent solo shows include the Serpentine Gallery, London, 2006, and the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2006.
The exhibition is accompanied by a full-colour publication, produced in association with Walther König Books, and includes a new text by Dave Eggers Fictional Episodes from the Life of Thomas Demand amongst a number of newly commissioned texts by Ulrich Baer, Professor of German and Comparative Literature, New York University; Paul Oliver, author and professor; Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, curator, critic and Professor of Modern Irish at University College Dublin, and Rachael Thomas as well as a previously published text from Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace, and an afterword by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA.
Opening: 28 february 2007
Irish Museum of Modern Art - Royal Hospital
Military Road, Kilmainham - Dublin
Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday 10.00am-5.30pm
Admission is free