http://www.gagosian.com/ Gagosian Gallery News en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss exhibit-E.com http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-02-11_crash/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-02-11_crash/
February 11 - April 1, 2010
Britannia Street Gallery

Opening reception: Thursday, February 11th from 6 to 8pm


I have used the car not only as a sexual image, but as a total metaphor for man's life in today's society.
--JG Ballard

Gagosian Gallery London will present "Crash," a major group exhibition opening on 11 February 2010, which takes its title from the famous novel by JG Ballard.

Ballard's novels stand among the most visionary, provocative literature of the twentieth century, with his ominous predictions regarding the fate of Western culture and his insights into the dark psychopathology of the human race. This exhibition is a response to the enormous impact and enduring cultural significance of his work, following his death in spring 2009. Highlighting Ballard's great passion for the surreal and his engagement with the artists of his own generation, "Crash" includes examples of his specific inspirations as well as works by contemporary artists who have, in turn, been inspired by his vision.

Ballard's first published short story "Prima Belladonna" appeared in 1956, the same year as the celebrated Independent Group's exhibition "This is Tomorrow" at the Whitechapel Gallery, which marked the birth of Pop Art in Britain. It was here, and in the work of Surrealists such as Salvador Dali and Paul Delvaux, that Ballard found the seeds of what he called a "fiction for the present day". With its dystopian depictions of the present and future, its bleak, man-made landscapes and the recounting of the psychological effects of technological, social and environmental developments on humans, his work has resonated strongly among other writers, filmmakers and visual artists. The exhibition "Crash" brings together works by artists tuned to the Ballardian universe, from his contemporaries such as Ed Ruscha, Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol and Helmut Newton, to younger artists such as Tacita Dean, Jenny Saville, Glenn Brown and Mike Nelson.

The exhibition is organised in association with the Estate of JG Ballard.

List of artists: Richard Artschwager, Francis Bacon, JG Ballard, Hans Bellmer, Glenn Brown, Chris Burden, Jake & Dinos Chapman, John Currin, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Tacita Dean, Jeremy Deller, Paul Delvaux, Cyprien Gaillard, Douglas Gordon, Loris Gréaud, Richard Hamilton, John Hilliard and Jemima Stehli, Roger Hiorns, Damien Hirst, Dan Holdsworth, Carsten Höller, Edward Hopper, Allen Jones, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Vera Lutter, Florian Maier-Aichen, Paul McCarthy, Adam McEwen, Dan Mitchell, Malcolm Morley, Mike Nelson, Helmut Newton, Cady Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzi, Steven Parrino, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Saville, George Shaw, Cindy Sherman, Piotr Uklański, Andy Warhol, Rachel Whiteread, Christopher Williams, Jane and Louise Wilson, Christopher Wool and Cerith Wyn Evans.

For further inquiries please contact the gallery at london@gagosian.com or at +44.207.841.9960.

Follow us on twitter]]> Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:10:27 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-02-13_chris-burden/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-02-13_chris-burden/
February 13 - March 27, 2010
Rome Gallery

Opening reception for the artist: Saturday, February 13th, from 6 to 8:30 pm


Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present Chris Burden's first exhibition in Rome in more than 30 years.

Burden continues his interest in built structures and the role they play in reflecting cultures. In three individual but interrelated works, he turns his attention to the beauty and metaphorical possibilities of the architectural folly.

At one end of the gallery Burden has recreated Nomadic Folly (2001). First presented at the Istanbul Biennial in 2001, this installation is his fantasy of a cultivated nomad's tent. The structure is comprised of a large wooden deck made of Turkish cypress and four huge umbrellas. Visitors can relax and linger in this tent-like structure, replete with opulent handmade carpets, braided ropes, hanging glass and metal lamps, and rich, sensuous wedding fabrics embroidered with sparkling threads and traditional patterns. Soothing, seductive Turkish-Armenian music spills from the tent's interior. At the other end of the gallery is Dreamer's Folly (2010), a series of three highly ornamental cast-iron gazebos reminiscent of those common to traditional English gardens. The three gazebos have been reconfigured to form one structure. Lacy "Tree of Life" fabrics are draped around the exterior to complete a beautiful sanctuary in which to dream.

But the calm and beauty of this environment is violently disrupted by the video projection The Rant (2006), where Burden's goggled face appears in close-up and many times larger than life, hovering just above water. In this performance he is a ranting xenophobic preacher delivering a short, intense message in French (with Italian subtitles), an impassion rejection of the Other.

Like all of Burden's exhibitions, The Heart: Open or Closed resonates with ambiguity on many levels. This disarmingly beautiful installation may be his most tender and humanistic to date, pointing to the beauty in the heart of two different cultures and the hate that can divide them.

Chris Burden was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1946. He received his BFA from Pomona College in Claremont, California and his MFA from the University of California at Irvine. Burden's solo exhibitions include "14 Magnolia Doubles" at the South London Gallery (London, 2006); "Chris Burden" at the Baltic Center of Contemporary Art (Gateshead, 2002); "Tower of Power" at the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (Vienna, 2002); "When Robots Rule: The Two Minute Airplane Factory" at the Tate Gallery (London, 1999); and "Chris Burden: A Twenty Year Survey" at the Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, 1988). His permanent outdoor installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) entitled Urban Light was unveiled in 2008, comprising of 202 restored antiques streetlights. Later the same year, What My Dad Gave Me, a 65-foot skyscraper made entirely of Erector Set parts was installed at Rockefeller Center in New York City. His work is featured in prominent museum collections such as the LACMA and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; the Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium; the Inhotim Centro de Arte Contemporanea, Brazil; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others. Burden currently lives and works in Topanga, California.

For more information please contact Francesca Martinotti at +39 0 697 848 570 or martinotti@lagenziarisorse.it.

For all other information please contact Gagosian Gallery Rome at +39.06.4208.6498 or at roma@gagosian.com.

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Inaugurazione alla presenza dell'artista: Sabato, 13 Febbraio, dalle 18 alle 20.30


Gagosian Gallery è lieta di annunciare la prima mostra di Chris Burden a Roma in oltre trenta anni.

In The Heart: Open or Closed l'artista prosegue la sua ricerca sulle costruzioni architettoniche e sul ruolo che queste ricoprono nel riflettere differenti culture. In tre opere individuali ma in relazione fra loro, l'artista esplora l'estetica e le possibilità metaforiche di architetture stravaganti.

Da un lato della sala ovale Burden ricrea Nomadic Folly (2001). Presentata per la prima volta nel settembre 2001 alla Settima Biennale Internazionale di Istanbul, questa installazione è la sua interpretazione fantastica di una sofisticata tenda nomade. La struttura è composta da un'ampia piattaforma in legno di cipresso e da quattro grandi ombrelloni. I visitatori possono soffermarsi e rilassarsi sotto la tenda rivestita di sontuosi tappeti e decorata da corde intrecciate, lampade e oggetti in vetro e metallo, ricche stoffe tradizionali ricamate con fili scintillanti. Una dolce e seducente musica turco-armena si diffonde dall'interno.

Nell'altro lato della galleria si erge il nuovo lavoro Dreamer's Folly (2010), una serie di tre ornati gazebi in ghisa che ricordano l'architettura tipica di un bucolico belvedere in un giardino all'inglese. I tre gazebi sono disposti in modo da creare uno spazio unico in cui drappeggi e ricami raffiguranti l'Albero della Vita, offrono al visitatore un magnifico santuario in cui sognare.

La calma e la bellezza di entrambe le strutture è interrotta dalla video proiezione The Rant (2006). In questo lavoro un primo piano ingrandito del volto di Burden emerge appena sopra il pelo dell'acqua per declamare, nel ruolo di un predicatore xenofobo, un breve ma intenso messaggio in francese di un appassionato rifiuto dell' Altro.

Come tutte le mostre di Burden, The Heart: Open or Closed suggerisce numerose ambiguità. La grazia disarmante di questa installazione, forse una delle opere più sensibili ed umane di Burden, trasmette la bellezza di due culture differenti e l'odio che può dividerle.

Chris Burden è nato a Boston, nel 1946. Ha studiato presso il Pomona College di Claremont e l'Università della California ad Irvine. La sua opera è stata oggetto di numerose mostre, fra cui "14 Magnolia Doubles" alla South London Gallery (Londra, 2006); "Chris Burden" alla Baltic Center for Contemporary Art (Gateshead, 2002); "Tower of Power" al Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (Vienna, 2002); "When Robots Rule: The Two Minute Airplane Factory" alla Tate Gallery (Londra, 1999); "Chris Burden: A Twenty Year Survey" all' Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, 1988). Nel 2008 Burden ha presentato Urban Light, una nuova iconica installazione permanente all'esterno del Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) composta da duecentodue storici lampioni restaurati, oltre ad una installazione presso il Rockefeller Center di New York - What My Dad Gave Me - un grattacielo alto quasi venti metri fatto interamente di elementi metallici giocattolo tipo meccano. Le sue opere sono incluse in importanti collezioni museali, tra cui il LACMA ed il Museum of Contemporary Art di Los Angeles; il Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art e il Museum of Modern Art, New York; la Tate Gallery di Londra; il Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium; l'Inhotim Centro de Arte Contemporanea, Brazil; il 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; il Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Burden vive e lavora a Topanga, California.

Ufficio stampa:
Francesca Martinotti
+39 0 697 848 570
martinotti@lagenziarisorse.it

Per tutte le atre informatzioni si prega di contattare Gagosian Gallery Roma +39.06.4208.6498 o roma@gagosian.com.]]> Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:31:56 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-01-28_pablo-picasso/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-01-28_pablo-picasso/
January 28 - April 10, 2010
Athens Gallery

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of linocuts made by Pablo Picasso between 1959 and 1963.

Throughout his life, Picasso restlessly explored the medium of the print, employing many techniques including lithography, etching, drypoint, and monotype. By the late 1950s he was spending most of his time in the south of France and the distance between him and his Parisian printers became increasingly difficult for smooth production. Increasingly he turned his attention to lino-cutting, a very direct way of working whereby a design is cut into a sheet of linoleum using a knife, chisel, or gouge. His first lino-cut Toros en Vallauris (1954) was a simple black-and-white print, but by 1959 he was using the technique as a complete means of expression, becoming totally absorbed in the process and his daily collaboration with the local printer Hidalgo Arnera.

The time-consuming production of Picasso's first traditional color linocut The Portrait of a Girl after Cranach (1958) prompted him to develop a new, simpler approach to the technique. Rather than using a separate linoleum block for each color, he began re-cutting the same block. He would progressively cut and re-print, depending on the number of colors he wanted in each linocut. Between 1959 and 1962 Picasso made about 100 linocuts using this new approach. Subjects ranged from Jacqueline Roque, his muse, wife, and constant companion in the gaily colored Portrait de Jacqueline au chapeau de paille multicolore to old master portraits such as the series Portrait d'homme à la fraise (Variation d'après el Greco) in which Picasso pays homage to El Greco, retaining the original composition of his predecessor's self-portrait while variously accentuating facial features and clothes to assert his own presence in the work.

In 1963, he briefly experimented with another unconventional linocut technique, typified by L'Etreinte 1 (Embrace), which depicts a man and woman locked in tumultuous embrace. This technique involved printing a linocut in cream ink onto white paper, and then painting the same sheet of paper with black China ink. The paper was then rinsed in the shower, which Picasso claimed to have enjoyed doing himself. The black ink was absorbed into the unprinted areas, but otherwise repelled by the greasy cream ink. This technique produced an image which looks as if it has been painted as much as printed.

Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain in 1881 and died in France in 1973. Recent exhibitions of his work include "Picasso: Tradition and the Avant-Garde," Museo Nacional del Prado and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2006); "Picasso and American Art" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2006) traveling to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2007); "Picasso et les Maîtres," Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (2008/2009).

For further inquiries please contact the gallery at athens@gagosian.com or at +30.210.36.40.215.

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Η Gagosian της Αθήνας παρουσιάζει μία έκθεση με χαρακτικά σε λινόλαιο που φιλοτέχνησε ο Πάμπλο Πικάσο από το 1959 έως το 1963.

Ο Πικάσο δεν σταμάτησε ποτέ να πειραματίζεται με τις διάφορες τεχνικές της χαρακτικής τέχνης, μεταξύ των οποίων και η λιθογραφία, η χαλκογραφία, η ακιδογραφία και η μονοτυπία. Στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του 1950 κατοικούσε το μεγαλύτερο διάστημα του χρόνου στη νότια Γαλλία, οπότε η μεγάλη απόσταση από το Παρίσι όπου βρίσκονταν οι τυπογράφοι με τους οποίους συνεργαζόταν δυσκόλευε πολύ την παραγωγή των έργων του. Άρχισε έτσι να πειραματίζεται με τη χαρακτική σε λινόλαιο, έναν πολύ πιο άμεσο τρόπο δουλειάς, κατά τον οποίο χάραζε ένα σχέδιο πάνω σε μία επιφάνεια από λινόλαιο χρησιμοποιώντας μαχαίρι, σμίλη ή σκαρπέλο. Το πρώτο του χαρακτικό σε λινόλαιο, το Toros en Vallauris (1954), ήταν μία απλή ασπρόμαυρη εκτύπωση, αλλά το 1959 είχε αρχίσει πλέον να εκφράζεται εξαιρετικά μέσω αυτής της τεχνικής, και τον είχε απορροφήσει εντελώς η διαδικασία της, καθώς και η καθημερινή συνεργασία του με τον Hidalgo Arnera, τον τυπογράφο της περιοχής του.

Επειδή όμως βρήκε χρονοβόρα τη διαδικασία της παραδοσιακής τεχνικής με την οποία δημιούργησε το The Portrait of a Girl after Cranach (1958), το πρώτο έγχρωμο χαρακτικό του σε λινόλαιο, αποφάσισε να εφεύρει έναν πιο απλό τρόπο για να εφαρμόζει αυτήν την τεχνική. Αντί να χρησιμοποιεί μία ξεχωριστή επιφάνεια από λινόλαιο για κάθε χρώμα, άρχισε να ξαναχαράζει την ίδια επιφάνεια. Χάραζε και ξανατύπωνε ανάλογα με τον αριθμό των χρωμάτων που ήθελε να χρησιμοποιήσει σε κάθε έργο. Από το 1959 έως το 1962 ο Πικάσο έφτιαξε περίπου 100 χαρακτικά σε λινόλαιο χρησιμοποιώντας τη νέα μέθοδο που είχε αναπτύξει. Όσον αφορά τη θεματολογία του, χρησιμοποίησε από τη Jacqueline Roque, τη μούσα, σύζυγο και μόνιμη σύντροφό του στο Portrait de Jacqueline au chapeau de paille multicolore με τα έντονα χρώματα, έως τα πορτρέτα μεγάλων δασκάλων του παρελθόντος. Για παράδειγμα, στη σειρά Portrait d'homme à la fraise (Variation d'après el Greco) ο Πικάσο τιμά τον El Greco, διατηρώντας την αρχική σύνθεση της αυτοπροσωπογραφίας του καλλιτέχνη τονίζοντας όμως με διαφορετικό τρόπο χαρακτηριστικά του προσώπου και των ρούχων του για να δηλώσει και τη δική του παρουσία στο έργο.

Το 1963 πειραματίστηκε για ένα μικρό χρονικό διάστημα με μία ακόμη πρωτότυπη τεχνική για χαρακτική σε λινόλαιο, χαρακτηριστικό παράδειγμα της οποίας αποτελεί το έργο L'Etreinte 1 (Embrace), το οποίο απεικονίζει έναν άντρα και μία γυναίκα σε έναν δυναμικό εναγκαλισμό. Εκτύπωνε το χαρακτικό με μελάνι σε κρεμ απόχρωση πάνω σε λευκό χαρτί και μετά ζωγράφιζε πάνω στο ίδιο το χαρτί με σινική μελάνη. Στη συνέχεια ξέπλενε το χαρτί με νερό, διαδικασία που ο Πικάσο απολάμβανε ιδιαίτερα. Οι περιοχές που δεν είχαν επάνω κανένα τύπωμα απορροφούσαν το μαύρο μελάνι, αλλά όπου υπήρχε το λιπαρό κρεμ μελάνι, η σινική μελάνη ξεγλιστρούσε. Η τεχνική αυτή δημιουργούσε μία εικόνα που έμοιαζε σαν να είναι και ζωγραφισμένη αλλά και τυπωμένη.

Ο Πάμπλο Πικάσο γεννήθηκε στη Μάλαγα της Ισπανίας το 1881 και πέθανε στη Γαλλία το 1973. Μεταξύ των πρόσφατων εκθέσεων με έργα του, αξίζει να σημειωθούν οι εξής: «Πικάσο: Tradition and the Avant-Garde» στο Museo Nacional del Prado και στο Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Μαδρίτη 2006· «Πικάσο and American Art» στο Whitney Museum of American Art, Νέα Υόρκη 2006, η οποία ταξίδεψε και στο Walker Art Center στη Μινεάπολη, και στο San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2007)· «Πικάσο et les Maîtres» στις Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (2008/2009).

Για πληροφορίες Τύπου παρακαλούμε επικοινωνήστε με τον Φοίβο Σακαλή στην ηλεκτρονική διεύθυνση fivos@fivos-sakalis.gr ή στα τηλέφωνα 210 6422849 και 6947 645400. Μπορείτε επίσης να επικοινωνήσετε με τη Χριστίνα Παπαδοπούλου στην Gagosian Αθήνας (cpapa@gagosian.com)]]> Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:03:52 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-02-10_arshile-gorky/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-02-10_arshile-gorky/
February 10 - April 1, 2010
Davies Street Gallery

There is some richness in just this little valley that does seem to inspire him. . . .
--Mougouch (Agnes Magruder)

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by Arshile Gorky, a key figure in the movement towards abstraction that transformed American art. This exhibition coincides with the travelling retrospective opening February 10 at Tate Modern, London.

Toward the end of his life, Gorky left the city to settle in the country where he produced his "Pastoral" work, which explored the arcadian theme that originated during the Hellenistic period and persisted through the Renaissance into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The current exhibition comprises fourteen drawings that he made in 1946 during time spent at Crooked Run Farm, the summer home of his parents-in-law nestled in the gently rolling hills of Virginia. Spurred by fears for his health (he had recently been treated for cancer) and his desire to compensate for the loss of almost thirty paintings in a fire that destroyed his studio, Gorky produced almost three hundred drawings in the period June to October 1946. His wife Mougouch reported Gorky saying that in Virginia "nature entered his head and closed his ears." He was drawing in the fields as if possessed.

Gorky went out day after day into the fields, looking intently at the various flowers and grasses that he saw before him and working freely with pencil, pens, crayons and watercolors. Later he drew multiple repetitions of the drawings made in the fields, which enabled him to ingest new ideas gained outdoors and integrate them into his formal vocabulary. He detached color from the drawn line to make them discrete pictorial components; he washed the drawings in his bathtub, hung them up to dry, and later scraped or sanded their surfaces. In this new experimentation with surfaces Gorky further altered the recognizable identity of an image through eliminating specific botanical or biological details. The resulting drawings, such as the Studies for Virginia Summer and the Pastorals are exuberant recordings of botanical and biological things taken apart and transformed into near-abstract renderings of a powerful life force.

Pastorale (1947) is a loosely painted work enlivened by a brilliant chromatic chord of yellow and peach hues. When Gorky approached the pastoral theme as the basis for painting, he was already so advanced in his knowledge of it through drawing that he hardly paused to work out his usual 'blueprint' version. Instead these paintings were exclusively, and atypically, executed in washes. In Pastorale, underdrawing is absent; the only kind of drawing visible is that done with the brush.

Arshile Gorky was born Vostanik Manoog Adoyan c.1904, in Khorkom, Armenia. He escaped the Armenian genocide in 1915, emigrated to the U.S. in 1920, and changed his name in the process of reinventing his identity. He attended the New School of Design, Boston (1922) and the Grand Central School of Art, New York City (1925). Gorky took his own life in 1948 in Connecticut. Major recent exhibitions include "Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective of Drawings," Whitney Museum of American Art (2003, traveled to the Menil Collection, Houston in 2004). "Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective," currently on view at Tate Modern, London, opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in October of last year and will travel to MOCA Los Angeles in June of 2010.

A fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by art historian and critic David Anfam accompanies the exhibition.

For further inquiries please contact the gallery at london@gagosian.com or at +44.207.493.3020.

Follow us on twitter]]> Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:31:41 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-06-05_nancy-rubins/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-06-05_nancy-rubins/
June 5 - July 9, 2010
Beverly Hills Gallery

]]> Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:25:03 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-02-26_david-smith/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-02-26_david-smith/
February 26 - April 10, 2010
West 24th Street Gallery

Opening reception: Friday, February 26th, from 6 to 8 pm


Sometimes when I start a sculpture, I begin with only a realized part, the rest is travel to be unfolded much in the order of a dream. The conflict for realization is what makes art not its certainty, nor its technique or material.
--David Smith

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of monumental sculptures by David Smith made between 1962-1964.

A pioneer of modernist twentieth-century American sculpture, Smith created these works during periods of intense production in Voltri, Italy, and at his workshop in Bolton Landing, New York. Beginning in 1952, he increasingly conceived his sculptures as distinct bodies of works that shared a thematic basis or a common material. Often he worked on several such series simultaneously, insisting that each grouping be understood as continuous parts of his concept rather than as variations on a theme. The monumentality of the Voltri, Cubi, Primo Piano, and Gondola series reflects Smith's ambition to create sculptures on a scale with the expansive rolling fields surrounding his home and studio at Bolton Landing.

In Voltri XVII (1962) and VB XVII (1963) Smith continued his practice of incorporating found objects and materials into sculptures that marry industrial processes with forms inspired by natural phenomena, such as clouds and mountains. In 1962, he was invited to participate in the "Festival of Two Worlds" in Spoleto, Italy. Working at a decommissioned steel factory in nearby Voltri, he created an astonishing twenty-seven sculptures in just thirty days. The surplus metal was then shipped to Bolton Landing where it became the raw material for the sculptures that comprise the subsequent Voltri-Bolton series: VB, Voltron and Voltri-Bolton.

Cubi II (1962) belongs to the ambitious Cubi series (1961-1965), in which Smith configured elemental, geometric, stainless steel modules into towering sculptures that evoke associations with the human body and architecture. Conceived to be installed outdoors, the Cubis absorb and reflect the varying light conditions and color of their environment, producing tonal contrasts that are painterly in nature.

Smith also continued to explore dissolving the distinction between two and three-dimensional works by painting many of his steel sculptures. In Gondola II (1964), solid planes of dark blue, black and cream function as pictorial and structural elements that seem to recede and advance with subtle authority. The title refers directly to the machine used to lift and position the large steel planes that compose this work. In contrast, the painted white surface of Primo Piano II (1962) unifies its various abstract components, reading as entirely negative space when viewed against the colored backdrop of a landscape environment. Both sculptures move beyond "drawing in space" to become "painting in space" on a grand scale and they contain strikingly disparate perspectives: when viewed from front or back, their volumes are reduced to planes, and when viewed from the side, these same volumes form almost linear profiles.

The five works selected from the major series that Smith was working on at the time of his premature death give a concise indication of the depth and range of his vision, and draw the viewer into the poetic relationships between form and space that unify his diverse oeuvre.

David Smith was born in 1906 in Decatur, Indiana. After briefly attending college at Ohio University, the University of Notre Dame, and George Washington University, he moved to New York in 1926, where he studied painting full time at the Art Students League. During the 1930s he began to focus on sculpture, creating welded constructions by using found objects and forged metal. Smith moved permanently to Bolton Landing, in upstate New York, in 1940. Smith died in a car accident near Bennington, Vermont, in 1965. Major exhibitions of his sculptures, paintings and drawings have been presented worldwide since the 1950s, including recent retrospectives at the Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo (1994); MNCA, Reina Sofia, Madrid (1996); and Storm King Art Center, New York (1997-1999). A centennial retrospective organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2006) traveled to the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Tate Modern, London (2006-2007).

For press inquiries please contact the gallery at newyork@gagosian.com or at 212.744.2313.

Follow us on twitter]]> Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:26:47 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-02-26_alexander-calder/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-02-26_alexander-calder/
February 26 - April 10, 2010
West 21st Street Gallery

Opening reception: Friday, February 26th, from 6 to 8pm


People think monuments should come out of the ground, never out of the ceiling, but mobiles can be monumental too.
--Alexander Calder

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of large-scale sculptures made by Alexander Calder made between 1957 and 1970.

Born into a family of celebrated yet traditional artists, Calder's innovative genius changed the course of modern art. He began by developing a new method of sculpting -- bending and twisting wire to "draw" three-dimensional figures in space. Resonating with early Conceptual and Constructivist art as well with as the language of early abstract painting, Calder gained renown for his invention of the mobile (a term coined by Marcel Duchamp to describe Calder's new kinetic sculptures) in which boldly colored abstract shapes made of industrial materials, including steel and wood, hang in perfect balance from delicate wires. Although his first mobiles made use of modern technology and were driven by electrical or mechanical means, he soon preferred their movements to be guided by the unpredictable influences of wind and water. While the kinetic energy, dynamism, and ebullience of the mobiles remained of primary interest to Calder throughout his life, he also created a number of important static sculptures, which Jean Arp named "stabiles" to distinguish them from their kinetic counterparts. These constructions utilized various techniques of welding and bolting to create a type of metalwork that rejected the weight and solidity of a bronze mass, yet allowed an object to displace space in a three-dimensional manner while remaining linear, open, planar, and suggestive of implicit motion.

By the 1950s, Calder's international recognition had increased significantly, allowing him to expand his studios in the United States and France; as a result, he was able to create his mobiles and stabiles on a monumental scale. In Rouge Triomphant/Triumphant Red (1959-1963), a mobile that spans almost six meters, he introduced primary red to provide vivid contrast to his almost exclusive use of black. In this rhythmic work, three groups of black "scales" are offset by an occasional red one to create a dynamic yet delicately balanced assemblage.

In monumental stabiles such as Spunk of the Monk (1964), the evident weight of the massive steel arcs is borne by just seven points of contact with the ground, suggesting a group of animals or some kind of exotic multipede, while their open intersections offer multiple perspectives that shift with the viewer's passage around the work. Commissioned for Mies van der Rohe's American Republic Insurance Company building in Des Moines, Iowa, its title is a playful allusion to the notion of life force, combining the translated French derivation of city's original name with the slang term for spirit or semen. The taut, curved planes of the human-scale Five Points/Triangles (1957) lean together, appearing to support each other even as they sweep upward like the sails of a boat.

Alexander Calder was born in 1898, Pennsylvania and attended the Stevens Institute of Technology and Art Students League. He died in New York City in 1976. Important museum collections include Musée national d`art moderne de la ville de Paris and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; and Museum of Modern Art, New York. Calder's public commissions are in evidence in cities all over the world and his work has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions, including "Alexander Calder: Die großen Skulpturen/Der andere Calder", Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 1993; "Alexander Calder", Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark, 1995 (traveled to: Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, in1996); "Alexander Calder: 1898-1976", National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1998); "Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2008 (traveled to the Centre Pompidou, Paris in 2009) and "Calder", Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2009-2010).

For press inquiries please contact the gallery at newyork@gagosian.com or at 212.744.2313.

Follow us on twitter]]> Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:25:20 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-03-25_tatiana-trouve/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-03-25_tatiana-trouve/
March 25 - June 26, 2010
Madison Avenue Gallery

The work is situated in an open space between matter and memory. This is where I wander and where the construction of a space linked to the development of psychic phenomena is expressed in twists in dimensions and intensities, in combinations that determine changes of pace and place the viewer on the threshold of a physical and mental experience, mobilizing his shoes as much as his mind.
--Tatiana Trouvé

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition by Tatiana Trouvé. Acclaimed in France and Europe, this is Trouvé's first major exhibition in the U.S.

In her disquieting, dystopic installations, Trouvé limns the boundaries between mental and physical where time, space and memory converge. Her most recent work unites her interest in sculpture, architecture, and drawing in site-specific situations that combine scenographic wall drawings; sculptures in the form of linear abstractions worked in steel, rubber, and leather, or found objects such as bed frames, shoes, machine components, mattresses, and rocks "frozen" in time by casting or embellishing; and oddly scaled built spaces incorporating sealed windows, vents, and passages articulated by windows and angled mirrors. Trouvé depicts eviscerated interiors that echo once-vivid spaces and realities. The resulting "environmental dramas" are melancholy yet highly charged, oscillating between the real, the imaginary and the phantasmic. Although these environments contain no figures, human presence is inferred by sculptural elements resembling prosthetic equipment of various sorts, while time becomes palpable in the mysterious scorch marks and viscous smears on windows and walls.

In this exhibition, Trouvé has turned the fifth floor galleries into interrelated zones of transformation and interconnection. The "foyer" to the exhibition is pure mimicry, a bare room equipped with useless cast concrete radiators and simulated wall plumbing. From there, sinuous lines drawn in copper and aluminum lead from floor to wall into large graphite drawings in which detailed fragments of modernist interiors and objects are collaged with partial views of urban or natural landscapes to create disjunctive scenes of inexplicable dread; elsewhere the same lines sweep up and across space, materializing into three-dimensional convulsions of metal wire. An adjacent space is transformed into a giant vitrine, through which one can look from either end but not enter. The volume inside the two windows is partially bisected by another visible egress, indicating an elsewhere to which access is again denied.

Diverse yet equally compelling sculptures from Trouvé's recent repertoire complete this strange scenario, including Priapus (2010), a wooden billiard cue laced into a fetishistic leather sheath that leans against a wall apparently scorched by its contact; Untitled (2009) a tangle of miraculously erect electrical cords, plugged into each other to form a closed circuit of pure entropy; Mattress (2009), a massive concrete cast lashed tightly to a pillar and the equally insidious Cushion (2009), stuffed between pillar and wall.

An illustrated folder with an essay by Kara Vander Weg will be available during the exhibition.

For press inquiries please contact Melissa Passman at mpassman@gagosian.com or at 212.741.1111.

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March 18 - April 24, 2010
Madison Avenue Gallery

Opening reception for the artist: Thursday, March 18th, from 6 to 8 pm


Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by Alberto Di Fabio.

Di Fabio's work is inspired by the fundamental laws of the physical world, as well as organic elements and their interrelation. His paintings and works on paper merge the worlds of art and science, depicting natural forms and biological structures in vivid color and imaginative detail. Throughout his abstract images, he has developed and expanded his interest in the natural world. In his early paintings, he examined the structures of flora and fauna, as well as eco- and astral systems, moving on to the study of genetics, DNA, and the synaptic receptors of the brain, and the realm of pharmaceutical and medical research.

In his latest work, Di Fabio investigates the perennial human fascination with the relationship between art and the cosmos, addressing the laws that regulate chaos in the universe, such as the theory of relativity and quantum theory. Di Fabio cites a broad range of influences and inspirations from Italian Futurist Giacomo Balla, to post-war modernists such as Enrico Castellani, Lucio Fontana, and Robert Ryman. Speed of Light (2009), for example, represents light rays in minimal form, meditating on the vastness and infinity of the medium. In this new series, Di Fabio expands his vision into meticulous detail using dots and strips of acrylic paint to interrupt the spatial field of the painting. Each of the multiple centers of the composition serves as both a cognitive and visual cue.

Alberto Di Fabio was born in Avezzano in 1966, and studied at the Academia delle Belle Arti, Rome. Recent exhibition include Beijing International Art Biennale (2005); "Insomnia", Galleria Pack, Milan (2007); and Umberto Di Marino Arte Contemporanea, Napoli, Italy (2007); Museo Carlo Bilotti, Aranciera di Villa Borgese, Rome, Italy (2008).

Di Fabio lives and works in Rome.

For press inquiries please contact the gallery at newyork@gagosian.com or at 212.744.2313.

Follow us on twitter]]> Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:11:34 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-03-04_andreas-gursky/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-03-04_andreas-gursky/
March 4 - May 1, 2010
Beverly Hills Gallery

Opening reception for the artist: Thursday, March 4th, from 6 to 8 pm


Space is very important for me but in a more abstract way. Maybe to try to understand not just that we are living in a certain building or in a certain location, but to become aware that we are living on a planet that is going at enormous speed through the universe. I read a picture not for what's really going on there, I read it more for what is going on in our world generally.
--Andreas Gursky

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition by Andreas Gursky to inaugurate the newly expanded Beverly Hills gallery, designed by Richard Meier & Partners.

In the two adjacent main galleries, Gursky will present a new series of large-scale works as well as a grouping of subjects that he has selected from the last twenty years, from the landscape Műlheim an der Ruhr, Anglers (1989) to the empty scene of Untitled XV (2008).

Gursky has demonstrated that a photographer can make or construct—rather than simply take—photographs about modern life and produce them on the scale of epic painting. Just as history painters of previous centuries found their subjects in the realities of everyday life, he seeks inspiration in his observations of the human species in the world, whether firsthand or via reports of global phenomena in the daily media.

The resulting pictures have a formal congruence deriving from a bold and edgy dialogue between photography and painting, empirical observation and artfulness, conceptual rigor and spontaneity, representation and abstraction. In pursuit of his aim to create "an encyclopedia of life" Gursky's world view fuses the flux of reality with the stillness of metaphysical reflection.

From initially using the computer as a retouching tool, he began exploring its transformative potential, sometimes combining elements of multiple shots of the same subject into an intricate yet seamless whole, at other times barely altering the image at all. Over time his subjects have expanded to map and distill the emergent patterns and symmetries of a globalized world with its consensual flows and grids of data and people, architecture, and mass spectacle.

In the new Ocean series, Gursky has for the first time relinquished his position behind the camera to work with satellite images of the world as his raw material, creating contemporary mappe del mondo on a scale befitting the cosmic grandeur of the subject. In their darkly nuanced surfaces, he has worked to reconcile the division between the machine eye and the human eye, continuing the debates and practices begun in the nineteenth century regarding photography and the issue of artistic expression versus objective science.

Andreas Gursky: Long Shot Close Up (2009), a documentary directed by Jan Schmidt-Garre (German with English subtitles), will be screened continuously in the rear gallery for the duration of the exhibition.

The catalogue in two volumes, featuring essays by California-based art historian Norman Bryson and German art historian and curator Werner Spies, is forthcoming.

Andreas Gursky was born in 1955 in Leipzig, former East Germany. He attended Folkwangschule, Essen (1978-1981) and Staatliche Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf (1981-1987). Recent major museum exhibitions include "Werke-Works 80-08", Kunstmuseen Krefeld (2008, touring to Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Vancouver Art Gallery in 2009); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2007); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2007, touring to Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Sharjah Art Museum, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Ekaterina Foundation, Moscow in 2007-2008); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2001, touring to Reina Sofia, Madrid, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2001-2002). His work is included in important public and private collections throughout the world.

Gursky lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.

For further press inquiries, reproduction permission and hi-res images, please contact Melissa Passman at mpassman@gagosian.com or at +1.212.741.1111.

Follow us on twitter]]> Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:28:03 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-04-09_richard-serra/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-04-09_richard-serra/
April 9 - May 15, 2010
Rome Gallery

]]> Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:52:26 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-03-18_ed-paschke/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-03-18_ed-paschke/
March 18 - April 24, 2010
Madison Avenue Gallery

Opening reception: Thursday, March 18th, from 6 to 8 pm


Central to my work is what I refer to as the law of opposites; I believe that there are polarities between things […] Positive/negative, the idea of pacing a painting in terms of complexity and simplicity, the idea of public versus private, are elements that have always interested me and that I've always tried in some way to build into the character of the paintings.
--Ed Paschke

Ed Paschke taught me what it meant to be a professional artist. His paintings are like drugs, but in a good way: they are among the strongest physical images that I've ever seen. Their effect is neurological.
--Jeff Koons

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of the work of Ed Paschke, curated by Jeff Koons. As a student, Koons admired Paschke's work and became his assistant in Chicago in the mid-1970s while attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Paschke would prove to be an important mentor and formative inspiration for the young artist. The exhibition includes loans from key public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad, as well as rarely seen works from the Ed Paschke Foundation.

Born in Chicago in 1939, Paschke studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the height of the Imagist movement in the late fifties, while supporting himself as a commercial artist. He avidly collected photograph-related visual media in all its forms, from newspapers, magazines, and posters to film, television, and video, with a preference for imagery that tended toward the risqué and the marginal. Through this he studied the ways in which these media transformed and stylized the experience of reality, which in turn impacted on his consideration of formal and philosophical questions concerning veracity and invention in his own painting. At the same time, he sought living and working situations -- from factory hand to psychiatric aide -- that would connect him with Chicago's diverse ethnic communities as well as feed his fascination for gritty urban life and human abnormality. Thus he developed a distinctive oeuvre that oscillated between personal and aesthetic introspection and confronting social and cultural values.

In his early paintings Paschke both incorporated and challenged depictions of legendary figures by transforming them into corps exquis, such as Pink Lady (1970) where he set Marilyn Monroe's famous head atop the suited body of an anonymous male accordion player; or Painted Lady (1971) where he redesigned screen legend Claudette Colbert as a tattooed lady fresh from a freak show. Another direction through which he explored the features and quirks of meaning and logic was in paintings of leather accessories interpreted as anthropomorphized fetish objects, such as Hairy Shoes (1971) and Bag Boots (1972). In the decades separating Pink Lady and Matinee (1987), Paschke shifted his interest from print to electronic media and a dazzling spectrum of televisual waves and flashes began to fill the paintings. Forms and images disintegrated, broken apart in the fabric of electronic disturbance and its surface. In Matinee, the face of Elvis Presley is fragmented into a field of glowing swathes of color with lips and eyes alone suggesting the human presence beneath the electronic overlay.

Paschke made use of an overhead projector to layer images, which he then rendered using the traditional and time-consuming medium of oil painting. He began with an underpainting in black and white, then addressed it with refined systems of colored glazing or impasto to enliven the optical and physical textures of his painting. With this original and painstaking process he created a formal parallel with the black-and-white-to-color progression in the historical development of printing, film, and television images, at the same time moving the subject matter from the particular to the non-specific to allow a wider range of interpretation. In his later work, once again forms became more solidified, moving back towards certain kinds of psychologized presences and the edgy tension that characterized his earlier work.

Unlike most of his Pop predecessors with their unthreatening embrace of popular culture, Paschke gravitated towards the images that exemplified the underside of American values -- fame, violence, sex, and money – a preference that he shared with Andy Warhol, who was one of his foremost inspirations. Although long considered to be an artist of his own time and place, his explorations of the archetypes and clichés of media identity prefigured the appropriative gestures of the "Pictures Generation," and for a new generation of global artists his totemic, eye-popping paintings have come to embody the essence of cosmopolitan art.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, which includes essays by Jeff Koons and art critic Dave Hickey as well as reprints of important essays by the Chicago critic and art historian Dennis Adrian and New Museum curator Richard Flood.

Ed Paschke lived and worked in Chicago until his death in 2004. His work is included many museum collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Centre Pompidou, Paris. Major exhibitions include "Ed Paschke: Selected Works 1967 – 1981", Renaissance Society, University of Chicago (1982, traveled to the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston); "Ed Paschke Retrospective", Centre Pompidou, Paris (1989-1990, traveled to the Dallas Museum, Texas and the Art Institute of Chicago, 1990-1991; "Ed Paschke: Recent Work", Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago (2003); and "Ed Paschke: Chicago Icon, A Retrospective", Chicago History Museum (2006).

Concurrent with this exhibition, Russell Bowman Art Advisory is presenting the survey exhibition "Ed Paschke's Women" in Chicago from March 26 through May 22, 2010.

For press inquiries please contact Virginia Coleman at virginia@gagosian.com or at 212.744.2313.

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