http://www.gagosian.com/ Gagosian Gallery News en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss exhibit-E.com http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-16_franz-west/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-16_franz-west/
September 16 - October 30, 2010
Rome Gallery

[Scroll down for Italian version / Testo in italiano al termine della versione in inglese]

Opening reception for the artist: Thursday, September 16th, from 6:30 to 8:30 pm


I see my works as quite compatible with a l'art pour l'art philosophy. One may think that I try to take the art object out into the world since my works sometimes appear to have a practical function, but really it's the other way around: things in the world can, under certain special circumstances, enter the realm of art.
--Franz West

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new sculptures by Franz West.

Belonging to the generation of artists exposed to Actionist and Performance Art of the 1960s and 70s, West instinctively rejected the traditionally passive nature of the relationship between artwork and viewer. In the seventies, he began making a series of small, portable, mixed media sculptures called Adaptives (Passstücke). These "ergonomically inclined" objects become complete as artworks only when the viewer holds, wears, carries or performs with them. West has continued to explore sculpture in terms of an ongoing dialogue of actions and reactions between viewers and objects in any given exhibition space. His amorphous and highly endearing sculptures transform public spaces into sociable aesthetic environments while his furniture designs and subversive collages further challenge the boundaries between art and life.

In this exhibition of new sculptures, West takes basic shapes and transforms them into irregular large-scale constructions. His persistent playfulness with the principles of classical sculpture is evident in Ecolalia (2010), a group of seven painted totems built from papier-mâché, cardboard, polystyrene, and objects. He fashions each one into a precariously stacked form that rises out of a trash can or bucket for a pedestal, grappling with contingency and equilibrium to produce unexpected results. Some of them teeter almost three and a half meters high with alternating rectangular and circular forms while others evoke the shape of a funnel. They can be viewed from sofas that West has designed both for comfort and to provide alternative positions and viewing platforms throughout the show.

A two-part sculpture Caino va incontro ad Abele (2009) re-imagines the foundational biblical story as two figures, painted in swathes of whimsical color, set in an opposing stance like sparring partners.

The exhibition catalogue features a text by Achille Bonito Oliva as well as West's own selection of literary, philosophical, and historical texts that he was reading while making these sculptures.

Franz West was born in Vienna in 1947 and studied at the Academy of Applied Arts, Vienna. His work is in many public collections including MAXXI, Rome; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum Ludwig, Cologne and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include "We'll Not Carry Coals," Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria in 2003; "Recent Sculptures" at Lincoln Center, New York in 2004; Vancouver Art Gallery in 2005; the MAK, Vienna in 2008; and "To Build A House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972-2008" at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2008-2009, which traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2009. A major European retrospective "Franz West: Autotheater" opened at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne earlier this year, traveling to MADRE, Naples and will be on show at the Universalmuseum in Graz, Austria from September to January 9, 2011.

Franz West lives and works in Vienna.

Press Office: Francesca Martinotti at +39 0 697 848 570 or martinotti@lagenziarisorse.it.

For more 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: Giovedì 16 settembre, dalle 18.30 alle 20.30


Credo che il mio lavoro sia vicino alla filosofia dell'art pour l'art. Si potrebbe pensare che io cerchi di portare l'oggetto d'arte nel mondo, dato che le mie opere a volte sembrano avere una funzione pratica, ma in realtà è il contrario: le cose nel mondo possono in alcuni casi particolari entrare nel reame dell'arte.
--Franz West

Gagosian Gallery è lieta di annunciare una mostra di nuove sculture di Franz West.

Appartenente alla generazione di artisti influenzati dall'Azionismo e dalla Performance Art degli anni Sessanta e Settanta, West rigetta istintivamente la natura tradizionalmente passiva della relazione fra l'opera d'arte e lo spettatore. Negli anni Settanta l'artista inaugura una serie di piccole sculture portatili polimateriche, gli Adattabili (Paßtücke). Questi oggetti simil-ergonomici si completano in quanto opere d'arte solo nel momento in cui lo spettatore le prende, le indossa, le porta con sè o le utilizza per svolgere delle attività. West continua ad esplorare la scultura in termini di costante dialogo di azione e reazione tra gli spettatori e gli oggetti all'interno di un qualsiasi spazio espositivo. Le sue sculture dalle forme indefinite ed accattivanti trasformano gli spazi pubblici in ambienti estetici conviviali, mentre mobili e collage infrangono ulteriormente i confini fra arte e vita.

Nella mostra di Roma West parte da forme basilari e le trasforma in costruzioni irregolari di grande formato. Il suo continuo approccio ludico ai principi della scultura classica è evidente in Ecolalia (2010), un gruppo di sette totem dipinti e realizzati con cartapesta, cartone, polistirolo, e oggetti vari. Ciascuno di essi appare come un accumulo precario di forme che emergono da piedistalli fatti di bidoni o secchi, che sfidano la contingenza e l'equilibrio al fine di produrre risultati inaspettati. Alcuni raggiungono precariamente i tre metri e mezzo di altezza alternando forme rettangolari e circolari, mentre altri evocano la forma di un imbuto. Queste opere possono esser osservate dai sofà che West ha realizzato per accogliere il visitatore e fornirgli molteplici punti di vista all'interno della mostra.

La scultura in due parti Caino va incontro ad Abele (2009) reimmagina la storia biblica attraverso due figure in resina variopinta poste una di fronte all'altra come in una sfida.

Il catalogo della mostra presenta un testo di Achille Bonito Oliva oltre ad una selezione di testi letterari, filosofici e storici scelti dall'artista durante il periodo di esecuzione dei lavori.

Franz West nasce a Vienna nel 1947, dove frequenta l'Accademia di Arti Applicate. Il suo lavoro è parte di numerose collezioni pubbliche tra cui il MAXXI, Roma; il Centre Pompidou, Parigi; il Museum Ludwig, Colonia; il Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fra le recenti mostre personali si annoverano "We'll Not Carry Coals" al Kunsthaus Bregenz (2003); "Recent Sculptures" al Lincoln Center di New York (2004); la Vancouver Art Gallery (2005); il MAK di Vienna (2008); "To Build A House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972-2008," presentata al Baltimore Museum of Art (2008-2009) e al Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2009). L'importante retrospettiva "Franz West: Auto-Theatre" è stata inaugurata al Museo Ludwig di Colonia all'inizio di quest'anno, presentata poi al Museo d'Arte Donna Regina di Napoli, e sarà in mostra al Universalmuseum di Graz da settembre 2010 a gennaio 2011.

Franz West vive e lavora a Vienna.

Ufficio stampa: Francesca Martinotti, +39.06.9784.8570 o martinotti@lagenziarisorse.it

Per tutte le altre informazioni si prega di contattare Gagosian Gallery Roma +39.06.4208.6498 o roma@gagosian.com.]]> Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:36:43 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-07-16_nancy-rubins/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-07-16_nancy-rubins/
July 16 - September 3, 2010
Beverly Hills Gallery

We all have some history with boats, whether our grandparents came over that way or whether we used them as kids. The canoe, for example, is such a simple form, an ancient form. And it's 100 percent figurative, designed around the human figure.
--Nancy Rubins

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce "Works for New Space, Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Monochrome I & II," Nancy Rubins' first exhibition in Los Angeles since 2001. The exhibition features two new sculptures, which were assembled on site at the gallery.

A pre-eminent American sculptor, Rubins takes used or discarded industrial materials and objects and transforms them into monumental sculptures whose scale and forceful presence have an overwhelming physical impact. Rubins acts as an intermediary between the past and future states of her chosen materials, crafting them into sculptures while maintaining the discrete identities of their constituents. Her work incorporates objects of consumer culture that sometimes retain visible identifying logos, however she is most interested in their formal qualities and spatial potential than their brand. Her arrangements evoke a precarious equilibrium of objects in space, citing both the traditions of modernist American monumental sculpture as well as bricolage, which emphasize the aesthetic possibilities of quotidian objects. Using these diverse precedents as her foundations, she produces sculptures that brim with the entropic energies and forces of nature.

Boats entered Rubins' sculptural vocabulary in 2000, which she chose for their lightness, mobility, and dynamic structure, as well as their iconographical import. Two massive sculptures, Work for New Space, Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Monochrome I & II, are made up of a variety of used aluminum boats including canoes, insta-boats, jon boats, and rowboats. In both, wire cable connects the boats to each other and to the steel armature, forming a weblike structure of compression and tension that recalls Buckminster Fuller's notion of "tensegrity," where the whole is stronger than the parts. The seemingly monochromatic metal sculptures reveal a subtle yet rich patination on closer examination, from the dents and scrapes of incidental damage to stenciled serial numbers. In a nod to Brancusi that conflates Bird in Space with Endless Column, they rise away from the floor, cantilevering toward each other in mid-flight.

Nancy Rubins was born in Naples, Texas, raised in Tullahoma, Tennessee, and studied at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore (BFA, 1974) and the University of California, Davis (MFA, 1976). Her work is included in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon, France. Major exhibitions include "Airplane Parts and Building, A Large Growth for San Diego," Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (1994); ARTPACE, San Antonio (1997); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1995); Miami Art Museum (1999); Fonds regional d'art contemporain de Bourgogne, France (2005); "MoMA and Airplane Parts," SculptureCenter, Long Island City, New York (2006); and "Big Pleasure Point," Lincoln Center, New York (2006).

Nancy Rubins lives and works in Topanga Canyon, California.

For further inquiries please contact Domenica Stagno at domenica@gagosian.com or at 310.271.9400.

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September 22 - November 6, 2010
Beverly Hills Gallery

Opening reception for the artist: Wednesday, September 22nd, from 6 to 8 pm


Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce “Contraband,” a new photographic series by Taryn Simon.

Simon’s photographs chronicle contradictory aspects of American identity while exposing the veiled mechanisms of society. Contraband expands on the earlier series An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007), which explored the covert intersection between private and public domains. For five days in November 2009, Simon lived at John F Kennedy International Airport, which processes more international passengers than any other airport in the United States. The exhaustive pace at which she photographed paralleled the twenty-four hour rhythm by which goods move across borders and time zones. Contraband includes 1075 photographs of over 1000 items detained or seized from passengers and from express mail entering the U.S. from abroad. Simon used a labor-intensive, forensic photographic procedure to document a broad array of forbidden items, including the active ingredient found in Botox, counterfeit clothes and designer accessories, pharmaceuticals, jewelry, overproof Jamaican rum, drugs, items made from endangered species, Cuban cigars, animal parts, pirated DVDs, khat, gold dust, GBL (date rape drug), cow-manure tooth powder, and steroids.

Cataloguing such an enormous amount of material in a limited period of time, emerging patterns reveal a comprehensive cross-section of international commerce, exposing the desires and demands that drive the international economy as well as the local economies that produce them. Simon photographed each item against a neutral grey background, producing an ‘objective’ scientific record, devoid of context. Removed from the individual passenger’s belongings, each item loses its distinguishing personal associations and is transformed into an artifact of the larger global network. For Simon, “contraband” can also infer danger, raising questions about what is officially considered to be a threat to authority and security in contemporary society.

This exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with a text by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Director of the Serpentine Gallery, London. It is published by Steidl.

Contraband will also open at Lever House, New York on September 30 and run until December 31, 2010.

Taryn Simon was born in New York in 1975. She is a graduate of Brown University and a Guggenheim Fellow. Simon's photographs have been the subject of international solo exhibitions including “The Innocents,” Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2003), traveled to institutions including P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2003) and High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2006); and “An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar,” the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007), traveled to institutions including The Photographer's Gallery, London (2007), the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2007-2008), and the Foam Photography Museum, Amsterdam (2008). Permanent collections include: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. She is the 2010 recipient of the Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award.

For further inquiries please contact Sarah Womble at swomble@gagosian.com or at 310.271.9400.

*There will be a cover feature on Taryn Simon's Contraband series in Sunday, August 1st's New York Times Magazine. To view online (click): Strange Cargo at Kennedy Airport]]> Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:43:06 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-24_michael-craig-martin/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-24_michael-craig-martin/
September 24 - December 17, 2010
Athens Gallery

[Scroll down for Greek version / Ελληνικά στο τέλος της σελίδας]

I want my paintings to be simple enough to seem obvious but complex enough to provide a variety of avenues for imaginative and aesthetic play.
--Michael Craig-Martin

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Michael Craig-Martin. This is his first solo exhibition in Greece.

In his early work, Craig-Martin often incorporated readymades into sculpture and made knowing references to American Minimalism. His elegant restraint and conceptual clarity is exemplified by An Oak Tree (1973), comprising a glass of water on a shelf and a text written by him asserting that the glass of water is, in fact, an oak tree. This interest in semantics, the play between rhetoric and object, continues to be a core theme in his work.

In the 1990s, Craig-Martin made a decisive shift to painting and developed his hallmark style of precise, bold outlines demarcating flat planes of intensely vibrant colors. Through exacting draughtsmanship, he uses composition to explore spatial relationships by juxtaposing and layering color. He paints groupings of letters that may form a number of words; he also depicts banal, manufactured objects. The painted words often refer to abstract qualities and concepts, while the objects are based on the familiar and concrete. However, he does not paint a specific chair, or shoe, or cell phone, but rather a generic typology for each that he repeats throughout his oeuvre. In his eyes, these ambiguous combinations of letters and schematic templates of mass-produced objects create potential for other viewers to derive a range of personal meaning from the paintings.

In his new and vivid acrylic-on-aluminum paintings, Craig-Martin continues his ongoing explorations of reality and representation in art. By constructing a series of open-ended associations and meanings from a set of self-imposed aesthetic limitations – akin to those of language itself –he creates seemingly infinite permutations that expand the imaginative possibilities of his readymade images. Each painting is predicated on a single word, such as “art” or “sign,” which he treats tautologically, interweaving the letters of the word, rendered in varying sizes, with line drawings of quotidian objects such as shoes, hammers, light bulbs, safety pins, and chairs, against a vivid monochrome background. The combined effect of the letters and the objects reduced to pictograms create an illusion of transparency and depth of field; narrative play results from this juxtaposition and layering. Through such apparently random groupings Craig-Martin exploits the complex and often contradictory relationships between word and image.

Michael Craig-Martin was born in Dublin in 1941. He studied at Yale University, where he received his BA in 1963 and his MFA in 1966. He was a professor at Goldsmith's College from 1974-1988 and 1994-2000, and a significant influence on the emerging British artists. Craig-Martin's work is represented in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid. Solo exhibitions include “Always Now,” Kunstverein Hannover (1998); IVAM, Valencia (2000); “Living,” Sintra Museum of Modern Art, Portugal (2001); “Signs of Life,” Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2006); and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2006-2007). Permanent large-scale installations can be found at Regents Place, London and The Laban Center, Greenwich.

Craig-Martin lives and works in London.

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

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Θέλω οι πίνακές μου να είναι τόσο απλοί που το περιεχόμενό τους να μοιάζει προφανές, αλλά και τόσο σύνθετοι ώστε να παρέχουν μεγάλη ποικιλία δυνατοτήτων για αισθητικό και νοητικό παιχνίδι.
--Michael Craig-Martin

Η Gagosian της Αθήνας παρουσιάζει μία έκθεση με νέους πίνακες του Michael Craig-Martin. Πρόκειται για την πρώτη του ατομική έκθεση στην Ελλάδα.

Στα πρώιμα έργα του ο Craig-Martin ενσωμάτωνε συχνά readymades (έτοιμα αντικείμενα) στα γλυπτά του και έκανε σαφείς αναφορές στον Αμερικανικό Μινιμαλισμό. Τόσο ο τρόπος με τον οποίον ελέγχει τις σκέψεις και τα συναισθήματά του όσο και η διαύγεια με την οποία χειρίζεται την εννοιολογική τέχνη απεικονίζονται ξεκάθαρα σε έργα όπως το An Oak Tree (1973), το οποίο αποτελείται από ένα ποτήρι με νερό τοποθετημένο σε ένα ράφι και ένα κείμενο γραμμένο από τον ίδιον στο οποίο ισχυρίζεται ότι το ποτήρι με το νερό είναι στην πραγματικότητα μια βελανιδιά. Αυτό το ενδιαφέρον για τη σημασιολογία –το παιχνίδι ανάμεσα στον λόγο και το αντικείμενο– παραμένει η βασική θεματολογία του έργου του.

Τη δεκαετία του 1990 ο Craig-Martin στράφηκε στη ζωγραφική και ανέπτυξε το ιδιαίτερο χαρακτηριστικό του ύφος που ξεχωρίζει για τα ακριβή, αδρά περιγράμματα που ορίζουν επίπεδες επιφάνειες πολύ ζωηρών χρωμάτων. Με τη μεγάλη ακρίβεια στην τεχνική του, χρησιμοποιεί τη σύνθεση για να εξερευνήσει τις συνάφειες στον χώρο, αντιπαραθέτοντας χρώματα σε πολλαπλά επίπεδα. Ζωγραφίζει σύνολα από γράμματα τα οποία μπορεί να σχηματίζουν μερικές διαφορετικές λέξεις. Σχεδιάζει επίσης μπανάλ βιομηχανικά αντικείμενα. Οι λέξεις που ζωγραφίζει αναφέρονται συχνά σε αφηρημένες αξίες και έννοιες, ενώ τα αντικείμενα που χρησιμοποιεί είναι γνωστά και υπαρκτά. Όμως, δεν ζωγραφίζει μία συγκεκριμένη καρέκλα, ένα παπούτσι ή ένα κινητό τηλέφωνο, αλλά μία αφηρημένη φόρμα για το καθένα την οποία επαναλαμβάνει σε όλο το έργο του. Κατά την άποψή του, ο αμφιλεγόμενος συνδυασμός γραμμάτων και σχηματικών περιγραμμάτων βιομηχανικών προϊόντων ευρείας κατανάλωσης προσφέρει στους θεατές τη δυνατότητα να δώσουν πολλές διαφορετικές προσωπικές ερμηνείες στους πίνακές του.

Στα νέα και ζωηρόχρωμα έργα του, τα οποία είναι ζωγραφισμένα με ακρυλικά χρώματα πάνω σε αλουμίνιο, ο Craig-Martin εξακολουθεί να διερευνά την έννοια της πραγματικότητας και της αναπαράστασης στην τέχνη. Έχοντας δομήσει μία σειρά ελεύθερων συνειρμών και νοημάτων που πηγάζουν από τους αισθητικούς περιορισμούς που ο ίδιος έχει επιβάλει στον εαυτό του –σαν αυτούς που εμπεριέχει άλλωστε και η γλώσσα– δημιουργεί απεριόριστες κατά τα φαινόμενα παραλλαγές, οι οποίες μπορούν να ερμηνευτούν με ακόμα περισσότερους τρόπους απ’ ό,τι τα έργα του με τα readymades. Κάθε πίνακας βασίζεται σε μια λέξη –όπως «τέχνη» ή «σύμβολο»– την οποία την αντιμετωπίζει ταυτολογικά, ενσωματώνοντας τα γράμματα της λέξης τα οποία παραθέτει σε διαφορετικό μέγεθος το καθένα, σε γραμμικά σχέδια αντικειμένων καθημερινής χρήσης όπως παπούτσια, σφυριά, λαμπτήρες, παραμάνες και καρέκλες, πάνω σε έντονο μονόχρωμο φόντο. Το αποτέλεσμα που προκύπτει από τον συνδυασμό των γραμμάτων και των αντικειμένων που στην ουσία συμβολίζονται από εικονογράμματα είναι ότι δημιουργείται η ψευδαίσθηση της διαφάνειας και του βάθους πεδίου∙ το αφηγηματικό στοιχείο των έργων προκύπτει από αυτή την αντιπαράθεση και τα πολλαπλά επίπεδα. Μέσα από τέτοιες φαινομενικά τυχαίες ομαδοποιήσεις, ο Craig-Martin ερευνά τη σύνθετη και συχνά αντιφατική σχέση ανάμεσα στη λέξη και την εικόνα.

Ο Michael Craig-Martin γεννήθηκε στο Δουβλίνο το 1941. Σπούδασε στο πανεπιστήμιο Yale όπου ολοκλήρωσε τις σπουδές του με μεταπτυχιακό τίτλο το 1966. Διατέλεσε καθηγητής στο Goldsmith's College από το 1974 έως το 1988 και από το 1994 έως το 2000, ασκώντας σημαντική επιρροή στους νέους Βρετανούς καλλιτέχνες. Η δουλειά του Craig-Martin περιλαμβάνεται σε πολλές δημόσιες συλλογές, μεταξύ των οποίων και στο Museum of Modern Art της Νέας Υόρκης, στην Tate Gallery του Λονδίνου, και στο Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia της Μαδρίτης. Έχει παρουσιάσει τα έργα του σε πολλές ατομικές εκθέσεις, μεταξύ των οποίων: “Always Now”, Kunstverein Hannover (1998)• IVAM, Βαλένθια (2000)• “Living”, Sintra Museum of Modern Art, Πορτογαλία (2001)• “Signs of Life”, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Αυστρία (2006)• Irish Museum of Modern Art (2006-2007). Μόνιμες μεγάλης κλίμακας εγκαταστάσεις του είναι τοποθετημένες στο Regents Place του Λονδίνου και στο Laban Centre του Γκρίνουιτς.

Ο Craig-Martin ζει και εργάζεται στο Λονδίνο.

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)]]> Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:15:51 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-07-16_jorge-pardo/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-07-16_jorge-pardo/
July 16 - September 11, 2010
Beverly Hills Gallery

Opening reception for the artist: Friday, July 16th, from 6 to 8 pm


That former notion of inside and outside is completely reformulating itself. It happens in a very blunt way - you go to a gallery and then you go outside and realize that the garbage you are looking at on the ground is more interesting, or the car you're getting into. One of the reasons I became interested in the functional was precisely because of that problematic.
--Jorge Pardo

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present "Bulgogi," a new mixed media installation by Jorge Pardo.

Pardo merges art, design, and architecture, drawing on the historical intersections of these disciplines from the Bauhaus to Robert Smithson while interrogating the conventional uses of public and private space. His diverse production range from hand-crafted furniture evoking Modernist designers such as Alvar Aalto and Charles Eames to large-scale, site-specific projects such as the house he designed in 1998 for an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and subsequently moved into. In his designs for both the Mountain Bar in Los Angeles and the lobby and bookshop of the former Dia Foundation for the Arts in New York, Pardo re-imagined public spaces as vivid aesthetic environments. Although his works are not easily categorized, he considers himself to be a sculptor, transforming traditional gallery spaces into installations that often combine his own designs for rugs, lamps, and furniture with paintings to prompt a reevaluation of their respective functions and significance and thus further dissolve the boundaries between art and life.

Bulgogi is the name given to a traditional Korean dish of marinated, barbequed beef, which Pardo uses here as a metaphor for Korean immigration and cultural assimilation in Los Angeles. Transforming the gallery into a domestic environment, Pardo creates a "drawing room" using a kaleidoscopic patterned rug of his own design and wallpaper based on a photo-collage of local Korean-Americans. The wallpaper includes scrapbook images framed by graphic flower cutouts, an evolution of a previous wallpaper installation that mapped the social history of Los Angeles. A series of vibrantly colored "fan paintings" on canvas, based on computer-generated abstractions evokes the push-pull dynamic of modernist abstraction, while a newly designed jewelry cabinet filled with idiosyncratic bracelets, rings and necklaces made of plastic, wood, gold, pearls and diamonds is an adaptation of Pardo's own earlier designs in the new context of the unifying cabinet display and gallery space. This gesture is intended to parallel the assimilation and adaptation of the immigrant population over time.

Jorge Pardo was born in Havana, Cuba in 1963 and studied at the University of Illinois, Chicago and received his BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions including "4166 Sea View Lane," Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1998); Fundació "la Caixa," Barcelona (2004); "House," Miami MoCA North (2007), traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2008); K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (2009); and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2010). Architectural projects and non-art specific spaces have included creating a café for the Leipzig Messe in Germany, a restaurant for the K21 Museum, and the re-design of the installation for the pre-Columbian collection at LACMA. His work is part of numerous public collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York and Tate Modern, London.

Jorge Pardo lives and works in Los Angeles.

For further inquiries please contact Sarah Womble at swomble@gagosian.com or at 310.271.9400.]]> Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:14:36 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-07-08_summer-shows/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-07-08_summer-shows/
July 8 - September 3, 2010
Madison Avenue Gallery

Three exhibitions on three floors:

The 6th Floor group show features Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra and Christopher Wool

The 5th Floor show features a selection of works by German artist Anselm Reyle

The 4th Floor group show features Mike Kelley, Florian Maier-Aichen and Anselm Reyle]]> Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:46:36 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-14_marc-newson/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-14_marc-newson/
September 14 - October 16, 2010
West 21st Street Gallery

Opening reception for the artist: Tuesday, September 14th, from 6 to 8pm


As a kid obsessed with designing and making things, post-war Italian design was a huge source of inspiration. I was amazed by the seamless ability of designers and industry to produce every conceivable type of industrial product, from furniture to automobiles. My own career has undoubtedly been influenced by the Italians’ impact on so many areas of design.
--Marc Newson

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce “Transport,” a thematic exhibition by Marc Newson that brings together for the first time all of his major designs and realized products for transport and human locomotion since 1999.

“Transport” will premiere Aquariva by Marc Newson, Newson’s reinterpretation of the famous leisure speedboats produced by the iconic Italian boatmaker Riva. Drawing on the contemporary Aquariva and its predecessor of the 1960s, the glamorous Aquarama, Newson has infused the classic model with his streamlined and forward-looking style using ideas imported from his innovative work in automotive and aerospace design. These include the use of phenolic textile composite -- a durable laminate made from linen and resin that made its first appearance in Newson’s furniture designs in 2007 -- in place of traditional mahogany for the deck; anodized aluminum for discreet hooks, cleats, handles, and holds; a streamlined instrument panel, and a wrap-around laminated windscreen made from a single sheet of glass. The modified interior – upholstered in the collector’s choice of punchy colors including a vivid turquoise as an update of the original tone used for the Aquarama -- includes separate driver and passenger seats, and a functional dining area. Aquariva by Marc Newson, custom-built in the original Riva boatyards, is produced in an edition of 22 and available exclusively through Gagosian Gallery.

Situating Aquariva by Marc Newson within the breadth and reach of Newson’s enduring obsession with human and mechanical locomotion, “Transport” explores the full range of his vehicle design. Some have been commissioned by leading international corporations specializing in automotive, aerospace, and nautical design, others designed for pure pleasure. From MN Special (2008), a lightweight carbon fiber bicycle designed for Biomega, to EADS Astrium Space-Plane prototype (2007) designed for commercial space tourism; from the mirror-like Nickel Surfboard (2006) designed for competitive tow-in surfing, to Kelvin40 (2003), a small, idiosyncratic jet plane named after the main character in Tarkovsky’s Solaris and commissioned by Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain; from the “convertible” Zvezdochka trainer for Nike (2004), designed for general use by Russian cosmonauts in the International Space Station and named after the fifth Russian dog in space, to the endearing Ford 021C urban concept car (1999), Newson’s imagination reveals a sense of playfulness and fun behind the requisite rigor of the modern design mind.

Newson approaches design as an experimental exercise in extreme structure and advanced technologies, combined with a highly tactile and exacting exploration of materials, processes, and skills. As an industrial designer, his reach is broad and diverse, from concept jets and cars to watches, footwear, jewelry, restaurants, and aircraft interiors. Since the outset of his career, he has also produced beautifully crafted, limited-edition furniture, including the iconic Lockheed Lounge (1986). In a world where the distinctions between art and design are becoming increasingly blurred Newson is a trailblazer, having pursued parallel activities in exclusive and mass production for more than twenty years.

Marc Newson was born in Sydney, Australia in 1963 and studied sculpture and jewelry design at Sydney College of the Arts. Parallel to his career as an industrial designer, he has exhibited limited edition works and projects in galleries and public institutions since 1986, including Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris (1995, 2004); Powerhouse Museum, Sydney (2001); the Groninger Museum, Netherlands (2004); and London Design Museum (2004-2005). Newson had his first major exhibition with Gagosian New York in 2007, followed by a second exhibition in Gagosian London the following year. He is a Royal Designer for Industry in the UK and currently Creative Director of Qantas Airways. Earlier this year he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Sydney. An extensive monograph on his work is forthcoming from Taschen.

Newson lives and works in London.

For press inquiries please contact the gallery at riva@gagosian.com or at 212.741.1717.]]> Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:02:32 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-10_dan-colen/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-10_dan-colen/
September 10 - October 16, 2010
West 24th Street Gallery

]]> Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:10:44 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-11_dike-blair/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-11_dike-blair/
September 11 - October 30, 2010
Madison Avenue Gallery

Opening reception for the artist: Saturday, September 11th, from 6 to 8pm


The relationship between my paintings and sculpture (or other installation-type work) has intrigued me for a couple decades. The paintings are fairly traditional and almost always personal while the sculptures are more formal, or engage less traditional forms. One thing that seems to have remained constant in all my work is the subject of light, and how to form paint to apprehend light.
--Dike Blair

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present new gouaches and sculpture by Dike Blair.

In this first exhibition since his recent 10-year survey at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Blair continues to explore the relationship between painting and sculpture, between the solid, utilitarian reality of three-dimensional forms and the field of illusory visual effects.

Blair's recent hybrid sculptures are comprised of painted, wooden shipping crates that contain framed, gouache paintings, which unpack to become part of a larger assemblage. The crates may also contain objects, like painted carpets or Noguchi lamps. The sculptures may evoke thoughts about light, both actual and implied, the liminal, and more quotidian notions about storage, furniture and the human body. In his more recent sculpture, he has dispensed with artificial lights in favor of a heightened painterly luminism. His photo-based gouaches capture glimpses of a roving eye that seeks out and captures a split second, dead-pan phenomenon of the observed world. They bring attention to the banal and transitory details of everyday life, from cigarettes in ashtrays to footprints in snow. They feel at once very personal, even diaristic, but also filtered and mediated.

In this exhibition, Blair has constructed an ambulatory installation that further links the transient aspects of his sculptures with the fugitive images of his paintings. The resulting works pause in time to quietly provoke a reevaluation of the complexities of visual and spatial perception in the modern world.

Dike Blair was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania in 1952. He studied at the University of Colorado, the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture before receiving his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1977. He is also a writer and a professor at RISD. A collection of his writings, "Again: Selected Interviews and Essays" was published by WhiteWalls in 2007. In 2009, he was the subject of a ten-year survey at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Public collections include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Blair lives and works in New York.

For press inquiries please contact Jillian Murphy at jmurphy@gagosian.com or at 212.744.2313.]]> Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:24:22 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-23_gregory-crewdson/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-23_gregory-crewdson/
September 23 - October 30, 2010
Madison Avenue Gallery

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Opening reception for the artist: Thursday, September 23rd, from 6 to 8 pm


In these pictures I draw upon the inherent quietness and uncanny aspects of the empty sets. As with much of my work, I looked at the blurred lines between reality and fiction, nature and artifice, and beauty and decay.
--Gregory Crewdson

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present "Sanctuary," Gregory Crewdson's latest photographic series.

Sanctuary, a group of forty-one black-and-white photographs, is the first that Crewdson has produced outside the United States. Digitally photographed and produced with minimal reworking, it is also his first black and white series since Hover (1996-1997). Shot on location at the legendary Cinecittà studios in Rome, he has moved beyond the construction of the surreal human drama that drove previous series.

Sanctuary is virtually devoid of human presence. Instead, Crewdson has made the abandoned outdoor film sets the subject of, rather than the mere setting for, his pictures. Moving through the empty streets of "Ancient Rome" at the beginning and end of the day, he has captured the palpable atmospheres of melancholy lurking at every twist and turn, cloaked in shadow or suddenly illuminated by a shaft of daylight. Although the links to the great chroniclers of urban environments such as Eugene Atget and William Eggleston are evident, Crewdson has added a new layer to the genre by searching for his particular form of verité within the artificial leftovers of cinematic reality.

Crewdson's imaginary stems from the impulses that have shaped the surreal visions of American artists from Albert Bierstadt to Stephen Spielberg. In the past he sought particular locations where he could create psychologically charged tableaux vivants that conflated empirical observation with artifice, like film stills from films that never existed. These photographs were often the result of weeks of preparation, a method with parallels in film production. In previous series including Twilight (1998-2002) and Beneath the Roses (2003-2007), feelings of alienation and anxiety, and oddness pervade meticulously staged scenes, exposing the hidden dramas embedded in normative suburban existence.

In Sanctuary, Crewdson's focus on scenographic architecture as the principal subject underscores the illusory techniques that he has previously used to construct his scenes and actions. The series contains certain characteristics of a documentary film by which is exposed the hidden life of movies and their artifacts that remain once production has ceased. In several images the underlying structure of the façades and scaffolding of decaying sets is exposed; in others, period buildings are framed by cobbled streets and open ground now overtaken by grasses and weeds; ruined statues, the odd graffiti on a wall, puddles of rain water, and other detritus further emphasize the eerie absence of life that these images convey, heightened by the ambient light of dawn and dusk. The intimate scale of the black-and-white photographs serves to further intensify the poignancy of each deserted scene.

A fully illustrated catalogue of the complete series with an essay by The New York Times film critic A.O. Scott is being published by Abrams to coincide with the exhibition.

"Sanctuary" will be exhibited at Gagosian Gallery Rome, in January 2011.

Gregory Crewdson was born in 1962 in Brooklyn, New York and received a BA at SUNY, Purchase and an MFA at Yale University. His photographs are included in numerous museums and public collections around the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. A retrospective of his work began at Kunstverein Hannover, Germany (2005) and traveled to institutions including Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; and the Hasselblad Center, Sweden. Another traveling exhibiton of his work is scheduled to open at the Kulturhuset Museum, Stockholm, in February 2011, followed by Sorte Diamant, Copenhagen and
c/o Berlin, Berlin, among others.

Crewdson is a faculty member of the Department of Photography at Yale University and lives in New York City.

For press inquiries please contact Putri Tan at putri@gagosian.com or at 212.741.1111.

Keep checking our website for the weekly release of Field Notes leading up to the opening of the exhibition.]]> Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:56:08 EST http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-07_rachel-whiteread/ http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-07_rachel-whiteread/
September 7 - October 5, 2010
Davies Street Gallery

A lot of the works that I've been making over the years have been part of a cyclical process. Things have happened, things branch off, things crop up that I haven't thought about. I often feel a cycle is incomplete and need to tread the same path again. I've been teaching myself a language for the past fifteen years, and the utilization of that language can take on many forms.
--Rachel Whiteread

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present drawings and a new sculpture by Rachel Whiteread.

This is the latest in a new series of sculptures for outdoor spaces in which Whiteread has substituted robust materials such as stone and concrete for the more fragile plaster, rubber, and resin of many of her best-known works. It comprises five approximately cubic forms of varying size and surface texture, arranged in a straight line. Small linear cutouts disrupt the otherwise smooth surface of each cube. Given that the work is intended for an outdoor space, changing light and shadow becomes another implicit and highly subjective dimension in the work. Two such commissions have been completed to date – in Stockholm, Sweden, and Dallas, Texas – and in subsequent works Whiteread is continuing to develop and refine her forms and use of media.

Using various materials to articulate the negative space surrounding or contained by objects, Whiteread has elaborated various approaches to casting and impression as subject, process, and vehicle for content. Her daily practice is based on a persistent duality: a pragmatic approach to the materials and making of art coupled with a fascination for the psychologically charged associations and traces of human contact borne by and embedded in objects and environments.

In her working process, Whiteread continually cycles back on her own history, renewing her established vocabulary with fresh information, forms, and materials. Moving away from more literal sculptures, such as Drill (2008) and Fell (2008), which are directly derived from everyday objects, her new five-part work revisits the ideas underpinning Untitled (100 Spaces) (1995), also a reference for the colorful drawing 50 Spaces (2010).

Whiteread’s frequent use of graph paper for her drawings recalls the notations of her Minimalist predecessors. Her forms, too, play off the geometry of the grid, but there are fundamental differences from the function-driven and emotional detachment of Minimalist drawings. For example, Dan Flavin’s graph paper drawings were empirical records of the components and colors of his installations whereas Whiteread’s are as much about evocation as representation and her choice of colored paper is as important as the drawing itself.

Rachel Whiteread was born in London in 1963. She studied painting at Brighton Polytechnic from 1982-1985 and sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1985-1987. She won the Turner Prize in 1993. Her work has been exhibited internationally in many solo and group exhibitions including the British Pavilion at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997), the Serpentine Gallery, London (2001), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2001), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2002), Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2005), MADRE, Naples (2007), MFA Boston (2009) and The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010). Notable public commissions include House (1993), Water Tower (New York, 1998), Monument (London, 2001), and Embankment at Tate Modern, 2005. In 1996 she received the controversial commission for Holocaust Memorial at the Judenplatz in Vienna, which she completed in 2000. Her traveling drawing retrospective opens at Tate Britain in September.

For further inquiries please contact Cristina Colomar at cristina@gagosian.com or at +44.207.841.9960.]]> Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:22:37 EST