Art Knowledge News - Keeping You in Touch with the World of Art... |
- The Denver Art Museum Presents Two Chinese Themed Exhibitions
- Porter Contemporary To Show "Body Beautiful" ~ A Group Show
- Elite Decorative Arts Auction to Feature 465 Lots of Fine Artwork, Porcelain and Decorative Arts
- "Art Stage Singapore" Returns for its Second Year With a World-Class Lineup
- The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' New Pavilion of Quebec & Canadian Art
- LeBasse Projects Group Show Previews the Year's Exhibitions
- Robert Asman Retrospective at the Philadelphia's Print Center
- The Crocker Art Museum Presents First Major Retrospective of Sculptor Clayton Bailey
- Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest hosts " Ferdinand Hodler: A Symbolist Vision Exhibition "
- Art 40 Basel ~ The 40th Anniversary of the Premier International Art Show
- The Museum of Modern Art Announces a Retrospective of Cindy Sherman for 2012
- Kunstmuseum Basel to feature Vincent van Gogh Landscapes
- Carnegie Museum of Art Presents Early 20th-Century of Abstract Art
- Causey Contemporary Presents "Coincidental Opposites" ~ A Group Show
- The Taubman Museum of Art features Devorah Sperber & Chris Doyle Exhibitions
- Italian Tax Police Seize Masterpieces Belonging to Founder of Dairy Company Parmalat
- A Great American Artist & Pop Art Pioneer, Robert Rauschenberg Died in Florida at 82
- Braunstein/Quay Gallery features Ursula Schneider ~ The River
- James Cohan Gallery Presents the First Solo Exhibition of Alex Katz' Work in Mainland China
- This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News
| The Denver Art Museum Presents Two Chinese Themed Exhibitions Posted: 07 Jan 2012 11:28 PM PST  Denver, Colorado.- The Denver Art Museum is proud to present "Xu Beihong: Pioneer of Modern Chinese Painting", the first exhibition in the United States to explore the work of the 20th century artist who is widely recognized as the father of modern Chinese painting. One of the first Chinese artists to study in Europe, Xu integrated Western techniques with traditional styles, creating a new, modern style of Chinese painting. As a prominent teacher and global ambassador for Chinese art whose work was exhibited widely throughout Asia and Europe, he is credited with revolutionizing the nation's arts institutions and reshaping international perceptions of Chinese painting. On view through January 29th 2012, DAM's landmark exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see major works from Beijing's Xu Beihong Memorial Museum, most of which have never before been on view in North America. The 61 works, including ink paintings, oil paintings, drawings, pastels, and calligraphy, trace the full arc of Xu's career — from early landscape paintings and drawings created during his studies in Europe, to portraits of political leaders including Mao Zedong and Mahatma Gandhi and his iconic horse paintings. Key works on view in the exhibition include, "Six Galloping Horses" (1942) – This large ink brush painting is an example of Xu's iconic horse paintings, which became a symbol of China's future in a time of national peril. The work incorporates Western perspective, and the compositional arrangement and control of ink throughout a complete grayscale range demonstrate Xu's skills and rich imagination. "Spring Rain on the Lijiang" (1937) – In this depiction of the beautiful Lijiang (Li River), Xu takes a fresh Impressionist approach to Chinese ink brush landscape painting, replacing lines with ink washes and watery strokes, and using few contour lines. Ink patches of varying tones overlap one another, creating the subtle impression of the riverbank, the dock and the huts in the spring rain. "Male Nude" (1924) – This refined drawing, created during Xu's studies in France, demonstrates the artist's drawing skills. The background is omitted in order to focus on the figure study. Using varied contour lines, Xu portrays the structure of the figure and the transitions between light and shade along the edges. Sketching, particularly of figures, was not part of the artistic tradition in China before Xu. Drawing on his training in Europe, he became the first artist to introduce Western practices of sketching from life to traditional Chinese painting, and established sketching as the foundation for students at major art institutions in China.  Xu Beihong was born into a poor family on July 19, 1895 in Yixing, Jiangsu Province. He studied Chinese classics, calligraphy, seal engraving and traditional Chinese painting from his father, a selftaught artist and portrait painter. Xu gained a government scholarship to study in France and attended the Académie Julian and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. Between 1919 and 1927, he studied sketching and oil painting in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland. Returning to China in 1927, he was determined to renew the tradition of learning from nature in traditional Chinese painting by integrating Western techniques. In order to revitalize the Chinese tradition, he was the first to systematically incorporate European sketching and oil painting methodology into the curriculum at major art institutions. From 1927 until his death in 1953, Xu trained students in this new direction. Many became accomplished artists and art educators who continued to influence Chinese painting in modern times. In addition to his important role as an educator, Xu exhibited widely in Asia and the Europe throughout his lifetime. In 1926, he held a large-scale retrospective in Shanghai that firmly established his reputation as a modern Chinese master. During the 1930s, his work was featured in successful solo exhibitions in Brussels, Lyon, Berlin and Frankfurt. In 1933, he organized a group exhibition of paintings by contemporary Chinese artists that traveled to Europe, raising the international profile and understanding of Chinese art among European audiences. While in India in 1940, he presented an individual exhibition in Calcutta. Xu Beihong's influence extended beyond his art when he became the first president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1949. His influence can be seen today in the artists that study and teach at the Central Academy. Alongside this exhibition, the museum will also be showing "Threads of Heaven: Silken Legacy of China's Last Dynasty". Drawn exclusively from the DAM's collection of Chinese textiles and costumes, "Threads of Heaven: Silken Legacy of China's Last Dynasty" presents a glimpse into the latter years of the court and culture of the Qing Dynasty and the final days of empire in China. Among the approximately 100 pieces on view are court robes and accessories, many of which denote the wearer's specific rank. In addition to objects from the museum's Charlotte Hill Grant collection, acquired by the donor in China during the early 20th century, there are numerous pieces either never before exhibited or not seen for many years.  The Denver Art Museum is a private, non-profit, educational resource for Colorado. The mission of the museum is to enrich the lives of Colorado and Rocky Mountain residents through the acquisition, preservation, and presentation of art works in both the permanent collections and temporary exhibitions, and by supporting these works with exemplary educational and scholarly programs. Since its beginnings in the 1890s as the Denver Artists' Club, the Denver Art Museum has had a number of temporary homes, from the public library and a downtown mansion to a portion of the Denver City and County Building. The museum opened its own galleries on 14th Avenue Parkway in 1949, and a center for children's art activities was added in the early 1950s. In 1971, it opened what's now known as the North Building. Their most recent expansion, the Frederic C. Hamilton Building, opened in October 2006. Today, the 356,000-square-foot museum complex includes collection gallery space, three temporary exhibition venues, and the Lewis I. Sharp Auditorium. In addition to its art collections, the Denver Art Museum is internationally recognized for our family-friendly environment, and has received critical acclaim for encouraging art appreciation through interactive activities. The museum has nine curatorial departments: architecture, design & graphics; Asian art; modern and contemporary; native arts (American Indian, Oceanic, and African); New World (pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial); painting and sculpture (European and American); photography; Western art; and textile art. The modern and contemporary collection of 20th-century art contains over 4,500 works with an emphasis on both internationally known and emerging artists. The department also includes the Herbert Bayer collection and archive, an important Bauhaus artistic and scholarly resource, containing some 2,500 items including works by artists such as Man Ray, Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Robert Motherwell, Damien Hirst, Philip Guston, Knox Martin, Dan Flavin, John DeAndrea, Gottfried Helnwein and Yue Minjun. The European collection is richest in Renaissance and 19th-century French paintings. The American collection consists of paintings, sculpture, prints, and drawings representing all major periods in American art before 1945. Artists represented include Sandro Botticelli, Defendente Ferrari, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Other painters represented include; Jacopo del Casentino ("Madonna and Child"), Bernardo Zenale, Niccolò di Pietro Gerini ("4 Crowned Saints Before Diocletan"), Filippino Lippi, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Berthe Morisot, Max Beckmann, Juan Gris,and Georges Braque. Visit the museum's website at ... www.denverartmuseum.org  |
| Porter Contemporary To Show "Body Beautiful" ~ A Group Show Posted: 07 Jan 2012 09:14 PM PST  New York City.- Porter Contemporary is pleased to announce "Body Beautiful", a group exhibition of seven artists that will both confirm and re-examine our ideas of beauty when it comes to the human form. The exhibition opens to the public with a wine reception with the artists on Thursday, January 12th, from 6:30 - 8:30 pm and remains on view through February 18th 2012. Porter Contemporary has selected artists and works that engage our inherent sense of beauty. The graceful and smooth marble sculptures of Carolina Baptista Rodriguez and the intimate photographs of Sarah Kaufman are juxtaposed with Juliet Foxtrot's modernized Da Vinci type painted nudes, Jennifer Murray's half human half animal mixed media works and Catherine Tafur's disturbing and erotic paintings. 'Body Beautiful' inspires a self-exploration of what defines beauty through different forms and mediums.  |
| Elite Decorative Arts Auction to Feature 465 Lots of Fine Artwork, Porcelain and Decorative Arts Posted: 07 Jan 2012 08:20 PM PST  Boynton Beach, Florida.- Nearly 500 lots of quality fine art, porcelain and decorative accessories will cross the block on Saturday, Januray 14th at the gallery of Elite Decorative Arts, located in the Quantum Town Center at 1034 Gateway Boulevard (Ste. 106-108) in Boynton Beach. The event will get underway at 1 p.m. (EST) with an in-house pre-sale slated for 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. The pre-sale auction will feature 120 lots of Lladro, Lalique, Roseville, Delft, Baccarat, oil paintings, bronze, crystal and more. It will be a live-only auction (no Internet bidding) and all items will be sold without reserve (no minimums). For the main auction starting at 1 p.m., phone and absentee bids will also be accepted, with online bidding facilitated by LiveAuctioneers.com.  |
| "Art Stage Singapore" Returns for its Second Year With a World-Class Lineup Posted: 07 Jan 2012 07:56 PM PST  Singapore.- "Art Stage Singapore" returns for its second year from January 11th through January 15th 2012 at the iconic Marina Bay Sands. Art Stage Singapore 2012 is proud to present a lineup of world-class exhibitors and incomparable special projects. The fair's second edition presents the best and most exciting of Asia's artistic creativity – the most important, interesting and stunning artists and galleries. The fair aims to showcase art in an artistic context by supporting special projects and presentations: Asian galleries are juxtaposed against a limited amount of carefully selected Western top galleries. The 120 exhibitors from 18 countries add unparalleled value to the fair by creating over 50 special projects and presentations. Japan-based Gallerist Tomio Koyama described Art Stage Singapore as a "contemporary art fair which shows the new direction of the Asian art market. The context of an Asian, instead of Wesrn, aesthetic point of view is what makes Art Stage Singapore appeal to the entire art market." While American artist David LaChapelle said, "The fair is at once global and intimate. It isn't just all about anonymous selling; it's about relationships and art." The fair's focus has always been directed toward quality over quantity, so despite a large increase in the number of applications, there has been a substantial jump in the quality of presentations and the level of presenting exhibitors. This year's applications had to pass even more stringent and rigorous admission criteria, so there is a definite difference and improvement in the quality of works and projects. (For the full list of exhibiting galleries, please click here).  Only in its second year, the fair has managed to attract new, high profile exhibitors including: prestigious international galleries such as Galerie Eigen+Art (Leipzig/Berlin), Lehmann Maupin (New York), Victoria Miro (London) , White Cube (London), etc; leading Asian galleries such as Gana Art Gallery (Seoul/Busan), Gallery Hyundai (Seoul), Mizuma Art Gallery (Tokyo), Ota Fine Art (Tokyo), Tang Contemporary Art (Bangkok/Hong Kong/Beijing), etc; and interesting young Asian galleries such as Takashi Murakami's Kaikai Kiki Gallery (Tokyo, Taipei). Glenn Scott Wright, Director of Victoria Miro (London) said, "Art Stage Singapore is set to be the most exciting addition in the international art fair calendar and we are looking forward to participating this year for the first time. With Singapore's investment in its cultural infrastructure and the addition of a world class art fair, the city is gearing up to become an important hub for the art market in South East Asia to add to its status as the region's financial hub." Jumping from 30 entries last year to 40 this year, the fair's Project Stage platform is the go-to place for the discovery of rising Asian stars in the world. For the 2012 edition, the works here will be even stronger and more impressive than in the year before –several of which feature site-specific projects, stunning installations and innovative concepts. (For the full list of Project Stage participants, please click here). Art Stage Singapore is definitely not a typical art fair – people will find not just smaller and commercially-popular art pieces on exhibition within the participating galleries' booths, but they can also expect to see – and participate in – performances and interactive projects such as the Gao Brothers' "World Hug Day" (presented by Vue Privee, Singapore); many spectacular large-scale installations including like the specially created works by world-renowned Antony Gormley (presented by London's White Cube); and, inspired by the fair's eye-catching publicity campaign, established Thai artist Navin Rawanchaikul created especially for Art Stage Singapore a new 12m long painting, titled, "We are Asia!" (presented by Yavuz Fine Art, Singapore).  There is also a significant increase in the Asia-Pacific representation, especially from the Philippines and Thailand. All the leading and most interesting Philippine galleries shall be participating, including new exhibitors Silverlens and Finale Art File. Despite the floods in Bangkok, representation of Thai artists is strong and works by leading Thai artists like: Navin Rawanchaikul and Manit Sriwanichpoom (presented by Yavuz Fine Art, Singapore), Rirkrit Tiravanjia (presented by Ikkan Art Gallery, Singapore) and more will be shown. Tibetan artist Tenzig Rigdol is showcased with a solo exhibition (presented by Rossi & Rossi London), and Project Stage has its first Kazak artist, Almagul Menlibayeva (presented by Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, New York). Art Stage Singapore is Asia's necessary response to the market, a top event with a strong Asian identity. The fair supports and defends the interests of Asian artists and galleries by elevating them to a level of international importance, by positioning them as strong and competitive players of the global market. Visit the fair's website at ... www.artstagesingapore.com  |
| The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' New Pavilion of Quebec & Canadian Art Posted: 07 Jan 2012 07:36 PM PST  Montreal.- The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2010, opened its new 59,000-gsf. Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion of Quebec and Canadian Art and Concert Hall. Increasing the MMFA's total exhibition space by 20%, the new Pavilion features 18,953 nsf. of gallery space, which doubles the previous display area dedicated for the presentation of the Museum's collection of historical and contemporary Quebec and Canadian art. In this new award-winning building (recipient of the 2010 Canadian Architect Awards of Merit and the 2011 Award of Excellence from the Urban Development Institute of Quebec), the Museum will present a more coherent and comprehensive examination of the history of Quebec and Canadian art. Continuing the MMFA's policy of offering free admission to its permanent collection, the new Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion will provide thousands of visitors, school groups, families, and tourists with the opportunity to learn more about Canada's rich cultural heritage.  |
| LeBasse Projects Group Show Previews the Year's Exhibitions Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:56 PM PST  Culver City, California.- LeBasse Projects is pleased to present "Preview 2012", on view at the gallery from January 7th through February 4th 2012. This group show will highlight some of the artists that will exhibit in 2012. Participating artists include Herakut , Mike Stilkey , Joshua Petker , Seonna Hong , Jim Houser , Tobias Keene , Katrin Fridriks , Nate Frizzell , Yoskay Yamamoto , Andrew Hem , Matt Haber and Melissa Haslam . Herakut is a symbiosis of the aliases Hera and Akut, two graffiti artists from Frankfurt and Erfurt, Germany. Their collaboration started when they first met in 2004. Both were invited to paint at the Urban Art Festival Sevilla in Spain and before that time had only seen each other's work in graffiti magazines. To everyone and themselves it was clear that despite the fact they both focused on character painting their styles had nothing in common whatsoever. And that has not changed a bit.  |
| Robert Asman Retrospective at the Philadelphia's Print Center Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:33 PM PST PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Robert Asman : Silver Mine is a retrospective exhibition of an exceptional photographic career characterized by idiosyncratic experimentation with the bounds of black and white photography. Robert Asman is one of the most important photographers of his generation. For most of the last thirty-five years Asman (Asheville, NC) has been devoted to investigating and stretching the conceptual and technical boundaries of silver prints, through extended, and related, explorations of the human figure and the urban landscape. His masterful manipulation of chemistry and paper negatives has resulted in a seemingly boundless and wondrous body of work. Asman approaches art making as a transformative process, in which he mines the physical properties of his materials to create a work on paper which are seemingly the result of alchemical change. Process and image are completely merged, and result in images ranging from the sublimely beautiful to the fetishized or the startlingly violent, though often conveying an ironic humor. The Print Center presents this exhibition at a critical moment for examining process driven work, as the integration of digital technologies into art making are causing artists to revisit traditional photographic processes.  |
| The Crocker Art Museum Presents First Major Retrospective of Sculptor Clayton Bailey Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:32 PM PST Sacramento, CA.– The Crocker Art Museum is pleased to present the first career-spanning retrospective of the work of contemporary sculptor Clayton Bailey in the new exhibition "Clayton Bailey's World of Wonders." This exhibition features 180 works and ephemera encompassing Bailey's 50-year career, and is now on view.A ceramist, sculptor, and self-proclaimed "mad scientist," Bailey aims to surprise and delight with his art. This exhibition presents the full range of his inspired eccentricity in clay and metal, including his signature "exploding pots," disarming robot sculptures, and ray guns inspired by science fiction and fashioned from discarded aluminum. Also included are the artist's pseudo-scientific discoveries made under the name of his alter-ego Dr. George Gladstone.  |
| Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest hosts " Ferdinand Hodler: A Symbolist Vision Exhibition " Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:19 PM PST The idea to stage an oeuvre exhibition on Hodler arose in Budapest and Berne gladly joined the project. The concept of the Museum of Fine Arts was to introduce Hodler – who although lesser known in Hungary is revered in Europe as a pioneer of modernism – by providing an overview of his oeuvre. The two museums undertook the joint task of presenting an analytical picture integrating the various aspects of Hodler's oeuvre and of adding new facets to the scientific research conducted on the artist's oeuvre by including works that had not been seen for a long time. The exhibition in Budapest displays Hodler's most important figural compositions and most beautiful landscapes to illustrate the essence of his art, i.e. the creation of a vision of cosmic unity, and his unmistakably individual style.  A Symbolist Vision forms part of a series of exhibitions presenting great artist figures of Europe, such as Monet and Van Gogh, which the Museum of Fine Arts launched a few years ago. The next part of the series will be the Cézanne exhibition in 2011. Ferdinand Hodler was born in 1853 in Berne and settled in Geneva in 1872, where he lived until his death. His subjects such as landscapes of the snow-capped Alps dotted with lakes, his portraits and his historical pictures made on commission established him as one of the leading artists of his country and one who attracted some loyal supporters at an early stage in his career. To this day by far the greater part of his extensive oeuvre is preserved in prominent Swiss museums and important private collections. In the early days of his career Hodler followed a realist approach but his landscapes and genre scenes soon revealed his desire to render ideals and the spiritual aspect of what he depicted rather than to create merely atmospheric compositions. It was primarily thanks to his friends in Geneva – including some members of the literati associated with the symbolists of Paris – that his art developed in the above direction and that his talent was eventually manifested in large figural monumental painting. Hodler tried to provide a theoretical framework for his painting imbued with pantheism. Being enchanted with geometry and the newly emerged natural sciences he relied on the principle of parallelism derived from Nature which he applied in his compositions with increasing consistency, by applying techniques such as co-ordination, mirroring and symmetry. Hodler's landscapes always met with great success; however, his monumental, symbolic figural canvases manifesting his individual style defined by his own choice of subjects, strict lines, forms and composition as well as arbitrarily applied colors won acclaim only when his painting entitled "Night" was exhibited first in Paris in 1891 and shortly after that in Munich, Venice, Berlin and Vienna. From the 1904 exhibition of the Vienna Secession – which earned Hodler not only artistic but also financial recognition – he was recognized as being one of the leading figures of the European Secession. From this time he was regularly invited to prominent exhibitions and received many awards. His artistic vision and unmistakably individual style exerted influence on Hungarian modernism.  The exhibition includes more than 120 paintings (many of which have been restored for this occasion), which are complemented by about forty drawings from the most prominent museums and private collections in Switzerland as well as by some canvases from German museums. A selection of the highest standard has been assembled by the curators in order to provide an overview of Hodler's oeuvre that places emphasis on the symbolist dimension of his art, culminating in masterpieces such as Night, Day, Emotion, Truth, Love, The Sacred Hour and Gaze into Infinity. Until now many of these works had not left the museums they had been preserved in for over fifty years. The exhibition devotes a special section to works with love and death as their central, symbolic theme, which Hodler rendered in an individual way in his paintings and drawings of his dying love Valérie Godé-Darel depicted in the successive stages of illness, agony and death. All the above facilitate a better understanding of the path traveled by this pre-eminent artist, who was greatly influenced by the developments of the last quarter of the 19th century and those of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and whose unmistakable style and significance have been placed in a new light thanks to the new approach to symbolism and modern art, as well as to the revival of interest in the portrayal of man. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Katharina Schmidt, who was the director of Kunstmuseum Basel and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Basel from 1992 to 2001. For many years she worked as a museum director and curator. She has organized 19th-century classical Avant-garde and contemporary art exhibitions since 1972 on a regular basis. Visit Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest at : www.szepmuveszeti.hu  |
| Art 40 Basel ~ The 40th Anniversary of the Premier International Art Show Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:18 PM PST
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| The Museum of Modern Art Announces a Retrospective of Cindy Sherman for 2012 Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:17 PM PST  NEW YORK, N.Y.- The Museum of Modern Art will present the exhibition Cindy Sherman, a retrospective survey tracing the groundbreaking artist's career from the mid 1970s to the present, from February 26 through June 11, 2012. The exhibition will bring together more than 170 key photographs from a variety of the artist's acclaimed bodies of work, for which she created myriad constructed characters and tableaus. The first comprehensive museum survey of Sherman's career in the United States since 1997, it will draw widely from public and private collections, including the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition is organized by Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art.  |
| Kunstmuseum Basel to feature Vincent van Gogh Landscapes Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:16 PM PST BASEL - In a spectacular, comprehensive exhibition taking place from April to September 2009, the Kunstmuseum Basel is staging the first showing worldwide of the landscape paintings by the legendary artist Vincent van Gogh. Seventy paintings – both world-famous key works as well as paintings barely seen previously by the general public – will give a completely new insight into van Gogh's body of work. Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. His paintings and drawings include some of the world's best known, most popular and most expensive pieces.  |
| Carnegie Museum of Art Presents Early 20th-Century of Abstract Art Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:15 PM PST  |
| Causey Contemporary Presents "Coincidental Opposites" ~ A Group Show Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:14 PM PST  BROOKLYN, NY.- For its Summer Group Show, Causey Contemporary presents, Coincidental Opposites featuring the works of R. L. Croft, Michel Demanche, Jordan Eagles, Cui Fei, Young Kim, Norman Mooney, Shen Chen* and Zane York. The opening reception at the gallery's 92 Wythe Ave location will take place through 23 August. The public is invited to attend this event and visit the gallery during our summer hours, Wed - Fri 12 - 6 pm, Sat & Sun 12 - 6 pm and Mon 9 am to 4 pm. Coincidental Opposites comes from the latin phrase "coincidentia oppositorum" and is a term used to describe the polarities or yin and yang of the universe. Latin is not however the first language in which these terms were coined but rather in archaic Chinese when the 6th century B.C. philosopher, Lao Tze began to suggest that "there can be no love without hate, no light without dark, no male without female." The Christian and Jewish Mystic traditions again put forth this philosophy in the 15th century with writers such as Nicholas of Cusa who voiced the concept as the "unity of contrarieties overcoming opposition by convergence without destroying or by merely blending the constituent elements." The alchemists of the period quickly adapted the term as synonymous with their fifth process, conjunction. Later thinkers such as Meister Elkhart and G.W. F. Hegel further stretched the definition to hold that presumed polarities in thought don't exclude one another but are actually necessary conditions for the assertion of their opposites. Artists throughout all these time periods and indeed today have struggled to illustrate the coincidental opposites as they encountered them. Through their creations, their audiences have also been forced to consider this duality as well. It is this trait in art that we examine in a small way with this exhibition. The eight artists within the exhibition explore either obliquely through references or directly with their materials/symbols the coincidental opposites of beauty and the grotesque, permanence and impermanence, attraction and repulsion, solid and non solid, soft and hard, yielding and lethal as well as full and empty.
That the eight artists included in the Coincidental Opposites exhibition come from widely varied backgrounds adds further dimension and dichotomy to the show. R.L. Croft and Michel Demanche both reside in Maryland though one on the western and one on the Eastern shores of the state. R.L. Croft received his degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond Va and went on to showcase his creations in Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C. And North Carolina. He has curated exhibitions at School 33 in Baltimore, The Delaplaine in Frederick, MD and Artspace Gallery in Richmond. His work has been reviewed or published by the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Post, and others. Alternatively, Michel Demanche, a transplant to Maryland from her native Texas received her MA degree from North Texas State University. She has had her prints, photographs, constructions and paintings included in exhibitions at such venues as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Women's Museum, and the Houston Art Museum among many others. Her works are in the collections of Chase Bank, Frito Lay, E-Systems, Franklin Furnace Archives, The Houston Museum of Art, and the Livens Collection of Sheppart Pratt. Jordan Eagles, Norman Mooney, Cui Fie, Shen Chen and Zane York all reside in the New York city area but come again from divergent backgrounds. Jordan Eagles grew up in the NY/NJ area and received his degree from New York University. He has exhibited throughout New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Georgia , Maryland California and even in Portugal. In addition his paintings have received several awards and are in the permanent collection of the Prudential Center in New Jersey and the Bohlen Collection in Massachusetts.  Norman Mooney, while also based in New York City began his artistic career in Ireland, receiving his BFA degree from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. He has showcased his sculpture and drawings in exhibitions in Ireland, Spain and the United States. His work was also recently in a two person, two city exhibition in NY and Singapore and he counts the Mint Museum, San francisco MOMA and Richard and Helen DeVos among his collectors. Shen Chen began painting in his native China and received his BFA from Shanghai Art College and then came to the USA where he received his MFA from Boston University. Since that time he has exhibited extensively in both countries at such venues as the Today Museum in China, the National Museum of Art in Beijing, Ethan Cohen Gallery and Cynthia Reeves Gallery in NYC. His works have also been included in exhibitions at the Grand Palais in Paris and the ROam Academy of Fine Art in Rome. Publications which have included his work art Art Asia Pacific, YiShu, The New York Times and Art in America. Like Shen Chen, Cui Fei also began her career in China receiving a degree from the Zhejian Academy of Fine Arts and then relocating to the USA where she completed her MFA at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her works have been included in exhibitions at the Queens Museum of Art,The Aldrich Museum of Art, the Museum of Chinese in America, the Kunstewerbe Museum in Germany,and the National Academy of Fine Arts in China. Her public collections include Princeton University Art Museum and China National Academy of Fine Arts. She was also a 2009 recipient of a Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant. The last of the NYC based artists is Zane York. Zane, a native Nebraskan received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin and then a MFA from the New York Academy of Art. He like, Jordan Eagles is one of the younger artists, curator Tracy Causey-Jeffery included in the Coincidental Opposites exhibition. To date his paintings have appeared in exhibitions in New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Missouri, St. Barthelemy Island and in Normandy France. Young Kim , the final artist, resides in Winston Salem, NC at present. He has exhibited extensively throughout the United States in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Illinois, Tennessee, West Virgina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York. His work has appeared in Publication in the Grand Rapids Press, the Charleston City Paper, The Washington Post, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and others. His public collectors include Austin Peay State University, West Virginia Sate Museum , the University of Kentucky and PNC Bank. Visit Causey Contemporary at : http://www.causeycontemporary.com/  |
| The Taubman Museum of Art features Devorah Sperber & Chris Doyle Exhibitions Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:13 PM PST  |
| Italian Tax Police Seize Masterpieces Belonging to Founder of Dairy Company Parmalat Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:12 PM PST
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| A Great American Artist & Pop Art Pioneer, Robert Rauschenberg Died in Florida at 82 Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:11 PM PST  |
| Braunstein/Quay Gallery features Ursula Schneider ~ The River Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:11 PM PST
San Francisco, CA - The large-scale paintings by Ursula Schneider are based on her observations of the Hudson River, the architecture of the Indian Point Energy Center, a nuclear power plant in Buchanan, New York , and the intrusion of industrial barges on the river's serenity. On exhibition at Braunstein/Quay Gallery, 430 Clementina / San Francisco, CA 94103 from 25 June through 1 August, 2009. Reception Saturday, June 27, 2009, 3:00 - 5:00pm  |
| James Cohan Gallery Presents the First Solo Exhibition of Alex Katz' Work in Mainland China Posted: 07 Jan 2012 06:10 PM PST  SHANGHAI.- James Cohan Gallery Shanghai presents Alex Katz, the first solo exhibition of the artist's work in mainland China. The exhibition focuses on five recent portrait paintings from 2008 to 2010, along with a selection of prints that feature the artist's lifelong interest in the landscape. A fully illustrated color publication will be available for this exhibition. For further information, please contact Leo Xu at lxu@jamescohan.com or +86-21-54660825. Light is a key and central subject in all of Katz's works. The velocity and subtle, ever-changing shifts of light—'fast light' as Katz calls it—and the way it is articulated and captured is an imperative for the artist. Shrewd attention to detail combined with an unfailing economy of means gives credence to the extraordinary technical demands of Katz's expansive technique, as evident in the five paintings in this exhibition. Each painting embraces its distinctive character and particularities. Alex Katz (b. Brooklyn, New York, 1927) has been a defining, preeminent and influential artist for the past fifty years. Graduating in 1949 from The Cooper Union Art School in Manhattan he was then awarded a scholarship to the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where he studied plein air painting, and which the artist soon realized, as Katz commented, "helped me separate myself from European painting and find my own eyes." Katz had his first one-person exhibition in New York City in 1954. Since the early 1960s, emerging in New York at the pinnacle of Abstract Expressionism but before the advent of Pop Art, Katz established a singular position for himself and his paintings by working rigorously and independently of these movements, remaining steadfast to figuration and to the landscape. Best known for his portraits of charismatic, stylish women painted with a crisp, methodical precision and bold areas of color, Katz has also painted men, many of whom are fellow artists, dancers, poets and writers from the New York literary world. Groups of people in social gatherings, the landscape and water of Maine, where the artist has spent his summers for many years, in addition to the urban cityscape of Manhattan at night have played a prominent role in Katz's paintings. Throughout his career Katz has also portrayed his family, his son Vincent, and the artist's wife and lifelong muse, Ada, who was the subject of a major exhibition, Alex Katz Paints Ada at The Jewish Museum, New York (2006-2007). In the current exhibition the painting Ada with Green (2009) and the two aquatint prints Vivien (1994), Vincent Katz's wife, and Blue Coat (Vincent) from 1993 are on view.  Also on view are the paintings Tara (2008), Anika (2008), and Ulla (2009), each with their own luminous, penetrating gaze toward the viewer as if entranced by a private moment in a public world. For Katz, appearances are an endless source of mystery that inspires his desire to continually discover something fresh, something not seen before. Printmaking has always been an integral part of Katz's work. The exhibition includes woodcut and linocut prints such as Forest (2008) and the triptych Twilight I, Twilight II and Twilight III (2009) and the portfolio Landscape (2001). Again, focusing on the artist's long engagement with light falling between tree branches, capturing an instantaneous moment, these prints are representative masterworks of a subject the artist has explored continuously since the early 1990s. Katz's work has been included numerous group and solo exhibitions internationally since 1951. Several major exhibitions of Katz's landscape and portrait painting in America and Europe followed his 1986 Whitney Museum of American Art retrospective and his 1988 print retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The Paul J. Schupf Wing for the Works of Alex Katz at the Colby College Museum of Art, Maine, presents ongoing exhibitions of Katz's paintings, cut-outs, drawings, and prints. It is one of the few museums in the United States devoted solely to the work of a single living artist. Museum collections worldwide include The Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée National d'Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Tate Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Recent exhibitions include the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He was inducted by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1988 and has received many honors and awards throughout is career.  |
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Within their art, each of the eight artists utilize the coincidental opposites to help them approach the sublime, react to events in the world around them and/or give birth to new ideas or thought processes.Shen Chen* creates abstract ethereal minimalist paintings where the markings are so simple that it truly expresses the taoist opposites of "less is more". Meanwhile Norman Mooney's carbon on paper drawings create a sense of pulsating depth on a flat surface and his glittering star sculpture is comprised of dagger sharp spires , yet both draw the viewer into their space. R.L. Croft's Silo incorporates consumer and industrial materials to create a vessel based on a concrete structure which should be solid but is not and which moreover suggests mobility and impermanence. Cui Fei's installation Not Yet Titled creates a written "text" upon the wall using thorns - a strange type of braille. Young Kim's temporal figurative portraits created using salt and earth tap into the dichotomy of nature's fleeting, yet permanent existence. Michel Demanche's photograph from her Beautiful Delmarva series is exquisitely printed and its black and white tonality sensual while its subject matter is very startling. Jordan Eagles's aesthetic borders the fine line between beauty and the raw visceral life force, blood. Using animal blood from slaughterhouses Eagles preserves the vitality and energy of the pieces encasing them in plexiglass and UV resin. Lastly Zane York's paintings illustrate decomposing taxidermy animal heads which he paints with a delicate renaissance touch. 
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