Art Knowledge News - Keeping You in Touch with the World of Art...

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• The Store Street Gallery hosts Orion Contemporary's Printmaking Exhibition
• The Dubuque Museum of Art shows "Urban Landscapes by Mary Phelan"
• Exhibition of New Sculptures by Tony Cragg at Marian Goodman Gallery
• American Impressionists on Exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence
• Kunsthalle Krems in Austria presents : "Miracles, Art, and Science"
• SFMOMA and YBCA show Major Survey Exhibition by Mark Bradford
• Santiago Calatrava and SMU ~ "A Decade in Motion" at the Meadows Museum
• ACME Fine Arts to Present "Kenneth Stubbs: A Retrospective"
• Green Art Gallery in Dubai presents “Brute Ornament”
• Gino Severini Retrospective at The Orangerie Museum in Paris
• Yayoi Kusama ~ Living Legend of the Avant-Garde at Gagosian in Rome
• Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia Exhibit at Museo Nacional D'Art de Catalunya
• California is Celebrating the 100th Birthday of Iconic Architect John Lautner
• Julie Heffernan Solos at The Catharine Clark Gallery
• “Keeping Shadows" : Photography at Block Museum of Art
• The Museum Folkwang To Display Donations to the German Poster Museum
• Italian Museum Director Seeks Asylum In Germany ~ For Himself, His Staff And His Artworks ~ After Mafia Threats
• Deutsche Guggenheim to show 'Picturing America ~ Photorealism'
• Fifteen Years of Collecting at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg ~ Against the Grain
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Store Street Gallery hosts Orion Contemporary's Printmaking Exhibition Posted: 04 Mar 2012 09:06 PM PST London.- Orion Contemporary is proud to announce the second 'edition' of Contemporary Printmaking, an exhibition promoting printmaking as an art form and celebrating the importance of the medium. Following the inaugural printmaking exhibition in 2011, this exhibition includes a variety of exciting and innovative prints by Lisa Denyer, Alexander Gough, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Max Lowry, Dénes Maróti, Will Martyr, Andy Warhol and Giulia Zaniol. "Contemporary Printmaking: From Andy Warhol to the Emerging Generation" will be on view at the Store Street Gallery in Bloomsbury from March 13th through March 18th. The exhibition seeks to bring together a dazzling array of works to offer audiences a fresh take on printmaking, juxtaposing highly-regarded household names with Orion's young, emerging stable of artists. Andrés Olow Clase, director of Orion Contemporary, says 'From Andy Warhol's exceptional print of 1974 to works made in 2012, the show explores the diverse vivacity and technical skill of printmaking.'  All artists in the show excel as painters as well as recognising the importance of the print; Zaniol, Maróti and Gough will be displaying previously unseen works, fresh off the press. Gough's Finnish ancestry and his own voyages into the magical landscape of his homeland are immediately evident throughout his works which are imbued with strong tonal contrasts, reflecting the twilight dancing on the snow, as the mid-winter landscape melts into long dark nights. Venetian artist Zaniol has recently begun to focus on the economic, cultural and historic fabric of London, her adopted home. Her 2012 series, Angels of London, uses a highly advanced two-plate technique of soft and hard ground, litho colours and spitbite to create images with deep and varied tonal harmony. The work of Maróti from Hungary is strewn with subtle references to art history that become most overt in the titles. Repetitive figures and the use of few, but powerful, colours coupled with a fine drawing technique create a strong visual impact. Lowry's work invites the viewer to complete an untold story; he initiates a dialogue between painter and spectator, a narrative dynamic that bring his prints to life. Martyr's paintings and prints express his love of modern architectural design. Perfectly combining clean lines, dramatic yet balanced compositions and a medley of colour, they encapsulate the style and glamour of the buildings from which they drew inspiration. On the evening of 14th March, Gabriel Angel Moreno, will be reading a selection of his poetry written in response to the works in the exhibition. In the tranquil ambience of the gallery, this will be the debut Orion event that explores the interrelated nature of the visual and written arts. Orion Contemporary was founded in 2008 and is run by Andrés Olow Clase and Arthur Byng Nelson. It is a nomadic gallery, promoting young and emerging artists with a strong focus on Nordic art. Having previously been part of the paintings team at Sotheby's, London, Andrés gives Orion Contemporary an international outlook with his strong ties to England, Italy and Spain as well as his native Sweden.  Arthur holds an MA in History of Art from Edinburgh University and benefits from much experience in the art world.  He is a practising solicitor. The gallery is also aided by consultant, Jonathan Pascoe Pratt, who brings 30 years' experience in the art market to the partnership. Visit the gallery's website at ... www.orioncontemporary.com.

The Dubuque Museum of Art shows "Urban Landscapes by Mary Phelan" Posted: 04 Mar 2012 09:05 PM PST Dubuque, Iowa.- The Dubuque Museum of Art is proud to present "Urban Landscapes by Mary Phelan", on view at the museum through March 25th. Scenes of Chicago neighborhoods celebrate the artist's hometown and bring to mind the civic pride found in 17th century Dutch cityscapes. Mary Phelan is inspired by feng shui in her compositions which together with soft lighting and a subdued color palette take these everyday scenes to a higher level. Phelan has a gift for seeing the poetry of the ordinary in the city environment and she seeks to connect the viewer with what is often overlooked. This exhibition features 13 oil on linen paintings. Phelan's artwork was included in the Museum's last Biennial exhibition. The paintings represent actual locations, mainly in Chicago neighborhoods, but she is drawn to a place by how compellingly it appears to manifest polar yin and yang energies. These energies are inherent in such abstract qualities as shape, color and texture, but they also influence ideas - growth, stillness, fluidity and radiance. Her urban landscapes seek to organize tensions and harmonies among these forces and direct them to the viewer's eye in ways that are telling and aesthetically pleasing.

Exhibition of New Sculptures by Tony Cragg at Marian Goodman Gallery Posted: 04 Mar 2012 08:10 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- Marian Goodman Gallery is showing an exhibition of new sculpture by Tony Cragg now on display. The exhibition features recent sculptures in bronze, corten steel, wood, cast iron, and stone. Concurrently, and accompanying the gallery presentation, a group of large scale works are being exhibited at The Sculpture Garden at 590 Madison Avenue (entrance at 56th Street). The Sculpture Garden is open to the public daily from 8 am to 10 pm. Tony Cragg is one of the most distinguished contemporary sculptors working today. During the past year, there have been several important solo exhibitions of his work worldwide: Seeing Things at The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Figure In/ Figure Out at The Louvre, Paris; Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg, Germany; Tony Cragg in 4 D from Flux to Stability at The International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice; It is, Isn't It at the Church of San Cristoforo, Lucca, Italy; and Tony Cragg: Sculptures and Drawings at The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.

American Impressionists on Exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence Posted: 04 Mar 2012 07:11 PM PST FLORENCE, ITALY- Americans in Florence. Sargent and the American Impressionists on view at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, from 3rd March to 15th July, sets out to illustrate the extremely fertile and multifaceted relationship that the painters of the New World established with Florence and other cities in Tuscany between the mid 19th century and the World War 1. After the end of the American Civil War, there was a substantial increase in the number of American artists travelling to Europe, although, of course, the 18th century Grand Tour tradition had never really died. The painters' main destinations were Florence, Venice and Rome, cities which the artists idolised in their eagerness to explore their ancient monuments and to take their own measure against the art of the past. They were also attracted by the charm and variety of the landscape, so different from the countryside back home, by the light, by the evocative and atmospheric panoramic views, and by the picturesque charm of the local people.

Kunsthalle Krems in Austria presents : "Miracles, Art, and Science" Posted: 04 Mar 2012 06:47 PM PST KREMS, AUSTRIA - The miracle is a concept that breaks through boundaries. This exhibition makes use of its explosive potential, following the traces of the miraculous in different disciplines and throughout different periods in history. Centered around works of contemporary art, the show examines what falls out of the normal framework of our world: from inexplicable healing, the incredible spectacle of nature, the enigmatic world of different cultures, the effects of unexpected technical innovations, unusual ideas in art and even mere coincidence. On view at the Kunsthalle Krems in Austria through 1st July.

SFMOMA and YBCA show Major Survey Exhibition by Mark Bradford Posted: 04 Mar 2012 06:31 PM PST San Francisco, California.- On view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) through June 17th, and at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) through May 27th, in its only West Coast presentation, "Mark Bradford" is the first major museum survey of paintings, sculptures, and multimedia works by this leading figure in contemporary American art. Mark Bradford (b. 1961)—a Los Angeles–based artist and MacArthur Foundation "genius" award recipient—works in a variety of media but is best known for his often enormously scaled collages on canvas, which are akin to abstract paintings. Gathering carefully chosen found materials with "built-in history," as the artist says, Bradford engages in a complex artistic process that involves both creation and destruction. His intricately made, fractured works often address pressing political issues and the media's influence on contemporary society while cataloguing cultural change and the artist's personal responses to societal conditions. Bradford's early works incorporate permanent-wave end papers, an influence from his family's beauty parlor in South Central Los Angeles. Later works employ various collaged materials typically salvaged from the street—billboard paper, newsprint, carbon paper, wrapping paper—that the artist layers together or strips apart, and then dramatically manipulates with nylon string, caulking, and sanding. While striking in its formal beauty and subtle craft, Bradford's art also evokes allusions to the urban landscape, most specifically the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles where Bradford lived as a child and still maintains his studio. His abstract paintings probe the structures of urban society often defined by race, gender, and class. As a result, they resonate with complex social and economic meaning. Organized by curator Christopher Bedford for Wexner Center for the Arts, this most comprehensive account of Bradford's career to date will open in San Francisco as a co-presentation installed at two neighboring venues, offering more than 50 works spanning 2000 to 2010. The exhibition will be overseen at SFMOMA by Gary Garrels, Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture; and at YBCA by Director of Visual Arts Betti-Sue Hertz. "In its refined melding of materials, exquisite surfaces, and exuberant physicality, Mark Bradford's work engages with the rich history of assemblage while achieving exceptional, painterly effects," says Garrels. "His art offers an intensely personal vision that investigates the many contradictions inherent to life in contemporary urban culture." Concentrating largely on painting—the artist's primary activity—the selection of works captures the development of Bradford's sensibility, which ranges from relatively modest-sized canvases to monumental public projects, and from purely formal investigations of material to engagement with sociopolitical questions. Organized chronologically at SFMOMA, the exhibition offers a thematic summary of Bradford's art over the past decade, showcasing key pieces from major bodies of work while emphasizing three central aspects of his practice: the palpable energy and physicality of this process; his interest in the specificity of materials and the methods he invents to manipulate them; and the importance he places on producing new work, pushing himself every time he enters the studio. The presentation also reveals how Bradford constantly revisits and repurposes various concepts and techniques, foregrounding the relentless energy that is one of the defining characteristics of the artist and his work. In addition to highlighting Bradford's work as a painter, the show will feature sound and video pieces, including the new large-scale environmental installation Pinocchio Is On Fire (2009), commissioned in tandem with the survey. Created during Bradford's recent residency at the Wexner Center for the Arts, this three-part multimedia work examines changing concepts of identity relating to the black male body from the early 1980s to the present, with cultural references that include the rise of HIV and crack cocaine, as well as gangster rap, mega-churches, and aspects of the artist's own biography. In this work, Pinocchio is an imaginary historical figure, or as Bradford notes, "an energy," whose journey through three decades reflects Bradford's own attempts to shape a new conception of the black male body through various processes of abstraction. At YBCA, the exhibition brings the legacy of Hurricane Katrina into sharp relief, featuring three major works by Bradford related to Mithra (2008), his enormous ark-like public art project installed in the Lower Ninth Ward for Prospect.1, the first New Orleans biennial. The title for the work comes from an ancient Roman deity associate with light, justice, and wisdom; this association, combined with the ark's reference to a biblical flood, positions Mithra as both an indictment of the government's failure to protect the citizens of the Ninth Ward and an expression of hope for survival and new life. In YBCA's galleries, Bradford will reconstruct sections of his original Mithra piece to create a new sculpture titled Detail. Also on view at YBCA will be related film by Bradford titled Across Canal, which examines the conception, production, and reception of Mithra; and Corner of Desire and Piety (2008), a wall grid of found and reworked FEMA and other merchant posters .All other works in the exhibition will be on view in SFMOMA's fourth-floor galleries. Founded in 1935, SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted to modern and contemporary art. From the outset, the museum has championed the most innovative and challenging art of its time, and it continues to exhibit and collect work by both modern masters and younger, less-established artists. They always have a dynamic schedule of thought-provoking exhibitions on view, including special exhibitions and changing presentations from our collection of more than 27,000 artworks, photographs, and design objects. Audio guides, docent tours, video screenings, interactive kiosks, and public programs offer opportunities to learn more about modern art. Located just a short walk from downtown San Francisco, the landmark building features a soaring atrium topped by our signature turret and oculus skylight. The MuseumStore offers the West Coast's finest selection of modern and contemporary art books, as well as exceptional design objects, furniture, jewelry, and children's products. Meanwhile, the cafe serves gourmet fare in a light-filled space with indoor and outdoor seating. SFMOMA's internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art includes more than 27,000 works and continues to grow. With strong holdings in photography, painting and sculpture, architecture and design, and media arts, the museum strives to present key examples of Modernism as well as more recent works that reflect a variety of artistic developments occurring regionally, nationally, and around the world. Each year, in addition to organizing ongoing installations of permanent collection works, its curators develop a variety of collection-based presentations to complement the special traveling exhibitions hosted by the museum. Including both modern art masterworks and glimpses of contemporary art in the making, the permanent collection contributes to SFMOMA's standing as a dynamic art center where visitors can learn, reflect, and be inspired. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.sfmoma.org

Santiago Calatrava and SMU ~ "A Decade in Motion" at the Meadows Museum Posted: 04 Mar 2012 06:30 PM PST DALLAS, TX.- SMU's Meadows Museum, home to "Wave" (2002), the first large-scale sculpture by Santiago Calatrava to be permanently installed in the United States, is joining the celebration honoring the opening of the Spanish architect's Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge with a special exhibition –"Calatrava and SMU: A Decade in Motion," March 4th through April 22nd. The exhibition includes a selection of Calatrava's preliminary watercolor sketches of "Wave," a 40-by-90-foot perpetually moving sculpture installed in 2002 on the street-level plaza in front of the Meadows Museum at 5900 Bishop Blvd. A campus landmark, the sculpture's bronze bars move sequentially above a reflection pool. The exhibition also includes correspondence and mementoes from the sculpture's installation and dedication.

ACME Fine Arts to Present "Kenneth Stubbs: A Retrospective" Posted: 04 Mar 2012 06:08 PM PST Boston, Massachusetts.- ACME Fine Arts is proud to present "Kenneth Stubbs: A Retrospective" on view at the gallery from March 17th through May 5th. A public reception will be held on Saturday March 17th from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. This will be ACME Fine Art's fourth solo exhibition of the artwork of Kenneth Stubbs. While others have been genre or medium focused this exhibition will be retrospective in nature –covering over thirty productive years of the artist's career- and will highlight important works from still life and landscape genres. The artwork for the exhibition was selected by Gallery Director David Cowan, and will feature a fine group of works from the artist's estate that have not been exhibited in more than 20 years.

Green Art Gallery in Dubai presents “Brute Ornament” Posted: 04 Mar 2012 05:44 PM PST Dubai.- Green Art Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of "Brute Ornament", a two-person exhibition featuring the works of New York based artists Kamrooz Aram and Seher Shah , curated by Murtaza Vali. The exhibition will be accompanied with a comprehensive publication edited by Murtaza Vali and with contributions by Shumon Basar, Media Farzin and Alan Gilbert. "Brute Ornament" will be on view at the gallery from March 19th through May 5th. Through the works of these two artists, the exhibition explores the conflicted relationship between the decorative tradition of ornament and Western modernism, revealing the constitutive role that ornament played in the development of modern art in the West, specifically in the move towards pure abstraction that was modernism's endgame.

Gino Severini Retrospective at The Orangerie Museum in Paris Posted: 04 Mar 2012 05:39 PM PST Paris.- The Orangerie Museum in Paris presents "Gino Severini (1883 - 1966): Futurist and Neoclassicist" until July 25th. This is the first retrospective of the work of the Italian painter Gino Severini since that organised in 1967 at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris. It brings together some 70 works from private collections, European and American museums including the Triton Foundation Netherlands, Peggy Guggenheim Collection Venice, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, Estorick Collection in London, Thyssen Foundation in Madrid and MOMA, New York. As Severini said, "Cortona and Paris are the cities I am most bound to : I was physically born in the first, intellectually and spiritually in the second", Paris is therefore a particularly fitting home for this retrospective. Severini originally trained under pointillist painter Giacomo Balla and at first remained close to his style, with an emphasis on Luminist effects and the contrast of light and shade. He arrived in Paris in 1906 keen to find out more about the work of Seurat. In 1910, Raoul Dufy, who had the neighbouring studio, introduced him to scientific Divisionism. His urban views, painted in quite a free Pointillist style, are reminiscent of Signac but also seem quite close to the landscapes painted by Van Gogh in Paris in 1887 with their broken brushwork and lighter palette. His few pastel portraits are closer in style to Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. He continued the Divisionist experiments in his early Futurist works by integrating coloured planes and adding sequins to his dancers. In 1911, Gino Severini joined the Futurist movement, having already signed the Manifesto in 1910. His large painting, The Dance of the Pan Pan at the Monico, was the highlight of the 1912 Futurist exhibition. He acted as mediator between the artists from Milan and those of the Parisian avant-garde, and joined the Futurists on their European tour. His preferred subjects at this time were crowds, urban scenes and places of entertainment, very different from the themes of his artist friends (The Boulevard, Estorick Collection, London). He also represented movement in his series of dancers produced in 1912-1913. In 1914 - 1915, at the invitation of Marinetti, Severini produced a series of paintings on the war ("Train Blindé (Armoured Train)", MOMA, New York). In 1916, after abandoning Futurism, he became part of the Cubist movement until 1919. He rubbed shoulders with Cocteau and Matisse, and met Juan Gris to whom he was very close both personally and stylistically. During this period, he painted still lifes that included real fragments of wallpaper, newspapers, musical scores, etc., basing them on a set of complicated calculations. His Cubism stood out for the subtlety of colour harmonies. It was at this time that he produced many theoretical works on geometry, the Golden Section and harmonic lines, resulting in the publication in 1921 of his book From Cubism to Classicism on the relationship between art and mathematics. He sought a return to the traditional values of painting by concentrating on "construction". From 1920 to 1943, his art entered a new phase with the "Return to the Figure". With his Portrait de Jeanne et sa Maternité, dating from 1916 and representative of a classical and realist style, he became part of the "Return to Order" movement. Just like other artists of the time, Picasso, Gris and Derain, Severini was fascinated by the characters of Harlequin and by the Commedia dell' Arte. His still lifes at this point became more decorative. This new transformation in his painting style, so far removed from Cubism, is evident in the decorations he created for the Sitwel family at Montefugoni in Tuscany. In the 1930s, he also worked on a number of religious mosaic murals for the churches of Tavannes and Saint Pierre de Fribourg in Switzerland. Severini painted relatively few easel paintings at that time. His subjects were more intimate and family-orientated. He alternated between hieratic portraits and still lifes (musical instruments, pigeons, ducks and fish) inspired by the decorations in Pompeii and by Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna. Along with other artists like De Chirico, Picabia, and Ernst, he was involved with the decoration of Rosenberg's house. Between 1928 and 1930, he exhibited with the Italian artists in Paris. His "Harlequin" from 1938 completes an exhibition that presents the many different aspects of an artist who was much more multi-facetted than his fame as a Futurist painter would have us believe. His work fits perfectly with the Musée de l'Orangerie collections, particularly in his desire for a classic "return to order" and his numerous representations of Harlequin that unquestionably bring him closer to André Derain. The Musée de l'Orangerie is an art gallery of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings located on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. It contains works by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Chaim Soutine, Alfred Sisley and Maurice Utrillo, among others. As its name suggests, the Orangerie Museum is housed in a former orangery, built in 1852 by architect Firmin Bourgeois and completed by his successor, Ludovico Visconti to house the orange trees of the Tuileries Gardens. Used by the Third Republic as a depository for materials, examination room, accommodation for mobilized soldiers, versatile arena for sporting events, musical or patriotic concerts, industrial exhibitions, dog-shows, horticultural and rare art exhibitions, it was finally devoted to the administration of Fine Arts in 1921. A cycle of Monet's water-lily paintings, known as the Nymphéas, was arranged on the ground floor of the Orangerie in 1927. The museum has housed the Paul Guillaume collection of impressionist paintings since 1965. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.musee-orangerie.fr

Yayoi Kusama ~ Living Legend of the Avant-Garde at Gagosian in Rome Posted: 04 Mar 2012 05:38 PM PST ROME.- Gagosian Gallery presents an exhibition of recent paintings and sculptures by Yayoi Kusama. Kusama is a living legend of the international avant-garde who has emphatically eschewed the categorizations of modern art. Flamboyant yet profound, her oeuvre runs the gamut from unique masterpieces to mass-produced pop culture commodities, consistent in their constant and manifold appeal to the imagination and the senses. In a protean career spanning more than sixty years, she has made cosmic infinity and personal obsession the twin poles of her artistic inquiry. This exhibition of recent work weaves between the two oppositions, juxtaposing monadic sculptures with topological installations and abstract paintings with self-portraits.

Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia Exhibit at Museo Nacional D'Art de Catalunya Posted: 04 Mar 2012 05:37 PM PST BARCELONA - This exhibition aims to chart the artistic and personal relationships of three of the great figures in early twentieth-century art, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia. Together they created the Dada movement in New York during the First World War, and, unusually within the history of modern art, they remained friends, with periods of varying intensity, throughout their lives. On view 26 June through 21 September, 2008.

California is Celebrating the 100th Birthday of Iconic Architect John Lautner Posted: 04 Mar 2012 05:36 PM PST LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Californian landscape wouldn't be the same without the photogenic, iconic buildings of architect John Lautner; his soaring glass and concrete mansions, imbued with playfulness and optimism of the mid-century spirit, are as much a part of the state's architectural heritage as the Golden Gate bridge. The celebrated designer, who lived from 1911 to 1994, would have turned 100 this week, and to mark this milestone, the John Lautner Foundation is organizing a series of film screening, tours, and exhibitions, on his actual birthday, July 16.

Julie Heffernan Solos at The Catharine Clark Gallery Posted: 04 Mar 2012 05:35 PM PST San Francisco, CA.- The Catharine Clark Gallery is pleased to present "Boy, O Boy II", a solo exhibition of new paintings by Julie Heffernan, on view until October 29th. Julie Heffernan's third solo exhibition at Catharine Clark Gallery, "Boy, O Boy II", presents more than a dozen paintings that delve into those transitional periods of life that are exhilarating and petrifying. Lushly painted, Heffernan's canvases explore the macro and microcosms of change, from earthly shifts in climate and culture over hundreds and thousands of years, to role-changes in families as members grow older and move away. Heffernan's subjects are depicted in strained relationships with their environments. In "Self-Portrait with Falling Sky", for example, the protagonist is standing precariously in the midst of a volley of intricately-carved and bejeweled rocks and boulders tumbling down upon her head. The tenuous situation is visually frozen in time by the painting so that the falling rocks are forever suspended around her. A notably new central subject for the artist is the Boy archetype — arriving in the paintings as Heffernan's son is leaving home. Recognizing the importance of this period in her life, Heffernan patterns herself as a sort of artist-as-Polonius, imparting the physical and intellectual tools she feels her son will need on his journey—books, rope, keys. In paintings like "Self-Portrait Picking Up the Pieces", the Boy is carrying the burdens and detritus of old belief systems and idols that have lost their power or been deprived of currency. Saddled with gear in a forest of sign systems that point him in a host of different directions, he is effectively left make his own way. No longer feeling it appropriate to consider those of her son to be "self-portraits" — as her paintings have historically been considered — Heffernan's Boy archetype still reflects inward, as if her son were an avatar of herself. Julie Heffernan's series of works have an ever-present awareness of generational inheritance. Will we pass on enough wisdom and means to ensure a successful life on this earth, and what kind of earth will that be? Her luscious palette and skillful handling of materials compliment a rich subject matter that adeptly explores the fragility of human existence. Born in Peoria, Illinois Julie Heffernan received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her Masters of Fine Art in Painting from the Yale School of Art. Her work is included in many national and international collections, including the Columbia Museum of Art (Columbia, South Carolina), the Virginia Museum of Fine Art (Richmond, Virginia), Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, Florida), The Contemporary Museum (Honlulu, Hawaii), The Mint Museums (Charlotte, North Carolina), and the Zabludowicz Art Trust (London, United Kingdom).  A traveling retrospective of her work, accompanied by the catalogue titled Everything that Rises, was organized by the University Art Museum, University of Albany (Albany, New York) in 2006.  Her paintings have been featured in solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music (Brooklyn, New York), the Lux Art Institute (Encinitas,  California), the John Michael Kohler Art Center (Sheboygan, Wisconsin), the Mint Museum of Art (Charlotte, North Carolina), and University Art Gallery at CSU Stanislaus (Turlock, California). Her work has garnered critical attention in numerous publications including Artforum, Art in America, Artnews,  and  The New York Times.  Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Heffernan now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Established in 1991, Catharine Clark Gallery presents the work of contemporary artists. A wide range of media is represented in the gallery's program with an emphasis on content-driven work that challenges both the traditional use of materials and formal aesthetics. Catharine Clark Gallery was the first San Francisco gallery to create a dedicated media room, presenting new genres and experimental video art with each changing exhibition.  Exhibitions are hosted  on a six-week schedule and generally feature one or two solo presentations in addition to media room installations.  The gallery regularly participates in national and international art fairs. Housed in a former 1920s farming equipment warehouse, redesigned by Los Angeles-based architectural designer Tim Campbell, Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, is situated among numerous arts-related landmark buildings in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Neighborhood; it is adjacent to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the Museum of the African Diaspora (MOAD), near the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, and is housed on the ground floor of the same historical building as SF Camerawork. In March of 2010, the gallery opened Catharine Clark Gallery, New York, a project space in a residential apartment in New York's Chelsea neighborhood. Installations of gallery artists' work are presented as "pop-up" exhibits at the New York location several times a year. Visit the gallery's website at ... www.cclarkgallery.com

“Keeping Shadows" : Photography at Block Museum of Art Posted: 04 Mar 2012 05:34 PM PST EVANSTON, IL - Northwestern University's Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art will expose its visitors to photography this fall, offering four exhibitions and a series of programs, including a benefit auction on Sept. 21, devoted to and inspired by the medium. "Keeping Shadows: Photography at the Worcester Art Museum" (Sept. 22 to Dec. 10) in the Museum's Main Gallery (40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston Campus), surveys the history of photography as both an art form and documentary medium.  Organized by the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, the exhibition contains images spanning more than 150 years, from 19th-century daguerreotypes to digital images from NASA space probes and features work by such master photographers as Ansel Adams, Robert Mapplethorpe, Man Ray, Cindy Sherman, and Alfred Stieglitz.

The Museum Folkwang To Display Donations to the German Poster Museum Posted: 04 Mar 2012 05:33 PM PST Essen, Germany.- The Museum Folkswang is pleased to present "Donations to the German Poster Museum (2005 - 2011)" on view from November 12th through January 22nd 2012. As with all museums, the Folkswang Museum - and the German Poster Museum within it - obtain works through exchange, purchase and donation. This new exhibition highlights a number of the generous donations that have been made to the German Poster Museum in the past few years.The German Poster Museum is unique in Germany and has one of the largest specialized collections in the world. Today the collection holds more than 340,000 covering the fields of politics, the economy and culture. They range from the earliest posters to those of today. Its thematic focus is a documentation of the development of German posters in a European context. The reasons for donating posters to the German Poster Museum may vary, but the expectations remain the same: the work should be well conserved, should be dealt with, should be available to the public and the name of the donor shouldn't be forgotten. And indeed, the exhibitions by the German Poster Museum in the Museum Folkwang organized since 2005 would not have been possible without these donations, at least not with the same quality. Thus the taking becomes a giving, this is our duty which we wish to fulfil and show that the donations do not simply disappear into the depths of the storeroom, but that they are valued, also beyond the exhibitions – through an intensive formal and scholarly study of them. The exhibition will show around 60 posters selected from the almost 12,500 works donated to the museum between 1910 an today. Geographically they come mostly from Europe, with the majority of those from Germany. Even if this can only provide a brief insight, this presentation is naturally also intended to encourage, to persuade the hesitant to give their posters to the German Poster Museum or to support an acquisition. The Museum Folkwang – in the old North German epic poem Edda, the term Folkvanger (People's Hall) was given to the palace of the goddess Freya – was founded by Karl Ernst Osthaus (1874-1921) in 1902 in the Westphalian industrial city of Hagen. This former student of art history, literature and philosophy had inherited enough money to finance the project. From its origins as an art collection with natural history and crafts sections, it soon developed into a pioneering museum of modern art in Germany. The museum was the first public collection in Germany to acquire and show works by forerunners of Modernism – Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Henri Matisse. Following the death of its founder in 1921, the Osthaus collection was acquired for the City of Essen by the newly created Folkwang-Museumsverein, a progressive initiative of Essen art enthusiasts, and in 1922 it merged with the existing municipal art museum, open since 1906. Osthaus's support for what was, at that time, the Avant-garde of art, and that of his friend Ernst Gosebruch, director of the Essen art collection and later director of the Museum Folkwang in Essen, was an expression of a reform movement touching all facets of life, which sought to give the "western industrial region" a new aesthetic appearance by linking art and life. A site for collecting and conveying modern and contemporary art, within a few decades the museum had gained an international reputation, one reason for the malicious campaign against it during the Third Reich. A considerable loss of irreplaceable paintings and the destruction of the two museum buildings in the rain of bombs during the Second World War so ravaged the Museum Folkwang that only ruins remained in 1945. In the 1950's and 1960's, the museum directors of the day, Heinz Köhn and Paul Vogt, succeeded in filling the most painful gaps by buying back some works and acquiring others oriented on those lost. With the collection's extension into contemporary art, by the 1970's it had become bigger than ever before. The Museum Folkwang is today one of Germany's best-known art museums with an excellent collection of 19th century and classical modern paintings and sculpture, post-1945 art, and photography, which has had its own department since 1979. The museum sees it as an opportunity to continue to develop along these lines and to revive the tradition of a range of media and a combination of fine and applied arts for which the Museum Folkwang was so famous before 1933 and which earned it the title of the "loveliest museum in the world". An international architectural competition to desogn a new museum building was won by David Chipperfeld Architects in March 2007. The new museum opened in January 2010, when Essen and the Ruhr Area became Europe's Capital of Culture. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.museum-folkwang.de

Italian Museum Director Seeks Asylum In Germany ~ For Himself, His Staff And His Artworks ~ After Mafia Threats Posted: 04 Mar 2012 05:32 PM PST Casoria Italy (AFP). - An Italian museum director has announced that he is asking for asylum in Germany, saying he is fed up with mafia threats and a government that is failing to protect Italy's rich cultural heritage. "I wrote a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel," said Antonio Manfredi, founder and director of the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) in Casoria, an impoverished and crime-heavy town close to Naples in southern Italy. "I'm serious. It's not some kind of performance art. If she gives me asylum, I'm going to pack up my bags and move to Germany with my staff and the museum's entire collection of 1,300 works," said Manfredi, who is also a sculptor. "Germany has been one of the few countries that hasn't cut its culture budget. It gives a lot of money to research unlike here," he said. To make his point, he has even planted a German flag outside the museum.

Deutsche Guggenheim to show 'Picturing America ~ Photorealism' Posted: 04 Mar 2012 05:31 PM PST   Berlin, Germany - At the end of the 1960s, a number of young artists working in the United States began making realist paintings based directly on photographs. With meticulous detail, they portrayed the objects, people, and places that defined both urban and suburban contemporary American life. Various terms were used to describe this art, chief among them Hyperrealism and Photorealism. On view 07.03.2009 - 10.05.2009 at Deutsche Guggenheim.

Fifteen Years of Collecting at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg ~ Against the Grain Posted: 04 Mar 2012 05:30 PM PST WOLFSBURG, GERMANY - The foundation of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in 1994 simultaneously marked the launch of its mission to build a permanent collection. Today, along with the museum's exhibition programme, the collection enjoys an international reputation and is one of the outstanding cultural features that contribute to the City of Wolfsburg's appeal. To mark the museum's 15th anniversary, Markus Brüderlin, the director of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg since 2006, has chosen to present the collection in a new light. The exhibition 15 Years of Collecting – Against the Grain has therefore been conceived as a distinctive, informal juxtaposition of older and younger artists and works rather than the customary chronological display. On view through 13 September, 2009. With its specific focus on acquiring key pieces and groups of works by international artists, the collection of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg has set itself apart from those of other German museums since its inception. The year 1968 marks the starting point of the collection and, as it were, the emergence of the new avant-garde. A solid foundation of late modernist art was laid during the first years of the collection with the acquisition of pivotal works of Minimal art, conceptual art, Arte Povera, body art and media art. Artistic bridges have subsequently been built between positions such as Anselm Kiefer, Gary Hill, Gerhard Merz or the British artist duo Gilbert & George and artists of the late 1980s such as Cindy Sherman and Allan McCollum. The pieces in the collection by Nam June Paik and Gary Hill are remarkable pioneering works of media art. By mounting the first major retrospective of Douglas Gordon's work in 2007, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg recognized an artist whose sculptural elaboration of video art gave fresh impetus to the medium, while early exhibitions and acquisitions of works by artists of the 1990s who went on to become leading international figures – including Jeff Wall, Olafur Eliasson, Andreas Gursky and Neo Rauch – are further examples of the museum's pioneering achievements in the realm of contemporary art. 15 Years of Collecting – Against the Grain opens with the works that form the cornerstones of the collection and explores recent positions in relation to artists at the forefront of late modernism: Carl Andre, Mario Merz, Jan Dibbets and Bruce Nauman. The aim of juxtaposing these older and newer works is not only to highlight the specific character of the collection but also to identify and illustrate ruptures and developments in the history of art over the last forty years. For example, geometric abstract paintings by the American artist Sarah Morris are contrasted with Carl Andre's field of stereometric wooden blocks, whose serial structures respond in turn to Allan McCollum's Over 10,000 Individual Works laid out on a table. With the opening of the Zaha Hadid Lounge in one of the museum wings in 2001, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg ventured into the area between art and architecture/art and design, a line of approach that was also adopted in the exhibition Interieur/Exterieur. Living in Art. This show featured the monumental, space-within-a-space installation Visiona 2 by the Danish designer Verner Panton, which was purchased for the collection with the generous support of the Friends Association. Here it is presented opposite Tobias Rehberger's installation Decke Büroräume 1. Stock (Lévy, Schuppli, Hirsch, Ritschard, Pakesch) from 1998, extending and highlighting the interaction between art and design. This focus continued in 2007 with the opening of the Japan Garden, which forms part of the emerging dialogue on modernism in the 21st century and also reveals the close ties between the museum collection and the building itself. The main focus of the exhibition is on works that have been acquired since 2006. Among these is Gerhard Merz's temporary spatial installation An Etienne-Louis Boullée III. His glowing temple of light and four monumental colour panels are juxtaposed with Lawrence Weiner's word piece Bent & Broken Shafts of Light, which evokes light and colour purely through a spatial display of texts. The closing highlight of the exhibition is Lalibela Kabinett by Philip Taaffe, a pictorial tower of 384 ornamental leaves that was created in the context of the major retrospective of the American artist's work held here in 2008. Visit : http://www.kunstmuseum-wolfsburg.de/

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 04 Mar 2012 05:29 PM PST This is a new feature for the subscribers and visitors to Art Knowledge News (AKN), that will enable you to see "thumbnail descriptions" of the last ninety (90) articles and art images that we published. This will allow you to visit any article that you may have missed ; or re-visit any article or image of particular interest. Every day the article "thumbnail images" will change. For you to see the entire last ninety images just click : here . When opened that also will allow you to change the language from English to anyone of 54 other languages, by clicking your language choice on the upper left corner of our Home Page.  You can share any article we publish with the eleven (11) social websites we offer like Twitter, Flicker, Linkedin, Facebook, etc. by one click on the image shown at the end of each opened article.  Last, but not least, you can email or print any entire article by using an icon visible to the right side of an article's headline.

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