OPEN TO YEAH (caps)

[ October 1 2015 ] : ART

RE:FORM KOESTLER AWARDS AT SOUTHBANK CENTRE, LONDON

Art by offenders on community sentences, secure psychiatric patients and immigration detainees.  It is the eighth exhibition in an ongoing partnership between the Koestler Trust and Southbank Centre.

On view until November 29 2015 at Southbank Centre, London SE1 8XX

[ September 22 2015 ] : ART

[ September 6 2015 ] : ART

[ July 4 2015 ] : ART

HANNAH COLLINS AT CAMDEN ARTS CENTRE, LONDON

British artist HANNAH COLLINS (b. 1956) is known for her large unframed photographs that create immersive spatial experiences, and installations that involve film and sound.  Her summer exhibition at Camden Arts Centre reveals COLLINS’ capacity to convey the emotional and psychological aspects of spaces steeped in cultural and social history, with subjects ranging from scenes of apparent inhabitation and temporary refuge to highly-charged historical locations and environments.  The exhibition presents works spanning COLLINS’ career to date, including large black and white photographs from her early work in 1980s East London to her recent series The Fertile Forest, comprising of photographs gathered during periods spent with tribal peoples in the Amazon basin.  Photos by Victoria Perez-Fragero

On view until September 13 2015 at Camden Arts Centre Arkwright Road, London NW3 DG

[ June 10 2015 ] : ARCHITECTURE

THE BRUTALIST PLAYGROUND AT RIBA, LONDON

In this unique project for RIBA, architectural collective ASSEMBLE and artist SIMON TERRILL used drawings and photographs from RIBA’s archives to build an interactive installation of post-war playground structures recreated in foam.  A homage, to the banished playgrounds built for mid-twentieth century housing, now largely considered unsuitable for play.  The project raises questions over design for play, from both a historic and contemporary perspective.  Photo and text Victoria Perez-Fragero

On view until August 16 2015 at RIBA 66 Portland Place, London W1B 1AD

[ May 8 2015 ] : ART

PLANTA : NOTES ON BOTANICAL DISSIDENCE AT ACME PROJECT SPACE, LONDON

In partnership with Acme Studios, students from the Royal College of Art Curating Contemporary Art MA present Planta: Notes on Botanical Dissidence.  Premised on the investigative model of note-taking, the group show is an exploration into the conceptual potential of plants. Ever present, silent yet living are frequently ignored in the overarching discourses of history.  The exhibition includes work by CANDICE JACOBS, MILOU VAN DER MAADEN, ISA MELSHEIMER and RACHEL PIMM.  In bringing together the work of these artists, the show suggests ways in which plant processes, as well as vegetal images and metaphors, could, in the words of philosopher Michael Marder, begin to ‘exert a formative influence on thinking.’  Photos by Victoria Perez-Fragero

On view until May 24 2015 at Acme Project Space, 44 Bonner Road, London E2 9JS

[ April 28 2015 ] : ART

THOMAS MAILAENDER SOLO CHAUD AT ROMAN ROAD, LONDON

For the first time in London, French multimedia artist THOMAS MAINLAENDER (b.1979) exhibits diverse works inspired from his ‘Fun Archive’- a personal collection he started in 2000, which now consists of more than 11000 amateur images sourced from the internet and objects found at flea markets.  Featuring his new series of ceramics, his cyanotypes, as well as a fantastic selection of works from his contemporaneous projects: Les Belles Images and his Chicken Museum relics, Solo Chaud explores MAILAENDER’S methods of reproducing his archived images and found objects to show how his innovative practice drives a new mode of art making, built from a merged position of artist, curator and collector.  Photo and text by Victoria Perez-Fragero

On view until June 15 2015 at Roman Road, 69 Roman Road, London E2 0QN

[ April 24 2015 ] : ART

THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT AT CAMPOLI PRESTI, LONDON

Text is often employed as an introduction within the context of the exhibition space.  The visitor can certainly often be observed shuffling a black and white A4 sheet around the space.  This format, to encourage the viewer the ability to learn of individual practices, traverse varying methods, pull together and compare historical and theoretical references and ideas in works, or speak of particular cultural themes.  In other words - as this exhibition text claims - the use of text is seeking to make the work in an exhibition cohesive within art history as opposed to disparate.   THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT takes its title from Roland Barthes 1973 book of the same name, in which the pleasure of reading exists in a derivative path, where our body follows its own ideas and destabilises its historical, cultural and psychological assumptions.  For this exhibition, Campoli Presti bring together artists that actively question the labelling of their works and re-elaborate them on their own terms.  Text by Victoria Perez-Fragero

On view until May 24 2015 at Campoli Presti 223 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 0EL

[ February 25 2015 ] : ART

HIGHLIGHTS FROM ARCO, MADRID

Photo Victoria Perez-Fragero

[ January 11 2015 ] : LOVE

[ January 10 2015 ] : ART

[ January 10 2015 ] : ART

THE SHELL (LANDSCAPES, PORTRAITS & SHAPES) AT ALMINE RECH, PARIS

The relatively small exhibition space is saturated by forty-two artworks from a wide variety of painters.  JOHN M ARMELDER, JEAN-BAPTISTE BERNADET, JOE BRADLEY, BERNARD BUFFET, BRIAN CALVIN, JOHN CURRIN, DAAN VAN GOLDEN, CHARLINE VON HEYL, DAVID HOCKNEY, ALEX ISRAEL, ALEX KATZ, KAREN KILIMNIK, BERTRAND LAVIER, ERIK LINDMAN, JOHN McALLISTER, DAVID OSTROWSKI, RICHARD PHILLIPS, BRIDGET RILEY, CHRISTIAN ROSA, JULIAN SCHNABEL, ALAIN SÉCHAS, JOSH SMITH, BETTY TOMPKINS, IDA TURSIC & WINFRIED MILLE, JONAS WOOD, CHRISTOPHER WOOL.  The vast display aims to consider the medium outside of genre, period, or context.  Inspired by Peter Schjeldahl’s quote that “Modern art history has ceased to represent a road traveled, and has come to seem an encircling panorama,” curator Éric Troncy employs a panoramic display intended –à la Google– to achieve this.  Presenting the works side-by-side in close configuration was indeed a feast for the eyes and a joy to walk through.  However, it also served a nasty after-taste, as the more paintings included, the less of an impact each individual work made.  Schjedahl’s point I suppose.  However, I couldn’t help but be saddened.  Placed within a commercial gallery, stripped and crudely commoditised; painting within this context becomes little more than an object of conspicuous leisure—a pretty picture with an exchange value.  But i don’t like to think negatively, and I shouldn’t ignore the joy I felt -  therefore - it’s a celebration, it’s a celebration! Photo and text by Victoria Perez-Fragero.

On view until February 18 2015 at Almine Rech 64 rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris

[ December 2 2014 ] : TRAVEL

A TRIP TO SA CALOBRA

Photo Victoria Perez-Fragero

[ November 26 2014 ] : ART

[ November 26 2014 ] : ART

SENGA NENGUDI AT WHITE CUBE BERMONDSEY, LONDON

Chicago born artist NENGUDI (b.1943) pioneering art, has developed over a 40 year long career, seamlessly traversing various disciplines while eloquently dealing with powerful themes of race and gender.   This exhibition is her first ever solo presentation in the UK.  NENGUDI first came to prominence in the 1970s when she was a Los Angeles-based artist affiliated with Studio Z, a radical group of African-American artists, including DAVID HAMMONS and MAREN HASSINGER.  This exhibition revisits her 1970s R.S.V.P series which show abstract and biomorphic ‘soft’ sculptures that use nylon tights hung and stretched out three-dimensionally on the gallery walls, sculptures suggesting skin, breasts and bodily organs.  In R.S.V.P, originally performed with MAREN HASSINGER, NENGUDI utilised movement to explore issues of self-esteem and self-acceptance.  While this body of work can clearly be positioned in relation to both Minimalism and Feminism, NENGUDI’S work resists any defined political or ethic content, but rather, evokes the fragility and resilience of both mind and body.  Photo and text Victoria Perez-Fragero

On view until January 18 2015 at White Cube 144-152 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3TQ

[ November 15 2014 ] : NATURE

[ November 11 2014 ] : ART

THE BAD SHEPHERD AT CHRISTIE’S, LONDON

The Bad Shepherd, is a collaboration between the Old Master Paintings and Post-War & Contemporary Art specialist departments at Christie’s.  On the one hand it is a celebration of the imprint made on our collective consciousness by the BRUEGHEL family, with its close early followers and collaborators.  On the other hand, it is an exploration of the ways in which living artists, entirely independently, have come to value precisely those aims that set the BRUEGHEL apart from their own contemporaries: The relentless challenging of received wisdom; a drive to expose hypocrisy in all its guises; unfettered frankness about the human condition; a rejection of pretentious criteria.  The title is taken from The Bad Shepherd, a masterpiece by PIETER BRUEGHEL the Younger which Christie’s brought to the market in 2008, and which is on loan to the exhibition from a private collection.  Other artists included in the exhibition are PETER DOIG, JAN BRUEGHEL, NICOLE EISENMAN, MARTEN VAN CLEVE, JEFF KOONS, ABEL GRIMMER, SARAH LUCAS, NEO RAUCH, THOMAS SCHÜTTE and JEFF WALL.  The ‘Bad Shepherd’ is used here as a powerful metaphor.  The parable which inspired the artists’ is about making a choice; about responsibility and coping with it; about sacrifice – and survival.  As always, with BRUEGHEL works, the moral message is not imposed on us – we are left with a questioning ambiguity, a challenge to look deeper, and to make up our own minds.  Photos by Victoria Perez-Fragero

On view until January 16 2015 at Christie’s 103 New Bond Street, London W1S 1ST