Author Archives: Rachael Morrison

WEEKLY WRAP UP | SEPT. 15-19, 2014

 

from Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940-1990

from Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940-1990

This week on the blog Alexandra Ruiz of Madame Paris joined the team. Check out all of our postings!

Erica Baum : The Paper Nautilus at Bureau

Harald Lander and William Forsythe at Opera Garnier

Machine Project at Gamble House

Cory Arcangel: tl;dr at Team (bungalow) in Venice, CA

Jonathan Binet & Martin Laborde

Sadie Benning ‘Patterns’ at Callicoon Fine Arts

The studio of Jean Arp and Sophie Taueber-Arp at Clamart 

Sophie Tauber-Arp exhibition Today is Tomorrow at the Aargauer Kunsthaus, in Switzerland

I Never Read at the Tokyo Art Book Fair

Alexander May at Balice Hertling

 

 

 

SADIE BENNING : PATTERNS

screen_shot_2014-09-08_at_5_39_31_pm.842x0Sadie Benning

Callicoon Fine Arts

Sept. 14 – Oct. 26

Callicoon Fine Arts is very pleased to present an exhibition by Sadie Benning. Patterns is comprised of a new series of wall-based artworks, including some of the artist’s largest to date, as well as works that, for the first time, incorporate fabric and found photographs. Benning uses repetition and patterning in these works to evoke systems of social order and control, while also questioning the entrenched and compulsive behaviors that these systems— capitalism, war and gender binaries— create.

Julie’s Rug, like all the works, is made from cut pieces of wood that have been coated with aqua-resin, sanded, painted and then reassembled. Comprised of a series of irregular rectangular forms arranged in rows and columns, the buffed and sprayed components in white, black, deep red and ocher rhythmically alternate across the large surface implying a continuation beyond the boundaries of the piece.

In the work Mask, a found black and white photograph is mounted onto the sculpted components. In this small work, the photograph is caught in a white beam emanating from a dark superhero-like mask —conveying a moment of perception and contact. What is seen is a domestic boundary wall made from highly contrasting patterned bricks.

In Gun Blanket, violence is implied by lever-like guns that fire out rows of rectangles all embedded in a black ground. They take aim at two neighboring paintings, Cig 1 and Cig 2, which are graphic depictions of cigarette boxes with fabric inserts for logos, pictorial spaces that signify both compulsion and comfort.

In the largest work, Rain Signal, the blue diagonal dashes depict rain falling while rows of white rectangles signify the ominous invisibility of military communication systems.

Each work proposes a way out of prescriptive orders even while they formally articulate those orders. Benning develops a visual language that strongly argues for the referential and connotative direction of experimental forms. It is a language that is shaped by the interactive and combustible relationships between drawing, sculpture and painting.

Sadie Benning was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1973 and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. Benning received an M.F.A. from Bard College and is co-chair of the film and video department, and a former member and cofounder of the music group Le Tigre. Benning’s work had been exhibited internationally since 1990 and is in many permanent collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, The Fogg Art Musuem, and the Walker Art Center. Benning’s work was included the Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, in NYC 1993:Experimental Jet SetTrash and No Star, New Museum and in Tell It To My Heart: Collected by Julie Ault, Kunstmuseum Basel and Artists Space, NY, and has been included in: Annual Report: 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008); Whitney Biennial (2000 and 1993); American Century, Whitney Museum (2000); and the Venice Biennale (1993). Solo exhibitions include Participant, INC., Wexner Center for the Arts, Orchard Gallery, Dia: Chelsea and The Power Plant.

Sadie Benning, Julie's Rug, 2014 medite, aqua resin, casein, and acrylic 60 5/8 x 70 3/8 inches Courtesy of the artist and Callicoon Fine Arts, NY

Sadie Benning, Julie’s Rug, 2014
medite, aqua resin, casein, and acrylic
60 5/8 x 70 3/8 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Callicoon Fine Arts, NY

CORY ARCANGEL : tl;dr

(image http://www.teamgal.com/)

(image http://www.teamgal.com/)

tl;dr

Cory Arcangel

Team (Bungalow)

306 Windward Avenue

September 14th – November 9th 2014

Team (gallery, inc.) is pleased to announce a solo show of work by New York-based artist Cory Arcangel. Entitled tl;dr, the exhibition will run from 14 September through 09 November 2014 and will inaugurate our project space in Los Angeles. Team (bungalow) in located at 306 Windward Avenue in Venice, CA. Concurrently, our 47 Wooster Street space in New York will house an additional show by Arcangel under the same title. 

Arcangel’s work has long dealt with the status conferred upon differing cultural ephemera: the privilege endowed so-called Fine Art as compared to the visual vernacular of “lowbrow” pop culture. Much of his early work consisted of hacked Nintendo cartridges; for Super Mario Clouds, a particularly epochal work, he removed all visual content from a copy of Super Mario Brothers, leaving only the drifting clouds of the game’s background. This work was shown in Team’s original Chelsea basement space in 2003, and was then included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Concepts like “8-bit” and “hack” — so suspect to the art world of 2003 — have been completely assimilated with this renegade work being exhibited in 2012 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

For this exhibition — his first in Los Angeles — the artist is showing several of his historic video game works running on cheap tablets and Smartphones via a Nintendo emulator. This gesture further complicates the works’ established relationship with appropriation and contextualization, while also acting as a miniaturized retrospective for this aspect of his oeuvre. The fact that visitors will be able to physically access the images’ supports by handling the tablets and PDAs also aids in this process of canon-debunking. 

The devices will be presented on grooved, wooden display racks, as they might at a commercial electronics outlet. While the original pieces relied upon grand presentation and white cube context to establish their Fine Art status, this gesture acts almost in reverse, using the now-iconic body of work to elevate (and fetishize) the consumer technology. The exhibition serves as a kind of funhouse mirror reincarnation of those early works, retaining parts of their power and significance but also providing them with a new, highly contemporary existence. 

In addition to the Nintendo pieces, the installation will include elements that highlight other aspects of the artist’s career. Acrylic magazine cases containing issues of Arcangel’s The Source zines — physical documents of the code he has written for his myriad projects — are presented alongside objects from his recently founded merchandise line Arcangel Surfware, which are hung retail-style from display hooks. Commercial-grade plastic shelves contain a selection of semi-obscure CDs and DVDs —  Nick Lachey’s, A Father’s Lullaby for example. Audio will be provided by a Sony iPod doc playing mp3s related to Kelly Clarkson’s 2004 song Since U Been Gone, a recurring motif in Arcangel’s production. 

During the past two years, Arcangel has completed several diverse projects outside the space of the gallery. He worked extensively with a team of researchers and computer experts in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Museum to unearth and preserve Warhol’s lost digital experiments, which he wrote about for the summer edition of Artforum. This past May, he launched the aforementioned publishing and merchandise imprint, Arcangel Surfware, whose products include bedsheets, iPad covers, and magazines. In July, he released his debut novel, Working On My Novel, published by Penguin. 

The 36-year old Arcangel has been the subject of numerous international monographic exhibitions at both galleries and major museums, including The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, The Whitney Museum in New York, The Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, The Barbican in London and MoCA in Miami. His work is included in many public collections, including the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, MoMA in New York, The Tate in London, Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington D.C. and the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zürich. 

We are excited to open Team (bungalow) in Los Angeles, our first exhibition space outside of New York City. The space, housed in a bungalow and a one-car garage, is quite possibly the smallest gallery in the city of Los Angeles. Our plan is to alternate exhibitions by artists represented in New York by Team, along with solo shows by artists from other galleries whose work excites us. Exhibitions by Margaret Lee, Pierre Bismuth and Bradley Kronz are forthcoming. 

Gallery hours are Friday through Sunday, noon to 6 PM.

(image http://www.teamgal.com/)

(image http://www.teamgal.com/)

(image http://www.teamgal.com/)

(image http://www.teamgal.com/)

(image http://www.teamgal.com/)

(image http://www.teamgal.com/)

(image http://www.teamgal.com/)

(image http://www.teamgal.com/)

MACHINE PROJECT AT GAMBLE HOUSE

gamblecombo-600x401

MACHINE PROJECT FIELD GUIDE TO THE GAMBLE HOUSE

Presented by The Pasadena Arts Council’s AxS Festival

Friday, September 19th – Sunday, October 5th

As part of this year’s Art and Science (AxS) Festival in Pasadena, whose theme is “Curiosity,” the Gamble House has collaborated with the Pasadena Arts Council and Machine Project of Los Angeles to present a special 17-day artist intervention in Pasadena’s world-renowned historic landmark. You will experience the Gamble House as never before – through the work and performance of contemporary artists in an exciting variety of forms and media. From night-time lighting shows and a “secret” restaurant, to psychic readings, bedroom conversations, group naps, dance, and installations of paintings, ceramics, wood, and metal, you will find plenty of opportunities both to spark and satisfy your curiosity, using all five of your senses (maybe even a sixth)!

Special artist-led workshops and tours will explore details of the life of the Gamble family, the crafts of letter-writing and embroidery, the technology and craftsmanship of the Gamble House, and even an opportunity to make your own soap (a tribute to the family firm of Procter & Gamble and its famed Ivory soap)!

…take a docent-led one-hour tour of the house or to participate in any of the wide variety of artist-led workshops (additional fees apply). You won’t want to miss this unique moment to visit the Gamble House, when we celebrate the true spirit of the original Arts and Crafts and contemporary Maker movements!

More information and tickets available at each of these websites:

http://machineproject.com/

http://gamblehouse.org/machine-project.html

ERICA BAUM : THE PAPER NAUTILUS

EB.Sewing.PH.1705.2014.web

Erica Baum, Sewing, 2014 (Naked Eye), Archival pigment print, 17 x 15.5 inches

ERICA BAUM

The Paper Nautilus

Bureau, NYC

September 7 – October 26 2014

Bureau is pleased to open the 2014 fall season with Erica Baum’s exhibition, The Paper Nautilus. Baum has become internationally known for her photographic work mining found printed sources for text and image. This exhibition presents work from three distinct series primarily focusing on the debut of Stills; works revealing Baum’s juxtapositions of fragmented images and silhouettes of text. These newest works are contextualized and complimented by the Viewmasters (2011) as well as two new works from the on-going series, Naked Eye. All three series are excellent examples of Baum’s practice of taking straight photographs of found printed material, and her surprisingly poetic and evocative results.

Utilizing the mechanical techniques of her Dog Ear and Blanks series, works in the new Stills are similarly composed through the simple operation of folding down the corner of a book page. In those earlier series, Baum’s corners disclose found concrete poetry and elegantly textured geometric abstractions. The Stills focus on fractured imagery and thus relate to Baum’s cinematic Naked Eye works in which fanned-out paperback pages reveal a rhythm of sliced pictures. This expanding aesthetic demonstrates Baum’s consistent skill for unearthing abstract beauty from within the printed page. The Stills are a suite of slightly uneven, bisected squares composed of blown-up halftone illustrations and forms framed by toothy paper grains from the books’ margins. The works range from near-pure abstractions to psychologically-charged figurative amalgams. The irregular squares of Shostakovich and Executive Yoga recall Malevich and Albers, respectively; while the truncated but suggestive female legs of Wild Orchid has an uncanny, surrealist allure.

Punctuating the arrangement of Stills in the main space are Baum’s Viewmasters. These larger-scale works are based on the discs of mounted film inserted into the eponymous stereoscopic toy. Rounded, black rectangles fan out radially in place of the original images, accompanied by evocative captions from science fiction and adventure stories. Baum often severs image from text, as with her Frick series (1998), entreating the viewer to imagine unseen works of art described in indexical descriptions. The Viewmasters similarly favor words to illustrate an obscured image.

For Baum, untold stories and images lie within the printed pages of books, games and archives. Beyond the narratives and illustrations that these texts present, it is in the margins and gutters, in the textures and contours of these printed objects that Baum finds her subject. With her incisive eye, Baum culls and edits a witty, beautiful and precise body of work from a seemingly endless library.

Erica Baum (b. 1961) lives and works in New York. Selected solo exhibitions include: Galerie Mark Müller, Zurich (2014); Kunstverein Langenhagen, Germany (2013); Galerie Crevecoeur, Paris (2013), Melas Papadapoulos, Athens (2013); Bureau, New York (2012, 2011 and 2009). She was featured in The Imminence of Poetics – 30th São Paulo Biennial, 2012. Her work is held in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; and FRAC Ile de France, Paris.

EB.Taxi.PH.1706.2014.web

Erica Baum, Taxi, 2014 (Naked Eye) Archival pigment print, 16 x 17 inches

Erica Baum, Implication, 2014 (Stills) Archival pigment print, 15 x 15.80 inches

Erica Baum, Implication, 2014 (Stills) Archival pigment print, 15 x 15.80 inches

Erica Baum, Executive Yoga, 2014 (Stills) Archival pigment print, 15 x 15.21 inches

Erica Baum, Executive Yoga, 2014 (Stills) Archival pigment print, 15 x 15.21 inches

Erica Baum at Bureau Installation View

Erica Baum at Bureau Installation View

Erica Baum, 20,000 Leagues B, 2011 (Viewmaster) Digital c-print, 40 x 40 inches

Erica Baum, 20,000 Leagues B, 2011 (Viewmaster) Digital c-print, 40 x 40 inches