Viewing articles from 2022/04

1646 Experimental Art Space, Boekhorststraat 125, 2512 CN, The Hague, Netherlands

Janek Simon | Meta Folklore

The Hague’s art space 1646 recently opened Meta Folklore, the first solo exhibition in The Netherlands by self-taught artist Janek Simon (b. 1977), showing his newest 3D printed sculptures. Growing up in Poland during the 1980’s amidst post-war dichotomies, Simon developed an anarchist political position and a resistance to reducing the world into categories. Combined with his urge to intrude on overpowering, opaque technologies, Simon sees the DIY approach as a tool to reappropriate technology and to empower people to dismantle simplistic constructs of reality, categorization and hierarchies. From the Press Release

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Carlos Ishikawa, 88 Mile End Road, London E1 4UN

Songs For Living | Korakrit Arunanondchai & Alex Gvojic

‘Songs for living’ provides excerpts from Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace, Édouard Glissant’s Sun of Consciousness, and On Prayer, a poem by the Polish-American poet, Czesław Miłosz. From separate times and places these writers survived under oppressive regimes with the provocation of their art. What they had in common was that they fought for a spiritual clarity amidst the forcefulness of symbolic communions. From the press release.

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Ingleby Gallery, 33 Barony Street, Edinburgh EH3 6NX

Katie Paterson | Requiem

Katie Paterson is one of Scotland’s most renowned artists, who looks up to the stars and back down at the earth, considering our relationship to the planet, cosmos, and deep time. Born in Glasgow in 1981 and studying at Edinburgh College of Art and The Slade School of Art, Paterson has featured in exhibitions worldwide, including Kettle’s Yard, Turner Contemporary, and BAWAG Contemporary. Paterson collaborates with scientists and produces in-depth research to create works that bridge the gap between science and contemporary art. Written by, Laura Baliman

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Peres Projects, Piazza Belgioioso 2, 20121 Milan, Italy

Dylan Soloman Kraus | Holy Unrest

Kraus is an intriguing character with an expansive curiosity for mythology and symbolism. He has come through a history of drug addiction and, as a side hustle, works as a stick and poke tattoo artist in New York. As with much of his work, in ‘Holy Unrest’, Kraus is thematically drawn to nature and paints using a restricted, largely blue, colour palette. For Kraus, the forms of nature are a language in which to express the human condition. I met the artist in a crowded cafe above a bookshop in Soho, London. A conversation with Sophie Naufal and US painter, Dylan Soloman Kraus

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Cristea Roberts Gallery, 43 Pall Mall London, SW1Y 5JG

Barbara Walker | Vanishing Point

“I’ve always been drawn to the figure, not necessarily, or not only, its portraiture aspects, but more so body politics. Black people are often on the receiving end of images, but art school provided me with the important opportunities to think about how as an artist, I had the power to push back and to create images other than the nasty corrosive caricatures of Black people frequently peddled by the mainstream media and dominant culture.” Barbara Walker

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Gagosian 20 Grosvenor Hill, London W1K 3QD

Titus Kaphar | New Alters: Reworking Devotion

In paintings, sculptures, and installations, Kaphar examines the history of representation by altering the work’s supports. In doing so, he reveals oft unspoken social and political truths, dislodging history from its status as “past” to underscore its contemporary relevance. New Alters: Reworking Devotion stresses the heterogeneity of Kaphar’s process by incorporating all the techniques he has employed to date into a single presentation that emphasizes the images’ surreality and strangeness. It is characterized by a layering of imagery and form and a strategic disregard for the consistency of ground and space. Shifts in scale turn some figures into miniatures and others into giants, while the use of gilded frames hints at a dedication to something beyond the physical. From the press release.

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Castlefield Gallery 2 Hewitt Street, Manchester M15 4 GB

Archives at Play | Gregory Herbert, Kelly Jayne Jones, Dr. Yan Wang Preston, and Chester Tenneson

'Archives at Play' is an exhibition exploring our relationship with the past and how this informs how we make the future. At a time when it is more important than ever to challenge inherited ideas about ecology, equality, and identity, this exhibition uses archival structures - the ways we hold and engage with the past - as a tool for questioning the worlds we find ourselves within. The artists Gregory Herbert, Kelly Jayne Jones, Dr. Yan Wang Preston, and Chester Tenneson have been invited to take the concept of the archive as a starting point to develop a series of new works for Archives at Play. From the press release.

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Bobinska Brownlee New River, London

On touch: Paintings | J.A. Nicholls

JA Nicholls delivers portraits of awkward emotions and moods, as much as faces and bodies. She’s never shied from portraying uncertainty and ambivalence, whether about gender, the female body, desire or ageing. This question of how we put ourselves together was explored in collage paintings for many years. ‘In Touch’ demonstrates the synthesis of Nicholls’ ideas and a self. There’s a looseness and cohesiveness without loose becoming careless. The main difference from earlier work is a joyful risk in the handling of the paint. Review by Cherry Smyth

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Secession, Friedrichstraße 12, A-1010 Wien

DIS | How To Become A Fossil

The film, Everything But The World was conceived as a TV pilot plotting new narratives for new histories. A multi-genre docu-sci-fi, the series departs from the premise of a nature show by turning the camera onto nature’s least natural invention: us. Connecting the repetitive movements of today’s warehouse worker to activities some 10,000 years ago, when many of our ancestors switched from hunting and gathering to farming full-time, Everything But The World challenges post-Enlightenment notions of “progress.” “This is the story of what happens after your property and after your progress. It’s over. And baby, you didn’t survive.“ — Narrator, Everything But The World

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