ART NEWS:March 01

Ulrike Müller’s paintings, drawings, and textiles encompass and achieve the aims of abstract painting, figurative painting, genre painting and even devotional painting. It’s 2019 and a geometric shape that may or may not appear to the viewer as the form of a shoe, a flower, or a cat, no longer definitively fix the meaning of the artwork in the gallery any more than the established categories of paintings just mentioned. The site of her exhibition, “The Walls Do Not Fall”, itself is part of the significance of the work. Müller has consistently painted the walls, reshaped the walls, and overall shown a strong hand in the contextual presentation of her work. No different for this show at Rodeo. The white of the wall is accepted as a choice. So too the architecture, the walls, and the unshaded windows in the gallery are preferences. Directly outside the gallery, there is much construction as well as available light. The fact that both noise and illumination are present factors can only be understood as a strong set of decisions by the artist. Info: Rodeo Gallery, 125 Charing Cross Road, London, Duration: 7/3-20/4/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, http://rodeo-gallery.com

Rosalind Nashashibi is a London-based filmmaker and artist whose practice incorporates painting, printmaking, and photography. Starting in 2014, Nashashibi has expanded her painting practice, creating abstract and figurative works that combine lush colors with sumptuous organic forms. Her paintings incorporate motifs that are pulled from her everyday environment such as a wine glass or an illuminated taxi sign, which are then reworked in multiple variations. There is both a softness and an immediacy present in her works that comes from an intuitive, process-based exploration of the mediumThe simple refinement of the artist’s paintings can be compared to her films in that they gently outline an internal visual language; giving the viewer space to think associatively rather than imposing an affected logical structure. Nashashibi’s films capture different kinds of relationships through the minutiae of her subjects’ lives and the lived environment. The films are often non-linear, punctuated by manifestations of power dynamics and the subtext of individual and collective histories. In the downstairs gallery, “Bachelor Machines Part 2” (2007) and “The Prisoner” (2008) are on display. In each of these films Nashashibi introduces deliberately constructed scenes into her filmmaking process. The intersection of real and staged footage produces a sense of possibility- an alternative reality in which the fantastical is mixed with plain, everyday occurrences. Info: GRIMM Gallery, 202 Bowery, New York, Duration: 8/3-18/4/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-18:00, https://grimmgallery.com

Helen Marden’s paintings that are on show at her solo exhibition “Tivoli” are characterized by vibrant colors, layered by the artist directly onto the canvas. Teeming with raw expression, her explorations of space, color, edge, and object exemplify how forms can represent experiences and emotions while tapping into the life force in nature itself. Although the exhibition is titled after the upstate village where Marden spends much of her time, New York City and Marrakech, Morocco, are equal catalysts for the forms and media in her paintings. Offering an immersive look at Marden’s compositions, the exhibition includes more than twenty paintings, all from 2018. Raw powdered pigments are mixed into resin, which Marden pours with both intensity and control. While the resin hardens, Marden augments the compositions with acrylic paint and more unconventional materials such as seashells, beads, and plastic. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 976 Madison Avenue, New York, Duration: 12/3-20/4/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-19:30, https://gagosian.com

The collective exhibition “Bodies’ Delays”, by the artists Philippe Decrauzat and Pierre Paulin, with the participation of Dan Walsh, is based on the film “Morceaux choisis” shot in 16 mm, co-directed by Philippe Decrauzat and Pierre Paulin. In each frame, a gloved hand manipulates one of the copies of the pieces of clothing in Pierre Paulin’s wardrobe, which are printed with poems and essays. Alternating between the texts and ordinary gestures – folding, turning over, zipping and unzipping – the film highlights the ambiguity of gestures which fall somewhere between the handling of clothing and the exhibition of work. Dan Walsh’s contribution to the exhibition is in the form of a book. This recent edition, entitled Black and white, is made up of 44 pages of drawings painted in black and white, and presents a succession of semi-circles painted with a wide brush on paper. Info: Xippas Gallery, Rue des Sablons 6 & Rue des Bains 61, Geneva, Duration: 14/3-4/5/19. Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-12:30 & 14:00-18:30, Sat 12:00-17:00,  www.xippas.com

The exhibition “The Lie of the Land” is designed as a kind of cabinet of curiosities that places Milton Keynes and the new MK Gallery Gallery in a playful context. It looks at changing attitudes towards leisure, culture and landscape over more than 250 years. 85 artists, architects and designers, including Thomas Gainsborough, J.M.W Turner and Joseph Paxton, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Jeremy Deller and Bridget Riley are placed alongside a vintage picnic basket, one of the earliest lawnmowers, Gertrude Jekyll’s gardening boots and a banner from Greenham Common. There are also new commissions including a 20-channel sonic portrait of Milton Keynes by sound artist and composer, Caroline Devine, a new film commission working with the community by Ed Webb-Ingall and an immersive installation by Project Art Works. Info: Curatorial Team: Anthony Spira, Sam Jacob, Claire Louise Staunton, Fay Blanchard, Tom Emerson, Gareth Jones and Niall Hobhouse, New MK Gallery, 900 Midsummer Boulevard, Milton Keynes, Duration: 16/3-26/5/19, Days & Hours: Thu-Fri 12:00-29:00, Sat-sun 11:00-20:00, www.mkgallery.org

Featuring both paintings and works on paper from the 1980’s, , the exhibition “The Eighties” provides a window into a seminal period in Chris Martin’s 40-year career. The exhibition charts Chris Martin’s transformation from a painter of slow, heavily worked canvases into a radical figure willing to invite the widest possible range of materials and experiences into the studio. If he entered this period as a strictly abstract painter, he emerged as one who employed abstraction as methodology rather than an end result, and who became increasingly interested in infusing his work with archetypal symbols, found materials, and other vivid remnants of lived experience. Some works are truly composite objects: large-scale paintings constructed from multiple canvases, with their geometric formalism slipping into recognizable imagery. The narrative openness that Martin was discovering allowed him to fully embrace his burgeoning obsessions with certain colors and materials. The use of metallic foil becomes a recurring feature in his painting at this time, and serves as both an unorthodox ground for the application of other mediums and an active, reflective component in the visual foreground of the work. Info: David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W. Edgewood Pl., Los Angeles, Duration: 16/3-27/4/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, http://davidkordanskygallery.com

Over the years, Kamrooz Aram has developed a rich painterly language through which he has explored the fraught position of ornament and the decorative in the history and discourse of modern art. In his solo exhibition “Arabesque”, the artist continues this trajectory in new works that explore the term Arabesque as it has been used in art history, as well as the multiple meanings the term might have for the artist personally. These paintings range from those bound closely to the logic of the grid, to those painted completely free-form, without any underlying structure. The result is a diverse group of works that exemplify Aram’s versatility and deep engagement with the medium of painting. Every painting is essentially an accumulation of marks on a surface. The gestures of mark-making are limited and controlled by the body of the artist. The movements of the body are organic: the arm is connected to a joint that functions as an axis, and as we start to count the number of joints that affect the mark, from the fingers to the wrist, elbow, shoulder, hip, knees, etc., we begin to see that the variables allow for a vast range of motions, within the limitations of the body. Info: Green Art Gallery, Al Quoz 1, Street 8, AlSerkal Avenue, Unit 28, Dubai, Duration: 18/3-5/5/19, Days & Hours: Sat-Thu 10:00-19:00, www.gagallery.com

The exhibition “Verde Prato” present heterogeneous materials such as drawings, maps, design documents, historical photos and video through a scaffolding system conceived of as a scenic machine. A tale that unfolds through texts and images along the creative process that aims to transform the city of Prato into a green, European and open city, integrating the nature system with the built environment. In addition to the focus on town planning aspects, the exhibition will present an installation devised for the occasion by Stefano Mancuso, photographic projects by talents such as Fernando Guerra, Maurizio Montagna and Delfino Sisto Legnani, and an interactive robotic machine that allows the public to navigate the various elements of the Plan. The exhibition is completed by an area designed as a meeting spot and a space for taking part in educational activities, conferences and round tables, turning the exhibition into a place of debate, a living square inside the museum. Info: Curators: Elisa Cristiana and Emilia Giorgi, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Viale della Repubblica 277, Prato, Duration: 20/3-11/4/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Thu & Sun 10:00-20:00, Fri-Sat 10:00-23:00, www.centropecci.it