ART NEWS:Dec.02

For “How I Will Know”, his first museum solo exhibition, Salman Toor presents new and recent oil paintings. Known for his small-scale figurative works that combine academic technique and a quick, sketch-like style, Toor offers intimate views into the imagined lives of young, queer Brown men residing between New York City and South Asia. Recurring color palettes and references to art history heighten the emotional impact of Toor’s paintings and add a fantastical element to his narratives drawn from lived experience. Lush interior scenes depict friends dancing, playing with puppies, and gazing into their smartphones. In these idealistic settings, Toor’s figures are freed from the impositions placed upon them by the outside world. In contrast, his more muted tableaus highlight moments of passivity to convey nostalgia or alienation. One painting features a forlorn man whose possessions are on display for the scrutiny of airport security officers; another renders unspoken tensions around a family dinner table palpable. Taken as a whole, Toor’s paintings consider vulnerability within contemporary public and private life and the notion of community in the context of queer, diasporic identity. Info: Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, Duration: 13/11/2020-4/4/2021, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu 11:30-18:00, Fri 13:30-21:00, Sat-sun 12:00-18:00, https://whitney.org

David Kordansky Gallery, in celebration of the season, through Thursday, December 17 offers discounts of up to 40% on select titles and gifts, including new publications by Andrea Büttner, Jennifer Guidi, and Adam Pendleton! Don’t miss signed books by Deana Lawson, Mary Weatherford, Jonas Wood, and more, as well as face masks designed by Rashid Johnson and the exhibition catalogue Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America published by Phaidon. Continue the spirit of giving at checkout by donating to Lauren Halsey’s Summaeverythang Community Center, which provides free organic produce boxes to residents of Watts and South Central Los Angeles. https://shop.davidkordanskygallery.com

In view of the complex entanglements of lust and cruelty in the formations of Lena Henke’s “Babysteps into Masochism”, it seems as if one is looking through the keyhole of a- glass door. Productive misunderstandings. In arrangement, no nostalgic, ornamental fragments of a repressed instinctual life lying in the dark are negotiated.  The motifs of the exhibited works formulate a shift away from clandestine male, heteronormative deviance towards an open, social motor that not only creates objectivation in fetishization, but also the possibility of liberating and equalizing aspects. But they also ask critically about the (instinct) forces that are able to spark the pleasure of self-torment and its economization from the neoliberal ability to suffer. Masochism is not only understood as the ultimate goal of exploitation, but is proposed as a model that only enables a controlled, enjoyable handover to a complex game of dependence and submission, and – at least temporarily – exchanging an inner leash for an outer one. Info: LAYR, Seilerstaette 2, Vienna, Duration: 9/12/2020-30/1/2021, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 11:00-18:00, www.emanuellayr.com

The exhibition “The world as seen by Inge Morath” at OstLicht presents a selection of mostly signed photographs by the Austrian “Magnum photographer” Inge Morath. In addition to some of her iconic photographs, the finely selected retrospective also provides an insight into the multi-faceted and lesser-known life’s work/oevre of the tireless/untiring photojournalist. The selection ranges from Morath’s classics, the American “street photos”, which were mainly taken in New York, to her well-known photo reportage from Spain, portraits of artists and celebrities, to quieter stagings and landscape photographs. Marilyn Monroe, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Jayne Mansfield or Louise Bourgeois have had their pictures taken by her. Despite the variety of subjects, Morath’s work is united by its intimacy with the many cultures of the world and their portrayed. Inge Morath worked as a text journalist for press and radio before she started taking photographs. In 1946 she moved to Vienna, where she worked together with the photographer Ernst Haas for “Heute”, the magazine of the American occupation. In 1949 the team was called to the Magnum photo agency in Paris by Robert Capa. There she worked as an assistant to Henri Cartier-Bresson, for whom she did laboratory work. In 1951 she left Magnum and moved to London and studied with Simon Guttman, who is considered the father of modern photojournalism. Since 1953 she was a Photographer for Magnum. In 1956 she published her first book Guerre à la tristesse. In the same year her first exhibition was opened in the Würthle Gallery in Vienna. Info: OstLicht. Galerie für Fotografie, Absberggasse 27, Vienna, Duration: 9/12/2020-6/2/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 12:00-18:00, www.ostlicht.org

Olaf Breuning presents “RAIN”, an exhibition of colorful new woodcut landscape paintings and carved stone sculptures that draw upon the natural world to consider the pressing environmental concerns we face today. Breuning returns to a more raw mode of production for his paintings, using rough-hewn, chainsaw-cut woodblocks to stamp out vivid and chaotic compositions. The imagery made with the carved blocks (shapes of waves, stars, raindrops, and blades of grass) conjures a time before technology was at the heart of our lives, when we lived more in tune with our natural surroundings. Evoking meteorological maps of turbulent weather, the paintings are a metaphor for the rapid pace climate change is affecting our environment, which is in constant disarray. The artist hopes that they are also a call to action, or at the very least, a reason to rethink our relationship with nature and the consequences of our actions. Info: Metro Pictures, 519 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 10/2/2020-27/2/2021, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.metropictures.com

With references to classical sculpture and archeology, Maria Antelman’s work in “Soft Interface” acknowledges the line between permanence and impermanence. Intimately photographing herself and her family and then splicing these with imagery from the natural landscape–referencing bodies as historic sculptures–Antelman intertwines the human form (humanity) with the porous stones of the earth. Creating formal connections through diagrammatic framing techniques, Antelman’s photographs and closed loops (gifs) are transformative. Her process includes photographing primarily with 35mm film, then scanning, manipulating and/or animating the images, editing and displaying the final work within the designed frames. While previous works have focused on the intersection of humanity with computer technology, the work in Soft Interface is rooted in stone, the base element for all future technological development. As a native of Greece, Antelman culls deeply from history while dually imagining the future. Info: Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, 724 S. 12th Street, Omaha, Nebraska, Duration: 10/12/2020-24/4/2021, Days & Hours: Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-17:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.bemiscenter.org

Treading the thin line between creation and destruction, Joey Fauerso’s work in his solo exhibition “Inside the Spider’s Body” explores dualities of the human condition, interweaving personal experiences with the current socio-political climate. Through painting, sculpture, performance, and film, Fauerso’s graphic works lean heavily on humor and tragedy, speaking to both fragility and resilience. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, Fauerso’s work shifted, opening the door for her personal life and anxieties to influence and exist within her practice. As a mother and an artist, she is inspired by the temporality and impermanence of childhood and the (almost) tragic theatricality of growth which she marries with historical references, mythology, and one’s relationship between the body and the landscape. Experiencing her work means stepping behind the curtain and encountering layers of complexity that surround the current moment. Forever in transition, oscillating between harmony and discord, Fauerso explores how humanity always plays multiple roles. Info: Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, 724 S. 12th Street, Omaha, Nebraska, Duration: 10/12/2020-24/4/2021, Days & Hours: Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-17:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.bemiscenter.org

Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s unconventional portraits and other studio-based photographs explore the artist’s relationship between himself and the camera, sexuality, friendship, and the space of the studio, which are intertwined and radically dependent on each other. Through his explorations, Sepuya opens up his world to the viewer, leaning into the dust and smudge marks that lay on a mirror, or adding bodies to the space with work prints pinned to the walls. Cameras play a central role, reflected back at the viewer while they focus on the formal yet playful performance of bodies within Sepuya’s space. These photographs not only offer a glimpse into the tenderness that exists between artist and sitter but underscores the presence of Black, brown, and queer bodies within the work. While living somewhere between revelation and obscuration, these portraits are experimental yet controlled, and the work often depends on blackness to make visible the traces of the subject, revealed via curtain, skin, or piece of clothing. This encourages one to look deeply, scouring out details while being denied by the theatrical minimalism of a black curtain hung in just a way that negotiates the space, the ongoing relationship, and all that surrounds it. The work is dynamic, self-reflexive, and powerful, offering an intimacy that embraces itself while contributing a newness to studio photography. Info: Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, 724 S. 12th Street, Omaha, Nebraska, Duration: 10/12/2020-24/4/2021, Days & Hours: Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-17:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.bemiscenter.org

The exhibition “Where do we go from here?” proposes that we think critically about the role of both art and exhibition-making in the production of narratives about our past, present and future. It encourages us to reconsider our understanding of history (personal, local, national) and progress (artistic, cultural, social), while articulating perspectives that challenge colonial systems of knowledge and methods of representation. Acting on the Vancouver Art Gallery’s statement in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement this summer, the exhibition developed as an opportunity to consider the Gallery’s own collecting and exhibition history. Reflecting on the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Gallery in 1931, this exhibition both acknowledges the under representation of African diasporic artists in our collection and exhibitions, which have historically privileged European art traditions, and reimagines how the next 90 years of programming can better represent Canada’s art landscape. The exhibition presents recent acquisitions from the Gallery’s permanent collection, as well as select loans from local artists, most produced in the last five years. Info: Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street, Vancouver, Duration: 12/10/2020-30/5/2021, Days & Hours: Mon, Wed-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:00-17:00, Fri 12:00-20:00, www.vanartgallery.bc.ca