ART NEWS: Sept.01

Working initially from a sketch, Anna Park develops and unpacks imaginary scenes with the support of her extensive personal image archive, mostly stock images sourced from the internet. These scenes often begin as universally recognizable moments or symbols that the artist then complicates with the introduction of additional layers of imagery that reveal and conceal. The works of Anna Park’s solo exhibition “Hello, Stranger” conjures the Western genre in a grand narration of her subject’s act of falling. The violence and shock from sudden impact reverberate through the composition with smudged charcoal strokes. In “Hello, Stranger” (2021), the artist casts a woman peering towards her viewer as she curls her hair, engaged in the ritual of preparing for a social event. The figure is surrounded by a flurry of shapes and gestures, swaths of swirling chaos that seem to originate from the subject’s own head and body, visualizations of anxiety and insecurity run rampant. We catch the subject in mid-transformation as she exchanges one persona for the next. Park’s portrayals are social commentaries on the contemporary experience, depictions of the world as a stage and the self-aware performances that occupy it. Info: Blum & Poe Gallery, Harajuku Jingu-no-mori 5F, 1-14-34 Jingumae, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, Duration: 1/9-9/10/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 12:00-16:00 (by appointment only, book here), https://blumandpoe.com

Comprising all new works, Megan Rooney’s solo  exhibition “BONES ROOTS FRUITS” present large-scale paintings including one monumental canvas, the artist’s largest to-date, alongside a selection of works on paper from Old Baggy Root, the most recent in an ongoing series of surreal portraits exploring figuration and observation.An enigmatic storyteller, Megan Rooney works across a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, installation, performance and language to develop intense narratives in a striking signature style. The celebrates Rooney’s ability to seamlessly work across differing scales. Whether executed over a period of months on large-scale canvases or swiftly at a table-top for the “Old Baggy Root” series, she creates compelling images that can be explored as forms of memory and transformation. The exhibition’s title is taken from the artist’s recent experiences, with subjects drawn directly from her own life and surroundings that are deeply invested in the present moment. Through layers of ethereal forms, she creates abstracted narratives without a discernible beginning or end. Punctuating these layers with a contrasting dash of colour or energetic line, her paintings draw the viewer in only to disrupt their gaze with these unexpected elements. Info: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, 37 Dover Street, London, England, Duration: 6/9-4/10/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://ropac.net

The visual references used in the works in Azade Köker’s solo exhibition “Murder of a Mannequin” acts as a documentation of the scenes of harassment and violence against women that we frequently encounter today. We come across dark trails that can be traced back to the Ancient Greek period and futuristic structures in the sculptures which take the audience to various time periods. Two main pillars feed the exhibition: the central themes of identity and belonging within Azade Köker’s early works, and the female figures the artist produced with baked clay, Terracotta in the 1990s. The surface layering tradition, which we are familiar with from Köker’s artistic practice, is reflected in the mysterious forms whose existence, absence, and permeability are mixed with each other in the paper materials she uses. The bodies, which are as voluminous as they are volatile, highlight the points where the top-down identification processes fail and reveal the fictionality of the gender system. Light identities suspended in purgatory trace the cracks through which they can leak and flow. Info: Zilberman Gallery, İstiklal Cad. No.163 Mısır Apartmanı K.3 D.10, Beyoğlu / Istanbul, Turkey, Duration: 7/9-4/12/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.zilbermangallery.com

Jérôme Zonder in his solo exhibition “Jusqu’ici tout va bien” presents a series of portraits: spaces of graphical collision in which a variety of stylistic regimes unfold a psychic world in full transformation. These ‘studies’ are a continuation of his research into the adolescence of Pierre-François, a fictional character borrowed from Marcel Carné’s film “Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945) and a recurring figure in his work. From the small formats that function as ‘source images’ to the large compositions that together make up this multitude of expressions, it is possible to glimpse, beyond the scope of the personal, a view of humanity in the Anthropocene era. Jérôme Zonder’s portraits unveil all the external forces that permeate and determine the human being and make tangible his physical constitution, at times atom by atom. Indeed, it is not uncommon for the carrier to assume the appearance of flesh, like a skin that has not healed properly. Info: Galerie Nathalie Obadia, 8 rue Charles Decoster, Ixelles-Brussels, Belgium, Duration:  7/9-23/10/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://nathalieobadia.com/exhibitions.php

Enormous paintings comprise the heart of the exhibition “MONUMENTAL” honoring William T. Wiley, who died on A 25/4/2021.  An audacious visionary, Wiley was an oracle, combining imagery, symbols, and wordplay to articulate social and environmental angst. For nearly sixty years, Wiley (who was referred to by this single-word moniker by his family, friends, and professionally) distinguished himself as a renegade American artist whose interests were rooted in liberal social and environmental concerns as well as philosophy and spirituality.  Though frequently political, his work adamantly resists classification into movements or stylistic trends. Wiley’s practice ranged from drawing, painting in watercolor and acrylic, sculpture, and assemblage to printmaking, filmmaking, and performance.  Combining found objects, personal symbols, enigmatic texts, as well as references to art history, popular culture, and current events, he developed a distinctive visual vocabulary that allowed for variety, invention, and his own subtle mysticism. But the defining hallmark of Wiley’s work is the text and wordplay that accompany nearly every piece he made.  From stream-of-consciousness rambles to pointed critiques, he used humor, puns, sarcasm, and double entendre to address the most consequential issues of our time. Info: Hosfelt Gallery, 260 Utah Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, Duration: 7/9-16/10/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:30, Thu 11:00-19:00, http://hosfeltgallery.com

Art Paris 2021 will be the first art fair to take up residence in the Grand Palais Éphémère on the Champ-de-Mars. Designed by the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, this spectacular temporary structure which is situated in front of the École Militaire and close to the Eiffel Tower, will host events scheduled at the Grand Palais until the building reopens for the Olympic Games in 2024. Art Paris has established itself as a major Art fair for Modern and Contemporary art. The 2021 edition brings together 140 galleries from over twenty countries, displaying art spanning post-war to the contemporary period. Whilst Art Paris is a place for discovery, its distinctive feature is a special emphasis on the  European scene combined with the exploration of new horizons of international creative hubs in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and  Latin America. Regional and cosmopolitan, the 2021 edition counts 39% of new participants and is marked by the arrival of leading international galleries including Almine Rech, Continua, Massimo de  Carlo, Lelong & co, Kamel Mennour, Perrotin and Thaddaeus Ropac. Info: Atistic Director: Guillaume Piens, Art Paris Art Fair 2021, Grand Palais Éphémère, Plateau Joffre, Paris, Duration: 9-12/9/2021, Days & Hours: Thu (9/9) 12:00-20:00, Fri (10/9) 12:00-21:00, Sat-Sun (11-12/9) 12:00-20:00, Admission: Thu or Fri: € 25 / € 14 for students and groups, Sat or Sun: € 30 / € 16 for students and groups, 2-day pass: € 35 / € 20 for students and groups, Free entry for children under 10 years old, www.artparis.com

Kon Trubkovich presents his solo exhibition “The Antepenultimate End” In paintings, works on paper, and videos, Trubkovich employs recollection as his primary source material. Through reference to antiquated technology, he investigates some of the ways in which personal and collective memories contradict one another, their gradual transformation complicating ideas of historical truth. Drawing on both recorded history and the story of his family’s 1990 emigration from the USSR to the United States, he marks the passage of time by alluding to the appearance of electronic media in decay. Trubkovich borrows imagery of many different origins and reconstructs events from their depiction on TV, using the on-screen image as a metaphor for displacement. He employs a fine paintbrush to emulate the grain of the broadcast image; the fuzzy reproduction quality of old video recordings informs the distinctive texture of his paintings’ surfaces and suggests that each scene is a pause between one frame, one recollection, one era, and the next. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 821 Park Avenue, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 9/9-23/10/2021, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-17:30, https://gagosian.com

Liste Art Fair Basel has been one of the most important places for discovering young international art since its founding. The current artistic voices in interna-tional discourse, presented primarily by young galleries, not only reflect our pre-sent but also help create it. It is therefore all the more important to guarantee the galleries and their artists the best possible presentation, both through a physical presence at the fair and through digital formats. Thus, in conjunction with the physical fair in Basel, the digital edition Liste Showtime Online (15-30/9/2021) will take place for the second time this year. Furthermore, Liste Expedition Online will launch in December 2021 as a research forum and artist index that will be freely and perm-nently available to all. Under the premise of promoting young international art, the Liste Committee selected 81 galleries from 33 countries to participate. 21 galleries have been selected for Liste Art Fair Basel for the first time. A total of 50 solo presentations will be on view. For the first time in its 26-year history, Liste Art Fair Basel will not be held in Werkraum Warteck pp, but at Messe Basel in Hall 1.1. A completely new exhibition space will be created with the Sculpture Piazza, located at the centre of the circular fair architecture. Based on the idea of a public square, 11 large-scale sculptures will define this space and invite visitors to dis-cover, meet and linger.  Info: Liste Art Fair 2021, Messe Basel, Hall 1.1, Entrance behind Art Unlimited, Maulbeerstrasse / corner Riehenring 113, Basel, Switzerland, Duration: 20-26/9/2021, Days & Hours: Mon (20/9) 18:00-20:00, Tue-Sat (21-25/9) 11:00-20:00, Sun (26/9) 11:00-16:00, Admission: Regular CHF 20, Reduced CHF 10 )from 19:00 / scholars / students / seniors), www.liste.ch

The exhibition “Philip Guston, 1969-1979” focuses on the breakthrough figuration that emerged in the final decade of the 20th century master’s career. Including paintings never before exhibited, the show brings together eighteen masterworks created after the artist turned away from abstraction to assert an unprecedented new figural language. While critics denounced his dramatic shift toward dark, cartoon-like imagery, the paintings of Guston’s last years are today considered milestones of modern art. They display not only great technical mastery, but uncompromising courage in directly addressing the injustices of American society. Made at the height of his creative life, the paintings on view attest to Guston’s enduring influence and astonishing relevance to contemporary artists and the public now. The exhibition traces the evolution of Guston’s return to figuration from the very end of the 1960s, when his distinctive hooded figures first appeared as avatars of our complicity in the everyday evils of society. The increasing urgency of Guston’s imagery over the next decade is evidenced in a richly rendered and deeply unsettling iconography. His distinctive visual language includes disembodied legs, pointing fingers, and piles of shoes that summon the horrors of the Holocaust and presage later genocides and racial terror. Info: Hauser & Wirth Gallery, 542 West 22nd Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 9/9-30/10/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.hauserwirth.com

The exhibition “Ron Gorchov: Spice of Life” features a selection of exceptional paintings made by Gorchov across the course of his fifty-year career, from the 1970s to the late 2010s. Ron Gorchov’s craft and skill as a painter lies not just in the structure of his radical “shield” and “saddle” shaped canvases, but in the artist’s visceral intelligence and acute sense of perception. Gorchov sought a new dimension in painting, and his gently curved stretcher that simultaneously bows inward and out creates a volumetric, topological space that considers all the opportunities that painting offers, while confronting the relationship between the perceived object, the space around it, and the viewer’s psychological experience.  On view in Spice of Life, the towering work “Set” (1971) stacks four monochromatic canvases in indigo, midnight, marigold, and tangerine. Ascending vertically, the wide shaped fields of color, mounted on top of one another, climb to 14 feet in height. The gently arched curves of Gorchov’s canvas lend a sculptural and architectural quality to painting. The monumental, bowed structure draws in light and casts shadow, adding to the physical sensuality of the colorfully pigmented surfaces. Info: Vito Schnabel Gallery, 455 West 19th Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 14/9-30/10/2021, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, www.vitoschnabel.com

Maro Michalakakos in her solo exhibition “IN ORBIT” presents a new body of work (sculptural installation, watercolors), an immersive environment that engulfs visitors and asks for a simultaneous departure and return to levels of experience beyond and beneath speech, to a place where space, time and bodies stretch and bend as much as our imagination allow them. The exhibition maps a journey that challenges our earthbound existence, it articulates worlds colliding internally or far away, it follows species fusing as they form future networks, it launches a mission of fantasy across corporeal and disembodied universes. A mission is being prepared. A journey to the future with fragments from the past. A sentient network of life is being formed, a new form of existence that navigates the trajectory of the cargo ship. Michalakakos invites us on a course around our cosmos, to collide with stardust and planetary rings, to travel the universe by spinning around the foundations of the self. In anticipation of a future without our planet, Michalakakos delves on the ground to reach for the stars, so that space, as a place of deep ecology, can be explored without leaving the Earth. Yet. Info: Curator: Kostas Stasinopoulos, Kalfayan Galleries, 11 Haritos Street, Kolonaki, Athens, Greece, Duration: 22/9-30/10/2021, Days & Hours: Mon & Sat 11:00-15:00, Tue-Fri 11:00-19:00, www.kalfayangalleries.com