ART NEWS: Feb.02

Lots of stories could be told about Jacqueline Peeters. One of them could be about how many years ago, in the Netherlands, she embarked on a first career as an artist and was awarded the Royal Prize for Painting. She then moved to Brussels, but around 2000 she chose to focus on a career as a media analyst and on her family. Some fifteen years later, from her square farmstead near Geraardsbergen, the paintbrushes enticed her once again and through social media she now reaches a new audience. Though her new work doesn’t take a radical leave from her earlier paintings, she chose to overpaint a significant number of her old canvases. Not from a desire to delete something, but rather as a second wind. The romanticism of the past is entirely lost on Peeters—she seeks the here and now. Because of this method, black and white are prominent colors in her palette. The hidden layers of paint add a tangible – and sometimes nearly visible – dimension. Occasionally there is a literal glimpse of what is underneath: on the paintings with windows, or where she uses texts, titles or strips of canvas from earlier works. Info: Annie Gentils Gallery, Peter Benoitstraat 40, Antwerpen, Belgium, Duration: 16/1-6/3/2023, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 14:00-18:00, www.anniegentilsgallery.com/

“Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70” is a major exhibition of 150 paintings from an overlooked generation of 81 international women artists. Reaching beyond the predominantly white, male painters whose names are synonymous with the Abstract Expressionist movement, this exhibition celebrates the practices of the numerous international women artists working with gestural abstraction in the aftermath of the Second World War. It is often said that the Abstract Expressionist movement began in the USA, but this exhibition’s geographic breadth demonstrates that artists from all over the world were exploring similar themes of materiality, freedom of expression, perception and gesture, endowing gestural abstraction with their own specific cultural contexts – from the rise of fascism in parts of South America and East Asia to the influence of Communism in Eastern Europe and China. The exhibition features well-known artists associated with the Abstract Expressionism movement, including American artists Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler, alongside lesser-known figures such as Bertina Lopes and South Korean artist Wook-kyung Choi. More than half of the works have never before been on public display in the UK. Info: Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High St., London, United Kingdom, Duration: 9/2-11/5/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.whitechapelgallery.org/

For his solo exhibition “DÉPLACÉ·E·S”, JR brings his personal touch to recounting reality and stimulating reflections on social fragility. In 2022, the number of individuals forced to flee their place of residence because of persecutions, wars, violence and human rights violations has exceeded the ominous threshold of 100 million. This emergency is now compounded by food and energy shortages, inflation and climate-related crises. In many countries of Africa, the Middle East, South America, at the gates of Europe, populations are being forced to abandon their homes to ensure their survival elsewhere. The war in Ukraine has prompted the most abrupt and one of the largest forced exiles since World War II. A symbol of this endless tragedy, the Greek island of Lesbos is the scene of the ebb and flow of migrants arriving by sea as the conflicts develop. This geography of forced relocation constitutes ‘off-limit locations’ that are given excess media attention and are invisible at the same time. By enlarging their portrait on huge banners, JR gives back an identity to those who are deprived of it. Info: Curator: Arturo Galansino, Gallerie d’Italia, Piazza San Carlo, 156, Torino, Italy, Duration: 9/2-16/7/2023, Days & Hours: Tue & Thu-Sun 9:30-19:30, Wed 9:30-22:30, https://gallerieditalia.com/it/

“The Sad Zither” is the first solo exhibition in Europe by Chinese painter Hao Liang. In his delicate but immersive landscape and figure paintings, and in his choice of literary references, Hao reflects on a spectrum of emotions while considering the passage of time and the ways in which we move through the world. Giving the methods and motifs of traditional Chinese ink wash painting a contemporary spin, he highlights the genre’s unique materiality while drawing on sources from cinema, modernist art, and Chinese and Western literature. Hao employs the guohua technique to make compositions on silk that are subtly toned and tinted, but indelible, accentuating his subjects’ complexity and infusing narrative and allegorical references with atmosphere and feeling. In the thirteen paintings on view which were produced over the past two years, Hao explores themes and symbols from fiction and poetry, engaging with the works of Dante, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, and Chinese poets Tao Yuanming, Li Shangyin, and Du Mu. The exhibition’s title alludes to Qian Zhongshu’s book “On the Art of Poetry” (1948), specifically the annotated text of Li Shangyin’s poem “The Sad Zither,” which notes various parallels between the verse and the instrument, including their translations of emotion into symbol, and their aesthetics of “rhythm and vitality”. Info: Gagosian, 20 Grosvenor Hill, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 9/2-18/3/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com/

In the spirit of impermanence, one of the core precepts of Buddhism, artworks in this solo show of the work of the 87-year-old Rinzai Zen monk Max Gimblett rotate in and out of the galleries throughout the run of the exhibition “The Beginning of Time”. Viewers, if they visit the gallery repeatedly, will find a completely different installation of new work each time they return. Gimblett’s paintings are a unique and mindful hybrid of the New York school of abstract expressionism with traditions of manuscript illumination and icon painting, Asian calligraphy, kintsugi, and lacquerware. Masterful brushwork, an eccentric and sophisticated color sense, and sensuously glossy surfaces are punctuated with precious metals. Some of the sculptural panels — tondos, ovals, and his signature four-lobed quatrefoil — are completely and idiosyncratically gilded in various types of gold or platinum, referring to the universality of devotional objects. With these very contemporary works, his intention is the marriage of Modernism with mysticism. Every work in this exhibition is an altarpiece; each is an offering. Info: Hosfelt Gallery, 260 Utah Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, Duration: 11/2-1/4/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:30, Thu 11:00-19:00, https://hosfeltgallery.com/

George Condo’s solo exhibition’s title “People Are Strange”, is taken from the hit 1967 song of the same name by legendary rock band The Doors, Condo’s latest canvases are filled with fragmented portraits and abstractions that echo LA’s sublime dissonance. In these large-scale works, the artist renders layered, vibrating planes, lines and geometries that seem to suggest a world of oppositional forces and states, at once solemn and euphoric, connected and entropic, logical and ineffable, beautiful and ugly. In their ability to convey such deep contradictions through Condo’s masterful approach to the medium of painting, the works on view mirror the incongruities and seductive power for which the sprawling city of Los Angeles itself is duly famous. “People Are Strange”’ finds Condo offering up impressions of the strange world around him and, in doing so, capturing something universal about the human condition and the transforming effects of time’s passage. Info: Hauser & Wirth, 8980 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, Los Angeles, Ca, USA, Duration: 15/2-22/4/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-16:00, www.hauserwirth.com/

On June 7, 1905, four young architecture students founded the artists’ group Brücke in Dresden. Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and, the less well-known today, Fritz Bleyl wanted nothing less than to rewrite art history.  Their drive for change contrasts with a time marked by the conservative attitude of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The first years of the Brücke are marked by the search for a new, artistic form of expression and their collective activities as a group. In addition to joint exhibitions, this included the creation of an extensive visual identity. They also actively recruited new members to expand their community of artists and art lovers. The exhibition “1905: Fritz Bleyl and the Beginning of the Brücke” looks at this historical moment from a contemporary perspective. It is the third and final part of a series of exhibitions that examines significant years of the artists’ group from a cultural and historical perspective. In what context were the artworks created, what moved the artists in their time, what surrounded them? Accompanying the exhibition is a newspaper produced in cooperation with the Kunstsammlungen Zwickau. Info: Curator: Lisa Marei Schmidt, Assistant Curator: Philipp Lange, Brücke-Museum, Bussardsteig 9, Berlin, Germany, Duration: 24/2-4/6/2023, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sun 11:00-17:00, www.bruecke-museum.de/