A London sunny afternoon in the park

Enjoying what best London has to offer - a sunny afternoon at the park - while reading about annoyance and writing about bullshit.

Chilling out at a London's independent cinema

Fitzrovia lates

Meanwhile, on the last Thursday of the month, somewhere in Fitzroy St. (Fitzrovia)...

Lara Schnitger

Lara Schnitger
Stuart Shave / Modern Art

Lara Schnitger, Little Help from my Friend, 2014. (detail)

Lara Schnitger, Need a Wife, 2012.

Lara Schnitger, Wallflower, 2014.

«Lara Schnitger’s use of fabrics entwines textile patterns with social codes and narratives. The artist often co-opts craft techniques that bear latent gendered and domestic connotations, such as patchwork, knitting or dyeing. Schnitger’s more abstract assemblages play between surface and support, transparency and opacity of different materials, and hint at suggestive anthropomorphic postures. Her collaged paintings and banners are often more explicit. Schnitger's work is frank in expressing her primary themes: sexuality, desire, and the shaping and representation of the female body in particular. With Sister of Arp, Lara Schnitger further explores issues of motherhood, feminism, fashion and sculpture.» [...MORE...]

«Lara Schnitger was born in Haarlem, Netherlands, in 1969, and lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA. Schnitger studied at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, The Hague, Netherlands (1987-1991); Academie Vyvarni Umeni, Prague, Czech Republic (1991-1992); de Ateliers, Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992-1994), and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Kitayushu, Japan (1999-2000). Recent solo exhibitions include Lara Schnitger: Two Masters and Her Vile Perfume, Sculpture Center, New York, NY, USA (2010); Dance Witches Dance, Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands (2008); My Other Car is a Broom, Magasin 3, Stockholm, Sweden (2005). Group exhibitions at Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands (2012); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2011); Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, Netherlands (2008); The New Museum, New York, NY, USA (2007); The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway (2007); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA, and Powerplant, Toronto, Canada (2005).»

Joyce Pensato: Joyceland

Joyce Pensato
Joyceland
Lisson Gallery

When I was a teenager I done a couple of creative things, including being in a band - “al most fin ish”- and doing some arty things on the visual arts fork - damn autocorrect -, such as combining photography and painting: drawing lines of colour over black and white photos of naked people (you can go and see the final result at a local restaurant near my parents’ home place). Anyway, moving on to the spicy things. Now that I’m at Joyceland, at Lisson Gallery, one of the first things that occurs to me is to paint (drippings) a metal “thing” that we used back in the old days to weight dead pigs. After we have killed him, and before doing the sausage, we use to weight the dead pig on the side of the house main gate so all the village will knew it. And used this “thing” to weight the beast. Good old days! I painted it together with a metal chandelier and a … with golden, purple, silver and green colours. Somewhere in between, I’ve also painted a couple of naked female bodies with my sweat, swear and seamen. Tonight, the only thing that I’m “painting” are these words on my iPhone. Life, back then, was much much more accessible. I simply didn’t care about conventions and norms, and lived it as I took it. Joyce Pensato, or Joyceland, as she calls her world, is a clear example of an artist that is totally about affect. People are wrong when they go and look for meaning (Afro-american and racism, Mickey Mouse an sexuality, etc.) when her work is about sensation. They are layers ad layers of sensation, not meaning. Those are a secondary outcome, results from a personal expression. She's sharing!

«Joyce Pensato paints exuberant, explosive large-scale likenesses of cartoon characters and comic-book heroes. Her seemingly frenzied technique – actually involving the deliberate accretion of successive layers of bold linear gestures, rapid spattering and frequent erasures – results in alternately humorous and sinister imagery. While her prima facie subject matter ranges from Batman, The Simpsons and Mickey Mouse to Felix the Cat and Elmo from Sesame Street, her artistic progenitors include Alberto Giacometti, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Philip Guston.» [...MORE...]

«Joyce Pensato was born in Brooklyn, New York, where she continues to live and work. Her touring solo show, I Killed Kenny, first shown at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (2013) is now travelling to the Contemporary Art Museum of St Louis (24 January-13 April 2014). Solo exhibitions include Santa Monica Museum of Art (2013); Petzel Gallery (2012, 2008, 2007) Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago (2012) and Galerie Anne de Villepoix (2010, 2000, 1998). Recent group exhibitions include Empire State, curated by Alex Gartenfeld and Sir Norman Rosenthal at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2013); Interior Visions: Selections from the Collection by Alex Katz at the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville (2012); A Painting Show at The Speed Museum of Art, Louisville (2011) and The Darker Side of Playland: Childhood Imagery from the Logan Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2000). Pensato’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; SFMoMA, San Francisco; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Dallas Museum of Art; St Louis Art Museum and the FRAC des Pays de la Loire. She has won numerous awards including the Robert de Niro, Sr. Prize (2013), the Award of Merit Medal for Painting, given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2012), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award (1997) and the Guggenheim Fellowship (1996).»

Kyotographie 2014 - International Photography Festival - Kyoto, Japan

«The KYOTOGRAPHIE International Photography Festival blossoms in Kyoto for its second year in April 2014. This high-end photographic event runs for over three weeks during the height of Kyotoʼs booming tourist season. The festival celebrates art and culture, bringing a distinct dimension to the historic city. KYOTOGRAPHIE creates opportunities and events that bring people together of all ages, cultures, and backgrounds. Situated in Kyotoʼs world-class atmosphere KYOTOGRAPHIE unites ancient history and contemporary art.»

A London on a Sunday afternoon

Swimming in the Ocean, or How I Lost My Mobile (Again)

Another night wandering from tavern to tavern in the centre of London, until I loose my mind to the Dionysian mysteries.

Tomory Dodge, Stutter (oil on canvas, diptych, 213.2x365.8cm), 2014 at Alison Jacques Gallery

Black, no black. European hypocrisy in process. I'm in love with the sales person, however she's with her boyfriend. It doesn't matter, because I don't want anything with him... I just want to meet her incorporate reserves.

Chromatic Urban Noises at Alison Jacques, Wallpaper at Pace Soho, Artist Inspiration Destabilization at White Cube, Black, No-Black The New Post-Colonial at Jack Bell, at the end of the night I Have Become Invisible with Favourbrook.

Liang Yuanwei, Untitled 2013.13 (oil on linen, 140x120cm), 2013 at Pace London (Soho)

I have been for so long living underwater that when, sometimes, someone gives me the opportunity to bread fresh air, I get sick. Underwater is much more quiet, fresh; underwater everything is more turbulent, limitless enveloping. I'm swimming in the ocean for so long. People are just blur images in the water. People are just colourful images in the water. People are just translucent images in the water. People are just intangible images in the water.

Miroslaw Balka, Above your head (steel mesh canopy), 2014 at White Cube (Mason's Yard)

I have been swimming in the ocean for so long that to have my tailoring made I need to be a Gallery Director or an Artist! I will be always the promo guy.

A London on a Sunday morning

... all silent but for the buzzing ...

Curating Contemporary Art
... all silent but for the buzzing ...
Royal College of Arts

«I love his use of light» [© 2014 Beth Fox]

What I do most love in the fact of living in London is the inherent and perceptual idea surrounding of what is a traditional London Spring/Summer day: Sun, Parks, Greens, Reds, Yellows, Rainbow of Colours, Sound, Silence, Noise, Pleasure, Satisfaction, Enjoyment, Intercourse, Happiness, Relaxing, Activity, Entertainment, Reading, Openness, Pasture, Action, Born, Reborn, etc. It is like eating an Häagen-Dazs' Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream accompanied by a sweet and rich Riesling while inserting my penis into a female's vagina. Feel and taste an intense, elegant and lavish golden composition arranged for three pieces, through her warm and wet vertical lips.

On the other hand, being inclosed, inside a building on a such day is like having a classic composition being compose, arrange and democratically decide on which pieces to use by an international group of mindless and wannabe individuals that want to be the next big classic music composer. Way to late my friend! At least some centuries way to late! It becomes a cacophony of information. Not music or any other alternative form of auditory communication structured in a particular manner and with a particular intention, but, instead, an incomprehensibility resulting from meaningless and what could have been relevant remarks. It is all silent but for the buzzing.

Presently, being a composer is more of a professional that wants to be able to trendily fit in with a particular group of people, particularly those with years or knowledge (two or three within an academic framework), but with a reduce of experience (from a couple of months to some outside without any relevance project). The more I know them, the less I want to know and will know. It is just like with the Internet: the more time we spend navigating through the net, the less we see and know. I do have/know some people who compose as a profession. And, believe me, those are really pleasant and enjoyable people to be with.

So, in midst all the confusion of an democratically choosing classic piece for 18 instruments the only real choice is to get inside a cubic and drink to forget. To remind me that I'm inside a dreary villa, on a sunny spring day on the South coast of France, that I'm an unzipped zipped file, or an unbuttoned shirt on a delightful Spring/Summer day in London. In there, I will just forget what was meant to be discus; what is concerned with raw states and disappearances, taken from within everyday life sounds and silence - Ryoji Ikeda concerns, by the way.

A traditional Spring day in London is an indistinct space that lies between chatter and silence. Not a bleak visual condition playing on the lighting level ascertain selection of sound compositions working as possible conditions for visual interventions and installations. These days, instead, are hypothetical descriptions of complex structures and dynamics through resonances and reverberations! It is a celebration of life.

A London

Helen Marten: Oreo St. James

Helen Marten

Oreo St. James

Sadie Coles HQ

Study from the Human Body

Study from the Human Body
Stephen Friedman Gallery

While looking at David Shrigley's humourous and macabre installation at Stephen Friedman Gallery, T and I started a discussion on the idea of Carnival. We were referring to that particular period in our human yearly time of public revelry that tend to go for a week before Lent, in Roman Catholic countries, and that involves processions, music, dancing, and the use of masquerade. Something that Bacchus would have been proud of, and would be participating if he was still allowed to be around by those same who prohibit his presence and organise this noisy orgy. Carnival is in February, before Easter. Carnival in the Summer doesn't make any sense. OK, February is cold and August is warmer. But, let's be honest, it is like to do a "post-colonial" work about the Antilles Françaises or about the Pacific Islands and the impact of globalisation on those/these micro-community, without living the warmness of my living room, in London (Europe). Or, instead, contribute to a Turner Prize nominee art work with some work of mine, i. e. with a drawing. I will always stay as an observer. A participant-observer, but, nonetheless, an observer. Anyway, throughout the evening I felt an awkward sensation. A combination of disruption and dislocation: What to say?! How to be and behave towards the other?! and What to think about what the other is expressing?! and, consequently, engage with it! In these perceptive moments my stomach starts to groin; my mouth taste's bitter. So, Carnival in August?!

International Confex 2014

May

Let March & April be as good as May!!! Life, surprise me once more...

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd
Sadie Coles HQ

The Prize! It helps me to explain much of the noise, the long legs on top of high-heels, the high percentage of black clothing, silly hats, and void conversations. It is a dreamer resonance in my head. It is a warm sensation in my stomach fill with a so called Italian beer. They are recognisable death faces posted on a wall. The Prize is my blossom justification for the "so nice to see you" and "I'm going to Ibiza next week." If someone asks me if I love the Prize. I will sensually and endometrial say, "Yes, I do LOVE the Turner Prize, and the Bat Opera, and the unrecognisable sound that comes out of people mouth."

Press Release:

"Marvin Gaye Chetwynd’s second exhibition with Sadie Coles HQ focuses on two bodies of work, each the subject of a major new publication. A recent group of the artist’s Bat Opera paintings – produced last year during a residency in Monteverdi, Italy – appears in conjunction with a new volume published by Sadie Coles HQ and Koenig Books, extensively documenting this long-running series. Also on view is an array of collages which Chetwynd was invited to create for a new edition of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, released this year by Four Corners Books. The exhibition reflects the various stages which led to the creation of each publication, with dummy runs of the two books viewable alongside the final versions.

Alongside her improvisatory performances featuring handmade sets and costumes, Chetwynd has also worked for over a decade on Bat Opera – a cycle of miniature paintings portraying bats of all shapes and sizes in a variety of quixotic settings. In one, a bat spreads its wings before an Italianate backdrop of pine trees and a palazzo. Elsewhere, bats’ faces mass together in a cluster of glistening eyeballs and bared teeth.

These latest works indeed reflect the sweeping thematic range of the Bat Opera genre, which is at odds with its concise and unchanging format. Chetwynd shifts between individual portraits of bats – portrayed heroically or forlornly before billowing skies – and swarming colonies. Several of the portraits channel the pomp of regal or military portraiture, or perhaps the melodramatic poses and kitsch fantasies of Heavy Metal album covers. Others share something of the sumptuous imagery and high drama of wildlife documentaries. We also encounter vacant landscapes and imaginary cities. Half industrial and half biblical, these equally call to mind the roseate cinematography of Michelangelo Antonioni and the overwrought backdrops of nineteenth-century operas. Indistinct fragments of architecture moreover function in the same way as the sentimentalised ruins of Romantic landscape painting. Emblems of decay, they convey the sentiment of death’s omnipresence or Et In Arcadia Ego (‘I exist even in Arcadia’ – famously the title of two paintings by Poussin, affirming death’s dominion even in pastoral idylls). Other works are altogether more playful: one shows not bats but a pair of beetles in clumsy combat.

While evoking theatrical sets or grandiose historical paintings, the Bat Opera pictures – arranged into variously-sized sequences – invite an intimate viewing experience. In this respect they stand in marked contrast to the riotous and collective spirit of Chetwynd performances. Yet viewers nonetheless become participants of a kind: the paintings’ scenes implicate us as audiences of theatrical displays. Many of the elements found in Chetwynd’s performances are also common to the Bat Opera pictures – infernal portals, semi-mythical creatures, troupes of figures. Like Chetwynd’s performances, these images plunder the depths of high and popular culture, ranging between the extremes of heaven and hell, farce and tragedy.

Chetwynd’s new Canterbury Tales collages – which number almost 200 – again embrace the participatory spirit of her practice at large, making use of photographs sent to the artist by friends and acquaintances alongside a plethora of found imagery. Excerpts from the different stories have been integrated into these schemes, in which Chaucer’s characters and their tales are not simply retold but re-staged. We find reincarnations of the bawdy Wyf of Bathe, a narrative cycle devoted to the Merchant’s Tale (in which the lustful Januarie is struck blind and cuckolded by his young wife May), and allusions to the Pardoner’s Tale – a fable about seeking to ‘kill Death’, told by a sly and unctuous cleric. Chetwynd’s images combine references to Medieval churches and Baroque ornamentation with the absurdist jolts and bodily anagrams of Surrealist collage. At the same time, the poses and attitudes of the subjects glance at other more esoteric reference points such Renaissance etchings of duelling positions and Natural History photography. In their frenetic complexity and eclectic sources, the collages capture the richness of Chaucer’s text – its shifts in between ghoulish ugliness, coarse slapstick, and flashes of disarming beauty. At the same time, the poses and attitudes of the subjects glance at other more esoteric reference points such Renaissance etchings of duelling positions and Natural History photography. In their frenetic complexity and eclectic sources, the collages capture the richness of Chaucer’s text – its shifts in between ghoulish ugliness, coarse slapstick, and flashes of disarming beauty.

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd (1973) was born in London and lives and works in Glasgow. She completed a BA in Social Anthropology and History, UCL, London (1995), followed by a BA in Fine Art, Slade School of Art/UCL, London (2000) and an MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London (2004). In 2012 she was nominated for the Turner Prize. Recent solo exhibitions and major performances include those at Nottingham Contemporary (2014); The Monteverdi Gallery, Castiglioncello del Trinoro, Monteverdi, Italy (2013); Home Made Tasers, Studio 231, New Museum, New York (2011-12) and Odd Man Out, Sadie Coles, London, 2011. Her work has featured in numerous group exhibitions, including L’Almanach 14, Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2014); Performance Now: The First Decade of the New Century, curated by Rose Lee Goldberg, various venues, USA (2012-14); Göteborg, International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Göteborg, Sweden (2013); Performa 13, New York (2013); Aquatopia, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK; Tate St Ives, St Ives, UK (2013); Turner Prize, Tate Britain, London (2012); Topsyturvy, de Appel, Amsterdam (2012); British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet, various venues, UK (2010-11). Later in 2014 Chetwynd will stage major solo presentations at Studio Voltaire, London; the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, and Tadeusz Kantor CRICOTEKA, Kraków, Poland (2014).

A London (Sunday morning)

The best time to walk through London high-streets and go for breakfast is on a Sunday morning. It is almost desert of any form of traffic. One couple walking peaceful over here, a bus to Victoria over there, an empty road in-between. After a sleeplessness night pass while migrating from one pub to the next, dragging naked bodies from a living room into the a bed room, it is also the best time to enjoy a breakfast calmly. Then, early in the morning we both go for a coffee and croissant like nothing has happened, on a sunny London, and as if nothing else happens in the world. I'm not going for a paper - two days ago a Malaysia Airlines plane going from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing has disappeared; official sources, according to media reports, are suggesting that it might has been a terrorist act take by two passengers with stolen passports that booked tickets together; however, what I will say is that this looks like more as an air plane malfunction (as is use to be) or a testing shot in to the sky, than to what the official sources are looking to blame - or walk the dog. That is from a completely and more complex order. It requires much more energy, intellect, and being in touch with reality, though! I'm talking of something much more basic; more bare-life. Like going to a MacDonald's, or any other high-street fast-food-chain. Where we just want to drag something in to the stomach, not to tasty a savoury meal accompanied by an exquisite wine and a delicious companion. Sunday, is just another day in London, and we must enjoy it before it's to late. I need this in my life. I'm going down without having my head around you all the time. It is full of alternations and contradictions. Every time I look at you I feel under a gun. Looking, feeling smaller, desperate. In need of a cigarette and a bottle of whisky. You are just a small, a fragile, a precious corpus ready to died. The best time to walk through London, is on a Sunday morning.

Walid Raad: Preface to the First English Edition

Walid Raad
Preface to the First English Edition
Anthony Reynolds Gallery

Walid Raad was born in Chbanieh, Lebanon, in 1967. His work has been widely exhibited in important international exhibitions. In 2013 he was commissioned by the Musée du Louvre to develop an interchange with the collections of the new Islamic Art galleries. In 2012 he was featured in Documenta 13, Kassel and in 2010/11 was the subject of a major exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery which toured to Umea in Sweden and the Kunsthalle Zurich. He has also had solo shows at the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid (2009) RedCat, Los Angeles (2009) The Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2006) the Kitchen New York (2006), Homeworks, Beirut (2005), Venice Biennale (2003), Whitney Biennial (2000 and 2002) and Documenta 11 (2002).

Raad is a recipient of the Alpert Award, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Deutsche Boerse Photography Award and the Hasselblad Award. Later this year he will have exhibitions at the Carré d’Art, Nimes and MADRE, Naples. His work will be the subject of a major survey exhibition at MoMA New York in 2015. 

Graham Gussin: FORSAKENFOCUSVERTIGOPREDICTION

Graham Gussin
FORSAKENFOCUSVERTIGOPREDICTION
Marlborough Contemporary