IN THE WORKS New York | San Francisco

Simone Shields Art Nerd | Barnard Student

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Enigmas @ Andrea Rosen Gallery

MARCH 6 – APRIL 25, 2015

Currently on view at Andrea Rosen is Enigmas, a show of contemporary paintings by Martin Barré, David Ostrowski, Julian Schnabel, and Reena Spaulings. The title of the exhibition comes from the Reena Spaulings series where dirtied tablecloths from art-world dinners are stretched and displayed as minimal paintings. These pair nicely with nearly all-white David Ostrowski canvases. Both projects point to the remarkable salience of the monochrome in contemporary aesthetic practice. 

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Gabriele De Santis

Inspired by skate culture and colloquial grammatical structures like the hashtag, Gabriele de Santis’s painting is decidedly contemporary. In recent months, works from his parenthesis series have appeared again and again in both gallery shows and on the market.

“In diptych form, they are a suggestion of opening and closing, allowing the viewer to imagine their own contents within the succession of beginning and end.” —Gabriele De Santis, Interview with Adam Carr of ArtTuner.

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Kazuo Shiraga @ Mnuchin Gallery

FEBRUARY 10 - APRIL 11, 2015

Kazou Shiraga is having a major market moment. Since the artist’s debut in the Christie’s November 2014 Evening Sale, auction prices for his work have held with vigor. Two major dealerships in New York, Mnuchin Gallery and Dominique Levy, have chosen to exhibit his painterly masterpieces in concurrence with Asia Week this spring. The artist, associated with a Japanese postwar avant-garde movement known as Gutai, paints with his feet, suspending himself with ropes from above. The process and the monumental effect are nothing short of extraordinary. 

“Shiraga’s rise in the West is a tutorial in how art market insiders band together to promote an under-recognized artist they consider deserving of a wider audience.” (James Tarmy, Bloomberg.com)

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Kazuo Shiraga and Satoru Hoshino @ Dominique Lévy

JANUARY 29 - APRIL 4, 2015

In contrast to the Shiraga show at Mnuchin, which showcases the artist’s aesthetically rich masterpieces with decisive drama, Dominique Levy takes a more academic lens, contextualizing the work with information on his working method as well as inciting a useful comparison with artist Satoru Hoshino.

[simoneshields-blog]

Daniel Buren @ Kamel Mennour

MARCH 4 - MARCH 8, 2015

At this year's Armory Show on Piers 92 & 94 Parisian gallery Kamel Mennour  presents a stunning mini-retrospective of Daniel Buren's work, including nine pieces created between 1965 and 2015. Each work incorporates Buren's signature vertical stripes -- the "visual tool" he has used to reconfigure environments throughout his practice.

"Most of the time, when someone buys the object, it's 100 percent transferred to them. I don't think this is true. Something exists within the object that can never be appropriated. This little part, I try to make it visible." (Daniel Buren, Interview Magazine, 2015)

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Amir Nikravan @ Various Small Fires 

MARCH 4 - MARCH 8, 2015

Amir Nikravan's new work has been the object of substantial attention at this year's Armory Show on Piers 92 & 94. Represented by Various Small Fires, a young gallery with a new space on North Highland in Hollywood, Nikravan has re-conceptualized the painterly process. The artist begins by building up a sculptural concrete relief, toying with distinctive surface treatments and building up thick impasto. He then places the object in a vacuum sealed container. A sheet of fabric canvas is placed over the relief. In the vacuum, the fabric assumes the topography of the original object, and Nivrakan applies spray paint to this surface, toying with effects of light and volume. This canvas sheet is then removed from the relief, stretched and mounted to creating an illusionistic, two-dimensional index of a painting. As his work at the Armory attests, Nikravan has engineered a remarkable new possibility for the category of painting.

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Helmut Lang @ Sperone Westwater

JANUARY 8 - FEBRUARY 21 2015

Ten years ago designer Helmut Lang sold his fashion label to focus on visual art. This season Sperone Westwater presents Lang’s first New York solo show on the Bowery. The work is largely sculptural, employing repurposed material from his past vocation. After a studio fire destroyed much of his fashion archive, Lang sent its remains through an industrial shredder. He then cast the resulting melange of denim, cotton and other production scraps in resin in order to create industrial-sized tubes. These pillars appear tree-like from afar, but upon close inspection point to a process of commercial re-assemblage that mimics Lang's own transition from fashion to fine art. 

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On Kawara @ Guggenheim

FEBRUARY 6 - MAY 3, 2015

The On Kawara show at the Guggenheim frames the artist's rigidly conceptual and meditative approach. The 'Date Paintings' constitute a major part of the exhibition, with nearly 100 on display. These works mark the period from January 4th 1966 to 2014 in which Kawara made a painting of the date written out starkly in two colors every single day. A daily reflection upon chronological time as a measure of human existence, these works take on collective rigor when seen one after another as the viewer ascends the Guggenheim's spiraling ramp.  

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The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World @ MoMA

DECEMBER 14 - APRIL 5, 2015

Artists today continue to choose to work with painting and "The Forever Now" exhibition at MoMA seeks to ask why. While the show presents a satisfying mix of market-approved contemporary painters, its thesis ultimately proves weak. Unifying the output of Rashid Johnson, Julie Mehretu, Oscar Murillo, Josh Smith, Mark Grotjahn, Amy Sillman and Co. under the phenomenon of "atemporality" does little to answer our big question: Why Painting? Still?

"This profligate mixing of past styles and genres can be identified as a kind of hallmark for our moment in painting, with artists achieving it by reanimating historical styles or recreating a contemporary version of them, sampling motifs from across the timeline of 20th-century art in a single painting or across an oeuvre, or radically paring their language down to the most archetypal forms."(MoMA, 2015).

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Tauba Auerbach could not be more cool. At 34 years old she is one of few practicing female artists to breach the $1,000,000 sales mark at auction. To produce her “fold” paintings she creases cloth canvases, applies spray paint at an angle, and re-stretches the material over a 2D frame. The resulting “trompe oeil” effect creates a sensorial tension between the physicality of sculpture and the flatness of painting. With such visually stunning work Auerbach is due for a solo show in New York.

“I guess the attraction stems from a kind of faith that something beyond what is perceptible exists and can be imagined, even if it can’t be experienced.” - Tauba Auerbach, 2012

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Adopting the carpet form and laboring over the careful integration of both ancient and contemporary motifs, it takes artist Kour Pour nearly a year to complete each of his paintings. His striking works now fetch around $100,000 apiece.

“I was thinking about the carpet and its role in the world as an object of craft—people weaving in a community, the history, the patterns, the figures, and even its place as a commodity being traded." (Kour Pour, Architectural Digest, 2015)

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Chris Ofili @ New Museum OCTOBER 29, 2014 - FEBRUARY 1, 2015

The popular Chris Ofili Exhibition at the New Museum has been extended through February 1, 2015. The show boasts 30 major paintings from Ofili’s oeuvre, many of which are spellbinding in their chromatic intensity and narrative rigor.

Particularly interesting are the mysterious “Blue Rider” works on the third floor. Set in a dark architectural space designed by the artist, these paintings test our vision - only through sustained looking do troublesome narratives emerge. Compelling installation techniques are at play throughout the show.

"Over the past two decades, Ofili’s practice has become identified with vibrant and meticulously executed artworks that meld figuration, abstraction, and decoration. The artist’s diverse oeuvre has taken imagery and inspiration from such disparate, history-spanning sources as the Bible, hip-hop music, Zimbabwean cave paintings, Blaxploitation films, and the works of William Blake." (New Museum, Exhibition Press Release, 2015)

[simoneshields-blog]

This show is accessible and fun - a “greatest hits” grouping of contemporary artists working in pattern. From legend Daniel Buren to newcomer Lucien Smith, abstraction proves ripe for reassessment. Sterling Ruby’s “Husbands + Drops” dominates the scene.

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Tal R @ Cheim and Read JANUARY 14 - FEBRUARY 15, 2015

Bringing a splash of old fashioned color to Chelsea, the Tal R show at Cheim and Read is a breath of fresh air grounded in historicism. Reminiscent of Matisse’s Odalisques, Tal R approaches the female nude with the same sort of obsessive concentration, churning out interior scenes that burst with saturated color.