STUDIO-ONLINE

TO BE UNDONE, an exhibition of recent photographs and works on paper by Swedish artist Nadja Bournonville. This is her first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. The question of “Why?” lies at the root of Nadja Bournonville’s practice. This searching, enquiring spirit creates works that seek to make connections out of a myriad ideas; to find sense in the world and her place in it. In photographs, text pieces and works on paper, Bournonville delves into her own experiences and imaginings exploring figures as varied as Harry Houdini and Roland Barthes, resulting in images infused with a surreal playfulness and wistful melancholia.

Following the earlier installments in this series, ‘One for every wish’ and ‘Amor omnia vincit’,  ‘To be undone’ marks the culmination of a project which Bournonville began in 2006. The impetus for this series came when Bournonville found a small wooden schooner which almost identically resembled a ship that sank in 1972, taking her uncle with it. A photograph, ‘For Magnus and Lefteria’, now came into being. This method of creating images Bournonville describes as ”a way of figuring out how accidental choices and decisive moments…can change the way we experience and understand life and how traces of them linger on through generations.” This poetic logic has been applied to the subsequent works that are each filled with a wonder and fascination about history, psychology, literature and art.

With ‘To be undone’, Bournonville has drawn inspiration from a reading practice including Moyra Davey, Joseph Cornell, Hanna Segal, Hans Holbein and Rainer Maria Rilke amongst others. It is no surprise therefore that the images are diverse; recordings of performance-like actions, deserted arches, comical sculptural arrangements, absurdist surrealism. Her speculative and intuitive process allows accidental moments, interventions and her own inventions to be playfully combined. What unifies the work is the artist’s distinctive aesthetic; muted colors, carefully observed compositions, a stillness that creates a world of its own. However, in this stillness there are a sense of abandonment, foreboding and decay creating a tension with the beauty and magicality of the images. Bournonville holds a fascination with material, surface and texture, her humane and personal touch is deeply felt throughout.

Nadja Bournonville (Vimmerby, Sweden, 1983) lives and works in Leipzig, Germany. She studied at Forsa Folkhögskola and the Glasgow School of Art. Bournonville has shown with galleries internationally and recently completed a residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. In 2007 she participated in ‘New Nordic Photography’ at Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg. She has previously exhibited with Galerie Gabriel Rolt in the group show ‘Who’s Missing?’

Galerie Gabriel Rolt
Elandsgracht 34
1016 TW Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 (0) 207855146

Maria Pergay has created 4 new works which exhibit her undeniable expertise in the use of stainless steel, developed since the late 1960s. Broken Cubes(2010), a pair of side tables, appear to have been violently torn open to reveal an exotic snakewood interior. She tears the steel like it is a piece of fabric, creating an internal paradox about the material itself. With the Rainbow Table(2010), Pergay elaborates on her use of car lacquer (Bracelet and Ribbon Pouf, 2007) to create a colorful, signature pattern for a dining table. By using an original base from the famous steel top model of 1968, Pergay reminds us that while her creations are in constant evolution, fundamentally, there is no disconnect between old and new work. Furthermore, the consistent
strength with which she has maintained her core design vision is apparent. In fact, Pergay has consistently reinvented her own distinctive design elements, like ribbons and belt buckles, across different mediums and periods of her work.

Since her groundbreaking show of new work in 2006 held at Demisch Danant and Lehmann Maupin galleries, Pergay has exhibited internationally, including shows in Paris, Korea and London. She has also focused on private commissions and is working with Demisch Danant on her catalog raisonné, to be released by Pointed Leaf Press in 2011. After a half century of creation, Pergay continues to surprise both herself and her collectors. Pergay turns eighty this year and shows no signs of stopping.

Demisch Danant
542 West 22nd Street 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10011 (United States)
Phone: 212-989-5750
Web:  www.demischdanant.com

Man & Child
2001
bronze, oil paint
32 1/2 x 14 x 10 1/2 inches

Sean Henry, an exhibition of new figurative sculptures from British artist Sean Henry. Inspired by friends and the people he encounters on the streets of London, Henry’s sculptures delve into the mysteries of daily life. Working from life, photographs and his own drawings, Henry creates each sculpture in clay before it is cast in bronze and individually painted by the artist.

Tom Flynn writes: “Underpinning Henry’s work is a restless urge to push boundaries that define the experience of viewing sculpture. Scale remains central to this ongoing investigation, as does his choice of subject. Works such as Papillon and John (Standing) demonstrate his instinct for turning seemingly ordinary human types into sculpted figures of compelling strangeness. Much of the new work also shows him foregrounding his love of painting - always an important part of his work but recently recruited into a more active role in conjuring a sense of psychological intensity. This is most evident in Papillon- three almost identical ceramic portrait heads of an anonymous man, mounted side by side on separate wall panel.”

Papillon and John (Standing) are included in the exhibition, as is the scale model of the artist’s work Follyge open-sided pavilion - developed between 2007 and 2009 for the sculpture garden of a new museum in The Netherlands. At full size, the work measures 24 x 18 x 12 feet. The tapering single room that comprises  contains painted bronze sculptures of a bed, a desk, two chairs and two versions of the same man, one asleep and one standing. Sunlight shines through a rectangular skylight directly above the bed, sending shafts of light and dark across the rear wall like an over-scaled Venetian blind, marking the passing of time.

Forum Gallery presented Sean Henry’s first U.S. exhibition in 2002, and has shown his work in group and solo shows ever since. The Artist is now exhibited regularly in Germany and Holland, as well as in his native England. In 2007, Sean Henry completed Britain’s first permanent offshore work of public art. The 16 ½ foot tall sculpture Couple is installed on a 25 foot tall pier, almost a quarter mile into Newbiggin Bay, on a 650 foot-long breakwater structure designed to protect the beach. Henry’s work is also the subject of a 2008 monograph published by Scala, written by Tom Flynn. The book is currently available at Forum Gallery for $39.95 (softbound) and $55 (hardbound). Henry’s sculptures are installed in collections around the world, including Golden Square, London; Canary Wharf, London; Paddington Central Development, London, Berkeley Square, London; Tower Records HQ, Sacramento, CA; and the Peak Mansions, Hong Kong.

Forum Gallery
745 Fifth Avenue 5th Fl.
(between 57th & 58th Streets)
New York, NY 10151
www.forumgallery.com

Marx & Zavattero is thrilled to present James Gobel’s new exhibition of felt, yarn, and acrylic paintings, in which chubby gay men of the “bear” subculture act out a campy 1980s rock ‘n’ roll fantasy. Gobel spins a glitzy tale of his heroes’ dramatic efforts as they belt out their favorite songs on a brightly lit stage, while studded in decorative attire. A new addition to Gobel’s body of work will be a series of “couture” bean bags, custom fabricated in an array of colorful, plaid textiles sewn to the artist’s specifications. Conceived as sculpture, these bean bags will sit on the gallery floor and provide a witty static counterpoint to the energy and glamour of the new paintings and drawings. mI Get What I Want, and Always Get It Again! will run from June 12 to July 17, 2010.

Music continues to play a pivotal role in Gobel’s work. Lyrics from pop and rock songs are titles for his pieces, and are often embedded in the works themselves –sometimes inscribed on concert t-shirts worn by Gobel’s subjects. This new body of work channels rock stars such as Freddy Mercury and Adam Ant as the primary narrative thread running throughout. His characters act out on stage against a dizzying array of strobe and footlights, their hips in movement, microphones held aloft like trophies, faces the epitome of resolute sincerity. Their costumes are cut in a variety of boldly colored, fluorescent pinks, yellows, and greens and are studded with faux crystals and beads. The heavily layered detail and patterning brilliantly matches the intensity of his subject’s performances. Gobel has even added a little personalized “bling” in some of the paintings, as his subjects wear bedazzled gold chain necklaces with a purple monogrammed G. A deliciously wonderful sense of abandon permeates this new series, elevating these portly men to icon status; and it is all delightfully sewn together by Gobel’s painstaking detail and seamless craft.

Gobel, a 2009 Artadia Award winner, has exhibited widely across the country, including solo exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles; and Kravets/Wehby Gallery, New York. Group exhibitions include Pattern ID, the Akron Museum of Art, Akron, OH; Collage, curated by Pavel Zoubok, Fred, London;  Las Vegas Diaspora: The Emergence of Contemporary Art from the Neon Homeland, curated by Dave Hickey, the Las Vegas Art Museum; I Want You To Want Me, Marx & Zavattero; and Boys of Summer, moniquemeloche, Chicago. Gobel has also exhibited at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles; and John Connelly Presents, New York, among many other venues.

Gobel’s work has been reviewed and featured in Art in America, ARTnews, Artforum, Flash Art, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Las Vegas Sun, Metro.Pop, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, Beautiful Decay, Flaunt, Zink, and The Believer, among many other publications. He received his MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara and his BFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The artist lives and works in San Francisco.

Marx & Zavattero
77 Geary Street
Second Floor
San Francisco, California 94108
Phone:  415-627-9111
Web:  www.marxzav.com

A new body of work by Damian Elwes draws upon a lifetime of extraordinary experiences. What began as a young man’s escape to New York to avoid family controversy in England and a determined effort not to paint portraits in the Elwes tradition, led to an unlikely passion for graffiti art and a friendship with Andy Warhol. A chance encounter with the renowned art dealer, Robert Fraser, endorsed the direction in which he was going and led to a joint show in London with two of the greatest graffiti artists of all time: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.

Since then Elwes has served what he has described as an apprenticeship in Europe:  in Paris he learned to “paint with a brush” and between Morocco and Italy he refined his craft by studying the masters, educating himself through the recreation of the studios of the greats - Matisse and Delacroix, for example - capturing on canvas their sources of creativity, ever searching for their inspiration.  The work is lyrical and reverential, many miles apart from his earlier experimentations.

In his forthcoming show at Morton Metropolis, Elwes has shed inhibitions as an artist and drawn on the magical time which he and his immediate family spent over a number of years in the rainforest in Southern Colombia.  A multi-part painting installation, which is both large and interactive, includes naked female portraits which are depicted with a new spontaneity.

The installation includes a large floor painting depicts one of the primary sources of the Amazon River. In an attempt to remind us of the world’s environmental problems, Elwes entices the viewer to the work by walking across it, simultaneously creating an individual path whilst interacting with nature. The work, which is based on a grid that Elwes constructed at the source of the river using ropes and pegs, is comprised of 144 small paintings which have been seamlessly fitted together.

On the surrounding walls are the images of a woman asleep, naked and at one with her environment, integrated in the flora. Collectively, the installation illustrates the idea that the woman is a metaphor for the river and that both represent the source of life.

Morton Metropolis
41 -42 Berners Street
London W1T 3NB
Phone:  +44 (0) 20 7636 1177
Web:  www.mortonmetropolis.com

“During my lifetime Glasgow, the city in which I was born and raised, has undergone rapid development. For every building that is knocked down a million memories are torn down with it. As the banks of the Clyde turn from heavy industry to tourism, how many lives have been changed? My paintings reflect my thoughts and feelings on a lost history of place and time. We all have these histories which one day will be lost. I create paintings that depict a narrative of the interaction people have with their surroundings. My studio based on the edge of the city centre and the East end of Glasgow gives me the perfect environment to reflect this kaleidoscope of memory and place, helping me to capture a very distinct energy”
-Paul Kennedy 2010

Paul Kennedy graduated from Edinburgh College of art in 2004. Since graduating, Paul has continued his development in painting in his east end Studio, and over the past six years has had a number of solo shows as well as participating in selective group exhibitions. In 2009 he was selected as a finalist in the prestigious Aspect Prize.

Mansfield Park Gallery
5 Hyndland Street
Glasgow
G11 5QE
Phone: 0141 342 4124
Web: www.mansfieldparkgallery.com

The Danish artist Armsrock, is one of a handful of artists on the Urban/Street art scene whose work reaches out beyond the confines of the genre. The quality and unique nature of his work, both on the street and for the gallery, has made him stand out in that talented crowd.

Armsrock’s work consists of delicately drawn figures, which he pastes on walls in urban settings. Mostly life-size portraits of humans on the edge of society, the character and placement of these pieces make them feel, sometimes, as if they have been tattooed to the wall. At other times, they can appear transitory - as if they had just arrived at a scene and are about to move on. More recently, he has developed an analogue projection technique that enables him to combine his magical drawn figures with light. This has the effect of making the images even more fragile and fleeting, almost like ghosts.

His new show in Signal Gallery is called ‘Drawn Towards The Present’. The show will be built around an installation that will consist of monumental charcoal drawings on rice paper. The imagery represented in the drawings is based on press-clippings from the artist’s archive, which have been reworked to create a fragmentary representation of contemporary history and a glimpse into our future hopes and fears.

Armsrock, was born in 1984 in Copenhagen and graduated at the Hochschule Für Kunst in Bremen, Germany. The quality of his art has been recognised internationally and has been seen in streets and public spaces across Europe and the United States. He has also shown his work extensively in traditional art institutions, such as museums and galleries. This is a young artist whose passion and commitment to his craft has won him supporters and buyers wherever he has shown his work.

Private View: 3rd June

Signal Gallery
96a Curtain Road
London EC2A 3AA
Web: www.signalgallery.com
Phone: 07766 057 212

Tabaimo, yudangami, 2009, 4 min 13 sec, video installation. Photo: Ufer! Art Documentary, © The artist, Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi.

Since her graduation from art school in 1999, Tabaimo’s innovative and large-scale animated drawings have been extensively shown to major critical acclaim, both in Japan and internationally.

Tabaimo is known for her skilfully drawn and disturbing animations that mix imagery from contemporary Japanese life with digital video technique. Throughout her eleven years of practice the artist has created satirical works that often comment on modern life in Japan, and in particular on the way her own generation attempts to reconcile the realities of today with traditional Japanese values. Tabaimo draws inspiration from a variety of sources, not least from the media and her own personal experience. All animations are hand-drawn by the artist and in their execution and use of colour they are perhaps inspired by traditional Japanese drawings and prints. Tabaimo’s work pulsates with a sense of immediacy that invites viewers to respond to them instinctively rather than react to them through acquired or preconceived knowledge.

The exhibition at Parasol unit will be comprised of five video installations: Japanese Kitchen, 1999; hanabi-ra, 2003; guignorama, 2006; public conVENience, 2006; and yudangami, 2009. The artist will also create a special wall drawing on felt relating to the public conVENience installation.

Japanese Kitchen, 1999, 5 min 10 sec, was Tabaimo’s graduation work and established her reputation as an artist to watch. Set in a domestic scenario the work’s protagonist, a stereotypical Japanese housewife, complains halfheartedly about her problems with little sense of awareness of issues beyond her own doorstep. There is an uneasy atmosphere in this apparently familiar environment and the work is punctuated with surreally unsettling images, such as a politician seen campaigning inside a microwave, and inside a fridge a businessman at work is plucked from his desk and decapitated. The latter is a visual pun on the Japanese expression kubi ni naru (literally, to become a neck), meaning someone has lost their job.

In hanabi-ra, 2003, 4 min 24 sec, literally translated as ‘flower petal’, we see the back of a naked man beautifully decorated with colourful flower patterns, similar to that of kimono designs. As time passes a butterfly, a vanitas symbol, appears and flutters around, followed by the image of a carp, symbol of masculinity, migrating swiftly across his back. The film ends by taking a rather unexpected turn.

The title of guignorama, 2006, 2 min 36 sec, is taken from the word guinol, which in French means hand-puppet. The work, we are told, was inspired by a chronic skin condition from which Tabaimo suffered in her childhood. Painted in pulsating rainbows of vivid reds, blues and yellows, tangled hands reveal angry tendons and veins which mutate endlessly into strange creatures.

public conVENience, 2006, 6 min 5 sec, plays on the paradox between public toilets and the private acts that occur within them. Set within a female public bathroom, a voyeuristic moth with camera-like eyes captures the surreal acts of its oblivious subjects: a woman examines her nude body in a mirror, whilst inside a cubicle another appears to give birth from her nostril. Symbols of feminine fragility and vulnerability abound in this theatrical video installation.

yudangami, 2009, 4 min 13 sec, is the artist’s most recent work. The title roughly translates as careless hair and was inspired by a serialised novel that Tabaimo was invited to illustrate over the period of a year. An audio track of beautiful and mysterious music accompanies this projection on a large curved screen, in which strange things happen in the interior of a woman’s home – a minor character from the novel. The whole film is seen through a curtain of long, black, straight hair, symbolic of femininity. As events take an increasingly dreamlike turn, a sense of voyeurism merges within the private sphere of the work’s protagonist.

Tabaimo, born 1975 in Hyogo, Japan, is currently based in Nagano. She graduated from the Kyoto University of Art and Design in 1999, receiving the Kirin Contemporary Award grand prize for her graduation workJapanese Kitchen. She participated in the triennial in Yokohama in 2001 and the biennials in Valencia in 2001, Sao Paulo in 2002, Sydney in 2006 and Venice in 2007. Most recently, Tabaimo has had solo exhibitions at the Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan, the James Cohan Gallery, New York, Gallery Koyanagi, Japan, and Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Her work was included in the group exhibitionMomentary Momentum: Animated Drawings at Parasol unit in 2007, which travelled to Kettle’s Yard Gallery, part of the University of Cambridge.

Private view: 25 May, 6.30 - 9 pm

Parasol unit
Foundation for Contemporary Art
14 Wharf Road
London N1 7RW
Phone: 44 (0)20-7490-7373
Web:  www.parasol-unit.org

In the years 2009-2015, the Totally Wreck Production Institute conducted a series of experiments investigating the qualities and curiosities of technological foreplay. Visions of progress and product were set aside, and instead, the identity of failure was sought out as a milestone containing shrouded and inherent success. Inconclusive dilemmas became holy events with hidden meaning and techno-spiritual meditations. The romance of technology within the members of the institution shed the layers of traditional clinical procedure, and instead, anarchic and unorthodox practices became felicitous excursions. Investors quickly ceased their funding of these experiments, based on an overwhelming fear that the institute’s pursuit of scientific conquest appeared to be slipping deeply into the palms of the psychotic/avant-garde.

However, in the eyes and brains of the institute, the reward of failed experimentation unveiled the antithesis of post-evolutionary change, as well as the capacity of love to undue ones’ own estate. “This is the foreplay of our own cognitive architecture,” declared one of the institute’s head scientists.

Alas, The Totally Wreck Production Institute is proud to present evidence of failure in these technological dark ages. The findings in these experiments were varied, but one fact remained consistently clear: IN SCIENCE, THE LION SLEEPS WITH THE LAMB.

Opening Reception with Special Performance: Saturday, June 5, 8-11 PM

Big Medium
5305 Bolm Rd #12
Austin TX 78721
Phone:  512-385-1670
Web:  www.bigmedium.org

Steve McCurry is recognized is recognized as one of thw world’s finest photographers and during his career he has covered many international and civil conflicts, particularly within the regions of Asia and the Middle East. McCurry made his name covering the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, after he managed to smuggle the films over the border by sewing them into his clothes. These images were amongst the first to be seen of the conflict and won him the prestigious Robert Capa Gold Medal. The now iconic image of the young green-eyed girl appeared for the first time on the cover of National Geographic in June 1985, instantly becoming a symbol both of the Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. A year later, McCurry became a full member of the international photographic agency, Magnum photos.

Many off McCurry’s later photographs have also become modern icons, each with a story to tell. An extensive traveler, his work has encompassed Pakistan, India, Sri lanka, Tibet and Yemen, amongst others. Best known for his evocative color images, his compelling photographs are unique street portraits that reveal the uiniversality of the human condition, finding the beautiful in daily experiences. McCurry’s skill lies in blending in, waiting for the unguarded moment when he can capture stories of the human experience in its rawest form.

“The thing I want people to take away from my work is this human connection between all of us…there’s a kind of commonality between all of us. Despite our religion, language or ethnicity, we’re all basically the same”, Steve McCurry

For over 17 years the identity of the Afghan girl remained a mystery, despite McCurry’s attempts to locate her. In January 2002, a National Geographic team traveled to Afghanistan and using biometric technology matched her iris patterns to those of the photograph. Her identity was revealed as Sharbat Gula, and the remarkable story was the subject of a television documentary, entitled Search for the Afghan Girl, to be released on DVD to coincide with the exhibition.

Councillor Martin Mullaney, Cabinet Member for Leisure, Sport and Culture at Birmingham City Council said: “ I am delighted that Birmingham’s world class Museum and Art Gallery is staging UK City of Culture 2013, it is further evidence of the city’s reputation for attracting high profile exhibitions that will attract both local and national visitors.”

Birminghan Museum and Art Gallery
Chamberlain Square, Burmingham, B3 3DH
Phone: 0121 303 2834
Web:   www.bmag.org.uk