For fans of 90s Antwerp fashion (Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester in particular) Dutch artist Mark Manders (now living in Belgium) will be your thing. Rigorously intellectual, deconstructionist, appreciative of raw materials and striving for transparency in the physical making of the objects, Manders is the art world contemporary of those fashion luminaries.
In his latest show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery he continues in his efforts to create architectural self-portraits through a condensing of language, art and time. His remarkable large sculptures which appear hewed from crumbling stone and plaster are actually the result of molded shapes painted (in the case of pic 3 the sculpture is molded in bronze). On the walls are his ‘All Existing Words’ pieces - white wall-mounted objects incorporating Manders’ own fabricated newspapers in which every word in the English language is used, although jumbled into random sentences - saying everything and nothing at the same time, highlighting the limitations of language to communicate meaning.
Like Ann Demeulemeester’s fashion which sketched soft, indefinable silhouettes, Manders’ art exists in the unpindownable space between art history and the avant-garde. So good. Thanks to Megan for a great walkthrough of the show. #markmanders #martinmargiela #anndemeulemeester #conceptual_art #sculpture
It’s your first solo show in a top New York gallery, why not go big. Hell, why not go HUGE! Artist #emilykraus is showing no willingness to cave to market demands. The smallest of the paintings on show here at #luhringaugustine in Tribeca would not get close to fitting in an NYC service elevator. No matter - they’ve all sold anyway… to institutions or private collections. Not bad for a 30 year-old who graduated in 2022.
Kraus has devised a box-like mechanical structure that allows her to apply paint while lying inside the box then thread the canvas through rollers to create rhythmic patterns. The machine operates a bit like a printing press and the results recall early Edward Muybridge stop-motion film footage (covered in #jacksonpollock paint splatters). The canvases are so huge that being surrounded by them in a room in the gallery feels like an immersive experience. They are a strident riposte to the muscular traditions of 50s abstract expressionism and have an energy independent of their mark-maker.
Chad and Kristin @available_items in Tivoli can be counted on to root out the best artist/designer/ makers in the Hudson Valley. They have keen antennae for the most unexpected use of materials and for the most surprising and often witty twists on functionality. Now they have staged a fantastic showcase of these talents at Ohayo Mountain House, a new modern home in the Catskills designed by architect @amintadj . Go visit for inspiring ideas on how to bring a creative edge to furnishing your home. Great work everywhere on show by 21 artist/ designer studios including #katiestout #francescadimattio #swellstudio and more. Pictured here: the fantastic ‘Golem table/lamp’ by #oricarlin and a fiber sculpture by #kathoward.
A fun visit to Marc Swanson’s studio in Catskill today. Marc’s work taps into a nostalgia for times of throw-caution-to-the-wind hedonism; times when you could be anyone you wanted to be with a bit of DIY costuming, a lot of eyeliner and a metal lunchbox full of drugs. Clubs like London’s Blitz and New York’s Tunnel are references. Not everyone lived to relive those times however, and they are remembered in memory boxes and honored in metallic sculptures fitted with mini candle lights that will never go out. #marcswanson #blitzclub #tunnelclub #clubkids #80s
Orkideh Torabi’s paintings are funny, dark and suddenly very of the moment. Born in Iran and now based in New York, she has a highly developed skill for puncturing masculine self-importance. The men in Torabi’s paintings are at the mercy of women who have hi-jacked their traditional roles as lords and protectors, or they are seen competing ridiculously with other men. The narratives are tightly contained and reference the allegorical narratives of Persian miniatures. The men look alarmed and neutered by their gender-reversal, but behind the comedy is a sense of danger. Torabi’s cartoonish style defangs the satire but we are painfully aware right now that images like these are no joke in certain parts of the world. And in parts of the so-called ‘manosphere.’ #orkidehtorabi #asyageisberggallery #womenartists #iranianartists
Sometimes it’s a loose sketch of a big, Guston-like foot at the base of the painting that draws you in, sometimes it’s a forensic-looking hole that turns out to be the gaping mouth of a fish - the longer you look at #jomesser’s paintings the more forms emerge from the swirling morass. I can’t be sure exactly what’s going but it looks slippery and wet and definitely fishy. #56henry #gesturalabstraction #womenartist
Painter Elizabeth Peyton has always had the lightest of touches. Her economy of scale, line and form plays equally across small portraits of kings, pop stars and personal friends. In her latest exhibition @davidzwirner she finds even more space on the canvas to do even more. In some cases the presence of the subject appears rendered through puffs of dusty pigment, smudged fingerprints, a draft of wind. Peyton captures emotional states through degrees of precision: stronger lines suggest stability, softness and delicacy suggests fragility. In ‘The Death of Sarpedon (after Henri-Leopold Levy, 1874), (2), Zeus’s son is carried as the life seeps from his body. He appears to be dissolving, matter breaking down as he disappears from the material world. These are extraordinarily beautiful paintings, sensitive and respectful of their subjects. An absolutely captivating show. #elizabethpeyton #davidzwirnergallery #contemporaryportrait
Two grande-dames of contemporary art having retrospectives in London: #rosewylie and #traceyemin. They have very different world views - Emin’s work is explicitly, graphically autobiographical dealing with her experiences of child abuse, rape and botched abortion, while Wylie’s art reflects whatever catches her eye in life and media - but there are more commonalities than at first appear. Motifs in the older Wylie’s paintings also hint at lurking childhood trauma - black WWII fighter planes loom large in some eclectic compositions. The two women share an appeal for misspelled text that is integral to the imagery; both also disdain academic techniques in favor of scrubby, fudged line-work and deceptively naive figuration. They are forceful voices a generation apart each expressing and challenging what makes a painting, what it is to be a woman artist and what it is to be a woman. Two good reasons to visit London soon. #tatemodernlondon #royalacademylondon
Good to be back in old London Town with its grandeur; twisty-turny historic lanes and 18th century Rookery Hotel in Clerkenwell (pics 6,7,8). #therookeryhotel #stpaulscathedral #smithfieldmarket
Every time I visit one of New York’s major museums I come away having seen a familiar artist’s work anew. Today I marveled at this beautiful Rothko ‘No. 10’ (1950) with its captivating balance of cool and warm floating rectangles. A lightness before the dark set in in later paintings. I also appreciated the uncharacteristically muted and restrained ‘The Piano Lesson’ (1916) by Henri Matisse. The boy at the piano in this tightly constructed composition is Matisse’s son, and this domestic scene unfolds against a backdrop of WW1. No dancing maidens, no joyful colors - here you can feel Matisse’s fear for the future. #rothko #matisse #moma
Exquisite works by #eliassime @jamescohangallery . Sourcing from the markets of Addis Ababa, Sime mines mountains of wires and circuit boards from the tech waste dumped there and with his team, painstakingly sorts it into colors and tiles. This material is then woven and collaged into wonderful tapestries that recall topographical maps and revisit Ethiopian craft techniques. In this way technology designed to speed up communication and commerce is lovingly redeemed as an object of beauty.
