Alexander and Bonin is pleased to announce Loop, the first one person exhibition by Jorge Macchi in New York.
 
For this exhibition Macchi will divide the gallery into three spaces. Each space will contain works which manifest the measure of time and reiterate its extension in space through a series of projections, objects and watercolors. Jorge Macchi’s finely tuned vocabulary results in works which are simultaneously poetic and uncanny.
 
Time stands still in a number of Macchi’s recent works. Pendulum, 2013 a curved I-beam supported by two plastic stools, appears to buckle under its own weight. As the title suggests, this tensile irregularity also demarcates the path of a pendulum’s swing, as if to solidify the infinite number of repetitive momentary positions of its arc. First Second, 2013 employs a similar logic, capturing a moment in a material. Macchi has cast the narrow wedge between the hour marking twelve and the tick of the first second on a clock’s face in concrete. This cast triangle renders space-time solid while at the same time leaving open the possibility of development, like a step on a spiral staircase of simultaneity.
 
The video installation, XYZ, 2012 will occupy the rear space of the gallery. The image of a station clock with hands frozen is projected in such a way that the three hands rest perfectly into the seams of the corner of a darkened room. In his work Macchi fuses architecture, space and time into a simple yet unfamiliar congress.
 
The two-channel video projection From Here to Eternity, 2013 will be shown on the gallery’s second floor. This work is the most recent collaboration between the artist and the musician Edgardo Rudnitzky. Two clips were extracted from the classic Hollywood film: the first from the opening title sequence and the second while the words ‘THE END’ appear on the screen. The clips have slightly different lengths creating a chaotic sound mixture and are combined with a third audio channel in real time using notes from the original soundtracks and from music sung by women.
 
Jorge Macchi was born in 1963 in Buenos Aires where he continues to live and work. Since the mid-1980s, his work has been shown throughout the Americas and Europe. Currently, ten large-scale installation works from 2007–2013 are being shown in ‘Container’ a one-person exhibition at the Kunstmuseum, Lucerne. In 2011, his work was the subject of a survey exhibition, ‘Music Stands Still’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art (SMAK) in Ghent. His work was represented in the 11th Biennale de Lyon (2011); the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011); ‘All of this and nothing’, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010); ‘Brave New Worlds’ at the Walker Art Center (2007). In 2005, Jorge Macchi, in collaboration with Edgardo Rudnitzky, represented Argentina at the Venice Biennale. His installation for the 2012 Liverpool Biennial, Refraction will be exhibited in June in the Art Unlimited section of Art Basel.
 
For press inquiries, please contact Sabina Roslyakova at 212 367-7474 or sr@alexanderandbonin.com.

Ricco/Maresca is pleased to present Marcos Bontempo: Dancing in the Void. This show marks the first time the gallery has brought the intricate and enigmatic works of the artist together in a solo exhibition. Born in Argentina in 1969, Bontempo moved with his family to Spain at the age of 6. He currently resides in Ronda, a culturally edifying city known for its stunning views and rich history. Bontempo, often viewed as complex and elusive, spends his days walking his dog through the town pocketing inspiration from the creative energy and natural beauty of the world that surrounds him.
 
In addition to his kinship with nature, Bontempo’s ingenuity can also be traced to his intermittent battles with schizophrenic episodes. Unencumbered by the outside world, the artist finds clarity in his work. Driven by both his environment and personal demons, Bontempo sits alone in his studio every day painting his own emotionally charged world filled with mental dissonance, adversity, and subtle glimpses of the hope aroused by the healing power of creation.
 
The exhibition brings together a powerful selection of paintings from Bontempo’s highly personalized and unique body of work. Bold in color and marked by ardent brushwork, the pieces portray a multifarious array of distorted bodies, floating in the pictorial plane while engaged in a disconcerting yet mystifying dance. His figures- some human, others more animalistic- emanate a personified amalgamation of cognitive agitation and freedom through physical malformation and cathartic expression. To create these lively and emphatic paintings, Bontempo uses ink or acrylic paint in combination with salt or iron. His dark palette of deep reds, blue, gold, and black embodied in fervent gestural abstraction are seemingly indicative of a primacy, misplaced and overthrown, and serve as a gentle reminder that both pain and normality are relative to one’s own experience.
 
Marcos Bontempo’s gentle and honest deportment is memorable on both a personal and professional level and he remains a welcome addition the gallery. His work is in several private collections in both the United States and Europe. Marcos Bontempo: Dancing in the Void will be on view at Ricco/Maresca May 16- June 15, 2013.

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate release:
Contact: James Levis
Levis Fine Art
514 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
(646) 620-5000
Email: jim@levisfineart.com
 
BEAUFORD DELANEY: INTERNAL LIGHT
 
New York, April 24 —Levis Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of Beauford Delaney: Internal Light, an exhibition of the extraordinary artistic legacy from the Paris period (1953-1972) of this modern master, who exhibited in museums throughout Europe and the United States. Many of these historically significant paintings have not been viewed since the artist’s landmark 1978 exhibition, Beauford Delaney: A Retrospective was held at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The solo exhibition will run from May 9 through June 15, 2013.
 
It is broadly recognized that Delaney’s Paris works are among the most significant of his body of work. A number of these Paris-period works to be shown were rescued from Delaney’s apartment shortly before his death. About to be seized by the French Government and auctioned to satisfy delinquent accounts, the paintings were shipped to New York through the efforts of a coterie of the artist’s devoted friends including James Baldwin, Henry Miller, Richard Powell and Richard Long. These paintings would form the core of the 1978 retrospective.
 
After thirty-five years of uncertain fate, and the enormous efforts over the past seven years by the estate’s court-appointed Administrator, Derek Spratley, many of these estate paintings have been recovered and are now being presented for the first time in this exhibition, opening to the public on May 9th. A fully illustrated color catalog with essay by Lily Wei, New York-based independent curator and art critic, will be available. Levis Fine Art is proud to represent the estate of Beauford Delaney.
 
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 10am-6pm or by appointment.

Susan Inglett Gallery is pleased to present new works by Marcia Kure in her second solo exhibition with the Gallery from 9 May to 15 June 2013. A reception for the artist will be held Thursday evening, 9 May from 6 to 8 PM.
 
—
 
We feel content and safe within the confines of the world we understand. “Tease” intends to poke holes, cut into, and fragment the perceptual matrix that is our world; daring the viewer to imagine existential possibilities beyond the familiar and the ordinary. “Tease” is a populated space, a universe of hybrid bodies and masked and secret things existing at the very edges of our daily lives.
 
The realities described by drawings, collages and sculptures in “Tease” are only imaginable through access to terrifying and exhilarating knowledge-knowledge we gain by prying open the locked closet, gazing into the dark sky, chanting a ritual song, or opening closed windows of the mind.
 
With familiar objects such as children's toys, kitchen utensils, bed sheets, rugs, and other common household items, “Tease” probes our fear of the unknown and the hidden, and tickles the pleasure of revelation. It asks the question: to what extent does the acquisition of more knowledge contribute to the (un-)making of the human? What is the existential value of curiosity, that primal urge to peer into the unknown? What desires are fulfilled or lost in encounters with partially obscured images and objects on the verge of disappearance/recovery?
 
“Tease” is a place of possibility, a space of becoming; it is an unsettling, off-kilter space, not unlike the world outside. It is at the moment of our greatest discomfort when we are compelled to ask the most important questions about our lives, and our world.
 
“Tease” is that place.
 
- Marcia Kure
 
—
 
Born in Nigeria, Marcia Kure has appeared in museum and gallery exhibitions in Nigeria, Germany, the United States, Spain, the Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Canada, Austria, and Switzerland. Most recently her work was featured at the Palais de Tokyo in the Paris Triennial 2012; “The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo Kuti” at The New Museum, NYC; The 7th Sharjah Biennale; and the 2nd Seville International Biennial curated by Okwui Enwezor. Reviews have appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, the New York Observer, Time Out, Frieze, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, African Arts and Flash Art among others. The work will be exhibited next in a three person exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City in the Fall.
 
The exhibition will be on view at the gallery located 522 West 24 Street Tuesday to Saturday 10 AM to 6 PM. For additional information please contact Susan Inglett Gallery at 212/647-9111, or info@inglettgallery.com

Andrea Meislin Gallery is pleased to announce Pavel Wolberg’s first exhibition at the gallery and in New York. The exhibition will open on May 4 and will be on view through June 15.
 
An objective yet empathetic observer, Wolberg intuitively photographs moments of wonder, spectacle, and solitude. He began his career in photojournalism, where his instinctual way of working allowed him to capture climactic and historic moments. Yet his photographs, which often depict various communities and their respective rituals in Israel, lean more towards the poetic than the political.
 
An avid museumgoer as a child growing up in Russia, he is inspired by great masters like Gericault and David, and his photographs often feel like paintings. Whether close to the action or revealing an expansive perspective, Wolberg maintains the position of a foreign observer and refrains from passing judgment or designating right or wrong. Renowned journalistic photographer Micha Bar-Am says of Wolberg, “He understands that life is sufficiently dramatic and theatrical and he has the proper combination of the laws of the chase and knowledge, in making a visual and artistic statement.”
 
Whether capturing the revelry of Purim, men dancing in gay clubs in Tel Aviv, sacred moments of a Hasidic wedding, or conflict-laden landscapes, Wolberg handles all of his subjects with sensitivity and respect, always aware of his responsibility as a visual communicator.
 
About the Artist
Born in 1966 in Leningrad, Wolberg moved with his family to Israel when he was nine years old. Upon completing school he joined the Army, and then after working various odd jobs, he studied at the Camera Obscura School of Art in Tel Aviv. Wolberg later worked as a photographer in the news department of Ha’aretz, and with the European Pressphoto Agency (EPA). He is the recipient of the Gérard Lévy Prize for a Young Photographer, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem and the Constantiner Photography Award for an Israeli Artist, Tel Aviv Museum. His work was featured in the 2007 Venice Biennale, and is in the collections of the Israel Museum, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum (New York), the Kadist Foundation (San Francisco, Paris), and many notable private collections.
 
For all press inquiries, please contact Courtney Richter at courtney@andreameislin.com

Erin Murray “Settling”
 
Opening May 9, 6-8pm through June 15, 2013
 
Nancy Margolis Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Erin Murray’s first solo New York exhibition, “Settling”, on May 9, 2013 and on view through June 15, 2013. The artist’s reception will take place May 9 from 6-8 pm.
Murray’s landscapes take built environments as their subject and formalize their banality as art. The show’s series of graphite and charcoal drawings features Murray’s characteristic austerity and, like the exhibition’s oil-on-panel paintings of unsettling landscapes, examines the real world in a surreal way. Devoid of people, Murray’s landscapes are permeated by an intensity that creates an anthropomorphic connect and imbues their mundane architecture with a significance otherwise unrealized.
Murray skillfully and innovatively employs different approaches to each drawing and painting so that, while the works in “Settling” vary in medium, the show’s mood and theme are consistent. Murray’s drawings are defined by their meticulous execution, striking perspectives, and high contrast, rendering these works near-portraits of the structures they depict, albeit cold and aloof. Through these techniques Murray monumentalizes her subjects, as in the large-scale Body Building (2012, 36″x108″). Intentionally stark, but dramatic, the drawing compels the viewer to empathize with the forgotten structure and find beauty in its symmetry.
The series of paintings offers a different mode of reductiveness. In contrast with Murray’s drawings, the paintings are replete with lush colors, radiantly rendered skies, depth of space, and lyrical, curvilinear forms. Nevertheless, they exude a similar timelessness and theatricality. Through titles such as Settling (potential energy) (2013, 24”x24”), Murray makes oblique references to the scene—the presence of a propane tank, electrical panel and solar array—while alluding to her landscapes’ emptiness, engendering nostalgia and contemplation.
A set of smaller paintings, titled Block Party (2013), likewise exposes the inherent artfulness of everyday structures. Each work hones in on a block-built wall, making abstract compositions of its colors, lines, shapes and patterns.
Interested in both the architectural history from which even the most humble of structures derive, and the cultural and economic realities they represent, the artist seeks meaning in seemingly meaningless spaces. In their precision and quietude, Murray’s works call attention to the oft-overlooked essence of built environments, making us see the extent to which we settle for our surrounds.
Erin Murray earned her B.F.A from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2001. She first showed at Nancy Margolis Gallery in 2011 with significant success. Since then, she has continued to show widely in Philadelphia and her work has been featured in several publications, including The Artblog, The Philadelphia Inquirer, New American Paintings Magazine, Tabletop Zine, and The News Journal. Her work is included in the collections of The Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Philadelphia, PA, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, and The West Collection, Oaks, PA.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work stems from my suspicion that the forms of the built environment carry an abundance of embedded meaning, which is reflective of our collective humanity even in the most humble of structures. A building or built form can be understood to represent our physical body, our cultural history, our economic reality, our long-formed habits. We naturalize our environment by reenacting the forms of the past, and we settle for the inevitable distortion. But with this distortion we also find things like sincerity, absurdity, failure, idealism and – hopefully – a sense of empathy.
EDUCATION
2001 Bachelor of Fine Art, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD. summa cum laude
SOLO & TWO-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2013
Settling, Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY
2012
Wind Challenge I, Fleisher Art Memorial, Philadelphia, PA
Municipalia, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE.
2011
Solo Series, Abington Art Center, Philadelphia, PA.
Strata, Cerulean Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. two-person exhibition.
Erin Murray and Mark Masyga, Mount Airy Contemporary Artist’s Space, Philadelphia, PA. two-person exhibition.
Architecture Parlante, Slingluff Gallery, Philadelphia, PA.
2007
(un)Built, Painted Bride Art Center, Philadelphia, PA
SELECT GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2013
Spark Gap, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA
Salon Zurcher, Galerie Zurcher, New York, NY
2012
THIS END UP, The West Collection at PULSE, Miami, FL
Earth and Artifice, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA
West Collects, City Hall, Philadelphia, PA
Artists We Admire, Abington Art Center at the William Penn Foundation, Philadelphia, PA
Landscape, University of Delaware @ Crane Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Permanent Collection, curated by Edward Rosario and Jordin Isip, Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY
High-Low Density, Rowan University Art Gallery, Glassboro, NJ
2011
Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY
LOOK! On Lancaster Ave, public art project, Philadelphia, PA
2010
VOX VI, Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia PA
I Can’t Get You Out of My Mind, Seraphin Gallery, curated by Hiro Sakaguchi
Drawings, The Art Trust, West Chester, PA
2008
Underground, Center For Emerging Visual Artists, curated by Lee Stoetzel
Fall Collection, F.U.E.L. Collection, Philadelphia, PA
Landscapes on the Edge, The Art Trust, West Chester, PA
2007
New American Paintings Show, Lancaster Arts and Culture Center, Lancaster, PA
2006
From The Studio III, Center For Emerging Visual Artists, Philadelphia, PA
Projects Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2005
Artist’s House, Philadelphia, PA Four-person exhibition
2004
Artist’s House, Philadelphia, PA Emerging Artist Exhibition
Creative Artist’s Network @SEI Investments, Oaks, PA.
2003
Creative Artist’s Network, Philadelphia, PA. Fall Group Exhibition
Baltimore Bound, Creative Artist’s Network @ MICA, Baltimore, MD.
Off The Wall, Creative Artist’s Network, Philadelphia, PA.
Creative Artist’s Network, Philadelphia, PA. Spring Group Exhibition
Creative Artist’s Network, Philadelphia, PA. Winter Group Exhibition
2002
Creative Artist’s Network, Philadelphia, PA. Fall Group Exhibtion
AWARDS
2012
West Collects, acquisition prize
PRESS
2012
Ben Meyer, “Fleisher Wind Challenge will blow you away–,” The Artblog
Victoria Donohoe, “Delaware Center Builds Worthy Show,” Philadelphia Inquirer
“Buildings and Contraptions R Us–DCCAs 2012 Gretchen Hupfel Symposium,” The Artblog
Maureen Milford, “Influence of buildings, objects on art explored at symposium,” The News Journal
2011
Victoria Donohoe, “‘Solo Series 2011’ explores art’s middle ground,” Philadelphia Inquirer
Edith Newhall, “Planes, panes, pallets,” Philadelphia Inquirer
Daniel Forrest Hoffman, “Erin Murray’s haunted architecture at Slingluff Gallery,” The Artblog,
Holly Otterbein, “First Friday Focus,” Philadelphia City Paper
2010
Edith Newhall, “Low-key Vox Pop,” Philadelphia Inquirer
Roberta Fallon, “VOX VI,” Philadelphia Weekly
Montana Torrey, “Curating the personal – I Just Can’t Get You Out of My Mind at Seraphin Gallery,” The Artblog
“Green Tease,” Philadelphia Magazine, April 2010, page 99
2008
Victoria Donohoe, “Range of Styles, Jewish Theme,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Galleries and Museums
2005
Laurence Liss, “Artist’s House,” Art Matters, June 2005, page 15
PUBLICATIONS
2012
Tabletop Zine, Issue 004, July-August
New American Paintings, #98 January-February
2007
New American Paintings, #69 April-May
PUBLIC LECTURES/PANELS
2012 “Boring” Architecture Tour and artist lecture, Fleisher Art Memorial
2012 Slide lecture, Art Salad Lecture Series, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts
2012 Panelist, SUPERstructure, Gretchen Hupfel Symposium at Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts
COLLECTIONS
Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Philadelphia, PA
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
The West Collection, Oaks, PA
REGISTRIES
Irving Sandler Artist’s File, Artist’s Space, New York, NY
The Drawing Center, New York, NY
MEMBERSHIP
2012-current Vox Populi Gallery
2002-2004 Center for Emerging Visual Artists

RSVP for the Reception as space is limited

Jaye Rhee
 
The Flesh and the Book
 
May 16~June 15, 2013
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 16, 6~8PM
 
DOOSAN Gallery New York is pleased to announce The Flesh and the Book, a solo exhibition of Jaye Rhee, from May 16 to June 15, 2013. The exhibition occupies her four-channel video and installation which explores the intersections between performance, the moving image, and sound installation.
 
Casting original dancers of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Rhee renders the human body as minimalist shapes that convey an improvisational selection of ‘notes’ within a musical composition co-created with Elliott Sharp. The dancers’ movements, both choreographed and organic, shift horizontally across the row of screens. At times, the movements flow synchronically with the sound while in other moments the relationship between the visual and aural becomes a series of independent juxtapositions.
 
As in many of Rhee’s works, at the heart of The Flesh and the Book lies an irreconcilable tension; here it exists between physical dance and musical notes. The dancers perform within a ‘musical staff’ made of five thick rubber bands that are suspended at different heights yet are equidistant from each other. A visual loss occurs when the two-dimensional music notes transition into the three-dimensional dance, and vice versa. As more notes are gained, more dancers are lost; the two must maintain a balanced yet opposed existence.
 
Jaye Rhee was born in 1973 in Seoul, Korea. She received her M.F.A and B.F.A from School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She has completed Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and artists residency program in Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has had solo exhibitions at Cais Gallery (2010, Seoul, Korea), Stephan Stoyanov Gallery (2010, New York, USA), Corridor Gallery (2010, New York, USA), KCCLA (2009, Los Angeles, USA) and Gallery Factory (2007, Seoul, Korea). Her works has also been included in Norton Museum of Art (2012, Florida, USA), Mori Museum of Art (2012, Tokyo, Japan), CU Art Museum (2012, Colorado, USA), Seoul Museum of Art (2011, Seoul Korea), and St. Cecilia (2010, New York, USA).

SERGEI ISUPOV: Call of the Wild
May 4 – June 15, 2013
 
NEW YORK – Barry Friedman Ltd, in collaboration with Ferrin Gallery, is pleased to present a solo exhibition of figurative sculpture by contemporary Russian artist, Sergei Isupov. This will be the artist’s second show with Barry Friedman Ltd, and will open with a public reception on Saturday, May 4 from 2-6pm.
 
Call of the Wild, a body of 14 new works in porcelain and ceramic, produced at Project Art, Cummington, MA, creates a conversation about conflict and resolution driven by the instinctual drives of man, woman, animal, and beast. Symbolic and metaphoric imagery gleaned from classical art training in the former Soviet Union, introduces allegorical biblical content and iconic presentations of portrait and landscape. The artist’s choice of ceramic materials provides the opportunity to create interlocking images with three-dimensional form and two-dimensional illustration. The human, male–female dilemma is examined throughout. Isupov explains, “Somebody saves somebody, someone loves the other more, they are mutually supportive and destructive, they are opposites — there are contrasts… One is more powerful, they are both survivors.”
 
Often called an erotic Surrealist for his daring representations of sexuality, relationships, and human encounter, Isupov takes narrative subject matter and merges it with ceramic sculptural form. Drawing on personal experience, and human observation, he creates works that integrate autobiography with universal narrative. He states, “Everything that surrounds and excites me is automatically processed and transformed into…an artwork. […] The essence of my work is not in the medium or the creative process, but in human beings and their incredible diversity. When I think of myself and my works, I’m not sure I create them, perhaps they create me.” While the robust, and racially distinct facial traits make each sculpture unique, they also make the body of work capable of representing universal experiences. The bold color palette, heavily tattooed faces, and textured surfaces relate these works to the aesthetics of traditional Russian art, as well as to contemporary styles of illustration.
 
Sonya Bekkerman, Vice President of Russian Art at Sotheby’s has written about Isupov and his artistic style within the context of Russian art history: “Sergei Isupov was born in the ‘60s, a decade in which Russian artists began to actively question and defy the prescribed artistic ideology dictated by the Soviet Union, and he left in 1983, just before the turbulent artistic breakthroughs incited by Gorbachev’s perestroika in 1987. […] Like many of his contemporaries who sought to express their individuality away from party control, Isupov emigrated to the United States, where he has never stopped looking inward and revealing truths, free associations, and sheer id, no matter how cryptic, filtered through an American and Russian lens.”
 
Sergei Isupov’s work will be featured in the upcoming exhibition “Bodies Speaking Out: New International Ceramics” at the Museum of Arts & Design, NY opening in September 2013, followed by a mid-career survey at Racine Art Museum in 2014.
 
Isupov’s work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Finae Arts, Houston; Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Museum of Art and Design, New York; and Museum fur Angewandte, Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany. Isupov has had solo exhibitions at Mesa Contemporary Arts Center, Arizona and The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Missouri. He has participated in group exhibitions at the 2009 World Contemporary Ceramics Exhibition at the 5th World Ceramic Biennale in Korea; The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft; Fuller Craft Museum, Massachusetts; and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Wisconsin. He lives and works in Cummington, MA.

Nicole McCormick Santiago is a painter of the domestic narrative. Her autobiographical images explore the contrast between unabashed indulgence and the selfless constraints of motherhood.

HANSJOERG DOBLIAR: “HYSTERIE UND ABSTRAKTION”

May 3 – June 15, 2013
 
Johannes Vogt Gallery is pleased to announce German artist Hansjoerg Dobliar’s first solo show with the gallery, Hysterie und Abstraktion (Hysteria and Abstraction). For the exhibition, Dobliar presents a new body of paintings on canvas and aluminum. Additionally the artist has designed an immersive wallpaper scheme for the rear room that serves as backdrop for an installation of paintings.
 
Dobliar’s paintings engage with the oil medium on a very material level. In his works, Dobliar builds up thick but fluid brushstrokes to form images. Dobliar’s practice strongly recalls and builds upon the traditions of German expressionism. In Dobliar’s engagement with abstraction, he enlivens the tension between figuration and abstraction. Subjects can be recognized, but only uncertainly, as if through a haze. In this way, he prioritizes the expressive handling of the material, neither blending his strokes to render his hand invisible, nor abandoning a subject in favor of pure abstraction. The expressionist brushstroke is understood for its ornamental value. This exchange is a theme also explored in his works on paper. By overpainting onto old magazine pages, Dobliar selectively obscures and represses the figures in these images. By intervening in the imagery of mass circulation, Dobliar symbolically questions cultural narratives, and the ways in which reality is undermined by myth.
 
Among the works in the front gallery is a series of small paintings on canvas. Referred to by Dobliar as the “dot paintings,” these works appear like a series of bullseyes, or a string of echoed permutations. In exploring a similar composition over a large number of small canvases, Dobliar enacts the decorative concealment of abstraction, and expresses a fixation with the aesthetic surface. These issues of representation and presentation also inform his practice of designing the manner in which his works are displayed. Previously, Dobliar has installed wallpaper, constructed shelving, and painted on the walls to modify the atmosphere in which his works are received. Dobliar continues this practice for his show at the gallery.
 
Dobliar’s vibrant paintings evoke the psychic worlds of the subjective experience. In his energetic and tactile engagement with the paint, Dobliar creates works that point beyond the limits of our knowledge, and force the viewer to ask where the abstraction ends and their projection begins.
 
Hansjoerg Dobliar was born in Ulm, Germany in 1970. Dobliar's work has been exhibited internationally, including Sammlung Rheingold at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Sammlung Falckenberg / Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Daniel Hug Gallery, Los Angeles; Kunstverein Oldenburg; and Beijing Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include Sies + Höke gallery, Düsseldorf; Galerie Akinci, Amsterdam; Galerie Ben Kaufmann, Berlin as well as a solo presentation at INDEPENDENT art fair in New York in 2011. He lives and works in Munich and Berlin.
 
Since its inception only two years ago, the gallery has taken on a challenging program leading to a change of location in November 2012. Johannes Vogt Gallery is committed to bringing attention to the complex artistic and cultural ties that bind New York to both Europe and Latin America.
 
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 6 pm and by appointment
 
For further details please contact Samuel Draxler at samuel@vogtgallery.com or at 212.255.2671

The sculptures, drawings, photographs, mixed media works, and films in Ana Mendieta: Late Works 1981-1985 at Galerie Lelong reveal Mendieta’s translation of her ephemeral practices in the landscape to independent art objects. Beginning in 1980, Mendieta took several trips to her birth country of Cuba. These visits brought a resolution that allowed the completion of her identity-oriented works and the seeking of an aspect of universality. In 1983, Mendieta left New York to begin a fellowship and residency at the American Academy in Rome, a period that redefined her creative process. Her time in Rome influenced the organization of the current retrospective at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Turin and inspired a documentary film currently in post-production, Itali-Ana, Mendieta in Rome, directed by Raquel Cecilia. The exhibition at Galerie Lelong opens during Frieze New York, with a public reception on May 10th from 6-8pm. The artist’s sister, Raquelin Mendieta, will be present.
 
In the 1980s, Mendieta began to shift away from performative, documented work as exemplified in two of her last films, Ochún and Birth from 1981. These films depict siluetas, potent traces of the artist’s body in the landscape, transformed by the ocean tide or ignited gunpowder. In 1982, she began creating numerous drawings directly onto fresh leaves she found in the landscape, using a variety of tools such as nails, needles, and pencils. Like her outdoor site-specific works, she embraced the natural effects of time on objects, such as the shifting color and texture of the leaves as they dried. Mendieta sought to fuse earth and form in her drawings, photographs, and sculptures. She created several sculptures that year including Fernwoman (1982), a unique sculpture standing close to five feet tall. Carved in an anthropomorphic shape from an Osmunda fern root, this work recalls primitive art. Mendieta often repeated imagery in different media, such as the “labyrinth” figure seen in La Concha de Venus (1981-82), a drawing on amate (bark) paper, and in outdoor sculptures molded in mud which she then photographed. Works like these not only show Mendieta’s continued interest in imagery of the female body, but also show her attempt to make her work more accessible to art audiences and collectors in the 1980s.
 
Mendieta’s late sculptures translate her familiar silueta-like forms into more tangible objects that became less specific to her own body and not tied to an exact location. This development can be seen in the floor sculptures Figure with Nganga (1984) and Untitled (1983-84), which show an affinity to works she made in the landscapes of places like Cuba, Iowa, and Mexico. A breakthrough in her practice at this time was combining imported sand and soil – from different locations significant to her including Cuba, the Nile in Egypt, and the Red Sea – with different binding materials to create indoor floor sculptures that carried the energy of these places. She also began making free-standing sculptures from hollowed tree trunks and wooden slabs that could rest against gallery walls. Ranging from five to seven feet tall, the wood pieces required physical rigor to transport from the forest to the studio, where she carved and burned organic patterns onto the surface. Mendieta’s archives from this period reveal that she had a strong interest in creating permanent works like these sculptures on a larger scale for public art projects. Unfortunately, some of these projects, such as her plan for an installation in Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park, were never realized due to her untimely death.
 
Ana Mendieta: Late Works 1981-1985 is the ninth solo exhibition of Mendieta’s work at Galerie Lelong, which has represented her Estate since 1991. Mendieta has had over 30 solo exhibitions worldwide, at museums including the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Kunstmuseum Luzern; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City. This January, the Castello di Rivoli began the second wave of large-scale retrospectives with the exhibition Ana Mendieta. She Got Love, which closes on June 16, 2013. The Hayward Gallery in London will open a retrospective curated by Stephanie Rosenthal on September 24 this year. In 2015, the Katherine E. Nash Gallery of the University of Minnesota will present an exhibition devoted to Mendieta’s films curated by Howard Oransky.

SPENCER FINCH: FATHOM May 2 – June 15, 2013
Press Preview: Thursday May 2, 10:00 AM
Opening Reception: Thursday May 2, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Artist Talk: Saturday May 11, 11:00 AM
James Cohan Gallery is pleased to present Fathom, Spencer Finch’s debut solo exhibition at the gallery, opening on Thursday, May 2nd and running through Saturday, June 15th. An opening reception for the artist will take place on May 2, 2013, from 6 – 8 PM.
To “fathom” is to comprehend the essence of something colossal or ineffable by translating it into terms we can grasp. For more than twenty years, Spencer Finch’s practice addresses such a need to capture and frame experience. In site-specific installation as well as drawing and sculpture, Finch has combined scientific calibration and calculation with a romantic’s engagement with nature and faith in the limitless rewards of observation.
A fathom is also a unit of measurement approximately six feet in length that is used to measure the depth of water, and a key reference point for the exhibition. After learning about Henry David Thoreau’s 1846 survey of Walden Pond, in which the famed polymath performed soundings to determine the lake’s depth at 102 feet and debunk a popular myth that it was bottomless, Finch received permission from the Walden Pond State Reservation to take a boat on the lake and perform that seminal survey for
the second time. Dropping rope into the pond, as Thoreau had, while also employing an electronic depth meter — combining old and new technology — Finch further measured longitude and latitude as well as color-matching the water at each sounding point.
The resulting work is a 120-foot long rope – the rope Finch used in the soundings, and the artist‘s description of the depth of Walden Pond. It serves as the physical record of the findings as well as an armature: paper tags for each of the approximately 700 soundings appear along the rope at their equivalent measure of depth along with their exact coordinates and a swatch of matched color, applied in watercolor. Neither entirely documentation nor sculpture, the long line may best be considered a drawing of Walden Pond.
The main gallery will include several other works delving into the idea of delineation, from continuous-line drawings of encircling vultures observed by the artist in Spain to abstract renderings of meteorological models used to predict weather patterns. Other new and recent works on view for the first time in New York address themes as varied as the color of the light on Mars, the breeze through Emily Dickinson’s bedroom window and the attempt to render wind through chalk pastel drawings of the movement of the curtains at Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s famous pavilion in Barcelona.
Spencer Finch was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1962. Recent solo exhibitions and commissions include: Following Nature, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN (2013); Painting Air, Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence, RI (2012); Lunar, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Rome, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA, Between the light - and me, Emily Dickinson Museum, Amherst, MA (2011); My Business, With the Cloud, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Evening Star, Pallant House, Chichester, UK, Between The Moon and The Sea, Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France (2010); As if the sea should part and show a further sea, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2009). He has taken part in numerous group exhibitions, including Light and Landscape, Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York, NEON, La material luminosa dell’arte, MACRO, Rome (2012); More Light, Museum De Fundatie, Zwolle (2011); Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); Making Worlds: 53rd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2009); 50 Moons of Saturn, Turin Triennial (2008); Refract, Reflect, Project: Light Work from the Collection, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. (2007); Light Art from Artificial Light, ZKM Karlsruhe and Colour After Klein, Barbican Art Gallery, London (2005). Finch lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
For press inquiries, please contact Jane Cohan at jane@jamescohan.com or at 212-714-9500.
For other inquiries, please contact Jessica Lin Cox at jcox@jamescohan.com or at 212-714-9500.

The Italian Antonio Marzi was positioned in Udine between 1944 and 1945 where he wrote a diary including observations of the events important to the war. This information was transferred to a contact person encrypted. Later, he forgot his own system of encoding, so that nobody including himself was able to read the notes. Marzi recalled, that the encryption was based on the line Un giovinetto pallido e bello of the poem Corradino di Svevia by Aleardo Aleardi. The code was cracked on February 23rd 2013.
 
Agnes Lux is an artist living and working in New York City. A catalog available at Martos Gallery will be published on the ocassion of the exhibition.
 
For further information please contact Mary Grace Wright at gracie@martosgallery.com or 212-560-0670

Curated by Nina Horisaki-Christians, Andrea Neustein, Victoria Rogers, and Jason Waite, Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellows of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program
 
Maintenance Required examines the large-scale systems that construct our daily lives through an investigation of the diversity of maintenance tasks. Durational by nature, maintenance networks provide life-perpetuating mechanisms of care, yet these systems have the potential to invisibly direct or limit life’s possibilities, even manifesting as malevolent systems of control. By dismantling our collective blindness toward maintenance activities, we can begin to examine how they condition our lives. Bringing maintenance into view exposes a constantly shifting set of social, political, and affective relations. Acknowledging maintenance systems invites questions about what needs to be maintained and under what conditions that maintenance occurs. Taking as an entry point Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ “Manifesto for Maintenance Art” (1969), in which the artist redefines maintenance activities as art, Maintenance Required focuses on artistic practices that frame and critically engage these invisible systems of life support: practices that articulate the paradoxical tensions of large-scale systems of maintenance whose power to sustain life may run parallel to the power to constrain it.
 
With works by Michael Bramwell, Goldin+Senneby, Ashley Hunt, Masaru Iwai, Yve Laris Cohen, Sam Lewitt, Park McArthur, Salvage Art Institute, Karin Sander, Taryn Simon, Pilvi Takala, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles.
 
Public Performances
Integral to the exhibition, performances will be occurring over the duration of the exhibition in the gallery and “maintenance” spaces such as the back rooms of the Kitchen and at Regus offices on Wall Street. All events are free and open to the public; for seated events, seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
 
Masaru Iwai
 
Washing Stage
 
Thursday, May 30, 5:00pm
 
Saturday, June 1, time TBA
 
Saturday, June 22, time TBA
 
Further performances TBA, please check website for updated details.
Repurposing the act of cleaning, the Tokyo-based artist Masaru Iwai will focus on the ritualistic act of cleaning and its relationship to the body while foregrounding the aesthetic materiality of the purifying act.
 
Yve Laris Cohen
 
Seth
 
Saturday, June 1, 8:00pm
 
Thursday, June 20, 8:00pm
 
In a new site-specific performance, Yve Laris Cohen meditates on the unused and unseen spaces of The Kitchen, responding to the history of the institution, the neighborhood, and the medium of performance. Exploring duration, perception, and the limits of human movement, Laris Cohen considers how maintenance, as well as the lack thereof, reveals our predilections and desires. This program is free of charge and open to the public. Space for the event is extremely limited. Reservations required; please register at maintenance.required.2013@gmail.com.
 
Ashley Hunt
 
Corrections
 
Thursday, June 6, 7:00pm
 
In his ongoing interdisciplinary project The Corrections Documentary Project, artist and filmmaker Ashley Hunt investigates the institution of the prison: how it helps to structure and preserve racial and economic divisions within society. In Corrections (2001), Hunt specifically looks at the privatization of the prison system, exposing the conflict between for-profit corporations focused on pleasing investors and the communities which must deal with the consequences of high incarceration rates.

David Zwirner is pleased to present the world debut of a new series of sculptures in the gallery’s West 19th Street spaces.
 
One of the most prominent artists working today, Jeff Koons is well known for his bold paintings and sculptures. Typically working in series, his art holds up a mirror to contemporary consumer culture, using the photorealistic, commercial aesthetic familiar from an earlier generation of Pop artists to generate his own unique and universally recognizable style. His subjects range from toys to inflatables to household items to luxury goods and sexualized imagery. His references to popular media are evidenced not merely in his choice of subject matter but also in his visual techniques: his sculptures often involve smooth, glistening surfaces while his paintings employ bright and saturated colors.
 
Born in 1955 in York, Pennsylvania, Koons studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He received his B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1976.
 
Beginning with his first solo exhibition in 1980, Koons has exhibited steadily in the United States and abroad. His work was the subject of four major solo presentations in 2008, including a large survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Celebration sculptures shown on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin; and an exhibition at the Château de Versailles, which opened its doors to a living artist for the first time with Jeff Koons: Versailles. He presented the Popeye series at London’s Serpentine Gallery in 2009, and Artist Rooms, a collection of contemporary art jointly owned by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland, toured until 2011. In 2012, the artist had his first solo show in a Swiss museum at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel as well as concurrent shows in Frankfurt at Schirn Kunsthalle, with an exhibition of paintings, and at Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, where his sculptures were shown alongside permanent collection works.
 
A major retrospective is being organized by Scott Rothkopf, Curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Opening in January 2014 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, it then goes to the Whitney in June, and travels to Centre Georges Pompidou in December, with possible additional venues in Europe. This will be the first ever one-person show to occupy all five floors of the Whitney. It will mark the final exhibition at the Marcel Breuer-designed building on Madison Avenue, before the Whitney moves into its new building in downtown Manhattan, near Chelsea and the High Line.
 
Koons earned renown for his public sculptures, such as the monumental floral sculpture Puppy (1992), shown at New York’s Rockefeller Center and permanently installed at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Another floral sculpture, Split-Rocker (2000), was installed at the Palais des Papes in Avignon and at the Château de Versailles.
 
Koons has received numerous awards and honors in recognition of his cultural achievements. In 2012, he was recognized by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for his participation in the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies program. Created to promote deeper cultural understanding through sharing art, the program — which marked its 50th anniversary in 2012 — selects and displays artwork purchased or borrowed for embassies, consulates, and ambassadors’ residences. In 2009, he received the John Singleton Copley Award from the American Associates of the Royal Academy Trust and the Governor’s Awards for the Arts (from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts), where he was given the Distinguished Arts Award. In 2007, former French President Jacques Chirac promoted Koons to Officier de la Légion d’honneur.
 
Work by the artist is in numerous public collections, including The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica, California; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He lives and works in New York.