change of season

joe scanlan
change of season

March 14 - May 9, 2009

Galerie de Expeditie is pleased to present an exhibition by New York-based artist Joe Scanlan (1961). Prior to the opening of his exhibition in de Expeditie in 2005, Scanlan held the press conference Two or Three Americans Field Questions About Their Country From In Bed. In 2001 Scanlan created Donelle Woolford, who had a solo show at the gallery last Winter. Most recently he was the the subject of an evolving, 18-month, one-person exhibition titled Passing Through at the K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

change of season has an atmosphere of anticipation. Everyone is waiting for the Winter to end, hoping for a fresh start once Spring settles in. This mixture of boredom and excitement, this chemistry is the subject of the exhibition. In addition to several forsythia pieces and mural drawings, the show consists of an old-fashioned computer harddrive with delicate snowflake images and a table with a puzzle of a Hans Hofmann painting. Visitors are more than welcome to work on the puzzle, while waiting for the change of season.

Galerie De Expeditie - Amsterdam

The Minimalist Site

The Minimalist Site
April 23 - June 19, 2009

Barbara Mathes Gallery is pleased to present "The Minimalist Site," a group exhibition of Minimalist sculpture and painting that explores the relationship between the work of art and its supporting architecture. This issue was central to the Minimalists' formal reductions and elimination of narrative. By paring down internal dynamics, their work acquired a reflexivity, in which art acknowledged or responded to its immediate environment. For these artists, the surrounding architecture took on new importance. No longer anonymous supports, the wall and floor became active surfaces that could be incorporated into the work. The ramifications of this insight continue to be felt today, as site specific and installation strategies have become essential components of contemporary artistic practices.

The centerpiece of this exhibition is a rare and monumental Sol LeWitt wall relief from 1977. This structure transforms the wall into a platform for a pioneering form of modular sculpture. Using an open square as a standardized unit, LeWitt translates a conceptual statement into sculptural form. In raking light, this work opens onto the wall to create an intricate interplay of geometry and shadow.

Other works in the show include a Frame/Ellipse painting by Robert Mangold, in which a shaped canvas becomes an architectural framing device. A Carl Andre copper sculpture dispenses with the pedestal and lies directly on the floor, expanding horizontally across the exhibition space. Dan Flavin's corner-mounted fluorescent tubes paint the walls with pure, luminous hue. A plank by John McCracken leans casually against the wall, creating an external geometry of negative space.

Together, these works open a window onto the full richness of the Minimalist generation. Rather than representing an aesthetic of puritanical austerity, these artists were committed to rethinking the limits of traditional mediums and expanding the parameters of modern art.

Barbara Mathes Gallery

Surrendering the Absolutes

Robert Longo
Surrendering the Absolutes
23 April - 30 May 2009

Metro Pictures presents "Surrendering the Absolutes," an exhibition of new work by Robert Longo. Featuring a group of Longo's signature large-scale charcoal drawings, the works represent a departure from his recent serial approach to a subject and instead are linked by atmospheric sensations of light and abstracted imagery.

As the title of the show suggests, Longo is focused on the shifts of perception that an image can at once evoke and extend in relation to its environment. The centerpiece of the show is a five-panel 25-foot drawing "Untitled (Cathedral of Light)," an image of glaring sunlight flooding through massive cathedral windows. Other images include a satellite view of Tokyo, its radiating roadways appearing as shattered glass; an immense concert stage where light physically engulfs the musicians; an exterior view of the hull of an airplane, its lighted windows revealing the isolation of people in close confinement; and a lone figure walking through an eerily illuminated forest. With this group of drawings, Longo extends his unique drawing method that employs deep blackened expanses with sharply contrasting whites to include nuanced gray tones that evoke smoky hazes and softened elusive forms.

Longo will also include a new sculpture, a 12-foot tower of four black charcoal drawings framed behind glass making explicit his interest in the cacophony of reflections created in the rooms where his works hang, by both mirroring the objects in its presence and co-opting them into its black void.

Robert Longo has had solo exhibitions at Hamburger Kunstverein and Deichtorhallen, Menil Collection in Houston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hartford Athenaeum, Isetan Museum of Art in Tokyo, Museen Haus Lange and Haus Esters, Krefeld, Germany and the Albertina Museum, Vienna. Group exhibitions include Documenta, the Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennale.

A survey exhibition of Longo's work will open at Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, Nice, in June of this year. His work is featured in the Metropolitan Museum's exhibition "The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984," April 20 to August 2.

In addition to the catalogue accompanying the Nice exhibition, a book of Longo's recent, large-scale drawings (from 2000 to present) from Hatje Kantz and a publication of the original photographs used for Longo's seminal "Men in the Cities" drawings from Schirmer/Mosel, are both forthcoming.

Opening: Thursday, April 23, 6 - 8 pm

Metro Pictures

Che fare? What is to be done?

Che fare? What is to be done?
a series of performances
April 3 – June 21, 2009

What is to be done? is a series of events, actions and performances at the Castello di Rivoli beginning in April 2009. Each event occurs in a different area of the museum. Che fare? takes its title from a 1902 text by Vladimir Lenin, itself inspired by an 1863 novel by Nikolai Chernyshevsky. Che fare? also refers to a celebrated work by Mario Merz, created in the midst of the 1968 protests, which reflects on the perennial doubt that accompanies artists in their relations to the world. Performance Art emerged in the 1960s and developed in the 1970s, although examples of performances can be found as far back as the early years of the last century, with events staged by the Dadaists and Futurists. A genre that has been widely rediscovered today, performance plays a significant role in contemporary art – occupying a space that lies between the permanent and the ephemeral. This project is an occasion to reflect on the relationship between art, ideas and action. Invited artists include Ana Prvacki, Nedko Solakov, Massimo Grimaldi, Mark Leckey and Dan Perjovschi. For different reasons, these artists refer to the difficulty of acting and agency in today’s world, often due to conflicts which apparently have no solution. The common element in these works is however expressive generosity and a sense of the real or possible participation by the public.

Castello di Rivoli - Museo d'Arte Contemporanea