advent calendar 2016 - part 2 (7 - 12 December)

Continuing our part 2 of the advent calendar series featured on our instagram in the run-up to Christmas:

Day 7: Gazelli Art House @gazelliarthouse recommends Philip Colbert's neon artwork. Pop!  a toast for a happy holiday & wonderful 2017! 

Day 8: Calvert 22 @calvert22foundation recommends Associated Nostalgia by Bulgarian-born photographer Eugenia Maximova @emax, one of the artists exhibiting at 2016 New East Photo Prize Exhibition. The series presents colourful trinkets that belonged t Eugenia Maximova o the artist's relatives & friends who displayed them in their homes during Bulgaria's otherwise bleak communist period. These objects are of little monetary value but now represent the priceless memories & family histories which the photos celebrate. 

Day 9: Leyden Gallery @leyden_gallery recommends South African born Vivienne Koorland. Her solo exhibition Soft Heart has at its own nodal core, the intersection of the Artist’s Body and a Body of Art travelling. Koorland is also currently showing together with William Kentridge at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. Her​ painting 'Soft Heart' appears​over Christmas & the New Year​ in the Winter Salon at Leyden Gallery from 15.12.2016 to 14.01.2017

Day 10: Maria-Lena Hedberg's work is featured in the group show 'Shifting States' at Espacio Gallery @espaciogallery. The exhibition presents works in various media / formats. The creative processes of the participating artists involve entering a state of flux in which the destination is initially unknown. The overt subject might be a time, a place or a psychological state – or all of the above.

Day 11: Candice Lin's System for a Stain installed in Gasworks gallery @gasworkslondon explores how histories of slavery & colonialism have been shaped by human attraction to particular colours, tastes, textures & drugs. It combines organic processes with DIY mechanics to create a metabolic machine that echoes the unrelenting flow of bodies & matter in colonial trade. Incorporating various handmade trinkets and curios, such as glazed cochineal vases and a tea strainer based on the upturned bust of Scottish botanist Robert Fortune, the installation transforms prized, historically loaded goods into a blood-like stain.

Day 12: Here is Big Bifur by Jean-Luc Moulène currently on display in the group show Thinking Tantra at Drawing Room @drawingroom_ldn . A trans-historical exhibition that begins with anonymous Tantric drawings, the collection dates from the second half of the 19th century, continues with work made in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s by Indian artists & includes work by 10 international contemporary artists. Tantra is a body of beliefs & practices that enables individuals to conjoin with something much larger than themselves - 'nothing short of cosmic forces'.

See the previous entries at part 1 here.

mayfair art walk - april 2013

The mayfair art scene has gone minimal and zen last month with the following shows in the neighbourhood.

Bischoff/Weiss gallery


Londoner Nathaniel Rackowe was showing in this simple space on Hay Hill (off Dover Street). The gallery walls are plain white and the floor are laid with zig-zag wooden tiles. It feels like an unoccupied studio/loft space.


Nathaniel's works have created an interesting tension with the gallery space. The sterile cold cathode lights juxtapose with colour neons. Mirrors and sheets of glass form new shadow dimensions within the exhibition space, amplifying the presence of passing-by visitors. These reflections connect individual pieces around together to become an integral piece as a whole, with the visitor's movements injecting a temporary dynamic component to it.


Full photo set here

28.03-05.06.2013
Gazelli Art House


Over Dover Street, we saw Italian artist Aron Demetz & Korean artist Shan Hur in a joint show. The connection between the works of the two artists are not obvious, in fact it is almost non-existent.


Aron's raw wooden figures are fascinating in the way they tries to represent life in two dimensions - that they are made of timber which was alive in the past and its form are human. He even has fake mushrooms growing from some of the figures, pretending life is thriving again on these dead logs.

this crack is a small-scale replica or Doris Salcedo's giant crack in Tate Modern Turbine Hall? 

Shan's works on the contrary are more site-specific and look like a parody of the gallery experience. As part of the gallery's Window Project, he duplicated the gallery entrance's columns right behind the entrance doors and twisted one of them as one of the show pieces.

Full photo set here

*****

Further Readings
Page: official press release for the Tainted show
Page: Garden fence uprising designed by Nathaniel Rackowe; by Manijeh Verghese for Iconeye.com