FEATURES

22 Meditative Ink Art

Harry Frost makes intentional and strategic use of fountain pens in his work. The result is serenity-filled art.

34 Living Sculptures

Using varied approaches, preferred paper, and specific references, Matthew Smith has developed an impressive portfolio of charcoal drawings.

49 Illustrative Portraits

Mendy Sylvain has always been exactly who he is — a talented illustrator who finds inspiration from creativity all around him.

©2023 by Vika Visual Arts Association

Iabsolutely love drawings. Although I’m obsessed with all forms of art, drawing appeals to me because of its pure form. There isn’t much post production, if any at all. It’s simply the artist and the drawing tool of choice. The work produced is simple. Clean. Refreshing.

Of course, drawing requires skillful artistry and sometimes years of practice to perfect, as explained by the three artists we interviewed in this issue. Harry Frost chooses to draw with a fountain pen, a process that he finds meditative. Matthew Smith favors charcoal and graphite, and Mendy Sylvain uses charcoal, Indian ink, pencil, and pen.

With their artistic strokes, these artists let us into their worlds. Enjoy the scenery, figures and compositions, portraits, and endless details in the work of these talented gentlemen. A special thank you to Harry, Matthew and Mendy, as they were especially gracious in collaborating with us.

Happy reading!

Devika Strother, Editor in Chief devika@artdictionmagazinecom

Hauser & Wirth to Open Its Third Space in New York

Hauser & Wirth will add another location to its portfolio of 15 exhibition spaces. This fall the megagallery will set up shop just south of where it already operates two spaces. Hauser & Wirth will open in SoHo, at 134 Wooster, once occupied by Gagosian Gallery when SoHo was New York’s main gallery neighborhood. It will be Hauser & Wirth’s third space in the city, after ones in Chelsea and the Upper East Side. “It’s not that we were looking for a space in SoHo,” Marc Payot, Hauser & Wirth president, said in an interview. “But this space became available and that’s what figured in our wish to be present there. We have a tendency to go to places where others don’t go.”

The ground-floor gallery, with 16-and-a-half-foot ceilings and 4,000 square feet of space, is one of the few remaining single-story buildings in the city’s SoHoHistoric Cast Iron District. The gallery will maintain the building’s architecture, which dates back to 1920 when it was built as a truck garage.

“For most of our galleries, we have transformed existing spaces into galleries,” Payot said. “When possible, we like to respect the original architecture and pay tribute to that when it is a beautiful space. In this case, a well-proportioned, simple space with skylights is ideal. It’s also very different from what we have in Chelsea or Uptown. We loved it, as it was in its bones.” For just over two decades, SoHo was the undisputable premier gallery neighborhood in New York. In 1968, Paula Cooper was the first art dealer to open a commercial gallery space in SoHo, which was located on Prince Street. From 1972 to 1996, Paula Cooper was located on the same block of Wooster Street, before moving to West 21st Street in Chelsea. Other dealers soon followed, with 420 West Broadway hosting several galleries over the course of its history, including Leo Castelli, Ileana Sonnabend, André Emmerich, and Mary Boone.

Since the exodus to Chelsea in the mid-’90s, few galleries have remained or opened in SoHo, with the exception of June Kelly and Louis K. Meisel, which are still active, and Team Gallery, which operated on Grand Street and closed in 2020. From 1996 to 2010, Deitch Projects operated a few blocks south, at 18 Wooster Street, then the home of the Swiss Institute, which Jeffrey Deitch reopened as his space in 2016. In January, Los Angeles–based dealer Nino Mier opened a new space on Crosby Street, just south of Spring Street.

Hauser & Wirth’s opening in SoHo marks its first official gallery space in Lower Manhattan, though its founders did operate a temporary space out of an apartment on Franklin Street some three decades ago.

Gallery cofounder Iwan Wirth first had a presence in the city in partnership with David Zwirner, who at the time had a gallery at 43 Greene Street in SoHo. Under the name Zwirner & Wirth, that enterprise ran on the Upper East Side on 69th Street from 2000 to 2009, when Hauser & Wirth took over the space. It first opened in Chelsea in 2013 on West 18th Street, which it closed in 2016. In New York, the gallery continues to operate its 69th Street location in addition to a custom-built space on West 22nd Street, which opened in 2020. The nearby neighborhood of Tribeca is a more common destination for galleries these days, with PPOW, JTT, Andrew Kreps, James Cohan, and Canada relocating there in recent years. Alexander Gray Associates and Marian

Unlike Hauser & Wirth’s other spaces, the forthcoming SoHo gallery will have shows that will be on view for longer periods of time, as a way to encourage more sustained engagement with the shows. It’s an approach that takes into account “who is in SoHo,” which at the moment isn’t the most heavily trafficked neighborhood as an art hub, according to Payot.

“It gives the opportunity to visit in a similar way that you would visit a museum—we’re not caught in a six-times-a-year rotation,” he said. “Depending on what the show is, the gallery will create links with the cultural landscape of the city.”

Additionally, Hauser & Wirth announced that Artfarm, an independent hospitality group that was founded by gallery cofounders Iwan and Manuela Wirth in 2014, will open a new restaurant kitty-corner to the SoHo space, at 130 Prince Street, next year.

Artfarm currently operates two of the three restaurants at Hauser & Wirth’s locations, Manuela at its downtown Los Angeles space and the Roth Bar & Grill at its Somerset gallery. (The third restaurant, the Cantina in Menorca, is operated by the local Bodegas Binifadet.)

Additionally, Artfarm operates a five-star boutique hotel in Scotland, the Fife Arms, as well as the Audley Public House in Mayfair and the Groucho Club in London’s Soho, among other properties.

“New York is a very dense urban environment so it’s not comparable to these places but what is the same and what has the same ethos is that proximity between the gallery and a restaurant,” Payot said. “Because these two spaces were available at the same time, we said this is a unique opportunity in New York to mirror these two very important entities for us. We love that proximity that creates spaces where artists want to be and where our community wants to participate.”

Ilya Kabakov, Ukrainian American Conceptual Artist, Dies at 89 forced to evacuate to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, during World War II, he continued to attend the Leningrad Academy of Art. At the age of 18, he enrolled at the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow to study graphic design and illustration. After joining the official Union of Soviet Artists in 1959, Kabakov made a living producing drawings for children’s books in the state-sanctioned style of Socialist Realism.

Ukrainian American conceptual artist Ilya Kabakov died May 27 at the age of 89. Kabakov’s works were often based upon his experiences of life under the Soviet Union. His subject never shied from themes of totalitarian suppression and thwarted dreams but were always underscored by a fantastical quality, offering hope for a more utopian future.

Since 1983, Kabakov has been particularly celebrated for his “total installations,” a genre of fully immersive environments that he pioneered. Together, the Kabakovs have created over 200 of these large-scale works, which often convey dramatic narratives via a cast of fictional characters.

In private, however, he became associated with an unofficial, underground group of conceptual artists, the Stretensy Boulevard Group, and met like-minded thinkers like the artists Erik Bulatov and Oleg Vassiliev and the philosopher and critic Boris Groys. Around this time, he started making work that satirized Soviet society and experimented with new media like assemblage. After some decades, the worlds he was building started to leap off the page and, in 1983, he began making his famous installations.

Ilya Iosifovich Kabakov was born in the city of Dnipropetrovsk in 1933, when Ukraine was part of the former USSR. His interest in art came to him naturally as a young boy, and even when he was

The earliest and best known example is The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment (1985), produced while Kabakov was still working out of his secret attic studio in Moscow. The work recreates a typically shabby bedroom in a communal apartment, a kind of

Soviet residence that accommodated multiple households. The small, oppressive space has propaganda photos tacked onto the wall, exemplary of the artist’s flare for establishing a specific mood and place.

Surprisingly, however, viewers are able to see a large hole in the ceiling. Accompanying texts give the accounts of several neighbors, who recall how the former resident Nikolaev dreamed of space travel and escaping his downtrodden existence. It would appear that in the end he succeeded, catapulting himself away from this grim reality into a faraway, celestial realm that audiences are left to imagine. When the work debuted at Ronald Feldman Gallery in 1988, it was an immediate sensation, cementing Kabakov’s reputation as one of history’s most important Soviet artists.

Eventually, his works began to be shown in the West, where they offered early glimpses into life behind the iron curtain, starting with a 1985 exhibition at the Bern Kunsthalle. In 1987, he was able to move to Austria for a fellowship at the Graz Kunstverein and just a year later he resettled in the U.S.

“Meeting Ilya when he immigrated from Russia to Austria made a deep impression on me,” his longtime dealer Thaddaeus Ropac told Artnet News. “I learnt so much from him about conceptual art, and the simple power of his installations were truly groundbreaking. I was privileged to have worked with him over the course of more than 35 years.”

Shortly after arriving in New York, buoyed by the buzz around his Ronald Feldman Gallery show, Kabakov met the curator and dealer Emilia Kanevsky (née Lekach). He had known her as a child since she was his niece. They married in 1992, and enjoyed over three decades of fruitful collaboration at their home and studio on Long Island. Highlights of this partnership have included Documenta in 1992, their representation of Russia at the Venice Biennale in 1993, the inclusion of The Red Pavilion at the 1997 Whitney Biennial, one of the first solo surveys dedicated to a living artist at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in 2004, and major retrospectives at both Tate Modern and the Hirshhorn in 2017. the Kelham Island Museum in the early morning of Sunday, May 14. In what museum officials have described as “a carefully planned theft,” thieves took 12 “irreplaceable” objects that were located behind display cases. Stolen pieces include knives, sculptures, and silver kitchenware that relate to the city’s history of metalworking, a longtime staple industry in Sheffield.

Philanthropically minded, the Kabakovs also launched the humanitarian art project The Ship of Tolerance, a vessel whose sails are adorned with the drawings of children. It was first conceived in Siwa, Egypt, but has since been at the Venice Biennale, the Sharjah Biennial, the Havana Biennial, as well as institutions in Rome, London, Chicago and Zug in Switzerland.

The stolen objects date back to the 1700s, some of which are on loan from the Sheffield Assay Office as well as those featured in exhibitions created by the Ken Hawley Collection Trust. “We’re deeply saddened by the break-in at Kelham Island Museum over the weekend,” chief executive of the Sheffield Museums Trust Kim Streets said in a public statement.

Kabakov is survived by his wife, his daughter Galina, his grandchildren Joseph, Orliana, Aurora, Anja and his great-grandchildren, Anastasia and Maxim. A statement released by his family described Kabakov as a “great artist, philosopher, beloved husband, treasured father, and adored grandfather” and confirmed that he died peacefully, “surrounded by his loved ones.”

Metal Works Stolen in UK Museum Heist

A dozen objects were stolen from

“The historical significance of these items goes far beyond any financial value they hold,” Streets continued. “They span one of the first objects hallmarked by Sheffield Assay Office to knives made by one of our last Little Mesters, the much-missed Stan Shaw, and are irreplaceable touchstones of Sheffield’s rich heritage.”

Located south of Leeds in South Yorkshire, the city has a lengthy history of metalworking and cutlery production, which was largely carried out by local artisans known as Little Mesters. Sheffield’s close proximity to raw materials rivers and forests that helped fuel machinery, made it a main center for cutlery production outside of London by 1600, according to historians. The earliest reference dates back to 1297 when tax records identified an individual as “Robertus le Coteler,” or Robert the Cutler, according to the Sheffield Museums’s website. In 1340, a Sheffield knife belonging to King Edward III was found at the Tower of London.

The stolen objects from the Kelham Island Museum include four Jason Heppenstall sculptures, a 104-blade exhibition knife (1800), and two knife displays made by one of the area’s last Little Mesters Stan Shaw, who died in 2021.

This recent theft is unfortunately not the first to occur in Sheffield. Earlier this year, the Sheffield Assay Office was targeted by thieves when over $100,000 worth of items was taken during a break-in. The incident resulted in 14 stolen items and two damaged display cases.

“Once again, similar to the Assay Office break-in earlier this year, the articles stolen do not have any real sell on value. To Sheffield Museums and the stories they celebrate, these represent a far wider loss and are totally irreplaceable,” Ashley Carson, assay master for the Sheffield Assay Office, said in a statement.

Streets said that the stolen objects are “very distinctive” and likely to end up on the market. “We’re appealing to the public to be vigilant and to share any information they have that might aid their recovery with South Yorkshire Police,” Streets said.

DC Arts Commission Announces New Director

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (CAH) has named Aaron Myers as its new Executive Director. After a four-month search, the Council of the District of Columbia voted unanimously to confirm his appointment. In his new role, Myers will oversee the agency’s efforts to support and promote the arts in the District of Columbia, including managing grant programs, public art installations, and cultural events in Washington, DC.

Aaron Myers as the new Executive Director of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Aaron’s passion for the arts and commitment to community engagement make him the ideal person to lead the Commission in its mission to support and promote the arts in the District of Columbia. We look forward to working with him to build a more vibrant and inclusive arts ecosystem in our city,” said Reggie Van Lee, Chair of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Myers himself is a DC-based artist, a renowned jazz vocalist, pianist, educator, and activist. He has been an active member of the DC arts community for more than a decade, serving as the Artist-in-Residence at the Black Fox Lounge, Mr. Henry’s Restaurant, The Eaton, and performing at venues across the city. Additionally, he is the founding Board Chair of the Capitol Hill Jazz Foundation, serves on the Board of Governors of the DC Recording Academy and has been recognized for his work in arts education. Further, Myers is known for his advocacy for social justice and community engagement. He has served as a community organizer and principle organizer of the DMV Music Stakeholders, a grassroots effort to center relief and resources for members of the music community impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Executive Committee of the DC Branch of the NAACP.

“We are excited to welcome

“I am excited to be given the opportunity to serve this community, in this capacity, at this moment, and I thank Chair Van Lee and the commissioners and staff, as well as Chairman Phil Mendelson and the Council for their confidence and support. I look forward to working together, along with Mayor Muriel Bowser, to meet the moment for our creatives, and to truly reinforce to the world that DC is the District of Creatives, the Creative Capital of this Country,” said Myers.

$20 Million Worth of Treasures

From the Rothschild Dynasty Is Heading to the First Auction of Its Kind

A trove of some 600 objects collected by the French branch of the famed Rothschild banking family—including paintings, furniture, enamels, maiolica, Renaissance jewelry, and silver—will go on sale at Christie’s this fall. The first auction in North America of objects amassed by the family, whose name is synonymous with wealth and luxe collecting, is expected to fetch in excess of $20 million.

The sale will take place in October at the auction house’s Rockefeller Plaza headquarters. Highlights of the sale are currently on a world tour, having just been viewed in Hong Kong and bound next for London, where they will be displayed July 1–7.

“Throughout the 19th century, the Rothschild family’s collecting was the stuff of legend,” Jonathan Rendell, deputy chairman of Christie’s Americas, told Artnet News. “They combined great paintings and works of art into interiors in what is now known as goût Rothschild (Rothschild taste).’”

He explained that the sale will include Kunstkammer objects including nautilus shell cups, Renaissance-style jewels, and important Urbino, Gubbio and Hispano-Moresque ceramics and Sèvres porcelain, together with Dutch paintings and Italian pietra dura cabinets. A highlight is a series of gilded leather panels depicting the triumph of David, attributed to a follower of Rembrandt and estimated to fetch $1.5 million. “Unseen in public for 150 years,” he added, “the Rothschild masterpieces are already causing a stir in the market.”

Christie’s defines “the Rothschild taste” as “sumptuous domesticity,” and points out that it was highly influential on wealthy houses in the city. In 1862, they welcomed Napoleon III to a gala opening of the palatial Ferrières home, designed by architect Joseph Paxton—perhaps best known for the Crystal Palace in London, designed for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

American collecting families such as the Vanderbilts, Astors, and Rockefellers.

The items were bought, largely during the later 19th century, by Baron James Mayer de Rothschild and his wife Betty, along with their son Baron Alphonse and his wife Leonora, to furnish their Château de Ferrières, near Paris, and their

ArtDiction | 10 | March/April 2023

A German-French banker, Baron James was the founder of the French branch of the family and a major figure in the financing of the railroads and mining business that made France an industrial power after the Napoleonic Wars. JeanAuguste Dominique Ingres painted a portrait of Betty that remains in the family’s collection. Alphonse, in addition to banking, operated a vineyard and owned and bred racehorses, among other activities.

Christie’s has handled countless items from the Rothschild family over more than 100 years. A July 2019 sale in London totaled $29.4 million, some 280% above the low estimate.

Whitney Museum Hires Brooklyn Museum Curator for Photography Department

Drew Sawyer, a curator at the Brooklyn Museum, has been appointed the Whitney Museum’s Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography starting this July.

Elisabeth Sussman, the curator who had long held that post, is set to remain on the Whitney staff as she completes an exhibition focused on polymath artist Harry Smith, set to open in the fall. The museum did not specify what her role would be, however.

At the Brooklyn Museum, Sawyer’s exhibitions included a recent retrospective for Jimmy DeSana, a photographer whose sexually frank art made him a key member of the 1980s art scene before he died of AIDS-related causes in 1990. This November, Sawyer is set to open “Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines,” which the Brooklyn Museum is billing as one of the largest museum shows dedicated to zines.

Before joining the Brooklyn Museum, Sawyer had been at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, where he co-organized “Art after Stonewall: 1969–1989,” an ambitious survey of two pivotal decades of queer art. The show ranked on an ARTnews list of the most important exhibitions of the 2010s.

Other shows curated by Sawyer include celebrated solos for John Edmonds and Liz Johnson Artur, both at the Brooklyn Museum, which hired him in 2018.

“Drew is one of the liveliest and most penetrating minds in the field of photography and contemporary art today,” Scott Rothkopf, who will soon assume his post as director of the Whitney, said in a statement.

At the Whitney, Sawyer will spearhead the acquisition committee devoted to works of photography. With drawings and prints curator Kim Conaty, Sawyer will also facilitate the Sondra Gilman Study Center, named for the Whitney’s longest-serving trustee and home to the museum’s more than 19,000 prints, drawings, and photographs.

“I am excited to be joining the team at the Whitney at a pivotal time in the institution’s history, and I look forward to continuing their work in championing living artists and in redefining discourses in U.S. American photography and art

ArtDiction | 11 | March/April 2023 through its renowned collection and programming,” Sawyer said in a statement.

His hire is the latest shift in the museum’s curatorial staff. In February, Marcela Guerrero was promoted from assistant curator to curator, and Jennie Goldstein was made associate curator. Rothkopf, currently senior deputy director and chief curator, was named director the following month.

Similarly, Sawyer’s departure from the Brooklyn Museum is the second high-profile one this month; Eugenie Tsai, the institution’s longtime senior curator of contemporary art, announced she would step down at the end of June.

Ngaire Blankenberg Quietly Departs National Museum of African Art After Less Than Two Years

The National Museum of African Art is again without a director for the third time in six years. Ngaire Blankenberg quietly left the post on March 31. She had served in the role for less than two years. The interim director will be John Lapiana, senior advisor to the undersecretary of museums and culture, who also served as deputy director since last spring.

Blankenberg encountered “individual and institutional resistance and then backlash,” she told the Art Newspaper via email. “There’s a lot of pressure and hope put on individual leaders, especially Black women, but at the first sign of trouble… well she becomes the problem. It’s becoming a cliché.” Blankenberg began at the museum a year after the post was vacated by Augustus Casely-Hayford, who was director for two years and departed in early 2020.

When she took the job, Blankenberg told MuseumNext that she had set an “insane challenge” for herself and her team: to bring in a global African audience of Gen Z and Millennials. “My vision is to create a 21st-century global African art museum, with an international presence in Africa and the African diaspora,” she told Smithsonian Magazine in 2022.

“For me it was a fantastic opportunity to really push the boundaries of what is a museum in the 21st century and what is an African art museum in the 21st century in America,” she told MuseumNext. The museum was established in 1964 in a Capitol Hill residence and became part of the Smithsonian Institution 14 years later, taking residence on the National Mall in 1987.

The museum made headlines last year, when the Smithsonian Institution approved the return of 29 Benin bronzes to Nigeria that were looted by British soldiers in a violent 1897 raid of the Royal Palace. The museum had removed them from view in 2021. That decision came from Blankenberg, who was, according to an April email to all directors from Kevin Gover, under secretary for museums and culture, “a leading voice in developing the Smithsonian’s new ethical returns policy.”

In July 2020, some former employees and former board members spoke out about an enduring culture of racism and racial bias at the museum, according seum. “I don’t know if many of the initiatives I put into place will continue—the institutional partnerships in Nigeria and South Africa, the Scholarly Advisory Committee, the African museology project, the Live Art series, the African design showcase, the Research Gallery to provide a space for the artistic community of DC—but I am really proud that I tried and I showed how much richer the museum could be if it just let other people make real contributions,” she says, “in this case artists, curators, designers, scholars, architects and the public who are both African and American and global all at once!” to CultureType. At the time of her hire, Blankenberg told CultureType that her “main priority” was to “hire more BIPOC staff in positions of power” and “ensure Black and racialized staff are supported and empowered.”

Ngaire stated that she is proud of her attempts to open up the mu-

ArtDiction | 12 | March/April 2023

The Canadian native started her career in television and documentary production. Her portfolio included the National Gallery of Canada, Superblue, the Museum and Archive of the Constitution at the Hill in Johannesburg, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. She also consulted on the exhibition team and education strategies for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, also a Smithsonian institution.

Exhibits

Bernard Lokai

May 25–June 30, 2023

Hosfelt Gallery presents Bernard Lokai. When German painter Bernard Lokai saw images of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he was immediately transported to memories of his family’s escape from Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. He responded with a series of abstract, deeply felt paintings that explore the connections between his own past and the immediacy and emotion of global political events.

Lokai’s work uses the historical vernacular of painting – including the active brushstrokes of Abstract Expressionism and the spray paint of graffiti – to simultaneously absorb and disrupt traditions of landscape and abstraction. In this new body of work, Lokai addresses his own refugee experience with bold, gestural marks and strategically positioned negative space. Often combining multiple techniques within a single work and leaving portions of the canvas raw around the movement and impact of the central forms, Lokai uses every tool at his disposal, from sprayed neon acrylics to thickly applied brushstrokes in oil.

Lokai’s new work expresses a direct emotion around a particular event, and deviates from earlier, more studied paintings “about painting.” While his practice ceaselessly probes the traditions and tropes of the genre, these new compositions bring the history and legacy of painting into an urgent present.

He studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Gerhard Richter and now resides in Düsseldorf and Berlin.

Alessandro Casetti: Sulla mia Pell June 24–30, 2023

Artplex Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Italian contemporary artist Alessandro Casetti. Featuring a new body of work in the artist’s signature style, Alessandro Casetti: Sulla mia Pelle entices the viewer into a dialogue between microcosm and macrocosm through delicate cracks, saturated fields of color, and archetypal femininity.

“With my faces, I metaphorically represent through the skin all the emotional processes that take place within those unexplored worlds. A skin that tells like a geographical map every latitude of our deepest and most intimate selves. An introspective journey that points its finger at the crooked and subtle edges of our ego. Because it is right there inside that the bud of everything that will happen outside is born. Deep and direct glances, at other times elusive and distant, manifest hidden universes. Cracks of color that open in a space where everything dissolves, perhaps to make way for a better future.”

Alessandro Casetti is a painter, singer, and musician, born in Bagno di Romagna in Italy in 1981. He earned a diploma from the Art Institute of Sansepolcro and attended the Fine Art Academy in Florence. In 2002, Casetti showcased his work for the first time at a prestigious art gallery in Florence. Since then, Casetti has gone on to participate in several successful international exhibitions and is increasingly sought after by collectors worldwide.

Casetti uses industrial paints, water, and white spirit enamels applied solely by gravity on wood or canvas. The colors take on different shapes and textures creating a crackle effect. The work becomes material, alive. The result is something infinitely large or infinitely small; a satellite vision of the planet, the cracks of the parched earth, fossils of ancient lakes; or maybe, on the opposite side of the spectrum, the slow progress of mold seen through a microscope.

Casetti’s works are collected internationally and the artist has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany,

The works on view, which span from the 19th through 21st centuries, reveal a range of moving and sometimes unexpected biographies.

Denmark, Taiwan, and the United States.

Since the opening of Artplex Gallery in 2018, the gallery continues to be one of the world’s leading art galleries specializing in high-quality, original contemporary art representing a broad spectrum of major international artists. Right at home in West Hollywood and within immediate proximity to its sister gallery Artspace Warehouse, Artplex Gallery is an expansive modern space that specializes in international urban, pop, graffiti, figurative, and abstract art catering to the visual impact.

What That Quilt Knows About Me

Until October 29, 2023

What That Quilt Knows About Me explores the personal and emotional power associated with the experience of making and living with quilts. The exhibition’s title expresses the indication that quilts have the capability of “knowing” or containing information about the human experience. Reflecting on this sentiment, the exhibition presents quilts as collections of intimate stories.

The works on view, which span from the 19th through 21st centuries, reveal a range of moving and sometimes unexpected biographies. From a pair of enslaved sisters in antebellum Kentucky to a convalescent British soldier during the Crimean War, the exhibition explores stories associated with both the makers and recipients of the works. On a quilt top from the 1890s, we find a surface bursting with narratives; in an example by Hystercine Rankin, a grid of small vignettes depicts scenes of family life defined by faith and toil.

Additionally, the exhibition explores how artists have continually drawn inspiration from and pushed the boundaries of quilt-making to incorporate surprising materials and ideas, inviting audiences to consider these objects as archives of personal human experiences. Dindga McCannon’s Mary Lou Williams, a quilt-like work, is created with paint, photographs, and fibers, as a tribute to the jazz musician and cultural environment of Harlem. Jessie Dunahoo uses plastic bags and yarn to evoke quilt-like coverings that swath the interior surfaces of his home.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the following recordings from the Museum’s Oral History project are available:

*Dr. Diana Baird N’Diaye, artist and Senior Folklife Curator, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage

*Patricia Gorelangton, Hawaiian quilt maker

*Dr. Raymond Bellamy, grandson of quilter Dr. Raymond Bellamy

*Venancio Aragon, textile weaver

The exhibition is curated by Emelie Gevalt, Curatorial Chair for Collections and Curator of Folk Art at the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) and Sadé Ayorinde, Warren Family Assistant Curator.

Constructed Truths: Alexandra Flood, Andrew Morrow, & Atticus Gordon

May 19–July 2, 2023

Alexandra Flood, Atticus Gordon, and Andrew Morrow share a love of painterly mark-making. Each uses emotive, thoughtful brushwork to build sophisticated visual truths for the digital era. Viewers of Constructed Truths are invited to reflect on questions the art- ists considered as they worked: what does a digital image feel like? What does it mean to pose for a portrait over Zoom? And, what happens when we put away our smartphones — and our reference points — and lose ourselves in the luxury of pure colour? with digital culture, often beginning his compositional process with animation and ‘photobashing,’ a form of montage which eliminates the visible seams between different source images. Unlike an animator, however, Gordon creates digital images only at the start of his creative process. Gordon then moves to painting, where he seeks to reveal the ‘truth’ about the digital universe. His latest works reveal ideas sparked by his enrolment in the MFA program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. References to both American art and Canadian modernism, as well as digital fantasies, appear in his landscapes. Gordon’s graduate training is a sequel to his studies at the University of Ottawa, where he counted Andrew Morrow among his mentors.

Morrow’s newest works reveal his vigorous re-engagement with full-colour oil paints after a long period of monochromatic drawings, gesso and acrylic work.

A “freefall into abstraction,” is how Alexandra Flood describes the process which generated her latest works. Flood’s new paintings are filled with mysterious, provocative shapes. The forms invite you to linger over the canvas; her use of colour is at once enchanting and defiant. Flood is intimately familiar with the digital universe; her response as a painter is to isolate the act of human brushwork. Flood’s abstract forms sometimes hint at muscular or industrial entities. Her titles deliberately invite as many questions as they answer. According to Flood, the new works reveal “the residue of human activity.” However, it is up to the viewer to decide whether that activity is a single wrist swiping paint across a surface or a collective effort to leave a human imprint on earth.

Andrew Morrow probes the collaborative spaces between figurative painters and their subjects. Morrow’s newest works reveal his vigorous re-engagement with full-colour oil paints after a long period of monochromatic drawings, gesso and acrylic work. Many of Morrow’s recent portrait sittings occurred while public health restrictions were in place, adding new spatial and psychological complexity to the painter-sitter relationship. Morrow found himself sketching and taking photos of some sitters outside, while other encounters took place over Zoom. On a psychological level, the connection between painter and sitter was profoundly changed by the enforced isolation of the pandemic; both digital and physical encounters had taken on new meanings for his sitters.

Morrow’s colourful, complex figurative works reveal traces of digital encounters even as they center the representation of human bodies. Flood and Gordon take different approaches to the challenge of creating paintings which they know will be experienced on Instagram and in the gallery. Seen on screen or in the flesh, these exquisite canvases by Alexandra Flood, Atticus Gordon, and Morrow celebrate the painterly vocabulary of brushwork today.

Teen Perspectives on Race and Health Equity

Until August 27, 2023

The Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) is hosting an exhibit, Teen Perspectives on Race and Health Equity. The included art is cre- ated by the young participants of a program organized in partnership with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (BCBSM), and brings high school students from Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Perpich Arts High School in Golden Valley to work with teaching artists to address racism and health inequities through their artistic practice.

The young artists show paintings, mixed media pieces, drawings, digital work, photography and sculpture, exploring topics like medical malpractice and abuse towards women of color, and more. “I was struck by how aware these young people are about this issue — not only in their lives, but in the lives of folks they know,” says Bukata Hayes, vice president of racial and health equity and chief equity officer at BCBSM. The program came about after the foundation declared racism a public health crisis, and needed to address that.

“I think we also acknowledged that we would have to partner in new ways and utilize multiple avenues to bring about awareness, and to bring about action,” Hayes says. A key component of the program was providing a voice to the young people who have been historically marginalized as they used art to amplify messages about racial health inequities and how we can move forward.

Ebony Beck, an educator in the program focused on keeping the space safe and inviting. She says that part was easy. “They were all so aware. I didn’t need to do much, which was awesome.” Beck also advised the young people on structure and value in their art piece, and helped them talk through the process and brainstorm.

Shawntea Kopseng, a student at Minnesota Transitions Charter School, created a piece based on her birth mother who had seven children. Kopseng is adopted and never met her birth mother who died two years ago from an overdose.

“She’s Native American, and I wanted to document her experiences with maternal health,” Kopseng says.

In the piece, Kopseng depicts a woman whose face is partially covered with hair. She wears a feather, and a shawl, and holds an expression of depression as light from the windows shines through blinds.

“The expression that she has is a sad expression,” Kopseng remarks. “And since I never got to meet my mother, it was very hard to think of her in such distress.” The piece came out of discussions she had in the program about health disparities in maternal health. “It was really nice to hear from other people and their experiences with racism and health problems,” she says.

Pasi Lee, a student at Perpich Center for Arts Education, also depicted a family member’s experience during COVID in her piece. In her painting, her grandmother seems to be peering through a window, or a doorway, and has an expression of desperation. It captures a feeling of Lee’s grandmother being closed in.

“During those years of COVID and also before COVID, she was very sick, and she had to be hospitalized for half a year,” Lee says. “It was a very long time, especially for her because she has a big fear of hospitals. That’s kind of common with my other older relatives as well.” Lee’s family is Hmong, and has a history of mistrust of the health system in the U.S. That barrier to health was a topic Lee wanted to explore in her piece. Other artists have pieces that explore identity. Lucía Samayoa incorporated her Guatemalan heritage in “Dios no es destino,” a mixed media work that layers in photographs, maps, painting, and a poem called “Salud Mental” by Vianney Harelly, one of Samayoa’s favorite authors.

“She wrote this poetry book about generational trauma and struggles with being the daughter of immigrants,” Samoyoa says. “It really inspired me to make this piece.”

Robert Smith participated in the program, and, for the first time, dealt with issues around race in his artwork. “My piece is a showcase of my father’s experience with the police and is meant to show that, yes, even though the police departments have become corrupt, the people of Minneapolis can and will make it through.”

Alessandro Casetti: Sulla mia Pell May 18–July 28, 2023

Galleria Monica De Cardenas has announced the second solo exhibition by Gideon Rubin at our gallery in Milan.

We will show 32 new paintings including a series of 13 works inspired by the erotic and poetic female portraits taken in the 1960s by Carlo Mollino (1905 -1973), the genius Italian architect and designer from Turin who designed the Teatro Regio in his native city with a corset-shaped floor plan.

In these works, as in his landscapes or famous solitary figures, Rubin surprises us with the ability to sublimate his subjects to their essence. Even if the facial features are invisible and the surroundings are only hinted at, there is a striking and immediate understanding of the situation and the mood, by how an attitude, a hairstyle or the detail of a dress can reveal an atmosphere, an identity, an intimacy.

Starting mostly from found images, photographs that belong to a personal but anonymous past, or images from the web and newspapers, Rubin collects and creates an iconographic archive for his paintings, a sort of act of reappropriation of memories, personal stories, and figurations. His subjects — women and men — evoke a reflection on the relationship between oneself and others, between the individual and the collective. Delicate colors — sandy tones, grayish blues, milky whites are emphasized by fluid brushstrokes that bring back to life and give permanence to an almost forgotten and suspended moment. Light reflects and plays on the subjects: as we look at his figures, we are captured by

Weston’s sweeping views of ranches and vineyards offer a picturesque vision of food production in California, whereas Alvarez Bravo’s photographs of restaurants and drinking fountains capture casual, day-to-day encounters with food and drink.

ArtDiction | 19 | March/April 2023 a visual pleasure that invites us to contemplate and complete the missing parts with our own imagination.

For the series inspired by Mollino’s Polaroids that give the exhibition its title, Rubin recalls how those “exquisite images continued to haunt my thoughts even after I returned to my studio in London. The 13 paintings focus on the women featured in the photographs and some men I imagined.”

In a separate series a single subject a woman’s head seen from behind with a long braid in the foreground - is expanded and magnified across four canvases of increasing size. Here Rubin evokes new interpretations of a broader and more complex shared history, however with multiple implications and an intimate character and sensibility in which to mirror oneself. Gideon Rubin was born in Tel Aviv in 1973; he is the grandson of Romanian born Reuven Rubin, one of the pioneers of Israeli art. Gideon studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and then at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London, where he completed his studies in 2002 and where he currently lives. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions around the world, most recently in Sydney, Auckland, Tokyo, and Paris. His works are included in international museums and important private collections, among others the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts in San Francisco; The Zabludowicz Collection in London; Ruinart and Fondation Francès in France; Museum Voorlinden Collection in the Netherlands; Herzliya Museum for Contemporary Art and Rubin Museum in Israel; Collezione Maramotti and the Collezione Fondazione San Patrignano in

Italy.

All Consuming: Art and the Essence of Food

April 14–August 14, 2023

Food and drink are the subject of many pieces of European art. These images offer aesthetic appeal and reveal actions and dynamics—indulging, abstaining, buying, selling, making, growing, craving and sharing—that give food profound social meaning.

The Norton Simon Foundation’s All Consuming: Art and the Essence of Food explores how artists responded to and shaped food cultures in Europe from 1500 to 1900, as shown in a group of 60 paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures from the Norton Simon’s collections. Three distinct themes —“Hunger,” “Excess” and “Sustenance” — examine a range of relationships with eating and drinking, both positive and negative, displayed across two galleries. Using images of charity, war and religious asceticism, “Hunger” addresses the many faces of food deprivation, whether as something to be remedied, feared or even admired. “Excess” reveals depictions of morally questionable consumption in raucous tavern scenes and images of exoticized decadence, which reinforced historically specific attitudes about gender, class and race. “Sustenance” examines how agricultural landscapes and bountiful pantries evoke comfort and plenty and how they are associated, particularly in northern Europe, with labor and commerce.

The third and final gallery brings the exhibition’s broader themes closer to home through Edward Weston’s and Manuel Alvarez Bravo’s photographs of California and Mexico in the 1930s. Weston’s sweeping views of ranches and vineyards offer a picturesque vision of food production in California, whereas Alvarez Bravo’s photographs of restaurants and drinking fountains capture casual, day-to-day encounters with food and drink. These works will be adjacent to a response space that invites viewers to contemplate art’s continued role in shaping our relationship with food, not just as a necessity for survival, but as an essential for cultural life.

Andy Warhol: Silver Screen

June 1–July 29, 2023

Gagosian has announced the opening of Andy Warhol: Silver Screen , an exhibition of three early paintings by Andy Warhol from 1963, organized for the gallery by Jessica Beck, formerly of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.

Warhol worked in a leaky former firehouse on the Upper East Side, eventually hiring poet Gerard Malanga to complete some of his most significant early silkscreened paintings, Disasters, Silver Elvis, and Silver Liz. A year later, Warhol moved to a larger space on East 47th Street. There, lighting designer turned assistant and photographer Billy Name lined the interior in foil and spray paint, creating a reflective environment for happenings, performances, films, and art production. The Silver Factory was born.

Sixty years ago, in the summer of 1963, Warhol was thinking as both painter and filmmaker, producing silkscreened canvases with multiple images. This was when he received his first camera (a 16mm Bolex that he later used for the Screen Tests, cinematic portraits of friends and “superstars”) and his paintings began to mirror the repetitions of filmstrips. At the same time,

By the time Warhol produced Silver Liz, Elizabeth Taylor had come to epitomize Hollywood glamor, but she had also been in the news for scandal and illness. This made her a perfect subject for the artist, whose silkscreen depiction of the Cleopatra star is derived from a publicity still and echoes the bold styling and square composition of his Marilyn silkscreens from the previous year. The canvas embodies Warhol’s intersecting absorptions in painting and the movies. "It was the perfect time to think silver. Silver was the future, it was spacey—the astronauts wore silver suits. And silver was also the past—the Silver Screen—Hollywood actresses photographed in silver sets. And maybe more than anything, silver was narcissism—mirrors were backed with silver." —Andy Warhol

Ethel Scull portrays the eponymous socialite who, along with her husband Robert Scull, assembled one of the first major American collections of Pop and Minimal art. In 1963, Scull commissioned Warhol to paint her portrait; he took her to the photo booths on 42nd Street where Scull played the part of a burgeoning starlet. The portrait Ethel Scull 36 Times was made from her animated and lively photo booth strips. Warhol’s lesserseen painting of Scull in silver transforms the socialite into an icon of Hollywood’s silver screen, its images’ uneven tone again suggesting the flicker of a celluloid reel (Scull was also an early Screen Tests subject).

Finally, in Tunafish Disaster, Warhol focuses on two women made famous by the uncanniness of their deaths caused by cans of contaminated tuna. In eleven paintings derived from the same source, Warhol used a Newsweek article from 1963 that paired the victims’ photographs with a grim headline. As part of the Death and Disaster series, these works comment on the numbing effect of gruesome images in the media. Tunafish Disaster, however, is unusual in that the article headline and women’s faces are featured prominently, tying the work to a specific story while highlighting the commonality of ordinary people being thrust into the public eye during times of crisis or in death. In all three works on view in Paris, Warhol presents a layered view of the promise and perils of fame.