The German art scene's past and present enfants terrible team up for mixed-media mash-ups of painted photo images, ink-jet printouts, and customary (for both artists) energetic, thick applications of paint on large canvases. This meeting of the minds and materials results in a group of farcical phalluses and f]hrers, to bravura effect.
This collection of paintings, sculptures and collaborations including stage sets for a production of Frank Castorf's Kokain is the first comprehensive survey of Meese's major incursions into the German art scene. The artist was born in Tokyo, lives in Berlin and has shown at the Tate Modern.
A leading figure of the postwar avant-garde, Danish artist Asger Jorn has long been recognized for his founding contributions to the Cobra and Situationist International movements - yet art historical scholarship on Jorn has been sparse, particularly in English. This study corrects that imbalance, offering a synthetic account of the essential phases of this prolific artist?s career. It addresses his works in various media alongside his extensive writings and his collaborations with various artists' groups from the 1940s through the mid-1960s. Situating Jorn's work in an international, post-Second World War context, Karen Kurczynski reframes our understanding of the 1950s, away from the Abstract-Expressionist focus on individual expression, toward a more open-ended conception of art as a public engagement with contemporary culture and politics. Kurczynski engages with issues of interest to twenty-first-century artists and scholars, highlighting Jorn's proposition that the sensory address of art and its complex relationship to popular media can have a direct social impact. Perhaps most significantly, this study foregrounds Jorn's assertion that creativity is crucial to subjectivity itself in our increasingly mediated 'Society of the Spectacle.'
Meese's work includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, and performances but also extends to writing, stage design, and directing within the field of theatre and opera. His practice addresses certain uneasy aspects of German political history and seeks to adopt ideological symbols and empty them of meaning. The subjects of his work have included Richard Wagner's three act opera Parsifal, and more recently, the American actor, John Wayne. Wayne's portrayals of unconquerable cowboys in over 80 Westerns, serve as the inspiration for a new suite of drawings entitled ERZMARSHALL. Newly conceived for the exhibition is an immersive installation that occupies an entire room. Combining painting, drawing, and sculpture, the work provides an environment in which the viewer can bear witness to Meese's wide-ranging imagination. Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Jonathan Meese: DR. TRANS-FORM-ERZ at David Nolan Gallery, New York, 27 October - 17 December 2016.
Albert Oehlen's work focuses on the process of painting itself rather than any subjective expressionism or formal representation. This catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibitions: 'I Will Always Champion Good Painting' at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and 'I Will Always Champion Bad Painting' at Arnolfini in Bristol.
Super Vision' explores the ecstatic and the threatening aspects of contemporary visual experience. Here, a selection of important works in a variety of media expresses both aspects of vision and reveals visual experience as a source of both pleasure and fear.