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WUM NEWS NEW YORK: Cuban-born Artists Pavel Acosta, Juana Valdes & Chinese-born Artist Heidi Lau at Guttenberg Arts

May 6, 2015, 8:13 pm
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Pavel Acosta, Rembrandt (detail), Image Courtesy of the Artist
This coming Saturday, May 9th, 2015 from 2 to 8PM, the new Guttenberg Arts– a center located in West New York–will be having a One Year Anniversary Open House in an afternoon of live demos presenting a new exhibition by Chinese-born, NY-based artist Heidi Lau who along with Cuban-born artists Juana Valdesand Pavel Acostaare the selected 2015 Summer STAR Residents artists.

By promoting the visual arts in the tri-state area, the center aims to increase opportunities for its supported artists by expanding their community through artistic collaborations and promotion to curators and collectors during a three-month residency at its Space and Time Artist Residency, STAR Studio.

The STAR residency includes a three-month of studio access, artistic stipend, material and travel grants amounting to $3,000.  In addition to this financial incentive, the Residency provides the opportunity for a public artist lecture and print/online publicity.
 
Heidi Lau's exhibition entitled  Lithos Sarkophagos  is on view through June 1, 2015. 

Lau’s work–that includes printmaking, ceramics and bookmaking– create an alternate world through excavating fragmented narratives from personal and collective memories.

By highlighting the archaic and invisible, the Macau-born artist recreates what has been lost to natural or human causes.

Lau’s geometric forms, inspired by magic charts and mandalas are juxtaposed with tusche renderings and acid washes resembling nebulas or alchemy. 

Heidi Lau,The Crystal, Image Courtesy of the Artist
Pavel Acosta is a Miami-based artist who emigrated from Cuba to the U.S. in 2010. His STAR Residency started this week on May 4th. 

Acosta told WUM that he is excited for this opportunity to work outside Miami at this new state-of-the-art studio during three months in New Jersey. 

"I could not be happier, they are paying me to do what I love most, to create art and I'm thrilled for the opportunities that would come along," he said.

Back in Cuba, Acosta life's as an artist was surrounded by a state of scarcity of resources. 

Now, based in the U.S., his artistic vision has taken a different turn at having access and to appreciate firsthand museum's masterpieces  which he had only known through slides and books for so many years.

"The exposure to these works led me to reconsider the genre of painting, its attributes and boundaries," he said.

In his series entitled Wallscape (2013 - present), Acosta intervenes museums' permanent collection galleries to comment on the institution's functions and his relationship with it. 

At the New York-based Museo del Barrio, Acosta copied a painting from its permanent collection, which was hung in front of the wall he was assigned to work as part of the Museo's Biennial in 2013.

"My work consisted of peeling off the paint from the wall, and making a collage with such paint chip and strips. As part of my Wallscape series, I intend to realize interventions at other U.S. museums," he added.

Juana Valdes,Colored China Rags 2, (Detail of 3), Ceramics, Image Courtesy of the Artist
To complete this trio of artists, Afro-Cuban American artist Juana Valdes (B.F.A. Sculpture at Parsons School of Design '91, M.F.A. School of Visual Arts '93) will also be presenting her latest work at the center.

A multi-disciplinary artist, Valdes’ work traces, recollects, and records her own personal experience of migration and growing up in the U.S.

"My work employs an inter-disciplinary approach to making art and a conceptual research oriented examination of ideas," writes Valdes on her statement.
 
Her work balances an interest in the semiotics of commercial mass-produced imagery and a tactile craft sensory approach to making. 
 
"The dynamism of in my work is vested in the transition from sculpture to installation to performance, thereby shifting fields, and exchanging modes of visual recognition. Thereby, I balances such questions as “where and what is the art in art?” and “when does it separate from daily life?.” 
 
Previous artists STAR Resident Artists include: Susan Graham, Johanna Winters, Kirsten Flaherty, Jairo Alfonso, Mirra Goldfrad and Beth Sutherland. Pilot STAR Residents were Phoebe Deutsch and Christina Pumo.
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WUM NEWS MIAMI DESIGN DISTRICT: Pritzker Laureates Zaha Hadid, Thom Mayne, Glenn Murcutt & Richard Rogers at de la Cruz Collection

May 7, 2015, 7:39 am
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Via Lo Que Pasa en Miami

Next week, a private "By Invitation Only" event will take place at de la Cruz Collection in the Miami Design District with four global personalities in the world of architecture, Pritzker Prize laureates, Zaha Hadid, Thom Mayne, Glenn Murcutt and Richard Rogers who will sit down for an hour and half conversation with american architect & critic Paul Goldberger– former art critic for the New Yorker and contributing writer for Vanity Fair–to discuss about the role of architecture in establishing a city's identity.

As cities continues to grow and develop, these architects will speak about the impact of iconic architecture in opposition with urbanism for example,  Can they complement and reinforce each other? Does architecture make a city? How much does architecture matter to the social/economic/cultural challenges facing cities today?

This prestige event is co-organized by the de la Cruz Collection, Miami Design District and the Hyatt Foundation with the support of the Miami Center for Architecture and Design.
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WUM NEWS ZURICH: New Works "Soft Sculptures" by American Artist Doug Aitken at Galerie Eva Presenhuber

May 7, 2015, 10:52 am
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Doug Aitken's Solo Show at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Image Courtesy of the Gallery
On Friday, May 15th 2015 from 6 to 8PM, the Galerie Eva Presenhuber at its Löwenbräu Areal location in Zurich will inaugurate a solo exhibition with new works by Gallery artist DougAitken.

Spanning a variety of media encompassing photography, sculpture, happenings and performances, sound, and single and multi-channel video installations, Aitken’s work explores the modern landscape and posits possibilities for new uncharted frontiers. 

Based between L.A. and New York,  Aitken, 46, is having another solo show in addition to the one at Presenhuber on July 9th at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, a major survey exhibition including four expansive film installations, sculptures and a site-specific sound work.

Next month on June 19th, Aitken will be having his U.K. premiere for his feature film [61 one-minute films from Coast to Coast] entitled "Station to Station" followed by the living exhibition Station to Station: A 30 Day Happening at Europe's largest multi-arts center, theBarbican in London from June 27th to July 26 featuring over 100 artists and 50 performances.

At Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Aitken's solo show will feature an installation of new sculptural objects or "soft sculptures" that create an immersive environment where place and time dissolve, and where the individual exists adrift in an electrically charged space. 

These soft sculpture works are made of photographic images on fabric that create sculptural forms, furniture and social spaces. 

Slices of the contemporary landscape are re-formed to create a tactile world of concepts and energy.
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WUM NEWS MARACAIBO: Geometric Movements, Ben Abounassif's Solo Show at Viloria Blanco Galería

May 7, 2015, 4:11 pm
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From Thursday May 7th to June 22nd, 2015, the Viloria Blanco Galería located in the oil-rich city of Maracaibo Sector Bellas Artes in Venezuela will present a solo exhibition by Venezuelan-Lebanese artist Ben Abounassif.

Last year in July, Viloria BlancoGalería inaugurated a new location in Wynwood on North Miami Avenue and 23rd street featuring artists such as Cipriano Martinez, JJ Moros, Alberto Cavalieri, Vicente Antonorsi, Rafael Rangel, Reymond Romero, Alberto Riera, Ben Abounassif, Luis Mille, Asdrubal Colmenarez, among others.

Entitled "Movimientos Geométricos" or Geometric Movements, Abounassif's exhibition in Maracaibo features 14 works and an installation of 27 small-format pieces.

A self-taught artist, Abounassif, 50, is also represented by Galería Parenthesis in Caracas and for the last three years, the director of his eponymous gallery Cesar Viloria Blanco has been closely following the trajectory of this kinetic-style artist whose digitally-cut geometric pieces are transformed by the presence of light, color and by the position of the viewer.

"Abounassif's multiple range of impeccable interpretation of geometric forms on paper–circunference, square or diamond-shape take over the language and give a new vertical or horizontal meaning that suggest the impression of movement," said Cesar Viloria to WUM.

As opposed to kinetic works of arts that result from motion and depend on movement for their effect, Abounassif's works are kinetically-paralleled because it's the position of the viewer and the presence of light that ultimately render the movement effect.

"My work can be applied to not only geometric forms but also figuratively as I can virtually represent forms that are recognizably and derived from life," said Ben Abounassif.

Last fall, Abounassif's work was selected among all Venezuelan up & coming artists of his generation to create a piece honoring the iconic Latin American art personality, Sofía Imber during the Venezuelan Endowment for the Arts Annual Gala at the David Rubenstein Atrium in Lincoln Center, New York City. 

Tonight at 7PM, with the presence of the artist, collectors from Maracaibo– who have also seen Abounassif's work showcased at FIAAM and at various collectives at the Gallery– will have the opportunity to meet the artist in person and appreciate his last geometric pieces.
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WUM NEWS BOSTON: Tufts University Adds Indoor Sculpture by Colombian-born, Miami-based Artist Santiago Medina To Its Collection

May 8, 2015, 4:35 pm
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Santiago Medina,Infinity,  24" x 12"  x 10", Image Courtesy of the Artist, Photo by Santiago Medina
Colombian-born, Miami-based artist Santiago Medina has added another one of his sculptures to a U.S. university's permanent collection. 

Photographed outdoors by the artist himself in his native Colombia where the sculpture was cast, "Infinity" is a small indoor piece made with highly polished Italian stainless steel.

The sculpture will be placed at Tufts University'sTisch Library and it will be Medina's second addition in Massachusetts where last year he added a second sculpture, a monumental stainless steel entitled "Fantasía" at Harvard School of Public Health in Cambridge.

It was at Harvard where Medina obtained his Master’s Degree in public health and health care management. 

A neuroradiologist and pediatric radiologist, Medina, 50, distinctively uses advanced Computerized Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to scan his sculptures and subsequently enhance the volumetric appeal and sculptural form.

In 2003, he began working as the Co-Director of the Miami Children’s HospitalDepartment of Radiology’s Division of Neuroradiology and was elected as associate editor of health policy and practice for Radiology, the world’s leading journal in medical imaging.

Medina's "Infinity" will be officially received at an unveiling ceremony at Tufts University on Friday, May 15, 2015.
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WUM NEWS NEW YORK: Small Rarely Seen Paintings by U.K. Artist Cecily Brown at Maccarone

May 9, 2015, 2:57 pm
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Cecily Brown "The English Garden"(May 9-June 20th, 2015) at Maccarone, Image Courtesy of the Gallery
Opening tonight, Saturday, May 9th, 2015 from 6 to 8PM, at the West Village-based Maccarone is Cecily Brown's exhibition entitled "The English Garden," featuring her intimately scaled abstract paintings organized by novelist and art writer Jim Lewis.

Made between 2005 and 2014, these seldom seen paintings were made concurrently with Brown's more familiar large-scale canvases and mirror shifts in her work over the past decade. 

They are presented here for the first time in an exhibition of their own.

Having lived with one of Brown's paintings for years, Lewis has grown increasingly fascinated by the power of the artist's smaller works and was moved to suggest a show devoted exclusively to them. 

Integral to Brown's practice for the past ten years, these pieces are not sketches, but autonomous works. 

In this scale they are more interior, diaristic, and confessional - full of secretive notations and private thoughts. 

The process of making them, too, is more intimate for the painter: Brown creates them while seated instead of standing, using the wrist not the arm. The paintings are gardens rather than landscapes.

In tandem with "The English Garden,"Lewis and Brown have coauthored a limited run artists' book of the same name. 

Lewis has contributed a short story informed by Brown's paintings, rather than a traditional essay (as he did for the artist's 2006 Essl Museum catalog). 

Click here to read Cecily Brown's interview on Vulture–
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WUM NEWS BEIJING: Kuhl & Leyton's Twitter IPO Solo Show at Workjam, 798 Art District

May 9, 2015, 3:12 pm
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Kuhl & Leyton,#5 Most-followed Twitter user (2014): Taylor Swift 41.2 million followers, Images Courtesy of the Artists

#8 Most-followed Twitter user (2014): Justin Timberlake 32.6 million followers

Today, Saturday, May 9th, 2015  from 2 to 6PM, the Workjam in Beijing's 798 Art District will present a solo exhibition entitled "Twitter IPO" (On view through June 5th) by Beijing-based artists Kuhl & Leyton showcasing portraits of the most-followed celebrities on Twitter. 

This exhibition explores social media's flattening of popular culture, where President Barack Obama and Justin Bieber are included in the same breath. 

Kuhl and Leyton's "Elite Deviance" series– which explores white-collar crime– will be featured at the Securities Enforcement Forum West on May 13th, 2015 at the Four Seasons in San Francisco.
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L.A. Louver's Visual Review of "Lone Star" Enrique Martínez Celaya's Latest Solo Exhibition

May 10, 2015, 5:36 pm
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Enrique Martínez Celaya ,The Invisible (or The Power of Forbearance), 2015, bronze sculpture, oil and wax sculpture installation dimensions variable, Image and YouTube Courtesy of the Gallery

This is the last week for the viewing of Enrique Martínez Celaya's Lone Starexhibition at L.A. Louver in Venice, California. 

Filling both floors of the Gallery as well as the small Skyroom, Martínez Celaya's paintings, and sculptures and installations are exuberantly showcased in an environment that begins with a flooded room of mirrors where a bronze boy cries silently and ends with an outdoor room where the same boy– his chest made into a birdhouse– stands in a cage with live birds. 

Among other things, these boys suggest loss, perseverance, and redemption. 

Their innocence comes across as a state of missed or yet-ungained awareness of experience as well as a condition of completeness where nothing is lacking.

Throughout the environment of paintings, installations, and sculptures as well as the writings, there is an emphasis on those instances of the world which are of interest to children and through this emphasis the work layers innocence, loss, hope, possibility and dreams to construct a new state, which seems to be the real aim of Lone Star. 

After a decade living in Miami, Martínez Celaya has returned to Los Angeles and created a space in Culver City that is as spacious as the corner gallery/studio he had in Wynwood. 

It is in this new place that he created all of his sculptures and paintings, except one. 

Lone Star has received extraordinary attention from the press including reviews on Los Angeles Times, Blouinartinfo, Installation, L.A. Weekly, KCRW, La Opinión, among others, and according to Gallery director Kimberly Davis,"the experience of viewing it all together is absolutely profound."

Martínez Celaya has said that he sees art as others see religion in the way that he receives inspiration for things that are not fully understood; he uses language going back to literature and philosophy to sort out the nature of the questions he is asking. 

Then he goes to his own writings. 

And for Lone Star, Martínez Celaya wrote three separate texts regarding this new body of work outlining few ideas in the work and discussing its aims as well as aspects of the imagery. 

"All three texts are different and all of them are related. One way to think of them is as different facets of the same crystal," he said.

Here is an edited version of the first two texts:

"On the evening of a turbulent day in my childhood I searched the night sky for some thing in myself that was adrift and looking at those stars and at the abyss of nothingness between them, I felt both a piercing awareness of self hood and an equally intense sense of self-negation.

Although I had considered that dome of stars many times before, it had never seemed as relevant to who I was nor as distant from my life, but what struck me most was the awe and dread I sensed at facing the mystery of the vast hole above me. 

Some mysteries, like the cosmos, are more apparent than others, but all things, as Maurice Maeterlinck wrote, are secret—the window through which I saw the sky, the curtains of my old bedroom, my eyes, and whatever in me gathered the vision of those stars.

Everything, including consciousness, radiates with the glow of this inherent mystery, and depending on our capacity for mystery, the allowances we make for this unknowable basis leads us to fears, to the safety of the measurable, or to dreams. 

In any case, our arrangements with the unknowable allow us to wake up each day and put aside the likeness of our insignificance and our transience to make sense of our lives.

We build memories, have children of our own, collect stamps, write journals, measure our age and our progress, and make lists of the places we have visited to confirm we have lived.

Part of that confirmation is looking in photo albums at what will never be again or, perhaps, at what never was, and also walking as ghosts the rooms and the landscapes we once walked as children or as men or women.

Sometimes we find a place for ourselves under the great canopy of stars and sometimes we do not. 

Regardless, there usually comes a time in our wandering when familiarity replaces innocence and freshness, and with that replacement, almost inevitably, the glow of the unknowable dims. 

There is, of course, no growing up without a rupture with our past—with those childhood bedrooms from which we looked at the night sky—but the necessity of rupture does not prevent us from feeling homesick for a vanished, mythologized time when the world was more radiant and when we were less weary, even if not necessarily happier.

Unlike the prodigal son, whoever longs for a vanished time can never return home. 

What was no longer is, except in our memories, and so we wander forward managing our restlessness as best as we can. 

At times we might feel at ease and distant from these stirrings, assembled by our routines, by our accomplishments, but in the depths of the self-content there is always restlessness. 

The interactions between these forces as well as love and loneliness define, in my view, the dynamics of becoming.

While much has been said and written about these dynamics, I find that it is mostly through the 'indirect' approach of art and literature that I gain insights into their movement and consequences.

This new body of work, Lone Star, considers aspects of that dynamic by means of an environment of paintings, installations, sculptures, drawings and writings.

I do not think of this body of work, however, as an assembly of individual artworks and writings. 

Instead, I approach it as a totality or as an environment where one artwork is revealed or hidden by another."
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WUM NEWS HONG KONG: On Reflection, a Solo Exhibition HK Debut by Israeli Photographer Ori Gersht at Ben Brown Fine Arts

May 11, 2015, 8:24 am
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Ori Gersht, On Reflection, Fusion B02, 2014, archival pigment print, Edition of 6 + 2 AP, Images Courtesy of the Gallery
On Friday May 15th, 2015 from 6 to 8:30PM,   Ben Brown Fine Arts  will inaugurate at its Hong Kong location a debut solo exhibition entitled "On Reflection" by Israeli-born, London-based photographer Ori Gersht(B.A. Photography, Film, Video, University of Westminster '92, M.A. Photography, Royal College of Art '95).

Interested in the differences and connections between the ways in which a painter and a camera create and record reality, Gersht, 47,  will present a new series of photographs–that are at once highly choreographed and entirely accidental–featuring the dynamic explosion of mirrored glass that meticulously reflect rendered floral still-lifes. 

In On Reflection,  the artist examines the subjective and immutable power of photography, the fragility and transience of life, and the fluid relationship between creation and destruction.

For this exhibition, Gersht and his studio spent months fastidiously crafting silk flowers arrangements that would replicate with precision those seen in three Jan Breughel the Elder still-life paintings at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. 

These vases of flowers were then placed in an elaborately-constructed studio in front of glass mirrors.

Electrical charges were sent into the mirrors while Gersht captured the explosion with various large format digital cameras. 

Material: After J. Brueghel the Elder E01, 2014, archival pigment print
Virtual E02, 2014, Light Jet print

One camera was sharply focused on the surface of the mirrored glass capturing the shards and fractals of the glass created by the destruction, with the reflection of the flowers blurred among them (these works are titled Material). 

Another camera was focused at twice the distance, instead of focusing on the reflection of the sumptuous flowers as they seemingly disintegrate during the violent destruction of the mirrors (these works are titled Virtual).

Lastly, for the group of works titled Fusion, Gersht was able to simultaneously capture both the materiality of the glass and the reflections in the mirror by using a hammer to send shockwaves to a steel plate on the reverse of the mirrors.

The still-life serves as powerful template for the artist to examine the tenuous boundary between harmony and chaos, the ephemerality of beauty and life, and the destructive effects of time and discord.
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WUM NEWS NEW YORK: A Four-Day Continuous Performance "Blinded by the Light" by Millie Brown during Select Art Fair

May 12, 2015, 11:01 am
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Marina Abramović Institute and FRIEDE & CO. Presents Millie Brown"Blinded by the Light"at Select Art Fair '15, Image Courtesy of Select Art Fair



From sunrise this coming Thursday, May 14, 2015 to sunset on Sunday, May 17, 2015– during Frieze Art Fair Week, one of the world's leading contemporary art fairs– Millie Brown will perform her piece entitled "Blinded By The Light" in collaboration with Marina Abramovic Institute and Select Art Fair 2015 [Curated by Brian Whiteley].
 
The performance will take place at Center548 in Chelsea with support from FREIDE+CO and will be open to the public 24 hours a day.  

This performance will be accessible 24 hours a day through a livestream to be released soon.

Bathed in a singular column of light from ceiling to floor, a constant stream of sand falling from above, representing time decelerated to allow the artist to exist in an alternate plane of time in space. 

Brown's body will be immersed in a pyramid of light and time, creating a vessel in which she will solely exist throughout the performance.

The artist will focus on the sounds of the sun as captured by NASA, serenading the performance with its transcendental and meditative tones, embodying the energy of the mother of all creation, the sun, the light of which created our entire existence.

Through four cycles of the sun, Brown will continuously submerse herself in light, allowing her body and mind to absorb its energy in all forms: physically, sonically, and symbolically. 

Focusing on the actual sound of the sun, she aims to transcend into a state of pure light, as the title suggests, "Blinded by the Light."
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WUM NEWS NEW YORK: Pilar Corrias to Exhibit a Solo Installation by French Artist Philippe Parreno at Frieze New York '15

May 12, 2015, 11:39 am
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Philippe Parreno, Fade to Black, 2013, 16 posters, orange, red, blue, white, yellow, red phosphorescent ink on paper, Installation view at Anywhere, Anywhere, Out of the World, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013,Images Courtesy of Pilar Corrias
Image from Parreno's exhibition "Fade to Black," 2013
The London-based gallery Pilar Corrias has announced participation at Frieze NY '15 [Booth B68] showcasing a solo exhibit featuring an installation by Gallery artist Philippe Parreno.
  

The acclaimed French artist and  filmmaker whose artworks question the boundaries between reality and fiction, explores the nebulous realm in which the real and the imagined blur and combine. 

Working in a diverse range of media including sculpture, drawing, film, and performance Parreno seeks to expand our understanding of duration, inviting us to radically re-evaluate the nature of reality, memory, and the passage of time. 

Central to Parreno’s practice is his quest for an ultimate form of communication capable of transcending language.

For Frieze, the installation choreographed by Parreno presents a new light marquee and the firefly automaton With a Rhythmic Instinction to be Able to Travel Beyond Existing Forces of Life (2014), surrounded by a selection of glow-in-the-dark posters from theFade to Black (2013) series.

In addition to this solo show, the Gallery will have two conversations at the Frieze New York Auditorium presenting Frieze Artist Award 2015 Rachel Rose on Thursday May 14th at 2PM, in discussion with Tom Eccles, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Tony Oursler who will talk about their projects for Frieze London and LUMA Foundation, Arles.

On Sunday, May 17th, at noon, artists Leigh Ledare and Paul McCarthy will talk to the WhitneyMuseum’s Chrissie Iles about their taboo-breaking work.
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WUM NEWS NEW YORK: Foxy Production Artists Sara Cwynar and Petra Cortright at Frieze New York '15

May 12, 2015, 11:56 am
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Sara Cwynar, Man 1, 2015, UV coated pigment print mounted on Dibond, 64 × 42 inches, Images Courtesy of Foxy Production

Petra Cortright, banksi unbrush ponitaeyel, 2015, still from webcam video, 1 min. 8 sec.
Foxy Production has announced participation [Stand D4] at Frieze New York '15 this week from May 14-17th, 2015 showcasing Gallery artists Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based Sara Cwynar and L.A.-based artist Petra Cortright.

Cwynar’s composite photographs of found objects and images court feelings of time passing. 

Using studio sets, collage, and re-photography, she produces intricate tableaux that draw from magazine advertisements, postcards, or catalogs. She is interested in how design and popular images work on our psyches, in how their visual strategies infiltrate our consciousness. 

In her book, Kitsch Encyclopedia (2013), Cwynar considers how familiar, sentimental images smooth over unpleasant realities, to cover up “the systems of control embedded within our social, economic, and political lives.” 

Cwynar’s process is, in a sense, circular: she begins and finishes with a photograph after a journey of intervention and manipulation that disrupts the smooth surface and perspective of the original.

Petra Cortright’s core practice is the creation and distribution of digital files, whether they be videos, GIFs, or jpegs, using consumer or corporate software and platforms. 

She has become renowned for making self-portrait videos that use her computer’s webcam and default effects tools, which she then uploaded to YouTube.

Cortright’s paintings on aluminum or acrylic are created in Photoshop using painting software and appropriated images, icons, and marks. 

The digital files are endlessly modifiable, but at a “decisive moment” they are translated into two-dimensional objects. 

They become finite, yet their range of motifs and marks, and their disorienting perspectives and dimensions suggest dynamic change.
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WUM REBLOG: Elaine de Kooning's "Portraits" at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

May 13, 2015, 10:29 am
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Elaine De Kooning believed that "the pose was the person"— and created a portrait of poet Frank O'Hara that does not show his face. National Portrait Gallery,Images Courtesy and via NPR

De Kooning made dozens of drawings, sketches and paintings of John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Photo credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Via NPR's Morning EditionBy Susan Stamberg

In New York City in the 1940s, painters Willem de Kooning and his wife, Elaine, were the people you wanted at your dinner party. 

He was inventing abstract expressionism. She, his former student, was part of that movement, but also painting landscapes and people.

Elaine de Kooning felt that making portraits was like falling in love — "painting a portrait is a concentration on one particular person and no one else will do," she said.
 
That's how she felt about her portrait of President John F. Kennedy, commissioned by the Truman Library— one of several de Kooning portraits currently on display in an exhibit of her work at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

De Kooning made dozens of drawings, sketches, paintings of Kennedy in 1963. 

The vivid Kennedy portrait on display at the Portrait Gallery — all lush green foliage and her characteristic quick, bold brushstrokes — stands 10 feet high.
 
Why so big?

"The idea of a man who happens to be president of the United States — well, that's already, right there, he's bigger than life," de Kooning said in a 1976 recording. 

"I was scampering up and down the ladder to do this painting."

Kennedy was golden, she thought — incandescent. 

He never sat still, making him the perfect subject for her busy brush. It was an extremely confident brush, racing across her canvases in decisive, athletic strokes.

"Elaine was a dancer throughout her life, and I think practiced yoga," says curator Brandon Fortune. 

"She was always moving. In fact, she said that she thought of painting as a verb, not a noun."

De Kooning painted Robert de Niro Sr. in 1973. 

The actor's father was a respected artist. Sitting on a couch, his elbow slightly bent, with dark, wild hair, he's scowling (in fact, she rarely painted people who weren't frowning).

"He looks to me to be absolutely exorcised about something — it's a ferocious expression," Fortune says.

And de Kooning's brush is equally ferocious — except on one knee, where the colors get muddy, which is unusual for her.

Her boldness as an artist matched the boldness of her spirit. 

In the '40s and '50s, the New York art world was dominated by very macho men — artists like Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline.  

Elaine de Kooning was not intimidated.

"She said and she thought she was as good as any male artist," Fortune says. "An important artist to be reckoned with."

As she put it: She felt she was at the "red-hot center" of art and culture in New York, and was determined to take her place there.

But her place was also next to her husband, Willem de Kooning, who was a giant in the field — as vigorous and prominent as Pollock. 

Thirteen years older than Elaine, he was her teacher first, then lover.

They married in 1943, and stayed married for 46 years — although they lived apart for 20 of those years. 

It was, you might say, a tumultuous relationship, and a tricky one, too. Both of them were painters, but he was the famous one.

"One of Elaine's friends asked her later in life what it was like to work in the shadow of Willem de Kooning." Fortune says. 

"And her reply was: 'I don't paint in his shadow, I paint in his light.'"

Unlike her husband — and unlike most artists in those days of abstract expressionism — Elaine de Kooning was painting portraits, which was a bold, brave decision.

In the 1960s, she paid less attention to the face, and more to the body — how her subject sat, or stood.

"She said that the pose was the person," Fortune says.

In some portraits, she even started wiping out the face entirely. Her full-length painting of poet Frank O'Hara in 1962 shows him jutting out his right hip a bit; his left hand on his left hip.

"The face is really covered with a sort of lavender wash of color, and while there's some slight hint of his eyes underneath that wash, his facial features are not there," Fortune says.

She essentially painted his face, then scrubbed over it.
"She had captured what you might see with a good friend walking toward you on a beach," Fortune says. 

"You would recognize that person before you could ever see their facial features. By the shape of their head, the way they hold themselves, the way they walk."

A viewer doesn't have the advantage of friendship. 

But what we can recognize — instantly — in these rooms at the National Portrait Gallery are the confidence of Elaine de Kooning's dancing brushstrokes, the vivid colors and the devotion of a lifetime spent making art on her own terms.


Click here to listen–
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WUM NEWS HAVANA: Miami-born Artist José Parlá "Detrás del Muro" at the 12th Havana Biennial

May 13, 2015, 11:48 am
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José Parlá "Detrás del Muro" at the 12th Havana Biennial,Images Courtesy of the Artist

From May 22nd to June 22nd, 2015 the 12th Havana Biennial [Between the Idea and Experience] will present an installation curated by Juanito Delgado Calzadilla entitled "Detrás del Muro" or Behind the Wall by Miami-born artist José Parlá.

The installation is part of the "Behind the Mural Project" for the Biennial consisting of four sculptural paintings by Parlá to be placed at the entrance of the Antonio Maceo Park in the famous seaside Havana's Malecón.

The works suggests cultural fragments salvaged from urban sites that have experienced social and cultural upheaval and transformation. 

Parlá's sculptures bear witness to waves of history that seem to be inscribed on their surfaces told  in an expressive and poetic language from the places the artist has lived.

Upcoming Parlá's projects include installations at the Standard High Line Plaza in July and a solo show entitled "Surface Body / Action Space" at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery and Mary Boone Gallery in Manhattan.

The curatorial team for this Havana Biennial is formed by Jorge Fernandez Torres, Director Havana Biennial and Curator, Margarita Gonzalez Lorente, Artistic Director Havana Biennial and Curator.

Curators are: Nelson Herrera Ysla, Jose Manuel Noceda Fernandez, Margarita Sanchez Prieto, Ibis Hernandez Abascal, Dannys Montes de Oca Moreda, and Jose Fernandez Portal.

The organizers have said that this Biennial  “It won’t be for collectors or gallerists, but rather to make a connection with the city." 

There will be no official opening or specific venue; art will spill out of the galleries, bursting into the streets which will be bubbling with ideas.

The 12th Biennial will be held in squares, parks and urban spaces, as well as in the usual venues for the event, including the Wifredo Lam Centre of Contemporary Art, the photo library Fototeca de Cuba, the Centre for the Development of Visual Arts and the Cuba Pavilion.
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WUM NEWS MIAMI DESIGN DISTRICT: Guccivuitton Opening Tonight at ICA Miami & After Party at Miami Music Club

May 14, 2015, 7:32 am
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Tonight, Thursday, May 14th, 2015 at 8PM, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami in the Miami Design District will inaugurate a collective show entitled "Guccivuitton" by 27 artists curated by Alex Gartenfeld, Chief Curator and Deputy Director, ICA Miami.

In celebration for this unique opening (On view through September 25th, 2015), ICA Miami will have an "After-Party" event at Miami Music Club, a maison musik boutique located at 91NE 40 Street– in a space graciously provided by Dacra– and featuring Primitive Languages, and Live sets by Miguel Alvarino, Cienfuegos, Nick Klein, Pure Matrix and residents DJ's Cool Cup& Stevie Bricks.

Featured artists at Guccivuitton Opening include: Scott Armetta, ART404, Loriel Beltran, Gabriel Bien-Aime, Brian Booth, Cristine Brache, Murat Brierre, Juan Carballo, Tomm El-Saieh, Phillip Estlund, Chayo Frank, Lafortune Felix, Jonathan Gonzalez, Pablo Gonzalez-Trejo, Peter Goodrich, Guyodo, Jason Hedges, Georges Liautaud, Luxury Face (Ida Eritsland, Geir Haraldseth and Agatha Wara in collaboration with Bjørnar Pedersen), Hugo Montoya, Joseriberto Perez, Cristina Lei Rodriguez, Robert St. Bryce, Rick Ulysee.

Founded by artists Loriel Beltran, Domingo Castillo and Aramis Gutierrez in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami in 2013, Guccivuitton has staked out a unique position that meditates on the rich history of artist-run galleries while presenting content that reflects authentic regional material and vernacular culture. 

This exhibition at ICA Miami demonstrates the collective’s interests in challenging notions of authorship, the traditional role of the artist and the value accorded to institutional structures.

Within ICA Miami’s Atrium Gallery, the artists are creating a four-story salesroom with customized storage racks, designed in collaboration with Jonathan Gonzalez, principal of the design firm Office GA. 

These racks are the primary aesthetic feature of the installation and speak to the artists’ ongoing interest in equalizing fine art, folk art, and design. 

Within the racks, unsold works are hung and arranged by scale and medium to emphasize their commodity status, and to suggest questions of value inherent to a gallery or museum. 

Works are available until sold, and any visitor can additionally function as a dealer, selling inventory to a collector.

ICA Miami, 4040 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami Design District, Fl 33137.
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Six Monumental Sculptures by Britain's Foremost Sculptor Tony Cragg at the Gothenburg International Sculpture Festival

May 14, 2015, 6:27 pm
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Tony Cragg, Runner #21, 2013, bronze, 360 x 251 x 146 cm. Photo credit: Michael Richter, Image Courtesy of Galleri Andersson/ Sandstrom, YouTube Video Courtesy of DW TV

   
On view through November 24, 2015 at theTrädgårdsföreningen and Götaplatsen which are beautiful gardens located in the heart of the city of Gothenburg–the second largest city in Sweden– are six monumental bronze sculptures by U.K. artist Tony Cragg that are showcased as part of  the Gothenburg International Sculpture Festival– a collaboration between Pilane Heritage Museum and Trädgårdsföreningen.
 
Cragg's praised exhibition Walks of Life was shown last year in the U.S. at the Madison Square Park in New York.
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WUM NEWS STOCKHOLM: The Unmistakable Expressionistic Style of Meta Isæus-Berlin at Galleri Andersson/Sandström

May 15, 2015, 8:03 am
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Meta Isæus-Berlin, The Return of the Primal Scream, 2015, oil on canvas, Images Courtesy of
Galleri Andersson/Sandström
On view through May 30th, 2015 at the Galleri Andersson/Sandström is a solo exhibition entitled "The Reminder of the Underwood," featuring seven new large-scale paintings by Stockholm-based  artist Meta Isæus-Berlin (University Collage of Arts, Crafts & Design '86, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm '93).

Ever since she was a little girl, Isæus-Berlin, 51, began her sketches at age 4 beautifully evolving her style and educating herself in Stockholm. 

She was first known as an installation artist showcasing works that create metaphors for life by depicting single events that can be both surrealistic or traumatic, but also infused with poetry of an irrational beauty and fantasy.
 
In her solo exhibition at the Gallery,  Isæus-Berlin's new series       "investigate recognisable questions that are a part of our collective consciousness as she points to the importance of escapism and emotional leakage in these extreme times of social pressure and a constant demand of simultaneous capacity, "writes Södertörn University professor Sven-Olov Wallenstein.

The Anxiety Hole That Drains You of Energy Every Morning, 2015, oil on canvas

"When walking into the gallery, you will face the painting The Return of the Primal Scream – a revolt against conformity and the pressure to fit in, be perfect and behave accordingly. 

Displayed in dynamic relation to it, The Anxiety Hole That Drains You of Energy Every Morning, is a polar opposite – a black hole suffocating optimism and self-esteem. 

Together they create a suggestive force, alluding to the complexity of life."

Isæus-Berlin had her break-through as one of Sweden’s most prominent installation artists in the mid-nineties, representing Sweden in several international biennials. 
 
Since then, she has had over 25 solo exhibitions in Sweden, Europe and USA.
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American Architect Tom Kundig To Design Outpost Basel, a Pavilion for the Collector's Lounge Design Miami/ Basel '15

May 15, 2015, 2:31 pm
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Tom Kundig's rendering of his architectural pavilion created for the Collector's Lounge at Design Miami/ Base, Image Courtesy of Camronpr.com
Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig is designing Outpost Basel, an architectural pavilion created for the Collector's Lounge at Design Miami/ Basel, Switzerland, a fair that will take place from June 16 – 21, 2015. 

Outpost Basel brings together diverse geographic, material and cultural elements from America, Japan, Austria and Romania to create a high-design space made from everyday materials.
 
The architectural firm Olson Kundig, is a Seattle-based design practice founded by architects Jim Olson and Tom Kundig on the ideas that buildings can serve as a bridge between nature, culture and people, and that inspiring surroundings have a positive effect on people’s lives.

Olson Kundig has created many projects from academic buildings to museums/installations and hospitality retreats including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Visitor Center in Seattle.

Kundig plays with the idea of being an outsider, bringing a collection of highly contrasting influences and functions, which he unifies to make a harmonious and inspirational space.  

For Kundig to work on this Outpost space is truly exciting. 

Although he is American his parents are Swiss, so he carries many influences from that country that he plans to incorporate by  bringing different elements together for Basel.

"With OutpostBasel, I like to mix old techniques and robust materials with innovative methods of making, so there will be crafted ironwork from Seattle, and amazing wood from Austrian firm Schweighofer,” Tom Kundig said.

An idea of yin-yang will run throughout, shown through the interplay of shaded and well lit areas,  dark and light materials, as well as space for refuge and for being seen. 

From a distance, Outpost Basel will appear to be a simple dark cube at the west point of the exhibition hall, playing a subtle role within the vast Messe Halle. 

But as visitors walk closer, they will see the textures and complexity of the structural design.  

Guests will be welcomed by hosts, who will roll open an iron-wheeled ‘X’ door, to reveal a vibrant inner sanctum of lounge and restaurant areas. 

A tribute to the 10th Anniversary of Design Miami/ Basel in the form of a repeated X- shaped pattern will wrap the exterior of Outpost Basel.
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WUM NEWS NEW YORK: Puerto Rican-born Artist Rafael Ferrer at David Castillo Gallery, Frieze NY '15

May 16, 2015, 8:24 pm
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Rafael Ferrer at David Castillo Gallery [Booth B46] Frieze New York. Narciso, El Ecco de la Mañana, 1992, oil on canvas. From 1985 until 1996, Ferrer spent part of each year on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. There, he rapidly developed and refined his painterly style, voraciously producing both portraits and large-scale, multi-figure compositions.  Texts by Deborah Cullen, Director & Chief Curator, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, Images Courtesy of David Castillo Gallery
Virgin Isle, oil on canvas, 1998-99. In the late 1990s, Ferrer initiated a series that explored the visual worlds of artists he had long admired, including Alberto Giacometti, Giorgio Morandi, David Smith, and Lam. He returned to his roots in 20th-century Modernism in these darker, complex studio compositions. In works such as Virgin Isle (72 x 60 inches) Ferrer creates the inner sanctums where artists grapple with their creations: their cluttered studios.
 
Rafael Ferrer lives and works in Greenport, New York and Vieques, Puerto Rico. 
 
His work is currently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art,"America is Hard to See" (May 1- September 27, 2015).  
 
His upcoming exhibitions include the solo exhibition at the MCA Chicago, curated by Lynne Warren, "MCA DNA: Rafael Ferrer" (September 19, 2015- March 6, 2016). 
 
In 2012, a monograph on the artist by Deborah Cullen was published by UCLA. 
 
In 2010, Ferrer's survey exhibition "Retro/Active" opened at El Museo del Barrio, New York which received important reviews in the The New York Times by Roberta Smith, The Nation by Barry Schwabsky, and ArtNexus by Luis Camnitzer, among many others. 
 
Ferrer participated in significant exhibitions of the new wave of conceptual, postminimal, process-oriented and "antiform" art in 1969 including "Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form" at the Kunsthalle Bern (recreated in 2013 during the Venice Biennale at the Prada Foundation's Ca' Corner della Regina, Venice, Italy, curated by Germano Celant); "Op Losse Schroeven (Square Pegs in Round Holes)" at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and "Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials"at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 
 
The following year, Ferrer's work was included in the seminal exhibition "Information" at the Museum of Modern Art, NY. 
 
His work is in the permanent collections of institutions such as The Guggenheim, New York; The Baltimore Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art NY; MCA Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art NY;  Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rhode Island School of Design; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among numerous others. 
 
Ferrer's many solo shows include El Museo del Barrio, NY; ICA Boston; Fort Worth Art Museum;Museum of Modern Art NY; MCA Chicago; ICA Philadelphia; and Whitney Museum of American Art.     
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WUM NEWS MIAMI: Neighborhood Reclamation, a New Installation by Michael Vasquez at MDC Museum of Art + Design

May 17, 2015, 6:08 pm
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Michael Vasquez, Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire, acrylic and acrylic spray paint on canvas, Image Courtesy of the Artist
On Thursday, May 28th, 2015 from 6 to 8PM, a Director's Preview and Reception will take place at the Alumni Gallery, Miami Dade College Museum of Art + Design at Freedom Tower to inaugurate a new installation and project entitled "Neighborhood Reclamation" by Miami-based artist Michael Vasquez (B.F.A New World School of the Arts '05).

Providing a platform to honor former alumni who have excelled in their respective artistic careers, the swing/SPACE/miami project and exhibition series continues to foster opportunities for further engagement with the next generations of young and emerging artists. 

An alumni of  the New World School of the Arts, Vasquez features a series of interspersed canvases that range in form and size. 

The figurative artist paints the typical trappings of an under served community.

In his portraiture work of neighborhood street gangs and culture, Vasquez is known for using scale and collage to assert his presence in the creative dialogue. 

Neighborhood Reclamation will present an alternate, deconstructed and optimistic environment for the protagonists that have traditionally been at the center of his practice.
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