Monthly Archives: February 2015

Gallery artist Allison Schulnik has works featured in “Strange Plants II,” the second book in a series that celebrates plants in contemporary art. Produced by Zioxla, the book features the work of 30 artists, including Schulnik, and explores what these artists think about plants and how they portray them in their work.

Says the publisher:

It includes viscous paintings of drooping flower arrangements; intuitive photographs of lily pads and lithe bodies; mixed-media collages that juxtapose the tranquility of Japanese Ikebana with the chaotic energy of vandalism; and much more. Editor Zio Baritaux brought together several artists who take a unique approach to incorporating plants into their work: Allison Schulnik, Misha Hollenbach, Francesca DiMattio, Zin Taylor, Katarina Janeckova, Stills & Strokes and Ren Hang. Schulnik, for example, used her own garden as a character in one of her short films; Stills & Strokes projected colors and geometric shapes onto the leaves of plants in botanical gardens; and DiMattio filled the sculptures in her exhibition with dramatic and unruly flowers.

“The aim of Strange Plants II is to continue the compelling conversations about how we perceive and interpret both the bizarre and beautiful sides of art and nature,” editor Zio Baritaux says. “Since the release of the first book, a community of like-minded, inquisitive and creative people has grown up around these conversations, and I hope this community will expand with the publication of this book.”

Strange Plants II was designed by Folch Studio, an award-winning design house in Barcelona. The book is 148 pages in length, and comes with eight adhesives so that readers can select their three favorite images and create their own unique covers.”

The book was recently featured on Oyster Magazine, to positive acclaim. “Strange Plants II” is available for pre-order now, and begins to ship on March 9. Please allow 2-3 weeks for delivery.

For information about the artist or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

Paintings by gallery artist Lester Monzon are currently on view at MAINSITE Contemporary (OK) in the group show, “Abstract Abstract.” Also featuring work by Josh Aster, Elise Dietrich, David Kelley, Chris Kuhn, Jacob Melchi, Ellen Moershel, Brad Stevens, Greta Svalberg, and Sungwon Yun, the show was curated by Tim Stark, and will remain on view through March 13, 2015. Says the gallery:

Abstraction is often thought of as the the movement that changed modernism through visually and physically breaking down the constructs of classical and early modernist art. It also responded to the rapidly developing world and changed the way in which people viewed and understood art and their surroundings. As a result, abstraction began to grow in popularity and size. Abstract paintings, not bound by the constraints typical of representational artwork, were only limited by the relative limitations of the paint and the surface being used. The trend of unbound abstraction, a perfect example of the modernist montra “art for art’s sake,” expanded throughout the duration of the modernist era and resulted in an almost fetishistic obsession with extra large scale works.
While most contemporary artists are no longer satisfied with making art simply for the sake of art, abstraction is still a major element in the contemporary art world. This is, in part, due to its inherent ability to directly respond to a constantly changing world and an ever more complicated human condition. In contemporary painting this focus on elements of culture as well as art history, medium, and surface has allowed abstraction to continue to evolve. One of the fantastic results of this evolution is abstraction’s return to the small scale painting.
Challenging by nature, small scale works offer the artists the ability to work quickly and decisively, while giving a focus on craft and detail that is rarely seen in extra large abstraction. They also give the viewer an intimate experience and a revealing look into the process and creation of the work. Abstract Abstract is an exhibition, displaying over 40 works by 11 artists from across the country, that serves to spotlight the breadth and depth of small scale abstraction in contemporary painting.

For more information about Lester Monzon, or available works by the artist, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

Tomorrow – Saturday, February 28, 2015, from  7-8:30pm – gallery artist David Maisel will give a lecture on his work at the Denver Art Museum. As part of the museum’s “Month of Photography” programming, the artist has been specially invited by the DAM Photography Department with support from the Cooke Daniels Fund and the Anderman Photography Lecture Series.

Says the museum:

David Maisel is notable for photographing the unseen and the unseeable. Both in his landscapes and in his recent work with objects, he entices the viewer through the use of abstraction and unreal color. 

Maisel’s photographs reveal a fascination with society’s mark on the terrain. He utilizes the aerial view to make clear the aesthetics of entropy by highlighting disjunctions between human and geologic time. Through framing, condensing space, and removing contextual references of foreground and background, he places emphasis on the forms and colors of water and earth that are the environmental consequence of industrializing nature.

While Maisel’s work is rooted in photography’s tradition of recording, the monumental scale and presentation of his prints also draw upon the language of abstract painting. Despite this visual correspondence, the work acts equally as a subversion of modernism as the inherent beauty of the often-horrific situations raises questions regarding the power of the sublime.
 
David Maisel was born in New York City in 1961 and lives and works in Sausalito, CA. A survey of his work, Black Maps: American Landscape and the Apocalyptic Sublime, traveled to institutions including the CU Art Museum and University of New Mexico Art Museum in 2013-14. An associated monograph was released by Steidl in 2013.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $5 students with ID, $10 for DAM members and CPAC members, $15 general admission: https://tickets.denverartmuseum.org/selection.aspx?item=1208

Ticketed with member discount. Purchase tickets online or call 720-913-0130. For additional details, e-mail photography@denverartmuseum.org.

For more information about the artist or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

The gallery is pleased to present new works by program artist Kim Rugg. These pieces can be viewed by visiting the gallery’s “Featured Works” page on the website.

In her most recent body of work – focusing primarily on global maps – Kim Rugg (b. 1963, Canada)  re-envisions the topography of various states, countries, continents, and even the world without borders, featuring a staggeringly precise hand-drawn layout with only city names and regions as reference points. In own sense of abstracted cartography, Rugg redistributes traditional map colors (or eliminates them entirely) in order to nullify the social preeminence given to constructed territories, and highlight the idea that our attention is manipulated to focus on the powerful few instead of the physical many. With a steady hand and a rapidograph pen, she alters the visual and emotional interpretations of our increasingly globalized society. This month, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, acquired an ambitious work from this series titled “America” (2013) for its permanent collection – we send Kim our congratulations on this major milestone.

Rugg received her MFA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art (London). Her work can be seen in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art (D.C.) and the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation (CA), the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (CA), the Norton Museum (FL), and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (TX) among others. She has been included in exhibitions at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (CA), Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (NY), Galerie Schmidt Maczollek (Cologne), and Nettie Horn Gallery (Manchester), and was the recipient of the Thames and Hudson Prize from the Royal College of Art Society in 2004. She lives and works in London (UK).

For more information about the artist or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

Recent films by gallery artist Allison Schulnik are about to be seen around the world – as her videos embark on a global film festival spree starting this month. In February alone, “Eager” (2014) will be featured at Anima (Belgium), and the Lucca Film Festival (Italy), while “Mound” (2011) will be shown at Fest Anca (Slovakia). Additionally in March, “Eager” will also be shown at the Holland Animation Film Festival (Netherlands).

Over the summer, “Eager” will be showcased at the Tel Aviv Animix Festival (August), following Schulnik’s retrospective screening at the Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film (Germany) in May – for which she will also serve as a Jury member for the Young Animation film category.

On the heels of two recently awarded distinctions for “Eager” – the 2014 SXSW Special Jury Award, and the OIAF (Ottawa Intl Anim Fest) Best Experimental Animation – these upcoming screenings have already been met with much acclaim and excitement from the artist’s international audience.

We congratulate Allison on this remarkable series of events. For more information about the artist or available work, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

The gallery is proud to announce its inclusion in the upcoming Dallas Art Fair, which takes place April 9-12, 2015, at the Fashion Industry Gallery (Dallas, TX). Visitors to the fair can find us in Booth #G14, on the first floor.

The fair is adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the revitalized downtown Arts District. This year, the Dallas Art Fair will feature over 90 prominent national and international art dealers and galleries exhibiting painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, video, and installation by modern and contemporary artists. This will be the gallery’s third year participating in the show; the booth will feature new work by Vernon Fisher, David Klamen, David Maisel, Ryan Wallace, Penelope Umbrico, Ben Weiner, Julie Oppermann, Christopher Russell, Kim Rugg, and Lester Monzon, among others.

Booth previews will be available after March 1, by request. For additional information about special events, fair access, day passes, and featured artists, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

The gallery is very proud to announce the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires‘ acquisition of “518 Beats” (2011) by Tim Bavington for its permanent collection. In addition to being a part of this public collection, the painting will also be featured in the upcoming exhibition, “Geometric Obsession – American School 1965 – 2015,” curated by Robert C. Morgan. Says the museum:

Fifty years ago curator William Seitz presented an op art exhibition titled The responsive eye at MoMa. With this proposal he deployed a scope of contemporary pieces that belonged to this movement, and brought together works of international artists and groups of artists from the United States, Argentina, Italy, England, Poland, amongst others. With the collaboration of one of the most important experts in geometric art of the period, the gallerist Denise René, the show featured the investigations on perception and pieces the generated an optical effect, associated to pure shapes, color and lines.

MACBA’s proposal for 2015 honors this iconic exhibition in its fiftieth anniversary, an initiative essential to the conception of its collection, which contains many of the artists who participated of The responsive eye. The Geometric Obsession. American School 1965-2015 project aims at bringing together forty works by these artists of the American school of abstraction with contemporary artists that have carried their legacy into the present.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an outreach program made up of a symposia of local and American specialists, which will bring forward the importance of these groups and their impact in art history until the present day. It is also expected that in 2016 the exhibition will itinerate in different institutions in Argentina and the South American region.

In addition to Bavington, the show will also include works by Josef Albers, Karl Benjamin, Gene Davis, John McLaughlin, Kenneth Noland, and many others. The exhibition will open on September 26, 2015, at 12pm – and will be accompanied by an in-depth catalogue with essays by critics such as Donald Kuspi, which will be presented in both English and Spanish.

We congratulate Tim on this major milestone!

Gallery artist Julie Oppermann will give an artist talk (alongside fellow Berlin-based artist, Michael Pohl) at the Weisman Museum of Art (CA) on Thursday, February 12, 5-6pm. Says the museum:

Julie Oppermann’s work pushes the limits of visual perception.  Scintillating effects arise through stacked layers of offset line patterns through which contrasting colors are juxtaposed, eliciting fluttering afterimages, optical flicker, disorienting spatial effects, and destabilizing sensations of movement.

In anticipation of her upcoming solo show at Mark Moore Gallery – which opens the following Thursday, February 19th, 7-9pm – this artist talk will include details pertaining to her new body of work, “Counterpoint,” as well as her studio technique and process. Admission to the artist talk is free and open to the public.

Julie Oppermann lives and works in Berlin. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union, and a Master’s in Neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2012 she completed a residency at FAAP in São Paulo, an academic exchange with Professor Robert Lucander at the Berlin University of the Arts, and completed her M.F.A. at Hunter College. In 2013 she had solo exhibitions at Mark Moore Gallery in Los Angeles, and Galeria Árnes y Roepke in Madrid, and in 2014 she had a solo exhibition at Galerie Roepke in Cologne. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (TX), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (CA).

For more information about the artist or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com

The gallery is proud to announce Christopher Russell‘s upcoming solo exhibition at Morgan Lehman Gallery (NY), opening next Thursday, February 12.

On view through March 21, 2015, the exhibition will feature new photographs altered by the artist’s signature razor blade etchings. Says Russell of his work:

Traditionally, photographers have obsessed over dust and scratches, manipulating errant lighting in the darkroom to create an image as flawless as the smooth surface of coated paper. However, I’ve come to think of photography as a medium that accepts the blunt line of the hand as a shock to this surface uniformity, creating interplay between the immediacy of the hand and that of photography.

Individual photographs are understood primarily as narrative. Relationships between figures or objects are understood by speculating on what might have brought them together in the camera’s frame or what might have happened in the moments after. It is this secondary interpretation, photography’s malleable narrative life, that I’m calling attention to with my razor-drawings.

I use an action that is undesirable to photographers. In defacing the photograph, it becomes a Postmodern substrate for Romantic thought. I identify as a photographer, however, I explore the medium through fictional texts, drawings and photographs. I mess up the clean reproducibility of the mechanically reproduced image with an X-acto blade, scratching elaborate patterns into the surface of my photographs. The razor-drawings appear delicate from a distance, but upon closer inspection become textured marks of controlled yet violent motions.

We congratulate Christopher on this major exhibition milestone, and encourage you to see his show at Morgan Lehman if you are in New York within the next several weeks. For more information about the artist or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.