Tag Archives: exhibition

Matisse Cut-Outs, Tate Modern

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It is difficult to dislike the Matisse Cut-Outs exhibition. This expressive and colourful display of creativity and passion is currently livening up the white walls of Tate Modern.

This show features work from the final chapter of Matisse’s life. When the artist began to get ill in the 1940s, he became unable to paint and so swapped his brush for scissors initiating a new medium of paper cut-outs. After undergoing a crucial and risky operation in 1941, he felt he had been given another chance and a second life, explaining perhaps why his final works are so celebratory and liberated. He depicts subjects of wonder and fascination on both a small and huge scale.Although flat, the energetic shapes and patterns seem to create a magical depth and as you look longer the compositions appear more complex and the patterns become more intriguing.

I have always loved the work of Matisse, reminding me of long summers in the South of France, where I often saw his paintings in Nice or Vence. The collages are something I discovered later, but love equally, simple works but with an amazing ability to capture the imagination.

Every piece in this Tate Modern show exudes happiness… dancing figures and exotic creatures, beautiful shapes and joyful colours. We witness the artist’s studio layout, the decorative Oceania paper scene that covered the walls. The blue nudes are simple and classic, studies of the female form that work in tandem with Matisse’s earlier sculpted nudes, similar in pose and mood. The psychedelic Jazz prints are loud and humorous, depicting scenes from the circus and theatre.

Amazingly as Matisse grew older and his mobility became more limited, his technique seems to loosen and broaden… his final works show a surge in energy with a greater sense of movement and power. Bigger works such as the Snail are emotive and triumphant, he describes it as ‘abstraction rooted in reality’. The roughly torn pieces of paper are arranged in a playful spiral, the giant masterpiece manages to evoke a tiny creature.

Even now the shapes, shades and patterns remain imprinted on my memory. This is a cheerful and life-affirming collection of works, offering a colourful glimpse into the mind of Matisse.

Continues until 7th September 2014, book here.

Chris Kenny: The Flowers That Did In Eden Bloom

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In a series of painstakingly constructed works using found materials (such as text cut from books, maps and abandoned landscape paintings), West London-based artist Chris Kenny examines and muses on the notion of Paradise: our attempt to define it, build it, reach it or perhaps remember it.

Rows of little wooden houses built from abandoned amateur landscape paintings are incised with the names of ideal worlds: Arcadia, Elysium, Utopia. They poignantly demonstrate the common desire to make a heaven on earth, a perfect garden, a harmonious society. Stories assembled from phrases cut from a multitude of books describe places heavenly but sinister, whilst complex floating assemblages of map fragments form circular ‘signs’ for an island or a terminus where the specific and universal are interwoven.

Kenny has exhibited with England & Co for over a decade with six solo shows to date, and has exhibited internationally including at the Museum of Art & Design, New York in their 2009 exhibition Slash: Paper Under the Knife. Kenny’s works have been reproduced in many magazines, exhibition catalogues and books, including You are Here and The Map As Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography.

More information on Chris Kenny is available from the England & Co website.

Date: 26 April 2014 – 11 May 2014

Location: PM Gallery & House, Walpole Park, Mattock Lane, Ealing, London

Cost: Free

Exhibition tour
Saturday 10 May, 2pm
Join us for an informal tour of the exhibition with artist Chris Kenny.
Free – just turn up

 

Berndnaut Smilde: Antipode, Ronchini Gallery London

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Ronchini Gallery London is pleased to present Antipode, an exhibition of new works by Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde. Smilde makes multidisciplinary work through the synthesis of photography, installation, performance and sculpture.

Smilde has become known for his Nimbus series comprised of striking images of ‘real’ clouds suspended within empty rooms. Using a fog machine, he carefully adjusts the temperature and humidity to produce clouds just long enough to be photographed. There is a unique ephemeral aspect to the work where the photograph captures a very brief moment before the cloud dissipates, disappearing as mysteriously as it was formed.

Smilde’s work centres on an impermanent state of being between construction and deconstruction and is often about situations that deal with duality. The exhibition title Antipode takes its name from the geographical term which refers to parts of the earth diametrically opposite each other. By exploring space and playing with perception, he lends his vision to the uncanny. His works question the inside and outside, size, the function of materials and architectural elements.

Working in a site specific way, the artist reacts to the architecture or history of a location. The recent locations Smilde has chosen to work in are all in some way connected to exhibition spaces. For Nimbus Sankt Peter he produced a cloud inside a gothic cathedral in Cologne, Germany, at the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, a site previously used by artists including Francis Bacon, Anish Kapoor and Cindy Sherman.

Further Nimbus works will be created in the UK, the USA and inside The Hallen, a contemporary art museum in Haarlem, The Netherlands. These spaces function as a plinth for the work and the clouds create a collision between the original state of the space and its actual function. Smilde explains:

‘If you take away or reposition objects that occupy buildings and spaces, there is a stronger emphasis on the bare architectural elements that define a space. That’s where I start working from.’

In a miniature version of Kammerspiele  – an on-going work Smilde has presented in different formats since 2011 and most recently at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht in 2013 – found postcards of idyllic landscapes are ruptured with blocks of miniature white tiles creating friction between ideal and functionality. Smilde deconstructs the ideal landscape and uses the viewer’s free navigation, so that a clear-cut perspective disappears.

In Antipode Smilde projects a colour spectrum onto an image of a dark landscape featuring a romantic old castle. The work explores the suggestion of a rainbow and its connotations of perfection and promise juxtaposed with the fact it is projected upside down and alongside the isolation of the solitary castle. The image of the castle originates from a card made for a stereoscope, one of the first attempts to see images in 3D.

About the artist

Berndnaut Smilde (b. 1978, Groningen) lives and works in Amsterdam. He has exhibited across The Netherlands and also in Toronto, Taipei, Istanbul, Dublin, Paris, London, Rotterdam and San Francisco. In 2013, he opened his first large scale solo exhibition in the US at Land of Tomorrow in Louisville, Kentucky, and guest curated a show at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht where he exhibited his personal choice of works from the collection in a dialogue with his own work. Smilde’s work resides in both the Saatchi and the Smithsonian collections among others. Smilde has been written about extensively in art publications; additionally his Nimbus series was recognised by TIME Magazine as one of the ”Top Ten Inventions of 2012″and was covered by the BBC and Reuters. He created works that featured Karl Lagerfeld, Donatella Versace, Dolce & Gabbana and Alber Elbaz for the Harper’s Bazaar U.S. September 2013 issue.  He was a resident artist at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in 2008. He received his BA in 2001 from the Minerva Academy and his MA in 2005 from the Frank Mohr Institute, both in The Netherlands. Smilde had a solo exhibition at the DSM Collection in Heerlen, The Netherlands, September 2013 – January 2014. His work was exhibited at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. as part of the ‘A Decade of Collecting’ exhibition, July 2013 – January 2014 and at SOMArts in San Francisco, November – December 2013. His work was included in an exhibition about artists who feature clouds in their work at the Musèe de La Poste in Paris February – May 2014. Smilde is represented by Ronchini Gallery in London.

Exhibition: Berndnaut Smilde, Antipode

Dates: 11 April – 14 June 2014

Opening Hours: Monday-Friday 10AM – 6PM, Saturday 11AM – 5PM

Location: 22 Dering Street, London, W1S 1AN

Tel: +44 (0)20 7629 9188

Press Release from Ronchini Gallery, visit the website here.