International Art News

Charlemont III - Acrylic/oil/canvas - 51.5x51.5cms - 2008 - Collection: the artist

Until February 29, 2012 – Highlanes Municipal Art Gallery
The Coercion of Substance is a new body work by the artist Samuel Walsh who describes his practice as one that emerges “from endless dualities: drawing and painting, line and colour, art and audience, seeing and drawing and poetry and prose.”

For this exhibition at Highlanes Gallery the work of Samuel Walsh will fill the main Lower Gallery space with a spectacle of dualities. Meeting the challenge of this unique gallery space, a former Franciscan Church, the artist has created a considered environment of canvases which will play with a further polarity: intimacy and exposure.

The title of this exhibition is taken from Seamus Heaney’s poem The Artist. Multitudinous square canvases will fill the gallery; vivid colours are criss-crossed with the heavy black lines. These paintings, made between 2008 and 2011, are influenced by places, experiences and colour memory.

Each work has its’ own pattern of line interspersed with pockets of colour suggesting aerial field patterns, stained glass windows or sun shining through branches. This exhibition will be a merging of painting and drawing through which Samuel articulates memory and experience.

Samuel Walsh studied Art at the Limerick School of Art; Philosophy at Mary Immaculate College of Education, Limerick, and holds an MFA from the National College of Art & Design, Dublin. In 1997, he was elected a member of Aosdána, a body set up by the Irish Government through the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon to recognise outstanding contributions by individuals to the arts in Ireland. He is currently a Fellow of the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ballycastle, Co. Mayo and has been selected for numerous international artists’ residencies.

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Bradd Westmoreland Garden temple, 2007 oil on linen 162.5 x 188cm

From February 7 to March 3, 2012 – Niagara Galleries
Bradd Westmoreland is compelled to do what he does – to apply paint, or if truth be known, to be the conduit for the paint applying itself to the canvas. Without any hint of a new-age shaman, Westmoreland aims to achieve a certain level of heightened awareness when painting. Not a trance, but a hyper-aware state where there is just him, the brush, the paint and the canvas. How or what appears is spontaneous, natural and, he would say, inevitable.

I just let the painting happen. I am actively not thinking about what I want to paint. It is as if the painting simply appears without physical hesitation, without mental questioning.

Westmoreland just trusts the paint ‘to do its thing’. It takes courage for an artist to almost relinquish control – the canvas is like a pool of water at the bottom of a very big cliff he has just jumped off with the paint as his metaphoric bungy cord. Many entries in Bradd Westmoreland’s painting diaries talk about being brave and effort.

‘Don’t be afraid of the dark’ ‘Never be shy’ ‘Just let it happen’ ‘Don’t try too hard’

Essentially, it is from the order and routine of a structured studio practice – painting, life drawing classes, work diaries – that Westmoreland has the freedom to lose himself in the process of making images. For him it is not about what to paint, but almost what not to paint.

Gallery Hours

From January 28 to July 1, 2012 – ARKEN Museum of Modern Art
With 135 works THE ESSENCE OF COLOUR is the biggest exhibition to date of H.M. the Queen’s art. At the exhibition we enter a personal universe and follow the Queen’s artistic development over 35 years. The subjects range from the close surroundings through imaginary landscapes to the most recent depictions of radiantly coloured rocks and bones.

Nature – both idyllic and dangerous – is a central subject for the Queen. The colours in the Queen’s art express the essence of a spirit. They evoke emotions and states of mind where words are not enough. The works in the exhibition range wide, from gentle watercolours through expressive paintings to imaginative découpages. In the découpages she has recomposed cuttings from art sale catalogues and magazines into new, magical worlds where anything can happen. We encounter both the humour and seriousness of the artist Queen Margrethe II.

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Adolfo Wildt, Un Rosario - MCMXV, particolare. Milano, collezione privata.

From January 28 to June 17, 2012 – Musei San Domenico
Finally, he has been rediscovered! An artist known by certain aficionados, but unheard of by numerous art amateurs, Adolfo Wildt (1868-1931), was a hair dresser and then a jeweller apprentice before discovering sculpture at the age of 13. At the age of 26, a Prussian collector –Franz Rose – signed a contract with him that covered the artist’s needs: for 18 years, the aesthete bought the first edition of each of his sculptures for an annual salary of 4000 lire. He then starts making from plaster, wax or, better yet, marble, hallucinating portraits, tortured faces, with sunk in features or amplified and exaggerated. In the restful venue of a restored church and its cloister, in what was Mussolini’s native town, his shocking creations, between symbolism and Art nouveau, are brought together with works that impressed him, from Cosmè Tura to Casorati.

Adolfo Wildt, Carattere fiero - Anima gentile, particolare. Venezia, Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna di Ca’ Pesaro

After the death of its promoter Rose (1912), Adolfo Wildt was forced to compete for the first time with the art market. In 1913, he was awarded the Premio Principe Umberto for his design for the fountain show at The trilogy of Secession of Monaco, then exhibited in the courtyard of the Humane Society in Milan. From 1914 onwards he was able to regularly attend various international exhibitions. Furthermore, he also held a staff in 1919 at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan, while in 1921, 1924 and 1926 he exhibited at the Venice Biennale. In 1921 he founded his School in Milan Marble which then became part of the ‘Accademia di Brera and was developed in 1927 in a three-year program. Among his most famous pupils were Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti and Luigi Broggini.

Museum Hours

Pierre Bonnard, Le Café, 1915, Oil on canvas, 73 × 106.4 cm, Tate, Photo: © 2012, Tate, London © 2012, ProLitteris, Zurich

29 January – 13 May 2012 – Foundation Beyeler
With the exhibition “Pierre Bonnard”, the Fondation Beyeler celebrates the great French colorist and one of the most fascinating of modern artists. More than 60 paintings from renowned museums and private collections provide insight into all phases of his career.
Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) was a co-founder of an artist‘s group known as the Nabis, who admired the style of Paul Gauguin and Japanese woodblock prints. In Paris, Bonnard depicted the bustling life on the streets and in the cafés, before retiring first to Normandy, very close to Monet‘s water-lily garden, then to the sunny Côte d‘Azur, where he was inspired by the light and colors of the Mediterranean environment. Continually experimenting, he produced variants in ever-new color combinations and from surprising points of view on subjects from everyday life, in which time only apparently seems to stand still. The artist‘s favorite model was the mysterious Marthe, his muse and wife. Bonnard created harmonious still lifes, enigmatic interiors, intimate female nudes, moving self-portraits, and decorative landscapes whose magnificent palette is unique in modern art.

Pierre Bonnard - Place Clichy, 1906–07 Oil on canvas, 102.1 × 116.6 cm Private collection © 2012, ProLitteris, Zurich

One of the principal lenders is the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Further outstanding loans come from the Tate London; the Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum, New York; the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Kunstmuseum Basel; the Kunsthaus Zürich; and from distinguished private collections, not least from the Hahnloser successors.

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Jimmy De Bock, Pompidou Center (summer)2011 - Photo printing under diasec - 65 x 152 cm (edition of 5 ) - 90 x 210 cm (edition of 2) - 128 x 300 cm (unique edition) - © Jimmy De Bock & Mazel Galerie

From February 3 to March 10, 2012 – Mazel Galerie
Born in 1975. Jimmy De Bock live and work in Brussels.
“It sometimes seems our eyes are shut to the simple beauties that surround us. Our daily life, our daily movements absorbe our attention away from our environment…
…it is about reconnecting your soul to what you forgot was there. It is about opening your eyes for the first time… again. eMotions is about us.”
Art has always been part of my family. Grand-parents painters, uncles graphic designers, father printer and very fond of photography. I have myself worked in my father’s printing factory from 1990 until 2000 as a graphic designer.

Photography came to my attention in 1994 in the United States.
A blessed year since, as the present prooves, it had a major impact on my life. I got to learn the basics of photogrpahy. I worked with a basic SLR camera, I made my own rolls of film, developed them, spent hours in the dark room.

I majored in Business in 2000 (Solvay Business School, ULB, Brussels). In the meantime, between 1996 and 2004 I traveled mainly in South America and Asia. Each year brought its load of learning until I finally realized I was destined to grow as an artist…

Bruno Timmermans, Eastwood+, Photo printing under diasec, 150 x 150 cm, 2011

Bruno Timmermans, born in Brussels in 1977, finds its calling in 1995 in Saint-Luc (Brussels) Art of the image and then continues at La Cambre studying silkscreen from 1999 to 2005.
Professional photographer, the artist throughout the years refined its style and perfected his techniques. His world view as well as his aesthetic gaze result in an image processing very singular, giving his works a special sublimation of the subject.
Bruno Timmermans’ works combine respect and embellishment whilst preserving the original purity of the “Papous”. He uses sophisticated techniques to further enhance the creative ornaments and detailed markings of the tribes. PapouArt is a genuine crossing between primal and contemporary art.

Galerie Hours