International Art News

Jorge Santos – Inner Circle | 2013 | 80 x 80 inches | Oil and acrylic on canvas

From April 13 to June 15, 2013 – 101 / exhibit – (Melrose Av)
Jorge Santos was born in 1959, and spent his childhood in Luanda, Angola on the coast of Africa. In 1975, Angola exploded in the violent political turmoil of decolonization forcing Santos’ family to flee the country. At the formative age of 16, Santos found himself thrust into the equally turbulent and unknown culture of Lisbon, Portugal as that country slid into its own revolution. The national struggle paralleled Santos’ own personal one and fueled his passion for drawing. At this early stage, pencil drawing, the most simple and direct form of expression, perfectly suited his complicated and dramatic images and expressed his unique vision.

Though of Portuguese descent, the following years brought the artist no sense of belonging, so in 1982, Santos moved to the United States. It was here that his work evolved beyond drawing. His illusory, dreamlike images that hint at bizarre secrets leapt from the drawing board to the full realization of paint and canvas.

In 1990, the self-taught Santos began adding color to his images and in this second period black and white figures stand out in stark contrast to their colored environments. Though the techniques combine acrylic and pencil on board, or oil and acrylic on canvas, a balance of opposites continued to be the focus of his work. With every painting, a stage of ambiguous illusion is created.

Jorge Santos – Maitre D | 2012 | 66 x 80 inches | Oil on canvas

Suddenly, at the end of the millennium, Santos’ paintings burst into full color showing a mature command of his artistry. They are still surreal allegorical works but now tempered with the irony and humor of an eccentric yet adventurous mind.

Figures are frequently fragmented, boxed within rooms, cardboard containers, or trompe l’oeil frames. An unusual icon will repeat itself with humorous frequency: a fish, a plane, a train… His characters seem alienated, odd, socially awkward and disconnected; disconnected also from their backgrounds by texture and technique. The overall impact of the work is disturbing and yet endearingly funny.

While one could spend hours psychoanalyzing Santos’ imagery, perhaps the best path to understanding his work is of that of a master set designer who creates an emotional landscape and populates it with characters to be animated in the imaginations of his viewers. Santos sets the stage and creates the cast, but each individual who sees the work writes his or her own internal play, making Santos’ work a unique, almost interactive, experience.

101 / exhibit

Edvard Munch - Girls on the Bridge - 1901 (1902–27.) - oil on canvas 136 X 125.5 cm - National Gallery, Oslo

Until the 14th of October 2012 – Tate Modern
Few other modern artists are better known and yet less understood than Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944). This exhibition examines the artist’s work from the 20th century, including sixty paintings, many from the Munch Museum in Oslo, with a rare showing of his work in film and photography.

Munch is often seen as a 19th-century Symbolist painter but this exhibition shows how he engaged with modernity and was inspired by the everyday life outside of his studio such as street scenes and incidents reported in the media – including The House is Burning 1925–7, a sensational view of a real life event with people fleeing the scene of a burning building.

The show also examines how Munch often repeated a single motif over a long period of time in order to re-work it, as can be seen in the different versions of his most celebrated works, such as The Sick Child 1885–1927 and Girls on the Bridge 1902–27.

Edvard Munch, The Sick Child 1907 © Munch Museum/Munch-EllingsendGroup/DACS 2002

Munch’s use of prominent foregrounds and strong diagonals reference the technological developments in cinema and photography at the time. Creating the illusion of figures moving towards the spectator, this visual trick can be seen in many of Munch’s most innovative works such as Workers on their Way Home 1913–14. He was also keenly aware of the visual effects brought on by the introduction of electric lighting on theatre stages and used this to create striking effect in works such as The Artist and his Model 1919–21.

Like other painters such as Bonnard and Vuillard, Munch adopted photography in the early years of the 20th century and largely focused on self-portraits, which he obsessively repeated. In the 1930s he developed an eye disease and made poignant works which charted the effects of his degenerating sight.

Tate Modern

Doğançay - No Future, 1999 - Mixed media on masonite tiles mounted on canvas - 122 x 122 cm.Doğançay Collection of the artist

Until the 23rd of September 2012 – Istambul Modern
Since the early 1960s, Burhan Doğançay examines the social, cultural and political transformation of modern and contemporary urban culture through the use of walls. As an urban traveller, he has been tracking walls in various cities across the world for almost half a century. With the guise of an anthropologist, Doğançay examines these surfaces that are open to all manners of contemporary interventions ranging from posters to slogans, and messages with sexual content to newspaper clippings. Doğançay’s works with different techniques and styles, are positioned in both a historical and contemporary ground through their incorporation of the icons of popular culture and political symbols.

Fifty Years of Urban Walls: A Burhan Doğançay Retrospective stands as an anthology for Doğançay’s last 50 years of work. With works that range from small sized pieces to big canvases, and installations that run beyond the walls, to various materials and pursuits, this exhibition unrolls the background to Doğançay’s ways of working. The exhibition gathers together 14 distinct series and periods of time with works coming from different collections all over the world. The accompanying catalogue presents images of works along with explanatory texts, which provide different perspectives to his ouevre while documents and photographs on Doğançay’s life alludes to his urban traveller identity.

Doğançay - Hear It With Your Heart, 1988 - Collage and acrylic on two stacked canvases - 122 x 127 cm. Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection

Munich based publishing house Prestel will be printing and distributing the catalogue worldwide,  allowing Dogançay’s works to access a broader viewing public. The curator of the exhibition, Levent Çalıkoğlu maps out the artist’s body of work spanning over 50 years in his essay entitled, The Recording of History and the Anatomy of Walls. Brand new essays by Brandon Taylor, Professor Ermeritus of History of Art at Southampton University, and Richard Vine, Senior Editor at Art in America, as well as explanatory texts on each series by the writer, editor and graphic designer Clive Giboire all examine the techniques Dogançay has developed and integrated into his practice.

Istanbul Modern

Roy Lichtenstein. Masterpiece, 1962. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Gund Collection

May 16–September 3, 2012 – The Art Institute of Chicago
This exhibition, the first presentation of the full scope and breadth of Roy Lichtenstein’s career since his death in 1997, aims to offer a new, scholarly assessment of the work of this foremost Pop artist. Lichtenstein is an artist whose work is widely known, reproduced, copied, and parodied—he is an artist that we seem to know well but in fact the true diversity and complexity of his oeuvre is little understood.

Roy Lichtenstein – Girl With Hair Ribbon – Oil and magna on canvas – 48 x 48 inches; 121.9 x 121.9 cm – 1965 The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation

Presenting over 130 paintings and sculptures, as well as over 30 little- or never-before-seen drawings and collages, this exhibition gives full consideration to all periods of Lichtenstein’s career, including but not limited to, pre-Pop expressionist work, classic Pop Romance and War cartoon paintings, Mirrors, Brushstrokes, Explosions, Artist’s Studio paintings, late nudes, and Chinese Landscapes. Special consideration is given to Lichtenstein’s relationship to art historical sources, ranging from Picasso and Cubism through Surrealism, Futurism, German Expressionism, and the American West.

Roy Lichtenstein. Ohhh…Alright…, 1964. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Private Collection.

Finally, the exhibition offers an examination of the artist’s use of alternative media like Plexiglas, Rowlux, and perforated steel in an attempt to broaden the understanding of his art beyond the strictly canonical early Pop paintings.

Art Institute of Chicago

Plugin | 58x83 | Acrylic on Canvas | 2011

From April 14 to June 6, 2012 – 101/Exhibit – Miami
San Francisco-based artist Ted Vasin display his thought-provoking paintings in a solo show titled Poison Bliss at 101/exhibit. Vasin, who has been with the Miami-based gallery for some time, has previously only participated in their group shows so this exhibit marks his fi rst solo outing with the edgy gallery.
“We think he represents a very important part of our program here at the gallery,” remarks Sloan Schaffer, owner of 101/exhibit, “and we think his imagery and techniques are unique and compelling, and we are excited to see the reactions from Ted’s work here in Miami.”
Schaffer notes that the materials Vasin uses and the narratives he creates within the works are unique and provocative. “I think it’s pretty provocative imagery and it almost feels psychedelic in nature. It’s going to be exciting,” he elaborates.
At first glance, collectors may think that Vasin’s works are drawings, but they’re both. They’re finely-crafted paintings using acrylic, metallic paint and graphite on canvas that relay Vasin’s distinctive technique and style. “The work is wild and it’s psychedelic and it’s contemporary and fresh,” adds Schaffer. “He’s not afraid to make a statement and his work sort of substantiates a lot of what he is thinking or feeling. It’s a strong narrative, and of course that fi ts within our program. We like to have work that you have to react to and engage with.” (Art Collector)

Monster | 60x48 Acrylic on Canvas | 2010

Vasin was born in Russia and currently lives and works in San Francisco. The artist has exhibited internationally including shows at the 101/exhibit, Limm Art Gallery, Davis Art Center, artMRKT Hamptons, Frey Norris Gallery, Tarryn Teresa Gallery, Sotheby’s New York, Tel Aviv and Amsterdam, Stanford Art Spaces and more. Vasin participated in two residencies through programs at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, exhibiting at the Palace of the Legion of Honor and the De Young Art Center. In 2006 Vasin was a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. His work has been reviewed by the ArtWeek, San Francisco Chronicle, ArtSlant and has been featured in the American Art Collector, New American Paintings, Fashion Week Magazine, Wired Magazine as well as online in Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructoze and Beautiful/Decay.

Gallery Hours

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung Scalps in French, 2011 Oil paint, spray paint, caulk, Plexiglas, old paintbrushes and string on canvas 16 x 34 x 5 inches (40.6 x 86.4 x 12.7 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Anna Kustera Gallery, NY

From May 1 to Jul 24, 2012 – Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Molly Zuckerman-Hartung’s innovative explorations of materials and process-based abstract painting make her one of Chicago’s most promising emerging artists. Fresh from her New York gallery debut, the artist presents new paintings that incorporate collage, found objects, and sculptural elements in unexpected ways that push the work beyond traditional notions of painting. BMO Harris Bank Chicago Works: Molly Zuckerman-Hartung is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition.

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung Fluid Spine, 2011 Oil, acrylic, latex, spray paint, glitter, nails on hand-dyed canvas 30 x 26 inches (76.2 x 66 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Anna Kustera Gallery, NY.

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung was born in 1975 in Los Gatos, California, and grew up in Olympia, Washington. She received her BA in 1998 from the Evergreen State College in Olympia and her MFA in 2007 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago . She is a co-founder of Julius Caesar, an artist-run exhibition space in Chicago and is currently an adjunct instructor at the School of the Art Institute and Northwestern University.

Museum Hours