Palm Beach Art, International Art News

Gopal Samantray Skinn Less IV Acrylic on Canvas 48" x 48"

16th February 2012 to 8th March 2012 – Indigo Blue Art Gallery
Indigo Blue Art is pleased to present Paradigms & Perspectives, a group show featuring five fresh emerging talents from India.

Showcasing a diverse collection of works, the exhibition explores a myriad of expressions and issues ranging from societal changes and expectations to urbanisation, religion, culture and violence.

Artists include Jimmy Chishi, Nabanita Guha, Kundan Mondal, Gopal Samantray and Parag Sonarghare.

Born in Nagaland, Jimmy Chishi (b. 1977) is greatly influenced by the culture of North-East India. He incorporates traditional folklore, storytelling and theology of North-East India with a contemporary twist.

Nabanita Duttaguha Encapsulate frozen frame Acrylic & thread on canvas 36" x 30"

Nabanita Guha (b.1982) employs dark humour to critique the insular and hypocritical values of the middle class society. Her paintings evoke the sensibilities of a pre-modern era and its corresponding value systems through references to old Indian prints and calendar art.

Kundan Mondal (b.1980) tends to arrange his work in a frenzied style, often forming a tapestry of images that takes references from art history, folk art, mythology, and folk tales. Using the metaphor of the cosmic mythical churning of lord Vishnu, Kundan tries to capture the contradictions and complexities that result in the metaphysical ‘churning’ through his paintings.

In his paintings, Gopal Samatray (b.1976) philosophises on the destructive relationship between humans and nature. His animal subjects are portrayed as being detached and alienated from their natural habitats. The perils of global warming and deforestation are revealed, as wild animals make sudden and incongruous appearances in urban spaces, as if they were the reminders of an impending catastrophe.

Parag Sonarghare Imagine it Done Acrylic on Canvas 75" x 30" (each)

Parag Sonarghare (b.1987) feels that we can never exist in a social vacuity. He is aware of the different identities and characters that people often adopt in daily life. He questions the role of identity in an age of technological advancement, where relations between people have become impersonal and distant.

Gallery Hours

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and workshop, Venus and Adonis. C. 1614, Oil on panel. 83 x 90.5 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Extended to June 15th, 2012 – Hermitage Amsterdam
The current exhibition featuring the great Flemish painters Rubens, Van Dyck & Jordaens is to be extended for three months, until 15 June 2012.
A stunning selection from the Flemish art collection of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. With 75 paintings and about 20 drawings, this definitive survey will include numerous masterpieces by the three giants of the Antwerp School  – Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacob Jordaens – accompanied by the work of well-known contemporaries.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) will be a special focus of the exhibition, represented by 17 paintings and many drawings. Rubens was the most accomplished and influential Flemish painter of the seventeenth century. At the same time, he was known as a charming aristocrat, diplomat, and collector, and his workshop was a smoothly operating business. He was a legend in his day, a homo universalis. Both Rubens’s religious and his secular works illustrate his unequalled talent. One of his masterpieces is the famous Descent from the Cross (c. 1618), which depicts Christ’s suffering with compelling drama. This painting has never before been sent out on loan.

Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), Portrait of Sir Thomas Wharton, 1639, Oil on canvas. 217 x 128.5 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

The exhibition will also examine Rubens’s influence and followers in detail, devoting particular attention to the elegant and refined portraits of his greatest pupil, Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641). Around 1638, Van Dyck painted King Charles I of England and his wife, the French princess Henrietta Maria. By that time, he had been serving as the king’s court painter for several years and had been knighted Sir Anthony.

The third great master of the Flemish school, Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678), did not study with Rubens but was influenced by him. His impressive paintings invite viewers to share in his exuberant Flemish joie de vivre. Even his history paintings have a Flemish ambiance.

Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), Portrait of Sir Thomas Wharton, 1639, Oil on canvas. 217 x 128.5 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Chirping birds, freshly killed game and floral bouquets grace the still lifes of Frans Snijders, while David Teniers the Younger was renowned for his genre pieces of everyday life. The exhibition will also feature a touching family portrait of Cornelis de Vos and many other major paintings by Flemish masters, displayed in their full glory.

It is the first time that this superb collection will be shown in the Netherlands. Many of these paintings were acquired by Catherine the Great in the eighteenth century. They belonged to world-class collectors such as Pierre Crozat and Heinrich von Brühl, whose collections Catherine purchased in their entirety. Most of them were commissioned by churches and secular patrons in Antwerp and other European cities, and were produced against the backdrop of the Eighty Years’ War and the Counter-Reformation. This Catholic movement, a reaction to the Reformation, encouraged both churches and private individuals to commission sacred art on a large scale. The epic Baroque style of Rubens and his contemporaries made an excellent propaganda tool for the Catholic church, the aristocracy and the wealthy bourgeoisie.

With the aid of an audio tour, a film, and computer displays, the exhibition offers a close look at Flemish art and the history of the Flemish art collection at the St. Petersburg Hermitage. The vitality of seventeenth-century Antwerp comes to life on a special wall of the exhibition that shows painters’ studios, churches, and monuments in word and image. The accompanying catalogue will include essays by Russian and Flemish authors.

Museum Hours

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

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.

Foundation hours and read more

Kori Newkirk Untitled, 2010 paint on artist board 8 x 10 inches Courtesy of the Debra and Dennis Scholl Collection, Miami, Florida

From August 5, 2011 to October 30, 2011 – Bass Museum of Art
Vanishing points: paint and paintings from the Debra and Dennis Scholl collection.
Featuring paintings from the collection of Debra and Dennis Scholl, Vanishing Points is an exhibition that explores how we perceive painting today as it relates to the history and continued viability of the medium. The exhibition presents three viewpoints: Sweeping Horizontality and Aerial Views, The Painterly without Paintings, and Impossible Task. Sweeping Horizontality and Aerial Views analyzes paintings that present stretched perspectives and linear structures that are often associated with cinema. The Painterly without Paintings describes the extreme edge where the medium of painting itself vanishes. That is, where color leaves the canvas behind without divesting itself of the painterly. Operating as a third vanishing point, Impossible Task, examines the “impossible” phenomenon of paintings that unravel Western perceptions of cosmological and idiosyncratic order.

Museum Hours

Intimate relativity2011 Mixed media on canvas 90 x 90 cm

May 13 to June 30, 2011 – Base Gallery / Matrix Japan S.A.
We cordially invite you to the solo exhibition “Intimate Relativity” by Shigeno Ichimura, based in New York.
In 1977 he was awarded 2nd Award in Texas National ‘97 Art Competition as the first Asian artist, then in 2002 won Artist Fellowship in New York Foundation for the Arts. Since then he has done numerous solo and group shows in New York and the other parts of the world.
This will be the 3rd solo exhibition at our gallery following to the one in 2005 and 2008. Dots are lined up on the silver surface in a mechanical manner, however each dot has been squeezed out of Ichimura’s own hands. These dots are drawn in order and each is expressing an individual characteristic and time that has past and cannot be regained.
The artworks shown in this exhibition also share their nature to the previous series.
It is said that the accumulation of those originally small characteristics holds the relationship between each other, and it is natural to question them. Therefore the piles of small moments have to be treated in a bigger current of time. Now coming back to its basic nature, the expression which consciously brings up the relativity has emerged in his artworks. For instance, a little colour has been used as signal to connect those characteristics. The words such as “RELATIVITY” and “AGGREGATE” are written to reveal the relationship and its influence hidden in those dots which are inorganically and beautifully lined up. The colour and words thrown into regulations stir so-called tranquillity in them, to show how complicated relations we live in.
This exhibition will show a new phase in his series of work.

Gallery Hours