Willem de Kooning. Pink Angels. c. 1945. Oil and charcoal on canvas, 52 x 40" (132.1 x 101.6 cm). Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles. © 2011 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

From September 18, 2011 to January 9, 2012 – The Museum of Modern Art
This is the first major museum exhibition devoted to the full scope of the career of Willem de Kooning, widely considered to be among the most important and prolific artists of the 20th century. The exhibition, which will only be seen at MoMA, presents an unparalleled opportunity to study the artist’s development over nearly seven decades, beginning with his early academic works, made in Holland before he moved to the United States in 1926, and concluding with his final, sparely abstract paintings of the late 1980s. Bringing together nearly 200 works from public and private collections, the exhibition will occupy the Museum’s entire sixth-floor gallery space, totaling approximately 17,000 square feet.

Representing nearly every type of work de Kooning made, in both technique and subject matter, this retrospective includes paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints. Among these are the artist’s most famous, landmark paintings—among them Pink Angels (1945), Excavation (1950), and the celebrated third Woman series (1950–53)—plus in-depth presentations of all his most important series, ranging from his figurative paintings of the early 1940s to the breakthrough black-and-white compositions of 1948–49, and from the urban abstractions of the mid 1950s to the artist’s return to figuration in the 1960s, and the large gestural abstractions of the following decade. Also included is de Kooning’s famous yet largely unseen theatrical backdrop, the 17-foot-square Labyrinth (1946).

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September 13 — October 30, 2011  – Moscow Museum of Modern Art
Necrorealism emerged in the early 1980s in Leningrad, founded by Evgeny Yufit, artist and independent film director. Necrorealism overturned the established Soviet concept of death as the only possible heroic ‘death in the name of Motherland’. Necrorealism was born as a social protest, full of absurdity and black humor, and based on forensic medicine textbooks. The main aesthetic theme of Necrorealism is the condition of man standing on the verge of death and demonstrating some pathology. The artists tried to represent the unthinkable — death itself. The very title contained a paradox: necro, which means death, and realism pointing to life.

The very first works produced by the group were studio photographs in ‘zombie make-up’ and impromptu performances that imitated fights and chases shot against the background of woods, abandoned construction sites, suburban trains, etc. These shootings were a start of the parallel cinema in Russia. Yufit founded the first experimental film studio ‘Mzhalalafilm’ that united independent directors and artists.

In the early 1990s, Necrorealism reaches international acclaim, and the works by group members take part in the most prominent exhibitions of Perestroika era, such as ‘In the USSR and Beyond’ (1990; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), ‘Binazionale: Soviet Art around 1990’ (1991; Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf; Central House of Artists, Moscow; Israel Museum, Jerusalem), ‘Kunst Europa’ (1991; Kunstverein, Hannover), and others.

The exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art is the first full-scale retrospective of Necrorealism that allows retracing the development of this original artistic movement. The display features both well-known and new works by the artists, as well as presents the ‘necro-method’ and complete iconography of the group.

Participants: Evgeny Yufit, Vladimir Kustov, Sergei Serp, Valery Morozov, Andrey Mertvy (Kurmayartsev), Leonid Trupyr (Konstantinov), Igor Bezrukov, Evgeny Debil (Kondratiev), Anatoly Svirepy (Mortyukov), Yuri Tsirkul (Krasev)

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'Sydney, George Street DOS', C-Print, wood, museum board, 55 x 44 x 22 cm

From August 25 to September 21, 2011 – Dominik Mersch Gallery
Blasco combines architecture, photography and installation to explore themes of vision and perception in relation to physical experience. Using digital photography and common building materials to assemble three-dimensional constructions that reconstruct interior spaces and outdoor environments culled from the artist’s personal New York cityscape. His work often references the realm of private or domestic space. Blasco normally begins by selecting one angle in a room or outdoors and then constructs a new space from the perspective of that vantage point. Though the distortions and emphases that Blasco orchestrates risk comparison with the actual streetscapes or rooms he’s re-creating, the resulting effect is a fragmentation of a single line of sight that is reminiscent of Cubist collages. Blasco’s three dimensional sculptures result in an elliptical succession of multiple angles, producing a space that is at once recognizable and entirely new.
Blasco uses digital photography and common building materials to assemble three-dimensional constructions that reconstruct interior spaces and outdoor environments. He combines architecture, photography and installation to explore themes of vision and perception in relation to physical experience.

Isidro Blasco is held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Chicago Institute of Contemporary Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art and many International Museums.

Gallery Hours

Collage, 2011

From the 3rd of September to the 11th of October 2011 – Galerie Zürcher – Paris
Brian Belott is an artist currently residing in New York. He works in a variety of media, including performance, painting, collage, often including found objects in his artworks such as photographs, and in 2007 he published his first book, “Wipe That Clock Off Your Face.” Brian received his B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1995 and has since exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at CANADA Gallery, Cheim & Read Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Galerie Zürcher in Paris, France.

Galerie Hours

Flying on Black, 1998-99, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art photo: Hayashi Tatsuo

From August 23 to October 23, 2011 – The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
A woman floats up from the canvas ground. A person is depicted with a cabbage head. A hollow girl has no legs. A monster-like face suddenly emerges out of the rocks.
The somewhat mysterious figures that Leiko Ikemura creates stem from her interest in “transfigurations” such as being and nothingness; the evolutionary relationship between animals and people; unspoiled nature and human civilization. Ikemura considers changes that are apt to be seen as a one-way transition from A to B as complementary, able to move back and forth, meandering, and endless, and this is what she expresses in her work.

Ikemura also has a desire to make work that is ecological. The size of her paintings corresponds to that of the human body. For her sculptures, Ikemura chooses clay that can easily be returned to the earth, and in her drawings, she uses simple materials like charcoal and paper. In this approach, one detects Ikemura’s distinct way of thinking, which is based on practical notions of what it means to be an artist making things in the current era.

In Ikemura’s work, one senses a philosophy in the poetry, and an emotional strength in the silence. There is also a depth that appears to be flat. Her work, which gently embraces conflicting qualities, gives us a profound sense of the “transfigurations” that are necessary for us to consider at this point in time.

This exhibition, the first full-fledged retrospective of Leiko Ikemura’s career to be held in Japan, comprises some 145 paintings, sculptures, and drawings presented in a space designed by an architect. Over half of the works arrive directly from the artist’s atelier (i.e., they will be shown for the first time in Japan), and the exhibition will also feature new works.

Born in Tsu, Mie Prefecture, Ikemura moved to Spain in 1973. There, she studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Saint Isabel of Hungary of Sevilla. She then moved to Switzerland before eventually settling in Germany. Currently based in Berlin and Cologne, she also works as a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. Major solo exhibitions of her work have been held at the Bonner Kunstverein (Germany) in 1983, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Basel in 1987-88, the Haggerty Museum of Art (Milwaukee, USA) in 1999, the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art in 2000, the Cantonal Museum of Fine Art, Lausanne (Switzerland) in 2001, the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein in 2002, the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (Germany) in 2004, the Kolumba Art Museum of the Archdiocese of Cologne in 2005, the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum (Mishima, Japan) in 2006, the Museum zu Allerheiligen Schaffhausen (Switzerland) in 2008, and the Sauerland-Museum (Arnsberg, Germany) in 2010

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Robert RAUSCHENBERG 29.7 x 37 x 38.3 cm. Shades, 1964 Lithograph on plexiglas on metal support and a lightbulb

From June 8 to October 30, 2011 – Moscow Museum of Modern Art
The Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents the exhibition «Masterpieces of the 20th Century from the Collection of the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (IVAM)».

It is remarkable that the IVAM and the MMoMA collections are similar to each other in many respects. Each collection counts over 10,000 exhibits and tends to present a panoramic view of modern art in all its diversity, with special emphasis on the national heritage. So it comes as no surprise that the Moscow Museum of Modern Art hosts this important exhibition.

The IVAM collection presents an overview of the avant-garde art of the first decades of the 20th century and all art tendencies of the postwar period. The art of Julio González, a pioneering Spanish artist and sculptor of the first half of the past century, occupies a special place in the IVAM holdings. The IVAM holds the richest collection of his artworks. The exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art opens with Julio González’s oeuvre together with the works by Torres Garcia, a Uruguayan artist of the early 20th century. Also on view at the Museum, will be kinetic sculptures by Alexander Calder, installations by Kurt Schwitters and Man Ray, abstract works by František Kupka and works by classic Surrealist and Dadaist masters Joan Miro, Marcel Duchamp, André Masson, Jean Arp.

The exhibition will show experimental tendencies of the postwar period, which reflected a newly formed worldview. These are works by European masters, i. e. Antoni Tàpies, Antonio Saura, Karel Appel, Ad Reinhardt, Pierre Soulages, and works by celebrated American artists, i. e. Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra. Works by American Pop-art artists, such as Richard Hamilton, James Rosenquist and European representatives of this tendency, such as Eduardo Arroyo, Equipo Crónica group and others will also be exhibited.

Starting from the 1980s, artists have been actively using new media, new techniques and electronic devices. The IVAM responded to the new art trends early on and acquired for its collection works by Andreu Alfaro, Miquel Navarro, John Davies, Bruce Nauman, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Christian Boltanski, Eduardo Chillida and Juan Usle. Some of these artworks will be displayed at the exhibition «Masterpieces of the 20th century». Postwar Modern Art will be represented at the exhibition by the works by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

Since the IVAM holds the most extensive and valuable collection of photography in Spain, a section of the exhibition is devoted to photography of the past century. Among other photo masterpieces of the 20th century, the show will feature a work by Alexander Rodchenko, one of the greatest Russian photographers.

Museum Hours