International Art News

From January 18, 2013 to February 22, 2013 – Palm Beach Gardens City Hall
One Woman Show: the works of Debbie Lee Mostel.  Her collection entitled “Technology Deconstructed/Nature Reconstructured is an exciting  exhibit of abstract mixed media.  It features among other surprises: integrated circuits, vintage globes, VCR Motors, mummified amphibians, tin wind up toys and hand-blown glass.

Formally trained as a Goldsmith & Glassblower, her years as jewelry design & manufacturer has enabled her to create intricate technical structures against dazzling abstract backgrounds.  Most pieces have an interactive aspect, which makes viewing always a different experience.

Her passion for Marine Biology and 2nd career as a landscape designer has also contributed to the underlying theme of “We are all united in the universe—the string theory” viewpoint.

Larger in Life – detail

From October 13 to November 26, 2012 – 101 exhibit – West Hollywood
Jason Shawn Alexander (B. 1975) Painter and draftsman from Tennessee, currently resides and works in Los Angeles, California. Though modern in its subject matter, Alexander’s work pulls, still, from the vulnerability, fear, and underlying strength that come from his rural upbringing. Much like good Delta Blues, his work maintains a sense of pain and passion which steers Alexander away from the standard “isms” that, in his words, “tend to muddy up what’s really important”. The result is something heartbreakingly genuine.

Larger in Life | 106×70 inches, mixed media, collage, inks, oils and paper on two canvases, 2012

“It’s probably not a coincidence that Jason Shawn Alexander, in his bio, mentions the Blues, and that when I first saw his paintings I immediately got a Muddy Waters song in my head. Alexander’s work just looks like it hums along a sweaty slide guitar chord, singing its pain and prosperity through a haze of smoke. You can tell that something bad is happening to or around his subjects, but also that they’re just people so it can’t be bad forever. His gritty, drippy, and dark style lends an ominous air, like a fresh grave, and the subject’s poses humanize the whole thing. This is the whole package.” (Brad Martin)

101 exhibit

Anthony McCall, Line Describing a Cone 1973 © Anthony McCall, courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York - Sunday 22 July A rare poportunity to see all four 1974 cone films by Anthony McCal

The Tanks: Art in Action  – A fifteen-week festival from 18 July – 28 October 2012 – Tate Modern
What already impressed everyone about the Tate Modern when it was inaugurated was its huge size. His former electric plant has been able to offer contemporary art absolutely spectacular spaces that have ensured the public’s passion as we can see in the installations presented in the hall of the Turbines over the last ten years. While waiting for the extension carried out by Herzog and de Meuron to be concluded by 2016 (which will add 21,000 square metres i.e. 60% additional space), the museum has decided to recuperate other areas: the reservoirs where the oil used to run the plant was installed. These underground rooms with vast dimensions (30 metres long, 7 metres tall) will be inaugurated on 18 July 2012, with an original theme: they will host one of the largest concentrations in Europe of living art, happenings and performances. The list of artists includes Korean Sung Hwan Kim as well as Cuban artist Tania Bruguera or Flemish Anne Teresa de Keersmaecker.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker - Photo: Herman Sorgeloos - Thursday 19 – Friday 20 July One of the most important choreographers of the 20th century performs widely acclaimed Fase: Four movements to the music of Steve Reich

An excellent opening to the Cultural Olympiad and to the London Festival 2012.

Tate Modern

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Frauenbildnis mit Hut, 1911-1912 - Wachskreiden auf Papier - Albertina, Wien - Dauerleihgabe der Sammlung Werner

From June 1, 2012 to August 26, 2012 – Albertina
Presented in this exhibition is the exceptional collection of a woman whose career following the Second World War started as a simple secretary and led to becoming the right hand woman of the renowned art dealer Wilhelm Grosshennig in Dusseldorf, and a passionate art collector after 1960.

Erich Heckel - Frau vor Bäumen, 1925 - Schwarze Kreide und Aquarell - Albertina, Wien - Dauerleihgabe der Sammlung Werner

The selection includes around 90 works with a focus on German Expressionism. In addition to outstanding work groups from Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde, works from a considerable ensemble of German art from the 19th century and Western European greats like Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani will also be shown.

Emil Nolde - Zwei Dampfer, um 1915 - Aquarell auf Japanpapier - Albertina, Wien - Dauerleihgabe der Sammlung Werner

Albertina

Vera Klute - Its coming out of my ears - fountain, plaster, pump, bucket, water, dimensions variable, 2011

From 7 May 2012 until 19 June 2012 – Butler Gallery – The Castle
The Butler Gallery reads like a latrine in the  context of Vera Klute’s work––especially considering the artist’s ‘pissing ear’ work at the far end of the Kilkenny art space entitled It’ s coming out of my ears. The grey tiled floor and series of ‘alcove galleries’ force the viewer to walk to the right and look to the left. Unavoidably, the art works are given a serial and segregated presentation, while the artist tries to form a cohesive hole. Saying that, the staccato architecture is perfect for Klute’s work, which presents the body as a series of disconnected bit-parts; divine and maybe not so divine.

Vera Klute - Its coming out of my ears (detail), - fountain, plaster, pump, bucket, water, dimensions variable, 2011

You almost have to break down her art practice into genus and species: drawings and paintings are also present. In each disconnected space of the gallery the viewer is presented with a limb, limbs or internal organs, that are being manipulated by kinetic or digital means. A series of large drawings hang volutes-like from the ceiling with a top heavy composition of what can only be read as cherubim. However, the composition crops the heads of the figures, suggesting decapitation or Icarian hubris. The latter seems to fit Klute’s playful fabrications, which suggest the daring of science and technology to play God through cybernetic experiments…(James Merrigan)

Vera Klute - Its coming out of my ears (detail), - fountain, plaster, pump, bucket, water, dimensions variable, 2011

From oil paintings of dead creatures to a pair of mechanical spoon-wielding hands, Vera Klute also does film installations and precise pencil drawings, as in Public Pool, which hangs ceiling-to-floor to give an underwater view of headless bodies in bathing suits, arms and legs flailing.

German-born, Dublin-based Klute makes art that is often uncanny and often absurd, driven by a dispassionate fascination with how humans function.
Klute consistently jolts viewers out of any sense of certainty about the nature of things with a show that is part science experiment, part psychological challenge. It deliberately raises more questions than it answers, which is just one of the reasons it works.

Gallery Hours

Amedeo Modigliani - Elvire au col blanc (Elvire à la collerette)- 1917 ou 1918 - Oil on canvas, 92 x 65 cm. - Private Collection © Photo : Pinacothèque de Paris

Until the 9th of September 2012 – Pinacothèque de Paris
Jonas Netter, is one of the most influential collectors of the 20th century, a discoverer of talents, all the more inspired and brilliant, in that he was totally discreet throughout his life, to such an extent that he is even today still completely unknown by the general public.
However, without him, Modigliani would probably not have existed, nor Soutine, nor Utrillo. This exhibition will now pay him the homage he deserves by nally enabling the public to discover an ensemble of works of astounding beauty, chiefly by Modigliani.

Maurice Utrillo - Place de l’église à Montmagny-c. 1907 - Oil on canvas, 54 x 81 cm. - Private Collection - © Adagp, Paris 2012- © Jean Fabris, 2012- © Photo : Pinacothèque de Paris / Fabrice Gousset

Jonas Netter was Alsatian, an agent for various trademarks settled in Paris, and he was fascinated by art and painting. He discovers a painting by Modigliani and decides to buy it. He was one of the very first to acquire works by that artist, taking over from Paul Alexandre, who had supported him until then, before World War One. A collector in his very soul, Netter started off buying all the works by Modigliani that he saw at Zborowski’s. He became passionate about that artist of whom he managed to acquire about forty paintings at the end of the Twenties.

Then he noticed Soutine. Long before Barnes, he was fascinated by him. He, the middleclass and discreet Alsatian Jew, was overtaken by a limitless passion for all those artists who made up the Paris School. He also discovered Utrillo : his white period delighted him and he started buying them also by the dozen, always via Zborowski. The latter found himself, thanks to Netter, at the head of a genuinely new market and of a bunch of young artists who suddenly found themselves propelled forward by this new generation of dealers and collectors.

Chaïm Soutine - L’Escalier rouge à Cagnes - c. 1918 - Oil on canvas, 61,6 x 46,5 cm. - Private Collection - © Adagp, Paris 2012 - © Photo : Pinacothèque de Paris / Fabrice Gousset

Valadon and Kisling were also part of that group of painters, as well as many others, just as wonderful even if they did not necessarily attain the same notoriety: Kremègne, Kikoïne, Hayden, Ébiche, Antcher and Fournier.

La Pinacothèque de Paris will show, for the first time ever, a group of never before exhibited works by Modigliani that recreates, alongside other works we have managed to find, Jonas Netter’s collection such as it was in his own time.
The Pinacothèque de Paris is therefore very proud to be able to partake in this outstanding discovery and to undertake Jonas Netter’s first wish, i.e. that the largest possible public should have access to these marvels.

Museum Hours