Kavi Gupta Gallery

As suggested by the exhibition's title, Antonia Gurkovska (b. 1984, Bulgaria) presented a lexicon of painting in her first solo show, "Index." Even as she did so, however, she rejected gestural painterly idioms and adherence to the picture plane for practices decidedly three-dimensional; press materials like Gurkovska to Lucio Fontana and Rudolf Stingel in her use of unconventional materials and methods of mark-making that rupture the paintings' surfaces to explore spatial concepts. Gurkovska built eight paintings on view (either 2011 or 2012) by layering vinyl,leather, plastic bubble wrap, corduroy, mesh and canvas, then over-painting the compilation with acrylics, enamels and oils to create a mono chromatic effect. In some instances the artist then punctured the work's outer skin with grommets or staples, as in Index (12 by 9 inches), in which rows of metal staples pierce a canvas support, the whole coated in thick layer of silver paint. In other works - the 8 by-6-inch Holes of Steel for example, and the 60-by-48-inch Outer - she cut into each painting's top membrane, in both cases black vinyl, to create a series of openings that reveal a textural terrain of fabric, plastic and paint underneath. These gashes and slits usually occur in horizontal or vertical bands that form abstract patterns typical of Op art and Post-Painterly Abstraction. Thus through repetition (and destruction) Gurkovska plays with notions of perception within certain lineages of painting. At the same time, she references the body both through her choice of materials deriving from clothing and textiles, and through a deconstructive process that metaphorically alludes to flesh and scars. In the ambitious Container, an environment created for the gallery's project space, the artist treated painting as an entity both corporeal and spatial. As if turning one of her smaller-scale works inside out, she hung the room's four walls with bubble wrap-which had been given a patina of rust-colored-paint- and covered its floor with nubby black vinyl. Viewers were offered an experience, simultaneously enveloping and intimate, that allowed them to revel in the optical pleasures and tactility of Gurkovska's materials. Like Gordon Matta-Clark, whose building cuts conflated inside/outside and absence/presence to comment on the decay of urban architecture, Gurkovska here performs, as in all her works, acts of excavation and reclamation to connect painting's past and future. -Susan Snodgrass

This year, the Armory Show art fair, which was held in March in two cavernous, steel-rafted halls on the Hudson River piers in the West Fifties, came with an official artist: Theaster Gates. A charismatic thirty-nine-year-old Chicago "urban planner, educator, composer and social catalyst," as he is described in a brochure from his dealer Kavi Gupta, Gates makes elegant assembled sculpture from the detritus of South Side slums...

Read the full article from the May 7 issue of the New Yorker in the Press section.

Often atmospheric and abstracted, the works comprising Wherever you go by renowned photographer, filmmaker and  artist  Ari  Marcopoulos include grandly-scaled pigment prints and smaller photographs on rice paper that, through processes of multiple printings of the same image, result in lush surfaces of densely textured black and white. Marcopoulos’ signature time-stamped photos, made with an old, inexpensive point-and-shoot camera, which are then further mediated through photocopying  and scanning, are given a dramatically new presentation as unique artworks. These works depict many of Marcopoulos’  familiar subjects, from graffiti scrawled walls and skate-sessioned  architecture  to the more close-at-hand studies that the artist has made of his own family and friends that have been atomized and degraded through reproduction.

In 2010, a 20-page fan zine titled Tyson Chandler, made by Marcopoulos as a tribute to the NBA player, ignited a friendship and collaboration between the New York Knicks center and the artist. Images of Chandler are featured in this exhibition, an illuminating  example of the intimate moments and inner lives Marcopoulos captures in his subjects using a familial, casual approach informed by immediacy, access and a finely tuned sense of portraiture.


Book and ‘zine-making have had a  critical role in Marcopoulos’ practice throughout his  career, and underscores his increasing interest in the democratization of distribution  and the equivalency of images. The artist’s  latest  collaboration with  Dashwood  Books includes producing one ‘zine each week over the period of this calendar year; Wherever you go will be featured in edition #17.  A vitrine with approximately fifteen of Marcopoulos’  rare and out of print books make up a reading room of  sorts, along with multiple bootleg versions of these books, xeroxed zine-style, for visitors to discover his past publications.
As an extension of this combination of a democratic spirit and a voyeur’s eye, a projected video work entitled City Riders, shot with a cellphone camera, and depicting New York City subway commuters makes a gritty homage to both Walker Evans and Warhol’s screen tests.


Ari Marcopoulos, born in Amsterdam in 1957, moved to New York in 1979 where he quickly became a key figure in downtown’s legendary art scene. Before coming into prominence, he printed photographs for Andy Warhol and assisted Irving Penn. His own artistic practice began on the streets of New York City, echoing a long tradition of work made in this arena by photographers such as Helen Levitt, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand documenting the intimate lives of artists, musicians and skateboarders who served as both muses and commercial subject-matter. Through engaged portraiture he offers a dramatic take on everyday life that neither romanticizes nor exploits his subjects. Self-taught as a photographer, Marcopoulos makes photographs that are often imbued with a subtle formalism, a classical austerity—informed by the artist’s broad knowledge of art history—combined with an intuitive approach and an ability to adapt to the moment.
Recent exhibitions include Midway at  Kavi Gupta, Chicago; Here and Now at V1 Gallery, Denmark and the 2010 Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial. Marcopoulos currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Image above: Ari Marcopoulos, 1.2065 (Cairo), 2012, pigment print on rice paper, 36 x 54 5/8 inches

Marlborough Gallery 545 W. 25th Street May 10th – June 16th, 2012

We are pleased to announce that the U.S Art Critics Association (AICA-USA) has awarded Kavi Gupta CHICAGO with Best Show in a Commercial Gallery Nationally for Theaster Gates, An Epitaph for Civil Rights and Other Domesticated Structures, 2011.


The US section of the International Association of Art Critics/AICA-USA announces its annual awards to honor artists, curators, museums, galleries and other cultural institutions in recognition of excellence in the conception and realization of exhibitions. The winning projects were nominated and voted on by the 400 active members to honor outstanding exhibitions of the previous season (June 2010 - June 2011). Awards will be presented by Lowery Sims, Peter Plagens, and Sanford Biggers. This year's Nominating Committee included art critics: Eleanor Heartney (Chair), Marek Bartelik (AICA-USA President), Rebecca Cochran, Peter Frank, Francine Miller, and Susan Snodgrass.

The awards ceremony, which has been held annually for more than 25 years, will take
place at the Asia Society in New York on April 2, 2012 at 6 PM. Awards will be presented by a group of distinguished artists and curators. Artist Michael Smith will serve as emcee for the evening. Museum curators, artists and critics from around the country are expected to attend. A select number of seats will be available to the public. Members of the public may contact aicausaprogram@gmail.com for more information about attending the event.

Tony Tasset is included in the group exhibtion This Will Have Been: Art, Love, and Politics in the 1980s, curated by Boston ICA Chief Curator, Helen Molesworth.

From the museum's website: "The art produced during the 1980s veered between radical and conservative, capricious and political, socially engaged and art historically aware. This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s provides viewers with an overview of the artistic production of these heady days, as well as impart the decade’s sense of political and aesthetic urgency by placing many of the decade’s competing factions in close proximity to one another."

February 11th to June 3rd 2012

This Will Have Been: Art, Love, & Politics in the 1980s
Museum Of Contemporary Art Chicago
220 E Chicago Ave
Chicago, IL 60611

CURTIS MANN
Paper cuts, Horizontals (as straight and closed as possible), 2012
Almine Rech, Paris
03.03 — 07.04.12 / paris

February 16th - June 3rd 2012

Claire Sherman is included in the exhibition Do Not Destroy: Trees, Art, And Jewish Thought at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. More information about the exhibition can be found here.

Theaster Gates will exhibit work in Feast: Radical Hospitality And Contemporary Art, curated by Stephanie Smith.

February 16th to June 10th 2012

Feast: Radical Hospitality And Contemporary Art
Smart Museum Of Art at The University Of Chicago
5550 S. Greenwood Ave.
Chicago IL 60637

Scott Reeder: MCA Chicago
Solo exhibition and large scale commission - thru May 2012

Theaster Gates has a solo exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum entitled The Listening Room.

From the press release: "Incorporating a vast array of disciplines, Gates’ solo exhibition at SAM will transform the gallery with cultural ephemera. Coupled with objects and architectural elements that elicit stories through every day practices, the backbone of the installation will be a collection of vinyl records that reflect cultural and social currents of the 60s, 70s and 80s."

December 9th 2011 - July 1st 2012

Theaster Gates: The Listening Room
Seattle Art Museum
1300 First Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101

Angel Otero
Galerie Isa
132, Great Western Building, 1st Floor,
SBS Road, Opp. Lion Gate, Fort,
Mumbai 400 023, India

March 30th, 2012 - June 7th, 2012

Angel Otero
Istanbul '74, Turkey.

Theaster Gates has been chosen as the commissioned artist of 2012.

Theaster Gates is included in The Smithsonian American Art Museum's exhibition 40 Under 40: Craft Futures.

July 20th 2012 - February 3rd 2013

40 Under 40: Craft Futures
The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery
1661 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20006

Chris Johanson is included in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of its SECA Award. Johanson received the SECA award in 2002.

December 9th, 2011 - April 3rd, 2012
Fifty Years of Bay Area Art: The SECA Awards
San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art
San Francisco, California

James Krone will be performing his work "Illegible Deposit" (2011) alongside performances by other Berlin artists Alessio delli Castelli and Maxwell Simmer.

November 18th 2011 from 6 to 9pm
Verein zur Forderung von Kunst und Kultur am Rosa-Luxemberg Platz e.V.
Linienstrasse 40
10178 Berlin DE

The debut West Coast museum exhibition of gallery artist Theaster Gates.

October 1st - January 15, 2012
"An Epitaph for Civil Rights"
LA MOCA (Geffen Contemporary)

Chris Johanson's work is included in the Toulouse festival, Le Printemps de Septembre: Another World.

September 23rd - October 16th 2011
Le Printemps de Septembre: Another World
Toulouse, France

Angel Otero is included in the group exhibition NY: New Perspectives at Brand New Gallery in Milan; the exhibition was organized in collaboration with Linda Yablonsky.

September 22nd 2011 - October 29th 2011

NY: New Perspectives
Brand New Gallery
via Farini 32
20159 Milan

Melanie Schiff is included in the exhibition Mouthing (The Senitent Limb) at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, curated by Kelly Kaczynski. The press release and further information about the exhibition is available here.