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Theaster Gates: The Rise of an Unconventional Art Star
by Cassie Walker Burke and Elly Fishman, Chicago Magazine , June, 2013
It’s even complicated to describe exactly what kind of artist Gates is. Trained as a potter and educated as an urban planner, he’s a craftsman with a well-honed visual aesthetic, a sensual performer whose harmonies can give you goose bumps, and a critical thinker who uses art to raise provocative questions about race. “He’s a sculptor, an installation artist, a performance artist,” explains his old friend Hamza Walker, an associate curator at the Renaissance Society. “He’s nine things at once.”
Above all, Gates is an enterprising, charismatic operator in a city teeming with operators—a guy who has figured out how to profit from the art world’s need to latch on to something with meaning.
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KaviGupta_Review268.pdf
Related Artists: Theaster Gates
Angel Otero: Material Discovery
Art&Education, May 16, 2013
The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) presents Material Discovery, the first large-scale exhibition of paintings by artist Angel Otero in Asia, at SCAD Hong Kong’s Moot Gallery. Curated by SCAD chief curator Isolde Brielmaier, PhD, the exhibition debuted in February 2013 at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia as part of the university’s deFINE ART program. Material Discovery will be on view May 20 through August 23, 2013 at Moot Gallery, 292 Tai Po Road, Sham Shui Po.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review271.pdf
Related Artists: Angel Otero
Lehmann Maupin at Art Basel in Hong Kong 2013
Yareah Magazine, May 16, 2013
Hong Kong, 16 May 2013—Lehmann Maupin (Booth 1C09) is pleased to participate in the premiere edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong from 23 – 26 May 2013 with a presentation of works by Hernan Bas, Gordon Cheung, Tracey Emin, Lee Bul, Liu Wei, Mr., Angel Otero, Tony Oursler, Robin Rhode, Jennifer Steinkamp, Do Ho Suh, and Mickalene Thomas.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review270.pdf
Related Artists: Angel Otero
The House Theaster Gates Built
by Aimee Levitt, Chicago Reader, May 10, 2013
Theaster Gates is known as an artist, but he trained as an urban planner, and it's hard to separate his work from the city that inspired it. So his new show at the Museum of Contemporary Art presented a bit of a challenge to both Gates and the curators.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review269.pdf
Related Artists: Theaster Gates
Artists on Display: The Fabric Workshop introduces an exhibition where you can see art being born.
by Alyssa Shaw, Philly.com, May 02, 2013
Consider all the exhibitions you have ever attended, whether art, historical or otherwise. Perhaps you walked through spacious rooms studying oil paintings, or maybe you examined sculptures or artifacts made by past civilizations. The exhibitions you have visited likely focus on works or objects reminiscent of a previous time, whether created in the previous week or the previous century. The Fabric Workshop and Museum invites you to a living, breathing exhibition, which encourages patrons to take their time wandering through a collaborative space shared by local and international artists alike while they create inventive works of various media.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review267.pdf
Related Artists: Theaster Gates
Brooklyn Art is Now Served
by Kimberly Chou, The Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2013
Brooklynites of all stripes were in the house Wednesday night at Brooklyn Museum’s annual Brooklyn Artists Ball. This year’s benefit was emphatically homegrown, celebrating artists who live and work in the borough. Vik Muniz, Wangechi Mutu and Roxy Paine were the evening’s artist honorees. They were recipients of the Asher B. Durand Award, named for the artist who in 1855 painted the first piece to join the museum’s collection.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review266.pdf
Related Artists: Roxy Paine
Ghosts of memory in the paintings of McArthur Binion
by Claudine Isé, Chicago Reader, April 18, 2013
Memory lives in our bodies as well as our minds—something to consider when you look at McArthur Binion's solo show "Ghost: Rhythms" at Kavi Gupta. The paintings were made in New York in the 1970s, when the artist was in his 30s, but what's on view here feels like the work of a much older man.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review263.pdf
Related Artists: McArthur Binion
Related Exhibitions: Ghost: Rhythms
Transformative series 'Art Speaks' begins next week at Birmingham Museum of Art
by Michael Huebner, Alabama.com, April 18, 2013
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- The Birmingham Museum of Art is about to embark on a far-reaching project commemorating 50 years of civil rights history in Birmingham. It not only looks back to the city's role in race relations, it is a forward-looking series that can potentially change the dialogue about race and redefine the museum's place in the community.
Two years in the making, “Art Speaks: 50 Years Forward” is bringing in several renowned artists as part of the 50th anniversary of events of 1963. Through photography, music, performance art and multimedia, the goal is to engage members of the community, not only with the artists but among one another.
Five projects will unfold between now and next year, beginning Thursday, April 25, with performance, visual and installation artist Theaster Gates.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review265.pdf
Related Artists: Theaster Gates
Review: McArthur Binion/Kavi Gupta Gallery
by Alan Pocaro, New City, April 16, 2013
A combination of oil stick and Dixon wax crayon on aluminum, Binion’s surfaces are spartan but materially cantankerous. Paintings such as the ashen “Icecicle: Juice” or the Barnett Newman-like “Ghost: Rhythms” shiver with cracks and crevasses, revealing subtle glimpses of pastel hues buried beneath a mostly gray and white patina. The unit-based geometry of these nearly forty-year-old paintings evoke the Apollonian rationality of the intellect, and it’s easy to recognize their appeal to the New York cognoscenti of the time.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review262.pdf
Related Artists: McArthur Binion
Related Exhibitions: Ghost: Rhythms
Must See Painting Shows: April 2013
by Steven Zevitas, The Huffington Post, April 12, 2013
April is another strong month for painting around the US. At 20 shows, this is the largest list that I have published to date, and it could have easily been longer.
The recent trend of solid shows by mid-career artists continues. Be sure to catch veteran painter McArthur Binion's first solo at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review264.pdf
Related Artists: McArthur Binion
Related Exhibitions: Ghost: Rhythms
On View: Clare Rojas at Gallery Nicolai Wallner
by Nastia Voynovskaya, Hi Fructose, April 08, 2013
Known for her character-driven paintings — with their autumn hues and patterns inspired by folk art forms — Clare Rojas has taken a radically new direction in her past few exhibitions. The artist opened a solo show at Galleri Nicolai Wallner in Copehagen on April 5, presenting a new body of abstract, geometric works with no narrative elements to be found. Experimenting with angular shapes and negative space, Rojas’ new paintings cultivate the same kind of warmth present in her representational work. These pieces test the artist’s ability to transmit moods and feelings without relying on characters to show us the way. Take a look at some photos of the works in the exhibition courtesy of Henrik Haven and check out the show through May 18.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review260.pdf
Related Artists: Clare E. Rojas
110 Ft. Sculpture Approved For Yerba Buena Central Subway Station
by April Siese, 110 Ft. Sculpture Approved For Yerba Buena Central Subway Station, April 03, 2013
The Central Subway Yerba Buena/Moscone Station is about to get a little lovelier for its slated 2019 opening thanks to a proposed 110′ stainless steel sculpture.
The SF Arts Commission voted Monday to approve the $1.5 million “dendroid” simply entitled “Node” by sculptor Roxy Paine. The piece tapers from a 48″ diameter at its base to 1/4″ at its peak.
According to the sculpture proposal, “Node is a distillation of a notion of growth, striving, and aspiration, into an essential meandering, searching form, but on a massive scale.”
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review261.pdf
Related Artists: Roxy Paine
by Brock Keeling, SFist, April 2, 2013
Paine is known in art circles for his large-scale stainless steel tree-like sculptures. (Check out his work here, here, here, and here.) This proposed sculpture will be located in a public plaza in front of the Central Subway Yerba Buena/Moscone Station at 4th and Clementina streets.
Specifics? "The 110-foot-tall curvilinear sculpture will taper from a diameter of 48 inches at the base to ¼ inch at the peak," notes the SF Arts Commission, adding, "Titled Node, the sculpture is described by the artist as a growth that emerges from a confluence of underground manmade systems that are the lifeline for the city."
Node's big reveal will coincide with the opening of the Central Subway way down in 2019. If you don't like it, you have more than enough time to move to Orinda where you belong.
Speaking of public art in San Francisco, we cannot recommend Arts for the City: Civic Art and Urban Change rabidly enough. The recent release chronicles public art in the city from 1932-2013, boasting a slew of photos and insight on some of your favorite (and not so favorite) art that you see on a daily basis. A must for any San Franciscan. Buy it here.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review258.pdf
Related Artists: Roxy Paine
Tête-à-Tête 3: Interview with Matthew Metzger
by Matthew Bourbon, Glasstire, March 27, 2013
Former North Texas artist, Matthew Metzger recently responded to Tête-à-Tête, offering some insight into his calculated and beautifully detailed paintings. Matthew lives and works in Chicago. He received his BFA from The University of North Texas and his MFA from the University of Chicago in 2009. Since then he has exhibited at such institutions as The Smart Museum of Art in Chicago and the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, while mounting solo exhibitions at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Sikkema & Jenkins Co. in New York, Arratia Beer in Berlin, and Tony Wight Gallery in Chicago. He is co-editor of the publication SHIFTER, and is Assistant Professor of Studio Art at The University of Illinois at Chicago.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review257.pdf
Related Artists: Hans-Jörg Mayer
Theaster Gates launchs U of C Arts Incubator in Washington Park
by Mike Thomas, Chicago Sun Times, March 12, 2013
There is life once more on what was long a “dead” corner at 55th and Prairie on Chicago’s South Side.
After more than two years of planning, fundraising and extensive reconstruction, a reception was held Friday to launch the University of Chicago’s “Arts Incubator” in Washington Park on the South Side.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review248.pdf
Related Artists: Theaster Gates
They Came, They Showed, They Sold: Dealers Tell Us About Some Artworks They Parted With at the Armory VIP Preview
by Dan Duray, Zoë Lescaze and Sarah Douglas, Gallerist NY, March 06, 2013
To a greater than usual degree, The Armory Show depends on the weather gods. Previous editions have been all but submerged in March snowstorms, causing taxi traffic jams and lines of disgruntled, frigid collectors. Tony Tasset, a very clever artist, is well aware of this, which is why he asked his Chicago dealer, Kavi Gupta, to install his life-size hyper realistic bronze sculpture of a snowman just outside his Armory booth. “He wanted it here because this fair can succeed or fail because of snow,” Mr. Gupta said at the fair’s bustling VIP preview this afternoon. But there was no snow, and therefore surging attendance, and that snowman had sold by 3 p.m. (for a cool $80,000), along with just about everything else in Mr. Gupta’s booth, which has other pieces by Mr. Tasset as well as other gallery artists like Scott Reeder, at prices ranging from $15,000 to $200,000.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review256.pdf
Related Artists: Tony Tasset
Visual Artist Angel Otero Speaks on First Gallery Show in Puerto Rico
by Tamara Warren, Life + Times, March 01, 2013
When Angel Otero was growing up in Bayamón, Puerto Rico he dreamed of moving to New York to live as an artist. “I wanted to some day be in a studio in an old factory with my paintings around and see the city of New York from my window. That was a major dream for me,” he says, with an easy grin on his face. “Now I’m pretty much living it; it’s awesome.”
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review245.pdf
Related Artists: Angel Otero
Reviews in Brief
by Nova Benway, Modern Painters, March 2013
Algae provided an unlikely guide for Krone’s paintings. Inspired by the overgrowth in a fish tank he kept at home, the artist uses oil paints to mimic both the process and effects on canvas. Hung on the wall, stacked in groups, and standing on the gallery floor like Japanese screens, each work posits painting as an organically evolving process, rife with stains, fades, and uneven saturation. The most interesting works are the darkest: layer upon layer of oil produce an opaque, depthless surface reminiscent of the bottom of the sea.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review242.pdf
Related Artists: James Krone
Related Exhibitions: Waterhome
Making All the Things: The Theaster Gates Approach to Improving Space
by Greg Scruggs, Making All the Things: The Theaster Gates Approach to Improving Space , March 04, 2013
For urbanists who don’t fancy themselves artists so much, there is certainly something to ponder in the basic act of making. “The box that holds the bowl,” as Gates suggested, referring to one of the Corporation’s outputs, “connects to the house that holds the person, the city that holds the people.” Value, he proposed, is a tricky, head-shaking concept: How is it that a piece of artwork can be deemed worth the same as a house, how can one relates the value of art to home values? These are questions purposefully left unanswered, very much the tack of the artist more so than the planner.
“Changing building codes is like working with clay,” Gates said early in his lecture. While that metaphor may strike some dyed-in-the-wool zoning commissioners as preposterous, it is a reminder that planning is both an art and a science, and Gates wishes mightily to tip the balance in favor of urbanism’s artistry.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review243.pdf
Related Artists: Theaster Gates
Related Exhibitions: Theaster Gates
Everyone Loves Tony Tasset’s Dirty Snowman Sculpture at Kavi Gupta’s Armory Show Booth
by Benjamin Sutton, Art Info, March 07, 2013
With preview day of the 2013 Armory Show officially behind us, we can safely say that, aside from Gagosian’s garish Warhol-camouflaged booth, the most photogenic artwork of the fair thus far has been Tony Tasset’s “Snowman with Yellow Glove” (2013, pictured), installed just outside expansionist Chicago gallerist Kavi Gupta’s booth.
Gupta’s stall proved a popular destination with collectors attending Wednesday’s VIP preview, as they snapped up pieces by James Krone and Angel Otero early on in the day. And by 3pm the snowman — a feat of hyperrealist verisimilitude made of bronze, stainless steel, glass, resin, brass, enamel paint, and poly-styrene — had also found a new home, for $80,000, GalleristNY reported.
Perhaps that generous donation to the weather gods will help temper the incoming snowstorm that is threatening to make the tail end of everyone’s Armory Week a little extra unpleasant.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review255.pdf
Related Artists: Tony Tasset