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Ari Marcopoulos Wherever you go
by Sean Landers, Nero, May 10th, 2012
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
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KaviGupta_Review144.pdf
Related Artists: Ari Marcopoulos
Ari Marcopoulos Captures Cool Straphanger in City Riders
by Joe Coscarelli, New York Magazine, May 8th, 2012
The artist Ari Marcopoulos, a former assistant to Andy Warhol and longtime documentarian of downtown culture (including the Beastie Boys), charmed us last year by stepping out of his box to make a fan zine dedicated to then–Dallas Mavericks center Tyson Chandler. When Chandler became a New York Knick through some twist of fate, he and Marcopoulos turned into fast friends, and the NBA player features prominently in Marcopoulos's new solo exhibition, "Wherever you go," opening this week. The other stars of the show are everyday people on public transit, as captured by Marcopoulos via cell-phone camera in a video called City Riders. Check out a few stills from the piece right this way, and see all of "Wherever you go" at Marlborough Chelsea starting Thursday, May 10.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review147.pdf
Related Artists: Ari Marcopoulos
Wherever You Go: Ari Marcopoulos presents richly degraded photography, photocopies and film in a new solo show
by Graham Hiemstra, Cool Hunting, May 10th, 2012
Dark, densely textured images seem to float on the stark white walls of the Marlborough Chelsea, the mostly massive black and white photographs fill the space with an almost unrecognizable, vaguely ominous mood. "Wherever You Go" is a considered collection of new photographs, photocopies and film by renowned photographer, filmmaker and artist Ari Marcopoulos.
"It's as much about photography as it is about printmaking," says Marcopoulos about the selection of high-contrast images. Shot predominantly with a 35mm point-and-shoot, the large-scale pigment prints and smaller photographs on rice paper are often printed multiple times and blown up to expose a gritty quality. Similarly Marcopoulos experiments with additional, non-photographic printed matter by layering photocopied imagery that evokes a visceral experience enhanced by the ability to walk up close and really see each minute detail of the bigger picture—a signature characteristic of Marcopoulos' shows. But while each image finds identity in its distinct textures, the subjects themselves strike a cord with the viewer as well. "I think there is certain power in the images, a certain strength when you look at them. They're kind of heavy images," admits Marcopoulos.
Best known for his portraiture, Marcopoulos starts to stray from the expected with the inclusion of some more abstract images that remove all apparent context. "I like the idea of looking at something where you dont have an exact idea of what it is. It's nice to make something where your first reaction is not words but just a feeling."
Feeling this way upon seeing the unnamed image dated 5.8.08, we asked Marcopoulos to elaborate on the compelling photograph of stained skin. "It's very close up," he says. "It's hard to tell what it is. It kind of has to do with the idea that as a photographer or in photography so often the images are about what it is you're looking at. So this is kind of more about just creating a rectangle, that doesn't really inform you as to what it is. It's open you know. It's more of a mood or a feeling."
While some artists may shoot specifically for a show, Marcopoulos prefers to focus on a vague idea, letting the body of work develop organically. "A lot of thought goes into it, but in the end it's very intuitive, it's like improvisation," says Marcopoulos. "You have an idea in your head and you do what you feel is needed to get it done. That idea is often not a wordy idea because you work in images, so the ideas are images in your head. The only way to get it done is actually select images—it can be one image, but it's often two or three—and then put it together. Sounds very abstract but that's kind of how it is. There is not ever one theme."
While the large-scale prints and enlarged photocopies dominate the show, Marcopoulos chose to include a projected film with a colorful splash of life that contrasts nicely with the still black and white environment. Entitled "City Riders", the voyeuristic piece was shot in a few short months with Marcopoulos' BlackBerry, capturing about an hour's worth of unsuspecting NYC subway commuters.
"Wherever You Go" opens tonight at NYC's Marlborough Chelsea with a reception from 6-8pm. The show will then run through 16 June 2012.
Installation image by Ari Marcopoulos
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review146.pdf
Related Artists: Ari Marcopoulos
All is Fairs
by Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, May 7th, 2012
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...
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review141.pdf
Related Artists: Theaster Gates
Related Exhibitions: Armory Show
Ari Marcopoulos Unveils New Work
by Rosalia Jovanovic, GalleristNY, May 9th, 2012
Ari Marcopoulos, the photographer known for his gritty and personal images of the downtown arts scene in the 1980s, and later his navigation of the cultures of snowboarders and skateboarders in the 1990s, will unveil a new exhibition tomorrow, “Wherever You Go,” at Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea. The exhibition includes a few photographs from a new series he shot of New York Knicks player Tyson Chandler, who just last week won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. Mr. Chandler is a relatively new subject for the photographer who in 2010 created a fanzine of the sports star with Camila Venturini from a stream of digitally sourced images.
“We’re friends,” Mr. Marcopoulos told The Observer over e-mail, when asked how these new pictures of Mr. Chandler came about noting that basketball players are a whole different ballgame, culture-wise, than skateboarders. “Skateboarding takes place in the street in the public realm,” said Mr. Marcopoulos, “and photography is an inherent ingredient to skateboarding. It is often used as proof that a trick actually succeeded.”
Ari Marcopolous, who moved to New York in 1980, very quickly became a known documentarian of the downtown art and hip-hop scenes. And his blog reads like the shy alter ego of Terry’s Diary, Terry Richardson’s blog. It bears similar snapshots of models and artists in hipster-wear, who, we assume, naturally populate his life. But rather than the cheeky glamour shots, they’re all about the quiet moments.
“I wanted to do some more formal studies than I regularly do,” he said of Mr. Chandler. But the experience of photographing people is always the same, no matter who he’s shooting. “What draws me to people,” he said, “is a combination of their looks and personality.” And despite the intimacy of his photographs, Mr. Marcopoulos said he doesn’t say or do much to direct people during his shoots. “I let things unfold and if someone is uncomfortable it reflects in the photos. I’m interested in that tension.”
For this show, the images are pigment print on rice paper, and at 36″ by 54″, much larger in size than he normally prints. The exhibition will also feature a short film that he shot while riding the subway, what he calls a “moving tribute to Walker Evans.” “One day, I just decided to film whoever was across from me; for about 15 seconds.”
We asked the one-time assistant to Andy Warhol what he had learned from the master. His answer: “Don’t shoot up at people so you glare into their nostrils.”
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review145.pdf
Related Artists: Ari Marcopoulos
Antonia Gurkovska
by Susan Snodgrass, Art in America, May 2012
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
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review142.pdf
Related Artists: Antonia Gurkovska
Related Exhibitions: Index
All the Way from New York to Mumbai
by Features Team, MidDay, March 25th, 2012
Works of Angel Otero, a Puerto Rican artiste based in New York, will be on display at the Galerie Isa from March 30 to June.
Galerie Isa is hosting it's second international art exhibition in Mumbai, which will showcase the works of Angel Otero – a Puerto Rican artist based in New York. Otero's work is heavily influence by his life in Puerto Rico and his relationships with his family members.
It's personal.
Otero's work sometimes uses his work
to confront deep, personal memories. Instead of merely representing his life through art, he archives moments within it by creating opportunities of surprise and discovery. His work is a constant negotiation between the individual and art history.
Unique Style.
The opening night will see some artworks on display which are dedicated to international art. Otero's painting process is conventional and has a broad appeal. He uses the technique of applying layers of oil paints on glass in reverse order. He scraps it off the glass once it has half-dried.
Then he applies the richly textured oilskin surface to a canvas. The result is a burst of colour and produces, unexpected wrinkles in Otero's imagery.
The show has been arranged through his New york gallery, Lehman Maupin. After the Mumbai show, Otero is planning to prepare for two museum shows in June and October.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review138.pdf
Related Artists: Angel Otero
Paint, Peel, Recreate
by Zaira Arslan, Indian Express, March 29th, 2012
On a shimmering gold dining table with a single visible chair, sit a vase with flowers in it, a teapot and some other pieces of crockery. All of these are also a brilliant gold, immediately attracting the viewer's attention and keeping it there. It's almost hard not to imagine kings and queens sitting at this table with a lavish spread before them.
This is, however, not an image from a fancy fairy tale, but a painting titled Leftovers from among Angel Otero's latest works. This and a number of other recent works-some created especially for the show- are on display at Galerie Isa, Fort, for Otero's first show in India....
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review139.pdf
Related Artists: Angel Otero
Visiting Artist: Molly Zuckerman-Hartung
by Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Newcity Art, April 3rd, 2012
...Antonia Gurkovska’s solo show, “Index,” at Kavi Gupta Gallery, orchestrated black and metallic colors into a fluorescent lit cocktail lounge atmosphere of post-minimal paintings. Makeshift yet sharply critical, her material resonates beyond recent “provisional” painting. Bubble wrap, with its repetitive grid and implications of transitional and temporary protection, is the texture du jour here. Gurkovska cut a grid of eye-like holes into four paintings, revealing receding layers of cut cloth or vinyl in what I want to call, oddly, the inside of the painting. The repeating pattern of cut eye shapes produces the queer experience of looking into the painting and simultaneously being looked at by the painting. The paintings mimic the sphere of social networking; the poker-faced paranoia of the vulnerable individual competing in a free market economy where peer means enemy, resources are scarce, and the field of action is the bar.....
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review140.pdf
Related Artists: Antonia Gurkovska
Related Exhibitions: Index
Clare Rojas:
by Cherie Louise Turner, art ltd., March 2012
Once again, Bay Area-based painter and musician (under the name Peggy Honeywell) Clare Rojas delivers. But here- in her third solo show at Gallery Paule Anglim- even more so, because it's in somewhat unexpected territory. Rojas is best known, and widely celebrated, for her graphic folk art-inspired figurative narratives, which are heavily focused on feminism and domestic life; however ten of the 11 new paintings (all 2012) on show are total abstractions. As with past work- which has long been associated with the SF Mission School (think Barry MgGee, Chris Johanson)-these paintings feature flat solid color, clean edges, and geometric lines and shapes, all finely edited down to only the most essential elements ( not to be forgotten, Roja's formal training is in printmaking). These works have stylistic predecessors..........
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review134.pdf
Related Artists: Clare E. Rojas
The Artist Facing the Art: Antonia Gurkovska
by Yolanda Green, Chicago Art Magazine, March 20th, 2012
Through lines, shapes, brush strokes and colors - it is a common idea that whatever goes onto a canvas contains a piece of the artist. Wether it is a nod towards a culture or some form of self expression, a part of the artist's being is engraved in the work. But how much must an artist lose themselves in the work? Should the artists step away from the work or always be a part of it?
What is more important- the art or the artist?
Thanks to all of these ideas and questions, Antonia Gurkovska's journey of artistic discovery was challenging........
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review135.pdf
Related Artists: Antonia Gurkovska
Related Exhibitions: Index
The New Revolutionary
by Michele Robercchi, Mousse Contemporary Art Magazine, Issue 32 February - March 2012
What role can a revolutionary play today? Starting with this question, Michele Robecchi zooms in on the practice of Theaster Gates, the artist from Chicago who through the creation of soul food restaurants and the construction of temporary temples generates multicultural dialogue. Programmatically eluding classification, Gates institutes physical and non-physical spaces in which to exercise the right to say challenging things without getting trapped in facile categories..........
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review131.pdf
Related Artists: Theaster Gates
Theaster Gates
by Christian Viveros-Faune, Art Review, Jan/Feb 2012
Great art according to the American poet Emily Dickinson, is what makes the hair on on the back of your neck stand up. So it is with the relentlessly civic-minded performance, sculpture, installation and urban reclamation work of Theaster Gates. continued...
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review130.pdf
Related Artists: Theaster Gates
Theaster Gates
by Lilly Wei, Art in America, December 2011
ARTISTS OFTEN TALK about real estate, but Theaster Gates, 38, multi medium artist, designer and musician, deals in it. An urban planner and developer, community organizer and cultural entrepreneur, Gates is also the inaugural director of Arts and Public Life at the University of Chicago; the new program will include artist residencies and collaborations with area cultural institutions.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review127.pdf
Related Artists: Theaster Gates
Museums for Tolerance
by Heidi Zuckerman, Huffington Post, Dec 8, 2011
Last year Rocco Landesman, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), spoke at a meeting of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD). He came to speak with us about what he perceived as a lack of civility in contemporary American society and to seek our help. His goal was a reactivation of the traditional "town square," where people of all different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences have historically intermixed. He suggested that museums were an appropriate and logical place to emphasize the town hall concept.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review128.pdf
Related Artists: Theaster Gates
Best of 2011
by Wurtz, Artforum, Dec, 2011
Tony Tasset's film 'Judy', 1998, shows a woman looking at the camera, which is supposedly being operated by Tasset, her husband. We witness, and relate to, her air of suspicion and self-consciousness, but what is most palpable is the strong psychological bond between her and the cameraman. Like voyeurs, we study the few seconds of footage as they loop over and over again. The piece is presented in a dark room by a cold and impersonal monster--the film projector--which loudly screeches and creaks along, scratching and gradually destroying the film. even with this machine standing in place of her husband, we still detect love on the woman's face.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review129.pdf
Related Artists: Tony Tasset
Studio Visit: Angel Otero
by In Culture, CoolHunting.com, February 16, 2012
As soon as you enter Puerto Rican artist Angel Otero's Brooklyn work loft, the intense smell of paint nearly stops you at the door. Shelves housing copious tubes of oil paint and rows of Montana spray cans lining the back walls allude to the strong odor, but it;s the stacks of work frying on wooden pallets surrounding the space that are really the culprit. But the extraordinary aroma is actually the upshot to Otero's distinct artistic technique, one which involves an extensive process of building up layers of paint on plexiglass before methodically scraping them off. "I've always been intrigued by process,"......
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review132.pdf
Related Artists: Angel Otero
Creative Rebuild:Theaster Gates in Hyde Park, St. Louis
by Francesca Wilmott, art 21:blog, August 1, 2011
Artist Theaster Gates likes systems. And what he likes more than a system itself is knowing how to leverage it. Though formally trained in handling clay, Gates also uses the structure of neighborhoods, cultural institutions, and universities as his artistic medium. continued....
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Related Artists: Theaster Gates
A Conversation With Curtis Mann
by Carmen Winant, Dossier Journal, October 12th, 2011
I first met Curtis Mann when he arrived with a small backpack at my San francisco apartment to spend five nights on an inflatable mattress in my living room. He was there to give a lecture on his work at the California College of Arts, where I was a graduate student, and to surf as much as possible while on the west coast. I immediately liked him. He was open about his experiences and curious about mine. We spoke at length about our evolving art practices, and the anxiety and excitement that comes with pushing our careers forward. .......
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review133.pdf
Related Artists: Curtis Mann
Angel Otero at Kavi Gupta and John Santoro at McCormick
by Chris Miller, New City Art, October 11, 2011
In 1845, J.M.W. Turner reportedly joked: “Indistinctness is my fault,” in response to an American collector who despaired finding many recognizable details in one of his atmospheric seascapes. In some of his magnificent swirls, nothing was recognizable at all. Was Turner an early Abstract Expressionist? Not if you distinguish the epic struggle of man against nature from the psychological struggle of self against the world. Curiously enough, a similar Romanticism has recently emerged simultaneously in the work of two painters now exhibiting work in adjoining galleries at 835 West Washington.
Cont....
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review126.pdf
Related Artists: Angel Otero
Related Exhibitions: The Dangerous Ability to Fascinate Other People