« It’s all in the nerves. The nerves that tense and relax as you approach the edges of companionship and love. The razor-sharp edges of companionship and love. »[1] Amuleto, Roberto Bolaño, 1999 Free from the object-picture idea, the tools of painting are used to only keep the “sidelines”. The marks created by the work…
Blind Paintings From May 18th to July 1st, Cécile Bart is presenting several new works in the project room at Valentin gallery in Paris; two screens/collages, one opaque and one mixed. The opaque paintings/screens are created by superimposing two spalter brushstrokes, the first a light colour, the second a dark colour, without any wiping to…
And so we come to the end of the evening, everyone will make judgements, the works will be sent off in their boxes and returned to warehouses full of history or towards energetic emerging artists. Many works will go towards new collectors but everything will go in directions that are difficult to define. The…
Intrigue, the exhibition of James Ensor (1860-1949) at London’s Royal Academy (through January 2017), does as promised by its captivating title borrowed from the homonymous seminal painting of 1890. Put together by the Belgian painter Luc Tuymans, not new to important curatorial efforts, the project is neither a canonical retrospective nor an artist-curated, past/present dialogue…
The air of hell suffers no hymns On the lower side, as fast as warning lights, my eyes sometimes struggle to take the light in. Proud, I stand up like a security gate. Bad seed in rolling paper. Rewind, the picture snapped. In copper and predatory reflection, I go round, I light up. En pointe…
It all began with a scam email from Barbados. Upon replying, an enthusiastic correspondence unfolded. Before the dialogue came to an end, Fergal (the scammer) traveled across the island to document the home of the Bajan pop star, Rihanna, by Ditte Ejlerskov’s request. A year later, the artist found herself sitting on a secluded beach…
Sandström’s practice actively interrogates the methods by which viewing initiates and elicits thought and cognition. Her newest body of work consists of a series of portrait-sized paintings hung at equal distance throughout the gallery. As a gestural template, each painting comprises an assortment of brushstrokes impastoed onto intimately-scaled panels colored vividly with swatches of magenta,…
