Samson Projects is proud to present Taylor Davis' 2nd solo exhibition: N W rk Ab t.

"What determines the parameters of side ?" Constant acquiescence to opinion would be possibly nice.

There is a cut cherry burl dead center in the room, one eighth of all eight directions. Balance being a concern, following a rigorous installation, most of the works cooperate with their place in space.

The exhibition contains the second sculpture Davis has made with a found section of a tree trunk (partially chewed by a beaver and both from East Benton, Maine). The previous life of a "material".

A textual inaugural urges: "...you have what you need, you're who you're supposed to be."

The cast iron pole is a grammatical fragment, " ...dull and hard things get. A weapon, a stripper pole, a phallus, a tilting [lilting] black line,... Tightly crossed oak boards are ungenerous. The knot hole on the lower board endures."

Taylor Davis' work was recently on view in Begin Again Right Back Here curated by B. Wurtz at White Columns (NYC, NY) and Visiting Faculty 2008-09 at Harvard University's Carpenter Center (Cambridge, MA). Her collaborative work with Nicole Cherubini; Davis, Cherubini will be exhibited at MIT's List Visual Art Center (Cambridge, MA) and Museum 52 (NYC, NY) in 2009. Her work is in the collections of the Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY, NY).

 

 

SAMSON PROJECTS
450 Harrison Avenue
Storefront 63
Boston, MA 02118
T +1 617 357 7177

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Max Hymes
Crystal Mountain

 

 

 

 

28 Oct 2008 to 20 Dec 2008

 

Contemporary Fine Arts is pleased to announce the solo exhibition 'Einbruchstellen' with new works by German artist Katja Strunz.

The sculptures by Katja Strunz shown in the exhibition protrude into the room more than ever; they have become more expansive. Her folded works, which became a stylistic trademark of hers in the late 1990s, are incorporated as parts of a whole. Frequently, Strunz disrupts the balance of the alignment of these folded works by placing a wooden or metal fan in direct proximity to further elements made from different materials. Do these compositions take mainly a notion of time, especially of past time, as their theme?

Certainly Katja Strunz's works resist a time level purely oriented to the future. The materials she uses implicate the works in different time dimensions. Already in an earlier work (Brunnen, 2000) Strunz engages with a sculpture shaped like stairs, an old metal set of stairs - a real Berlin objet trouvé which the artist found in an abandoned swimming pool and declared to be a sculpture. A similarly fragile and battered flight of copper stairs (Ohne Titel, 2008) now greets the visitor in the front room on the gallery's first floor: the visibly aged sculpture, bearing green traces of oxidation, seems to lead nowhere, and offers the beholder neither a hold nor a way out. A paper collage hanging on a wall close by communicates with the stairs sculpture. The term stagnation, which keeps appearing with Strunz, in this collage with descending letters seems to underline backwardly the path into nothingness.

The largest sculpture in the exhibition, on the upper floor (Der müde Traum, 2008) consists of several wooden elements painted white, and together they create an independent space that can be entered. Parts of the wall of the gallery room seem to have become independent and reared up.

All the folded works anchored on the wall, the cubes, collages, and material pictures bear the traces of time, the past, and an intentional imperfection. The cubes (Memory Wall, 2008) entering over two floors are dented, in a state of dissolution, and they are in danger of disintegrating into two-dimensionality and drifting apart. It is almost as if they want to return to the pure abstract form of a black square. Or are they, on another level, dream elements falling into our reality and present?

Katja Strunz's works can be seen as points of rupture (Einbruchstellen), through which what lies beyond the work of art can protrude into our language and our sense of time.

'Einbruchstellen' is the artist's first solo show with Contemporary Fine Arts.

Katja Strunz (born in 1970) lives and works in Berlin.

 

 

 

Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin
Am Kupfergraben 10
10117 Berlin
T +49-30-288 787 0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7 Nov 2008 to 6 Dec 2008

DEAN PROJECT is delighted to present, All Good Things... the first New York solo exhibition and collaborative project by Timothy Berg & Rebekah Myers.

The above artist's statement was the springboard for the works in this exhibition, which comprises four parts:

Part 1: "Between a rock" consists of five 3-foot tall bright red ceramic brontosaurus atop custom wooden pedestals painted to simulate a stylized cliff-like outcropping. The dinosaurs are situated under a styrofoam replica of a large meteorite hanging from the ceiling.

Part 2:"Eat your heart out" is a four piece work which includes three fiberglass ice cream cookie sandwiches and a vinyl wrapper in various states of consumption; starting with the whole sandwich, a single bite, half eaten and ending with the empty wrapper.

Part 3:"Bone of contention" consists of sixty-four gold lustered T-rex bones in a custom built walnut chest. Two of the drawers each hold an arrangement of half of the gold bones required to assemble the 1/56 scale model T-rex with the third drawer containing the faux rock landscape this model is meant to be set upon.

Part 4: The fourth piece is a quasi souvenir booth where an edition of one hundred 6-inch tall replica ceramic brontosaurus's modeled off the dinosaurs from "Between a Rock" will be available for sale at a modest price.

In many respects these pieces are meditations on value; what we value and how and why we might value the things we do. These works persuade the audience to consider how consuming leads to the extinction of things and even though we may see the problem head-on our insatiable desire for things is greater than our ability to curb our appetites.

DEAN PROJECT
45-46 21st Street
Long Island City
NY 11101
New York
T +1 718 706 1462

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 14, 2008 - January 17, 2009

James Cohan Gallery has invited Dutch sculptor Folkert de Jong to create an exhibition for its new Shanghai location, which opened July 10, 2008. Folkert de Jong is best known for his theatrical, narrative-based installations. His life-sized sculptures presented in tableau-like arrangements, take on the themes of war, greed and power. These provocative sculptures are surprising for their unorthodox choice of materials-sculpted out of industrial Styrofoam and Polyurethane insulation foams. De Jong's figures embody a grotesque horror and macabre humor that is reminiscent of the work of the 20th century European artists Georges Grosz and James Ensor.

This new body of work entitled Thousand Years Business as Usual consists of three new sculptural tableaux. The conceptual underpinnings of the exhibition relate to Darwin's theory of "survival of the fittest." De Jong's work applies Darwin's evolutionary theory beyond the natural world and into an exploration of the competition between global entities. Using this scientific theory and his startling imagery, Folkert de Jong attempts to illuminate the notion that the delicate balance of power between nations can evolve into a pattern similar to that of the natural environment. In Thousand Years Business as Usual, Folkert de Jong examines the many paradoxes inherent in what humans attempt to control and what is ultimately not in their power to control. These concepts provide fertile territory for De Jong's singular brand of expression.

The main sculptural installation Early Years consists of seven anthropomorphized monkeys in a circle frozen in the midst of a joyful dance based upon the Matisse painting The Dance (c. 1901.) For the artist, the circular formation of the group represents the ever-repeating cycle of life and the gradual mutation that takes place along life's continuum as described by Darwin. By referencing the Matisse painting, De Jong uses one of the most well-known images in the history of Modern Art to represent the concept of progress, which can be understood as both the progress of the species from ape to man and the progress fueled by man's innovation in the modern age. The artist's use of the monkey as main character acknowledges both its symbolism- in the Chinese Zodiac the monkey is the most versatile and creative of astrological creatures-as well as its important role in evolutionary theory.

Business as Usual-The Tower presents three monkeys, one on top of the other miming the cautionary saying, "See no evil, hear no evil, say no evil." De Jong's depiction of the oil barrel as a base for the trio references the complex role that oil plays in the global economy and its influence in world hegemony. The insulation foam that De Jong employs as his medium, itself a petroleum product, highlights further issues relating to the lasting negative impact that non-biodegradable products have on the environment. Sifting through the many layers in this complex body of work, the viewer may be inclined to wonder... Is this De Jong's way of suggesting that the "fittest" in the new geopolitical terrain will be the ones who are the most innovative and creative? As he questions "business as usual," is De Jong offering that the artists of the world will be the ones to lead us to a new way?

Folkert de Jong, born in 1972, lives and works in Amsterdam. De Jong studied at the Academy for Visual Arts and the Rijksacademy for Visual Arts, both in Amsterdam, and was awarded the Prix de Rome for Sculpture in 2003. Among other European venues, he has had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Winterthur (Winterthur, Switzerland), the Chisenhale Gallery (London, England) and mounted a major sculptural installation, Gott Mit Uns (God With Us), at the Lever House in New York City. De Jong participated in the 2007 Athens Biennial, and recently had two exhibitions in the New York City region at the James Cohan Gallery and at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. Upcoming, De Jong's work will be presented at the Saatchi Gallery (London, England) in a new exhibition entitled Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture in spring 2009.

This exhibition has been realized by the generous financial support of the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam and the Consulate General of the Netherlands in China.

 

James Cohan Gallery Shanghai
1/F Building 1, No. 1 Lane,
170 Yue Yang Road
200031 PRC
Shanghai

 

 

 

 

 

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