MADRID.- This exhibition on Martín Ramírez will bring together some eighty drawings from 1948 to 1963, exploring this artist’s extraordinary production. These works highlight Ramírez’s memories of Mexico, as well as his encounter with the North American landscape and the richness of his unique imagination. Art critics celebrate Ramírez’s oeuvre for its bold lines, meticulous repetitions and extraordinary variations within the same themes addressed consistently by the artist. Also to be shown together with these works is a selection of drawings discovered in a garage in California in 2007, which have not yet been exhibited outside New York. Working with a limited range of materials and supplies, Martín Ramírez (1895-1963) created an astonishing oeuvre, over a period of some fifteen years, while an inmate of DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn, California. Ramírez made his art in a room that he shared with dozens of other men who were also confined on account of their m
The Cars’ Ric Ocasek Exhibits in NY for the First Time at Cinders Gallery
BROOKLYN, NY.- “Teahead Scraps” marks Ric Ocasek’s first art exhibition in New York and features never before seen drawings selected from a body of work that spans the last 30 years. Like the music of his beloved rock band “The Cars”, his drawings are unabashedly pop- and yet unlike his music’s super sleek veneer, these works are a bit more raw and unedited, revealing meditative moments of a Zen-like drawing practice. Never intended for public view, these works on paper are fluid and unselfconscious abstractions made with colored pencils, pens, and markers. Ric’s spontaneous, rhythmic mark-making is completely musical and explores repetition and patterns with psychedelic colors and sinuous lines. While “The Cars” as a band were perhaps the perfect embodiment of pop art and pop music (Andy Warhol even directed an amazing Cars video), the art of Ric Ocasek
New Work from Contemporary Chinese Artists Lu Chunsheng and Jia Aili at Iniva
LONDON.- Iniva presents new work by two contemporary Chinese artists at Rivington Place, with the European premiere of a film by Lu Chunsheng who showed in the Serpentine Gallery’s exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at Battersea Power Station. This is also the first solo exhibition in Europe, “Make Believe…”, by emerging artist Jia Aili. Both artists reflect on industrial progress, social corrosion and the individual’s struggle in the machine age. Lu Chunsheng’s film, “The first man who bought a juicer bought it not for drinking juice”, mixes documentary and fantasy to theatrical effect. The characters in the film are both human and mechanical, and represent the consequences of the globalised era in their repetition of senseless acts. Orson Welles’ fictional account of an alien invasion in The War of the Worlds which was mistaken for a real news item, is the impetus for the film. It illustrates the
New Book Shows Explosions, Fires, and Public Order by Sarah Pickering
NEW YORK, NY.- Sarah Pickering’s “Explosions, Fires, and Public Order”, (Aperture, April 2010) is a visually arresting glimpse into the secret world of civil defense. Combining four series, the book begins with Public Order, a project exploring the Metropolitan Police Public Order Training Centre, a simulated urban environment near London where officers rehearse responses to imagined scenarios of civic unrest. Next, the Explosions series documents the tactical use of controlled explosions by the British military to add realistic stress to training exercises and familiarize soldiers with various munitions. Fire Series and Incident, Pickering’s most recent work, were produced while she was an artist in residence at the UK Fire Training College. While there she photographed blazes that were set inside meticulously and elaborately constructed home interiors as well as the stark, charred remnants of fake urban settings after the scenario fires had been put out.
Photographer Cuny Janssen Presents Latest Project at Foam
AMSTERDAM.- Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam presents the latest project by photographer Cuny Janssen, entitled “My Grandma Was A Turtle”. This refers to the Turtle clan of the matriarchal Delaware tribe of Native Americans in Oklahoma. In 2008, Janssen visited the village of Bartlesville in Oklahoma to photograph children of Native American ancestry and their surroundings. She was curious to see whether there was anything about their origins to be seen in today’s Native American children. Her photos of people and her landscape images are relaxed, timeless and remarkable for their subtle lyricism. Cuny Janssen focuses her lens almost exclusively on children and unspoilt nature. Her landscape pictures are taken in the same environment in which her portrait subjects live. The children in the photos look straight into the camera without reservation. Their candour and the beauty of the surrounding country perfectly match the tranqui
“Herbert G. Ponting: The Conquest of the South Pole” at Flo Peters Gallery
HAMBURG.- With the exhibition “Herbert G. Ponting: The Conquest of the South Pole” the Flo Peters Gallery presents photographs of historic significance and incomparable suspense. In 1910 Captain Robert Falcon Scott set sail under the British Flag aboard the research ship Terra Nova aiming to be the first man to conquest the South Pole. Also part of the crew was a photographer and cameraman by the name of Herbert G. Ponting. With his photographs of the expedition and its participants he not only left a unique document about the beginnings of polar exploration but also lets the posterity be part of one of the last great adventures of human discovery. In 1913 the British expedition of the Terra Nova to the South Pole ended in tragedy. Robert Falcon Scott just missed the glory to be the first man on the South Pole. He lost the race to the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who
Zimbabwe Police Shut 2nd Art Exhibit on Violence
HARARE (AP).- Police in Zimbabwe shut down an art exhibit exploring violence blamed on President Robert Mugabe, an attorney said Monday. Artist Owen Maseko collected family photos of missing people, images of mine shafts where bodies were believed dumped and reports on an armed uprising after independence in 1980 in the western Matabeleland district that was crushed by troops loyal to Mugabe. Thousands of civilians were massacred in the fighting. Attorney Kucaca Phulu said that Maseko, his client, spent the weekend in jail on incitement charges after police shut down the exhibit in Bulawayo Saturday. Maseko sought bail Monday but the court’s ruling was postponed to Tuesday, Phulu said. On Wednesday, police in Harare forced a human rights group to abandon a photo exhibit about political violence blamed on Mugabe’s supporters. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the former opposition leader now in a year-old coalition government with Mugabe, opened that exhibition and condemned poli
Fashion Photographer Peter Gowland Dies at 93
LOS ANGELES (AP).- Peter Gowland, an innovative fashion photographer who invented elite cameras and equipment that he used to shoot pinups and magazine covers for six decades, has died. He was 93. Gowland’s business partner and wife of 68 years, Alice, told the Los Angeles Times in a Sunday story that Gowland died March 17 at his Los Angeles home of complications from hip surgery. He was 93. Gowland shot more than 1,000 magazine covers, mostly glamour shots of female models but also portraits of celebrities like Rock Hudson and Robert Wagner. His covers included Rolling Stone, Playboy, See and Modern Photography. He usually worked in and around the home and studio in Pacific Palisades he and his wife built in 1955. The pair erected scaffolding around the swimming pool and designed a trough that could create a waterfall pouring over a model. In the late 1950s, Gowland also invented the twin-lens Gowlandflex camera, which used 4-by-5 inch film for high-quality pictures and has sin
Mutiny Diary of Indian National Congress Founder for Sale at Bonhams
LONDON.- A hand written dairy kept by Allan Ocatavian Hume, the founder and first general secretary of the Indian National Congress, during the Indian Mutiny in 1858 is to be auctioned at Bonhams’ India and Beyond, Travel and Photographs sale on 13 April 2010. As Magistrate and Collector of the Etawah District in modern day Uttar Pradesh, Hume led an irregular force of 650 Indian troops in defence of the area and kept a daily record of skirmishes with the mutineers. Blaming the uprising on the British Government’s political ineptitude, Hume sympathised strongly with the plight of ordinary Indians unwittingly caught up in the action, writing, “God help the poor cowed villagers. I can’t… and no body else seems inclined to do so”. He pursued a deliberate policy of mercy towards the local population estimating that there were no more
Asian Arts Sale at Freeman’s Boasts Great Results
PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Domestic buyers and sellers of Chinese decorative arts, no matter how experienced in the trade, have come to face each major sale on the auction calendar expecting the unexpected. China’s dynamic economy and the subsequent explosion of that nation’s antique and decorative arts market has created surging, wave-like trends that suddenly, unexpectedly crash American auction house floors, often to the delight of auctioneers and their consignors. Such was the case on Saturday, March 20, 2010 when Freeman’s Asian Arts Department hosted a large contingent of international buyers for their spring auction and saw strong prices bid for known achievers such as hardwood furniture and antique carved jade and -in some cases- even stronger prices bid for pieces heretofore considered good but middling property. Lot 396, a large Chinese Hu-form vase from China’s Republic period in the first half of the 20th century w