One of our highlights from Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair is this inkjet print from Wolfgang Tillmans' celebrated 'paper drop' series, presented by Maureen Paley.
Tillmans makes abstract works that challenge pre-existing hierarchies around photography. He constructs cameraless photographic images via a process of exposing photosensitive paper to light sources.
In the case of his 'paper drop' series, Tillmans photographs curved sheets of photographic paper. In these works, the sheet of photographic paper becomes sculptural, transformed into a voluminous, almost liquid state.
Tillmans does not view his abstract work as separate from his figurative output, and their power lies in the startlingly personal sensation elicited from something so abstract.
We love this David Douard work that Galerie Chantal Crousel are showing for Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair.
Poetry and text feed into Douard's sculptures as vital components, shaping the meaning of his objects and their surroundings. The result is the creation of a strange fictitious world made up of organic, whimsical sculptures.
Douard explains that the use of poetry in his work, which he sources from the internet, started early on in his career and represents a prolongation of the relationship he had with graffiti in his past.
'Nobody expresses anything in the street now. Everything happens on the internet,' Douard has said.
Salon 94 are showing this Judy Chicago work in the online viewing rooms of Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair.
For the Birth Project (1980–1985), Judy Chicago collaborated with over 150 needleworkers to create a series of embroidery and paintings dedicated to the multifaceted experiences of giving birth.
Birth Trinity (1985), a print version of the original 1983 needlework on mesh canvas, takes a mystical turn on the process: three figures are entangled, merging into and emerging from one another, with bands of softly pulsating colours that radiate from their forms.
Kasmin Gallery are showing this sublime sculpture by Brancusi for Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair.
The 1932 unique cast of this work fetched USD $71 million at Christie's in 2018 and, although this is a posthumous cast, one cannot deny the sheer beauty of this object.
Brancusi's iconic polished bronze lends itself so well to more recent casting, and invites intriguing questions around authorship.
This sculpture feels contemporary, in part due to Brancusi's aesthetic influence on modern sculpture that has trickled down over the years, but also through his ability to convey modernity as an expressive form of universality.
Brancusi eschews physical characterisation for more abstract forms, but a subtle suggestion of curves, swirls, and verticality leaves us with this powerful sensation of a sophisticated woman.
Coinciding with his exhibition at Lévy Gorvy's new space in Paris, Günther Uecker is showing at their space on Albemarle Street, London from 27 October 2020.
Uecker's statuesque sculptures appear to be threatening relics from a turbulent past, but they are extraordinarily tactile, revealing the process involved in their making.
The artist's repetitive hammering of nails into readymade objects becomes a ritualistic process indulging Uecker's interest in Buddhist, Taoist, and Islamic philosophies.
Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel showed this work by Adriana Varejão at Art Basel OVR20:c—a highlight from the fair for us.
Varejão has been one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful Brazilian artists over the last 25 years.
Her work unpicks the layers of colonialism and diverse cultural histories making up her native Brazil. Fragments from different times and places are assembled and recontextualised within the framework of Varejão's painting. This early canvas from 1993 is ruptured with flesh wounds, revealing a morbid violence simmering beneath the surface of the remnants of colonialism.
Varejão provides us with text from ancient maps detailing different oceans alongside beautiful variations of painted waves. Pieces of broken porcelain in an array of colours and patterns are strewn across the canvas, interconnected by delicate threads of material.
This intricate web alludes to the fragility of our cultural histories, whilst also questioning the stability and authenticity of a globalised society. Varejão uses pieces of Brazilian culture as props to construct beautifully poetic and, at times, visceral images that reflect contemporary life.
Lucio Fontana's work is being shown alongside Alexander Calder's at Ben Brown Fine Arts for Art Basel OVR:20c.
Known as the father of Spatialism, Argentine-Italian artist Fontana worked with a variety of materials and techniques to experiment and pioneer conceptual limits in art.
The Movimento Spaziale was the result of the 'Manifesto Blanco', a manifesto written by the students and teachers at the Academia Altarmira, which Fontana founded in 1945. The manifesto called for art that combined elements of colour, movement, time, and space.
This work is part of Fontana's 'Concetto Spaziale' series. The linen was stretched and painted in monochromatic colours, to which Fontana would stab to create buchi (holes), exposing the space beneath. In creating this void, Fontana investigated and manipulated the space between the viewer, the canvas, and the space beyond.
The painting is significant for marking the beginning of Fontana's distinctive 'Tagli' (cuts) series. Tagli being the process of vertical or diagonal energetic slashes made to the canvas made with a sharp blade. Earlier Tagli work can be delineated for their rougher, more ragged tears, whereas later works were characterised by definitive slashes.
Drawing on Flemish traditions of Realism, featuring representations of found images or photographs, Luc Tuymans' work engages with the world in a way that defies traditional narratives and histories to instead 'start from something real'.
His figurative paintings executed in muted colours and a hazy application of paint, create a dream-like frame, drawing on themes of memory and his interest in photography and moving image.
Still is inspired by a scene from David Lynch's film, Mulholland Drive (2001), in which Justin Theroux's character is confronted by a cowboy mysteriously advising him on his predicament.
Together with Outfit—a painting of the cowboy costume of Hollywood actor, Tom Mix—these works also investigate the image of the cowboy as a cultural embodiment of the U.S.A. and how this was exported globally. The title of the show, Good Luck, also hints to a more ominous or threatening message when considered alongside images of cowboys.
Luc Tuymans' exhibition Good Luck is showing with David Zwirner in their Hong Kong gallery, running from 27 October to 19 December 2020.
Mendes Wood DM have announced representation of the young Czech painter, Vojtěch Kovařík.
Vojtěch Kovařík featured in their exhibition at Villa Era in Italy that opened on 26 September 2020. His paintings are figurative and monumental; using spray paint techniques, he creates a patina akin to the stone surface of sculptures.
Although hugely influenced by artists such as Baselitz, Lupertz, and Picasso—Kovařík also cites his father's readings of Greek myths from a book by Eduard Petiska as a huge influence to him.
Soviet Brutalist sculpture and murals also permeate his imagery, imbuing them with melancholy and rooting them to his native Czech Republic.
This wall-based sculpture was part of a group of 12 new works by Vincent Fecteau for his exhibition at Galerie Buchholz, running from 11 September to 31 October 2020.
The San Francisco-based artist is also represented by Matthew Marks Gallery in New York and greengrassi in London. Recent museum solo shows have included the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2019) and Secession, Vienna (2016).
Fecteau often uses papier-mâché, together with various everyday materials to construct his sculptures. These works contain free-flowing forms that shift in and out of legibility as our eyes wander around the surface. Each object or shape of recognition is twisted or merged into another; Fecteau's use of colour playfully intersecting this apparent malleability.
A tactile quality is alluded to via the use of felt and cotton, and although his work often invites comparison with Ken Price and Ron Nagle—perhaps due to their modest scale and abstract nature—these works seem more architectural and energised, revelling in the process of excavating and constructing forms in three-dimensional space.
HdM Gallery showed this painting by Qian Jiahua for ASIA NOW online, presented on Ocula, from 21 October to 7 November 2020.
Qian Jiahua is a young Chinese artist based in Shanghai and known for her geometric abstract paintings in acrylic. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at K11 Museum and the Long Museum in Shanghai.
Using thin lines of paint to dissect planes of colour applied in varying textures, Qian Jiahua's compositions are activated through these contrasting edges that form an illusion of layer and depth.
In Fountain, a thin line casts an elegant shadow, transforming the blue beneath into an airy natural tone, which is offset by a deep blue opposite. This rich blue is dramatically interrupted by a stroke of white—subtly appropriated from Hockney's famous splash paintings—and alluding to the fountain's spurting water; Qian Jiahua teases out these natural sensations and memories from within us.
