Victoria Miro is delighted to participate in FIAC 2017 with a four-person presentation of works by Doug Aitken, Secundino Hernández, Yayoi Kusama and Conrad Shawcross.
In his iconic text works such as Vision, 2016, Doug Aitken reclaims the commercial landscape of signage in order to underscore the cultural potency of language. The artist has described his sculptural text pieces as possessing a 'toughness' that echoes the abbreviated nature of much contemporary communication. At the same time, these works move beyond language, breaking down into abstraction – in the case of Vision its mirrored surface causing a fractured, endlessly changing viewing experience. Doug Aitken is the first recipient of The Frontier Art Prize, which will be awarded annually to a contemporary visual artist whose practice exhibits a pioneering spirit, whose work challenges the current and future condition of human knowledge and experience, and who celebrates individual and collective experimentation. Aitken will be honoured at a dinner on 18 October, the opening night of the FIAC Art Fair, at the Musée Picasso Paris.
Largescale monochrome paintings by Secundino Hernández are energised through linear dynamism and derived in part from a process of removing paint with a pressure washer. Almost archaeological in nature, this method involves the artist erasing pigment to expose the canvas beneath. Redolent of the urban environment, the resulting 'wash' paintings have a dramatic, exploratory quality and openly display the triumphs and struggles of the artist's practice. Discussing the tension between calculation and spontaneity in these works, the artist says: 'When the works succeed I don't see geometric shapes any more. I see a dance between pictorial languages and a balance between something which is very much under control and something else which is accidental.' His work features in The Art Show – Art of the New Millennium in the Taguchi Art Collection at the Museum of Modern Art Gunma, Japan (until 12 November 2017). Forthcoming solo institutional exhibitions will be held at CAC Málaga, Spain, and at Kunsthalle Helsinki, Finland, both in 2018.
Works by Yayoi Kusama reflect her lifelong preoccupation with the infinite and sublime, as well as the twin themes of cosmic infinity and personal obsession as found in pattern and repetition. A new work from Kusama's iconic Infinity Nets series, INFINITY-NETS [KGFZH], 2017, is rendered in a soft neutral tone over a light ground that, from a distance, reads as monochrome. Up close its intricate surface becomes visible: small arched semi-circles of paint almost completely covering the ground to suggest a detailed lattice. Covered variously with proliferating patterns of dots, eyes, faces in profile and more abstract forms, the monochrome silkscreen works on canvas Woman's After-Image [FAOWE], 2005, Women Waiting for Spring [TZW], 2005, and Infinity-Cosmos [TOWEY], 2007, distil the themes and obsessions that characterise Kusama's art, while encapsulating a surreal and humorous, as well as instinctual approach to art making. An extensive selection of these black-and-white works, collectively titled Love Forever, are on display at the new Yayoi Kusama Museum, which opened in Tokyo on 1 October 2017. The museum also features specially-conceived installations of paintings from Kusama's My Eternal Soul series and other important works. Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, the most significant North American tour of Kusama's work in nearly two decades opens next at the The Broad in Los Angeles (21 October 2017 – 1 January 2018), before travelling to Art Gallery of Ontario (March – May 2018) and the Cleveland Museum of Art (July – October 2018). Works from Kusama's Infinity Nets series are at the Judd Foundation, New York, in a display curated by Flavin Judd (until 9 December 2017). The solo exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of a Rainbow, a collaboration between National Gallery Singapore and Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, opens at Queensland Art Gallery on 4 November 2017. Her work is included in Etre Modern: Le MoMA à Paris, an exhibition of some 200 works that trace the history of MoMA's unparalleled collection of modern art, at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (11 October 2017 – 4 March 2018).
Sculptures by Conrad Shawcross, such as Paradigm Chamfer (Solid), 2016, Paradigm Broad (Structural), 2016, and Paradigm Slender 2 (Structural), 2016, are part of his ongoing exploration of the four-sided tetrahedron as a tessellating form. Works from the Paradigm series elicit a subtle line between structure and nature, the metaphysical and the molecular and make reference to the notion of the paradigm shift – a leap of imagination that jolts scientific enquiry forwards. Composed of weathered steel, the sculptures convey movement through stasis in totemic form. One of the tallest public sculptures in central London Paradigm, commissioned by the Francis Crick Institute, stands at the entrance of the Institute's new building near Kings's Cross St Pancras. In June 2017, the Royal Academy of Arts and St Pancras International unveiled the major site-specific installation, The Interpretation of Movement (a 9:8 in blue), Shawcross' most ambitious mechanical work to date, for the Terrace Wires commission at St Pancras International station. His six-metre-high sculpture Monolith Optic, 2016, is currently on view in the Sculpture Park at Roche Court, near Salisbury, Wiltshire. Work by Shawcross is included in Now Wakes the Sea: Contemporary Art and the Ocean at The Glucksman, Cork (until 5 November 2017).
Additionally, Victoria Miro will have works available to view by Jules de Balincourt, Hernan Bas, Varda Caivano, Idris Khan and Chantal Joffe.
OPENING HOURS
Thursday, October 19th & Friday, October 20th: from noon to 8pm
Saturday, October 21st & Sunday, October 22nd: from noon to 7pm