Ocula Conversation Hito Steyerl: How To Build a Sustainable Art World 'A Picture of War is Not War', we read in Hito Steyerl's iconic film November (2004), an essayistic Super 8 film tackling the definition of terrorism constructed around the figure of the artist's best friend Andrea Wolf, who was killed as a terrorist in 1998 in Eastern Anatolia after she joined the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party). Mixing documentary...
Ocula Report Aichi to Okayama: Art in Japan Looks to the Future 11 Oct 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula There has been a flurry of triennial and biennial art activity in Japan this year. The Aichi Triennale opened in Nagoya this August, sparking a national debate about the shutting down of a display of formerly censored works—the result of public backlash against a burnt image of Emperor Hirohito and a statue commemorating the women forced into...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Alex Katz is one of the most significant artists of his generation. A graduate of the prestigious Cooper Union Art School in Manhattan in 1949, Katz was subsequently awarded a scholarship by the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine. In 1968, Katz moved into an artists’ cooperative building in SoHo, where he has lived and worked ever since, spending his summers in Lincolnville, Maine.
Common to both Katz’s celebrated portraits and immersive landscapes is a pristine flat surface and an economy of line, first developed by the artist in the 1950s. Katz’s minimal aesthetic was, at this time, both an anticipation of Pop Art and a reaction to the Abstract Expressionist movement. In tandem with his painting practice, Katz continues to explore three-dimensional space with sculptural cutouts—a technique first established by the artist in 1959. He is also a prolific printmaker.
Related Press The Colors of the Sixties Hyperallergic : 6 April 2019 The eighth floor of the Whitney Museum of American Art, as David Breslin, the Director of the Collection, sees it, is 'a place for surprises.'The elegant spaces of the museum's top floor, catching the light off the river through its skylights and glass walls, have felt enchanted ever since it opened in 2015 with the Early Modernist 'Forms...
Related Press 'Fashion doomed to fade, but art is forever' The Korea Times : 27 April 2018 American artist Alex Katz is known for his distinctive style of portraits featuring sophisticated yet daring women of all ages. The Lotte Museum of Art (LMOA) in southern Seoul presents the first solo exhibition of the 90-year-old artist, who stylises American culture and society such as fashion, beauty and landscape, in Korea.Titled Alex Katz:...
Related Press Alex Katz - 'I never had any self-confidence until I was 30' Phaidon : 10 November 2017 We've loved and admired the work of Alex Katz for a long time now so we were happy to bump into him while checking out some of his new paintings, sculptures and a show of his 1940's Subway Drawings at Timothy Taylor, London a couple of weeks ago. The drawings were made by Katz during his time as an art student at Cooper Union, when he used his time...
Related Press Alex Katz’s Subway Drawings Give a Glimpse of 1940s New York Vogue : 27 April 2017 If you're in New York City and you catch the Q train at the new subway station at 86th Street, you'll glimpse a massive, scowling, photo-realistic portrait of the artist Alex Katz by his friend, the painter/photographer Chuck Close. But Katz's presence can also be felt 30-odd blocks south. That's where, seven decades ago, the artist would cross the...
Related Video & Audio Alex Katz at Timothy Taylor, London Vimeo : 10 November 2017 Alex Katz (b. New York, 1927) is known world-wide for his unique approach to contemporary representational painting, developed in reaction to the dominance of Abstract Expressionism, prior to the emergence of Pop Art in the USA. This exhibition will contrast over 50 intimate, delicate early pencil drawings with the artist's latest works - a series...
