BEERS London now represents Sabrina Bockler

July 13, 2022

Sabrina Bockler tackles challenging imagery in her work, which she presents as a critical re-evaluation of so-called women’s work. Her painstakingly detailed paintings of the domestic sphere seem altogether displaced as if harkening from some parallel reality in which everything feels ever-so off-kilter. There are direct references to artists like Balthasar van der Ast or Rachel Ruysch, but Sabrina elevates her work with stylishness and through pastiche, adding her own painterly flair and presenting viewers with various tableaux that seem plucked from David Lynch or some Surrealist version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

Born in 1987, Bockler graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2011. Selected exhibitions include: Vessel, Hashimoto Contemporary, Los Angeles (2022); Potluck (curated by Dasha Matsuura), Hashimoto Contemporary, Los Angeles (2022); Quiet Fire, Far by Wide, New York City (2021); Sabrina Bockler, The Clark Gallery, Boston (2021); Wünder Womxn: The Female Figurative, BEERS London, London (2021); By Yourself With Everyone, Good Mother Gallery, Los Angeles (2020) and; The Velvet Ropes, Patrick Parrish Gallery, New York City (2018). Fairs include: Holiday Market (curated by Andrew Salgado), Future Fair (online, 2021); Art Miami, Clark Gallery, Miami (2021) and; Hamptons Art Fair, Clark Gallery, Hamptons NY (2021). Bockler currently lives and works in New York.

Bockler will be having a solo exhibition at BEERS London in 2023

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery announces representation of Nasim Hantehzadeh

July 12, 2022

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is delighted to announce representation of Iranian-American artist Nasim Hantehzadeh (b. 1988, Stillwater, Oklahoma), whose first solo exhibition in Europe will take place at the gallery from 18 November 2022 – 7 January 2023.⁠
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Working in oil, pastel and graphite, across both canvas and paper, Hantehzadeh brings together freewheeling figurative elements in vibrant and arresting compositions that allude to a range of references, including Paleolithic cave paintings, indigenous art from Mexico, Islamic architecture and ancient Persian rug patterns. Hantehzadeh’s work often reflects her particular interest in Mayan and pre-Islamic art and artefacts, occasioned by evidence of matriarchal and gender-fluid practices that existed in these cultures prior to European colonisation. Embellished orifices and sexual organs proliferate Hantehzadeh’s work, transfigured from the corporeal to the otherworldly in an earthy palette that complements her biomorphic and abstract forms.⁠
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Nasim Hantehzadeh lives and works in Los Angeles. She studied a BA at the University of Tehran Center for Art and Architecture in 2007; in 2013 she received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2018.⁠

photo: Morgan Waltz⁠

Antoni Ferrer inaugurates Galería Fermay, a dynamic gallery dedicated to showcasing contemporary art in Palma de Mallorca

July 8, 2022

Opening on 9 July 2022, Galería Fermay will occupy the space of a former light-industrial factory in the Blanquerna neighbourhood of Palma. The gallery represents and collaborates with local, national and international visual artists whose artistic practices challenge existing forms of expression, thereby contributing to the overall development of the visual arts. The programme includes emerging and mid-career artists such as Julio Varela, Elisa Braem or Damaris Pan as well as established positions such as Carla Arocha + Stéphane Schraenen and Alejandro Corujeira.

The gallery seeks to become a reference point promoting the study and reflection around contemporary artistic practices. The gallery will contribute to the overall artistic discussion with an innovative programme addressing a broad and diverse public and encouraging art collecting in all its forms.

“We understand the gallery as a living space; a meeting point for artists, collectors, professionals and art lovers”, points out the gallery director Antoni Ferrer, who also seeks “to promote and give visibility to artists as well as to offer an exclusive and transparent service”

photo: Elisabeth Salcedo

Gagosian announces representation of Jadé Fadojutimi

July 6, 2022

Gagosian announces the representation of Jadé Fadojutimi. To inaugurate the relationship, Fadojutimi will take over the gallery’s booth at Frieze London in October 2022 with an installation of new works.

In her paintings, which are often monumental in scale, Fadojutimi orchestrates color, space, line, and movement in the service of fluid emotion and the quest for self-knowledge. She interprets everyday experience in ways that are at once compelling and confrontational, reflecting a drive to understand more completely otherwise indescribable but perpetually intertwined ideas of identity and beauty.

Making use of key visual elements from twentieth-century painting such as grids, layers, and the juxtaposition of disparate types of mark, Fadojutimi conjures a sense of transformation. Her compositions can suggest plants or microbes, marine landscapes or stained-glass windows, but edge consistently toward abstraction. Described by the artist as “environments,” these complex arrangements are built up with layers of oil paint, sometimes interrupted by oil pastel. Fadojutimi also combines elements of clothing—swatches of fabric and the shapes of stockings and bows—with ambiguous outlines to reflect the trauma of displacement (she alludes to a “familiar unfamiliarity” born of motion toward and away from recognizability).

In other works, Fadojutimi draws inspiration from specific locations, cultures, objects, and sounds, especially Japanese anime, clothing, and soundtracks (she traveled to Japan after graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, then again for a residency in 2016, and now returns to the country several times a year). Writing, too, is key to her process—sometimes she uses it to help articulate the subtleties of her painting; at other times she positions it in parallel to the visual by adopting a more poetic approach. For Fadojutimi, her roles as artist and writer are equally important aspects of her creative practice.

Jadé Fadojutimi was born in 1993 in London, where she lives and works.

Fadojutimi will continue to be represented by Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Germany, and Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo.

Photo: Anamarija Ami Podrebarac

Timothy Taylor Announces New Space in New York

June 23, 2022

Timothy Taylor announces the opening of a new 6,000-square-foot space in New York’s Tribeca in early 2023, replacing the Chelsea townhouse that was formerly the gallery’s New York space.

Located in the vibrant Tribeca gallery district, the ground-floor space at 74 Leonard Street is similar in scale to Timothy Taylor’s flagship gallery in London. The larger size will allow the gallery to present expansive exhibitions with monumentally-scaled work, as well as multiple exhibitions simultaneously, and reflects the importance of New York as a hub for the gallery and its artists.

The New York-based architecture and design firm studioMDA, led by Markus Dochantschi, is completing a full renovation of the space that will maintain the character of the building, including its cast-iron columns, 15-foot ceilings, and original storefront. The final gallery will feature new exhibition spaces, skylights, viewing rooms, and offices. An authority on cultural buildings, studio MDA has worked extensively with art collectors, artists and gallerists to design more than a dozen art galleries, including Bortolami, Anton Kern, Andrew Kreps, Luhring Augustine, Lisson, PPOW, 303 Gallery, and the Faurschou Foundation.

“When we expanded to New York six years ago, it was an experiment, a way to explore how the gallery and our program could contribute to this vibrant art hub while still maintaining our identity. New York has exceeded our highest expectations—from the enthusiasm with which our artists and exhibitions have been received to the relationships that we have made and strengthened with collectors, curators, and artists alike. I am delighted that we now have a gallery space that can accommodate our ambitions for New York” – Timothy Taylor

Image: Courtesy studioMDA

Timothy Taylor to Represent the Estate of Victor Willing

June 21, 2022

Timothy Taylor announces the representation of the Estate of Victor Willing (1928-1988).

A British painter of vibrant compositions derived from the subconscious, Willing developed a fierce new form of Surrealism that wove together the metaphysical with complex memories of his life in Portugal with his wife, the artist Paula Rego, and their family. During his lifetime, Willing was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, curated by Sir Nicholas Serota, and the Serpentine Gallery, among others.

The gallery plans a major solo exhibition of works in London in September 2022, illustrating Willing's dramatic shift from figurative painting to the psychologically piercing abstract works of the 1970s and '80s. In this most significant period of creation, Willing's paintings grew enigmatic and opaque, threaded with expressionistic dashes of vivid colour that anticipated 1980s New Wave painting as well as recalling the off-kilter still lifes of Giorgio Morandi and Giorgio de Chirico.

“We are honoured to work with the Estate of Victor Willing, whom I first met as a young gallerist working at Bernard Jacobson where Willing gave several shows in the early ’80s... Expressing ideas decades ahead of his time, Willing’s emergence as an artist of profound psychological insight echoes his artistic peer Philip Guston’s radical turn from abstraction to surreal landscapes of the inner self. Were he alive today, I am certain that the intensity of his flame would have burned just as brightly.” - Timothy Taylor

Gagosian and Serpentine present a screening of “The Painter,” a film by Oliver Hirschbiegel, written by Ben Becker and Albert Oehlen

June 16, 2022

Join Gagosian and Serpentine on Monday 20 June, 6.30pm at Curzon Mayfair, London for a screening of The Painter (2022), a docufiction film made collaboratively by Albert Oehlen, director Oliver Hirschbiegel, and writer/actor Ben Becker, featuring narration by Charlotte Rampling. The film is an artistic tour de force, taking viewers into the real and imagined mind of the artist as he struggles with the creation of a single painting. In the film, Becker (playing the role of Oehlen) improvisationally re-creates an artwork that Oehlen himself is painting in real time behind the camera.

After the screening, Oehlen and Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator and artistic director of Serpentine, will discuss the film, followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience. Doors open at 6pm; screening begins at 6.30pm. To attend the free event, register here.

Han Bing joins Thaddaeus Ropac

Born in China and currently based in Paris, Han Bing is recognised for her sensitive yet disruptive visual language in paintings that deconstruct pictorial reality and open up new dimensions. Representing the artist in Europe and Korea alongside Antenna Space in China and Night Gallery in the USA, Thaddaeus Ropac gallery will stage a solo exhibition of Han’s work in 2023.

“Han Bing is a fascinating young artist who has already succeeded in developing her unique pictorial language, characterised by a very nuanced and fragile relationship between abstraction and figuration. She manages to transform the places that serve as her inspiration into completely mesmerising visual worlds. We are incredibly happy to be working with her.” - Thaddaeus Ropac

Han Bing’s practice draws on urban elements including city streets and architectural façades. Having recently moved to Paris after living in New York, Los Angeles and Shanghai, she is inspired by the textures and patterns that appear in cities, especially the ‘errors’ and ‘glitches’ generated by ripped posters. For the artist ‘painting is a way to resist all the information that is being forced on us’. Taking inspiration from various sources, including theatre, science and literature, Han allows the dynamics of the works to guide their compositions. Using oil stick and spray paint, and occasionally allowing surprises during the process to introduce an unexpected twist, her works gradually move towards abstraction as figurative elements are filtered and deconstructed into fragments.

Thaddaeus Ropac 画廊欣然宣布代理中国艺术家韩冰。韩冰因其敏锐而颠覆性的视觉语言备受瞩目，她的画作解构图像现实，并开辟全新的维度。韩冰目前生活工作于法国巴黎，其四幅新作正在画廊巴黎庞坦空间的群展中展出，该展览由奥娜·道尔 (Oona Doyle) 策展。Thaddaeus Ropac 画廊将在欧洲和韩国代理韩冰，与中国天线空间以及美国Night Gallery 共同代理其作品。Thaddaeus Ropac 画廊计划于2023年举办韩冰的个展。

韩冰的作品被国际重要美术馆和私人机构收藏，包括洛杉矶郡立美术馆。她的作品亦曾参加全球众多重要展览，包括在北京尤伦斯当代艺术中心的群展“紧急中的沉思” (2020年)。

“韩冰是一位有自己独特绘画语言的才华横溢的年轻艺术家，她的作品于抽象和具象之间建立错综复杂和脆弱的联系。她将激发其灵感的场所转译为趣味盎然的视觉世界，令人神往。我们很高兴能与她合作。” — Thaddaeus Ropac 先生

韩冰的创作实践借鉴都市的元素，包括城市街道和建筑外墙。她曾在纽约、洛杉矶和上海生活，目前居住在巴黎。其灵感来源于城市中的纹理和图案，尤其是撕裂的海报所产生的“错误”和“故障”之感。对韩冰而言，“绘画是一种抵制被强行灌输予我们的过剩信息的方式”。韩冰亦从多样的来源获得灵感，包括戏剧、科学和文学，并让作品的进程引导其自身的发展方向。她运用油彩和喷绘的方式精心创作，时而追随创作中的偶然性，时而任由意外引入出乎意料的转折，具象的元素由此被过滤和解构成碎片，画面形成趋于抽象的视觉效果。

“我的绘画有再现性的因素但他们更是一个在几个色块不期而遇时，从一个令人费解的瞬间整理出一个对我而言合理秩序的过程。” — 韩冰

Photo: Charles Duprat. © The artist

Gagosian announces representation of Stanley Whitney

June 14, 2022

Gagosian is pleased to announce the representation of Stanley Whitney. Following the 2020 exhibition of his work at Gagosian Rome, the artist will have a solo exhibition with the gallery in London in 2023.

Renowned for the depth of his exploration into the expressive potentials of painted color and form, Whitney has been committed to abstraction since the mid-1970s. While living in Rome in the 1990s, he consolidated a process-based painterly approach which he has now sustained and developed over the course of three decades. Dividing square canvases into sequences of loosely defined rectangular blocks of saturated color that are demarcated by linear bands, Whitney progresses from the top of the canvas across and down, choosing each successive color in relation to those laid down previously. His visible brushwork establishes nuanced passages amid the boundaries of these rectangular planes. The resulting chromatic and spatial interactions define relationships between each shape and the composition as a whole. The strictures of the modernist grid are loosened in these paintings, their freehand geometries at one with their progression of vivid hues.

Stanley Whitney was born in 1946 in Philadelphia. He lives and works in New York and Parma, Italy, and is professor emeritus of painting and drawing at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, Philadelphia.

Photo: Jeannette Montgomery Barron/Trunk Archive

Astrid Krogh’s Planet awarded Best Contemporary Work 2022 at Design Miami/Basel

Galerie Maria Wettergren has announced that Astrid Krogh’s Planet has been awarded Best Contemporary Work 2022 at Design Miami/Basel.

Made of gold leaf, silver, platinum, aluminium and fiber optics, Astrid Krogh creates a feeling of enchantment and marvel in her light sculpture, Planet, inspired by cosmos. With its sweeping flux of moving light and various vibrating surfaces with reflections and solarisations, the work seems to breath and pulsate with a life of its own. The countless cosmic phenomena that shape our Universe offer an extraordinary source of inspiration for this pioneering Danish artist, and over the past few years, she has been corresponding with the American astrophysicist, Dr. Margaret Geller from the Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Indeed, the exchanging of ideas between science and the visual arts, has allowed Krogh to push boundaries, probing differently into understanding and interpreting the Universe’s architecture, as well as the physical laws that govern it, creating the foundation for her sensorial experimentation with light, space, materials and colours.

Planet (2021) is made of gold leaf, silver and platinium, aluminium, optic fibers and light monitors. It measures 150 cm in diameter and is 25 cm deep and is of a limited edition of 8 unique pieces.

Stephen Truax appointed Director of Timothy Taylor New York

June 9, 2022

Timothy Taylor is pleased to announce the hire of Stephen Truax as a director of the New York gallery, to help support the gallery's U.S. growth. Truax will work closely with Taylor and with U.S. partner Chloe Waddington to further develop the gallery's sales and program in the U.S.

A curator, artist, and writer, Truax was most recently a director at Cheim & Read, where he worked for seven years. He has curated recent exhibitions at the RISD Museum in Providence, RI, and at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York, both of which explored the power and significance of intimate relationships in works of contemporary art, particularly those made by artists who identify as Queer and artists of color. He is a frequent contributor to museum catalogues and scholarly journals.

“I am delighted that Stephen is joining the Timothy Taylor team at this key moment in the development of our New York gallery. I look forward to working alongside him to strengthen and broaden our presence in the U.S.” – Chloe Waddington, Partner

Photo: Thomas McCarty

Parafin welcomes Aimée Parrott into the gallery programme

June 8, 2022

Parafin announces that British artist Aimée Parrott has joined the gallery programme.

Aimée Parrott distills her ideas, motifs and imagery through a range of media and styles but the monoprint remains at the heart of her practice. It yields spontaneity and gives her works a subtle sense of seriality. For her paintings, the transferral of an image on the plate onto an unprimed cotton canvas surface also allows her to work with the slippages produced by this method.

The trace of a motif is offered forward by its ghost print onto another cotton surface, becoming a suggestion for a new idea. Images are echoed through Parrott’s work in this way, creating a sense of movement, alluding to growth. There is an atmosphere of interconnectivity where unnameable microbial forms or planetary motifs are perceivable in other works. This adds to the overall impression of a relationship between the micro and the macro, and of space and time on a larger spectrum.

She works into her compositions on cotton – sometimes dyed, embellished or stitched – to the degree where they might become like furrows of skin, at once tangible and intangible. By using appliqué to add further material, a seam or juncture, she positions her work between being an image and a material object. There is sometimes also a sense of multiplicity in the way she alludes to a frame within a frame, or a window within a window.

Parafin will showcase Parrott’s new work with a solo exhibition in 2023.

Paula Rego 1935 – 2022

Paula Rego, the celebrated painter, illustrator and printmaker, known for her visceral and unsettling works, has died aged 87, Victoria Miro announced earlier today.

Rego’s style evolved from abstract towards representational, reflecting aspects of feminism inspired by literature, folk-themes, myths and fairytales from her native Portugal and from Britain, as well as cartoons and religious texts. Drawing her imagery from sources as varied as Peter Pan and Mary Magdalene, Rego created narrative works imbued with mystery, while also challenging gender stereotypes and championing women’s rights.

In 1988, Paula Rego had her first major solo exhibition in Britain at the Serpentine Gallery, London, and was appointed the first National Gallery Associate Artist, London in 1990. In 2005 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Oxford University, and was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to Art by the Queen of the United Kingdom in 2010.

Portrait of Paula Rego, 2021 © Nick Willing

galerie frank elbaz now represents Chloé Delarue

June 1, 2022

galerie frank elbaz is pleased to announce the representation of Chloé Delarue. She is the recipient of the Fondation Patiño - City of Geneva grant and will have a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris from September 2022. Her first solo exhibition at the gallery is scheduled for 2023.

Chloé Delarue observes the interactions between the technique and the living acting on our systems of representations and identifications. Thinking in particular on the notions of reproducibility and simulation and their effects on our perception of reality, she explores the transformation of the tangible, of bodies, of affects that have become sensors.

Chloé Delarue lives and works in Geneva (Switzerland).

Workplace announces move to 50 Mortimer Street, the gallery’s new permanent space in London

May 26, 2022

The gallery will open to the public on 9 June 2022, and will launch with a group show of new and recent works by represented and invited artists.

With a floor to ceiling glass street frontage and arranged over two floors, the 1,500 square foot gallery in the heart of Fitzrovia combines the best features of Workplace’s current spaces into one and is motivated by the necessity for more space in a central location following the growth of the gallery’s programme; in the last year Workplace has added four new artists to its roster: James Prapaithong, Olivia Jia, Miko Veldkamp and Katinka Lampe.

Bringing together international and British artists who respond to the art historical legacies of specific media whilst focussing upon an interrogation of socio-political contexts, the gallery is underpinned by a constant commitment to excellence and the development of artists at all stages of their career.

Alfonso Artiaco announces the representation of Diego Cibelli

May 25, 2022

Cibelli’s design practice is mainly based on the use of ceramics and porcelain, never to highlight technical virtuosities. These media become an open link ready to connect a variety of artistic techniques, visions and historical references.

The design culture is an act of generosity and with this value Cibelli creates his collections, understood as a real “motor activity of the image”. The resources are connected to each other through a skilful interplay of references and, in this accelerated intertwining, the artist designs collections in which past, present and future coexist together.

From this method Cibelli reinvigorates his imaginative power and each production becomes a narrative system capable of merging the dimension of the domestic landscape with the external territorial context.

Diego, in his artistic research, has always explored humanistic geography, interpreted as the study of territories, their history and the related sense of belonging that human beings develop, generating new spaces of the living. With the activation of a series of cultural and visual references, Cibelli build scenarios that drive themselves the design of the installations. Each scenario, composed by several sculptures, is understood as a set of tangible and intangible relationships between mankind and landscape and it is conceived as an habitat.

photo: Francesco Squeglia

Karsten Schubert London announces representation of Charlotte Verity

May 16, 2022

Karsten Schubert London announces the representation of British artist Charlotte Verity - following two recent solo exhibitions at the gallery, “Echoing Green” and “Echoing Green Part II: The Printed Year”, which presented Verity’s recent paintings and watercolour monotypes respectively.

“Things move quickly, fleetingly, barely noticeably. How to respond?” Verity

Whether working at a large or small scale, Verity maps the ephemerality of her immediate surroundings, evoking the cycles of nature. The sense of light and space compels the viewer to look more closely. Transient moments and feelings are captured whether in the blossom of the pear tree in spring, or the starkness of holly in winter, the sky reflected in its shiny leaves. With her brush she seeks out the subtle shifts in tone and colour, or the exact line and curve of what is in front of her. Her handling ranges accordingly - from broad strokes to intense passages of fine brushwork.

“Nothing in a Verity painting is ever motionless […] How Verity achieves this sense of movement - birth growth, blossom, decay, four seasons on a single surface -with such an economy of subject is what makes her a truly contemporary painter” - Rachel Spence

photo: Sophie Davidson

Gagosian announces representation of Ashley Bickerton

Gagosian announces the gallery’s representation of Ashley Bickerton. The artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery is scheduled for 2023 at Gagosian New York.

Bickerton made his name with ironic, abstracted constructions focused on ideas of consumerism, identity, and value. Establishing his own personal (and pointedly “feminine”) brand, Susie, he produced a succession of slickly manufactured “self-portraits” that juxtapose his imaginary company’s logo with familiar real-world examples, including those of Bayer, Marlboro, and Renault. Bickerton also produced “still lives” incorporating digital screens that display the work’s fluctuating market value - a satire of art as the object of commercial speculation.

When Bickerton relocated permanently to the Indonesian island of Bali in 1993, his work took a self-consciously “exotic” turn. Its tongue-in-cheek feel and ornate, crafted look contrast sharply with the conceptual detachment of his previous output, though a slippage between mediums, genres, and subjects remained. Employing polished figuration to parody Western fantasies of a hypersexualized expat life, Bickerton depicts himself, his family, and his friends in lurid colors, introducing the grotesque “blue man” character as an archetypal European male in an “othered” tropical setting. “I consider him an escapee from the grand canons of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,” Bickerton comments, “but now lost and adrift in an alien twenty-first century, awash in a whole other set of sociocultural and psychological metrics—ones that he is clearly unable to grasp.”

Over the past few years, Bickerton has brought his practice full circle, synthesizing its heterogeneous modes and gestures into an all-encompassing visual language. In the Ocean Chunk series, originally conceived of in New York shortly before his move to Bali, he uses resin and fiberglass to create the impression of shimmering water, while in the mixed-media Flotsam paintings, he employs the framing devices of his earlier work to recontextualize objects—such as ocean-borne waste and assorted marine gear—in a way that contradicts their natural milieux. The industrial trappings of his 1980s and ’90s output also find their way into the Vector series, in which various forms of hardware appear alongside logos that recall his early works’ self-consciously detached focus on commerce. However, far from trumpeting a reductive opposition between nature and technology, the series navigates our exploitation of natural resources while implying that the planet will outlast humanity’s disruptive impact.

Former Institut Giacometti Artistic Director Christian Alandete joins kamel mennour

May 11, 2022

Christian Alandete has been the Artistic Director of the Institut Giacometti in Paris for the past ten years, and was also in charge of relations with contemporary artists.
He has coordinated more than twenty publications on Alberto Giacometti and co‑curated Giacometti retrospectives at Pera Museum in Istanbul, Yuz Museum in Shanghai, LaM in Villeneuve‑d'Ascq and Grimaldi Forum in Monaco. He was the curator of the following exhibitions: “Giacometti, The Late Work” in Nice, “Picasso ‑ Giacometti” in Doha, “Giacometti, After Models” in Seoul, “Giacometti Face to Face” in Stockholm and “Giacometti / Sade, Cruel Objects of Desire” in Paris.
He also curated the major retrospective Henry Moore at Fonds Hélène & Édouard Leclerc in Landerneau, a dozen exhibitions of contemporary art in France and abroad, and the program “Partitions (Performances)” at Fondation Pernod Ricard from 2008 to 2021.
His research mainly focuses on the relationship between contemporary art and art history — and in particular from the modern period.

His latest project “Alberto Giacometti / Douglas Gordon. the morning after” is currently presented at Institut Giacometti, Paris until 12 June.

Almine Rech announces representation of Mehdi Ghadyanloo

Almine Rech has announced representation of the Iranian artist Mehdi Ghadyanloo in France, Belgium and Shanghai, following his first solo exhibition at the gallery’s Brussels space in the spring of 2021.
There will be a solo exhibition of the artist at the London space in 2023.

Born in Karaj, Iran in 1981, Ghadyanloo began his career as a muralist in Tehran in the early 2000s, when, following a call for proposals by the city, he produced almost one thousand gigantic wall paintings, including dreamlike landscapes and science-fiction scenes.

His work combines minimalist themes and a surrealist aesthetic in his paintings, using acrylic, oil, or watercolor. He uses the trompe l’œil technique of his murals to compose his paintings that take on the shape of square boxes with dreamlike imagery and hyperrealistic technique. Each of his works reveals his brilliant ability to trick our eyes and our perception of reality. Their architectural appearance reflects the artist’s investigation into designing and representing space on the canvas.

Shadow and light overlap and challenge each other endlessly in Ghadyanloo’s practice, and the symbolism of the movement from darkness to light is at the heart of his vision. All the elements that he depicts in his paintings — ladders, fences, holes in the ceiling — are methods of representing a way out, a kind of hope.

Mehdi Ghadyanloo is based in Sarrebrücken, Germany and New York, US.

— Martha Kirszenbaum, independant curator and writer