Exhibitions

Dimitrios Antonitsis: Sarmale with Ketchup / SABOT Gallery, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
March 21 – May 5, 2012

Sleek show fitting the sleek space of Sabot and breathing contemporary air into the Transylvanian folklore.

A graduate of the New York Film Academy and a former fashion photographer, Antonitsis is keenly aware of the different ways reality can be manipulated or exaggerated. (Tina Sotiriadi | Art in America, April 2002)

The Folklore, as a term of Dimitrios Antonitsis’ personal vocabulary, is invariably concerned with the practice of handcrafts. Always manifesting a soft spot for the discarded and the rejected, the artist easily fell for the triviality of Romanian fleamarket-stands, where he purchased used ceramic pots and vessels, woven rugs and bedspreads, and even some coarse wood-crafted decorative objects. These forsaken, modest artifacts became the chosen ingredients for his challenging task of pursuing a juicy aesthetical discourse and transforming them into his own contemporary dish.
The mundane titles “Sarmale with Ketchup” (for his solo show at Sabot), and “Panache de Papanași” (for the concomitant exhibition at the Museum of Art in Cluj-Napoca), should be therefore read as an act of resisting social formatting.

Antonitsis uses his latest sculptural work as a sharp metaphor for leisure, fun and luxurious consumption. Bonus, a giant canine treat in aluminum and Bunny Labyrinth, a kids game silk-screened on a woven rug comment on our complicated and troublesome relation with over-achievement, social power and reward. His aesthetic language stretches from an attractive and minimal object making to an overcharged and exaggerated folklore design, always responding to the goal of articulating the concepts as accurately as possible. After all, Antonitsis is an artist who feels responsible for bringing truth to his audience. He can be wrong or misunderstood, but he must struggle to reflect reality in a way that speaks out the truth, whether we comprehend it or not.

Artist and curator, Dimitrios Antonitsis is the founder of Hydra School Projects, a cutting edge international platform for the visual arts set up in an elementary school on the Greek island of Hydra.

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SEATS 05: Sibylle Stoeckli, Christian Horisberger, Enzo Mari / Depot Basel, Switzerland
March 24 - May 6, 2012

On the 23rd March (17-20 pm), Depot Basel will opened its doors at their residence in Basel once again.

Depot Basel takes on the topic of SEATS for the prelude of the 2012 season. A regular chair consists of four legs and a backrest, however, according to demands, a chair can also have three legs, diverse dimensions, shapes and outlines. We will take a close look at the past, present and future – of how chairs take shape and how they have changed with time.

Sibylle Stoeckli and Christian Horisberger will re-interpret Enzo Mari’s “Do It Yourself” chairs from 1974. The workshop will be put into practice at Depot Basel together with the School of Design Basel – Renata Borer and Kuno Nussli.

The project “Take a seat” initiated by AEKAE for “Café Z am Park” shows Horgen Glarus’ Classic 1-380 chair re-designed by various designers. Additionally, we show the favourite chairs of people from Basel.

In co-operation with the Czech design collective OKOLO we will present an illustrated selection of unusual seating in the history of Modern Design in the form of a limited edition publication.

Last but not least, the initiators of “Leuchtturm Kreative Wirtschaft” will round off our programme with the first talk of their new lecture series titled “MILK – Design dialogue #1” starting at 8 pm on Saturday, March 23.

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Galerie Besson, Retrospective of a lifelong passion / Officine Saffi, Milan, Italy
March 22 - May 21, 2012

After the closure of the historic London gallery, Officine Saffi presents an exclusive anthology of the collection in a group show from March 22 to May 21, 2012. This exhibition is a tribute by Officine Saffi to Anita Besson, her inspiration and work, in the form of a retrospective exhibition of her collection.

The exhibition provides an opportunity to see art ceramic works by some important and influential international artists: Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Claudi Casanovas and Jennifer Lee, alongside pieces by three Italian artists, Lucio Fontana, Nanni Valentini and Carlo Zauli.

Galerie Besson was founded in London in 1988, and it rapidly became an international point of reference for the greatest ceramic artists, hosting over 150 exhibitions featuring artists from all over the world.

Officine Saffi is an exhibition space in central Milan, very close to Santa Maria delle Grazie and Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. The gallery is dedicated to all aspects of ceramics. As well as the exhibition space, there is a workshop complete with kilns, wheels and all other equipment needed for ceramics, including high-temperature processes. The ceramics magazine La ceramica in Italia e nel mondo, the only publication of this type in Italy, also has its editorial office at the location.

Anita Besson will be present at Officine Saffi for the opening, which will be held on Thursday, 22 March 2012 at 6.00 pm (Entrance by invitation only).

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Andrew Barton: Final Frontier / SODA, Istanbul, Turkey
March 1 - April 14, 2012

SODA is pleased to announce “Final Frontier”, the first solo show of internationally renowned sculptor Andrew Barton. The exhibit consists of space helmets from three major religions. The expanse of religion to our final frontier, space. Expressing a dystopian future of possible religious conflict in the heavens.

Andrew Barton was born in 1970 London, England. MFA from The Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO).
Male fertility, non-loving sex, violence and cannibalism were reoccurring themes in Barton`s work from the end of the 90`s. Barton`s work then took a new direction focusing on the torso or body fragment in combination with a foreign object or abstract shape, dealing with bodily transformations and meditative states of being. His current work deals with industrial products from dystopian futures; space helmets designed for religious expansion in space, and bomb suits tailored for the mundane acts of shopping and child`s play in a future society gone bad.

SODA is a contemporary art and design space founded in Istanbul in January 2010. SODA focuses on artists and designers using different materials and medias from various disciplines and supports contemporary art jewellery, which is a globally rising trend. SODA presents artists and designers distinctive in their field and examples of contemporary movements to audiences that are open to innovation and aims to introduce a new perspective to collectors.

Gallery Hours: Monday to Saturday between 11am and 7pm.

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Melissa Stern: The Talking Cure / Fetherston Gallery, Seattle, USA
March 9 – April 7, 2012

Artist Reception: Thursday, March 29, 5.00 – 8.00 pm

The Fetherston Gallery is proud to present “The Talking Cure” exhibition, by New York artist Melissa Stern, a groundbreaking interactive art exhibition integrating sculpture, contemporary literature, online audio and Smartphone technology.

Smartphone Meets Sculpture
“The Talking Cure” exhibition consists of ten of Stern’s sculptures each accompanied by an interactive audio track created by one of ten literary collaborators. Stern’s sculptures, fabricated figures combining mixed materials and found objects, with deeply drawn surfaces, possess an abundance of personality. Stern has collaborated with ten contemporary writers - poets, novelist, screenwriters, and playwrights - to each choose a sculpture and write his or her monologue of the goings on in the sculpture’s mind. The monologues are transformed into audio recordings, stored “in the cloud,” and triggered via a QR tag imbedded in the sculpture. When the viewer points a Smartphone, Blackberry or I-Phone at the QR tag it will trigger audio to hear the inner voice of the sculpture.

Interactive Multimedia in the Manner of Sigmund Freud
The viewer will also have the opportunity to record his or her own imagined monologue for the sculpture. These recording will be available for playback, creating an added interactive dimension to the work. Viewers will be creators as well as receivers of the back-story for each sculpture; the exhibition takes its title from Sigmund Freud’s original name for the practice of psychoanalysis.

Melissa Stern has worked in both sculpture and drawings for over twenty years, living and exhibiting in California, Europe, and New York City. Her work is featured in a number of prominent corporate and museum collections including Dow Jones, JP Morgan, The Arkansas Art Center and the Kohler Corporation, where she was an artist-in-residence. She has also had residences at the Serenbe Institute outside of Atlanta Ga. and at The Washington School of Glass in Washington DC. Her artwork was has been featured in Trans- Ceramic Art, 500 Figures in Clay, and American Illustration 26 – The Best American Illustrations of 2007.

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Ebru Özseçen: True Love Soul Mate / RAMPA İstanbul, Turkey
March 02 — April 07, 2012

Ebru Özseçen combines her experience in the fields of architecture, design and contemporary art to explore different aspects of psychological and sociological relationship between space and body. Her work presents great diversity; ranging from urban intervention to sculpture and objects, from photography to video, from film installations to drawings. The artist is concerned with the dualities of inside/ outside and public/private; and explores individual memory in contemporary society. Ebru Özseçen investigates the seemingly mundane to expose its magical and unseen aspects. She reveals a space where fantasy and memory hide in plain sight.

It is impossible to disregard the gender aspect in Özseçen’s work, in which she indiscriminately plays with the androgynous form – the phallus, vulva, uterus or scrotum. At times pushing the boundaries of pornographic obscenity, the artist always places erotic intensity in the foreground. On the other hand, in many of her works it is possible to see Özseçen driven by her deep-seated admiration for the tradition of artisanship. The artist is drawn to the sensual quality of the form and the beauty of a well-accomplished object. This approach invites us to interpret the artist’s practice from a new perspective. Özseçen’s sharp gaze on the form, and her romantic obsession with the beautiful, the pure, and the unsoiled confront us as sharp yet sensitive, violent yet graceful works that have been refined in the hands of a craftsman.

Özseçen’s new work, Gerçek Aşk Gönül Eşi / True Love Soul Mate (2011), which will constitute the backbone of the exhibition at Rampa, is comprised of over 100 separate glass pieces. This work is realized in collaboration with Mayer of Munich and Glasshütte Lamberts, which are among the most prominent handmade glass studios of the world that has for the first time opened its doors to contemporary arts for this work. Each piece is produced in different sizes and forms with hours of effort in 1450-degree ovens. Recalling many of Özseçen’s work, heat once more emerges as a dominating component in this work, both as a physical force and as an allegory. For this work, the artist divulges that “the concept of true love and soul mate employed in the title should be sought not in the realm of romantic love, but rather in companionship, camaraderie as signified in the craftsman’s delicate touch on the objects he has amorously devoted himself to.” Installing two of her works of the same form together, one from the beginning and the other from the most recent phase of her career, Özseçen incites the audience to trace a playful phantom form.

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Karen Bennicke and Steen Ipsen: Geometrical Evolution / Copenhagen Ceramics, Denmark
March 1-24, 2012

Artist Talk: Saturday, March 3rd, 2pm

Geometric Interpretations
Copenhagen Ceramics presents a new exhibition with works by Karen Bennicke and Steen Ipsen, two highly experienced ceramists with a particularly well-developed sense of operating visually within one of the great fields of inspiration for ornamentation – the world of geometry.

Karen Bennicke and Steen Ipsen have both repeatedly returned to this inexhaustible source of astonishment and fascination, and for their first exhibition together they offer new and surprising visual interpretations of geometric phenomena.

Karen Bennicke has for many years remained a remarkable profile within the context of contemporary ceramics, in Denmark and internationally. First and foremost, she is a real form-person. Her ceramic objects are typically characterized by a great complexity of form; they are spatial visions, often constructions reminiscent of contemporary architecture. Through self-defined systems and an almost intuitive mathematical construction-method, she arrives at surprising, poetic expressions somewhere between exactitude, the illogical and occasionally even the absurd.

Light and shadow are always important factors in Karen Bennicke’s sculptures. In the new works the choice of material helps to emphasize the multi-faceted surface, that has resulted from her process this time. The unglazed, matt clay surfaces enhance the great variation of light and shadow, bringing to mind the kaleidoscopic universe of crystals; a recurrent theme in her oeuvre, and one she has intensively been working on in recent years.

The precise approach of the textbooks is not defining the relationship with geometry for Steen Ipsen either. He perceives geometry as images and pattern. From the very start of his ceramic career he has had a keen eye for the ornamental potential within the universe of geometric form. Early examples of this are his large porcelain vessels from the 1990ies with strict, repetitively faceted forms, that turn into brightly colored patterns on the surface. In later works he has thematically explored repetition in the form – or the ’variation of repetition’, as was his title for an earlier exhibition.

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Jaime Alvarez: Memento / Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia, USA
March 2 - April 1, 2012

Opening reception: Friday, March 2, 6pm-10pm

Tiger Strikes Asteroid is pleased to announce its March 2012 exhibition, Memento, the first solo exhibition by TSA member Jaime Alvarez.

Alvarez’s work explores particular details of icons that function within a larger established structure or ideology. He examines and subverts the idea of memory encapsulated within objects, which share an established history of decorative use.

“In allegory, the vision of the reader is larger than the vision of the text; the reader dreams to an excess, to an overabundance. To read an allegorical narration is to see beyond the relations of narration, character, desire. To read allegory is to live in the future, the anticipation of closure, beyond the closure of narrative.” Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection

Memento is a collection of one hundred framed photographs of second hand souvenirs. The figurines have been painted black, lit, and photographed from the rear or three quarters view, denying the viewer the “familiar” frontal view of the objects. Alvarez’s manipulation liberates the figurines, freeing them of past associations. The once ubiquitous statuettes are transformed into a sublime tableau. The objects speak a completely new language. Imbued with emotion, they become powerful talismans, gazing into the void.

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Ceramic Impressions by Judy DiBiase / BDA Dental Museum, London, UK
February 23 - May 24, 2012

Works in porcelain inspired by the collections of the BDA Dental Museum and its visitors.

London based ceramic artist Judy DiBiase has been working with the museum to capture the visitor’s different reactions to the museum’s collections and the memories the objects provoke. These have then provided part of the inspiration for Judy’s own response, in ceramics, to the museum’s collection which can be seen on show in the museum and around the BDA.

“Objects make us think. We think of the time and place when they were used, their purpose and method of use. They evoke memory, acting as a catalyst for a host of experiences that are revived by interaction.

The BDA Dental Museum houses a fantastic and fascinating array of objects that are connected to my memories. My father, David DiBiase was a leading orthodontist; I grew up surrounded by images of teeth. Plaster impressions in green boxes, diagrams and x-rays of displaced incisors and canines. I remember Dad dictating letters and storing dental notes in brown files. Looking at the museum collection my memories become heightened and vivid.

My practice is concerned with how memories can be drawn out by objects. Memories layer to inform an emotional understanding of ourselves and our environment. I have worked with the Museum collection, recording people’s reactions to objects which are connected by the observer to personal incidents and events. My work is exhibited alongside the collections, so taking it out of a traditional art gallery setting.

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Fine Lines ’12, Jewelry by Yoshiko Yamamoto / Keiko Gallery, Boston, USA
March 3 – April 4, 2012

Opening Reception: March 3, 3:00pm — 6:00pm

Since no theme was suggested by the gallery for this exhibition, I fully embraced the freedom to choose my own materials and subject matter.

As I have quite a few collections of copper, monofilament and silver wire, I decided to use the `domestic crafts` of knitting and crocheting to approach the work. The copper wire was already colored and the nylon monofilament was hand-dyed. The 34 gauge colored copper wire has a silky quality that I could treat as soft, fine thread. When tightly crocheted, the material became stiff and I was able to transform its character into a wearable piece. Just like copper wire, monofilament is a marvelous material for knitting and crocheting. The difference is that nylon needs a more taming approach because of its unyielding nature.

I also decided to make jewelry using wire. One reason is that I wanted to create the jewelry / object based on lines. I used very thin fine silver wire coiled up, then flattered and fused into various shapes that became stronger as I worked. The end product was quite an exciting discovery. The gold wire jewelry required a degree of precision. These works are based on the traditional processes and craftsmanship yet the end product is much different than conventional gold work.

The four self-portraits are important to me as it expressed my physical dysfunction at that time. Annoyingly, a pinch wouldn’t allow me to go to my studio, so I was looking at myself with both frustration and hope. These figures are spontaneously depictions of my feelings.

Keiko Gallery is one of the most appreciated art galleries in the US that focuses on Japanese art - from ceramics to the innovative lacquer art, textiles, jewelry and painting.
View our special feature on Japanese artists from Keiko Gallery, October 2011.

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