Genieve Figgis, Happy Accidents of the Swing (2018), via Almine Rech

Part of the challenge of the current exhibition of work on view by painter Genieve Figgis on view at Almine Rech’s Paris location lies in the deciphering of her press release.  With only a single paragraph on the genesis and economic boon caused by the “Monster Jesus” phenomenon (in which a woman’s disastrous restoration of a fresco depicting the Christ in the North of Spain became the city’ main tourist draw), the show makes Figgis’s paintings a bit more confounding.  For an artist whose body of work consists of deconstructed, loosely rendered interpretations of Rococo and Classical masterpieces, the comparison is a strange one.  Are we being led to understand Figgis’s work as a degradation of these works?  Is she presenting them as an economically-motivated path away from such classic images?

Genieve Figgis, Wish You Were Here (Installation View), via Almine Rech

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Mark Verabioff, Concerned Women For America Rim Glue Pour Cultural Confinement Rundowns Pool Side (2017) (detail), all images by Osman Can Yerebakan for Art Observed

Entering Mark Verabioff’s first exhibition with Team Gallery, the audience encounters expansive, full-wall images of entertainment industry figures symbolizing generations of American pop culture, such as the controversial photos of child actress and model Brooke Shields, iconic fashion editor Diana Vreeland (photographed by Francesco Scavullo), and teen heartthrob Nick Jonas. Known for his image and text based practice in which he cross-references words and pictures in relation to their abundant presence and status in visual culture, Verabioff mines the archives of art history, feminism, gender politics, and pop. The L.A.-based artist’s riff on language and pictures stems from his exhibition title, TEARS, brewing two distinct meanings and pronunciations of the word “tear” in contextual and performative levels. Other words with versatile meanings and utterances, such as “rim” and “pour” extend his play on language.

Mark Verabioff, TEARS at Team Gallery (Installation View)

The act of ripping off a page, and the drops shed by the eye encapsulate two avenues Verabioff takes with the word “tear” throughout the exhibition. Conveyed through tear drops adorning various eyes are notions of guilt, shame, and redemption; they appear around the eyes of many celebrity photos amassed by the artist, both in wall-spanning vinyl decals and small prints off of magazine pages. The vast collection of photographs shows woman celebrities at the prime of their careers include Grace Jones, Cher, Madonna, Candy Darling, and Diane Ross, with the word “ANTIFA” reading on the top left corner of each image.

Mark Verabioff, TEARS at Team Gallery (Installation View)

Although “antifa” calls to mind political activism and vocal opposition, the artist’s appropriation of the word in the company of glamorous celebrity photography furthers his approach to language as a social phenomenon and political tool. Either posing for Scavullo’s lens or featured in an anonymous magazine, these women, among which are also unknown models, overall constitute a transcendental aura within the gallery as they stare into our eyes with glamour and confidence. Yet they challenge the limitations and expectations imposed by the society and media due to age, sexuality, and their career.

Mark Verabioff, Concerned Women Rundowns Poolside (2017)

The artist utilizes a torn piece of tape to create the typical paisley pattern or a rectangular shape at the edges of these famous eyes. Strength and vulnerability, two opposites embedded in the act of crying, complicate these figures’ recognition in society as icons and victims, recalling Warhol’s use of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor photographs. The performative gesture of ripping “things,” pages or tapes in this case, imbue an archivist but also anarchist nature to Varabioff’s process, which expands to his mixed-media acrylic paintings blending various pictorial and textual traits onto canvas.

Mark Verabioff: TEARS is on view at Team Gallery through March 3, 2018.

Mark Verabioff, TEARS at Team Gallery (Installation View)

—O.C. Yerebakan

Related Link:
Team Gallery [Exhibition Page]

Stephen Shore, New York, New York, May 20, 2017 (2017), via Art Observed

Few photographers have left such an enduring impact on the practice of contemporary photography, and arguably on the state of contemporary art making as Stephen Shore.  Exploring a mix of taut, close cropped examinations of modern civilization alongside the varied textures and scenes that marks its intermingling with natural environments and varied foreign agents, Shore’s interest in the present condition is frequently bound up in a series of variations and interpretations along shared themes.  Working in series with varied materials and cameras, his work is ever-shifting and precise in its statements, making him an endlessly compelling artist to view. Read More »

Tom Wesselmann, Still Life #59 (1972), via Art Observed

Dwelling on a unique body of work in artist Tom Wesselmann’s expansive oeuvre, Gagosian Gallery in New York is currently presenting a series of the artist’s monumentally-scaled “Standing Still-Lifes,” a series of works that saw the artist explore past practices and themes in his work, while embracing a scattered, varied approach towards his own imagery.  On view through the end of February, Wesselmann’s work in series presents a unique opportunity to dive deeper into the artist’s relentlessly innovative vision and interests in the language of American consumerism.   Read More »

Petrit Halilaj, Abetare (Fluturat) (Installation View), via Kamel Mennour

Currently on view at Kamel Mennour in Paris, artist Petrit Halilaj has brought a nuanced body of works that explore the constitution of both history and society through its youngest members.  Exploring the phenomena of early childhood, the various cultural touchstones and worlds created from young minds, and their analogs in the world around them, Halilaj’s work is a striking and empathetic exploration of both violence and youth, memory and time. Read More »

Ida Ekblad, Proper Stuff (Installation View), via Herald St

It would be understandable to overlook the works currently on view at Herald St. in London as paintings by Norwegian artist Ida Ekblad.  The young painter and sculptor, whose work so often mines the scrawling hands of graffiti writing or mixes in cast-off detritus from her daily daily wanderings, here has taken a decidedly more contemplative route.  Over a small series of paintings, she embraces a distinct sense of foreground and backdrop, mining new ground to create a particularly compelling body of works. Read More »

Eddie Martinez, Love Letter #15 (2017), via Art Observed

Artist Eddie Martinez has returned to Mitchell-Innes & Nash this month, bringing two different bodies of work to the gallery’s two exhibition spaces in Chelsea and Uptown.  These two shows mark the first time Martinez’s work has been exhibited in New York since major solo exhibitions at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College and at The Drawing Center, New York, and signal a continuation of themes explored in those shows. Martinez’s work, which draws on languages of modernist painting while abstracting its language through varied techniques and imaginative approaches to the canvas.

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Serge Alain Nitegeka, Colour & Form XL (2017), via Marianne Boesky

Since joining Marianne Boesky several years ago, the Johannesburg-based painter Serge Alain Nitegeka has explored a series of ever-changing, constantly evolving approaches to a familiar construct. Blocks of color and stark, geometric forms dominate his pieces, always interested and invested in the way their application is capable not only of dividing up the space of his panels, but equally in how the viewer’s comprehension of space is shifted in turn. For his most recent exhibition at the New York Gallery, Nitegeka brings a selection of striking new paintings that continue this array of interests, applied towards increasingly impressive ends.

Serge Alain Nitegeka, Colour & Form XLVIII (2017), via Marianne Boesky

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Katherine Bernhardt, Siesta (2017), via Canada Gallery

Katherine Bernhardt’s work is nothing if not repetitive, producing colorful, swirling landscapes of repeated graphic motifs, often using variations on a theme to produce a sort of constellation of the everyday.  For her most recent show at Canada Gallery, she returns to this mode of practice. Cigarettes and Nike logos are a frequent occurrence, as are pizza, tropical fruits and even the occasional insect.  The show, which draws its name and inspiration in part from the classic Charlton Heston futuristic nightmare film Soylent Green, is equally invested in a sense of societal decline, pushing the artist’s own approach to figuration to stranger heights, twisting bodies ever further and images into an even more bizarre state of juxtaposition.  The same ideas are present to be sure, but the artist’s use of this same repetitive motif, one she has used over the past several years since debuting the approach at Canada three years ago, has been pushed to intense new vistas. Read More »

David Lamelas, The Other Side (Installation View), via Maccarone

The current exhibition at Maccarone Gallery in Los Angeles is something of a subdued affair, a pair of works by David Lamelas erected on either side of the gallery’s main, bisecting wall. The show, Lamelas’s third with the New York/Los Angeles gallery, is executed in conjunction with the current iteration of Pacific Standard Time, which included a body of the artist’s works. Read More »