#luhring augustine

[garadinervi]

Tomm El-Saieh, Song and Dance, (acrylic on canvas), 2017-2018 [Luhring Augustine, New York, NY. © Tomm El-Saieh]

[abstracteddistractions]

Philip Taaffe, "Prior Pedro" (2022), 

Mixed media on panel, 14 1/8 inches x 26 1/8 inches 

© Philip Taaffe; photo by Farzad Owrang, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

[longlistshort]

It often feels like we are oversaturated with images in today’s world, but the energy at the Charles Atlas exhibition A Prune Twin at Luhring Augustine gets the balance right.

From the gallery’s press release-

Luhring Augustine is pleased to announce A Prune Twin, the gallery’s third solo exhibition with pioneering film and video artist Charles Atlas. The presentation will mark the American debut of this major multi-channel installation with sound that was originally commissioned by the Barbican Centre, London as the centerpiece of their 2020 exhibition, Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer; which traveled to the Victoria and Albert Museum in Dundee, Scotland in 2021.

The collaboration between the two artists began in 1984 when the young dancer, Clark, performed in two single-channel films by Atlas: Parafango and Ex-Romance. However, it was not until the groundbreaking Hail the New Puritan in 1986, that the relationship between the two artists was deeply cemented. Originally commissioned as an arts documentary by Channel 4 of the BBC, Hail the New Puritan turned the genre on its head, presenting a highly stylized and fictionalized version of a typical day in Clark’s life – an “anti-documentary”, as Atlas has called it.  The two artists also worked closely together on another Channel 4 production, Because We Must (1989), which was full of extreme theatricality in its dance, choreography, scenery, costumes, and directorial position.

In A Prune Twin, Atlas pulls material from these two major films to create an immersive eight-channel installation of sound and moving image. He extends the idea of choreography to camera and sound, flowing across and throughout screens and monitors; in this sense, Atlas choreographs his own past material into a new and compelling dance all of its own. Evident in this work, and many others by Atlas, is his strong affection and attraction to exceptionally creative collaborators, his sensitivity to movement and how to capture it on film, and his novel skills as both a storyteller and observer. Much like MC9, an immersive installation that compiles Atlas’ extensive work with Merce Cunningham, A Prune Twin surrounds the viewer in a beautifully choreographed spectacle. The work captures the spirit and passion of a 35-year collaborative relationship, one that continues to this day – currently realized through the lighting design that Atlas produces for all of Clark’s live performances, an endeavor he has undertaken since the 1980s.

[mentaltimetraveller]

Simone Leigh

“The Village Series #4,” 2018 (stoneware, 45.1 x 21 x 25.4). |© Simone Leigh, Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

[abwwia]

Simone Leigh, No Face (Pannier), 2018.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LUHRING AUGUSTINE

[mybeingthere]

Amazing tapestries by Christina Forrer (b. 1978, Zurich), lives and works in Los Angeles.

Her inspirations include early 20th century German Expressionism (particularly the tapestries German painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) made with Swiss artist Lise Gujer (1893-1967)), and Swedish textile artist Hannah Ryggen.

“It’s usually something that happens in my daily life or that I see, a fight between two individuals, a conflict where there’s aggression towards you,” Christina Forrer said in a 2016 video from the Swiss Institute. “From the first second we are born, conflict kind of guides our lives. I think it’s what makes people do things, good or bad.” = Christina Forrer 

Christina Forrer creates tapestries, paintings, and works on paper depicting wildly dense scenes of conflict and debate. Crude figures argue, revolt, and assault one another; the compositions depict scenes of violence, torture, and aggressive embrace. The figures in Forrer’s works possess large eyes, mouths agape, and aghast expressions; they appear to be generationally tied, as if all part of the same wild, comically horrifying family. 

Forrer’s practice is rooted in a tradition of tapestry and invested in the materials that construct such works, carefully weaving in color to create eclectic palettes and crafty, abject characters. She has had solo exhibitions at Luhring Augustine, New York (2019); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2019); Swiss Institute, New York (2017); The Finley, Los Angeles (2016); and Grice Bench, Los Angeles (2016; 2014). She has also participated in group exhibitions at Lever House, New York (2017); Jewish Museum, New York (2015); and Midway Contemporary, Minneapolis (2015).

[fuckyeah-jessicabiel]

Jessica Biel for Details Magazine, September 2002

JENNY GAGE AND TOM BETTERTON : When shooting all-American beauty Jessica Biel (page 256), husband-and- wife team Tom Betterton and Jenny Gage wanted to keep things real. "At this point in her career, it seems like everyone wants to sex her up," says Betterton. "But her beauty is very nat- ural." The couple has shot for W, among other magazines, and has a video instal- lation opening at the Luhring Augustine Gallery in New York this month.

"If you don't sign my ass, I'm gonna have to do fifteen shots of Jack Daniel's." Rarely in the course of a lifetime does an individual get a clear opportunity to directly affect the destiny of a complete stranger. For Jessica Biel, the chance to prevent a tragic death—or at least a long, ugly night of toilet hugging-came at 4 A.M. during pledge week of her freshman year at Tufts University.

Emboldened by copious amounts of liquor (and no doubt a few keg stands), a staggering pack of frat boys descended on Biel's dorm room with a mission- to get her to scrawl her name on a pledge's butt. Despite the obscene hour, Biel shook off her initial shock and took Sharpie in hand.

"The poor guy just drops trou and bends over right in front of me," Biel says, trying her best not to blush. "So I reached out and scribbled some illegible thing, and then they took off. You know, I hope they were serious, because I felt really bad. Fifteen shots of Jack? That could kill somebody."

While it's possible that her squeaky-clean work on the WB dramedy 7th Heaven brought her to the attention of Tufts' homy mob of chronic masturbators, more likely it was her ill-fated brush with kiddie-porn infamy when she was 17. Biel sus- pected that her Heaven-sent image had kept her from landing the meaty role in American Beauty that went to Thora Birch. So, at a magazine shoot, she had Frank W. Ockenfels 3 take pictures of her sprawled out in nothing but high heels and a thong. As if the photos weren't saucy enough, the article painted her as a foul- mouthed Lolita trying to bait Aaron Spelling into booting her off the show so she could pursue a proper big-screen career.

Part One of the equation worked like a charm: Soon after the story hit news- stands in March 2000, her character was packed off to do some soul-searching, and returns in just a handful of episodes. But the movie-star part? Well, let's

just say that the resounding thud of her first post-pinup role-Summer Catch- made her realize that there are worse fates than an eternity in Heaven.

"Yes, the pictures were supposed to be a little more mature and sexy than what I'd done before, but it went further than what I expected or wanted it to, she says. "Looking back, I would've made a different choice. I learned a shitload from the experience and grew a lot—but I wouldn't do it again.”

The year at Tufts helped bring her back to earth; tiny Medford, Massachu setts, was the perfect place to plot her next move. "I was pretty depressed, but most of all I was angry that I put myself in that situation," she says. "I never wanted to get off 7th Heaven. I just wanted to go to college."

She'll return to Tufts this fall, but not before giving the movies another shot In October she'll star alongside James Van Der Beek, Shannyn Sossamon, and Kip Pardue in The Rules of Attraction. Based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel, it'sa satiric look at a sexual triangle among friends at a New England liberal-arts col lege. Biel passed on a nude scene, but still manages to play against type-jus like she's always wanted.

"What's most impressive about Jess is that she's really brave when the camera rolls," says Van Der Beek. "There was this one scene where she had to break down and cry, and she nailed it on the first take. She absolutely grabbed the scene by the balls. The girl knows her shit."

Biel admits that returning to the cineplex after her public comeuppance is bit nerve-racking, but she's ready to put the controversy behind her. "You do crazy things when you're 17, and I've changed a lot since then," the 20-year-old says with a smile. "I'm finally ready to show people that there is very different side of me."

The woman in Bungalow 27 at the Topanga Ranch Motel is getting nervous. So is the dandered militia of meowing cats pouring from every loose shingle of her beachfront cottage. She emerges from behind her rusting screen door, kitty tucked under one arm, and steps over an assortment of food-encrusted dishes to size up Biel.

"This isn't a party, is it?" she demands.

Biel names the approaching stranger Cat Woman under her breath, then charms her into submission. "Yes, ma'am," she says, managing to sound more sweet than smarmy. "The frat boys are on their way." Curiosity quenched, the Cat Woman herds her feline conga line back into the house and retreats.

Looking like a SoCal queen with her low-slung jeans and flip-flops, Biel has and arrived at this Pacific-coast hideaway to step in front of a photographer's lens once again. This time around, she'll prove she can turn it on without taking it off. After she wraps up here, she'll hop a plane for Austin to begin filming the just remake of seventies trash classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A horror junkie,

Biel snagged the role by auditioning for producer Michael Bay himself, and she's obviously ecstatic about reimagining Leatherface's sordid tale.

She coils up on the bed of the cramped motel room and rocks back and forth as she excitedly describes one of the scenes.

"I jump out a window and gash my knee, but I'm still running," she explains, eyes wide. "I'm in these semi-stiletto clogs and I trip and twist my ankle. So now I'm bleeding and I've got a busted ankle. But I'm not the typical horror-movie wuss girl-not at all. I get right back up on my feet and keep on running." Falling down and getting back up again? It's something Biel has become pretty damn good at. Leatherface had better watch out.■

[garak]

nyc mutuals you guys have got to check out pipilotti rist at luhring augustine… so good

[sussanmaria]

Pipilotti Rist, Ever is Over All,1997 (still). Sound by Anders Guggisberg and Rist. Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Luhring Augustine.

[hyperallergic]

Artist Philip Taaffe synthesizes layers and symmetry to attain an in-between state and capture the process of change.

In that world, ornamental and fossil patterns become significant forms, while printmaking and collage take on the character of painting.

John Yau reviews Philip Taaffe at Luhring Augustine Tribeca.

[garadinervi]

Zarina Hashmi, The Ten Thousand Things IV, (detail), (set of 100 collages mounted on Somerset white paper), 2018 [Luhring Augustine, New York, NY. © Zarina Hashmi]

[distinktionsfetzen]

Check out Richard Rezac, Untitled (22-08) (2022), From Luhring Augustine

[longlistshort]

Work by Shaun Pierson

Work by William Eric Brown

Work by Sheida Soleimani

Work by Sophia Chai

Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez

Work by Kevin Landers

Work by Brittany Nelson

The seven artists on view at Luhring Augustine for the exhibition Tiptoeing Through the Kitchen, Recent Photography, each bring a unique vision to their practice. The artists included in this show are William Eric Brown, Sophia Chai, Kevin Landers, Brittany Nelson, Shaun Pierson, Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez, and Sheida Soleimani. Below is more detailed information on the work from the gallery.

From the press release-

“Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.”  – Diane Arbus

Materialized in varying ways, kinship and cultural inheritance are frequent touchstones for many of these artists. William Eric Brown’s works — the source images for which were taken in Antarctica in the 1950s by the artist’s father while serving in the US Navy and stationed on an icebreaker — are instilled with new significance through his manipulation and reconceptualization, which address the current reality of climate change and its effects on the arctic. Sophia Chai explores her memory of learning the Korean alphabet as a child through her work. By drawing and painting the shapes and lines of the characters on the walls and floor of her studio, Chai reimagines them in space, thereby abstracting written communication into an embodiment of the sensation of each word being formed inside the mouth.

Sheida Soleimani stages elaborately constructed tableaux to address interwoven narratives of family, politics, and caregiving that trace both personal and public histories. Her carefully fabricated scenes demonstrate her commitment to approaching her practice with measured sensitivity; rather than divorcing her subjects from their own realities, Soleimani creates a contemplative space in which each incorporated object or image conveys an intentional message. Similarly, Shaun Pierson’s work illuminates the complex dynamics in the relationship between photographer and subject. Entwining conflicting sensations of inhibition and desire, Pierson lays bare the often simultaneously transactional and vulnerable apparatus and process of making photographs. Kevin Landers’ photographs, taken on the streets of New York and across the country, are rooted firmly in the here and now. He documents a collection of seemingly unnoticed moments, paying careful attention to unexpected details that, more often than not, most people would simply walk past — ephemera such as an abandoned shopping cart or an intricately woven spider web, expanding our notion of landscape beyond simply the pastoral.

Queer desire and a longing for another space and time are explored through the re-authoring of found or archival images in the works of Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez and Brittany Nelson. Reyes Rodriguez pairs images from his own history with a series of photographs he purchased from a bookshop in Mexico City — dated between 1987 and 1993, the found snapshots evidence the personal experiences of a young, presumably queer, man known to us as “Technoir.” By combining the two archives, Reyes Rodriguez invites us to dwell in a space of merged memories, neither of which we can fully inhabit, and of the desire to know more. While at first glance Brittany Nelson’s use of archival materials is less overtly personal, her work considers themes of otherness, isolation, and the desire for connection. In one of the series on view, she perceived a sense of romantic devastation in the images taken by Opportunity, the Mars rover, which she amplifies by re-printing them using the 1920s analog bromoil photographic process, thereby infusing them with an added eerie, otherworldly quality.

Though varied in their approaches to photographic practice, what unifies these artists is their investigation of longing, care, and lineage — familial and otherwise — and the way in which they use the medium and the process of making the work as a means to engage with others, with themselves, and to challenge expectations. Generating a constellated conversation that draws upon photography’s history, yet turns toward something altogether new, the artists included in Tiptoeing Through the Kitchen, Recent Photography imbue the seemingly unknown with flashes of recognition.

This exhibition closes 6/8/24.

[mentaltimetraveller]

Sanya Kantarovsky

Alma, 2018

Oil and watercolor on canvas 85 x 65 inches (215.9 x 165.1 cm)

at Luhring Augustine, New York

[abwwia]

Simone Leigh, Dunham, 2017,  Farzad Owrang/Luhring Augustine

[fotos-art]

Janine Antoni 2038 (2000). Photo courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.