Sander Coers

Work from POST.

“POST explores the intersection of constructed memories and perceptions of masculinity in visual culture through the use of AI-generated imagery. With this project, I aim to investigate the role of photography in shaping our perceptions of the past and question its authenticity in the age of digitalism where memories can be constructed and manipulated.

As a child, I spent hours immersed in my grandparents’ photo albums, fascinated by the details in each picture. I longed to connect with the people captured in those images and to have a glimpse into the past of my grandfather. In those albums, I discovered a part of my heritage tied to my grandfather’s birth in Indonesia during World War II. But there was a silence surrounding the past, making it difficult to grasp the full story.

To bridge that gap, I decided to train an AI bot to expand my family history based on my grandparents’ photo albums ranging from the 1940’s to the 90’s. These AI-generated images evoke similar elements found in my grandparents’ albums, landscapes, clothing, and colors from that time. However, everything is completely false. Combining the visual style of my grandparents’ albums with its vast database, the AI bot comes up with a dark-skinned man running through a field of flowers, located in what seems to be the Alps, an image that is not necessarily rooted in our visual memory. It’s interesting to see how the bot makes room for a new narrative.

The link between the concept of memory and masculinity in this project is multifaceted. On the one hand, memory plays a significant role in shaping our perceptions of masculinity over time. By looking at the recurring symbols in the AI-generated images, such as suits, belts, and hats, we can see how these have been used as stereotypical visual markers of masculinity through different eras. On the other hand, the project also explores the idea that memory itself, like masculinity, is a construct. Something that can be manipulated and fabricated. This raises questions about the authenticity of our memories, and how our perceptions of masculinity might be shaped by constructed memories rather than actual experiences.” – Sander Coers

Jesse Mockrin

Work from The marks of a stranger at Nathalie Karg Gallery.

“What makes Jesse Mockrin’s paintings sing is what she leaves out. All the pieces in The Marks of a Stranger at Nathalie Karg Gallery were inspired by Renaissance and post-Renaissance depictions of the rape of Lucretia, the possibly mythical royal outrage that ancient Romans credited with spurring them to oust their kings and found a republic. On smaller canvases, Ms. Mockrin crops out the woman’s face and most of her body, along with any context, everything but an elegant silver dagger pressing into bloodless, yielding flesh. You’re reminded of the value we still put on possession, in all its senses, the sexual, the impassioned, the violent, and of the all too common urge to destroy what we admire. In the larger scenes, Ms. Mockrin crops less, to even more powerful effect. Two Lucretias turn toward each other, in the diptych Weep into my eyes, their faces disappearing into the gap between the canvases. This gap is something like the caesura, or metrical break in a line of poetry, and it has its violent and sexual subtext, too. But most of all it’s a brilliant demonstration of how dramatically we can change our perspective on art history without changing the history itself.” – Will Heinrich

David Douard

Work from Permanent Hymns at Galerie Chantal Crousel.

“Language is the very basis of David Douard’s work. The texts and poems he collects on the Internet are manipulated, transformed in order to become a vital flow, feeding into his sculptures. Through language as an ingredient, David Douard redefines space as hybrid and collective by injecting anonymous, chaotic, deviant, ill and frustrating poems in it. As he recreates an infected environment where the real world used to be, the fantasy brought by new digital technologies expands.” – Galerie Chantel Crousel

Anthea Hamilton

Work from The Prude.

“… For the prude, modesty becomes extreme. The prude will not permit themselves, or others, sensuous enjoyment in life. Hamilton’s interest in the literary figure of “the prude” in part, references Cecil Vyse — the aloof character of E.M Forster’s A Room with a View (1908). Perceiving himself a sensitive intellectual, Vyse in reality, remains detached from lived experience. This obstinate self-awareness is matched by a cultivated, exaggerated style. This skewed mode of being, the prude-as-persona, serves a framework for the exhibition, where the prude is put to use as a proxy for Hamilton, who performs a “hands off” physicality.

The balance of materiality and economy is consistent with Hamilton’s practice, where tactile surfaces are often conceived through digital production. Suggestive of previous exhibitions and series, The Prude is largely a continuation of Hamilton’s The New Life at Secession, Vienna (2018). Four distinct interiors emphasise the confluence of domestic and gallery space through a number of wall treatments: airbrushed, textile clad and digitally printed wallpapers. One monochrome room at No.11 includes photographs by Lewis Ronald. Taken at Kettle’s Yard, the images show multidisciplinary artist Carlos Maria Romero interact with objects in the house, specifically, four brass rings and one jade ring (pre-1966) made by Richard Pousette-Dart.

The Prude also challenges relationships of scale and content, with large soft sculptures of moths and butterflies, and extravagant stone, marble, and walnut wavy boots. The effect is less an analysis of artifice, more a consideration of the way objects and images may influence meaning when treated to different processes of realisation.

Though Hamilton’s use of material may appear mercurial, her approach to form remains acute. Hamilton’s interest in the reducibility and expansion of spaces — in meaning, and as objects — harmonises visual material to a level plane. Here, bodies of research co-exist in a manner that questions the remit of research itself. The recurrence of familiar forms composes this reflexivity: both the work and Hamilton’s original interests are situated under renewed scrutiny. Here, the works behave twofold: they are objects as receivers of ideas, while appearing to emit ideas themselves.

Hamilton’s work holds an internal logic based on the cultural connections of things: the implicit subtext of an idea, the lineage and physical sensibilities of images, or the curiosity and adaptability of an object’s ontology. Tracing the shifting usages and sensitivities of an image, Hamilton brings the frequencies of authenticity and artifice into plain relief — their competing status collapsing. Multiple images or materials may extrapolate from one nucleus: a moth species, an Ed Ruscha gradient, a Robert Crumb figure, a Hamilton tartan swatch. The fundamental economy of Hamilton’s choice however, allows the obvious to be both simple and complex; the permutations are high, though the “origin” is concentrated and transformational…” – Thomas Dane Gallery

Anne de Vries

Work from his oeuvre.

“Anne de Vries is a Dutch artist working on the border of digital photography and other media, such as video and sculpture since 2003. De Vries is interested in how our understanding of reality is influenced by new media. He reconnects paradoxical elements, including different types of materials, to construct his works, often assessing how matter and information are constantly impacting one another.” – ISCP

Slavs and Tartars

Work from Simurgh.

“The solo exhibition by the Berlin-based international collective Slavs and Tatars takes its title from Simurgh, a majestic, mythological bird-like creature with references to Persianate, Turkic, and other Eurasian histories. The Simurgh story, rich in themes of unity and the interconnectedness of all living beings, offers important insights into the idea of coexistence and its relation to democracy, representational politics, self-governance,and the construction of hope. Through various media – from sound to glasswork, textiles to mirrors – Simurgh invites us to engage in a conversation on existence, living together, and belonging, transforming the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden into a space for self-discovery and conviviality.

Simurgh includes newly commissioned works that connect this Eurasian creature to the context of Baden-Baden and Baden-Württemberg through the tradition of living, regenerating tales, fables, and mythologies, such as those of the Black Forest. Selected works by the pioneering conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaers (1924–1976) will feature in the exhibition promenade as referential forms, alongside a sound-based installation by Istanbul-based artist Cevdet Erek. These elements extend the horizons of Simurgh symbolically, architecturally, and sonically. The artists aim to build upon Broodthaers’ seminal work Musée d’Art Moderne: Département des Aigles (1968–71) – where the role of the eagle in French and German heraldry, literature, and history is deconstructed – by replacing the eagle, a nationalist symbol, with the Simurgh, a figure that is decidedly transnational, if not metaphysical.” – Kunsthalle Baden-Baden

Shuvinai Ashoona

Work from her oeuvre.

“Inuk artist Shuvinai Ashoona’s fantastical drawings inject surreal visions into depictions of contemporary Inuit life, overturning stereotypical notions of Inuit culture while capturing the dramatic changes it has experienced in recent history. Ashoona produces her work at the Kinngait Studios, a community-run art-making cooperative incorporated in 1959 as the artistic arm of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative. The humans who populate the domestic and quotidian scenes depicted in her pen-and-pencil drawings are joined by mermaids, human-animal hybrids, and fantastical sea creatures. Surreal details signal spiritual, cosmological, or phantasmatic forces in delicate coexistence with the everyday. In the two new works included here (both 2021), humans and animals both cohabitate and merge: in one drawing, a woman with a platypus mouth and webbed fingers reclines on an ice flow as a poncho-wearing, tentacled walrus confronts his own reflection; in the other, human figures are ambiguously enveloped by, costumed as, or walking alongside chimerical creatures. Ashoona’s merging of social experience, fantastical iconography, and narrative composition is infused with Surrealism’s mining of the subconscious and provides a simultaneously vivid and phantasmagoric vision of life in her community.” – Ian Wallace

Seriously.

Group Exhibition Curated by Nana Bahlmann currently up at Sprüth Magers London.

Seriously. features the work of Bas Jan Ader, Keith Arnatt, John Baldessari, Massimo Bartolini, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Lynda Benglis, Helen Chadwick, Robert Cumming, Thomas Demand, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Braco Dimitrijević, Cao Fei, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Ceal Floyer, Tom Friedman, Dan Graham, Rodney Graham, Scott Grieger, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Sigurður Guðmundsson, Andreas Gursky, Barbara Hammer, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, Rebecca Horn, Douglas Huebler, Birgit Jürgenssen, Astrid Klein, David Lamelas, Louise Lawler, Natalia LL, Sarah Lucas, Urs Lüthi, Tom Marioni, Anthony McCall, Jonathan Monk, Peter Moore, Bruce Nauman, Joshua Neustein, Dennis Oppenheim, Géza Perneczky, Sigmar Polke, Charles Ray, Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, Ulrike Rosenbach, Thomas Ruff, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Stephen Shore, Santiago Sierra and Franz Erhard Walther, Roman Signer, Laurie Simmons, John Smith, Martine Syms, Robert Therrien, Rosemarie Trockel, Keiji Uematsu, Ger van Elk, Mark Wallinger, John Waters, Gillian Wearing, Carrie Mae Weems, William Wegman, Hannah Wilke, Stephen Willats, and Christopher Williams.

“Conceptual photography is often regarded as self-serious and academic. Yet, since the very inception of conceptual art in the 1960s, many such artists have strategically employed humour to provoke and meaningfully engage the viewer, as well as challenge visual norms. Despite being humorous, this work remains intellectually rigorous and profound.

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present Seriously., a group exhibition curated by Nana Bahlmann, featuring over a hundred conceptual photographs, print media, and select films ranging from the 1960s to the present, which expose the absurdities of our world and its representations. Through visual wit, subversiveness, and even outright slapstick, these photographic experiments offer humorous conceptual investigations of how images are constructed and interpreted. Employing a range of strategies, from masquerade and role-play to the construction of inexplicable scenarios, unexpected juxtapositions, and idiosyncratic sculptural compositions, these works reveal the farcical and fantastical within the visual realm. In reframing our visual world through satire and playful mimicry, they create space for both reflection and amusement.

The exhibition unfolds across a range of thematic clusters, from explorations of self-portraiture, the built and natural environment, and everyday objects (and sometimes combinations thereof). As visitors move through each room, they encounter groupings of artworks that invite questioning and reimagining of societal norms, gender identity, and the role of the artist. However, a prominent recurring motif that thematically bridges such groupings together is artists citing or parodying the work of their fellow artists. Peter Fischli and David Weiss’ eccentric Equilibres (1984–86), which are included in the show, are rephotographed in Thomas Ruff’s Zeitungsfotos (Newspaper Photographs, 1990–91), also on view here. Jonathan Monk jovially makes reference to Louise Lawler and the artist duo Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose unexpectedly humorous work is presented. Satirising Cindy Sherman, Thomas Demand, and Andreas Gursky, as well as their contemporaries, John Waters’ Art Market Research (2006) merrily documents hysterical reviews of the work of artistic peers that are exhibited alongside Waters’ comical critique.

While many of the artists included in this exhibition are traditionally associated with humour, such as John Baldessari and William Wegman, others are not. Humour is subjective; what one person finds funny may not resonate with another, depending on the context in which the object of hilarity is presented. Not all of the works included in this extensive exhibition were necessarily intended to be humorous by the artists who made them, nor will every viewer perceive them as such. Yet, in the context of an exhibition focused on humour, the underlying wit and clever punning within these works becomes apparent.

Humour is more than entertainment; it’s a powerful socio-political tool that acts as a lens through which to understand the strange or illogical aspects of our times. Seriously. celebrates this complexity and invites its audience to engage, think, and laugh.” – Nana Bahlmann

Trisha Donnelley

Work from an Untitled Exhibition (2019)

“In 1974, the CIA green-lit a 350-million-dollar cover-up operation to salvage a sunken Soviet sub from the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Hidden in plain sight, the top-secret rescue spawned the “Glomar response,” crafted to elude journalistic inquisition: “We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the information requested but, hypothetically, if such data were to exist, the subject matter would be classified and could not be disclosed.” The slogan is now ubiquitous, parroted by everyone from Kylie Jenner to the NYPD, but Trisha Donnelly remains its most fascinating artistic partisan. Donnelly’s solo exhibition at Matthew Marks, characteristically opaque and sans press release, collects six new untitled sculptures alongside three blurred projections. Formally, the series of marble plinths that populate the gallery take up the legacy of minimalism — but unlike its adherents Judd and Serra, whose well-known industrial processes are part and parcel of their work, little is known about Donnelly’s fabrication methods. Her undecipherable slabs were, at some point, pulled from quarries. Probably in Italy, the gallery assistant tells me. I’m unable to verify, which is maybe the point: taking Judd’s assertion that methods are irrelevant so long as they result in art’s logical extreme, Donnelly lays an inscrutable series of objects before us and insists that in this pure absence of didacticism we make for ourselves what we will. Donnelly’s exhibition invites a meditative form of curiosity. The absence of a structuring narrative invites close viewing in its stead, drawing attention to the sculptures’ juxtaposing surfaces: flawless smoothness, serrated grain. In the front room, a dim digital image appends three scattered granite hunks, clustered according to an unknowable logic. The works are spaced atypically, quietly resisting the linear standardization of minimalism past and proper. During the day, the surrounding projections are barely discernible; once the sun sets, the sculptures are lit dimly by design. Only part of the show is fully visible at any given time — another subtle jab at the precision of Donnelly’s progenitors? Perhaps. We can neither confirm nor deny.” – Adina Glickestein for Flash Art

David Hartt

Work from Naturphilosophie.

“Galerie Thomas Schulte presents Naturphilosophie, an exhibition of new works by David Hartt. For his second solo exhibition at the gallery, Hartt expands
on an ongoing body of work, continuing his engagement with themes related
to dominant systems of knowledge and representation, and corresponding
processes of marginalization and displacement. Reproduced as photogravures
or translated as tapestries, the works comprise images of plants photographed
at various sites in northern Europe —in the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany.
Bringing these peripheral, non-human agents into focus, the images reflect
on how our environment, and the life present in it, has been shaped by human
activity and ideals of the past—as well as their resonances today.

The sites visited and photographed by Hartt for the works on view—among
them, the historic university cities of Leiden, Uppsala and Göttingen—were
informed by the work of artists and early naturalists active there, primarily,
but not exclusively, during the 18th century. Through mostly close-cropped,
nondescript views, however, locations are kept from being fully identifiable in
the images. Their titles are the primary indicator, parenthetically noting the
city and date of the photograph, as well as the scientific names of the plant
species featured in it. Documents of a place and a specific moment in time, they
also refer to and enact a process of naming. Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus,
known as the “father of modern taxonomy” for having formalized the binomial
nomenclature system in 1753, is also associated with three of the cities in which
the photographs were taken. The presence of such figures puts the images in
dialogue with European artistic and intellectual traditions in and around this
period—a period also marked by European colonization and its effects, including
the movement of flora, fauna and human communities.” – Galerie Thomas Schulte