"For Your Infotainment" Celebrates "Outliers"
Frieze New York 2018 takes place May 4—6. Tickets are available now.
The Matthew Higgs-curated section sees galleries pay homage to a colleague who championed the uncategorizable
Taking its name from the words printed on Feature Inc.’s compliments slip, For Your Infotainment celebrates the maverick spirit and enduring legacy of the late art dealer Hudson (1950-2014) and his Chicago- and New York-based gallery Feature Inc. Further to the announcement in January, full details of this—the first themed section at Frieze New York—have been announced.
Curated by Matthew Higgs (White Columns, New York), For Your Infotainment: Hudson and Feature Inc. showcases major artists who received their gallery debuts or had a long history at Hudson’s seminal space Feature Inc. in the 1980s, ‘90s and early 2000s—a group which, Higgs says, comprises “artists of often quite radically different intentions, that somehow all made (perfect) sense when viewed through Hudson’s eyes.”
The presentations in For Your Infotainment include:
Jason Fox and Daniel Hesidence (Canada, New York)
Dike Blair (Karma, New York)
Tom of Finland (David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles)
Tom Friedman (Stephen Friedman Gallery, London)
Raymond Pettibon (David Zwirner, New York)
Takashi Murakami (Gagosian, New York)
Tony Tasset (Kavi Gupta, Chicago)
Andrew Masullo (Nicelle Beauchene, New York)
A booth representing the recently launched non-profit Feature Hudson Foundation (FHF) will also be a highlight of the section, with a display curated by Higgs and showcasing another 15 artists, including Lisa Beck, Richard Kern, Roy McMakin, Kay Rosen, Nancy Shaver, Lily van der Stokker, among others.
CANADA
November 7, 2015 - January 6, 2016 Opening reception: Saturday, November 7, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
CANADA is pleased to announce that we now represent Daniel Hesidence, whose first exhibition at the gallery, Summers Gun, opening Saturday November 7th. Summers Gun represents a rarity in the supercharged atmosphere of contemporary art, a practice that is slow and stubbornly invested in painting on Hesidence’s own terms. The scale of Hesidence’s achievement is compounded by the fact that Summers Gun represents the final installment of four distinct and fully realized bodies of work that are structured on the seasons. The paintings in Summers Gun are a blossoming of Hesidence’s language, hitting new highs in inventiveness of drawing, timbre, palette and depth of feeling.
The paintings place the viewer into the role of archaeologist or spelunker. One of the unifying properties that runs through the work is a forceful and seemingly archetypal drawing that asserts itself in the foreground of the paintings. However, after looking, one begins to see this is often a decoy or preamble and there is a second or third image that is eventually revealed at their own internal tempos. It is this visual bait and switch that is at the heart of Hesidence’s poetry. The “yes, but...” of the thing beneath or behind that informs and destroys, adding complexity and motion to the paintings. We have to use our senses to determine the situations and ideas that each painting transfers. There is nothing passive or unconsidered in these paintings, yet they seem bracingly open-ended.
The paint is thick, applied out of the tube or off the end of a stick in some fugitive procedure that recalls aboriginal dot painting. The canvases are invested with Monet’s transcendent explorations of pictorial space that is composed primarily in the viewer’s eyes, making us aware of our rods and cones. Like sonograms of the human body, the paintings become instruments to open perception of our collective human circumstance. The murkiness and depth of an electric guitar’s feedback drone or patina left on a well-used tool, the visions come one after another in Hesidence’s paintings like waves on a beach.
The paint stands on end, like capillaries that reach out from the canvas. Paintings are typically two-dimensional, but with Hesidence, the interplay of shadow and graphic structure take you internal or external. The paintings are a meditation on the senses, the possibilities of human comprehension, and our supposed status as captains of our own ships.
Daniel Hesidence was born in Akron, Ohio, 1975. His numerous group exhibitions include “The Encyclopedic Palace,” at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), “Autumn Buffalo,” at D’Amelio Terras, NY (2010), “Rose Laughter Winter Holiday,” at Andrea Rosen Gallery, Curated by David Altmejd, NY (2009), and “1779,” at Feature Inc., NY (2008).
"The Painter of Modern Life"
Anton Kern Gallery
March 5 – April 11, 2015 Opening reception: Thursday, March 5, 6:00 – 8:00pm
"The Painter of Modern Life" brings together works by 21 artists, with the 19th century designation of the poet-critic Charles Baudelaire as its mantle1, including:
Nathaniel Axel, Lisa Beck, Sadie Benning, Sascha Braunig, Alex Brown, Mathew Cerletty, Wayne Gonzales, Joanne Greenbaum, Daniel Hesidence, Mamie Holst, Cannon Hudson, Chip Hughes, Xylor Jane, Robert Janitz, Erik Lindman, Nikholis Planck, David Ratcliff, Nicolas Roggy, Ivan Seal, Richard Tinkler and Stanley Whitney.
The exhibition may be thought to ask, what is modern life? Or rather, what has it become? In what ways do we translate and make sense of the world around us, our sense of place and displacement in the everyday? Manet was a painter of modern life in Baudelaire's time. On Kawara was a painter of modern life in ours. How do we navigate this not inconsiderable distance?
What is commonly referred to as today's art world is a far larger canvas, and even if one were to possess a crystal ball, our supposed clairvoyance would be a continuous squint of the eye, and in what would be closer to an ever- shaken snow globe.
Modern life is in no way opaque. It can be observed and seen through. And while our notion of beauty may change and distort, we remain dedicated to its pursuit. After all, don't we want to take pleasure in the visual landscape—even that which appears beyond aesthetic concerns or worthy of a higher level of poetics? But what of the drab canvas we accept as life today? Although detours are of the utmost necessity, they comprise our path without leading directly to our destination. And what is the modern life of painting?
As with spirit photography in the 19th century, one could say that the medium of painting is in fact a medium, the very means to communicate with the past, wholly within and expanding the contours of the present, pointing perhaps to a future it never intended to predict.
One is guided, as always, by the works that reflect the moment in which they have been made, as they register in their own voice, and at their own volume. The artists actively participate in and amplify the larger world of the imagination. A statement, if there is one, is made by the works themselves. All you can do is bring them together. But these days, an assembly does not in any way constitute a movement, since movements belong to the past, and surely for the best. History will not be rushed along. All contemporary art, then, with no reliable guarantors for posterity, is in a sense pre-historic. Let the works, one at a time, convince you that this visual realm remains a compelling place to explore, and that picture-making can't help but define our time. After all, the artists are both observers of and re-makers of reality.
This exhibition has been organized by the writer and curator Bob Nickas.
1. Mantle, a loose sleeveless cloak; something that covers or conceals—'On a winter night ... a mantle of mist hangs above the city street'; the protruding shelf over a fireplace; the outer covering of a wall; a zone of hot gases around a flame; a sheaf around a gas lamp that gives off brilliant illumination when heated by the flame; anat.—the cerebral cortex; geol.—the layer of the earth between the crust and the core; the wings, shoulders, feathers and back of a bird when differently colored from the rest of the body.
"Fertility"
33 Orchard
March 15 - April 26 2015 Opening reception: Sunday, March 152015
"Fertility" brings together works by:
Carl d'Alvia, Lisa Beck, Louise Bourgeois, Claudia Demonte, David Dupuis, Michelle Grabner & Brad Killam (CAR), Daniel Hesidence, James Hyde, Chantal Joffe, Kinke Kooi, Niki de Saint Phalle, Pat Place, Roland Schimmel, Lily van der Stokker, Elaine Sturtevant, Betty Tompkins and more...
Jane Kim is pleased to announce "Fertility" a group exhibition of works opening March 15 through April 26, 2015 at 33 Orchard. The human body naturally works aggressively to expel any alien entities. This is particularly notable during the fertilization process. Strangely, at a certain point though, the female body suddenly creates an anti-serum halting this reaction and causing the body to become hospitable. Inspired by this natural and sacred compromise, "Fertility" is focused on the conception and mediation of ideas and an art practice. "Fertility" presents works that touch on birthing, life, and death and the politics surrounding motherhood and fatherhood.