BAD MANTRAS
Nathaniel Mellors & Erkka Nissinen
June 7 – July 20, 2019
Opening reception: Friday, June 7, 6 PM – 9 PM

“BAD MANTRAS by Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen, Mellors’ second exhibition at The Box, is a dark satire of contemporary western politics and cultural assumption. We enter a space/time k-hole/black-hole where autocracy and corruption has led to a world of dysfunction and absurd inversion…

…Where humans are subjugated to puppets and a giant talking egg is GOD.

…Where nationalism manifests in cosmic/comic acts and the world is remade as just one country … FINLAND.

…Where liberal-democracy has become a terrified technocratic autocracy and to make matters worse the God-like creators of Planet Finland will be back any moment now to check-in on the culture they think they’ve created…

This may not go so well.

At the core of Mellors and Nissinen’s exhibition is The Aalto Natives, a project originally conceived for the Finland Pavilion of the 2017 Venice Biennale. This is a comedy which fuses creation mythology and religion with contemporary themes through the archetypal narrative of Atum and Geb, the father and son creators of “New Finland”. Atum and Geb – a talking egg and talking cardboard box – exist in the gallery as animatronic sculptures, interacting with the video projections, through which we experience their mock-epic narrative. The Box will show The Aaltos Natives (Floored version), which was exhibited in Mellor’s solo exhibition, Progressive Rocks, at the New Museum in 2018. This work is a sculptural amalgamation of Atum and Geb: multiple projections shoot from their heads and limbs, floating images of the film around the room and encouraging the viewer to move about the space and objectify the sculptural bodies.   

The current political and cultural situation in the U.S.A. intertwines crooked corporate dealings, infantile political activity and the hermetic mediation of reality through social media and the news cycle – we experience the apparently permanent extension of the dominant power structure and its inverse – the new underclass – a growth beneath the belly of ownership. In The Aalto Natives, all the characters living outside of the technocratic political super-structure are subject to misery and mutation. They sing songs about it, and some have resorted to performance art. This work mirrors the scenes and situations we see increasingly manifesting in the world.

In narrative dialogue with The Aalto Natives storyline, the exhibition presents two new works: Presidential Crucifixion (2019) and Bad Mantras (2019). Presidential Crucifixion features The President of Finland puppet, with a spherical head and long tentacle-like arms, and mounts him to the wall as a totemic sacrifice. The projected film upon him both glorifies and degrades him at the same time. Bad Mantras isa felt sculpture of the mangled Transcendental Accident character from The Aalto Natives. The Transcendental Accident has no centralized body but multiple-heads and long limbs reaching out and improvising with various musical instruments. It’s performing, it’s singing … it’s a sculpture trying to transcend its own objectification.

The humor and playful visual tone of Mellors and Nissinen’s work highlights the moral complexity of our intense political and environmental issues. The Box is excited to bring these works to their first showing on the west coast at a time of broad social and political vulnerability and to invite the viewer to enjoy the work’s humor and use it as a vehicle to encourage reflection.” – per website

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Isaac Julien: Playtime

” Isaac Julien CBE RA (United Kingdom, b. 1960) is an artist and filmmaker whose multi-channel film installations and photographs feature fractured narratives reflecting his explorations into race, class, sexuality, postcolonialism, and representation. Co-founder of Sankofa Film and Video Collective in 1983 and Normal Films in 1991, Julien has won numerous awards and honors and has had over 60 solo exhibitions worldwide. Marking the artist’s first major presentation in Los Angeles, Playtime (2014) is a captivating critique of the influence of capital in the art world. It stars James Franco, Maggie Cheung, Colin Salmon, and auctioneer Simon de Pury, among others. The seemingly disparate narratives of six vignettes demonstrate the various levels at which the flow of money has an affect on the production, dealing, and collecting of contemporary art, and the lives impacted by the system. Playtime has been exhibited at Fort Mason, San Francisco (2017), Platform-L Contemporary Arts Center, Seoul (2017); and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2016); among other venues around the globe.” – per LACMA website

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Art is an after-reflection.
—Urs Fischer

Gagosian is pleased to present Images, an exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Urs Fischer.

In Fischer’s work, images emerge from an odd liminal space between the real and the imagined, between what does, and could, exist. Over the past year, he has been creating paintings digitally, inventing things, rooms, and spaces using color and light. On a screen, as opposed to paper or canvas, Fischer is able to paint with light itself—moving illuminated pixels around, juxtaposing clean lines and gradients, and reflecting on the subtle atmospheric changes across day and night, summer and winter, Los Angeles and New York.

Silkscreened onto aluminum panels, the paintings in this exhibition—vertical compositions broken up into multiple rectangular passages—take on the scale of modern abstraction, yet they all describe imaginary interior and exterior worlds. Windows appear often: one glows behind a gauzy white curtain, looking onto swaying palm trees; another reflects a sunrise or sunset, with a still life on a table barely visible through fingerprints on the glass; and another frames a building across the street, where nine more windows reveal smeared and fragmented California views. In other paintings, Fischer imagines canvases hanging on walls, hit with swathes and squares of light pouring in from an unseen source. The fictional paintings and sculptures depict animals, food, city streets, or messy brushstrokes, but they—like the light—only exist within Fischer’s constructed environments; they need not adhere to any history, law, or logic.

Fischer presents characters and drawings that seem capable of disappearing at any moment. In one painting, a small orange bird sits on a branch, floating in a dark gray sky. Though its legs are in sharp focus, its body becomes a vaporous orb, glowing within the surrounding clouds. And in an uncanny sculptural ecosystem below, two motorized snails slowly wander through the gallery, leaving trails of slime in their wake. These gleaming lines, which evaporate over time, wind across the floor, uniting the other sculptures—a smoking volcano, a snowman, a palm tree—within a swirling, ephemeral landscape. Looming over the scene, the surrounding paintings form vivid, even cinematic, backdrops: a montage of disparate settings for a small, peculiar world.

– FROM GAGOSIAN WEBSITE

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“40 for LA celebrates the forty-year history of MOCA. Offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse into MOCA’s past, this multimedia exhibition features archival materials from the museum’s vault, including rare photographs and lithographs, limited-edition objects, a detailed exhibition and programming timeline, excerpts from the museum’s YouTube video project MOCAtv, and a special homage to all of the artists to whom the museum is indebted. Visitors get an in-depth look at some of the key elements that define the institution: the Grand Avenue location designed by famed Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, a celebrated permanent collection, a groundbreaking history of temporary exhibitions, and the museum’s dedicated board members and patrons. Together, these elements tell the story of MOCA’s beginnings, explore the museum’s vital role in shaping the Southern California art community, and take stock of MOCA’s achievements as a pioneering contemporary art institution in Los Angeles. 

40 for LA is organized by Bryan Barcena, Assistant Curator and Manager of Publications, and Amanda Hunt, Director of Education and Curator of Programs, with Karlyn Olvido, Curatorial Assistant, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. 

Lead underwriting for MOCA’s 40th anniversary exhibitions and programs is provided by Sean and Alexandra Parker. 

Exhibitions at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Exhibitions with lead annual support provided by Sydney Holland, founder of the Sydney D. Holland Foundation. Generous funding is also provided by Dr. Alexander and Judith Angerman, Earl and Shirley Greif Foundation, Nathalie Marciano and Julie Miyoshi, Steven and Jerri Nagelberg, and Jonathan M. Segal through the Rhonda S. Zinner Foundation.” – per website

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NADA Miami

The 16th edition of the fair, to be held December 6–9, 2018 at Ice Palace Studios, is dedicated to showcasing new art and to celebrating the rising talents from around the globe.

NADA holds a renowned art fair to vigorously pursue our goals of exploring new or underexposed art that is not typical of the “art establishment.” NADA Miami is the one of the only major American art fairs to be produced by a non-profit organization, and is recognized as a much needed alternative assembly of the world’s youngest and strongest art galleries dealing with emerging contemporary art. – taken from website

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Pop Minimalism 
Minimalist Pop

Opening reception: Tuesday, December 4, 5–8pm
December 5–9, 2018
Moore Building, Miami

On the occasion of Art Basel Miami Beach 2018, Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch are pleased to present Pop Minimalism | Minimalist Pop, their fourth collaboration at the Moore Building in the Miami Design District. This group exhibition explores the intersections and legacies of two major American art movements of the 1960s—Pop art and Minimalism—and the ways in which features of Minimalism have been incorporated into a variety of contemporary art practices. While these two art movements are typically seen to represent opposing artistic responses to the legacy of Abstract Expressionism, the work in Pop Minimalism | Minimalist Pop highlights points of common conceptual approaches and mutual exchange. Work by Jeff Koons, Adam McEwen, Sarah Morris, and Richard Prince is included. – taken from website

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(from website) David Kordansky Gallery is pleased to announce Chromospheres, its first exhibition by Fred Eversley. The show of new sculptures will open on January 12 and remain on view through March 2, 2019. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, January 12 from 6:00pm until 8:00pm.

Based in Venice Beach for five decades, Fred Eversley is a key figure in the development of contemporary art from Los Angeles during the postwar period. His work is the product of a pioneering vision attuned to enduring principles of energy, motion, space, gravity, time, light, and color, and synthesizes elements from several 20th-century art historical lineages with roots in Southern California–most notably the Light and Space movement, with which he has long been associated. Chromospheres will feature the latest examples of Eversley’s iconic Parabolic Lens sculptures, an ongoing typology that is the result of continuous experimentation over the course of five decades. Made using clear resin and commercial dyes, these objects generate complex and highly luminous optical events for their viewers, encapsulating the mechanics of sight and the action of physical and metaphysical energies.

After formative experiences as an aerospace engineer, Eversley began in the late 1960s to produce multicolor, multilayer cast polyester sculptures informed by his knowledge of technology, scientific principles, the properties of various materials and his ability to develop his own specialized tools to manipulate them. Spinning liquid resin and dyes in molds affixed to turntables fashioned from lathes, potter’s wheels, and repurposed industrial machinery, he produced sculptures that in turn initiated a focused yet open-ended body of work that continues to the present day.

By adjusting the saturation of his dyes or pigments, the thickness of each layer of poured resin, the amount of catalyst responsible for eventually hardening it, and the speed at which he spins the mold, Eversley creates the Parabolic Lenses, disc-like objects that contain a wide variety of chromatic effects and varying degrees of transparency. These features only fully emerge after each sculpture undergoes a long polishing process whose technical and physical demands far exceed those of the casting itself.

All works of this type are defined by the parabolic curvature, on one side, of a concave surface, which reflects the spaces in which they are installed and creates ever-changing spatial illusions. (Eversley has often remarked that the parabola is the only shape that focuses all forms of energy toward a single point.) As light interacts with the sculpture, the sharp surface edge refracts it like a prism, each of the curved layers of color comes into focus, and viewers are given a new, constantly shifting experience of discovery that depends on their angle of approach. The world around them is transformed within: flipped upside down, its proportions distorted, and suffused with rich color.

Eversley has described his Parabolic Lenses as kinetic sculptures, though the motion to which he refers is the movement of viewers’ bodies and the corresponding variations in their perceptions of light and reflection. The intentionality of composition that makes such movement possible and invites natural, often instant, engagement by the observer, distinguishes his work from many of the West Coast minimalists who have been his peers and neighbors over the last five decades. Though he has produced large-scale works for a variety of contexts, Eversley does not privilege monumentality or imposing forms. Rather, he calls attention to universal forces responsible for moving and arranging light and matter, ephemeral atmospheric effects (including the sun’s interactions with sky and sea), and the formal poetry created when ineffable workings of the eye and mind are given formal expression.

Eversley’s singularity of purpose nonetheless results in sculptures that demonstrate a wide range of compositional variation. This can perhaps be observed most readily in his use of color. The earliest Parabolic Lenses all contained the same order and combination of blue, amber, and violet; he achieved a range of effects by varying only the speed at which he spun his molds, as well as the proportions of resin and dye concentrations. While some of the works on view in Chromospheres shift the old color combination into new orders, others are radiant two- and three-color lenses that make use of the entire color spectrum. Also on view are monochromatic lenses so saturated or dark that they appear to be completely opaque mirrors. In its own way, each of these works demonstrates how Eversley reveals fundamental properties of energy by harnessing time, gravity and centrifugal force to create parabolic forms and distribute color and matter within them. As the artist points out, “The genesis of energy is central to the mystery of our existence as animate beings in an inanimate universe. The original and ultimate source of all energy on earth is the sun. My early sculptures were directly influenced by the solar energy source; my new works take this theme deeper and beyond to the colors of the stars, which we can not see, but only imagine.”

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(from website) Untitled, Art is an international, curated art fair founded in 2012 that focuses on curatorial balance and integrity across all disciplines of contemporary art. Untitled, Art innovates the standard fair model by selecting a curatorial team to identify and curate a selection of galleries, artist-run exhibition spaces, and non-profit institutions and organizations, in dialogue with an architecturally designed venue. The next edition of Untitled Art, San Francisco will take place January 18 – 20, 2019 at Pier 35, 1454 The Embarcadero.

Jeffrey Lawson is the Founder and owner of Art Fairs Unlimited, LLC, Untitled, Art and ELEMENTS Global Trade Show, LLC. Lawson has produced and consulted on large-scale trade shows globally for the past 12 years. In 2010, Lawson founded Elements Showcase. In 2012, he established Untitled, Art, which launched in December 2012 on the sands of Miami Beach at Ocean Drive and 12th Street, and debuted on the West Coast in San Francisco in January 2017. 

In July 2017 Untitled, Art appointed Manuela Mozo as Director to lead the international development of Untitled and oversee the curatorial and strategic vision of the fairs in Miami and San Francisco. Manuela Mozo was a partner at Simon Lee Gallery from 2013, where she established the gallery’s office in New York. Prior to this, Manuela was a Director at Metro Pictures and Skarstedt Gallery, both in New York. Manuela holds a Masters in Contemporary Art Theory and Cultural Studies from New York University and currently sits on the advisory board of RxArt. 

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Cristian Răduță’s animals march in droves. A Noah’s Ark of improvised genetic anomalies populate Nicodim Gallery like an emergency spawning ground, but no two are paired or exactly alike. Apelikenesses can be seen from one angle and a shuffle of animalian ciphers from the other. Răduță is their shepherd, bringing to each form a unique trembling glory. This harmonious pattern of origin stories—both raw and cooked—ludically swirl in the artist’s grand tale of a double helix. His creatures are echos of archetypes, songs from a golden record played deep in outer space.

We learn quickly that the primordial soup is not a pulsing mitosis gasping for air, but instead a Home Depot rich in opportunities, crude and visionary, like cast shadows on a cave wall, actualities of some alternate reality—a more real reality. In Răduță’s world, the metaphor becomes literal: a chair’s leg is a hominid’s leg; the gorilla’s sharp purple “pipe” is erected from a circumcised sink pipe. An intimate knowledge of these resources is not necessary, however. They are preverbal and intuitive. Naming them would somehow discourage their being, shaming them from the garden towards an unwanted conformity.

Răduță is a true bricoleur. His efforts have a cosmic intention to map the journey of DNA within a feedback loop of primitive sculptural forms. Răduță believes in the source animal, a being from which this rippling morphology birthed. S/he lives in the gallery in a state of divine dedifferentiation. A glittering patina of fresh flesh in that moment before God took the rib, compromising its transitory state. S/he is the one of oneness—the omnipotent maker. 

These specimens are becoming. To see their perfect imperfection is a gift for the eyes in search of seeing for the first time. They represent an awkwardly powerful stutter in the animal kingdom. Răduță has remembered the moment before language and made do using onomatopoeia instead of the dictionary. These creatures fall off the tip of the tongue and scatter. – per website.

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Design Miami/ is the global forum for design. Each fair brings together the most influential collectors, gallerists, designers, curators and critics from around the world in celebration of design culture and commerce. Occurring alongside the Art Basel fairs in Miami, USA each December and Basel, Switzerland each June, Design Miami/ has become the premier venue for collecting, exhibiting, discussing and creating collectible design.

Design Miami/ is more than a marketplace for design, where the world’s top galleries gather to present museum-quality exhibitions of twentieth and twenty-first century furniture, lighting and objets d’art. Each show balances exclusive commercial opportunities with progressive cultural programming, creating exciting collaborations with designers and design institutions, panels and lectures with luminaries from the worlds of design, architecture, art and fashion, and unique commissions from the world’s top emerging and established designers and architects.

By continuously expanding and enriching its program, Design Miami/ seeks to not only satisfy the demand for a high-end design fair, but also to broaden awareness of modern and contemporary design, fuel the market for collectible design, and provide an exciting yet accessible destination for collectors and enthusiasts alike. – taken from website

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson