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Caroline Pagès Gallery, Lisbon

Driss Ouadahi
Implosion, 2013
Oil on canvas
140 x 160 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Caroline Pagès Gallery, Lisbon
 
 
DRISS OUADAHI
Implosion
 
June 27 – September 21, 2013
 
Constructing a point of view
 
Driss Ouadahi is an Algerian artist, born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1959. After starting a diploma in architecture in Algiers, he joined the Ecole des Beaux-Arts there where he took classes from 1984 to 1987. In 1988 he left Algeria and joined the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts where he obtained an MA in painting. He has lived and worked in Düsseldorf since.
 
Throughout his artistic career, Driss Ouadahi has created special links between architecture and painting. The resulting works are abstract compositions featuring grid patterns, whose density evokes the architecture of the outskirts of big cities and their tightly woven networks of high-rise housing.
 
Moving around this organised, structured and tiered impression of the urban landscape, and in trying to capture its spirit and movement, Ouadahi creates a space with a hybrid language, blending structured drawing and painting, where the vibrations of light and chromatic richness constitute a break with the rigidity and monotony of the structures. Large brush-strokes give volume and depth to the repetitive geometry in highly colourful compositions, creating a surface which is at once attractive and impenetrable and which leaves us wondering about life behind these walls.
 
The inhabitants may not feature in these paintings, and yet they still reveal something of the social, townplanning and ethnic policies that are embodied in their mesh. Evoking architectural structures without their inhabitants means understanding the complexity of a place that can never be reduced only to what it is in itself. The composition of Ouadahi's works, abiding by a poetry of architectural codes, transforms the visible into a metaphor tending to point out an invisible driving force behind that which we see. The power of the visible depends, then, on its ability to suggest the invisible, and in this way Driss Ouadahi uses architecture as an abstract visual context where he constructs our way of seeing.
 
- Brahim Alaoui, June 2013.
 
 
Solo shows include Trans-location (2013) at Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco; Breathing Space (2012) at Lawrie Shabibi Gallery, Dubai, UAE; and exhibitions at the Horst Schuler Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany (2011); Herbert- Weisenburger-Stiftung, Rastatt, Germany (2009); dok25a, Düsseldorf, Germany (2008); Atelier am Eck, Düsseldorf, Germany (2005); Centre d’Art Contemporain Istres, Marseille, France (2003); Klinkhammer-Metzner Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany (2001); and JASIM Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany (2000).
 
Collective exhibitions include 25 ans de créativité árabe (2013), curated by Ihab El Laban, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris and Abu Dhabi ; 100%_100 ans, 100 artistes (2013), curated by Mohamed Rachdi, Espace d'Art-Société Générale, Casablanca, Morocco; Horizons croisés (2012), curated by Brahim Alaoui, Moussem culturel international d’Assilah, Morocco; Desviar do Olhar (2012), Caroline Pagès Gallery, Lisbon; Le Retour (2011), 3rd FIAC, MAMA, Algiers, Algeria; Magreb: Dos Orillas (2011), curated by Brahim Alaoui, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid; Future of a Promise (2011), curated by Lina Lazaar, 54th Venice Biennale, Italy; Geometric Days (2011), Exit Art, New York; Looking Inside Out (2009), curated by Maaretta Jaukkuri and Cristina Ricupero, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway; Périfériks (2009), Centre d’Art Neuchâtel, Switzerland; Iconoclastes: Les territoires de l’esprit (2008), curated by Kader Attia, Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris; Alger Capitale de la Culture Arabe (2007), Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art, Algiers, Algeria; Sonntag (2006) and, since 2006, he featured in several group shows at the Hosfelt Gallery in New York and San Francisco.
 
His work can be seen, among others, in the public collections of the Herbert-Weisenburger-Stiftung, Rastatt, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Nadour Collection and Stadtsparkasse Baden-Baden.
 
Implosion is his first solo show at the Caroline Pagès Gallery and in Portugal.
 
 
Caroline Pagès Gallery
Rua Tenente Ferreira Durão, 12 - 1° Dto.
1350-315 Lisbon
Portugal
T: 351 213873376
 
Caroline Pagès Gallery
 
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Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens, Cologne

Andreas Rüthi
Still life with Chardin, 2012
oil on masonite
50 x 56 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens, Cologne
 
 
ANDREAS RÜTHI
"Home Is Where The Art Is"
 
until 27 July, 2013
 
Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens is delighted to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Swiss artist Andreas Rüthi.
 
Born in 1956, this is the artist's fifth solo show at the gallery and follows well received exhibitions in London, Zurich and Melbourne.
 
Rüthi works directly from observation, creating complex formal compositions that bring together a variety of interests, with art historical references, found objects and his personal history all occupying equal importance and value of meaning. This exhibition can be seen to show the development of Rüthi's distinct painterly style with new paintings made during the last four years, split into two series – the book paintings and the more recent Morandiesque still life paintings.
 
The title of the exhibition, 'Home Is Where The Art Is', refers not only to the making of his work and the ways in which his immediate environment influences his painting practice, but to the space and activities associated with domesticity and comfort. His studio is in a former slaughterhouse at the end of his garden and this sense of the uncanny or familiarity goes some way to suggest that the artist has thought about the dissonance between connotations of home. Notions of 'home' can of course point towards feminine domains, romantic clichés, cosy familial idylls, and yet persuade us to consider our trust in boundaries from the outside world created only by sand and water, bricks and mortar; a most unsettling reality. At its most basic level, the home is both a potential site of conflict and often of conflicting subjectivities or even ideologies. Though it can be a place where one might feel safe, find refuge, a place of belonging and community, it also holds the possibility of antagonism rather than harmony.
 
This analogy between the home and the studio clearly resonates strongly with Rüthi. With his pared down methodology – a toy, a book, a piece of fruit, a postcard, a pot, accessory, perfume bottle, shelf or tabletop – his paintings could have been made anywhere: in an unfurnished room devoid of comfort, perhaps a prison cell. The high drama of the everyday is material for the artist: it's endlessly repeatable, an altar set up by a recidivist, a serial offender who paints the shadows between things.
 
Like spit dripping down a window, the open book paintings seem to slide off the canvas. In a state of flux the reproduced image operates as a doorway into the past. The tones and skeins of colour echo a sozzled Lautrec, or the Marthe haunted interiors of Bonnard. And yet, these are books without words – text, where it appears is unreadable. They are also centre-folds, something seen most clearly in the odalisques in 'Still Life with Matisse', a possible allusion to Rüthi's past as an editor in publishing. There's an allure of vintage erotica about these – books propped up to keep the hands free. And, appropriately, this series borrows the pastel-like strokes Renoir used to inscribe his buxom bathers. The lines parallel the action of the eyes, constantly moving, never still. Rüthi has said that he's influenced by the graphic figuration of Georges Remi (Hergé): the ligne claire drawing, the scansion and rereading needed to navigate those detailed frames and panels are replicated here.
 
The more recent paintings could only have been painted in an age of austerity. It's as if Giacometti was given a job lot of Titian's – burning some to keep warm, the rest painted over. These stylistic tropes add a heightened sense of the quotidian to the ascetic work, referencing the passage of time and a respect for historical markers, allowing the contemporary to seep through. Beckett's stage descriptions in Endgame also come to mind: 'Bare interior. Grey Light.' These could be instructions for the assembly of these pictures – Nag and Nell, the legless dustbin dwellers, wouldn't be out of place here. 'Large Still Life', where a group of objects seem to enact some existential theatrical drama, plays on the distinctions of functional and decorative objects, the manufactured and the handmade. Using only simple props, Rüthi's pictorial scenarios speak of poverty, relationships and the human condition, agonised and struggling.
 
Labourious and time-consuming, the paintings themselves are built up over a series of months, with one painting taking Rüthi approximately 80 hours to fully complete. A definitive ticking off of time is produced by each painting, revealing some of the truth of its making – the alterations and deliberations, the constant working out and reworking – the changes are left on the canvas, as testament to the time put in, a reminder that painting is an act of endurance.
 
Dazzling, weird and peculiar, the paintings in 'Home Is Where The Art Is' present one of the most inventive artists painting today.
 
- Neil McNally
 
 
Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens
An der Schanz 1a
D-50735 Cologne
Germany
T: 00 49 0221 287 08 00
 
Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens
 
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Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo

Lucia Laguna
Paisagem Nº 66, 2013
Acrylic and oil on canvas
140 x 180 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo
 
 
LUCIA LAGUNA
Jardim
 
22 June - 03 August 2013
 
We are pleased to present Jardim [Garden], the first solo show by the artist Lucia Laguna at Galeria Fortes Vilaça. The exhibition features new acrylic and oil paintings, based on the landscape of the artist's daily life.
 
Lucia Laguna's painting portrays her surroundings: the landscape of suburban Rio de Janeiro, the district's informal architecture, the artist's own studio and the garden of her house. They are slices of the landscape presented in a veiled, nearly abstract way. Shapes, lines and color fields are overlaid with more figurative elements, often giving the impression of a broken mirror.
 
Laguna has developed a unique method, in which images are produced in acrylic paint by her assistants, according to her guidelines, who then completes or deconstructs them using oil paint. They are compositions where it seems that the process of painting never ends, the images remains alive and changeable before our eyes. The painting arises not only from observation, but also from an empirical practice of juxtaposition and reprocessing of everyday images, generating an accumulation of memories.
 
The garden of Lucia's canvases is urban and characteristic of Rio de Janeiro. It shows itself amid a mix of stones and vases, the hills are taken by houses, and the backyards are full of rubble. In Jardim nº 11, for example, we see only a little table with houses in the background, there is no green on the canvas. The artist leaves large areas covered by patches of paint in colors ranging from beige to yellow, giving the impression of a field yet to be filled. It is an invitation for the spectator to project his/her own images on the accumulation of memories preserved under the mass of color.
 
In Jardim nº 10, a large horizontal canvas, the artist offers us a sweeping personal panorama of the city she inhabits. The green of the plants and trees appears interspersed by sketched houses and vases, as though we were looking through the window of a house in an urban center where everything is always in constant movement.
 
Lucia Laguna was born in Campo dos Goytacazes, RJ, in 1941. She received her degree in language studies in 1971 and began to teach the Portuguese language. In the mid-1990s, the artist took courses in painting and history of art at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, in Rio de Janeiro. She held her first solo show in 1998. She participated in the Panorama de Arte Brasileira, MAM-SP, in 2011; the 2005/2006 edition of the Instituto Itaú Cultural's Programa Rumos Artes Visuais in 2006; and received the CNI SESI Marcantônio Vilaça Prize. Her work figures in the collections of the Museu de Arte Moderna of Rio de Janeiro and that of São Paulo, the Museu Nacional de Brasília, among others. She recently participated in the 30th São Paulo Biennial which is currently traveling through the state's interior.
 
Also showing at the Galpão:
 
MARINA RHEINGANTZ
Uma hora e mais outra
 
08 June - 27 July 2013
 
We are pleased to present Uma hora e mais outra [One hour and yet another], a solo show by Marina Rheingantz at Galpão Fortes Vilaça. The show features 15 oil paintings, where the artist blends antagonistic elements, which can be images, styles or colors. In this new body of work places of passage, desolate landscapes and sublimated memory emerge like the components of a collage.
 
 
Galeria Fortes Vilaça
Rua Fradique Coutinho 1500
05416-001 São Paulo
Brasil
T +55 11 3032 7066
 
Galeria Fortes Vilaça
 
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MediaArtHistories, Master of Arts – Danube University

Images: A.Bosse (1648) + S.Mikami (Gravicells, 2004)
 
The MediaArtHistories MA at Danube University is the only international Master of Arts program focusing on preparing art professionals and researchers through a deep exploration of the diverse histories of Media Art, Science and Technology.  The program is a two-year low-residency, either 90 or 120 ECTS Master’s degree offered in English.  In addition to individual study and project work at your home location, students gather twice a year for two-week seminars with internationally noted media artists and scholars.  These intense and enriching sessions take place at Danube University or another European location relevant to the community of media art, such as Linz, Austria, Berlin, Germany, and Riga, Latvia.
 
Since its beginnings in 2006, Danube University’s MAH program has offered its students both a deeper critical comprehension and a practical orientation regarding the most important developments of contemporary art, by building on its faculty network of renowned international theorists, artists, and curators.  The connections and community that are formed during the two-week modules are maintained with online networking and project collaboration throughout the year.
 
==> BRAIN TRUST – Faculty of the MediaArtHistories program have included: Erkki HUHTAMO, Lev MANOVICH, Christiane PAUL, Roger MALINA, Jens HAUSER, Jeffrey SHAW, Jussi PARIKKA, Sean CUBITT, Paul SERMON, Oliver GRAU, Christa SOMMERER, Edward SHANKEN,  Frieder NAKE, Machiko KUSAHARA, Nat MULLER, Gunalan NADARAJAN, Monika FLEISCHMANN, Margit ROSEN, Knowbotic Research, Andreas LANGE, Christopher SALTER, Darko FRITZ, Irina ARISTARKHOVA, and others.
 
==> CONTENT - Media Art History offers a basis for understanding the evolutionary history of audiovisual media, from historic examples such as the Laterna Magica of the 17th century to the Panorama, Phantasmagoria, Film, and the algorithmic art of recent decades. Key approaches and methods from Image Science, Media Archaeology and the History of Science & Technology are explored in depth. Courses cover subjects such as interactive, telematic, genetic and net art as well as the most recent reflections on nano art, bio art, immersive installations, augmented reality, video games as art, and wearable technology. Special attention is given to examining archiving and preservation, cultural management practice and the theories that inform this interdisciplinary field, such as digital gender theory and cybernetics.
 
==> DANUBE UNIVERSITY - located 70km from Vienna in the UNESCO world heritage Wachau region, Danube University is the only public university in Europe specializing in advanced continuing education by offering low-residency degree programs for working professionals and life-long learners.  The University’s Center for Image Science is housed in the Göttweig Monastery, a 14th century building remodeled to fit the needs of modern media arts research in singular surroundings.
 
==> STUDENTS - MediaArtHistories coursework is held in English, and students can be accepted throughout the year on a rolling basis. Acceptance into the program requires either a Bachelor’s degree (or higher), or equivalent relevant work experience.  Students may travel to Europe twice a year for 2-week blocks of study, or can be eligible for student visas for year-round residency. Thus, working professionals can maintain their usual employment, and students entering directly after a Bachelor’s degree will have opportunity to gain valuable career experience while they study.  International students to our program have come from locations including Canada, Hong Kong, Ukraine, USA, Japan, Brazil, Iceland, Russia, Egypt, Germany, Austria, Korea and Mexico.
 
==> MODULES – Oct 1-11, 2013 (taking place immersed in Riga, including the 3-day MediaArtHistories conference Renew) – April 24-May 3, 2014 - November 21 – December 1, 2014, April 16 – 25, 2015.
 
==> APPLICATION (digital) - application form, a letter of motivation, copies of previous degree(s), copy of passport and a Europass CV. An application interview is required, which may be conducted in person or through internet videoconferencing.
 
Course website
MediaArtHistoriesArchive
Database of Virtual Art
Student testimonials
Media Art Histories RESEARCH group
 
 
Contact:
Wendy Jo Coones, M.Ed.
Center for Image Science :: Department for Arts and Image Science
Danube University :: Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Str. 30 :: Krems, Austria 3500
+43(0)2732 893-2543 :: zbw@donau-uni.ac.at :: www.donau-uni.ac.at/cis