The first exhibition of paintings by Ciaran Murphy at Kavi Gupta gallery features twelve paintings on canvas, all small or medium in size. They’re painted in a style that’s become all the rage of late– that low key, often monochromatic rendering of disparate objects and interiors, you know the one. The one Luc Tuymans made famous; the one that brought back small painting from the bombastic Eighties. We’ve all learned to appreciate a little meditative, personally scaled rumination on delicate palettes and sensitive brushwork. I know I have.
Ciaran’s paintings do just what this brand of painting aims to do. Well, some of them. The idea is really lovely; what at first seems simply under-described, gives way to a transcendent moment of reverie. That by flinging off all sorts of extra baggage, the paintings may, if done well, describe ever so much more than the ones that contain excessive information. In the case of this exhibition, the effect is achieved so well in a few of the works. “Frozen Tree” is a superb painting. Barely breathing through the flat gray field of color is a vibrant, odd fleshy tone of under painting. The fallen tree and its exposed root clump are rendered just enough, and not too much. The root clump, like an explosion on the otherwise quiet composition, makes the work a succinct beauty. “Storm Damage” and “Circular Cloud Formation” achieve the same thing- calligraphic gestures doled out in minimum, and with confidence. Like a good haiku, if I dare say. Continue reading »
This week Duncan and Richard are joined by guest host Tony Tasset to talk to Pamela Fraser and Randall Szott about their work, arguing and their project he said-she said.
he said-she said is an exhibition and event series held in the home of Pamela Fraser and Randall Szott. They will take turns presenting what amounts to an ongoing conversation about art and culture - Ms. Fraser presenting art and artists, and Mr. Szott sharing the activities of people who work in other contexts. Together they hope to offer up a fun and thoughtful take on current ideas in art and life.
Richard makes Duncan feel bad. Much mirth is had by all.
Brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman have taken pastoral paintings by Adolf Hitler added some psychedelic rainbows and hearts to the scene. Calling the work “If Hitler had been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be” the plan is to sell them as one piece. Taking the £115,000 work of Hitler and selling them for £685,000.
Chapman hoped the defacement of Hitler’s work, which includes landscapes, vistas of Roman ruins and still life, which the dictator painted when he was young, would have him “spinning”. The changes they had added meant it was no longer Hitler’s work, he added.
“If hell exists and Hitler exists in it, he would be spinning if he saw these. It’s not his work any more. It’s our work,” he said.
Timur Serebrykov, 27, of Pittsburgh, a guard at the Carnegie Museum of Art has been charged with slashing Vija Celmins’ “Night Sky .12” a painting he apparently didn’t like, damaging it beyond repair.
The museum’s surveillance camera caught the vandalism on May 16, police said Thursday.
The 31-by-37½-inch oil-on-canvas painting of a black starlit night had a large vertical gouge in the middle and was damaged beyond repair & valued at $1.2 million according to a police affidavit.
Court documents indicate Serebrykov used a key or other implement to damage the painting because he disliked it.
The first exhibition of paintings by Ciaran Murphy at Kavi Gupta gallery features twelve paintings on canvas, all small or medium in size. They’re painted in a style that’s become all the rage of late– that low key, often monochromatic rendering of disparate objects and interiors, you know the one. The one Luc Tuymans made famous; the one that brought back small painting from the bombastic Eighties. We’ve all learned to appreciate a little meditative, personally scaled rumination on delicate palettes and sensitive brushwork. I know I have.
Continue reading »
