awards emmy, london photography award, foam paul huf award

prager began her photography practice after viewing an exhibition of william eggleston's at the getty museum which was on view between 1999 & 2000. her staged color photographs are described by ken johnson as being influenced by cindy sherman, philip lorcadicorcia & dougl assirk. moma curator roxana marcoci has described prager's work as ‘intentionally loaded’, saying ‘it reminds me of silent movies— there is something pregnant, about to happen, a mix of desire & angst.’  michael govan the director of lacma has said that ‘prager's photographic & filmic compositions, like eggleston's photographs, alfred hitchcock's films, & edward hopper's paintings, reveal the extraordinary lurking within the ordinary. wreaking havoc with our involuntary voyeurism & our tendency to leap to conclusions about people's characters based on the merest details of their appearances, prager cues our own fantasies by representing her own.

in 2005, prager created a group of works, the book of disquiet, as an exhibition & joint publication with artist mercedes helnwein. she began to gain more attention after exhibiting polyester in 2007, which focused on what is now described as her signature cinematic styled portraits set in los angeles. her next series, the big valley, was shown in 2008 at michael hoppen gallery in london & in 2009 at yancey richardson gallery in new york. in 2010 prager exhibited week-end at m+bgallery in los angeles, yanceyrichardson gallery & michaelhoppen gallery where she debuted her first short film, despair alongside a group of photographs. despair was conceived in london during the big valley exhibition, where viewers were inquiring what happened before & after to the subjects in her photographic work. the film starring bryce dallas howard was a full-sensory version of prager's photographs in motion, showing the before, now and after of one of her images. her intention was to create pure, cinematic melodrama through the use of an array of artistic mediums – imagery, motion, color, sculpture, painting & sound. prager's despair was included in museum of modernart's exhibition ‘new photography 2010’ where she was recognized as a notable emerging talent

a pivotal moment for prager came in 2011 when kathy ryan, director of photography for the new york times magazine commissioned her to shoot 12, 1 minute films with some of 2011's stand-out film actors inspired by ‘cinematic villainy’. prager won an emmy for her touch of evil short film

in 2012, prager addressed themes of disaster & spatial turbulence with the series compulsion. exhibited at m+b gallery and yancey richardson gallery. prager's short film lapetitemort starring french actress judith godreche with narration from gary oldman was shown alongside the body of work. the film was a ‘contemplation on death’ & ‘a way for [her] to deal with the hopelessness [she] was feeling about the world. creating a parallel universe where tragedies happen but with a sense of lightness as well’

prager's series, face in the crowd, debuted at washington d.c.'s corcoran gallery of art in 2013 followed by a solo exhibition at lehmann maupin in new york

prager was commissioned by the paris opera in 2015 to create a film for 3 e scène. the film, la grande sortie, explores the tension between a performer's experience on stage and the audience watching

wreaking havoc with our involuntary voyeurism & our tendency to leap to conclusions about people's characters based on the merest details of their appearances, prager cues our own fantasies by representing her own.

Franz Xaver Bergmann (1861 - 1936) was an Austrian art founder and one of the most famous representatives of Viennese bronze.

His father Franz Bergman the Elder was born in Gablonz, northern Bohemia. He worked there as a metalworker. Franz Bergman the Elder moved to Vienna, where he founded a small bronze foundry in 1860. His son Franz Xaver Bergmann worked as a bronze caster. Bergmann's logo was a stylized double B in Geschützt writing.

Franz Bergman's workshop produced a large number of small-scale, artistic sculptures in the form of dancers, people from the Orient or animals. The color was painted on cold. The pieces from the Bergmann foundry became collectors' items. Some of his works are attributed to Art Deco.

The company closed during the 1930s due to the Great Depression, which however was reopened a few years later by his son Robert Bergmann until his death in 1954. The molds and inventory were taken over by Karl Fuhrmann & Co. in 1960 and continued to be cast until 2012. In addition to Bergmann's brand, a diamond was minted with the letters Kf, which stands for Karl Fuhrmann & Co. The foundry was operated by Lise Fuhrmann, Karl Fuhrmann's wife until her death in 2012.

The Bergmann foundry was closed in 1930 due to the Great Depression. It was reopened some years later by Robert Bergmann, son of Franz, and operated until his death in 1954 when the remaining stock and molds were sold to Karl Fuhrmann & Co.

Franz Xaver Bergmann › Oriental › Erotic › Animal Figures

Volker Stelzmann was born as the third child of the Reichsbahn civil servant Kurt Stelzmann and his wife Charlotte Ruth, née Lambrecht. His father was killed in the war in 1944. From 1948 onwards, Stelzmann grew up in Leipzig, where, after completing his secondary education, he did an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic from 1957 to 1960 and worked in this profession until 1963. At the same time, he attended an evening painting school at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts with Walter Münze. From 1963, Volker studied at the HGB in Gerhard Kurt Müller's specialist class and graduated in 1968. He completed his basic studies with Fritz Fröhlich, Hans Mayer-Foreyt and Harry Blume. During his studies, Stelzmann researched essays by Michel de Montaigne. In 1966, together with Ulrich Hachulla, he had his first personal exhibition in Ahrenshoop and has since been involved in important exhibitions in the GDR and abroad.

From 1968 to 1973, Stelzmann worked as a freelance artist and sought to engage with works by Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Otto Dix and the New Objectivity. After several study trips to the Soviet Union in 1966, he also visited Bulgaria, Cuba and India during this period. From 1970 to 1986 he was a member of the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR, and from 1978 to 1986 he was chairman of its central section. From 1973 to 1974, the artist did a traineeship at the HGB and in 1979 was appointed lecturer and head of the department of basic studies. In 1982. Stelzmann was appointed professor at the HGB. He continued to teach until 1986.

In that year he did not return to the GDR from a trip on the occasion of his exhibitions in Oberhausen and West Berlin. From 1987 to 1988, he was a visiting professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and in 1988 he was appointed professor of painting at the Hochschule (later Universität) der Künste Berlin. In protest against this, the painter Georg Baselitz resigned from his teaching position at the Hochschule for a longer period of time, as he regarded Stelzmann as a state artist loyal to the ruling line. Stelzmann's teaching activities ended in 2006.

Volker Stelzmann lives and works in Berlin-Charlottenburg. He has been married to Henriette Stelzmann, née Arndt, since 1988. The artist is represented by Die Galerie in Frankfurt am Main and Galerie Poll in Berlin.

Volker Stelzmann (born Dresden 5 November 1940) is a German Painter and Graphic artist.

Volker Stelzmann › Seven Bowls of Wrath

John Currin is a New York City-based American painter. He is most recognized for his technically skilled satirical figurative paintings that deal with provocative sexual and societal topics. His work is influenced by a wide range of sources, including Renaissance art, popular culture periodicals, and contemporary fashion models. He frequently distorts or exaggerates the sensual features of the female body, and he has stated that his characters are self-portraits rather than real individuals. His technical abilities, which include Old Master paint technique and high-Mannerist composition, have been put to use on some of our generation's most alluring and rivetingly strange figure works.

At White Columns in New York City in 1989, the artist displayed a series of portraits of young girls culled from the images in a high school yearbook, and launched his efforts to extract art from typically clichéd subjects. Currin stood apart from the crowd in the 1990s, when political themed art was popular, by boldly depicting busty young women, mustachioed males, and asexual divorcees. For his drawings, he drew inspiration from magazines such as Cosmopolitan and vintage issues of Playboy. Currin went to the Andrea Rosen Gallery in 1992, focusing on well-to-do middle-aged women with less sympathy.

Currin's ability to paint kitschy subjects with technical skill earned him critical and commercial success by the late 1990s, and by 2003, his paintings were selling for high six figures after he moved to the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. More lately, he's worked on a series of figure paintings with overtly pornographic themes, claiming that one of his goals is to see whether he can make something that is clearly debased and unattractive become beautiful in a painting.

Feinstein and Currin published The Honeymooners - a 24-page book of their works in 2002 at the Hydra Workshop in Greece. Sadie Coles conducted an interview for the book. They were dubbed the governing power couple in today's art world by the New York Times in 2011. Currin's work is in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Tate Gallery, he has had retrospective exhibits at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Currin's Whitney retrospective in 2004 featured nearly 40 of his works, showcasing the evolution of his career.

Currin defined his relationship with his profession as a wholly ambisexual atmosphere in a recent interview. If one thinks his work has a reverse logic, he believes one is correct. It's the fact that men's paintings are about men, while women's paintings are about the artist himself. He has studied and imitated paintings from the 16th century in Northern Europe. Old Master portraits and pin-ups, nymphs, and ethereal feminine prototypes, as well as his muse and wife, Feinstein, are among his sources of inspiration. His works are a dialogue between the grotesque and the beautiful, with influences ranging from classical artists like Fragonard and Bouchard to modern artists like Rockwell and Crumb.

John Currin is an American painter based in New York City. He is best known for satirical figurative paintings which deal with provocative sexual and social themes in a technically skillful manner.

Nicola Godden has been creating bronze figurative sculptures for over 30 years. Icarus for the London 2012 Olympic Village, the bronze Sir Peter Scott sculpture for the London Wildfowl and Wetlands Centre in Barnes, Hammersmith Man for the Hammersmith fly-over, and Survivor for Eastman Kodak H.Q. in the United States are among the large contracts. The majority of Godden's work has been private art of various sizes displayed in galleries in the UK, Ireland, and the United States.

Nicola Godden has worked with a variety of companies and organizations over the years. Whether abstract or realistic, the artist's work is almost always based on the human figure, each piece usually has a narrative behind it. Because of the sentiments and emotions that the human body evokes, Godden has always wanted to deal with it. Her work has gone through various phases and has altered dramatically over time. What was going on in the artist's life strongly influenced these eras. A piece of flint or bone found while walking might inspire new art, as can a dream, mythology, or something observed momentarily while traveling.

Nicola Godden likes to work in clay or plaster since it is quick and allows her to express herself rapidly. Godden begins with a metal supporting armature and creates the rough outline with aluminum wire. She prefers to keep things spontaneous and open to new ideas, thus she rarely sketches out a sculpture before beginning working on it. Godden's finished work is mostly cast in bronze. The surface reflects light nicely and can be very appealing to touch. The sculptor attempts to be involved in every step of the process because casting bronze is a complex and time-consuming procedure. The metal is timeless and has a great narrative to tell.

‘’My work is nearly always based on the human figure whether in an abstract form or in a more realistic way. I have always wanted to work from the human form because of the fascination I have with it and the feelings and emotions it conveys."

Michael James Talbot is a British sculptor, born in Staffordshire in the north of England in 1959. After completing a BA honors degree in Sculpture, he gained a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Arts in London for post-graduate study in 1980, winning the coveted Landseer prize in 1983. He studied further at The Sir Henry Doulton Sculpture School under Colin Melbourne ARCA and Dame Elizabeth Frink RA.

“Sculpture for me, is essentially a theatrical construction, an attempt to show and illuminate a chosen moment in time. I like to give my sculptures choreography of form, tension and balance, to lead the eye and capture a moment in time. Sometimes I work with the fragment form rather than an entire figure, this is a favorite artistic device, often inspired by shadows of the model on the studio wall – because sometimes, less is more.” 

Michael Talbot collaborated with The Royal Ballet in 2014-2016 on the creation of the ‘Ballet Collection’ – a series of sculptures inspired by dance and the dancers of the Company. The first piece in the series, a portrait of Principal dancer, Edward Watson in rehearsal;  Callisto, a tribute to the wonderfully talented Jeanetta Laurence, the former Associate Director of the Royal Ballet;  Juliet,  inspired by the character in the classic MacMillan-choreographed ballet, and Reborn, a sculpture based on Principal dancer Lauren Cuthbertson.

“This project is a dialogue between sculpture and dance that allows me to work with artists of the highest calibre from The Royal Ballet.” 

Talbot is a perfectionist and his figurative artwork is renowned for its exquisite detail and anatomical precision. This accuracy and attention to detail is an important factor in the Royal Ballet series, where each piece is carefully crafted to ensure that the poise and posture of the dancer is captured as precisely as possible. To achieve this, Talbot worked closely with the dancers at the Royal Opera House, home to The Royal Ballet. During this creation phase the clay sculpture was carefully scrutinized by the expert and experienced eyes of the Royal Ballet directors and Talbot would often make minute adjustments to ensure the highest degree of integrity in the final study.

“This project is a dialogue between sculpture and dance that allows me to work with artists of the highest calibre from The Royal Ballet.”

Michael James Talbot › Ballet Collection

Peter Gric began to explore the possibilities of computer graphics for his paintings in the early 1990s. From then on, sophisticated architectural structures and objects were added to his organic surreal visual imagery. Instead of using a pencil and sketchbook, he began to construct his compositions utilizing 3D visualization software, transferring virtual reality into painting, and discovering his own distinct style as a result of this fusion.

His Artificial Spaces series exemplifies this method. The paintings are created using a virtual building block system or other mathematical and algorithmic techniques to create three-dimensional geometries. In order to produce ordinarily inaccessible regions in a wholly artificial arrangement of space and light, the development of these photos becomes a game with intricate spaces and viewpoints. Gric tries to infiltrate those artificial realms and make them tactile by transferring these virtual thoughts into the paint. The artist aspires to impart form and substance to his or her creations, bringing them from a virtual state to a tangible embodiment.

Gric experiments with the human nude in combination with mineral, technoid, and architectural constructions in addition to his Artificial Spaces. Despite the fact that the bodies in the Mnemosyne series are sometimes dissolved and fractured, he acquires or even emphasizes the erotic component on purpose.

Gric was born in 1968 as the only child of artist married pair Ludmila and Jaroslav Gric in Brno, former Czechoslovakia. His parents were aware of his artistic abilities and encouraged him to pursue them. His parents chose to relocate in 1980, and they eventually arrived in Austria. In 1988, he moved to Vienna and enrolled in Prof. Arik Brauer's master class at the Academy of Fine Arts. Gric began to sell his paintings after participating in a number of group exhibits. In 1993, he completed his studies. Gric relocated to Oberhöflein in 2009.

Gric‘s works are in possession of numerous private and public collections: Austria State Gallery Oberes Belvedere in Vienna, Municipal Gallery in Traun / Austria, Künstlerhaus München / Germany, Art Visionary Collection in Melbourne / Australia, Collection Rardy van Soest in Houden / Holland, Trierenberg Art in Traun / Austria, beinArt Collection / Australia, Westermann Collection / Germany.

In the early nineties, Peter Gric started to discover the possibilities of computer graphics for his paintings. From then on his organic-surreal visual imagery was enriched by complex architectural structures and artefacts. In place of using pencil and sketchbook he began to design his compositions with a 3D visualization software, he started to transfer virtual reality into painting and consequently found within this fusion to his very unique and distinctive style.

This method is most obvious in his “Artificial Spaces” series. These paintings are based on three-dimensional geometries built with something like a “virtual building block system” or other mathematical and algorithmic concepts. The creation of these images becomes a play with complex spaces and perspectives in order to create normally non-accessible places in a completely artificial arrangement of space and light. By translating these virtual concepts into paint, Gric attempts to enter into those artificial spaces, and render them tactile. He seeks to give form and substance, bringing them out of their virtual state to a substantial manifestation.

In addition to his Artificial Spaces Gric also experiments with the human nude combined with mineral, technoid and architectural structures. Despite the fact, that the bodies of this “Mnemosyne” series are often dissolved and fragmented, he wittingly obtains or even emphasizes the erotic component. In this series, his fantastic and surreal origin is most apparent.

Peter was born in Brno, former Czechoslovakia in 1968 as the only child of the artist married couple Ludmila and Jaroslav Gric. Already in his early childhood his parents recognized and supported his talent for drawing and painting. In 1980, his parents decided to emigrate and via Hungary and Yugoslavia they arrived to Austria. They spent a year in Edlach/Reichenau an der Rax, afterwards they moved to Linz where Peter finished primary school and a technical college for graphic design. In 1988, he came to Vienna and started studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in the master class of Professor Arik Brauer. During his studies, he participated in numerous group exhibitions and started to successfully sell his paintings. He finished the study in 1993 and got his Masters degree in Fine Arts. In 2009, Peter moved from Vienna to Oberhöflein at the Hohe Wand plateau nearby the Eastern Alps. He has two daughters, Emilia (2002) and Natalia (2005).

In 2010, Gric has been working on Concept Design for Guillermo del Toro's film project "At the Mountains of Madness". From 2011 to 2015 Gric had a teaching assignment at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.

Gric‘s works are in possession of numerous private and public collections: Austria State Gallery Oberes Belvedere in Vienna, Municipal Gallery in Traun › Austria, Künstlerhaus München › Germany, Art Visionary Collection in Melbourne › Australia, Collection Rardy van Soest in Houden › Holland, Trierenberg Art in Traun › Austria, beinArt Collection › Australia, Westermann Collection › Germany

Peter Gric finishing his new NFT-loop "Bifurcations". "Free me as free is the forest fire, as is the thunder that laughs aloud and hurls defiance to darkness." - Rabindranath Tagore. MP4-loop, 1920 x 1920 pix / 1 min.

Nil & Karin Romano are twin female painters, as well as DJs, based in Tel Aviv. Creating together with harmony and completing each other, they work primarily with acrylic & oil paint on large canvas surfaces. However, they do not restrict themselves into a particular medium; they also create works using pen or ink on paper. The use of strong and bold colours, together with the dark, surrealistic scenes that they unfold through their paintings capture the viewer’s eye and imagination. For the artists, each work is an opportunity to narrate a story of their inner world. Their interest revolves around the complexity of human soul and emotions and they communicate these notions through motifs such as chaos, ritualism and nihilism. They explain that such ideas resulted from a long period of depression and, therefore, of isolation from society. As they explain, “being introverts by nature, we found in art a way to communicate our messages to the world”. Their creations are mutual and simultaneous and their style is intense, ritualistic and cult-like, dealing with beliefs and religion, relationships between women, magic, as well as with the power of emotions. Romano often use themselves as a reference to create imaginative female characters, something particularly visible through their black and white series of drawings.

This series of works by identical twins Nil and Karin Romano is a spectacular fantasy in four hands. The pen-and-ink drawings are the result of harmonious collaboration between these two autodidactic artists. Their attention to detail has yielded crowded drawings teeming with situations and occurrences, creating a full and explosive kaleidoscope of images, animals, furniture and architectural items reflecting off one another and shattering/splitting in the mirrors mounted on the sides.

Each drawing contains an inner space built in a different architectural style—modern, baroque or nouveau art. In some the space can be identified: the interior of a synagogue, a temple, a bedroom. Yet often the constructed architecture bursts out into nature. The space strays beyond the walls, and its dimensions are unclear and do not conform to any rules. The perspective battles with the flatness that has been forced upon it.

The most outstanding element is the symmetry. Almost every work has a clear center line, a central event stage that balances the right side of the drawing with the left. In psychology, symmetry is identified with obsession and narcissism. These works serve the artists as a form of correction, a way to relate to the other, to achieve a balance within the chaotic and the psychedelic.

The works are laden with many details that call for examination. The elements inspire a sense of ritual: various religious symbols alongside witches and black magic; an abundance of accessories and props—masks, umbrellas, chains, lamps, candles; an assortment of animals, such as turtles, bats, rabbits, pheasants, shellfish and snakes alongside imaginary hybrid creatures. In between, the human figures stand out, first and foremost duplications of the twin artists’ faces and bodies alongside other female figures with flowing hair, naked or dressed in ceremonial attire. All are in motion, symbiotic, powerful in their appearance.

The artists do not conform to any rules, neither those of perspective nor those of proportion. They let their fantasies run free, such that a dung beetle or an ant may be larger than a human figure. They take symbols and images originating in various cultures and turn them into new and very personal images that extend beyond all theories of analysis, decoding or diagnosis.

Nil and Karin Romano invite the viewer into their world—a super-human world of dreams that is larger than life and offers a hypnotic and multi-sensual experience.

​While self-taught, Romano sisters have grown a unique style of painting, and they have attracted the interest of international art collectors. They have exhibited their works in both solo and group exhibitions together with other emerging  and well known artists.

The works are laden with many details that call for examination. The elements inspire a sense of ritual: various religious symbols alongside witches and black magic; an abundance of accessories and props—masks, umbrellas, chains, lamps, candles; an assortment of animals, such as turtles, bats, rabbits, pheasants, shellfish and snakes alongside imaginary hybrid creatures.

Black Orchids › Nil and Karin Romano › Identical Twins ‹ A Spectacular Fantasy in Four Hands

Throughout his fifty-year career, Giuseppe Penone has employed a wide range of materials and forms in an exploration of the fundamental language of sculpture. A protagonist of Arte Povera, Penone explores respiration, growth, and aging—among other involuntary processes—to create an expansive body of work including sculpture, performance, works on paper, and photography.

Penone’s early performance-based works evolved in direct response to the forests near his native village of Garessio, Italy, where he interacted with trees, water, and marble. In the Alpi Marittime (Maritime Alps) works (1968), his gestures and interventions left physical traces over extended periods of time: tree trunks were distorted by copper wire, stones, and bronze casts of the artist’s hand; mechanisms made of ropes and deer hides reacted to the weather; and casts of Penone’s face, hands, and feet were immersed in a stream bed.

In 1969 Penone created the first of his Alberi (Trees): “stripped” trees made by carving into mature timbers and removing the wood along the outer growth rings to reveal the memory of a sapling at the core of the trunk. This ongoing series has taken on various permutations as Penone refines his techniques and experiments with different sizes and installations. In 1970 he even carved an Albero in the presence of an audience, merging sculpture and performance. This same year he made the Rovesciare i propri occhi (Reversing One’s Eyes) works, in which he wore custom-made mirrored contact lenses and had himself photographed. The lenses, though they deprived the artist of his own gaze, allowed him to objectively record images, literally reflecting his surroundings.

During this period Penone also began to explore different ways of documenting his work, as well as his body’s interactions with sculpture. In the Svolgere la propria pelle (To Unroll One’s Skin) series (1970–71), he captured the intricate patterns of rock and bark, skin and hair, through frottage (taking rubbings on sheets of paper), imprints (pressing his body into surfaces), and photography. Then, with the Soffi (Breath) works (1977–), Penone attempted to translate into sculpture the ephemeral phenomenon of breath. He took photographs of light powder that he had blown into the air and translated the cloud-like forms into bronze sculptures, drawings, and vase-like constructions.

Essere fiume (To be a River, 1981) marked an important turning point in Penone’s practice. Extracting chunks of stone or marble from the source of a river, he carved them so that they resembled the smaller, smoother stones at the bottom of the riverbed, mimicking the effects of water on the rocks’ shape and size. Then, returning to an investigation of the figure, Penone began the Gesti vegetali (Vegetal Gestures) works (1982–), hollow anthropomorphic sculptures whose forms were based on single gestures or movements.

In the 1990s Penone worked on the Anatomie (Anatomies, 1992–), which included Carrara marble and other stones carved in high relief to echo vascular and muscular systems, as well as the Propagazioni (Propagations, 1995), a series of drawings based on the concentric linear patterns of a fingerprint. Since then he has continued to expand upon many of his earlier series and to work on the Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone) sculptures (2003–), in which he juxtaposes rocks and trees to highlight the balance between verticality and horizontality and the interplay of gravity and growth. Penone has also designed two gardens, one in Turin and one in the Reggia di Venaria in Piedmont.

In Penone’s work, sculptural transformations draw the viewer’s attention to details that have long existed but are easily overlooked. By bringing the grandeur—as well as the modesty and intimacy—of raw but also cultural material into various settings, Penone raises questions about sculpture and its essence.

"The veins of water that pour from the earth flow in trickles that merge, like the branches in the trunk, like the fingers in the palm of a hand, like the bronze in the matrix of a tree."

Giuseppe Penone › The Bronze in the Matrix of a Tree

Over the past four decades, Robert Therrien (1947–2019) cultivated an expansive vernacular of forms drawn from memory and the everyday. Seemingly simple subjects—including snowmen, bows, and oilcans—acquire multiple levels of reference and association, while outsized sculptures of stacks of plates, tables and chairs, and beards shift between the ordinary and the surreal. The repetitive perfecting of chosen motifs is central to his work, imbuing objects and images with intentionality and a latent sense of the unattainable.

Born in Chicago, Therrien emerged on the burgeoning Los Angeles art scene in the late 1970s after completing graduate school at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and studying photography at the Brooks Institute, Santa Barbara, California. At a time when the dominance of Minimalism and Conceptualism was being challenged, Therrien adopted certain formal aspects of these movements, yet allowed his pared-down sculptures and monochrome wall reliefs to take on poetic reference and implied narratives.

Therrien was represented by Leo Castelli in New York and Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf throughout the 1980s and 1990s, during which time his work received increasing international recognition. In 1984 the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, presented the first exhibition of his stand-alone rooms: six re-creations of his Pico Boulevard studio, complete with the artworks therein. The studio would continue to be a subject and conceptual catalyst throughout Therrien’s oeuvre, in which art and domestic life are deeply intertwined. In 1990 he moved to a two-story building that he designed and built according to the layout of the earlier Pico Boulevard studio. This space served as home, repository, workshop, and gallery, allowing Therrien to reference his past works as well as items from everyday life—taking them from two to three dimensions or from small- to large-scale and back again.

In 1991 the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, presented a survey of Therrien’s work since 1969, revealing the evolution of many of his motifs as they vacillate between the familiar and the abstract. The exhibition included a sculpture comprised of three worn white cabinets, which simultaneously echo the seriality of Minimalist sculpture and the intimate tactility and history of found objects.  In the early 2000s Therrien continued to reinvent his unique vocabulary, revealing influences including Surrealism, early Hollywood cartoons, childhood myths, and period-specific design. Survey exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2011), the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (2013), and Parasol unit, London (2016), revealed Therrien’s investigations of what he calls “figure-ground play,” wherein an image can evoke many things at once or seem to advance and retreat simultaneously. These chromatic and perspectival effects were expanded in his later room works, in which objects and spaces are reduced not in form but through choice of materials, monochromatic palettes, and presentation of either crowded or eerily sparse interiors.

Parallel to his sculpture practice, Therrien’s works on paper display the uncanny sense of humor behind many of his inventions. The drawings feature motifs such as heads with halos, fork-tailed red devils, gallows, walking feet, and black clouds, usually positioned at the center of the page and shown in silhouette. These depictions are made using various combinations of customized stencils, bleach, Japan Colors, and dye—serving as complex works in and of themselves, as well as foundations for sculptures.


"Sometimes people ask whether I am a romantic or a realist artist. I would hope that I fall between the two. The ideal artist looks at the future and the past at the same time. The romantic artist spends more time looking backwards. The realist attempts to work in the present but emphasizes the future. However, if you try to predict the future, you seldom succeed."

Robert Therrien › If You Try to Predict the Future › You Seldom Succeed

Regarding the change from Bad Painting to Good Painting. I had two striking realizations: 1, that even if I produced the worst paintings possible › Bad Painting › they would not be good enough› and 2 › that 'Idealism is unavoidable.' › and  finally › Bad Painting wasn’t my ultimate ideal. › Neil Jenney

A maverick of twentieth-century American art, Neil Jenney pursues realism as a style and philosophy. He strives to return to the classical ideal of truth and to integrate form and content, while eschewing what he has described as the decorative, expressive qualities of modern abstraction. In his two years at Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, from 1964 to 1966, Jenney created hard-edge paintings and Minimalist sculpture, showing an advanced understanding of contemporary art. Yet when he was ready, his work was rejected by all Boston galleries. This disappointment forced Jenney to realize that selling art was not a financial solution in Boston, and that he couldn’t afford being a student. As the few part-time jobs were already taken, gone was the notion of working his way through school.

On November 6, 1966, Jenney turned twenty-one and started driving a checker cab for Town Taxi, which he would do full-time for sixty-three days straight. On or about January 7, 1967, he moved to 723 East 6th Street, New York, and began his Anti-Minimal Sculpture, initially with an Electric Light Piece that drained his funds and was never completed. Parts were used for the last Light Piece, of 1967, which was acquired by Kasper Koenig. Next came the Linear Series: groups of half-inch aluminum bars, coated with a flexible multicolored paint and arranged on the floor. These pieces featured a new Anti-Minimal element: the random crooked line.

Jenney next restated the concept with The Volumetric Series: irregularly shaped masses of fabric, formed over chicken wire and arranged in groups of three or four on the floor. Jenney’s dealer, Richard Bellamy, sold the best Volumetric to Robert Scull in the spring of 1967, in Jenney’s first New York sale, for $300. Next came the Found (free) Material Series, large floor arrangements critically referred to as “environmental,” “theatrical,” or “maximal.” However, as critics were beginning to identify Jenney as an “earth” or “environmental” artist, he was growing discouraged with the lack of sales, despite some nice comments made. One day Bellamy said, “Well, ya know, Jenney, nobody’s got floor space—everybody’s got wall space.” So Jenney put some Linear Pieces on the wall and made some sales! Bellamy was right. Jenney needed wall ideas.

Now the format of the “environmental” Found Material Pieces of 1968 gradually mutated to a simple structure of “these things and those things relating”: tanks of circulating water and plants (1968), shown at Noah Goldowsky/Richard Bellamy Gallery, New York, spring of 1968; a desk and office chair with lighted neon on top (1968), shown in West Germany at Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, November 1968; soapy water in hanging vinyl containers and washed wood (1968), shown at Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, November 1968; two corrugated aluminum structures with three fluorescent lights (1968), shown at David Whitney Gallery, New York, November 1970.

Jenney’s life was looking in dumpsters every day, as he couldn’t afford materials. Often he couldn’t find what he was looking for, and often the good stuff was under a pile of other stuff and couldn’t be retrieved. This made art making slow and frustrating. At some point Jenney mused that if he was doing paintings he could just paint whatever he needed, and that the paintings would be on the wall, where the money was. And that “things relating to other things, not just spatially, but through their identity as objects” (the structural format of the sculptures) could be stated in painting form. And that this brand of realism was very removed from the Pop art, straight American symbolism solution of the day.

Jenney reckoned that Pop art was “veneration of the superficial”—Campbell’s Soup, movie stars, pickup trucks, storefronts, American stuff. Jenney felt that the world was ready for veneration of the relevant, the pertinent, the profound, the timely. No one was dealing with these elements; they were just laying there, like electricity was in 1840. So it was now painting. Jenney decided to deliver the message as directly as possible, drawing and painting once only, using acrylic paint. This brand of new realism began in 1969 and finished in 1970.

These works featured relating elements isolated on large areas of canvas, painted green (grass), blue (sky/water), or brown (dirt or tabletop). The work developed in three stages. The first paintings were made as part of the last “environmental” sculpture, and were shown in 1969 at the new Whitney Museum in a show called Anti-Illusion: two series of paintings with images in cinematic progression on the wall, plus dog food in food bowls on newspapers on the floor. Jenney quickly realized that a single-image statement was the most practical. Stage two: these first single-image works started with quick drawing and fast painting. The results were rather sloppy—but the message was clear. At some point Bellamy—who preferred Jenney’s sculpture—said, “Well, clean it up a little.” The result: good drawing and fast painting and more versions of each image. In 1969 Marcia Tucker, the new curator at the new Whitney Museum, visited Jenney’s studio at 76 Jefferson Street, New York, and decided to include this new realism in the Whitney Annual of 1969. FISH AND POLE sold for $900 to novelist Constance DeJong (unframed) and received no critical comment.

By 1978 Marcia Tucker had her own museum, the New Museum. Having done much traveling to studios in America, Marcia was aware of other active, independent, idiosyncratic realists and decided to gather them together, Jenney included, under the rubric Bad Painting. Gradually—toward the end of 1970—Jenney realized that his completed “ideal” would be Good Drawing and Slow Painting. This would allow total refinement. This meant dealing with the complexities of oil pigment, of which Jenney knew nothing. But Jenney did know that acrylics were very limited in terms of chromatic subtlety, and their fast drying time was limiting. So, in December 1970 Jenney decided to tackle the oil pigment puzzle. And to move past the “this and that” format of the Bad years, and to work on wood, which would allow for greater precision. This led Jenney first to the library, to seek books with technical answers and the secrets of the ancients. Here he learned of the Greek notion that a painting was a scene viewed through a window, hence the window (the frame) presented the illusion and existed as the architectural foreground. So frames were functional.

Jenney had avoided framing the Bad Paintings of 1969–70, thinking that frames were merely decoration, and figured that prettifying Bad Painting would diminish its purity. Wrong paintings require a frame, and it’s a perfect place for the title. This revelation was the most sustaining inspiration that Jenney ever had, as suddenly he was back in the sculpture business again, where he felt most comfortable. Since 1971 Jenney has not stopped drawing frames. He started with the Bad Painting solution, and since that date has developed nine distinct framing solutions, some featuring innovations like the seamless face with the lighted surface treatment; some with a mantled base, or big lintel, or wide side face, or most recently the narrow/wide face; some using side-mounted titles, others using the marquee-style (angled) side titles.

Jenney designated all works from 1971 on—all on wooden surfaces—as Good Painting. These works focused on the “intimate,” rather than the “panoramic.” And Jenney now refers to the early new realism of the 1960s as Bad Painting, thanks to Marcia Tucker. At some point the oil-on-wood works—with the frames—became rather heavy, too difficult to move without assistance. This annoyed Jenney, as he preferred to do things himself. Jenney’s assistant Romeo (Joe) DeTullio (frame maker) passed on in 2004, age eighty-nine years. One day Jenney mused—after some thirty years—that he had never painted on canvas with oils, and that work on canvas would be much lighter. And that even bigger works could be moved by himself alone. The first of these works came from old drawings for paintings never done. Jenney refers to these new works (2016) as the New Good Paintings, as they have a different process entirely.

Neil Jenney is a self-taught artist born in 1945. He attended Massachusetts College of Art in 1964. In 1966 he moved to New York City where he currently resides. His painting style was described by the art critic Marcia Tucker in 1978 as Bad Painting, a description which he has embraced.

At first, it was a self-portrait. I tried to make myself—my weak self, my pitiful self, my anxious self—into a joke or something funny that could be laughed at…It was sometimes seen as a parody or satire referring to contemporary people. As I continued to think about this, I expanded it to include consumers, city-dwellers, workers, and the Japanese people. — Tetsuya Ishida

Ishida came of age as a painter during Japan’s “lost decade,” a time of nationwide economic recession that lasted through the 1990s. In his afflictive paintings, he captured the feelings of hopelessness, claustrophobia, and emotional isolation that burdened him and dominated Japanese society. From his early career until his untimely death in 2005, Ishida provided vivid allegories of the challenges to Japanese life and morale in paintings and graphic works charged with dark Orwellian absurdity.

In nightmarish scenes, suited figures made in Ishida's own likeness but possessing machine or animal parts are depicted being boxed and repaired, like helpless objects. Foreground and background are rendered in equally meticulous detail and this intricate compression of layers intensifies the sense of entrapment. The stoic male subjects seem accustomed to their cyborg limbs and dreary surroundings as they carry on in their shared routine. Some men are fully merged with household objects, reduced to little more than functional but inanimate tools and furniture.

Tetsuya Ishida was born in Yaizu, Shizuoka, Japan in 1973, and died in Tokyo in 2005. Solo museum exhibitions include Sumpu Museum, Shizuoka, Japan (2006); “Tetsuya Ishida: Canvas of Sadness,” Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art (2007); CB Collection, Tokyo (2007); and “Tetsuya Ishida: Self-portraits,” Nerima Art Museum, Tokyo (2008). Selected group exhibitions include “Asian Avant-garde,” Christie’s London (1998); “dis-communication,” Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul (2007); “Chaosmos ‘07: In the Face of Sadness,” Sakura City Museum of Art, Chiba, Japan (2007); and “Tetsuya Ishida and Shizuoka-related Artists,” Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art, Shizuoka (2009). A survey exhibition of Ishida’s work, “Notes, Evidence of Dreams,” was on view at Ashikaga Museum of Art this fall, and will travel to Hiratsuka Museum of Art; Tonami Art Museum, Toyama; and Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art (through 2014).

In nightmarish scenes, suited figures made in Ishida's own likeness but possessing machine or animal parts are depicted being boxed and repaired, like helpless objects. Foreground and background are rendered in equally meticulous detail and this intricate compression of layers intensifies the sense of entrapment. The stoic male subjects seem accustomed to their cyborg limbs and dreary surroundings as they carry on in their shared routine. 

Tetsuya Ishida › I Tried to Make Myself › My Weak Self

The permanent site-specific installation by Anselm Kiefer—The Seven Heavenly Palaces—owns its name from the palaces described in the ancient Hebrew treatise Sefer Hechalot, the “Book of Palaces/Sanctuaries,” which dates back to the 4th-5th centuries A.D. The volume narrates the symbolic path of spiritual initiation that anyone who wants to become closer to God must undertake.

The seven towers—each of which weighs 90 tons and rises to heights varying between 14 and 18 meters—were created from reinforced concrete using the angular construction modules of shipping containers. The artist has inserted, between the various levels of each tower, lead books and wedges which, compressing beneath the weight of the concrete, further guarantee the static nature of the structure. More than mere functional value, for Kiefer the use of this metal has symbolic meaning: in fact, lead is traditionally considered the material of melancholy.

The Seven Heavenly Palaces represents a point of arrival for Anselm Kiefer’s entire artistic production, synthesizing his principle themes and projecting them into a new timeless dimension: they contain an interpretation of ancient Hebrew religion; a representation of the ruins of Western Civilization after the Second World War; and projections into a possible future through which the artist invites us to face the present.

Since September 2015 five large canvases—produced between 2009 and 2013, and exhibited for the first time—enrich and expand the permanent installation. This additional display, curated by Vicente Todolí, reconsiders and confers new meaning on the artist’s work. The paintings—Jaipur (2009); two works of the series entitled Cette obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles (2011); Alchemie (2012) and Die Deutsche Heilslinie (2012-2013)—are on show in the “Navate” space which hosts the permanent installation, giving new meaning to Anselm Kiefer’s masterpiece. These paintings form, together with the “towers”, a single installation entitled The Seven Heavenly Palaces 2004-2015, which addresses themes already present in the site-specific work: large architectural constructions of the past as man’s attempt to ascend to the divine; constellations represented through astronomical numeration. They also add a number of considerations that are key to the artist’s poetic vision, including the relationship between man and nature, and references to the history of ideas and of Western philosophy.

Anselm Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen (Germany) in 1945. He dedicated himself to art after studying law and literature. His first works, realized during the second half of the 1960s, were influenced by the gestures and artwork of Joseph Beuys. Between 1993 and 2007, Kiefer moved to Barjac, in southern France, where he transformed a 350,000-square-metre silk factory into his home and studio. Today he works in Croissy and Paris, although many of his large installations are still housed in Barjac, forming a sort of personal museum and Gesamtkunstwerk (literally “total artwork”).

Anselm Kiefer › The Seven Heavenly Palaces

The figures that populate Louise Bonnet’s paintings and works on paper walk a line between beauty and ugliness, between absurdist, knockabout comedy and extreme psychological and physiological tension. Inhabiting sparse, eerie landscapes and boxed in by the edges of the canvas or the page, they act out dramas of profound discomfort that plumb the depths of the artist’s subconscious. Drawing on a range of sources, from Old Master painting to Surrealism and underground comix, Bonnet toys with signifiers—of gender and sexuality in particular—in a playfully confrontational style. Her subjects are at once monumental in scale and diminished in capacity, their limbs grotesquely bloated and their eyeless faces partially obscured by dense caps of hair.

Bonnet was born in Geneva, where she attended the Haute école d’art et de design. In 1994 she moved to Los Angeles for “a year off” and never left. In 2008, having worked in illustration and graphic design, she launched her career as an artist with a solo exhibition at Subliminal Projects in Los Angeles, a gallery and project space founded by Shepard Fairey and Blaize Blouin. Five years later a move from acrylic paint into oils led Bonnet to new creative possibilities by allowing her to introduce a greater sense of light and volume to otherwise stark compositions. The change of medium also heralded a diversification and sharpening of themes and references; still focused on depicting the human body in extremis, she intensified her approach, combining the mordant wit of Philip Guston with the nuanced chiaroscuro of Caravaggio.

The representation of sex in Bonnet’s work is characterized by manic exaggeration and physical restraint. It also has a dreamlike quality that recalls such disturbing concoctions as René Magritte’s The Rape (Le viol) (1934), in which a nude female torso is recast as a face, and Hans Bellmer’s controversial sculptures of pubescent female dolls. Gender in Bonnet’s work is usually either overstated through cartoonlike inflation or left indeterminate, allowing the figures to function as universal stand-ins for unconscious drives and anxieties. In some images, this signature approach to the human figure is combined with an exploration of Christian imagery and its history in European painting.

The representation of sex in Bonnet’s work is characterized by manic exaggeration and physical restraint. It also has a dreamlike quality that recalls such disturbing concoctions as René Magritte’s The Rape (Le viol) (1934), in which a nude female torso is recast as a face, and Hans Bellmer’s controversial sculptures of pubescent female dolls.

Louise Bonnet › A Line between Beauty and Ugliness

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