In the first space of the exhibition, four paintings of Orlando Manifesting 2022 are hung, one on each wall. This presentation suggests a rotating circular dynamic in the room parallel to the physical rotation of Joseph Nechvatal’s The Viral Tempest record as it is played (published by Pentiments). Nechvatal also links this circular dynamic to his memory of Quad, a 1981 television play by Samuel Beckett, in which four asexual, gowned fi-gures turn around and revolve around a stage with defined patterns.

The second room of Turning the Viral Tempest features diptychs and triptychs presented in a line previously shown in 2020. Taken as a whole, Turning the Viral Tempest indirectly addresses issues of gender plasticity in our tumultuous viral and socio-political times by imagining non-existent mythical scenes from Virginia Woolf’s 1928 casual novel Orlando (the story of a young aristocratic poet who transforms into a woman overnight and lives for 300 years).

Galerie Richard in Paris presents the second solo exhibition of Rémy Hysbergue entitled «Tout Schuss», new acrylic paintings on silk velvet, from January 29 to February 27, 2022. The velvet support adds to the painting the specificity of its visual depth and adds to the viewer a play effect with the color by a lateral displacement to the painting. Compared to his memorable last exhibition a year ago at the gallery, the color is more radiant and his painting more expansive. The title suggests with relevance the curvatures and breaks of the slopes.

Thick blocks of acrylic in three dimensions, deposits of light traces of large brushes and their overlays, airbrushing with which he brings light and an impression of relief all fictive, Rémy Hysbergue multiplies the techniques of painting (Rémy Hysbergue likes to say that he paints the painting) with unparalleled dexterity to offer a strong visual pleasure to people who face his works.

Rémy Hysbergue does not allow himself to be locked up in any system. As just in an all-over painting as in a sober painting with three strokes of brushes, his refined paintings reach maturity and for this they express and make share his true pleasure of mastering the possibilities of expression of his medium.

Remy Hysbergue has just participated in the collective exhibition entitled «Painting: obsolescence deprogrammed» at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Les Sables d’Olonne from October 17 to January 16,2022 and his paintings will be presented on the exhibition entitled « Licences et Codes picturaux à l’ère numérique » at the Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch d’Issoudun from February 11 to May 8, 2022.

]]> http://www.galleriesinparis.com/exhibitions/hysbergue-richard/feed/ 0 http://www.galleriesinparis.com/exhibitions/finley-richard/ http://www.galleriesinparis.com/exhibitions/finley-richard/#comments Sat, 20 Nov 2021 15:11:17 +0000 Galleries http://www.galleriesinparis.com/?p=5126 REALTORS

Jean-Luc and Takako Richard have the pleasure to present a solo show with new paintings by American artist Chris Finley  titled “Realtors” in Paris, his first show in Europe from November 20, 2021 to February 26, 2022. His new works represent real estate agents’s portraits digitally manipulated and distorted with imaging softwares and carefully painted with glossy enamel paint. Chris Finley is a major painter in this generation who assimilated new digital technologies and new aesthetics to the long history of Painting.

“When I begin working from a single Realtor image on the computer (Adobe Illustrator) I save many iterations of the image as I am twisting, pulling rotating the elements of the vector shapes. I will sometimes save 20 versions or more. I am looking for a composition that surprises me. Something I could not imagine first. In reviewing the 20 or more images, I usually find 1-5 versions especially compelling.  If there are many physical paintings of an individual realtor, it is because there were many compelling digital versions created during the process and I was moved to paint each of them. If there are only two paintings of a realtor, it is because there were only two digital images that I felt warranted paintings. My process births twins, triplets, and quadruplets.

As a parent, husband, and educator living and teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area for most of my life, I have witnessed radical economic and social changes brought about by the local tech industry.  The tsunami of money that they ushered in increased the cost of living, exacerbated inequitable housing and displaced many long-term residents of nearby cities. The ability to live near where you work is now a luxury only afforded to the few.
In my series of paintings featuring Real Estate Agents, these gatekeepers of homeowning transactions have been re-configured from downloaded photographs and then digitally manipulated with imaging software. The finished paintings result in humorous and grotesque compositions whose distorted facial features hint at a subtle critique of inequitable power structures within the housing industry.
Most images we see today are seen on a screen and are translations of the real world to the digital.  I am interested in the physical reproduction of the digital image and how that translation from digital image to the material object presents itself in physical space.

I trained and worked as a sign painter as a teenager in the 1980’s. The glossy enamel paint I currently use is employed by traditional sign painters. My use of this antiquated art form serves as a low-tech antidote to the slick digital design production I utilize to construct the images before painting them by hand.”

- Chris Finley

Chris Finley is part of a generation of painters who have examined and incorporated digital technologies into traditional art practices. His work has been documented in journals and books for his contribution to the evolution of the History of Painting. Most notably, his work was featured in the book, “Digital Art”, published by Thames & Hudson, world of art in 2015. The author, Christine Paul is the Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School, New York.

Christine Paul states within the text, “Finley’s work process mirrors the limitations that are inherent to the restricted menu of imaging software: working within the restraints of a set of options determining color, shape, and form, Finley combines elements that are digitally manipulated through rotation or copying. The artist then re-creates the composition on canvas and mixes the colors to conform to the digital palette. The results are paintings where traditional craft blends with the clear-cut shapes and color fields of computer-generated painting.”

Chris Finley was part of the exhibition titled “post-digital Painting” curated by Joe Houston at the Cranbrook Art Museum in 2002-2003. I the book Joe Houston states within the text: “Chris Finley’s restless creatures navigate an environment in which space, matter and time meet in violent conflict. His paintings circumscribe the bizarre world of game space, that multi-layered, shadowless environment familiar to a generation weaned on Space Invaders. This virtual reality assembled from mathematical code and translated into the graphic interface of the cathode ray tube provides the futuristic landscape for the artist’s cybernetic vision.

Photo : Realtor #6 (Nathan), 2021, Acrylic sign enamel on canvas over wood panel,  52 x 47x 1.75 inches / 132 x 119 x 4.4 cm

In 2002 the gallery moved to Saint-Louis island, adopted the new name of Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard as well as a new exhibition program that was more focused on new painting. The gallery mostly organized solo shows with new artists such as Kiyoshi Nakagami, Yek, Paul Henry Ramirez, Carl Fudge, Adam Ross,  Hervé Heuzé, Beverly Fishman, Alice Stepanek & Steven Maslin, Scott Anderson, Yuichi Higashionna, Shirley Kaneda, Tim Bavington.

In 2006 the gallery moved to its current location in the Marais and doubled its space in 2007 with a 400 square meter exhibition space. In 2007 the gallery joined the Professional Committee of Art Galleries. The gallery exhibited emerging artists such as David Ryan, Sven-Ole Frahm, and more established ones such as Bram Bogart, Ron Gorchov, Frank Stella, Judy Pfaff, Alain Kirili, Linda Besemer, Joseph Nechvatal.  In the exhibition The Incomplete – Paris in 2010, the gallery introduced 28 artists collected by Hubert Neumann.

In 2011 they opened a second gallery in Chelsea in New York The gallery name was changed in Galerie Richard. In 2012 they presented a Takesada Matsutani’s retrospective exhibition in Paris and in 2013 a double show in New York and Paris. In 2014 they organized an itinerary exhibition John M Armleder – Jean Carzou in New York, Paris, and Miami at Untitled. The gallery has developed a digital photography program with Dionisio González, Li Wei, Lauren Marsolier, Olaf Rauh and Yang Yi. In 2015 Galerie Richard sold a major work by Matsutani to The Centre Georges Pompidou. In 2015 they moved to Lower East Side. Jeremy Thomas joined both galleries, and Scott Anderson came back to the Parisian gallery. In 2018 the gallery was pleased to represent Koen Delaere, Sebastian Ludwig, Eduardo Portillo, Dennis Hollingsworth and Kim Young-Hun. In 2019 the gallery is representing Gustavo Prado, Rainer Gross. In 2021 the gallery is representing Rémy Hysbergue, Chris Finley, Joeggu Hossmann.

The hanging is exceptionally charged, reflecting the ability of the contemporary gaze to view multiple screens simultaneously.

Each painting is meticulously executed by the artist with color zones corresponding to a pixelated screen image. The artist reproduces areas of cut colors such as lace, different from both square-by-pixel carvings and curvatures of topographical maps.

Paintings reproducing the pages of the most viewed images for a particular word-search keys on Google contain a mass of visual information that perfectly represent the Zeitgeist and that for this can be considered the major series of his work.
The most developed series is probably today that of celebrities, whether they are in the field of cinema, music, sport, art…

Landscapes around the world are another important theme. The hues of the sky are subtly degraded. There is often a feeling of loneliness in these great landscapes. Some views are actually reprints of photographs of the globe-trotter artist, which reveal a personal look at the landscape and its interest in capturing the daily life of people from all countries.

Painting was the dominant medium of expression for two purposes:
- objectively represent the iconography of the world at any time
- To show the uniqueness of each artist and thus of each human being.
The painters were able to absorb the photographic medium in their practice. Today Joeggu Hossmann appropriates the inventory capacities of the digital in favor of the medium of painting.

Joeggu Hossmann regularly exhibits in Switzerland in Zurich, Germany in Mannheim and the United States in Kierland, Arizona and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He has exhibited in the art centers of Switzerland in Steffisburg, Le Noirmont, the Museum of Arts of Moutier.

The text below by Barbara Hess entitled «Hommage to the Spray Gun» is an excellent introduction to his works.

„Everything folds in its own way, the rope and the stick, but also the colors that are distributed according to the concavity and convexity of the luminous ray, and the sounds, all the more acute as the trembling parts are shorter and more tense.“
Gilles Deleuze, Le Pli. Leibniz et le baroque, Paris 1988

In the field of music a suite is an order of pieces with a common programmatic theme. Under the title of the exhibition Suite for Spray Gun Thomas Zitzwitz brings together a series of paintings that were made using a spray gun – a technical tool, which is normally used in industry for the application of lacquers. The other common point of exponates is that the color is painted on a canvas irregularly folded. Only after the canvas is mounted on a canvas.

The process of Spray Paintings can be characterized by a directed chance, since the result of this process, which is of a directed part and another random part, is only visible when the canvas becomes a flat surface mounted on a chassis – similar to the material of a film, which must be chemically developed after exposure.  First of all, with the help of adhesive tapes, we define an area on the coated or raw canvas spread on the floor. Then the artist prepares this one, in a way like a piano by John Cage, by manipulating the fabric and from time to time placing objects under the canvas to design draperies. The surface thus prepared is treated with the spray gun – monochrome or polychrome – on all sides, to such an extent that the parts which are behind a crest and which are not affected by the paint mist remain empty, as the color becomes more pronounced on other parts, and where the absorption capacity of the canvas is exhausted, lakes of colors are formed.

The association of a landscape in relief unites some Spray Paintings with compositions of Abstract Expressionism such as the monumental Mountain and Sea (1952) by Helen Frankenthaler – an effect, which is countered in some works by bands painted on the edges of the image field, which disturbs the spatial effect and which instead emphasizes the very process of painting.

It goes without saying that Thomas Zitzwitz is not the first artist in the history of painting who experiments with folding. Clearly in the discourse of painting after Modernism there is no longer any question of originality or authenticity but of a relationship of difference and productive divergence. The title Suite for Spray Gun is also understood as a reference to the Hungarian exile Simon Hantaï (1922 – 2008) who is a historical representative of folding.

In 1948 Hantaï left as an art student the territory of Socialist Realism and settled in Paris, the world capital of art of that time. There, between 1969 and 1973, was born his group of works Etudes (in music a designation for a musical composition written to serve to exercise the skill of the executant): All over large format executed on canvases folded several times, where the light, unpainted parts evoke an interlacing of bamboo leaves on a monochrome background.

Notably Thomas Zitzwitz’s Spray or Crumple Paintings mark a difference in his own artistic practice. In the second part of the 90s he had realized installations of video, sound and odors. Towards the end of this Decade he concentrated more and more on the paint by using interference pigments, which are applied using a scraper in a transparent acrylic gel. The light- and color-saturated surfaces of these paintings, which are often separated by exact horizontal edges into two or three differently structured parts, change their colors according to the viewer’s

point of view and the light situation. Their hybrid and atmospheric character – which is not only chromatically unstable, but also changes between the type of painting and object – was more evident in 2007 in the artist’s book Moleskine Orangée. There the confrontation with Kodachrome photos dating from the artist’s childhood in the South of France transformed the vivid paintings into abstract images of memory.

A little later, in early 2008, Thomas Zitzwitz started working on the first Spray Paintings: It was also a deliberate change of the shiny and thicker surface“paint with pigments interfering with a more formal and less associative image effect”, as he formulated in his e-mail communication with American artist David Reed.

The relationship to the film mentioned at the beginning is for the Spray Paintings – whose visual appearance develops “only by straightening on the chassis – still significant in other respects. One of their most remarkable qualities is their illusionist and almost phototoréalist depth, since the three-dimensional aspect of the folding is preserved as a trace in the color applied on the canvas stretched. In fact, we can refer to them – like the images of photography or film – with the philosopher Charles S. Pierce as “indexical”.

Because between the spatial arrangement of the canvas on the floor of the studio and the visual appearance of the Spray Paintings as a two-dimensional painting exists a relationship of physical causality – similarly as in the association between the photographed object and its photographic image or cinematographic.Since bending is a transitional form between continuity and rupture – which, as Deleuze writes, is appropriate to divide differences, incompossibilities, disagreements, dissonances […] into as many possible worlds“– The Spray Paintings by Thomas Zitzwitz constantly change between illusionism and self-reference: a moment of instability and ambiguity, which remains essential for his pictorial approach.

Gross’ process is alchemic. He first paints six or seven layers of different-colored pigments suspended in water on one canvas. These are neither a solid color nor a pattern, but each layer covers the last completely. Next, he applies an approximately 1/8-inch-thick layer of paint on another canvas of equal size, pressing the two canvases together by hand and leaving them to “cure.” Gross then pulls the canvases apart, revealing the parts of the surface that have adhered to the other. This idiosyncratic technique produces a consciously unpredictable crackled impasto landscape that a viewer can connect to other materials or textures that are altered by time. Gross hangs the double painting upside down, confusing the viewer by escaping obvious symmetries.

A deeper understanding of Gross’ paintings asks the viewer to consider the challenges entailed in becoming a painter in 1970s Cologne, when the ideology of “The End of Painting” professed by Joseph Beuys and Associates at the Kunst Akademie Düsseldorf became dominant among the art world’s “elite.” Being a painter meant thinking about the specificities of the medium and new ways to push it forward. From figuration to abstraction, Gross’ series share one common trait: they reveal every layer of paint and texture. From sticking kitsch canvases on his paintings and superimposing geometrical lines on figurative subjects, to the “Twin Paintings” and the “Contact Paintings,” his work has always been a play of visible superimpositions using various layers of paint.

In the new paintings, the importance of the process is both striking and fascinating. The artist controls the original first painting; after that, the piece is altered by the pressure of the additional canvas which unpredictably partially removes the pigments. For the artist, it must be a wonderfully surprising feeling to create a work which in many ways does not depend solely on him. The unexpected parts of the process bring a sense of infinity. In this aspect, it is interesting to think about Gross’ work in context with contemporary Asian artists such as Kiyoshi Nakagami, who never claims to have total control of the creative process and is happy to discover how natural processes interact in the final result.

Rainer Gross was born in Köln, Germany in 1951. He has lived and worked in New York City for 45 years. In 2017, Gross was included in the Beijing Biennale as a representative of Germany. In 2012, the Museum Ludwig (Koblenz, Germany) held a four-decade survey of his paintings. Other notable national and international exhibits include the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts (Lausanne, Switzerland), Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion (Champaign, Illinois), Kunsthalle Emden (Emden, Germany). Gross’ paintings are housed in numerous public collections, including the AT&T Corporate Art Collection, the Cohen Family Collection, the Hirschhorn Collection, the UBS Union Bank of Switzerland, and the Lowe Art Museum. His work has been reviewed by the New York Times, Art in America, ArtNews, The Brooklyn Rail, The Boston Globe, and others.

As Good as New

William Bradley, 31 years old, is taking on his heroes of American Abstract Expressionism by challenging their use of automation and spontaneity.  His work begins with small abstract gestural watercolors. They are precisely composed and each has a specific range of colors. The artist then scans them, and manipulates the colors by saturating and contrasting them. These resolved designs are then meticulously repainted in oil on canvas. His work can be described as « abstract art about abstract art » with an underlying concept that explores the communicative disconnect between artist and viewer. Bradley constructs a language of references or quotes from mostly Abstract Expressionists including Robert Motherwell, Bram Van Velde, Clyfford Still, Adolf Gottlieb, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hoffman, while maintaining his own distinctive approach. He deliberately destroys the usual preconceived connection between the visual language and the processes involved.

Bradley does not intend for his paintings to be interpreted as works of Abstract Expressionism. Instead, he exploits characteristics of the style in order to expose the contextual limitations.  Thus, the paintings act to classify the artistic movement as a brand and an exhausted academism.  The Modern concept is refreshed in these works through a contemporary portrayal. Although initially intuitive, gestural strokes are instead consciously transcribed patterns.

 Linda Besemer

Bram Bogart

Sven-Ole Frahm

Ron Gorchov

Norio Imai

Takesada Matsutani

David Ryan

Galerie Richard is pleased to host the exhibition “Painting Into Three Dimensions” from March 12^th to April 30^th 2016. This is a continuation of the exhibition at Galerie Richard in New York in February 2016. The exhibit highlights the importance of the painter working in three dimensions. The exhibition gathers different generations of artists from Europe, North America, and Asia that have been supported by the gallery: Linda Besemer, Bram Bogart, Sven-Ole Frahm, Ron Gorchov, Norio Imai, Takesada Matsutani et David Ryan.

Bram Bogart was most influenced by Van Gogh, who applied a touch of texture for each color. In 1960, besides beginning to work on ground, he applied jute fabric to panels and further strengthened the back of the paintings with wooden crosspieces. He observed that the thicker the material is, the more variations he could create in gestures, signs, and strips. He considers himself a painter, not a sculptor, saying: “There is no dimension related to sculpture in my works. The third dimension is the depth of the paint layer.”

In 1966, Ron Gorchov made the first negatively curved structure with a wire dipped into a plastic liquid. He realized that as the whole thing got stronger, it could make less acute corners. He finally discovered the best method was to start with a rectangle, so the curved part would spring away from it. Therefore, the structure itself becomes an argument to the rectangle. This concept interested him.

In the 1950’s, Takesada Matsutani, a Gutai artist, was interested in the organic forms of cells that he could watch with a microscope. Accidentally, he noticed that the wood glue that he poured on a canvas dried on the surface and formed a texture like skin. He blew the air inside with a straw and the surface of the skin swelled and became a soft globe. He also created waving shapes by pouring the glue and using a roller on the canvas. He wishes “to instill his sense of sensuality in his artworks.”

Another Japanese artist, Norio Imai, also part of the Gutai movement, developed the third dimension in the 1960’s. From the beginning he added molded three-dimensional plastic shapes to white painted canvas and stretchers. For him, the canvas is not so much a support for the painting, but a new medium that allows him to experiment and develop his paintings in three dimensions. By doing so, he plays with light and adds tonality to the monochrome surface and creates fluid and organic curved lines. The title of his most recent work, “Shadows of Memory”, reflects his inclination towards the spiritual and the intangible.

For the first time, the exhibition gathers historic artists with a new generation of artists: Linda Besemer, Sven-Ole Frahm and David Ryan.

After Bogart, Linda Besemer’s paintings are at the same time a work of art and material. “Her paintings are carefree and mysterious, subtle and audacious. They establish visual continuity between what is seen and what is hidden, between the straight and the curved, and between the stiff and the flowing.” (John Yau)  Her work creates a dialogue between the third physical dimension and the third optical dimension.

Influenced by constructivism, Sven-Ole Frahm adds a new role to the canvas by using material to replace the flat pictoral paint gesture. With a playful and sensual spirit, he cuts painted canvas and sews them together. He cuts the canvas to make lines and empty spaces and adds wood elements behind or in front of it. His work combines a perfect composition and new experimental expressive techniques.

From sketches digitally drawn with a mouse on the computer, David Ryan creates and combines monochrome panels. Lines only exist as empty spaces of these monochrome panels. His works are composed of layered panels, which are not only superimposed, but also integrated into 3D assemblages. For the first time he puts down his paintbrush to use layers, light, and transparency. His abstract three-dimensional paintings are elegant and refined in their technical and visual complexity.