The Luis Adelantado Gallery is delighted to announce the opening of a new Gallery in Mexico City. Luis Adelantado comments that “this new challenge is planned as a logical attainment, after already various years of close relation between the Gallery and Mexico.” The Gallery, with an extension of 1500 m2, is situated in a new cultural area near Polanco, where the new headquarters of the prestigious Jumex Foundation and Collection and the Soumaya Museum is being constructed. The space is divided in two large interconnected buildings: one with a 300m2 space, complete with offices and stores on the upper floor, and another space with 500m2. The marked inter-disciplinary character of the Gallery project, which the gallery has been developing since its beginnings 35 years ago, makes the singularity of the space favorable for multiple possibilities of dialogue, for which the projects in situ will be an important part of the future programme. For this special occasion the gallery has chosen to inaugurate the space with a group show that represents the essence of the Gallery’s philosophy. The show presents a selection of artists from different generations and disciplines that create the generic guidelines on which the project is based.

LUIS GORDILLO (1934, Seville, Spain) is one of the most singular figures of representational abstract art. His work explores the meaning and the link between the world of the thought, the world of experience, and the world of esthetic expression. With a long solid career behind him, Luis Gordillo is a consecrated artist that has been awarded with multiple prizes and recognitions. Among them, in 2007 he was awarded with the Velázquez Prize of Plastic Arts. In 2007 a retrospective exhibition (1959-2007) was shown at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. His work forms part of the collections of; Caixa Forum, the Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art, the collection of Patio Herreriano, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art in Cuenca, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA), the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao, and of many other important museum and international collections.

DARÍO VILLALBA (1939, San Sebastián, Spain) is an inescapable reference to understanding the art after the generation of the 50s informalism up to present date. His work criticizes the artistic media in where he unfolds; clarifying that it is not the style but the artist that defines his work. Always up to date, and in constant dialogue with the artistic youth, the work of Darío Villalba explores the border between photography and painting. It also explores the borders of object, installation and sculpture. In 1970, at the XXXV Venice Biennial, he presented his “encapsulates” that gave him international fame and artistic significance. For the constancy in the excellence of his work, he has been awarded with diverse recognitions, among them the Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts, given by the King of Spain in 2002. His work has been shown in many of the main museums of the world, as the MoMA, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.

FENDRY EKEL (1971, Jakarta, Indonesian) is, along with Folkert de Jong, one of the main exponents of contemporary art in northern Europe. His work explores the dark side of human ambition; ridicules the fundamental precepts of society, politics and the styles of art; reflects on power and the megalomania that humankind is manifesting in architecture. Immigrating at an early age to the Netherlands, the urban landscape has been the perfect setting to identify the drastic change of his environment; the figuration and the abstraction are found and interact in his work. Since 2007, Fendry Ekel has collaborated closely with Folkert de Jong, creating a dialogue between his bi-dimensionality and Folkert’s tri-dimensionality. Since 1999 he has been participating actively in a great number of shows in museums and galleries. His work forms part of the collection of the Museum Dhondt Dhaenens in Belgium, the Plancius Art Collection and of private collections in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Mexico and the United States.

FOLKERT DE JONG (1972, Edmond aan Zee, Holland) is, along with Fendry Ekel and Astrid Honold, the founder of the United Artists Productions Amsterdam. His work includes unprecedented technical innovation, utilizing polyurethane and polystyrene foam as raw material to create disconcerting large scale scenes and paraphrase of masterpieces that shows a criticism to the esthetics of horror, using themes from conflicts, politics, wars and art history. His work acquires majestic dimensions revealing the meanings of the messages from the grand masters. Folkert de Jong has been awarded with important prizes as the Charlotte Köhler in 2002, the Prize of Rome in 2003, the Thiem Art Acknowledgement in 2004 and the sculpture prize Den Haag “Orange Award” in 2005. His work is part of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, the Saatchi Collection London, the Lever House Collection, the Dakis Joannou Collection, and of multiple private collections in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Greece, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands.

JASON MENA (1974, New York, United States) is a noticeable representative of the textual conceptual art that arose in the decade that saw him born. In that moment of art history Ben Vautier reflected on the uselessness of art. Today, Jason Mena reflects, melancholically, on the certainty or the falsehood of the world in which we live and the desire to believe in a future. His texts appear and disappear in the urban landscape, mixing the space of fiction and the space of reality, provoking a reaction in the spectator. It is a profound criticism of the simulated culture and of its trans-esthetication, declared in techniques of multimedia, installation, painting and photography. Jason has been accredited the prize of the Arnaldo Roche Rabell Foundation in 2002, the prize of the International Association of Art Critics in 2006 and of the prize Lexus Grant for the Arts in 2002, among others. His work forms part of the Cisneros-Fontanals Art Collection, the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, and the Collection of the Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center, and among many other private collections in Europe and North America.

OSWALDO RUIZ (1977, Monterrey, Mexico) is an artist that reflects about the different areas that currently worry the contemporary individual; worries that include his contact with the economic system and the means of production, his confrontation with solitude and distance. He reflects his mobility in large format photography and in video installation. He explores the night in abandoned landscapes that once were buoyant with economic activity. In his work he juxtaposes opposites that are the products of the huge contradictions of society and contemporary esthetics: the savage and the rational, the natural and the artificial darkness and light; he carries light to where there isn’t, illuminating what has been hidden and thus; reveling a fight between the capacity of regeneration of the Earth, and the progress of the productive world. Oswaldo Ruiz has been awarded with several scholarships and recognitions, among them that of the FONCA for studies abroad, the Prize of Acquisition SIVAM in 2006 and an honorable mentioning in XIII National Biennial of Photography of the Image Center in Mexico.

AGGTELEK (1978, Barcelona, Spain) is the name of the artistic project of Gema Parales and Xandro Valles. In their work Aggtelek establishes maps of dynamic trajectories as a methodology to achieve a total esthetic experience in which multiplicities of perceptions and artistic actions are linked. They construct and deconstruct with different techniques that range from sculpture, performance, painting, graffiti, illustration and text, to video dance and acting. In short, their work is a post romantic event that produces ambiguous sensations. Their work is in constant dialogue with the space around it, offering different faces and multiple readings. It is inevitable to feel affected by such reception of images. Since 2004, Gema and Xandro have participated untiringly in exhibitions and biennials internationally renowned. They have received countless prizes, as the first place in the I contest of Artistic creation of the Foundation José Garcia Jiménez in 2006 and the first prize in the V Contest of painting of Castellón in 2008. Their work forms part of the Fundación Norte Collections, ABC Collection, Foundation DEPART Rome, Circa XX, Foundation Pilar Citoler, the Museum Het Domein, in Holland, among many other private and public collections.

MARCOS CASTRO (1981, Mexico City, Mexico) is a young artist that reflects on a fundamental act in the art: the look. By diverse media he explores the dialogue between materials of natural origin as graphite and wood, which serve as a technique to speak of what is human from subjective codes in his relation with the media and with the multiplicity of the points of view of the spectator. He integrates elements from his personal mythology and from nature as testimonial symbols of contemporary society. The work is an exploration of the interactions between techniques and formats that include drawing, painting, stage resources, installation, the animation, video-art and video-installation. He puts the spectator in a vigilant position before his will of contemplation. He has been selected in the official selection of the Biennial Tamayo 2006, in the Scholarship young Creators of the FONCA 2007 and in the residence Artist in Residence at 18th. Street Art Center Los Angeles in 2008.

ANDRÉS CARRETERO (1981, Mexico City, Mexico) is a young promising artist, that questions the limits of what can be photographed. His liberty in portraying repetitive forms, objects of kitsch culture and appliances in disuse, is a masochist drive that reflects the constant desire of the subject in company before the possibility of experience. He presents the world in a debate between reason and sensibility, offering different esthetics experiences to the receiver. His photographs explore the strangeness of the world as an encounter with the objects, like introjections. The imminent esthetic pleasure produced immediately by the work is understood afterwards as an ontological reflection on death, abandonment and violence. Andrés Carretero has been awarded with the Prize of Acquisition at the XII National Biennial of Photography 2009 from the Center of Image. His work has been published in editions from the Foundation Jumex, and the “Celeste” Magazine, among others. His work belongs to the Collection of Art Cisneros-Fontanals, to the collection of the CIFO Foundation, the Image Center Collection and the Jumex Collection, among many other private collections.

Images provided by the artists and Luis Adelantado Gallery 

 

Text provided by the Luis Adelantado Gallery

Lees het artikel in de Economist en loop hier in Nederland eens binnen bij een van de vele galeries.
Metis_NL waar wij afgelopen dinsdag mochten genieten van een diner temidden van de zeer internationale expositie is daar een mooi voorbeeld van!

Voor mij waren er twee eye-openers:
1. We kijken niet meer tegenwoordig. Kunst is er om je in te verdiepen en om de waarom vraag bij te stellen. Kunst is niet wat je ziet op het eerste gezicht. Er is meer. Je leert weer kijken als je daar maar de tijd voor neemt!
2. Galeries zijn helemaal niet zo hoogdrempelig en besloten als ik dacht. Galeriehouders die echt van de kunst houden willen dit ook graag delen met ‘kunst analfabeten’.

Ben je echt oprecht geïnteresseerd om meer over kunst te weten en er echt naar te kijken dan is een goed voornemen – zoals het mijne – om niet alleen naar musea te gaan maar gewoon eens in je eigen stad naar een galerie te gaan. 

Neem als voorbeeld www.metis_nl.com te Amsterdam

These didn’t make it into the main article, ‘BioShock: Are you a man, or a slave?‘. Enjoy.

Table of contents

• Folkert de Jong – The Iceman Cometh
• Jules Verne – Lighthouse at the End of the World

Folkert de Jong – The Iceman Cometh

(Top): The 'Iceman Cometh' art exhibition by Folkert de Jong; (Bottom) One of Sander Cohen's ice sculptures in Fort Frolic. One of Cohen's victims even namechecks the 'Iceman Cometh'.

I’m a bit surprised nobody else has pointed this out yet. The ice sculptures in Fort Frolic and the reference to ‘The Iceman Cometh’ allude to Dutch artist Folkert de Jong’s art exhibition by the same name. Sander Cohen’s last name is a homage to the ‘James Cohan Gallery‘ – where Folkert’s ‘Iceman Cometh’ was exhibited.

Link: – http://www.smba.nl/en/newsletters/n-60-the-iceman-cometh/ (Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam – N60 – The Iceman Cometh)
Link: – http://www.jamescohan.com/ (James Cohan Gallery)
Link: – http://www.jamescohan.com/artists/folkert-de-jong/ (James Cohan Gallery – Folkert de Jong – Selected Works)

Jules Verne – Lighthouse at the End of the World

Those who would scoff at the surreal nature of a lighthouse in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean might not be aware that the artists pulled this concept from Jules Verne's 'Lighthouse at the End of the World'. It's there to reinforce the 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea image of BioShock's Rapture.

FOLKERT DE JONG Human Pyramid, 2007 Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam,

Folkert De Jong

FOLKERT DE JONG, The Shooting At Watou; 1st of July, 2006

“Double Diplomacy” met werk van Fendry Ekel en Folkert de Jong is nog te zien t/m 10 mei bij galerie Gabriel Rolt in Amsterdam.

Folkert de Jong: Operation Harmony