New Dimensions
March 14 - April 28, 2007Statement
John Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present New Dimensions, an exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculpture by a selection of prominent and emerging artists. New Dimensions marks the premiere exhibition of these works as an ensemble and will occupy both floors of gallery space. This exhibition opens Thursday, March 14th and will run through Saturday, April 28, 2007.
Artists included in New Dimensions are: Darren Almond, Stephan Balkenhol, Los Carpinteros, Gregory Crewdson, Iran do Espirito Santo, Tom Friedman, Anton Henning, Anish Kapoor, Jenny Pockley, Jenny Scobel, Kiki Smith, Veron Urdarianu, and Rachel Whiteread.
Darren Almond (British, b. 1971) works in a variety of media, including sculpture, drawing, video, and, as seen in New Dimensions, photography. Since his first solo exhibition at White Cube in 1997, Almond's work has been the focus of solo exhibitions internationally as well as been an integral component of group exhibitions like 1997-2000's Sensation at the Royal Academy of Art in London and the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York.
The figurative works of Stephan Balkenhol (German, b. 1957) are largely informed by the minimalist tradition of German sculpture. As a student in Hamburg in the late 1970s/early 1980s, he studied under Ulrich Ruckreim, a first-generation Minimalist. In the monumental Large Woman with Yellow Shirt, and Woman with Indigo Blue Dress, Balkenhol's preference for working with wood is apparent. These two sculptures, like the majority of Balkenhol's rather large body of work, are rudely, yet purposefully, manufactured from single slabs of wood.
Los Carpinteros was not a self-imposed moniker assumed by the Cuban born trio of Marco Castillo, Dagoberto Rodriguez and Alexandrea Arrechea. The name of the collective was given to them by their classmates at Havana's Superior Institute of Art in the early 1990's due to the group's tendency to work primarily with wood and because of the utilitarian aesthetic of their sculptures and drawings. Today, Los Carpinteros is predominantly known throughout the US for their 2005 mid-career retrospective Los Carpinteros: Inventing the World at the University of South Florida's Contemporary Art Museum and for Ciudad Transportable (Transportable City) at PS1 Contemporary Art Center and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The large and highly theatrical photographs of New York based artist Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962) have solidified his position as one of the rising stars of photography since the 1990s. Crewdson, whose resume includes a teaching position in the photography department at Yale's graduate School of Art and various stints in the role of curator, has been the subject of numerous monographs and museum exhibitions of both national and international scope, including a 2005 retrospective at the Kunstverein Hannover.
The work of Tom Friedman (American, b. 1965) is as varied as his educational background. Born in St. Louis, Friedman studied graphic illustration there at Washington University before moving to Chicago to study sculpture at the University of Illinois. His first solo exhibitions occurred in Chicago and in New York in 1991. Since then, Friedman has continued to broaden his oeuvre and has been the focus of solo exhibitions at institutions such as New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and the Prada Foundation in Milan.
The work of Anton Henning (German, b. 1964) is often self-referential, self-consciously art-historical and almost always tongue-in-cheek. In any given canvas, Henning might schizophrenically switch between styles, borrowing snippets of imagery from artists like Picasso, Modigliani, Van Gogh and Matisse to produce pseudo-Cubist-Expressionist-Constructivist paintings. In his latest solo exhibition at the Zach Feuer Gallery in New York in 2006, Henning created a multimedia explosion of art that transformed the gallery into an over-the-top salon while simultaneously referencing and critiquing the salons of a bygone era. Included in this exhibition were not only the paintings and sculptures that have catapulted Henning into the realm of cult hero, but also video and multimedia installations including self-composed piano music. His works have garnered much critical attention and have been exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, and biennales.
Anish Kapoor (Indian, b. 1954) is a Turner Prize winning sculptor who lives and works in London. Kapoor is best known for his brightly colored, highly reflective, monochromatic curved forms. Since the late 1990s, Kapoor has frequently experimented in the production of massive, architecturally derived sculptures including the large steel Marsyas (2002) installed at the Tate Modern in London, 2004's bean-shaped Cloud Gate in Millennium Park, Chicago, and Sky Mirror (2006) at Rockefeller Center in New York.
Jenny Pockley (British) is one of the emerging artists included in New Dimensions. She studied at the Royal Academy between 1994 and 1997, and has since exhibited at a handful of institutions including Sarah Myerscough Gallery and Whitechapel in London as well as the John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco. She has been the recipient of several awards including the Kent Institute's First Prize for Painting.
Iran do Espirito Santo (Brazil, b.1963) is best known for his minimal sculptures that take quotidian objects - light bulbs, shirt boxes, aluminum cans - as subject matter. By fabricating these out of the more historically conventional materials of sculpture, Espirito Santo transforms them from utilitarian objects into non-functional but highly accessible works of art. His work will be included in the upcoming 52nd Venice Biennale (marking his third exhibition at the Venice Biennale). Iran do Espirito Santo has exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide; his works are included in the collections of many prominent international museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Jenny Scobel (American, b. 1955) currently lives and works in New York. Her portraits, made with oil and graphite on wood, often appropriate images of known personalities and celebrities (faces and torsos) that are then juxtaposed seamlessly, or not, with images of her own creation. Many of the subsequent hybridized subjects are identifiable in a number of her other paintings, often times with only a slight perspective change or renegotiating of the background or decor. Scobel has had several solo-exhibitions, including 1999's Unsolved Mysteries in Molloy College Rockville Centre, New York. In 2004, she participated in the exhibition Sagt holde Frauen: 15 zeitgenssische Kunstlerinnen und das Medium Zeichnung at the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel.
Born in Nuremburg, Germany in 1954, Kiki Smith began her artistic career by participating in COLAB (Collaborative Projects), a New York-based cooperative that consisted of over forty artists in the mid-Seventies. Smith's early career included solo exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art (1989), the MAK Galerie (Vienna, 1991), the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebaek, Denmark) and the Fawbush Gallery, New York. In 2005, the Walker Art Center organized a traveling retrospective that moved on to the San Francisco Museum Art. Other recent solo exhibitions have included: Convergence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Directions - Kiki Smith: Night at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; and Invention/Intervention: Kiki Smith and the Museums at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Kiki Smith's work can be found in over thirty-five national and international public collections.
New Dimensions marks the inaugural exhibition of works by Romanian artist Veron Urdarianu (b. 1951) at the John Berggruen Gallery. Urdarianu began painting in the late 1960s before moving to the Netherlands in 1973 to concentrate largely on sculpture. In the 1990s he changed his focus once again to painting on canvas, although he currently creates objects using the two disparate mediums - a practice that greatly influences the artistic composition of both his sculpture and his paintings. Urdarianu is a relative newcomer to the United States, with most of his exhibitions occurring in Europe. Of particular importance was his inclusion in 2005 - 2007's Imagination Becomes Reality that originated at the Sammlung Goetz in Munich, Germany and traveled to various other European institutions.
Rachel Whiteread (British, 1963), a member of the Young British Artists, holds the honor of being the first woman to win the Turner Prize (1993). She is best known for her sculptures, which often take the form of casts and have as their subject matter ordinary domestic objects. Her works have been included in numerous exhibitions such as Sensation. Whiteread has been the focus of much critical attention for her Nameless Library (Holocaust Monument) in Vienna, and Untitled Monument (Plinth) in London among a multitude of other works.
Exhibition Works
Los Carpinteros Rio (Los Encantos de la colectividad) 2002 watercolor on paper 64 1/4 x 88 inches
Los Carpinteros S/T 2006 watercolor on paper 29 3/4 x 44 inches
Tom Friedman Untitled (Dollar Print) 2000 Iris Print 14 x 35 1/4 inches
Tom Friedman Vanishing Point 2006 Photo-Graveure 42 x 39 1/2 inches
Anton Henning Interieur No. 260 2004 oil on canvas 84 1/8 x 72 inches
Anton Henning Portrait No. 141 2006 oil on canvas 70.2 x 80 cm
Anton Henning Globale Malerei No. 8 2006 oil on bronze, wood pedestal 15 3/4 x 15 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches
Anish Kapoor After Marsyas 2003 lacquered bronze 18 1/2 x 18 3/4 x 23 1/2 inches
Anish Kapoor Untitled 1998 glazed ceramic and pinged bronze with platinum colored internal glaze 12 1/2 inches in diameter 14 1/2 inches deep
Iran Do Espirito Santo 200 W 2004 stainless steel, aluminum, teflon 6 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches
Iran Do Espirito Santo Can L 2005 stainless steel 7 x 6 5/8 inches
Iran Do Espirito Santo Gray Box 2003 gray sandstone 4 3/4 x 13 x 9 inches
Iran Do Espirito Santo Ice Cream Pot 2005 marble 4 3/8 x 4 x 4 inches
Iran Do Espirito Santo White Shirt Box 2005 marble 2 7/8 x 14 x 10 inches
Veron Urdarianu He Became an Artist 2005 oil on linen 51 1/4 x 63 inches
Veron Urdarianu House with a History 2006 oil on linen 55 1/8 x 67 7/8 inches
Veron Urdarianu Renunciation of Naivete 2006 oil on linen 66 7/8 x 55 1/8 inches
Stephan Balkenhol Large Woman with Yellow Shirt 1994 poplar wood and paint 100 x 32 x 16 1/2 inches
Stephan Balkenhol Woman with Indigo Blue Dress 1996 poplar wood and paint 102 1/2 x 30 3/4 x 2 inches
Rachel Whiteread IN OUT - IX 2004 mixed media 78 1/5 x 35 4/5 x 3 9/10 inches
Darren Almond Fullmoon@ElCapitan 2005 C-print mounted on aluminum 48 x 48 inches Edition of 5
Darren Almond Fullmoon@Ribblehead 2004 c-print 49 3/4 x 49 3/4 inches Edition of 5
Gregory Crewdson Untitled (house fire) Summer 2004 digital C-print 66 1/4 x 97 inches Edition of 6
Kiki Smith Lounging Legs (4) 2005 collage, ink on Nepal paper 19 1/2 x 30 inches
Kiki Smith Starling with Stars 2004 bronze 39 x 47 x 2 inches
Kiki Smith Three Girls with Bat 2004 ink on Nepal paper 29 1/2 x 45 3/4 inches
Anton Henning, Interieur No. 260 Anton Henning, Globale Malerei No. 8
Anish Kapoor, After Marsyas Kiki Smith, Starling with Stars Kiki Smith, Play (Serpent with Apple IV)
Anish Kapoor, Untitled, 1998 Iran do Espirito Santo, sculpture grouping Gregory Crewdson, Untitled (house fire)
Jenny Pockley, Thames Barrier Jenny Scobel, All Before and Blink Stephen Balkenhol, Large Woman with Yellow Shirt
Jenny Scobel, All Before and Blink Los Carpinteros, Rio (Los Encantos de la colectividad)
Iran do Espirito Santo Gray Box Ice Cream Pot Can L White Shirt Box
Veron Urdarianu He Became an Artist House with a History Renunciation of Naivete