15 May–28 June 2014
Tim Van Laere Gallery
Verlatstraat 23-25
2000 Antwerp
Belgium
T +32 3 257 14 17
F +32 3 257 14 25
info [at] timvanlaeregallery.com
www.timvanlaeregallery.com
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Tim Van Laere Gallery is pleased to present Portray, a group show which will open on Thursday 15 May. The show will feature works by Armen Eloyan, Kati Heck, Anton Henning, Tomasz Kowalski, Edward Lipski, Vivian Maier, Dan McCarthy, Jonathan Meese, Pablo Picasso, Tal R, Ed Templeton, Rinus Van de Velde and Henk Visch.
Armen Eloyan (b. 1966, Yerevan, lives and works in Amsterdam and Zurich), who states that his paintings are a reference to poetry, predominantly paints dramatic canvases in lush primary tones. His work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions worldwide, including Timothy Taylor Gallery, London; Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zurich; Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London and A Vision of Central Europe, curated by Luc Tuymans, Bruges, 2010.
Kati Heck (b. 1979, Düsseldorf, lives and works in Antwerp) concentrates mostly on painting, but sculpture, photography, performances and installations are also an important part of her work. She has exhibited globally with museums and leading art galleries, including solo shows at CAC Málaga; Mary Boone Gallery, New York; group shows at Saatchi Gallery, London; Bozar, Brussels; and National Art Museum of China, Beijing.
Anton Henning’s (b. 1964, Berlin, lives and works in Berlin and Manker) work is best described as Gesamtkunstwerk. Not only does he work with an extensive range of media, but his sheer inexhaustible imagination seems to know no limits: his way of living constructs a Henning-Universe; a total synthesis that is painted, drawn, sculpted, written and filmed; it is photographed, enacted, imagined, pretended and recorded. Some of his recent solo shows include Kunsthalle Mannheim; S.M.A.K., Ghent; and De Pont, Tilburg. Group exhibitions include Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; White Cube, London, La Biennale de Montreal, Haus der Kunst, Munich.
Tomasz Kowalski’s (b. 1984, Szczebrzeszyn, lives and works in Warsaw and Szczebrzeszyn) idiosyncratic iconography and personal imagination, lends his imagery an enigmatic and psychedelic quality and journeys to a past with rather generous boundaries. His work has been exhibited in solo shows at Centre for Contempory Art Ujazdowskie Castle, Warsaw, Poland in 2011; Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and in group shows at Kunsthalle Wien; de Appel, Amsterdam; MUMOK – Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna; S.M.A.K. Ghent, Belgium; De Garage, Mechelen, Center for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund.
“My work exists between the cultural and the visual level,” Edward Lipski (b. 1966, London, lives and works in London) explains, “I’m interested in the space between something you understand and something that is also abstract. This confusion creates a particular intensity.” His work moves between these two poles; the distance between extremes is blurred, until we find ourselves immersed in a seductive visual chaos. He has exhibited globally with museums and leading art galleries, including solo shows at MDD, Deurle; Greenberg Van Doren Gallery; Stedelijk Museum het Domein; group shows at Mudam, Luxembourg; M HKA, Antwerp; MARTa Herford, S.M.A.K., Ghent.
Vivian Maier (1926, New York–2009, Chicago) worked for 40 years as a nanny in Chicago. During those years, she took more than 100.000 photographs, primarily of people and cityscapes in Chicago, although she traveled and photographed worldwide. Her photographs remained unknown and mostly undeveloped until they were discovered by John Maloof in 2007. Following Maier’s death, her work began to receive critical acclaim. Her photographs have been exhibited throughout North America, Western Europe and Asia and featured in countless articles throughout the world. Her life and work have been the subject of several books and documentary films. Selected exhibitions: Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York; Fifty One Fine Art Photography, Antwerp.
Dan McCarthy’s (b. 1962, Honolulu, lives and works in Brooklyn) figures seem to live in the light. Looking at the sequence of painted single figures on lightly stained backgrounds and the rows of high-gloss colorful Facepots, appears as though McCarthy wants his figures to come alive. They possess a presence and life-like spirit that suggests potential action; action appropriate to the artist’s utopian cast of characters comprised of bathers, dancers, bird-wranglers, musicians. His work has been exhibited at Anton Kern Gallery and Annet Gelink Gallery and in numerous shows throughout Europe, Asia and America including Paris, Dresden, Madrid, Amsterdam, Berlin, Geneva, Cologne, Vienna, Los Angeles, São Paolo, and Tokyo, and at MoMA PS1 during its 2007 Silicone Valley exhibition.
Exploring themes as revolution and the role and power of art, Jonathan Meese’s (b. 1970, Tokyo, lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg) installations, paintings, sculptures, and performances emerge from the “Dictatorship of Art.” He has exhibited globally with museums and leading art galleries, including solo shows at Gem, The Hague; CAC Málaga; MOCA Miami; de Appel, Amsterdam; group shows at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; MARTa Herford, Herford; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Saatchi Gallery, London; and MoMA PS1, New York.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was one of the greatest and most influential artists whose work defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
The duality of Tal R’s (b. 1967, Tel Aviv, lives and works in Copenhagen) heritage is recognized in his work, which offers sensations both celebratory and sinister. His subject matter is intentionally easy to describe, but meaning, as in dreams, is enigmatic. Tal works with a variety of media (painting, sculpture, collage, woodcut, installation) and intuitively culls imagery from diverse sources. Selected exhibitions: Sugar Paintings, Sugar Club, Copenhagen; Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Humlebaek, Denmark; Arts Center of Givat Haviva, Israel; Street Sharks Biennial, Copenhagen; Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen; Horsens Kunstmuseum, Horsens, Denmark; Royal Academy of Arts, London; Kunsthalle Wien; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (together with Jonathan Meese); Kunsthalle Mannheim; Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf.
Ed Templeton’s (b. 1972, Garden Grove, works in Huntington Beach, California) work cannot easily be categorised. He spent his youth in a world of skateboarding and punk music. While still very young he became a professional skateboarder and at the age of 21 set up his Toy Machine Bloodsucking Skateboard Company, for which he did all the artwork. Photos, paintings and sculptures complement each other, and are of equal worth, without hierarchy. Templeton often describes his drawings, photos and paintings by means of anecdotes, feelings and ideas that give a new, more profound interpretation to the images. He has exhibited globally with museums and leading art galleries, including solo shows at S.M.A.K., Ghent; Palais de Tokyo; group shows at Museo de Reina Sofia, Madrid, Museum Het Domein, and La Triennale di Milano.
Rinus Van de Velde’s (b. 1983, Leuven, lives and works in Antwerp.) practice consists of black-and-white charcoal drawings on canvas. For his recent works on canvas, Van de Velde stages nonexistent scenes in self-made photographs, which serve as source material for narrative drawings in which the artist is the protagonist. Van de Velde has exhibited worldwide including solo shows at CAC Málaga; Patrick Painter, Los Angeles and group shows at De Garage, Rotterdam, David Roberts Foundation, among others.
The experience of space is the key to Henk Visch’s (b. 1950, Eindhoven, lives and works in Eindhoven) sculptural practice. He is unwilling to submit the creation or exhibition of his sculptures to any programmatic, stylistic or technical system. His work functions at the level of body language and produces a physical experience, the sense of which is never determined in advance. Henk Visch has exhibited extensively including solo shows at Middelheim, S.M.A.K., Ghent, Documenta IX, Venice Biennial and group shows at M HKA, Antwerp, MARTa Herford, Herford.
For further information, please contact the gallery.