Shohei Takasaki: Looking at Debris Sideways
Each Modern, Taipei
Tue 2 Jan 2024 to Wed 7 Feb 2024
3F, 97 Sec. 2 DunHua S. Road, 106
Tue-Sat 12.30-6.30pm
In preparation for this exhibition, Takasaki sought inspiration from a diverse array of sources spanning various eras and categories. Rather than placing primary importance on art history, the focus was directed towards the visual fulfillment derived from these references. Takasaki deliberately divorced these images from their original contexts, purifying his interaction with them into a purely aesthetic engagement. This approach aimed to bypass calculated intellectual processes, allowing him to connect instinctively with his creative drive.
Despite the potential dangers or disrespect associated with referencing images without considering their context, Takasaki remained acutely aware of his positionality in art history. This awareness, paradoxically, enabled him to transcend traditional boundaries. His artworks derive their appeal from his ability to extract the energy of art historical transitions and revolutions, channeling them through his unique creative process.
Takasaki’s sources of inspiration are eclectic, ranging from fragments of discarded photographs to doodles on his studio wall and everyday stimuli. These seemingly mundane objects and moments, termed “scattered debris,” are collected from his conscious and subconscious, repurposed as catalysts for his creative process.
The artist aligns his work with the automatist tradition, asserting that discovering “unconscious” strokes and compositions from outside one’s personality is a unique and profound experience. This approach runs counter to contemporary trends that favor structure, calculation, and planning. Takasaki embraces radical automatism, finding it increasingly relevant in a society that may shun intuitive expressions.
Takasaki’s artworks defy categorization and genre limitations, much like the French avant-garde artist Francis Picabia, whom he cites as an influence. Takasaki’s creative process involves “collaging” various visual elements into a single artwork, irrespective of their context.
Born in 1979 in Saitama, Japan, Shohei Takasaki, currently based in Sydney, Australia, is known for his exploration of comparison in his body of work. Using mediums such as oil pastels, charcoal, paint, found objects, and fabric, Takasaki often depicts subjects in multiple styles, encouraging viewers to reexamine assumptions and engage in a nuanced understanding of the world.
His work has been exhibited internationally, including Los Angeles, Portland, Kuwait, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Tokyo. Takasaki’s art is also featured in public collections, such as the Starbucks headquarters in Seattle, The Hoxton Hotel in Portland, and Sakura Color Products Corporation in Osaka, Japan.
Takasaki’s approach to art has been discussed by art critic Theo Downes-Le Guin, who notes the artist’s ability to adopt interesting elements from various cultures without falling into pastiche. Despite living across multiple cultures, Takasaki’s work transcends contemporary trends, fluidly moving between figuration and abstraction.
In Takasaki’s artistic journey, influences such as automatism and a love for art historical transitions emerge. His meticulous planning and execution, while seemingly at odds with the chaos associated with automatism, reveal a deliberate interplay between chance and structure. Takasaki’s love for historical transitions, especially between figuration and abstraction, avoids replication and embraces the interstices of artistic movements.
Doron Langberg: Night
Victoria Miro, London
Fri 26 Jan 2024 to Thu 28 Mar 2024
16 Wharf Road, N1 7RW
Tue-Sat 10am-6pm
Victoria Miro is showcasing a new exhibition by Doron Langberg, titled Night, featuring large-scale tableaux depicting nightclubs and beach scenes. The exhibition explores the nocturnal world’s interior and exterior spaces, emphasizing ambiguity, opportunity, and liberation after dark. Coinciding with his first solo institutional presentation in Europe at Kunsthal Rotterdam, the exhibition is accompanied by an essay from writer Hannah Baer.
Langberg’s paintings delve into relationships, sexuality, nature, family, and self, portraying and creating queer subjectivity. The works, named after queer New York parties and club nights, present dynamic spaces that evolve throughout the night, from Basement to Sunrise. Figures and surroundings dissolve certainties of form, creating compositions where individuals and their surroundings interact fluidly. Light plays a crucial role, describing the effects of strobe or fog machine and conveying the erotic atmosphere of a night out.
The exhibition invites viewers to engage with moments of euphoria and haziness, capturing the collective energy of gatherings. Hannah Baer’s essay emphasizes touch as a vital element, bringing the figures to life and exploring shared experiences beyond individual subjectivity.
Born in 1985 in Yokneam Moshava, Israel, Langberg currently resides in New York City. The exhibition coincides with another showcase, Flowers, at Victoria Miro Venice. Langberg’s significant institutional presence includes exhibitions at Kunsthal Rotterdam and Rubell Museum Miami. His work is featured in various collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (MAMCO), and the National Portrait Gallery.
Jean-Frédéric Schnyder: ŒL AUF LEINWAND
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich
Sat 20 Jan 2024 to Sat 23 Mar 2024
Waldmannstrasse 6, CH-8001
Wed-Fri 12-6pm, Sat 11am-5pm & by appointment
The exhibition showcases 65 paintings and the 161-part series Billige Bilder (Cheap Pictures), offering an overview of Jean-Frédéric Schnyder’s extensive painting career from 1982 to the present. It highlights his focus on seriality, the interplay between similarity and dissimilarity, and a keen interest in everyday subjects like landscapes, letter paintings, and still life. Schnyder’s meticulous approach, whether depicting urban scenes or symbolic imagery, reflects his deep commitment to painting as an exploration and experimentation of the everyday.
The precision in capturing motifs reveals an encyclopedic approach and unironic ambiguity in his work. His Billige Bilder series, where individual pictures represent textiles used to clean brushes, exemplifies Schnyder’s clear and tautological theory of painting. Born in Basel in 1945, Schnyder’s career has spanned numerous solo and group exhibitions globally, emphasizing his unique contribution to the art world.
Marta Spagnoli: Scavengers
Galleria Continua, Paris
Fri 19 Jan 2024 to Tue 26 Mar 2024
87 rue du Temple, 75003
Tue-Sat 11am-7pm
Galleria Continua introduces Marta Spagnoli’s inaugural solo exhibition, Scavengers, featuring about twenty works, including drawings, large-scale canvas paintings, and gouaches, the exhibit explores the concept of otherness and the intricate depths within the artist’s poetics. Spagnoli’s art, created in 2023, delves into the interconnectedness of human beings and the natural world, portraying various life forms.
The exhibition title, borrowed from Roberto Calasso’s essay the celestial hunter, references the scavenger’s role in nature, particularly embodied by the hyena. This creature becomes a symbol reflecting human nature’s predatory aspects. Spagnoli questions human tendencies to assimilate scavenger behaviors, exploring the duality of appropriation and accumulation.
The large-format paintings, Scavenger II, III, and IV, prominently feature the hyena, evoking archetypal themes with a simultaneous repulsive and fascinating aura. In other works like Untitled I and Untitled II, rhizomatic vegetation elements grow horizontally across canvases, creating a continuum.
Spagnoli’s paintings depict subjects coexisting in a surface alternating between raw canvas and vibrant colors. The fragmentation of figuration and space lends the works a timeless quality, detaching them from specific contexts. The exhibition also showcases an expanded version of the Seeds for Praying series, initiated in 2019, exploring the gesture of enclosing clay in her hands as a form of prayer.
Marta Spagnoli, born in 1994 in Verona, Italy, currently resides and works in Venice. Graduated in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions globally, showcasing her exploration of the relationship between humans and the natural world. Her works are featured in various public collections, including Fondazione CRC, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, and Fondazione Giancarlo Ligabue.
Marisa Merz
Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples
Tue 23 Jan 2024 to Sat 23 Mar 2024
Via Francesco Crispi, 69 (1º Piano), 80122
Tue-Fri 11am-7pm, Sat 12-7pm
Marisa Merz’s artistic creations seamlessly blend with the city of Naples, evoking a perfect harmony between her elemental materials—clay, copper, gold, bronze, and wax—and the city’s meandering streets and shrines. Thomas Dane Gallery proudly presents Merz’s solo exhibition, marking her return to Naples after 17 years.
As the sole woman in the Arte Povera movement of 1960s Italy, Merz maintained a unique and enduring presence, continually reshaping genres and defying expectations. Her enigmatic, untitled works find comfort in intimate spaces like kitchens and alcoves, avoiding traditional gallery halls.
Rooted in tradition and classicism, Merz draws inspiration from Byzantine icon paintings, the Trecento, Fra Angelico’s tenderness, and the dynamism of the Futurists. Her striking sculptures, like an elongated paraffin triangle on a carpet with copper strings, fluidly merge different artistic influences, creating a poetic harmony described as an Apollonian merger of zither and koto.
Merz’s work delves into the myths and idioms of antiquity and the neolithic Mediterranean, seamlessly traversing space, time, and disciplines. Her transformation of inert materials into quasi-animistic objects forms an opus of icons, ex-votos, and memento mori. The recurring motif of the human head, molded in unfired clay or painted in gold, echoes Naples’ watchful sculptures, frescoes, and shrines.
Marisa Merz (1926-2019), based in Turin, Italy, received solo exhibitions at prestigious global institutions , including The Met Breuer, The Hammer Museum, and Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina. As a significant figure in the Venice Biennale, she earned the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2013.
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