Los Angeles Art Shows- “Post Human” at Jeffrey Deitch

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Ceramic Art, Conceptual Art, Digital Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Glasswork, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film
Jan 162025
 

Charles Ray “Family Romance”, 1993, and Ashley Bickerton “F.O.B.:Tied (White)”, 1993/2018

Charles Ray “Family Romance”, 1993

Maurizio Cattelan “WE”, 2010

Tishan Hsu, “mammal-screen-green-2”, 2024

Work by Josh Kline

“Untitled”, 2008-9, and “Two Breasts”, 1990, by Robert Gober

Mike Kelley, “Brown Star”, 1991 (left) and “The Judge”, 2018, by Jana Euler (painting on right)

Wanghechi Mutu, “One Cut”, 2018, (center sculpture); photographs by Cindy Sherman, 2010/2023

“Pep Talk”, 2024, by Cajsa von Zeipel and Jamian Juliano-Villani, “Women”, 2024, (painting on right)

Post Human, the current group exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch’s Los Angeles location, continues an artistic investigation of humanity that began with the 1992 exhibition of the same name. Some of the over forty artists (and even some of the works) were in the previous iteration, but now their work is placed alongside others made more recently. Seeing them together offers viewers a chance to  contemplate the shifts and continuations in culture, technology, and what it means to be human.

From the gallery-

“Post Human was virtually a manifesto trumpeting a new art for a new breed of human,” wrote the art historian and curator Robert Rosenblum discussing the impact of the exhibition in the October 2004 issue of Artforum.

In 1992, Post Human, curated by Jeffrey Deitch, brought together the work of thirty-six young artists interested in technological advancement, social and aesthetic pluralism, and new frontiers of body and identity transformation. Through their art, these artists were exploring the same questioning of traditional notions of gender, sexuality and self-identity that was—and still is—taking place in the world at large. Capturing a developing social and scientific phenomenon, Post Human theorized a new approach to the construction of the self and interpretation of what defines being human. The exhibition set the agenda for the 1990s, and its influence on artists and philosophers led to a new field of academic study.

In her book Posthuman Feminism (2022), the philosopher and feminist theoretician Rosi Braidotti credits Deitch for capturing “the avant-garde spirit of the age by foregrounding the role of technology in blurring binary boundaries between subjects and objects, humans and non-humans.” She adds, “Post Human showed also that art assumed a much more central role as it merged with science, computerization and biotechnology in further re-shaping the human form and perfecting a flair for the artificial.”

The catalogue of the 1992 exhibition, with its visual essay and innovative design by the late Dan Friedman, also proved lasting relevance. Deitch’s influential essay predicted many of the scientific and sociological shifts that have since shaped our cultural and social environment, even the pandemic.

More than thirty years later, Post Human at Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, revisits the theme of the exhibition, bringing the discourse into the present. The show includes several of the key figures who participated in the 1992 exhibition in dialogue with some of the most interesting artists continuing the exploration of these themes today. In keeping with the social and technological trends that inspired it, the interest in figuration of the original artists and the younger generations presented in the show is conceptual rather than formal.

Much of the then-new figurative work was descriptive of the “real” world but cannot, in fact, be called “realistic” in the conventional sense. That is because so much of the “real” world the artists were reacting to had become artificial. With the concept of the real disintegrating through an acceptance of the multiplicity of reality models and the embrace of artificiality, Realism as it was once known was no longer possible. This new figurative art may have actually marked the end of Realism rather than its revival.

Fully integrated into our pop psychology, the term “posthuman” is now used in everyday conversations and has come to primarily identify with the trope of the cyborg. This exhibition, like the 1992 show, however, examines multiple declinations and aspects of the postmodern construction of personality and the engineering and transcendence of the human body. The artists in the exhibition embrace notions of plurality, metamorphosis and multi-beingness. Cyber-futuristic, surgically improved, commodified, stereotyped, and politicized, the “cultured body” lends itself to reflect on a variety of concerns that define our age.

Several works in the exhibition will embrace the biometrical aestheticization of the human body to address the decay paranoia, the social conflict over genetic engineering and the use of biotechnologies, and the conversation around the limits of “natural” life.” Artists have long engaged with the threats of biometric surveillance, the possibility of virtual reality overtaking our physical one, the accelerating real-time consumption of experience, and the automation of the workforce. As AI’s ability to fulfill our creative and specialized needs has reached mass fruition, artists are confronting the impact of what was once considered speculative science fiction, an everyday reality.

Post Human was first presented at FAE, Musée D’art Contemporain, Pully/Lausanne (June 14–September 13, 1992) and traveled to Castello di Rivoli—Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli/Turin (October 1–November 22, 1992), Deste Foundation, House of Cyprus, Athens (December 3, 1992–February 14, 1993), Deichtorhallen Hamburg (March 12–May 9, 1993), Israel Museum, Jerusalem (June 23–October 10, 1993). A number of the works shown in 1992-1993 are now in international museum collections. Matthew Barney’s REPRESSIA (decline) (1991) is now in the collection of LACMA, where it was on view in 2023. Posthumanism has since been the subject of countless books, movies and high-profile exhibitions.

Artists in the exhibition: Isabelle Albuquerque, 
Matthew Barney
, Ivana Bašić
, Frank Benson, 
Ashley Bickerton, 
Maurizio Cattelan
, Chris Cunningham
, John Currin, 
Alex Da Corte, 
Olivia Erlanger
, Jana Euler
, Rachel Feinstein, 
Urs Fischer, 
Pippa Garner
, Robert Gober
, Hugh Hayden, 
Damien Hirst
, Tishan Hsu, 
Pierre Huyghe, 
Anne Imhof
, Alex Israel, 
Arthur Jafa, 
Jamian Juliano-Villani
, Mike Kelley, 
Josh Kline, 
Jeff Koons
, Paul McCarthy
, Sam McKinniss, 
Mariko Mori
, Takashi Murakami
, Wangechi Mutu
, Cady Noland, 
Charles Ray
, Cindy Sherman, 
Kiki Smith
, Hajime Sorayama, 
Anna Uddenberg, 
Cajsa von Zeipel
, Jeff Wall
, Jordan Wolfson, and 
Anicka Yi

This show closes Saturday, 1/18/25.

Los Angeles Art Shows- Austin Lee at Jeffrey Deitch

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Digital Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film
Oct 232024
 

Austin Lee’s uses a combination of technology and traditional artistic techniques to create work in a variety of mediums for Psychomachia, his latest exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch. The saturated colors in his paintings (and the blue of the center sculpture) make them eye catching, while his subject matter creates, at times, a feeling of unease.

From the gallery-

Austin Lee knows how to render human emotion. Through a unique process that has defined his career, Lee explores human psychology and emotions by integrating software technologies with traditional methods of artmaking to produce vibrant paintings, sculptures and video works. Psychomachia marks Lee’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles in eight years and third exhibition with Jeffrey Deitch.

Lee’s work explores the hyperreality of social media and the internet, and, in this exhibition, he continues to explore the complexity of human connection that can be refracted through our digital age. He uses 3-D and virtual reality software to make drawings that are then painted on canvases with airbrush or fabricated in materials like resin and bronze. Lee turns inward and examines his own raw emotions through saturated hues and uncanny images.

The exhibition also draws inspiration from a transformative visit Lee made to the Giotto Chapel in Padua, Italy, where he was inspired by painted scenes from the 14th-century poem Psychomachia by Prudentius. The poem, which depicts the allegorical battle between virtues and vices for control over the human soul, served as an important source for several paintings in the exhibition. Some paintings show imagery that is directly pulled from the Chapel’s walls, while other paintings are quiet references to familiar symbols, like animals and families. Lion with Blue Eyes (2024), for example, conjures feelings of valiance and strength, whereas In Bed (2024) invites visitors to participate in a more unsettling sensation–– the feeling of being vulnerable or being under surveillance.

Central to the exhibition space is Blue Fountain (2022-2024), Lee’s fountain sculpture that was previously exhibited in his solo museum exhibition at the Lotte Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea in September 2023.

The mezzanine features a series of new video works that continue to explore surveilled environments and the disquieting feelings in the paintings. The animated figures ogle at the viewer from the same viewpoint as reflected in In Bed. It is common for Lee to build upon previous works, placing them in a rich, multidimensional visual world through rendering them in different media.

This exhibition is on view until 10/26/24.

NYC Art Shows- Kennedy Yanko at Jeffrey Deitch

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture, Sound Art
Apr 202023
 

“Pink and green music”, 2023

“What we re-quire is…silence”, 2023

“Within the Lattice”, 2023

“An Ode to Hugs”, 2023

It’s the last week to see Kennedy Yanko’s exhibition, Humming on Life at Jeffrey Deitch gallery’s Wooster Street location.

Tonight, 4/20/23, she will be at the gallery discussing her work with Alteronce Gumby.

From the press release-

By employing paint skin and metal in ways that both transmute a bodily essence and reposition the weight of gravity, Kennedy Yanko wields materiality and abstraction with the possibility of intervening in the viewers’ perceptions. In Humming on Life, Yanko‘s first exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch, the artist continues this exploration.

Although the tactile quality and lyrical processuality of Yanko’s works emphasize their sculptural quality, the artist considers herself foremost a painter. In her new body of work, Yanko takes an approach to sculpture that reconnects it, and her, with painting. In recent years, the weathered paint and bruised patinas found on salvaged metal relics informed her palette for the paint skins. Now, the artist is introducing colors to the metal she finds. By painting the metal directly, underpainting, fire-cutting forms and compositions, and then crushing those new shapes, Yanko is expanding the definition of painting through her process. She remarks:

Working this way has been labor-intensive and has exposed me to sounds, like water thrashing inside a metal tank while cleaning it. Feeling that thrashing—hearing a power that felt like infinity incarnate—encouraged me to probe water as a medium and examine my intuitive method more closely, which seemingly only comes from physical exchange: input and output, expansion and contraction. In pulling water apart and becoming more curious about its behavior and participation, I’ve enjoyed revisiting the ways in which it’s a web of activation, a source, and information. It’s a cue and a salve and carries with it tinges of what it’s gone through.

What water did for me in that moment was to point back to the livingness of my medium — of the metal and paint skin I rely on — and wash away the binary between life and matter. Erasing this divide expands the possibility of experience; it gives materiality an abstract power that we yield to. It’s that vitality, found in color, form, attention and consciousness, that I hope this work can be a language for.

The “Illuminating Sound” presented apart of the exhibition, composed by Samuel Kareem, is derived from audio Yanko recorded while working in the yard. Kareem expanded one striation of sound within the clip—one small element he excavated from the layers of water, metal, paint and movement—and created 10 ten unique soundscapes. Each of the scapes corresponds with a sculpture within the show, and illuminates it. Listen to “Illuminating Sound” here.

Swoon at Deitch New York

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film
Jan 302020
 

It’s the last week to see Swoon: Cicada at Jeffrey Deitch’s New York location. This exhibition of Caledonia Dance Curry (aka Swoon)’s work includes a sculptural installation, drawings, and a stop motion film.

From the gallery’s website-

Cicada marks a new development in Swoon’s practice. A celebration of rebirth and transformation, the exhibition at 76 Grand Street features recent films, drawings, and installations in which her personal story becomes more central.

Moving away from her street pasted portraits that encouraged the viewer to imagine a background story, Swoon now creates narratives that draw from her personal history as well as classical mythologies. She is also inspired by the handcrafted quality of silent era and 20th-century folkloric films. In her stop-motion animations, fragments of the subconscious coalesce into subliminal images. Open-ended stories unfold and weave recurring motifs such as birth, divination, trauma, and healing.

Swoon’s stop-motion films emphasize the body’s ability to serve as a vessel carrying memories and traditions. A house, a ship, and human figures split and open to liberate a cast of imaginative and mythological creatures trapped inside. The central figure is the “Tarantula Mother,” a half-human, half-spider allegory that evokes traumatic memories from childhood. Swoon’s response to parts of her family history – and the legacy of her parents’ addiction and substance abuse – has recurred throughout her work. These components inflict a strong element of realism to the films, grounding the otherwise- whimsical atmospheres of Cicada.

In Swoon’s work, the sea often constitutes the physical and metaphorical ground for possible encounters. In Cicada, underwater scenarios become a psychological space for introspection and subconscious explorations. Surrounded by new sculptures and her portrait series, Cicada allows viewers to immerse themselves into Swoon’s world, creating a vivid experience embedded in the present moment.

Swoon’s inner circle of friends is the subject of a new series of drawings included in the exhibition. The intimacy of these portraits recalls the romantic and humane spirit of her earlier street pasted works. A tableaux vivant of performers will accompany the exhibition on the opening night, renewing her interest in the counter culture of collectives and carnivals. Whether presented without permission or realized in a traditional gallery or institutional space, Swoon’s work connects with viewers on an emotional level.

The sculptural work is incredibly intricate and its amazing watching it come to life in the film.

This exhibition closes 2/1/20.

 

Tokyo Pop Underground at Deitch Los Angeles

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jan 162020
 

Sexy Robot_Floating, 2019 by Hajime Sorayama

Tokyo Pop Underground curated by Tokyo gallerist Shinji Nanzuka and currently at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in Los Angeles “explores the complex history of Japanese contemporary art from the 1960s to the present through the works of seventeen artists who emerged from pop and underground culture”.

From the press release-

Shinji Nanzuka explains that “originally in Japan, most of what is referred to as art are practical items, developed together and in integration with popular culture.” He cites examples from calligraphy to folding screens, paintings on sliding paper doors, lacquerware, netsuke, and the Ukiyo-e prints that served as posters and commercial portraits. He also mentions art historian Naoyuki Kinoshita’s study of intricately realistic handicrafts such as iki-ningyou, life-like dolls that were made for exhibitory performances. Nanzuka’s mission in this exhibition is to present contemporary artistic commentaries on this Japanese artistic heritage.

Deviating from the mainstream current of “art for art’s sake” when he opened his Tokyo gallery in 2005, Nanzuka decided to focus on artists whose works at the time were not considered to be art. Artists like Keiichi Tanaami, Harumi Yamaguchi, and Hajime Sorayama, whose works are now celebrated in the international art world, were looked down upon as producers of commercial and popular art. Nanzuka saw them as prime exponents of the idiosyncratic nature of Japan’s culture and history.

Another reason that Tanaami, Yamaguchi, Sorayama, and Toshio Saeki did not receive recognition until recently is the radical intensity of their practice. The expressions of sex and violence in their work are statements of anti-authority and anti-uniformity. The aggressive portraits of women painted by Harumi Yamaguchi show her engagement with the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s. Sorayama’s sexualized robots predict a dystopian future.

There are strong links between the underground Japanese culture from which many of these artists emerged and the American graffiti and skateboard subcultures that were embraced by Japanese youth. Haroshi, one of the younger artists in the show, constructs his works entirely from wood sliced from skateboards donated by friends and professional skateboarders to compose a collective portrait of his enlarged, international community.

The artists in Tokyo Pop Underground reflect the strains in contemporary Japanese culture as it rebuilt itself after the ruins of war and confronts numerous natural disasters. Their work reflects what Nanzuka describes as “the crazy cross-cultural exchange” between the West, the East, and the Far East, shaping a new international artistic language.

This exhibition closes 1/18/20.

Urs Fischer at Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles

 Art, Artists, Conceptual Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Performance Art
Jun 132019
 

It’s not often an art show comes along where you wish there were more people in the gallery, but going to see Urs Fischer: PLAY at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles was one of them. When you first walk into the large space filled only with office chairs, you notice them moving but in ways you might not expect- if you expect office chairs to be moving on their own in the first place.

The chairs are controlled by artificial intelligence that determines and learns from each encounter. Even alone in the gallery, it was delightful to watch the chairs interact with each other and then myself as I walked around. They come close to you and each other. They spin and travel together or seem to interact one by one. When others entered the gallery they change their movement again, seemingly without any set pattern. At one point I watched one of the chairs move all the way to the desk by the entrance, a space that seemed like it would be out of bounds.

Urs Fischer is quoted in the press release saying- “despite the complexity of the parts, the exhibition as a whole is pretty simple. It’s about what you, the viewer, project onto it. It’s not about chairs, it’s about humans.” This is what makes the show so fascinating, it is almost impossible not to anthropomorphize the chairs and their interactions.

PLAY, conceived of by Urs Fischer with choreography by Madeline Hollander, runs through June 15th.

People at Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles

 Art, Artists, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture
Apr 042019
 

People, the current sculpture exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch’s Los Angeles gallery in Hollywood, fills the large room with work in a variety of media but all representing human beings in some way.

From the press release-

More than fifty standing, sitting and hanging figurative sculptures will fill Jeffrey Deitch’s new Los Angeles gallery. The artists in the show span several generations from the 1980s to the present, with an emphasis on emerging talent.

All of the works in the exhibition reflect a contemporary approach to sculpture inspired by the innovations of Dada, Surrealism, Assemblage and by the influence of non- or meta- art sources like department store mannequins.

Only one work in the show is carved or modeled in the traditional way. Some are made from body casts, others are constructed with found objects and only a few use conventional sculptural materials like bronze.

The works in the exhibition reflect the diversity of the artists who created them and the diversity of the people who the sculptures represent. The styles range from hyperrealism to allegory. The subjects range from ordinary individuals to creatures of fantasy. The works explore the uncanny confrontation of the artificial and the real while simultaneously responding to the multiple approaches to human identity in the contemporary world.

One of the sculptures, Totem, by Narcissister even incorporates live women. This adds to the unsettling feeling that some of the other sculptures, like Nobody, by Karon Davis (who founded The Underground Museum with her late husband Noah Davis), might have included real people as well (they don’t).

Karon Davis, “Nobody”, 2019

One of the strongest pieces in the exhibition is David Altmejd’s Pyramid in which a human/dog hybrid figure sits smoking while its back opens to expose insides composed of quartz, a hand, and several ears protrude from its sides. The little details are fascinating. He’s even painted one of the figure’s fingers purple, perhaps a reference to Human, the Ibizan hound with one purple leg that was included in Pierre Huyghe’s exhibition at LACMA.

People was inspired by Mike Kelley’s exhibition and book project The Uncanny, from 1993, and that’s definitely an accurate description of how it feels to wander around in this particular room of sculptures.

This exhibition closes 4/6/19.