Tag: witte de with

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Constant..NEW BABYLON by Wigley

Schermafbeelding 2018-07-17 om 15.09.07

If there is one title which has become one of the most sought after ones i have in my inventory it is Constant’s New Babylon/ The Hyperarchitecture of desire.

The book originally published in 1998 for the Witte de With exhibition , was sold at the occasion of the restoration of the New Babylon models by Constant. It took almost 5 years, but after that restoration period, these very important and visionary models could be presented again in all their glory. With the exhibition the Gemeentemuseum sold the book by Mark Wigley and because of its price almost guilders 50,– we did not sell many copies and eventually the book was part of a sale in which the book was sold for less than euro 12,–

But after that “low”, the stature of the book changed. It was described as one of the best architecture books on the market and i received orders from all over the world because in architecture lessons and classes it was described as one of the key publications in the field of visionary architecture. At one time i even bought a box of these books and sold them within a few months. But things have changed. No longer you can find copies and whenever one is offered it is at auction where it fetches a high price ( plus costs ). Still one copy remains in my inventory at ww.ftn-books.com

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Fiona Rae (1963)

Schermafbeelding 2017-09-07 om 14.00.40

I never had heard of Fiona Rae until i purchased the excellent Voorwerk box published by Witte de With in which there was a contribution by Fiona Rae. Rae  ( born in Hong Kong) added to this Voorwerk box a small unique painting , making this box one of the most sought after art publications from the last 30 years. These boxes were published in an edition of only 500 copies by Witte de With in the very beginning of its existence. Chris Dercon was the responsible curator, who later would become the director of the Boijmans van Beuningen. An article on Blouin triggered this blog on Rae since an exhibition in Lugano was recently opened. Here follows the Blouin artice and of course for the unique Fiona Rae painting visit this link at www.ftn-books.com:

https://ftn-books.com/products/fiona-rae-original-painting-from-500-paintings-for-witte-de-with-mint

use the code: fionaftn  and receive a USD 95.00 discount on this purchase.

valid until the 31st of december/ only 1 work available.

rae jan aa

Buchmann gallery in Switzerland presents British painter Fiona Rae’s paintings for the first time in Buchhmann Lugano.

The paintings featured in the exhibition are part of the most recent works by the British artist. The works begun in 2014 and are comprised of a number of charcoal drawings. Initially, the series started out as grayscale works and relied upon its fluidic flow of the brush in a calligraphic style, completely omitting the colors. The largest of the painting, thus, is limited to a size which she can completely control from a single standpoint; and can through her brush freely to cover the entire canvas with a single brush stroke.  It’s the magic of the art of calligraphy that makes the canvas as well as the drawings free flowing but with an intense precision and even discipline.

The large work upon canvas, the painting named “Figure 2a” introduces color on the foreground upon a grayscale backdrop.  This approach literally highlights the figure in contrast with the backdrop and creates a new concentration and dynamism in the constellation of figure and ground, surface and line. This approach has been further explored through her smaller drawings and paintings on paper as well, like the paintings “Figment 2u,” “Figment 3b” and “Figment 3c.” For the title of her painting, Rae uses a taxonomic system: Figure 1a, Figure 1b, etc. In this way, she creates a distance between the painting and the title, enabling the viewer to concentrate on contemplating the pure painting. Still, Fiona Rae’s signature remains clearly recognizable in these new works, evidence of the many visual codes and tropes she has developed and made her own over the years.

These new paintings make clear what Fiona Rae means when she says: “I see these paintings as suggesting the presence of a figure, whilst simultaneously insisting on its absence; the paintings remain abstract. I want the urgency of paint marks and gestures made only by the hand; the need to make a mark that goes back thousands of years.”

The exhibition is on view through November 25, 2017 at Buchmann Gallery, Buchmann Lugano Via della Posta no. 2, CH-6900 Lugano.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Julio Galan (1958-2006)

There are not many publications on this fantastic artist, but www.ftn-books.com has two of them. In 1992 the Stedelijk Museum had a large retrospective exhibition on him and this catalogue is one of the 2 available books on Galan.

Julio Galan Romo was born in Muzquiz, Coahuila, and grew up in Monterrey, attending private schools. He began to paint while studying architecture at the University of Monterrey and received encouragement from the Monterrey art dealer Guillermo Sepúlveda. He had his first exhibition at Mr. Sepúlveda’s gallery in 1980. A precocious talent with a prickly, flamboyant personality, Mr. Galán began showing in Monterrey at age 20. In the late 1980’s and 90’s, he was Mexico’s best-known young artist. Julio was in effect a second generation Neo-Expressionist. He came to New York in 1984, in the heyday of this polymorphous painting style, whose freewheeling strategies of collage, fragmentation, cultural borrowing and dreamlike suspension were formulated by David Salle, Julian Schnabel and Francesco Clemente, who were influenced by Sigmar Polke. Galan, already strongly influenced by the self-scrutiny of Frida Kahlo, filtered Neo-Expressionism’s lessons through a personality and cultural heritage as polymorphous as the style. Throughout an astoundingly varied, often uneven range of images, he laced references to his childhood and his sexual identity with allusions to Catholicism, the Mexican Baroque, pre-Columbian cultures, retablos and folk art. The result was a kind of postmodern Symbolism: overripe, often perverse, yet mesmerizing. Julio Galán’s works often had the heat of colorful circus murals that had been defaced by a very sophisticated vandal. Their torturous dreamlike settings tended to be haunted by a handsome young man or boy-child who strongly resembled the artist. He underscored this preoccupation by frequently having himself photographed in different roles, for example as Jesus wearing the crown of thorns, or as sensitive bohemians, Mexican Indians and women in black gowns or veils.

Although he never exhibited these self-portraits as his art, they were invariably used in his exhibition catalogs to inflammatory effect: it was like Salvador Dalí channeling Cindy Sherman. In 1985, the young painter made his gallery debut at the Art Mart Gallery in the East Village and began to exhibit widely in Europe. In New York, he also exhibited at Anina Nosei, Ramis Barquet and Robert Miller, where he had his last solo show in 2001; he was included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial. A survey of his work was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey in 1994. His work has been exhibited individually in Mexico, Argentina, USA, Holland, Spain, Italy, England and France. He was the recipient of numerous awards, from fine art institutions like the Arvil Gallery in Mexico City, Vitro Art Center in Monterrey, Mexico, Salon de la Plastica of the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and the Concurso Nacional de Artes Plasticas in Aguascalientes. Julio Galan died on August 4th 2006 after suffering a brain hemorrhage in Zacatecas, where he spent the last years of his life.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA