Perry Rubenstein Gallery's mission is to support and build the work of contemporary and emerging artists, cultivating their practice and creating a context that will broaden visual narratives through dialogue and juxtaposition.
Information
- Location:
- New York, NY, 10011
- Phone:
- 212.627.8000
- Tues - Sat:
- 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Events
4 past eventsSee All
- OPENING RECEPTION: The Law of ...
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
Tuesday, September 22 at 6:00pm - OPENING: "The Law of Fives" Fi...
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
Tuesday, September 22 at 6:00pm - OPENING: Richard Woods "The Na...
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
Friday, April 17 at 6:00pm - Kamrooz Aram – Of Flame and Sp...
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
Saturday, February 28 at 6:00pm
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
For Immediate Release
PERRY RUBENSTEIN GALLERY
527 WEST 23 STREET
ANNOUNCES 5TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION
THE LAW OF FIVES
FAILE, ZILLA LEUTENEGGER, TERESA MARGOLLES,
ROBIN RHODE, RICHARD WOODS
September 22 — October 31, 2009
On the occasion of its Fifth Anniversary, Perry Rubenstein Gallery presents The Law of Fives, a group e...xhibition featuring monumental works by each artist: FAILE, Zilla Leutenegger, Teresa Margolles, Robin Rhode, Richard Woods. Each of the five artists to be shown work within the realm of illusion or with the notion of re-envisioning that which has previously existed.
Since the gallery’s inauguration in September of 2004, it has staged over fifty exhibitions incorporating artists from the program and beyond. Early exhibitions featuring historically significant artists often rooted in the performative realm (Bas Jan Ader in 2005, James Lee Byars in 2006) have provided a contextual foundation to the program, highlighting cross-genre and hybrid artistic practices. The fifth anniversary of the gallery is about looking beyond, looking into the future—highlighting what the gallery looks like now, where we've been and where we're going.
In Mayan mythology, the coming Fifth World (where our present world is presented as the Fourth) is a pseudo utopia, where magic and connectedness is rediscovered. Some tribes refer to this period of change, the door to the Fifth World, as "Purification Time”; all of the Earth's life is then said to be "raised" to its perfected-eternal form. Our 5th Anniversary exhibition will focus on a passing through of sorts, into a utopian or dystopian landscape with a visual immediacy. Using the notion of a door (both literally and conceptually) to the future as a starting point, the works included have a performative or temporal element. They are about a transcendence of time and or space, the physical act of creation or the physical experience of the creation point towards a passing through into another (utopian) world that is at once immediately accessible or just at arm’s length. These artists conceive of something in two or three dimensions but the realization of the work is ultimately in another dimension than it began in its conception.
Richard Woods’ door leads you into the exhibition. Bright red and freestanding, the door is fixed into a steel frame, the skeleton of the sheetrock wall. Leutenegger’s Bathroom entices you; the door is slightly ajar and fixed, so that the viewer only sees the reflection in the mirror of a woman taking a shower. Margolles’ wall stops you; relocated from her hometown of Culiacán, Mexico (dubbed “Narco City”), the cinderblock wall is riddled with bullet holes from drug-related shootings. FAILE’s installation imagines an architecture of their language: wooden boxes silkscreened with images of religious iconography, historical figures, and futurist superheroes are stacked one on top of the other to create a fantastical narrative that is all their own. Robin Rhode’s staged actions allow us to enter into his world and vision, showing his ability to bring his narrative or fantasy to life. For Rhode nothing is inanimate, and everything is possible.
Richard Woods was born in 1966 in Cheshire, United Kingdom; he now lives and works in London. His commission for the Lever House in New York will be on view December 3, 2009 – February 2010. Zilla Leutenegger was born in Switzerland in 1968 and lives and works in Zurich; her first exhibition at the gallery will be in April 2010. Teresa Margolles was born in Culiacán, Mexico in 1963; she lives and works in Mexico City. Margolles represented Mexico this year at the 53rd Venice Biennale. FAILE is the Brooklyn based artist duo Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, born in 1975 in Minneapolis and 1976 in Canada, respectively. FAILE’s first large-scale solo exhibition with Perry Rubenstein Gallery will be in May 2010. Robin Rhode was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1974 and lives and works in Berlin. He will have a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in March 2010.
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
527 West 23 Street
New York, NY 10011
T 212.627.8000
F 212.627.6336
info@perryrubenstein.com
www.perryrubenstein.com
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
Members of the press please contact:
Jennifer Bono
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
T 212.627.8000
F 212.627.6336
press@perryrubenstein.com
FAILE, Zilla Leutenegger, Teresa Margolles, Robin Rhode, Richard Woods
Time:6:00PM Tuesday, September 22nd
Location:Perry Rubenstein Gallery
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
PERRY RUBENSTEIN GALLERY
527 WEST 23 STREET
ANNOUNCES
RICHARD WOODS
THE NATURE SHOW
April 17, 2009 – May 23, 2009
Opening Reception, Friday, April 17, 2009, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Perry Rubenstein Gallery is pleased to
announce The Nature Show, Richard
Woods’ first solo exhibition at the gallery.
Woods works with existing architecture a...nd
materials to completely transform structures
and spaces, engaging them with reality and
fantasy. He has been re-creating and reenvisioning
objects and environments since
the late 1990s. Plywood and household gloss
are used to employ the traditional technique
of wood block printmaking technique in order
to cover surfaces of interiors and exteriors that
create vividly different graphic surroundings.
Woods has done numerous projects and
commissions in New York and throughout the
U.S.; this will be his first large-scale exhibition
in the States since 2002.
Covering the gallery floors with the cartoonish
line drawings of flowers from his Floral repeat
series (begun in 2000) on a vivid orange background, Woods’ signature wood panel
logo series wraps the gallery walls floor to ceiling. A new series called Song Thrush of
what the artist calls “reversed repeat tiles” flank the window walls facing the street. The
installation also features a selection of Woods’ paintings, created with household paint
on panels made from leftover floorboards inlayed into raw plywood. These paintings
have been integrated into the artists practice in the last few years and are integral to
his process.
Woods is constantly experimenting, making things in the studio, formulating and finalizing
his ideas through doing. The DIY nature of the work feeds into the activation of a space
or object. The work is always in a sense, a riff on something else—vernacular
architecture, found objects and materials—a contemporary and theatrical interpretation
of something classical or perhaps “regular.” Woods’ work is both witty and illusionistic;
there is an optimism and liberalism to the work literally and conceptually. Duchamp’s
ready-mades, Artschwager’s use of synthetic materials (wood grain in particular), and
James Turrell’s use of existing grounds and phenomenology of perception can all be
called upon as references. Woods’ ties to art history are apparent, yet he is not
interested in the contemporary notion of art as a precious object—his work allows us to
walk on it, touch it, exist within it. A great admirer of William Morris, whose preference for
the flat use of line and color and abhorrence of “realistic” rendering or shading
revolutionized textile design in the 19th Century. Like Morris, who is known for his handson
technique and multi-faceted practice, Woods infuses his own unique language in
everything that he does.
For the 50th Venice Biennale, Woods transformed the grounds of a Renaissance
Venetian Palazzo, rendering the courtyard grounds in exaggerated cobblestone of
fantastical white, black and grey. At the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Wood’s
bursting images of flora and fauna in Two cockatoos (red), in conjunction with the
building’s traditional details, morphs the “proper” interior space.
Woods was born in Chester in 1966 and now lives and works in London. He received
his MA at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1990. His first solo exhibition took
place in Winchester in 1988, followed by Cargo at Arched Space, London, in 1990. He
was among nine artists selected for the Barclays Young Artist Award in 1991 (with an
exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, London). Solo shows have taken place in London,
Athens, Rome, Paris, Berlin and Turin since 1994. He has done commissions and
exhibitions with the Wimbledon School of Art at Oxford University, The Henry Moore
Foundation in Leeds, Paul Smith and Comme des Garçons in Tokyo. He did a sitespecific
installation in the London Underground for Art Leicester Square (2006) and was
in the Liverpool Biennale (2008). His work is currently on view in Superabundance at the
Turner Contemporary Project Space in Margate. This spring installation will begin on the
MCM headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Woods’ largest permanent exterior commission
to date.
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
527 West 23 Street
New York, NY 10011
T 212.627.8000
F 212.627.6336
E info@perryrubenstein.com
www.perryrubenstein.com
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
Members of the press please contact:
Jennifer Bono
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
T 212.627.8000
F 212.627.6336
E press@perryrubenstein.com
Time:6:00PM Friday, April 17th
Location:Perry Rubenstein Gallery
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
Pictures Reframed: Robin Rhode and Leif Ove Andsnes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O2WWMOeB
Jesper Just + February 26, 2009, "Cinémas" at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France http://www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou/Manifs.nsf/0/0E5B697A6018D03FC12574EB003888BC Richard Woods ...
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
For Immediate Release
PERRY RUBENSTEIN GALLERY
527 WEST 23RD STREET
ANNOUNCES
KAMROOZ ARAM
OF FLAME AND SPLENDOUR
February 28, 2009 – April 9, 2009
Opening Reception Saturday, February 28th, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
New York, February 11th 2009 – Perry Rubenstein Gallery is pleased to announce Of Flame and Splendour, Kamrooz Aram’s de...but solo-exhibition with the gallery. Aram will exhibit new paintings and drawings created over the past year.
While the iconography and scale of his work is undoubtedly recognizable as his own, this exhibition marks a distinct shift in Aram’s approach. Aram explores such diverse themes as new age mysticism, the glorification of violence, and the idealization of revolutionary, religious and nationalist ideologies, most significantly through an investigation of contemporary Orientalism. The notion of Orientalism, as famously popularized by the late theorist Edward Said, is summarized as a general subjugation of the East as described and portrayed by the West through both high and low culture.
Aram's paintings explore iconography used in the Islamic and the Western worlds, questioning convenient definitions and categorizations. His compositions are populated with scrolling foliage referencing Persian miniatures and carpet patterns, angels from Shiite religious posters and Giotto paintings, as well as the pictorial language of popular culture. Images and symbols are introduced and re-contextualized so that their very signifier changes; the work becomes an expansion and abstraction of the iconography he uses.
Aram is working within a familiar lexicon but the process of painting pushes the imagery out of the realm of objectivity. Aram sees this step toward abstraction as not necessarily in opposition to representation, rather as an abstraction of ideas. The iconography in these paintings relates sometimes directly and sometimes quite obliquely to the iconography of the world in which we live. By creating a parallel universe in which the artist investigates these themes, he is able to open the work to the viewer for further exploration.
Also on view are drawings from the series Mystical Visions and Cosmic Vibrations (begun in 2004), which takes its title from a line in Allen Ginsberg’s America. Ginsberg and many poets and artists of his time had a sincere, nevertheless Orientalist fascination with Eastern cultures and religions. In the most recent drawings from this series, Aram often portrays bearded men in turbans: the Mullah (religious scholar) or the Sufi mystic. In the West, these figures are commonly identified as symbols of religious extremism and radical politics. However, like Ginsberg and his peers, some idealize these figures as a source of spiritual wealth. In both his paintings and drawings, Aram engages with the complexity of these relationships and challenges the convenient divisions of East versus West.
Kamrooz Aram was born in Shiraz, Iran. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Past group exhibitions include: the Busan Biennale (2006) and the Orlando Museum of Art (2007). He has had solo exhibitions, among others, at the Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA (2006), the Wilkinson Gallery in London, UK, and Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery in New York, NY (2007). In 2008 his work was included in Empire and Its Discontents at the Tufts University Art Gallery in Medford, MA and in Wall Rockets: Contemporary Artists and Ed Ruscha, curated by Lisa Dennison at The Flag Art Foundation, New York, NY.
*Image: Kamrooz Aram, Supreme Elevation (detail), 2009; Oil on canvas
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
527 West 23 Street
New York, NY 10011
T 212.627.8000
F 212.627.6336
E info@perryrubenstein.com
www.perryrubenstein.com
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
Members of the press please contact:
press@perryrubenstein.com
T 212.627.8000
Opening Reception
Time:6:00PM Saturday, February 28th
Location:Perry Rubenstein Gallery
KAMROOZ ARAM: Realms & Reveries Exhibition Catalogue, MASS MoCA, 2006. With an essay by Liza Statton. HAVARD HOMSTVEDT: ...
2009 Peter Callesen: Folded Thoughts — December 11, 2008 - January 24, 2009 Daniel Rich: Downburst — December 11, 2008 - January 24, 2009 2008 Håv...
2009 Kamrooz Aram: Of Flame and Splendour — February 27 - April 9, 2009 Richard Woods — April 16 - May 23, 2009 Jesper Just — June, 2009
In September 2004 Perry Rubenstein Gallery opened with two public spaces in Chelsea. In 2005, Perry Rubenstein Gallery opened a third gallery space in Chelsea at 534 West 24 Street...
