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Galerie Ropac Celebrates Baselitz’s 80th with Focus on 1980s + Frieze Booth Preview

October 1, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Galerie Thaddeaus Ropac is celebrating Georg Baselitz’s 80th year with a show of his work from the 1980s at their London gallery during Frieze week. Meanwhile, at the fair, Ropac will feature work by Robert Rauschenberg (above), Adrien Ghenie, Antony Gormley, Oliver Beer, Alvaro Barrington, Daniel Richter coming off a strong auction sale in Hong Kong over the weekend, and Rosemarie Castoro. Here’s Ropac on what they’re bringing to Frieze:

Robert Rauschenberg, Rumor (Spread), 1980

  • A clear example of how in his Spread series, started in 1975, Rauschenberg revisits his Combine series, reintroducing daily objects in his paintings, together with all the techniques and elements he kept working on until then.
  • Robert Rauschenberg’s Spreads series consists of around 95 large-scale multimedia works that feature solvent transfer images and patterned fabrics on wooden panels, often in combination with electrical components and unwieldy, three-dimensional objects. Several of the Spreads have drainpipes, gutters or, as in Rumor, a pail suspended from the canvas, which Rauschenberg jokingly said was ‘to contain the excesses’. A lightbulb embedded in the pail is plugged into a socket, activating the work and linking it to the surrounding space.
  • Forthcoming exhibitions: Rauschenberg: Spreads, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac London, 20 November 2018); In and About LA, LACMA (August 11, 2018 through February 10, 2019); The ¼ Mile, LACMA(from 28 October 2018 -9 June 2019)

Adrien Ghenie, Untitled, 2018

  • In Adrian Ghenie’s Untitled (2018), the facial features have been obliterated, replaced by a repulsive smudge of textures that the artist gleaned from images of pizza, bacon rashers and dried mushrooms. Despite this, the figure is immediately identifiable as Donald Trump by his characteristic, and oft-caricatured, sweep of golden hair, along with his politician’s uniform of white shirt, suit and tie. Trump’s image has dominated the media since his election in November 2016, to the extent that it has become almost self-parodying. At the heart of Ghenie’s portraiture is his fascination with the uniquely human ability to interpret abstract signs and symbols, mentally filling in the blanks so that not only do we read a faceless figure as a portrait, we can even “recognise” its subject.
  • ‘I am not painting a portrait in celebration of the subject (Donald Trump) rather, I am interested in the formal “deconstruction” of the portrait. In the 20th century, the people who did this really radically were Picasso and Bacon. They took elements of the face and rearranged it. There is no nose, there is no mouth, there is no eye – no sense of anatomy. The portrait as a landscape, basically.’

Antony Gormley, FRONT, 2016

  • A highlight of recent survey of his Polyhedra works at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg, covering an eleven-year-long investigation into the polyhedra as a geometric language for sculpture.
  • The cast-iron sculpture FRONT forms part of Antony Gormley’s POLYHEDRA series, begun in 2008, which translates the human form into an accumulation of tightly nested and sharp-edged polygonal cells derived from natural structures. The life-size figure in FRONT leans its upper body against the wall, in a posture that the artist has described as a landslide in human form.
  • Forthcoming exhibition: Antony Gormley: Royal Academy (from 21 September – 3 December 2019)

Oliver Beer, Euphoria in the Home, 2018

  • The first work to be shown from a new development of his Two-Dimensional Sculptures, in black resin (previously used white gesso) and incorporating laughing gas canisters and ancient ceramic fragments embedded so that only the flat, cut surfaces remain visible, becoming two-dimensional objects.
  • Forthcoming exhibitions: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Marais (12 January – February 2019); Quebec Biennale (from 14 February until 15 May); Vessel Orchestra, Met Breuer (2 July -11 August 2019).

Alvaro Barrington, P1, 2018

  • A new portrait work by Alvaro Barrington
  • “I think Alvaro Barrington is an artist to watch. He is an intense and serious artist who is both of his time but reaches back to artists like Phillip Guston and Joseph Beuys.” Norman Rosenthal
  • “I wanted to make portraits that felt informed by early 20th century modernism that also felt new very distinctively me. It’s goes through artists like Basquiat, Giacometti, Dubuffet, Picasso, Matisse, Thornton, in that a lot of the decisions in how the paintings comes together is whorled out through them and a conversation with the yarn, the openness of burlap. Which yarn are placed next to each other…” Alvaro Barrington
  • Forthcoming exhibition: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris, Marais, 2019

Daniel Richter, Classic, 2018

  • New work by German artist Daniel Richter, who has shaped painting in Germany for over two decades.
  • His latest paintings represent the next experimental step in the visual language he’s been developing since 2015, which marked a radical aesthetic shift.
  • Classic, shown at Frieze for the first time, depicts transient figures flickering in and out of view, coalescing around an abstracted, skull-like face or an implied erotic act before dissolving again, their splayed legs, gaping mouths and bestial, claw-like feet suggesting ambiguous, episodic encounters.
  • Forthcoming exhibitions: Group Show: Draiflessen Collection in Germany (from 14 October); Group Show: Schloss Derneburg at the Hall Collection (with Albert Oehlen); Group Show at EMMA in Helsinki Finland (January 2019)

Rosemarie Castoro, Blue Red Gold Pink Green Yellow Y Bar, 1965

  • In line with Frieze’s own focus on female artists this year, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac will be showing a sought-after, rare, large-scale early (1965) painting by Rosemarie Castoro. These are rarely seen on the market, and this work was recently shown as centrepiece at MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona) show. Featuring this work follows Ropac’s acclaimed recent Land of Lads, Land of Lashes exhibition (named after two of Castoro’s large-scale sculptures).
  • Castoro is a pioneering female artist whose work from the 1960s and 1970s has only recently been internationally recognised.
  • This work did not appear in Ropac’s Land of Lads, Land of Lashes show.
  • Rosemarie Castoro’s earliest mature works were paintings composed from tessellated Y shapes that later broke apart into a scatter of bars across the monochrome ground, as in Blue Red Gold Pink Green Yellow Y Bar. Their orchestration across the canvas creates a dynamic sense of movement, recalling Castoro’s dance training, introducing a visual playfulness that enlivens the geometric rigour of Minimalism.
  • Forthcoming exhibition: Rosemarie Castoro: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris, Marais (23 February – March 2019)

Ropac Brings Rauschenberg Combine to Art Basel

June 11, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Robert Rauschenberg, Slug, 1961

Thaddaeus Ropac has what he believes to be the only Robert Rauschenberg combine work available on the art market priced at $8.5m, the assemblage was on loan to a major German museum for many years prior to this. In addition, Ropac will bring a Georg Baselitz work, A Fractured Dog, Upwards, with an asking price of $3.5m, as well as, Robert Longo’s Death Star II priced at $1.5m. Here are Ropac’s descriptions of the works:

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is proud to present at this year’s Art Basel a rare work from Robert Rauschenberg’sradically inventive and much sought-after Combine series (1954-64), in which his compositions are a synthesis of sculpture and painting. ‘Slug’ of 1961, from this celebrated series, was previously on loan for four decades at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Germany.

Alongside new works by Georg Baselitz, a historic painting from the artist’s seminal Fracture series will feature. Ein zerrissener Hund, aufwärts [A Fractured Dog, Upwards], painted in the revolutionary year 1968, exemplifies the series that heralded the artist’s typical inversion of the motif.

Marking a rare appearance for works by Joseph Beuys at Art Basel, the artist’s early sculpture Junges Pferdchen [Young Horse](1955/86) comes directly from the artist’s estate and has only recently been exhibited for the first time as part of our London gallery’s current show Joseph Beuys: Utopia at The Stag Monuments. The wax figure of a horse in one half of an opened plaster cast was completed by Beuys shortly before his death.

From a news series of works by American artist Elizabeth Peyton, her painting Hanyu (Yuzuru Hanyu) will debut at Art Basel. Her portrait of the Japanese figure skater captures the perceptible intimacy with which she depicts individuals to whom she is particularly drawn, whether friends and acquaintances, individuals she finds interesting, or historical figures who have made a strong impression on her.

Robert Longo is represented with a powerful new work Death Star II (2017/18), his large-scale planet-like sculpture consisting of 40,000 glinting bullet-cartridge cases – the number of deaths by shooting in the USA over the last year. The statistic assumes a poignant form, addressing the crucial debate about gun violence today. With Death Star II Longo takes a position both as an artist and a citizen, pledging to give 20 per cent of the sales of this work to the movement to end gun violence Everytown for Gun Safety.

German artist Wolfgang Laib presents a site-specific installation of his work. You will go somewhere else (1997/2005). Seven enigmatic wax boat-like forms, perched on wooden battens, almost as out of reach seem to file through the space. Reflecting Laib’s temporal exploration of how the present holds the future, his vessels float in the air and invite the viewer to detach themself from earthly preoccupations and to meditate on the voyage to unknown destinations.

Guston, Bradford and Rauschenberg Dominate Venice

May 12, 2017 by Marion Maneker

Philip Guston and The Poets at Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia #philipguston #ContemporaryArt #art #venice #labiennale #biennale #venicebiennale #Galleriedell’Accademia #Venezia @labiennale @gallerieaccademiavenezia

A post shared by TransparentShades (@transparentshades) on May 12, 2017 at 4:20am PDT


Jackie Wullschlager makes quite a statement about American artists, in general, and Philip Guston, in particular, in the Financial Times:Continue Reading

Gagosian’s New Top Customer: MoMA

October 24, 2013 by Marion Maneker

Richter, Tote 1963

Carol Vogel reveals the details of MoMA’s two recent acquisitions, both of which were held until recently by Gagosian Gallery. One is an important work by Robert Rauschenberg:

Rauschenberg’s “Overdrive,” a silk-screen incorporating images of a bird, a stop sign, a one-way-street sign, the Statue of Liberty and other objects, is a promised gift from Glenn Dubin, the Manhattan financier who is a MoMA trustee, and his wife, Eva. Sotheby’s had sold the painting at auction in New York five years ago, to Larry Gagosian, the super dealer, for $14.6 million. He recently sold it to the Dubins for an undisclosed price.

The other is an early Gerhard Richter:

The 1963 painting by Mr. Richter, which the museum bought from Mr. Gagosian, is “Tote” (the German word for dead). “It’s a man who has washed ashore underneath what appears to be an iceberg,” Ms. Temkin said. It is one of the earliest examples of the artist’s photo-paintings, based on a photograph of a shipwreck taken in March 1963 that he discovered in Quick, a German magazine.

The painting also has an auction history. Sotheby’s sold it in London 10 years ago for about $5.6 million to an unidentified buyer. Experts say it is now worth about $6 million. It is the museum’s earliest work by Mr. Richter and was included in his retrospective there in 2002.

There’s a slight error in the story. Vogel meant to write that the work sold in 2003 for slightly less than $1m and is now estimated to be worth about $6m. Whether Gagosian sold it for $5.6m or the number is simply a typographical error is not known.

Inside Art: Adding Rauschenberg and Richter to MoMA (New York Times)

With Friends Like These . . .

September 21, 2009 by Marion Maneker

Last month, we linked to a story in the Seattle Times that explained the disposition of Merce Cunningham’s assets which were mostly art that he received from friends. Today, Carol Vogel follows up with the news that Christie’s will be selling Cunningham’s works–with a $3-5m estimate range–in the November sales. Of course, none of the art Cunningham owned was meant to be an asset. Much of it was acquired as gifts and Vogel ends her story with the charming anecdote provided by Laura Kuhn who is a trustee of the Cunningham Trust and the Executive Director of the John Cage Trust:

Jasper Johns, Dancers on a PlaneNeither Cunningham nor Cage must have thought their art was particularly valuable, just a familiar part of their visual landscape. Ms. Kuhn, the trustee, said that around 1988 their accountant asked them about insurance. “And when he discovered they had none, he asked, ‘What would happen if there was a fire and it was all destroyed?’ ” Ms. Kuhn recalled. “And Merce replied, ‘Our friends would paint us new ones.’ ” […]

Besides Mr. Johns, Cunningham’s circle included other great American artists of the 20th century, like Robert Rauschenberg, who in the 1950s was also an adviser to Cunningham’s company, and Philip Guston.Continue Reading

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