Gordon Cheung:The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Gordon Cheung
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
7 August – 1 November 2009
New art Gallery Walsall

I’m bumping a post this week because I went to see Cheungs Exhibit at the Walsall Gallery, and had to blog. (and a gold star for me-theres still plenty of time to see this)

Gordon Cheung creates hallucinogenic visions inspired by a wide range of sources including science fiction, 18th century romantic painting, zombie films, cartoons and current affairs. His works reflect on such contemporary issues as the war on terror, religion, economics, globalisation, the digital age and technology. *Walsall Art Gallery*

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Stock listings, ink, acrylic gel and spray paint on canvas, 2009

For this exhibition, the artist has created a significant new body of works including contemporary interpretations of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. For the first time, sculpture, animations and laser etchings are shown alongside his more familiar mixed media paintings.*Walsall Art Gallery*

Sculpture: …Using a cast of a long horn bull. Presented in mirror cases they appear like ancient relics or revered icons. Each one is made of different materials to suggest each of the Horsemen. Plaster and oxidized copper filings for Death (pale green), terracotta and iron for War (red), plaster and marble for Conquest (white), and concrete and graphite for Famine (black)….key inspiration was Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey in which a bone is thrown into the air and subsequently becomes a spaceship. Through this work he suggests that the evolution of humanity is intertwined with violence. *D Robinson, Wallsall Art Gallery*

Visual trickery used with in the sculptures, though simple, became very effective in bringing to mind an abyss inhabited by increasingly strong feelings of inevitability (I dont know if I’m on board with such a fatalistic vision). The references are all there, as described by the gallery, but not overwhelming and some of the works are playful while peppered with the more poignant and sadly all to recognizable images like *Father* bellow.

Father (Disasters of Terror), laser etching, vaporised stock listings on plywood, 2009

This is pretty stunning visually, the large scale paintings have the mix of beauty and horror that I love so I recommend it…..however…’All hope abandon ye who enter here’. Or maybe- we have to destroy to make.

A sample of The Doors-The End was looped as part of the film instilation. Enjoy….

last chance to see….

She wanted his soul but he could only give her his blood
Paul Kindersley
4-27 September 2009
Transition Gallery
London E8

My original post/review of the exhibit is HERE

OTHER STUFF TO SEE…..
I’m not going to make it to some of these but, they look interesting none the less.

COLLAGE, LONDON/NEW YORK
FRED
London E2

featuring important works from the last 100 years..alongside contemporary innovations….FRED (London) is delighted to have this opportunity to present an exhibition in celebration of Collage. Co-curated with Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York, this joint-exhibition provides a platform for contemporary American artists to show in London, many for the first time, alongside leading European artists represented by FRED. Both galleries have also brought together works by some of the foremost practitioners in Twentieth century Western art. The exhibition creates a unique grouping of work from this exciting field. *FRED*

Hare Essentials (2009)
David Harrison,Oil on canvas,72.2 x 41.2 cm

STARTING WITH A PHOTOGRAPH
10 Sept – 10 Oct .09
Michael Hoppen Gallery
London SW3
An exhibition of Saatchi Online Artists at Michael Hoppen Contemporary

Blue Lake Revisited,Robin Cracknell,C-type print from mixed media.

The Otolith Group
A Long Time Between Suns (Part 2)
The Show Room
London NW8
Opening 8 September 2009

Informed by Satyajit Ray’s unmade film ‘The Alien’ (1967) and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ‘Appunti per un film sull’India’ (1968), ‘Otolith III’ is a single screen projection that replays Ray’s unrealised science fiction as a series of competing past potential futures. As with Part 1 at Gasworks, it will be situated in a new installation conceived and designed by Will Holder. ‘Otolith III’ is accompanied by ‘Otolith Timeline’ (video, colour, 30 minutes, 2003) which situates The Otolith Trilogy in a speculative history of the 20th and 21st Century. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of events, including a seminar with The Otolith Group and discussions with filmmaker Eyal Sivan and Bidoun magazine. *The Show Room*

So that was a mixed bag of things that I would like to see but probably wont get a chance to. They all look interesting in their own way, worth a look?

in fragments….

‘Some others by their tenderness
May try to guide your youthfulness,
Myself, I want to rule by fear.’
The Ghost, C Baudelaire

Before I start painting again I thought it would be a good move to get some thoughts together. A prolonged period of drawing/reading/research is coming to an end. Sorting through everything can be a chore without an outlet, this is a good one for me-blogging can help detach me from the work, take a step back and then run for the hills! or not, if I’m lucky.

*Fragments* is a good word for me right now, as I allow fragments of text to slide their way into my practice. There’s a question here though, am I looking for a text to support me or am I looking for a kindred spirit to draw from? Surely its got to be a bit of both but its not about illustrating someone else’s thoughts. Its about feeling less lsolated. I have focused on this over the last few weeks. Feels like giving up a small amount of control but the rewards are more than worth it.

Flapping excitedly, bathing his wings in dust,
And said, with heart possessed by lake he once loved:
‘Water when will you rain? Thunder when will you roar?’
I see this hapless creature, sad and fatal myth,

Stretching the hungry head on his convulsive neck,
Sometimes towards the sky, like the man in Ovids book-
Towards the ironic sky, the sky of cruel blue,
As if he were a soul contesting with his God!
extract. ‘The Swan’ C Baudelaire.

In sinuous coils of the old capitals
Where even horror weaves a magic spell,
Gripped by fatal humours, I observe
Singular beings with appalling charms
extract ‘The Little Old Woman’ C Baudelaire

Tilo Baumgartel at the Wilkinson Gallery

3 Sept-4 Oct 2009
Wilkinson Gallery
London
E2

Dur Sterm, 2008

Painting in a formal figurative style, Baumgärtel depicts stylized scenes that seek no distinction between both painterly urban, and pastoral realism, and the encroaching fantastical elements. The subject suggests narrative and characterization, without the artist ever feeling it necessary to constrict the viewer’s attention to one story. With Baumgärtel, the viewer acts as the narrator, the painter merely offering a collection of visual motifs for the imagination to contextualize. *Wilkinson Gallery*

Langdun, 2008

NYX, 2009

It maybe tempting to read the subject scenes as being allegoric, especially when reminded of Germany’s literary history of fairy tales. Yet this is not the artist’s intention. The anthropomorphized animals, a recurring motif, are used not in this vein, but rather as a tool to seek some kind of cultural universality to the scenes. A simple example explanation being that animals can be depicted unclothed (to leave humans unclothed would lead the viewer along an unwanted and specific lineage of the figurative nude). The eschewing of clothing avoids any localizing of culture or chronology, further demonstrating the artist’s attempts as pictorial universality.*Wilkinson Gallery*

NYX, 2009
It seems to me that Wilkinson missed a trick here, I understand the journey that the Artist takes to make the paintings (drawing in prepperation for the painting being key), that every step of this process is integral to creating some, frankly rather spookily beautiful large and small scale paintings. However I dont think it would obscure the importance of this process if the viewer were to experience the paintings together in one powerful display of snapshots from the uneasy relationships offered up by the Artist.

Splitting the paintings and peppering them with the large scale drawings some how distracted me totally from the paintings, I could have been over whelmed by the paintings but I wasnt, I could have been sucked into that almost fairy tale world of the slightly strange, but instead the flow of the exhibit was cut up. Should work have been split into painting and drawing? Who am I to say…but i dont think the journey and process would have been lost on the viewer if they had been. Of course there’s every chance that I was being picky, I like the Wilkinson space, its a space that can adapt for pretty much anything so……

Calle, 2008
I still recommend the show. I said in an earlier blog that Wilkinson wont disappoint (as a space it doesnt) Followers of this blog will have gathered by now that I rarely blog about an exhibit that I wouldnt recommend (life’s to damn short!).

‘She wanted his soul, but he could only give her his blood’

4-27th September
Transition Gallery
London, E8