This is a slightly disorienting view but it’s no more than the view from the top of a staircase, showing 2 stories of this local gallery.
Duplex
Tag: gallery
KMSKA
Our final morning in Antwerp was spent at the KMSKA (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen), which underwent a massive refurbishment for many years. It’s a stunning museum and as you can see I continue to be interested in capturing the spaces, the geometry, the whiteness (and blackness), the symmetry and awe of this cathedral to the beauty of the capitalist art world. Please do click into the images below to see them all full-sized (you may need to click on the post title above first if you’re seeing this in email).
Glasswork
In the window of a gallery near the Belgium Jewish Museum.
Gallery Space
Modern galleries always have vast expanses of white space, (often) neutral white light, and interesting geometry to photograph. It strikes me there’s something about the capitalist hegemony of the art world about this, a set of signs or a sub-text letting you know your place in this sacred hierarchy but beyond the obvious fact that such space in the poshest parts of the patrician cities of the world is terribly expensive and therefore you are being suffered to be allowed in, I’m not sure I can articulate it precisely. Certainly the way gallery staff ignore hoi polloi is a sign of something.
Grayson Perry at Victoria Milo
These large tapestries, Posh Cloths, by Grayson Perry at Victoria Milo, in London were eye-opening. I think the designs are made on a computer using graphics software, then translated to looms that weave the actual tapestry. Note the way text is woven into the images, especially in the map-like tapestries below. A definite inspiration for the text-based work I want to do on inequality. Click into any of the groups of images to see all the pictures in that group enlarged.
Autograph Geometry
Modern galleries present a lot of opportunities to take stark, geometric pictures.
Grafton Street
Me, Again
Seems like every gallery I go to, I find a reflection of myself down a corridor in a doorway.
Gallery White
Image World
The second gallery on our tour last Tuesday was Sprüth Magers and the Gretchen Bender exhibition, Image World: “Gretchen Bender gained renown in the 1980s as a key observer of the effects of capitalist society and mass media on the human experience.”
The Lightbox
Blog Note
My MFA class has an exhibition at The Lightbox in Woking running now and I have a couple of images from my Meadowlands series in it. I traveled there last Sunday to see it. If you’re in the UK, please come by and see it, thru February 5th. Click any image above to see them all enlarged.
One and Two Chairs
with apologies to Joseph Kossuth
Layers
From The Photographers’ Gallery we moved on to Gagosian to see the powerful Tyler Mitchell Chrysalis exhibit. You can faintly see my reflection layered above my classmate in the window in front of the photographs on the gallery wall.
Benny Andrews
Saturday before Christmas we went to see Benny Andrews: Portraits, A Real Person Before the Eyes at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. These are very very powerful, strong images, created with paint on canvas and painted cloth and other materials (gesso?) that give them real depth. Well worth putting on a mask and making an appointment to go see.
Exhibition Space
From a Tropical space
Next stop on our gallery crawl was this powerful Titus Kaphar exhibit at Gagosian.
Click any image to see them all enlarged.
Ryan McGinness
Next we saw some Ryan McGinness works at 2 different Miles McEnery locations first on 22nd Street (above) and then a massive installation of 72 panels on W 21st Street.
Frank Auerbach
Continuing west on 24th Street we came to the Luhring Augustine Gallery and these Frank Auerbach works (from 1978 – 2016). Really luscious impasto and a lovely autumnal palette of (mostly) muted shades.
OSGEMEOS Portal
After Billie Zangewa (see last post) we went upstairs and took a quick look at OSGEMEOS Portal. Not really my thing but there was certainly a lot of vibrancy.
Billie Zangewa
The first stop on our gallery tour yesterday was Lehman Maupin to see Billie Zangewa’s Wings of Change. These are works of a South African artist, working in silk collage, dealing with the world of Covid-19 isolation. I’ve tried to pair most of the works with a close-up, detail shot to show how these magnificent works were created.
You may be reminded of the work of Bisa Butler, a quilting artist I highlighted a few months ago in this post.
Heart of the Home 
Heart of the Home detail
An Angel at My Bedside 
An Angel at my Bedside detail
Free Spirit 
Free Spirit detail
A Fresh Start 
A Fresh Start detail
Faithfully 
Faithfully detail
