Leo Koenig, Inc.

Leo Koenig, Inc. http://leokoenig.com/ en Copyright 2010, Leo Koenig Inc. Wed, 8 Sep 2010 08:31:01 -0400 Exhibition: "Long Long Gone" <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">July 8 - August 21, 2010</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, July 8, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1933"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/35/35622.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>"Long Long Gone", <em>Installation view</em>, 2010</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Holly Coulis, Peter Demos, Lois Dodd, Emilie Halpern, Ridley Howard, Merlin James, Alicja Kwade, Atta Kwami, Giorgio Morandi, Yuko Murato, Nancy Shaver and Molly Smith</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to present a group exhibition entitled "Long Long Gone." </p> <p>This exhibition includes a range of artists that deal with a kind of quiet consideration, personal poetic, or draw inspiration from simple observations and things from everyday life. There is a resistance to the overtly spectacular in favor of a more subtle and deliberate time-based exchange. </p> <p>Two small drawings by Giorgio Morandi serve as the cornerstone of the show, epitomizing the economy of means also evident in other works in the exhibition. The artist that stated "nothing is more abstract than reality" hovered between representation and abstraction, ever reducing compositional elements to essential values, hues, and lines. And though the works in this exhibition range from image based painting, abstraction, photography, and more conceptual sculpture, these seemingly disparate stylistic approaches frame a similarity in attitude about the experience of making and looking at art. Through a focus on the interior or the local, an understated visual language opens a portal to themes both universal and elusive.</p> <p>The gallery will be open summer hours in July, Monday through Friday, 10-6 pm. For further information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1933 Exhibition: Kelli Williams <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Scala Naturae"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 28 - July 2, 2010</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, May 28, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1898"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/34/34708.jpeg" alt="Installation View of Scala Naturae, 2010" height="335" width="500" /></a> <p><p>Installation View of Scala Naturae, 2010</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Kelli Williams: Scala Naturae </p> <p>See thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth<br /> All matter quick, and bursting into birth:<br /> Above, how high progressive life may go!<br /> Around, how wide! how deep extend below!<br /> Vast chain of being! which from God began;<br /> Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,<br /> Beast, bird, fish, insect, who no eye can see,<br /> No glass can reach; from infinite to thee;<br /> From thee to nothing.--On superior powers<br /> Were we to press, inferior might on ours;<br /> Or in the full creation leave a void,<br /> Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed:<br /> From Nature's chain whatever link you like,<br /> Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike."<br /> -Alexander Pope, Essay on Man (Epistle 1, 1732):</p> <p>In the words of the artist: </p> <p>"Hatred is an underrated emotion. Operating with the belief that the world is an unjust place polluted by ancient, religious delusion and it isn't my job to decorate it, I made this show to examine the centuries old belief in the Scala Naturae or Great Chain of Being. In its various permutations it is one of the most pernicious of social hierarchies and systems of religious belief, which ordered all living things in a divine, regimented social order. Originating with Aristotle it became codified within Christianity with angels and deity at the top followed by a careful ranking of humans of various races, animals, plant life and minerals at the bottom. It persisted throughout the Enlightenment and early Lamarckian models of evolution before finally being replaced by the Darwinian model of organizing living things based on their physical not spiritual characteristics. A key facet of this system of belief was the view that it must be static and unchanging and that no part could be damaged or undermined or the entire chain would break. In my small but sincere way I've attempted to chip away at hierarchy by corrupting the tropes of religious art like the Instruments of the Passion and the Hand of Fatima. By depicting serraglios and harems as well as spiritualized masochism I'm mocking Islamic and Christian fables. By depicting 60's hippies and forms of natural purification like high colonics I'm mocking nature worship. This show is intended as a malicious, anti-theistic attack on social and natural order and prostration to higher powers and collective identities as well as an examination of the clash of belief systems and the anxiety underlying teleology and classification."</p> <p>Kelli Williams has an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Yale University. This is her second solo show with the gallery. Her work was exhibited in The Incomplete, curated by Manon Slome and Hubert Neumann, Chelsea Art Museum, New York. She has participated in The Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational exhibition in New York and "Through the Looking Glass" at Galerie Bob van Orsouw in Zurich, Switzerland. </p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6 pm. For further information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1898 Exhibition: Wendy White <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Up w/Briquette"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 23 - May 22, 2010</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, April 23, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1900"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/33/33756.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>Wendy White, <em>Installation view of "Up w/ Briquette"</em>, 2010</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition by Wendy White entitled Up w/Briquette. In her second show at the gallery, the artist incorporates many techniques familiar to her work, such as multiple canvases configured to read as a whole, aggressive line work, acrid colors, and a generous helping of black paint. Added to the mix are outlines of letters and sculptural attachments which mimic written language. </p> <p>White comments on the title: "The phrase 'Up w/Briquette' champions the unaesthetic... a charcoal briquette is a dirty, sooty object with a paradoxically dainty French name.... and it's an ordinary part of backyard American lexicon. The original pronunciation endures every barbecue." This offhanded statement belies the sheer visual impact and complexity of her large scale, vibrant canvases. </p> <p>Language and communication figure prominently in White's works. Billboards, street signage, and graffiti all express a kind of communication that White subverts and strips of its manipulative associations, forcing a querying rather than consumed response. If language contains within it the essence of a culture, then White's canvases can be seen as approaching the fragmented, cursory modes of interaction that take place in our daily lives. Territories suggest text, but there are lines missing, messages truncated, and forms reversed. By using component canvases, White forms a commentary on all sorts of concepts from modernism to urban planning and the contemporary obsession with compartmentalization of space. </p> <p>White's recent exhibitions include Feel Rabid or Not, Galeria Moriarty, Madrid, Spain; Borderland Abstraction, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; Maximal Minimal, Primopiano, Lugano, Switzerland; Quick While Still, Heist Gallery, New York, NY and Motus Fort, Tokyo, Japan. Upcoming exhibitions include Platinum Metre, Aschenbach & Hofland, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. A solo exhibition is scheduled for September at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, <span class="caps">IL.</span></p> <p>A 40-page, fully illustrated catalog is available.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays 10 - 6 pm. For further information and/or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1900 Exhibition: "Self-Fulfilling Prophecies" <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 4 - April 17, 2010</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, March 4, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1875"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/32/32725.jpeg" alt="" height="360" width="492" /></a> <p>"Self-Fulfilling Prophecies", <em>Installation view</em>, 2010</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Dike Blair<br /> Nathan Coley<br /> Rineke Djkstra<br /> Tracey Emin<br /> Jeppe Hein<br /> Zoe Leonard<br /> Justin Lieberman<br /> Adam McEwen<br /> Jonathan Messe<br /> Jonathan Monk<br /> Dave Muller<br /> Todd Norsten<br /> Anselm Reyle<br /> Tom Sachs<br /> Jessica Stockholder<br /> Banks Violette<br /> James Welling<br /> Johannes Wohnseifer</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a group exhibition entitled, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies. The works in this show reveal a swaggerless, off-handed confidence, and are linked aesthetically by their creators' overt use of a myriad of contemporary tropes. Minimalism; monochromatic painting; use of language/text; ordinary objects made extraordinary by context; all these make appearances. But appearances can be deceiving, as this generation of artists have dissected and assimilated the methods of their predecessors, and have reinvented the endgame, completely fresh and in their own image. Instead of emulation, these artists have created doppelgangers of a familiar approach. Blurring the lines between irony and sincerity, these artists have obliterated the expectations of either conceit, throwing the viewer momentarily into a bit of a quandary. The dry delivery of a line/image/context, which seems funny at first, becomes a genuine, inclusive observation.</p> <p>Slick surfaces and meticulous presentation, distinctive of works that espouse aesthetic distance, permeate the exhibition. Yet that emblem of contemporary art is both highlighted and violated, often within the same works. Cool and obtuse examinations have been exchanged for real emotional investment; reflection and glint of light project pleasure at face value, allowing for a communication that is ultimately rooted not in judgment, but curiosity. This frank and straightforward approach frequently overwhelms, rendering the viewer incapable of neatly resolving what is seen, while succinctly capturing the mood of a generation who have crossed over the precipice of the 20th century and is poised solidly at the beginning of 21st. </p> <p>Self-Fulfilling Prophecies will be on view in both Leo Koenig Inc. and Leo Koenig Inc., Projekte Hours for both galleries will be Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6 pm. For further information and/or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1875 Exhibition: Les Rogers "Last House" <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 8 - February 20, 2010</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, January 8, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1844"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/30/30949.jpeg" alt="" height="332" width="500" /></a> <p>Les Rogers, <em>Installation view</em>, 2010</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by Les Rogers entitled Last House. </p> <p>In previous work, Rogers has incorporated quotation and appropriation from a variety of sources, both historical and popular. In this show, Rogers continues to move away from this, creating his own visual dictum, eschewing quoting particular works while instead making gestural references that give cues to a variety of antecedents</p> <p>The exhibition Last House is partly inspired by new surroundings. Moving between the diaphanous haze of memory and the sharp focus of the immediate, Rogers creates paintings that beguile with possibilities. Originating with a glance at something vaguely familiar, the paintings unfold themselves to the viewer gradually. The large and medium scaled works allude to wide genus of painting ranging from landscapes to interior scenes; still lifes to nudes. Rogers' approach encourages a sort of mimetic syncopation, providing a palette that is at once comforting and slightly foreboding,</p> <p>In the fragmentary nature of this body of work, we are given snippets of information, slivers of light that illuminate a transitory moment, but the "whole" is never revealed. Form gives way to atmospheric perspective, as the canvases present narratives that are open-ended and questioning. The artist's effortless merging of abstraction and realism; the familiar and arcane, allows entry into a world that the viewer can ultimately make his/her own.</p> <p>Les Rogers holds a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from Rhode Island School of Design. He has exhibited internationally, most recently at galleries such as Galleria Marabini, Bologna, Italy, Galeria Maisterravalbuena, Madrid, Spain, Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris, France, and Karlheinz Meyer, Karlsrue, Germany. Les Rogers lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays 10 - 6 pm. For further information and/or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1844 Exhibition: Nicole Eisenman <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 30 - December 23, 2009</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 30, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1796"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/29/29949.jpeg" alt="" height="332" width="500" /></a> <p>Nicole Eisenman, <em>Installation view</em>, 2009</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by Nicole Eisenman.</p> <p>Nicole Eisenman moves deftly in and out of genres, sifting through both history and contemporary philosophical concerns with a poignant and searing personal lens. In this series of paintings, Eisenman's wit, facility and sheer visual eloquence are exemplified. Co-mingled tropes suggest the conflict of the thinking contemporary artist struggling with both the ordinary and the immense issues of the day. </p> <p>When recently interviewed about her new series of works, Eisenman said this:</p> <p>"There's a whole genre of paintings, particularly French ones, of people eating and drinking, and the beer garden seems to be the equivalent, for certain residents of twenty-first-century Brooklyn, of the grand public promenades and social spaces of the nineteenth century. It's where we go to socialize, to commiserate about how the world is a fucked-up place and about our culture's obsession with happiness."</p> <p>Communication, or perhaps the futility of it, seems to be a lingering premise in these visually hypnotic and psychologically fraught paintings. The large and medium scaled works depict group scenes at beer gardens, conversations between various night creatures at a dinner table, and a couple langorously reclining. Color and pattern play a pivotal role in the accessibility of these works. Fascinated by shifting ways of seeing, Eisenman acknowledges pattern recognition as an integral aspect of visual communication as well as a tool to vary perception.</p> <p>Though coupled or grouped together, Eisenman's canvases are populated with characters that seem adrift in their own thoughts. The scenes are suspended in that comforting "golden moment" at night before things go one way or another. The artist's proclivity for painting each character differently heightens the sense of "being alone in a crowd." Throughout, Eisenman offers an insight into the isolation experienced in the pursuit of artistic creation and the very human need to seek diversion from that same pursuit. </p> <p>Nicole Eisenman currently has a solo exhibition at the Tang Museum, Skidmore College, <span class="caps">NY.</span> She has also had solo shows at the Kunsthalle, Zurich, Switzerland, Barbara Weiss Gallery, Berlin, Germany, and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, in Mexico City, The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, The Centraal Museum Utrecht, Holland and the San Francisco Art Institute. Gallery hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays 10 - 6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1796 Exhibition: Naomi Fisher <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"The Brave Keep Undefiled A Wisdom Of Their Own"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 18 - October 24, 2009</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, September 18, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1786"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/30/30052.jpeg" alt="" height="331" width="500" /></a> <p>Naomi Fisher, <em>Installation view</em>, 2009</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Naomi Fisher<br /> "The Brave Keep Undefiled, A Wisdom of Their Own"</p> <p>September 18th through October 24th, 2009<br /> Opening reception Friday September 18th 6-8 pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Naomi Fisher entitled "The Brave Keep Undefiled Wisdom of Their Own." With this exhibition, Fisher strives to explore the reciprocal relationship between the force of nature and its tendency towards chaos as it stands in opposition to the order and structure of civilization and culture. It is an investigation through movement, landscape costume and adornment.</p> <p>Figuring most significantly in this new series of photographs, videos and drawings, are the women depicted in the images. Some of these women have been photographed by the artist for over a decade, and are all trained dancers and performers whose personal visions parallel those of Ms. Fisher's. Other intrinsic elements of inspiration for the exhibition came from the location (Oleta State Park), and a chance happening of what can only be described as the "Garage Sale of a Lifetime" where the artist stumbled upon the sale of the contents of an unpaid storage unit in Miami. There, Fisher amassed 3 garbage bags full of clothes that ended up containing vintage Versace. </p> <p>"Camp Primitivo" was the name which was given to Fisher's "bubble world," and leopard print was their uniform. Oleta State Park, is on an island in Biscayne Bay between North Miami Beach and the City of Miami. Truly hidden in plain site, the park has miles of mangroves, forests and beaches nestled between metropolis and ocean. Life there was basic, food, beach, insect repellent, sleep, cook dinner over a campfire, drink, dance, thunderstorm, scream, repeat. The resulting images convey an atmosphere of spontaneous expression tinged with just a bit of mystery. The women, clad in their leopard-print and sequined outfits, exude an impulsive and unguarded playfulness, while at the same time leaving the viewer with the feeling that they might never really know the whole story. </p> <p>Growing up in Miami and traveling abroad while her botanist father collected and studied tropical plants has given Ms. Fisher a unique perspective to recontextualize the modernist fascination with the tropics and the "wild" women for whom the jungle is their natural habitat. The images in this exhibition are a culmination of a project where the artist invited four women to camp with her and shoot for 9 days straight. The intimacy is apparent in the images. For the duration of the project each performer was able to tap into a reservoir of darkness and emotion which was effortlessly communicated with humor and abandon. Likewise, the artist's direction became an intuitive, and organic process. This seamless reciprocal gesture could only be the result of years of familiarity and collaboration.</p> <p>Naomi Fisher is an artist born and raised in Miami. Fisher has exhibited internationally in such venues as the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev; Halle fur Kunst, Luneburg; Kemper Museum, Kansas City; Kunsthalle Wein, Vienna; Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; Deste Foundation, Athens; and the New Museum, <span class="caps">NY. </span> Fisher graduated summa cum laude with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1998, and is a recipient of a 2008 Knight Arts Challenge Grant from the John and James L. Knight Foundation. She also co-founded and jointly runs the Bas Fisher Invitational, an artist run alternative art space in Miami.</p> <p>The artist would like to thank Jacqueline Fritz, Nancy Garcia, Jessie Gold, Elizabeth Hart, and Nikki Rollason for their inspiring performances. </p> <p>Special thanks to Knight Arts Challenge Grant from the John and James L. Knight Foundation. </p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10-6pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1786 Exhibition: "Get It Right Back To Where We Started From..." <div class="exhibition-subtitle">Selections from the collection of Norman Dubrow</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">August 2 - September 4, 2009</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1778"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/27/27061.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>"Get It Right Back to Where We Started From...", <em>Installation view</em>, 2009</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Works by: Gelitin, Torben Giehler, Jonathan Meese, Erik Parker, Les Rogers, Lisa Ruyter and Bill Saylor</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a group exhibition of works by artists currently or formerly represented by Leo Koenig Inc. entitled Get Right Back to Where we started From. </p> <p>This exhibition is equal parts anniversary show, and a celebration of the collection of an early and most enthusiastic patron of the gallery. It has been ten years since Leo Koenig Inc. first opened its doors in a Williamsburg space by a then, 21 year old gallerist. Even compared to these strange times, with its unique set of economic hardships, ten years ago, Leo Koenig Inc. was "flying without a safety net" so to speak. Contrary to myth and rumour, Leo Koenig Inc. opened its doors without a silent partner, or monetary backing. The gallery was dependant solely upon the exuberance of its creator, the talents of its artists, and perhaps most importantly the support of a few gutsy and discerning collectors. Among those, one of the most beloved has always been Norman Dubrow. </p> <p>Over the course of the years, Mr. Dubrow unassuming, and always enthusiastic, has amassed a fantastic collection of works by an impressive array of now prominent artists, only a few of whom were represented by this gallery. The truth is that Mr. Dubrow's unflinching support was critical to many of us years ago, and he continues to be a voice that remains strong and sage...and for that, for him, and the few like him, we are grateful. </p> <p>This show is by no means a survey of the last 10 years that the gallery has been in existence. It is instead a glimpse back at some memorable exhibitions, a seedling of a vision, and a toast to the next 10. </p> <p>For further information please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery. Summer gallery hours are Monday through Friday 10-6pm.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1778 Exhibition: Bill Saylor <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"If fantasies came by the gallon, this baby could run forever"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 5 - July 20, 2009</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, June 5, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1702"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/25/25841.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>Bill Saylor, <em>Installation view</em>, 2009</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Bill Saylor. </p> <p>For this exhibition, Saylor continues to meld together a profuse and varied imagery of the mechanical and the organic, high and low, sublime and ludicrous, which results in an intoxicating hybrid. Frenetic environments arise from the artist navigating freely between gestural brushwork, alternatingly rough and detailed drawing, text, collage, and incongruous sculpture that is meant to be considered as a whole.</p> <p>Saylor often begins with notational drawings that have evolved into a highly personalized shorthand and anchoring force for his paintings and sculptures. In the canvases, superficial links to an abstract expressionist past are in evidence, however, in the artists hand, the confrontational machismo that ab-ex was known for, is subverted through unlikely juxtapositions, humorous text and collages. There also seems to be a continuing effort to re-code the visual bombardment of contemporary city life into a dialogue with gestural painting. For all the initial chaos that is recorded by the eye however, a teetering cohesion emerges.</p> <p>In the past, Saylor's work has been described as being tuned in to a particularly American iconography. With this in mind, in his new sculptures, Saylor is in effect memorializing an imminent "dinosaur," the V8 high performance engine. These striking relics have been transformed into colorful pop-elegies for a soon to be bygone era, while offering a glimpse to a potential future, mutating forms into a playful and eloquent mechanical/biological amalgam. As the title suggests, "if fantasies came by the gallon, this baby could run forever...</p> <p>Bill Saylor has exhibited internationally and has been included in such shows as The Peanut Gallery, curated by Joe Bradley, Journal Gallery, Brooklyn <span class="caps">NY,</span> Kults, Werewolves and Sarcastic Hippies, Yerba Buena Art Center, San Francisco, <span class="caps">CA., </span>and Contemporary Painters; curated by Alex Katz, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, <span class="caps">ME. </span> He has recently been selected for the Chinati Foundation artist residency in Marfa <span class="caps">TX. </span> He lives and works in <span class="caps">NYC.</span></p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1702 Exhibition: Greg Bogin <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"I Want to Be Your Friend"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 17 - May 30, 2009</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, April 17, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1692"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/24/24861.jpeg" alt="" height="325" width="500" /></a> <p>Greg Bogin, <em>Installation view of "I Want to Be Your Friend"</em>, 2009</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>"I Want to Be Your Friend"<br /> April 17th through May 30th, 2009<br /> Opening Reception Friday April 17th 6-8 pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by Greg Bogin. In lieu of a press release, the artist requested that we simply share this statement regarding this particular body of work. </p> <p>"The work for this exhibition was made over the last three or four months, a time when anxiety seemed to be everywhere. The concern I felt created the necessity to find a "happy place" where I could escape to. </p> <p>I worked (as I frequently do) opposite my mental state. I put aside the feeling that signs seemed to point to the futility of any creative gesture. I continued working and developing the same themes that have always occupied my work. I am reticent to delve into explanations as to what these themes may or may not be as the works are open to the interpretation of the viewer, each of whom will bring their own set of ideas and beliefs to the experience. Painting is a visual language and as such words do poor job of translation. Trying to understand what a painting means...gets in the way of understanding the meaning of the painting."</p> <p>Greg Bogin has exhibited extensively in the <span class="caps">US, </span>and internationally. His work has been included in exhibitions such as Minimalism and After <span class="caps">IV, </span>at the Damler Chrysler collection, Berlin Germany, Glee: Painting Now, curated by Amy Cappelazzo and Jessica Hough, at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Aldrich CT and The Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art Palm Beach Miami and Arte Americana Ultimo Decennio, (American Art of the Last Decade), curated by Claudio Spadone, Ravenna, Italy (cat.). Greg Bogin lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10-6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1692 Exhibition: Ridley Howard <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 6 - April 11, 2009</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, March 6, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1667"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/23/23515.jpeg" alt="" height="329" width="500" /></a> <p>Ridley Howard, <em>Installation view</em>, 2009</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by Ridley Howard. Known for his enigmatic portraits, the artist continues his exploration of internal landscapes and external artifice. </p> <p>Howard's psychologically taut works reveal an artist that easily incorporates the vernacular of vastly different genres of painting, among them, high renaissance, pop art, and abstraction. Subtle and deceptively straightforward, the paintings invoke a sense of monumentality while still retaining a lingering intimacy. </p> <p>In this most recent group of paintings, the artist depicts singular subjects in various settings. Elegant, and beautiful, the people inhabiting the landscapes reveal a complexity in their isolation. A filmic narrative emerges, coaxed by visual cues. The figures in soft focus invite speculation into their repose or watchfulness while strict delineation of the canvas, contracts or expands the frame. In this way Howard's work brings to mind cinematic tropes Antonioni or Godard. Contrasting the singular figure with an almost monochromatic background compels the viewer into the frame to consider the subject even more closely, inviting a variety of interpretations.</p> <p>Ridley Howard has exhibited extensively. His work has been included in shows at institutions such as the Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville <span class="caps">TN, </span>and The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, <span class="caps">GA.</span> He holds an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Tufts University and has been the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Ridley Howard lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturdays 10-6pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1667 Exhibition: "Born in the morning, dead by night" <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 16 - February 28, 2009</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, January 16, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1606"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/22/22271.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>Born in the morning, dead by night, <em>Installation view</em>, 2009</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>"Born in the morning, dead by night"<br /> Curated by Tony Matelli</p> <p>January 16th through February 28th, 2009</p> <p>Wayne Atkins, Mathew Brannon, Olaf Breuning, Tom Costa, Ceal Floyer, Dana Hoey, Matt Johnson, Peter Land, Kris Martin, Cristina Lei Rodriguez, David Shrigley, Sleep, Guy Richards Smit</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to start off the New Year with a group exhibition curated by Tony Matelli. </p> <p>At the beginning of the day our hopes are always high. As the sun burns off the morning dew we are alive with promise...until the shit hits the fan. The impossible complications of daily life wear us down until our plans and desires become hopelessly tangled and compromised. Our day becomes a desperate struggle to maintain coherence, stave off collapse and preserve whatever beauty we may find along the way. The impermanence and futility of our ambitions become clear; times change, joy and sorrow come and go, the city turns into an uninhabited moor, the house becomes occupied by different tenants, desire turns rotten. We slowly turn into shadows of our selves.<br /> We are dead by night. Tomorrow is another day. This is a balancing act.</p> <p>"Born in the morning, dead by night" focuses on the difficulty of maintaining stability in life and the tension between the vitality of hope and the disappointment of failure.</p> <p>-Tony Matelli</p> <p>For more information or visuals please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at info@leokoenig.com. Gallery hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays 10 am-6 pm.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1606 Exhibition: Christian Schumann <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Deepest, Darkest"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">November 21, 2008 - January 3, 2009</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, November 21, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1579"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/21/21393.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>Christian Schumann, <em>Installation view of Deepest, Darkest</em>, 2008</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Deepest, Darkest<br /> November 21st, 2008 through January 10th, 2009<br /> Opening reception: Friday, November 21st 6-8 pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of Deepest Darkest a solo exhibition of new works on paper by Christian Schumann. For the exhibition, Schumann continues the contemplative, intricate and labor-intensive works that has distinguished his body of work for the past three years. </p> <p>Upon entering the gallery, the works, all identically sized, appear as abstract ones. Upon closer inspection the drawings reveal impossibly dense, secret worlds. The manner of improvisation is similar to Schuman's previous abstract work in that marks are placed upon fields of color. There are also distant links to comic books as many of the works seem to evoke nano-cities overrun with self-replicating technology, and androids melding into organic matter that has begun to proliferate. Hybrids of organic and artificial become enmeshed with one another on fields of gradating color imbued by an inexplicable melancholy. </p> <p>Schumann describes these works as impoverished landscapes that relate a speculative fiction. The title alludes to the darkest impulses of mankind. The subconscious is a referent as well. Though the idea of an inner landscape is contrived, it is still valid. There is also a nod to American notions of the exotic, and the tendency of a socially oppressive/restrictive society to only allow for forms of subconscious release to be exposed via the conduits of taboo.</p> <p>Christian Schumann has had numerous solo exhibitions worldwide. His work has been included in exhibitions such as "The Panic Room," - works from the Dakis Janou Collection, The Deste Foundation, Athens Greece, "Proliferation," at <span class="caps">MOCA</span> Los Angeles, and "Pop Surrealism," Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. His work has been included in public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Dallas Museum. Christian Schumann currently lives and works in Los Angeles.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1579 Exhibition: Jeff Elrod <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 17 - November 15, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 17, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1564"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/19/19830.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>Jeff Elrod, <em>Installation view</em>, 2008</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Jeff Elrod<br /> October 17th through November 15th, 2008<br /> Opening reception, Friday, October 17th, 2008, 6-8 pm</p> <p>"Computer art is the last stance of abstract art"<br /> -Jasia Reichardt, The computer in Art</p> <p>"Every person has the right to find the right distance for himself.<br /> Move closer to view colours.<br /> Every person has the right to find the right height for himself.<br /> Wait for a certain time until your own brain rhythms are brought into phase with those <br /> of the machine"...<br /> - -Brion Gysin<br /> - <br /> Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by Jeff Elrod. For this exhibition the artist has created a striking series of large scale and medium sized works that continue his exploration between the two worlds of digital anonymity and analog variation. </p> <p>Jeff Elrod begins with a perfected process, which he terms "Frictionless Drawing." The drawings are made with a computer mouse, which allows the hand to glide into a smooth detached aesthetic. For this exhibition, all the paintings have emanated from variations made to a single drawing file. Completely subverting the exactitude of digital technologies, the artist's mark making initiates a randomness, which traverses the lines between chaos and repetition on the finished canvas. The negative field plays an important role in all of the paintings, as often, deleted information becomes the image.</p> <p>These new works provide a visceral response that is heightened by a predominately black and white palette. Managing at once to be physically imposing and visually direct, the paintings still exhibit a sense of buoyancy. The works also hint at a wide range of influences that are outside the realm of formal abstraction. Punk graphics, "cut up" technique and obscure typography all make appearances in the paintings.</p> <p>Jeff Elrod has exhibited extensively both in the <span class="caps">U.S. </span>and in Europe. His work has been included in exhibitions at such institutions as the Chinati Foundation, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Kunsthalle Berlin. Most recently his work has been seen in "The Incomplete" at the Chelsea Museum, <span class="caps">NYC </span>and "Beneath the Underdog" at Gagosian Gallery. Jeff Elrod will have a solo show at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2009. He lives and works in Marfa Texas.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1564 Exhibition: "Call the Interruptions Days" <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 5 - October 11, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, September 5, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1461"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/18/18753.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>"Call the Interruptions Days", <em>Installation view</em>, 2008</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>"Call the Interruptions Days"</p> <p>a group exhibition curated by Brandon Lattu<br /> <br /> September 5th through October 11th, 2008<br /> Opening reception Friday September 5th, 6-8pm</p> <p>Works By:</p> <p>David Hughes<br /> JP Munro<br /> Ruby Neri<br /> Jon Pestoni<br /> Amy Sarkisian<br /> Jeremy Sigler<br /> Tyler Vlahovich</p> <p>Leo Koenig, Inc. is pleased to present, "Call the Interruptions Days", a group exhibition curated by Brandon Lattu. While any over-arching theme would be inappropriate for an exhibition of artists so disparate in method, this group, as a whole, does exhibit tendencies in common. Definitive choices made between component signs within an individual work are emphasized over a serial reliance on a type of image or method that "brands" a signature style. Lattu states "this emphasis on experimentation composed between signs within a single work seems to be a means to impact a complexity on individual artworks that has largely been overlooked in the shadow of Warhol, as well as the rise of photography in the artworld. It is tied to the demise of a recognized canon, that has accompanied the impulse to quotation in art during post-modernism." These works do not rely upon a quotation of a pop-culture image to re-site the individual and the activity of art-making. Rather, they emphasize the decisions made arranging complicated signs in a manner that is analogous to the complexities of our world. </p> <p>It's evident from the range of methods and references employed in the works, that these artists have acknowledged the legacies of minimalism and conceptualism. The work however, is clearly energized by the possibilities afforded by the discrete space of the artwork, fluently combining the materials, shapes and languages at hand. Construction in painting, sculpture, poetry and weaving is favored over the choice of a proxy image.</p> <p>Untitled Picture by Jon Pestoni speaks directly through varied, hierarchical subject matter. The single piece of depicted information in black and white at the center of the canvas, circled by golden loops and cornered by random bits of alphabet, gives the viewer a compact sense of pictorial space. It is an abstraction whose graphic variables sit extremely close to the surface and provide the viewer with a sense of hyper clarity. The picture's discovered composition; its unrefined, bumpy surface, mixed with the deliberateness of the subject matter, creates a complex read of representation and abstraction. As a sign, the work places the subject of painting in quotations; filled with references. Untitled Picture is an easel painting made without a plan. It's part old and part new. </p> <p>Amy Sarkisian will exhibit Rug Sculpture, a sculpture woven in the latch-hook method that has the appearance of an oriental rug. Presented on a low pedestal, this sculpture first appears slightly out of focus, or faintly vibrating. With more scrutiny, one becomes aware that the soft surface is made of yarn far too large to render the minute detail of Oriental rugs. Traditionally, this detail communicates the rug's narrative, as well as providing a measure by which the quality of the rug is </p> <p>judged. In fact, Sarkisian's sculpture was modeled after a range of machine- produced imitation oriental rugs. Through her lower resolution production of the work, Sarkisian has transformed her subject, utilizing the moment of fascination to connect her sculpture through the common mass produced knockoff and back to a wonderfully detailed example of cultural craft production. While it is secondary in the work, one realizes that this piece reverses and revitalizes the turnabout that Carl Andre's metal floor pieces performed from the handcrafted to the machine produced.</p> <p>Ruby Neri's two paintings show a lightness of touch rare in experimental work today. The application of paint is distinct in each area of both paintings, structuring the composition with a visual and tactile code that ties the speed, color, form, and coverage of paint to the way that each section is viewed. Particularly, the use of color in the work is cumulative, suggesting a kind of physical joining relating to her work in sculpture that is not represented in this exhibition.</p> <p>David Hughes presents two sculptures, one updated from 2000 and one from 2008. The older sculpture is a linked and woven body with appliqués that sits on the ground like a small landscape. The interplay between the landscape form and the variety of signs produced in the appliqués is elaborate, producing references that range from topical to extremely oblique. The new sculpture consists of acrylic pedestals with two books on top, one of images and one of writings. These are meant to relate to each other by proximity as well as directly by subjects presented within. The respective contents of each book encompass narratives and digressions neither of which is specified in any direct manner.</p> <p>The two drawings by JP Munro: "The Triumph of Death" and "Odin" are works meticulously composed and produced in an ostensibly pre-modern manner. Munro's work performs a transposition, to make drawings and paintings with a means and imagery from before Manet and Courbet when the canon of western art was not broken by the advent of modernism. There is little doubt that this strategy utilizes the re-contextualization of conceptualism, but through an understanding of the works' reception instead of an alteration of its making. So Munro's works become something isolated in time, not truly of then but not reveling in the novelty of now. Nonetheless, they display the myth, violence, fantasy, and ceremony that is the world of today as well as the past.</p> <p>The works made of black and white clay and poetry in the exhibition are by Jeremy Sigler. An artist that has straddled the poetry and art worlds for the last ten years, Sigler is represented in this exhibition by two works that address pictorial circumstances. In the piece that begins on the large wall in the front room of the gallery, straddles a pull out door in the liminal space of the doorway, and ends in the smaller back gallery; Sigler addresses the gentle hostility of romanticism. The work in the back gallery more overtly uses the ability of words to metonymically produce an absent image and links this image to a passage of time. Both works are constructed of the elemental characteristics of language, that is, the basic connotations of syllabic parts instead of a readymade selection of words or phrases.</p> <p>The 10 foot, 4 inch tall painting in the front gallery is a recent work by Tyler Vlahovich. Inspired by textile design and early modern painters such as Frantisek Kupka, Vlahovich activates the white ground as a separate color and an active participant in the growth of the painting. The works are made in a constant state of decision-making, each mark, each decision is a visible contribution to the variations of form in the field. Significantly Vlahovich does not paint over applied paint, but works off of each decision. The variation of each brush mark strains against the idea of a homogenous field, each producing a discrete composition with surrounding marks.</p> <p>For further information or visuals, please contact the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1461 Exhibition: Leo Koenig Inc. Contemporary Art <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Between Us..."</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">August 9 - August 10, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, August 9, 11:00 AM - 7:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1458"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/18/18010.jpeg" alt="View of barn (photo courtesy of Oto Gillen)" height="360" width="465" /></a> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. Contemporary Art, <em>View of barn</em>, 2008</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Including:<br /> <span class="caps">AIDAS BAREIKIS, GREG BOGIN, NICOLE EISENMAN, JUSTIN FAUNCE, TORBEN GIEHLER, RIDLEY HOWARD, TONY MATELLI, LES ROGERS, BILL SAYLOR, DAVID SCHER </span>and <span class="caps">ANKE WEYER</span></p> <p>Renowned international gallerist Leo Koenig opened his new satellite space on August 9th, 11 am -7 pm. Housed in a converted barn, Leo Koenig Inc. Contemporary Art, will debut with a group exhibition of personally selected contemporary artists and a program of emerging artists curated by Meghan DellaCrosse, also a longtime Andes resident. This program featured a performance by emerging artists; Trisha Baga, Phillip Gabriel, Nik Gelormino, Keegan Monaghan and Nick Parker.</p> <p>BY <span class="caps">APPOINTMENT ONLY</span></p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1458 Exhibition: Wendy White <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Autokennel"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 20 - August 1, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, June 20, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1428"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/17/17711.jpeg" alt="Autokennel installation view" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>Wendy White, <em>Autokennel installation view</em>, 2008</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>June 20th through August 1st, 2008<br /> Opening reception: Friday June 20th, 6-8pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new works by Wendy White. </p> <p>For her first solo exhibition at the gallery, Wendy White has produced a body of work that is visually striking, physically confrontational and intellectually engaging. White's compositions utilize a distinctive abstract language that alludes to the bombardment of the everyday. Urban sprawl, space junk, graffiti, buried hazardous material, and the accumulation of refuse are punctuated by heavy black areas that map a direct trail from the ubiquitous to the subconscious.</p> <p>Unafraid to conjure real feeling and emotion in these works, White gives new form to the bombast of rock concerts and the mass elation of sports arenas. Built organically and intuitively, these works balance accident and scrappy paint handling with compositional coherence. While White seems to work with reckless abandon, her off-kilter compositions prove well considered with time, though perhaps deliberately confounding. Just when one begins to get involved in a lush patch of painterly abstraction, a field of blank white canvas, almost large enough to topple the composition, is encountered. Flatness combats depth, black is balanced against white, and fluorescent colors fade and emerge on top of a surface that is consistently finessed. </p> <p>Wendy White has an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Rutgers University. She has been honored with several awards including a 2005 George & Helen Segal Foundation Grant and a 2003 Space Program Studio Grant from the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, New York, <span class="caps">NY.</span> She has had previous solo exhibitions at Sixtyseven in New York and Solomon Projects in Atlanta. Recent group exhibitions include Galerie Markus Winter in Berlin, Thrust Projects in New York and Galeria Moriarty in Madrid, where she is preparing for a solo exhibition in 2009. Wendy White lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>Summer gallery hours will remain the same as usual gallery hours which are Tuesday through Saturday 10-6. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1428 Exhibition: Tom Sanford <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Mr. Hangover"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 9 - June 14, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, May 9, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1423"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/16/16532.jpeg" alt="" height="241" width="500" /></a> <p>Tom Sanford, <em>Installation view of Mr. Hangover</em>, 2008</p> <p> varies with installation </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">TOM SANFORD</span><br /> "Mr. Hangover"<br /> May 9th through June 14th, 2008,<br /> Opening reception, May 9th, 6-8pm</p> <p>Maybe we should just forget the whole statesman, warrior scientist, artist, thinker, businessman- idols of that type are dead or dying surely? People who cling to such figures- are they just slave to nostalgia, nostalgia for the real, for the heights and depths to which earlier ages aspired? Are they epochal snobs, so to speak, anachronisms clinging to the judgment that pop culture is just too pop to be taken seriously? Are they just refusing to believe that the place of real heroes could be usurped by mere performers-when in fact, that is exactly what has happened? - Thomas de Zengotita, Mediated How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It</p> <p>I like people who are really f---ed up. ... I am very high strung and suffer from multiple personalities. Jane. She's crazy and she always wants to kill me. Tila. ... Poor Girl. ... She deserves a break. ... I do a lot of things that are self-destructive. ... I've always been a nerdy geek trapped inside a umm ... woman's body. Yea. ... That's me. People love me for some reason. I don't know why. ... I do but I just say I don't know why just to be modest. - Tila Tequila, star of A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, in a post on her MySpace page</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of by Tom Sanford entitled "Mr. Hangover." Featured in the exhibition are new works modeled after ubiquitous street posters that are plastered around most cities to advertise events, movies and products. Comprised entirely of hand painted posters that are unframed and tacked to the wall, they suggest influences that come as much from the broader consumer culture as they do from the arena of fine art. In "Mr. Hangover," Sanford references a world of disposable cultural objects and ephemera, and the glut experienced after being inundated by these elements. </p> <p>Tom Sanford's work is littered with the icons and detritus of pop culture obsessions. In this exhibition, these references become a fractal projection of his identity. Personal identification mixes with celebrity iconography offering glimpses into a lexicon of the artist's experience. These images exude a curious combination of veneration and disdain for the subjects depicted, even when (or especially when) the subject is the artist himself. </p> <p>Alternately sweet, sarcastic, caustic and mundane, Sanford briefly attempts to share a personal aside only to shout "gotcha!" with the next image. Tarnished sports heroes share the walls with portraits of cheap beers and even cheaper pop stars. Sometimes the stars are depicted as themselves, other times they are depicted as a character they play in a film or TV show. All the while, the quintessential New York paper coffee cup proclaims "It's Our Pleasure to Serve You." In the artist's own words, Sanford calls this his "mad magazine version of Marxist critique-and a subtle acknowledgement of the position of the artist in the culture economy." This presentation induces a dizzying push/pull, mimicking the schizophrenic nature of our contemporary surroundings and the way competing imagery and attitudes incessantly vie for our attention. </p> <p>Tom Sanford has a BA from Columbia University. This is his second solo exhibition at Leo Koenig Inc. Sanford recently exhibited at Galleri Faurschou in Copenhagen and he is preparing for a solo exhibition with Galerie Erna Hecey in Brussels. His work was seen in the group exhibitions "The Incomplete" at the Chelsea Museum and "Heroes!...like us?" at the Palazzo Delle Arti in Naples, Italy. He lives and works in New York City. </p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1423 Exhibition: Alexis Rockman <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"South"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 28 - April 26, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, March 28, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1350"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/15/15036.jpeg" alt="South" height="103" width="500" /></a> <p>Alexis Rockman, <em>South</em>, 2008</p> <p> Oil on gessoed paper, 75 x 358 3/4 inches </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Alexis Rockman<br /> "South," March 28th through April 26th, 2008<br /> Opening reception March 28th, 6-8 pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new works by <br /> Alexis Rockman. Inspired by the artist's recent trip to Antarctica, Rockman continues his recent exploration of painting landscape as an alchemical event. </p> <p>Anchoring the exhibit is South, a seven-panel work on paper that is over 30 feet long. South is a diaristic work about the 12-day voyage by ship from the tip of South America to the Antarctic Peninsula. Accompanying this piece is a suite of watercolors inspired by the trip, as well as an allegorical painting titled Food Chain (After Breughel) about the stress on the food chain in that fragile ecosystem.</p> <p>Foremost in Rockman's experience of the Antarctic was how alien its landscape is to the human perspective. The nearly hallucinatory experience of traveling among the glaciers had a profound impact on Rockman. "I've never seen anything like it. Ice conducts light, it gathers it and projects it at you. That is something that cannot really be photographed, so the piece becomes a construction of notes, memory, and photographic documentation," states Rockman. </p> <p>The terrain is inhospitable and most Antarctic life clings to the edge of the ice and coast. All human activity is limited to the artificial environment they bring with them, much like going to another planet. Rockman observed penguins, seals, whales and other players in the ecosystem. There was also a reminder of the legacy of human disaster in the area. Upon arriving at the Peninsula their ship, the Lindblad Endeavour, received a message that another ship, the Explorer, had hit a piece of ice and was sinking. The Endeavour was the first on the scene and they witnessed the foundering ship and the passengers stranded in lifeboats. This event is embedded as an incident in the work, overwhelmed by the vast landscape. </p> <p>Continuing Rockman's long-term interest in scientific pictorialism, South shows simultaneous views of above and below the water, allowing for the representation of the impossible. However, the artist's painting technique over the past few years has moved away from an illustrative approach--he allows the materials to interact in such a way that the act of painting both resembles and mimics the interaction of weather and landscape. </p> <p>Alexis Rockman has a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from the School of Visual Arts and has exhibited his work in galleries and institutions worldwide. A solo exhibition of Alexis Rockman's recent works on paper will be mounted at the Rose Museum, Brandeis University, in May. As well, the work "South" has already been chosen for an exhibition at Mass MoCA. Most recently he has had solo exhibitions at the <span class="caps">CAC</span> Cincinnati, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, Camden Art Centre, London, and the Wexner Center for the Arts, <span class="caps">OH. </span> Public collections that have acquired Rockman's work include the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, <span class="caps">NY, </span>and the Whitney Museum of American Art, <span class="caps">NY. </span> Rockman lives and works in New York City.<br /> Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1350 Exhibition: Aidas Bareikis <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Easy Times"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 21 - March 21, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, February 21, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1326"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/14/14401.jpeg" alt="Easy Times, 2007" height="276" width="368" /></a> <p>Aidas Bareikis, <em>Easy Times</em>, 2008</p> <p> Mixed media installation, Dimensions vary with installation </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Aidas Bareikis<br /> "Easy Times," Part <span class="caps">II, </span> February 21st, through March 21st , 2008</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. in pleased to open the second act of the solo exhibition of new work by Aidas Bareikis. This exhibition "Easy Times" is a re-interpretation of the artist's installation at the Athen's Biennial. With "Easy Times," Bareikis continues his rumination on the excruciating costs of sustaining the world's leisure class. </p> <p>In many ways this installation is one of gesture and negation. The artist regards his work as not involving strategies of deconstruction or post modernism. Bareikis utilizes spontaneity and inherently tempers it with a moral stance in order to underline the premise that there is no compromise with the indictment of history. </p> <p>Humanity's struggle with its history as it leaps into the future has always been a pervasive aspect of Bareikis's work. His process begins with impulse and a necessity to approach issues and observations that are uncomfortable, yet ubiquitous. Imbued with a feeling of haphazard cruelty, his installations are amazingly intricate and obsessive, often incorporating a tableaux of decaying grandeur. It is this dichotomy that the artist relies upon to communicate the inadequacies of contemporary existence, relating perhaps, that the more things change, the more they remain the same. </p> <p>Aidas Bareikis has exhibited extensively throughout the <span class="caps">U.S. </span>and Europe. Most recently his work has been seen in "Destroy Athens," the Athens Biennial of Contemporary Art, "Fancy Meetings," Locust Projects, Miami Fl., "When Humour Becomes Painful" at the Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland. He lives and works in <span class="caps">NYC.</span></p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1326 Exhibition: Lily Ludlow, Bill Saylor and Anke Weyer, Aaron Brewer <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 20 - March 21, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Wednesday, February 20, 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1325"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/14/14454.jpeg" alt="Installation view" height="305" width="500" /></a> <p>Aidas Bareikis presents Brewer, Ludlow, Saylor, Weyer, <em>Installation view</em>, 2008</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Aaron Brewer, Lily Ludlow, Bill Saylor and Anke Weyer,</p> <p>February 21 through March 21, 2008</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a group show curated by Aidas Bareikis. <br /> Bareikis has assembled these works by artists that he has admired and has had a dialogue with for several years. In these artists' disparate works, Bareikis detects a language that is instinctual and exhibiting what he calls a "Subjective <span class="caps">DNA,</span>" while possessing an abiding intellectual rigor. The codex that links these works are not reliant upon appropriation or quotational strategies. Instead, Bareikis sees these works linked more so by a trust in process, and demonstrating a courageousness in personal gesture.</p> <p>Aaron Brewer assemblages of often unidentifiable objects, paint, spray foam and other materials. Appearing as chaotic and unintentional gatherings of items and materials, Brewer plays with the notion of the complexity and incomprehensibility of daily existence. His sculptural examinations provide a plethora of physical and emotional relations ranging from uncomfortable to the humorous and absurd. </p> <p>Aaron Brewer is an artist, theorist, and curator, who has exhibited widely throughout the United States and Canada. He has contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogs and is a regular contributor to C Magazine based in Toronto. He is one of the original founders of <span class="caps">CANADA, </span>the New York based gallery. Brewer attended Tyler School of Art and Hampshire College, and lives and works in Los Angeles.</p> <p>Lily Ludlow contributes a painting in a muted palette. The painting shows two nude figures amidst a flurry of patterns, evoking both a tentative sensuality and a humorous aside on the male gaze.</p> <p>Lily Ludlow is best known as a designer for Imitation of Christ and one of the founders of Somnus, a collective that encompasses fashion, film and art and is represented by Canada Gallery</p> <p>Bill Saylor navigates freely between gestural brushwork, alternatingly rough and detailed drawing, street tag-like text, and collage. While initially chaos seems to rule, a second look reveals an intrinsic balance. Through this process, Saylor has found a territory where abstract expressionism, the rawness of punk rock, and pop art iconic imagery can coexist in one composition.</p> <p>Bill Saylor has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. He has had solo exhibitions at Leo Koenig Inc., New York, Hiromi Yoshi Gallery, Tokyo, and Galleri Loyal in Stockholm Sweden. He lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>Anke Weyer's paintings are dark, gestural, compositions of suprising complexity. While her paintings have a spiritual link to German expressionist painters such as Dix, Grosz and Kirchner, she retains a singular voice provocative voice. Weyer's brooding abstract works are an invitation to reflect and also be consumed by beauty. </p> <p>Anke Weyer is a graduate of the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste, Staedelschule, Frankfurt Germany where she studied under Per Kirkeby and has had a solo exhibition with Canada Gallery, <span class="caps">NY. </span> She lives and works in <span class="caps">NYC.</span></p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1325 Exhibition: Aidas Bareikis <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Fancy Meetings"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 10 - February 8, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, January 10, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1320"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/13/13210.jpeg" alt="Fancy Meetings, 2006-2008" height="313" width="500" /></a> <p>Aidas Bareikis, <em>Fancy Meetings</em>, 2008</p> <p> Mixed media installation, varies with installation </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Aidas Bareikis<br /> January 10th through February 8th, 2008<br /> Opening reception Thursday, January 10th, 6-8pm</p> <p>"The pool of energies which constitute Myths, which man no longer embodies, is embodied by the theatre. By this double, I mean the great magical agent of which theatre, through its forms, is only the figuration on its way to becoming the transfiguration. It is on the stage that the union of thought, gesture and action is reconstructed. And the double of the Theatre is reality untouched by the men of today." - Antonin Artaud</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to open the New Year with a solo exhibition of new work by Aidas Bareikis. In this exhibition, Bareikis presents a "theatrical spectacle devoid of entertainment." Conceived in two parts, his installation is an operatic progression. The first "Act" will be entitled "Fancy Meetings." This installation is vaguely inspired by a short story by Victor Pelevin where a ghost participates in a saturnalian ritual and meets a little girl, all the while unaware that he has passed to the spirit world. In "Fancy Meetings," Bareikis articulates the confrontation between self-awareness and alienation. The opulent creations not only do not recognize themselves, but they turn a blind eye to their own destruction.</p> <p>At the end of February, Bareikis will present the second act entitled "Easy Times." For this installation Bareikis focuses his ebulliently nightmarish vision on the excruciating costs of sustaining the world's leisure class. Here he posits a recognition of the burden that superficial grandiosisty engenders; yet all are complicit in being somehow unmoved by that recognition.</p> <p>Humanity's struggle with its history as it leaps into the future is a pervasive aspect of Bareikis's work. Contemporary anachronisms are collected and transformed into a tableaux of orchestrated chaos. Bareikis surveys the detritus resulting from consumer culture, environmental decay and decomposition alongside the philosophical and emotional limbo modern society can produce. The artist has confined his creations to a perceptual purgatory, between a world of excess and exploitation and one of conscience and intent. As well, Bareikis re-asserts that it is the artist role, not only to produce work that excites the eye, but also to expose the monsters created by the human condition.</p> <p>Aidas Bareikis has exhibited extensively throughout the <span class="caps">U.S. </span>and Europe. Most recently his work has been seen in "Destroy Athens," the Athens Biennial of Contemporary Art, "Fancy Meetings," Locust Projects, Miami Fl., "When Humour Becomes Painful" at the Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland. He lives and works in <span class="caps">NYC.</span></p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1320 Exhibition: Tony Matelli <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"The Old Me"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 10 - February 8, 2008</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, January 10, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1297"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/12/12839.jpeg" alt="The Old Me (detail)" height="240" width="360" /></a> <p>Tony Matelli, <em>The Old Me (detail)</em>, 2008</p> <p> steel, porcelain, paint, wick and liquid wax, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">TONY MATELLI</span><br /> The Old Me<br /> January 10th through February 8th, 2008<br /> Opening reception Thursday, January 10th, 6-8pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to open the New Year with a solo exhibition of two new works by Tony Matelli. For his exhibition entitled The Old Me, Matelli focuses on the ideas of rebirth and reinvention. Known for his hyper realistic sculptures, Matelli often depicts characters, or things that are barely getting by; things nearly dead, hopelessly lost or otherwise, totally unwanted. His interest has always been in the underdog. </p> <p>Serving as metaphors for our own social malaise and general struggle for survival, Matelli's sculptures mimic inner states of desolation, panic, ambivalence and despair. These states are often associated with trying to locate ones self within our social world. Formerly his works have addressed an inescapable sense of doom. In this particular exhibition, however, Matelli has introduced a glimmer of hope. </p> <p>With a nod to 17th century Vanitas painting, Matelli presents a double self-portrait; two caricatures of the artist, seemingly made of vegetable parts (they are in fact painted bronze). In one portrait the vegetables are fresh, and robust, while nearby they have rotted and collapsed. The image of the two figures is comically poignant, one contemplating its own inevitable demise. The glimmer exists in the form of some new growth sprouting from the rotted head. A resurrection. The other sculpture in the show is The Old Me. It consists of a few airbrushed headshots of the artist, placed on a table and burning. A classic Vanitas, The Old Me burns continuously throughout the course of the exhibition constantly reminding us that death always precedes rebirth.</p> <p>Tony Matelli has exhibited extensively in the US and in Europe. His work was most recently seen in "I am as you will be," the Skeleton in Art, Cheim & Reid Gallery, and "Baroque Biology" at the <span class="caps">CAC</span> Cincinnati, and currently in "Undone," at the Whitney Museum, Altria. Tony Matelli lives and works in <span class="caps">NYC.</span></p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1297 Exhibition: Norbert Bisky <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"what's wrong with me?"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">November 20 - December 29, 2007</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/999"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11876.jpeg" alt="" height="332" width="500" /></a> <p>Norbert Bisky, <em>Installation view of what's wrong with me?</em>, 2007</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For Immediate Release:<br /> Norbert Bisky<br /> "what's wrong with me?" <br /> November 20th through December 22nd, 2007<br /> Opening reception; Tuesday November 20th, 6-8pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by artist Norbert Bisky. Previously known for his paintings depicting predominately blond-haired blue-eyed boys engaged in feats of endurance, athleticism and occasional debauchery, Bisky's new works extends his vocabulary towards a new intensity. These paintings are both visually and thematically more aggressive. It is as if the violence and confrontation that was seething just beneath the surface in his previous series of works, has finally erupted, unfettered, onto the canvas. </p> <p>As opposed to a historical perspective, Bisky points out that currently, he is dealing with present day dilemmas, personal and universal. His figures, in many cases are floating, falling, tumbling, without any gravitational axis. Untethered to the earth, they inhabit a landscape thoroughly in flux. The tumult surrounding the figures is punctuated by the cross pollination of cues from Christian ideology, art history, gay culture, pornography and apocalyptic visions. The feigned utopia and ideal previously referenced in his work has all but evaporated. It is as if the artist has turned the intent of his paintings inside out, no longer finding any reason for restraint or polite analogy. The works are abrupt, insistent and crucially tied to this particular moment in time. In them, there exists a dizzying choice of belief systems, and amalgam of desire, though rooted still to the commonality of false promise.</p> <p>Bisky further highlights the urgency of these works by the utilization of bold color along with a peculiar arrangement of space on the canvas. Soft pastels have been replaced by deep and bright colors, partially inspired by the artists' various trips to Brazil. Objects and figures are arranged in many cases, as if a tornado has lifted everything off of their moorings, embodying a very personal sense of upheaval. In all, Bisky transmits an impression of instability on the canvas that distinctly resonates with our contemporary state of affairs. </p> <p>Norbert Bisky was born in Leipzig, Germany. He graduated from the Hochschule de Künste in Berlin where he was a master student of George Baselitz. He also studied with Jim Dine at the Salzburg Summer Academy. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museum Junge Kunst, Frankfurt, Manheimer Kunstverein, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius. Norbert Bisky's work has been acquired by many public collections, notably, The Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Museum of Modern Art, <span class="caps">NY,</span> Museum Der Bildenden Kunst, Leipzig. Norbert Bisky lives and works in Berlin. For further information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/999 Exhibition: Justin Faunce <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Pictophilia"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 19 - November 17, 2007</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1096"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/10/10819.jpeg" alt="Pictophilia, 2007" height="357" width="500" /></a> <p>Justin Faunce, <em>Pictophilia</em>, 2007</p> <p> Acrylic on canvas, 10 x 18 feet </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Justin Faunce<br /> "Pictophilia," October 19th through November 17th, 2007<br /> Opening reception Friday October 19th 6-8 pm</p> <p>"But certainly for the present age; which prefers the sign to the thing signified; the copy to the original, representation to reality; the appearance to the essence...illusion only is sacred; truth profane: Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as the truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness."<br /> <br /> - Ludwig Feuerbach, from the preface to the second edition of "The Essence of Christianity". </p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is delighted to announce a solo exhibition of new work by Justin Faunce entitled "Pictophilia." The centerpiece of the exhibition is a painting by the same name, measuring 10 × 18 feet, which is the culmination of the artist's exclusive efforts for the past year and a half.<br /> <br /> With this latest exhibition, Faunce explores the nature of our present day experience of reality. Pictophilia is a fetish involving the preference for pornographic images over actual physical contact. A true pictophiliac can only achieve gratification with the aid of pornographic images. Faunce conveys the premise that as a society, we are all becoming pictophiliacs, preferring the carefully packaged depictions of reality, to the actual experience. The constant bombardment of images and information that have been precisely altered to alleviate them from the burden of their context, in effect compromises the viewers ability to make critical examinations, thoughtful choices and commitments to meaningful social actions.</p> <p>Faunce attempts to turn the banal imagery of passive, consumerist titillation on its head. In his practice the artist has sifted through an enormous variety of found images, both familiar and obscure. With this considered arrangement, his visual language places familiar mediated images within a disturbing landscape of surprising malevolence. Faunces technique of obsessive devotion imbues the picture with an additional power of intent. Working with an extremely precise method of stenciling and layering paint, Faunce executes the work with an intense focus that concentrates on the smallest of details. This methodology and imagery, collude to spur an inquiry of intent that renders a passive response impossible. </p> <p>Justin Faunce received a Diploma from the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. His work has been seen in exhibitions such as Greater New York, PS 1 <span class="caps">MOMA,</span> Long Island City, New York, "Superstars," Kunsthalle Vienna, Austria, "Metro Pictures" at The Moore Space in Miami <span class="caps">FL, </span>and "Unlearning" at the <span class="caps">ICA,</span> Manitoba, Canada. For further information and visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1096 Exhibition: Christian Lemmerz <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"The Omen"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 11 - October 13, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, September 13, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/998"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/9/9972.jpeg" alt="" height="312" width="500" /></a> <p>Christian Lemmerz, <em>Installation view of The Omen - Abu Ghraib (The Lovers) in the foreground</em>, 2007</p> <p> White Carrara marble, 48 x 89 3/8 x 26 3/8 inches </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">CHRISTIAN LEMMERZ</span>: "The Omen"<br /> September 13th to October 13th, 2007</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo show by German artist Christian Lemmerz, entitled, "The Omen." Trained as a sculptor, Christian Lemmerz has worked with many different mediums, choosing materials according to their potential for making statements, and implementing his particular artistic strategies. Throughout his career, he has incorporated drawings, set designs, installations and films into his practice. </p> <p>For his show at Leo Koenig Inc., Christian Lemmerz has created a series of works that implicate the viewer in a world that is unrelentingly moribund. Anchored by large sculptures made from white marble, Lemmerz employs the figure to anthropomorphize our most basic fears. With titles such as "Abu Ghraib" and "Katrina," he confronts his audience with their own collective consciousness of present day terror, literally etched in stone. Lemmerz has stated in previous conversations that art has to operate in a profoundly disturbing way "like some smoldering danger where provocation entails confrontation." To this end, Lemmerz succeeds in these aims with his current exhibition "The Omen."</p> <p>The choices of so-called "classical" materials like marble and bronze help convey both the gravitas and absurdity of these fears. Though these materials have been deemed classical, Lemmerz perceives them as "contaminated". According to the artist, they represent among other things, kitsch, history and myth. The theatricality of these sculptures, some of which appear as tomb sculptures, blatantly critique our present day obsession with public displays of intense mourning, inevitably giving way to cowering fear where victims become symbols for political folly. The sculptures both negate the tawdry spectacle of national hysteria, and memorialize the absence of real grief, highlighting the requisite national amnesia that inevitably follows suit. </p> <p>Christian Lemmerz work has been included in numerous exhibitions, most recently a solo show at Horsens Kunstmuseum and is notably a part of the collection at The National Gallery of Art, Copenhagen, and the Saatchi Collection, <span class="caps">UK.</span><br /> He was born in Karlsruhe, Germany and now lives in Denmark.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh, or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/998 Exhibition: "You Always Move In Reverse," curated by Bjarne Melgaard <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 29 - July 31, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, June 29, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/930"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/8/8569.jpeg" alt="You Always Move In Reverse, Installation View (R. Bianco,J. Ono, R. Hawkins , B. Wurtz, J. Kristiansen, T. Vejvi, J. Dodge)" height="340" width="500" /></a> <p><p>You Always Move In Reverse,<br /> Installation View (R. Bianco,J. Ono, R. Hawkins , B. Wurtz, J. Kristiansen, T. Vejvi, J. Dodge)</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>"You Always Move in Reverse"<br /> curated by Bjarne Melgaard<br /> June 29th through July 31st, 2007</p> <p>Featuring:<br /> Rod Bianco<br /> Jason Dodge<br /> Audrey Ewell & Aaron AItes<br /> Richard Hawkins<br /> Lydia Lunch<br /> Jeff Ono<br /> Torbjorn Vejvi<br /> B. Wurtz<br /> Vincent Fecteau<br /> Jon Kristiansen</p> <p>*Special performance featuring Lydia Lunch on Thursday, June 28th, 7-9 pm<br /> Please call gallery for further information and reservations</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc is delighted to announce the opening of a group exhibition entitled " You Always Move in Reverse," curated by Bjarne Melgaard. </p> <p>The title of the show is taken from a piece by artist Jason Dodge which consists of a 1 kg. silver cube being thrown through a window, with glass and silver laying where they fall for the entire duration of the exhibition. The window will be simply repaired with tape. Although the idea of rebellion and teenage angst is instantly brought to mind, the intent of the piece, as with many of Mr. Dodge's works, is to initiate a personal narrative in the mind of the viewer, setting up the evidence of an event, focusing on absence of the individual who has left behind the detritus of his/her actions.</p> <p>Bjarne Melgaard has stated in previous conversations regarding this exhibition that "In our society today, we have this enormous focus on the teenage rebellion thing." This exhibition attempts to counter this focus on adolescence. With Jason Dodge's piece for instance, "it is not like he is rebellious and breaks something, but he tries to fix something that does not need to be fixed. This is like becoming older where you try to fix something that does not need (or cannot) be fixed." He has also said that as you grow older, there is a shift in focus from being looked at, absorbing the effects of the gaze, to a point where you are actually initiating the gaze. Melgaard takes this further by suggesting that the works initiate their own "gaze" upon the viewer. With this statement, Melgaard is suggesting the dialogue that develops from the act of looking at an artwork becomes interactive only after a certain time in ones' development. The ideas that have evolved in Melgaard's arena of thinking are about art as an ongoing crisis, the disappearance of the child in our culture, and how adolescence seemingly dictates our current discourse on art. There is an exploration of an abstract realism, with objects functioning simply as objects, and not maquettes of a piece. </p> <p>This exhibition is also a rumination on the passage of time, maturing, and the experience of shifting from a place where we are being observed to become one who observes instead. We also move from a place of appreciation of skill and ability, and hopefully to a discovery that is perhaps more intimate and reflective. </p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. would like to thank the following galleries for their assistance and support in the coordination of this exhibition: Feature Gallery, <span class="caps">NYC,</span> Greengrassi, London, Casey Kaplan Gallery, <span class="caps">NYC, </span>and Galleria Raucci/Santa Maria, Napoli, Italy. For further information or visuals, please contact the gallery by phone or email.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/930 Exhibition: Brandon Lattu <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"4 Models"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 12 - June 16, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, May 12, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/890"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11848.jpeg" alt="" height="339" width="500" /></a> <p>Brandon Lattu, <em>Installation view of 4 Models</em>, 2007</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Brandon Lattu<br /> 4 Models, May 12 through June 9th, 2007<br /> Opening Reception: Saturday, May 12, 6-8pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce "4 Models," a solo exhibition of new works by artist Brandon Lattu. Lattu utilizes photographic imagery to explore different aspects of perception, at once from a physical, psychological and philosophical perspective. Often employing a particularly precise process of digital manipulation, Lattu composes images that are impossible to see in nature. In his work, perspective is inverted, hidden angles are revealed, opaque and impenetrable surfaces become transparent. As a result, there is an odd "otherworldliness" to much of the work. Ultimately fascination and interpretation are held in simultaneous check, allowing one to revel in the seductiveness of the images but shift back and forth with an analysis of a familiar subject questioned in a pointed way. <br /> For his second solo show at the gallery, Brandon Lattu will be presenting 4 works that each distinctly represent a different model of visual empiricism. The anchor piece of the exhibition is a suite titled Library. With echoes of Fox Talbot's famous photographs of books from "The Pencil of Nature," this suite of works depicts covers of all the books in the home of the artist. Bookcases and stacks were initially photographed as they were found. In the finished works, full scale scans of the front, back and spine stand in for the books on a two color ground representing the bookcase and the wall behind. However, the pages of the books are not shown, emphasizing the visual information on the covers of books. Various ideas intersect in this work such as reading vs. seeing, intellectual fetishism, as well as the compulsion of collecting. <br /> Toys of a Two Year Old depicts all of the artist's two year-old child's toys that have eyes. The toys are presented on a plain while oval ground arranged from the largest at the center to the smallest at the edge. It is a dizzying array, at once disconcerting and humorous, pondering the visual cues associated with the development of language, and an adult striving for communication with his/her pre-verbal child. <br /> In Untitled Slide Piece, the notational snapshot is the basic compositional unit. Selected from a vast archive of images made over ten years, 160 snapshots are presented as a traditional slide-show with projectors and a dissolve unit. The photographs are ordered so that one subject in each image is repeated in the next. Similar to the film editing technique of a match cut, Lattu's piece differs in a significant way. Whereas in film editing cuts are planned in advance for narrative progression; this work is made by ordering unrelated experiences into an associative sequence. The piece frustrates narrative expectations, while at the same time suggesting a different model of empirical classification. <br /> Banqueting House is a sculpture produced by the model of perspective of a camera. The titular building in London was designed in 1619-1622 by Inigo Jones in a neo-Palladian style and decorated with ceiling panels by Peter Paul Rubens. Following Vitruvian models of proportion and form the great hall of the building is a double cube: twice as long as it is tall and wide. Lattu photographed the entire interior of the hall from a standing viewpoint in the center of the room, halfway between the entry and the throne. These photographs have been reversed to wrap the exterior of a sculpture that is a hybrid between the double cube and the perspective of the camera.<br /> Brandon Lattu holds an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from <span class="caps">UCLA. </span> Most recently his work has been included in "The Movement of Images," at the Centre Pompidou, National Museum of Modern Art Paris, "Big City Lab," curated by Friedrieke Nymphius at Artforum, Berlin, and "Symmetry' at the <span class="caps">MAK</span> Center for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Upcoming solo exhibitions are scheduled at Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver in July and the Kunstverein Bielefeld, Germany in October. He lives in Los Angeles. </p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10- 6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/890 Exhibition: Torben Giehler <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Eis Hexe"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 31 - April 28, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, March 31, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/866"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11875.jpeg" alt="" height="319" width="500" /></a> <p>Torben Giehler, <em>Installation view of Eis Hexe</em>, 2007</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For Immediate Release:</p> <p><span class="caps">TORBEN GIEHLER</span>: "Eis Hexe"<br /> March 31st through April 28th 2007<br /> Opening Saturday March 31st from 6-8pm</p> <p>In his forth solo exhibition at Leo Koenig Inc., Torben Giehler presents a series of new paintings. He explores new pictorial solutions in combining traditional painting with digital encoding and techniques of construction. He creates vibrating rhythmical grids of color that are made of zigzag lines and angular shapes that sometimes are superimposed thus evoking an element of time and space. </p> <p>At first Giehler's paintings may seem overwhelming as the viewer gets caught in an abstract geometric maze of lines that suddenly change direction or seem to immediately stop until the eye of the beholder can fight its way through to recognizable spatial worlds. Line and color segments evoke structures that simulate digital networks or new urban spaces.</p> <p>Giehler's reference to landscape painting is less evident in this show. In his new work, colors follow an abstract logic that is defined within each painting sometimes allowing three-dimensional illusion of depth or creating compositions that resemble sectional views of four-dimensional hypercubes. Eventually the viewer is always brought back to the surface of the canvas. Giehler's painting language has expanded, ranging from thin transparent areas where the underpainting is still visible to saturated opaque layers. This method evokes a wider variety of emotional responses similar to music. </p> <p>The album "Head for the Shallow" from the grunge band Big Business inspired all of the works in this show. With colors and lines he is painting visual metaphors to their energetic and raw sounds. Abstract painters like Kandinsky and Mondrian have always been fascinated by music's emotional suggestive qualities. Music expresses itself through sound and time allowing the listener a freedom of imagination that is not based on the literal or descriptive, but in the abstract. In that sense Giehler is deeply rooted in the origins of abstract painting. </p> <p>Torben Giehler is currently participating in the exhibition "Like color in pictures" at the Aspen Art Museum, <span class="caps">CO.</span> He has shown extensively in Europe and the <span class="caps">US.</span> His work has been included in many prestigious group exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, New Orleans Museum of Art, Chelsea Art Museum in New York, Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Germany. In 2005, his work was selected for the Prague Biennale 2 and Greater New York at PS 1. In 2003 Giehler had a solo exhibition at the Centro de Arte in Salamanca, Spain. </p> <p>Gallery Hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10- 6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery or visit www.torbengiehler.com</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/866 Exhibition: Kelli Williams <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Tooth and Nail"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 23 - March 24, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, February 23, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/891"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11877.jpeg" alt="" height="320" width="500" /></a> <p>Kelli Williams, <em>Installation view of Tooth and Nail</em>, 2007</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Kelli Williams: "Tooth and Nail"<br /> "February 23rd through March 24th <br /> opening Friday February 23rd from 6-8pm</p> <p>All the conventions conspire<br /> To make this fort assume<br /> The furniture of home:<br /> Lest we should see where we are,<br /> Lost in a haunted wood,<br /> Children afraid of the night<br /> Who have never been happy or good.</p> <p>-W.H. Auden</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of paintings and drawings by Kelli Williams entitled "Tooth and Nail." For this much-anticipated debut, Kelli Williams has produced a series of modestly-scaled works that exude Boschian excess and complexity. In them, gentle and comforting hues belie the debauchery and profanity of the compositions. </p> <p>In her works, Ms. Williams attempts to create a kind of master narrative, so overheated and unstable that It collapses upon and subverts itself, achieving a kind of cathartic release. In keeping with the tightly wound compositions, a fetishistic and obsessive attention to detail is evidenced. The paintings include multiple figures painted on a chalk gesso ground with detailed drawings underneath. Because of the complexity of both the materials and the methodology, the works take an extraordinary amount of time to complete. This show is the culmination of 2 years of work. </p> <p>Kelli Williams' work is, in her own words, influenced by kitsch and pornography. However, she is not interested in kitsch in a nostalgic sense but rather has an admiration for the way the genre depicts death, horror and the sublime in messy, uncontrolled and unironic ways. There is an affinity in thinking in Ms. Williams work, with cultural theorists such as Laura Kipnis who argues that the disgust exhibited by many feminists towards porn springs from a history of bourgeois desire to remove the distasteful from the sight of society, which links to a denial of the body, its orifices and desires. A cultural and anthropological interest in the genre is also evident, particularly with reference to ancient, quasi-religious beliefs about obscenity as a protection against death or the malice of others. In Ms. Williams imagination, these works act as talismans against the ugliness of the world, by instigating a subversive, rather than romantic form of escapism. </p> <p>Kelli Williams has an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Yale University. She has participated in The Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational exhibition last year in New York City, and "Through the Looking Glass" at Galerie Bob van Orsouw in Zurich, Switzerland. This is her first solo exhibition. </p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6pm. For further information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/891 Exhibition: Tony Matelli <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"New Works"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 12 - February 17, 2007</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/872"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/6/6981.jpeg" alt="Old Enemy, New Victim, 2006" height="390" width="500" /></a> <p>Tony Matelli, <em>Old Enemy, New Victim</em>, 2006</p> <p> steel, fiberglass, silicone, paint, yak hair, 37.5 x 72 x 62 inches </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Tony Matelli<br /> New Works<br /> January 12th through February 17th 2007<br /> Opening reception: Friday, January 12, 6-8pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition by artist Tony Matelli. </p> <p>Tony Matelli has always been interested in the underdog. He has become well known for his hyper-realistic sculptures often depicting characters and things just barely getting by; things nearly dead, hopelessly lost or otherwise totally unwanted. These sculptures serve as metaphors for our own social malaise and our general struggle for survival. They mimic inner states of desolation, panic, ambivalence and despair; frequent conditions associated with trying to locate ones self within our social world. </p> <p>The chimpanzee has for some years been a figure in Matelli's work as a stand in for the human id, or the human subconscious. For this exhibition he uses them to depict a violently upended social order: the poor eating the rich, the weak overtaking the powerful. Similarly, another ongoing project is Weeds, made in bronze to look exactly like the real thing and surreptitiously placed in the gallery. The weed, as always, is a persistent unwanted intruder and Matelli uses them as an emblem of struggle, and perseverance. They celebrate debasement and mock cultivation, an impulse that is simultaneously political and deeply personal. </p> <p>Also in this exhibition are Veg. Head, a self-portrait rendered in old, mouldy vegetables, and A Fucking Mess, a sculpture of hopelessly tangled rope. Both are reflections Matelli's inner state of incertitude, and unease. Fuck It, Free Yourself! is a small sculpture of burning money, casually set on a plain domestic table. It is perhaps the most direct example of Matelli's new ambivalent social order; an eternal flame commemorating total disregard.</p> <p>Tony Matelli has exhibited extensively in the US and in Europe. His work was most recently seen in "5 Billion Years," at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and Into Me/Out of Me, at <span class="caps">P.S.</span> 1 <span class="caps">MOMA</span> New York, travelling to KW Berlin Institute of Contemporary Art. Upcoming projects include Evolution: Tony Matelli/Alexis Rockman, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Still Life, at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand, and Die Macht der Dinge - The Power of Things, Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin. For information and visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/872 Exhibition: Bjarne Melgaard <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"A Weekend of Painting; A novel by Les Super"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">November 21, 2006 - January 6, 2007</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Tuesday, November 21, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/839"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/17/17598.jpeg" alt="Installation view of "Les Super," 2006-2007" height="372" width="472" /></a> <p>Bjarne Melgaard, <em>Installation view of "Les Super," 2006-2007</em>, 2006</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Bjarne Melgaard<br /> "A Weekend of Painting; A Novel by Les Super"<br /> November 21st, 2006 through January 6th, 2007 <br /> Opening Reception; Tuesday, November 21st 6-8 pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc is pleased to announce a solo exhibition entitled "A Weekend of Painting; A Novel by Les Super," by artist Bjarne Melgaard. Long known for outrageous installations involving elements from a decidedly underground sensibility ranging from hardcore heavy metal music to allusions to graphic <span class="caps">S&M </span>trysts, Bjarne Melgaard's work has matured with his re-discovery of the basics, painting and drawing. Not completely gone are the scatological narratives, and flippant humor of his past works, but gone is the compulsion to shock with the ultra -violence of confrontation. </p> <p>Melgaards' angst-riddled constructions began as antithesis to the culture that surrounded him in good taste and minimalist aesthetics. Schooled in the Netherlands at the Jan van Eyck Academie, in Maarstricht, and the Riijksakamie, Amsterdam, Melgaard has been quoted as stating this time as the most miserable in his life. In his aesthetic "lashing out" he often offended, yet just as surely inspired minions of artists who also felt stifled by the fanaticism and over abundance of slick, finished-looking objects that flirted with decoration. Melgaard's work also evolved concurrently with contemporary transgressive literary writers such as Dennis Cooper, whose work involves passages of hardcore homosexual encounters and violence as a method to demonstrate an emphasis on difference, abnormality as opposed to the boredom of conformity. There is no interest in a collective identity whatsoever. </p> <p>Enter Les Super, Melgaards "minipig" character. Pathetic, gross, yet lovable, and endearing, the creature begins a journey exploring life in a slightly subdued but equally moving way. It is a testament to Melgaard's artistic mutability, that he can easily shift from the extroverted, muscular visual onslaughts to the more introspective paintings that will be exhibited here. Venturing from pure abstraction to expressive narratives involving Les Super, the works guide the viewer through a story of transformation that resonates on many levels at once. The paintings are in fact a gorgeous confluence of painting skill and newly discovered tenderness. Reminders of the past continue to insinuate themselves everywhere, sometimes appearing on t-shirt's, in other instances, the hesitant text surrounding Les Super like his own racing thoughts. These elements ever threaten to take the picture to another direction. They are there to tell us that Les Super is still defiant, not defeated, and always casting a watchful eye on the Human Stain .</p> <p>Bjarne Melgaard has shown extensively in Europe as well as the <span class="caps">US. </span> Most recently, his work has been included in such exhibitions as Superstars: The Celebrity Factor, From Warhol to Madonna, Kunstahlle Wien, Austria "In a Norwegian Wood,: Norwegian Art of the Last Decade at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland and "Playlist" at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. Bjarne Melgaard lives and works in Barcelona Spain.<br /> <br /> For further information and/or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/839 Exhibition: Peter Saul <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Recent Works"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 19 - November 18, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 20, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/741"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/27/27173.jpeg" alt="" height="360" width="461" /></a> <p>Peter Saul, <em>Installation view</em>, 2006</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Peter Saul<br /> "Recent Works"<br /> October 19th through November 18th, 2006<br /> Opening Reception Friday, October 20th, 6-8 pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of recent paintings by artist Peter Saul which will be on view concurrently here and at David Nolan Gallery.</p> <p>Long known for his acid-hued paintings melding cartoon imagery with biting social and political commentary, Peter Saul has influenced generations of contemporary artists. Coming of age in the 50's and 60's, Saul was inspired equally by comic books as he was by surrealists and remained an unrelenting critic of various aspects of American culture. In the 60's, Peter Saul was associated with a group of imagists in Chicago called the "Hairy Who," that disavowed the various New York styles or schools of the moment. Instead they focused on the human image, conflated elements of high and low culture, were extremely anti-authoritative and promoted a particularly intense political critique.</p> <p>The paintings in this exhibition expound on the elements that Saul has utilized in his paintings for 45 years. The works are varied and timely. In one for example, George W. Bush's head looms, with a slightly maniacal smile, admiring a disfigured and bullet-riddled head as if eyeing a trophy. Entitled "Bush at Abu Ghraib," one can almost smell the sulfur... "Sardanapalus" relates the story of the Ancient Persian king who according to legend commits suicide and was later decapitated by his body guards in order to more easily strip his corpse of gold and jewels. In Saul's painting, the king looks eerily like Osama bin Laden and blatantly refers to the dissemination of the loot of war. And Saul doesn't leave himself out of his acrid pictures. Continuing a practice of depicting male figures with female attributes, in "Portrait of the Artist" as a Woman, Saul takes an experience where he and his wife were mistaken for two women and twists it to a completely absurdist end. While his paintings are visceral, enigmatic and often convey a caustic wit, Saul states simply that he would like to take attention off of a pictures style long enough to be concerned with its image, which he considers more interesting. </p> <p>Peter Saul has exhibited worldwide in numerous galleries, museums and institutions. Most recently he has had solo exhibitions at Musee Paul Valery, Sete, France, and Musee d'art moderne et contemporain, Geveva, Switzerland. His work was also recently included in "Disparities and Deformities: Our Grotesque," Site Santa Fe, and "Splat, Boom, Pow," at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and the <span class="caps">ICA,</span> Boston. Peter Saul lives and works in Germantown New York. A catalogue with an essay by Brooks Adams will accompany the exhibition. For further information and/or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/741 Exhibition: Greg Bogin <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Greetings Earthlings"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 7 - October 14, 2006</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/766"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/5/5057.jpeg" alt="Greetings Earthlings, 2006 Installation View" height="244" width="360" /></a> <p><p>Greetings Earthlings, 2006<br /> Installation View</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">GREG BOGIN</span><br /> "Greetings Earthlings"<br /> September 7th through October 14th, 2006<br /> Opening Reception, Thursday, September 7th, 6-8 pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings and sculpture by Greg Bogin. </p> <p>For this exhibition, Bogin continues his examination of the evermore porous boundaries between painting and sculpture. Greg Bogin's work is informed by the mundane and the ordinary that surrounds us, and infiltrates our subconscious, even without our knowledge. Truck logos, supermarket signage, <span class="caps">IKEA </span>catalogues and highway markers are all sifted through and distilled onto shimmering jewel-like surfaces. Emblematic, and vaguely familiar, Bogin creates from the everyday detritus of our collective peripheral vision, the inverse of the commonplace. </p> <p>Greg Bogin has been keenly decoding our ubiquitous stimulae for several years now. In this new grouping of works, we see the progression of an artist technique to articulate and expand on an idea, that in lesser hands, could have become rote. Previously working with silk-screening on canvas, Bogin now uses automotive lacquer to make his paintings. Initially experimenting with the lacquer to achieve a more subtle gradation of color, that the silk-screening prohibited, Bogin instantly took to the new medium, preferring its directness and the luminous quality of the surfaces.</p> <p>As always, Bogin's titles relate a deadpan humor, that currently chronicles his interest in the optimism of science fiction series, such as Star Trek. Embedded metal flake obviously evokes ideas of hotrods and visions of warp speeds, but the static paintings in odd, component-like shapes, allow for an easy, symbiotic dialogue with his sculpture, evoking a cooler form of covetousness. A contemplative, visionary desire emerges..., pondering the questions that besieged Buckminster Fuller his entire career, as to why there are so many triangles in the future.</p> <p>The exhibition "Greetings Earthlings" will be accompanied by a 74-page color monograph by the same title, published by Leo Koenig Inc.</p> <p>Greg Bogin has shown extensively in the US and in Europe. Most recently, he has exhibited at Starmach Gallery in Krakow, Poland and Galerie Jablonka in Cologne, Germany. Greg Bogin lives and works in New York City. </p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh, or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/766 Exhibition: A.R. Penck <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Major Works From the 1960's - 1980's"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 27 - August 5, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Tuesday, June 27, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/672"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/19/19402.jpeg" alt="Installation view" height="265" width="404" /></a> <p>A.R. Penck, <em>Installation view of "Major Works from the 1960's to 1980's"</em>, 2006</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is honored to announce the exhibition of works by AR Penck from the 60's throught the 80's Born Ralph Winker, Penck adopted several pseudonyms, finally arriving at AR Penck, which he borrowed from an Australian geomorphologist whom he admired. Born in the <span class="caps">GDR, </span>the chameleon-like changing of his name was in part a strategy and sly response to the rigid cultural policy of the country of his birth. Repeatedly harassed by authorities in the <span class="caps">GDR,</span> Penck found that works of art could be easier transferred to the west with various pseudonyms. </p> <p>Penck started painting the style for which he is known in the 1960's after finishing an apprenticeship as a commercial artist and doing a stint at an advertising agency in Dresden, sometime in the early 60's. Penck's style appears borrowed from primitive renditions of humans and their surroundings. Stick figures and emblematic renderings of animals are often depicted with mark making patterning creating an all-over effect. However, symbolic in appearance, the also paintings reveal an obsession with all manor of systems such as mathematics, cybernetics and information theory. Through the melding of these aspects, Penck intended to produce a visual language completely his own. However, in doing so it is easy to see how his work has inspired other contemporary artist. Some insist that every work produced by Penck is a political statement. Others believe that the works are autobiographical in nature, revealing the ongoing quest to align some sort of order from a chaotic and disparate universe. </p> <p>The works in this exhibition have been generously loaned from a private collection and have never been exhibited in New York previously. They run the gamut of his styles from incredibly dramatic works predominately in black and white or grey to the flashes of intense color which makes its appearance in his works from the 70's on. </p> <p>In 1980, Penck was expatriated to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), which had already acknowledged him as an important artist for a long time. Since 1972 Penck was represented at the documenta several times and in 1984 also at the Biennial in Venice. The artist obtained a professorship at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Düsseldorf in 1988. He remains one of the most influential artists of our time. </p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/672 Exhibition: Nicole Eisenman <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Progress: Real and Imagined"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 13 - June 17, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, May 13, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/673"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/17/17635.jpeg" alt=""Progress Real and Imagined" installation view" height="327" width="500" /></a> <p>Nicole Eisenman, <em>"Progress Real and Imagined" installation view</em>, 2006</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><em>While allegory employs 'machinery,' it is not an engineer's type of machinery at all. It does not use up real fuels, does not transform such fuels into real energy. Instead, it is a fantasized energy, like the fantasized power conferred on the shaman by his belief in deamons.</em></p> <blockquote><p>Angus Fletcher, Allegory</p></blockquote> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new works by Nicole Eisenman entitled, Progress: Real and Imagined. The centerpiece of the exhibition are two large scale panels that make a complete work that spans 8×30 feet. Within the painting, Eisenman revisits many themes and characters that have appeared in previous works, creating an allegorical treatise on a diverse range of topics.</p> <p>One panel centrally depicts an artist studio as an Ark. Adrift, a figure furiously draws, seemingly unaffected by the cascade of influence and history that crashes down. There is much going on beyond the confines of the ark, but the artists' focus is so intense, that nothing seems to break the spell. There is a bit of "Nero plays while Rome Burns" in the painting, suggesting the conflict of the thinking contemporary artist struggling with both the ordinary and the immense issues of the day.</p> <p>On the other panel, a landscape unfolds. Here, Eisenman's vision spans frenetically from Goddess mythology, creation myths, and carnivorous obsession. In this work, babies float down rivers, to be scooped out & auctioned off, hamburgers appear as pods of desire, exploding upon impact while wormholes in space open up windows into alternative realities. Eisenman explores the idea of progress, creating a distopian universe whose populace is besotted with instant gratification and whose existence is underlined with a routine violence, where it seems completely rational that women hunt men for their sperm, and inseminate each other with high-powered rifles.</p> <p>This is a truly epic work which touches on the sympathetic journeys between the internal evolution of the artist at work traversing an interior mindscape, and the actual passage to a future state that is both inviting and dangerous. In addition to this work, Ms. Eisenman will present a series of smaller paintings that could be viewed as singular portholes emanating from the larger work.</p> <p>Nicole Eisenman has been included numerous exhibitions, notably the Whitney Biennial in 1995. She has had solo exhibitions at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, in Mexico City, The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, The Centraal Museum Utrecht, Holland and the San Francisco Art Institute. She has an upcoming solo exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. As well, her work has been included in recent group exhibitions at the Ludwig Museum Cologne and the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/673 Exhibition: Hardcore Diner <div class="exhibition-subtitle">PAUL RENNER</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 6 - May 11, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, May 6, 6:00 PM - 12:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1658"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/23/23356.jpeg" alt="" height="346" width="460" /></a> <p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Sat. May 6th, <span class="caps">GASTROINTESTINALATLAS,</span> A Jouney to the Interior with Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray</p> <p>Sun. May 7th, <span class="caps">IMPOSSIBLE BODIES HERMAPHORDITES </span>& <span class="caps">STUFFED FIGURES,</span> Speech by Gerald Matt</p> <p>Mon May 8th, <span class="caps">FERTILE FAT BREASTS ABUNDANCE </span>& <span class="caps">EXCESS</span><br /> eatable sculpture by WIll Cotton and Striptease by Miss Ruby Valentine</p> <p>Tues. May 9th: IN <span class="caps">COLD BLOOD, HENKERSMAHLZEIT</span><br /> Concert by Llucia Pulido</p> <p>Wed. May 10th" <span class="caps">THE GOLDEN ASS TRANSFORMATION </span>& <span class="caps">ALCHEMY </span>reading by Brian Waniewski</p> <p>Thurs. May 11th <span class="caps">DECAYED GOTHAM HONEY PARTY PERFUME AND DISENFECTANT </span> DJ Debora Warner</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1658 Exhibition: Alexis Rockman <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"American Icons"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 8 - May 5, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, April 8, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/674"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4554.jpeg" alt="" height="241" width="281" /></a> <p>Alexis Rockman, <em>Disney World I</em>, 2005</p> <p> oil on wood, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc is pleased to announce the opening "American Icons" an exhibition of ten new paintings and five new drawings by Alexis Rockman. Beginning where he left off with the epic painting "Manifest Destiny" in which he imagined the future of the Brooklyn waterfront, Rockman has envisioned specific American landmarks, such as the Gateway Arch, in Saint Louis, the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, and the Capitol building in Washington DC after the effects of global warming. Rockman imagines the future of these most beloved contemporary markers in the tradition of the sublime ruin. The transformed landscapes show how ecosystems continue to thrive, regardless. In keeping with the theme of climate change, Rockman's oil drawings show severe weather phenomena.</p> <p>Although Rockman's subject matter remains disquieting, these paintings and drawings reveal a new-found painterliness and a fascination with the alchemy of materials. A decaying Hollywood sign appears against a spectacular sunset. The Capitol building appears like Angkor Wat from underneath vegetation that has nearly engulfed its Neo-classical architecture. In a painting entitled "Lawn," dandelions stretch out as far as the eye can see, their voraciousness hidden in the guise of a cheerful yellow flower. The scenes are lusciously tactile, and act as luminous cautionary odes to future that may very well transpire, but whose alternative fleetingly lies within our reach.</p> <p>A native New Yorker, who spent much of his childhood at the American Museum of Natural History, Rockman's work is partially inspired by botanical and zoological renderings while being informed by art historical references from Thomas Cole to Robert Smithson. He has a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from the School of Visual Arts and has exhibited his work in galleries and institutions worldwide. Numerous catalogues have been published of his work and he most recently had a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, Camden Art Centre, London, and the Wexner Center for the Arts, <span class="caps">OH.</span> Public collections that have acquired Rockman's work include the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, <span class="caps">NY, </span>and the Whitney Museum of American Art, <span class="caps">NY.</span> Rockman lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>A 48-page hardcover catalogue including full-color reproductions of all the paintings in American Icons and co-published with Baldwin Gallery, in Aspen Colorado will accompany the exhibit. The catalogue also features reproductions of oil drawings included in Rockman's simultaneous exhibit, Big Weather at the Baldwin Gallery through April 16. The catalogue includes an introduction by Dorothy Spears, and essays by the art historian Robert Rosenblum and the environmentalist, Bill McKibben.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/674 Exhibition: Tom Sanford <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Tom Sanford"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 10 - April 6, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, March 10, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/675"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/17/17648.jpeg" alt=""Tom Sanford" installation view" height="360" width="488" /></a> <p>Tom Sanford, <em>Tom Sanford installation view</em>, 2006</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by Tom Sanford. Sanford's paintings and drawings form a tableau depicting the dark side of America's celebrity obsessed popular culture. For this exhibition, he has executed eight pieces ( six paintings, one drawing and one series of 30 drawings) each of which deals with the events and personae that define the artist's relationship to popular culture. Some of the paintings depict events that occurred in the arena of mainstream popular culture, such as "the Assasination of Dimebag Darrell" or "The Vibe Awards Stabbing." Others, including "The Triumph of Passion over Reason" and "Follow the Boys," address events and issues of celebrity culture within the New York art community.</p> <p>The experience of viewing these paintings are somewhat like watching a car wreck. One simply cannot turn away, yet the image burned into one's consciousness is undeniably disturbing. It is this attraction/repulsion that is the impetus for Sanford's work and reflects the artist's ambivalent relationship to the culture he not only depicts, but of which he is also an avid consumer. The paintings are tethered between the crass opulence of celebrity, and the hysterics of its fans (a group of which Sanford is a self-identified member)</p> <p>In his paintings, Sanford often employs the tropes of Renaissance portraiture, history painting or Byzantine Icon painting, substituting contemporary figures into classical compositions. The use of these conventions invites the viewer to venerate our contemporary icons, while at the same time, the paintings suggest a recent history as epic as the mythologies depicted in paintings of the western canon.</p> <p>Sanford has also invented a caricature of himself which is included in many of his paintings. This caricature, "Tompac" originated in a project where he reinvented himself, losing weight, getting himself pierced and tattooed, in order to look more like Tupac Shakur. "Tompac" was born to fail, and is in Sanford's own words, the "most pathetic gangster." In his paintings Tompac appears as the fool, either seemingly commenting on the scenes or stiffly posing within them. The insertion of an awkward likeness of himself into his paintings underlines his uneasy relationship with the subject matter he depicts. But in the end, his visage assumes more of the traditional role of court jester, taking on the task of comically critiquing "royalty", when other means of censure would prove too risky.</p> <p>Tom Sanford was born in Bronxville, NY and has a BA from Columbia University. He has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Faurschou, Copenhagen and Tomoya Saito Gallery in Tokyo. His work was most recently seen in the group exhibition "Star-Star: Towards the Center of Attention" at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. He lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/675 Exhibition: Les Rogers <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Lindsey - New Paintings"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 28 - March 4, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, January 28, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/676"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4474.jpeg" alt="Installation view, Leo Koenig Inc., New York" height="283" width="500" /></a> <p>Les Rogers, <em>Installation view, Leo Koenig Inc., New York</em>, 2005</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by Les Rogers.</p> <p>In the spring of 1954, Pablo Picasso discovered a young woman, Sylvette David at a pottery studio across the street from his studio. Picasso became entranced by the young woman's classic looks and modern air. Sylvette became known as the girl with the pony tail, which to Picasso, accentuated and complimented her profile, while making her appear as a young sophisticate emerging from adolescence into womanhood. Picasso completed up to 40 portraits of Sylvette in two months ranging in style from Neo Classical to Synthetic Cubism, often with the styles overlapping.</p> <p>For his exhibition at the gallery, Les Rogers is presenting a series of portraits of a contemporary teenager named Lindsey. However the nature of the artist-model relationship has shifted a great deal. Lindsey is a "virtual" model, discovered on one of the many online community sites permeating cyberspace. The artist and model have never met in person, but have only communicated online. Lindsey, like many millions of others, posts new pictures of herself weekly, along with the usual lists of favorite bands and books and the occasional blog. Here it is the individual who projects the various changing and overlapping images of themselves. It is Lindsey who allows one to witness the emergence of a young woman, determining for herself how she would like to be perceived, and how perhaps that is ever-evolving. Picasso had referred to painting as a process of "opening windows," which translates neatly to contemporary online vernacular. In essence, through this new series of paintings, Les Rogers has opened yet another window into Lindsey's life.</p> <p>In this exhibition, Les Rogers sees his paintings evolving in much the same way that Lindsey's persona evolves on the web. On a surface level, this is a simple portrait show, focusing on a young woman who has captured an artist's imagination. However, within those strictures, Rogers is ruminating on the array of choices that an artist makes when approaching a work. The exhibition is an investigation of the art-making process itself, espousing the idea that part of an artist's job is to constantly reinvent himself/herself. Experimentation must be valued as much as rigor. This certainly applies to Rogers' oevre. In the past, Roger's work has ranged in stylistic choices from photo-realist to a very lyrical abstraction, often times overlapping the various styles in one work. His abstractions are often a "collection of glimpses", where images are layered atop each other, thereby moving in and out of abstraction to representation at a blink of an eye. To Rogers, the process of making art is in fact, discovering ones own language anew, every day,</p> <p>Les Rogers has shown extensively in the United States and in Europe. Most recently, he has exhibited at Suzanne Tarasieve Gallery in Paris, and Karlheinz Meyer Gallery in Karlsruhe, Germany. Les Rogers lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/676 Exhibition: Marcin Maciejowski <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Marcin Maciejowski"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 9, 2005 - January 14, 2006</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, December 9, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/677"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4571.jpeg" alt="" height="500" width="442" /></a> <p>Marcin Maciejowski, <em>Kostium. Tadeusz Kantor. Teatr Cricot. 1974</em>, 2005</p> <p> oil on canvas, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by Polish artist, Marcin Maciejowski. Schooled at the Krakow Art Academy, Maciejowski was a founding member of Gruppa Ladnie / The Pretty Group, a student collaborative that garnered attention for incorporating the geography and social fabric of the city. Gruppa Ladnie presented their work in unusual locations such as empty suburban lots, city billboards and historic landmarks. As well, the artists created fanzines, comics magazines and compilation tapes to disseminate their work. Gruppa Ladnie soon gained international recognition, spawning the success of such artists as Wilhelm Sasnal and Rafal Bujnowski as well as Maciejowski.</p> <p>Marcin Maciejowski's paintings are odd. Imbued by an aesthetic influenced by his study of Graphic Arts and printmaking, the work employs flat, two dimensional imagery culled equally from mass media, pop culture and art history. For this series of paintings, the artist continues his exploration of male identity, religion and public policy from a perspective that both highlights and transcends Polish post-Soviet perspective.</p> <p>Often blocky and matter-of-fact, the paintings present what at first glance may appear to be banal scenes from contemporary life, but they exude a delight in the sensual qualities of painting. In the works, scenes appear as if interrupted mid-sentence, or perhaps as snippets of stories wafting in and out of earshot at the neighborhood pub. There are a few clues as to what led up to the moment depicted, and no hints as to what may occur in the future. In this way, the paintings are a stream-of-consciousness communication, immersing the viewer immediately into a work that is at once familiar, and yet somehow different. A parallel experiential universe is uncovered, appealing to the viewer through oblique and sometimes absurd humor that belies an often stinging social critique.</p> <p>Marcin Maciejowski's work has appeared in "Nation," at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main, Art Basel 35 Statements, and the National Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow. He has had solo exhibitions at galleries such as Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna and Marc Foxx Gallery in Los Angeles. This is his first solo exhibition in New York City. Marcin Maciejowski lives and works in Krakow, Poland.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/677 Exhibition: Gelitin <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Tantamounter 24/7"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">November 16 - November 23, 2005</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/678"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/7/7029.jpeg" alt="Tantamounter 24/7, 2005" height="375" width="500" /></a> <p>Gelitin, <em>Tantamounter 24/7</em>, 2005</p> <p> mixed media, installation in gallery </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><em>Leo Koenig Inc. will be closed Thanksgiving weekend The gallery will reopen on November 29th, and Gelitin's structure for Tantamounter 24/7 will be on view until December 3rd</em></p> <p>The "Tantamounter 24/7" is a gigantic, complex and very clever machine. It's like a huge huge Xerox copy machine, only bigger and more clever. The friendly customer places their personal objects, ideas, smells on one of the entry ports and after a short analysis will be informed of the time it will take to produce the copy.</p> <p>The "Tantamounter 24/7" can scan two and three-dimensional objects, analyze their flavours, ideas, concepts and contents. As a clever machine it can not just copy or duplicate objects, but of course be tantamount to them. Due to its complex emotional circuitry one will never know how the "Tantamounter 24/7" will reflect the input. After the announced waiting time the input object and its duplicate will be ejected through the exit slot. The working mechanism behind "Tantamounter 24/7" is some completely hardwired intense individual agents operating day and night under close supervision of a bankrupt psychiatrist.</p> <p>The "Tantamounter 24/7" is a novelty in an ever changing market and will have its first public test run on November 16th, 10 pm serving its audience 24/7 until November 23rd, 10 pm. The "Tantamounter 24/7" will be totally free of charge (Although it will be happy about food and love donations.) Get down and get your stuff tantamountered at Leo Koenig Inc., 545 W 23rd Street.</p> <p>Yes, Leo Koenig Inc. will be open 24 hours a day for the entire week of November 16 through November 23rd.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/678 Exhibition: Christian Schumann <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Variations and Suppositions"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 14 - November 12, 2005</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 14, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/679"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/17/17852.jpeg" alt="Variations and Suppositions installation view" height="305" width="500" /></a> <p>Christian Schumann, <em>Variations and Suppositions installation view</em>, 2005</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc., in cooperation with Patrick Painter, is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by Christian Schumann. This new series of paintings emphasizes a shift in his work that has happened since his relocation to Los Angeles. Previously known for paintings that included text and cartoon figuration, Schumann has now distilled his work to a labor-intensive, miniscule mark making that unfolds into beautifully languorous abstractions. Only in one case do vestiges of Schumann's cartoon influences remain, in the form of the cross-hatching technique which compose the existentialist shadows so prevalent in the world of comic illustration.</p> <p>The mark making has become for Schumann a kind of notation, a repetitive, singular act which congeals into an atmospheric envelopment of the canvas. As if by some kind of aesthetic molecular reorganization, the figure as a reference has disintegrated, but the lines that compose that figure have remained. The visual genetic material has formulated into a resulting mist that envelopes the viewer with their own personal inferences.</p> <p>In the second room of the exhibition are three peculiar landscapes. The paintings depict a seemingly endless panorama of ramshackle architecture, and piecemeal homesteading amidst a devastated landscape. Although finished long before and having no correlation to recent events, one cannot help but notice the similarities between these paintings and the images that have been flashing on TV screens nightly. The bleached colors permeating the canvas add an unsettling brightness to the desolation, not unlike the blazing sunshine that accompanies Los Angeles' infamous Santa Ana winds.</p> <p>Christian Schumann has had numerous solo exhibitions worldwide. His work has been included in exhibitions such as "Proliferation," at <span class="caps">MOCA</span> Los Angeles, and "Pop Surrealism," Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. His work has been included in public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Dallas Museum. Christian Schumann currently lives and works in Los Angeles.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/679 Exhibition: Frank Nitsche <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Very Friendly Fire, (Born to Make You Happy)"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 9 - October 8, 2005</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, September 9, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/680"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/17/17792.jpeg" alt="Very Friendly Fire (Born to Make You Happy) installation view" height="339" width="500" /></a> <p>Frank Nitsche, <em>Very Friendly Fire (Born to Make You Happy) installation view</em>, 2005</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by German artist, Frank Nitsche. Nitsche's exhibition marks the first solo show at the gallery's new home at 545 West 23rd Street, and his second exhibition with the gallery.</p> <p>In his previous work, Nitsche bordered on the aggressive and confrontational, evincing the feeling of velocity and mechanical potentiality. In this new series of paintings, Nitsche is more restrained. Now the most elemental aspects of his abstraction are traversed, heavily dependent upon a linear grace, less relevant to a virtual speed. If in the past Nitsche's concerns were compression, speed and immediacy, he seems now more concerned with the essence of a moment, distillation of a template into it's purest form.</p> <p>Nitsche's point of reference is still the ubiquitous lines of design that encompasses everything from athletic wear to architecture. And gesturally, Nitsche's paintings still allude to elaborate urban graffiti. But there has been a departure, a more considered approach to the paintings that relish in a moment of color, ever delineated by graphic sweeping lines. Forms appear weightless, and drips that fall from every direction disorients the viewer temporarily. But in an instant they are anchored and substantial. The colors in his paintings further highlight his approach to abstraction. The grey underpinning of the works acknowledges history but also looks through history to the nanosecond of the present where, Nitsche asserts, grey is the prevailing hue utilized by architects of contemporary culture.</p> <p>Frank Nitsche's source materials are catalogued clippings from newspapers and magazine illustrations but really offer no direct links to his paintings except in a skeletal sense. Filed and catalogued, these imagistic materials serve as a compressed and conserved media diary. His systematic filing of resource material perhaps most closely influences the titles of his paintings, which are in fact simply serial numbers. His sources however, are digested and ruminated upon, later appearing in an outlined form upon a canvas as if through the process of some imagistic osmosis.</p> <p>Frank Nitsche has had exhibitions at Natalie Obadia Gallery, Paris, White Cube, London and Max Hezler, Berlin. His work has been included in such prestigious international public collections such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Museum Ludwig and the Tate Modern among others. Frank Nitsche lives and works in Berlin.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/680 Exhibition: "Self Preservation Society" <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">August 9 - September 3, 2005</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Tuesday, August 9, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/681"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/7/7364.jpeg" alt="Installation view 1" height="375" width="500" /></a> <p><p>Installation view 1</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/681 Exhibition: Aidas Bareikis, Justin Faunce, Gelatin, Torben Giehler, John Kacere, Tony Matelli, Erik Parker, Alexis Rockman, Tom Sanford, Kelli WIlliams <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Leaving Cockaigne"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 11 - April 30, 2005</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, March 11, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/682"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4400.jpeg" alt="" height="500" width="375" /></a> <p>Tony Matelli, <em>Fucked</em>, 2004</p> <p> Sculpture, Mixed media, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>"Leaving Cockaigne," March 11th through April 30th, 2005<br /> Opening Reception Friday March 11, 6-8pm.</p> <p>Aidas Bareikis <br /> Justin Faunce<br /> Gelatin<br /> Torben Giehler<br /> John Kacere<br /> Tony Matelli <br /> Erik Parker<br /> Alexis Rockman<br /> Tom Sanford<br /> Kelli WIlliams<br /> </p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the last exhibition in its current space, a group exhibition entitled "Leaving Cockaigne." Leo Koenig Inc. which has been situated at 249 Centre Street for over 4 years, will be moving to 545 West 23rd Street in Chelsea in May. </p> <p>Derived from Middle English and Middle French, from a word that essentially means "cake," Cockaigne has been known from medieval times as the mythical land of milk and honey. Cockaigne was a peasant's fantasy, offering the sweet dream of relief from backbreaking labor and the daily struggle for meager food. In the Middle Ages, many songs and poems were circulated about the place. Absurdists and Surrealists could have easily taken cues from this lore, where roasted birds fell from the sky like rain, trees produced ripe fruit all year round and people were arrested for working. Artist renderings depicted the imaginary Cockaigne as well, in forms of engravings and paintings. A well-known case in point is Brueghel's "The Land of Cockaigne," In this work, the darker side of utter contentment is highlighted. Brueghel's targets are gluttony and sloth, portraying fat, repulsive drunkards, passed out with symbols of spiritual impotence surrounding their visages.</p> <p>"Leaving Cockaigne" is meant to be an ironic and up to date glimpse at these very themes. Contemporary life often teeters between the world of abundance and over-indulgence. Celebrity culture and its flipside of puritanical moralizing seem to be equally sensational and repugnant. In "Leaving Cockaigne," the participating artists have created works that are not so much a critique of these seductions, but perhaps a winking call to pause from their ever-present, gravitational tug.</p> <p>Hedonistic abandon and a sense of play are mainstays of Gelatin's oeuvre. Often deliberately confronting fears or phobias first associated with childhood, there is a sincere joy evidenced in the installations, performances and static works that this 4 member art collective creates. In Torben Giehler's digitized landscapes, we are transported to a virtual utopia. Skewed perspectives give viewers the approximation of speed while blazing colors coax an excursion into the Hyper-real. John Kacere's paintings of women's bottoms replete with lacy /transparent lingerie are the pinnacle of voyeuristic pleasures. Though a decidedly Victoria's Secret stylized version of womanhood, the paintings are undeniably celebratory. Tony Matelli's sculpture "Fucked" depicts a sweet-faced primate suffering the fate of Saint Sebastian, and then some. Wounded, but still standing, "Fucked" epitomizes Matelli's sly take on present-day dilemmas. Psychedelic, and hallucinatory are words that have often been used to describe Erik Parker's paintings. In his most recent works, Parker has become more indulgent with his forms, sprouting asymmetrically, threatening to evolve off the frame. Contained within these forms are the nuggets of a collective cultural consciousness, deliberately engaging us in a game that utilizes our own unique memory of events. Alexis Rockman delves into the darkest possible consequences of our collective avarice. Gorgeously painted scenes depict futuristic landscapes struggling to thrive, finally devoid of human intervention. Hip Hop culture, religious devotion, recklessness, martyrdom and greed all collude in Tom Sanford's paintings. Incorporating devices from Christian Icon and Renaissance painting, Sanford creates scenes canonizing rap stars such as Tupak Shakur, Biggie, Eminem, Icecube, 50 Cent, P Diddy and others. Kelli Williams offers extremely detailed, jewel-like works that depict complex scenes of demonic amusements and sexual excess. Evoking references to Hieronymus Bosch and Goya, Williams paints a bacchanal that verges on the terrifying. </p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10-6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/682 Exhibition: Justin Faunce <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Thanks for All the Memories"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 25 - March 5, 2005</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Tuesday, January 25, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/683"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/17/17867.jpeg" alt="Thanks For All the Memories installation view" height="317" width="500" /></a> <p>Justin Faunce, <em>Thanks For All the Memories installation view</em>, 2005</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Justin Faunce entitled "Thanks for All the Memories". Faunce's paintings are a labyrinth of color, pop imagery, cultural iconography with an underpinning of socio-political critique. Deceptively cheery, the paintings appear to be brightly colored, glittering confections. However, soon the imagery asserts itself as an incongruous juxtaposition between an ostentatious giddiness and a brooding malevolence. One sees alongside Vegas showgirls and charming cartoon characters, the emblems of corporate America, heroes and villains of our recent cultural past and reminders of the violence of our foibles. As to further illustrate this point, Faunce's compositions are done using a mirror image or Rorschach technique. One side of the canvas mimics the other, though upon closer inspection, one realizes that this is not altogether true. Within the mandala-like intricacies, there are glitches in the reflection, we are not seeing the reverse of the image, but its doppelganger.</p> <p>Faunce's technique is one of obsessive precision. Using a method of meticulous stenciling and applying layers of paint, the artist begins by assembling and arranging an enormous array of found images, both familiar and obscure. Faunce relates the sifting through this imagery as extracting something meaningful from the information void. Like so many of us, Faunce believes that the magnitude of information that we are bombarded with in contemporary life has become incomprehensible. The sheer force of its volume has made it impossible to form cogent narratives from our aspirations. What we are often left with amounts to a collective attention deficit disorder and personal histories reduced to sound bites.</p> <p>Justin Faunce prefers to construct his own complex visual allegories. His painstaking method painting, taking months to complete, is not unlike the meditative practices employed by eastern philosophies. With intense focus, and repetitive actions concentrating on the smallest of details, Faunce relates a particularly effervescent state of visual bliss. As well, his compositions, though eminently contemporary, also reveal a much more traditional underlying notion of duality. Patterns emerge, spliced from up-to-the-minute relics of a disposable society. Images mutate into each other, creating a perverse hybrid that immerses the viewer in a plethora of opposing representations where innocence exists alongside depravity, confidence alongside apprehension, hope within despondency. In these multi-faceted compositions, Faunce attempts to relate the impressions of a generation who are confronting a future of endless possibilities, all the while convinced of impending global catastrophe.</p> <p>Justin Faunce received a diploma from the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. This is his first solo exhibition in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/683 Exhibition: Erik Parker <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Let the Good Times Roll"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 11, 2004 - January 22, 2005</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Sunday, December 11, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/684"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/8/8518.jpeg" alt="Installation view of "Let the Good Times Roll," 2004, Leo Koenig Inc." height="318" width="500" /></a> <p><p>Installation view of<br /> "Let the Good Times Roll,"<br /> 2004, Leo Koenig Inc.</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Erik Parker entitled, "Let the Good times Roll". The work in this exhibition marks a subtle shift in Parker's paintings; Whereas in previous work, text and image were on nearly an equal footing, here, image, color and form are central. In the past, Parker's compositions tended to be symmetrical formulations, the canvas dissected with form between lines of text. In Parker's new crop of paintings, the forms are organic, sprouting and asymmetrically, evolving within the entire frame. The impact of the paintings arise from a color sense that borders on psychedelic. As well, Parker has refined a graphic approach to his paintings that articulates a sophisticated sense of space while consistently mining a litany of pop and art-historical influences. The effect is a group of works that are immediately engaging while remaining eminently challenging.</p> <p>Parker's work goes even further however. As always, Parker is a chronicler of recent, and sometimes, not so recent history. In the past, the themes of his paintings have ranged from pop to punk, hooliganism to hero worship, poetic justice to political satire. Never veering from controversy, Parker focuses in on issues that challenge the viewer on multiple levels. And issues that interest the artist are meticulously researched and distilled within an imagery that invites contemplation. Our sense of conscience, or collective cultural memory is piqued by a mere mention of a name or source. In this way, Parker's "lists" are meant to serve not as a cursory glance towards a complex theme, but to act more as neurons firing in the synapses of a collective consciousness. Topics that are included in this exhibition for instance range from the outcome of our recent presidential election, the mounting conflict in Darfur, to the gathering threat of America's evangelical movement to the seperation of church and state by promoting the idea of "creationism" at our public schools and parks. Added to this list of works are two paintings that are so intensely personal that the artist refers to them as "Self-Portraits".</p> <p>Throughout, Parker avoids moralizing, though the impact is resonant. Cartoony figuration often belies the weightiness of the words. Bemused misspellings and letters written backwards seem to negate their own import. Instead of obfuscating however, these devices collude to lend an arcane power to the entire composition.</p> <p>Erik Parker has been included in numerous museum exhibitions such as "Nation" at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, "Painting Pictures", curated by Gys van Tyl at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, "One Planet Under a Groove" at the Bronx Museum, (traveling to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis & Museum Stuck, Germany), and "The Americans" curated by Mark Sladen at the Barbican Art Galleries in London. As well, Erik Parker has had a solo show at the Cornerhouse Contemporary Art Museum in Manchester. He has exhibited extensively in Europe and Japan in such galleries as Paolo Curti & Co. in Milan, Arndt & Partner in Berlin, Jablonka Galerie in Cologne and Taka Ishi in Japan. Erik Parker lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/684 Exhibition: Torben Giehler <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"J-PEG Twister"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 23 - November 27, 2004</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Sunday, October 23, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/685"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4381.jpeg" alt="" height="500" width="421" /></a> <p>Torben Giehler, <em>Chemical Imbalance</em>, 2004</p> <p> acrylic on canvas, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the third solo exhibition of new paintings by Torben Giehler at the gallery. For this exhibition, the artist has pulled out all the stops, completing a series of paintings that revel in a hue-amplified tempest. Alternating between flat grids and paintings that have a centered, focal point, Giehler's work has the viewer both gliding dizzily over his surfaces and getting caught up in a maelstrom of faceted color. All sorts of phenomena come to mind, tornadoes, shifting plate tectonics, faultlines, and volcanic craters. And all of these references come filtered through an electrified circuitry, reading as a virtual universe.</p> <p>Unobstructed by the pivoting views and intense color is the pitch-perfect resonance of art history. Anchored in his expansive, artificial and digitized panoramas is a purely formalist abstraction. Diagonal, crisscrossing lines seem familiar, as perhaps, architectural blueprints, but ultimately serves as a structural framework. Giehler breaks the picture plane into contemplative sections of pure color yet the feeling of velocity arises from the skewed, multiple perspectives. For a moment it is easy to spot the faint trails of Mondrian, or Blinky Palermo, but in an instant we are light years away, twisting in a quasar that pulsates the beat of an Audioslave song. It is this speed of information, that Giehler has translated into color, intersected by line, and formatted for reflection.</p> <p>Torben Giehler is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has been the recipient of the James William Paige Fund as well as a recipient of the Clarissa Bartlett Scholarship. He has exhibited extensively in Europe, including most recently a solo show at Arndt & Partner, Berlin. He has also had a solo exhibition at Centro de Arte, Salamanca. As well, Torben Giehler's work has appeared in museum shows such as "Treasure Islands" and "Painting Pictures" at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and "Metascape" at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Most recently he was included in the exhibition "The Eclectic Eye: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation", New Orleans Museum of Art, LA</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/685 Exhibition: Kristin Calabrese <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Everlasting Gobstopper"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 14 - October 16, 2004</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Wednesday, September 14, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/686"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4502.jpeg" alt="" height="459" width="500" /></a> <p>Kristin Calabrese, <em>There's No Telling WHat the Future WIll Hold</em>, 2003</p> <p> oil on canvas, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is delighted to announce the opening of our fall season with a solo exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles artist Kristin Calabrese entitled "Everlasting Gobstopper". The title is culled from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", the artist's favorite movie as a child, and is a fleeting insight into her thought process. In the movie, Gob refers to a mouth, and gobstopper could be thought of as either a specific candy or as something that would render someone permanently speechless. In this series of new paintings, the artist addresses head-on, issues that are traditionally left unspoken, while at the same time, in effect, desiring to render the viewer speechless. Politics, intimacy, emotionally charged confessional themes, often deemed as "taboo" in artmaking, are playfully but pointedly explored.</p> <p>Calabrese's paintings are imbued with multiple layers of meaning. Intentionally and intensely charged with psychological implications, the canvases eerily resonate on a subconscious level. Though in many cases Calabrese's imagery seems at first benign, there is a troubling sense of apprehension that permeates her sense of play. In "There's No Telling What the Future May Hold", for instance, Calabrese has painted cardboard boxes that are stacked to the very top of the painting's frame. Painted in pastel colors, the effect is oddly beautiful and engaging. Yet one cannot help being overwhelmed by a sense of potential force that quietly looms, barely contained within each one of the enormous stack of closed boxes. Conversely, in the painting "The Price of Oil", Calabrese is unabashedly political. This work is a monumental effort, and anchors the exhibition. Here, instead of boxes, bodies are stacked, meticulously rendered, and enveloping the entire picture frame. The painting is a languid heap of young souls that have collapsed upon eachother, as though imploding upon their own promise.</p> <p>Calabrese's ability to careen through sensitive subject matter with such an abject tenacity results from an underpinning steeped in formalism. Throughout her oevre there has always been equal focus of these concerns: abstraction mediated through illusionistically painted objects, the denial and reinforcement of concepts relating to the flatness of the picture plane, the formalization and elevation of low culture, and wrapping the viewer in an alien, underlying field. It is ultimately her consummate paint handling skills and use of color and plane that both allows her to transgress the status quo, and seduces us to safely navigate the formidable subject matter embodied in her work.</p> <p>Kristin Calabrese has had numerous solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe. As well, her work has been included in exhibitions at the Seattle Art Museum, WA , The Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, <span class="caps">CA., </span>and the San Francisco Art Institute, <span class="caps">CA. </span>and such prestigious collections as the Neuberger Berman and Saatchi. She is represented in Los Angeles by Gagosian Gallery. This is Kristin Calabrese's first solo exhibition in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/686 Exhibition: Philip Akkerman, Olaf Breuning, Tony Matelli, Jim Nutt, Peter Saul, Thomas Schutte <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Altered States"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 12 - July 31, 2004</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Sunday, June 12, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/687"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/27/27183.jpeg" alt="" height="360" width="463" /></a> <p>"Altered States", <em>Installation view</em>, 2004</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><em>Everyone is searching for their true selves, their real selves. We are all trying to fulfill ourselves, be our true selves, face the reality of ourselves, go into ourselves. Ever since we dispensed of God we've got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life. I think that the true self, that first self, that original self is real and quantifiable, tangible and incarnate...</em></p> <p><em>...I am convinced the mutation was triggered by an act of consciousness. I entered another consciousness; I became another more real self. There has been an externalization of my other more authentic self! I am asking you to accept one deviant concept; that our other states of consciousness are as real as our waking state! We are experiencing a whole new force in nature.</em></p> <blockquote><p>- Dr. Eddie Jessup, Altered States.<br /> "Altered States" brings together six contemporary artists, whose work often assumes altered and alternate realities in order to give tangible form to express otherwise less tangible ideas.</p></blockquote> <p>Until recently the Romantic tradition has had very little currency in contemporary art, today its stock has raised considerably. Artists are now employing some of the very same strategies Ruskin and Baudelaire promoted -- humor, shock contradiction, distortion, the Grotesque, with surprising relevance. It's the prevalent resurgence of these strategies that motivated this show.</p> <p>At the end of Ken Russell's movie "Altered States" Dr. Eddie Jessup is struggling to regain his physicality. He is slamming from one molecular state to the next, on the brink of plasmatic implosion when he is told... "Defy it Eddie! You make it real, you can make it unreal!" His physical manifestations were a state of mind... an Altered State.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/687 Exhibition: Jonathan Meese <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Dr. No's Son"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 10 - June 10, 2004</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Monday, May 10, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/688"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/8/8550.jpeg" alt="Dr. No's Son, 2004" height="504" width="424" /></a> <p>Jonathan Meese, <em>Dr. No's Son</em>, 2004</p> <p> oil on canvas, 47 x 39 inches </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is delighted to present new works by Jonathan Meese in an exhibition entitled "Dr. No's Son". With this show, Meese continues to mine the themes that he has been obsessed with since the inception of his career. At the core of his work remains an unrelenting sense of history, with a particular eye towards the more notorious or tragic figures. In the past, visages of Nero, Imhotep, Caligula, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, have all made appearances. And here, once again historical and mythical personages coexist with/through Meese's self-portraits. Echnaton, the Egyptian ruler that established monotheism in Egypt only to be labeled a heretic by following generations, looms. Eldorado the mythical city brimming with gold, appears as temptation and damnation. And interspersed with his channeled self-portraits, are a surprising addition, portraits of Jonathan's own mother as well as two abstracted/figurative bronze sculptures.</p> <p>By titling the show "Dr. No's Son", Meese directs us back to ideas that appeared in his earlier installations. In his room sized installations, walls were completely papered with pop-culture icons, and movie posters were a significant medium of choice to convey this visual iconography. The reference to the James Bond film may be only a hint to what Mr. Meese is up to. For instance, it has been said of the film that there were girls & gadgets galore, but there was really no formula. Sean Connery was not the first choice of either the director or the writer, and Ursula Andress, though cast as soon as she appeared, had all of her lines dubbed by another actress because the director thought that her thick accent would be incomprehensible. Yet these unforseen variables begat the most successful serial of movies in history.</p> <p>So too, Meese lacks a "formula" per se. In his works, Meese, as the Son of Dr. No, has been developing his own pop-cultural, historical, mythological, and very personal lineage. In essence, Meese performs a genetic splicing of these antecedents to create a hybrid of his own that conveys alternating, even opposing meanings. And by incorporating the frothy nod to absurdity in the character of Dr. No, Meese's work is saved from appearing too heavy or morose. In fact, it is impossible to categorize Jonathan Meese's work to any predefined style. In 1962, the curator Harald Szeeman coined the term "Individual Mythologies" to describe artists whose work is seen as a process of existential self-discovery and seek to avoid all forms of classification and pigeon-holing. This term seems to apply to Meese's work perfectly.</p> <p>Jonathan Meese has most recently had solo exhibitions at Schirn Kunstahlle, ("The Plantation of Dr. No"), the Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover ("Revolution") and the Kunstwerke Berlin. His work has also been included in such prestigious exhibitions as "Junge Szene" in Secession, Wien, "Generation Z" at PS 1 and the Berlin Biennial (in 1998). His work has also been recently included in the Saatchi collection. Jonathan Meese exhibits regularly at <span class="caps">CFA,</span> Berlin, Paolo Curti & Co., Milan and Modern Art in London. Jonathan Meese lives and works in Berlin.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/688 Exhibition: Brandon Lattu <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 13 - May 8, 2004</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Saturday, May 8, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1208"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11541.jpeg" alt="Installation view, 2004" height="461" width="360" /></a> <p>Brandon Lattu, <em>Installation view</em>, 2004</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For Immediate Release:<br /> Brandon Lattu<br /> April 13 through May 8, 2004<br /> Opening reception Tuesday April 13, 6-8 pm (@Leo Koenig Inc., 249 Centre Street)</p> <p>"Ultimately, Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks" ... Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new photo-based works by Brandon Lattu. An extremely considered artist, for this exhibition, Lattu will be exhibiting works that have occupied his attention over the last several years. A conceptualist who uses photography, sculpture, and digitally based imagery, Lattu has carefully labored over the most intricate details of his images to produce works that seduce with a deceptively simple and elegant beauty. At the same time these images resonate on an equally powerful sentient level. </p> <p>Lattu will be presenting five projects that each juxtapose different aspects of visuality to identify the different functions of pictorial genres. Transparency and blankness are recurrent themes throughout the show that question assumptions about traditions of picture making. The manipulation, clarity, and overload of information in these images triggers the recognition that we can visually imagine a scene such as this but we will never see in this way.</p> <p>In "Film Without End", Lattu presents a video projection that he has produced by driving through Los Angeles at night with a slide projector casting a blank white rectangle the shape of a movie screen onto the passing landscape. What at first seems to be a digital effect slowly displays itself as an actual but brief interjection into the urban space. Alluding to Guy Debord's conception of the derive, the piece simultaneously displays and questions the fascination of the cinematic spectacle.</p> <p>Lattu's ability to stealthily weave in and out of critical discourse by causing the firing of alternating synapses of beauty and intellect seems effortless. In "Miracle Mile", Lattu utilizes the extent of photographic technology to produce a series of views looking west down the length of Wilshire Boulevard between La Brea and Fairfax Avenues in Los Angeles. Presented on a pure field of black, the only images depicted are the illuminated signs. Contrasting this black field of nothingness, each sign is presented in its accurate place and scale in relation to the section depicted. Perspective is eliminated and some signs appear backwards as one might see them while looking in a side view mirror from a car at night. With careful inspection the viewer becomes aware that commercial competition is investigated in this piece through the presence of stores directly across the street from one another. For example, on the north side of the street, Rite Aid, Staples and Blockbuster vie with Sav-on, Office Depot and Hollywood video on the south side offering essentially the same products. Here and throughout Lattu's oeuvre, the instinctual attraction of sublime visual pleasure becomes inseparable from intellectual engagement. </p> <p>Also Included in this exhibition will be the works "Selected Products" and "Rejected Products". In the selected version Lattu has arranged boxes of dry goods that he has chosen from his own pantry. Digitally scanning all faces of each box, and then adjusting the transparency of the faces, the commercial decoration on all surfaces are displayed at once. By utilizing this visual device, the rift between the simplicity of a consumable product and the complexity of the graphic information used to sell it is foregrounded. In the rejected version the process and background are identical, the only difference is that the products are commercially competing alternatives. By presenting these similar images together, Lattu objectifies the issues of taste, authenticity and seriality that exist within the local supermarket as well as the artworld. However, the significance of these ideas are embedded within the visual enchantment that the artist's thoughtful and painstaking process has produced. Shot to mimic an aerial view, the "products" assume a jewel-like quality. The seductiveness of the colors, the facets, and ghostly emptiness of the boxes supplants our qualifying and propels us into the sheer pleasure of looking.</p> <p>Two examples from Lattu's Sample series will be presented in this exhibition as well. "Sand, Point Dume, Malibu, California" and "Denim, Levi's 501 Unwashed, Made in <span class="caps">USA</span>" are images produced with the utmost care to render the source material in the greatest degree of verisimilitude possible. On first viewing they appear as monochromatic fields, but with closer examination they reveal a depth and texture that makes them virtually indistinguishable from the materials they nominally depict. </p> <p>Brandon Lattu holds an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from the University of California, Los Angeles where he graduated after receiving a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from the Corcoran School of Art. His work has been included in exhibitions such as the Hamburg Tiennial of Photography, "Superman in Bed" at the Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany as well as "Deep Distance", at the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland. He currently is a Visiting Assistant Professor at UC Riverside. Brandon Lattu lives and works in Los Angeles. This is his first New York solo exhibition. Gallery hours are 10-6pm, Tuesday through Saturday. For more information and/or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1208 Exhibition: Nicole Eisenman <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Elizaville"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 12 - April 10, 2004</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, March 12, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/690"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4343.jpeg" alt="" height="379" width="500" /></a> <p>Nicole Eisenman, <em>Elizaville Werkstadt</em>, 2004</p> <p> oil on canvas, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new works by Nicole Eisenman entitled "Elizaville." A painter of immense facility and range, Nicole Eisenman's oevre runs the gamut of visual reference from surrealism to pointillism to <span class="caps">WPA </span>murals to name but a few. Eisenman deftly moves in an out of these references with ease, utilizing them to suit her own distinctive vernacular. Orgiastic crowds, Dionysian sacrifices, minotaur hunts, and romps through art history and pop culture have made appearances in past exhibitions. Yet the wit and scope of Eisenman's vision often disguises the intimacy of her work. Clichés are turned inside out, gender roles are questioned and one is engaged without fully realizing that the lushly painted scenes are revealing something very personal.</p> <p>For this exhibition, Nicole Eisenman has created a series of works that have been influenced by a recent move to the Hudson Valley in New York. In travel time, the town is only about two hours from New York City. But it is perhaps light years away in surroundings, temperament and pace.</p> <p>Far from romanticizing however, Eisenman delivers a decidedly skewed vision of rural life. As always, her razor-sharp wit is pervasive in this body of paintings and drawings. "Elizaville" appears bucolic yet slightly seedy. Absurdity and apprehension emerge in scenes of local young hoodlums, skulking in the woods, and bare-chested men with ubiquitous baseball caps, traipsing through mud under fall foliage.</p> <p>Throughout, Eisenman's vision retains an underlying ambivalence. Merged with the less than idyllic tableau are the artist's continuous ruminations on the art world in general. In allegorical form, Eisenman explores the balance between creativity and commerce, success and obscurity and the mechanics of inspiration.</p> <p>Nicole Eisenman has been included numerous exhibitions, notably the Whitney Biennial in 1995. She has had solo exhibitions at The Herbert <span class="caps">F.J</span>ohnson Museum of Art, at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, The Centraal Museum Utrecht, Holland and the San Francisco Art Institute. As well, her work has been included in recent exhibitions at the Ludwig Museum Cologne and the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/690 Exhibition: Aidas Bareikis <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Rise Up, Solitude"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 10 - March 10, 2004</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/691"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4322.jpeg" alt="" height="363" width="469" /></a> <p>Aidas Bareikis, <em>Rise up Solitude</em>, 2004</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition of new works by Aidas Bareikis entitled "Rise Up, Solitude". In sharp contrast to his previous exhibitions which are usually room sized installations, this time, Bareikis has fashioned seven free standing figures. As if awakened from a sleep of reason, Bareikis' figures emerge as the inhabitants of a subconscious fraught with the implications of both a ferociously decadent past as well as the promise of an eternally tormented future. Far from being menacing however, the figures convey instead, a sense of grotesque jubilation, of lonely but comic monsters.</p> <p>In the tradition of artists such as Dieter Roth, Bareikis is an archiver of throw-away items. His constructions are made entirely of things found discarded on the street or purchased at ubiquitous 99-cent stores, flea markets and thrift shops. He chooses objects that "look weird but also betray a certain cruel exploitation in their purpose or in the way that they were manufactured", Bareikis states. In addition, these objects are not only selected, but altered in some way. Obsessed with notions of alchemy, Bareikis subjects his collections to a succession of trials by fire or other transforming treatment, including (but not limited to) chemical, pressure and exposure. In many cases color is achieved through the introduction of food-based organic materials such as coffee and soy sauce.</p> <p>Humanity's struggle with it's history as it leaps into the future seems a pervasive aspect of Bareikis' work. Contemporary anachronisms are collected and transformed into a tableaux of orchestrated chaos. Bareikis surveys the detritus resulting from consumer culture, environmental decay and decomposition alongside the philosophical and emotional limbo modern society can produce. The artist has confined his creations to a perceptual purgatory, between a world of excess and exploitation and one of conscience and intent. As well, Bareikis re-asserts that it is the artist role, not only to produce work that excites the eye, but also to expose the monsters created by the human condition.</p> <p>Aidas Bareikis was born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1967 and graduated from the Vilnius Art Academy in 1993. He came to America the same year and completed the <span class="caps">MFA </span>program from Hunter College in 1997. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and has been the recipient of a Soros Foundation Grant. Bareikis has had solo exhibitions at the Zacheta Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland and at the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius. In addition he has participated in shows such as "Generation Z", and "Greater New York" at <span class="caps">PS1 </span>/ <span class="caps">MOMA </span>"Crossing the Line" at the Queens Museum. Aidas Barekis lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/691 Exhibition: Norbert Bisky <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"The Proud. The Few"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 9 - February 7, 2004</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/692"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4325.jpeg" alt="" height="361" width="425" /></a> <p>Norbert Bisky, <em>Meineid (Perjury)</em>, 2003</p> <p> oil on canvas, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by German artist Norbert Bisky. Bisky paints idyllic images and utopian scenes of (mostly male) youth engaged in athletic games, tests of skill or endurance against a background of optimistic colors that mimic sunshine- dappled open skies. Bodies are taut, ever moving forward, on occasion even floating, oddly powerful and ethereal at the same time. A congruence of cultural antecedents appear as one is instantly reminded of imagery co-opted by National Socialist propaganda and later Social Realism. Even more recently, fragments of these same ideas have crept into Madison Avenue's vocabulary of images. In Bisky's paintings, this imagery, on the surface, carefree and idyllic suddenly presents itself with looming implications, complex and shadowy underpinnings. Their titles, sometimes borrowed from Communist slogans, sometimes acquisitioned from themes from the Love Parade, further complicate the issue, turning the relentless optimism abruptly oppressive and claustrophobic.</p> <p>Bisky's intent is constantly being called into question. Born in East Germany, the son of a prominent Socialist politician, Lothar, Norbert Bisky's childhood was spent under the Socialist regime of the <span class="caps">GDR.</span> The imprint of the years spent as a pioneer youth, singing socialist songs, remains churning in his memory. According to Bisky, the imagery of his childhood had mutated from one dictatorship to another. Bisky sees this singularity of vision as a precursor to those incorporated by current ad campaigns that lull a stupefied public into believing that a life is directly measured simply by what a person is able to buy. The consequences visited upon a society that increasingly refers to its citizenry only as "consumers", is obfuscated by color and high gloss. It is the ability of this specific type of imagery to mutate and come to conform equally to one ideology or another that is of interest.</p> <p>For his show at Leo Koenig Inc., Bisky has chosen the title that is similar to a slogan for the <span class="caps">U.S.</span> Marines. When suddenly taken out of context, slogans such as "Be all that you can Be" and "an Army of One" rings all too ominously familiar. The evincing of universal themes such pride, self-betterment, teamwork, comraderie etc. is incorporated and distorted again and again by disparate organizations for the simple reason that it is effective. The sunlight insinuated by Bisky's paintings represents the same optimism that shines from those who smile but would rather us not question what is behind it. But Bisky in fact, demands that the viewer does question everything that is seen. His canvases are beautifully painted, radiantly colored, blatant confrontations with an intoxicating malevolence. Looking at Bisky's work is the inverse of finding a silver lining.</p> <p>Norbert Bisky was born in Leipzig, Germany. He graduated from the Hochschule de Kunst in Berlin where he was a master student of George Baselitz. He also studied with Jim Dine at the Salzburg Summer Academy. Bisky's work has been included in numerous museum exhibitions such as most recently, the Kunstmuseum Ostende in Belguim as well as the Neues Museum Weserberg in Bremen, Museum Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin and the Frissiras Museum in Athens, Greece. This is Norbert Bisky's first solo exhibition in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/692 Exhibition: "... As Time Goes By" <div class="exhibition-subtitle">A collaborative exhibition between Leo Koenig Inc & Gordian Weber Kunsthandel, presenting ancient and contemporary art</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 1, 2003 - January 3, 2004</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/693"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/8/8532.jpeg" alt=""...As Time Goes By"" height="375" width="500" /></a> <p>"... As Time Goes By", <em>Installation view</em>, 2004</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce an exhibition entitled "...As Time Goes By", a very special and unique showing of works by some of the worlds foremost contemporary artists juxtapositioned with consummate examples of ancient art. For this exhibition, Leo Koenig Inc has collaborated with Gordian Weber Kunsthandel, a much respected dealer of antiquities from Cologne.</p> <p>"...As Time Goes By" is the brainchild of Leo Koenig and Gordian Weber, and is years in the making. Each dealer had long wished to work on a collaborative presentation because of the intense admiration for the other's respective field. Gordian Weber is an avid follower and collector of contemporary art, and Mr. Koenig has always possessed a keen interest and love of ancient art. This show is the result of a unique friendship, and an ongoing professional and personal dialogue between the two colleagues.</p> <p>Highlights of the exhibition will be inspired contemporary paintings that were either created specifically or carefully chosen for the exhibition, alongside such stunning examples of ancient art as a late Hellenistic, life-sized marble statue of a Priestess of Demeter from the 1st Century <span class="caps">B.C. </span>and other exemplary pieces. We are delighted and honored to announce that contemporary artists, Donald Baechler, George Condo, Peter Saul, Nicole Eisenman and Erik Parker have each made a work specifically for the exhibition.</p> <p>The figure remains a central component in the exhibition, invoking various muses both anonymous and heralded, throughout the centuries. The humor, grace and elegance of the artists imaginative renderings give a glimpse into not so much on how our cultures have changed throughout the years, but instead how the most fundamental aspects of human depiction have endured. The thread of history, it's conquests and failings, though ever-present, is a secondary, or rather complimentary consideration. It is the more fragile human qualities, compassion, affection, wit and admiration, that infuses the atmosphere surrounding all the works.</p> <p>We are indebted to the following people and galleries for their kind assistance. Without their help, this exhibition would not be possible.</p> <p>Roland Augustine, Luhring Augustine Gallery<br /> David Nolan, Nolan Eckman Gallery<br /> Ranbir Singh<br /> and all the participating artists</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or "Nicole Russo" :mailto:nicole@leokoenig.com at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/693 Exhibition: Tomoaki Suzuki <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"New Sculptures"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 14 - November 15, 2003</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/694"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11167.jpeg" alt="Humiyasu, 2002" height="497" width="320" /></a> <p>Tomoaki Suzuki, <em>Humiyasu</em>, 2002</p> <p> Limewood and acrylic paint, 19 x 6 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new sculptures by Tomoaki Suzuki. Tomoaki Suzuki employs a traditional Japanese wood-carving techinique to create life-like, miniature visages of his friends and aquaintances. Suzuki's creations look as if they are culled from the pages of a current lifestyle magazine. Meticulous attention to detail is evident in the hand painted clothes and accessories.</p> <p>Suzuki begins his process with a series of photographs of his subjects from every conceivable view. A series of drawings are made from each photograph. The drawings provide him with schematics for his sculptures, while allowing him to focus on the details even more intensely. Only after weeks of viewing his subjects, does he begin the painstaking process of carving limewood.</p> <p>Within each of these works are a melding of cultures, traditional and current, rigidly coded as well as defiantly independent. While the precision of Suzuki's craft reveals a dedication of practice, his subjects evoke within the viewer, images of youthful rebellion or ambivalence. It is through a thoughtful, patient process, that the impact of the present emerge.</p> <p>Tomoaki Suzuki holds an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Goldsmith's College, University of London. His work has been included in the exhibition "New Contemporaries" at The Cornerhouse in Manchester, traveling to Milton Keynes Gallery and Inverlieth House in Edinburgh. As well, he has had solo shows at Corvi-Mora Gallery in London and Michael Janssen Gallery in Cologne. This is his first solo exhibiton in New York City</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/694 Exhibition: Gelatin <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"The Gelatin Institute"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 16 - October 11, 2003</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/695"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4371.jpeg" alt="" height="385" width="500" /></a> <p>Gelitin, <em>Untitled</em>, 2003</p> <p> mixed media on photo collage on wood, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For Immediate Release:<br /> gelatin<br /> "the gelatin institute"<br /> September 16 th through October 4th, 2003<br /> Opening reception Tuesday September 16th 6-8 pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig inc. is so pleased to be the warmly welcoming host of "the gelatin institute".<br /> The institute pictures the intense scrutinization of the adventures and natural habits of the gelatin boys and friends. The story of good and evil, spit and honey, about live and let's lunch, the great themes of humankind shown in the creamcoloured, spongy atmosphere of a long forgotten tiny room behind your molars is revealed.</p> <p>It's a surprisingly classic show gelatin is setting up for their second exhibition at the gallery and it is also a show that might make you smile.<br /> as well:<br /> During their stay in New York, gelatin will be hosting field trips to various locations <br /> where you can metamorphose in sculpture seminars on Coney Island Beach and at the performance picnic in Central Park.</p> <p>gelatin will also be presenting their new book "gelatin is getting it all wrong again", published by Leo Koenig Inc. and accompanied by a beautiful text of Norman Dubrow which chronicles their Thursday-lectures held at the gallery space at 359 Broadway in 2001.<br /> Come for the opening and bring your friends, they might like it.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/695 Exhibition: Bill Saylor <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Softail-Project"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 17 - July 26, 2003</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/696"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4478.jpeg" alt="" height="300" width="400" /></a> <p>Bill Saylor, <em>Installation View of Softail Project</em>, 2003</p> <p> Leo Koenig Inc., </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition of new works by Bill Saylor entitled, "Softail-Project." For his second show at the gallery, Saylor presents a series of paintings, drawings and sculptures that revolve around his current interests in biker lore and imagery and the clash between nature and encroaching urban development. The images Saylor uses in his work seem mined from a collective psyche of a distinctly American counter-culture. They are ubiquitous, yet very personalized excerpts from a visual diary that comprises a hallucinatory landscape of incongruous beauty.</p> <p>Saylor's process begins and ends with drawings. The drawings act as a kind of shorthand, a stream of consciousness informed by everything from, logos, tabloid headlines, texts from scientific, and sci fi magazines, comics and visuals from satellite transmissions. Culled from imagination as well as his surroundings, a plethora of absurdist combinations arise and take form in paintings and sculptures as well. Strangely consuming compositions emerge, stemming from such imagistic memories as watching the picturesque Cayahoga river instantaneously combust from pollutants skimming the surface, to dirt bike riding in abandoned rock quarries, to a recent visit to Centralia, <span class="caps">PA, </span>where a coal mine has been burning, and is expected to burn for at least the next 40 years. It is this knife's edge where beauty and disquiet exists that Saylor initiates his journey.</p> <p>The show's title becomes a reference point. "Softail Project" emanates from a motorcycle term meaning "hidden suspension." Technically, it is a kind of engineering that allows a chopper to ride comfortably while remaining an imminently sculptural machine. Saylor is enticed by the idea of "hidden suspension" as a key aspect that draws one to a work of art. It is this aspect that allows the viewer to accompany an artist through his/her personal topography. This tension between high and low, between action and stasis, between exuberance and concentration is the balancing act visible in each of Saylor's works. His use of counter-culture iconography allows a deceptively easy access into works that have ties to German expressionism, and Viennese action drawing, coupled with the muscularity and freedom exhibited in American Ab-Ex painting.</p> <p>The element of risk remains a constant and key to Saylor's work. In many examples, Saylor seems to hover precariously between two gravitational axes. Sometimes, one may fear that he has momentarily veered a little too far with a certain gesture, color or form. But within another moment, the composition rights itself and makes perfect sense. For the artist, it is within this risk that lies the adventure.</p> <p>Bill Saylor has been included in various exhibitions in the US and in Europe, including Eleni Koroneou Gallery in Athens, Voges & Partner in Frankfurt and Asbaek Gallery in Copenhagen. He holds a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from Cal State Long Beach. Bill Saylor lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/696 Exhibition: Aidas Bareikis <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"La Charme De La Vie"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 29 - May 31, 2003</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/697"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/8/8919.jpeg" alt="La Charme De La Vie" height="504" width="399" /></a> <p>Aidas Bareikis, <em>La Charme De La Vie</em>, 2003</p> <p> installation view, mixed media, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of "La Charme De La Vie", an installation by Aidas Bareikis. For "La Charme De La Vie", Bareikis recalls a painting of the same name by Watteau. Employing the painting's theatrically serene imagery as memetic anchor, Bareikis catapults the viewer into a space-time continuum at warp speed, putting Watteau's scene through the g-forces of gravity. In Bareikis' hands, the view is inverted, exposing the inherent decadence of Watteau's "fete galante". On one side, the bucolic landscape, lovely women, innocent girls, a man tuning a lute while to the right a dog lays on the ground with a servant, head bowed, nearby. What emerges is the brutality of the journey to the 21st century. Columns have fallen, vessels are compressed, gasses expand, individuals are melded and disfigured. The more delicate the artifice, the more exaggerated the devastation. The sensitive rococo palette has been charred beyond recognition.</p> <p>Bareikis generally creates environments that resonate as exquisite catastrophes, ebullient nightmares. Working with items bought at 99 cent stores, flea markets and yard sales, he looks for objects that "look weird but betray a certain cruel exploitation in their purpose or in the way they were manufactured". Iridescent tchotchkes compete with cartoon figures, Halloween masks are festooned with temporary tattoos, at times giving one the feeling that they are experiencing some adolescent-goth-science-experiment gone mad. Bareikis continuously seeks out and arranges objects that appear to potentiate energy, invested with a nascent force of their own. As a result, these objects seem to be mutating and replicating by their own volition, becoming more baroque with each transformation. The resulting installation gives the impression not of a carefully arranged spectacle, but one of beautifully germinating abnormality, dormant chaos.</p> <p>This feeling of latent chaos however, belies the fastidiousness of Bareikis' construction. Each object is not only selected, but altered in a way that in most cases, leaves it's method of alteration mysterious. This enigmatic transformation suggests a spontaneous change from within that is a result of an applied external variant. The viewer becomes a witness to a mesmerizing arrangement of looming implications. Chemical reactions, bio-engineering and genetic modification bubble up from the surface of relentless consumerism, blatant exploitation and the numbing exchange of kitsch for culture. And still, the whole expresses not so much a nihilistic view, as one of a curiously effervescent entropy. Bareikis manages to create installations that are at once formless and modular, chaotic yet rigorous, confrontational and introspective, heroic while revealing a fragile elegance.</p> <p>This is Aidas Bareikis third solo exhibition at Leo Koenig Inc. Aidas Bareikis was born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1967 and graduated from the Vilnius Art Academy in 1993. He came to America the same year and completed the <span class="caps">MFA </span>program from Hunter College in 1997. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and has been the recipient of a Soros Foundation Grant. Bareikis has most recently had a solo exhibition at Zacheta Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland. He also recently had a solo exhibition entitled "Glad to Hear From You", at the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius. In addition he has participated in shows such as "Generation Z", and "Greater New York" at <span class="caps">PS1 </span>/ <span class="caps">MOMA </span>"Crossing the Line" at the Queens Museum. Aidas Barekis lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/697 Exhibition: Meg Cranston <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Magical Death"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 4 - April 5, 2003</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/698"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/8/8586.jpeg" alt="Magical Death (Piñata with every color paper), 2002" height="648" width="500" /></a> <p>Meg Cranston, <em>Magical Death (Piñata with every color paper)</em>, 2002</p> <p> papier mache, colored tissue, and pastel, 72 x 29 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/698 Exhibition: David Scher <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"ptg.", Recent Works</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 11 - February 12, 2003</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/699"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/26/26339.jpeg" alt="" height="328" width="494" /></a> <p>David Scher, <em>Installation view</em>, 2000</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is please to announce the opening of a solo exhibition by David Scher entitled, "ptg.". David Scher's vision finds its way on to many surfaces: canvas, paper, photo prints, and video screens. A prolific and multi faceted artist, David Scher's output is profuse, and varied, striking a teetering balance between the everyday and the extraordinary, oftentimes exposing both qualities in the same obscure character or situation. Disparate elements emerge, as fragmentary as memory. Muted colors, gestures that gently seduce, all coalesce, imbued with an irrational humor, a dadaist absurdity. Yet secreted within this approach, a more solemn undertone reveals itself. A succinct melancholy punctuates a picture but avoids corroding into sentimentality</p> <p>There is an intimacy which is revealed in increments. Segued between ephemeral mark-making and an incredibly nimble hand, phrases, lists, and words that are crossed out and gone over again, are scattered throughout Scher's drawings and paintings. One might perceive this as an attempt at a more direct communication, however, Scher's use of words usually brings up more questions than it answers, challenging the viewer to varying interpretations and shifting linguistic doppelgangers.</p> <p>David Scher approaches art-making in a similar manner that a poet may approach writing. Much like the way a poet may choose a word for its sound, Scher may choose an image for its visual echo, its intrinsic ability to induce a memetic effect. Other elements are chosen for their congruence, or lack thereof, to the elements preceding it. Meanings are hinted at, filtered through layers of individual experience. Scher delivers his visual vocabulary in precisely this way. We are drawn to a piece by our own visceral reaction, to the breeze of familiarity that brushes against us, only to disappear just as suddenly.</p> <p>In fact, David Scher has a background that has never been confined to the visual arts. A musician and published poet as well as a visual artist, Scher's work reveals not so much a breaking down of boundaries as much as synthesis of experiences and emotions, creating a geography where ethereality and substance logistically coincide.</p> <p>This particular body of work has been produced over the past year in new multiple studio spaces, including an 19th century general store and barns, on Scher's property in Delaware County. The scale of these workrooms and of the landscape outside is reflected in the work itself: oversized drawings, 5 × 7 foot oils and wallfuls of massed multi-media works. The subjects of these pieces include (individually and collectively) policemen, bouquets of flowers, football players, clowns, abstractions that convey a sense of deep snow, shovels and plows, TV glow....</p> <p>David Scher has been producing, performing and exhibiting work for over 20 years. He has shown at spaces such as , <span class="caps">P.S.</span> 1 and the Brooklyn Museum. He most recently has had solo exhibitions at Museo Des Artes, Guadalajara, Mexico, and Roberts Tilton in Los Angeles. A catalogue with essays by Aaron Kunin and Brian Dewan will be published by Leo Koenig Inc. during the course of the exhibition.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/699 Exhibition: Lisa Ruyter <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Follow The Boys"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">November 19, 2002 - January 4, 2003</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/700"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/10/10815.jpeg" alt="The Wet Parade, 2002" height="394" width="500" /></a> <p>Lisa Ruyter, <em>The Wet Parade</em>, 2002</p> <p> Acrylic on canvas, 66 x 84 inches </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For Immediate Release:</p> <p>Lisa Ruyter<br /> "Follow The Boys," New Paintings<br /> November 19 through January 4th, 2003<br /> Opening reception, Tuesday November 19th 6-8pm</p> <p>Lisa Ruyter's new works are party paintings. Made from photographs taken<br /> late at night in restaurants and bars, Ruyter's new pictures are still in<br /> vibrant color, however, they are more Weegee than Warhol, for they resemble<br /> nothing short of crime scenes. These new paintings reveal much about what<br /> Ruyter has been looking at intently, namely American straight image<br /> photography and the work of driven paparazzi. Almost unnoticed, she has been<br /> moving through the art world over the past year taking relatively<br /> unflattering photographs of what she's now rendered as a demimonde. Her new<br /> pictures might best be read against such social landscape photographers as<br /> Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand or Lee Friedlander, or against the recent<br /> event pictures of Jessica Craig-Martin.</p> <p>The color in Ruyter's new work seems more akin to the photomontages of<br /> Gilbert and George than to anything seen in contemporary painting. Like the<br /> forced colorization of old black and white films, Ruyter's colors refuse to<br /> hold on to flesh , to flesh out reality; to imbue skin with the color of<br /> life. Instead her imposed colors are brutal, deathly; an aggressive act<br /> carried out against the original image. Like the narratives which we<br /> frequently spin around our ever waning memories, Ruyter's grafted-on colors<br /> re-cast her camera originals. It is the distance between the color as<br /> photographed (as it really was) and the color as painted, which creates an<br /> interpretive space for the viewer. Ruyter is no longer using color to create<br /> a set of harmonics but rather to force a dissonance through which her<br /> intentionality and our reading can perpetually vie one with the other.</p> <p>Ruyter's recent work expands her ever-widening autobiographical project , a<br /> project through which she has shared her life with a growing audience. From<br /> paintings of listless suburbia, to travelogues of Europe and the Americas,<br /> Ruyter has shared her family; her interest in popular music; in the cinema;<br /> in travel and in sports. She has also recently completed a number of<br /> large-scale projects and cycles of paintings that deal with the complex<br /> binary of death and the thirst for immortality. In this new body of work,<br /> Ruyter shares her friends, and the artists and staff of her New York<br /> gallery. Quite simply, Ruyter continues to paint the world in which she<br /> finds herself, and she does so with great generosity.</p> <p>In these new frozen tableaux of revelry, the figures are frequently outlined<br /> not with colored glows of aura but, rather, with psychedelic effects caused<br /> by the camera's flash in the originary photograph. Ruyter thereby doubly<br /> emphasizes the corporeality of her subjects while flattening her renderings.<br /> These figures, as they are, mediate the distance between sleepwalking and<br /> consciousness. Perpetual fluctuation reasserts itself as the central characteristic<br /> of Ruyter's work. Her celebratory paintings of graveyard succinctly underlined this<br /> ambivalence and these new paintings further her intent. That this point consistently<br /> evades detection is either a testament to Ruyter's craftiness or proof positive of our<br /> blind spots.</p> <p>Lisa Ruyter has most recently been included in Project 77, billboards by Julian Opie, Sarah Morris and Lisa Ruyter , commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York as well as "Shopping; Art and Consumer Culture" at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt and traveling to the Tate Liverpool. Her work will also appear in "Painting Pictures; Painting and Media in the Digital Age,"curated by Gijs van Tuyl at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. Lisa Ruyter Lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>Gallery Hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10-6 <span class="caps">PM. </span> For more information or visuals, please call the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/700 Exhibition: Erik Parker <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"You Paint the Picture"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 15 - November 16, 2002</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/701"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11754.jpeg" alt="You Paint the Picture exhibition invite, 2002" height="672" width="460" /></a> <p>Erik Parker, <em>You Paint the Picture</em>, 2002</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Erik Parker.</p> <p>Erik Parker's paintings are at once colorful, graphic, sometimes psychedelic, always mesmerizing compositions that are in fact fervent exchange between visual intoxicants and an internally-navigated <span class="caps">GPS </span>(global positioning system) of cultural antecedents.</p> <p>Parker is a chronicler of recent and sometimes not so recent history. Using a method akin to genealogy tables, Parker traces the elements, influences and nuances of a specific time, place or personality. Initially, the lists appear random, people, dates, or movements seem thrown together haphazardly. The famous exist alongside the obscure, each having equal importance within the composition.</p> <p>In reality however, these paintings are meticulously researched snapshots of a particular era that has deeply interested the artist. Arranged on canvas the way one envisions neurons may fire in the synapses of our cultural sub-conscious, "Props" are given to figures that have been overshadowed by others. These random associations coax the viewer into initiating new pathways through which to glean the essence of a particular period. (It may also serve as a reminder of the fickle hand of fate.) Incorporating a technique that the artist describes as attempting the visual equivalent of a hip-hop song, Parker catapults the viewer into the heartbeat of a moment. And there we linger...</p> <p>Framing and forcing the issue are all manner of cartoony, internal organs, defiantly raised fists graphically rendered appendages and cavities. Punchy, colorful, and in your face, Parker relates the blood and guts of what he has got to say on canvas. Never acquiescing entirely to merely presenting a picture or telling a tale, Parker really does attempt to capture a moment. The themes of his paintings have ranged from pop to punk, hooliganism to hero worship, poetic justice to political satire.</p> <p>Erik Parker will be included in the exhibition "Painting Pictures" curated by Gys van Tyl at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. He has also been included in the exhibition "the Americans" curated by Mark Sladen at the Barbican Art Galleries in London and has had a solo show at the Cornerhouse Contemporary Art Museum in Manchester. He has exhibited extensively in Europe and Japan in such galleries as Modern Art, London, Jablonka Galerie in Cologne and Taka Ishi in Japan. Erik Parker lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/701 Exhibition: Torben Giehler <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"New Works"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 10 - October 12, 2002</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/702"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4372.jpeg" alt="" height="396" width="500" /></a> <p>Torben Giehler, <em>K2-North spur</em>, 2000</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Torben Giehler. For Giehler's second exhibition at the gallery, he continues to skirt the edges of abstraction and representation. Using grids, brilliant, synthetic colors and seemingly mathematically precise rendering, Giehler creates compositions that read as both dazzling virtual landscapes and geometrical abstractions. In many of the new paintings, Giehler's perspective is perhaps even more skewed, giving the viewer a pronounced feeling of vertigo, a more drastic approximation of speed.</p> <p>For this exhibition, Giehler alternates between aerial views of completely artificial, but wholly satisfying panoramas, and mountainscapes portrayed dead on, mapping the signature planes and crags of the world's most famous peaks. While pivoting views of the landscapes evoke a confluence of connections to flight simulators, video games and superhighways, they approach closer to formal abstraction. Diagonal, crisscrossing lines break the picture plane into contemplative sections of pure color and line while at the same time urging the eye to glide over the surface.</p> <p>Giehler's depiction of mountains are a pause. Giehler takes us through the parapet, delineating every facet of it's surface. Appearing as elaborately detailed blueprints for geologists, the mountains splendor does not rely on the height of its peaks, but rests instead within the composition of bedrock that rises slowly skyward. Here Giehler examines the framework through which each singular surface fuses into an apex, both challenging and highlighting paintings' traditional stance of flatness.</p> <p>Torben Giehler is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has been the recipient of the James William Paige fund as well as a recipient of the Clarissa Bartlett Scholarship. He has exhibited extensively in Europe, including most recently a solo show at Arndt & Partner, Berlin. In the past two years Torben Giehler's paintings have been acquired by some of the worlds most renowned public and private collections. In addition to upcoming solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Houston, Milan, Athens and London, he has also been included in the upcoming survey exhibition "Painting Pictures," initiated by the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. Torben Giehler lives and works in <span class="caps">NYC.</span></p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6B%61%69%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Kai Heinze</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/702 Exhibition: Yoshitaka Amano <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 25 - August 3, 2002</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/703"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/8/8577.jpeg" alt="Untitled, 2002" height="317" width="437" /></a> <p>Yoshitaka Amano, <em>Untitled</em>, 2002</p> <p> Ink on handmade Nepalese paper, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For Immediate Release:<br /> Yoshitaka Amano<br /> June 25th through August 3, 2002<br /> Opening reception Tuesday June 25th from 6:00 to 8:00 PM</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition of new work by the anime luminary Yoshitaka Amano. Revered in Japan for his participation in the worlds of manga, anime and video games, Yoshitaka Amano worked as a creator of such favorites as "Speed Racer," "G-Force" and later "Final Fantasy." Although this marks the first exposure of his work to a fine art audience in New York City, he is considered to have inspired a whole generation of contemporary artists such as Mariko Mori, Takasha Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara. </p> <p>For his exhibition at Leo Koenig Inc. Amano has created large-scale paintings of characters that have become familiar to us by way of the flickering cathode ray emanating from our TV sets, pulsing through light into the comfort of our living rooms. Painted on aluminum, and detached from their surroundings, the faces from G-Force and Speed Racer suddenly hint closer to Japanese ritual masks than to Saturday morning cartoons. Presented on the cool, impervious metal, the characters reveal a progression of centuries from Samurai Warrior to Super Hero in a split-second glance. </p> <p>Accompanying the large scale paintings, this exhibition will also include more intimate works done in the 700-year-old tradition of monochrome ink painting known as sumi-e. Applied to fragile, absorbent rice paper, the key to sumi-e painting lies in its brushstrokes made with no room for error. It relies upon the rapid application of gestures that have been repeated so often as to become second nature. Also integral to sumi-e is the idea of presenting the essence of something. This capturing of essence combines with the speed of gesture, resulting in a secondary effect of an approximation of instantaneous travel and warp-speed velocity while remaining Zen-like, in the present. In her essay on Yoshitaka Amano, Rachel Kushner eloquently describes this approximation as " a studied transmutation from extroversion to introversion, a nexus where differing concepts of time, vectors of past and future, come together."</p> <p>Yoshitaka Amano was born in 1952 in a small town in Shizuoka, Japan near Mt. Fuji. At fifteen, Amano traveled to Tokyo with the intention of becoming an animator. There he was hired by Tatsunoko Productions where he remained for 15 years creating such characters as "Hutch the Honeybee," "Tekkaman" and the tremendously popular "Gatchaman," (or "G-Force" as it was known in the States, ) which became Tatsunoko's most successful superhero anime and was broadcast throughout the world. At 30, Amano left Tatsunoko Productions to persue a more independent career as a freelance artist. Over the last twenty years he has remained a prolific creative force in various mediums such as drawing, painting, novel illustration, film, lithography, ceramics, costume design and video games. He divides his time between Tokyo, New York City and Paris. A 196-page catalogue produced by Leo Koenig Inc. with an essay by Rachel Kushner will be available during the exhibition.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/703 Exhibition: Les Rogers <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Recent Paintings"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 21 - June 22, 2002</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/704"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/4/4459.jpeg" alt="" height="403" width="287" /></a> <p>Les Rogers, <em>Night Plow Radio</em>, 2002</p> <p> oil on canvas, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition of new paintings by Les Rogers. At first glance, Rogers' paintings appear as peculiarly graceful yet muscular abstraction. But Rogers creates his paintings by layering images, one atop another, saturating the canvas, at times creating a kind of visual white noise. The sources are too numerous and varied for the eye to differentiate immediately. Stacked and carefully compiled, these images meld into frenetic, yet considered works that move in and out of abstraction to representation at a blink of an eye. The fine line between precision and chaos, power and collapse, destruction and creation, presents itself as a composition that is at once thought out and allowed to develop. At the same time, the random presence and physicality of a human form acts as a visceral respite from the intellectual meditations on formalist concerns.</p> <p>If the viewer is strangely drawn into the space, to the eye of the storm, they may initially be beguiled by the strength and intensity of color as well as the seductive qualities of materiality. The surfaces are generous and lush, at once enigmatic and exuberant. And there are gradual revelations - one soon discovers, for example, that added to the mix are explicit or implicit references to significant works of art. Here Rogers expands on a post-modernist approach, conceding to the equanimity of images while suggesting a specific art-historical lineage. Eventually a progression is alluded to, a dynamic, impulsive beauty is revealed, and a distinct visual language becomes evident.</p> <p>Les Rogers holds a <span class="caps">B.F.A </span>from the Rhode Island School of Design. He most recently has had solo exhibitions at Karlheinz Meyer, Karlsruhe, Germany and Eleni Koroneou in Athens. Les Rogers lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/704 Exhibition: Ouattara Watts <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"From The Collection of Ranbir Singh"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 2 - May 18, 2002</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/705"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11592.jpeg" alt="From the Collection of Ranbir Singh, installation view, 2002" height="360" width="450" /></a> <p>Ouattara Watts, <em>From the Collection of Ranbir Singh, installation view</em>, 2002</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For Immediate Release:<br /> Ouattara Watts from the collection of Ranbir Singh<br /> May 2 through May 18th, 2002<br /> Opening reception, Thursday May 2nd 6-8 pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of paintings by Ouattara Watts from the collection of Ranbir Singh. Ranbir Singh is a passionate collector of contemporary art and Mr. Watts represents a significant addition to his collection. On Mr. Watt's work, Singh writes the following:</p> <p>How does one communicate with the invisible today? Does one teach the rabbit or does the dead rabbit teach you? Ouattara's works are far away from the literal or documentary discourse found in much art "discovered" by a western art market in Africa, and oriented toward a commercial market mainly in Europe, and to some extent, the <span class="caps">U.S. </span> The commercial strategy adopted by these dealers was similar to that of their forebearer's during Europe's colonial intrusions into Africa. The work found by these dealers is comfortably pc (pre-colonial) and uses tropes taken from billboards, folk art or documentary. It is not bad for what it really is. Unfortunately, it was dressed up for what it was not.</p> <p>In the meantime, while these dealers were scouring Africa, Ouattara was beginning to cross the chasm. He arrived in Paris where he completed art studies in the mid 1980's . In the early 1990's, he moved to New York and continued to travel to Paris and the Ivory Coast. These travels do not appear dissimilar to many contemporary artists from America or Europe feeling the need to travel to Mali or India or, to go further back, the pull of African masks and objects for Picasso, Duchamp and Leger that helped their art travel to a new place. </p> <p>In Ouattara's works, the reading of place is felt in the yellow and orange fields that are rendered with pigmented papier-mache that the artist prepares, mixes and applies by hand. The paper used in this process is recycled newsprint, something the artist finds where he lives. It could reference the mud and grass used for walls in the ageless architecture Sudanese of Africa or adobe structures found in Sante Fe and Taos, <span class="caps">U.S.A. </span>or the timeless mud and dung painted layers of the great drawings by the women of Mithila, India. The fields created by this process have their own meditative and alchemical quality. The real action begins there.</p> <p>Instead of a place- specific feel, what one feels in looking at Ouattara's work is an upward movement that can be read as spiritual, a relationship between man and what is invisible to us. This universe has been glimpsed by other great American masters, such as Barnet Newman and Mark Rothko. The central form in one painting in this exhibition is a subtle reference to some sort of abstract bird or butterfly creature that has this uplifting feeling that leads us higher. The area around the bird is layered with great subtlety of surface and paint handling.</p> <p>Ouattara usually makes big paintings. The works in this exhibition are smaller, by relation. Installed, the large recent works have the feeling of an Antoine Wiertz installation. Being resident in Brussels, a familiar and sympathetic place I visited often was the Wiertz studio, now a great museum on the site of this 19th century painter's studio on Vauthier. It is the size of a small field with 40 foot ceilings and with natural light to match the Royal Greenhouse, a few miles north. Wiertz, however, also painted great smaller works. His "La Belle Rosine," showing Rosine, full of life, in some sort of conversation with death, symbolized by a skeleton, is less than a couple of feet in either direction and impossible to remove from memory.</p> <p>Similarly, the painting, "Monk Piano," 2002, is more intimate, compared to the larger works, and seems like a conversation in a dream with his dear, late friend, Jean Michel Basquiat. They had met in Paris-JMB was already well-known, and they connected immediately. Both loved music, both were artists, each painting for some years, one in New York the other in Paris, but meeting each other for the first time. In this painting, Ouattara ties music and art in an embrace of perhaps free abstract jazz, like a dance with <span class="caps">JMB </span>in another cosmic invisible dimension. The lights burn dimly at his side, but this painting is full of life.</p> <p>Ouattara Watts' paintings have most recently been seen in this year's Whitney Biennale and in "The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994 at <span class="caps">P.S.</span> 1, Long Island City New York. He currently lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/705 Exhibition: Frank Nitsche <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Winterorbit"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 26 - April 28, 2002</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/706"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/8/8821.jpeg" alt="Winterorbit Installation View" height="361" width="466" /></a> <p>Frank Nitsche, <em>Winterorbit Installation View</em>, 2002</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For Immediate Release:<br /> Frank Nitsche<br /> "WINTERORBIT, recent paintings" <br /> March 26 through April 28th <br /> opening reception Tuesday March 26, 6-9pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Berlin artist, Frank Nitsche. With gestures that echo elaborate urban graffiti, Nitsche's works suggest a cyber-punk abstraction that is the visual equivalent of JG Ballard's Crash. With vague allusions to portraiture, and crushed, but still glistening chrome, ala John Chamberlain sculptures, his paintings do not so much depict an abstraction of form as much as they depict a destruction of form. This inherent aggression of a violated form is delineated in graphic lines that appear and disappear beneath chunks or veils of colors that remain at once optimistic and eerily nostalgic. </p> <p>Speed, mechanical potentiality, and gravitational consequences are all touched upon, but Nitsche is not simply a chronicler of abstracted catastrophes. Within each collapsing form is an image germinating into being. The paintings divulge a synchronization between the heft of a muscular line and the ethereality of a floating geometric shape. </p> <p>Cataloguing clippings from newspapers and magazine illustrations, Nitsche's collection of reference material are not a direct link to and offer no clue to the content of his paintings. They serve instead as a compressed and conserved media diary. His systematic filing of resource material perhaps most closely influences the titles of his paintings, which are in fact simply serial numbers. His sources however, are digested and ruminated upon, later appearing in an outlined form upon a canvas as if through the process of some imagistic osmosis. </p> <p>Frank Nitsche has a concurrent exhibition at Max Hetzler Gallery in Berlin and has been also recently showing at Daniel Templon, Paris and Jay Jopling's White Cube 2, London. This marks his debut solo exhibition in New York City. </p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6pm. <br /> For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/706 Exhibition: Michael Phelan <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Spring rain on my roof begins to drum: Drips from the willow, petals from the plum"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 22 - March 23, 2002</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/707"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/10/10997.jpeg" alt=""Spring rain on my roof begins to drum: Drips from the willow, petals from the plum." height="615" width="395" /></a> <p>Michael Phelan, <em>Exhibition invite</em>, 2002</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Incorporating installation, sculpture, and occasionally, painting, Phelan continually mines the psyche of the American landscape, focusing on the way we have taken traditional aspects of various cultures, and modifying them for a popular sensibility. Phelan considers what makes up our new and improved landscape, the "new real." It is an attempt to experience an idealized beauty and serenity, but one in which we no longer have to contend with the elements of the Great Outdoors. The city of Las Vegas illustrates this view to the most extreme and successful degree. Phelan views humanity as increasingly estranged from what is perceived as nature, prefering to live in a landscape which is tailored to our needs.</p> <p>For example, for his exhibition at the gallery, Phelan created a series of paintings rendered in the ancient style of Sumi-e. Teaching himself the oriental art form from "Learn to master Sumi-e books, Phelan's "landscape" paintings adhere to the basic principles of Sumi-e. Working with the classical Sumi-e brush (fude) and Sumi ink (made from a sumi ink stick and water), Phelan painted from memory combining emotion with memorized strokes. In this case, Phelan's memories were of the American West. Phelan relied on his childhood recollections growing up in Colorado and visiting such destinations as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park. Paired with this landscape, were sculptures drawn from the five major types of natural rock shapes recognized for the purpose of Zen Meditation Gardens or Karesansui. Phelan's sculptures were developed through a complex modeling process. Beginning with a two dimensional study of a specific rock shape, (ex. reclining ox), ansd with the help af a 3/d modeling and architectural computer program, Phelan distilled the stone shapes, locating and faceting its surface planes. He then created the works from high density foam, in it's original scale. Laminating the stones with "Granite" formica, Phelan simplified, implied and symbolized nature. A final component of the exhibition were cast bronze stems of "Lucky Bamboo," believed to bring good fortune and prosperity.</p> <p>In his work whose title is lifted from a popular Soap Opera, "Like Sands through an Hour Glass, So Are the Days of our Lives," Phelan stacks aquariums filled with various objects. In this case, Phelan considers these glass vitrines as architectural components, which can be stacked and layered in infinite combinations Placement becomes the aesthetic gesture, while the contents represent idealized standards, existing outside the transient aspects of time and weather. In Tree piece an inviting park bench conveniently comes equipped with it's own artificial tree. Employing the principle of simplification, (aka reductivism or abstraction), Phelan's constructions are carefully arranged in keeping with elements of balance, contrast and rhythm. Hence Phelan reduces the "natural" world to its essence, creating a stylized medium for meditation. Phelan strives to transform the mundane into the sublime, where the natural and artificial, real and unreal can exist without contradiction.</p> <p>Michael Phelan is a graduate of Rhode Island Shool of Design, Providence. His work has most recently been seen in shows such as "Urban Pronography" curated by Lauri Firstenberg at Artist Space, La Ville/Le Jardin/La Memoire, curated by Lawrence Boose, Carolyn Christov-Bahagiev and Hans Ulrich Olbrist at the Academmia di Francia, Villa Medici, Roma, Italy and "Unbottled" at the Hammond Museum inNorth Salem, <span class="caps">NY.</span> Michael Phelan has an edition and an upcoming monograph which was created in collaboration with Gabrius Editions.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/707 Exhibition: Jeff Elrod <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Analog Paintings"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">January 18 - February 26, 2002</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/708"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/8/8818.jpeg" alt="Analog Paintings, Installation view" height="389" width="500" /></a> <p>Jeff Elrod, <em>Analog Paintings Installation view</em>, 2002</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by Jeff Elrod. For this exhibition Elrod continues with what he calls "Analog" painting. In his own words, Elrod makes "handmade copies of a digital original". Starting with an elementary drawing program, Jeff begins with "frictionless drawings" made with a computer mouse. The movements required to create the drawings are very similar to those hand gestures used to operate some computer games. A smooth detached aesthetic arises where the mouse, instead of being a more precise tool for rendering, initiates a randomness that totally subverts the accuracy of digital technologies. At the same time, the shallow, compressed sense of space that we can only associate with the computer screen, emphasizes a new painterly space. Applying the resulting images and words onto canvas becomes a process of not only applying paint to the surface but a dropping off, deleting of information. With Elrod's practice of taping off and painting, the deleted information becomes the image, the absence becomes the essence.</p> <p>Elrod's paintings reveal clues to his many, varied influences. He evokes famed graphics innovator, Sister Mary Carita while incorporating the literary device known as "cut up" creating a kind of digital collage of information and form. Titles reveal yet another layer of information "Delete Yourself" is at once funny and darkly existential. "Missing Time" could easily refer to the stress of modern life as much as it could to that odd feeling of not knowing where one had spent the last 24 hours after a particularly raucous party. "Flatlands" refers to an obscure 19th century sci fi novel written by Edwin Abbot and described as a "Geometric Love Story". As a group, these titles, imagery and even color collude to suggest a frenetic free association that is perhaps closer to synapses firing in ones mind than to the more reflexive qualities of surfing the internet. Ultimately, the paintings resonate visually and formally as a fresh incarnation of American Post-war painting.</p> <p>Jeff Elrod's work has most recently appeared in "Bitstreams", at the Whitney Museum of American Art and "Glee: Painting Now", at the Aldrich Museum and The Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art as well as the Kemper Museum in Kansas City. Jeff Elrod currently lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/708 Exhibition: Tony Matelli <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Sexual Sunrise"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 6, 2001 - January 13, 2002</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/709"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/27/27189.jpeg" alt="" height="360" width="461" /></a> <p>Tony Matelli, <em>"Sexual Sunrise" installation view</em>, 2001</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of our new exhibition space at 249 Centre Street. The reason for our seemingly sudden move was a practical one. The logistical and emotional reverberations of being 8 blocks away from the World Trade Center attack proved too overwhelming. In addition the building which housed our gallery for over a year has slipped into a deepening cycle of disrepair.</p> <p>Our new space at 249 Centre Street, although smaller, will be sleeker and better suited for our future exhibitions. Situated across the street from the well known "police building" on the edges of both Chinatown and Little Italy, we are happy to still be in a lively downtown neighborhood. In the coming year, we will renew our commitment to presenting solo exhibitions of exceptional emerging artists. In addition, we have established publishing collaborations dedicated to producing monographs of selected artists. Scheduled for this coming year are monographs of Tony Matelli, published in collaboration with Verlag Buchandlung Walther Koenig, Michael Phelan, in collaboration with Gabrius Editions, Lisa Ruyter and Erik Parker both in collaboration with Oktagon. These forays into publishing began with the production of catalogues documenting each of our exhibitions, which we will continue.</p> <p>We are extremely grateful for the unflinching support of a community that has been wounded but remains resilient, and we are thankful for the good fortune to not only persevere, but to grow in these uncertain times. Please join us to celebrate our move towards a cautious optimism. Gallery Hours will remain Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6pm.</p> <p>Inaugural Exhibition at new space: "Sexual Sunrise", new works by Tony Matelli</p> <p>December 6 through January 13, 2002</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is happy to announce the opening of our new space at 249 Centre Street. For our inaugural exhibition, we are pleased to present "Sexual Sunrise," new works by Tony Matelli. For this exhibition, Matelli offers works that are at once witty, self-mocking caricatures while remaining a vaguely troubling self-portraiture. Directly addressing the isolated process of self-reflection, the sculptures convey the warping effects this process can sometimes take on one's mirrored psyche.</p> <p>In "Sexual Sunrise," there are four works which each represent a stage in a developing self-awareness. In the first state of isolation, the gallery walls are surrounded by an endless horizon. In effect, Matelli transforms the gallery into a self contained island whose sole inhabitants are his own multiple, ever-distorting visages.</p> <p>The first inhabitant one encounters is "The Hunter." This sculpture depicts Matelli, complete with oversized head and exaggerated features. In one hand is a coil of rope with which he is setting a trap while the other hand is held up to his nose as he vigourously sniffs it. Creeping through the woods, spurred by inspiration or merely habit, Matelli is obviously hot on the trail of something unknown.</p> <p>Next, there is "Sexual Sunrise," a combination of digital prints and reflective foil on canvas. Located on the eastern wall just above the ocean horizon, this picture depicts dozens of ecstatic faces bursting from behind a tropical landscape. This is the epiphany, your own image reflected within a sunburst of orgasmic faces.</p> <p>Finally there is "Reverie." Here, Matelli is lost in thought, charmed by his own music as he strums a small guitar. With his eyes rolled back and a smile on his face, Matelli is either post-coital or presently drugged. Behind him is a tree strung loosely with 50 feet of rope. Clearly enough with which to... "Reverie" perhaps is to become the last stop.</p> <p>Tony Matelli's work are manifestations of an intensely personal dilemma. Desires, fantasies, ego and expectations sometimes collude in isolation, to form disquieting compostitions. But it is precisely this personal experience that is at the core of Matelli's work. In his own words," I wanted a more humanizing, more subjective art, one in which I am completely represented.... The subjective as metaphor, the artist as foil." By exploiting a theme so universal, so basic to the human condition, Matelli's evocation of the personal becomes even more acute. In sexual Sunrise, Matelli deftly manages to convey an almost embarrassingly personal insight while the viewer maintains the familiar acknowledgement that we've all been there.</p> <p>Tony Matelli holds an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Most recently, his work has been included in the exhibition "The Americans," curated by Mark Sladen at the Barbican Galleries in London and "Vral que Nature" at the capc, Musee d'art contemporain de Bordeaux. He was also included in the Greater New York Show at <span class="caps">PS1 </span>and "Small World at <span class="caps">MOCA</span> San Diego among others. Tony Matelli lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/709 Exhibition: Gelitin <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Gelitin is getting it all wrong again"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 11 - October 31, 2001</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/710"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/10/10856.jpeg" alt="Gelitin is getting it all wrong again, 2001" height="415" width="500" /></a> <p>Gelitin, <em>Gelitin is getting it all wrong again</em>, 2001</p> <p> Mixed media installation and performance, varies with installation </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Even after the experience of having totally failed with their invisible appearance at the current Venice Biennale, Gelatin are still not able to fix up a proper show. But you can wander through futkanister, sit by the waterfall with wannabe intellectuals looking at polish carpenters, and listen to bearded ladies telling you how to live art. And if you come back another day, everything seems to look different.</p> <p>But the Habitat Tour 2001 should be seen as more of a place to be than as a place to look at art. Gelatin's shameless behavior and the surroundings they create allow you to leave the place your living and enter a cute little space under floorboards and in sinuses, in capillaries, in little cracks and folds the size of a whole universe. Being there just more than a moment sets off a movement that rises in your nerve fibers through the spinal column into the backyard of your jellybrains and slides down to your belly releasing extreme energy. It is the energy of intense embarrassment such as you might feel when you watch a movie with your favorite star and every moment he is so naïve and every action he takes leads into catastrophe, or when you take your friends to see something you love and they are not impressed.</p> <p>Come and be with Gelatin at Leo Koenig Inc. 1 & 2 on 359 Broadway the hard way and experience love, beauty and embarrassment. Bring your friends, they might like it.</p> <p>Lectures (including audience participation) spoken and performed by Gelatin every Thursday until October 11 at 8:00 pm.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/710 Exhibition: Aidas Bareikis <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Silence before the Curve"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 16, 2001 - July 28, 2002</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/711"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/7/7251.jpeg" alt="" height="375" width="500" /></a> <p>Aidas Bareikis, <em>Silence Before the Curve</em>, 2001</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of "Silence before the Curve", an installation by Aidas Bareikis. Two years ago, Aidas Bareikis' large scale, mixed media sculpture entitled "Embarkation For Cythere" was presented as the inaugural exhibition at the gallery's first home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Suggesting Antoine Watteau's 1717 painting by the same name, at that time Bareikis related a "three dimensional reading of abstraction and virtual entropy".</p> <p>In "Silence before the Curve", Bareikis embarks on a more cinematic journey. His starting point is a fascination with space travel, technology and exploration. Bareikis focuses on the conflicting representations of the "final frontier". On one hand is the hermetic presentation that we have all become familiar with, by directors such as Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky. On the other, is the reality of space tourist Dennis Tito paying millions of dollars to be encapsulated with strangers in tight quarters and less than ideal hygienic conditions. A trip to the Smithsonian reveals that our most sophisticated Lunar landing vehicles look as if they were pieced together with tin foil and wire. Here, Bareikis makes a sly correlation with art practice itself, contrasting the arduous process of creating, with the seemingly effortless results of some contemporary progenitors of beauty through high production values.</p> <p>With "Silence Before the Curve", Bareikis takes a decidedly "Low Fi" approach initiating what he calls a "strategy of impoverishment". Constructed entirely from found objects that appear to have been through an acid rain and sealed in a plasticized lava, one becomes witness to an alchemic transformation. The objects within the installation exude a technological potentiality that has been temporarily interrupted. Meanwhile, iridescent color deliberately sets a mood of frenetic jubilance that belies the artifacts seemingly trapped by the monochrome quagmire of Bareikis' own equation. In an instant, the installation becomes an external manifestation of an intensely personal, internal landscape. At once hopeful and apocalyptic, ebullient and nightmarish, Bareikis relates a journey from the celebratory to the commemorative.</p> <p>Aidas Bareikis was born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1967 and graduated from the Vilnius Art Academy in 1993. He came to America the same year and completed the <span class="caps">MFA </span>program from Hunter College in 1997. He was awarded a Fullbright Scholarship and has been the recipient of a Soros Foundation Grant. Aidas Bareikis has shown in "Generation Z", and "Greater New York" at <span class="caps">PS1</span>/MOMA and has had a solo exhibition at Podewil in Berlin. Currently, his work is included in the exhibition "Crossing the Line" at the Queens Museum. He lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/711 Exhibition: Jonathan Meese <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"La Chambre de Balthus III"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 8 - June 9, 2001</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/713"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/29/29204.jpeg" alt="" height="360" width="462" /></a> <p>Jonathan Meese, <em>La Chambre de Balthys</em>, 2001</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of new work by German artist, Jonathan Meese. Long known for his saturated installations and energetic performances, Meese is presenting a series of paintings and drawings for his first New York solo exhibition. La Chambre de Balthus <span class="caps">III </span>marks the third of a series of installations of paintings, sculptures and drawings, the first being in Hanover at the Kestner Gesellschaft and the second at <span class="caps">FRI</span>-Art Centre d'Art Contemporain in Fribourg, Switzerland.</p> <p>Rooted in shades of Living Theater and the Viennese actionists, Meese has been known to "invoke" controversial figures from history during his performances. Surrounded by constructed labyrinths brimming with pop-culture icons and numerous self-portraits, Meese enters a seemingly trancelike state. Repeating gestures and phrases, Meese evinces an atmosphere of mystification that in turn, renders his audience into a state of astonishment. His watchers are at odds at how they should respond. The figures he conjures up are at once noble and notorious. The very act of mentioning their names oftentimes brings with it a serious responsibility. But with Meese, seriousness never appears without a hint of sarcasm, grandeur never appears without a trace of lyrical melancholy.</p> <p>Meese's first foray into art however, was through painting. It was only after attending the Academy of Fine Arts, Hamburg studying with Franz Ehrhardt Walther, that Meese abandoned painting and concentrated on installation work. Throughout the past few years, Meese had turned to installation and performances both as an "existential exploration of what could be central to art", as well as an exorcism of sorts, from the strictures and confinement of canvas.</p> <p>Always reinventing himself, Meese has now returned to painting and drawing. Here, Meese inverts this idea of painting's confinement by inventing his own, more severe constraints. His palette is reduced to shades of black gray and brown. The repetition of his performances become the figures that reappear in his portraits. At the core of his work remains an unrelenting sense of history. And once again historical and mythical personages coexist with/through Meese's self-portraits. Meese appears with Balthus looming, as Imhotep, resigned. Twin sisters in pigtails look through decades of conformity in search of a childhood that never existed. They did not avert their eyes to the unpleasantries of the passage of time, they observed and were affected. The paintings are the antithesis of slick, pop, commercially appropriated works.</p> <p>The gallery itself reverberates with historical lineage. As the studio of famous civil war photographer, Mathew Brady, 359 Broadway was one of the first photo portrait studios in the United States. It would seem that Meese's portraits have found a most appropriate venue.</p> <p>Jonathan Meese has had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle St. Gallen and galleries such as Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Christian Nagel, Cologne, Paolo Curti & Co, Milan. His work has been included in exhibitions at Kunstverein Frankfurt, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Museum Abeiberg Monchengladbach, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Vienna Secession, and <span class="caps">P.S.1</span>/MOMA.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/713 Exhibition: Bill Saylor <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Why Go Anywhere?"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 24 - April 28, 2001</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/714"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11584.jpeg" alt="Why Go Anywhere? installation view" height="326" width="500" /></a> <p>Bill Saylor, <em>Why Go Anywhere? installation view</em>, 2001</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition of new works by Bill Saylor. Saylor's process begins and ends with drawings. Bordering on the obsessive, he sketches out ideas on anything he finds immediately available. Ten or twenty drawing notations may initiate a single painting. The works are informed by his surroundings in Brooklyn as much as his living in southern California where he studied marine biology along with fine arts. Logos, tabloid headlines, texts from scientific journals and visuals from satellite transmissions abound. Hence, Saylor's work appears equal parts abstract expressionist, graffiti tagger, <span class="caps">NASA </span>space program enthusiast, and eco-terrorist.</p> <p>A fascination with technology is evidenced, especially with Global Positioning Systems. The artist is inspired by the absurdity of a technology that allows man to mimic nature's innate sense of navigation by connecting to satellites through a hand-held device. In the words of John Coltrane, Saylor would like to "establish a territory in which to have an adventure." The inclusion of <span class="caps">GPS </span>codes underscores an acknowledgment of the limitation of paintings spatial abstraction. Meanwhile, the unpredictability of natural phenomena summon into form, solar powered animals, structures made of bone and flora with sensory perception. Colors collide in tandem, relating a belief in the power of entropy.</p> <p>The tension between the literal allusion to space and the flatness of the overall painting creates works that either threaten to fall in upon themselves or spill off the canvas onto the walls. The paintings seem to hover precariously between two gravitational axes. There is an element of risk that he may have gone momentarily a bit too far with a certain gesture, color or attitude. For the artist, however, therein lies the adventure. Somehow, abstraction, images and distorted texts collude, resulting in a composition that resolves to make perfect sense. For Saylor, the real risk always lies in the possibility of not venturing far enough.</p> <p>Bill Saylor holds a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from Cal State University, Long Beach. His work can currently be seen in "Come on Feel the Noise," at Asbaek gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark. This is his first solo exhibition in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/714 Exhibition: Lisa Ruyter <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Imitation of Life"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 10 - March 10, 2001</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/715"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11572.jpeg" alt="Imitation of Life installation view, 2001" height="360" width="456" /></a> <p>Lisa Ruyter, <em>Imitation of Life installation view</em>, 2001</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Lisa Ruyter.</p> <p>These paintings are made from photographs taken by the artist in cemeteries including Brompton Cemetery in London, Pere Lachaise in Paris, Boothill Graveyard in Tombstone Arizona and Hope Cemetery in Barre, Vermont. - a kind of travelogue about space and time.</p> <p>Ruyter has titled the show "Imitation of Life," referencing the 1959 melodrama by Douglas Sirk. Ruyter identifies with Sirk's use of recycled material and genre structure to exploit the complexity of representation. Sirk relied on an earlier and more classical model (the first "Imitation" made a fortune for Universal in the 30's) using bright Technicolor saturation and mannerist compositions to distort his narrative plane. Ruyter, who would have you believe that painting is her genre, shoots and paints, acknowledging the impossibility of depicting reality without a formalist safety net, without a dialogue of antecedents. The relationship between formalist concerns and a living content are at the heart of her work.</p> <p>The naming of this show after a film echoes Ruyter's practice of titling her paintings from a list of movies. This strategy encourages a reading that places her work within a broader cultural history of image-making. The importance of the photographic source material is evident. Ruyter stresses the act of taking photographs, of having been there, of collecting imagistic fragments of her own biography.</p> <p>All of these paintings have a particular subject matter in common. The space created in them is specific to each individual work. These paintings are about intentionality, about the use of style as a willful act. If the source photos had an immediate quality to them, the paintings betray any illusions of casualness in the photo. The cruelty of the camera angle, the sadism of the cropping become evident. Ruyter utilizes style and artifice to create works that affect the viewer as being more real, more deliberate.</p> <p>In sharp contrast to a painting-specific understanding of formalism as a neutralizing and meaning-stripped venture, Ruyter re-posits formalist approach as a deliberate and conscious act. The artist visually relates her story, manipulating content through formal intercessions, an idea very familiar to students of film and photography. The fact that Ruyter stages these constructions in cemeteries reinforces the connection of art to the commemorative. These paintings are glimpses of the infinite authored by a human hand.</p> <p>Lisa Ruyter has exhibited extensively in Europe as well as the <span class="caps">U.S.</span> Her work has most recently been seen at the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris in the exhibition "Pastoral Pop," and in PS 1's "Greater New York." She lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/715 Exhibition: David Scher <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Diary of a Spaceman"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 16, 2000 - February 2, 2001</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/716"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/8/8830.jpeg" alt="Diary of a Spaceman, 2000" height="322" width="345" /></a> <p>David Scher, <em>Diary of a Spaceman</em>, 2000</p> <p> 6 1/2 x 7 ft., </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/716 Exhibition: Martin Kippenberger and Marko Lehanka <div class="exhibition-subtitle">“Today: Spicesbreadscompetitioneating” or “Don't call me, I'll call you”</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 16, 2000 - February 3, 2001</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/717"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/10/10860.jpeg" alt="Kippenberger & Lehanka" height="504" width="397" /></a> <p>Martin Kippenberger, <em>"Today: Spicesbreadcompetitioneating" or "Don't call me back, I'll call you"</em>, 2001</p> <p> Installation view, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Martin Kippenberger and Marko Lehanka.</p> <p>Without question, Martin Kippenberger is considered to be among the most diverse, unpredictable and prolific artists of our time. Before his untimely death in 1997, Kippenberger initiated a freedom and levity within contemporary art practice that continues to confound and inspire. The works on view for this exhibition were created in 1991 in Tokyo, Japan. Highlighted will be a series of large-scale drypoint etchings. Focusing on "Americana", the etchings are extremely detailed and resolved. In addition, a box sculpture, rubber relief on canvas and a unique handmade book will be on view. This will be the first time these pieces are shown in the <span class="caps">U.S.</span></p> <p>Marko Lehanka continues with this tradition of wry wit and unexpected juxtapositioning. For this show Lehanka will be exhibiting sculptures which were previously on view at the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, Germany. One sculpture is based on an Albrecht Durer drawing for Peasants Monument. In the drawing, Durer assembles a totem of agricultural products and equipment in the form of trophies. The drawing is topped by a pathetic peasant with a sword in his back, illustrating the rift between ruling powers and those who are ruled over, a composition of insoluble, diametrically opposed interests.</p> <p>In Lehanka's updated version, there is also a collection of everyday farm products and tools stacked upon each other. The present day protagonist atop Lehanka's totem smokes a cigarette and is content, seemingly lost in thought. The figure is not representative of the rich or powerful, but obviously his fate is not as tragic as the peasant he is modeled after. There is no life and death struggle to signify, perhaps just a hint of resignation amidst dry goods and the status quo.</p> <p>In another piece, constructed wooden benches will follow along one side of the gallery painted in a very specific set of colors. When asked about the reasoning for the colors, Lehanka responded that before making the benches, he had a dream that he was going to take a trip to the Caribbean (with the money he would make from the sale of the benches), and these are the colors of the Caribbean. This response, though typifying his approach, belies the complexity of the resulting piece. The benches with these undeniably inviting colors, effectively compel visitors to sit and talk.</p> <p>What in fact drives Lehanka's work is conversation. Whether it be replying to historical statements or wry commentary on day-to-day life, Lehanka's responses are delivered in a relaxed unself-conscious manner, similar to a chat with an old friend. Not unlike a poet, he can infuse meanings that are at once absurd and profound. Above all, he is what all great conversationalists are, a good listener, one who is able to make succinct observations and convey them without sentimentality.</p> <p>Marko Lehanka has exhibited extensively in Europe including the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, Kunstmuseum Lucerne and in Forwart at the Banque Brussells. This is his first exhibition in the United States.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/717 Exhibition: Erik Parker <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Whiteboysteals"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 28 - December 2, 2000</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/718"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/26/26336.jpeg" alt="" height="276" width="500" /></a> <p>Erik Parker, <em>Installation view</em>, 2000</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Erik Parker.</p> <p>Using an approach akin to genealogy charts, Erik Parker creates written snapshots of a particular time and place. Cross-pollinating pop and street culture with an art world who's who, Parker conveys an unusual lineage through specific eras in our recent past. Assigning an equal emphasis to obscure and well-known figures, the names in his lists act as neurons firing in the synapses of our collective cultural consciousness.</p> <p>Framing these "thought balloons" is all manner of cartoony internal organs and bodily functions. Colors are as strong as his writing is direct. It's as if to say, the physicality of experience is necessary to punctuate the haze of memory. Using slang, borrowing elements from tagging and graffiti, Parker does the art world a favor by placing them squarely within the backbeat of the real world. Inspiration resides alongside camaraderie, celebrity exists on the fringe of obscurity.</p> <p>Parker, in his own words, tries to make paintings that "look the way a hip hop song sounds". In his work, there is no separation between the visceral and cerebral. In the end, you can only do what your gut tells you to do.</p> <p>Most recently Erik Parker's work was included in the "Greater New York" show at <span class="caps">PS1 </span>in Long Island City, New York. He has been awarded the Rema Hort-Mann Foundation Grant and the Purchase College 25th Anniversary Scholarship. He lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/718 Exhibition: Torben Giehler <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 15 - October 21, 2000</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/719"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/26/26789.jpeg" alt="" height="287" width="500" /></a> <p>Torben Giehler, <em>Installation view</em>, 2000</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For Immediate Release:</p> <p>Torben Giehler</p> <p>September 15 through October 21st, 2000<br /> Opening reception Friday, September 15th, 6-9pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of it's first exhibition of the fall season, recent paintings by German born artist, Torben Giehler. </p> <p>Giehler's paintings combine elements of geometrical abstraction and color field painting into futuristic landscapes. Working first with freehand drawings, Giehler then completes alterations of dimension and color with the assistance of his computer and digital photography. The process goes back and forth before the images are finally laid onto canvas. </p> <p>The paintings are influenced by everyday urban as well as virtual landscapes that inhabit our increasingly digital imaginations. There are recognizable forms laid out in skewed perspectives. Cityscapes shimmer, gleaned from aerial views. Colors resonate with unnatural intensity, evoking sunsets fueled by the by the emanations of our technological advances. </p> <p>For Giehler, these landscape gestures ultimately are a structural framework that transforms immediately into line, color and form. He states " I am trying to create a situation whereby pictorial events are recognizable and meaningful and at the same time can be seen as pure abstractions." <br /> <br /> Torben Giehler is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston Massachusetts. He has been the recipient of the James William Paige Fund as well as a recipient of the Clarissa Bartlett Scholarship. In 1999 he exhibited in `Traveling Scholars" at the Museum School in Boston. This will be the 27 year old artist's first solo exhibition. Torben Giehler lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/719 Exhibition: Sean Snyder <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 14 - July 29, 2000</div> <br/> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/720 Exhibition: Greg Bogin <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Stop N' Shop"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 8 - May 28, 2000</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/721"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11374.jpeg" alt="Stop & Shop, 2000" height="349" width="454" /></a> <p>Greg Bogin, <em>Stop & Shop installation view</em>, 2000</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>After a successful year in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Leo Koenig is pleased to announce the opening of his new space, Leo Koenig Inc. at 359 Broadway, between Franklin and Leonard streets in Tribeca. For it's inaugural show, Leo Koenig Inc. will present a solo exhibition of new works by artist Greg Bogin.</p> <p>Greg Bogin paintings are distilled from the debris of a modular collective memory. Using acrylic and enamel on canvas, Bogin painstakingly creates a surface of clean anonymity. On a ground of brightest white, bars of color recall parking lot signs, legos, board games and the compulsive graphs of the global corporate market. In Bogin's vocabulary, supermarket slickness is the vector that propels the viewer into a world of symbols, which await signification.</p> <p>With this exhibition, Bogin continues with variations of themes that have occurred earlier in his work. He states "I think of the individual works as being rebuildable, as if they were designed according to the laws of building blocks. But upon closer examination of the precise canvases, laws evaporate, lines jar momentarily to the side. Imperfections bloom, a hint to the culpability of the hand as much as the process. Here, the anonymity of structure and systematic organization trigger strangely personalized memories that may span from a vaguely missed childhood toy to a Stanley Kubrik film.</p> <p>Greg Bogin has had solo exhibitions at Jablonka Galerie in Cologne, Germany. and at Gian Enzo Sperone, Rome. This is his first solo exhibition in New York City.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/721 Exhibition: Michael Bach <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 11, 1999 - January 15, 2000</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/722"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/10/10994.jpeg" alt="Installation view, 1999" height="390" width="500" /></a> <p>Michael Bach, <em>Installation view</em>, 1999</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/722 Exhibition: Bill Saylor <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 11, 1999 - January 15, 2000</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/723"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/27/27168.jpeg" alt="" height="360" width="399" /></a> <p>Bill Saylor, <em>Point Panic</em>, 2000</p> <p> Acrylic and oil on canvas, 66 x 60 inches </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/723 Exhibition: Niels Bonde <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 23 - November 21, 1999</div> <br/> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/724 Exhibition: The John Weber Project <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 18 - October 17, 1999</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/725"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11164.jpeg" alt="Installation view, 1999" height="357" width="500" /></a> <p>The John Weber Project, <em>Installation view</em>, 1999</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/725 Exhibition: Javier Tellez <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 17 - October 9, 1999</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1181"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11163.jpeg" alt="Untitled, 1999" height="367" width="500" /></a> <p>Javier Tellez, <em>Untitled</em>, 1999</p> <p> Mixed media, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1181 Exhibition: Dara Birnbaum <div class="exhibition-subtitle">(A) Drift of Politics "Laverne and Shirley"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 26 - July 24, 1999</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/726"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/11/11015.jpeg" alt="(A)drift of Politics "Laverne and Shirley," 1999" height="249" width="250" /></a> <p>Dara Birnbaum, <em>Installation view</em>, 1999</p> <p> Mixed media installation, </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/726 Exhibition: Siah Armajani, David Scher <div class="exhibition-subtitle"></div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 22 - June 20, 1999</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/727"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/26/26334.jpeg" alt="" height="326" width="498" /></a> <p>Siah Armajani and David Scher, <em>Installation view</em>, 1999</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/727 Exhibition: Aidas Bareikis <div class="exhibition-subtitle">"Embarkation for Cythere"</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">April 10 - May 8, 1999</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/728"><img border="0" src="http://leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/26/26332.jpeg" alt="" height="360" width="381" /></a> <p>Aidas Bareikis, <em>Embarkation For Cythere</em>, 1999</p> <p> Mixed media installation, Varies with installation </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig welcomes you to the opening of the gallery space Leo Koenig, Inc. and to the fist show therein: sculptor Aidas Bareikis' "Embarkation for Cythere," April 10-May 9 1999. Leo Koenig, Inc. is located at 138 Bayard Street in Williamsburg , Brooklyn, the former location of the Four Walls project-based exhibition space. The gallery will present works by emerging European and American artists for the limited time of one year. This commitment of showing is made possible through resale activities at Leo Koenig, Inc.</p> <p>Aidas Bareikis' large scale, mixed media sculpture entitled "Embarkation For Cythere" is here presented in suggestion of Antoine Watteau's 1717 painting of the same name. The sculptor describes the work as,</p> <p>"... a virtual island, It's not a fixed place. There is possibility here. I recognized coincidence between this sculpture and Watteau's painting. That "the party's over" and also that there is a possibility left open that the party is coming. This mood has been present before, this mood of virtual entropy, it's nothing new. This sculpture is an imploded landscape not so unlike the virtual landscape of the painting. There are found objects, ready-mades contemplating their own absence. They mingle among features that remind of a sponge swollen with matter that no longer flows. In the end it is a confusion of chipped gimcracks, ill assorted, obsolete-embarkation."</p> <p>Aidas Bareikis was born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1967 and graduated from the Vilnius Art Academy in 1993. He came to America in the same year and completed the <span class="caps">MFA </span>program from Hunter College in 1997.</p> <p>For more information or visuals, please contact <a href="mailto:%65%6C%69%7A%61%62%65%74%68%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Elizabeth Balogh</a> or <a href="mailto:%6E%69%63%6F%6C%65%40%6C%65%6F%6B%6F%65%6E%69%67%2E%63%6F%6D">Nicole Russo</a> at the gallery.</p></div> http://leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/728 News: Tony Matelli Solo Exhibition "Mise-En-Abyme" <p>At Stephane Simeons, Knokke, Belgium<br /> August 6th - September 13th, 2010</p> <p>Mirrors and copulation are abomidable, for they multiply the image of man.</p> <p> -Jorge Luis Borges</p> <p>...I dragged my fingers across the mirror. I made a painting in the tired dust. A cave painting; it was an image of Lucy. Two days later some asshole wiped it out and now his stupid shit is there. Who cares? This is a palimpsest of the worst kind. Christ there’s not even a message here, just dumb marks. What do you expect in a place like this anyway. Write over my name, I write over yours. Time obscures everything.</p> <p> <br /> -Tony Matelli</p> <p> </p> <p>Stephane Simoens is proud to present Tony Matelli’s first solo show in Belgium; Mise en Abyme comprised of 4 new small scale sculptures and several new wall works. The title, originally from the French, means, “placing into infinity” or “placing into the abyss”. Its more commonplace usage is to describe the visual experience of standing between two mirrors, seeing an infinite reproduction of ones image. In literary criticism, Mise en Abyme is a type of frame story, in which the core narrative can be used to illuminate some aspect of the framing story.</p> <p>With Mis en Abyme, Matelli has created a setting where parallel moments in time and space co-exist, are frozen, and repeated. Sculptures on the verge of collapse; among them The Constant Now, 2010, a rich entry point into such a universe. A smoking cigarette is fixed atop a cardboard box, expelling an endless and ceaseless stream of smoke. It is a kind of hourglass, recording the infinite. It is time fixed, just as it is time, broken.</p> <p>Converging moments in time are recorded in Matelli’s new series of ongoing mirror paintings—in this case, time is documented in the form of dust and grime, settled on a surface. A word is wiped or a drawing scrawled, only to be thinly veiled by more filth. The mirrors are, in a sense, palimpsests of long distances between instants of perversion, and testaments to the indefatigable nature of time. Installed parallel to one another these paintings and anything in between multiplies into filthy infinity.</p> <p>In the new series of work entitled Letterhead Matelli produces a different kind of repeated self-image. Taking as his starting point the ultimate trope of professionalism: the company letterhead, Matelli treats it as a surface for manifold explorations. In lieu of any stylistic coherence all of his stolen images, loose painting, hard abstraction, bodily functions, borrowed styles, cut out holes, applied objects, decorative patterns, even copied art works become framed within his “professional identity”. Enlarged 200-300% and painted on aluminum, these letterhead pages become as much a kind of mental self-portrait as they are a parody of the professionalism that frames them. Matelli seems to suggest that the artist and the professional are an impossible conflation, unable to occupy the same space at the same time. Like most of Matelli’s self portraiture, these are grotesques, but of a different kind. The cool seriality of these paintings, combined with their incongruous stylistic interventions point to an identity slipping away held together only by contrivance and name.</p> http://leokoenig.com/news/view/1454 News: Wendy White participates in the group show "Graphic Abstraction" <p>Opening September 13th, 2010, closes October 9th<br /> <span class="caps">SCAD</span> Hong Kong</p> <p>Rocio Rodriguez, Julio Garcia, Jennifer Jenkins, Heidi Cody, Jimmy O'Neal, Martha Whittington, Richard Gere, Whitney Wood, Cynthia Lollis, Wendy White</p> <p>Moot Gallery<br /> <span class="caps">SCAD</span> Hong Kong<br /> 292 Tai Po Road, Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong<br /> http://scad.edu/hong-kong/</p> http://leokoenig.com/news/view/1455 News: Bill Saylor solo exhibition "Ghost Light Junkie" <p>At Journal Gallery,168 North 1st Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211, June 23 - August, 2010</p> <p>Opening reception: June 23, 2010, 6-8 pm</p> <p>Appearing at dusk, clearly within one’s field of vision, the ghost lights of Marfa, Texas, flicker and dance for a moment before disappearing into darkness. Many claim that most of this light business is caused by the far off cars on Highway 67. Yet according to local lore, the first settlers in 1883 saw the lights long before automobiles or highways existed.</p> <p>Melding the mechanical and the organic, hand-made and ready-made, rough-house paint handling, and detailed drawing, this installation, like much of Saylor’s oeuvre, seeks to integrate the visual bombardment of city life into a personalized lexicon of imagery made unique by way of unlikely juxtapositions, humor and an intent to render the viewer slightly off balance.</p> <p>Much of what you see in “Ghost Light Junkie” is the product of a two-month residency at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, made with the sole intent to enjoy the freedom that the time permitted and the landscape inspired. The opportunity to present these works came as a complete and welcome surprise. The resulting installation, including a work specifically made for The Journal Gallery space, is a collaboration whose nuances scintillate, evaporate, and suddenly reappear like a mirage in the desert, which is where, in junkyards, Saylor made and left behind the sculptures that became the catalyst for this exhibition.</p> <p>Bill Saylor has exhibited internationally and his work has been included in such shows as “Kults, Werewolves and Sarcastic Hippies,” Yerba Buena Art Center, San Francisco, “California, Contemporary Painters,” curated by Alex Katz, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine and has previously been exhibited at The Journal Gallery as part of “Peanut Gallery,” curated by Joe Bradley. Saylor lives and works in <span class="caps">NYC.</span></p> http://leokoenig.com/news/view/1415 News: Nicole Eisenman participates in "Painting Like a Feminist" <p>A group exhibition at the Jewish Museum, New York, <span class="caps">NY,</span> September 12 - January 30, 2010</p> http://leokoenig.com/news/view/1394 News: Wendy White solo exhibition "French Cuts" <p>At Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, <span class="caps">IL,</span> September 10 – October 23, 2010</p> http://leokoenig.com/news/view/1457 News: Tom Sanford and Wendy White participate in "New Paintings" <p>Curated by Renee Boventi, At Staley/Wise Gallery, New York, <span class="caps">NY,</span> August 21-22, 2010</p> http://leokoenig.com/news/view/1449