http://541.leokoenig.com/ en Copyright 2012, Leo Koenig Inc. Mon, 6 Feb 2012 12:31:01 -0500 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 15 - November 12, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, September 15, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>"Directing Light onto Fist of Father" evolves over three parts:</p> <p>Part I<br /> Initiation: September 15, 6-8pm<br /> Throughout the exhibition&#39;s opening reception, <span class="caps">MPA </span>will present the action "Initiation."</p> <p>Part II<br /> The Act: September 16-November 5<br /> Between these dates, <span class="caps">MPA </span>will present a series of unscheduled actions at the gallery.</p> <p>Part <span class="caps">III</span><br /> Invitation: November 8-12<br /> Including the performance "Revolution. Two marks in rotation" as part of Performa 11.*<br /> Tuesday, November 8, 6:30-7pm (sharp)<br /> * With a working relationship that spans more than 6 years, <span class="caps">MPA </span>and Amapola Prada present their first-ever public collaboration. Using materials that include cinderblocks and plate glass, as well as their own bodies, they will seek the edges of antagonism, permissibility, and collaborative movement. The remnants of their performance will be on view in the gallery until the close of the exhibition</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/2226 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 21 - September 3, 2011</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2210"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/43/43045.jpeg" alt="" height="543" width="466" /></a> <p>Sigmar Polke, <em>Untitled (Palermo)</em>, 1976</p> <p> Gelatin silver print, 32.7 x 29.5 inches (83 x 75 cm) </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc., in collaboration with Winckler Fine Arts, Berlin, is pleased to announce the opening of Sigmar Polke: Photoworks 1964-2000. Widely acknowledged as one of the most important creative forces to emerge from post World War II Europe, Sigmar Polke was an artist of incredible unpredictability. From the very beginning, and throughout his career, Polke resisted the idea of an identifying "signature." In his practice, the artist incorporated techniques borrowed from mass marketing and commercial realms into a proscenium of images that overlap and resonate over time. Inscrutable, mysterious, iconoclast, are all words that at one time or another have been used to describe both the artist and his work. As difficult as it may be to extrapolate precise meaning from Polke&#39;s prodigious and varied output, one would never describe his work as incoherent. An underpinning of acerbic wit, indelible beauty, and a poetic sensibility temper his images and communicate an accidental seduction. </p> <p>Over the course of his life, Polke made thousands of photographs and the selection of works for this exhibition keenly highlights the integral role that photography had played in the artist&#39;s larger oeuvre. Ranging in tenor from charmingly clumsy to poignant and wistful, the works have been amassed from a variety of sources and collections, both public and private. Many of these have rarely been seen in the United States. Highlights of the exhibition include works that were previously exhibited at the Kasseler Kunstverein in 1977, and the Kunsthalle Mannheim in 2004. One series of 20 photographs are unique variants from the same series shown in When Pictures Vanish at <span class="caps">MOCA,</span> Los Angeles in 1995. Also included is an eerie selection of photographs taken at the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, and a series of photograms in which Polke experimented with, among other untried techniques, the effects of radioactive materials on the photographic process. </p> <p>Sigmar Polke was constantly experimenting with the medium and his photographs range from humorously staged ordinary objects to intrepid shots of people that he took while traveling through places such as the Bowery in New York City, the streets of Paris, and small villages in Afghanistan. While the images contain the evidence of his subjects, the developing process provided Polke the ability to create hallucinatory narratives, resembling an episode from a dream. Above all, the photographs reveal an overarching attitude towards imagery that obscures or shifts a central focus, emphasizes a delight in the unintentional, and infuses his pictorial language with an incandescent force.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10am to 6pm. For further information please contact Stephanie Schumann at 212.334.9255 or stephanie@leokoenig.com</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/2210 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 12 - June 18, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, May 12, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2190"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/41/41833.jpeg" alt="" height="303" width="500" /></a> <p>Tony Tasset, <em>Exhibition Invitation</em>, 2011</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition by Tony Tasset entitled Judy. Though trained as a painter and sculptor, Tony Tasset has been known to work in a variety of media: photography, film, video, bronze, and wax. For Judy, Tasset chose the most beautiful medium he could think of...35mm film. </p> <p>Judy is, in fact, the artist&#39;s wife and fellow artist, Judy Ledgerwood. The film simply captures a moment, and Tasset&#39;s aim was to create a world compressed into that moment. The repeating memory of an instant flickers on the screen, exposing a personal reflection that poignantly resonates on a universal level. The passage of time and the notion of life&#39;s brevity are succinctly and beautifully conveyed by the lush opulence of the film, which over time deteriorates, evincing scratches and blemishes over the course of the exhibition. </p> <p>Tony Tasset began this work as a portrait of his wife. It is in many ways a love letter to her. Though the film&#39;s constant looping and eventual disintegration might draw immediate references to Warhol, Tasset&#39;s point of reference is immediate, personal and emotional as opposed to detached. In his own words, Tasset was trying to be as "open hearted and corny as a Neil Young song..." Unapologetic about the emotion behind his work, Tasset views it not only as a love letter to his wife, but a love letter to the medium of film at a time when the world is overwhelmingly becoming digitized. </p> <p>In recent years, Tony Tasset has turned the dichotomy of his own identity -urban artist and suburban family man with a garden -into fodder for objects and images that are simultaneously ironic, serious, and deeply humanistic. </p> <p>Tasset received his <span class="caps">BFA </span>from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and his <span class="caps">MFA </span>from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1985. He is currently a professor of art and design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Tasset has exhibited his works at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; and Camerawork, London among others. He lives and works in Chicago, where he is represented by Kavi Gupta Gallery.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10am to 6pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh at the gallery: Elizabeth@LeoKoenig.com.</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/2190 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 6 - May 8, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, May 6, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2189"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/41/41931.jpeg" alt="" height="474" width="360" /></a> <p>Sara VanDerBeek, <em>Detroit Glass (color)</em>, 2011</p> <p> C-Print, 16 x 20 inches </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>For Immediate Release <br /> SculptureCenter participates in New York Gallery Week</p> <p>Exhibition:<br /> SculptureCenter Limited Edition Photo Portfolio:<br /> Leslie Hewitt, Marlo Pascual, Erin Shirreff, Kathrin Sonntag and Sara VanDerBeek</p> <p>Gallery Hours:<br /> Friday - Sunday, 11am-6pm</p> <p>New York - SculptureCenter is pleased to announce our participation in the 2011 edition of New York Gallery Week, May 6-8. SculptureCenter&#39;s participation consists of a special pop-up exhibition of the SculptureCenter Limited Edition Photo Portfolio, featuring newly commissioned photographs by Leslie Hewitt, Marlo Pascual, Erin Shirreff, Kathrin Sonntag and Sara VanDerBeek. Sharing an interest in the materiality of images and the way the photographic image affects the way we experience form, each artist explores concerns that are central to the current dialogue around the relationship between sculpture and photography. Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte is generously hosting SculptureCenter for this special presentation. </p> <p>The annual SculptureCenter Limited Edition is a prestigious commission, selecting one or more artists to create an innovative and accessible artwork for emerging and blue chip collectors alike. All proceeds from the sale of this edition directly supports SculptureCenter&#39;s dynamic exhibition program. Artists who have produced editions for SculptureCenter include: Walead Beshty, Tom Otterness, Jenny Holzer, Ugo Rondinone, Peter Coffin, Julianne Swartz, Do-Ho Suh, and Fred Wilson. </p> <p>Special Events<br /> Friday, May 6, 2011, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM<br /> Opening Reception Hosted by SculptureCenter&#39;s NewArtNetwork members</p> <p>Saturday, May 7, 2011, 2:30 PM<br /> Fionn Meade in conversation with Sara VanDerBeek<br /> SculptureCenter curator Fionn Meade discusses the relationship between sculpture and photography with Photo Portfolio artist Sara VanDerBeek. </p> <p>Photographs by Sara VanDerBeek are based predominantly on sculptural forms created by the artist. Many of these feature discrete sculptural set-ups that deftly reference not only archaic effigies, but also appropriated imagery and Modern design. Constructed expressly in order to be photographed VanDerBeek&#39;s sculptural process offers dexterous and subtle juxtapositions that reveal how history changes our view of images, and images change our view of history.</p> <p>Sunday, May 8, 2011, 5-7pm<br /> Opening Reception for Time Again, an exhibition that explores the language of repetition, bringing together works that destabilize conventional ways of seeing and considering what is past and what is present. Engaging gesture, image sequence, material affect, and displaced narrative, the works on view create disjunctions with the way the time of the present is experienced, challenging our understanding of what it means to be contemporaries. Curated by Fionn Mead. More information may be found on our website www.sculpture-center.org.</p> <p>Description of Photo Portfolio<br /> SculptureCenter Limited Edition Photo Portfolio 2010:<br /> Leslie Hewitt, Marlo Pascual, Erin Shirreff, Kathrin Sonntag and Sara VanDerBeek<br /> Five photographs in a custom archival box<br /> Each photo approximately 16" &#215; 20"<br /> Edition of 50 + 5 AP<br /> Introductory price: $2000<br /> Each print is numbered and signed by the artist<br /> Framing instructions included</p> <p>About New York Gallery Week<br /> The second annual New York Gallery Week May 6-8, 2011 will culminate with a three day presentation of over 60 solo gallery exhibitions, along with scores of free events and programs, the majority taking place inside the galleries themselves.</p> <p><span class="caps">NYGW </span>offers unique access to a wide range of special gallery-produced artistic experiences in one concentrated period of time. It is <span class="caps">NYGW</span>&#39;s desire to refocus public attention toward the city&#39;s long-standing exceptional gallery programming.</p> <p>About SculptureCenter<br /> Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit arts institution in Long Island City, NY dedicated to experimental and innovative developments in contemporary sculpture. SculptureCenter commissions new works and presents exhibitions by emerging and established, national and international artists. Our programs identify new talent, explore the conceptual, aesthetic and material concerns of contemporary sculpture, and encourage independent vision.</p> <p>Admission:<br /> Free and open to the public</p> <p>For additional information or images, please contact:<br /> Frederick Janka<br /> t 718.361.1750 &#215;117<br /> f 718.786.9336<br /> frederick@sculpture-center.org</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/2189 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">March 25 - April 30, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, March 25, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2058"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/41/41400.jpeg" alt="" height="336" width="500" /></a> <p>Paul Renner, <em>Installation view of The Consecration of the Bar</em>, 2011</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>With special evening performances during the opening on Friday, March 25th, 6-8pm, Saturday March 26th, 1-3pm and further dates to be announced</p> <p><span class="caps">AND </span></p> <p><span class="caps">HERMANN NITSCH</span><br /> "Die Apotheke / The Pharmacy"<br /> March 25th through April 30th, 2011</p> <p>With special performances by Hermann Nitsch featuring the Quintetto Nitsch during the opening on Friday, March 25th, 6-8pm and Saturday, March 26th, 1-3pm</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. is delighted to present an exhibition by the notoriously theatrical Austrian artist, Hermann Nitsch. The gallery will be exhibiting paintings by the artist alongside a virtual "cabinet of curiosities." The cabinets, which line the walls of the back of the space, house all manner of accoutrements for Hermann Nitsch&#39;s performances slated for the evening of the 25th and midday on the 26th.</p> <p>Nitsch will select "ingredients" lined within the cabinets, such as paint, spices, oils, pigment and vestments, all from previous performances, and will create a work atop a long table covered with white cloth. Nitsch has always believed that his performances should engage all the senses, sight, smell, taste, and not least of all sound. With this in mind, the Nitsch Quintetto will be accompanying Nitsch&#39;s action. The Quintetto is comprised of 5 musicians that have worked with Nitsch for several years, performing new compositions created by Nitsch specifically for this event. </p> <p>Several large-scale, dynamic paintings made between the years of 1973 and 2000 will be on display. Symbolic of ritual, these works create an animated proscenium for the performances (or their evidence) further inside the space. The paintings stand as both embodiment and record of Nitsch&#39;s actions. </p> <p>The catalyst for Nitsch&#39;s theatrical and often symbolically violent actions is the belief that humankind&#39;s instincts have been buried, anesthetized or sublimated by contemporary modes and the media. Knitting together threads from the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Wilhelm Reich with rituals from the Catholic Church, and the decadence of the cult of Dionysus, Nitsch continues to perform ritualized actions directed towards the releasing of repressed energy in both the participants and the audience.</p> <p>Hermann Nitsch&#39;s works are in the collections of some of the worlds most prominent museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, <span class="caps">NY,</span> The Guggenheim Collection, the Walker Art Center <span class="caps">N.Y., </span>the Tate Gallery, London, and the Georges Pompidou in Paris to name but a few. Most recently, Hermann Nitsch has shown at Mike Weiss Gallery, in <span class="caps">N.Y. </span>and at the Denver Art Museum in Colorado. This exhibition is conceived in collaboration with Mike Weiss Gallery. </p> <p>Concurrent with Hermann Nitsch&#39;s exhibition, Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Austrian artist Paul Renner. "The Consecration of the Bar" is an exhibition in dialogue with the "Die Apotheke / The Pharmacy". This is Mr. Renner&#39;s second show at Leo Koenig Inc. </p> <p>At the center of Renner&#39;s installation is a bar filled with various kinds of Austrian Schnapps, homemade pates and marinated fruits contained in laboratory vessels, distillation flasks, and Murano glass. Inspired by Renner&#39;s designs, the artist Roland Adlassnigg created the bar counter, and Murano glass expert Massimo Lunardon designed various glass vessels and a special schnapps glass. The bar will remain open, serving drinks until the stock has run out, that is until it has been drunk dry, and all the food has been devoured. This process is what Renner refers to as an applied form of social sculpture and could last several days. This work carries on Renner&#39;s interest in those historical moments when the culture becomes so refined that it falls back into itself...Decadence.</p> <p>The exhibition also presents Renner&#39;s latest series of paintings, "Tableau Personnel." These works revolve around the most essential concepts of Renner&#39;s creative work and aim to transform the bar into something of the sublime.</p> <p>The pairing of the artists Paul Renner and Hermann Nitsch is no accident. The two artists have a long history. Mr. Renner was Hermann Nitsch&#39;s assistant in the 1970&#39;s and directed Nitsch&#39;s three-day action performance in 1984. He has been cooking at Nitsch&#39;s actions since 2000. The artists collaborated in Renner&#39;s Theatrum Anonomicim at the Kunsthause Bregensz (Austria) in 2007. In 2004, Paul Renner, Medlar Lucan and Dorian Gray staged special performances called the "Hellfire Touring Club" which traveled through locales in Europe, including the Kunsthalle Wien. Paul Renner will be creating another social sculpture at the Timken Museum of Art, San Diego. </p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday, 10-6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Liz Hull at the gallery.</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/2058 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">February 10 - March 19, 2011</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, February 10, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2050"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/40/40235.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>Vincent Szarek, <em>Installation view</em>, 2011</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc., Projekte is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Vincent Szarek. Szarek&#39;s work reveals a myriad of influences from custom car culture, and minimalist finish fetishism, to monochrome abstraction. These influences are a result of his unique background. While attending <span class="caps">RISD,</span> Szarek worked at an automotive body shop where he was exposed to car culture. At the auto body shop, engrossed by the labor intensive finishes, saturated color, and smooth surfaces, Szarek learned first hand to seamlessly incorporate materials and fabrication processes associated with cars and surfboards into his art practice. </p> <p>The works in this exhibition can be read as both embracing and critiquing America&#39;s fascination with slick "sparkly" surfaces, ostentatious wealth, and salacious voyeurism. Szarek will be presenting 4 sculptures that provoke a dialogue with Olivier Mosset&#39;s black paintings exhibited next door at Leo Koenig Inc. Satisfying both Mosset&#39;s impulse for the collaborative gesture, and Szarek&#39;s own ideas about consumerist display, the two exhibitions are meant to deflect and inform one another and exemplify both artists&#39; affinity for the monochrome.</p> <p>Anchoring the show is a wall hanging made of gold sequins that declare " The Meaning Of Life." The phrase, in this incarnation, is culled from the chorus from a country music song by Tom T. Hall, in which a cowboy explains to a poet that the meaning of life is "faster horses, older whiskey, younger women, more money." The sequins are forever undulating, propelled by fans directed onto them at all times, starkly reflecting off of a background of matte black emptiness. On the floor Szarek has created a facscimile of both a traditional "minimal sculpture" and a readymade. The shape is easily recognizable as an ordinary parking block, encased in gold metalflake. Utility and decadance abide in a single form. </p> <p>A sculpture of a pair of cherries is realized in black with gold stems. The perfect spheres reflect everything around them, initiating a refrain with the space. The berries are exactly the same, cast from the same mold, and Szarek sees them as serial monochromes. The double cherry is the kitsch image of tattoos, stickers and slot machines. Employing a Koonsian approach, Szarek uses the clich&eacute;d image as a searing lens, inversely representing middle-class American values. </p> <p>The end quote of the show is a pseudo-Roman column. Again, the object is a monochrome...for the drug trafficker. Smoothly stylized and glossy black, it is an image of an old ruin that is not one. Brand new and perfect, the column becomes an emblem, a "classical" reference ubiquitous to the narco-nuevo riche. "Szarek remarks, "if you google search &#39;narco palace&#39; they all use classical elements that are clearly fake." The sculpture becomes an Americanized icon to an empire in decline, filled with denial, and created with the finish of our beloved auto industry. </p> <p>Vincent Szarek has exhibited internationally at galleries such as Galerie Mehdi Chouakri in Berlin, Germany, Almine Rech Gallery in Paris, France and Galerie Nicholas Ruzicska in Salzburg, Austria. In 2003, he had an exhibition at <span class="caps">PS1</span> MoMA and has been included in exhibitions such as Minimalism and After (both II and V) at the DiamlerChrysler Collection, Berlin, Germany and Greetings from New York at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg, Austria. The artist lives and works in New York City.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday, 10-6 pm. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/2050 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">December 10, 2010 - January 29, 2011</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/2015"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/39/39041.jpeg" alt="Installation View, 2010" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p><p>Installation View, 2010</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte is pleased to announce: Cleopatra&#39;s Presents: Xavier Cha, Jenna Gribbon, Hannah Hoffman, Andrea Huelse, Anna Lundh, Caris Reid, Hanna Sandin, Maayan Zilberman</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. director Nicole Russo invited Cleopatra&#39;s, a Brooklyn-based curatorial collective, to organize an exhibition in the new Leo Koenig Projekte gallery. Discussing potential ideas and exhibition strategies revealed that Russo&#39;s interest in Cleopatra&#39;s mirrored Cleopatra&#39;s interest in an unofficial group of artists of which they had just become aware. The exhibition&#39;s participants are a self-organized group of cultural producers. The group has been gathering regularly for two years in convivial support of each other&#39;s ideas and, together, further conversations between their respective practices. </p> <p>Unaffiliated through professional work nor artistic collaboration, the participants conduct informal meetings in the form of potluck-style dinners, hosted on rotation at their homes or live-work studios. These meetings are a thread of social continuity between participants with notably different practices and professions. Cleopatra&#39;s is interested in how, at its core, the group&#39;s alliance is a support structure for their creativity and individual careers as painter, filmmaker, performance artist, lingerie designer, photographer, jewelry designer, set designer, gallerist, collector, sculptor, writer and more. </p> <p>The group&#39;s commitment to the relationships between each of them (operating on different levels) provides an opportunity to develop and continue a critical dialogue amongst peers. Their union is a place for creating discourse, incorporating varying disciplines, knowledge, skills, and practices. On this occasion, Cleopatra&#39;s is interested in seeing the group working together on one unlikely exhibition that reconciles autonomous and divergent practices. In presenting a more traditional group show - including painting, video, text and sculptural installation -- the curatorial model takes after the group&#39;s own structure of the social event that drives their connectivity. </p> <p>Cleopatra&#39;s was founded in June of 2008 in a storefront located in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York and is co-operated by Bridget Donahue, Bridget K Finn, Kate McNamara and Erin Somerville. Cleopatra&#39;s works collaboratively with artists, curators, writers, designers and musicians, operating in a territory outside of their respective studios to further connections between practices, disciplines and creative communities. Investigations are realized in the storefront, as well as in the form of off-site public programs, events and in print publications. As a non-commercial art space and working archive, Cleopatra&#39;s looks to not only produce exhibitions and events in its physical space, but also to produce and document in print and on-line projects, recordings and happenings. The space serves as a curatorial studio space, a showroom, and a library making all actions and projects accessible to the public. </p> <p>Xavier Cha&#39;s performance-based work revolves around conventions of accessibility, exchange and hierarchies of space. Her performances, installations, and videos explore phantasmic supports behind cultural development and the individual&#39;s search for place/transcendence within this web of complex subjectivity. A frequent collaborator, Xavier has invited dancers, musicians, cults, and clowns among many others- not only to participate in her projects, but also to become protagonists of the work. She received her <span class="caps">BFA </span>from <span class="caps">RISD </span>in 2002 and her <span class="caps">MFA </span>from <span class="caps">UCLA </span>in 2004. Xavier&#39;s work has been widely exhibited in the United States as well as internationally, including The Kitchen, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Moscow Biennial, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (UK), the Sculpture Center, Asia Society Museum, Hammer Museum, and MoCA Miami. Xavier Cha is represented by Taxter and Spengemann Gallery and currently lives in New York. </p> <p>Jenna Gribbon was born in Knoxville, TN and currently lives and works in Long Island City, <span class="caps">NY.</span> Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art in New York, and at Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles, and of numerous group exhibitions in the <span class="caps">U.S. </span>and abroad including, among others, shows at Babel Kunst in Trondheim, Norway; the Georgia Museum of Contemporary Art in Atlanta, GA; the National Academy Museum &amp; School of Fine Arts in New York, NY; and the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Finland. Earlier this year she was included in Realism-The Adventure of Reality a large-scale exhibition which traveled to two museums in Germany; first to Kunsthalle Emden in Emden, and subsequently to Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung in Munich. Gustave Courbet, Gerhard Richter, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia were among the other artists in the exhibition. In 2006 she was commissioned to paint three works for Sofia Coppola&#39;s film, Marie Antoinette, which premiered at the New York Film Festival. </p> <p>Hannah Hoffman is originally from Dallas, <span class="caps">TX.</span> She has lived and worked in New York for the past 2 1/2 years. She currently works at Gavin Brown&#39;s enterprise. </p> <p>Andrea Huelse is a New York City-based set and costume designer whose work has been seen in fashion photography, film, television, opera, and fine art around the world. Recent clients include: Diller Scofidio and Renfro, <span class="caps">PBS,</span> Wolf Trap Opera, V Magazine, Ford Models, and Michael Joo. Andrea earned an <span class="caps">MFA </span>in Scenography at New York University, and was a recipient of the <span class="caps">NEA</span>/TCG Young Designer Grant in 2005. </p> <p>Anna Lundh is a Swedish artist based in Stockholm and New York. She graduated in 2008 with an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Konstfack University of Art, and has also studied at the Cooper Union. In recent years she has participated in residency programs such as the <span class="caps">LMCC</span> Workspace in New York and Art Omi International Arts Center, Ghent, and she recently completed a Post Graduate Research project at Konstfack, Stockholm. Her work investigates cultural and social phenomena, technology and language and takes the form of installations, video, text and various experiments. Anna has previously been exhibited at venues that include Bonniers Konsthall and Haninge Konsthall, (Stockholm), X-initiative (for Rhizome) as well as Apexart and Marian Spore in New York. </p> <p>Caris Reid is a painter living in New York City. She is a contributing editor for Dossier Journal, the biannual arts and cultural publication, where she has interviewed artists such as David Salle and Tauba Aurebach. Her artwork is featured in the current issue, No. 6. She is in the process of curating her second show, titled All That is Unseen, this February at Alan Nederpelt, with curator Meg O&#39;Rourke. Her first curatorial project, titled, Autosuggestion was in a pop-up space in Soho in the Fall. This March she is in the group show The Sultans Played Creole, curated by James Cope, At Champion Contemporary in Austin. Her work has also recently been featured in the group shows Mouthful of Poison at Ramiken Crucible and Behind the Green Door at <span class="caps">DNA</span> Gallery. She graduated Cum Laude with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from Boston University in 2005. </p> <p>Hanna Sandin is an artist based in New York. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Fake Estate in 2009 and the not-for-profit <span class="caps">A.I.R.</span> Gallery. In 2005, she received the Emerging Artists Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park as well as from <span class="caps">A.I.R.</span> Gallery in 2008. Hanna was subsequently in residence in the Workspace program at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in New York in 2009. Her work has been shown in both the <span class="caps">U.S. </span>and internationally at Mary Mary Gallery, Clifton Benevento Gallery, the Kitchen, Karma International, Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, and Philips de Pury &amp; Co Gallery in London. Her works will be on view at a group show curated by Peter Eleey at <span class="caps">PS1</span> Contemporary Arts Center.</p> <p>Maayan Zilberman is one half of New York based lingerie brand The Lake &amp; Stars. Maayan&#39;s designs have been featured in Vogue <span class="caps">US, UK, </span>and Italia, The New York Times, and Elle, amongst others. Her work has been part of museum shows at The Fashion Textile Museum in London and has been included in books on Contemporary Lingerie and The History of Lingerie. Maayan is also a professional baker, founding WaveCake (a specialty cake and pastry service) in 2009. In addition to this she is a contributing writer on Advanced Style, the much loved blog about seniors with incredible style. Maayan Zilberman graduated with a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from School of Visual Arts and was later a participating artist at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como, Italy, followed by a show hosted by Viafarini Foundation in Milan. </p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10-6 pm, <span class="caps">GMT</span>-4:52. For further information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/2015 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">November 4 - December 4, 2010</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, November 4, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1995"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/38/38375.jpeg" alt="Installation View" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p><p>Installation View</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition by Chicago artist, <span class="caps">DZINE, </span>entitled Voodoo. The exhibition includes a video installation, sculptural drawing, photographs and a unique custom bicycle sculpture.</p> <p>Sifting through the rituals of faith, youth culture, folklore, and urban style, Dzine has created works that contextualizes these diverse elements into a vernacular of contemporary aesthetics. Each piece is inspired by, and partially produced on, the Dutch Island of Curacao during Dzine&#39;s residency at the Instituto Bena Bista, the Curacao Center for Contemporary Art. The presentation utilizes a number of mediums to capture the spirit of Szwaybar, a phenomenon that is unique to the youth of Curacao, and never previously documented or viewed outside the Island. The Szwaybar bicycle comes from the "Szway" motorbike, these are motorbikes that are altered to extend into oddly shaped driving crafts. Since the youth cannot afford them, they simply try to copy the technique with a bicycle by memory. Some of the bicycles are used as their only means of transportation. However, recently, the youth who produce these custom bicycles use these creations as symbols of style, status and showmanship.</p> <p>By entitling the show Voodoo, Dzine evokes a tradition that encourages rituals and songs to maintain the relationship between the spirits and the community as a whole. Voodoo shares many similarities with other faiths of the African Diaspora and practitioners mediate between humans and spirits through divination and trance. They can also perform rituals to appease spirits or ancestors or to repel magic. In this exhibition, the artist incorporates talisman-sculpture, which conflates ideas of religious pomp with those of pop art. The bicycle work for instance, can be seen as an offering poised on an altar while being a precisely fabricated work of contemporary sculpture. Standing on a mirrored pedestal, the sculpture appears as a bridge between various worlds, contemporary and ancient, high and low, sacred and secular, accidental and intentional. </p> <p>Through the photographs and video works, Dzine captures both the raw landscape of Curacao and the mercurial spirit of the male youths that are shaped by that very landscape. The photographs, though meant to be documentary, are far from off-handed. The boys appear at times, pensive, thoughtful, or cocky. In short, the photographs reveal universal aspects of male bonding, competition and showmanship, while also hinting at the isolation of living on an island paradise. The images are at once melancholic and exuberant, and poised somewhere between celebration and regret. </p> <p>Dzine has exhibited extensively, both in the <span class="caps">U.S. </span>and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include the Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan, the Bass Museum of Art, Miami, and the Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands. His work has also recently been included in "Living in Evolution," the Busan Biennale, and Viva La Revolucion: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Dzine lives and works in Chicago.</p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10-6pm. For further information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1995 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 16 - October 23, 2010</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, September 16, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1959"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/37/37021.jpeg" alt="The Full Story" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>Debora Warner, <em>The Full Story Instal. View</em>, 2010</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte is delighted to present The Full Story, a selection of paintings and works on paper by Debora Warner. Expanding upon her previous practice of incorporating text in some form, the artist has utilized a more direct approach with her most recent series The Declarations and The Swadesh Paintings.</p> <p>The new work takes it&#39;s content from a list of basic vocabulary words that was created by linguist Morris Swadesh in the 30&#39;s and 40&#39;s. This list consists of 207 words that exist in all languages. These most commonly used words provide insight into our preoccupations with survival, the body, and social systems. The list currently has ambiguous relevance in academia, so Warner provides a new context for this piece of anthropological research.</p> <p>Warner has continuously incorporated forms of text into her work such as; exploring text as audio in the experimental audio group, <span class="caps">SONTEXT</span>-sound/text (1999-2001); then as sculpture, in the rose bouquets largely inspired by poetry (specifically Rilke&#39;s idea of "thing-poems"), as three dimensional representations of longing, lust, cruelty, and obsession. With The Swadesh Paintings, the artist focuses her vision on concrete language, words relating to our physical existence, and rooted to our perception and our senses. </p> <p>However rooted in physicality the words may be, Warner&#39;s fluid and spontaneous application of paint onto the canvases creates a divergent template for the weight of the words laid upon them. The words convey a fairly confrontational stance, while the materials underpin them with a sophisticated, gestural monochrome. By isolating the words while animating them, Warner allows us to see ourselves as a highly complex species, however very much connected. At the same time, the artist&#39;s hand is ever the reminder that our motivations may be much more complex than basic sensory reflex.</p> <p>Debora Warner created the surround-sound audio piece "Flutter" (2000) which was exhibited at the Frankfurt Kunsthalle Schirn in 2002. She has been included in exhibitions at the Frac Bourgogne (Dijon) and the Musee de Elysee (Lausanne). Ms. Warner has had solo exhibitions at Akira Ikeda Gallery in both Germany and Japan as well as at I-20 in New York City. More recently she has participated in numerous group shows at venues such as The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Gallery 400 in Chicago, the <span class="caps">LTHM</span> Gallery in New York, and Charest Weinberg in Miami. </p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10-6pm. For further information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1959 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">July 26 - September 10, 2010</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Thursday, July 22, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1943"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/35/35774.jpeg" alt="" height="351" width="472" /></a> <p>Arnold Odermatt, <em>Buochs</em>, 1976</p> <p> Gelatin silver print, Ed. 6/8, 30 x 40 cm (12 x 15 3/4") </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte is pleased to present a selection of photographs by Arnold Odermatt. These photographs were taken from the 1950&#39;s through the 70&#39;s while Odermatt was a police officer and official police photographer of the canton of Nidwalden, Switzerland. Joining the police force in 1948, when he was in his twenties, Odermatt assembled a large inventory of "accident " photographs. During his career, he documented countless vehicular mishaps along Nidwalden&#39;s treacherous roads as well as its quiet village streets. Arriving at the scene of an accident, Odermatt would take one set of photographs for the police and insurance files, and another set for himself. </p> <p>The photographs, all black and white, are a narrative of absence. The contrast of crushed metal against breathtaking views of mountains and countryside or glimpses of quaint small town quietude creates a strange tension. The images cross over from the forensic to the elegiac and back again. Though hardly clinical, the images accurately depict numerous impacts, and their resulting effects upon structures and vessels. Evidence of the victims however, is stringently excluded. Stripped of this evidence, the viewer can contemplate folds in metal, and pinpoints of light reflected in shards of glass from a vantage point that adds the necessary distance that is required for aesthetic consideration. Thus Odermatt&#39;s work suggests an innate and nuanced eye for formalist inventions, moving the photographs beyond the realm of mere documentation into one of exquisitely poignant works of art. </p> <p>Born in Oberdorf Switzerland in 1925, Arnold Odermatt worked as a baker until he joined the Swiss police force in 1948. He remained with the Nidwalden police department for over 40 years from 1948 to 1990, when he retired from the rank of First Lieutenant Head of Traffic Police and Deputy to Commander of the Nidwalden Police. Though never trained as an artist, Arnold Odermatt&#39;s collection of photos were discovered by Harald Szeeman while the curator was visiting Nidwalden. Szeeman was so impressed by the body of work that he exhibited them in the 49th Venice Biennial. Odermatt was also given a one-person exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. A catalogue of his work entitled Karombolage was published by Seidl in 2003. </p> <p>The summer hours at the gallery are Mondays through Fridays, 10-6pm. For further information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1943 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">May 28 - July 10, 2010</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, May 28, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1917"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/34/34715.jpeg" alt="Installation View" height="336" width="500" /></a> <p><p>Installation View</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Curated by Colin Huerter</p> <p>Works by:<br /> <br /> Kadar Brock <br /> Michael Brown <br /> Carter <br /> Julia Dault <br /> Andrea Longacre-White <br /> Adam Marnie <br /> Ryan Sullivan <br /> J. Parker Valentine<br /> Ned Vena </p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte is pleased to present Substance Abuse, a group exhibition curated by Colin Huerter, featuring recent work by Kadar Brock, Michael Brown, Carter, Julia Dault, Andrea Longacre-White, Adam Marnie, Ryan Sullivan, J. Parker Valentine, and Ned Vena. <br /> <br /> The title of this exhibition, Substance Abuse, is intended to suggest not only a mistreatment and breakdown of materiality, but also of the self and its relation to the world. Since the act of breaking down is a form of reduction, perhaps it is natural that the artists included here seem to gravitate toward Minimalism as a way to ground the questioning phase of their process. Whereas that earlier movement was concerned with emptying the object of image, of metaphor, of individual touch, of evident psychological and emotional expression in an effort to somehow purify (and maybe even liberate) line, form and color, this particular group of younger artists is more inclined to call attention to the subtle, expressive varieties of imperfection that seem to be embedded within the material, and thus context itself. For instance, in the buckled, warped, torn, cracked, scratched, and generally abused surfaces of the work on view, an argument is made for the un-sustainability of isolation, for the physical, visible way outside pressures manifest their presence and impose the consequence of systematic, institutional neglect. To continue with their argument is to acknowledge that in the thirty plus years since its heyday, Minimalism has come to symbolize the end of an era, of a singular, progressive, dominant way of thinking about history and the world. While being responsive without being prescriptive, the work in Substance Abuse, both individually and together, places vulnerability as perhaps its central concern - vulnerability of line, of hand, of material, of self, of history. </p> <p>Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10-6 pm. For further information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Rus</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1917 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</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/1901"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/33/33892.jpeg" alt="Installation view" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>"I speak from .... Michelle Grabner is dull", <em>Installation view</em>, 2010</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Michelle Grabner, Katharina Grosse, Brad Killam, Philip Vanderhyden, and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung</p> <p>The exhibition, I speak now from the aesthetic and artistic point of view when I say that life with Michelle Grabner is dull brings together the work of four antithetical painters who Michelle Grabner, the Chicago-based artist, heralds as profoundly enabling to her own unvaried and unimaginative abstract investigations. The exhibition is diverting and self-critical, juxtaposing Grabner&#39;s work with the work of Katharina Grosse (Berlin), Molly Zuckerman-Hartung (Chicago) Philip Vanderhyden (New York), and her husband, Brad Killam (Chicago). Grabner&#39;s enthusiasm for dull Eucleadean rules and reductive visual vocabulary are absolved when measured against the gestural, chromatic, and material explorations by four artists she greatly esteems. </p> <p>Grabner&#39;s attraction to the transcending virtues of quantity and form via the act of counting points and lines is the result of theoretical and cultural imprinting. After all, Grabner is a middle age, middle class, mid-career, Mid-western mother of three who is deeply unsettled by her own subjectivity. The `other&#39; paintings in the exhibition expose the unrelieved and idealistic conceit that Grabner desperately clings to when she is in the studio. </p> <p>Grabner is an artist and writer who lives and works in Oak Park, <span class="caps">IL.</span> She is a professor and chair of the Painting and Drawing department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Mus&eacute;e d&#39;Art Moderne, Luxemburg; Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; Daimler Contemporary, Berlin; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She is the co-editor of the newly released The Studio Reader, an anthology published by the University of Chicago Press. Grabner and her husband Brad Killiam run The Suburban, an artists project space in Oak Park, IL and The Poor Farm, a not-for-profit art space in rural Wisconsin. The Suburban will be participating at the Tate Modern&#39;s 10th anniversary No Soul For Sale project in May 2010 and this summer The Poor Farm will host art historian Moira Roth&#39;s Festschrift exhibition. </p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc., Projekte is open from Tuesday through Saturdays 10-6pm. For further information or visuals please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1901 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</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/1876"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/39/39561.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></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&#39; 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://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1876 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</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/1847"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/39/39577.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>"In There, Out Here", <em>Installation View</em>, 2010</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">AIDAS BAREIKIS</span><br /> <span class="caps">JOE BRADLEY</span><br /> <span class="caps">SARAH BRAMAN</span><br /> <span class="caps">BRENDAN CASS</span><br /> <span class="caps">BJORN COPELAND</span><br /> <span class="caps">JIM DRAIN</span><br /> <span class="caps">INSTITUTT FOR DEGENERERT KUNST</span><br /> <span class="caps">SADIE LASKA</span><br /> <span class="caps">JONAS MEKAS</span><br /> <span class="caps">A.R. PENCK</span><br /> <span class="caps">JOYCE PENSATO</span><br /> <span class="caps">CHLOE PIENE</span><br /> <span class="caps">JULIAN SCHNABEL</span><br /> <span class="caps">MICHAEL WILLIAMS</span></p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc., Projekte is pleased to announce a group exhibition entitled In There, Out Here, curated by Bill Saylor. Bill has given us a few words for the exhibition...<br /> <span class="caps">FLAT VOID PERSISTENCE</span><br /> <span class="caps">COMIC SPEED</span><br /> A <span class="caps">KNIFES LINE</span> TO <span class="caps">SOW THE FIGURE DOWN</span><br /> <span class="caps">WAVES</span> AT <span class="caps">THE EDGE DOWN</span> A <span class="caps">HARD GRAVEL MARCH</span><br /> <span class="caps">LOOK OUT FINGERS</span><br /> <span class="caps">SPACE DICE DEEP</span><br /> <span class="caps">RECORDING EVERY LIFE</span> A <span class="caps">MINUTE</span><br /> <span class="caps">EVERY LINE</span> A <span class="caps">NOISE, EVERY MARK</span> A <span class="caps">SHADOW</span><br /> <span class="caps">MOMENTS ABANDONED</span><br /> <span class="caps">RETURNS THE LOOP, THE MARK, THE WAVE</span><br /> <span class="caps">EVERY DEEP DIVE</span> A <span class="caps">HOME</span><br /> A <span class="caps">NEW STEP LOAN</span><br /> <span class="caps">BLACK BOLT RAIN</span><br /> <span class="caps">THROUGH</span> A <span class="caps">HURRICANE HAZE</span><br /> A <span class="caps">STREET MAGIC WEIGHTLESS THIN AIR WALK</span><br /> <span class="caps">NORTHERN SKY POTIONS</span><br /> <span class="caps">THE HAND</span></p> <p>Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 10-6 pm. For further information or visuals please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1847 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">November 20 - December 23, 2009</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, November 20, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1810"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/30/30313.jpeg" alt="" height="333" width="500" /></a> <p>"Ridykeulouse Hits Bottom", <em>Installation view</em>, 2009</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">A.K.</span> Burns<br /> Aaron Johnson<br /> Anna Sew Hoy<br /> Celeste Dupuy-Spencer<br /> Cody Critcheloe/ssion<br /> Cyrus Saint Amand Poliakoff*<br /> Dana Schutz<br /> Dawn Frasch<br /> Dawn Kasper<br /> Dawn Mellor<br /> Dean Daderko as Referee<br /> Eve Fowler &amp; Math Bass<br /> Explosion Robinson<br /> Fastwurms<br /> Leidy Churchman<br /> Two Serious Ladies<br /> Ulrike Muller<br /> Zackary Drucker + <span class="caps">A.L.</span> Steiner</p> <p>"Ridykeulous: Too big to fail." - Roberta Smith, NY Times</p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc., Projekte is pleased to present Ridykeulous.</p> <p>Ridykeulous are more than pleased with ourselves to announce the group exhibition "Ridykeulouse Hits Bottom," curated with an iron fist by Ridykeulous, otherwise known as Nicky E. and UnkAL, a.k.a Nicole Eisenman and <span class="caps">A.L.</span> Steiner. </p> <p>We&#39;re thinking of wreckage and ruin, death, patricide, matricide, fratricide, infanticide, feticide, foeticide, anything odious, and as always, sexual perversion, the demonic, darkness, supernaturallity, raising the dead, the eminent demise of civilization and stuff like that. </p> <p>We are doing this show now in hopes that we become rich enough to have this collection of universe-altering works shown at The New Museum and buy a condo in MoMA&#39;s ultra-luxury residences. And needless to say, we&#39;re extremely pleased thus far with the positive reviews coming in.</p> <p>Brooklyn-based artist <span class="caps">A.L.</span> Steiner uses constructions of photography, video, installation, collaboration, performance writing and curatorial work as seductive tropes channeled through the sensibility of a cynical queer eco-feminist androgyne. She&#39;s a collective member of Chicks on Speed, co-founder of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) and cheats on Nicky E. with other numerous visual and performing artists. Steiner is represented by Taxter &amp; Spengemann.</p> <p>Nicole Eisenman currently has solo exhibitions at the Tang Museum, Skidmore College, NY and Leo Koenig Inc., New York. She has also had solo shows at the Kunsthalle, Zurich, Switzerland, Barbara Weiss Gallery, Berlin, Germany, and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, The Centraal Museum Utrecht, Holland and the San Francisco Art Institute. </p> <p>Gallery hours are 10-6 pm Thursdays through Saturdays, and by appointment on Tuesday and Wednesday. For further information please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo</p> <p>*Saturday December 12th, 3-5pm<br /> Werkshop with Cyrus Saint Amand Poliakoff <br /> "A Hystery with Fainting and Violets"</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1810 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">October 23 - November 14, 2009</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, October 23, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1793"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/30/30364.jpeg" alt="" height="328" width="500" /></a> <p>Daniel Gordon, <em>Installation view</em>, 2009</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p>Everything that is visible hides something that is invisible. <br /> -Ren&eacute; Magritte </p> <p>Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte is pleased to present "Flying Pictures," an exhibition of photographs by the artist Daniel Gordon. This coincides with the release of a book of the same name, published by powerHouse Books. In addition, Daniel Gordon&#39;s more recent work is currently on view at the MoMA as part of the exhibit "New Photography 2009."</p> <p>On the snowy fields of New York&#39;s Hudson Valley and on the rocky coasts of the Bay Area in Northern California, artist Daniel Gordon taught himself to fly--if only for 1/125th of a second at a time. The images are both landscapes and documents of a radical performance, for each photograph records the artist&#39;s body hovering in midair. Romantic and piercing, the images convey a fleeting moment of grace, never betraying the Sisyphean task of human flight Gordon had set out for himself. <br /> Daniel Gordon created this series of photographs early on, beginning nearly 10 years ago, while he was still an undergraduate at Bard College. The pictures were made without digital manipulation--Gordon literally &#39;flew&#39; just long enough to capture himself on film, looking tranquil and confident in his midair pose. It soon becomes impossible however, to look at the pictures without imagining the artist&#39;s inevitable post-shutter collision with the landscape.</p> <p>Daniel Gordon received a BA from Bard College in 2004, and an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Yale School of Art in 2006. His photographs have been exhibited in solo shows at Zach Feuer Gallery in New York City, Angstrom Gallery in Dallas, and Groeflin Maag Gallery in Zurich. His work has also been shown at the <span class="caps">CCS</span> Galleries at Bard College and the Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois. Gordon was recently a Visiting Lecturer in the photography department at Sarah Lawrence College.<br /> Gallery hours are 10-6 Thursday through Saturday. The gallery is open by appointment on Tuesday and Wednesday. For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo.</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1793 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">September 18 - October 17, 2009</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, September 18, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1785"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/27/27966.jpeg" alt="" height="332" width="500" /></a> <p>"Don't Perish", <em>Installation view</em>, 2009</p> <p> </p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">EAT WELL BRING FOOD</span><br /> Potluck Dinners every Tuesday &amp; Saturday Eve</p> <p>The metaphors linking food and art are abundant. They persist: the ideas of sustenance versus subsistence, to satiate concomitant with nourishment, to simply serve, or to present. Don&#39;t Perish posits the independent creativity of the artist within the anomaly of an inventive community. Don&#39;t Perish is an exchange suggested as an exhibition:</p> <p> "We want to live with work we like, work we are curious about, work we have the chance to eat dinner with if we put it into a group show that incorporates tables, chairs, and food. In order to understand the work, get to know it, we invite our friends and strangers to look at the work with us over a meal."</p> <p>Montgomery and Willenbring have done this before. Rose Colored Glasses was mounted at Passerby in 2008. That exhibition shared the same impetus as Don&#39;t Perish, which was and is, a desire to experience works of art in a setting that provides an alternative to the passive viewing parameters usually encountered when visiting a gallery. There was and is the intention that the participant will find sustained albeit earned nourishment in the work as well as the meals. In addition to the individual works providing stimulus, the context provided by the visual storage and organization of non-perishable food throughout the gallery inspires another level of sightlines, interruptions, jumps in conversation and information that keeps perspective un-fixed.</p> <p>Abstract and conceptual works lend themselves particularly well to durational viewing. When considering pieces for the exhibition, Montgomery and Willenbring specifically chose works by artists that combine rigor and formalist underpinnings, with an understated yet sublime beauty. They have grouped an unexpected bevy of artists into a space activated by dinner-time conversations puzzling the connections and discovering the complements. </p> <p>At the core of this exhibition is the emphasis on responsibility. Montgomery and Willenbring are creating a pantry within the gallery for food the visitor donates to the Food Bank of New York*. They ask the diners to bring food to share to the table when they come to dinner. Montgomery and Willenbring are bringing food to the neighborhood by hosting a farm stand on Saturdays. </p> <p>Each artwork will also initiate queries on responsibility through its language of abstraction, investigate the necessity or uselessness of interpretation, and weigh the burden or enlightenment of context. </p> <p>Joseph Montgomery and Jesse Willenbring are artists that live and work in New York City.<br /> Joseph Montgomery holds a BA from Yale University and both he and Jesse Willenbring hold <span class="caps">MFA</span>&#39;s from Hunter College. </p> <p>With many thanks to the generous loans from Paula Copper, Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, Steve Henry, The Hall Collection and Jack Tilton.</p> <p>Fall gallery hours will be Thursday through Saturdays 10-6, (Tuesdays and Wednesdays by appointment). Please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo for further information and/or visuals.</p> <p>*Non-perishable food items may be donated during gallery hours.</p> <p>Dinners will be held on;<br /> September 19th, September 22nd, September 26th, September 29th, October 3rd, October 6th, October 10th, October 13th, October 17th</p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1785 <div class="exhibition-subtitle">541 West 23rd Street</div> <div class="exhibition-dates">June 5 - July 11, 2009</div> <div class="exhibition-opening">Opens Friday, June 5, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM</div> <br/> <a href="/exhibition/view/1711"><img border="0" src="http://541.leokoenig.com/static/dyn-images/25/25461.jpeg" alt="installation view; &quot;Blind Buzzard&quot; Adrian Meraz and Anke Weyer " height="333" width="500" /></a> <p><p>installation view; "Blind Buzzard" Adrian Meraz and Anke Weyer</p></p> <br /> <div class="exhibition-description"><p><span class="caps">PROJEKTE </span>is pleased to announce as its inaugural exhibition, a two person show of works by Adrian Meraz and Anke Weyer entitled "Blind Buzzard".</p> <p> In native American lore, Buzzards help to construct and purify the world and they are universally seen as an adroit and efficient scavenger. Blind Buzzard on the other hand, evokes a comic/tragic familiar whose skill set could be hampered or surprisingly enhanced by a distinct disadvantage. A parable for absurdity and incongruence, Blind Buzzard extracts grace from disorientation. </p> <p>Adrian Meraz&#39; impossibly delicate sculptures defy their foundation. Evoking a complexity that reaches beyond the simple materials that he has used, the structures seemed to have willed themselves into being. Popsicle sticks, toothpicks balsa wood, cardboard and string are wrought into precarious edifices. Meraz works address the immovable constructs of materiality while considering the tenuous and fragile nature of that materiality. Meraz states "I am interested in the simplicity of materials as an aggregate for meta-history, subtext, a channeling device, a monster language. Each piece, in some ways, is a bastard community constructed to engage a more mental navigation via its smaller spacial makeup. I am interested in the work as a set of images that the viewer "maps," and how this navigation within the object explores liminality." Adrian Meraz holds a <span class="caps">BFA </span>from Otis College of Art and Design and an <span class="caps">MFA </span>from Yale School of Art, Department of Sculpture. He has had a solo exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and was awarded a California Community Fellowship. Adrian Meraz lives and works in <span class="caps">NYC.</span></p> <p>Anke Weyer&#39;s ink washes of wolves and nocturnal birds are an invitation to reflect and also be consumed by beauty. While known for large, brooding abstractions, Weyer has been making these more intimate works for over a year now in a continuing series called "Night Roamers." This series, represents a respite from daylights harsh and predictive rigor. The ink washes came into their own, feral and ephemeral creatures haunting desolate landscapes. Slowly, Weyer began to see the works as a whole. "Night is the place where perceptions are challenged, and changed "says Weyer. They are images of a possible journey, a chance encounter, following a stranger into an unknown place. Anke Weyer is a graduate of the Hochschule fur bildende Kunste, Staedelschule, Frankfurt Germany and is represented by Canada Gallery, <span class="caps">NY. </span> She lives and works in <span class="caps">NYC.</span></p></div> http://541.leokoenig.com/exhibition/view/1711