Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley       The World Stage: Africa: Lagos-Dakar (M Wiley .N5 W55 2008)

From the Studio Museum Harlem “The World Stage: Africa, Lagos ~ Dakar is Kehinde Wiley’s (b. 1977) first solo exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem and features ten new paintings from his multinational “The World Stage” series. Wiley is known for his stylized paintings of young, urban African-American men in poses borrowed from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European figurative paintings, a practice he started in the early 2000s while an artist in residence at the Studio Museum. Over the last two years, Wiley has expanded his project by living and working abroad; he temporarily relocates to different countries and opens satellite studios to become familiar with local culture, history and art. His “The World Stage” series is the result of these travels.

Wiley’s first trip was to China, where he placed his models in poses based on Chinese propaganda art from the Cultural Revolution. The World Stage: Africa, Lagos ~ Dakar, organized by Christine Y. Kim, features paintings from Wiley’s next stops, Senegal and Nigeria. For this exhibition, Wiley’s models mimic historical public sculptures from Dakar, Senegal, and Lagos, Nigeria. Wiley received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1999 and an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2001 before becoming an artist in residence at the Studio Museum. His work is represented in the collections of several museums, including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Brooklyn Museum; Denver Art Museum and Virginia Museum of Fine Art.”

New Book

Bea Emsbach: Beutezuge im Bodensatz der Wissenschaften (M Emsbach .E636 A4 2002)

From DAP “ In the intersection of comics, biotechnology, fairly tales, and science fiction lies the work of  Bea Emsbach Through the characteristic precision of her blood-red ink drawings, Emsbach creates scenarios–real and unreal–that serve to perturb and transfix the viewing eye. She designs imaginary scenarios of the future, traversing various pictorial worlds as a matter of course. Strange beings evolve as a result–peculiar mutants, hybrid humanoid creatures, entangled in bizarre situations and bound together with veins, tubes, and cords. This publication provides a comprehensive overview of Emsbach’s pen drawings from 1995 onwards (these comprise the body of her work), as well as selected lesser-known installation and object work.” Essays by Beate Ermacora, Verena Kuni, Annelie Pohlen and Edwin Schâfer.

Hammershoi (M Hamme .H282 A4 2008)

From The Royal Academy “The first Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) retrospective in the UK, this exhibition features over 60 paintings spanning the career of this celebrated Danish artist. The works have been selected from museums and private collections in Europe, the United States and Japan.

Hammershøi’s most compelling works are his quiet, haunting interiors, their emptiness disturbed only occasionally by the presence of a solitary, graceful figure, often the artist’s wife. Painted within a small tonal range of implied greys, these sparsely-furnished rooms exude an almost hypnotic quietude and sense of melancholic introspection.

In addition to the interiors, the exhibition also includes Hammershøi’s arresting portraits, landscapes and his evocative city views, notably the deserted streets of London on a misty winter morning. The magical quietness of Hammershøi’s work can be seen in the context of international Symbolist movements of the turn of the last century but the containment and originality of his art makes it unique.”

Interactive graphic: ‘Interior with Woman at Piano, Strandgade 30′

New Book

Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton (M Peyto .P428 A4 2008)

From The New Museum  ”Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton is the first survey of Elizabeth Peyton’s work in an American institution. The survey will include more than 100 works made over the past fifteen years.

Peyton’s oeuvre can be read in chapters, each of which feature portraits of friends, family, personal heroes, and fleeting passions. Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton will offer a visual biography of the artist, and at the same time create a snapshot of the popular culture of the past decade.

From her earliest portraits of musicians like Kurt Cobain, Liam Gallagher, and Jarvis Cocker to more recent paintings featuring friends and figures from the worlds of art, fashion, cinema, and politics including Rirkrit Tiravanija, Matthew Barney, and Marc Jacobs, Elizabeth Peyton’s body of work presents a chronicle of America at the end of the last century. A painter of modern life, Peyton’s small, jewel-like portraits are also intensely empathetic, intimate, and even personal. Together, her works capture an artistic zeitgeist that reflects the cultural climate of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries.”

See the exhibition’s website here.