Catharina Szonn at Kunstverein Konstanz / Konstanz

 Catharina Szonn / Trouble in Paradise

Text by Dr. Dolores Claros-Salinas

1 August - 27 September, 2020

Kunstverein Konstanz

Wessenbergstraße 39

78462 Konstanz

Germany

Photography by Fenja Cambeis

"Perfumed Envelopes Travel Avalon of the Heart" at Pet Projects / Athens

Perfumed Envelopes Travel Avalon of the Heart

Amalia Vekri, Valinia Svoronou

23^th June – 12^th October

Pet Projects, Athens

Lauren Coullard at MOUNTAINS / Berlin

Lauren Coullard / Angels On A Needle

July 18 - August 29, 2020

MOUNTAINS

Pariser Strasse 4
10719 Berlin

Wed-Fri 13-19, Sat 11-16 

All images courtesy of the artist and the space

Here and there, in Lauren Coullard’s paintings, colours fussing in scattered configurations. Shades sometimes vivid, almost energetic – they suggest motley universes propitious to some kind of cheerfulness. Making themselves darker, other colours are more inclined to immerse us into nocturnal atmospheres – they allude to sleepy worlds where emerges a hidden onirism. From these ambiances, sometimes translucent like a clear day, sometimes underground, it remains that we are tempted to associate some compositions to the tradition of German expressionism and to the art of collage, while others, more figurative, lie halfway between pop-art, Dadaism and Surrealism.

Actually, Lauren Coullard’s compositions are unclassifiable. Something of these paintings really explores the nature of what is hybrid, were it only through the preparatory work of collage each time executed on a small format before every composition – unless it is through the uncertain space they open between figuration and abstraction, that we witness painting after painting. On one side, indeed, medieval vignettes reveal court characters and prodigious creatures; the thematic of courtly love and chivalrous deeds sets up the backdrop. On the other side, touches of colour and flat tints, lines and edges, slack and spontaneous, contribute to an overview visually inextricable. In a kaleidoscopic way they manage, though, to compose a rhythmical, almost musical brushwood, as if to recall that the most tumultuous swirls always possess a form of measure.

Moreover, especially in certain compositions, this painterly fuss allows us to mobilize the work of imagination, so that vaguely anthropomorphic patterns end up emerging out of the painting. And regardless the question whether or not we would be looking at a figurative work that has become abstract – or, the other way around, to an abstract work letting us identify elements of reality – it seems that the presence of this imaginary of hybridity is also linked to the way these humanlike figures – or rather, these characters – are conceived. We notice, for instance, that they always seem disguised, wearing make-up or camouflage. In a suggestive manner, first, when our need for interpretation makes us believe that in the midst of a mosaic of forms and colours pops up an eye, a smile or a glance. More literally, afterwards, when on some paintings novel or history characters, gallant souls or colourful superheroes are invited – people that anyway always show a specific attention to the way they look, the way they behave and maybe even the way they perform.

Therefore, it is maybe the figure of the comedian that is more often present in the paintings of Lauren Coullard – they who pretend to be themselves and, simultaneously, a multitude of others; they who, above all, put on a show and convince us of the different realities they inhabit successively, reflecting fantasized lives and extraordinary stories, or asserting the inanity of a world that one should rather laugh about.

The act of turning oneself into another could be misinterpreted as the will to escape a given primary identity, or a world gone amorphous and ungrateful (Deleuze Guattari, Mille Plateaux) – as if it had been about fleeing. It is the opposite that occurs within Lauren Coullard’s work, as the shifts and hybridizations operate as means to answer to life itself – or even to provoke and produce it. These characters, indeed, always claim for themselves the remarkable, and the features of what is out of step – lying sometimes on the threshold of extravagancy or exploiting contents specific to fabulous universes, such as manga, comics or cartoons.

To disguise, then, does not mean to hide, but to reveal oneself in a better way. Rather than a withdrawal, the gesture of becoming another outlines a form of clamour, a joy that echoes in the paintings of Lauren Coullard with this presence a little mischievous or facetious, almost jubilant. The most remarkable thing, in the end, is to see that this joy appears as close as possible to painting, through the danced gesture of the strokes or twirling colours. But we would almost forget the main point, namely that Lauren Coullard herself is also a character or a comedian. She aspires, as such, to visit territories freed from all barriers, and to discover unthought ways of self-realization – maybe she flees, but if she does, it is with paintbrushes and colours.

Text by Julien Verhaeghe.

—

Lauren Coullard (b. 1981 in Paris) lives and works in Paris, France. She is currently showing in Your Friends and Neighbors at High Art in Paris. Previous exhibitions include A.ROMY, Geneva (2020); Lily Robert, Paris (2019); Galerie Vallois, Paris (2019); C4RD, London (2018); Silicon Malley, Lausanne (2017); New Bretagne Belle Air, Essen (2016). Her work was 

featured in Artforum, Libération, Daily Lazy, and others. Lauren Coullard is co-founder of DOC! Paris.

Julien Verhaeghe is a curator and writer who lives and works in Paris, France.

Maximilian Sandfort at BPA / Cologne

Maximilian Sandfort at BPA

Güte beim Denken erzeugt Tiefe (?)

July 31 - August 30, 2020

BPA
Maastrichter Str. 10
Cologne, Germany

Overview

Overview

"Dimensions / Of Possibility" at Nevven Gallery / Göteborg

"Dimensions / Of Possibility"  

Anastasia Bay

Matthew Lessner

Lisa Lundgren

Emelie Sandström

June 4 - 30 August, 2020

Nevven Gallery

Bangatan 10 

414 63 Göteborg

Martin Kähler at goeben / Berlin

Martin Kähler 
Campo

July 31 - September 10, 2020

goeben berlin
Goebenstraße 22
Berlin, Germany

Fixing One’s Gaze with Landscape - Mit Bergen den Blick reparieren at Kunstverein Kärnten / Klagenfurt

Fixing One’s Gaze with Landscape - Mit Bergen den Blick reparieren at Kunstverein Kärnten

presents works by:

Stella Antares (AUT)

Oscar Cueto (MEX)

Gerhard Fresacher (AUT)

Eva Funk (AUT)

Nina Herzog (AUT)

Leon Höllhumer (AUT)

Daniel Hosenberg (AUT)

Evelina Jonsson (SWE/E)

Yein Lee (KOR)

Meina Schellander (AUT)

Patrick Topitschnig (AT)

Chin Tsao (TW)

Eugen Wist (D/RUS)

Gisela Zimmermann (D)

 

Performances with Pope Sangreta and Gerhard Fresacher

Curated by Céline Struger

Kunstverein Kärnten

Künstlerhaus Klagenfurt, Goethepark 1, 

9020 Klagenfurt

https://www.kunstvereinkaernten.at

July 10, 2020 - August 8, 2020

Closing party August 8, 2020 17:00 -24:00

 

Hrefna Hörn Leifsdóttir at Digestivo / Rotterdam

Hrefna Hörn Leifsdóttir

A voice can only break a glass that already has a crack in it

Graaf Florisstraat 106b

Rotterdam, Netherlands

16th of July - closing 6th of August

 

Antonin Giroud-Delorme at Les LIMBES / Saint-Étienne

Antonin Giroud-Delorme / “The  Nameless Healer: Hazy Wisdom”

with a lecture by Julie Sas & an essay by Romain Noël 

Les LIMBES

Summer show residency, 7 rue Henri Barbusse 42000 Saint-Etienne, France

July 31, 2020 till August 9, 2020

Sheilah ReStack at Interface Gallery / Oakland

Sheilah ReStack
Hold Hold Spill

July 17 - August 23

Interface Gallery
486 49th Street, Oakland
USA

 Sheilah ReStack, Hold Hold Spill, Installation View, Interface Gallery, Oakland.

Sheilah ReStack, Hold Hold Spill, Installation View, Interface Gallery, Oakland.

Aerosol, Sage, Intent: Unlock at Göteborgs Konstförening / Gothenburg

AEROSOL, SAGE, INTENT: UNLOCK


Presents works by Sara Andreasson, Hanna Antonsson, Björn Engberg, Adam Haugbak, Oscar Häggström, Jenny Johansson, Andreas Sandberg, Karin Ström


July 24–Aug 7, 2020


Olly Zander-Jones at Kleinerfelt / Fitzroy

Ghost stars / Olly Zander-Jones

15th July - 15th August, 2020

Kleinerfelt

92 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy
Victoria, Australia, 3065

Like a Sieve at Kupfer / London

Like a Sieve
Madeleine Pledge, Nathaniel Faulkner, Alexei Alexander Izmaylov, James Jessiman, Evie Ward, Jude Crilly. Curated by Ted Targett

July 25 - August 5

Kupfer

27A Ponsford St 

London, UK

Like a Sieve @ Kupfer. Exhibition overview

Like a Sieve @ Kupfer. Exhibition overview

Yuji Nagai at Zarinbal Khoshbakht / Cologne

Yuji Nagai
One Sound

June 26 - August 8

Zarinbal Khoshbakht

Albertusstrasse 24

Cologne, Germany

Exhibition overview

Exhibition overview

Damien Davis at Mrs. / Maspeth

"Benefit Suite" / Damien Davis

July 20 - August 1, 2020

Mrs.

60-40 56th Drive

Maspeth, NY 11378

Damien Davis
Breonna Taylor (Blackamoors Collage #345), 2020
Laser-Cut Plexiglass and Stainless Steel Hardware

11 1/2 x 6 x 1 in
29.2 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm
(DD_008)

SOLD with a direction Donation to 

Black Women's Blueprint.

Allan Rand at CHAUFFEUR Gallery / Sydney

Allan Rand

Arthur Phillip puts his head down, Barangaroo 1788

July 2 - August 1, 2020 

CHAUFFEUR

1/222 Liverpool Street Darlinghurst

Sydney 

Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff at the Downer / Berlin

Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff


June 18 - August 1
the Downer

Skalitzer Str. 68
Berlin, Germany

Installation view

Installation view

Teras Terra at Galeria Duarte Sequeira / Braga

Teras Terra 

Participating artists: Lito Kattou, Petros Moris

11th July - 12th September  2020

Galeria Duarte Sequeira 

R. da Galeria nº129

4700-803 Braga

Portugal

Ádám Albert at Kisterem / Budapest

disconnected / Kisterem

Ádám Albert 

June 23rd - July 31st, 2020


Képíró u. 5,1053
Budapest, Hungary