ALLISON LONG HARDY | PEN, INDIA INK, GRAPHITE...

Combine, pen, India ink, graphite, colored pencil, collage on paper, 24″ x 21″, 2011

Daydream, pen, graphite, colored pencil, India ink on paper, 38″ x 26″, 2011

Grow, India ink, pen, colored pencil, collage on paper, 72″ x 20″, 2012

Midline, India ink, pen, graphite, colored pencil on paper, 72″ x 22″, 2012

Passing Through, pen, colored pencil, graphite, India ink on paper, 24″ x 48″, 2011

Pronounce, pen, India ink, graphite, colored pencil, collage on paper, 24″ x 21″, 2011

Protect, pen, India ink, collage, colored pencil, graphite, marker on paper, 34.75″ x 26.75″, 2013

Artist Statement

I am interested in how people communicate, effectively and ineffectively. Communication is the one thing that binds us all together, the one common thread that must continue. Without communication, what else do we have? When making work, I am interested in the certain moments when communication or lack of communication occurs and in interpreting those moments through mark. What interests me most is when the marks that emerge on the page overlap and meld with the marks below or on top and create their own type of mark—something I had not planned. My work is a mix of intuitive and deliberate mark-making paired with the spontaneity that occurs when these marks overlap.

About the Artist

Allison Long Hardy was born and raised in Frederick, Maryland. She received her bachelor’s degree in intermedia from West Virginia Wesleyan College and her master’s in fine art from Towson University, where she concentrated in painting. Hardy currently is an adjunct professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where she teaches a variety of 2D and 3D design, painting, drawing, and printmaking courses.

Hardy’s work has been seen nationally and regionally in numerous solo, two-person, and group shows. From September 10 to December 3, 2013, she exhibited her drawings alongside photographs by Frank Hallam Day at The Heurich Gallery in Washington, D.C. Her solo exhibitions include “Crowded Spaces” at the University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia; and “Engulfed: Works on Paper by Allison Long Hardy”, which took place November 29–December 16, 2013, in the Esther Prangley Rice Gallery at McDaniel College, Westminster, Maryland. 

Hardy’s honors include a printmaking award from Washington Printmakers Gallery and a grant from Vermont Studio Center.

Hardy’s work can be found in the collections of PNC Bank, Washington, D.C., and on the set of The Good Wife, which airs on CBS. The home furnishings company West Elm has featured Hardy’s work in its catalog and on its blog, Front and Main.

Allison Long Hardy’s Website

Allison Long Hardy’s Etsy Site

www.escapeintolife.com

CHRISTIE'S | POST-WAR & CONTEMPORARY

JEFF KOONS
Cracked Egg (Magenta), Executed in 1994-2006
Estimate: £10 million to £15 million

From 6 to 14 February in London, Christie’s will present an outstanding season of exhibitions and auctions dedicated to Post-War & Contemporary Art, representing the most important artists and movements of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Francis Outred, Christie’s Head of Post-War & Contemporary Art, Europe: “’Following on from the success of New York in November, when new records for any auction globally, any work of art at auction and any work by a living artist were achieved, Christie’s is delighted to present another exceptional series of Post War and Contemporary art auctions in London this February. The ground-breaking Italian spirit of Arte Povera emanates from the special collection of ‘Eyes Wide Open’ where major works by Pascali, Pistoletto and Fabro mix with their forebears Fontana, Burri and Manzoni and their international heirs in Schutte, Eliasson, Kapoor and Trockel to name but a few. We are also celebrating a British odyssey starting with Francis Bacon’s stunning ‘George Dyer Talking’ from the same period, 1966, Bridget Riley’s ‘Chant 2’ which won the Golden Lion in Venice in 1968 and ending with the group of works from the key exhibition of contemporary art from the last couple of decades, ‘Sensation’. The generation of Hirst, Hume, Ofili and Saville often quote Arte Povera as a profound influence so to be able to bring these works together in February is particularly resonant. Following Koons’ record-breaking sale in New York the appearance of his celebrated ‘Cracked Egg’ for the first time at auction should create tremendous excitement, and the Gerhard Richter ‘Abstraktes Bild’ is the finest abstract painting I have ever worked with. This should be a season to remember.”

This exceptional week of sales begins with Eyes Wide Open: An Italian Vision, a single-owner auction and exhibition featuring the largest and most important private collection of Arte Povera ever to be shown in the UK. The exhibition will open on 5 February and will be displayed across all three floors of Christie’s Mayfair Gallery in New Bond Street (until 14 February). The stand-alone auction will take place on 11 February at Christie’s King Street.

The February season is led by the Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Auction on 13 February 2014, which will offer 49 works representing each decade of the past 60 years and reflecting watershed moments in contemporary art. The evening auction is led by masterpieces by Francis Bacon, Gerhard Richter and Jeff Koons and is expected to realize £87 million to £107.5 million, the second highest pre-sale estimate for a London auction in the category at Christie’s, and the highest for the February season. The Evening auction will also showcase the evolution of British art from the 1960s to the present day, with outstanding examples by Francis Bacon, Bridget Riley, Gerald Laing, Jenny Saville, Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Gary Hume and Peter Doig.

www.christies.com

TALA MADANI | NOTTINGHAM CONTEMPORARY

25 Jan 2014 - 23 Mar 2014

Tala Madani is one of the most original painters to have emerged in recent years. Her work reflects on masculinity, group dynamics, sexuality and power play – topics that are explored with humour, as well as impossible cartoon violence.

Madani imagines the bizarre and purposeless rituals of a male-only domain. An absurd and nightmarish sense of exposure pervades her paintings of groups of men in underwear or sleepwear, blissfully unaware – and evidently enjoying – their own predicaments, and each others’ company. Madani has said that she “let’s the subconscious speak.”

Bodily functions appear in her paintings and digital animations, creating intensely private moments that are strangely shared. Moving outside the body, she describes some of her works as speaking of a sexual, religious or spiritual ecstasy. These are inextricably and disturbingly tangled, critiquing male power cliques.

View Exhibition notes >>

She has said that she uses humour to “bring everyone’s guards down”. In her paintings competitive violence is reduced to an absurd impotence. So called feminine colours or patterns are applied to the macho activities.

A new series of works feature children from a traditional learn to read series, books that reflect the conservative gender roles of the 50s. As a teenager newly arrived in the United States, Madani herself used them to learn English. The children appear alongside Madani’s little men who can be good or evil. The original illustrations of the children’s ordered existence are subverted by their anarchic actions.

Madani’s work often seems to tell a story. She draws inspiration from the graphic novels of Alan Moore and Robert Crumb. Her work also contains numerous arthistorical references that range from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism, encompassing in particular Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings and Morris Louis’s poured paint technique.

Born in 1981 in Tehran, Tala Madani lives and works in Los Angeles.

A limited edition by Tala Madani has been produced exclusively for this exhibition. Find out more >>

The exhibition is curated by Abi Spinks and is a collaboration with the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville.

Tala Madani travels to CAAC, Seville: 15 April to 24 August 2014.

http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/tala-madani

JORG SASSE | STILL LIFE AND TABLEAUX

JÖRG SASSE - STILL LIFES AND TABLEAUX - GALERIE WILMA TOLKSDORF FRANKFURT

Jörg Sasse - Still Lifes and Tableaux - Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf - Frankfurt 

4 December 2012 - 23 February 2013
Website Jörg Sasse

http://contemporaryartlinks.blogspot.it