DANIEL BUREN | PIERRE HUYGHE Feb. 11 - April 4, 2020  View this email in your browser (https://mailchi.mp/27faa862cae4/nahmad-contemporary-newsletter-september-2562403?e=c39411af91) O P E N I N G T H I S W E E K ** D A N I E L B U R E N | P I E R R E H U Y G H E ------------------------------------------------------------ February 11 - April 4, 2020 NEW YORK—Nahmad Contemporary is pleased to announce Daniel Buren | Pierre Huyghe, an exhibition that foregrounds the conceptual affinities between French artists Daniel Buren (b. 1938) and Pierre Huyghe (b. 1962). Presenting a selection of Buren’s vanguard striped paintings from 1966 in dialogue with one of Huyghe’s dynamic aquarium ecosystems from 2013, the show unites two bodies of works that dismantle the conventional relationship between authorship and presentation. The inception of Daniel Buren’s pivotal, striped motif—which continues to form the foundation of his practice today—occurred in 1965 when he noticed the conventional, 8.7-centimeter-wide striped awning fabric lining the storefronts of a Parisian textile market. He adopted this unassuming, two-toned mass-produced fabric as the basis of his paintings, which he bestowed with matter-of-fact titles that list the medium, such as White acrylic paint on red and white canvas (1966), or describe the compositional form, such as Variable Forms Painting (1966). Although Buren left the majority of the striped support untouched, he deliberately distinguished his work from “ready-mades” by adding subtle painterly gestures (condensed to narrow, meandering lines across the support or isolated to its perimeter). Defying traditional painted allusions of figuration and depth, these important early works mark the artist’s unparalleled use of stripes as a tool to direct attention from the artwork to its surrounding context. The series was created amid great political unrest and robust societal critique at a time when artists aimed to decry institutional power structures. Accordingly, by reducing the artist’s hand and employing systematic stripes, Buren unveiled the work as a neutral object whose value is assigned by the context in which it is placed. Pierre Huyghe has examined the contextual implications of art exhibitions since the 1990s. His works often present themselves as situated networks, a continuity between a wide range of intelligent life forms (biological, technological) and matter that learn, modify and evolve. This exhibition centers on Cambrian Explosion (2013) from his aquarium series, which he began in 2010 and comprises live ecosystems that host aquatic plants and organisms. Radically eschewing traditional artistic media and ideas of authorship, these variable environments evolve independently of the artist’s control. In the featured work, a 280-pound boulder is floating in water over crabs and anemones. The title refers to the sudden biological explosion over 500 million years ago that marked the emergence of almost all animal species. By referring to this moment of incredible volatility in the natural world, Cambrian Explosion suggests a sense of emergence and ephemerality, which is perpetuated by the artist’s use of autonomous living species as his medium. As if summoning the philosophies of Buren, who was an early mentor, Huyghe surrenders his work to contingency and different natures of intelligences: liberating artmaking from conventional institutional values. Presenting Buren’s self-reflexive linear textiles and Huyghe’s evolving ecosystem, the exhibition provides a platform to extract a common thread between two very distinct artistic approaches. Whether renouncing painting for machine-made fabric or relinquishing sculpture to the impulses of nature, both artists create distance between themselves and their works, acting as catalysts rather than makers. The resulting works offer brilliant interrogations on the complex relationship between artist, artwork, context and viewer. press release (http://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/exhibitions/daniel-buren-pierre-huyghe) R E C E N T P R E S S http://images.nahmadcontemporary.com/www_nahmadcontemporary_com/NYT___Spiegelbilder.pdf T H E N E W Y O R K T I M E S Albert Oehlen’s “Mirror Paintings” Art Reviews - Roberta Smith Jan. 15, 2020 read article (http://images.nahmadcontemporary.com/www_nahmadcontemporary_com/NYT___Spiegelbilder.pdf) ** L A T E S T P U B L I C A T I O N ------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/publications/albert-oehlen-spiegelbilder A L B E R T O E H L E N S P I E G E L B I L D E R M I R R O R P A I N T I N G S 1 9 8 2 - 1 9 9 0 Published on the occasion of the exhibitions at Galerie Max Hetzler and Nahmad Contemporary Essay by Raphaël Rubinstein purchase (http://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/publications/albert-oehlen-spiegelbilder) ** N E W S ------------------------------------------------------------ J E A N - M I C H E L B A S Q U I A T Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines National Gallery of Melbourne, Australia Until April 13, 2020 more information (https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/keith-haring-jean-michel-basquiat/) W A D E G U Y T O N Wade Guyton | ZWEI DEKADEN MCMXCIX–MMXIX Museum Ludwig, Cologne Until March 1, 2020 more information (https://www.museum-ludwig.de/en/exhibitions/wade-guyton.html) H A N S H A R T U N G Hans Hartung | La fabrique du geste Museum of Modern Art, Paris Until March 1, 2020 more information (http://www.mam.paris.fr/en/expositions/exhibitions-hans-hartung) https://www.kunsthalle-duesseldorf.de/en/exhibitions/baeume-trees/ Carroll Dunham / Albert Oehlen . Bäume / Trees Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany Until March 1, 2020 more information (https://www.kunsthalle-duesseldorf.de/en/exhibitions/baeume-trees/) P A B L O P I C A S S O Picasso. Magic paintings Musée Picasso, Paris Until Feb. 23, 2020 more information (http://www.museepicassoparis.fr/en/exhibition-picasso-magic-paintings/) Picasso and Paper Royal Academy of Arts, London Until April 13, 2020 more information (https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/picasso-and-paper) Charlotte Perriand: Inventing a New World Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris Until Feb. 24, 2020 more information (https://www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr/en.html) N A H M A D C O N T E M P O R A R Y 980 MADISON AVE ⎮ NEW YORK NY 10075 [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) +1 646 449 9118 Monday-Saturday, 10AM-6PM http://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/ https://www.instagram.com/nahmadcontemporary/?hl=en https://www.facebook.com/Nahmad-Contemporary-761104604029387/ https://www.twitter.com/Joe_Nahmad/ ============================================================ Pierre Huyghe, Cambrian Explosion, 2013, Image courtesy of the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; Esther Schipper, Berlin; Hauser & Wirth, London; Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris. Daniel Buren, Photo-souvenir: Variable Forms Painting, [January-May] 1966, Image courtesy of the artist and Bortolami, New York. Photo credit: Tom Powel Imaging Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat at the opening reception for Julian Schnabel at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1987. Photo: © George Hirose Wade Guyton Installation view at the Ludwig museum, © Wade Guyton Hans Hartung © Musée d’Art moderne de Paris / © Raphaël Chipault ©ADAGP, Paris, 2019 Albert Oehlen, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 2019 © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019 Photo: Katja Illner Pablo Picasso, Dora and the Minotaur, 1936, © Succession Picasso 2020 Pablo Picasso, Femme dans un fauteuil [Figure], 1927. Huile sur toile, 128 x 97.8 cm Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Collection Beyeler. Photo: Robert Bayer © Succession Picasso 2020 © Succession Picasso 2020, installation view at Fondation LV, Paris If you received this email in error or no longer wish to receive these mailings, you can click here to ** unsubscribe (https://nahmadcontemporary.us17.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=b70673086d081550990c36524&id=62f68f98d0&e=c39411af91&c=af8ceb9652)