Facets of Figuration: Rodman & Renshaw Benefit Art Exhibition
Watch the video from the Gala at the Metropolitan Museum in New York:
Works in the Exhibition:
Rodman & Renshaw LLC, the McCarton Foundation and Quintessentially Art would like to welcome you to the exhibition “Facets of Figuration”, staged at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 12, 2011. In this exhibition we highlight an exciting group of artists exploring the contemporary permutations and possibilities of figurative art.
Even during pre-historic times, primitive cave-dwelling humans wanted, even needed, to express the world around them. From the prehistoric art of Baden-Wurttemberg in Germany, Chauvet, France and even Bradshaw art of Western Australia, humans have been depicting the people and animals around them. Fast forward thousands of years and we still find artists exploring the figure, with a range of inspirations, from Renaissance’s classical depictions to post-modern distortions using a wide range of materials and techniques.
After the advent of photography artist started questioning the need for representational drawing, as the camera would render an image more precisely. As Modernism and Post-modernism questioned the relevance of figuration, the contemporary art world reaffirmed a firm place for the inherent interest and relevance of artists’ representation of the figures around us. This exhibition shows that the figurative practices are varied, probing, visually and intellectually stimulating and a key component of artists’ dialogue in our contemporary discourse.
The artworks for this exhibition come from an eclectic range of artists, from world renowned impresarios to emerging talent, that all have a figurative resonance within their practices.
Andres Serrano turns his masterful eye on everyday Americans, casting them in heroic, transcendent portraiture, while Paco Cao takes a conceptual look at a dystopic future, where mythological creatures are among the humans, protecting the status quo.
David Kramer uses text to augment an image and express the escapism that advertising promises but rarely fulfills, while Rina Banjerlee drawings represent a search for belonging for a ‘foreigner’ in a post-colonial, globalized world.
Anya Rubin’s expressionistic brushstrokes are the search for human’s place in the technologically saturated world, while Beata Drozd make collages using materials of the media bombardment, namely ripped up magazines, to reformulate the notion of icons and celebrity.
Alexander Melamid gets away from his recent conceptual projects to rediscover the fundamentals of artmaking with Velasquez-like classicism, as Mikel Glass gets inspiration from the Renaissance masters while keeping his focus on our moment in history.
Xiaowei Chen explores what goes on in the mind through delicate, intricate drawing and Joseph Wolf Grazi sees the human connections to the primal world of animals by drawing the predators of the ages.
And the lone sculptor of the group Gennadi Kirichansky manipulates one of the most ancient of materials, marble, into a modern form that at its root has connections with Greek and Roman traditions.
There will be a selection of video art shown during the event. From xxxxmagazine.com the ‘Untitled’ Magazine, you will see beauty, art, and fashion intermingled. Artist Amir Baradaran will show a vignette of the new world of Augmented Reality, as well as recordings of his performances and infiltrations. Aitor Lajarin’s video is a laser sharp look at the hyper-mega-metropolises of today.
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