Artcity21 - Blog

Annie Leibovitz Photographs

An Important Gift from HMF

Temporary Exhibition

On until January 21st, 2019

The Hermitage Museum Foundation (USA) is proud to announce the exhibition of the recent acquisition of photographs by esteemed photographer, Annie Leibovitz. Leibovitz (born 1949) is one of the most successful photographers of the present day. She made her name with photographs of celebrities taken on assignments from magazines and advertising agencies. In her finest works, Leibovitz goes beyond the bounds of a commercial shoot, creating memorable, heart-stirring images of personalities and the age. 

Anette H. Flensburg, The Magnolia. Later, 2018, oil on canvas, 90 x 110 cm

ANETTE H. FLENSBURG

STILL

Galleri Andersson/Sandström is proud to announce Anette H. Flensburg's fifth solo exhibition at the gallery. In this upcoming exhibition, Still, new paintings from 2018 will be presented.

Anette H. Flensburg is a painter who paints interiors. Rooms that are most often devoid of humans but filled with spatially defined boundaries in the form of walls, screens and translucent surfaces. In addition to these formal elements, the paintings harbour intensity and hold certain moods. With her exceptional craftsmanship, Flensburg creates illusory representations of three-dimensional spheres and succeeds in creating forms for psychological ideas that cannot be materialized, but which are omnipresent, and invisible.

‘Still’ can mean a still image, an indication that there were pictures before and after this picture, unmistakably changed. But it can also mean still or quiet, still and constant. In the world of Art, Still Life is another word for Nature Morte, depictions of more or less perishable objects set in a room.

The paintings in the exhibition Still correspond in different ways with several of the aforementioned meanings and with the still life tradition. The pictures have the character of a captured momentum when the light falls at a specific angle, creating special shapes and sharp shadows. When the objects stand thus and the room itself is viewed from this subjective perspective, they create a significant, frontally oriented configuration.

There is an old saying that we can accomplish a lot if we "set our mind to it"... that is very true, and it particularly makes a lot of sense if we take as best example, the inner consistency, conviction, talent, certainty, wisdom, kno wledge and attitude of contemporary artist Antonio Pessoa and his increasing power to create. Soul Fire! Years ago, breaking free of his old patterns, Pessoa grabs the attention of a wide audience, not only becoming a life guru, but what's really at stake and most importantly, coming up with an impressive cutting edge abstract (neo- surrealistic) series which visual effects succeed to take the viewer beyond pseudo-intelectual reason (or confusion)... straight high up into the universe of ultimate emotional ecstasy. Antonio Pessoa is much talked about nowadays but how many of us have really understood him, his message and his Oeuvre to put him once and for all in the reputable world of the Great Masters? Obviously many, however the future is just about to surprise us far beyond our expectations with a new exciting movie about the Masterpiece of a Genius, which script is inevitably in the complex but enthusiastic process of being written. An Art Expert, an artist or a Life Guru? That's the ultimate question concerning Pessoa's top priorities, as the world goes round and round and time eventually goes by. Knowing the artist as we know, even so, the secret and the mystery is ultimately for him to know and for all of us to find out. However, one thing is true, Antonio Pessoa and his unique capacity to relax, and in so doing just letting go, more than remarkable, is a well developed skill he uses and commands, a quality so intimate that even his willingness to share, oftentimes is not enough when it comes to when many fans and clients, friends and art collectors want to know and learn the trick behind the Great Master of Reality. Art expression, international language as it is and must be, knows its limits, the abstract message inevitably subjective, ambiguous as visual poetry. The whole deep truth about this mysterious and unique man, can only be felt through intuitive interpretation, even when effective communication and world wide web information about his Art and Life, concentrate the efforts in providing the public with as clear as possible reviews and news tips in order to let out in the open the big riddle of the artist's inner self and private life. One way or another, for the artist there is one unquestionable issue. Always! The time to magically open up is Now. Labelled as Soul Fire, energy, love, action and creativity, these are the elements involved in achieving abundance in Art and Life, while Pessoa, the Master of Wisdom trusts the universal time, the universal principles and laws and the perfect alignment to simply afford pleasurably work, live, enjoy anf letting go. Yes, Belief underlies the whole process. The belief that there are no other options but to know exactly how to accomplish whatever is on his mind, whatever is on his list, whatever is burning on his soul. An excellent equation, a brilliant combination. However, how it all comes about is still an awesome miracle to many. No Miracle, whatsoever. It's all about Soul Fire and inspired action. Antonio Pessoa's intuition tells him his thinking mind where to look next, what to do next, and what to paint next. It's a very exciting intuitive and personal issue-unquestionably a very exciting way of living - between the artist and his feelings. He trusts his feelings and feelings don't lie. More than Soul Fire, what's really at stake and what we are really talking about is the artist's reknown intuition and it sure works. Voilà!

Decía Schöffer:  "El cine no es solamente imágenes grabadas en un carrete. Se puede hacer cine en el espacio, se puede hacer cine sobre cualquier superficie, en diferentes medios. (...) Entonces, considero que cuando utilizo mis proyecciones de luz o mis esculturas-luz en una plaza pública, estoy haciendo cine, solo que lo llamo espectáculo luminodinámico y el cine también forma parte del luminodinamismo"

(declaraciones recopiladas por Éric Rohmer en Le Celluloïd et le Marbre, de 1966)

 Enrique Martínez Celaya,The Latecomer, oil and wax on canvas, 166 x 178 cm

Enrique Martínez Celaya,
"The Other Life"
Stockholm, May 3 - June 2, 2018

 Galleri Andersson/Sandström is proud to present the third solo exhibition of Enrique Martínez Celaya’s work, The Other Life. In this exhibition – which features eight paintings and five works on paper – Martínez Celaya reflects on inevitability, tragedy, and loss in a way that does not discount hope, but places it out of reach. The title of the exhibition suggests the enigma of life’s singularity, and invites thoughts of another life – one parallel to our own and emerging from the choices we did not make.

The new body of work presented in the exhibition features allusive and archetypal imagery – a basket of apples, fields of grass, flooded waters – symbols and landscapes that connect the work to what Martínez Celaya has previously done. However, the emotional register in these works confronts more starkly than before despair, loss, and loneliness against tenderness, redemption, and love. For Martínez Celaya, the capacity of painting to create meaning depends on the instability between the references in painting and its materiality, between what it brings forth as idea, dream, or invocation, and its factual condition as object and reservoir of work.

Since the early 1990s, working in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, and installation, Enrique Martínez Celaya has created an extensive oeuvre characterised by metaphorical complexity. He blends fantasy, reality, and memory to create a poetic world that is both semi-autobiographical and resonantly universal. His art, as Martínez Celaya describes, is a rescue ship, where its ever shape-shifting appearance depends on what we lack and what we long for.