Intersect Aspen (formerly Art Aspen) is an annual art and cultural event in the heart of one of the nation’s most prestigious collector communities. In 2020 it is an online-only event, replacing Art Aspen, which has been running since 2010.
The Silent Press, an installation in pigment and paper scrolls is Shono’s response to such erasure, a silent call for the liberation of the word from the hegemony of textuality and its dissemination. It also marks the silent memory of the erasure of the practitioners of the free word and imagines an alternate distribution of the free word.
Central to the iconography of Heat Burns, Ahaad Alamoudi’s first solo show in 2020 is the symbol of the iron and the colour yellow. Alamoudi sees the iron as a tool for action, creating change through heat and pressure. The Pantone Yellow overwhelms the show and is seen in the works in the room, the multiple yellow thobes, gym equipment and in the central video MakwahMan. The central work in the show is a three-channel video Makwah Man. On an immersive projection a man is depicted endlessly ironing metres of pantone yellow cloth in his pantone yellow satin thobe on top of a dune in the middle of the desert, reciting paternalistic, positive aphorisms.
In the language of mythology and religion, Barzakh is what separates life after death and before resurrection, as the barrier between the physical and spiritual worlds. In other interpretations it is a grave as a final ending. As a term designating a state of severance, it is rich with multiple connotations, used in geography describing what splits the sweet rivers from the salty seas, to the dream which separates sleep from vigilance and the soul from body and mind. This disjunction though allows foreign elements to surface, challenging the very own mechanism of this concept and creating a link between all. Barzakh allows then transit, like a mirror between the body and its image.
AGIAL AND SALEH BARAKAT GALLERY
Agial and Saleh Barakat Gallery are featuring a group of young contemporary artists from the Arab world, including Nabil Nahas, Serwan Baran, Anas Albraehe, Hiba Kalache, Hala Ezzeddine, Abdul Rahman Katanani, and Hady Sy.
GALLERY ISABELLE VAN DEN EYNDE
Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde’s selection includes works by Hoda Tawakol, Mohammed Kazem, Vikram Divecha, Abdelkader Benchamma, Haleh Redjaian and the collective formed by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian.
Hafez Gallery’s selections includes Lulwah Al Homoud, Ahmed Keshta, Ali Chaaban, Mohammad Barrangi, Osama Esid, Bashaer Hawsawi, Rashed Al Shashai, Ibrahim El Dessouki, Fuad Hamdi and Arif Al Nomay.
Lyons Wier Gallery’s selections featurs artists Fahamu Pecou, Tara Lewis, James Rieck, Cobi Moules, Chelsea Gibson, Valeri Larko, Edie Nadelhaft, Dylan Martinez and Jae Yong Kim.
In Trapademia II: LIT, Fahamu Pecou weaves together two concepts, Trapademia™ and notions of light-based performance found in contemporary African diasporic practice-that reframes contemporary Black culture. Trapademia™ considers trap as a technology where various social, cultural, racial, sexual, economic and political oppressions become remedied through innovative and inventive social practices. LIT refers to light or illumination.
Tara Lewis portrays real-life subjects adorned with incongruous props, artist-made t-shirts and satin pageant sashes boasting pop culture text idioms. Her portrait process happens organically as models go through her wardrobe, accessories and props to discover a ‘persona’. These ‘play-dates’ serve as a pivotal ingredient for her practice as they are the underpinning of the subsequent photoshoot that serves as the source material for her paintings. The paintings play with scale, redefine gender stereotypes and revisit past decades with a dose of satirical zing that results in trophy toting portraiture and willful non-conformist debutantes gone rebel-rogue.
Inspired by vintage clothing catalogs from the 1950s and ‘60s, James Rieck is notorious for capturing the clothes and postures of his subjects, while intentionally leaving out the faces. “I bring the attention to the unspoken body language of the models, and their accoutrements. Often times it is a gesture or a posture that I’m interested in. It’s there that I see the history of the figure and portrait painting. There’s a similar language to presenting one’s best, with undertones of hiding. We know clothes are used to cover us up—they always tell us about what we are hiding from ourselves and each other.”
Afikaris gallery sheds light on the recent dynamism and liveliness of the Cameroonian art scene that has been noticeable in the past five years.
The Half Planes work-phase (1995-97) is based on the 6-D hypercube. As indicated for the Laserglyphs (1991), this complex structure has 32 diagonals from which 23040 “diagonal-paths” that can be calculated combinatorially. A random selection of two “diagonal-paths” from this alphabet of signs provides the building blocks for each work in this work- phase. In the grey paintings, the “diagonal-paths” are represented by thick white lines. The vector pairs which complete the quadrilaterals are represented by thin black lines. The quadrilaterals are coloured in grey to create the shape of the painting.
Sifting through dumpsters to find materials, Daniel Canogar creates works out of discarded pieces of moribund and current technological hardware, from light bulbs and VHS tapes to DVDs and fiber optic cable. Canogar’s installations offer commentaries about the speed and regularity of obsolescence in the world of consumer technology. The artist’s 2010 installation Spin featured films projected onto the DVDs from which they were ripped, creating reflections on facing walls, and accompanied by their dissonantly layered soundtracks.
In 1968 Salvador Dalí was commissioned to illustrate an edition of the Alice in Wonderland book. Dalí chose to represent Alice as a girl with a skipping rope, an image which first appeared in his oeuvre in the 1930’s and was used in numerous oil paintings such as Morphological Echo (c.1935).
Jeff Koons plays with ideas of taste, pleasure, celebrity and commerce. “I believe in advertisement and media completely,” he says. “My art and my personal life are based on it.” His paintings and sculptures borrow widely from art-historical techniques and styles. Although often seen as ironic or tongue-in-cheek, Koons insists his practice is earnest and optimistic.
A provocative figure in the world of street art, Mr. Brainwash practices an irreverent brand of appropriation characterised by the use of copyrighted images from history, popular culture and art history. The artist subtly alters the picture or its context, mischievously undermining the tone of the source material. Brainwash, a pseudonym for Thierry Guetta, is known for producing massive spectacles to display his art.
For British designer Faye Toogood, “whether you are a fashion designer, a furniture designer or an interior designer, the materials you can get your hands on are essential, because you are always looking for a new way to interpret your designs and to explain your story.” Toogood’s products, designed with “honesty to the rawness and irregularity of the chosen material,” are sculptural in form and range from cups, tables and chairs to art objects. Like her interior spaces, her furniture is considerate of both the two-dimensional design as well as three-dimensional space.
Working at the intersection of design and sculpture, Misha Kahn creates objects whose function is masked by the unusual assemblage of objects he uses to create them. Kahn designs his objects by hand with unorthodox materials such as pool noodles and fishing wire and often produces the final work through digital means, creating an interplay between the handmade and the technological.
Detroit-based designer Chris Schanck embraces contradiction in his work, finding a comfortable place between the distinctions of dilapidation and assemblage, individual and collective, industrial and handcraft, romanticism and cynicism. His efforts deviate from the mass-produced, instead reviving mundane materials by transforming them into unique objects of uncommon luxury.
Winner of the 2003 Turner Prize, Grayson Perry creates ceramics and other objects that explore diverse historical and contemporary themes. Drawn in by the beauty of his objects, which are covered with sgraffito drawing, handwritten and stenciled text, transferred photographs, and sumptuous glaze, at close range viewers apprehend darker subjects and narrative hints to environmental disaster and child abuse.
Peter Doig’s enigmatic paintings are characterised by their captivating combination of figurative depiction and dreamlike quality. Doig draws on personal memories from his childhood in Canada, as well as imagery sourced from photographs and films, to craft images that exist in fantastical, timeless spaces that feel both personal and universal.
KAWS possesses a sophisticated humour and thoughtful interplay with consumer products and collaborations with global brands. He often draws inspiration and appropriates from popular culture animations to form a unique artistic vocabulary and influential cast of hybrid cartoon and human characters.
The above descriptions are sourced from the galleries’ press releases.
Intersect Aspen is on view until the 22nd of August.