Feed Thy Soul
17 April – 17 May
Private view: 16 April, 6–9 pm
The exhibition stages an encounter between artists Martin Gustavsson and Matteo Rosa, exploring the cultural and aesthetic significance of gardens and flowers, from seemingly contrasting viewpoints.
Departing from the ancient Greek myth of Hyacinth, a lover of the god Apollo, Martin Gustavsson examines the metaphorical and formal language of representation, allegory and form, painting the image of nature as a site of desire and decay.
In an essay on his work, Peggy Phelan writes that “Gustavsson makes a bid for painting’s still urgent contribution to the representation of sex and death”. The results are baroque and highly erotic canvases that oscillate between the painstakingly beautiful and the grotesque.
Central to Matteo Rosa’s work is a phenomenological inquiry into the potential of human consciousness, within the context of minimalist aesthetics. In this exhibition he presents a series of videos and drawings, focusing on the contemplation of nature and impermanence.
Informed by Eastern philosophy, Rosa’s work can be seen as an endeavour to extinguish desire, separation and ego. For Rosa, the garden becomes a peaceful space, which enables meditation, spiritual communion and existential development.
Feed Thy Soul is an attempt at probing the split between nature and culture, reconciling the thoroughly human craving for pleasure with the quest for spiritual improvement.
E:vent Gallery
96 Teesdale Street
London
info@eventnetwork.org.uk
Nils Bech performs at the opening of Wrath of God at Oslo Kunstforening
Dokumentation of Nils Bech singing Purcell, Handel his own material together with Bendik Giske. The performance was part of the opening of Wrath of God in Oslo 15/11.
Second Installment of Wrath of God
Last Saturday 15th of November Wrath of God opened at Oslo Kunstforening. At the opening Nils Bech and Bendik Giske performed a new piece in response to the paintings.
The exhibition will run until 19th of December
Wrath of God at Oslo Kunstforening 15/11-19/12 2008
Oslo Kunstforening is situated in the heart of Oslo and is one of it's oldest buildings.
This baroque house forms the perfect setting for the second installment of Wrath of God. It offers new possibilities of showing existing pieces along with new paintings which will take this work to another level.
The emphasis on theatricality, painting as a tableaux or a stage and also in it's presentation, will be more pronounced.
For more information please visit the gallery's website www.oslokunstforening.no click here
Or you can mail marianne@oslokunstforening.no
Review of Wrath of God by Power Ekroth, from Art Forum online
The sky seems to be the limit in "Wrath of God,” Martin Gustavsson’s painted reinterpretations of Gustave Doré’s engravings detailing the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. There is absolutely nothing modest about these canvases. The subject is of course bombastic, but the technique is equally over-the-top: Flesh tones, fiery reds, and sun-bright yellows are deployed voluptuously and are enhanced by lavish, thick layers of pink, gold, or white glitter. In the diptych The Deluge (all works 2007), two piles consist of bodies that seem to have melted together into a fleshy porridge of wormlike extremities. Interwoven with biblical motifs, as in Jacob wrestling with the angel, 2007, one finds paintings of cloud formations that look uncannily corporeal.
Myths of God’s punishment of his people for their sins and perversions have been the subject of countless beautiful artworks but have also inspired less exalted sentiments, among them homophobia. Gustavsson, who has also recently painted male nudes, plays with these divergent connotations, creating a painterly style simultaneously tender and violent. Here the sublime is evoked in so deliberate a manner that one cannot help but embrace the result, a gallery that seems (and smells) like an overtly licentious Sistine Chapel.
Hyacinthos at Clifford Chance
Martin Gustavsson's paintings from the series Hyacinthos will form part of a group show at Clifford Chance taking place in July 2008. This exhibition called Trans-Atlantic Pride takes place on the 30th floor at 10 Upper Bank St, Canary Wharf and simultaneously at the New York office. There will be a video link between the two exhibitions. More info to follow.
Wrath of God, Brändström & Stene, Stockholm, 2007
Wrath of God (2006-2007) is a series of apocalyptic paintings taking their inspiration from Gustave Dore's romantic illustrations for the Bible. These are re-workings of an already famous body of work, instantly recognisable and part of a shared culture, yet eerily different. Painted very loosely, paint and glitter is dripping, writhing almost melting off and across the surface of the canvas. These violently beautiful paintings invoke a sense of fear and theatricality, highly pitched and highly sexed. Working with the mythical and religious imagery opens up new and fascinating re-readings of old stories in a contemporary light.
In Gustavsson's series of images The Gospel (2002-2003), a sacralization of male, homosexual desire takes place. But it is not an attempt at proving homosexuality to be compatible with the Christian church. The Gospel is not a manifestation against the repression of homosexuals by the church. Gustavsson is more perverse than that. Rather, it is about reinterpreting Christian tradition in its totality from the viewpoint of the revolutionary potential of homosexual desire. For Gustavsson, Jesus is the symbol for an eternally abundant, polyformous sexual desire (how does he understand communion?), and in his images, the apostles are a group of beautiful men filled with lust, whose bodies he carefully portrays with a remarkable glow in oil on milky, almost transparent paper.