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Selected Works by Thomas Helbig at the Saatchi-gallery

January 2nd, 2010

Thomas Helbig’s Rom emerges as a palimpsest of muted expression. Obliterated in a blizzard of gauzy brushwork, Helbig’s forms appear as half-articulate sentiments: architectural shapes, reticent drips, and mumbled textures surface through the mists as revenants of their former selves. Proposing a literally whitewashed narrative, Rom conceives landscape as intangible space, creating an epic romanticism tinged with disorienting solitude.

Commanding with a painterly dynamism, Thomas Helbig’s abstractions strive to capture the essence of power. Within his raw canvases, Helbig alludes to the unwieldy forces of nature, and the representational modes used to harness its vastness. Stylistically, Helbig recycles art history, implicating visual language as reflective of ideology: from the political subtexts of abstraction, to the religious spiritualism of romanticism. In Seele, Helbig creates a field of high drama, his blacks and blues churning with the unpredictable depth of night. Reminiscent of Turner’s climactic impressionism, Helbig’s Seele suggests both haunting landscape and stormy psychology.

Reworking the theme of Picasso’s Girl Before A Mirror, Thomas Helbig’s Wilde Mit Spiegel sets up a questionable allure, positing the perception of beauty as a consequence of excess. Hidden within an abstract field of wild brushwork and gory splatters, Helbig paints a figure, profiled as grotesque caricature. His Holbien-ish shrew is defined by her painterly construction, the mimetic qualities of the media bubbling as boils and warts, crackling like matted hair; above her head a chandelier of gobby yellow suggests tarnished halo. To the left, an orange vignette doubles as figurative mirror and comic speech bubble brandishing a sketchy image of pleasantry.

Thomas Helbig’s Jung Frau offers a morbid fascination. Using the textural contrasts of materials, Helbig creates a biomorphic abstraction veering between charred and fossilised remain and science fiction species. Embedding smooth moulded forms in rough globular material, Jung Frau possesses a tactile physicality at odds with itself: fragile and brutal, elevated and primitive. Coated in high gloss black paint, Helbig’s sculpture is both sinister and humorous, suggesting apocalyptic narratives that are glamorous and abject.

Conclusion:

At first glance Thomas Helbig’s sculptures appear to be futuristic ruins; bizarre and broken finds hinting at some remote gothic civilisation, glorifying its defunct authority.

what to Do Next. . .

Read more information about Thomas Helbig paintaings and ehibitions at

http://www. saatchi-gallery. co. uk/artists/thomas_helbig. htm

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Li Songsong Biography and His Art Work

January 2nd, 2010

Li Songsong was born on 1973 in Beijing, China. He lives and works in Beijing, China. His painting was the kind of iron candy boxes he played with when he was small. Its title was “Beijing Candy. ” There was another one called “Digging,” which depicted some soldiers digging trenches. He painted above two paintings between 1997 and 1999. At that time, he just graduated from college and had not much to do at home so he painted those. This way of thinking was not especially active back then.

He made “Horse” in June 2001. He started to paint these paintings during that summer when he found some old photographs. Originally he wanted to paint something that had a certain distance from reality. He thought to construct a scene in painting, representing things or a certain sentiment from our real life, was not so interesting.

Li Songsong deliberately plays down the potential implication of the images he chooses for his pictures eliminating his personal feelings from these images by adopting an arms length procedure for his work. He breaks up his found images into segments and loosely regroups them through various shades and blocks of color in his painting. For National Geographic, Li downloaded more than a hundred small photographs of details of Taiwan Island from “Google Earth”, a satellite imagery-based mapping website, and reconstructed a collage of Taiwan by depicting each portion in thick and bold strokes of paint.

The painting of the soldiers digging the trench, for example, was a picture he saw by chance. He felt attracted to the process of looking at photographs. When he looks at pictures in a book, he usually turns them over when we understand the meaning in them. He painted this picture probably because He looked at it so closely. It was a very plain photograph: some people in uniform were digging into the earth on a wasteland. After he read the explanation, he realized that the people were voluntary soldiers digging a trench during the Korean War. If you look at an image long enough, you will discover other meanings in it. He had also painted images from TV, the portrait of the late Deng XiaoPing for example. At the time when he passed his portrait was on TV every day. I took a picture of his portrait and painted it. But he didn’t continue with this kind of topics, including the one of the candy box. Perhaps he wanted to paint some existing and ready-made things at that time. But he didn’t want to sketch a person in a conventional type of space. He wanted the original image to be something one dimensional.

Conclusions:

Li Songsong had already established his own style and the impact of the work had won him a strong reputation in Chinese art circles.

What to Do Next. . .

If you want any information about Li Songsong or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www. saatchi-gallery. co. uk/artists/li_songsong. htm

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Art Live Chat Support

January 1st, 2010

Saatchi Gallery offers an opportunity for lovers, creators and producers of visual and performing art to get together and interact in real time through our Live Chat application. This interactive program brings together art aficionados from a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds, and creates an atmosphere in which artistic tastes and ideas can be shared and discussed in a productive and liberal manner. The chat room can be accessed after a brief registration, and it allows people at all levels of artistic proficiency to meet and encourage each other in their artistic endeavours. It also allows them to seek out persons of similar interests and to form local and international groups for the discussion, creation, and critical analysis of art.

The application is also invaluable to the marketing aspect of organizations, as it allows directors or representatives to get in touch with real people and solicit real feedback regarding special upcoming events or recent presentations. The Live Chat feature allows art lovers and creators all over to keep themselves up to date with the contemporary trends, haunts, and preferences of other local and international artists. The application also supports the needs of local and international artists whose works are hosted on the site. They are accorded the chance to speak directly to the viewers of their work, make cash sales, and get direct feedback concerning the reception of their work by the public. This resource is a priceless tool that brings together talented persons and organizations that would otherwise never have had the chance to communicate. It allows for collaboration and generation of innovative and seminal ideas on the subject of visual and performing arts.

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Daniel Richter’s Biography and Exhibitions at the Saatchi-gallery

January 1st, 2010

Daniel Richter was born on 1962 in Germany, Currently lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg. in 1991-1995 Hochschule der Bildenden Künste, Hamburg. Daniel Richter’s paintings are elaborate in their deconstruction and recodification of art history. Drawing a wide range of reference from Goya, Munch, Ensor, to Immendorff and Doig, Richter offers a revisionist position for the crisis of painting in the 21st century.

Daniel Richter’s Jawohl und Gomorrah possesses an operatic quality. Borrowing themes from both Christianity and German history, Richter constructs his contemporary scene with theatrical flair: his figures are staged in Baroque composition, their outlandish costumes and mask-like faces lend an element of surreal spectacle. The fervent emotion of grand drama is carried through Richter’s frenetic style of painting: thick brushwork battles with translucent drizzles and impassioned smears; acid tones are electrified against the sombre ground. Reminiscent of Ensor’s nightmarish crowds, Richter infuses this street scene with apocalyptic celebration.

Richter’s work is often read with political motive. Working in the genre of epic historical painting, his images are fraught with a painterly anxiety. His work is infused with an apocalyptic energy, reflective of media induced paranoia. Beneath his highly seductive surfaces lies the portent of instability, violence, alienation and ideological subversion of a contemporary world in constant flux. Taking his subjects from pictures found in newspapers, comics, album and book covers, Richter repositions contemporary media imagery in the form of theatrical tableaux that are fantastical and timeless.

His nightmarish scenes are both terrifying and beautiful: rebellious mobs attacking the Berlin wall are staged with medieval religious zeal; gatherings of vagabonds glow with paranormal threat. Laden with the weight of implied history, Richter’s scenes extend beyond emblematic reading; their narratives take on the qualities of magical realism, extending a shiver of supernatural barbarism to depictions of current affairs.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2005

• Daniel Richter Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin

• Daniel Richter Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg

2004

• The Morning After David Zwirner, New York

• Daniel Richter: Pink Flag, White Horse The Power Plant, Toronto

2003

• Hirn Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin

• Hearn Galerie Benier/Eliades, Athens

2002

• Grünspan, K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

2001

• La Cause du Peuple Patrick Painter Inc. , Los Angeles

• Billard um halb Zehn, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany

Conclusions:

Richter’s canvases are imbued with an alchemic affinity for paint. Copious techniques and applications deceptively flaunt the process of making, yet remain elusive in their overwhelming complexity.

What to Do Next. . .

Find more information about Daniel Richter Exhibitions or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www. saatchi-gallery. co. uk/artists/daniel_richter. htm

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Jonathan Meese’s Biography and Exhibitions at Saatchi-gallery

January 1st, 2010

Jonathan Meese was born in Tokyo in 1971. Jonathan Meese is a self-proclaimed cultural exorcist. In his performances, sculptures and paintings he adopts a shamanistic role, channelling all manner of chaotic zeitgeist. His personal interests reverberate throughout his paintings: comic books, horror films, medieval crusades and outsider art merge into a compendium of morality and epic failure. In his paintings, clear-cut roles of good vs. evil are confused, ironic propaganda is served up with homebrew conviction and malevolent knaves become heroes of the disenfranchised.

Jonathan Meese draws from German Expressionism, a movement dominated by the horrors of war and social discontent, especially in painting and film. It was strongly concerned with the unique vision of the artist: a conception of artist-as-diviner that Meese readily embraces. In Catdim, Meese presents himself as an exotic oracle. His flat black mask sits with elegant form over his energetic gold colour-field, reminiscent of Emil Nolde’s Prophet. Meese infuses his images with immediacy and pathos, and his use of these values in a contemporary context lends authenticity to his B-movie alter-ego.

Jonathan Meese is a champion of the lost cause. His personal interests reverberate throughout his paintings: comic books, horror films, medieval crusades and outsider art merge into a compendium of morality and epic failure. In his paintings, clear-cut roles of good vs. evil are confused, ironic propaganda is served up with homebrew conviction, and malevolent knaves become heroes of the disenfranchised. In Der Suppenpharao, Meese invents a protagonist of questionable intent. Based on Zardoz’s savage executioner, his masked gladiator-cum-superman stars in a poster-like composition, brimming with promise of pulp fiction drama. Meese incorporates himself into his fantasy, as a tribe of snout-nosed nymphs approving the impending carnage.

In his self-portraits, Meese exaggerates his real-life ‘wild-man’ features, his image continuously mutating through a cast of characters – from demons to divas – to develop potential narratives exploring the nature of power and conspiracy underlying contemporary mythology. Through his many reinventions, Meese replicates celebrity image manufacturing to style himself as a cult figure: both symptom and cure of a corrupted belief system. His narrative works play out B-movie fantasies in feudal tableaux, hailing religion and politics as punk-style forgeries. Collectively Meese’s works operate as meta-narratives; feeding the fictional legacy of the artist as an almighty and immortal entity.

Conclusion:

Jonathan Meese Is Mother Parsifal set the young artist alone against the well-over-five hours of Wagner’s slow-moving epic in the vast scenery store-house of Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

what to Do Next. . .

Find more information about Jonathan Meese Exhibitions or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www. saatchi-gallery. co. uk/artists/jonathan_meese. htm

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About Artist Stef Driesen Art Work and His Paintings at the Saatchi Gallery

December 31st, 2009

Influenced by the works of Northern European Old Masters, Stef Driesen’s paintings often incorporate references to art history through their colours, compositions, and subject matter. Through this lineage, Driesen draws from his own personal experiences to create beautifully expressive canvases evoking both emotional and physical sensuality. Using his own sexual identity as a platform for investigation, Driesen’s work expands upon the theme of man and nature: each canvas conceals a human form within his abstracted landscapes, creating a symbiosis between the romantic sublime and mortal carnality.

Using a fleshy, earthy palette, Driesen’s canvases blur the bounds between tangible and psychological space. Watery grounds, delicate brushwork, and intensified tones lend a sense of dream-like terrain, translating materiality of paint into ephemeral fields redolent with contemplation, desire, and loss. In their poetic articulation, Driesen’s paintings convey the intimacy of the human condition, rendering it equally fragile and heroic. Watery mountain scapes and dramatic skies frame ambiguously figurative foreground elements. Soft pinks and flashes of azure punctuate dark canvases highlighting rivers through the picture plane and revealing landscapes beyond. Ultimately Stef Driesen’s compositions expand space, opening up an imaginary dimension into a world full of the theatrical and fantastic.

Stef Driesen draws inspiration from the compositions, colour palettes, and themes explored by these Old Masters, and is inspired by the way in which they used all of these elements to project a vision of life in their time, political, religious, romantic or otherwise. Watery mountain scapes and dramatic skies frame ambiguously figurative foreground elements. Soft pinks and flashes of azure punctuate dark canvases highlighting rivers through the picture plane and revealing landscapes beyond. Ultimately Stef Driesen’s compositions expand space, opening up an imaginary dimension into a world full of the theatrical and fantastic.

What to Do Next. . .

If you want any information about Stef Driesen or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www. saatchi-gallery. co. uk/artists/stef_driesen. htm

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Selected Art Works by Shi Jinsong

December 31st, 2009

Shi Jinsong was born on 1969 in Dangyang county, Hubei province, China. He lives and works in Wuhan and Beijing, China. Shi Jinsong has branded his stainless steel baby product line Na Zha, a child warrior deity of Chinese folklore celebrated for his bravery and strategy in the battlefield. Befitting its title, this sculptural series consists of a cradle, a carriage, a walker, a toy, needle-tipped pacifiers and pieces of abacus, all outfitted with deadly weapons inside out and evokes the image of Swiss army knives. The artist’s extreme makeover of formerly harmless and delightful objects into such a meticulously built and disturbingly handsome compilation of machineries was geared to expose the constant battles we have to fight to survive the manipulative, erotic and violent nature of our consumption culture and the fearful world. Chambers Fine Art is proud to announce the opening of Na Zha Baby Boutique. Comprised of sculptures, blueprints, and photographs, this exhibition represents the debut solo show by Shi Jinsong, one of the leading young sculptors in China.

The title refers to an enduring figure of Chinese folklore and mythology: Na Zha, an impish trickster with supernatural powers and flamboyant fashion sense (legend has it his red silk trousers generated so much heat the sea began to boil, enraging the East Sea Dragon King). Na Zha’s essential ferocity long since tamed in the Chinese psyche, he is now chiefly celebrated as a God of Lotteries and Gambling, a commodified totem of the new global economy. “Na Zha” is here recast as the brand name for an outrageously unsafe line of baby products. Meticulously assembled in stainless steel from intricate mechanical drawings, they include a deadly Carriage; a sadistic Cradle; a sinister Walker; and a malicious, multi-part Toy complete with needle-tipped pacifiers and dismembering abacus. Baby Boutique confronts its “shopper” with a radically strange and seductive “product,” lethal luxury designed to reveal the forces that dominate our lives in unimaginable ways.

Shi Jinsong enrolled at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts in 1994, majoring in sculpture and mastering a gamut of traditional techniques. Under the influence of three powerful stimuli – radical socio-cultural change in China; a reading of Foucault’s Madness and Civilization; and the birth of his first daughter – the artist began to investigate ideas of transformation and control. Featured in Alors La Chine, a groundbreaking survey of contemporary Chinese art mounted at the Centre Pompidou in 2003,

Conclusions:

Shi Jinsong had already established his own style and the impact of the work had won him a strong reputation in Chinese art circles.

What to Do Next. . .

If you want any information about Shi Jinsong or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www. saatchi-gallery. co. uk/artists/shi_jinsong. htm

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Marc Swanson at the Saatchi-gallery

December 31st, 2009

Marc Swanson lives and works in Brooklyn. He uses a variety of materials–from crystals and glitter to lumber and deerskin–to make sculptures that examine renewal, personal history, mortality, and rites of passage. He received an MFA from The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and has recently solo exhibitions at Bellwether Gallery in New York and Julia Friedman Gallery in Chicago. Marc Swanson is a sculptor and installation artist. Swanson’s repeated use of central motifs has resulted in a body of poignant, witty, often self-referential works. In “Killing Moon #3,” Swanson creates a self-portrait as a Yeti in his lair in the boiler room at P. S. 1 for the Greater New York show (2005).

Marc Swanson art work

Marc Swanson’s Fits and Starts is a sculpture of a life-size deer, entirely encrusted in rhinestone crystals. The deer is portrayed mid-leap, its hind legs in the air and its head turned, as if glancing back at a person or another animal in pursuit. Swanson, who views the sculpture in terms of fantasy and desire, notes that the deer is an alluring and elusive creature that is simultaneously darting away and frozen in time. The graceful sculpture suggests an unattainable object of adoration, trying to flee those who wish to approach. Swanson has made several related deer-head sculptures, which he calls his “surrogates,” encrusting the conventional hunter’s trophy with dazzling rhinestones and hanging it on the wall

About Marc Swanson Exhibitions

Marc Swanson’s second solo exhibition at Bellwether, “Live Free or Die,” was an anthem to crushed dreams and hopes for the future. Conceived as a four-part installation comprising individual artworks fitted into a loosely autobiographical scenario, the show roughly conveyed the artist’s coming to terms with his homosexuality and his politically conservative, rural New Hampshire roots. It also suggested a lapsed search for the possibility of renewal in a psychically devastated landscape.

Conclusion of this article:

Swanson’s honky-tonk environment initially seemed to be at odds with his purportedly self-revelatory intent. Each tired symbol pumped up the volume of exhausted artifice. Yet on some level, the contrivance of this deliberately awful down-and-out setting, with its dime-store mannequins and cheaply realized decor–made with, among other things, glitter, sgraffitoed Plexiglas, hockey tape, hanging T-shirts, rope nets, dirt and deerskin–seemed to offer an authentic glimpse into the artist’s sense of abject futility, Goth morbidity and misplaced projection of gay fabulousness.

Read entire article about Marc Swanson or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www. saatchi-gallery. co. uk/artists/marc_swanson. htm

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Art Showdown

December 31st, 2009

Saatchi Gallery is now hosting an Art Showdown, which is an online competitive event that allows artists to upload images of their work and make them available to an online voting audience. Those who would like to enter must be registered members of Saatchi online or of the Stuart Artist group.

Saatchi Gallery is now hosting an Art Showdown, which is an online competitive event that allows artists to upload images of their work and make them available to an online voting audience. Those who would like to enter must be registered members of Saatchi online or of the Stuart Artist group. However, registration is easy, free, and readily available on the site. Once registered, Showdown accepts one image from each artist every period beginning on Monday at 9 a. m. until the following Sunday evening at 6 p. m. —a one-week period. During the time the work is uploaded to the site, all visitors will be free to view and vote on the quality of the work. Each visitor is permitted only one vote for each work, but may vote on as many works as is preferred. The voting is done on a scale of one (1) to ten (10). Once the scores are tallied for the first week in each period, the two artists with the highest scores are given the chance to compete against each other for additional votes for the period of another week.

These two remaining artists go head to head, vying for a chance to enter for the final prize of £1000. The competition continues for twelve rounds, after each of which, one winner is selected. The final knock out round has the twelve finalists going head to head in a bid for the £1000 prize, yet Saatchi’s support does not end there. This coveted prize will not be the only benefit of the competition, as the runner up is also granted the sum of £750. And even further benefits exist, as all the artists who enter gain the exposure that comes with having your work viewed on the site that welcomes thousands of visitors on a regular basis.

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Artistic Showdown at Saatchi Gallery

December 30th, 2009

The Saatchi Gallery hosts its artist “Showdown” as a means of promoting and rewarding artists that demonstrate themselves as possessing extraordinary talent. It is also a means of getting popular opinion on the works of these up-and-coming artists. Over a one-week period, Saatchi accepts one piece of art work from each artist that chooses to enter the contest. Submissions are accepted between 9:00 a. m. on Monday until 6:00 p. m. on the following Sunday. Voting then begins, and each visitor to the site is allowed to rate the quality of each piece of work submitted. Visitors may vote on as many pieces as they wish, but are allotted only one vote for each individual piece. They indicate their preference for a particular work by rating it on a scale of one (1) to ten (10). After the scores are tallied, a duel begins between the two artists who have attained the highest scores. These two leaders vie for a chance to enter the final showdown, where the winners of twelve such rounds go head to head for the final prize of £1000 for the winner and £750 for the runner up.

Entrance into this event on the Saatchi website is free and easy, and it holds the promise of furthering the careers of not just the talented winners but also of the wide variety of talented entrants whose works will be seen by Saatchi’s large viewing audience. The competition is also a means of exposing young artists to the triumphs and pitfalls that are likely to attend them throughout their entire artistic career. Therefore, artists not only get the chance to benefit monetarily, but also the chance to develop as a professional businessperson.

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