Artists – Pilar Corrias

Christina Quarles

Pilar Corrias — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 15:52:53 +0000

Legibility teeters on the edge of lack and excess—when we lack information about a thing, it is vague. However, as information accumulates, the risk for contradiction increases and legibility tips into ambiguity. As a Queer, cis-woman who is Black but is often mistaken as white, Christina Quarles engages with the world from a position that is multiply situated. Her project is informed by her daily experience with ambiguity and seeks to dismantle assumptions of our fixed subjectivity through images that challenge the viewer to contend with the disorganized body in a state of excess.

Christina Quarles (b. 1985 Chicago, USA) currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She received an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2016, and holds a BA from Hampshire College. Quarles was a 2016 participant at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. Her current and forthcoming exhibitions include: Skibum MacArthur, Los Angeles (2017); No burden as heavy, David Castillo Gallery, Miami (2017); Trigger: Gender as a Tool and as a Weapon (New Museum, New York, NY); Fictions, The Studio Museum, New York (2017); Reconsitituion, LAXART, Los Angeles (2017) among others.

Sophie von Hellermann

Pilar Corrias — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 17:00:59 +0000

Sophie von Hellermann’s paintings recall the look of fables, legends, and traditional stories that are imbued with the workings of her subconscious rather than the content of existing images. Her romantic, pastel-washed canvases are often installed to suggest complex narrative threads. Von Hellermann applies pure pigment directly onto unprimed canvas, her use of broad-brushed washes imbues a sense of weightlessness to her pictures. Von Hellermann’s paintings draw upon current affairs as often and as fluidly as they borrow from the imagery of classical mythology and literature to create expansive imaginary places. In subject matter and style, von Hellermann tests imagination against reality.

Sophie von Hellermann was born in 1975 in Munich, Germany. Von Hellermann received her BFA from Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf and an MFA from Royal College of Art, London. Selected solo exhibitions include: Sophie von Hellermann, Office Baroque, Brussels (2017); After a Fashion– A Play with Fire, Vilma Gold, London (2015); Novel Ways, Greene Naftali, New York (2013); Elephant in the Room, Firstsite, Colchester (2013); Crying for The Sunset, Vilma Gold, London (2011); Sophie von Hellermann & Josh Smith, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium, Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2010); Judgement Day, Chisenhale Gallery, London; and Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen (2006). Selected group exhibitions include: Jahresgaben 2016, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2016); Call and Response, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York (2015); Jerwood Encounters: The Grantchester Pottery paints the stage, Jerwood Visual Arts, London (2015); Empathy and Abstraction: Modernist Women in Germany, Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2015); I Cheer a Dead Man’s Sweetheart, De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill on Sea (2014); Out of the House, Cranford Collection, Fundacion Banco Santander, Madrid (2013); Folk Devil, David Zwirner, New York (2013); In the disappearing mist, the gift of whispers, Focal Point Gallery, Southend (2012); Watercolour, Tate Britain, London (2011); Sophie von Hellermann and Josh Smith, le Consortium, Dijon (2009); 100 Years, 100 Artists, 100 Works of Art, Art on the Underground, London (2008).

Sophie von Hellermann lives and works in London and Margate, United Kingdom.

Tschabalala Self

laraasole — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 15:54:40 +0000

Tschabalala Self builds a singular style from the syncretic use of both painting and printmaking to explore ideas about the black female body. The artist constructs exaggerated depictions of female bodies using a combination of sewn, printed, and painted materials, traversing different artistic and craft traditions. The exaggerated biological characteristics of her figures reflect Self’s own experiences and cultural attitudes toward race and gender. “The fantasies and attitudes surrounding the Black female body are both accepted and rejected within my practice, and through this disorientation, new possibilities arise,” Self has said. “I am attempting to provide alternative, and perhaps fictional, explanations for the voyeuristic tendencies towards the gendered and racialized body; a body which is both exalted and abject.”

Forthcoming exhibitions include: Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2017). Recent exhibitions include: Tschabalala Self, Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London (2016); A Constellation, Studio Museum Harlem, curated by Amanda Hunt (2016); The Function, T293, Naples (2016); Tropicana, The Cabin, Los Angeles (2015).

Helen Johnson

laraasole — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 13:21:51 +0000

Painting serves as a critical departure point for Helen Johnson’s practice, as a set of tools that work beyond language to encircle a range of contemporary issues. Her works engage a broad visual vernacular, including spasming stock market graphs, fragments of text from the bygone days of pre-mechanised mining and logging, desert islands and the layout of the Australian Parliament House. Both loaded and contextually specific, the imagery is treated with an insistently aesthetic approach, with an implicit claim for the continuing possibility of critical engagement through reflective aesthetic experience. The building up of layered surfaces is not merely a technically-driven choice, but also serves as a metaphor for some of the complexities and interplay that operate in the ongoing formation of Australian identity—including ‘the persistence of denialist accounts of colonisation, the relationship between personal and official histories, and more fleeting cultural trends that spike the mix, becoming ever present as we lean into the internet’.

Helen Johnson was born in 1979 in Melbourne, Australia. Johnson received her BFA Painting (Hons) from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne and a PHD (Fine Art) from Monash University, Melbourne in 2014. Selected solo exhibitions include: Barron Field, Glasgow International (2016); Cafe Fatigue, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne (2015); The body is through, Laurel Gitlen, New York (2015); Slow Learners, Château Shatto, Los Angeles (2015); Ex-execs, Minerva, Sydney (2014); Time Flies, Sutton Projects, Melbourne (2014); At Once (in collaboration with Adelle Mills), 55 Sydenham Rd, Sydney (2014); Just Paintings (in collaboration with George Egerton Warburton and Hamishi Farah), Westspace, Melbourne (2014); Problem History, MADA Gallery, Monash University, Melbourne (2014); Time enough for love, Chapter House Lane, Melbourne (2013); Meantime, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne (2013); Air to Surface (with Parker Ito), Prism, Los Angeles (Curated by Liv Barrett) (2013).Dead Metaphor, ACME Project Space, London (2012); Universal Remote, Y3K Gallery, Melbourne (2011); and System Preferences, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne (2011).

Selected group exhibitions include: Painting. More Painting, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2016); TarraWarra Biennial: Endless Circulation, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria (2016); I wish I never kissed that frog, Jeanine Hofland, Amsterdam (2015); Relational Changes, Christine König Galerie, Vienna (2015); In my absence, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris (2015); June: A Painting Show, Sadie Coles, London (2015); Care, Interstate, New York (2015); Nine paintings presentation, The Alderman, Melbourne (2014); Faux Museum, C3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne (2014); Re-raising Consciousness, TCB, Melbourne (2014); Air to Surface: Parker Ito and Helen Johnson, Prism, Los Angeles (2013); Collage: The Heide Collection, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne (2013); Negotiating This World: Contemporary Australian Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2012); Chinatown: the sequel, ltd Los Angeles (2012); Art & Australia Collection 2003 – 2013, Newcastle Art Gallery, New South Wales (2012); Stick It! Collage in Australia Art, The Ian Potter Center: National Gallery of Victoria (2010); The Independence Project, Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur (2007); Present Future, Artissima, Turin (2007); Octopus 6, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne (2006); and New06, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2006).

Johnson has undertaken international studio residencies in London, Norway and Germany. She was also a studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary between 2003 and 2005, and Artspace, Sydney, in 2012.

Helen Johnson lives and works in Melbourne

Gerasimos Floratos

laraasole — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 15:20:41 +0000

Gerasimos Floratos (b.1986) New York, NY.

A first generation Greek American and native New Yorker, Gerasimos Floratos’ paintings and sculptures play with the idea of site specificity and the notion of what it means to be ‘rooted’ in a single place. His works employ pyscho-figurative bodies as mechanisms for charting space in many forms; psychogeography of the globalised world, societies or microcosms built through commonalities of practice, and the internal space of the mind. For the artist, the slouchy alter egos present throughout his work operate as sites for exploring the relationship between the material and psychological bodies. The coded visual language present throughout his practice is partnered with a unique lexicon from which he draws titles for the works and exhibitions.

Current, upcoming and recent solo exhibitions include: Schloss, Oslo (2018); Soft Bone Journey, Armada, Milan (2017); Big Town, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2016); White Columns, New York City (2016). His work has been included in recent group shows at Salon 94(2016); Murray Guy (2016); Harper’s Books, East Hampton, NY (2015); and Know More Games, Brooklyn (2015) among others.

Chris Huen Sin Kan

Pilar Corrias — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 13:33:34 +0000

Chris Huen Sin Kan’s work is characterised by his pursuit to capture the details and minutiae of everyday life. Huen meticulously observes personal, and yet, commonplace occurrences drawn from his studio/home. He seldom plans for a painting; keeping his brush strokes gestural and light as he works to catch a moment before it passes. Through their subdued colours Huen’s paintings materialise as ethereal essences of reality. Typical domestic scenes include pot plants in the corners of his apartment, and often feature his dog Doodood sleeping on a sofa or bed. His subjects lie within the reality of human nature. It is through painting Huen experiences the nuances of looking and builds an archive of the experiential phenomena of life.

Huen was born in 1991 in Hong Kong. He obtained BA in Fine Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include: RE-FRESH: Chris Huen Sin Kan, Pilar Corrias, London (2016); Things Happen Naturally, Nanhai Gallery, Taipei (2015); Out of The Ordinary, Gallery Exit, Hong Kong (2015); Chris HUEN Sin Kan: Life In The Temporary, Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong (2014); Double Solo Exhibition: Chris Huen Sin Kan | Vito Hung- Fai, Ch’ien Mu Library, New Asian College, CUHK, Hong Kong (2013). Recent group exhibitions: Landscapes, Ota Fine Arts Singapore, Singapore (2017); Connect 4, Simon Lee Gallery, Hong Kong (2016); Performing Time, Leo Xu Projects, Shanghai (2016); Imagine There’s No Country, Above Us Only Our Cities, Para Site, Hong Kong (2015); Absolute Collection Guideline, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing (2015); réflexion au delà des frontières, Young Art Taipei, Sheraton Grande Taipei, Taipei (2015); after/image, Studio 52, Hong Kong (2015); Imagined Geographies, Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong (2014); Remaster vs Appropriating the Classics, VT Art Salon, Taipei (2014); Collector Club, Oi!, Hong Kong (2014).

Chris Huen Sin Kan lives and works in Hong Kong.

Ian Cheng

Pilar Corrias — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 16:35:56 +0000

Ian Cheng’s work explores the nature of mutation and the capacity of humans to relate to change. Drawing on principles of video game design, improvisation, and cognitive science, Cheng has developed “live simulations”, living virtual ecosystems that begin with basic programmed properties, but are left to self-evolve without authorial intent or end. His simulations model the dynamics of often imaginative organisms and objects, but do so with the unforgiving causality found in nature itself. What results is a cascade of emergent behaviors that the artist can manage but never truly control. Cheng describes his simulations as akin to a “neurological gym”: a format for viewers to deliberately exercise feelings of confusion, anxiety, and cognitive dissonance that accompany the experience of unrelenting change. Through simulations, Cheng wonders if it’s possible to love these difficult feelings and refactor our relationship to indeterminacy as a feature of being alive today, not a bug.

Ian Cheng (b.1984 Los Angeles, USA) lives and works in New York. Current and recent solo exhibitions include: EMISSARY FORKS featuring THOUSAND ISLANDS, Espace Louis Vuitton München (2017); EMISSARIES, MoMA PS1, New York (2017); Forking at Perfection, Migros Museum, Zurich (2016); Emissary Forks At Perfection, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2015); Emissary in the Squat of Gods, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2015); Real Humans, with Wu Tsang, Jordan Wolfson, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf (2015); Ian Cheng, La Triennale di Milano, Milan (2014); Baby feat. Bali, Standard (Oslo), Oslo (2013).

Recent group exhibitions include: Yokohama Triennale 2017, Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama (2017); Suspended Animation: Headlong into digital space, Les Abattoirs, Musée FRAC Occitanie, Toulouse (2017); Generation Loss: 10 Years Julia Stoschek Collection, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2017); Shanghai Project Chapter 2 Exhibition: Seeds of Time, Shanghai Himalayas Museum, Shanghai (2017); BMW Tate Live Exhibition: Ten Days Six Nights, Tate Modern, London (2017); Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art 1905–2016, Whitney Museum, New York (2016); Take Me (I’m Yours), Jewish Museum, New York (2016); Overpop, Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2016); Liverpool Biennial (2016); WELT AM DRAHT, Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin (2016); Stranger, MOCA, Cleveland (2016); Suspended Animation, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington (2016); Co-Workers, Musee d’Moderne Paris (2015); Taipei Biennial – The Great Acceleration, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei (2014); Phantom Limbs, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2014).

Rachel Rose

Pilar Corrias — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 19:25:09 +0000

Rachel Rose (b. 1986) is among the foremost artists working with and in video today, as her work actively recodes the medium’s very conditions. Her films straddle and collapse multiple categories at once: found and original footage coalesce into poetic compositions which explore states between real and artificial, interior and exterior, dead and alive. Rose draws from and extends a long history of cinematic innovation, as she foregrounds a usage of noted audiovisual strategies and editing techniques in her practice. Investigating topics such as cryogenics, the American Revolutionary War, modernist architecture, or the sensory experience of walking in outer space, Rose’s body of work pinpoints what it is that makes and keeps us human, along with the ways we seek to alter, enhance, and escape that designation.

Recent solo exhibitions include: 57th Venice Biennale Exhibition: Viva Arte Viva, Venice; Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz; Lake Valley, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London; Contemporary Projects: Rachel Rose, Museu Serralves, Porto; The Aspen Art Museum, Aspen; Everything and More, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Palisades, Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London; Interiors, Castello di Rivoli, Turin. Current and recent group exhibitions include: The Infinite Mix, Hayward Gallery, London; the São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, and Development, Okayama Art Summit, Japan. Forthcoming exhibitions include: Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy (2018); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2018).

Sabine Moritz

laraasole — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 17:47:36 +0000

Sabine Moritz’s work is a manifestation of memory and release. She returns repeatedly to specific scenes from her childhood that have become indelibly imprinted on her psyche. Some works are created entirely from memory, while for others she interrogates the strength of her visual recollections by studying reportage photographs, newspapers, family album snapshots, and other found images. Her paintings portray the personal and collective history of, and the passing of, a period in time.

Moritz started her studies at Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (from 1989 to 1991) and completed her studies at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (graduated 1994). Moritz has been widely exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Düsseldorf, Brussels, Paris and London. Selected solo exhibitions of Moritz’s work include: Dawn, Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris (2016); Blumen, Masken, Schädel, Galerie Haas, Zürich (2016); Harvest, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2015); Schiffe und Wasser, Felix Ringel Galerie, Düsseldorf (2015); Sabine Moritz, Von der Heydt-Kunsthalle, Wuppertal (2014); Concrete and Dust, Foundation de 11 Lijnen, Oudenburg (2013); Lobeda, Kunsthaus sans titre, Potsdam (2011). Selected group exhibitions include: Faber-Castell International Drawing Award 2012, Neues Museum – Staatl. Museum für Kunst und Design, Nuremberg (2012); and The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, Cultuurcentrum Mechelen, Mechelen (2010).

Sabine Moritz lives and works in Cologne.

Alice Theobald

laraasole — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 17:12:25 +0000

Alice Theobald draws upon a mixture of pop and underground cultural references as she develops multifaceted performances using music, installation, and video. Theobald’s performance and video works reference the hybrid nature of their construction through playing with the metaphorical potential of language, sound, and movement while directly addressing accepted concepts of spectacle and emotion. Theobald frequently works in collaboration with a cast of non-professional actors and performers and employs repetition as a strategy to interrogate the unstable relationship between art, communication and representation.

Alice Theobald lives and works in Huntingdon and graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2014, where she won the Gold Medal. In December 2015 Theobald had her first solo exhibition in a public institution at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK.In 2016 Theobald completed the ‘Back-To-Front-Space’ Residency at Primary, Nottingham and in 2015 the ‘Bear Pit’ Residency at Focal Point Gallery, commissioned by Grand Union. In February of 2014 she presented ‘I’ve said yes now, that’s it’ for the Chisenhale Gallery’s Interim programme. In 2014, Theobald completed The Future Autumn Residency at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire; and the Gasworks, London International Performance Residency in 2013. Recent performances, exhibitions, and film screenings include: Weddings and Babies, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2017); The Next Step, Two Queens, Leicester (2016); Alice Theobald and Atomik Architecture, BALTIC Ryder Commission, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2016); You’ve got my back and I’m on your side, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims (2016); Lucy Stein & France-Lise McGurn present NEO-PAGAN BITCH-WITCH!, Evelyn Yard, London (2016); The Boys The Girls The Political, curated by Lynton Talbot and Hana Noorali, Lisson Gallery, London (2015); The Fifth Artist, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2015); Scene Four: Home, curated by John Bloomfield, Flat Time House, London (2015);  Open Source, Gillett Square, London (2015); Dear Luxembourg (yours, bucktoothed girl), Nosbaum Reding Projects, Luxembourg (2015); Too Much, Two Queens, Leicester (2014); Marmalade Me, South London Gallery, London (2014); I’ve said yes now, that’s it., Outpost, Norwich (2014); I’ve said yes now, that’s it., Chisenhale Gallery, London (2014); AFTER/HOURS/DROP/BOX, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2013), Spike Island, Bristol (2014); Young London, V22, London (2013); They Keep Putting Words In My Mouth! An Operetta of Sorts, Pilar Corrias, London (2013); Situation|Event, Gasworks, London (2013); Stage Night, The Horse Hospital, London (2013); 6th Tropical Lab, ICA, Singapore (2012). She is currently working on an opera with her band Ravioli Me Away (Siân Dorrer and Rosie Ridgway) at Wysing Arts Centre.