Group Show Part 1 Don Brown, Daniel Lergon, R.H Quaytman, Gabriel Vormstein, Lawrence Weiner

Almine Rech Gallery is pleased to announce a group show in two parts that will bring together, in the first part, the work of Don Brown, Daniel Lergon, R.H. Quaytman, Gabriel Vormstein and Lawrence Weiner. In a second flight, Don Brown and Daniel Lergon participate alongside Sylvie Fleury, Joseph Kosuth, Hedi Slimane and Franz West. Don Brown will show two white sculptures entitled Yoko XXVI and Yoko XXVII. His wife is his model, the medium, the muse – to use a romantic term – that allows him to employ the timeless topic of the female nude. His sculpture is essential, rejecting the anecdotal. Don Brown does radical work, and in gazing at his work a clearly contemporary vision appears. Looking to express what «beauty» can be, he succeeds in melding two spheres, one inside the other: endless and ephemeral — this ephemeral related to «fashion», required, to shoulder the burden of the eternal. Don Brown sculpts and draws, too.

Gabriel Vormstein draws and paints. He often works on pre-existing supports, in particular with sheets of newspaper upon which he paints abstract patterns or figurative forms. The daily news appears through the paint, drawing a parallel between the outside world and the studio. He draws and paints with a great mastery. He has completed works in which color and pattern are of major importance, re-interpreting works by Schiele, Klimt or Nolde. He will present hitherto unseen works. Daniel Lergon paints. His studio is a place of solitude, calm and meditation. He experiments with different types of material, seldom painting on the linen or cotton canvas typically used in painting. His work is abstract, tending towards the diagram. He recently made reflective paintings in which the painted part is realized in a transparent lacquer, so that the works become shadows, gleams.

From Lawrence Weiner, a work made of copper will be presented that poses the question of appearance. The American artist R.H. Quaytman will show unseen works, paintings and a photographic work, a kind of collage, the totality of the works attesting to the period of the artistic research and critic that she practiced in New York for the last 3 years until 2008 when herself and a group of new york artists – united under the name of a collaborative artist run gallery «Orchard»- turned their regard towards the work of the avant-gardes in Eastern Europe and South America in the 60’s.

During the second part of the exhibition a significant work in neon by Joseph Kosuth will be shown, entitled Seeing, Reading, 1979. It is a work that we can automatically read upon seeing it, of which meaning is interactive within the precise moment of looking.

Hedi Slimane will exhibit photographs from the series «Berlin» that formulate with a very sensitive accuracy the atmosphere of Berlin from recent years, through places and young people, as a city of hope, promoting a new German Romanticism. Photographs directly linked to the centrality of the rock music scene in current culture will be shown, a focal point that Hedi Slimane brought to the forefront at the beginning of his photographic work in the 90’s.

From Sylvie Fleury an abstract painting in the spirit of «optical art» will be presented, revisiting this era with the sensuality and glamour proper to the work of the artist. For the occasion of our new collaboration with Franz West, several works will be exhibited.