Nicolas de Stael

Tempete


Ciel de Dieppe ou Les Toits (1952)


Cap Gris Nez

I first saw Nicolas de Stael's paintings in the Musee Picasso in Antibes in 2000. I just stood there staring, transfixed/ A few years later he was the subject of a major retrspective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and I wandered through completely lost in his world. He isn't so widely known outside of France, as he enjoyed success as a painter for just ten brief years before committing suicide in 1955. If you'd like to know more, his wiki entry is here

The Saatchi Gallery & Channel Four's 4 New Sensations 2009

4 New Sensations was launched in 2007 by Channel 4 and The Saatchi Gallery to find the twenty most imaginative and talented artists graduating in the UK this year. The judges were artist Gavin Turk; Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery, London; critic Louisa Buck; and Alison Jacques, owner of Alison Jacques Gallery in London.

I am very, very proud of my friend Maurice Citron whose work is included in the exhibition. A talented painter and sculptor, he studied at Chelsea and has just graduated from the MA programme at Byam Shaw.

In addition to his inclusion in the New Sensations show, he currently has a residency at The Florence Trust, has just been shortlisted for the Clifford Chance Sculpture Award 2009, and found out yesterday that he has been picked for inclusion in Future Map, the annual exhibition of the best emerging talent from the current graduating year (9152 students) of the six colleges of the University of the Arts London. Yay! Go Mo!


Untitled by Maurice Citron

4 New Sensations is at The A Foundation at the Rochelle School, Arnold Circus, Shoreditch from 9-19 October (12-6pm, Thursday 15 October until 8pm).

www.mauricecitron.co.uk

Maelstrom by Roxy Paine at The Met

Sunday afternoons are for The Met. Ambling around The Temple of Dendur, peering at the models from the Tomb of Meketre, admiring the Robert Adam Dining Room from Lansdowne House and, especially, checking out the installations up on the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden.

Each year, under the unwavering stare of Rodin's Les Trois Ombres, a different sculptor's work is showcased up there: in 2007 an installation of recent work by Frank Stella, in 08 three pieces of previously unseen work by Jeff Koons, including Balloon Dog (Yellow) which reflected my distorted image back at me like a fairground sideshow.

This year it's Maelstrom by Roxy Paine, a site specific piece from his Dendroid series, which explore systems such as vascular networks, tree roots, industrial piping, and fungal mycelia.

I first saw his work in Madison Square Park in 2007, when Conjoined, two oversized silver trees, reached branches towards the skies, fingering their way through the real trees.


Image: Madison Square Park
This year he has gone a whole lot bigger: Maelstrom is a site specific 130-foot-long by 45-foot-wide stainless-steel sculpture. Intended to give the feeling of being caught in a cataclysmic force of nature, against the background of Central Park and the New York skyline, it succeeds in both being alien and natural.



The tree limbs were made elsewhere, and craned over the roof of The Met to be welded together on site. Do watch this fascinating video of its construction:



There are great flashes of humour up there too:



Due to end on October 25th, the installation's public viewing schedule has been extended through November 29th.
Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom
April 28, 2009–November 29, 2009 (weather permitting)
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden

ps Can you spot where I shot my blog header now?!

Quick, quick!

The V&A's Golden Age of Couture exhibition closes this Sunday, and Tate Modern's fantastic looking Louise Bourgeois retrospective ends on the 20th January.