ALEX KATZ: Recent Paintings & Selected Prints

*Please scroll down for English.

艾利克斯•凯兹——油画新作和版画精选

2011年3月18日至5月15日

开幕酒会：3月18日，周五，晚6-8点 上海James Cohan画廊 地址：徐汇区岳阳路170弄1号楼1楼，近永嘉路

上海James Cohan画廊很荣幸地带来艺术家艾利克斯•凯兹（Alex Katz）首个中国大陆的个展。展览的重点将是艺术家于2008至2010年间创作的五件肖像绘画以及表现了其对风景长期兴趣的精选版画作品。

艾利克斯•凯兹（1927年生于纽约布鲁克林）已是过去的五十多年里杰出的、具有代表性和影响力的艺术家。1949年毕业于曼哈顿的Cooper Union 艺术学院，凯兹获得了缅因州的Skowhegan绘画雕塑学院的奖学金。在该学院凯兹学习了外光派（plein air）绘画，并如其所说的意识到了“（这段经历）帮助我从欧洲的绘画里分离出来，找到我自己的眼睛”。1954年，凯兹在纽约市举办了他第一场个展。

自1960年代初期以来，凯兹开始在纽约崭露头角，当时正值抽象表现主义的高潮，而波普艺术尚未到来。通过严谨的工作且独立于当时艺术运动之外，坚持具象和风景创作，凯兹为自己和自己绘画创立了一个特殊的地位。凯兹最为广为人知的是其富有魅力、时髦的女性肖像。这些绘画精准，清晰有条理，着色大胆。此外，凯兹也绘画男性形象，这些肖像大多是艺术家同行、舞蹈家和来自纽约文学圈的诗人、作家。在凯兹绘画里扮演着重要的角色是社交聚会中的人群，缅因州的风景与河湖流水（艺术家多年在此度过夏天）以及曼哈顿的城市夜景。在其艺术生涯中，凯兹也为其家庭、其子文森特、其夫人也是一生的缪斯艾达绘制了肖像，艾达还是其重要展览《艾利克斯•凯兹绘画艾达》（犹太博物馆，纽约，2006-2007年）的主题。本次展览展出了油画《绿色中的艾达》（2009）和两件蚀刻铜版《薇薇恩》（1994，文森特的夫人）以及《蓝衣（文森特）》（1993）。

光是凯兹所有作品里的关键和核心主题。光的速度和细微的变化——就如凯兹所描述的“快速的光”——以及光如何被表现和捕捉对于凯兹是至关重要的。对细节的敏锐以及方式上的精简都使得凯兹精湛的技艺变得令人信服，诚如本次展览的五件油画所展示的。每张绘画都有其独特的特点和个性。自画像《黑帽子（艾利克斯）》（2010）里一片稳健的黄色为84岁高龄的艺术家奠定了背景，肖像里艺术家本人戴着时髦的墨镜和宽边黑色呢帽。

同时展出的还有油画《塔拉》（2008）、《安妮卡》（2008）和《乌拉》（2009），每个肖像都以其明亮、穿透性的视线注视着观众，就如同在公共空间里一段出神的私密的片刻。对于凯兹来说，外貌是隐秘无穷尽的来源，它启发着艺术家继续挖掘新鲜未见的事物。

版画也一直是凯兹创作整体的一部分。本次展览包括了一批木刻版画和亚麻油毡浮雕版，如《森林》（2008）和三联张《黎明之一、二、三》（2009）以及作品集《风景》（2001）。同样地，这些版画聚焦于艺术家长期对婆娑树影的关注，其对瞬间的刻画，它们乃是自1990年代初期以来艺术家对这一主题探索的代表作。

自1951年来，艾利克斯•凯兹的作品参加了无数国际上的群展和个展。继1986年惠特尼美术馆回顾展和1988年布鲁克林美术馆版画回顾展之后，他在美国和欧洲举办了多个重要的有关其风景和肖像绘画的展览。其作品也在缅因州的Colby大学美术馆Paul J. Schupf楼得以展出，这是美国少数仅展出现世的单一某位艺术家的美术馆之一。艾利克斯•凯兹的作品也广为世界各地的美术馆收藏，比如，芝加哥艺术中心、华盛顿的Smithsonian机构的赫希杭（Hirshhorn）博物馆和雕塑园、纽约大都会博物馆、巴黎蓬皮杜艺术中心、马德里索菲亚女王美术馆、波士顿美术馆、纽约现代美术馆、华盛顿的国家画廊、华盛顿Smithsonian的国立美国艺术博物馆、伦敦泰特美术馆、纽约惠特尼美术馆等。其近期展览包括伦敦的国家肖像画廊和费城美术馆。凯兹1988年就职于美国艺术暨文学学会，其生涯中已获得无数奖励与荣誉。

彩色图录将为展览而出版。更多信息，请联系Arthur Solway asolway@jamescohan.com 或 +86-21-54660825。
 

ALEX KATZ: Recent Paintings & Selected Prints

March 18 through May 15, 2011

VIP reception: March 18, Friday, 6 to 8 pm Venue: James Cohan Gallery Shanghai Address: 1/F, Building 1, Lane 1, No.170 Yue Yang Road, Shanghai

James Cohan Gallery Shanghai is pleased to present Alex Katz, the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work in mainland China. The exhibition will focus on five recent portrait paintings from 2008 to 2010, along with a selection of prints that feature the artist’s lifelong interest in the landscape.

Alex Katz (b. Brooklyn, New York, 1927) has been a defining, preeminent and influential artist for the exhibitions fifty years. Graduating in 1949 from The Cooper Union Art School in Manhattan he was then awarded a scholarship to the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where he studied plein air painting, and which the artist soon realized, as Katz commented, “helped me separate myself from European painting and find my own eyes.” Katz had his first one-person exhibition in New York City in 1954.

Since the early 1960s, emerging in New York at the pinnacle of Abstract Expressionism but before the advent of Pop Art, Katz established a singular position for himself and his paintings by working rigorously and independently of these movements, remaining steadfast to figuration and to the landscape. Best known for his portraits of charismatic, stylish women painted with a crisp, methodical precision and bold areas of color, Katz has also painted men, many of whom are fellow artists, dancers, poets and writers from the New York literary world. Groups of people in social gatherings, the landscape and water of Maine, where the artist has spent his summers for many years, in addition to the urban cityscape of Manhattan at night have played a prominent role in Katz’s paintings. Throughout his career Katz has also portrayed his family, his son Vincent, and the artist’s wife and lifelong muse, Ada, who was the subject of a major exhibition, Alex Katz Paints Ada at The Jewish Museum, New York (2006-2007). In the exhibitions exhibition the painting Ada in Green (2009) and the two aquatint prints Vivien (1994), Vincent Katz’s wife, and Blue Coat (Vincent) from 1993 are on view.

Light is a key and central subject in all of Katz’s works. The velocity and subtle, ever- changing shifts of light—‘fast light’ as Katz calls it—and the way it is articulated and captured is an imperative for the artist. Shrewd attention to detail combined with an unfailing economy of means gives credence to the extraordinary technical demands of Katz’s expansive technique, as evident in the five paintings in this exhibition. Each painting embraces its distinctive character and particularities. In the self-portrait included in this exhibition, Black Hat (Alex) 2010, a solid blast of yellow defines the background for the smiling artist, at age 84, wearing chic sunglasses and a wide-brimmed black fedora.

Also on view are the paintings Tara (2008), Anika (2008), and Ulla (2009), each with their own luminous, penetrating gaze toward the viewer as if entranced by a private moment in a public world. For Katz, appearances are an endless source of mystery that inspires his desire to continually discover something fresh, something not seen before.

Printmaking has always been an integral part of Katz’s work. The exhibition includes woodcut and linocut prints such as Forest (2008) and the triptych Twilight I, Twilight II and Twilight III (2009) and the portfolio Landscape (2001). Again, focusing on the artist’s long engagement with light falling between tree branches, capturing an instantaneous moment, these prints are representative masterworks of a subject the artist has explored continuously since the early 1990s.

Katz's work has been included numerous group and solo exhibitions internationally since 1951. Several major exhibitions of Katz's landscape and portrait painting in America and Europe followed his 1986 Whitney Museum of American Art retrospective and his 1988 print retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The Paul J. Schupf Wing for the Works of Alex Katz at the Colby College Museum of Art, Maine, presents ongoing exhibitions of Katz’s paintings, cut-outs, drawings, and prints. It is one of the few museums in the United States devoted solely to the work of a single living artist.

Museum collections worldwide include The Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Tate Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Recent exhibitions include the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He was inducted by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1988 and has received many honors and awards throughout is career.

A fully illustrated color publication will be available for this exhibition. For further information, please contact Leo Xul xu@jamescohan.com or +86-21-54660825.