Installation view, Luxembourg & Dayan at Art Basel Hong Kong 2018
Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Luxembourg & Dayan is pleased to announce its participation in Art Basel Hong Kong 2018 with an exhibition curated by Jeffrey Deitch. Titled Modern Figures, the presentation highlights a variety of approaches to figuration in artworks from the 1920s through 1960s, touching on movements from Surrealism to Pop and Nouveau Realisme. The presentation celebrates these shifting attitudes towards form in works by Enrico Baj, Balthus, Giorgio de Chirico, Domenico Gnoli, Giorgio Morandi, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, and Martial Raysse, among others.
Modern Figures tracks a variety of approaches to the subject of the human body, from exacting verisimilitude to abstraction, parody, and distortion. The ability to capture the figure has long stood as the apex of naturalism; in the 1920s, Surrealism paired naturalism with a sense of the uncanny, the body presented as if a dream image pulled from the depths of the subconscious. Works by Balthus and de Chirico offer scenes that balance realism with fantasy, using classicism towards mysterious ends. In Picasso's Le baiser (1930), an abstracted embrace poises the body as a site of obscure desire.
In the 1950s and 60s, the human form once again emerged as a found subject (a "readymade" of sorts) in the work of Baj, Gnoli, and Raysse-artists involved with Pop and its European counterpart, Nouveau Réalalisme, but influenced by Surrealism, too. The Surrealist figure tends to emerge from the imagination or desire of the individual; in contrast, the Pop-inflected work of the 1960s concerned itself with bodies appropriated and pieced together from the mass media dreamscape of a postwar world. Fashion advertisements feature in Raysse's collaged paintings, while Baj's "Picabaj" series stitch together kaleidoscopic portraits in homage to Picasso's Cubist approach to form.
The presentation will be accompanied by a public conversation between Jeffrey Deitch and curator Francesco Bonami. The conversation will take place on March 26, 2018, at 4pm in the Sky Lounge at the Upper House, Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, Hong Kong, 49th Floor. Please RSVP to info@luxembourgdayan.com or call +1 212.452.4646.
About Luxembourg & Dayan
Luxembourg & Dayan presents curated, museum-quality exhibitions of works by modern masters and contemporary artists in its spaces in New York and London. Since opening in 2009, the gallery has presented a number of critically- acclaimed exhibitions, ranging from historical presentations of artists such as Alberto Giacometti, Alberto Burri, Domenico Gnoli, and ReneÅL Magritte, to thematic survey exhibitions including Grisaille; Unpainted Paintings; Thick
Paint; The Shaped Canvas, Revisited; Word By Word; and Contingencies: Arte Povera and After.
Media contact
Andrea Schwan, Andrea Schwan Inc. info@andreaschwan.com, +1 917 371 5023 (Americas)
Gair Burton, Pickles PR, gair@picklespr.com, +44 7402 784 470 (Europe)
Simone Woo, Jiang Hildebrandt Associates. Ltd., swoo@jianghildebrandt.com, +852 9260 1455 (Asia)