By suzanne February 6th, 2010
Martin C. de Waal is a Dutch artist who uses his modeling experience and his body as a means to his art. By shifting the boundaries of self alteration artist persuades his audience to rethink their opinions and reduce prejudice when it comes to physical appearances, and he does so by using fashion imagery. Performances such as staged interviews, fake magazine articles, edited proofs of his physical mutations are part of artist’s work in which he explores notions of human identity, gender and the self. Constant reinvention is a part of de Waal’s practice, which plastic surgery is a common medium for: a few years ago artist underwent and eight and a half hour surgery to alter his face. The procedure has been photographically documented and showcased at various galleries. By using various alter egos such as VJ and Martin Duval and providing false information about himself, de Waal confronts the audience with usual questions: ‘How can we understand ourselves?’, ‘How do we deal with our insecurities in the contemporary consumer society?.
De Waal’s glamorous digital compositions present characters overly preoccupied with their own image, busy capturing viewer’s attention and imitate stereotypical attitude created by media. By first seducing us these works function as wires in the web of gaze that structure power relationships in contemporary society. Martin C. de Waal’s works symbolize a glamorous and self-mocking return of the repressed, altered visions of the same.
-text by Anny Baranova
By suzanne January 26th, 2010
Marlene Dumas is a South African, Amsterdam-based artist whose themes are relationships between art and femininity, art and pornography. Subjects of race, sexuality, social identity and personal experiences are portrayed by an artist in a unique and thought-provoking manner. Style of Expressionism is prevailing Dumas’ works however it is combined with Conceptual art and eroticism. Images of female bodies, children and snapshots of contemporary life events is artist’s way of commenting, criticizing and reflecting on art’s state and position today.
Dumas’ personal experience of growing up in South Africa has deeply influenced her works in which she aims to portray her concerns with society’s way to regard people as ‘types’ or ‘groups’ rather than individuals depending on their skin colour. Her series of ‘Black Drawings’ signifies such social intolerance. Another subject on Dumas’ mind is role of women in man’s world as a muse or a mistress and in her works she intends to persuade female audience of their power, uniqueness and potential dominance.
Birth of her own child has given Dumas yet another source of inspiration and created elements of vulnerability and fragility. Such vulnerability can also be grasped in artist’s series of male nudes in pornographic interpretations, yet it is fused with straightforwardness. In recent years Dumas has been exploring subjects of today’s political situations and has portrayed her concerns in a series of works titled ‘Blindfolded’, portraits of refugees and victims in the Middle East .Dumas’ works are direct yet intimate, emotional yet harsh, serious yet ironic.
-text by Anny Baranova
By suzanne January 11th, 2010
Vegas is pleased to present ‘Les Choses Perdues’, a special project curated by Ken Pratt as the opening show for its new gallery space in Vyner Street.
Les Choses Perdues - Group Exhibition 15 January/ 14 February 2010
Private View: Thursday 14 January 18:30 - 20:30
By suzanne January 2nd, 2010
Jodie Carey’s sculptures are overpowering and overwhelming to me due to their size and structure. Artist explores themes of memory and death and artist signifies these notions in her work in a sentimental and melancholic way. One of artist’s works ‘Untitled Chandeliers’ was made from vacuum cleaner dust which represents all that remains of the body after we have passed away. Carey says: “Hoover dust is the detritus of everyday life. If you die tomorrow, all that would be left of you would be in your Hoover.”
‘Untitled Monument’ is another infamous work by Carey: a wedding cake made of cast human bones, which refers to couple’s hopes for the future. Baroque excessive and decorative style of works gives them intensity and at the same time fragility. Materials play crucial role in order to bring her works to life and Carey often makes references to physicality of human body by using bones or blood. Another means of suggesting decay and passing away that artist uses is aroma.
The great quality of craftsmanship is displayed in Carey’s works of art, which suggests labor intensity in their construction. This is artist’s way to confront the viewer with the meaning of being human. By transforming ordinary material into the beautiful and extravagant work Carey questions the way we look at the world and challenges viewer to depict beauty in ugliness.
text by Anny Baranova
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By suzanne October 20th, 2009
Vegas Gallery is proud to present overview images of ‘Gloria’, the first London solo exhibition by Carla Arocha (°1961, Caracas) and Stéphane Schraenen (° 1971, Antwerp).
The art of Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen evokes many relationships with preceding movements in art. Almost all of these associations relate to the umbrella of Modernism and the gradated ontology of its progeny later in the twentieth century; it evokes the formal qualities of Minimalism as much as the optical illusions of Op Art. And yet, it is actually neither. It is not what it is and it is not what it seems. Hidden beneath the outward layers of immediate similarity is a practice that, while never denying what it admires about or has learned from these movements, remains fundamentally post-modernist; post-modern not as a visual facsimile of the received vernacular from the 1980’s, but in terms of the oft-misunderstood philosophies and bodies of theory accurately associated with the term.
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By suzanne February 18th, 2009
Stay In The Light - Groupshow 19 February/15 March 2009
Private View: 19 February 18:30 - 21:00
at VEGAS GALLERY
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