John Currin

69 South Audley Street, London W1
Private View 02 April 6-8 pm

Sadie Coles HQ is presenting a major new series of paintings by American painter John Currin whose subjects range from the domestic to the overtly erotic. These exceptionally refined and gloriously engaging paintings continue the intense debate within Currin’s work that combines art historical technique with contemporary reference. While some of Currin’s new paintings are of flowers and exquisite china, most are depictions of hardcore eroticism taken from European pornography.

Pornography is functional and almost by definition an unembellished celluloid or digital idiom. Indeed, one of the primary uses of photography is porn, and a painting would struggle to claim to be as immediate or undeniably in the moment as a photograph.

Currin’s use of pornographic subject matter is both a challenge to these conventions and an acknowledgement of the spectral presence of photography for the contemporary painter. Currin renders the pornographic in luscious oil paint, evoking the technique of historical painters as various as the magisterial Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Gustave Courbet, Christian Schad or Otto Dix. Currin’s appropriation of daring images and their transformation through the medium of paint knowingly mimics the four-hundred-year-old practice of erotic paintings commissioned for private viewing by wealthy patrons. His imagery does away with the elevation of the subject through mythical role play and these girls and boys are what they are, 20th century porn stars, but they are promoted purely through their rendering in oil paint. And when the pictures are not explicit they are laced with innuendo. One picture in the exhibition, Pushkin Girl, depicts a plump young woman looking up from her book in order to gaze at the viewer, the expression on her face suggesting that something indecent may be going on outside the crop of the image. Another painting, a still life of delft china, is seen in this context as fetishistic and as dogged in its mastery as Currin’s rendering of the sex act.

From early on in his career Currin was known for his distinctive depictions of women of various ages and sizes – dour menopausal women, pretty young girls, buxom maidens – and men of dubious sexual ability, and he has been alternately spoken of in terms of mannerism, caricature, and conservatism. But throughout Currin’s compositions is a morphology of academic realism entwined with lively contemporary caricature, with the work allowed to triumph by the pure splendour and the staggering ability of his painting.

John Currin was born in Boulder, Colorado, in 1962 and obtained a B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University (1984) followed by a M.F.A. from Yale University (1986). He lives and works in New York. In 2003, a travelling exhibition of drawings was organised by the Des Moines Art Center and in the same year MoCA Chicago initiated a mid-career survey of his painting which travelled to the Serpentine Gallery, London and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. His work has also been included as part of What is Painting?- Contemporary Art from the Collection, MoMA- Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2007; Painting Now! - Back to Figuration, Kunsthal Rotterdam, 2007; In the Darkest Hour there may be light: works from Damien Hirst’s Murderme Collection, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2006. A major monograph on John Currin was published by Rizzoli in 2006.

35 Heddon Street London W1
Private view 21 May 6 - 8pm

Frank Benson’s spring 2008 show at Sadie Coles HQ presents a series of refined presentations of pre-existing abstract forms, each one arrested in motion. Two of the sculptures replicate actual chocolate fountains, highly associative objects of desire and consumerism. Cast in stainless steel to maintain a material harmony with the object that inspired them, the fountains are polished to be almost inconceivably reflective. The apparent invitation to try and disturb their flow is overwhelming. But as with other work by Benson, such as Human Statue that was shown at the Serpentine last year, the pieces remain in the realm of the spectacle: these sculptures are static, abruptly frozen, always resisting the viewers intervention. With their repetitive geometric and iconic shape the reference to Constantin Brancusi is clear; their extreme and polished realism becomes entwined with a kind of universal abstraction. The illusion of fluidity in the fountains is echoed in the tables that support them. Concertina-like bases made of aerospace materials are a direct translation of Benson’s foam core maquettes and introduce space, air and upward motion to the closed and inert form of the fountain. The base turns the totemic monument of the chocolate fountain into an unstable phallus, something that asserts its masculinity at the same time as it risks its own demise.

The nonchalance of these sturdy bases is also found in two furled MDF pieces that are positioned on the floor. These works appear casual, as though they might flop back to their original form, but like the fountains their construction means that they are in fact the opposite. Made by means of a lengthy process in a furniture-making workshop involving jig construction, lamination and trimming, high levels of production as a means to the distillation of movement are as central to these pieces as in the chocolate fountains. Benson says ‘I enjoy backtracking through the manufacturing and distribution process which produces the readymade and intervening one or two steps before the object would become available to the public...’. Furthering the idea of manufacture, Benson has specifically made two of each sculpture in order to ‘suggest the possibility of multiple, if not infinite, variations on each form.’

Benson’s photographic works are similarly occupied with the suspension of movement in both the form and function of the object. The image that is part of this exhibition shows a halted multiple CD-changer, presented as an architectural monument, its functionality as bypassed as a Blossfeldt flower. In other photographs a foam-spraying can deposits its contents into the air, the nodular forms frozen, and a plastic party cup melts to form a plate but stops just short of losing functionality. Through this series of photographs, as with the other works in the show, Benson aspires ‘to force the viewer to form their own conclusions about each of the work’s state of being and acceptability as an art object.’

Frank Benson was born in 1976 in Virginia, USA. He studied at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, and Master of Fine Arts, University of California, Los Angeles. His work was recently included in the world-touring Uncertain States of America - American Art in the 3rd Millennium curated by Daniel Birnbaum, Gunnar B. Kvaran and Hans Ulrich Obrist which came to the Serpentine Gallery last year.

For his third exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ, Currin presents a concise new group of eight new works, introducing still-life subject matter alongside his more familiar figurative imagery. A reclining nude recalls his black background nudes of the late 90s, paintings which married the influences of Cranach and Botticelli, but here playing on the foreshortening of Mantegna to celebrate a new ideal of beauty. The middle-aged woman in Bent Lady, gaily contorted in front of a luscious rose bush, has shaken off her dour peers who were the subjects of a rather darker, peculiarly asexual group of earlier imaginings of divorcee fund-raisers. In the biggest and most elaborate composition in the exhibition, three women of different ages, all based on the artist’s wife, are seen preparing Thanksgiving Lunch. Beautifully realised, the vignette affectionately mocks the domestic rituals of the middle classes, a scene elevated by the myriad of art historical references (and, what is quite possibly, the most lovingly painted turkey in the history of art).

1962 Born Boulder (CO)
1986 MFA, Yale University, New Haven (CT)
1984 BFA, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (PA)

Solo Exhibitions

2006 Gagosian Gallery, New York
2003 Sadie Coles HQ, London
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, touring to Serpentine Gallery, London; Whitney Museum of Art, New York (cat.)
John Currin: Works on Paper, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines (IA), touring to Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (CO); Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee (WI)
2002 Regen Projects, Los Angeles (CA)
The Honeymooners, Hydra Workshops, Greece (with Rachel Feinstein), July-Sept. (cat.)
2001 Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
2000 Monika Spruth Galerie, Cologne, Germany
Sadie Coles HQ, London
1999 Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Regen Projects, Los Angeles (CA)
1997 Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Sadie Coles HQ, London
1996 Regen Projects, Los Angeles (CA)
1995 ICA, London
Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain, Limousin, Limoges, France (cat.)
Donald Young Gallery, Seattle (WA)
Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco (CA)
1994 Galerie Jennifer Flay, Paris, France
Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
1993 ‘Critical Distance’ (curated by Luk Lambrecht), Ado Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium, (cat.)
Galerie Monika Spruth, Cologne, Germany
1992 Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
1989 White Columns, New York

Group Exhibitions

2007 Old School, Hauser & Wirth Colnaghi, London (traveling to Zwirner & Wirth, New York)
Very Abstract and Hyper Figurative, Thomas Dane Gallery, London (curated by Jens Hoffman)
2006 In the Darkest Hour there may be light, Work’s from Damien Hirst’s Murderme Collection, Serpentine Gallery, London (cat.)
Surprise, Surprise, ICA., London
Zurück zur Figur: Marlerei der Gegenwart, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung,
Munich, Germany (cat.) touring to Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Painting Codes: I Codici della Pittura, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone, Monafalcone, Italy (cat.)
Prints, Sadie Coles HQ, London
2005 Girls on Film, curated by Kristine Bell, Zwriner and Wirth Gallery, New York
Drawing from the Modern, 1975-2005, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Idols of Perversity, Bellwether, New York.
In Limbo. Victoria H. Myhren Gallery, University of Denver, CO.
Getting Emotional, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA.
2004 Disparities and Deformations: Our Grotesque (curated by Robert Storr),
SITE Santa Fe Biennial, Santa Fe (NM)
She’s Come Undone, Artemis, Greenberg van Doren Gallery, New York
Now Is a Good Time, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
2003 Inaugural Exhibition, Regen Projects, Los Angeles (CA)
20th Anniversary Show, Monika Spruth / Philomene Magers, Cologne, Germany
An International Legacy: Selections from Carnegie Museum of Art, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City (OK), touring to Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (NV); Mobile Art Museum, Mobile (AL)
Supernova: Art of the 1990s from the Logan Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (CA)
2002 Liebe Maler, male mir…Dear Painter, paint me…Cher peintre, peins-moi (curated by Alison Gingeras), Pompidou Centre, Paris, touring to Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany (cat.)
Drawing Now: Eight Propositions, Museum of Modern Art, New York, (cat.)
American Standard (Para) Normality and Everyday Life, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York
2001 Form Follows Fiction, Castello di Rivoli, Turin
Azerty, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
About Faces, C & M Arts, New York
Naked Since 1950, C & M Arts, New York (cat.)
The Way I See It, Galerie Jennifer Flay, Paris
Drawings, Regen Projects, Los Angeles (CA)
Works on Paper from Acconci to Zittel, Victoria Miro Gallery, London
2000 Kin, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
OO, Barbara Gladstone Gallery; NYC
Innuendo, Dee/Glasoe Gallery, New York
Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Couples, Cheim & Read, New York
1999 artLovers, Compton House, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool
I’m Not Here: Constructing Identity at the Turn of the Century, The Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg (PA)
Carnegie International 1999/2000, CI:99/00, The Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh (PA)
The Great Drawing Show: 1550 to 1999, Kohn Turner Gallery, Los Angeles (CA)
Malerei, INIT-Kunsthalle, Berlin,
The Nude in Contemporary Art, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield (CT) (cat.)
Troublespot Painting, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwepren (MUHKA), Antwerp, Belgium
Examining Pictures: exhibiting paintings (curated by Francesco Bonami), Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, tour to Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (IL) (cat.)
Etcetera (curated by Tommaso Corvi-Mora), Spacex, Exeter, England
John Currin and Elizabeth Peyton (curated by Peter Schjeldahl) Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge (MA)
Salome: Images of Women in Contemporary Art (curated by Katherine Gass), Castle Gallery, The College of New Rochelle (NY)
Positioning, Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (NY)
1998 More Fake, More Real, Yet Ever Closer (curated by Robert Evren), Castle Gallery, The College of New Rochelle (NY) (cat.)
The Risk of Existence, Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York
“Young Americans 2; Part Two”, Saatchi Gallery, London, (cat.)
From Here to Eternity: Painting in 1998, Max Protetch Gallery, New York
Hungry Ghosts, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, (cat.)
Portraits: People, Places and Things, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
Pop Surrealism, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Aldrich (CT) (cat.)
Now and Later, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (CT)
1997 Heart, Body, Mind, Soul:  American Art in the 1990s, Selections from the Permanent Collection,The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
The Tate Gallery Selects:  American Realities - Views from Abroad: European Perspectives on American Art 3 (curated by Nicolas Serota and Sandy Nairne), The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, (cat.)
Painting Project, Basilico Fine Arts and Lehmann Maupin, New York (cat.)
Projects #60:  Currin, Peyton, Tuymans (curated by Laura Hoptman), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (pamphlet)
Feminine Image (curated by Donald Kuspit), Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor (NY)
1996 a/drift:  Scenes from the Penetrable Culture ( curated by Joshua Decter) Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies, Annandale-on-Hudson (NY) (cat.)
Figure, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo
Pittura, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy
Variations, op. 96: une selection d’oeuvres du Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain, Poitou-Charentes
Musée de Cognac, Cognac, France
Answered Prayers, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
Sugar Mountain (curated by Paul Ha and Andrea Scott), White Columns, New York
Face to Face, Victoria Miro Gallery, London
Controfigura, Studio Guenzani, Milan, Italy
narcissism: Artists Reflect Themselves, California Center for the Arts Museum, Escondido (CA) (cat.)
Screen (curated by Joshua Decter), Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York
1995 Wild Walls, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, tour to the ICA, London (cat.)
25 Americans: Painting in the 90’s, Milwaukee Museum of Art, Milwaukee (WI) (cat.)
Collection, fin XXe, Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain Poitou-Charentes, Angouleme, France (cat.)
White Columns Benefit, New York
B-Movie (curated by Sarah Morris), Phoenix Hotel, San Francisco (CA)
1994 A series of rotating installations: Week 1: John Currin and Andrea Zittel, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Summer Group Show, Donald Young Gallery, Seattle (WA)
Up the Establishment (Benefit sale for Independent Curators Incorporated) (curated by Dan Cameron)
Sonnabend Gallery, New York
Galleria Galliani, Genoa, Italy
Don’t Postpone Joy or Collecting Can Be Fun! (curated by Rudi Molacek and Barbara Steffen), Neue Galerie, Graz, Austria, tour to Austrian Cultural Institute, New York
Intercourse (curated by Pedro Gomez and Daniel Carello), Mustard, New York
Passing Through (curated by Ugo Rondinone), Galerie Walcheturm, Zurich, Switzerland
1993 Medium Messages (curated by Vik Muniz), Wooster Gardens, New York
Look at the Window (curated by Jose Lebrero Stals) Museum Het Kruithuis, Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, (cat.)
One of Us (Since You Stayed Here) (curated by Mark Wilson & Cokkie Snoei), Kunsthal Rotterdam, The Netherlands
After the Event (curated by Mike Hubert) Aperto 93, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (cat.)
Just what is it that makes today’s home so different, so appealing?, Galerie Jennifer Flay, Paris
Project Unite Firminy (curated by Yves Aupetitalot), Unité D’Habitation Le Corbusier, Firminy, France (cat.)
Prospect ‘93: Eine Ausstellung des Frankfurter Kunstvereins im Steinernen Hans und der Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (cat.)
SOHO at Duke IV, Duke University Museum of Art, Durham (NC)
1992 Figurative Work from the Permanent Collection, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Double Identity, Johnen & Schottle, Cologne, Germany
Dead Cat Bounce, Robbin Lockett Gallery, Chicago (IL)
Galerie Rudiger Schottle, Munich, Germany, tour to Galerie Rudiger Schottle, Paris,
1991 Malerei, Johnen & Schottle, Cologne, Germany
Art Under 30, The Fiar International Prize, Milan, Italy, tour to Rome, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles (cat.)
Shared Skin: Sub-Social Identifiers (organized by Janet Biggs), Dooley Le Cappellaine Gallery, New York
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Violence and Knowledge in Recent American Art (curated by Klaus Ottman), Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Wesleyan (MA)
Gulliver’s Travels, Sophia Ungers Galerie, Cologne, Germany
7 Women, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Andrea Rosen Gallery (two person exhibition with Robin Kahn), New York
1990 (not so) Simple Pleasures, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Boston (MA) (cat.)
Total Metal (curated by Richard Phillips), Simon Watson Gallery, New York (cat.)
White Columns Benefit, New York
Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
Program Update White Columns, White Columns, New York (cat.)
1989 Amerikarma (curated by Dan Levine) Hallwalls, Buffalo (NY)