OLENSKA BLOG

Patrick Morgan ‘Ten Years of Hurt,’ The House of St. Barnabas from 2 December. Editions available: patrickmorgan.co.uk

Illustrator Patrick Morgan presents his first exhibition in a decade. With clients including the English National Ballet, Coca Cola and most recently Tom Ford, Morgan’s pop culture heritage recontextualises familiar fashion and art icons such as Tracey Emin, Chanel fragrances and fashion campaigns. Strong brushstrokes and trickles of paint elegantly deconstruct contemporary culture, creating an eerily familiar, yet vigorously modern body of work. ‘Warhol Stripes’ 2010 further pushes the high/low culture concept, painted as it is with household emulsion, alongside the more traditionally artistic mediums of India ink and charcoal. ‘Patrick Morgan: Ten Years of Hurt’ takes over the rambling rooms of The House of St Barnabus from Friday 2 December 2011.

Andy in the Silver Factory by Billy Name, 1964, Felix Gonzalez-Torres Untitld (Placebo), 1991, Chanel Graphite Nail Polish, Aldo Chaparro, Stella McCartney Autumn Winter 2011 collection, Silver Crush Table by Fredrikson Stallard.

all available at Ray Ward (www.rayward.co.uk)

at the Experimental Cocktail Clubs boat party, Paris

With a title like ILLUMinations, the 54th Venice biennale is resplendent with the inevitable interplay of opposites; darkness and light, art and politics, old and new – stagnancy and fluidity. At first glance, the tide of recession seems far away amidst the super yachts and Baroque spender of Venice, yet socio-economic malaise seeps into this year’s biennale with a deeply political anchor.

Alongside Spain’s contemplative performance piece The Inadequate – representing the globally unofficial and marginalized, a gently intellectual and fiercely international take on curation and freedom of speech is provided by the Danish pavilion. Foregoing the usual pavilion format of focusing on the work of a single artist, Greek born and Belgian based curator Katerina Gregos presents a thought provoking and witty group exhibition entitled Speech Matters. Taryn Simon’s culturally curious photographs from An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007) give the viewer access to otherwise inaccessible stories and histories integral to America’s cultural composition. An albino tiger glares at the viewer as if about to pounce, yet we discover that as a result of inbreeding which produces all living white tigers in the United States, it is mentally retarded and malformed. Other images present hymen reconstructive surgery and a Braille edition of Playboy magazine. The clarity of Taryn’s non-judgmental and unsentimental visions, allow the viewer to ponder the mythologies of cultural identity, a subject also explored in Jan Svankmajers 1968 film The Garden.  Czech born Svankmajers film presents a darkly humorous human fence – a personal take on freedom of speech, with a scathing critique on the communist regime under which he lived.

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Urs Fischer, Rape of The Sabine Women, 54th Venice Biennale 2011 (until 27 November 2011)

Lucian Freud by Cecil Beaton, Estate Tiffany & Co crystal and horn vase with silver base, Whistlejacket by George Stubbs (www.nationalgallery.org.uk,) Musee de la Chasse et la Nature (www.chassenature.org,) vintage hunt image, Antique William IV silver fox snuffbox

Claridges Galliano tree, Fiac – Grand Palais, Dale Chihuly