Tag Archives: Art Basel Miami

Chance Encounters V – Art Basel Miami 2019

Leave a reply

For the fifth consecutive year, the LOEWE Foundation continues its commitment to bringing together artists from various disciplines in unexpected conversations. Chance Encounters V, through the work of British artist Hilary Lloyd, turns LOEWE’s Miami store into a unique artistic space.

Colour and textile interventions created by Hilary Lloyd (b. 1964, Halifax, UK) – the main artist featured in this year’s edition – are accompanied by images recorded in and around her London studio, which are projected on monitors and screens, taking on a surprising prominence; curtains, frames, and other set-like objects create a space that seems to be activated by the viewer.

For more than three decades, Lloyd has worked and lived in London, where she experiments with film and video within sculptural installations; this exhibition at Art Basel Miami perfectly showcases her most refined work. The videos, which make use of repetitive movement, jump cuts, and sweeps, conjure both her own restless gaze and the experience of increasing speed that characterises the way in which we consume images today.

In and among Hilary Lloyd’s installation is the work of another British artist: Ewen Henderson (1934 – 2000) is one of the most esteemed members of an illustrious generation of potters that included Gordon Baldwin, Gillian Lowndes, and Ian Godfrey. Henderson’s large-scale ceramic sculptures, some of which are presented in this exhibition, were born out of his need to manipulate clay in order to reach total abstraction. The roughly-textured surfaces and layered colour of his pieces often resemble the stratified nature of rock or earth totemic works, evidence of his interest in Neolithic and ancient art.  The pieces presented lead to the perfect interdisciplinary and timeless dialogue between two fundamental artists.

‘The Chance Encounters exhibitions are an opportunity to create conversations across time between artists whose work resonates strongly with my own creative approach,’ says Jonathan Anderson, LOEWE’s Creative Director. ‘Hilary Lloyd’s work is perfectly attuned to the contemporary moment and the way in which we engage with the visual world around us. It stages a striking dialogue with Ewen Henderson’s bold materially-rich work.’

Chance Encounters V. LOEWE Miami Design District, 110 NE 39th Street, Suite #102. Miami, Florida, United States. Until 2nd February 2020.

Photo Captions: Installation view. Hilary Lloyd: Robot, The Shop, Sadie Coles HQ, London, 09 October – 07 November 2015. Hilary Lloyd, courtesy of the Sadie Coles Gallery, London. Ewen Henderson: Group of Standing Stones.

Art Basel Miami: Chance Encounters IV

Leave a reply

Chance Encounters is an annual exhibition staged by the LOEWE FOUNDATION at the LOEWE Miami store in the city’s Design District. Unique as a commercial space, it is dominated by a 200 year-old granary building which was transported, stone by stone, from Portugal to Miami. At over 10 meters long and five meters high, the wood and stone pitched-roof structure sat for centuries in the river lands of the Miño, a humble edifice designed for rural industry. It now assumes the grandeur of a temple, its weather-worn surfaces redolent of another place and time.

Anne Low

Contradiction and displacement are key to Jonathan Anderson’s creative approach at LOEWE. His collections challenge notions of beauty, upset gender conventions and push materials and silhouettes to their limits. To be contemporary is to acknowledge the past; dissonance can create moments of strange harmony. This potential has been embedded in the architectural fabric of the LOEWE store itself through the presence of the granary, and has provided something of a guiding principle for the Chance Encounters series of exhibitions that creates unexpected dialogues between historical and contemporary artists and makers. Previous exhibitions have included work by Anthea Hamilton, Lucie Rie, Paul Nash, John Ward, Rose Wylie, William McKeown, Lionel Wendt and Sara Flynn – conversations that have taken place between art forms and across time.

 

‘Diver’, woodcut on Japaneese paper 218×117.5 cm
2017

Chance Encounters IV brings together works by Andrea Büttner (b. 1972, Germany), Ian Godfrey (1942-1992, UK) and Anne Low (b.1981, Canada). From different generations and working in various media —from ceramics and textiles to woodcut printing— these artists are united by a fascination for historical traditions of making, exploring the potential for the outmoded to, somewhat counterintuitively, give fresh insights onto contemporary concerns. In their work, history becomes a prism through which the present moment fans out into a spectrum of social, economic and material realities.

Low’s newly-commissioned installation Dust Bed occupies the granary, drawing on the intimate textures of this object and to create an exuberant performance of textile forms.

Woodcuts by Büttner monumentalise simple every objects and fragments of art historical works. Hand-carved and printed, her images speak urgently about notions of shame and humility through works that are wilfully slow and temporally-layered.

 

A major collection of over 100 works by British ceramicist Ian Godfrey occupies museum-like cases throughout the space. His minutely-detailed ceramic sculptures are individual worlds that draw on the art of ancient civilisations. Populated by exotic animals and fantastical architecture, they draw the viewer into their childlike landscapes and transport us momentarily to another time and place.

Ritualistic Sculptures and Vessels

Chance Encounters IV. From 4th December 2018 to 31st January 2019.
 LOEWE Miami Design District, 110 NE 39th Street, Suite #102. Miami, Florida (USA).

Photo Captions: Anne Low ©Dennis Ha; ‘Diver’ ©Andy Keate, courtesy of Andrea Büttner and Hollybush Gardens; ‘Ritualistic Sculptures and Vessels’ ©Lewis Ronald.

Art Basel Miami: Chance Encounters III

Leave a reply

The LOEWE FOUNDATION presents the third exhibition in its Chance Encounters series, bringing together artists from various disciplines in order to explore unexpected conversations. This year, Sara Flynn, Richard Smith and Lionel Wendt present their works at the LOEWE Miami District store, which was designed around a monumental 18th century granary. “Art and craft are at the centre of my creative process and these exhibitions are an exciting way of exploring artists that are important to me”, says Jonathan Anderson, LOEWE’s Creative Director.

For this edition, Irish ceramist Sara Flynn has been commissioned to produce a new body of ceramic work inspired by the space and materiality of the granary, which was brought over from Portugal and rebuilt stone by stone. Despite using a wheel to throw her pots, her subsequent interventions result in complex and irregular shapes that challenge our reading of the vessels, bringing them into closer dialogue with the language of sculpture. Flynn was one of the 26 finalists of the first LOEWE Craft Prize.

Richard Smith was one of the most original artists of his generation. He emerged in the late 1950s and became known for works that challenged the accepted traditions of painting. His 1975 work Shuttle will be exhibited soaring above the LOEWE store granary. Specially commissioned for the Tate that same year, the installation is comprised of a series of coloured canvases stretched across aluminium rods reminiscent of tent structures. Smith’s work ‘Both Halves (A)’ was acquired by LOEWE in 2016 and is currently displayed in the firm’s Madrid flagship store.

The renowned photographer Lionel Wendt, who was originally trained as a concert pianist, took up photography later in life after studying in the UK. He created a ground-breaking body of work documenting life in his home country of Ceylon as well as homoerotic portraits that were considered radical at the time. After his premature death in 1944, most of his negatives were destroyed. However, his prints were rediscovered in the 1990s and he is now considered one of the key proponents of modernist photography. His work was presented as part of the setting for the LOEWE Fall 2017 collection at the Unesco building in Paris.

Chance Encounters III. From 4th December 2017 to 4th February 2018.
 LOEWE Miami Design District, 110NE 39th Street, Suite #102. Miami, Florida (USA).

Photo Captions: Chance Encounters III © Naho Kubota