EXHIBITIONS
Martin Basher, Henry Codax and Nico Colón “High Tide” at Brand New Gallery, Milan
Martin Basher, Henry Codax
Brand New Gallery is delighted to host Henry Codax and Martin Basher’s two-person show.
Henry Codax presents two large-sized monochrome paintings. The works were made in 2014, they are silver 84 inch squares. It is the first time the artist exhibits his works in Italy.
Martin Basher’s works are a part of a broader investigation that combines sculpture and painting with the languages of product display and retail architecture. The New Zealand-born, New York based artist’s explorations into color, form and surface parallel an enquiry into the retail environment as a potential site, like art, in which to find “peak experience” (described by psychologist Abraham Maslow as “moments of highest happiness and fulfillment”) and even as a place to experience the sublime.
The elegant paintings on show—symbolic colour combinations arranged in vertical stripes, blended with shimmering horizontal or diagonal flashes of blinding light—can evoke corporate retail architecture; the interiors of shopping malls, product barcodes and security grilles. Yet they also suggest a refined stillness and depth that might, in a certain light, even evoke something of the sublime.
Basher’s collages are closely linked to the paintings, being made on the packaging that the canvasses are delivered in. Their surfaces are quickly built up from the tape and other materials employed in the making of the paintings. Working as a counterpoint to the meticulous construction of the paintings, the collages nevertheless echo the same forms, in a faster, more immediate manner—an architecture of the storerooms, ductwork and structure behind the perfect retail façade.
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until 23 December 2014
Martin Basher, Untitled, 2014
Henry Codax, Untitled (Silver), 2014
Martin Basher, Untitled, 2014
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Martin Basher, Henry Codax installation views at Brand New Gallery, Milan, 2014
Courtesy: the artists and Brand New Gallery, Milan.
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Nico Colón “High Tie”
I have seen men, ugly men
with their eyes snak? in dark sockets,
surpassing the hardness of rock,
the rigidity of cast steel,
the senseless rage of ciminals,
the falseness of the hypocrite,
the most extraordinary actors
the strength of character of priests,
beings whose real character is
the most impenetrable,
colder than anything else
in heaven or on earths
I have seen them wearing
out moralists who have
attempted to discover their
heart, and seen them
bring upon themselves
implacable anger from an high.
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until 23 December 2014
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Above – High Tide 1, 2014
High Tide (disaster at sea), 2014
High Tide 3, 2014
Fallen kings can be the kindling, but the smoke is thick and black, 2014
Fallen kings can be the kindling, but the smoke is thick and black, 2014
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Nico Colón “High Tide” installation views at Brand New Gallery, Milan, 2014
Courtesy: the artist and Brand New Gallery, Milan.
