Surfacing: The art of Louise Olsen and Stephen Ormandy

The oozing amoebic forms, fashioned from resin, that have become signature pieces from Sydney's Dinosaur Designs since the mid-1980s, always seemed to signal a desire to transform into something else. As have their City Art Institute-trained creators, Louise Olsen and Stephen Ormandy, who established the iconic brand with Liane Rossler in 1985. Now the pair's lesser-known artistic oeuvre, drawn from a shared 30-year studio practice and on display at the Newscastle Art Gallery until 17 February 2019, reveals a modernith aesthetic as seemingly simple and slippery as those early resin forms, moving from intimate and ethereal studies in watercolour and oil (Olsen) to tumescent totemic sculpture and three-dimensional collage (Ormandy).

Rhys Lee: Good Boy and Kevin Bourgeois: Wall of Sound

 In these two shows gallery visitors have the opportunity to view two very different, but very gifted artists. Rhys Lee is an Australian artist in his early forties; this show examples a series of paintings based on a 1970s New York City subway cartoon, made by graffiti artist Mitch 77, of an orange Pluto (the cartoon dog) wearing white gloves and a blue bowtie. Kevin Bourgeois is a New York-based, musically oriented artist whose work here consists of record jackets assembled with pieces taken from different covers.

A Good Boy and a Wall of Sound at Olsen Gruin Gallery

There isn’t much time left to catch one of the best two-person shows on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, or more accurately, two unique, but not so disparate exhibitions; Kevin Bourgeois’ Wall of Sound and Rhys Lee’s Good Boy, both seamlessly coexisting inside Olsen Gruin Gallery and coming down Sunday, November 18th.

“Wall of Sound” by Kevin Bourgeois at Olsen Gruin, New York

Self-taught artist Kevin Bourgeois' solo exhibition, "Wall of Sound" features a curated selection of conceptual record jacket collages that present visuals inspired by Phil Spector's philosophies on sound mixing.

'Rhys Lee: Good Boy' at Olsen Gruin, New York

Melbourne-based painter Rhys Lee comes from a background of street art. His latest, vibrant oil paintings featuring abstracted graffiti-inspired figures in sumptuous "gelato colors" grace the walls of Olsen Gruin in the current solo exhibition, "Good Boy," on view through November 18.

ART COLLECTOR GLOBAL: Q&A WITH TIM OLSEN

With New York Gallery Olsen Gruin hitting the 18-months open mark, Emily Cones-Browne talks to Australian dealer and co-director Tim Olsen about going international.

Extract:
Olsen Gruin has hit the 18-month mark since opening its first doors. What are some of the winning hallmarks the gallery has experienced during the first 18 months ?
The surprising thing about the New York experience is that I had no idea it was going to happen. It was only because my sister was moving her business that we had the opportunity for a pop-up. What began as an experiment was such a resounding success, it felt as though we had a place in the New York art scene.

What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week

Extract: 'Beyond the Veil’

Through July 8. Olsen Gruin, 30 Orchard St., Manhattan; 646-613-7011, olsengruin.com

Who gets to narrate history? Who gets to represent whom? These questions have been roiling the American art world lately, but they are nothing new in Australia — especially in regard to its indigenous population, who faced official efforts to erase their culture well into the 20th century through forced assimilation. Visual art has provided a crucial tool to help redress these erasures, and at this New York outpost of a Sydney gallery, the paintings by five women from central Australia, and one collaborative group, testify to the vibrancy of Aboriginal Australian art and the necessity of speaking for yourself.

The Approval Matrix

The Approval Matrix - Our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies...

BRILLIANT - The breathtaking small survey of Aboriginal art "Beyond the Veil" at Olsen Gruin gallery.

“Beyond the Veil” at Olsen Gruin

So, there is something that holds true in a show like this, which presupposes a different way of looking at society because of the long reach of the West's current obsession with money. Clearly, affluence is not a major interest of the women in this show, who live in the central desert of Australia and who work on paintings that, despite their abstraction, remain close to their lives. This is a different cry by far from the recent dot paintings of Damien Hirst, whose probable appropriation-we are not certain this is true-looks like very much like the theft of a venerable art coming from a culture some 100,000 years old. Hirst's borrowings do tend to look facile in light of the greater gravitas of the indigenous women's works, which can be understood by Western viewers-albeit on a level likely more superficial than the paintings themselves. In any case, the controversy raises real issues about the appropriation of other cultures-a hallmark of Western art practice since the beginnings of modernism, when Picasso made use of African masks for his work Les demoiselles d'Avignon.

BEYOND THE VEIL CURATED BY ADAM KNIGHT
May 16 – July 8, 2018
OLSEN GRUIN NY
-Jonathan Goodman

Three Sentence Reviews of Marlene Dumas, Dan Colen, and 11 Other Art-World Big Shots

To coincide with several big art fairs and last week’s massive auctions, many larger galleries mounted shows of their bigger artists. So let’s read the tea leaves on the upper end of the food chain.

Extract:  Beyond the Veil
Curated by Adam Knight
Olsen Gruin

No doubt many of the bigwigs in town for all the art stars, megagalleries and super-auctions, missed maybe the best secret show in New York at the moment, this six-artist exhibition of Australian Aboriginal women painters curated by the president of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia — a show that gives us a breathtaking small survey of what critic Robert Hughes (who in almost every case except this I disagreed with) called “the last great art movement of the twentieth century.”

“Beyond The Veil” at Olsen Gruin, New York

Olsen Gruin is currently hosting a group exhibition titled "Beyond The Veil."

Until July 8, 2018, Olsen Gruin will host an exhibition that celebrates Aboriginal Australian artistic practices. “Beyond the Veil” features a group of contemporary Australian artists. It has been made possible by the gallery’s collaboration with the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia. The group show will be on view at the gallery’s New York venue.

This group exhibition of Central Desert Paintings has been curated by the President of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia, Adam Knight. The anticipated show features select works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Evelyn Pultara, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Gayla Pwerle, Polly Ngale, and the Women’s Collaborative comprising Beverly Cameron, Kathy Marinkga, Imitjala Curley, and Tjangili George.

Featured: Untitled 1993 Emily Kame Kngwarreye Synthetic polymer paints on Belgian linen 23.6 x 35 inches (59.9 x 88.9 cm)

Beyond the Veil

Olsen Gruin is pleased to present Beyond the Veil, a group exhibition of Central Desert Paintings curated by the President of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia, Adam Knight. The anticipated show features select works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Evelyn Pultara, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Gayla Pwerle, Polly Ngale, and the Women’s Collaborative comprising Beverly Cameron; Kathy Marinkga, Imitjala Curley, and Tjangili George, and will be on view from May 16 – July 8, 2018.

Beyond the Veil x Adam Knight

Olsen Gruin is pleased to present Beyond the Veil, a group exhibition of Western Desert Paintings curated by the President of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia, Adam Knight.

The anticipated show features select works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Evelyn Pultara, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Gayla Pwerle, Polly Ngale, and the Women's Collaborative comprising Beverly Cameron; Kathy Marinkga, Imitjala Curley, and Tjangili George, and will be on view from May 16 - July 8, 2018.

Did Damien Hirst Rip Off Aboriginal Australian Artists’s Work?

Australian artists and dealers claim ‘uncanny’ similarities between Hirst’s ‘Veil Paintings’ and landscapes of the late Emily Kame Kngwarrey.

Damien Hirst’s ‘Veil Paintings’ works – recently on show at Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles (ranging from USD$500,000 to $1.7 million) – have come under fire for their similarity to the work of female Aboriginal artists, including Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who died in 1996.

Stephen Ormandy “Only Dancing”

Stephen Ormandy “Only Dancing”
Olsen Gruin
OPENS: March 7
The Lower East Side gallery presents a collection of new abstract oil on linen paintings and resin sculptures by Australian artist Stephen Ormandy, co-founder/creative designer of Dinosaur Designs.

ANNA-WILLI HIGHFIELD | OLSEN GRUIN

Christopher Hart Chambers reviews Anna-Willi Highfield‘s exhibition Spirit Faces at Olsen Gruin Gallery in New York City.

Up front by the gallery's storefront window on the Orchange Street strip on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which is now perhaps the premier location for current fine art, stands a construction of sheet brass shards, with straight, think brass rods projecting outwards in all directions, extending like rays of light or exclamation points.

Spirit Faces: Anna-Wili Highfield’s First Show at Olsen Gruin Gallery NYC

After a 10-plus year hiatus, Australian artist Anna-Wili Highfield has returned with a collection of mixed media sculptures. Titled ‘Spirit Faces’, the sculptures are currently being shown at Olsen Gallery’s New York City outpost, Olsen Gruin.

The show is Anna’s first fully conceived body of work in over a decade and follows on from the gallery’s calendar of other strong shows representing some pretty excellent Australian artists: Stephen Ormandy, George Byrne, Leila Jeffreys, and the super cool TV Moore.

Anna-Wili Highfield: Spirit Faces at Olsen Gruin Gallery

"Olsen Gruin is pleased to present Spirit Faces, an installational exhibition of new sculptures by Australian artist Anna-Wili Highfield (b. 1980, Sydney). Highfield's first fully conceived body of work in a decade, Spirit Faces gathers a celebratory mélange of animals, body parts, and self-portraits. Virtuosic and playful, Highfield's mixed media sculptures reach new heights of exuberance and material imagination.

Anna-Wili Highfield’s Spirit Faces

A selection of thought-provoking, mixed media sculptures.

After the clean and minimal photographs of sunny LA which provided a vibrant glimpse into the urban landscape of California, New York-based gallery Olsen Gruin presents the work of a strikingly different artist. Anna-Wili Highfield‘s Spirit Faces exhibition features mixed media sculptures that create an intriguing collection. Made of a blend of glamorous materials, brass, and spray painting finishes, the intricate artworks draw the viewer closer. Animals and body parts combine in carefully shaped sculptures that often remind of a self-portrait.

'Jens Einhorn: Raw Vision' at Olsen Gruin, New York

Olsen Gruin is currently hosting a solo exhibition by Jens Einhorn, titled "Raw Vision."

The exhibition presents a collection of new collage-paintings by the German artist. Einhorn's body of work reveals his interest in channeling the assertive energy of the urban periphery. His new works incorporate shapes cut from tarpaper, layered starkly above a vibrant collage of fabric, acrylic, and spray paint. Similar to how associating our personal memories gives meaning to others' discarded objects, Einhorn's collages are full of suggestion and opportunity.

Born in 1980, Jens Einhorn graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as a Master Student with Professor Tal R. The artist currently lives and works in Berlin.

The exhibition will be on view through February 5, 2018 at Olsen Gruin, 30 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002, USA.