Out with the old, in with the new.

Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury sums it up visually with a c-print from her video, Here Comes Santa/Bells. Dash those decorations to the ground, grind them to powder beneath your heels and ready yourself, steady yourself, for 2006.

Heres hoping from Art MoCo!

Artist: Sylvie Fleury
+ ropac.net

Light plays an important role in the paintings and drawings of April Gornik. Whether it is a storm brewing over the water, and the light shading the blues of the sky, the sea and the action, or the soft tones of the Chinese countryside that bring to mind the light pursued by the old masters, Gornik captures the various times of day of a variety of landscapes. Even in her charcoal drawings does Gornik so effectively use the light that one could almost mistake the work for a black and white photo.

Artist: April Gornik
+ danese.com

Austrian painter Christoph Schmidberger’s adolescent dandies are typical of a youth culture that peoples his work. Schmidberger paints a teenage beauty that has been described being close to a fall from grace, and it does seem that an unhappy narcissism is being depicted. One gets the feeling that if something hasn’t gone terribly wrong yet, some nameless danger is on the way. It could be disguised as life itself, ready to be embraced by the youth that wear their confidence as they would the latest fashion.

Artist: Christoph Schmidberger
+ christoph-schmidberger.com

John Hartman’s series of oils on Rivers and Cities brings a lushness to what can often be a gritty subject. Rivers and Cities have been favorite topics for painters for hundreds of years (well, perhaps not Calgary), so it would be all too easy to dismiss most works of this ilk as not much more than simple landscape. John Hartman, however, uses a combination of colour and stroke that tells the eye to look further, longer. One expects a palette of greys, so spurts of blue and purple tease, while an autumnal mix of earthy hues to depict Manhattan comes as a complete surprise.

Artist: John Hartman
+ metiviergallery.com

Martin Kline is a painter who opts for less traditional media for his paintings, often producing works that appear to be more sculptural in nature. Kline tends to work a lot with encaustic, pigmented wax that can be applied in layers. This allows more of a transparency than do oils, and Kline’s use of encaustic will add a dimensionality to his paintings that simply would not be there with oils or acrylics. He chooses also stainless steel and cast bronze as trademark tools for a major part of his recent projects. Oath is encaustic on wood, Wounded Healer stainless steel, and Night Time Enigma encaustic on panel.

Artist: Martin Kline
+ jasonmccoyinc.com

The graphic work of Michael Craig-Martin is about as straightforward as it gets, although from certain cultural points of view Biding Time could come off as an ad for Boxing Day sales. But seasonality aside, Craig-Martin’s work does provide a snapshot of the times what with the mobile phones and digital cameras that form a major chunk of the subject matter. Let’s take a look at these pieces in twenty, thirty years’ time – you can’t help but feel you’re looking at the new retro.

Artist: Michael Craig-Martin
+ haasundfuchs.de

Jean-Paul Lemieux's classic painting of the mid-twentieth century sums up the season well, albeit from a fairly cold, yet hardy, point of view. The family of the terroir sets out on their round of visits to family and friends, braving the weather to seek out the warmth within. Joyeux Noël.
Glad tidings and best wishes to all from Art MoCo.

The canvases of Brazilian Beatriz Milhazes are almost psychedelic in nature, masses of swirls and spirals and layers of tendrils and flora. The movement in Milhazes’ work is sometimes reminiscent of Spirograph drawings all grown up. Her technique is of note: Milhazes applies her shapes on thin plastic sheets from which she then transfers the images onto a prepared background of canvas, creating a transparent effect where some elements may be totally obscured. Concentric circles and vivid stripes add to the carnival of colours that make for an explosive festival of painting.

Artist: Beatriz Milhazes
+ stephenfriedman.com

Photographer Neil Folberg borrows from the Impressionists the subjects that make up his series entitled The Impressionists’ Salon. However, instead of painting modern day ballerinas and bon-vivants, Folberg has used his camera. While in France, the photographer haunted the stomping grounds of Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Dégas, Vincent Van Gogh and Auguste Renoir, even using Morisot’s great-granddaughter to pose for a portrait, much the same way Morisot did for Manet. The photos are light and accessible, as were the originals, highlighting the timelessness of a technique considered bold and new at its inception.

Artist: Neil Folberg
+ flomenhaftgallery.com

Gary Brewer’s most recent oil paintings are fantastical scientific studies of botany mixed with a dash of the sea world, all orchids and corals set against grounds that change shades with great success. Brewer draws on history and scientific thought to follow his pursuit of beauty, referring back to discoveries and theories by Kepler, Galileo, Pliny the Elder and Theophrastus. But most importantly, his new exhibition, Beautiful Ramifications, brings us the results of Brewer’s delving into the past: lush, yet controlled, gardens of contemporary visual seduction.

Artist: Gary Brewer
+ l2kontemporary.com.com

Johannesburg artist William Kentridge does a lot of video work and set design, so many preparatory drawings form a large body of his work. Preparing the Flute is an exhibition based on the set Kentridge has done for Mozart’s The Magic Flute, performed in Brussels. Also included are drawings from his Porter series, silhouettes of figures bearing items of furniture crossing various maps. Kentridge’s drawings involve very little use of colour as these works are primarily of charcoal and pastel or mohair silk and embroidery, thus giving off a whiff of the past while remaining true to a very modern product.

Artist: William Kentridge
+ gallerialiarumma.it