Frieze London

P • P • O • W is pleased to present historical and contemporary works Elijah Burgher, Ramiro Gomez, Dinh Q. Lê, Hew Locke, Hunter Reynolds, David Wojnarowicz and Martin Wong.

 

­­­­Elijah Burgher (b. 1978) works in painting, drawing and printmaking, exploring themes of language, mysticism, and iconography. Whether expressed in detailed figurative drawings or large-scale acrylic paintings on canvas drop cloths, Burgher draws from a variety of both supernatural and aesthetic currents to achieve a highly personalized visual language inspired by European ceremonial magic. A recent addition to the gallery, Burgher’s will add a unique yet complimentary voice to our program with his investigations into sexual identity and the boundaries of the physical self. Burgher received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. His work was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial (selected by Anthony Elms), the 2014 Gwangju Biennial (as part of AA Bronson’s House of Shame), and The Temptation of AA Bronson at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, among others. He was recently a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Fire Island Artist Residency. Burgher’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, Art Review and Artforum, among others. He will be included in the forthcoming three-person exhibition For Opacity, with Toyin Ojih Odutola and Nathaniel Mary Quinn, at The Drawing Center in New York (October 12, 2018 - February 19, 2019). Burgher lives and works in Berlin.

 

Ramiro Gomez (b. 1986) creates pristine domestic scenes and landscapes populated with subjects whose labor often goes unrecognized and underappreciated by society. Following the success of his debut exhibition with the gallery in March 2017, we will present new paintings based on a recent trip to London, as well as scenes from his native Los Angeles, imagery for which Gomez is best known. Gomez has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the University of Michigan, Institute for the Humanities and the West Hollywood Public Library as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA. His work has also been featured in group shows at notable institutions including: the 2017 Whitney Biennial; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Denver Art Museum; Blanton Art Museum, University of Texas at Austin; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College, Florida; among others. Domestic Scenes: The Work of Ramiro Gomez, a monographic catalog by Lawrence Weschler, was published by Abrams in 2016. His work was recently included in the National Portrait Gallery’s group exhibition The Sweat of Their Face: Portraying American Workers. Gomez lives and works in West Hollywood, California.

 

Dinh Q. Lê (b. 1968) is best known for his deep engagement with photography as both a technology for image making and an apparatus for distributing ideological narratives. P • P • O • W will present a new “photoscroll” entitled “All the Boys in the World,” a digital collage of mixed-race gay pornographic imagery that is printed across a 150-foot roll of photopaper. Suspended three meters high and gathering in undulating folds, this monumental photographic installation explores the tactile and sensual capabilities of the two-dimensional image. This work also marks a shift in the artist’s practice, engaging more directly with global sex industries as well as the artist’s own sexual identity. Lê holds an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York. His work is currently on view in the 2018 Gwangju Biennial, in Seoul, South Korea, and has exhibited at the 2013 Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, PA and documenta 13, Kassel, Germany in 2012. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Carnegie Museum, PA; MoMA PS1, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, TX; and the Asia Society, NY, among many others. Dinh Q. Lê: True Journey Is Return, a traveling retrospective organized by curator Rory Padeken, is currently on view at the San Jose Museum of Art. He is a co-founder of the nonprofit organization Sàn Art. Lê lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

 

Hew Locke (b.1959) explores the languages of colonial and post-colonial power, how different cultures fashion their identities through visual symbols of authority, and how the passage of time alters these representations. P • P • O • W will present photographic works from his 2006-08 series “How Do You Want Me?” Referencing studio photography and historical portraits of nobility, these images depict the artist festooned in plastic war trophies, self-awarded medals, various arms, scalps and baby doll heads, as well as flora and fauna. The resulting parade of sinister figures including corrupt kings, generals, tyrants and bandits, explores the ambivalence of socio-political representation, a recurring theme in Locke’s practice. Locke was primarily raised in Guyana and returned to the UK to complete an MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 1994. His work has been included in The Folkestone Triennial in 2011; the 54th and 55th Venice Biennale in 2011 and 2013; Prospect New Orleans Contemporary Art Biennial, New Orleans in 2014; and Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art in 2016. In 2010, Locke's work, Sikandar, was shortlisted for the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London. His work is represented in many collections including the Government Art Collection, UK; Miami Art Museum, FL; Tate Gallery, UK; the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Perez Art Museum Miami, FL; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, MO; the RISD Museum, RI; the British Museum, London, UK; and the Henry Moore Institute Leeds, UK. Locke’s debut exhibition with P • P • O • W, Patriots, will open on October 11, 2018. He is represented in London by Hales Gallery.

 

Hunter Reynolds (b. 1959) uses photography, performance, and installation to address issues of gender, identity, sexuality, mourning, loss, survival, and healing. P • P • O • W will present iconic photographs from the 1992-94 series “I-DEA, The Goddess Within,” a historic collaboration between Patina du Prey, Reynolds’ drag persona, and documentary photographer Maxine Henryson. During their eight year collaboration, Reynolds’ HIV positive status was a pending death sentence, making the photographs a moving and poignant record of the years before HIV drugs were available. Patina is presented as a mythical figure that disrupts gender icons in order to relate to the viewer as a shamanistic transgendered embodiment of beauty, fantasy and healing. Reynolds was an early member of ACT UP and in 1989 co-founded Art Positive, an affinity group of ACT UP that fought homophobia and censorship in the arts.  His work has be exhibited at White Columns, New York, NY; Artist Space, New York, NY; Participant Inc., New York, NY; ICA Boston, Boston, MA; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; and documenta, Kassel, Germany. In 2017, Reynolds was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Love Light, a solo exhibition of historical and recent installations and phot-weavings, was present at Hales Gallery in the summer of 2018. His work is currently on view at the Hayward Gallery in their group exhibition Drag: Self-portraits and Body Politics, on view through October 14, 2018.

 

David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) was an undeniable presence in the New York City art scene of the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s. P • P • O • W will present a selection of vintage photographic works, including his iconic “Untitled (Spirituality) from the Ant Series,” 1988-89. Wojnarowicz’s work has been included in solo and group exhibitions around the world, at institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The American Center, Paris, France; The Busan Museum of Modern Art, Korea; Centro Galego de Art Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; The Barbican Art Gallery, London; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. His works are in permanent collections of major museums nationally and internationally and his life and work have been the subject of significant scholarly studies. Wojnarowicz has had retrospectives at the galleries of the Illinois State University in 1990, curated by Barry Blinderman and at the New Museum in 1999, curated by Dan Cameron. A third retrospective, David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, co-curated by David Kiehl and David Breslin, opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in July 2018. The widely acclaimed exhibition has been reviewed in Artforum, The Guardian, The New York Times and The New Yorker, among others. The retrospective will travel to the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid in May 2019 and the Musee d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City in November 2019. An exhibition of Wojnarowicz’s photography and films will open at the KW Berlin in February 2019.

 

Martin Wong (1946-1999) depicted urban life on New York City’s Lower East Side, where he settled upon moving from his native California in1978. He was a prolific painter whose work functioned as a visual diary dense with recurring symbols and imagery including stacked bricks, crumbling tenements, constellations, closed storefronts and hand signals. We will present Wong Family Benevolent Society, 1990, a major painting presaging his final body of work, focused on New York and San Francisco’s Chinatowns. Wong’s work is included in museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Bronx Museum of The Arts, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Wong had a one person show Sweet Oblivion at the New Museum (1998). City as Canvas: New York City Graffiti from the Martin Wong Collection opened at the Museum of the City of New York in 2013 and traveled to the Amsterdam Museum in 2016. Wong's retrospective, Human Instamatic, opened at the Bronx Museum of The Arts in November 2015, the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio in May of 2016 and traveled to the UC Berkeley Art Museum in San Francisco, California in the fall of 2017.