Mathias Schmied

Not, not you

2022

DANIEL SAMPER AVENDAÑO (COLOMBIAN, b. 1980) “I explore the art overlapping paint lines and dots that are dispose systematically over canvas, giving a three-dimensional character to ...

Youri Leroux comes from the North of France, a region whose landscapes have seduced so many artists. Born in 1972, now married with three children, he is characterised by his reserve, his typical northern France inwardness and his sentimental attachment to his family and his origins. From a very young age, he showed great interest in art and any thing that gave free reign to his imagination. He attended classes offered by painting workshops At the age of sixteen, he went to the Saint-Luc Institute in Tournai (Belgium) where he studied new arts teaching and met famous artists. He later attended architecture and design classes. After gaining his diploma in 1999, he joined an architect’s office in Lille (France) where he worked principally with volume, colours and the enhancement of light. His first exhibition was held at Le Masquerel (France) and included fifteen artists. He sold his first paintings. The highlights of 1997 and 1998 were his wedding and the birth of his first child. His painting evolved, his work focused more on the curves of the female body and the plumpness, sensuality, shapes and shadows that it emanate. After traveling in North Africa, be began to focus on his backing material – sand was a very successful and impressive medium, giving the viewer the urge to approach and caress his paintings. In 2000, he traveled to New York, where he feasted on verticality and asymmetries that were in sharp contrast to his supple work on the female body. In early 2001, encouraged by true art lovers and the success of his paintings, he left his job as an architect to devote himself to his art. He subsequently applied these geometric ideas in a literary theme, more intimate and reassuring – perspectives, depth, repetitions, an enormous library or just three books with straight lines and the effects afforded by contrasting materials. Looking out from his open workshop, many things inspire him. Through the lovely Breton coast, he reveals to us his third pictorial theme – the combination of feminine curves and asymmetric libraries suggest old sailboat...

Obra sobre papel

Roland Ayers (1932-2017). Untitled, 1983. Ink on paper, measures 17 x 23 inches. Unframed and unmounted. Signed and dated lower left. Ayers holds the distinction of having participated in the first important survey of African-Americans, Contemporary Black Artists in America, a 1971 show at The Whitney. Biography: Artist and art educator, Roland Ayers was born on July 2, 1932, the only child of Alice and Lorenzo Ayers, and grew up in the Germantown district of Philadelphia. Ayers served in the US Army (stationed in Germany) before studying at the Philadelphia College of Art (currently University of the Arts). He graduated with a BFA in Art Education, 1954. He traveled Europe 1966-67, spending time in Amsterdam and Greece in particular. During this period, he drifted away from painting to focus on linear figurative drawings of a surreal nature. His return home inaugurated the artist’s most prolific and inspired period (1968-1975). Shorty before his second major trip abroad in 1971-72 to West Africa, Ayers began to focus on African themes, and African American figures populated his work almost exclusively. In spite of Ayers’ travel and exploration of the world, he gravitated back to his beloved Germantown, a place he endowed with mythological qualities in his work and literature. His auto-biographical writing focuses on the importance of place during his childhood. Ayers’ journals meticulously document the ethnic and cultural make-up of Germantown, and tell a compelling story of class marginalization that brought together poor families despite racial differences. The distinctive look and design of Germantown inform Ayers’ visual vocabulary. It is a setting with distinctive Gothic Revival architecture and haunting natural beauty. These characteristics are translated and recur in the artist’s imagery. During his childhood, one of the only books in the Ayers household was an illustrated Bible. The images within had a profound effect on the themes and subjects that would appear in his adult work. Figures in an Ayers’ drawing often seem trapped in a narrative of loss and redemption. Powerful women loom large in the drawings: they suggest the female role models his journals record in early life. The drawings can sometimes convey a strong sense of conflict, and at other times, harmony. Nature and architecture seem to have an antagonistic relationship that is, ironically, symbiotic. A critical turning point in the artist’s career came in 1971 when he was included in the extremely controversial Whitney Museum show, Contemporary Black Artists in America. The exhibition gave Ayers an international audience and served as a calling card for introductions he would soon make in Europe. Ayers is a particularly compelling figure in a period when black artists struggled with the idea of authenticity. A questioned often asked was “Is your work too black, or not black enough?” Abstractionists were considered by some peers to be sell-outs, frauds or worse. Figurative* work was accused of being either sentimental or politically radical depending on the critical source. Ayers made the choice early on to be a figurative artist, but considered his work devoid of political content. Organizations such as Chicago’ s Afri-Cobra in the late 1960‘s asserted that the only true black art of any relevance must depict the black man and woman...