Anton Unai personifies the creative philosophy represented by Joseph Beuys’ legacy: a profound belief in the sanctity of spontaneity, the poetry of chaos, and the rejection of traditional academia. As a self-taught artist, Unai’s installations are often the result of weeklong “actions,” improvised and created on-site using mostly found objects, or “golden garbage,” salvaged from the streets of his action.

Using materials that reflect the urban landscape, ordinary detritus like rusty sheet metal or yesterday’s newspaper, Unai’s work resurrects and reinvents the discarded relics of the modern masses. His art is at once rough and delicate, exposing sentimental and vulnerable humanity through violent gestures, provocative irony and messy compositions that defy traditional aesthetic boundaries. Meta-narratives, pop and subculture artifacts, religious iconography and a wide breadth of literary references are all present in his multifaceted installations, as well as allusions to art historical antecedents ranging from Basquiat’s urban poetry to Sir Howard Hodgkin’s abstract paintings as sculptural objects to Jonathan Meese’s theatrical symbolism.

Anton Unai:
DO WHAT YOU CAN, WITH WHAT YOU HAVE, WHERE YOU ARE

Opening: July 7th – 7 pm / open tue-sat until july 31st – 12am to 6pm
Location:  Circleculture Gallery, Gipsstrasse 11 Berlin-Mitte / German

Kelsey Brookes is a former biochemist who lives by the beach of San Diego, California. He attributes his raw art style to an education system “that refuses to teach scientists to draw.” He abandoned biochemistry and science’s loss became art’s gain. The works potency arguably lies in the way its clash of ancient and ultra-modern references downplay sex and death, which are featured heavily in the work. Brookes describes his art as “an unrefined and, some would say, unskilled mix of sex, comedy and animals which is derived from a true passion for all three, except not necessarily all at the same time.”

Opening: November 18, 7 PM
Exhibition: November 19 to January 12 2011
www.circleculture-gallery.com

Auch wenn Tagnos gegenständliche Arbeiten als figurativ beschriebn werden können, liegt das Interesse des Künstlers eher in der Anatomie der Buchstaben als in der Referenz zur Anatomie des lebenden Körpers.

“Ich male Schrift und scheibe Firguren”

erklärt er. Mit diesem Vorgehen versucht er, die jedem Buchstaben eigene Persönlichkeit aufzudecken, ebenso wie eine Poesie der Schrift, die auch bei der Abwesenheit einer phonetischen Bedeutung existiert.

Text: Auszug aus dem Austellungskatalog Daniel Tagno: “High end vandalism braeking into pieces”

www.circleculture.com