Equator Production

Alan Belcher, b. 1957, lives and works in Toronto, Canada.  His practice spans more than thirty years, and includes a vibrant career as a gallerist, forays into curatorial, editorial, and advertising, a skiiled use of media, and a practice at skeptical remove from market, speculation and hype, while tackling their content all the same.  Belcher founded Nature Morte Gallery, in New York City, in the 1980s, and was one of the motors behind the art world as we know it today.

The Dog Chew Rag of Alan Belcher is just that, a skillful conglomeration of a ridiculous toy that the artist's small terrier, Milo, probably plays with.

But the work is more than that: it's a totem, an Algonquin shield, a use of the readymade in a sculptural mode, and a translation of an object produced en masse in China, rewoven together by computer in the hands of an artist in Toronto, and then delegated, via New York and Rome, back to Asia, to the patient weavers of Katmandu.  It's a perfect example of the liquid society we live in, yet Dog Chew Rag has the authorial strength of an object that lifts off from its reference, because its designer, an artist, understands form, material, and the migration of cultural symbols, deeply.

Biography by Golden Ruler Rome

Of the many British artists to emerge in the last twenty years, and claim preeminence in the global art scene, Liam Gillick, British artist, lives and works in New York City, with a global practice. In addition to art, his interests span music, teaching, architecture, and design. Gillick is especially known for his brilliant us of color, applied to stainless steel and plexiglass structures, as well as his ability to index seemingly simple forms to complex socio-economic or historical constructs.

Liam Gillick's design for this carpet was inspired by the Frankfurt Kitchen, first designed in 1926 by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. The goal of the Frankfurt Kitchen is simple: to create the most efficient kitchen space. It was designed to be cost efficient, time-saving, and hygienic. Importantly, this design separated the kitchen from the living space, creating a separation between work (the kitchen), and leisure (the living room). 

Emilia and Ilya Kabakov are Russian-born, American-based artists that have been collaborating since 1988. Their work fuses the conceptual with the everyday. Ilya is recognized as the most important Russian artist to have emerged in the late 20th century. Growing up in the Soviet Union, their work focuses on Soviet society and culture, highlighting its universal significance. 

Their work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Documenta IX, at the Whitney Biennial in 1997 and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, to name a few. The Kabakovs have also received a number of honors and awards, including the Oscar Kokoschka Preis, Vienna, in 2002 and the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, Paris, in 1995.

“This drawing is from the Album Ilya made in 1968-72 — THE AGONIZING SURIKOV. It is about the character who is trying to see everything that surrounded him in this life. But the result was a small scrap, like a keyhole, and everything else was hidden from him by an impenetrable  shroud, which never disappeared, no matter how carefully he tried to look through this hole. So, whenever we desperately try to see or understand the reality, we are able to see only small parts of it. 
The whole picture, the complete meaning, probably, never will be given to us.”

-Emilia Kabakov 

http://www.ilya-emilia-kabakov.com/

Born in 1945, the American artist is known as a pioneer of conceptual and installation art, which began to emerge in the mid-1960s. As a conceptual artists, Kosuth strips art of personal emotion, focusing on the objects as language and meaning. 

Often referencing psychoanalysis and philosophy of language, Kosuth's carpet refers to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. The carpet is in fact named after Wittgenstein's book Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (German: Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik), published in 1956.

Ken Lum is Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Design. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1999), and numerous awards.  A Canadian artist, formerly of Vancouver,  Lum has also worked curatorially,  in China (2005), Africa (2001), as well as the Middle East, as co-curator of the Sharjah Biennial (2005).   A retrospective of his practice originated in 2011 at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The artist has appeared in multiple Biennales around the world, as well as Documenta (2002).

Jonathan Monk, b. 1969, is a UK artist based in Berlin and Rome. Retrospectives of his work have been organized by by Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow (1992 and 1994), Centre d'Art Contemporain in Neuchatel (1997), Museum Kunst Palast in Duesseldorf (2003), Institute of Contemporary Art in London (2005), Kunstverein Hannover (2006), Palais de Tokyo and Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris (2008), Artpace in San Antonio (2009), as well as CAC Malaga, Spain (2012).

David Ostrowski (*1981) lives and works in Cologne. Ostrowski studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Albert Oehlen from 2004–2009. He was awarded the Atelierstipendium by the Kölnischer Kunstverein and the Imhoff-Stiftung, Cologne, in 2012. Recent solo exhibitions include Bei mir geht es in den Keller hoch at Blueproject Foundation, Barcelona (2017), To Lose (a two man show with Michail Pirgelis) at the Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren (2016), The F Word at the ARKEN Museum, Copenhagen, and I want to die forever at Kunstraum Innsbruck (both 2015), as well as How to do things leftat Rubell Family Collection, Miami and Just do it at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (both 2014). Ostrowski’s work has also been included in group exhibitions at the M Woods Museum, Beijing (2015), Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz (2014), and at the ICA, London (2014). Ostrowski’s work also featured in DONT the Music and Art Performance at Halle 9 Kirowwerk, Leipzig (2017).

For his first solo show at Spruth Magers in London, David Ostrowski presents a new body of work that explores the complexities of the color red and its myriad connotations throughout art, literature, and culture. A hue that evokes violence and rage as much as it does amour and passion, Ostrowski incites the symbolic power of red as a source of confrontation, resulting in a sort of experiment in the emotional affects of its different shades. View the full press release here.

As the only non-canvas piece a part of of the exhibition, the two editions of F (Kölner Frauen schlagen Alarm) play a significant role in this experiment. Inspired to create a work that was meant for the floor, the artist explains that “A carpet is above all decorative. Therefore the choice of the motive of the carpet is crucial, it should unsettle.” The motif originated as a painted work, which was then digitized, rendered, and handwoven from 100% New Zealand wool.

Eva Petric, born in 1983 in Slovenia, and growing up on four continents, is one of the very few Slovenian artists to claim prominence on the global art scene. Based in New York City and Vienna, Austria, Eva combines in her art various media, spanning from photography, video, literature, performance and installations to sound and olfactory, to create new spaces and their atmospheres. Over the past decade she has had numerous one-person and group exhibitions throughout the world.

Her Flying Carpet of Shadowed Emotions is based off of her analog black and white photography from her cycle Gr@y Matter – language of shadows, for which she received the prestigious Vordemberge.Gildewart Grant in 2010. In this project, resulting in the 1025 pages book of the artist and her periodic table of shadowed emotions, she explored the ephemeral world of shadows with its communication abilities and paralleled it to the phenomena of emotions. The Flying Carpet of Shadowed Emotions, incorporated very recently into the  Equator Production collection, is based on the shadow image Proud from the group of Confident in her Periodic table of shadowed emotions. According to Eva Petrič, it is »giving some people a home,  and others  adventures...depending on what each person keeps in the shadows of their lives…”

Julião Sarmento was born in 1948 in Lisbon, Portugal and lives and works in Estoril, Portugal. He studied painting and architecture at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts. Throughout his career, Sarmento has worked in a wide range of media – painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, film, video and installation.  He has had numerous one-person and group exhibitionsthroughout the world over the past four decades.

Julião Sarmento represented Portugal at the 46th Venice Biennale (1997).  He was included in Documenta 7 (1982) and 8 (1987);  the Venice Biennale (1980 and 2001) and the São Paulo Biennale in 2002. His work is represented in many public and private collections in North and South America, Europe and Japan.

Julião Sarmento nasceu em Lisboa, em 1948 e vive e trabalha no Estoril. Estudou Pintura e Arquitectura na Escola Superior de Belas Artes de Lisboa.
No decorrer da sua carreira, utilizou uma enorme variedade de meios – pintura, escultura, fotografia, filme, vídeo e instalação e realizou inúmeras exposições individuais e colectivas tanto em Portugal como no estrangeiro.
Julião Sarmento representou Portugal na 46ª Bienal de Veneza (1997). Foi incluído nas Documentas 7 (1982) e 8 (1987); nas Bienais de Veneza de 1980 e 2001 e na Bienal de São Paulo de 2002. O seu trabalho está representado em diversas colecções públicas e privadas na Europa, America do Norte, America do Sul e Japão.

www.juliaosarmento.com

Rosemarie Trockel is a German contemporary artist currently living in Cologne. She began her career in the 1970s, addressing issues of sexuality, feminism, and the human body. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Fondation Beyeler in Rien and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. In 2011 she was awarded the Kaiserring from the city of Goslar, which is one of the best-known prizes for contemporary art in the world. 

Heimo Zobernig is a Professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna from 1977 to 1980.   Retrospectives have taken place in Vienna, Madrid, and Kunsthaus Graz. Other exhibitions include Kunsthalle Zürich (2011), and a shared exhibition between Tate St. Ives, Cornwall, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Modern Art Centre, Lisbon (2011), CAPC- Musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux; Galleria Civica Modena; and Kuntstverein Braunschweig.  Zobernig is the recipient of numerous awards, and is most recently the winner of one of Europe’s top art prizes, the 2016 Roswitha Haftmann Prize

Lore Bert was born 1936 on July 2nd in Germany, grown up in Darmstadt. 1953-57 she studied painting among others at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin at the sculpture Professor Hans Uhlmann.

Characteristically for her artistic work since about 4 decades is the work with paper and space. Since 1982 she created collages, relieves, transparencies and sculptures with Far Eastern papers on paper, canvas and later also on wood. Since 1984 she constructed installations, paper rooms and environments with different materials. Since 1994 she realized environments with neon letters, neon tubes, oriental neon numbers and neon spheres until complete neon spaces. More than 125 environmental installations in Europe, Asia, Africa, Arabic countries, the USA and Mexico have been realised in public space until 2018.

Constructive, geometrical and architectural shapes and ornaments as well as numbers and letters are her form elements. Humanities and sciences, poetic and philosophic writings, astronomy, logical constellations, mathematics, abstract qualities, universal relations and the absolute in its poetic beauty create the mental and spiritual base of her work.

More than 260 solo and group shows in 28 different countries world wide, document the ›Dialogue of Cultures‹ in her work and are published in more than 40 monographs of Museum one man shows.

Several times Lore Bert was presented in Biennials, 1999 she was Honorary Artist at the Biennale of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), 2011 she was Honorary Artist at the Biennale of Izmir (Turkey), 2013 she presented a ›Collateral Event‹ at the Biennale of Venice in the Marciana (St. Mark’s National Library at the Correr Museum).

Her works are in numerous public and private collections. In 2017, she was awarded the medal of the City of Lublin to honour her accomplishments and contribution for the city’s cultural life.

Lore Bert lives and works in Mainz/Germany and Venice/Italy.

Adam Pendleton is a New York-based artist known for work animated by what the artist calls “Black Dada,” a critical articulation of blackness, abstraction, and the avant-garde. Drawing from an archive of language and images, Pendleton makes conceptually rigorous and formally inventive paintings, collages, videos, and installations that insert his work into broader conversations about history and contemporary culture. 

Pendleton has been the subject of solo exhibitions across the United States and abroad, at institutions including Kunstverein, Amsterdam (2009); The Kitchen, New York (2010); Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2017); Baltimore Museum of Art (2017); and MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (2018). His 2016 solo exhibition Becoming Imperceptible was organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, before closing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.

In 2017, Koenig Books published his Black Dada Reader, a collection of documents and essays from various sources that relate to the conceptual framework of Black Dada. The New York Times named the Reader as one of the best art books of 2017. He was recently the subject of a two-person exhibition with Pope.l at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich and is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin (through June 29, 2019). 

His work is held in public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Tate, London, among others.