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John Berggruen Gallery

October 1 - November 1, 2009

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228 Grant Avenue San Francisco, CA 94108
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Six Artists Julião Sarmento, Negócios Galantes e Pilagens, 1997
John Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition featuring work by Tom Friedman, Kiki Smith, Vik Muniz, Julião Sarmento, Anton Henning and Jonathan Callan on view from October 1-October 31, 2009. Working with such unconventional materials as construction paper, cellophane tape, silicone, partially erased magazine pages, and intricately cut sheets of newspaper, the works in Six Artists share a sense of tactility, experimentation, play and historical referencing. The works can be provocative, Kiki Smith's Ejaculating Snake, deceptive, as with Vik Muniz's Woods in November, after Albert Renger-Patzsch and Back, after Dorothea Lange, from the Pictures of Paper series, which after an initial impression of three-dimensionality reveal themselves to be one-dimensional photographs, or intricate, such as Tom Friedman's precisely cut NYtimes on Xmas. Julião Sarmento's multi-media works Negócios Galantes e Pilagens and Some Attributes of Anxiety invite the viewer to explore the forms hidden beneath the matte surfaces. Anton Henning, with his lush, exuberant ribbons of paint in Interieur No. 398 and Interieur No. 407, revels in the simplicity and beauty of oil on canvas. Jonathan Callan's pinups in Joan Bennett 1932 and Lana Turner are luminous presences, dissolving before the viewer's eyes. All the works have a strong sense of the artist's hand at work, whether through the drawn lines of Sarmento and Kiki Smith, the precise layering of cut paper in Friedman, the curvilinear gestures of Henning's paint, or Muniz and Callan's manipulation of paper through cutting and erasure. Six Artists is running in conjunction with Michael Gregory, Western Constructs.