PRESENTS @
PULSE MIAMI DECEMBER 6-9, 2012
THE ICE PALACE 1400 NORTH MIAMI AVENUE MIAMI
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
Shimon Okshteyn (b. 1951, Ukraine. Lives & works in the USA since 1980)
RETRO ‘80s For the first time, Shimon Okshteyn presents to the public a body of work created in late 80’s and until now held in a private collection in France. This presentation, like each one of his exhibitions revives the polemic on the originality of his work. He has been searching for an identity for a long time. He was born and studied art in the Former Soviet Union, traveled to Europe, and found his vocation in the United States where he arrived in 1980 and settled in a small New England town. Soon after his arrival, he made his first trip to New York City walking the streets and visiting museums and galleries. It was an obsessive tête-à-tête with hectic street life of New York bursting with unfamiliar energy, the Chagalls and Matisses casually hanging in commercial galleries and Picasso retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. It was difficult not to be distracted by the spectacle of Madison Avenue storefronts displaying mannequins in business attire of the time with exaggerated shoulder pads and lacquered hair. It was a decisive moment for his future. Indeed, as soon as he returned to New England, Okshteyn started a series of paintings employing appropriation and many other landmark ’80s techniques in an effort to disrupt modernist notions about beauty with something more fragmented and challenging. The work consists of fragments of consumer and mass media paraphernalia incorporated and glued together with personal notes and other materials on canvas or paper. Its heterogeneous elements are linked by images of meticulously rendered beautiful people. If those paintings with spectacle and surface are derived from the Madison Avenue storefronts, they have an aggressive beauty of their own, capturing with joyful expression elements of his new visual world and newly found freedom. Like many other Western artists of his generation (but unlike many other artists who came from Russia pre- and post-Perestroika), Okshteyn loves theatrical effects. This love is reflected in this never before seen paintings. They have an alchemy and substance different from his later black & white work, a substance that let the artist be sweet, luxurious and opulent. Like the entire European Transavantgarde, he is an eclectic who brings emotion back into the process, reunites all myths, present and past, and the themes of different cultures. His reputation is that of an imitator, a devourer, and an “omnivore”. It is true that nothing scares him, no topic, no technique, no style.
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
NY LADY mixed media on paper 88 x 68 inches (220 x 168cm) 1990
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
SAKS 5TH AVENUE Mixed media on canvas 88 x 80 inches (220 x 200 cm) 1990
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
REAR VIEW Mixed media on paper 16 ! x 12 inches (41 x 29 cm) 1988
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
TENDER BUTTONS Mixed media on paper 16 ! x 12 inches (41 x 29 cm) 1988
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
SLIM FIGURE Mixed media on paper 14 x 10 inches (35 x 25 cm) 1989
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
THE WALL FLOWER SERIES Like the Pop artists with whom he shares a number of impulses, Okshteyn has a love/hate relationship with his imagery, especially his people. He could not have so much interest in their detailed life without sympathy, and he could not paint or draw them with the biting, sometimes grotesque irony, without a profound dislike. This leads him to express his views on society focusing on a very specific thin slice of humanity: the alliance of of the quasi Demi-Monde and the quasi Bel-Monde where they dwell - the world of vulgar high fashion, night clubs, cocktail parties and such, where the rich and those pretending to be rich, the sophisticated and those acting as if they were so, the cynical, the vacuous play out their little skits for each other.
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
LUDMILA mixed media on paper 16 x 11 " inches (41 x 29cm) 1988
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
VICTOR mixed media on paper 16 x 11 " inches (41 x 29cm) 1988
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
WALL FLOWER mixed media on paper 16 x 11 " inches (41 x 29cm) 1988
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
MOUSTACHE mixed media on paper 16 x 11 " inches (41 x 29cm) 1988
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
STROLOGY mixed media on paper 16 x 11 " inches (41 x 29cm) 1988
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
C’EST UNE PIPE mixed media on paper 16 x 11 " inches (41 x 29cm) 1986
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
SCARLETT mixed media on paper 14 x 10 " inches (36 x 26cm) 1988
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
483 Driggs Avenue / Brooklyn, NY 11211 / t. 718 599 8775 / f. 718 599 8798 info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com / www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com