"Polemically Small" Art by International Artists at Two California Venues

Written by Harold Shipley Thursday, 01 December 2011 21:19

Beverley Hills, CA.- "Polemically Small" is a multi-venue exhibition curated by Edward Lucie-Smith, featuring 200 small works by artists from the UK, USA, Germany, Russia, Italy and Spain. The exhibition will be on view, split between the Garboushian Gallery (from May 21st until June 25th) and the Torrance Art Museum (May 28th, also until June 25th). This monumental undertaking is the first major curatorial undertaking by Lucie-Smith in North America. Finding the wall space for an encyclopedic survey of the international avant-garde, even if the works are small, is an undertaking in itself, but locating and delivering the work is another story entirely. In fact, the London-based Lucie-Smith went as far as to literally hand-pick and transport some of the works from Berlin himself, such extreme measures however are to be expected from a tireless advocate for contemporary art.

The author of more than a hundred books total, and more than sixty books about art, Lucie-Smith is regarded as one of the most prolific and widely published writers on art today. A number of his books-among them "Movements in Art since 1945" (first published in 1969 and now in its fifth edition) and "Visual Arts of the 20th Century, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Art Today" - are used as standard texts throughout the world. His works have been translated into 14 languages.


Polemically Small is an unprecedented exhibition eschewing what the curator describes as "warehouse art" and the "outmoded rhetoric of size", in favor of a growing trend among artists toward producing smaller works. Explains Lucie-Smith: "What's the polemic? Why small? This exhibition, of small, sometimes very small, works of contemporary art is essentially a rant about the outmoded rhetoric of size that is still embraced by what likes to call itself the avant-garde...Huge art, in Modernist terms, was essentially an invention of America in the 1940s. Very big Abstract Expressionist paintings that proclaimed the new cultural dominance of the United States...This exhibition is meant to do two rather ambitious things within a physically small space. First, to suggest that contemporary art is changing, and changing rather faster than usual. An important part of this change is the rebellion against huge size."

For this exhibition, the Garboushian Gallery will show works by 29 artists, chosen by Lucie-Smith in association with The Future Can Wait. These exquisitely small works span contemporary art genres-including gestural abstraction, figurative painting, photography and collage-and are rendered on a variety of surfaces, both expected and unexpected: canvas, paper, panel, postcard and envelope. The works in Polemically Small are by definition slight in size, however they are powerful, complex and technically profound pieces by some of the world's foremost practitioners. Works will be displayed salon style within the gallery. Artists featured in the Garboushian Gallery selection include, Henny Acloque, Alexander Adams, Iain Andrews, Francisco Benitez, Neil Butler, Genia Chef, Pablo Cristi, Alexander de Cadenet, Heather Eastes, Zavier Ellis, Roni Feldman, Harry Holland, Luke Jackson, Sam Jackson, Reece Jones, Henrietts Labouchere, Linda Lencovic, Jasmine Maddock, Maslen & Mehra, Jost Munster, Max Preseneill, Shani Rhys James, Kim Rugg, Dallas Seitz, Dominic Shepherd, John Stark, Covadonga Valdes, Greta Waller, and Alexander Zakharov. Visit the gallery at ... http://www.garboushian.com/

In their half of the exhibition, the Torrance Art Museum will be hosting works by, Henny Acloque, Alexander Adams, Dale Adcock, Dominic Allan, Jonathan Baldock, Angela Bartram, Paul Becker, Kiera Bennett, Emma Bennett, Shane Bradford, Juliana Cerqueira, Leite Gordon, Cheung, Billy Childish, Oliver Clegg, Sam Dargan, Tom Doran, Heather Eastes, Zavier Ellis, Nadine Feinson, Hester Finch, Grant Foster, Nick Fox, Rose Gibbs, Stuart Gough, Steve Green, Andrea Gregson, David Hancock, Christopher Hanlon, Sarah Hardacre, Andy Harper, Justin Hibbs, Sigrid Holmwood, Paul Hosking, James Howard, Luke Jackson, Sam Jackson, Monica Ursina Jäger, James Jessop, Jasper Joffe, Chris Jones, Reece Jones, Claire de Jong, Rebecca Kressley, Ansel Krut, Peter Lamb, Cathy Lomax, Robert Luzar, Joe Machine, Alastair Mackie, Jasmine Maddock, Robin Mason, Rui Matsunaga, Alan McQuillan, Hugh Mendes, Alexis Milne, Jock Mooney, Kieran Moore, Alex Gene Morrison, Jost Muenster, Nika Neelova, Gavin Nolan, Margaret O'Brien, Tim Parr, Claire Pestaille, Harry Pye, Ged Quinn, Danny Rolph, Kim Rugg, Miho Sato, Stuart Semple, Benjamin Senior, Dominic Shepherd, Jamie Shovlin, John Stark, Nessie Stonebridge, Kate Street, Charles Thomson, Erik Tidemann, Gavin Tremlett, James Unsworth, Covadonga Valdes, Alex Virji, Stephen Walter, Christian Ward (Hidaka), Miranda Whall, Hannah Wooll and Vicky Wright. Visit the museum at ...http://www.torranceartmuseum.com

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