ALLISON SCHULNIK - NEW YORK CITY

We, at Mike Weiss Gallery, have been working with the editors of Border Crossings Magazine all summer and I am excited to share the result; a beautiful eight page spread. Allison is featured among a handful of bright young artists in this latest issue which focuses on painters and is out on news stands now

Allison Schulnik will be participating in the group exhibition Baker’s Dozen at the Torrance Art Museum

in Torrance, CA beginning September 19th. Baker’s Dozen is an annual survey round-up of 13 artists who have made an impression over the past year and reflect the strengths of contemporary practice as seen at various galleries and spaces throughout Los Angeles.

Allison Schulnik is being featured in the group exhibition Small Is Beautiful at Seomi & Tuus Gallery

in Seoul, Korea. By leaving out large works the show focuses on an ethereal smallness that exudes mystery, beauty, and power. Some of the other artists included in this exhibition are: Damien Hirst, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ed Rushca, Andy Warhol. The show will be on view September 1st through 30th.

The Harris Art Gallery of The University of La Verne

presents Psychic Hearts, a group exhibition of painters from Los Angeles and New York whose work blurs the distinction between memory and fiction inviting the exploration of altered realities. The artists featured are Angela Dufresne, Kristine Moran, Max Presneill and Allison Schulnik. The show runs from September 8th through October 8th.

Other upcoming group shows that Allison Schulnik will be exhibiting in are La Femme at McClain Gallery

in Houston, TX on October 15th through January 2nd, 2010 and Fixed Chaos at Montserrat Gallery

at the Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA on October 30 through January 23, 2010.

For further information contact Helene Necroto, Director 212-691-6899 or helene@mikeweissgallery.com

YIGAL OZERI : DESIRE FOR ANIMA -

Kick off the season with our first show opening Thursday night, September 10th. Please join us at the gallery from 6 - 8PM for the opening of "Desire for Anima" an exhibition of new oil paintings on paper by Yigal Ozeri and click here

to read Robert Ayers' interview with the artist.







520 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
Tel: 212.691.6899
Fax: 212.691.6877
info@mikeweissgallery.com

LIAO YIBAI - NEW YORK

If you have not yet seen the exhibition of Liao Yibai's works at the gallery, please stop by. The show will be on view until August 15th.

Yibai's first experience tasting an American hamburger as a child is one of his most enduring memories. While attending school at the military factory, Yibai and his classmates were taught one English word a day. One day, the word was "hamburger," however, the teacher was not able to explain what it was beyond a symbol of American "decadence". The father of one classmate was going to America, so the students begged him to bring back an actual hamburger. Initially he was reluctant as he was traveling under the auspices of the Chinese government. However, when he returned, he gathered the children, shut all the windows and doors, and clandestinely pulled an envelope stamped "Top Secret" from his briefcase. From inside he pulled a five day old, greasy, American, hamburger. (At the time it took five days to travel between China and the US). Tasting it, the first student screwed up his face and declared it "Gross and Horrible". Nevertheless Yibai and his classmates all tried part of the completely rancid burger.

Growing up, Yibai's favorite dog, Manman would fight every dog it encountered. Recently Yibai visited Hong Kong's Disneyland and waited in line with his daughter to meet Mickey Mouse. For much of his life, Mickey Mouse was taught to be a major example of American culture's decadence. While greeting Mickey Mouse, Yibai noticed the figure threw a long shadow. In "Fighting Shadow", Yibai uses these two figures to represent the futility of fighting and creating enemies by showing Manman stabbing his shadow with a spear. However instead of mirroring his figure, the shadow reflects Mickey Mouse's shape.

Yibai's father worked for 40 years in a confidential military factory as an engineer of long-range cruise missiles. Believing that the USA was imminently preparing to fire on China, the Communists decided that for every one missile the Americans sent to China, they would reciprocate by firing ten missiles back. Yibai small missile sculptures are intended to be sold to the American public, thereby coming full circle from the intention of his father's lifetime work. Instead they serve as an indication that the enmity between the two countries is now over, and confidentiality should be eliminated between them.

Mike Weiss Gallery
520 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
Tel: 212.691.6899
Fax: 212.691.6877

YIGAL OZERI - NEW YORK CITY

Desire for Anima – Yigal Ozeri

Opening Thursday September 10, 2009, 6 – 8pm

September 10 – October 24, 2009

Mike Weiss Gallery presents Desire for Anima, an exhibition of new oil paintings on paper by Israeli artist Yigal Ozeri. Using video and camera work in the initial stages of his process, Ozeri embodies the role of film director, choreographer, and painter. The essence of Ozeri’s paintings are the performative and psychological aspects they take on, ultimately breaking through the veils of perception and illusion into raw, tactile reality itself.

In this newest work, Ozeri gives us a series of portraits of young women together or standing alone in lush fields of grass under expansive skies. The girls are presented partially or fully nude, seemingly engrossed within their idyllic surroundings. Their gaze is only ever turned obliquely towards the viewer, yet their vulnerability and fragility is haunting.

There is an uncanny presence in these images, a spirit or charge of the human presence that saturates the pictures, which is revealed by the detail and tiny brushwork in which Ozeri renders these young women. This presence is the hidden essence of his work, and marks Ozeri’s special insight, and psychological atmosphere of his endeavor. Ozeri seeks to touch the anima, Carl Gustav Jung’s concept of the powerful feminine archetype that resides in the unconscious, the driving force underlying all creative potential. The delicate moods that Ozeri achieves are result of this desire, beginning as a dialogue that has the immediacy of a Polaroid, taking place between the artist and model in an interdisciplinary, collaborative environment reminiscent of Warhol’s Factory.

Ozeri responds to today’s demand for high definition media images, but unlike television or video Ozeri’s art concerns the basic philosophical premises of perception and illusion, and uses the resolution of realism to break into a hidden, sensuous reality beneath. In this his new work he recalls Duchamp’s Etánt Donne; where a carefully staged conceptual installation masquerades as a tromp l’oeil painting. Ozeri’s newest paintings similarly set a complex performative working strategy into the context of realistic figurative painting, yet Ozeri is concerned with the presence of Eros in the natural world, the fragility of our planet; the verdant and elusive feminine space of the anima.

Yigal Ozeri has exhibited extensively throughout Israel, Europe and the United States, and his work can be found in many prominent collections, including Albertina Museum, Vienna; Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Westchester; Kennedy Center for the Arts, Washington DC; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; Nerman Museum, Kansas City; Scheringa Museum of Realist Art, Netherlands; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; and The Jewish Museum, New York. The artist lives and works in New York City.

Mike Weiss Gallery, 520 West 24th Street , New York, NY 10011