Breaking Rules, Embracing Artistic Freedom

British Artist David Risley opens his solo exhibition ‘Madam X’ at Copenhagen’s Outpost Gallery. The exhibit coincides with the launch of the Copenhagen Fashion Week. The artists looks at modern day muses as his subject and has iconised Danish fashion influencers to create works in watercolours on life-size silk canvases. The paintings include mainly of women from early Renaissance frescos of standing saints to the portrait of Madame X. The exhibition will remain open till August 19.
The late legendary painter Pablo Picasso continues to influence new minds and an example of this is the show ‘Picasso, Welcome to America’ currently on at the Jennifer Baahng Gallery in New York. The 10 contemporary artists exhibiting in this show are influenced by Picasso’s experiments with form and perspective – his breaking of traditional and academic rules and much more. While some works presented in the exhibition comment on his darker side, there are many other pieces that engage with the social and political aspects of Picasso’s art. The artists exhibiting appreciate the formal and aesthetic complexity of a constant innovator. Interestingly Picasso was barred from ever visiting the United States as he was a member of the French Communist Party. The participating artists in the show are R.C. Baker, Brandon Ballengée, Romare Bearden, Deborah Buck, Shijia Chen, Billy Copley, Eileen Foti, Björn Meyer-Ebrecht, Jaye Moon, Pablo Picasso, André Raffray, Janet Taylor Pickett and Zhang Hongtu. The exhibition will remain open till September 30.

The Fiona and Sidney Myer gallery in Melbourne showcased interesting works by four artists Kay Abude, Trent Crawford, Nusra Latif Qureshi and Lisa Waup. While Abude’s ‘Smoko Room 2023’ brought alive the performance and installation work of CARGO XXV – LABOUR SOLUTIONS, a fictional crew of 12 working for a fictional cargo company, Crawford’s art ‘Learning to Waltz in the 21st Century: Images from Kate Daw’s The Between Space: Narrative in Contemporary Visual Practice, 2005, 2023’ are 16 framed images of laser engraved silver gelatin prints. Artist Qureshi’s exhibit ‘Gnawing ships idle in the troubled sleeps of Erasmus’ digital prints on fabric, stone, glass and plastic beads, thread, wool and pearls too are thought provoking and are unique in their own way as is Waup’s exhibit on display Mother/Country 2023.