Kavi Gupta Gallery is pleased to present Misiisto by Chicago-based artist Scott Anderson. Anderson, who is best known for his abundant imagery depicting places that nod to surrealism while utilizing the picture-plane as an adaptable space where fictional narrative shifts its weight with the process of painting. Anderson�s latest body of work blends a world of speculative-fiction, fantasy, and medieval painting imploring a darker palette and tone. Abandoning previous iconography, which referred directly to sci-fi, these new scenes present exotic religious ritual, prophecy, pilgrimage, and indoctrination. Figures such as a cloaked monk and a seemingly dead explorer intermingle with disembodied floating heads, open fires and glowing chalices engaged in a sacrilegious party of excess. At once his paintings present depth and flatness utilizing a fluctuating scale across the picture leaving an unstable idea of space, time or dimension. Misiisto, the title of the exhibition is taken from the failed utopian language of Esparanto�often used by Anderson in his work�that was created to encourage international peace and understanding.
Scott Anderson (b. 1973) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Anderson has exhibited solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica; Chicago Cultural Center; Miami University of Ohio, Oxford, OH. His work has also been included in exhibitions at the Cranbrook Art Museum, MI; Happy Lion, Los Angeles; fa projects, London; P.P.O.W Gallery, NY; and Luckman Gallery, California State University, LA. Anderson�s work was recently acquired by the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and was just featured in Bon Magazine. Additionally, Scott will be participating in the Future Tense: Reshaping the Landscape exhibition at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, NY.
Gallery 2:
Johanna Billing This is how we walk on the moon
Kavi Gupta Gallery is pleased to present Johanna Billing�s most recent film This is how we walk on the moon, 2007, which debuted this past summer at documenta 12. Billing is well known for her films that engage a group of people in a collective experience. Throughout these constructed realities, Billing examines issues of group dynamicism as well as detachment. A feeling of melancholy runs through all of her work and often a narrative emerges though subtle and without dialogue.
This is how we walk on the moon was made in collaboration with the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland. Intrigued by the fact that the population in this town is somewhat detached from the ocean despite its geographical location, Billing invited a group of local musicians to go sailing for the first time. As they set sail into the unknown, a string version of Arthur Russell�s song This is how we walk on the moon begins to underscore the film while throughout the adventure hand written notes poetically punctuate the journey�s developments. The group starts out weary, cautious, and uncertain about what to do as they rely upon the leadership and guidance of the ship�s captain. They soon start to move about the ship as if in a dance, understanding and taking ownership of their individual roles. Sailing through treacherous weather conditions at times, the film ends with the crew returning back to the dock more comfortable and connected to the landscape that surrounds them.
Johanna Billing (b. 1973, J�nk�ping) lives and works in Stockholm. Billing recently exhibited two concurrent solo exhibitions at Museum f�r Gegenwartskunst, Basel and the Dundee Contemporary Art Centre. A 255 page book was recently produced on the occasion of her solo exhibitions titled "Look Behind Us a Blue Sky". Other recent solo exhibitions include projects at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh and Fundacio La Caixa in Barcelona. Billing will also be featuring two of her films in Here We Dance at the Tate Modern, London opening March 14 � May 26.
