What's On: London

Date
24 November 2011

Three very special shows opening this week in London – Alison Jacques Gallery presents Wandering Comma, Ryan McGinley’s first solo outing in London since his Moonmilk series, twin artists, Gert and Uwe Tobias celebrate their first solo show at Maureen Paley and Michael Wolf presents a beautifully broad photographic triptych installation at Flowers Gallery. London you are spoiling us!

Ryan McGinley: Wandering Comma Alison Jacques Gallery

Ryan McGinley’s latest exhibition is the largest scale he’s yet exhibited in. His work is at times unpredictable and spontaneous, but the photographer has a vision that is almost cinematic, implying that there is a deliberate hand in direction. The simplicity of this is realised by a number of variables he appears to orchestrate effortlessly, such as environment, nakedness, light and the models. “My photographs are about removal” he once said, and he has become synonymous with a limited style palate which in the immediacy of image aggregation, has spawned a succession of imitations but very little of McGinley’s verve. Showing until December 22.
www.itsnicethat.com/whats-on/ryan-mcginley

Gert and Uwe Tobias Maureen Paley

Romanian-born twins, Gert and Uwe Tobias’ collaborative paintings, woodcuts, ceramics and collages are a heady mix of typographic abstractions, concrete characters and vividly coloured, visual quotations. The pieces could be easily translated as a sort of twin-language with repetitive motifs and a shared sense of humour. The pieces are funny (weird) too, the forms – obscure yet figurative – are a folky and familiar and recall some outsider art that’s come to light over the last decade. They’re not outsiders, they’re insiders – and they’re in the Saatchi Gesamtkunstwerk exhibition at the moment – but this solo show is their first in London, and they are certainly a unique and fascinating combination. Showing until January 15.
www.itsnicethat.com/whats-on/gert-and-uwe-tobias

Michael Wolf Flowers Gallery, Kingsland Road

From an epic inspection of architecture to the transient yet intensely intimate portraits through a subway window, Michael Wolf offers us big-small studies of sociological compactness. Aside from the variegated spectrum the artist makes exceptional use of, there are further parallels between the careful attention to surface and fragmentary glimpses of individuals in the collective mass of people. Like the feeling of “peering into a human petri dish,” buildings become frameworks on which to “hang their personalities” while the proximity of inhabitants is rarely realised more fully than the infamous sardine standard of a Tokyo train. Showing until January 7.
www.itsnicethat.com/whats-on/michael-wolf

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Bryony Quinn

Bryony was It’s Nice That’s first ever intern and worked her way up to assistant online editor before moving on to pursue other interests in the summer of 2012.

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