Whitney Bedford
Reflections on the Anthropocene
Susanne
Vielmetter
Los Angeles
Projects
John Sonsini reviewed in Riot Material
"Sonsini has painted these same men over and over for the past fifty years, and one has the sense they comprehend and appreciate each other deeply. These are not only paintings but images that facilitate a deeply personal exchange between people whose experiences may be very different, but whose humanity is very much the same."
By Eve Wood – 20 January 2020
Pope.L reviewed in the New York Times
"The stealth magic and gonzo tactics in these works invoke people who succeeded in some of the horrific historical narratives: captives who sneaked off slave ships; runaways and maroons; people who acted like ghosts to achieve their own freedom."
By Martha Schwendener – 10 January 2020
Wangechi Mutu featured in the Financial Times
"From Artemisia Gentileschi to Wangechi Mutu, 2019 was a year in which women artists broke through the male canon"
By Jackie Wullschläger – 03 January 2020
Tobias Vielmetter-Diekmann Joins Vielmetter Los Angeles in New Full Time Position as Senior Director of Development and Technology
We are happy to announce that Berlin based Tobias Vielmetter-Diekmann has moved to Los Angeles to join Vielmetter Los Angeles as Senior Director of Development and Technology. Tobias joins the team of Senior Directors Kevin Scholl, Ariel Pittman, and Michael Smoler.
Technology has been an important driver in the gallery’s development from the beginning and Tobias’ role will be to further advance the gallery’s operations by utilizing cutting-edge technological solutions. This will include enhancing our state-of-the-art data management and communications systems, optimizing the gallery’s internal workflow and its digital presence for years to come and thus creating substantial benefits for the gallery’s clients and artists represented.
Most recently, Tobias collaborated with Berlin-based strategic consultant and UX designer Konstantin Haubrok (https://haubrok.co) to redesign the gallery’s brand identity and communication for social media, online platforms and print publications. For the gallery’s move to the new downtown location, they developed a new layout for the gallery webpage, which delivers access from mobile devices and a greatly enhanced opportunity to explore the gallery’s programming, exhibitions, news, and portfolios of artists.
Tobias has been part of the team since the founding of the gallery in 2000, up to now working remotely from Berlin in various capacities including the directorship of the gallery’s former Berlin branch. He developed the gallery’s integrated inventory and address management system and has managed its online presence from the beginning. Tobias has also helped gallery artists with ambitious technology-based productions for exhibitions both at the gallery and in major institutions as well as implementing advanced studio archiving solutions and data management.
Tobias holds a degree in software engineering in addition to a BA in Museum Studies from Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin with graduate studies in Art and Visual History at Humboldt University of Berlin. He has worked as Director at Praz-Delavallade Gallery, Berlin, and assisted the Curator’s Office of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Tobias is the founder of the inventory and contact management software WrkLst (https://wrklst.art), which offers cloud based integrated data management solutions for commercial galleries, artists, collectors, and museums and is being used by a wide range of private and institutional customers worldwide.
Mickalene Thomas featured in Artsy
"This decade put the spotlight on celebrated artists such as Mickalene Thomas, whose unapologetic, “proud black lesbian” gaze has not only given visibility to the women in her life, but has also drawn attention to the way history has removed the presence and importance of black figures in painting."
By Charlotte Jansen – 18 December 2019
Amy Sillman highlighted in Vulture
"As the Museum of Modern Art toyed with removing the stick of modernism from its own keister, artist Amy Sillman went whole hog with the best single gallery of art that didn’t follow modernist strictures, showing the mother ship the jolt possible when you let go of old ideas."
By Jerry Saltz – 12 December 2019
Pope.L highlighted in The Art Newspaper
"A pirate wench with the head of Martin Luther King Jr hangs upside-down from the ceiling, her bosom partially exposed, on the stand of Mitchell-Innes & Nash at Art Basel in Miami Beach. The ghostly figure also leaks a chocolate substance mixed with the paint thinner Floetrol. Altogether, the statue A Vessel in a Vessel in a Vessel and So On (2007), by the artist Pope.L, is a comment on the toxicity of black stereotypes."
07 December 2019
Amy Sillman highlighted in the New York Times
"Titled The Shape of Shape, it was chosen by the New York painter Amy Sillman, who orchestrated a dense installation that compared and contrasted work by around 70 artists. The result was a visual feast that might also be read as a reminder to MoMA’s brainy curators that pleasure is its own form of knowledge."
By Roberta Smith – 06 December 2019
Pope.L reviewed in 4Columns
"Despite his unassuming abjection, or maybe because of the tenacity of similar abjection in our culture, and the fact that he has persistently thrown his arte povera in the face of a market obsessed with luxe surfaces, he has bitten off a huge chunk of gallery reality this fall."
By James Hannaham – 06 December 2019
Mickalene Thomas reviewed in Artsy
"As she shares the spotlight with her friends and peers, Thomas promotes a vision of artmaking that relishes in solidarity and collaboration instead of tired notions of the single lone genius, toiling away in the studio to his sole benefit."
By Alina Cohen – 06 December 2019
Linda Besemer reviewed in What's On Los Angeles
"That their point of departure is a glitch reiterates this impossibility and makes the paintings even more fascinating to behold."
By Jody Zellen – 05 December 2019
Amy Sillman highlighted by Nicole Eisenman in Artforum
"Sillman’s eye is sharp and witty. She makes brilliant, often hilarious connections between objects that may be wildly disparate. As part of the opening gambit at the new MoMA, Sillman chose seventy-one works from the institution’s collection, using shape as her conceptual lodestar. Walk around the small, anxiously stuffed gallery and you will recognize aspects of Sillman’s own work: lumps, lines, cuts, and lots of awkward, bulbous things."
By Nicole Eisenman – December 2019
Wangechi Mutu reviewed in the Financial Times
"Her work has long been preoccupied with hybrid female figures, from eerie tree women made out of earth, bone and other natural materials to her collages, which splice magazines and images from pop culture to combine images of female beauty with ones of horror, distortion and violence."
By Annalisa Quinn – 04 December 2019
Mickalene Thomas named the 2020 Presidential Visiting Fellow in Fine Arts, Yale School of Art
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Mickalene Thomas on her appointment as the 2020 Presidential Visiting Fellow in Fine Arts at the Yale School of Art.
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean Marta Kuzma notes: “We are honored to have Mickalene Thomas join the Yale School of Art faculty throughout 2020 as a black feminist artist whose practice contributes to the evolving conversation around post-blackness, sexuality and power. She is a fierce mentor who has supported emerging queer black artists, through fostering critical conversations and assisting with professional development.”
Genevieve Gaignard at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara
Vielmetter Los Angeles congratulates Genevieve Gaignard on Bloom Projects: Genevieve Gaignard, Outside Looking In, a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (March 5–May 31, 2020). This exhibition is curated by Alexandra Terry, Associate Curator, MCASB.
Wangechi Mutu highlighted in Artforum
"Mutu’s installation ushers in a new era of cultural connectivity for the Met, one that I hope will inspire greater diversity and inclusion in its future offerings."
By Naimi J. Keith – December 2019
Nicole Eisenman featured in ArtNews
"Having long been known best as a painter, Nicole Eisenman has recently become one of our finest sculptors. Her characteristically playful five-part sculpture Sketch for a Fountain, which was first presented at the Skulptur Projekte Münster in 2017, is an ode to leisure and quiet contemplation."
By Claire Selvin – 28 November 2019
Hayv Kahraman profiled on NPR
"She says her artwork is semi-autobiographical: large-scale paintings and sculptures focused on women, migrants and refugees, with references to the Italian Renaissance, Iraqi architectural design and Japanese woodcuts. Most of her work uses repeating images of women."
By Mandalit Del Barco – 3 December 2019
Genevieve Gaignard featured in Fortune magazine
"Genevieve Gaignard, who currently resides in an artist compound in Leimert Park, explores race, class, and femininity through her works. Her wallpaper installation ascends from the sixth to seventh floor and is called “Never Too Much,” a title borrowed from her favorite Luther Vandross tune."
By Danielle Barnabe – 24 November 2019
Pope.L profiled in Art in America
"Pope.L’s ambivalence toward form, his creation of works that generate multiple versions and embodiments that elude art historical classification, is his way of slipping past barriers that divide art and life."
By Aria Dean – 20 November 2019
Mickalene Thomas previewed in the New York Times
"Few artists have had more museum exposure in the past couple of years than Mickalene Thomas, a prolific maker in several media. In 2018 alone, her name was in the title of at least four different shows, and since then her work has been included in many other exhibitions across the country."
By Ted Loos – 24 November 2019
Linda Besemer in Artillery magazine
"Color and black-and-white are employed with equal evocativeness; oddly, you can imagine yourself inside several of the paintings, almost as though they portrayed actual spaces."
By Annabel Osberg – 20 November 2019
Mickalene Thomas featured in the Los Angeles Times
"When Mickalene Thomas was chosen to create art for the Leimert Park station of Metro’s Crenshaw/LAX line, she looked to iconic elements of the community’s landscape — including the Art Deco-era tower of what is now the Vision Theatre — then collaged them. She wanted residents to recognize the images in the piece."
By Dorany Pineda – 11 November 2019
Sadie Benning, Nicole Eisenman, Rodney McMillian, Pope.L, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya at MOCA LA
Sadie Benning, Nicole Eisenman, Rodney McMillian, Pope.L, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya are included in the exhibition The Foundation of the Museum: MOCA's Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles (May 19, 2019 - Jan 27, 2020). The exhibition is organized by Bennett Simpson, Senior Curator, with Rebecca Lowery, Assistant Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.