74th Arts, INFLUENCERS: Pioneering Women Shaping Contemporary Art and Design, Milan. October 22nd - November 3rd.
We are delighted to announce our participation in the 74th Arts exhibition INFLUENCERS. To be held in Blindarte, Via Palermo 11, 20121 Milan.
Featuring works by: Gideon Rubin, Anthony Akinbola, Sydney Albertini, Iain Andrews, Cristina Babiloni, David Caballero, Daisy May Collingridge, Mat Collishaw, Claudia Doring-Baez, Antonio Girbes, Abbie Griffiths, Haroun Hayward, Nicolas Lefebvre, Christabel MacGreevy, Nao Matsunaga, Jillian Mayer, Polly Morgan, Blanca Muñoz, Woody De Othello, Carol Rama, Romilly Saumarez Smith, Liliane Tomasko, Faye Toogood.
Galerie Karsten Greve, Art Basel, Paris, Booth C19
October 16 - 20 2024
We are delighted to announce our participation in Art Basel Paris 2024, with Galerie Karsten Greve, to be held from October 16th to 20th, 2024. You will find the gallery at Booth C19 in the re-opened Grand Palais.
Featuring works by Gideon Rubin, John Chamberlain, Jean Dubuffet, Kathleen Jacobs, Jannis Kounellis, Georgia Russell, Joel Shapiro, Pierre Soulages, Louis Soutter and Cy Twombly.
Freud’s 4pm Session: The Freud Museum and Art
Join us for a captivating discussion at the Freud Museum between renowned curator James Putnam and acclaimed painter Gideon Rubin. Gideon will share insights into his 2018 exhibition at the museum, while James reflects on his experience collaborating with a range of artists as part of the museum’s exhibition programme. This engaging talk offers a unique behind-the-scenes look at the creative processes that bring art and Freud’s legacy together.
Freud's 4pm Session: 13 October, 4pm- 5 pm
Frieze Seoul | Maho Kubota Gallery
6 - 9 September 2024
The Armory Show | Anat Ebgi Gallery
5 - 8 September 2024
Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce our participation in The Armory Show 2024. The curated selection of works for our booth include a cross-section of the gallery’s program; it is intergenerational, international, and marries conceptual practices with meticulous workmanship.
Featuring works by Marisa Adesman, Alejandro Cardenas, Amie Dicke, Alec Egan, Tina Girouard, Caleb Hahne Quintana, Greg Ito, Sarah Lee, Karyn Lyons, Jenny Morgan, Jaime Muñoz, Jordan Nassar, Joshua Petker, Gideon Rubin, Sigrid Sandström, Krzysztof Strzelecki, Sarah Ann Weber, Janet Werner, Ming Ying
Anat Ebgi Gallery
Moon Above Water | Galerie Karsten Greve
6 July - 7 September 2024
Galerie Karsten Greve is pleased to present Gideon Rubin’s latest solo exhibition with the gallery. Through a new body of works, the artist once again transports us into his universe inhabited by anonymous figures. Gideon Rubin ́s work mirrors the nature of human memory, emphasizing feelings over facts and simplifying images into blocks of color and tone. Rubin's creative process involves painting multiple canvases simultaneously, allowing conversations to develop among them, and narratives to emerge and transform. Drawing from collective memory sources like books, films, and the internet, his imagery reflects shared human experiences. Recently, he has also begun using his own photographs and live models, returning to direct human representation. Despite their disparate origins, the subjects are linked by the act of choosing: they each contain something that connects with the artist, expressing something of his own perspective on the world. The images are drawn together thematically too, each possessing a palpable sense of the quotidian. Rubin’s subject matter is the stuff of life: the views and vistas glimpsed from a window or on screen; the people lost in conversation or in thought; a day at the beach; the first cherries of the season.
Group Show | Mamoth
28 June - 10 August 2024
More Than A Feeling | DE LEÓN
27 May - 6 July 2024
DE LEÓN is delighted to present our latest exhibition that brings together the work of four international artists, Kaye Donachie, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Gideon Rubin and Grace Weir. The work draws upon the past, whether as in Grace Weir’s film it is the resonance of a 14th century building in Spoleto, Italy where artists have spent their summers since the 1970s; or a line taken from a 19th century poem or a piece of early 20th century writing which Kaye Donachie uses as the starting point for many of her paintings. An old photograph is the point of departure for the work shown by Rose Finn-Kelcey and Gideon Rubin’s paintings draw upon found imagery from archive photographs, magazines or film stills. The title of the show, and the work within it, resonates with this quote from Gideon Rubin, who said, when talking about painting ‘…and sometimes it’s a richer experience, the second thought, second listening, second look, second memory’.
The Anatomy of Seeing | Fox Jensen McCrory | Auckland
14 March - 13 April 2024
Look Again | New Monograph | Published by Anomie
A new monograph on the work of Gideon Rubin, published in 2023 by Anomie, was launched at the two-person exhibition 'Living Memory' in London. The book includes an introduction by Jennifer Higgie, an essay by Matthew Holman, a Q&A between Rubin and his friend and fellow painter Varda Caivano, and a poem by Park Joon. The book is available for purchase through the Anomie website.
Living Memory: Louise Bourgeois, Nicolas Godin & Gideon Rubin
The All Saint's Chapel, Fitzrovia | London | 28 Sept - 27 Oct 2023
UNITY GROUP is pleased to announce an exhibition of Louise Bourgeois and Gideon Rubin in the chapel of All Saints House including a sound intervention by Nicolas Godin of musical duo, AIR. Curated by Beth Greenacre the exhibition will run from 28 September to 27 October and coincide with Frieze London.
The All Saints Chapel was the first purpose-built place of worship for the Society of All Saints Sisters of the Poor; rich in cultural and historic interest the chapel houses a wall painting from 1861 of the Crucifixion with attendant female saints by John Richard Clayton. The fresco, along with the convent’s purposeful history, which accommodated a women’s order, whilst serving as a space for women, provides a poignant context in which to house the work of Bourgeois and Rubin. Though working across different periods and from different perspectives both artists have, or had, a career-long exploration of the human form, particularly women’s bodies, exploring the important role that memory and time plays not only in the creation of art, but also in how we understand ourselves, the world and our surroundings.
The exhibition will include a new series of paintings by Rubin based on stills from 'Madchen in Uniform', the 1931 film by Christa Winsloe, alongside three significant sculptures by Bourgeois from the late 1940’s to the 2000’s. Many of Bourgeois' breakthrough works were from the 1940’s, including those made from scavenged and carved wood that are then cast in bronze, such as Woman with a Secret, which like Brother and Sister from 1949 represent the artist’s interest in the human form and relationships but also in traditional techniques. A third work, Arch of Hysteria from 2000, explores the body in sewn fabric and refers to the work of French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, best known for his pioneering work on ‘hysteria’.
Music acts as a conduit between the psychological and visceral and a brand new audio work by French musician, Nicolas Godin becomes an integral element of the immersive exhibition. In response to the artists practices and to the architecture of the chapel - which historically would have been animated by sound - the soundscape is conceived to create a space that is both physical and reflective.
The exhibition, hosted by Unity Real Estate, is generously supported by Galerie Karsten Greve.
LIVING MEMORY: LOUISE BOURGEOIS, NICOLAS GODIN & GIDEON RUBIN
The All Saint's Chapel, 82-83 Margaret Street, Fitzrovia, London W1W 8LH
28 September - 27 October 2023
www.livingmemoryexhibition.co.uk
Yōga | CASSIUS&Co. | London | Opens 14 September 2023
CASSIUS&Co. presents Yōga, an exhibition of new paintings by Gideon Rubin, opening on 14th September 2023. For this intimate presentation the artist turns the tradition of European oil painting to a subject with which it is largely unfamiliar, the image of Japan, in a focused series of works based on the rich history of postwar Japanese literature and photography.
Born in Tel Aviv and now living and working in London, Rubin is inevitably an outsider in Japan. He uses oil and linen rather than ink and silk, and so in a technical sense can only ever be a painter of yōga, the Japanese school of painting that translates as ‘Western-style’, and which is usually framed in opposition to nihonga, which employs traditionally Japanese techniques.
Unlike the painters of ‘Japonisme’ in late 19th century France, who looked to printmakers like Hokusai and Hiroshige for their flattened surfaces and sense of perspective, Rubin has made paintings that look to Japan more for its literature than its printmaking. In works like Kawabata’s Snow Country, or Tanizaki’s Naomi, it is the sparsity of language, the elimination of description, that gives the writing its elegance. For his Yōga paintings, Rubin has stripped his figures of their faces and removed the most overt signs of place-ness that might have more obviously identified his subject. Flowers here sit only in emptiness, rowing boats on lakes of nothing. Japan appears mostly as sparsity, as gesture, as form reduced almost to its element. This practice of reduction, of austerity and emptiness, is closer to the spirit of nihonga than yōga, though applied with European oils, complicating the supposed polarity of these traditional positions.
Gideon Rubin: Yōga is to be presented at CASSIUS&Co. alongside a bookshelf exhibition of rare Japanese photo-books, some of which provided source material for the paintings in the exhibition.
63 Kinnerton Street
Knightsbridge, London SW1X 8ED
The Flower Show | Purdy Hicks Gallery | London
21 July - 18 September 2023
Whether symbols of love, sensuality, beauty, innocence, diversity, death, transience or the course of life, all of these artists have shared a mutual fascination for the flower. Choosing to render the flower as a subject, their works raise crucial questions about life and art – each with their own method and meaning.
Takashi Arai, Nobuyoshi Araki, Jonathan Delafield Cook, Ralph Fleck, Tom Hammick, Pat Harris, Tif Hunter, Charles Jones, Sandra Kantanen, Kathrin Linkersdorff, Gideon Rubin, Keith Tyson.
Purdy Hicks Gallery
25 Thurloe Street, South Kensington
21 July - 18 September 2023
Gideon Rubin: 13 | Galleria Monica De Cardenas | Milan
18 May - 28 July 2023
Monica De Cardenas Gallery will host an exhibition of new paintings by Gideon Rubin, including a series of 13 works inspired by the 1960s portraits taken by Carlo Mollino (1905 -1973), an architect and designer from Turin who designed the Teatro Regio in his native city with a corset-shaped floor plan.
In this series of works - as in his landscapes or famous solitary figures - Rubin surprises us with the ability to sublimate his subjects to their essence. Even if the facial features are invisible and the surroundings are only hinted at, there is a striking and immediate understanding of the situation and mood; an attitude, hairstyle or detail of a dress reveals something of the atmosphere, identity and intimacy.
Starting mostly from found images - photographs that had to a personal but anonymous past, or images from the web and newspapers - Rubin collects images, creating an iconographic archive for his paintings, a re-appropriation of memories, personal stories, and figurations. His subjects - women and men - evoke a reflection on the relationship between oneself and others, between the individual and the collective. Delicate colors - sandy tones, grayish blues, milky whites – are emphasized by fluid brushstrokes that give life and a sense of permanence to an almost forgotten or suspended moment.
Light reflects and plays on the subjects: as we look at his figures, we are captured by a visual pleasure that invites us to contemplate or complete the missing parts from our own imaginations. Rubin evokes new interpretations of a broader and more complex shared history - however, with multiple implications and an intimate character and sensibility in which to mirror oneself.
MONICA DE CARDENAS
Via Francesco Viganò 4
20124 Milano
+39 02 2901 0068
The Last Day of Summer | Maho Kubota Gallery, Tokyo |
7 April - 20 May 2023
Maho Kubota Gallery is pleased to present The Last Day of Summer, a solo exhibition by Gideon Rubin.
In his paintings rendered on linen canvas, light stops over the subject. Because Gideon Rubin’s paintings are created using a very limited painterly language, viewers initially take in the entire piece without being distracted by details, but the eye unconsciously seeks out the light. While viewers may hope to put off the point at which their line of sight slips into the folds of shadow, it is utterly impossible for them to resist the invitation to the visual pleasure that Rubin’s paintings emit.
It is easy to see the influence of the vintage photos that Rubin says he used to collect. Even when his art depicts the present, it seems to be clearly indicating a fate that can never be rendered with paint (because the subject has already become a thing of the past by the time the artist uses his brush). Viewing a painting of a person rendered with minimal elements—the image of a person in some unknown country doing something unknown, having lived some unknown life—allows viewers to superimpose their own memories onto the scene, and reservedly let their feelings slide in too. Within this simple, pure, and young world, which is somehow incomplete, somehow missing something, silently arises a universal mythology that excludes no one at all.
Gideon Rubin’s latest work takes inspiration from The Last Day of Summer—an icon of Polish cinema directed by Tadeusz Konwicki. Taking stills from the film as the starting point, Rubin has produced a new body of work; reinterpreting the quiet, contemplative scenes in paint—the black & white frames transformed into painterly technicolor.
Understated and poetic, Konwicki’s The Last Day of Summer presents an ambiguous and open-ended scene, much like those in Rubin’s own work, where extraneous details are edited and erased, leaving only what is essential. As film critic Robert Birkholc describes in his post about the film, “We don’t know the names of the heroes, nor their pasts—the dialogues are sparse and the plot exists only partially—but from their gestures, glances and fragmentary sentences we may glean some information.”(”The Last Day of Summer – Tadeusz Konwicki” by Robert Birkholc).
The Last Day of Summer
2-4-7- Jingumae Shibuya-ku Tokyo Japan
Raymond Chandler 'Farewell, My Lovely' & Anne Tyler 'French Braid'
Works by Gideon Rubin can be found on two book covers published with Penguin Random House: a re-print of Raymond Chandler's 'Farewell, My Lovely' and the latest novel by New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anne Tyler - 'French Braid'.
TEFAF Maastricht | Galerie Karsten Greve | 11 - 19 March January 2023
Galerie Karsten Greve will participate in TEFAF Maastricht 2023. For more details please visit TEFAF.
ART SG, Singapore | Galerie Karsten Greve | 11 - 15 January 2023
Galerie Karsten Greve will participate in the first edition of Art SG in Singapore with a presentation of works by Pierrette Bloch, Louise Bourgeois, Ding Yi, Jean Dubuffet, Leiko Ikemura, Joan Miro, Giorgio Morandi, Claire Morgan, Gideon Rubin, Georgia Russell, Joel Shapiro, Qui Shihua and Pierre Soulages.
Galerie Karsten Greve can be found in Booth BC06, 11 - 15 January 2023.
Art SG, Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore
The Cabin LA Presents: A Curated Flashback | The Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, Texas | 11 February - 21 May 2023
The Green Family Art Foundation presents a group show in collaboration with The Cabin LA. 'A Curated Flashback' includes work by Gideon Rubin, Amoako Boafo, as well as many others who have participated in The Cabin LA's artist residency programme.
The Green Family Art Foundation
2111 Flora St, Suite 110, Dallas, TX 75201
30 Years | Monica De Cardenas, Milan | 14 Jan - 11 March 2023
MONICA DE CARDENAS
30 YEARS
30 Years is an exhibition to celebrate three decades of history of the gallery opened by Monica De Cardenas on Via Francesco Viganò in Milan, at a time when locals and tourists alike saw the neighborhood of Porta Nuova and the Garibaldi station as the outskirts of town. Today this urban area has become central, a true symbol of the city. The works of art are displayed and understood in a space that closely resembles a private home.
Showing international stars and young talents alike, with a passion for conceptual photography and figurative painting, for clear, rigorous but also poetic images: these have been the guidelines of the gallery’s choices from the outset. In early 1993, the space hosted the first solo exhibition in Italy by Thomas Struth, one of the leading figures of the new German - and then worldwide - photography, with works made specifically for the occasion, belonging to two of the artist’s main lines of research: street photography – in Milan, in this case – and large color images of interiors of Italian museums. One year later came the first exhibition by Markus Raetz, bringing the Anamorphoses to Italy for the first time, his famous sculptures that take on different appearances according to the vantage point we look at them.
In 1997, when the great American master was still relatively unknown in Europe, the gallery hosted the first of a series of exhibition by Alex Katz, who is now in the spotlight – at the age of 95 – at the Guggenheim in New York, with an extraordinary retrospective lasting until 20 February 2023.
In the early 2000s, in contrast with the mainstream trend of the time, the gallery focused even more on figurative painting, presenting exhibitions by artists such as Peter Doig, Chantal Joffe and Benjamin Senior.
The extensive group exhibition includes work from: Maurizio Arcangeli - Stephan Balkenhol - Lupo Borgonovo - Valerio Carrubba - Chung Eun-Mo - Philip Lorca di Corcia - Rä di Martino - Gianluca Di Pasquale - Peter Doig - Linda Fregni Nagler - Francesca Gabbiani - Silvia Gertsch - Craigie Horsfield - Chantal Joffe - Alex Katz - Khalif Kelly - Juul Kraijer - Claudia Losi - Lutz & Guggisberg - Esko Mannikko - Julian Opie - Gabriel Orozco - Barbara Probst - Markus Raetz - Gideon Rubin - Jean-Frédéric Schnyder - Ivan Seal - Benjamin Senior - Hannah Starkey - John Stezaker - Christine Streuli - Thomas Struth - Federico Tosi - Franco Vimercati.
MONICA DE CARDENAS
Via Francesco Viganò 4
20124 Milano / +39 02 2901 0068
Art Cologne | Galerie Karsten Greve | 16 - 21 November 2022
Gideon Rubin will be shown as part of the presentation by Galerie Karsten Greve at Art Cologne 2022. Rubin will show alongside Louise Bourgeois, Lucio Fontana, Leiko Ikemura, Gotthard Graubner, Raul Illarramendi, Jannis Kounellis, Loic Le Groumellec, Young-Jae Lee, Claire Morgan, Georgia Russell, Qiu Shihua, David Smith and Pierre Soulages.
Art Cologne / Galerie Karsten Greve Booth A 109
16 - 21 November 2022
K11 Art Foundation | Shanghai | 12 November - 25 December 2022
chi K11 Art Museum Shanghai is pleased to present Gideon Rubin’s solo exhibition “A Summer’s Tale” in collaboration with HdM GALLERY. The artist's first solo exhibition in Shanghai, ‘A Summer’s Tale’ brings together a group of 18 paintings, mostly new works, curated by Cici Xiang. The exhibition will run from 12 November to 25 December 2022.
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Saint Jerome (347-420 AD) speculated that the soul of a person, its benevolence or otherwise, is reflected on their face - exclaiming that 'The Face is the Mirror of the Mind’. In this belief, Saint Jerome followed the teachings of Socrates, who had come to a similar conclusion six centuries earlier. By blurring the facial features of the people he depicts, Gideon Rubin takes the audience on an entirely different path, encouraging them to reassemble the subjects’ soul through their pose, attitude, dress and hair.
The exhibition acts as an introduction to the themes and narratives that occupy the artist. Many of the paintings explore adolescence, the short yet formative period between childhood and adulthood - a fleeting moment in time that Rubin captures in oil on canvas. Other themes that present themselves throughout the exhibition, and in Rubin’s work more generally, include ideas of history and memory, identity and anonymity.
Photography is the source for Rubin’s paintings, who uses anonymous photographs to find his subjects. Taken from vintage photo albums and the internet, the unidentified photographs are scattered about the artist’s studio; they form tall stacks on the desk and a thick carpet on the floor, whilst some are taped to the wall for closer inspection. Often it is films that present themselves as source material; for this exhibition, scenes from films by Eric Rohmer and Andrei Tarkovsky are reproduced on canvas and linen.
Rather than a faithful reproduction, Rubin offers an interpretation of the original; through composition and editing he makes the image his own, removing superfluous details until only the essence remains. Through this process the image becomes less specific - it is no longer a painting of a photograph, instead, through the process of painting it achieves a life of its own, it acquires its own identity.
For this exhibition Rubin collaborated with curator Cici Xiang, who wrote an accompanying text that weaves a narrative of a young life. The exhibition follows a fictional teenage life, offering an open-ended story of youth and adolescence. Speaking of the work in the exhibition, Rubin explains:
“I made this group of paintings thinking of childhood, of adolescence. A first kiss; a strand of hair; an evocative scent. Paintings brought together like musical notes, to reveal a hidden narrative.
I want to make work that speaks to our younger selves, images that play with memory. I wanted them to be soft and poetic - an antidote to our daily high-speed routines.
I return over and over to the subject of adolescence in my work - perhaps it’s the emotional subtext, or the journey of sexual discovery. It is when we are formed, and we carry it wherever we go.”
K11 Art Foundation
300 Middle Huaihai Road
Huangpu, Shanghai
Here and Elsewhere | Purdy Hicks Gallery | London
8 September - 1 October 2022
Coalescing around ideas of portraiture and abstraction, history and memory, revealing and concealing - the artists in this exhibition portray the (female) figure in ways that are discrete and indirect, delicate and tender.
An exploration of the relationship between painting and photography, the exhibition brings together work by the photographers Céline Bodin, Susan Derges, Anni Leppälä, Diana Matar, Jorma Puranen and Bettina von Zwehl - and the painter, Gideon Rubin, whose work has a different yet equally vital relationship to photography, using purely photographic source material as the basis for his painted portraits.
Moving seamlessly between painting, photography, and sculpture, and incorporating high culture and mass media, each artist blurs the boundary between different forms of image-making.
Creating moments of intimacy, the images explore the relationship between the artist and their subject. Delicately composed and framed with poise, the exhibition will present the painterly gesture caught on film, and the photographic snapshot recreated in paint.
Less a document and more an evocation - for these artists photography moves beyond the factual/documentarian, and towards the atmospheric. There is a suggestion of something beyond the frame, just out of sight... Rather than fully ‘exposing’ the subject, the artist withholds and withdraws, provoking questions about what is known, unknown and, ultimately, unknowable.
A fragment of time, a moment glimpsed, these images are of the distant and the not-so-distant past, the subject is both here and elsewhere.
Purdy Hicks Gallery
25 Thurloe Street
South Kensington
London SW7 2LQ
Sydney Contemporary | Fox Jensen Gallery | 8 - 11 Sept 2022
FOX JENSEN & FOX JENSEN MCCRORY are delighted to be participating “in person” at Sydney Contemporary 2022.
The galleries will be at Booth F15, presenting works from Australia and beyond... including new paintings by Gideon Rubin (UK), Mark Francis (UK), Liat Yossifor (USA), Jan Albers (GER), Imi Knoebel (GER), Winston Roeth (USA), Jenny Topfer (AUS), Tomislav Nikolic (AUS), Aida Tomescu (AUS), Matthew Allen (AUS) & Todd Hunter (AUS).
Artists Talk | Galerie Karsten Greve | Cologne | 2 September 2022
Gideon Rubin in conversation with Anahita Vessier and Dr. Nady Mirian
The Conversation takes place alongside the exhibition opening of 'Looking Away' at Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne.
Anahita Vessier is an art consultant, art advisor, curator and founder of the art platform Anahita's Eye. She is also actively promoting the contemporary Iranian art scene through exhibitions and at art fairs, and, additionally, she develops dialogues and projects between artists and luxury brands (Guerlain, Hermès, Dior, etc.) in the form of exhibitions, installations and limited editions.
Dr. Nady Mirian has been teaching as a lecturer at the University of Cologne since 2016 with a focus on the history of discourse (especially the history of psychiatry), resilience of marginalized groups as well as (cyber)bullying in social discourse (sociocultural causes). She is also a psychotherapist for children and adolescents with a clinical focus on depression, anxiety disorders and schizophrenia in adolescence.
The conversation will take place in the Cologne gallery at 5 pm on Friday 2nd September 2022
Looking Away | Galerie Karsten Greve | Cologne, Germany
2 September - 12 November 2022
To open the 2022 autumn season, Galerie Karsten Greve is delighted to launch Looking Away, a solo exhibition featuring new work by Gideon Rubin. This is Gideon's eighth one-man show with Galerie Karsten Greve, which has represented and presented the artist for more than the past ten years. Twenty-five works in oil on natural linen will be on display, coming directly from Gideon’s London studio, and giving an insight into the artist's current creative phase.
There is a focus on two series of paintings with a total of ten works, each showing the same motif: the back view of a young woman in a purple dress (Purple Dress, 2022), and of a young man in a blue shirt (Blue Shirt, 2022). The isolated figures face away from the viewer, and are shown in undefined places. It is the romantic Rückenfigur, or figure seen from behind, that seems to be revived in Gideon Rubin’s new work. The Rückenfigur with his or her typical gaze into an indefinite distance serves to convey the depth of space on the two-dimensional picture surface so as to allow the viewer to identify with the figure looking into the picture space.
Looking Away, the title of the exhibition, describes situations in which people ostentatiously look the other way. Showing protagonists from the back is ambiguous: on the one hand, it illustrates strong emotions such as contempt, sadness, fear, disgust, and thoughtfulness. On the other hand, in early photography as well as in fashion photography, a figure, or nude, seen from the back is an artistic exploration of the dialectic of revealing and hiding. The two series, Purple Dress and Blue Shirt, evoke both photography's ability to reproduce and the process of remembering. Looked at from a distance, the images of the two series appear similar, however, their differences become clear when viewed up close. This process corresponds to an imitation of memory, which is slightly altered each time one returns to an item in one's memory. In his most recent work, Gideon more frequently works in series; he repeats the same motif over and over again, creating the same image at different scales as if it were a photograph in different formats. Gideon Rubin describes this procedure as "exercises in seeing."
His paintings are inspired by photographs from old family albums found at flea markets, in daily newspapers, or illustrated magazines. The complexity of historical hairstyle trends, pictures of celebrities, pornography as well as portrait and history painting become visual subjects moved to the center of artistic interest. Gideon sketches his subjects with a few brushstrokes which he applies with confidence and using tonal colors – mostly sandy hues; to emphasize details he also uses a clear bright red. As a result of the blurring of identifying details and the erasure of physiognomic features, onlookers associate the protagonists in the picture with their own memories and perceptions, especially since the restrained gestures, postures, and positions of the characters aim at a déjà-vu effect, encouraging those who see them to complete the picture in their own way.
Galerie Karsten Greve
Drususgasse 1-5
Cologne 50667
Germany
Red Sea | Fox Jensen McCrory | Auckland | 16 June 2022
Fox Jensen McCrory presents 'Red Sea' a group show that brings together works by Gideon Rubin, Aida Tomescu, Tomislav Nikolic, Liat Yossoifor and Hanns Kunitzberger. Opening on 16th June 2022, Red Sea will be on view at:
Fox Jensen McCrory
10 Putiki Street, Grey Lynn
Auckland 1021, New Zealand
ARTEFIERA 2022 | Galleria Monica De Cardenas | Bologna
13 - 15 May 2022
New paintings by Gideon Rubin will be on display at ARTEFIERA in Bologna. Exhibiting with Galleria Monica De Cardenas, the art fair will welcome visitors from 13 - 15 May 2022.
For further information, please visit: www.artefiera.it
Break in Emergency 3 | Group Exhibition and Fundraiser by 4BYSIX
125 New Bond Street | 1 & 2nd April
4BYSIX will host a group exhibition 'Break in Emergency 3'. Al sales will directly support the mission of 4BYSIX - helping disadvantaged people through creative projects. The group exhibition will include specially commissioned works by artists including: Ana Aleksov, Andre Saraiva, Anthony Lister, Chen Wei Ting, David Haye, Dot Pigeon, Eva Berlin, Freddie Peacock, Geoff Walker, George Vicary, Gideon Rubin, Isaac Andrews, Johan Van Mullem, Jon Burgerman, Jonathan Edelhuber, Keene, Lil Kool, Mike Irak, Nantoka, Richie Culver, Sara Berman, Slawn, Wayne Horse, Willem Hoeffnagel, Yu Nagaba and Zhu Chen-Wei.
Break in Emergency
125 New Bond Street, London W1S 1DY
1 & 2nd April 2022
Unmasked | Laurie M. Tisch Gallery | New York
17 March - 5 June 2022
Group exhibition curated by Udi Urman, including work by artists Guy Aon, Elinor Carucci, Omri Goren, Marie Hudelot, Iddo Markus, Michal Pollack, Gideon Rubin, Julie Weitz. 'Unmasked' explores the ancient, paradoxical relationship between artists and masks. The eight artists featured in the exhibit approach the concept of masking in ways unique to their cultures and identities. The historical context of masks will also be explored. Masks have been used throughout human history, intertwining traditions and collective identities, including during the Middle Ages, and when Jewish communities began celebrating Purim by wearing masks. In more abstract ways, Jewish people have often worn “masks” and disguised their identities, by changing their last names or physical appearances to avoid life-threatening antisemitism.
The use of masks in contemporary society will also be explored: masks have evolved from physical objects into digital filters flooding social media platforms. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, masks have become a major part of everyday life, saving lives and helping keep communities safe. They have also become a political symbol, bringing to the surface deep social tensions.
The Laurie M. Tisch Gallery | 334 Amsterdam Avenue at 76th Street
Drop in—no reservations necessary
Exhibition Review: Red Boys and Green Girls | San Francisco Examiner
Max Blue has written a review of Gideon's solo exhibition 'Red Boys and Green Girls' at Hosfelt Gallery, titled "Gideon Rubin Show is like a Haunted House of Images Real and Imagined". An extract from the article is below - or click here to read the full piece.
"Rubin’s transition away from realist painting was inspired by the discovery of a collection of Victorian photo albums at a bookshop in Hampstead in 2006. Funny, since photographs are usually equated with realism. But it was the gaps in Rubin’s own personal history — an absence of photographic records predating his extended family’s emigration from Poland to Israel in the 1930s — that inspired him. He began painting from old photographs, and sometimes on top of them, leaving the faces blank both to homage lost records and to leave room for viewers to insert their own narratives.
The source material for Rubin’s more recent pictures comes from many places, but it’s always photographic. For this show, Rubin draws on internet images, vintage magazines and film stills. As Gabriel Coxhead points out in his essay “Blurred Visions,” “In Rubin’s paintings, photography itself is the subject,” rather than the people those photographs depict. Either way, what Rubin’s really playing with is memory."
Artist Talk and Virtual Tour | Hosfelt Gallery | 10 February 2022
In Conversation: Gideon Rubin & Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett
Thursday 10th February 2022, 12pm Pacific-Time
Tune in for a virtual tour of Gideon Rubin's current exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery and a conversation between the artist and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Thursday February 10 at 12pm PT.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University. She is currently Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, in Warsaw. Her books include 'Image before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939', and 'They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust'.
She received honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, University of Haifa, and Indiana University and was decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for her contribution to POLIN Museum. She was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and awarded the Dan David Prize.
Register for the talk and virtual tour here.
Art Fair Tokyo | Maho Kubota | 10 - 13 March 2022
Work by Gideon Rubin will be on display at Art Fair Tokyo 2022, presented by Maho Kubota Gallery. The fair will take place at the Tokyo International Forum in mid-March, and Gideon's work will be presented alongside a number of other artists from the Maho Kubota roster.
Art Fair Tokyo
Tokyo International Forum
3 Chrome-5-1 Marunouchi Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo-to 100-0005 Japan
Red Boys and Green Girls | Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco
27 January - 19 February 2022
The paintings in Gideon Rubin’s seventh solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery reflect the zeitgeist of our COVID-defined world. Solitary figures, frequently turned away from the viewer, stand immobilized or move dreamily in blurry, indefinite spaces. Isolated and dislocated, the scenes evoke a realm of introspection and become meditations on the individual’s relationship to humanity.
Rubin interprets anonymous images he has mined from the internet, vintage magazines, or scenes from French New Wave Cinema. Like the film director Eric Rohmer, to whose work some of these images refer, he’s more interested in the emotional state of his subjects, than what they’re actually doing.
The show takes its title from two series of paintings, each group of the same subject matter: a boy in a red shirt and a young woman wearing a green dress. In each set, it’s the same clothing and same pose. Only the scale of the paintings shifts. "What surprised me, as I made them, was how different each felt. Almost as if it was the same green dress but worn by a different person," says Rubin.
Any series is an artist’s exploration of a subject matter that fascinates them. A series inevitably illustrates that the same thing, observed and interpreted repeatedly and at different times, will yield different conclusions. These works by Rubin are additionally meditations on the practice of painting, demonstrating how a few, sure brushstrokes can be used to suggest light falling on form, defining a mental state or conjuring a mood. Repeatedly painting the same figure with subtle variations, Rubin speaks to the fact that no one is the same person from moment to moment, and none of us is the same person today that we were in the autumn of 2019.
Hosfelt Gallery
Utah Street, San Francisco CA 94103
27 January - 19 February 2022
Vestoj Issue 10 | 'On Doubt' | November 2021
Gideon Rubin features in Issue 10 of Vestoj. The issue focuses on 'Doubt', examining the kind of doubt that can cripple us and the kind of doubt that propels us forward. Texts by Irwin Shaw, Kate Chopin, Christina Moon, Philippa Snow, Renate Stauss, Jonathan Michael Square and Merel Lefevere. Images from Philippe Braquenier, Orfeo Tagiuri, Tiane Doan an Champassak, Gideon Rubin and Michelangelo Caravaggio.
G & G Magazine | Gideon Rubin featured in Interior by Sandra Benhamou
Sexy Xmas | 20 November - 24 December | The Lodge, Los Angeles
It is that time of the year again and The Lodge is very excited for SEXY XMAS V opening on Saturday, 20th November, 2021.
As usual we have a marvelous ensemble of artists - Sloane Angell, Whitney Bedford, Brian Calvin, Cayce Cole, Edward Cushenberry, Megan Fenton's Waste Vase, Francesca Gabbiani, Michael Harnish, Simon Haas, Ricardo Harris-Fuentes, Natalie Krim, Emily Lynch, Brad Phillips, Gideon Rubin, Ed Ruscha, Jake Sheiner, Small Scale LA, Johnny Smith, Nick Taggart, Jimmy Thompson … and collaborations between Nils Benson & Senon Williams, Simon Haas & Kevin Willis and Jenny Rask & Alice Lodge. With window installation designed by Dry Clean Only.
Every year I write about Sexy Xmas and try and explain it to visitors. It started off as a simple idea that popped into my head out of a reaction to my melancholia during the Holiday Season. So I thought I was being naughty by coming up with the theme of Sexy Xmas. But every year that theme/subject becomes more complex as it whirls around in my head. The world has changed since the first Sexy Xmas in 2015. The #MeTooMovement, a microscope on sexual identity, isolation and economic divide because of COVID-19, and a massive flux in world politics, in my opinion some revolutionary and some horrifyingly regressive.
The Lodge
1024 1/8 N Western Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90029
RLWindow | High Line, New York | 11 November - 22 December
Alongside the solo exhibition 'The Sun Also Rises' at Ryan Lee Gallery, Gideon Rubin will also exhibit in their sister space, RLWindow. Viewed from Manhattan's High Line is a large-scale reproduction of Rubin's painting 'Red Hair Pin' (2020). The work will be on display until 22 December 2021.
'Nurse' enters the Permanent Collection of Palazzi Dell'Arte Rimini | Italy
'Nurse' (2020) has entered the permanent collection of the Palazzi Dell'Arte Rimini, donated by Collezione Fondazione San Patrignano. Gideon's work will be on view alongside other artists in the permanent collection, including: Vanessa Beecroft, Jake and Dinos Chapman, George Condo, Pual Mccarthy, Shilpa Gupta, Mona Hatoum, Carsten Holler, William Kentridge, Agnes Martin, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Julian Schnabel, Francesco Vezzoli and Zhang Xiaogang.
PART : Palazzi Dell'Arte Rimini
Piazza Cavour 26, 47921 Rimini, Italy
Q&A with Gideon Rubin | The Montreal Review | October 2021
Interviewed by The Montreal Review, Gideon discusses his inspirations and the work of Leonard Cohen, touching on the role of social media and his life as an artist. To read the full article, please click here.
Progetto Genesi: Art & Human Rights | Curated by Ilaria Bernardi
Villa Panza di Biumo, Varese, Italy
‘Progetto Genesi. Art and Human Rights’ curated by Ilaria Bernardi and promoted by Associazione Genesi is a cross-disciplinary and inclusive project lasting an entire year that combines exhibition and educational activities for the purpose of offering a permanent education on the topic of human rights. The exhibition presents for the first time ever to the public the contemporary artworks in the Collezione Genesi, which reflects on the urgent, complex, and often dramatic cultural, environmental, social, and political issues of our day and age.
In Assisi the exhibition opens on December 18, 2021, International Migrants Day. At the Museo Diocesano e Cripta di San Rufino the exhibition unfolds in inside and along the corridors outside the cloisters, where temporary walls host the six main theme-based sections, identified in the Collezione Genesi, through which the works convey this message linked to the defense of human rights: ‘The Color of a Person’s Skin, The Female Condition, The Memory of a People, The Safeguarding of the Environment, Victims of Power, Multicultural Identity’.
The Collezione Genesi includes numerous works that refer to the victims of violence that are tolerated or perpetrated in some areas of the world by governments, on the one hand, and to the female condition, on the other. Furthermore, for the past two years the Museo Diocesano has been a promoter of fair trade to promote social and economic justice respecting basic human rights. In addition to the exhibition, also an essential part of ‘Progetto Genesi’ are the educational activities distributed in an intense program of meetings, guided tours and workshops, both on-site and online, liked to the exhibition, and by a cycle of twelve online conversations in collaboration with the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. These activities will continue for the entire duration of ‘Progetto Genesi’ that is until September 2022.
The exhibition includes work by Gideon Rubin, alongside Henry Taylor, Zanele Muholi, Paulo Nazareth, Shirin Neshat, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Alredo Jaar, JR - and others.
Progetto Genesi: Arte e Diritti Umani
21 September 2021- 21 September 2022
The Sun Also Rises | RyanLee Gallery | New York | 11 Nov - 22 Dec 2021
RyanLee is pleased to announce The Sun Also Rises, the gallery’s first exhibition of work by Gideon Rubin.
Known for painting faceless figures and ambiguous landscapes that are familiar yet fugitive, Rubin uses vintage and found photographs as the basis for his paintings, reimagining the context surrounding these memory fragments, drawing the viewer into recognisable scenes that refuse resolution and leave the narrative and its protagonists deliberately nebulous. Through the application and erasure of paint, Rubin says, “details are lost, but a new identity appears.”
Rubin considers himself a portrait painter, but his paintings are less about an individual sitter than his perception of the world. He turns his attention to pops of strategically placed colour and points of contact: “I focus on the edges, where colours, shapes and tones touch each other,” he says. In works such as Blue Jeans (2021) and White Shirt (2021) Rubin’s lone figures seem lost in moments of contemplation, but the absence of facial features obscures access to definitive meaning. Rubin confesses that he enjoys cultivating this deliberate incompleteness; the resulting images are painterly snapshots of moments in time that appear both commonplace and particular.
All of the paintings in The Sun Also Rises were produced during the height of the pandemic in London, and the landscape images in particular provided Rubin with “a comforting sense of escapism,” he said. In Boat (2020) and Untitled (2021) Rubin’s solitary figures seem to stare out at the nature that surrounds them—the blue of a body of water, and wild forest greenery, respectively. Though each of these landscapes is abstracted—into loose layers of blue and energetic bursts of green—and neither reveals itself as a specific location, they are meditations on the role of place in Rubin’s own practice. “Over the past year or two, we all had to reflect on our relationship towards our environment – the landscape, or lack thereof. This relationship, between experience and the memory of it, between painting a boat and going out on a boat, became the backdrop to a very productive artistic isolation.”
515 West 26th Street
New York NY10001
FIAC | Galerie Karsten Greve | 21-24 October 2021
Paintings by Gideon Rubin will be on display as part of Galerie Karsten Greve's booth at FIAC.
FIAC is held at the Grand Palais Ephemere, Paris, from 21-24 October 2021, with virtual viewing rooms available from 21-25 October.
MiArt | Galleria Monica De Cardenas | 17 - 19 September 2021
Walk-Through at Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv
Friday 10th September 2021
In light of the changing restrictions in Israel, Gideon Rubin will be present at Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv for a walk-through and an informal talk at his two-person exhibition 'Hannah | Rubin'
Gideon Rubin, artist's walk-through at Alon Segev Gallery
Friday 10th September, 12-4pm
7 HaManoa St. Tel-Aviv 6816831
Hannah / Rubin | Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv |
2 September - 29 October 2021
A two-person show exhibiting the works of Duncan Hannah (Brooklyn, NY) and Gideon Rubin (London, UK)
Alon Segev Gallery is honored to announce the opening of a two-person show of American artist, Duncan Hannah (born Minnesota, 1952) and Gideon Rubin (born Israel, 1973).
Two artists, friends who are yet to meet in person, who share a common interest in the past – with a particular attraction to the visual imagery of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. This shared interest is the common ground for their first collaboration, which follows a long overseas online friendship.
Hannah / Rubin
Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv
Opening Reception: Thursday, 2 September 2021, 19:30-22:00
Closing Date: Friday, 29 October 2021
Art Fix Collaboration | Limited Edition Print | July 2021
Art Fix will launch a limited edition print in collaboration with Gideon Rubin. Available in an edition of 25, the print is part of 'Art Fix Collect'. Ahead of the project, Art Fix paid Gideon a visit in his studio, which was documented in the video above. The hand-signed limited edition print features the 2017 painting 'Untitled', and will launch through Art Fix on July 18th 2021.
Emotional Fragments: Chen Han x Gideon Rubin | HdM Beijing | 26 June - 14 August 2021
HdM Gallery, Beijing will present a two-person show titled 'Emotional Fragments' with paintings by Gideon Rubin and Chen Han. On display from 26 June until 14 August 2021, for further information please refer to the HdM website.
NOMAD | St Moritz, Switzerland | 8 - 11 July 2021
Gideon will be included in the 2021 edition of NOMAD St. Moritz. The art fair runs alongside his solo exhibition 'Swing' at Galerie Karsten Greve, St. Moritz. Curated by Kenny Schachter, NOMAD will exhibit two paintings as part of a group show.
Swing | Galerie Karsten Greve | St Moritz, Switzerland
9 July - 28 August 2021
Galerie Karsten Greve is delighted to show at St. Moritz the second solo exhibition of Gideon Rubin, in parallel with NOMAD. Presenting approximately thirty paintings created over more than a decade, the exhibition will include Rubin’s most recent compositions, offering a comprehensive insight into the artist’s creative path.
In addition to his characteristic faceless portraits, landscapes also form a significant part of this exhibition: whether devoid of humans or as a surrounding element, nature breaks through and opens up a new perspective. Made in reaction to the confinement and limitations of lockdown, many of the most recent works in the exhibition have an element of escapism and a strong focus on the outdoor. Reevaluating the relationship between figure and landscape in his work, Rubin translated his longing for travel onto the canvas so that he could go to the slopes, play golf and even fly in a little red plane.
Often inspired by photographs from vintage photo albums or by images of celebrities and paintings by the old masters, the artist seeks to present narratives that are open to interpretation. The anonymous protagonists draw from the memories of the beholder, rather than representing the specific identity of the sitter - and great attention is paid to the subtle signs, gestures and postures that hold information about the subject.
There is a strong focus on the material qualities of the paint itself, as well as the surface on which the paint is applied. Using canvas, raw linen and roughly-cut cardboard, Rubin often leaves entire areas of the surface untouched as an integral part of the work.
Gideon Rubin 'Swing'
July 8 2021 – August 28 2021
Opening: Saturday, July 10 2021, 1 pm – 7 pm
On the occasion of NOMAD's St. Moritz VIP programme there will be an Artist Talk followed by a book signing on Friday, July 9 from 3.30 pm to 5 pm with Gideon Rubin.
Reflections: Human/Nature | Curated by Matt Black
Gana Art, Seoul | 12 May - 6 June 2021
Gana Art is pleased to present Reflections: Human/Nature curated by Matt Black. The third instalment in a series of exhibitions, this group show focuses on artists who visualise both the human and nature. Capturing and reflecting the nature of an individual's personality and feelings, Reflections: Human/Nature offers a space to reinterpret life as seen from each artists' own perspective.
Frieze Viewing Room | Ryan Lee Gallery | 5 - 14 May 2021
Work Acquired by Collezione Maramotti | Italy
Gideon will take part in the 2021 Frieze Viewing Room, with the New York gallery, Ryan Lee. Available to view from the 5th to the 14th April, for further information refer to the Frieze website, which can be found here.
The work 'From Caravaggio to Beyonce' (2020-2021) has been acquired by the Collezione Maramotti in Italy. On display in the exhibition, 'On Cardboard' at Monica De Cardenas, Milan, the work consists of 25 small works on cardboard (gouache on cardboard, various sizes).
Work Donated to The Rubin Museum Collection | Israel
The painting 'Father and Son' (2011) has been donated to the Rubin Museum Collection in Tel Aviv, Israel. The Rubin Museum is the former home and studio of the painter, Reuven Rubin - the grandfather of Gideon Rubin - which is open to the public as a museum and gallery.
Spring Show | Group show, Maho Kubota | 12 March - 3 April 2021
Maho Kubota, Japan, presents 'Spring Show' - a group exhibition with works by Brian Alfred, Noriko Ambe, Alex Katz, Keisuke Tada, Keita Miyazaki, Julian Opie, Gideon Rubin, Guy Yanai and Takanosuke Yasui. For further information, please visit the Maho Kubota website.
Work Acquired by the Voorlinden Collection | The Netherlands
The Museum Voorlinden Collection has acquired the work 'Two in a Boat' (2020) - which was exhibited in Gideon's recent solo exhibition 'A Stranger's Hand' at Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris. The painting will join the museum's collection based in The Netherlands.
Holding Hands | Group show, Union Gallery | 4 March - 24 April 2021
Union Gallery, London, presents a group show with works from artists including, among others, Olivia Box, Hannah Brown, Douglas Cantor, Lucas Dupuy, Peter Frederiksen, Florence Hutchings, Erin Lawlor, Alvin One, Gideon Rubin and Rose Wylie. The exhibition will be available to view online from the 4th March, and, will open to the public in April, according to the COVID regulations at the time. For further information, please see the Union Gallery website.
Art Fair Tokyo | Maho Kubota Gallery | 19 - 21 March 2021
Maho Kubota Gallery will participate in Art Fair Tokyo 2021. Opening on Friday 19 March, the fair is open until the 21st March, located in the Tokyo International Forum Hall. Several works by Gideon will be included in Maho Kubota's presentation at the fair - more details can be found on the Art Fair Tokyo website.
On Cardboard | Monica De Cardenas, Milan | 4 March - 30 April 2021
Galleria Monica De Cardenas will exhibit an installation of new works on cardboard. 'On Cardboard' will be presented in the Project Room, alongside a group show titled 'On Paper' with works by Marco Belfiore, Lupo Borgonovo, Elena Ricci and Federico Tosi. Click here to read the press release.
We Thought It Was Heaven Tomorrow | FoxJensen, Sydney | 11 Feb 2021
The second part of Gideon's exhibition 'We Thought It Was Heaven Tomorrow' opens in Sydney, Australia on 11 February 2021. Gideon's first exhibition in Australia, the works will be on view at FoxJensen Gallery until 20th March. View the exhibition catalogue here.
We Thought It Was Heaven Tomorrow | FoxJensenMcCrory | 4 Feb 2021
'We Thought It Was Heaven Tomorrow' is Gideon's first solo show in Auckland, New Zealand. The exhibition will be on display across the gallery's two spaces - with works split between FoxJensenMcCrory in Auckland, and FoxJensen in Sydney, Australia. The exhibition will close on the 13th March. View the exhibition catalogue here.
Of Paper | Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv | 19 February - 2 April 2021
'Of Paper' a group exhibition at Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv, will open on the 1st January 2021. Participating artists include Gideon Rubin, Sigalit Etel Laudau, Maya Zack, Tal Mazliach, Shir Moran.
For further details please visit Alon Segev.
NOF at The Rubin Museum | Re-opens 15 December | Tel Aviv
'NOF' the two-person show at the Rubin Museum, Tel Aviv, re-opens to the public on 10 December 2020. For further information on the exhibition with paintings by Gideon Rubin and Eldar Farber, please visit the Rubin Museum website.
Perspectives | Art Basel Online Viewing Room | 2 - 6 December 2020
Galerie Karsten Greve will participate in OVR: Miami Beach, with a presentation that focuses on four artists who expand the gallery program with new perspectives. Included in the exhibition are Raul Illarramendi, Claire Morgan, Gideon Rubin and Georgia Russell. The online exhibition can be viewed from the 2 December - click here for Art Basel OVR: Miami Beach.
Future Dreams Online Exhibition and Auction | 23 - 30 November 2020
Gideon is delighted to participate in the virtual exhibition and auction for the breast cancer charity, Future Dreams. Including works by Chantal Joffe, Rankin, David Yarrow, Adebayo Bolaji and Celine Bodin, the event will raise vital funds for breast cancer support, awareness and research. The gallery is available to view online from 10am on 23rd November until 7pm on 30th November. 100% of the profits go to the charity, and bids can be registered with The Auction Collective until 7pm on the 30th November.
High Voltage | Nassima Landau | 24 November 2020- 15 January 2021
Woolwich Print Fair | The Online Edition | 12 November - 13 December 2020
Gideon will participate in the 2020 edition of the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair. For further information and to view hundreds of prints by artists including Jake & Dinos Chapman, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, David Shrigley, James Turrell and Silia Ka Tung please visit the Woolwich Print Fair website.
Please find Gideon's print on view in Room 8.
Art on a Postcard | Winter Auction | 5 - 19 November 2020
Art on a Postcard work with the world's leading artists to raise money for the Hepatitis C Trust. Gideon is pleased to donate a work to the 2020 auction (Lot 341). For full information or to bid on a work, please visit the website of Art on a Postcard.
Canal+ Presentation | Boite Noire | 2020
Boite Noire presentation on Canal+
Filmed in October 2020 on the occasion of Gideon's exhibition at Galerie Karsten Greve.
To watch the full video, click here.
In Conversation: Gideon Rubin & Roman Hossein Khonsari
Gideon Rubin in conversation with Maxillofacial Surgeon, Roman Hossein Khonsari. A special event held at Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, on Saturday 17th October at 5pm in collaboration with Anahita's Eye.
In conjunction with Gideon's solo exhibition at Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, Anahita Vessier, founder of Anahita's Eye, will orchestrate a talk between Gideon Rubin and Roman Hossein Khonsari, a maxillofacial surgeon whose work in reconstructing faces makes an interesting echo with the work of the artist. A live Instagram will be organised at 5pm on Saturday 17th October, imagined and orchestrated by Anahita Vessier.
A Stranger's Hand | Galerie Karsten Greve Paris | 16 October 2020
Galerie Karsten Greve is pleased to present A Stranger's Hand, Gideon Rubin's third solo exhibition in Paris. The artist unveiled about 30 works created over the past two years, particularly a series of ten paintings, including two diptychs, that pay tribute to the 20th century artists whose influence has been so crucial to his work, including Philip Guston, Willem De Kooning and Richard Diebenkorn.
He once again transports us into his universe inhabited by figures made anonymous through his use of framing, posture and the erasure of all individuality. The systematic erasure of the faces, but also any reference to time or place, has been at the heart of Gideon Rubin's artistic approach since 2001. That approach, which confronts the view with a stranger, also enables him to create an intimacy between views and representation - intimacy of the gaze that must be attentive and take the time to observe the image in the most minute details of a hairstyle, an outfit, a posture or an attitude. This attention then gradually shapes or reshapes a story from personal experience or universal knowledge, or perhaps a mix of both.
Gideon Rubin created his works using various sources, drawing from old newspapers, photos unearthed at flea markets, generic pictures in magazines, old art books and extracts from films. His portraits of artists are inspired by vintage pictures found on the internet.
Identifiable at first place thanks to his palette of sandy, pastel tones - sometimes emphasised by a luminous blue or a touch of red - the relationship between colour and its support is crucial to Rubin's work. With a preference for linen canvases, but also working on wood and cardboard, he gives great importance to his choice of support, which appears under broad, vigorous strokes in a non-finito approach that lends his works a unique subtlety and lightness. His lively brushstrokes dissolve some parts of the composition in a fascinating blend of figuration and abstraction.
NOF: Gideon Rubin & Eldar Farber | Rubin Museum | 4 Sept - 4 Dec 2020
The exhibition NOF (landscape) was born following the meeting of two painters and the dialogue that they pursued. Eldar Farber and Gideon Rubin, both Israeli born and both working mostly outside of Israel, in Europe: Rubin in London and Ferber in Berlin and in Tel Aviv. Landscape painting is central to Farber’s art while for Gideon Rubin landscape painting has been marginal but with time is becoming less so. Gideon Rubin is the grandson of the painter Reuven Rubin in whose former home, The Rubin Museum, the exhibition is taking place. Reuven Rubins’ landscape paintings are obviously part of his grandson’s visual legacy.
Reuven Rubin painted the local sights with great excitement, motivated by the notion of having found a home, an environment that one had better familiarize oneself with, explore and document. Rubin’s landscapes, like those of his peers, deliver on canvas impressions of specific sites at a certain time, and therefore, with time they can also be regarded as historical documents.
The grandson strips his encounter with the landscape from any identifiable signs of place and time. He applies layers of paint onto the canvas instantly, sometimes also erasing them, as he does in his more familiar featureless figure paintings. In his landscapes the smear-erase-blur process is on the verge of abstraction and the outcome is often generalized open landscape moulds void of specific landmarks.
Eldar Farber moves back and forth between Israel and Europe, between the shores of the Yarkon river and the German woods. The real, actual landscape serves – in his own words – as a “source of information”, as a foundation on top of which he applies yet another layer expressing impressions and a state of mind, an internal dialogue in which he repeatedly examines what he sees, while moving there and back from the local Israeli landscape to the landscapes of Germany.
It is noteworthy that both artists belong to a generation for whom Israel is a self-evident place of birth. Their world of reference is global and “home” is where they choose to live and work. The notion of belonging, so crucial to the generations of immigrants, is regarded as a given, sometimes even a burden. From their point of view, each in his own particular way, the landscape is viewed as an aesthetic challenge, “a source of information”, another resource for “the invention of a place” in Ferber’s words, from which one can learn and explore. The Landscape is not a tool with which to assume a sense of identity or reinforce a sense of rootedness. “Viewing the landscape” says Gideon Rubin “purifies the tension between the brushstroke and what it describes”. Moreover, the movement of the brush on the canvas already bears the memory of the place.
The landscapes in the exhibition are in strong saturated green hues in the case of Farber’s paintings along with bright landscapes in light blue and grey in the case of Gideon Rubin. Both paint on large canvases or on small ones, without titles, signatures or dating. “Manipulation of matter so as to tell and to describe,” says Farber. Indeed, he takes the time to reflect, add and thicken the green, while what seems important to his friend is instant visibility, the outcome of the urgent, energetic movement of the brush. It seems however, that both of them relate in their landscapes to colour, form, and stain, as poetry does to words.
Galleria Monica De Cardenas | 3 June - 10 October 2020 | Milan
Galleria Monica De Cardenas is delighted to announce the first solo exhibition in Italy by Gideon Rubin. Rubin creates paintings where the figures are rendered without their facial features. Thus the gaze of the viewer is not captured by physiognomy, but by the atmosphere unleashed by the entire images; the subjects are characterised by their positions and attitudes, by the way they move in space and dress. Evanescent and melancholic, Rubin’s works speak of a past or a recollection that has surfaced in memory. The paint is dense and seductive, with fluid strokes that describe intimate atmospheres and complicity between the subjects portrayed. With their forcefully evocative character, these figures trigger direct empathy in the viewer.
Monica De Cardenas Via Francesco Vigano 4, 20124 Milan, Italy
Opening Hours: Monday to Friday, 3 - 7 pm & by appointment
Virtual Tour: Black Book | Jerusalem Artists' House | Until May 2020
Jerusalem Artists' House have created a virtual tour of their current exhibition, making it possible to 'visit' the space and explore the exhibitions during this period of self-isolation. Currently on display is 'Black Book' by Gideon Rubin, alongside exhibitions by Abraham Kritzman, Eyal Sasson, David Teboul and Ofri Lifshitz. To take the tour, please visit the website of the Jerusalem Artists' House
Hosfelt Gallery | Art Fair: ADAA New York | 26 Feb - 1 March 2020
Hosfelt Gallery will present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Gideon Rubin at the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) 2020, New York. Organised annually, the ADAA offers intimately scaled and thoughtfully curated presentations by the nation's leading fine art dealers, providing a rich selection of works from the late 19th century through today.
Art Dealers Association of America Hosfelt Gallery, Booth D24, Park Avenue Armory, New York City. www.artdealers.org
Black Book | Jerusalem Artists' House | 29 Feb - 25 April 2020
The Artists' House, Jerusalem, will present the series of work titled 'Black Book' - shown previously at the Freud Museum, London. Curated by Marie Shek, the exhibition is an opportunity to show the works in the unique setting of The Artists' House - an historic building that once housed The Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts.
The Artists' House Shmuel Hanagid 12, Jerusalem, Israel
To Paint is to Love Again | Nino Mier Gallery LA | Jan 2020
Curated by Olivier Zahm, 'To Paint is to Love Again' presents work by Rita Ackermann, Adam Alessi, Vanessa Beecroft, Judith Bernstein, Urs Fischer, Evita Flores, Paul McCarthy, Raymond Pettibon, Gideon Rubin, Gus Van Sant, Jim Shaw and Guy Yanai - amongst others.
Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles www.miergallery.com
Announcement of Representation by FoxJensen and FoxJensenMcCrory
FoxJensen and FoxJensenMcCrory are thrilled to announce that Gideon Rubin will be represented by the galleries in Sydney and Auckland.
Looking at Gideon's paintings one certainly has the feeling that he shared something with each of the sitters. The children, the swimmers, the Red Army soldier, the dancers, the women, the landscape, the lovers - all somehow his. And though time and history make this implausible it is a highly desirable fiction. Gideon Rubin's great capacity as a painter is to make these small, poignant narratives manifest in paint, alive with the awareness that only making can do. He brings us close to them through the humanity and discernment with which he approaches making. Having first exhibited with the galleries in Eros (2019) Gideon will have his first solo exhibition in Auckland in 2020.