HERE AND NOW
A solo exhibition by ARI MARCOPOULOS
OPENING: FRIDAY APRIL 27. 2012. TIME: 17.00 - 22.00
EXHIBITION PERIOD: APRIL 28 – MAY 19. 2012.
Ari Marcopoulos arrived in New York from the Netherlands in 1979, and started taking pictures. He
documented the relationship between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, making some of the last
images seen of both. He recorded the legendary downtown skateboarding scene in ʼ90s New York from
the street, making some of the first images ever seen of, among others, the teenaged Harold Hunter and
Justin Pierce. Through the past decade he has proven to be one of Americaʼs only firmly established
artists playing by no established rules—despite, for example, his two appearances in the Whitney
Biennial, the survey exhibition considered the most important bellwether of contemporary American art
Marcopoulos takes very little interest in todayʼs gallery system and its business of wealth, canonization
and the market.
Marcopoulosʼ practice these days is very much about what he sees on a daily basis. Composing and
distributing work in the form of publications is a constant part of his public output, so the most recent
work is always what is focused on. In Here and Now he wanted to just show his work from 2012, and
most of the prints, as can be seen from the date stamp in the lower-right hand corners, are from March
this year.
He still works on film, so there is some separation between the time the photo is taken and the time the
result is seen. So much imagemaking now only exists on a held-hand device or only disseminated
electronically. Marcopolous does not record and store imagery this way—he continues to look, feeling a
constant slow change of where he stands. He no longer judges the work from an aesthetic point of view.
Here and Now contains an image of Tyson Chandler, the center of the NY Knicks basketball team, on
the court at Madison Square Garden. Marcopoulos has access to Chandler, but instead took a picture
anyone could take at a public event. This image crystallizes the idea behind the show: everything is
squarely photographed as is, without much consideration for emotion or compositional guidelines.
Here and Now is a selection of 23 recent color works. V1 Gallery is additionally showing a selection of
older works, putting the new work in perspective and introducing a bit of history here, at Marcopoulosʼ
first exhibition in Denmark. Among the older works are a portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a self-portrait
with the actor and skater Justin Pierce, a group of street photos, and a large collage of contact sheets
from Marcopoulosʼ seminal ʼ90s New York skateboarding series.
Ari Marcopoulos currently has a show with Kavi Gupta (May 5th) gallery in Chicago. Other recent
exhibitions include 2010 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum, New York, USA; This Week, Galerie Frank
Elbaz, Paris, France; Abandoned Sleep, Ratio 3, San Francisco, USA; Street and Studio: From
Basquiat to Seripop, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria and Ari Marcopoulos: It Might Seem Familiar,
Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Here and Now will be accompanied by a new Marcopoulos publication, which has been specially made
for the exhibition, and an essay on the artist by writer and exhibition co-organizer William Pym.
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