HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

TO OUR CLIENTS, COLLEAGUES AND DEAR FRIENDS HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM BARBARA BALKIN INC. !!

ICONOCLASTS LOST

COMBINING FEARLESS AND MASTERFUL LITERARY BRILLIANCE WITH CIVIC ENGAGEMENT: CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS AND VACLAV HAVEL: MAY THEY REST IN PEACE

DOUGLAS GORDON AT MMK

Douglas Gordon. Photo: Martin Hunter

With the major solo exhibition "Douglas Gordon" (19 November 2011–25 March 2012), the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst will present an artist who is one of the most important and most influential of his generation. While he gained renown above all for his films and large video installations, his oeuvre also comprises photographs, texts, sculptures and sound installations. Douglas Gordon (b. 1966 in Glasgow) has been a professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt since 2010. The MMK has in its possession one of Gordon's magnum opera—the video installation Play Dead; Real Time (2003)—as well as a number of other photo and video works. These holdings now form the point of departure for the first major survey in Europe since Gordon's presentation at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in 2007. Apart from installations rich in imagery, for example Straight to Hell and No Way Back (both of 2011) and recent additions to the Self-Portrait of You + Me series, the exhibition will also present three further large-scale video installations. The artist's latest work, Henry Rebel, carried out jointly with director James Franco and the young actor Henry Hopper, was premiered by the show. Henry Rebel is a major video installation executed this year as part of the Rebel project initiated by James Franco. All of the artists participating in the project realized works revolving around different aspects of Nicholas Ray's film Rebel Without a Cause of 1955. In the video installation to be featured by the MMK exhibition, Gordon interprets two scenes, which were part of the original screenplay but were never shot. For these scenes, they were fortunate in being able to cast Henry Hopper, the son of the late actor Dennis Hopper, who played in the original movie by Nicholas Ray. This is a circumstance which brings the inner logic of this highly complex masterpiece—in which Gordon records the young actor's performance on film—full circle. With his analyses of the images of our collective memory and everyday culture, Gordon exposes fundamental patterns of perception. His works frequently revolve around phenomena of doubling and mirroring: the couple, the double, light and dark, guilt and justice. Douglas Gordon won the Turner prize in 1996.

CONGRATULATIONS ROB PRUITT

ROB PRUITT AT DALLAS CONTEMPORARY

17 December 2011 - 18 March 2012
Opening celebration – Saturday 17 December 21.00 – 24.00 (9.00 - midnight).

Dallas Contemporary announces an exhibition featuring New York artist ROB PRUITT. The exhibition made specifically for Dallas Contemporary will be Pruitt’s first major institutional exhibition in the United States and his largest exhibition to date. Pruitt’s interests lie in creating environments where participants feel free to improvise and experiment outside of their comfort zones. In his signature style, Pruitt’s installation of glitter panda paintings has never before been shown and is the largest number of panda paintings to be shown together.

HARMONY KORINE

Dazed And Confused just turned 20 years old and for a new series of covers for their magazine they invited Harmony Korine to pose for a cover. A video interview featuring Korine and Dan Colen can be viewed from the magazine’s YouTube page.

MARTIN BOYCE WINS TURNER PRIZE 2011

Scottish artist Martin Boyce, 44, whose work harks back to the innovators of 20th century Modernism has won this year’s Turner Prize — Britain’s best-known and most provocative art award. Boyce was nominated for his solo exhibition in Zurich, which included a stark installation compared to an indoor park complete with paper leaves. The jury praised Boyce for his contribution to contemporary artists’ interest in historic modernism, and said he developed and found new directions using his knowledge of the field.

ANN KOCH AT ART BASEL MIAMI

Anne Koch performs in her film ‘eat (lobster)’ 2011 at Art Basel Miami Beach