Dennis Hopper

Wilhold Up the Mirror Photograph and Mixed Media Assemblage Wall Hanging Artwork

1961

Dennis Hopper, (American, 1936-2010) Mixed media sculpture "Outmolding Older Concepts (Wilhold Up the Mirror)", 1961, photo and assemblage, Ace gallery and Easy Rider Production labels verso 27"h x 40"w x 5"d. There is broken mirror glued into the wooden collage box with the ceramic head that is attached to the front. I assume that is how it was made. Provenance: Estate of Pentti Kouri, NYC; Ace Gallery, Los Angeles; Exhibited MOCA, Los Angeles, 2010 From a 1997 interview with Hopper where he references this piece "Right now it's very intense. I had a show that travelled Germany, about 15 different museums. Sunday we go to Denmark; I'm showing the early assemblage I did in 1961 which was the signal for conceptual art. I'm just two days there, then I'm going to Venice to meet Julian Schnabel - Count Volpe's given us a place to paint in Giudecca. Then I'm going to Documenta in Germany to hang another show, then I go back to LA on the 21st and start a film on the 23rd." Notes/Literature: Dr. Pentti Kouri(1949-2009) was a Finnish economist and venture capitalist with partner George Soros. He built his prestigious art collection with the goal of opening a private art foundation focused on his interests in Minimalism, Arte Povera, Conceptual and Text-based art. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Dia Art Foundation, and on the boards of Tate, London and the Guggenheim Museum, New York. In addition, a portion of his collection forms the core of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland Hopper made his film debut alongside James Dean in 1955's Rebel Without a Cause. Both lost souls from dysfunctional households, they gravitated to each other, smoked dope and took joy rides. When Dean died, Hopper saw himself as the natural inheritor of his rebellious mantle and, revelling in his nickname of "Dennis the Menace", gave it to Hollywood with both barrels; so they dropped him. Dennis didn't make another Hollywood movie for seven years. Frustrated by the deliberate stifling of his film career, Dennis turned to art and photography for creative stimulus, beginning with abstract subjects such as landscapes. His cutting-edge conceptual art became established round the world, with exhibitions in major cities. At home in the dining room stood one particularly interesting work, a white plastic box, eight feet long, that had an aluminium shaft sticking out of it, and two very large balls. It was called The Perpetual Erection Machine. Before Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, there was Dennis. In 1961, Hopper took part in an international photography competition in Australia with a contribution of five abstract photos, which he called Pieces. He won first place. Soon after, Hopper married Hayward, daughter of the film producer Leland Hayward, whose credits include The Sound of Music and South Pacific. The wedding party of Hopper and Hayward was held in August at the apartment of actress Jane Fonda, a childhood friend of Hayward, who introduced Hopper to her younger brother Peter Fonda. Their daughter Marin was born in 1961, and they moved to Bel Air, California. Soon afterward the famous Bel Air fire destroyed their home, including approximately three-hundred Abstract Expressionist works and hundreds of pages of poetry that Hopper had begun in the mid-1950s. Hopper and his actor friends Dean Stockwell and Russ Tamblyn were close to many artists in California, especially assemblage artists Edward Kienholz...

From his show Hashish at Michael Steinberg Gallery (bearing their label verso) Reviewed by Roberta Smith in the New York Times. Abstract Expressionism meets graffiti photography. Cy Twombly in cyberspace. Existential physics. The trajectories of car bombs. These phrases came to mind at the show of Dennis Balk's new work, made during the last three years while he lived in Bahrain and traveled primarily in the Middle East. The show is dominated by black-on-white gestural drawings on canvas from Mr. Balk's Faith Thumbnail series. Full of graphic and even painterly nuance, they turn out to have been made completely on the computer. In a smaller room, the Exhausted and Ideographic series features gaudy, vertiginous digital mixes of colorful photographs. Originally a performance artist, he became known in the art world in the early 1990s for improvisational diagrams that brought different historical narratives into collision. One work in his solo debut at American Fine Arts in SoHo in 1992 charted the lives of Ho Chi Minh and Abraham Lincoln -- both fathers of their countries in different ways -- across white paper napkins. His 2003 exhibition at that gallery was titled ''Particles + Waves With Plausibility,'' as is a recent book of his work. Dennis Balk is an educator, visual artist, writer, media designer and playwright based primarily in New York. Balk has an MFA Degree from California Institute of the Arts. Throughout the 90s and 00s he was an Art Director and media designer for television, outdoor, print and emerging tech and social/ media at; Arnell/ Bickford Associates, Frankfurt Gipps Balkind, Foote Cone & Belding and McCann Erickson, New York. At Amster Yard, the conceptual agency within McCann Worldwide, Balk was involved in concepting high-profile campaigns that ran both domestically and internationally. As an interactive and exhibition designer, Balk has designed significant exhibition work for; Princeton University (The Firestone Library), The National Building Museum (Washington DC), The Jewish Museum (New York) and The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington DC) in conjunction with the offices of James Ingo Freed. Balk has taught and lectured at a variety of Universities, most recently; UCLA in the Department of New Genres, the Università IUAV di Venezia, Yale University, Otis College of Art and Design- Public Practice MFA and as Coordinator of the Department of Fine Arts/ Computer Graphics at the New York Institute of Technology, Bahrain Campus. Since the late 80s his art work has addressed, in multiple formats (including several productions of his plays), the conditions of narrative and the narrative aspects of historicizing the present. His work has been exhibited internationally and reviewed extensively including; Artforum, Filosofia e Questioni Pubbliche, Bookforum, Art in America, Paper Magazine and The New York Times. While in New York, his primary gallery representation was with the seminal gallery, American Fine Arts. In February 2009, INOVA at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee presented the early work survey titled, “Dennis Balk - Early Work 1890-2090”. His recent publications include; “Dennis Balk/1890-2090” (2010-channel 171), “Dennis Balk The Arabian Gulf” (2010-channel 171), “ash” (2009-channel 171), “Colin de Land, American Fine Arts” (2008-powerhouse books), and “particles + waves with plausibility” (2006-powerhouse books). SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 2011 Jack Bankowsky, Rosetta Brooks, Ingrid Schaffner, Nicholas Frank, Christina Valentine, Dennis Balk, Jennifer Bolande...

This is a beautiful layered, mixed media piece using acrylic ink, salt water and salt crystals, on unprocessed photographic paper. The video shows the salt crystals shimmering on the paper when light reflects off it. This piece conjures up a beautiful imaginary world. The layering of works, creating depth, process and nature are important elements of the artist' work . For example, salt crystallization has been used on found objects and encrusted on photo based works on paper. The salt crystallization process is similar to preserving some objects, while disintegrating others with time. By incorporating salt crystals onto the photo based paintings, the image presents a mystical otherworldly feel, capturing and refracting light and the slippage of time. 20x24 in. Signed en verso. Singular piece. Art exclusively at gallery. Inquire to view series, collection. Inquire to commission projects. Framing available. --- Christine Nguyen is a Los Angeles based artist. She received her B.F.A from California State University, Long Beach and M.F.A from University of California, Irvine. As an artist, she is inspired by literature, science, nature, astronomy, geology, marine biology. Using photography’s processes as a point of departure, Christine Nguyen’s pioneering spirit led her to begin manipulating negatives and onward–creating her own by cutting, layering, and adding on. Nguyen’s subsequent explorations embrace drawing...

Fu Wenjun is a Chinese contemporary artist. He works on conceptual photography, installation art, sculpture and oil painting. Currently he lives and works at Chongqing, China. He ha...