Istanbul'74 Presents Sandro Kopp at Lehmann Maupin Jan 25- Feb 4

Istanbul'74 will present There you are, an exhibition of new work by Sandro Kopp at Lehmann Maupin Gallery on view 25 January – 4 February, 2012 at 201 Chrystie Street.

In September 2011, Lehmann Maupin Gallery launched its partnership with Istanbul'74 with a mission to foster a cultural exchange between New York and Istanbul. This month, Istanbul'74 will present an exhibition by painter Sandro Kopp in New York at Lehmann Maupin's Lower East Side gallery. Istanbul'74, an Istanbul-based creative agency focusing on the presentation of various cultural projects, first presented Kopp's work at Istancool in 2011, in the exhibition titled Being With You, which featured Skype-sitting portraits with subjects such as Haider Ackerman, Ryan McGinley, and Waris Ahluwalia, among others.

Sandro Kopp's There you are will feature a series of portraits painted from the artist's skype-sittings with friends who become his paintings' subjects. The artist has said of his work, "In exploring these questions – in trying to distill the essence of the difference between these modes of painting – I had the idea of paintings made during video-web-chats: a hybrid of a painting done from life and a painting done from a photograph. Stripping the elements of three-dimensionality and physical presence away, putting a lens (of the webcam) between me and my sitter – but maintaining the elements of time passing and conversation: of engagement."

Sandro Kopp was born in 1978 in Heidelberg, Germany, of New Zealand and German descent. He started drawing and painting proficiently at a very young age and had his first solo exhibition when he was seven years old, his second when he was fifteen. After graduating Abiltur majoring in Fine Art and English, Kopp moved to New Zealand in 2000. The following three years were spent studying, painting and exhibiting in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, where he lived in the creative collective, The Factory. Having left New Zealand in 2005, the next years where spent nomadically roaming around between Italy, New York, France and the UK. Since 2009 he has been based in the Highlands of Scotland. Kopp has exhibited internationally, most recently at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2007; the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2008; and at the Istancool arts festival, Istanbul, Turkey in May 2011.