Almost Ninja: July 2008

Thursday, July 31, 2008

tranzitdisplay

http://www.tranzitdisplay.cz

Descend the long staircase; the first piece, a long aluminium pole inscribed with a text, is found on the landing approximately halfway down the staircase as it makes a ninety-degree turn to the left. The pole leans against a wall that you see as you walk onto the staircase.

As you walk down the stairs and stand on the landing dominated by an Art Deco lamp, two views of the space open up to you. A fast, electronic, inhumanly rapid film montage of a naked woman descending a staircase. A young lady with short, probably bleached, blonde hair, holds her back as stiff as a board and she walks down the stairs. We see this film image from the base of the stairs to the right of the central column. If we look to the left, we see ourselves in a long and tall mirror reaching from the floor nearly to the ceiling. The dimensions of the mirror are approximately 5.5 m x 3 m. Approach the mirror; to your right, crossways to the corner of the room, is a black curtain in the shape of the letter U hanging from the ceiling. A film is playing on the space inside the letter U: a view of a landscape, a shot of a meadow, perhaps in a park. All at once the view begins to recede, disappearing inside, and we realize that we saw the view of the meadow in the mirror.

The Fruitmarket Gallery

http://www.fruitmarket.co.uk

A rare chance to experience the work of one of the most internationally respected artist partnerships, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Cardiff/Miller's collaborative installations are multi-layered, multi-media experiences. Using objects, images and sound, they collage together impressions and experiences, memory and history, mixing
references to high and popular culture in works which draw an audience into a series of intensely credible fictional worlds.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Ai Weiwei

Born in Beijing, his father was the famous Chinese poet Ai Qing, who was denounced during the Cultural Revolution and sent off to a labor camp in Xinjiang with his wife, Gao Ying.^[3] Ai Weiwei also spent five years there.^[2] Ai Weiwei is married to artist Lu Qing.^[3]

In 1978, Ai enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy and attended school with famous Chinese directors Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou.^[4] In 1978, he was one of the founders of the early avant garde art group the "Stars," and the group subsequently disbanded in 1983.^[5]

From 1981 to 1993, he lived in the United States, mostly in New York, doing performance art and creating conceptual art by altering readymade objects.^[5] While in New York, he studied at Parsons School of Design.^[6]

Subodh Gupta

Artist: Subodh Gupta, Title: Pink Chimta, 2008

ART LA 2009

ART LA 2009

The New
Los Angeles International Contemporary Art Fair
relocates to the Barker Hanger
January 23 - 25, 2009

EXHIBITOR
APPLICATION
NOW AVAILABLE
Materials Due: August 26, 2008

http://www.art-la.com

The fair relocates for the 2009 edition to the historic Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport. The Barker Hangar is known as one of Southern California's premier charity and arts events venues and is now home to the premier international contemporary art fair of the West Coast. In 2008, ART LAhosted top international and US based galleries from Los Angeles, New York, Berlin, Tokyo, London, Auckland, and beyond. The new expansive venue allows the fair to increase the number of participants to approximately 75 galleries; ten more than last January's event.

Festival de Cine

Locarno
International Film Festival

The 61st International
Film Festival presents

Play Forward
6 - 16 August 2008

Via Ciseri 23
6600 Locarno
Switzerland
http://www.pardo.ch

Acting as an interface for film, video art and all other media, Play Forward is the privileged observatory for all contemporary forms of audio-visual experimentation and creation. The programme showcases intriguing, sometimes extreme works whose common denominator is that they all stand at the intersection of video art and all other arts.

Play Forward 2008 features established artists across the generations such as the American Doug Aitken, the Italians Olivo Barbieri, Maia Guarnaccia and Masbedo, the Swiss Emmanuelle Antille and Frédéric Choffat, the French Stephen Dean, Pierre Coulibeuf, Ange Leccia, Vincent Dieutre, and the Austrians Josef Dabernig and Erwin Wurm. Latin America will also feature strongly in Play Forward this year, notably the Argentine Miguel Angel Ríos and the Mexican Teresa Serrano.

This selection is the result of a significant network established by the Play Forward section in the milieu of contemporary audio-visual creation, and through collaboration with prestigious art galleries such as the Sara Meltzer Gallery, the 303 Gallery and the Florence Lynch Gallery (New York), Hotel (London) Noire Contemporary Art (Torino), Monitor (Rome), Lokal_30 (Warsaw), and several others.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Devendra Banhart

Devendra Banhart - Carmensita

con Natalie Portman

Cocorosie

Cocorosie - Warewolf live

Ratatat

RATATAT - MIRANDO

Electrelane - To the east

The Organ - Love, love, love

mas conciertos mgmt no confirmado..

cansei de ser sexy

11 sep 08 MTY

uma bar

12 sep 08 DF

vive cuervo salón

Blonde Redhead

22 ago 08 GDL

teatro estudio cabaret

MGMT

17 oct 08 MTY

escénica

FRANK MILLER

FRANK MILLER´S THE SPIRIT DECEMBER 2008

http://www.mycityscreams.com

A resurrected cop does battle with a villain whose quest for immortality threatens an entire metropolis in Sin City creator Frank Miller's adaptation of Will Eisner's acclaimed graphic novel. When a rookie cop is brutally killed and mysteriously brought back to life, he assumes the guise of The Spirit (Gabriel Macht) -- a masked crime fighter who prowls the shadows of Central City on a supernatural mission to keep the urban landscape safe. Upon discovering that his arch nemesis, The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), is determined to live forever even if it means wiping out the entire population of Central City, The Spirit must race to stop the diabolical villain from achieving his cold-blooded plan. But even with his unique powers, the brave masked crusader will face a series of deadly challenges as a bevy of treacherous beauties including deceptively sweet girl next door Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulson), spitfire secretary Silken Floss (Scarlett Johansson), wraithlike siren Lorelei (Jaime King), seductive policewoman Morgenstern (Stana Katic), and French black widow Plaster of Paris (Paz Vega) set out to seduce or consume him at every turn; even The Spirit's one true love, a volatile jewel thief named Sand Saref (Eva Mendes), could ultimately destroy our hero before he accomplishes his mission of saving Central City. ~ Jason Buchanan.

ALMOST NINJA... almost-ninja.blogspot.com

ALMOST NINJA ... almost-ninja.blogspot.com

ALMOST NINJA... almost-ninja.blogspot.com

ALMOST NINJA ... almost-ninja.blogspot.com

ALMOST NINJA... almost-ninja.blogspot.com

ALMOST NINJA ... almost-ninja.blogspot.com

Sunday, July 27, 2008

FAMILY SWETERS...

Tang Zhigang

Tara Donovan

Cube of Toothpicks

Installation artist Tara Donovan�s hallmark is her use of ordinary mass-produced products in repetitive patterns and layering. Donovan has used materials as banal as plastic drinking straws, fishing wire, paper plates, tar paper, Styrofoam cups, wooden toothpicks, tempered glass and steel pins in her fascinating installations, quite often relying on friction and gravity to keep the piece together. What is so interesting about Donovan�s work is that the viewer, accustomed to seeing the materials in a familiar domestic context, has to re-think and re-visualize them as they take shape in new forms. (One cannot help but wonder how many pins could be safely pulled from their cube before creating an altogether new, and untidy, structure.)

Mario Garcia Torres

Secrets and Lies

The young Mexican artist brings his aesthetics of

information to the Frieze Art Fair

mario garcia torres puts a single 35mm slide in his pocket and

repeats the act by sliding it in and out of various pockets for about a

month. A slice of blank emulsion, it takes on the scratches and wrinkles

of everyday use, acquiring the patina of a forgotten thing. Come

exhibition time he projects the slide, a scruffy document of inattention.

It’s an artwork, sure, but whether we could say that an artist made it is

another question.

Chance, erasure, inaction: all standbys of art in the twentieth

century, at least since Dada. At mid-century, Robert Rauschenberg

rubbed out a Willem de Kooning drawing and exhibited it, while at

about the same time his sometime collaborator John Cage wrote 4’33”

(1952). Ian Wilson, Douglas Huebler, Martin Creed, Andrea Fraser and

Tino Sehgal have all explored immateriality in their work. Garcia Torres

is part of a generation of younger artists (he was born in 1975) that

comes to conceptualism long after its endgame bandwagon has rolled

into the sunset. He forgoes tendentiousness for a playfully sensuous

approach to the project.

In September 1969 the artist Oscar Neuestern was the subject

of a detailed profile in ArtNews. Written by a certain Kiki Kundry and

called ‘The Ultimate Non-Act’, the piece portrayed Neuestern as a

young goofball mystic who supposedly sought the absolute through

complete withdrawal. ‘True transparency’, he said, ‘is possible only in

the ultimate non-act.’ So who is this forgotten master of Minimalism?

Nothing in the survey books, no results on Google. In fact, this guy

never walked Prince Street, where he supposedly had a loft, nor

anywhere else. The piece was an elaborate canard with any number of

conceptual artists as its target. Looking back in the light of the current

practice of some artists – Neuestern refused to allow his work to be

reproduced – the satire is wonderfully prescient.

Rather than view the piece as an attack on the tradition he

admires, Oscar Neuestern’s scentless corpse presents Garcia Torres

with some gorgeous raw material. He has exhumed his name for his

show at the Kadist Art Foundation, Paris. “The show will be extremely

flat”, he suggests, “to imply that I have been working without much of

an effort.” Hence stuffing a 35mm slide in his pocket for the month

leading up to the show. Neuestern will make an appearance as a slide

show, a succession of projected images of varying opacity. Another

work will revisit Rauschenberg’s erased de Kooning: the viewer will hear

the barely audible sound of someone rubbing out a drawing.

Given his lighthearted yet heady approach, it’s not surprising

that Garcia Torres laid his foundations with a pun. Asked about the

first work that might mark a transition into some kind of maturity, he

mentions Graphite on Paper (1997), a conversion of information into

an object. “Instead of a drawing, it’s just a mound of graphite on a big

sheet of paper. It’s stupid in a way, but it became a way to talk about

art, to make a little twist of the text on the label.” He made the work

while he was a student at the Universidad de Monterrey, a time and

place he acknowledges with a dismissive shrug, discernible even over

the phone.

words craig burnett

scaping...

movetouchlistentranslateimaginefilllet go

Lissy Trullie - Self Taught Learner

The Knife - Live - You Make Me Like Charity

Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Architecture In Helsinki - Heart It Races

Of Montreal - Gronlandic Edit

Dance with me....

The Knife - Pass This On

Friday, July 25, 2008

Long March Space

http://www.longmarchspace.com

Long March Space will showcase new explorations by artist Lin Tianmiao in 'Mother's!!!', an immersive experience that will see the gallery space completely transformed.

Over the past 2 years, Lin Tianmiao's practice has turned towards the small and intimate, having previously experimented with various large-scale installation and print based media. The diminutive works presented in 'Mother's!!!' maintain important qualities from her previous works — such as her use of material, form and color — however the relationship between these elements have been significantly altered in terms of how these aspects can articulate a particularly different, at times violent, bodily existence.

The white, voluptuous figures of middle-aged women, whose heads have been removed, or remain abstract and devoid of human features, have been placed in deliberately ambiguous postures. The surface of these bodies are delicately wrapped in a pearl-like material, these figures at times placed in private remonstrations suggesting the expelling of bodily waste, or seemingly pulled apart and laid bare, the innards of the body transformed into ominous balls and threads which suggest an interconnected relationship with the animal and plant world. The boundaries between people and their surroundings; male and female; internal and external; between different types of species, are blurred and broken, creating a chaotic environment which questions the nature of the world it inhabits.

Blanton Museum of Art

http://blantonmuseum.org

The Blanton Museum of Art is pleased to present the work of Argentine artist Fabián Bercic for its current WorkSpace—a series that explores new developments in contemporary art by featuring commissioned projects by emerging and mid-career artists from around the world.

Bercic provides a contemporary reinterpretation of the traditional Zen garden in his site-specific installation for WorkSpace. As a critique of consumerism and the commercialization of culture, Bercic transforms the usually sacred rock garden, replacing its natural and organic elements with synthetic, day-glo, plastic materials. Not simply an opposition between an idealized past and an imperfect present, Bercic's work reminds us that we can only look to the past through a contemporary lens. The work, in this contemporary context, reflects the artist's interest in the cuteness (kawaii) of Japanese product design and Anime. It also reveals his fascination with medieval manuscript illustrations and draws heavily from his own imagination. He synthesizes multiple sources as he poses the question of how one can create a meaningful Zen garden with the materials of a late-capitalist society.

SCOPE

http://www.scope-art.com

International Contemporary Art Fair in East Hampton Summer Home

Returning for its fourth year to the East End, SCOPE Hamptons will transform the 25,000 square-foot East Hampton Studios into a world-class art fair and destination-location coinciding with the 15th Annual Watermill Center Summer Benefit. SCOPE is a major contributor to the Hamptons most celebrated weekend of art. Centrally located and inches from seasoned and emerging collectors' homes, East Hamptons Studio is SCOPE's home away from home for the New York and international art enthusiast.

With 40 international established and emerging contemporary galleries, SCOPE will present a full schedule of special events, performances and screenings, alongside museum-quality programming, creating what has become "The Hamptons Weekend of Art."

centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle

http://www.csw.art.pl

"Establishment (and its discontents)" is a group exhibition of artists participating in making of contemporary art. The project refers to a wave of "new" and "young art" exhibitions, which took place on the Polish art scene at the beginning of the 21st century. The subject of our "Establishment" exhibition are artistic proposals and individualities, which emerged out of these past shows – namely art, that appeared after "new art from Poland". Participants of the "Establishment" did not take part in those past presentations. They are artists, who made their presence on the art scene in the last two or three years. A context for our presentation is a concept of establishment – understood as a challenge for young artists, as a point of reference, a collection of temptations and an object of contest. Finally, it is a potential source of discontent.

Laboratorio de Arte y Espacio Social

http://laes08.blogspot.com

The Laboratorio de Arte y Espacio Social (LAES) is a collaborative research workshop directed by María Fernanda Cartagena and Bill Kelley, Jr. for the Education Department of the Museo del Banco Central del Ecuador (Central Bank Museum of Ecuador).

LAES will offer a free and open space for participants of any discipline to investigate and engage in issues involving the relationship between art and public space. Methodological research that involves working with and understanding public cultural practices are of primary concern within a field that has seen enormous growth of activity both locally and internationally, institutionally and informally, and individually and collectively.

Practices born in or outside the art world system hold numerous promising possibilities depending on the public one chooses to work with. LAES, under the institutional umbrella of the largest museum in Ecuador, will seek to investigate the ties between institutional possibilities and the numerous independent artist/activist led projects in the region. Relationships between art and political movements, collaborative strategies and community work, as well as contemporary and historic forms of public space cultural practices will be investigated.

Hangar Bicocca

http://hangarbicocca.it

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Role:
The Artistic Director will work in close quarters with the Scientific Committee in order to develop an ambitious program of exhibitions and events; build an international network with contemporary art institutions worldwide; consolidate the relations with the neighborhood and with the public and private cultural institutions at local and national level; liaise with the General Director in the activity of fund-raising.

Non-Objectif Sud

http://www.nonobjectifsud.org

Non-Objectif Sud (NOS) is pleased to present its third annual exhibition entitled NOS Open which is taking place at La Barralière from June 15 through September 7, 2008. NOS invites artists, curators and colleagues to spend several days together, collaborate on and install an exhibition.

This summer, the participating international artists include Tanya Barr, Tania Kitchell, Ati Maier, Clive Murphy, Gary Rough, Blair Thurman and Lars Wolter who are exhibiting at NOS for the first time. Working in a variety of media from wall painting, drawing, photography and video to site-specific installations, sculpture and landwork, several artists interact with the surrounding provencal landscape.

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Hugues Reip Eden, 2003. Photo: Hugues Reip

http://www.mot-art-museum.jp/english

Exhibition Outline
Do we live simply in one world—the world we see around us?
There may be other worlds, alternative realities, somewhere very close by. Now, Hugues Reip and 10 Japanese and French artists invite us to experience "parallel worlds" like that of works of fantasy and science fiction.

Born in Cannes, France in 1964, artist Hugues Reip commands an array of art media, including neon and video. Parallel Worlds gathers Reip's major works in one exhibition, such pieces as "Eden," in which viewers encounter an optical illusion of themselves, as tiny as insects, inside huge plants, and "White Spirit," in which humorous ghosts fleetingly appear and disappear. The world of Reip's imagination unfolds around us, a world uncanny, yet filled with warmth.

Project Arts Centre

The Flight of the Dodo is an eclectic exhibition made up of various artworks and elements that celebrate adventure, delve into factual myths, plunging in and out of notions of the hybrid, evolution, imaginative escapism, the will to survive and ultimate extinction.

The exhibition includes artists who have an eye on the flipside of life, the next steps in evolution and an interest in the endgame. While we read endlessly of global warming and the future migration which will be necessary to survive, there is much debate and angst about the timeframe for this outcome. Some artists focus on the landscape after the fall while others envisage salvation through science and technology. Some artworks let you escape from rational understanding, while others ground you in disaster archaeology of the 20th Century.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Mushroom Room

Upside Down Mushroom Room, 2000
exhibited at Fondazione Prada Milan

Liam Gillick

Dr. Lakra

DR. LAKRA

Art has always questioned the medium through which it is portrayed. Extending ultimately, to questions over its very definition. Paint on canvass may be described as ‘pure art’, while a chair, designed principally as function, can include artistic elements. A cup, ostensibly a container, may be considered art if intended solely as an ornament, while a painting may be deemed craft if mass-produced. But where does skin fit? The organ that encompasses our physicality, yet divides our externality. Race, creed, colour, the building blocks of the ‘other’ and the familiar, are all superimposed upon the body’s outer shell. Can this value-laden entity become ‘pure art’, or is it confined by its attachment to the identities of those who wear it?

Sunday, July 20, 2008

José González

José González -Teardrop

PLANTAGE

Santogold, Julian Casablancas, N.E.R.D produced by Pharrell

YEAH!

Kunstverein Freiburg

http://www.kunstvereinfreiburg.de

Ergin Çavuşoğlu's video installations reflect the complex and constantly changing migration of people between places and countries. Often filmed in ports, airports or markets, his videos treat the themes of travel and the process of transition that determines our reality. In this way they construct a lyrical narrative about the personal experiences of individuals within a broader collective history.

At the centre of the exhibition is the video installation Point of Departure, 2006 that was filmed in two airports, Stansted in southern England and Trabzon in the Turkish Black Sea region. Facing each other from the opposite ends of the European landmass, these two locations are subtly separated and recombined. Point of Departure explores the airport both as architectural structure, a machine for processing travellers and their belongings, but also as a space that lends itself to a certain poetic treatment.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Whitney Museum of American Art

http://www.whitney.org

This exhibition brings together a group of new and rarely seen works by Paul McCarthy. It addresses a core element of McCarthy's art: the way in which physical and psychological de-stabilization is made to occur through the body's interaction with dislocated architectural space. This question has been central for McCarthy since his earliest experiments with destruction in painting and performance in the 1960s. The exhibition includes 'Spinning Room', a projective installation first proposed in 1971, 'Mad House', a new installation, 'Bang Bang Room' (1993) and a group of rarely seen film loops, videotapes and a slide work from 1966-1971.

MGMT - Kids....

El Perro Del Mar - Party

ABOUT EL PERRO DEL MAR
El Perro del Mar was founded in the end of 2003 around the idea and need
of making music on terms of one's own. Behind the alter-ego is the sole member Sarah Assbring.
El Perro del Mar started out as what is often referred to as an mp3-artist and in spring 2004 the first cdr-ep 'Baby, I've been in a bad place' was released by the then newly started Swedish label Hybris. Two more cdr-ep:s, 'I've got good news' and 'Holiday Special', were released shortly thereafter.
In late 2004 the first official ep 'What's new? El Perro del Mar' was released, including the songs 'I can't talk about it', 'This Loneliness' and 'It's all good'. Also around this time, she contributed with the song 'Shake it off' on a joint and very limited split single initiated by friend Jens Lekman. She joined him shortly thereafter as opening act on his tour in Sweden.
In May 2005 all the previous unofficial and official releases were gathered to form the compilation album 'Look! It's El Perro del Mar!'. Later that year the ep 'God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get) was released, including the songs 'God Knows', 'Do the Dog' and 'Say'.
During spring 2006 a slightly updated version of the debut album was released in England and in Europe by British label Memphis Industries.
By the end of 2006 the self-titled album was released in the U.S. as well as in Australia and New Zealand. The album received rave reviews.
El Perro del Mar also had the opportunity to make a short and successful tour in Brazil. In spring 2007 El Perro del Mar toured the U.S.

BLUMEN

http://www.villaromana.org

BLUMEN is the second installment of Collier Schorr‘s “Forests & Fields“ project. Schorr has been documenting the life and landscapes of a small town in Southern Germany for the past 15 years. Spending summers and occasional winters there, her work has veered from mainly portraiture to include domestic landscapes and arrangements as a way of informing about the lives, structures and temperaments of the townspeople of Schwäbisch-Gmünd.

BLUMEN is a play on the idea of floral arrangements, of taking what is natural and fitting it into a compromised position. These actions mirror Schorr‘s idea of portraiture as a picture of both the subject and the photographer‘s idea of who the subject is, merging her subject‘s identities with her own idea of what it is to be “German”.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Kunsthallen Brandts

http://www.brandts.dk/prb

China evokes strong feelings in the Western world right now. We do not understand the country's culture and view of human life, just as they are unappreciative of Western values. The communication between East and West is precisely what is on the Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping's agenda. In his art he points to the great differences between these two parts of the world, but also tries to unite East and West and make us communicate. The exhibition Ping Pong at Kunsthallen Brandts presents works by Huang Yong Ping. It is both a beautiful and very powerful exhibition centering on the world's conflicts and its lack of understanding and dialogue.