sala rekalde

http://www.salarekalde.bizkaia.net

sala rekalde presents Symmetric Inequality the first solo exhibition in Spain by Berlin-based artist Haegue Yang. The work belongs to a group of installations the artist has been developing over the course of this year, focusing her interest on investigating new possibilities for parallel crossings between abstraction and narration. Together with Kunstverein (Hamburg), Cubitt (London), the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), Portikus (Frankfurt) and REDCAT (Los Angeles), sala rekalde now contributes to the closure of a serial project that has taken the medium of portraiture as the point of departure for its own articulation. 

Symmetric Inequality continues a process of experimentation based on the artist's personal use of the portrait-like study within abstract terms, firstly to open this format to a more allegorical space for representing subjectivity, secondly to investigate the political implications embedded within hidden fragments of personal memories and, lately, as a possible platform for self-recognition. 

Starting from the installation Mountains of Encounter at Kunstverein Hamburg, Haegue Yang stressed her interest in a particular series of meetings during the Japanese occupation (1910-1945) between Korean underground fighter, Kim San, and American journalist, Nym Wales, from which a dissident view of Korean history was narrated. Following this line of work, Lethal Love at Cubitt in London comprised another portrait installation, informed this time by the life and death of the peace movement activist and founder of the German Green Party, Petra Kelly, and her life partner, Gert Bastian, a former NATO general. The overlap between her public image and her private life was translated into a porous construction. In Three Kinds, presented at the 55th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the artist employed a more dialectical approach than in previous installations. As a result of this, the concept of portraiture and its potential narratives were diluted into a less descriptive exercise to highlight its own abstract configuration. Her solo show entitled Sibling and Twins at Portikus in Frankfurt am Main returned to narrative as the starting point for configuring the materials used in the installation. Two pairs of historical characters; on the one hand, Kim San and Nym Wales and on the other, French writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras and her husband, the Resistance fighter Robert Antelme, were juxtaposed in two distinct works. More recently, in Asymmetric Equality at REDCAT, Los Angeles the artist opened up a dialogue between fragments of certain biographies and her own vital experiences. The childhood of French author Marguerite Duras in Indochina reminded her own memories of youth in an under-developed society. Described as "warm melancholy" by the artist,Asymmetric Equality evoked colonial displacement, the dislocation of subjectivity and empowering melancholy through the clash between heat, wind, light and sound.

artparis 2009

http://www.artparis.fr

FOCUS ON ARTPARIS 2009:

130 exhibitors will present an exciting panorama of the artistic creation of the 20th and 21st centuries under the elegant glass dome of the historic Grand Palais in Paris, showcasing a wide variety of media from painting, drawing and sculpture to photo, installation and video. 

- artparis Photography 

Created in 2008, this dedicated section of the fair will be consolidated. 15 international galleries specializing in contemporary photography will present the latest trends.

- artparis Young Talent

15 young international galleries will participate in this new section, dedicated to the most innovative young artists of today. 


This year, artparis will welcome the prestigious Daniel and Florence Guerlain Prize for Contemporary Drawing. Work by the three short-listed candidates will be on view at the fair (names to be announced in December). 

As the crossroads of several artistic trends, artparis has proven itself to be a cultural melting pot where artists, gallerists, collectors and even less experienced visitors can feed their passion for modern and contemporary art and satisfy their curiosity for the world we live in.

Blanton Museum of Art

http://www.blantonmuseum.org

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is pleased to present The New York Graphic Workshop: 1964 – 1970, the first comprehensive presentation of a crucial, yet little-known episode in the history of American and Latin American Conceptual art. The Blanton is recognized as a leader in the scholarship and presentation of Latin American art, and building on the museum's 2007 exhibition, The Geometry of Hope, this exhibition further explores the contributions of Latin American artists to the modern and contemporary art historical narrative.

The exhibition examines the Conceptualist movement of the 1960s and '70s through the printmaking practices of the New York Graphic Workshop (NYGW). Founded in 1965 by three young Latin American artists in New York—Luis Camnitzer, José Guillermo Castillo, and Liliana Porter—the group's mission was to redefine the practice of printmaking, focusing on its mechanical and repetitive nature as opposed to its traditional techniques and aesthetics. Moreover, the group employed radical printmaking practices—printing, for example, on the side of a ream of paper- exploring the idea of what actually constitutes a print. The NYGW examined the ideas and conceptual meaning behind printmaking, and sought to utilize the medium in both alternative and accessible ways. As stated in the artists' first manifesto, "The printing industry prints on bottles, boxes, electronic circuits, etc. Printmakers, however, continue to make prints with the same elements used by [Albrecht] Dürer. The act of printing in editions, the act of publishing, is more important than the work carried out on a printing plate."

In the 1960s, The New York Graphic Workshop established a cooperative space that promoted an exchange of ideas between artists and served as a collective center for professional printmakers to teach, exhibit and experiment. One of the most interesting aspects of the NYGW was its unusual printmaking practices, and means of presenting new artworks—holding exhibitions by mail, distributing a cookie as a multiple, exhibiting in a safe deposit box on 57th Street and announcing a non-existent exhibition as part of Information, a show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970. 

Showcasing over 70 prints, drawings and mixed media works, The New York Graphic Workshop: 1964 -1970, examines the philosophies of the group's founders and explore the theoretical possibilities of printmaking through examples by Camnitzer, Castillo and Porter, along with leading contemporary artists of the period—Max Neuhaus, José Luis Cuevas and Salvador Dalí—whose works were produced by the Workshop on the artists' behalf. On view in the Blanton's Butler Gallery on the first floor, the exhibition design and installation reflects the mission of the NYGW.

Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible live in an elevator

Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)

http://www.macba.es

RABASCALL
PRODUCTION 1964-1982
Inauguration: 22 January 2009
Exhibition dates: From 23 January to 19 April 2009
Curator: Bartomeu Marí
Production: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)

Exhibited regularly in France, the work of Joan Rabascall (Barcelona, 1935) from the early sixties to the early eighties is barely known in Catalonia. This exhibition analyses his production during this period, a key era in the artist's career as it enables us to decipher the central code of his concerns: from the landscape of the communications media to that of ideologies and technological transformations and their imprint on the consideration of the human, the way the media demarcate the construction of the historical memory and the position of art as an antidote and counterpoint to the standardisation of ideas. 

The art critic Alexandre Cirici wrote in 1970, "We often find the name Rabascall among the promoters of manifestations of investigation, in Paris, London or Amsterdam. Lately, we've found it linked to the strange phenomenon of the revival of the ceremonial. But in Catalonia he continues to be largely unknown. That's why we think we should talk about him." It was in fact necessary to wait until 1985 to find him in an exhibition, the Barcelona-Paris-New York (The Course of Twelve Catalan Artists, 1960-1980), in the Palau Robert, and in projects presented in the Virreina (1993) and the Centre d'Art Santa Mònica (2000). Now, the MACBA recovers a series of works with a heavy dose of cultural criticism dating from a period of breakage and conflict in European culture and politics. 

The exhibition is structured around a concrete series of works and includes, among others, the collages made from 1964 to 1968, the first emulsified canvasses and photographic prints on metal. Works are also displayed from the early seventies which employ texts and statistical data on culture in a kind ofready-made; the Souvenir Landscapes of 1975, in which he contrasts images from tourist postcards of towns where there were once concentration camps, with the places where these camps were actually built, and the Landscapes of 1982, which show images of different localities on the Costa Brava that reveal the effect of tourism on the transformation of landscapes. 

Rabascall's work may be situated in the setting of a 'perverse', steely vision of criticism of the object and the consumption unfolding in Europe, in contrast to the fascination for the industrial product of American Pop. An expert in British and French art (Rabascall has lived in Paris since 1961), he knows Lawrence Alloway and Pierre Restany, the Independent Group and the Nouveaux Réalistes, and mixes with avant-garde groups that retrieve techniques and positions reminiscent of Berlin Dadaism. The criticism of culture linked to political positions of opposition and revolt led him to explore culture's dependence on the economy, fashion and politics and would result, in the seventies, in his developing a reflection on the construction of history and the way the tourism industry shapes landscapes, lands and languages. 

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)

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

Under the title "MOT Collection," Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) is holding exhibitions examining the Museum's permanent collection from fresh perspectives. In 2008 Period 3, MOT Collection is presenting a special exhibition entitled "Survival Action—Focusing on New Acquisitions," featuring selected Collection works acquired in the previous fiscal year, with a focus on those of emerging artists. The works are being displayed together with referential artworks by Japanese and international artists. 

Today, in a world rendered unclear, for good or bad, by a superabundance of things and information, when society and history fail to provide individuals with "meaning for living" and "correct values" in daily life, we can only choose or create our own meaning for living. And yet, in this opaque world where people are unable to share a unified vision, even the standards we choose change at a dizzying speed. As a result, it is hard in everyday life to feel the joyful reality of being alive. We must even then, however, make choices and decisions in order to live—what is correct, what truly has value, what is truly best to do? Amid our superabundance of things and information, and diversifying lifestyle choices, we experience a loss of freedom and can no longer find meaning or values we can believe in. 

The works of many artists, who live in the same everyday world as we, demonstrate for us the freedom to act and change the existing framework, without succumbing to nihilism or withdrawing from contemporary life, or else fleeing to an outer imaginary world of their own making. Their endeavor—of using journal or documentation methods to observe the small events of our days, or altering familiar materials and motifs present around us in daily life—can help us find a new standpoint in our relationship with society and the everyday world. This special exhibition perceives the highly varied expression of such artists—particularly young contemporary artists, as "survival actions" for living in today's opaque world. 

We hope the exhibition will communicate the value of maintaining artworks for future generations, as well as the rich power of contemporary artworks to reflect our times. 

Featured artists and creators:
Tobias REHBERGER, Yukio FUJIMOTO, Katsushige NAKAHASHI, SHIMABUKU, Koki TANAKA, Haruka KOJIN, Mika KATO, Yoshitomo NARA, Atsuko TANAKA, Yayoi KUSAMA, Kohei NAWA, Roy LICHTENSTEIN, Kentaro YOKOUCHI, Motohiko ODANI, Lucio FONTANA, Kiichiro ADACHI, Yuki KIMURA, Chie MATSUI, Richard LONG, Hamish FULTON, Naoki ISHIKAWA, Robert RAUSCHENBERG, Shinro OTAKE, Kenji YANOBE , Matthew BARNEY, Natsuyuki NAKANISHI, Takanobu KOBAYASHI, Mokuma KIKUHATA, Kazuo SHIRAGA, Yves KLEIN, Robert SMITHSON, Ryoko AOKI, Marlene DUMAS

bkSM (beeldende kunst Strombeek/Mechelen)

http://www.bonnefanten.nl

The bkSM (beeldende kunst Strombeek/Mechelen) publication of the artist book 'This an Example of That', designed by Luc Derycke, shows the preliminary sketches of this unique series of works created by the collaboration between John Baldessari and Koen Van den Broek. 

Exhibitions International distributes the book.

John Baldessari (National City, California, 1931) lives and works in Santa Monica. His photographic works undermine the conventional language of images. Drawing on visual material from the cinema, newspapers and movie stills, he has described his photomontages as "blasted allegories," shards and fragments of possible meanings that lend themselves to on-the-spot interpretation. Rooted in conceptual art, Baldessari's practice continues to evince the artist's interest in the relationship between image and language, in absurdity, banality, and in Freudian associations. In his work, atrocious images incite laughter, and triteness takes on a tragic dimension.

Koen van den Broek (Belgium 1973) is a young Belgian painter, who lives and works in Schilde, Belgium. His paintings want to examine our experience of landscape, from close-up views of bleak urban corners to huge, empty swathes of countryside. The paintings combine sensual abstraction with precise figuration to create paintings of arresting, cinematic power. 

Koen van den Broek has long been familiar with the work of the American artist John Baldessari, whose artistic output has been of seminal importance for the younger generation of artists because in his sustained personal interpretation of conceptual art he has never renounced the making of images.

'This an Example of That' is a unique collaboration between these two artists.

For this project John Baldessari sent Koen Van den Broek from his copious archive a series of photographs of scenery and sets from the Hollywood film world. Koen van den Broek conceived and processed this series of 22 suggestive images – blown up in prints ranging in size from small to monumental – with brightly coloured passages, strokes and stripes with the result that a new reading reorients and accentuates the work. 

International Cairo Biennale

http://cairo2008.makcenter.org

The United States will be represented at the 11th International Cairo Biennale by new-media artist Jennifer Steinkamp as well as with a diverse program of activities designed to promote international exchange. Organized by Kimberli Meyer, director of the MAK Center for Art & Architecture at the Schindler House in Los Angeles, a team of Los Angeles-based artists and curators will conduct a variety of adjunct programs, including "Animation Buffet," a screening of contemporary experimental animation; "Other Sides of the World," a public roundtable discussion; a website and blog; and an exhibition catalogue. The Cairo Biennale will run from December 20, 2008 – February 20, 2009.

Jennifer Steinkamp is known for creating computer-generated immersive installations that are both thought provoking and dazzling to the eye. Her digital animations use state-of-the-art technologies and employ elements of popular culture while raising fundamental questions about politics, perception and existence. At the Cairo Arts Palace, Steinkamp will exhibit her multi-channel video piece Dervish (2004–2005). The installation will be accompanied by a new work, Dervish Cairo (2008), a suite of three prints that superimposes the trees of Dervish onto photographs of Cairo's urban landscape. 

The Los Angeles art community will also be represented in Cairo by a diverse group of cultural producers. These include writer, curator and artist Malik Gaines; artist and curator Sherin Guirguis; curator Chip Tom; and animation scholar and CalArts faculty member, Maureen Furniss. The L.A. team is conducting a variety of cultural programs as part of the U.S. contribution to the Cairo Biennale. Public dialogue will be activated on December 22 with "Other Sides of the World," a presentation and roundtable discussion in which Gaines, Guirguis, Meyer and Tom give short presentations on their multi-disciplinary work in Los Angeles and discuss common threads in their practices. "Animation Buffet," curated by Maureen Furniss, will be screened on December 23. The 80-minute program features short videos by a wide variety of international artists. The "Extra-Biennial Blog," part of the project web site, will chronicle the activities and art of the Biennale, as well as other art event s in Cairo such as the multi-venue exhibition "Photo Cairo 4: The Long Shortcut," and the workshop and site-specific performance "Eleven Human Senses" by LA group My Barbarian at The Townhouse Gallery.

Garage Center for Contemporary Culture

Moscow on the Move showcases works by leading Russian and international artists on one of the city's largest plasma screens. Featured artists include AES+F, Artavazd Peleshan, Doug Aitken, Fischli & Weiss, Douglas Gordon, Chris Marker, Alexander Kluge, Sarah Morris, Pipilotti Rist, Cao Fei, Yang FuDong, Philippe Parreno and Agnes Varda. The works will be seen not just by passers-by and cars in traffic but also from buildings across the city. The project is presenting the Russian premiere of the video work by Russian artists AES+F which attracted such critical attention at the 2007 Venice Biennale.

The project is presented in collaboration with London's Serpentine Gallery and is curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine.

Dasha Zhukova' Founder of GCCC said: "I think there are many busy people in Moscow and many of them may love contemporary art, but they may not have the time to go out to a museum. Everyone is always in a rush, so I thought this would be a great way for people on their way to work to get a glimpse of these beautiful works." 

The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture (GCCC Moscow) Moscow's newest arts centre opened in September this year with a major exhibition by Russia's leading artists, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. GCCC is concerned with the promotion and development of contemporary art and culture in Russia. It is housed in one of Russia's architectural masterpieces, the former Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, designed in 1926 by the architect Konstantin Melnikov. With a floor space of 8,500 sq m, GCCC Moscow boasts the largest, fully flexible exhibition venue in the city. The project was founded by Dasha Zhukova and co-ordinated by Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst. 

S.M.A.K.

http://www.smak.be

Since the end of the 1980s Mark Manders (b. 1968, Volkel, the Netherlands) has created sculptural installations – or better said: installation sculpture – which can all be regarded as sections of a self portrait in the form of imaginary spaces. Through his recent participation in the 24th Sao Paulo Biennale (1998), the Venice Biennale (2001) and Documenta 11 in Kassel (2002) Manders has acquired a prominent and autonomous position in the international world of sculptural artists.

His career began as early as 1986, the year in which he created one of the key works in his body of work, 'Self Portrait as a building'. Everything Mark Manders subsequently produced can be interpreted within this idea of the self portrait as a building and as an attempt to translate his own human existence and biographical memories and feelings into wordless associative memory spaces or –installations. This concept of the 'self' as architecture, as a building, produced an art that sees sculpture as a spatial materialising of highly personal – sometimes abstract – thoughts, feelings and emotions. Of course Mark Manders is apprehensive about not allowing his poetic 'self' to fully coincide with the real, autobiographical Mark Manders, but at the same time the latter cannot be seen completely separately. Mark Manders' installations are always about a paradoxical balance: the construction of a self-portrait which can only reveal itself in a more universal visual idiom tha t transcends the hyper-personal and is characteristic of all good contemporary art. 

Together the chimneys, brick walls, larger than life rats, chairs, newspapers and a collection of small personal objects form a sort of 'still lives with broken moments', an art that appears to distance itself from time. In his work Mark Manders seeks precisely that point at which the radical personal aspect of his sculptures, most of which are made by hand, comes fully to its own but at the same time – like a radical self-portrait – also acquires a more general character.

Kunsthalle Fridericianum

http://www.fridericianum-kassel.de

The Kunsthalle Fridericianum has invited the Berlin-based conceptual and performance artist Daniel Knorr (b. Bucharest, 1968) to present his performance project Scherben bringen Glück (Shards bring good luck). The project includes the creation of the sculpture City Pills and the ongoing production of spectacles from fragments of old glass during the entire run of the exhibition. The artist aims to make history – literally – visible in this way and to evoke associations with various levels of our culture. Daniel Knorr: 'On the one hand broken glass is a witness to a violent history, on the other it contains everyday cultural meanings and values. In Scherben bringen Glück the glasses stand for the visualisation of this ambivalent relationship.'

Daniel Knorr's work deals with the realationships between performance art, everyday life, public versus private space and the artist and the audience. Pursuing the principle of Conceptual Art, the artist explores the aspect of materialisation in art, calling it into question on various levels. Thoughts, ideas and feelings, but also identity, language and text all contribute to the realisation of his art.

In 2005 Daniel Knorr represented Romania at the Venice Biennale. As an 'anti-concept' he left the pavilion empty revealing the traces of the pavilion's usage over time. At this year's Berlin Biennale, Knorr questioned German history and the notion of national identity in his work Nationalgalerie, which featured the flags of Berlin's student fraternities – notorious for their right-wing stance – as a 'flag frieze' fluttering from the roof of the Neue Nationalgalerie. Knorr's contribution to Manifesta 7 in South Tyrol consisted of removing all the doors from one of the exhibition venues in Rovereto so that the art works on display were freely accessible 24 hours a day. The reactions to this project were documented and discussed in supplements in the local daily paper and in association with a Romanian periodical. The artist's contribution to Copenhagen's U-TURN Quadrennial for Contemporary Art caused quite a stir this autumn; Stolen History involved covering t he heads of the city's public sculptures with black balaclavas.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

http://www.sfmoma.org

The exhibition proposes that participatory art is generally based on a notion of indeterminacy—an openness to chance or change, as introduced by John Cage in the early 1950s—and refers to projects that, while initiated by individual artists, can be realized only through the contribution of others. This artistic approach entices the public to join in; it questions the conventional divide between artists and their audiences, and it challenges assumptions about the symbolic value of art as well as the traditional role of the museum as a container for objects rather than a site for social engagement or art production. 

The Art of Participation traces the influence and transformation of this concept across various genres, identifying its signal moments and charting a lineage of participatory art across a wide spectrum of media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, film, video, photography, online projects, and interactive media installations. Seminal works by major historical figures will contextualize more recent projects, linking key aspects of contemporary participatory practice to their historical precedents. 

SFMOMA, in association with Thames & Hudson, has published a 224-page, fully illustrated exhibition catalogue featuring original essays by Robert Atkins, Rudolf Frieling, Boris Groys, and Lev Manovich. SFMOMA will also produce a companion volume (a small print-on-demand paperback, to be released after the exhibition closes) reflecting the participatory aspects of the show by collecting texts, visuals, and other content contributed by artists and visitors.

Complete List of Featured Artists
Abramović/Ulay; Vito Acconci; Francis Alÿs; John Baldessari; Joseph Beuys; Joachim Blank, Gerrit Gohlke, and Karl Heinz Jeron; George Brecht; Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Mike Bennett; John Cage; c a l c and Johannes Gees; Janet Cardiff; Lygia Clark; Minerva Cuevas; Maria Eichhorn; VALIE EXPORT; Harrell Fletcher and Jon Rubin; Fluxus collective; Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz; Jochen Gerz; Matthias Gommel; Felix Gonzalez-Torres; Dan Graham; Hans Haacke; Lynn Hershman Leeson; Allan Kaprow; Henning Lohner and Van Carlson; Chip Lord, Curtis Schreier, and Bruce Tomb; Rafael Lozano-Hemmer; Tom Marioni; MTAA (M.River and T.Whid Art Associates); Antoni Muntadas; Yoko Ono; Nam June Paik; Dan Phiffer and Mushon Zer-Aviv; Raqs Media Collective; Robert Rauschenberg; Warren Sack; Mieko Shiomi; Torolab; Wolf Vostell; Andy Warhol; Stephen Willats; Erwin Wurm

Neues Museum

http://www.nmn.de

"Mainstream art, art market art is boring", says René Block. Since the 1960s, the gallerist, publisher, curator and collector has operated outside of the normal mould and its narrow boundaries. His collection - featuring among others Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, George Brecht, Wolf Vostell and Karl Arthur Koepcke - is among the foremost in the realm of Fluxus. From the 1990s onwards his interest has turned to above all to the European periphery: Turkey, the Balkans, and Scandinavia. Block has showcased artists such as Mangelos, Gülsün Karamustafa, Sanja Ivekovic, Ayse Erkmen and Maria Wirkkala at international exhibitions. 

Since it was founded, the Neues Museum has been able to present broad sections of the Block Collection on permanent loan. A large number of further works, including many of recent date, have recently been added.

They demonstrate how the Block has constantly developed ever since its beginnings. 

This new aspect of the collection is now centre stage at the exhibition, which picks up on the Block exhibition at the Kunsthalle Nürnberg in 1993 - but without repeating anything. The title "Who Killed the painting?" takes it name from a work by Kosovo artist Driton Hajredini (born 1970), that reflects ironically on the frequently mooted "end of painting". Similarly, in the Block Collection the classic medium of painting is placed in the shadow of photography, video and object art.

Topics such as national identity and cultural self-image, gender and politics constitute the collection`s major thrust. 

With "Who killed the painting?", the Block Collection will be presented for the first time in all its complexity and with that trace out the signature of a collector who is regarded as a pioneer and trail-blazer for a great many artists. 

Hirshhorn Museum

http://www.hirshhorn.si.edu

Figurative art plays an important role in the Hirshhorn's collection. "Strange Bodies," on view from Dec. 11 to early 2010, brings together some of the most celebrated examples of figuration from the museum's holdings to examine how and why artists depict and distort the body. Organized by associate curator Kristen Hileman and located in the lower-level galleries, the installation comprises more than 40 works, with a rotation of works occurring midway through the show. The exhibition also includes a gallery devoted to a survey of the museum's unique, in-depth holdings of works on paper and paintings by George Grosz, which demonstrate a socially charged use of the human form.

"Strange Bodies" provides an opportunity to examine the ways in which artists have exaggerated or altered the figure in order to explore cultural and individual conflicts and psychology, as well as formal qualities such as color, shape and texture. The exhibition also traces the evolution of the museum's particular focus on collecting figuration. On view are early to mid-20th century works from the core collection Joseph H. Hirshhorn donated to the museum, including pieces by Francis Bacon, Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, Willem de Kooning and others, which reveal the various ways in which these artists dissolved or warped the human figure to heighten its expressive and emotional impact. Hirshhorn also acquired paintings by Balthus and René Magritte, which represent the human subject in a surreal way, locating the body (or its parts) in contexts that are outside of mundane occurrences, and, in part, reflect the traumatic war-torn world in which their art developed. 

Building on Hirshhorn's legacy, former director James T. Demetrion brought important examples of figuration from more recent decades into the collection, including sculptures and paintings by Georg Baselitz, Sue Coe, Tony Cragg, Robert Gober, Philip Guston, Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Julian Schnabel, Paul Thek and Franz West. These works, such as Thek's bloody, sandal-clad "Warrior's Leg" (1966–67) made during the Vietnam War era and Coe's "Malcolm X and the Slaughter House" (1985), often combine expressionistic and/or surrealistic impulses with social critique. The use of unorthodox materials also characterizes several of these works, as with Schnabel's "Portrait of Andy Warhol" (1982) painted on velvet and the Kienholzs' "In the Infield Was Patty Peccavi" (1981), an assemblage of found objects including furniture, a stuffed bird, photographs and electric lights.

Akademie der Künste, Berlin

http://www.adk.de/reactfeminism/index.htm

The international performance project re.act.feminism provides an exemplary overview of gender-critical performance art of the 1960s and 1970s and its current ‘return’ in form of appropriations, re-enactments and archival or documentary projects. 

The exhibition documents performative works from 24 artists spanning across two generations. The selected works extend the perspective beyond the canon of the known and familiar in order to demonstrate the diversity and complexity of (feminist) performative strategies. This includes performance movements in Eastern and South Eastern Europe as well as the former GDR (since the beginning of the 1980s), which often developed parallel to and independent of “Western art”. 

The video archive offers visitors the possibility to choose from a wealth of more than 70 performance documents, video performances and interviews with artists and to view these “on demand”. This unique collection allows an intensive examination of feminist inspired performance art in both the East and West. 

A performance programme by artists of different generations, performance interviews, discussions and theoretical reflections not only pursues the question of how performance can be archived, documented and re-enacted, but also introduces current strategies of gender-critical and interventionist performance. 

Exhibition:
Oreet Ashery (IL/UK), Maja Bajević (BIH/D), Colette (USA), Orshi Drozdik (H), VALIE EXPORT(A), Esther Ferrer (E), Kate Gilmore (USA), Lorraine O’Grady (USA), Sanja Iveković (HR),Verena Kyselka (GDR/D), Nicola L (F), Suzanne Lacy & Leslie Labowitz (USA), Babette Mangolte (USA), Yoko Ono (J/USA), Orlan (F), Tanja Ostojić (SRB/D), Ewa Partum (PL/D),Ulrike Rosenbach (D), Boryana Rossa (BG), Stefanie Seibold (A/D), Cornelia Sollfrank (D),Gabriele Stötzer (GDR/D) and Martha Wilson (USA).

Artpace

http://www.artpace.org

Artpace San Antonio announces new projects by 08.3 resident artists Richie Budd (San Antonio, TX),Lu Chunsheng (Shanghai, China), and Taryn Simon (New York, New York), selected by guest curatorHans Ulrich Obrist, Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at London's Serpentine Gallery.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

San Antonio-based artist Richie Budd makes sensory, interactive sculptures out of a broad array of household and industrial gadgets and materials. At Artpace, Budd's Absorbing Liminal Homeostasis, comprises an interactive sculpture constructed with medial equipment, speakers, convex mirrors, aromatherapy devices, lights, a margarita machine, and smoke, snow, and bubble machines. The sensory elements of the machine, operated by the artist from a wheelchair set within the sculpture, include the polyphonic layering of club music and audio tracks developed for business coaching. Acting as a neurological disc jockey of sorts, Budd conducts an investigation of psychological and cultural programming, and generates a powerful sensory experience for viewers. 

Chinese artist Lu Chunsheng's video and photographic works integrate documentary-style imagery with fictional epic narratives. At Artpace, Chunsheng created his first full-length, high-definition film. Shot in locations throughout San Antonio and surrounding areas, The first man who bought a juicer bought it not for drinking juice documents the life of a combine (a farm machine used for harvesting grain) from its birth in a factory to its work in the fields. Inspired by Orson Welles' radio play, The War of the Worlds, Chunsheng's film has all the trappings of a classic science fiction scenario, showing technology as a creation that threatens to undermine and enslave its creator. In this not so subtle critique of science and industry, the film joins sweeping panoramic shots of Texas farmland with long-take footage of the combine to create a diametrical opposition between the natural world and the manufactured environment. 

Taryn Simon's Artpace exhibition, a photo-sculptural installation titled Sepia Officinalis, represents a departure from the artist's previous bodies of work, introducing a more intuitive atmosphere of trial and error based on the possibilities of natural phenomena. It features four aquariums, which house a unique species of marine life called Cuttlefish. The skin of the cephalopod almost instantly adapts to its surroundings, taking on distinct tonalities of the surface over which it swims. Through maintenance of four separate environments—a control group of three tanks lined with natural images of sand and one tank featuring a background of a checkerboard—the artist tests the Cuttlefish's survival strategy of invisibility. Through careful construction of the Cuttlefish's environment, Simon presents a series of sculptures that blur the lines between natural and man-made, emphasizing the power—and fragility—of illusion. 

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Hans Ulrich Obrist was born in Zürich, Switzerland in1968. In 2006, he joined the Serpentine Gallery, London, England as Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects. Prior to this he was Curator of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France (2000-06), as well as Curator of Museum in Progress, Vienna, Austria (1993-00). He has curated over 150 exhibitions internationally since 1991, including DO IT (47 exhibitions since 1994); 1st Berlin Biennale, Germany, co-curated with Klaus Biesenbach and Nancy Spector (1998); 2nd Guangzhou Triennale, China, co-curated with Hou Hanru and Guo Xiaoyan (2005); Lyon Biennale, France, co-curated with Stéphanie Moisdon (2007); Il Tempo del Postino, Manchester International Festival, England, co-curated with Philippe Parreno (2007); and 1st Moscow Triennale, Russia (2008). 

Zacheta National Gallery of Art

http://www.zacheta.art.pl

The starting point for the project are murals which, associated above all with wall painting, on this occasion are to be a pretext for a variety of different interventions in/on the architectural interior of the Zacheta gallery. In addition to classical painted murals, the exhibition will also witness the realisation of non-murals: that is to say non-painted installations created from big format prints or other unconventional materials, which somehow reproduce or imitate painted effects.

An essential element in the project is the inscribing of artistic actions in the context of the Zacheta's classical exhibition space. These actions are to take over the existing architecture: the walls, floor, skylights, and staircase whose history reaches back to the beginnings of the 20th century, and which in the beginning of the 50s started to function in the context of the specific aesthetic of the white cube. The monolithic and objective context of the white cube passes in contemporary exhibition-making as a universal space. It is a convention of a space outside of reality, in which the attention of the spectator is to focus on the work of art, while peripheral significations emerging from the realia or context of the exhibition space are neutralized. Prior to entering into relation with the work, however, the spectator often casts an eye over the space of the gallery; and it is this reflex that provides the overarching context for the objects shown within . The sacralised, conventionalised nature of the white cube is sustained as a system of values, through which objects always attain the status of art.

The wall - the symbol of the white cube - does not in itself contain any essential aesthetic features; it is simply a necessity. But from the times of the revolution in art at the turn of the 50s and 60s, and as a consequence in strategies for the making of exhibitions, the wall is no longer a passive support or foundation, but rather is often engaged as an active participant, as a field of confrontation, or as a surface on which artists strive to intervene.

In Zacheta, the architecture of the interior creates an unusual space that does not undergo transformation easily. The artists participating in the project have been asked to engage with the space of several of Zacheta's rooms and create installations - murals/non-murals - which annex the architecture in a total way by taking over its monumental surfaces. These actions aim to create a new quality of space, in which the spectator feels the force of illusion, colour and apparently limitless forms stretching out to the scale of the existing architecture: more extended than a painting in a closed frame, but linked to the proportions of the size of the building. The spectator, who in general quickly identifies with pictures hung on the wall indicating a specified direction of perception, in the case of murals/non-murals receives non-defined vectors of perception - and can take up any possible point of view. The activisation of the wall and interventions in the gallery's interior, the total annexing of space through the extension of painting and non-painting on the surfaces, thus aims to lead spectators into a transformed space of Zacheta. The wall as atabula rasa available for the making of a record, for inscribing a tattoo.

I Am Making Art by John Baldessari

I Am Making Art by John Baldessari

Frankfurter Kunstverein

http://www.fkv.de

The group exhibition "Experimenta FOLKLORE" concerns the phenomenon of folklore as a musical element within contemporary art production. The title of the project refers to the "Experimenta" series that was founded in Frankfurt in the 1970s and conceived as an international, experimental and boundary transcending theatre festival. It is considered to have been an important influence on the experimental music scene of that time. 

Folklore can have both a mythical element as well as still contain the capacity to grapple with the worldly traditions of everyday life and the significance that advanced technology has in a post-modern world. The project aims to relate, in a humorous manner, an understanding of tradition and modernity through the particular installations and performances of various artists (- groups); incorporating self-built instruments and costumes. 

Some of the artists' projects that have been introduced in the exhibition will be questioning the importance that traditional customs, rhymes, rites and harmonies have in our present. Further, the technical achievements that form part of the research of sound sources is not placed in the foreground, instead it is the investigation of musical anthologies and new forms of staging pop-cultural events, traditions, styles and myths. 

"Experimenta FOLKLORE" presents works of Olaf Breuning, Sung Hyung Cho, Factotum, Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane, Uroš Djurić, Michael Dreher, Lilian Franck, Andy Holden, Honey-Suckle Company & Konrad Sprenger, Dani Jakob, juneau/projects/, Johanna Kandl/H. & J. Kandl, Kostüm Total (Alexander Györfi & Peter Holl), Thomas Kratz, Arto Lindsay, f.marquespenteado, Jonas Ohlsson, Marie-Clémence & Cesar Paes, Georges T. Paruvanani, Claus Richter, Duncan Ross, Jim Shaw, Shimabuku and Nicole Wermers. 

The exhibition includes an extensive film program, which, besides a series of documentary films within the exhibition, also contains additional screenings of the film Rock My Religion (1982-84) by Dan Graham as well as the film De llama Lâmina (2004) by Matthew Barney. 

EXHIBITION CURATED BY: Tobi Maier

Collezione Maramotti

http://www.collezionemaramotti.org

Scenario, Gianni Caravaggio's project, is composed of six pieces, four of which have never been exhibited before, and made specifically for the Maramotti Collection.

The exhibition is composed around the fascination surrounding the imagination of the beginning, taken as a constant possibility.

All the pieces become the protagonists of a Scenario of cosmogonic actions creating space and interrelated in different constellations capable of creating ever-changing scenarios. Each piece is inherently an "actuated form" which can still be actuated again.

As always in Caravaggio's work, its formal mutations are linked to the use of unexpected and obsolete materials engendering alchemical processes and sensory illusions playing on paradox. 

The pieces presented in the project continue Caravaggio's theoretical thinking on the mystery of art creation, and the art gesture as generator of renewed relations with the work itself and its potential and constant re-definition.

The book with the same title, written by Federico Ferrari and Caravaggio, and published by Gli Ori develops the same lines. Fruit of the cooperation of the two authors, it will be released for the inauguration of the exhibition.

The book presents a text written by the philosopher Ferrari on art as the creation of a scenario which is never fully defined and whose boundaries are beyond measure.

In the scenario practice – as it is indeed practice – the matter is not the outlining of a new picture of time reality, the offering of a new representation of the present day, the shaping of a new leading figure, a new trend, not the invention of a new -ism. The scenario goes beyond every scene, it is not a datum, but the depiction of the possible: something is still possible at the very point of origin, which has not yet been lost, but is always present in every instant. The scenario is a never-ending origin.

Ludwig Museum

http://www.lumu.hu

Dóra Maurer is one of the major figures in the Hungarian art scene since the 1970s, both through her art and her influence as a professor of the Hungarian Fine Arts Academy. This retrospective exhibition begins with works from the early seventies, drawing on the influences of conceptualism and geometric composition. By presenting entire series wherever possible, the show aims to demonstrate how versatility of form and seriality that has informed Dóra Maurer's work. In addition to her initial printed graphics, she has worked with photography and materials found in nature (branches, hair, etc.). Maurer has been also involved in action art and work bordering on body art and feminism, as well as painting. 

The tendencies and themes running through her work are clearly apparent from the works in the exhibition: from conceptual photography through quasi-images of standard colours and works created through processes of shifting and distortion or virtual spatial inversion of frontally-conceived surfaces, to the curving of the plane. In another direction, the exhibition traces how the standard colours initially used by Maurer have transformed and taken on new life, culminating in Overlappings, a recent group of works exploring colour perception itself.

One of the rooms presents a mural, as a re-enactment of her 1982 work made in the Buchberg Castle, Austria. The space painted in the artist's standard colours is lit by differently coloured lights, meant as a study of human colour perception, demonstrating how colours change with the changes of light. 

The exhibition also features Dóra Maurer's film and video works from 1973 to 1996 in the form of a "video library". 

Accompanying Dóra Maurer's exhibition, a bilingual catalogue has been published in German and Hungarian, including texts by Dieter Honisch and Dieter Bogner, an interview with the artist, as well as a study by art historian Judit Király, analysing Dóra Maurer's works from a mathematical perspective. The book concludes with a comprehensive catalogue based on the artist's original notes.

Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory

http://www.cascoprojects.org

'Generale Staten (General States)' revolves around the story of a quarantined town in the middle of an as yet unidentifiable, virulent and deadly epidemic. This story was played in the form of a physical game by a group of recruited participants. During the preparatory workshop and subsequent performance, the participants actively shaped the game as a collaborative and performative inquiry into the organization of power, imagined and enacted from different points of view, including authorities, individuals and unlabelled collectives. The result is recomposed and presented at Casco, to be accompanied by a game manual anticipating its replay.

Referencing the "Staten-Generaal", an assembly of representatives of the Dutch provinces that became the parliament of the new Dutch Republic in the late 16th century, 'Generale Staten (General States)' proposes to rethink the power of gatherings, meetings and communality from the bottom, particularly under the threat of an invisible danger that could contaminate and affect anyone, any social organ. Instead of being fully scripted, the game is designed with a rudimentary storyline, a minimal set of rules and a stripped-down setting, which serve as tools for the players to exchange and negotiate their different "states" – psychological, ideological, intellectual, physical – as they are gradually transformed during the play. Operating within a loose structure that allows a new temporary reality to be imagined and practiced, the players become active performers who double as citizens, acting and making decisions for the forms of their co-existence, breaking the borders betwe en reality and fiction, between playfulness and seriousness and between pain and joy.

Mieke Van de Voort (b. 1972, based in Amsterdam), working with various media and carrying on different forms of inquiries, has consistently explored mechanisms of power and the possibilities for individuals and collectives to make change within the existing social system. 'Generale Staten (General States)' stands in this line of her ongoing exploration. Making use of different contexts and organizations, this project will also evolve in collaboration with other international art institutions such as The Showroom in London, with which Casco is establishing a continuous collaboration.

Műcsarnok / Kunsthalle Budapest

http://www.mucsarnok.hu 
http://www.kunsthalle.hu

Thomas Ruff's work is an encyclopaedic encapsulation of today's photography. His subjects extend from portraits to galaxies, from the micro- to the macrocosm. His approach is simultaneously scientific and political, while he is also sensitive to shifts in the approaches of contemporary visual culture. The techniques he has employed represent all major steps in the development of photography, including digital image making. His monumental enlargements are expressive lessons in the method, or what he calls the grammar of photography.

The digital world has turned everything that is related to images upside down. Photography as the most trustworthy representation of the world has lost some of its authenticity, because image manipulation in the media has compromised the portrayal of men, and even political documentation.

The issues Thomas Ruff's oeuvre explores are how a photographer in the digital age should deal with the deluge of images, and how the photographs spread and stored on the internet can be made to serve a lesson that throws a new light on the structure of visual culture. Thomas Ruff is a man who knows when to quit: when something proves outdated, he changes his methods and finds new ways for himself.

As a photographer, Thomas Ruff made professional techniques his starting point. His large-size blow-ups surpass even reality: stepping close, you can see details in the pictures which would normally require a microscope to detect. This is his way of reflecting on the uses of photography in the technological culture that emerged in the 1990s. One possible application, he suggests, is to make the photo show more of reality than what is available to the naked eye.

Art in General

http://www.bloomberg.com

Coming to You LIVE presents artworks that reflect the notion of live transmission, one of the dominant technological processes that shapes and defines our relationship with information. Continually updated streams of information permeate both the home and the workplace and are increasingly pervasive elements of contemporary architecture and infrastructure. Drawing from direct news coverage, live feeds of financial data, and reality TV and its myriad DIY offshoots on YouTube, the artworks in the exhibition—like the majority of live transmissions—report on largely unspectacular material with little real-time urgency. The show focuses more on the social, political and psychological effects of a wired world than the advanced equipment that enables it.

Andrea Polli's installation involves a live image feed from the South Pole, while Ian Burns' video of an icy plane with a waving flag in its midst reveals itself to be an illusion concocted from, among other elements, a plastic Wonder Bread box, a bulb, and a fan. Pre-recorded videos by Saskia Holmkvistand Kimberly Miller display subjects molded by the ever-present potential of "going live" and Francis Carlow and Katya Sander take on the anonymous iconicity of newscasters. Ola Pehrson created a live translation of the NASDAQ index into musical notes, resulting in an abstracted composition derived from capital highs and lows. Featuring taped information that appears to be "live," along with rather undramatic real-time footage, several of the pieces remind us that direct visual access can create a sense of profound geographic remoteness rather than the celebrated promise of immediate global connectivity.

Galerie im Taxispalais

http://www.galerieimtaxispalais.at

Artists
Halil Altindere, Fernando Bryce, Patricia Esquivias, Deimantas Narkevicius, Olaf Nicolai, Ola Pehrson, Romana Scheffknecht, Erzen Shkololli, Amelie von Wulffen

Ritornell (refrain) refers to the recurrence of a motif, an instrumental phrase played at the beginning, end or middle of a piece in concerto grosso; the refrain. In this exhibition, Ritornell is a metaphor representing nine artistic works in which the recurrence of motifs and reiteration play a part. The motifs themselves originate from various discourses, from history and the present day, and from everyday life as well as politics. In their creative adaptation it seems that something is set in motion, a "ritornell" via which these motifs are transposed using poetic, sometimes ironic means from the historical into the present day, and so made productive in terms of current experience.

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Critical Interrogation of Visual Culture
The Graduate Program in Visual and Critical Studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco trains students to write professionally about the visual arts and visual culture.

Our program is designed for students interested in the scholarly and creative investigation of the production, circulation, and impact of visual images, objects, events, artifacts, and practices. Students employ a range of methods to analyze and contextualize the visual registers of social subjectivity and collectivity. Using interdisciplinary and culturally diverse frameworks, they bring historical, social, and political analysis, as well as formal analysis, to bear on the interrogation of visual culture.

Degree Options
In addition to an MA in Visual and Critical Studies, we offer dual degrees in coordination with CCA’s graduate programs in Fine Arts, Design, Writing, and Curatorial Practice; there is also a concentration in the Master of Architecture Program option. We welcome highly motivated applicants from a broad spectrum of cultural, professional, and academic backgrounds who believe that criticism can effect positive change on our sociopolitical, as well as visual, environment.

Curriculum
Through core courses, electives, forums, workshops, and guest lectures, students explore the complexities of the contemporary visual landscape. Our distinguished faculty members, drawn from departments across the college, are trained in fine arts, art history, architecture, design, design theory, curatorial practice, creative writing, philosophy, cultural studies, and critical studies.

Additional Components of the Educational Experience
Students interact with a wide variety of visiting artists, scholars, critics, curators, art activists, and community organizers from around the world. CCA’s Graduate Studies Lecture Series brings several distinguished artists, scholars, and other arts professionals to campus each semester. Our department also hosts biweekly seminar-like forums, roundtables and colloquia on pertinent topics, and professional-development workshops. Recent guest speakers have included Judith Butler, Peggy Phelan, José Esteban Munoz, Teresa de Lauretis, Anne Wagner, and Simon Leung.

Career Trajectories
Our alumni follow a range of professional trajectories. They are enrolled in prestigious doctoral programs; curating exhibitions; entering arts administration and journalism; teaching; and engaging in studio and social practice.

Application Deadline
The deadline to apply for the fall 2009 semester is January 15, 2009. Read more atwww.cca.edu/admissions/grad/vizcrit.

Scholarships and Financial Aid
CCA awards a range of competitive merit and diversity scholarships as well as substantial need-based financial aid. For more information about financial aid at CCA, visit www.cca.edu/financialaid.

Aqua Art Miami 2008

http://www.aquaartmiami.com

I'm Keeping an Eye on You
A video art program curated by John Spiak
On-going screening December 2-7 
I'm Keeping an Eye On You is a single channel video art program featuring works by ten artists that explores the effects of our curiosity in and intrusions upon others. Featuring works by: Mounira Al Solh, Rachel Garfield, Charlotte Ginsborg, Pia Greschner, Myung-Soo Kim, Yaron Lapid, Jeff Luckey, Johnna MacArthur, Michael Mohan, and Corinna Schnitt.
Sponsored by Aqua Art Miami & Friends of the Arizona State University Art Museum. 

Home Movies
A new media/video installation by Jim Campbell
On view from December 2–7 
Campbell is an MIT-educated engineer and mathematician who is known for his installations featuring extremely low-resolution moving images accomplished utilizing LED technologies. 
Presented by Hosfelt Gallery, New York & San Francisco.

The Zoseria at Aqua
An installation by Frohawk Two Feathers
On view from December 2–7 
Frohawk Two Feathers is a Los Angeles based artist whose work is at the confluence of graffiti, folk art and 19th century portraiture. Frohawk is creating a large decorated pyramid that will be installed in the outdoor courtyard at Aqua Wynwood. 
The Zoseria at Aqua is presented by House of Campari. The artist appears courtesy of Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles.

Antistrot: Site-specific wall mural painted by Dutch collective
On view from December 2-7
The Dutch artist collective Antistrot will create a new work in Miami for the courtyard of Aqua Wynwood. The collective, who are inspired by comic books, fashion magazines and old photography books among other things, will be painting live during the Wynwood VIP Preview on December 2.
Presented by Sara Tecchia Roma New York.

Ellis Gallagher: site-specific shadow drawing 
On view from December 2–7 
Ellis Gallagher's shadow chalk drawings, executed in both urban and interior settings, seek to enhance the beauty of everyday objects and mundane situations that are routinely overlooked. The artist will be making drawings at Wynwood and other Miami locations.
Presented by Sara Tecchia Roma New York.

PIEROGI, HALES Gallery

Once again, Pierogi, Hales Gallery and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts return to Miami to present a comprehensive exhibition in a 12,000 square foot space in the Wynwood section of Miami. Instead of attempting to present work in the confines of an art fair booth, we have joined forces to create a dynamic exhibition space where we can feature one-person exhibitions and curated groupings of work by gallery artists. "Art fairs will continue to flourish until the bottom falls out of the art market, or until dealers, who invented them, decide that there is a better way to do things. Two dealers already on this quest are Ronald Feldman, a longtime SoHo gallerist, and Joe Amrhein of Pierogi, a Williamsburg fixture. They have rented a one-story building in the Wynwood district here and filled its 12,000 square feet with works by artists they represent." (Roberta Smith, The New York Times, December 2006)