Teresita Fernandez and Drawn Toward Light

http://www.blantonmuseum.org

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is pleased to present Teresita Fernández: Blind Landscape, a survey of new and recent works by this internationally acclaimed artist. The exhibition is organized by and premiered at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum (USFCAM) and was curated by David Louis Norr, chief curator, USF Institute for Research in Art, in close collaboration with the artist. Accompanying Teresita Fernández: Blind Landscape, Drawn Toward Light is an exhibition featuring works from the Blanton's collections that use light as a medium. Both exhibitions will be on view November 1, 2009 to January 3, 2010.

American artist Teresita Fernández (born in Miami, lives and works in Brooklyn) is widely known for her immersive installations and evocative large-scale sculptures that explore the cultural fabrication of nature. Characterized by her deft ability to transform common materials like steel, graphite and glass into forms and images reminiscent of the natural world, Fernández' works bring idea and experience into poetic tension. Meticulous, subtle, and always surprising, her sculptural scenarios offer viewers unique opportunities for contemplation and discovery.

"Investigating the act of looking is central to Teresita Fernández' work," says Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, the Blanton's curator of American and contemporary art and director of curatorial affairs. "Her works address our experiences of light and space as they evolve moment-to-moment and respond to sensation, memory, and the process of perception."

The Austin presentation of the exhibition includes five recent large-scale sculptures, a series of six wall works, and a new, monumental drawing made on site. Featured among the large-scale works is Vertigo (sotto en su) from 2007, comprised of layers of precision-cut, highly polished metal woven into a reflective and intricate arboreal pattern suspended high above the viewer, not unlike an immense, cascading tree branch. "The multiple planes of space through which the viewer looks become visible simultaneously, vacillating between object and optical phenomena, continuously disassembling and reassembling," writes curator Norr.

The Blanton's presentation also features Stacked Waters, 2009—a two-story, site-specific work commissioned for the museum's Rapoport Atrium earlier this year. Stacked Waters consists of 3,100 square feet of custom–cast acrylic that covers the cavernous atrium walls in a striped swirl pattern resembling water. Horizontal bands of saturated color shift and fade from deep blue to white, creating what the artist calls "a colored abstraction" from which the visitor emerges at the top of the Museum's grand stair. Titled in a nod to Donald Judd's boxes, the work suggests that the space is a container, in this case of light and communal activity. Visitors move within its volume, lured by the image yet fully aware of its fabrication.

Major support for Teresita Fernández: Blind Landscape at The Blanton is provided by Jeanne and Michael Klein and the Linda Pace Foundation. Funding also is provided by Julie and John Thornton and by Lora Reynolds and Quincy Lee in honor of Jeanne and Michael Klein.

Drawn Toward Light
Light is an essential element of visual experience and the means by which we see and begin to perceive the world around us. A special complement to Teresita Fernández: Blind Landscape, Drawn Toward Light is an exhibition of works from the Blanton's holdings that use light as a medium. Stephen Antonakos, Paul Chan, James Turrell and Leo Villarreal focus light into elemental geometric shapes to give it physical presence and sculptural form.

Adrian Ghenie

http://www.mnac.ro

The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest presents the first survey exhibition of paintings by Adrian Ghenie (born 1977), the well-known Romanian artist who lives and works in Cluj and Berlin. The exhibition underscores the way in which Ghenie has been developing a consistent engagement with issues such as memory and history, by subjecting his artistic practice to a process of continuous renewal and experimentation.

Ghenie is an ardent researcher of the history of the 20th century, being preoccupied with unearthing forgotten narratives, marginal events and seemingly insignificant details in order to compose a visual vocabulary that is both compelling and uncanny. The subject matter does not revolve around a single set of concerns, and yet the different themes of Ghenie's paintings seem to connect. Spectral presences of Hitler and Lenin, collective bodies of anonymous, defaced people – are all there to reveal the feebleness and inconsistency of our memory. The failure of modernity brought about by the catastrophes of the Second World War is seen in conjunction with the rise of modern forms of entertainment such as cinema, another major topic for Ghenie.

From the strong effects of chiaroscuro reminiscent of Caravaggio to the frieze-like compositions that bring to mind David Hockney's alignment of disconnected elements alluding to a theatre set; from an indebtedness to the tradition of Renaissance painting, visible in the rigorous construction of the picture space, to the uninhibited handling of paint that recalls the gestural freedom of abstract expressionism – Ghenie incorporates a multitude of references and idioms that do not result in a gratuitous postmodern game, but rather evince his commitment to investigate the possibilities of painting, while at the same time problematizing it. Although his work displays a belief in the contemporary relevance of painting, Ghenie seeks to delve into the conceptual tenets that have undermined the legitimacy of the medium. The artist revisits key moments in the history of modernism that prompted the declaration of the death of painting. He invokes the figure of Duchamp – the foremost enemy of paint and colour who rendered the painting obsolete through the introduction of the readymade into the field of art – as well as the first International Dada exhibition in Berlin which exhibited signs declaring that art was dead.

Rebecca Horn

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

The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo is pleased to announce a solo exhibition this fall of the work of Rebecca Horn, a major representative of the contemporary German art world. This will be the first large-scale exhibition of her work in Japan.

Horn has been known for her performance works involving the wearing of feathers, horns, and mirrors.

Since her participation in the 1972 Documenta show in her 20s, she has energetically pursued a range of artistic activity that continues to tackle new territories of art, one after the other—beginning with kinetic sculpture as well as film, and continuing on to capture the fascination of a great number of people—audiences with an interest not only in visual art, but that include film and dance enthusiasts as well.

Her performances, which began in the late 1960s, sought to expand the functions of the human body, improve communications with others, and develop a rapport with mythical animals and nature. The devices that attached to the body and enhanced its physical perceptions were first used in performance, and then eventually developed into independent, kinetic-mechanical sculptural works.

Later, in what amounted to over ten years of life in New York, Horn undertook the production of highly narrative, full-length films, and incorporated the sculptures and movements from her earlier work into this new context of film, transforming their significance. Since the 1980s, after moving back to her home country of Germany, Horn's work that directly confronts modern historical issues has been acclaimed for its ability to tie together personal experience and social memory. One early example of this work involves the conversion of the interior of an abandoned tower in the city of Münster into a piece that utilizes its history as the subject matter.

In recent years, Horn has been working on large-scale installations and stage designs using music composed by Hayden Chisholm. She has also made, without the use of tools, a series of unrestrained drawings that emphasize direct human movement, developing a completely free mode of creation.

This exhibition is a full-scale presentation of Horn's work. With all representative film footage, which includes the performance records from the 1970s and the full-length narrative films from the 1990s, as well as installations and two- and three-dimensional works that she has been producing since the 1990s.

An approximate total of thirty exhibits allows one to trace the development of relationships between the various media in which Horn works. The flow of various invisible energies of humans and nature are transformed into visible form via movement, light, and the traces of such. Moreover, we present Horn's new work, The Raven Tree, which was made especially for the exhibition at MOT. Her visit to Kyoto in 1984 inspired her to make this sculpture, which represents the concept for this exhibition. The exhibition promises to be an unparalleled opportunity to experience this highly original, creative trajectory in MOT's vast space.

Isabella Stewart

http://www.gardnermuseum.com

The art of Taro Shinoda engages themes of science, philosophy, and desire, and investigates our place in the universe. As he reflects on philosophical considerations of contemporary life he is thinking about how we might better function as a society.

During his month-long stay at the Gardner Museum in the spring of 2007, Shinoda was inspired by the moonlight and the sense of calm that reigns at night in the museum courtyard to develop his Lunar Reflection Transmission Technique. The project was rooted in the artist's early childhood memories of trying to communicate with his mother over great distances, entrusting messages to the moon, which he hoped his mother would receive on the other side of the planet when the moon rose for her.

For this project, Shinoda constructed an astronomical telescope out of corrugated cardboard and attached a video camera to it; with this instrument he filmed the moon from different parts of the world, including Istanbul, Limerick, Tokyo and Boston. He described his endeavor in the following way:

"It's not a bad place here, but with the entire land covered in asphalt and riding my bicycle while avoiding all the electrical currents and electro-pulses, I yearn for the flowing of water and the drifting of the clouds. These days I am working on reviving my old skills, of the lunar reflection transmission technique. Every night when the moon is out I bicycle outside and spend many hours and try to remember what that technique was. I've spent many nights attempting it, but have a long ways to go until I can use the technique like I used to be able to. Like how not everything you see is as it seems, your intuition can't tell you all you need to know. And how the concept of "American Civilization" seems to be integrating everything as we know it, there seems to be something above that which exists as fact. Even if our future comes up from behind us, and even if we aren't used to walking backwards, as adults I feel it is imperative to learn those techniques."


Taro Shinoda: Lunar Reflections will include an engawa—a Japanese viewing platform that traditionally separates the domestic space from the garden, an enchanted space. From this vantage point, visitors may sit and meditate on their place in the universe as they watch Shinoda's extraordinary films of the moon and mysterious nocturnal cityscapes.


Taro Shinoda's work has been shown in: Korea at the Busan Biennale; Turkey at the Istanbul Biennial; Limerick, Ireland at the EV+A festival; Los Angeles at the Roy and Edna Disney Calarts Theater; Tokyo at the Mori Art Museum; San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Lithuania at the Baltic Triennale; and Yokohama, Japan, at the International Triennale of Contemporary Art. Shinoda has been an artist-in-residence at REDCAT, Los Angeles and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Shinoda was born in Tokyo, where he continues to live and work.

The End of the Line: Attitudes in Drawing‏

http://www.fruitmarket.co.uk

This exhibition of new and recent work by eleven highly acclaimed young international artists explores a diverse range of contemporary approaches to drawing. From small, intricately-crafted pencil drawings to expanded installations in which the 'drawn' lines are made from masking tape, or in which drawings mutate into animation, the exhibition celebrates a contemporary resurgence in drawing.

Just as the formal and stylistic parameters of drawing have expanded, so too has the range of artists it attracts. This exhibition brings together artists from several continents, all using drawing to communicate their ideas, dreams and interpretations of the world.

Artists in the exhibition are: Jan Albers (Germany), Michaël Borremans (Belgium), Marc Brandenburg (Germany), Fernando Bryce (Peru/Germany), Kate Davis (New Zealand/Scotland), Monika Grzymala (Poland/Germany), David Haines (England/Netherlands), Kim Hiorthøy (Norway), Garrett Phelan (Ireland), Naoyuki Tsuji (Japan), Sandra Vasquez de la Horra (Chile).

A Hayward Touring exhibition organised in collaboration with mima, (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) and the Bluecoat, Liverpool, in association with The Drawing Room, London

Lunds konsthall: new exhibitions

http://www.lundskonsthall.se

Nasreen Mohamedi: Notes – Reflections on Indian Modernism

Nasreen Mohamedi (1937–90) is regarded as one of the most important Indian artists of her generation, and her paintings, drawings and photographs, produced from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, are now being recognised as a key body of work within the modernist canon.

In art-historical terms, Mohamedi can be seen in relation to an earlier generation of Indian abstract artists such as V.S. Gaitonde, and her works on paper have often been compared to those of Agnes Martin or to the utopian suprematist visions of Kazimir Malevich. Yet as this exhibition shows, Mohamedi also deserves to be considered on her own terms. Her drawings from the 1970s onwards tend toward uncompromising abstraction, but they also invoke a range of cultural references. This becomes clear in her photographs, in which meticulously cropped details of historical architecture and everyday life create aesthetic links to both contemporary culture and an Islamic visual heritage.

The exhibition, which brings together rarely seen drawings, paintings and photographs with unique archival material from Nasreen Mohamedi's studio, is curated by Suman Gopinath and Grant Watson and organised and initiated by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA). It was first shown at OCA in Oslo and then at Milton Keynes Gallery in England. The slightly extended version shown at Lunds konsthall will also travel to Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland.


Rasheed Araeen: Structures, Chakras, Triangles

Rasheed Araeen was born 1935 in Karachi, Pakistan, also incidentally the birthplace of Nasreen Mohamedi. Trained as an engineer, he has been working as an artist, writer and publisher since his arrival in London in the 1960s.

Araeen is a leading artist whose work is informed by the aesthetics of minimalism, a movement in art that he pioneered in Britain. In his practice formal and political concerns overlap, the latter largely informed by his experience as an artist of non-Western origin living and working in the West. After joining the Black Panther Movement he founded the short-lived journal Black Phoenix in 1978. In 1987 he established Third Text, an important journal that critiques contemporary art from an international and postcolonial perspective.

The exhibition, curated by Suman Gopinath and Grant Watson, includes photographs of Araeen's sculptural Structures from the 1966–68 and documentation of his performances Chakras and Trianglesfrom 1969–70.


Raqs Media Collective: Steps Away from Oblivion

Steps Away from Oblivion is a circuit of films, installed on screens and as projections in a confined space, that invoke different rhythms of repose and transformation in today's India.

The Raqs Media Collective have invited eight documentary filmmakers (Debkamal Ganguly, Ruchir Joshi, Kavita Pai & Hansa Thapliyal, M.R. Rajan, Priya Sen, Surabhi Sharma, Vipin Vijay) to revisit key moments in their work; re-editing, re-making or re-presenting particular sequences from their films. In The Sleepwalker's Caravan (Prologue), Raqs's own contribution to the circuit, we are greeted by the wandering figures of a yaksha and a yakshi, mythic guardians of treasure and keepers of riddles in different Indic traditions, as they traverse a contemporary landscape which the other films also portray and problematise.

The installation was first shown within the context of Indian Highway, a travelling exhibition of contemporary art from India that was first presented at the Serpentine Gallery, London, in 2008.


About the curators:

Suman Gopinath is a curator and the founder and director of CoLab Art & Architecture, Bangalore, India. Grant Watson is a curator at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (MuHKA), Antwerp, Belgium. Gopinath and Watson have been collaborating on exhibitions of modern and contemporary Indian art since 1999.

Raqs Media Collective is a group of artists and curators (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta) based in New Delhi, India, and working internationally. Among many other things, they were co-curators of Manifesta 7 in 2008 and responsible for one of its exhibitions, The Rest of Now in Bolzano, Italy.

Art Basel Miami Beach 2009: The Oceanfront area

Art Basel Miami Beach 2009: The Oceanfront area

http://www.artbasel.com

The Oceanfront area: Our new platform for artistic programs

The new Oceanfront area in Collins Park has been created as a platform for virtually all of Art Basel Miami Beach's cultural programming. Situated directly beside the beach, in the former location of Art Positions, the Oceanfront marks the point where the artworld interfaces with the broader public. We are delighted to have Creative Time, the legendary New York City-based public art organization, as a partner in the launching of this new dimen¬sion of Art Basel Miami Beach. Having solicited many proposals, Creative Time and Art Basel Miami Beach commissioned Los Angeles artist Pae White to create this "social space".

Free of any admission charge, the Oceanfront - located at Collins Park, between 21st and 22nd Streets - offers visitors many opportunities. In the mornings, they can attend the discussion panels of the Art Basel Conversations series, featuring prominent figures from every artworld domain. And every night during Art Basel Miami Beach, the Oceanfront will feature at least one special event. The evening se¬ries will be inaugurated by the annual Art Loves Music concert on the beach; the following evenings feature the Art Perform program, the Art Video program curated by Creative Time and the Art Film evening. Rounding out the experi¬ence, the Oceanfront Cafe will offer visitors the possibility to have brunch in the morning, then light meals and refreshing drinks from dusk to midnight.

Oceanfront project by Pae White
For the 2009 premiere of the Oceanfront, Pae White will create an immersive and interac¬tive cityscape, providing a new experience with each visit. By day, large color blocks will dominate the landscape. At night, these color blocks transform into a shadowy group of buildings that house various merchants and performers. In addition to this labyrinth-like metropolis on the sand, White will design a stage area that will host the morning Art Basel Conversations and the evening Art Video, Art Film, and Art Perform programs.

Art Basel Conversations
Thursday, December 3 through Saturday, December 5, 10 – 11 am
As in previous years, the Art Basel Conversation will be inaugurated by the Artist Talk premiere, which this year features Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The Art Basel Conversations are "Museum Directors: Change in Generation," "Collector Focus: Latin America" and "The Future of the Museum: The Portable Museum." "Museum Directors: Change in Generation" brings together the next generation of museum and institution directors to discuss their visions for the coming decades. In "Collector Focus: Latin America" prominent art collectors from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico explore the dynamic way in which Latin America's collecting scene has grown and international¬ized in the last decade. "The Future of the Museum: The Portable Museum," will offer fresh insights from four artists on future models for exhibition-making.

Art Video
Thursday, December 3 and Saturday, December 5, 7 – 8.30 pm
Curated by Creative Time, the Art Video program includes discussions with the featured artists. Videos by Tom Sachs and The Neistat Brothers and Marc Horowitz will be screened on Thursday evening, followed by a conversation with Casey Neistat and Marc Horowitz. On Saturday evening videos by Jill Magid and Kon Trubkovich will be presented, followed by a conversation with the artists.

Art Perform
Thursday, December 3 and Saturday, December 5, 9 pm
Now in its fifth year, Art Perform features an intensified array of longer performances by rising international artists. This program will again be conceived by curator Jens Hoffmann, director of the CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco. It will take place on Thursday and Saturday at 9 pm. The participating artists are Claire Fontaine, Simon Fujiwara, Loris Gréaud/Mario Garcia Torres, Kris Martin, and Kelly Nipper.

Art Film: "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child"
Friday, December 4, 8.30 pm
This year's Art Film event offers an exclusive work-in-progress sneak preview of the documentary feature film "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child," preceded by a panel with a selection of participants, moderated by Bob Colacello. "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child" is directed by Tamra Davis and features a long and never-before-seen interview with Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), shot shortly before his death. Art Film is curated by Zurich film connaisseur This Brunner.

Slow Paintings

http://www.museum-morsbroich.de

The exhibition Slow Paintings is devoted to the development of a highly involved form of painting as a continual strategy in the history of art, which emerged from the early 1960s onwards. With over 60 paintings and featuring no fewer than 32 artists, Slow Paintings provides a comprehensive overview of the different techniques and conceptual approaches that characterise this style of painting. The expanse of time invested by individual artists into the production of the paintings exerts its effect upon the visitor via the unique experience of sustained deceleration.

The exhibition starts chronologically with Ad Reinhardt's Abstract Painting from 1961 and Konrad Klapheck's Das Kinderfräulein from1964—two paintings, one abstract, the other figurative. Ad Reinhardt's painting of a black cross on a black ground emphasises, with an amazing diversity of superimposed layers of coloured glazes, the meditative character of the painting itself, as well as the aspect of intense observation in this decidedly polyvalent work. Klapheck's portrait of a typewriter entitled Kinderfräulein shows the way in which the painting techniques of the Old Masters can also serve—precisely in the 20th century—an endearing, if disturbing description of a surreal pictorial world. John Currin’s Girl in Bed from 1993 connects with this idea in a 'trashy' way, whereas artists, such as Tomma Abts, Adrian Schiess, or Ekrem Yalçindağ, perpetuate the tradition of abstract painting in new ways.

During the course of the 20th century, artists have extended the traditional boundaries of painting in a variety of ways. Long-term projects, such as On Kawara's well-known Date Paintings or Roman Opalka’s Details, with its continuous series of numbers, have introduced the idea of the project into the realm of slow painting. Contrary to their conventional interpretation as sculptural works, Reinhard Mucha considers his wall vitrines to be paintings as well. This means consigning their tonal valency to a two-dimensional plane: the reverse glass painting of the frontal planes of glass and the internal reliefs, the bituminised felt board of 'found' floor coverings printed with various patterns, the zones of light and shade of the painted surfaces of the door leaves with their panels and the negative volume behind them filled with felt—all of these 'painterly' aspects are crucial here.


Recent figurative works by Alexander Esters and Sebastian Ludwig, developed especially for the exhibition, likewise explore the continuing delimitation of painting. Esters combines numerous, specially developed printing techniques using traditional components, whereas Ludwig sketches shapes onto canvases, which he then elaborately covers with tape, allowing the paint to flow over and behind the taped areas in a controlled process. These techniques presuppose a high degree of craftsmanship endowed with the power to captivate and fascinate the viewer both when scrutinising the motifs themselves and when reviewing the essence of the alchemistic means deployed.


On no account does the exhibition desire to foster a sense of competition between slow and fast painting. Instead, Slow Paintings is intent upon placing the emphasis on the special connection between conceptuality and elaborate composition, which entails a unique experience for the viewer: this isn’t merely concerned with extremely decelerated reception on the part of the viewer. More fascinating still is the apprehension of the way in which the complex ideas and the seemingly infinite number of layers of glaze resulting from this highly involved method are superimposed upon and, indeed, even conceal one another, ultimately surrendering the sharp, intellectual contours of their origin in favour of an unexpectedly rich, new physical identity. Slow Paintings shows us in ideal-typical manner the abundant potential and continual inventiveness of painting.

With works by Tomma Abts, Ross Bleckner, Alighiero e Boetti, Michaël Borremans, Gillian Carnegie, Raúl Codero, John Currin, Alexander Esters, Bernard Frize, Franz Gertsch, Andrew Grassie, On Kawara, Konrad Klapheck, Jochen Kuhn, Sebastian Ludwig, Michel Majerus, Fabian Marcaccio, Rodney McMillian, Jonathan Monk, Reinhard Mucha, Manuel Ocampo, Roman Opalka, Laura Owens, Magnus Plessen, Ad Reinhardt, Bernd Ribbeck, Adrian Schiess, Pablo Siquier, Andreas Slominski, Cheyney Thompson, Corinne Wasmuht and Ekrem Yalçindağ.

Cai Guo-Qiang

http://www.TFAM.museum

Cai Guo-Qiang: Hanging Out in the Museum

Internationally acclaimed artist Cai Guo-Qiang was born in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province. He speaks Fukienese and is also a follower of the goddess Mazu; for him, visiting Taiwan "feels like coming home." In 1998, Cai was first invited by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum to realize Golden Missile and Advertising Castle for the 1998 Taipei Biennial. In the same year, he was commissioned to realize the No Destruction, No Construction: Bombing the Taiwan Museum of Art project. In 2004, Cai curated the BMOCA (Bunker Museum of Contemporary Art: Everything is Museum No. 3). After the September 21, 2000 earthquake and August 8, 2009 floods, he donated his works to charity sales, showing his deep affection and friendship for Taiwan.

This is Cai's second collaboration with the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and his first exhibition inside the grand space of the museum. Through the positioning of the installation works in the architectural space, Cai looks back at his works and places them in new contexts, challenging and energizing the museum space in unusual ways. The 35 works on exhibition are drawn from internationally renowned museum and private collections, and include three specially created new works. In this exhibition with the special featuring Cultural Melting Bath (1997), audiences are invited to join the medicinal bath located in the outdoor courtyard. For this exhibition, Cai Guo-Qiang devoted intensive artistic thanking for three new works: Day and Night, a gunpowder drawing based on the physical diary of a female nude; the classical Chinese landscape Toroko Gorge, inspired by Cai's recent visit to the spectacular landscape in eastern Taiwan; and Strait, a Quanzhou rock curved as a cross-section of Taiwan Strait transported in this occasion by sea, literally through the ancient journey from the mainland China.

As a contemporary artist, Cai Guo-Qiang not only dreams audaciously, he is effective doer in realizing his artistic vision. His explosive energy does not stem from gunpowder, but from an unrestrained flow of creative energy, an ability to create social dialogue, and a dogmatic romanticism. This exhibition highlights the artist's background and development, his creative process, and his insistence on and methods of making art more accessible to the general public. To fully embrace the theme of "hanging out in the museum" and to create opportunities where the public can interact with art, a series of activities and programs, such as the public viewing and volunteer training for the creation of several gunpowder drawings in the exhibition, and related education programs have been initiated. The exhibition also seeks to examine Cai Guo-Qiang's creations and the zeitgeist in his art, through contemplating the practice of contemporary art, critiquing socio- and geopolitics, and reflecting on Eastern aesthetics and philosophy.

ARCOmadrid_2010 PANORAMA: LOS ANGELES

Gallerists, collectors and other players in the art world will be travelling to Madrid next February 17th through 21st for ARCOmadrid_ 2010, the International Contemporary Art Fair. Work from around 200 galleries and almost 3000 major artists will guarantee an exciting fair mirroring all the latest tendencies in contemporary visual and plastic creation. An excellent cross-section of languages, supports and expressions spanning from painting to performance, not forgetting graphic work, sculpture, installation, digital art and other emerging creative expressions.

ARCOmadrid_ 2010 gives collectors and other art world professionals a unique chance to catch the latest in artistic creation around the world. Apart from the galleries taking part in the core General Programme and ARCO40, the fair also spotlights happening art in its curated programmes: SOLO PROJECTS, EXPANDED-BOX, CINEMALoop and PERFORMING ARCO. These curated sections will feature around 50 projects and reinforce the fair as a leading showcase for the most cutting-edge art of today.

Besides, 2010 will be the first time that ARCOmadrid's special annual guest is a city, more specificallyLos Angeles, one of the world's most exciting and fertile hubs for art at the moment. The Panorama: L.A. programme will host a selection of 17 galleries, curated by Kris Kuramitsu and Christopher Miles, giving the public an overview of the latest tendencies in art taking place in one of the world's major cities.

The exhibition programme is rounded off by a long list of activities organized to coincide with the fair. These include the Experts Forum, as well as a large number of conferences, parties and presentations, reflecting the importance of ARCOmadrid as one of Spain's biggest annual cultural events and a must-visit for the contemporary art market.

LIST OF GALLERIES:
GENERAL PROGRAMME 1900*2000 PARIS AD HOC VIGO AELE EVELYN BOTELLA MADRIDAICON GALLERY LONDON ALEXANDER AND BONIN NEW YORK ÁLVARO ALCÁZAR MADRIDANDRÉ SIMOENS GALLERY KNOKKE ANGELS BARCELONA BARCELONA ANTHONY REYNOLDS GALLERY LONDON ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL BARBARA GROSS MUNICH BÄRBEL GRÄSSLINFRANKFURT BENVENISTE CONTEMPORARY MADRID BERNARD BOUCHE PARIS CAIS GALLERYSEOULCÁNEM CASTELLÓN CAPRICE HORN BERLIN CARLES TACHÉ BARCELONA CARLOS CARVALHO-ARTE CONTEMPORANEA LISBON CARRERAS MÚGICA BILBAO CASA TRIANGULOSAO PAULO CASAS RIEGNER BOGOTÁ CATHERINE PUTMAN PARIS CAYÓN MADRID CHARIM GALERIE VIENNA CHRISTOPHER GRIMES SANTA MONICA DAN GALERIA SAO PAULO DISTRITO CUATRO MADRID DNA GALERIE BERLIN EDWARD TYLER NAHEM FINE ART, L.L.C. NEW YORKELBA BENÍTEZ MADRID ELISABETH & KLAUS THOMAN INNSBRUCK ELVIRA GONZÁLEZMADRID ERNST HILGER VIENNA ESPACIO MÍNIMO MADRID ESPAIVISOR GALERIA VISORVALENCIA ESTIARTE MADRID ESTRANY DE LA MOTA BARCELONA FAGGIONATO FINE ARTSLONDON FARIA FÁBREGAS GALERÍA CARACAS FILOMENA SOARES LISBON FÚCARES MADRIDGANA ART GALLERY SEOUL GEORG KARGL VIENNA GEORG NOTHELFER GALERIE BERLINGRIMM FINE ART AMSTERDAM GRITA INSAM VIENNA GUILLERMO DE OSMA MADRID GUY BÄRTSCHI GENEVE HANS MAYER DUSSELDORF HAUNCH OF VENISON LONDON HEINRICH EHRHARDT MADRID HEINZ HOLTMANN COLOGNE JAVIER LÓPEZ MADRID JOAN PRATSBARCELONA JUANA DE AIZPURU MADRID KLAUS GERRIT FRIESE STUTTGART LA CAJA NEGRAMADRID LA FÁBRICA MADRID LEANDRO NAVARRO MADRID LELONG PARIS LEME SAO PAULOLEYENDECKER SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE LUCÍA DE LA PUENTE LIMA LUCIANA BRITO GALERIA SAO PAULO LUIS ADELANTADO VALENCIA MAI 36 GALERIE ZURICH MAIOR POLLENÇAMAISTERRAVALBUENA MADRID MAM MARIO MAURONER CONTEMPORARY ART VIENNAVIENNA MANUEL BARBIÉ BARCELONA MANUEL OJEDA LAS PALMAS MARIO SEQUEIRA BRAGAMARK MÜLLER ZURICH MARLBOROUGH GALLERY MADRID MARTA CERVERA MADRID MAX ESTRELLA MADRID MAX WIGRAM GALLERY LONDON MEESSEN DE CLERCQ BRUSSELSMICHAEL JANSSEN BERLIN MIGUEL MARCOS BARCELONA MOISÉS PÉREZ DE ALBÉNIZPAMPLONA MORIARTY MADRID NÄCHST ST. STEPHAN ROSEMARIE SCHWARZWÄLDERVIENNA NOGUERAS BLANCHARD BARCELONA OLIVA ARAUNA MADRID ORIOL GALERIA D'ARTBARCELONA PALMA DOTZE VILAFRANCA DEL PENEDÈS PELAIRES PALMA DE MALLORCA PILAR PARRA & ROMERO MADRID POLÍGRAFA OBRA GRÁFICA BARCELONA PROJECTESDBARCELONA RAFAEL ORTIZ SEVILLE REFLEX AMSTERDAM RONMANDOS GALLERY AMSTERDAMSABINE KNUST MUNICH SENDA BARCELONA SLEWE AMSTERDAM SOLEDAD LORENZO MADRIDSOLLERTIS TOULOUSE STUDIO TRISORIO NAPLES T20 MURCIA THADDAEUS ROPAC PARISTHE PARAGON PRESS LONDON THOMAS SCHULTE BERLIN TIM VAN LAERE ANTWERP TOMAS MARCH VALENCIA TONI TÀPIES BARCELONA TRAVESÍA CUATRO MADRID TRAYECTO VITORIAVANGUARDIA BILBAO VISTAMARE BENEDETTA SPALLETTI PESCARA WALTER STORMS GALERIE MUNICH WETTERLING GALLERY STOCKHOLM WOLFGANG GMYREK DUSSELDORFZINK BERLIN
ARCO40 ADN GALERÍA BARCELONA ADORA CALVO SALAMANCA ALEJANDRO SALESBARCELONA ALEXANDRA SAHEB BERLIN ALFREDO VIÑAS MÁLAGA ALTAMIRA GIJÓN ANNET GELINK GALLERY AMSTERDAM ANTONIO HENRIQUES-GALERIA DE ARTE VISEU ART NUEVEMURCIA BACELOS VIGO BEIJING SPACE BEIJING BIRGIT OSTERMEIER BERLIN BITFORMSNEW YORK BRIGITTE SCHENK COLOGNE CASADO SANTAPAU MADRID CHINA TODAYBRUSSELS CHRISTIAN LETHERT COLOGNE DEL SOL ST. ART GALLERY SANTANDER ESPACIO LÍQUIDO GIJÓN FACTORÍA COMPOSTELA (C5 COLECCIÓN) SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELAFONSECA MACEDO PONTA DELGADA FORMATO CÓMODO MADRID GABRIEL ROLT AMSTERDAMGIMPEL FILS LONDON JM MÁLAGA JUAN SILIÓ SANTANDER KAI HILGEMANN BERLIN KASHYA HILDEBRAND ZURICH KUCKEI + KUCKEI BERLIN LA ACACIA LA HABANA MARIBEL LÓPEZ GALLERY BERLIN MICHEL SOSKINE MADRID MIRTA DEMARE ROTTERDAM MS MADRID NF NIEVES FERNÁNDEZ MADRID OREL ART PARIS PACIARTE CONTEMPORARY BRESCIA PERUGI ARTECONTEMPORANEA PADUA PROJECTRAUM VIKTOR BUCHER VIENNAPROMETEOGALLERY MILAN RAIÑA LUPA BARCELONA RAQUEL PONCE MADRID ROSA SANTOSVALENCIA RUBICON GALLERY DUBLIN SANDUNGA GRANADA SERVANDO LA HABANA SIBONEYSANTANDER STELLA LOHAUS GALLERY ANTWERP TAIK BERLIN VALLE ORTÍ VALENCIA VAN DER MIEDEN ANTWERP YBAKATU ESPAÇO DE ARTE CURITIBA

Bloomberg SPACE presents COMMA 13 and COMMA 14

http://www.bloombergspace.com

COMMA 13 Irina Korina

Korina is a sculptor and installation artist whose work very much reflects her original training as a scenographer: her large-scale installations recall theatrical sets, creating all-encompassing spaces that convey a very strong sense of narrative on the edge between reality and fiction. Yet these narratives are not based on any specific storyline, they are formed through the interplay of textures, materials and scale. Through her use of found objects, especially materials imbued with strong cultural references (furniture, printed textiles, clothing etc), she engages with social and political ideas, particularly associated with the Russian context, yet with a potentially more global resonance.

For Bloomberg SPACE she has created a towering central sculpture in the semi-darkened front gallery, with the room lit by the sculpture itself. In turns resembling a jellyfish, Kraken, spaceship or enchanted tree, the work attempts to give voice to the former USSR's most voiceless – the silent underclass of economic migrants from impoverished former Soviet republics known as 'gastarbaitery' – who play a crucial role in Russia's economic development.

COMMA 14 Vicky Wright

Vicky Wright presents a series of new paintings, which draw upon her ongoing concerns with the paradoxical nature of portraiture, politics and patronage.

The paintings, which continue on from her original Extraction series, hint at a hidden history by painting on the reverse of the frame. The works will traverse the rear gallery appearing as windows into the machine or portraits of desire, their gaze looking out covetously. At the epicentre of the gallery will stand a large 'totem' enclosing an illuminated piece of coal, a symbolic source of energy - the prize.

The paintings, simply entitled The Guardians appear as an exploration of portraiture and what might be revealed on the back of such portraits. The history of genre painting generally, especially portraiture, tends to immortalise the captains of industry who have commissioned it. As Wright explains, 'The darker side to this is the extraction of wealth at the price of human misery, whether its coal mining in the North or the extraction of minerals in Africa - they all reveal an exploitative transaction. In a sense, the people who aren't immortalised are the ones who are the exploited'.

COMMA focuses entirely on the commissioning of new work providing exceptional opportunities for artists to experiment and expand their practice in relation to the particular nature of Bloomberg SPACE.

Twenty of today's most outstanding established and emerging international artists have been invited to create new work, installations and architectural interventions in a fast paced succession of exhibitions created in response to and seen for the first time at Bloomberg SPACE.

The new programme continues Bloomberg SPACE's reputation of presenting the unknown alongside the very well known drawing on a group of artists from across the globe. The programme spans a wide range of media – during the year painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, performance and film are all featured – and retains the potential for one-off or performative events.

Abraham Cruzvillegas

http://www.wattis.org

Abraham Cruzvillegas is the first participant in the Wattis Institute’s The Magnificent Seven program and our fall Capp Street Project artist in residence. The Mexican artist is best known for his sculptures that transform everyday objects, such as found scrap wood and weathered buoys, into elegant compositions. The artist plays the role of a scavenger, finding value in the discarded.

Over the past semester Cruzvillegas and 10 students in CCA’s Graduate Program in Fine Arts have been investigating concepts of need and scarcity in relation to object making. Their starting point was the customization and transformation of found materials into bicycles and other functional vehicles. Discussing the forms the vehicles might take, options ranged from a delirious machine to a popcorn vehicle, an art-making trailer, a happy machine, a mirror-reflecting vehicle, a festival-on-the-go machine, a mobile sound system, a half-man-half-vehicle, a music vehicle, an elements wagon, a bike raft, and a bird surrey.

The themes inspiring these forms included memories, community, imagination, motion, happiness, celebration, environment, work, speed, energy, and fun. The students also aimed to address issues specific to the Bay Area such as pollution, community, economics, and politics. They visited numerous scrapyards, then collected and recycled parts from old bikes with other found objects and junk.

The three vehicles they created will be presented in the main building at CCA’s San Francisco campus November 15-29, with a parade in front of campus on Saturday, November 21, from 2-5 p.m.

The participating MFA students are Fred Alvarado, Natalia Anciso, Angela Camille, Daniel Dallabrida, Rachel Dawson, Crystal de la Torre, Courtney Johnson, Vanessa Nava, Carlos Ramirez, and Allison Rowe.

About the Magnificent Seven
September 2009 marked the launch of The Magnificent Seven at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. The seven participating international artists are Abraham Cruzvillegas, Harrell Fletcher, Ryan Gander, Renata Lucas, Kris Martin, Paulina Olowska, and Tino Sehgal. Over a three-year period they are being integrated into every aspect of the institution’s structure and activities. Each one presents a solo exhibition, completes a Capp Street Project artist residency, produces a publication, teaches a number of courses as a CCA faculty member, delivers a public lecture, and participates in other aspects of the Wattis’s programming.

About the CCA Wattis Institute
The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts was established in 1998 in San Francisco at California College of the Arts. It serves as a forum for the presentation and discussion of international contemporary art and curatorial practice. Through groundbreaking exhibitions, the Capp Street Project residency program, lectures, symposia, and publications, the Wattis Institute has become one of the leading art institutions in the United States and an active site for contemporary culture in the Bay Area.

'From the Outside Looking In'

http://www.artaids.com

20 Artists: Francesc Abad, Ignasi Aballí, Iñaki Álvarez, Roger Bernat, Jordi Canudas, Biel Capllonch, Pep Dardanyà, Alícia Framis, Núria Güell, Jean-Charles Hue, Cova Macías, Anna Marín, Josep-Maria Martín, Marina Núñez, Antonio Ortega, Santiago Ortiz, Javier Peñafiel, L. A. Raeven, Job Ramos, Erich Weiss.

Curator: Miquel Bardagil

On December 1-st the ArtAids Foundation will present 'On the Outside Looking In' in several venues throughout Barcelona. This exhibition, featuring works by artists from Barcelona and those with a special link to the city, aims to raise awareness and create a greater understanding of people living with HIV and to emphasise the need for prevention.

Curator Miquel Bardagil has linked the "outside" in the exhibition's title to the idea of the outdoors. This concept is the starting point for the exhibition, providing us with an insight into the experience of HIV-positive people. It underlies the work of the artists, who employ a wide range of disciplines including installations, photography, drawing, painting and video.

Simultaneously, Barcelona's Casa Àsia will host 'More to Love', an exhibition of works by twenty Thai and European artists that was presented by ArtAids in Bangkok and Chiang Mai (Thailand) in 2008.

To complement 'On the Outside Looking In', ArtAids is organising educational workshops at Casa Elizalde and an educational project in the neighbourhood of La Mina.

After its Barcelona season, 'On the Outside Looking In' will be presented in Oviedo (Banco Herrero Head Office) from September through November 2010. From December 2010 through February 2011, the exhibition will be shown at Valencia's MuVIM.

ArtAids was founded in Holland in 2006 by writer and collector Han Nefkens, who has been living with HIV since 1987. It was set up to fight the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS by commissioning works by acclaimed international artists in order to explore the illness, help increase public awareness and improve society's attitude towards HIV-positive persons.

ArtAids has also created projects that provide medical assistance to those who would not otherwise receive it, and finances HIV research in Spain and Thailand.

Since its inception, ArtAids has worked in Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Thailand. In 2010, ArtAids will be present at Dak'Art, the Biennial of Contemporary African Art in Senegal.

Thom Vink

http://www.stroom.nl

During the past few years, Thom Vink has worked on a consistent body of work. His approach can best be described as a series of attempts to understand the city and its architecture as an organic process. Where urbanists, property developers and politicians who believe that social change can be effected through public policies would like us to believe that a city develops on the basis of rational considerations, consensus, specific expertise and according to pre-established plans, this artist whispers poetic and occasionally unsettling footnotes. Stroom Den Haag presents the first retrospective of this artist in the Netherlands.

In his work Thom Vink works with fascinating and remarkable analogies to methods from psychotherapy, forms of abstract art, biological structures, physical perceptual phenomena and literary and non-literary narratives. He draws a great deal of inspiration from the pre-Google era. The encyclopaedias from that age, with compact information about indisputable truths, illustrated by mysterious images and fascinating graphs, form a rich source. By carefully selecting and rearranging these images he changes their aesthetics and gives them new meaning.

Thom Vink (1965, Leiden, NL) graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 1990. A major part of the year he spends abroad, primarily in Finland and Japan. Solo exhibitions include 'Evidence' in gallery Muu in Helsinki, Finland (2004); 'Home' in gallery 300m3 in Gothenburg, Sweden (2004); 'Complex' in Aaltonen Museum in Turku, Finland (2005); and 'Changers' in Youkobo Art Space in Tokyo, Japan (2009).

His exhibition 'Moth House' at Stroom Den Haag is the latest installment in Stroom's series of solo presentations by artists like Mark Handforth (2005), Calin Dan (2006) and Toby Paterson (2007). The power and originality of their work is of great value for everyone interested in the urban environment.

Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid in Paris

http://art-action.org

Preceding Madrid in April and Berlin in July, the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madridwill once again create a space for discovery and reflection between new cinema and contemporary art at several venues in Paris: the Centre Pompidou, the Jeu de Paume National Museum, the Châtelet Theatre and the Reflet Médicis movie theatre.

With the participation of 120 artists and filmmakers from all-over the world, this exceptional edition will propose an international programme of audiovisual creation gathering 150 works from France, Germany, Spain and 60 other countries, internationally-known artists and filmmakers with young artists and filmmakers presented for the first time in Paris. With many film premieres, video programmes, multimedia concerts, a cycle of debates and panel discussions. A video library will offer a space where the whole programming, made of 95% of premieres, could be viewed and reviewed on request.

SAVE THE DATES!
////// OPENING SCREENING - MONDAY 30th OF NOVEMBER
////// AT THE CENTRE POMPIDOU, AT 8.30PM

////// SPECIAL EVENT - TUESDAY 1st OF NOVEMBER
////// AT THE CHATELET THEATRE, FROM 3 TO 11PM


FILM AND VIDEO SCREENINGS
Fictions, video, documentary approaches, experimental
27 screenings, each followed by a discussion session with the artists and film-makers
December 2-6, Centre Pompidou
December 1, Châtelet Theatre
December 6-9, Jeu de Paume
December 7 and 8, Reflet Médicis movie theatre

• A rare carte blanche to Artavazd Pelechian (RU/AM) in his presence
• A carte blanche to Harun Farocki (DE), with the screening of his latest film "By comparaison"
• A unique carte blanche to Werner Schroeter (DE) in his presence
• The latest film by Pedro Costa (PT) 'Ne change rien' (2009, Première) in his presence
• Two videos by Ken Jacobs (USA), "The Day was a Scorcher" (2009, Première), and "Excerpt from the Sky Socialist Stratified" (2009, Première)
• A rare 3D experimental fiction by Zapruder Filmmakergroup (IT) "Cock-crow" (2009), previously shown at the Venice Film Biennial.
• The film première of "Le procès d'Oscar Wilde" (2009) by Christian Merlhiot (FR)
• A film event by Johan Grimonprez 'Double Take' (2009, BE)
• A mid-length film by Tsai Ming Liang (TW) "Madame Butterfly" (2008)
• The latest video by Emmanuelle Antille (CH) " Strings of Affection" (2009, Première)
• Focuses on several countries: France, Germany, Spain and a selection of films and rare videos from Croatia.

Each screening is built around a theme, a question through different forms and audiovisual practices.

FORUM – DEBATES
December 1st, at the Châtelet Theatre
December 2-5, at the Centre Pompidou – "Où va le cinema?" organized by the Centre Pompidou
December 6th, at the Jeu de Paume

The Rencontres Internationales invites filmmakers, curators, artistic directors and programmers from European and extra-European museums, art centres and biennales in the fields of contemporary cinema, video and media art. The debates aim to develop a reflection on the concerns and tracks explored in each country in order to debrief this creation and accompany it, as much from a critical point of view, as from the point of view of the public and the artists.

MULTIMEDIA CONCERT
December 1st, at the Châtelet Theatre
Thomas Köner - Le manifeste du futurisme - French Premiere.
Thomas Köner invokes le "futurist manifesto" by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti then proceeds to a phase of deconstruction. Call it a return to the future (futurism), for a society meriting the label "post-utopian/post-futurist".