Fleet Foxes - He Doesn't Know Why
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Monica Bonvicini / Tom Burr at Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munchen
Monica Bonvicini (*1965 in Venice, lives in Berlin) and Tom Burr (*1963 in New Haven, Connecticut, lives in New York) are internationally regarded as among the most important representatives of contemporary art today. They share an interest in the functional purposes of social spaces and their psychological, social and genderspecific conventions. This mutual interest manifests itself in very different types of photographs, drawings, sculptures and installations. But common to both oeuvres is the question of the dynamics of power reflected in architecture, behaviour and action. Enthusiasm for the almost libidinous quality of surfaces and materials is a further bond between Monica Bonvicini and Tom Burr's artistic output. The juxtaposition of their works brings out both the similarities and the contrasts between their aesthetic strategies.
Cécile Bart, SUSPENS [SUSPEND] at the Frac Bourgogne (Dijon, FR) & The Eventual at Futura
The works of artist Cécile Bart will fill the premises of the Frac Bourgogne in the context of a commissioned exhibition. Since the late 1980s, Cécile Bart has induced viewers to experience seeing as an integral part of the world instead of detached from it.
As a continuation of the propositions Cécile Bart made with her exhibitions Habiter (at the Villa Arson in Nice in 1995) and Tanzen (at the Kunsthaus of Aarau in 1998), the exhibition at the Frac Bourgogne will put her paintings/screens in the space as if on stage. The paintings are sometimes décor, sometimes moving bodies, and also part of an exhibition of the scenes created by the paintings themselves, to which are added the presence of the visitors.
Indeed, Cécile Bart's paintings are sensitive tools for exploring the reality of a place and everything that gives life to it. Her painting/screen remains translucent; light passes through it and it can be seen through. It is almost impossible to look at the color alone. Everything which enters into the frame is projected onto it.
For the Dijon exhibition, Cécile Bart has worked with the panoramic vision which one has from the entrance, as well as the depth of the exhibition space and the light which bathes the place from high over head. In neither case is the spectator static, but rather can accept the invitation to move around, and let his eyes playfully explore the colored forms suspended in space. The forms in suspense remain unresolved both with regard to the space and to time, in the same way that an image of a film can be frozen -- cinema being one of the artist's favorite media.
This is why Cécile Bart's creations touch on questions of abstraction, organization of colored forms in space, pertinent to the present-day context.
As a continuation of the propositions Cécile Bart made with her exhibitions Habiter (at the Villa Arson in Nice in 1995) and Tanzen (at the Kunsthaus of Aarau in 1998), the exhibition at the Frac Bourgogne will put her paintings/screens in the space as if on stage. The paintings are sometimes décor, sometimes moving bodies, and also part of an exhibition of the scenes created by the paintings themselves, to which are added the presence of the visitors.
Indeed, Cécile Bart's paintings are sensitive tools for exploring the reality of a place and everything that gives life to it. Her painting/screen remains translucent; light passes through it and it can be seen through. It is almost impossible to look at the color alone. Everything which enters into the frame is projected onto it.
For the Dijon exhibition, Cécile Bart has worked with the panoramic vision which one has from the entrance, as well as the depth of the exhibition space and the light which bathes the place from high over head. In neither case is the spectator static, but rather can accept the invitation to move around, and let his eyes playfully explore the colored forms suspended in space. The forms in suspense remain unresolved both with regard to the space and to time, in the same way that an image of a film can be frozen -- cinema being one of the artist's favorite media.
This is why Cécile Bart's creations touch on questions of abstraction, organization of colored forms in space, pertinent to the present-day context.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Vancouver Art Gallery presents Andreas Gursky
Vancouver Art Gallery the Only North American Museum to Present Exhibition by Renowned German Photographer Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky's photographs are celebrated as some of the most compelling images of our modern world. The Vancouver Art Gallery will be the only North American museum to present Andreas Gursky: Werke/Works 80-08 the largest and most comprehensive exhibition to survey this renowned German artist's remarkable career. Selected by Gursky himself from his substantial collection of photographic work, this landmark exhibition of more than 130 artworks will be on view from May 30 to September 20, 2009.
"It is a privilege for the Gallery to be the only North American museum presenting this extraordinary survey of Andreas Gursky's photographs. Bringing the work of this internationally renowned contemporary artist to Vancouver would not have been possible without the partnership of our co-organizers the Kunstmuseen in Krefeld, Germany and the Moderna Museet, in Stockholm, Sweden," said Vancouver Art Gallery director, Kathleen Bartels. "The Gallery puts great emphasis on collaborating with other visual arts institutions to present the work of today's most important artists."
Gursky's towering ambition is to create an image-based "Encyclopedia of Life." Colossal German raves, crammed international trading floors, obsessively-choreographed North Korean political rallies, high tech production lines, multi-acre garbage heaps, rudimentary factory floors, cavernous ultramodern buildings, massive plots of land transformed by agriculture, kilometres of sunbathers on an Italian beachfront, solitary individuals in the midst of mountains, discount stores and prize fights -- Gursky captures countless settings, often emphasizing the individual human's insignificance relative to the built and natural environment.
For the artist, photography is not a neutral tool of representation, but a medium for constructing reality. Highly detailed and massive in scope, Gursky creates images that often emphasize human-constructed patterns in urban, rural and remote landscapes to create compositions that are simultaneously representative and abstract.
For the first time in many years, Gursky will reduce the scale of his photographs to the panel picture format that launched his career. This method of presentation is a radical departure for Gursky. The artist has recently completed three major museum exhibitions that have featured a small selection of his images at the massive scale for which he has become renowned. Reprinting his images in the panel format allows him the ability to present three decades of work in one comprehensive exhibition for the first time. Andreas Gursky: Werke/Works 80-08 will provide an important opportunity to see how the meaning of the artist's photographs shifts with the change in presentation, and will offer an occasion for reflection at a critical stage in the artist's career.
Andreas Gursky: Werke/Works 80-08 begins with photographs from the artist's student days studying under Otto Steinert and influential documentary photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, and concludes with seven new images printed in the monumental size for which he is best known. This massive selection of images depicts Gursky's progression, from early photographs based in the documentary tradition to his first experiments with digital technologies and his eventual fine tuning of the process to highlight the fabricated nature of the photographic image. Presented in a chronological chain, the exhibition offers an unprecedented opportunity to witness the evolution of Gursky's subject matter, aesthetic sensibilities and conceptual strategies.
Andreas Gursky's photographs are celebrated as some of the most compelling images of our modern world. The Vancouver Art Gallery will be the only North American museum to present Andreas Gursky: Werke/Works 80-08 the largest and most comprehensive exhibition to survey this renowned German artist's remarkable career. Selected by Gursky himself from his substantial collection of photographic work, this landmark exhibition of more than 130 artworks will be on view from May 30 to September 20, 2009.
"It is a privilege for the Gallery to be the only North American museum presenting this extraordinary survey of Andreas Gursky's photographs. Bringing the work of this internationally renowned contemporary artist to Vancouver would not have been possible without the partnership of our co-organizers the Kunstmuseen in Krefeld, Germany and the Moderna Museet, in Stockholm, Sweden," said Vancouver Art Gallery director, Kathleen Bartels. "The Gallery puts great emphasis on collaborating with other visual arts institutions to present the work of today's most important artists."
Gursky's towering ambition is to create an image-based "Encyclopedia of Life." Colossal German raves, crammed international trading floors, obsessively-choreographed North Korean political rallies, high tech production lines, multi-acre garbage heaps, rudimentary factory floors, cavernous ultramodern buildings, massive plots of land transformed by agriculture, kilometres of sunbathers on an Italian beachfront, solitary individuals in the midst of mountains, discount stores and prize fights -- Gursky captures countless settings, often emphasizing the individual human's insignificance relative to the built and natural environment.
For the artist, photography is not a neutral tool of representation, but a medium for constructing reality. Highly detailed and massive in scope, Gursky creates images that often emphasize human-constructed patterns in urban, rural and remote landscapes to create compositions that are simultaneously representative and abstract.
For the first time in many years, Gursky will reduce the scale of his photographs to the panel picture format that launched his career. This method of presentation is a radical departure for Gursky. The artist has recently completed three major museum exhibitions that have featured a small selection of his images at the massive scale for which he has become renowned. Reprinting his images in the panel format allows him the ability to present three decades of work in one comprehensive exhibition for the first time. Andreas Gursky: Werke/Works 80-08 will provide an important opportunity to see how the meaning of the artist's photographs shifts with the change in presentation, and will offer an occasion for reflection at a critical stage in the artist's career.
Andreas Gursky: Werke/Works 80-08 begins with photographs from the artist's student days studying under Otto Steinert and influential documentary photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, and concludes with seven new images printed in the monumental size for which he is best known. This massive selection of images depicts Gursky's progression, from early photographs based in the documentary tradition to his first experiments with digital technologies and his eventual fine tuning of the process to highlight the fabricated nature of the photographic image. Presented in a chronological chain, the exhibition offers an unprecedented opportunity to witness the evolution of Gursky's subject matter, aesthetic sensibilities and conceptual strategies.
Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art presents Parades and Processions: Here comes everybody
This spring Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art will present Parades and Processions: Here comes everybody . The exhibition will feature works by twelve international artists who take their inspiration from the traditional meanings of 'parades' and 'processions', creating works that epitomise the social and political context of our time. The resulting works, ranging from sculpture to installation, films and videos, are powerful forms of expression that address issues of history, culture, identity and politics. They also highlight the recent and increasing phenomenon in our society of holding parades and processions. This exhibition aims to show a selection of works by contemporary artists who see in these themes considerable possibilities for expression.
A 'parade' is usually a festive occasion for which people dress up in extravagant costumes and create elaborate and highly structured artefacts, while a 'procession' is more often an organised group of people proceeding in a formal or ceremonial manner, often with a religious or political connotation. Throughout civilisation, parades and processions have been integral to the human experience and social customs have been abundantly illustrated on ancient monuments. Often connected to religious, sacrificial or triumphal occasions they eventually evolved into festivals and carnivals. Nowadays parades and processions have become democratic activities in which people participate, interactively sharing a special experience with a group of like-minded people. They have become the perfect vehicle for communication and solidarity, and also raise questions about sociological and behavioural phenomena of our time, such as the increased surge in urban life, group selection, self-expression and the marked focus on the body.
The expressive power of parades and processions allows many contemporary artists to adopt these traditional themes, and by replacing some of its emblems and icons with other symbols and objects, bring new meaning to the work. In so doing they revitalise the concepts of parades and processions, which in the past have been considered formal traditions. In their quest to create new ways to express themselves, these artists have benefited greatly from the efforts of those artists who in the 1960s and early 1970s, liberated art from the museum walls and placed it in the midst of society and public spaces in the form of happenings and performances.
A 'parade' is usually a festive occasion for which people dress up in extravagant costumes and create elaborate and highly structured artefacts, while a 'procession' is more often an organised group of people proceeding in a formal or ceremonial manner, often with a religious or political connotation. Throughout civilisation, parades and processions have been integral to the human experience and social customs have been abundantly illustrated on ancient monuments. Often connected to religious, sacrificial or triumphal occasions they eventually evolved into festivals and carnivals. Nowadays parades and processions have become democratic activities in which people participate, interactively sharing a special experience with a group of like-minded people. They have become the perfect vehicle for communication and solidarity, and also raise questions about sociological and behavioural phenomena of our time, such as the increased surge in urban life, group selection, self-expression and the marked focus on the body.
The expressive power of parades and processions allows many contemporary artists to adopt these traditional themes, and by replacing some of its emblems and icons with other symbols and objects, bring new meaning to the work. In so doing they revitalise the concepts of parades and processions, which in the past have been considered formal traditions. In their quest to create new ways to express themselves, these artists have benefited greatly from the efforts of those artists who in the 1960s and early 1970s, liberated art from the museum walls and placed it in the midst of society and public spaces in the form of happenings and performances.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sarah Morris at MMK Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt
As part of the current presentation of the Collection Yellow and Green featuring the masterworks of Pop Art and Minimalism from the former Ströher Collection, the MMK is showing a comprehensive solo exhibition of American artist Sarah Morris (born 1967). In her work, which encompasses film and painting, Morris takes up the formal language of Pop Art and Minimalism, expands it medially and places it in a new debate as regards content.
Sarah Morris creates images and films in which she traces contemporary urban and social typologies. She explores the psychological and societal codes of the modern city and the formal language in which they are reflected in architecture. In the endless variations of complex color and formal analyses in her paintings, which modify the appearance of our urban environment, and the rhythmically structured sequence of images in her films, Morris attempts to filter out what lies hidden behind the facades of architectural and urban structures.
Sarah Morris' latest film Beijing is being shown for the first time in Europe in the MMK exhibition. The film centers on what was the nation's most complex undertaking last year in terms of organization and possibly its most ambitious: The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Her film is the spectacular portrait of a neo-Capitalist state in an extreme phase of self-stylization and the compulsive need to control. Beijingreveals an authoritarian country previously closed in many areas, in a moment of seeming openness.
The exhibition in the MMK also showcases a comprehensive selection of paintings produced in connection with Morris' films. In addition, especially for the exhibition in the MMK, the artist developed a wall painting, which extends over two floors and responds to the symmetry of the museum's architecture.
In collaboration with MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam the MMK has produced a large-format publication with extensive images on Beijing.
Sarah Morris creates images and films in which she traces contemporary urban and social typologies. She explores the psychological and societal codes of the modern city and the formal language in which they are reflected in architecture. In the endless variations of complex color and formal analyses in her paintings, which modify the appearance of our urban environment, and the rhythmically structured sequence of images in her films, Morris attempts to filter out what lies hidden behind the facades of architectural and urban structures.
Sarah Morris' latest film Beijing is being shown for the first time in Europe in the MMK exhibition. The film centers on what was the nation's most complex undertaking last year in terms of organization and possibly its most ambitious: The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Her film is the spectacular portrait of a neo-Capitalist state in an extreme phase of self-stylization and the compulsive need to control. Beijingreveals an authoritarian country previously closed in many areas, in a moment of seeming openness.
The exhibition in the MMK also showcases a comprehensive selection of paintings produced in connection with Morris' films. In addition, especially for the exhibition in the MMK, the artist developed a wall painting, which extends over two floors and responds to the symmetry of the museum's architecture.
In collaboration with MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam the MMK has produced a large-format publication with extensive images on Beijing.
OK Offenes Kulturhaus Oberösterreich presents Art on the Rooftops of Linz
A project for Linz 2009, European Capitel of Culture
The art exhibition OK I HÖHENRAUSCH (Thrill of the Heights) entices visitors up to and over the roofs of Linz. It shows art between the sky and the city, offering an opportunity for a unique experience of Linz. For 150 days it is possible to experience OK I HÖHENRAUSCH, then the heavens above Linz will be closed again. The ascent makes it possible to be "so close to the sky", as rarely experienced before. Those who undertake this ascent are transformed into the figure of the rooftop wanderer, exploring Linz from an unfamiliar perspective.
The landscape of the course leads over bridges and stairs – from house to house, from roof to roof. The path changes with the constant up and down. Spaces are alternately crossed on the inside and on the outside. Visitors leave the surface of the familiar. In the end they land on the ground of reality, in the streets of the city.
Pierre BISMUTH FR/BE ; Shaun GLADWELL AU ; Inger Lise HANSEN NO ; Ricardo JACINTOPT ; Shih-Yung KU Taiwan ; Georg LINDORFER AT ; Maider LÔPEZ ES ; Mali WU Taiwan ; Paul DeMARINIS US ; Martin MUSIC AT ; Werner PFEFFER AT ; Pipilotti RIST CH ; Roman SIGNER CH ; Serge SPITZER US ; Andreas STRAUSS & FunkFeuer AT ; Fiona TAN Indonesia/NL ; Leonid TISHKOV RU ; Erwin WURM AT
A History of ascensions and crashes: Brigitte FELDERER AT Architecture ATELIER BOW-WOW JP in collaboration with RIEPL RIEPL ARCHITEKTEN AT Curators: Paolo Bianchi & Martin Sturm
The art exhibition OK I HÖHENRAUSCH (Thrill of the Heights) entices visitors up to and over the roofs of Linz. It shows art between the sky and the city, offering an opportunity for a unique experience of Linz. For 150 days it is possible to experience OK I HÖHENRAUSCH, then the heavens above Linz will be closed again. The ascent makes it possible to be "so close to the sky", as rarely experienced before. Those who undertake this ascent are transformed into the figure of the rooftop wanderer, exploring Linz from an unfamiliar perspective.
The landscape of the course leads over bridges and stairs – from house to house, from roof to roof. The path changes with the constant up and down. Spaces are alternately crossed on the inside and on the outside. Visitors leave the surface of the familiar. In the end they land on the ground of reality, in the streets of the city.
Pierre BISMUTH FR/BE ; Shaun GLADWELL AU ; Inger Lise HANSEN NO ; Ricardo JACINTOPT ; Shih-Yung KU Taiwan ; Georg LINDORFER AT ; Maider LÔPEZ ES ; Mali WU Taiwan ; Paul DeMARINIS US ; Martin MUSIC AT ; Werner PFEFFER AT ; Pipilotti RIST CH ; Roman SIGNER CH ; Serge SPITZER US ; Andreas STRAUSS & FunkFeuer AT ; Fiona TAN Indonesia/NL ; Leonid TISHKOV RU ; Erwin WURM AT
A History of ascensions and crashes: Brigitte FELDERER AT Architecture ATELIER BOW-WOW JP in collaboration with RIEPL RIEPL ARCHITEKTEN AT Curators: Paolo Bianchi & Martin Sturm
Monday, May 25, 2009
FISCHLI & WEISS
Peter Fischli
Born 1952 in Zurich, Switzerland
David Weiss
Born 1946 in Zurich, Switzerland
Swiss artists Peter Fischli / David Weiss have been collaborating since the late 1970s. Their photographs, sculptures, installations and moving images explore extraordinary transformations of the commonplace through the radicality of a comic and childlike spirit and love of play. The world of everyday objects is in a precarious balance, and an absurd chain of reactions between different objects colliding and setting off explosions constitutes their most well-known work – the filmThe Way Things Go (1987). In Sydney, the artists exhibit the series of photographs Equilibres (1984–87) – chance encounters of objects. In these images, gravity seems to work in reverse, creating states of suspension.
French Pavilion presents Claude Leveque at 53rd Venice Biennale
Claude Lévêque spearheads French representation at Venice Biennale.
This year Claude Lévêque is the artist who will represent France at the 53rd International Exhibition of Art – La Biennale di Venezia. At the French Pavilion, he will feature an installation entitled "Le Grand Soir", which will be in character with the thrust of his work. A uniquely French concept from the eve of the Revolution, "Le Grand Soir" evokes the moment when the world changed.
To support him in this project, Claude Lévêque has selected Christian Bernard as curator; Christian Bernard is the director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Geneva.
Under the administration of Daniel Birnbaum, a Swedish art critic and philosopher, the 53rd International Exhibition of Art – La Biennale di Venezia's theme this year is : Making Worlds. It questions the process of artistic creation.
Claude Lévêque has been recognized for years as a major artist on the French and international scene. His works refer to popular culture, to the everyday environment, and to mental images. He creates ambiances, environments and objects while expanding the installation's dimensions through the use of the sensory effectiveness of light and sound. Playing on the ability of the works to provoke visual and sensory emotions, he shakes up the perceptual and reactive habits of the cultural references necessary to his creation.
On the occasion of the exhibit Le Grand Soir, Culturesfrance, the Centre National des Arts Plastiques and Flammarion are co-publishing a monograph on Claude Lévêque in French and English. It will be available in June.
The general curatorship of the French Pavilion will be ensured by Culturesfrance, in collaboration with the French Ministry of Culture and Communication / Visual Arts Delegation and the Centre National des Arts Plastiques.
This year Claude Lévêque is the artist who will represent France at the 53rd International Exhibition of Art – La Biennale di Venezia. At the French Pavilion, he will feature an installation entitled "Le Grand Soir", which will be in character with the thrust of his work. A uniquely French concept from the eve of the Revolution, "Le Grand Soir" evokes the moment when the world changed.
To support him in this project, Claude Lévêque has selected Christian Bernard as curator; Christian Bernard is the director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Geneva.
Under the administration of Daniel Birnbaum, a Swedish art critic and philosopher, the 53rd International Exhibition of Art – La Biennale di Venezia's theme this year is : Making Worlds. It questions the process of artistic creation.
Claude Lévêque has been recognized for years as a major artist on the French and international scene. His works refer to popular culture, to the everyday environment, and to mental images. He creates ambiances, environments and objects while expanding the installation's dimensions through the use of the sensory effectiveness of light and sound. Playing on the ability of the works to provoke visual and sensory emotions, he shakes up the perceptual and reactive habits of the cultural references necessary to his creation.
On the occasion of the exhibit Le Grand Soir, Culturesfrance, the Centre National des Arts Plastiques and Flammarion are co-publishing a monograph on Claude Lévêque in French and English. It will be available in June.
The general curatorship of the French Pavilion will be ensured by Culturesfrance, in collaboration with the French Ministry of Culture and Communication / Visual Arts Delegation and the Centre National des Arts Plastiques.
Centro Cultural Monthermoso Kulturunea presents selected projects from ART AND RESEARCH 08
From May 22nd to August 30th, Centro Cultural Monthermoso Kulturunea presents the projects selected from the more than 500 entries submitted to the ART AND RESEARCH 08 annual open call. The eight artists' projects and one curatorial project selected have been produced by Montehermoso in the 2008-2009 season, and will be presented in the Centre's exhibition rooms.
Eight solo projects:
ION ARREGI (San Sebastian, Spain, 1982)
Fondo I: Estimas, variaciones y contradicciones románticas.
MARCELO EXPÓSITO (Puerto Llano, Spain, 1966)
No reconciliados (nadie sabe lo que un cuerpo puede).
AURÉLIEN FROMENT (Angers, France, 1976)
The Fourth Wall
ANDRÉ GUEDES (Lisbon, Portugal, 1971)
Airotiv
IRENE KOPELMAN (Córdoba, Argentina, 1974)
El vuelo de Lévy.
NATHANIEL MELLORS (Doncaster, United Kingdom, 1974)
Giantbum.
PIA RÖNICKE (Roskilde, Denmark, 1974)
Facing.
LISA TAN (New York, USA, 1973)
Language Barrier
Curatorial project:
THERE IS NO AUDIENCE!, curated by Adnan Yıldız. (Istanbul, Turkey, 1979)
Alikidd + Jade Sou / Can Altay / Fikret Atay / Johanna Billing / Gerard Byrne / Elmas Deniz / Olof Dreijer & Mamori / Hadley + Maxwell / Christian Hillesoe & Johan Tiren / Lynne Marsh / Ming Wong.
Eight solo projects:
ION ARREGI (San Sebastian, Spain, 1982)
Fondo I: Estimas, variaciones y contradicciones románticas.
MARCELO EXPÓSITO (Puerto Llano, Spain, 1966)
No reconciliados (nadie sabe lo que un cuerpo puede).
AURÉLIEN FROMENT (Angers, France, 1976)
The Fourth Wall
ANDRÉ GUEDES (Lisbon, Portugal, 1971)
Airotiv
IRENE KOPELMAN (Córdoba, Argentina, 1974)
El vuelo de Lévy.
NATHANIEL MELLORS (Doncaster, United Kingdom, 1974)
Giantbum.
PIA RÖNICKE (Roskilde, Denmark, 1974)
Facing.
LISA TAN (New York, USA, 1973)
Language Barrier
Curatorial project:
THERE IS NO AUDIENCE!, curated by Adnan Yıldız. (Istanbul, Turkey, 1979)
Alikidd + Jade Sou / Can Altay / Fikret Atay / Johanna Billing / Gerard Byrne / Elmas Deniz / Olof Dreijer & Mamori / Hadley + Maxwell / Christian Hillesoe & Johan Tiren / Lynne Marsh / Ming Wong.
The Fear Society at the 53rd Venice Biennale
Curated by Jota Castro
Artists invited: Tania Bruguera, Fernando Bryce, Jota Castro, Martin Dammann, Regina José Galindo, Rainer Ganahl, goldiechiari, Hans Haacke, Alfredo Jaar, Jesus Martinez Oliva, Jesus Segura, Ann-Sofi Sidén
Press preview and opening: THURSDAY 4 JUNE, 2009 AT 4 PM
Location: Arsenale Novissimo, Tese di San Cristoforo, Tesa 92, Venice
Exhibition dates: 4 JUNE - 4 OCTOBER 2009
Opening hours: from 4 to 7 June, open 10 am to 8 pm / from 8 June to 4 October, open from 10 am to 6 pm. Closed on Tuesdays
TANIA BRUGUERA PRESENTS AUTOSABOTAGE 5 JUNE - 15PM
Murcia Cultural of the Autonomous Community of Murcia Region, presents, with the occasion of the 53rd International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, an international group show of artists who work or have worked on the theme of fear.
The world has changed in the last six months. Many of our convictions have collapsed, and we get hit by a new reality everyday. One thing can be sure: our society is governed by fear. Fear is an emotional response to threats and danger. The capacity to fear is part of human nature but the experience of fear is affected by historical and cultural influences.
What do people fear most? Change, the other, financial chaos, spiders, death, terrorist attacks, unemployment, being a failure, immigration, being alone, the future...
Artists invited: Tania Bruguera, Fernando Bryce, Jota Castro, Martin Dammann, Regina José Galindo, Rainer Ganahl, goldiechiari, Hans Haacke, Alfredo Jaar, Jesus Martinez Oliva, Jesus Segura, Ann-Sofi Sidén
Press preview and opening: THURSDAY 4 JUNE, 2009 AT 4 PM
Location: Arsenale Novissimo, Tese di San Cristoforo, Tesa 92, Venice
Exhibition dates: 4 JUNE - 4 OCTOBER 2009
Opening hours: from 4 to 7 June, open 10 am to 8 pm / from 8 June to 4 October, open from 10 am to 6 pm. Closed on Tuesdays
TANIA BRUGUERA PRESENTS AUTOSABOTAGE 5 JUNE - 15PM
Murcia Cultural of the Autonomous Community of Murcia Region, presents, with the occasion of the 53rd International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, an international group show of artists who work or have worked on the theme of fear.
The world has changed in the last six months. Many of our convictions have collapsed, and we get hit by a new reality everyday. One thing can be sure: our society is governed by fear. Fear is an emotional response to threats and danger. The capacity to fear is part of human nature but the experience of fear is affected by historical and cultural influences.
What do people fear most? Change, the other, financial chaos, spiders, death, terrorist attacks, unemployment, being a failure, immigration, being alone, the future...
UAE Pavilion at 53rd Venice Biennale
Raising awareness that the United Arab Emirates is emerging as an important contributor to the world of contemporary art, the UAE National Pavilion will welcome visitors from June 7 through November 22, 2009, as the nation's official contribution to the Venice Biennale.
The UAE Pavilion, located in the Arsenale, is the first national pavilion ever to be created at the Biennale by an Arabian Gulf country. It is being developed and presented under the leadership of its Commissioner, Dr. Lamees Hamdan, a member of the Board of Directors of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority. Serving as curator for the UAE Pavilion is Tirdad Zolghadr, an internationally respected curator, critic, professor and filmmaker.
The UAE Pavilion will be titled "It's Not You, It's Me," a playful and provocative name for the country's first pavilion at the world's most prestigious contemporary art event. "By and large, art professionals around the world dismiss the notion that a pavilion can truly represent a nation," Zolghadr explains. "There still remains much to consider--especially when the nation in question is a place where more efforts are being invested in the development of a global art arena, within a smaller geographic space, and within a shorter time frame, than ever attempted before."
"Coming from a new arrival at the Venice Biennale," Zolghadr continues, "the title 'It's Not You, It's Me' might therefore be interpreted to mean, 'Look, it's the UAE's turn now.' The UAE Pavilion will be unapologetic about documenting the nation--even while the Pavilion as a whole can be seen as an exhibition about exhibition-making, reflecting on the very act of national showcasing at the Venice Biennale."
Built in a large and prominent location in the Arsenale--one of the two main areas of the Venice Biennale--the Pavilion will draw attention to its nature and function as a showcase through a combination of scenographic elements and architectural design by the partnership of Rami Farook (founder of the UAE's Traffic design gallery) and the Belgian architectural collective D'haeseleer & Kimpe & Poelaert, known for its collaborations with visual artists. Physically, the entire Pavilion will highlight a "World's Fair" theme that will incorporate various components:
• work by the featured artist, Lamya Gargash;
• a showroom of work by several UAE artists: Ebtisam Abdul-Aziz, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Huda Saeed Saif, and, Hassan Sharif;
• Hannah Hurtzig's Kiosk featuring conversations with key figures in the cultural panorama of the country;
• a documentation of a Dubai performance by the Jackson Pollock Bar; and
• scenography reminiscent of the World's Fair tradition, including text panels and architectural models of UAE arts infrastructure.
The UAE Pavilion, located in the Arsenale, is the first national pavilion ever to be created at the Biennale by an Arabian Gulf country. It is being developed and presented under the leadership of its Commissioner, Dr. Lamees Hamdan, a member of the Board of Directors of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority. Serving as curator for the UAE Pavilion is Tirdad Zolghadr, an internationally respected curator, critic, professor and filmmaker.
The UAE Pavilion will be titled "It's Not You, It's Me," a playful and provocative name for the country's first pavilion at the world's most prestigious contemporary art event. "By and large, art professionals around the world dismiss the notion that a pavilion can truly represent a nation," Zolghadr explains. "There still remains much to consider--especially when the nation in question is a place where more efforts are being invested in the development of a global art arena, within a smaller geographic space, and within a shorter time frame, than ever attempted before."
"Coming from a new arrival at the Venice Biennale," Zolghadr continues, "the title 'It's Not You, It's Me' might therefore be interpreted to mean, 'Look, it's the UAE's turn now.' The UAE Pavilion will be unapologetic about documenting the nation--even while the Pavilion as a whole can be seen as an exhibition about exhibition-making, reflecting on the very act of national showcasing at the Venice Biennale."
Built in a large and prominent location in the Arsenale--one of the two main areas of the Venice Biennale--the Pavilion will draw attention to its nature and function as a showcase through a combination of scenographic elements and architectural design by the partnership of Rami Farook (founder of the UAE's Traffic design gallery) and the Belgian architectural collective D'haeseleer & Kimpe & Poelaert, known for its collaborations with visual artists. Physically, the entire Pavilion will highlight a "World's Fair" theme that will incorporate various components:
• work by the featured artist, Lamya Gargash;
• a showroom of work by several UAE artists: Ebtisam Abdul-Aziz, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Huda Saeed Saif, and, Hassan Sharif;
• Hannah Hurtzig's Kiosk featuring conversations with key figures in the cultural panorama of the country;
• a documentation of a Dubai performance by the Jackson Pollock Bar; and
• scenography reminiscent of the World's Fair tradition, including text panels and architectural models of UAE arts infrastructure.
The Making of Art at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
THE SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT'S "THE MAKING OF ART" ADDRESSES THE COMPLEX WORLD OF CONTEMPORARY ART
The exhibition The Making of Art offers a look at the web of relationships of contemporary art, where the triangle of the artwork, the artist, and the viewer has long since been expanded in many ways. Not infrequently, the relationships between artists, collectors, dealers, curators, and critics influence the content of the works; often this is also illustrated: In a large survey from the 1960s to the present, this exhibition presents the positions of artists such as John Baldessari, Joseph Beuys, Tracey Emin, Peter Fischli/David Weiss, Ryan Gander, Christian Jankowski, Louise Lawler, Jonathan Monk, Nedko Solakov, Mladen Stilinović, Andy Warhol/Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Ai Weiwei. These artists reflect on an increasingly elaborate system, question the criteria of art, examine its methods and its institutions as sites, and shed light on the diverse connections and networks. With approximately 150 paintings, drawings, objects, installations, and videos, the exhibition addresses the complex system of the art world in the era of upheaval we are currently experiencing.
In a work from 1972, Jörg Immendorff describes his dream of being an artist: Ich wollte Künstler werden (I wanted to become an artist) was the title of his self-portrait. In a romantic vision of a deliberately pathos-laden painter's idyll, we encounter familiar ideas of artists as bohemians living beyond all conventions, whose only goal is making their visions, their genius, reality. It is an idea that is found in today's art only as a caricature. In the meantime, the somewhat romantic idea of the artist genius working in the solitude of his studio is countered by a broad network of artistic production. Those works which reflect an artistic apparatus that is becoming ever more complex today almost represent a separate genre, a late modern tradition that extends from the early 1960s into the present.
The 1960s also mark the birth of the artwork as institutional critique. The results were interventions, works, and objects that for the first time directly explored their relationship to their context. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a second wave of institutional critique follows, without which art since the 1980s can scarcely be understood. The context of the work of art now becomes the central theme of whole series of works by artists, and especially woman artists like Louise Lawler or Candida Höfer, which demystifies the museum as the sublime space of high culture. The Russian conceptual artists Komar & Melamid take it a step further and present the museum as nothing more than a ruin in a pastoral idyll.
The exhibition explores the most diverse aspects of the 'making of…' behind the scenes of the artworld: Starting with artworks about aspects of art production, fundamental questions about creativity and the exhibition space, to the dreaded issue of money. Artists report on expectation and overburdening, success and failure, glamour and fall from grace. Chris Burden seeks his answer to the question of how to deal with criticism. Ai Weiwei or Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová play subversive games with the establishment. Thomas Struth or Tina Barney portray their collectors. Azorro document encounters with curators, Phil Collins even hits them in the face. Martin Parr and Jessica Craig-Martin capture the decadence of recent times in their photographs and show impressions of the hotspots of contemporary art: from 'Art Basel' via the art fairs of Miami and Dubai all the way to the London 'Frieze'.
The Moscow Conceptualist Yuri Albert roguishly turns a little painter on his head and states: I Am Not Baselitz! In the end, what today's artists have in common is the irony and subversion with which they move between museum and market, success and crisis, romanticism and realism.
LIST OF ARTISTS: Yuri Albert, Pawel Althamer, Azorro, John Baldessari, Tina Barney, Tamy Ben-Tor, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Stefan Brüggemann, Chris Burden, Chicks on Speed, Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová, Claire Fontaine, Clegg & Guttmann, Phil Collins, Jessica Craig-Martin, Peter Davies, Jiří Georg Dokoupil, Michael Elmgreen/Ingar Dragset, Tracey Emin, Dan Fischer, Peter Fischli/David Weiss, Andrea Fraser, Ryan Gander, Dieter Hacker, Candida Höfer, Bethan Huws, Jörg Immendorff, Christian Jankowski, Martin Kippenberger, Komar & Melamid, Jeff Koons, Sean Landers, Louise Lawler, Marcin Maciejowski, Piero Manzoni, Jonathan Monk, Dave Muller, Manuel Ocampo, Martin Parr, Dan Perjovschi, Raymond Pettibon, William Powhida, Tom Sachs, Chéri Samba, Nedko Solakov, Mladen Stilinović, Thomas Struth, Goran Trbuljak, Andy Warhol & Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Waters, Ai Weiwei
The exhibition The Making of Art offers a look at the web of relationships of contemporary art, where the triangle of the artwork, the artist, and the viewer has long since been expanded in many ways. Not infrequently, the relationships between artists, collectors, dealers, curators, and critics influence the content of the works; often this is also illustrated: In a large survey from the 1960s to the present, this exhibition presents the positions of artists such as John Baldessari, Joseph Beuys, Tracey Emin, Peter Fischli/David Weiss, Ryan Gander, Christian Jankowski, Louise Lawler, Jonathan Monk, Nedko Solakov, Mladen Stilinović, Andy Warhol/Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Ai Weiwei. These artists reflect on an increasingly elaborate system, question the criteria of art, examine its methods and its institutions as sites, and shed light on the diverse connections and networks. With approximately 150 paintings, drawings, objects, installations, and videos, the exhibition addresses the complex system of the art world in the era of upheaval we are currently experiencing.
In a work from 1972, Jörg Immendorff describes his dream of being an artist: Ich wollte Künstler werden (I wanted to become an artist) was the title of his self-portrait. In a romantic vision of a deliberately pathos-laden painter's idyll, we encounter familiar ideas of artists as bohemians living beyond all conventions, whose only goal is making their visions, their genius, reality. It is an idea that is found in today's art only as a caricature. In the meantime, the somewhat romantic idea of the artist genius working in the solitude of his studio is countered by a broad network of artistic production. Those works which reflect an artistic apparatus that is becoming ever more complex today almost represent a separate genre, a late modern tradition that extends from the early 1960s into the present.
The 1960s also mark the birth of the artwork as institutional critique. The results were interventions, works, and objects that for the first time directly explored their relationship to their context. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a second wave of institutional critique follows, without which art since the 1980s can scarcely be understood. The context of the work of art now becomes the central theme of whole series of works by artists, and especially woman artists like Louise Lawler or Candida Höfer, which demystifies the museum as the sublime space of high culture. The Russian conceptual artists Komar & Melamid take it a step further and present the museum as nothing more than a ruin in a pastoral idyll.
The exhibition explores the most diverse aspects of the 'making of…' behind the scenes of the artworld: Starting with artworks about aspects of art production, fundamental questions about creativity and the exhibition space, to the dreaded issue of money. Artists report on expectation and overburdening, success and failure, glamour and fall from grace. Chris Burden seeks his answer to the question of how to deal with criticism. Ai Weiwei or Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová play subversive games with the establishment. Thomas Struth or Tina Barney portray their collectors. Azorro document encounters with curators, Phil Collins even hits them in the face. Martin Parr and Jessica Craig-Martin capture the decadence of recent times in their photographs and show impressions of the hotspots of contemporary art: from 'Art Basel' via the art fairs of Miami and Dubai all the way to the London 'Frieze'.
The Moscow Conceptualist Yuri Albert roguishly turns a little painter on his head and states: I Am Not Baselitz! In the end, what today's artists have in common is the irony and subversion with which they move between museum and market, success and crisis, romanticism and realism.
LIST OF ARTISTS: Yuri Albert, Pawel Althamer, Azorro, John Baldessari, Tina Barney, Tamy Ben-Tor, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Stefan Brüggemann, Chris Burden, Chicks on Speed, Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová, Claire Fontaine, Clegg & Guttmann, Phil Collins, Jessica Craig-Martin, Peter Davies, Jiří Georg Dokoupil, Michael Elmgreen/Ingar Dragset, Tracey Emin, Dan Fischer, Peter Fischli/David Weiss, Andrea Fraser, Ryan Gander, Dieter Hacker, Candida Höfer, Bethan Huws, Jörg Immendorff, Christian Jankowski, Martin Kippenberger, Komar & Melamid, Jeff Koons, Sean Landers, Louise Lawler, Marcin Maciejowski, Piero Manzoni, Jonathan Monk, Dave Muller, Manuel Ocampo, Martin Parr, Dan Perjovschi, Raymond Pettibon, William Powhida, Tom Sachs, Chéri Samba, Nedko Solakov, Mladen Stilinović, Thomas Struth, Goran Trbuljak, Andy Warhol & Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Waters, Ai Weiwei
Art Basel presents Il Tempo del Postino
One of the most spectacular events during Art 40 Basel will be the presentation of "Il Tempo del Postino" at Theater Basel. The Independent called this unique show "The world's first visual arts opera" after its first and only presentation at the Manchester International Festival in 2007, for which a group of the world's leading visual artists created a major experimental presentation.
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno as a group show that would occupy time rather than space, "Il Tempo del Postino" (Postman Time) presents a sequential display of time-based art on the theatre stage. After its first celebrated presentation, Richard Dorment of the Daily Telegraph wrote: "At the end of 'Il Tempo del Postino' I felt I'd been present at a historic occasion when the ambitions of the curators were perfectly matched by the quality of the art." This elaborate and ambitious exhibition is now touring to Basel, where each of the twenty artists invited will create an act of different length.
In Basel "Il Tempo del Postino" will be directed by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Philippe Parreno, Anri Sala and Rirkrit Tiravanija. In addition to works from the artists who participated in Manchester in 2007 - Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney & Jonathan Bepler, Tacita Dean, Trisha Donnelly, Olafur Eliasson, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Koo Jeong-A, Philippe Parreno, Anri Sala, Tino Sehgal and Rirkrit Tiravanija & Arto Lindsay - "Il Tempo del Postino" in Basel will include new contributions by Thomas Demand and Peter Fischli / David Weiss.
By focusing on time-based work, this unique group show aims to redefine how the visual arts can be experienced. Set in a classic theater architecture, it transforms the established exhibition model into an exhilarating, shared audience experience. The question originally posed by the curators was: "What happens if having an exhibition is not a way to occupy space, but a way to occupy time?" For "Il Tempo del Postino" each artist creates their own piece, including the presentation of installations, and inviting performing artists, singers, actors, dancers and a full orchestra playing specially commissioned music. "Il Tempo del Postino" is delivered to the audience in its own presentation time, rather than the audience walking through it in their own time; the final production was created collaboratively with all participating artists feeding into the overall structure, assisted by a creative team of experienced theatre practitioners and technicians.
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno as a group show that would occupy time rather than space, "Il Tempo del Postino" (Postman Time) presents a sequential display of time-based art on the theatre stage. After its first celebrated presentation, Richard Dorment of the Daily Telegraph wrote: "At the end of 'Il Tempo del Postino' I felt I'd been present at a historic occasion when the ambitions of the curators were perfectly matched by the quality of the art." This elaborate and ambitious exhibition is now touring to Basel, where each of the twenty artists invited will create an act of different length.
In Basel "Il Tempo del Postino" will be directed by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Philippe Parreno, Anri Sala and Rirkrit Tiravanija. In addition to works from the artists who participated in Manchester in 2007 - Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney & Jonathan Bepler, Tacita Dean, Trisha Donnelly, Olafur Eliasson, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Koo Jeong-A, Philippe Parreno, Anri Sala, Tino Sehgal and Rirkrit Tiravanija & Arto Lindsay - "Il Tempo del Postino" in Basel will include new contributions by Thomas Demand and Peter Fischli / David Weiss.
By focusing on time-based work, this unique group show aims to redefine how the visual arts can be experienced. Set in a classic theater architecture, it transforms the established exhibition model into an exhilarating, shared audience experience. The question originally posed by the curators was: "What happens if having an exhibition is not a way to occupy space, but a way to occupy time?" For "Il Tempo del Postino" each artist creates their own piece, including the presentation of installations, and inviting performing artists, singers, actors, dancers and a full orchestra playing specially commissioned music. "Il Tempo del Postino" is delivered to the audience in its own presentation time, rather than the audience walking through it in their own time; the final production was created collaboratively with all participating artists feeding into the overall structure, assisted by a creative team of experienced theatre practitioners and technicians.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Eva Lofdahl at Lunds konsthall
Eva Löfdahl, born 1953, emerged in the early 1980s and is rightly regarded as one of Sweden's most significant and innovative artists. She was always interested in how concepts are created and conveyed in art. Throughout the years she has worked in many different techniques and formats: painting, drawing, sculpture, text-based investigations, large-scale public art commissions for urban space and institutional settings. She has participated in numerous exhibitions in Sweden and internationally, representing Sweden at the Venice Biennale 1995. Her works are in many public and private collections.
Lunds konsthall is proud to present a substantial solo exhibition by Eva Löfdahl, comprising works from 1995–2009. The selected works are pronouncedly visual, investigating and illuminating concepts that language would barely manage to articulate on its own. Eva Löfdahl's art requires an active and thoughtful viewer, but it is by no means unwilling to engage with the world or to communicate. On the contrary, she cuts straight into societal issues and contemporary intellectual debates, and she often uses methods and forms borrowed from science.
The exhibition title, Π and around, evokes classical geometry and its fundamental concepts, whose potential for stimulating creative thinking is nowhere close to being exhausted by science. The irrational number Π expresses the relation between a circle's circumference and its diameter and must be written with an infinite number of decimals. Π is the image of constancy, remaining the same regardless of context or individual initiative, while also serving as a perpetual reminder of the strong pull that the unfinished and the unsolvable exert on us.
Π and around consists of three-dimensional works that are more or less easily decipherable, more or less sculptural. Yet what the exhibition really does is to show something that exists around visible form, outside tangible objects and beyond the habitual three dimensions. Eva Löfdahl has conceived and ordered the display at Lunds konsthall as a non-linear, non-hierarchical text. At the same time she offers a carefully planned trajectory through the exhibition space and through her artistic thinking. Cool logic and visual reduction meet mystical self-contradiction. In particular, the many new works in the exhibition demonstrate Eva Löfdahl's ability to make seemingly simple and direct plastic forms carry complex mental messages that are both worrying and uplifting.
Lunds konsthall thanks Eva Löfdahl for the inspiring collaboration on Π and around and also thanks the lenders, both private collectors and the Malmö Art Museum. Without their dedication and generosity the exhibition would not have been possible.
Lunds konsthall is proud to present a substantial solo exhibition by Eva Löfdahl, comprising works from 1995–2009. The selected works are pronouncedly visual, investigating and illuminating concepts that language would barely manage to articulate on its own. Eva Löfdahl's art requires an active and thoughtful viewer, but it is by no means unwilling to engage with the world or to communicate. On the contrary, she cuts straight into societal issues and contemporary intellectual debates, and she often uses methods and forms borrowed from science.
The exhibition title, Π and around, evokes classical geometry and its fundamental concepts, whose potential for stimulating creative thinking is nowhere close to being exhausted by science. The irrational number Π expresses the relation between a circle's circumference and its diameter and must be written with an infinite number of decimals. Π is the image of constancy, remaining the same regardless of context or individual initiative, while also serving as a perpetual reminder of the strong pull that the unfinished and the unsolvable exert on us.
Π and around consists of three-dimensional works that are more or less easily decipherable, more or less sculptural. Yet what the exhibition really does is to show something that exists around visible form, outside tangible objects and beyond the habitual three dimensions. Eva Löfdahl has conceived and ordered the display at Lunds konsthall as a non-linear, non-hierarchical text. At the same time she offers a carefully planned trajectory through the exhibition space and through her artistic thinking. Cool logic and visual reduction meet mystical self-contradiction. In particular, the many new works in the exhibition demonstrate Eva Löfdahl's ability to make seemingly simple and direct plastic forms carry complex mental messages that are both worrying and uplifting.
Lunds konsthall thanks Eva Löfdahl for the inspiring collaboration on Π and around and also thanks the lenders, both private collectors and the Malmö Art Museum. Without their dedication and generosity the exhibition would not have been possible.
'Awake Are Only The Spirits' – On Ghosts And Their Media at HMKV
make any text speed it up slow it down run it backwards inch it and you will hear words that were not in the original recording new words made by the machine different people will scan out different words of course but some of the words are quite clearly there and anyone can hear them words which were not in the original tape but which are in many cases relevant to the original text as if the words themselves had been interrogated and forced to reveal their hidden meanings
(William S. Burroughs, The Invisible Generation)
At first glance, the subject of the exhibition 'Awake Are Only the Spirits' – On Ghosts and Their Mediaseems somewhat outmoded: the presence of the supernatural, the manifestations of spirits, and (trans)communication with the beyond facilitated by technical media.
The exhibition is based on the audiotape archive of Friedrich Jürgenson who discovered the so-called Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) in 1959. Taking as starting point the lively interest shown in the subject by contemporary artists, the show aims to tell a 'ghost story' that explores the question of why, for all our enlightenment, irrational capabilities are regularly ascribed to the new media and technologies of a given time – for instance, the ability to act as a channel for messages from the beyond.
All of the projects by the twenty-two international artists participating in the exhibition question in some way or another the existence of ghosts, they explore the integration of new media and technologies in spiritualist contexts, make visible or perceptible the invisible and trace the political implications as well as the aesthetics of such contemporary trans-communication phenomena.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Lucas & Jason Ajemian (US)
Archive of an Anonymous Ghost-Seer (DE), curated by hans w. koch
Sam Ashley (US)
Corinne May Botz (US)
Erik Bünger (SE)
Damien Cadio (FR)
Michael Esposito (US)
Nina Fischer/Maroan el Sani (DE)
Agnès Geoffray (FR)
Kathrin Günter (DE)
Carl Michael von Hausswolff (SE)
Tim Hecker (CA)
Susan Hiller (GB)
Martin Howse (GB)
International Necronautical Society (GB)
Friedrich Jürgenson (SE)
Joep van Liefland (NL)
Chris Marker (FR)
Jorge Queiroz (PT)
Scanner (GB)
Jan Peter E.R. Sonntag (DE)
Suzanne Treister (GB)
CURATORS
Inke Arns, Thibaut de Ruyter
(William S. Burroughs, The Invisible Generation)
At first glance, the subject of the exhibition 'Awake Are Only the Spirits' – On Ghosts and Their Mediaseems somewhat outmoded: the presence of the supernatural, the manifestations of spirits, and (trans)communication with the beyond facilitated by technical media.
The exhibition is based on the audiotape archive of Friedrich Jürgenson who discovered the so-called Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) in 1959. Taking as starting point the lively interest shown in the subject by contemporary artists, the show aims to tell a 'ghost story' that explores the question of why, for all our enlightenment, irrational capabilities are regularly ascribed to the new media and technologies of a given time – for instance, the ability to act as a channel for messages from the beyond.
All of the projects by the twenty-two international artists participating in the exhibition question in some way or another the existence of ghosts, they explore the integration of new media and technologies in spiritualist contexts, make visible or perceptible the invisible and trace the political implications as well as the aesthetics of such contemporary trans-communication phenomena.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Lucas & Jason Ajemian (US)
Archive of an Anonymous Ghost-Seer (DE), curated by hans w. koch
Sam Ashley (US)
Corinne May Botz (US)
Erik Bünger (SE)
Damien Cadio (FR)
Michael Esposito (US)
Nina Fischer/Maroan el Sani (DE)
Agnès Geoffray (FR)
Kathrin Günter (DE)
Carl Michael von Hausswolff (SE)
Tim Hecker (CA)
Susan Hiller (GB)
Martin Howse (GB)
International Necronautical Society (GB)
Friedrich Jürgenson (SE)
Joep van Liefland (NL)
Chris Marker (FR)
Jorge Queiroz (PT)
Scanner (GB)
Jan Peter E.R. Sonntag (DE)
Suzanne Treister (GB)
CURATORS
Inke Arns, Thibaut de Ruyter
Carlos Amorales at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich
Precisely two years ago Mexican artist Carlos Amorales presented his "Liquid Archive" with the exhibition "Dark Mirror" at the Daros Exhibition in Zürich. Using a laser he cut out a large part of the forms of the digital "Liquid Archive" out of black paper. These fragile paper works were displayed in specially produced showcases.
Similar fragile papers are stored in numerous Dada archives in Europe. Contrary to the paper works in Daros Exhibition, these were originally cheap mass-produced products, which were created for public consumption in the form of magazines, posters and flyers. Because these artifacts were produced on very cheap paper, they are very difficult to preserve.
For the exhibition "The Skeleton Image Constellation" Carlos Amorales and Adrian Notz visited the Kunsthaus Zürich, the exhibition "Art is Arp" in Strasbourg, the Arp Foundation in Solduno, the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, the Arp Foundation Rolandseck and the Arp Foundation in Meudon to look at the Arp works more closely and discuss them with scientists and conservators.
In these discussions, they discovered that the working process of Arp, was as important as the finished product. The core of this work was comprised of a lexicon of forms, which he called "Découpage". Using these stencils he composed his work sometimes very specifically, sometimes by chance ("…selon du lois du hazard") and at times even inviting others to play with the forms in his studio.
Other examples for lexicons of forms can be found in Kurt Schwitter's work in the elements he utilized for his collages, or in Max Ernst's work in the wooden pieces he used in creating "Frottages". In Man Ray's work this can be seen in the composition of objects on the photopaper he chose in the production of his photograms.
Carlos Amorales coined the definition "Skeleton Images" to describe the lexicons of these Dada artists. Also the data of his "Liquid Archive" are comprised "Skeleton Images" used to produce his art works. Amorales sees the "Skeleton Image" as one degree in the process of creating a work. There is a "Source" of the image, for example the nature in the valley of Maggia in 1915 in the case of Arp, and in the case of Amorales' photos, magazines, logos, masks, etc. Then there is the "Skeleton Image", the "Image" which is the artwork itself and the "Ghost Image" which is a reproduction of the work whether that be conscious or accidental in nature.
Amorales often works in collaboration with other artists, musicians, designers, animation artists, tarot card readers, filmmakers and others. Similar to Arp, Amorales invites others to "play" with his "Liquid Archive" to produce new works. The "Liquid Archive" is therefore virtually open-source.
In the exhibition, "The Skeleton Image Constellation" at the Cabaret Voltaire, for the first time ever, the "Liquid Archive" will not only be exhibited, but open and available to the public in the form of 1,040 different post cards in small editions of 100 cards each.
Here, the "Liquid Archive" doesn't manifest itself as a precious artifact like Amorales' laser cut- outs, but as a cheap mass-produced product, similar to Dadaist magazines and flyers. In this form, the "Liquid Archive" continues to be a "Skeleton Image".
Curated by Adrian Notz
Special Thanks to Hans-Michael Herzog (Daros-Latinamerica), Mark Divo and Sonja Vectomov.
Thank you to Marc Dachy, Chiara Jaeger (Fondation Arp Clamart), Walpurga Krupp (Hans Arp Sitftung Rolandseck), Karin Orchard (Sprengelmuseum Hannover), Mirjam Varadinis (Kunsthaus Zürich)
Similar fragile papers are stored in numerous Dada archives in Europe. Contrary to the paper works in Daros Exhibition, these were originally cheap mass-produced products, which were created for public consumption in the form of magazines, posters and flyers. Because these artifacts were produced on very cheap paper, they are very difficult to preserve.
For the exhibition "The Skeleton Image Constellation" Carlos Amorales and Adrian Notz visited the Kunsthaus Zürich, the exhibition "Art is Arp" in Strasbourg, the Arp Foundation in Solduno, the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, the Arp Foundation Rolandseck and the Arp Foundation in Meudon to look at the Arp works more closely and discuss them with scientists and conservators.
In these discussions, they discovered that the working process of Arp, was as important as the finished product. The core of this work was comprised of a lexicon of forms, which he called "Découpage". Using these stencils he composed his work sometimes very specifically, sometimes by chance ("…selon du lois du hazard") and at times even inviting others to play with the forms in his studio.
Other examples for lexicons of forms can be found in Kurt Schwitter's work in the elements he utilized for his collages, or in Max Ernst's work in the wooden pieces he used in creating "Frottages". In Man Ray's work this can be seen in the composition of objects on the photopaper he chose in the production of his photograms.
Carlos Amorales coined the definition "Skeleton Images" to describe the lexicons of these Dada artists. Also the data of his "Liquid Archive" are comprised "Skeleton Images" used to produce his art works. Amorales sees the "Skeleton Image" as one degree in the process of creating a work. There is a "Source" of the image, for example the nature in the valley of Maggia in 1915 in the case of Arp, and in the case of Amorales' photos, magazines, logos, masks, etc. Then there is the "Skeleton Image", the "Image" which is the artwork itself and the "Ghost Image" which is a reproduction of the work whether that be conscious or accidental in nature.
Amorales often works in collaboration with other artists, musicians, designers, animation artists, tarot card readers, filmmakers and others. Similar to Arp, Amorales invites others to "play" with his "Liquid Archive" to produce new works. The "Liquid Archive" is therefore virtually open-source.
In the exhibition, "The Skeleton Image Constellation" at the Cabaret Voltaire, for the first time ever, the "Liquid Archive" will not only be exhibited, but open and available to the public in the form of 1,040 different post cards in small editions of 100 cards each.
Here, the "Liquid Archive" doesn't manifest itself as a precious artifact like Amorales' laser cut- outs, but as a cheap mass-produced product, similar to Dadaist magazines and flyers. In this form, the "Liquid Archive" continues to be a "Skeleton Image".
Curated by Adrian Notz
Special Thanks to Hans-Michael Herzog (Daros-Latinamerica), Mark Divo and Sonja Vectomov.
Thank you to Marc Dachy, Chiara Jaeger (Fondation Arp Clamart), Walpurga Krupp (Hans Arp Sitftung Rolandseck), Karin Orchard (Sprengelmuseum Hannover), Mirjam Varadinis (Kunsthaus Zürich)
Mexican Pavilion presents Teresa Margolles at 53rd Venice Biennale
CURATOR
Cuauhtémoc Medina
VENUE
Rota Ivancich Palace
Castello 4421 (close to San Marco square)
30122 Venice
CATALOGUE
A catalogue will be published, including essays by well known authors such as Cuauhtémoc Medina, Ernesto Diezmartinez Gumàn, Elmer Mendoza, Antonio Escohotado, Mariana Botey.
SPONSOR
The pavilion is sponsored by The National Council For Culture And The Arts (CONACULTA), The Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), The National University of Mexico (UNAM), Patronato Del Arte Contemporaneo (PAC)
Mexico presents its second official national representation at the 53rd International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia, on June 7 through November 22, 2009. The pavilion will be located in the historic Rota Ivancich Palace, built in the 16th century, next to Querini Stampalia Foundation, close to San Marco square, in the heart of Venice.
The pavilion will host a solo show by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles titled ¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? (What Else Could We Talk About?) which involves of a single and continuous intervention, with different actions and works along the pavillion. The show is curated by Cuauhtémoc Medina.
Teresa Margolles’s work, despite its controversial character, has increasingly been exhibited in different venues and around the world, includying the Liverpool Biennial (2006), The Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany (2007), La Colección Jumex, Mexico (2007) and Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2008).
The works presented at the Mexican Pavilion are a subtle chronicle of the effects of a devilish international economy: the vicious circle of prohibition, addiction, accumulation, poverty, hatred and repression that transmogrifies the transgresive pleasures and puritan obsessions of the North into the South as Hell.
The show will be accompanied by a bilingual catalogue published in English and in Spanish with texts by the curator Cuauhtémoc Medina, Ernesto Diezmartínez Guzmán writer and cinema’s critic; Luis Astorga reasearcher for Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, UNAM; Elmer Mendoza writer; Sergio González Rodríguez, writer; Antonio Escohotado Spanish philosopher; Mariana Botey Mexican artist and theorists and an interview about the realisation of the exhibition of the artist by Taiyana Pimentel and Cuauhtémoc Medina.
In 1990 Teresa Margolles (Mexico, 1963) was a founding member of the group SEMEFO (Servicio Médico Forense/Forensic Medical Service) and has in this capacity since held performances, made installations, objects and videos and intervened in public places. Later on, she continued working on her own using the morgue as a laboratory and study, developing social and conceptual artistic strategies on the basis of the use of bodily substances and images of corpses. Her exploration of death as a subject, has been related to a ever deepening research on issues of economic and political unequalities, social exploitation, the process of historical mourning and the way extended violence defines the cultural and philosophical landscape of today.
Due to the recent upsurge of violence in Mexico ─ according to the press, in 2008 more than 5000 people lost their lives in executions and shootings related to drug trafficking and its combat ─ Teresa Margolles’s work, that for almost two decades has concentrated in the exploration of the artistic possibilities of human remains, has put an increasing emphasis in the meditation on violent death and its victims.
Margolles most recent work involve a subtle and moving chronicle of the pervasive economy of death that plagues the north of Mexico.
In the last two years, she had focused in creating installations, paintings and objects departing from the material traces of killings in the streets and the associated verbal production taken from execution notes, police reports and press accounts of violence.
¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? will be a narrative based on tactics of contamination and material actions, which will seek to emotional and intellectually involve the visitors in the issues surrounding the way violence and the current global economy involve the effective declaration of whole generations of individuals as a virtually disposable social class, trapped in between the perverse logic of criminality, capitalism and prohibition. The Pavillion project will be accompanied by a number of public actions which will extend the concept of her participation to the venues of the Venice Biennale and the city.
Cuauhtémoc Medina
VENUE
Rota Ivancich Palace
Castello 4421 (close to San Marco square)
30122 Venice
CATALOGUE
A catalogue will be published, including essays by well known authors such as Cuauhtémoc Medina, Ernesto Diezmartinez Gumàn, Elmer Mendoza, Antonio Escohotado, Mariana Botey.
SPONSOR
The pavilion is sponsored by The National Council For Culture And The Arts (CONACULTA), The Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), The National University of Mexico (UNAM), Patronato Del Arte Contemporaneo (PAC)
Mexico presents its second official national representation at the 53rd International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia, on June 7 through November 22, 2009. The pavilion will be located in the historic Rota Ivancich Palace, built in the 16th century, next to Querini Stampalia Foundation, close to San Marco square, in the heart of Venice.
The pavilion will host a solo show by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles titled ¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? (What Else Could We Talk About?) which involves of a single and continuous intervention, with different actions and works along the pavillion. The show is curated by Cuauhtémoc Medina.
Teresa Margolles’s work, despite its controversial character, has increasingly been exhibited in different venues and around the world, includying the Liverpool Biennial (2006), The Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany (2007), La Colección Jumex, Mexico (2007) and Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2008).
The works presented at the Mexican Pavilion are a subtle chronicle of the effects of a devilish international economy: the vicious circle of prohibition, addiction, accumulation, poverty, hatred and repression that transmogrifies the transgresive pleasures and puritan obsessions of the North into the South as Hell.
The show will be accompanied by a bilingual catalogue published in English and in Spanish with texts by the curator Cuauhtémoc Medina, Ernesto Diezmartínez Guzmán writer and cinema’s critic; Luis Astorga reasearcher for Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, UNAM; Elmer Mendoza writer; Sergio González Rodríguez, writer; Antonio Escohotado Spanish philosopher; Mariana Botey Mexican artist and theorists and an interview about the realisation of the exhibition of the artist by Taiyana Pimentel and Cuauhtémoc Medina.
In 1990 Teresa Margolles (Mexico, 1963) was a founding member of the group SEMEFO (Servicio Médico Forense/Forensic Medical Service) and has in this capacity since held performances, made installations, objects and videos and intervened in public places. Later on, she continued working on her own using the morgue as a laboratory and study, developing social and conceptual artistic strategies on the basis of the use of bodily substances and images of corpses. Her exploration of death as a subject, has been related to a ever deepening research on issues of economic and political unequalities, social exploitation, the process of historical mourning and the way extended violence defines the cultural and philosophical landscape of today.
Due to the recent upsurge of violence in Mexico ─ according to the press, in 2008 more than 5000 people lost their lives in executions and shootings related to drug trafficking and its combat ─ Teresa Margolles’s work, that for almost two decades has concentrated in the exploration of the artistic possibilities of human remains, has put an increasing emphasis in the meditation on violent death and its victims.
Margolles most recent work involve a subtle and moving chronicle of the pervasive economy of death that plagues the north of Mexico.
In the last two years, she had focused in creating installations, paintings and objects departing from the material traces of killings in the streets and the associated verbal production taken from execution notes, police reports and press accounts of violence.
¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? will be a narrative based on tactics of contamination and material actions, which will seek to emotional and intellectually involve the visitors in the issues surrounding the way violence and the current global economy involve the effective declaration of whole generations of individuals as a virtually disposable social class, trapped in between the perverse logic of criminality, capitalism and prohibition. The Pavillion project will be accompanied by a number of public actions which will extend the concept of her participation to the venues of the Venice Biennale and the city.
SculptureCenter, New York
http://www.sculpture-center.org
The University of Trash, a project by Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman
May 10 - August 3, 2009
The University of Trash is an experiment in alternative architecture, urbanism, and pedagogy produced through SculptureCenter's Artist-in-Residence program. Drawing from utopian ideals and radical urban projects undertaken since the 1960s, the artists have created an installation that functions as a temporary, makeshift University - hosting courses, lectures, presentations, and workshops. Five collaborations occupy distinct and specially designed architectural spaces in SculptureCenter's central gallery and courtyard. Working with students, artists, local organizations, activists, and academics, the University consists of a complex of multiple departments and interactions both onsite and off. A Free Skool program will operate within the University, offering the public the opportunity to propose their own courses - open and free for all who sign up and attend throughout the duration of the exhibition. To view a complete listing of upcoming events at the University, please click here to visit our events page. To read more, click here to view the full press release.
Rashid Johnson: Smoke and Mirrors
May 10 - August 3, 2009
For his first solo museum show in New York, Rashid Johnson will present a number of new large-scale sculptural works that suggest altars, entertainment consoles, or constructivist-like abstractions alongside photographs and works in other media. Considered one of the up and coming artists whose work has been termed "post-black", Johnson engages with racial identity but in ways that insist on fluidity and contradiction. Johnson uses materials such as steel, poured wax, and shea butter, while juxtaposing relics and artifacts in an approach that flirts with the shamanistic. To read more, click here to view the full press release.
New In Practice Projects
May 10 - August 3, 2009
Michael Ashkin, Michael Blum, David Dixon, Simone Leigh, Cindy Loehr, Virginia Overton
In Practice is an ongoing project series designed to support the creation of innovative work by emerging artists. To read more, click here to view the full press release.
For additional information please contact SculptureCenter: (1) 718.361.1750 orinfo@sculpture-center.org
Media contact: Nickolas Roudane, press@sculpture-center.org
About SculptureCenter
Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit arts institution dedicated to experimental and innovative developments in contemporary sculpture. SculptureCenter commissions new work and presents exhibits by emerging and established, national and international artists. In 2001, SculptureCenter purchased a former trolley repair shop in Long Island City, Queens. This facility, designed by artist/designer Maya Lin, includes 6,000 square feet of interior exhibition space, offices, and outdoor exhibition space.
The University of Trash, a project by Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman
May 10 - August 3, 2009
The University of Trash is an experiment in alternative architecture, urbanism, and pedagogy produced through SculptureCenter's Artist-in-Residence program. Drawing from utopian ideals and radical urban projects undertaken since the 1960s, the artists have created an installation that functions as a temporary, makeshift University - hosting courses, lectures, presentations, and workshops. Five collaborations occupy distinct and specially designed architectural spaces in SculptureCenter's central gallery and courtyard. Working with students, artists, local organizations, activists, and academics, the University consists of a complex of multiple departments and interactions both onsite and off. A Free Skool program will operate within the University, offering the public the opportunity to propose their own courses - open and free for all who sign up and attend throughout the duration of the exhibition. To view a complete listing of upcoming events at the University, please click here to visit our events page. To read more, click here to view the full press release.
Rashid Johnson: Smoke and Mirrors
May 10 - August 3, 2009
For his first solo museum show in New York, Rashid Johnson will present a number of new large-scale sculptural works that suggest altars, entertainment consoles, or constructivist-like abstractions alongside photographs and works in other media. Considered one of the up and coming artists whose work has been termed "post-black", Johnson engages with racial identity but in ways that insist on fluidity and contradiction. Johnson uses materials such as steel, poured wax, and shea butter, while juxtaposing relics and artifacts in an approach that flirts with the shamanistic. To read more, click here to view the full press release.
New In Practice Projects
May 10 - August 3, 2009
Michael Ashkin, Michael Blum, David Dixon, Simone Leigh, Cindy Loehr, Virginia Overton
In Practice is an ongoing project series designed to support the creation of innovative work by emerging artists. To read more, click here to view the full press release.
For additional information please contact SculptureCenter: (1) 718.361.1750 orinfo@sculpture-center.org
Media contact: Nickolas Roudane, press@sculpture-center.org
About SculptureCenter
Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit arts institution dedicated to experimental and innovative developments in contemporary sculpture. SculptureCenter commissions new work and presents exhibits by emerging and established, national and international artists. In 2001, SculptureCenter purchased a former trolley repair shop in Long Island City, Queens. This facility, designed by artist/designer Maya Lin, includes 6,000 square feet of interior exhibition space, offices, and outdoor exhibition space.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Emerging Swedish contemporary art at Bonniers Konsthall
The 1980s is back. Bonniers Konsthall introduces the decade's return in emerging Swedish contemporary art in the Rummaging exhibition. The group exhibition presents 11 young Swedish artists and their connection to the Swedish artworld of the early 1980s.
Bonniers Konsthall continues to check out the Swedish contemporary art scene and just what characterises our time. Every year Bonniers Konsthall presents a group exhibition, which provides an insight into what preoccupies today's young artists. In 2007, Bonniers Konsthall scanned the Swedish art academies and discovered the return of romanticism. Last year, Bonniers Konsthall invited its friends to present their favourites on the young Swedish art scene as a way of exploring contemporary networking.
The result of this year's investigation is now being presented in the exhibition Rummaging, revealing a connection between emerging contemporary artists and the Swedish artworld of the early 1980s. Works by 11 artists, all at the beginning of their careers, is exhibited in the Rummaging exhibition that brings together both the '80s and the '00s, and form and relationships. The participating artists and their predecessors share an interest in the formal aspects of objects, spatialities, the visual and material. Like in the '80s, today's artists explore art's closeness to choreography, music and new media as well as art as a possible meeting place. The Rummaging exhibition combines monumental installation, ambiguous sculpture, real-time video and shadow play. As viewers we are invited to step into the physically tangible works in the exhibition.
Camilla Larsson, the exhibition curator:
"I see the exhibition as a creative re-reading that is not just a way of formulating a strong tendency among today's young artists. It is also a way of retroactively directing attention towards what makes the particularity of the Swedish 1980s into a historic turning point today. For me, its radicality lies in the way that the artists affirmed the unnecessary, the absurd and the tentative. They rejected things that had been formulated in advance."
The re-reading of our contemporary history is given topical relevance in Rummaging in two ways. Partly through being the connecting thread linking the choice of artists, partly through the programme of accompanying events that spans three Wednesday evenings. Here the '80s meets the '00s in a series of discussions, performances and concerts. Those taking part include the exhibition artists and leading figures from the 1980s Swedish art scene, such as Cecilia Edefalk, Margaretha Åsberg and Max Book.
Participating artists:
Suzanna Asp, Fredrik Auster/Viggo Mörck, Ebba Bohlin, Gabo Camnitzer, Johanna Gustafsson Fürst, Åsa Norberg/Jennie Sundén, Kerstin Persson, Christin Wahlström and Anna Wignell.
Curator: Camilla Larsson
Bonniers Konsthall continues to check out the Swedish contemporary art scene and just what characterises our time. Every year Bonniers Konsthall presents a group exhibition, which provides an insight into what preoccupies today's young artists. In 2007, Bonniers Konsthall scanned the Swedish art academies and discovered the return of romanticism. Last year, Bonniers Konsthall invited its friends to present their favourites on the young Swedish art scene as a way of exploring contemporary networking.
The result of this year's investigation is now being presented in the exhibition Rummaging, revealing a connection between emerging contemporary artists and the Swedish artworld of the early 1980s. Works by 11 artists, all at the beginning of their careers, is exhibited in the Rummaging exhibition that brings together both the '80s and the '00s, and form and relationships. The participating artists and their predecessors share an interest in the formal aspects of objects, spatialities, the visual and material. Like in the '80s, today's artists explore art's closeness to choreography, music and new media as well as art as a possible meeting place. The Rummaging exhibition combines monumental installation, ambiguous sculpture, real-time video and shadow play. As viewers we are invited to step into the physically tangible works in the exhibition.
Camilla Larsson, the exhibition curator:
"I see the exhibition as a creative re-reading that is not just a way of formulating a strong tendency among today's young artists. It is also a way of retroactively directing attention towards what makes the particularity of the Swedish 1980s into a historic turning point today. For me, its radicality lies in the way that the artists affirmed the unnecessary, the absurd and the tentative. They rejected things that had been formulated in advance."
The re-reading of our contemporary history is given topical relevance in Rummaging in two ways. Partly through being the connecting thread linking the choice of artists, partly through the programme of accompanying events that spans three Wednesday evenings. Here the '80s meets the '00s in a series of discussions, performances and concerts. Those taking part include the exhibition artists and leading figures from the 1980s Swedish art scene, such as Cecilia Edefalk, Margaretha Åsberg and Max Book.
Participating artists:
Suzanna Asp, Fredrik Auster/Viggo Mörck, Ebba Bohlin, Gabo Camnitzer, Johanna Gustafsson Fürst, Åsa Norberg/Jennie Sundén, Kerstin Persson, Christin Wahlström and Anna Wignell.
Curator: Camilla Larsson
Wojciech Gilewicz at Foksal Gallery
Wojciech Gilewicz's current exhibition at the Foksal Gallery, his second here, differs vastly from what he has accustomed us to in his previous work. The show comprises paintings created for earlier projects; however, this time he presents them as wholly abstract works, removed from the context in which they originally appeared as realistic painted reproductions doing duty for elements of the surrounding world. In general, they imitated fragments of the walls and windowsills of buildings, or masqueraded as paving stones. They could only be found with the help of a special map, prepared by the artist himself. So perfectly did they meld with reality that they remained completely invisible to the uninitiated viewer. Gilewicz's work to date has been a junction, a meeting place for painting, photography, installations, and videos documenting his artistic actions. The final work was a fusion of numerous elements, acquiring significance only within the context of the whole, even when transferred to the setting of a gallery's interior. This was what happened with the show which Gilewicz prepared for the Foksal in 2005. The work fused painting, photography and reality; a view from a window in the gallery. The pictures inside the gallery, three irregular figures, had to be read in conjunction with the photographs presented alongside them. They showed three canvas stretchers in the park, before painting, and after, along with a view of the park from the gallery window. Now Gilewicz goes a step further. He deprives his paintings of context, imposing the constraints of artistic form on them. It no longer matters whether the works first functioned against the urban fabric of Warsaw, Sanok or Paris, or whether they once became a part of the New York metro, Warsaw's Zachęta National Gallery of Art or Ukraine's Ivano-Frankivsk Museum of Art. What matters now is their independent existence, the paintings and the paintings alone. What new meanings do they acquire? Set against the backdrop of painting's entire tradition and the history of that medium, how do they speak to us? And finally, does Gilewicz's work provide simple answers to these questions? Or does it also provoke us to further reflection?
Born in 1974 in Biłgoraj. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan (1994-1996) and then in Warsaw, where in 1999 he earned a degree in painting (with an additional degree in photography) A painter, photographer, author of installations and videos. Lives and works in Warsaw and New York.
Born in 1974 in Biłgoraj. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan (1994-1996) and then in Warsaw, where in 1999 he earned a degree in painting (with an additional degree in photography) A painter, photographer, author of installations and videos. Lives and works in Warsaw and New York.
Menil Collection: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen
Presented by the Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center
For more than three decades, artists Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) and Coosje van Bruggen (1942-2009) created large-scale works that reconfigure our conception of ordinary objects, transforming them into humorous public monuments. These initial studies reveal a spontaneity and wit that subvert the solemn and inert character of public monuments.
Drawings On Site: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, organized by Bernice Rose, chief curator of the Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center, in cooperation with the artists, will showcase more than a dozen large-scale drawings assembled primarily from the artists' private collection.
An innovator of New York's nascent Pop Art movement, Claes Oldenburg gained critical acclaim for his offbeat return to "realism" during the waning years of Abstract Expressionism. Drawing inspiration from his urban surroundings, Oldenburg transformed fragments of the debris found in the streets of his Lower East Side environment into artworks, creating a new genre of installations in exhibitions.
In 1965, Oldenburg began drawing ideas for Proposed Colossal Monuments, a series of "unfeasible" large sculptures planned for several of the most recognizable spaces in the United States. In 1969 he constructed his first colossal monument at Yale University, Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, a twenty-foot tube of lipstick placed atop a pair of tank treads. Other large commissions followed in the next several years, including Three-Way Plug (1970) at Oberlin College and Giant Ice Bag (1970) at the U.S. Pavilion of Expo '70 in Japan. Whether visionary or fully realized, monumental public works and large-scale sculptures remained a central focus of the work.
After collaborating with Oldenburg in 1976 on the siting of his 41-foot sculpture Trowel I (a work conceived in 1971), Dutch writer and art historian Coosje van Bruggen joined the artist as a creative partner. They married the following year in the Netherlands and returned to New York to focus on the challenges of producing large-scale public works. Each project began with a conversation between the two artists – an exchange of words and images.
Concentrating on drawings for projects developed from the 1980s onward, Drawings On Site offers a rare glimpse into work such as Cleveland's Free Stamp (1984) and the Vitra Museum's Balancing Tools, Position Study (1983) from the artists' perspective – a preview before the sculptures reached a public audience. In the large presentation drawings Oldenburg has recorded his impression of the couple's ever-evolving interpretations of how their sculptural object interacts with its environment. The exhibition takes into account visualizations of both feasible and unfeasible sculptures as they appear (or could appear) in situ at various locations around the world. Included will be imagined works such as the colossal Golfbag Ruin (1999), a romantic vision of verticality in an imaginary landscape of Scotland.
From the mid-1970s on, Oldenburg and van Bruggen realized nearly fifty public projects in the United States, Europe, and Asia. All have been conceived in the singular drawing practice that stands as not simply as a creative generator of large-scale sculptures, but as a remarkable testament to the act of drawing.
Coosje van Bruggen died in January of this year after battling a long term illness. Drawings On Sitecommemorates one of the most important artistic collaborations of modernist sculpture.
This exhibition is generously supported by David Teiger, Janie C. Lee and David B. Warren, the Susan Vaughan Foundation, The Brown Foundation, Inc./Nancy and Mark Abendshein, Leslie and Shannon Sasser, Beth and Rick Schnieders, and the City of Houston.
For more than three decades, artists Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) and Coosje van Bruggen (1942-2009) created large-scale works that reconfigure our conception of ordinary objects, transforming them into humorous public monuments. These initial studies reveal a spontaneity and wit that subvert the solemn and inert character of public monuments.
Drawings On Site: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, organized by Bernice Rose, chief curator of the Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center, in cooperation with the artists, will showcase more than a dozen large-scale drawings assembled primarily from the artists' private collection.
An innovator of New York's nascent Pop Art movement, Claes Oldenburg gained critical acclaim for his offbeat return to "realism" during the waning years of Abstract Expressionism. Drawing inspiration from his urban surroundings, Oldenburg transformed fragments of the debris found in the streets of his Lower East Side environment into artworks, creating a new genre of installations in exhibitions.
In 1965, Oldenburg began drawing ideas for Proposed Colossal Monuments, a series of "unfeasible" large sculptures planned for several of the most recognizable spaces in the United States. In 1969 he constructed his first colossal monument at Yale University, Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, a twenty-foot tube of lipstick placed atop a pair of tank treads. Other large commissions followed in the next several years, including Three-Way Plug (1970) at Oberlin College and Giant Ice Bag (1970) at the U.S. Pavilion of Expo '70 in Japan. Whether visionary or fully realized, monumental public works and large-scale sculptures remained a central focus of the work.
After collaborating with Oldenburg in 1976 on the siting of his 41-foot sculpture Trowel I (a work conceived in 1971), Dutch writer and art historian Coosje van Bruggen joined the artist as a creative partner. They married the following year in the Netherlands and returned to New York to focus on the challenges of producing large-scale public works. Each project began with a conversation between the two artists – an exchange of words and images.
Concentrating on drawings for projects developed from the 1980s onward, Drawings On Site offers a rare glimpse into work such as Cleveland's Free Stamp (1984) and the Vitra Museum's Balancing Tools, Position Study (1983) from the artists' perspective – a preview before the sculptures reached a public audience. In the large presentation drawings Oldenburg has recorded his impression of the couple's ever-evolving interpretations of how their sculptural object interacts with its environment. The exhibition takes into account visualizations of both feasible and unfeasible sculptures as they appear (or could appear) in situ at various locations around the world. Included will be imagined works such as the colossal Golfbag Ruin (1999), a romantic vision of verticality in an imaginary landscape of Scotland.
From the mid-1970s on, Oldenburg and van Bruggen realized nearly fifty public projects in the United States, Europe, and Asia. All have been conceived in the singular drawing practice that stands as not simply as a creative generator of large-scale sculptures, but as a remarkable testament to the act of drawing.
Coosje van Bruggen died in January of this year after battling a long term illness. Drawings On Sitecommemorates one of the most important artistic collaborations of modernist sculpture.
This exhibition is generously supported by David Teiger, Janie C. Lee and David B. Warren, the Susan Vaughan Foundation, The Brown Foundation, Inc./Nancy and Mark Abendshein, Leslie and Shannon Sasser, Beth and Rick Schnieders, and the City of Houston.
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