Teenager - Alone Again
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
d.c.a presents OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES
For its second edition, OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES is providing a large range of art exhibitions and events in 43 French art centres. Throughout the whole summer, from 28th May to 30th September, this event will highlight the dynamism and engagement of art centres which focus on the production and diffusion of contemporary art, their continuous work with artists and their firm commitment to the development of public awareness.
43 art centres, 100 exhibitions, 200 artists
OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES is offering more than 100 exhibitions curated by the art centres' directors or by guest curators, showing 200 artists. Amongst them: Kader Attia, Orla Barry, Cornelius Cardew, Hubert Czerepok, Dora Garcia, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Yona Friedman, Ayse Erkmen, Ryan Gander, Vidya Gastaldon, Camille Henrot, Lina Jabbour, Jochen Lempert, Claude Lévêque, Rivane Neuenschwander, Mark Raidpere, Nora Schultz, Paul Sharits, Samon Takahashi, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Raphaël Zarka….
d.c.a, a strong network of art centres in France
OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES was initiated by d.c.a, the French Association for the Development of Art Centres, a non-profit association set up in 1992, which values art centre activities and federates them by means of collective projects. Leading institutions which are true talent spotters in terms of art, they bring together contemporary art and new audiences through the discovery of up and coming talent and the production of original work accompanied by works of reference. The first art centres made their appearance in France in the '70s as civil initiatives for the making and dissemination of contemporary art. They've had a special relationship with living artists and have kept in close touch with the current scene. Originally venues for experimentation and production, they diversified into annual programmes of exhibitions, publishing and outreach towards the broadest possible public.
Creative outings across the country
OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES 2009 is offering a panorama combining tourism and creativity at the heart of each art centre and in its local surroundings. Original itineraries dreamt up by each art centre allow new audiences to discover locally other places dedicated to contemporary art but also public commissions, innovative architecture and gardens, as well as the addresses of restaurant and hotel owners who instigate new trends.
More information on:
http://www.dca-art.com
http://www.flowersway.com/pleinsoleil2009
43 art centres, 100 exhibitions, 200 artists
OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES is offering more than 100 exhibitions curated by the art centres' directors or by guest curators, showing 200 artists. Amongst them: Kader Attia, Orla Barry, Cornelius Cardew, Hubert Czerepok, Dora Garcia, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Yona Friedman, Ayse Erkmen, Ryan Gander, Vidya Gastaldon, Camille Henrot, Lina Jabbour, Jochen Lempert, Claude Lévêque, Rivane Neuenschwander, Mark Raidpere, Nora Schultz, Paul Sharits, Samon Takahashi, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Raphaël Zarka….
d.c.a, a strong network of art centres in France
OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES was initiated by d.c.a, the French Association for the Development of Art Centres, a non-profit association set up in 1992, which values art centre activities and federates them by means of collective projects. Leading institutions which are true talent spotters in terms of art, they bring together contemporary art and new audiences through the discovery of up and coming talent and the production of original work accompanied by works of reference. The first art centres made their appearance in France in the '70s as civil initiatives for the making and dissemination of contemporary art. They've had a special relationship with living artists and have kept in close touch with the current scene. Originally venues for experimentation and production, they diversified into annual programmes of exhibitions, publishing and outreach towards the broadest possible public.
Creative outings across the country
OUT IN THE SUN / SUMMER IN ART CENTRES 2009 is offering a panorama combining tourism and creativity at the heart of each art centre and in its local surroundings. Original itineraries dreamt up by each art centre allow new audiences to discover locally other places dedicated to contemporary art but also public commissions, innovative architecture and gardens, as well as the addresses of restaurant and hotel owners who instigate new trends.
More information on:
http://www.dca-art.com
http://www.flowersway.com/pleinsoleil2009
ALLORA & CALZADILLA at Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin
The Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla. Known for their complex artistic vocabulary utilizing film, installations, performances, and sculpture, their artistic practice engages with history and contemporary geo-political realities, exposing their complicated dynamics, destabilizing and re-ordering them in ways that can be alternately poetic, humorous, and revelatory.
Allora & Calzadilla's new work Compass, 2009, conceived specifically for the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, creates a new spatial and acoustic experience. Dividing the Kunsthalle horizontally, a new level is introduced into the space, inaccessible to the viewer and reducing the grand exhibition hall to less than one third of its normal height. Visitors can only hear the vibrations and sounds of an a capella dancer performing a choreography above their heads. The otherwise empty exhibition space is turned into a huge resonating chamber:
"The performer is like a specter that moves through this flat horizontal stretch and whose sonic traces become a type of metrical language – a rhythmic and poetic means of communication with the public below." (Allora & Calzadilla)
Allora & Calzadilla will also present their most recent video work How to Appear Invisible, 2009. Filmed in Berlin on the site of the Schlossplatz at the close of 2008, it documents the last remains of the Palast der Republik being torn down. Bearing witness to this event is a German Shepherd dog wearing a makeshift cone collar fashioned from the trademark container of one of the largest American fast food franchises: Kentucky Fried Chicken. The camera follows the dog roaming through the barren no man's land of the palace ruins as if it was searching for the last remains of an utopia that has vanished.
Both pieces address the historically significant grounds where the Kunsthalle has been temporarily erected: the Schlossplatz with its remaining traces and signs. The empty space of the hall points to the vacuum left behind by the deconstruction of the Palast der Republik and to the debate about the future of the site, while the film puts into play notions of iconolatry and iconoclasm within monumental public space. With their exhibition, Allora & Calzadilla elaborate on the relations between orientation and disorientation, memory and visibility, presence and absence – as well as on the realms of imagination, projection, and possibility.
Allora & Calzadilla's new work Compass, 2009, conceived specifically for the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, creates a new spatial and acoustic experience. Dividing the Kunsthalle horizontally, a new level is introduced into the space, inaccessible to the viewer and reducing the grand exhibition hall to less than one third of its normal height. Visitors can only hear the vibrations and sounds of an a capella dancer performing a choreography above their heads. The otherwise empty exhibition space is turned into a huge resonating chamber:
"The performer is like a specter that moves through this flat horizontal stretch and whose sonic traces become a type of metrical language – a rhythmic and poetic means of communication with the public below." (Allora & Calzadilla)
Allora & Calzadilla will also present their most recent video work How to Appear Invisible, 2009. Filmed in Berlin on the site of the Schlossplatz at the close of 2008, it documents the last remains of the Palast der Republik being torn down. Bearing witness to this event is a German Shepherd dog wearing a makeshift cone collar fashioned from the trademark container of one of the largest American fast food franchises: Kentucky Fried Chicken. The camera follows the dog roaming through the barren no man's land of the palace ruins as if it was searching for the last remains of an utopia that has vanished.
Both pieces address the historically significant grounds where the Kunsthalle has been temporarily erected: the Schlossplatz with its remaining traces and signs. The empty space of the hall points to the vacuum left behind by the deconstruction of the Palast der Republik and to the debate about the future of the site, while the film puts into play notions of iconolatry and iconoclasm within monumental public space. With their exhibition, Allora & Calzadilla elaborate on the relations between orientation and disorientation, memory and visibility, presence and absence – as well as on the realms of imagination, projection, and possibility.
Edgar Honetschlager at Casino Luxembourg
Edgar Honetschläger is a traveller between cultures who, over the past two decades, has lived mainly in Tokyo, but also in New York, Los Angeles, São Paulo, Rome and Vienna. In reference to the theory of artistic disciplines, Honetschläger's practice combines two extremes: drawing, the quintessential means of expression (suffice to think of the Lascaux Cave paintings), and filmic work with moving images and sound, an art form which, for its unlimited technical reproducibility, has become a symbol of the modern, globalized world.
Honetschläger's work originates from his anthropological curiosity in the "Other". In his drawings and films, the artist reflects cultural phenomena and false assumptions with the distanced look of the outsider, combining them with his protagonists' introspective feelings. While Honetschläger's drawings retain a child-like spontaneity or freshness that betrays the artist's curiosity and amazement at his discoveries, his films are surprisingly complex in structure. Intertwining social and historic myths with personal experiences, their often critical stance is aimed at deeply rooted cultural characteristics, whose purported origins they ceaselessly question.
In analysing the tension that thus arises between the individual and the collective in various cultures, Honetschläger often chooses the world's big cities as context. The most recent work in this exhibition, for instance, a series of 27 drawings entitled Kappa Goes Tokyo, is an updated account of an old Japanese myth. It tells the story of a kappa (kappas are water goblins who live in ponds and fountains, eat small children and gherkins, and impart a very personal brand of wisdom) who heads off to the big city, where he discovers an entirely new world. After a series of adventures, he eventually even learns to fly.
Celebrating the constant shift between genres, elements and aggregate states, this story is a plea for the freedom of choice, which the artist sees hidden in the metropolis. The status of drawing in his work is itself related to this vision of freedom, as it reflects his ongoing struggle with two-dimensionality and the diktat of the central perspective. Similarly, Honetschläger's films frequently use two-dimensional drawings as stage sets. In Enduring Freedom, for instance, a filmic metaphor about the USA after 9/11, the actor is seen lying in an actual bed, while the other elements in the picture – a window, a bulb, a light switch, a fan and a mosquito – have been drawn on the wall. The artist's dismissal of the Western central perspective in an attempt to escape "absolute" ways of looking is a political manifesto in favour of cultural diversity and the freedom of the gaze.
The exhibition at Casino Luxembourg presents drawings and film works by Edgar Honetschläger from the past eight years. The selection intends to explore the artist's use of narrative structures, while surveying the wide range of approaches that characterise his work.
Edgar Honetschläger (*1969) was born in Linz and studied Economics and Art History at Vienna University. He lives and works mainly in Tokyo and Vienna. Among other places, he has exhibited at Documenta X (1997), the World Exhibition in Aichi, Japan (2005) and the Taiwan National Palace Museum. His films have been selected for festivals all over the world, recently the Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal Film Festivals, Rio de Janeiro Short Film Festival and Locarno Film Festival. More information on: http://www.honetschlaeger.com
Honetschläger's work originates from his anthropological curiosity in the "Other". In his drawings and films, the artist reflects cultural phenomena and false assumptions with the distanced look of the outsider, combining them with his protagonists' introspective feelings. While Honetschläger's drawings retain a child-like spontaneity or freshness that betrays the artist's curiosity and amazement at his discoveries, his films are surprisingly complex in structure. Intertwining social and historic myths with personal experiences, their often critical stance is aimed at deeply rooted cultural characteristics, whose purported origins they ceaselessly question.
In analysing the tension that thus arises between the individual and the collective in various cultures, Honetschläger often chooses the world's big cities as context. The most recent work in this exhibition, for instance, a series of 27 drawings entitled Kappa Goes Tokyo, is an updated account of an old Japanese myth. It tells the story of a kappa (kappas are water goblins who live in ponds and fountains, eat small children and gherkins, and impart a very personal brand of wisdom) who heads off to the big city, where he discovers an entirely new world. After a series of adventures, he eventually even learns to fly.
Celebrating the constant shift between genres, elements and aggregate states, this story is a plea for the freedom of choice, which the artist sees hidden in the metropolis. The status of drawing in his work is itself related to this vision of freedom, as it reflects his ongoing struggle with two-dimensionality and the diktat of the central perspective. Similarly, Honetschläger's films frequently use two-dimensional drawings as stage sets. In Enduring Freedom, for instance, a filmic metaphor about the USA after 9/11, the actor is seen lying in an actual bed, while the other elements in the picture – a window, a bulb, a light switch, a fan and a mosquito – have been drawn on the wall. The artist's dismissal of the Western central perspective in an attempt to escape "absolute" ways of looking is a political manifesto in favour of cultural diversity and the freedom of the gaze.
The exhibition at Casino Luxembourg presents drawings and film works by Edgar Honetschläger from the past eight years. The selection intends to explore the artist's use of narrative structures, while surveying the wide range of approaches that characterise his work.
Edgar Honetschläger (*1969) was born in Linz and studied Economics and Art History at Vienna University. He lives and works mainly in Tokyo and Vienna. Among other places, he has exhibited at Documenta X (1997), the World Exhibition in Aichi, Japan (2005) and the Taiwan National Palace Museum. His films have been selected for festivals all over the world, recently the Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal Film Festivals, Rio de Janeiro Short Film Festival and Locarno Film Festival. More information on: http://www.honetschlaeger.com
Stroom Den Haag presents Foodprint
Curated by: Marieke Berkers
Exhibition design: PRONK Rotterdam
The Foodprint exhibition shows crucial moments relating to food, food production and the city through the work of artists and designers. Starting in the late 1960s artists have used food as a theme for tackling wider social topics. Gordon Matta Clark organized a restaurant as a meeting place. In Manhattan, Agnes Denes sowed a field of corn as a political statement: real estate versus food. More recently one comes across projects by Atelier Van Lieshout, centered around self-sufficiency, or Raul Ortega Ayala and Yang Zhichao, which focus on food in relation to ethical value systems.
Participants:
Atelier Van Lieshout (NL), Bohn & Viljoen Architects (UK), Olaf Breuning (CH), Agnes Denes (USA), Helmut Dick (GER), Driessens & Verstappen (NL), Fritz Haeg (USA), Winy Maas / The Why Factory (TU Delft, NL), Gordon Matta Clark (USA), Christien Meindertsma (NL), Leberecht Migge (GER), Nils Norman (UK), Raul Ortega Ayala (MX), Giuseppe Penone (IT), Debra Solomon (USA/NL), Van Bergen Kolpa Architecten (NL), Frank Lloyd Wright (USA), Yang Zhichao (CN) and many more.
Foodprint:
The program Foodprint. Food for the city takes place over the course of two years and deals with the impact of food on the culture, structure and functioning of cities in general, using the city of The Hague as a case study. With a series of activities Stroom aims to increase people's awareness of the value of food and to give new life to the way we view the relationship between food and the city. The program invites artists and designers to develop appealing proposals on the subject, while at the same time establishing a clear connection with entrepreneurs, farmers, food experts and the general public.
Exhibition design: PRONK Rotterdam
The Foodprint exhibition shows crucial moments relating to food, food production and the city through the work of artists and designers. Starting in the late 1960s artists have used food as a theme for tackling wider social topics. Gordon Matta Clark organized a restaurant as a meeting place. In Manhattan, Agnes Denes sowed a field of corn as a political statement: real estate versus food. More recently one comes across projects by Atelier Van Lieshout, centered around self-sufficiency, or Raul Ortega Ayala and Yang Zhichao, which focus on food in relation to ethical value systems.
Participants:
Atelier Van Lieshout (NL), Bohn & Viljoen Architects (UK), Olaf Breuning (CH), Agnes Denes (USA), Helmut Dick (GER), Driessens & Verstappen (NL), Fritz Haeg (USA), Winy Maas / The Why Factory (TU Delft, NL), Gordon Matta Clark (USA), Christien Meindertsma (NL), Leberecht Migge (GER), Nils Norman (UK), Raul Ortega Ayala (MX), Giuseppe Penone (IT), Debra Solomon (USA/NL), Van Bergen Kolpa Architecten (NL), Frank Lloyd Wright (USA), Yang Zhichao (CN) and many more.
Foodprint:
The program Foodprint. Food for the city takes place over the course of two years and deals with the impact of food on the culture, structure and functioning of cities in general, using the city of The Hague as a case study. With a series of activities Stroom aims to increase people's awareness of the value of food and to give new life to the way we view the relationship between food and the city. The program invites artists and designers to develop appealing proposals on the subject, while at the same time establishing a clear connection with entrepreneurs, farmers, food experts and the general public.
Robot Dreams Symposium at Kunsthaus Graz
Kunsthaus Graz and the Museum Jean Tinguely, Basel are organising a symposium on the subject of robotics in the context of art. The event will explore the cultural history of the phenomenon, robots in everyday use and the importance of artificial intelligence for the development and self-image of society. Robot Dreams is a platform for diverse scientists, artists and cultural historians to pursue the social, cultural historical and artistic implications of the subject. The symposium is closely connected with the joint exhibition program the two museums are planning for summer and autumn 2010 likewise focusing on the phenomenon of robotic and art.
In the development of robots and particularly intelligent swarm robots, the discussions range from illuminating evolutionary theory to learning to understand biological behaviour. What does it mean if robots penetrate our thinking and action - do we need to "rethink work", for example, as Professor Albers of Karlsruhe University believes? And what does it mean for art? How does art react and what new thinking will involve if robotics and artificial intelligence give rise to new materials and media and new fields of universal interconnections? Will we still be able to regard the fine arts as a discrete realm?
In the development of robots and particularly intelligent swarm robots, the discussions range from illuminating evolutionary theory to learning to understand biological behaviour. What does it mean if robots penetrate our thinking and action - do we need to "rethink work", for example, as Professor Albers of Karlsruhe University believes? And what does it mean for art? How does art react and what new thinking will involve if robotics and artificial intelligence give rise to new materials and media and new fields of universal interconnections? Will we still be able to regard the fine arts as a discrete realm?
Museum Folkwang presents Irina Korina
Irina Korina (*1977 in Moscow) is one of Russia's leading young artists. For the foyer of the company headquarters in the RWE Tower, Korina has developed various spatial installations, including an architecturally related work developed for the Tower. Furthermore, the artist is presenting a selection of objects from the last three years in her first individual exhibition in Germany. Irina Korina was selected as one of the artists for the Russian pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale. The exhibition Installations, from July 1st to September 18th 2009, is a continuation of the cooperation between the Museum Folkwang and the RWE AG in the field of contemporary art. The focus of 2009 is on Russia.
A mosaic, colorful and pregnant with meaning, draws attention like one of those found in Moscow's famous subway stations. But this one is somehow different. From a distance wave cosmonauts on their way into an outer space promising a new future. On their helmets, the "CCCP" recalls Soviet hopes for success in politics and science. To reach the image in the installation "Back to the Future", which tickles your curiosity, you follow an improvised office corridor. But the image is only partially accessible – a wall blocks your way. The mosaic is a trompe-l'œil, made of synthetic and painted sample tiles. The artist links political propaganda and consumer society advertising slogans with everyday banalities.
Irina Korina, a trained stage decorator, is fond of industrially produced surfacing materials such as wallpaper, oilcloth, mosaics, Styrofoam tiles, ceiling tiles, PVC, woodlook or flowerprint strips, which often appear in her installations. With "camouflage" and "bricolage" as artistic strategies, she repeatedly tackles the phenomena of artistically generated and illustrated nature. She is a master of the spatial and monumental format. Her works are often directly related to society, drawing their themes from media and events culture. Irina Korina consciously distances herself from the "Moscow Conceptualists" understanding of installation, one defined by one of Russia's leading artists, Ilya Kabakof and which still influences the younger artists of the Russian Confederation.
The Moscow Museum of Modern Art presented an extensive exhibition of Irina Korina's works at the beginning of 2009; which allowed a first overview of her plastic works of the last ten years.
Irina Korina studied at the Moscow Theater Academy and took courses at the ICA Moscow and the Soros Contemporary Art Center in 1999 and 2000. She then studied abroad at the art academy in Gothenburg in Sweden and at the art academy in Vienna from 2002 to 2005. The artist lives and works in Moscow.
A mosaic, colorful and pregnant with meaning, draws attention like one of those found in Moscow's famous subway stations. But this one is somehow different. From a distance wave cosmonauts on their way into an outer space promising a new future. On their helmets, the "CCCP" recalls Soviet hopes for success in politics and science. To reach the image in the installation "Back to the Future", which tickles your curiosity, you follow an improvised office corridor. But the image is only partially accessible – a wall blocks your way. The mosaic is a trompe-l'œil, made of synthetic and painted sample tiles. The artist links political propaganda and consumer society advertising slogans with everyday banalities.
Irina Korina, a trained stage decorator, is fond of industrially produced surfacing materials such as wallpaper, oilcloth, mosaics, Styrofoam tiles, ceiling tiles, PVC, woodlook or flowerprint strips, which often appear in her installations. With "camouflage" and "bricolage" as artistic strategies, she repeatedly tackles the phenomena of artistically generated and illustrated nature. She is a master of the spatial and monumental format. Her works are often directly related to society, drawing their themes from media and events culture. Irina Korina consciously distances herself from the "Moscow Conceptualists" understanding of installation, one defined by one of Russia's leading artists, Ilya Kabakof and which still influences the younger artists of the Russian Confederation.
The Moscow Museum of Modern Art presented an extensive exhibition of Irina Korina's works at the beginning of 2009; which allowed a first overview of her plastic works of the last ten years.
Irina Korina studied at the Moscow Theater Academy and took courses at the ICA Moscow and the Soros Contemporary Art Center in 1999 and 2000. She then studied abroad at the art academy in Gothenburg in Sweden and at the art academy in Vienna from 2002 to 2005. The artist lives and works in Moscow.
Lutz Bacher at Kunstverein Munchen
Kunstverein München is pleased to present the first comprehensive solo exhibition of American artist Lutz Bacher in Europe. "Do you love me?" is the last episode of Lutz Bachers` trilogy that further encompasses the exhibitions "Spill", (Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis) and "My Secret Life", (PS1/MoMA, New York City).
Working in Berkeley, California since the 70s and during the 80s in close affiliation with Pat Hearn Gallery in New York City, Lutz Bacher, whose real identity remains hidden from the art public, stages herself as a shape shifting character. Constantly constructing fractured and conflicting identities, Bacher creates a body of work that is formed and informed by interference, superposition and dissolution.
This exhibition especially produced for Kunstverein München focuses partly on Bacher`s humorous picking away at the American Dream, respectively its representation and construction within the media; Video works, fanzine-like books or installations - in her exhibition "Do you love me?" mermaids cross the path of alligators, Gozilla bites the "Wizard of Oz" while penetrating "Gap" advertising campaigns. Lutz Bacher contaminates assumed visual worlds with traces of idiosyncrasy and sexual ambiguity, creating fractures that reveal the material as well as the psychological contradictions of a dream cum nightmare constantly driven by the question "Do you love me?"
Lutz Bacher lives and works in Berkeley, California.
Solo exhibitions: 2009, PS1/MOMA (New York); 2008, Contemporary Art Museum (St. Louis), Taxter & Spengemann (New York); 2006, Ratio 3 (San Francisco); Group exhibitions: 2008, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York); 2006 PS 1/MomA (New York).
Working in Berkeley, California since the 70s and during the 80s in close affiliation with Pat Hearn Gallery in New York City, Lutz Bacher, whose real identity remains hidden from the art public, stages herself as a shape shifting character. Constantly constructing fractured and conflicting identities, Bacher creates a body of work that is formed and informed by interference, superposition and dissolution.
This exhibition especially produced for Kunstverein München focuses partly on Bacher`s humorous picking away at the American Dream, respectively its representation and construction within the media; Video works, fanzine-like books or installations - in her exhibition "Do you love me?" mermaids cross the path of alligators, Gozilla bites the "Wizard of Oz" while penetrating "Gap" advertising campaigns. Lutz Bacher contaminates assumed visual worlds with traces of idiosyncrasy and sexual ambiguity, creating fractures that reveal the material as well as the psychological contradictions of a dream cum nightmare constantly driven by the question "Do you love me?"
Lutz Bacher lives and works in Berkeley, California.
Solo exhibitions: 2009, PS1/MOMA (New York); 2008, Contemporary Art Museum (St. Louis), Taxter & Spengemann (New York); 2006, Ratio 3 (San Francisco); Group exhibitions: 2008, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York); 2006 PS 1/MomA (New York).
SCHUNCK* presents Rites de Passage
Rites de Passage is the name and catchphrase for the cultural happening that is about to mark the metamorphosis from Glaspaleis to SCHUNCK new-style. A distinguishable and pioneering institution of culture and education, SCHUNCK* is the dynamo that drives critical, artistic and cultural encounters between the community and the world. SCHUNCK* is gearing up to celebrate this landmark event withRites de Passage.
Rites de Passage includes an internationally and locally oriented exhibition that fills the entire building. It was assembled by our in-house team in association with two guest curators, Pier Luigi Tazzi (Italy, Thailand) and Rich Jacobs (USA). Pier Luigi Tazzi, who was involved in Dokumenta 9 amongst other projects, highlights three themes in the exhibition. First, he presents an anthropological take on adolescence. Then, he focuses on the arts circuit, asking who belongs there and who does not. And third, he asks which view of quality, aesthetics, and value actually counts. He approaches the project as a rite of passage, in which both the maker and the audience are protagonists as well as witnesses. In other words, as a dynamic process. His part of the exhibition features artists from Thailand, Asia and Africa: Abdel Abdessemed, Huang Shih Chieh, Yoshitomo Nara, Jirayu Rengjaras, Shao Yinong & Mu Chen, Weal Shawky, Maitree Siriboon, Tseng Yu-Chin and FuDong Yang.
The second guest curator, Rich Jacobs (USA), associates the theme Rites de Passage with a specific youth phenomenon. Jacobs' part of the exhibition turns the spotlight on 'Zines', the self-published magazines from the Californian skateboard culture in the 1980s, which produced various well-known artists including Barry McGee, Thomas Campbell and Ed Templeton.
Architecturally, Rites de Passage draws attention to the most obvious and most striking part of the exhibition: the building itself. The architectural history of the building will be discussed in an essay in the SCHUNCK* Guidebook. At the same time, in the Rites de Passage exhibition, the re-design of the building along the lines of SCHUNCK new-style will be translated into new strategies for exhibiting contemporary art and new presentation settings involving exhibition architecture, apparatus and signposting.
As a whole, the Rites de Passage project is, at all levels, the business card of the new SCHUNCK*. It does not mark the completion of a development project. On the contrary, it shows the result and points to the potential that SCHUNCK* still has to offer. It embodies a new vision and a new course. SCHUNCK* is pursuing its international ambitions by engaging with curators from other countries and by explicitly exhibiting non-Western art.
Rites de Passage is accompanied by the SCHUNCK* Guidebook; a catalogue that contains information on everything connected with SCHUNCK* in addition to the Rites de Passages projects.
Artists involved in Rites de Passage (among others):
Huang Shih Chieh, Robert Pettena, Jirayu Rengjaras, Marcello Simeone, Maitree Siriboon, Shao Yinong & Mu Chen, Italo Zuffi, Adel Abdessemed, Tseng Yu-Chin, Giovanni Ozzola, Rebecca Salvadori, Weal Shawky, FuDong Yang, Michelangelo Consani, Pawel Althamer, Yoshitomo Nara, Rineke Dijkstra, Svaetopluk Mikyta, Societe Realiste, Francoise Cactus, Sanne van Renesse, Inti Hernandez, Cita, Rich Jacobs, Anneke Eussen, Jeanette Ehlers, Michel Huisman, Ed Templeton, Deanna Templeton, Arno Nollen, Ruud van Empel, Loretta Lux, Sidi el Karchi, Maurice Thomassen, Koen Vermeule, Jeroen Elsen, Wouter Van Riessen
Rites de Passage includes an internationally and locally oriented exhibition that fills the entire building. It was assembled by our in-house team in association with two guest curators, Pier Luigi Tazzi (Italy, Thailand) and Rich Jacobs (USA). Pier Luigi Tazzi, who was involved in Dokumenta 9 amongst other projects, highlights three themes in the exhibition. First, he presents an anthropological take on adolescence. Then, he focuses on the arts circuit, asking who belongs there and who does not. And third, he asks which view of quality, aesthetics, and value actually counts. He approaches the project as a rite of passage, in which both the maker and the audience are protagonists as well as witnesses. In other words, as a dynamic process. His part of the exhibition features artists from Thailand, Asia and Africa: Abdel Abdessemed, Huang Shih Chieh, Yoshitomo Nara, Jirayu Rengjaras, Shao Yinong & Mu Chen, Weal Shawky, Maitree Siriboon, Tseng Yu-Chin and FuDong Yang.
The second guest curator, Rich Jacobs (USA), associates the theme Rites de Passage with a specific youth phenomenon. Jacobs' part of the exhibition turns the spotlight on 'Zines', the self-published magazines from the Californian skateboard culture in the 1980s, which produced various well-known artists including Barry McGee, Thomas Campbell and Ed Templeton.
Architecturally, Rites de Passage draws attention to the most obvious and most striking part of the exhibition: the building itself. The architectural history of the building will be discussed in an essay in the SCHUNCK* Guidebook. At the same time, in the Rites de Passage exhibition, the re-design of the building along the lines of SCHUNCK new-style will be translated into new strategies for exhibiting contemporary art and new presentation settings involving exhibition architecture, apparatus and signposting.
As a whole, the Rites de Passage project is, at all levels, the business card of the new SCHUNCK*. It does not mark the completion of a development project. On the contrary, it shows the result and points to the potential that SCHUNCK* still has to offer. It embodies a new vision and a new course. SCHUNCK* is pursuing its international ambitions by engaging with curators from other countries and by explicitly exhibiting non-Western art.
Rites de Passage is accompanied by the SCHUNCK* Guidebook; a catalogue that contains information on everything connected with SCHUNCK* in addition to the Rites de Passages projects.
Artists involved in Rites de Passage (among others):
Huang Shih Chieh, Robert Pettena, Jirayu Rengjaras, Marcello Simeone, Maitree Siriboon, Shao Yinong & Mu Chen, Italo Zuffi, Adel Abdessemed, Tseng Yu-Chin, Giovanni Ozzola, Rebecca Salvadori, Weal Shawky, FuDong Yang, Michelangelo Consani, Pawel Althamer, Yoshitomo Nara, Rineke Dijkstra, Svaetopluk Mikyta, Societe Realiste, Francoise Cactus, Sanne van Renesse, Inti Hernandez, Cita, Rich Jacobs, Anneke Eussen, Jeanette Ehlers, Michel Huisman, Ed Templeton, Deanna Templeton, Arno Nollen, Ruud van Empel, Loretta Lux, Sidi el Karchi, Maurice Thomassen, Koen Vermeule, Jeroen Elsen, Wouter Van Riessen
Jonathan Monk at Artpace
Artpace San Antonio presents Rew-Shay Hood Project Part II, on view through September 6, 2009, in the Hudson (Show)Room. Curated by Artpace Executive Director Matthew Drutt, the exhibition debuts a new body of work by Berlin-based artist Jonathan Monk. Fittingly located in the space named for Artpace's former function as a Hudson automobile dealership, the exhibition features a series of paintings after American artist Ed Ruscha's iconic photographic series and book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations.
In Rew-Shay Hood Project Part II fourteen distinctive hoods of classic American cars—from a 1963 Plymouth Fury to a 1982 Chevrolet Camaro—serve as canvases for the photo-realistic airbrushed paintings. "Re-presented" on car hoods, Ruscha's deliberately sober early 1960s photographs of service stations located in Texas and Oklahoma are transformed and monumentalized, provoking reconsideration of the narrative of conceptual and pop art.
In previous projects, Monk has referenced other canonical modern and contemporary artists, such as Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner, and most recently, Jeff Koons. He is at the forefront of a generation of artists who have appropriated American conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s to create contemporary projects that deal with reception and re-presentation. Monk's works inhabit a diverse range of media, from photography and sculpture to film and installation, where the artist, the creative process, and art's dictum of originality collide.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Since graduating from the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, in 1991, Jonathan Monk has amassed an impressive roster of exhibitions and publications. His most recent solo exhibitions include Time Between Spaces, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France and Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2008); Twodo-Project 2007, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Germany (2007); and Some Kind of Game Between This and That, Casey Kaplan, New York (2007). Monk's work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including, most recently, Time Pieces, Galerie Jan Mot, Brussels, Belgium (2008); Looking Back, Mireille Mosler Ltd., New York (2008); and The Store, Tulips & Roses, Vilnius, Lithuania (2008).
In Rew-Shay Hood Project Part II fourteen distinctive hoods of classic American cars—from a 1963 Plymouth Fury to a 1982 Chevrolet Camaro—serve as canvases for the photo-realistic airbrushed paintings. "Re-presented" on car hoods, Ruscha's deliberately sober early 1960s photographs of service stations located in Texas and Oklahoma are transformed and monumentalized, provoking reconsideration of the narrative of conceptual and pop art.
In previous projects, Monk has referenced other canonical modern and contemporary artists, such as Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner, and most recently, Jeff Koons. He is at the forefront of a generation of artists who have appropriated American conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s to create contemporary projects that deal with reception and re-presentation. Monk's works inhabit a diverse range of media, from photography and sculpture to film and installation, where the artist, the creative process, and art's dictum of originality collide.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Since graduating from the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, in 1991, Jonathan Monk has amassed an impressive roster of exhibitions and publications. His most recent solo exhibitions include Time Between Spaces, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France and Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2008); Twodo-Project 2007, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Germany (2007); and Some Kind of Game Between This and That, Casey Kaplan, New York (2007). Monk's work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including, most recently, Time Pieces, Galerie Jan Mot, Brussels, Belgium (2008); Looking Back, Mireille Mosler Ltd., New York (2008); and The Store, Tulips & Roses, Vilnius, Lithuania (2008).
Modern Art Oxford
The first major exhibition in the UK of the London-based artist Silke Otto-Knapp. Devised as a single installation for Modern Art Oxford's Upper Gallery, the exhibition presents thirteen paintings produced by Otto-Knapp between 2005 and 2009.
Silke Otto-Knapp works with watercolour and gouache on canvas, repeatedly building up and dissolving the surface to create paintings of subtle effect. Drawing on a photographic archive of visual sources that refer to the spatial staging of the formal garden and the choreography of modern dance, Otto-Knapp's tautly constructed yet mutable compositions are rendered in layers of diluted pigment and metallic silver monotones. Recent paintings reveal the artist's evolving investigations into the construction of pictorial space with a renewed approach to the figure and colour through which more complex narratives emerge.
The exhibition will be Silke Otto-Knapp's first in a public Gallery in the UK since her earlier survey at the Kunstverein Düsseldorf in 2003 and her display at Tate Britain as part of the Art Now series in early 2005. To coincide with the exhibition, Modern Art Oxford is producing a fully illustrated monograph on Otto-Knapp's work with essays by the exhibition's curator Suzanne Cotter and writers Jan Verwoert and Catherine Wood. Published in collaboration with the Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, and Koenig Books, London.
Silke Otto-Knapp works with watercolour and gouache on canvas, repeatedly building up and dissolving the surface to create paintings of subtle effect. Drawing on a photographic archive of visual sources that refer to the spatial staging of the formal garden and the choreography of modern dance, Otto-Knapp's tautly constructed yet mutable compositions are rendered in layers of diluted pigment and metallic silver monotones. Recent paintings reveal the artist's evolving investigations into the construction of pictorial space with a renewed approach to the figure and colour through which more complex narratives emerge.
The exhibition will be Silke Otto-Knapp's first in a public Gallery in the UK since her earlier survey at the Kunstverein Düsseldorf in 2003 and her display at Tate Britain as part of the Art Now series in early 2005. To coincide with the exhibition, Modern Art Oxford is producing a fully illustrated monograph on Otto-Knapp's work with essays by the exhibition's curator Suzanne Cotter and writers Jan Verwoert and Catherine Wood. Published in collaboration with the Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, and Koenig Books, London.
B.P.S.22 space for contemporary creation presents Hell'O Monsters – Free Us!
As part of the 7th ARTour Biennial, the contemporary creation space B.P.S.22 is presenting a Hell'O Monsters installation at the Winter Garden in the Domaine de Mariemont, from 27th June to 30th August. For this project, the group of artists have created a series of hybrid characters in vinyl form and attached them to the windows of the immense glasshouse, built ca. 1850 but now no longer used. Only visible from the exterior, the crazy monsters from the world of pop and fiction in the Hell'O Monsters exhibition appear to have been imprisoned in the winter garden.
The formal universe of the Hell'O Monsters group is made up of colourful monsters, which are formed and re-formed as their adventures dictate. Both similar and yet so different from us, these creatures embody our fantasies, as conveyed by the artists in a both amusing and caustic manner. The not so dangerous monsters are seen in numerous contexts but are never passive; they have adventures which the artists recount in each of their productions.
The narrative frameworks are precise and abundant; that of the winter garden in the Domaine de Mariemont is just one of them. Printed on self-adhesive vinyl and invading all the glazed surfaces, these imaginary beings, evoked through the characteristically eloquent lines and graphic fantasy of Hell'O Monsters, are trapped in this deliberately enclosed architecture, which invites the visitor to open the door and let them free. But their metaphorical release is primarily our own. For these imaginary monsters resemble the horde of their predecessors. Like their ancestors, they embody the fears and desires of the humans who created them. The whole range of fears and desires which children feel so intensely when confronted with the vast world that they are constantly discovering.
A production from the B.P.S.22 contemporary creation space in the Province of Hainaut, with the support of the Directorate General of Cultural Affairs in Hainaut, in collaboration with the gallery think.21, the Royal Museum in Mariemont and the Cultural Centre of the Central Region.
The formal universe of the Hell'O Monsters group is made up of colourful monsters, which are formed and re-formed as their adventures dictate. Both similar and yet so different from us, these creatures embody our fantasies, as conveyed by the artists in a both amusing and caustic manner. The not so dangerous monsters are seen in numerous contexts but are never passive; they have adventures which the artists recount in each of their productions.
The narrative frameworks are precise and abundant; that of the winter garden in the Domaine de Mariemont is just one of them. Printed on self-adhesive vinyl and invading all the glazed surfaces, these imaginary beings, evoked through the characteristically eloquent lines and graphic fantasy of Hell'O Monsters, are trapped in this deliberately enclosed architecture, which invites the visitor to open the door and let them free. But their metaphorical release is primarily our own. For these imaginary monsters resemble the horde of their predecessors. Like their ancestors, they embody the fears and desires of the humans who created them. The whole range of fears and desires which children feel so intensely when confronted with the vast world that they are constantly discovering.
A production from the B.P.S.22 contemporary creation space in the Province of Hainaut, with the support of the Directorate General of Cultural Affairs in Hainaut, in collaboration with the gallery think.21, the Royal Museum in Mariemont and the Cultural Centre of the Central Region.
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) presents Isabelle Huppert
UCCA presents Isabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces, an ambitious photo show initiated by the Museum of Modern Art / P.S.1, New York, for the first time in China. The exhibition gathers 120 photo and video portraits of French actress Isabelle Huppert created by a multi-generational and international group of leading photographers. For this unique Chinese issue, organized as part of the 'Croisements Festival', the project includes new works by the upcoming generation of Chinese artists such as Yang Fudong, Wen Fang and Shi Xiaofan.
"The idea of having young Chinese photographers giving their very own creative vision of a legendary French star broadens the 'Huppert myth' and gives it an unprecedented resonance in China. We are glad to be the place where the two worlds meet", Jérôme Sans, UCCA Director and co-curator ofIsabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces.
The works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edouard Boubat, Nan Goldin, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Robert Franck, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Roni Horn, Juergen Teller, Helmut Newton, Robert Wilson and many others are inspired by Isabelle Huppert's dynamic, challenging and powerful presence in her movie roles and act as a tribute to her prolific, thirty-year acting career.
Isabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces has already been presented in over seven important institutions, including the Musée d'art Moderne/Couvent des Cordeliers in Paris, the Galerie C/O in Berlin, the Gallery of the Botanical Garden in Madrid, the Gemeentemuseum of Den Haag in The Netherlands and the Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo.
The 250,000 plus visitors who have visited the show so far confirm the public's interest in this exhibition, which can be further described as a 'history of the photographic portrait in the last decades of the 20th Century'.
This exhibition is organized as part of the ''Croisements Festival'' with the support of the French Embassy in Beijing. It is produced by Joany Edition.
"The idea of having young Chinese photographers giving their very own creative vision of a legendary French star broadens the 'Huppert myth' and gives it an unprecedented resonance in China. We are glad to be the place where the two worlds meet", Jérôme Sans, UCCA Director and co-curator ofIsabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces.
The works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edouard Boubat, Nan Goldin, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Robert Franck, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Roni Horn, Juergen Teller, Helmut Newton, Robert Wilson and many others are inspired by Isabelle Huppert's dynamic, challenging and powerful presence in her movie roles and act as a tribute to her prolific, thirty-year acting career.
Isabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces has already been presented in over seven important institutions, including the Musée d'art Moderne/Couvent des Cordeliers in Paris, the Galerie C/O in Berlin, the Gallery of the Botanical Garden in Madrid, the Gemeentemuseum of Den Haag in The Netherlands and the Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo.
The 250,000 plus visitors who have visited the show so far confirm the public's interest in this exhibition, which can be further described as a 'history of the photographic portrait in the last decades of the 20th Century'.
This exhibition is organized as part of the ''Croisements Festival'' with the support of the French Embassy in Beijing. It is produced by Joany Edition.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Juan Muñoz at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
This exhibition, which the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía dedicates to Juan Muñoz (Madrid, 1953 – Ibiza, 2001), is the most complete retrospective on the artist to date. The exhibition has been enriched by works never exhibited until now and extends throughout several rooms in the Museum, as well as the Sabatini Gardens. His drawings, writings, sound works and radio segments are exhibited together with numerous sculptures.
Juan Muñoz is an international point of reference in the renovation of contemporary sculpture. The sixteen years spanning from 1984, the date of his first solo exhibition, to 2001, when he created his last work, allowed him to develop an artistic corpus with an exceptional narrative quality.
Exhibition organized by the Tate Modern, London, in association with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.
Juan Muñoz is an international point of reference in the renovation of contemporary sculpture. The sixteen years spanning from 1984, the date of his first solo exhibition, to 2001, when he created his last work, allowed him to develop an artistic corpus with an exceptional narrative quality.
Exhibition organized by the Tate Modern, London, in association with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.
VILLA ARSON National contemporary art centre, NICE (France) presents Ryan Gander / Gilles Barbier / Florian Pugnaire & David Raffini
http://www.villa-arson.org
RYAN GANDER THE DIE IS CAST
Ryan Gander’s work is difficult to define and to identify. He himself describes his practice as answering the intention to create something totally disconcerting. When he embarks on a project, he deliberately makes pieces that do not match the body of his previous works. Whatever medium, vehicle or device he uses, it is with the wish to reconfigure aesthetic conventions and to reinvent a practice that he also sees as a whole. Most of his works play with displacing common objects, situations or systems in which he instils an often enigmatic narrative.
The Die Is Cast is the British artist’s first important exhibition in France. A selection of pieces from the last ten years will be completed by new works produced during a three months residency at the Villa Arson. These works, for example portraits or notice board, are inspired by the specificity of the place, and are testimonials to his sometimes unexpected meetings with the students of the art school. Installations, sculptures, photographs, videos, texts or sound pieces create a course that questions both the conditions of creation, and the mechanisms of the perception and apprehension of a work of art. Ryan Gander builds his project around the dichotomy between autobiography and fiction, inside and outside, visible and invisible. His ambition is to summon the desire and responsibility of the viewer by offering the possibility to compose a narrative continuity based on associations, traces and ill-assorted elements.
Ryan Gander is represented by the the Annet Gelink Gallery (Amsterdam), Lisson Gallery (London), the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (New-York) and Taro Nasu Gallery (Tokyo).
GILLES BARBIER THE SKATING RINK
Gilles Barbier’s work, deeply formal and prolific, has been relentlessly questioning the basic premises of knowledge and representation. Relying on hypotheses that echo one another, he has created step by step a regular language that steers clear from narrative codes and traditional criticism, and prefers unexpected conceptual and sensitive structures, all deeply intent on rendering the frailty of our convictions.
The Skating Rink organises, on an opaline stand, an ensemble of small super flat sculptures evoking something slippery: crushed bananas and avocados, oil stains, yoghurt and cheese, dog droppings… the small world of sidewalks is referred to here in order to transcribe and retrace a choreography or an orchestration about falling, which has usually been expressed through skating, surfing, skiing or skate boarding. But in Barbier’s universe, by the means of what he calls a “wetting agent”, sliding essentially refers to the aesthetics of gesticulation, where the combination of movements proves more important than the gesture, where trajectories are a breaking point, where the very notion of a straight line becomes incongruous. The Skating Rink establishes the notion that movement, as closely linked as it may be to everyday life, is sooner found in the chaos of a fall than in he fluidity of a walk, or even of a gait.
Gilles Barbier is represented by Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois (Paris).
A series of texts by the artist will be published by the JRP/Ringier editions (HAPAX collection).
FLORIAN PUGNAIRE & DAVID RAFFINI EXPANDED CRASH
A progressive sculpture based on the autocompression of a car over several weeks. A production of Le Fresnoy - national Studio of contemporary arts and Villa Arson.
RYAN GANDER THE DIE IS CAST
Ryan Gander’s work is difficult to define and to identify. He himself describes his practice as answering the intention to create something totally disconcerting. When he embarks on a project, he deliberately makes pieces that do not match the body of his previous works. Whatever medium, vehicle or device he uses, it is with the wish to reconfigure aesthetic conventions and to reinvent a practice that he also sees as a whole. Most of his works play with displacing common objects, situations or systems in which he instils an often enigmatic narrative.
The Die Is Cast is the British artist’s first important exhibition in France. A selection of pieces from the last ten years will be completed by new works produced during a three months residency at the Villa Arson. These works, for example portraits or notice board, are inspired by the specificity of the place, and are testimonials to his sometimes unexpected meetings with the students of the art school. Installations, sculptures, photographs, videos, texts or sound pieces create a course that questions both the conditions of creation, and the mechanisms of the perception and apprehension of a work of art. Ryan Gander builds his project around the dichotomy between autobiography and fiction, inside and outside, visible and invisible. His ambition is to summon the desire and responsibility of the viewer by offering the possibility to compose a narrative continuity based on associations, traces and ill-assorted elements.
Ryan Gander is represented by the the Annet Gelink Gallery (Amsterdam), Lisson Gallery (London), the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (New-York) and Taro Nasu Gallery (Tokyo).
GILLES BARBIER THE SKATING RINK
Gilles Barbier’s work, deeply formal and prolific, has been relentlessly questioning the basic premises of knowledge and representation. Relying on hypotheses that echo one another, he has created step by step a regular language that steers clear from narrative codes and traditional criticism, and prefers unexpected conceptual and sensitive structures, all deeply intent on rendering the frailty of our convictions.
The Skating Rink organises, on an opaline stand, an ensemble of small super flat sculptures evoking something slippery: crushed bananas and avocados, oil stains, yoghurt and cheese, dog droppings… the small world of sidewalks is referred to here in order to transcribe and retrace a choreography or an orchestration about falling, which has usually been expressed through skating, surfing, skiing or skate boarding. But in Barbier’s universe, by the means of what he calls a “wetting agent”, sliding essentially refers to the aesthetics of gesticulation, where the combination of movements proves more important than the gesture, where trajectories are a breaking point, where the very notion of a straight line becomes incongruous. The Skating Rink establishes the notion that movement, as closely linked as it may be to everyday life, is sooner found in the chaos of a fall than in he fluidity of a walk, or even of a gait.
Gilles Barbier is represented by Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois (Paris).
A series of texts by the artist will be published by the JRP/Ringier editions (HAPAX collection).
FLORIAN PUGNAIRE & DAVID RAFFINI EXPANDED CRASH
A progressive sculpture based on the autocompression of a car over several weeks. A production of Le Fresnoy - national Studio of contemporary arts and Villa Arson.
Exhibition, The Isle, and public presentation, Satellite Geography: as long as it is aiming at the sky by Pages at MAK Center for Art & Architecture,
About The Isle:
The MAK Center for Art & Architecture is currently presenting The Isle, a mixed media installation by artists Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi.
The Isle is about the architectural and political incongruities of an Iranian island in the Persian Gulf called Kish. This presentation is the third and final part of a project by the artists, begun in 2005 with the installation Sunset Cinema and continued in 2007 with Undecided Utopia.
The island of Kish lies eighteen kilometers from the southern coast of the Iranian mainland. Its modernization was "inaugurated" in December 1977 by the landing of a Concorde Supersonic at a new airport that had been built to accommodate an exclusive, hyper modern leisure resort for the country's royal elite and their international guests. A year later, the Islamic revolution would suspend the completion of this project. Soon thereafter the new government declared Kish as Iran's first free trade zone, applying the principles of a free market economy to attract foreign investment. By 1994, almost 55 percent of the island was given to tourism. In 2009, a privately initiated project for a luxury business and tourist resort, which had involved more than 20 German architecture firms for its development, was halted; the envisioned "internationalism" of the project would prove incompatible with the prevailing sociopolitical conditions in Iran. Yet Kish, an hour and half flight south of Tehran, has remained a tolerant oasis for Iranian tourists who desire escape from the societal restrictions of the mainland.
Throughout its modern period, the island of Kish did not fulfill all that was desired for it to be. Subjected to the politics of mainland Iran, the island finds itself lingering between opposing ideologies, caught in a geopolitical indecisiveness that prevent it from retaining a sense of "place". Kish fails to situate itself historically and in relation to the geography that surrounds it. In many respects the island of Kish has become the "other" of its surrounding developments in the Persian Gulf.
Through videos, models, and re-appropriation of found documents, the Isle re-articulates the unresolved instances of Kish's modernization into representations of (unfulfilled) desires as symptoms of a modernity manifested in un-destined and ambivalent forms of architecture.
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture extends special thanks to the Federal Ministry of Education, Art and Culture of the Republic of Austria; the Consulate General of the Netherlands, New York; and the Mondriaan Foundation of the Netherlands for their support of The Isle.
About Satellite Geography: as long as it is aiming at the sky:
On June 30th, Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi will give a public presentation about their current video project–in–development entitled Satellite Geography: as long as it is aiming at the sky. A survey about Los Angeles-based Iranian satellite television stations, this project addresses aspects of the tele-visual mediation and production of geographical and communal identity and politics.
Today, there are more than 20 satellite TV stations broadcasting internationally in the Farsi language from Los Angeles, with the majority of their audience living inside Iran. What is retained through these TV programs is their twofold geographical, political and cultural identity: an ambivalence of here/there, now/then, and now and the eventual future, identified and elaborated by both the audiences living in and outside of Iran. These programs have come to produce a surplus geography with a political and cultural identity that is indecisive and liminal in nature, while fostering a community of hosts and audiences. This has given these television programs the character of an enclosed tele-visual micro universe that constantly refers to and comments on its own production and reception structures.
During the evening's discussion, Tabatabai and Afrassiabi will present video footage gathered during two month of research in Los Angeles.
Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi live in Rotterdam and pursue an art practice both in Iran and the Netherlands. They began Pages in 2004, which consists of art projects, and a bilingual Farsi/English magazine. With Pages they try to create possibilities for reflecting on politically and socially contingent conditions of cultural practice in order to generate space of criticality. Their work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Latin America, the United States, the Middle East, and throughout Europe. For more information about Pages, please go to http://www.pagesproject.net
Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi are the sixth Fellows sponsored through the MAK Center's Urban Future Initiative. The mission of the Urban Future Initiative (UFI) Fellowship is to promote meaningful exchanges between cultural thinkers from diverse nations in order to cultivate visionary conceptions of the urban future. For more information about the UFI, please go to http://www.makcenterufi.org
The MAK Center for Art & Architecture is currently presenting The Isle, a mixed media installation by artists Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi.
The Isle is about the architectural and political incongruities of an Iranian island in the Persian Gulf called Kish. This presentation is the third and final part of a project by the artists, begun in 2005 with the installation Sunset Cinema and continued in 2007 with Undecided Utopia.
The island of Kish lies eighteen kilometers from the southern coast of the Iranian mainland. Its modernization was "inaugurated" in December 1977 by the landing of a Concorde Supersonic at a new airport that had been built to accommodate an exclusive, hyper modern leisure resort for the country's royal elite and their international guests. A year later, the Islamic revolution would suspend the completion of this project. Soon thereafter the new government declared Kish as Iran's first free trade zone, applying the principles of a free market economy to attract foreign investment. By 1994, almost 55 percent of the island was given to tourism. In 2009, a privately initiated project for a luxury business and tourist resort, which had involved more than 20 German architecture firms for its development, was halted; the envisioned "internationalism" of the project would prove incompatible with the prevailing sociopolitical conditions in Iran. Yet Kish, an hour and half flight south of Tehran, has remained a tolerant oasis for Iranian tourists who desire escape from the societal restrictions of the mainland.
Throughout its modern period, the island of Kish did not fulfill all that was desired for it to be. Subjected to the politics of mainland Iran, the island finds itself lingering between opposing ideologies, caught in a geopolitical indecisiveness that prevent it from retaining a sense of "place". Kish fails to situate itself historically and in relation to the geography that surrounds it. In many respects the island of Kish has become the "other" of its surrounding developments in the Persian Gulf.
Through videos, models, and re-appropriation of found documents, the Isle re-articulates the unresolved instances of Kish's modernization into representations of (unfulfilled) desires as symptoms of a modernity manifested in un-destined and ambivalent forms of architecture.
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture extends special thanks to the Federal Ministry of Education, Art and Culture of the Republic of Austria; the Consulate General of the Netherlands, New York; and the Mondriaan Foundation of the Netherlands for their support of The Isle.
About Satellite Geography: as long as it is aiming at the sky:
On June 30th, Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi will give a public presentation about their current video project–in–development entitled Satellite Geography: as long as it is aiming at the sky. A survey about Los Angeles-based Iranian satellite television stations, this project addresses aspects of the tele-visual mediation and production of geographical and communal identity and politics.
Today, there are more than 20 satellite TV stations broadcasting internationally in the Farsi language from Los Angeles, with the majority of their audience living inside Iran. What is retained through these TV programs is their twofold geographical, political and cultural identity: an ambivalence of here/there, now/then, and now and the eventual future, identified and elaborated by both the audiences living in and outside of Iran. These programs have come to produce a surplus geography with a political and cultural identity that is indecisive and liminal in nature, while fostering a community of hosts and audiences. This has given these television programs the character of an enclosed tele-visual micro universe that constantly refers to and comments on its own production and reception structures.
During the evening's discussion, Tabatabai and Afrassiabi will present video footage gathered during two month of research in Los Angeles.
Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi live in Rotterdam and pursue an art practice both in Iran and the Netherlands. They began Pages in 2004, which consists of art projects, and a bilingual Farsi/English magazine. With Pages they try to create possibilities for reflecting on politically and socially contingent conditions of cultural practice in order to generate space of criticality. Their work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Latin America, the United States, the Middle East, and throughout Europe. For more information about Pages, please go to http://www.pagesproject.net
Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi are the sixth Fellows sponsored through the MAK Center's Urban Future Initiative. The mission of the Urban Future Initiative (UFI) Fellowship is to promote meaningful exchanges between cultural thinkers from diverse nations in order to cultivate visionary conceptions of the urban future. For more information about the UFI, please go to http://www.makcenterufi.org
Paola Pivi / Anthony Mccall / Rivane Neuenschwander & Cao Guimaraes at LE GRAND CAFE, Contemporary Art Centre, Saint-Nazaire (F)
Curator: Sophie Legrandjacques, artistic director of Le Grand Café
As part of the Estuaire 2009 Nantes - Saint-Nazaire event, Le Grand Café is proposing an artistic tour of Saint-Nazaire.
Alongside two works permanently installed in the town, Felice Varini's Suite de Triangles, 2007 and Gilles Clément's Le Jardin du Tiers-Paysage, 2009, Le Grand Café presents three exhibitions devoted to individual artists on different sites: Paola Pivi, Anthony McCall, and Rivane Neuenschwander & Gao Guimarães.
Although each is very different, all of these exhibitions confront us with experiences marked by a pervasive strangeness. Each artist explores, in their own manner, the perception of the (in)visible and the passage from the real to the unreal, amplifying reality's abstract character.
As part of the Estuaire 2009 Nantes - Saint-Nazaire event, Le Grand Café is proposing an artistic tour of Saint-Nazaire.
Alongside two works permanently installed in the town, Felice Varini's Suite de Triangles, 2007 and Gilles Clément's Le Jardin du Tiers-Paysage, 2009, Le Grand Café presents three exhibitions devoted to individual artists on different sites: Paola Pivi, Anthony McCall, and Rivane Neuenschwander & Gao Guimarães.
Although each is very different, all of these exhibitions confront us with experiences marked by a pervasive strangeness. Each artist explores, in their own manner, the perception of the (in)visible and the passage from the real to the unreal, amplifying reality's abstract character.
Roman Ondák at The Museum of Modern Art, New York
MoMA CONTINUES PERFORMANCE EXHIBITION SERIES WITH NEWLY ACQUIRED WORK,
MEASURING THE UNIVERSE (2007), BY ROMAN ONDÁK.
Museumgoers play a central role in the creation of Measuring the Universe (2007) by Slovakian artist Roman Ondák. Over the course of the exhibition, attendants will record the heights of Museum visitors on the gallery walls, along with their first names and the date each measurement is taken. Beginning as an empty white space, the gallery will gradually accumulate the traces of thousands of people, generating a unique wall drawing.
The inclusion of the viewer in the art-making process has a long tradition in the history of performance-based art. By inviting people to actively participate, artists attempt to bridge the divide between art object and spectator, production and reception.
Measuring the Universe transforms the domestic custom of recording a child's height on doorframes into a public event, referring through its title to humankind's age-old desire to gauge the scale of the world. By welcoming the involvement of the public in the creation of this work, Ondak merges art with everyday life in a process that is at the very heart of his artistic practice.
Roman Ondák (b. 1966, Zilina, Slovakia) is widely regarded as one of the most important neo-conceptual artists working today. His work is characterized by a minimal use of materials paired with a subtle humor. Inviting strangers to participate in the production of his works is also a common strategy for the artist.
Ondák lives and works in Bratislava, Slovakia. He is currently representing Slovakia at the 53rd Venice Biennale in the CZ/SK pavilion through November 22, 2009.
Measuring the Universe was recently acquired for the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with the Museums newly heightened focus on performance-based art.
The Performance Exhibition Series is organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator, and Jenny Schlenzka, Assistant Curator for Performance, Department of Media and Performance Art.
The Performance Exhibition Series and the Performance Workshop are made possible by the Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art.
MEASURING THE UNIVERSE (2007), BY ROMAN ONDÁK.
Museumgoers play a central role in the creation of Measuring the Universe (2007) by Slovakian artist Roman Ondák. Over the course of the exhibition, attendants will record the heights of Museum visitors on the gallery walls, along with their first names and the date each measurement is taken. Beginning as an empty white space, the gallery will gradually accumulate the traces of thousands of people, generating a unique wall drawing.
The inclusion of the viewer in the art-making process has a long tradition in the history of performance-based art. By inviting people to actively participate, artists attempt to bridge the divide between art object and spectator, production and reception.
Measuring the Universe transforms the domestic custom of recording a child's height on doorframes into a public event, referring through its title to humankind's age-old desire to gauge the scale of the world. By welcoming the involvement of the public in the creation of this work, Ondak merges art with everyday life in a process that is at the very heart of his artistic practice.
Roman Ondák (b. 1966, Zilina, Slovakia) is widely regarded as one of the most important neo-conceptual artists working today. His work is characterized by a minimal use of materials paired with a subtle humor. Inviting strangers to participate in the production of his works is also a common strategy for the artist.
Ondák lives and works in Bratislava, Slovakia. He is currently representing Slovakia at the 53rd Venice Biennale in the CZ/SK pavilion through November 22, 2009.
Measuring the Universe was recently acquired for the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with the Museums newly heightened focus on performance-based art.
The Performance Exhibition Series is organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator, and Jenny Schlenzka, Assistant Curator for Performance, Department of Media and Performance Art.
The Performance Exhibition Series and the Performance Workshop are made possible by the Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art.
WALKING IN MY MIND at The Hayward Gallery
The Hayward Gallery's 2009 summer exhibition continues the recent tradition of inviting high profile and up-and-coming artists from around the world to transform the Gallery's unique outdoor and indoor exhibition spaces. This year, ten artists have been selected to show works that explore how the inner workings of the mind - emotions, thoughts, memories and dreams – can be represented in three-dimensional space, shedding light on their creativity and inviting visitors to explore their own thought processes.
The exhibition features new and existing works by the following artists: Charles Avery (UK), Thomas Hirschhorn (Switzerland), Yayoi Kusama (Japan), Bo Christian Larsson (Sweden), Mark Manders(The Netherlands), Yoshitomo Nara (Japan), Jason Rhoades (USA), Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland),Chiharu Shiota (Japan) and Keith Tyson (UK).
Over the last few summers, with major successes such as Antony Gormley: Blind Light (2007) and Psycho Buildings: Artists Take On Architecture (2008), the Hayward Gallery has established itself as a leading venue for curated experiential exhibitions, tailored to the Gallery's unique spaces. Highlights of this year's show include three works by iconic Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, rarely exhibited in the UK, as she transforms the Gallery into a vision of her signature polka dots. Visitors are able to immerse themselves in Dots Obsession (2009), a large mirrored corridor filled with red spotty balloons, and walk through a dot-covered landscape on one of the outside sculpture terraces. Twenty-five trees along Queen's Walk are also covered in red and white polka dots for the duration of the exhibition.
Five of the ten artists in the exhibition have created new works, each presenting a different way in which artists construct images and installations that explore the mind. Turner-prize winner Keith Tyson is showing a new series of Studio Wall Drawings, including a gigantic composite image of a brain, whileCharles Avery is presenting new drawings and sculptures as part of his ongoing The Islanders project. Two new sculptures by Dutch artist Mark Manders, who is exhibiting for the first time in a major London show, are on display. The exhibition also introduces visitors to new works by Chiharu Shiotaand Bo Christian Larsson, two promising artists who have not been seen in a major UK exhibition before.
Stephanie Rosenthal, Chief Curator of the Hayward Gallery, said:
'Many artworks encourage the viewer to see the world through the artist's eyes. The works in Walking in My Mind do more than this, as they pull the viewer into the unique worlds of ten major international artists who are explicitly preoccupied with their own minds and the creative process. The installations function as metaphors for the creative mind, inviting visitors to walk in and around the artists' inner worlds translated into physical works of art.'
Since 2004, Charles Avery's (b. 1973) work has focused on a single, epic project, The Islanders, an encyclopaedic investigation of an imaginary island and everything it contains, documented in text, paint and sculpture. For Walking in My Mind, Avery presents his tardis-like Eternity Chamber on one of the Gallery's external sculpture terraces, as well as new drawings and sculptures of island creatures, inviting visitors to lose themselves in the artist's imagination.
Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn (b. 1957) has said of his art that he wants the visitor 'to be inside a 24-hour brain in action'. He is represented by Cavemanman (2002), a sprawling complex of caves and linking tunnels made from cardboard and glossy brown parcel-tape. In each of the four caves, the visitor encounters an eclectic array of information, objects and images – from clocks showing the same time in different cities and foil-covered shop dummies, to gigantic books tied to sticks of dynamite and photocopied excerpts from philosophical writings.
Iconic Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama's (b.1929) work is characterised by compulsive iterations of certain motifs, such as polka dots and infinite nets, which the artist says are the result of hallucinations that she has experienced since childhood. Her installation Dots Obsession (2009), part of a series, immerses visitors in a large mirrored corridor filled with red spotty balloons, leading on to one of the outside sculpture courts, which is transformed with bright green Astroturf under foot and big red spotty skittle-shaped sculptures.
Visitors come face-to-face with the subconscious of Swedish artist Bo Christian Larsson (b. 1976) in a new sculptural environment taking up the entire staircase connecting the Hayward Gallery's upper and lower galleries. Based in Germany and a rising figure on the continental art scene, this is the first opportunity visitors have to experience Larsson's performance installation art in England. The starting-point for The first cut is the deepest and the division of seven is a performance during the preparation period of the exhibition, involving the artist and actors performing a cast of characters representing Larsson's different persona, which form the basis of an eerie installation bedecked with trees and owls.
In 1986, at the age of 18, Dutch artist Mark Manders (b. 1968) embarked on his ongoing project Self-portrait as a Building, which he describes as 'a place where my thoughts are frozen together'. Exhibiting for the first time in a major London show, he is represented by six works from his project, including two new sculptures, each a fragment of the artist's fictional self.
Celebrated Japanese Pop artist Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959) collaborates with creative design team grafto create wooden hut-like installations, one of which is on display. Intended as a recreation of the artist's studio and representing a little hut atop a hill that Nara recalls from his childhood, these large uncanny structures incorporate Nara's iconic and intriguing drawings of balloon-headed children, as well as various artist objects.
During his all too brief career, Jason Rhoades (1965 - 2006) achieved international notoriety for his immense, sprawling installations. He is represented by The Creation Myth (1998), an enormous assemblage of interconnected machines and everyday products, which 'is about how one creates and how one sees the act of creation', according to the artist's thinking.
Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist (b. 1962) is best known for her lush multimedia installations that playfully and provocatively merge fantasy and reality. This is the first opportunity for a UK audience to see Extremities (smooth, smooth) (1999), a film installation reconfigured for the Hayward exhibition, in which images of body parts – a gigantic foot, hand, breast, mouth and ear – float and dance in space, immersing the viewer's own body with that of the artist's work.
Chiharu Shiota (b.1972), a Japanese artist who has made Berlin her base since 1996, is known to enmesh mysterious and frightening objects – as various as dresses, burnt-out pianos, charred chairs and hospital beds – into intricate cocoons of black wool. Relating to dreams and childhood traumas, the threads serve to connect the artist's memories and emotions, creating mindscapes that are full of physical and psychological tension, at once comforting and threatening. Shiota has taken part in many international group exhibitions, recently at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, and this is her first showing in the UK.
Turner-prize winner Keith Tyson's (b. 1969) interest in the creative process is demonstrated by hisStudio Wall Drawings, an ongoing series of complex works on paper which record the artist's thought process and working practice. Occupying three walls, Tyson's new series of drawings includes a gigantic composite image of a brain, set within a landscape. The installation also features a sculpture representing the artist as a young boy and is accompanied by sound pieces explaining each work as it is made.
The exhibition features new and existing works by the following artists: Charles Avery (UK), Thomas Hirschhorn (Switzerland), Yayoi Kusama (Japan), Bo Christian Larsson (Sweden), Mark Manders(The Netherlands), Yoshitomo Nara (Japan), Jason Rhoades (USA), Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland),Chiharu Shiota (Japan) and Keith Tyson (UK).
Over the last few summers, with major successes such as Antony Gormley: Blind Light (2007) and Psycho Buildings: Artists Take On Architecture (2008), the Hayward Gallery has established itself as a leading venue for curated experiential exhibitions, tailored to the Gallery's unique spaces. Highlights of this year's show include three works by iconic Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, rarely exhibited in the UK, as she transforms the Gallery into a vision of her signature polka dots. Visitors are able to immerse themselves in Dots Obsession (2009), a large mirrored corridor filled with red spotty balloons, and walk through a dot-covered landscape on one of the outside sculpture terraces. Twenty-five trees along Queen's Walk are also covered in red and white polka dots for the duration of the exhibition.
Five of the ten artists in the exhibition have created new works, each presenting a different way in which artists construct images and installations that explore the mind. Turner-prize winner Keith Tyson is showing a new series of Studio Wall Drawings, including a gigantic composite image of a brain, whileCharles Avery is presenting new drawings and sculptures as part of his ongoing The Islanders project. Two new sculptures by Dutch artist Mark Manders, who is exhibiting for the first time in a major London show, are on display. The exhibition also introduces visitors to new works by Chiharu Shiotaand Bo Christian Larsson, two promising artists who have not been seen in a major UK exhibition before.
Stephanie Rosenthal, Chief Curator of the Hayward Gallery, said:
'Many artworks encourage the viewer to see the world through the artist's eyes. The works in Walking in My Mind do more than this, as they pull the viewer into the unique worlds of ten major international artists who are explicitly preoccupied with their own minds and the creative process. The installations function as metaphors for the creative mind, inviting visitors to walk in and around the artists' inner worlds translated into physical works of art.'
Since 2004, Charles Avery's (b. 1973) work has focused on a single, epic project, The Islanders, an encyclopaedic investigation of an imaginary island and everything it contains, documented in text, paint and sculpture. For Walking in My Mind, Avery presents his tardis-like Eternity Chamber on one of the Gallery's external sculpture terraces, as well as new drawings and sculptures of island creatures, inviting visitors to lose themselves in the artist's imagination.
Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn (b. 1957) has said of his art that he wants the visitor 'to be inside a 24-hour brain in action'. He is represented by Cavemanman (2002), a sprawling complex of caves and linking tunnels made from cardboard and glossy brown parcel-tape. In each of the four caves, the visitor encounters an eclectic array of information, objects and images – from clocks showing the same time in different cities and foil-covered shop dummies, to gigantic books tied to sticks of dynamite and photocopied excerpts from philosophical writings.
Iconic Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama's (b.1929) work is characterised by compulsive iterations of certain motifs, such as polka dots and infinite nets, which the artist says are the result of hallucinations that she has experienced since childhood. Her installation Dots Obsession (2009), part of a series, immerses visitors in a large mirrored corridor filled with red spotty balloons, leading on to one of the outside sculpture courts, which is transformed with bright green Astroturf under foot and big red spotty skittle-shaped sculptures.
Visitors come face-to-face with the subconscious of Swedish artist Bo Christian Larsson (b. 1976) in a new sculptural environment taking up the entire staircase connecting the Hayward Gallery's upper and lower galleries. Based in Germany and a rising figure on the continental art scene, this is the first opportunity visitors have to experience Larsson's performance installation art in England. The starting-point for The first cut is the deepest and the division of seven is a performance during the preparation period of the exhibition, involving the artist and actors performing a cast of characters representing Larsson's different persona, which form the basis of an eerie installation bedecked with trees and owls.
In 1986, at the age of 18, Dutch artist Mark Manders (b. 1968) embarked on his ongoing project Self-portrait as a Building, which he describes as 'a place where my thoughts are frozen together'. Exhibiting for the first time in a major London show, he is represented by six works from his project, including two new sculptures, each a fragment of the artist's fictional self.
Celebrated Japanese Pop artist Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959) collaborates with creative design team grafto create wooden hut-like installations, one of which is on display. Intended as a recreation of the artist's studio and representing a little hut atop a hill that Nara recalls from his childhood, these large uncanny structures incorporate Nara's iconic and intriguing drawings of balloon-headed children, as well as various artist objects.
During his all too brief career, Jason Rhoades (1965 - 2006) achieved international notoriety for his immense, sprawling installations. He is represented by The Creation Myth (1998), an enormous assemblage of interconnected machines and everyday products, which 'is about how one creates and how one sees the act of creation', according to the artist's thinking.
Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist (b. 1962) is best known for her lush multimedia installations that playfully and provocatively merge fantasy and reality. This is the first opportunity for a UK audience to see Extremities (smooth, smooth) (1999), a film installation reconfigured for the Hayward exhibition, in which images of body parts – a gigantic foot, hand, breast, mouth and ear – float and dance in space, immersing the viewer's own body with that of the artist's work.
Chiharu Shiota (b.1972), a Japanese artist who has made Berlin her base since 1996, is known to enmesh mysterious and frightening objects – as various as dresses, burnt-out pianos, charred chairs and hospital beds – into intricate cocoons of black wool. Relating to dreams and childhood traumas, the threads serve to connect the artist's memories and emotions, creating mindscapes that are full of physical and psychological tension, at once comforting and threatening. Shiota has taken part in many international group exhibitions, recently at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, and this is her first showing in the UK.
Turner-prize winner Keith Tyson's (b. 1969) interest in the creative process is demonstrated by hisStudio Wall Drawings, an ongoing series of complex works on paper which record the artist's thought process and working practice. Occupying three walls, Tyson's new series of drawings includes a gigantic composite image of a brain, set within a landscape. The installation also features a sculpture representing the artist as a young boy and is accompanied by sound pieces explaining each work as it is made.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth
Fundación Proa presents the exhibition Urban Spaces: Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth. The show analyzes the evolution on the concept of the city in contemporary culture through the ideas and images produced by the artists of the so called Düsseldorf School of Photography: Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth.
Curated by Ludovico Pratesi, in collaboration with Benedetta Carpi, the exhibition is composed by 45 works produced from the early eighties until recent times. It is designed to take the visitor first through the artists' early works –those produced during their formative years– and continuing with their most recent body of work, in which an individual selection from each artist emphasizes their stylistic differences and personal characteristics.
Gursky, Höfer, Hütte, Ruff and Struth were invited to reflect of a common theme –the city–. The works exhibited are the result of the close dialogue between the artists and the curator, and depicts the different interpretations and relation each artist has with the urban space. "The exhibition includes some of the artists' master works. At the same time, in the selection made with Höfer there are some important shots taken in Buenos Aires –where the exhibition is displayed–, a city which fascinated and interested her in a very special way", explains the curator Pratesi.
In the exhibition catalogue, a bilingual publication (Spanish – English) of 200 pages, each artist counts with a special section that includes an unpublished interview, a biography and the exhibited works. The catalogue also includes critical essays by curator Pratesi and art critics such as Armin Zweite and Pablo Perulli –published in Spanish for the first time–, and Valeria González. For further information about the catalogue: libreria@proa.org
"This exhibition is part of the cultural program of Fundación Proa, in which we present different disciplines of current contemporary art. In the same way that we once organized exhibitions of photographers Andrés Serrano or Sebastián Selgado, we now considered that bringing works of these five artists of the Düsseldorf School was practically inevitable within the international contemporary context", explains Adriana Rosenberg, director of Proa.
The exhibition, sponsored by Tenaris and Organización Techint, and with the collaboration from Italian Embassy in Argentina, is accompanied by special events that will take place in Fundación Proa´s Auditorium, including a film and video programme with the city as the main theme, presented by the Goethe-Institut.
Curated by Ludovico Pratesi, in collaboration with Benedetta Carpi, the exhibition is composed by 45 works produced from the early eighties until recent times. It is designed to take the visitor first through the artists' early works –those produced during their formative years– and continuing with their most recent body of work, in which an individual selection from each artist emphasizes their stylistic differences and personal characteristics.
Gursky, Höfer, Hütte, Ruff and Struth were invited to reflect of a common theme –the city–. The works exhibited are the result of the close dialogue between the artists and the curator, and depicts the different interpretations and relation each artist has with the urban space. "The exhibition includes some of the artists' master works. At the same time, in the selection made with Höfer there are some important shots taken in Buenos Aires –where the exhibition is displayed–, a city which fascinated and interested her in a very special way", explains the curator Pratesi.
In the exhibition catalogue, a bilingual publication (Spanish – English) of 200 pages, each artist counts with a special section that includes an unpublished interview, a biography and the exhibited works. The catalogue also includes critical essays by curator Pratesi and art critics such as Armin Zweite and Pablo Perulli –published in Spanish for the first time–, and Valeria González. For further information about the catalogue: libreria@proa.org
"This exhibition is part of the cultural program of Fundación Proa, in which we present different disciplines of current contemporary art. In the same way that we once organized exhibitions of photographers Andrés Serrano or Sebastián Selgado, we now considered that bringing works of these five artists of the Düsseldorf School was practically inevitable within the international contemporary context", explains Adriana Rosenberg, director of Proa.
The exhibition, sponsored by Tenaris and Organización Techint, and with the collaboration from Italian Embassy in Argentina, is accompanied by special events that will take place in Fundación Proa´s Auditorium, including a film and video programme with the city as the main theme, presented by the Goethe-Institut.
Paris Photo 2009
In mid-November 2009, Paris Photo, the world's leading photography fair, will bring together 101 exhibitors from 23 countries.
The 2009 selection was conducted according to a number of criteria which included the quality and originality of the projects submitted as well as achieving a balance between the various periods of photographic expression, ranging from 19th Century to present day work. Another consideration was content renewal and the overall freshness of the fair with 30 newcomers this year.
The 2009 edition of Paris Photo proposes to undertake an unprecedented exploration of the Arab and Iranian photography scene. Guest curator Catherine David had been charged with this project which is composed of three distinct elements: the Central Exhibition showcasing photographs from the Arab Image Foundation and the Statement section which offers an overview of the scene currently emerging from the region – from Tehran to Beirut, Gaza to Cairo and Tangiers to Dubai. Finally, the third element is the Project Room screening a selection of video work by artists from the region.
Now in its sixth edition, the BMW – Paris Photo Prize, worth 12 000 euro, will offer a glimpse of current trends in international photography while rewarding the work of a promising artist.
Presided by Philippe Dehennin - CEO of BMW France, the members of the 2009 jury are:
Robert Delpire, photographer and publisher, TJ Demos, art critic and writer, Matthias Harder, director of the Helmut Newton Foundation, Manfred Heiting, collector, Sandra S. Phillips, Curator of photography for SFMOMA. The theme is "When was the last time you experienced something for the first time?"
A number of outstanding photographic exhibitions will coincide with the fair, including "Michael Kenna rétrospective » at the Bibliothèque Nationale, « La subversion des images, Surréalisme, photographie, film » at the Centre Pompidou, « August Sander » at the Fondation Henri Cartier Bresson, "Delpire & Cie" at the Maison Européenne de la photographie, "Federico Fellini" at the Jeu de Paume, "100 ans de photographie iranienne" at the Musée du Quai Branly and "Palestine, la création dans tous ses états" at the Institut du monde arabe.
The 2009 selection was conducted according to a number of criteria which included the quality and originality of the projects submitted as well as achieving a balance between the various periods of photographic expression, ranging from 19th Century to present day work. Another consideration was content renewal and the overall freshness of the fair with 30 newcomers this year.
The 2009 edition of Paris Photo proposes to undertake an unprecedented exploration of the Arab and Iranian photography scene. Guest curator Catherine David had been charged with this project which is composed of three distinct elements: the Central Exhibition showcasing photographs from the Arab Image Foundation and the Statement section which offers an overview of the scene currently emerging from the region – from Tehran to Beirut, Gaza to Cairo and Tangiers to Dubai. Finally, the third element is the Project Room screening a selection of video work by artists from the region.
Now in its sixth edition, the BMW – Paris Photo Prize, worth 12 000 euro, will offer a glimpse of current trends in international photography while rewarding the work of a promising artist.
Presided by Philippe Dehennin - CEO of BMW France, the members of the 2009 jury are:
Robert Delpire, photographer and publisher, TJ Demos, art critic and writer, Matthias Harder, director of the Helmut Newton Foundation, Manfred Heiting, collector, Sandra S. Phillips, Curator of photography for SFMOMA. The theme is "When was the last time you experienced something for the first time?"
A number of outstanding photographic exhibitions will coincide with the fair, including "Michael Kenna rétrospective » at the Bibliothèque Nationale, « La subversion des images, Surréalisme, photographie, film » at the Centre Pompidou, « August Sander » at the Fondation Henri Cartier Bresson, "Delpire & Cie" at the Maison Européenne de la photographie, "Federico Fellini" at the Jeu de Paume, "100 ans de photographie iranienne" at the Musée du Quai Branly and "Palestine, la création dans tous ses états" at the Institut du monde arabe.
Olga Koumoundouros at REDCAT
Conversation between the artist and Charles Gaines: Thursday June 25, 6:30 pm
For her solo exhibition at REDCAT, Los Angeles-based sculptor Olga Koumoundouros presents an ambitious new project that excavates the political, psychological and physical terrain of class in America. Informed by research on the country's uneven distribution of wealth, Koumoundouros contemplates the promise of middle class life and its compounded and compromised relationship to lived reality.
In this site-specific, newly-commissioned installation, Koumoundouros presents an architectural manifestation of a pie chart representing the 1% of the U.S. population that holds 34% of its wealth. The imposition of this architectonic structure in the space counters the expressive papier-mâché molds found inside. Made from everyday household furnishings–a bathtub, refrigerator, toilet and mattress, among other items representing basic human sustenance--the objects form a ring that cuts into the 1% of the "pie". Referencing cyclical movement, productivity, Möbius strips and tunnel forms, Koumoundouros explores concepts of standardization, industry and commerce in relation to human scale and expression, forcefully considering questions of mobility and power, participation and citizenship.
The exhibition title, Demand Management, offers an entry point into the artist's thinking on the subject. Here, Koumoundouros articulates a particular tension—this "demand" speaks of an anxiety, incites violence and aggression; the "management" calls for order, requires restraint. Through the artist's sculptural language, this abstract tension finds footing in material and form.
The artist's dexterity and commitment to materiality is her tour de force. Koumoundouros' provocative practice over the last few years has actively engaged ideas of labor, class and human sustenance, shaking the very core of the American Dream. Often working with building materials, such as plywood, corrugated fiberglass, plaster and tar, the artist's sculptural objects and installations resonate with brute but elegant force, exploring the many social, economic and political ideologies that shape our relationship to both past and present.
In A Roof Upended (2007), a recent project the artist undertook in Bellevue, Washington, she recovered sections of asphalt shingle from a derelict, ranch-style house and reconstructed the roof tilted on end, supported by columns of stacked vegetable cans filled with concrete. Here, the artist explored the tension between development and community, while contemplating the displacement of people and their histories.
Koumoundouros graduated from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, and University of Vermont, Burlington. She has presented work at Open Satellite, Bellevue, Washington; Mullin Gallery, Occidental College, Los Angeles; Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Banff; Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; LA ART, Los Angeles; Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; among other institutions. She is the recent recipient of a grant from The Durfee Foundation. Koumoundouros lives and works in Los Angeles.
Demand Management is curated by REDCAT gallery director & curator Clara Kim with curatorial assistant Ryan Inouye.
This exhibition is made possible with the support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and John Rubeli. Additional support provided by Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.
Free gallery admission underwritten by generous support from Ovation TV. The Standard is the official hotel of REDCAT.
For her solo exhibition at REDCAT, Los Angeles-based sculptor Olga Koumoundouros presents an ambitious new project that excavates the political, psychological and physical terrain of class in America. Informed by research on the country's uneven distribution of wealth, Koumoundouros contemplates the promise of middle class life and its compounded and compromised relationship to lived reality.
In this site-specific, newly-commissioned installation, Koumoundouros presents an architectural manifestation of a pie chart representing the 1% of the U.S. population that holds 34% of its wealth. The imposition of this architectonic structure in the space counters the expressive papier-mâché molds found inside. Made from everyday household furnishings–a bathtub, refrigerator, toilet and mattress, among other items representing basic human sustenance--the objects form a ring that cuts into the 1% of the "pie". Referencing cyclical movement, productivity, Möbius strips and tunnel forms, Koumoundouros explores concepts of standardization, industry and commerce in relation to human scale and expression, forcefully considering questions of mobility and power, participation and citizenship.
The exhibition title, Demand Management, offers an entry point into the artist's thinking on the subject. Here, Koumoundouros articulates a particular tension—this "demand" speaks of an anxiety, incites violence and aggression; the "management" calls for order, requires restraint. Through the artist's sculptural language, this abstract tension finds footing in material and form.
The artist's dexterity and commitment to materiality is her tour de force. Koumoundouros' provocative practice over the last few years has actively engaged ideas of labor, class and human sustenance, shaking the very core of the American Dream. Often working with building materials, such as plywood, corrugated fiberglass, plaster and tar, the artist's sculptural objects and installations resonate with brute but elegant force, exploring the many social, economic and political ideologies that shape our relationship to both past and present.
In A Roof Upended (2007), a recent project the artist undertook in Bellevue, Washington, she recovered sections of asphalt shingle from a derelict, ranch-style house and reconstructed the roof tilted on end, supported by columns of stacked vegetable cans filled with concrete. Here, the artist explored the tension between development and community, while contemplating the displacement of people and their histories.
Koumoundouros graduated from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, and University of Vermont, Burlington. She has presented work at Open Satellite, Bellevue, Washington; Mullin Gallery, Occidental College, Los Angeles; Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Banff; Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; LA ART, Los Angeles; Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; among other institutions. She is the recent recipient of a grant from The Durfee Foundation. Koumoundouros lives and works in Los Angeles.
Demand Management is curated by REDCAT gallery director & curator Clara Kim with curatorial assistant Ryan Inouye.
This exhibition is made possible with the support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and John Rubeli. Additional support provided by Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.
Free gallery admission underwritten by generous support from Ovation TV. The Standard is the official hotel of REDCAT.
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