Arthur Renwick, Adrian Stimson, Jeff Thomas

The Canadian Cultural Centre presents Unmasking : Arthur Renwick, Adrian Stimson, Jeff Thomas, an exhibition organized for "Photoquai" , the New World Visual Arts biennale of the Quai Branly museum in Paris.

The photographic works of Arthur Renwick, Adrian Stimson, and Jeff Thomas are diverse, and to varying degrees, confrontational expressions of First Nations identity. Unmasking explores their individual strategies, which can be gentle, campy, or whimsical, while creating conversations between contemporary art, mass culture, and representations of the past.

All three artists use staging, or posing, of the human subject, referring directly or obliquely to photographic documents, such as Edward S. Curtis's monumental and flawed The North American Indian, as well as stereotypical three-dimensional objects, ranging from sculptures to toys. All three also look to the built environment and the landscape for vestiges of First Nations representation and still active systems of belief. Every work in Unmasking carries signs of rupture in the historical account – signs that draw out specific histories and contemporary realities. Their mises-en-scène and performances are based on sound research and deep understanding of cultural traditions, while firmly implanted in the present. Their images powerfully state: we are here now; recognize us; acknowledge us; deal with us.

The exhibition has been organized by independent curators Martha Langford and Sherry Farrell Racette for the Canadian Cultural Centre, within the context of Photoquai – Renwick, Stimson, and Thomas are featured in the 2009 edition.

Jim Drain

http://www.blantonmuseum.org

The Blanton Museum of Art is pleased to present I Will Show You the Joy-Woe Man, a new multi-media installation by internationally recognized, Miami-based artist Jim Drain.

The epic poem Gilgamesh resonated in Jim Drain's mind last spring as he came to Austin to make this new project for The Blanton's WorkSpace series. An ancient coming-of-age story from Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), the myth pairs a disenchanted ruler, Gilgamesh, with his half-wild twin, Enkidu. Together, they journey through different worlds, exploring changing identities in a quest for adventure and, perhaps, immortality. The experiences they encounter, the choices they must make along the way, all posit wildness against responsibility, darker impulses against knowledge and transcendence.

I Will Show You the Joy-Woe Man—a series of projected video vignettes embellished with ambient sound and sculptural elements—is Drain's impressionistic response to the tale of Gilgamesh, who has counterparts in contemporary popular culture, including video game and comic book heroes. It was as if looking through the eyes of such archetypal, morally ambivalent characters that Jim first sought images and settings in Austin for the filming project. Ominous oaks, bat-filled skies, and grackle squawks abound in the final phantasmagorical work, the result of a five-week residency.

WorkSpace is an invitation to experiment. Revisiting a strategy from his days as a member of the Providence-based Forcefield music/performance collective, Drain conceived and directed video performances by local actors over several weeks' time. Mostly members of the art and music communities, the performers improvised the states of mind that drive Gilgamesh's protagonists. Then, editing the footage for eight specific vignettes, Drain projected them within a dense, anthropomorphized installation of recycled objects. Hallucinogenic images rotate around the upper and lower registers of the 800 square foot gallery, creating a fragmented space-in-the-round that brims with material and sensorial detail.

Haegue Yang

http://www.walkerart.org

In the last few years, Haegue Yang (born 1971, based in Seoul and Berlin) has worked with non-traditional materials such as customized venetian blinds and electrical devices including lights, infrared heaters, and fans, to create a series of carefully orchestrated and nuanced installations that operate as microcosms of sensory experiences. The centerpiece of the artist’s first U.S. solo museum exhibition,Integrity of the Insider, is Yearning Melancholy Red (2008), an installation constructed from custom-made white and faux-wood blinds suspended from the ceiling and arranged in interconnecting crystalline forms surround Plexiglas mirrors, infrared heat lamps, fans, with circling theater lights are connected to a drum kit, which viewers are invited to play.

Co-produced by the Walker and REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), Los Angeles, where it premiered in the artist's solo exhibition Asymmetric Equality in June 2008, Yearning Melancholy Redreflects the artist's ongoing engagement with certain historical figures of interest, in this case, the late French writer and filmmaker, Marguerite Duras. While Yang's own bond with the storied, legendary personage is the reservoir from which the work of art stems, the installation itself makes no specific references to concrete names, events, or realities, instead imparting to viewers the most abstract qualities—namely, geometry, light, and sound.

The exhibition also includes selections of smaller-scale works from 2000–2007 that formally and intellectually inform and dialogue with Yearning Melancholy Red. Several works explore "non-folding," an important concept which contemplates how processes of un-making—in the forms of literally unfolding, flattening, spray-painting, and time-lapse or serial photography—can become acts of making. Other works are instigated by Yang's existence in more than one society and culture, and the desire to belong to, or counter, the tradition of avant-garde she both identifies with and feels distance from.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Yang will spend three weeks at the Walker to conduct an experimental project where she aims to "domesticize the institution" by taking up residence as an apprentice in the museum. Provocatively exploring her concept of the antagonistic relationship between artist/artwork and institution, Yang has mobilized the Walker to bring together a group of “expert” participants in a skill-share and knowledge exchange. Titled Shared Discovery of What We Have and Already Know, Yang will engage participants as both teachers and learners in a series of discussions and workshops that will investigate the role of research in her practice as well as critical notions in her work, such as abstraction, community, and subjectivity. A resulting series of multidisciplinary public programs will be presented in February 2010 to coincide with the end of the exhibition.

FEVER RAY

Seven from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

FEVER RAY - SEVEN

MEW

Mew - Comforting Sounds

Emiliana Torrini

Emiliana Torrini - Jungle Drum

JAMES TURRELL

JAMES TURRELL

James Turrell was born in Los Angeles in 1943. His undergraduate studies at Pomona College focused on psychology and mathematics; only later, in graduate school, did he pursue art. He received an MFA in art from the Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California. Turrell’s work involves explorations in light and space that speak to viewers without words, impacting the eye, body, and mind with the force of a spiritual awakening. “I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing,” says the artist, “like the wordless thought that comes from looking in a fire.” Informed by his studies in perceptual psychology and optical illusions, Turrell’s work allows us to see ourselves “seeing.” Whether harnessing the light at sunset or transforming the glow of a television set into a fluctuating portal, Turrell’s art places viewers in a realm of pure experience. Situated near the Grand Canyon and Arizona’s Painted Desert is Roden Crater, an extinct volcano the artist has been transforming into a celestial observatory for the past thirty years. Working with cosmological phenomena that have interested man since the dawn of civilization and have prompted responses such as Stonehenge and the Mayan calendar, Turrell’s crater brings the heavens down to earth, linking the actions of people with the movements of planets and distant galaxies. His fascination with the phenomena of light is ultimately connected to a very personal, inward search for mankind’s place in the universe. Influenced by his Quaker faith, which he characterizes as having a “straightforward, strict presentation of the sublime,” Turrell’s art prompts greater self-awareness through a similar discipline of silent contemplation, patience, and meditation. His ethereal installations enlist the common properties of light to communicate feelings of transcendence and the Divine. The recipient of several prestigious awards such as Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships, Turrell lives in Arizona.

SOL LEWITT

SOL LEWITT

American sculptor, printmaker and draughtsman. He studied at Syracuse University, NY, from 1945 to 1949, and between 1951 and 1952 he served in the US Army in Japan and Korea, where he was able to visit oriental shrines, temples and gardens. In 1953 he moved to New York, where he attended the Cartoonists and Illustrators School. From 1955 to 1956 he worked as a graphic designer for the architect I. M. Pei, and he began to make paintings while continuing to work as a graphic designer. He abandoned painting in 1962 and began to make abstract black-and-white reliefs, followed in 1963 by relief constructions with nested enclosures projecting into space, and box- and table-like constructions. He first made serial and modular works, for which he is best known, in 1965. Initially these were wall and floor structures, but in 1968 LeWitt made his first wall drawing in pencil on plaster, at the Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (see 1978 exh. cat., p. 92). From that time he continued to make structures, wall drawings and drawings on paper as well as prints, which he first made in 1971.

MATTHEW DAY JACKSON

MATTHEW DAY JACKSON

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2005	Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York
2004	By No Means Necessary, The Locker Plant, Chinati Foundation, Marfa

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2006	Whitney Biennial, ‘Day for Night’, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Villa Manin Centro d’arte Contemporanea, Manin, Italy
2005	Sticks and Stones, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York Studio: Seven Months of My Aesthetic Education (Plus Some) New York Version and Climaxed, Tony Oursler Studio, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York The Uncertain States of America, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway You Are Here, The Ballroom, Marfa Motion, Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe Bridge Freezes Before Road, Barbra Gladstone Gallery The Greater New York, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York
2004	Mommy! I! am! not! an! animal!, Capsule Gallery, New York Relentless Proselytizers, Feigen Contemporary, New York SuperSalon, Samson Projects, Boston Drift III, Valentino Pier Park, Brooklyn
2003	K48: Klubhouse, Deitch Projects, Brooklyn Spiritual Hunger, Daniel Silverstein Gallery New York Now Playing, D’amelio Terras Gallery, New York Drift II, site specific exhibition at the former home of Buckminster Fuller, Northern White, Black, Yellow, Red, Storefront 1838, New York Biennial, Portland Museum of Art, Portland
2002	Drift, environmental exhibition, Manasquan
2001	…sorta like a revelation, Rabbett Gallery, New Brunswick
1999	Sans Titre, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder

JEFF KOONS

http://www.jeffkoons.com/

American artist. He trained at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore (BA 1976), and worked as a Wall Street commodities broker before embarking upon his career as an artist. In the 1980s he won international recognition as a radical exponent of Neo-Geo, an American movement concerned with appropriation and parody. Following the example of Pop artists of the 1960s, Koons used his work to reflect the commercial systems of the modern world. He also referred back to the Duchampian tradition, appropriating an art status to selected products. His vacuum cleaners encased in perspex (1980-81; see 1993 exh. cat., pls 5-9) were classified as monuments to sterility. His immaculate replicas of domestic products, advertisements, kitsch toys and models exercised an enthusiastic endorsement of unlimited consumption, unlike the veiled criticism of some work of the first generation of Pop artists. Koons perceived Western civilization as a driven society, flattered by narcissistic images and with a voracious appetite for glamorous commodities. In his expressions of the ecstatic and the banal he did not hesitate to breach the borderlines of taste; in the body of work titled Made in Heaven (1989-91; see 1993 exh. cat., pls 48-65) he featured explicit sexual photographs and models of himself with his wife Ilona Staller ('La Cicciolina'). Such works were naturally highly controversial.

Anthony Gormley

http://www.antonygormley.com/

Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950. After schooling at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire, he went on to complete a degree in Archaeology, Anthropology and History of Art at Trinity College, Cambridge, between the years of 1968-71. Following his graduation, Gormley travelled to India and Sri Lanka to study Buddhism for three years. On his return to London, in 1974, he attendedCentral School of Art and Goldsmith's College before completing a postgraduate course in sculpture at Slade School of Art between 1977 and 1979.

Gormley's work has revivified the way in which the human form is appropriated. Frequently using his own body as the subject of his work, Gormley's innovative use of the body, as a vessel for memory and transformation, explores the collective body and the relationship between self and other. His investigation into the human condition has been realised in highly acclaimed large-scale installations such as Critical Mass (1995), Allotment (1997), Inside Australia (2002), Domain Field (2003), Another Place (2005), and Blind Light (2007).

Celebrated internationally, Gormley has had solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Scandinavia, America, Japan and Australia. His sculptures have been acquired by many public and private collections around the world. In 1994 he was awarded theTurner Prize and in 1999 he won the South Bank Prize for Visual Art. In 1997 Gormley was made an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to sculpture and in 2003 he became a Royal Academician. In 2007 he was awarded the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture. He continues to fulfil his roles as an Honorary Fellow at the Royal Institute of British Architects; Trinity College, Cambridge andJesus College, Cambridge, and his trustee positions at the British Museum andBaltic Centre for Contemporary Art.

THE DEAD WEATHER

The Dead Weather - Treat Me Like Your Mother

CLOUD CULT

Cloud Cult - When Water Comes to Life

WHITE DENIM

White Denim - Shake Shake Shake

CROCODILES

Crocodiles - Neon Jesus

GOSSIP

The Gossip - Love Long Distance

Ola Pehrson

http://www.fargfabriken.se/

Färgfabriken has the pleasure to present the first comprehensive survey of Ola Pehrson's work. Despite major international success, this is the first opportunity for audiences to see and experience his key works in relation to one another. The Ola Pehrson Retrospective will also draw a portrait of an artist that, in his own highly personal way, has given shape to some of the most burning questions of our time.

In Ola Pehrson's art we are confronted with monumental powers such as the mass media and global capitalism, and we move swiftly in and out of digital and virtual worlds. Central to his art is an interest in human behaviour--what controls it and how it can be manipulated. A fascination over how we perceive reality and how this perception in turn shapes behavioural patterns links Pehrson's work to cognitive science and all the way back to Plato's Doctrine of Ideas.

Ola Pehrson was born in 1964 and trained at Idun Lovén and the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm. He had a major breakthrough in 1999 with the work Yucca Invest Trading Plant, presented at Tensta Konsthall and the Modern Museum in Stockholm. At the time of his death, in April 2006, Ola Pehrson's art had attracted considerable international interest. His work had been shown on three continents and what came to be his last piece, Hunt for the Unabomber, received great attention at the Istanbul Biennale (2005) and the São Paolo Biennale (2006). The piece was acquired by the Modern Museum in 2006 for its permanent collection.

The Ola Pehrson Retrospective has been presented in a smaller format in Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade in 2007-8. The exhibition at Färgfabriken will be complemented with a rich program of talks, seminars and guided tours.

Curated by: Joa Ljungberg and Saša Nabergoj
in close collaboration with Anneli Bäckman, Head of Ola Pehrson Foundation & Färgfabriken

State Museum of Contemporary Art presents 2nd Biennale of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki

http://www.thessalonikibiennale.gr

With the support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture

More than 200 artists / 39 countries/ 22 city's collaborating institutions/ 20 venues/ 12 exhibitions

Don't miss the upcoming events!!!

Main Programme
With the visitors number growing more than 30.000 and with flattering critics from the press in Greece and abroad the 2nd Biennale of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki under the title "PRAXIS: Art in Times of Uncertainty" is still on show until September 27. Some 57 artists and groups from Greece and abroad are exhibiting their work in the main programme of the 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art. The works of the artists are displayed in the venues all over the centre of the city:It should be noted also that a large number of these works of art were produced by the 2nd Biennale and are being displayed in a world premiere in Thessaloniki. The curators of the main programme of the Biennale are Bisi Silva, Gabriela Salgado and Syrago Tsiara.

Meanwhile don't miss the two new exhibitions from the parallel programme which are coming up. The first one opened yesterday September the 2nd under the title of "1000+1 PRAX(E)IS" (French Institute of Thessaloniki until October 15 and Goethe Institute until October 9). The exhibition is designed to identify those actions which, literally or potentially, might transform the physical space or reshape social relations – through the creative process and theory, the theoretical/political and by extension, social discourse-project – into acts of catharsis. The exhibition encourages the public to consider whether a work of art is an act of protest against materialistic and economic determinism.

The second one is due on September 11, under the title "Personal-Political", at Warehouse B1 (Port of Thessaloniki). Thirty-seven Greek artists take a stand, with political works from the 1960s until today, which will be presented in the exhibition. How many bombs and how many Greek flags can hide in an art exhibition, how many protests, how many ideologies, what secrets, personal or political, indicate the way in which the country is evolving socially? The events of last December brought back memories of the Polytechnic drama of 1973. Why is that? Has not much changed since then? are some of the questions that arouse.

Also note some more shows from the parallel programme

• Moscow-Thessaloniki 2009 / Works from the Stella Art Foundation Collection
19.09-01.11
'Subjective visions'
Opening: 18/09/09
Venue: National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation 108, Vas. Olgas Aven.

• Making Words / Moscow Poetry Club
Poets Machine/ Yioula Xatzigeorgiou
19.09-04.10
Opening: 18/09/09

• Young Artist's Workshop Part B
25.09- 25.10
Venue: Artforum Vilka Gallery, 21 Andreou Georgiou Str.

• Weak Monuments/ A topography of public murder in Thessaloniki
17.10-18.11
Venue: Bar Association of Thessaloniki building, 103 Tsimiski str.

INFO
STATE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Kolokotroni 21, Stavroupoli 56430, Thessaloniki
Τ: +30 2310 589140-1 & 3, F: +30 2310 600123
http://www.greekstatemuseum.com , info@greekstatemuseum.com

Rosalind Nashashibi

http://www.ica.org.uk/nashashibi

The ICA is pleased to present a solo exhibition by London based artist Rosalind Nashashibi, the most comprehensive presentation of the artist's work to date. This exhibition concentrates on her recent work, presenting 16mm films from the last four years, alongside examples of her photographic output.

The lower gallery is being used to display a trio of short, inter-connecting film works, includingEyeballing (2005), which juxtaposes scenes of New York policemen with the anthropomorphic faces that Nashashibi's camera finds in the physical fabric of their city. The upper gallery contains Nashashibi's two most recent film pieces, including Jack Straw's Castle (2009), her most ambitious work to date. The latter uses footage shot in and around a public park in London, interlacing shots from real life– with highly theatrical scenarios involving a cast of non-actors.

If Nashashibi's early films were often understood as documentary or anthropological in nature, it is the cinematic aspect of her work that has become increasingly apparent, as well is its engagement with performance and ritual. Many of the works on display here involved elements of staging, and all of them are engaged with the place of personae in human life, and how individuals and groups transform themselves through theatre. Such ideas are also evident in a new photographic installation by the artist, entitled In Rehearsal (2009), which depicts what is known in the theatrical world as 'physicalisation' – whereby people are transformed into characters.

The exhibition has been organised by the ICA with Bergen Kunsthall in Norway, and supported by The Henry Moore Foundation.

Publication
A catalogue of the exhibition, including new texts by Martin Herbert, Dieter Roelstraete and the artist, and will be available from the ICA Bookshop from 16 October priced £14.95. The exhibition is also accompanied by issue three of ROLAND, the magazine of the ICA's visual art programme.

Events
The events programme for the Rosalind Nashashibi exhibition includes a series of screenings in the ICA's cinemas, selected by the artist. Nashashibi will be conversation with artist Olivia Plender at the ICA, 27 September. There are also additional gallery talks. For bookings, please call the ICA box office on 020 7930 3647.

http://www.ica.org.uk/nashashibi


Limited edition print
Rosalind Nashashibi has generously created a special limited edition print to accompany her solo exhibition at the ICA. This new collage work takes the artist's new photographic installation In Rehearsal (2009) as its source material.

Works on paper are integral to Nashashibi's practice, and draw attention to ideas and images that recur within her work. Available exclusively at the ICA, this limited edition presents an exceptional opportunity to collect a new work by the artist.

We offer ICA Members and Patrons priority purchase and a 10% discount on this edition and 20% discount on all previous ICA limited editions. For more information or to order contact Vicky Steer, Editions Manager, on 020 7766 1425 or email vicky.steer@ica.org.uk

The ICA regularly publishes limited editions by artists involved in its exhibition programme—recent collaborations include Frances Stark, 2008 Turner Prize winner Mark Leckey, 2009 nominee Enrico David and 2009 Venice Biennale Golden Lion winner Roberto Cuoghi. Proceeds from the sale of these editions provide vital support for the ICA, directly contributing towards the ICA's future exhibition programme. To view all ICA editions visit http://www.ica.org.uk/editions

Press information
For press information please contact Jennifer Byrne, Press Officer (E: jenniferb@ica.org.uk / T: +44 20 7766 1407).

Chance Aesthetics at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

http://kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu

Sept. 18, 2009, to Jan. 4, 2010
Major loan exhibition to explore use of chance, randomness and probability in modern art

Dripping or flinging paint; flipping coins to compose musical scores; letting the progressive decay of organic materials determine a composition — since the early 20th century avant-garde artists have used these processes and many others to explore the creative possibilities of chance and its attendant release of authorial intent. This fall the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present Chance Aesthetics, a major loan exhibition investigating the use of chance as a key compositional principle in modern art.

Organized by Meredith Malone, assistant curator for the Kemper Art Museum, Chance Aesthetics will feature more than 60 artworks by more than 40 avant-garde artists from Europe and the United States, including Jean Arp, George Brecht, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Ellsworth Kelly, Alison Knowles, François Morellet, Robert Morris, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Dieter Roth, Niki de Saint Phalle and Yves Tanguy, among many others.

At the exhibition's heart is a central paradox involving the tension between chance and choice. While many artists have championed the creative possibilities of the arbitrary and the accidental — both as an attack on reason and logic and as a counterpoint to officially sanctioned aesthetic tastes — artistic subjectivity is never entirely ceded. The controlled and the arbitrary variously interplayed throughout the 20th century, stimulating new forms of creative invention that challenged longstanding assumptions about what might constitute a work of art and the role of the artist as autonomous creator.

A fully illustrated color catalog — distributed by the University of Chicago Press — accompanies the exhibition. Essays by Susan Laxton, Meredith Malone and Janine Mileaf draw connections across media and disciplines while linking the genesis and meaning of artistic production through chance to larger socio-cultural, historical and theoretical contexts. The catalog also features extended entries on all works in the exhibition, focusing on the processes employed and the rhetoric used to describe and theorize them.

Public Opening Celebration
Friday, September 18, 7-9 pm

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
The Kemper Art Museum features cutting-edge special exhibitions, exceptional educational resources, and an outstanding collection of 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century European and American art. A stimulating and unique site to experience art, culture, and education in St. Louis, located on Washington University's Danforth campus. FREE and open to the public 11-6 every day except Tuesday, open 11-8 on Friday.
314.935.4523

THREE CURATORIAL COLLECTIVES IN CHARGE OF MANIFESTA 8

ALEXANDRIA CONTEMPORARY ARTS FORUM

CHAMBER OF PUBLIC SECRETS

TRANZIT.ORG



Manifesta 8 taking place in the Spanish cities of Murcia and Cartagena in 2010, will be curated by Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Chamber of Public Secrets and Tranzit.org as the three collectives, who will together form the curatorial team of the next edition.

In keeping with Manifesta's aim to experiment with innovative curatorial models and methodologies, no individual art professionals were considered for the position of curator of Manifesta 8. Instead, curatorial groups, artistic and interdisciplinary collectives and/or existing institutions were invited by the Board and the Director of the International Foundation Manifesta to propose a new working model for Manifesta 8. In doing so, the Board wishes to initiate a transcontinental collaborative strategy, connecting regions and institutions located around the Mediterranean.

Opening on October 1, 2010, and continuing through the autumn in the Region of Murcia (Spain) in dialogue with Northern Africa, Manifesta 8 will explore the idea of Europe in the 21st century, focussing on the boundaries of the continent, and thus strengthening its international and intercontinental character. More specifically, the aim of Manifesta 8 will be to engage with Europe's present-day frontiers and its interrelation with the Maghreb region.

As with each edition, the newly appointed curatorial team will develop Manifesta 8 in close collaboration with the permanent team of the Amsterdam based home offices of Manifesta together with local producers in Murcia and Cartagena.

Inherent to Manifesta's nomadic character is the desire to explore the psychological and geographical territory of Europe, referring both to border-lines and the notion of nationality. This process aims to establish closer dialogue between particular cultural and artistic situations and the broader, international fields of contemporary art, theory and politics in a changing society.

ALEXANDRIA CONTEMPORARY ARTS FORUM
Curator/Team Executive: Bassam El Baroni
Associate Curator: Jeremy Beaudry

Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), founded in Alexandria (Egypt) in December 2005, focuses on contemporary art, new media and discursive practice, cultivating a deeper awareness of art in relation to all aspects of contemporary life and culture. Central to its mission is an ongoing engagement with projects that bring together established and emerging artists, university students, and diverse practitioners, in contexts that recognize the value of an informal, non-hierarchical, open-ended circulation of information and experience. The ACAF is in a constant state of flux and incorporates innovative activities, guided by its socio-cultural compass.

CHAMBER OF PUBLIC SECRETS
Curators/Team Executives: Khaled Ramadan / Alfredo Cramerotti

Chamber of Public Secrets (CPS), based in Copenhagen (Denmark) and the Middle East, works as a network of artists, curators and thinkers who have been collaborating since 2004 in the organization, production and circulation of film and video festivals, art exhibitions, TV and radio programs, political fictions and documentaries. CPS also develops forums for debate and publishes books and articles about socio-political and cultural issues such as migration, mobility, representation, colonialism, gender and difference. CPS wishes to stimulate the role of debate, while reconstructing the role of art, its responsibility and its relation to society.

TRANZIT.ORG
Team executive: Vít Havránek
Team assembly: Zbyněk Baladrán, Dóra Hegyi, Boris Ondreička, Georg Schöllhammer

tranzit.org is a network of autonomous art associations, existing since 2002 in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, who cooperate working across borders - between nations, languages and histories. Each tranzit group operates independently from each other, using different formats and methods - such as discursive platforms, exhibitions, publications and research initiatives - but always aiming to generate a deep involvement in the local artistic and intellectual context. At the same time each tranzit group carries out a re-assessment of contemporary history, challenging the canons, geography and master-narratives of post-war European (art) histories. The aim of tranzit is to act trans-locally, in constant dialogue with cultural narratives on a local and global scale.


In the next few months the three selected collectives will define a mutual working methodology which will culminate in the concept and realization of Manifesta 8, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art.


Manifesta 8 is an initiative of the International Foundation Manifesta in collaboration with the Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia (CARM) and Murcia Cultural.

The International Foundation Manifesta is supported by the European Commission Culture Framework program, The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of The Netherlands.

Photographic Power and Violence, Disease and Death Photographed

http://www.fotomuseum.ch

Darkside II
Photographic Power and Violence, Disease and Death Photographed


Last year's exhibition "Darkside I – Photographic Desire and Sexuality Photographed" explored the role of photography in the imaging of sexuality and desire. Now the sequel, Darkside II, looks at the opposite end of the photographic spectrum, charting the path from the body as a veritable 'picture of health' to the body injured, disfigured or mutilated, in decline and decay.

This raises questions: Why is there an intimate affinity between photography and death? Why does violence attract images? The visual world of western culture is full of images of violence – both random outbursts of violence and military violence, regulative state violence. In a strange reversal, societies have shut away images of life-affirming, life-giving sexuality, banishing them to the fringes of obscurity, whereas images of dark and excessive violence have been brought into the light.

The reasons for this are many and complex. Images function in much the way as nouns do, by naming something: the tangibility of the portrayal comforts us, as a means of grasping the horror. Images of violence excite and electrify all those the horrors have passed by uninvolved. They read like memorials, like visual tablets of the law, when they portray state and judicially sanctioned violence. They claim to be enlightening, accusatory manifestos and moral appeals for an end to the horror they portray. And what is more: they sell. People are fascinated by shocking photographs of horror, terror, murder and branding, not only for the reasons already mentioned, but also because of a desire to glimpse at the dark side of civilised, orderly life. Having a part in something without actually participating – a kind of voyeurism of violence and its portrayals.

This in itself raises questions of exploitation, complicity and the reproduction of power structures on both sides of the camera and in the photograph. Do we need such images as a visual crutch to shore up our moral fibre? Darkside II addresses these and many other issues surrounding the visual approach to the body.

The exhibition will include works by many photographers and artists, including: Antoine d'Agata, Christian Boltanski, Sophie Calle, Hans Danuser, Maria Friberg, Nan Goldin, F. Holland Day, Peter Hujar, Sally Mann, Enrique Metinides, Miyako Ishiuchi, Shirin Neshat, Gilles Peress, Walid Raad, Sophie Ristelhueber, Andres Serrano, Fazal Sheikh, Cindy Sherman, W. Eugene Smith, Weegee. Francesca Woodman etc.


Main sponsor: George Foundation

The exhibition catalogue is published by Steidl Verlag:
Darkside II –Photographic Power and Violence, Disease and Death Photographed. Edited by Urs Stahel, 368 pages, hardcover, with approx. 270 photographs and bilingual texts (English/German) by Ariella Azoulay, Johannes Binotto, Elisabeth Bronfen, Sander L. Gilman, Daniela Janser, Thomas Macho, Milena Massalongo, Bernd Stiegler, Katharina Sykora, Urs Stahel and Tan Wälchli.


On Monday, 21 September 2009 the Symposium "Too Brutal? Too Beautiful? Images of Violence and Beauty in Photography" will be held to accompany the exhibitions Darkside II - Photographic Power and Violence, Disease and Death Photographed at Fotomuseum Winterthur andGotthard Schuh – A Kind of Infatuation at Swiss Foundation of Photography. With presentations by Oliviero Toscani, Ariella Azoulay, Valentin Groebner, Luisa Lambri, Elisabeth Lebovici and Martin Seidel, among others. Register now (http://www.fotomuseum.ch/Symposium.472.0.html?&L=1)

Abraham Cruzvillegas

http://www.redcat.org

Through his interest in autoconstrucción ("self-construction"), Abraham Cruzvillegas explores economies of the makeshift, the handmade and the recycled. His recent work gravitates toward an examination of his childhood home and the neighborhood of Ajusco, a district in the south of Mexico City founded by migrants who, like his parents, squatted and settled in what was deemed uninhabitable land in the 1960s. To this day, Ajusco's landscape of volcanic rock remains a work in process. Structures are in a constant state of transformation, as additions are made when materials become available and necessity dictates.

In contrast to cities developed with central planning or strict building codes, the architecture of each building in Ajusco is heterogeneous and manifests the particular vision of those who built it, often referencing a hybrid of styles and sensibilities indicative of an individuals' ideals and often informed by other people, places and times. The sense of ingenuity and improvisation that characterizes the landscape here reflects the vibrant, self-reliant and politically active community (who fought for the rights to property ownership) and becomes the impetus for the artist's own exploration of the roots of his practice. In a text accompanying his recent exhibition at The Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Cruzvillegas explains:

Many of my works are evidence of my will to confront at once two or more radically different economic systems through bricollage [sic] or assemblage, making hybrid marriages and bizarre mixtures of materials and techniques&.a reproduction of the diverse dynamics involved, regarding the economic and social environment as a sort of scaffolding through/on which I do my moves.


At REDCAT, Abraham Cruzvillegas continues to expand upon his interest in social organization, collaboration and exchange. For this solo exhibition, the artist presents a newly commissioned film that offers a rich portrait of Ajusco. Shot on location with non-professional actors and developed by a self-organized, guerilla-style film cooperative, the film employs an unconventional narrative without dialogue, intertwining footage of the landscape with unscripted moments of intimacy and encounter. Cruzvillegas' film uses the predictable, mechanistic structure of early pornographic films to build a non-linear story made up of fragments that collapses the past and present--the neighborhood's history and present, landscape and everyday life--as an abstract portrait. The film, the artist's first, will be installed along side other related work including storyboards made by other artists.

Over the past ten years, Abraham Cruzvillegas has developed a language of improvisation and assemblage that brings together materials into attentive, though unexpected, states of energy and equilibrium. In earlier works, the artist dynamically integrates natural objects such as candles handmade from animal fat, bird feathers, maguey leaves, wool and beads with more "_modern" or manufactured materials such as milled lumber, metal, tools and consumer packaging--contemplating notions of craft, authorship and hybrid forms.

This exhibition is accompanied by a major bilingual (English and Spanish), four-color monograph about the artist's ongoing interest in autoconstrucción as methodology and form. The publication includes an exquisite corpse like exchange between the legendary artist, writer and activist Jimmie Durham and Cruzvillegas as well as contributions by Mark Godfrey, Clara Kim and Ryan Inouye. The publication will be available in late October/early November.

Born in 1968 in México City, Abraham Cruzvillegas has presented solo exhibitions at California College of the Arts, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; The Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (MACO), Oaxaca; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte (MUCA), México City, among others. He has participated in the 10th Havana Biennial in 2009, 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 and the 25th São Paulo Biennial in 2002 as well as group exhibitions at Fundación/Colección Jumex, Ecatepec, México; New Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

This exhibition is made possible with generous support from Fundación/Colección Jumex, the Nimoy Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Larry Mathews and Brian Saliman, and John Rubeli.

Maria Lindberg‏

http://www.futuraproject.cz

Informal and yet with explicit precision regarding both formality and thought, anchored in early idea art and to the practice of the Fluxus movement: Swedish artist Maria Lindberg's work is marked by a remarkable integrity and gives an example of an consistent thinking that has continued to challenge the eye and mind of the observer in its investigation of the fraudulence of language and thought.

Throughout a career spanning well over twenty years, Maria Lindberg has utilized a wide variety of media ranging from artist's books, text, video, sound, painting, drawing and found objects, creating a body of work multi-layered to its content, always offering multiple possibilities for interpretation. Starting out from the artist's early contemplative and process based work, executed in her living place, the work has continued to explore relationships in time, endless or capsuled,

A strong advocate of the economy of simplicity, with her choices of material being basic and with objects recycled from the everyday, Maria Lindberg's film- and video work are structured to endure in real time, with certain actions being monitored until they lapse or reach completion. This is seen executed in the film Friday the 13th, featured in the exhibition. The work documents a five hour car drive from the artist's home in Göteborg to the opening reception of Stockholm's Moderna Museet, filming the road left behind, with Lindberg handing over the new work, her contribution to the show, at the arrival.

Maria Lindberg's work has been exhibited at several well-known art institutes, galleries Scandinavia, Europe and the USA. Futura in Prague is currently showing a broad selection of the artist's production, having compiled for the first time works from the mid-1980s until the present day, with several of the works never been displayed outside Sweden before. The curator and the initiator of the exhibition is Mats Stjernstedt, director of Index, the Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm.

The Hayward Gallery presents Martin Sastre

www.hayward.org.uk/

This September the Hayward Gallery Project Space presents an exhibition of works by the Uruguayan artist Martin Sastre. This will be his first exhibition in a major UK institution.

Sastre's videos combine a love of trashy pop culture with witty meditations on global politics. He is fascinated by the notion of the cover version or remake, and describes his work as existing 'on the frontier between reality and fiction'.

In the animated video KIM X LIZ (2008), viewers see the flowering of an unexpected love affair between Hollywood actress Elizabeth Taylor and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, who is a well-known fan of Taylor's. Sastre is fascinated by these two figures, who he sees not only as real people but also fictional characters created by the desires of societies driven by the cult of celebrity and the cult of personality.

Making its debut at the Hayward Gallery Project Space is Sastre's latest work, Ride with Obama (2009). Continuing Sastre's enquiry into impersonations and the rewriting and re-depiction of reality, the film shows the artist visiting a Madrid theme park in the company of a man who bears an uncanny resemblance to President Barack Obama. Here the two men from the Americas explore the rides and inhabit the theme park, which represents a place in Europe where artifice dominates and authenticity has slipped out of sight.

Martin Sastre
We are the World (Something has to Change for Everything to Stay the Same)
Curated by Tom Morton
8 - 30 September 2009
The Hayward Gallery Project Space
Admission Free
10am - 6pm everyday

The Hayward Gallery Project Space
The Hayward Gallery Project Space, which opened summer 2007, showcases both up-and-coming contemporary artists from the UK and internationally, many of whom have not shown in the UK before. Recent exhibitions have included solo presentations of the work of Cyprien Gaillard, Guido van der Werve, Tim Lee, Ujino Muneteru and Matthew Darbyshire. Admission is free.