Centre Pompidou Damián Ortega

http://www.centrepompidou.fr 

Born in Mexico City in 1967, Damián Ortega is the first Latin American artist to show in Espace 315. One of the leading members of the rising artistic generation in Mexico, he first came to widespread attention at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, with Cosmic Thing, a Volkswagen Beetle dismantled and suspended from the ceiling, an ironic deconstruction of one of the cult objects of Mexican consumer culture.

Ortega began his career drawing political cartoons and his work is always marked by a certain acerbic playfulness. With irreverent eye, he parodies the purity of Minimalist sculpture. His sculptures, photographs and action pieces, which often make use of commonplace objects, suggest a potential for development and perpetual change. A certain scepticism regarding the utopian forms of Modernist architecture and a distinct fondess for language games are also central to his work.

For Espace 315, Damián Ortega has created an installation that operates as a camera obscura.

At the entrance is a wall drawing of molecular structures, while in the central space 6000 coloured modules are suspended from the ceiling. At the far end of the room, visitors pass behind a partition, from where they view the installation through a lens. Once again deploying the principle of fragmentation and spatial dispersion of forms, here Ortega allows viewers to experience the very process of perception that links eye to brain.

Dia Art Foundation

http://www.diaart.org/porter

Drawing from an extensive collection of figurines, knickknacks and toys, Liliana Porter works in photography, painting, video, and sculpture, creating humorous scenes with her inanimate protagonists. For her first web-based project, Porter presents a cast of toy chicks singing "La donna è mobile" (Woman is fickle) from Giuseppe Verdi's 1851 opera Rigoletto. The chicks begin in chorus, but viewers can cut to "solos" by clicking any of the individual chicks, and then return to the chorus where they left off. Each chick's audio track of the song is a unique interpretation, ranging from Tango to a panhellenic guitar version to a 1907 rendition by Enrico Caruso. The soundtrack is by Sylvia Meyer, with whom Porter has collaborated on her video projects.

In Rigoletto, "La donna è mobile" is sung by the Duke of Mantua, a coldhearted playboy. In the last act when the Duke is singing its reprise, Rigoletto realizes his attempt to have the Duke assassinated had been foiled, and that his daughter, instead, was the one killed. In the context of violence and betrayal in the opera, the song's lyrics of distrust and deceit stand in contrast to its comical melody. Added to this disconnect is the inherent irony that it is the Duke singing of females being flighty, when he is the one most guilty of this accusation. Woman may be fickle, man even more so, but Porter's fluffy yellow chicks, a gender-neutral metaphor of innocence, sing as if to comfort and calm.

Long interested in issues of representation, Porter's practice frequently addresses conventions related to portraiture and the gaze. Her figures, typically shot against white backdrops or placed on a painted white canvas or shelf, are presented with a simple, direct quality, inviting the viewer to ponder their existential plight. Whether it is a line-drawn rabbit looking at us from a piece of paper with a rock glued on, its path leading straight to the rabbit's head, or a man pulling a strand from a rope, coiled beyond his vision to the size of a mountain, relative to his size, we can feel momentarily omniscient and amused, but also unsettled when we recognize ourselves, similarly unaware of our fate. Though they are kitch objects, the artist portrays the chicks in Rehearsal in a way that imbues them with humanity, legitimizing our desire to anthropomorphize them.

http://www.connercontemporary.com

Zoë Charlton presents Family (2008), a new series of large format drawings. Statuesque nude figures drawn from live models portray characteristics of the artist's female cousins, demonstrating diverse personalities within her Florida-based African American family. In these drawings Charlton explores how inherited traits interact with personal choices to define the self. Elaborating naturalistic figural imagery with culturally-laden attributes that reveal individuality, she construes the formation of personal identity as an analog to, or perhaps a model for, artistic creation.

In War David Levinthal juxtaposes Iraq (2008), his latest series of photographs, with selections from his seminal work Hitler Moves East (1977). In grad school at Yale, he and Garry Trudeau recreated the WWII German military invasion of Russia with toy soldiers. This Kodalith film series catalyzed the fabrication movement in photography. 

Swiss Institute

http://www.swissinstitute.net

With art works by Fia Backström, Olaf Breuning, Daniele Buetti, John Cerasulo, Anne Collier, Ann Craven, Dexter Sinister, Ida Ekblad, Ryan Foerster, Georg Gatsas, Liam Gillick, Amy Granat, Nic Guignini, Jamie Isenstein, Matt Keegan, Scott King, Andrew Kuo, Sean Landers, Leigh Ledare, Erik Lindman, Manon, Rachel Mason, Josephine Meckseper, John Miller, Olivier Mosset, MINIMETAL, Kelly Nipper, Taiyo Onorato / Nico Krebs, Lisa Oppenheim, Mamiko Otsubo, Marlo Pascual, Mai-Thu Perret, Richard Phillips, Scott Reeder, Tyson Reeder, John Riepenhoff, Pipilotti Rist, Shirana Shahbazi, Roman Signer, Greg Parma Smith, Karlheinz Weinberger, Lawrence Weiner and Franz West

See the art works online 
http://www.swissinstitute.net/shop/auction.php

B.P.S.22 space for contemporary creation

http://bps22.hainaut.be

Jean-Luc Moerman's indefinable shapes, formed by black lines around brightly-coloured tinted areas, are inspired by countless influences: mostly graffiti, but also independent comic strips, Japanese mangas, science fiction, utopian and futurist designs, car tuning, etc. Sometimes his painted forms seem to refer to biotechnological evolution, communication technologies, and virtual architecture, etc. However, a closer analyse of Jean-Luc Moerman's works allows a better comprehension of their richness. Far more than the product of diverse influences, his paintings are the result of his constant drawing. 

A complex articulation between the volume, suggested by the drawings (the black lines) and the large, flat surfaces, generated by the colour sections gives Moerman's oeuvre a dynamic that makes the medium an almost irrelevant aspect. Even if his paintings fit into the formats of classical painting (canvas, paper sheet, etc.) without any difficulty, they easily exceed the limits of the frame or the place that serves as the surface. What counts, is the ensemble of shapes that surround us, becoming the theatre of his artistic interventions. The generic term 'virus-painting' is probably the most appropriate to describe this kind of expression.

Kunstmuseum Bern

http://www.kunstmuseumbern.ch

Autobiography in all its forms is a medium for depicting one's ideas about oneself but also for reflecting on contemporary issues. If, until now, an artistic self-portrait condensed the self-perception and self-representation momentarily into a single image, this exhibition focuses on whole processes of finding and documenting identity. Thus, a deliberate approach to time, memory and the question of what will one day remain of life conjoins with self-investigation and the depiction of a subjective world of experiencing. Ego Documents examines the autobiographical act in contemporary art as a strategy in life-narration, a self-documentation, an imprinting into cultural memory, a transformation of a lived into an aesthetic experience, as well as a meditation on one's own transience.

List of artists:
Darren Almond, Sadie Benning, Louise Bourgeois, Annatina Graf, Mona Hatoum, Xiaoyuan Hu, On Kawara, Martin Kippenberger, Isabelle Krieg, Elke Krystufek, Laura Lancaster, Nicolas Nixon, Jan Peters, Jack Pierson, Anri Sala, Vittorio Santoro, Carolee Schneemann, Annelies Strba, Ana Strika, Pascale Wiedemann/Daniel Mettler.

KAI 10 Raum fuer Kunst

http://www.kaistrasse10.de

KAI 10 Raum für Kunst is a private, non-commercial institution for the promotion of contemporary art. Supported by the Arthena Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by entrepreneur Monika Schnetkamp, and housed in a former warehouse in Düsseldorf's Media Harbour, KAI 10 is an extraordinary new exhibition site.

KAI 10 will produce three to four exhibitions annually, offering international artists a platform for the presentation and discussion of their works. Although the focus is on the newest, most current art, the KAI 10 program will also include better-known, established artists. This will provide opportunities to identify the points where the works intersect thematically, as well as the differences between generations. In accordance with the character of today's artistic practice, the exhibitions will integrate various media and production methods. Moreover, aesthetic commonalities and dissimilarities between art and its adjacent cultural discourses - for instance, in design and architecture - will also be explored. As a private, independent institution, KAI 10 is building an active space committed to conveying contemporary art's new ideas and ways of thinking to the public in Düsseldorf and beyond.

KAI 10's inaugural exhibition, NO ILLUSIONS is neither thematic nor programmatic. Curated by Zdenek Felix, the exhibition features work by Björn Dahlem, Thomas Helbig, Manfred Pernice, Marjetica Potrc, Franz West, and Heimo Zobernig. Their work represents a dialogue between the older and younger generation, yet it resists the trends employed in the successful marketing of superficial appearances. NO ILLUSIONS takes a stand against the tendency of some of today's art to favor illusionism and sensationalism, demonstrating that there are still critical antitheses in present-day art.

Watershed

http://www.watershed.co.uk

Luke Jerram's The Dream Director is a unique art event, installation and exploration investigating the hidden realm of dreaming. 

Where do people go when they dream? What do they see? What do they experience? And can the shape of dreams be influenced as the dreamer is sleeping? These are the questions posed and explored by artist Luke Jerram in his participatory work, The Dream Director. 

Jerram was commissioned in 2007 by Watershed through the Clark Bursary, the UK Digital Art Award, to investigate the complexities of sleep and dreaming. He built upon original research carried out with sleep psychologist Chris Alford at The University of West of England, to create a new installation that merges art, science and digital media.

The Dream Director invites people to sleep overnight in a gallery. Specially designed "pods" house the dreamers who don eye-masks that detect rapid eye movement, indicating the dreaming stage of sleep. Each pod is allocated a different bank of sounds, shaping participants dreams in different ways.

When the dreamers reach their dream state, their eye masks trigger ambient sounds via a computer, which are played into small speakers mounted into the pod, in an attempt to affect the nature and content of their dreams. 

Prior to the sleepover, participants are asked to record what sort of dreams they normally experience. After the sleepover they are asked to record their dreaming experience for that night.

The Dream Director explores the boundaries of participants' conscious and subconscious minds, prompting questions about the ethics of and possibilities for, creating art in dream space. It is also a new tool for sleep science and clinical applications that raises questions about the rules of interaction and boundaries of science and art.

Open Art Project

"Two Men and a Wardrobe" is the most recent project by Pawel Althamer, whose works, from the very beginning of his artistic career, oscillate with different amplitude between the poles of figurative sculpture and collective activities introducing other people into the creative process. By inviting random people from the street, inhabitants of a Warsaw block of flats, prisoners from a German penal institution or difficult youth the artist poses questions about the position and status of the author, which is a characteristic phenomenon in the art of the last decade. However, the means by which Althamer explores the notion of participation seems to be closely related to the social potential that his works carry. Instead of granting them complete freedom, the artist creates a specific framework, a proposition, in which those invited define their identity.

This practice is closely related to the figure of Grzegorz Kowalski, professor at the sculpture department of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts from which Althamer graduated. The original course ran by Kowalski meant to create non-verbal means of communication within the class, where the students react to the activities of others by changing or commenting upon the given situation, shaped Althamer's attitude towards the creative process. 

Sammlung Verbund

http://www.sammlung.verbund.at

Verbund presents the intervention Yellow fog by the renowned Danish artist Olafur Eliasson directly in the center of Vienna. Yellow fog is Olafur Eliassons fist work of art in public space in Vienna.

The impressive work Yellow fog was first shown in New York in 1998. It is now presented as a permanent work of art in public space. The location for the intervention is the Verbund building and the historic plaza Am Hof, which at dusk turns into a public stage for an orchestration of light and fog. 

32 fluorescent tubes are embedded in the pavement along the 48 meter façade of the Verbund headquarters, emitting a specific yellow light, attuned by the artist himself. Daily at dusk fog rises up the façade in yellow light at regular intervals, shrouding the building in an ephemeral veil for one hour. 

The fog serves as a fleeting projection screen for the light. It not only obscures the view of space, but also creates a more precise experience of distance and spatial relations. Olafur Eliasson uses fog as a "tool", as an "instrument", to allow us a new perception of urban space, of the building's façade, of the pavement as well as the entire plaza ensemble. Thus the dialogue between urban space and the passers-by is redefined. 

Ellipse Foundation Contemporary Art Collection

http://www.ellipsefoundation.com 

Eija-Liisa AHTILA | Vasco ARAÚJO | John BALDESSARI | Stephan BALKENHOL | Matthew BARNEY | Ashley BICKERTON | Louise BOURGEOIS | Rineke DIJKSTRA | Carroll DUNHAM | Jimmie DURHAM | Gardar Eide EINARSSON | Robert GOBER | Nan GOLDIN | Felix GONZALEZ-TORRES | Douglas GORDON | Thomas HIRSCHHORN | José IRAOLA | Mike KELLEY | Barbara KRUGER | Zoe LEONARD | Sherrie LEVINE | Glenn LIGON | Sarah LUCAS | Ryan MCGUINLEY | Shirin NESHAT | João ONOFRE | Catherine OPIE | Tony OURSLER | Raymond PETTIBON | Jack PIERSON | Richard PRINCE | Thomas RUFF | Julião SARMENTO | Collier SCHORR | Thomas SCHÜTTE | Steven SHEARER | Cindy SHERMAN | Laurie SIMMONS | John STEZAKE | Hiroshi SUGIMOTO | Billy SULLIVAN | Kara WALKER | Sue WILLIAMS | Terry WINTERS | YONAMINE


The Ellipse FOUNDATION Contemporary Art Collection is pleased to announce its new exhibition, Listen Darling… The World is Yours, a selection of works from the Collection, including hitherto unseen works and new acquisitions, by guest curator Lisa Phillips, Director of the New Museum, New York.

Listen Darling… The World is Yours brings together the work of over forty artists who together demonstrate the sweeping changes in the psycho-sexual dynamics of culture over the past thirty years. The exhibition, which revolves around several major works by Louise Bourgeois, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, and Shirin Neshat, among others, looks at how women see women, women see men, men see women and men see men, often through direct confrontation with sexuality and sexual politics. Listen Darling…reveals the strong infiltration of the woman's voice in the art and culture of our time, as well as gay artists whose sexual identity is a deliberate part of their artistic statement.

Frankfurter Kunstverein

http://www.fkv.de

The Frankfurter Kunstverein is a leading German institution in the analysis of contemporary art with an international reputation and is engaged in reaching a broad audience via its exhibitions, lectures and publications.

The Frankfurter Kunstverein's current director, Chus Martínez, has taken a new position starting now. Therefore the board of the Frankfurter Kunstverein is looking for a new, visionary director who can lead the institution from spring 2009, possibly 1st of April. We are looking for someone with a broad, documented experience in German and international contemporary art, and who is known in Europe and abroad as someone with a distinctive approach in the field. Experiences that could be relevant are, for example, work as an art historian, curator or critic. An international network in the visual arts is an important qualification as well.

We are looking for someone with a strong vision of the Frankfurter Kunstverein's programmatic direction and setting for the future. As the director of a flexible and fast-paced workplace, you must be accustomed to management and have excellent social skills:

- You show initiative and have the analytical power and social intelligence to function effectively and comfortably in the complex professional institutional field in Frankfurt am Main.
- You are a strong communicator and have a natural tendency towards cooperation and collaboration.
- You deal easily and naturally with the political, cultural, economic and public relations of the institution as well as with its members, and have concrete strategies for successfully seeking fundraising and sponsoring partnerships, based on practical experience
- You are a persistent, convincing and effective negotiator.

Index the Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation

http://www.indexfoundation.se

A front figure in contemporary art since the 1960s, the Austrian artist VALIE EXPORT has played a pioneering and vital role in the development of performance and feminism and activist strategies as well as conceptual photography and film. Index presents an introductory exhibition of VALIE EXPORT's work which focuses on strategies for self-definition and feminism, including a selection of her films and performative photography.

In 1970 the artist adopted a new artistic identity with the name VALIE EXPORT, always written in capital letters, as an act of self-definition, and thus pointing out an objective which pervades her oeuvre. "Action Pants: Genital Panic", (1969) defines an active femininity which acts both politically and sexually.

In one of her first films, "Selbstportrait mit Kopf" (1966) the artist's face merge together with but also detaches from the image of an expected femininity, here expressed in a classical sculpture of a woman's head. "Mann & Frau & Animal" (1970-73) is an act of sexual self-definition but then also a survey of the relation between image and representation, something that reappears throughout her artistic career, beautifully expressed for instance in her film "Syntagma" (1984). The feature film "Unsichtbare Gegner" (1976), screened at Cinemateket Stockholm in November, is a science fiction with inspiration from Don Siegel's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956) and at the same time a strong and humoristic showdown pointing at the woman's alienation in society. Several elements from "Unsichtbare Gegner" can also be found in the later work "Syntagma". VALIE EXPORT very early on recycled images and sequences from her own production into new works, an artistic strategy that ques tions the traditional idea of the image's authenticity.

PHILIPPE ZUMSTEIN

http://www.lalehjune.com

Philippe Zumstein (b. 1973) lives and works in Geneva. Zumstein has shown at institutions such as Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Chaux-de-Fonds, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, CAN, Kunsthalle Palazzo.

The use of saturated and violent colors, overflowing paint and the deformation of matter are some of the elegant possibilities offered by the work of Philippe Zumstein as a means for breaking away from the canvas as an object. His first paintings, the Fat paintings, contained so much liquid paint beneath their surface that they seemed ready to explode at any moment. His more recent works, the Crash paintings, bear the stigmata of an accident. These works share a formal efficiency and a plastic refinement. 

The artist questions the age we live in through our intimidating fascination for the design object which we sometimes hesitate to handle. He does so by adding a fault to his objects that reveal their fragility. The destiny of the object, condemned to beauty, is here united with the individual's destiny. Below the object's smooth and perfect appearance a chaotic truth lies buried; we cannot disregard it for long. Indeed, everything is destined to vanish but, prior to the final crash, we must create the illusion that this is not so. Customizing our cell phones and cars is not unlike exercising with the goal of maintaining our bodies in shape. 

Mark Moore Gallery

http://www.markmooregallery.com

Mark Moore Gallery is pleased to present new paintings from Belgian artist Cindy Wright. Wright's large-scale portraits and still-lifes embrace oppositions, the distance between which might be crossed in a few steps or might be too blurry to even define. Wright forces her viewer to scrutinize often-unconsidered yet vital minutia; skin, fat, ripples in fabric or internal organs. Yet her claustrophobic focus offers a false intimacy; in order for the images to remain recognizable, the viewer must remain at a distance; upon closer inspection the canvas pleasingly dissolves into a collection of abstract brushstrokes. Paradoxically, despite this painterly presence, her use of photographs as source material strips her works of any tenderness. They retain a detached and sterile quality, their function a clinical observation. Nevertheless Wright's work displays no awkwardness on behalf of these conundrums; rather her canvases are effortless displays of art historical awareness, their solemn beauty at once familiar and disquietingly innovative.

Museum of Contemporary Art Miami

http://www.mocanomi.org

Exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and MOCA at Goldman Warehouse during Art Basel Miami Beach


MOCA, North Miami
The first major museum exhibition by Albanian artist Anri Sala features seven films from the late 1990s to the present including a new film, Answer Me, along with photographs and sculptures that explore a dialogue about the interplay of the works with space and time. Co-organized by the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), Cincinnati and Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Sala's work is presented as one exhibition with two parts designed to resonate with each museum's respective space. 

The installation at MOCA, North Miami addresses the issue of rupture as Sala's films play on a timer. Sala creates an environment in which the visitor's focus is directed toward specific films that engage in dialogue with each other, with the space, and experience of the viewer. Sala includes several drums especially fabricated for the exhibition. Synched with particular films, the drumsticks respond to the low-frequency rhythm of the films' soundtracks, a furtive, yet direct connection between musical instruments and the sound component of a particular narrative. Lighting of the space and drums follow the same sequence Sala has developed for the screenings. As some films end, they completely disappear and different films in other areas of the museum begin. The orientation of the installation is constantly changing, causing viewers to reorient themselves within the space

Anri Sala: Purchase Not By Moonlight is sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and is part of the Museum of Contemporary Art's Knight Exhibition Series. Additional support provided by Starbucks Coffee Company and Monica Kalpakian.

The exhibition is sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and is part of MOCA's Knight Exhibition Series. Additional support provided by the Arts Council Singapore, Office for Contemporary Art Norway and IASPIS.

Au Revoir Simone

Au revoir Simone - Stay Golden

Cornelius

Cornelius - Eyes

B. Fleischmann

B. Fleischmann - Play The Big A

Interdisciplinary art festival

http://www.kunstverein.de

Hamburg is booming, say the city marketing agencies. Hamburg sucks, say a lot of artists. Into this crossfire of interests WIR NENNEN ES HAMBURG (We Call It Hamburg) crashes. The one side wants to draw more attention; the other doesn't want to allow itself to be used as a drawcard for spectacles. This debate is old and new at one and the same time. In the works this debate is not yet apparent. Meike Behm, Yilmaz Dziewior and Corinna Koch from the Kunstverein in Hamburg and Amelie Deuflhard, Nadine Jessen and András Siebold from Kampnagel have done interviews, listened, argued, and now it's being served: WIR NENNEN ES HAMBURG. From 11 October 2008 to 4 January 2009 you can make your own picture, or have it made, of the diversity of artists, choreographers, directors and musicians taking part in the festival. Of course there are still other artists to be discovered -- outside the festival. Our focus is on artistic positions that stand out because of their particul ar interest in interdisciplinary topics and ways of proceeding. On the whole, at WIR NENNEN ES HAMBURG it is not so much individual artists who stand in the foreground, as the attempt to provide insight into present-day cultural production in Hamburg by drawing on more than 250 positions. In doing so, tribute will also be paid to those artists who have played, or are playing, a significant role in the emergence and development of the Hamburg art scene. 

Participating artists: 

Jürgen Albrecht | Moritz Altmann | Monica Antezana | Atelier Goldstein | Nicolas Anatol Baginsky | Katrin Bahrs | Thomas Baldischwyler | Michael Baltzer | Michael Bauch | Arvil Baud | Suse Bauer | Claus Becker | Patrick Bebelaar Stefanie Becker | Achim Beitz | Rolf Bergmeier | Jenny Beyer | Jaakov Blumas | Andreas Bode | Claus Böhmler | Peter Boué | Boy Division | Verena Braun | Heike Breitenfeld | Mariola Brillowska | Thorsten Brinkmann | Antje Bromma | Dani Brown | Thorsten P. Bruch | Ina Bruchlos | Nele Budelmann | Arne Bunk | Boran Burchhardt | Tim Burchardt | Sebastian Burdach | Baldur Burwitz | Werner Büttner | Tatiana Calasans | Patric Catani | Armin Chodzinski | Kyung-Hwa Choi-Ahoi | Lukasz Chrobok | Martin Conrad | Michael Conrads | Stephen Craig | Charlotte Crome | Adelaida Cue Bär | Carola Deye | Die Strolche | Die Vögel | Goesta Diercks | Cordula Ditz | Michael Dörner | Drei Hamburger Frauen | Jürgen von Dückerhoff | Susanne Dupont | Henrik Eiben | Mel usine Eichhorn | Dörte Eißfeldt | Elbipolis Barockorchester | Julia Eltner | Reinhold Engberding | Titus Engel | Juri Englert | Klaus Erichsen | Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg | Fanatically Feminist feat. Lady Bitch Ray | Patrick Farzar | Jeanne Faust | Maria Fisahn | Lili Fischer | Jochen Flinzer | Jens Foerster | Nadja Frank | Frank Spilker Group | F.S.K. | Beate Fuchs | Wolfgang Fütterer | Galerie C&V | Geelke Gaycken | Hartmut Gerbsch | Till Gerhard | Frank Gerritz | Monika Gintersdorfer | Lucia Glass | Sakir Gökcebag | Ari Goldmann | Dorothea Goldschmidt | Tatjana Sarah Greiner | Ole Grönwoldt | Hinrich Gross | Benita Grosser und Imanuel Grosser | Verena Grothe | Annette Grotkamp | Romeo Grünfelder | Almut Grypstra | Katharina Gschwendtner | Anna Gudjónsdóttir | Gudny Gudmundsdottir | Sun Guo | Esther Haase | Karin Haenlein | Ole Henrik Hagen | Christian Hahn | Hajusom! | Egbert Haneke | Daniel Hausig | Peter Heikenwälder | Nele Heitmeyer | Simone Henneken | HGich.T | Bianca Hobusch | Frenzy Höhne | Sylvia Hohlbaum | Annegret Homann | Henrik Hold | Manfred Holtfrerich | Jan Holtmann | Achim Hoops | Alexander Höpfner | Kathrin Horsch | Kimberly Horton | Florian Hüttner | Julia Hummer | Wil van Iersel | Adam Jankowski | Berndt Jasper | Joan As Police Woman | Anna Belle Jöns | K8 Hardy | Kabu Kabu | Volko Kamensky | Zvika Kantor | Naho Kawabe | Stefan Kern | Marte Kiessling | Akane Kimbara | Johnny King | Hector Kirschtal | Knut Klaaßen | Sibylle Klein | Henning Kles | Jan Köchermann | Jonas Kolenc | Kommando Himmelfahrt | Corinna Korth | Armin Krämer | Inge Krause | Frau Kraushaar | Michael Kress | Sylvi Kretzschmar | Klaus Kröger | Lutz Krüger | Martin Krützfeldt | Felix Kubin | Klaus Kumrow | Martin Kunze | Clemencia Labin | Volker Lang | Melody Laverne Bettencourt | Jeong Eun Lee | Jochen Lempert | Christina Lenschow | Uwe Lewitzky | LIGNA | Melissa Logan | Markus Lohmann | Maria Magdalena Ludewig | Frank Lüsing | Peter Lütje | André Lützen | Peter Lynen | Gosia Machon | Royston Maldoom ... 

Museum Morsbroich

http://www.museum-morsbroich.de

Around 500 works in the exhibition including numerous works owned by the artist himself show how since 1989 Gerhard Richter has worked intensively on this body of work that is of great personal importance to him.

The majority of the overpainted photos are created by the artist pulling the photo through the wet paint on the spreading knife using a wiping movement. In this way, he can pick up large quantities of paint that, with a slight movement, lie like amorphous islands, sometimes millimetres thick, on the photographic paper and have the appearance of closed skin; conversely, with a stronger movement, the direction is at the same time visible as a pastose, directional colour gradient.

For his overpainted works, Richter generally uses standard reprints of photographs taken on trips, walks and in his private surroundings. The photos seem – not least because of the predominant format of 10 x 15 cm – as if they were taken from a family album and subsequently artistically processed.

The eye that, in the beginning, was focussed heavily on the photographic motif soon enters into a lively dialogue with the deep spaces, colour correspondences and basic form. "The public scenes, whether on the beach or the ski slope or children's theatre, are beset with sudden surges of colour that tend to resemble interventions of the sky or elemental forces, more than the moods of a decorative or ornamental painter annotation. Sometimes they seem like catastrophic visions. Blood-red snowflakes dance above the white firn. The photo shows skyscrapers in the urban morning sun – and the oil paint adds to the sulphurous fire that pours over the city from the sky – as described by Botho Strauß in the catalogue.

Helsinki Photography Festival 2009

http://www.hpf.fi

Aletheia – Positions in Contemporary Photographies (January 23 - March 22), presented at Meilahti Art Museum, revisits and reexamines fundamental questions regarding photographic practices and the photographic medium – including the very possibility of a medium – and their roles and impact within contemporary culture.

Many concerns regarding photography were put on hold as the shift from silver-halide processes to digital technologies took place, with the then wide-spread estimation that the rules of the game had changed dramatically and that photography would no longer be able to lay any special claims regarding its relationship to the realities it would depict and represent. Yet, acknowledging that the digital shift is final, conclusive and irreversible, it is surprisingly clear that the fundamentals of photography have not always been challenged in the ways imagined at the onslaught of the digital revolution. Photographic media continue to pursue or attempt mimetic persuasion and photography's descriptive or epistemological powers, even when aimed at the imaginary, remain decisive. Not to mention that we are still seduced, alarmed, enticed and moved by photographs. Furthermore, photographic practices insist in very particular yet changing concerns regarding the nature and representation of time, space and memory.

Peggy Guggenheim Collection

http://www.guggenheim-venice.it

In this 60th anniversary year of Peggy Guggenheim's collection in Venice, her museum will host an exhibition dedicated to a major figure in Italian and international art of the mid 20th century: Carlo Cardazzo (1908-1963), a Venetian whose centenary is this year and who shared with Peggy Guggenheim his passion for contemporary art. Carlo Cardazzo. A New Vision for Art, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, 1 November 2008 - 9 February 2009, is the first exhibition to be devoted exclusively to this enterprising, even volcanic figure: patron, publisher, collector, and dealer. Cardazzo, through the multiplicity of his activities, the originality of his way of navigating the art world and his methods of promoting it, reached a new public, in part through his galleries, and in part through novel cultural strategies.

MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main

http://www.mmk-frankfurt.de

"And I saw light in the form of a river blazing with radiance." This is Dante's description of what he perceived as he entered the tenth circle of heaven in paradise. Throughout history, light phenomena have been interpreted as religious visions. What for some is a spiritual accomplishment following hours of seclusion, is explained by others as a physiological reaction following a period of reduced stimulation of the sense of sight. 'Prisoner's cinema' is the term used to refer to the varicoloured play of light which prison inmates – but also pilots and long-distance truck drivers – have reported on. They see it when they gaze into a visually unmodulated and virtually unchanging environment for long stretches at a time. What they are actually experiencing is a phenomenon determined not by the outside world, but by the brain. This is how the brain reacts to an 'undersupply' of visual stimulae. 'Prisoner's cinema' is also presumed to be a scientific explanation for ap paritions.

Melvin Moti's 35mm film The Prisoner's Cinema (2008) forms the core of the solo exhibition When No Means On, which – on view at the MMK Zollamt until 18 January 2009 – presents a number of works never yet shown in Germany. Film is Moti's primary medium. Recently, however, he has begun showing his films in conjunction with works in other media. When No Means On continues this approach. Apart from two films, the exhibition includes photographs, a drawing, a text-based work and an installation in the public realm.

Feist

Feist - Honey Honey