installations

Martine Aballéa

16/05/2013

“My New Year’s Eve Toast : to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle – may they never give me peace.” (Patricia Highsmith, Nouvel An, 1947). For her third personal exhibition at Art: Concept, Martine Aballéa presents two new series of photographs mixing landscapes with texts, nature and ghostly worlds. They tell love and crime stories that stand out from luxuriant natural backgrounds or from negative prints of images. At first, nothing exceptional or irrational seems to be going on.

Courtesy of art:concept

A few almost banal places are depicted; forest clearings, undergrowths, the façade of a house… then a sentence, in its simplicity and uniqueness, comes to identify and stigmatize the location, transforming it into a place of transgression or of refuge. Quickly it all swings into action: One sentence has been enough to drag us into a fiction that encourages us to step through the looking glass and enter a place where real life never leads us, and somehow become someone else.

Courtesy of art:concept

Being someone else is Martine Aballéa’s secret pleasure, a weapon that allows her to reshuffle the cards of joy, loneliness or sorrow. Such is the ultimate purpose of her game: To play tricks on the disenchantment and on the depression of life before it annihilates her, cheating on reality before it betrays her. The idea of being someone else, to be able to break the rules of the game without consequences, is often found in Martine Aballéa’s work. During the 1980s she began working on fiction texts, such as the “Romans Partiels”* series in 1982, “Epave du désir”** in 1995 and the “Nouveaux amours / Nouveaux crimes”*** series in 1997.

Courtesy of art:concept

In all these works she carefully develops the narrative link and tells us her very mysterious stories. The latest one is the story of a woman, a woman who represents many other women. Aballéa’s fiction often shelters characters that want to break free from something or someone on a social or on an affective level. In this new photographic series, she represents women who, for a reason or another, have gone all the way, as if the solution to avoid really turning into a psychopath was to invent a malevolent doppelganger for oneself and thus incarnate a woman- killer who represents the universality of relationship-breakdown and what it can entail. The causes are multiple, and Martine Aballéa draws up a non-exhaustive list, to which you can add your own causes. The exhibition almost becomes a sort of illustrated dictionary of love, representing all the comforting and dangerous facets inspired by the feeling.

Courtesy of art:concept

These images remind us of the plots of certain crime novels, such as the ones written by Raymond Chandler or Patricia Highsmith, where bucolic and nature-saturated universes are interspersed with places bathed in cold light such as the settings of the “Ghost Lovers“ series. All these places have been the theatre of painful happenings. Like her series of photographs, Martine Aballéa is a dual person. She can be both luminous and dark. When asked questions that she finds too intimate she becomes a secretive, fragile, restless and suspicious person, curling up into a ball and withdrawing somewhere far from the conversation. But when she starts talking about literature, love or her work, she straightens up, her eyes brighten and her smile returns. She can turn the Museum of Modern Art into an ephemeral hotel, and invent an endless house as homage to Sarah Winchester, peopling it with some of her own ghosts. In her photographs she stage-manages notions of ambivalence, doubt, violence or protectiveness just by subtly playing with light and shadows.

Courtesy of art:concept

Martine Aballéa is a primeval forest that is about to be completely drowned by vegetation. She is the white of negative prints or an invading colour; a mixture of cats, humans, books and sentences, something at once romantic and mystical. Even though her subject is tragedy its treatment remains poetic, offering the sharp sensations of an emotional hypersensitivity coupled with merciless irony and controlled cynicism in a very subtle fictional blend. In the images that are presented at the gallery, a murder has already occurred. The event is a symbol rather than something that has really happened. A man and a woman have played the main roles, the man isn’t there anymore, and the vegetation has quietly reclaimed its rights, erasing all traces of dread and leaving a ghost. As for the woman, she seems to have gone away, elsewhere.

Courtesy of art:concept

Born in 1950 in New york, Martine Aballéa lives and works in Paris. Her work has been shown, among others, by the following institutions: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Musée National d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris; Centre Pompidou Beaubourg, Paris; FNAC, Paris; FRAC Basse Normandie; Bibliothèque National de Paris, Cabinet des Estampes. Expositions (sélection) : La Maison sans fin au CRAC Languedoc en 2012, Musée de l’Abbaye Ste Croix, Les Sables d’Olonne en 2010, Fun House at the Centre National de la Photographie à Paris in 2002, Hôtel Passager, ARC, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1999.

Art: Concept

Selected by Ingrid Melano

Gilberto Zorio

07/05/2013

artists, contemporary art, cult, exhibitions, galleries, installations, invitations, sculpture

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After the retrospective exhibition at MAMbo, curated in 2009 by Gianfranco Maraniello, Lia Rumma Gallery is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of the artist Gilberto Zorio in the Milan space of Via Stilicone. The exhibition will develop over the three floors of the gallery, in an alternation of light and dark. Gilberto Zorio works with the space in dealing with “issues” ranging from the experience, confrontation, and the unknown.

Courtesy of MAMbo

In the great hall of the ground floor, the exhibition opens with a Star Tower building of gasbeton blocks star-shaped. The star, since ancient times, is a guiding instrument and symbol of desire. The tips of the Tower will extend and will propagate in the space in a radial pattern, in a clockwise direction. The interior of the tower will be partially visible and you will see the net luminescence caused by the sudden darkness.

Courtesy of MAMbo

Across the room will appear alchemical signs that are not normally visible. The ladles are sedans used to transport hand crucibles containing molten bronze, glowing, ready to be cast in the form of sculpture-valve in the negative forms. They usually play the role of instruments manufacturing the sculpture, but in the case of the exhibition of Zorio turn working to become themselves works of art.

Courtesy of MAMbo

On the first floor, the exhibition continues with another Star Tower, in the space of sunlight, the construction propagates in the outdoor area, along the terrace, while the work Luci 1968 attempt to compete with the glow of the sun, however, ready to illuminate itself and the darkness to come. On the second floor, obscured, there will be pyrex containers, containers of rubber, visible signs and interventions through the use of materials-recurring clots in the work of Zorio.

Courtesy of MAMbo

The luminescence and discharge, sparks Tesla, will be given to the three floors. Light, Darkness and explorations are related issues like the elements that indicate sedans, the star, chemical reactions, the energies. They are energies that are told.

Courtesy of MAMbo

Gilberto Zorio was born in 1944 in Andorno Micca, Biella. Lives and works in Turin. The protagonist of the movement formed in the mid-sixties in Italy, called Arte Povera, Gilberto Zorio from ’67 to now, in addition to exhibitions in private galleries, has exhibited in numerous solo shows at public exhibition spaces such as the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne (’76 ), the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (’79), the Pinacoteca di Ravenna (’82), the Venice Biennale (’78, ’80, ’86, ’95, ’97), the Kunstverein in Stuttgart (’85) , the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (’86), the Tel Aviv Museum and the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (’87), Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art (’88), the Museu Serralves in Porto (90), the IVAM in Valencia (’91), the Centre for Contemporary Art Pecci, Documenta in Kassel and the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain in Nice (’92) , Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea di Trento (’96), the Dia Center for the Arts in New York (2001), Le Creux de l’Enfer Centre d’Art Contemporain in Thiers and the Institut Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt (2005 ), the Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes (2008), Mambo in Bologna (2009), the CGAC of Santiago de Compostela (2010), the MACRO in Rome (2010).

Lia Rumma

MAMbo

Selected by Ingrid Melano

Dynamo – A century of light and movement 1913-2013

29/04/2013

artists, contemporary art, exhibitions, installations, mixed media

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Courtesy of Grand Palais

Following the style of the exhibition Soleil Froid at Palais de Tokyo, in the 4000 m2 area of Grand Palais, Paris, the exhibition Dynamo reveals how, over the last fifteen years, many artists have explored the notions of vision, space, light, structure and movement in their work, often encouraging visitors to take an active role in their installations: notable examples include the changing chromatic atmospheres of Olafur Eliasson and Ann Veronica Janssens, the vibrating structures and kaleidoscopic mirrors of Jeppe Hein and Anish Kapoor, and the in situ creations of Felice Varini.

Courtesy of Grand Palais

About the exhibition the editors of Le Monde wrote: “This circle is it a circle or a square? Where are the top and bottom? This vacuum is it deep or narrow? I saw? What did I see? Beyond this exhibition there is the desire to disrupt perception and make people aware viewers of the fragility of their convictions and their perception – and of their psychic system.

Courtesy of Grand Palais

The exhibition juxtaposes disruptive devices where it is often necessary to interact with. But the aim is also to provide the genealogy of these artists. Or reconcile these two requirements is difficult, precisely because of the intensity of the proposed experiments. Sensory impact and scholarly analysis does not necessarily go together. We therefore recommend to visit twice the Grand Palais”.

Grand Palais

Le Monde

BERLIN Gallery Weekend 26-28 April 2013

10/04/2013

artist collectives, artists, contemporary art, culture, events, exhibitions, galleries, installations, mixed media, paintings, photography, project space, sculpture, vernissages, video art

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Don’t miss Berlin Gallery Weekend, on 26-28 April, 51 galleries will present a comprehensive overview of current trends in the art market. Participating galleries and artists:

Galerie Guido W. Baudach ? Thilo Heinzmann: In the current space on Savignyplatz and in the future space in the Tagesspiegel-Hochhaus on Potsdamer Strasse, Galerie Guido W. Baudach will present a seventh solo exhibition with new work by Thilo Heinzmann. For almost twenty years, Thilo Heinzmann has been dedicated to the development of new compositional possibilities within the broad field of painting.

Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie ? Oscar Murillo: Mainly textile work, but also mixed-media installations will be on display in the new project space on Bülowstrasse and in a bunker on Lützowstrasse. Oskar Murillo?s works reveal an often political statement, addressing issues of social class, economy and industrial production through material and working practices.

BQ ? Alexandra Bircken: In her sculptures, the artist combines textile fragments with things found in nature, hand-made objects and items with an industrial origin, establishing a relationship between biological processes, industrial production and technology. Parallel during the exhibition period, an installation by the artist will be on display in the pavillion of the Volksbühne on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.

Galerie Buchholz ? Tomma Abts: The British artist will show a group of new images and large-format drawings.

Buchmann Galerie ? Bettina Pousttchi: Following the photo installation ?Framework? for the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in 2012, here another extensive photographic work is the focus. Since 2008, Bettina Pousttchi has been photographing public clocks in different cities. The body of work will be finished at the end of 2013 when shots from 24 time zones together depict a ?photographic world clock?.

Capitain Petzel ? Maria Lassnig: Since the beginning of her artistic practice in the 1940s, with her painting and drawing the Austrian artist has been concerned almost exclusively with the visualization of internal bodily sensations. Maria Lassnig, born in 1919, has gained widespread international attention, in particular with her participation in the 1980 Venice Biennial and documenta in 1982 and 1997. Capitain Petzel will mainly show paintings and drawings directly from the artist?s studio.

Carlier | Gebauer ? Michel François: In this solo exhibition by Michel François ?Pieces of Evidence?, new objects are mounted as in an evidence room with the exhibition space as the setting. Independent of medium or material, with François objects become sculptures from which he draws inspiration for his photographs, videos, installations, performances and curatorial projects. Kirsi Mikkola / Jessica Rankin: In addition to the work from Michel François, works from Jessica Rankin can be seen in the project room and from Kirsi Mikkola in the showroom.

Galerie Mehdi Chouakri ? Hans-Peter Feldmann:
Hans-Peter Feldmann?s latest work was inspired by a booth still under construction at Art Basel. In the projection of a spotlight on an empty wall he saw an artwork in itself. In keeping with his penchant for the ?unhinging? of exhibition formats or his fascination with the everyday, Feldmann lets oblong flecks of light fall on blue- and green-painted gallery walls ? along with picture hooks. Significantly, the artist refers in this way to moments of the art market.

Circus ? Özlem Altin: In her multi-layered collages and installations, Özlem Altin combines found images with her own photographs, paintings and sculptural works. Her solo exhibition ?Cathartic Ballet? revolves around the representation of subjectivity and the simultaneous manifestation of presence and absence. The associative image-semantics that emerge paint a lyrical psychological portrait of inner states and the external constraints of human existence.

Contemporary Fine Arts ? Thomas Kiesewetter: Open vistas and compact volume, largesse and detailed precision, light forms and heavy metal ? the sculptures of Thomas Kiesewetter subsist on dissonance. /Markus Bacher: His work oscillates between representation and abstraction. Figurative or landscape associations are possible but not challenged. The many-leveled meaning is secondary to the scenic effect.

Galerie Crone ? Jerszy Seymour: Like a time capsule, ?The Universe Wants to Play? places people at the beginning and end of the world. Everyday materials in the here-and-now, at once primordial and futuristic. Here one struggles against demons, loves the future and clamors for the present. ?The Universe Wants to Play? peoples one?s own mind and one?s own planet.

Croy Nielsen ? Mandla Reuter

Galerie Eigen+Art ? Carsten Nicolai: Carsten Nicolai?s installation, ?crt mgn? plays with neon tubes transferring light to a picture tube while magnets allow for color shifts and distortions in shape, facilitating a potentially endless archive of images. / Jürgen Mayer H.: On lab premises, Jürgen Mayer H. will show a specially-developed room installation of sculpture and wall painting, as well as a selection of drawings, objects, collages and photographs.

Jan Dibbets

Konrad Fischer Galerie ? Jan Dibbets: For the first time in Germany, Konrad Fischer Galerie will show large-format works from the series ?New Color Studies 1976/2012?. Based on negatives from the 1970s, Dibbets harnesses the technical possibilities of the dramatic enlargement of old subjects.

Galerie Cinzia Friedlaender ? Martha Jungwirth: In the exhibtion ?Pädagogisch Wertlos?, work from the late 1980s and early 1990s showing her abstract figurative style will be on display. During her almost half-century-long artistic career, the painter deliberately left no categorizations.

Michael Fuchs Galerie ? Silvia Gertsch & Xerxes Ach: The exhibition ?Silent Moments/Cosmic Light? presents the artist position of Silva Gertsch and Xerxes Ach. Silvia Gertsch?s glass paintings are filled with late summer light photons. She creates an impression, an aesthetic underlaid by a particular sensibility; this is reflected further in the work of Xerxes Achs. The aesthetics are expressed through sensual color experiences.

Gerhardsen Gerner ? Dirk Stewen: In his exhibition ?Paper Sir?, Dirk Stewen integrates photographis into each of the works. They are painted over, turned into negatives and surrounded by abstractions. He thereby exploits his own production, within which the exhibited works are merely points of concentration.

Galerie Michael Haas ? John Isaacs: In his work, the British artist combines conceptual gestures with compositional possibilities, materials and forms of sculpture. Isaac?s work is often located between authentic monumentality and subtle gesticulation; some are brought together in a work in such a way that completely unanticipated form-resonances emerge. / Nicole Bianchet: Large-format wooden panels as well as works made out of paper and torn cardboard will be exhibited ? rationally focussed and obsessed, while also intuitive and emotional.

Galerie Max Hetzler ? Toby Ziegler: All paintings and sculptures in this exhibition, ?Borderine Something?, reference excerpts from Flemish and Spanish still lifes; enlarged, discolored, transformed by computer or by hand, they become studies through which the artist plays with the subject as well as with the ambivalence between abstraction and figuration.

Courtesy of Tate London

Johnen Galerie ? Hans-Peter Feldmann: Presented as the focus in ?Kunstausstellung? are images and objects from different sources, mostly from 19th and early 20th century painting. Feldmann continues to draw on the history of image production in all its cultural broadness, from high-art to technical mass production, from children?s books to photographs and postcards. With often humorous interventions, he is able to present the artwork in a contemporary context.

Galerie Kamm ? Christoph Meier: Christoph Meier?s works often emerge as a reaction to something pre-existing, making use of its rational and reactive power, traversing it through several states, all the while underscoring the process with cynicism and dark humor. His sculptures are manipulated, sprayed or simply treated by hand, whereby their previous form, in contrast to the tradition of classical, ancient sculpture, shifts.

Klosterfelde ? Jorinde Voigt: The exhibition ?9 Times Philosophy? presents a new group of drawings based on various philosophical and literary texts. In her drawings, Voigt allows the viewers to participate in her personal process of appropration and her attempts at understanding the texts. The artist condenses what?s been read into notes and abstract surfaces, which become placeholders for her internal images.

Johann König ? Monica Bonvicini: In the showrooms on Dessauer Straße, Johann König presents the exhibition ?Disegni? by Monica Bonvicini, who is new to the gallery?s program. Using a variety of drawings, it offers an overview of Bonvicini?s work over the last decade. / Alicja Kwade: In the former church of St. Agnes ? before its conversion into a gallery ?Johann König will show Alicja Kwade?s light and sound installation, ?Nach Osten? based on the principle of Foucault?s pendulum.

KOW Berlin ? Michael E. Smith: With his sculptures, images and videos, the Detroit artist portrays the tortured American soul in the early years of the 21st century as an array of ruinous bodies: As a traumatic existence in a paralyzed system that surpresses and denies its vulnerability with violence.

Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler ? Avery Singer: Figures and narratives in paint and text are the focus of Avery Singer?s work. Influenced by the formal terms of these media, she has explored the potential of culture industry subjects and images and has shaped these into new, idealized forms.

Tanya Leighton Gallery ? Aleksandra Domanovic: Her work is focused on the dissemination and reception of images and information, in particular those that effect a shift in meaning and changing entryways in which varying contexts and relationships are touched upon.

Meyer Riegger ? Eva Kotátková: The Czech artist focuses her drawings, collages, sculptures, installations and perfomances on the possible ways of perceiving the self. In her work, she attempts to materialize the feeling of mental restriction triggered by our external world through institutional regulations, educational processes and communication conventions.

Moeller Fine Art ? Lyonel Feininger + T. Lux Feininger: The two complementary exhibitions, ?Lyonel Feininger: Drawn from Nature, Carved in Wood? and ?T. Lux Feininger: Sixty Years of Painting? will show sketches, woodcuts, wood carvings and paintings from father and son, reflecting almost a century of artistic development.

Nature Morte Berlin ? AA Bronson & Michael Bühler-Rose: Referencing the tradition of hispanic ?Botanicas? ? religious and magical supply stores ? in America, both the artists AA Bronson and Michael Bühler-Rose play with the idea of the artist as a shaman/priest, the mystical transfiguration of artistic creation, ritual objects, magical supplies, and spiritual consumer behavior.

Galerie Neu ? Jana Euler: Jana Euler?s work will be presented in the gallery?s exhibition rooms. In her painting practice the artist focuses ? in a figurative as well as abstract way ? on the impact of different channels of communication on her social fabric. / Nick Mauss: In the MD72 space, Nick Mauss?s work will be on display, with a broad, mixed lot of varying media that, in their volume, autarchically bring the exhibition room into proportion, generating the simultanaeity of different modes.

Neugerriemschneider ? Isa Genzken: Genzken will show her extensive installation ?Ohne Titel (2007)? from Skulptur Projekte Münster 07. At the time, it was publically installed in front of the Überwasserkirche. /Billy Childish: In a temporary exhibition space on Münzstraße in Berlin-Mitte, there will be paintings from Billy Childish, outlining his complex universe of personal and literary references. / Michel Majerus: The Michael Majerus Estate has invited Charles Asprey to assemble a work presentation of the artist in the onetime atelier and present location of the artist?s estate on Knaackstraße in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg.

Galerie Nordenhake ? Esko Männikkö & Pekka Turunen: Exhibited will be a photoessay by the two Finnish photographers with the title ?Pemoht?, produced between 1989 and 1995 as a testimony to post-Soviet living conditions. They document a bleak, destroyed landscape and severe pollution with serious damage to the ecosystem.

Peres Projects Berlin ? Alex Israel: In a work specially developed for the exhibition entitled ?Self-Portraits? Israel draws on a series of self portaits that he designed as a logo for his project ?As it LAys?, produced by Warner Brothers in glassfiber in different color variations. The artist, originally from Los Angeles, invariably refers to the Hollywood system in the production of his work, and here grapples with the entertainment industry in the city.

Galeria Plan B ? Ciprian Muresan: In this solo exhibition, the Romanian artist will show, among other things, a video work about the borders between harmony and chaos in overlapping acclaimed works, as well as a sculpture out of 50,000 stapled posters printed with the drawing of an empty plastic bag. An X-Ray of a painting by British artist Tom Chamberlain stands as a counterpart to the stapled posters. Reveals it.

Galerija Gregor Podnar ? Goran Petercol: Since 1975, Petercol has occupied himself with the study and and positioning of transcendental objects within processes that are derived from the conceptual art and analytical painting of the 1970s. At the same time, Petercol is working on the recontextualization of the interaction between the viewer and the artwork.

PSM ? Ariel Reichman: For Gallery Weekend Berlin, PSM will be opening its new exhibition space on Köpenicker Strasse. Beginning with an homage to Felix Gonzalez Torres, the Israeli artist Ariel Reichman will show his minimalistic solo presentation, ?Dear Felix, I am sorry but we are just too scared to fly?, which deals with the attention of the viewer.

Aurel Scheibler ? Curt Stenvert: ?Vorstoß ins Niemandsland? is a film by the Austrian filmaker, painter, sculptor and object artist Stenvert (1920 ? 1992). In Stenvert?s work ? along with the references to literature as a constant leitmotif ? there are also elements of past movements, in which personal beliefs reverberate and the concerns of Dada and Surrealism are integrated.

Esther Schipper ? Ugo Rondinone: In the exhibition, Rondinone takes on the concept of timelessness: On the the floor of the gallery, wooden floorboards are laid, the windows are whited over. On the floor there are 59 small horse sculptures that were first formed by hand in clay and then cast in bronze. Parallel, in the ?Studio Space?, there will be a solo presentation by Ceal Floyer with the extensive installation ?Untitled (Dotted Line)?.

Galerie Micky Schubert ? Daniel Sinsel

Galerie Thomas Schulte ? Alice Aycock: At the center of the American sculptor Alice Aycock?s exhibition is the sculpture ?Super Twister II?, belonging to a group of sculptural assemblages visualizaing the power of wind within her oeuvre. / Franka Hörnschemeyer: In the corner room the gallery there will be a site-specific kinetic installation by Franka Hörnschemeyer.

Sommer & Kohl ? Paul McDevitt: The title of the exhibition, ?A Life Without Shame?, refers to Adam Smith?s seminal text on global capitalism, originating in the Scottish town of Kirkcaldy. In the recent years ? hit hard by the recession ? McDevitt photographed there the showcases of vacant shops, among other things. These photographs are the basis for a new group of paintings on display at the exhibition. Also exhibited will be a second set of works consisting of the drawings from the ongoing series ?Notes to Self?.

Sprüth Magers Berlin ? George Condo: In addition to eight large-format paintings created in 2012, there will be five bronze sculptures from the same year in the George Condo exhibition. / Joseph Kosuth: From Joseph Kosuth, there will be a retrospective of neon works from 1960 to the present. / Richard Artschwager: Richard Artschwager?s exhibition will focus on a current series of portraits that will be shown next to the sculpture ?Exclamation Point (Orange)? from 2010.

Supportico Lopez ? Henri Chopin: The exhibition will show the manuscript ?La Crevette Amoureuse? (1967/1975) by the French avant garde poet Henri Chopin (1922-2008), unprinted until 1994 and only once shown in the group show ?Ecstatic Alphabet?, curated by Laura Hopman, at the MoMA in New York.

Galerie Barbara Thumm ? Anna K.E.: ?Two Whores in the Same Dress? is a multi-media installation at the center of which are two correlated sculptures presented simultaneously as space of interpretation and interactive podium. These objects, so typical for Anna K.E., are constructions defining the private, intimate spaces as well as public space, testifying to a yearning for intimacy. They point to the contrast between private and public actions.

Sassa Trülzsch ? Roswitha Hecke: The exhibition ?Irene? will show vintage prints by Roswitha Hecke from the time of the creation of the book by the same name. In 1978 the photobook was published for the first time under the title ?Liebes Leben?. It is the portrait of a Zurich artist muse and prostitute Irene. / Erik Steinbrecher: Following the recently concluded exhibition at the Kunstbibliothek Berlin, the Swiss conceptual artist has continued his ambulatory practice with new, hybrid sculptures. In two specific locations in the gallery, in the deserted stairwell and in the garden, male commentary will arise.

VW (Veneklasen/Werner) ? Peter Saul: ?Neptune and the Octopus Painter? features new large-scale works on canvas and a selection of recent works on paper, a body of work created during the past two years. Drawing as much on the imagery of Walt Disney as on traditions of classical painting, Saul’s recent works again look to genres of history and self-portraiture, dissecting to humorous, gruesome and deliberately offensive effect, a range of subjects and attitudes.

Galerie Barbara Weiss ? Ay?e Erkmen: At the center of the exhibition ?Wesenzug? there will be a yellow-white scuplture out of acrylic ? a remake of her first exploration of acrylic as a medium. In addition, more yellow and white acrylic works will be installed in the space. With the works, existing forms and uses of materials in architecture and design will be questioned on the value of usefulness and uselessness.

Wentrup ? Nevin Aladag (solo): The artist will show works in the media of sculpture, photography and film. Together the work is an inquiry into the social fabric of society and the interpretative view of the observer. / ?Traces of Life? (group show): This group exhibition shows various positions of international artists dealing with the visible and invisible traces of life. In the works, they reflect the partially fragile but also overwhelming key moments in the creative process.

Kunsthandel Wolfgang Werner ? Medardo Rosso & Gotthard Graubner: Twelve of the extremely rare sculptures of the Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso (1858?1928), celebrated by his contemporaries as the ?sculptor of light? will be placed in dialogue with drawings from the last 40 years by Gotthard Graubner.

Wien Lukatsch ? Hans-Peter Feldmann: In ?Bücher | Books?, the exuberant work of Hans-Peter Feldmann?s books will be extensively exhibited. From the ?Bilder?, grey booklets with printed stamps and offset print from photographs, to ?Zeitserien?, folders with original photographs pasted to card from the 70s and on to numerous books with pasted photographs and magazine projects.

Zak | Branicka ? VALIE EXPORT: The exhibition ?Bilder der Berührung? is concerned with the work of the artist finding expression in touch and implications of touch in various media including installation, drawing, photography, video and archived material. As a key figure in contemporary art since the seventies, VALIE EXPORT has played a deciding role in the development of performance art, feminism, and action art, as well as conceptual photography and film.

GALLERY WEEKEND BERLIN
26-28 April 2013

The Spring Exhibition 2013 Charlottenborg Kunsthal

03/04/2013

art projects, artists, awards, contemporary art, exhibitions, installations, sculpture, video art, young audiences

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Charlottenborg is an amazing multilevel exhibition space in the heart of Copenhagen. The exhibition building, which also holds The Danish Art Library, underwent significant restoration in the late 1970s and was renamed Kunsthal Charlottenborg in 2007.

The Spring Exhibition is an open submission exhibition that has long been one of the highlights of the annual programme at Charlottenborg. In 2013 the show features 74 participants from around the world, including many from Denmark and Northern Europe, as well as others from countries such as Chile, Australia and the USA.

Among the participating artists there seems to be a special interest in exploring the impacts of globalization on human beings and societies, not just by way of international interaction and transaction – including outsourcing, global trading networks, international warfare and transgressive crime – but also through the way we as a global public mirror ourselves in the media, and in the physical space in which we move. As such, you will find several politically and philosophically founded works in the exhibition, just as many of the exhibiting artists have based their work on phenomenological studies of the way a given medium affects the message it communicates – which ideology it is colored by.

The Jury primarily sees the Spring Exhibition as a showcase for new trends and talents. Therefore, it should not be tightly curated, but rather be shaped by its constitutive parts: the selected works, which are all of high quality and which offer exciting insights into the world and the arts. Among the artists’ works I liked more: Jakob Michael Birn DE 1976, Mika Katarina Friis DK, 1983, Kiyoshi Yamamoto JPN, 1983, Marco Pando PER, 1973, Axel Straschnoy FI, 1978, Margrethe Odgaard DK, 1978.

A special thanks goes to Maria Kamilla Larsen

Charlottenborg Kunsthal

Selected by Ingrid Melano

Nikolaj Kunsthal – Copenhagen

03/04/2013

art projects, artist collectives, artists, contemporary art, cult, exhibitions, installations, mixed media, music, performances, project space

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St. Nicholas Church in Copenhagen was built in the early 1200s, but almost everything was lost during the Great Fire of Copenhagen in 1795. The congregation and priest wanted the church to be rebuilt, but with state bankruptcy following in the wake of the Napoleonic wars other buildings had higher priority. The parish was dissolved in 1805, and the congregation moved to neighbouring parishes. This marked the end of St. Nicholas’ life as a church.

Since 1957, when Knud Petersen opened his art library, the building has played a significant role in contemporary art. During the 1960s a whole series of key avant-garde manifestations took place here, including some of the first Fluxus concerts in 1962. During the 1970s the Danish Visual Artists’ Union was affiliated with the building, and in 1981 Copenhagen Council’s Exhibition Hall – Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center today – was opened.

Two permanent installations are to be absolutely visited: The Jukebox which contains a comprehensive collection of sound works, among these sound poetry, electronic music, microtonality, avant-garde music and sound works by visual artists who took part to Fluxus happenings and performances . These are sounds which are rarely heard – one is more likely to hear about them.

The idea of the jukebox dates back to the 1960′s, when Fluxus organizer Knud Pedersen put up a jukebox in order to make the sound experiments of this period available to the audience. The jukebox expressed an eager longing for the computer. Art should be brought to the people, and what could be more obvious than using a jukebox to do so?
Introducing the jukebox – an object commonly known from pubs and bars – into an art centre was also a project which was totally in keeping with the Dadaist spirit. This was related to developments within avant-garde art in which objects belonging to everyday life were incorporated into works of art.

Today, Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, has further developed the idea of the jukebox and has classified the more than 20 hours of recordings into various categories. One of these is Historical Voices, in which it is possible to listen to epochal artists such as Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Tristan Tzara, F.T. Marinetti and Joseph Beuys. Another category is Fluxus which documents how this movement worked with sound art.

The Crying Space by Eric Andersen, 1994 contains various objects and effects which can stimulate the visitors’ need to cry. Apart from the nine crying stones, made especially out of Verona marble shaped as elliptical stones, each with two indentations for tears, there are a pair of scissors, some needles, feathers – and an onion waiting to be chopped. Furthermore, there is an accompanying sound picture made of recordings of professional mourners. Crying always contains a substance and leaves traces. The minerals of the tears will influence the crystals of the marble when they fall on the stones. The elliptically shaped crying stones may therefore change their structures because of the visitors’ tears. This may be seen as an extension of Eric Andersen’s whole experimental artistic practice in which the inclusion of an active audience plays an important part.

Tears and crying are the pivotal points and the theme of the installation to be found in the green room. According to the artist, tears are the only human means of communication which cannot be decoded right away. Tears indicate that something important is happening but not what or how. Tears can thus be shed because of anger, pain, sorrow, surprise, confusion, remembrance, love, joy, consensus, the wind or for no reason at all. In The Crying Space the guests are invited inside to shed their tears together and in public. And, according to the artist, there is plenty to cry over in a culture where crying has long since become taboo.

Nikolaj Kunsthal

Copenhagen Fluxus Archive

Re-made // Re-used

12/03/2013

art projects, contemporary art, exhibitions, installations, project space, sculpture, vernissages

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Have a look at the first exhibition of this year at REH Kunst. The group exhibition Re-Made // Re-Used traces the transformation from trash, everyday articles, or industrial materials to art work. The shown works are all created from materials or objects which were originally made for another purpose or existed in an art-unrelated context. The exhibited artworks are less Ready-Mades in the sense of Duchamp, but rather Re-Mades – artifacts taken from their origin context and completely reconstructed by the artists.

The participating artists show different approaches and positions in regard to the motif of reutilization. Often the artists draw on their immediate surroundings and incorporate elements of their everyday reality, with the accessibility of materials making out a not unimportant aspect. Among the applied artistic strategies are the re-contextualization of used or thrown-away items as well as the aestheticizing reinterpretation of everyday objects.

The exhibition space itself – the GDR Raumerweiterungshalle (REH, literally, space-extending building) – is a construction originally made for another purpose and context, which is now being re-used as an art and project space. REH refers to a modular architectonic system whose individual elements can be telescopically extended to form a multi-functional space that remains transportable despite its solid roof, floor, and walls. The REH was a part of everyday life in East Germany and long helped shape its architectural landscape.

In the summer of 2011, Valeska Hageney founded REH Kunst in the Kopenhagener Strasse in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg as a space for art and experiments. In the last one and a half years, she has organized and curated several exhibitions there. Since January 2013, Marie Arleth Skov and Laura Haaber Ihle have joined Valeska Hageney to run the program contents of REH Kunst. RE-MADE // RE-USED is the first jointly curated exhibition by the new team.

REH Kunst

India – ZegnArt Public

10/03/2013

art projects, collaborations, contemporary art, exhibitions, fashion, installations

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Untitled (Cobweb / Crossings) by Reena Kallat (Delhi, 1973), the first work of public art in collaboration with Dr. Bhau Daji Lad City Museum City, was presented in Mumbai. The project is the result of a special commission by the Ermenegildo Zegna Group as part of ZegnArt Public / India. The Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum of Mumbai is the oldest museum in the city whose collections document the applied arts and everyday life in Mumbai in the nineteenth century. Under the guidance of its director, the museum has opened its doors to contemporary art with an ambitious and far-sighted program that involves Indian artists. The institution was chosen based on a common vision of art as a factor for development and awareness-building of the entire community. The artwork by Reena Kallat - produced entirely by the Ermenegildo Zegna Group and scheduled to be donated to the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum – has been officially inaugurated on Saturday, March 2, and will remain on exhibit until Wednesday, March 15, 2013.

The artwork consists of a large installation which is located on one side of the Museum: ‘Untitled (Cobweb/Crossings)’ is an oversized web formed with hundreds of rubber-stamps, each one bearing the colonial name of a city street that has now been replaced by an indigenous one. The work weaves a story of past and present. Through the recovery of the memory of one of the aspects of the process of decolonization, the renaming of cities and other locations to regional or Indian names from their anglicized British ones, it forms a palimpsest onto which generations re-inscribe stories. “A cobweb is evocative of time,” explains Reena Kallat. “And just as a room is left vacant, stories that are not visited gather cobwebs that appear to hold dust from the past.” This particular location of the installation makes it accessible not only to museum visitors but to anyone passing along the road, which is well-traveled given that it leads to the museum as well as the city zoo. It’s a work of art for the city; one that speaks of the history of Mumbai and invites the public to reflect upon the theme of identity.

Alongside the work of Reena Kallat, in one of the newly designed pavilions that the museum has decided to dedicate exclusively to contemporary arts, will be the exhibit (drawings, maquettes, renderings …) created by Alwar Balasubramaniam, Atul Bhalla, Sakshi Gupta, Reena Kallat, Srivanasa Prasad, Gigi Scaria and Hema Upadhyay, the seven artists invited to submit projects for ZegnArt Public. The exhibition offers an overview of the proposals on public art designed by the best Indian creative talent. The entire ZegnArt Public project was created by Cecilia Canziani and Simone Menegoi, and curated together with Andrea Zegna, who is the coordinator. The team collaborates from time to time with the curator of the cultural institutional partner in every phase of the project.

The selection process entailed several stages, the first of which required that the curatorial team – composed of Cecilia Canziani, Simone Menegoi and Andrea Zegna – to make a series of research visits in collaboration with the director of the museum, Tasneem Mehta. At the end of the comprehensive survey within the territory, which was conducted alongside the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, seven artists were invited to submit a proposal for artwork specifically designed for the project. The jury, which included Gildo and Anna Zegna, on behalf of Ermenegildo Zegna Group; Tasneem Zacharia Mehta, Jyotindra Jain and Minal Bajaj on behalf of the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum and Andrea Zegna, project coordinator, identified Reena Kallat as the winner among three finalists, based on the following motivation: “The work responds fully to the spirit of the commission: it favors and privileges the relationship with the public space, both from a formal point of view, as the work is meant to be exposed on the main facade of the museum, and in terms of content, having as its theme the history of colonial and post colonial life within the city of Mumbai…”

The partnership between the Zegna Group and the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum has been set up as a new and innovative model of public-private collaboration that, in India in particular, is being established for the first time. “An experience that - in the words of Tasneem Mehta - will remain as an established track that facilitates the opening of new frontiers and new high-profile collaborations.”

ZegnArt Public / India is the first episode of a long-term program that calls for the annual activation, in an emerging country, of a dual path: the onsite construction of a work of public art commissioned from an artist in mid-career from within the host country and created in collaboration with a local institution of international profile; the financing of a residency offered to a young artist from the host country who is invited to spend a research period in Italy. Public operates as a format based on the principle of dialog and reciprocal exchange. Through the ideal combination between the commissioning of a public artwork and a residency program, Public was conceived with a three-year operational calendar, in which India is the protagonist of the next episode, followed by Turkey (September 2013) and Brazil (2014).

ZegnArt

Mumbai, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum

Asymmetry

07/03/2013

contemporary art, exhibitions, installations, music, sculpture, video art

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It is still possible to see, until May 2013, the first comprehensive solo exhibition in the Netherlands by the Rotterdam-Berlin based Spanish/Icelandic artists Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson. Their survey exhibition in TENT gathers video-based, installation, sound and sculptural projects from the last decade. The presentation is curated by Adam Budak. A three-part symposium has been organised to accompanying the exhibition (9 February, 13 March, 17 April) and is concluded with the publication and distribution of a newspaper.

The multimedia and interventionist work of Castro and Ólafsson can be considered as an on- going investigation into the way in which life, society, and the individual are influenced by socio- economic, cultural, and political factors. Asymmetry is a guiding principle in Castro and Ólafsson‘s work. They address injustice and inequality, and portray the rejected subject as well as the authoritative subject. On their journeys, the artists’ research into the workings of inequality attempts to decipher laws on the distribution of power. In a quest for a universal vocabulary their installations bring together texts, languages, and traditions. Asymmetry is a 10 year overview of their past installations, video works, photographs and objects.

‘ThE riGHt tO RighT’ launched during the 7th Liverpool Biennial in 2012. A monumental neon sign reads alternately ThE riGHt tO RighT and ThE riGHt tO WrOnG, thus questioning the essence of the (human) right itself, its habit and rhetoric as well as its ownership and belonging. ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ blur as if producing yet another paradigm of political behaviour, discipline and ethics. Castro and Ólafsson’s neonwork is a provocative gesture which points out paradoxes of law and freedom. The project’s Liverpool iteration is accompanied by a free newspaper ‘ThE riGHt tO RighT/WrOnG which features an essay by British writer and philosopher Nina Power, who, in a dialogue with the artists, comments upon the current global political upheaval by deconstructing a ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ and replacing it with a philosophy of wrong and its brand new manifesto – ‘The Partial Declaration of Human Wrongs’.

Alongside the exhibition is a three-part symposium with a film program related to the port of Rotterdam. The symposium concludes with the publication and national distribution of a newspaper (printed and digital) to accompany this new episode of ‘ThE riGHt tO RighT’ project. The symposium reflects on important themes in the artists’ work. The speakers will discuss legal issues, protest, and unequal power relations. The first part of the symposium will be held on 9 February with a lecture by philosopher Nina Power followed by a roundtable discussion with curator Adam Budak and the artists. In her lecture, Power addresses the contemporary.

TENT

MATRIX A trip in Generative art with crystals, flakes and galaxies

26/02/2013

artists, contemporary art, cult, culture, drawings, exhibitions, installations, interviews, magazines, video art, young audiences

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Donatien Aubert is the prodigious talent of ENSAPC, the National HigherSchool of Arts of Paris-Cergy. His practice is developed from digital tools: CAD Computer Aided Design, animation, rendered three-dimensional models, computer programs at large. From this, he creates new works: interactive installations, sculptures, videos, photos.

Avid reader of contemporary authors about converging technologies (nanotechnology, genetic engineering, information technology and cognitive technologies), such asJeremy Rifkin and Francis Fukuyama, he structures his original researches in epistemology, logic, art of memory, science fiction, speculative philosophy, ethics and ecology.

The thesis offered by various futurists, like the transhumanist Raymond Kurzweil, that humanity, through the above-mentioned technologies, could decide about its evolutionseems more and more plausible. Changing our empathetic nature, our need for recognitionwould change our ethics and could therefore destabilize the political systems in which we live.

Let’s start from the general rendering of the research you did last year, what was it about?

I focused on fractal structures, auto generative systems and, more generally, on matrices. Fractals were studied because they are effective mathematical tools to describe a large amount of natural phenomena: in meteorology, to explain the formation of clouds; in molecular biology, to explain how the translation of DNA allows the formation of complex iterative structures inside the body such as the pulmonary alveoli, or the formation of synapses in the brain; in astrophysics to describe the formation of spiral galaxies. The study of the emergent properties of these systems needed the production of matrices to classify their features and simulate their interactions, to understand how simple elements, taken separately, can produce complex systems by associations…

Check the full interview I did in Paris for Horst&Edeltraut

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Archive

installations

Martine Aballéa

Gilberto Zorio

Dynamo – A century of light and movement 1913-2013

BERLIN Gallery Weekend 26-28 April 2013

The Spring Exhibition 2013 Charlottenborg Kunsthal

Nikolaj Kunsthal – Copenhagen

Re-made // Re-used

India – ZegnArt Public

Asymmetry

MATRIX A trip in Generative art with crystals, flakes and galaxies

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