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Courtesy of Grand Palais

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

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

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

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:

© Alex Israel

© Alex Israel

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

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

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.

© Jorinde Voigt

© Jorinde Voigt

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.

© Aleksandra Domanovic

© Aleksandra Domanovic

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.

© Ugo Rondinone

© Ugo Rondinone

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.

© Alex Israel

© Alex Israel

GALLERY WEEKEND BERLIN
26-28 April 2013

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

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.

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

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.

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

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.

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

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.

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

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.

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

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.

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

© Mustikka

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

Give a warm welcome to PopSchau, the platform created by Ferdinand Prinz, Vito Leccese, and Vincent O. An online video show that allows you to stay on top of contemporary culture, providing an overview of what video content the leading magazines and blogs are publishing about each week. Don’t waste any more time browsing through websites and videos trying to find something worth watching!

Whether on-the-go or during lunch, PopSchau delivers your weekly dose of popular culture merging 10-second previews of the best weekly popular culture video content from leading magazines and blogs into one 2.30- minute video.

The weekly videos are in a news show format (and have an invisible moderator voice) and offer the user the maximum amount of infos about current popular culture in the minimum amount of time. Thumbnails link back to the source of the full video, in case the user has gained the impression of wanting to actually watch the full video. Want to learn more? Check the following links.

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© Carsten Nicolai

An experimental italian music video from the 90ies, Disco Labirinto, started with a scientist saying: “Every musician will use a machine specifically designed to visualize the individual soundtracks…Now try to see the music”. Hangar Bicocca, opened in Milan the cycle of exhibitions presenting Unidisplay, the audiovisual installation by Carsten Nicolai, German artist, musician and leading player in contemporary research on the relantionship between electronic music and images. Unidisplay will then be exhibited in Mmk Frankfurt.

© Carsten Nicolai

Curated by Chiara Bertola and Andrea Lissoni, Unidisplay, is the installation measuring about 40 metres in length, which combines the most important elements of Nicolai’s work: the ability to make sound perceptible on an optical level, minimal aesthetics translated into the monotone use of colour (variations on black and white) and acoustics, and the propensity towards abstraction and the infinite.

© Carsten Nicolai

Thanks to a rigorous approach inspired by the scientific method, the artist has conducted his research – at once cogent and poetic – on the mechanisms of representation, and the procedures and limitations of visual and sound perception. His works involve the physicality of the spectator and the architectural space for which they are conceived, bringing into play the very concepts of time and space.

© Carsten Nicolai

Carsten Nicolai was born in 1965 in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now known as Chemnitz) in former East Germany. A leading figure on Berlin’s creative scene in the Nineties, Nicolai is internationally renowned for his installations and performances, which explore the connections linking vision, sound, architecture, science and technology.

Carsten Nicolai

Mmk Frankfurt  26st january – 05th may 2013

Hangar Bicocca  21st september 2012 – 06th january 2013

Selected by Ingrid Melano

 

© Julião Sarmento

Julião Sarmento is a Portuguese artist and painter. Born in Lisbon, studied painting and architecture at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts. Sarmento has developed a multi-media visual language, combining film, video, sound, painting, sculpture and installations. Sarmento‘s work often deals with issues of complex interpersonal relationships; he has consistently utilized themes such as psychological interaction, sensuality, voyeurism and transgression.

© Julião Sarmento

Sarmento is well known for his thickly impastoed, textured paintings where the paint field forms a ground from which he teases out his imagery in graphite, reversing the traditional basis of painting. His imagery is often partially or fully erased. He then draws on top of the erasure, creating fragmented and layered forms, which evoke disconcerting, mysterious gestures and relationships. Recent paintings no longer focus on line as a representation of female form, but utilize monochrome silhouettes to represent the figures.

© Julião Sarmento

© Julião Sarmento

He has exhibited his work extensively in one-man and group shows. Julião Sarmento represented Portugal at the Venice Biennial in 1997. He has been included in two Documenta. His work is represented in public and private collections worldwide such as: The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland; and the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.

Sean Kelly Gallery


Anichroches, Variations, choral and fugue is a musical voyage, into Espace culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris, at the heart of which are sight and sound, and it is probably one of the best exhibitions of the year.

© Mustikka

We had access to the space through a elevator created by Olafur Eliasson, that lock the visitors into a soft darkness, no lights, no sounds. Then, moving through the exhibition, we discovered works that tackle the domains of sculpture or installation, and at the same time open them to the realm of music. Questioning the close ties between the body of the musician and his instrument, the creations presented there almost all have the ability to be played.

© Mustikka

Laurent Saksik, for instance, takes inspiration from the theremin (one of the earliest electronic musical instruments) to create a structure from which everyone is invited to generate a sound without actually making contact with it. Anri Sala’s offering, meanwhile, requires the presence of a saxophonist who, at appointed times, will initiate a duet with the work on display.

© Mustikka

We really had fun in there and i was impressed about how the visitor discovers through this exhibition –an itinerary that alternates music and silence, action and contemplation. For the duration of the exhibition, in the rotunda, the Espace culturel Louis Vuitton will invite visitors to take part in an unprecedented digital experience on the borders of artistic creation and musical composition.

© Mustikka

Well curated, perfectly organized, in a charming space and with great artists such as Rémy Jacquier, Christina Kubisch, Charlotte Moorman, Thierry Mouillé, Laurent Saksik, Anri Sala, Su-Mei Tse, Stéphane Vigny, this is an exhibition to enjoy in a group, exploring together all the soundscapes suggested by this great curatiorial project.

Espace culturel Louis Vuitton 

Is fashion an art form? It is a big question in the art talks, and i still remember a speech made by Elio Fiorucci few years ago, telling about his experience in the 80ies, at the time when he was hosting art stars like Keith Haring in his flagship store in Milan, performing and creating at the same time great artworks for commercial purposes.

Last month at the contemporary art fair Artissima, in Turin, i was walking around to check the New Entries, and it happened to me to notice a small booth, made by Untitled gallery from NY. Among the work they were presenting, i stopped in front of Chiffon an advertisement that most of us know for the series of disruptive campaigns of the company American Apparel.

Despite being a piece of newspaper, this adv had something different, it was double framed by a wood and a heavy metallic panel (121.9 x 91.4 x 17.8 cm), which meant that at that point the pretty lady in the photo could finally be defined as art. Chiffon actually became art. Together with the photographer who did the picture and the company as well.

The artist’s name is Phil Wagner, and the gallerist Carol Cohen, who was so kind to give me some additional informations wrote me: “After training as a painter, Wagner began making painting-like compositions through assemblage, employing discarded furniture and everyday objects he finds in the streets of Los Angeles”.  Strong of some solo exhibitions at the gallery, is not the first time that Phil Wagner plays with American Apparel advertisements, creating big composition that make the visitor think about where is the border between fashion and art, and why that border has been crossed.

 

NYUntitled

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