MIRAGES XLII
November is usually full of exhibitions and Art Fair, since it is the most dynamic month of the art year. The Art Fairs are continuing: in Turin-Artissima (3-5/11/17), in Abu Dhabi the Abu Dhabi Art (8-11/11/17) and finally in Paris after FIAC 2017 we are waiting for Paris Photo 2017 (9-12/11/17).
Let’s not forget that this month is dedicated to photography, so alongside Paris Photo 2017, a selection of Seydou Keïta’s black & white portraits of the residents of Bamako is on exhibition at Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris. His photographs eloquently portray Bamako society during its era of transition from a cosmopolitan French colony to an independent capital of Mali. Ali Kazma, who works with lens-based media, all aver the world and investigates situations, places and structures relating to man’s ability to transform the world. His works raise fundamental questions about human activity in economic, industrial, scientific, medical, social, and artistic spheres. Each video outlines a different facet of his on-going study of the ways in which our contemporary world changes, constituting an immense archive on the human condition. His solo exhibition is on presentation at Jeu de Paume, Paris.
The inaugurations at the Gallery and the Museums this month extend from Sydney and Beijing to Seoul, Turin and New York. We distinguished some of the most interesting exhibitions and recommend them to you: like Pipilotti Rists solo exhibition, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney. As one of the first generation of artists to grow up with televisions in their living rooms, Rist’s work references the history of new media, with her early videos presented on monitors and her recent works projected across ceilings, floors and walls,
On the other hand, Yayoi Kusama, who always surprises us even through the reworking of her Polka Dots, presents two “Mirror Rooms”, a selection of new “Infinity Nets” paintings and new large-scale flower sculptures; on two concurrent exhibitions on view across three gallery spaces of David Zwirner in New York. Agnes Martin and Richard Tuttle first met in the early ‘60s at Betty Parsons Gallery in New York and remained close friends until Martin’s death in 2004. For the exhibition “Crossing Lines” Richard Tuttle created new artworks in response to, and installed among seven grey paintings by Agnes Martin, at Pace Gallery in New York. At Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli is on presentation the exhibition “Paranormal. Tony Oursler vs Gustavo Rol”, a collection that includes works by Tony Oursler and a selection of objects belonging to his large collection revolving around the occult, alongside the works in the city collections by the painter and psychic Gustavo Rol, active in Turin in the latter half of the 20th Century. While Chiharu Shiota travels in “Direction” is guiding us to her labyrinthine world at KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, in Bergen. The starting points for the majority of her installations are collections of used everyday objects that act as expressions of human acts. Complex networks of yarn are interlaced around and between the objects, linking their inherent narratives and creating a new visual plane, as if painting in mid-air, to explore the relationship between living and dying and to access memories found within these objects.
Architecture extends from tributes to Great Architects such as: Wang Shu (4/11/1963- ) and Rem Koolhaas (17/11/1944-) to books-monographs dedicated to their work like the monographs: Shigeru Ban ‘’Complete Works 1985-2010’’ and Zaha Hadid ‘’Building The Future’’ both by Taschen Publications.
As for the artists that characterize the month through the Column Traces, they are few but extremely important: Richard Serra, (2/11/1939- ), Mimmo Rotella (7/10/1918-8/1/2006 ), George Maciunas (8/11/31-9/5/1978), Arman (17/11/1928-22/10/2005), Luciano Fabro (20/11/36-22/7/2007), Felix Gonzalez-Torres (26/11/1957-9/1/1996), and Marina Abramović, (30/11/46- ).
Good Month
Efi Michalarou
7/11/17