ART NEWS: Dec.01

Contemporary art from the trinational region is the focus of the exhibition “Regionale 23” at HEK held in collaboration with numerous institutions. The cross-border project Regionale is unique in its form, with eighteen institutions from three countries (Switzerland, Germany, France) presenting artistic positions from the Basel region as well as northwestern Switzerland, South Baden and Alsace at the end of each year. For the younger generation of artists, performance is a particularly popular art form that is carried out in parallel with visual works. Objects, clothing, wearables, and accessories of all kinds – complemented by digital media – are heterogeneous installation elements that form the backdrops of performances or are the traces of past actions. The artists conceive their works as stages that seem to create a gateway between the real world and the increasingly prevalent virtual social spaces. The use of new media in performance art ultimately reflects the performativity to which digital media itself invites us daily, providing everyone with a stage for constructing roles and chasing dreams of fame and success. With a subtle but smug irony, the artists walk through some of these dreams for us. The exhibition’s installations are activated by the artists’ performances throughout the month of December. Info: Regionale 23, HeK-Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel, Freilager-Platz 9, Münchenstein / Basel, Duration: 26/11/2022-1/1/2023, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 12:00-18:00, www.hek.ch

In 1991, Pierre Dunoyer presented his works on the ground floor of the newly renovated Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in an exhibition with the minimalist name “Paintings”. This was a series of 24 works of identical dimensions dating from 1989, in no particular order, in 4 series taking up each of the 6 primary colors and based on the same repetitive but random principle. This exhibition, the first and, to date, the last one-person exhibition in an institution, revealed him as one of the most original artists on the French art scene, rigorously presenting a synthesis between the most radical forms of current painting and a certain tradition of what he called “painted works”. More than thirty years later, the exhibition “A Retrospective in 14 paintings” takes the form of an authentic retrospective, exhibiting 14 paintings in a deliberately tight, strictly chronological order from 1978 to 2022, in which the artist’s initial formalism, with its large white backgrounds, gives way to a freer approach to the painted surface and a variety of shades. Broad, dynamic, free touches of colour move across the dominant reds, blues or yellows which sometimes inspired the works’ titles. The artist describes them as “painted objects”, or “painted thoughts”, which, with their simple, calming influence “have no other ambition than just to be there”. Info: Curators: Benjamin Couilleaux and Carrie Cunningham, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 11 Avenue du Président Wilson, Paris, France, Duration: 1/12/2022-13/3/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-sun 10:00-18:00, Thu 10:00-21:00, www.mam.paris.fr/

In the group exhibition “Derrière la mémoire” participate three artists who are very different: Martine Bedin, James Siena and Orazio Battaglia. Nothing seems more distant than their practices, their everyday worlds, their biographies, their networks. Yet there is something obvious that this exhibition reveals. Their works touch on what we would like to distinguish behind our memory.Here, the artists seem to be trying to reconnect with our lost perceptions, as if our dreams were a cracked mirror between us and our memory. James Siena’s drawings all seem to be full of a simple but discontinuous structure. A gesture unfolds through repetition in a system that goes beyond their small size. The artist, who claims to be in search of visual algorithms, brings out chance, rhythms and forms from a continuum.  Martine Bedin knows that our memories are built up over time. She deploys drawings in exile, suspended moments, things outside themselves. Orazio Battaglia reconstructs by night the city he travels through by day. Info: Xippas Gallery, Rue des Sablons 6 & Rue du Vieux-Billard 7, Geneva, Switzerland, Duration: 1-23/12/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-13:00 & 14:00-18:30, Sat 12:00-17:00, www.xippas.com/

Τhe Latvian collection of Malmö Konstmuseum was given to the museum as a donation in 1939 and was on permanent display until 1958. The exhibition “The Latvian Collection” presents the collection in its entirety for the first time since the 1950’s alongside eight new commissions by artists who have researched the collection. The exhibition highlights overlooked narratives within the collection and looks at new ways of accessing the historic collection as a moment in time. The exhibition is addressing larger issues pertaining to nationalism and nation state building in the Baltic region at the same time acknowledging the fragility of smaller nation states and how they could act asantidotes to imperialism.
The starting point for the invited artists was to look at the collection and explore ways of thinking beyond nation states. The newly commissioned works will become part of Malmö Konstmuseum’s permanent art collection, emerging as extensions and interpretations of the existing Latvian collection, providing windows into how it was perceived in 2022 for future curators, artists, and visitors. Info: Curators: Inga Lāce and Lotte Løvholm, Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmöhusvägen 6, Malmö, Sweden, Duration: 2/12/2022-16/4/2023, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-17:00, https://malmo.se/

The exhibition “Matter, Non-Matter, Anti-Matter” delves into the significance of digitality and computer-generated environments in the context of the material understanding of art production and the showcasing of it. Through deep engagement with two past landmark exhibitions and their philosophical foundations, the exhibition lends insight into the implications for contemporary curatorial and artistic practices, including their mediation, that arise from the assumption that the digital comprises a material layer. Based on the case studies of “Les Immatériaux” (Centre Pompidou, 1985) and “Iconoclash. Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art” (ZKM, 2002) and within the framework of the practice-based research and international co-operation project “Beyond Matter”. The exhibition presents the digital models of the aforementioned past exhibitions on the newly developed “Immaterial Display” a hardware created specifically for the exploration of virtual exhibitions. Info: ZKM (Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe), Lorenzstr. 19, Karlsruhe, Germany, Duration: 3/12/2022-23/4/2023, Days & Hours: Wed-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat-sun 11:00-18:00, https://zkm.de/

The exhibition “Body and Territory: Art and Borders in Today’s Austria” actualises the questions of national representativity, starting from two dominant tendencies that mark contemporary art in Austria. It focuses on the tradition of radical performance and feminist legacy while giving a voice to those who are silenced—women, queer individuals, immigrants, refugees and migrants. The body and its vulnerability emerged in Austrian art as a dominant topic in the early 20th century; by the late 1960s, it became the main medium of radical forms of political resistance. The subversive performances of Günter Brus occurred in the very convergence of body and territory. The body is also the main medium of feminist advancement into marginal practices represented by VALIE EXPORT, an artist whose works constitute another important framework of this exhibition. Following modified political circumstances and by opening up to the global flux of capital and money, the regime of political borders was replaced by one of economic borders. The territory is inscribed into bodies through new, variable paradigms of identity. Info: Curators: Jasna Jakšić and Radmila Iva Janković, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Av. Dubrovnik 17, Zagreb, Croatia, Duration: 7/12/2022-26/3/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-19:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.msu.hr/

Against the background of her Swiss-Indian-Malaysian biography, Olga Titus illuminates questions of identity and cultural influence. Her images of printed sequins, installations and video works create an engaging cosmos of Bollywood aesthetics, folklore, pop culture and computer game worlds. In her solo exhibition in the Bündner Kunstmuseum, Olga Titus is showing her largest sequin work to date. She prints the shielding sequins on both sides and creates the image composition by running her hand over the sequins and turning them at selected points. The artist describes the tilting of sequins as a painterly gesture and says that the realization of her pictures is never completely finished. Depending on the incidence of light, the play of colors changes, depending on the touch, the sequins are realigned. These works are based on digital collages composed of images from the Internet. Light also plays a central role in a new group of works. On thin metal surfaces, the artist traces the traces of the sun’s reflections, which are reflected on the metal sheet while she is working. With gentle pressure, she imprints the play of light on the sheet. Olga Titus arranges these light embossings as stationary images in space that can be viewed from both sides. Info: Bündner Kunstverein, Bahnhofstrasse 35, Chur, Switzerland, Duration: 11/12/2022-29/1/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-sun 10:00-17:00, Thu 10:00-20:00, https://kunstmuseum.gr.ch/

The exhibition “Dipl.-Ing. Arsitek: German-trained Indonesian Architects from the 1960s” illuminates the lives and work of Indonesians who studied in Germany and graduated in the 1960s with the degree of Diplom-Ingenieur (Dipl.-Ing.) in architecture. After graduation, many of the newly trained architects returned home and became the protagonists of modern Indonesian architecture. Some of them, however, remained in Europe, settling in Germany, Switzerland, or the Netherlands. The exhibition gives an in-depth look into the careers of the selected architects. Historical documents and previously untapped archival materials allow for an intensive examination of the work of these architects against the backdrop of their training in Europe, particularly from Germany. New photographs created for the project by William Sutanto and Moritz Bernoully depict exemplary buildings by the architects in their present-day context and raise questions about the cultural significance and future of architectural modernism in Indonesia and Germany. Info: Curators: Avianti Armand, Sally Below, Moritz Henning, Eduard Kögel, Setiadi Sopandi, Taman Ismail Marzuki –TIM (Jakarta Arts Centre), 8, Jl. Cikini Raya No.73, RT.8/RW.2, Cikini, Kec. Menteng, Kota Jakarta Pusat, Daerah Khusus Ibukota, Jakarta, Indonesia, Duration: 12/12/2022-12/1/2023