ART NEWS: April 03

With “Images [and Talking Back to Them]” the artist and filmmaker Sara Eliassen presents a film installation in the lower exhibition hall and a program at Kunstnernes Hus Cinema. The project deals with image politics and the media’s role as active agent in the production of collective memories, and is based on many years of research and dialogue with artists and thinkers between Norway and Mexico. Realised as a multiscreen installation, the exhibition brings together films of dialogues recorded over several years, on the road to, or location of sites inscribed with the history of systemic violence, and its distorted representations: Guided by journalist Sergio Ocampo, Eliassen visits stations on the journey taken by 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal school before their fatal disappearance in 2014, an incident shrouded in government cover-up propaganda. She talks with women from Disidencias y Mujeres Organizadas FFyL at the UNAM university in Mexico City where feminist activists protest femicide, sexist abuse, and its normalisation in the media. Together with journalist Heriberto Paredes, Eliassen travels to rural towns in Michoacán and speaks with locals who form armed groups to fight cartel domination, and land grabs by global mining corporations. Info: Curator: Silja Espolin Johnson, Kunstnernes Hus, Wergelandsveien 17, Oslo, Norway, Duration: 14/4-14/5/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-17:00, Thu 11:00-19:00, https://kunstnerneshus.no/

In “Mirrorland”, Thomas Broomé further develops his characteristic visual language where he uses letters, signs and words in repetition across the image surfaces. A personal and distinctive form of calligram that Broomé has explored for nearly twenty years. From the early black and white drawings, the works have become increasingly complex and multidimensional. Thomas Broomé began the work with “Mirrorland” in the first half of 2020, at a time when much of what we took for granted and ideas we lived by were put to rest. The core of the exhibition is a new series of paintings where Broomé has worked with a multi-layered imagery. The painting technique mimics how the human eye registers what we see. The first layer is painted softly and realistically in grey scale, as how we perceive light and dark with the help the rod cells in our eyes. The colours enters in the second layer, where Broomé starts from the red, blue and green captured by the cone cells. These two layers form what we can call the visible reality. The third and final layer of the paintings are letters, where the words are written repetitively on the objects. Info: Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Fredsgatan 12, Stockholm, Sweden, Duration: 15/4-20/5/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 12:00-17:00, Sat 12:00-16:00, www.gallerimagnuskarlsson.com/

The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive (JGPACA) holds a unique collection of artefacts and archival material, which has at its core the interest of Pan-African cinema and its relationship with Black British cinema and culture. The exhibition “PerAnkh – The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive” is structured around a programme of feature films, shorts, documentaries and television programmes by celebrated filmmakers including Timité Bassori, Safi Faye, Gaston Kaboré, Sarah Maldoror, Djibril Diop Mambéty and Ousmane Sembène, and is complemented by a series of intergenerational panel discussions bringing together local and international practitioners. An Archive Studio and Reading Room within the exhibition enables direct public engagement with the collection. The exhibition also includes an installation of the earliest audio-visual works by the Black Audio Film Collective, “Expeditions 1 – Signs of Empire” and “Expeditions 2 – Images of Nationality” (1983–84), and a new work by Chimurenga, a collective of researchers and artists from Cape Town, South Africa, which charts the development of the JGPACA. Info: Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 15/4-4/6/2023, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.ravenrow.org/

Claire Trotignon’s solo exhibition “Italian Ice cream in the wind” features a collection of unique collages, drawings, and sculptures. Through her drawings and installations, the artist skillfully builds upon paper to seek out and draw in space. Shattering linear narration and traditional perspective, Trotignon implements the collision of heterogeneous elements by expanding upon the delicate streak and scoring of recomposed fragments, giving rise to new spatio-temporal horizons. Indeed, the amalgamation of heterogeneity and multitudinal sources conceive a prismatic image. Thus playing on relativistic, anachronistic parameters, the artist reaches equilibrium through her vacant drawings as the very space she defines remains in reserve. Combining landscapes, buildings, and cartography, a form of ruin can be perceived within her work, becoming both a symbol of loss and a reading in reserve of our reality. Ruin appears frequently in Claire Trotignon’s creation; it is a conflicting concept existing between its physical materiality and the immateriality that it implies. A perfect equilibrium amidst void, desolation, and disruption. Much like Alain Schnapp’s depiction, one can interpret the ruin she portrays as a constant movement, a cyclic form whose aim is to return to nature. It is a question of perceiving it as a dynamic rather than an opposition, it can then be a flow, a line, a drawing. Info: La Patinoire Royale | Galerie Valérie Bach, rue Veydt 15, Brussels, Belgium, Duration: 20/4-27/5/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11L00-19:00, Sat 11:00-18:00, www.prvbgallery.com/

The exhibition “Five Decades +” feature sculptures made between 1960 and 2011, providing an in-depth look at the John Chamberlain’s oeuvre. Showcasing sculptures created over a fifty-year period, the exhibition aims to illuminate the themes and techniques that remained central to the artist’s lifelong practice. Drawn from prominent private collections and museums, the iconic sculptures are not organized chronologically. Rather, by interweaving works from various periods, the exhibition celebrates the unwavering commitment to innovation and experimentation that defines Chamberlain’s enduring legacy in the canon of American sculpture. Chamberlain first gained recognition for his abstract sculptures made entirely from crushed automotive steel in the early 1960s. Constructed from vibrantly lacquered sheet metal and reflective chrome bumpers, these sculptures possessed a unique dynamism and distinct architectural formula for form and color. Chamberlain would famously muse, “it’s all in the fit,” referring to the intuitive and improvisational manner with which he would arrange each piece, until the composition was just right. Info: Mnuchin Gallery, 45 East 78 street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 21/4-10/6/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.mnuchingallery.com/  

The exhibition “Fast of Words” includes twenty new sculptures and a group of related drawings by Ron Nagle. The sculptures, each no larger than six-and-a-half inches in any dimension, are made by hand in the artist’s San Francisco studio using a combination of traditional mediums, such as porcelain and ceramic, and more contemporary materials, like catalyzed polyurethane and epoxy resin. Nagle has spoken of the “immediacy” of clay, while critics have noted the wealth of “beguiling effects” offered by his less conventional materials. Color is as important as form for Nagle, who has often described his sculptures as three-dimensional paintings. Like still lives or miniature stage sets, the works evoke both landscapes and interiors. As Nagle has said, “they’ve got sort of this inside/outside quality. I always like the mystery of looking inside something in this kind of intimate observation, where you can see what’s going on, but then there’s also something beyond.” Info: Matthew Marks Gallery, 1062 North Orange Grove, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Duration: 21/4-10/6/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, matthewmarks.com/

Spanning the full range of his practice, the exhibition “Smaller Than The Sky” represents a major showing of Sean Scully’s outdoor sculptures, including several new works. Ranging in scale from small maquettes to monumental open structures in steel, works on view will include Stacks made of sandstone, wood, glass and marble. His sculptures are extensions of his painting practice, constructed by stacking and assembling sensuous materials in a process similar to that with which he builds the rich surfaces of his paintings. Lines, stripes and grids combine colour and material to respond to particular locations, sensations and memories, bringing emotion back into the vocabulary of geometric abstraction. Many of Sean Scully’s sculptures are made with recycled or locally sourced materials, including a new “Wall of Light” constructed from limestone local to Houghton Hall, connecting his work to the surrounding landscape. The exhibition will also include a selection of paintings and works on paper made over the past few years but with key reference to works from earlier in Scully’s career.  These will be displayed in the grand rooms of the house and in the North Colonnade and in the Contemporary Gallery. Info: Curator: Sean Rainbird, Houghton Hall, King’s Lynn, Norfolk, United Kingdom, Duration: 23/4-29/10/2023, Days & Hours: look here, www.houghtonhall.com/