ART NEWS: Sept.02

Maki Na Kamura in two exhibitions is presenting her new paintings. In an act of great concentration, she has taken the pressure on her profession to legitimate itself as a problem and come up with a remarkable solution to it. Adapted to meet the current situation, the dream-like (or nightmarish) colorfulness of her palette is how Maki Na Kamura signals that painting must at long last awaken from its slumbers, having now dozed for far too long. She fundamentally aligns painting to mark-making. The marks are the always clearly contoured, flattish color units with their differing structures using which she arranges the overall image. In the form of the mark, Maki Na Kamura invents a strictly ambivalent unit of signification that over and above the six traditional constituents of pictures brings a seventh contemporary one into play, namely the viewers with their ability to associate. She creates a hitherto unknown, virtual representative potential for images by virtue of which painting can resurrect itself using its traditional means. To this end, Maki Na Kamura has assembled an extensive catalog of body marks that, on the one hand, tie the figures she devises back to traditional painting and, on the other, opens them out to contemporary figurative phenomena. Info: Contemporary Fine Arts Galerie GmbH, Grolmanstraße 32/33, Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany, Duration: 16/9-4/11/202, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-14:00, https://cfa-berlin.de/ & Galerie Michael Werner, Hardenbergstr. 9a, Berlin, Germany, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-16:00, https://michaelwerner.de/

Helen Marden presents early works painted in her studio in Hydra, Greece, alongside a new series of paintings that reaffirms her commitment to bold gesture and color in “Agape/Αγάπη”, her first solo exhibition in Athens. To make her new paintings, Marden begins by applying a liquid resin to the canvas. As the medium hardens, she adds powdered pigments, working with improvisational immediacy to paint with pure, saturated hues. Defying the lingering conception that color is a frivolous or secondary concern for artists—women artists in particular—Marden’s daring palette is central to her work. Her vivid compositions are linked by flowing skeins, their sinuous overlapping shapes defined by both clear contours and delicately feathered edges. Incorporated within the surface of selected paintings are objects such as feathers, shells, twigs, and pieces of sea glass—elements from nature that are fragile and tough, vital and transformative. Marden’s paintings are informed by her engagement with contemporary abstraction, her immersion in nature, and her fascination with Greek and other cultural traditions. Since 1971, she has maintained a home in Hydra, and it was here that she resumed painting in earnest following a hiatus in her art making, making a body of work represented in the exhibition by two paintings from 1980. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 22 Anapiron Polemou Street, Athens, Greece, Duration: 21/9-21/10/2023, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 11:00-19:00, https://gagosian.com/

Mario Schifano’s retrospective “TUTTO nelle carte…” aims to shed light on Mario Schifano’s extensive and varied production of works on paper from the 1960s. The exhibition features a selection of works on paper that retraces the best-known cycles that the artist was concurrently also creating on canvas, beginning from the “Monocromi” and ending with “Compagni compagni”. Mario Schifano’s work and journey were intense and never separate. His works on paper represent an important and copious production. The selection on display clearly demonstrates that throughout the decade of the sixties, for Mario Schifano art was TUTTO: art that evolves and revolves around the subject, reality, and a new mindful consciousness in relation to the city, human space, life and emotions. In the same manner as his paintings, the works on paper provide vivid evidence of how everything influenced his way of seeing and thinking: films, signage, advertising, politics, loves and friendships. Nothing escaped his need to capture on a support the moment, the lightning idea or the concept. More so than other artists, he immediately and independently understood how art is life and vice versa. He differentiated himself initially from the American phenomena of pop art and new dada, and then from everyone else for the rest of his career. His artworks on paper are the geographical map of his way of thinking and his practice. Info: Curator: Alberto Salvadori, Gio Marconi, Via Alessandro Tadino, 15, Milan, Italy, Duration: 21/9-1/11/2023, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 11:00-18:00, https://giomarconi.com/

“Channeling” presents new acquisitions alongside other works from the MMK’s collection. Different perspectives may emerge in the space between objects. This space relates to the distance of time between the works’ making and their positioning in the exhibition. “The whole of your body except your hands and feet are over black emptiness. Your feet are on slabs of stone sloping downwards and outwards at an angle of about thirty-five degrees to the horizontal.” Serving as a review and advice for climbing the architecture of Cambridge, England, “The Night Climbers of Cambridge” is a 1937 book published under the pseudonym “Whipplesnaith.” A series of photographs document the practice of a group that went by the same name, comprising anonymous students who climbed college buildings and townhouses in the 1930s. In Un film dramatique (2019), Éric Baudelaire lets schoolchildren in the 6th grade at Collège Dora Maar reflect on and work with film. Over a four-year period, their understanding of the medium develops in parallel with an awareness of their position in society. Living in the “Neuf-Trois” (the 93rd district) of the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, the children, as they negotiate their teenage years, openly address social violence, identity, and power relations. Info: Curators: Julia Eichler and Lukas Flygare, MMK (MUSEUm für Moderne Kunst), Domstraße 10, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Duration: 22/9/2023- , Days & Hours: Tue & Thu-sun 11:00-18:00, Wed 11:00-19:00, www.mmk.art/en/

STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore announceδ its 21st Anniversary celebrations, headlined by a special exhibition titled “21 Years: A Story in Multiple Parts”. The show reflects a rich history rooted in over two decades of artistic collaboration and accomplishments with more than 100 artists from around the world, and looks to a continuing future of innovation and collaboration for its artists and community. With artistic collaborations at the heart of STPI, these works on show are a representation of the expertise, innovation, and experimental dialogues that take place in the Creative Workshop. This process empowers visiting artists of international calibre to push the boundaries of their practice, finding elevated forms of expression through print and papermaking techniques that challenge convention. “21 Years: A Story in Multiple Parts” is a multi-faceted exhibition featuring a selection of over 30 artworks from more than 20 artists, spanning across the early 2000s to the 2020s, including the likes of Do Ho Suh, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Pinaree Sanpitak, the late Ashley Bickerton and Pacita Abad,  pioneer Singapore artists such as Chua Ek Kay and Han Sai Por, and many more. Info: STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, 41 Robertson Quay, Singapore, Duration: 25/9-15/10/2023, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-19:00, Sun 11:00-17:00, www.stpi.com.sg/