ART NEWS: Nov.03
As a prelude to the 60th Biennale di Venezia, where Julien Creuzet represents France in the French pavilion, the exhibition “Oh téléphone, oracle noir (…)” offers a retrospective look at the extent of his work. It presents itself as a landscape, made collective by placing the artist’s works in dialogue with five other contemporary voices. A plural vision of thought has always accompanied Julien Creuzet’s artistic process: it articulates and nourishes it, carrying within itself the possibility of shaping new languages. From the beginning, Julien Creuzet has integrated the metaphor of the archipelago into his thinking and his plastic work. Among many other references, it draws on the relationship to the non-fixed world of the Martinican thinker Édouard Glissant, for whom dispersion allows people to come together. Phoebe Collings-James, Christina Kimeze, Manuel Mathieu, Bruno Peinado and Chloé Quenum share questions about the politics of bodies in movement, the experience of a plural existence and its rhythms. Their relationship to space appears in turn contested, demanded, or traced in each of the poetic and political forms that their works generously offer. Info: Magasin CNAC (Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Site Bouchayer Viallet 8 esplanade Andry-Farcy, Grenoble Grenoble, France, Duration: 17/11/2023-23/5/2024, http://magasin-cnac.org/
“Self as a Forgotten Monument” is the first museum exhibition by Mame-Diarra Niang and is a survey of the artist’s practice from the past decade, bringing together significant bodies of work in dialogue in a spatial choreography. Niang’s prolific practice is characterised by an exploratory, abstract and subversive approach to lens-based media, such as photography and immersive audio-visual installation. Her work is an act of remembering, through which she resists categorisation and assumptions about geographies and specificities. The title of the exhibition is an invitation for viewers to embrace the artist’s notion of “Plasticity of the Territory,” a concept that forms the foundation of her practice and asserts an inner territory that names life as an experience in and of itself. A monument in Niang’s world registers as a commemorative structure of remembrance, an offering to remind us of a never-ending metamorphosis of the self. It is an inner space odyssey to build a self-portrait in constant mutation. Info: Curators: Storm Janse van Rensburg and Thato Mogotsi, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Silo District, S Arm Road, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa, Duration: 17/11/2023-7/7/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, https://zeitzmocaa.museum/
Leidy Churchman’s new paintings in the exhibition “Heart Drop” address our understanding of the nature of reality through our direct relationship with what lies before our eyes. They invite us into a world of signs and symbols that are both personal and specific, gently encouraging us to drop what we think we know about what’s going on. Like the physical sensation before you jump into a body of water, plummet from a roller coaster, or take off in an airplane, the paintings in Heart Drop put us in the immediate. There’s no room for anything else. The past is gone. The future is uncertain. There is no solid ground beneath our feet. There is only the possibility of the moment. According to the classic Buddhist text the Heart Sutra, this moment, the drop, the take-off, the plummet, itself is empty. Emptiness is not nothingness. It means that every experience, including our own emotions, is impossible to conceive. We call it empty because we can’t explain it. Info: Matthew Marks Gallery, 1062 North Orange Grove, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Duration: 18/11/2023-13/1/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://matthewmarks.com/
John Miller’s exhibition “New Horizon” features paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and photo-based works spanning the 1980s to the present. Comprised of various series from a forty-plus-year career, Miller’s project critiques systems of representation, commodification, and production, of political and libidinal economies and social relations in the public and private space. While an integral part of Miller’s practice since his early career in the 1980s, painting is the genre Miller has consistently challenged, particularly its inherent associations and reception. Whether ironically quoting styles like regionalist painting or social realism, or using generic imagery from postcards, comic books, or reality TV as subject matter – “pictures of pictures” – or making abstract works in a “surrogate” style, intending to evoke a layman’s idea of artistry, Miller remains acutely aware of the implicit culturally-loaded, regressive nature of painting. Hence, he deploys strategies to subvert and destabilize the genre. The current exhibition features an early brown impasto abstract painting, a pedestrian painting, various game show paintings, and new paintings that juxtapose photographic elements with brown impasto forms. Info: Meliksetian | Briggs, 150 Manufacturing Street #214, Dallas, TX, USA, Duration: 18/11/2023-20/1/2024, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 12:00-17:00, www.meliksetianbriggs.com/
Maurizio Pellegrin has divided his exhibition “Myself and I” into two parts: the work entitled “The Others”, composed of more than a hundred portraits of the 18th and 19th centuries, with the inclusion of objects and textiles, in which a human presence appears, although not always immediately declared or perceptible. These works, in a sense, constitute his virtual self-portrait. The first room presents the artist’s reflections on his identity and vision of himself and his personal history. Imaginary self-portraits of Pellegrin’s head shown in profile alternate with depictions of his native city, Venice. These are displayed alongside the eyes and faces of other memories that emerge from drawings and notes from the past. In addition to the portraits, the exhibition presents a number of objects, including “Memories (The Corsets)”, a work created in 2021 that suggests the figures and portraits through the signs of the physical and intimate presence of the body. Info: Curator: Elisabetta Barisoni, Ca’ Pesaro-Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, Santa Croce 2076, Venezia, Venice, Italy, Duration: 24/11/2023-1/1/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-17:00, https://capesaro.visitmuve.it/
“Andante con moto” is the first major solo exhibition Liliana Moro, who was born in Milan, Italy, in 1961. The show spans a period from the early work of the late 1980s to her current output and also includes a number of new pieces developed for the display. From her early beginnings until the present, Liliana Moro has explored different means of expression in her work, including sound, spoken and written language, sculpture, performance, drawing, collage and video. Often her works are based on everyday objects and situations, inviting the audience to glimpse behind the – seemingly – obvious. Each of her artistic gestures demands active participation from the visitors, be it by entering, cowering down or listening. Moro’s practice of sustained listening encourages us to heighten our attention, inviting us to become physically, intellectually and emotionally involved. In this way, listening becomes a shared experience. Originally, Liliana Moro had planned to study scenography; although she later chose painting, her passion for the theatre remained. Her strong affinity for the poet and playwright Samuel Beckett, whose writing forms the basis for many of her works, testifies to this. Info: Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Städtle 32, Vaduz, Liechtenstein, Duration: 19/11/2023-1/4/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-17:00, Thu 10:00-20:00, https://kunstmuseum.li/
Jeff Olsson in his exhibition “Oh No” presents drawings from the last couple of years. In the first room we are introduced to an installation of smaller works and animations together with additions, fragments and texts applied directly on the gallery walls. In the second room a series of larger drawings are presented. In his artistry Jeff Olsson has worked exclusively with drawing since the start. His works are created with charcoal, graphite and dry pastel on paper and have with few exceptions been in black and white. Something ancient and prehistorical about drawing lives on in Olsson’s imagery, even though they are of course contemporary. A poetic and substantive connection to a primitive creation with the coal from a burned-out campfire. The drawings often reminiscent of relics or messages from a time that no longer exists, or that has not yet arrived. They carry an inherent melancholy and despair and seem to be drawn out of necessity rather than pleasure. But in the austerity there is also a childish dark humor and an almost manic desire to tell stories. The pen, stick or piece of charcoal continues an endless journey on the paper. Info: Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Fredsgatan 12, Stockholm, Sweden, Duration: 25/11/2023-27/1/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 12:00-17:00, Sat 12:00-16:00, www.gallerimagnuskarlsson.com/
The “BPA// Exhibition 2023”, features works that second year BPA// participants produced over the course of their working period with the program. The exhibition takes place on two floors of KW’s front house, and allows for the individual positions as well as for cross-references to be explored. The exhibition is accompanied by a set of essays: each artist has invited an author of their choice to reflect on their work. The bundled essays will be on sale in KW’s bookshop. In addition, a public program of tours offers a deeper engagement in the artists’ practices. The partnership between KW Institute for Contemporary Art and BPA// Berlin program for artists began in 2020. BPA// is an artist-led organization, founded in 2016 by Angela Bulloch, Simon Denny and Willem de Rooij. The program is centered around mutual studio visits between participants and mentors. It is punctuated with a range of public events, organized together with both artist-run spaces and renowned institutions. Participation in BPA// lasts two years. It is free of charge and participants receive support to produce new work. Info: Curator: Sofie Krogh Christensen, Assistant Curator: Sophia Yvette Scherer, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststraße 69, Berlin, Germany, Duration: 25/11/2023-7/1/2024, Days & Hours: Mon, Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-19:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.kw-berlin.de/
In her multidisciplinary practice, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan unfolds ways in which memory, identity, and knowledge are shaped by deeply ingrained yet constantly evolving waves of history. The artist often references mythology and theology, as well as specific architectural structures as the foundation for her works, closely observing their genealogies and the ways in which they shift and evolve over time. Through her site specific interventions, sculptures, drawings and films, Büyüktaşcıyan dives into terrestrial imagination by unearthing patterns of selected narratives and timelines that unfold the material memory of unstable spaces. “Resonant Grounds” is conceived as an exhibition in four chapters. In “Defending Ancient Waters,” the artist evokes the transformative effects of water as it moves through a landscape. “A Rehearsal for Changing Skin” explores the region’s spiritual and ancestral connections to water. In “Dendrologia,” curved sections of bark collected from uprooted or diseased trees are suspended in a gentle arc. Mask-like, with furrowed, weathered surfaces, they convey an uncanny resemblance to human and non-human beings. Lastly, “The World’s Fragile Skin” is a stop-motion video presented in parallel to the exhibition. Shards of pottery and weathered glass move across the floor in a flow of geometric patterns. Info: Centre International d’Art et du Paysage, Vassivière Island, 1794 route de l’île, Beaumont-du-Lac, France, Duration: 26/11/2023-10/3/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 14:00-18:00, https://ciapvassiviere.org/home