ART NEWS:March 04

The gates of ART PARIS ART FAIR 2016 will open at Grand Palais in Paris on 31/3/16. The 2016 edition of the Fair is focused in exploring the different regions of Europe and its cities, each with their own individual identities such as Zurich, Munich and Milan. The 2016 Guest of Honour is South Korea with Guest Curator: Sang-A Chun, Art Paris highlights the wealth of the art scene from South Korea, with close to 80 artists represented by galleries both from Korean Galleries and 20 Western galleries, this project spans the emergence of very specific forms of Contemporary art in the 1960s to the present day boom in creativity. Info: Art Paris Art Fair 2016,Artistic Director: Guillaume Piens, Guest Curator: Sang-A Chun, Grand Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill, Paris, Days & Hours: Wed 30/3/16 Preview (by invitation only), Thu 31/3/16 11:30-20:00, Fri 1/4/16 11:30-21:00, Sat 2/4/16 11:30-20:00, Sun 3/4/16 11:30-19:00, Entrance fee: Adults and children over age 10: €25, Students and groups of 10 or more: €12, Free admission for children under age 10, http://www.artparis.com/en

In his solo exhibition “The Life Sized Black (a Porsche for RH)”,  Jonathan Monk revisits and reinterprets works from contemporary art with a mixture of wit, ingenuity and irreverence, appropriating and reorganising elements from a vast collection of images in a manner that is ironic but may also contain autobiographical allusions. Monk considers the written concept for his works as of equal importance to the physical realisations themselves, much as Sol LeWitt conceived the instructions for his wall drawings. The iconic Porsche car, the fact that it may have belonged to a famous artist, and the effect of breaking its image down into pixels all create an ironic context which explores the contrast between the immediate accessibility of its image and its ungraspable deconstruction. The original function of representation is thus lost. The artist’s initial material has been narrowed down, shrunk to the impasse of the pixels. Info: Blondeau & Cie, 5 rue de la Muse, Geneva, Duration: 17/3-30/4/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 14:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-19:00,  www.blondeau.ch

The nucleus of the exhibition “Tomi Ungerer: INCOGNITO”, is formed by Tomi Ungerer’s collages and some drawings from the last 15 years, which are complemented by important pieces from earlier periods and a selection of the artist’s small-scale objects and sculptures. This important aspect of Ungerer’s oeuvre is being showcased for the first time on the basis of 160 works straddling 60 years, reveals how some subjects, such as wartime experiences in Alsace, particularly occupied Ungerer in the first years of his career. Other motifs drawn from the artist’s desires and even nightmares appear again and again. A major recurring theme is the body, fragmented, vulnerable, fetish and object of desire. Info: Museum Folkwang, Museumsplatz 1, Essen, Duration: 18/3-6/5/16, Days & Hours: Tue, Wed & Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, Thu-Fri 10:00-20:00, www.museum-folkwang.de

The exhibition “A Sense of History” focuses on positions in video art, which draft alternative narratives to established history and reflect past and present by including historical events and personal experiences. In a variety of works from the exhibition private and public images, photographs, documentary footage, sequences from classic movies and family shots are combined into new narratives in order to allow alternative perspectives on historical phenomena, to construct spaces of remembrance and forms of personal appropriation of history and to make its associated subjectivisation understandable. The exhibition ranges from Eduardo Paolozzi’s black and white film “History of Nothing” (1960-62), to the new production by the Kurdish-Turkish artist Halil Altındere “Escape from Hell” (2016), hence over five decades of critical reception of history in video art. Info: Curators: Marius Babias & Kathrin Becker, Nordstern Videokunstzentrum, Nordsternplatz 1, Gelsenkirchen, Duration: 19/3-12/12/16, Days & Hours: Daily 11:00-18:00, www.nordsternturm.de

Are we now really living in an environment that is completely dominated by human influences? This widely conducted discussion recognisably raises awareness for nature and the forces behind its manifestations, as well as for the consequences of our actions on the environment. The exhibition’s title “The Forces behind the Forms: Geology, Matter, Process in Contemporary Art” features 12 artists who occupy themselves with nature’s formational forces. The exhibition motivically follows a path through the natural environment. The exhibition, however, is not concerned with the mere illustration of natural phenomena; the artists instead employ the transformational potential of materials in order to also make inroads into social and spiritual dimensions. Info: Curator: Magdalena Holzhey, Museums Haus Lange and Haus Esters, Wilhelmshofallee 91-97, Krefeld, Duration 20/3-31/7/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-17:00, www.kunstmuseenkrefeld.de

The exhibition “Enigma – Portuguese Art in the Berardo Collection” brings together works that they share an awareness of an issue transversal in the arts: the enigma as both core element and radical uncertainty. The enigma with which they operate lies in their refusal to affirm a self-evident meaning. It draws an indiscernible that inhabits its core and establishes within the visible an interval of assumptions that threatens the integrity of the visuality of the work. Another array of raised issues consists in the exposure of thought to the unknown. Visibility and thought or invisibility and the unthinkable, constitute that uncertainty. This exhibition aims to present the moment of uncertainty at the core of artistic work as a fundamental element of art against its own instrumentation. Info: Curator: Pedro Lapa, Museu Coleção Berardo, Praça do Império, Lisbon, Duration: 23/3-25/9/16, Days & Hours: Mon-Sun 10:00-19:00, http://en.museuberardo.pt

The year is 2052. The museums are threatened with extinction and art is disappearing from society. In this scenario, more than 80 key works Centre Pompidou, the Tate and the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, are united in a temporary transnational museum. The exhibition “An Imagined Museum”, was inspired by Ray Bradbury’s science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, which was published in 1953. In that story Bradbury visualizes a future in which works of literature have been banned from society. The only means of preserving them for later generations is to commit them to memory. The exhibition takes visitors to a future in which the artworks on display face imminent destruction. In nine thematic sections, it illuminates specific qualities and processes inherent to art and finally concludes with an homage to the enigmatic and unexplainable aspects of art. Info: Curators: Francesco Manacorda, Darren Pih, Lauren Barnes, Peter G orschlüter,Hélène Guenin & Alexandra Müller, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, MMK 2, Taunustor , Frankfurt, Duration: 24/3-3/9/16, Days & Hours: Tue & Thu-Sun 10:00-18:00, Wed 10:00-20:00, http://mmk-frankfurt.de

“Light Boiled Like Liquid Soap” is a series of newly commissioned works by Wilfrid Almendra. Fogo Island Arts presents the artist’s first solo exhibition in Canada, an immersive installation featuring sculpture, radio transmission and a series of objects that morph painting and drawing in a play of transparency. Combining found and repurposed materials, the works on view attest to notions of desire, circulation and flux, from protective spaces of retreat to global economies of exchange. His work draws upon architectural influences found in the shapes and surfaces around us. Almendra brings together diverse sources and materials to create sculptures that reference the practices of hobbyists, cite the designs of major architects of the Modern era, and question social class divisions, labour and alternative economies. Info: Curators: Alexandra McIntosh & Nicolaus Schafhausen, Fogo Island Gallery, 210 Main Street, Joe Batt’s Arm, Newfoundland and Labrador, Duration 25/3-9/10/16, http://fogoislandarts.ca

“D’un objet à l’autre”, is an in situ project by Alexandre David that works across conventional boundaries of architecture, sculpture and wall adornment. The exhibition features four plywood objects produced with very subtle differences. In many ways these objects function in the same terms as the walls themselves, however they also perform as images on the wall. The simplicity of form, attention to shadow and light are akin to a minimalist approach to painting that ultimately produces a series of “monumental” sculptures. In “Opaque Architectures”, Jaime Angelopoulos assembles an exhibition of works on paper and sculptures that gesture towards the artist’s personal narratives through processes of abstraction. Angelopoulos draws from a number of sources including mythology, pop culture, current events and our contemporary social climate. These references are simultaneously concealed and disclosed by extension of the artist’s subjectivity. Info: Parisian Laundry, 3550 St-Antoine West, Montreal, Duration: 25/3-23/4/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00, www.parisianlaundry.com

“Riddle of the Burial Grounds” brings together artworks that measure themselves against geological and human time. They are artworks that give speculative forms and images to periods, epochs and eras: vast, unknowable expanses of time that help us to look outside of ourselves and the worlds we inhabit and, in so doing, attempt to stretch the possibilities of human imagination. Artists have situated works in or around various unique subjects: man-made ruins and extraordinary natural phenomena; excavated sites and empty-bellied mines, language and its limits; burial, ritual, forecasting, futures and radioactivity, raw material, the language of forms, wastelands and wildernesses. Info: Tessa Giblin, Extra City Kunsthal, Eikelstraat 31, Antwerp, Duration: 26/3-17/7/16, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 13:00-18:00,  http://extracitykunsthal.org

Started in 1997 as a project that worked on imaginary orders, Extrastruggle sharply but subtly takes on the criticism of the culture of everyday life through direct references to the political and popular. The exhibition “I Only Did What I Was Told To Do”, consists of the artist’s most recent sculptures and installations and takes a journey towards subservience, setting off from the inseparable relationship between women and punishment, to the archaic books in which the first laws of cruelty were written, and to the notion of debt that enslaves people. The artist comments on the global issues as well as the local ones with his idiosyncratic artistic language. Info: Galeri Zilberman, İstiklal Cad. Mısır Apt. No:163, Beyoğlu, Istanbul, Duratrion: 26/3-7/5/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-19:30, Sat 12:00-19:00, www.galerizilberman.com

In a long collaboration, in works that move between documentary, video art and performance, the internationally-recognized Lebanese artist couple Rabih Mroué and Lina Majdalanie has developed a quite specific language. By blurring the borders between the real and the fictional, their performances, “non-academic lectures” and installations constantly circle around current political events and questions of representation. The retrospective “Outside the Image Inside Us”, presents a selection of their previous works: from the beginnings, to Mroué’s collaborations with Hito Steyerl, to the present day. Alongside the moving performance “Riding on a Cloud” (2013), their most recent work “Ode to Joy” (2015) will be shown in Berlin for the first time. Info: Hebbel am Ufer (HAU), HAU1: Stresemannstr. 29, HAU2: Hallesches Ufer 32 , HAU3: Tempelhofer Ufer 10, Berlin, Duration: 30/3-3/4/16, http://english.hebbel-am-ufer.de

Three solo exhibitions consisting of all-new works take place at Arter. “Flow Through” takes as its departure point Bahar Yürükoğlu’s experiences during her travels to the Arctic Circle in 2015.In this exhibition, the artist creates fictional spaces based on the dualities she observed in the Arctic region through light, colour and sound. Blurring the boundaries between presence and absence, past and future, nature and civilisation, cyclical movements and inevitable transformations, the exhibition test the viewer’s perceptive capacities, and demand that the dichotomy between the subject and the object is set aside. Murat Akagündüz’s exhibition “Vertigo” presents a series of white on white oil paintings depicting some of world’s highest mountain peaks as seen on Google Earth, and explores the transformation of the human-nature relationship within the landscape tradition. Şener Özmen’s exhibition “Unfiltered” tackles the concept of “recognition,” and expands into the artist’s individual “demands and desires” which arise following the process of being recognised. Exploring the position of the artists who have been associated with a fixed social identity, the exhibition is structured around platforms that allude to a vernacular architectural wooden form used in hot climates to spend summer nights outdoors. In the exhibition, these pieces function as planes for revisiting desires and creating new memories. Info: Curators: Duygu Demir (Flow Through), Aslı Seven (Vertigo), Süreyyya Evren (Unfiltered), ARTER – space for art, İstiklal Caddesi No: 211, Beyoğlu, İstanbul, Duration: 30/3-15/5/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Thu 11:00-19:00, Fri-Sun 12:00-20:00, www.arter.org.tr