ART NEWS:June 01
“Monday”, Camille Henrot’s exhibition at Fondazione Memmo takes inspiration from the first and most disorderly of the week’s days. At its heart are a series of bronzes that hover between the figurative and abstract, a cast of allegorical characters embodying the emotional and intellectual states particular to the beginning of the week. Derelitta, inspired by the painting ascribed to Botticelli, is either unable or unwilling to leave her bed; an athlete stands alone on a podium, defeated; a melancholic dissolves into tears while waiting for a text message that will never come; a fickle figure stands caught between states, inconstant like the moon from which Monday takes its name. Info: Fondazione Memmo, 56B Via della Fontanella di Borghese, Rome, Duration: 12/5-6/11/16, Days & Hours: Wed-Mon 12:00-19:00, www.fondazionememmo.it
Nina Yuen’s solo exhibition “Narcissus”, features two new films and a series of photographs that poetically and intimately explore universal themes of time, death, and beauty. Yuen’s signature assemblages combine spoken monologue, music, and montage to create a fictionalized narrative of her personal memories in a compellingly dreamlike alternate reality. Through a series of obsessive calculations and rearrangements, the film “Raymond” chronicles the simultaneous aging of the artist and her father, and their parallel understanding that as her father ages and dies, Yuen will grow and outlive him. Info: Jane Lombard Gallery, 518 West 19th Street, New York, Duration: 19/5-24/6/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-18:00, www.janelombardgallery.com
“Routine Pleasures” brings together artists working in a variety of media to explore “the termite tendency”, a concept introduced by artist and film critic Manny Farber in his 1962 essay “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art”. The exhibition takes its title from the film Routine Pleasures (1986) by director Jean-Pierre Gorin. His film intermingles two parallel tracks: one, his gradual infiltration of a model railroaders club, and the other, a meditation on the writings and still life paintings of Manny Farber. The film itself embodies the termite tendency described by Farber, a “buglike immersion in a small area without point or aim, and, over all, concentration on nailing down one moment without glamorizing it…” Info: MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Schindler House, 835 North Kings Road, West Hollywood, Duration: 25/5-14/8/16, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-18:00, http://makcenter.org
The exhibition “Caméra(Auto)Contrôle” is the core of the 50JPG—50 Days for Photography in Geneva 2016. It takes us right into the burning issue of drones and all other monitoring systems that use photo and video cameras. We can indeed “celebrate” a quarter of century of the monitoring of public space by automated cameras worldwide. These cameras quite often bear a sticker with a smiley asking those being recorded, whether in a car park, at a supermarket check-out, or on public transport, to smile. The exhibition focuses on a world contaminated by the Western lifestyle that nevertheless retains a few throwbacks to the old surveillance regime. Info: Centre de la photographie, Genève, Rue des Bains 28, Geneva, Duration: 1/6-31/7/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.centrephotogeneve.ch
In “Our National Body”, artists from Poland, Ukraine and Russia discuss about the self-image of the states and the nations. How do they perceive their own nations? What image of their states arises from their works? How do they describe the condition of the international community? Artists have the uncanny ability to detect emergent phenomena before they even crystallise. Their ability to observe the world in its various manifestations enables them to be in touch with occurrences, collective emotions and thoughts which impose structure on social life. By watching the actions, reactions and arguments of their fellow citizens, by looking at everything that underlies the declared, debated and demonstrated attitudes, they can discover the obscured or disavowed narratives regarding, for instance, their own countries. Info: Curator: Monika Szewczyk, Taras Shevchenko National Museum, 12 Taras Shevchenko Boulevard, Kyiv, Duration: 1-22/6/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, http://galeria-arsenal.pl
The International Digital Art Biennial (BIAN), is an art biennial whose themes reflect the evolution of our world where digital technology holds more and more sway. The 3rd edition’s theme is “AUTOMATA” , the theme looks to the future, exploring all possible hypotheses, including how machines perceive humanity, its beliefs, and way of life. Knowing that the emergence of a more intelligent species may threaten the survival of a dominant species, as we have seen with the development of humans vis-à-vis the animal kingdom, it is justified to question this possible future. BIAN wishes to open this door and to contemplate what might happen to society, culture, and should this point ever be reached. Info: Curator: Alain Thibault, Co-curator: Dooeun Choi, Arsenal Contemporary Art, 2020 William Street, Montreal, Duration: 3/6-3/7/16, Days & Hours: tue-Wed 11:00-18:00, Thu-Fri 11:00-20:00, Sat-Sun 10:00-17:00, http://galeria-arsenal.pl
Matthew Ronay’s first major museum presentation in the United States surveys a recent body of meticulously hand-crafted and vibrantly colored sculptures, reliefs and installations that deliver a phantasmagoric vision of physical and psychic processes fueled by visual traditions and conventions in art, science, and popular culture. Made primarily with basswood, dye, and gouache, Ronay’s sculptures, reliefs and installations formally draw on surrealism, psychedelia, and science fiction. Inspired by a deep appreciation for botany, biology, physics, and psychoanalysis, fields that explore parts of the physical and mental world that are often hidden from direct perception but shape our experiences in ways both subtle and profound, the artist seeks to give form to the invisible powers that affect our existence. Info: Blaffer Art Museum, Fine Arts Building, 4173 Elgin Street, Houston, Duration: 4/6-1/10/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00, http://blafferartmuseum.org
“Michael Landy. Out of Order”, brings together works from the past 25 years and covering Michael’s Landy entire oeuvre since 1990. The works in this exhibition can be viewed both individually and as part of a single, comprehensive installation. Landy’s work is characterized by an intensive engagement with society’s attitudes towards consumption, the consumer world, the transience of objects and towards possessing and letting go. Through his artistic research Michael Landy poses fundamental questions: What does materialism do to us? What do we need to live? Or even: How creative is destruction? Info: Museum Tinguely, Paul Sacher-Anlage 2, Basel, Duration: 8/6-25/9/16, Days & Hours: Tue-sun 11:00-18:00, www.tinguely.ch