ART NEWS:Dec.01

Two exhibitions with works by Adam Straus are on presentation. With 40 works, the exhibition at Nohra Haime Gallery survey Adam Straus’s oeuvre from 1979 to 2016. While the focus is on paintings and works on paper, Straus’s little-known photography and sculpture from the early 1980s is provided context for his later transition to painting. A number of the works are from private collections and will be on public view for the first time. At Adelson Galleries, the exhibition focus on 16 paintings from 2011 to 2016, many of which, in a witty and irreverent manner, refer to how technology alters our view of nature. His penetrating dark humor can transport the viewer to post-apocalyptic worlds and often offers a wry observation on how humans have altered the natural landscape. Info: Nohra Haime Gallery, & Adelson Galleries, 730 Fifth Avenue, 7th Floor, New York, Duration 23/11/16-14/1/17, Days & Hours: Nohra Haime Gallery Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, Adelson Galleries Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 10:00-17:00, www.nohrahaimegallery.com & www.adelsongalleries.com

This year’s Bloomberg New Contemporaries brings together artists working across a range of media with traditional techniques and materials used alongside digital applications and processes. The panel of guest selectors has chosen 46 artists who now join an illustrious roster of New Contemporaries alumni that includes Tacita Dean, Mona Hatoum, Damien Hirst, Mike Nelson and Laure Prouvost amongst many others. Themes in this year’s works include: mass-production, socio-economics, gender equality and cultural identity. The resulting exhibition is both a social commentary and an indication of the emerging generations’ preoccupations. New Contemporaries is the leading UK organisation supporting emergent art practice from British art schools. Since 1949 it has consistently provided a critical platform for final year undergraduates, postgraduates and artists one year out of postgraduate study, primarily by means of an annual, nationally touring exhibition. Info: Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), The Mall, London, Duration: 23/11/19-22/1/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-23:00, www.newcontemporaries.org.uk

The exhibition “Making Nature”, explores how and why we look at animals and what we see when we do with 100 objects from literature, film, taxidermy and photography. From the formalisation of natural history as a science, through the establishment of museums and zoos, to lavish contemporary wildlife documentaries, the exhibition reveals the hierarchies in our view of the natural world, and considers how these influence our actions, or inactions, towards the planet. With the rapid loss of habitats and species threatening the health of our planet, the historical roots of our beliefs about other animals are coming under scrutiny. Is the separation of humans from other animals, both in our minds and our environments, compatible with creating a sustainable world? Info: Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London, Duration: 1/12/16-21/5/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-18:00, Thu 10:00-20:00, https://wellcomecollection.org

The exhibition “Orpheus” at Gagosian Gallery presents a selection of paintings and works on paper by Cy Twombly, dating between 1968 and 1979, that take as their subject the figure of Orpheus. For the artist, Orpheus, is the mythic archetype representing the artist and the creative process itself. In urgent gestures, Twombly was able to evoke centuries of historical record and artistic endeavor. In “The Veil of Orpheus” (1968), he traced wax crayon lines over panels of painted canvas, creating what he referred to as “a time line without time”.  Info: Gagosian Gallery, 4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris, Duration: 1/12/16-18/2/17, Days & Hours Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.gagosian.com

Described as ‘phallus-addicted’ by her peers in the ‘70s, Renate Bertlmann’s provocative art practice has historically made her the subject of criticism – despite her active participation in feminist discourse. Her inclusion in the major exhibition, “Museum des Geldes” (1978), resulted in audience members calling for the removal of her work and for the artist to be prosecuted – the show toured to the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, both which refused to exhibit her work. “Höhepunkte” the first solo exhibition in the UK dedicated to one of the most radical artists of our time, is on presentation at Richard Saltoun Gallery. The exhibition showcases three of Renate’s most controversial works: “Rollstuhl (rot-groß)”  (1975) “Uravagina” (1978) and “Bru(s)tkasten” (1984). These works, exhibited alongside vintage photographs and drawings from the 70s, illustrate her unique sensitivity to material and female tropes. Info: Richard Saltoun Gallery, 111 Great Titchfield Street, London, Duration 2/12/16-27/1/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, www.richardsaltoun.com

The research exhibition “Learning Laboratories: Architecture, Instructional Technology, and the Social Production of Pedagogical Space Around 1970” sets out to reconstruct educational imaginaries, the past’s conceptions of the future of education, in an archaeological excavation of learning spaces and knowledge environments of the ‘60s and ‘70s. In stark contrast to the present condition of crisis in education the architectural programs and educational research around 1970 gave rise to a number of experimental building principles and pedagogical ideals. Through a number of selected case studies in the edu-architectural design and learning technologies of the period, the exhibition explores the experimental embodiment of several spatio-pedagogical ideologies, opening out to developments in educational design, politics, and psychology. In different ways, the exhibition revisits the attempts in education to cope with the economic and demographic realities ushered in with the post-war generation. Info: BAK-basis voor actuele kunst, Lange Nieuwstraat 4, Utrecht, Duration: 3/12/16-5/2/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 12:00-18:00, http://bakonline.org

In the last 15 years, Herman Asselberghs has built a modest but precise and internationally presented body of audiovisual work, in which he explores the borders between word and image, world and media, poetics and politics. “For Now” is the title of the new film as well as of a solo exhibition by the artist. Both deal with a swelling of time, inspired by a Benjamin quote: “In times of great turmoil, time comes to a standstill”. In this exhibition, Asselberghs proposes four films from his on-going body of work: “a.m./p.m.” (2004), “This was before” (2014), “Watching words becoming a film” (2017) and “For Now” (2017). Info: De Garage, Onder den Toren 12A, Mechelen, Duration: 3/12/16-12/2/17, Thu-Sun 13:00-18:00, www.cultuurcentrummechelen.be

Anton Ginzburg presents a new body of work titled “Blue Flame: Constructions and Initiatives”. The exhibition explores the collapse of the modern universalist project. Visitors encounter a series of artistic investigations recalling Constructivist pedagogical experiments combined with the artist’s personal mythologies. Throughout the 1920s, VKhUTEMAS reflected the school’s mandate to merge progressive politics and technical innovation within the universalist, modernist project. Ginzburg engaged in visual exercises, including colour and spatial studies, photography, and graphic explorations, reanimating avant-garde methodology into a present day North American context. In a playful if destructive gesture, the artist burned spatial studies, summoning the aura of the interrupted avant-garde experiment. The artist employs Esperanto, a language devised as an international medium of communication, to guide the viewer through each chapter of the exhibition. Info: Southern Alberta Art Gallery, 601 3 Ave S, Lethbridge Alberta T1J 0H4, Duration: 3/12/16-5/2/17, Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:00, Thu 10:00-19:00, Sun 13:00-17:00, http://www.saag.ca

With 50 works including paintings, photographs, video, installations, and objects, the exhibition L’arte differente” is the first large‑scale and comprehensive presentation of works from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cracow (MOCAK), to be presented in Italy The exhibition, coproduced by the MOCAK, and the MAXXI, is the a major event of the “Expanding Horizon” program and is an opportunity for the Italian public to become acquainted with the Polish contemporary art. The MOCAK Collection comprises 4 557 works by 235 artists from 32 countries. It is MOCAK’s aim to persuade those not professionally connected with art that art is an indispensable tool for understanding the world. We want to fight the fallacy that art should be pleasing and decorative. Info: MAXXI – National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Via Guido Reni 4A, Rome, Duration: 7/12/16-22/1/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri & Sun 11:00-19:00, Sat: 11:00-22:00, www.fondazionemaxxi.it