ART NEWS:Feb.01

Trondheim kunstmuseumIn this year’s first exhibition at Trondheim kunstmuseum, you are invited to participate! The role of the visitor at an art museum is traditionally a relatively passive one; a spectator looking at artworks with a certain distance. The exhibition “Participation” embodies a desire and an intention to lower the threshold for a wider audience to experience contemporary art. On the exhibition are on presentation works by: Erwin Wurm, Felix Gonzalez Torres, Annika Ström, Anna Karin Rynander, Bella Rune, Yoko Ono, Mariele Neudecker, Anders Sletvold Moe, Edith Lundebrekke, Kurt Johannessen, Anne-Karin Furunes, A K Dolven and Oddvar I. N. Daren, all the works rely on audience participation. The works invite the spectators to take part and get involved, physically and practically, with an aim of encouraging reflection. The participation aspect of the exhibition is twofold: some of the artworks invite introspection and involvment on an emotional level. Others demand the spectator to complete the artwork by getting involved, physically or otherwise. Info: Trondheim kunstmuseum, TKM Bispegata / TKM Gråmølna, Bispegata 7b / Trenerys gate 9, Trondheim, Duration: 22/1-7/5/17, Days & Hours: Wed 12:00-20:00, Thu-Sun 12:00-16:00, http://trondheimkunstmuseum.no

Sørlandets KunstmuseumHanne Nielsen and Birgit Johnsen have worked together since 1993 and are considered pioneers within Danish Video Art, their four-channel video installation “Drifting” (2014) is on presentation at Sørlandets Kunstmuseum. In 2006 a man was found drifting on a raft in the Skagerak Strait, in international waters. Suffering hypothermia and other ailments, the man was rescued by a Norwegian ship and brought to shore in Sweden. No one knows who he is or where he comes from. The authorities are having trouble identifying him, and the media are full of speculation. The man himself refuses to speak. The artists use this true story as the point of departure for their video work. In a four-screen video installation, images of the ‘drifter’ alternate with clips of interviews with sailors, the police and immigration authorities. The fragmented structure weaves together facts and fiction to create a story that raises existential and highly relevant questions about identity, nationality, a lack of belonging, and about being adrift as a human being.Info: SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Skippergata 24B, Kristiansand, Duration: 28/1-23/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-17:00, http://skmu.no

metro picturesAndré Butzer focused on Abstract painting in 2010 and started an ongoing series that explored the maximal potential of paintings through apparently reductive means.The latest works of André Butzer that are on exhibition at Metro Pictures are imposing, they have developed to include only vast fields of black with thin gaps of white on the right side of the canvas. The ostensible uniformity of the paintings underlines the variations between them. Seen together, gradations of color and brushstroke become visible, and a sense of motion and static in the pictures manifests. The intricate subtleties of these enigmatic paintings reveal the subjectivity of their making. The works in this longstanding series are made following a methodology Butzer has named “NASAHEIM,” or more simply, “N.” He describes N as an incalculable artistic unit of measurement, a mythological and irrational numeral denoting all colors and life and death. It is a notion that incorporates philosophical ideas with science fiction, abutting an extroverted cultural language with intellectual interiority. Info: Metro Pictures, 519 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 2/2-11/3/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.metropictures.com

PALAIS DE TOKYO PANTaro Izumi operates in a world which is close to a play by Samuel Beckett: absurd, burlesque and often tinged with humour. For “Pan”, his first large-scale solo exhibition in France, the artist is presenting a vast series of works staging everyday objects amid installations designed to accommodate the bodies of guest performers. For example, the sculptures in the series “Tickled in a Dream” allow for the reproduction of the sometimes acrobatic postures of sportspeople in the throes of action; these then compose both a parody of the dream bodies of stadium heroes, and also a commentary on the history of the plinth. Most of Taro Izumi’s pworks retain traces of experimentations which are as derisory as they are fantastical. Triggering the unexpected and playing on the paradoxical behaviours they generate, his works seem to be animated by a perpetual motion, in an equilibrium between order and chaos. Info: Curator: Jean de Loisy, Palais de Tokyo, 13 Avenue du Président Wilson, Paris, Duration: 3/2- 8/5/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Mon 12:00-00:00, www.palaisdetokyo.com

Ag Galerie“I Am Here” by Mahdyar Jamshidi is an on-going art project focused around man’s relationship with space and emphasizes greater communication around the concept of “centre” from various viewpoints. The project is comprised of three phases. The first phase of the project was conducted in 2014 after Jamshidi began researching innovative forms of communication and representation. The idea was born by having typed the word “Iran” into Google Earth’s search engine whereby a red balloon marked the centroid of Iran, defining a physical location in the middle of the desert on the outskirts of Ardakan. Jamshidi took it upon himself to physically mark that location on the ground by digging a pit 150 cm deep and 250 cm in diameter. A flat mirror was placed at the bottom of the pit and red neon lighting was installed around its perimeter reflecting the colour into the mirror, the sky and the surrounding atmosphere. The second phase was a curatorial tour to the location which engaged viewers from a myriad of professional backgrounds to participate in the project. The main focus of this component was an in-depth conversation and analysis around the concept of the centre. In the third phase, documents, video footage and archives of the project are presented in the exhibition. Info: Ag Galerie, #3 Pesyan Street., Valiasr Street, Tehran, Duration 3/2-1/3/17, Days & Hours: Sat-Wed 12:00-20:00, thu-Fri 16:00-20:00, http://aggalerie.com

PALAIS DE TOKYO 2Dorian Gaudin is a New York-based artist who primarily works in film and installation. “Rites and Aftermath” is  his first  solo exhibition in an art centre. The artist, whose work has recently been shown at the off-site exhibition organised by Palais de Tokyo alongside Manifesta 11, in Zürich, will produce an site specific installation at Palais de Tokyo. By focusing on the primary nature of machines as an instrument providing motion, Dorian Gaudin reminds us of the way the fetishism of objects and technology govern our relationship with the world. Under the sign of magic and kinetics, this show stages a theatre of objects which become animated according to a precise score and mechanism. Info: Curator: Julien Fronsacq, Palais de Tokyo, 13 Avenue du Président Wilson, Paris, Duration: 3/2-8/5/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Mon 12:00-00:00, www.palaisdetokyo.com

frank elbazThe unique exhibition “Art Galleries in Paris under the Occupation – A Story from the History of Art” features a large number of private and public archives, along-side film extracts, showing the vicissitudes of gallery life under the Occupation of Paris. The exhibition attempts to contextualize and shed some light on the art market in occupied Paris. It is an undeniable fact that the art market in Paris during the time of the Occupation was flourishing. All the traditional channels of selling art, the galleries and public auction houses, were gripped by euphoria. Yet, the sale, the trafficking and the exchange of art objects at extremely inflated prices were not without consequence for the  destinies of works that belonged to Jews. It is worth recalling here that certain market players, because they were stigmatised as belonging to the “Jewish race” by the anti-Semitic legislation of the 1940s (whether it came from the Germans or the Vichy government), were directly and severely affected by these shameful laws. The careers of several art dealers, on display at the exhibition, make this absolutely clear. Info: Curator: Emmanuelle Polack, Galerie Frank Elbaz, 66, rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 4/2-11/3/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.galeriefrankelbaz.com

parafinNathan Coley is interested in the idea of ‘public’ space, and his practice explores the ways in which architecture becomes invested  and reinvested, with meaning. Across a range of media Coley investigates what the built environment reveals about the people it surrounds and how social and individual responses to it are in turn culturally conditioned. The solo exhibition of Nathan Coley at Parafin in London coincides with his biggest public project to date, a major new work installed across ten sites in the Central Denmark Region for the year long cultural project Aarhus2017. Coley’s exhibition at Parafin includes new sculptures and text works. The centerpiece of the show is a major new sculptural work, “Tate Modern on Fire” (2017). This work is a companion piece to “Paul” (2015), which depicts St Paul’s Cathedral. The two buildings face each other across the Thames and in doing so establish a complex relationship, between past and present, religion and culture at the centre of London. The sculpture also references Ed Ruscha’s controversial painting, “The Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire” (1965-68). Info: Parafin, 18 Woodstock Street, London, Duration: 10/2-18/3/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 12:00-17:00, www.parafin.co.uk