ART NEWS:Feb.03
The exhibition “Birds of a Feather” is a curatorial response to our thoughts and emotions surrounding recent political events with a group exhibition revolving around a symbol of peace, hope and freedom. As the proverb goes: birds of a feather, flock together. This idiom perhaps was never more appropriately used than when discussing the geographical ideological division of the country during the course of the 2016 presidential election in U.S.A., New York solidly established in the country’s east coast parentheses even furthers the proof of this age-old adage, for if one thing is true it’s that New Yorkers stick together. This exhibition pays homage to this solidarity in a candid collection of bird imagery. Info: Rober Mann Gallery, 525 West 26th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, Duration 9/2-18/3/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.robertmann.com
The first exhibition in Spain with works of Lewis Baltz, take place at Fundación MAPFRE. The exhibition includes around 400 works and presents the entire range of his work, from his first photographic series in black and white taken in the ‘60s and ‘70s up to the work in color and the exploration of new artistic languages of his later years. Lewis Baltz is one of important photographers of the second half of the 20th Century. His work has traditionally been associated with the New Topographics Movement and seminal to the development of conceptual photography. Baltz’s unique pictures are strikingly cool and emotionless, appearing technical, thin, and almost immaterial. With his use of this visual medium and his stance as a critical, conceptual photographer and artist, he created what we might call a new photographic image of the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century. In an abrupt about-turn, he revealed not pristine, sacred American nature, but the suburbs proliferating out of the cities; the landscape as increasingly occupied territory. Info: Curator: Urs Stahel, Fundación MAPFRE, Bárbara de Braganza Exhibition Hall, 13 Calle Bárbara de Braganza, Madrid, Duration: 9/2-4/6/17, Days & Hours: Mon 14:00-18:00, Tue-Sat 10:00-20:00, Sun 11:00-19:00, www.fundacionmapfre.org
With “Under The Sun”, his new exhibition Nathan Mabry explores interconnected relationships of art history’s ethos, tropes and assumptions in both obvious and subtle ways. Furthering the enigmatic and mystical qualities of these works, the handmade, the appropriated, adaptation and the found have been considered. The context for expression and the authority of objects is examined while reflecting aesthetic shifts. Among the works of the exhibition “The Nostalgia of the Infinite (Le Cyclope)” is the newest work in a recent series in which Mabry investigates iconic metal sculptures from mid-century modernism with an added surrealism, mixed with notions of past and present, and the works “Feels (Ghost)” that are Mabry’s first exploration in textile based works. Each cut piece hangs from the wall with a swaging drape, made from wool felt. They have a dialogue with Joseph Beuys, Robert Morris and Louise Bourgeois. Info: Praz Delavallade Gallery, 5 rue des Haudriettes, Duration: 11/2-1/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.praz-delavallade.com
The group exhibition “What’s Unfolding” examines the development and preliminary phases of an exhibition. The title poses the question as to what has come before, what is undefined, what has perhaps been left behind, exploring the initial stages and the winding paths that result in a certain form of display. To shed light on this process, the catalogue is of particular relevance. Several months before the opening, the curator invited all of the artists to design four pages in the catalogue and thus to present current works and ideas on the book’s pages, similar to the walls of a gallery space. Developed for or adapted to the catalogue’s format, these projects reflect the status of the exhibition at an early stage and serve to complement and augment the pieces shown in the museum itself. This year’s theme “Contemporary Drawing” which was also the thematic focus for applications to the 2016–17 Balmoral residency grants, lends itself especially well to reflections on the catalogue format as an additional space for exhibitions. Info: Curator: Regine Ehleiter, Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Hans-Arp-Allee 1, Remagen, Duration: 12/2-25/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-sun 11:00-18:00, http://arpmuseum.org
The group exhibition “Serialities” at Hauser & Wirth examines notions of seriality and repetition, and ways in which artists explore linear and non-linear narratives through iterations. The exhibition includes Photos, drawings and sculptures. The central informing figure of the exhibition August Sander is best known for his monumental project “People of the 20th Century”. Sanders’ remarkable encyclopedic archive comprises more than 600 photographs shot between 1910 and the early ‘50s, and creates a provocative collective portrait of the artist’s fellow citizens, grouped according to determined sociological categories. Also visitors to “Serialities” are invited to a special designated Book Lab in the form of a Reading Room on the gallery’s 3rd floor. Here, a curated selection of catalogs offers additional insights into the practice of each of the artists represented in the exhibition. Info: Hauser & Wirth Gallery, 548 West 22nd Street, New York, Duration: 15/2-8/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.hauserwirth.com
Τhe exhibition “Assemblages and Collages 1960-1980” is a remarkable selection of 29 works realised by Louise Nevelson. Nevelson turned to collages from the mid-50s and these works clearly show the influence of Cubism, which she encountered during research trips in Europe. Realised on wooden or paper boards and in different dimensions, the collages reveal the artist’s attention to perspective, chromaticism, spontaneity of execution and compositional balance. To this first kind of artistic production, Nevelson added assemblages: in both cases, the works are realised by collecting scrape wood and metals bits found in the streets of New York. In her sculptures, we recognise everyday objects, from table and chair legs, to balustrade and more, that the artist re-uses with a sensibility that wavers between New Dada and Abstractionism, but that also looks back at pre-Columbian and Mesoamerican sculpture she became fascinated with during a trip to Mexico in 1950. Info: Cortesi Gallery, Via Frasca 5, Lugano, Duration 16/2-7/4/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, http://cortesigallery.com
Set within the iconic concrete architecture of the Brazilian Modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer, the works of the exhibition “Concrete Jungle”, explore the physical and psychological boundaries between the human and architectural body within the specific context of Brazil. “Concrete Jungle” is presented at a time when, notwithstanding the international focus brought by the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, the utopian possibilities of Brazil have once again become a distant memory. Today, Niemeyer’s structures are permanent reminders of the promise of Modernism but also of Brazil’s continued reliance on a political system where social hierarchies have exacerbated the distance between the Haves and the Have-Nots. Info: Curator: Alexandra White, Annka Kultys Gallery, 472 Hackney Road, Unit 3, 1st Floor, London, Duration: 22/2-18/3/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 12:00-18:00, http://www.annkakultys.com
The exhibition “Rita Kernn-Larsen. Surrealist Paintings” inaugurates Peggy Guggenheim Collection’s “Project Rooms”, two new exhibition rooms at the museum dedicated to focused exhibitions. The exhibition brings together paintings by Kernn-Larsen an artist little known outside Denmark. This is the first important presentation of the artist’s Surrealist period outside of her native Scandinavia since her solo exhibition at Guggenheim Jeune. The exhibition brings together Surrealist paintings by Kernn-Larsen from public and private collections in Denmark, including the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen, Kunstmuseet i Tønder, and the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg. Photographs and other ephemeral material related to Kernn-Larsen’s exhibition at the Guggenheim Jeune gallery will also be on display. Last but not least, a film-interview with Kernn-Larsen recorded on the occasion of her participation in the 1986 Venice Biennale ise on view in the museum’s veranda. Info: Curator: Gražina Subelytė, Peggy Guggenheil Collection, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, 704 Dorsoduro, Venice, Duration: 25/2-26/6/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Mon 10:00-18:00, www.guggenheim-venice.it
Communication throughout the world has never taken so many different forms, using every type of technique, borders, however, are still present… The exhibition “Imaginary Frontiers” is dedicated to the theme of borders, both real and imaginary, visible and invisible. The map creates the world: by tracing a line on paper, a boundary is inscribed between two spaces. The composition of a map, with its scale, key, centre and periphery, axes, vanishing lines and blank spaces, is the result of a palimpsest of images, references, and concepts ensuing from geographic, historic, social and mental constructs. Borders invite us to think about questions related to the themes of interior and exterior, of identity and belonging. Who am I, who are Others? A border is a region in itself. A border culture is developing in the fringe, one built on sharing and intermingling, or, on the contrary, exclusion. Taming differences, developing exchanges, cultivating dialogues, crossing borders, and letting borders cross us – these open new perspectives and offer artists much scope for critical thinking. Info: Curator: Louma Salamé, Villa Empain – Centre for art and dialogue between the cultures of the East and the West, Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, 67, Brussels, Duration 25/2-30/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.villaempain.com
The whereabouts of the lost masterpiece “Turm der blauen Pferde” by Franz Marc are still subject to speculation, 80 years after the disappearance of this alarming foreboding of World War I by the famous German painter. The Haus am Waldsee in Berlin and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich have invited 20 contemporary artists to reflect on the fate of the famous artwork. The artists of the joint exhibition “MISSING Der Turm der blauen Pferde by Franz Marc” look at its history through the lens of painting, sculpture, photography, installation and literature. While the painting remains missing until today, a coloured study in form of a postcard has survived in the Fohn Collection and is now stored at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich. Franz Marc had sent this postcard for New Years’ in 1912/13 to his friend, the writer Else Lasker-Schüler in Berlin. The Munich part of the exhibition subsequently looks at the beginning of the history of the painting and asks how the myth around Franz Marc and his art came into existence, especially in the hometown of Der Blaue Reiter. Info: Haus am Waldsee, Argentinische Allee 30, Berlin, Duration: 3/3-5/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 12:00-18:00, www.hausamwaldsee.de and Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Katharina-von-Bora-Straße 10, Munich, Duration: 9/3-/5/17, Days & Hours: Mon 14:00-17:00, Tue-Thu 10:00-13:00 & 14:00-17:00, Fri 10:00-13:00, www.sgsm.eu