ART NEWS:March 01

“Blue Room”, the first institutional solo exhibition by Frank Heath, is a synchronized installation of video works connected by an ominous humor, shadowed by references to surveillance and espionage. The exhibition takes its title from two types of space which employ ambient lighting as a system of control: a dimly lit command center used to monitor airspace during the Cold War, and a calm room used to pacify prisoners in solitary confinement. Heath’s work typically plots an idiosyncratic line through historical material, employing outmoded systems of communication and infrastructure to throw the conditions of the present into relief. A number of recent videos have featured recordings of phone calls to businesses or services in which an anonymous character describes impossible situations and apocryphal stories with a tone of disclosure. Info: Swiss In situ, 102 Franklin Street, New York, Duration: 17/2-19/3/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 12:00-18:00, www.swissinstitute.net

The exhibition “Les motifs sauvages” by Florentine and Alexandre Lamarche-Ovize, features a multiplicity of motifs, from tapestry patterns and ceramics, to video animation, notebooks and rubber stamps, which are on view throughout the space. This shift from one support to another, which maintains both an autonomous position and a cause-and-effect relationship, is also found in the ceramic pieces on display. Following a residency in Mexico in 2015, the artist duo were able to experiment with techniques from an appropriated “Barro Negro” artisanal and industrial approach, a style that is practiced around Guadalajara. Their work gave rise to more or less exotic motifs featuring insignificant objects drawn from the everyday world. For the two artists, the idea has been to pursue their work in crafts and highlight different production processes, along with the meteorological and natural context of the earth. Info: Parc Saint Léger – Centre d’art contemporain, Avenue Conti, Pougues-les-Eaux, Duration: 19/2-30/4/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 14:00-18:00, www.parcsaintleger.fr

With the exhibition “Die Zugezogenen” Elmgreen & Dragset transform the venue of Museum Haus Lange back into what it was originally intended to be: a family home. The artist duo stages the moment when a fictional German family moves in. Having previously relocated to Britain, the family has now decided to move back to Germany following the Brexit vote. Elmgreen & Dragset combine their own artworks with ready-made furniture, objects and artifacts in order to turn the Museum into the family’s new domestic setting. Some items are already unpacked and put in place, while others remain semi-wrapped or in boxes. Rather than a clear and linear storyline, Elmgreen & Dragset opt for a more abstract narrative. Like the experimental French nouveau roman of the 1950s and ’60s, the exhibition brings together different histories and time periods and presents them side-by-side in a non-chronological manner. Info: Curators: Magdalena Holzhey & Irina Raskin, Museums Haus Lange and Haus Esters, Wilhelmshofallee 91-97, Krefeld, Duration: 19/2-29/8/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-17:00, www.kunstmuseenkrefeld.de

Luxembourg & Dayan will present “The Ends of Collage”, an exhibition that unfolds across three platforms, each offering a different perspective from which to review the medium of collage and its legacies. In New York the exhibition is dedicated to some of the technical preconditions of collage (variety of cuts, masks and windows, image manipulations and the notion of ‘edge’). In London, the exhibition shifts the focus towards some of the major themes that characterise the medium (fantasy, the domestic sphere, dismemberment of the social or private body, and the mobility of images). The third platform takes place on the pages of a printed publication, edited by Yuval Etgar, the curator of the exhibition, which brings together various theoretical motivations that precipitated the emergence of collage at the beginning of the twentieth century along with those that expanded the medium beyond its traditional limits with the emergence of digital cultures in the late ‘70s. Info: Curator: Yuval Etgar, Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, 64 East 77th Street, New York, Duration: 27/2-15/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00 and Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, 2 Savile Row, London, Duration: 10/3-13/5/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-17:00, Sat 12:00-16:00, www.luxembourgdayan.com

Ibrahim Mahama is known for large-scale installations incorporating jute sacks, previously used to transport cocoa beans and charcoal, which are stitched together and draped over architectural structures. “Fragments”, his first solo UK exhibition draws its name from the book of the same name by the Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah. Published in 1970, the novel explores the relationship between the individual and society within the newly independent Ghana against a backdrop of self-serving materialism and a corrupt, crumbling civic environment. Equally, Mahama’s practice points to the recurring themes of decay and collapse, exploring systems of capital and production. Mahama’s interest in the circulation and exchange of materials is evident in his use of jute sacks as a medium in his major site-specific architectural interventions and, here, in smaller scale works which the artist describes as paintings. Info: White Cube Gallery, 144 – 152 Bermondsey Street, London, Duration: 1/3-13/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-1:00, Sun 12:00-18:00, http://whitecube.com

The House of Photography is showing photo essays by 12 young European photographers on the theme of “Shifting Boundaries”.  The artists were selected from the participants in the first round of the European Photo Exhibition Award a joint project by the Körber Foundation and three other European foundations. Experiencing, recognizing, and actively or passively dealing with borders, this phenomenon is characteristic of the situation in Europe not only at the present moment. How can we approach European history and understand the constant and complex changes in Europe? The theme of “Shifting Boundaries” makes reference to these lines of separation and calls on us to direct our gaze at geographic, sociocultural, and psychological barriers. In their photo essays, the photographers deal with the shifting of boundaries and urban changes in the past and the present and examine processes of perception and digitization. Info: Curators: Rune Eraker, Sérgio Mah, Enrico Stefanelli and Ingo Taubhorn, Deichtorhallen Hamburg GmbH-House of Photography, Deichtorstraße 1-2, Hamburg, Duration: 3/3-1/5/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.deichtorhallen.de

The multi-disciplinary work of Simon Bilodeau bears resemblance to the brutalist style in architecture of the ‘50s. Owing to a background in painting, Bilodeau hones his craft on the cold minimalism of the brutalist aesthetic with a refined aesthetic sensibility. In his solo exhibition “De l’avant comme avant: la suite”, some works appear as reconstructed artefacts, giving the viewer a haunted non-memory of history’s significance, turning longing into a most powerful emotion. Our relationship to all cultural artefacts of any age is shot through the prism of romanticism, and in the case of Bilodeau’s work their carefully crafted ephemeral presence is a rich juxtaposition to the harsher metallic edges of other works on display. In each work though there is a very deliberate focus on materiality and process. This is not a fetishisation of the production of things though, but a comment on the aftermath of accelerated development and its fallout. Info: Art Mûr, 5826 St-Hubert, Montréal, Duration: 4/3-29/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed 10:00-18:00, Thu-Fri 12:00-20:00, Sat 12:00-17:00, http://artmur.com

The exhibition “Double Take” examines the theme of appropriation and how it has been explored by different generations of artists from the ‘60s to the present day using photography that investigate the power of pictures in shaping ideas of identity, gender, race, desire and sexuality. The exhibition takes as its starting point Robert Heinecken’s seminal series “Are You Rea” (1964-68), as well as works by leading artists of the “Pictures Generation”, including: Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger and Louise Lawler, who came of age during the media-driven consumer culture of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. With the democratisation of the image through social media and the internet in today’s digital age, “Double Take” explores the theme of appropriation and the role of photography across generations in shaping and re-examining ideas of authorship, originality, identity and culture. Info: Skarstedt, 8 Bennet Street, St James’s, London, Duration: 7/3-22/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 10:00-17:00, www.skarstedt.com

In Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art are on presentation works made by more than 60 artists from russia, the exhibition captures the zeitgeist of some of the most active and influential figures of the past five years, offering insight into the diversity of social tendencies that constitute the underexplored Russian art scene. The curatorial team from their research identified seven “vectors,” or tendencies, through which the current art life of the country can be broadly understood. These range from a strong fidelity to place and a drive to create elaborate mythological worlds, to the use of art practice as activism or as a mechanism to participate in international discourse. Often isolated and working in the absence of established cultural infrastructure, what unites the artists is resourcefulness and a powerful belief in art as a way of life. The Triennial will take place in the Museum and the surrounding area of Gorky Park. Info: Commissioner: Kate Fowle, Garage, Curatorial Team: Katya Inozemtseva, Snejana Krasteva, Andrey Misiano, Ilmira Bolotyan, Sasha Obukhova, Tatiana Volkova, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Gorky Park, 9/32 Krymsky Val Street, Moscow, Duration: 10/3-14/5/17, Days & Hours: Daily 11:00-14:00, http://garagemca.org