ART NEWS:March 03

Calouste Gulbenkian MuseumManuela Marques’ solo exhibition “Versailles. The hidden face of the sun” is the first public presentation of a group of photographs made b over several months at Versailles. Wandering around the palace, the  artist became a kind of flâneur, exploring its most hidden spaces, capturing atmospheres and recording details of sumptuous objects or unexpected graffiti, and even sounds that summon up contemporary life in these spaces – a place of work for some, and a place that delights the millions of visitors who wander through its rooms, corridors and gardens. Among other themes, it highlights royal patronage, luxury industries, and the dynamism of cultural activity, which found in book production one of its most significant moments. Info: Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Av. de Berna 45A, Lisbon, Duration: 3/3-22/5/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Mon 10:00-18:00, https://gulbenkian.pt

modernamuseetThe exhibition “The Social” focus on Annika Eriksson’s works of the last decade, comprising LED-signs, video, slideshow, documentation of performance as well as different kinds of sculptural objects. Reflecting the artist’s interest in major social transformations, many of the works occupy the gaps that are created when social visions fade into history before new ideas and models have yet taken form. A number of the exhibited works place themselves in the gaps that are created when social models fade into history before new ideas and visions have materialized. One example is the video In Preparation for a “Psychodrama” (2015), set in Folkets Park in the Swedish town Grängesberg – which used to be a thriving mining community before its industries closed down. Here we encounter a group of local amateur actors who are trying in various ways to create new contexts, in an environment shaped by ideals and visions of the past. Info: Curator: Joa Ljungberg, Moderma Museet Malmo, Ola Billgrens plats 2–4, Malmö, Duration: 11/3-4/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.modernamuseet.se

Contour Biennale 8Contour Biennale 8 is located across several historical sites and at contemporary art venues in Mechelen city. The theme “Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium” evolves in drawing relations between contemporary artistic practice and the course of social justice against the 400-year old juridical past of Mechelen’s Great Council, Europe’s first courthouse. From the vestiges of this judicial infrastructure, what might it mean to survey the field of social justice and its implements as media archaeology such that justice itself is considered a “medium” that is simultaneously a performative, ethical and aesthetic operation. With the limits of justice now unraveling in a volatile crisis of ethics in the global present, Contour Biennale 8 engages a polyphonic view that recalls the acoustic history of the Lowlands while presenting a notational landscape that is multiphonic, carrying overtones that are heard as a plural consciousness, and at times as states of discord. This biennial sets out to question the preconceived boundaries between the perception of legality and illegality within today’s experience of statehood. Info: Curator: Natasha Ginwala, Assistant Curator: Krisztina Hunya, Contour Biennale 8, Begijnenstraat 19, Mechelen, Biennale venues: De Garage (starting point)-Onder den Toren 12, Alderman’s House (Schepenhuis)-Steenweg, Court of Savoy-Keizerstraat 20, House of the Great Salmon-Zoutwerf 5, House De Clippel-Korenmarkt 6. Warehouse and Co-working Space—Battelsesteenweg, Duration: 11/3-21/5/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 9:00-17:00, Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.contour8.be

green art galleryFor Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, the term aquamorphology grants water a physical, transformative agency through its collaboration with time. It symbolizes the fluid, aquatic nature of memory, as it can simultaneously purify, divide, connect, heal and destroy. In her solo exhibition “Write Injuries on Sand and Kindness in Marble” Büyüktaşçıyan uses the gallery’s previous life as a marble factory as a starting point for questions about frameworks of power, labour, production and reconstruction of memory. Much of Büyüktaşçıyan’s work is defined by an architectural and anthropological approach, and she often favours site-specific installations inspired by the memories found within a place. She examines the way in which virtual spaces operate in relation to the physical, and how fragments of time and memory can be unearthed, restructured and woven together to bring to life a forgotten aspect of time and history. Info: Green Art Gallery, Al Quoz q, Street 8, Alserkal Avenue, Unit 28, Dubai, Duration: 13/3-13/5/17, Days & Hours: Sat-Thu 10:00-19:00, www.gagallery.com

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art KoreaThe exhibition “Samramansang-New Acquisitions 2013-16” features a selection of 100 works recently acquired by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, between 2013 and 2016. The selection ranges from the works of the late modern period to pieces crafted by the vibrant, active young artists of the 2000s, allowing the viewer to grasp the current of the artistic movement from past to present. The title of the exhibition was taken after one of the works on display, “Samramansang”, an installation by Kang Ik-Joong. Meaning “The entire world, the universe and all things,” the title itself serves as an allusion to the expansive and free nature of modern art, as it embraces all kinds of techniques, matter, materials, topics, and so forth. This infinite range of expression appears from Korean modern artist Kim Whanki to Yang Fudong. The entire exhibition consists of five separate exhibition halls. Info: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art-Korea, 30 Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu, Sogyeok-dong, Seoul, Duration: 13/3-13/8/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Tue & Thu-Fri & Sun 10:00-18:00, Wed & Sat 10:00-21:00, www.mmca.go.kr

National Gallery of VictoriaThe 3rd Melbourne Art Book Fair in 2017 brings together international and local publishers and practitioners in a weekend of free talks, book launches, performances, and stalls featuring art, design, architecture and photography publications from around the world. The 2017 Melbourne Art Book Fair also features a large-scale architectural commission by Benja Harney, and a full-day International Symposium on Typography featuring globally acclaimed practitioners Sara De Bondt and Radim Peško. The Symposium will be the third in a series presented in collaboration with the RMIT Design Futures Lab. Coinciding with the NGV Festival of Photography featuring solo exhibitions by William Eggleston, Bill Henson, Patrick Pound, Zoe Cröggon and Ross Coulter, the Fair includes a focus on photography and explore the medium and artistic practice through a range of public programs and forums. Info: Melbourne Art Book Fair 2017, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 180 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne, Duration: 16-19/3/17, Days & Hours: Thu-Sun 10:00-17:00, www.ngv.vic.gov.au

Lily RobertState of the Art first was the name of the artist-run space initiated by Dennis Rudolph in Berlin in 2014, with constantly evolving residents. In this world, the artists themselves must be ceaselessly in motion, circulating from one biennale to another, from residency to residency, connecting the dots of the vast global artistic network that stretches from Berlin to Mexico, Paris to Los Angeles, which places the classic studio practices of the previous century alongside remnants from the past. “State of the Art” at Lily Robert in Paris hosts a grand celebratory banquet in its former wine cellar that is digitally accessible to everyone around the world and to a limited number of guests in the flesh. About 15 artists who have taken part in the activities of the art space in Berlin will come present their work, while Dennis Rudolph moderates the evening. Info: Lily Robert Gallery, 3 rue des Haudriettes, Paris, Duration: 16/3-29/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.lilyrobert.com

Gallery Weekend BeijingGallery Weekend Beijing (GWBJ) offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore the work of Beijing-based artists through the lens of exhibitions presented by 18 participating galleries and art institutions. The three-day contemporary art event introduces emerging and established artists in China to an international audience of collectors, museum curators, art professionals and art lovers, while shining a light on the fact that art is often best experienced in a thoughtfully curated gallery exhibition. The contemporary art scene in China has been growing in stature – and nowhere is this more apparent than in Beijing, which features two artistic communities in the north of the city. 798 Art Zone and Caochangdi are both art districts that showcase the contemporary art, architecture and culture of Beijing’s distinct and unique art scene. It is a city of tremendous change, where artists are developing their own inimitable visions of what it means to be contemporary, testing their limits and pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable. Info: Gallery Weekend Beijing, Beijing, Duration: 17-19/3/17, www.gallery-weekend-beijing.com

metro picturesIn response to his appreciation of and heightened attention to the work of René Daniëls, Metro Pictures presents the group exhibition “Sputterances”, that shares its name with a poem by Daniëls, whose enigmatic and influential work serves as the exhibition’s point of departure. Daniëls’s paintings range from language-driven anecdotes to surprisingly earnest reveries in color, shape and value. Drawing on this range within Daniëls’s work, the exhibition proposes an expanded view of highly individual painting practices with parallel themes and considerations. The paintings find their resonance in the gap between the impulse to express and the unanticipated obstacles whose confluence results in a finished painting. Unlike procedures that elicit predetermined outcomes, the criteria to arrive at the completion of these distinctive works are inexplicable. Info: Curator: Sanya Kantarovsky, Metro Pictures Gallery, 519 West 24th Street, New York, Duration 17/3-22/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.metropicturesgallery.com