ART NEWS:May 01

“Innovation: made in France II”, is an exhibition of important historical French design created between 1965 and 1975, a period of rapid technological advancement that shaped a distinctive new aesthetic in French public and domestic life.  In France, Les Trente Glorieuses, the 30-year period following the end of World War II, was marked by explosive scientific, technological, economic, and social development. These advances fueled exuberant public optimism in the ‘60s, a time of national positivism that remained uninterrupted until the onset of the 1973 Oil Crisis. During this vibrant period, art, architecture, decorative arts, and fashion blossomed in step with the prevailing optimistic mood, buoyed by prosperity and rapid urbanization. As the industrial world turned its focus to all domains of creation, introducing new technologies and innovative materials, forms were liberated and experimentation abundant. Info:  Demisch Danant, 30 West 12th Street, New York, Duration: 3/5-1/7/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 12:00-17:00, www.demischdanant.com

Anselm Kiefer in his solo exhibition “Transition from Cool to Warm” presents new paintings, artists’ books, and watercolors. Central to the exhibition are 40 unique artists’s books, their pages painted with gesso to mimic marble, displayed in an installation of glass vitrines. Erotically charged female nudes and faces emerge from the pages. The large array of new watercolors marks a significant return in Kiefer’s work to the elusive and sensuous medium. The exhibition’s title refers to a celebrated book of watercolors that he produced from 1974 to 1977, in which cool, blue marine land and seascapes transform into warm female nudes. The watercolors and books are complemented by romantic landscape paintings, in which lakes can be glimpsed through screens of trees or where surfaces of splashed molten lead peel back to reveal the sea or landscape depicted beneath. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21st Street, New York, Duration 5/5-14/7/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.gagosian.com

Clint Neufeld’s work can be addressed conceptually, as an object “With a changed relation to the human subject,” resembling something that works, or worked, and now an object asserting itself as thing. Clint Neufeld in his solo exhibition “Grid Roads and a Dead Man’s Hand” presents sculptures that intricate a play between contradictory forms, materials, and purposes. For the last few years, since graduating with an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal, Neufeld has been working with the most common forms that are employed with great frequency throughout in his home town: engines, excavating buckets, and other mechanical devices. Yet, unlike the real objects, Neufeld’s sculptures are not made with industrial materials. Rather, they are lovingly handcrafted from such substances as porcelain and wax. “Smash” (2016), the video accompanying this exhibition, underscores these juxtapositions: playing on the implicit fragility of fine china confronting the perceived mass of an engine, a motor, a lathe. Info: Art Mûr, 5826 St-Hubert, Montréal, Duration: 6/5-17/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed 10:00-18:00, Thu-Fri 12:00-20:00, Sat 12:00-17:00, http://artmur.com

The group exhibition “Garage Inventors” features a 30-year span of work by artists who exemplify the ethos of Silicon Valley in the form of the genius “garage” inventor.  Many of these artists have deep roots in the Bay Area, and they all channel a streak of “mad scientist” to experiment, discover, and innovate. Nam June Paik is widely credited as the founder of video art and among the first artists to envision the radical implications of an ‘electronic super highway’ and cybernetics.  Alan Rath builds electronic sculptures infused with uncannily life-like characteristics. Jim Campbell’s work probes the limits of perception with extremely low-resolution imagery through hand-made, LED-based sculptures. Tim Hawkinson’s creative output channels the qualities of virtuoso tinkerer and prodigious alchemist. Gail Wight works primarily in sculpture, video, interactive media and print to construct biological allegories that tease out the impacts of life sciences on the living: human, animal, and other. Charles Lindsay’s multi-disciplinary practice involves immersive environments, sound installations, and sculptures built from salvaged aerospace and bio-tech equipment, photographs and videos. Rachel Sussman recently completed a critically acclaimed, decade-long project, “The Oldest Living Things in the World” that combines art, science, and philosophy into a traveling exhibition. Info: Hosfelt Gallery, 260 Utah Street, San Francisco, Duration: 6/5-1/7/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:30, Thu 11:00-19:00, http://hosfeltgallery.com

“Stadtbilder|Nachlass”, Ulrich Wüst’s first exhibition in a U.S. gallery is on presentation at Christopher Grimes. Trained as an urban planner, Wüst came to photography in the ‘70s as a rhetorical tool for studying the development of cities. This work quickly developed into a critique of the East German approach to city building and led ultimately to a conceptual approach to portraiture of the Socialist state. In the “Stadtbilder” series, Wüst photographed East German cities that were slow to recover from wartime destruction, bringing emphasis to the massive, soulless housing structures that emerged in the rise of the Socialist regime and that failed to address the rehabilitation of the cities’ historic city centers.  Wüst remained in East Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall, where he began photographing left behind objects from the homes of those who abruptly fled the city. In these photographs from the “Nachlass” series Wüst captured the intimate architecture of everyday life, creating the objects’ historical portraits, and ultimately a portrait of their former owner, before they were disposed of and forgotten. Info: Christopher Grimes Gallery, 916 Colorado Avenue, Santa Monica, Duration: 6/5-17/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:30, www.cgrimes.com

The starting point of Elisabetta Benassi’s solo exhibition “It starts with the firing” is the controversy triggered by Carl Andre’s “Equivalent VIII” (1966) which is composed of 120 bricks placed on two overlapping rows to form a rectangular shape. The work was purchased by London’s Tate Gallery in 1972. At the time, the British press attacked the purchase by ridiculing the museum’s choice with articles and vignettes. Elisabetta Benassi has referred back to the traces of these press materials, now held in the Tate Archives (put together by Carl Andre himself and donated to the museum), to open up and activate the controversy by extrapolating excerpts from the original newspaper cuttings, assembled in an artist’s book and turned into billboards positioned around the town of Reggio Emilia. From the town to Collezione Maramotti, the posters lead us toward the exhibition space, where every room presents a single work that creates a relationship between “objects” belonging to the history of the location (the first Max Mara factory, now housing the Collection) and other elements linked to a much wider story, not solely Italian, by creating “stopovers” in an itinerary that can be assembled at will by viewers. Info:, via Fratelli Cervi 66, Reggio Emilia, Duration: 7/5-17/9/17 (Closed 1-25/8/17), Days & Hours: Thu-Fri 14:30-18:30, Sat-sun 10:30-18:30, www.collezionemaramotti.org

In between individual experiences and collective narratives, the exhibition “TV 70: Francesco Vezzoli guarda la Rai”, translates Francesco Vezzoli’s gaze into a visual experience that explores ‘70s TV production. Italian public TV is interpreted by the artist as a driving force for social and political change in a country in transition from the radicalness of the ‘60s to the hedonism of the ‘80s, as well as a powerful machine for cultural and identity creation. The sequence of immaterial documents from the Teche Rai archives combined with the materiality of paintings, sculptures and installations l develop in three separate sections and analyze the relationships between Italian public television with visual art, politics and entertainment. The exhibition also hosts a selection of TV excerpts edited by Vezzoli, including the icons that marked his childhood. Info: Fondazione Prada, Largo Isarco 2, Milan, Duration: 9/5-24/9/17, Days & Hours: Mon, Wed-Thu & Sun 10:00-19:00, Fri-Sat 10:00-29:00, www.fondazioneprada.org

Celebrated as a sculptor, painter and draughtsman, Giacometti’s distinctive elongated figures are some of the most instantly recognisable works of modern art. The first major retrospective of Alberto Giacometti for 20 years is on presentation at Tate Modern. This exhibition brings together 250 works. It includes rarely seen plasters and drawings which have never been exhibited before and showcases the full evolution of Giacometti’s career across five decades, from early works to iconic bronze sculptures. The exhibition also explores some of the key figures in the artist’s life who were vital to his work including his wife Annette Giacometti, his brother Diego and his late mistress Caroline. Giacometti’s personal relationships were an enduring influence throughout his career and he continuously used friends and family as models. Info: Curators: Frances Morris and Catherine Grenier, Assistant Curators: Lena Fritsch, and Mathilde Lecuyer, Tate Modern, Bankside, London, Duration: 10/5-10/9/17, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-18:00, www.tate.org.uk

Mike Mandel’s solo exhibition “Good 70’s” feature works from many of Mandel’s cutting edge series including “Myself: Timed Exposures”, “People in Cars”, “The Baseball-Photographer Trading Cards”, “Making Good Time” and “Evidence”, one of the many collaborations done with artist Larry Sultan. Mandel was immersed in a society that was bombarded with imagery. Thus, Mandel’s work is largely informed by the pervading question: what is the meaning of photographic imagery within popular culture? Seeking an answer to this question, Mandel looked to infuse meaning back into imagery through the appropriation of commercially successful ventures, such as billboards and baseball trading cards, transforming them into an artistic medium. Info: Robert Mann Gallery, 525 West 26th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, Duration: 11/5-30/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-18:00, www.robertmann.com