ART NEWS:May 04

Adi Nes’ solo exhibition “A Rooted Wandering” is on presentation in Los Angeles.. Nes stands out as one of the most important art photographers in Israel. Through 20 years of activity, his awork has been groundbreaking while clearly presenting the multilayered complexities of Israeli identity. Central themes in Adi Nes’s photographs deal with the issues of Israeli identity and masculinity. His works wrestle with social and political questions revolving around gender, the center versus the periphery, Eastern versus Western cultures, ethnic issues, Judaism, local myths, militarism, humanism, and social justice. As a photographer working in Israel, Nes makes meticulously crafted images that are both autobiographical and attest to living in a country in conflict. His photographs are reminiscent of Renaissance or Baroque paintings, often based on parables and collective cultural memory. Info: Praz-Delavallade, 6150 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, Duration 18/5-24/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.praz-delavallade.com

Orawan Arunrak’s most recent series of works communicate through conversations that focus on elements and mixtures of Thailand, Germany, Vietnam, and elsewhere, encompassing religion, otherness and gender, as defined by customs, contexts, and environments. Presented as an installation titled “Exit–Entrance”, these works explore the juxtaposition of different states of being in the “real” and in the spiritual world, with the ideas of nationhood and nationality. The artworks featured in the exhibition combine visual and sound elements drawn from conversations held in Thai, German, English and Vietnamese. The audio component of the project is presented within an immersive installation of hand-drawn images printed as wallpaper. Arunrak sees her work as an experiment for the viewer, to try to hear, listen and see in ways that might develop mutual understanding for different ways of living. Info: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Kottbusser Strasse 10, Berlin, Duration: 25/5-18/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 14:00-19:00, www.bethanien.de

Jan Groth has been selected for the 2017 Bergen International Festival Exhibition, and his exhibition includes a number of new works made especially for the show. The exhibition primarily focus on drawings and sculpture; two media which in different ways express Groth’s distinctive combination of the immediate and the gradual. While the drawings appear intuitively improvised , composed at the moment the black crayon meets the paper, the sculptures are the result of a slower process; from layered modelling to casts. The relationship between the vital, direct expression of the line and the slow process of becoming was also a feature of the monumental tapestries that Groth made with his partner Benedikte Groth in the period 1961 – 2006. The exhibition also includes drawings produced directly onto the wall. In this case it is the drawing itself that becomes the object of a similar translation; from the intimate to the monumental and from the immediate to the meticulously executed. Info: Bergen Kunsthall, Rasmus Meyers allé 5, Bergen, Duration: 25/5-13/8/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-17:00, http://kunsthall.no

Born in 1980, Patrick Martinez lives and works in Los Angeles, “American Memorial” marks the artist’s first solo exhibition at a museum. In Martinez’s work, memorials take myriad forms. The act of mourning offers an opportunity to express pain and to demonstrate respect. In public, mourning can function as a political protest, a defiant act, and ultimately an expression of love. Memorials exist as material manifestations of grief. A number of paintings in the show pay tribute to floral memorials. The ubiquitous use of flowers to commemorate loss or in some cases, the intervention of flowers in daily life that inspire a meditation on the meaning of beauty emanate from these works. With a colorful palette, the artist leverages certain aesthetics that reflect both individual and communal pain. His neon that states: “Then they came for me” haunts as a reminder of the fragility of personal safety and of a just society. Info:  Cornell Fine Arts Museum, 1000 Holt Avenue, 32789 Winter Park, Florida, Duration: 25/5-10/9/17, Days & Hours: Tue 10:00-19:00, Wed-Fri 10:00-16:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-17:00, www.rollins.edu

Richard Deacon’s solo exhibition “SOME TIME” is focused around a major new commission, the resurrection of Deacon’s “Never Mind”, a key work from the collection of Middelheim Museum, which has been refabricated in stainless steel by Deacon for this landmark exhibition. The title of the exhibition refers to both the provisional nature of time and, more literally, to a short period of time. It explores several key themes which Deacon has revisited throughout his oeuvre over a period of more than 40 years, including the artistic strategies of refabrication and variation. The sculpture “Never Mind” was first acquired by Middelheim Museum in 1993, in an historic moment for the museum which took a resolute step towards contemporary art at this time. Info: Middelheim Museum, Middelheimlaan 61, Antwerpen, Duration 27/5-24/9/17, Days & Hours: Daily (May & September 10:00-20:00, June & July 10:00-21:00), www.middelheimmuseum.be

Amanda Dunsmore’s “Becoming Christine” is an exhibition based on the lived experience of Christine Beynon. It is a continually developing body of work involving re-presented “selfies,” sound installation and video portraiture that premiere at Galway Arts Centre. The “selfies” follow Christine Beynon’s journey and transition over the past 12 years, to becoming a woman.  These self-portraits range in tone from the painful, to the playful, from the mundane to the contemplative to the joyful. The sound installation & narrated artwork was a result of a collaborative partnership between the artist and Christine Beynon. Over the year Amanda recorded a series of conversation between herself and Christine—where Christine described her journey to becoming a woman. In 2017, Amanda and Christine have decided it is the right time to share that conversation. The artist Amanda Dunsmore filmed a new video portrait of Christine to accompany the sound installation, photographs and publication. Info: Curator: Liz Burns, Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick St Lwr, Galway, Duration: 27/5-9/7/17, Days Mon-Sat 12:00-17:00, www.galwayartscentre.ie

In 2002, several queers set up a camp under a highway bridge in Tel Aviv, just a few hundred meters from the huge Gay Parade taking place at the same time. The party under the bridge grew rapidly and marked the beginning of a queer movement that until 2009 organised parties at different places in Jaffa/Tel Aviv: Queerhana. The exhibition “THIS IS A FREE ZONE” documents the origin and development of Queerhana in the context of other autonomous movements in Israel/Palestine from 2001 to 2009. 15 years later, the project takes a look back and raises questions regarding the connection of party and politics: (How) can one dance during war? What is necessary for creating a common space for Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli queers? Can a “safe space” be created without repeating the same excluding power relations and dichotomies that the zone actually seeks to overcome? Info: neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), Oranienstraße 25, Berlin, Duration: 27/5-2/7/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Tue, Thu & Sat 12:00-19:00, Wed & Fri 12:00-20:00, http://ngbk.de

“Perla Pollina 1996-2016” is the title of the first midcareer retrospective devoted to Roberto Cuoghi, one of the most enigmatic, mysterious and fascinating Italian artists of his generation. Cuoghi’s artistic practice brings together the sculptural and compositional qualities of the visual arts and the scenic-narrative qualities of a performer and storyteller. His unique paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations, videos and films, sound works and performances use partly unconventional techniques and materials, which the artist often experiments with and even reinvents. They explore the notions of the simulacrum and the symbol, memory and immanence, devotion and superstition, transformation and metamorphosis (of the body, identity, language and the forms themselves of representation and expression). There are references to antiquity and the history of humanity that, despite being based on rigorous philological and documentary research, are also remolded by the artist with highly idiosyncratic results, in which temporal, spatial and epistemic planes merge together. Info: Curators: Andrea Bellini & Andrea Viliani, MADRE Napoli, Via Settembrini 79, Naples, Duration: 27/5-18/9/17, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sat 10:00-19:30, Sun 10:00-20:00, www.madrenapoli.it

The exhibition “31 Women” channels the pioneering spirit of the exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s New York gallery in 1943. Featuring artists within Guggenheim’s circle, the exhibition combine worzk by successive generations of practitioners from the 1940s to the present day.Taking cues from the transitional moment when Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism co-existed in 1940s New York, two thematic threads are traced. The first privileging artistic positions embracing the psychological, instinctual and erotic, or which depend on notions of chance, the uncanny and accidental. The second establishing a continuity of formalist inquiry incorporating multiple modes of abstract mark making and production. The exhibition further presents a group of artists with a strong presence in London, offering an engaging survey of important figures working or exhibiting in the city today. Info: Breese Little Gallery, Unit 1, 249 – 253 Cambridge Heath Road, London, Duration: 2/6-31/7/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 12:00-18:00, www.breeselittle.com

Around 1990, Erwin Wurm found a new form of expression with his “Performative Sculptures”, a new term that the artist claimed for himself. The solo exhibition at the 21er Haus comprises upwards of 40 performative sculptures and statues, including a series of new works which Wurm developed especially for the exhibition. In his most recent work, he deals with extraordinary examples of architecture and objects of daily use. The starting point is represented by models and blocks of clay, which are usually processed by Wurm himself or other people whom he instructs. Tension arises in the dialogue between the original form of objects and the traces left by the performative interventions, turning the body into the material and the medium of action. In the exhibition, the works of clay are juxtaposed with castings made of bronze, aluminium, iron, or polyester resin. Info: Curators:  Severin Dünser & Alfred Weidinger, 21er Haus Museum of Contemporary Art, Arsenalstrasse 1, Vienna, Duration: 2/6-10/9/17, Days & Hours: Wed 11:00-21:00, Thu-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.21erhaus.at