ART NEWS:Sept. 01
Russian Cosmism was a movement that called for material immortality and resurrection, as well as travel to outer space. It developed out of the spirituality of 19th Century Russia and a strong fascination with science and technology. The doctrine of immortal life in infinite space captured the optimism of both science and the arts at the time. Since then, the utopian, science fiction-like thinking of the cosmists had a great influence on art, science, and politics in both pre-revolutionary and Soviet Russia. The exhibition “Art Without Death” delves into Russian Cosmism (its philosophical, scientific, artistic concepts and ideas) by intertwining historical material and contemporary contributions. An exhibition shows the film trilogy “Cosmism” (2014–17) by Anton Vidokle The exhibition design by Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller is based on an idea by Hito Steyerl. The third part of the trilogy, an extensive research project shot all over the former Soviet Union, will premiere at “Art Without Death”. The exhibition also features historic works by the Russian avant-garde from the George Costakis collection. Info: Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, Berlin, Duration: 1/9-3/10/17, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sun 11:00-19:00, www.hkw.de
In his new exhibition entitled “The mummy, the astronaut and other works”, Jorge Queiroz presents twenty exclusive artworks from which exert an obvious and communicative joy of painting. The artist’s paintbrush is generous and greedy. It swallows every inch of canvas and leaves no blank space. Paint covers it all. It flows like a cascade, climbs cliffs, dives into rock or sea faults, goes through underground networks to spurt up again and evaporate in inland lakes. Some islands emerge from these oil seas materialized by intense flat tints of colors. They are like breaths enabling life to flourish in his paintings. The latter manifests itself through rare silhouettes making elusive apparitions, a bit like mirages floating in the horizon. This human presence is somewhat reassuring. It means that the depicted nature is not hostile. Even if it is slightly rugged and damaged, life can still blossom, whether natural or fantastic. Info: Galerie Nathalie Obadia, 8 rue Charles Decoster, Ixelles-Brussels, Duration: 8/9-28/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 12:00-18:00, www.nathalieobadia.com
The 9th edition of Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) titled “WheredoIendandyoubegin – On Secularity” seeks to stimulate public discourse on a subject of contemporary social and political significance: that of the secular. What role should secularity have in society today? Based on the principle of a separation of religious belief and non-belief from the state, contemporary Western liberal secularity strives to create the conditions that produce and protect four civic cornerstones: political and social equality, minority rights, religious freedom, and the legal separation of private and public domains. Secularity, not to be confused with atheism, has played an essential role in society, creating the conditions for regulating complex and often divisive areas of transaction, including abortion rights, sexual freedoms, freedom of religion, gender equality and freedom of expression. Its strength lies in allowing different modes of living to co-exist due to protections and rights provided under the law and has taken many forms around the world. Info: Curator: Nav Haq, Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art 2017, Various Venues, Göteborg, Duration: 9/9-19/11/17, www.gibca.se
Matthew Brannon’s solo exhibition “Concerning Vietnam” is the result of several years’ worth of ongoing research and formal experimentation, it features unique large-scale prints, sculptures, and installation-based objects in which Brannon applies his inimitable graphic style to the psychological, political, and cultural impact of the Vietnam War. “Concerning Vietnam” represents Brannon’s most comprehensive display of work from the project to date. It includes several silkscreen prints that depict, from a first-person perspective, sites of command represented by the desks and intimate domestic spaces of the American and, for the first time, Vietnamese power brokers who directed the course of the war. endered by the artist in his studio, these are among the largest and most intricate prints he has made; in some cases they span two sheets of paper and require the use of hundreds of screens. Images of everyday things like eyeglasses and cigarette packs appear larger-than-life, creating cinematic inversions of foreground and background in which otherwise unremarkable objects take on a looming (and often sharply comical) significance.Info: David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W. Edgewood Pl., Los Angeles, Duration: 9/9-21/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, http://davidkordanskygallery.com
Lois Andison presents her solo exhibition “move forward, look back”. Her multi-disciplinary practice displays a deep knowledge of transience. Through the use of sculpture, text, video and installation she conveys the complexity of time, systemic transformation and what it is that constitutes to be female in the canon of contemporary art history. Her work interrogates the hegemony of one of the many strains of history that views her as something extraneous to the patrilineal genetic line. This is a line Andison habitually steps across through her gestural, performative sculptures, her use of wordplay and through her afterworks. A recurring motif in her kinetic sculptures is that of orbiting. This concept is extrapolated into word play that draws from the cycles of both the moon and the sun. Her video work complements the noble simplicity and refinement of her sculptural work and bears the same depth in theoretical richness. Info: Art Mûr, 5826 St-Hubert, Montréal, Duration: 9/9-28/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed 10:00-18:00, thu-Fri 12:00-20:00, Sat 12:00-17:00, http://artmur.com
Ni Youyu’s first exhibition in France, entitled “The Endless Second” features a selection of recent works (2016-17) of various media and techniques such as engraving on wood, acrylic on canvas, photography, chalk dust and stone. With the “Water Washed Paintings” series, Ni Youyu has developed a technique based on a specific pictorial process. He first covers his canvases with golden acrylic paint before adding layers of black. He then sprays great quantities of water in order to wash away some of the layers and leave only the precise outlines of a drawing. Water therefore becomes like a second paintbrush. These contrasting paintings represent motifs that evoke natural elements like trees or forests, but also fluvial sediments and rivers. The Water Washed Paintings, as well as the engravings on wood also showcased in the exhibition, are often painted in baroque frames in reference to classical masterpieces. Info: Galerie Nathalie Obadia, 3 rue du Cloître Saint-Merri, Paris, Duration: 9/9-28/10/17, days & Hours: Mon-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.nathalieobadia.com
Lucia Koch in her solo exhibition “No more things” presents a continuation of her “Fundos” series: photographs of the interiors of empty boxes, bags, and packages, manipulated to house and reflect light and mimic architectural scales. Koch began photographing for this series in 2001 while reading Paul Auster’s dystopian novel “In the Country of Last Things” which tells the story of a collapsed society with no economy or industry, in which the population must resort to selling scavenged, nearly forgotten objects to survive. In this collection of new photographs, Koch explores the feeling of vacuity when objects become obsolete and only their negative space is left behind. The result is a series of disorienting portals that hint at the inevitable downfall of a materialistic society. Info: Christopher Grimes Gallery, 916 Colorado Avenue, Santa Monica, Duration: 9/9-28/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:30, http://www.cgrimes.com
“Follow the Line”, Maria Nordin’s solo exhibition presents a group of new watercolors. In her latest work, Nordin addresses the relationship between the human body and its surrounding physical reality. In her latest work, Maria Nordin focuses on the relationship between the human body and its surrounding physical reality. A tangible reality where we constantly move around objects and geometrical shapes, and where architecture and its room embraces us. We tend to imagine this relationship as neutral and more palpable than, for instance, psychological impact, but is it actually that simple? By letting an illogical distorted form become predominant, Maria Nordin allows her figures to be shaped in a different logic from the one we have become used to see in her conceptually and physically recognizable bodies. Info: Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Fredsgatan 12, Stockholm, Duration: 9/9-8/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 12:00-17:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-16:00 (Sundays closed from 14/10 and onwards), www.gallerimagnuskarlsson.com
“Théâtres de mémoire”, is the first exhibition of Dubuffet’s homonymous series in over three decades and the first-ever exhibition dedicated to the series in London. the exhibition features nine monumental paintings on loan from Fondation Dubuffet, Tate and Fondation Beyeler. This is one of Dubuffet’s most important series of works, and contains some of the largest paintings he has ever made. The series, which Dubuffet started at age 74, also marks one of the last he created. Each work is a vast picture made up of smaller paintings, which Dubuffet cut out and glued to the canvas. He began his process on his studio floor. He then used magnets to pin the paper or canvas to the wall, allowing him to easily replace one element with another, and to overlap segments until he reached his final compositions. Info: Curators: Arne Glimcher and Tamara Corm, Pace Gallery, 6 Burlington Gardens, London, Duration: 13/9-21/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com
EXPO CHICAGO welcomes 135 leading galleries representing 25 countries and 58 cities from around the world. The 2017 Exhibitors are presented alongside sections including EXPOSURE, dedicated to solo and two artist presentations by galleries eight years and younger, selected for the first time by a curator, Justine Ludwig (Dallas Contemporary); EXPO Editions + Books, featuring artist books, editions, and multiples; and the inaugural EXPO PROFILE section, which highlights single artist installations and focused thematic exhibitions by established international galleries. In addition to participating exhibitors, EXPO CHICAGO shares a first look at the /Dialogues panel discussions program, presented in partnership with the School of the Art Institute (SAIC), to take place on-site at the 2017 edition. Aligning with the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the second annual Symposium features a day-long series of discussions and discourse surrounding the intersecting fields of art and architecture alongside over 25 panels throughout the run of the exposition. Info: EXPO CHICAGO, 600 E Grand Ave, Navy Pier, Chicago, Duration: 13-17/9/17, Days & Hours: 13/9 (Wed) 18:00-21:00 (Vernissage), 14-16/9 (Thi-Sat 11:00-19:00, 17/9/ (Sun) 11:00-18:00, www.expochicago.com
Sadie Barnette’s solo exhibition “Compland” features a mergence of photography, drawing and installation to create a dynamic exploration of the abstraction of urban space and the transcendence of the mundane to the imaginative. The title suggests a mythical cultural space, though geographically impossible, blending the California cities of Compton and Oakland. For the artist, these cities each hold equal parts biographical significance and importance as iconic places defining west coast culture, from Black Power to hip hop. Family photographs and ephemera punctuate Barnette’s imagined space with evidence of the real. California 1970’s living rooms, stacks of money and coins, sidewalk cracks and fences, stucco buildings and hello kitty toys are viewed alongside splashes of glitter and otherworldly holographic iridescence. Info: Fort Gansevoort, 5 Ninth Avenue, New York, Duration: 14/9-28/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.fortgansevoort.com
The newly founded art berlin is a partnership between abc art berlin contemporary and Art Cologne. As a further evolution of abc, the art fair takes place for the first time, the fair presents 110 international galleries from 16 countries at Station at Gleisdreieck. In addition to emerging as well as established galleries focusing on contemporary art, one will also be able to discover modern art. Throughout its four-day running time, art berlin invites you to a dense program of events that have been developed in collaboration with Berlin artists. The program, aimed in part at invited guests but also directed to the wider public, encompasses talks, studio visits, and walks throughout the exhibition grounds and in the city. On Friday evening, September 15, Berlin galleries participating in art berlin open the doors to their exhibitions. Many of these exhibitions will be opening on that same evening and complement the weekend program of Berlin Art Week. Info: art berlin, Station-Berlin, Luckenwalder Straße 4-6, Berlin, Duration: 14-17/9/17, Days & Hours: 14/9 (Thu) 12:0-16:00 Preview & 16:00-20:00 Opening, 15-16/9 (Fri-Sat) 11:00-19:00 & 17/9 (Sun) 11:00-16:00, http://artberlinfair.com
Launched in 1987, the Sea Art Festival is Korea’s leading nature and environmental art festival that has been held in the sea of Busan. This year sees the 30th anniversary of this art event. This art festival was presented as part of the Busan Biennale from 2000 to 2010 but since 2011 it has been held every odd year as a separate event. It is a unique type of environmental art festival that makes use of the sea of Busan. The theme of Sea Art Festival 2017 is Ars Ludens: Sea+Art+Fun. It derives from the question “Is art always serious and difficult to understand or is it amusing?” This theme comes from a Latin phrase coined by Dutch cultural theorist Johan Huizinga under the slogan “Art / Even art should be fun.” This touches on how the art humans create is laden with playful traits just as how one of the attributes of humans is “playing.” Such playful traits of art will be displayed through 40 artworks on a vast, white sandy beach which highlight three keywords: “sea,” “art” and “fun.” To be both artistic and fun, artworks should be able to draw a connection between people around the exhibition sites, Dadaepo seashore. Info: Curator: Do Taekeun, Sea Art Festival 2017, Dadaepo Beach, 14 Molundae 1-gil, Saha-gu, Busan, Busan, Duration 16/9-16/10-17, www.busanbiennale.org
On 12/9/17 it will be 25 years since De Pont Museum in Tilburg opened its doors to the public. This anniversary is celebrated with the exhibition ”ReView”, which involves the return of special artworks that have been seen in De Pont’s many presentations over the years. The exhibition celebrates the adventure of collecting. At De Pont, collecting has meant carefully building the museum’s DNA, which is developed and given further significance with every acquisition and presentation. This exhibition offers a glimpse of De Pont’s history. On display are several significant works from the opening exhibition, including Richard Long’s “Planet Circle”, “The First People” by Marlene Dumas and “Pair Field” by Roni Horn. The reconstruction of an initial ‘trial installation’ will be carried out specially for this occasion. Info: De Pont Museum, Wilhelminapark 1, Tilburg, Duration 16/9/17-18/1/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-17:00, Thu 11:00-20:00 (17:00-20:00 free admission), www.depont.nl