ART NEWS:Sept. 03
Christian Hidaka’s “Players” are few in number and return from one composition to the next. Here, they are harlequins, young female acrobats, men in djellabas, a silhouette stretched out beneath a fire… In other paintings we find women in kimonos, musicians, silhouettes shaded by parasols. Christian Hidaka’s paintings function through a condensation of inspirations. Walking around the exhibition, places and scenes follow one another in a regular scansion, the gallery in its turn is transformed into a memory theater. It can be revisited in the mind: first the antechamber with its empty spaces, thereafter the main room with the Players performing their mysterious ceremonies. One painting after another, the visit can be reconstructed. Info: Gallery Michel Rein, 42 rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 7/9-11/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, http://michelrein.com
The exhibition “Investigating the Limits of Painting” explores the work of Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos and Julije Knifer. Created in post-war Croatia, their work presents an attempt to resolve the problem of the “death of painting” and could be described as a part of the neo-avant-garde and proto-conceptual practices in Europe. Julije Knifer dedicated his life and career to create “anti-painting”, reducing form down to its simplest iteration, and holding himself to a principle of repetition, while Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos was negating art creating his “antipeinture” series, turning ready-made objects, into artworks. His approach was deeply rooted in philosophy and aimed to investigate the destiny of painting after the experience of wartime death and devastation. The idea of this exhibition is to present both artists, keeping in mind the obvious difference in visual expression, and prove that similar concepts could result in completely different final work. Info: Curator: Ivana Bašičević Antić, Galerie Frank Elbaz, 136 Glass Street, Dallas, Duration: 9/9-28/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.galeriefrankelbaz.com
In “Line + Light” Brian Wills presents his new body of work, the artist continues to use his trademark materials of thread and wood to navigate modes of perception. Like his predecessors in the ‘60’s Light and Space Movement, Wills furthers their explorations, merging formalist concerns with his idiosyncratic use of materiality and color. Adopting a minimalist ethos, Brian Wills has embraced the ideology of the relationship between space and the spectator. His work is characterized by simple and smooth geometric shapes that lend themselves to a physical form of appreciation. His exhibition comprises three series of new works, one of which is focused around his signature use of hovering rayon thread over oak and walnut shadow boxes, where thread becomes both color and surface within the conceptual space of painting. In a new series, he takes this process a step further by painting the wooden surface behind the thread into solid tones, bringing a different depth and complexity to the work. Info: Praz-Delavallade, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Duration 9/9-28/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.praz-delavallade.com
Since 2011, the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès supports the production of new work in the Performing Arts field, through its programme “New Settings”.
Now in its seventh year, “New Settings” presents 16 works for the stage, supporting their production and presentation in various French cultural institutions. Additionally, three performances are presented in New York. Together, they embrace diverse formats and aesthetics, but are united in their off-beat, experimental approach. At the frontier of the visual and performing arts, many draw on innovative expressive forms
and vocabularies to create remarkable, ground-breaking works across artistic disciplines. Each piece is the fruit of collaborations between performing and visual artists, or between choreographers, stage directors and artists eager to experiment: performers combine aspects of the visual arts
with their core media—the spoken word and movement—while visual artists apply their unique skills to the theatrical medium of space and time. Info: Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, Various Venues, Duration: 13/9-21/12/17, http://en.fondationdentreprisehermes.org
John Chamberlain’s solo exhibition “Masks” highlights a series of steel masks, the majority of which are on view for the first time since their creation in the ‘90s, as well as abstract wall sculptures made between the ‘70s and ‘00s. From the beginning of his career, Chamberlain emphasized the primary role of abstraction in his work. In 1991, he turned to a more recognizable form: the mask. Assembling intricately cut, painted metal parts, he made his first mask, “A Good Head and a Half” (1991), for a benefit auction for Victim Services, providing aid to victims of sexual assault. He continued to produce masks throughout the ‘90s in his studio on Shelter Island, titling many of them with opus numbers. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 980 Madison Avenue, New York, Duration 19/9-28/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.gagosian.com
The group exhibition’s title, “WILD WEST” acts as a play on words for Franz West’s nonconformist, anarchic approach to artmaking, as well as his critical place in 20th Century Western art history. His deep curiosity for alternative ways of thinking and exhibiting manifested in his numerous collaborations with fellow artists and creatives. During the height of his career in the mid ‘80s, West chose to break the conventions of a traditional “solo show” by offering other—often unknown—artists to exhibit their work alongside his—much to the surprise of the institutions that invited him. This non-hierarchical approach stood in stark contrast to West’s tremendous success in the art world, which is frequently preoccupied with authorship and individual fame. A key work in the exhibition is “Franz West” (2017) by Reiter Raabe, a film composed of never-before-seen footage Reiter Raabe shot in West’s studio between 2007 and 2012. Info: Curators: Andreas Reiter, Austrian Cultural Forum New York, 11 East 52nd Street, New York, Duration: 20/9/17-22/1/18, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-18:00, www.acfny.org
Elia Alba’s solo exhibition “The Supper Club” is focused on racial politics and visual culture. The exhibition is comprised of three components: an ongoing series of socially-engaged dinners, an exhibition of 60 photographic portraits of the artists who participated in the dinner conversations, and a book scheduled for publication in 2018. The project began in the summer of 2012 with Elia Alba photographing a group of artists. These were followed by a series of dinner conversations that engaged fifty artists to “give voice” to members of Alba’s artist community. There have since been 25 dinners that have explored themes like Baltimore, Race, and Identity, the 2016 shootings in Orlando and the need for sanctuary spaces; Black Female Subjectivity, Black Male Subjectivity and Racial Subjugation in Latin American History. Info: Curator: Sara Reisman, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation , The 8th Floor, 17 West 17th Street, New York, Duration: 21/9/17-12/1/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, http://the8thfloor.org
As Beirut is a bridge between East & West, the BEIRUT ART FAIR establishes and builds artistic links between diverse cultures, fostering collaboration between galleries with a demonstrated commitment to making discoveries. The 8th edition of BEIRUT ART FAIR gathers 51 galleries from 23 countries and features the work of 230 artists. The “Classic Section” of the fair brings together 35 exhibitors of which 15 are first-time participants while the “REVEALING” section, dedicated to the discovery of young talents, featuring a group of 26 galleries, 16 of which are participating for the first time. The three main objectives of this 2017 edition are to foster a spirit of expansion and renewal, to promote the discovery of young talents, and to unfold new perspectives on the recent history of creation and collecting in Lebanon. The exhibition “Ourouba, The Eye of Lebanon” at the heart of BEIRUT ART FAIR 2017 focuses on artistic productions and acquisitions of the 21st century and features installations, paintings, photography, video and sculptures from major Private and Institutional Collections throughout Lebanon. Info: BEIRUT ART FAIR, Beirut International Exhibition & Leisure Center, Down Town, Beirut, Duration: 21-24/9/17, Days & Hours: Thu (21/9) 18:00-22:00 by invitation only, Fri-Sun (22-24/9) 15:30-21:20, www.beirut-art-fair.com
In “Mirrors”, José Parlá creates a new series of paintings that reinvent the cityscape by exporting parts of walls he found in Italy to his Brooklyn studio in order to create work that interplays and re-contextualizes detritus appropriated and presented as objet trouvé in both abstract paintings and poetic interpretations of places seen by the artist’s eye. Parlá collected ripped posters he has applied to his work as collage that will be returned to their country of origin using his paintings as the vessels translating his journey from Milan to Rome, Napoli, Matera, Bari, Lecce and Bologna. In these works, Parlá reflects on memories from his travels and imports them back to Italy as carriers of new meaning. Parlá captures a ‘visual phonetic poetry’ throughout his art. In this exhibition José Parlá pays homage to several artists such as Mimmo Rotella, Isidore Isou, Tristan Tzara, and Burhan Dogançay, and art movements that are close in relation to his practice: New Realism and Lettrism. Info: Brand New Gallery, via Carlo Farini 32, Milan, Duration: 21/9-18/11/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat: 11:00-13-00 & 14:30-19:00, www.brandnew-gallery.com
“D’après Fibonacci and the world out there” brings together paintings, drawings and sculptures by Jorge Pinheiro. In preparing the exhibition, the active dialogue between Jorge Pinheiro and Cabrita Reis has generated a selection of 80 works focusing on specific periods of Pinheiro’s career dating from the ‘60s until the present, in which figurative painting and the language of concrete and conceptual abstractions coincide. The selection also includes a major new sculpture produced specially for the exhibition and the context of the Museum´s architecture by Álvaro Siza. Recovering the social, political and cultural spirit of his early works, Pinheiro´s artistic production over the past two decades has privileged a painting of rich quotation. His most recent works mark a return to the abstraction of music and numbers. Info: Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Rua D. João de Castro 210, Porto, Duration: 30/9/17-7/1/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-19:00, Sat-Sun 10:00-20:00, www.serralves.pt