ART NEWS:Sept.04
“Muros Blandos. Ser entre bordes” is an international group exhibition that aims to open up a conversation about notions of migration, otherness and possibilities of transformation. It brings together eight artists and collectives from different geographic locations, socio-political perspectives and moments in time who share an impulse to question social constructions of power. Together these disparate voices find points of confluence and divergence, creating a series of layered conversations which audiences are invited to join. Drawing on the ideas of Brazilian theoretician and pedagogue Paulo Freire, the exhibition poses questions rendered urgent by increasingly divisive politics around the globe: can the state of being in-between borders, which is becoming a reality for more and more people, become a powerful position of resistance? What are the possibilities of questioning the roles of oppressor and oppressed, towards a transformation of these dynamics? Info: Curators: Berger, Lily Hall and Mette Kjærgaard Præst, Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Avenida República 475, Santiago, Duration: 2/9/17-21/1/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, http://mssa.cl
The works of the exhibition “Cambridge Living” by Hernan Bas are inspired by the lore and romanticism of life at Cambridge. Following a period of research while in residence at Jesus College Cambridge in 2016, Bas has developed new subject matter including the famed ‘Night Climbers of Cambridge’, a group of students whose nocturnal ascents of the ancient buildings of the university and town, taking photographs while trying to avoid detection, gained them a cult following during the early decades of the 20th Century. Bas is as prodigious in his experimentation with painting materials and techniques as with his reference points and source material. Inspired by an exhibition of illuminated manuscripts at the Fitzwilliam Museum, which included a vitrine containing the pigments used to create them, he has recently begun to make his own paints, the results of which can be seen in these paintings on linen and painted works on paper. Info: Victoria Miro Gallery, 14 St George Street, London, Duration: 6/9-21/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.victoria-miro.com
Since 2008, Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machado have produced a suite of moving image works that reflect on notions of confrontation, order and chaos in contemporary society. Bringing these works together for the first time in the United States, the exhibition “Divine Violence” speculates on the potential for revolution in everyday life. In doing so, the exhibition attends to the artists’ reflections on violence (and by extension anarchy) as a means to undercut the forces of law, power, and capital. Among the works of the exhibition exploring the poetics and politics of urban life in Brazil and other global locations, “The Century” (2011) and “One Way Street” (2013) are interrelated pieces that provide different viewpoints on a shared event,a street protest. These two works function as an anatomy of the event, deconstructing its actions and impact on civic space. Info: Curator: Yesomi Umolu, Logan Center Exhibitions, 915 E. 60th Street, 1st Floor, Chicago, Duration: 8/9-20/10/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 9:00-21:00, Sun 11:00-21:00 https://arts.uchicago.edu
To celebrate the centennial of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, The Arts Club of Chicago presents Roman Ondak’s solo exhibition “Man Walking Toward a Fata Morgana”. Known for a conceptual oeuvre that draws on both participatory and object-based processes, Ondak interrogates the peculiarities of daily life in a post-Soviet and increasingly global context. On presentation are four sculptural installations that have never been shown in the United States along with an ongoing series of paintings begun in the ‘90s, most of which were produced expressly for this exhibition. The visual and conceptual centerpiece of the exhibition is “Escape Circuit” (2014), an arrangement of 42 colorful, wooden and metal cages placed in a rough circle with interlocking passages. Ondak presents the cages as a hypothetical habitat, with the implication that an animal inhabitant could experience the illusion of freedom, but without ever leaving the loop determined by the architecture of his environment. Info: The Arts Club of Chicago, 201 E. Ontario Street, Chicago, Duration 12/9-22/12/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-18:00m Sat 11:00-15:00, http://www.artsclubchicago.org/
Set within an immersive wall painting the installation “Ahy-kon-uh-klas-tik” combines a trans-historical selection of works from the Van Abbemuseum’s collection, sculpture and assemblages by Brook Andrew, rarely seen documents and publications from the museum’s library as well as the artist’s own extensive archives that focus on popular and official documents relating to colonial and stereotyped agendas of the global south. The title of the exhibition, the phonetic spelling of Iconocalsm, alludes to the manner in which Andrews project takes apart and upends methods of categorising, presenting and mythologizing cultural histories. It also challenges the use of the Greek classical term in the light of Western philosophical dominance; reflecting on the extreme linguicide of Aboriginal languages since the British invasion of Australia in 1788. Info: Curators: Nick Aikens, Van Abbemuseum, Bilderdijklaan 10, Eindhoven, Duration: 15/9-31/12/17, Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-17:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, https://vanabbemuseum.nl/
In the exhibition “Die Spuren” Mirosław Bałka has interrelated a selection of sculptures, sound-specific and site-specific works which are limited to minimal gestures and reduced artistic elements and that revolve around the idea of emptiness. This emptiness created by means of reserved enactments, minimal interventions and reduced gestures makes space for the relationship between the separate works, mutually charged by their interaction, and thus opens up the interpretative impetus for the viewer’s perception that is driven not only by seeing, but also by moving around, feeling and hearing. The point of reference of many of Bałka’s works is the body and the corporeality of human existence. Whereas in his earlier works the body featured as an image, in the works since the 1990s it seems to be present through its absence. Info: Museum Morsbroich, Gustav-Heinemann-Strasse 80, Leverkusen, Duration: 24/9/17-7/1/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-17:00, http://www.museum-morsbroich.de/
Gianfranco Baruchello’s solo exhibition “Incidents of Lesser Account” presents works made between 1959 and this year, including large early canvases, paintings on layered acrylic sheets and on aluminium, boxed assemblages, and a selection of film and video. These will plot a map through Baruchello’s excessive imaginary, where a form of storytelling, critically engaged and often absurd, is constantly re-invented. Baruchello developed his pictorial vocabulary through a process of fragmentation and miniaturisation. Applied on canvas, acrylic and aluminium, a multitude of objects, shapes and characters, from history, politics and high and low culture circulate in decentralised, non-hierarchical space, creating a sort of mental cartography. Even if, as the artist’s friend Marcel Duchamp suggested, his works are ‘viewed from close up over the course of an hour’, their narratives remain elusive. Info: Curator: Luca Cerizza, Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, London, Duration: 29/9-3/12/17, Days & Hours: Fri-Sun 11:00-18:00 (2-8/10 Daily 11:00-18:00, http://www.ravenrow.org/
For her exhibition “ears to speak of”, Amalia Pica will develop “Ears” (2017), a new work, which continues her engagement with the failures and impossibilities of communication and obsolete technologies. The artist will create monumental cardboard reconstructions of acoustic radars, also referred to as ‘listening ears’, found in Denge, Kent in the UK. These devices were built along the coast of England between the ‘20s-‘30s. Designed to pre-empt aerial attacks by detecting the sound of incoming aircraft, these radars were quickly outmoded, due to the rapid evolution of aircraft and radar technologies. The exhibition will also feature works from Pica’s “In Praise of Listening” (2016) series, large-scale sculptures of hearing aids rendered in marble, granite and soapstone. At the heart of these devices is the active intention to make listening possible on a personal level. Info: Curator: Carolin Köchling, Assistant Curator: Nabila Abdel Nabi, The Power Plant, 231 Queens Quay West, Toronto, Duration: 29/9-31/12/17, Days & Hours: tue-Wed 10;00-17;00, Thu 10:00-20:00, Fri-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.thepowerplant.org
The exhibition “Charles & Ray Eames. The Power of Design” offers a comprehensive overview of the complete oeuvre and shared life of this husband-and-wife team. Featuring 500 original works, including films, photographs, furniture, drawings, sculptures, paintings, textiles, graphic design, models and stage props, the retrospective illustrates the congenial synergy between the personalities of Charles and Ray Eames, which formed the foundation of a lifetime of work by what was arguably the most successful design duo in history. Charles and Ray Eames gained an international reputation with their furniture designs, which are displayed in the second area of the exhibition. They initially focused their efforts on plywood, exploring the limits of its capacity to be moulded into complex shapes. In the late 1940s, they began experimenting with the increasingly popular material of plastic, creating the legendary fibreglass chairs that soon became a common fixture in many households and public spaces. Info: Vitra Design Museum, Charles-Eames-Str. 2, Weil am Rhein, Duration: 30/9/17-25/2/18, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-18:00, www.design-museum.de
For the first time in more than a decade, the 6th Asian Art Biennial this year is curated by a joint team of an in-house curator and three foreign curators, a mechanism fairly distinct from its previous curatorial practice. Treating “Negotiating the Future” as the theme, the curatorial team has invite around 30 artists/collectives to accomplish this great achievement with concerted efforts. The theme “Negotiating the Future” features the momentum and limitless potential of contemporary art, as well as the possibilities for art to negotiate and strike a balance among various conflicts of power and relations. By virtue of the creations of these participating artists, this biennial also seeks to address the recent events and latent tension in Asia, thereby reflecting people’s desperate yearning for changing the society and fashioning the future through a concatenation of negotiations. Info: Curators: Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Ade Darmawan, Kenji Kubota, Hsiao-Yu Lin, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, No. 2, Section 1, Wuquan West Road, Taichung City, Duration: 30/9/17-25/2/18, Days & Hours: tue-Fri 9:00-17:00, Sat-Sun 9:00-18:00, http://english.ntmofa.gov.tw