ART NEWS:Nov.04

Technologies suitable for mass consumption, such as VR glasses, 3D cardboards, 3D projectors and televisions, are increasingly found in everyday life. The various fields of application for these technologies, including 3D-supported operation monitoring, video games, trauma coping and the digitization of lost cultural treasures all illustrate how virtual spatial images already influence different areas of our world and will continue to shape our future. The exhibition “Beautiful New Worlds–Virtual realities in contemporary art” addresses these recent developments in image technology and explores the resulting entanglement of virtual and physical spaces. A particular focus is placed on the socio-political potential of virtual technologies. In the crosshairs between illusion and critical distance, different artistic positions examine the possibilities presented in the fields of forensics, the porn industry, and modern warfare; after all, control over virtual space is always interlinked with control over physical space. Info: Zeppelin Museum, Seestraße 22, Friedrichshafen, Duration: 11/11/17-8/4/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00, www.zeppelin-museum.de

Titled “Deep Roots”, the first exhibition by Youssef Nabil in Brussels, takes the form of a retrospective, covering the artist’s full career from his first colour photographs in 1992 until his most recent and unseen self-portraits. Youssef Nabil was born in Cairo in 1972 and deeply marked by the aesthetic of the golden years of Egyptian cinema during the ‘40s and ’50s. All his work venerates, while also reviving, this belle époque”of the East, magnified by cinema and its sequins and velvety-eyed stars. This nostalgia-tinted zeal has haunted him since the childhood he spent in the streets of the Egyptian capital, during the period they were lined with posters glorifying his idols. By awakening the flamboyant ghosts of Egypt’s pre-revolutionary films, Youssef Nabil reflects on the paradoxes of the Middle East today, in which freedoms have dangerously lost ground to religious fundamentalism on all sides. Info: Galerie Nathalie Obadia, 8 rue Charles Decoster, Brussels, Duration: 15/11-23/12/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 12:00-18:00, www.nathalieobadia.com

Olga Fedorova’s “Generic Jungle” is her first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom. Olga Fedorova is an artist working at the intersection of photography, painting, digital imaging and installation.  Using three-dimensional digital rendering software, Fedorova creates forms that resemble ready-made models and inserts them into spaces and landscapes typified by their aseptic, clinical sterility and detached, impersonal ambience.  Fedorova’s images, with their surreal, dystopian presentation, evoke uneasy, dreamlike states that feel both familiar and alien, comforting and disturbing. Female figures wearing high heels (a symbol of Russian female sexiness and sensuality) feature in several of Fedorova’s works; an aspect Fedorova describes as comprising an important element of Russian female identity.   Olga Fedorova’s lenticular images are created in the virtual space of the computer.   (Lenticular printing produces images with an illusion of depth and/or the ability to change or move as the image is viewed from different perspectives). Info:  Annka Kultys Gallery, 472 Hackney Road, Unit 3, 1st Floor, London, Duration: 16/11-16/12/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 12:00-18:00, www.annkakultys.com

The peculiarity of the exhibition “The New Frontiers of Painting” lies in the fact that it presents 34 works, only figurative paintings of 34 painters born from 1960 onwards from 17countries. Almost all paintings are large size and come mostly from artists consolidated on the international scene. Gathering them under one roof shows that painting is a language that still has a lot to say and this contrasts with the orientation of the large international exhibitions. The exhibition also establishes a dialogue with the work of leading artists living in the new Chinese and Southeast Asian scene, witnessing the importance of cultural exchanges with countries with whom dialogue is becoming increasingly intense. The project tends to highlight the incidence that painting has in the artistic landscape of the last decades and the stylistic-contentual turning point in the new millennium. Info: Curator: Demetrio Paparoni, Fondazione Stelline, corso Magenta 61, Milan, Duration: 16/11/17-25/2/18, www.stelline.it

Exploring works from the early 19th century, “Indigenous Australia: Masterworks from the National Gallery of Australia” encompasses not only the iconic traditional Indigenous works from these early periods, but also explores the rich diversity of contemporary practice in Australia right now. While paintings form the core of the exhibition, they are accompanied by videos, sculptures and installations. The exhibition reflects Aboriginal culture’s deep spirituality in its connection to country. The religious mythology of the Dreaming holds an important place in many of the works, producing images of intricate patterns belonging to particular regions while other works remind us that there has been great upheaval and change for these cultures throughout past and recent history. Some, sensing the ongoing transformation, used the medium of artistic expression to document their people’s ways, preserving them for future generations by portraying mythology and ancient rituals. Consequently, many of the contemporary works deal directly with issues arising today in Aboriginal society: Identity, politics, and sharing the complex history. Info: Curato: Franchesca Cubillo, me Collectors Room Berlin, Auguststrasse 68, Berlin, 17/11/17-2/3/18, Days & Hours: Wed-Mon 12:00-18:00, www.me-berlin.com

Merike Estna and Maria Metsalu present performances and the joint exhibition “Soft Scrub, Hard Body, Liquid Presence” that observes a shift taking place in the realm of our aesthetic and emotional sensibilities. The exhibition wonders if our over-consumption of virtual space and submission to the stress of competition and acceleration has provoked a deep mutation in the psychosphere, exploring the zombified body as a response to today’s evolving societal structures. Merike Estna’s works echo contemporary social concerns with allusions to the digital, the nostalgic, and a romantic reverence for the parts of human existence that are currently mutating, melting, and slipping away. Her performative paintings and multidimensional works question the diminished value of traditional female labor.  Maria Metsalu’s sculpture and video deal with the politicization of sexuality and the millennial body. She confronts our current conditions by taking her own body as the epicenter of her work, turning it into a shimmer as sublimely dull as that on a screen. Info: Curator: Maria Arusoo, Art in General, 145 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, New York, Duration: 18/11/17-13/1/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 12:00-18:00, www.artingeneral.org

“Intermetamorphosis” is a new series of collaborative works by Mark Fell commissioned by Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art that consider the layering and interplay of technical and interpersonal systems. The title refers to a medical condition whereby individuals appear to transition into one another and between different known identities. This is taken as a starting point for a series of explorations that antagonize classical models of artistic production and cognition. The centrepiece of the series is a new performative work featuring the North American dancer and choreographer Justin F. Kennedy. Occupying Serralves gallery space over several days, it is based around recursive actions and behaviours that form in relation to technical objects, resulting in a final evening of performance that closes the work. The piece also features the collaboration of Digitópia Collective of Casa da Música, namely through the use of the robot gamelan that this collective has developed in the last years. As part of the series the artist will also work with Drumming -Grupo de Percussão on a musical piece that revisits a collection of microtonal metallophones originally developed by the composer Iannis Xenakis. Info: Serralves Foundation, Rua Dom João de Castro 210, Porto, Duration: 23-26/11/17, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Fri 10:00-19:00, Sat-Sun 10:00-20:00, www.serralves.pt

Looking at the oeuvre of Ion Bitzan, the exhibition “The Prisoners of the Avant-Garde-A Ion Bitzan Retrospective”​ tries to shed light on a period full of nuances and shadows, when artistic innovation and political art co-existed in a complicated relation. Ion Bitzan belongs to a Romanian generation of great talents, manifest in the brief period of détente between 1962-1974 approximately, who developed a body of work that can be ascribed to international conceptualism and minimalism. His career was highlighted by participations to the most important international Biennales of the times. In contrast to other colleagues who later either emigrated, or isolated themselves from the ever more aggressive politcal context, Ion Bitzan devised a different strategy, original and at the same time risky. Parallel to his research into the history of international experimental art (which resulted in an impressive number of works), Bitzan also produced works commissioned by and dedicated to the Communist Party and its leader. Info: Curator: Călin Dan, Assistant Curator: Sandra Demetrescu, National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest, The Palace of Parliament, Wing E4, 2–4 Izvor St., Bucharest, Duration: 23/11/17-1/4/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.mnac.ro

The sixth edition of Amsterdam Art Weekend brings together a diverse network of galleries, project spaces, art institutites and acclaimed residency programs. With a tantalizing program that presents a unique opportunity to discover the latest developments in contemporary art. Over 100 events are held at more than 50 locations. This year’s diverse program features numerous exhibitions, performances, film screenings, lectures and tours. A new addition to the Amsterdam Art Weekend program is an international visiting program set up in collaboration with Kunstvlaai, platform for experimental art spaces. As part of this program six German Kunstvereine will be organizing sessions at an Amsterdam-based gallery or project space, that draw attention to artistic talent and experimentation. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam opens the exhibition “Jump into the Future-Art from the ’90s and 2000’s-the Borgmann Donation”, with works donated by German collector Thomas Borgmann. Info: Amsterdam Art Weekend, Amsterdam, Duration: 23-26/11/17, http://weekend.amsterdamart.com

Alfredo Jaar’s “A Logo for America” is on presentation for the first time in Colombia. Initially created in 1987 for New York City’s Times Square, as a commission by the Public Art Fund for their Messages to the Public series, “A Logo for America“ was seen by many at the time as a provocation. The work emblazons the words “This is Not America” across a flag and map of the USA in order to challenge the ethnocentrism of the United States, a country where language incessantly monopolizes the term “America” to describe a single country rather than an entire continent. Jaar recently pointed out that, 30 years later, the representation of an entire continent is still monopolized by the same, single country. Reproduced widely around the world, A Logo for America has become one of the artists best known works. Info: Torre Colpatria de Bogotá, Cra. 7 #24-51, Bogotá, Duration: 24-25/11/17, www.babelmedia.today