ART NEWS:Dec.02

Tim Van Laere GalleryFranz West’s solo exhibition is on presentation at Tim Van Laere Gallery. The exhibition brings together various aspects from the broad oeuvre of Franz West. Both collages, sculptures from papier-mâché, plaster and polyester, furniture and installations from different periods of his career are shown. His oeuvre is characterized not only by the forms he invents, but also for the communicative quality with which he directly addresses the viewer, urging him/ her to participate. In the mid-1970s, West made his so-called “Paßstücke” movable sculptures made of plaster and metal that were intended to be moved, touched, and handled, thus transforming viewers into participants.  As a consistent continuation of the series West has been working since 1987 to construct furniture for sitting and reclining, using prefabricated elements and discarded industrial products which he covered by stretching fabrics or carpets over them. The artist aims to create a certain interaction between artwork and viewer, between object and subject. Info: Tim Van Laere Gallery, Verlatstraat 23-25, Antwerp, Duration: 7/12/17-20/1/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 13:00-18:00, www.timvanlaeregallery.com

Boghossian FoundationIn the exhibition “Instantanés d’Orient” is on presentation a selection of photographs from the Biennal of contemporary photographers from the Arab world shown in Paris at the Arab world institute as well as at the European house of photography in 2017. The group exhibition explores the contemporary Arab world through the diverse viewpoints of six photographers: Jaber Al Azmeh, Moath Alofi, Mouna Karray, Rania Matar, Douraïd Souissi, and Stephan Zaubitzer. These artists capture original portraits and troubling landscapes through their series of snapshots. Exploring contemporary creative photography in this region helps bring to light the diversity of the concerns facing the photographers who live and work in the Arab world, and helps to connect each of their practices whether they are conceptual, material, or documentary. Each of the exhibited artists has his or her own journey, but they have all been selected for their strong commitment and for the closeness they have with the themes they address and express through their images. Info: Fondation Boghossian, Villa Empain, Avenue Franklin Rooseveltlaan 67, Brussels, Duration: 7/12/17-11/2/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.villaempain.com

The BassMika Rottenberg’s self-titled solo exhibition, presents a selection of work created within the past two years. Through a globally influenced practice, not pinned to nationality, identity or location, Rottenberg blends fiction and humor to illuminate tangible contemporary concerns. Her work often focuses on elucidating the mechanics of late-stage, global capitalism by way of absurd and poetic comparisons. Through architecturally constructed sculpture combined with sensory video experiences, Rottenberg creates immersive scenarios that probe connections between alternate universes and visible reality, calling attention to the tenuous closeness between the real and the absurd. Her works highlight the human body’s relationship to capitalist production, often exploring the actual commodification of bodily possessions, and persons themselves. Similarly, Rottenberg’s kinetic works operate as constructed mechanisms that allude to other-worldly scenes, providing enticing vitality to otherwise mundane, common materials. Info: The Bass, 2100 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, Duration: 7/12/17-30/4/18, Days & Hours: Mon & wed-Sun 10:00-17:00, https://thebass.org

SMKFor her solo exhibition  “SÅ LÆNGE DET VARER*”, Nairy Baghramian created a site specific installation reflecting on the role of the institutional frame as an experimental space that is made available to contemporary art. Inspired by an iconic steel grid structure from the exhibition venue The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, the artist has produced an installation especially for SMK. Reflecting on the ceiling grid at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, initially conceived as an architectural feature holding lamps etc. and then, over decades, worked over and repeatedly subjected to interventions by artists, Baghramian uses the grid almost as a matrix. The structure has since been taken down, but Baghramian obtained a piece of the original grid to cast her sculpture from. In her version, the originally solid, load-bearing grid structure is transformed into light, semi-transparent shapes propped up by thin polished metal rods. Info: Curator: Marianne Torp, SMK (National Gallery of Denmark), Sølvgade 48-50, Copenhagen, Duration: 7/12/17-2/4/18, Days & Hours: Tue & Thu-Sun 11:00-17:00, Wed 11:00-20:00, www.smk.dk

GRIMM GalleryDana Lixenberg presents her three-channel video installation “Imperial Courts”. This video is an expansion of her extensive project “Imperial Courts” (1993-2015). Lixenberg’s video installation captures life in Imperial Courts in a spectrum from drama and play to aimlessness and routine, enhancing our grasp of the normalcy of life in a part of the American inner-city habitually derided as aberrant and extreme. The video thus frames the continuity of community against the changelessness of an inner-city landscape, rejecting sensationalism and spectacle in favour of sensitivity. In 1992, Lixenberg traveled  for first time to South Central Los Angeles to photograph a magazine story on the aftermath of the riots that erupted following the acquittal of four LAPD officers who were involved in the brutal beating of Rodney King. What she encountered inspired her to return to the area and eventually led her to the Imperial Courts housing project in Watts. The potent combination of racial injustice, community frustration, and one-dimensional media coverage pushed her to start a project portraying the residents of Imperial Courts. Info: GRIMM Gallery, 202 Bowery, New York, Duration: 14/12/17-28/1/18, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 11:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-18:00, https://grimmgallery.com

THE FABRIC WORKSHOP AND MUSEUMThe exhibition “Process and Practice: 40 Years of Experimentation” pairs evocative items from almost 60 boxes containing process materials from its artists residencies with the finished works that were produced in FWM’s Workshop. The selection is drawn from 371 boxes stacked floor to ceiling in the Museum’s archive and from the permanent collection of some 5,000 objects amassed since its inception in 1977. The occasion is its 40th anniversary and capping the year has been the literal unpacking of a rarely-exhibited holding within the Museum’s Collection. A number of the objects on view document what are today considered milestones in contemporary art practice. Among these, process material from Chris Burden’s “L.A.P.D Uniforms” and Gary Simmons’ “Step in the Arena (The Essentialist Trap)”, both exhibited in 1994, are especially timely for their engagement with the issues of violence and race in America. Info: The Fabric Workshop and Museum, 1214 Arch Street. Philadelphia, Duration 15/12/17-25/3/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat-sun 12:00-17:00, www.fabricworkshopandmuseum.org

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art 1“turning forty winks into a decade” is Sofia Stevi’s first solo presentation in a public institution. The artist presents  recent paintings alongside a new body of work created for the exhibition. Stevi makes bold, large-scale paintings, sculpture, books, works on paper and installations, drawing inspiration from literature, philosophy and the everyday. Her works bring together a wide range of references, from the writings of Victorian poet Christina Rossetti, to found images on Instagram, which Stevi interprets through a series of figurative studies on fabric. Her background as a poet and designer is incorporated into her fluid use of line and narrative graphics, abstracting her source material and experimenting with soft, pliable materials such as untreated cotton as a base for her work. Her paintings capture fleshy fruits and soft body contours with a cartoon-like expressiveness. Made with Japanese ink, the works evoke the domestic but contain a charged eroticism. Info: Curator: Emma Dean, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, S Shore Rd, Gateshead, Duration 15/12/17-22/3/18, Days & Hours: m=Mon & Wed-Sun 10:00-18:00, Tue 10:30-18:00, http://baltic.art

Contemporary Arts Museum HoustonChristopher Knowles is regarded as a poet and painter, yet his output is broader than this suggests. The exhibition “In a Word”, his most comprehensive to date, spans many text, sound, painting, drawing, sculpture, and performance, including works made in collaboration with esteemed theater director Robert Wilson. His work records and reorders the everyday materials around us using incantatory rhythms and repetition. Typings of language permutations, reimagined song lyrics, interlocking blocks of raw color commonly depict family and close friends. Sculptures are precise and direct in construction: polka-dotted cones, brilliantly hued paper cutouts, Lego structures, and accumulations of wind-up alarm clocks. Info: Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Brown Foundation Gallery, 5216 Montrose Boulevard, Houston, Duration: 16/10/17-25/3/18, Days & Hours: Tue-wed & Fri 10:00-19:00, Thu 10:00-21:00, Sat 10:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-18:00, https://camh.org

Hosfelt GalleryIn Andrew Schoultz’s solo exhibition “Illuminated Opposition”, the artist brings his signature street-savvy style to a new body of work that questions the meaning and function of public space and the nature of political discourse. With an emphasis on the formal vocabulary of abstraction, Schoultz exposes the ways in which meaning is manipulated and perception skewed as the locus for civic debate has shifted from the town plaza to the isolated, anonymous realm of cyberspace. Two monumental sculptures anchor the installation, surrounded by murals painted directly on the walls of the gallery, paintings on panel and paper, and other sculptural objects. In a new series of abstract paintings, Schoultz distills some of his familiar stylistic elements into a more formal language with subtler allusions. Other works incorporate new symbolic motifs with multiple, sometimes conflicting meanings. Info: Hosfelt Gallery, 260 Utah Street, San Francisco, Duration: 16/121/17-20/1/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10am-17:30, Thu 11:00-19:00, http://hosfeltgallery.com

Annie Gentils GalleryThe exhibition “Four Rooms for Five Thoughts” shows a selection of recent works of Herman van Ingelgem and Chloé Op de Beeck. Their cooperation which started in 2015 arose from an intense correspondence. Since then they have been researching how this dialogue and the sharing of experiences can be a method of working. By means of different media (drawings, installations, videos, sculptures,etc.) they question in an authentic manner how language and memory work in relationship to their surrounding architecture and art history. Interesting is the fact that the artists does not use expensive specialized material or equipment to construct their works. A strange scale model of a room is done in plaster cardboard transparent plastic and bits of paper. Especially the plaster cardboards are a typical do it yourself material. There is nothing special or specialized about this kind of art and it is exactly that which makes it so compelling. In some cases the question arises whether he used any material at all or whether he rather took away things that were already there to reveal what lays behind them. Info: Annie Gentils Gallery, Peter Benoitstraat 40, Antwerp, Duration: 16/12/17-14/18, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 14:00-18:00, www.anniegentilsgallery.com