ART NEWS:June 04
In “Bittersweet Transformation” works by three female artists from three generations, from sculpture through to film, come together in a dialogue about the body as the origin of all that is perceptible. The works of the Polish sculptor Alina Szapocznikow have been rediscovered in recent years. With Szapocznikow as the starting-point, the exhibits are situated in a field of tension between the primal instincts of lust and a yearning for death versus the routines and actions of everyday life, which manifest themselves in an engagement with changing artistic material. The works of Kateřina Vincourová and Camille Henrot also reveal a conflicting language of the subconscious as an erotic source of creation in the world of things, their technical reproduction and transformation. Here, death (in the sense of Bataille) is not just a constant companion, but undergoes a bold fusion to become the bittersweet culmination of all life. Info: Curator: Katrin Bucher Trantow, Kunsthaus Graz Universalmuseum Joanneum, Lendkai 1, Graz, Duration: 26/5-28/8/16, Days & Hours: Tue-sun 10:00-17:00, www.museum-joanneum.at
La Pop, the new music venue staged in a barge at Quai de Loire in Paris welcomes on board one of the most radical Installations of Claude Lévêque. “Kollaps”, is referring to one of cult albums of the industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, the Installation plunges the viewer into a black pitch. Advancing deep into the barge, the viewers will face their own inner demons, their fears of childhood, those caused by a dive in complete darkness and those caused by disruption of the senses. “Kollaps” is the first installation of Claude Leveque to have confronted the viewer to complete darkness. It was shown only once, in 1999, when it was created at Consortium in Dijon. Info: La Pop, 40 quai de la Loire, Paris, Duration: 1-30/6/16, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 14:00-10:00, http://lapop.fr
The exhibition at Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi resembles presentations of ethnographic collections and includes individual works of Tamás Kaszás, as well as works produced with Anikó Loránt (ex-artists’ collective) since the beginning of the 21st Century, and work prepared especially for the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. The exhibition consists of two parts, titled Archeology of the Future and Auto-anthropology. In the first section, works of art are displayed as archeological findings, speculative traces of a (future) community, which managed to survive the destruction of modern civilization. Auto-anthropology touches upon these issues on a smaller social scale: by displaying exercises in the autonomy of living and ecology of art through building a familial artistic collective. Info: Curator: Joanna Sokołowska, Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi (MS), Wieckowskiego 36 Street, Lodz, Duration: 3/6-25/9/16, Days & Hours: Tue 10:00-18:00, Wed-Sun 11:00-19:00, http://msl.org.pl
In March 1968 “Viet Nam Discourse” premiered in Frankfurt, a performance that would shake the foundations of the Western theater world. The drama was written by the Berlin-born and Stockholm-based author, filmmaker, and artist Peter Weiss, who was one of the most influential German writers of the postwar period. For the project “Viet Nam Discourse Stockholm”, the artist and researcher Marion von Osten and Peter Spillmann from CPKC Berlin have revisited the drama’s complex production history as well as the political and cultural context in which the play was created. Their ongoing research is creating a virtual archive of the radical politics of the 1960s and how they became a part of film, theater, and art. During the summer, Tensta konsthall is creating a platform for conversations, interpretations, and readings about and of the entangled histories of art practice and solidarity movements. Info: Tensta Konsthall, Taxingegränd 10, Spånga, Duration: 10/6-25/9/16, Days & Hours: Wed 12:00-20:00, Thu-Fri 12:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-17:00, www.tenstakonsthall.se
Solid and still liquid, this opposing pair delineates the parameters of an exhibition dealing with contemporary sculpture and surveying certain current tendencies on view at the Kunsthalle Münster. On the one hand, the exhibition “Solid Liquids-International Tendencies in Contemporary Sculpture” blends and appropriates artistic practices from the ‘60s to the ‘90s: readymades, appropriations, concepts, performance, and participation all stage differing narratives subjectively negotiating specific phenomena of our time. Often, such materially poor works appear with little physicality and thus seem fleeting, making them appear only more suggestive. On the other hand, one observes a new fascination for the aesthetic potential of material, for it’s form and expressive possibilities. Created single-handedly in the studio the works exhibit no shyness for the figurative, for coincidence, for purely formal decisions or for constructed mythologies. Info: Kunsthalle Münster, Speicher II, Hafenweg 28, Münster, Duration: 11/6-25/9/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 14:00-19:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-18:00, www.stadt-muenster.de
Life and death, blooming and withering, attraction and repulsion challenge each other in Saara Ekström’s provocative aesthetics. She brings together contrasting phenomena in unexpected, unsettling ways and questions culturally bound notions of what objects and materials symbolise. The exhibition title “Alchemy” refers to a process in which symbolic values are refined and modified. Saara Ekström works mainly with photography and video, but also with text, sound and sculptural installations. This exhibition presents a selection of the artist’s latest works, based on her fascination with alchemical processes. Info: Bildmuseet, Östra Strandgatan 30B, Umeå, Duration: 12/6-4/9/16, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.bildmuseet.umu.se
The group exhibition “HOME” presents works by: Morag Keil, Karen Kilimnik, Georgie Nettell, Sam Pulitzer, Emily Sundblad, Frances Stark and Phillip Zach, addressing various aspects of domesticity and the representation of interior space. The word “home” denotes a specific architectural typology that implies a comfort zone. But the home also has a hidden, mysterious side, suggesting intimate scenes and possible conflict. This is the first exhibition to take place in the new environment of schwarzescafé, by Heimo Zobernig. Zobernig’s black interior and architectural interventions serve multiple functions: coffeehouse and bar, screening and lecture hall, exhibition space and reading room, and a home for Kunsthalle Zurich’s library. Info: Curators: Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen, LUMA Westbau, Löwenbräukunst, Limmatstrasse 270, Zurich, Duration: 12/6-18/9/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat-sun 10:00-17:00, http://westbau.com
In the ‘80s, Fouad Elkoury documented the civil war in Lebanon. He has subsequently started to question the individual photographic image and now combines several media in order to create new meaning: photography, text, sound and video. Juxtaposing different layers of information evokes the viewer’s associations and new stories are generated. In the video installation “Le plus beau jour” photographer and film-maker Fouad Elkoury couples his own images, from various times and geographical locations, with excerpts from the poem “To Be in a Time of War” by the Lebanese author and artist Etel Adnan. A poetic interplay between image and text communicates experiences of a changing existence through parallel stories of war, daily life, love and despair. Info: Bildmuseet, Östra Strandgatan 30B, Umeå, Duration: 12/6-4/9/16, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.bildmuseet.umu.se
The exhibition “At first I thought I was dancing” at the Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw wants to look at the models proposed by El Hadji Sy and a specific cultural experience, the frames in which they arose as well as the possibility of their universalization. Over 100 paintings, objects, posters, and documentation as well as a performance created especially for the exhibition helps investigate the models of performativity and processuality proposed by El Hadji Sy and the surprising place in which the body, object as well as the global flow of people, goods and meanings are found within its frames. It’s the process that fascinates the artist, not the finished object. It is the process with its hidden musical, rhythmic structure that strongly transforms and bends reality. Info: Curators: Małgorzata Ludwisiak and El Hadji Sy, Assistant Curator: Karolina Marcinkowska, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, 2 Jazdów Street, Warsaw, Duration 16/6/16/40/16, Days & Hours: Tue-sun 12:00-19:00, http://csw.art.pl
Featuring 22 paintings and sculptures, “A Gesture of Color” provides a fresh look the oeuvre of Karel Appel, that goes beyond the ‘50s, spanning more than 60 years. The exhibition revisits Appel’s early interest in children’s art, his stylistic experiments, and his highly personal and sometimes almost abstractinterpretation of traditional subjects like the nude, the portrait, and the urban or rural landscape. The exhibition is a part of a wider international reappraisal of Appel’s work, which includes exhibitions in The Hague, Paris, and Munich. Karel Appel is perhaps the most renowned Dutch artist of the latter half of the 20th century and one of founding members of the Cobra group. He made his international debut in the United States in the ‘50s with support from the then director of the Guggenheim Museum James Johnson Sweeney and from Martha Jackson, allowing him to bridge his career between Europe and America. Info: The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street NW, Washington, Duration: 18/6-18/9/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:00, Thu 10:00-20:20, sun 12:00-19:00, www.phillipscollection.org
The exhibition by Christoph von Weyhe, “Au silence”,features a wide range of the artist’s large-scale gouaches. This is his first major monographic exhibition. For thirty-five years, he has been returning to the place where he grew up (the Hamburg harbor) and transcribing it into painting. Christoph von Weyhe first captures the instant with gouache, and then works on reinventing his initial sensation for months, and even years. Most of the gouaches have never been shown, and will be presented for the first time. Info: Galerie Azzedine Alaïa, 18 rue de la Verrerie, Paris, Duration: 23/6-7/8/16, Days & Hours: Daily 11:00-19:00
“MELODRAMA” is an exhibition in two acts, taking place between Luxembourg & Dayan’s London and New York gallery spaces. The exhibition includes seven sculptures and a series of photographs that function as characters in a melodramatic play. Cloaked under commonplace appearances, the works perform dramatic attitudes, generate heightened emotions, and pervade pathos into the gallery space. In “Act I: London” are on presentation works by: Pino Pascali, Maurizio Cattela, Fischli & Weiss and a series of meticulous photographs by Franco Vimercati . “Act II: New York” (14/7-17/9/16), will be on presentation a work Vincenzo Gemito in an dialogue with a Jeff Koons cast bronze sculpture. At the same time, Urs Fischer will face a work by Richard Serra. Info: Curator Francesco Bonami, Luxembourg & Dayan, 2 Savile Row, London, Duration: 24/6-20/8/16, days & Hours: tue-Fri 11:00-17:00, Sat 12:00-16:00, www.luxembourgdayan.com