ART NEWS:Jan.01
OMA, led by partner Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, have been chosen as the “Creative Mediators” for the 12th edition of Manifesta, which will be held in Palermo in 2018. The practice will assemble an interdisciplinary team to investigate the role of governance in the Italian city, and address how contemporary urban centers are affected by tourism, gentrification, migration and climate change. They will also work with specialists from the fields of contemporary art, sociology, music, cinema and architecture” to develop a series of “interactive, interdisciplinary, performative and artistic interventions. Manifesta is the third most influential European Biennial. The establishment of Manifesta goes back to the early ‘90s and its radical economic and social changes, which followed the era of the Cold War and began the formation of a new European identity. Manifesta has since become an interdisciplinary platform, which, through intensive research into its own location and the production of new artworks, has established a dialogue between international and local players about questions of art and society in Europe. Manifesta 12 will feature a series of interactive, interdisciplinary, performative and artistic interventions.
The expansion of the Lillehammer Art Museum and Lillehammer Cinema by Snøhetta is created on idea of art hovering above a transparent base. The new space houses a children’s workshop at ground level and sits beneath a cantilevered hall wrapped in a dynamic metal façade. The circulation through the Museum is significantly improved, with a new connection below the art garden enhancing the visitor experience. The second story gallery is dedicated to housing the works of Lillehammer-based artist Jakob Weidemann. The gallery’s striking metallic wrapping reflects the surrounding context and changes its appearance with the light. The façade was created by late Norwegian artist Bård Breivik, and it is conceptually rooted in the sculptural idea of a shooting star, a dramatic symbol of the importance of Weidemann’s contribution to Norwegian painting. The Lillehammer Cinema added two new auditoriums and renovated its existing circulation space. One auditorium is integrated in the existing building structure, and the second is located below the art garden, between the two existing buildings. The entrance façade is renewed to compliment the style of the original building and brings to front a wall integrated with art by Odd Tandberg.
The book “A Silent Solitude” by SKIRA Publications that will be in the market on February 2017, is a powerful monograph dedicated to the work of Santu Mofokeng, winner of the International Prize for Photography. Born in 1956 in Soweto, Mofokeng began his career as a freelance photojournalist and darkroom printer, and it was during this period that he decided to document the minutiae of his everyday life. Mofokeng’s early series were conceived while he was a member of Afrapix, the influential anti-apartheid documentary photography collective that championed the Resistance Arts Movement and called for photographers to channel their work into activism. With his 1986 project, “Train Church”, Mofokeng captured the devotional worship and laying of hands that occurred in makeshift religious services put on during his daily commute between Soweto and Johannesburg. A later series, “Chasing Shadows” (1996-2006), delved deeper into the spiritual lives of black South Africans as they held faith ceremonies at the sacred Motouleng Caves.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles announced a Terry Riley Residency. During the residency Riley improvises solo as part of a series of in-gallery programs focusing on core ideas in the exhibition “Doug Aitken: Electric Earth”. Terry Riley creates a series of improvisational performances in dialogue with the multiple moving image installations inside the exhibition. In each performance, Riley use a combination of instruments to explore and respond to the different environments within the exhibition. On 5/1/17 5, Riley will do a one-hour concert performance starting at 19:00, and again on 8/1/17 starting at 15:00. During the remainder of the residency dates Riley will be doing impromptu performances inside the exhibition. All performances are free with museum admission. Minimalist composer Terry Riley’s revolutionary 1964 classic “In C” provided a new concept in musical form, changing the course of 20th Century music. He has been cited as a major influence by composers Phillip Glass and John Adams, and rock band The Who. Info: The Museum Of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA), Geffen Contemporary, 152 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles, Duration: 4-10/1/17, www.moca.org
The new solo exhibition of Simon Faithfull, “Does The World Exist, When I’m Not There” presents for the first time the trilogy “Going Nowhere” (1995-2016). “Going Nowhere 1” (1995) is an attempt to witness an absence and to check wether the world still existed during this absence. In the video trudging through drifting snow, a figure walks slowly away from the camera. The silhouette gradually recedes to become a dot in the white landscape and finally disappears over the distant horizon. “Going Nowhere 2” (2011) presents a walk through a landscape at the bottom of the Adriatic Sea. A figure dressed in jeans and a white shirt walks purposefully away from the camera and steps laboriously through a landscape of fish, rocks and watery light until he disappears into the murky distance. “Going Nowhere 1.5” (2016) presents a walk around the perimeter an inter-tidal island as it slowly disappears under the rising waves. The third in a trilogy of works, again shows a figure that seems locked in a Sisyphean quest. Info: Galerie Polaris, 15 rue des Arquebusiers, Paris, Duration: 7/1-18/2/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.galeriepolaris.com
The group exhibition “The visible hand” draws its title on the business history homonym term for management as a corrective to the invisible forces of the market, this show posits art as a form of managerial practice. After all, artists already live, breathe and work as single-person institutions. The participating artists: Chloë Bass, BFAMFAPhD, Maureen Connor, Devin Kenny and Jen Liu, set aside the too-convenient narrative of art as an oppositional critique of corporate management, and propose art as existing within and alongside institutions rather than outside of them. The works here reflect on the entire process of artistic production, from early socialization to the arts education system to market pressures to systems of distribution, consumption and storage. Info: Curator: David Borgonjon, CUE Art Foundation, 137 West 25th Street, New York, Duration: 7/1-15/2/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00, http://cueartfoundation.org
Sophie Kuijken’s first solo exhibition will be on presentation at Galerie Nathalie Obadia. Born in Bruges Sophie Kuijken has worked for 20 years in the most complete privacy. She chose to destroy a large part of her creations from these years of research, until finally, in 201, she accepted the invitation of Joost Declercq, director of the Museum Dhont-Dhaenens in Belgium, to showcase her work for the first time. The new works presented in this exhibition bring a whole gallery of individuals to life. The framing varies to zoom in on a face or have bodies float on a dark and undetermined background. The ambiguity of these images goes with a great attention paid to details through the fold of an item of clothing, the choice of a certain color or the mastery of the play of lights and shadows. The darkness of backgrounds, the frontal points of view and the formats chosen reveal the essential photographical dimension in Sophie Kuijken’s work. Info: Galerie Nathalie Obadia, 3 rue du Cloître Saint-Merri, Paris, Duration: 7/1-11/3/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.nathalieobadia.com
Laurent Grasso, presents the Paris debut of “Elysée” at Galerie Perrotin, the artist received special authorization to shoot the film in the Salon Doré, the office of the President of the French Republic. With this film, Laurent Grasso offers a unique reflection on the esthetics and representation of power. A genuine incursion into the hushed secrets of the Salon Doré in the Elysée Palace, the film brings to light objects from the past and present, the decorum of the presidential function. “My work always takes its point of departure in reality, which provides a support for the imagination”, explains Laurent Grasso. The camera lingers and grazes all these objects with a certain intimacy which creates a temporal telescoping and displacement. Produced on the invitation of the Archives Nationales in 2016 for the exhibition “Le secret de l’Etat”, and shot by a real film crew, is the first of a series of films that Laurent Grasso wishes to devote to places of power. Info: Galerie Perrotin, 76 rue de Turenne (10 Impasse Saint-Claude), Paris, Duration: 7-14/1/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.perrotin.com
David B. was one of the initiators of the French alternative editorial house L’Association, and is now well-known for the graphic novels he either wrote and drew himself and the ones he wrote for others. After his Applied Arts studies, David Beachard had his first publications in magazines. After he co-founded L’Association in 1990, he began using the pseudonym David B. and specialized in short black-and-white stories, detailing nightmarish dreams, collected in the album “Le Cheval Blême” in 1992. As powerful as his dream imagery is in itself, it is amplified by his masterful use of black and white drawings. David B in his solo exhibition “Mon Frère et le Roi du Monde” at the Gallery Anne Barrault in Paris, presents a set of 72 drawings. This project follows the last two solo exhibitions of the artist at the art centre le Pavillon Blanc in Colomiers and at the Museum of l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix in les Sables d’Olonne, as well as the book published by l’Association. Info: galerie anne barrault, 51 Rue des Archives, Paris, Duration: 7/1-4/2/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.galerieannebarrault.com
Cycles such as appreciation, oblivion and reappraisal, in the form of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction lie at the source of Jonas Wijtenburg’s artistic practice. To him, his sculptures are never finished, but are components of a constant process of becoming and deteriorating. The motif of the ruin appears regularly in his work. For instance, he makes use of all kinds of elements from previous works to create new sculptures. Simultaneously, Wijtenburg also recognizes parallels in this cycle with the realm of thought in which forgotten ideas manifest themselves in a new form after time. On the basis of that thought and with an abhorrence of waste, he is currently working on a modular installation that he gradually expands within the inner logic of his self-conceived system. According to Wijtenburg, this concerns a reciprocal process in which his spatial works are not merely the reflection of his ideas but, vice versa, generate in turn a kind of spatial concept that gives form and structure to his realm of thought. Info: Lily Robert, 3 rue des Haudriettes, Paris, Duration: 7/1-25/2/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, http://lilyrobert.com
Just as love feeds and thrills us, the loves related in LOVE STORIES nourish and enliven us. In the 31st edition of VIDEO FOR EVER, “Love Stories” ventures into a realm of love without borders, without distinctions between the various forms of love. We no longer should assign love a quality, to inscribe it in hierarchies like the ones bequeathed by idealism tainted with moralist propaganda, which casts down carnal love and raises up agape. Instead, our guiding principle for LOVE STORIES has been and will be the amorous mechanism, the principle of attraction, the flux that engenders attachment, instilled by nature in all its creatures, conscious or not. Love is the love for the other – whoever the other is. Let him or her be and let us all enjoy the existence of the other with love and respect. The videos selected also shed a critical light on the never-ending loneliness and constant fights that love also conceals. Info: Curator: VIDEO FOREVER 31, Soho House Istanbul, Evliya Çelebi Mahallesi Mesrutiyet Cad. No:56, Beyoglu, Istanbul, Day & Hour: 7/1/17, 19:00