ART NEWS: Dec.02
The Group exhibition “The TWIST. Failing Empires, Triumphant Provinces” represents the second phase of a long- term research, initiated at Kunsthalle Bega, Timișoara. A complex inquiry into the visual and cultural history of the TWIST as a motif, it originated in a reiterated reading of Plato’s allegory of the Cave describing the “turning around of the soul”: a movement both spiritual and physical, declined in this exhibition in its figurative, morphological, corporeal, and symbolic dimensions. The concept is illustrated through an unconventional assemblage of archaeology, applied arts, apparel, ethnographic and industrially mass-produced products that establish meaningful dialogues with contemporary art works from the collection of the National Museum of Contemporary Art and from private collections. The TWIST is a crucial conceptual mediator for the morphological and symbolic exchanges between spiritual and material cultures, a perspective applied here to the millennia of civilisation developed on the territory conventionally named “the Carpathian-Danubian-Pontic space”. The show tracks the cultural and temporal trajectories of the different regions belonging to this territory that has been, during the long history, the contact zone between the margins of various empires (Greek, Roman, Ottoman, Hungarian, Austrian, Russian, Soviet, etc.). While being formally or informally under the influence of diverse geo-political ambitions, these provinces have developed in time a resilient identity of intersection that gives the notion of “provincial” a dignified significance. Info: Curators: Călin Dan & Celia Ghyka, ational Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania, Palace of Parliament, Calea 13 Septembrie 1-3, Gate B3 / Entrance E1, Wing E4, Sector 5, Bucharest, Romania, Duration: 13/6/2024-13/4/2025, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-18:30, https://mnac.ro/
In her solo exhibition “Alliance des Corps” the light works, collages, drawings, banners and films express Marinella Senatore’s amazing creativity. Marinella Senatore has imposed a participatory art experimenting with the creative power of the collective. Through The School of Narrative Dance, Marinella Senatore, opening a dialogue between history, culture and social structures, has organized giant parades around the world (more than 7 million participants since 2012) mixing local communities, musicians, dancers, activists… The banners hanging over visitors in the exhibition at the gallery come from these parades and recall the traditional processions of Southern Italy, where the artist is from, without their religious dimension. Marinella Senatore’s work is a call to «build community». Marinella Senatore invites us, through dance, to use our body, in its fragility and singularity, as a means of resistance. This common need to weave a new social bond through bodily expression appears in all of the artist’s practices. The messages written on her installations and her luminous works are injunctions to come together, become one, celebrate life, beyond our differences. Info: Michel Rein Gallery, 42 rue de Turenne, Paris, France, Duration: 13/10/2025-18/1/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, https://michelrein.com/
John McAllister’s solo exhibition “shining serenest-like wilds whirl” presents, a series of paintings of landscapes under different conditions. McAllister creates landscapes through intuitive explorations within nature, using the enigmatic play of light and colour to conjure up scenes of beauty and emotional resonance that focus on the phenomenological elements of nature rather than the illustrative. Many of the works in this exhibition were conceived in pairs, showing the same landscape both in bloom and alive with fire. The exhibition itself is also divided in two, presented as a paired exhibition across two of our gallery spaces at MASSIMODECARLO Hong Kong and MASSIMODECARLO Beijing. The two types of landscape in shining serenest-like wilds whirl present nature in moments of transition, both accentuated by human beings’ persistent desire to create an ideal landscape and impose their ingenuity upon it. McAllister’s arcadian landscapes hint at human interference as plants with far-flung origins intermingle with native species, while their counterpart infernos show how nature can react when our efforts to mould it are pushed too far. Info: MASSIMODECARLO Gallery, 03-205A & 205B & 206, Second Floor, Barrack Block, Tai Kwun, No. 10 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong, Duration:21/11/2024-24/1/2025, Days & Hours: mon-Sat 10:30-19:00, https://massimodecarlo.com/
Lisa Jonasson’s exhibition “Reality Trip” presents collages and assemblages in painted, cut paper and wood made in recent years, as well as a series of new sculptures and objects in bronze and mixed media. Lisa Jonasson works intuitively with her images and compositions. A process where an initial statement nourishes what comes next and the final result cannot be predicted until the last piece has fallen into place. The finished works contain large quantities of small, painted and cut pieces of paper, which are joined together to form a complex and teeming imagery. The meticulous collage technique she uses is a complicating factor, a necessary friction and slowness. By concentrating on the hand, the scissors and how they interact with the paper, thoughts can be limited and chiselled out. Not everything is possible, just one thing at a time. The detailed and enigmatic images can be experienced as winding labyrinths or rebuses. Imaginative and figurative but with a broken narrative. Mysterious and open to interpretation but at the same time full of recognition and precise in their execution. Perhaps life is portrayed here in a broad sense – from its emergence and development through the lens of a microscope, via everyday relationships and endeavours, to a zoomed-out perspective where we are only an insignificant part of an infinite universe? Info: Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Fredsgatan 12, Stockholm, Sweden, Duration: 30/11/2024-25/1/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 12:00-17:00, www.gallerimagnuskarlsson.com/
After moving from Hamburg to Glasgow in the late summer of 2024, Eliza Wagener wandered through the Scottish metropolis in a ‘dérive-like state’. During the first few weeks, she looked with curiosity into the windows of the city, which was still unfamiliar to her. The view from outside into illuminated interiors and on people in supposedly unobserved moments form the basic theme of her first solo exhibition in Berlin. The artist demands conscious observation for her work, since “Windowpecking” includes around a dozen paintings created between 2021 and 2024 from different contexts. This challenges comparative viewing, which triggers speculation about the references and differences between different production phases. Some of the scenes in Wagener’s small-format paintings are bathed in a bluish light. The atmosphere of the light sometimes resembles the flickering of smartphones on which people scroll through their feeds in bed at night before falling into a restless sleep. The blurring of the real and virtual world becomes apparent. The shadows grow. A fondness for twilight, in which the contours of the human silhouettes are less sharply defined can be recognised in many of the paintings. The moment a painting is successfully propelled into the metaphysical realm, the ‘visual crackle’ begins. Wagener’s pictures are directed towards the present. Temporality appears to be a fundamental subject of her art. Info: Galerie Noah Klink, Kulmer Straße 17, Berlin, Germany, Duration: 6/12/2024-11/1/2025, Days & Hours: Thu-Sat 12:00-18:00, https://noahklink.com/
Esther Schipper Gallery presents “Sähkö Recordings”, a record shop devoted to the pioneering music label founded by Tommi Grönlund and celebrating over 30 years of its activity. As part of the artist duo Grönlund-Nisunen with Petteri Nisunen, Grönlund has had five solo exhibitions with the gallery. This is the gallery’s first focus on his work in the realm of experimental music. Sähkö Recordings was founded in 1993 by Grönlund together with the pioneering, late Finnish musician and producer Mika Vainio, and has since been releasing one of the most distinctive and important discographies in electronic music. On view, and for sale, are nearly 50 vinyls from its extensive output, alongside posters and ephemera documenting its history. Among the most well-known artists released on the label are Mika Vainio, an experimental electronic musician who helped define the genre and Jimi Tenor, an alternative jazz musician well-known in Finland and around the world. Parallels between his work on the label and as part of his collaboration with Nisunen, which also began in 1993, are apparent. In both practices, there is often a straightforward reflection, or amplification, of a physical process. Info: Esther Schipper Gallery, Potsdamer Str. 81e/Top floor / Obergeschoss, Berlin, Germany, Duration: 6/12/2024-11/1/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.estherschipper.com/
Born in 1944 in Istanbul’s Vefa neighborhood to Nezihe and Latif Ariş, Koray Ariş spent his childhood and early youth in Adana until graduating from high school in 1962. In 1963, he enrolled in the Sculpture Department at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts and graduated from Şadi Çalık’s studio in 1968. Following his graduation, he received a state scholarship to study in Italy and attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, where he studied in sculptor Emilio Greco’s studio from 1969 to 1971. Koray Ariş’s solo exhibition “The Skin We Live In” weaves together through a site-specific arrangement the artist’s works from different periods and series, as well as objects and materials documenting the production processes in his studio. The exhibition offers a comprehensive view on Ariş’s six-decade-long sculptural practice through the lens of figure, skin, sound, movement and balance—central themes in his work. Reflecting the metamorphosis of forms, the approximatively 300 works and objects on display embody a shared territory where sculpture takes on a sensual dimension through various materials like wood, stone, metal and leather. Info: Curator Selen Ansen, ARTER, Irmak Caddesi No: 13, Dolapdere Beyoğlu, Istanbul, Turkey, Duration: 12/12/2024-3/8/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-19:00, www.arter.org.tr/
Philippe Parreno has transformed the exhibition experience by turning galleries into choreographed spaces that unfold like a script. His exhibitions are immersive journeys, where parallel realities are interconnected, creating a series of unexpected, inter- dependent events that alter perceptions of space, time, and boundaries. In “Voices” at Haus der Kunst, Parreno explores the power of language by introducing ∂A, a new language crafted through machine learning and voiced by the renowned speaker Susanne Daubner. This language, merging news authenticity with Parreno’s imaginative realms, infuses the exhibition with an uncanny sense of truth. Parreno collaborates with artist Tino Sehgal to develop a new component of the exhibition in which human bodies trigger ongoing dialogues with its elements, becoming fully part of it. Their vocalisations—ranging from guttural sounds to melodic phrases—interact with the environment, causing lights to flicker, objects to whir, and surfaces to ripple. Daubner’s voice, though unseen, engages with the dancers, blurring the lines between human and artificial. The space evolves into a living environment, with Parreno’s quasi-objects re- sponding to the performers. Museum apparatus, on loan from diverse local institutions are transformed into Parreno’s conducting tools. Info: Curator: Andrea Lissoni and Lydia Antoniou with Hanns Lennart Wiesner, Haus der Kunst, Ostgalerie, Mittelhalle, Prinzregentenstraße 1, Munich, Germany, Duration: 13/12/2024-25/5/2025, Mon, Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-20:00, Thu 10:00-22:00, www.hausderkunst.de/
“Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s” is an extensive survey of experimental art made in six Central Eastern European nations between the 1960s and 1980s. Including both rarely seen and newly reconstructed works, the exhibition weaves together a complex story of artists questioning how, when and where art could exist, and exploring the varied meanings it might hold for society. Despite their geographical proximity, the artists featured in the exhibition encountered different conditions for daily life and artmaking, as they confronted varying degrees of control and pressure exerted by state authorities. Charting a generation invested in experimentation, Multiple Realities sheds light on ways that artists refused, circumvented, eluded and subverted official systems. Often infused with wit and irony, the works on view demonstrate both conceptual and formal innovation, often underpinned with an unfettered spirit of adventurousness. Drawing on visual art, performance, music and material culture, this interdisciplinary exhibition brings together works by nearly 100 artists from East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. While it presents select canonical figures from the region, the exhibition places additional emphasis on lesser-known practitioners, particularly women artists, artist collectives and those exploring embodiment through an LGBTQIA+ lens. Info: Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada, Duration: 13/12/2024-21/4/2025, Days & Hours: Mon-Wed & Sat-Sun 10:00-17:00, Thu-Fri 10:00-20:00, www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/