ART NEWS:Feb.02

The retrospective “Mediations” is devoted to the American photographer Susan Meiselas and brings together a selection of works from the 1970s to the present day. A member of Magnum Photos since 1976, Susan Meiselas questions documentary practice. She became known through her work in conflict zones of Central America in the 1970s and 1980s in particular due to the strength of her colour photographs. Covering many subjects and countries, from war to human rights issues and from cultural identity to the sex industry, Meiselas uses photography, film, video and sometimes archive material, as she relentlessly explores and develops narratives integrating the participation of her subjects in her works. The exhibition highlights Susan Meiselas’ unique personal as well as geopolitical approach, showing how she moves through time and conflict and how she constantly questions the photographic process and her role as witness. Info: Curators: Carles Guerra and Pia Viewing, Jeu de Paume, 1 place de la Concorde, Paris, Duration 6/2-20/5/18, Days & Hours: Tue 11:00-21:00, Wed-Sun 11:00-19:00, www.jeudepaume.org

The exhibition “Sean Scully: 1970” revisits two seminal sites in Sean Scully’s career: Newcastle and Liverpool, and demonstrates the remarkable confidence of his earlier works and his continued fascination with stripes and the spaces in between. Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1945, Scully moved to Newcastle upon Tyne in 1968 to study Fine Art at Newcastle University. During this time, he began to develop his iconic style of technically flawless paintings, consisting of a complicated grid system of intersecting bands and lines. Following his studies in Newcastle, Scully was awarded the runner-up prize in the John Moore’s Painting Prize in Liverpool in 1972 and 1974. The exhibition is a presentation of Scully’s early works. Collectively, they demonstrate remarkable confidence at this earliest stage of his career and reveal the genesis of his continued fascination with stripes and the spaces in between. In addition to his paintings, the exhibition will present a large selection of Scully’s sketches from 1967-1969, which still provide the artist with inspiration to this day. Info: Laing Art Gallery, New Bridge Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, Duration 10/2-28/5/17,  Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00, Sun 14:00-17:00, https://laingartgallery.org.uk/ and Hatton Gallery, Kings Road, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, Duration 10/2-28/5/17,  Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-17:00, https://hattongallery.org.uk

Hiraki Sawa is known internationally for videos and installations that create powerful psychological situations by interweaving the domestic and the fantastic. His solo exhibition “Fantasmagoria” features UK premieres for three new film works, “fantasmagoria” (2017) and “fishstory” (2017) are related works based on a family story about Sawa’s grandfather, who suffered a stroke as a young man. To check the bleeding on his brain, Sawa’s grandmother had to obtain ice to keep him cool, which in the remote part of the country where they lived was a very difficult task.  The third work, “ulo.ulo.ulo” (2017) marks a radical departure for Sawa. Instead of the intimate interiors that are typical of his work, the film focuses on a series of surreal actions performed in darkness in a snow-bound landscape. Info: Parafin, 18 Woodstock Street, London, Duration 15/2-29/3/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 12:00-17:00, www.parafin.co.uk

Sam Stewart’s work, which traffics in the vocabulary of high-production furniture design, conveys twisted narratives through the act of obsessive world making. Exploring the perverse desires and sincere emotions that we project onto the things we own, his sculptures subvert the intended use of the items they resemble, and instead operate as symbolic totems. His solo exhibition “Cryptid” takes place on the second floor of a townhouse and is visited by appointment only. Zoned for residential use, the space is required by the Department of Buildings to include a shower in the bathroom, a sleeping surface, and a working kitchen among other prerequisites for daily living. Reflecting on these codes and their distinctions from commercial space, Stewart has created a series of objects that imagine the personal affects of a mythical occupant.  Modeled on fabled humanoid characters, whose existence is unsubstantiated to the present, Stewart’s cryptid belongs to folklore and science fiction as well as everyday forms of self-generated mythology, such as data-driven consumer branding. Info: 3 Ninth Avenue, New York, Duration 15/2-24/3/18, Days & Hours: By Appointment Only, http://www.fortgansevoort.com/

The group exhibition “Il pleut, Tulipe” is shaped from the margins of a notebook, from the territory of signs, words, images, virtual beings existing outside all language. This is an exhibition from the shadow realm: not that it is hidden from the sun by something or somebody (although relations of dominance do get redefined here) or that the shadow in question is being manipulated by puppet masters; but because shadow has an existence of its own, just like rain, a plant, an animal, an image or a sign—subjectivities interacting in the world. The exhibition gathers together artists tuned in to these alternative beings and their affective interconnections; artists haunted by potentialities whose voices are in the minority or muffled, but with which they converse or form alliances. “Il pleut, Tulipe” thus speaks to intersubjectivity between artists, the public and these free entities; intersubjectivity as the very locus of the making of art, triggering the implosion of the old nature/culture dichotomy. Participating Artists: Pedro Barateiro, Simon Bergala, Elise Florenty & Marcel Türkowsky, Samir Ramdani, Melanie Smith, Jessica Warboys. Info: Curator: Elfi Turpin, CRAC Alsace, 18 rue du château, Altkirch, Duration: 18/2-13/5/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 14:00-18:00, www.cracalsace.com

For the first time Stine Deja and Marie Munk have worked together, Munk’s recent series of interactive sculptural works are shown alongside Deja’s immersive moving image pieces.  The exhibition, entitled “Synthetic Seduction”, questions and explores fundamental emotions, such as love, empathy, attraction and repulsion, within the growing importance of artificial intelligence in our everyday lives. Marie Munk presents a recent series of sculptural work based loosely around an ambiguous aesthetic resembling in utero or newly born creatures, each work being animated in its own unique fashion through breathing, pulses, singing, speaking or moving.  The works are interactive. Stine Deja presents the video “Foreigner” (2018, and In a second video work, “The Intimacy Package” (2018), displayed on a large TV screen Deja has created a series of lessons, composed of five short sequences set in a variety of environments. Info: Annka Kultys Gallery, 472 Hackney Road, Unit 3, 1st Floor, London, Duration: 21/2-24/3/18, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 12:00-18:00, www.annkakultys.com

The group exhibition “MORE THAN WORDS…” explores the use of text and the written word in the practice of major post-war Italian and international artists. Focusing on creative output from 1958 onwards, the exhibition feature over 30 works in various media. The artists included in the exhibition are brought together by certain key concerns: concept, light, dictionary, pop, time, philosophy, which allow us to identify affinities that unites them. Drawing on life and the kaleidoscope of verbal, literary, philosophical and poetic communication, each artist has succeeded in conferring upon the word a power that goes beyond mere meaning: more than words! On presentation are works by: Vincenzo Agnetti, John Baldessari, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Dadamaino, Tracey Emin, Lucio Fontana, Emilio Isgrò, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Piero Manzoni, Rebecca Moccia, Gastone Novelli, David Reimondo, Mimmo Rotella, Salvo, Cy Twombly. Info: Curator: Daniela Ferrari, Mazzoleni Art, 27 Albemarle Street, London, Duration 23/2-12/5/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, http://mazzoleniart.com

“MARK WALLINGER MARK” is the title of the first solo exhibition in Italy of the British artist Mark Wallinger. Known for his investigations of identity and a career-long engagement with ideas of power, authority, artifice and illusion, Mark Wallinger works in a wide range of media, covering painting, sculpture, photography, film, installation, performance and public art. Wallinger was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995 and won in 2007 for his installation State Britain, an exact replica of peace campaigner Brian Haw’s protest camp in London’s Parliament Square. On view at Centro Pecci are central works from different phases of Wallinger’s career, giving an insight into the artist’s manifold practice.  “Pietre Prato” (2018) is a new site specific work created for the exhibition. These numbered stones, with their inherent contrast of human labour and the monumental timescale of geology, catalyse thoughts of mortality, of catalogues of the vanished and anonymous. Info: Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Viale della Repubblica 277, Prato, duration 24/2-3/6/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-23:00, www.centropecci.it

John Torreano presents new works in his solo exhibition. Torreano’s practice pulls heavily from the cosmic compositions of stellar imagery; constellations and nebulae serving as both inspiration and confirmation of his paintings. The exhibitions’ title “Dark Matters Without Time” takes this reference further, building on the relationship dark matter has as an unseen yet binding force in the universe and the parallel references in Torreano’s abstraction of undefined space as being enigmatic yet universal. The paintings are created on a human scale. They envelop the viewer, drawing the gaze in and past the brush marks and routered shapes, which reference proto planets and dense gaseous clouds within nebulae, into the vast expanse of the works. Torreano’s brushwork also conjures an impressionist sensibility reminiscent of Cezanne or Monet with its energetic and gestural strokes. Info: Lesley Heller Gallery, 54 Orchard Street, New York, Duration 28/2-8/4/18, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 11:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-18:00, www.lesleyheller.com