ART NEWS:June 02

Michel François transforms seemingly uncomplicated objects and materials, or traces of past events, into deeply resonant carriers of meaning. His sculptures can be seen as explorations of  cause and effect, and the ways in which simple gestures can change the status of an object  or have important consequences. The artist in his solo exhibition “Une Hétérotopie” presents new video installations and a series of related sculptural works.  The exhibition derives its title from Michel Foucault’s notion of the heterotopia: a space of otherness that is both physical and mental. Various echoes and mirroring ripple throughout the exhibition. Like a game of hide-and-seek, a small reference that appears in one work will be  transformed in another, just as the countless catalog envelopes that line labyrinthine rows of metal shelves in one of the channels of François’ new video installation appears again in  sculptural form as an outsized golden envelope. The four-channel video installation juxtaposes footage François shot in locations ranging from Rajasthan to Rotterdam. Info: Carlier|gebauer, Markgrafenstraße 67, Berlin, Duration: 9/6-15/9/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.carliergebauer.com

Gauri Gill’s solo exhibition “Traces” features two series drawn from her extensive archive “Notes from the Desert“. “Traces”, is a series of large-format pictures of graves made in the desert of West Rajasthan. They are elementary places of memory for family and community members. The motifs are moving in their simplicity and their tendency to dissolve into the landscape. In an accompanying set of eight photographs, the “Birt”h Series portrays the birth of the granddaughter of the midwife Kasumbi Dai, who invited Gill to be present, and to record the event. The two series are complementary, presenting aspects of coming into being and passing away in a specific cultural context. In turn, the dual series contrast with the opulent pictorial tradition of the dance of death with which they are juxtaposed in the form of Jean Tinguely’s “Mengele-Totentanz” (1986). Info: Museum Tinguely, Paul Sacher-Anlage 1, Basel, Duration: 13/6-9/11/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00 (11-17/7/18 9:00-19:00& 9/9/18 11:30-17:30), www.tinguely.ch

Samuel Gratacap has been collecting the stories of the migrants since 2007, the artist in his solo exhibition “Les Invisibles” presents works made in various locations over the last ten years, from Lampedusa to Tunisia, Libya, and back to Europe via the Italian mainland. The exhibition comprises both photographs and videos, as well as audio excerpts. The works show Gratacap’s reflections on the connections between geopolitical decisions, economic interests and money-making schemes in the form of human smuggling and slavery, and the direct impact this has on the people involved. Although the artist adopts a research methodology, his photographic approach to his subjects is sensitive and intuitive. Since his first series, Gratacap has continued to create projects that follow from his constant travels. In addition to the series “Empire” (2012-2014), the exhibition also juxtaposes a large selection of both previous and more recent series and video works, some of which are being displayed to the public for the very first time. Info: Foam, Keizersgracht 609, Amsterdam, Duration: 15/6-9/9/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Wed & Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, Thu-Fri 10:00-21:00, www.foam.org

The art critic and poet Takiguchi Shuzo is known for introducing Surrealism to Japan and for supporting young artists through his criticism. Takiguchi also created a large body of art, including drawings and decalcomanias. In the exhibition “Takiguchi Shuzo and the Artists Who Captivated Him” are on presentation 13 of Takiguchi’s works along with some by artists who attracted his interest. This is not, however, a Surrealist exhibition. Instead, we have assembled these works in order to focus on the way in which the artists dealt with “objects.” Their approaches were highly varied. Some artists removed objects from an everyday context and used them to fire the imagination, while others simply reexamined the wonder of the object’s existence. As you consider what might have drawn Takiguchi to these diverse works, try to experience them through his eyes. You might also ruminate on the things, which lie beyond words, that he was attempting to express in his own work. Info: The National Museum of Modern Art, 3-1 Kitanomaru-koen, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Duration: 19/6-24/9/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Thu & Sun 10:00-17:00, Fri-Sat 10:00-20:00, www.momat.go.jp

With more than 100 works highlighting every phase of GeorgBaselitz’s six-decade career from the 1950s to today, the exhibition “Baselitz: Six Decades” features work never before seen in the U.S. and cements Baselitz’s reputation as one of the most original and inventive figurative artists of his generation. For the first time, US audiences can experience the full scope of Baselitz’s powerful explorations of the human figure, as well as the influence of American artists on his early work and his continued impact on contemporary American painting and sculpture. Baselitz’s creative genius, combined with his message about the inherent strength of the everyday human condition, make this exhibition particularly compelling. The exhibition traces the foundational impact of Baselitz’s career as he pushed the limits of painting and sculpture through lifelong artistic experimentation. Organized chronologically, it begins with paintings and works on paper from the late 1950s, when Baselitz was first influenced by the Art Informela postwar movement, which abandoned geometric abstraction in favor of a more intuitive form of expression—to which he contributed a unique figurative vocabulary. Info: Curator: Stéphane Aquin, Hirshhorn Museum, ndependence Ave SW & 7th St SW, Washington, Duration: 21/6-16/9/18, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-17:30, https://hirshhorn.si.edu

Known for her immersive and mixed-media installations that combine film and installation in humorous and idiosyncratic ways, Laure Prouvost’s work addresses miscommunication and things getting lost in translation. For “Ring, Sing and Drink for Trespassing”, her first solo show in a Parisian institution, Laure Prouvost invites visitors to embark on a geographical and mental escape. The exhibition opens the possibility to experience an ambiguous site, between a wasteland and a post-apocalyptic garden. It is home to a lonely octopus, a lush fountain, or branches sprouting mammary growths and buttock implants. A gardener and a storyteller, the artist plays with language, neologisms and hybrid objects, with mistranslations, linguistic slippages and transpositions. She thus expresses the desire, which is indeed sometimes a need, for escape, to go beyond boundaries and exist elsewhere. She will represent France at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Info: Curator: Daria de Beauvais, Palais de Tokyo, 13 avenue du Président Wilson, Paris, Duration: 22/6-9/9/18, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sun 12:00-00:00, www.palaisdetokyo.com

2018 is the bicentennial of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel, “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus”, the novel’s lasting impact is grounded in the fact that it is a parable about human nature and the most important question it asks is who is the real monster? The “Frankenstein’s Birthday Party” exhibition begins, as it must, with contemporary artists looking at the body and our attempts to conquer death; advances in science and technology; the animation of objects or machines and artificial intelligence. Thence comes an examination of ambition that outstrips the ability to understand or control what we’ve created and finally, what happens when we don’t take responsibility for the consequences of our actions.   Central to both the novel and the curatorial stance of this exhibition is the failure to feel empathy for the ostensibly unlovable — the other.  Who is to blame for the rage born of feelings of rejection and how do we expect that anger to play out in society? Info: Hosfelt Gallery, 260 Utah Street, San Francisco, Duration: 23/6-11/8/18, Days & Hours: tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:30, Thu 11:00-19:00, http://hosfeltgallery.com

From the desert to the docks, farmland to the sea, the group exhibition “Selected Affinities” brings together four artists, who, along with Allan Sekula, use photography or video not only as a tool for documentation but also as part of a discourse rooted in social relations.  On view for the first time at the Christopher Grimes Gallery is Sekula’s “Message in a Bottle” (from Fish Story Chapter 5) (first version). One of his best-known bodies of work, Message in a Bottle specifically addresses the decline of the fishing economy in the small Spanish town of Vigo. “After the American Century” is a series of photographs Samaras captured in the United Arab Emirates starting in 2008 at the beginning of the global economic recession. Coolidge will exhibit a selection of pictures from his “Mattawa” series, fourteen photographs of converted cargo containers used to transport refrigerated goods, modified into a migrant housing project on farmlands in central Washington State. In Malibu Sandbags, Shapiro turns her attention to Broad Beach, an exclusive stretch of oceanfront in Malibu that has been historically contested ground between public access and private property. Woodberry presents his film, “Marseille Après La Guerre”, a portrait of dockworkers in Marseille after the Second World War. Info: Christopher Grimes Gallery, 916 Colorado Avenue, Santa Monica, Duration: 23/6-31/8/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:30, www.cgrimes.com

The exhibition “I Was Raised” on the Internet” focuses on how the internet has changed the way we experience the world. Due to new types of gaming and entertainment and the rise of social media and alternative modes of representation, the everyday is no longer what it used to be. The ways we interact with each other have shifted through the connected nature of telecommunications devices across the internet, including mobile applications, social media platforms, and large search engines that have become everyday tools for individuals from all walks of life. New modes, not only of seeing but also of feeling, have emerged in response to this. The exhibition documents a specific moment in time, beginning with 1998 and extending to the present, and focuses on the shifts that have occurred since the millennium. The nearly 100 works in the exhibition span photography, painting, sculpture, film, and video, as well as emerging technologies and interactive elements, which include interactive computer works and virtual reality. Among these are new adaptations of major bodies of work, as well as new commissions from some of the most significant artists working with these ideas today. Info: Museum of Conteporary Art Chicago (MCA), 220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, Duration: 23/6-14/10/18, Days & Hours: Teu & Fri 10:00-21:00, Wed-Thu & Sat-sun 10:00-17:00, https://mcachicago.org

In today’s world there is ever increasing disparity in the distribution of resources and ever greater numbers of people subjected to political-economic privations. On the occasion of the second Italy-Africa Conference, MAXXI presents the exhibition “African Métropolis” which, structured around the concept of the city, features the works of African artists, and “Road to Justice”, an experimental project that integrates works from the museum collection with others chosen for this specific occasion. In the history of the African continent, the deportation of entire populations and the successive colonization have led to the progressive destruction of ancient cultures and the alteration of political, religious and social equilibriums. Over the centuries, the presume superiority of the whites with respect to the native peoples has been used to justify the oppression, exploitation and impoverishment of the territory. Contemporary artists are the keepers of these events and the exhibition recounts this imbalance, this trauma and investigates whether its healing is possible to imagine. Info: MAXXI (Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo), Via Guido Reni 4 A, Rome, Duration: 23/6-18-13/1/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri & Sun 11:00-19:00, Sat 11:00-22:00, www.maxxi.art