ART NEWS:June 03

The exhibition “Don’t you dare to call it work” by Maria Toboła comprises a pseudo-readymade, a video simulating the works of other artists, and a fake audioguide. In these puns, Toboła analyzes the notions of shame and discredit, and confuses the audience by actions on the verge of public shaming, role-playing, sexual jokes, dressing up, or family awkwardness. Her quizzical work poses a question: what work should be done to not be afraid of talking in your own voice?  Toboła uses quotes from art history and mixes them with elements characteristic for her style: lingual and visual jests, codes extracted from subcultures, class stereotypes, or the battle of the sexes. Her works are not, however, a sentimental journey through the consecutive waves of feminism, or the activistic gesture of a young artists. Info: Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, 2 Jazdów Street, Warsaw, Duration: 7/6-15/7/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 12:00-19:00, Thu 12:00-21:00, http://u-jazdowski.pl

Todd Gray in his new body of work “Portraits”, continues to re-contextualize photos from his own archive, structuring images to both conceal and reveal simultaneously. His latest works contains a plurality of critical narratives exploring diaspora and contemporary/historical examinations of power while engaging the viewer to be an active participant in the construction of meaning. Through his use of collage, multiple narratives are offered for the viewer to engage and untangle, resisting a single iconic narrative. Antique frames found in South Los Angeles and more recently in Johannesburg are used as structuring devices to create sculptural collages. The used, often well-worn, frames carry historical markings from the domestic spaces they once inhabited and are signi-fiers of both taste and class. Info: Meliksetian|Briggs, 313 N Fairfax Avenue, West Hollywood, Duration: 15/6-15/9/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 12:00-17:00, www.meliksetianbriggs.com

Jochen Gerner and Yuichi Yokoyama present their joint exhibition “To the East”. It will be the first time Yuchi Yokoyama presents a set of drawings and paintings in a gallery in France. The artist lives alone in a tiny house in the suburbs of Tokyo. He has no computer or television. After graduating from the painting department of Musashino Art University, he first dedicates himself to painting, then gradually to drawing. Because of his cramped living space, where he can no longer keep his paintings, he then chooses paper and ink. Echoing Yuichi Yokoyama’s black ink, Jochen Gerner presents a recent series of white (or nearly white) monochromes: a winter landscape, a set of drawings of Stockholm. During a stay in this town, Jochen Gerner found thirty postcards and covered them with white, grey or green paint. The layers of rough or thinned acrylic express the Scandinavian blue, the green of the zinc roofs and the vast stretches of wilderness. The postmarks recall the undulations of the omnipresent water, which shapes and cuts into the landscape. Info: Gallery Anne Barrault, 51 rue des Archives, Paris, Duration: 16/6-28/7/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:0, www.galerieannebarrault.com

Thomas Bayrle’s first major New York museum survey “Playtime” brings together works from the last fifty years, highlighting Bayrle’s experiments across media and their prescient commentary on the relationship between consumerism, technology, propaganda, and desire. One of the most important artists to have emerged during the 1960s West German economic boom, Bayrle has received belated recognition for his influential works and processes. Long before the advent of current visual technologies, he foresaw our digital reality, employing photocopy machines and other midcentury tools in his early works to create analog visualizations of what are now fundamental traits of our digital culture. Bayrle’s thematic investigations have ranged from a visual analysis of mass culture and consumerism to reflections on the intersection of technology with global politics. Bayrle’s work has also looked at the proliferation and uniformity of the global mega-city and its infrastructure networks. Info: Curator: Massimiliano Gioni and Helga Christoffersen, New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, Duration: 20/6-2/9/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.newmuseum.org

Trevor Paglen’s photographs show something we are not meant to see, whose concealment he regards as symptomatic of the historical moment we inhabit. His objects act in opposition to what his images have exposed, imagining another and potentially different world. “Sites Unseen” is a mid-career survey, the first exhibition to present Paglen’s early photographic series alongside his recent sculptural objects and new work with AI.Trevor Paglen blurs the lines between art, science, and investigative journalism to construct unfamiliar and at times unsettling ways to see and interpret the world around us. Inspired by the landscape tradition, he captures the same horizon seen by American photographers Timothy O’Sullivan in the 19^th century and Ansel Adams in the 20^th. Only in Paglen’s photographs is the infrastructure of surveillance also apparent: a classified military installation, a spy satellite, a tapped communications cable or a drone. Info: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 8th and F Streets, NW, Washington, Duration: 21/6/18-6/1/19, Days & Hours: Daily 11:30-19:00, https://americanart.si.edu

Ieva Epnere’s first solo presentation in Canada, “On water, wind and faces of stone” stems from Epnere’s residency with Fogo Island Arts in Fall 2017 and features photography, projections, works on silk and organza, and a series of collaborative acts that explore community as an open, cumulative process. In Epnere’s multidisciplinary practice, encounters with people and places, stories, and ritual expression form the basis of a larger consideration of tradition and collective identity. During her time on Fogo Island, Epnere was struck by the rugged landscape, the immensity of the sea, and the unpredictable weather—ultimately, the sheer force of nature in shaping peoples’ lives. The texture, colour and shape of local stones became a source of material exploration in her work. Having documented the landscape through photography, Epnere had these images printed onto organza and silk. Swaths of fabric showing lichen-covered rock, geological seams and water are suspended freely in the gallery or sewn into articles of clothing. Info: Curators: Alexandra McIntosh and Nicolaus Schafhausen, Fogo Island Arts, 210 Main Street, Joe Batt’s Arm, Newfoundland and Labrador, Duration: 22/6-28/10/18, Daily 11:00-18:00, http://fogoislandarts.ca

The exhibition “That’s IT!” explores the latest developments of art in Italy, consistently with the specific position that MAMbo decided to take on the Italian and international scene. The exhibition chooses not to revolve around a single, monolithic concept, instead it comes up with questions, potential perceptions of the contemporary world from an open, dialectic, magmatic perspective. Does it still make sense nowadays to speak of an “Italian” artist? What defines “Italian-ness”? Does such definition have consequences on an artist’s self-representation? Where and how do we put the generational boundary? The works on display include installations, videos, photography, sound art, sculptures, performances, paintings, works on paper, are set in an open layout, with no barriers, that appropriates and contaminates all the areas of the Museum and even outside of it, with art installations in the Parco del Cavaticcio and a number of videos screened at Cinema Lumière, in partnership with Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna. Info: Curator: Lorenzo Balbi, Curatorial Assistants: Sabrina Samorì and Stefano Vittorini, MAMbo – Museum of Modern Art of Bologna, Via Don Giovanni Minzoni, 14, Bologna, Duration: 22/6-11/11/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-18:30, Thu 10:00-22:00, www.mambo-bologna.org

The exhibition “Not the Apple but the Fall” operates like a pause, a gap, a moment of suspended meaning where what is real and artificial bleed together into a matter of interpretation. The work of Francis Alÿs finds reality in absurd or transgressive situations. In his video “The Nightwatch”, Alÿs released a fox into London’s National Portrait Gallery in the middle of the night. The museum’s CCTV system tracks the fox and documents it’s movements. The fox, a wild infiltrator, marginalized through modern urban expansion, is considered a pest in cities throughout Great Britain. Fiona Connor presents two recent sculptures that these are exact reproductions of original message boards found around Los Angeles that represent varying types of ephemera, each perfectly recreated, become a minimally self-composed collage of vanishing communal forums. Tony Labat obstructs the gallery’s entrance with a transparent industrial curtain used for environmental separation in walk-in freezers as well as a barrier in warehouses, offering privacy as well as preventing noise control. Labat’s sculpture is the perfect alternative to a permanent wall, offering openness and accountability. Info: The Garage, The David Ireland House, 500 Capp Street, San Francisco, Duration: 23/6-11/8/18, Days & Hours: Sat 12:00-17:00, http://500cappstreet.org

Alison Wilding in her solo exhibition “Right Here and Out There” presents new and existing works. Wilding’s abstract works use contrasting materials such as neoprene rubber, translucent acrylic, mirrored glass, alabaster and steel to create sensual juxtapositions which explore the complexities of perception. The exhibition responds to the landscape that surrounds the De La Warr Pavilion and light that streams into it, showing a selection of works from the 1980s to the present and two new sculptures made especially for the site. By combining ancient and modern materials, Wilding’s sculptures create conversations across time and space, producing new experiences in the present. “Dark Horse” is the most identifiably figurative work in the exhibition: resting on the floor, it comprises a flat, black neoprene shape that loosely resembles an animal skin, a stone object that might be its head placed on top. Info: De La Warr Pavilion, Marina, Bexhill, East Sussex, Duration: 23/6-16/9/18, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-18:00, www.dlwp.com

The exhibition “Matisse et Picasso, la comédie du modèle” is part of the Picasso-Méditerranée international cultural programme whose aim is to strengthen the links between institutions on all sides of the Mediterranean. The exhibition is structured around four thematic sections, presenting in addition to the Museum’s Collection, 140 paintings, sculptures and graphic works by Matisse and Picasso. A photographic section compares the two artists at work in their respective studios, highlighting the differences and similarities between them. The exhibition is complemented by a presentation of archival documents: letters, exhibition catalogues, reviews and films, illustrating the history of their relationship.   Between dialogue and competitiveness, the relationship between Matisse and Picasso was the subject of a permanent exchange. Subtle but captivating resonances exist in the work of both artists, which should be examined in light of the relationship enjoyed between each painter and his model: one of the main driving forces of the reflection carried out by both artists on the question of the representation of the body and the creative act.  Info: Musée Matisse, 164, avenue des Arènes de Cimiez, Nice, Duration 23/6-29/9/18, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-18:00, www.musee-matisse-nice.org

International Print Center New York announced the 58^th presentation of its New Prints Program, a biannual, juried open call for prints and print-based work created in the preceding twelve months. Titled “Multilayered”, the exhibition presents 43 prints and print-based works. Multilayered reflect the curators interest in new narratives for an increasingly hybridized cultural world. Many of the artists skillfully deploy traditional printmaking techniques, including lithography, etching, woodcut, and screenprints, to create enigmatic characters and complex scenes, while others use prints as the basis for expansive installations. In this exhibition, Sánchez also places particular emphasis on hand-made artist books, many of which overtly address current social and political themes. The artists on view also display a particular propensity towards experimenting with mediums, combining traditional commercial materials with a great variety of handmade papers, and adding embroidery, gold leaf, and even mushroom spores to their prints. Info: Curator: Juan Sánchez, International Print Center New York (IPCNY), 508 West 26th Street 5a (between 10th and 11th Ave), New York, Duration: 26/6-22/9/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.ipcny.org