ART NEWS:Oct.01

Continuing to address the twin themes of cosmic infinity and personal obsession, the new works in Yayoi Kusama’s solo exhibition “The Moving Moment when I went To The Universe” are testament to an artist at the height of her powers as she approaches her 90th birthday. Joyfully improvisatory, fluid and highly instinctual, the “My Eternal Soul” paintings abound with imagery including eyes, faces in profile, and other more indeterminate forms, including the dots for which the artist is synonymous, to offer impressions of worlds at once microscopic and macroscopic. The exhibition marks the debut of “Infinity Mirrored Room-My Heart Is Dancing Into The Universe” which envelops visitors inside a large mirrored room with paper lanterns covered with polka dot patterns, which are suspended from the ceiling. Conveying the illusion of being unmoored in endless space, this latest example of Kusama’s immersive environments offers a sense of infinity through the interplay of the rhythmic patterns of colourful spots covering the black spherical lamps and the surrounding mirrors. Info: Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road, London, Duration: 3/10-21/12/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, Entry by free timed ticket only, www.victoria-miro.com

Works by the five finalists of Sobey Art Award areon view at the National Gallery of Canada. In this year’s exhibition, Jeneen Frei Njootli, the finalist from the West Coast and Yukon, activates objects through performance and sound, leaving only traces of her gestures to resist the evocative power of sound and materials. Joi T. Arcand, representing the Prairies and the North, uses Cree syllabics to intervene into public and architectural space and imagine a world where Indigenous languages are present and powerful. Representing Ontario, Kapwani Kiwanga explores the effects of colour and institutional architecture, questioning how they are used to shape or control behaviour. Jon Rafman, who represents Quebec, creates immersive video installations, drawing from online communities and platforms to create surreal narratives that question our relationship to technology. And Atlantic Canada’s Jordan Bennett blends technology and his Mi’kmaq worldview to speak about kinship, land and belonging in his installations. Info: National Gallery of Canada, 380 Sussex Dr, Ottawa, Duration 3/1018-10/2/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-17:l00, Thu 10:00-20:00, www.gallery.ca

In the exhibition “Tapestries and New Works on Paper”, Aziz + Cucher (Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher) present four tapestries from the series “Some People Tapestry Cycle” (2014-17) and five works on paper from the “Frieze” (2018). “The Some People Tapestry Cycle” is a series of jacquard tapestries overseen by Magnolia Editions and executed on a digital Jacquard loom in Belgium. Beginning the series in 2014, these woven works depict conflict by utilizing the rich tradition of pictorial storytelling. Curious to see what it would mean to revisit the traditional medium through a contemporary lens, the collaborative duo wonderfully illustrates how our modern powers are being vigorously assaulted from a multitude of paradoxical extremes. The “Frieze” series borrow similar techniques used to create the tapestries, Aziz + Cucher have translated them into a process that includes inkjet printing, silk-screen and gold leafing. Through these works the motif of dancing figures, which appears in the distance of the tapestries, are brought to the fore and stand in marked contrast to the turbulent and dark world found in the tapestry works. Info: Gazelli Art House, 39 Dover Street, London, Duration: 5/10-24/11/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-19:00, http://gazelliarthouse.com

The Nuit Blanche 2018 is planned for October 6, 2018. As the sun goes down Parisians and tourists have an encounter with art! For this new edition, 3 unparalleled tours have been thought up and they all are related to the capital’s emblematic sights so you can see works and attend performances by artists from 19:00 to 7:00. The planed contellations are: the Constellation des Invalides that connect the Musée de l’Armée, the Invalides basement (materializing the underground “Course du Soleil” by Félicie d’Estienne d’Orves) to the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais and the Palais de la Découverte without forgetting the Pont Alexandre III. Constellation de l’Île Saint Louis: The White Night offers a unique stroll on the Île Saint Louis, away from the real world, by Edgar Sarin and Mateo Revillo. It’s the path of the unexpected, works nestled in secret places, a Paris made of narrow streets and bridges, intrigues from the Middle-Age to today’s new relationships kept between art, science and commerce. The Constellation de la Villette will shine a spotlight on the entire Parc de la Villette. Music will be given pride of place in several places, as well as a program for young people will be held at the Cité des Enfants in Little Villette. Constellation de la Porte Dorée: As a place never thought about for the White Night, the Porte Dorée will become a stroll at the outskirts of the city. This constellation will take you to a rediscovery of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, then, the tour will reach the banks of the Lac Daumesnil up to the Parc Zoologique de Paris that will offer to the public a totally unique experience! Info: Nuit Blanche 2018, Points Info (17:00-2:00), Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, Place Clémenceau, Place de la Fontaine-aux-Lions and Place Édouard-Renarde, Day: Sat, October 6, Hours: 19:00-7:00, https://quefaire.paris.fr

The exhibition “Fascination Japan: Monet, Van Ghgh, Kliit” is devoted to the West’s passion for the aesthetics and world of images of the Far East. The exhibition traces its development, starting with the fascination for the exotic and the new and the first stirrings in the 1860s to long after the turn of the century, to its amalgamation into the form vocabulary of Western painting and the influence of its aesthetics on the development of modernism around 1900. After Japan opened up to the West in 1854, the elegant and exotic aesthetics of the everyday utensils and most of all the ukiyo-e had been invading the European market and fulfilling the public’s passion for unknown culture and a new vision of aesthetics. Artists were in the forefront, collecting and integrating the extraordinary form vocabulary of the ukiyo-e and their astonishing themes and motifs into their visual imagery. Monet, Manet, Van Gogh and Degas were the first, followed by the younger artists – Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton, also Marc and Kandinsky, to name only the most important. Launching out from Paris, Japomanie conquered the whole of Europe, and in Vienna the aesthetics of the Far East inspired such artists as Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann. Info: Curator: Eve lyn Benesch, Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien, Freyung 8, Vienna, Duration 10/10/18-20/1/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:00-19:00, Fri 10:00-21:00, www.kunstforumwien.at

German Stegmaier in his solo exhibition “Licht und Ton: Paintings 2016-18” presents  17 works, paintings that consist of a combination of simple colors, and drawings composed through added simple lines and cut and pasted paper. For Stegmaier, the completion of a work is defined by the very moment it reaches a state of autonomy, which at times take years to arrive at. While his drawings are created systematically, his paintings are sensual and harbor a strong presence. Both manifest as traces of the artist’s thoughts, and suggest the accumulated passage of time spent in their production. German Stegmaier was born in 1959 in Mühldorf, Germany. He started to study mathematics and theory of science at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and soon switched to study art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and later on at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Info: 8/ ART GALLERY/ Tomio Koyama Gallery, Shibuya Hikarie 8F, 2-21-1 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Duration” 10-29/10/18, Days and Hours: Daily 11:00-20:00, http://tomiokoyamagallery.com

The group exhibition “Positioner” focuses on the ways in which artists today are approaching one of the oldest traditions in visual art: the depiction of an individual. Representation, figuration, and portraiture all carry with them implications of power, visibility, and identity. The artists in this exhibition, working in a broad range of media, expand upon and push against these histories, suggesting more inclusive and critically-engaged ways forward. The notion of visibility is central to Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s work, in which bodies are revealed, mirrored, and reimagined. In these works, the artist’s studio becomes a site for introspection, collaboration, and experimentation. The human body is referenced but decidedly absent in the ceramic sculptures of Julia Phillips. Julien Nguyen looks to an unlikely source of inspiration in his newest work: the oft-maligned painter of a certain rugged vision of America, Andrew Wyeth. For Nguyen, Vietnamese-American and gay, to access Wyeth’s notably straight and white domain is both a pointed and poignant act. In “Die Kommenden” (2018) Lena Henke retools iconic modernist sculptures in the likeness of her family members — notably, Henke has appropriated a Matisse nude for her own stand-in. A rough-hewn structure in the German half-timber fachwerkhaus style houses the sculptures, drawing attention to the mutability of national identity. Ravi Jackson’s work combines brightly hued painterly gestures, occasionally brash pop-culture imagery, and a sense of construction in line with assemblage. Info: Matthew Marks Gallery, 1062 North Orange Grove, Los Angeles & 7818 Santa, Los Angeles Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, Duration: 13/10-22/12/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.matthewmarks.com

In her solo exhibition Sarah Sze presents new works. A video installation, the latest of Sze’s “Timekeeper” series begun in 2015, transforms the oval gallery of Galery into a lanterna magica, an immersive environment that is part sculpture, part cinema. In these studies of the image in motion, at once expansive and intimate, time, place, distance, and the construction of memory are engaged through a mesmerizing flux of projected images, both personal and found. A sort of Plato’s Cave, the new work confronts the viewer from simultaneous points of view: moving pictures of people, animals, scenes, and abstractions unfold, flickering and orbiting randomly like thought, or life itself. In an in-situ gesture that links the darkened video gallery with the adjoining room of new panel paintings, Sze materializes light as a spill of paint applied directly to the stone floor. In the paintings, her nuanced sculptural language adapts to the conditions of the flat support. Info: Gagosian Gallery, Via Francesco Crispi 16, Rome, Duration: 13/10/18-12/1/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:30-19:00, https://gagosian.com 

Parallel at two venues: in the Kunstmuseum Ahlen and in the Marta Herford, the exhibition “Volatile Dreams-Art of the World’s Fair” is devoted to the fhistory of the expo. In dialogue with contemporary artists, the “best expo in the world” places themes at the centre which are just as controversial as they were over a hundred years ago. The first world fair opened in 1851 in the Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park. Since then it has developed to become a historic spectacle centering on national achievements, visions and ideologies. The arts also always played an important role in these massive events which still take place today in ever more extravagant form. Artists and their works appear equally as ambassadors and propagandists, as free-spirited actors and instrumentalized representatives of their nations. Info: Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Museumsplatz 1 / Weststraße 98, Ahlen, Duration 13/10/18-3/2/19, Days & Hours: Wed-Fri 14:00-18:00 & Sat-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.kunstmuseum-ahlen.de and Marta Herford, Goebenstraße 2–10, Herford, Duration 13/10/18-3/2/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, https://marta-herford.de

The term “pittura metafisica” refers to an artistic style that emerged in Italy during the First World War. Closely associated with de Chirico, it often featured disquieting images of eerie spaces and enigmatic objects, eliciting a sense of the mysterious. The exhibition “Metaphysical Masterpieces 1616-1920” is devoted to masterpieces of metaphysical art, with rarely seen works created between 1916 and 1920 by Giorgio Morandi, Mario Sironi, and Carlo Carrà, along with a key work by Giorgio de Chirico. The exhibition focuses largely on the short yet pivotal period of 1916–1920, which saw the end not only of the first phase of Futurism, but also of Cubism as initially conceived, and which in turn sowed the seeds of both Surrealism and the work that would be called a “ritorno all’ordine” in the early 1920s. Info: Curators: James Bradburne and Laura Mattioli, Center for Italian Modern Art, 421 Broome Street, 4th floor, New York, Duration: 19/10/18-15/6/19, Days & Hours: Fri-Sat 13:00-18:00, www.italianmodernart.org