ART NEWS:Dec.01

Šejla Kamerić repeatedly utilises her ability to transform acute moments of everyday reality into impressive and aesthetically attractive signs. The active zones of the visual symbols fill up the gaps in remembrance, but at the same time, they offer a liberating experience; in chasms of memory they make it possible to climb towards hope. Šejla Kamerić has created “SUMMERISNOTOVER”, a new, site-specific project for Fondazione Adolfo Pini, working on the existing space and its structure. This site-specific project comments on our perception of the news, pointing at the changed role of photography as well as the issue of today’s usage of (war) images and their distribution. Historically, wars and revolutions have often started in spring and summer, while perhaps today, during these seasons we make a heightened use of social media to illustrate our projected lives. By distorting the alleged authenticity of the photograph, while using the exact same techniques of social media to reach a widespread audience, “SUMMERISNOTOVER” overcomes the traditional belief that photography exists in separate and controlled categories. It forms one giant image stream to remind the viewer that summer is not over—war is not over. Info: Curator: Erzen Shkololli, Fondazione Adolfo Pini, Corso Garibaldi 2, Milan, Duration: 27/11/18-8/3/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-17:00, www.fondazionepini.net

The exhibition “The Grinders Cease” testifies to the depth and breadth of Mat Collishaw’s practice, with new and recent works including installation, sculpture, photography and painting. The exhibition opens with a new work from 2018, “Columbine”, which animates Albrecht Dürer’s watercolour study Columbine from 1526. This wild plant is a multifaceted example of the transience of life, both in that it blooms only briefly and because the plant itself is poisonous. Collishaw is a key figure in an generation of contemporary British artists who came to prominence via the group show Freeze in 1988. He has never shied away from challenging subject matter, exploring ideas around death, destruction and decay. The artist is known for works that reference art history and create a contemporary dialogue with past masters. The Grinders Cease reflects his preoccupation with the vanitas theme, used since the Renaissance as a way of reminding viewers of the impermanence of worldly pleasures. The exhibition title is borrowed from the King James Bible, Book of Ecclesiastes, from which the Vanitas derives. Info: Blain|Southern, Potsdamer Straße 77–87, Berlin, Duration: 1/12/18-26/1/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.blainsouthern.com

 “Quadra Medicinale Singapore” is the title of the late Belgian artist Jef Geys’s first institutional exhibition in Asia. Geys’s conceptual practice adopted an interdisciplinary and collaborative process of research and knowledge-formation, and was driven by his belief that art should be intertwined with the everyday. For “Quadra Medicinale” (2009), Geys invited residents of Villeurbanne, New York, Moscow, and Brussels to demarcate a geometrical quadrant, with their home or workplace at the centre, and document 12 unassuming street plants, or “weeds.” From this collection, the collaborators uncovered the productive, and often times medicinal, properties of these plants. On view are four chapters of the project, including a newly-created Singapore chapter following Geys’s instructions with contributions by local collaborators, Louise Neo and Teo Siyang. Each chapter includes framed plant specimens with their characteristics labelled, photographs of the site where the plants were originally found, as well as maps of the geographical quadrant explored. Through inciting a collaborative process, Geys created a unique model for knowledge production and sharing. Info: Curators: Dirk Snauwaert, Ute Meta Bauer and Khim Ong, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Gillman Barracks, 43 Malan Road, Singapore, Duration: 1/12/18-3/3/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Thu & Sat-Sun 12:00-19:00, Fri 12:00-21:00, http://ntu.ccasingapore.org

The site-specific event-exhibition “Drive-in” let the visitors relive the collective experience of outdoor film screenings. Based on the “figures of the extreme” at the heart of the art-history lectures she has been giving for the past three years, the curator Alexandra Midal revisits the drive-in cinema, where families would view the latest box office hits sitting in their car and nibbling popcorn during intermissions. As part of the research for her projects, Midal routinely watches scores of films on and around a given topic, often in fast forward mode and sometimes even simultaneously. These “movie marathons” inspired her to create a series of visual essays, the first of which, “Hocus-Pocus”, is a fictional thriller whose storyline mixes magic and crime. After Politique-Fiction, Domestic Psycho I, Villa Frankenstein and Eames, An Atlas, Midal has produced three new visual theory films for the CAPC in Bordeaux exploring the radical social changes prompted by the Industrial Revolution. In collaboration with the designer Adrien Rovero, Midal has conceived a special scenography that revisits the social ritual of outdoor film screenings. It takes the shape of a double projection system that will be activated by performative interventions as part of special late-night events. Info: CAPC Contemporary Art Museum Bordeaux, 7 rue Ferrère, Bordeaux, Duration: 1/12/18-6/1/19, Days & Hours: Tue & Thu-Sun 11:00-18:00, Wed 11:00-20:00, www.capc-bordeaux.fr

The exhibition “Landa Lan. A Documentation of Darcy Lange” is the result of the work of a group of artists in order to understand another artist and his contexts through the archive that all of his documents make up; an articulation that crosses the work and the life of Darcy Lange, and now also that of Tractora. In the Basque language, “landa lan” means both field work and to work the field. The displacement beyond the limits of the artist’s studio or workshop, the document status of the elements presented, and the experimental exercise are common traits of the materials that make up the exhibition as well as the activities that surround it. Formed as a sculptor in New Zealand and London, in 1972 Darcy Lange began recording what he called “work studies”, durational video observations of people working, an activity he would carry on throughout his lifetime. The videotapes that he shot, mostly first generation ½ inch open-reel magnetic tapes, were always accompanied by photographs and in some cases by film, comprising groups that he called “documentations” or “studies”. Info: Developer: Tractora Koop. E, Tabakalera-International Centre for Contemporary Culture, Andre zigarrogileak plaza 1, Donostia / San Sebastián, Duration: 1/12/18-19/3/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Thu 12:00-20:00, Fri 12:00-21:00, Sat 10:00-21:00, Sun 10:00-20:00, www.tabakalera.eu

Bots are inconspicuous computer programs that perform tasks automatically. Bots manipulate the masses, turn fake news into facts, supersede human labour, colonise our objects and lead us into temptation: Based on digital code, bots perform thousands of minute routines which supplement and at times displace human agency and labour, thus shaping virtual and analog structures. They are often given human features––names, voices, bodies on occasion. Yet even when remaining invisible, they are increasingly becoming part of our everyday. The exhibition “The Influencing Machine” examines these diffusions and formations. Clustered around a series of famous bots, the exhibition assembles contemporary artistic positions examining the automation and datafication of our life worlds and work environments. Here, bots are understood as socio-technical phenomena; their efficacies requiring and provoking novel and manifold relations and imaginations. The exhibition provides insights into the socio-material ecologies of this new influencing machine and seeks to problematize the figure of the bot beyond the dominant narratives of society and technology. Info: neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), Oranienstraße 25, Berlin, Duration: 1/12/18-20/1/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Tue & Sat-Sun 12:00-19:00, Wed-Fri 12:00-20:00, https://ngbk.de

For “Assembly (KIOSK)”, Agency makes a selection from its list of controversies based on the question “What if common things would get mutually included within art practices?” Intellectual property includes copyright, which protects ‘original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression’. However, copyright law hasn’t defined originality. Under the copyright framework, two elements are put forward in relation to originality. One, a work must be ‘the product of independent creation’ and, two, must ‘exhibit at least some minimal degree of distinguishable variation’. This means that a ‘slavish copy’ does not comply and that the work of authorship is seen as the author’s internal creative processes. The legal framework excludes the influence of external factors. But often it is difficult to distinguish internal from external factors during creative processes of making replicas. Courts have interpreted differently what originality requires. Some courts have granted protection for labour, skill, and investment on the ‘sweat of the brow’ principle. Info: KOSK, Louis Pasteurlaan 2, Ghent, Duration: 1/12/18-27/1/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 14:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.kioskgallery.be

The exhibition “Deep Surface“ adopts the year’s theme: “The Appearance of Things” by delving into the continuing issue of daily confusion: To what extent can we trust our perception? Karen Linnenkohl’s photo installation is concerned with remote spaces and objects that have accumulated over time. From things that were accidently set aside, to those which have been forgotten, and traces that have survived generations and which have in part been replaced and covered by newer versions, artist works with the medium of the snapshot, the seemingly coincidental photograph. Sabine Linse’s productions are permeated by a puzzling, absurd atmosphere in which the connection between the familiar and the unfamiliar creates an alliance between the comic and the uncanny. Their imagery is determined by a logic akin to that of dreams: causal and chronological connections change abruptly with symbolic and associative ones. The Unexpected, the Strange – they appear with the semblance of an almost harmless normality. The laconic absence of a picture narrative is characteristic of Richard Schütz’s photographs. The viewer is confronted with the presence of abandoned constellations, decaying classification systems and a disturbing experience of emptiness in the omnipresence of objecthood. Yet there is a fragile balance in the way that everything in the picture comes together and consists of Not-Yet and No-Longer-Being. Info: Scotty Enterprises, Oranienstr. 46, Berlin, Duration: 8/12/18-5/1/19, Days & Hours: Thu-Fri 15:00-19:00, Sat 14:00-18:00, www.scottyenterprises.de

Charwei Tsai’s solo exhibition, “Root of Desire”, centers around desire and preludes to the classical maieutic discourse of the Vimalakirti Sutra. It is a profound and sophic exploration of the metaphysical troika encompassing her own life, nature, and humanity. This ancient spiritual text is one of the first recorded in Asia that with an emphasis on social equality. Transcribing the Vimalakirti Sutra, the artist imprints this vessel for emptiness upon her impermanent form until she becomes one with it. The exhibition moves on to a personal journey through a vast desert landscape portrayed in the new video installation, “Root of Desire” (2018). In this work, the artist inscribes a conversation between Vimalakirti and Manjusri that deconstructs desire into rootlessness. As the sand is scattered by the wind, the text also disintegrates. The work articulates the search for desire in its differing manifestations. Info: TKG+, B1F, No.15, Ln. 548, Ruiguang Rd., Neihu Dist., Taipei 114, Duration: 8/12/18-20/1/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-19:00, www.tinakenggallery.com