ART NEWS:Jan.02

The group exhibition “Life to come” brings together works that meditate on the creation of new worlds and new models for living. Central to the exhibition are its hosts, who guide visitors through the environment comprised of fairy-tale objects, and help visitors draw connections between works such as a series of floral arrangements inspired by the Sogetsu Ikebana school, and Dan Graham’s film “Rock My Religion”, which surmises Shaker religion to be the foundation of rock and roll. Sound works by David Lynch and Tunde Adebimpe regularly punctuate the experience. Experiencing the works together incites intellectual, physical, and spiritual understandings of what it means to make an entirely new world, one in which reality is made from fiction. Raza asserts that “by re-immersing ourselves in the strangeness and fecundity of attempts to create worlds that have gone before, our imagination of a world beyond the present may be renewed.” The uncertainty about what new paradigm awaits us is unsettling in the wake of the modernist 20th century, but it links us to previous generations who experienced radical reinventions of biological and social life. Info: Metro Pictures, 519 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 17/1-16/2/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.metropictures.com

By using mainly analogue photography in the digital era, Matthew Porter asserts a certain logic in his artistic process, conferring a unique perspective on it. He has decided to construct his images by freeing himself from the traditional leitmotiv of time suspension in photography. He does not seek to capture the instant, but on the contrary, to reveal the completion of a long process of creation and revelation. He therefore explores the techniques and possibilities afforded by photography in order to manipulate it further. The title of the exhibition, “The Sheen, The Shine”, conveys the fundamental importance of light in Matthew Porter’s photographs. The sheen: that which reflects, reacts, and the sheen: that which illuminates, are the two luminous actions in the two series presented in the exhibition. Whilst light enables the existence of every image, here, Matthew Porter pushes this principle to its paroxysm by using light to show the world differently. Info: Xippas Gallery, rue des Sablons 6 & rue des Bains 61, Geneva, Duration: 17/1-2/3/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 14:00-18:30, Sat 12:00-17:00, www.xippas.com

The photographs, videos, wall works, sculptures and new VR works in her solo exhibition “disruption” of Louisa Clement, born in Bonn in 1987, are concerned with phenomena of the sense of confusion in time of political and societal uncertainty. Clement’s investigations prove to be as seductive as they are cryptic: What is a human being in a digital age in which the body’s integrity is increasingly questioned through vehement medical and technological interventions? In an almost surreal manner, Clement’s detailed photographs conjure up a new image of the body that also represents the ambivalent vision of a “new human being.” With the help of her photographs, taken with smartphone cameras, she examines not only the medium’s ability to reproduce images, but also the reality of the technologically modified human. Info: Bernier/Eliades Gallery, 46 Rue du Châtelain, Brussels, Duration: 17/1-6/4/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 12:00-18:00, www.bernier-eliades.gr

The exhibition “Speaking Power to (Post) Truth” brings together a constellation of six contemporary artists Ergin Cavusoglu, James Clar, Mounir Fatmi, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, and Shahpour Pouyan who unite to create a series of patterns that explore the deep historical associations inherent within human consciousness and truth. Presented through an array of media the works employ drawing, printed matter, installation and video. The works on view straddle the transference knowledge between different realities in order to cast a complex web of reality. Functioning as important interlocutors between multiple “truths” that inhabit and trouble zones of incongruity, the six artist’s works aid in bridging the gap that exists between logic and illogic and creates a conversation between shape and form, as well as symbol and abstraction to reveal overt and covert truths. Info: Curator: Sara Raza, Jane Lombard Gallery, 518 West 19th Street, New York, NY, Duration: 17/1-6/2/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-18:00, www.janelombardgallery.com

For “Si le temps est un lieu” Pablo Valbuena is creating create a monumental installation and shows several existing works. Ephemeral and immersive sculptures, Pablo Valbuena’s works are generally conceived according to the spaces that welcome them, whether they be public spaces or museum rooms. For each artwork the artist fashions sound, light and movement, ephemeral and intangible materials. Using simple elements and technical tools of great precision, he plays with the intensities, the scales and the motifs to create works that are as spectacular as they are minimalistic. Inserted in a familiar architecture, they underline it whilst also going further. Based on a study of space, time and perception, Pablo Valbuena creates a double score, audio and visual, that restructures a venue by fashioning our sense of space and time. In his sculptures and installations, the virtual is not opposed to the real. On the contrary, their overlapping suggests a parallel architecture to the visitor, an augmented space in perpetual transformation where the boundaries between reality and what is perceived disappear. Info: e CENTQUATRE-PARIS, 5 rue Curial, Paris, Duration: 19/1-24/3/19, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 14:00-19:00, www.104.fr

Sofia Duchovny’s title of the exhibition “Private Viewing” suggests exclusivity, but is parodied by the public nature of an exhibition as such. Duchovny’s works are shaped by the ambivalence of private and public, between that which is shown and that which should be shown, between intimacy and authenticity. The artist moves between these two poles with humor and a disarming sense of emotionality. The exhibition combines sculptures and paintings to a kind of filmic parcours. For this, Duchovny continues her analysis of the artwork as a flexible and non-passive object, which she has been working on over the past few years. As a part of this work, she has produced a series of foldable sculptures. The predominantly pastel-colored paintings are similar to the sculptures in that round shapes also define them. Duchovny plays with naivety and thereby entangles the viewer into her image world. Info: Curator: Tomke Braun, Kunstverein Göttingen, Gotmarstraße 1, Göttingen, Duration: 19/1-10/3/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 14:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-17:00, www.kunstvereingoettingen.de