ART NEWS:May 02
The exhibition “Archives, Annotations and New Proposals” consists of recent work by Carlos Aguirre, a key artist who has contributed to the Mexico City art world since the 1970s. His wide-ranging, complex body of work is marked by its engagement with the premises of conceptual art, particularly with regard to his investigations of the exercise of power and of graphic experimentation, which have enabled him to use new materials and different forms of representation. His work delves into different kinds of tension, such as that between Mexican history and global problems linked to political critique, or the tension between materials and formal structures. The title of the show alludes to Aguirre’s enduring engagement with the notions of the archive and history, while at the same time bringing together a selection of pieces that had previously been confined his notebooks, and which he is now materializing by exploring new physical media. As a counterpart to these pieces, the exhibition includes works that emphasize his ongoing quest to experiment with and combine different techniques and materials related to photography and the graphic arts. The exhibition thus offers both a direct view on the present and a review of important pieces from the past. Info: PROYECTOSMONCLOVA, Colima 55 Roma Norte, Mexico City, Duration: 9/5-8/6/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-18:00, sat 11:00-16:00, http://proyectosmonclova.com
In “Physical Status Report”, artist Luna Scales appears naked, lying on her side with her head resting in her hand. Her pose attests to a thousand years of art history, in which women have been portrayed in this position since time immemorial. Text taken from the Danish authority’s statement on the artist’s physical condition, in which her body is described and evaluated, appears beneath the image. Scales was born with a muscle disease, which involves her muscles becoming easily overstrained. The nude figure possesses a category of its own within the field of art history, primarily that of the female body representing an object. Whether or not the artwork is of a sexual nature has more to do with the cravings of the viewer – not the model. The nude model exists for the spectator’s needs and desires, to be surveyed and appraised. Scales’ work contains an additional dimension. Specifically, that even an ‘abnormal’ body should be inspected, measured and classified. Info: Bonniers Konsthall, Torsgatan 19, Stockholm, Duration: 2/5-16/6/19, Days & Hours: Wed 12:00-20:00. Thu-Sun 12:00-19:00, https://bonnierskonsthall.se
What happens when artworks are given a voice? Experimental art writer Maria Fusco explores an imaginative world between language, silence and space in this display of nine masterworks from Spain’s leading collection of contemporary art. Invited by Whitechapel Gallery to select works from ”la Caixa” Collection of Contemporary Art and write an accompanying work of fiction, Fusco presents film, photography and sculpture by Alan Charlton, Esther Ferrer and Cindy Sherman. Maria Fusco’s new short story “NINE QWERTY BELLS. Fiction for Live Voice” (2019) imagines the artworks speaking at a conference in distinctive voices. It is published in the exhibition catalogue and available to read in the gallery or to purchase. Fusco was intrigued by themes of sound, muteness and the body she found in the collection and these are central to both the display and new text. Info: Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High St, Shadwell, London, Duration: 8/5-1/9/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Sat-Sun 11:00-18:00, Thu-Fri 11:00-21:00, www.whitechapelgallery.org
In “psalm”, Edmund de Waal is creating a major new two-part exhibition in the 500-year-old Jewish Ghetto in Venice The first part is located in the spaces surrounding the Canton Scuola, the beautiful 16th Century synagogue in the Ghetto Nuovo, which is now part of the Jewish Museum. New installations of porcelain, marble and gold will reflect the literary and musical heritage of this extraordinary place. The intention is to animate spaces that are little known and little understood by visitors to the Biennale and to bring new audiences into the Ghetto. The second part of the work is a pavilion based at the Ateneo Veneto, the 15th Century building near the Fenice Opera House that has been an historic centre for cultural debate in Venice. Here, de Waal is constructing a small building within the main space that houses 2,000 books by exiled writers, from Ovid to the present day. Info: Scola Canton, Calle Orto, 1191, Venice & Ateneo Veneto, Calle della Verona, 1897, Venice, Duration : 8/5-21/9/19, Days & Hours : Sun-Fri 10:00-18:00, www.museoebraico.it
Grasping the dynamics of today’s Chinese art scene, “Entropy” explores the works of seven Chinese contemporary artists. The exhibition was met with wide critical acclaim when it was first presented at Faurschou Foundation in Beijing last year. Now, an altered version of the exhibition is traveling to Venice for the Biennale. Divided into seven sections, each dedicated to the work of one of the seven artists, the exhibition offers an insight into the complexity of the ever-evolving art scene in China today. While the artists share the experience of being born and raised in a rapidly changing China, marked by economic growth and cultural exchange, the exhibition allows each of their distinct voices to be heard. Like the scientific term “entropy,” which is a measurement of the number of possible states in a given system, the exhibition marks one voice of China, formed by many, and can be interpreted and experienced in various ways. The seven artists (He An, Liu Wei, Yang Fudong, Zhao Zhao, Sun Xun, Yu Ji, and Chen Tianzhuo) were raised in China during different stages of economic reform. Their works originate from conflicting emotions, caused by clashes between urbanism and nature, as well as deeply-rooted traditions and a new modern reality ,all of which the artists experienced first-hand during their youth. Info: Cini Foundation, San Giorgio Maggiore Island, Venice, Duration: 10/5-1/9/19, Mon-Tue & Thu-Sun 10:00-19:00, www.faurschou.com
Bernard Lokai in his solo exhibition “Painting” explores the seemingly infinite possibilities of paint applied to canvas in two distinct bodies of work. The first body of work, which he calls Landscape Blocks, is comprised of grids of 12 x 16 inch panels in which he both refers to and disrupts the history of painting. Each panel is a stand-alone abstract work. He then arranges (and sometimes spends years rearranging) them into grids of 18 to 33 components, which together form the impression of a landscape. The tension between abstraction and representation operates as a metaphor for philosophical examinations of appearance and disappearance, permanence and impermanence, creation and destruction. Individual large canvases form the second body of work. These make room for bold expressions of color and mark-making and often combine multiple painting techniques within a single work. Info: Hosfelt Gallery, 260 Utah Street, San Francisco, Duration: 11/5-3/7/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:30, Thu 11:00-19:00, http://hosfeltgallery.com
The exhibition “Spaces of Color”, sheds light on Hermann Nitsch, an artist who has consistently developed his painting from the 1960s to the present day and further expanded his own specific approach for each Painting Action, each group of works. The results are now accessible and perceptible at the Albertina Museum as color spaces and poured installations. Hermann Nitsch sees his work as a Gesamtkunstwerk, as a comprehensive spectacle of the Orgies Mysteries Theater. From his Aktionen (Actions), their photographic and filmic documentation, and the relics of his Actions via painting and his graphic work to the music he composes, his texts, scores, and stage sets, the individual disciplines are brought together to form a cohesive whole. Nitsch’s main objective is to stage real-life events with his work, thereby addressing all the senses and intensifying perception and experience. The goal is, through this delirious state of being, to consolidate humankind’s existence in the world. With his theater, he strives to ecstatically and excessively overcome the boundaries of art, to make art and life become one. Info: The ALBERTINA Museum, Albertinaplatz 1, Vienna, Duration: 17/5-11/8/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Tue, Thu & Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, Wed & Fri 10:00-21:00, www.albertina.at
The exhibition “Misfits-Memoriam” is dedicated to the artist Gustav Metzger, who died in 2017. It is carried out in partnership with the Gustav Metzger Foundation and under the curatorial supervision of Guillaume Leingre. It will be devoted to two emblematic works, chosen at the beginning and at the end of the artist’s long career, in order to embrace a path too little known. Gustav Metzger was the creator in the 1960s of a self-destructive art. The first part of the exhibition, is entitled “Misfits”. It is the unveiling of a work conceived by the artist but never achieved. Daniel Spoerri and Robert Filliou, organizers of The Festival of Misfits, rejected Metzger’s proposal, invited to participate in this exhibition, which took place at Gallery One in London on 23/10-8/11/1996, The second part of the exhibition presents a work from 2005: “In Memoriam”. While this installation directly refers to Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe built in Berlin, it functionally uses the principles of Machine Art, described by Metzger in 1962. But it also refers to an everyday object by its material: the box of cardboard handkerchiefs that will be duplicated in dozens of enlarged copies, as well as the cardboard of Cardboards, the artist’s first exhibition in 1959. Info: mfc-michèle Didier, 66 rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, Paris, Duration: 17/5-13/7/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.micheledidier.com
Walid Raads in his first solo in Netherlands entitled “Let’s be honest, the weather helped”, shares his perceptive, critical, politically engaged, and often playful perspective of the complexities of the Lebanese wars and the current boom of contemporary art in the Middle East. Raad works in a wide variety of visual media, complemented by performances and essays. The exhibit features photos, drawings, videos, and sculptures, including new work that is on display for the first time. Walid Raad’s oeuvre delivers sharp analyses of the historical, political, economic, and aesthetic aspects of war. His artworks concentrate on the Lebanese wars as well as the Middle East’s rapidly burgeoning art world. On view in each room are often entirely new combinations of series from Raad’s three major long term projects: “The Atlas Group” (1989-2004), “Sweet talk commissions Beirut” (1987– ) and “Scratching on things I could disavow” (2007– ). Among the new works in the survey are Raad’s three sculptures titled, “I feel a great desire to meet the masses once again _ VI, XVII, XXXIII”. Info: Stedelijk Museum, Museumplein 10, Amsterdam, Duration: 18/5-13/10/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:00-18:–, Fri 10:00-22:00, www.stedelijk.nl
Enrique Martínez Celaya’s solo exhibition “The Mariner’s Meadow” unveils 16 previously unseen paintings, in which the artist focuses on the sea and its relation to the human subconscious. Despite leaving the Caribbean in 1982, the sea has remained with Martínez Celaya as a “stowaway”. Although often working in multiple mediums, including sculpture and the written word, the nature of painting and its capacity to create and sustain meaning remains one of Martínez Celaya’s central concerns. The artist views painting as a sustained process of inquiry, and often significantly reworks an artwork several times over the course of months or years. In “The Prophet” the artist worked through a variety of species of sea creatures and human figures, before settling on the scene of a girl with one foot resting on a beached shark. Info: Blain|Southern, 4 Hanover Square, London, Duration: 23/5-13/7/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 10:00-17:00, www.blainsouthern.com
Huguette Caland has her first UK museum solo exhibition. Shifting between figuration and abstraction in large, colorful paintings and detailed drawings, the works reveal the delicate balance between the suggestive and the explicit in Caland’s practice. In the 1970s, after moving to Paris from Beirut, she created exuberant and erotically-charged paintings, which challenged traditional conventions of beauty and desire. The female physique is a recurrent motif in her work, depicted as landscapes or amorphous forms. Caland has often used her own body as a subject, and her self-representation comes from a desire to liberate and control how her own body and the bodies of other women are depicted. The exhibition includes large canvases with bright colors, moving from abstraction into figuration, with shapes doubling as flesh. Alongside these paintings are Caland’s intricate drawings, which demonstrate her mastery of line. In these works, portraits of friends and lovers transform into landscapes, and landscapes into overtly sexualized body parts. Info: Tate St Ives, Porthmeor Beach, St Ives, Cornwall, Duration: 24/5-1/9/19, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-17:20, www.tate.org.uk