ART NEWS:Feb.03
Art Madrid, the most important contemporary art fair in the Spanish capital, celebrates its 15th anniversary this year with an edition that is more dynamic and transgressive than ever with changes that promise to please all attendees and participants. The fair defines itself as an open and global proposal that offers the perfect opportunity to discover and acquire singular works covering all disciplines. In the 15th edition of Art Madrid join their forces 27 Spanish and 14 foreign Galleries from 9 countries, including 13 new galleries represented at Art Madrid for the very first time with 200 artists. Among the Galleries in the General Sector, Gallery BAT Alberto Cornejo among other artist presents works by Gustavo Díaz Sosa, one the most exhibited Cuban painter in Spain. The program PROJECTOR’20 is dedicated to visual and interactive arts and action art. In this edition, the Art Madrid will have a booth dedicated to presentations and live actions with renowned artists from the field of performance and video creation. Info: Art Madrid 2020, Galería de Cristal de CentroCentro Cibeles, 1 Montalbán St., near Plaza de Cibeles 1, Madrid, Duration: 26/2-1/3/20, Hours: 11:00-21:00, Admission: Full-fare ticket 15€, Reduced Ticket (people over 65y, unemployed, students and groups (20 minimum)) 12€, Children up to 12years- free, www.art-madrid.com
JUTMAD Art Fair celebrates its 11th edition as one of the avant-garde references on the emerging art scene in Spain. It provides access to an exhibition platform created on the definition of the emerging art concept as an artistic production born in a space that did not use to exist. This edition will include more than 60 exhibitors from countries such as Brazil, Cuba, Spain, United States, France, Italy, Portugal and the United Kingdom, among others. The fair seeks to hold a tenth edition that influences the quality of the artistic proposals. As on previous occasions, different prizes will be awarded during the fair which evaluate the quality of the participating artists and increase important collections. There are prizes from different collections with significant amounts of prize money, such as the Room Mate collection, the Oliva Arauna collection, Rucandio Collection or the TMF collection will be held during the fair. Like in previous editions, the Pilar Citoler foundation awards the Young Collector Prize, with prize money of €1,800. Info: JUSTMAD, Palacio Neptuno, Calle de Cervantes, 42, Madrid, Duration: 27/2-1/3, Hours: Tue (27/2) 11:00-15:00 Preview (only with VIP card), 15:00-21:00 Professionals, Fri-Sat (28-29/2) 11:00-21:00, Sun 11:00-19:00, Admission: Full-fare ticket 15€, Reduced Ticket (Students, pensioner and unemployed people) 7€, https://justmad.es
Alban Muja’s new video installation “Family Album” digs deep into personal and collective memories of the Kosovo War (1998-99) interrogating the role that images and the media have in constructing and shaping narrative, identity and history, especially in times of conflict. Last year marked the twentieth anniversary of the end of the armed conflict in Kosovo, the last war to have been fought on European soil in the 20th century and in the continent’s youngest country. At the starting point of Muja’s project lies a selection of photographs of child refugees taken during the war, images that were published in newspapers and on news sites around the world, and which became synonymous with the war, emblematic of the chaos, trauma and pain communicated to the public by the global media. 20 years on, Muja tracks down the individuals, now adults, captured in these frames to delve both into the way in which the ensuing images act as carriers of personal memory and in how they helped craft a wider political and media story beyond the control of the subjects represented. Info: Ludwig Museum-Museum of Contemporary Art, Komor Marcell utca 1, Budapest, Duration: 18/2-15/3/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-20:00, www.ludwigmuseum.hu
For the past fifteen years, Rasim Aksan has been exploring the clashes between the real and the virtual world, and the paralyzing effect it has on society. His oeuvre is focused on contemporary aesthetic contemplation of the body and its fictitious perception. Rasim Aksan’s solo exhibition titled “Neo” places focus on our constant exposure to drastically evolving and conflicting visual imagery, which is further enhanced by Aksan’s technique of hyperrealist pencil and acrylic airbrush. Aksan’s practice involves in-depth research; the artist collects images from the internet in an almost scientific manner and constructs surreal, timeless settings that help to question and examine the discrepancies between predetermined ethical codes and the current voyeuristic culture that permeats society. The religious symbolism in his works; the figures of Adam and Eve, angelic creatures floating over the earth, and swirls of fine cloth emphasize an ethereal atmosphere – and he inserts contrasting eroticised female bodies, neon signs or cartoon patterned wallpaper to accentuate the contradictions between our daily life and current visual culture. Info: Galerist, Meşrutiyet Caddesi No:67/1, Asmalımescit Mahallesi, Tepebaşı, Beyoğlu, Istanbul, Duration: 21/2-21/3/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, http://galerist.com.tr
Gilbert & George have created art together now for half a century. Through this an outstanding body of work has emerged that is still explosive and avant-garde today. This is now generously demonstrated in “THE GREAT EXHIBITION, 1971-2016”, which allows unique insight into their visually powerful, boundless – and sometimes provocative – artistic universe. Since they first met in London’s Saint Martin’s School of Art in 1967 and George have challenged the artistic canon. As both subject and object of their own works, these form a cohesive gesamtkunstwerk. Without demur, the artists commit themselves to art and unceasingly push its boundaries in a both disciplined and endlessly imaginative manner. Over the decades an impressive oeuvre has emerged, a powerful panorama of thousands of pictures. This challenges our world without compromise or blinkered vision, continually proving itself forward-thinking. Info: Curator: Bernhard Mendes Bürgi,Luma Westbau, Limmatstrasse 268, Zürich, Duration: 22/2-10/5, Days & Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri 11:00 – 18:00, Thu 11:00 – 20:00, Sat-Sun 10:00 – 17:00, https://westbau.com/ and Kunsthalle Zürich, Limmatstrasse 270, Zürich, Duration: 22/2-10/5, Days & Hours: Fri 18:00-21:00, Sat-Sun 10:00-17:00, http://kunsthallezurich.ch
Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s solo exhibition “Dear Valérie… “ at the Kunsthalle Bern includes works from the 1970s to the present. It focuses on rarely shown works and bodies of works which have never been presented together before. Thus, a large selection of letters Chaimowicz has written since the 1970s in widely differing life situations. Their poetic nature reflects another characteristic of Chaimowicz’ work: the power of omission to bring suggestive spaces of imagination and the incomplete into effect. Another arrangement focuses on the private residence of the architect Roger Diener and his wife, the writer Maryam Diener. Chaimowicz has furnished their place near Basel with floors, lamps, tiles and façade paintings, turning it into a total work of art. The work of Marc Camille Chaimowicz is rich in nuances. It oscillates in the specific, but at the same time appears abstract and, indeed, other-worldly. Emotional, yet cool. Intimate, yet foreign. His art is cheerful and melancholic. Tasteful, at times almost artificial, but simple. Even the boundaries between public and private space present themselves as soft shades. Info: Kunsthalle Bern, Helvetiaplatz 1, Bern, Duration: 22/2-26/4/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, https://kunsthalle-bern.ch
Marie Bovo in her solo exhibition “Nocturnes” presents 35 large format prints from 5 different series, as well as 2 films. It is often at dusk that Marie Bovo feels the urge to make time stand still. And not only because of the extremely long exposure time that her chosen technique (large-format, film, natural light) demands, but also so she can watch the slow passage of time unfold in intermediate spaces that are inhabited, despite being empty of people. This approach to time, illustrated by both photography and film, is based on a quiet, thoughtful observation, the politeness of her gaze, the appropriation of an imagined inner self perceived from the outside. Marie Bovo moves comfortably from photography to the moving image and her photographs, systematically presented in series to emphasize the passage of time, are always on the threshold of film-making. In these highly controlled visual images, one does not at first detect the humanism that underlies them. Info: Curator: Agnès Sire, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, 79 Rue des Archives, Paris, Duration: 25/2-17/5/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-19:00, wwwri.hencartierbresson.org
Pia Camil’s yearlong exhibition “Velo Revelo” in public spaces around the Clark features a new, site specific installation by Pia Camil, as well as two of the artist’s large-scale sculptures in fabric. The title pairs the Spanish for a “veil” and the verb “reveal.” It is named for Camil’s intervention in the Manton Reading Room, a curtain made of sheer stockings that is more than fifty feet in length and “dresses” the space, partially covering both a window of the Clark’s library and a reproduction of a painting selected by the artist from the collection. In the Clark Center, two sculptures from Camil’s Skins series appear downstairs: “Telluride Tunic” (2015)and “Valparaiso Green Cloak for Three” (2016). These monumental, garment-like forms, made of castoffs from textile factories, draw parallels, both playful and pointed, between traditional Mexican craft and the modernist American paintings of Frank Stella. In all of these works, Camil uses fabric in ways that are both elegant and incisive, highlighting questions of private and public space; indigenous craft and artistic invention; the body, gender, and identity. Info: Curator: Robert Wiesenberger, Assistant Curator: Mariana Fernandez, The Clark Art Institute, 225 South Street, Williamstown, MA, Duration: 26/2/20-3/1/21, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00 (September-June), Daily 10:00-17:00 (July-August), www.clarkart.edu
Moving between diverse styles and subjects, Dan Colen investigates the conceptual stakes of materiality and mark making. In his earliest paintings, elements of the supernatural intrude into naturalistic renderings of interior spaces, while his more recent canvases explore the technical, physical, and thematic limits of the medium itself. Colen has often worked with unconventional materials such as chewing gum, soil, and trash, relinquishing control of his work’s final appearance to their unpredictable surfaces. Nevertheless, representational imagery has remained a through line across his oeuvre, allowing him to conduct an ever-evolving inquiry into the objecthood and authority of painting as a medium. In the seven new canvases on display in “HELP”, Dan Colen uses the motif of the message in a bottle to stage the practice of painting as an act of faith, and as a tool for communication with the unknown. The note enclosed in the sealed glass container has traditionally functioned as a distress signal or last-ditch message from a desperate or doomed sailor. These works represent the final entries in Colen’s cycle of “Disney paintings,” which derive their imagery from animated films made by the famous studio. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 821 Park Avenue, New York, Duration: 26/2-4/4/20, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com
With 80 works alongside a selection of rarely-seen archival documentation, the exhibition “Richard Artschwager”, is a unique occasion to survey the creative career of an artist who worked halfway between painting and sculpture and who developed a unique language using the new domestic materials of his time. Halfway between painting and sculpture, Artschwager develops a unique language using the new domestic materials of his time, always working toward the fusion of figuration and abstraction, artistic innovation and design, and ironically seeks to combine the functional and the useless. Designed as an open labyrinth, the exhibition features a comprehensive selection of paintings and sculptures dating from the early 1960s to the first decade of this century. Artschwager represents places, scenes from everyday life, and common objects such as tables, chairs, and dressers, interpreting them in ordinary, standardized industrial materials such as Formica, Celotex, acrylic paint, and rubberized horsehair. Artschwager’s work continually questions appearance and essence, offering us a delicate and realistic, humorous yet monumental interpretation of the world. Info: Curators: Germano Celant and Manuel Cirauqui, Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, Avenida Abandoibarra, 2, Bilbao, Duration: 29/2-10/5/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-20:00, www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus