ART NEWS:Oct.01

With “The Diasporic Schools” Kunstenfestivaldesarts commissions and presents six new artistic projects by: Tania Bruguera, Bouchra Khalili, Otobong Nkanga, Christian Nyampeta, Yael Bartana, and Samah Hijawi & Reem Shilleh, based on new forms of circulation of knowledge in diasporic contexts, and transmission as a political and empowering tool. In recent months the pandemic and the health crisis have forced many, in pedagogical, work-related and artistic contexts, to exchange information remotely. However, far from being a novelty, remote transmission has always existed for diasporic communities, in which archipelagos of identities are kept alive by developing methods for staying in touch and sharing content in conditions of impossible proximity. The six artistic projects function as classes, each creating a group of selected participants related to the question and based anywhere in the world, and experimenting collective production and circulation of knowledge from a distance. In doing this The Diasporic Schools strengthen existing bonds, and the possibility of learning in the diaspora and from it, and to reflect on the history, politics and future of distant conversations. Info: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Duration: 1-31/10/20, www.kfda.be

The six drawings that compose Sam Durant’s solo exhibition “Iconoclasm” are accompanied by a new two-channel video work made from archival footage of public statues being torn down. In a new series of graphite works drawn from archival documentation, Durant depicts the intentional and often violent destruction of public monuments. Durant slows the speed for a protracted, quiet fall that allows for a reflective experience in processing the wreckage of public symbols. Both the drawings and the video illustrate a wide-ranging arc of monument destruction across nations, cultures, and time periods. Both in and out of their original context, the monuments speak to the specific time and place from which they came, while standing equally as appropriate and applicable to the contemporary situation in which they are exhibited. They speak widely to recurrence and re-occurrence of moments of struggle and resistance in history. Info: Blum & Poe Gallery, 2727 S. La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, Duration: 1/10-7/11/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.blumandpoe.com

While much of Titus Kaphar’s work begins with an exhaustive study of pre-twentieth-century master painting techniques, his solo exhibition “From a Tropical Space” sees him wield these various methods to create an emotionally saturated visual landscape that is entirely contemporary. Just as artists, through time, have translated the fraught and mercurial sociopolitical contexts in which they operate into new and often radical aesthetic modes, so do the pervasive social and cultural anxieties of the world in which we find ourselves resonate throughout Kaphar’s new work. In the exhibition Kaphar presents a haunting narrative of Black motherhood wherein collective fear and trauma crescendo in the disappearance of children, literalized through the physical excision of their images from the canvases themselves. The absence of each juvenile figure, whether seated in a stroller or held in a woman’s arms, reveals only the blank gallery wall beneath. The intense coloration of the suburban environments in which the figures are set only heightens a pervasive tension—these are images for uncertain times. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21st Street, New York, Duration: 1/10-19/12/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com

For her exhibition “Wings of Change”, Billie Zangewa has created a body of work that explores the new reality of living and working in isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic. Best known for her intricate collages composed of hand-stitched fragments of raw silk, Zangewa creates figurative compositions that explore contemporary intersectional identity in an attempt to challenge the historical stereotype, objectification, and exploitation of the black female form. The works in “Wings of Change: visualize the recent, radical shifts in daily life and mundane routines, as well as the growth and loss of personal relationships as a result of the pandemic. The title of the exhibition suggests possibility in the face of a global crisis that is forcing the world to change and critically reexamine personal, governmental, and societal priorities. For Zangewa, it is important that her representation of this moment focuses on not only its hardships but offers a candid view of domestic life in its altered state and an opportunity to make necessary changes in our habits, relationships, and day-to-day. The ultimate message is thus one of hope, and an offering of love for oneself and all of humanity. Info: Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 501 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 1/10-7/11/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com

Charles Sandison’s exhibition “The Garden of Light” comprises interwoven video projections and large screens that invite the audience to immerse themselves in the digital glow of an alternate universe populated artificial intelligence life forms. Words, numbers, signs, and symbols roam freely around the walls. Sometimes briefly merging to form human figures and then exploding into a storm of letters, they transform themselves from one lexicon to another. Sandison combines his ability to write complex computer programs with a savant like spatial dexterity that visualises the hidden world of data that surrounds us.  The multi-channel video installation “Et in Arcadia ego” (2020) is a biological collage that uses artificial intelligence to create an imaginary eco-system that constantly swings between chaos and entropy. Works such as “The Maker” and “Metsänpeitto” (2020) draw on the artists adopted Finnish homeland and family life. From ideas of loss and grief woven into a fabric as an act of memorial to transplanting the site for his artworks deep into the forest away from audience and observation. Info: Bernier/Eliades Gallery, 11 Eptachalkou Street, Athens, Duration: 1/10-19/11/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri10:30-19:00, Sat 12:00-16:00, https://bernier-eliades.com

The launch Exhibition of He Art Museum “From the Mundane World”  attempts to develop on two aspects: “Mundane World” or the human world and the things from said world. the human world, includes the space inhabited by human beings, and time, material, energy, speed, etc. The rest of it, the tangible items like landscapes make up the things from the World. It is a study of how tangible ‘things’ develop through the nebulous nature of the World and the resulting issues of production, consumption, ecology, etc. Our interaction with nature is constructed and reconstructed by exploring, utilising the quality and energy of materials, as well as by accumulated creative experiences. Artistic experiments extend beyond mere experience, they record the direction of our understanding of natural materials, reveal the limitations of the visual experience, and deconstruct, while transforming the original form of materials. As artists “experience all things,” this gradually shapes their perceptions, thoughts, and transformations of art in material and visual culture, and brings out a transcendental visual tension. Info: Curators: Hu Bin, Wang Xiaosong, Liu Gang, Shao Shu, Assistant Curators: Yang Qing, Gou Xianxu, Yuan Zhao, Lai Zhiqiang, Wang Qi, He Art Museum, 6 Yixing Road, Beijiao New Town, Shunde, Foshan, Duration: 1/10/20-31/3/21, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, https://hem.org

In his solo exhibition “The Vanity of Small Differences” Grayson Perry presents  a series of six large-scale tapestries. These six tapestries were created alongside the Channel 4, Bafta-winning documentary series “All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry” (2012), in which he visited three very different regions of England, exploring the taste of the different social groups he encountered. The tapestries look at English class through the story of the life of Tim Rakewell, and his progress through modern British society from humble birth to famous death. They are composed of characters, places and objects that Perry encountered on his travels through Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and the Cotswolds. As well as drawing on these experiences, Perry also took inspiration from art-historical imagery: often early Renaissance religious works but also, and most importantly, William Hogarth’s series of paintings A Rake’s Progress (1733), which tells the story of the rise and fall of a young man who loses his inherited fortune through a series of bad decisions. Info: Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange, The Exchange, Princes Street, Penzance, Duration: 3/10/20-2/1/21, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 10:00-17:00, https://newlynartgallery.co.uk

“Days and Nights” by Mette Björnberg and Richard Johansson has the form of two parallel solo exhibitions with a common title. Mette Björnberg and Richard Johansson live and work together since 25 years in Södra Mellby in the south of Sweden. Their lives and artistry are strongly intertwined and they have also done a number of public works together. Mette Björnberg presents a suite of wall reliefs made in the last two years. Björnberg has sculpted in wood and then painted the objects monochrome in a subtle color scale. The consistent craftsmanship and the restrained uniformity enables them to work as independent short stories and as well as parts of a larger whole. We encounter a dozen carefully selected objects: a button, a skirt, a mirror, a pair of boots etc. Richard Johansson presents a site-specific installation with sculptures and paintings in various materials and techniques. The new exhibition can be seen as a sequel to his acclaimed presentation at the Market Art Fair in Stockholm last year. Now, as then, we get to experience the diversity of Richard Johansson’s unpredictable artistry. A series of new vinyl paintings on raw linen run like a red thread through the room. Info: Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Fredsgatan 12, Stockholm, Duration: 3/10-7/1/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 12:00-17:00, Sat 12:00-16:00, www.gallerimagnuskarlsson.com

Using photographs of stamps, postcards, and landscapes, Myeongsoo Kim’s sculptural collages in his exhibition  “Mother-Land” reveal the ways that seemingly unrelated phenomena (and how they are represented in visual culture) are deeply entangled. Images sourced from personal experiences and geopolitical events are dismantled and reconstructed to explore how both landscapes and nationality are manufactured through considerations of the difference between an object and its image. In the works of the exhibition, the artist includes photographs of landscapes from the American Southwest along with his childhood collection of commemorative stamps released by the South Korean government leading up to the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics. Images of once popular vacation destinations, in reality now marked by deteriorating ecological and social conditions, are juxtaposed with a selection of images from his commemorative stamp collection portraying primarily white masculine athletes frozen in scenes of exertion. Juxtaposed and stratified, the images represent the ways in which popular culture has been used as government propaganda to influence collective values and desires from an early age. Info: Curator: Michelle Yun, CUE Art Foundation, 137 West 25th Street, Ground Floor (Between 6th and 7th Avenue), New York, Duration: 7/10-3/11/20, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 12:00-18:00, https://cueartfoundation.org