ART NEWS:Dec.03

Qiu Zhijie presents his solo exhibition “Lectures”. As an artist, he is known for his calligraphy and ink painting, photography, video, installation and performance works. His art is representational of a new kind of experimental communication between the Chinese literati tradition and contemporary art, social participation and the power of self-liberation of art.   He was also the curator of the first video art exhibition in China in 1996, and curated a series of “Post-sense Sensibility” exhibitions during 1999 and 2005 promoting the young generation of Chinese artists. In 2012 he was the chief curator of the 9th Shanghai Biennale “Reactivation”, in 2017 he is the chief curator of the Chinese Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale. He was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize administered by the Guggenheim Foundation due to his work of The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Project. He was awarded “Artist of the Year” of the Award of Art China in 2009, and was nominated for the same award in 2016. Info: Galleria Continua, Dashanzi Art District 798 #8503, 2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, Duration: 10/12/2020-26/2/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.galleriacontinua.com

Iman Issa raises questions about the relevance of forms and iterates the past into virulent present. With her installations, films, publications, and sound works, Issa creates playful studies that allow viewers to experience the blind spots that run through present visions of the past. Historical artifacts, the genre of the artistic self-portrait, film sequences, the history of ideas, and cultural practices—such as museal conventions of showing and preserving—are drawn upon, variegated, and reinterpreted. The works in the exhibition “Proxies, with a Life of Their Own” challenge the status commonly designated to the images, objects, descriptions, and subjects in the exhibition space by proposing different relationships between them. Each sculptural object, for example, is assigned a text precisely describing in straightforward language an existing object, painting, film scene, et cetera, however these written descriptions are incongruent with the sculptures presented. Although characterized by a high degree of precision and clarity, the individual elements of each work interact with each other and the viewer in a manner resembling a complicated conversation where basic terminology still needs to be negotiated . . . a process of perception that opens up essential questions instead of closing them. Info: TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol, Maria-Theresien-Str. 45, Innsbruck, Duration: 11/12/2020-7/3/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-sun 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-20:00, www.taxispalais.art

The group exhibition entitled “Unlock” proposes the constructive, healing and unifying energy of culture and art against the social, cultural, and economic shock created by the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic, against which the world has been fighting a battle over a year now at terrible costs, both material and moral. In the face of the “Lockdown”/“Quarantine” practice, which humanity has been exposed to and which caused many cultural and artistic activities to be postponed, the exhibition aims to keep the doors open as a kind of “intensive care” source with a 24/7 responsibility and understanding, and enables that the laborers of this field meet with their audience under every possible condition. Participating artists: Heba Y. Amin, Alpin Arda Bağcık, Başak Bugay, Burçak Bingöl, Guido Casaretto, Antonio Cosentino, Elmas Deniz, Memed Erdener, Zeynep Kayan, Azade Köker, Sandra del Pilar, Erinç Seymen, Yaşam Şaşmazer, Isaac Chong Wai and Eşref Yıldırım. Info: Zilberman Gallery, İstiklal Cad. No.163 Mısır Apartmanı K.3 D.10, Beyoğlu / Istanbul, Duration: 15/12/2020-27/1/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-19:00, www.zilbermangallery.com

This winter, Foam is all about young talent and proudly presents the work of a new generation of artists in the group exhibition “Foam Talent 2020”. These exceptional young photographers were selected out of 1.619 received submissions from 69 countries. With the work from these artists Foam presents her vision on the diverse and often surprising developments in modern photography. This edition can be characterised by in-depth identity issues. After publication in Foam Magazine #55: Talent and the première of the exhibition in Berlin, during the European month of Photography in October, the work of the Foam Talents recently has been included in a fully digital exhibition: Foam Talent | Digital. Subsequently, we will now present Foam Talent in our museum in Amsterdam. Info: Foam, Keizersgracht 609, Amsterdam, Duration: 18/12/2020-21/4/2021, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat-sun 10:00-18:00, Fri 10;00-21:00, www.foam.org

The exhibition “The Heart Has Its Reasons” with works by Louise Bourgeois takes its title from Blaise Pascal’s well-known phrase: ‘the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing’. Bourgeois studied mathematics and philosophy at the Sorbonne, Paris, and wrote her thesis on Pascal; but the death of her mother in 1932 eventually led her to abandon these studies and turn to art making. The exhibition features a selection of important sculptures and drawings from the artist’s oeuvre spanning from 1949 until 2009, and explores themes central to her practice. The motifs that unify the presentation; the couple, the paired form, the house, the bed, landscape, and human anatomy, are grounded in the dynamic interplay between the binary oppositions—mind and body, geometric and organic, male and female, conscious and unconscious—that animate Bourgeois’ work as a whole. Above all, this exhibition speaks about Bourgeois’ need for love, the ‘polar star’ she could not live without. Info: Hauser & Wirth Gallery, Vieux Chalet, Oberbortstrasse 24, Gstaad, Duration: 19/12/2020-3/2/2021, Days & Hours; Tue-Sat 11:00-17:00, www.hauserwirth.com

The work of Philip Guston spans half a century and continues to exert a powerful influence on contemporary culture today. Recognized as a pioneer of abstract expressionism before his return to figuration in the late 1960s, for Guston painting was an encounter between thought and feeling, image and idea. Within this exhibition, Hauser & Wirth in the exhibition “Transformation” present two bodies of work from different periods, abstract (1952-64) and figurative (1968-1977), that together show the depth and complexity of his personal iconography. Available to view in person and online, the significant collection of 14 drawings and paintings reveals Guston’s complete commitment to direct experience, moving between a pictorial language relating to his studio and painting tools, to contemplative motifs of his wife, the poet Musa McKim, and their shared lives together. These deeply personal works transcend everyday experience to present an intimate vision of Guston’s creative process and unique artistic freedom. Info: Hauser & Wirth Gallery, Via Serlas 22, St. Moritz, Duration: 22/12/2020-28/2/2021, Days & Hours: tue-Sat 14:00-19:00,  www.hauserwirth.com