ART NEWS:Feb.02

Mariana Bunimov, in her exhibition “La beauté sera CONVULSIVE”, places the viewer in the middle of a crossroad where, without hierarchy or apparent connection, thousands of images hailing as much from her imaginary as from her daily life, cross paths. Defying any kind of criteria or absolute, the eclectic nature of her world is also the reflection of the spirit of our time, the zeitgeist: a fragmented and hybrid world where the permanent flow of many different and divergent images and data converge in an ongoing immediacy that goes beyond any given geography or time-frame. Through the accumulation, re-appropriation and transformation of bits and pieces of multiple realities, Bunimov creates an eclectic world. Civic upheavals rub shoulders with childhood images, music, lovers, landscapes, modern ruins, personalities, martyrs, fashion, architecture, memories, hybrid-objects and hybrid-beings. After years of working on sculpture, video art, animation and installations, Bunimov once again offers a central place to painting, this time on paper. Info: Curator: Angeles Alonso Espinosa, Gallery Michel Rein, 42 rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 30/1-20/3/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, http://michelrein.com

Lu Song’s interest and artistic inspiration derives from imaginary places and poetic environments: from his early works depicting dark green to his most recent magnification of powerful purple flowers the artist reflects upon the power of nature and the means of absorbing and returning it. His solo exhibition “Purple Skin” aims to present an experienced stage in the artist’s career.  Paintings from the series “Conversation” realized in 2018 are juxtaposed with his first flowers paintings Purple Skin commenced at the end of 2019 through to his most recent canvases One struggle more, and I am free. The choice of including works from the past three years in the exhibition, reflects the artist wishes to  offer a deeper insight into his artistic practice. For Song, all the works from these different series are interconnected, there is no interruption in between, and his poetic evolves seamlessly. The repetition of the same subject is indeed intended as a medium to acquire a deeper understanding of the painting experience itself: every brushstroke, every impact on the canvas brings the artist closer to discovering both his and the painting’s expressiveness. Info: Massimo De Carlo, 12 Pedder Street – 3F Pedder Building, Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 4/2-18/3/2021, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:30-19:00,, www.massimodecarlo.com

“K. Kofi Moyo and FESTAC ’77: The Activation of a Black Archive” resituates, and also finds a place for, a cache of images by Karega Kofi Moyo, who was active between 1968 and 1978 during a pivotal time for Black liberation and cultural production. Notably, the Moyo repository, replete with images of Black political, social, and cultural life from that period, includes images that refer back to an auspicious 1977 event for Black diasporic convening in Lagos, Nigeria: the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, known as FESTAC ’77. This presentation includes a core selection of Moyo’s photographs of FESTAC ’77, which are activated here for the first time in an exhibition context. They index the event and the journey to it from the perspective of a Chicago participant. In addition, the show presents varied contemporary responses to, and interpretations of, Moyo’s FESTAC ’77 images. Projects by University of Chicago students Enid, Ayrika Hall, Cortlyn Kelly, Fabien Maltais-Bayda, Shane Rothe, Andrew Stock, and Abigail Taubman draw from a Fall 2020 course taught by Romi Crawford and Theaster Gates as part of their Mellon Collaborative Fellowship at the Gray Center that aimed to activate and turn on a Black photographic archive, such as Moyo’s, and also rouse the art historical significance of FESTAC ’77. Info: Logan Center Exhibitions, 915 E. 60th Street, 1st Floor, Chicago, Illinois 60637, Duration: 12/2-21/3/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 9:00-21:00, Sun 11:00-21:00, www.loganexhibitions.uchicago.edu

Since childhood, Jean Claracq has been fascinated with the history of art, drawing inspiration from mediaeval illumination to photography via Renaissance painting. Favouring miniature formats, his paintings are based on digital collages derived from various sources. Despite their small sizes, his compositions teem with detail and offer multiple stories that bring together different temporalities and places. Using highly contemporary iconography, Claracq works in a particular tradition of the genre scene. He depicts young male figures absorbed in virtual worlds, isolated in interior and exterior environments, offering different perspectives on the suburbs and their buildings as well as urban and natural landscapes. For his first solo exhibition, Claracq has created “Propaganda”, five new works set into an architectural model system that invites the viewer to move around the paintings. Info: Galerie Sultana, 10 rue Ramponeau, Paris, Duration: 13/2-20/4/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-16:00, https://galeriesultana.com

The exhibition “Hello, are we in the show?”, provides an extensive overview of the artist duo Simona Denicolai  and Ivo Provoost’s work and offers the first museum presentation of their recent animated film with the same title (2019). The film is a co-production with S.M.A.K. and has been converted into an impressive installation for the occasion. For more than twenty years Denicolai and Provoost have been working on a multidisciplinary practice that seeks to disrupt our normal ways of thinking and routine behaviour. Using protocols and scenarios that they have devised, and which are firmly rooted in a place’s unique characteristics, the pair involve people, objects and stories as ‘collaborators’ in their artistic process. The exchanges that these evoke are embedded in a local reality, whilst also touching upon universal themes such as citizenship, identity and solidarity. hey describe their process-based working method as ‘sculptural action’, and it includes practices that decouple existing elements from their familiar context, rearrange them, or connect them to new forms. These are reflected in a plethora of forms such as performances, video work, installations, models and studies, all of which derive meaning from the interpretation of art as an active concept. Info: S.M.A.K., Jan Hoetplein 1, Gent, Duration: 13/2-30/5/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 9:30-17:30, Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, https://smak.be

Valentina Ornaghi and Claudio Prestinari begun to work together in 2009 with a desire to develop each of their projects through dialogue and sharing. This exhibition presents a group of previously unseen works, realised especially for this occasion, that reflect on the theme of “meeting”.  The works that Ornaghi & Prestinari have conceived for their exhibition “Toccante”, are united by the theme of meeting and a relationship with the other. A meeting that presupposes the desire to approach and make contact, as shown in “Rintocco”, where the crystal chalices positioned on a shelf throughout the day get closer together until they touch, similarly in “Sfiorare”, the diptych in which two canvases tilt so much towards each other that they touch in a corner. “The Latin etymology of the word ‘to think’ (pensare) means ‘to weigh’ (pesare). Info: Galleria Continua, The St. Regis Rome, Via Vittorio Emanuele Orlando 3, Rome, Duration: 19/2-17/4/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.galleriacontinua.com

Shimabuku’s  exhibition “The 165-metre Mermaid and Other Stories”  stems from a mediaeval Japanese legend and unfurls in the manner of an epic poem. It tells of the artist’s adventures and encounters as he goes with the flow, roving between his native Japan and Monaco via Brazil, Australia and many other lands. Freely combining performance, land art, music and cooking, Shimabuku’s poetic actions are forever spinning new tales. His texts, which form the narrative thread of the exhibition, interweave installations, films, sculptures and photographs executed over the past 30 years. Each of Shimabuku’s works can be seen as a poetical-philosophical experience, questioning our relationship with otherness and engaging with an individual or collective action of care and attention. Initiated on Norihama beach after the  2011 tsunami, the installation Erect has led to a new specific production created in Monaco following the poem-protocol established by the artist. Info: Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Villa Sauber, 17 avenue Princesse Grace, Monaco, Duration: 19/2-3/10/2021, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-18:00, www.nmnm.mc

For the title of her first solo exhibitiono Maude Maris has chosen “Hieromancy”, a reference to the ancient practice of divination using offerings to the gods, in particular studying the entrails of sacrificed animals. The exhibition that bears this rare, contextualised term is comprised of around one dozen paintings of figures suffering from rosacea, their abnormally flushed complexions shot through with pink, red and burgundy. Each blends, more often than not, into a cool, blurry blue background. Right from the start of her career some fifteen years ago, Maris implemented a precise ritual involving painted objects – one to which she has always remained true – and yet this series marks a departure. It is as if the images have established a mysteriously connection to the occult world, one which unsettles notions of scale, disturbs perception and disrupts dominion. As far as dimensions are concerned, Maris usually sees things on a very big or a very small scale and only rarely in the intermediate formats on show here. Info: Praz-Delavallade Gallery, 5 rue des Haudriettes, Paris, Duration: 20/2-10/4/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.praz-delavallade.com

Naeem Mohaiemen’s film “Jole Dobe Na” (Those Who Do Not Drown) was commissioned by the Yokohama Triennale and Bildmuseet, where it is now being shown for the first time following its premiere in Japan. In the exhibition at Bildmuseet, the new film is presented together with earlier works by the artist. “Jole Dobe Na” is a dreamlike and meditative story about loss and care. In an abandoned hospital, a man moves through empty wards, running an endless memory loop of the last months of his wife’s life. Through his repetitive recall, Mohaiemen’s work expresses how the departed live on in the minds of those left behind. The film is presented with earlier works on memory, photography and history, including the acclaimed film installation “Two Meetings and a Funeral” (2017) which premiered at documenta 14. In films, installations, drawings and essays Naeem Mohaiemen investigates legacies of socialist utopias, incomplete decolonization, and how shifting borders, citizenship and language wars shape people’s lives. Mohaiemen has presented his work extensively at exhibitions and film festivals around the world. He was a finalist for the Turner Prize in 2018. Info: Bildmuseet, Umeå University, Universitetsområdet, Umeå, Duration: 20/2-15/8/2021, Days & Hours: online visits Thu-Sun 12:00-17:00, www.bildmuseet.umu.se

For “HOW TO BE ENOUGH” her first solo exhibition in Italy, ruby onyinyechi amanze has conceived a new multidimensional drawing for the Collezione Maramotti Collection’s Pattern Room, working on a monumental scale she has never previously explored. The work is made up of 15 sheets of paper that extend over the entire height and width of the room’s long central wall, creating a vast contemporary “fresco on paper”. For years now amanze has focused on drawing, employing techniques that range between graphite, acrylic, coloured pencil, ink and paint. The thick rag paper is not merely a support, not merely a two-dimensional surface, but rather becomes a sculptural, structural medium – fragile, yet strong – for the artist to manipulate, physically and visually creating different levels of depth and of viewer engagement. Her wonderland of images comprises a number of recurring figures that act as lexical units in a discourse not meant to be narrative. Info: Collezione Maramotti, via Fratelli Cervi 66, Reggio Emilia, Duration: 21/2-257/2021, Days & Hours: Thu & Fri 14:30-18:30, Sat-Sun 10:30-18:30, www.collezionemaramotti.org