ART NEWS:Feb.03

French artist and designer Nathalie Du Pasquier presents, in the context of SOLO/MULTI, her first major solo exhibition in an Italian museum. Titled “Campo di Marte”, the show is conceived as a Gesamtkunstwerk (a “silent symphony” in the artist’s words) that incorporates a body of about one hundred works made from the 1980s to the present. Setting aside the traditional idea of a retrospective, the exhibition comes to terms with the vast size of the space, becoming a single, large, dynamic installation of multiple forms. Working on the walls as if they were immense canvases, the artist transforms the space into a unified scenario where visitors are encouraged to approach paintings, three-dimensional constructions, prints and drawings, juxtaposed according to various logical parameters. Info: Museum MACRO, Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, Via Nazionale 194, Rome, Duration: 3/2-20/6/2021, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 11:00-21:00, www.museomacro.it

Luigi Presicce’s exhibition by, is second project in the three-year project “Dispositivi sensibili” brings together a cycle of ten episodes entitled “Le Storie della Vera Croce” which first saw the light of day in 2012 and which now make up a single big work being shown in its entirety for the very first time. Ten chapters comprise a total of eighteen performances presented through the medium of video recordings in which painting becomes the nerve centre of the display. Following a research associated with often very different media such as painting and performance art, and setting mythology, history, beliefs and religion side by side, Luigi Presicce’s project alternates between the presentation of his performances in video format and obsessive research into painting. The end of the videos leads to performances, encounters and film screenings focusing on painting from life and on tableaux vivants through an eclectic tangle of quotations and echoes mixing street culture and mysteric cult, folklore and the sacred, and ancient and contemporary history in a totally free and independent fashion. Info: Curator: Angel Moya Garcia, Mattatoio di Roma, Piazza Orazio Giustiniani, Rome, Duration: 9/2-2/5/2021, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 11:00-20:00, www.mattatoioroma.it

In the exhibition “Songs for dying”, Korakrit Arunanondchai explores the ghost as a metaphor for suppressed and overlooked histories. He looks at the official handling of traumatic and violent events and the legacy of the victims and political figures who appear just as inaccessible and elevated above the living as a ghost. In this way, Arunanondchai examines the ghost as a social, lived reality. Arunanondchai has produced a new video work, which has its world premiere in the exhibition. The video, sharing its title with the exhibition, was commissioned by the 13th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, Han Nefkens Foundation in Spain and Kunsthall Trondheim. Through this video work, as well as in installation and paintings, Arunanondchai unites the personal and intimate with the spiritual, the technological, animistic belief systems, politics and the global narrative. In the video, the idea of the ghost is active on several levels: as a presence that disintegrates the linear perception of time by making the past alive and pulsating in the present, as an alternative knowledge system, as an image of invisible structures and as a metaphor for how all things, both bodies and spirits, are interconnected as a community in a greater whole. Info: Kunsthall Trondheim, Kongens gate 2, Trondheim, Duration: 11/2-18/4/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 13:00-17:00,

Diana Policarpo’s exhibition “Nets of Hyphae” takes its point of departure in the ergot mushroom. The parasite infects rye plants and is believed to be the cause of the St. Anthony’s fire disease, inducing burning and tingling sensations, muscle spasms, hallucinations and even gangrene in humans. In small doses, ergot has traditionally been used by women for abortions and to treat bleeding after giving birth. However, the healers’ expertise rooted in experience of the land and plants has been eroded by the progress of patriarchal capitalism, replacing it with obstetrics. With “Nets of Hyphae” Diana Policarpo continues her research into fungi networks, drawing speculative webs of connection between ergot spores, reproductive justice and alternative forms of knowledge. Co-commissioned by Kunsthall Trondheim and Galeria Municipal do Porto in Portugal, Policarpo’s videos, digital 3d animation, drawings printed on textiles, light intervention and soundscape are based in research and simultaneously offer audiences a sensorial experience. At a time when abortion rights are under threat in Poland, the United States and other places, this exhibition connects health struggles dating back to the Renaissance with contemporary concerns of sexual and reproductive justice. This includes the right to decide over one’s own body, access to abortion, the consideration of factors regarding class, race and disability as well as LGBTQ+ inclusion. The exhibition invites viewers to consider parallels between the fungus cycle, the politics of sexual health and the expertise of midwives, healers and peasants in precarity and resistance. Info: Kunsthall Trondheim, Kongens gate 2, Trondheim, Duration: 11/2-18/4/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 13:00-17:00, https://kunsthalltrondheim.no

“Point of View” is the title of the first European survey exhibition of American artist Angela Washko . Throughout her practice, Angela Washko investigates how power structures are embedded into our collective consciousness through media. A life-long gamer, her work takes the form of performance (in both virtual and physical spaces), actions, interventions, video games, videos, prints and books. In her exhibition on presentation are four bodies of work “The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft” with a goal to facilitate discussions with other players about the misogynistic, homophobic, racist and discriminatory language used within the game space. For her video series Heroines with Baggage, Washko started to replay the 1990s role-playing video games which were formative to her as a child. Upon replaying these games, it became clear to the artist that the women represented were frequently portrayed as collapsing, running scared, afraid of being alone, and always in need of rescue by a male protagonist. BANGED is a series of works Washko created around the figure of Roosh V, ‘the Web’s most infamous misogynist’ and a professional pick-up artist. “The Game: The Game” is composed entirely of scenarios, techniques, and language from texts and instructional videos created by pick-up artists, The Game: The Game is a feminist dating simulator video game designed to give players the experience of interacting with a series of infamous pick-up artists and seduction coaches. Info: Curator: Karen Verschooren, STUK – House for Dance, Image & Sound, Naamsestraat 96, Leuven, Duration: 12/2-25/4/2021, www.stuk.be

Harriet Schwarzrock’s new work, “spaces between movement and stillness”, explores notions of emotional processes and their physical manifestations. In spaces between movement and stillness, the artist has embraced science and experimentation to create visual wonders: glass, inert gases, and electricity combine into an array of organic forms, producing a captivating field of colour and movement. ‘Sometimes they have a warm glow, much like an aurora contained in a bottle; in others there are lightning-like lines meandering around the form. Although the gases are invisible, when excited by electricity they reveal subtle effects and differences. The creation draws reflections on the role of the human heart as our central, exquisitely responsive ‘engine’. When we’re relaxed, the heart beats at a slow and steady rhythm; when excitement takes hold – for example, in the first throes of true love – the cadence might crank with the beat of a wilful, wild machine. Luminous alone, the myriad tones and permutations of spaces between movement and stillness also echo the boundless forms of love in the exhibition, “Australian Love Stories”. Info: National Portrait Gallery, King Edward Terrace, Parkes, Canberra, Duration: 13/2-1/8/2021, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-17:00, www.portrait.gov.au

Maria Nordin’s exhibition title “Law of Falling Bodies” alludes to both the law of gravity and the figures in the paintings. They are in the middle of a movement, isolated in a balancing act, or already fallen. Painted with watercolor on large papers, mainly in light pink, yellow and blue, they do not necessarily interact with the implied darkness. In her art, Maria Nordin focuses on how experiences are expressed through the human body or how bodily experiences can be shaped. The new works deal mainly with the movement of bodies. She has taken inspiration from theory of modern dance, where fall and gravity have been deliberately used, unlike the classical ballet which has strived to overcome gravity. The fall, which both symbolically and literally, causes us to lose our footing is also associated with decay. Physical expressions such as being out of balance and losing stability serve as metaphors for our psychological or emotional state. The exposed vulnerability becomes an expression of decadence and failure, something that is consolidated in a culture where lightness, mobility and stability are desired. Info: Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Fredsgatan 12, Stockholm, Duration: 20/2-20/3/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 12:00-17:00, Sat 12:00-16:00, www.gallerimagnuskarlsson.com

Lucas Blalock’s solo exhibition “Florida, 1989” scene is set with a collection of photography and sculpture that exude a sense that we are navigating a shoddily constructed fantasyland. Interspersed with this scenery are nods toward the unseemly realities of the body (its frailties, its unruliness, its horror) that have been commonplace in Blalock’s work for years, return here freighted with additional psychic weight. His three kinetic sculptures, dubbed “Film-Objects” due to their comically impoverished resemblance to proto-cinematic 19th-century zoetropes, which often depicted human or animal bodies in dynamic, eye-catching motion, ironically point to the body in a state of torpor or death. The show is also populated by a bizarre cast of animal familiars and ghostly entities. These kinds of characters have popped up in Blalock’s work before, but they are similarly inflected with new flavors of meaning in the context of this exhibition’s autobiographical turn. Info: Eva Presenhuber Gallery, 39 Great Jones Street, New York, Duration: 27/2-10/4/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.presenhuber.com