ART NEWS: May 02

Liste Art Fair announced that it is further expanding its commitment to presenting new artistic positions from around the world. Going forward, Liste will consist of three formats. In addition to Liste Art Fair Basel, is expanding its digital art fair, Liste Showtime Online, and forging ahead with the creation of a new research forum, Liste Expedition Online, in collaboration with the association Joinery. Liste Expedition Online will launch in October 2021 as a non-commercial, digital research forum presenting the world’s newest and most important positions in contemporary art. The forum will be home to a continuously growing index of artists and it will be publicly accessible year-round along with curated programmes. It is made possible with the generous support of the Swiss Federal Office for Culture and the Canton of Basel-Stadt and the Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger I KBH.G. Info: www.liste.ch

The 16th edition of Art Madrid will take place from the 26th to the 30th of May, 2020 in the Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles, an unmissable appointment with contemporary art that every year has a more significant international presence and attracts a greater number of visitors. To celebrate its 16th anniversary, Art Madrid has organised a very special edition in which everyone can enjoy the contemporary art of the moment in an event full of novelties. The fair defines as a proposal close to the public and the reality of the art world, aware of the future challenges and the positive impact of initiatives like this one. This year will bring together 33 national and international galleries that will provide a fresh and current vision of the world art scene. This edition stands out for its impact on the latest artistic trends, a set of proposals that shine for the increasing quality of their works. Emerging and consolidated creators alike report that their production has been great during the past year, which has provided them with time and space for research and reflection, with creative results that reveal new forms and possibilities in the world of contemporary artistic creation. Info: Art Madrid 2021, Galería de Cristal de CentroCentro Cibeles, Plaza Cibeles, 1A, Madrid, Spain, Duration: 26-30/5/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-21:00, General Ticket: 15€, Reduced Ticket (people over 65y, unemployed, students and groups (20 minimum)): 12€, Children up to 12y free, www.art-madrid.com

Ran Hwang’s solo exhibition “Hope Springs Eternal” consists of a series of work created during quarantine and fueled by the artists compulsion to seek inner peace and mental stability. In this exhibition, Hwang focuses on small cherry blossom works that are bright and joyful, following the religious practices of Buddhism and hoping to bring light to people’s hearts and heal their inner wounds. Ran Hwang’s artistic practice is deeply rooted in the philosophy of Zen Buddhism. Pondering the themes of cyclicality and learnt appreciation for the time’s ephemerality accompanies the artist’s works. Hwang’s installations serve as monuments to a human’s perpetual attempts to capture and prolong a fleeting moment. In this case, the cherry blossoms are subjects of Hwang’s series as they stand to represent nature’s vulnerability to imperfect conditions and inevitability of life’s transient nature. In her Cherry Blossoms, the artist hopes to convey a meditative state to the audience, inviting the viewer to trace the delicate motions of the blossom’s falling petals succumbed to the imminent progression of time. Info: Leila Heller Gallery, 17 East 76th Street (off Madison Avenue), New York, USA, Duration: 12/5-24/6/2021, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, www.leilahellergallery.com

Gérard Alary presents his solo exhibition “A painter is a dessein”. This play on the double meaning of words indicates that, for him, drawing and painting never cease to revive this poetic and practical purpose: to bring to light the flow, the irreducible resistance of the individual to the expectations of matter and time. If his painting projects us, in the continuous activity of the cosmos, of the telluric forces it is because his central subject, as reveal his graphics, his vibrating surfaces, is the human person. It is in front of us, standing, in small drawings, moved by animality, the elements, sexuality, stormy winds or, on the contrary, concentrated in a figure, a face, a sculptural skull, prey to death but, even more, animated by the response to this deflagration, by a “spring” that the creator goes to look for in himself… This breath allows him to sweep away the destruction at work to restore, through drawing, this face and this figure. Info: The Patinoire Royale – Galerie Valérie Bach, rue Veydt 15, Brussels, Belgium, Duration: 20/5-17/7/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed 14:00-18:00, Thu-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.prvbgallery.com

The exhibition “The Normal” explores ideas about pausing the train of progress, resurgent communities, an ever-increasing proximity between humans and wildlife and the asymmetrical effects of this pandemic due to socioeconomic and racial inequality. The exhibition is a vivid reflection of life during the pandemic. Through artworks that express hope, grief, survival, violence and solidarity, the exhibition situates our lived experience within a global artistic dialogue. The artists are exploring ideas about pausing the train of progress, resurgent communities, an ever-increasing proximity between humans and wildlife and the asymmetrical effects of this pandemic due to socio-economic and racial inequality. All of this remains underscored by the need for a profound re-orientation towards planetary health following the loud wake-up call. Participating artists: Larry Achiampong, Amy Balkin, Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan, Boyle Family, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & Sascha Pohflepp, Gabrielle Goliath, Femke Herregraven, Jarsdell Solutions Ltd, Kahlil Joseph, Tonya McMullan, Sarah Rose, and James Webb. Info: Talbot Rice Gallery, Old College, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Duration: 18/5-29/8/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00, www.trg.ed.ac.uk

Mark Grotjahn  in his solo exhibition “Horizontals” presents new and recent paintings from the “Capri” series (2016- ) Stemming from a body of work that he produced in 2016 for Casa Malaparte on the isle of Capri, Italy, the new paintings extend Grotjahn’s shift away from the representational qualities of the “Face” paintings (2003– ) toward the realm of full abstraction. In the later Capri paintings, Grotjahn moves beyond this motif, conjuring multicolored linear vertices with stylistic echoes of German Expressionism and Italian Futurism, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. These works are also marked by the influence of American Abstract Expressionism—specifically Clyfford Still’s use of the palette knife. Although allusions to landscape are present in these paintings, most meaningfully they embody in abstract terms the formal and expressive possibilities of paint and process. Some of the most recent works, which adopt the landscape format primarily, also feature rolls of excess paint that Grotjahn “harvests” with a palette knife and arranges in loose grids across the surface of the canvas. Info: Gagosian Gallery, 7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 18/5-7/8/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, https://gagosian.com

Titled “Artery”, Allison Katz’s exhibition is her first institutional solo show in the UK. For more than a decade, Katz has been exploring painting’s relationship to questions of identity and expression, selfhood, and voice. Animated by a restless sense of humour and curiosity, her works articulate a tricksy language of recurring forms—roosters, monkeys and cabbages, among other things. Katz’s paintings, as well as her ceramics and posters, are frequently bodily and relentlessly wordy, thick with puns and allusions. For Katz, “Artery” is a resonant and loaded title. The artist wants to emphasise the non-order of things, from inside to out.” Arteries are inside us, but they also connect us: the “arterial” is used to describe major highways, subterranean cabling, branching rail networks, and winding river systems. This exhibition is preoccupied by these networks and channels, by the spaces between inside and outside, you and me, experience and image. Info: Curator: Sam Thorne, Nottingham Contemporary , Weekday Cross, Nottingham, United Kingdom, Duration: 22/5-31/8/2021, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-17:00, https://nottinghamcontemporary.org

Mélanie Matranga’s films, installations, and sculptures are at once intimate and elegiac. Her work asks fraught and timely questions about images and memory, privacy and proximity. Titled “0, 1, 2, 3, 4”, this is her first institutional solo show in the UK, and all of the works in the exhibition were made over the last year. At a time when we have become accustomed to confinement and isolation, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 offers a sensitive reflection on how we see ourselves as individuals, and on the social fabric that binds us together. Matranga has, for a number of years, been preoccupied with the gap between intimacy and feeling alone, together. Fundamental to this exhibition is the way in which the private becomes public. Sculptural works—assemblages, domestic panoramas, and a maquette of where the artist lives and works—present worlds within worlds. Info: Curator: Olivia Aherne, Nottingham Contemporary , Weekday Cross, Nottingham, United Kingdom, Duration: 22/5-31/8/2021, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-17:00, https://nottinghamcontemporary.org

The first solo presentation in a UK museum by Erika Verzutti gathers more than 40 sculptures from the past 15 years, alongside new work and a site-specific commission. This survey draws together key examples of her vocabulary of recurring forms. Often humorous forms are realised in a core set of materials that include bronze, concrete and papier mâché. At times seemingly primordial, the sculptures draw from a range of visual sources, including domestic objects, vegetables, newspaper clippings, internet phenomena, and art history. In this exhibition, Verzutti’s home country represents important points of departure. In sculptures moulded from jackfruits, which can be considered symbolic of Brazil, she defies the Brazilian modernist tradition, slicing, carving, and sculpting the fruits in a tactile celebration of contrasting surfaces. Alongside these works are a series of new sculptures made from papier mâché, and a new life-size bronze commission that the artist refers to as Venus, the mother of all sculpture. Info: Curator: Nicole Yip and Kiera Blakey, Assistant Curator: Hannah Wallis, Nottingham Contemporary , Weekday Cross, Nottingham, United Kingdom, Duration: 22/5-31/8/2021, Days & Hours: Daily 10:00-17:00, https://nottinghamcontemporary.org