ART NEWS:Nov.03

Permanent public sculpture in Austria: Jutish Kallat was one of the artists invited by the Advisory Council of Lower Austria to conceive of a sculpture. Kallat chose a roundabout located in Stockerau, about 20km north of Vienna, a nodal point on the expressway connecting several towns. Rendered in a “traffic blue” shade and layered with information set in the font “Here After Here After Here” could appear like a mammoth loop of infinitely stretched traffic signage. Kallat draws together a confluence of myriad references to arrive at this compelling form.

“Geometry of the Absurd: Recent Paintings by Peter Halley”, eatures 8 large paintings produced between 2007-15. The paintings selected for the exhibition share in common a distinctive double-stack composition, each with two prisons or cells, one precariously suspended above another. The dynamic of each painting is found in the endlessly jockeying for position of two prominent shapes, as if each is attempting to be “on top”. Together, these works project a worldview in which technology and social connections have run amuck, expressed through a geometry that has lost its claim to rationality and become senseless and absurd. Info: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State Street, Santa Barbara, Duration: 8/11/15-21/2/16, Days & Hours: Fri-Sun & Tue-Wed 11:00-15:00, Thu 11:00-20:00, https://www.sbma.net

In the years since the revolution, Iran’s reconstruction has been twofold. The post-1979 economic recovery has resulted in a flurry of new buildings, along with a tidal wave of gentrification and widening income disparity. It is joined by a sustained invocation of nostalgia-for the Iranian pastoral, for ancient Persian civilisations, that looks to construct a scaffolding of renewed national identity and pride. In “Surfaces & Solids”, Nazgol Ansarinia considers these recent decades, and how these dual efforts have manifested themselves in Tehran’s urban and socioeconomic fabrics. Info: Green Art Gallery, Al Quoz 1, Street 8, Alserkal Avenue, Unit 28, Dubai, Duration: 16/11/15-9/1/16, Days & Hours: Sat-Thu 10:00-19:00, www.gagallery.com

Marco Maggi was one of the artists selected for the 56th Venice Biennale, contributing a show that fits inside a small suitcase. Now, in his solo exhibition “Uma frase com três cantos”, in São Paulo, he will present a development of the piece first presented at the Biennale. The conceptualism of the iteration shown in Venice, entirely black and white, is enhanced by the addition of primary colors, another staple of the artist’s output. The exhibition is composed of several black-and-white panels of variable dimensions, which contain selected snippets cut in primary colors (blue, red, and yellow). Info: Galeria Nara Roesler, Av. Europa 655, Jardim Europa, São Paulo, Duration: 16/11/15-13/2/16, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-19:00, Sat 11:00-15:00, www.nararoesler.com.br

Bergen Kunsthall, one of Scandinavia’s most important and respected not-for-profit spaces, hosts a rare benefit auction featuring works by 37 international artists including: Yngve Holen, Jean-Michel Wicker, Karl Holmqvist, Julia Wachtel, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Robert Overby, Anna-Bella Papp, Will Benedict, Moyra Davey, Nick Mauss and Tauba Auerbach. All of the proceeds will directly support the Kunsthall’s exhibitions, commissions and education programmes. Info: Bergen Kunsthall Benefit Auction, Duration: 18/11-2/12/15, BID HERE

In sculptures made out of an array of discarded factory materials and old office furniture, the Portuguese artist Nuno Sousa Vieira explores opposites: consumption and usefulness versus refuse and obsolescence; the mass-produced versus the handmade; function over form versus form over function. Sousa Vieira renders utilitarian materials useless, while referencing their former functions and investing them with new life as elegant sculptural works. His new exhibition entitled “The Volume Of the Visible” is at: Galerie Emmanuel Herve, 6 Rue Jouye-Rouve, Paris, Duration 19/11/15-16/1/16, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 14:00-19:00, http://emmanuelherve.com/

“Sun Splashed” examines the career of Nari Ward, through interrelated frameworks that reveal the ongoing investigations and interests that have guided his work for more than 20 years. It focuses on vital points of reference for the artist, including the dynamics of power and politics, ideas of migration and movement, and place and identity formation. The exhibition highlights the artist’s unique approach to material and making, which is defined by its embrace of varied mediums and, in particular, the use of found objects and assemblage. Info: Curator Diana Nawi, Pérez Art Museum Miami, 1103 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, Duration: 19/11/15-21/2/16, Days & Hours: Fri-Sun & Tue-Wed 10:00-18:00, Thu 10:00-21:00, http://pamm.org/

The exhibition “The Fourth Prose”, proposes a completely new theme: visual and conceptual poetry in Eastern Europe from the ’70s onwards. The exhibition presents important graphic works and rare documents from four artists already known on the international scene: Vyacheslav Akhunov, Babi Badalov, Vlado Martek and Dmitrij Prigov. Being located on the border between the literary and visual worlds, all the artists share a sense of libertarian militancy in their relationship with the power, which is expressed in a variety of solutions. Info: Curator: Marco Scotini, Laura Bulian Gallery, Via G. B. Piranesi 10, Milan, Duration: 19/11/15-25/3/16, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 15:00-19:00, www.laurabuliangallery.com

“More pictures from Wai’anae”, is Matthew Brandt’s first solo exhibition in Brussels. The show will exhibit a new series on the Hawaiian landscape that furthers Brandt’s formal and material consideration of the natural world. This new body of work extends Brandt’s interest in the meeting between the photographic subject and its material self. Pressing beyond the pictorial depiction of the dense tropical rainforest, the images also bear the imprint of the actual site. Info: Praz-Delavallade & Vedovi, 11 boulevard de Waterloo, Brussels, Duration: 19/11-19/12/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.praz-delavallade.com

Solo exhibition by the Dutch artist Joep van Lieshout at the Almine Rech Gallery. In this exhibition titled “Primitive Modern”, the artist presents the transition between two key projects: the new project “Neo-futurism” and recent works from the ”Gesamtkunstwerk New Tribal Labyrinth”, which the artist has been working on for the last four years. Both projects depict the same paradoxical utopian desires, while bringing to the fore a clear shift through a future vision on the development of the world. Info: Almine Rech Gallery, 20 Rue de l’ Abbaye Abdijstraat, Brussels, Duration: 19/11-19/12/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat: 11:00-19:00, www.alminerech.com

“Pop” is an exhibition of Robert Smithson’s works on paper and select sculpture from 1963-65. Smithson’s prolific drawings from this period, including those about language and Christian iconography, sought out disorder from the hierarchies of social conventions and popular culture. The series of drawings on view at the gallery are composed like biblical panel paintings with collaged or drawn elements in the center of the page surrounded by free-floating figures in nested zigzag motifs. Info: James Cohan Gallery, 291 Grand Streett, New York, Duration: 20/11/15-10/1/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.jamescohan.com

The exhibition, “Light and Form” presents Sophia’s Dixon Dillo most current research: to make light visible. The exposition displays both installations of fishing line, appearing as tensely stretched of sails and some paper works to which the cut relief motifs appear personal to each spectator. The concept that light is always present but not always seen is the focus of her practice. Through large-scale installations as well as minimal paintings, Dillo actively engages with this internal contradiction, between the materiality of the art object and the immateriality of light. Info: Galerie Fatiha Selam, 58 rue Chapon, Paris, Duration: 21/1115-16/1/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.fatihaselam.fr

The exhibition “GOD IS MAN MADE” of John runs in In parallel with the exhibition “UGO RONDINONE : I ♥ GIORNO” at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The exhibition will feature exclusively new works from his recent series ‘Rainbow Paintings’. The artist aimed at opening up poetry to an audience wider than its usual public. He is considered to be the inventor of “Performance Poetry”, intense and vividly performed poetry readings in front of an audience, and of “Dial-A-Poem” (1968), a free telephone line to connect listeners to recordings of poems. Info: Almine Rech Gallery, 64 Rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 21/11-19/12/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat: 11:00-19:00, www.alminerech.com

The work of Jennifer Tee includes sculpture, installation, performance and choreography. The works all clearly express a dialogue between material experimentation and philosophical contemplation. Through a web of references to Western culture, art history, and Eastern philosophy, Tee investigates the mutability and complexity of constantly overlapping cultures and identities. “The Soul in Limbo” is her first museum exhibition in Netherlands. Info: Curator: Hilde de Bruijn, Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Sandbergplein 1, Amstelveen, Duration: 24/11/15-21/2/16, Days & Hours: Tue-sun 11:00-19:00, www.cobra-museum.nl