ART NEWS: Oct.01

Since the early 1990s, Josephine Pryde has produced enigmatic yet provocative photographs and sculptures that critically address and interrogate subjects such as motherhood, beauty, consumer culture, tourism, and medical science. While her images appear informal, they are decisively staged. Often they connect to conventions of established photography styles—both incorporating and eluding genres such as advertising and fashion photography as well as documentary, snapshot, and experimental photography. “The Vibrating Slab” juxtaposes works from Josephine Pryde’s new and recent series, from the ongoing “Hands” begun in 2016, to recent images of prehistoric rock carvings and some small-scale sculptures. Also included is a brand-new photography series that stems from an inquiry into the ways smartphones inhabit our lives. Together these works ask us to consider the intersections as well as divergences, over time, in sensory experience and how language scripts our sensory perceptions. Info: Curator: Ann Goldstein, Assistant Curator: Makayla May, The Art Institute of Chicago, 111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL, USA, Duration: 1/10/2022-30/1/2023, Days & Hours: Mon & Fri-Sun 11:00-17:00, Thu 11:00-20:00, www.artic.edu/

“Canyon” – a new work by Katharina Grosse is on public display. This installation is the latest artist commission by the Fondation Louis Vuitton, and comes after works by Olafur Eliasson, Ellsworth Kelly and Adrián Villar Rojas inspired by the architecture of the Frank Gehry building. Composed of eight 5-millimeter-thick aluminum sheets “petals” spray-painted with acrylic and connected to a beam, “Canyon”  is a response to the artist’s question: “How can a painting appear in a space with no floor and no walls, where air, light, flows and energies circulate?” It is a reference to the characteristics of the “canyon” (the name given to the void that is visible inside the building from the ground up.) Echoing Frank Gehry’s glass facade – a ship moored to a cascade – the artist has hoisted a kind of cut-out sail using a pulley, in a tense exchange with the architecture.  From the work’s conception, a close dialogue has been established between the artist and the architect – a passionate debate around the use of color in a pre-existing building. “Canyon” is visible from the Fondation’s different landings. Featuring curves and counter-curves, the work defies gravity by combining elegance and monumentality in a kind of choreography with the building. Info: Fondation Louis Vuitton, 8 Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, Paris, Duration: 5/10/2022- , www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr/

The exhibition “Monet – Mitchell Dialogue” create an unprecendented dialogue” between the works of Claude Monet and Joan Mitchell. Bringing together some 60 emblematic works by the two artists, the exhibition offers the public an enchanting journey, emphasised by striking visual and thematic parallels. The exhibition displays 36 works by Claude Monet in dialogue with 24 of Mitchell’s imposing abstract paintings. The  exhibitions present each artist’s unique response to a shared landscape, which they illustrate in a particularly immersive and sensual manner. In his last paintings, the Water Lilies, Monet aimed to recreate in his studio the motifs he observed at length on the surface of his water lily pond in Giverny. Joan Mitchell, on the other hand, would explore a memory or a sense of the emotions she felt while in a particular place that was dear to her, perceptions that remained vivid beyond space and time. She would create these abstract compositions at La Tour, her studio in Vétheuil, a small French village. Info: General Curator Suzanne Pagé, Co-curators: Marianne Mathieu, Angeline Scherf, Assistant Curators: Cordélia de Brosses, and Claudia Buizza Fondation Louis Vuitton, 8 Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, Paris, France, Duration: 5/10/2022-27/2/2023, Days & Hours: Mon, Wed-Thu & Sat-sun 11:00-20:00, Fri 11:00-21:00, www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr/

“Weavers”, a new solo presentation by Rosa Barba, unfolds in two spaces. In the nave, Barba has conceived an in situ project, linked to the research she carried out during her recent residency at the Atelier Calder, Saché. In the black gallery she immerses us in a cinematographic space mixing images and sculptures in movement. In the nave, Barba is planning a new work, designed for the exhibition space. It will be directly linked to the research she carried out during her recent residency in Touraine, where she developed an experimental sound device, using elements such as piano strings and projectors, linked together and producing a sound loop. The second part of the exhibition takes place in the black gallery and allow us to discover recent productions by the artist. For this purpose, Barba has reconfigured the exhibition space by emphasizing the permeability between interior and exterior and creating a poetic dialogue between the real landscape and the filmed landscapes. Info: CCC OD (Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré), Jard. François 1er, Tours, France, Duration: 7/10/2022-30/4/2023, Days & Hours: Wed-Fri & sun 11:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-19:00, www.cccod.fr/

Virginia Overton in her exhibition “Saved”, shown sculptures and site-specific installations made from repurposed everyday materials that create a dynamic visual poetry of reclamation and renewal. Virginia Overton seeks out the creative potential in ordinary building materials, defunct equipment, and other objects that have been discarded or fallen into disrepair. “In her practice, Overton focuses on harnessing and examining associations carried by items, machined or organic, that retain aspects of their former lives.. Through a process that embraces improvisation, the artist adds layers of meaning by dismantling, constructing, realigning, and juxtaposing elements. “Encouraging us to see beauty and find value in neglected things, Overton presents an alternative to the attitude of disposability that prevails in consumer culture,” said Scala. The exhibition’s title, Saved, is a reference to how material objects can be re-envisioned as art instead of being cast away. Info: The Frist Art Museum, 919 Broadway, Nashville, TN, USA, Duration: 7/10-31/12/2022, Days & Hours: Mon & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:30, Thu 10:00-20:00, Sun 13:00-17:30, https://fristartmuseum.org/

The exhibition “E W S” presents the special family bond, Ernest Mancoba, Wonga Mancoba and especially Sonja Ferlov Mancoba. The title “E W S” corresponds with the three artist’s initials, which Sonja Ferlov Mancoba often used as a mutual signature to mark the unity’s strong ties both as a family and artistically. The exhibition is an associative conversation between artworks, life, photos, and studio objects. In the front room of the gallery the focus is the radical approach they had to the artistic process, creation, and the artist role: The family together constitutes a unity as “The Artist” and the artworks are living creatures, which become parts of an all-encompassing community of creatures, cultures, and humans from all times and from all over the world. In this way the exhibition stands for an inspiring rethinking of the current norms of family-life and work-life, as well as the idea of the artist as an individual, and the artwork as an independent object. The exhibition also presents the future Sonja Ferlov Mancoba Pavillion that is showing all her sculptures. Info: Curators: Annette Rosenvold Hvidt and Cecilie Høgsbro Østergaard, Galerie Mikael Andersen, Bredgade 63, Copenhagen, Denmark, Duration: 7/10-3/12/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 12:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-15:00, http://mikaelandersen.com/

SITE Santa Fe presents two major solo exhibitions by Shirin Neshat and Max Cole. Created in New Mexico in 2019, “Land of Dreams” by Shirin Neshat is a multidisciplinary series featuring over one hundred photographs of New Mexico residents embellished with Farsi calligraphy and small-scale illustrations; a two-channel video following a fictional Iranian photographer as she travels door-to-door soliciting portraits of strangers while collecting their dreams; and a feature length film. Alongside Land of Dreams is Neshat’s “Dreamer’s Trilogy” (2013-2016), three short films that draw inspiration from the artist’s own recurring dreams. Together, these works reflect one another, mirroring layers of ambiguity between dreams and reality, fiction and memory. Featuring a selection of paintings and works on paper spanning 1962-2022, the exhibition “Endless Journey” surveys over six decades of Max Cole’s ongoing career including many never-before-seen works. Cole’s iconic paintings invite viewers on a meditative journey through her lifelong investigation of rhythmic repetitive line and composition. The exhibition features over 30 works, including significant loans. Written like music or poetry, Cole’s lines are records of movement, keepers of time. The slight variation in each hand-made mark creates a visual echo that vibrates across the canvas creating a visceral and immersive experience for the viewer. Info: Curators: Brandee Caoba (both exhibitions), SITE Santa Fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, NM, USA, Duration: 7/10/2022-16/1/2023, Days & Hours: Mon, Thu & Sat-Sun 10:00-17:00, Fri 10:00-19:00, https://sitesantafe.org/

Miquel Barceló in his exhibition “Grisailles” presents paintings featuring his new series of large-scale still lifes with sea creatures, flowers and bones in monochromatic hues. Taking place in the gallery’s Pantin space, the exhibition will be punctuated by paintings of bulls and wild animals, all rendered in translucent layers of colour that pay homage to the tradition of grisaille painting. Known for the richly textured, sedimented surfaces of his works, Barceló takes a different approach in this exhibition, adopting a variation on the traditional grisaille technique, where translucent layers of color are applied over a monochromatic underpainting. The result is a group of paintings that are airier and more loosely composed than the artist’s previous treatment of still lifes, allowing the grain of the canvas to show behind the thin layers of ink and acrylic red, pink, blue and yellow. The absence of relief and the blurred outlines of the objects depicted by the artist give the paintings a sense of mystery and timelessness, suspending them somewhere between a dream and reality. Info: Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, 69, Avenue Du Général Leclerc, Pantin, France, Duration: 8/10/2022-7/1/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, https://ropac.net/

The exhibition “Double Act” brings together two collections: the monumental video installations from the Kramlich Family Collection with highlights from Centraal Museum Utrecht collection of 17th- century paintings. The works mirror each other and show striking similarities, sometimes in terms of subject, sometimes in terms of mood. In some cases the resonance between painting and installation is immediately obvious, and at times it is more intuitive. It is the first time for the Kramlich collection to be displayed outside the United States on this scale. By bringing together two such seemingly different collections the similarities stand out. When we look beyond the medium of paint or video, we see that both the 17th-century paintings and video art feature the vivid effects of light and dark and an emphatic delineation of the image. What the works on display have in common, above all, is their poignant character. They depict emotions, each using the techniques and technical resources of their time. The art of painting and video art meet in the exhibition, and together they reflect human moods and emotions – like mirrors for the soul. The works on display also relate to recurrent and contemporary issues such as emancipation, colonialism, imperialism and war. Info: Centraal Museum Utrecht, Agnietenstraat 1, Utrecht, The Netherlands, Duration: 8/10/2022-15/1/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-17:00, www.centraalmuseum.nl/

180 Studios presents 2 major exhibitions by Richard Mosse and the digital art collective, Universal Everything.  Filmed in remote parts of the Brazilian Amazon, the immersive video installation  “Broken Spectre” by Richard Mosse is the result of three years documenting environmental crimes using a range of scientific imaging technologies. Seeking to overcome the inherent challenges of representing climate change in order to make visible the world’s most crucial yet ignored ecological warzone, this is Mosse’s most ambitious project to date. A selection of the artist’s photographs from the project will be displayed alongside the installation, including large-scale photographs that have not been exhibited in the UK before. “Lifeforms” by Universal Everything  brings together 14 projects within a series of habitats designed by Ab Rogers Architects. Their largest show to date is constantly unique. An amalgam of unpredictable, generative pieces and installations that mirror and shift with time and the public’s interactions. The works draw from the history of visual culture – from Futurist’s attempt to depict the body in motion to Eadweard Muybridge’s sequential 19th century film experiences. Info: 180 Studios, 180 Strand Temple, London, England, Duration: 12/10-4/12/2022, www.180thestrand.com/

For this new series of paintings, Vaughn Spann, that are on show in “Reflections: Refractions”  has immersed himself in materiality and movement, pushing the viewer to consider his works as much in a form of pause, or even contemplation, as in the dynamism linked to the expressiveness of gesture. Proof also that the subject or the motif is a base of vocabulary that can be reused at will. Strong in colors, the “Marked Man” works presented in this exhibition are seen in a multiplicity composed of two panels of a total scale of more than six meters. The tones oppose and respond to each other: deep blues and purples to sparkling oranges and pinks, creating rhythms and movements that blur the contours and make the image more abstract. From the side, one can see the thickness of the paste and the pleasure Spann had in working with it. He cites Bram Bogart, endorsing his very physical paintings and their construction done in a quasi-sculptural manner. Info: Almine Rech Gallery, 64 Rue de Turenne, Paris, France, Duration: 15/10-19/11/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.alminerech.com/

The exhibition “Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition” presents an entirely new understanding of Cubism by connecting it to the strategies, motifs, and playful provocation of trompe l’oeil illusionism. This exhibition brings together more than 100 objects, the majority being by the three Cubists who concertedly addressed the practice of trompe l’oeil in the years 1909-1915, paintings and collages are paired with celebrated by European and American artists from the 17th through the 19th century. Though these trompe l’oeil painters were often disparaged for merely copying nature, they filled their pictures with ingenious tricks and sophisticated allusions, elevating the seemingly humble genre of still life. As the exhibition reveals, the Cubists both parodied and paid homage to classic trompe l’oeil devices, while inventing new ways of confounding the eye and the mind. Despite vast differences in overall appearance, both art forms interrogated the nature of representation, raising philosophical questions about the real and the fake, and the ephemeral and the enduring, that resonate powerfully today. Info: Curators: Emily Braun and Elizabeth Cowling, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Met Fifth Avenue, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 20/10/2022-22/1/2023, Days & Hours: Mon-Tue, Thu & Sun 10:00-17:00, Fri-Sat 11:00-21:00, www.metmuseum.org/