ART NEWS: Oct.03

The exhibition “Playworlds, 2018–2022” presents a series of works drawn from Switchers, a collaborative framework that combines visual arts, theatre, video and pedagogy, developed through worldbuilding and play. Switchers comprises an evolving network of artists, performers and young people from Hackney, London and Mid Powys, Wales. The group addresses social struggles, ownership, racism and issues faced by young people, using collective imagination to connect city and country. Switchers was first initiated by artist Emanuel Almborg as a youth theatre exchange in 2018 and has since developed into a series of extended and shifting artistic collaborations, generating new projects and works. The exhibition presents two new videos—one directed by Jamie Baker and produced by Almanac, London/Turin, another by Prince Owusu with young amateur artists from Brétigny, produced by CAC Brétigny—alongside collectively authored “Acorn “(2021) and Almborg’s “The Nth Degree” (2018). These films are installed within a scenographic installation created by the artist Ksenia Pedan, who previously produced set design for Acorn. Info: Curator: Thomas Conchou, CAC Brétigny (Contemporary Art Center of National Interest / Cœur d’Essonne Agglomération), Rue Henri Douard, Brétigny-sur-Orge, France, Duration: 1/10-15/12/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 14:00-18:00, www.cacbetigny.com/

The doodles, imprints, blots and stains that fill the pages of Gabriel Orozco’s “Diario de Plantas” (2021-22) spread out in time as well as space and are, as such, less a matter of formal composition and design than growth and proliferation. Orozco began to make them in Tokyo, where he has been based with his family since 2017, in small notebooks that he found there; then he carried on making many more of them in Mexico, where he also lives and works. They have travelled with him as he moves between places, and they chart a period of time split mainly between Tokyo and Mexico City, where he has been working on the large public project that will transform and regenerate Chapultepec Park in the centre of the city. Only during the cumulative process of making them did they become something he could imagine as a set of diaries, and only once the notebooks were filled were groups of individual drawings selected from them. This dynamic of accumulation is important to remember when we think of what the Diario is. Info: White Cube Gallery, 25 – 26 Mason’s Yard, London, England, Duration: 12/10-12/11/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.whitecube.com/

The carpets patterns designed by Maria Thereza Alves for her solo exhibition “On Remembering for a Future” are inspired by the Middle East and its traditionally rich floral patterns. They are usually placed in indoor or outdoor spaces to create meeting places – creating portable gardens, recalling the different forces underlying human existence. The flowers and plants represented are a reminder of man’s increasing control over nature as well as colonization. The circulation of beings allows Alves to draw up a paradoxical history of globalization, between uprooting, abandonment and resistance. These plants placed into new complexities are the trace of a vestige of our past. The titles of the watercolors are an indication of the close relationship between Maria Thereza Alves and French literature: Flora were chosen because they were quoted in texts intimately linked to Paris. These representations underline the link between the writings and the possible encounters in the city through different historical periods, Info: Michel Rein, 42 rue de Turenne, Paris, France, Duration: 15/10-26/11/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, https://michelrein.com/

Lucia Koch presents her exhibition “double trouble” at the Palais d’lena in Paris in conjunction with Paris+, par Art Basel. Koch has installed her site-specific work throughout the main floor of the monumental palace. Extending over 1,200 square feet and 20 feet high, Koch’s free-flowing translucent curtains interweave between the concrete pillars, intersecting each other, transforming the appearance of Perret’s architecture and altering the interior space through light, creating a dialogue throughout the space. Koch’s intervention implements color gradients of amber and blue, emulating the color temperature variations of the natural light throughout the day, shifting the viewer’s experience as they move throughout space. The draperies are a moving boundary, inviting people to interact and eventually redefine the configuration of the spaces they inhabit, experiencing the different atmospheres that the work creates. A set of works from Koch’s “Fundos” series are placed on the periphery of the main installation. Consisting of photographs of the interior of vacant packing boxes, these works alter the state of the places in which they interfere, reorienting not only our perception but the comprehension of the constructed world. Info: Curator: Matthieu Poirier, Palais d’lena, 9 Av. d’Iéna, Paris, France, Duration: 18-28/10/2022, Days & Hours: Daily 11:00-17:00

“From Body to Horizon” sd an exhibition of paintings by queer artists who have developed specific approaches to color through depictions of the interior and exterior landscapes of their own lives. The exhibition feature works by Etel Adnan, David Hockney, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, and Doron Langberg. Pushing beyond the conventions of naturalism, each of these four artists has developed a signature approach to color as a language—a means for reflecting upon topographies both figural and panoramic, domestic and picturesque, intimate and universal. The exhibition is anchored by David Hockney’s large-scale diptych “Double East Yorkshire” (1998), one of six early canvases the artist painted of Yorkshire between 1997 and 1998, during the illness and death of his longtime friend Jonathan Silver. While the first four paintings in the series evoke summer, the work on view portrays the progression of the seasons and the passage of time. Hockney’s expressive use of color has been an inspiration to Doron Langberg, whose new figurative painting “Jarrett and Candystore” (2022) are on view. Info: LGDR (Lévy – Gorvy – Dayan – Rohatyn), 909 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 20/10-12/11/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 1o:00-18:00, https://lgdr.com/

Moving away from the geometric patchwork of traditional patterns, Arna Óttarsdóttir creates loose compositions of intentional and haphazard edits. The imagery is derived from drawings, doodles, and small notes from her sketchbooks, where she does not select the final motif based on refined finish, but rather on the possibility of future exploration. Her solo exhibition “soon, again” features new weavings by Óttarsdóttir, all made by hand on a loom in her Reykjavík studio. As is consistent throughout her practice, the artist uses her own notebooks, which are filled with thoughts and drawings, as source material for her works. By incorporating sketches and less formal visual elements into the weavings, Óttarsdóttir infuses her work with a spirited, personal energy that permeates the exhibition. This new body of work by Óttarsdóttir combines elements of abstraction and figuration and explores the physical properties of the material. At times, the artist eschews a tight weaving technique in favour of a loose, drawing-like approach. The patterns, textures, and colors within Óttarsdóttir’s tapestries vary within individual works, allowing the artist to investigate the aesthetic intricacies weaving allows. Info: i8 Gallery, Tryggvagata 16, Reykjavik Iceland, Duration: 20/10-26/11/2022, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 12:00-17:00, https://i8.is/

The exhibition “Early Works” seeks to uncover the earliest layers of Michel Majerus’ (1967-2002) artistic practice by showing works he produced between 1990 and 1996. Many of these pieces are on public view for the first time. The exhibition is dedicated to the beginnings of Majerus’ nationally and internationally celebrated work. Majerus’ artistic approach is already apparent in the early works created during his studies. These explore visual culture, time, speed and seriality as well as virtual and physical space. The artist’s continuous observations of surface and space as well as his inquiries into materials and techniques were essential to his methodological way of illuminating how images are produced. This investigation formed the foundations of his reflections on the meaning and power of visual culture. On its ground floor and main hall KW will show over 80 pieces from the artist’s early works set in a site-specific exhibition architecture. Fragments of scaffolding will recall Majerus’ first institutional solo show at the Kunsthalle Basel in 1996, wherein the artist created a scenography that integrated viewers into its visual space. Info: Curator: Krist Gruijthuijsen, Assistant Curator: Léon Kruijswijk, KW Institute for Contemporary Art , Auguststraße 69, Berlin, Germany, Duration: 21/10/2022-15/1/2023, Days & Hours: Mon, Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-19:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.kw-berlin.de/

Jutta Haeckel subversive artworks in her solo exhibition “Golden Thread” invert the act and purpose of painting—both materially and subjectively.  Beginning with jute as her substrate—much thicker and rougher than standard canvas—she frays it by removing some of the threads. This opens the weave and allows her to extrude paint from the back, thus physically merging paint, image and surface.  In addition, through her process of accumulating material and form, she disguises the representational sources of her subjects. In confounding the viewer’s experience she creates an opportunity for reinvention. Constantly exploding conventions, Haeckel’s paintings simultaneously disclose and deceive, their multilayered colors and swirling or grid-like designs revealing whispers of lost meaning. She draws content from visual markers intended to inform, instruct, or identify. Yet the maps, fingerprints, and circuit boards she depicts transform into abstracted patterns and their purpose evaporates. Info: Hosfelt Gallery, 260 Utah Street, San Francisco, CA, USA, Duration: 22/10-23/11/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:30, Thu 11:00-19:00, https://hosfeltgallery.com/