John Bannon, Gabi Brandt, Molly Briggs, Robert Davis at Fassbender Stevens Gallery, Chicago - Quirks & Quarks: The Idiosyncracies of Four Emerging Artists

John Bannon, Gabi Brandt, Molly Briggs, Robert Davis

Quirks & Quarks: The Idiosyncracies of Four Emerging Artists

Fassbender Stevens Gallery, Chicago

December 6, 2002 - January 4, 2003

Quirks & Quarks... is an exhibition mired in the diversity of young emerging artists whose common denominator is the persistent funkiness of their own visions.

 

Gabi Brandt's provocative photographs, "America Town Series" display matter-of-fact frontal portraits where surroundings and attire inform meaning as apposed to the deliberately impassive facial expressions of his subjects. Though these subjects feign an expressionless posture, they are not entirely successful as their quirks show through, accelerating the tension that arouses curiosity. Gabi Brandt lives and works in Las Vegas. He received his MFA in photography from Yale University.

 

John Bannon's mixed media and neon sculpture include fantastic interactive moonscapes, abstract architectural neon light boxes and video installation. Bannon's object installation "Better to Look Into Than At" includes video footage of falling snow viewed through a vintage microscope. The viewer is disoriented by looking down at falling snow that was video taped by looking straight up. Initially resembling microbes, this perspective addresses the inverse relationship of how the search for scientific meaning is undertaken. John Bannon lives and works in Chicago. He received his MFA in studio arts from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

 

Molly Briggs wears the mantle of the scientific investigator rendering the invisible visible, and questioning our perceptions of 'truth'. Combining collage, drawing and painting, this incessant experimenter deconstructs the world around us, looking at how things are made (and how they make us). She draws from fields as diverse as fashion, evolutionary theory and household lighting to present us with a tongue-in-cheek mishmash that is also daintily and exuberantly beautiful. Molly Briggs lives and works in Chicago. She received her MFA in printmaking from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

 

Robert Davis casts pristine, wall mounted, organically shaped objects out of plastic. Half familiar and half other-worldly, the forms are seductive in their simplicity. Robert Davis lives and works in Chicago. He received his B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

FASSBENDER STEVENS GALLERY

835 W. Washington, Chicago, IL 60607

www.fassbendergallery.com

Transcend CompactFlash Memory Card 1GB

Version en français à venir

DEC 05, 2002 - Transcend CompactFlash Memory Card Capacity Reaches 1GB

Now businessmen can carry a library of information in their pocket and professional digital photographers can get an entire photo shoot on a single memory card. Transcend Information Inc., the professional memory module and flash card manufacturer, has doubled the available capacity on a single Transcend Type I CompactFlash Memory Card to 1GB.

CompactFlash is the world's most popular removable mass storage device. CompactFlash was designed based on the popular PC Card (PCMCIA) standard, and the technology has resulted in the introduction of a new class of advanced, small, lightweight, low-power, mobile products that has significantly increased productivity and enhanced the lifestyle of millions of people. These mobile products include: digital cameras, digital MP3 players, handheld PCs, personal communicators, automobile PCs with GPS, digital voice recorders, digital photo printers, medical monitoring equipment, and many other devices.

With the rapid increase in the number of devices using CompactFlash memory cards, and people's enhanced reliance on them, capacity, stability, and reliability are the major factors users consider when selecting flash memory. Roy Wong, product manager for Transcend stated:

"Transcend's 1GB CompactFlash Memory Card uses four 2Gbit NAND Type flash memory chips with a high performance controller. The read speed is up to 5.2MB/sec and the write speed is up to 3.2MB/sec. The 1GB CompactFlash Memory Card has also passed compatibility testing to ensure users a hassle-free, worry-free digital life experience."

• Fully compatible with CompactFlash Association and PCMCIA card standard
• True Plug and Play
• Low power consumption
• Storage capacity up to 1GB
• Single Power Supply: 5V ± 10% or 3.3V ± 10%
• Recommended operating temperature: 0ºC (32°F) to 70ºC (158°F)
• 5-year warranty
• Capacity: 16MB, 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB

www.transcendusa.com

Source : Transcend - Press Release - 05.12.2002

Albrecht Dürer at The British Museum, London

Albrecht Dürer and his legacy: The graphic work of a Renaissance artist 
The British Museum, London
5 December 2002 - 23 March 2003

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was in a sense the first truly international artist. He was certainly the first who saw how to exploit the new technologies of printing to ensure that his works were known and sought after not just in his own country but across the whole of Europe, making him the great master of the multiple image and an international celebrity. The  AD monogram became a trademark recognised and respected world-wide. His drawings and his prints, on which his reputation was built, are at the heart of this exhibition, the first to be devoted to him in Britain for more than 30 years.

As a prelude to the Museum’s 250th anniversary year in 2003, the exhibition will celebrate the superlative collection of Albrecht Dürer prints, drawings and watercolours in The British Museum, many of which were Sir Hans Sloane’s original bequest to the Museum in 1753. In addition, there will be a number of outstanding loans, including the National Gallery’s Saint Jerome, and drawings of prime importance from the Ashmolean Museum, the Royal Collection, the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin and the Albertina in Vienna. Two superb drawings, the Albertina’s Self-portrait as a thirteen-year old and the world famous Praying Hands, have never before been displayed in this country. The aim of the exhibition is to examine Albrecht Dürer’s extraordinary achievements as a draughtsman and printmaker during his own lifetime and to look at how the artist’s widely-disseminated and innovative imagery influenced artists and craftsmen for centuries to come.

The exhibition begins with an examination of the artist’s revolutionary approaches to self-portraiture and looks at the differing ways that other artists have represented and constructed his image over the centuries. The next sections follow the chronology of Albrecht Dürer’s life, with an emphasis on a particular period or project in each. 

They include his early years in Nuremberg; his first visit to Italy which stimulated him to produce the earliest-known group of watercolour landscapes drawn from nature to have survived in the history of western art; the production of his virtuoso engraving Adam and Eve in 1504 with its numerous related studies; his work for the Emperor Maximilian including the massive Triumphal Arch – one of the largest prints ever produced - and his three enigmatic master prints of 1513-1514, Knight, Death and the Devil, Melancholia and St Jerome in his Study. The following sections show the impact of Albrecht Dürer’s work on other artists, including Germany, Holland and Italy (Rembrandt among them), and his long-standing influence on ceramic designs from 16th century maiolica to 18th century Meissen.  A focus on the late 16th and early 17th century phenomenon known as the ‘Dürer Renaissance’, largely created by the scarcity of the master’s work, shows how glossy pastiches and elegant copies of his work became so highly sought after that artists such as Hans Hoffmann became well-known primarily for their skill at producing them. 

The exhibition concludes with Albrecht Dürer’s legacy in the 19th century, particularly the way in which his work was interpreted by Romantic artists such as Caspar David Friedrich. Amid the rise of German nationalism, Dürer’s name and art began to achieve a virtually iconic status and a final section looks at how the artist became an object of almost religious veneration in the elaborate festivals celebrating the anniversaries of his birth and death dates of 1828 and 1871.

The exhibition is accompanied by the fully-illustrated catalogue Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy (£35.00, British Museum Press, December 2002) by Giulia Bartrum, Joseph Leo Koerner and Ute Kuhlemann, with a text by Nobel Prize winning novelist Günter Grass written in 1971 in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Dürer’s birth. 

THE BRITISH MUSEUM
www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk

Yuichi Hibi, Marvelli Gallery, New York - Zero Hour - Photography Exhibition

Yuichi Hibi: Zero Hour

Marvelli Gallery, New York

November 27 - December 30, 2002

Marvelli Gallery presents Zero Hour, the second solo show at the gallery of Japanese photographer and filmmaker Yuichi Hibi. This exhibition features thirteen new black and white photographs shot entirely at night with no additional lighting other than natural, and without any creative arrangements or props.

With Zero Hour, Yuichi Hibi continues the exploration of his bleak and stylized cinema-noir vision with a more dramatic edge to his moving high-contrast set pieces. Devoid of people, these cinematic photographs portray the dark, airless romantic reality which is at the center of Hibi's imaginative gaze. In his compositions stingy moments of light act as an emotional climax within the confines of an urban nightmare.

Yuichi Hibi, who has developed an enthusiastic cult following in New York and Tokyo, graduated from Tokyo's famed Nikkatsu School in 1985. In 1986, Hibi joined Japan's highly-acclaimed theater group Bungaku-za, where he performed in many productions of classic works of drama. His directing career began with an intimate portrait of photographer Robert Frank at his home in Nova Scotia. Yuichi Hibi's most recent film, "Unveiled", will appear at film festivals worldwide in 2003. 

MARVELLI GALLERY

526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.marvelligallery.com

Didier Gauducheau Impressions 2000-2001 Exposition Photo

Le photographe Didier Gauducheau a réalisé en 2000-2001 une série de portraits de réfugiés Roms du camps de Plemetina, au Kosovo. Ces photographies en noir et blanc, pleines d'émotions, sont exposées à Confluences. Impressions 2000-2001 Exposition du 3 décembre 2002 au 5 janvier 2003 Confluences Maison des Arts Urbains 190, boulevard de Charonne 75020 Paris Accès : Métro Ligne 2, Station Philippe Auguste ou Alexandre Dumas

Michal Rovner, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

Michal Rovner

Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

29 November 2002 – 26 January 2003

Stephen Friedman Gallery presents an exhibition of new works by Michal Rovner.

Michal Rovner was born in Tel Aviv in 1957 and has lived and worked in New York since 1988. Michal Rovner works with film, video and photography and her subjects confront issues of identity, memory and existence. The images she uses undergo a reductive process in the original recording, rendering them residues or shadows of the original subjects. For this exhibition, figures were filmed in a desolate Russian landscape and used as a starting point in the work.

In the front room, the texture of the works creates a flat field in which figures are reduced to dark forms against a blank white space. These beautiful and haunting images mark a new direction in Michal Rovner's work and resemble delicate charcoal drawings. Other works on paper are derived from the film Notes, a collaboration between Michal Rovner and composer Philip Glass.

In the back gallery, the film Coexistence 2 is shown on three monitors. Here, Michal Rovner orchestrated a large number of people to form interactive groups. The ambiguity of the action in the film makes it unclear whether these people are hostile gangs or amicable friends playing. Throughout the film, a soundtrack of shuffling feet is punctuated by the high cant of a human voice.

Michal Rovner has exhibited extensively around the world. From July – October 2002, The Whitney Museum of American Art presented a comprehensive mid-career retrospective titled The Space Between. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Whitney Biennial at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2000; The Corcoran Museum, Washington, D.C.; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; P.S.1, New York, and the Tate Gallery, London. Michal Rovner will be creating an installation for the Israel Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in June 2003.

STEPHEN FRIEDMAN GALLERY

25-28 Old Burlington Street, London W1S 3AN

www.stephenfriedman.com

Rachael Neubauer, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco - New Work

Rachael Neubauer: New Work

Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco

November 21, 2002 - January 4, 2003

Rena Bransten Gallery presents an exhibit of new sculptures and drawings by Rachael Neubauer. Neubauer's new sculptures continue to dazzle and puzzle viewers. Their references seem always just out of thought-range - are they organic, technical, figurative, sub-cellular, models, jewelry or furniture? Neubauer describes the new works "as meditations on the material and the desirable." Using drawings to establish a conceptual framework, she invents a visual vocabulary of form, shape and color fusing imagery and source material. The resulting imagery is mysterious yet not unfamiliar, not predetermined but in the process of revealing itself.

Rachael Neubauer earned her MFA at Ohio State University and received a scholarship to Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She received the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's SECA Award in 2000 and the Art Council Grant in 1999. Her work is included in the collections of Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco, The Oakland Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

RENA BRANSTEN GALLERY

77 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

www.renabranstengallery.com

Art Gallery Ontario Transformation - A Vision for the Future

Art Gallery of Ontario Transformation Project

The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) has announced the details of a transformation project that includes an unprecedented donation of art and funding by Kenneth Thomson, and a physical redesign and expansion led by Frank Gehry. Groundbreaking is set for early 2005, and the project will be complete in 2007.

"The greatest museums transform themselves into imaginative centres that reflect and enhance the world that surrounds them. Our vision is for the Art Gallery of Ontario to become such a place; a place that creates that moment when art and people meet, when conversations happen about the special role that art plays in our lives," said AGO Director and CEO Matthew Teitelbaum in describing his vision for the future at the announcement event in Toronto.

Earlier this year, the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario committed financial support for the project. "The federal government is supporting this major initiative by the AGO in recognition of the impact it will have in improving the quality of life for our citizens. We applaud Mr. Thomson for his magnificent gift to the people of Canada and the leadership of the AGO for creating and now enhancing an extraordinary home for art," said The Honourable David Collenette, Federal Minister of Transport, who is also responsible for the Greater Toronto Area.

"The Thomson donation of funding and works of art is unparalleled in the history of Canadian philanthropy," said The Honourable David H. Tsubouchi, Ontario Minister of Culture. "The current expansion plans to provide exhibit space for this outstanding collection will further position the Art Gallery of Ontario as a dynamic, world-class art museum with international presence and attraction."

Famous Rubens among collection filled with masterpieces

"The Art Gallery of Ontario has always held a special place in my heart, and I am confident that it represents the best opportunity to share my passion for art with the people of this city, Ontario, Canada, and the world," said Kenneth Thomson, a leading art collector and businessman.

Ken Thomson has made history with a donation that includes:

- The extraordinary Thomson Collection of nearly 2,000 works of art, the greatest in private hands in Canada. It includes masterpieces by such renowned Canadian artists as Paul Kane, Tom Thomson, Cornelius Krieghoff, and Lawren Harris, and a stunning collection of rare European art objects dating from the middle ages to the mid-nineteenth century that is among the finest in the world.

- The headline-making Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens, acquired by the Thomsons earlier this year for $117 million, the highest price ever paid for an old master painting.

- Two major Canadian masterpieces acquired by Mr. Thomson in recent years: Lake Superior III by Lawren Harris, and Scene in the Northwest by Paul Kane.

- $50 million in capital funding for the museum's building expansion on Dundas Street West in Toronto, plus an additional commitment of $20 million in endowment funding, thus helping to assure the AGO's continued success in the future.

First major Gehry project in Canada will be just steps from childhood home

"The Art Gallery of Ontario is where I first experienced art as a child and it was Grange Park where I played, so this project means a great deal to me. The building we envision will connect the city and its people to great art and art experiences," said world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, who is now based in California, at the announcement event.

Mr. Gehry's team is already well underway in the process of analyzing the AGO's current space and its needs for the future. In the months and years to come, the AGO will involve the community in Mr. Gehry's unique design approach and the transformation of the museum through lectures, open houses and other special events.

Renowned and admired the world over, Mr. Gehry's other landmark projects include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain and the Vitra Design Museum in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany. In addition to the AGO, Mr. Gehry is currently building the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and designing the Museum of Biodiversity in Panama City.

Formula for success

The AGO's transformation project is unique in its partnership approach. The acumen of Kenneth Thomson, creativity of Frank Gehry, vision of Matthew Teitelbaum and leadership of the AGO's Board of Trustees are just the beginning.

"We are encouraged that the Thomsons and both the federal and provincial governments are taking an active role in transforming the Art Gallery of Ontario for the future. This project is an example of how individuals, organizations and governments can work together to implement a shared vision. I am hopeful that others will join us in this vision," said A. Charles Baillie, President of the AGO Board.

Combined with the Thomson funding donation, the AGO has already secured a substantial portion of the building project cost, estimated at $178 million. Key partners in the project include the Government of Canada through Industry Canada and the Government of Ontario through SuperBuild, which have each pledged $24 million toward the AGO's expansion. The AGO is also grateful for the contribution of McKinsey & Company, who provided strategic counsel in developing a blueprint for success.

One of world's leading art museums continues to grow

"We will transform our building to welcome people with open arms, and to open them to new experiences while guiding them through a great and inspiring building with ease. We intend to literally transform the AGO with the addition of new galleries for art, new meeting places for our visitors, and improved and expanded amenities throughout our building," said Matthew Teitelbaum. As part of the transformation project, the AGO will be enlarged by 75,000 square feet, an expansion that will increase the viewing space for art by more than 40 per cent.

Economic highlights of the project, based on economic impact studies by PricewaterhouseCoopers, include:

- More than 2,000 person years of projected construction work, including about 245 permanent jobs.

- A one-time contribution to the Ontario economy of about $100 million dollars, and a projected annual boost of close to $13 million in tourism and operations dollars.

- All levels of government will realize one-time taxes from construction of $54 million, and $3.8 million annually thereafter.

The AGO's collection comprises more than 36,000 works representing 1,000 years of European, Canadian, modern, Inuit and contemporary art. This important collection, along with the Gallery's preeminence in art education and expertise in the conservation of art, makes the AGO one of Canada's most significant public resources for the advancement of the visual arts.

AGO - ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO

317 Dundas Street West, Toronto, ON M5T 1G4

www.ago.net

Project Moby Click Kiasma Museum, Helsinki. Art works with the Nokia Camera Phone

Contemporary Art Exhibition in Finland

Project Moby Click

Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, November 13 - December 15, 2002

Students of ¨Photography and Product Design from Helsinki’s University of Art and Design presents Project Moby Click, a unique installation at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki. In the exhibition, the young artists demonstrate multimedia art, creating live exchanges around image, place and time.

Two months ago, the nine students were each given a Nokia 7650 camera phone before setting out to explore the boundaries between art and real-time imaging with multimedia messaging (MMS).

“We use the camera phone for recording visual notes and impulses as we would a sketch book,” said student Tapio Laukkanen. ”It is more immediate than a camera or a tape recorder and needs no preparation.”

In addition to funding and implementation, project partners Kiasma, Satama Interactive and Nokia assisted the students in coming up with the concept behind the exhibition. Finnish mobile operator Sonera then lent its support by offering MMS transmission free of charge for the duration of the event.

Exhibition highlights

A Trip by Ea VASKO and Liisa VALONEN (prints) depicts an imaginary trip, in which the passage of time can be seen by movement and changes in the shooting location. The large prints consist of mosaics of dozens of MMS images.

Sight/Näky by Kitta PERTTULA, Antti OKSANEN and Eero KOKKO is an installation taking the image off its frame. The work studies the transmission of images in cyberspace. The images “come off the wall” to become active elements.

Momentary Impressions: Snapshots for the Curious by Antti HAHL and Tapio LAUKKANEN (on-screen flash presentations) uses the camera phone to photograph this image series. Visitors can select the series to be displayed on a computer screen.

Visual Discussion (big board) allows visitors to follow a happening in real time with the students on Fridays and Saturdays. A joint venture by Tatu Marttila, Mikko Saario and the group explores how MMS is bound up with time and place. The project also introduces a new way of discussing pre-selected topics, e.g. Art Talk, via MMS, using image, text and sound.  The discussions are projected onto a wall in the exhibition space, forming route maps that reveal the course of the discussion. Inside the Museum, members of the public are also invited to actively participate.

 

Previous posts about Nokia products and events

• Nokia Camera Headset HS-1C

• The Compact Nokia 6650 camera phone, the first to record video with sound

Warren Rohrer, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia - Morning Fogs Trees and Leaves

Warren Rohrer 

Morning Fogs Trees and Leaves

Locks Gallery, Philadelphia

November 1 - December 14, 2002

Locks Gallery presents twelve, rarely seen paintings by WARREN ROHRER (1927-1995), one of Philadelphia's most important 20th-century painters. Known for his luminous, vibrantly-colored canvases, Warren Rohrer evolved in the late 1960s from a landscape painter to a deeply intuitive abstractionist. This exhibit focuses on the loose, improvised work from the early 70s that laid the framework for his mature work.

The artist spent the first twenty years of his career as a landscape painter. Most of his early works are highly abstracted views of the Pennsylvania countryside, particularly the farms of Lancaster County where he was born, and spent long periods of his life. Beginning in the early 1970s, Warren Rohrer made a decisive breakthrough in his paintings, which shifted toward abstract squares of color, punctuated by a grid.

The small painting First (1972) presages the rest of his work with its square format and allover almost purely abstract composition. Between 1972 and 1975, Warren Rohrer made the series of large, minimal paintings included in this exhibition. The works are noticeable for their stark structures--often with a smaller square centered inside the larger square of the painting--and simple, hatchmark-like brushstrokes, suggesting tilled fields, woven baskets, rows of seeds, or stitching on a quilt.

While the work of Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko deeply affected the artist during this period, Warren Rohrer's works retain their roots in his chosen subject matter: the planned and chance geometries of the agricultural landscape paired with the rhythms of farming life. In 1975, Warren Rohrer wrote "These processes of plowing, planting, cultivating and harvesting are very similar to my processes of layering, defining, obscuring."

The artist originally chose the title Morning Fogs Trees and Leaves for his 1974 show at Locks Gallery. Looking back at the period now, the artist was clearly then in the midst of a formative shift that became the foundation of his later work.

The first, large-scale museum exhibition of Warren Rohrer's work will be held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2003. The artist began showing in Philadelphia in 1960 and had eight one-person shows with Locks Gallery between 1974-94. His work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum and Delaware Art Museum. 

An accompanying catalogue illustrates all of the paintings in the exhibition.

LOCKS GALLERY

600 Washington Square South, Philadelphia, PA 19106

www.locksgallery.com

The Sonnabend Collection, Wexner Center, Colombus - From Pop to Now - Off-site exhibition

From Pop to Now

Wexner Center off-site, Colombus

November 3, 2002 – February 2, 2003

From Pop to Now showcases works from the private collection of gallery owners Ileana and Michael Sonnabend, including such artists as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Gilbert & George, Rona Pondick, Bruce Nauman, Anselm Kiefer, Jeff Koons, Elger Esser, and Christian Boltanski. Nearly 70 works—painting, sculpture, photography, and mixed-media installation—by about 50 artists are on view. Together, this selection sheds light on the intersections of pop, conceptualism, minimalism, postmodernism, and other major experimental art movements of the last century, in a show that is “brimming with important pieces” (The New York Times, June 30, 2002).

From Pop to Now was organized by the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. The presentation in Columbus coincides with the Wexner Center’s gallery renovations. All exhibitions in the upcoming season will be presented off-site, with three presented in downtown Columbus.

THE SONNABEND COLLECTION

Ileana Sonnabend—who became known in the ’60s as “The Mom of Pop Art”—has been a seminal force in the contemporary art world for 40 years, identifying young, emerging artists and introducing their work to wide audiences in both Europe and the United States. Her enthusiasm for collecting began in the 1950s during her brief marriage to art dealer Leo Castelli, and continued with her marriage to Michael Sonnabend, with whom she ran galleries in Paris and New York. The Sonnabends introduced new American artists—such as Robert Rauschenberg and Dan Flavin—to Europe, and brought European artists to the attention of New York audiences (e.g., Ileana was the first to bring the new German art to New York in the early 1980s). The vast Sonnabend Collection includes contemporary paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and works in new and nontraditional media, collected over the decades.

From Pop to Now is the most comprehensive survey to date of the Sonnabends’ legacy. The exhibition includes key works originally shown at their galleries, along with rarely seen pieces from their private collection. “I’m particularly interested in works that are by now ‘classical’ and still keep their provocation,” Ileana Sonnabend told The New York Times earlier this year. Recently widowed, Sonnabend continues to actively collect.

From Pop to Now premiered at the Tang in June; the Wexner Center marks its first stop on a national tour, and additional venues will be announced.

THE ART

The exhibition features a range of works reflecting the Sonnabends’ taste over the years, including early pop art by then-emerging artists, contemporary photography, and multimedia sculptural works. Major art movements include pop, minimalism, conceptualism, arte povera, and abstract expressionism. The earliest work in the show is from 1956 (a Cy Twombly); the most recent is from 2002 (a chromogenic print by Andrea Robbins and Max Becher).

Among the highlights from the exhibition: Roy Lichtenstein’s Aloha (oil on canvas, 1962), plus three other Lichtensteins; Andy Warhol’s White Brillo Boxes (1964), plus five other Warhols; Jasper Johns’s Figure 8 (1959); Jeff Koons’s stainless steel Rabbit (1986); Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photographs Water Towers (1972); Rona Pondick’s Dog (yellow stainless steel, 2000); Dan Flavin’s “Untitled (To the ‘Innovator’ of Wheeling Peach Blow),” featuring fluorescent lights, from the late 1960s; Sol LeWitt’s Arcs from Four Corners (1971); Gilbert & George’s They (1986); and Bruce Nauman’s neon 

My Name as Though It Were Written on the Surface of the Moon: Bbbbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuucccccccccceeeeeeeeee (1967).

EXHIBITION'S LOCATION: The Belmont Building, 330 West Spring Street, Colombus, OH

WEXNER CENTER FOR THE ARTS

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

1871 North High Street, Columbus, Ohio 43210

www.wexarts.org

Nokia Camera Headset HS-1C

 

Nokia announces the Nokia Camera Headset HS-1C, a combined easy-to-wear digital camera and headset enhancement for compatible Nokia phone models with the Nokia Pop-Port  interface connector.* The Camera Headset enables users to take digital images and send them as multimedia messages (MMS) with text, image, and/or audio content. ** The Camera Headset will start shipping globally in December 2002.

“We are very excited to introduce a combined digital camera and headset. With two functions in one product, users have less to carry and yet can take advantage of the richness and fun of MMS,” said Waldemar Sakalus, Director, Terminal Enhancements in Mobile Enhancements Business Unit, Nokia Mobile Phones. “Images are a powerful way to communicate and the Camera Headset brings this ability to a wider number of Nokia phones.”

The small and lightweight Camera Headset combines a digital VGA camera and the basic handsfree functionality of a headset with an answer/end button. Users can conveniently view through an optical viewfinder of the camera and snap an image. The image will be automatically transferred to the phone. The LED indicates the operating mode of the camera. Before taking a picture user can select between higher quality and lower quality image from the image quality switch. Afterwards the image can be viewed on the phone display and users can store, send or delete images from the Gallery menu on the phone.

Power for the Camera Headset comes from the phone via the Pop-Port connector. The Pop-Port interface has been designed for the mobile environment and it supports advanced functionalities such as power output support for terminal enhancements and fast data connectivity.

* These models currently support both Pop-Port interface and MMS: Nokia 7210, Nokia 6610, Nokia 5100, Nokia 6100 and Nokia 6800 phones.
** The MMS related services are dependent on the network as well as on the compatibility of the devices used and the content formats supported.

Daniel Berkeley Updike, The Well-Made Book - On the art of the book. Edited by William S. Peterson

Mark Batty Publisher announces the publication of “The Well-Made Book: Essays and Lectures by Daniel Berkeley Updike”, edited and with an introduction by William S. Peterson. This book is a collection of Daniel Berkeley Updike's writtings on the art of the book

The distinguished printer Daniel Berkeley Updike (1860-1941), proprietor of the Merrymount Press in Boston, has been described as “the most distinguished American printer,” and was also one of the most successful and influential book designers of the 20th century. This 400-page, illustrated collection encompasses virtually all of Updike’s writings on the arts of the book.

Daniel Berkeley Updike, The Well-Made Book: Essays and Lectures 

Image courtesy Mark Batty Publisher

Updike’s aesthetic philosophy and commitment of quality in the making of books have a special relevance today at a time of rapid change in the media arts. The Well-Made Book is a substantial and timeless collection of virtually all of Updike’s writings on the art of the book. William S. Peterson has researched, unearthed and assembled this wealth of material – much of which will be new even to those readers who are familiar with Updike’s writings. “Until the publication of The WellMade Book, many of these important and revealing essays have been hard to find,” notes publisher Mark Batty, “and some of Updike’s writing featured in this book appears here for the first time” There is a complete index, annotations, and a new scholarly introduction by Peterson.

The Well-Made Book is also available in a special, extra-illustrated edition of 40 copies featuring 11 ephemeral pieces: nine pages from books designed and printed by Updike spanning his 20th century career, together with specially prepared letterpress printed additional items, and a reproduction of an unpublished photographic portrait.

William S. Peterson is Professor of English at the University of Maryland, and the author of several books on William Morris and the Kelmscott Press, and the editor of The Ideal Book (1982), a collection of Morris’ writings on the book arts. His books have won numerous honors, including the Premio Felice Feliciano, the Besterman Award, and a nomination for the National Book Award.

About Mark Batty Publisher

Mark Batty Publisher LLC is dedicated to creating a list of distinctive books in these subject areas: graphic design; lettering and the printing arts; media and graphic communication; and art and popular culture. The books are chosen for their long-term relevance, for the clarity of their message, and their usefulness and aesthetic appeal. Each book is thoughtfully designed to the highest standards, produced for dependable use and manufactured employing quality archival materials. Most are extensively illustrated. 

The Well-Made Book: Essays and Lectures by Daniel Berkeley Updike

Edited by William S. Peterson

Mark Batty Publisher, West New York, NJ 

408 pages, 31 full page illustrations, many in 2 colors

Case bound in cloth, dust jacket, 6 x 9 inches - Price: $55

Special edition of 40 extra illustrated copies: $220

MARK BATTY PUBLISHER 

6050 Boulevard East, Suite 2H 

West New York, New Jersey 07093 

Website: http://www.markbattypublisher.com 

Willie Doherty, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin - False Memory

Willie Doherty: False Memory

Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 

31 October 2002 - 2 March 2003

A major mid-career retrospective of the work of the internationally-acclaimed, Derry-born artist Willie Doherty opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. 'Willie Doherty: False Memory' is the first substantial showing of Willie Doherty’s work in Ireland and one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of his work anywhere to date.

The exhibition, which comprises more than 40 photographic works and slide/tape and video installations, explores themes of memory and place - concerns which have preoccupied the artist throughout his career. Closely keyed to his native city of Derry and the Northern Ireland “Troubles”, Willie Doherty’s work reveals a complex and shifting range of relationships between places, events and the images by which they come to be represented and recalled.

Much of the work is open ended, forcing the viewer to move beyond the surface picture to explore the fallibility of human memory and our need to engage with the stories and images that make up our experience. '30th January 1972' (1993), for example, comprises two projections – one showing news footage of a crowd scene on Bloody Sunday, the other a view of Glenfada Park (scene of fatal Bloody Sunday shootings) as it looked in August 1993. These projections are accompanied by three audio tracks – one recorded during the shooting on Bloody Sunday, the other two being edited extracts from interviews with passersby on Rossville Street (another location of the fatal shootings) in August 1993. The central point is that the work is not intended to be a contribution to the body of documentary evidence on Bloody Sunday, but rather an attempt to investigate the impact of such a traumatic event on private and public memory and identity.

'Willie Doherty: False Memory' presents many such key works from all stages of the artist’s career. These include early black and white photographs, such as 'Mesh' (1986) and 'The Blue Skies of Ulster' (1986), and large colour cibachrome photographs, such as 'Unapproved Road I' (1992) and 'Out of Sight' (1997), which exist on the borderline between the documentary and the staged. In these works Doherty places us at the edge of the city, between the familiar and the unknown – a highly mediated place, shaped from a combination of television news coverage, cinematic fantasy, tourist information, popular stereotypes and collective memory. The seminal slide installations 'Same Difference' (1990) and 'They’re All the Same' (1991) question how language can shape our perceptions of images, in this instance media images of IRA suspects. Willie Doherty’s most recent video installation, 'Re-Run' (2002), commissioned by the British Council for this year’s 25th São Paolo Bienal, is here shown for the first time in Ireland.

Commenting on the exhibition, Brenda McParland, Head of Exhibitions at IMMA, said: “Much of Doherty’s artistic output is closely linked to the physical and political landscape of the city of Derry and its environs. However, there is a measure of detachment in his work that resonates beyond Ireland, giving it universal appeal and international significance”.

Born in Derry in 1959, Willie Doherty is an artist of international standing. In 1993 he (and Dorothy Cross) represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1994 and was the recipient of the IMMA Glen Dimplex Artists Award the following year. Earlier this year he represented the United Kingdom at the São Paulo Biennal. He has exhibited in a number of solo exhibitions in Derry, Dublin, London, New York and Paris and has contributed to group shows worldwide.

A major full-colour monograph, published by IMMA and Merrell publishers, London, with essays by the chief curator of the Castello di Rivoli, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, and writer and critic, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, accompanies the exhibition.

The exhibition is curated by Brenda McParland, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions, IMMA.

IMMA - IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 

Military Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 8

www.modernart.ie

Mamma Andersson, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

Mamma Andersson

Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

23 October - 23 November 2002

Stephen Friedman Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by Swedish artist Mamma Andersson. This is the artist's first solo exhibition in London.

Mamma Andersson's paintings of haunting landscapes, strange interiors and mysterious people are at once magical, ominous and compelling. Scandinavian trees such as birch, pine, aspen and spruce feature among Mamma Andersson's motifs together with animals, children, classrooms and libraries. In Mamma Andersson's paintings, adults look disorientated, interiors are disordered and the environments portrayed are unstable.

The manner in which paint is applied to Mamma Anderssons' canvases is both delicate and dramatic. Subtle throws of light reveal uncanny details while broad, dark brush strokes imply a more sinister setting. Mamma Andersson's paintings are loaded with symbols, historical references and allusions to local Swedish art and culture. Characters are often removed from their original contexts and are given new identities and meanings. Existing images from art history, popular culture and news photography are also recyclyed to form new narratives in her work. Steeped in Swedish colourist tradition, Mamma Andersson's paintings recall the fearful atmosphere of fairy tales and local folk legends.

Mamma Andersson has exhibited extensively in Sweden and was selected for the Carnegie Art Award which toured to Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, Helsinki and Reykjavík in 2000-2001.

STEPHEN FRIEDMAN GALLERY

25-28 Old Burlington Street, London W1S 3AN

www.stephenfriedman.com

Lucian Freud Retrospective Exhibition

LUCIAN FREUD
CaixaForum, Barcelona
24 October, 2002 - 12 January, 2003
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
February 9 - May 25, 2003

“What do I demand of a painting? That it surprise, disturb, seduce, convince,” At 80, Lucian Freud is one of the greatest living realist painters. Known mainly for his unsettling portraits and nudes, he is the creator of a disturbing universe, populated mostly by models from his own circle: his mother, children, friends, artists, lovers, etc. “My work is completely autobiographical. It is about me and what surrounds me,” the artist has repeatedly declared. The "La Caixa" Foundation now presents Lucian Freud at CaixaForum, the largest retrospective exhibition ever held on the artist. With 126 paintings, drawings and etchings, some of recent creation, the show covers more than 60 years of Freud’s artistic career. Visitors are offered a chance to view works from the fruitful creative period of the past twenty years together with others of the first decades. Among the foremost works in the exhibition is the extraordinary series of portraits of the artist’s mother, portraits of his painter friends such as Francis Bacon, John Minton, Frank Auerbach and Michael Andrews, and a number of self-portraits, in addition to other emblematic paintings such as The Painter’s Room, Leigh Bowery (seated) and Girl with Roses. The Lucian Freud retrospective exhibition, organised by the Tate Britain Museum, (where it has run from 20 June to 22 September, 2002), has been produced by "La Caixa" Foundation in Barcelona. Following its exhibition at CaixaForum it will be shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles from 9 February to 25 May, 2003.

The retrospective exhibition Lucian Freud at the CaixaForum premises, will map out a chronological journey through the British painter’s artistic career, covering more than 60 years. The show begins with a series of works from the decade of the 1940’s - Box of Apples in Wales (1939), The Painter’s Room (1943-1944) and Girl With Roses (1947-1948), among other oil paintings, and concludes with a group of recent works, such as Eli (2002), finished last August. The 126 works that make up the exhibition, distributed over nine rooms, invite the visitor to discover certain chapters in the life of Freud: his relationships with his mother, wives and children, his friendship with Francis Bacon, solitude, etc. After all, Freud has often stated, “Everything is autobiographical, and everything is a portrait.”

Lucian Freud Biography

Lucian Freud was born in Berlin on December 8th, 1922. His father, architect by profession, was the son of Sigmund Freud, the creator of psychoanalysis. The family came to England in 1933, a few months after the Nazi party came to power. Six years later, in 1939, Freud became a naturalised British subject. In that same year, he enrolled in Cedric Morris’s East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, an informal painting institute. In 1941, after completing his brief academic career, he enlisted as merchant seaman in an Atlantic convoy. “I liked the idea of adventure – the figure of the old salt – but I was soon disappointed.” In 1944, the Lefevre Gallery put on Freud’s first solo exhibition, which included The Painter’s Room (1943-1944), a widely celebrated work that will be on display at CaixaForum. In 1948 he married Kitty Garman, daughter of Jacob Epstein, later marrying Caroline Blackwood in 1952. In the 1950’s he became famous in London, along with his cohort Francis Bacon. After spending periods in Paris and Greece, he settled in London, where he still lives and works.

“To me, the person is the painting”, says Lucian Freud, who is mainly known for his unsettling portraits and nudes, several of which can now be seen at CaixaForum within the retrospective exhibition. Among the foremost works in the exhibition is the extraordinary series of portraits of Freud’s mother, such as The Painter’s Mother Reading (1975). The series begins in 1972, the year in which the artist’s father died, and his mother sank into deep depression. It concludes in the year of her death, in 1989. “If my father hadn’t died, I never would have painted her,” says Freud who went to pick her up four or five times every week for her to pose.

The exhibition also contains several self-portraits of Lucian Freud, such as Reflection with Two Children (1965) – the two children are his, Rose and Ali – Interior With Mirror in Hand (1967) and Painter Working, Reflection (1993), a painting which, when Freud set to touching it up, “turned out to be of my father”. In that regard, Lucian Freud states, “My idea of the portrait emerges from my unhappiness with the portraits that look like their models. I want my portraits to be ‘of’ people, not like them. More than looking like the models, that they ‘be’ themselves.”

The show also offers some unsettling nudes, such as those of Leigh Bowery, a performer weighing over 200 pounds who became Lucian Freud’s first professional model, posing for him several days a week over two years. “I must have a fondness for unusual or oddly-proportioned people, and I don’t want to indulge it too much,” Lucian Freud has said. The daughters of the painter also posed for several nudes, such as Portrait of Rose (1978-1979). “There’s something in a nude person, when I see them before me, that appeals to my sense of respect. It could even be called my gentlemanliness. In the case of my daughters, it is the respect of a father in addition to that of a painter. They take my painting them well. They don’t make me feel uncomfortable.”

The Lucian Freud exhibition is organised by William Feaver.

Lucian Freud
24 October, 2002 - 12 January, 2003

CaixaForum
Av. Marquès de Comillas, 6-8
08038 Barcelona

Abbas: Visions of Islam - Muncipal Museum of Ourense

 

Exhibition

 Abbas

 Visions of Islam

Muncipal Museum of Ourense, Spain 

 

“The day after its liberation by the Americans, I discovered a Kuwait littered by war debris and cadavers of Iraqi soldiers. Their withdrawal must have been a true ordeal.”

These are the words of Abbas, an Iranian photographer who “writes with light”. After visiting 28 countries –from Sinkiang to Morocco– between 1987 and 1994, Abbas portrayed the resurgence of Islam and the contradictions between an ideology inspired by a mythical past and the universal yearning for modernity and democracy. Under the title Abbas: Visions of Islam, Fundació “la Caixa” now presents these 99 photographs -in reference to the 99 names and epithets of Allah-, accompanied by excerpts from books by famous historical travellers, and fragments from the diaries of this photojournalist who has been a member of the Magnum Photos agency since 1981. On exhibit at the Municipal Museum of Ourense, the photographs show revolution and war; daily life in the cities; the world of the women, particularly downtrodden by the fundamentalists -Abbas dedicates the exhibition to the women of Afghanistan-; children who attend the Koran schools, the cradle of the most orthodox Islamism; stark landscapes consisting of streets, cemeteries and sanctuaries; protests against the writer Salman Rushdie by European Muslims; demonstrations in support of the chador, prohibited in secular schools... In other words, an eyewitness account of Islam and its peoples.

 

From Sinkiang to Morocco, from London to Timbuktu, including even Mecca, the exhibition Abbas: Visions of Islam reflects the day-to-day life of the Muslims, their spirituality and their mysticism, the rituals of their faith and the political phenomenon that Islam represents today. Taken in 28 countries (Egypt, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, China, Indonesia, Brunei, India, Great Britain, Spain, Algeria, Senegal, Sudan, Israel, Bosnia and Iran, among others), the photographs are displayed together with fragments from the personal diaries of Abbas himself and other historically famous travellers. These texts provide a counterpoint to the images, explaining the context in which a specific photograph was captured. A prime example is that of little Gulbibi (“Queen of the Flowers”), portrayed in Kabul (Afghanistan), and whose startling text states, “Her left foot was amputated as the result of a mine explosion. Her leg and right arm are a mass of raw flesh. Lying on her bed, an icon of suffering and dignity, she has to be given anaesthetic each time her dressing is changed, so intense is her pain.”

Abbas explains how, in 1987, before leaving Paris to undertake his long journey through these 28 countries, a friend of his –a woman– recommended that he read the Voyages of Ibn Batuta, the legendary traveller who had roamed Islamic lands centuries before. Abbas discovered an Ibn Batuta who ordered hands to be cut off, who abused the female slaves and who had innocent people whipped. Thus it was that Abbas made a journey of contrasts. His camera captured, for example, a militant feminist who fought against the Family Code in Algeria; the religious fervour of Mecca; the leaders of Dar al-Ulum, the flagship university of orthodox Islam, a branch of which is established in a town in the county of Yorkshire (Great Britain), and so on. Such scenes and accounts reveal the different realities and contradictions of Islam.

Abbas Biography

Of Iranian background, the photographer Abbas lives in Paris and has been a member of the Magnum Photos agency since 1981. Between 1970 and 1978, his work was published in magazines of international scope, reflecting the political and social conflicts of southern hemisphere countries, such as Chile, South Africa, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Biafra. Between 1978 and 1980, he covered the Iranian revolution. His book Iran, la Révolution Confisquée (Clérat, 1979) forced him into a voluntary exile that would last 17 years. Between 1983 and 1986, he travelled to Mexico and published Return to Mexico, Journeys beyond the Mask (W.W. Norton, 1992). Following Allah O Akbar, voyages dans l’Islam militant (1994), and between 1995 and 2000, he visited Christian countries (Voyage en Chrétientés, La Martinière, 2000). He is currently investigating paganism.

Some of his solo exhibitions have been hosted by the Musée d’Art Moderne of Teheran (1980), the Escuela de Bellas Artes of Almería (1991), the Centro de la Imagen of Mexico (1994), the Palace Royale of Brussels (1999), the Institut du Monde Arabe of Paris (2001) and the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence (2002). Referring to his work, Abbas writes: “At present, my photography is a reflection that comes to life in action and leads to meditation. Spontaneity –the suspended moment– intervenes during action, in the viewfinder. A reflection on the subject precedes it. A meditation on finality follows it, and it is here, during this exalting and fragile moment, that the real photographic writing develops, sequencing the images. For this reason, a writer's spirit is necessary to this enterprise. Isn't photography "writing with light"? But with the difference that while the writer possesses his word, the photographer is himself possessed by his photography, by the limit of the real which he must transcend so as not to become its prisoner.”

 

Abbas: Visions of Islam
23 October - 17 November 2002

Muncipal Museum of Ourense
Rúa Lepanto, 8
32005 Ourense

The exhibition is open to the public:
Tuesdays to Saturdays, 11:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Sundays, 11:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Closed Mondays and holidays

Admission free of charge

 

Autres messages plus récents sur ce thème (French)

Abbas / Magnum, Au nom de qui ? Le monde musulman après le 11 septembre 2001, Editions du Pacifique, 2009.

 

Updated

Jonathan Horowitz: Pillow Talk at Sadie Coles HQ, London

Jonathan Horowitz: Pillow Talk
Sadie Coles HQ, London
17 October - 16 November 2002

For his first show at Sadie Coles HQ, JONATHAN HOROWITZ presents Pillow Talk. The installation centres around the video work It’s Magic/Acting the Part: the Biographies of Doris Day and Rock Hudson. On two separate monitors the life stories of these two film icons run parallel, each one freezing to accommodate the other. Horowitz appropriates footage from television biographies of the stars’ lives, focusing on their final television reunion, when Rock appeared as the first guest on Doris’s talk show on the Christian Broadcasting Network. Suffering from dementia caused by HIV related illness, Rock showed up at the studio in a shockingly haggard state. Rock had not yet revealed his condition to Doris or the rest of the public, but when images from the recording were broadcast around the world, Rock was forced to acknowledge that he had AIDS.

With this admission the heterosexual, macho image Rock had maintained throughout his life was instantaneously shattered. As the footage demonstrates, his life and career would become a footnote to his homosexuality and death. In contrast, as portrayed in the Doris Day biography, the adversity that Doris experienced in her personal life served to reinforce her professional accomplishments and make her character more sympathetic.

In It’s Magic/Acting the Part, Jonathan Horowitz explores the peculiar balance between the public and private lives of stars of the small and large screens. In an age in which viewers believe they know intimately the actors they are watching, television becomes the only vehicle through which these actors can communicate with each other and perhaps even themselves.

Extending his focus from the romantic fiction of the Rock and Doris partnership, Horowitz examines the weird world of the celebrity couple. A mattress lies on a plinth in the gallery, on which rest two pillows silk-screened with the names of an improbable romantic pairing. On the walls above are photographs of over 100 sets of pillows, each bearing the names, in different typefaces, of more odd-ball partnerships: Dumb and Dumber; Leverne and Shirley; Liza and David; Ben and Jerry. Jonathan Horowitz highlights the pivotal role romantic couples play in popular culture and assesses the way this has forced people, and in particular gay people, to identify with the most unlikely characters. Jonathan Horowitz employs video to deliver a sharp critique of the socio-political manipulation of television and the impact it has on our lives.

JONATHAN HOROWITZ was born in New York and continues to live and work there. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Greene Naftali in New York (2002) and at Kunsthalle St. Gallen in Switzerland (2001) and group shows in the U.S.A. and Europe, including at the Kunstverein Hamburg (2002) and The Americans at the Barbican Art Centre in London (2001).

SADIE COLES HQ
35 Heddon Street, London W1
www.sadiecoles.com

Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969 at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA

Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

October 12, 2002 – January 12, 2003

The early photographs of Mel Bochner (b. 1940) are on view in Carnegie Museum of Art’s Forum Gallery. Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969 showcases 34 important, little-known works that demonstrate Mel Bochner’s role during the formative years of the Conceptual art movement.

Mel Bochner, a Pittsburgh native and graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, is best known for installations and paintings that probe the abstract concept of measurement. In the late 1960s, Mel Bochner, like other Conceptual artists, turned away from self-expression, choosing instead to explore organized systems of thought, such as language and mathematics, through artistic practices that used minimal aesthetics.

Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969 reveals the artist’s contributions to Conceptualism by highlighting the importance of his photography in the movement’s development. For Mel Bochner, photography was well suited to exploring the abstract ideas and systems behind artistic practice, which interested him more than focusing on the representation of objects.

Mel Bochner’s photographs treat a variety of subjects, investigating a range of artistic phenomena such as perspective, color, scale, and language. A number of pieces in the exhibition record Bochner’s experimentation working outside standard photographic formats, including several multi-panel and large-format works that the artist cut and manipulated. When installed several inches from a wall, these works produce an effect that blurs the distinction between two-dimensional media and sculpture.

Some pieces in the exhibition deal with mathematical ideas. 36 Photographs and 12 Diagrams (1966) depicts a numerical sequence, emphasizing the whole, as well as showing the incremental changes in its creation. To do this, Mel Bochner built and photographed a series of stacked wooden blocks, emphasizing the mathematical principle of the arrangement step-by-step.

Works like Surface Dis/Tension (1968) delve into the depiction of perspective. Beginning with a photograph of a grid, Mel Bochner soaked the print and peeled away the image-bearing surace, allowing it to wrinkle while drying. He then photographed the image of the grid as it appeared on this crumpled membrane. Next, Mel Bochner made positive and negative prints of the distorted grid on the same piece of paper, simultaneously revealing the original perspective as well as its altered form.

Other works probe how presentation affects perception. H-2 (1966–67), for example, minimizes the difference between sculpture and photography. The piece is a gelatin silver print of stacked wooden blocks in a cruciform arrangement, cut in silhouette and mounted on Masonite. When viewed head-on, the work gives the illusion of depth. Viewed obliquely, the third dimension disappears. This mutability hints at Bochner’s awareness of art’s power to bridge, as well as widen, the gap between object and representation.

According to exhibition curator Scott Rothkopf, “People often think that Conceptual art is hard to understand, and that it doesn’t offer the viewers a lot visually. Bochner, however, cared very much that his photographs be as interesting to look at as they are to think about.”

The 185-page exhibition catalogue Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969, by Scott Rothkopf, includes an essay by Elisabeth Sussman and 40 color plates, as well as 119 black-and-white illustrations. The catalogue, published by Yale University Press in conjunction with Harvard University Museums, is available in the Carnegie Museum of Art Store.

Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–69 was organized by Scott Rothkopf for the Harvard University Art Museums.

CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART

4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA

www.cmoa.org

Ben Nicholson, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester - chasing out something alive

Ben Nicholson: chasing out something alive
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
4 October - 15 December 2002

Ben Nicholson is recognised as one of the most important British artists of the twentieth century. By bringing together his late drawings and painted reliefs, this exhibition shows the range of Ben Nicholson’s imagination and artistic achievement.

The drawings and painted reliefs made between 1950 and 1975 represent the culmination of Ben Nicholson’s career. The artist felt that it was through these works, and the seminal white reliefs of the 1930s, that he wished his art to be judged. In his work, Ben Nicholson aimed to represent the inner life of things rather than their outward and material appearance. ‘A painting or a carving’, he said, ‘is quite simply the expression of an idea’. This interest in the ‘spirit in painting’ led Nicholson towards abstraction, his painted reliefs expressing an experience of time and place.

While the reliefs show Ben Nicholson at his most abstract and austere, his drawings are much more approachable. His studies of landscape, architecture and still life have a spontaneity, wit and virtuosity that make them his most personal expressions. Many chronicle his travels through Britain, Italy and Greece. Like the reliefs, the drawings seek to capture the essence of a place as well as the physical reality. The artist creates ‘something alive’ from pencil and paper, paint and board.

Drawings and reliefs are the two poles between which Ben Nicholson’s imagination ranged, from the particular to the universal – the two dimensional drawings representing a single aspect of reality, the three dimensional reliefs exploring a wider whole.

Ben Nicholson: ‘chasing out something alive’ was originated by Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge and has been supported by the Henry Moore Foundation.

THE WHITWORTH ART GALLERY
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6ER
www.whitworth.man.ac.uk

Judy Chicago at NMWA, Washington DC - National Museum of Woman in the Arts

Judy Chicago
National Museum of Woman in the Arts, Washington DC
October 11, 2002 - January 5, 2003

Judy Chicago, one of America’s artistic trailblazers and a pioneer of the feminist art movement, is the subject of an exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). The exhibition features over 90 works from the 1960s to the present, and includes selections from Judy Chicago’s best-known work as well as rarely seen early and recent autobiographical pieces.

Judy Chicago’s monumental installation The Dinner Party (1979), a symbolic history of women in Western civilization in visual and textual form, has become an icon of the 20th century. Her two autobiographies, Through the Flower and Beyond the Flower, have been sold around the world. The NMWA exhibition provides an overview of the artist’s career in the following sections: Early California Years, 1964-71; Breakthrough Years, 1972-75; The Dinner Party, 1974-79; Birth Project, 1980-85; Powerplay, 1983-86; Holocaust Project, 1985-93; and The End of the Century, 1993-2000.

At a time when women artists had very few role models and even fewer opportunities for recognition and success, Judy Chicago looked to her female forebears for inspiration and began to explore identity and other issues from a woman’s perspective. She established the first feminist art program in 1970 at Fresno State College in California. In 1972 she collaborated with Miriam Schapiro under the sponsorship of Cal Arts on the groundbreaking art/performance space Womanhouse, continuing to generate a great deal of debate with her art and activist stance. Judy Chicago’s art also underwent a transformation at this time as her early paintings and sculptures gave way in the late 1960s to large spray-painted canvases of centered geometric forms —works celebrating women’s spirit, power, and generative strength.

With The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago distinguished herself further as an artist determined to change the way women, and women artists in particular, are remembered and regarded. Going against traditional societal taboos in choosing the vulva as her main symbolic image, Judy Chicago also rejected art hierarchies by working with craft as well as fine arts, and foregrounded the idea of artistic collaboration rather than lone artistic genius. The Dinner Party solidified Judy Chicago’s place as a feminist and has become an icon of feminist art.

Her next large work, Birth Project, celebrates women’s role as the giver of life, with 150 needleworkers showcasing once again Judy Chicago’s collaborative interests. The Powerplay series explores the distortion that power has when it dominates men's lives and its wrenching emotional effects on both sexes. In the Holocaust Project, Judy Chicago worked with her husband, photographer Donald Woodman, to use the Holocaust as a point of departure in addressing the suffering of all victims of genocide. Autobiographical and recent work reveals the emotions of the artist at different points in her career, and includes her recent Song of Songs (1998).

Judy Chicago is presented at NMWA through the generous sponsorship of The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. The foundation seeks to raise awareness of the contributions of women in all areas of art and culture with specific focus on feminist art. According to Elizabeth A. Sackler, "This exhibition is a glimpse of the breadth and range of Judy Chicago’s oeuvre, her groundbreaking contributions to the world of art and to women. She has fought the status quo with the same single-minded tenacity, resilience, and gumption with which she has conducted her life and forged her life’s work."

The exhibition’s consulting curators are John Bullard, director of the New Orleans Museum of Art, and Viki Wylder, curator of education at Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts. Liaison curator is NMWA Chief Curator Susan Fisher Sterling. An accompanying book, Judy Chicago, with more than 100 full-color illustrations will be available in NMWA’s museum shop. Spanning four decades of Chicago’s work, the book features an interview with the artist by renowned feminist art critic and historian Lucy R. Lippard and biographical text by Wylder.

Coinciding with NMWA’s exhibition, Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party will be exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art from September 20, 2002 through February 9, 2003. This gift to the Brooklyn Museum of Art from The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation will be permanently installed in 2004.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington DC
www.nmwa.org

Updated 05.07.2019

Sharon Ellis, San Jose Museum of Art, California - Evocations

Evocations: Sharon Ellis, 1991 - 2001 
San Jose Museum of Art
October 11, 2002 – February 16, 2003 

The San Jose Museum of Art will present Evocations: Sharon Ellis, 1991 – 2001, the first in-depth study of the work of noted Los Angeles-based painter SHARON ELLIS. The exhibition was organized by the Long Beach Museum of Art and is completing its national tour at SJMA. 

Sharon Ellis, best known for her modestly-sized paintings of expansive, visionary landscapes, juxtaposes epic subjects such as brilliant night skies, vast roiling oceans, and distant solar systems with intricately depicted details of nature — a tangle of blossoms, a single twig, or silhouetted tree branches. These subjects from nature, while painstakingly rendered, are significantly altered through the artist’s highly inventive imagination. Ellis completes only three to four of her richly detailed, vibrantly colored canvases in a year. 

In the early 1990s, influenced by Romantic and Symbolist painting, theory and poetry, Sharon Ellis produced several paintings of gardens — Garden (1993), Sunken Garden (1993), and Cathedral of Dandelions (1993) — which portray aspects of nature in eerie, lush detail that transforms the imagery into highly fanciful, imaginary outdoor spaces. While referring outwardly to the world of nature, these paintings are also hauntingly anthropomorphic in their references to internal organs and parts of the human body. 

Since 1995, Sharon Ellis has explored temporal themes through several series of time-based subjects. Among these are The Four Seasons (Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring) and The Times of the Day (Dawn, Morning, Midday, Afternoon, Dusk, Night). 

In her most recent work, Sharon Ellis’ landscape subjects are influenced by her interest in nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry, particularly Brönte, Wordsworth, and Hart Crane. 

Born in Great Lakes, Illinois in 1955, Sharon Ellis received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Irvine in 1978 and a Master of Fine Arts from Mills College in 1984. She has lived in Los Angeles since 1989. In 1996, Sharon Ellis had her first museum exhibition, The Four Seasons, at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Her work was also featured at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Departures: Eleven Artists at the Getty in 2000. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a four-color, fully illustrated catalogue with essays by noted art critic Dave Hickey and Sue Spaid, curator at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio. 

SAN JOSE MUSEUM OF ART - SJMA
110 S. Market Street, San Jose, California 95113
www.sjmusart.org

Updated 27.06.2019

Yigal Nizri at Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv - "Living Growing"

Yigal Nizri "Living Growing"

Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv

October 3 - November 9, 2002

Yigal Nizri creates a sensual pictorial installation at the heart of which stand graphic images of the biblical seven species (wheat, barley, olive, fig, date, pomegranate, and grape). The depiction, imposed directly on the walls, will employ materials used in large-scale public advertising. In addition to the illustrations (see attached images) articles of clothing and other sewn objects will be placed throughout the space.

In Israel, the iconography of the seven species ("A land of wheat, barley, olive, fig, etc.") represents the abundance/fecundity of the "holy land." Thus, the installation addresses questions of cultural belonging, origin, and "roots".

Through the seven species, Yigal Nizri calls the dominant images adopted by Israeli culture into question. While the seven species signify attachment (to the land), they also attest to Israel's symbolic detachment from its geographic and cultural surroundings. The seven species bespeak a would be utopian oasis in a 'Levantine desert wilderness,' a fruitful eroticism amidst an 'arid impotence.'

Yigal Nizri is an artist and designer living and working in New York and Tel Aviv. A graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (1998), he participated in the "World Views" studio residency program on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center in Fall/Winter 2000-2001.

DVIR GALLERY

11 Nahum st., Tel Aviv 63503

www.dvirgallery.com

Irish 20th century art at National Gallery Dublin

The National Gallery of Ireland's permanent collection of Irish art drawn from the first half of the 20th century goes back on display in the Millennium Wing from Monday, October 7th. Included are new works acquired by the Gallery in recent years and some on loan from private and public collections.

All the greats are featured such as William Leech's Convent Garden, Brittany; and Sunshade ; a selection of Paul Henry Western Ireland landscapes, and a large magnificent portrait of Lady Hazel Lavery by her husband, Sir John Lavery.

A special bay is given to William Orpen with his famous portraits of The Vere Foster Family; Noll Gogarty; The Dead Ptarmigan -a self-portrait, and The Artist's Parents. Those influenced by Orpen, such as Sean Keating, James Humbert Craig, Patrick Tuohy, James Sleator, Margaret Clarke and Dermod O'Brien have a special bay.

The modernists are represented by Mainie Jellett, Norah McGuinness, Mary Swanzy, Evie Hone, Grace Henry and Jack B. Yeats.

The last bay is dedicated to 'Artistic Trends in Irish Art 1930-1959', represented by painters Colin Middleton, Gerard Dillon, Patrick Collins, Harry Kernoff William Scott Daniel O'Neill, John Luke and Louis le Brocquy.

Admission to the permanent collection is free.

National Gallery of Ireland Merrion Square West and Clare Street, Dublin 2

Opening hours: Mon-Sat 9.30am-5.30pm; Thu 9.30am-8.30pm; Sun 12.00pm-5.30pm

Fusion between TV Imaging Phones - The Nokia Mediamaster 230 S

 

The Nokia's latest innovation for the home, is a satellite digital television receiver that provides access to the highest quality digital television. For the first time, Nokia's new 230 S Mediamaster provides consumers the possibility to transfer digital images from any Bluetooth version 1.1 (object push profile) enabled camera phone, like Nokia's 7650, to the receiver and view them on the TV screen.

With the new Nokia Mediamaster 230S image viewer, consumers can enjoy the images from their camera phones in a larger format and store the most favored in their Navi Bars image folder. Storage is available for more than 30 images at one time. By also providing all the benefits of a digital satellite receiver, it is a fusion that enhances the pure entertainment experience of digital TV.

Based on Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) standards, Nokia's Mediamaster 230 S supports various Pay TV operators via a common interface module and also provides access to all digital free-to-air television and radio channels available. The Nokia Mediamaster 230 S offers an attractive compact design featuring a titanium grey flap, with blue black cabinet. 

"The Nokia Mediamaster 230 S offers access to a huge array of digital content available, while at the same time providing the unique image viewer and the ability to view digital images from camera phones", said Pekka Kuusela, General Manager Sales, Nokia Home Communications. "Now that there is connectivity between the digital TV receiver and the mobile phone , the family TV becomes a true information and entertainment hub for the home. The launch of the Nokia Mediamaster 230 S demonstrates Nokia's role in creating innovative functionalities for the digital receiver market."

The Nokia Mediamaster 230 S is easy to use, offering the onscreen Nokia Navi Bars user menu and an electronic program guide (EPG), thus allowing rapid navigation between TV and other digital content. Consumers have the ability to create up to eight personal favorite lists from a memory of hundreds of channels. The Nokia Mediamaster 230 S also features some of Nokia's most popular games, such as Snake, Tic-Tac-Toe and the new Card Deck game. It also supports Dolby Digital (Bitstream Out).

Nokia's new 230 S Mediamaster will be available in Europe at the end of 2002.

Next posts about Nokia products and events

• Nokia Camera Headset HS-1C

• Project Moby Click at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art: Helsinki art students get visual with Nokia camera phone

Previous posts

• The Compact Nokia 6650 camera phone

Four Thirds System Digital SLR Camera Standard: Olympus and Kodak Agreement

Olympus and Kodak Agree to Implement Four Thirds System Digital SLR Camera Standard

Olympus Optical Co., Ltd. of Japan and Eastman Kodak Company of the United States recently announced that they have agreed to implement the Four Thirds System (4/3 System), a new standard for next-generation digital SLR camera systems that will ensure interchangeable lens mount compatibility. The two companies have resolved to aggressively implement this new standard in their respective product lines, and to establish the Universal Digital Interchangeable Lens System Forum, an industry forum that will promote acceptance of the Four Thirds System by other camera manufacturers. Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. has already agreed to participate in the new standard.

About Four Thirds System

The Four Thirds System is not based on existing standards for 35mm film SLR camera system lenses, but instead establishes a new common standard for the interchange of lenses developed exclusively to meet the optical design requirements of digital SLR cameras.

4/3-Inch (Type) Image Sensor Size

The Four Thirds System uses a 4/3-type CCD, CMOS or other image sensor, and will facilitate the development of dedicated digital camera lens systems that maximize image sensor performance and ensure outstanding image quality while also being smaller and easier to handle than 35mm film SLR camera lens systems.

Lens Mount Standardization

By establishing an open standard for camera body and lens mounts, the new system will make it possible to standardize lens mounting systems, something that has been impossible to achieve with digital SLR cameras that are based on existing 35mm film SLR lens systems. In addition, the new system defines standards for image circle size (the diameter of the area in which the subject is resolved) and back focus distance (the distance from the lens mount to the image sensor).

Development Background

Current digital SLR cameras with interchangeable lenses are basically based on conventional 35mm camera systems. As a result, they must be equipped with image sensors that are comparable in size to 35mm and APS film. However, because the imaging characteristics of these large CCDs are fundamentally different from those of film, a number of issues can prevent them from achieving their full performance potential. These include: (1) Although film is capable of responding to light striking the surface at a high angle of incidence, a high angle of incidence can prevent sufficient light from reaching sensor elements at the periphery of a CCD and result in reduced color definition, particularly when shooting with wide-angle lenses. (2) To achieve the resolutions required by the micron pitch of today's CCDs, the demands of optical design tend to result in the use of larger and heavier lenses.

Moreover, manufacturers of digital SLR camera systems have until now adopted the mounting systems used in their own respective 35mm film SLR cameras, making bodies and lenses produced by different manufacturers incompatible with one another.

In light of these circumstances, the new Four Thirds System standard was conceived to facilitate the design and development of digital SLR cameras and lenses that maximize the performance potential of digital imaging sensors, and provide users with product advantages such as compact size, handling ease, and enhanced functionality.

Benefits

The major benefit of Four Thirds System is that it allows the design of dedicated, high-performance digital camera lens systems that are more compact than 35mm film SLRcamera lens systems. The impact of the more compact lens size will be especially marked on telephoto lenses, making it possible to produce a Four Thirds System 300mm telephoto lens, for example, that offers performance equivalent to an approximately 600mm lens on a 35mm film SLR camera. In other words, it will be possible to offer the same angle of view in a lens that is only about one-half as long. The 4/3-type image sensor size will also allow the development of bright, high-performance zoom lenses that are more compact than those needed for use with image sensors the size of APS or 35mm film. By taking advantage of the more compact lens size, it will therefore be possible to develop lens systems that are much easier to handle than conventional 35mm film SLR camera lens systems. Furthermore, standardization of the lens mounting system will make it possible for consumers to photograph combining with bodies and lenses produced by different manufacturers, and enjoy a wider range of product selection.

Eastman Kodak Company
www.kodak.com