27/12/04

Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique 2005, Bruxelles

Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique 2005, Bruxelles
21 - 30 janvier 2005

Du 21 au 30 janvier 2005, la Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique verra converger vers Tour & Taxis, plus de 30.000 amateurs, collectionneurs et professionnels des Antiquités. Cette 50ème édition, qui coïncide avec le 175ème anniversaire de l’indépendance de la Belgique et le 85ème anniversaire de la Chambre Royale des Antiquaires de Belgique, sera résolument jubilatoire et confirmera la dimension internationale de l’événement, acquise de façon incontestable et définitive depuis son transfert vers les espaces du Bâtiment A de Tour & Taxis : 100 exposants, issus des quatre coins du globe. Un salon qui se renforce et se maintient dans une évolution continue, forte de ses acquis, tout en poursuivant la même rigueur objective : allier exigence de qualité, luxe, raffinement et professionnalisme à destination d’un public d’acheteurs, très averti.

Depuis cinquante ans, la Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique, le plus ancien salon annuel au monde, organisée par la Chambre Royale des Antiquaires de Belgique fondée en 1920, constitue un événement incontournable en matière d’antiquités et l’occasion, chaque année pour les professionnels et les amateurs, de regarder et de s’informer, comme de  prendre la mesure du marché et créer des contacts nouveaux. Elle constitue désormais un rendez-vous incontournable au sein du calendrier international des antiquités. Forte de ses acquis qui lui permettent de célébrer allègrement son jubilé d’or, la Foire se tourne aussi vers l’avenir, prête à relever sans cesse de nouveaux défis.

Lors de l’édition 2004, la Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique a investi les superbes et immenses halls de l’ancienne gare de triage de « Tour & Taxis ». Situé en plein centre de Bruxelles, cet ensemble architectural de tout premier plan, constitue un bijou du patrimoine industriel belge où il règne une atmosphère magique.  On ne change pas une équipe gagnante : les espaces occupés par la Foire des Antiquaires dans le Bâtiment A (les salles 2, 3 et 4 ), qui couvriront une superficie totale de 9 000 m² de plain-pied, seront à nouveau orchestrés par le prestigieux tandem de Volume Architecture : Nicolas de Liedekerke et Daniel Culot. Celui-là même qui, de l’avis unanime, contribua à conférer toute son envergure et sa magie spatiale à la précédente édition du Salon. Chaque exposant disposera à nouveau à sa guise d’un espace de stand aussi vaste que possible, réparti le long d’allées couvertes et spacieuses de 4 mètres de large. Cette mutation dans la forme fut sans conteste l’une des clés du succès de la manifestation dont l’accès est également devenu on ne peut plus aisé grâce à d’importants espaces de parking gardés pouvant accueillir un millier de véhicules !

Les vastes superficies d’exposition de ses nouvelles pénates permettent à la Chambre Royale des Antiquaires de Belgique de maintenir le cap et, comme lors de l’édition passée, d’étoffer encore le nombre de ses participants. Ce renforcement qui vise à toujours plus de qualité s’opère d’une part en faisant appel une fois encore aux meilleurs antiquaires belges, et d’autre part en asseyant la dimension internationale de la Foire par la sollicitation d’antiquaires d’Allemagne, de Grande-Bretagne, de France, d’Italie, du Luxembourg, de Monaco, des Pays-Bas et de Suisse. Le nombre d’exposants belges et étrangers se maintient ainsi à 100 stands en un équilibre parfait, la base restant belge malgré un tiers d’étrangers. Un chiffre qui renforce son niveau d’excellence et rapproche considérablement la Foire des dimensions de ses concurrentes immédiates …

Comme chaque année, le salon s’est doté d’un thème fédérateur. Le prochain sera centré autour du «Cinquantième Anniversaire», puisque le jubilé d’or  de la Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique coïncide avec le 175ème anniversaire de l’indépendance belge et le 85ème anniversaire de la création de la Chambre Royale des Antiquaires de Belgique. Ce triple anniversaire sera pour chaque exposant l’occasion de marquer le coup et d’exposer ses plus belles pièces afin de donner à l’événement tout le lustre qu’il mérite.

Un secret : la qualité. Privilégier la qualité, garantir l’authenticité par une fiche d’expertise tenue à la disposition des acheteurs est la volonté première des Organisateurs de la Foire. Or l’offre artistique, qui varie toujours de l’Antiquité au classicisme moderne, impose un souci de qualité et d’exception constant. C’est pourquoi, les expertises (le Vetting) sont traitées avec un sérieux et une exigence portés à leur maximum. Le Comité Organisateur a mis sur pied des Commissions d’Experts répartis par section. Constituées de conservateurs, d´antiquaires non-exposants, d’historiens d’art et de restaurateurs, elles opèrent, deux jours complet, la veille du vernissage et en l’absence de tout exposant. Chaque objet qu’elles examinent est soumis à l’approbation unanime de leurs membres, sous peine d’être refusé au Salon, non parce qu’il est faux mais parce qu’il ne correspond pas aux exigences de qualité requise !

Mais soulevons déjà un coin du voile et révélons quelques unes des pièces maîtresses qui devraient réjouir les visiteurs de cette cinquantième foire. Dans le domaine de l’argenterie, le Bruxellois Francis Janssens van der Maelen proposera une bouilloire torse en argent (1759) par l’orfèvre liégeois Olivier Franckson. L’antiquaire allemand Jörg Schuhmacher exposera d’authentiques dessins sur papier de Paul Cézanne, dont deux Etudes de Femme au bain datées 1876-1879.  De Londres, Edric Van Vredenburgh Ltd montrera une table romaine de Francesco Sibilio datant du second quart du XIXe siècle. Chez le Belge Oscar De Vos, on verra une grande huile sur toile d’Emile Claus, "Moisson" signée et datée 1900.  Enfin, dans le domaine des Arts Premiers, retenons cette plaque en bronze du Bénin qui décorait les piliers du Palais de Loba à Benin City et fut arrachée lors du sac du Palais en 1870. Elle représente le loba en tenue de guerrier. Datée du début du XVIIème siècle, elle sera visible chez Pierre Dartevelle de Bruxelles. Un paysage forestier exceptionnel de Adriaen van Stalbemt, circa 1625, sera mis en vente chez Jan De Maere.

La Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique est ainsi toujours l’occasion de découvertes exceptionnelles,  d’autant que la rencontre entre les oeuvres et le public est au coeur des préoccupations de ses Organisateurs. Elle s’adresse à deux sortes d’acheteurs : un noyau dur de collectionneurs sérieux et un grand nombre de personnes, tout simplement intéressées, recherchant un bel objet pour leur environnement. Le premier groupe n’achète pas uniquement au coup de cœur, il cherche surtout à constituer des ensembles. Car collectionner peut être le but ou l’aboutissement de toute une vie. 

Ce public de connaisseurs possède en général une éducation au-dessus de la moyenne, a des revenus élevés et croit dans les valeurs patrimoniales. Par la volonté générale de vouloir faire plus et mieux en améliorant sans cesse la participation comme la présentation, la 50ème édition de cette prestigieuse manifestation répondra sans conteste aux attentes des plus exigeants d’entre eux !

Devenue HSBC Dewaay en janvier 2004, suite à son intégration au sein du groupe britannique HSBC, la Banque Dewaay, oeuvre dans la gestion de patrimoines privés et institutionnels depuis 1926.  Elle offre une gamme complète de services de banque privée et, en ce sens, soutient différentes manifestations de prestige telles que la Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique dont elle est le principal appui financier.

Chambre Royale des Antiquaires de Belgique
Rue Ernest Allard 32, 1000 Bruxelles
www.antiques-fair.be

14/12/04

Lee Friedlander at Texas Gallery, Houston - Xmas in Texas

Lee Friedlander: Xmas in Texas 
Texas Gallery, Houston
December 14, 2004 – January 15, 2005
“He was not unlike a traveler walking into a landscape which may prove mirage.”(Patrick White, “Riders in the Chariot”)
Texas Gallery presents an exhibition of photographs by Lee Friedlander – 40 black and white photographs taken in west Texas between 1997 and 2004. Lee Friedlander has been working periodically in Texas since the early 1970’s, focusing on urban settings, the big thicket and desert landscapes. This new group of photographs has two themes: buildings and streets in towns of far west Texas, such as Alpine and Marfa, which focus on Christmas decorations, and from which derives the title of the show; and classic images of landscape: the highland deserts and mountains of Big Bend and the Davis Mountains. Lee Friedlander’s photos are distinguished by a compositional technique of formal organization and complex pattern. Using a square format camera with a flash, the artist achieves clarity with a great depth of field. Lee Friedlander’s photos bring to mind the beautiful intelligence of the works of Walker Evans and Eugene Atget.

Lee Friedlander lives in upstate New York, is a McArthur Fellow and he will have a retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art, NY in June 2005. His most recent publications include “Sticks and Stones, Architectural America” (2004), “Family” (2004), and “Stems” (2003).

TEXAS GALLERY
2012 Peden, Houston, TX 77019
www.texgal.com

12/12/04

Psy[k]é, Musée de la Publicité, Paris - Affiches psychédéliques des années 1960-1970

Psy[k]é
Musée de la Publicité, Paris
9 décembre 2004 - 27 mars 2005

Psyké
(c) Union centrale des arts décoratifs

Psychédélique [psikedelik], adj.> Qui est provoqué par l’absorption de drogues hallucinogènes et consiste en un débordement délirant des idées et une distorsion des faits et des images réels, qui peuvent aller jusqu’aux hallucinations psycho-sensorielles.
> adj. Proposé en 1956 par un correspondant de l’écrivain Aldous Huxley et popularisé par le psychologue américain Th. Leary lorsqu’il répandit l’usage du L.S.D
Psychédélisme, Subst. Masc.Etat psychédélique, par ext., façon de vivre, éthique qui préconise l’utilisation de drogues hallucinogènes.
Trésor de la Langue Française, Paris, 2002

Le musée de la Publicité présente une exposition inédite en France et en Europe : Psy[k]é, où 200 affiches psychédéliques des années 1960-1970 sont réunies. Nées en Californie à San Francisco, d’expérimentations tant graphiques et artistiques que sensorielles, ces affiches incarnent les aspirations d’une génération qui revendique le rock et la liberté individuelle.

Au milieu des années soixante, tous les regards se portent sur la Californie. Dans un contexte politique et social contestataire dont les principales valeurs reposent sur l’égalité des droits civiques, l’écologie, l’utilisation des drogues, la lutte contre la guerre du Vietnam et bien sûr la musique, la contre-culture brille de mille feux.

Le rock devient le langage de cette étrange révolte, encore informe, qui couve dans le monde occidental. Il s’impose comme la seule forme d’expression dans laquelle se reconnaît la majeure partie des jeunes, et on parle rapidement d’une « culture rock » à part entière, avec ses codes (musicaux, vestimentaires, idéologiques), son mode de vie, ses écrivains et son esthétique visuelle. Pour les artistes, les premières occasions de création sont les affiches de spectacles de rock.

Ils usent de couleurs vibrantes, et d’un répertoire de formes surprenantes issu des théories de la couleur et des effets optiques de Josef Albers, ancien membre du Bauhaus, de l’Op Art naissant, mais aussi du Jugendstijl, des affichistes du mouvement sécessionniste viennois (Gustav Klimt, Alfred Roller et Kolloman Moser) et du résultat de la prise de LSD. Ces affiches sont pour la plupart composées par de fortes masses de lettrage laissant peu de place à l’image. La typographie est mouvante et décorative à la limite de la lisibilité. Non seulement les artistes empruntent à l’Art Nouveau ses arabesques et son décor floral, mais vont jusqu’à s’approprier certaines images des affiches de Mucha ou Jules Chéret. Très vite l’affiche de musique rock devient un média artistique populaire et influence considérablement le champ du graphisme publicitaire.

Ces affiches sont signées: Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso, Mouse Studios, Rick Griffin, Bonnie Mac Lean, Lee Conklin, David Singer, et annoncent exclusivement des concerts.

A travers elles, sont évoqués tous les noms de ceux qui ont initié et développé ce mouvement : les producteurs tel que Bill Graham et ses deux célèbres salles Fillmore ou la Family Dog Production qui organisait des concerts à l’Avalon Ballroom ; ainsi que les groupes de musique comme les Quick Silver Messenger Service, Grateful Dead, The Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Co, les Doors, le Velvet underground, les Pink Floyd, ou BB King.

Parution d'un ouvrage consacré aux affiches psychédéliques dans le cadre de l'exposition.

Commissaire de l'exposition : Amélie Gastaut, conservateur du musée de la Publicité

MUSEE DE LA PUBLICITE
Union centrale des arts décoratifs 
107-111 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris
www.ucad.fr

10/12/04

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, International Center of Photography, New York

Ralph Eugene Meatyard 
International Center of Photography, New York
December 10, 2004 - February 27, 2005 

The photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925-1972) defy convention. They have been called visionary, surrealistic, and meditative. Fascinated by the uncanniness of ordinary life, Meatyard made mysterious staged images using his friends and family—often involving masks and abandoned spaces—that are familiar and disturbing at the same time. Highly original and deeply emotional, Meatyard’s expressionist style and use of staged scenes foreshadows the work of many contemporary artists, such as Francesca Woodman, Cindy Sherman, Sally Mann, and Justine Kurland. The most comprehensive exhibition of his photographs to date, Ralph Eugene Meatyard will be the first major New York City showing of this work. The selection of over 150 photographs was made by Guy Davenport, scholar, poet, and friend of the artist.

Meatyard was an optometrist by profession who shot on weekends and printed his photographs in a makeshift darkroom in his home. From his thousands of images, he would select only those he considered his best, making just one or two prints of each negative. His strict attention to technique and consistency in print size achieved the aesthetic effects of photography he was seeking — a world seen through a full tonal range from black to white; intentionally strange, yet familiar and approachable.

From 1953 until his untimely death in 1972, Ralph Eugene Meatyard explored what he called the “photographic.” His earliest work from the mid-1950s includes a documentary project on Georgetown Street, a primarily African American neighborhood in Lexington, Kentucky. He then began an experiment that continued off and on throughout the 1960s with the more technical and formal aspects of the camera, using long exposures to record light reflecting off water, extreme focus for his “no-focus” images, and low depth of field for his “Zen twigs” series. By 1960, he was regularly making photographs of his three children in abandoned rural Kentucky mansions and in the forests surrounding them. Highly imaginative, even surrealistic, the photographs evoke a world not normally acknowledged with the human eye. They suggest the complex emotions associated with childhood, intimacy, loss, and destruction. These images, which form the largest component of the exhibition, are what Guy Davenport has called “charming short stories that have never been written.” 

The visualization of the passage of time played an important role for Meatyard in all of his photographs —from long exposures to the maturation of his children, from timeworn buildings to the changing light gracing the natural world. For one of his last series, titled “Motion-Sound,” he made pictures by moving the camera gently, creating multiple exposures of woodland scenes that suggest visual sound patterns.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s engagement with photographing people is evident in a number of portraits he made of a circle of local writers with whom he developed great friendships, including Davenport, Thomas Merton, Wendell Berry, James Baker Hall, and Jonathan Greene. These friends not only provided intellectual inspiration and support, but often acted as collaborators in other projects. Meatyard also made a significant number of self-portraits in many of the same settings in which he photographed his friends and family.

About Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Meatyard was born in Normal, Illinois in 1925 and moved to Lexington in 1950, after serving in the U.S. Navy and studying at Williams College and Illinois Wesleyan University. He went to work at Tinder-Krauss-Tinder, an optical firm, which also sold cameras and other photographic equipment. That same year he bought a camera to photograph the first of his three children. Meatyard spent the rest of his life in Lexington, where he worked as an optician at his shop Eyeglasses of Kentucky and photographed in his spare time. His membership in the Lexington Camera Club in 1954 led to an enduring friendship with his photography teacher, Van Deren Coke. In 1956, summer workshops at Indiana University brought him in contact with such influential photographers as Henry Holmes Smith, Aaron Siskind, and Minor White. These interactions paved the way for Meatyard to launch his own photographic vision. Solo and group exhibitions soon followed across the country. His prodigious career ended in 1972 when he died of cancer.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard: Catalogue

Acclaimed writer and intimate friend of the photographer Guy Davenport made the selection of images, and Cynthia Young, ICP Assistant Curator, organized the exhibition. Ralph Eugene Meatyard will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by and interview with Davenport. The catalogue will be published by ICP / Steidl and released in December 2004. 

Guy Davenport (born 1927) is a poet, artist, illustrator, short-fiction writer, essayist, literary critic, and noted translator. After attending Merton College, Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, he received a PhD from Harvard University with a thesis on the work of Ezra Pound, and then taught English at several universities. His work has garnered such prizes as the O. Henry Award for short stories, the 1981 Morton Douwen Zabel award for fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Leviton-Blumenthal Prize for poetry, and a 1990 MacArthur Fellowship. Davenport lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

This exhibition was made possible with support from Frank and Mary Ann Arisman, Christian K. Keesee, and Richard and Ellen Kelson. 

International Center of Photography

01/12/04

Papiers Qualité Photo Verbatim : Nouveautés 2004



Papiers Qualité Photo Verbatim : Double face et Premium

L'extension de la technologie photo numérique s'accompagne d'une forte demande de papiers de qualité photo. Verbatim,  filiale de Mitsubishi Kagaku Media, surtout connu comme un des leaders sur le marché des supports de stockage de données, lance deux nouveaux produits conçus pour satisfaire les besoins des photographes.

Le Papier Qualité Photo Double Face de Verbatim sèche instantanément. Le papier a une face en finition brillante et l’autre en finition mate. Le Papier Qualité Photo Recto Verso de Verbatim est conditionné en pack de 100 feuilles 10x15 cm, légères et résistantes à l’eau. Chaque feuille pèse 220 g pour 275 microns et peut être imprimée jusqu'en 1440 dpi.

Verbatim annonce aussi la disponibilité de son Papier Qualité Photo Premium. Le format est de 10x15 cm en pack de 24 feuilles. Il pèse 254 g, sèche également instantanément, résiste à l'eau résistance à l’eau et et peut être imprimé jusqu'en 1440 dpi.

Mise à jour

28/11/04

Peter Holl, Galerie Juliètte Jongma, Amsterdam - The Constellations

Peter Holl: The Constellations
Galerie Juliètte Jongma, Amsterdam
27 November 2004 – 7 January 2005

The exhibition 'The Constellations' is the first solo exhibition of the German artist PETER HOLL (1971) in the Netherlands.

Peter Holl displays in his artworks a clear reference towards he American photorealistic movement from the 70s. This movement rebelled against the subjective way of painting and expressed themselfs against the usual content and expectations of a portrait. Everything is superficial there's no depth within the image at the most it is indifferent, 'it is what it is'.

Peter Holl seems to implement this theorie. He did not choose reproductions of selfmade photographs nor does he portray his friends but he focusses on adapted, artficial images from (fashion) magazines. His subject choise seems to have a strong reference towards distant painting. The artist isn't in surch of fixing a moment like his American (pre-andisters) but in search of an optical play. His portraits show clear signs of several images mixed with one-and-other. Your eye tries to unravel their riddle and play with the wish to crack there code. At the same time it is clear that it is not in our advantage to decifer, the challenge is within the looking itself.

The exhibition 'The Constellations' which means 'stars' or a configuration of celestial body's seen from the earth, gives a reference to the mathematics. A mathematician uses this discription for the movement of the body with time as the fourth dimension. Herewith time becomes as equal as spacious coordinates. Time as a fourth dimension is mostly used in astronomy. The stars we see are seen from the past.

The artist gives with this element reference towards artists like Marcel Duchamp and movements like dadaisme and futurism where researches of movement where represented. Peter Holl gives a contemporary representation of this element. 

GALERIE JULIETTE JONGMA
Gerard Douplein 23, 1073XE Amsterdam

24/11/04

Anders Petersen, Marvelli Gallery, NYC - Close Distance

Anders Petersen: Close Distance
Marvelli Gallery, New York
November 23, 2004 - January 31, 2005

Marvelli Gallery presents the first comprehensive exhibition of important Swedish photographer Anders Petersen in the United States. Anders Petersen exhibit an installation from the book Close Distance (2002) together with prints from the book Nobody Has Seen Everything (1995). In the back room there is a selection of rare vintage prints from the book Café Lehmitz (1978).

Café Lehmitz, the title of Anders Petersen’s first book, is a tavern in Hamburg where the photographer spent time at the end of the sixties. Petersen frequented this bar in which all conventions are suspended, and in which a raw life, full of humor and despair, takes place: a rough place and a kind of home at the same time. Café Lehmitz is a blunt, merciless book about life outside the bourgeoisie, in the windswept, unprotected zone where the only thing that counts is who someone really is.

Several books followed Café Lehmitz: among them, Nobody Has Seen Everything (1995), a book about about people in a psychiatric clinic. In collaboration with individual patients, Anders Petersen  staged scenes about the lost and abysmal aspects of existence in which depression and euphoria both have their place.

More recently, in the book Close Distance, Anders Petersen’s work has developed increasingly into a diary. His photographs reveal his close proximity to people, his “hypnotic intimacy” with them. These are not pictures of safe, balanced people, but images of compulsion, longing, aggression and sexuality, with the laughter and tears of despair.

A key figure of European photography, Anders Petersen is a photographer emblematic of a type of social photography where the total involvement of the author with his subject makes a militant work. Petersen aims to show the hidden aspects of human nature. Anders Petersen’s work belongs in the ranks of Ed van der Elsken, Nan Goldin and Daido Moriyama.

ANDERS PETERSEN
Born in Stockholm in 1944, Anders Petersen trained with famous Swedish photographer Christer Stromholm and then carried on his studies at the Cinema University and at the Dramatiska Institute in Stockholm between 1973 and 1974. In 1978, the publication of Café Lehmitz, marked the beginning of his carreer. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in Antwerp, Arles, Evry, Gothenborg, Hamburg, Helsinki, Herten, Istanbul, Karlsruhe, Karlstad, London, Malmo, Nancy, Nice, Oslo, Paris, Stockholm, Turin and other places. He has participated in many group exhibitions in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. He has published several books, among them: Café Lehmitz (Shirmer/Mosel, Munich, 1978); Fangelse (Prison) (Norstedts, 1984); Ragang till Karleken (Boundary to Love) (Norstedts, 1991); Ingen Har Sett Allt (Nobody Has Seen Everything) (Legus, 1995); Anders Petersen - Photographs 1966-96 (Journal, Stokholm, 1997); Du Mich Auch (Journal, Stokholm, 2002); Close Distance (Journal Stockholm, 2002); Ich Dich Lieben, Du Mich Auch (Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2002). His work is included in important public collections, such as: Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg; Bibliotheque National, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Det Nationale Fotomuseum, Copenhagen; among others.

MARVELLI GALLERY
526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
www.marvelligallery.com

20/11/04

Sara Radstone, Barrett Marsden Gallery, London

Sara Radstone
Barrett Marsden Gallery, London
19 November 2004 - 8 January 2005

Sara Radstone explores themes of history, memory and place in works that probe the traces left by human activity and their evocative power. Some recent sources of reflection include sites as diverse as Rodinsky‘s room in London‘s East End, with its accumulations of matter marking the idiosyncratic interests of a single life, to the landscape of North Cornwall that bears the imprints of the different demands on the land made by successive generations of people.

Rather than employing explicit signs, Sara Radstone often composes sections of a piece from casts taken from man-made or natural artefacts, which, through the stages of her process, become only faintly identifiable. A number of the works are composed of fragments, as if remnants of some former whole. Many hang from the wall - their outlines echoed by shadows that raise uncertainty as to where the piece finally ends and the background begins.

While surfaces are densely textured - dented, eroded, or carrying the accretions of time - the forms are stark and understated, their colours elemental. Sara Radstone has described her approach as seeking ‘simplification ...a paring down to austerity’ and her aim to make artefacts that appear as ‘nudges in the line of vision.’

Ultimately Sara Radstone‘s works contain a penetrating abstract charge, one that evades literal interpretation and which finds true resonance at an unspoken level of human existence.

SARA RADSTONE (b. 1955) trained at Herefordshire College of Art (1975-1976) and Camberwell School of Art, London (1976-1979). Acclaimed as one of Britain‘s leading ceramic artists she has won a number of major awards including an Arts Foundation Fellowship (1993). Other stands of her professional career include work as a lecturer and writer within the visual arts field. Radstone‘s work has been exhibited internationally and is found in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum, USA; Shigaraki Cultural Park, Japan; Museum die Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt, Germany; the Victoria and Albert Museum, British Council and Crafts Council, London.

BARRETT MARSDEN GALLERY
17-18 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DN
www.bmgallery.co.uk

18/11/04

Mary Kim - Exhibition at MONA

Mary Kim, Oblique Structure: Odradek Tower. Drawings and Models

Detroit' Museum of New Art, November 13 - December 18, 2004

Mary Kim, a Cranbrook graduate and instructor at the College for Creative Studies, takes center stage at MONA with her colorful geometric towers, some of steel and some of wood. Simple yet complex, her painted pieces change as you move around the gallery, revealing hidden negative spaces and subtle shifts in color that are engaging.

MONA - MUSEUM OF NEW ART
7 N. Saginaw St.
Pontiac, Michigan 48342

Young Artists Exhibition at MONA in Detroit, Michigan

Museum of New Art, Pontiac, Michigan

The Museum of New Art's (MONA) new show reveals more than meets the eye. Head to the museum's Pontiac complex to see "The Next Big Thing", featuring new work by young artists, working in all disciplines.

Some standouts include Cynthia Randolph's studies of time and timing depicted in a series of digital photographs. One chronicles one day of urine flushing down toilet bowls, resulting in a grid of colors and gradations in light that don't look anything like what they are. Another work discovers the beauty of a surgical mask, light and disposable but able to protect from disease. The artist previous exhibition includes two National Scholastic Exhibit at Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washingthon, DC, in 1992 and 1994, A Sculpture Show at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1998) and two exhibits at Melting Point Gallery, San Francisco, California in 2001 and 2003.

Roland Lusk has created a room installation that takes you into a verdant yet somewhat sickly forest. Leaves of green fabric are suspended from the ceiling and stuck on the walls along with painted white tree fungus and antlers. The walls are papered in an oversized digital print - a cowhide tinted grass-green.

Michelle Hinebrook creates highly textured and veiled paintings – some pure abstractions, others with hidden figures – on tiles covered with netting culled from produce bags found on fruits and vegetables.

Other artists' include Kelly Rosebrock who has captured "fingerprints" of individual cell phones in her sparse, colorful photographs; Narine Kchikian, who curated the show, has created a minimalist room installation where illusions come into play; Georgia Vandewater, who creates paintings in vinyl that are variations on Da Vinci's "Circle of Man"; the artist Unholy Erection has created a funhouse of gender coding in his installation of photos and video; and Gabriel Hillebrand whose work in the Annex on the first floor combines grids, string  and books into a playful sculpture.

THE NEXT BIG THING
November 13 - December 18, 2004

MONA - MUSEUM OF NEW ART, DETROIT
7 N. Saginaw St.
Pontiac, Michigan 48342

17/11/04

Catherine Yass at Alison Jacques Gallery, London

Catherine Yass 
Alison Jacques Gallery, London
18 November - 23 December 2004

Alison Jacques Gallery presents a new film and series of four photographs on light boxes by Catherine Yass. Over the last year, Yass has been filming and photographing the Israel/Palestine separation wall from Israeli-controlled areas.

The resulting film entitled Wall, will be projected across the entire width of the gallery. Using a widescreen film format, Catherine Yass has concentrated on the physicality of the wall as it winds through communities and stretches across the landscape. The footage is structured in separate sequences, corresponding to recently constructed sections of the wall in Baqa, Qalqilya and Jerusalem.

Catherine Yass has developed a distinctive language which conveys her own personal response. As with her previous film Descent, for which she was nominated for the Turner Prize at Tate Britain (2002),  the single viewpoint and insistent camera movement are at once subjective and mechanical . The wall almost fills the frame, so buildings and minarets are only just visible behind it. The restricted viewpoint of the camera re-enacts the limited view imposed by the wall, and reflects the inability to see the other side. As well as representing a physical structure, the film shows the wall as, literally, a concrete manifestation of psychological barriers.

The photographs are on light boxes and underlaid with a blue negative, which gives the wall the quality of a mirage hovering somewhere in the imagination. In the areas where the wall is still under construction, building blocks lying in the rubble take on an eerie sense of ruin, as though they are part of an archeological site. The concrete blocks of the wall bear a resemblance to modernist architecture and sculpture, only here it is the wall which imposes the grid and brings modernism back to contemporary experience in a form where aesthetics and politics become indissoluble.

Catherine Yass was born in London (1963) and graduated with an MA from Goldsmiths College (1990). In 2002, Catherine Yass was nominated for the Turner Prize at Tate Britain. Since then, Yass has collaborated with Merce Cunningham on his world tour of Split Sides, which premiered at the Brooklyn Academy, New York (2003) and toured to Paris and London (The Barbican, October 5-9, 2004). Forthcoming projects include a solo show at the Herzilya Museum, Tel Aviv and participation in WOW at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle and Expo Tokyo, Japan (2005). Catherine Yass is represented in many public collections including The British Council, Tate, and The Jewish Museum, New York.

ALISON JACQUES GALLERY
4 Clifford Sreet, London W1X 1RB
www.alisonjacquesgallery.com

13/11/04

Craig Kauffman: Works from the 1960s at Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York

Craig Kauffman: Works from the 1960s
Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York
November 11 - December 21, 2004

Franklin Parrasch Gallery presents an exhibition of select works from the mid to late 1960s by Los Angeles born artist Craig Kauffman. This exhibition of six works provides a small window to view the developing concepts and discoveries Craig Kauffman made within this intriguing and productive five year period.

Craig Kauffman began his career in the mid-1950's as an abstract painter exhibiting in Los Angeles first at Felix Landau Gallery then at Ferus Gallery, throughout its nine year history. Craig Kauffman's early work explored figure/ground relationships as defined by color, saturation and image density. By the mid 1960's Craig Kauffman became intrigued by commercial plastic signs in the Los Angeles area, particulary with vacuum formed plastic in which figurative elements were rendered in vibrantly colored relief along a background plane.

Craig Kauffman's initial forays with industrially produced plastic resulted in a series of flat rectangular planes embossed with convex linear (somewhat phallic) imagery, the versos of which were printed in vibrantly contrasting colors. These works, while pioneering in their execution retained many of the aesthetic gestures addressed in his previous paintings and drawings.

It was not until his next series of mold-formed plastic works, euphemistically referred to as "Washboards," that Craig Kauffman abandoned altogether the identifiable centralized image and embraced the ambiguous depth of field inherently produced by this industrially colored medium. These undulating rectangular reliefs create a funhouse mirror-like effect with color and light.

The convex reliefs from the Washboard series establishes a basis from which later experimentations with vacuum formed plastic led to a series of horizontal ellipses Craig Kauffman called "Bubbles." Merging qualities of pigment, plastic, and light, the "Bubble" successfully produced a range of formal and spatial arrangements that furthered this artist's ongoing investigations of perception. In these works (produced from 1967-1968) Craig Kauffman ceased all application of exterior pigmentation, as well as any iconic lines or gestural imagery. Using an industrial sprayer Craig Kauffman painted the interiors of these lozenge shaped forms with a specialized enamel commercially known as "Morano." "Morano," a specialized pearlescent lacquer, produced an exquisitely chatoyant surface that simultaneously reflects and refracts light. It was a toxic, extremely expensive material and had only a short lived commercial application in the then popular spector of hot rod industry.

Craig Kauffman's plastic forms once again morphed and evolved. He realized that plastic's innate tendency to atrophe from its own weight could be used to create a loop shape by slumping a 1/4 inch sheet over wire. Gradations of altering colors and the confluence of the back ground plane and the foreground (looping) plane vary the viewer's chromatic experience based on proximity and light. Cascading bands of translucent (Rothko-esque) pigmentation on the slumped plastic sheet bathe the background wall in varegated color.

Over the past two years Craig Kauffman's early work has been reexamined in a number of group exhibitions including "Ferus" at Gagosian Gallery in 2002, "LA's Finish Fetish" at Franklin Parrasch Gallery in 2003, and "A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958 - 1968," Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles the spring of 2004.

FRANKLIN PARRASCH GALLERY
20 W 57th St (between 5th and 6th aves.), New York, NY 10019
www.franklinparraschgallery.com

07/11/04

Contemporary Art of East Asia at San Diego Museum of Art + Other venues - Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia

Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia
San Diego Museum of Art
November 6, 2004 - March 6, 2005

The San Diego Museum of Art (SDMA) presents a major group exhibition featuring many important established and up-and-coming artists from China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Titled Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia, this internationally touring exhibition organized by SDMA provides American museum goers a rare, yet extensive look at work from several vital artistic communities from Asia that are quickly gaining a foothold on the world cultural stage.

The exhibition is curated by SDMA's curator of contemporary art, Betti-Sue Hertz, and includes 21 artists and artist groups who have created innovative works representing some of the newest trends in an increasingly globalized art world. Among the featured artists are Soun-gui Kim, Cai Guo-Qiang, Wang Qingsong, Tadasu Takamine, Hiroshi Fuji, Michael Lin, and Leung Mee Ping. Major funding for the exhibition is provided by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award.

This multifaceted exhibition showcases cutting-edge artists working in a diversity of media—painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, digital media—who use contemporary approaches that reflect their respective cultural and artistic backgrounds. Occupying several of the Museum's galleries, each artist's work is featured in a separate section while accompanying wall texts—in both English and Spanish—articulate how the artist is responding to historical precedents. By including recent, new, and commissioned works, the exhibition also serves as an introduction to the latest trends in contemporary East Asian art.

The artists and artist groups included in the exhibition, listed here by country or region of origin, are:

Contemporary Artists from China

- Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957, born in Quanzhou, lives in New York), drawing/public events
- Cao Fei (b. 1978, born and lives in Guangzhou), photography
- Shao Yinong and Muchen (b. 1961 and 1970, born in Xining and Lianong, both live in Beijing), photography
- Wang Jianwei (b. 1958, born in Sichuan Province, lives in Beijing), video
- Wang Qingsong (b. 1966, born in Hubei Province, lives in Beijing), video
- Yang Fudong (b. 1971, born in Beijing, lives in Shanghai), video
- Yangjiang Calligraphy Group with Zheng Guogu, Sha Yeya, Chen Zaiyan, and Sun Qinglin (live in Yangjiang), mixed-media installation

Contemporary Artists from Hong Kong

- Leung Mee Ping (b. 1961, born and lives in Hong Kong), video installation/performance
- Wilson Shieh (b. 1970, born and lives in Hong Kong), drawing

Contemporary Artists from Japan

- Ryoko Aoki (b. 1973, born in Hyougo, lives in Kyoto), drawing installation
- Hiroshi Fuji (b. 1960, born in Kyoto, lives in Fukuoka Prefecture), mixed-media installation
- Mitsushima Takayuki (b. 1954, born and lives in Kyoto), installation
- Tadasu Takamine (b. 1968, born in Kagoshima, lives in Gifu), mixed media installation/performance
- Shizuka Yokomizo (b. 1966, born in Tokyo, lives in London), photography/video

Contemporary Artists from South Korea

- Flyingcity: Urbanism Research Group (based in Seoul), interventions/mixed-media installation/video
- Hee-Jeong Jang (b. 1970, born and lives in Seoul), painting
- Soun-gui Kim (b. 1946, born in Pou-yo, Chung-Nam, lives in Paris), video installation/photography
- Kim Young Jin (b. 1961, born in Busan, lives in Seoul), video installation

Contemporary Artists from Taiwan

- G8: Public Relations and Art Consultants Collaborative (based in Taipei), interventions/installation
- Hung Yi (b. 1970, born and lives in Taichung), painting/sculpture/mixed-media installation
- Michael Lin (b. 1964, born in Tokyo, lives in Paris and Taipei), architectural painting

Accessing the past to map the future, these artists explore aesthetic and conceptual principles that are rooted in the arts and culture of their particular region. Whether they work in traditional genres such as painting and sculpture or newer technologies such as photography, video, and digital media, they assert their connection to Chinese, Korean, or Japanese culture through a variety of avenues.

For example, some artists like Wilson Shieh and the Yangjiang Calligraphy Group use traditional materials and techniques while others, like Cai Guo-Qiang and Soun-gui Kim, engage established religious iconography and philosophical ideas. Others, like Hiroshi Fuji and Cao Fei, explore interactions with the everyday physical world to reclaim endemic ways of seeing and being.

Another approach employed by certain artists is to reveal new views on their cultural history and interdependencies within the region by drawing on, for instance, craft-based methods (Ryoko Aoki, Tadasu Takamine), landscape and floral imagery (Michael Lin, Wang Qingsong, Yang Fudong, Hee-Jeong Jang), family histories (Kim Young Jin), or indigenous concepts of time and space (Soun-gui Kim, Shizuka Yokomizo, Mitsushima Takayuki). Still others address modern political histories and their impact on the individual and the construction of social relations and space in urban centers (Flying City, Wang Jianwei, G8).

The selection of artists presented in Past in Reverse reveal that in spite of cultural proximity, there is as much disconnect as common ground among artists from any particular region, placing into doubt the possibility of a regional aesthetic. What is clear is that as Asia continues to participate more wholeheartedly in the international art scene, it is slowly becoming more confident that its cultural impact, while not as influential as its economic one, is steadily growing.

Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia is made possible in part by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award.

Exhibition Tour

- San Diego Museum of Art, Nov. 6, 2004-Mar. 6, 2005
- Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, June 3-Sept. 4, 2005
- Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, Jan. 15-Mar. 12, 2006
- Hong Kong Museum of Art (pending)
(dates subject to change), 2006

Exhibition Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by a 176-page soft-cover catalogue featuring an introductory essay by the exhibition's curator Betti-Sue Hertz as well as four other scholarly essays by an international team of noted experts: Taehi Kang (South Korea), Li Xianting (China), Midori Matsui (Japan), and Zhang Zhaohui (China). Also included are extended entries devoted to each artist, a checklist of the exhibition, and biographies of the artists and essayists.

SAN DIEGO MUSEUM OF ART
1450 El Prado, Balboa Park, San Diego, CA

06/11/04

Milton Avery, Knoedler & Company, New York - Onrushing Waves

Milton Avery: Onrushing Waves
Knoedler & Company, New York
November 4, 2004 – January 29, 2005

Knoedler & Company presents Milton Avery: Onrushing Waves. This focused exhibition on Milton Avery and his relationship to the sea includes paintings, both on canvas and paper, spanning the 1920s through the 1950s. Also included are a selection of the artist’s sketchbooks recording trips to California, Massachusetts, Maine and the South of France.

Milton Avery (1885–1965) continuously drew whatever was around him, and developed a working method of turning his sketches into watercolors, and watercolors into canvases. His summer visits to the sea began in the 1920, at the popular artist’s colony of Gloucester, Massachusetts. The earliest work in this exhibition, a watercolor, Rocky Coast, dates from one of those early trips. Milton Avery and his family went to the sea nearly every summer after that, and he constantly drew images of moving water, land, and sky. Milton Avery’s wife, the painter Sally Michel, recalled:
We were followers of the sea. On the beaches of Provincetown, Gloucester and the Gaspé we braved the surf and rocky shore, spending endless hours contemplating the sea … We spent a summer by the Pacific enthralled by the wild surf and the strange rock formations … But it was the sea, alternately black and mysterious or ruddy and gay that expressed the mystery and independence that makes its lure unfathomable. For Milton this was a subject to challenge again and again.
While Milton Avery’s depictions of the sea have been the subject of previous exhibitions, this is the first to focus on his treatment of the sea’s movement and energy in all its permutations.

Milton Avery: Onrushing Waves is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Arthur C. Danto. 

KNOEDLER & COMPANY
19 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021
www.knoedlergallery.com

03/11/04

Jona Frank: High School photographs exhibition at Foley Gallery, New York

Jona Frank:  High School Foley Gallery, New York September 23 -­ November 27, 2004

MICHAEL FOLEY opens Foley Gallery this fall after 15 years of working with notable photography galleries including Fraenkel Gallery, Howard Greenberg Gallery and Yancey Richardson Gallery.  He is on the faculty of the International Center of Photography, New School University and the School of Visual Arts where he teaches and lectures on issues in contemporary photography.

In the spirit of photographer August Sander, JONA FRANK sets out to record the social dynamic of the American public high school by examining the adolescent social experience.  For three years, Jona Frank visited high schools across the United States, exploring the layered cliques, stereotypes and personalities that grow during the social experiment of high school.

Innocent, revealing and fresh, this series of color portraits from High School capture a turbulent period of experimentation and role-playing many teenagers confront as they attempt to find their place in the social landscape.  The range of these expressive uniforms that Frank uncovers, from the Cheerleader to the Chess Clubber to the X-File Fan serve as a microcosm for a society at large.

Through her photographs we discover a revealing search for identity and the battle with conformity.

Jona Frank’s portraits can evoke a sense of the familiar, connecting the viewer with the universal high school experience while evincing the freshness and individuality of today’s teenager.  The result is a perpetual, timeless and oddly recognizable return to high school.

Coinciding with her exhibition, Arenas Street Publishing will release the book of JONA FRANK’s photographs HIGH SCHOOL with a special forward by Gus Van Sant.

FOLEY GALLERY, NYC 
foleygallery.com





30/10/04

Store 'n' Go 5 en 1 de Verbatim : photo, vidéo et plus encore

Nouveauté 2004 : L'appareil compact multifonction Store 'n' Go 5 en 1 de Verbatim

Stockage de données, appareil photo numérique, caméscope numérique, Web Cam et dictaphone, c'est le Store 'n' Go 5 en 1 de Verbatim.

Store 'n' Go 5 en 1 de Verbatim

Dans cet appareil très compact, Verbatim a incorporé un appareil photo numérique qui peut prendre et stocker jusqu’à 3000 photos en 320 x 240 pixels, un caméscope numérique qui peut enregistrer jusqu’à 12 minutes de vidéo  en 640 x 480 pixels à 30 images par seconde. Le 5 en 1 peut aussi servir de Web Cam et enregistrer jusqu’à 112 minutes de voix. Grâce à sa connexion USB le 5 in 1 Store 'n' Go de Verbatim se branche sur tout ordinateur.

25/10/04

Agfa Gevaert - Agfaphoto

La division Consumer Imaging (photo argentique et numérique) quitte Agfa-Gevaert et prend un nouveau départ avec AgfaPhoto

L'ancienne division photo d'Agfa-Gevaert renaît sous un nouveau jour, AgfaPhoto. Ainsi, dès le 1er novembre 2004, la division Consumer Imaging (C.I.), qui comprend les pellicules et les équipements de laboratoires photo, sera définitivement séparée du groupe Agfa-Gevaert, et formera une nouvelle société indépendante opérant sous le nom d'"AgfaPhoto".
Basée à Leverkusen (en Allemagne), la nouvelle structure mondiale aura pour Président Directeur Général, Eddy Rottie. Quant à Agfaphoto France, elle sera dirigée par Serge Carbonne, actuellement directeur de la division Consumer Imaging. La nouvelle société restera basée pour le moment à Rueil-Malmaison, en région parisienne, louant locaux et services à Agfa.

Agfaphoto a déjà donné le ton lors du salon Photokina (en Allemagne), il ne s'agit pas d'abandonner le film argentique ; Agfaphoto entend rester l'un des principaux producteurs de pellicules. Quant au numérique, il restera plus que jamais au cœur des préoccupations d'AgfaPhoto.

Pour preuve, les produits phare seront des cartes mémoire pour appareils photo numériques, le nouvel équipement de laboratoire numérique, d-lab.1s doté de la fonction a-REDC (correction automatique des yeux rouges), le kiosque permettant de recevoir et d'imprimer des images provenant de téléphones mobiles avec option photo, ainsi que de nouvelles solutions d’e-commerce. AgfaPhoto lance également de nouveaux films car la photographie argentique reste un segment important du marché de l'imagerie, le parc d'appareils photo classiques étant très étendu.

- Présentation de la société AgfaPhoto
AgfaPhoto est une société privée qui appartient à la direction du Consumer Imaging (25% sous forme de MBO), à la holding d’investissement NannO Beteiligungsholding (55%) ainsi qu’à deux actionnaires minoritaires, Abrams Capital (10%) et Highfields Capital (10%), tous deux investisseurs institutionnels basés aux Etats-Unis.

La nouvelle société reprend la totalité des activités C.I., à savoir : les films, le papier, la chimie, les équipements de laboratoire et le service. Elle continuera par conséquent de servir tous les clients et marchés photo à l’échelle mondiale.

Les investisseurs et l’ensemble de l’équipe d’AgfaPhoto auront un but commun : le développement profitable d’AgfaPhoto en tant que société majeure dans l’industrie photographique. Dotée d’une solide assise financière (300 millions d’Euros de capitaux propres, soit un ratio de 40%), AgfaPhoto sera gérée avec un maximum de flexibilité pour s’adapter à un marché en évolution rapide et faire face aux nouveaux marchés.

Agfa a conclu un accord de licence en vertu duquel AgfaPhoto pourra utiliser la marque Agfa pour la commercialisation des produits grand public photo pendant une durée illimitée. Au plus tard 18 mois après la séparation, le lancement de la marque AgfaPhoto aura lieu pour les produits de finishing (papier, chimie) et l’équipement de laboratoire.

- Des solutions innovantes dédiées à la photographie argentique et numérique
Qu’il s’agisse de photos prises avec un appareil photo argentique, avec un numérique ou un téléphone mobile équipé d’un appareil photo : les tirages papier peuvent être réalisés à partir de n’importe quel support. Soit localement via un minilab, soit dans un laboratoire industriel de production.
Le produit clé d’AgfaPhoto pour le traitement sur site est le d-lab1, un minilab numérique tout-en-un. Lancé sur le marché au printemps 2004, il a rapidement pris la tête de la famille des minilabs Agfa. Mais les minilabs de moyenne et haut de gamme, respectivement le d-lab.2 et le d-lab.2plus, ont également connu des modifications et sont maintenant commercialisés en version « select ». Pour tous les minilabs, la nouveauté réside dans la fonction a-REDC de correction automatique des "yeux rouges".
Le produit phare de cette fin d'année est le kiosque, système qui permet de tirer instantanément et en libre-service des photos numériques sur papier à sublimation thermique.
Etant donné le nombre de tireuses haut débit installées, AgfaPhoto est le N°1 mondial du marché des industriels de la production. Le d-ws, conçu pour une capacité de 20 000 tirages à l’heure, sera également équipé de la solution a-REDC.

Les services Internet, tels que le service de tirages en ligne, l'Agfanet Print Service, et l’Album Web deviennent de plus en plus importants. AgfaPhoto suivra cette tendance et présentera des versions entièrement remodelées de ses services.

Le marché du film étant toujours un marché très important, AgfaPhoto n'a pas fini d'améliorer ses produits et ses nouveaux films photo Vista dotés de la technologie Eye Vision 3.0 en sont la preuve. Ces nouveaux films sont également intégrés dans les nouveaux prêts-à-photographier – un segment de marché qui enregistre encore de forts taux de croissance au niveau international et qui sera développé par la nouvelle entité.

Compte tenu de l’explosion du marché des appareils photo numériques, les cartes mémoires sont également en forte croissance. Leur fonction est très proche de celle d'un film. C’est donc en toute logique que l'un des premiers fabricants de films se lance sur ce marché, avec une gamme de produits adaptés aux différents groupes d’utilisateurs et d’appareils photo. Dans ce contexte, AgfaPhoto fondera sa stratégie marketing sur son expertise acquise dans la photographie argentique : ces supports de stockage numériques seront commercialisés sous le nom de "Agfa Digital Film".

- L’accent sera mis sur les systèmes de production de tirages
Les solutions de tirages sur papier d’images analogiques et numériques seront également au cœur des préoccupations d’AgfaPhoto – car les consommateurs ne souhaitent pas abandonner les tirages papier. Les tendances du marché le confirment : le nombre d’images numériques tirées sur du papier photo augmente beaucoup plus vite que les ventes d’appareils photo numériques elles-mêmes.

La photographie numérique est désormais un marché de masse. En conséquence, elle a atteint le grand public qui ne veut pas seulement stocker ses photos sous forme numérique, mais aussi avoir entre les mains de vrais tirages et peut-être les mettre dans un album. C’est pour cette raison que le laboratoire photo offre non seulement des tirages d'excellente qualité, à un coût nettement moins élevé que celui des tirages sur imprimante à domicile. De plus, des tirages sur papier photo garantissent la possibilité de regarder ses images des années et des années plus tard.
Après tout, du fait du rythme rapide de développement du marché de l’électronique, ceux qui ne font que sauvegarder leurs photos sous forme de fichier numérique courent le risque que le matériel et les logiciels nécessaires à leur visionnage ne soient plus disponibles dans dix, vingt ans ou plus. Quel PC actuel est-il encore capable de lire les données enregistrées dans les années 80’ et 90’ ?

22/10/04

Samsung SCH-S250 : 5-Megapixel Camera Phone

SAMSUNG Introduces World’s First 5-Megapixel Camera Phone : the SCH-S250


Samsung S250
Samsung S250
(c) Samsung


Samsung Electronics unveils the world's first mobile phone (model: SCH-S250) equipped with a 5-megapixel camera. Just one year after the introduction of its first 1-megapixel camera phone and 3 months after its first 3.2-megapixel camera phone, Samsung proves its technological prowess again with this revolutionary product.

The CCD (charge-coupled device) camera and high-sensitivity flash allow the user to take the same quality pictures one gets from a top-end digital camera. Similar to Samsung's premium grade camera phones, the S250 can also function as a camcorder. The 92MB onboard memory can store up to 100 minutes of video (320x240), and a 32MB auxiliary memory is included as a standard feature. The shutter speed is as fast as 1/1,000 th of a second, allowing the user to film beautiful landscapes as well as subjects as close as 10 cm. The S250 can be connected to a TV to display video during shooting or to show footage that has already been recorded in the mobile phone.

The S250 comes with a unique “stretch” design, reminiscent of the futuristic phones seen in the movie The Matrix . The high-quality camera lens and LCD remain covered and protected when the phone is closed, and when it is stretched open, the product has the feel of a regular digital camera.

Samsung has also set a new standard in mobile phone display technology. Until now, mobile phones had been equipped with LCDs capable of 262,000-color resolution. The S250 boasts a QVGA TFD-LCD (Thin Film Diode-Liquid Crystal Display) that has previously been adapted only for top-end TVs and desktop monitors. The display can reproduce 16 million colors, over 60 times the color compared to existing mobile phone displays, all the hues found in nature; thus, QVGA resolution has been referred to as “true color.”

Samsung has also taken voice recognition to a higher level by introducing text-to-speech (TTS) conversion. Now the user can listen to incoming text messages or the prepared “to-do” list rather than having to read them.

The S250 supports high-image-quality games and 3D sound effects. If a call is received in the middle of a game, the user can restore the game later and resume play.

Other advanced functions in the S250 include an MP3 player, mobile banking capability and 64-polyphonic sound.

According to President & CEO Kitae Lee of the Samsung Electronics, “Our development of a 5-megapixel camera phone will elevate the competitiveness of the Korean mobile phone industry. At the same time, I would like to see our technological advances contribute to the growth of the global mobile phone industry and create a more convenient way of life.”

President Lee adds, “It's very important to lead the trends through continuous introductions of innovative new products. Samsung Electronics possesses the world's leading technologies and state-of-the-art design capabilities, and we are committed to developing distinctive products for our customers.”

Samsung cooperated with the Japan-based Asahi Pentax, one of the most respected camera lens providers in the world, to develop a camera module customized for the mobile phone. This partnership began in the first-half of 2003.

The SCH-S250 will be available in the Korean market this October.

www.samsung.com

20/10/04

Expositions Culture Design, Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris

Culture Design 
Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris
20 octobre 2004 - 16 janvier 2005

Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, ministre de la culture et de la communication, a inauguré mardi 19 octobre 2004, l’exposition Culture design, qui présente, pour la première fois à Paris, plus de 2000 objets des collections publiques.

En présence de nombreux désigners, (François Bauchet, Matali Crasset, Frédéric Ruyant, Robert Stadler etc.), le Ministre a rappelé que « le design occupe un espace considérable dans le champ de la création contemporaine. Le dynamisme et la qualité des designers qui vivent et travaillent dans notre pays, la vitalité de ceux qui, éditeurs, entreprises, marchands, oeuvrent à sa diffusion et à sa rencontre avec le public, confèrent à la France, en la matière, une position de choix sur la scène internationale ».

C’est de la volonté de donner au plus grand nombre les références, les outils nécessaires à la connaissance et à la compréhension de ce champ de la création contemporaine qu’a procédé la conception cette manifestation.

Cet événement, conçu comme un diptyque réunit deux expositions :

    - Design en stock, 2000 objets du Fonds national d’art contemporain (FNAC)
    - Mobilier national : 40 ans de création

          -  Design en stock rend compte de la diversité de la collection du FNAC, riche de plus de 5000 objets de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, ce qui la situe au tout premier rang des collections contemporaines. Elle regroupe des objets principalement destinés à l’habitat domestique, parmi lesquels le public reconnaîtra, des objets familiers. Les objets sélectionnés sont identifiés et classés en 13 zones selon la rigueur pragmatique d’un inventaire : designers, éditeurs, datations, types, matériaux et techniques, nationalités, dimensions, ensembles, stades de production, lieux de fabrication, tirages, couleurs, nombres d’éléments. Elles offrent autant de points de vue différents sur les objets et sur la collection. Ce classement a été traduit par une scénographie originale, imaginée par Konstantin Grcic, designer allemand, permettant au visiteur de découvrir l’exposition depuis des passerelles métalliques surplombant les 2000 objets.

          -  Mobilier national : 40 ans de création (1964-2004) réunit une centaine de pièces uniques réalisées depuis 40 ans par une cinquantaine de créateurs au sein de l'Atelier de Recherche et de Création du Mobilier national. Depuis sa création, l'ARC est le laboratoire où s'exerce une intense activité de recherche et de création sur les formes, les matériaux et les techniques. Vingt ans après l'exposition bilan Mobilier national : 20 ans de création présentée en 1984 au Centre Georges Pompidou, cette exposition est notamment l'occasion de mesurer, la contribution de l'atelier au renouveau voulu par les présidents Pompidou ou Mitterrand dans les décors de l'Elysée, en liaison avec des créateurs tels que Pierre Paulin, Olivier Mourgue, César, Jean-Michel Wilmotte, Etienne Hajdu, Andrée Putman …; c’est aussi l'occasion de découvrir les pièces les plus récentes, inédites, crées ces dernières années ou achevées en 2004.

15/10/04

Chun Liao at Barrett Marsden Gallery, London

Chun Liao
Barrett Marsden Gallery, London
15 October - 13 November 2004

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1998, Chun Liao has won wide critical acclaim for her exquisite porcelain pots. These are informed by her research into ancient Chinese porcelain bodies and glazes, knowledge she transforms and extends to produce distinctive, contemporary form.

The tapering shapes are finely thrown and finished in a single glaze colour. Chun Liao has recently chosen to restrict her palette to a clear glaze, either used alone, or stained black or with copper carbonate, but she encourages subtle variations of tone and texture through the density of their application and by differing temperature settings of the kiln. Other decorative details are similarly understated, such as where the thin rims of the pots are left delicately ragged, or where tiny rods of applied silver wire descend deep into a wall during the firing process, melting to leave a green coloured trace.

The new body of work is intimate in scale, varying from barely 1cm to 7cms in height. Chun Liao‘s approach is deceptively simple - to throw pots this size demands an extraordinary degree of skill, with the smallest requiring the clay to be steadied on the wheel and pulled up using only the ring or little fingers. Their diminutive scale serves to magnify the characteristics of each form. It underscores their preciousness and calls attention to their seemingly endless range of subtle nuances.

CHUN LIAO was born in Taiwan in 1969 and came to Britain in the early 1990s. She trained in ceramics at Brighton College of Technology, Bath Spa University and the Royal College of Art. Her work has been widely exhibited in the UK, the Netherlands, USA and China and is included in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Crafts Council, London.

BARRETT MARSDEN GALLERY
17-18 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DN
www.bmgallery.co.uk

Hans-Peter Feldmann: 100 Years, P.S.1, Long Island City, NY

Hans-Peter Feldmann: 100 Years
P.S.1, Long Island City, NY
October 15, 2004 - February 21, 2005

P.S.1 presents German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann’s (b. 1941) 100 Years (2001), a monumental series of 101 photographic portraits of people aged 8 months to 100 years old. Comprised of images of the artist's family members, friends, and acquaintances, the series draws out a chronology of human life within which viewers can situate themselves, glimpsing past, present, and future. 100 Years, building on Feldmann’s interest in the concept of the archive, foregrounds both individual and collective memories and imaginations, functioning as the artist’s personal database as well as an accessible exploration of the cycle of life.

Hans-Peter Feldmann entered the art world in the late 1960s, when he began to construct and exhibit editions of small booklets containing found images such as postcards, magazine clippings and posters. These images constituted part of Feldmann’s massive “picture archive,” an assortment of images categorized according to the artist’s own system. In the event that a part of the archive was incomplete (an image was missing), Feldmann would capture this image via his own photography. Using image reproduction, photography or otherwise, as a means to illuminate the mysteries of daily life, he consistently gives credence to under-recognized art forms such as the photo album, never underestimating the power of the most “common” aesthetic strategies.

Hans-Peter Feldmann (b. Germany, 1941) lives and works in Dusseldorf. He has had numerous solo exhibitions since the early 1970s, including various shows at Galerie Paul Maenz in Koln, Germany, Galleria Sperone in Turin, Italy, and Kunstraum Munchen, Munchen, Germany. More recently he has shown at the Guggenheim Museum Soho, New York (1993), 303 Gallery, New York (1992, 1996, 2000), and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (2003). His work also appeared in documenta 5 and documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany (1972, 1976), do it, curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist in Ritter Klagenfurt, Austria (1994), Big Brown Bag at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York, NY (2002), Utopia Station, curated by Molly Nesbit, Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Rikrit Tiravanija at the 2003 Venice Biennale, and The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography, 1960-1982 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This exhibition is organized by P.S.1 Chief Curator Klaus Biesenbach.

P.S.1
www.ps1.org

14/10/04

Aquisition de Jasc Software par Corel

Corel Corporation élargit son portefeuille de produits graphiques
Corel a annoncé l’acquisition de Jasc Software, éditeur de Paint Shop, une famille d’applications d’édition photo et d’images numériques. Étape clé dans la mise en oeuvre de sa stratégie, cette acquisition s’ajoute à quatre trimestres consécutifs de résultats positifs et à la refonte complète des activités depuis qu’elle est devenue une société à capitaux fermés en août 2003. De sa position renforcée sur le marché des applications bureautiques et graphiques, Corel pourra désormais offrir à ses clients, dénombrés à plus de 60 millions dans le monde entier, un portefeuille élargi de produits novateurs et spécialisés — édition photo, conception graphique, illustration vectorielle, illustration technique — sans oublier son produit renommé WordPerfect. La transaction devrait être finalisée officiellement d’ici fin octobre 2004.
Corel aura toujours son siège social à Ottawa (Canada) et continuera à exploiter l’établissement à Minneapolis, où Jasc développe Paint Shop. Amish Mehta restera à la tête de la société et plusieurs dirigeants de Jasc se joindront à l’équipe Corel.
Corel entend offrir Paint Shop Pro, Paint Shop Pro Studio et Paint Shop Photo Album sous forme de produits autonomes et continuera à fournir à l’échelle mondiale des services d’assistance sous sa propre bannière. De plus, elle appuiera activement les nouvelles initiatives en recherche et développement destinées à pérenniser la gamme Paint Shop et à garantir la réussite commerciale de la prochaine génération de produits.
En août 2003, Corel a été acquise par Vector Capital Group, une société de capital-risque basée à San Francisco et gérant actuellement plus de 500 millions de dollars en capital. Depuis, Corel a mis en oeuvre une stratégie produit et commerciale bien définie, laquelle consiste à revaloriser les produits les mieux implantés, soit WordPerfect Office, la Suite graphique CorelDRAW et Corel Painter, et à rationaliser ses activités et sa gamme de produits. Forte du soutien de Vector et de cette nouvelle acquisition, qui n’en est que la première, Corel est sans doute en passe de connaître un nouvel essor.
Développant son offre de produits prisés par des millions d’utilisateurs en raison de leur bon rapport qualité-prix, et à laquelle s’ajoute la famille Paint Shop, Corel entend conquérir des parts de marché dans deux secteurs clés, entreprises et grand public, où débutants et professionnels bénéficient désormais de solutions complètes, qu’il s’agisse simplement d’organiser ou de partager des photos, de retoucher et d’enrichir des images ou encore de créer et de modifier des graphismes complexes.
Corel accroît sa visibilité sur le marché porteur des applications numériques
« L’acquisition de Jasc nous permet de pénétrer le marché des logiciels de traitement d’images, un des secteurs clés visés par notre stratégie de croissance » a déclaré Amish Mehta. « La famille Paint Shop apporte d’excellents produits d’entrée de gamme qui permettront à Corel d’acquérir des millions de nouveaux clients. À long terme, nous gagnerons la fidélité de ceux qui achètent régulièrement des logiciels d’édition de photo numérique, un segment du marché actuellement en plein essor ».
Selon InfoTrends/CAP Ventures, les appareils photo numériques se généralisent et, à l’échelle mondiale, le marché devrait croître de près de 20 p. 100 (TCAC), soit la vente de plus de 100 millions d’appareils en 2008 par rapport aux 45 millions vendus en 2003. Une enquête conduite récemment par InfoTrends/CAP Ventures révèle également que 55 p. 100 des propriétaires d’appareils numériques achètent des logiciels complémentaires pour gérer et améliorer leurs photos numériques.
La famille Paint Shop, dont les produits phares sont Paint Shop Pro, Paint Shop Pro Studio et Paint Shop Photo Album, est non seulement réputée pour ses innovations, mais aussi pour la qualité de l’expérience numérique qu’elle procure aux utilisateurs de tous niveaux, du débutant au professionnel. « Bien connue du public, la famille de produits Paint Shop s’ajoute naturellement au portefeuille Corel et y apporte des gains d’efficacité », poursuit Amish Mehta. « Comme Corel, Jasc a toujours mis sur le marché des solutions graphiques novatrices, fiables, faciles d’emploi et économiques à tous égards. Cette acquisition témoigne donc de notre volonté d’élargir notre gamme de produits et de croître notre clientèle souhaitant bénéficier du meilleur rapport qualité-prix. »
Développer la clientèle au travers du réseau de distribution mondiale
Prises ensemble, Corel et Jasc disposent d’un important réseau de distribution mondiale qui, s’appuyant sur les nouvelles synergies, leur fera conquérir de nouvelles parts de marché. Ce réseau comprend plus de 5 000 revendeurs VAR et de grands détaillants implantés dans 75 pays.
En outre, Corel et Jasc ont réussi à conclure avec plusieurs acteurs majeurs, dont DELL Computer et Wacom, des partenariats OEM importants. Ces contrats OEM continueront à se développer et conforteront la position de Corel sur un marché à forte croissance.
Stratégie de croissance axée sur des profits record et des orientations décidées
Cette année, Corel a réalisé des profits records et enregistre sur toute sa gamme de produits des taux de croissance appréciables. En acquérant la famille de produits Paint Shop, la société est positionnée pour profiter de la progression du marché des applications d’édition de photo et d’images numériques.
« Cette fusion porte toutes les marques d’une très bonne affaire, parce que les deux sociétés ont besoin de ce que l’une et l’autre avaient à offrir », explique Rob Enderle, analyste principal chez Enderle Group. « Corel possède une solide marque internationale et des produits bien tournés vers les photographes numériques professionnels, mais elle avait besoin de produits d’entrée de gamme tout aussi solides que ceux de Jasc pour accroître sa clientèle. Inversement, Jasc avait besoin de la force d’action d’une marque internationale et un ensemble de produits robustes pour élargir sa base de clients. C’est maintenant chose faite, et les deux sociétés pourront désormais offrir à la fois aux entreprises et au grand public un choix de produits qui séduiront autant par leur fiabilité que par leurs prix compétitifs. »
A propos de Jasc Software
Grand éditeur de logiciels de photographie et d’imagerie numériques, Jasc offre une famille de produits de premier choix dont Paint Shop Pro, Paint Shop Pro Studio et Paint Shop Photo Album. Conçus pour débutants et professionnels, ces produits enrichissent l’expérience numérique des utilisateurs en les invitant à se découvrir de nouvelles possibilités d’évolution. Les produits Jasc s’utilisent sous Windows, et leur convivialité, conjuguée avec l’assistance dont ils bénéficient, en fait une solution abordable.
A propos de Corel
Réputée pour ses produits graphiques et bureautiques, surtout la Suite graphique CorelDRAW, WordPerfect Office et Corel Painter, une application de peinture et d’illustration Natural-Media, Corel Corporation propose des solutions novatrices prisées par des millions d’utilisateurs dans plus 75 pays, en raison de leur excellent rapport qualité-prix et des gains de productivité qu’elles permettent. En août 2003, Corel est reprise par Vector Capital Group, société de capital-risque basée à San Francisco, et, depuis lors, a enregistré des profits record et des taux de croissance sur toute sa gamme de produits. Corel est, depuis sa création en 1985, basée à Ottawa, au Canada. Pour en savoir plus, vous pouvez consulter son site internet : www.corel.com

Andrew Wyeth Retrospective at Philadelphia Museum of Art

Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic
Philadelphia Museum of Art
March - July 2006

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, in partnership with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, will present Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic , a retrospective that surveys seven decades of the artist’s achievement. The exhibition will be seen in Atlanta (November 2005-January 2006) before coming to Philadelphia, where it will be on view from March until July 2006.

Anne d’Harnoncourt, Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, said: "Wyeth’s art grew out of his boyhood experiences both in the Brandywine Valley near Philadelphia and on the coast of Maine, and his intensely personal vision has been etched in the American national consciousness for at least half a century. While many of his landscapes and interior views seem familiar to those of us who live in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Wyeth’s work is ultimately elusive and enigmatic in its meaning. We hope this exhibition will provide a deeper understanding of his contribution to American art."

John Wilmerding, the Christopher Binyon Sarofim Professor of American Art at Princeton University and Senior Advisor to the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is preparing an introduction to the scholarly volume that accompanies the exhibition. He noted: "As we reexamine the full range of Andrew Wyeth’s art, from landscape to figure subjects, we intend to show the various ways in which his creativity has transformed the ordinary and familiar."

Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic will present about 100 tempera paintings, watercolors, and drawings from the 1930s to the present. It will explore in depth Wyeth’s frequently unadorned and often haunting images—ranging from meditative, softly lighted vessels and containers to scenes of stark rooms, windows with curtains lifted in the breeze, barren hills, and people lost in deep introspection.

The exhibition is organized by the High Museum, Atlanta with the collaboration of the Wyeth family and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The curatorial team for Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic includes guest curator Ann Knutson for the High Museum of Art, and, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Kathleen L. Foster, the Robert L. McNeil Curator of American Art, and Michael Taylor, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art.

Catalogue
In the fully illustrated catalogue, published by the High Museum of Art, guest curator Anne Knutson will explore the central role of objects in Wyeth’s art and situate these works in the larger context of American art. Kathleen Foster will discuss the artist’s tempera painting Ground Hog Day (1959) in terms of its meaning and technique and related works in tempera, watercolor, and drawing; and Michael Taylor will write about Wyeth’s relationship to currents in Realism and Surrealism in the 1930s and 1940s. Christopher Crosman, the Director of the Farnsworth Art Museum, will examine the role of Betsy Wyeth in the artist’s life and art.

About Andrew Wyeth
Born in 1917 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, southwest of Philadelphia, Andrew Wyeth is one of America’s most highly regarded living artists. The youngest of five children, Wyeth received his artistic training from his father—the famed illustrator Newell Convers (N.C.) Wyeth. During annual vacations in Maine, Andrew Wyeth explored watercolor and tempera; both would become signature mediums for his work. Subject matter for Wyeth’s painting and drawing came primarily from his surroundings in Pennsylvania and Maine. In 1939, Wyeth married Betsy James and they had two sons, Nicholas and James (Jamie). Jamie Wyeth, a much-exhibited painter and watercolorist, is the third-generation artist in the family.

In 1936, at the age of 19, Andrew Wyeth held his first solo exhibition, at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. In 1963, President Kennedy awarded Wyeth the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the first visual artist to be honored with the nation's highest civilian award. Opened in 1971, the Brandywine River Museum, in Chadds Ford, Pa., became closely associated with the Wyeth family and is among the largest repositories of the Wyeth artists’ work. In 1990, Andrew Wyeth was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, again the first artist to receive this honor.

Andrew Wyeth at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
In 1959, the Philadelphia Museum of Art acquired Ground Hog Day (1959), one of Wyeth’s best-known tempera paintings, in which pale sunlight rakes across a windowsill and strikes the flowered golden wallpaper of a kitchen in the Kuerner farm, Chadds Ford, where a table is set for one. The Museum has since added to its collections other important works by Wyeth, including Cooling Shed (1953), acquired in 1998, and the early tempera Public Sale (1943), acquired in 2001. Both were included in the exhibition celebrating the Museum’s 125th anniversary in 2002. These three works are currently on view in Gallery 119 of the American Wing.

Philadelphia Museum of Art
www.philamuseum.org