Georges Braque: Pioneer of Modernism – Exhibition at Aquavella Galleries, NYC

Georges Braque: Pioneer of Modernism
Acquavella Galleries, New York
Through November 30, 2011

GEORGES BRAQUE: PIONEER OF MODERNISM, a retrospective of seminal paintings curated by Dieter Buchhart, is on view at Acquavella Galleries in New York. The exhibition include over forty major paintings and papiers collés by the artist, all on loan from prestigious international public and private collections. The exhibition marks the first major Braque retrospective in the United States since the Guggenheim Museum’s celebrated exhibition in 1988.

Best known as the co-founder of Cubism with Pablo Picasso* and as the inventor of the papier collé technique, Georges Braque’s legacy is better understood in the context of his lasting influence on artists for the past century. “The purpose of this retrospective is to present the artist not only as the cocreator of Fauvism and Cubism but also as a profoundly passionate, progressive and influential painter all the years of his life, well beyond his early triumphs,” explained William Acquavella.

As a young man, Georges Braque was a leading member of the Fauves, together with Henri Matisse, André Dérain, and Maurice de Vlaminck, before being inspired by the structured compositions of Paul Cézanne. This adherence to structure would guide Braque for the remainder of his career, especially during his close six-year collaboration with Picasso.

Together, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso invented a new aesthetic by portraying their subjects from multiple vantage points. They created a new pictorial world in which an object was deconstructed and then reconstructed on the basis of geometric criteria. They used forms that resembled geometric cubes, leading art critic Louis Vauxcelles to assign the name “Cubism” to the new movement. Still lifes became Braque’s preferred vehicle for innovation, and he was celebrated for instilling the most everyday objects with a profound spirituality usually reserved for devotional painting. Georges Braque described his fascination with the genre, “A lemon and an orange side by side cease to be a lemon and an orange and become fruit. The mathematicians follow this law; so do we.” In addition to fruit, other familiar objects such as tobacco pouches and musical instruments became frequent sources of inspiration.

At seventy-nine, Georges Braque became the first living artist to be accorded a solo exhibition at The Louvre museum and was awarded state honors at his funeral in 1963. His work is held in the permanent collections of the world’s foremost museums including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Collection, London; The Albertina, Vienna; The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Kunsthaus Zurich; The Phillips Collection, Washington DC; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; many of whom have loaned work for the exhibition.

Georges Braque: Pioneer of Modernism, Exhibition catalogue, 2011
Photo © and Courtesy Acquavella Galleries, New York

Georges Braque: Pioneer of Modernism is accompanied by a 160 page hardcover catalogue which will include essays by Dieter Buchhart, Isabelle Monod-Fontaine and Richard Shiff.

ACQUAVELLA GALLERIES, NEW YORK, NY
www.acquavellagalleries.com

Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910-1912 is on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art through January 8, 2012

Andrea Bowers @ Andrew Kreps Gallery, NYC - The New Woman’s Survival Guide

Andrea Bowers: The New Woman’s Survival Guide
Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
October 29 – December 17, 2011

The Andrew Kreps Gallery presents Andrea Bowers’ second exhibition at the gallery entitled, The New Woman’s Survival Guide.  Consisting of drawings layered over wallpaper made up of handbills and protest signs collected by the artist, the show contrasts previous tropes of feminism with current ones.

The show’s title and subject matter uses this 1973 feminist zine as its nexus and impetus to consider the evolution of women’s issues and feminist activism today.  The original publication’s intent was to catalogue and document activities aimed explicitly at developing an alternative woman’s culture.  The original DIY book served as an encyclopedic collection of women’s organizations and services that existed throughout the United States during the second wave of feminism in the early seventies.  The artist’s discovery of the New Woman’s Survival Guide led Bowers through a process of questioning and investigating the progression and possibility of an alternative woman’s culture almost 40 years after the this tome was published.   

The exhibition continues her use of archival strategies in art making, which includes drawing, photography and graphic materials.  Bower’s belief in the importance of the partnership between art and politics is at the forefront of this exhibition and she celebrates a 40-year history of feminist political graphics highlighting specific images as homage or political focal points creating moments of humor, celebration, memorialization and rage. Twenty drawings hang on a huge wall installation, made of contemporary political placards and graphics combined with reproductions of the 1973 zine.  All the contemporary political graphics were collected by the artist through donations to feminist organizations like Planned Parenthood, NOW, NARAL, Radical Women, 9to5, Codepink, Another Mother For Peace, etc. 

The drawings comprise three bodies of work: text drawings, figurative drawings, and black and white feminist graphic drawings.  The text drawings, Make My Story Count are hand-drawn copies of letters written recently to Planned Parenthood by women in the Los Angeles area expressing their appreciation for the organization’s invaluable healthcare services.  The figurative drawings use as their source photos taken by the artist at 2011 May Day March in Los Angeles.  All of the drawings are of women and reflect the complexities of gender, race and global migration that must be confronted in today’s woman’s movement.  The graphite black and white drawings appropriate graphics from the 1970’s but become playful and contemplative 40 years later. 

By juxtaposing the historical and contemporary tropes of activism the artist foregrounds not only the trajectory and evolution of the feminist dialogue, but also it’s difficulties maintaining pertinence and purity in an ever-growing complex political environment.

A percentage of sales from the exhibition will be donated to Planned Parenthood Los Angeles.

Andrea Bowers received her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in 1992. Solo exhibitions include: Secession, Vienna, Austria; REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; and the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Sammlung Goetz, Seedamm Kulturzentrum, Switzerland; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst; Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL.

ANDREW KREPS GALLERY
525 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
andrewkreps.com

Tokujin Yoshioka: Waterfall, SCAF Sydney – A major exhibition on view in Australia

Tokujin Yoshioka: Waterfall
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation  SCAF, Sydney, Through 17 December, 2011

TOKUJIN YOSHIOKA: Waterfall is a major solo exhibition developed by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF). This exhibition is exclusive to Sydney. Waterfall explores the work of endlessly inventive Japanese artist Tokujin Yoshioka. Known for the simplicity and ingenuity of his concepts and holistic approach to design, Tokujin Yoshioka’s interdisciplinary practice has garnered him much attention since founding his eponymous studio in Tokyo in 2000. Tokujin Yoshioka experiments with a sophisticated play of materials and shapes using his art as a means of communicating something fascinating, surprising, joyful and unexpected. SCAF has invited Tokujin to create an extraordinary installation, transforming the gallery space and giving Australian audiences the opportunity to view the work of this influential contemporary artist.

TOKUJIN YOSHIOKA
Waterfall, 2005
Courtesy and © Tokujin Yoshioka. Courtesy of SCAF, Sydney.

Born in Japan in 1967, Tokujin Yoshioka’s professional career is rooted in the fruitful collaboration with Shiro Kuramata and Issey Miyake. The ten-year association with the renowned fashion designer has produced numerous important projects including Issey Miyake Making Things at the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris (1998). Tokujin Yoshioka has collaborated with various companies inside and outside Japan including Hermès, BMW, Toyota and Swarovski. His works are held in permanent collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Recent exhibitions include Sensing Nature, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2010), and Glasstress 2011, a collateral event of the 54th Venice Biennale. He also directed Second Nature at 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT (2008). Water blocks, optical glass benches designed by Tokujin Yoshioka in 2002, have been permanently installed at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, in the Impressionist gallery where masterpieces of Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir are displayed (Orsay museum reopened after renovation on October 20, 2011). This is the artist’s first visit to Australia.

An exhibition catalogue is published on the occasion of Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka’s inaugural Australian exhibition at Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. Authors: Gene Sherman, AM, Chair and Executive Director of SCAF - Dolla S. Merrillees, General Manager,  Artistic & Educational Programmes, SCAF - Mami Kataoka, Chief curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, and International Associate Curator, Hayward Gallery, London. Published by Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, 2011, 96 pages, 220 x 155 mm, full colour, hardback with dust jacket.

Tokujin Yoshioka: Waterfall is supported by Japan Foundation, SPACE Furniture and Nelson Meers Foundation.

Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation
Sydney NSW 2021 Australia
www.sherman-scaf.org.au 

Tokujin Yoshioka website: www.tokujin.com

Chen Jiagang: Abandoned Fable. A retrospective exhibition at Han Art Gallery, Montreal, Québec

Chen Jiagang Retrospective: Abandoned Fable, Han Art Gallery, Montreal (Westmount), Québec, November 4 - December 3, 2011
 

CHEN JIAGANG was born in 1962 in Chongqing, Sichuan, China. The artist lives and works in Beijing. Han Art Gallery in Westmount (Québec) presents a retrospective exhibition featuring fifteen photographic works by Chen Jiagang. As one of today’s most renowned Chinese contemporary artists, Chen Jiagang is featured at the 12th Annual Toronto International Art Fair (TIAF 2011) through October 31, 2011 before his debut at Han Art Gallery.  Abandoned Fable opens on November 4th and concludes on December 3rd, 2011 

CHEN JIAGANG, Bridges, 2008. Photograph from The Great Third Front series. Courtesy and ©2008 Chen Jiagang. Courtesy  Han Art Gallery, Montreal

Chen Jiagang is a distinctive contemporary artist who consistently weaves a phenomenal historical analogue into his imagery.  In allowing time itself to disappear from space, Chen Jiagang composes a visual language full of complexity and contradiction that adds to this historical contemporary fable - a spatial narratology and an art form that relies on the cultural inheritance. His works narrate the impact of power and politics on environment, human inhabitation, gender balance and family development - all social perspectives that are systematically disseminated into the peoples’ spiritual realm of senses.  The artist utilizes language between certainty and uncertainty to rebel against dogmatic mainstream perspectives in a society where images are becoming increasingly standardized, to discard with the trend of commercialization in art, and to obtain independence with direction.   

In the past few years, the artist made many trips to the factories, mines and small villages in the mountains and in the valleys of Yuanan, Guizhou and Sichuan.  These provinces in particular, which once served as a strategic epicenter of industry in the 1960s determined by Chinese national politics, now find themselves in a vastly different circumstance. 

Trained as an architectural designer, Chen Jiagang regards memories as the most authentic source in human life and believes that images act to preserve these memories.  Aside from bringing to attention intensely social and political issues, his works explore these issues from various perspectives, taking a distanced standpoint to explain history, enabling him to express his aesthetic need on the basis of an intensely personal experience.     

In regards to technique, Chen Jiagang often chooses to capture his images when the sun has just set, immediately after the clouds have emitted the last rays of light and warmth over the deserted and abandoned space.  It is common for him to portray a powerful contrast between subject and space, as demonstrated in his depiction of young women dwarfed by industrial ruins from the past. For example, in one of his works, a woman is portrayed pacing back and forth, seeming reluctant to leave the place she finds herself. Sinking into the darkness and disappearing into her surroundings, the woman is a subtle sign and yet a vibrant creature who breathes life into the remaining walls and majestic ruins filled with traces of the past. The corner store is now deserted, and the path leading towards the space serves only as a football field. These oft-frequented places of the past now remain abandoned and forlorn. Chen Jiagang uses this imagery to compose the bitter sound of a mournful elegy without emitting a single sound. A period which would otherwise be forgotten as history is captured in a moment where people and space observe one another silently with indignation. 

In a country that is presently experiencing one of the highest rates of development in the world, it is not surprising that the works of Chen Jiagang prompts the viewer to question the usefulness and absurdity of this mad race towards development that humanity has been pursuing for decades. His works are deeply entrenched in the new preoccupation of Contemporary Chinese artists, preoccupations that are social, political, and environmental.  As a successful architect and contemporary art collector from the start, Chen Jiagang now exhibits his most recent accomplishments - a monumental photographic product that is entrenched in a powerful aesthetic and conceptually loaded with meaning and inquiry. 

The works of Chen Jiagang have been exhibited in renowned museums and galleries across the globe—including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, and the Art Gallery of Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing.  His works have been consistently purchased by private collectors throughout his career.  Most recently, Chen Jiagang’s works were featured in the Red Flag exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal. A landmark exhibition, Red Flag served as the first show to bring Contemporary Chinese Art and Quebecois aesthetic together under one roof.  During this exhibition, Chen Jiagang’s works were featured alongside some of the most well-known Contemporary Chinese artists, including Gu Wenda, Ai Weiwei, Zhang Huan, Xu Bing, Wang Tiande and the Gao brothers.  

In this retrospective solo exhibition at the Han Art Gallery in Québec, fifteen major works have been selected to showcase the essential and integral value of Chen Jiagang’s creativity in the first several chapters of his career. 

HAN ART GALLERY
Westmount, Québec, Canada  H3Z 1P6www.hanartgallery.com

Young Fashion Photographers Now 2012 Poland

Young Fashion Photographers Now 2012 in Poland take place in the town of Lodz from 27 to 30 October 2011. YFPN 2012 is part of FashionPhilosophy, the Fashion Week Poland

Young Fashion Photographers Now 2012, Lodz, Poland, 27 - 30 October 2011
 Photo MICHAL POLAK, michalpolak.iportfolio.pl

The YOUNG FASHION PHOTOGRAPHERS NOW exhibition accompanies each edition of the OFF Out Of Schedule, the OFF module of Fashion Week Poland . YFPN presents the works of young artists and establishing new trends in photography.

YFPN PARTICIPANTS:

AGATA KACPRZAK
“I study photography in Lodz and try to find a balance between Poland and the abroad. Fashion interests me as an additional element in photography. In my opinion photography equals searching, and searching is what I find meaningful.”

Photo by AGATA KACPRZAK. Courtesy and © the artist

ANTONINA DOLANI
Born in Warsaw in 1989, Antonina Dolani had studied photography in London for 3 years. She actively engages in fashion and beauty photography. The Italian Vogue has named her the rising star of the fashion photography, and her photographs were published in Kmag, Foto, Take me, Umno and many more. She has received numerous awards, i.e. in the competition organised by the Associate of Photographers in London. She currently lives and works in Warsaw.

Photo by ANTONINA DOLANI. Courtesy and © the artist

EWA DANOWSKA
Born in 1987 in Bialystok, Ewa Danowska is a self-taught photographer and head-hunter in the independent photomagazine PRISM. Despite her works being diametrically different from traditional Playboy pictures, she won the Fotoerotica competition in 2010. She looks for magnetic, characteristic faces and charismatic people and is generally inspired by her own dreams and the surrounding world.

Photo by EWA DANOWSKA. Courtesy and © the artist

GREG ADAMSKI
Greg Adamski is an author of numerous fashion and portrait photoshoots, but since he is mainly interested in fashion-related phenomena, he enjoys breaking these. He studied at the ASP in Wroclaw and at the PWSFTViT in Lodz. He works with Jaga Hupalo, Frol&Zalesky, Nenukko, and Alicja Antoszczyk. His last projects include TOUCH (Spot Poznań), KILLS BEAUTY (Jaga Hupało) and NOT SPECIFIED (presented during Fashion Week Poland).

Photo by GREG ADAMSKI. Courtesy and © the artist

KRZYSZTOF ADAMEK
“I was born on the 24th of February 1993. I’am a high school student Poznan, and I have had the pleasure of making Anna Orska’s jewellery campaign. My works have been featured in K-Mag, Exklusiv and VIVA! Moda. I have shown my work at several exhibitions and I cooperate with numerous designers. When taking photographs, I enjoy showing expressiveness and transcience of the present.”

Photo by KRZYSZTOF ADAMEK. Courtesy and © the artist

LUKASZ WIERZBOWSKI
“I am 28 years old and live in Wroclaw. I have taken up photography four years ago, during the third year of my Psychology studies. In my works I focus on the relationship/dialogue between the model and the space she is in. I try to capture the moments, movements, postures suspended in between pictures, moments without posing, weightless. So far my works have appeared in a number of magazines and zines and on the covers of two books. I have also participated in several exhibitions. Last year, my first album was published by the Berlin-based POGO BOOKS. This spring my works were exhibited in Nizio galery in Warsaw.”

Photo by LUKASZ WIERZBOWSKI. Courtesy and © the artist

MARTYNA GALLA
19 years old, Martyna Galla is a student at the PWSFTViT in Lodz. She is represented by Van Dorsen Talents. martynagalla.com

Photo by MARTYNA GALLA. Courtesy and © the artist/Van Dorsen Talents

MICHAL DESKA
Born in Czestochowa, fashion enthusiast and style admirer. Gray eminence as a rule. “I would like to combine fashion and photography and keep getting more experienced, because I am in love with beauty”

Photo by MICHAL DESKA. Courtesy and © the artist.

MICHAL POLAK
Born in 1984, Michal Polak brought up in the suburbs of industrial Łódź.He is an self-taught photographer “who transfers anxieties of a social misfit into photos. “Fascinated with ‘impersonality’ and blurred sexuality”, the artist is also “interested in pretty much everything except politics”.
michalpolak.iportfolio.pl

Photo by MICHAL POLAK. Courtesy and © the artist.

PAULINA WYDRZYNSKA
“I am 18 and I attend the graduating class. I live and breathe photography, I dream of working for prestigious fashion magazines. I am inspired by everything. I don’t have a favourite photographer, but I enjoy the works of Tyszka and Walker.”

Photo by PAULINA WYDRZYNSKA. Courtesy and © the artist.

ZIJA&PIORO
The Photographers duo ZOSIA ZIJA and JACEK PIORO have been together (both privately and professionally) for a couple of years. Portrait, fashion, documentary. They are mainly interested in the human aspect of fashion. As commercial photographers, they work with most of the Polish publishing houses and also publish abroad. Solo and group exhibitions in Warsaw, Pozań, Milan, Castelo Branco, Brussels, Rome, New York, Los Angeles. Awards: 2007: IPA (International Photography Awards, LA) – 1st place in the people category. Apart from being inspired by photography, they name filmmaking and film watching as another source of inspiration. Their works can be found at zija-pioro.com.

Photo by ZIJA & PIORO. Courtesy and © the artists.

Venue: Łódź Special Economic Zone, 22/24 Tymienieckiego Street, Łódź, Poland

Also at Fashion Week Poland:

FASHION AND MOVIE: Fashion Film Festival

Combining fashion and motion pictures is the lastest of all FashionPhilosophy projects. Nowadays, many designers wish to see their projects on the big screen, encouraging film-makers to create avant-garde films featuring their collections. Tomasz Ossolinski cooperated in such project with Magda Wunsche & Samsel, Konrad Parol with Marcin Kempski and Czlowiek Warga, and La Mania designers engaged in a joint project with Xawery Zulawski and Jan Kaczmarek (shown as a part of the Fashion Film Festival). It is worth mentioning here that this phenomenon is popular among people from the film industry, like style icon Tilda Swinton or designer Tom Ford. Motion pictures created by Yves Saint Laurent, Yohji Yamamoto, Kate Moss. Naomi Campbell or Tim Walker have already been screened during A Shaded View Of Fashion Film Festival – a world-famous film festival created in Paris by Diane Pernet. Before Pernet's film festival comes back to FashionPhilosophy in May, Autumn edition FW visitors will have a chance to watch motion pictures selected especially for Fashion Week audience.

FashionPhilosophy: Fashion Week Poland
www.fashionweek.pl

Enrique Martínez Celaya: Schneebett, Miami Art Museum

Enrique Martínez Celaya: Schneebett 
Miami Art Museum
October 14, 2011 - January 1, 2012

Miami Art Museum presents the United States debut of ENRIQUE MARTINEZ CELAYA’s Schneebett, a major installation inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven’s convalescence and death in Vienna, Austria in 1827, originally created for the Berliner Philharmonie. Enrique Martínez Celaya:  Schneebett is on view in the Museum’s Anchor Gallery, a space dedicated to large-scale works from the permanent collection. 

Schneebett, which reflects on and transports the viewer into the final hours of Ludwig van Beethoven’s life, was the first work of art commissioned for and exhibited at the Berliner Philharmonie since its founding in 1882. It was presented in 2004, and was shown in juxtaposition to the music of the Berliner Philharmoniker with special programming at the American Academy in Berlin. Schneebett was presented again in 2006 at the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig where it offered a counterpoint to Max Klinger’s statue of the heroic Beethoven as the creative genius. The title, Schneebett (“Snow-bed”), is from a poem by Holocaust survivor Paul Celan, a meditation on death. To re-animate the spirit of those celebrated exhibitions, Martínez Celaya created a new version of the installation for Miami Art Museum, which opens with a performance of Beethoven’s late quartets by the Miami Symphony Orchestra. A video of the performance will be on view for the duration of the exhibition. 

The three-part installation conveys Beethoven’s final moments in Vienna, far away from his native Bonn. In one room is a bronze bed, its surface covered in a thick layer of frost created by an elaborate compressor system. Behind it is a large tar-and-feather painting of a dense, snow-covered forest. The entry to the room is blocked by a pile of sticks and branches. On the other side of the blocked doorway is an “ante-chamber” with a solitary chair from which a viewer can peer into the inaccessible “bedroom,” and experience the environment as a memory of what was, or what might have been. The Leipziger Volkszeitung remarked that Beethoven’s presence “literally hovers in the air as sound.”

Schneebett is a promised gift to the museum from German collectors Dieter and Si Rosenkranz.  “Schneebett is a major work by an internationally-renowned artist,” said MAM Senior Curator Peter Boswell. “It will have a special resonance here in Miami since Enrique Martínez Celaya, who was born in Cuba, was inspired in part by the thought of Beethoven’s passing away far from Bonn, the city of his birth, which he left at age 21 never to return.”

ENRIQUE MARTINEZ CELAYA 

Enrique Martínez Celaya Born in Habana in 1964, Enrique Martínez Celaya worked primarily as a scientist until 1992, when he decided to be an artist, an endeavor he had been pursuing since an early apprenticeship during his teenage years. Marie Louise Knott, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, which dedicated an entire issue to the artist, stated, “Martínez Celaya’s work reinvents the original magic of art.”   

Enrique Martínez Celaya studied applied physics at Cornell University and, supported by a fellowship from the Brookhaven National Laboratory, pursued a Ph.D. in Quantum Electronics at the University of California, Berkeley. As a scientist he worked on superconductivity, lasers and laser delivery systems, research for which he was issued an often-cited patent. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine and received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work is represented in such public collections as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He has been the recipient of numerous distinguished awards, including most recently, the honor of being the second Visiting Presidential Professor in the history of the University of Nebraska, and the prestigious Anderson Ranch National Artist Award. Recently, the University of Nebraska Press released Enrique Martínez Celaya: Collected Writings & Interviews, 1990-2010, which traces the development of the artist’s thought throughout his twenty-year career as an artist, writer, and lecturer. 

MIAMI ART MUSEUM 
101 W Flagler St., Miami, FL 33130
www.miamiartmuseum.org

Howard Hodgkin @ Peder Lund, Oslo - New Paintings

Howard Hodgkin: New Paintings
Peder Lund, Oslo
October 22, 2011 – November 26, 2011

Peder Lund presents an exhibition of ten new paintings by the British artist HOWARD HODGKIN (1932). The paintings are from the period 2008-2010 and the exhibition is curated by the artist. Howard Hodgkin’s new paintings are characterised by a much looser, more pastose technique. A classic Howard Hodgkin painting, of the kind that secured him international recognition in the 1980s, is relatively small, powerful, composed of dense brushstrokes and stippling, and saturated with intense, bright colours. Paintings from this period were the result of several decades of work with painting and graphics. According to Howard Hodgkin, his paintings are representational, meaning that they are not non-figurative. These are paintings whose forms and colours refer to something beyond their mere presence on the wooden panels they are painted on. They represent, or correspond with, other paintings, and they correspond to emotions experienced in real situations and with memories of those. The paintings are concurrently in dialogue with contemporary art and art history. The freedom and naturalness that we observe in Howard Hodgkin’s latest pictures are the result of over sixty years of artistic practice.

With his characteristic colour-vibrating and pastose paintings, Howard Hodgkin is considered one of the most important living painters. Howard Hodgkin received The Turner Prize in 1985, was knighted in 1992 and was made a Companion of Honour in 2003. His paintings have been exhibited at some of the most influential museum institutions in the world. In 2010-2011 the travelling exhibition Time and Place, 2001-2010 was shown at Modern Art Oxford, De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art in Tilburg and at the San Diego Museum of Art. In 2007, the exhibition Howard Hodgkin: Paintings 1992-2007 was shown at Yale Centre for British Art in New Haven and later at the Fitzwilliam Museum of the University of Cambridge. A large retrospective was held in 2006-2007 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Tate Britain in London and at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. The Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh exhibited Howard Hodgkin: Large Paintings in 2002 and in 1995 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York exhibited Howard Hodgkin: Paintings 1975-1995.

PEDER LUND
Filipstadveien 5, 0250 Oslo
pederlund.no

Clément Bagot – traversée d’espace, Chapelle de la Visitation, Espace d'art contemporain, Thonon

Clément Bagot – traversée d’espace
Chapelle de la Visitation, Espace d'art contemporain, Thonon
22 octobre - 24 décembre 2011

Deuxième des quatre expositions de la saison 2011-2012, « Clément Bagot, traversée d’espace » s’inscrit dans le cadre de l’une des quatre thématiques - à savoir ici, « Pièce unique » - sur lesquelles s’appuie dorénavant la programmation de la Chapelle de la Visitation de Thonon-les-Bains. Cette exposition est surtout l’occasion de découvrir le travail d’un jeune artiste qui s’articule autour de l’idée d’architectures imaginaires.

Clément Bagot
Vue de l’installation « Mise en place », 2010
Ecole d’architecture de la Porte de la Villette
Bois, doubles mesures, tubes fluorescents, lampes
Courtesy Galerie Eric Dupont, Paris
© Philippe Ruault

L’art de Bagot procède de la construction de topos improbables qu’il élabore dans le double objectif de mettre en évidence le processus de création lui-même et d’inviter le regard de l’autre à toutes sortes d’expériences perceptuelles. Dans le cadre de son exposition à la Chapelle de la Visitation, l’artiste réalisera  in situ une « pièce unique », frontale et monumentale, en forme de claustra, à laquelle seront associées diverses sculptures s’apparentant à des maquettes ainsi que des dessins. Si les travaux en volume de Clément Bagot en appellent à toute une matérialité de tasseaux, de profilés, de règles et de néons, il les emploie dans le but de multiplier les jeux d’échelles et de points de vue, offrant ainsi au regard l’occasion inédite d’une « traversée d’espace ». Tout comme ses dessins qui procèdent d’une vision quasi cosmogonique nous entraînent à l’épreuve sidérale de mondes inventés. La démarche de Clément Bagot trouve sa justification dans l’analyse des rapports de l’œuvre au lieu et au spectateur dans une qualité phénoménologique de l’appréhension de l’espace telle que l’a énoncée l’art minimal. A cette différence près que son art se double d’une puissante dimension poétique.

Philippe Piguet
Commissaire chargé des expositions

 

Clément Bagot
Aeronef, 2008-2009
Bois, règles, décimètres, équerres, cartes, plexiglas,
tubes fluorescents
Courtesy Galerie Eric Dupont, Paris

L'artiste Clément Bagot est né en 1972 à Paris. Après son diplôme de l'Ecole d'arts appliqués Studio Berçot à Paris (1990-1992), il a été styliste au département Accéssoires chez Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Clément Bagot : Expositions personnelles

2010    Mise en place, Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-la Villette.
2010    Entrée en matière (avec le soutien du centre national des arts plastiques).
           Galerie  Eric Dupont, Paris.

  Clément Bagot
Etalon, 2010
Bois, doubles mesures, lampes articulées
Courtesy Galerie Eric Dupont, Paris

2007   Galerie  Premier Regard, Paris.
          Binôme, Musée de l’Hospice St Roch, Issoudun.
2001   Hors contours, Espace Armand Gatti, Montreuil.
2000   Sur papier, Centre Culturel de Mareuil-le-Port.
1998   L’imprimerie, Paris.
1996   Usine Ephémère, Paris.

Clément Bagot : Publications

2010   Dessin, Collection Florence et Daniel Guerlain.
2010   Collection 3 Peinture et dessin, Fondation Salomon pour l’art contemporain, Alex.
2009   Dessin, Collection Florence et Daniel Guerlain.
2008   Binôme - Clément Bagot et Emmanuel Falque. Musée de l’Hospice Saint Roch, Issoudun.

Chapelle de la Visitation  - espace d’art contemporain
25 rue des Granges - 74200 Thonon les Bains
Commissaire chargé des expositions : Philippe Piguet, critique d’art

Nick van Woert, Anatomy, Yvon Lambert, Paris

NICK VAN WOERT, Anatomy
Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris
20 Octobre - 19 Novembre 2011

NICK VAN WOERT 

© Nick van Woert, Courtesy of Yvon Lambert, Paris-New York

Yvon Lambert présente Anatomy, la première exposition personnelle en France du jeune artiste américain NICK VAN WOERT après l'exposition Nick van Woert: Breaking and Entering organisée cette année à Yvon Lambert New York, qui était la première exposition personnelle du sculpteur aux Etats-Unis. Artiste new-yorkais, agé de 32 ans, il présente à la galerie de nouvelles sculptures inspirées par le tableau Leçon d’anatomie du docteur Tulp réalisée en 1632, par Rembrandt. La pratique de Nick van Woert utilise un vocabulaire formel très personnel, marqué par l'architecture, la nature et l’histoire ancienne.  

En grandissant à Reno, au Nevada, Nick van Woert est marqué par le contraste entre le paysage fort du désert aride et l’espace urbain outrancier où règne la démesure. Ce contraste raide fournit à l’artiste une riche base d’inspiration conceptuelle et figurative. L'artiste américain réutilise des matériaux de construction dans l’élaboration de ses formes, il va même jusqu’à emprunter des matériaux issus des différentes techniques tels que le polyuréthane, l’acier, le plexiglass et les associe avec d’autres produits tels que le gel pour les cheveux ou encore la Chlorine. 

L’ensemble de son travail met en confrontation deux mondes : celui de la sculpture classique faisant référence au passé et celui d’un univers ultra contemporain défini par l’usage de ces matériaux. 

En utilisant pour ses sculptures des copies de bustes et/ou de torses antiques, l’artiste réinterprète les codes de la sculpture classique. Artiste de la métamorphose, Nick van Woert décharne, démembre, ou encore mutile ces objets du passé, avant de leur configurer un nouvel aspect étrange et intemporel. 

Convaincu par l’idée que ce que nous sommes a une influence sur tout ce qui nous entoure, Nick van Woert considère le corps comme le miroir de notre environnement et se le réapproprie à sa façon. 

Dans le cadre se son Festival d'Automne, le French Institute, Alliance Française de New York présente actuellement dans sa galerie l'exposition Nick van Woert Terra Amata. Nick van Woert est né à Reno dans le Nevada en 1979. Il vit et travaille à Brooklyn, New York. 

Yvon Lambert - 108, rue Vieille-du-Temple - 75003 Paris

Site internet : www.yvon-lambert.com

Cranbrook Art Museum: Grand Reopening Exhibition No Object is an Island: New Dialogues with the Cranbrook Collection

No Object is an Island: New Dialogues with the Cranbrook Collection, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA, November 11, 2011 - March 25, 2012

The first Exhibition in the Newly Renovated and Expanded Museum Explores Cranbrook’s Continued Influence in the World of Contemporary Art and Design. No Object is an Island: New Dialogues with the Cranbrook Collection will pair the work of 50 leading contemporary artists and designers with an equal number of objects from Cranbrook’s outstanding permanent collection of 20th- and 21st-century art and design. Visitors will discover a Nick Cave Soundsuit side-by-side with a tapestry by Arts and Crafts master May Morris. A conceptual partnership that Maarten Baas projects between himself and Marc Newson meets a very real early collaboration of Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames. And Whitney Biennalist Tony Mattelli’s hyperrealist sculpture, The Hunter, faces off with one of fellow sculptor Kate Clark’s ravishing taxidermy beasts with a human face.

The pairings reinstate the challenging dialogue that has characterized Cranbrook since the revolutionary graduate school and museum opened more than 80 years ago. In so doing, No Object is an Island is an analog for Cranbrook Art Museum itself, the renovation of which transcends common notions of museum practice. For Director Gregory Wittkopp, who has guided the museum as its curator or director for 26 years, No Object is an Island is an opportunity to showcase a cross-section of the museum’s permanent collection—including numerous recent “never-before-seen” acquisitions—while also demonstrating its continued relevancy to contemporary practitioners. “At a moment when most museums would simply trot out their 100 greatest hits, Cranbrook will use its collection to challenge and inspire a new generation of artists and designers and other museum visitors,” says Wittkopp. “While the 20th-century museum saw its mission as preservation, we are leading the charge of 21st-century museums to educate through objects.”

Often called the American Bauhaus, Cranbrook Academy of Art has long been hailed for its prescient embrace of interdisciplinary art and design education. No Object is an Island and the enhanced museum will embody and update that tradition. Nowhere is this more evident than in the exhibition’s unexpected pairings, such as that of Cranbrook’s legendary designer, Harry Bertoia and contemporary metalsmith Dorothea Pruhl. Here we find Bertoia working not at the expected scale of his iconic furniture or Sound Sculptures but as a jeweler, next to one of Europe’s most influential craftswomen. Or the dialogue between Asymptote Architecture and Eero Saarinen, both of whom have helped redefine the form of architecture and how we model it. In the case of Asymptote, visitors will see a “fly-through” projection of their award winning, 2011 YAS Hotel in Dubai next to a rare original model of Saarinen’s structurally daring Dulles International Airport. Separated by half a century of thought and technology, both buildings nevertheless share a tradition of radical form-making (and advanced technology) that are characteristic of Cranbrook’s leading role in contemporary architecture.

No Object is an Island is organized around six themes—Craft, Site, Comfort, Resistance, Process, and Fiction– each of which connotes a period of innovation at Cranbrook Academy of Art and presents a body of work that suggests common points of departure in the pursuit of creative expression and original art. While “Craft,” for example, reflects the important role that Cranbrook’s founder George Booth played in shaping the American Arts and Crafts movement (giving it physical form through the architecture and collections of Cranbrook), “Process” explores the work of contemporary artists who give physical form to the activity of making. “Comfort” suggests both the Academy’s role as the cradle of mid-century modernism, as well as the work of contemporary designers who are continuing to challenge and redefine the nature of domestic and work environments. The themes of “No Object” are by no means exhaustive; nor are they meant to be prescriptive. Instead, they offer a starting point for exploring the remarkable influence Cranbrook has had on contemporary creative culture.

No Object is an Island will open on 11-11-11 in conjunction with an eleven-day program of events, lectures, films and performances—during which the museum will be open 11 hours each day—and will run through March 25, 2012. This is the first of many exhibitions that will build on Cranbrook Art Museum’s mission to bridge visual art and design, scholarship and accessibility, tradition and innovation in its programs, and in so doing, document the ongoing creative achievements of the faculty and alumni of Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Curators: Gregory Wittkopp, Director of Cranbrook Art Museum, and Sarah Margolis-Pineo, the Art Museum’s Jeanne and Ralph Graham Collections Fellow, are the co-curators of No Object is an Island.

Publication: Cranbrook Art Museum will publish a fully illustrated catalog in conjunction with this exhibition. The catalog will include an introductory essay by Gregory Wittkopp with section essays by Emily Zilber (Craft), Jana Cephas (Site), Reed Kroloff (Comfort), Sarah Margolis-Pineo (Resistance), Sarah Turner (Process), and Christopher Ho (Fiction).

CRANBROOK ART MUSEUM, BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Website: www.cranbrookart.edu

Cranbrook Academy Art Museum: History, Renovation and Expansion

Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

(The next post is dedicaced to the Cranbrook Art Museum reopening exhibition)

HISTORY OF CRANBROOK ACADEMY OF ART AND ART MUSEUM, "AMERICA'S BAUHAUS"

Founded by newspaper magnate George Gough Booth and his wife Ellen Scripps Booth, Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum represent an ongoing educational experiment that the whole Cranbrook Educational Community embodies—"an original and radical plan to integrate all the arts in a perfect ensemble," according to Museum Director Gregory Wittkopp.

Cranbrook Academy of Art has been described as "America's Bauhaus," in recognition of the singular impact the school – one of the nation's leading graduate schools of art, architecture, and design – has as a place of artistic creation. Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, Harry Bertoia, Ralph Rapson, and Eero Saarinen created mid-century modernism at Cranbrook. Michael and Katherine McCoy started Product Semantics at the school. Daniel Libeskind, Jun Kaneko, Hani Rashid, Nick Cave, Richard De Vore, Tony Matelli, Niels Diffrient, Ed Fella, John Glick, Duane Hanson, Jack Lenor Larsen, and Lorraine Wild all studied or taught at Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Today, the Academy graduates more than 70 young artists and designers each year. The school's faculty of ten Artists-in-Residence are award-winning practitioners in their fields with work exhibited at some the world's most distinguished venues, including the Venice Biennale, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, The American Academy of Arts, and many others.

Reed Kroloff, Director of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum, says, "People may not realize it, but Cranbrook art and design is everywhere. Whether you're sitting in an Eames office chair or riding in a new subway car in New York City, you are experiencing design by Cranbrook graduates [Antenna Design, which created the most recent subway cars, is co-directed by Masamichi Udagawa, a Cranbrook graduate]. The impact of this school on American life is ongoing and profound."

The Art Museum represents the culmination of Booth's plan. The Museum's collection of art and objects includes sculpture, paintings, models and drawings, ceramics, glass, furniture, textiles, and metalwork, and it is renowned for its variety – with the decorative, applied and fine arts all represented–its depth, and its unrivaled quality. Among the many treasures owned by Cranbrook Art Museum are works by Agnes Martin, Donald Judd, Bridget Riley, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Maija Grotell, Peter Voulkos, Eliel, Eero, Loja and Pipsan Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Florence Knoll, Marianne Strengell, Marshall Fredericks, Carl Milles, Arthur Neville Kirk, Paul Manship, and William Morris.

CRANBROOK ACADEMY OF ART AND ART MUSEUM: RENOVATION AND EXPANSION

Designed originally by Eliel and Eero Saarinen (with later buildings by Steven Holl, Lake/Flato, Rafael Moneo, Peter Rose, and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien), Cranbrook is a National Historic Landmark, located on 320 acres of rolling, wooded landscape approximately 18 miles northwest of downtown Detroit. And, on a campus famous for its architecture, Cranbrook Art Museum is considered one of Eliel Saarinen's masterpieces.

The complete renovation and expansion accomplishes two things, according to Museum Director Wittkopp. "On a fundamental level, we are making a commitment to the infrastructure of the museum by raising Saarinen's masterwork to the standards of 21st-century museum practice, in terms of mechanical systems, lighting, communications, and other technology," he says. "But Cranbrook is, ultimately, a community where art and life are inextricably linked, and we believe that a museum and its collections are important only if they can continue to inspire new generations of artists." To that end, and in keeping with Cranbrook's tradition as a center of educational innovation, the new Collections Wing creates a model that is unprecedented: a museum whose collections in their entirety are visible and accessible. "The Academy has always seen the collection as a critical component of our pedagogy," explains Kroloff. "So we decided early on to create a very different kind of environment for viewing it. Instead of seeing only the fraction of the collection that most museums offer, our students, faculty, and visitors will have access to all 6,000 objects in a way that's never been possible before. Cranbrook Art Museum and its collections will be an integrated teaching environment like no other."

In order to accommodate this program, the building project encompassed two primary aspects: renovating and restoring the original Saarinen museum, and adding the 20,000-square-foot Collections Wing, where much of the collection will be displayed. Creating a conservation environment within the existing building required substantial improvements to achieve current standards for lighting, temperature, and humidity. Restoration of the Saarinen building also included a new roof, windows, and brick repair, as well as the disassembly and rebuilding of the building's famed plazas and ceremonial exterior stairs, which will now include a snow melting system that eliminates the need for destructive winter salting. An original Saarinen-designed coffered gallery lighting system (believed to be the first of its kind, and the forerunner of Eero Saarinen's revolutionary integrated lighting systems at the nearby General Motors Technical Center) was also restored.

The new Collections Wing is located to the northeast of the historic Saarinen museum and houses the new, visible collections spaces, a woodshop, photography studio, loading dock, and a 10'x15' freight elevator to facilitate the transport of artworks within the building. A seminar/conference space is intended for focused instruction regarding the collection. The SmithGroup was the architect for both the restoration and the new building.

The $22 million-project at Cranbrook Art Museum was funded by Cranbrook Educational Community as one of several important restoration projects made possible by a recently completed $181 million Comprehensive Fundraising Campaign. Of this total, the Academy of Art and Art Museum raised nearly $46 million in annual and endowed support for programming, financial aid, faculty support, and new equipment. The $10 million lead gift to the Campaign was received from Maxine and Stuart Frankel and family.

After the two-year construction project Cranbrook Art Museum will reopen on 11-11-11.

CRANBROOK ART MUSEUM, BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Website: www.cranbrookart.edu

Lowell Boyers, Von Lintel Gallery, NYC - What We Long to Know

Lowell Boyers: What We Long to Know
Von Lintel Gallery, New York
October 13 - November 12, 2011

Von Lintel Gallery presents "What We Long to Know," LOWELL BOYERS' first solo exhibition with the gallery. The show is comprised of new paintings. 

In an almost alchemical process, Lowell Boyers blends acrylic paint, ink, watercolor and resin to create lyric images that hover between abstraction and figuration. Including swathes and swirls of brilliant color interlaced with depictions of figures who appear to defy gravity, the works function as portals between the material world and a fluid, dreamlike realm of symphonic hues, bold brushwork and mysterious narrative. Combining skilled draftsmanship with a poetic sense of color and composition, Lowell Boyers paints in an intuitive, stream-of-consciousness fashion. His unconventional use of ink and watercolor on exposed canvas results in unexpected painterly detail and a surprising materiality at close range.

Lowell Boyers' work has been exhibited nationally and internationally since 1994 and is included in many prominent collections.

A catalog is available:

LOWELL BOYERS

Paintings

Text by Tom Healy

Von Lintel Gallery, New York, 2011

32 pages - $27

VON LINTEL GALLERY
555 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001
www.vonlintel.com

Updated 10.07.2020

Diaghilev Ballets Russes, CaixaForum Barcelona and Madrid

Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 1909-1929. When Art dances with music. Exhibition at CaixaForum Barcelona, 5 October 2011 - 15 January 2012, and at CaixaForum Madrid, from 16 February 2012

SERGE DIAGHILEV (Novgorod, 1872 - 1929, Venice) is a key figure to understand the evolution of dance in the  20th century. Through his company, the Ballets Russes, he championed the idea of a total work of art and aimed at a renovation in visual language, both in his choreography and stage design, musical language and costumes. He acted as a catalyst for the European cultural world at the beginning of the 20th century and left a rich legacy of music, dance and art that reverberated throughout the rest of the century. The dramatic performances of Serge Diaghilev transformed dance, arousing a renewed interest in ballet throughout Europe and America. 

Serge Diaghilev was a cultured man, a keen reader and collector of books, with an amateur’s passion for music and song, and was fond  of the theatre and painting. From a very young age he was in contact with artists, he travelled through Europe and alternated between his facet of critic and writer and that of publisher and organiser of exhibitions. Diaghilev’s cosmopolitan background and enterprising spirit were decisive factors when  he launched the Ballets Russes project in 1909. 

In the early years of the 20th century, an artistic and musical avant-garde appeared in Russia that was not very well-known internationally. Serge Diaghilev came up with the idea of creating a group of outstanding dancers from the Ballet Imperial of the Maryinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg and presented them in Paris in a high category show that included music, dance, painting and literature: a total work of art that showed the world the vitality of modern Russia. 
For twenty years, the Ballets Russes presented about fifty ballets of different styles in Europe and America in which the top European dancers performed, with music scores written by the most outstanding composers and with the collaboration of the most well-known artists of the time. Diaghilev contacted artists from different fields for montages that have remained for posterity, such as Le Tricorne by Manuel de Falla or Parade by Eric Satie with the stage design by Picasso.

SERGE DIAGHILEV
© V&A Images

His success was due to his aim for renovation of visual language, both in the choreography and stage designs, and in the musical language. The essential factor was using dance through the human body to express stories and feelings and, based on this, developing the talent of his dancers. 

Avant-garde visual artists of the stature of Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Derain, Goncharova, Laurencien or Chanel took part in designing the costumes and stage designs; renovating musicians, such as Ravel, Satie, Falla, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Rimski-Korsakov; dancers, such as Fokine, Nijinsky, Pavlova, Karsavina or Massine, and writers, such as Jean Cocteau worked together, encouraged by Serge Diaghilev.

This exhibition has been organised by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London – where it could be viewed last year and more recently at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec – and produced by the "la Caixa" Foundation, with a review of the figure of Serge Diaghilev and passing through the most important scenarios and events in which his company performed during the twenty years it existed. 

Therefore, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, 1909-1929. When Art dances with Music conveys a spirit that permeated the company through the exceptional collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, which preserves a  large part of the Ballets Russes’ costumes – many of which were acquired at auctions held by Sotheby’s between 1967 and 1973 –, the scenery for six of Diaghilev’s ballets and large collections of designs, drawings, prints, different objects and archives. It is a remarkably rich legacy, recreating the atmosphere of a period of great artistic vitality between 1909 and 1929. 

Although some of the dancers performed in films, Serge Diaghilev categorically prohibited any filming of Ballets Russes and included clauses in the contracts signed that imposed this prohibition. Diaghilev thought that films, due to being in black and white and silent at the time, could not capture the colourful and collaborative magic of his productions. However, the exhibition that will be held now at the CaixaForum Barcelona will show for the first time a sequence secretly filmed and only recently discovered, with 60 seconds of the Ballets Serge Lifar with Diaghilev to his right, Boris Kochno on his left, and company members.

 Serge Lifar and Alexandra Danilova in Apollon Musagète,  1928
showing the first version of the costumes designed by Coco Chanel.
Photograph by Sasha © V&A Images

The extraordinary display created for this occasion takes visitors behind the scenes of the Ballets Russes’ productions: its inspiration, choreography, music and stage designs. Pablo Picasso became an integral member of the Ballets Russes during the I World War. A reproduction of the enormous canvas by Alexander Shervashidze for  Le Train Bleu, after a design by the painter, and a costume that was designed for Parade are on display in the exhibition.

The exhibition also explains how Ballets Russes survived the Great War, being cut off from its roots in Russia and with little access to the cities where they had performed before 1914, and ends by explaining the decade of the 1920s – a period when Serge Diaghilev had already achieved an important place in European culture. It includes a wide selection of costumes of all kinds: exotic –created by Léon Bakst for  The Sleeping Beauty  and Henri Matisse for  Le Chant du rossignol–, extravagant –by Mikhail Larionov for Chout and Giorgio de Chirico  Le Bal or elegant –the bathing suits designed by Coco Chanel for Le Train Bleu and the costume of Georges Braque for Zephyr and Flore and Marie Laurencin for Les Biches.

The Ballets Russes and Spain

By holding this exhibition, ”la Caixa” Welfare Projects fulfil its goal of informing the general public about the pioneers of art at the beginning of the 20th century and the artistic vitality at that time, which is key to understanding everything that happened in later decades. In this respect, the exhibitions devoted to Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt or Maurice de Vlaminck should also be recalled. 

Similarly, another aim of the exhibitions held by "la Caixa" also to create points of contact between artists, movements and historic periods of universal art in Spain. With this goal in mind,  exhibitions have been organised, such as  August Rodin and his relationship with Spain or, more recently, Eugène Delacroix, which pays special attention to the travels of these artists in the Peninsula.

A very important part of the history of Ballets Russes took place in cities such as Barcelona, Madrid or Sant Sebastian, where they had a remarkably warm welcome and found refuge during the years of the First World War. Spain played an important role in the survival and development of Ballets Russes. The establishment of collaboration with Spanish creators meant that Spain would be present in the highest international artistic context of the first quarter of the century.

Between 1916 and 1918, when the doors of a large part of Europe were closed for Ballets Russes, Spain was a stimulating haven for the dancers and for all the artistic collaborators. Once peace was restored, the relationship with Spain continued with the support of King Alfonso XIII, a great admirer of the company.  In the twenties, after Ballets Russes had spent long periods in Monte Carlo, Barcelona became the first place the company would use as a base for its spring tours.

Poster for Petrushka at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, 1917
Courtesy of the MAE, The Stage Arts Museum, Barcelona

Therefore, for its exhibition at CaixaForum Barcelona and CaixaForum Madrid, the institution has prepared a new section that provides testimony of the relationship of Ballets Russes with Spain and its impact and the collaboration with Spanish musicians and artists, such as Manuel de Falla, Isaac Albéniz, Juan Gris,  Joan Miró, Pere Pruna, Josep M. Sert or Joaquín Turina. 

This section includes numerous objects documenting  the company’s presence in Spain, such as posters, programmes, invoices, correspondence, etc. Similarly, "la Caixa" Welfare Projects has produced an audiovisual explaining the history of Ballets Russes from the time of its  arrival in Cadiz, where they were met by Falla.

Exhibition Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes CaixaForum Barcelona
Photographs Courtesy CaixaForum Barcelona

The exhibition has been organised by Geoffrey Marsh and Jane Pritchard, museum director and curator of the Theatre and Dance Department of the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) respectively and can be viewed at CaixaForum Barcelona (Av. de Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, 6-8) from 5 October 2011 to 15 January 2012 and at CaixaForum Madrid from February 2012.

The catalogue that has been published for the occasion also includes a chapter written by the specialist Ester Vendrell in which this long-lasting relationship is explained in greater depth.

CaixaForum Barcelona
Obra Social “la Caixa” - Caixa Foundation
www.obrasocial.lacaixa.es

Patricia Dauder, Modular, Berlin at Aanant & Zoo

Patricia Dauder: Modular, Aanant & Zoo, Berlin / Germany, Through 5 November 2011

This is the first solo exhibition of Spanish-Catalan artist PATRICIA DAUDER (*1973) in Germany.

PATRICIA DAUDER
Modular
Installation view, Aanant & Zoo, 2011
Courtesy of Aanant & Zoo, Berlin

The title of the exhibition, „Modular“ – modular seen as the opposite of monolithic –, hints to one of the central themes of Patricia Dauder's artistic work: The analysis and exploration of diverse possible elements and (atmo)spheres, taken individually from reality, or borrowed from it as geometric figures. By her subjective realignment, Patricia Dauder reveals existing structures, forms and perspectives which allow a novel view on the whole. Through minimal variations of the visual content that seems to oscillate inside a hermetic space, a meta-narrative arises which is intent on the reintegration of the images within their original context. However, such an endeavor varies depending on viewer and situation, and in this sense remains subordinated under a double contingency.

Dauder´s thoughts and works always have their starting point in the phenomenal, which, despite its high level of abstraction, can at second sight always be reintegrated into our lifeworld and reality. Important to note though that this world is no longer the natural and primal one, but a new world, constituted by means of the interplay between artist, artwork, and observer. This occurs in media as different as drawing, slide projection, film and installation.

Patrica Dauder's drawings, in their apparent unambiguousness, presuppose an accurate and cautious viewer. In the interplay between filigree and reduction, they show themselves as works derived from the organic, and they also require to be seen as such.

The drawing “Aerodynamism (from Overlappings),” executed on semi-transparent paper, shows a denial of any kind of perspective. Not only does it have the audacity to reside on the floor, or at least on a small platform – it seemingly takes the alchemist principle as above, so below; as below so above to the heart. The work offers itself to the gaze from each side, yet still remains hermetic. Viewers looking for orientation or entry points in the work may recognize the basic geometrical structures of circle, rectangle and square. They may also realise the play of emptiness and fullness between different elements of the work. Otherwise they are left to themselves, the artwork and its unspoken demand to develop one's own logic.

Besides drawings and other works on paper, Dauder has for some years been using film as a medium. “Forward”, a film shot on Gran Canaria at the 2009/2010 PWA (Professional Windsurfing Association) event, offers a loosely edited and non-narrative sequence of film clips. The images of the sea, the suggested horizon and the flying surfers with their boards against the sky are shown in quick succession, but in slow-motion; they seem to be in a seemingly almost timeless mode of perception beyond the one we are used to. By reducing her mean of production to those of a black and white film, and by abandoning any kind of sound, the artist manages to create a contemplative film sculpture. The sport with its quick and precise movements, and the competition on and with the water almost appear as a natural spectacle that reinserts itself into the great cycle of things.

Patricia Dauder's works retain an enigmatic character. They will not accept to be deciphered in their entirety but rather keep their being-for-themselves. At the same time they invite us, just like nature, to engage in and to renew our explorations on time. 

Next exhibition at Aanant & Zoo : LUIS CAMNITZER, 18 November 2011 - 28 January 2012 ... more informations coming soon ...

Aanant & Zoo, Berlin
Bülowstraße 90
10783 Berlin / Germany
Website: www.aanantzoo.com

Sunday Art Fair 2011 London Ambika P3 Space

SUNDAY ART FAIR 2011, LONDON

13 -16 October 2011

Taking place at the P3 space on Marylebone Road in London, SUNDAY ART FAIR is a gallery-led art fair showing a selection of 20 young international galleries, exhibiting work by artists at the fore of emerging talent.

Housed in the Ambika P3, a 14,000 square foot, triple height subterranean space, the fair is free and open to all. SUNDAY aims to provide an easy going and accessible temporary platform for young galleries to exhibit their artists’ work. Following from last year, SUNDAY is a fair with no booths or divisions and this year exhibiting galleries will each show solo or duo artist presentations, adding to the open nature of the fair.

SUNDAY’s first outing was in Berlin at the 2010 Gallery Weekend where it was so well received the organisers decided to bring it to London during the 2010 October art week, where it received more than 5,000 visitors over just 3 days. About Sunday Art Fair 2010 in London.

SUNDAY is organised by three of the participating galleries: Croy Nielsen (Berlin), Limoncello (London) and Tulips and Roses (Brussels) and sponsored by the Zabludowicz Collection.

SUNDAY ART FAIR celebrated its return to London on Wednesday night with an opening party at the ICA. Over 1,000 curators, artists, gallerists and art lovers, including the dashing Will Young, filled the ICA’s bar and Nash and Brandon rooms, where dj collective Top Nice provided tunes to dance to until 1am.

Sunday Art Fair 2011 First Day Photographs reproduced in this post have been taken by photographer JOE CLARK.

SUNDAY opened its doors on Thursday at 10am, counting over 1,000 visitors by lunch and a first day total of over 2,000. The day got off to a very confident start with all galleries reporting good sales and London and Brussels based gallery MOTINTERNATIONAL selling their entire stand in the first hour of the fair.

SUNDAY ART FAIR 2011 ARTISTS & GALLERIES

Among the artists on show are: Caroline Achaintre, Dove Allouche, Bianca Brunner, Brody Condon, Matt Connors, Tim Davies, Sean Edwards, Debo Eilers, Robin Footitt, Aurélien Froment, Simon Fujiwara, Ryan Gander, Ian Homerston, Taka Izumi, Christian Jankowski, A Kassen, Franziska Lantz, Oliver Laric, Pierre Leguillon, Raimundas Malašauskas, Kate Newby, Joshua Petherick, Dan Rees, Florian Roithmayr, Hugh Scott-Douglas, Francesco Simeti, Zin Taylor, Allyson Vieira, Jessica Warboys, Susanne M. Winterling and Maria Zahle.

Exhibiting galleries: ARCADE (London), BolteLang (Zurich), Cole (London), Croy Nielsen (Berlin), Gaudel de Stampa (Paris), Laurel Gitlen (New York) Hopkinson Cundy (Auckland), Tanya Leighton (Berlin), Limoncello (London), Lüttgenmeijer (Berlin), Francesca Minini (Milan), Motive Gallery (Amsterdam), MOTINTERNATIONAL (London/Brussels), TARO NASU (Tokyo), Neue Alte Brücke (Frankfurt), New Galerie (Paris) On Stellar Rays (New York), Proyectos Monclova (Mexico), Supportico Lopez (Berlin) and Tulips & Roses (Brussels).

Independent bookshop Motto (Berlin) and publishing house Archive Books (Berlin) are also at SUNDAY with a selection of journals and books available to purchase. The publications section also include The Art Newspaper, cura., Frieze, Kaleidoscope and Mousse magazines. Raising funds for their Interaction programme, the Zabludowicz Collection present their affordable limited editions including a new action figure by British artist David Blandy. Blandy also host a Duels and Dualities tournament at the late opening on 14 October.

 DAVID BLANDY

Bryan’s Bar is serving refreshments throughout the fair, including cocktails from artist Ryan Gander’s cocktail recipe book.

Ambika P3 (entrance via red gate opposite Baker Street tube station)
University of Westminster
35 Marylebone Road
London NW1 5LS

www.sunday-fair.com

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