Illustrator : les nouveautés disponibles en avant première pour les abonnés à Adobe Creative cloud

Illustrator, le logiciel professionnel de graphisme d'Adobe fait l'objet d'améliorations dont peuvent profiter pour l'instant, en avant-première, les seuls abonnés à Adobe Creative Cloud. Les nouveautés doivent offrir des gains de temps aux créatifs et graphistes et faciliter la remise de fichiers à des collègues, clients et prestataires.

Parmi les nouveautés de cette version d’Adobe Illustrator figurent : 

– L’assemblage de fichiers permet aux créatifs de rassembler automatiquement tous les fichiers utilisés dans un projet Illustrator, notamment les images liées et les polices, dans un seul et même dossier, rendant ainsi les transferts et le partage de projets plus efficaces et sans erreurs. 

– L’exportation en fichiers autonomes des images incorporées permet aux graphistes d’exporter en fichiers autonomes les images incorporées, dans un fichier Illustrator, par d’autres créatifs ou clients, permettant ainsi de gagner du temps.

– L'amélioration du panneau Liens permet aux utilisateurs de voir et de suivre plus rapidement les informations concernant une illustration importée dans un fichier Illustrator. Toutes les opérations indispensables pour s’assurer que les images importées remplissent les critères pour l’impression sont maintenant regroupées dans une seule fenêtre. 

D'autres nouveautés vont être disponibles dans peu de temps. En septembre l’édition Single de Digital Publishing Suite sera intégrée au Creative Cloud, pour la publication de brochures, de portfolios et d’ouvrages illustrés sous forme d’applications sur l’iPad. Les abonnés au Creative Cloud bénéficieront, également en exclusivité, de nouvelles fonctionnalités d’Adobe Dreamweaver. Adobe prévoit d’autres innovations à destination des abonnés au Creative Cloud dans les prochains mois. 

Creative Cloud est proposé sur abonnement aux particuliers dans 36 pays at dns plusieurs langues. La formule annuelle coûte 50 € HT par mois et la formule mensuelle 75 € HT par mois. Les clients possédant une licence individuelle d’une édition Creative Suite ou d’un produit seul, en version CS3 ou ultérieure, ont droit à un tarif d’abonnement préférentiel en formule annuelle à 30 € HT par mois la première année. Un tarif Education est également disponible. Pour en savoir plus, consultez la page dédiée au Creative Cloud sur le site d'Adobe :

 www.adobe.com/go/creativecloud.fr

Festival Photo Photaumnales à Beauvais

La 9e édition du festival photographique les Photaumnales, organisé par Diaphane, pôle photographique en Picardie, se tiendra du 8 septembre au 4 novembre 2012 à Beauvais et en région Picardie.  

Cette année, le thème de passage réunira près de trente photographes français et étrangers parmi lesquels : 

Brigitte BAUER, Nolwenn BROD, John BURKE et Simon NORFOLK, Arnaud CHAMBON, Thibaut CUISSET, Josef Heinrich DARCHINGER, Venetia DEARDEN, Eric DEXHEIMER, Claudine DOURY, Léon FENET, Julia FULLERTON-BATTEN, Ana GALAN, Thierry GIRARD, Laurent GUENEAU, Lois HECHENBLAIKNER, Guillaume HERBAUT, Stéphanie LACOMBE, Xavier LAMBOURS, Emile LOREAUX, Sylvie MEUNIER, Magali NOUGAREDE, Jon RAFMAN, Lola REBOUD, Vincent RUBIN, Lars TUNBJORK, David TURAKIEWICZ et Bertrand TRICHET et David MANAUD, Corinne VIONNET, Estelle ZOLOTOFF 

Et un focus sur la photographie lituanienne : Antanas SUTKUS, Vitas LUCKUS, Vytautas STANIONIS (père), Vytautas STANIONIS (fils), Klaudijus DRISKIUS, Donatas STANKEVICIUS, Mindaugas AZUSILIS 

www.photaumnales.fr 

Spencer Finch, I'll tell you how the Sun rose at Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm

Spencer Finch, I'll tell you how the Sun rose
Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm
August 23 - September 30, 2012

In SPENCER FINCH’s exhibition at Galerie Nordenhake in Stockholm the artist presents a group of recorded observations from the natural world. Often combining Conceptual and Impressionist practices Spencer Finch reflects on the tautologous nature of seeing, the limits of visual perception and the fallibility of recollection. Sometimes his works originate from his own individual perceptions, of light, color, darkness for example, while his methodology is often scientific in its precision. However, all his work is strongly anchored in often-poetic references to literature, philosophy, mythologies and even historic observations from the scientific cannon.

This exhibition partly comprises a group of works dealing with atmospheric phenomena and relating to the landscape. A highly industrialized and urban waterway is recalled via Impressionist images of water lilies, sunsets and seascapes in a color study of the Gowanus canal (which passes the artist’s studio in Brooklyn) using the amalgamated hues from picture postcards of works by Claude Monet. The breeze as recorded passing through the bedroom window at Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst, MA, is evoked in exactness with the use of a table fan. In an eclectic variety of media and themes Spencer Finch also takes on cloud formations, moon shadows and stone wall formations.

A second group of works embodies a more formal character. The lightbox Yellow Square reveals the spectral breakdown of the color yellow. A red, green and blue grid of squares emits yellow light on the reflecting walls. This work is accompanied by a series of 15 collages arranged using colored paper and filters. The series is based on Wittgenstein's Remarks on Color in which the philosopher reflects on Goethe's attempt to clarify the use of language about color.

NORDENHAKE Stockholm
Gallery's website: www.nordenhake.com

Tony Matelli at ARoS, Denmark

Tony Matelli - A HUMAN ECHO
ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark
31 August - 30 December 2012

ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum presents the New York artist Tony Matelli (b. 1971) with the exhibition Tony Matelli – A HUMAN ECHO. Visitors to ARoS have for several years been able to experience Tony Matelli's art, as he has occupied a prominent place in the museum's collection of contemporary art with his controversial installation Fucked (Couple), 2005 – the devastated couple who have got a Steinway grand piano on their heads.

The exhibition Tony Matelli – A HUMAN ECHO displays Matelli's artistic oeuvre and his special imagery in its full glory. It presents works from the latest 15 years of Matelli's career and focus particularly on his artistic development, which has moved from macabre self-portraits created of meat and vegetables via absurd presentations of monkey and Man to subdued interpretations of mankind's traces and litter. All wrapped up in the artist's characteristic combination of creepiness and sophisticated humour

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCULPTURE TRADITION

With his realistic figures, Tony Matelli is a principal exponent of the further development of the American sculpture tradition. Starting out especially from the Western European history of art and its existential and philosophical thematic complexes, Matelli reinterprets the condition of human life – not least in his series of modern vanitas motifs, which in their interplay of humour and horror remind us that the days of mankind are counted.

MAN AND MONKEY

In Tony Matelli's earlier career it is the human body – or the monkey as a symbol of mankind – that is interpreted and reproduced in various contexts. In his most recent installations, however, both mankind and animal have abandoned the stage and left behind only fleeting traces in the form of impressions in the dust, empty beer cans or cigarette ends.

Nevertheless, the title of the exhibition – Tony Matelli – A HUMAN ECHO – emphasises that it is mankind – present or absent – that constitutes the essential starting point for Matelli's artistic universe. This creates a link between Matelli and large areas of the permanent collection in ARoS that be activated via the app installed in the exhibition to iPhones and iPads.

THE IMPERFECT HUMAN BEING

In the realm of Tony Matelli figures, the order of the day is determined by the imperfect human being. The artist's striking use of sarcasm and inverted ideals of beauty puncture mankind's lofty understanding of itself and bring a smile to the lips. This relationship is clearly expressed in works such as the sculpture Total Torpor, Mad Malaise, 2003, in which a naked, deformed male figure ravaged by boils smiles condescendingly to us from his podium. The work reeks of irony with Matelli asking us to take a critical look at ourselves, our habits and the culture around us.

In the sensational installation Old Enemy. New Victim, 2007, Tony Matelli reveals the disturbing aspects of mankind and human society. Here, we come across the rare sight of a hopelessly obese gorilla that has been overpowered by two starving chimpanzees.  The statement implicit in this work, which turns our traditional concept of our surroundings upside down, is typical of Matelli, who in several of his installations takes the theme of the unpredictability contained in mankind's struggle for power both physical and psychological.

THE VIEWER'S OWN BODY

Whereas in the introductory section of the exhibition Tony Matelli – A HUMAN ECHO we view the artist's detailed interpretations of the human body and the monkey, it is in the final part of the gallery that the viewer's own body is in the firing line.

Here we see a series of dusty mirrors that catch our eye and retain our own body as the central feature in the art. In the early mirror works the actual motif is a play on words or a pastime in the form of games of noughts and crosses, while in the most recent mirrors there is a brief suggestion of a human hand, shoulder or finger drawing a quick line in the dust. The message remains the same, however: "Mankind has been here".

Tony Matelli's world of images is filled with recognisable motifs: the bunch of flowers, the human body, money and mirror. But we are constantly being filled with doubt as to what is going on when things are transposed and Tony Matelli nvites us in behind the polished facade of humanity.

CATALOGUE AND APP

In connection with Tony Matelli's solo exhibition, ARoS in collaboration with the international publishers Walter König Books, London, is to publish a 298-page, richly illustrated catalogue of the exhibition. This publication contains both Danish and foreign contributions – including a lengthy interview with Matelli.

As a new initiative in communication, ARoS has developed an app for iPhones and iPads relating to the exhibition Tony Matelli – A HUMAN ECHO. The app can be downloaded free of charge and can lead to a series of alternative experiences of Matelli's art and the exhibition in ARoS.  It is possible to borrow an iPad and headphones at the information desk in the museum.

TONY MATELLI

Tony Matelli was born in Chicago in 1971.

Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Over the last ten years, Tony Matelli has had a large number of solo and group exhibitions at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Palais de Tokyo, Paris and the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin.

Tony Matelli is represented in permanent collections all over the world, including: FLAG Art Foundation, New York, National Center of Contemporary Art, Moskva, Fundacion la Caixa, Madrid, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, ARoS

Responsible for the exhibition Tony Matelli – A HUMAN ECHO: Pernille Taagaard Dinesen

ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum
Special Exhibition Gallery, Level 1
Aros Allé 2 - 8000 Århus C - Denmark
www.aros.dk

Pablo Picasso & Marcel Duchamp, Moderna Museet, Stockholm - Picasso/Duchamp “He was wrong”

Picasso/Duchamp “He was wrong”  

Moderna Museet, Stockholm 

25 August, 2012 – 3 March, 2013 

With the exhibition Picasso/Duchamp “He Was Wrong”; the Moderna Museet in Stockholm sets two giants, Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, up against each other for the first time. They are often regarded as the two most influential artists of the 20th century – Picasso, who personified the modernist painter, and Duchamp, the indifferent ironist and chess genius, who challenged painting and transformed art into a maze of intellectual amusements. Now, visitors to the Moderna Museet have a unique opportunity to witness this battle of giants and see where it leads.

They may appear incompatible when contrasting the purpose of painting, and the eye versus the mind:

“If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.” – Pablo Picasso

“I was interested in ideas, not in visual products. I wanted to put painting again in the service of the mind.” – Marcel Duchamp

Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp are often seen as contraries. And admittedly, although they were often in each other’s immediate surroundings and shared many patrons and collectors, they nevertheless appear to have manoeuvred in totally different worlds. They were so different that their respective ideas on what art should be and can be seem irreconcilable, and yet from their extreme positions they simultaneously exerted incalculable influence on the destiny of modernism. Indeed, the author Octavio Paz once wrote: ‘Perhaps the two painters who have had the greatest influence in this century are Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. The former with his entire oeuvre; the latter with one single work, which is a veritable negation of the modern sense of work.’

The exhibition Picasso/Duchamp “He Was Wrong” represents a passionate confrontation between what are perhaps the greatest of rivals in 20th century art. Reflecting on the resistance each artist felt towards the other is especially meaningful given that 2012 is the centennial anniversary of the first meeting between Picasso and Duchamp. The contrasts between the two artists will be explored, from Picasso’s fascination with the Minotaur to Rrose Selavy, Duchamp’s feminine alter ego. Before Picasso died in 1973, he had noted, with rising resentment, that other artists were challenging his legacy. According to Picasso’s biographer, John Richardson, the growing number of young artists who preferred Duchamp was something that Picasso could never reconcile. Richardson writes: “If it had been Matisse, who was always a rival, it wouldn’t have mattered. But who were they looking up to on the other side of the Atlantic but Marcel Duchamp of all people! Picasso despised him.” Allegedly, Picasso’s only comment on hearing that Duchamp had died was: “He was wrong.” Perhaps this is only to be expected, since Duchamp was considered to be the artist who challenged the very foundations of Picasso’s prominence: the eye, the hand, and painting itself.

Picasso/Duchamp: “He Was Wrong” emphasises the rivalry, but also lifts up correspondences, and a proximity between Picasso and Duchamp that has often been virtually ignored. Both artists were promoted in the 1930s by the leader of the surrealist movement, André Breton, who also devoted an issue of the journal Minotaure to each of them.

“We are featuring one of the most magnificent and productive rivalries of 20th century art. The most influential painter is juxtaposed for the first time in this way to the artist who has most poignantly challenged painting itself and insisted on other possibilities. This exhibition will be valuable to anyone who sometimes asks what art is and what it can be,” says Daniel Birnbaum, Director of Moderna Museet.

In large measure, Picasso/Duchamp “He Was Wrong” is composed of works by these two artists from the Moderna Museet’s collection. The Museum has one of the world’s most prestigious collections of work by Duchamp, with The Large Glass, La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, meme (1915-1923), as its centrepiece. It also has a substantial collection of paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings by Picasso. Thanks to additional loans, the exhibition covers nearly seven decades of Picasso’s oeuvre.

Two major works from the museum’s collection, Picasso’s Bouteille, Verre et Violon (1912) and Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (1913) are set side by side to highlight the substantial incongruence between each artist’s approach to modernism. Notably, over the course of this exhibition, which opens in 2012 and closes in 2013, these two works of art will pass through their centennial anniversary. It has been 100 years since Picasso and Duchamp first asserted their influence on modern art becoming in Paz’ words, the “greatest influence on our century.”

Moderna Museet’s history is intimately linked to both artists. In 1956, before Moderna Museet was officially opened, Pablo Picasso’s legendary painting Guernica (1937) was exhibited in Stockholm. A few years later, in 1961, Marcel Duchamp visited Stockholm and providing crucial inspiration for a new generation of artists and numerous exhibitions that followed on at Moderna Museet. The upcoming exhibition is greatly enhanced by works borrowed from museums and private collections in Sweden, Denmark, France and Switzerland.

An illustrated catalogue with new essays by Daniel Birnbaum and Ronald Jones will be published in conjunction with the exhibition. The catalogue is published in association with Verlag Walther König, Cologne.

Curators: Daniel Birnbaum, Ronald Jones and Annika Gunnarsson.

MODERNA MUSEET

Exercisplan 4, 111 49 Stockholm

www.modernamuseet.se

La nouvelle gamme de tablettes Archos Gen10 XS

L’Archos 101 XS est la première tablette de la nouvelle gamme Archos Gen10 XS. Sa disponibilité est annoncée pour mi-septembre au prix de 379€ (prix public conseillé). Le fabriquant français lancera ensuite l’Archos 97 XS et l’Archos 80 XS un peu plus tard en 2012. De quoi donner des idées au Père Noël. 

La principale innovation est le coverboard, clavier magnétique destiné a améliorer le confort d'utilisation de cette tablette fine (8mm) et légère (600g) dotée d'un écran de 10,1 pouces.

Le système de clavier magnétique, conçu et breveté par Archos, permet d’aligner parfaitement la tablette au clavier grâce à des aimants, sans recours à tout autre système de fixation mais avec une petite "béquille" (entourée sur l'image suivante) qui assure le maintient de l'écran en position fixe.

La nouvelle gamme Archos Gen10 XS, certifiée Google, embarque Android 4.0 et donne un accès complet à Google Play et à ses 600.000 jeux et applications. La gamme sera mise à jour avec Android 4.1 Jelly Bean dès le 4ème trimestre 2012.


Accessoires Archos Gen10 XS

Des enceintes 40 watts équipent le nouvel Archos Speaker Dock qui sert aussi de station de chargement.

La station d'accueil, l'Archos Docking Station sert aussi de station de chargement mais permet également la connexion d'une tablette Archos Gen10 XS à un disque dur externe via le port USB dont elle est dotée ou de relier la tablette multimedia au système HiFi via sa sortie audio.

Archos a également conçu un ensemble de housses de protection en différentes matières et couleurs pour sa nouvelle gamme de tablettes.

Site Web Archos : www.archos.com

Paula Scher & Seymour Chwast, Graphic Designers at Philadelphia Museum of Art

Double Portrait:  Paula Scher and Seymour Chwast, Graphic Designers at Philadelphia Museum of Art
Curator: Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger
December 2, 2012 - April 14, 2013

Illustrator Seymour Chwast is graphic designer Paula Scher’s greatest influence, and also happens to be her husband. With a shared sensibility and approach to design, their work has transformed the fields in which they practice. Double Portrait:  Paula Scher and Seymour Chwast, Graphic Designers celebrates the achievements of this remarkably creative couple, whose illustrations and designs will be shown together for the first time. The exhibition in the Collab Gallery of the Museum’s Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building will include more than 300 images, selected and installed by Seymour Chwast (b.1931) and Paula Scher (b. 1948). On Saturday, December 1, they will be honored with the Design Excellence Award given by Collab, the group of design professionals and enthusiasts that supports the modern and contemporary design collection at the Museum.

“Thanks to the efforts and generosity of Collab, we are the only Museum in the country to regularly devote our galleries to exhibitions about contemporary designers,” notes Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger, Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700. “It is an extraordinary opportunity to be able to view Scher and Chwast’s work, side by side, in a museum setting. Seen in concert, their iconic images, social commentary, and commercial relevance speak to graphic design’s ability to transcend the medium’s perceived boundaries.”

Both Seymour Chwast and Paula Scher understand graphics as expression, very often comic expression, and are drawn to eclectic influences and conceptual methods. Double Portrait explores the artists’ commonalities and differences in works ranging from record albums, books, magazine covers, and illustrations to posters, typefaces, trademarks, identities, and environmental graphics shown in videos and in the gallery.

The exhibition will demonstrate how Seymour Chwast’s vision was, and remains, deeply personal, inspired by sources as diverse as German Expressionist woodcuts, Victorian typography, children’s art, primitive art, folk art, and comic books. On view will be one of Seymour Chwast’s most iconic and still provocative works of the 1960s, his anti-war poster “End Bad Breath” (1968), designed in protest of the U.S. bombing of Hanoi. Both cartoon and illustration, the poster features Uncle Sam centered like the sun against a background of thick rays, his hugely open mouth filled with bombs and bombers.

End Bad Breath, 1967. SEYMOUR CHWAST, American, b. 1931. 

Poster, offset lithograph, 37 x 24 inches

In his poster “War is Good Business: Invest Your Son” (1967), Seymour Chwast used a collage style of Victorian wood-block typography, photography, and bright color to create a dense, visually busy surface that activates his ironic text message.

Paula Scher is best known for her innovative reimagining of typography as a communicative medium, her work divided largely between the fields of graphic identity and environmental graphics. Her identity program and posters for New York’s Public Theater (from 1994), will be featured in Double Portrait, including the graphic language designed for The Public Theater which reflects street typography with unconventional placements and uses of different sizes, weights, and styles of type.

Best of Jazz, 1979. PAULA SCHER, American, b. 1948. 

Offset lithograph, poster, 26 x 35 inches. For CBS Records

Paula Scher's poster for the theater’s production of “Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk” (1995) sets the play’s title and theater logos around the silhouetted image of the tap artist in different visual rhythms which convey the sound of the performance. Paula Scher’s environmental graphics for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Lucent Technologies Center for Arts Education (2001), utilizes super graphics to redraw the exterior of the sixty-year old school building in typography with painted words loudly announcing the school’s program as “Theater, Music, Dance.”

SEYMOUR CHWAST SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Seymour Chwast studied at New York’s Cooper Union and, after graduating, co-founded the Push Pin Studios in 1954 with classmates Milton Glaser and Edward Sorel.  Widely influential, Push Pin broadened the boundaries of modern design by reintroducing historic graphic styles and techniques, transforming them into a new, contemporary vocabulary. Throughout a varied career in promotion and publishing, Seymour Chwast’s designs have been used in advertising, animated films, and editorial, corporate, and environmental graphics for such clients as Mobil, Sony, Forbes, and Columbia Records, and his illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Time.

Seymour Chwast, Photograph by John Madera

Seymour Chwast has created more than 100 posters and has designed and illustrated more than 40 children’s books. His work has been the subject of Seymour Chwast: The Left Handed Designer (Abrams, 1985) and Seymour: The Obsessive Images of Seymour Chwast (Chronicle, 2009). Museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress have collected his posters, and he has lectured and exhibited worldwide.

PAULA SCHER SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Paula Scher holds a BFA from the Tyler School of Art and a Doctor of Fine Arts Honoris Causa from the Corcoran College of Art and Design, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and Moore College of Art & Design. She began her professional career as an art director in the mid-1970s designing record covers for CBS and Atlantic Records, developing an eclectic approach to typography that became highly influential. In 1991, Scher became a partner in Pentagram, the distinguished international design consultancy. Scher has developed identity and branding systems, promotional materials, environmental graphics, packaging, and publication designs for a broad range of major corporate and institutional clients including, among others, the Museum of Modern Art, New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the New York Philharmonic, Bloomberg L.P., Citibank, Microsoft, Tiffany & Co. and the Sundance Film Festival as well as the Public Theater and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Paula Scher, Photograph by Branson Veal

Paula Scher has been the recipient of hundreds of industry honors and awards and served on numerous boards. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. She has lectured and exhibited all over the world, and has taught for more than 20 years. She has authored numerous articles and is a frequent design contributor to The New York Times, GQ and other publications. In 2002, Princeton Architectural Press published her career monograph Make It Bigger as well as her map-based paintings, installations, drawings, and prints in Paula Scher: Maps, in 2011.

Both Paula Scher and Seymour Chwast have received the medal of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, their profession’s highest honor, Chwast in 1985, Scher in 2001. In 1983 and 1998, respectively, Chwast and Scher have been inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame.

Curator: Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger, Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700

The Philadelphia Museum of Art

Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Collab Gallery

Museum's website: www.philamuseum.org

DESIGN EXCELLENCE AWARD

In conjunction with Double Portrait: Paula Scher and Seymour Chwast, Graphic Designers, Collab will present the 2012 Design Excellence Award to the artists on the evening of December 1, 2012. The Design Excellence Award honors a renowned designer or manufacturer who has enriched the world with his or her unique creative vision. The award ceremony will take place in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Van Pelt Auditorium and will include an illustrated lecture by the artists.

STUDENT DESIGN COMPETITION

2012 marks the 20th anniversary of Collab’s Student Design Competition, which challenges area college students studying architecture and industrial design to be inspired by themes closely associated with the annual Design Excellence Award winner and corresponding exhibition. The 2012 challenge associated with Double Portrait: Paula Scher and Seymour Chwast, Graphic Designers is entitled "Game On" and asks students to redesign and/or repackage an iconic game or create their own. The judges, prominent figures in the commercial and academic design world, will review the submissions and select the winners in a day-long review at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Monday, November 19, 2012. The top three winners receive monetary awards, and their work will be featured on the Museum website.

Expo AD Interieurs 2012, Artcurial Paris : Carte blanche à 13 décorateurs contemporains

AD INTÉRIEURS 2012 : VOYAGES IMAGINAIRES, Artcurial, Paris, 8 - 21 septembre 2012

L'exposition AD Intérieurs 2012 donne carte blanche à treize décorateurs contemporains autour du thème des voyages imaginaires. Voici quelques lignes sur chacun des décorateurs et son projet pour l'exposition organisée par Artcurial et le magazine AD en partenariat avec Louis Vuitton.

RAFAEL DE CARDENAS

De son adolescence dans les années 1980, ce New-Yorkais a conservé le goût des décors graphiques et colorés. Rafael de Cárdenas zappe depuis 2006, date de création de son agence, entre projets d’agencement de concept-stores branchés et réalisation d’élégants intérieurs privés. L’édition de sa ligne de mobilier néo-postmoderne, par la Johnson Trading Gallery en 2011, le propulsa au rang de nouvelle pop star du design US. Depuis, rien ne semble l’arrêter. 

PROJET : LE MODULE D’HABITATION EN RÉFLEXIONS 

L’espace est séparé en deux îlots, d’un côté le coin chambre avec son lit se prolongeant en banquette, de l’autre la zone bureau qui fait également salle à manger. Ces structures à l’architecture très dessinée s’articulent autour de cages métalliques encerclant des lustres en cristal signés Baccarat. Les murs et le plafond, recouverts de miroirs, réfléchissent à l’infini ces lumières ondoyantes. L’ambiance fantomatique évoque autant les décors néoclassiques du film les Prédateurs, de Tony Scott, que les clips disjonctés de The Buggles. 

VINCENT DARRE

Ami du Tout-Paris, ex-roi des années Palace, prince de la mode reconverti dans la haute voltige décorative, Vincent Darré édite un mobilier surréaliste présenté dans sa galerie parisienne. Si ce dandy grand teint s’est tout d’abord fait connaître par ses agencements de boîtes de nuit, du Montana à Paris au Baron de New York, il compose désormais des intérieurs fantasques.

PROJET : LE BOUDOIR DADAÏSTE 

Un paravent géant dans lequel s’encastre porte, fenêtre et cheminée, déploie ses panneaux autour de la pièce pour définir un boudoir intime et baroque. Aux dessins des boiseries en trompe-l’œil, dans des tonalités tabac, rouille et fauve, répondent les jeux de perspective d’un labyrinthe tissé sur le tapis, au sol. Une table d’inspiration Calder, un guéridon cubiste, quelques curiosités choisies chez les antiquaires soulignent l’esprit de cet espace chahuté et graphique.

A noter que du 1er Septembre au 28 Septembre 2012, la Galerie 13. Jeannette Mariani (36, rue du Mont Thabor, Paris 1er) présente également du mobilier conçu par Vincent Darré dans le cadre de l'exposition Living Room aux côtés de réalisations de Gavin Benjamin, Anne Brunet et Nina Dotti. De Vincent Darré sont exposés un Fauteuil Dorsal, une Table Pas de Cigogne, une Banquette Aligator et un tapis Wall Paper.

JEAN-LOUIS DENIOT 

Diplômé de l’Ecole Camondo, en 2000, Jean-Louis Deniot entame aussitôt ses premiers chantiers. Son talent pour décontracter le classicisme à la française d’une touche de confort toute américaine lui assure un succès certain. Il excelle dans les mélanges de meubles de provenances diverses qu’il fond en des camaïeux soyeux.

PROJET : LE SALON ETHNIQUE GRAPHIQUE 

Jean-Louis Deniot se livre à des jeux de constructions graphiques en déclinant à l’infini le dessin d’un tissu africain. En petit, sur les tapisseries des murs, over-sized sur le tapis. Le motif détermine la structure d’un surprenant canapé composé de 15 modules. Au plafond, le lustre s’inspire du tracé de l’imprimé. Tout n’est que répétitions aléatoires et illusions d’optique se reflétant à l’infini dans les mosaïques de miroirs oxydés de la cheminée et les feuilles de verre d’un paravent géant. 

DIMORE STUDIO

Basés à Milan, l’Américain Britt Moran et l’Italien Emiliano Salci insufflent aux espaces qu’ils réinterprètent la patine d’un passé fantasmé. Un style érudit et un brin bohème que l’on a pu découvrir à Paris au Caffè, adresse de Thierry Costes près des Champs-Elysées. C’est à eux que Tomas Maier a confié la mise en scène de sa dernière collection de mobilier pour Bottega Veneta. Le duo s’affirme comme la nouvelle star de la décoration transalpine. 

PROJET : LES SALONS DOLCE VITA 

Deux salons ouverts en vis-à-vis. L’un comme un vestibule meublé de pièces vintage d’Azucena. L’autre, accueillant des fauteuils clubs et un ample canapé, relève autant du salon de lecture que du cabinet de curiosités privé. Une bibliothèque sculpturale, sorte de cage en métal, y présente des objets cultes du design italien – céramiques, vases et autres objets du quotidien. Les plantes vertes, le sol en mosaïque de bois laqué et bronze, les tonalités gris-vert, bleu azur et sapin évoquent la mélancolique d’une Italie oubliée. 

JOSEPH DIRAND

Diplômé de l’école d’architecture de Paris-Belleville, le décorateur Joseph Dirand aime jouer avec les relectures minimales des registres de l’architecture classique, du 18e siècle aux années 1940. Qu’il s’agisse de projets résidentiels à Paris, Londres, New York, Tel-Aviv ou Le Caire, il enchaîne des chantiers d’envergure. Il inaugurera cet automne le nouveau restaurant du Palais de Tokyo, façon brasserie Art déco revisitée.

PROJET : LA SALLE DE BAINS DE MAHARADJAH POUR LOUIS VUITTON 

En hommage aux princes indiens, clients phare de la maison Louis Vuitton dans les années 1930, Joseph Dirand signe une salle de bains néo-Art déco aussi sophistiquée que spectaculaire. Boiseries d’ébène, murs de marbre, plafond en caissons, verrière en bronze, carreaux de douche en or blanc, tabouret signé Serge Roche, tous les éléments composant cette pièce relèvent de l’excellence du savoir-faire français au service de l’art de vivre. Valeurs que partagent Louis Vuitton, partenaire de AD Intérieurs 2012, et Joseph Dirand. 

FRANÇOIS-JOSEPH GRAF

Fils d’antiquaire, architecte de formation et diplômé de l’Ecole du Louvre, François-Joseph Graf s’est fait une spécialité des chantiers classés liés aux monuments historiques. Les antiquaires le réclament – pas moins de cinq stands réalisés par son agence à la Biennale. Les grandes fortunes internationales également – chantiers à Londres, Athènes, Rome, Paris… Il élabore actuellement une ligne de mobilier d’exception, bientôt présentée à Paris.

PROJET : LE SALON EN ADOBE 

Puisant ses influences dans des constructions de Timbuku à Meroé, d’Ifé à Libella, François-Joseph Graf érige des murs de terre pour redéfinir les structures d’un salon à l’architecture classique. Ce jeu de textures brutes allié à des photos tribales et abstraites signées Olivier Dassault, au mobilier en acier rouillé et à quelques statues ethniques, souligne l’influence africaine du projet. Le maître excelle dans les espaces ultra-dessinés où architecture intérieure, motifs et fournitures déclinent un même propos.

THIERRY LEMAIRE

Architecte DESA de Paris, Thierry Lemaire agence depuis 1990, des intérieurs vibrants. De grands espaces contemporains, qu’il s’agisse d’un appartement parisien, d’un chalet à Gstaad ou d’un restaurant à Beyrouth – ses derniers chantiers – où cohabitent les influences des années 1960 et 1970. Passé maître dans les contrastes entre bois brut, métaux précieux et touches de couleurs, il développe également un mobilier d’exception désormais édité par Modénature. 

PROJET : LE LOUNGE SOFITEL 

La découverte de panneaux laqués chinoisants du xviiie siècle chez un antiquaire inspira au décorateur un paravent mural. Les motifs peints s’intercalent avec des miroirs noirs, dans un jeu de rayures graphiques. L’influence chinoise se retrouve aussi dans les bibliothèques, consoles et tables d’appoint en bois aux pieds recourbés et au plateau laqué de couleurs vives. Au centre de la pièce, deux doubles canapés en velours turquoise composent des îlots conviviaux et élégants, propres à l’art de vivre à la française promu par Sofitel qui est un des partenaires de AD Intérieurs 2012.

CHAHAN MINASSIAN 

Architecte d’intérieur, ensemblier, antiquaire, ce Parisien d’origine arménienne fut l’un des premiers à promouvoir en France le travail de designers américains qu’il représente dans sa galerie de la rue de Lille, à Paris. 

PROJET : LE SALON CALIFORNIEN 

La lumière dorée de Palm Springs, filtrée par des stores vénitiens, baigne un salon aux tonalités poudrées. Réputé pour son art des décors atmosphériques, fruit de subtils camaïeux, jeux de textures et d’accords stylistiques audacieux, Chahan Minassian dispose, devant un mur en céramique de Peter Lane, un canapé de Vladimir Kagan, des chaises de John Dickinson et une console de Karl Springer. Ces pièces d’icônes du design dialoguent avec les toiles de peintres cultes, comme Bernard Buffet. De ces juxtapositions érudites découle un décor serein qui se reflète à l’infini dans les miroirs installés de part et d’autre de la pièce. 

BRUNO MOINARD 

Réputé pour ses lieux épurés, luxueux sans ostentation, chics sans snobisme, Bruno Moinard développe depuis son agence parisienne de l’avenue Montaigne des chantiers d’envergure aux quatre coins du globe. Maisons à Casablanca, Toronto, Shanghai, Knokke-le-Zoute, agencement des étages luxe des Galeries Lafayette, hôtels à Chengdu, bureaux à Shanghai, rénovation du Plazza Athénée… Et toujours les boutiques Cartier, plus de 340 livrées en dix ans. 

PROJET : LA SALLE DE BAINS FALAISE 

Les coloris brumeux, l’ambiance calme et sereine, évoquent les plages de Normandie. Une baignoire en ébène, comme un coquillage accroché à un mur texturé façon falaise, souligne la poésie du propos. Bruno Moinard compose son décor par touches allusives : une console au plateau en verre ondulant suggère l’horizon, la moquette en dégradé, la marée descendante, des projections d’images sur un paravent, des souvenirs de vacances.

ROSE ANNE DE PAMPELONNE 

Parisienne, d’origine philippine, Rose Anne de Pampelonne apporte un vent de fraîcheur à la haute décoration française. Son sens du détail, empreint d’une délicate féminité, se traduit par un goût pour les fresques fantasques, les touches folk bien senties et les jeux subtils de couleurs vibrantes. Un style ethno-baroque que l’on retrouve également dans les collections d’accessoires de mode, qu’elle conçoit en parallèle de son activité d’architecte d’intérieur.

PROJET : LES CHAMBRES ECLIPSE 

Le jour et la nuit, le yin et le yang, le masculin et le féminin. Rose Anne de Pampelonne agence deux chambres en écho. L’une, derrière une porte de pavillon chinoise, apparaît comme un jardin d’hiver, avec ses murs recouverts de treillages asymétriques. L’autre, plus minérale, présente des cloisons métallisées, rehaussées parfois de paravents en feuilles de miroirs patinés. La même palette de teintes perlées et le choix de pièces de mobilier d’artiste réunissent ces deux espaces rêveurs.

FRANCIS SULTANA 

Parallèlement à ses fonctions de directeur artistique de la galerie de design David Gill à Londres, Francis Sultana mène de nombreux chantiers : résidence à Saint-Moritz, maison à Monaco et appartement à Tel-Aviv, actuellement en cours. Il édite également un mobilier sobre, élégant et luxueux à son nom, trait d’union entre ses diverses activités.

PROJET : LE SALON PARISIEN

Pour Francis Sultana, Londonien d’origine maltaise, l’esprit parisien a saveur d’exotisme. Il s’amuse donc à imaginer l’allure qu’aurait aujourd’hui le salon de Marie-Laure de Noailles, place des États-Unis. À une cheminée en plâtre sculptée façon coquillage d’Oriel Harwood répond une console en branchages surréaliste de Mattia Bonetti et une table basse en verre liquide de Zaha Hadid. Des pièces sculpturales pour cette collectionneuse de mobilier d’artiste. Rien de muséal pourtant, quelques livres traînent ici et là. Francis Sultana compose un salon habité, dans des tonalités crémeuses et aquatiques.

PIERRE YOVANOVITCH 

Architecte d’intérieur plus qu’ensemblier, cet ancien collaborateur de Pierre Cardin est réputé pour son goût des géométries, des belles matières et son sens des proportions. Minimal mais humaniste, il sait réchauffer ses agencements sobres et modernistes – qu’il s’agisse d’une maison à Anvers ou encore de l’Hôtel Marignan inauguré cet automne à Paris – par un choix de chaleureuses matières. Essences de bois, métaux oxydés et pierre brute lui permettent d’insuffler un certain naturel dans l’exceptionnel.

PROJET : LE PAVILLON EN ELLIPSE 

Pierre Yovanovitch érige une cellule minimale et abstraite dans un salon de réception aux murs recouverts de boiseries. Cette construction circulaire, blanche de l’extérieur, doublée façon miroir au sol et à l’intérieur, tout juste meublée d’un canapé sculptural en bois brut et de tables basses en céramique, invite à l’évasion introspective. Il s’agit d’un sas, d’une porte ouverte vers l’imaginaire… 

CHARLES ZANA 

Architecte de formation, Charles Zana a le don pour créer des ambiances chaleureuses et faciles à vivre, quelle que soit l’envergure des chantiers. Sensible aux belles matières, aux jeux de textures, comme aux tonalités estompées, il compose des intérieurs contemporains. Ses derniers projets, un showroom parisien pensé comme une maison privée pour Maje, un penthouse à Tel-Aviv faisant la part belle à la pierre du désert, illustrent cette quête de sérénité. 

PROJET : LA BIBLIOTHÈQUE ONIRIQUE

Derrière une fenêtre, des images de lever et de coucher du soleil diffusées en accéléré – allégories du temps qui passe –, font évoluer l’ambiance d’une bibliothèque agencée autour d’un lit de repos. Ce lieu rêveur, antre d’un collectionneur épris de pièces à la frontière entre art et design, présente un lustre d’Andrea Branzi, une œuvre d’Alessandro Mendini dans l’escalier, une console en marbre de Sophie Lafond dans le couloir. Une sélection érudite de créateurs contemporains.

ARTCURIAL
7, rond-point des Champs-Elysées - 75008 Paris
Ouvert tous les jours de 11h à 19h
www.artcurial.com

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought at CaixaForum Barcelona

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought at CaixaForum Barcelona
Curator: Helena Tatay
Through 28 October 2012

CaixaForum Barcelona presents works created in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by artists that explore and question systems of representation

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought is a major exhibition, presented by CaixaForum Barcelona, featuring cartographies drawn up by twentieth- and twenty-first century artists who explore and question the systems of representation that humans have used for centuries as a way of understanding the chaos that is life.

The exhibition, organised and produced by ”la Caixa” Foundation, pursues one of the organisation’s long-standing goals, that of  helping to increase the capacity to generate knowledge and awareness of the most recent art whilst fostering greater understanding of contemporary creativity and breaking down the barriers that often prevent such art from reaching wider audiences.

To this end, the Foundation’s cultural programme focuses particularly on the most recent artistic manifestations, both in the exhibitions it organises – including such recent shows as  The Cinema Effect. Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image; Displaced Modernity: Thirty Years of Chinese Abstract Art and those devoted to such artists as Hannah Collins, Omer Fast and Pierre Huygue – and in the acquisition policy followed with regard to the Contemporary Art Collection. 

The ”la Caixa” Contemporary Art Collection is formed, at present, by more than 900 works by some of the most important artists of the last 30 years. Today, this collection is unquestionably a reference in the art world, as is demonstrated by the fact its works are regularly requested on loan  for exhibitions all over the world. Moreover, the Foundation organises frequent  exhibitions at its CaixaForum centres, as well as travelling shows that tour Spain, Europe and the rest of the world.

In order to further intensity its cultural activities, moreover, ”la Caixa” Foundation also establishes strategic alliances with major museums around the world, such as the Louvre and the Prado. This line of action also includes the agreement between ”la Caixa” and MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona) Foundation to jointly manage their respective contemporary art collections, establish a coordinated acquisition policy and co-produce exhibitions based on these collections.

In this latest presentation of contemporary art works, ”la Caixa” Foundation takes a universal concept as the starting-point: the human need to understand and represent the world around us.

The central aim of this exhibition is, therefore, to explore the ways in which contemporary artists have used cartographic language to subvert traditional systems of representation, propose new formulas or  suggest the very impossibility of representing a globalised, ever more chaotic world.

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought features more than 140 works, including installations, video installations, paintings, drawings, projections, digital art, maps, etc., from a wide range of institutions and galleries, such as MOMA, the Pompidou Centre, Museo Reina Sofía, IVAM, MUSAC, MACBA, Fundació Joan Miró, the Hirshhorn Museum and ”la Caixa” Contemporary Art Collection itself.

We map our world in order to gain a glimpse of the reality in which we live. Since time immemorial, maps have been used to represent, translate and encode all kinds of physical, mental and emotional territories. Our representation of the world has evolved in recent centuries and, today, with globalisation and the Internet, traditional concepts of time and space, along with methods for representing the world and knowledge, have been definitively transformed. In response to this paradigm shift, contemporary artists question systems of representation and suggest new formulas for classifying reality.

The ultimate aim of Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought, an exhibition that seeks to draw a map formed by cartographies created by twentieth- and twenty-first century artists, is to invite the visitor to question both the systems of representation that we use and the ideas that underpin them.

 

 

Joaquín Torres García, América invertida, 1943.
© Joaquín Torres García, Museo Torres García

 

The exhibition, organised and produced by ”la Caixa” Foundation, is comprises more than 140 works in a wide range of formats - from maps and drawings to video installations and digital art - on loan from the collections of several major contemporary art galleries. The artists represented include such essential figures as Salvador Dalí, Paul Klee, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Klein, Gordon Matta-Clark, Richard Hamilton, Mona Hatoum and Richard Long, shoulder-to-shoulder with a roster of contemporary artists, including Art & Language, Artur Barrio, Carolee Schneemann, Ana Mendieta, Erick Beltrán, On Kawara, Alighiero Boetti, Thomas Hirschhorn and Francis Alÿs, amongst others. Finally, the exhibition is completed by a series of revealing documents drawn up by experts from other fields, such as Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Lewis Carroll and Carl Gustav Jung.

Öyvind Fahlström, Column no. 2 (Picasso 90), 1973.
Photograph: Alexander Hattwig, Berlin

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought: The artists whose works are featured in the exhibition are:

Ignasi Aballí
Francis Alÿs
Efrén Álvarez
Giovanni Anselmo
Art & Language
Zbynék Baladrán
Artur Barrio
Lothar Baumgarthen
Erick Beltrán
Zarina Bhimji
Ursula Biemann
Cezary Bodzianowski
Alighiero Boettti
Christian Boltanski
Marcel Broodthaers
Stanley Brouwn
Trisha Brown
Bureau d’Études
Los Carpinteros
Constant
Raimond Chaves & Gilda Mantilla
Salvador Dalí
Guy Debord
Michael Drucks
Marcel Duchamp
El Lissitzky
Valie Export
Evru
Öyvind Fahlström
Félix González-Torres
Milan Grygar
Richard Hamilton
Zarina Hashmi
Mona Hatoum
David Hammons
Thomas Hirschhorn
Bas Jan Ader
On Kawara
Allan Kaprow
William Kentridge
Robert Kinmont
Paul Klee
Yves Klein
Hilma af Klint
Guillermo Kuitca
Emma Kunz
Mark Lombardi
Rogelio López Cuenca
Richard Long
Cristina Lucas
Anna Maria Maiolino
Kris Martin
Gordon Matta-Clark
Ana Mendieta
Norah Napaljarri Nelson
Dorothy Napangardi
Rivane Neuenschwander
Perejaume
Grayson Perry
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Vahida Ramujkic
Till Roeskens
Rotor
Ralph Rumney
Edward Ruscha
Carolee Schneemann
Robert Smithson
Saul Steinberg
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Willy Tjungurrayi
Joaquín Torres García
Isidoro Valcárcel Medina
Adriana Varejao
Oriol Vilapuig
Kara Walker
Adolf Wölfli

 

Art & Language. Study for Index: Map of the World, 2001.
Acrílico, lápiz y Tipp-Ex sobre papel

The exhibition, which opens with reflections by the cartographer Franco Farinelli and ends with an interview with the philosopher Alexander Gerner, also features several eighteenth-century manuscript maps from the National Library. Moreover, some sections also feature dialogues between contemporary artists and outstanding experts from other fields, such as  Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Carl Gustav Jung and Lewis Carroll.

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought: Physical, mental and emotional territories

Humans have always needed to design and build structures in order to understand the chaos that is life. Maps break down  reality into fragments, enabling it to be presented in the shape of tables. In this way, we translate and codify, not only physical space, but also knowledge, feelings, desires and life experiences. 

Representing the Earth on a plane, projecting a three-dimensional object in two dimensions, was an astounding transformation. This  process enables us to grasp the idea of space, which has shaped European  thinking. As the geographer Franco Farinelli notes, since the beginning of European knowledge there has been no other way of knowing things except through their image. It is difficult for us to go beyond their appearance, their representation.

In the seventeenth century, classifications and phenomena began to be drawn on a plane. Mapmaking knowledge was combined with statistical skills. In this way, data maps emerged, helping to visualise knowledge and converting it into science. A century later, linked to the colonial expansion of certain European countries, scientific cartography came into being.  At the same time, maps of emotions began to appear in French salons hosted by women. Since then, maps have been used to represent and make visible physical, mental and emotional territories of all kinds.

In the twentieth century, technical advances such as the airplane and photograph, which enabled reality to be reproduced exactly, wrought changes in the way the world was represented. Moreover, non-material communication – the telegraph and the telephone  – caused the “crisis of space” that was so ably reflected by the cubists.

Internet finally dispelled all traditional concepts of time and space. The contemporary space is a heterogeneous space. We are aware that we live in a network of relations and material and non-material  flows, but we still do not possess a model to represent this invisible network. We live in tension between what we were and can think and these new things that we are unable to represent.

This exhibition explores a theme that has unattainable ramifications. Based on art (a microspace for freedom in which models of knowledge can be reconsidered and redefined) it proposes a map – arbitrary, subjective and incomplete, like all maps – of the cartographies formulated by twentieth-century
and contemporary artists. This map invites us to question the systems of representation that we use, and the ideas that underlie them.

 

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought: Cartographic language

The reduction of the Earth to a two-dimensional graphic image constituted a technical and cultural revolution. It enabled gradually built up knowledge about the territory to be transmitted whilst also, acting as an interface between us and the world, it changed our relationship with reality and helped to shape and inform European knowledge. 

In order to represent the world and other things, we project them onto the abstract space of geometry, which takes no account of nuances or qualitative differences between places. In this process, the geographic space takes on the properties pertaining to its material  support, the map. As Karl Schlögel points out, there can be nothing that resembles a correct figure on cartographic maps; the map’s rectangular coordinates iron out the world’s wrinkles.

Art and Language, Michael Baldwin and Terry Atkinson,
Map of itself (Map of an area of dimensions 12" × 12", indicating 2,304 1/4" squares), 1967. MACBA Collection. Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona Consortium. Philippe Méaille Collection.

Cartographic language translates the world’s reality. However, like all languages, it imposes its rules and establishes limits. Representation transforms the chaos of the world into its opposite, a logical space. 

Since the early-twentieth century, countless artists, like the Surrealists, have played with the cartographic language. Lewis Carroll, Art & Language played with cartographic grammar. As well as artists like Stanley Brouwn or Artur Barrio turning its logic into something apparently absurd.

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought: Types of space

Knowledge of the space, reflection about its nature as collective representation and the need to classify and define the different types of spatial representations; these are all characteristics of our time. 

Edward Ruscha, 9 to 5, 1991
”la Caixa” Foundation Contemporary Art Collection
© Colección Arte Contemporáneo Fundación "la Caixa"

The idea of space, which shaped European knowledge, has impregnated all the realms of our thought. We speak of personal, public, symbolic and many other types of spaces. Space is, today, the metaphor that is most often repeated in our discourses. This is, no doubt, because we feel that, through space, we free ourselves from the linear nature of language and writing. In it, thought finds expression for its plurality and dynamism. 

Michel Foucault defined the transformation of the notions of time and space through the idea of “other” spaces, which are neither here nor there: the telephone call or the Internet space, as well as the mirror space and the sound space. Non-material communication has changed our notion of time and space. Little by little, we find different forms in the time-space relationship in the images around us.

This section contains works by artists in which space and time are linked in different ways. There are social spaces outside time (Constant), countries of the mind (Evru), displacements of mirrors (Robert Smithson), invisible spaces (Giovanni Anselmo), empty spaces generated during the running time of a film (Hiroshi Sugimoto), sound spaces (Milan Grygar), a million years organised in just one space (On Kawara) and many more.

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought: Social and political cartographies 

Far from being merely descriptive, maps impose a structure on the world, describing it in terms of power relations and cultural practices. In the modern period, topographic and data maps have played a very important role in the constitution of nation-states and empires.

Topographic maps, which reduce the world to a single plane, provide an “ideal” space in which the modern territorial state and its colonialist policies draw straight lines: the former, drawing borders in an abstract way, the latter – railway lines and roads – to cross it and increase the speed at which goods are exchanged.

Whilst we continue to hold the same idea of territorial space, processes of globalisation have decreased spatial barriers. Moreover data on patterns of activity and planetary capitalist relations –capital flows, business concentrations and their geographical and political ramifications– are so abundant that we are lost in a mire of information. We experience complex perceptions. Immersed in world markets for material goods, messages and migrants, we need to delimit and define the singularity of the territory we inhabit. The states need them in order to express a distinctive cultural value, and we, in order to feel and construct our own identity.

Through critique of the geographic discourse, some artists question the existing political and social order. Others attempt to make sense of the vast quantity of data on capital flows, power relations and political events, which are so difficult to understand, or organise diagrams and cartographies to make them visible.

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought: Cartographies of the body

The body is our measure of the world. We use our bodies to perceive and delimit the space around us. We measure in feet and in palms, and we speak of celestial bodies or major arteries in the city.

Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking, 1967.
Dorothee and Konrad Fischer Collection.

Throughout history, we can find countless examples of cartographic maps with human forms. The equivalence between the Earth and the body was developed socially in the eighteenth century as part of a new ideal for the representing the territory topographically. Romanticism, on the other hand, sought the echoes of its feelings and images of the self in sublime, disturbing nature. For the subject, the body-Earth equivalence is established by taking the body as part of the cosmic meaning of life.

 

Michael Druks, Druksland–Physical and Social, 15 January 1974, 11.30 am 1974 © Michael Druks. Photo: England & Co Gallery, London

In the twentieth century, the body-Earth fusion generated images of footprints in mud (Ana Mendieta), bodies marked on the map (Adriana Varejão) and traces of the body moving over the canvas (Yves Klein).

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought: Cartographies of experience and life

However, topographic cartography is always a drawing of a lifeless form that does not represent what moves and breathes, not the territory or city that is travelled over and experienced (Bas Jan Ader). When we move through the space, we break the fixed nature of the cartographic subject, which, by moving, awakens its emotions. Cartographies made by the body’s movement, as in dance (Loïe Fuller) or performance (Carolee Schneemann), draw evanescent maps of the space of representation in real time.

If we try to make a cartography of our life, having resource to memory, we will find a mixture of houses and cities, everyday occurrences and social events, fears and desires that fuse into an ethereal amalgam that resounds to the echoes of our relations. If we attempt to order this amalgam onto the linear time that governs the world or to draw it on a plane, we realise that the internal and external, personal and social limits that we establish to separate the human being from the world become porous or disappear altogether. In the maps that represent our lives there are no borders between what is perceived and what is felt, nor is there any distinction between social and personal territories.

That is why many artists infuse time lived into the spaces of common topographic maps (Grayson Perry, Zarina Hashmi, Guillermo Kuitca) or use ordinary postcards to record their everyday, repetitive movements (On Kawara). Other artists draw the landscapes of their inner journey in search of America (Raimond Chaves & Gilda Mantilla) or create an internal cartography of desolation by filming the empty places of extermination in Uganda (Zarina Bhimji).

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought: Cartographies of the intangible

Discarded by European rationalism and classified as esoteric, astrology, mysticism and occultism, amongst others, have been  sidelined for centuries, consigned to limbo by official culture, along with everything else that exceeds the limits of space and time and cannot be demonstrated empirically.

According to the esoteric philosopher Rudolf Steiner, the goal of knowledge is not to repeat in conceptual form something that exists, but rather to create a completely new sphere, which when combined with the world given to our senses constitutes complete reality. 

This section features cartographies that make intangible aspects visible. Here are structures whose dimensions are not always ascertained, and which map the vibrational, the suprasensitive, the multidimensional, the unconscious and dreams.

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought: Conceptual cartographies 

When we draw conceptual maps or diagrams, we are seeking to give structure to unresolved questions and problems. We order our formulations by drawing a logical plan of relations, with points of intersection, nodes, empty fields, connections and disconnections. In this way, we are able to articulate our thought, giving it shape, form, and making it visible.

The relations between ideas or things appear more clearly because we establish a dynamic and indicate the forces of change that are established between them. This, in turn, enables us to understand the effect of one on the other. Whilst topographic cartography is static, these maps record changes and transformations.  Conceptual maps made using images (and whose mythical origins in the art world are found in Aby Warburg’s  Atlas Mnemosyne) are tools that enable us to conceive of reticular relations and to construct new models of orders and senses.

Kris Martin, Globo terráqueo, 2006.
Colección Teixeira de Freitas, Lisboa, Portugal.
Courtesy of Johann König, Berlin; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf.
Photograph: Ludger Paffrath, Berlín

 

The appearance of technological networks greatly boosted diagrammatic and reticular thought. Internet has accentuated the production and dissemination of knowledge, and interaction enables us to create new personal and collective realities. Today, we use conceptual maps and diagrams as tools to help us understand the complex transformations that take place in the world around us. At a time of accelerated change, technological innovation, urban metamorphosis, social transformation and political conflicts, we need new maps that can help us to visualise this transformation.

Curator: Helena Tatay

Contemporary Cartographies. Drawing Thought. Organised and produced by ”la Caixa” Foundation. The exhibition opened 25 July and is on view through 28 October 2012 at CaixaForum Barcelona (Av. de Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, 6-8).

Combas / Kijno - via crucis, la peinture à quatre mains - Chapelle de la Visitation, Espace d'art contemporain, Thonon-les-Bains

Robert Combas & Ladislas Kijno
à la Chapelle de la Visitation,
Espace d'art contemporain à Thonon en Haute-Savoie

   

Combas / Kijno - via crucis, la peinture à quatre mains
Chapelle de la Visitation, Espace d'art contemporain, Thonon
Commissaire de l'exposition : Philippe Piguet
Jusqu'au 7 octobre 2012

Première des quatre expositions de la saison 2012-2013, " COMBAS/KIJNO – via crucis, la peinture à quatre mains " s’inscrit dans le cadre de l’une des thématiques - à savoir ici, « Pièce unique » - sur lesquelles s’appuie depuis l’an passé la programmation de la Chapelle de la Visitation de Thonon-les-Bains. Le choix de cette exposition a été fait délibérément en écho à celle que consacre le Musée du Chablais à Maurice Denis et à la restauration qui a été entreprise de son chemin de croix à la basilique Saint-François de Sales.

Robert Combas & Ladislas Kijno
Jésus est chargé de sa croix, 2005
© Robert Combas / Ladislas Kijno

Robert Combas & Ladislas Kijno

Jésus tombe pour la première fois sous le poids de la croix, 2005

© Robert Combas / Ladislas Kijno

C’est un tout autre chemin de croix qui est présenté cet été à la Chapelle, celui qu’ont réalisé à quatre mains, en 2005, deux artistes de deux générations différentes : Robert Combas (né à Lyon en 1959) et Ladislas Kijno (né à Varsovie, Pologne, en 1921). Tandis que ce dernier est l’une des grandes figures d’un art abstrait matiériste des années 1960, le premier est la figure majeure du mouvement de la Figuration libre, apparu au début des années 1980. La découverte à la télévision de son aîné, invité d’une émission consacrée aux enfants, a déterminé Robert Combas à vouloir le rencontrer. De cette rencontre est née l’envie de réaliser une œuvre en commun et les deux artistes se sont accordés sur le thème du chemin de croix, travaillant tour à tour chacune des scènes. Quatorze stations, quatorze grandes toiles de 195 x 130 cm: une façon d’affirmer la permanence d’un sujet et de certifier la vivacité de la peinture à l’ordre du post-modernisme. Une rencontre au sommet de l’esprit, en quelque sorte. 

Philippe Piguet, Commissaire chargé des expositions

ConférenceJeudi 20 septembre 2012 à 20h30, conférence de Philippe Piguet. « Art contemporain et Art sacré ». Entrée libre dans la limite des places disponibles.

Edition - L’exposition Combas/Kijno - via Crucis, la peinture à quatre mains fait l’objet d’une publication d’un numéro de SEMAINE. Magazine hebdomadaire spécialisé en art contemporain qui consacre chaque numéro à un artiste, un lieu ou une exposition.

Chapelle de la Visitation
25 rue des Granges - 74200 Thonon-les-Bains
04 50 70 69 49
www.ville-thonon.fr
Entrée libre
Horaires : Ouvert du mercredi au dimanche de 14h30 à 18h.
Visites commentées gratuites. Rendez-vous chaque samedi et dimanche à 16h.

Everything was moving: Photography from the sixties and seventies at Barbican Art Gallery, UK

Everything was moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s 
Barbican Art Gallery, London
13 September 2012 - 13 January 2013

I love all art medium but it is always a pleasure to share inforations about a major photography exhibition. This one is particulary interresting because it surveys the medium from an international perspective, and includes renowned photographers from across the globe, all working during two of the most memorable decades of the 20th Century. everything was moving: photography from the 60s and 70s tells a history of photography, through the photography of history. It brings together over 350 works, some rarely seen, others recently discovered and many shown in the UK for the first time.

It features key figures of modern photography including Bruce Davidson, William Eggleston, David Goldblatt, Graciela Iturbide, Boris Mikhailov and Shomei Tomatsu, as well as important practitioners whose lives were cut tragically short such as Ernest Cole and Raghubir Singh. Each contributor has, in different ways, advanced the aesthetic language of photography, as well as engaging with the world they inhabit in a profound and powerful way.

The exhibition is set in one of the defining periods of the modern age – a time that remains an inescapable reference point even today. The world changed dramatically in the 1960s and 1970s, shaped by the forces of post-colonialism, and Cold War neo-colonialism. This momentous epoch in history coincided with a golden age in photography: the moment when the medium flowered as a modern art form.

Great auteur photographers emerged around the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’ world. Many, working increasingly independently from the illustrated press, and freed from the restraints of brief and commission, were able to approach the world on their own terms, and to introduce a new level of complexity to photographic imagery. Others, such as Li Zhensheng (China) and Ernest Cole (South Africa), found themselves living in situations of extreme repression, but devised inspiring strategies to create major works of photography in secrecy and at huge personal risk.

Back in the 1960s, many commentators viewed photography as inferior to painting or sculpture, because it simply recorded, mechanically, what could be seen, and was judged to be concerned primarily with reporting the facts (journalism) or campaigning for change (social documentary). Attitudes changed during this period, and the art museum slowly opened its doors to the medium. Less concerned to change the world, or to merely describe it, a new generation of photographers were driven to understand that world, as well as their place within it.

The exhibition presents a selection of works by the Chinese photographer, Li Zhensheng, some never before revealed in public. An aspiring artist and filmmaker, Li Zhensheng worked throughout the tumultuous decade of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) for the Heilongjiang Daily, the local newspaper of Harbin in the far North East of China, on the border with Russia. He, like everyone else in the country found himself caught up in the mad spiral of indoctrination and violence that was Mao’s ‘revolution’– at times as a participant, at others as a victim. At great personal risk, Li Zhensheng photographed in secret, and then buried those photographs, some 30,000 negatives, under his mud floor. The material only came fully to light in the West at the end of the 20th century. It is the most complete visual record known of this extraordinary period of human history.

In a very different response to totalitarianism, acclaimed conceptual photographer, Boris Mikhailov lived and worked in Kharkhov at the height of Soviet domination of the Ukraine. Boris Mikhailov developed a distinctive artistic approach, with which to evade the censors and to satirize Soviet occupation, as well as the tenets of socialist realism. The exhibition includes the first UK showing of his very first series, Yesterday’s Sandwich, 1968-1975, a collection of radical, often hilarious montages.

A pioneer of colour, Indian artist Raghubir Singh (1942-1999) was driven to create a photography that was emphatically modern and Indian. He broke abruptly with the colonial tradition of single-point perspective, picturesque, depopulated landscapes – to describe an India which was peopled, frenetic and luminous. His so-called theory of ‘Ganges modernism’ pitted colour and spirituality against the monochromatic angst and alienation of Western figures such as Robert Frank and Diane Arbus. The work of Raghubir Singh has never been thoroughly evaluated in the UK, and this selection includes rarely seen images from the extraordinary archives of the early part of his career.

In stark contrast to Raghubir Singh’s colourful exuberance, an unrelentingly black-and-white aesthetic emerged in Japan, exemplified by the work of Shomei Tomatsu who is widely considered the ‘godfather’ of modern Japenese photography and a major influence on Daido Moriyama. In Shomei Tomatsu’s first-ever British museum showing, life in 1960s and 1970s Japan is evoked in metaphoric, angry, uncompromisingly monochrome pictures. Shomei Tomatsu rails against continuing American military occupation at Okinawa (the base from which Vietnam was being bombed); the growing impact of American capitalism on Japenese culture; and the devastating psychological legacy of Nagasaki.

Where most of Africa was – in theory at least – liberated from colonial domination by the early 1960s, in South Africa, a government – inspired by Nazi Germany and ignored by the West – was starting to build its heinous apartheid regime. Across the Atlantic, in another society dominated by white racism and racial segregation, the Southern states of America saw the stirrings of change as the civil rights movement gathered pace. The struggle for civil rights –from Selma to Soweto, the Amazon to Londonderry – was to define the spirit of the times: as did an increasingly angry global opposition to the neo-colonial war that America was waging in Vietnam.

Johannesburg-based David Goldblatt, is, perhaps more than any other photographer since Eugène Atget, linked inextricably with the country of his birth. Over five decades, David Goldblatt has created arguably one of the most important bodies of documentary photography in the history of the medium. He has forged a complex, contradictory tableau of South Africa’s fractured society, during and after apartheid. For this exhibition, David Goldblatt has personally revisited his major series of the 1960s and 1970s, from On the Mines with Nadine Gordimer, to Some Afrikaners Photographed, and In Boksburg. The selection includes rarely exhibited works.

Long thought lost for ever, an incredible collection of vintage prints by the black South African Ernest Cole (1940-1990) was recently rediscovered and will be shown for the first time in Britain at Barbican Art Gallery. Ernest Cole somehow persuaded the Race Classification Board that he was not ‘black’ but ‘coloured’ (he changed his name from Kole to Cole) and was therefore able to practice as a photographer at a time when many black photographers were persecuted and imprisoned. Ernest Cole’s courage and determination were matched by his artistic talent. He escaped South Africa on 9 May 1966, and in exile in New York was to publish House of Bondage, 1967, an indelible record of what it was to be black under apartheid. Ernest Cole was never able to return home and he died in poverty, his negatives given away, it is believed, in lieu of an unpaid hotel bill.

South Africa ’s extraordinary tradition of realist photography during this period is contrasted with major American contemporaries. Bruce Davidson and William Eggleston are two of the giants of 20th century photography. In many ways, they are diametrically opposed in philosophy and approach, and yet at points in the 1960s they shared subject matter: both were photographing people and places in the contested landscape of the Southern states as the struggle for equality unfolded.

Time of Change, 1961-1965, one of Bruce Davidson’s most powerful series, has never been exhibited in the UK. On May 25, 1961 the 28-year old photographer joined a group of Freedom Riders making a terrifying journey by bus from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi. It was the starting point of a four-year project for Bruce Davidson, in which he captures the mood and the events of the civil rights struggle, in a series of poignant and empathetic pictures. Where Bruce Davidson was interested in the human reality of the south, in contrast, William Eggleston, a native of Memphis, Tennessee, perplexed the critics with his seeming lack of subject matter, lack of composition - and lack of a photographic agenda. Now, he is widely viewed as a brilliant innovator who revolutionized photography with his ‘democratic’, non-hierarchical vision, his ‘shotgun’ aesthetic and his radical use of colour. William Eggleston’s classic pictures of the period – affectless, brooding images of the Deep South, saturated in vivid colour, and shot through with a sense of menace, equally conjure the mood of the time.

Also included: major contributions by Hasselblad-award winners Graciela Iturbide (Mexico) and Malick Sidibé (Mali); a little-seen allegorical work by Sigmar Polke (Germany) ; and a selection of Larry Burrows’ (UK) powerful Vietnam portraits.

Kate Bush, Head of Art Galleries, Barbican Centre, said:

I am delighted to bring together an amazing group of photographers whose striking and powerful images of the 1960s and 1970s make us look at the world again. everything was moving explores a spectrum of different photographic approaches, and asks if, in the early 21st century, we are finally prepared to erase the distinction between art photography and documentary photography.

This exhibition is supported by The Japan Foundation, Institut Français, The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and The Nehru Centre.

Art Gallery, Barbarican Centre's website: www.barbican.org.uk