Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change @ The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia & Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio

Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change
The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia
February 21 - May 9, 2016
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
June - ..., 2016

The Barnes Foundation, in partnership with the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, premieres Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change. On view February 21 through May 9, 2016 at the Barnes, the exhibition will then travel to the Columbus Museum of Art in June. Curated by Simonetta Fraquelli, an independent curator and specialist in early twentieth-century European art, the exhibition explores Pablo Picasso’s work between 1912 and 1924, highlighting the tumultuous years of the First World War, when the artist began to alternate between cubist and classical modes in his art.

Inspired by the Columbus Museum of Art’s Picasso Still Life with Compote and Glass, 1914-15 and the Barnes’s extensive Picasso holdings, Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change features some 50 works by Picasso drawn from major American and European museums and private collections. The show includes oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and four costumes the artist designed for the avant-garde ballet, Parade, in 1917. Some 15 other important canvases by Picasso’s contemporaries—including Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, and Diego Rivera—will also be presented.

“A radical shift occurred in Picasso’s work in 1914,” notes curator Simonetta Fraquelli. “Following seven years of refining the visual language of cubism, he began to introduce elements of naturalism to his work.” This change in his production can be viewed against the backdrop of an unsteady cultural climate in Paris during the First World War. Many people identified the fragmented forms of cubism with the German enemy and therefore perceived it as unpatriotic. This negative impression reverberated throughout Paris during the First World War and may have been a factor in Picasso’s shift in styles. However, Fraquelli states, “What becomes evident when looking at Picasso’s work between 1914 and 1924, is that his two artistic styles—Cubism and Neoclassicism—are not antithetical; on the contrary, each informs the other, to the degree that the metamorphosis from one style to the other is so natural for the artist that occasionally they occur in the same works of art.”

Included in the exhibition will be major works from the Picasso museums in Barcelona, Málaga, and Paris, including, respectively: Woman with a Mantilla (Fatma), oil and charcoal on canvas, 1917; Olga Kholklova with a Mantilla, oil on canvas, 1917; and Femme Assise, oil on canvas, 1920. 

The exhibition also features four costumes that Picasso designed for the avant-garde ballet, Parade, which premiered in Paris in 1917. These are: Costume for Chinese Conjurer (original), and reproductions of The American Manager, The French Manager, and The Horse. Performed by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, with music by Erik Satie, story by Jean Cocteau and the choreography of Léonide Massine, Parade was the first cross-disciplinary collaboration of its kind. The ballet, which tells the story of an itinerant theater group performing a sideshow, or a parade, was viewed as a revolutionary approach to theater. Picasso was the first avant-garde artist involved in such a production – not only designing the costumes, but also the theater curtain and set. Included in the exhibition will be a watercolor and graphite sketch of the curtain design, and a pencil sketch of the Costume for Chinese Conjurer. Picasso drew inspiration for his designs from the modern world – everything from circuses and carousels, to music halls and the cinema. With Picasso’s inventive, geometric costumes and naturalistic curtain design, Parade can be seen as the ultimate fusion of cubist and classical forms.

Picasso’s juxtaposition of figurative and cubist techniques can be seen as an expression of artistic freedom during a time of great conflict, and his shifts in style became a means of not repeating, in his words, “the same vision, the same technique, the same formula.” The works by Picasso’s contemporaries, such as Diego Rivera’s Still Life with Bread Knife from 1915 and Henri Matisse’s Lorette in a Red Jacket from 1917, offer further insight into the shifting cultural climate in France during this transformative period.

Managing Curator for Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change at the Barnes Foundation is Martha Lucy. Managing Curator at the Columbus Museum of Art is Chief Curator, David Stark.

THE BARNES FOUNDATION
www.barnesfoundation.org

Christophe Robe @ Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris

Christophe Robe, des peintures, des dessins
Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris
3 décembre 2015 - 16 janvier 2016

Pour la première exposition personnelle de CHRISTOPHE ROBE à la galerie Jean Fournier, cette dernière présente un ensemble de peintures et de dessins témoignant des travaux les plus récents de l’artiste.

Christophe Robe développe une recherche aux frontières de la figuration et de l’abstraction. D’emblée, son univers onirique attire le spectateur par son étrangeté et l’utilisation récurrente d’éléments figuratifs, le plus souvent végétaux ou organiques qui jouxtent des éléments plus abstraits... Comme il fait se côtoyer plusieurs univers, il recourt à de multiples techniques. Il ponce, lessive, accumule et multiplie les couches picturale.  

Cette accumulation « gourmande » de techniques et de méthodes en appelle à l’imagination du spectateur aux confins des contes pour enfants ou de la fiction. Chaque tableau est un univers en lui-même : un paysage, un sous-bois, un fond marin. Une ambiguïté se crée entre la profondeur et la surface, entre la dimension physique et optique de la peinture. Des branches entrelacées se mêlent à des formes géométriques aux contours très précis, à des formes incertaines ou bien encore à des excroissances de matière aux interprétations multiples. Certains éléments semblent reconnaissables immédiatement mais l’artiste brouille les pistes. La succession de couches de matière quant à elle renforce la profondeur de l’image. Cette stratification de la peinture correspond à une remontée de la mémoire perceptive de l’artiste.

"De strates en strates, par porosité, capillarité et transferts, le regard s’infiltre dans des profondeurs haptiques que seul le vocabulaire de la gourmandise semble parvenir à décrire : copeaux de lumière cristallisés, nappages de nuances douces-amères, roulés de couleurs confites, flans de peinture montée en neige, tonalités crémeuses, caramels chromatiques … Tout un inventaire inédit de complicités entre le peindre et le savourer, qui jette le spectateur-goûteur derrière l’écran du visible, pour rejoindre les eaux troubles et délicieuses de la cécité de la peinture." (1)

La même foisonnance se retrouve dans le travail graphique. Si cette pratique riche en recherches formelles est totalement indépendante du travail pictural, elle présente néanmoins de multiples liens avec celui-ci. C’est pourquoi l’accrochage fait cohabiter les grands et petits tableaux avec les dessins,  comme autant de gros plans ou de longs plans séquence. 

A l'occasion de l'exposition, publication d'un catalogue avec un texte de Stéphanie Katz (Edtions Galerie Jean Fournier) 

(1) Stéphanie Katz, Ni homme, ni bête, seul l'arbre, in catalogue exposition Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris, 2015 

Exposition suivante à la galerie Jean Fournier : Kimber Smith, oeuvres sur papier, 21 janvier - 5 mars 2016

Galerie Jean Fournier
22 rue du Bac
75007, Paris - France
www.galerie-jeanfournier.com

Pupa Neumann @ The Big Gallery, Paris

Pupa Neumann, Daydream
The Big Gallery, Paris
10 décembre 2015 - 16 janvier 2016

Pupa Neumann, Au soleil 2013

Pupa Neumann, Le Cri 2013

Pupa Neumann, Asia 2013

Des femmes...
Des femmes belles et énigmatiques.
Qui viennent de nulle part.
Exilées dans un monde qui ne les reconnaît pas.
Sont ce de belles ukrainiennes mariées sur internet à de riches fermiers impuissants du Minnesota ?
Ou d’élégantes bulgares égarées au fond de la Beauce profonde afin de fuir un destin tragique ?

Non, à moi, elles m’évoquent plutôt des âmes perdues venues d’un futur proche. Accident temporel. À la recherche d’une joie évanouie, une joie purement mélancolique, une joie purement insaisissable. Elles amènent de leur monde disparu une aura de perfection, un sens sophistiqué de l’harmonie chromatique, une légèreté surnaturelle, une grâce trop sensible pour l’époque brutale ou elles atterrissent. De plus, à leur grande surprise, leur principale découverte est l’absence. L’absence d’homme, d’enfant, de famille, d’humain... Une absence complète et imprévisible. Se marier avec qui ? Se préparer à quelle union ? À quel don de soi ? Est ce que la seule réponse pour ne pas perdre la raison est de se voiler la face ? Car bien sûr c’en est trop et la folie guette. Le voile est un refuge qui permet de conserver une partie de son intégrité mentale. Se masquer, s’enfouir, ne rien révéler. Dans cette sécurité, attendre. Mais pas seulement. Trouver une liberté dans l’attente. Retrouver une innocence et une joie. Attendre sans rien espérer. En refusant le dévoilement, en restant secrètes, les femmes de Pupa Neumann, conservent mystérieusement leur souveraineté, leur disponibilité à changer de destin. Et même cette proximité constante de la folie féminine est un gage d’indépendance, échapper à tout conditionnement, social ou autre, par une fuite dans son propre monde. Le pouvoir d’imaginer et de construire sa vie, celui qu’on s’accorde à soi même sans l’autorisation d’une autorité supérieure. Et quelques soient les circonstances, jouir de la beauté du monde. Ce monde incertain, imparfait mais magnifique. Ou tout reste à inventer. Les images de Pupa Neumann nous plongent dans ce rêve éveillé, entre horreur et merveille, tristesse et légèreté, vide et énergie. Femmes du futur...

Arthur H

The Big Gallery 
27, rue Saint-Paul, dans la cour du Village Saint-Paul
75004 - Paris
du mercredi au dimanche de 10h30 à 19h00
www.thebiggallery.fr

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium @ LACMA, Getty Museum, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney...

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium 
LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art
March 20 - July 31, 2016
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 
March 15 - July 31, 2016 
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
September 10, 2016 - January 15, 2017 
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 
October 28, 2017 - February 4, 2018

Robert Mapplethorpe, Lisa Lyon, 1982 

Gelatin silver print

Promised gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to The J. Paul Getty Trust 

and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 

© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium, a major retrospective examining the work and career of one of the most influential visual artists of the 20th century. Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium is co-organized by LACMA and the J. Paul Getty Museum. In a historic collaboration, the two institutions will trace the artist’s working methods and materials, presenting the improvisational, experimental aspects of his practice alongside the refined perfection of his prints. The works on display provide new context for understanding the key genres that Mapplethorpe pursued: portraiture, the nude, and still life. His personal connections to sitters, his ability to manage a  successful studio, and his ambition to elevate photography to the status of contemporary art will be demonstrated through rarely seen correspondence, books, and other ephemera, including those from the artist’s archive held by the Getty Research Institute. 

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self-Portrait, 1980 

Gelatin silver print

Promised gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to The J. Paul Getty Trust 

and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 

© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

LACMA’s presentation (March 20–July 31, 2016) focuses on Mapplethorpe’s working methods, sources, and creative processes—the experimental and performative aspects of his work—while the J. Paul Getty Museum (March 15–July 31, 2016) highlights the artist’s disciplined studio practice, figure studies, and legacy. Between the two museums, more than 300 works by Mapplethorpe will be on view, making this one of the largest-ever presentations of his work. The objects on view in Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium are drawn almost entirely from the landmark joint acquisition of art and archival materials made in 2011 by the J. Paul Getty Trust and LACMA from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. 

Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, 1978 

Gelatin silver print

Promised gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to The J. Paul Getty Trust 

and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 

© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

"4 years ago LACMA and the Getty came together to jointly acquire the art and archives of Robert Mapplethorpe," said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. "It has been an exciting collaboration ever since, as our researchers, conservators, and curators have all spent time with this trove of Mapplethorpe's art. Now, we are glad to present this large-scale joint exhibition to Los Angeles and the world."

“Through this historic collaboration, the LACMA and J. Paul Getty Museum exhibitions offer a new perspective on this influential artist,” said Britt Salvesen, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography department. “Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium reveals the rich resources of the Mapplethorpe archive, which provides a broader context for the iconic images that brought him fame. Mapplethorpe’s refined style challenged viewers to consider his portraits, flowers, and sexually explicit images as equal expressions of a personal vision. His drive to capture the perfect moment is the core of his art.”

Following its Los Angeles debut, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium will travel internationally beginning with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada (September 10, 2016–January 15, 2017), the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, (October 28, 2017–February 4, 2018), and another international venue. This will be the first major traveling retrospective in North America since the landmark exhibition The Perfect Moment, organized in 1988 by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated book, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs, co-published by LACMA and the J. Paul Getty Museum. A comprehensive guide to the artist's work and career, this publication will feature an introduction by cocurators Britt Salvesen and Paul Martineau, five scholarly essays, an illustrated chronology, and a selected exhibition history and bibliography. The J. Paul Getty Museum presentation is curated by Paul Martineau, associate curator of photographs.

Exhibition Organization

The LACMA presentation is organized in five thematic sections. The first gallery establishes Mapplethorpe in the milieu of 1970s and 1980s urban gay culture, depicting himself and his models openly declaring their sexuality through clothing, body adornment, and gesture. The second gallery highlights the work Mapplethorpe created in the late 1960s and early 1970s before he took up photography in earnest. As a student of graphic design at the Pratt Institute, he demonstrated an early facility for draftsmanship and a penchant for geometric composition. He designed jewelry and temporary assemblages using items of clothing. Inspired by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg, he also experimented with collages and constructions, often incorporating Catholic iconography and appropriated imagery from homosexual periodicals.

Robert Mapplethorpe borrowed a Polaroid camera from a friend in 1970 and, over the course of the next year, honed his vision as a photographer. These early unique images, installed in the third gallery, reveal his observational acuity and his ability to be in the moment. Mapplethorpe was one of his own best subjects, as his many self-portraits attest, and he was open about being a participant in the scenarios he depicted. The fourth gallery focuses on Mapplethorpe’s engagement with the leather and bondage community, his appropriation of pornographic source material, and his exploration of the African American male nude. Additionally, this gallery features ephemera relating to Robert Mapplethorpe’s first breakout exhibitions in New York, including a joint exhibition at The Kitchen and Holly Solomon Gallery in 1977. The fifth gallery presents work from the mid-1980s, when Mapplethorpe was running a successful studio and producing many commissioned portraits. Among his favorite subjects were the artists, musicians, and other performers he first encountered in the downtown art scene in the ’70s. He commented that photography was “the perfect medium for the 70s and 80s, when everything was fast. If I were to make something that took two weeks to do, I’d lose my enthusiasm. It would become an act of labor and the love would be gone.” 

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium: Exhibition Highlights

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self-portrait (1980)

Robert Mapplethorpe’s turn to photography in the early 1970s coincided with his embrace of New York’s leather subculture, and, throughout the decade, he explored the potential of both forms of expression simultaneously. His 1980 self-portrait as a surly, smoking leatherman captures the hyper masculine posturing that was concomitant with the choice of leather as a fashion statement and as a sexual fetish. Staring defiantly into the camera, Robert Mapplethorpe declares his participation in the leather community. At the same time, the photograph expresses the playful and performative aspects of his studio practice. An element of dress-up and theater is evident in much of his portraiture. This self-portrait shows the artist posing in the role of an archetypal tough-guy—a greaser complete with popped collar, a lit cigarette dangling from his lip, and hair styled into a pompadour. 

Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith (1978)

Robert Mapplethorpe was studying art at the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, when he met Patti Smith in spring 1967. Mapplethorpe and Smith spent the next decade in close proximity, inspiring one another's artistic aspirations. Mapplethorpe chose photography as his medium in the early 1970s, whereas Smith gravitated toward poetry and music, and the two collaborated in a number of portrait sessions. Here, Smith poses in the act of cutting her hair, a gesture of defiance. As she explained in a 1975 interview, she didn't "want to walk around New York looking like a folk-singer. I like rock 'n' roll. So I got hundreds of pictures of Keith Richards, and I hung them up and then just took scissors and chopped away until I had a real Rolling Stones haircut." Mapplethorpe captured Smith's androgynous style, composing the photograph to emphasize contrasts of black and white in Smith's features and wardrobe, in the background, and even in the cat.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Lisa Lyon (1982)

Robert Mapplethorpe met Lisa Lyon at a party in 1979, and he would go on to produce nearly 200 photographs of her over the next several years. The first woman to win the International Federation of Body Builders female competition, Lyon had an androgynous, muscular physique that appealed to Mapplethorpe’s interest in the sculptural body. “I’d never seen anybody that looked like that before,” he said. “Once she took her clothes off it was like seeing something from another planet.” The pinnacle of their collaboration came with the release of the book Lady (1983), a series of portraits of Lyon. In this portrait, Mapplethorpe captures Lyon in her work-out attire, a nod to her role as an early advocate for fitness and weight training, which came to be a defining feature of early and mid-1980s American culture. 

Complementary Exhibition

The LACMA exhibition will also be accompanied by the installation Physical: Sex and the Body in the 1980s, which will feature roughly 30 works from the museum’s permanent collection. Placing Robert Mapplethorpe’s work in dialogue with his contemporaries, the installation examines the cultural and artistic upheavals of a pivotal decade in the history of American art and society. Featured artists include Bruce Weber, Kiki Smith, Sarah Charlesworth, Laura Aguilar, and Marina Abramovic, among others. Physical: Sex and the Body is curated by Ryan Linkof, assistant curator of the Wallis Annenberg Photography department.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036
www.lacma.org

J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90049
www.getty.edu

Isa Genzken, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Isa Genzken: Mach Dich hübsch!
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
November 29, 2015 - March 6, 2016

Isa Genzken “Nofretete”, 2014 

7 Nefertiti plaster busts with glassed on wooden bases, wooden plinths on casters and 4 steel panels 

Each 190,7 x 40 x 50 cm Installation dimensions variable Galerie Buchholz 

© Photo courtesy the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/Berlin/New York

The exhibition Isa Genzken: Mach Dich hübsch! presents a survey of the extraordinary oeuvre of Isa Genzken (Germany, 1948), one of the most influential artists of the last forty years. The exhibition is the first major retrospective of Genzken in the Netherlands and is her largest survey to date, comprising over 200 works. 

Isa Genzken, Soziale Fassade, 2002

Metal, plastic and metal foil, 70 x 100 cm. Ringier Collection, Zürich 

© Photo courtesy the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/Berlin/New York 

Mach Dich hübsch! is an odyssey through four decades of an astonishing practice defined by artistic freedom and bold inventiveness. The first room introduces the concept of the exhibition. It was designed, in collaboration with Genzken, as a comprehensive installation of older works mixed with very recent work, which she created for this exhibition. In the following suite of galleries, Genzken’s oeuvre is presented as a montage, not a chronology, to highlight interconnections and thematic threads. The artist engages with themes such as artistic position, the body, identity, the (self) portrait, architecture, and big-city culture.

Isa Genzken, X-Ray, foto 

100 x 80 cm, private collection 

Courtesy of Gert Jan van Rooij. 

Isa Genzken’s oeuvre is rooted in the medium of sculpture, and is distinguished by radical experimentation and the unconstrained use of media. The artist works across a wide range of media, which includes sculpture, installation, film, video, painting, work on paper, collage, and photography. The radical inventiveness of her work, rich in autobiographical elements and subtle social critique, serves as a reference point and inspiration source for generations of artists and art lovers.

Curator Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen says, "Isa Genzken creates art that engages with the present moment. With her startling sculptural vision, she reflects upon the material world around us and the structures that dictate our lives. Among artists, Genzken's embodiment of the challenging, unconventional tradition of the Stedelijk Museum is virtually without equal.” 

Isa Genzken (2015) Galerie Buchholz 

© Photo courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/Berlin/New York

The artist has a special relationship with Amsterdam. She visited the Stedelijk Museum in her youth, and held one of her first exhibitions in the Amsterdam gallery Van Krimpen. The Stedelijk has been collecting her work since 1985, and holds several key works from her oeuvre. In 2014, newly appointed director Beatrix Ruf’s first acquisition for the museum was a Genzken painting, Zwei Lampen (1994). 

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
www.stedelijk.nl

Zones de confort, Galerie Poirel, Nancy

Zones de confort

Collection design du CNAP Centre national des arts plastiques 1/3

Galerie Poirel, Nancy

21 novembre 2015 -17 avril 2016

STILETTO STUDIOS, Fauteuil Short Rest, 1983 / 1990,

FNAC 01-541, Centre national des arts plastiques

© droits réservés / Cnap / photo : Yves Chenot

Le Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap) et la galerie Poirel – Ville de Nancy s’associent pour présenter l’exposition Zones de confort qui constitue le premier volet d’un triptyque permettant d’aborder le design sous différents angles, comme pratique et discipline. Le public découvrira cent pièces du Fonds national d’art contemporain, l’une des plus importantes collections de design en Europe, enrichie, conservée et diffusée en France et à l’étranger par le Cnap.

Le confort peut être défini par « l’ensemble des commodités matérielles qui procurent le bien-être » 1

L’exposition propose d’observer certains objets conçus pour apporter satisfaction à nos corps et à nos esprits. Libération ou contrainte, que disent ces objets de nos activités et de nos préoccupations domestiques ? Des produits fabriqués en grande série, solution standardisée du confort, côtoieront des oeuvres plus singulières, qui bouleversent les codes esthétiques ou les moeurs. Ainsi, l’exposition est le reflet de deux postures complémentaires du design : élaborer des solutions et formuler des critiques. Le public découvre une curieuse demeure, celle d’un collectionneur compulsif et éclectique à l’image du Cnap. Les objets constituent le décor et les accessoires d’une grande scène dont le visiteur est à la fois le spectateur et l’acteur. Une forme de théâtre de nos activités qui invite à réfléchir sur les objets qui composent notre environnement domestique.

TIM THOM, Philippe STARCK, Radio Boa, 1995, FNAC 980713,

Centre national des arts plastiques

© Philippe Starck / Cnap / photo : Yves Chenot

La visite se construit en quatre actes et un interlude : 

- L'office, rempli d’objets fonctionnels, offre l’image du « confort moderne », celui des commodités matérielles destinées à améliorer le bien-être de l’utilisateur en le soulageant d’activités pénibles. 

- La salle de réception se présente comme un vaste salon, garni de meubles destinés à l’accueil des corps aux repos, en quête d’apesanteur. 

- L’aire de jeux, rassemble une sélection d’objets qui échappent au strict fonctionnalisme pour se placer du côté du divertissement et de la dérision. 

- L’antichambre bouscule notre représentation du bien-être en révélant certaines inquiétudes contemporaines. 

- Tel un interlude, la commande publique, L’Écouteur de Laurent Massaloux et Jean-Yves Leloup, interprétation contemporaine du salon de musique, permet de faire l’expérience d’une écoute immersive et spatialisée.

Avec des pièces de : 5.5 Designers, Eero Aarnio, François Azambourg, Pascal Bauer, Vincent Beaurin, Sebastian Bergne, Jurgen Bey Francesco Binfaré, Bless, Erwan & Ronan Bouroullec, François Brument, Edf R&D Design, Mark Brusse, Fernando & Humberto Campana, Pierre Charrié, Matali Crasset, Pucci De Rossi, Dimos, Nanna Ditzel, Florence Doléac, David Dubois, Michel Ducaroy, James Dyson, Charles Eames, Eliumstudio, Ruth Francken, Aurélien Froment, Naoto Fukasawa, Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, Franco Teodoro, Piero Gilardi, Konstantin Grcic, Gruppo Strum, Ineke Hans, Richard Hutten, Mathieu Lehanneur, Jean-Yves Leloup, Ross Lovegrove, Vico Magistretti, Enzo Mari, Laurent Massaloux, Alberto Meda, Nils Holger Moormann, Jasper Morrison, Marc Newson, Philippe Nigro, Gaetano Pesce, Olivier Peyricot, Radi Designers, Tejo Remy, Jean Royère, Sanks, Seb, Charles Semser, Olivier Sidet, Sony Design Intégré, Ettore Stottsass, Robert Stadler, Philippe Starck, Stiletto Studios (Frank Schreiner, Dit), Studio 65, Studio Formafantasma, Superstudio, Roger Tallon, Tim Thom, Maarten Van Severen.

1 Selon le Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales : 
http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/confort

Commissariat général : Charles Villeneuve de Janti, directeur du musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy

Commissariat scientifique :

Juliette Pollet, responsable de la collection design au Cnap

Studio GGSV (Gaëlle Gabillet et Stéphane Villard)

Coproduction :

Centre national des arts plastiques

Galerie Poirel

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy

Ville de Nancy

GALERIE POIREL

3, rue Victor Poirel - 54000 Nancy

www.poirel.nancy.fr 

William Anastasi: Puzzle, Sandra Gering Inc, New York

William Anastasi: Puzzle
Sandra Gering Inc, New York
November 17, 2015 - January 9, 2016

SANDRA GERING INC. presents Puzzle, WILLIAM ANASTASI’s sixth one-person exhibition with the gallery. 

Throughout William Anastasi’s career as a seminal figure in the field of Conceptual Art, semantics and tautology have long played significant roles. The subject of pairing in particular has been a recurring theme since as early as 1967, when William Anastasi’s Six Sites exhibition at the Virginia Dwan Gallery featured the gallery’s walls photographically rendered on canvas, then hung on the same walls. Repetition has also been embraced in William Anastasi’s well-known subway drawings, a continuing series of unsighted works on paper the artist creates while drawing blind on the train, letting the motion of the car dictate the chance markings on paper as pure gesture. Circular reasoning informs William Anastasi’s puzzle works. Aside from the obvious playfulness of the subject (humor being one of the least talked-about aspects of this artist’s oeuvre), the puzzle as metaphor first appeared in 1975, when the Museum of Modern Art commissioned William Anastasi to design a jigsaw puzzle for their store. The result was iconic, as his design was to create a puzzle-themed puzzle, similar in concept to his wall-on-a-wall works. It was popular enough to re-issue in a second color version, of which the current exhibition’s shaped paintings are based. Hung in pairs, the exhibition room itself becomes a sort of game, unresolvable in this instance as the room only holds a fraction of the series. Upon seeing the first enlarged piece in William Anastasi’s studio, John Cage inquired how many pieces were in the puzzle’s box. When William Anastasi replied with the number, John Cage’s response was ‘Well then you’ve made 513 masterpieces!’ Puzzle also poetically references Anastasi and Cage’s many hours spent over a chessboard, silently engaged in a game of a different sort.

WILLIAM ANASTASI was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1933. The recipient of the 2010 John Cage Award, Anastasi is in nearly every major permanent collection, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Guggenheim Museum, NY; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; The Ludwig Museum, Germany; Center for Contemporary Art, Malmo, Sweden; The Jewish Museum, NY; and The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, among many others. He has had solo exhibitions at The Neuberger Museum of Art, NY; The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; and The Kunstmuseum, Dusseldorf. His work was recently featured in William Anastasi: Sound Works 1963-2013, at the Hunter College Art Galleries, NY in October 2013. A comprehensive monograph on the artist, William Anastasi: Paintings, Small Works, Drawings has been published by Emilio Mazzoli, Modena, Italy. William Anastasi lives and works in New York, NY.

SANDRA GERING INC.
14 East 63rd Street, New York, NY 10065
www.sandrageringinc.com

Electronic Superhighway (2016 - 1966) @ Whitechapel Gallery, London

Electronic Superhighway (2016 - 1966)

Whitechapel Gallery, London

29 January - 15 May 2016

In January 2016 the Whitechapel Gallery presents Electronic Superhighway, a landmark exhibition that brings together over 100 artworks to show the impact of computer and Internet technologies on artists from the mid-1960s to the present day.

New and rarely seen multimedia works, together with film, painting, sculpture, photography and drawing  by over 70 artists feature, including works by Cory Arcangel, Roy Ascott, Jeremy Bailey, Judith Barry, James Bridle, Douglas Coupland, Constant Dullaart, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Vera Molnar, Albert Oehlen, Trevor Paglen, Nam June Paik, Jon Rafman, Hito Steyerl, Ryan Trecartin, Amalia Ulman and Ulla Wiggen.

The exhibition title Electronic Superhighway is taken from a term coined in 1974 by South Korean video art pioneer Nam June Paik, who foresaw the potential of global connections through technology. Arranged in reverse chronological order, Electronic Superhighway begins with works made between 2000 – 2016, and ends with Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T), an iconic, artistic moment that took place in 1966. Spanning 50 years, from 2016 to 1966, key moments in the history of art and the Internet emerge as the exhibition travels back in time.

As the exhibition illustrates, the Internet has provided material for different generations of artists. Oliver Laric’s painting series Versions (Missile Variations) (2010) reflects on issues surrounding digital image manipulation, production, authenticity and circulation.  Further highlights include a series of photographs from conceptual artist Amalia Ulman’s four-month Instagram project Excellences & Perfections (2014-2015), which examines the influence of social media on attitudes towards the female body. Miniature paintings by Celia Hempton painted live in chatrooms go on display alongside a large scale digital painting by Albert Oehlen and manipulated camera-less photography by Thomas Ruff.

The dot-com boom, from the late 1990s to early millennium, is examined through work from international artists and collectives such as The Yes Men who combined art and online activism in response to the rapid commercialisation of the web.

Works by Nam June Paik in the exhibition include Internet Dreams (1994), a video-wall of 52 monitors displaying electronically-processed abstract images, and Good Morning, Mr. Orwell (1984). On New Year’s Day 1984 Paik broadcast live and pre-recorded material from artists including John Cage and The Thompson Twins from a series of satellite-linked television studios in New York, West Germany, South Korea and Paris’ Pompidou Centre to an estimated audience of 25 million viewers worldwide. Paik saw the event as a counter response to George Orwell’s’s dystopian vision of 1984.

The birth of the World Wide Web in 1989 provided a breeding ground for early user-based net art, with innovators such as Moscow-born Olia Lialina adopting the Internet as a medium, following earlier practices in performance and video. In My Boyfriend Came Back from the War (1996) the artist presents a love story enacted via an interactive black and white browser screen.

The emergence of net art is explored through a curated selection of interactive browser-based works from the Rhizome archive, a leading digital arts organisation founded online in 1996 by artist Mark Tribe, and affiliated with the New Museum in New York since 2003. In 1999, Rhizome created a collection of born-digital artworks which has grown to include over 2000 and in recent years, it has developed a preservation programme around this archive.

One of the first ever major interactive art installations, Lorna (1979-1982) by Lynn Hershman Leeson presents a fictional female character who stays indoors all day watching TV and anticipated virtual avatars. Also on show is Judith Barry’s video installation Speed flesh (1998), which lures viewers into an interactive computer-generated world.

A proliferation of experiments from the 1960s – 70s pushed the boundaries of technology. Artists such as Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnar, Frieder Nake and Stan VanDerBeek adopted computer programmes to create abstract and geometrical works while Roy Ascott, Allan Kaprow, Gary Hill and Nam June Paik used various new media to connect across multiple sites globally.

The exhibition concludes with artefacts from the formation of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) in New York in 1966 which saw performances over nine evenings from artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and Yvonne Rainer working together with engineers from American engineering company Bell Laboratories in one of the first major collaborations between the industrial technology sector and the arts.

To coincide with Electronic Superhighway a series of related special projects/displays, commissions and special events include:

Harun Farocki – Parallel I–IV  (2012–4)

15 December 2015 – 12 June 2016 (Free Entry)

German avant-garde film-maker Harun Farocki’s major video installation Parallel I-IV (2012-2014), the artist’s final work, is shown in Gallery 2. In this display, Farocki charts the evolution of computer game graphics – from the earliest simple, symbolic forms, through thirty years of rapid technological progression to the realism of the present day. Projected on four screens, each video focuses on different aspects of the video game genre.

Luke Fowler and Mark Fell: Computers and Cooperative Music-Making

Until 7 February 2016 (Free Entry)

Glasgow-based artist film-maker Luke Fowler and Yorkshire-based multidisciplinary artist Mark Fell collaborate on a new exhibition exploring technological advancements in music history. Focussing on two historic computer music languages that have been obscured by more commercially viable options, the duo look at how computers began to impact and shape music making, while experimenting with unfamiliar techniques involving algorithms, non-standard timing and tuning tables.

Heather Phillipson

12 February – 17 April 2016 (Free Entry)

Artist and award-winning poet Heather Phillipson creates a new installation for the project galleries, expanding on her time as the Gallery’s Writer in Residence in 2015. Through video, music, sculpture and live and recorded speech, Phillipson’s work oscillates between conceptual distances and the intimacy of the body.

Artists’ Film International: Rachel Maclean

29 January – 29 May 2016 (Free Entry)

Artists’ Film International, the Whitechapel Gallery’s annual programme of film, video and animation chosen by partner cultural organisations around the world, is based on the theme of ‘technologies’ in 2016. Highlights include Scottish artist Rachel Maclean’s Germs (2013), a dark and surreal take on female-targeted advertising, which runs from 28 January 2016.

For more information on events and displays visit www.whitechapelgallery.org

Munch and Expressionism @ Neue Galerie, New York

Munch and Expressionism
Neue Galerie, New York
February 18 - June 13, 2016

On February 18, 2016, Neue Galerie New York will open "Munch and Expressionism," an exhibition that examines Edvard Munch’s influence on his German and Austrian contemporaries, as well as their influence upon him. The show will offer a compelling new look at works by the Norwegian artist, whose painting The Scream has become a symbol of modern angst. The Neue Galerie is the sole venue for the exhibition, where it will be on view through June 13, 2016.

The show, curated by Expressionist scholar Dr. Jill Lloyd, has been organized in tandem with Munch specialist Dr. Reinhold Heller. Dr. Lloyd has assembled several important exhibitions for the Neue Galerie, including "Van Gogh and Expressionism" in 2007 and "Ferdinand Hodler: View to Infinity" in 2012. As an independent art historian, she has also curated exhibitions at the Tate, the Royal Academy in London, and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. She has written extensively on Expressionist art.

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was highly regarded for his exploration of dark themes, including alienation, sin, and human vulnerability. Munch’s use of vivid color intensifies the emotional power of his subject matter, an approach which helped to pave the way for an entirely new attitude towards art during the early twentieth century. Although much has been written about the relationship between Munch’s personal life and his art, this exhibition is the first thorough study of the artist’s work in the context of his German and Austrian peers.

The exhibition will be comprised of approximately 35 paintings and 50 works on paper from both public and private collections worldwide. The German artists included in the exhibition are Max Beckmann, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gabriele Münter, and Emile Nolde, and the Austrians included are Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele. The curator will compare all of these artists’ approaches to key themes such as adolescence, urban anxiety, and self-portraiture, and to innovative developments in printmaking during this time. The exhibition will include several works that have never before been seen in the United States.

A fully illustrated catalogue, published by Prestel Verlag, will accompany the exhibition featuring contributions by leading scholars in the field, including Patricia Berman, Nelson Blitz, Alison Chang, Jay Clarke, Reinhold Heller, Jill Lloyd, Nils Ohlsen, and Øystein Uvstedt. This authoritative and beautifully illustrated book will explore Munch’s impact on German and Austrian artists of the period within an Expressionist context.

Neue Galerie New York
Museum for German and Austrian Art
1048 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028
www.meuegalerie.org

Frank Stella: A Retrospective @ Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC - Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth - Young Museum, San Francisco

Frank Stella: A Retrospective
Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC
Through February 7, 2016
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 
April 17 - September 4, 2016
Young Museum, San Francisco
November 5, 2016 - February 27, 2017

Frank Stella: A Retrospective brings together the artist’s best-known works installed alongside lesser known examples to reveal the extraordinary scope and diversity of his nearly sixty-year career. Approximately 100 works, including icons of major museum and private collections, will be shown. Along with paintings, reliefs, sculptures, and prints, a selection of drawings and maquettes have been included to shed light on Stella’s conceptual and material process.

This is the first comprehensive Stella exhibition to be assembled in the United States since the 1987 retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. “A Stella retrospective presents many challenges,” remarks Michael Auping, “given Frank’s need from the beginning of his career to immediately and continually make new work in response to previous series. And he has never been timid about making large, even monumental, works. The result has been an enormous body of work represented by many different series. Our goal has been to summarize without losing the raw texture of his many innovations.”

“It’s not merely the length of his career, it is the intensity of his work and his ability to reinvent himself as an artist over and over again over six decades that make his contribution so important,” said Adam D. Weinberg. “Frank is a radical innovator who has, from the beginning, absorbed the lessons of art history and then remade the world on his own artistic terms. He is a singular American master and we are thrilled to be celebrating his astonishing accomplishment.”

Throughout his career, Stella has challenged the boundaries of painting and accepted notions of style. Though his early work allied him with the emerging minimalist approach, Stella’s style has evolved to become more complex and dynamic over the years as he has continued his investigation into the nature of abstract painting.

Adam Weinberg and Marla Price, Director of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, note in the directors’ foreword to the catalogue, “Abstract art constitutes the major, and in many ways, defining artistic statement of the twentieth century and it remains a strong presence in this century. Many artists have played a role in its development, but there are a few who stand out in terms of both their innovations and perseverance. Frank Stella is one of those. As institutions devoted to the history and continued development of contemporary art, we are honored to present this tribute to one of the greatest abstract painters of our time.”

Although the thrust of the exhibition is chronological, the artist, who has been closely involved in the installation, has juxtaposed works from various periods allowing some rooms to function as medleys. The presentation highlights the relationships among works executed across the years, suggesting that even the most minimalist compositions may invite associations with architecture, landscapes, and literature.

The earliest works in the exhibition are rarely seen early paintings, such as East Broadway (1958), from the collection of Addison Gallery of American Art, which show Stella’s absorption of Abstract Expressionism and predilections for bold color and all-over compositions that would appear throughout the artist’s career.

Frank Stella’s highly acclaimed Black Paintings follow. Their black stripes executed with enamel house paint were a critical step in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism. The exhibition includes such major works as Die Fahne hoch!( 1959), a masterpiece from the Whitney’s own collection, and The Marriage of Reason and Squalor II(1959) from The Museum of Modern Art’s collection. A selection of the artist’s Aluminum and Copper Paintings of 1960–61, featuring metallic paint and shaped canvases, further establish Stella’s key role in the development of American Minimalism.

Even with his early success, Frank Stella continued to experiment in order to advance the language of abstraction. The presentation of Stella’s work highlights the artist’s exploration of the relationship between color, structure, and abstract illusionism, beginning with his Benjamin Moore series and Concentric Square Paintings of the early 1960s and 70s—including the masterpiece Jasper’s Dilemma (1962). In his Dartmouth, Notched V, and Running V paintings, Frank Stella combines metallic color with complex shaped canvases that mirror the increasingly dynamic movement of his painted bands. These were followed by the even more radically shaped Irregular Polygon Paintings, such as Chocorua IV (1966) from the Hood Museum, with internally contrasting geometric forms painted in vibrant fluorescent hues; and the monumental Protractor Paintings, such as Harran II (1967) from the Guggenheim's collection, composed of curvilinear forms with complex chromatic variations. 

The Polish Village series marks the beginning of Frank Stella’s work in collage. He begins to build paintings and incorporate various materials into large-scale constructions, further probing questions of surface, line, and geometry. In works like Bechhofen (1972), from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the interlocking geometric planes of unpainted wood stretch the purely pictorial into literal space.

The work of the mid-1970s and 1980s constitutes yet another form of expressive abstraction and illustrates Frank Stella’s absolute insistence on extending his paintings into the viewer’s space. During his tenure as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor in Poetry at Harvard University (1983-4), Stella said that “what painting wants more than anything else is working space—space to grow with and expand into, pictorial space that is capable of direction and movement, pictorial space that encourages unlimited orientation and extension. Painting does not want to be confined by boundaries of edge and surface.” Works from the artist’s Brazilian; Exotic Bird; Indian Bird; Circuit; and Cones and Pillars series, including St. Michael’s Counterguard (1984) from the Los Angeles County 

Museum of Art, address this interest. In these works, sheets of cut metal project out from the picture plane, creating gestures that are further activated with drawing and the addition of various reflective materials. The radical physical and material nature of these works was quite influential to a younger generation of painters in the 1980s.

In the last thirty years, much of Frank Stella’s work has been related in spirit to literature and music. The large-scale painted metallic reliefs in the Moby Dick series (1985-97), titled after each of the chapters of Melville’s novel, also exemplify Stella’s idea of “working space.” The complexity of this series, made primarily in metallic relief with fabricated, cast, and found parts; prints; and freestanding sculpture, is a tour de force. Extraordinary abstractions such as Loomings from the Walker Art Center and The Grand Armada (IRS-6, 1X) from the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, suggest an abstract narrative composed of visual elements, such as waves and fins, which recur in Melville’s novel.

Since the 1990s Frank Stella has explored this concept in increasingly complex two- and three-dimensional works of various materials, such as the large-scale aluminum and steel sculpture Raft of the Medusa (Part I) (1990) from the collection of The Glass House; and the mural-size painting Earthquake in Chile (1999), part of the artist’s Heinrich von Kleist series (1996-2008), which takes as its point of departure the writings of the early 19th century German author. Extraordinary metal reliefs from his Bali series (2002-2009), as well as the lightweight and dynamic sculpture from his Scarlatti Sonata Kirkpatrick series (2006-present), whose delicacy and intricacy suggest the musical compositions of the Baroque master, represent the later work in the exhibition. In many of these works Frank Stella has used computer generated images and modeling to extend the complexity, layers, and allusions of his material process well beyond traditional media for painting and sculpture. Two of Stella’s recent sculptures, Black Star (2014) and Wooden Star I (2014), are installed on the fifth-floor roof terrace.

Frank Stella: A Retrospective underscores the important role Stella’s work plays within the art historical framework of the last half century. It provides a rare opportunity for viewers to discover the visual and conceptual connections within the extraordinarily expansive and generative body of work of an artist restless with new ideas.

About Frank Stella 

Born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1936, Stella attended Phillips Academy and then Princeton University, where he studied art history and painting. In college, he produced a number of sophisticated paintings that demonstrated his understanding of the various vocabularies that had brought abstract painting into international prominence. After graduating in 1958, Stella moved to New York and achieved almost immediate fame with his Black Paintings (1958–60), which were included in The Museum of Modern Art’s seminal exhibition Sixteen Americans in 1959-60.

The Leo Castelli Gallery in New York held Frank Stella’s first one-person show in 1960. The Museum of Modern Art presented his first retrospective in 1970, under William Rubin’s stewardship, when Stella was only thirty-four years old. A second retrospective was held at MoMA in 1987. Since then, Stella has been the subject of countless exhibitions throughout the world, including a major retrospective in Wolfsburg in 2012. Frank Stella: A Retrospective is the first survey of the artist’s career in the U.S. since 1987. He was appointed the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University in 1983. “Working Space,” his provocative lecture series (later published as a book), addresses the issue of pictorial space in postmodern art. Stella has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the 2009 National Medal of Arts and the 2011 Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award from the International Sculpture Center, as well as the Isabella and Theodor Dalenson Lifetime Achievement Award from Americans for the Arts (2011) and the National Artist Award at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen (2015).

Frank Stella

A Retrospective

Published in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art 

and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 

Yale University Press, November 2015

About the Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated scholarly catalogue, published by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Yale University Press. The publication addresses in depth such themes as the artist’s complex balancing of expressionist gesture and geometric structure, his catholic referencing of the history of art (abstract, figurative, and decorative), the importance of seriality in Stella’s process, and his work’s impact on subsequent generations of American artists.

The catalogue includes an essay by Michael Auping that encompasses Stella’s entire artistic output and connects the many different series and transitions in the artist’s 60-year career. Adam Weinberg addresses Stella’s formative years at Andover and Princeton and his earliest influences. Art historian and artist Jordan Kantor contributes an essay about the artist’s more recent work, and artist Laura Owens interviews Stella. Stella’s highly articulate Pratt Lecture (1960) is also included. The book concludes with a substantial chronology.

Frank Stella: A Retrospective is jointly organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

With the close collaboration of the artist, Frank Stella: A Retrospective is organized by Michael Auping, Chief Curator, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, in association with Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, with the involvement of Carrie Springer, Assistant Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Whitney Museum of American Art

www.whitney.org

Art Basel Miami Beach: Public sector 2015

Art Basel Miami Beach: Public sector
December 3 - 6, 2015

Public: 26 international artists will transform Collins Park with 27 site-specific installations and performances.

Tony Cragg

Mixed Feelings, 2012

Marian Goodman Gallery

Courtesy the artist and the gallery

For the 2015 edition of Art Basel's show in Miami Beach, Nicholas Baume, Director and Chief Curator of Public Art Fund, returns for his third year curating the show’s Public sector. Under the theme ‘Metaforms’, 27 large-scale and site-specific installations and performances by leading and emerging artists from over 11 countries will turn Miami Beach’s Collins Park into an outdoor exhibition space. Produced in collaboration with the Bass Museum of Art for the fifth consecutive year, the sector will include significant works by Olaf Breuning, James Capper, Tony Cragg, Melvin Edwards, Sam Falls, Sylvie Fleury, Katharina Grosse, Matt Johnson, Jacob Kassay, Kris Martin, Rubén Ortiz Torres, Athena Papadopoulos, Ishmael Randall-Weeks, Sterling Ruby, Michael Sailstorfer, Tomás Saraceno, Tony Tasset, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Francisco Ugarte, Timm Ulrichs, Marianne Vitale, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Hank Willis Thomas, Robert Wilson, Yan Xing and Xiao Yu.

The Public sector of Art Basel will open on Wednesday, December 2, with a special evening performance program featuring Xavier Cha (b.1980, United States), Ryan Gander (b. 1975, United Kingdom), Pope.L (b. 1955, United States) and Yan Xing (b. 1986, China).

Ursula von Rydingsvard

Bent Lace, 2014

Galerie Lelong

Courtesy the artist and the gallery

Kris Martin

Altar, 2014

Sies + Höke

Courtesy the artist and the gallery

Nicholas Baume’s curatorial premise, ‘Metaforms’, will consider how art making is, at its core, a process of transformation. The manners in which artists conceptually and physically reimagine objects or symbols will be explored, and in doing so add new layers of significance to what was once familiar in order to reveal unexpected truths.

Several of the works will be participatory. Jacob Kassay's (b. 1984, United States) ‘Untitled’ (2012-2015) is designed to provide a place for individuals to gather together in conversation. ‘Healing Pavilion’, a gemstone-encrusted sculpture by Sam Falls (b. 1984, United States), will similarly provide communal seating, in this case enhanced with metaphysical properties through minerals such as amethyst, orange calcite, jasper, lapis lazuli and rose quartz. Other work will convert inanimate objects into 'moving beings', as with ‘Mountaineer Prototype’ (2015) by James Capper (b. 1987, United Kingdom). Widely known for his large-scale, man-operated machines, Capper’s brightly-colored kinetic sculpture will walk around on four telescopic legs, remotely operated via a control panel.

Timm Ulrichs

Von null bis unendlich (from here to eternity), 1986

Wentrup

Courtesy the artist and the gallery

Michael Sailstorfer

Voilà (Dubai) 1, 2011, and Voilà (Dubai) 3, 2011

Galerie König

Courtesy the artist and the gallery

Power, manipulation and structures of oppression will be implied themes in several works. 'Ukpo.Edo' (1993/1996) is a stainless steel installation by Melvin Edwards (b. 1937, United States) comprised of large metal links, a poignant symbol of both the history of slavery and oppression, as well as the interrelation between people and cultures. Matt Johnson’s (b. 1978, United States) ‘Twisted Jersey Barrier’ (2015), evocative of a warped concrete highway divider, and Sterling Ruby’s (b. 1972, Germany) ‘Big Yellow Mama’ (2013), based on the notorious Alabama electric chair, both reference objects designed to exercise control. Robert Wilson’s (b. 1941, United States) tall, slender chairs from the original 1976 production of ‘Einstein on the Beach’ will evoke a trio of elevated figures standing in judgment.

Hank Willis Thomas

Ernest and Ruth, 2015

Jack Shainman Gallery

Courtesy the artist and the gallery

Reflections on identity and subjectivity are also embedded in Olaf Breuning’s (b. 1970, Switzerland) polished steel series of oversized heads, Athena Papadopoulos’ (b. 1988, Canada) ‘Two Serious(ly) (Young) Women’ (2015) and Hank Willis Thomas’ (b. 1976, United States) single bench ‘Ernest and Ruth’ (2015), from his ongoing series ‘The Truth is I See You’ (2011). In Yan Xing’s (b. 1986, China) playful performance, ‘L’amour l’après midi’ (2015), young men clad in Chinese silks and embroidery designed by the artist will flirt with passersby, projecting emotions like love, anxiety and lust through their eyes, body language and sparse dialogue.

Tomás Saraceno

One Module Cloud with Interior Net, 2015

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Courtesy the artist and the gallery

Tony Tasset

Deer, 2015

Kavi Gupta

Courtesy the artist and the gallery

Marianne Vitale’s (b. 1973, United States) nine meter long sculpture ‘Ace of Spades’ (2015) is comprised of relics of the industrial age, created from 60 tons of steel scrap material sourced from a Pennsylvania track yard facility. As Vitale brings the past into dialogue with the present, so too does Ishmael Randall-Weeks’ (b. 1976, Peru) simulated archaeology and Kris Martin’s (b. 1972, Belgium) bare bones interpretation of the 15th-century Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Objects and images from popular culture and daily life animate works by Sylvie Fleury (b. 1961, Switzerland), who will broadcast the name of a supposed new fragrance in neon, Sterling Ruby (b. 1972, Germany), with a giant tubular set of red lips, and Michael Sailstorfer (b. 1979, Germany), in the form of potted beer garden lights. Additionally, Rubén Ortiz Torres’ (b. 1964, Mexico) ‘Collector’s Backyard Boogie’ (2015), will set customized shopping carts into motion with a hydraulic lift. Tony Tasset (b. 1960, United States) will play with our sense of perception through a monumental deer lawn ornament, while Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. 1961, Argentina) will bend the meaning of language through a solar powered LED-lit sign, similar to directional signs found on highways.

Xiao Yu

Elevation No.2, 2013

Beijing Art Now Gallery

Courtesy the artist and the gallery

For many artists, the forms, processes and systems of nature are evoked in more or less explicit ways and with varying degrees of abstraction. Francisco Ugarte’s (b. 1973, Mexico) site-specific sculpture, ‘Sunlight I’ (2015), responds to the sun’s trajectory and position during the days of the exhibition. The installation’s eleven wooden pyramids will each correspond with a specific time from sunrise to sunset, tracking the sun’s movement, elevation and azimuth, through the shifting projective geometry of the work. 

Additional examples include Tony Cragg’s (b. 1949, Britain) twinned, spiraling bronze sculpture ‘Mixed Feelings’ (2012), Katharina Grosse’s (b. 1961, Germany) colossal, painterly abstract forms, Tomás Saraceno’s (b. 1973, Argentina) delicate ‘One Module Cloud with Interior Net’ (2015), Timm Ulrichs’ (b. 1940, Germany) kinetic sculpture ‘Von null bis unendlich (from here to eternity)’ (1986) and Ursula Von Rydingsvard’s (b. 1942, Germany) large-scale bronze sculpture, ‘Bent Lace’ (2014). Inside the Rotunda, Xiao Yu’s (b. 1980, China) ‘Elevation No. 2’ (2013), a series of double-sided abstract canvases, invites viewers to look differently at both the traditional display and subject matter of painting.

As in the past three years, a selection of artworks will remain installed in Collins Park until February 1, 2016 as part of 'tc: temporary contemporary', a city-wide temporary public art program which is present by the Bass Museum of Art in partnership with the City of Miami Beach.

A series of live performances will be presented on Public’s Opening Night on Wednesday, December 2. Xavier Cha’s ‘supreme ultimate exercise’ (2015) will be comprised of parallel performances contrasting manipulations of the athletic form, including both the slow, controlled and fluid movements of a female tai chi master adjacent to a choreographed tractor tire routine enacted by male bodybuilders. Controlled physical exertion also marks Pope.L’s elaborate and sorrowful production; four large men speed through the park on skateboards, while lying prone, before crawling laboriously onto a small wooden stage to sing 'America The Beautiful'. 

Channeling the Wildean pun of 'the earnest Ernest', Ryan Gander’s work features a dandy hobo who will engage the audiences in scripted conversations that reveal iterations of the artist’s fancied and conflicted selves. The work, ‘Ernest Hawker’ (2015), was a Performa Commission curated by Mark Beasley for Performa 15. Public’s opening night will also feature a special evening rendition of Yan Xing’s flirtatious performance.

Public Opening Night, which is free and open to the public, will take place in Collins Park on Wednesday, December 2, from 7pm to 9pm. The Public sector is free of charge and will be open to the public from Wednesday, December 2 to Sunday, December 6, 2015.

Tours will be offered daily at 2pm starting from the On-site Info Point (no reservation required). Private, group and school-group tours will be offered by reservation.

Collins Park is located between 21st and 22nd Street, in close proximity to the exhibition halls within the Miami Beach Convention Center and adjacent to The Bass Museum of Art.

As part of Art Basel’s Salon series, on Friday, December 4 from 4pm to 5pm, Nicholas Baume will join in conversation with the artists Ishmael Randall-Weeks, Hank Willis Thomas, and Xavier Cha. Art Basel entry tickets include admission to Salon.

Art Basel Miami Beach 2015 Public artworks:

Olaf Breuning, I Can Not Take It Anymore, 2015, Metro Pictures
James Capper, Mountaineer Prototype, 2015, Paul Kasmin Gallery
Tony Cragg, Mixed Feelings, 2012, Marian Goodman Gallery
Melvin Edwards, Ukpo.Edo, 1993/1996, Alexander Gray Associates,
Stephen Friedman Gallery
Sam Falls, Untitled (Healing pavilion…), 2015, Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Sylvie Fleury, Eternity Now, 2015, Bass Museum of Art
Katharina Grosse, Untitled, 2012, Galerie König, Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder
Matt Johnson, Twisted Jersey Barrier, 2015, 303 Gallery, Blum & Poe
Jacob Kassay, Untitled, 2012-2015, 303 Gallery
Kris Martin, Altar, 2014, Sies + Höke
Rubén Ortiz Torres, Collector’s Backyard Boogie, 2015, OMR
Athena Papadopoulos, Two Serious(ly) (young) Women, (Hubba Hubba Trouba and Ouchy Waa Waa Mama’), 2015, Supportico Lopez
Ishmael Randall-Weeks, Paraíso, 2015, Revolver Galería
Sterling Ruby, Big Yellow Mama, 2013, and Lips, 2014, Gagosian Gallery
Michael Sailstorfer, Voilà (Dubai) 1, 2011, and Voilà (Dubai) 3, 2011, Galerie König
Tomás Saraceno, One Module Cloud with Interior Net, 2015, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Tony Tasset, Deer, 2015, Kavi Gupta
Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2015 (don’t shoot the messenger), 2015, Gavin Brown’s enterprise
Francisco Ugarte, Sunlight I, 2015, Arredondo \ Arozarena
Timm Ulrichs, Von null bis unendlich (from here to eternity), 1986, Wentrup
Marianne Vitale, Ace of Spades, 2015, Contemporary Fine Arts
Ursula von Rydingsvard, Bent Lace, 2014, Galerie Lelong
Hank Willis Thomas, Ernest and Ruth, 2015, Jack Shainman Gallery
Robert Wilson, Einstein Chair, from Einstein on the Beach, 1976 (produced 2002), Paula Cooper Gallery
Yan Xing, L’amour l’après-midi, 2015, Galerie Urs Meile
Xiao Yu, Elevation No.2, 2013, Beijing Art Now Gallery

Public opening night performances:

Xavier Cha, supreme ultimate exercise, 2015, 47 Canal
Ryan Gander, Ernest Hawker, 2015, Lisson Gallery (A Performa Commission curated by Mark Beasley for Performa 15)
Pope.L, The Beautiful, 2015, Mitchell-Innes & Nash
Yan Xing, L'amour l'après-midi, 2015, Galerie Urs Meile

Art Basel Miami Beach
www.artbasel.com

Robert Irwin, Ernesto Neto & Judith Barry @ MCASD, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California

Robert Irwin, Ernesto Neto, Judith Barry
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
November 20, 2015 - February 21, 2016

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) will present three large-scale works from its permanent collection by artists Robert Irwin, Ernesto Neto, and Judith Barry at its downtown location from November 20, 2015 through February 21, 2016. The installations will fill each gallery with immersive artworks that engage viewer’s experience of physical space, light, and sound.

Robert Irwin: Light and Space

Light itself focuses and diffuses our gaze in Irwin’s environmental light installation Light and Space (2007). The piece creates a dialogue between solid architecture and empty space mediated by electric light—three forms of matter at different accelerations. Driven by an attention to phenomenological experience rather than illusion, Irwin’s work is an inquiry into the nature of perception.  Irwin’s early examinations into the nexus between what is seen and perceived with the senses, in addition to the physical conditions of a site, helped to define the aesthetics and issues of the West Coast Light and Space movement in the late 1960s. In this work—developed during Irwin’s residency in MCASD’s Robert Caplan Artist-in-Residence Studio—he uses fluorescent light tubes alone as the main triggers of a mass-less, enveloping perceptual setting. The specific objects utilized in the installation serve as a passive platform that facilitates the transformation of energy and triggers a phenomenal, visual experience. Resisting the need to jump to quick conclusions, Light and Space creates a response of pure attention and engagement.

Robert Irwin: Light and Space is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Institutional support of MCASD is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund.

Judith Barry: Voice Off

An artist and writer who trained in architecture, Judith Barry creates experiential video works in which the viewer plays an integral role. These innovative installations often explore the relationship between physical space and psychological space—and how these spaces shape us as subjects. Presented at MCASD for the first time, Voice Off (1998-99) is a two-channel video and sound installation in which videos are projected onto each side of a wall dividing the gallery. As viewers and participants, we must navigate the two spaces through a passageway in the projection. On one side, a frustrated writer grows distracted by noises and voices that he hears—figments of his imagination, perhaps. Increasingly distraught, he obsessively tries to locate the source of these sounds. On the other side, figures appear in an ambiguous, dream-like realm inhabited by a succession of characters who sing, tell stories, and enact various social scenarios. Each video suggests various manifestations of the voice—interior or exterior, sung or spoken, expressive or silenced. Taken as a whole, this multi-layered installation dramatizes complex aural and vocal cues, exploring how sound might be visualized, and how it, in turn, shapes our experience of physical space.

Judith Barry: Voice Off is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Institutional support of MCASD is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund.

Ernesto Neto: Mother body emotional densities, for alive temple time baby son

Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto’s monumental site-specific commission for MCASD, first presented in 2007, features immense organic forms, fashioned from suspended, translucent Lycra fabric filled with spices such as annetto, cloves, and turmeric. The installation suggests the microscopic landscape of the body at a macroscopic scale. Neto's installations contain a strong social component and an aspect of whimsy that purposefully combine architectural, sculptural, and atmospheric effects to create a specific visual and physical experience. As the viewer moves through both the gallery and the piece, they are surrounded by soft membranes and bathed in diffused light streaming down from the clearstory windows of the gallery through the translucent material. Developed in response to the light-filled, open-trellised architecture of the exhibition space, the work stands suspended between architectural and bodily space, creating a strong physical relationship with the viewer that must be experienced rather than merely seen.

Ernesto Neto is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Institutional support of MCASD is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund.

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD)
www.mcasd.org