Ai Weiwei @ Mary Boone Gallery, NYC

Ai Weiwei
2016: Roots and Branches
Marie Boone Gallery, New York
5 November - 23 December 2016 

On 5 November 2016, Mary Boone Gallery will open at both its Fifth Avenue and Chelsea locations Ai Weiwei 2016: Roots and Branches, an exhibition of recent works by eminent international artist and human rights activist AI WEIWEI.

The show includes works in a variety of mediums – from ancient wood and porcelain, to modern LEGO bricks, and wallpaper of the Artist’s design.

At the Gallery/Uptown (745 Fifth Avenue), a circular field of 40,000 spouts broken from antique Chinese porcelain teapots fills the main room. Wallpaper with a complex design of an arm with extended middle finger, referencing Ai’s well-known Study of Perspective series of photographs, serves as the backdrop for this installation. Seen in this context, the individual spouts mimic the form of the bent finger, excised and rendered ineffectual.

The Gallery/Downtown (541 West 24 Street), houses the monumental (25 foot high) Tree. Constructed from weathered sections of dead trees that have been brought down from the mountains of Southern China and bolted together in the form of a whole, healthy tree with spreading branches, Tree is a totem that may be seen as a comment on the strength of modern China built from many ancient ethnic groups, or a determined attempt to create something new and vital from what is irrevocably lost. The show also includes new works composed from plastic LEGO toy bricks. Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn recreates with “pixels” of LEGOs Ai’s iconic triptych of black and white photographs depicting himself in the act of destroying a fragile symbol of China’s past. Self-Portrait, another LEGO work, presents an image of Ai Weiwei that adopts the bright color and repetition of Warhol’s silkscreen portraits.

Each location also includes one of Ai’s works made of ancient reclaimed huali wood. Treasure Box is an enlargement of an intricate puzzle-box of sliding and locking compartments, and Garbage Container, modeled after a bin turned on its side, is an elegy to five homeless boys in Guizhou Province who suffocated in a dumpster while trying to stay warm.

Ai Weiwei will have concurrent exhibitions in New York at Lisson Gallery and Jeffrey Deitch. The Mary Boone Gallery exhibition is on view at both Gallery locations – 745 Fifth Avenue and 541 West 24 Street – through 23 December 2016.

Marie Boone Gallery
maryboongallery.com

Ai Weiwei @ Lisson Gallery, NYC

Ai Weiwei
2016: Roots and Branches
Lisson Gallery, New York
5 November – 23 December 2016

For his first solo exhibition with Lisson New York, Ai Weiwei populates the gallery with felled, cast-iron tree trunks, nearly sixteen feet in length, and a series of iron root sculptures set against the backdrop of a new wallpaper installation. Situated among the beams of the High Line exposed entirely in this exhibition for the first time, the seven sculptures on display combine to create a forest of displaced objects and reveal the artist’s interest in tradition and contemporaneity as well as the prevalence of displacement in post-modern societies.

Natural objects – from the sunflower seeds that carpeted Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2010 to his series of porcelain rocks and watermelons – have been an ongoing source of inspiration for Ai Weiwei, with trees recurring as a spiritual motif in his work since 2009. These monumental wooden or iron multipartite sculptures are all composites of different parts of different trees gathered by the artist from various parts of China in reference to the ancient Asian tradition of collecting dry fragments of trees for contemplation of their complex forms.

Fragments also play an important part in Ai Weiwei’s work as they force attention on foundational elements and the most basic units that combine to create a whole. Here, in line with the artist’s worldview, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts but rather each individual part is equal and of unique importance. This focus on equality is evidenced in recent projects by the artist that take as their starting point the refugee crisis and challenges to freedom of speech.

The iron roots and tree trunks shown in New York are presented in a natural, untreated state, appearing at first glance as organic forms, yet upon closer inspection, reveal their artificiality. Not born of nature but made by human hands, the works, themselves contorted by the surrounding landscape, represent a society uprooted by industrialisation and modernisation, illustrating how progress can often come at the expense of cultural and societal well-being. By eliminating their original function and value, Ai Weiwei imbues the objects with new meaning and forces us to confront them in a new light.
 

Ai Weiwei’s work was recently presented alongside the iconic pop artist Andy Warhol, who Ai Weiwei first encountered when he lived in New York in the late 1980s, in the critically acclaimed touring exhibition ‘Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei’at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. Palazzo Strozzi’s exhibition ‘AiWeiwei. Libero’, the first retrospective dedicated to the artist in Italy, runs from September 2016 until January 2017, when his work will also be the subject of a major exhibition at the Meijer Gardens in Michigan. In New York, Mary Boone Gallery will also present a parallel solo exhibition of work sharing the title 2016: Roots and Branches, while in London, Lisson Gallery will present Ai Weiwei’s installation Fondation (2011) from 18 November 2016 – 7 January 2017.

LISSON GALLERY
504 West 24th Street
New York 10011
www.lissongallery.com

Liu Xiaodong @ Faurschou Foundation Copenhagen

Liu Xiaodong: Painting As Shooting
Curated by Jérôme Sans
Faurschou Foundation Copenhagen
Through December 16,  2016

Photo of artwork ‘Xuzi at Home’.

© Xiaodong Studio

Liu Xiaodong

2010

Oil on canvas, 140 x 150 cm.

Collection of the artist

Photo of artwork ‘The Nude Black Maya’.

© Xiaodong Studio

Liu Xiaodong

The Nude Black Maya, 2009,

Oil on canvas, 200 x 250 cm.

Private Collection

Faurschou Foundation presents the third and final Liu Xiaodong exhibition in its Copenhagen space.

Painting as Shooting is conceived as an exhibition in three chapters, curated by Jérôme Sans and produced by Faurschou Foundation, in Venice, Beijing and Copenhagen. The first step, which took place at the Cini Foundation for the 56th Venice Biennale, was the first major European institutional exhibition to fully explore Liu Xiaodong’s unique practice, as one of China’s most influential painters of the last two decades. The second, presented by Faurschou Foundation in its Beijing space, presented the most recent series of works created by the artist during his stay in Ordos in Inner Mongolia. The last chapter, mixing the first two shows, represents the most updated survey on Liu Xiaodong’s work.

The exhibition, Painting as Shooting, focuses on a unique selection of some of the artist’s most important projects from the last decade. They deal with major global, sociological, cultural, economic, ecological and environmental issues from the past ten years. It is not meant as a retrospective exhibition, but rather as a journey through images of the various worlds and situations he has witnessed all over the world, in locations such as China, Asia, Cuba, Europe, Israel, etc.

Photo of artwork ‘Jincheng Airport’.

© Xiaodong Studio

Liu Xiaodong

Jincheng Airport, 2010,

Oil on canvas,

300 x 400 cm.

Collection of the artist

Most recently Liu Xiaodong reactivated the issue on human migration, which appeared in his earlier "Hot Bed" series. Previously he portrayed migrants within Asia, both in his homeland China and in Thailand. Today Liu focuses on the largest migration and humanitarian problem since World War II: communities taking the most dangerous trip across the Mediterranean Sea and the most hazardous routes into Europe to escape the wars in the Middle East and Africa, hoping to find a better future in Europe. This issue will not only impact Europe, but the rest of the world.

Liu Xiaodong's projects will also be presented in an extended book, containing large graphical illustrations, sketches, diary notes and texts by Jérôme Sans. In addition to the exhibition there will be shown ten documentaries each following the different projects.

Painting as shooting

Liu Xiaodong is a painter of everyday life. His images are of family and friends set against modest scenery capturing ordinary moments, such as eating, laughing or playing games. However, in-depth exploration of what is hidden behind the small stories that populate the surface of his work reveals a much bigger picture. Xiaodong’s paintings are pointing with simple gestures to the reality of the periphery, the margins and the paradoxes of our contemporary society. It is the reality that no one dares to speak about; the tough reality of daily existence that reaches out to us from displaced communities—from migrant workers, victims of ecological and natural disasters and sex workers to the new homeless—all sharing the dream of a better life.

Liu Xiaodong approaches his work with the eyes and the storyboard practice of a filmmaker. Each of the artist’s major works begins with a simple idea from one of his daily diary entries, describing the events he has witnessed, photos he has taken or people he has met, and then transforms them into live characters on his canvas. In a way the artist’s paintings resemble a production set where he acts as a director who collaborates with actors to play, record or recreate a situation, various impressions or the effects thereof. It is hereby that Liu Xioadong embodies the concept of "painting as shooting."

Biographies

Photo of the artist Liu Xioadong

Photo by © Jiang Jia

Liu Xiaodong (1963) lives and works in Beijing. He holds a BFA and an MFA in painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (1988–95). The artist gained recognition in the 1990s and represents the Chinese Neo-Realism style. His solo exhibitions include Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2012) and Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2010), while his work was also shown in various group exhibitions such as the Shanghai Biennale (2000, 2010), the 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006) and the 47th Venice Biennale (1997).

The artist Liu Xiaodong with the curator Jèrôme Sans, Venice, 2015.

Photo by Yu Hong, © Faurschou Foundation & Liu Xiaodong Studio

Jérôme Sans is an internationally renowned curator, art critic, artistic director who has curated numerous major exhibitions around the world. He was the former director of the ground-breaking Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing and co-founder of the acclaimed Palais de Tokyo in Paris. He is currently artistic director of one of the most important urban development projects in Europe, the Lyon Rives de Saône-River Movie, and co-founder of Perfect Crossovers ltd, a Beijing based cultural consultancy group.

FAURSCHOU FOUNDATION
www.faurschou.com

Patrick Zachmann, Prix Nadar 2016

Le Prix Nadar Gens d’images a été attribué à l’ouvrage So Long, China du photographe Patrick Zachmann publié par les Éditions Xavier Barral

Cela fait plus de trente ans que PATRICK ZACHMANN parcourt la Chine qu’il découvre en 1982 à travers le prisme du cinéma. Des triades de Hong Kong dans les années 80 à la transformation de la ville de Pékin en passant par Tian’anmen, le tremblement de terre du Sichuan et l’exposition universelle de Shanghai, cet ouvrage rassemble près de 350 photographies N&B et couleur, mêlant la petite et la grande histoire dans un pays en pleine mutation. Le fil rouge de ce travail au long cours est la question de l’identité qui devient pour les nouvelles générations, en perte de repères, un enjeu essentiel. La Maison Européenne de la Photographie a consacré une exposition à ce travail du 6 avril au 5 juin 2016.

PATRICK ZACHMANN

So Long, China

ISBN 978-2-36511-093-8

Format : 17 x 23 cm / 592 pages

345 photos en couleurs et n&b

Editions Xavier Barral

45 €

Édition limitée

Dans son coffret, ouvrage signé accompagné d’un tirage argentique N&B signé, réalisé avec le soutien du laboratoire PICTO

Édition numérotée de 1 à 50

Prix de lancement : 400 €

Après un premier voyage de découverte, en 1982, dans le cadre d’un reportage sur le cinéma chinois, Patrick Zachmann entreprend un travail sur la diaspora chinoise dans le monde. Cela l’amène en Chine du Sud d’où sont originaires la plupart des immigrés. Il entame alors un voyage sur la durée à travers une vingtaine de séjours qui lui permettront de saisir les transformations fulgurantes de la société chinoise mais aussi les bouleversements urbains. Images du sud de la Chine, de Hong Kong, mais aussi de Taïwan qui entretient un lien très fort et incontournable avec la mère patrie, images de Tian’anmen lors des événements de mai-juin 1989, et du terrible tremblement de terre qui endeuilla la province du Sichuan en 2008.

A partir de 2001, la Chine de Patrick Zachmann passe à la couleur. Comme une transition, la série Impressions de nuit montre un pays qui est passé du costume de Mao aux couleurs vives, extravagantes et audacieuses.

PATRICK ZACHMANN

So Long, China

Editions Xavier Barral

Le photographe choisit dès lors de montrer faux-semblants et envers du décor, il veut être le témoin de la complexité des formes qui bouleverse les identités individuelles et collectives de la Chine contemporaine. Entre les images de façade qui caractérisent le pays – décors urbains, pouvoir des apparences, univers artificiel de la nuit – se glissent des existences dures et incertaines, comme celles de ces mingong, paysans pauvres venus fuir la misère et chercher du travail dans les grandes villes. Véritables esclaves modernes qui construisent la Chine de demain, ils sont près de deux cents millions à trimer pour un salaire de misère et ne rentrent au village, qu’une fois par an, durant le nouvel an chinois. Avec la série Retour à Wenzhou, Zachmann montre les mutations profondes de l’espace urbain. Le mouvement d’immigration s’est presque inversé. Les candidats à l’exil se font plus rares et de nombreux Chinois reviennent au pays, les chances de s’enrichir sont plus grandes aujourd’hui à Wenzhou que dans un atelier clandestin en France. Les dernières images du livre, composées de portraits transgénérationnels, ont pour ambition de montrer le choc culturel à l’intérieur des familles dans un pays où l’histoire s’est accélérée à une vitesse vertigineuse.

Des extraits du journal de bord tenu par Patrick Zachmann lors de ses voyages ponctuent ces différentes étapes et apportent un éclairage supplémentaire à ces images, mais aussi sur le travail de photographe dans une société où règnent la censure et la manipulation du régime.

PATRICK ZACHMANN

So Long, China

Editions Xavier Barral

Depuis 2002, les Éditions Xavier Barral publient des ouvrages abordant les formes nouvelles de la photographie, de l’art contemporain et des sciences. Chaque livre est un objet singulier où priment esthétique et choix graphiques. Les regards se croisent entre artistes et auteurs du monde entier. Le catalogue compte plus de 100 ouvrages salués par la critique.

Né en 1955 à Paris, Patrick Zachmann dit être devenu photographe parce qu’il n’a pas de mémoire. Il affirme la rechercher en reconstituant les albums de la famille qu’il n’a pas eue. Photojournaliste et réalisateur, il développe une oeuvre qui traite de façon récurrente des questions d’identité, de la mémoire et de l’immigration de différentes communautés. Il travaille, de 1982 à 1984, sur l’insertion des jeunes immigrés dans les quartiers nord de Marseille. En 1983, il publie son premier livre, Madonna !, plongée dans la violence de la mafia napolitaine. Deux ans plus tard, il intègre l’agence Magnum et devient membre en 1990.

Plus proche de sa propre histoire, l’ouvrage Enquête d’identité. Un juif à la recherche de sa mémoire (1987) est le fruit d’une recherche de sept ans. En 1989, son reportage sur les événements de la place Tian’anmen, largement diffusé dans le monde, marque le début de son immersion photographique au coeur du monde chinois. « Photographe de ce qui ne peut pas être dit », plus que photographe de l’action, il ne recule pas devant de longues investigations pour dire l’indicible. Aussi faudra-t-il attendre 1995 pour voir la publication de W. ou l’oeil d’un long-nez, sur la diaspora chinoise.

En parallèle, il mène un travail au long cours sur la banlieue qui a fait l’objet d’une exposition à la Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration en 2009, accompagnée d’un premier ouvrage aux Éditions Xavier Barral : Ma proche banlieue. Dans la série Mare/Mater, il confronte son histoire familiale à celle des migrants d’aujourd’hui entre les deux rives de la Méditerranée. Cette série a été exposée au MuCEM à Marseille en 2013 puis au Musée Niépce à Chalon-sur-Saône.

Il a reçu de nombreuses distinctions, dont le prix Niépce de Gens d’images en 1989. Plus récemment, dans le cadre de son travail sur la Chine, il a reçu une Aide à la création de la délégation aux arts plastiques (DAP) ainsi qu’en 2015, le Prix Spécial de la Fondation Gan pour le Cinéma pour son premier projet de film fiction « Mister Wu ».

Le Prix Nadar Gens d’images récompense depuis 1955 un livre consacré à la photographie ancienne ou contemporaine édité en France au cours de l’année. Il est attribué en partenariat avec la Bibliothèque nationale de France et le musée Nicéphore Niépce, sous le patronage d’Audrey Azoulay, ministre de la Culture et de la Communication. Il bénéficie du soutien d’Escourbiac, imprimeur de qualité, qui réalise les cartons d’invitation et les stickers du Prix. Avec le Prix Nadar, l’association Gens d’images veut mettre en avant les plus belles réussites éditoriales.

Le lauréat bénéficie d’une campagne de presse menée par Gens d’images et la BnF, de rencontres à la MEP à Paris et au Musée Nicéphore Niépce à Chalon-sur-Saône. Un sticker spécial « Prix Nadar Gens d’images 2016 » collé sur la couverture de l’ouvrage primé lui assure une meilleure visibilité.

Les dix livres remarqués par le jury sont présentés au Musée Nicéphore Niépce et valorisés par l’association Gens d’images.

PATRICK ZACHMANN

So Long, China

Editions Xavier Barral

Evénements autour du lauréat

Rencontre avec Patrick Zachmann
A la Maison européenne de la Photographie, dans l’auditorium
jeudi 17 novembre à 18h15
Atelier Gens d’images consacré au livre lauréat

Signature du livre de Patrick Zachmann
A Paris Photo, sur le stand des Éditions Xavier Barral
samedi 12 novembre à 17h

PATRICK ZACHMANN

So Long, China

Editions Xavier Barral

Les dix livres remarqués par le jury sont : Mexico, Mark Cohen, Xavier Barral - After the image, Marina Gadonneix, RVB Books - European Puzzle, Jean-Christophe Béchet, Loco - Township, Anne Rearick, Clémentine de la Ferronière So Long China, Patrick Zachmann, Éditions Xavier Barral - Je n’ai plus peur du noir, Julien Magre, Filigranes Editions / d&b - Astres noirs, Katrin Koenning et Sarker Protick, Chose Commune - My Lagos, Robin Hammond, Editions Bessard - Saisons noires, Julien Coquentin, Lamaindonne.

Prix Nadar 2016 - les membres du jury

Acueilli par Sylvie Aubenas, Directeur du département des Estampes et de la photographie, à la Bibliothèque nationale de France, le jury, composé de personnalités du monde de l’édition et de la photographie, a délibéré mardi 25 octobre. Il était composé de :

Emilie Bernard, bibliothécaire, Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

Nathalie Bocher-Lenoir, présidente de Gens d’images

Julien Chapsal, photographe, chef de projets culturels, coordinateur du Prix Nadar

Christine Coste, journaliste au Journal des Arts et à L’Oeil

Sebastian Arthur Hau, libraire, commissaire d’exposition, directeur artistique de Cosmos Arles Books et Polycopies Paris

Dominique Mérigard, graphiste et photographe, agence Intensité

Bruno Nourry, collectionneur de photographies et de livres de photographies, Président de la Galerie associative Confluence à Nantes

Fabienne Pavia, éditrice, Le bec en l’air (lauréat 2015)

Dominique Sagot-Duvauroux, économiste, professeur à l’université d’Angers, délégué général du Prix Nadar

Vincent Tixier, directeur de production, éditions Glénat

Dominique Versavel, conservatrice au département des Estampes et de la photographie, chargée de la photographie moderne, chef du service de la photographie, Bibliothèque nationale de France

Anne-Laure Walter, journaliste, Livres Hebdo

Gens d'images
www.gensdimages.com

Théodore Rousseau @ Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

Théodore Rousseau. Unruly Nature
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen
Through 8 January 2017

Théodore Rousseau, French, 1812 - 1867

Mont Blanc Seen from La Faucille, Storm Effect, begun 1834

Oil on canvas, 143 × 240 cm

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, MIN1783

Théodore Rousseau, French, 1812 - 1867

View of Mont Blanc, Seen from La Faucille, c. 1863-67

Oil on canvas, 91.4 × 118.4 cm

Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Putnam Dana McMillan Fund

Photo: Minneapolis Institute of Art

THEODORE ROUSSEAU (1812 - 1867) stands among the great figures of mid-19th century French painting. This autumn’s major special exhibition at the Glyptotek showcases Théodore Rousseau’s richly varied life’s work, where landscape painting became fertile soil for wild innovation. Featuring 56 paintings and drawings from 29 museums and private collections and from the Glyptotek’s own collection, this exhibition is the first large-scale presentation of Rousseau ever in Scandinavia, and the first of its kind in Europe since 1967.

Théodore Rousseau: Out of the shadows

Despite his considerable significance, Théodore Rousseau has long stood in the shadows of the subsequent generations of French painters – particularly the Impressionists, whom he can be said to have anticipated with his dawning abstraction and daring brushstrokes. Similarly, his role as standard bearer for the so-called Barbizon school has dimmed later generations’ appreciation of the full importance of Rousseau’s groundbreaking painting. Flemming Friborg, director of the Glyptotek, says: “Rousseau is much more than a warm-up act for Monet & associates. He is very much his own artist. This exhibition specifically aims to set him free from the constraints of preconceived categories, presenting him as what he is: one of the great innovators of landscape painting.”

Théodore Rousseau, French, 1812 - 1867

Evening (The Parish Priest), 1842-43

Oil on panel, 42.3 × 64.4 cm

Toledo Museum of Art, Gift of Arthur J. Secor, 1933.37

Photo: Chris Ridgway

Théodore Rousseau, French, 1812 - 1867

Sunset near Arbonne, c. 1860–65

Oil on wood, 64.1 x 99.1 cm

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Bequest of Collis P. Huntington, 1900)

Théodore Rousseau: Unruly landscapes

Théodore Rousseau entered the art scene at a time when landscape painting became recognised as one of the most popular and experimental genres around. Up until this point, landscapes had led rather quiet lives on the outskirts of the art of painting, serving mainly as the backdrop of scenes from literature and history. But now a new generation of artists began working with pure landscapes. Landscapes offered infinite painterly potential with their array of natural phenomena, capricious weather and changing light. Rousseau soon proved himself to be an artist of great scope and range. But to him landscapes were more than just nature. Painting became a prism through which he could merge sober observations of nature with his own feisty artistic temperament. Clear-headed renditions of details are combined with voluptuous brushstrokes to great effect in scenes from nature where the Romantic credo about the sublime is given unbridled visual expression.

Théodore Rousseau, French, 1812 - 1867

Forest of Fontainebleau, Cluster of Tall Trees Overlooking the Plain of Clair-Bois at the Edge of Bas-Bréau, c. 1849-52

Oil on canvas, 90.8 × 116.8 cm

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2007.13

Théodore Rousseau, French, 1812 - 1867

Farm in Les Landes, c. 1852-67

Oil on canvas, 64.8 × 99.1 cm

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Willamstown, Massachusetts, USA

© Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Photo: Michael Agee

Covering two floors, the exhibition demonstrates the sheer range of Théodore Rousseau’s oeuvre. Arranged in chronological order, the works on display demonstrate how Rousseau’s experiments cut across different techniques and formats, and especially how he utilized the synergy between drawing and painting. Open, receptive and explorative, Rousseau’s life’s work emerges as an extremely fruitful combination of fascination with nature and technical skill that helped formulate an entirely new vocabulary of expression within the landscape genre.

Théodore Rousseau: An unruly artist

The story of Théodore Rousseau’s career is of such stuff as myths are made on. Having been repeatedly met by chilly reception and rejections from the Paris Salon, Rousseau chose, in 1841, to entirely boycott this uppermost tier of the official art scene in France. A daring move that would usually have tripped up any artistic career. Yet things turned out differently for Rousseau. His absence became synonymous with the growing dissatisfaction with the Salon, and he was soon celebrated as “le Grand Refusé”. With political winds blowing in his favour, Rousseau was able to make a carefully staged comeback, casting him as a heroic martyr who not only conquered the art scene, but also won a seat on the Salon jury. Demand for his art rose rapidly soon afterwards – and did so at a time when the commercial art market began emerging in earnest. Soon his works were sold at dizzying prices, and far into the 20th century his artworks were among the most highly sought-after among museums and private collectors.

”Théodore Rousseau. Unruly Nature” has been co-organized with the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which showed the exhibition from 21 June to 11 September 2016.

Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue (in English) that offers an overview of and insights into Théodore Rousseau’s rich and varied landscape painting. Featuring articles by the exhibition curators: Scott Allan (J. Paul Getty Museum), Édouard Kopp (Harvard Art Museums) and Line Clausen Pedersen (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek).

Unruly Nature: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau. Publisher: J. Paul Getty Museum

209 pages, lavishly illustrated.

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

Dantes Plads 7, Copenhagen 1556
www.glyptoteket.com

Vincent van Gogh, The Bedroom, 1889 - On Loan From the Art Institute of Chicago at the Norton Simon Museum

Van Gogh’s ‘Bedroom’ on Loan From the Art Institute of Chicago
At the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California
December 9, 2016 - March 6, 2017

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890)

The Bedroom, 1889.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection.

The Norton Simon Museum presents an installation of Vincent van Gogh’s tender and intimate Bedroom from 1889, a highlight of the Art Institute of Chicago’s superb 19th-century collection. A meditation on friendship, hope and crushing disappointment, Van Gogh’s Bedroom serves not only as a kind of self-portrait, but also as a symbol of the artist’s wandering existence and search for an elusive sense of repose. The second of three versions of the interior scene, the Chicago Bedroom was painted by the artist while at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, in September 1889. Its installation at the Norton Simon Museum marks the first time the painting has been on view on the West Coast, and it will hang in the Museum’s 19th-century art wing, surrounded by the Simon’s own important collection of Van Gogh works, from Dec. 9, 2016 through March 6, 2017.

Says Museum President Walter Timoshuk, “The Norton Simon Museum is delighted to feature Van Gogh’s mesmerizing masterpiece in our galleries this winter, and we are grateful to President James Rondeau, to Chair of European Painting and Sculpture Gloria Groom, and to the board of Trustees at the Art Institute of Chicago for making this exceptional exchange possible.” Adds James Rondeau, President and Eloise W. Martin Director at the Art Institute of Chicago, “Our recent exhibition featuring Van Gogh's Bedroom reaffirmed what we have long believed about the power of this beloved picture to remain relevant and resonant to new generations of audiences. We hope the Southern California community will enjoy the opportunity to see Van Gogh’s Bedroom, which has been a star in our permanent collection for nearly 100 years.”

About Van Gogh’s Bedroom

In his brief life (just 37 years), Van Gogh sought a place to call home in four countries and 37 residences. In only one of these did he find something approaching contentment: his leased rooms at No. 2 Place Lamartine in Arles, the so-called “Yellow House,” where he dreamed of establishing a “Studio of the South.” He painted his bedroom in situ for the first time in autumn 1888 (a picture today in the Van Gogh Museum), having spent two days confined to his bed by a fit of exhaustion. In an Oct. 16 letter to his brother, Theo, he explained:

I had a new idea in mind... This time it’s simply my bedroom, but the color has to do the job here, and through its being simplified by giving a grander style to things, to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In short, looking at the painting should rest the mind, or rather, the imagination. The walls are of a pale violet. The floor — is of red tiles. The bedstead and the chairs are fresh butter yellow…

(16 October 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, No. 704).

The artist’s specific interest here in the decoration of his home betrayed nervous excitement in anticipation of Paul Gauguin’s arrival the following week. Already Van Gogh’s friend, competitor and artistic idol, Gauguin was to be his collaborator at last, to live and work by his side in the Yellow House. The violet walls, the butter yellow chairs and bedstead, the selection of portraits on the wall in the bedroom: these were all carefully chosen with Gauguin’s future residence in the adjacent room in mind.

The dream of a shared Studio of the South, however, proved short-lived, descending before the year was out into a nightmare, when Van Gogh experienced a nervous breakdown in late December and presented a severed portion of his own ear to a local prostitute. In and out of the hospital at Arles through the spring of 1889, Van Gogh admitted himself to the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in early May. It was there, the following September, that he undertook the second and third versions of his Bedroom, today in the Art Institute of Chicago and the Musée d’Orsay, respectively. Both were adapted from the original canvas, which had sustained serious water damage in a flood at Arles. As he copied the damaged Bedroom in his asylum studio at Saint-Rémy, the hopeful moment that picture had once captured must have seemed to Van Gogh far away. Yet the second version—the Chicago picture—is, if anything, more startlingly vivid than its predecessor, its colors more vigorously contrasted, its surface more thickly covered in paint. Hoped for, lost, and longingly remembered, the peaceful scene here rematerializes with the intensity of a fever dream.

Van Gogh’s ‘Bedroom’ on Loan From the Art Institute of Chicago is organized by Chief Curator Carol Togneri. The painting’s installation at the Norton Simon Museum comes shortly after the Art Institute’s revelatory exhibition “Van Gogh’s Bedrooms” (Feb. 14–May 10, 2016), which brought together all three versions of the interior and presented new research on the works. That exhibition’s curator, Gloria Groom, chair of European Painting and Sculpture and the David and Mary Winton Green Curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, will present a lecture on Van Gogh and his ‘Bedrooms’ at the Norton Simon Museum. Information about additional events, including a lecture by Van Gogh Museum Director Axel Rüger, will be made available this fall.

Van Gogh and His Bedrooms

Gloria Groom, Chair of European Painting and Sculpture and the David and Mary Winton Green Curator at the Art Institute of Chicago

Saturday, Jan. 7, 2017, 4:00–5:00 p.m.

NORTON SIMON MUSEUM, PASADENA, CA
www.nortonsimon.org

Fairfield Porter @ Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NYC

Fairfield Porter
Things as They Are
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York
October 20 - December 3, 2016

Fairfield Porter

First of May, 1960

Oil on canvas, 60 x 71 5/8 inches

Courtesy of the Tibor Nagy Gallery

The Tibor de Nagy Gallery presents an exhibition of paintings by the American Realist painter Fairfield Porter (1907-1975). This will be the gallery’s seventeenth exhibition of the artist’s work. The show coincides with the publication of a new monograph on the artist work. The exhibition concentrates mainly on landscapes from the 1950s through the 1970s of Maine and Southampton in addition to interiors scenes and portraits.

As a painter, Fairfield Porter forged a distinctly American vision out of two disparate styles: the first—loose representation characterized by intimacy and directness; and the second—gestural abstraction. Porter’s broad knowledge of art history informed not only his art criticism but his painting as well. His work is best considered as a lifelong project in which he perpetually sought to define for himself his relation to the world.

Porter was largely a self-taught painter. He was as much influenced by French Intimists such as Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, as by his contemporaries during a time when Abstract Expressionism was at its height. Foremost among his allies were Willem and Elaine de Kooning, artists with whom Porter sustained a dialogue which would prove deeply meaningful in his own work. Remaining defiantly figurative despite an art scene that swung increasingly toward abstraction, and choosing as his subjects the places and people where he felt most deeply connected, Porter produced a body of work that is significant and consistent in its vision.

More than any other American painter of his generation, Fairfield Porter poignantly defined the look and feel of everyday domestic life. He endeavored to convey an honest appraisal of what his eye saw expressing it with a beguiling, unpretentious naturalness. Porter has long been associated with the gallery, as it introduced his work with his first solo exhibition in 1952.

TIBOR DE NAGY GALLERY
www.tibordenagy.com

Impasse Ronsin @ Paul Kasmin Gallery, NYC

Impasse Ronsin
Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York
October 28, 2016 - January 14, 2017

Paul Kasmin Gallery announces the forthcoming exhibition, Impasse Ronsin, which will be on view at 515 West 27th Street from October 28th – December 23rd, 2016.  Taking as its focus the historic Parisian alley once home to the studios of Constantin Brancusi, William N. Copley, Max Ernst, Yves Klein, Les Lalanne, Larry Rivers, Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely and numerous other seminal 20th-century artists, the exhibition will include work by these artists in an elaborate installation designed to embody the collaborative atmosphere of the Impasse Ronsin.

At the heart of the original Impasse Ronsin complex, as well as in this exhibition, stands Constantin Brancusi, who moved into the Impasse in 1916 and would remain there until his death in 1957. During those forty-one years, countless seminal artists made the pilgrimage to the Impasse Ronsin in hopes of meeting the artist, whom Marcel Duchamp famously referred to as “The Queen Mother of the Impasse Ronsin” .  The exhibition will feature a bronze edition of Princess X, one of Brancusi’s most iconic forms, as well as a selection of the artist’s vintage photographs depicting the studio and its contents.  Brancusi’s studio as it was arranged at the time of his death was later meticulously reconstructed opposite the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where it has been open to the public since 1997.

From the 1930s through the 1950s, the Impasse Ronsin was an area closely associated with Dada and Surrealism.  While neither had permanent studios in the Impasse, both Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp were fixtures at the complex.  Included in the exhibition is a vintage photograph of Brancusi and his dogs taken at the Impasse by Man Ray, as well as an original set of Duchamp’s “Rotoreliefs” and his film Anemic Cinema, 1926, in which they were used.

This Surrealist spirit would remain at Ronsin through the 1950s and 1960s, when artists such as William N. Copley, Max Ernst and Les Lalanne would inhabit studios.  Max Ernst’s Dancers Under the Starry Sky, 1951, a painting aptly characteristic of this spirit, will be on view for the first time in sixty-four years.  Also executed in 1951 is William N. Copley’s Steroptic Nude, one of the artist’s most important early paintings and last exhibited in the artist’s 1980 retrospective at the Kunsthalle Bern.  The renowned collaborative duo Francois-Xavier Lalanne and his wife Claude Lalanne first met at the Impasse Ronsin in 1952, where iconic works such as Mouton de Laine and Choupatte were initially conceived, and which will be included in the exhibition.

More than anything else, collaboration and perpetual dialogue defined the Impasse Ronsin. In 1961, it was the locale in which Niki de Saint Phalle famously staged her “Shooting Paintings” with the help of Jean Tinguely, Yves Klein and Pierre Restany.  On view in Impasse Ronsin will be Tir (Fragment de Dracula II), 1961 – one of the most substantial and important works from the series.  Also included is Turning Friendship Model from the same year – a kinetic sculpture made by Larry Rivers with the help of Jean Tinguely.

In the rear gallery The Noguchi Museum will create an installation that evokes the ‘Brancusi-like’ studio Isamu Noguchi established just south of Paris, in Gentily, in 1927, after serving as the Romanian’s assistant. As the only artist to have come out of Brancusi’s studio, Noguchi’s insights into that Modernist Eden of ambiguity- where traditional craft met the avant-garde, object became indistinguishable from base, and art was life-are of particular interest.

The cooperative, convivial environment of the Impasse Ronsin has never been adequately articulated in the history of 20th-century art, but today, with sprawling artist communities thriving in Beijing, Berlin, Brooklyn, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, etc., its story has never been more relevant.

A comprehensive monograph including an essay by Jerôme Neutres, extensive archival images and texts, and a selection of interviews conducted by independent curator and art historian Adrian Dannatt will accompany the exhibition.

PAUL KASMIN GALLERY
http://paulkasmingallery.com

Mario Merz @ Gladstone Gallery, NYC

Mario Merz
Early Works
Gladstone Gallery, New York
November 10 - December 17, 2016

Gladstone Gallery, in collaboration with Fondazione Merz, presents an exhibition of historic early works by Mario Merz. A leading member of Italy’s Arte Povera movement of the 1960s and 70s, Mario Merz created paintings, sculptures, and installations with an aim to oppose a monolithic culture and to celebrate perplexity. This goal manifested itself in the artist’s deviation from the mass-media iconography popularized by Pop Art, the mythic emotionalism of Abstract Expressionism, and the machismo detachment of Minimalism. Instead, Merz and his Arte Povera contemporaries – such as Alighiero e Boetti, Luciano Fabro, and Jannis Kounellis, among others – employed simple, everyday materials and perceptive references to nature in order to ground their art in a relatable existential ambiguity.

The three seminal works on view in this exhibition exemplify this stratagem. Giap Igloo – If the Enemy Masses His Forces, He Looses Ground: If He Scatters, He Loses Strength (1968) represents a body of work that became an enduring motif throughout Mario Merz’s career, since he began making igloo sculptures in 1967. Using the exterior world to create an interior space, igloos encapsulate Mario Merz’s drive to utilize social tradition as a means for individual reflection. At once a freestanding structure, this hemisphere is rendered meaningless without an inhabitant to provide utilitarian import. The instillation of subjective weight onto the objective form of the igloo is underscored by the neon words circumscribing the dome. A quotation from General Vo Nguyen Giap of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front describing the double-bind of combat strategy, the glowing letters provide a visual tension to the cracking clay exterior, while highlighting the artist’s fascination with social mores – in this case, military and political custom.

Further showcasing Mario Merz’s interest in exploring a collective conscience through prosaic media is his boxlike sculpture, Sitin (1968). The title of the work invokes the physical act of using one’s body to occupy space – a fact emphasized by the position of the sculpture on the gallery’s floor – and also points to the global escalation of political protests in 1968, of which the sit-in was an often-used technique. Through this gesture, Merz emphasizes the social significance of sitting as individual stance and collective action.

The large-scale installation, La bottiglia di Leyda (Leyden Jar), provides a visual culmination of Mario Merz’s Arte Povera endeavors: physical space is redefined as both deeply personal and simultaneously universal through the use of common materials. With wire mesh covering every wall of the gallery, Merz invites viewers into a communal environment that proudly incorporates the natural world, all while neon lights spell out the Fibonacci sequence. A remarkable numeric sequence that seems to exist throughout nature (from pinecones to snail shells), the Fibonacci numbers in this work stress a belief that, even though the world around us is sometimes inexplicable and chaotic, there is an order uniting us all.

Mario Merz was born in 1925 and died in 2003 in Milan, Italy. He was awarded the Praemium Imperiale, Tokyo; the Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Vienna; and the Arnold Bode Prize, Kassel. Merz was the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions around the world, including Fundação de Serralves, Porto; Welhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisberg; Fundación Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. His work is included in many prominent public collections, including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Art Institute of Chicago, among many others. The Fondazione Merz in Turin, Italy, regularly displays both the works of its namesake and sponsors exhibitions by living artists.

Gladstone Gallery
www.gladstonegallery.com

Cy Twombly @ Centre Pompidou, Beaubourg, Paris : Rétrospective

Cy Twombly
Centre Pompidou, Beaubourg, Paris
30 novembre 2016 - 24 avril 2017

Cy Twombly

Blooming, 2001-2008

Acrylique, crayon à la cire sur 10 panneaux de bois, 250 x 500 x 2 cm

Collection particulière

© Cy Twombly Foundation, courtesy Fondazione Nicola del Roscio

© Photo : Studio Silvano, Gaeta

Le Centre Pompidou organise la première rétrospective complète de l’oeuvre de l’artiste américain Cy Twombly. Événement de l’automne 2016, cette exposition d’une ampleur inédite sera uniquement présentée à Paris. Elle rassemble des prêts exceptionnels, venant de collections publiques et privées du monde entier.

Construite autour de trois grands cycles : Nine Discourses on Commodus (1963), Fifty Days at Iliam (1978) et Coronation of Sesostris (2000), cette rétrospective retrace l’ensemble de la carrière de l’artiste à travers un parcours chronologique de cent quarante peintures, sculptures, dessins et photographies permettant d’appréhender toute la richesse d’un oeuvre, à la fois savant et sensuel. Dans cette sélection, le visiteur pourra découvrir les oeuvres emblématiques de l’artiste dont beaucoup, jamais exposées en France.

Né en 1928 à Lexington, Virginie, Cy Twombly est décédé en 2011, à l’âge de quatre-vingt-trois ans, à Rome où il a passé une grande partie de sa vie. Unanimement salué comme l’un des plus grands peintres de la seconde moitié du 20e siècle, Twombly qui, depuis la fin des années 1950, partageait sa vie entre l’Italie et les États-Unis, « syncrétise » l’héritage de l’expressionisme abstrait américain et les origines de la culture méditerranéenne. De ses premiers travaux du début des années 1950, marqués par les arts dits primitifs, le graffiti et l’écriture, jusqu’à ses dernières peintures aux couleurs exubérantes, en passant par ses compositions très charnelles du début des années 1960 et sa réponse à l’art minimal et conceptuel dans les années 1970, cette rétrospective souligne l’importance que Cy Twombly accorde aux cycles et aux séries dans lesquels il réinvente la grande peinture d’Histoire. L’exposition est aussi l’occasion de rendre sensible la relation forte entretenue par l’artiste avec Paris. Le Centre Pompidou lui avait dès 1988 consacré une première importante rétrospective.

L’exposition est organisée en étroite collaboration avec la Cy Twombly Foundation et son président Nicola del Roscio, la Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Gaeta et avec le soutien d’Alessandro Twombly, le fils de l’artiste.

Commissaire de l'exposition : Jonas Storsve, Conservateur du Cabinet d’art graphique, musée national d’art moderne.

CENTRE POMPIDOU
www.centrepompidou.fr

Rencontres Parisiennes de la Photographie Contemporaine

Seconde édition des Rencontres Parisiennes de la Photographie Contemporaine
Marché Dauphine, Saint-Ouen
5 - 27 novembre 2016, les week-end*

Les rencontres parisiennes de la photographie contemporaine nous invitent pour leur seconde édition sous la halle du marché Dauphine pour une macro exposition : Le réalisme symbolique en photographie.

Durant tout le mois de novembre, LE mois de la photographie à Paris, les RPPC proposent un événement généreux, axé sur le partage des savoirs artistiques et du plaisir qu'il procure : confronter la charge émotionelle qui se dégage du travail de chaque artiste aux sensations du public en créant des rencontres singulières. La charge émotionnelle qui se dégage du travail de chaque artiste et les sensations du public sont au coeur de ce projet.

Aux RRPC tout un chacun peut trouver son bonheur : acquérir une oeuvre selon son budget, avoir un échange humain avec l’artiste. Il ne s’agit pas ici d’aplanir les singularités des artistes mais bien de rendre la rencontre singulière avec l’artiste!

Parmis les artistes phares de ces rencontres vous retrouverez :  Yan Morvan, Sacha  Goldberger, Elizabeth Prouvost et Coco Fronzac. 

(c) Yan Morvan

"La première édition des RPPC s’est tenue l’an dernier sur l’Esplanade des Invalides.  J’ai pu me rendre compte, que lorsque l’on était soi-même acteur de la photographie, en ayant une pratique assidue, il était beaucoup plus simple d’avoir un langage commun au milieu, et ainsi fédérer ses «collègues» et de leur transmettre l’envie de participer à cette aventure. Cette casquette ambivalente a permis un choix rigoureux des artistes, pour le plus grand bonheur de tous, tant du côté du public que des professionnels présents.  Cette année, le décor est tout autre, et le succès de l’an dernier nous a permis de rebondir vers ce cadre prestigieux qu’est le Marché Dauphine. C’est un immense plaisir d’intégrer cet univers qui sait être luxueux sans pour autant être prétentieux. C’est précisément dans cette dimension humaine et économique que s’inscrit la mentalité des RPPC." Jonathan Abbou, commissaire de l'exposition.

Vernissage le samedi 5 novembre 2016 de 18 h 00 à 22h

* Les RPPC se dérouleront chaque weekend (du vendredi au lundi inclus) du 5 au 27 novembre au marché Dauphine

132-140 rue des Rosiers 93400 Saint-Ouen
Métro Porte de Clignancourt ou Garibaldi

Artist collective GCC @ Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NYC

GCC: Positive Pathways (+)
Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
Through November 23, 2016

GCC

Installation view of "Positive Pathways (+)," 2016

Courtesy GCC; Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin; Project Native Informant, London; 

Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY; photo: Timo Ohler

Mitchell-Innes & Nash presents Positive Pathways (+), an exhibition of works by artist collective GCC. This is the group’s debut show at Mitchell-Innes & Nash and their first in the United States since GCC: Achievements in Retrospective at MoMA PS1 in 2014.

The exhibition, which includes installation, wall sculptures and sound, focuses on the increasingly pervasive trend of Healthy Living and Positive Lifestyles gaining momentum in the Middle East. In particular, GCC explores the ways in which these lifestyle attitudes are appropriated, employed, and transformed as part of a greater political mechanism.

The exhibition at Mitchell-Innes & Nash expands upon GCC’s 2016 project at the most recent Berlin Biennale, a sculptural installation of a woman and child. The woman is performing a Quantum Touch exercise, a non-contact touch therapy that became popular in the West in the late 1990s, on a boy as they stand on sand surrounded by a running track. The work, from where the exhibition borrows its title Positive Pathways (+), focuses on the ways that the positive energy movement and body healing practitioners have become co-opted by governments in the region – such as the creation of new ministerial positions like the UAE’s Ministry of Happiness, and the emergence of life coaches and Feng Shui consultants employed by hereditary leaders. Also on view will be a set of sculptural reliefs created using Thermoforming, a commonly used industrial process where thermoplastic sheets are heated and formed on a mold. The reliefs are based on 3D renderings of stills taken from YouTube videos and images found online of regional practitioners promoting the positive energy movement. Ranging from politicians to social media celebrities to TV clerics, these individuals utilize the Positive Energy attitude as a base for state policy. Referring to the erasure and creation of cultural myths, these reliefs create narratives of the present, a mechanism of both nation building and the politics of cultural extinction and creation.

About GCC

GCC, an acronym that does not necessarily stand for but alludes to the Gulf Cooperation Council (the intergovernmental political and economic partnership that connects six countries in the region), is an artist “delegation” or collective composed of eight members, all of which have strong ties to the Arabian Gulf region of the Middle East. The group was formed in 2013 at Art Dubai and has since shown at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler in Berlin; Project Native Informant in London; The New Museum, Whitney Museum of Art, and MoMA PS1 in New York; Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris; 9th Berlin Biennial; Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; Fridericianum in Kassel; and Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.

Since its debut at Sultan Gallery, Kuwait, the group has continued to address the shifting systems of power in the Gulf region and abroad. GCC live between Kuwait, New York, Amsterdam, London, and Berlin. Apart from several summits held in Switzerland, Kuwait, France and, most recently, New York, Whatsapp is the group’s primary mode of communication.

Collective members:
Nanu Al-Hamad (b. 1987)
Khalid Al Gharaballi (b. 1981)
Abdullah Al-Mutairi (b. 1990)
Fatima Al Qadiri (b. 1981)
Monira Al Qadiri (b. 1983)
Aziz Al Qatami (b. 1979)
Barrak Alzaid (b. 1985)
Amal Khalaf (b. 1982)

Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
@ 534 West 26th Street, New York
www.miandn.com

Ignasi Aballí @ Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin

Ignasi Aballí
something is missing
Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin
October 28 - December 23, 2016

Ignasi Aballí

Attempt of reconstruction (glasses), 2016

broken glasses, 4 x 12 cm

In his first solo exhibition in Berlin Ignasi Aballí presents a body of new works revolving around aspects of invisibility. The artist’s practice is characterised by minimal gestures - or in trying to do almost nothing - however, by doing so, he constantly disrupts the categories of painting, sculpture, literature, or installation. Aballí pays special attention to the major implications of apparently insignificant strategies of representation and re-signification. For the exhibition in Berlin he has not only reconstructed found glass objects and photographed empty vitrines in museums but he also added a mirror at the base of a trolley that reflects the ceiling of the gallery, and people are able to move it in the space.

The group of works Reconstruction Effort, 2016, consists of a series of small broken glass objects - most of them used for measuring things like liquid, time or vision. The artist attempted to meticulously restore the discarded glass vessels by gluing their many fragments back together. The reconstruction efforts seem to be an impossible task, and the objects seem to be suspended in an uncertain epistemological state of in-betweenness. Unable to be fixed, the vessels become useless, they can’t contain any liquid nor can they be recycled. Although Ignasi Aballí’s gesture of applying glue between the glass pieces is almost invisible, the object’s fate has been profoundly altered.

Something is Missing, 2016, are photographs of the empty wall or vitrine in a museum left by an artwork that was temporarily removed to be loaned or studied. In the images the wall labels with their detailed information about the work such as title, date, dimensions, or its origin become central. The series of photographs can be read, not without humour, as an absurd index of what is considered essential data to identify a work of art. The series is a development of the artist’s archival practices that are a significant and well-known aspect of his work since the early nineties.

Ignsi Aballí confronts us with objects that constantly re-direct our attention both to a realm of self-references, and to ambiguous traces of things that happen to be somewhere else. All the works of the exhibition oscillate between what is there, what is represented, or what is actually missing, and thus ultimately problematize their fragile physical and conceptual condition.

Ignasi Aballí was born in 1958 in Barcelona, where he lives and works. A comprehensive exhibition of his oeuvre titled without beginning / without end was shown at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid in 2015-16. In 2015 he was awarded the prestigious Joan Miró Prize and in connection to it he presented the exhibition Infinite Sequence at Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona. Aballí has had recently solo exhibitions at Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo (2010), Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2008), Museu Serralves in Porto, Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and ZKM in Karlsruhe (all 2006), Museum of Contemporary Art de Barcelona MACBA (2005), and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia MNCARS, Madrid (2002). He participated in the 4th Guangzhou Triennial (2012), the 52nd Venice Biennale, the 8th Sharjah Biennial, UAE (both 2007), and the 11th Biennial of Sydney (1998). He will be taking part in the XIII Bienal of Cuenca, Ecuador (2016-17).

GALERIE NORDENHAKE
Lindenstrasse 34
DE-10969 Berlin
www.nordenhake.com

Mark di Suvero @ Paula Cooper Gallery, NYC

Mark di Suvero
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
November 3 - December 10, 2016

Paula Cooper Gallery announces an exhibition of work by Mark di Suvero. The exhibit highlights the artist’s continued preeminence in abstract sculpture throughout his near-sixty-year career. The show, on view at 534 West 21st Street, will be up from November 3rd through December 10th, 2016. The opening reception is on Friday, November 4th from 6 to 8pm.

As art historian Barbara Rose stated, “[Mark di Suvero’s] genius lies in his unique ability to fuse the excitement of the momentary … with the gravity of a timeless geometry and the engineered ability and intuitive equilibrium that his hard-won mastery of structural balances makes possible.” His works thrive on the collision of geometric and organic forms through spontaneous experimentation. “I don’t draw detailed plans,” he said. “I start with a vision … and see where it goes.” Di Suvero executes and installs his sculptures himself. Designing and revising throughout every step of construction, he welds, bends, cuts and bolts with illimitable buoyancy. The vast metal sheet plate becomes a blank piece of paper on top of which he crawls to sketch freehand forms with chalk. The industrial crane becomes an extension of the artist’s arm, handled as if he were painting with a massive brush. Activated by this spirited process, the final structures assert a dynamic and irrefutable presence.

Ranging from three to thirteen feet in height, the midsize scale of the works on view accommodates an especially wide range of formal improvisation that highlights the artist’s constructivist foundation and expansive manipulation of line and space. Composed of beams of wood and painted steel, the manifold planes of Untitled (hungblock), 1962, extend with a kinetic yet delicate thrust, while Nextro, 2003, offers an enigmatic staccato of linear and spherical elements. A recent work from 2015 entitled Post-Matisse Pullout draws inspiration from the cut-outs of the French artist, Henri Matisse. The playful potential for imminent change contained in its bowing curvilinear form recalls the mutable paper and thumbtacks used by Matisse for continuous alterations.

Mark di Suvero currently lives and works in New York. His first retrospective was at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975 and was accompanied by a citywide exhibition of large-scale works. The artist has had acclaimed international exhibitions in Nice (1991), Venice (1995, on the occasion of the 46th Venice Biennale) and Paris (1997), among others. In 2011, eleven monumental works were installed on Governors Island in New York Harbor. Organized by Storm King Art Center this marked the largest outdoor exhibition of work in New York since the 1970s. That same year di Suvero received the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest honor given to artists. From May 2013-2014, SFMOMA presented eight monumental sculptures in the city’s historic Crissy Field for a yearlong outdoor exhibition. In September 2016, two monumental works were installed on Chicago’s Lakeshore Drive through a partnership between the Chicago Park District and EXPO CHICAGO. These works will be on view through 2017. One can also see a number of Mark di Suvero sculptures at the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York, permanently installed.

Paula Cooper Gallery
www.paulacoopergallery.com

Paul Pfeiffer @ Paula Cooper Gallery, NYC

Paul Pfeiffer
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Through November 12, 2016

Paula Cooper Gallery presents Paul Pfeiffer’s second one-person exhibition, which includes a selection of recent video work.

Known for his innovative manipulation of digital media, Paul Pfeiffer recasts the visual language of spectacle to uncover its psychological, cultural and racial underpinnings. For this exhibition, the gallery presents Paul Pfeiffer’s forty-eight minute multi-channel audio and video installation, Three Figures In A Room (2015-2016), which features televised footage of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao’s highly publicized boxing match at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, in May 2015. The original audio has been replaced by an eerily quiet Foley soundtrack, which isolates the physical exertion of the boxers and movement among the stadium audience—a rhythmic thud of footsteps; an acute smack of leather on flesh; a hissing snarl of exhausted breath. A second video channel shows the sound technicians as they distill and recreate the sound effects. Mirroring the boxers’ athleticism and focus, the Foley channel plays in sync with the fight channel, each placed against opposing walls in the main space of the gallery. Audio playback alternates from one channel to the other, sparring across the room and enveloping the viewer in the meticulous process of sound production.

Also on view are three new works from Paul Pfeiffer’s ongoing Caryatid series, begun in 2004. Screened on lustrous chrome television sets of varying sizes, the HD videos show slow-motion excerpts of boxing matches in which the attacking opponents have been digitally removed. Cast into a torpid yet tense solo performance, the remaining boxer invites close scrutiny. Obscure corporeal details are brought to the fore, highlighting the brutality of impact from an invisible assault, while the work’s presentation as sculptural object serves to prompt further meditative viewing.

Paul Pfeiffer was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has had one-person exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2001), MIT’s List Visual Arts Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2003), the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2005), MUSAC León, Spain (2008), the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2009) and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2010). He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship and the Bucksbaum Award from the Whitney Museum. Pfeiffer was the subject of a retrospective at Sammlung Goetz in Munich, Germany in 2011. The artist lives and works in New York City.

Paula Cooper Gallery
www.paulacoopergallery.com

Carl Andre @ Musée d'Art moderne de la ville de Paris : Sculpture as place, 1958-2010

Carl Andre
Sculpture as place, 1958-2010
Musée d'Art moderne de la ville de Paris
Jusqu'au 12 février 2017

Le Musée d’Art moderne rend hommage à Carl Andre (né en 1935 à Quincy, Massachusetts), artiste américain majeur du XXème siècle. L’exposition Carl Andre – Sculpture as place, 1958-2010 couvre tout le spectre de son oeuvre et en révèle la cohérence, en présentant une quarantaine de sculptures monumentales, de nombreux poèmes, des photographies, des oeuvres sur papier et des objets inclassables. Les pièces iconiques côtoient des éléments jamais réunis, comme ses Dada Forgeries. Acteur principal du minimalisme (avec Donald Judd et Robert Morris), Carl Andre apparait aujourd’hui comme l’un des plus grands sculpteurs du XXème siècle.

Cette rétrospective révèle comment à partir d’éléments standards, de matériaux industriels bruts, l’artiste redéfinit la sculpture comme un lieu d’expérience de l’espace, de la forme et de la matière. Carl Andre a également composé nombre de poèmes en employant les mots pour leur valeur aussi bien sémantique et sonore que visuelle. L’apparente simplicité des oeuvres remet en jeu les notions traditionnelles de technique, de composition, d’installation où le visiteur est partie prenante de l’oeuvre.

Arrivé à New York en 1957, Carl Andre s’essaie à la poésie et réalise ses premières sculptures de petit format. Il s’intéresse rapidement aux propriétés de la matière : forme, poids, surface. Dès 1965, il emploie des éléments industriels qu’il assemble lui-même : bois, métaux, briques, bottes de foin, en relation avec les lieux où il expose. L’artiste n’a de cesse depuis de réagir aux espaces proposés par les galeries, musées, villes. Il travaille avec les éléments qu’il trouve sur place, assemble ce qu’il peut manipuler seul, réalise des ensembles à la fois très présents et en même temps si intégrés aux espaces qu’ils semblent avoir toujours été là.

Avec Carl Andre, l’oeuvre d’art change de statut : elle n’est plus un élément symbolique ou figuratif, mais un objet réel qui fait partie du monde, au même titre qu’un arbre ou un mur. Au cours des années soixante, l’artiste a évolué dans sa conception de la sculpture, d’abord comme forme, puis structure et finalement comme un lieu (« sculpture as place »). « J’ai des désirs; je n’ai pas d’idées. C’est pour moi un désir physique de trouver le matériel et un lieu où travailler » (entretien de l’artiste avec Marta Gynp, 2015).

Cette première exposition consacrée à Carl Andre en France depuis vingt ans (la dernière ayant eu lieu au musée Cantini à Marseille en 1997), correspond à la politique du Musée d’Art moderne de relecture des grands artistes fondateurs de la modernité.

Conçue par la Dia Art Foundation en étroite collaboration avec l'artiste, cette rétrospective a été présentée à New York (2014), Madrid (2015), Berlin (2016), puis le sera à Los Angeles (2017).

L’exposition itinérante internationale de Carl Andre : Sculpture as Place, 1958-2010 a été rendue possible grâce au soutien de Henry Luce Foundation et de Terra Foundation for American Art, ainsi que par celui de Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, The Brown Foundation, Inc. de Houston, National Endowment for the Arts et Sotheby’s.

Cette manifestation est organisée dans le cadre du Tandem Paris-New York 2016, mis en oeuvre par la Ville de Paris et l’Institut français, en partenariat avec les services culturels de l’Ambassade de France aux États-Unis d’Amérique et l’Ambassade de États-Unis d’Amérique en France, avec le soutien de la Ville de New York.

Commissaires de l’exposition : Sébastien Gokalp, Yasmil Raymond, Philippe Vergne

Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris

11 Avenue du Président Wilson - 75116 Paris

www.mam.paris.fr