Hannah Wilke @ Alison Jacques Gallery, London

Hannah Wilke

Alison Jacques Gallery, London

27 September - 21 December 2018

"Since 1960 I have been concerned with the creation of a formal imagery that is specifically female... Human gestures, multi-layered metaphysical symbols below the gut level translated into an art close to laughter, making love, shaking hands... Eating fortune cookies instead of signing them, chewing gum into androgynous objects... Delicate definitions... Rearranging the touch of sensuality with a residual magic made from laundry lint, or latex loosely laid out like love vulnerably exposed... continually exposing myself to whatever situation occurs...."

Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective, University of Missouri Press, 1989, p.139.

Alison Jacques Gallery presents an exhibition spanning three decades of the American painter, sculptor, photographer, video and performance artist HANNAH WILKE (1940 - 1993), in partnership with The Hannah Wilke Collection and Archive, Los Angeles.

Hannah Wilke's firm legacy as a pioneering, often controversial, feminist and conceptual artist is evident not only in her early use of vaginal imagery as a feminist intervention but also in her radical choice of materials. The use of terracotta and ceramic, latex, chewing gum and erasers was unusual for this time period and their characteristics of malleability and fragility reflect the sense of vulnerability that is consistent throughout Hannah Wilke's practice.

Over the last decade, major museums have acknowledged Hannah Wilke's previously overlooked importance through significant acquisitions: MoMA, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles and Centre Pompidou, Paris. Tate, London recently acquired Hannah Wilke's iconic installation Elective Affinities (1978) consisting of 76 glazed porcelain white sculptures laid out in grid-like formats; a maquette for this work, Untitled (1977), is included in the current exhibition.

Bringing together works from the early 1960s through to 1987, this is the first time since Wilke's death in 1993 that her paintings on canvas from the 60s have been exhibited. The colours of these works and the forms depicted, relate to many of Hannah Wilke's drawings and sculptures. Other lesser-known intensely coloured small-scale works on paper are shown alongside Hannah Wilke's iconic performance photographs including Gestures (Triptych), (1974 - 76) in which the artist stretches and contorts her face directly at the camera, using her skin as a malleable sculptural medium. As Hannah Wilke explained Gestures shows "the pathos past the posing" and this reference to primal female instinct was fundamental to her thinking.

From the beginning, drawing was central to Hannah Wilke's practice as well as her considered use of colour. The early abstract works on paper and card from the 60s, often in charcoal, pastel and pencil reference the body sexually with yonic and phallic shapes merging within floral landscapes to create sensual abstract forms. As Hannah Wilke stated, she was concerned with creating: "a new language that fuses mind and body into erotic objects that are nameable and at the same time quite abstract. Its content has always related to my own body and feelings, reflecting pleasure as well as pain, the ambiguity and complexity of emotions." (Hannah Wilke, A Retrospective, University of Missouri Press, 1989, p.139).

Central to the exhibition is one of Hannah Wilke's largest installations, Untitled, (1974 - 77) consisting of 103 painted flesh-coloured terracotta sculptures. Although the forms are arranged in a scattered configuration they are, as with many of Hannah Wilke's multi-part sculptures, confined within the minimalist square and show "Wilke's subversion of the Minimalist/Conceptualist concern with systems, while also demonstrating her genius for fusing her personal, bodycentric feminism with the formal issues and rigorous philosophy of Conceptualism " (Paige K. Bradley, Artforum, October 2014).

HANNAH WILKE (born Arlene Hannah Butter, New York, NY, 1940; d. Hannah Wilke, Houston, TX, 1993). Wilke studied at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia and taught at the School of Visual Arts, New York (1974 - 1992). Wilke had two solo museum exhibitions during her life: Hannah Wilke: Starification Photographs and Videotapes, Fine Arts Gallery, University of California, Irvine (1976); and Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective, University of Missouri, Missouri (1989) as well as a posthumous museum survey show; Gestures curated by Tracy Fitzpatrick, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY (2009).

Recent major group exhibitions include: Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by Her Writings, Tate St Ives, UK (2018); Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950 - 1980, Met Breuer, New York (2017); Generation Loss: 10 Years of the Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2017); Campaign for Art, SFMOMA, San Francisco (2016); The Imaginary Museum, Tate Liverpool, UK (2015) toured to MMK, Frankfurt and Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz (2016); and Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women 1947-2016, Hauser, Wirth & Schimmel, Los Angeles (2016).

The Hannah Wilke Collection and Archive, Los Angeles was founded in 1999 by Hannah Wilke's sister Marsie Scharlatt and her family, and has been represented by Alison Jacques Gallery since 2009. 

ALISON JACQUES GALLERY

16-18 Berners Street, London W1T 3LN

www.alisonjacquesgallery.com

KODAK EKTACHROME Film line

KODAK EKTACHROME Film line

Eastman Kodak Company and Kodak Alaris recently announced the availability of the highly anticipated KODAK EKTACHROME Film line.

KODAK EKTACHROME

KODAK PROFESSIONAL EKTACHROME Film E100, available from Kodak Alaris, will immediately begin shipping to distributors and stock house dealers worldwide.  The new film will initially be available in 135/36x camera format and is expected to be a favorite among professional and enthusiast photographers alike.

KODAK EKTACHROME 7294 Color Reversal Film in the Super 8 format will also be available beginning October 1, 2018 from Eastman Kodak Company. Availability of EKTACHROME products in the 16mm format will follow later this year.

Resurgence in the popularity of analog photography and motion picture film has created demand for new film offerings. “We recently brought KODAK PROFESSIONAL T-MAX P3200 Film back to market, and the response was overwhelming,” said Dennis Olbrich, President – Kodak Alaris Paper, Photo Chemicals and Film. “Based on the response we’re seeing to beta test images on social media, we expect the return of EKTACHROME E100 to be equally well received.”

“EKTACHROME Film was the choice for generations of filmmakers,” said Steve Bellamy, President, Eastman Kodak Company’s Motion Picture and Entertainment Division. “The distinct and unparalleled look of films like Tony Scott’s “Domino” and Spike Lee’s “Inside Man” could not have been achieved without EKTACHROME. We are extremely excited to reintroduce this film to those who know and love it, and to a new generation of motion picture artists.”

KODAK PROFESSIONAL EKTACHROME Film E100 and KODAK EKTACHROME 7294 Color Reversal Film are daylight balanced color positive films, featuring clean, vibrant colors, a neutral tone scale, and extremely fine grain.  The distinctive look is well suited to a wide range of applications, such as product, landscape, nature and fashion photography. Kodak also anticipates a strong demand for Super 8 and 16mm products for use in commercials, music films, and features.

www.kodak.com

Ossip Zadkine @ Musée Zadkine, Paris - L'instinct de la matière

OSSIP ZADKINE

L’instinct de la matière

Musée Zadkine, Paris

28 septembre 2018 - 10 février 2019

« C’est l’instinct qui prime d’abord ; c’est le plus important ; tout le reste vient plus tard ; alors on s’arme d’une logique qui pénètre chaque geste. »

Ossip Zadkine,

Entretien avec Jacques Charles, 16 septembre 1966

Le musée Zadkine rend un hommage inédit à l’artiste en soulignant sa place aussi originale que singulière au sein des modernismes du XXe siècle. L’exposition Ossip Zadkine, l’instinct de la matière met en lumière, à l’occasion du 130e anniversaire de l’artiste, son lien organique à la matière.

Après lexposition Être Pierre en 2017, poursuivant l’exploration des matérialités créatrices, le musée fait pénétrer le visiteur dans l’intimité du dialogue d'Ossip Zadkine avec les différents matériaux qui sont à ses yeux des « puissances formelles ». Pour l’artiste russe (Vitebsk 1888 – Paris 1967), la matière est toujours « première ». Il sait, il sent qu’elle est porteuse d’une vocation formelle. L’exposition retrouve ce lien intime à la matière primordiale, aux formes en gestation : les veines et les nodosités du bois, la densité et les particules de la roche, la fluidité de l’encre ou de la gouache…

« Inductives», les matières sont riches d’une dynamique, d’une poussée que le geste du tailleur ou la main du dessinateur doit capter en retour. « Du dialogue avec la matière nait le geste de l’homme », confiait Ossip Zadkine à Pierre Cabane (Arts, 1960). L’authenticité de la création plastique passe par ce rapport instinctif avec la matière que Zadkine n’aura de cesse d’éprouver.

Le musée bénéficie à cette occasion de prêts exceptionnels comme Le Fauve du Musée de Grenoble, une très belle série d’oeuvres graphiques prêtées par le musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris ou L’Odalisque, pièce majeure du musée Réattu en Arles. Le visiteur découvre l’oeuvre de Zadkine dans un parcours enrichi, avec une scénographie dictée par la résonance même du propos. L’introduction d’oeuvres sur papier permet notamment de retrouver le mode de présentation adopté par l’artiste de son vivant et de dépasser l’image d’une oeuvre identifiée à la seule sculpture. Cette approche souligne la richesse plastique et la force intérieure d’une création attachée à préserver la nécessité vitale du lien de l’homme à la nature.

Ossip Zadkine : Matière Source

La section initiale rassemble certaines tailles directes «nées de la plongée dans les eaux régénératrices de l’archaïsme » pour reprendre les termes mêmes de Zadkine. Ainsi sont présentées dans cette partie des oeuvres majeures des années 1910 à 1925 : des marbres – Maternité, 1919 ; Léda, 1919-1920 –, des pierres – Tête héroïque, 1910 ; Tête aux yeux de plomb, 1918 –, des bois – Le Prophète, 1914 ; Les Vendanges, 1918 ; Torse d’éphèbe, 1922 ; Porteuse d’eau, 1923…

Mi- figures mi- arbres ou pierres, ces sculptures sont confrontées à une sélection de dessins à la plume des années 1913-14 et de gouaches des années 1920, peintes sur papier. Si la création graphique d'Ossip Zadkine revêt un caractère certain d’autonomie, elle participe néanmoins du même mouvement que la sculpture. Une étroite et indéniable coïncidence unit ce qu’il peint à ce qu’il taille.

Ces dessins retranscrivent le principe de « la forme dans la forme » et de l’emboitement prégnants dans l’oeuvre de Zadkine.

Ossip Zadkine : Richesse Plastique

Montrant les capacités métamorphiques de la matière, la deuxième partie de l’exposition met l’accent sur la matière transformée, l’assemblage, l’incorporation et l’incrustation de matériaux. Cette section souligne également le lien étroit que la sculpture de Zadkine a pu entretenir avec les arts décoratifs, aussi bien par la relation très fructueuse que l’artiste noue dès 1920 avec André De Ridder (fondateur de la revue belge Sélection) que par sa collaboration avec les décorateurs André Groult ou Eileen Gray, à laquelle appartenait Tête de Femme, 1924 incrustée de marbre et rehaussée de couleurs. Sous l’inspiration d’un primitivisme aux multiples sources et après un bref passage par le cubisme, Ossip Zadkine renoue avec le caractère spirituel de la sculpture, la charge rituelle de l’ornementation et de la coloration dans la sculpture moderne. En ce sens, les bois dorés à la feuille du Fauve, 1920-1921 ou de la Tête d’homme, 1922 et le plâtre de L’Oiseau d’or, 1924 ne ressortissent ni de l‘enjolivement ni de l’accessoire mais de la richesse plastique. La parure de l’or est une seconde peau, un épiderme étincelant comme un simulacre de la chair lumineuse et imputrescible des dieux.

Ossip Zadkine : L’Atelier intérieur

Coque de la vie intime, l’atelier de Zadkine préside à la jonction de l’intériorité sensible, psychique, fantasmatique et de l’extériorité - le monde du dehors auquel sont destinées les oeuvres. Différentes thématiques qui traversent l’oeuvre de Zadkine sont ainsi évoquées, des femmes à l’oiseau aux figures mythologiques récurrentes : Orphée, 1930-61, Prométhée, 1955-1956 ou L’Odalisque, 1932, pièce majeure prêtée pour la première fois par le musée Réattu en Arles. Dans cet atelier intérieur, l’artiste se confronte aux différents matériaux et à leur dynamique intrinsèque. Il expérimente physiquement les pratiques et les savoir-faire du sculpteur, qui transparaissent dans la représentation de l’artiste par lui-même. Son image est ainsi évoquée à travers des œuvres comme Le Sculpteur, 1922-1949, manifeste et magnifique autoportrait ou encore l’Auto-portrait testamentaire et inquiétant, 1960.

COMMISSARIAT SCIENTIFIQUE

Noëlle Chabert, directrice du musée Zadkine, conservateur général du patrimoine

Jérôme Godeau, commissaire d’exposition

Assistante d’exposition : Adélaïde Lacotte, doctorante

CATALOGUE

OSSIP ZADKINE

L’instinct de la matière

Catalogue d'exposition

Edité par Paris Musées, 2018

ISBN 978-2-7596-0415-9

176 pages, relié, 17 x 24 cm, 108 illustrations

Un catalogue de référence accompagne l’exposition. Edité par Paris Musées, centré sur l’oeuvre d’Ossip Zadkine et son rapport singulier à la matière, l’ouvrage comprend une centaine d’illustrations et plusieurs articles scientifiques, points de vue croisés de philosophes, d’historiens de l’art engagés dans l’art moderne et contemporain. Matérialité (Antonia Soulez), monumentalité (Dominique Viéville) et matière–peau (Jérôme Godeau), font partie des sujets questionnés dans des contributions qui renouvellent en profondeur l’approche de l’artiste.

Sous la direction de Noëlle Chabert, conservateur général du patrimoine, directrice du musée Zadkine.

En collaboration avec Jérôme Godeau, historien de l’art

Auteurs :

Stéphane Carrayrou (critique d’art et commissaire d’exposition),

Noëlle Chabert (conservateur général du patrimoine, directrice du musée Zadkine),

Serge Fauchereau (historien de l’art et écrivain),

Véronique Gautherin (adjointe à la directrice du musée Zadkine, responsable des collections du musée Zadkine),

Jérôme Godeau (historien de l’art),

Antonia Soulez (professeur émérite de philosophie du langage, Université de Paris 8),

Dominique Viéville (conservateur général honoraire, ancien directeur du musée Rodin).

MUSÉE ZADKINE

100bis rue d'Assas, 75006 Paris

www.zadkine.paris.fr

Tatsuo Miyajima, Drawings @ Buchmann Galerie, Berlin

Tatsuo Miyajima: Drawings
Buchmann Galerie, Berlin
28 September - 3 November 2018

Buchmann Galerie presents the first solo exhibition of drawings by TATSUO MIYAJIMA (*1957, Tokyo) 

Tatsuo Miyajima is one of Japan‘s most important sculptors and installation artists. In his œuvre, the artist – who became known primarily for his works using digital light diodes (LED) – is concerned with concepts of time, its (non-) calculability and its cultural and existential dimension. 

One important component of the works is counting and sequences of numbers. These numbers, appearing in continuous and recurrent - although not necessarily consecutive - cycles from 1 to 9, represent the journey of life until death, whose finality is symbolized by ‚0‘ or the zero point. Consequently, this never appears in the artist‘s work. The series of works on paper from 1995 to 2018 now collected in the Buchmann Box explore several issues essential to Tatsuo Miyajima‘s work. 

Kũ Drawing Series 

In the Zen tradition Kũ stands for emptiness (Kũ is the transcription of the Sanskrit word sunya or sunyata, translated literally as „emptiness“). Tatsuo Miyajima describes how he produced these drawings in a state of Kũ, holding a pencil in his hand, his eyes closed: The lines from my subconscious show my time spent in emptiness. The length of time given in the title, 15 minutes for example, describes the period of time which I spent in an altered state of mind, with my eyes closed. 

Innumerable Counts Series 

Every number in these drawings represents a moment in the counting cycle from 9 to 1. The empty space in the potentially in infinite sequence of numbers re- presents the figure zero, which - as indicated above - does not appear in his work. In these drawings the artist is attempting to grasp moments in cycles of innumerable counts. The Innumerable Counts visualize life for Tatsuo Miyajima. The spirals or lines in the drawings are thus excerpts from a broader context, from innumerable moments in time. 

Count Down Drawing Series 

Tatsuo Miyajima provides a different interpretation of the zero, the empty space, in his Count Down Drawing Series: this series of works shows a repea- ted sequence, counting down from 9 to 1, as the title suggests. Here, too, the place of zero (Kũ) is represented by an empty space or fille with a thin gold foil or a microchip. In this variation the empty space is filled; it is, as the artist points out, the field provided with every possibility, the field of potential. 

The artist‘s works on paper are an essential component of his practice, seen as equal in status to the installation pieces and performances. They complete the artist‘s complex œuvre, which is characterized by investigation into the significance of counting and time, and by subtle meditations exhibiting sublime precision and finesse. 

Important works by the artist can be found in collections including the Tate Gallery London, the Bavarian State Collection of Painting Munich, La Caixa Barcelona, the Deste Foundation in Athens, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Leeum Seoul, Kunstmuseum Bern, and M+ in Hong Kong. 

Buchmann Box 
Charlottenstrasse 75, 10117 Berlin
www.buchmanngalerie.com

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian @ The Third Line, Dubai - The Breeze at Dawn Has Secrets to Tell You

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian

The Breeze at Dawn Has Secrets to Tell You

The Third Line, Dubai

September 24 – November 3, 2018

The Third Line presents The Breeze at Dawn Has Secrets to Tell You, a solo exhibition featuring MONIR SHAHROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN’s most recent body of work. While they continue to draw from Islamic cosmology, mathematics and Sufi mystic philosophies, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s mixed-media installations define a new step in the artist’s ever-evolving practice as she for the first time experiments with kinetic art.

The Breeze at Dawn Has Secrets to Tell You

Don't go back to sleep!

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep!

People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,

The door is round and open

Don't go back to sleep!

Excerpted from a poem by 13th century Sufi poet Rumi, The Breeze at Dawn Has Secrets to Tell You stands as a reminder that the changes we strive for lie within our hands, as thresholds that demand to be crossed, opportunities to be seized.

Reminiscent of such gates, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s mirror mosaic representations of geometrical figures are framed by curtains of reverse-painted plexiglass strands that one imagines could oscillate in the wind. Suspended from the frame of several works are pendants that mirror the geometrical shapes of the works from which they hang. Drawn from Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s childhood memories of her nanny wearing a microscopic Quran page medallion pinned to her sleeve, these adornments remind us of the sacred geometry principles that have been at the core of the artist’s practice for the past five decades. Each of the shapes possesses mathematical attributes and consequently, its own meaning. Thus, the triangle becomes a symbol of harmony representing the soul and the three forms of action: mental, physical and verbal, while the square is synonymous with stability, the four cardinal points and the four seasons.

To take a closer look at the reflective surfaces that host the various geometrical shapes is to realize that the mirror has been shattered in what seems like the ultimate gesture materializing both Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s avant-garde practice and her forever young and playful spirit. The fragmented planes also hint at the historical origins of the mirror mosaics used in Iranian architecture: in the 18th century, mirrors imported from Europe that arrived broken were salvaged by local craftsmen, who reassembled cracked elements into patterns imitating traditional Iranian tiles.

Also on display will be 2018 iterations of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s famed 1970s Mirror Ball works—spherical sculptures comprising myriads of hand-cut mirror elements inspired by the sight of children playing football in the streets of Tehran.

In conjunction with the exhibition, The Third Line screens Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, a documentary that explores the artist’s life and practice and uncovers how she came to be one of the most influential and innovative practitioners in the Middle East. Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian is directed by Bahman Kiarostami and produced by Leyla Fakhr.

MONIR SHAHROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN - BIOGRAPHY

Born in Qazvin, Iran in 1924, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s distinguished career has spanned more than five decades. Incorporating traditional reverse glass painting, mirror mosaics and principles of Islamic geometry with a modern sensibility, her sculptures and installations defy easy categorization.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian attended the Fine Arts College of Tehran before becoming one of the first Iranian students to study in the United States after World War II. She graduated from Parsons School of Design in 1949 and then became a Member of the New York Art Students' League (1950-53). Engulfed in the epicenter of the modern art world, it was here that she worked alongside many iconic contemporary American artists including Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella, Louise Nevelson and Andy Warhol, all who had an influence on her work.

In August 2018, a major solo exhibition featuring over 70 works opened at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and will travel to the Sharjah Art Foundation in 2019.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s work is housed in several major public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Jameel Collection, London; Tate Modern, London; The Queensland Art Gallery, Australia; The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran; Swisscorp Bank, Switzerland; The Sharjah Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates; and the School of Law at Columbia University, United States.

THE THIRD LINE

www.thethirdline.com

Lola Alvarez Bravo: Picturing Mexico @ Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Saint-Louis

Lola Álvarez Bravo: Picturing Mexico
Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Saint-Louis
September 14, 2018 – February 16, 2019

LOLA ALVAREZ BRAVO 

La Visitación, ca. 1934, printed 1971 

Gelatin silver photograph. 9 ¼ x 6 ¾ inches (23.5 x 17.2 cm) 

Brooklyn Museum, purchased with funds given 

by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, 

Adrian Gill and Coler Foundation, 1995.125. 

© 1995 Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation explores the career of pioneering Mexican photographer Lola Álvarez Bravo (1903 – 1993) with an exhibition of images that she considered to be her personal photography. Lola Álvarez Bravo: Picturing Mexico presents nearly 50 photographs and photomontages spanning Álvarez Bravo’s five-decade career. Together, these illuminate the ways in which her modernist aesthetic, with meticulous attention to pattern, light, and composition, contributed to her depictions of Mexico’s diverse inhabitants and landscapes as she traveled the country documenting life in the years following the Mexican Revolution (ca. 1910–1920).

Born in 1903 in Jalisco, Mexico, Lola Álvarez Bravo began taking photographs in 1925, when she moved from Mexico City to Oaxaca with her husband, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, who would become one of the most prominent photographers of the period. In 1927, the couple moved to Mexico City, where Lola Álvarez Bravo would work as a curator, an educator, and a gallerist, coming into contact with many of the most prominent figures in Mexico’s modernist avant-garde, from painters David Alfaro Siqueiros, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera, to photographers Tina Modotti, Paul Strand, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as numerous writers and intellectuals.

Shortly after the Álvarez Bravos separated in 1934, Lola began a professional practice as a photojournalist. As a female photographer, she occupied a rare and often stigmatized position, and she once described herself as “the only woman that ran around the streets with a camera, at sports events and the Independence Day parades, and all the reporters made fun of me.”

LOLA ALVAREZ BRAVO

Unos suben y otros bajan, ca. 1940

Gelatin silver print. 9 1/4 x 6 15/16 inches (23.5 x 17.6 cm) 

Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: 

Lola Álvarez Bravo Archive 93.6.97. 

© 1995 Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation

Lola Álvarez Bravo: Picturing Mexico comprises work that Lola Álvarez Bravo considered her “personal” photography, what she described as “images that affected me deeply, like electricity, and made me press the camera shutter.” Highlighting several intersecting themes that informed the photographer’s practice, the exhibition focuses on both her subjects and the impact of modernism on the way she portrayed them.

The presentation begins with a group of portraits of friends, collaborators, and professional contacts—the images for which Lola Álvarez Bravo is best-known outside of Mexico. Included here is a portrait of Frida Kahlo seated on the bed in her home studio, and one of Henri Cartier-Bresson photographing an as-yet unfinished mural by David Alfaro Siqueros. Other images remove the sitter from the evidence of their daily lives and professions. Artist Isabel Villaseñor, for example, is shown standing in front of a rock formation that occupies the entire background. A raking shadow covers her arm, seeming to merge it with the background and creating an interplay between light and dark, and between landscape and the human figure.

Picturing Mexico continues with images of labor, a recurring theme for Lola Álvarez Bravo, as it was for many during the post-revolutionary years. One of the images here, Las Lavanderas, or Washerwomen, dating from around 1940, shows a group of women on the shore of a body of water, photographed from above as they focus on their work. The shadows that stretch across the sand are clearly those of a human-made structure, perhaps a pier on which the artist is perched. Landscape and architecture thus converge in the waterfront scene where, again, we also see a play of light and dark. Caught mid-motion, the women and children add a note of humanity and a kind of poetry to the scene, as they form a counterpoint to the rectilinearity of the cast shadow. Moreover, their faces are obscured, so that it takes a moment to understand what they are doing in the space of this complex composition. This uncertainty distinguishes Lola Álvarez Bravo’s work from the highly ordered and legible depictions typical of most of the contemporaneous art produced in the service of nation-building.

LOLA ALVAREZ BRAVO

Untitled , 1954 

Gelatin silver print. 9 5/16 x 7 11/16 inches (23.7 x 19.5 cm)

Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: 

Lola Álvarez Bravo Archive 93.6.70. 

© 1995 Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation

The next group of works shows Lola Álvarez Bravo addressing the rapid changes in the architecture and landscape of post-Revolutionary Mexico, not only with images of modern buildings, such as architect Felix Candela’s Church of our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, a modernist icon located in Mexico City, but also with photographs of traditional structures and building methods. In Bajareque, of ca. 1938, Lola Álvarez Bravo depicts an example of the eponymous construction method, which dates to the pre-Hispanic period, in keeping with the post-Revolutionary focus of art that addresses Mexico’s working class and indigenous communities. Yet she comes in so close that the frame is filled edge-to-edge with tightly bound layers of twine, on the left, and earth, on the right. In doing so she at once highlights the technique’s intricate handwork and creates an abstract composition.

LOLA ALVAREZ BRAVO

Sexo vegetal, ca. 1948 

Gelatin silver print 7 3/8 x 9 1/8 inches (18.8 x 23.1 cm) 

Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: 

Lola Álvarez Bravo Archive 93.6.69 

© 1995 Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation

Lola Álvarez Bravo’s engagement with modernism is addressed directly in a group of four images. In one of these, Sexo Vegetal (Plant Sex), of ca. 1948, she points her lens directly into the center of a tightly cropped maguey plant, a species of agave, recalling the images of Edward Weston and Tina Modotti in which calla lilies, peppers, shells, and gourds are transformed into sensual forms resembling the corporeal. Those earlier evocations of the body are manifest in Sexo Vegetal, where fleshy splayed leaves open around a central flowering spear, standing in for male and female sex organs. Yet this work contains evidence that Lola Álvarez Bravo chafed against the modernist opposition to photographic alteration, as she transformed the image by rotating it 90 degrees from its original orientation. In doing this, she creates a pattern of shadow that appears to emanate, impossibly, from a source below the plant, endowing the image with a sense of the uncanny that conjures Surrealism.

Lola Álvarez Bravo was one of Mexico’s first artists to produce photomontage, shown in the following section. Most of these were more explicitly political than her photography, addressing the changing architectural environment as well as conditions of labor, industrialization, and technology. In Hilados del Norte II (Northern Yarns II), of ca. 1948, one of two photomontages on view, she blends images of automobile manufacturing with the urban landscape. Unlike the celebrated photomontages of the Dada movement, Lola Álvarez Bravo used her own photographs rather than found images in this body of work, and she arranged them to create the illusion of depth, rather than embracing the inherent flatness of the medium.

Lola Álvarez Bravo: Picturing Mexico concludes with a group of six images that evoke photography’s unique relationship to the acts of seeing and being seen. In these, the photographer, who once referred to the camera as a “third eye,” uses doors, windows, and other portals as framing devices. In some images, such as the 1950 Saliendo de la Opera (Leaving the Opera), depicting three men hauling a prop horse as they exit Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes, she captured her subjects in moments of transition. At other times, her camera catches a subject's direct gaze, as seen in Los gorrones (The Scroungers), of around 1955, an image of young boys idling on a staircase in which some of them look at the photographer while the others seem unaware of her presence, absorbed by their own act of looking.

Lola Álvarez Bravo: Picturing Mexico is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, published by Yale University Press, with essays by Stephanie Weissberg and Karen Cordero Reiman, art historian, curator, and Professor Emerita at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City.

Lola Álvarez Bravo: Picturing Mexico has been curated by Pulitzer Arts Foundation Assistant Curator Stephanie Weissberg. The Pulitzer is the exhibition’s only venue.

PULITZER ARTS FOUNDATION
3716 Washington Blvd, Saint Louis, MO 63108
pulitzerarts.org

Richard Pettibone @ Castelli Gallery, New York - Recent Works

Richard Pettibone: Recent Works 

Castelli Gallery, New York 

September 12 - November 21, 2018 

RICHARD PETTIBONE 

Heart Attack #4, 2018 

Oil on canvas, 11 x 8 ½ inches 

© Richard Pettibone, courtesy Castelli Gallery 

Castelli Gallery presents Richard Pettibone: Recent Works. The exhibition features new paintings by the artist, which revisit subjects that have been pivotal to Richard Pettibone’s work throughout his career. The largest series of paintings on view engage with Marcel Duchamp’s famous cover design for the 1936 issue of the avant-garde art magazine, Cahiers D’Art. The design consists of three concentric hearts in red and blue, which produce an optical illusion of depth and movement. Owing to this illusion, Marcel Duchamp called the image Coeurs Volants, or Fluttering Hearts. Although Duchamp’s work has long been a source of inspiration for Richard Pettibone, this particular image took on an added personal meaning for him after he suffered a heart attack in 2016. In the charming title and image of Duchamp’s Fluttering Hearts, Pettibone found a compelling, if dichotomous, resonance with his own physical experience. The act of reproducing Duchamp’s design by hand not only served as a therapeutic process, but also provided a tangible means of connecting the seemingly contradictory realities of Duchamp’s playful image and the gravity of Richard Pettibone’s own condition.

Other works in the exhibition include paintings of a Shaker chair in the artist’s signature photo realist style. Richard Pettibone first became fascinated by Shaker furniture in the late 1980s when he moved to upstate New York and found himself living near the Shaker Museum in Mount Lebanon. This exposure gained him a deep appreciation for Shaker artisans’ dedication to craftsmanship, a quality that likewise characterizes Richard Pettibone’s own work. The specific inspiration for this series of paintings is a Shaker chair, which the artist bought in 1990. At the time, the chair cost him $2,500. He recently discovered, however, that the same type of chair now sells at auction for only $400. Seen in the light of shifting popular tastes and market values, the chair became a renewed source of interest for Richard Pettibone. Placing the piece of furniture outside on the deck of his house, he painted it as it appeared in the natural sunlight. In these images, the chair is represented independent of such arbitrary signs of worth as price and taste; its significance is seemingly no more nor less than the light it displaces, measurable by the shadow it casts.

A third series of paintings in the exhibition responds to a market trend in the opposite direction. In 1965, Richard Pettibone created his first appropriation of Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel, with the financial help of a friend who worked at the local post office. The appropriation was displayed later that year at the prominent Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. As a token of his gratitude, the artist eventually gave the work to his friend as a gift. Over fifty years later, on March 10, 2017, Richard Pettibone’s Bicycle Wheel sold at auction for £62,500. As in the case of the Shaker chair, this fluctuation in the artwork’s worth prompted the artist to revisit his original appropriation by creating a series of paintings honoring this new layer of significance. In reference to the auction that catalyzed this change, Richard Pettibone’s new series of paintings, titled My First Duchamp Bicycle Wheel, 1965, represents not the sculpture itself, but the sculpture’s image published in the auction catalogue.

While the three series of paintings included in the exhibition are in many ways quintessential examples of Richard Pettibone’s work—revisiting some of the artist’s most important inspirations and showcasing his characteristic style—they also present something new in the strong autobiographical through-linethat unites them. In this way, the show as a whole expresses one of the major themes conveyed by each series individually: the idea that although the object itself may remain the same, its value—whether emotional, conceptual, or financial—evolves over time.

CASTELLI GALLERY

18 East 77 Street, New York, NY 10075

www.castelligallery.com

Francesca Woodman @ Victoria Miro, Venice - Italian Works

Francesca Woodman: Italian Works

Victoria Miro, Venice

15 September - 15 December 2018

Victoria Miro presents an exhibition of works made in Italy by the celebrated photographer FRANCESCA WOODMANN (1958–1981), including examples from the Eel Series, created in Venice in 1978.

Born and raised in the United States, Francesca Woodman considered Italy her second home. She lived in Florence for a year as a child, attending second grade at a public school there, and spent her adolescent summers in Antella, Tuscany, where her parents purchased a farmhouse when the artist was 11 years-old. Shortly after this, at the age of 13, Francesca Woodman created her first self-portrait, and the genesis of her work until her death in 1981, aged just 22, is intrinsically linked to Italian art and culture.

This exhibition is comprised of Italian images, including those Francesca Woodman made in 1977 and 1978, during the year she spent in Rome at the Rhode Island School of Design’s European Honors programme. This year proved pivotal to her artistic development, and the works from this period emphasise the integral influence of Italian art and culture on her aesthetic vision. One of the key influences of Italian art on Woodman’s work was in her precise use of composition, which became more sophisticated during her time in Rome. She explored perspective and consciously used formal strategies learnt from her study of Florentine masters, particularly Giotto and Piero della Francesca, and classical sculpture.

In addition to immersing herself in the study of historic painting and sculpture in Rome, Woodman made strong connections with Italian artists her own age. She became friends with Giuseppe Gallo and Enrico Luzzi, and through them discovered the Pastificio Cerere, an abandoned pasta factory transformed into an art space that housed the studios of artists who became known as the ‘San Lorenzo Group’. It was in the cavernous spaces of the Cerere that she made some of her most iconic images. She also befriended the young painter Sabina Mirri, who became one of her favourite models.

Also crucial to her development in Rome was Francesca Woodman’s association with the Maldoror bookstore in Via di Parione, which specialised in avant-garde literature of the twentieth century as well as more obscure books on subjects including the fantastical and the grotesque. Woodman spent hours in the shop, learning more about early twentieth-century artistic and literary movements. Her first Italian solo exhibition took place in the bookshop’s basement gallery space.

The exhibition explores Francesca Woodman’s fusion of Italian classicism with aspects of narrative and performance. In Italy Francesca Woodman extended her development of classical subject matter, predominantly the female nude and tropes of still life and classical composition. At the same time she was enhancing and extending her use of narrative and performative strategies. This is evident in her use of series of images, crucially in Self-deceit, 1978, which features scenarios where Francesca Woodman refers to classical and surrealist sculptural poses using her own naked body and a single prop, a rough-edged piece of mirrored glass. Further important series Francesca Woodman worked on during this time include the Angel series, which she commenced in Providence but extended in works made in the Cerere, and Eel Series, 1978, likely created in Venice on one of her frequent visits to the city.

Bringing these diverse works to Venice for the first time reveals the ways in which Italy and its culture underscored the development of an artist whose work has garnered exceptional public and critical interest in the 37 years since her untimely death.

Born in 1958 in Denver, Colorado, FRANCESCA WOODMANN lived and worked in Providence, Rhode Island, New York and Italy until her death in 1981. Significant posthumous solo presentations include On Being an Angel, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2015–2016), touring subsequently to Foam, Amsterdam (2016), Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris (2016), Moderna Museet, Malmo (2016–2017) and Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki (2017); Francesca Woodman, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (2011–2012), touring to Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2012); Francesca Woodman: Retrospective, Sala Espacio AV, Murcia, touring to SMS Contemporanea, Siena (both 2009); Francesca Woodman: Providence, Roma, New York, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2000); Francesca Woodman, Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris, touring to Kunsthal, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (both 1998); Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal (1999); The Photographers’ Gallery, London (1999); Centro Cultural TeclaSala, L’Hospitalet, Barcelona (1999–2000); Carla Sozzani Gallery, Milan, (2001); The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2001) and PhotoEspana, Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid (2002). Woodman's work is represented in the collections of major museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Tate/National Galleries of Scotland. Current exhibitions include Life in Motion: Egon Schiele / Francesca Woodman, Tate Liverpool, UK until 23 Sep 2018.

VICTORIA MIRO, VENICE

Il Capricorno, San Marco 1994, 30124 Venice

www.victoria-miro.com

Véronique Arnold @ Buchmann Galerie, Lugano - Ou elles volent, ou elles tombent

Véronique Arnold  

Ou elles volent, ou elles tombent 
Buchmann Galerie, Lugano 
8 September 2018 - 26 January 2019 

The exhibition space Buchmann Lugano presents the artist Véronique Arnold (Strasbourg, *1973).

The exhibition presents new, unseen art works, realised specifically for this occasion. The central space of the Gallery in Lugano hosts a work which sits on the border between installation and sculpture. The artist started with gathering real leaves during her walks. She then dipped them in white porcelain and at a later stage, she carefully and meticulously applied extra layers of porcelain by hand. Until finally being baked in a specialized oven. The result of this slow, painted and delicate process was then laid, with particular calm and attention on a plinth expressly conceived for the city space. The leaf, symbol of fragility and lightness, recalls the transience of life, leads to a reflection of death and their profound meaning.

To complete the exhibition, on the walls: graphite drawings on canvas, which once again present leaves that seem to be moving, perhaps echoing the title of the exhibition.

In short, the work of Véronique Arnold gives intense emotions to its poetic strength, inserting natural elements into a broader and more complex metaphorical discourse, while maintaining a vocabulary that is coherent to the viewer. Fascinating works, whose genesis implies a repetitive gesture, almost a form of ritual, of which the artist takes charge and gives back to the community in a refined visual and emotional experience.

Véronique Arnold realised a personal exhibition at the gallery Stampa of Basel (2017), at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Mulhouse (2015), exhibited in a collective at the Fondation Fernet-Branca of Saint-Louis in Alsace (2015), she collaborated with Christine Ferber and Jean-Paul Hévin at the Salon du Chocolat of Isetan in Tokyo (2012) and presented her works at the Palazzo Salis, Soglio della Biblioteca Engiadinaisa, Sils Maria (2012).

In addition to this exhibition, you may find her works on paper a t the WOPART fair 2018 starting from the 20th to the 23rd of September presented in our stand B2 at the Centro Esposizioni of Lugano.

BUCHMANN LUGANO
Via della Posta 2, CH-6900 Lugano
www.buchmanngalerie.com

Contemporary art in Zimbabwe @ Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town - Five Bhobh: Painting at the end of an Era

Five Bhobh: Painting at the end of an Era

Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), Cape Town

12 September 2018 – 31 March 2019

The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) presents an exhibition of contemporary painting from Zimbabwe. The show features 28 artists from Zimbabwe who are creating works during a time of transition into an alternative dispensation.

“Present-day painting comes at a heightened socio-political moment. Recent events in Zimbabwe have left many asking, “Where are we going? What comes next? How do we get there?” For some the journey may not be a comfortable one. It may require coming back, picking up where one left off, or unravelling forgotten layers of the past. Using various tones and gestures, the artists in this exhibition highlight the pressing questions emanating from a moment of great angst. They interrogate present-day circumstances, reimagine manifold futures, and recount entangled histories,” explains curator Tandazani Dhlakama.

The name of the show, Five Bhobh (pronounced five bob), was inspired by the average fare needed to journey locally by kombi (minibus) in Zimbabwe.

“As soon as you are crammed in, four in each row, the conductor will announce “Five bhobh!” or “Two pa dollar!” You may hear the tinkling of coins being collected and observe lower denominations of notes unfolding from sweaty palms, pockets and blouses. Monotonously shoulders in the front rows are tapped as money is moved forward and change is negotiated until it reaches the hwindi (bus conductor). By then the engine is roaring and the driver is negotiating his exit from the bustling terminus. Passengers may begin to converse. Matters of everyday life in Zimbabwe are discussed always in codes with a diverse array of figurative language. They have paid their dues, invested in the future, and are waiting expectantly to move forward,” Tandazani Dhlakama continues.

The participating artists in this exhibition mark the end of an era, offering foresights into an alternative dispensation. The metaphor of the kombi is like the nation of Zimbabwe; the artists its passengers, who engage in social commentary through calculated gesture.

Painting has a long history in Zimbabwe and this exhibition provides a synopsis of the medium as it applies to the country today, challenging traditional ideas around how painting is defined. In some cases, the painting is stripped to its most basic form, exposing threadbare canvas. At other times, paint is mixed into substances such as silicone, synthetic hair, and wood. For decades artists from this country have manipulated this medium as a way of subtly articulating complex issues, speaking in intricate, allegorical codes.

In the lead up to the show, two Zimbabwean artists - Kufa Makwarara and Richard Mudariki, both residents of Cape Town – occupy half of the museum’s third floor as resident artists. The museum believes it is important to offer artists space to allow them the freedom to make significant works for the exhibition and beyond.

Exhibition Curator: Tandazani Dhlakama

Exhibiting artists:

• Admire Kamudzengere

• Anthony Bumhira

• Berry Bickle

• Charles Bhebhe

• Cosmos Shiridzinomwa

• Duncan Wylie

• Gareth Nyandoro

• Gillian Rosselli

• Greg Shaw

• Helen Teede

• Isheanesu Dondo

• Janet Sirigwani Nyabeze

• John Kotze

• Kreshia Mukwazhi

• Kufa Makwarara

• Mostaff Muchawaya

• Percy Manyonga

• Portia Zvavahera

• Rashid Jogee

• Richard Mudariki

• Shalom Kufakwatenzi

• Simon Back

• Tatenda Magaisa

• Tawanda Reza

• Thakor Patel

• Troy Makaza

• Wallen Mapondera

• Kudzanai Violet Hwami

ZEITZ MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART AFRICA - ZEITZ MOCAA

Silo District, South Arm Road, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town 8002

zeitzmocaa.museum

Judith Eisler, Casey Kaplan Gallery, NYC - Riffs. Jarman’s Caravaggio

Judith Eisler: Riffs. Jarman’s Caravaggio

Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York

September 6 - October 20, 2018

Casey Kaplan presents JUDITH EISLER: Riffs. Jarman’s Caravaggio. For the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery, Judith Eisler presents a new series of paintings based on Derek Jarman’s 1986 film “Caravaggio”.

Judith Eisler paints cinematic close-ups sourced from her own photographs of paused film scenes. With a lifelong interest in film, Judith Eisler often returns to the work of filmmakers such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Derek Jarman. In consideration of the formal properties of light, color and space within a single film frame, the artist considers an image’s capacity to exist as both real and fictional. As each image undergoes multiple layers of mediation, Judith Eisler's renderings shift between representational and abstract. Working with oil on canvas, Judith Eisler directs our view to the visual optics of cinematic happenings.

The film “Caravaggio” depicts the story of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s (1571 - 1610) life, filtered through the lens of filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942 – 1994). The script expands upon the sanctioned narratives of what might have occurred. If the film is at all biographical, it is in Jarman’s fidelity to the color, light and tableaus of Caravaggio’s paintings. Jarman either recreates or refers to a number of Caravaggio’s paintings such as Boy with a Basket of Fruit (1593), The Lute Player (1596), Penitent Magdalene (1594-95), and The Deposition (1602-03). The actors and sets are staged and illuminated in a visual style that echoes the dramatic light infusing Caravaggio’s paintings.

Love, lust, and violence permeate both Caravaggio’s paintings and Jarman’s film. While watching the film, Eisler paused the action and took photographs of this fusion of sensibilities, establishing distance in order to study emotionally and psychologically charged themes with a dispassionate eye. Judith Eisler’s photographs capture the transformation of painting through staged reality, film, and transmission. In working from these stills, the artist is rendering and reanimating the material as it is dematerialized. Despite the abstractions caused by the technological interference in this process, a structure is formed: the sum of the parts creates a whole that is simultaneously present and falling into fragmentation.

Judith Eisler questions whether light is a substance or a process. In the film, the source of light illuminating the models is indeterminate. Does it stem from an artificial spotlight or is it high noon? Is the glare providing clarity or illumination, or is it hindering the act of seeing? In the portraits of Tilda Swinton as Caravaggio’s model, Lena, and Nigel Terry as Caravaggio, faces brace against the glare or lower their eyes to turn their gaze inward. Judith Eisler’s interest lies not in recreating the subject of the gaze, which is visible in the film sequence, but to describe what it looks like when someone is seeing.

In the film, The Martyrdom of St. Matthew (1599–1600) is sketched out on a canvas. Terry, as Caravaggio, manipulates his model (Sean Bean) to perfectly mimic the pose in the painting. Judith Eisler was initially interested in how the proto-cinematic light that suffuses Caravaggio’s paintings might be transformed when viewed through a filmic interpretation of his work. As she watched Jarman’s recreation of the artist at work in his studio, Judith Eisler became less interested in painting the physical reenactment of the composition than in describing what it looks like to make something. In turn, the artist began making paintings about the materiality of making a painting. As the brush lifts color to canvas and materials are arranged on the palette, Judith Eisler considers the elements that make up an illusionistic whole.

The palette compositions can be seen as a stage upon which material and tools are laid out in anticipation of the rendering of the subject. Judith Eisler painted several versions of the palette in order to reflect the painter’s preoccupation with raw material and the shifts that occur on that particular flat surface. There are solvents housed in decanters, colors, brushes, both active and at rest. In some of the frames, coins are also depicted, evoking the marriage of art and commerce. But even as the elements seem fixed and interconnected, at the same time they seem on the verge of falling apart, sliding off the table onto the floor.

Jarman uses candles to illuminate the “17th century” studio where the painter works into the night. The candles burn as the wax melts and the expansiveness of the flame is tempered by the simultaneous diminishment of the material. Similarly, the film still contains the seeds for its own disintegration: what appears before our eyes in one moment will transition into something else in the next frame. That moment between what has happened and what is to happen is open to possibility and chance. Things still happen when one is not looking.

Judith Eisler received her BFA from Cornell University in 1984. She has been exhibiting her work since 1995 at venues such as Kunsthalle, Vienna; Hall Art Founda- tion/Schloss Derneburg Museum, Hanover, Germany; White Columns, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Bass Museum, Miami, FL; Hayward Gallery, London; and Castello di Rivoli, Turin. In 2002, she was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Judith Eisler is a professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, and lives and works between Vienna, Austria and Warren, Connecticut.

CASEY KAPLAN

121 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.caseykaplangallery.com

Matali Crasset @ Galerie de Sèvres, Paris - Les Capes

Matali Crasset, Les Capes 

Galerie de Sèvres, Paris

6 septembre - 27 octobre 2018

MATALI CRASSET

Photo : Gérard Jonca / Sèvres Manufacture et Musée nationaux

A l’occasion de la PARIS DESIGN WEEK (6 – 15 septembre) et jusqu’au 27 octobre, Sèvres expose dans sa galerie de Paris, les créations de la designer française Matali Crasset, réalisées à la Manufacture en 2018. L’une des créatrices les plus iconoclastes de sa génération nous livre une version forcément personnelle et singulière de vases de Sèvres, ici bien « capés ». Matali Crasset s’est approprié l’exceptionnelle palette de couleurs de la Manufacture pour revêtir la porcelaine.

“Longtemps je me suis refusée à dessiner du mobilier et, plus encore, à dessiner des vases ! Le projet consiste justement à ne rien dessiner mais à opérer des choix. Il s’agit de penser des vases comme une méthode. Cette suite s’articule autour d’un protocole comme une échappée à l’esthétisme, à la manière d’un jeu oulipien.

En me promenant dans la vaste bibliothèque de « formes » qu’est la Manufacture de Sèvres, j’ai identifié des vases qui me sont apparus anthropomorphes et que j’ai souhaité associer à d’autres en les imbriquant dans une idée d’hybridation. Les combinaisons sont multiples de sorte que le second vase vient habiller le premier. Prolongeant l’analogie avec la couture, je « coupe », je « taille » dans les vases avec l’aide des artisans, les évidant, développant des jeux d’ombres et de lumières, de pleins et de vides.

L’opération est renouvelée plusieurs fois, de façon à donner naissance à un « défilé » de silhouettes. Puis j’interviens avec les atelier de grand feu, de pose de fond ou de filage, pour envisager la couleur sur ces volumes.”

L’exposition présente une douzaine de créations. Certaines arborent les couleurs emblématiques de Sèvres le bleu, le blanc et l’or.

MATALI CRASSET à Sèvres en 2018

Photo Sarah Mineraud

Biographie de MATALI CRASSET

Née le 28 juillet 1965 à Chalons en Champagne, Matali Crasset est designer industriel de formation. A l’image d’un de ses objets emblématiques, « la colonne d’hospitalité quand jim monte à Paris », elle met en place une méthodologie propre dans laquelle elle questionne l’évidence des codes qui régissent notre vie quotidienne pour mieux s’en affranchir et expérimenter. Elle développe ainsi des nouvelles typologies articulées autour de principes tels que la modularité, l’appropriation, la flexibilité, le réseau. Son travail, qui s’est imposé à partir des années 90 comme le refus de la forme pure, se conçoit comme une recherche en mouvement, faite d’hypothèses plus que de principes.

Elle collabore avec des univers éclectiques, de l’artisanat à la musique électronique, de l’industrie textile au commerce équitable. Ses réalisations l’ont ainsi amenée sur des terrains qu’elle ne soupçonnait pas, de la scénographie au mobilier, du graphisme à l’architecture intérieure.

Parmi la riche actualité de la designer pour la prochaine rentrée, sa création intitulée « Saule et les Hooppies », une commande du Centre Pompidou, fera escale de ville en ville à travers la France, pour faire vivre aux enfants de 5 à 10 ans un tour musical. Elle a également réalisé, la librairie des presses du réel et le cinéma Anna Sanders Films pour le Consortium Museum à Dijon.

GALERIE DE SÈVRES

4 Place André Malraux, 75001 Paris

www.sevresceramique.fr

NeoRealismo: The New Image in Italy, 1932–1960 @ Grey Art Gallery, New York University

NeoRealismo: The New Image in Italy, 1932–1960

Grey Art Gallery, New York University

September 6 – December 8, 2018

Pasquale De Antonis

Rapino, lucky fishing

Abruzzo, 1935

© Archivio De Antonis

Mario Cattaneo

From the series Alleys in Naples

Naples, 1951-1958

© The Heirs of Mario Cattaneo

NeoRealismo: The New Image in Italy, 1932–1960 poignantly portrays life in Italy through the lens of photography before, during, and after World War II. While neorealism is associated primarily with cinematic and literary depictions of dire postwar conditions, this is the first major museum exhibition to highlight key photographers active at the time. Featuring approximately 175 photographs by over 60 Italian artists, NeoRealismo pairs them with the original publications in which they circulated—illustrated magazines, photobooks, and exhibition catalogues. The show also includes film excerpts by such notable directors as Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, and Luchino Visconti, alongside related movie posters.

Neorealism—as both a formal approach and a mindset—reached the height of its popularity in the 1950s. Organized by Admira and curated by Enrica Viganò, NeoRealismo is making its American debut at the Grey after traveling in Europe to wide acclaim. A selection of the photographs are also on view at NYU’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò. As Enrica Viganò observes, “NeoRealismo takes a unique approach to the period between 1932 and 1960 in bringing together various media and materials that have never before been grouped together in the same context.” Grey Art Gallery director Lynn Gumpert adds, “NeoRealismo explores how Italian photographers conveyed daily political realities during these three decades, a subject that is particularly resonant today. We are very pleased to bring this important exhibition to the Grey, which, as a university art museum, consistently draws attention to underrepresented but culturally relevant bodies of work.”

Neorealism inspired diverse approaches to photography. While neorealist prints are most often considered within the postwar period, their impact spans decades. The installation’s first section, Realism in the Fascist Era, takes the year 1932—which saw the opening of the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution—as its point of departure. On display for two years at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, this propagandistic show presented photography as an instrument of mass communication, one that mined its educational and informational potential. Photographic images carried the “proof” of Mussolini’s declarations and testified to the truth of his words. Though it often veiled the differences between information and propaganda, photography provided a language that was accessible to all in the face of widespread illiteracy, regional dialects, and social inequality.

By the end of the war, Italy was in ruins. Despite its material devastation, however, the country experienced a widespread sense of euphoria and rebirth. This feeling of moral redemption underlies what historians have termed “the Italian miracle” of the 1950s and ’60s, and the newfound freedom to reveal the realities of a wounded country re-creating itself gave rise to neorealism. Poverty and Reconstruction examines dramatically contradictory depictions of Italy during this period. Photographers such as Tullio Farabola and Stefano Robino captured daily life under these difficult conditions, which nevertheless vibrated with hope and vitality.

With the fall of Fascism, neorealism became the dominant form of expression. Artistic freedom and the need to rebuild a new Italian identity fueled a nationwide fervor for documentation—the testimony of quotidian reality. Ethnographic Investigation demonstrates how photography played an essential role in attempts to establish a collective identity in postwar Italy. Now the educational function that had been exploited during the Fascist period was placed at the service of democratization.

After the war, Italian regions remained fragmented, each affected by different economic and social conditions. Figures such as Mario Cattaneo, Franco Pinna, and Arturo Zavattini helped Italy establish a new national identity by photographing the country’s many faces, reaching a high point in the neorealist era. In this heyday of social photojournalism, ambitious reportage projects portrayed many parts of Italy, documenting life as it was lived. Motivated by a desire to convey the realities of Italian experience, photographers with varying degrees of social awareness and political engagement traveled to every corner of the country.

An increase in printed media outlets spurred a variety of photographic approaches and transformed the photographer’s role. Newspapers, which previously had hired freelance photographers, began to incorporate them into editorial teams, promoting their work and viewing it as part of their distinct branding. Photojournalism and the Illustrated Press focuses on this golden age, when photographic narratives came to resemble cinematography, with spreads covering numerous pages and major reportage released in episodes, special inserts, and supplements. Despite their dramatically different perspectives, these print-media photographers—including Carlo Cisventi, Tino Petrelli, Marisa Rastellini—are linked by their interest in realism and their rejection of the artificial.

The exhibition’s final section, From Art to Document, features works by photographers such as Pietro Donzelli and Giuseppe Bruno, who were engaged in heated discussions about neorealism’s legacy. Between 1943 and 1960, photo clubs provided meeting places where artists debated the creative value of photography and its future. Two opposing schools of thought arose. For some, neorealism represented a rigid restriction of expression that stifled the photographer’s creative potential. Others felt that unless photography retained a strong connection with real life and was informed by a sense of civic engagement, it risked becoming a formal exercise. These two camps became entrenched over time, resulting in extended arguments and hardened divisions. Nevertheless, their debates laid the foundations for the future of photographic criticism in Italy.

NeoRealismo’s presentation at the Grey Art Gallery and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Merrimò (which features works by the photographers along with film posters) has inspired related exhibitions across New York City. The Howard Greenberg Gallery has organized The New Beginning for Italian Photography, 1945–1965 from September 13–November 10 while the Metropolitan Museum of Art is featuring a selection of postwar images from the permanent collection in the Johnson Galleries from September 18, 2018–January 15, 2019. Also on view is Nuova Fotografia Italiana at the Keith de Lellis Gallery from September 5–November 3, 2018.

Exhibition Catalogue: NeoRealismo is accompanied by a 352-page publication that includes 218 illustrations. Translated into English for the Grey’s presentation, this publication includes a new foreword by renowned film director Martin Scorsese, who is a lifelong fan of Italian neorealism. Additional contributors include Gian Piero Brunetta, professor, History and Criticism of Cinema, Università degli Studi di Padova; Bruno Falcetto, professor, Department of Literature, Philosophy, and Linguistics, Università degli Studi di Milano; Giuseppe Pinna, art historian; and Enrica Viganò, curator and founder of Admira. Published by DelMonico Books, an imprint of Prestel, the catalogue presents various perspectives by acclaimed scholars on a previously underexplored area.

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