Rafael Wardi @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - Rafael Wardi 2020

Rafael Wardi: RAFAEL WARDI 2020

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

Through January 3, 2021

“My whole life is in my art. Some of my paintings go back a very long way – it has taken a lifetime to create some of them. I believe that good art is a force for positive change. That, perhaps, is the most meaningful impetus for my art.”

Rafael Wardi

Helsinki, 14.10.2020

Rafael Wardi’s (b. 1928) paintings offer a commentary on painting, literature and poetry, a window to the past and the present, a glimpse into the artist’s interests and passions. His latest oil paintings explore history, featuring subject matter from floral compositions to angels, some assuming the guise of animals.

Rafael Wardi is known for his lively treatment of line and his rich, color-drenched palette. His work combines an intimate knowledge of art history with highly distinctive, colorist studies of daily life. He embraces a serial working method, delving deeper into each theme while engaging in a self-reflexive study of the nature of painting. While each floral composition is a unique, each one unfurls its petals toward the same objective.

Rafael Wardi is a celebrated artist who has also made his mark as a respected teacher and an early Finnish pioneer of art therapy. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Pro Finlandia medal and the Finnish State Art Prize. One of his most famous paintings is his official portrait of the former Finnish president Tarja Halonen (2002). His work is found in leading Finnish museums including the Ateneum Art Museum and the Sara Hildén Art Museum. Rafael Wardi has lived in the Helsinki district of Lauttasaari since the 1920s.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22 - 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

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Raili Tang @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - Väri ja tunne

Raili Tang: Väri ja tunne

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

Through January 3, 2021

Raili Tang (b. 1950) has conjured forth an exhibition themed around the emotion of joy. The works in this show were painted last spring and summer as a conscious antidote to the fear and uncertainty that swept the world. Tang escaped the never-ending deluge of bad news by retreating to her studio and spreading joy and warmth on the canvas.

Raili Tang wanted to liberate herself from all restrictions by surrendering herself to the pleasure of painting. She painted her latest works out of the pure joy of painting, and she wanted her exultation to be reflected in their rich, exuberant palette. Even for an artist already known as a brilliant colorist, this new ensemble of works revels in colors of unprecedented intensity, with glowing yellows dancing alongside myriad shades of red and green. Her new paintings are a celebration of color as well as physicality, another striking and typical feature of her work. For Tang, painting has always been a process in which she vigorously engages her whole body.

Raili Tang’s new exhibition exudes an insistent sense of liberation that verges upon outright anarchism. Her style has grown more abstract, her typical round shapes having lost their well-defined outlines and melted into figures with an anthropomorphic presence, the compositions being reminiscent of people embracing and touching each other. Closeness and touch are basic human needs, and their importance is something we barely even notice until we are deprived of them – as we have all recently experienced collectively. Tang declares a message of love and peace with paintings that are more colorful and expressive than ever seen before from this artist.

Raili Tang has exhibited widely both in Finland and internationally. Her work is found in leading Finnish museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and the Helsinki Art Museum HAM. Tang is the 2015 winner of the Pro Finlandia medal.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22 - 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

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Diana Velásquez, Grand Palais, Paris - Installation L'attente sur la Façade du Grand Palais

Diana Velásquez, L'attente

Installation - Façade du Grand Palais, Paris

9 décembre 2020 - 24 février 2021

DIANA VELASQUEZ

L’attente 

© Diana Velásquez

“-Been waiting long?

-All my life.”

(Once upon a time in America)

Le Grand Palais a invité l’artiste colombienne Diana Velásquez à présenter son oeuvre « L’attente » composée de 10 toiles de 5m de haut par 2m de large, directement sur les colonnes de la façade du Grand Palais, avenue Winston Churchill. Profitant de l’espace entre chaque colonne, l’artiste met en scène une file de personnes âgées qui attendent, chacune à distance de celle qui la précède. 

« Cette oeuvre cherche à faire réfléchir à quel point la pandémie a mis en lumière la précarité dans laquelle nous nous trouvons tous, mais qui atteint d’abord les plus faibles.

Martin Luther King disait « Il est possible que nous soyons tous arrivés dans des embarcations différentes, mais maintenant nous sommes tous dans le même bateau ». Ce projet veut remettre en mémoire certains des passagers de notre bateau, les personnes âgées, et l’attente qu’ils affrontent au milieu d’une grande incertitude, et dans beaucoup de cas, d’une grande solitude. », Diana Velásquez.

Après l’intervention de Sammy Baloji avec ses deux sculptures monumentales dans le cadre d’Africa 2020, et celle de Nayel Zeaiter avec une fresque qui raconte l’histoire du Grand palais sur la palissade de chantier, l’installation de Diana Velásquez permet à ce monument républicain de faire écho aux questions les plus urgentes, les plus contemporaines, préfigurant ainsi l’ambition artistique du nouveau Grand Palais, avec des créations qui se déploieront à l’intérieur comme à l’extérieur.

« Le Grand palais ne doit pas se laisser enfermer dans le passé. Il est important de transmettre l’histoire mais il faut aussi résolument se tourner vers les générations futures et les questions qu’elles portent, qui sont aujourd’hui globales. Le travail sur l’héritage colonial de Sammy Baloji, celui sur l’attente de Diana Velásquez, nous parlent des crises sociales partout dans le monde. Après Bogota, puis Gijón en Espagne, l’oeuvre de Diana est mise à l’échelle d’un monument qui devient lui-même récit, comme l’avaient voulu ses créateurs en l’ornant de fresques et de sculptures. », Chris Dercon.

Diana Velásquez est née en 1978 à Bogota. Elle vit et travaille aujourd’hui à Madrid, après avoir étudié les arts plastiques en Colombie et à New-York. Ses oeuvres qui utilisent différents média, interrogent la réalité des efforts qui sont faits pour atteindre le bien commun, et notamment la profonde fracture du consensus social et la montée d’une démagogie qui cherche à édulcorer les tensions plutôt qu’à les apaiser. Elles narrent les mésaventures de ce qu’on appelle le progrès.

« Attendre et faire la queue, sont des phénomènes qui sont allés s’amplifiant au fur et à mesure que le bien-être des citoyens s’est trouvé remis en cause. Les longues files d’attente montrent les difficultés de la société pour faire face aux problématiques sociales, économiques, sanitaires : ce sont des horloges arrêtées à l’intérieur desquelles sont lancées, non seulement les efforts concrets de ceux qui attendent, mais aussi leurs aspirations, leurs angoisses, leurs désirs.

Malheureusement, l’attente ne se définit pas comme le temps que prend la solution pour arriver, mais plutôt comme une frontière indéterminée qui nous sépare de l’aboutissement heureux que nous espérons.

La société contemporaine s’est habituée à attendre et à faire des queues, longues parfois de plusieurs jours, pour accéder non pas à des services, ou à une démarche administrative, mais simplement pour manger ou acheter à manger, pour fuir de la guerre, demander asile, ou d’autres nécessités qui conditionnent la survie de l’individu. L’attente met à l’épreuve notre résistance, c’est un mécanisme qui inévitablement se met en place dès qu’il y a une impossibilité d’être proactif dans la situation.

La pandémie actuelle a constitué une rupture dans notre condition et notre bien-être. La population entière, sans distinction de race ou d’âge, a été mise en échec, car rien ne permettait d’esquiver.

Nous avons dû attendre des informations, des nouvelles, des avancées, des mesures, des politiques, et maintenant un vaccin. Nous avons dû attendre, confinés, c’est-à-dire sans possibilité de faire, ni d’interagir au-delà de notre groupe nucléaire.

Nous avons et continuons d’avoir une attente consciente que le nouvel ordre ne nous fasse pas disparaitre. »

Diana Velásquez

Le travail de Diana Velásquez a été sélectionné en 2013 par les Circuitos de Artes Plásticas de Madrid (2013)- l’un des prix les plus importants pour les artistes de moins de 35 ans en Espagne, par la Biennale de Bolivieen 2016, pour l’exposition collective Paz en las mesas? (2019) au Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bogota. Elle a également participé à la Hybrid Art Fair à Madrid (2017) et à Poppositions Art Fair (2016) à Bruxelles. « L’Attente » a été développée à Gijón dans le cadre de la Bourse AlNorte.

GRAND PALAIS, PARIS

Avenue Winston Churchill, 75008 Paris

grandpalais.fr

Site web de Diana Velásquez 

www.dianavelasquez.es

We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices in Los Angeles @ USC Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena

We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices in Los Angeles

Reanne Estrada, Phung Huynh, Ahree Lee, Ann Le, Kaoru Mansour, Mei Xian Qiu, Sichong Xie

USC Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena

Through spring 2021

USC Pacific Asia Museum presents We Are Here: Art and Asian Voices in LA featuring work by Reanne Estrada, Phung Huynh, Ahree Lee, Ann Le, Kaoru Mansour, Mei Xian Qiu, and Sichong Xie. Organized by USC Pacific Asia Museum Assistant Curator Dr. Rebecca Hall, the exhibition aims to ignite understanding across geography and generation, culture and difference. These seven Los Angeles based female contemporary artists of diverse Asian Pacific heritages engage with and draw from their family’s experiences as refugees, immigrants and foreign nationals to create compelling works of art that invite visitors to think about their histories. Interwoven in their works are personal and universal narratives that give voice to the plural community we call home. A variety of media are exhibited, including painting, photography, installation, performance and video. 

Reanne Estrada

Reanne Estrada’s practice includes work in drawing, sculpture, and installation as well as collaborative work in performance, video and photography. Estrada utilizes the body in space to question identity and its fragile nature. Born in the Philippines, Estrada moved with her family to California as a child. This experience emphasized the importance of community and the ways people renegotiate themselves in response to their environments. With a socially engaged artistic practice, her work explores systems and their effects on individuals as they negotiate their place in the world. For We Are Here, she has created artworks that challenge us to consider our experience of technology and surveillance and ask how we might assert greater control over our digital bodies and what is extracted from them. Exploring systems of surveillance, Estrada provides social commentary on the tenuous relationship of people to larger systems of control, using her artwork as a catalyst for public good.

Phung Huynh

Phung Huynh was born in Vietnam and came to the United States as a refugee when she was a toddler with her family. Her narrative of survival and migration is entangled in the complex history of postwar Asia, a period of upheaval, decolonialism, reconstruction, and nationalism. Huynh’s paintings investigate notions of identity from a kaleidoscopic perspective, exploring how cultural ideas are imported, disassembled, and then reconstructed. Her recent work on view in We Are Here explores the Southeast Asian refugee experience in Los Angeles. Portraits of refugees on pink donut boxes reference the donut shops that gave Cambodian refugees an opportunity to build a new life after fleeing genocide. The sensitive portraits of refugees celebrate their power and perseverance. Cross stitch license plates with non-Western names resemble souvenir keychains,creating inclusivity and an opportunity for all Americans to find their names on these ubiquitous mementos. With this work, Huynh reveals the resilient nature of refugees in shaping the Southern California cultural landscape.

Ann Le

Ann Le was born in the United States to a refugee family from Vietnam. She uses photography to excavate her lineage within the larger context of war by revisiting her family’s experiences. Drawing from her archive of family photos and stories, familiar symbols, and research, Le creates narratives with layers of images related to real and constructed memories. Using a variety of methods including collage and illustration, she combines found and new images to touch on emigration, history, family, and conflict. Le’s photomontages reveal complex constructions that contemplate the meaning and effect of war. She adamantly conveys that those affected by war will not be silenced as they piece together new versions of themselves amid unparalleled, irreversible change.

Ahree Lee

As a child of Korean immigrants raised American, Ahree Lee looks to the past and across distances to investigate what constitutes an individual or collective identity in an increasingly diasporic, culturally alienated and fractured world. Lee uses algorithms to transform imagery like daily self-portraits, home movies, and other image archives that she finds or creates. Her work aggregates these fragments into a new sum that is greater than its parts using contemporary time-based mediums such as video, sound, and interactivity. Lee’s artworks uncover personal links to ongoing inquiries about who and what is integral to social and technological change. Her recent work investigates how invisible labor, specifically work that has traditionally been done by women, is essential to the life of economic systems. Lee’s handwoven textiles merge weaving and computer coding. Through research and process, Lee reveals a history of connection: the first computers were based on the technology of the loom. Reactivating the link between weaving and computing, Lee’s weavings and computer-generated videos draw on code, algorithms, and self-generated labor data.

Kaoru Mansour

Kaoru Mansour is a native of Japan now living in Los Angeles. She moved to California in 1986 and studied at Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) in Los Angeles from 1987-1989. Her experience growing up in a small village in Japan meant that nature and the seasons were integral to her life. She draws from daily life and the natural world to create balanced paintings that rediscover the joys of color, line, family, plants, and animals. Mansour plays with materials and images to create layered paintings that recall Edo period painted screens and Raku ceramics. Mansour's collages are made up of multiple layers of pigment and collaged elements on wooden panels and canvas. The softly detailed surfaces give a sensuous appearance to the paintings and serve to elevate the subject – trees, fruit, leaves, and birds – to something revered, sacred and even mystical.

Mei Xian Qiu

Mei Xian Qiu’s complex family history directly informs her photography. Qiu was born in the town of Pekalongan on the island of Java, Indonesia, to a thirdgeneration Chinese minority family. In the aftermath of the Chinese and Communist genocide, the family immigrated to the United States. She was moved back and forth several times between the two countries during her childhood. Drawing from her personal history, Qiu reconstructs iconic images and dissects familiar archetypes through a lens of fantastical notions of culture. These investigations into power, politics, and individual interior worlds, reflect the contemporary landscape of transience and a growing global monoculture. Qiu plays with archetypes and creates artworks that are rich in metaphor and meaning. Through photography, she speaks to the displacement she experienced as a result of her multiple heritages. Three series are featured in We Are Here; each reflects the artist’s experience traveling between China, Indonesia, and the U.S. In one series, the models for the imagery are Pan Asian American artists and academics specializing in Chinese culture, the very group at risk in the Hundred Flowers Movement. Hidden political dangers are suggested but put aside momentarily, subsumed to the romance of “the beautiful idea.” The costumes are discarded U.S. military uniforms, cheongsams constructed for the photographs, and Chinese mockups taken from a Beijing photography studio, specializing in getups for foreign tourists to re-enact Cultural Revolution Propaganda imagery.

Sichong Xie

Sichong Xie creates performance, video, and installation to explore her identity and place in the world as an expatriate Chinese citizen. She investigates the relationship between the state and the individual against various backdrops in both China and the U.S., much of her work using displaced cultural imagery within new social constructs. Xie’s practice deals with issues of identity, politics, crossculturalism, and the surreal potential of her body in the ever-changing environment. Her recent work explores Chinese culture versus American culture and the connection between politics and family heritage. The multi-channel, multimedia installation included in We Are Here explores the impact of art and the fluidity of memory as a form of protection. Her grandmother is the family’s only witness to an event that had great effect on her grandparents: her grandfather’s political illustration, now destroyed, that landed him in prison for two years. Xie recreates the illustration many times with the aid of her grandmother’s everchanging memory. Like much of Xie’s work, this piece presents an open-ended question about survival, the stories that connect generations, and the transient nature of life.

USC PAM is temporarily closed due to Covid-19. 

You can visit the exhibition in 3D at 

https://pacificasiamuseum.usc.edu/exhibitions/current/

USC PACIFIC ASIA MUSEUM

University of Southern California

46 N Los Robles Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101

pacificasiamuseum.usc.edu

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Andy Warhol Now @ Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Andy Warhol Now

Museum Ludwig, Cologne

12 December 2020 - 18 April 2021

Andy Warhol is indisputably the best-known representative of Pop Art. His iconic subjects such as Marilyn, the Campell’s soup can, and Coca-Cola bottles are part of the collective memory. Thirty years after his last retrospective in Cologne, Andy Warhol Now presents Andy Warhol as an artist whose innovative work can be rediscovered, especially for a young generation in the age of migration and social diversity.

Andy Warhol (*1928 in Pittsburgh – †1987 in New York) captivated and polarized people with his personality, and his art shaped an entire era. His multifaceted work redefined the boundaries of painting, sculpture, film, and music. Even more than his deliberate flirtations with the world of commerce and celebrities, from today’s perspective his advocacy of alternative ways of life makes him an exceptional artist who can still reveal new interpretations and insights.

As a young man from a religious, working-class milieu, Andy Warhol carved his own path into the artworld, which was still dominated by Abstract Expressionism. In his early work, personal, often homoerotic drawings stood alongside commissions as a successful advertising illustrator, while his unmistakable screen prints made him the epitome of the new Pop Art movement. His explorations of advertising, fashion, music, film, and television attest to Warhol’s lifelong fascination with pop culture. But just as his celebrity portraits and Coca-Cola bottles held a mirror up to American society, Andy Warhol stands for a diverse, queer counterculture that found its expression not least in his New York studio, the Factory.

This major exhibition follows this path with over 100 artworks in a variety of media and illuminates Andy Warhol’s expanded artistic practice against the backdrop of pressing social issues. Famous key works such as the Elvis Presley series and colorful variations of an electric chair are represented as well as less well-known aspects, which allow for a current view of this artist of the century in a time of political and cultural upheavals. For instance, it illuminates the influence of Andy Warhol’s immigrant background as the son of Rusyn immigrants in Pittsburgh, which is reflected in a complex processing of religious themes and subjects, among other things. Many works, such as the magnificent series Ladies and Gentlemen, show Andy Warhol as a queer artist who postulated openness and diversity as fundamental and vital factors of a diverse society. In this way, in his work Andy Warhol continually and expertly negotiates topics that remain highly relevant today.

The exhibition is organised by Museum Ludwig and Tate Modern, London in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and Aspen Art Museum, Colorado.

Curated by Yilmaz Dziewior, Director, Stephan Diederich, Curator, Collection of Twentieth-Century Art, Museum Ludwig, Gregor Muir, Director of Collection, International Art and Fiontán Moran, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern.

ANDY WARHOL NOW

Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

Museum Ludwig, Cologne

A catalogue has been published in German and English, edited by Gregor Muir and Yilmaz Dziewior, with texts by Kenneth Brummel, Diedrich Diederichsen, Stephan Diederich, Yilmaz Dziewior, Olivia Laing, Fiontán Moran, Gregoir Muir, Charlie Porter, and Martine Syms. London/Cologne 2020/2021, 224 pages. 200 color illustrations, 21,9 x 28,9 cm, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König. 

MUSEUM LUDWIG

Heinrich-Böll-Platz, 50667 Köln

www.museum-ludwig.de

Nicole Eisenman & Keith Boadwee @ FLAG Art Foundation, NYC

Nicole Eisenman and Keith Boadwee

The FLAG Art Foundation, New York

December 12, 2020 - March 13, 2021

The FLAG Art Foundation presents Nicole Eisenman and Keith Boadwee, on view on its 9th and 10th floors. The recipient of The Contemporary Austin’s 2020 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, Nicole Eisenman created thematically-linked solo exhibitions for The Contemporary (Sturm und Drang, at the museum in Austin, Texas, February 27 - November 15, 2020) and FLAG. Nicole Eisenman expanded the exhibition at FLAG to include artist Keith Boadwee; their shared use of humor and critical observation questions both real and imagined power structures, upends art history, and lampoons notions of “good taste.”

Nicole Eisenman employs a plurality of styles and visual references in her drawings, paintings, and sculptures to give shape to the many forms of the human condition. At FLAG, Eisenman’s cast of characters are emblematic of the patriarchy—frat guys, paunchy businessmen, and bald eagles—the foundations of which she gleefully undermines through absurdity, caricature, and gallows humor. A concurrent exhibition of upwards of 250 abject drawings by Keith Boadwee dovetails with Eisenman’s presentation. Installed en masse, Boadwee’s works depict a near infinite variety of scatological scenes that assert one’s agency over their body, its functions, messiness, and pleasures.

What unites Keith Boadwee and Nicole Eisenman, in addition to a thirty-year-long friendship, is their mutual exploration of representations and sensations that challenge conservative, heteronormative notions of cleanliness, decency, and identity. Keith Boadwee’s relation to such subject matter is career-spanning; in the mid-1990s, he began making paintings by performatively expelling paint from his anus onto canvas; rudimentary floral designs and/or tartan patterns were largely determined by gravity and splatter. As Nicole Eisenman wrote in her essay[1]on Boadwee, “[…]The artist is painter/is painting, finally is a tube of paint! Boadwee is subject and object, maker and the made, a self-reflexive circle is complete.” The enema paintings operate beyond shock (and relish in it) and challenge the history of painting and the primacy of the heroic gestural mark. Successive bodies of Keith Boadwee’s work explore similar thematic territory; in photography, the artist and his genitals regularly play dress-up as popular cartoon characters and/or art historical tropes. Though explicit, Keith Boadwee’s imagery created from and/or inspired by his body is never overtly sexualized.

At FLAG, Keith Boadwee’s scatological drawings, all created between 2016-20, are presented in grids, vitrines, and wall-sized vinyls and feature a multitude of characters engaged in absurd situations. Ranging from the everyday to the fantastical to the overtly political, Boadwee’s scenes overwhelmingly employ slapstick humor to diffuse, confront, and demystify this inescapable and universal bodily function. A litmus test of viewers’ personal limits, the cumulative effect of the presentation coupled with the serial exploration of defection cannot be easily dismissed. While Keith Boadwee hammers the same nail repeatedly, Nicole Eisenman’s toolkit is a bit broader and examines larger systems that impact an individual’s identity and their perceived public and private boundaries. Her work elucidates awkward, impolite moments with a tenderness that allows her subjects to transcend a punchline.

Nicole Eisenman’s practice blends the influence of Western art history and traditional figuration with elements of music, activism, queer sexuality, and humor. Works on view, from 1993-2020, many never exhibited in New York, include recent paintings of lovers and friends, globby plaster sculptures of men at rest, and a selection of drawings that range in subject matter from schticky (Charlie the Tuna and See Saw Sex, both 1993) to apocalyptic (World War Me, 2001, and Suicide, 2004). Nicole Eisenman subverts stereotypical gender roles throughout the works at FLAG, from deflating the traditional, heroic bust in a pair of Sleeping Frat Guy sculptures, both 2013, to Cubist Female Innards 1 and 2, both 2019, paintings which place tangles of disembodied intestines and stomachs on pedestals, elevating them to the status of artwork. Nicole Eisenman’s full frontal portrait of Keith Boadwee further flips gendered roles by way of the odalisque trope. Here, Nicole Eisenman’s depiction of her longtime friend is resplendent; in nothing but red socks, Keith Boadwee is in complete command of his body, his sexuality, and its objectification.

“The design intervention on The FLAG Art Foundation logo,” says Nicole Eisenman, “is an acknowledgment of the reality that when an institution mounts an exhibition by queer artists, that institution takes on the responsibility of the stewardship of the artist’s queer ideals. To show an artist’s work is not a passive act, but one that can have meaningful and lasting change if the action is taken to allow for that change. The fallen “L” design represents the ongoing struggle that queer people live with—of making a world that is actively not made for them accessible, livable, and enjoyable. This design is as much about queering the name of the foundation as it is queering an article of hate speech. By turning the word “FLAG” into “FAG,” we are taking a word that people have used against us our whole lives to cut and we are using it now with pride.”

NICOLE EISENMAN (b. 1965, Verdun, France) is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Nicole Eisenman’s work was included in both the 2019 Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff, and the 2019 Whitney Biennial, co-curated by Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley. Recent solo exhibitions include Baden Baden Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, Germany (2018); Dark Light, Vielmetter Los Angeles, CA (2018); Dark Light, Secession, Vienna, Austria (2017); Al-ugh-ories, New Museum, New York, NY (2016); Magnificent Delusion, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, NY; among others. Nicole Eisenman received the Carnegie Prize (2013); the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship (2015); The Suzanne Deal Booth/FLAG Art Foundation Prize (2018); and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2018.

KEITH BOADWEE (b. 1961, Meridian, MS) is an artist living and working in Emeryville, CA. Boadwee earned an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley, CA, in 2000, and a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles, CA, in 1989; there he studied under artists Paul McCarthy and Chris Burden. Recent solo exhibitions include God’s Eye, The Pit, Los Angeles, CA (2020); Atelier 34zero Muzeum; Brussels, Belgium (2017); Deborah Schamoni Gallerei, Munich, German (2016); Shoot the Lobster, New York, NY (2015); among others. His work has been featured in thematic exhibitions, including Float in a Dark Tank, Yautepec, Mexico City, Mexico (2016); AA Bronson’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria (2015); Prospect 1.5, New Orleans, LA (2010); Into Me / Out of Me, MoMA PS1, Long Island, NY and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2006); among others. His works have been the subject of reviews and articles in publications including Artforum, Art in America, Hyperallergic, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Village Voice, among others.

Exhibition Catalogue: A fully illustrated catalogue co-published by Radius Books, Santa Fe, was designed by Tiffany Malakooti to be read in two directions, reflecting the separate but related exhibitions at The Contemporary Austin’s and The FLAG Art Foundation. Contributors include artists Nicole Eisenman and Keith Boadwee, writers Alhena Katsof and Litia Perta, and essays by Heather Pesanti (Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Contemporary Austin), and Jonathan Rider (Associate Director) and Stephanie Roach (Director) at FLAG.

[1] Nicole Eisenman, “Inside Out, Boy You Turn Me,” Keith Boadwee 1989-2013 (Zurich: Micronaut and Hacienda Books, 2014): 30.

Due to precautions surrounding the spread of COVID-19, The FLAG Art Foundation is open to the public by appointment only.

THE FLAG ART FOUNDATION

545 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001

flagartfoundation.org

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Boomoon @ Flowers Gallery, London - Waterfalls

Boomoon: Waterfalls

Flowers Gallery, London

Through 6 February 2021

BOOMOON

Waterfall #7803, 2017

Archival pigment print

© Boomoon, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Flowers Gallery presents an exhibition that draws together works from South Korean artist Boomoon's Skogar and Waterfall series. Both explore a waterfall in the tiny village of Skógafoss, Iceland, as part of his ongoing investigation into the infinite and ungovernable character of the natural world. 

For over four decades Boomoon has engaged deeply with the medium of photography, producing large format images of expansive landscapes devoid of human presence. He sees this as a means of considering perception and the self, focusing on the present moment and liberating himself and the landscape from its history and geopolitics. Since the 1990s Boomoon has referred to this activity as “photographic respiration”, a tripartite relationship that has been described by author Catherine Grout as corresponding “to a phase, a dynamic exchange between the artist, a moment in the world and (...) the image being made.” This desire for complete disassociation with the connotations of a place is what draws him to Northern countries, such as Iceland, as he believes they offer “landscapes that are the least contaminated by words and meaning." 

Boomoon has explained that he is less interested in photographs that only express the beauty or power of the subject in front of his lens and more inspired by the resonances in himself that result from his physical encounters with phenomena in the world: "My photographs are not self-expression, nor do they carry a message. They are simply the embodied result of my interactions with my surroundings." In the case of the series included in this exhibition, Boomoon plunged into the icy pool below the waterfall in order to absorb himself in the scene and gain the fixed frontal perspective seen throughout.  

The Waterfall series presents tightly-cropped lucent blue water with no horizon, drawing the viewer’s focus to the abstract beauty and shape-shifting forms created by the highly focused, celestial veils of spray and dark cascading water hitting the rocks behind. Boomoon attributes the crystalline clarity of these reductive monochromes to the stark purity of northerly light. In contrast, Skogar, a series of 300 exposures shot in black and white captures the turbulent junction between the two axes, exactly two thirds falling water and a third horizon. In this series, the waterfall appears more recognisable and highlights the magnitude and elemental force of the falling water.  

In both series Boomoon excludes all peripheral context, eliminating any sense of scale and time. This offers the viewer an immersive experience that appears to extend beyond the limits of an individual standpoint or subjective encounter. Poet and critic Shino Kuraishi believes that the minimal waterfalls dispense with continuity or a sense of passage between past and future. He says: “The destination of the end of time is permanently postponed. The waterfall keeps falling self-recursively, aimlessly, and meaninglessly carrying the undetermined present. The waterfalls descend defying associations of any other place and any other time.”

BOOMOON

Skogar #0558, 2015

Archival Pigment Print

© Boomoon, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery

ABOUT BOOMOON

Born in Daegu, Boomoon lives and works in Toseong, South Korea. Having commenced his artistic studies as a painter, Boomoon began to explore photography in the early 1970's and enrolled in the Photography department at Chung-Ang University, Seoul. Throughout the 1970's Boomoon passionately recorded the rapid transformation taking place in Korean society, looking at deserted villages and the heightening contrast between rural and urban communities. Since the 1980's he has been engaging with the natural landscape in his work as a means of self-reflection, producing large format photographs of vast expanses of sea, sky and land. Devoid of human presence, the central emphasis of his work is the experience of the infinity of nature and the representation of its presence.

Boomoon has exhibited internationally, including in South Korea, Japan, Istanbul, New York, London and Paris and his work is in the collections of the Yokohama Museum of Art, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, the Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul and the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. From October 2013 to January 2014, a retrospective exhibition of Boomoon's major landscape series was held at the Daegu Art Museum in South Korea. Entitled Constellation, the show gave a comprehensive overview of Boomoon's practice and confirmed his significance as a photographic artist.

FLOWERS GALLERY

21 Cork Street, London W13 3LZ

www.flowersgallery.com

Anastasia Samoylova @ Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC - Landscape Sublime

Anastasia Samoylova: Landscape Sublime

Laurence Miller Gallery, New York

Through December 31, 2020

Landscape Sublime focuses on the way that landscape imagery in our contemporary culture is used to create constructed realities, wholly apart from our lived experience. Anastasia Samoylova collects online stock photography, creating a group of landscape images that reflect the stream of consciousness nature of internet surfing and the idealized imagery of consumer culture. The digital images are printed, cut, folded, and assembled into three-dimensional studio tableaus that are then re-photographed. The resulting works collage together unreal and romanticized spaces, evoking the way that commercial images reflect popular taste like an infinite hall of mirrors.

ANASTASIA SAMOYLOVA (b. 1984) grew up in Moscow where she earned a Master’s degree in Environmental Design from Russian State University for the Humanities in 2007. She received MFA from Bradley University in 2011. She lives and works in Miami, Florida.

In 2020 Anastasia Samoylova had her first solo museum exhibition of the ongoing project FloodZone at USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa. Her work is in the collections at the Perez Art Museum Miami, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago. Art Slant Collection, Paris; Miami International Airport; Mount Sinai Medical Center Miami Beach; Boston Consulting Group; and Vontobel, Switzerland; among others. 

LAURENCE MILLER GALLERY

9 East 8th Street, New York, NY 10003

www.laurencemillergallery.com

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Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen @ Paula Cooper Gallery, Palm Beach - There is no such thing as a perfect lamb chop

Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen

There is no such thing as a perfect lamb chop

Paula Cooper Gallery, Palm Beach

December 5, 2020 – January 9, 2021

An exhibition of work by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen titled “There is no such thing as a perfect lamb chop” marks the inauguration of Paula Cooper Gallery’s new seasonal pop-up at 243A Worth Avenue opened on December 5, 2020. The couple first began their working partnership in 1976 and, over the course of the next three decades, produced an extensive body of drawings, sculptures, and public commissions. The presentation at Paula Cooper Gallery includes examples from these important collaborative years, as well as works by Claes Oldenburg made before their meeting and after Coosje van Bruggen’s passing in 2009.

In celebration of the vibrant life of Palm Beach and the surrounding area, “There is no such thing as a perfect lamb chop”[1] presents a selection of drawings and sculptures by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, with a focus on their representations of food, sport, music, and other articles of pleasure. These striking images reinvent quotidian objects, using line and form to playfully merge natural elements with the irreverent and the fantastical. In the duo’s 2007 pastel drawing, an anthropomorphized shuttlecock performs a feat of superhuman acrobatics across the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum. Elsewhere, Claes Oldenburg’s canvas-and-resin tomates farcies entice and charm viewers with their luscious hue and supple surfaces. In the catalogue for his 1969 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, art historian Barbara Rose wrote: “It is his execution, his ability to make form live and to imbue it with a palpable vitality and sense of movement, that distinguishes Oldenburg’s genius […] In his art, the distortion of form, its infinite metamorphoses, becomes a metaphor for the search for truth, an endless pursuit through the labyrinth of illusion. His prime values as an artist are elusiveness, mystery, ambiguity, and multivalence.”

Many of the works on view relate to realized monumental public sculptures by the artists, including the exhibition’s earliest pieces: studies of the mass-produced typewriter eraser. Claes Oldenburg considered the eraser to be a “fine anti-heroic object” and in 1970 he began to make sketches of its form, set in imagined landscapes or personified as ‘Medusa’ or as a ‘Big Guy.’ A large-scale version measuring over eighteen feet high is installed at the entrance of the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. Imbued with human-like qualities, the object tilts forward as if it were exuberantly speeding away—its bristles blown back like strands of hair. In another work, a drawing from 1988, the couple depicts a broken plate out of which orange slices and expressively cut peels appear to tumble and bounce off the ground, as if caught in stop-motion. This anti-hierarchical form was their proposal for a public commission in Metro-Dade Open Space Park in Miami—a response to the eclectic architecture of the site where the finished sculpture still stands today.

CLAES OLDENBURG was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1929. He attended Yale University (1946–1950) as well as The Art Institute of Chicago before moving to New York City in 1956. The artist had his first one-person exhibition at the Judson Gallery, New York, in 1959 followed by shows at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1966) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1969). “Claes Oldenburg: An Anthology” opened at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in 1995 and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; and the Hayward Gallery, London. In 2002 the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York held a major exhibit of Oldenburg’s drawings; the same year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York featured a selection of Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s sculptures on the roof of the museum. “Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties” opened at the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien in 2012 and traveled to the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Oldenburg has been honored with numerous awards including the Wolf Prize in Arts (1989) and the National Medal of Arts (2000). He lives and works in New York City.

COOSJE VAN BRUGGEN was born in Groningen, the Netherlands in 1942. She received a master’s degree in art history from the University of Groningen. From 1967 to 1971 she worked in the curatorial department of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and was co-editor of the Sonsbeek 71 catalogue. Van Bruggen was a member of the selection committee for Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany (1982), a contributor to Artforum (1983–88) and Senior Critic in the Department of Sculpture at Yale University School of Art (1996–97). She has also authored books on Claes Oldenburg’s early work as well as on John Baldessari, Hanne Darboven, Bruce Nauman and the architect Frank O. Gehry. Van Bruggen’s first collaboration with Claes Oldenburg was in 1976 on Trowel I located in the sculpture garden of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands. In 1978 Coosje van Bruggen moved to New York, where she continued to work with Oldenburg, creating large-scale, site-specific works in urban settings. Their collaboration has extended to include smaller-scale park and garden sculptures as well as indoor installations. Coosje van Bruggen passed away in Los Angeles in 2009.

[1] A statement by Claes Oldenburg from his interview with Barbara Rose in Interview Magazine (December 8, 2015)

Make an appointment to see this exhibition in person.

PAULA COOPER GALLERY

243A Worth Avenue, Palm Beach, FL

www.paulacoopergallery.com

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Jean-Luc Moulène @ Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris - Implicites & Objets

Jean-Luc Moulène

Implicites & Objets

Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

Jusqu'au 19 décembre 2020

Pour sa sixième exposition à la Galerie Chantal Crousel, Jean-Luc Moulène propose un paysage sculptural où l’abstraction se présente comme une force de pensée, d’imagination, évoluant conjointement avec une figuration forte et fixe dans un espace ritualisé.

Au centre de la première salle, un objet abstrait, la Montagne pourpre (2019) est installée sur son socle. Conçue à partir de modélisation 3D et produite par machine-outils, cette imposante sculpture abstraite en mousse dure est une surface remplie. Elle est conçue par l’artiste comme un monochrome en trois dimensions. Cette abstraction colorée est placée sous le regard d’un ensemble de sculptures inédites en béton, produites manuellement, les Implicites (2020). Assemblés autour de la Montagne pourpre et adossés au mur, ils l’observent à distance mais par cette observation, les Implicites sont également amenés à regarder leur propre intériorité. En effet, suivant le même protocole de production déjà utilisé pour la série des Tronches (2014-2017)*, ce sont des figures retournées, inversées, intériorisées puis remplies de béton - des effigies aux corps et faciès distordus.

L’aspect du béton diffère d’une sculpture à l’autre tant par sa couleur (nuances de gris) que par son traitement de surface (cire, époxy). La forme des corps et leurs attributs surgissent de leur propre effacement par l’action de remplissage. On peut parler ici de mise en scène de leur existence sensible.

Au coeur de la seconde salle, nous trouvons une sculpture totémique en bronze sur socle haut, Pyramid’os (2020). Ici, les os longs des membres du corps humain forment les arrêtes d’une pyramide et en délimitent les surfaces ou plutôt l’absence de surface puisque son cœur reste vide ; les articulations, quant à elles, en deviennent les sommets.

La Pyramid’os partage son espace avec un portrait dessiné (Tronche, 2020) et plusieurs autres objets dont une figure Implicite de taille réduite (Redux Implicite, 2020) également adossée au mur et présentée en hauteur sur le même plan et face à la pyramide.

En résonnance avec les oeuvres dont nous avons précédemment parlées, la troisième et dernière salle, latérale à la première, présente trois sculptures dont deux grandes abstractions posées sur tables. Reprenant les questions formelles soulevées par la Montagne pourpre, la Montagne blanche (2020) a une forme abstraite quelconque**. C’est un grand monochrome blanc qui garde en surface les traces de la peinture à l’huile. Toutes ces traces renvoient directement aux gestes visibles de l’artiste peignant sa toile. Autre variation, Nature Morte (2020) est également une peinture en relief, un volume avec des éléments réalistes et non dissimulés cette fois-ci, tels que des os et des cailloux.

« L'abstraction […] n'est pas simplement un thème, une technique ou un style, mais un protocole évolutif qui permet à la pensée de voir l'image d'elle-même du point de vue d'une matière qui la traque implacablement. »***

Enfin, ces deux abstractions côtoient une dernière sculpture posée sur une poutre de bois, Yeux bleus (2020). En position d’observateur, cet objet est composé de deux pierres trouvées, collées entre elles par de la pâte époxy. Sur sa partie supérieure, se répandent des centaines de Nazar boncuk, petites amulettes traditionnelles turques en verre destinées à protéger contre le mauvais œil. Non sans rappeler l’abstraction quelconque présentée à la Biennale de Venise en 2019 (Pale blue Eyes, 2019), ces yeux, qui semblent se multiplier, regardent la scène et épient tant les sculptures que les visiteurs.

Comme le disait très justement Philippe Vasset, on aime « s’attarder dans les expositions de Jean-Luc Moulène : pleines d’énigmes et de détails suggestifs, ce sont de véritables machines à fiction. »****

Au cours de ces deux dernières décennies, les oeuvres de Jean-Luc Moulène ont été présentées dans les plus grandes institutions et lors des plus importants évènements internationaux, parmi lesquels : les expositions More or Less Bone au SculptureCenter, New York, Etats Unis (2019) ; The Secession Knot à Secession, Vienne, Autriche (2017) ; Jean-Luc Moulène au Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France (2016) ; Il était une fois à la Villa Médicis, Rome, Italie (2015) ; Documents and Opus (1985 - 2014) au Kunstverein de Hanovre, Allemagne (2015) ; Jean-Luc Moulène . works au Beirut Art Center, Liban (2013) ; Jean-Luc Moulène au Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, U.K. (2012) ; Opus + One, Dia: Beacon, Beacon, New York, Etats Unis (2012) ; Jean-Luc Moulène au Carré d’art – Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes, France (2010) ; ou encore Le Monde – le Louvre au Musée du Louvre, Paris, France (2005) ; et sa participation à de nombreuses biennales : 58ème Biennale de Venise, Italie (2019) ; Biennale de Taipei, Taïwan (2016) ; Biennale Internationale Design, Saint-Etienne, France (2015) ; Biennale de Sharjah, Émirat Arabes Unis (2011) ou encore la Biennale de Sao Paulo, Brésil (2002).

————

* Jean-Luc Moulène travaille sur la série des Tronches entre 2014 et 2017. Ce sont des masques d’Halloween en latex, d’abord retournées à l’envers par l’artiste puis dans lequel il verse du béton. Quand ce dernier est sec, le latex est retiré, le béton ciré, le masque posé sur une couverture et exposé ainsi. Le béton est alors gris ou coloré. Un ensemble de Tronches fut notamment présenté dans l’exposition personnelle de l’artiste à la Villa Médicis en 2015.

** Le terme « quelconque » est fréquemment utilisé dans le lexique de Jean-Luc Moulène. Il s’agit de formes, de choses, quelconques dont nous ne connaissons ni l’organisation, ni la composition ni la transformation.

*** Reza Negarestani dans “Torture Concrete: Jean-Luc Moulène and the Protocol of Abstraction”, Sequence press editions, New York City, Etats-Unis, 2014, p.5 - traduction de l’anglais.

**** Philippe Vasset dans « Un rituel sans liturgie », catalogue de l’exposition Jean-Luc Moulène, éditions Centre Georges Pompidou et Dilecta, Paris, 2016, p. 108.

GALERIE CHANTAL CROUSEL

10 rue Charlot, 75003 Paris

www.crousel.com

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Les icônes de l’agence Roger-Viollet @ Galerie Roger-Viollet, Paris - Vente exceptionnelle de tirages photographiques

Les icônes de l’agence Roger-Viollet

Galerie Roger-Viollet, Paris

11 décembre 2020 - 23 janvier 2021

Serge Gainsbourg au théâtre de l’Etoile,

Paris septembre 1959

© Studio Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet

A l’occasion des fêtes de fin d’année, 

profitez d’une vente exceptionnelle

 de tirages photographiques

La galerie Roger-Viollet, 

ouvrira ses portes le 11 décembre à 14 heures 

pour une vente unique

Plus de 40 photographies proposées

Des portraits d’artistes et de personnalités du XXe siècle (de Chirac à Gainsbourg, de Colette à Birkin…) ainsi qu’une sélection des plus belles archives de l’agence seront présentés dans les prestigieux locaux de l’agence Roger-Viollet, bien connus des parisiens et situés au 6 rue de Seine, dans le 6ème arrondissement. 

Un nouvel espace

L'agence photographique Roger-Viollet, créée en 1938, est une des plus anciennes agences françaises. Ses collections constituent un fonds photographique unique en Europe avec plus de 6 millions de documents couvrant plus de 180 ans d’histoire parisienne, française et internationale. Après trois mois de travaux, le lieu dédié à la photographie d’archive conserve son âme et propose aujourd’hui, sur une surface ouverte au public de 100 m², un nouvel espace d’exposition, un espace de consultation et de vente de tirages, et un coin librairie.

Les tarifs des tirages

Format A4 : 130 euros

Format A3 : 220 euros

Format A2 : 300 euros

Possibilité d’encadrement sur place

Informations pratiques

Ouverture à partir du vendredi 11 décembre à 14h

Du mardi au samedi de 14h00 à 19h00

6, rue de Seine 75006 Paris

roger-viollet.fr

Usimages 2021, Biennale de la photographie du patrimoine industriel - 4e édition, Agglomération Creil Sud Oise

USIMAGES 2021 

Biennale de la photographie du patrimoine industriel - 4e édition

Agglomération Creil Sud Oise

17 avril - 20 juin 2021

© Usinages

Au printemps 2021 se déroule la 4ème edition d’Usimages, biennale de la photographie du patrimoine industriel organisée par l’Agglomération Creil Sud Oise (ACSO) avec le concours de Diaphane, pôle photographique en Hauts-de-France. 

Avec les travaux de Eugenijus BARZDŽIUS, Mattia BALSAMINI, Cécile CUNY, Nathalie MOHADJER et Hortense SOICHET, Ioana CÎRLIG, Julien BENARD, Émeric FEHER, Laurent GÉLISE, Yannick LABROUSSE et Lars TUNBJÖRK, Lucas CASTEL et Morgane DELFOSSE et des oeuvres issues des fonds photographiques de l’Institut national de recherche et de sécurité (INRS), de celui du Centre des monuments nationaux Ministère de la Culture (Émeric FEHER), du fonds Bernard HEURTIER et avec un partenariat avec le musée McCORD à Montréal.

13 expositions sont présentées en plein air dans les communes et invitent ainsi les habitants à une déambulation photographique à travers le territoire. Cette biennale est une formidable occasion de mettre en valeur des photographies contemporaines et historiques avec un regard toujours porté sur l’homme au travail. Deux jeunes photographes sont également en résidence dans des entreprises de l’agglomération. Leur travail sera exposé et permettra de valoriser l’industrie d’aujourd’hui ainsi que les hommes et les femmes qui contribuent à son développement sur l’ACSO.

Fil rouge de cette édition, la thématique « Santé et sécurité au travail » se décline à travers les photographies issues du fonds photographique de l’Institut national de recherche et de sécurité pour la prévention des

accidents du travail et des maladies professionnelles (INRS), qui accompagne depuis 1947 les entreprises du régime général de la Sécurité sociale dans la prévention des risques au travail. 

EMERIC FEHER

Usine de papeterie et cartonnerie La Rochette - CENPA

© Émeric Feher / Centre des monuments nationaux

Les photographies industrielles d’Émeric FEHER (1904-1966), conservées au Pôle images du Centre des monuments nationaux, révèlent une certaine approche commerciale des années 50 et 60 qui, par le passage du temps, en font des images historiques. Des archives du Musée McCORD, musée d’histoire sociale à Montréal, présentent les photographies des métiers de la métropole québécoise au début du 20ème siècle.

© Fonds Bernard HEURTIER - Musée de Bretagne

Il est également question d’« Histoire de bureaux », exposition collective avec Julien BENARD, Émeric  FEHER, Laurent GÉLISE, Yannick LABROUSSE et Lars TUNBJÖRK. Une série de photographies de bureaux réalisées en entreprises dans les années 70 est présentée, issue du Fonds Heurtier conservé au Musée de Bretagne.

La biennale est aussi ouverte sur le monde et sur les conditions de travail. Ioana CÎRLIG, dans sa série « Post Industrial Stories / The Last Shift » dépeint la classe ouvrière roumaine à la dérive. Dans le cadre des partenariats internationaux, Kaunas Photo festival (Lituanie) présente le travail de Eugenijus BARZDŽIUS, le festival Photolux (Italie) celui de Mattia BALSAMINI. Dans cette période où l’organisation du travail est repensée, Cécile  CUNY, Nathalie MOHADJER et Hortense  SOICHET invitent à découvrir le travail des manutentionnaires de la logistique à travers l’exposition «  On n’est pas des robots. Ouvrières et ouvriers de la logistique ».

Toutes les expositions sont ouvertes au public gratuitement.

PROGRAMMATION USIMAGES 2021 

(sous réserve de changement 

Lieux d'exposition préciser ultérieurement) 

PHOTOGRAPHIE CONTEMPORAINE

Eugenijus BARZDŽIUS

Carte blanche avec Kaunas Photo festival (Lituanie)

Mattia BALSAMINI

Contingency Plans, exposition soutenue dans le cadre du projet covid19visualproject.org et produite grâce à la bourse d’études Cortona Visual Narratives. Carte blanche au festival Photolux (Italie)

Cécile CUNY, Nathalie MOHADJER, Hortense SOICHET

On n’est pas des robots. 

Ouvrières et ouvriers de la logistique

Ioana CÎRLIG

Post Industrial Stories / The Last Shift

Julien BENARD, Émeric FEHER, Laurent GÉLISE, Yannick LABROUSSE, Lars TUNBJÖRK

Histoire de bureaux

Concours photo wipplay

Mon environnement de travail

Résidence en entreprise

Carte blanche à Lucas CASTEL et Morgane DELFOSSE dans des entreprises de l’Agglomération Creil Sud Oise : Clouterie Rivierre à Creil, Cartonnages Bazin à Villers-Saint-Paul et Lib Ferroviaire à Montataire

LES FONDS PHOTOGRAPHIQUES

Fonds de l’Institut national de recherche et de sécurité (INRS)

Émeric FEHER

en partenariat avec le Fonds photographique du Centre des monuments nationaux Ministère de la Culture

Fonds Bernard HEURTIER

en partenariat avec le Musée de Bretagne

Montréal au travail 

en partenariat avec le musée McCORD à Montréal

A PROPOS DE LA COMMUNAUTÉ D’AGGLOMÉRATION CREIL SUD OISE (ACSO)

Le territoire de l’Agglomération Creil Sud Oise, à la fois urbain et rural, rassemble 86 000 habitants sur 11 communes. Les 51 élus et les 130 collaborateurs de l’ACSO s’attachent à aménager, développer et dynamiser l’intercommunalité : développement économique et emploi, politique de la ville et aménagement du cadre de vie, politiques de mobilité, collecte des déchets, protection des ressources naturelles et promotion du tri, gestion de l’eau et de l’assainissement, soutien aux activités culturelles.

L’ACSO entend placer l’habitant au coeur de son projet de territoire en l’informant et en l’associant au processus de décisions afin de bâtir avec lui une agglomération valorisant la ruralité, préservant l’environnement et développant les espaces urbains.

L’ACSO, terre d’histoire, terre d’avenir.

Agglomération Creil Sud Oise (ACSO)

www.creilsudoise.fr

Diaphane, pôle photographique en Hauts-de-France

www.diaphane.org

Decadence and Dark Dreams, Belgian Symbolism @ Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Decadence and Dark Dreams

Belgian Symbolism

Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Through 17 January 2021 - Temporaly closed 

All museums of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin are closed. No exhibitions or events will take place until further notice.

FERNAND KHNOPFF

Caresses, 1896

Oil on canvas, 50 × 150 cm

© Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brüssel

The sensual gaze of a jaded society on the brink of the abyss, the morbid attraction of Thanatos and Eros: these are subjects in art which found expression at the end of the nineteenth century, particularly in Belgian Symbolism. The large-scale special exhibition “Decadence and Dark Dreams”, with over 180 works in the Alte Nationalgalerie, is dedicated to this artistic trend that emerged in the 1880s with Brussels as a major centre.

EUGENE LAERMANS

The Flowers of Evil, 1891

Oil on canvas, 81 x 58 cm

Private collection, Genf

Belgian Symbolism is characterised by a special predilection for morbid and decadent themes. Death and dissipation were recurring motifs even around the middle of the century, and can be traced back to sculptors such as George Minne and that master of the absurd, James Ensor. Inspired by contemporary literature, the artists around 1900 were linked by a new mysticism with an extravagant and sumptuous style. In this context the femme fatale became a central figure as an expression of over -abundance and lust. Symbolism, however, did not just influence portraiture and figure painting, but was also reflected in landscape painting and eerie interior scenes.

JEAN DELVILLE

The Love of Souls, 1900

Oil and tempera on canvas, 238 × 150 cm

© Musée d’Ixelles – Brüssel, Photo: Vincent Everarts

The extensive special exhibition with over 180 works on loan from international collections and Belgium’s most important museums, including Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent, introduces the entire spectrum of Belgian artistic positions previously little-known in Germany – like Fernand Khnopff, Léon Spilliaert, Félicien Rops, James Ensor and Jean Delville – as an important reference for Symbolism. Of special note, from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, is Fernand Khnopff’s sphinx -like “The Caresses”: an absolute icon of Belgian Symbolism. Works by artists such as Max Klinger, Edward Burne-Jones, Arnold Böcklin, Edvard Munch, Gustave Moreau and Gustav Klimt allow placement within the broader European context.

WILLIAM DEGOUVE DE NUNCQUES

Child with Owl, 1892

Pastel on paper mounted on canvas, 41 x 35 cm

Privatsammlung, Antwerpen

© Private collection, courtesy Van Herck – Eykelberg, Antwerp

List of Belgian Artists of the Exhibition

Arthur Craco (1869-1955)

William Degouve de Nuncques (1867-1935)

Jean Delville (1867-1953)

Charles Doudelet (1861-1938)

Paul Dubois (1859-1938)

James Ensor (1860-1949)

Henri Evenepoel (1872-1899)

Émile Fabry (1865-1966)

Léon Frédéric (1856-1940)

Henry de Groux (1866-1930)

Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921)

Eugène Laermans (1864-1940)

Georges Le Brun (1873-1914)

Xavier Mellery (1845-1921)

Charles Mertens (1865-1919)

George Minne (1866-1941)

Constant Montald (1862-1944)

Émile Motte (1860-1931)

Jean-François Portaels (1818-1895)

Félicien Rops (1833-1898)

Victor Rousseau (1865-1954)

Juliette Samuel-Blum (1877-1931)

Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946)

Charles van der Stappen (1843-1910)

Théo Van Rysselberghe (1862-1926)

Other Artists of European Symbolism of the Exhibition

ARNOLD BOCKLIN

Isle of the Dead, 1883

Oil on panel, 80 x 150 cm, 

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie

© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie,

Photo: Andres Kilger

FRANZ VON STUCK

The Sin, um 1912

Oil on canvas, 88 x 52,5 cm

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie

© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie,

Photo: Andres Kilger

Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901)

Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898)

Georges de Feure (1868-1943)

George Frampton (1860-1928)

Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916)

Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918)

Albert von Keller (1844-1920)

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

Max Klinger (1857-1920)

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)

Edvard Munch (1863-1944)

Gustave Moureau (1826-1898)

Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

Carlos Schwabe (1866-1926)

Franz von Stuck (1863-1928)

Jan Toorop (1858-1928)

Originally planned to run from 15 May until 13 September 2020, the exhibition has been postponed due to the museum’s Corona virus related closure.

The exhibition is supported by the Royal Museums of Art in Belgium, and made possible by the Freunde der Nationalgalerie. 

An extensive catalogue has been published by the Hirmer Verlag:

Decadence and Dark Dreams. Belgian Symbolism

336 pages, 265 colour illustrations

24,5 cm x 29 cm, hardcover

Edited by Ralph Gleis, with contributions by 

J. Block, M. Brodrecht, Y. Deseyve, J. De Smet, 

M. Draguet, R. Gleis, A. Groenewald-Schmidt, 

H. Körner, I. Rossi.

ALTE NATIONALGALERIE

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Bodestrasse 1-3, 10178 Berlin

www.smb.museum

Robert Smithson @ Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris - Primordial Beginnings

Robert Smithson: Primordial Beginnings

Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris

1 December 2020 - 9 January 2021

Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris and Holt/Smithson Foundation present the first exhibition of ROBERT SMITHSON at the Gallery. Born in Passaic, New Jersey, Robert Smithson (1938-73) recalibrated the possibilities of art. For over fifty years his work and ideas have influenced artists and thinkers, building the ground from which contemporary art has grown.

Primordial Beginnings investigates Robert Smithson’s exploration of, as he said in 1972, “origins and Primordial Beginnings , […] the archetypal nature of things.” This careful selection of works on paper demonstrates how Smithson worked as, to use his words, a geological agent. He presciently explored the impact of human beings of the surface of our planet. The earliest works are fantastical science fiction landscape paintings embedded in geological thinking. These rarely seen paintings from 1961 point to his later earthworks and proposals for collaborations with industry. Between 1961 and 1963 Smithson developed a series of collages showing evolving amphibians and dinosaurs. Paris in the Spring (1963) depicts a winged boy atop a Triceratops beside the Eiffel Tower, while Algae Algae (ca, 1961-63) combines paint and collage turtles in a dark green sea of words.

For Robert Smithson, landscape and its inhabitants were always undergoing change. In 1969 he started working with temporal sculptures made from gravitational flows and pours, thinking through these alluvial ideas in drawings. The first realized flow was Asphalt Rundown, in October 1969 in Rome, and the last, Partially Buried Woodshed, took place on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. A selection of drawings related to these important event sculptures are on display in Primordial Beginnings. Robert Smithson was invested in a definition of sculpture that was timebound and precarious, that would not claim monumental status, and would instead collaborate with entropy.

An autodidact, Robert Smithson's interests in travel, cartography, geology, architectural ruins, prehistory, philosophy, science-fiction, popular culture, and language spiral through his work. In his short and prolific life, Smithson produced paintings, drawings, sculptures, architectural schemes, films, photographs, writings, earthworks, and all the stops between. From his landmark earthworks to his 'quasi-minimalist' sculptures, Nonsites, writings, proposals, collages, detailed drawings, and radical rethinking of landscape, Smithson's ideas are profoundly urgent for our times. By exploring the conceptual and physical boundaries of landscape Smithson raised questions about our place in the world, their relevance heightened as the dangers of global warming move ever closer.

Primordial Beginnings is accompanied by a simultaneous exhibition, Hypothetical Islands, at Marian Goodman Gallery, London. Both exhibitions feature rarely seen works from the personal collection of the artist Nancy Holt (1938-2014). Holt married Smithson in 1963 and managed his Estate between 1973 and 2014. Primordial Beginnings and Hypothetical Islands are organized in partnership with Holt/Smithson Foundation, an artist endowed foundation dedicated to continuing the creative legacies of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson.

Born in Passaic, New Jersey, ROBERT SMITHSON (January 2, 1938 – July 20, 1973), spent his formative years in New Jersey. In 1963 he married the artist Nancy Holt (1938–2014), who managed the Estate of Robert Smithson from 1973-2014, and who literally willed Holt/Smithson Foundation into being. Robert Smithson is best known for his earthworks Spiral Jetty (1970), Broken Circle/Spiral Hill (1971), and Amarillo Ramp (1973). Prior these earthworks Smithson created performative entropic land works, such as the ephemeral sculptures Asphalt Rundown (1969, Rome), Glue Pour (1969, Vancouver), Concrete Pour (1969, Chicago), and Partially Buried Woodshed (1970, Kent State) speak poignantly to issues of time and the human condition. Robert Smithson’s first solo exhibition, with emphasis on what he described as ‘expressionistic work’, took place in 1957 at Allan Brilliant’s gallery in New York. The artist’s peripatetic life took him to Rome in 1961, when George Lester offered him his first solo international exhibition at Galleria George Lester, where he explored quasi-religious subject matter. His early paintings, drawings and sculptures made between 1961 and 1963 were imbued with references to concrete poetry, popular culture, and science fiction. Influenced by minimalism, in 1964 Smithson declared his quasi-minimal sculptures made from industrial materials of metal and mirrored Plexiglas as his ‘mature’ works, distancing himself from his early expressionistic paintings and drawings. Robert Smithson’s writings on art, western culture, graphic texts, and interviews, are published in The Writings of Robert Smithson, edited by Nancy Holt (1979, New York University Press, with an expanded version edited by Jack Flam published in 1998). His works are in numerous museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Dia Art Foundation, Museum of Modern Art New York, National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art.

GALERIE MARIAN GOODMAN

79 rue du Temple, 75003 Paris

www.mariangoodman.com

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