teamLab Exhibition @ Pace Gallery, NYC - Interactive digital artwork "The World of Irreversible Change"

teamLab: The World of Irreversible Change 

Pace Gallery, New York 

May 10 – August 16, 2024 

teamLab 

The World of Irreversible Change, 2024 

© teamLab, courtesy Pace Gallery

Pace presents an exhibition by teamLab at its 510 West 25th Street gallery in New York. The show spotlights a single interactive digital artwork—titled The World of Irreversible Change—projected on a wall in the gallery. This presentation marks teamLab’s first solo exhibition in New York in ten years.

Founded by Toshiyuki Inoko in Tokyo in 2001, teamLab is an international collective of artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, and architects. Known for its multisensory, immersive work, teamLab explores the relationships between humans and the world, encouraging new modes of perception through its pioneering, technologically advanced installations. In recent years, teamLab has presented solo exhibitions at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco; Amos Rex in Helsinki; TANK Shanghai; and many other institutions and venues around the world.

In the exhibition at Pace in New York, The World of Irreversible Change is projected on a large, freestanding, black-painted wall in a darkened gallery space. First presented by the collective in spring 2022 at the Aomori Museum of Art in Japan, this screen-based work, created by teamLab over five years, has never before been exhibited as a projection. Conceptually, The World of Irreversible Change centers on everyday life in an anonymous city during an unspecified epoch. Animated figures move throughout the panoramic village scene, which change with the time of day and weather in New York. Scenery and stories unfold each day, and the lives of the people in the city continue eternally unless gallery visitors interact with the work, causing permanent disruption.

Over the course of its exhibition at Pace, The World of Irreversible Change can transform as a result of viewers’ engagement with it. If visitors continue to intervene with the work during its three-month presentation, the scenes of daily life become increasingly agitated and chaotic, with fighting between individuals escalating into an all-out war. Peace and harmony give way to fire and destruction, a devolution that speaks to the inherency and universality of violence in the human experience. The city becomes forever devoid of people, while plants begin populating its streets and ruins over time.

“In the ruined city where not a single person remains, the seasons still pass and the sun rises and sets with the time of the real world,” teamLab writes in a statement on The World of Irreversible Change. “After a while, new flora begin to grow in the burnt ruins of the city. The flora grow, bloom, and scatter repeatedly, changing daily with the real passage of time ... Once the world of this artwork begins to burn, the world from before can never be returned to. The people who interact with the artwork cause this outcome.”

PACE GALLERY

510 West 25th Street, New York City, NY

www.pacegallery.com

Emma Ainala Exhibition @ Helsinki Contemporary - Exhibition "Delulufesting Dimension"

Emma Ainala: Delulufesting Dimension

Helsinki Contemporary

24 May -30 June 2024

EMMA AINALA

She Didn’t Make it Through Bridal Core, 2024

Oil on canvas, 180 cm x 190 cm

Photo: Johannes Ekholm

EMMA AINALA

Pigeon Promenade, 2024

Oil on canvas, 170 cm x 180 cm

Photo: Johannes Ekholm

EMMA AINALA

Big Budget Shadow Work, 2024

Oil on canvas, 140 cm x 160 cm

Photo: Johannes Ekholm

EMMA AINALA presents her latest paintings in her fourth solo exhibition at Helsinki Contemporary, Delulufesting Dimension, which embarks on a freshly nuanced and deepening exploration of her signature themes: femininity and the gaze.

Ambiguous figures in flamboyant interiors are recurring tropes in Ainala’s richly detailed paintings. While their content invokes the short-lived fads of the digital era, their exquisite, painstaking execution is time-consuming and meticulously planned. Her work also alludes frequently to art history. Sometimes she might combine allusions to the mystical worlds of the Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch with references to hyper-specific TikTok trends in one and the same painting.

The term “delulufesting” is the artist’s own portmanteau word of the internet slang terms “delulu” and “manifesting”, both of which refer to the blurring of boundaries between reality and fantasy. “Delulu'' is a term describing the delusional belief that one can influence one’s destiny through sheer willpower. “Manifesting” meanwhile describes the practice of willing something into existence purely by thinking aspirational thoughts – by focusing your thoughts on a desired outcome as if it were already true, you can supposedly make dreams come true in real life as well.

Emma Ainala’s latest paintings depict lavish, manor-like interiors inhabited by female figures that are hybridized with mythical creatures. It remains for the viewer to interpret whether we are looking at “dreams come true”, fantasy scenes, role play, or nightmares.

Womanhood and girlhood are long-standing themes in Emma Ainala’s oeuvre. The figures in her latest paintings are portrayed in princess-like gowns and wedding veils, sometimes blending in with the ornate interiors. The figure’s gaze is usually averted or her eyes are closed, or the head and eyes might be absent altogether. Bridal gowns and veils are trappings associated with the new #bridalcore fashion trend that is on the rise on social media.

Ainala’s paintings are packed with a teeming array of symbols and allusions. Their interpretation is ultimately left up to the viewer, as her paintings seem to pose more contradictory questions than offer solid answers.

Delulufesting Dimension takes us to a dimension where the digital and material worlds collide, and where reality is hybridized with dreams, wishes, and delusions.

That said, every artist must inherently embrace a near-delusional conviction in a positive outcome. When painting or preparing an exhibition, the artist must cling to the unshakeable belief that something will eventually manifest out of thin air.  The artist must be able to picture the desired outcome and invest boundless trust in a process that is inherently indeterminate.

EMMA AINALA

Portrait Photograph

EMMA AINALA (b. 1989, Helsinki, lives and works in Savonlinna, Finland) graduated from the Finnish Academy Fine Arts of Uniarts Helsinki in 2013. She had her first solo museum exhibition at Mikkeli Art Museum in 2017, followed by another one at Jyväskylä Art Museum in 2019, and Hyvinkää Art Museum in 2020. In spring 2018, she was invited to take part in the prestigious Spring Exhibition at Copenhagen’s Kunsthalle Charlottenborg. Her works have been widely exhibited in Finland and in Europe. Her works are included in collections such as the art collection of the Saastamoinen Foundation, the Niemistö Collection and Mikkeli Art Museum’s collection.

HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY

Bulevardi 10 - 00120 Helsinki

helsinkicontemporary.com

Zoe Leonard @ Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas - "Al río / To the River" Exhibition

Zoe Leonard: Al río / To the River

Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas

October 12, 2024 - June 2025

ZOE LEONARD

Al río / To the River (detail), 2016–2022 

Gelatin silver prints, C-prints and inkjet prints 

© Zoe Leonard. 

Courtesy the artist, Galerie Gisela Capitain, and Hauser & Wirth.

The Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati presents an exhibition of ZOE LEONARD’s Al río / To the River. The photographic work follows the course of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo where the river is used to define the boundary between the United States and Mexico. Zoe Leonard’s work contemplates the intricate cultural, social, political, ecological, and economic landscapes that comprise the 1,200 mile stretch of river from Ciudad Juárez and El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico and poses the question: what does it mean to ask a body of water to perform a political task? “The shifting nature of a river—which floods periodically, changes course, and carves new channels—is at odds with the political task it is asked to perform,” says Zoe Leonard.

Known for her work across photography, sculpture, and installation, Zoe Leonard has long explored the physical and bodily act of looking, often underscoring tensions between the natural world and human-built environments. Her work You see I am here after all (2008), made on-site at Dia Beacon and exhibited from 2008 to 2011, is composed of thousands of postcards of Niagara Falls from the early 1900s through the 1970s. It considers the role of photography in constructing American historical narratives and myths. In her large-scale installation 100 North Nevill Street, on view at the Chinati Foundation from 2013 to 2015, the artist transformed a former ice plant building into a camera obscura that projected the ever-changing state of the external environment in Marfa. As with all of her camera obscura works, the piece was made on-site in response to the existing architecture, history, and land

In late 2016, Zoe Leonard began to photograph the Rio Grande/Río Bravo—and the ways in which humans live in relation to it—from various perspectives in the United States and Mexico. The artist crossed back and forth from one side of the river to the other (and from one country to another), creating layered and thought-provoking compositions that draw attention to the complexity of the river as a porous channel, a source of life, and a politicized site. The work depicts the water, the land that surrounds it, and the infrastructures built along, across, and through it, offering viewers a variety of frames through which to think about the movement of people, animals, cars, boats, information, and goods.

Al río is comprised of several hundred photographs, structured in groupings, or ‘passages,’ and in this exhibition, a selection will be installed across three buildings on the grounds of Chinati. By arranging the photographs in passages, Zoe Leonard uses seriality to show actions unfolding; quotidian scenes of rest and play contrast with acts of policing and government control. The images are deeply specific and rooted in place, but they also relate to our shared world—one in which daily life is disrupted by fences, checkpoints, and surveillance. The project engages with histories of image-making from abstraction to documentary to digital surveillance, and, in doing so, reconsiders representational tropes, mythologies about the American West and Mexico, and the role of photography in shaping our perceptions of borders and rivers.

The opening of Al río / To the River at the Chinati Foundation—its first institutional presentation in the Americas—follows its debut at Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (2022), and subsequent exhibitions at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2022) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2023). Hauser & Wirth presented a related gallery exhibition of excerpts from Al río in New York in 2022, as did Capitain Petzel in Berlin (2022) and Galleria Raffaella Cortese in Milan (2023/2024). At Chinati, where artworks are permanently installed throughout the former military spaces of Fort D.A. Russell, Zoe Leonard’s photographs will respond to—and sometimes mirror—the surrounding environment. When traveling between exhibition spaces, visitors may notice familiar subjects, like the mountains in the distance or a passing border patrol vehicle.

The exhibition is accompanied by a two-volume publication, also entitled Al río / To the River. Edited by poet Tim Johnson, designed by Joseph Logan, and published by Hatje Cantz, the book features a selection of Zoe Leonard’s photographs and a compilation of writings by artists, poets, historians, musicians, and scholars with an interest in the politics, ecology, and cultures that intersect at the river. Both Johnson and his partner Caitlin Murray, Director of the Chinati Foundation, are longtime friends of the artist, who first came to Marfa in 2006. When Donald Judd established the foundation in 1986, he invited his friends to install work there; Leonard’s exhibition expands upon this history of long-term collaboration and conversation among friends.

ZOE LEONARD (born 1961 in Liberty, New York; lives and works in New York, New York and Marfa, Texas) balances rigorous conceptualism with a distinctly personal vision in her work with photography, sculpture, and installation. Employing seriality and shifting perspectives, and with an attention to the materiality of photography, Zoe Leonard’s practice probes the politics of representation and display. Zoe Leonard explores themes such as gender and sexuality, loss and mourning, migration, displacement, and the urban landscape. Her photography invites us to contemplate the role that the medium plays in constructing histories and shaping our perceptions of the world around us. More than its focus on any particular subject, Zoe Leonard’s work encourages the viewer to consider the act of looking itself, as a complex and conditional process. 

CHINATI FOUNDATION

Marfa, Texas 79843

www.chinati.org

Exhibition Who Is an Animal? @ HAM - Helsinki Art Museum

Who Is an Animal?

HAM - Helsinki Art Museum

17 may - 18 August 2024

Esko Männikkö

Untitled, 2005 

HAM Helsinki Art Museum

Photo: Yehia Eweis

The exhibition Who Is an Animal? invites visitors to stop and look at the animal as a source of artistic fascination down through the years, while remaining mysterious and inexplicable. The exhibition is primarily based on HAM’s art collection – property of all Helsinki residents. Its 80 works are grouped into themes that serve as points of discussion for various topics, such as how animals are depicted, their habitats, mistreatment, coexistence, and agency.

Who Is an Animal? draws attention to how artists strive even more to break the power structure between humans and other animals, and make visible what unites us.

The exhibition is curated by HAM’s curator Sanna Juntunen and features works by numerous artists including Jasmin Anoschkin, Eeva-Leena Eklund, Terike Haapoja, Appu Jasu, Anne Koskis, Aura Kotkavirta, Paula Lehtonen, Maija Luutonen, Esko Männikkö, Tuula Närhinen, Dennis Oppenheim, Stiina Saaristo, Pentti Sammallahti, and Victor Westerholm.

HAM - HELSINKI ART MUSEUM

Eteläinen Rautatiekatu 8 - 00100 Helsinki

www.hamhelsinki.fi

Artist Paul Winstanley Exhibition @ Cristea Roberts Gallery, London - "Reprise"

Paul Winstanley: Reprise 

Cristea Roberts Gallery, London

7 June - 27 July 2024

PAUL WINSTANLEY

Painted Alp 4., 2024 

116.4 x 78 cm. Edition of 6 

© Paul Winstanley, courtesy of Cristea Roberts Gallery

Cristea Roberts Gallery presents Reprise, an exhibition of new prints and paintings by PAUL WINSTANLEY (b. 1954). Best-known for photorealistic paintings of liminal and transitory spaces, Paul Winstanley’s new body of work re-invents early nineteenth-century paintings of mountainous landscapes.

Paul Winstanley’s new work marks a departure from his previous depictions of empty interiors, such as art school studios, modernist corridors and waiting rooms, to appropriate existing paintings of nature. Interested by the aesthetics of the sublime, which inspired artists and writers from the seventeenth century onwards, Paul Winstanley explores how pictures mythologise reality.

For Reprise, Paul Winstanley appropriates images of existing historical paintings depicting Alpine landscapes of mountains, trees and rushing water and, using processes of wax resist, degrades the images, impacting their perfection and historical authenticity.

“...how you apply the resist, the gesture, whether it’s sprayed on, painted or scraped on...the image is different each time but there is always a shadow of the original image. Details are lost to be replaced with the details of the process; the spots and specks of coagulated ink. The image is abraded, it disintegrates, all sorts of interesting incidents occur, though you can still see the shadows of trees, rocks, water, mountains, all the elements of the image.” - Paul Winstanley

Paul Winstanley incorporates these images into a photogravure process and prints them with re-imagined colour and sense of light. The artist presents eight variations as photogravure prints, five large scale photogravure prints incorporating hand painting and two previously unseen paintings, all originating from this process of decay and reinvention. 

By revisiting the making of the artwork and altering its material surface, Paul Winstanley considers his new prints and paintings to be re-enactments that give the work a contemporary urgency and energy. The works, with their hazy and distorted quality, become distanced from their original subject matter, leaving the viewer to imbue the compositions with their own interpretation.

The artist also exhibits The Viewers, 2020-2023, a group of prints based on installation shots of various of his own recent solo shows in which photographs of museum visitors are incorporated into the gallery space creating semi-fictional images.

“I’ve talked about the role of the viewer in my work for years but these actually attempt to picture this, dismember it and reveal some sort of truth through the use of artifice and fiction. And this can also be said of the landscape prints and paintings. They are not quite what they seem.” - Paul Winstanley.

PAUL WINSTANLEY

Paul Winstanley was born in Manchester in 1954. He studied painting at Cardiff College of Art and the Slade School of Art, London. Schooled in the orthodoxies of abstract Modernism, Paul Winstanley spent a decade after college establishing a new visual language, combining the tenets of minimalism with the pictorialism of photography.

Paul Winstanley has been exhibiting internationally since the late 1970s. He won the first prize of the Unilever Award at the Whitechapel Open in 1989, and two years later was artist-in-residence at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. He has had solo exhibitions in London, Paris, Munich, Hamburg, Madrid, Dublin, New York, Los Angeles and in Auckland, New Zealand.

Paul Winstanley’s work is represented in several important public and private collections in Europe and the United States, including Tate; the British Museum; British Council; Government Art Collection, London; MoMA, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and Fonds National d’art Contemporain, Paris.

He lives and works in London.

www.paulwinstanley.com

Instagram: @paulwinstanley54

CRISTEA ROBERTS GALLERY

43 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5JG

www.cristearoberts.com

Artist Heloisa Hariadne Exhibition @ Tiwani Contemporary, London

In Focus: Heloisa Hariadne 

Tiwani Contemporary, London 

30 May – 15 June 2024 

Heloisa Hariadne 

As vezes sinto que vale a pena ser salva, 2023 

Oil on Canvas, 201 x 97 cm / 79 1/8 x 38 1/4 in | HEH 001

© Heloisa Hariadne, Courtesy of Tiwani Contemporary

"My painting is an investigation of memories in my body, in which I question the temptations and intentions in a portrait of the intimate - a memory of records of looks, people and constructions, of small shapes, environmental themes, habits, the rescue of the knowledge of native peoples - all these things that fill in the images. I like to think of my paintings as emotional portraits."

Heloisa Hariadne

Tiwani Contemporary presents Brazilian visual artist, Heloisa Hariadne. The artist lives and works in São Paulo. 

Heloisa Hariadne is an early career artist who has established a botanical and philosophically driven visual language pursuing existential questions around will and self-determination, and the impact of personal and historical past events, and memories in relation to her subjecthood. By removing herself from a daily circuit of chasing the conventions of contemporary daily life, the artist steps back in isolation, and allows herself to have a meditative breathing space, where she can reach the answers to these questions through her practice, transforming the canvas into a visual memoir.

Heloisa Hariadne draws inspiration from the connection she has with her body, her nourishment - both physical and spiritual, and the ambience that surrounds her. Nature, being one of the key elements in Heloisa Hariadne’s practice, acts as a healer and is a place where Heloisa Hariadne repairs and generates her constant imaginative stream. Movement, dance, and writing equally manifest meaningful connections that translates to her canvases.

Heloisa Hariadne Biography

 

Heloisa Hariadne (b. 1999) was born in Carapicuíba in Greater São Paulo, Brazil. She holds a BA in Visual Art as well as Indigenous History from University of Arts of São Paulo. Recent exhibitions include: Nem o céu escapa da vida, Galeria Leme, São Paulo, Brazil (2023 -solo); Whispers from the South, LAMB Gallery, London, UK (2023 -group); Passado Presente - 200 anos depois, Centro Cultural PGE – RJ, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2022 -group); Arte Atual - Por muito tempo acreditei ter sonhado que era livre, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil (2022 -group); Estamos aqui, Sesc Pinheiros, São Paulo, Brazil (2022 -group); Coleção MAR + Enciclopédia Negra, Museu de Arte do Rio - MAR, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2022 -group); Nova Vanguarda Carioca, Cidade das Artes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (group -2022); Hariadne's works are in permanent collections of Inhotim Institute, Minas Gerais, Brazil; Inclusartiz Institute, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Underdog Collection, Italy.

TIWANI CONTEMPORARY

24 Cork Street, London W1S 3NG 

www.tiwani.co.uk

Exposition When We See Us : Un siècle de peinture figurative panafricaine @ Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart

When We See Us

Un siècle de peinture figurative panafricaine

Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart

25 mai - 27 octobre 2024

Sungi Mlengeya

Constant III, 2019

Acrylic paint on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

Courtesy of the Ditau Collection

Zéh Palito

Que Se Chama Amor, 2022

Acrylic on canvas, 162 x 125 cm

Courtesy the artist, Simões de Assis and Luce Gallery

Avec l’exposition When We See Us, le Kunstmuseum Basel présente un kaléidoscope qui raconte un siècle de peinture figurative noire. Il s'agit d’une reprise de l’exposition organisée au Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art of Africa au Cap. Installée dans les espaces du Gegenwart, elle réunit plus de 150 peintures d’environ 120 artistes, jamais exposées en Suisse pour la plupart, et apporte un éclairage sur la puissance et la dimension politique de la « Black Joy ».

Le titre de l’exposition s’inspire de la mini-série de Netflix When They See Us (2019). La réalisatrice afro-américaine Ava DuVernay y aborde la manière dont des Blancs perçoivent indifféremment de jeunes Noirs innocents comme de potentiels criminels constituant une menace. En remplaçant « They » par « We », l’exposition opère un changement de perspective et offre ainsi un espace aux artistes pour montrer la manière dont il voient leur condition. Elle accorde une place centrale à leur perception propre et révèle comment la vie des Noirs ne cessa d’être représentée par d’autres de manière biaisée et fausse.

When We See Us est le résultat de recherches approfondies menées par Koyo Kouoh, directrice et cheffe curatrice du Zeitz MOCAA au Cap, et son équipe. De novembre 2022 à septembre 2023, ce musée dédié à l’art contemporain africain le plus grand au monde a présenté cette vaste exposition. Celle-ci est représentative d’une nouvelle perception de soi et de l’autodétermination d’artistes noir.e.s qui, après des siècles de domination par le canon artistique blanc, écrivent leur propre histoire de l’art. Au Kunstmuseum Basel, elle succède à une série d’expositions monographiques consacrées à des artistes afro-américain.e.s : Theaster Gates, Sam Gilliam, Kara Walker et dernièrement Carrie Mae Weems. Ces expositions et bien d’autres explorent la « Blackness » dans le monde, notamment au regard des traumatismes et des aspects du colonialisme. D’après les commissaires Koyo Kouoh et Tandazani Dhlakama, When We See Us se concentre quant à elle sur le quotidien ainsi que sur la « puissance de la joie », éliminant ainsi les stéréotypes liés au racisme, à la violence ou aux crises. L’exposition s’attache à proposer aux individus un nouvel angle de vue tour à tour solennel, puissant et digne : « Il faut que nous parlions beaucoup plus de nous-mêmes, d’une manière qui stimule notre esprit » disent-elles. 

Wangari Mathenge

Sundials and Sonnets, 2019

Oil on canvas, 137.2 x 172.7 cm

Credit : Pascale M. Thomas and Tayo E. Famakinwa

Six sections du quotidien

Plus de cent cinquante oeuvres d’art sont réparties en six chapitres d’exposition : Le quotidien, Joie et allégresse, Repos, Sensualité, Spiritualité et Triomphe et émancipation. Les salles ne sont pas aménagées de manière chronologique, ni selon le pays d’origine ou le lieu de travail des artistes.

La déclinaison en des thèmes universels indique également pour la première fois que les artistes ont travaillé aux mêmes thématiques à différents endroits en Afrique et au sein de la diaspora africaine. Ainsi, des parallèles iconographiques s’esquissent entre les oeuvres de Romare Bearden (1911–1988), artiste afro-américain, et de George Pemba (Afrique du Sud, 1912–2001), ou entre le Congolais Chéri Samba (*1956) et l’Afro-Américain Barkley L. Hendricks (1945–2017).

When We See Us occupe l’ensemble des espaces du Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart. Comme au Zeitz MOCAA, Ilze Wolff, associée de l’agence Wolff Architects au Cap, a été chargée de la scénographie, tandis que le musicien Neo Muyanga a conçu les stations sonores. Une frise chronologique précise le contexte de création des oeuvres exposées et un audioguide adapté pour le Kunstmuseum Basel fournit des informations sur les oeuvres.

Le programme qui accompagne l’exposition met en avant différentes voix noires à travers la musique, la littérature, des ateliers, des visites guidées, des groupes de discussion et des événements universitaires. Au rez-de-chaussée, une salle spécialement conçue pour accueillir ce programme sert de lounge public ainsi que de lieu de rassemblement et d’événements pour les ateliers, séminaires, concerts et autres.

Chapitres d’exposition et liste des artistes

Triomphe et émancipation

Le sentiment de fierté envers sa propre histoire et ses réussites malgré l’adversité et une oppression longue de plusieurs siècles figure au coeur de ce chapitre. Au rez-de-chaussée du musée, les visiteur.euse.s croisent des icônes mondialement connues, à l’instar du tableau de Chéri Chérin Obama Revolution (2009), sur un pied d’égalité avec des figures certes anonymes, mais fortes, comme dans le Portrait of a Sudanese Gentleman (1951) d’Ibrahim El-Salahi. Les personnes représentées s’occupent des biens culturels des ancêtres ou sont des hommes et des femmes politiques engagés et des individus ayant obtenu le succès et la reconnaissance sociale.

Chéri Samba 

Hommage aux anciens créateurs, 2000 

Acrylic on canvas, 135 x 200 cm 

Private Collection, courtesy of MAGNIN-A Gallery, Paris 

Artistes : Benny Andrews, Margaret Taylor Burroughs, Chéri Chérin, Kudzanai Chiurai, Aboubacar Diané, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Ben Enwonwu, Gherdai Hassell, Wifredo Lam, Akinola Lasekan, Mustafa Maluka, Eria Nsubuga ‘Sane’, Augustin Okoye, George Pemba, Chéri Samba, Mmapula Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, Gerard Sekoto, Katlego Tlabela, Cyprien Tokoudagba

Sensualité

Sensualité présente des corps noirs de manière intime et avec aplomb comme ne l’avait guère permis le canon visuel occidental. Le modèle noir, d’après Félix Vallotton (2019) de Roméo Mivekannin fait directement écho à ce canon, de même que Reclining Nude with Lemon (2021) de Sahara Longe. Ce chapitre montre toute la palette de la sensualité, de l’amour et des relations intimes. L’ensemble des oeuvres ont en commun l’autodétermination des protagonistes. 

Chris Ofili 

Within Reach 7, 2002 

Gouache, India ink, charcoal and gold leaf on paper, 114 x 69 cm 

© Courtesy of Jochen Zeitz Collection 

Artistes : Nina Chanel Abney, Olusegun Adejumo, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Maxwell Alexandre, Tiffany Alfonseca, Dominic Chambers, Somaya Critchlow, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Elladj Lincy Deloumeaux, Aboubacar Diané, Ibrahima Kébé, Yoyo Lander, Sahara Longe, Danielle McKinney, Roméo Mivekannin, Moké, Geoffrey Mukasa, Chris Ofili, Kambui Olujimi, Tschabalala Self, Monsengo Shula, Mickalene Thomas, Bob Thompson, Kehinde Wiley.

Spiritualité

Selon les commissaires de l’exposition, il est difficile d’imaginer un quotidien noir sans spiritualité. Cette section représente le « triple héritage » décrit par l’écrivain kenyan et américain Ali Mazrui (1933-2014) dans son livre The Africans: A Triple Heritage : la "Black Life" perméable aux rituels et traditions locales, islamiques et chrétiennes. Les oeuvres présentées ici montrent une spiritualité vivante, à l’instar de Genesis Creation (1989) de Jacob Lawrence et The Dumb Oracle (2019) de Michael Armitage.

Michael Armitage

You, Who Are Still Alive, 2022

Oil on Lubugo barkcloth, 150 x 200 cm

Kunstmuseum Basel, purchase with funds from the Efren Fund,

Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft Basel

Photo : Max Ehrengruber 

© Michael Armitage 

Cassi Namoda 

To Live Long Is To See Much (Ritual Bathers III), 2020 

Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 233.6 cm 

Courtesy of Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Miami 

Artistes : Michael Armitage, Gerard Bhengu, Wilson Bigaud, Edouard Duval-Carrié, Aaron Douglas, Scherezade García, Jacob Lawrence, Cassi Namoda, Malangatana Ngwenya, Kambui Olujimi, Emma Pap’, Naudline Pierre, Prosper Pierre-Louis, María Magdalena Campos Pons, Cinga Samson, Gerard Sekoto, Devan Shimoyama, Alex Shyngle, Sthembiso Sibisi, Olivier Souffrant, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Nirit Takele.

Le quotidien

Des tableaux à l’instar de Boy with a Toy Plane (1938) d’Aaron Douglas, The Reader (1939) de William H. Johnson, Gisting in the Kitchen (2018) de Joy Labinjo ou encore l’affiche publicitaire de Johnny Arts pour Ozor International Barber also Specialist in Hair Dying and Shamporing (1962) montrent la beauté de la vie quotidienne. Ce chapitre présente des scènes de la vie publique et privée avec des moments de joie ou de contemplation, que ce soit au sein de la famille ou de la communauté, à l’occasion de jeux, à l’école, lors du portage de l’eau ou de la réalisation de tresses.

Artistes : Johnny Arts, Malang Badji, Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, Gervais Emmanuel Ducasse, Ben Enwonwu, Ablade Glover, Gavin Janties, William H. Johnson, Kangudia, Ibrahima Kébé, Joy Labinjo, Petson Lombe, Marvelous Mangena, Luis Meque, Moké, Meleko Mokgosi, Richard Mudariki, Theresa Mungure, Lavar Munroe, Chemu Ng’ok, Nicholous Njau, Boris Nzebo, Antoine Obin, Télémaque Obin, Bruce Onobrakpeya, George Pemba, Horace Pippin, Kingsley Sambo, Gerard Sekoto, Ancent Soi, Moustapha Souley, Edward Saidi Tingatinga, Zandile Tshabalala, Sane Wadu, Richard Witikani

Joie et allégresse

Cette section est consacrée aux moments d’allégresse et de loisir : d’après les commissaires, il reste toujours du temps pour une chanson ou une danse. Dans The Birthday Party (2021) d’Esiri Erheriene-Essi, on chante pour Steve Biko ; dans Un mardi de Carnaval (1960) de Philomé Obin, on participe aux célébrations au sein d’un défilé ; dans Jazz Rhapsody (1982) de Romare Bearden, on écoute les rythmes musicaux.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi

The Birthday Party, 2021

Oil, ink and Xerox transfer on linen, 150 x 200 cm

Courtesy of Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Miami

Cinthia Sifa Mulanga

Wait your turn – Competitive Sisterhood, 2021

Mixed media on canvas, 76 x 101 cm

Courtesy of Serge Tiroche and the Africa First Collection 

© Courtesy African Arty Gallery

Moké

Kin oyé ou Couloir Madiokoko à Matonge, 1983

Oil on canvas, 67 x 87 cm

André Magnin Collection, 

Courtesy of MAGNIN-A Gallery, Paris

Artistes : Romare Bearden, Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Barkley L. Hendricks, Clementine Hunter, Jacob Lawrence, Arjan Martins, Moké, Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, Eric Ndlovu, Nicholous Njau, Nestor Vuza Ntoko, Philomé Obin, George Pemba, Chéri Samba, Matundu Tanda, Katlego Tlabela, Charles White.

Repos

Le troisième étage du Gegenwart réserve une place aux moments de repos, équivalents à ceux d’allégresse. Ici, on s’étire dans un canapé dans Sundials and Sonnets (2019) de Wangari Mathenge, on se promène dans la campagne dans Surveying the Family Seat (2017) de Toyin Ojih Odutola ou bien on savoure simplement le calme assis sur une chaise comme dans An evening in Mazowe (2019) de Kudzanai-Violet Hwami. Partout, des personnes détendues, seules ou dans une atmosphère familière. 

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

A Culmination, 2016

Oil on canvas, 200.5 x 250 x 3.8 cm

Kunstmuseum Basel, purchase

Photo credit: Jonas Hänggi

© Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Zandile Tshabalala 

Two Reclining Women, 2020

Acrylic paint on canvas, 91.5 x 122 cm

Courtesy of the Maduna Collection 

© Zandile Tshabalala Studio

Artistes : Cornelius Annor, Gideon Appah, Firelei Báez, Amoako Boafo, Beauford Delaney, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Wangari Mathenge, Neo Matloga, Sungi Mlengeya, Ian Mwesiga, Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Eniwaye Oluwaseyi, Marc Padeu, Zéh Palito, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, Henry Taylor, Zandile Tshabalala, Kehinde Wiley, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

A propos des commissaires de l'exposition

Koyo Kouoh

Depuis 2019, Koyo Kouoh est directrice et cheffe curatrice du Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) au Cap. Elle a grandi en Suisse puis s’est installée à Dakar, au Sénégal, dans les années 1990, où elle a fondé le RAW Material Company, un centre pour l’art, le savoir et la société en 2008. Elle en fut également la directrice artistique. Avant et parallèlement à cela, elle a organisé et assuré le commissariat d’expositions majeures et de biennales dans le monde entier (notamment Ataraxia au Salon Suisse de la Biennale de Venise en 2017). Koyo Kouoh a beaucoup publié sur la portée internationale de la communauté artistique panafricaine. En 2020, elle a reçu le Prix Meret Oppenheim et a été reconnue comme l’une des personnalités les plus importantes et influentes du monde artistique. En tant que curatrice et critique ainsi que fondatrice d’institutions culturelles, elle a proposé de nouvelles formes de médiation et a fortement contribué à porter l’art africain sur la scène internationale.

Tandazani Dhlakama

Née au Zimbabwe, Tandazani Dhlakama travaille depuis 2017 au Zeitz MOCAA comme curatrice et dans le domaine de la médiation artistique. Auparavant, elle a travaillé à la National Gallery of Zimbabwe et occupé différentes fonctions lors d’expositions, de conférences et de biennales en Afrique. Tandazani Dhlakama possède un master en Art Gallery and Museum Studies de l’université de Leeds au Royaume-Uni (2015) et un bachelor en Beaux-Arts et Sciences Politiques de l’université St. Lawrence de New York aux États-Unis (2011). Dernièrement, elle a assuré le commissariat de Witness: Afro Perspectives from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection à El Espacio 23 de Miami – une exposition consacrée à l’oppression systématique, aux traumatismes intergénérationnels, aux nouvelles visions du monde, à l’identité et au territoire.

Le Kunstmuseum remercie Kadiatou Diallo, Sindi-Leigh McBride et Lorena Rizzo du Centre d'études africaines de l'Université de Bâle pour leur regard critique sur l'adaptation de l'exposition au Kunstmuseum de Bâle.

KUNSTMUSEUM BASEL

St. Alban-Graben 8 - 4010 Basel

www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch

Metahaven Film Installation: Chaos Theory @ Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Metahaven: Chaos Theory

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao 

Through June 9, 2024

Metahaven

Chaos Theory, 2021

Single channel film, 25 min. (film still)

Courtesy the artists

© Metahaven

Metahaven

Chaos Theory, 2021

Single channel film, 25 min. (film still)

Courtesy the artists

© Metahaven

Metahaven

Chaos Theory, 2021

Single channel film, 25 min. (film still)

Courtesy the artists

© Metahaven

Metahaven

Chaos Theory, 2021

Single channel film, 25 min. (film still)

Courtesy the artists

© Metahaven

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Metahaven: Chaos Theory, the year's first exhibition of Film & Video exhibition series. This program, celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2024, is permanently devoted to artistic practices associated with the moving image.

Chaos Theory is a unique film installation by Metahaven, the renowned collective founded by Amsterdam-based artists Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden in 2007. Encompassing a variety of mediums including moving images, graphics, interfaces, textile works, and theory, Metahaven is regarded as a forerunner of interdisciplinary practice today.

In Chaos Theory, Metahaven addresses the range of shifting emotions of childhood, sisterhood and parenthood in the connected existence of the film's two protagonists. The enthralling 25-minute film takes revolves around different moments in the dialogue of a child ‘X’ (Valentina Di Mondo) and an adult named ‘Y/Z’ (Georgina Dávid), as they play, walk and live together in a multi-lingual reality. Filled with poetic resonances and ingenious wordplay, their exchanges are set in open spaces as well as more intimate settings—an elevator, a room—all of them equally allegorical and dream-like. A sense of continuity between wakefulness and reverie, pervades the entire film, where the lightness of play alternates with conversations on existential time and gravity. Thus, Chaos Theory operates as a nonlinear tale that challenges distinctions between voices and thoughts, places and fantasy zones.

Shot on location in the outskirts of Amsterdam, the film’s infrastructural landscape appears in contrast with its open-ended poetics. Multiple vantage points, or screens within the screen, coexist at times. Sections of the screen are outlined in red, as in a video conference call, when a new motif appears in the story. Chaos Theory is presented in a newly conceived spatial installation that includes a large woolen carpet, conceived as a seating area for the audience. Graphic vectors and colour squares mingle in a densely tufted texture that is reminiscent of common upholstery in public transportation. This object somehow materializes X’s words: “I see us in things that are not us; in the drawings of the seats on the bus.”

In the anteroom, Metahaven’s film resonates with a multiplicity of textile works that the artists understand as equivalent to film stills. Thus, the presentation of Chaos Theory is expanded with a selection of embroidered objects created in the past four years, some of which are being exhibited publicly for the first time. These series—Arrows (2020), Blossoms (2021), Bus Seats (2023), and Murmurations (2024)— include jumpsuit jackets, plastic bags, and small tapestries on bus seat fabric. Beside them are the triptych Living Together in Stories (2022) and the single jacquard Versions and Waves (2020). Juxtaposing oneiric landscapes, interfaces, bird flocks and geographics, the artists invite us to challenge our certainties and envision a future defined by empathy, fluid identity, and acknowledged dependence.

Metahaven. Biography

Amsterdam-based Vinca Kruk (b. 1980) and Daniel van der Velde (b. 1971) founded the Metahaven collective in 2007. Their work encompasses filmmaking, writing, and design, and has presented solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; ICA London; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Asakusa, Tokyo; Izolyatsia Kyiv; e-flux, New York; Tick Tack, Antwerp; and State of Concept, Athens, among others; as well as participated in major group exhibitions at Artists Space, New York; the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw; the Gwangju Biennale; the Sharjah Biennial; the Busan Biennale; Ghost:2561, Bangkok; and many others. Their work is featured in collections of the Sharjah Art Foundation, the National Gallery of Victoria, M HKA, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, among others.

Metahaven are artistic advisors at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam; affiliate researchers at Antikythera, Los Angeles; and heads of department at the Geo-Design MA at Design Academy Eindhoven. 

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM BILBAO

Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa

Avenida Abandoibarra, 2 - 48009 Bilbao

www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus

Exposition Julien Mignot @ Galerie Esther Woerdehoff, Paris - "So far so close"

Julien Mignot : So far so close 

Galerie Esther Woerdehoff, Paris 

6 juin - 7 septembre 2024

Julien Mignot 

Solstice, 21 juin 2023

Tirage Fresson 

60 x 80 cm, édition de 3

© Julien Mignot, courtesy Galerie Esther Woerdehoff

Julien Mignot 

Today, the time is close,

41.9236, -5.6047 25th March 2017 18:23:29 UTC, 2022

Tirage Fresson 

120 x 100 cm

© Julien Mignot, courtesy Galerie Esther Woerdehoff

Julien Mignot 

Dark Red, 2019

Tirage Fresson

18 x 27 cm, édition de 3

© Julien Mignot, courtesy Galerie Esther Woerdehoff

Julien Mignot 

No Hope, 2018

Tirage Fresson

18 x 27 cm, édition de 3

© Julien Mignot, courtesy Galerie Esther Woerdehoff

La Galerie Esther Woerdehoff présente une exposition du travail photographique de l'artiste français Julien Mignot, en présentant trois séries distinctes mais interconnectées : Before the Night is Over (2011-2023), Today, the time is close (2023) et Temps présent (2024). Réunies par le rare et méticuleux procédé de tirage Fresson, ces séries témoignent de l'engagement profond de Julien Mignot dans l'histoire et les limites perceptuelles de la photographie. Il s'agit de la première exposition personnelle de l'artiste à la galerie, qui comprend plus de vingt pièces.

Before the Night is Over invite le spectateur à suivre le parcours personnel de l'artiste, qui rappelle son précédent projet « 96 Months », dans lequel la vie quotidienne joue un rôle important dans un rituel de capture d'images faisant écho à des morceaux musicaux. En confiant ses negatifs à la technique Fresson - une méthode conservée depuis 1899 par la famille Fresson - Julien Mignot embrasse la nature imprévisible de ce processus. Cette technique, caractérisée par ses couches de pigments sur du papier « Charbon-Satin », fait référence à l'ère pictorialiste de la photographie, brouillant la netteté typique de la photographie moderne et invitant à une réflexion nostalgique sur les origines du médium.

Dans Today, the time is close, Julien Mignot explore le concept de l'espace et de ses limites à travers des fragments de ciel. Ces pièces uniques remettent en question notre perception de l'espace et les limites arbitraires que nous lui imposons. La série est particulièrement convaincante dans la manière dont elle utilise l'horizon - une démarcation construite socialement et subjectivement - pour remettre en question les hypothèses spatiales des spectateurs. Ici, l'horizon n'est pas seulement une ligne de partage, mais aussi une ligne unificatrice qui mêle des domaines connus à des paysages imaginaires, redéfinissant ainsi notre engagement au monde.

 

Temps présent, initié pendant la résidence de Julien Mignot au Festival Planche Contact à Deauville et sur la côte Atlantique, est une série contemplative qui capture les couleurs transitoires du ciel de l'aube au crépuscule. Chaque photographie, prise à différents endroits le long de la côte, représente un journal chromatique unique d'une journée, résumant la nature fugace et éphémère du temps lui-même.

Cette exposition met en évidence la maîtrise technique de Julien Mignot et son utilisation innovante de l'impression Fresson, mais également son enquête sur le tissu même de l'expérience visuelle. A travers son objectif, Julien Mignot capture plus que de simples images ; il saisit des moments d'introspection, des fragments de temps et les frontières fluides de notre environnement. Son travailnous encourage à voir au-delà de l'évidence, à trouver la beauté et le sens dans ce qui est transitoire, faisant de cette exposition une expérience profonde pour tous ceux qui pénètrent dans le monde immersif de sa création.

GALERIE ESTHER WOERDEHOFF

36 rue Falguière, 75015 Paris

www.ewgalerie.com

Artist David Huffman @ Casey Kaplan, NYC - "Children of the Sun" Exhibition

David Huffman

Children of the Sun

Casey Kaplan, New York

April 29 – July 26, 2024

David Huffman’s (b. 1963, Berkeley, CA) inaugural exhibition with Casey Kaplan, Children of the Sun, presents a new group of paintings known as “social abstractions” that combine socio-political themes, personal history, and abstract mark-making. Large-scale, densely layered paintings become sites for the artist’s play— swathes of African textiles, spray-painted basketball nets, loose brushstrokes, and collaged imagery merge as a way of storytelling. David Huffman activates these planes with memories of his family’s experience in Berkeley, California at the height of the radical Black Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s, combining material evocative of the quest for self and Black liberation.

David Huffman found himself at the epicenter of revolution at a young age in the charged Berkeley environment. Swelled by the birth of hippie culture, the Black Power movement, and the Space Race, David Huffman, by the age of five, experienced most of what would later inform his life and work. His mother, Dolores Davis, was at the crux of his upbringing, exposing him to the machinations of the Black Panther Party, ultimately designing the iconic "Free Huey [Newton]" flag and the crawling panther in the party's logo in 1968. Inextricably bound by meaning and form, Huffman’s works integrate his mother’s illustrations, serving as symbols of his childhood and a future his community collectively longed for. At the center of Eucalyptus (2024), David Huffman collages a photograph of Bobby Seale, the co-founder of the Black Panthers, embracing him and his brother at Berkeley’s Provo Park festival. They are positioned at the base of a painted tree, miniature, but focal— the two young boys stand next to a stoic Seale, their trio laden with the heft of the past, present, and future. Within Huffman’s swirls of activity and gesture, they are engulfed by the material remnants of a long-served memory.

Three eight-foot panel paintings anchor Children of the Sun — their monumental scale juxtapose smaller format works, each combining imagery and diverse material steeped in personal narrative. With weighted balance, Huffman’s material decisions imply equity in form and content: African fabrics are layered against hard-edge abstract lines and expressionist brushstrokes, while spray-painted sections of basketball netting overlay floral patterns and structured, high frequency stamped words. The abstraction of these elements, along with glittered text like “mental health,” “homeless,” and “payday loans" act as social agents— they are significant to the Black experience and serve as motivators for societal change.

In his most recent series, David Huffman updates his palette— floral patterns and pastel hues recall a sense of awakening. Rebirth, bloom, and a return to nature are at the forefront; specifically, Huffman accentuates the symbiotic relationship between children and nature, perpetually young, free, and full of hope. The multi-racial children of the “New Frontier” (a promise for domestic social reform by John F. Kennedy in 1960) are Huffman’s “Children of the Sun”: together they are reflected by the vibrant color and synergy of Huffman’s expression. Within the residue of his memory, Huffman recalls the rare breaking of cultural bounds, where for a moment in his childhood, there was reciprocity between racial, social, and economic status. If the seeds of change stem from the place cultures collide, Huffman aims to find this elusive middle ground.

The fecundity of nature is balanced by a celestial world that spans planetary orbs and moons, reflecting the expanse of the universe and the search for the supernatural. Huffman integrates a sphinx head across multiple paintings and merges the profile of his mother as a nod to her commitment to Egyptian mysticism and psychic teachings. These spiritual inclinations were integrated with the lessons of Sun Ra, Black American writers like Octavia Butler, Jimi Hendrix, and Star Trek, paving the path for David Huffman as a progenitor of the visual Afrofuturist movement. Huffman’s translation of this genre into the visual arts introduced a world of fantasy to a community typically rejected from the category until then. His acclaimed series of “traumanauts” from the late 1990s depicted a group of Black astronauts inhabiting surrealist landscapes, collectively in search of an elusive “home.” By expressing notions of Black agency, social and creative freedoms, and activism as a means for Black liberation, Huffman’s abstractions serve as a response to a displaced world in need of repair. As the sphinx head in Huffman’s work gazes up towards the sky, it signals the potential of a brighter future and acts as a reminder for humility within a boundless ecosystem.

CASEY KAPLAN

121 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.caseykaplangallery.com

Jason Dodge - Exposition @ MUDAM Luxembourg : "A Model: Epilogue" "Tomorrow, I walked to a dark black star"

Jason Dodge 

A Model: Epilogue 

Tomorrow, I walked to a dark black star 

MUDAM, Luxembourg

4 mai - 8 septembre 2024

JASON DODGE - Vue de l'installation au

Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean

Exposition Tomorrow, I walked to a dark black star

4 mai - 8 septembre 2024

© Jason Dodge, courtesy MUDAM Luxembourg

JASON DODGE - Vue de l'installation au

Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean

Exposition Tomorrow, I walked to a dark black star

4 mai - 8 septembre 2024

© Jason Dodge, courtesy MUDAM Luxembourg

Dans le cadre de l’exposition collective A Model [Lien pour une présentation de cette exposition], JASON DODGE (1969, Newtown, Pennsylvanie) a été invité à concevoir un épilogue. Tomorrow, I walked to a dark black star prend la forme d’une exposition monographique au sein d’une exposition de groupe.

La directrice du Mudam, Bettina Steinbrügge, commente :

« Dans son travail, Jason Dodge joue avec la perception, avec ce que nous nous attendons à voir et ce que nous ne voyons pas – au musée comme dans le monde qui nous entoure. Au Mudam, il avait perçu la partie principale de l’exposition collective A Model comme un grand monde à part entière, qu’il entendait dès lors conclure par un geste poétique au moyen de son Epilogue. Pour ce faire, il a collecté des déchets trouvés dans les environs du Mudam et au Luxembourg, ainsi que des choses qui ne sont pas considérées comme de l’art, disposant dans les salles d’exposition ce dont d’autres s’étaient débarrassés. C’est donc en y regardant de plus près que l’on appréciera mieux cet épilogue, puisqu’il s’avère alors imbu de poésie. Pour Jason, qui a également fondé une maison d’édition où il publie des poèmes, la poésie et l’art contemporain sont proches en ce qu’ils opèrent de manière similaire : on dispose de certains objets et certains mots et il s’agit alors de remplir les espaces intermédiaires. La poésie remplit ces espaces intermédiaires, tout comme l’art de Jason. C’est une façon de réfléchir aux résonances et à la manière d’inciter les visiteur·euse·s à remplir les espaces intermédiaires avec leurs propres idées. »

Un épilogue désigne généralement un discours ou un fragment de texte insérés à la fin d’une pièce de théâtre ou d’un livre, donnant un bref aperçu de ce qu’il arrive aux personnages après la fin de l’histoire. En tant qu’épilogue, l’exposition devient tout à la fois médium, objet et sujet, à travers lesquels interroger conjointement la manière dont nous percevons les choses et ainsi les transformons. Cette approche inhabituelle de l’exposition, consistant à venir ajouter l’oeuvre d’un artiste à une exposition déjà en place, permet d’explorer les potentiels de l’exposition collective et de l’exposition monographique, tout en troublant et prolongeant leurs enjeux et temporalités respectifs.

JASON DODGE - Vue de l'installation au

Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean

Exposition Tomorrow, I walked to a dark black star

4 mai - 8 septembre 2024

© Jason Dodge, courtesy MUDAM Luxembourg

JASON DODGE - Vue de l'installation au

Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean

Exposition Tomorrow, I walked to a dark black star

4 mai - 8 septembre 2024

© Jason Dodge, courtesy MUDAM Luxembourg

Jason Dodge s’intéresse au paysage auquel nous faisons face et au paysage de nos vies, entendu comme ce que nous possédons, ce à quoi nous pensons, les personnes auxquelles nous nous lions et celles que nous tenons à distance – les choses qui composent cette oeuvre sont directement issues d’un paysage élaboré collectivement. Imaginez une poche que l’on aurait vidée au hasard, on pourrait y trouver les traces de notre existence dans des bouts de papier, quelques pièces de monnaie, un ticket quelconque, un peu de poussière, autant de preuves que l’on était là, vivant·e.

Les choses – ces traces – qui composent l’oeuvre de Jason Dodge nous rappellent que le corps et l’esprit ne sont pas séparés, que nos corps interagissent et font partie d’autres systèmes et organismes. Dodge met en scène une expérience partagée où les causes et les effets, le contact et le lâcher-prise, font partie d’un même cercle. Les gestes de l’artiste rendent étranges ces résidus familiers, parfois insignifiants. L’exposition Tomorrow, I walked to a dark black star se confronte au langage contenu dans les choses existantes et à la manière dont nous persistons à les transformer.

Pour l’artiste, les choses existent, toujours au présent. Si nous sommes capables de retracer notre relation à une chose que nous reconnaissons, nous ne pourrons jamais connaître l’intégralité de son histoire. Dans l’exposition de Jason Dodge, le titre Tomorrow, I walked to a dark black star, tiré d’un poème d’Alfred Starr Hamilton (1914 – 2005, Montclair, New Jersey), représente aussi un objet trouvé. Choisi pour sa capacité à ouvrir une brèche entre le futur et le passé, il met en évidence la capacité de l’artiste à troubler l’aspect figé de toute entité.

JASON DODGE (1969, Newtown, Pennsylvanie) a présenté des expositions dans des galeries, des musées, des biennales, des centres d’art et des espaces gérés par des artistes depuis la fin des années 1990. Son travail est conservé dans plusieurs collections publiques. En 2012, Dodge fonde la maison d’édition de poésie Fivehundred places, qu’il dirige toujours aujourd’hui. Parmi ses expositions monographiques récentes, on peut citer Cut a Door in the Wolf au MACRO à Rome (2021) et They lifted me into the sun and packed my empty skull in cinnamon, une exposition en six parties organisée à Akwa Ibom à Athènes, Guimaraes à Vienne, MOREpublishers avec les Éditions Gevaert à Bruxelles, la Galleria Franco Noero à Turin et Gern en Regalia à New York (2020). Au coeur de la pandémie, chaque exposition a été installée par différents artistes, dont Eva Barto, SoiL Thornton et Giorgio Griffa. Parmi ses autres expositions monographiques, on trouve Jason Dodge with Ishion Hutchinson: The Broad Church of Night, au Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, sous le commissariat de Dieter Roelstraete, Chicago (2018), Water Paper Cut au Schinkel Pavillon à Berlin (2017) et Behind this machine anyone with a mind who cares can enter, IAC – Institut d’Art Contemporain de Villeurbanne (2016). Dodge a été le co-commissaire d’Enemy of the Stars avec Krist Gruijthuijsen au KW Institute à Berlin (2017). Son travail a récemment été inclus dans The Collection for the 21st Century à la Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart à Berlin (2023) et dans des expositions collectives au Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea à Turin (2020), au Hammer Museum à Los Angeles (2018) et au MIT List Visual Arts Centre à Cambridge, USA (2017). Il vit sur l’île de Møn.

Outre Epilogue, Jason Dodge a édité le catalogue de l’exposition A Model. Il a invité la directrice du Mudam, Bettina Steinbrügge, à écrire un essai et confié la conception graphique de l'ouvrage à Julie Peeters.

Commissaires : Bettina Steinbrügge, avec Sarah Beaumont, Clément Minighetti et Joel Valabrega

MUDAM LUXEMBOURG

Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean

3, Park Dräi Eechelen, 1499 Luxembourg-Kirchberg

mudam.com