Gisèle Vienne: This Causes Consciousness to Fracture @ Haus am Waldsee, Berlin

Gisèle Vienne

This Causes Consciousness to Fracture

Haus am Waldsee, Berlin 

12 September 2024 – 12 January 2025

Gisèle Vienne 

L’Etang, 2020 

Photo: Estelle Hanania 

Gisèle Vienne 

L’Etang, 2020 

Photo: Estelle Hanania 

Gisèle Vienne 

L’Etang, 2020 

Photo: Estelle Hanania 

For the first time in Berlin, the Haus am Waldsee, in collaboration with the Georg Kolbe Museum and Sophiensæle, presents the artistic work of Gisèle Vienne (b. 1976). The Haus am Waldsee is going to showcase a large-scale solo exhibition spanning the entire institution. Over the past twenty-five years, the French-Austrian artist, choreographer, and director has created a complex and idiosyncratic body of work that reconsiders our perceptual frameworks and invents artistic languages in order to pave the way for structural societal change. Gisèle Vienne’s creations, both on stage and within her visual practice, are developed together with dancers and actors, and are often animated by anthropomorphic figures and puppets to explore the sensuality, rage, and creativity of counterculture in all its subversive potential. Through bringing together her philosophical influences and formal experiences, her work on stage and otherwise seeks to overturn dominant orders and to invent new artistic forms that explore the possibility of encoding the world differently.

Vienne predominantly works on the stage where she expands her practice by incorporating dolls and life-size puppets, mainly representing adolescents. Her use of puppets, considered in the field of figurative sculpture, unfold a decidedly political dimension in relation to the body as a place where culturally and socially constructed systems of perception can be questioned, criticised, and possibly dislodged. By staging the longing and the fears of a crisis-bound youth, her protagonists’ sensibilities are validated in all their political and societal aspects. Gisèle Vienne’s work involves itself in the battle that rages against standardising, authoritarian forces which weigh heavy on the mind and body. ‘Gisèle Vienne embarks on a meticulous, determined and challenging quest. She investigates the framework of intelligibility that governs our gestures, our imaginary and our collective myths, our identities, our morals, and, ultimately, social order.’

The exhibition assembles the life-size puppets created by Vienne over the last twenty years in a carefully composed installation alongside a body of photographs by the artist, portraying the range and types of dolls. Staged in the guise of a puppet play the presentation is developed purposefully for the architecture of the Haus am Waldsee, where layers of language, sound, and movement are pitched against the silence and immobility of the exhibited dolls. Here, Vienne creates a field of tension between self-determination and heteronomy, questioning moments that cause consciousness to fracture. The title, This Causes Consciousness to Fracture, is borrowed from a track from the album Patterns of Consciousness (Important Records, 2017) by Caterina Barbieri, Gisèle Vienne’s collaborator for the stage piece Extra Life (2023).

Gisèle Vienne 

This causes consciousness to fracture, 2024 

Photo: Estelle Hanania 

Gisèle Vienne 

This causes consciousness to fracture, 2024 

Photo: Estelle Hanania 

The exhibition is part of a collaboration between the Haus am Waldsee, the Georg Kolbe Museum, and Sophiensæle, Berlin. All three institutions bring Vienne’s work, in all its complexity, to the city as part of Berlin Art Week 2024 and present different approaches to her multifaceted practice, located between photography, sculpture and installation, film, choreography, and theatre. Haus am Waldsee opens This Causes Consciousness to Fracture on 11 September 2024 (the exhibition runs from 12 September 2024 to 12 January 2025). At Georg Kolbe Museum the exhibition, presenting Viennes work in the context of female avantgarde artists, opens on 12 September 2024 (the exhibition runs from 13 September 2024 to 16 March 2025). The film Jerk by Gisèle Vienne will be shown as part of an artist talk at Sophiensæle on 15 September 2024. Performances of Crowd are planned for 14, 15, and 16 November 2024.

Gisèle Vienne is a Franco-Austrian artist, choreographer, and theatre and film director. Since her childhood, she was trained in visual arts by her mother, Dorothéa Vienne-Pollak. She studied dance and music, philosophy, and puppeteering. Over the past twenty years, her work, among them the productions Showroomdummies (2001/2009/2013/2020), I Apologize (2004), Kindertotenlieder (2007), Jerk (2008), This Is How You Will Disappear (2010), LAST SPRING: A Prequel (2011), The Ventriloquists Convention (2015) in collaboration with Puppentheater Halle, Crowd (2017), L’Etang (2021), and EXTRA LIFE (2023, invited to Theatertreffen Berlin 2024), has been touring in Europe, Asia, and America.  Vienne has frequently exhibited her photographs and installations in museums, among them the Whitney Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; and the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva. She has published two books: JERK/Through Their Tears with Jonathan Capdevielle, Dennis Cooper, and Peter Rehberg in 2011 and 40 PORTRAITS (2003–2008), in collaboration with Dennis Cooper and Pierre Dourthe in 2012. Her work has led to various publications and the original music of her shows to several albums.  

In the framework of the presentations in Berlin, a new publication dedicated to the collaborative work of Gisèle Vienne and Estelle Hanania including texts by Anna Gritz and Elsa Dorlin will be published by Haus am Waldsee together with Spector Books.

[1] Elsa Dorlin, ‘To the Accursed Role We Play: Gisèle Vienne’, Magazine Ruhrtriennale, 2021, online at: https://archiv.ruhrtriennale.de/2021/en/magazine/to-the-accursed-role-we-play-gisele-vienne/62.html.

Curated by Anna Gritz

HAUS AM WALDSEE 

Argentinische Allee 30, 14163 Berlin

hausamwaldsee.de

Artist James Allister Sprang @ Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, Maine - "Each of Us Are Several" Exhibition

James Allister Sprang 

Each of Us Are Several

Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland 

July 5 – August 24, 2024

James Allister Sprang 

Sunset Ripple (detail), 2023 

Woven cyanotypes, textile hardener, 

uv-resistant lacquer, wood, 27" x 18"

© James Allister Sprang / Courtesy Dowling Walsh Gallery

Dowling Walsh Gallery presents Each of Us Are Several,a solo exhibition of work by artist James Allister Sprang.

James Allister Sprang is a multidisciplinary artist who creates immersive audiovisual installations and complex woven two-dimensional works. "I make sensory poems for the spirit," he says. Similarly to how he weaves genre and instrumentation together when composing and producing musical scores, he weaves prints and watercolor into dimensional, textural works of abstraction that celebrate the sensory experience of Black life. His first exhibition with Dowling Walsh Gallery, Each of Us Are Several is a multimedia installation that includes sound, elements of text, and wall-based work. In its varied forms, James Allister Sprang's work fosters connections between the tangible and intangible nature of being human in this ever-spinning world, between past and present, the known and the unknowable.

JAMES ALLISTER SPRANG was born in Miami, FL, and received his BFA from The Cooper Union, New York, NY, and his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. He is a 2022 Knight Foundation Art + Tech Fellow, a 2023 Pew Fellow, and a 2024 Young Arts Fellow. He has been an artist-in-residence at The Kitchen, New York, NY; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine, Philadelphia, PA; Baryshnikov Arts Center Space, New York, NY; and the Fountainhead, Miami, FL. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the ICA at Maine College of Art and Design, Portland, ME; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Knockdown Center, New York, NY; and The Cooper Union, New York, NY, as well as in group exhibitions throughout the United States, including at the Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Seattle, WA; Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, FL, and David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, and Art Papers, among others. He lives and works in Portland, ME.

Also on view at Dowling Walsh Gallery:

Jenny Brillhart, July 5 – 27, 2024

Bo Bartlett, July 5 – 27, 2024

DOWLING WALSH GALLERY 

365 Main Street, Rockland, Maine 04841 

www.dowlingwalsh.com

Bo Bartlett @ Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, Maine - "Saudade" Exhibition

Bo Bartlett: Saudade 

Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland  

July 5 – 27, 2024

BO BARLETT

The Cove, 2022 

Oil on linen, 80" x 100"

© Bo Bartlett / Courtesy Dowling Walsh Gallery

Dowling Walsh Gallery presents Saudade,a solo exhibition of work by painter Bo Barlett.

Artist Bo Bartlett is highly regarded as a painter of contemporary realism. He paints grand human narratives and quiet private moments. His art is an act of discovery, a testament to living close to nature, and a record of the unsettled present. "The purpose of art is to wake us up," he says. In the exhibition, Saudade, a Portuguese word meaning a melancholy yearning, several paintings and pastel drawings depict figures poised on the edge between land and water, a liminal space of repose and unease, reflecting the uncertain nature of our time. Cinematic in scope and grounded in the figurative tradition, Bartlett's paintings speak to his training as a filmmaker and to the work of his mentor, Andrew Wyeth, as well as his artistic forebears, the American realist painters Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singleton Copley, and Benjamin West. 

BO BARTLETT received his Certificate of Fine Arts from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a Certificate of Filmmaking from New York University. In 2023, he received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Art from the New York Academy of Art and an honorary Certificate from the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts. His work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at MOCA Jacksonville, Jacksonville, FL; Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, Old Lyme, CT; The Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Weber Fine Art, Greenwich, CT; The Florence Academy of Art, Jersey City, NJ; Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI; and the Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL. Additionally, it has been included in numerous group exhibitions at museums throughout the United States and in Linz, Austria. Bartlett's work is in the collections of the Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, GA; Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR; Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO; Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC; La Salle University Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando, FL; Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA, among others. He lives and works in Columbus, GA, and Wheaton Island, ME.

DOWLING WALSH GALLERY 

365 Main Street, Rockland, Maine 04841 

www.dowlingwalsh.com

Josephine Pryde Exhibition @ Haus am Waldsee, Berlin - "How Frequency The Eye"

Josephine Pryde

How Frequency The Eye

Haus am Waldsee, Berlin

24 May - 18 August 2024

Josephine Pryde 

Causeway (W2–A1) (1), 2024 

Archival pigment print, 60 x 90 cm 

Courtesy the artist, Galerie Neu, Berlin 

and Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York 

Photo: Stefan Korte

Josephine Pryde 

Television (5), 2024 

Archival pigment print, 60 x 80 cm 

Courtesy the artist, Galerie Neu, Berlin 

and Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York 

Photo: Stefan Korte

Josephine Pryde 

Cabinets (14), 2019/24 

Silver gelatine print, 38,7 x 26,6 cm 

Courtesy the artist; Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York 

and Gandt, New York

With How Frequency The Eye, Haus am Waldsee presents a comprehensive exhibition by the Berlin-based British artist Josephine Pryde.

In her practice, Josephine Pryde explores modes of creation, consumption and production of images, most often through photography. Employing a wide range of technical means, she takes up ideas conveyed through camera-generated images, in order to challenge and re-examine established modes of reception and expectations as to how the visible may be rendered.

HAUS AM WALDSEE 

Argentinische Allee 30, 14163 Berlin

hausamwaldsee.de

Artist Jenny Brillhart @ Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, Maine - "Memoir 15" Exhibition

Jenny Brillhart: Memoir 15 

Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland  

July 5 – 27, 2024

Jenny Brillhart 

Bed and Window, 2024 

Oil on panel, 20" x 20"

© Jenny Brillhart / Courtesy Dowling Walsh Gallery

Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland presents Memoir 15,a solo exhibition of paintings by artist Jenny Brillhart.

Jenny Brillhart finds subjects for her exquisitely rendered paintings in unexpected and often overlooked places, materials and scenes plucked from everyday life that arrest her attention. Photographed and assembled in collages or made into three-dimensional arrangements in the studio, the commonplace become subjects for her spare, elegant compositions. Painted in mostly muted tones with considered notes of color, light and shadows play a dominant role, lending an atmosphere of stillness and calm to her work. The influence of Shaker design and craftsmanship runs deep, as do the Precisionist paintings of Charles Scheeler. Her masterly mark-making defines shape, space, and gravity. 

Jenny Brillhart received her BFA from Smith College, Northampton, MA, and MFA in painting from The New York Academy of Art, with additional studies at The Art Students League, New York, NY. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Kuckei + Kuckei Gallery, Berlin, Germany; Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, FL; and numerous other solo and group exhibitions throughout Maine, Florida, Germany, and Spain. In 2019, Jenny Brillhart's work was included in the New England Biennial Exhibition at the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA, and in 2017, in the two-person exhibition Temporality: Jenny Brillhart & Sara Stites at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. She lives and works in Blue Hill, ME. 

DOWLING WALSH GALLERY 

365 Main Street, Rockland, Maine 04841 

www.dowlingwalsh.com

Philip Guston @ Hauser & Wirth Zurich - "Philip Guston. Singularities" Exhibition

Philip Guston. Singularities 

Hauser & Wirth Zurich 

7 June – 7 September 2024 

Philip Guston in his Woodstock studio, 1970 

Photograph by F. K. Lloyd 

Image courtesy of The Guston Foundation and Hauser & Wirth

Philip Guston

Painter’s Forms, 1972

Oil on panel

121.5 x 152.2 x 2.3 cm / 47 7/8 x 59 7/8 x 7/8 in

125.6 x 156.5 x 5 cm / 49 1/2 x 61 5/8 x 2 in (framed)

© The Estate of Philip Guston

Courtesy the Estate of Philip Guston and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Christopher Burke

Philip Guston

Feet on Rug, 1978

Oil on canvas

203.2 x 264.2 cm / 80 x 104 in

206.7 x 268.3 x 5.1 cm / 81 3/8 x 105 5/8 x 2 in

(framed)

© The Estate of Philip Guston

Courtesy the Estate of Philip Guston and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Christopher Burke

‘I really only love strangeness.’ – Philip Guston

Hauser & Wirth Zurich presents an exhibition of late figurative PHILIP GUSTON paintings dated between 1968 and 1979 at the gallery’s second floor Limmatstrasse space. Curated in collaboration with Musa Mayer, the artist’s daughter and President of The Guston Foundation, ‘Philip Guston. Singularities’ presents well-known paintings alongside never-before exhibited works that explore the liberated motifs and instinctual forms that emerged in Philip Guston’s late works as they continued to evolve until his death in 1980. This exhibition in Zurich follows the major retrospective ‘Philip Guston’ at the Tate Modern, which closed in February 2024.

Excerpt from Musa Mayer’s guide to the exhibition:

The strange forms that inhabit the 12 paintings in this exhibition of Philip Guston’s late works are intensely personal and packed with imagery that haunted the artist throughout his painting life. Yet they also speak to us in a metaphysical language that resists analysis, but that we grasp deeply, intuitively. 

When asked, Guston would resist interpretating the iconic symbols that appeared in his paintings. He would respond that he, too, was mystified by these inexplicable forms, these singularities. ‘If I speak of having a subject to paint,’ he wrote, ‘I mean there is a forgotten place of beings and things, which I need to remember. I want to see this place.’ 

From this forgotten place emerge the artist’s singular responses to the beauty, pain and cruelty of the world, to the intimacies of his daily life, love and the passage of time and loss. These works are neither cerebral nor removed; they are timeless. And they feel alive, as if freshly painted. Complex surfaces disclose an exuberant love of the act of painting itself, Guston’s fidelity to an ancient process cultivated over a lifetime of close observation and rigorous interrogation of the art he loved and the necessity of painting. 

Philip Guston

Untitled, 1979

Oil on canvas

122 x 107 cm / 48 x 42 1/8 in

126 x 111 x 5.5 cm / 49 5/8 x 43 3/4 x 2 1/8 in (framed)

© The Estate of Philip Guston

Courtesy the Estate of Philip Guston and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: EPW Studio - Ellen Page Wilson

Philip Guston

Future, 1978

Oil on canvas

213 x 272 cm / 83 7/8 x 107 1/8 inches

216 x 275 x 5 cm / 85 x 108 1/4 x 2 inches (framed)

© The Estate of Philip Guston

Courtesy the Estate of Philip Guston and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Jon Etter

Philip Guston

Untitled, 1969

Acrylic on panel, 76.2 x 101.6 cm / 30 x 40 in

© The Estate of Philip Guston

Courtesy the Estate of Philip Guston and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

The exhibition opens with ‘Painter’s Forms’ (1972), one of Philip Guston’s masterpieces and according to the art historian Dore Ashton a ‘true distillation of Guston’s late oeuvre into a single painting.’ A few of his most familiar objects spew out of the painter’s mouth against a washed-out pink background: a boot, a bottle, a cigarette, the sole of a shoe, the top of an easel and a nameplate bearing his initials. It is a painting about the act of painting.

In many of these enigmatic late works, the distinction between interior and exterior space largely disappears, as domestic elements merge with outdoor scenes. In the allegorical landscapes in which these strange dramas unfold, Philip Guston’s signature cadmium red medium dominates the lower terrain, while the upper sections are a tranquil cloudless blue. 

In ‘Feet on Rug’ (1978), two feet are stranded in a barren red landscape against a sky-blue horizon, standing on a rug whose fringes morph into crawling insect legs. The bug-amoeba form is echoed in ‘Future’ (1978), where it appears to rotate alongside a snail like creature as a despairing human figure sinks into a postapocalyptic ground or sea. In ‘Untitled’ (1969)—one of the never-before exhibited paintings—an earlier version of this snail form, nautilus-chambered, curls its way into a cozy but colorless domestic interior.

In a 1972 slide talk, Philip Guston told students that when he returned to Italy after first exhibiting his late work, he wanted to see the paintings of the past that he loved. But not for their beauty. 

‘I wanted to see early frescoes of Last Judgments and end-of-the-world paintings. Particularly Romanesque paintings and Sienese fresco painters who paint huge, marvelous frescoes of the damned, all the tortures in hell, and so on. Heaven is always very dull, just a lot of people lined up. Like trumpets, they’re all lined up. There’s not much to look at. But when they’re going to hell the painter really goes to town. All kinds of marvelous stuff. That’s when they really enjoyed painting. I feel we live in comparable times. Oh yeah, and I want to paint that. I don’t want to copy, but I feel that’s the big subject matter. I don’t know how it’s going to come out. Well, I’ve begun. I’ve begun with this story.’

Philip Guston

Door and Room, 1978

Oil on canvas

203.2 x 292.1 cm / 80 x 115 in

© The Estate of Philip Guston

Courtesy the Estate of Philip Guston and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Sarah Muehbauer

Philip Guston

Aegean, 1978

Oil on canvas

172.7 x 320 cm / 68 x 126 in

176.5 x 322.9 x 5.7 cm / 69 1/2 x 127 1/8 x 2 1/4 in (framed)

© The Estate of Philip Guston

Courtesy the Estate of Philip Guston and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Genevieve Hanson

‘Door and Room’ (1978), on view for the first time, suggests a story of forced entry into the artist’s studio. The realities of the world intrude into his sanctuary, leaving the artist as witness to perpetual acts of war. The red and black scene is relieved only by the narrow strip of blue at the top, like a slight breath of air or a hope for peace. Yet in the bloody field of combat are unmistakable signs of a painterly, exuberant celebration of dynamic form and color. 

A demonstration of Philip Guston’s ability to introspectively capture the struggles of his time with meticulous composition and nuanced detail is ‘Aegean’ (1978). In this large painting, the convergence of outstretched hands, arms and shields in the form of trash can lids recalls his early work from the ‘40s, in which he depicted childhood street fights that mimicked the theatrics of warfare. But these games are clearly more than child’s play; they are precursors of war. The late Philip Guston addresses the inherent nature of violence as it manifested in the political turmoil of his era, evoking the Holocaust, the Vietnam War and the civil unrest that permeated the late 1960s. Expanding on this theme, Guston’s ‘Untitled’ (1979)—made in the last year of his life—can also be understood as an allegory of human struggle. Shields float in the void, creating a bizarre scene that oscillates between violence and humor. Philip Guston said, ‘I wanted to include everything. I felt, like everybody, disturbed about everything to such an extent that I didn’t want to exclude it from the studio, from what I did. Paint it. I didn’t think I was illustrating anything.’

Philip Guston’s late paintings retain a mysterious quality and all are driven by the artist’s desire to tell stories that not only reflect his state of mind but also provide insights into the social and political climate of his time. When seen together, they show the singular depth and complexity of his rich personal iconography.

Related posts: 

Philip Guston Now, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, March 2 – August 27, 2023 

Philip Guston - Late Paintings, Peder Lund, Oslo , September 20 - November 8, 2014 

Philip Guston: Works on Paper, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, May 2 - August 31, 2008

Philip Guston: Mind and Matter, McKee Gallery, New York, November 11 - December 23, 2003

Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Limmatstrasse

Limmatstrasse 270, 8005 Zürich

www.hauserwirth.com

Artist Lasse Juuti: Public Artwork in Oulunkylä - Helsinki - "The Contemporaries"

Lasse Juuti: The Contemporaries

Public Artwork in Oulunkylä - Helsinki 

Unveiling Ceremony: 14 June 2024 

LASSE JUUTI

The Contemporaries (detail), 2024 

HAM Helsinki Art Museum 

Photo: Sonja Hyytiäinen

LASSE JUUTI

The Contemporaries (detail), 2024 

HAM Helsinki Art Museum 

Photo: Sonja Hyytiäinen

LASSE JUUTI

The Contemporaries (detail), 2024 

HAM Helsinki Art Museum 

Photo: Sonja Hyytiäinen

LASSE JUUTI

The Contemporaries (detail), 2024 

HAM Helsinki Art Museum 

Photo: Sonja Hyytiäinen

A new public artwork, The Contemporaries, by artist LASSE JUUTI, has been installed in Oulunkylä. The proposal to brighten up the station with art came from the Oulunkylä residents through the OmaStadi participatory budgeting. The work has been curated by HAM Helsinki Art Museum, and an unveiling ceremony will take place at Oulunkylän Seurahuone on 14 June 2024. The Deputy Mayor for Culture and Leisure of Helsinki, Paavo Arhinmäki, will unveil the artwork, and the artist will be present at the event. The unveiling ceremony is open for all.

Lasse Juuti’s The Contemporaries explores the sense of time. In the work, you may see clocks, bicycles, and a pump trolley familiar from the railways. According to the artist, the brothers Now and Soon, with their moustaches shaped like clock hands, are turning the time forward by riding the pump trolley, stretching up to the ceiling of the underpass as they work. Sense of time is a malleable and even a fragmented experience: sometimes time flies by, sometimes it seems to drag on.

On the opposite wall, a piece resembling dandelion has sprouted on the wall. Upon closer inspection a historical high-wheel bicycle turned upside down. Its large wheel is positioned in front of the sun, and the figure riding the bike is keeping the sun – and thus time – moving. According to the artist, the work refers, among other things, to a sundial, which tells the time through the movements of shadows and light.

To celebrate the inauguration of Lasse Juuti’s work, an unveiling ceremony open to all Helsinki residents is held on 14 June 2024. The event starts at Oulunkylän Seurahuone, and the work will be unveiled in the station underpass at the end of the event. HAM Helsinki Art Museum’s Director Arja Miller will give the opening remarks of the event, and Helsinki Deputy Mayor for Culture and Leisure Paavo Arhinmäki will inaugurate the artwork.

- It is wonderful to finally get to unveil this work of art exploring time in a playful and multidimensional way. Lasse Juuti created the work specifically for the Oulunkylä station and residents of Oulunkylä. For us at HAM, it is important to bring art near people’s everyday lives in urban environments, Museum Director Arja Miller says.

 

Lasse Juuti at his studio

Photo: HAM / Maija Toivanen

Lasse Juuti (b. 1990) is known for his playful works stretching the boundaries of painting. Lasse Juuti’s pieces often break away from the traditional flat and rectangular form of painting, turning into three-dimensional combinations of painting and sculptures. The works are based on daily observations, a strong sense of rhythm, and references to architectural environment.

OmaStadi is Helsinki’s way of implementing participatory budgeting. It means that city residents can suggest ideas and vote on how residential areas are developed. The OmaStadi proposal to bring art to the Oulunkylä station underpass came from the Oulunkylä residents in 2021. The proposal received 464 votes and has now been realised.

Lasse Juuti’s work was curated by HAM Helsinki Art Museum, and it was created in cooperation with the City of Helsinki’s Culture and Leisure Division and Urban Environment Division. The work will be added to the City of Helsinki’s art collection, which is managed and curated by HAM.

Photographe Anouk Desury @ La Piscine, Roubaix - Exposition "Les poings ouverts"

Anouk Desury : Les poings ouverts 

La Piscine, Roubaix 

22 juin - 29 septembre 2024

ANOUK DESURY

Shaïna Monier 

© Light Motiv - Anouk Desury

/ Grande commande photojournalisme.

« La photographie est pour moi une manière de mieux comprendre le monde qui m’entoure. Très attachée à témoigner des histoires et des combats personnels, j’ai cette volonté forte de mettre en lumière ceux à qui on laisse trop peu la parole. C’est l’attachement au territoire de Roubaix et à chacune des personnes que je rencontre qui guide ma photographie» - Anouk Desury.

Jeune photographe de 28 ans, Anouk Desury découvre la ville de Roubaix pendant son BTS Photographie. Passionnée, elle complète sa formation par un diplôme universitaire en Photographie Documentaire (DU) à Carcassonne. Revenue s’installer à Roubaix, sa ville « de cœur et d’adoption », elle s’attache aux gens avec pour toile de fond ce territoire si singulier qu’est l’ancienne capitale textile et son travail s’inscrit dans la lignée des photographes humanistes.

Plusieurs sujets vont capter son attention. En 2017, la photographe entame un travail de mémoire auprès des habitants d’un quartier populaire en cours de rénovation, sujet qu’elle expose plusieurs fois dans la cité roubaisienne. Elle poursuit cette quête du quotidien en s’attachant à suivre pendant deux ans le combat d’une famille d’immigrés venue guérir un père ancien champion de boxe devenu hémiplégique. En 2020, lorsque la crise sanitaire éclate, Anouk Desury capte avec empathie la pandémie, à l’échelle du territoire roubaisien, mais aussi au CHU de Lille. Le reportage fait l’objet d’un ouvrage « Une évidence, malgré tout », publié par l’agence photographique et maison d’édition Light Motiv. En 2023, toujours avec le concours de Light Motiv et l’association SOLFA (Solidarité Femmes Accueil) à Lille, Anouk Desury porte un regard bienveillant sur six femmes, six parcours, victimes de violences. Ses photos saisies sur le vif sont publiées sous forme de recueil d’images et de textes écrits par Samira El Ayachi : « Ce soir je prendrai soin de moi », ouvrage qui témoigne avec force d’une forme de résilience.

En 2021, elle est lauréate de la plus grande commande publique photographique d’Europe pour son reportage intime sur trois jeunes boxeurs (Aziz, Djamal, Moustapha) et une boxeuse (Shaïna), de Roubaix, saisis dans leur environnement immédiat, leur entrainement, mais aussi leur lieu de vie. L’image en couleur est un outil et un moyen pour appréhender au-delà du ring les aspirations et l’importance que revêt pour eux cette discipline rigoureuse. Cette complicité nouée avec ces jeunes sportifs où l’humain transparaît est aujourd’hui présentée à la BnF dans l’exposition « La France sous leurs yeux ». L’été 2024, en écho au Festival des cultures urbaines (URBX), La Piscine présente dans ses cabines du premier étage, et dans la salle consacrée à l’Histoire de Roubaix, les portraits de ces jeunes Roubaisiens (28 photos), assortis de tenues d’entrainement.

Ces photographies ont été produites dans le cadre de la grande commande nationale "Radioscopie de la France : regards sur un pays traversé par la crise sanitaire" financée par le ministère de la Culture et pilotée par la BnF.

Cette exposition s’inscrit dans la programmation de la troisième édition du festival URBX, organisé du 11 au 23 juin 2024 à Roubaix et dans la métropole lilloise. urbxfestival.com

Commissariat : Karine Lacquemant, conservatrice en charge des collections et de la programmation arts-appliqués, La Piscine – Musée d’art et d’industrie André Diligent.

A voir aussi à la Piscine, les oeuvres du peintre roubaisien Paul Hémery (1921-2006), La Lumière en liberté, 22 juin - 1er septembre 2024 

LA PISCINE, ROUBAIX

Musée d’art et d’industrie André Diligent

www.roubaix-lapiscine.com

Collection de M Leuven - Museum Leuven - Musée de Louvain

La Collection de M  

Museum Leuven - Musée de Louvain

29 juin 2024 - 29 avril 2029

‘Moerassen van Genk’ (detail), Rodolphe de Lexhy, 1894,

Collection M Leuven, CC0, photo: M Leuven

/

‘I Sea’ (detail), Tina Gillen, 2018,

Collection Flemish Community M Leuven, photo: © the artist

« La Collection de M » couvre plusieurs siècles, elle comprend des œuvres de maîtres anciens, d'artistes contemporains et de créateurs de toutes les époques intermédiaires. La présentation au musée met en valeur cette collection abondante et vous incite à la regarder de près. Les pièces majeures et les joyaux inconnus font apparaître des correspondances inattendues ou mettent en lumière des sujets sociétaux d'une actualité brûlante.

La présentation fait ressortir la diversité captivante de la collection. Sculpture, peinture, vidéo, céramique, art du verre… quasiment toutes les disciplines y sont représentées. Vous y retrouvez des objets du patrimoine médiéval, des œuvres d'aujourd'hui et des pièces de haut niveau de bien d'autres époques. Pour un certain nombre d'entre elles, il s'agit même de la première présentation dans nos salles.

Si certaines œuvres évoquent clairement et manifestement des thématiques et des récits, d'autres en sont curieusement dénuées. Que montrent-elles aux visiteurs, en fait ? Et que ne montrent-elles pas – mais le racontent, peut-être ?

Comment la lumière et la matière entrent-elles en interaction ? Comment peut-on représenter le passage du temps ? Et comment les artistes se révèlent-ils dans leur travail ? Que se passe-t-il lorsqu'on est face à une œuvre d'art ? Que voit-on, qu'est-ce qui fait défaut, quel complément apporte-t-on soi-même ? Et est-ce qu'une œuvre créée il y a 800 ans peut nous éclairer sur la société actuelle ?

Près de 300 pièces de la collection vous proposent de nouvelles façons de regarder le monde et invitent à vous attarder à ce que vous inspirent les représentations anciennes et d'aujourd'hui.

MUSEUM LEUVEN

L. Vanderkelenstraat 18, 3000 Leuven 

www.mleuven.be

Helsinki Biennial 2025 - Save the Date

Helsinki Biennial 2025  

12 June - 21 September 2025 

The Helsinki Biennial 2025 will be held from 12 June to 21 September 2025 on Vallisaari Island, in Esplanadi Park, and at HAM Helsinki Art Museum. Curated and produced by HAM, this major visual arts event is organised with great passion for a broad audience, aiming to create a thought-provoking celebration of visual arts in the summertime maritime environment of Helsinki.

The Esplanadi Park offers the opportunity to explore 

the Helsinki Biennial 2025’s offerings for free in a 

central location in Helsinki 

Photo: Helsinki Partners / Lauri Rotko 

The Helsinki Biennial 2025 will be held from 

12 June to 21 September 2025 

on Vallisaari Island, in Esplanadi Park, 

and at HAM Helsinki Art Museum 

Photo: HAM / Matti Pyykkö 

The Helsinki Biennial is an ambitious major visual arts event offering a unique overall experience in Helsinki’s archipelago nature. The biennial’s cornerstones are site-specific commissioned works for each edition, where art enters into dialogue with Vallisaari Island’s history and its flourishing nature that has existed without human habitation for decades. The goal of HAM and the City of Helsinki is to make the Helsinki Biennial one of the most renowned international art biennials.

"We want to maximise the presence of art in Helsinki and envision the Helsinki Biennial as a city-wide celebration of art. The charming Esplanadi Park joins as a new venue, offering the opportunity to explore the biennial’s offerings for free in a central location in Helsinki. In 2025, in addition to art, we will pay special attention to the visitor journey and experience," says Arja Miller, Museum Director of the Helsinki Art Museum.

Blanca de la Torre and Kati Kivinen

Head Curators of Helsinki Biennial 2025 

Photo: Ilkka Saastamoinen / HAM / Helsinki Biennial 

The head curators of the Helsinki Biennial 2025 are Blanca de la Torre and HAM’s Head of Exhibitions, Kati Kivinen. De la Torre is a Spanish curator, art historian, and researcher. Her work lies at the intersection of visual arts, political ecology, ecofeminism, and sustainable creative practices. Kivinen is an art historian and curator who examines contemporary artistic approaches in relation to diverse cultural processes and socio-political and ecological issues.

More than 30 artists from around the world to take part

The head curators of the 2025 Helsinki Biennial have undertaken the challenging task of centring their work on non-human subjects. Nudging the focus away from human-centric perspectives creates space for others and aims to pinpoint more diverse ways of sensing and transmitting information.

“Within the ongoing climate and environmental crisis, new thinking that shifts away from human-centredness is called for. It’s essential to explore perspectives beyond the human in order to reimagine the relationship between humanity and nature. Art has the power to not only generate new agencies but also to create new realities. The third Helsinki Biennial aims to motivate positive action," says Kati Kivinen, co-curator of the 2025 Helsinki Biennial 2025.

A total of just over 30 artists or artist groups will participate in the Helsinki Biennial 2025. Artists from around the world will be included, with a particular focus on South America and Northern Europe. Around half of the artists will present new commissions or site-specific works.

Sustainability and maintaining the ecological balance are central values of the Helsinki Biennial, with environmental considerations being highlighted from the start, including in the selection of artists. The biennial aims to bridge theory and practice with a sustainability plan; the event not only proposes alternative realities but also creates them.

Co-curator Blanca de la Torre will spend most of this summer in Finland, and several artists will also visit Vallisaari in summer 2024. At HAM, contracts and production efforts are proceeding, and the first names of the participating artists will be announced in autumn 2024. The development of the audience engagement plan, as well as updates to the visitor journey and customer service initiatives, are also well underway.

HAM Helsinki Art Museum

www.hamhelsinki.fi

Exposition Paul Hémery @ La Piscine, Roubaix - "Paul Hémery (1921-2006). La lumière en liberté"

Paul Hémery (1921-2006)  

La Lumière en liberté  

La Piscine, Roubaix 

22 juin - 1er septembre 2024 

Paul Hémery (1921-2006) 

Portrait, 1965.

Huile sur toile, 73,5 x 50 cm. 

Collection particulière 

Photo : Alain Leprince.

Paul Hémery (1921-2006) est l’une des figures importantes du Groupe de Roubaix, rassemblement informel d’amis, peintres et sculpteurs, ayant débuté leur carrière artistique au Salon des Artistes Roubaisiens et dans les galeries de la ville. Ensemble, ils éveillèrent la région Nord-Pas-de-Calais à l’art contemporain durant les Trente Glorieuses. 

C’est à Bruges, dès son plus jeune âge, que Paul Hémery s’essaye à la peinture qu’il se met à pratiquer sérieusement et apprend en autodidacte au sortir de la guerre, exposant ses oeuvres au Salon des Artistes Roubaisiens dès 1952. En 1953, il expose à la galerie roubaisienne Louis Parenthou en compagnie de Jean-Robert Debock, Jean Roulland et Michel Delporte, nouant avec ce dernier une solide et fraternelle amitié. En 1954, à Roubaix, il participe à l’exposition Douze peintres, premier accrochage du groupe, à la galerie Dujardin. En 1955, son déménagement à Mouvaux le rapproche de ses aînés, les peintres René Jacob et Maurice Maes, qui eurent à cœur d’aider la jeune génération d’artistes. La même année, le musée de Tourcoing lui offre ses cimaises ainsi qu’à Delporte, tandis que la galerie Dujardin présente ses oeuvres en 1956. Léon Renar, que Paul Hémery a incité à ouvrir une galerie à Roubaix, défend le travail du peintre dans plusieurs expositions personnelles en 1961, 1962, 1964 et 1966.

Il est soutenu à cette époque par l’industriel textile et collectionneur roubaisien Philippe Leclercq, rejoint plus tard par Anne et Albert Prouvost, à la tête du Peignage Amédée Prouvost à Roubaix, qui vont devenir de véritables mécènes. Ils lui proposent un atelier dans la ferme des Marguerites, située sur leur domaine et Paul Hémery leur soumet bientôt l’idée d’y ouvrir un lieu d’échanges artistiques : Septentrion, le centre artistique de Bondues-Marcq, est inauguré quelque temps plus tard et présentera de nombreuses expositions. En 1970, il reçoit la commande d’une décoration monumentale de 100 m2, La Naissance de la lumière, peinte et installée dans les ateliers du Peignage Amédée. L’artiste quitte alors son métier de fonctionnaire de police à Tourcoing pour se consacrer à la peinture. Fasciné par la collection de minéraux rassemblée par les Prouvost, il s’en inspire pour créer des toiles abstraites. C’est le début de sa période minérale qu’il présente à Paris dans la galerie Henri Bénézit en 1972. La suite de son cheminement sera faite de va-etvient entre figuration et abstraction, s’adonnant au pastel par des visions crépusculaires pour revenir plus tard à l’huile dans des compositions colorées rythmées par le jazz. 

Au fil du temps, La Piscine a rassemblé un fonds de référence grâce à divers dons, mais surtout au legs concédé par son ami le peintre Michel Delporte en 2001, et grâce à la générosité de l’artiste lui-même en 2000 et 2002. Le musée propose ainsi de redécouvrir une figure aussi essentielle que méconnue du paysage artistique septentrional de l’après-guerre.

Commissariat scientifique et général : Germain Hirselj, historien de l’art.

Commissariat exécutif : Adèle Taillefait, conservatrice en charge des collections beaux-arts, et Bruno Gaudichon, conservateur en chef, La Piscine – Musée d’art et d’industrie André Diligent.

Catalogue publié à l’occasion de l’exposition aux éditions Invenit.

LA PISCINE, ROUBAIX

Musée d'art et d'industrie André Diligent 

23 rue de l’Espérance, 59100 Roubaix

roubaix-lapiscine.com

Like a Whirlwind: The Gender Plays by Marie Høeg & Bolette Berg @ f3 – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin

LIKE A WHIRLWIND 

The Gender Plays by 

Marie Høeg & Bolette Berg

f³ – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin 

June 14 – August 25, 2024 

Berg & Høeg 

In the studio: Marie operating the camera,

Bolette photographing the scene, 1895–1903

© Collection of Preus Museum

Berg & Høeg 

»Water Scene«. Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg

in a rowing boat in the studio, 1895–1903

© Collection of Preus Museum

Berg & Høeg 

Marie Høeg and her brother Karl crossdressing, 1895–1903 

© Collection of Preus Museum

Berg & Høeg, 

Bolette and Marie playing with friends, 1895–1903 

© Collection of Preus Museum

The exhibition LIKE A WHIRLWIND – The Gender Plays by Marie Høeg & Bolette Berg presents unique cross-dressing photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The photographers Bolette Berg and Marie Høeg founded the Berg & Høeg photo studio in the southern Norwegian town of Horten in 1894. The couple spent their entire adult lives working and living together. They published their fairly conventional portrait and landscape photographs as postcards. The Norwegians achieved international fame posthumously through their early photographic experiments with gender roles, which are probably rightly regarded as the first such complex photographic examination of the subject of cross-dressing.

When their estate was auctioned off in the 1970s, the Norwegian collector Leif Preus acquired the glass negatives of the two photographers. In addition to photographs of landscapes and reproductions of artworks, there were two boxes labeled "private" showing Marie Høeg, Bolette Berg and their siblings and friends posing in front of the camera. These shots had nothing in common with traditional portrait photography. Playful, humorous and full of joie de vivre, the photographs radically and cheekily question the ideals of femininity of the 19th and early 20th centuries as well as the gender roles of the time. The topicality of the imagery and the visual exploration of the theme, which is comparable to contemporary artistic practice, is astonishing. The two photographers take up stereotypes in a witty and fresh way and transform them into frivolous photographs with the help of props and costumes.

The modern approach of the photographers testifies to their self-confidence and a playful examination of social norms; at the same time, the estate makes it clear that the photographs were only intended for private use during their lifetime, not for the public. The photographic studio was the safe space, where the protagonists of the pictures could present themselves in a self-determined manner.

The Preus Museum, the Norwegian National Museum of Photography, manages the estate of Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg and owns the original glass negatives in its collection. The exhibition at f³ – freiraum für fotografie shows digital reproductions of this unique material, which is on display in Germany for the first time.

f3 – freiraum für fotografie

Waldemarstrasse 17, 10179 Berlin  

www.fhochdrei.org

Artist Gioele Amoro @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki – "Painted Words: A Fusion of Art and AI" Exhibition

Gioele Amoro 

Painted Words: A Fusion of Art and AI

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 

June 7 – August 18, 2024

Gioele Amaro is a digital painter whose latest exhibition is a collaboration between human creativity and AI. Amaro’s second solo exhibition at Galerie Forsblom again pushes the boundaries of art, this time going even further by plunging into the world of trompe l’oeil and exploring the enigmatic allure of ethereal, shimmering surfaces that keep shifting and changing. Gioele Amaro’s new paintings furnish convincing evidence of the artist’s masterful command of both traditional painting techniques and new digital technology.

Gioele Amaro’s latest innovative paintings are the outcome of an intriguing process through which he seamlessly fuses his creative vision with the boundless capabilities of artificial intelligence. Working with AI algorithms, the artist has crafted commands and words to generate compositions that capture the essence of painting in all its resplendence. His AI-generated paintings are designed on a computer, printed on canvas, and finalized with a coat of varnish to bring out its brightness and depth. This results in a blurring of boundaries between the virtual and physical worlds, inviting viewers to reflect on the fundamental nature of perception and reality.

The exhibition immerses visitors in a universe where something extraordinary is born from the marriage of technology and creativity. Gioele Amaro’s paintings revel in subtle interplays of light and color, creating complex patterns that dance alluringly across the surface of the canvas. His paintings offer us a glimpse into a future where art knows no boundaries.

Gioele Amaro (b.1986) is an Italian artist who studied at La Villette in Paris and at the University of Art and Architecture Mediterranea in Reggio Calabria. Amaro has held numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe and China. The artist divides his time between Paris and Milan.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki 

www.galerieforsblom.com

Exposition Paradis naturistes @ Mucem, Marseille - 600 photographies, films, revues, objets quotidiens, peintures, dessins, livres, estampes et sculptures

Paradis naturistes 

Mucem, Marseille 

3 juillet - 9 décembre 2024 

Affiche - Paradis naturistes - Mucem

Pierre Audebert 

Île du Levant, 1935 

Collection Éliane Schoeffert-Audebert 

© Archives Pierre Audebert

Un nouvel engouement se manifeste aujourd’hui pour les pratiques de nudité dans la nature, engouement qui va de pair avec la recherche d’une alimentation saine, végétarienne, ou encore le recours aux thérapeutiques naturelles, à la méditation ou au yoga en plein air. Ces modes de vie, mais aussi le rejet des diktats qui pèsent sur nos corps, sont autant de clés de lectures contemporaines pour comprendre les enjeux des naturismes d’hier et d’aujourd’hui.

La France est la première destination touristique au monde pour les naturistes : son climat tempéré et la présence de trois mers ont facilité l’installation de véritables communautés, qui – excepté en Suisse – ont peu de véritables équivalents ailleurs en Europe, où le naturisme se pratique de manière plus libre, hors de communautés constituées. Mais d’autres raisons, historiques, culturelles, juridiques, expliquent la singularité et la longévité des communautés installées en France.

Alors, vivre nu en communauté pour communier avec la nature serait-il le secret du bonheur et de la santé ? Pourquoi et comment la France est-elle devenue un « paradis naturiste » ? Mais au fait, naturisme et nudisme, est-ce la même chose ?

En tant que musée de société implanté à Marseille, cité méditerranéenne autour de laquelle plusieurs lieux naturistes importants se sont développés, il semblait naturel que le Mucem cherche à explorer ce phénomène singulier et fédérateur qu’est le naturisme, ou plutôt les naturismes, car ils sont pluriels.

Dans une scénographie solaire conçue par l’agence Trafik, l’exposition « Paradis naturistes » réunit 600 photographies, films, revues, objets quotidiens, peintures, dessins, livres, estampes et sculptures.

Ils sont issus des archives des communautés naturistes, ainsi que de collections privées et publiques françaises et suisses, parmi lesquelles : le Musée national d’art moderne MNAM/CCI Centre Pompidou, le musée du Louvre, la Bibliothèque nationale de France, le musée Bourdelle, le musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, le musée de l’Éphèbe et d’archéologie sous-marine d’Adge, le musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole, la Cinémathèque de Paris, l’INA, les Archives départementales des Yvelines, les Archives municipales d’Agde, le syndicat d’administration d’Héliopolis – île du Levant, la Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, la galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois, la Bibliothèque nationale suisse à Berne, le Bündner Kunstmuseum à Coire, la Cinémathèque de Berne, la Fondazione Monte Verita à Ascona.

Commissariat de l'exposition :

—Bernard Andrieu, philosophe, professeur au sein de l’Institut des sciences du sport et de la santé de Paris, université Paris Cité.

—Jean-Pierre Blanc, directeur de la villa Noailles.

—Amélie Lavin, conservatrice en chef au Mucem, responsable du pôle Corps, apparences, sexualités.

—David Lorenté, ingénieur des systèmes et techniques audiovisuels et multimédia à l’université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne et doctorant, université Paris Cité.

 Commissaires associés :

—Julie Liger, directrice adjointe de la villa Noailles.

—Thomas Lequeu, associé à la direction artistique pour la villa Noailles.

MUCEM, MARSEILLE

mucem.org