Lou Reed, Romanticism - Photo Exhibition @ Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

New Photographs by Lou Reed

Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

December 18, 2009 - January 9, 2010

  © LOU REED / Steven Kasher Gallery

 

Steven Kasher Gallery (New York) presents an exhibition of NEW PHOTOGRAPHS BY LOU REED accompanying the publication of his book, ROMANTICISM (Edition 7L/Steidl, 2009). The book and exhibition feature stunning black and white and color images of landscapes and architectural motifs, shot on the artist’s travels to Scotland, Denmark, Big Sur and elsewhere. The photographs are taken with a specially altered digital camera, which gives them an aura of strangeness, or otherworldliness.  They have a timeless quality but are simultaneously very modern, like Reed himself. They are surprisingly small in scale, making these striking natural images personal, portable, and intimate.

First with his group, The Velvet Underground, and then as a solo artist, Lou Reed has been making innovations in music since the 1960s. His name has become synonymous with the New York avant-garde, and with the city itself.  With his photography, Reed has been moving out of New York, while his first collection featured portraits of the city, this new one focuses on more pastoral settings.

This collection of photographs takes its name from the 18th and 19th century art movement that sought a return to the emotion, beauty, and unknowability of the natural as a counterpoint to industrial era’s emphasis on technological development and the pursuit of rational knowledge. Reed’s images recall this impulse: they focus on the aesthetic and the sublime; the splendor of a single tree against a cloudy Scottish sky, suffused with light. There is, however, also something uncanny and eerie about some of the photographs; the absence of human figures, a road leading over a bridge into a dense, shadowy forest. Reed has recently adapted the poet and writer Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, the supernatural is a theme that underwrites much of his recent work. Perhaps, like the Romantics, Reed is commenting on another Industrial Revolution — the rapid developments of globalization are once again placing the natural into both literal and metaphoric danger — the beauty of his landscapes takes on a more urgent meaning.

Lou Reed says of his work:

          “I love photography. I love digital. I love digital. It’s what I’d always wished for. Being in the camera and experiencing the astonishing accomplishment of the creations of life sparked through the beauty of the detailed startling power of the glass lens. A new German lens brings a mist to me. The colors and light I come to see through the beauty of the camera. A love that lasts forever is the love of the lens of sharpness – of spirit warmth and depth and feeling. It makes my body pour emotion into the heartbeat of the world. A great trade and exchange. I think of the camera as my soul. Much like a guitar. My lovely Alpa has rosewood grips. What more could you need?”

Lou Reed has been working in multiple media for over thirty years. Along with his band, The Velvet Underground, he was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. He has acted in and composed music for a number of films, and is the recipient of the Chevalier Commander of Arts and Letters from the French government. He is the author of Pass thru Fire: The Collected Lyrics and the play The Raven. Reed acted as guest art director for the Winter 2008/2009 issue of Francis Coppolla’s Zeotrope Magazine. His previous books of photography, both published with Steidl, are Lou Reed’s New York and Emotion in Action. Lou Reed’s latest work The Raven, published by Le Seuil, is a reworking in play form of some works of Edgar Allan Poe, illuminated by the graphic artist Lorenzo Mattotti.

Steven Kasher Gallery is located at 521 W. 23rd St. New York, NY 10011.

Lou Reed: Romanticism one-day exhibition was on view on December 17 and continue in back gallery from December 18 through January 9, 2010.
 
Other post on Wanafoto about Steven Kasher Gallery’s Exhibitions: Tracey Moffatt, Love and Adventures

Modernist Jewelry Arthur Smith

 

Exhibition Catalog is available at Brooklin Museum

 

From the Village to Vogue:
Modernist Jewelry of ART SMITH

From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith will honor the gift of twenty pieces of silver and gold jewelry created by the Brooklyn-born modernist jeweler ARTHUR SMITH (1917–1982), primarily from CHARLES RUSSEL, Smith’s companion and heir. This small exhibition is on view at the Brooklyn Museum since May 14, 2008 through March 14, 2010 (and not May 17, 2009 as previously announced)

The presentation of Art Smith jewelry will be enhanced by archival material from the artist’s estate, including his working tools, the original shop sign designed by Smith, period photographs of models wearing his jewelry, preparatory sketches, and account books. Presented along with Smith’s work are twenty-three pieces of modernist jewelry from the permanent collection by such artists as Elsa Freund, William Spratling, Frank Rebajes, Eva Eisler, Ed Weiner, Claire Falkenstein, Jung-Hoo Kim, and others. Inspired by surrealism, biomorphicism, and primitivism, Art Smith’s jewelry is dynamic in its size and form. Although sometimes massive in scale, his jewelry remains lightweight and wearable due to his awareness of the female form. The jewelry dates from the late 1940s to the 1970s and includes his most famous pieces, such as a “Patina” necklace inspired by the mobiles of Alexander Calder; a “Lava” bracelet, or cuff, that extends over the entire lower arm in undulating and overlapping forms; and a massive ring with three semiprecious stones that stretches over three fingers.

Trained at Cooper Union, Art Smith, an African American, opened his first shop on Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village in 1946. He later moved the business to 140 West Fourth Street, where it remained throughout his career. Not only one of the leading modernist jewelers of the mid-twentieth century, Smith was also an active supporter of black and gay civil rights, an avid jazz enthusiast, and a supporter of early black modern dance groups.

This exhibition is organized by Barry Harwood, Curator of Decorative Arts, Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition is supported by the Harold S. Keller Fund with additional support from the Donald and Mary Oenslager Fund.

On View Since May 14, 2008 through March 14, 2010, at Brooklyn Museum

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/

Updated 12-2009

Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer - Retrospective Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Alice Guy Blaché Retrospective 

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

November 6, 2009 – January 24, 2010

Alice Guy Blaché (1873–1968) 

Madame a des envies (1906, Gaumont). 
Courtesy of Gaumont Pathé Archives, Paris

An unprecedented large-scale retrospective of the films of Alice Guy Blaché (1873–1968) —the first woman director in the history of cinema— is presenting by the Whitney Museum of American Art. Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer features more than eighty rare films screened in the Whitney’s Kaufman Astoria Studios Film and Video Gallery.

After a pioneering decade working in Paris at Gaumont (1896–1907) as its first director and head of production, Alice Guy Blaché came to the United States where she was the first woman to establish and run her own film company, Solax (1910–1914), located initially in Flushing, New York, and then in Fort Lee, New Jersey; she continued working in the US as an independent director through 1920. During these formative years of cinema’s evolution, Alice Guy Blaché wrote, directed, or produced more than 1,000 films, ranging from under a minute long to multi-reel features. She made films in a wide range of genres, including comedies, dramas, Westerns, fables, detective stories, a biblical epic, and films based upon literary classics. She wrote scripts, experimented with camera techniques, made films that were color-tinted by hand, and shot more than one hundred synchronized sound films between 1902 and 1906, decades before sound became the standard for the medium.

Until a decade ago, only forty of her films were known to exist; today, some 130 works have been identified in archives internationally. The recovery of Alice Guy Blaché’s work—both its identification as hers and its conservation and restoration—has involved an enormous worldwide undertaking by film historians, archivists, and preservationists. Joan Simon, the Whitney’s curator-at-large and organizer of the exhibition, notes: “Alice Guy Blaché—cinema’s first woman director, screenwriter, producer, businesswoman, and studio owner—is unique in film history. This exhibition introduces new audiences to a littleknown but historically key figure who had decade-long careers in France and the US, and affords film scholars a ‘critical mass’ of Blaché’s body of work by which to place her films within the international context of early cinema. Her films are important examples of film’s evolution as popular entertainment: they are bold, her stories fascinating, her point of view singular, her comedies raucous, and her characters (especially her women and child heroes) complex. Her career is worthy of renewed investigation and she deserves recognition as a pioneer of early cinema.”

Born in Paris in 1873, and raised in Switzerland, Chile, and France, Alice Guy, as she then was known, studied the new “sciences” of typewriting and stenography, and began working as secretary to Léon Gaumont in 1894 at Le comptoir général de photographie, a manufacturer of still cameras and other optical equipment. This was the corporate predecessor of L. Gaumont & Cie, established in 1895, soon to become one of the world’s leading film companies and today the oldest in continuous operation. Alice Guy learned the photography business through correspondence, familiarizing herself with clients, marketing, and the company’s stock of cameras, and became acquainted with the new technologies being invented for shooting and exhibiting motion pictures.

Inventors Gaumont and the Lumière Brothers were friends as well as competitors; both were trying to solve the problem of projecting film. Alice Guy and Léon Gaumont were among the audience at a private screening in March 1895, when the Lumières presented their projection of a film of workers leaving a factory.

Until this time at Gaumont, filmmaking had been in the service of science or used as a promotional tool for selling cameras. “In the beginning, everyone was always shooting street scenes, parades, or moving trains, which I did not find terribly interesting,” Alice Guy later recalled. “So one day I said to Monsieur Gaumont: ‘It seems to me we could do something better.’” Perhaps with the courage of youth, Alice Guy asked Gaumont if she could try making a film that would tell a story. He said yes. Thus, Alice Guy became Gaumont’s first director (although the term did not yet exist) and soon became head of production, spending the next decade making films at Gaumont’s studios in Paris and elsewhere in Europe, between 1896 and 1907.

Alice Guy’s earliest films at Gaumont share certain subjects and visions with some of her colleagues, such as the Lumières. As Joan Simon writes in her catalogue essay, “The magical antics when body parts come undone from a body, as in Guy’s Chirurgie fin de siècle (Fin de Siècle Surgery, 1900), are in the spirit of Méliès’s famous and numerous deconstructions. She also, like many of her contemporaries, made travel films and dance films, sometimes the two genres conveyed in one moving picture, such as her dances filmed in Spain, particularly the beautiful hand-tinted films Le Bolero (1905), performed by Miss Saharet, and Tango (1905).”

Alice Guy’s distinct point of view was to be seen in her story films, and she was among the first to make them. She worked from scripts, which she wrote as well as directed. Though she produced such typical period genres as chase films or those derived from fairy tales, these often featured a twist. The folktale of children born in a cabbage patch is the subject of her first film, La Fée aux choux (The Cabbage Fairy). In the story, babies are presented as if they are new cameras for sale. The theme of the complications of parenthood recurs in many of her films, whether La Fée Printemps (1906), in which a fairy magically transforms winter to spring and delivers a newborn from a garden to expectant parents, or Madame a des envies (Madame Has Cravings, 1906), a new kind of chase film, where a pregnant woman races through town, husband and child in tow, stealing foods to satisfy her cravings. Alice Guy also addressed the duplicity and brutality of a stepmother (La Marâtre, 1906) and the same year made her epic La Vie du Christ, with sets and costumes based on the realist illustrations in a famous James Tissot bible, using some twenty-five sets and hundreds of extras, for a film running ca. thirty-four minutes long, at a time when the norm was a maximum of six or seven minutes.

Alice Guy’s decade-long career at Gaumont alone would have earned her a place in cinema history. However, this was followed by a second decade in the United States, from 1910 to 1920, where she was known as Madame Blaché (or Alice Blaché). Here she worked at her own company, Solax, which existed from 1910 to 1914, first in Flushing, New York, and later in Fort Lee, New Jersey (where she built a studio plant at a cost of $100,000), and subsequently as an independent for companies such as Metro and Pathé. While some of her American films explore genres new for the filmmaker, including detective stories and Westerns, others address in new ways themes she had already considered in France. Several Solax films continue her use of cross-dressing—Officer Henderson (1913), for example, in which undercover police dress in drag to pursue purse-snatchers—that was earlier employed to great comic effect in Les Résultats du féminisme (1906) to depict a world where male and female roles are reversed (the latter also re-told in her Solax film In Year 2000, made in 1912, whereabouts unknown). Others again ponder the nuances, the difficulties, and the human comedy of domesticity, such as Mixed Pets (1911), in which neither baby nor dog is wanted in a household, or A House Divided (1913), in which a couple estranged by suspicions of infidelity must live together under one roof and communicate exclusively by handwritten notes. She also continued to make films which feature child heroes and heroines, such as Falling Leaves (1911), as in the earlier Gaumont film Une Héroine de 4 ans (1907).

Madame Blaché also addressed modern social problems in several of her films. The Making of an American Citizen (1912) is a story of immigration and relearning the expected roles of husbands and wives. Other films explore prejudicial views toward the poor (The Thief, 1913), and, in the case of A Fool and His Money (1912), the follies of social climbers and the well-off. This last film is also significant for being the earliest known film to feature an all black cast.

In her three surviving feature-length films, The Ocean Waif (1916), The Empress (1917), and The Great Adventure (1918), her leading women demonstrate increasing sophistication, finding their way by using their wits and with the help of some surprising comrades. Her characters (and relationships between characters) are psychologically complex, even as they play out the kind of melodramas that were becoming the standard in the industry at that time.

Alice Guy Blaché (the name she chose to use after her divorce and return to France in 1922) produced a singular body of work that spans the evolution of filmmaking on two continents. Her oeuvre in both her French and American periods reveals her to have been a gifted scriptwriter who transformed imagined picture-stories into motion pictures and a new kind of director who asked actors to “be natural.” She established the house style at Gaumont, trained its next generation of directors (including Ferdinand Zecca, Etienne Arnaud, Louis Feuillade), and then did the same at her US company, Solax. Her role as a studio owner is still rare in the film industry; among the few women who followed her were Mary Pickford and Lucille Ball.

Although her moviemaking career ended in 1920, when she was only forty-seven years old, cinema occupied her whole life. She corresponded with historians and others, sharing documents with them, to correct early film histories that had not included her work. Well into her eighties, she gave lectures and was interviewed on radio and television about her roles in the nascent film industries of the US and France. In 1955, she was recognized with the Legion of Honor (France’s highest non-military honor), and in 1957 was honored by the Cinémathèque Française. The posthumous publication of her memoirs, first in French in 1976 and then in English in 1986, with the assistance of film historian Anthony Slide, initiated an important cycle of rediscovery. In his catalogue essay, film historian Alan Williams calls Blaché’s memoirs “one of the very best books of its kind…a basic text in the history of early cinema.”

This exhibition underscores the importance of film preservation in the study of early cinema. From the American portion of Madame Blaché’s career, five films that are in the collection of the Library of Congress have been restored by the Whitney, including the feature The Ocean Waif. Two others, also in the collection of the Library, have been restored by gift: Falling Leaves (1911), thanks to Dayton Digital Filmworks, and Mixed Pets (1911), with a grant from New York Women in Film and Television, Women’s Film Preservation Fund and contributions by the Whitney. The occasion of this exhibition has been the catalyst for other archives to begin to restore films in their collections, including the Academy Film Archive-Center for Motion Picture Study, Los Angeles; BFI, London; and the Filmoteca Española, Madrid.

To accommodate requirements for limited screenings of archival film material and also allow wider access to these films, for the twelve Sundays and select Friday evenings during the exhibition’s run, special 35mm projections will take place, many of them with live musical accompaniment. The weekly screenings will be shown in other formats, including beta-sp and HD. A selection of Guy’s synchronized sound films will be screened and heard; several suites of silent films will be accompanied by recorded scores by contemporary composers Du Yun, Missy Mazzoli, Tamar Muskal, and Tender Forever—commissioned by Whitney Live and the French Institute Alliance Française—and by Barbara Harbach.

Catalogue

The Whitney’s exhibition of the films of Alice Guy Blaché is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue (fifty-nine black-and-white images; eight-page color section) published by Yale University Press, in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, with contributions by noted film scholars Jane Gaines, Alison McMahan, Charles Musser, Alan Williams, film historian and preservationist Kim Tomadjoglou, and the show’s organizer, Joan Simon.

Alice Guy Blaché Film Score Project: A Whitney Live Commission in Partnership with the French Institute Alliance Française

Whitney Live, the Whitney’s performance series, has commissioned scores by four vanguard women composers—Du Yun, Missy Mazzoli, Tamar Muskal, and Tender Forever—for four Alice Guy Blaché film programs. The commissioned-score project is a partnership between the Whitney and the French Institute Alliance Française; the recorded scores will be heard with the films during the run of the Whitney exhibition and will be premiered in live performance, along with the projected films, at Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, on September 29th as part of FIAF’s 2009 multimedia “Crossing the Line” festival (fiaf.org)

Other Special Events

November 14, 2009: “Woman with a Movie Camera: Alice Guy Blaché Symposium,” co-sponsored by the Whitney’s Education Department and the Department of Cinema Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. At the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Film Center, New York University, 36 East 8th Street, New York.

December 4, 2009: Film Evening Honoring the Women’s Film Preservation Fund (WFPF) of New York Women in Film and Television. A special screening of four of Guy Blaché’s Solax films (Mixed Pets, 1911; A Fool and His Money, 1912; A House Divided, 1913; and Matrimony’s Speed Limit, 1913), restored by the WFPF, New York Women in Film and Television. Drake Stutesman (editor, Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media) will introduce the evening; the screening will be followed by a conversation with Diana Little (preservationist, Cineric) and Mona Jimenez (cinema studies professor and associate director of NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program). At the Whitney Museum of American Art.

December 5, 2009: Special Screening of Alice Guy’s La Vie du Christ (1906) at the Brooklyn Museum. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition James Tissot: The Life of Christ (October 23, 2009-January 2010), organized by Judith F. Dolkart. Alice Guy based the twenty-five sets and costumes for her silent film epic La Vie du Christ (The Life of Christ) on illustrations from Tissot’s watercolors published as the so-called Tissot Bible, a turn-of-the-century bestseller in England, France, and the US. The Brooklyn Museum exhibition includes 124 selected from the complete set of 350, as well as a copy of the Tissot Bible. The original watercolors were a pivotal acquisition of the Brooklyn Museum in 1900, the year Alice Guy herself acquired a copy of the Tissot Bible in Paris. This screening, a partnership between the Whitney and the Brooklyn Museum, affords visitors a chance to compare the mediums of painting (and its translation into printed images) and film as related narrative forms. Following the screening will be a discussion comparing and contrasting the points of view of filmmaker and painter, led by Judith F. Dolkart, Associate Curator, European Art, Brooklyn Museum, and curator of the Tissot exhibition; Catherine Morris, Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum; Joan Simon, Whitney curator-at-large and organizer of the Alice Guy Blaché exhibition. For more information, visit brooklynmuseum.org. Presented as part of Target First Saturdays at the Brooklyn Museum. The Brooklyn Museum, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY.

Whitney Museum of American Art

November 6, 2009 – January 24, 2010

Jenny Lexander: Sisu, Photography Exhibition @ Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki

Jenny Lexander

Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki

26 November 2009 - 6 January 2010 

© Jenny Lexander - www.lexander.se 

Courtesy of Finnish Museum of Photography

On November 30 2009, it was 70 years since the outbreak of the Winter War.

Finnish war veteran Aarne Körkkö tells: "We had been fighting for two months, and we were dirty as hell and our clothes were in tatters. Then along came the Swedish troops, the ‘gentlemen', who were stylishly dressed in white. The officers had white fur coats."

© Jenny Lexander - www.lexander.se 

Courtesy of Finnish Museum of Photography

The Swedish fashion photographer JENNY LEXANDER (b. 1976) has photographed Finnish and Swedish war veterans and the freezing winter landscapes where the combat took place.

One of the veterans photographed is Lexander's grandfather. Jenny Lexander has always wondered the silence around the war issues. The exhibition particularly wants to tell the younger generation about the historical significance of the Winter War, Continuation War and Lapland War for Finland and Sweden, and thus increase awareness of the shared history of the Nordic countries.

Chairman of Disabled war veterans association of Finland Juhani Saari has opened the exhibition.

The SISU exhibition is a collaboration between the photographer Jenny Lexander and AD Susanna Knyphausen. The producer is Johanna Suo, founder of Innovation Culture Europe (ICE). The main goal of Ice is to increase understanding between European nations through art and cultural projects. www.ice-eu.net

The Finnish Museum of Photography 

Cable Factory, Tallberginkatu 1 G 00180 Helsinki

Christine Crozat - Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen - Exposition Et à partir de là. Dessins, estampes et vidéos de Christine Crozat

Et à partir de là 

Dessins, estampes et vidéos de Christine Crozat

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen

21 novembre 2009 - 28 février 2010

Derrière les vitres du TGV qui la mène régulièrement de Paris à Lyon, Christine Crozat (*1952) à Lyonpoursuit une sorte de promenade mentale. Pendant ses allers et retours, elle note et dessine directement sur une feuille de papier les fragments d’un paysage qui disparaît, le vol des oiseaux, un champ de colza, une girouette sur un clocher; son regard parcimonieux prélève au gré des trajets les formes furtives qui viennent se superposer aux souvenirs et aux projections plus intimes de la conscience.

De grands dessins, réalisés entre 2007 et 2009, sont plus particulièrement inspirés par le mobilier urbain. Sur les papiers fins et transparents cohabitent horloges, panneaux de signalisation, noms de rues et pictogrammes rencontrés au cours de déambulations à Lyon et à Prague, ou bien encore lors de voyages en Suisse, en Italie, en Allemagne et plus récemment en Géorgie. Anodins et invisibles à force d’être vus, ces éléments épars participent à la recomposition d’espaces poétiques et ludiques qui invitent le spectateur à une nouvelle circulation. 

Une suite de dessins, exécutée à Caen, complète et renforce la cohérence de cet ensemble placé sous le double signe de la mobilité et de la légèreté.

Les vidéos, conçues et réalisées avec Pierre Thomé, s’inscrivent résolument dans la même veine. Elles transforment les actions et les choses du quotidien en récits à moins qu’elles ne les convertissent, comme dans Galata, en un séduisant ballet de signes graphiques.

Commissariat : Caroline Joubert

MUSEE DES BEAUX-ARTS DE CAEN

Le château -14000 Caen

www.mba.caen.fr

Mexican Modern Painting Exhibition at Singapore Art Museum - Camino a la Modernidad - The Path to Modernity: Mexican Modern Painting

Mexican Modern Art Exhibition
Camino a la Modernidad

The Path to Modernity:
Mexican Modern Painting

Singapore Art Museum

15 November 2009 -3 January 2010

 
Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), Self-Portrait with Medallion, 1948
Oil on masonite, 50 x 40 cm - Private Collection
Courtesy of the Singapore Art Museum

The Singapore Art Museum and the Embassy of Mexico presents Camino a la Modernidad, The Path to Modernity: Mexican Modern Painting.   The exhibition examines the myriad artistic languages that constitute the formation of Mexican modernism. Camino a la Modernidad, The Path to Modernity: Mexican Modern Painting  is the largest Mexican art exhibition ever held in Singapore and Southeast Asia.

The exhibition was opened by the Spouse of the President of Mexico, Mdm. Margarita Zavala on Saturday, 14 November, at the Glass Hall, Singapore Art Museum. 

Camino a la Modernidad, The Path to Modernity: Mexican Modern Painting  traces major developments in  Mexican art from the 1900s to the 1950s, where Mexican society underwent tremendous changes in social and political spheres that impacted much of its artistic expression. The Mexican Revolution (1910) laid the foundation for a new artistic movement, Mexican Mural Renaissance, which attempted to bridge the class divide in the construction of a national identity and aesthetic, through bringing art to the masses in the form of highly accessible, outdoor public art murals. The exhibition features over 70 works  from important Mexican public and private collections, including works by renowned mural artists Diego Rivera (1886-1957), David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), José Clemente Orozco, Roberto Montenegro, Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), Maria Izquierdo (1902-1955) and Frida Kahlo (1907-1954).

The exhibition is organised  in three sections: Agents of Change, Charting New Territories and The Graphic Arts.

Agents of Change highlight the aspect of artists being   conscious of their roles as agents of social change, and many of them were aware of the need for art to be socially-conscious. 

The second section Charting New Territories shows how the artists attempt to break new ground in their art.  We can see this in the exaltation of Mexican landscape as a hallmark of national identity, the development of industrial scenes as a new genre of Mexican landscape painting, as well as the exploration of abstract art by artists such as Germán Cueto, Carlos Mérida and Kishio Murata, as a means of crossing the boundaries of aesthetic definition.

The Graphic Arts section presents the artists‟ belief  in  the  idea of art as a communicative tool  to the masses, and many of the illustrations here attempt to highlight the issues of the working classes and farming communities.

Says Director, Singapore Art Museum, Tan Boon Hui,  “Camino a la Modernidad, The Path to Modernity: Mexican Modern Painting  is the largest Mexican Art Exhibition ever to be showcased in Singapore and Southeast Asia.  The exhibition examines the myriad artistic languages that constitute the formation of Mexican modernism.  Through the selection of the artworks in this exhibition, we see how different artists interpreted the notions of „modernity‟ and „progress‟, and quite significantly,  their mixed results.  The Singapore Art Museum is privileged to work with the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico and the Embassy of Mexico in realising this magnificent exhibition.”                      

Says Mr. Antonio Villegas, Ambassador-Designated of Mexico, Embassy of Mexico, “In 2010, Mexico will be celebrating the 200th Anniversary of its Independence and 100th Anniversary of the Mexican revolution, Camino a la Modernidad: The Path to Modernity: Mexican Modern Painting. This is an exhibition that portraits the long history of Mexico and the vastness of the Mexican culture and art. We, at the Mexican Embassy in Singapore are very proud to share this heritage with the people of Singapore.  This is the first time that such a magnificent collection of Mexican art, 25 of the artworks are National and Cultural Heritage and it is inaugurated during the official visit of the President of Mexico., H.E. Mr. Felipe Calderon to Singapore. Mdm. Margarita Zavala, Mexico‟s First Lady will be the Guest of Honour during the opening on Saturday, November 14th, 2009. The Embassy of Mexico hopes that this Exhibition could serve as an invitation to our friends in Singapore to visit Mexico to learn and experience our uniqe culture.”  

Curator Michelle Ho’s Tour: The Art of Mexico

Travel back in time to a tumultuous era in Mexico‟s history  and see the evolution in painting styles and themes from the 1900s to the 1950s. How did the artists respond to the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and what role did the Mexican Mural Renaissance play in the creation of a national identity?

Venue  SAM Lobby
Fees Free. Registration Required

Singapore Art Museum
71 Bras Basah Road, Singapore 189555

Monday to Sunday: 10am to 7pm, with extended hours and  
FREE Admission on Friday from 6pm to 9pm

Bridget Riley, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London - New Paintings, Wall Paintings and Gouaches

Bridget Riley 

New Paintings, Wall Paintings and Gouaches 

Timothy Taylor Gallery, London 

7 November - 23 December 2009 

Timothy Taylor Gallery and Karsten Schubert present the second exhibition in the gallery by the internationally acclaimed painter Bridget Riley. Working specifically to the cool and elegant proportions of the gallery space, Bridget Riley premieres two specially created wall paintings, as well as new paintings and gouaches.

Bridget Riley’s art is one of continual discovery and exploration, of testing the limits and of uncovering new challenges: “You cannot deal with thought directly outside practice as a painter: ‘doing’ is essential in order to find out what form your thought takes” (Work, Bridget Riley, Flashback, Arts Council catalogue 2009).

After the success of Bridget Riley’s colourful stripe paintings of the 1980s, the artist sought new challenges and a way to move the eye in different ways over the canvas. The result of her subsequent investigations with collage and drawing was the creation of a lively new form, a patch of colour similar to a brush mark, which was free of any associations with the square, the stripe, or other recognisable forms. This particular shape, refined and developed in recent years, offers the opportunity for an incredible melding of form and colour. Bridget Riley uses its inherent curves to create works of great energy and movement, building up complex layers of interlocking vertical and diagonal planes. In her most recent paintings, these dynamic, layered forms interrupt and threaten to break out from the picture plane – overhanging the frieze-like frame, they jostle and strain to escape, demonstrating Riley’s consummate creation of a ‘supple plastic space’ within the fictive realm of painting.

Bridget Riley’s work is a compelling and complex study of how form and colour are interwoven, and the complexities and joys to be had from that co-mingling. Commenting in Frieze magazine on Riley’s major exhibition in Paris last year, Michael Bracewell observed that over the past 50 years, Riley has been engaged in “an epic excursion into the consciousness of time, place and memory, refined from an infinity of elements into a universal and symphonic text, open to all”. As the artist herself observed, “Pure perception – untrammelled perception – is surprising: startling, exciting, powerful and beautiful” (Bridget Riley in conversation with Lynne Cooke, 2005).

Bridget Riley’s lifelong achievement and contribution to the history of painting is widely recognized. This year, she was awarded the prestigious Kaiser Ring of the City of Goslar with previous recipients including Henry Moore, Max Ernst, Joseph Beuys and Jenny Holzer amongst others. She is also the first subject in a new series of retrospective exhibitions entitled Flashback. The show opened at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool this September celebrating significant early purchases by The Arts Council Collection and will also travel to three additional venues in the UK.

Bridget Riley was born in London in 1931. She studied at Goldsmiths College, 1949 – 1952 and the Royal College of Art, 1952 – 1955. In 1969, she was the first woman to win the International Prize for Painting whilst representing Britain at the 34th Venice Biennale. Bridget Riley was made a CBE in 1974, and in 1998 was awarded the Order of the Companion of Honour. Major exhibitions have included the Hayward Gallery, 1970 and 1992/94; a British Council touring retrospective in the USA, Australia and Japan, 1979; and retrospective exhibitions at Tate Britain, 2003; Museum of Modern Art in Sydney, Australia, 2005; City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand, 2005; and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2008.

TIMOTHY TAYLOR GALLERY

15 Carlos Place, London, W1K 2EX

www.timothytaylorgallery.com

Eric Baudelaire, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, NYC - Anabases

Eric Baudelaire: Anabases
Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York
October 31 – December 19, 2009

Elizabeth Dee presents Anabases, ERIC BAUDELAIRE’s second solo show at the gallery, which is at once a continuation and a departure from Circumambulation, his 2007 inquiry into the cyclical and hypnotic relationship between image and event. Once again, the work presented is part of a greater cycle where pieces in different media are federated by an allegory of movement. But where Circumambulation navigated around a space left empty by a particular event that unfolded on September 11th, and the ensuing effect it had on our lives and our relationship to images, the ambulation at work in the current cycle stems from a literary motif inspired by Xenophon’s Anabasis. And yet, it isn’t so much a story or a destination that the show refers to. Instead, Anabases is an inquiry into the idea of a movement, the internal logic of which is embedded in the structure of the works on display.

What kind of movement is inscribed in Anabases? One that originates in Xenophon’s historical epic, also known as the Persian Expedition, which recounts a leaderless retreat of ten thousand Greek mercenaries in search of a way home through unknown lands following the unexpected death of the Persian prince who had retained them. The itinerary becomes more allegorical in its many adaptations, including those by the poets St John Perse and Paul Celan, the 1979 cult film Warriors, its imminent Tony Scott remake, an Xbox game, and a lecture by Alain Badiou who employed the idea in his seminary on the 20th century at the Collège International de Philosophie. What the various incarnations of anabasis have in common is a principle of wandering, the notion of a journey into the new which isn’t a simple return because it forges its own path without knowing whether it leads towards home. Alain Badiou defines anabasis as “a free invention of a meandering which will have been a return, a return which, prior to the wandering, did not exist as a return.” (1)  And in tracing this undecidability, he notes that the notion of a disjunctive synthesis of will and wandering is embedded in the Greek etymology of the word itself since the verb αναβανειν (“to anabase,” as it were), means both “to embark” and “to return.”

This idea is at the heart of the works in Anabases: either allegorically, in terms of process, or in their conceptual structure, they each inhabit the idea of an uncertain movement that fundamentally changes in status or in meaning as it reaches its endpoint. The meandering becomes a return, but before being a return, it was an undetermined wandering. And while this essential transformation occurs at the end, it retroactively alters the nature of the movement that had taken place until that point.

Since 2005, Eric Baudelaire’s practice has been rooted in an ongoing exploration of images and documents. With pieces like The Dreadful Details (2006) and Sugar Water (2007), he worked less as a photographer than as a factographer, fabricating images that tended towards the real, false documents that created a mimesis of events as a device to decode the modes of fabrication, dissemination and consumption of images.

With Anabases, the practice is reversed; instead of creating fictions that appear to be documents, Eric Baudelaire uses real documents to extract fictions. Here, the documentary materials are strictly sampled from the real, the gesture consists in their assembly, reproduction or recontextualization, which opens up new narrative spaces or initiates original forms.

Anabases encompasses a series of heliogravure prints sampling pages of western art magazines from which genitalia has been scratched out by Japanese press distributors (Of Signs and Senses), vitrines of found film stills matched to bits of narratives from un-made Antonioni film treatments (The Makes), photographs printed from rolls of traveling unexposed film (Anabasis X-rayograms), and Wall Street Journal clippings from September 2008 in which verses from a Paul Verlaine poem are revealed (Chanson d’automne). A booklet titled Anabases: Source Documents can be taken away as a memento and serves as a libretto for the show, reproducing the original materials from which the works originate and contextualizing them with a chronology of Anabases-related events. These narratives of disjunctive synthesis inside the gallery are signaled with a broken neon-sign on the façade (THE ROSE), and developed further with two new films ([sic] and The Makes) that depart from the strictly documentary nature of the rest of the works, linking back to Baudelaire’s factographic practice.

The Anabases cycle was initiated during an eight-month residency at the Villa Kujoyama, in Kyoto, Japan, in 2008, and received support from the French consulate in New York City.

ERIC BAUDELAIRE lives and works in Paris, France. He graduated from Brown University in 1994. Since 2005, his work has been exhibited throughout Europe and North America. Anabases at Elizabeth Dee Gallery runs simultaneously with its counterpart at Galerie Greta Meert in Brussels.

(1) Badiou, Alain, Le Siècle, Paris: Seuil, 2005, Chapter 8.

ELIZABETH DEE GALLERY
545 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011
www.elizabethdeegallery.com

Andrea Bowers @ Andrew Kreps Gallery, NYC - Mercy Mercy Me

Andrea Bowers: Mercy Mercy Me
Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
October 24 – December 5, 2009

The Andrew Kreps Gallery presents Andrea Bowers’ new exhibition, entitled Mercy Mercy Me. Released in 1971, this influential Marvin Gaye song was, and still is, one of the most popular songs of all time that addresses the degradation of the environment, and other pressing social and political issues.  Bill McKibben, American environmentalist, recently wrote about Mercy Mercy Me., “For a brief moment. . .it made perfect sense for the civil rights and environmental movements to be singing the same tune. Tragically, those movements soon diverged - diverged so far that some people still find it odd that activists are working side by side again on issues like global warming and poverty.”

In her current exhibition Andrea Bowers investigates the complicated politics of dealing with the contemporary idea of landscape and the problematic relationship of predominantly Eurocentric environmentalist’s attempts to collaborate with locals to fight against climate change.  Almost without exception the most endangered locales are populated with people of color and those with low income. And despite their intrinsically humanistic attempts to help, human rights organizations, corporations interested in sponsorship and the Green Movement struggle with compatibility. This exhibition began with a trip that Andrea Bowers took with a small group of activists to the Arctic Village in Northern Alaska in the summer of 2009.  It is a village of about 150 Native Americans, called Gwich’in, and is located in the southern edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  

The exhibition includes a group of 4 video projects, several drawings, books, beading and ephemera from past protests. Circle is a video that combines panoramic landscapes with interviews and footage of four generations of women from the Arctic Village. These women, some of whom are part of the activist organization, The Gwich’in Steering Committee, eloquently express the urgent needs of their people for the prevention of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the protection of their lands from global warming.

Interview with Betty Ann continues Andrea Bowers’ interest in storytelling but for the first time she turns the camera on herself to tell a story about her correspondence with a woman bead artist that she met at the Arctic Village. A third video, which was recorded this summer, documents a tree-climbing lesson given to Andrea Bowers by environmental activist, John Quigley.  This piece, focusing on the metaphor of ascension, encapsulates the good intentions and hopes of the environmental movement and continues Bowers’ interest in choreographic movements resulting from political action.  Also part of this exhibition are works that reference the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and Alaskan beading traditions layered with environmental activism. 

Andrea Bowers received her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in 1992. Solo exhibitions include: Secession, Vienna, Austria; REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; and the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Bard College, Annendale-on-Hudson, NY; Sammlung Goetz, Seedamm Kulturzentrum, Switzerland; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst; Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL.

ANDREW KREPS GALLERY
525 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
andrewkreps.com

Olivier Mosset, Portrait de l'artiste en motocycliste, MAGASIN - Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble

Olivier Mosset

Portrait de l'artiste en motocycliste

MAGASIN - Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble

11 octobre 2009 - 3 janvier 2010 

Steven PARRINO

Untitled , 1993 

Courtesy Art & Public, Geneva.

Andy Warhol, Stephane Kropf, Sylvie Fleury, Walter Steding, John Dogg, Christian Marclay, Carl Andre, Alix Lambert, Amy Granat, Janine Antoni, Walter Robinson, John Nixon, Ricardo de Oliveira, Christian Floquet, Lily van der Stocker, John Armleder, Laurie Parson, Cady Noland, Gavin Brown, etc... 

Le MAGASIN consacre son projet de rentrée au portrait de l'artiste Olivier Mosset. La forme qui est celle de l'hommage rassemble les oeuvres de nombreux artistes sans jamais montrer le travail d’Olivier Mosset lui même ! Ces artistes appartiennent à toutes les générations confondues, de Carl Andre à Stéphane Kropf en passant par le collectif 1m3 pour les plus jeunes. 

Figure incontournable de la scène artistique, Olivier Mosset entretient avec eux des liens de voisinage au sein d'une famille de même sensibilité. Il collectionne leurs oeuvres, ou pratique l'échange. L’ensemble forme aujourd'hui une collection dont il a offert la plus grande partie au Musée de la Chaux-de-Fonds, d’autres oeuvres étant déposées ou données au MAMCO de Genève, au Consortium de Dijon, ou encore à Tucson. 

L'exposition entend donc faire le portrait de l’artiste à travers des salles qui seront organisées autour de thèmes identifiés. Une première salle présente ses racines, avec les gravures de Chardin données chaque année par son grand père à ses collaborateurs, ou le portrait de Grégoire Muller. Une autre rassemblera les portraits d’Olivier Mosset à travers les photographies de Steven Parrino ou la peinture à l'acrylique de Walter Steding. Une autre salle dévoile les citations, emprunts et copies (Hugo Pernet). Les ensembles qui suivent déclinent les peintures monochromes, les pièces au sol, et le lien indéfectible de l’artiste au monde du motocyclisme. 

Olivier Mosset est né en 1944 à Berne, il vit et travaille aujourd'hui à Tucson (Arizona). Membre du groupe BMTP en 1966 avec Daniel Buren, Niele Toroni et Michel Parmentier, il s'installe à New York en 1977. 

Bibliographie princiaples : Olivier Mosset : Travaux 1966-2003/Arbeiten 1966-2003/Works 1966-2003, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne - Kunstverein St Gallen, 2003. 

Commissaire de l'exposition : Yves Aupetitallot 

MAGASIN – Centre National d'Art Contemporain 
Site Bouchayer-Viallet, 155 cours Berriat - 38000 Grenoble 
www.magasin-cnac.org

Exposition d'Art du FMAC à la FIAC 2009

Exposition du FMAC à la FIAC 2009

22 - 25 octobre 2009

QU'EST-CE QUE LE FMAC ?  Le Fonds municipal d’art contemporain (FMAC), qui a reçu sa dénomination actuelle en 1987, est l’un des héritiers des Collections municipales de la Ville de Paris, initiées en 1816. Dès cette époque, les commandes et les achats sont réalisés auprès d’artistes vivants, dans un esprit d’aide à la création, et destinés à “décorer” l’Hôtel de Ville et les mairies d’arrondissement. La collection compte environ 20 000 oeuvres : 17 000 oeuvres modernes, auxquelles se sont ajoutées, depuis 1970, 2 764 oeuvres contemporaines de 1 579 artistes ; elle est composée de peintures, dessins, gravures, sculptures, photographies, installations et vidéos.Présente dans tous les arrondissements, la collection est diffusée, pour la quasi totalité de ses oeuvres, dans 450 espaces d’accueil, services publics et équipements parisiens : Hôtel de Ville, mairies, bibliothèques, crèches, conservatoires, hôpitaux, résidences santé, écoles, etc. Depuis 2001, le FMAC a installé 4 410 oeuvres à Paris, soit 630 en moyenne annuelle.

LE FMAC A LA FIAC 2009 Chaque année depuis six ans, avec le stand “Ville de Paris - Art Contemporain”, le FMAC présente ses dernières acquisitions à la Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain. C'est la seule collection publique présente à la FIAC qui a lieu du 22 au 25 octobre 2009 au Carrée du Louvre, à Paris. Cette année, le stand du FMAC présente 66 oeuvres de 31 artistes, acquises en 2008 auprès de 23 galeries, de 4 artistes et du Centre national de l’estampe et de l’art imprimé (Cneai) à Chatou. 

ARTISTES : A Constructed World, Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, Silvia Bächli, Pierre Bismuth, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Collectif Fact, Alain Declercq, Marie Denis, Vincent Epplay, Maïder Fortuné, Mark Geffriaud, Eric Hattan, Rodolphe Huguet, Naji Kamouche, Florence Lazar, Alexandra Leykauf, Bradley McCallum et Jacqueline Tarry, Pierre Malphettes, Anita Molinero, Miquel Mont, Benoît-Marie Moriceau, Thierry Mouillé, Jean-Luc Moulène, Tania Mouraud, Stéphanie Nava, Régis Perray, Stéphane Sautour, Bert Theis, René Wirths, Raphaël Zarka. 

LA POLITIQUE D'ACQUISITION DU FMAC : Dans les oeuvres exposées s'expriment les lignes directrices de la politique d'acquisition du FMAC. Depuis cinq ans, une “ligne de conduite” des acquisitions a été déterminée pour contribuer à l’identité de la collection et rechercher des oeuvres correspondant aux contextes spécifiques de présentation qui leurs sont destinés : les services de la Ville de Paris, les bureaux d’élus, etc. Les rapporteurs présentent des oeuvres présélectionnées en fonction de ces orientations de la collection. Les propositions d’acquisition spontanées d’artistes sont également examinées (60 à 80 dossiers annuels). LE LIEN A PARIS Les oeuvres sélectionnées sont des créations d’artistes français et internationaux qui vivent ou se manifestent à Paris. Le mouvement permanent d’artistes, résidents ou de passage dans la capitale, constitue l’un des fondements de l’enrichissement continu de la collection, qui ambitionne aujourd’hui d’illustrer la spécificité de Paris comme l’un des pôles artistiques mondiaux. LES THÉMATIQUES URBAINE ET POLITIQUE Les acquisitions explorent les diverses orientations des thématiques urbaine et politique. - Au-delà des oeuvres dans lesquelles Paris est présent, les acquisitions s’orientent vers celles où l’univers urbain résonne, d’une manière générale, dans toute sa diversité géographique. - Les oeuvres empreintes d’une thématique politique, concernant tous les domaines de société, en France et dans le monde, sont également une spécificité de la collection : questions de régimes politiques, pouvoirs, organisations, mouvements, idées, conflits, libertés, revendications, travail, justice, immigration, écologie, etc. LA "VALEUR D’USAGE" Les sélections tiennent compte également de l’usage de la collection. Les oeuvres s’inscrivent dans le quotidien des élus et et fonctionnaires mais aussi des usagers et visiteurs, dans les lieux de plus en plus nombreux où la collection est montrée aux publics. Le choix des oeuvres tient compte de leurs contraintes techniques d’accrochage et d'exposition, de conservation et de stockage. 

Stand “Ville de Paris – Art contemporain” Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain - FIAC Stand E 25 - Cour Carrée du Louvre Rue de Rivoli - 75001 Paris Du jeudi 22 au dimanche 25 octobre 2009, de 13h à 21h www.fmac.paris.fr

Anthony McCall, Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Moderna Museet Now: Anthony McCall 

Moderna Museet, Stockholm

10 October – 6 December, 2009

Beginning in the 1970s, Anthony McCall creates art based on the beam of the film projector in the darkened cinema, working on the boundary between the most influential styles and genres in postwar art – minimalism, film, performance and drawing. In this exhibition, Moderna Museet presents two of his large light installations from the 2000s, along with numerous drawings.

“Anthony McCall was part of a circle that included many of the seminal artists of the 1960s – Richard Serra, Carolee Schneemann, Michael Snow and Joseph Kosuth, to name but a few – and addressed many of the issues they were dealing with, albeit in his own independent and idiosyncratic way. It is exciting now, to present this exhibition of McCall, following his wonderful comeback that started with the Whitney Biennial in 2004,” says Lars Nittve, Director of Moderna Museet and curator of Moderna Museet Now: Anthony McCall.

In 1973, Anthony McCall embarked on making the now legendary film series Solid Light. The first part, Line Describing a Cone, had its first screening at the experimental art space Fylkingen in Stockholm on 30 August the same year. During half an hour, a narrow ray of light was projected through the room by a 16 mm projector, first forming an arch and ultimately cutting out a large cone of light in the dark room.

This is basically the same sensual experience we may encounter today when we move in darkness through McCall’s luminous walls or membranes of light. But now they are sculpted using different technology, to achieve greater visuality and complexity, both in animation and projection. Suddenly it has become possible – now that smoky and dusty lofts are a thing of the past – to (re)create the filmic “fog” necessary for the light to materialise with the aid of a haze machine.

It was when Anthony McCall discovered this possibility that he decided to return to art, after a pause of nearly 25 years, making his acclaimed comeback at the Whitney Biennial in 2004 with an entirely new work, Doubling Back. This work, which was recently acquired for the Moderna Museet collection and is featured in the exhibition, initiated the second chapter in an oeuvre that has come to assume a central position in art at the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

Anthony McCall was born in 1946 in the UK, but moved to New York when he was in his 30s. Since resuming his artistic work, he has participated in a large number of international solo and group exhibitions, at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the Serpentine Gallery, to name but a few.

At the finissage, the last weekend of the exhibition, 4–6 December, Line Describing a Cone, 1973, will be shown in the right-hand gallery on Floor 2.

Curator: Lars Nittve with Jo Widoff

Moderna Museet Now is an exhibition series for contemporary art and historically interesting oeuvres, comprising some four exhibitions per year.

MODERNA MUSEET

Exercisplan 4, 111 49 Stockholm

www.modernamuseet.se

Michael Kenna, Exposition Photos, Galerie Camera Obscura

Michael Kenna, New York New York
Galerie Camera Obscura, Paris
14 octobre - 28 novembre 2009

(c) Michael Kenna. Courtesy of Galerie Camera Obscura, Paris, 2009

La galerie Camera Obscura (Paris) présente une exposition du photographe Michael Kenna. C'est la première exposition en France de ses photographies sur New York. La galerie Camera Obscura a déjà consacré deux expositions à Michael Kenna dont une rétrospective de l'oeuvre est présentée à la Bibliothèque nationale de France.

New York est un des sujets de photographies de Michael Kenna depuis plusieurs années. C'est particulièrement en 2000, 2003 et 2006 que New York est devenue plus centrale dans son travail et qu'il a ainsi pu terminer sa série présentée à Paris actuellement. "Le paysage et l'architecture sont les deux thèmes de prédilection de Michael Kenna : il a trouvé en New York, ville paysage, ville souvent décrite comme une formation naturelle, minérale, de proportions plus proches des canyons et des montagnes que des rues de nos villes, un sujet qui rassemble ses deux passions.

Michael Kenna a une grande maîtrise de l'image d'architecture : sa vision est naturellement construite et graphique, mais elle est aussi sublimée par une science de la lumière qui enrichit et porte à une autre dimension le formalisme de ses images. En choisissant le thème de New York, Micheal Kenna se confronte naturellement aux grands noms de l'histoire de la photographie, de Kertész à Stieglitz. Sensible à cette histoire, et au statut d'icône de cette ville que le monde entier connaît par les images, sa réussite est d'autant plus impressionnante qu'il se permet quelques citations et hommages à ses maîtres sans que cela entame la force et l'originalité du résultat" (Camera Obscura).

Michael Kenna réalise lui-même les tirages de ses photographies. Il s'agit de tirages argentiques légèrement virés par sulfuration. Ce sont ces tirages originaux qui sont exposés à la Galerie Camera Obscura. 

Michael Kenna est né en Angleterre, en 1953. Il est diplomé du London College of Printing (1976). Il vit depuis de nombreuses années aux USA et habite actuellement à Seattle.  

Galerie Camera Obscura
268, boulevard Raspail 75014 Paris
Du mardi au samedi, de 13h00 à 19h00
www.galeriecameraobscura.fr/

Edward Steichen, Photos Exhibition at WCMA, Williamstown

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) presents two exhibitions highlighting different periods from the photographic career of Edward Steichen. In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years, 1923–1937 is the first comprehensive presentation of Steichen work made for the fashion and glamour industry. Episodes from a Life in Photography surveys Edward Steichen’s photography throughout his career. A special celebration marking the opening of these two exhibitions will take place on June 5 at 6:00 pm. Gallery talks will be given at 6:00 pm. This is a free public event and all are invited to attend.

Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years, 1923–1937 presents over 180 photographs that Steichen made while working as Chief Photographer for two of Condé Nast’s best known magazines: Vogue and Vanity Fair. Steichen photographed models wearing fashion from some of the most famous designers of the period including Worth, Poiret, Chanel, and Schiaparelli. He also created portraits of the most prominent figures in literature, journalism, dance, sport, politics, theatre, and film for Vanity Fair, including Greta Garbo, Winston Churchill, Marlene Dietrich, George Gershwin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Amelia Earhart, and Walt Disney. Between the two World Wars, Steichen revolutionized fashion photography while becoming known as “the most famous portrait photographer in the world.” In High Fashion opens at WCMA on May 30 and runs through September 13, 2009, after which it will travel to the Art Gallery of Ontario. A 288-page catalogue accompanies this exhibition.

Edward Steichen: Episodes from a Life in Photography features photographs from throughout Steichen’s prolific career, presenting many different aspects and themes. It also highlights some of the technical and artistic issues that Edward Steichen explored in his printing methods. Episodes depicts Steichen’s transition from pictorialist to modernist photography, which is epitomized by his fashion and glamour photography. Episodes presents 90 photographs and includes multiple copies of certain prints to demonstrate Edward Steichen’s interest in a variety of technological processes. Since June 6 to November 8, 2009.

“We are unbelievably fortunate to have this bounty of Edward Steichen material on view—almost 300 vintage prints,” notes exhibition curator John Stomberg. “These works are rarely seen. We will also be showing all of the original, extraordinarily fine gelatin silver prints (still in their original mounts) that Steichen created for a 1936 illustrated edition of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Together these two shows demonstrate the dynamism of American modernism and Steichen’s critical role in its development.”

In High Fashion, the North American exhibition, was organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis, the Musée de L'Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, and the International Center of Photography, New York in collaboration with Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Mass.

It was curated by William A. Ewing, Director, Musée de l´Elysée; Todd Brandow, Executive Director, Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography; Nathalie Herschdorfer, Curator, Musée de l’Elysée; and Carol Squiers, Curator, International Center of Photography.

Episodes from a Life in Photography was organized by John Stomberg, Deputy Director/Chief Curator and Lecturer in Art at WCMA, with assistance by Veronika Totos, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, Class of 2009.

Williams College Museum of Art, 15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Ste 2 Williamstown, MA 01267

The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

Richard Learoyd, McKee Gallery, NYC - Unique Photographs - Text by Martin Barnes

Richard Learoyd: Unique Photographs

McKee Gallery, New York

September 24 – October 31, 2009

McKee Gallery presents the first exhibition in America by the English photographer RICHARD LEAROYD. This is also the first ever exhibition of photographs at the McKee Gallery.

After graduating in photography from the Glasgow School of Art in 1992, Richard Learoyd has taught and lectured in various art schools, all the while experimenting in unconventional technique based on the principles of the ‘camera obscura’. The extraordinary results are best described by Martin Barnes, chief curator of photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in his 2007 essay “Reverie and Presence.” Originally published in the book Richard Learoyd: Twenty-Two Photographs 2005/2007, the essay was later reprinted in Hot Shoe International Magazine: Fresh Perspectives on Contemporary Photography, February/March 2008, p. 18-27:

Richard Learoyd’s photographs have recently emerged into the art world seemingly from nowhere. Visually, they are bold, poised, and magnetically beautiful. Beneath their alluring appearance lies a deeply inquiring and subtle intellect. Although his images convey something of their power when reproduced, nothing can compare with the wonder and presence felt when seeing one of the original, large-scale photographs. By sheer force of visual impact, they initially jolted my default tools of critique out of kilter – and replaced them with the pure pleasure of the eye. Observing his work has reinvigorated for me the profound delight of simply looking at photographs…

I am reminded of the haunting thrill particular to looking at nineteenth-century daguerreotypes, the very first types of photographs introduced in 1839, on which the images is fixed on a highly polished and silver metal plate. In daguerreotypes we come face to face with the dead, seemingly resurrected through the act of looking at them in the surface of a mirror. Learoyd’s photographs feel uncannily similar. But where monochrome daguerreotypes fit in the palm of the hand, Learoyd’s over-life-sized color works have impact on the wall. His processes of production, subjects and sitters are modern; yet the feelings his images evoke seem to beckon from the dawn of photography. Learoyd rekindles something of the marvel of this creative collision of science and art that so captivated and bewitched the Victorians. His evident passion for experimentation, his knowledge and interest in the chemistry and optics of photography, comes across I image like those who were fired by the medium over one-hundred and sixty years ago…

Learoyd’s images occupy a unique place in the practice of contemporary fine art photography. I can think of no-one else working with the same methods or in quite the same way. His pictures are refreshingly, not conceptually driven; but neither do they fall as a result into mere decoration or technical display. They carry historical relevance, but they are undeniably f our time. Due to their visual impact, we cannot help but stare at them and feel perhaps even a mild embarrassment over the painfully sensuous proximity they reach in relation to our senses …

We come to know his subjects intimately, yet they remain paradoxically and beautifully mysterious…

MCKEE GALLERY

745 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10151

www.mckeegallery.com

Gerry Snyder and Marco Rosichelli: The Surreal Life, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe

The Surreal Life: Gerry Snyder and Marco Rosichelli

New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe

September 25, 2009 - January 31, 2010

The Surreal Life sets up a dialogue between the work of two artists, Gerry Snyder and Marco Rosichelli, who share a desire to create alternative universes both familiar and strange. 

Gerry Snyder and Marco Rosichelli present in their art extremely well known elements – Snyder’s beautifully crafted paintings with their Renaissance inspired backdrops and Rosichelli’s finely crafted playground toys. However, they juxtapose these artistic elements with surreal content, Snyder with amorphous balloon-like cartoon shapes and Rosichelli with fetus-like forms. 

Marco Rosichelli’s sculptures evoke common objects reminiscent of childhood icons and toys. He says, “…the viewers are enticed to interact with the work.”  

The figures in Gerry Snyder’s paintings have an unruly organic quality that suggest Darwinian principles run amok; they can’t stop growing extra breasts yet lack basic necessities like arms or mouths. 

We are asked to consider the anthropomorphic forms represented in both artists’ work, either through our subconscious dream-fueled mind or as literal symbols. Is the Rosichelli sculpture in the exhibition, “Spring Fetus 2,” the realization of some dream gone bad or more literally a hobby horse common to children’s playgrounds? Is Snyder asking us to look at the forms in his paintings as if through a window or is the canvas a mirror?

Exhibition curator Tim Rodgers, Ph.D., said that he hopes the viewer will, “…find such art inspiring in that it opens up new possibilities and alternative worlds.”

Gerry Snyder earned his BFA from the University of Oregon and his MA in Art and Media, at New York University. Gerry Snyder lives in New Mexico. His work has been exhibited internationally and is in the Whitney and DeYoung Museums’ permanent collections. Marco Rosichelli received his BFA in sculpture and design from Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon. He recently earned an MFA in sculpture from Arizona State University, in Tempe, Arizona. He was recently the recipient of a public art commission through the Scottsdale Public Arts Commission, in Scottsdale, Arizona. Rosichelli currently lives in Arizona. Marco Rosichelli has mostly shown in Arizona and Oregon and The Surreal Life is a good opportunity to see emerging and more established artists’ take on this topic.

NEW MEXICO MUSEUM OF ART

Santa Fe’s Plaza at 107 West Palace Avenue

www.nmartmuseum.org 

Koka Ramishvili, Mitterrand + Sanz / Contemporary Art, Zurich

Koka Ramishvili
Perforated Cinema
Mitterrand + Sanz / Contemporary Art, Zurich
August 28 - October 24, 2009

On the occasion of their relocation to Limmatstrasse 265, Edward Mitterrand and Gérard Sanz along with Fabian Lang, their new Director, presents a condensed retrospective of KOKA RAMISHVILI's work since 1991.

Currently representing the Republic of Georgia at the 53rd Venice Biennal, Koka Ramishvili gathered a selection of videos, photographs and installation to illustrate the social, economic and artistic tension within his work and his native country over the past decade.

Renowned art critic Viktor Maziano explains, in his text “After Ramishvili” (2009), Ramishvili’s leitmotif of contradiction that unites all works included in this exhibition titled from the work Perforated Cinema:

“This is the answer of Koka Ramishvili to series of contradictions the last soviet generation had to face. Artist acknowledges them as insoluble. /… / Instead of pulling tight apologia of contemporaneity and its rejection, it is worthwhile to take a closer look to the world when it is not chained in one-sided schemes. This is especially appropriate as unwillingness to accept the idea that contradictions torturing us are insoluble, gave birth to majority of dramas and crimes of the post soviet epoch”. (After Ramishvili. Viktor Miziano, 2009)

The central installation Perforated Cinema, through a minimalist intervention between a slide projector and a screen, demonstrates the contradictions between the idea of film projection itself and its physical absence on the screen: the projection becomes a black hole when part of the screen transforms into a line and another part changes into a pedestal of the black hole.

The most obvious presence of politics comes with the black and white video titled Change (2005) which is currently on view at the Venice Biennale Georgian Pavilion. It presents a true coup d’etat in the Georgian parliament under the shape of a “male ballet” by using slow motion and adding a death song by Veronika Voss from the Fassbinder film. “...Masculine will for power and history opposes feminine implantation in a natural constant flow of life and death and soul of the music.” (Fidelity to an Event. The Poetics of Koka Ramishvili. Viktor Miziano, 2008)

The immediate result of this political change is captured in the black and white photo series War From my Window (1991-1992) where images of war are hardly captured: one can only see one slightly smoky district, where military actions took place. Name of the work, angle of the shooting and landscape become here an expression of the authors’ “experience of dramatic impotence towards history.” (After Ramishvili. Viktor Miziano,2009)

Koka Ramishvili was born in 1956 in Tbilisi, Georgia, ex-URSS and lives and works in Geneva.

Since 1995 he has been offered numerous grants and awards for his videos and photographs (Ministry of the Culture and Education, Vienne, Academy Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, International Electronic Art Media Forum in Bauchaus, Département des affaires culturelles de la Ville de Geneva) and was exhibited in various Museums (such as Tate Modern in London, MAMCO in Geneva, Goethe Institut in Berlin, Russian National Gallery in Moscow, Fine Art Museum of Nantes, and others) and galleries (Kulturmanagment Hausler in Munich, Guelman Gallery in Moscow, Newman Popiashvili Gallery in New York, Attitudes in Geneva, etc.).

Mitterrand + Sanz / Contemporary Art, Zurich
www.mitterrand-sanz.com

Berliner Liste 2009 fur junge Galerien

Berliner Liste 09 als experimenteller Ort für junge Galerien und aktuelle Kunst

Berlin gehört zu den pulsierendsten Kunstzentren der Welt. Seit Jahren begegnen sich hier junge Künstler aller Stilrichtungen, um jenseits des Establishment des weltweiten Kunstmarktes nach neuen Konzepten und unkonventionellen Wegen zu suchen. Für diese Szene steht die Berliner Liste; als innovative Entdecker-Messe bildet sie seit ihrer Gründung vor sechs Jahren durch den Berliner Galeristen Wolfram Völcker eine Plattform für junge Arbeiten und frische, zeitgenössische Kunst. Die Berliner Liste gibt Newcomern eine Chance. Die unkomplizierte und kommunikative Atmosphäre der Messe lässt einen lebendigen Austausch zwischen Künstlern, Galerien und dem interessierten Publikum entstehen. Mit diesem Konzept hat sich die Berliner Liste seit ihrem Jubiläumserfolg von 2008 mit rund 15.000 Besuchern als zweitgrößte Kunstmesse Berlins nach dem Art Forum etablieren können. 

Berliner Liste 09 an neuem Standort hinter Glas Zum besonderen Profil der Berliner Liste gehört auch der jährlich wechselnde, stets außergewöhnliche Standort. In jedem Jahr wird ein anderer Ort von der Messe mit Leben gefüllt und der Öffentlichkeit bekannt gemacht. In den Vorjahren zählten bereits das Vitra Design Museum und der Postbahnhof am Gleisdreieck zu den ausgewählten Ausstellungsorten. Zum 5jährigen Jubiläum 2008 zog die Berliner Liste in das leer stehende ehemalige Luxushotel Haus Cumberland am Kurfürstendamm. In diesem Jahr wird die Messe das Palais am Tiergarten beziehen, einen neuen, nahezu transparenten Glas- und Backsteinbau, der für die Foto- und Lichtkunst der Berliner Liste 2009 den idealen Rahmen bilden wird. Auf vier Etagen lädt die Berliner Liste hier zum Flanieren und Entdecken des aktuellen Kunstschaffens ein sowie zum Dialog mit Künstlern und Galeristen. Im fünften Stock wird eine Lounge mit Dance Floor die entspannte und kreative Atmosphäre der Messe unterstreichen. Nicht zuletzt ist auch das Art Forum von diesem zentral am Reichpietschufer in unmittelbarer Nähe der Nationalgalerie gelegenen Gebäude in wenigen Minuten mit öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln zu erreichen. 

Berliner Liste 09 als Tor nach Osteuropa Die diesjährige Berliner Liste präsentiert sich weitaus internationaler als bisher; am neuen Standort im Palais am Tiergarten werden 60 Galerien aus 14 Ländern ihre vielversprechendsten künstlerischen Talente Sammlern, Kuratoren, Kunstinteressierten und Journalisten aus aller Welt vorstellen. Die Hälfte der ausstellenden Galerien stammt dabei Deutschland, die übrigen kommen aus dem europäischen Ausland, den USA und Südkorea. In diesem Jahr nimmt die Berliner Liste 2009 die osteuropäische Kunstszene in den Focus: So wird auch dieses Jahr wieder die Anaid Gallery aus Rumänien dabei sein. Erstmals reisen aus Osteuropa die Galerie Krokus und die Photon Gallery aus Slowenien an. Die Gallery Bastejs aus Lettland wird ebenso die neuesten Strömungen und Tendenzen der Kunst aus Lettland präsentieren. Mit der expliziten Auswahl vieler osteuropäischer Galerien will die Berliner Liste der speziellen historischen und geografischen Situation Berlins auf der Schnittstelle zwischen Ost und West gerecht werden. Ein weiterer chwerpunkt liegt auch in diesem Jahr auf aktueller Kunst aus Spanien. 

Fotografie auf der Berliner Liste 09 Anlässlich ihres fünfjährigen Jubiläums hat die Berliner Liste 2008 ihr Angebot um zwei neue Abteilungen erweitert. In der Sektion „Fotografie” zeigten 10 Galerien erstmals gebündelt ausschließlich Fotografie. „Kunst seit 1960“ öffnete die Berliner Liste, um weitere Galerien und anspruchsvolle Sammler einzuführen. Beide Abteilungen haben großen Zuspruch des Fachpublikums erfahren. Zum 6. Mal bietet die Berliner Liste diesen Herbst eine Plattform, um risikolos experimentieren zu können und Entdeckungen zu machen – und zwar nicht nur neue Orte, sondern auch aufstrebende Künstler und aktuelle Tendenzen. 

BERLINER LISTE 09 Fair for Contemporary Art, Photography and Art since 1960 
24 - 27 September 2009 Eröffnung: 23. September 2009, 18 Uhr im Palais am Tiergarten 13 bis 21 Uhr, am 27. September 13 bis 19 Uhr Eintritt: Tagespreis 12 Euro, ermäßigt 10 Euro Katalog : 5 €
Palais am Tiergarten Reichpietschufer 86 10789 Berlin Veranstalter : The working smarter group GmbH Augustr. 62 10117 Berlin