Olafur Eliasson @ MOCA, Los Angeles - "OPEN" Exhibition

Olafur Eliasson: OPEN

MOCA, Los Angeles

September 15, 2024 – July 6, 2025

OLAFUR ELIASSON

Kaleidoscope for plural perspectives, 2024 

Installation view: Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin 

Photo: Henri Lacoste | Studio Olafur Eliasson 

Courtesy of the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, 

New York/Los Angeles; neugerriemschneider, Berlin

© 2024 Olafur Eliasson

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) presents Olafur Eliasson: OPEN at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. The first major solo exhibition of the Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967, Copenhagen; lives and works in Berlin) in Los Angeles. Continuing Eliasson’s career-long exploration of light and color, geometry, and environmental awareness, Olafur Eliasson: OPEN presents a series of site-specific installations responding to MOCA Geffen’s building and the atmospheric conditions of Los Angeles.

Olafur Eliasson: OPEN features over a dozen works commissioned for MOCA, along with a selection of recent works organized around the artist’sresearch on perception, optical devices, physics and natural phenomena, navigational instruments, and color experimentation. Olafur Eliasson draws attention to the relativity of our perception and challenges habitual ways of seeing and experiencing the world. The exhibition is informed by the artist’s belief in the potential of inconclusiveness—the idea that every artwork contains an aspect that is radically open.

“Olafur Eliasson’s work is an invitation to explore, reconsider, and co-produce our relationship with the world around us,” said Johanna Burton, The Maurice Marciano Director. “His innovative use of light, color, and space transforms the familiar into the ephemerally extraordinary, encouraging a deeper engagement with the environment and our perceptions of it. This exhibition is a natural extension of MOCA’s commitment to environmental programming, as seen in our ongoing presentations and initiatives focused on climate change and sustainability.”

“In this ambitious project, Eliasson taps into the legacies of artists intimately tied to Los Angeles and MOCA’s rich history of experimentation and innovation," said José Luis Blondet. "From Michael Asher’s site-specific interventions, to Maria Nordman’s exploration of space and time, to Robert Irwin’s perceptual experiments with light and space and James Turrell’s pioneering work in the use of light as a medium.”

“Eliasson is an artist of singular vision who combines scientific levels of precision with a poetic sensibility about the metaphysics of perception,” says co-curator Rebecca Lowery. “His deep engagement with the specific architectural setting of The Geffen Contemporary will animate this beloved building in new ways for first-time and long-time visitors alike.”

OPEN is conceived as a number of fluid experiences staged in the vast industrial spaces of The Geffen Contemporary. The exhibition’s central gallery becomes a point of departure and return, welcoming visitors to meander throughout the museum as they interact with various optical devices that refract and reframe the building and its environments. OPEN offers unique explorations of light, perception, and interaction with the environment.

OLAFUR ELIASSON

The works of artist Olafur Eliasson (Icelandic-Danish, b. 1967) explore the relevance of art in the world at large. Since 1997, his wide-ranging solo shows—featuring installations, paintings, sculptures, photography, and film—have appeared in major museums around the globe. In 2003, he represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale and later that year installed The weather project in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, London. Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, a survey exhibition organized by SFMOMA, traveled from 2007 until 2010 to various venues, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2018, the site-specific installation Reality projector transformed the Marciano Foundation in Los Angeles. Exhibitions in 2024 include Senin beklenmeidk karşılaman (Your unexpected encounter) at Istanbul Modern and Your curious journey, at Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and travel to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan; Museum MACAN, Jakarta, Indonesia; and conclude at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila, the Philippines.

Eliasson’s projects in public spaces include The New York City Waterfalls, 2008; Fjordenhus, Vejle, Denmark, 2018; Ice Watch, 2014; Seeing spheres, 2019, in San Francisco; and Atmospheric wave wall, 2020, in Chicago. Harpa Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre, 2011, for which Olafur Eliasson created the facades in collaboration with Henning Larsen Architects, won the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2013.

In 2012, Olafur Eliasson started the social business Little Sun, and in 2014, he and Sebastian Behmann founded Studio Other Spaces, an office for art and architecture. In 2019, Eliasson was named UNDP Goodwill Ambassador for climate action. In 2023, he received the Praemium Imperiale from the Japanese imperial family for outstanding contributions to the development, promotion, and progress of the arts.

Located in Berlin, Studio Olafur Eliasson comprises a large team of crafts people, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, art historians, and specialized technicians.

www.olafureliasson.net

Olafur Eliasson: OPEN is part of the landmark Getty initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide and is organized by José Luis Blondet, Senior Curator, and Rebecca Lowery, Associate Curator, with Emilia Nicholson-Fajardo, Curatorial Assistant, and Anastasia Kahn, former Curatorial Assistant. 

Museum of Contemporary Art - MOCA

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

152 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012

www.moca.org

Kiira Miesmaa: New director of Kiasma, Helsinki, Museum of Contemporary Art

Kiira Miesmaa has been chosen as the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

Photo: Finnish National Gallery/ Susanna Kesänen

The board of the Finnish National Gallery has selected KIIRA MIESMAA as the next director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma for a five-year term starting from June 1, 2024.

Kiira Miesmaa has worked in leadership positions in various organizations in the art sector, both in the public and private sectors. At Galerie Forsblom, she has been responsible for the operational management of the gallery. While the gallery operated in Stockholm, she handled the strategic management of both galleries in collaboration with the gallery owner. Miesmaa has consistently contributed to the internationalization of Finnish art, with the gallery participating in contemporary art fairs worldwide. She has been a member of the HIAP board since 2019.

“Kiira Miesmaa has excellent qualifications to lead Kiasma and the Finnish National Gallery forward in the next five-year period. Miesmaa’s expertise complements the Finnish National Gallery’s management team in a positive way,” says the chairman of the board Matti Vanhanen.

The Finnish National Gallery initiated the search for directors for Ateneum and Kiasma simultaneously in June 2023. Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff was selected as the director of Ateneum in early November, commencing her duties on January 1, 2024. Both museum directors are part of the National Gallery’s management team and collaborate with the CEO and other department heads to develop the National Gallery’s activities.

Miesmaa will succeed the current director of Kiasma, Leevi Haapala, whose second term in office concludes on May 31, 2024.

“Haapala has done excellent work as the director of Kiasma. He has navigated Kiasma through a challenging period with the pandemic and a major renovation. During his tenure, Kiasma has hosted, among other things, two major international ARS exhibitions and exhibitions of significant Finnish artists such as Markus Copper and Tom of Finland, not to mention numerous international names,” acknowledges Kimmo Levä, the General Director of the National Gallery.

Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

Mannerheiminaukio 2, 00100 Helsinki

www.kiasma.fi

Markus Copper Retrospective @ Kiasma, Helsinki - The Taste of Metal

Markus Copper – The Taste of Metal

Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki

11 November 2022 – 26 February 2023

Markus Copper

Juggernaut, 1992-95

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Markus Copper

Archangel of Seven Seas, sketch, 1996

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Markus Copper 2009

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

The visual artist MARKUS COPPER (1968–2019) is known for his sculptures that take over the surrounding space. The sounds, mechanical movements and lights reverberating in viewers’ bodies spark their attention. The retrospective at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma showcases Markus Copper’s exceptional art and his worldview with a selection of work of unprecedented variety and depth. Diving into the culture of collective trauma and the human tragedies of our time, the exhibition comprises works that were completed between 1991 and 2018.

MARKUS COPPER: METAPHORS AND SENS OF DANGER

The Taste of Metal exhibition takes a deep dive into the collective trauma culture and human tragedies of our time. The large­scale Estonia (2006) and Kursk (2004) capture the communal fear and anxiety induced by the sinking of the car ferry Estonia and the submarine Kursk. Whaling Station (2009), constructed from external ribs sown together out of leather jackets and a rowing boat, is in turn doomed to repeat a ritual portrayal of the flensing of a whale. 

Markus Copper

Kursk, drawing

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Karjalainen

Markus Copper

Kursk, 2004

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Markus Copper

Kursk, 2004

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Markus Copper

Estonia, 2006

Finnish National Gallery / Kiasma

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Markus Copper

Whaling Station, 2009

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

“Markus Copper wanted his dramatic sculptures to highlight the forces that govern life, the constant tension between destruction and creativity, the fact that art can explore the darkest aspects of life and society on a symbolic level. The sense of threat in his works evokes turning points, the fragility of life, fractures and transience. The power of the works lies in their ability to open themselves up, through the mythical figures that the artist has created, to the sore points of our own time. They create room to think and to experience the meaning dimensions of human existence,” says Leevi Haapala. 

Especially in the early stages of his career, Markus Copper sought to impart a sense of threat to his work, and some of his early pieces even involved a dimension of actual danger. A case in point is Sixpack of Instant Death (1995), which consisted of six sculptural objects that Markus Copper gave to his friends. The objects were designed to explode when linked together. In 2020, the police tracked down the work’s missing components, which have since been rendered harmless. 

Markus Copper

Sixpack of Instant Death, 1995

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

MARKUS COPPER: ICONIC PIECES AND UNKNOWN WORKS

The exhibition also includes Markus Copper’s best-known work, a whale sculpture entitled Archangel of Seven Seas (1998). Part of the Kiasma collection today, the iconic piece is one of the museum’s most cherished artworks. A key component of the work is a set of organ pipes from the church of Kotka that play a low, rumbling “whale song”. 

Markus Copper

Archangel of Seven Seas, 1998

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Markus Copper

Archangel of Seven Seas, 1998

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Markus Copper

Archangel of Seven Seas, 1998

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Many of Markus Copper’s works have been dismantled or lost. They are presented in the exhibition in the form of drawings, sketches and documentary material. With the help of the artist’s family and friends, Kiasma has succeeded in recovering and partly conserving several works, including the sculptures Whaling Station (2009), South Pacific Execution (2007) and The Khyber Pass (2014). These are all now accessioned to the collection of the Finnish National Gallery.

Markus Copper

Iron Maiden, Bourgeois Door, 2006

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Markus Copper

Khyber Pass, 2014

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Markus Copper was also a prolific and skilful draughtsman. The show includes several of his drawings from various museum collections, including his last suite, Roadside Picnic (2018), which is part of the Kiasma collection. Also included in the show are rarely screened video documentaries about the artist from the 1990s.

The exhibition is curated by museum director Leevi Haapala and curator Jari-Pekka Vanhala from Kiasma. The exhibition is accompanied by the publication of a lavishly illustrated book on Markus Copper’s art, produced in collaboration with Parvs Publishing Company. The book offers fresh perspectives on the artist’s work by several authors. 

Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA

Mannerheiminaukio 2, 00100 Helsinki

kiasma.fi

Simon Denny @ MOCA Cleveland - The Founder’s Paradox

Simon Denny: The Founder’s Paradox
Museum of Contemporary Art - MOCA Cleveland
February 16 - June 10, 2018

SIMON DENNY is a Berlin-based artist who explores the aesthetics, rhetoric and cultural impact of technology and technologists, both in the public and the private sector.

For his exhibition at MOCA Cleveland, Simon Denny presents new sculptures, paintings, and prints that employ the language of board games to explore and unpack political narratives associated with a side of radical conservatism emerging from influential parts of the technology business community in recent years. Reflecting on the growing subcultural popularity of board games, and resonant with the histories of game theory’s influence on the technology sector, these works present popular board games remapped with narratives distilled from texts like Peter Theil’s contrarian Zero to One and the cult libertarian book The Sovereign Individual. For example, Settlers of Catan, which is the favorite board game of tech entrepreneur and founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman is re-imagined as a story of expansion where a player “settles, trades, and builds” their way from a decaying earth to New Zealand, then out into international waters to found a sea-steading nation, and finally to the Moon and Mars to create space colonies.

Simon Denny: The Founder’s Paradox includes remapped sculptural versions of three existing popular board games that include Settlers of Catan, The Game of Life, and Descent: Journey’s Into Darkness. Each sculpture is accompanied by a group of paintings and prints that present the new rules, characters, and graphic identity for the remapped games now retitled Founders, Game of Life: Collective vs. Individual, and Ascent – Above the Nation State.

In the works on display, newly prominent mythologies about the figure of the entrepreneurial “founder” and the role of the nation state in a libertarian future collide with fantasy genre imagery, expansionist ambition, and the role of political ideology. These narratives are present within globally impactful innovations like Bitcoin and emergent platform monopolies enabled by the network effects of big data and Web 2.0.

In an exciting collaborative component, Simon Denny’s exhibition also explores the intersection of technology and management philosophy through an experimental seminar and workshop led by Denny and Youngjin Yoo, a Professor at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western University, which also includes Patrick Barrett, Adjunct Professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA). Here he works with MBA students and Design students to produce designs for sculptural board games that investigate the impact specific technologies might have on various industrial sectors — such as transportation, healthcare and housing as they meet Augmented Reality, the blockchain and big data —providing a counterpart to his own board game sculptures.

SIMON DENNY

Simon Denny (1982, Auckland, NZ) is a Berlin based artist whose work focuses on the production, dissemination, and consumption of contemporary media and technology with a particular focus on the internet based exchange of capital and information. His works take shape in a range of forms that often mimic the visual language and devices that appear at various technology industry trade shows and launch events. Denny is a research based artist whose work offers critical and celebratory insights into the content and structure of the technology industry, governmental information agencies, and individual cult figures in the field. Recent projects include exhibitions, objects, and installations that investigate the emergent cryptocurrency Bitcoin and the blockchain technology that makes it possible; the Berlin based SoundCloud startup; and a series of graphics—including cartoons, maps, and charts— made by a senior designer at the National Security Agency (NSA), which were part of the information leaked by Edward Snowden. Denny has been based in Berlin since 2009 following his studies at the Städelschule, Frankfurt. Recent solo exhibitions of his work include Business Insider, WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (2016); Products for Organizing, Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London (2015); The Innovator’s Dilemma, MoMA PS1, New York (2015); New Management, Portikus, Frankfurt (2014); All You Need Is Data, Kunstverein Munich, Munich (2013); and Full Participation, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2012). In 2015 he represented New Zealand in the 56th Venice Biennale.

Museum of Contemporary Art - MOCA Cleveland
Toby Devan Lewis Gallery
11400 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106
http://mocacleveland.org

Tauba Auerbach and Eliane Radigue @ MOCA Cleveland

INDUCTION: Tauba Auerbach and Eliane Radigue
Museum of Contemporary Art - MOCA Cleveland
February 16 - June 10, 2018

Tauba Auerbach's rich exploration of painting, sculpture, sound, and typography considers the possibilities of multi-dimensional space and phenomenological encounters. Her work often engages with systems of logic — mathematical, linguistic, and spatial — proposing ways to enhance their fluidity, or subvert them entirely. Most recently, her large-scale paintings and glass- and 3D-printed sculptures articulate the relationship between such natural forms as the wave, the vortex, and the helix with planes of sight and human gesture. Alongside innovators such as John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, and La Monte Young, Paris-based composer Éliane Radigue is one of the leading figures in experimental music and sound art. From the 1960’s until 2000, Radigue worked primarily using a single synthesizer, the ARP 2500 modular system and tape. Since 2001 Radigue has composed primarily for acoustic instruments, creating works that are uniquely influenced by her study of Tibetan Buddhism.

The exhibition represents Tauba Auerbach’s first collaborative installation in a museum with an experimental composer. Similarly, the exhibition marks an important point for Éliane Radigue. At 85, Éliane Radigue is highly esteemed within the field of electro-acoustic composition, yet she has rarely been acknowledged for her sound installations.

INDUCTION brings together the work of Éliane Radigue and Tauba Auerbach in an architecturally responsive installation that explores the artists’ shared interests, including Eastern philosophies, the body and states of consciousness, and the concept of phenomenology. The exhibition will include a gallery-sized installation of one of Radique’s earliest compositions, OMNHT (1970). Premiered at Galerie Rive Droit in 1970, and presented at MOCA Cleveland for the first time in the United States, the work is composed of three simultaneous multi-durational loops of modified recordings of a flowing river. The work is installed inside the walls of the gallery space so that its low volume creates a vibration that can be felt as visitors lean against the wall, creating a sonic connection between the body and visual landscape that Auerbach has created for the exhibition.

Tauba Auerbach’s contribution features new paintings from her Grain series, installed for the first time as freestanding, two-sided objects. Presented in tandem with these paintings is a suite of new video works, projected on hanging screens and marking the artist’s first time working in this medium. Additionally, the exhibition will include a series of new flame-worked interlocking glass sculptures crafted by the artist herself. Auerbach’s new works emerge from an inquiry-based process and self-experimentation, focusing on the body’s relationship to induced states of consciousness, such as hypnotic induction and trance states, and growing to other systems that make use of frequency and flow including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Tension, Stress and Trauma Release (TRE), acupuncture and Frequency-Specific Microcurrent. These healing modalities reveal particular shapes and rhythms, and are here elaborated in the gestures of Auerbach’s new videos, sculptures and painting.

As part of the exhibition, MOCA Cleveland will present a concert of Eliane Radigue’s acoustic compositions in the gallery space, performed by world-renowned musicians Carol Robinson (Paris) and Nathan Wooley (New York), who are longstanding collaborators of Radigue. The band that Tauba Auerbach collaborates with, Zs, will also perform a series of new works in the gallery as a closing program.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue that will premier newly commissioned texts on Tauba Auerbach’s work and new translations on Radigue’s work in English. It will be launched in the spring of 2018.

TAUBA AUERBACH

Tauba Auerbach (1981, San Francisco, CA) lives and works in New York. Working in a variety of media, ranging from painting and photography to book design and musical performance, Auerbach explores the limits of our structures and systems of logic (linguistic, mathematical, spatial) and the points at which they break down and open up onto new visual and poetic possibilities. A major solo exhibition of Auerbach’s work was organized by Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (2011), and traveled to Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2012), and Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (2013). Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012 and 2013); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2013); Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (2014); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2015–16); and the Kitchen, New York (2016). Auerbach has also participated in the New Museum Triennial (2009) and the Whitney Biennial (2010). She was the recipient of the Eureka Fellowship, The Fleischhacker Foundation (2008); SECA Art Award, SFMOMA (2008); and Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2011).

ELIANE RADIGUE

Éliane Radigue (1932, Paris) is a French electronic music composer. She studied under Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, who oversaw her early exploration in microphone feedback and long tape loops. Over the course of her career, she has developed a unique sound influenced by Tibetan Buddhism. Her masterpiece, Trilogie de la Mort (1998), follows the path of six states of consciousness as interpreted by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Bardo Thodol. After 2000, Radigue began working in acoustic sounds, as demonstrated in her Occam cycle. She has collaborated with the improvisation group La Petites on the album Before the Libretto (2005). Performances of her music have taken place at galleries and museums such as the Salon des Artistes Decorateurs (Paris); Foundation Maeght (St. Paul de Vence); Issue Project Room (New York); Gallery Sonnabend (New York); Galerie Yvon Lambert (Paris), at festivals including the Festival de Como (Italy), the Festival d'Automne a Paris, Festival Estival (Paris), International Festival of Music (Bourges, France); and at the New York Cultural Center, Experimental Intermedia Foundation (New York), The Kitchen (New York), Columbia University (New York), Vanguard Theatre (Los Angeles), LACE (Los Angeles), Mills College (Oakland), the San Francisco Art Institute, and the NEMO Festival (Chicago 1996).

Museum of Contemporary Art - MOCA Cleveland
Mueller Family Gallery
11400 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106
http://mocacleveland.org

Catherine Opie @ MOCA, Los Angeles

Catherine Opie: 700 Nimes Road
MOCA - The Museum of Comtemporary Art, Los Angeles
January 23 - May 8, 2016

CATHERINE OPIE 

Andy Warhol to Elizabeth (Self-Portrait Artist) from the 700 Nimes Road Portfolio, 2010-2011, 

Pigment print, 16 ½ x 22 in. (40.6 x 55.9 cm)

© Catherine Opie, Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Lehmann Maupin, New York & Hong Kong

Catherine Opie: 700 Nimes Road presents new and recent work by Los Angeles–based artist Catherine Opie (born 1961, Sandusky, Ohio), an essential figure in contemporary photography. Taken over the course of six months at the Bel-Air, California, residence of the late actress Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011), the exhibition’s photographs are drawn from two series: Closets and Jewels, and 700 Nimes Road. Inspired by William Eggleston’s images of Elvis Presley’s Memphis estate, Graceland, Catherine Opie creates a portrait of Taylor from her personal space and mementos. The artist photographs rooms, closets, shoes, clothing, and jewelry that depict an indirect, yet deeply intimate, portrait of a life defined by wealth and fame. With an investigative eye, Catherine Opie documents the grandeur and minute details of the home in a range of visual scales. Scrutiny tempered with restraint allows objects to accumulate, rooms to become landscapes, and clothing to be transformed into fields of color and be specifically designated or precisely described. In the artist’s words, the project is not about the relationship to celebrity but about “the relationship to what is human.”​

MOCA Director Philippe Vergne said, “The way Cathy looks at the world, the city, the citizens, who ever they are, who ever they love, whatever they do, constitutes us as a community. It is an honor to show her work.”

Catherine Opie: 700 Nimes Road is organized by MOCA Chief Curator Helen Molesworth.

Major support is provided by J.P. Morgan Private Bank.

MOCA Pacific Design Center
8687 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood, CA 90069
www.moca.org

Robert Irwin, Ernesto Neto & Judith Barry @ MCASD, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California

Robert Irwin, Ernesto Neto, Judith Barry
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
November 20, 2015 - February 21, 2016

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) will present three large-scale works from its permanent collection by artists Robert Irwin, Ernesto Neto, and Judith Barry at its downtown location from November 20, 2015 through February 21, 2016. The installations will fill each gallery with immersive artworks that engage viewer’s experience of physical space, light, and sound.

Robert Irwin: Light and Space

Light itself focuses and diffuses our gaze in Irwin’s environmental light installation Light and Space (2007). The piece creates a dialogue between solid architecture and empty space mediated by electric light—three forms of matter at different accelerations. Driven by an attention to phenomenological experience rather than illusion, Irwin’s work is an inquiry into the nature of perception.  Irwin’s early examinations into the nexus between what is seen and perceived with the senses, in addition to the physical conditions of a site, helped to define the aesthetics and issues of the West Coast Light and Space movement in the late 1960s. In this work—developed during Irwin’s residency in MCASD’s Robert Caplan Artist-in-Residence Studio—he uses fluorescent light tubes alone as the main triggers of a mass-less, enveloping perceptual setting. The specific objects utilized in the installation serve as a passive platform that facilitates the transformation of energy and triggers a phenomenal, visual experience. Resisting the need to jump to quick conclusions, Light and Space creates a response of pure attention and engagement.

Robert Irwin: Light and Space is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Institutional support of MCASD is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund.

Judith Barry: Voice Off

An artist and writer who trained in architecture, Judith Barry creates experiential video works in which the viewer plays an integral role. These innovative installations often explore the relationship between physical space and psychological space—and how these spaces shape us as subjects. Presented at MCASD for the first time, Voice Off (1998-99) is a two-channel video and sound installation in which videos are projected onto each side of a wall dividing the gallery. As viewers and participants, we must navigate the two spaces through a passageway in the projection. On one side, a frustrated writer grows distracted by noises and voices that he hears—figments of his imagination, perhaps. Increasingly distraught, he obsessively tries to locate the source of these sounds. On the other side, figures appear in an ambiguous, dream-like realm inhabited by a succession of characters who sing, tell stories, and enact various social scenarios. Each video suggests various manifestations of the voice—interior or exterior, sung or spoken, expressive or silenced. Taken as a whole, this multi-layered installation dramatizes complex aural and vocal cues, exploring how sound might be visualized, and how it, in turn, shapes our experience of physical space.

Judith Barry: Voice Off is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Institutional support of MCASD is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund.

Ernesto Neto: Mother body emotional densities, for alive temple time baby son

Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto’s monumental site-specific commission for MCASD, first presented in 2007, features immense organic forms, fashioned from suspended, translucent Lycra fabric filled with spices such as annetto, cloves, and turmeric. The installation suggests the microscopic landscape of the body at a macroscopic scale. Neto's installations contain a strong social component and an aspect of whimsy that purposefully combine architectural, sculptural, and atmospheric effects to create a specific visual and physical experience. As the viewer moves through both the gallery and the piece, they are surrounded by soft membranes and bathed in diffused light streaming down from the clearstory windows of the gallery through the translucent material. Developed in response to the light-filled, open-trellised architecture of the exhibition space, the work stands suspended between architectural and bodily space, creating a strong physical relationship with the viewer that must be experienced rather than merely seen.

Ernesto Neto is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Institutional support of MCASD is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund.

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD)
www.mcasd.org

Monumental Works by El Anatsui @ MCASD - Gravity and Grace

Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui 

MCASD, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA

March 5 - June 28, 2015

El Anatsui’s artworks embody a wide array of artistic techniques and aesthetic traditions, as well as layers of cultural meaning. Tapping into personal experience—his upbringing and education in Ghana, teaching and art making in Ghana and Nigeria, and his global travels—he creates art that represents ideas specific to his life and environment yet also speaks to universal themes of human connection and change.

Gravity and Grace features Anatsui's signature hangings composed of discarded liquor bottle caps, milk tin lids, and aluminum printing plates. Anatsui uses copper wire to connect countless units of cut and folded metal into massive expanses. The frugality of the materials and this patchwork technique suggest the mass consumption habits that his accumulations evidence, and counter the opulence of the finished objects. Whether hanging from the ceiling or on the wall, Anatsui’s works are refigured and draped anew each time they are installed. Malleable and shimmering, they bridge painting and sculpture, taking on a different form with every installation. He wishes for his art to remain fluid, reflecting the ever-changing nature of life. The exhibition's 11 metal objects, along with Anastui's wall reliefs of reclaimed wood and works on paper, will fill MCASD Downtown’s 10,000-square feet of gallery space, with the largest piece spanning 35 feet.

Embracing the African ethos of repurposing used items, Anatsui places a deep value on the human imprint that each object bears. Liquor bottle caps retain an especially potent history, not only for the hands that have touched them but as a symbolic connecting point between Africa, Europe, and the United States, owing to the key role of liquor in the colonization of West Africa and the slave trade.

Anatsui’s recent body of work has an African point of view yet cannot be culturally or geographically pinned down. His alchemical transformations connect with viewers through scale, pattern, light, and texture that, like the micro-history contained within each bottle cap, together leave a spiritual imprint on the mind.

Born in 1944 in Anyako, Ghana, Anatsui has maintained a complex relationship with traditional African art throughout his more than 40-year artistic career. Raised by a Presbyterian minister uncle, Anatsui was oriented from an early age toward Western religious ideals and modes of learning. Anatsui’s education at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana (1965-69) focused on Western art and history, since the institution continued to operate under the British education model during Ghana’s post-colonial transition.

As a result, Anatsui gained much of his knowledge of African art through direct observation of indigenous artists and independent research. While teaching art in Winneba, Ghana in the late 1960s, he studied the techniques of traditional weavers, carvers, drummers, and musicians, whose visual and musical representation of abstract concepts attracted him. Particularly inspired by Akan Adinkra cloth, Anatsui has cited the Adinkra symbol Sankofa, the notion of “looking back and picking up,” as a key concept in his practice. Though his metal wall hangings have been associated with Kente cloth, the artist does not claim it as a direct source stating, “I think that cloth has been maybe an unconscious influence.”

Leaving Ghana in 1975 to teach art at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka was an important catalyst for Anatsui. He states, “If I had lived in Ghana, my mind wouldn’t have roamed, therefore I wouldn’t have expanded my experiences.” In Nigeria, as in Ghana, Anatsui engaged with a variety of local, pre-colonial art forms. During this time, he solidified the core principles of his artistic practice: learn from local artists, use found materials, consider location and environment, embrace the metaphoric potential of artworks.

Anatsui’s art career flourished in Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s, where he was highly respected for his innovative use of materials and metaphors rooted in the history of Africa. After participating in an exhibition of African artists in the 1990 Venice Biennale, Anatsui was recognized by critics and scholars around the world. Discovering a sack of discarded bottle caps in 1999 initiated a new chapter in Anatsui’s career that catapulted him onto the global contemporary art stage. In 2010, after 35 years of teaching at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Anatsui retired to focus on his studio work.

“I’ve been to Venice four times now, twice as exhibitor and twice as a visitor. When I first went, twenty years ago, I was cast in the light of an ‘African artist,’ whereas in 2007, I was just another artist. The constraining label of being an artist from somewhere else had disappeared…. The world is beginning to realize that artists are just artists; not ‘European artists,’ not ‘African,’ nor ‘American.’ Art is not the preserve of any one particular people, it’s something that happens around the whole world.” —El Anatsui, 2011

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO

www.mcasd.org

Taking it all away: MCA Collection, Sydney

Taking it all away: MCA Collection 
Museum of Contemporary Art , Sydney, Australia
Through 22 February 2015

Stuart Ringholt

Untitled (Clock), 2014, clockwork, tubular bells, world globe, steel, glass, electronics 

Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2014

Installation view Stuart Ringholt: Kraft, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2014

Image courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane © the artist, photograph: Andrew Curtis

What might happen if you took away time, so a 24-hour day passed in just 18 hours? What are you left with once 260 volunteers have spent five years erasing a magazine by hand – page by page? These questions about our relationship to time, and how it might be spent and measured, represent one line of enquiry within Taking it all away, an exhibition of works drawn from the Museum of Contemporary Art Collection that is on display this summer.

Taking it all away: MCA Collection presents works that speculate upon the continued importance of Minimalism and conceptual art, the processes of erasure and abstraction, and the social impact of art.

The exhibition includes work by Gordon Bennett, Christian Capurro et. al. (featuring Chris Bond), Peter Cripps, Gail Hastings, Robert Hunter, Rose Nolan and Stuart Ringholt. It presents recent works acquired by the MCA Foundation, along with artworks drawn from the MCA Collection.

Exhibition highlights include Christian Capurro’s erased magazine, which passed through the hands of 250 people over five years and Stuart Ringholt’s 18-hour clock, which explores not only the potential impact of time being taken away but also cosmology and our place within a vast universe. 

In different ways Peter Cripps, Gail Hastings and Robert Hunter explore how art activates our senses of spatiality and temporality, requiring not only our occupation of space but also our input of time and contemplation. Through mirrored surfaces, subtle painted grids or objects to walk around, these works map out the interaction between gallery and spectator.

Gordon Bennett’s soft ground etchings featuring black squares directly reference the origins of abstraction, while Rose Nolan’s banners recall the radical aesthetics of Constructivism’s political slogans. Yet hers are a call to arms of a more individualistic nature, in which party ideology is pared down to personal anxiety.

Natasha Bullock, MCA Senior Curator said ‘If there is a link between the diverse works by the artists featured in Taking it all away it is in their exploration of the dynamics of space and time, set against the complexities of modern life.’

The museum dedicates this exhibition to the memory of artists Gordon Bennett and Robert Hunter, who both sadly passed away during its development.

ARTIST LIST
Gordon Bennett was born 1955, Monto, Queensland. Lived and worked Brisbane. Died Brisbane 2014.
Christian Capurro was born 1968, Dampier, Western Australia. Lives and works Melbourne.
Peter Cripps was born 1948, Melbourne. Lives and works Melbourne.
Gail Hastings was born 1965, Perth. Lives and works Sydney.
Robert Hunter was born 1947, Melbourne. Lived and worked Melbourne. Died Melbourne 2014.
Rose Nolan was born 1959, Melbourne. Lives and works Melbourne.
Stuart Ringholt was born 1971, Perth. Lives and works Melbourne.

Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
www.mca.com.au

Gu Changwei at MoCA Shanghai - “ i ” Contemporary Art of GU Changwei

“ i ” Contemporary Art of GU Changwei
Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai
December 13, 2014 - March 31, 2015 

The Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai presents an exhibition of works by Gu Changwei.

One of China’s most famous film directors today, Gu Changwei began studying art in his pre-college days. In 1978 he was enrolled into the Cinematography Department of Beijing Film Academy as his entry to the movie industry. His practice and exploration of contemporary art, however, has so far remained largely unknown to the public. In this sense, “ i ” Contemporary Art of Gu Changwei is a presentation of his art works after years of silent accumulation.

In this exhibition, the artist used different media including video, two dimensional pieces, and installation. All the works are closely linked to our day-to-day lives and yet they have represented an unexpected and extraordinary splendor. In front of these works, we question on ourselves and derive all kinds of solutions, which also hide behind the artist's interpretation of the contemporary social values, and thinking of the current physical existence.

This solo exhibition is not intended as a summary or extension of Gu Changwei’s achievements as an artist. Rather, it marks a beginning with a unique perspective, a sober-minded meditation expressed with passion. Here and now, we will see an old friend of ours opening up his brave new world of “ i ” to us.

To explain his motivation in creating these works, Gu Changwei quotes from Marcel Duchamp: “Art is not about itself but about the attention we bring to it.”

The curator of this exhibition, Kong Chang’an was among the curators and organizers of the China/Avant Garde ‘89. In the early 1990s, as an eminent art critic, he introduced China’s contemporary art to the West through Flash Art, a world-famous art magazine. Besides, he is the first Chinese curator to work for the 45th Venice Biennale in “Aperto” in 1993. In recent years, Kong has been more involved in research and practice on visual/video art in the United States.

“ i ” Contemporary Art of Gu Changwei at the MoCA Shanghai is a display of contemporary art based on the trans-disciplinary cooperation between a celebrated film director and a senior curator and on an intellectual dialogue by means of visual/video art. For China’s art circles, it will be the year’s finale notable for its flickering novelty.

Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai 

Curator: KONG Chang’an

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, SHANGHAI
People's Park, 231 West Nanjing Road, Shanghai
www.mocashanghai.org

Updated 30.06.2019

Simon Hantai Retrospective @ Ludwig Museum, Budapest

Hantai

Ludwig Museum, Budapest

May 9 – August 31, 2014 

The Ludwig Museum - Museum of Contemporary Art presents the first major exhibition of Simon Hantai in Hungary. The large-scale retrospective surveys the key aspects and periods within the oeuvre of the internationally renowned artist of Hungarian origin, from his early paintings executed in Hungary, through to his final works.

In 2013 the Centre Pompidou showcased a highly successful exhibition of Simon Hantai´s works. The Ludwig Museum is privileged to organize Simon Hantai´s solo exhibition in collaboration with the artist´s family as co-curators. Further enhancing the significance and distinctiveness of the retrospective, the sixty works on view include a number of previously unknown pieces. In addition to the artist´s bequest housed outside Hungary, the show also focuses on paintings belonging to Hungarian collections, thus providing a significant source for art connoisseurs and supplementing the previous international exhibitions.

Simon Hantaï was born in 1922 in Biatorbágy, Hungary, in the vicinity of Budapest. He studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, under the direction of Vilmos Aba-Novák, Béla Kontuly and István Szőnyi. In 1948, Simon Hantai won a scholarship in Paris which was withdrawn as a result of the political changes. Before that the young painter immigrated to France with his wife Zsuzsa Biró, a fellow painter, they spent couple of month in Rome. Italian travel experiences influenced his artistic vision. When he met André Breton and his circle in Paris, he was painting vivid colourful canvases inhabited with phantasmagorical creatures, organic and biomorphic forms, as well as engaging in experiments concerning his medium and technique. Breton organised his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1953, praising Hantai´s work as a great departure in its accompanying catalogue. In the wake of his continuous experiments conducted in parallel with his Surrealist paintings, his art practice became increasingly gestural: following the Paris presentation of the New York School, he became inspired by abstract expressionism, and it was above all Pollock´s work that motivated him to turn to gesture painting. In the 1960s, he began to develop his own unique technique of image-making (the so-called pliage): by creasing and folding the canvas, and then covering it with layers of paint, he created specific abstract patterns on huge surfaces, drawing on the results of the Pollockian sense of freedom in painting, as well as on the explorations of light, colour and surface accomplished by French artists. His works created by the method of folding became arranged in consecutive series, or sequences of form (Mariales or The Virgin´s Mantles, Catamurons, Panses or Sausages, Meuns, Études, Blancs or Whites, and Tabulas).

In 1982, Simon Hantai represented France at the Venice Biennale; and at that time, he decided to withdraw from public life. His absence from the public art scene, however, did not imply abandoning art: Hantai never stopped painting and constantly revisiting his work. He died in September 2008 in his Paris home.

Signaling the importance of his oeuvre, Simon Hantai´s works are included not only in major Hungarian public collections, such as the Museum of Fine Arts, the Hungarian National Gallery and the Ludwig Museum, all in Budapest, and the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pécs, but also in world-famous international collections, such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Musée National d´Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, and Musée d´Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Vatican Museum in Rome, the Musée d´Art Contemporain in Nice, Christie´s in London, and Galerie Jean Fournier in Paris, as well as in Hungarian, American, Italian, Belgian and French private collections.

The exhibition is organized by the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest in collaboration with the Archives Simon Hantai.

LUDWIG MUSEUM

H-1095 Budapest, Komor Marcell utca 1

www.ludwigmuseum.hu

Sculptor Costas Coulentianos Retrospective Exhibition, MMCA, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece

COULENTIANOS THE LAST OF THE MODERN ACROBATS
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece
Through July 26, 2013

The Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece, presents the great retrospective exhibition dedicated to COSTAS COULENTIANOS, which aims to present the entire work by the significant Greek sculptor. The exhibition is organized by the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and the Benaki Museum, in collaboration with the son of the artist, Ben Coulentianos and Theodoros Papapadopoulos. The exhibition was first presented in Athens at the Benaki Museum (28 September 2012 -5 January 2013) and had been a great success.

Sculptor Costas Coulentianos was born in Athens in 1918. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and, later, in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière where he studied under Ossip Zadkine. Costas Coulentianos met Henri Laurens, which had a definitive influence on a great many of his works. His first solo exhibition was held in Paris, in 1962, at a same time, he had started to discuss with architects, how sculpture could be included in architecture, both in public and in private spaces.

The exhibition showcases 80 pieces by the artist, which represent the entire gamut of his creative periods. These range from his first student pieces in the 1940s, when Costas Coulentianos still worked with clay, to the monumental pieces in iron from the last decades of his life. The exhibition seeks to renegotiate the artist's body of work as well as its historical role in the context of artistic production in Greece and internationally, his presence in Paris being catalyzing for contemporary sculpture. 

Issues including the variety of materials he utilised and the sculptural ease with which he handled them; his engagement with the human form; how he combined levels in both small and larger pieces; how cohesive his progress was to an ever more complete simplicity, all constitute fundamental issues both of the exhibition and the accompanying publication. 

Discussing his own oeuvre COSTAS COULENTIANOS stated:

The main material I utilise is iron, ever harder, heavier, more difficult to work with. At the same time I try to remove some of its crude weight and give it motion. My basic problem is space, light and volume. How can each piece be positioned in space and accept the light, so that it can gain significance? I attempt to open space through my forms, creating holes that will allow the light through, so that the space can enter the artefact, which shall, in its turn take its place within the space.

The art historian and curator of the exhibition DENYS ZACHAROPOULOS, artistic director of MMCA, analyzing the artist's work underlines:

From bronze to iron, welding to brazed iron, cement to aluminium, synthetic materials to wood, from wool and weaving to concrete reinforcing bars, stainless steel to bolted metal constructions, Coulentianos experimented, always reaching a stage where the development of "the other" is neither a mechanical repetition nor a mannerism of variation. The artist's work of all the different periods may be said to anticipate the future, not so that it may be original, but, on the contrary, in order to avoid the perennial need for a new patent in the development of sculpture. Every time that he engaged with a new medium he did so, not to rehabilitate an ailing sculpture, but, rather, in order to revive the desire and give life to a sculpture that keeps asking for more, that tries to stand on its own feet, to evolve, to grow, to embrace space, the other, man, the horizon, the world. A man facing a man, a man approaching a man, a man that knows how to stop before oppressing or violating the other, the human in Coulentianos's sculpture is inscribed in a profoundly political dialectic. Even as the artist's sculpture incomparably captures the sensuality that inspires the erotic nature of all human relationships, it also hails from a deep poetic awareness of a man who has experienced fascism and war, the most atrocious state of man when he abuses authority and tries to subject the other. In this respect, Coulentianos's work clearly demonstrates, alongside the sensual surrender to love, the power of resistance, which serves as a constant reminder of the precarious presence of the other, of alterity. Coulentianos is therefore not only the last of the modern acrobats, but, moreover, a fervent advocate of humanism, in the full platonic sense of the word, which fuses love for the other and rejection of war into a single unique awareness and a political stance, not of representation, but of presence, and into a discourse, not of "either-or", but of "you 'll find me in your way"; yet, that is not a threat, but almost a confession of love, a bold statement and demonstration of presence in life, of an active participation in the flux of life and the cosmos. This is the Coulentianos who installs sculptures in cooperation with architects in regional France, who deploys forms in the landscape that embrace the horizon and converse with the trees, who escapes upwards, towards the sky, envious of the flight of birds, who affectionately leans towards all human forms, with a bold, meaningful gesture of a man who offers his body and soul to the person before him.

Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Egnatia 154 (on the grounds of Thessaloniki International Fair)
546 36 THESSALONIKI, GREECE
Museum's website: www.mmca.org

Museum Contemporary Art Sydney reopens march 2012

MCA - Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia: A Major redevelopment

MCA Sydney redevelopment by Sydney architect Sam Marshall
in partnership with the New South Wales Government Architect
Image Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

Following a major AUD$53 million redevelopment, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney will reopen in March 2012 as a bold, new and significantly expanded Museum. The opening of the new MCA promises to be a highlight on the international art calendar, as the Museum is transformed into a major cultural centre for contemporary art and education. 

Commencing in August 2010, the redevelopment is by Sydney architect Sam Marshall in partnership with the New South Wales Government Architect. It will create an additional 4,500 square metres, increasing the MCA’s total size by almost 50 per cent. In addition to building three spacious new galleries, the building program will involve a complete refurbishment of existing facilities. The new Museum will house an entire floor dedicated to the MCA Collection, offering a major national resource for education and interpretative programs.

The National Centre for Creative Learning (NCCL) is one of the most significant highlights of the upgrade, created to complement the Museum’s commitment to innovation and its role as a leader in art education. The NCCL features a dedicated multimedia room and digital classroom, two practical studios, a 120-seat lecture theatre and a room for the MCA’s Bella program for children with special needs. Using unique learning programs and the latest technology, the Centre will connect with classrooms across Australia and the world to engage people with art through seamless accessibility. 

MCA Sydney redevelopment by Sydney architect Sam Marshall
in partnership with the New South Wales Government Architect
Image Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

New venue spaces will also be added on top of the existing building to take advantage of the MCA’s stunning location with spectacular views over Sydney Harbour to the Opera House. The redevelopment will create a new rooftop café and Sculpture Terrace, featuring an annually commissioned artwork. This expansion directly responds to the MCA’s growing audience – which reached over 580,000 in 2010 and has increased five-fold in the last decade. According to MCA Director, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor: ‘This expansion will cement the MCA’s role as a locally loved and internationally renowned contemporary art museum, which supports and promotes Australian artists alongside their international peers. Our commitment to education comes from our belief that creativity and education in the arts are the critical building blocks for a dynamic community’. 

The MCA redevelopment has been made possible as a result of public and private sector support. The Federal Government and the NSW State Government have contributed $13 million each. The MCA’s Chairman, Simon Mordant, and his family have pledged $15 million, in recognition of which the extension will be named the Mordant Wing. The City of Sydney has contributed $1 million and nearly $9 million has been pledged by private donors. The MCA has just launched a campaign to raise the final $2 million. 

The MCA also announced four new commissions by Australian artists, two of which will change annually. The Australian representative for the International Art Exhibition of the 2011 Venice Biennale, Hany Armanious, will create the first work for the new Sculpture Terrace. Additionally,  Emily Floyd will create the first sensory environment for the MCA’s Bella Room and Brook Andrew will install a permanent work which responds to the colonial naval dock remains underneath the new extension. Finally, Grant Stevens will create a video work for the new foyer, featuring names of building donors.  

MCA - MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART - SYDNEY 

www.mca.com.au

Expo BigMinis, CAPC Bordeaux - Musée d’art contemporain / Museum of Contemporary Art of Bordeaux, France

BigMinis, Fétiches de crise
CAPC, Musée d'art contemporain, Bordeaux
Commissaire d'exposition : Alexis Vaillant
Jusqu'au 27 février 2011

Please scroll down for english version

DAVID MUSGRAVE (artiste anglais né en 1973), Animal, 1998
Courtesy de l’artiste et de la galerie greengrassi, Londres © David Musgrave

 

Le mini est-il un signe avant-coureur de crise, ou bien un reflet, une conséquence de celle-ci ? Serait-il aussi une réponse efficace et décalée à LA crise ? Avec l’expo BigMinis, le CAPC se propose d’explorer la fascination singulière qu’exerce l’objet « réduit » à l’heure de la récession. Alors que la miniaturisation peut évoquer une réduction des coûts, du temps et de l’espace, la production du mini, elle, est stratégique. Le mini résiste à la réduction. Il existe depuis sa petite taille. Une petitesse insolente qui révèle, dans le contexte économico-culturel actuel, quelques-unes des pathologies capitalistes dans lesquelles le mini s’origine et auxquelles il répond. Le mini, un objet régulateur ?

L’exposition BigMinis regroupe les oeuvres d’une cinquantaine d’artistes contemporains prêtées par des collections publiques françaises et étrangères, des fondations et collections privées, des galeries et les artistes eux-mêmes. Son propos qui s’origine dans la conjoncture économique actuelle, se déploie sur fond de récession, et interroge, notamment, la notion de « fétiches de crise ».

On pense à tort que dans le mini, tout est proportionnel-lement réduit : il en irait ainsi de l’idée qui l’anime, comme de son impact. Or l’expérience démontre le contraire. Le mini perdure et marque. Il résisterait même à la crise. L’exposition est pensée dans cette perspective.

Pour rendre le propos dialectique et piquant, des oeuvres de grande taille animées par des mini-idées sont aussi montrées, signifiant ainsi que l’impact d’une idée véhiculée par un objet n’est pas proportionnelle à la taille de ce dernier. Autrement dit, que les oeuvres de grande taille sont loin d’avoir le monopole des « grandes » idées et que les idées courtes ne sont pas nécessairement proportionnelles à la taille des objets qui les véhiculent.

Compte-tenu des proportions maximalistes du CAPC auxquelles l’exposition répond en partie, un dispositif a dû être inventé, les "bigminis" ne s’exposant pas vraiment comme des standards. La galerie new formula du rez-de-chaussée du musée ressemblera à un terrain de jeu mental. Et c’est dans une forêt de socles aux allures post-Tetris qu’il faudra parfois chercher les oeuvres. Les minis ignorent les canons de l’époque. Uniques, les oeuvres d’art minis, si tant est qu’elles soient ainsi catégorisables, sont comme mûes par la vie. Qu’elles soient belles et laides importe peu. Leurs dimensions, leurs matériaux, leurs prouesses techniques et conceptuelles les rendent enviables et attachantes, stimulantes pour l’oeil et l’esprit. Elles surprennent et s’imposent. On ne peut rien leur retirer. Elles impactent jusqu’à réveiller la cleptomanie qui sommeille en nous.

Contrairement au king size, le mini doit se voir de près. Il présuppose une mise au point, d’où l’emprise qu’il exerce sur la sphère du désir. En même temps, le petit fait le vide autour de lui car pour être vu, il a besoin de plus d’espace. Il prend donc plus de place que ce que sa taille laissait supposer, d’où sa capacité à devenir fétiche. Le rapport qu’il entretient avec l’environnement (la ville pour la voiture, l’espace d’exposition pour l’objet d’art, la poche pour le tamagotchi, ...) et avec nous, devient alors politique.

Après avoir incarné le boom-object des pays industrialisés, quand le raccourcissement des jupes et des voitures avait pris la dimension d’un phénomène de société, créant la vogue du mot « mini » en Occident, l’objet compact se mesure aujourd’hui à l’aune du mignon (objet léché superflu, symptomatique), de l’inquiétant (objet sériel, culte, fétichisé) et du résistant (objet critique, Pear to Pear, individualiste). On déteste l’aimer et on aime le détester. On le veut en cachette et on ne l’a jamais assez vu.

BigMinis au CAPC
Galerie NEW FORMULA rez-de-chaussée du musée
Exposition conçue par Alexis VAILLANT, responsable de la programmation, CAPC, musée d’art contemporain.de Bordeaux

CATALOGUE DE L’EXPOSITION : BigMinisBook
Sous la direction d'Alexis Vaillant
Contributions de Bruce Hainley, Jennifer Higgie, Claire Moulène, David Musgrave, Aaron Schuster, Alexis Vaillant
Français / Anglais, 10,5 x 7 cm, 300 pages, 160 illustrations quadri, 18 EUR

_______________ English Version _______________

 
BigMinis
Fetishes of crisis
CAPC, Museum of Contemporary Art of Bordeaux
Exhibition Curator: Alexis Vaillant
Through 27 february 2011

With the exhibition BigMinis, the CAPC is offering a plunge into the heart of the ‘compact’ object, the idea being to explore the fascination that things ‘scaled down’ wield these days, afflicted by the crisis as we all are. If it is possible to see in the mini, a harbinger of crisis, as well as a reflection and a critical consequence of this latter, we must also not overlook the fact that it usually represents an unexpected and off-kilter response to the recession. Because a reduction in size conveys the idea of a reduction in cost, space and time, it likens the production of the compact to an intelligent, reactive production, adapted to its economic and cultural context. A control-production.

The mini is at once near and far. Unlike the King-size which can be seen from afar, the ‘mini’, for its part, has to be seen up close. You have to get near to it in order to get a focus. The small makes a void around it, which is how it takes up all its room. To be well displayed, it needs space, and to be properly seen, a decision has to be made about the distance separating it from us. For the room it takes up is more than its size might have us suppose. And it is by taking up this room that the compact object deploys its capacities. Whence issues the thoroughly special relation that it introduces between the environment (city for car, exhibition venue for art object, pocket for tamagoci…) and us. It is a 1:1 relation of resistance. We think, wrongly, that in the small everything is proportionately scaled down, which also applies to the idea which informs it and its impact. Experience shows the opposite. The small endures. To make things fragrant and spicy, large works are also being shown in the exhibition, insinuating that the mini-idea can be enlarged and last as long as the ‘grand’ idea contained in the mini-object.

The exhibition BigMinis is a dialectical show which brings together a selection of works by some forty contemporary artists, enhanced by several emblematic historical works all coming from French and foreign public collections, private foundations, private collections, galleries and artists. It has come into being in the current economic climate, with the aim, of questioning the fascinating attraction with what we might call “fetishes of crisis”. The mini artworks, which are surprising and unique in relation to the canons of the day and age, are as if driven by life. Beautiful or ugly, it matters not a lot. Their dimensions, materials and technical and conceptual prowess all make them enviable, engaging and stimulating for eye and mind alike. But today, they provoke and mark. You cannot take anything away from them, and they often bestir the kleptomania that lurks in all of us. 

After incarnating the ‘boom object’ of the industrialised nations in the 1950s and 1960s, unaided, the compact object is nowadays regarded at once as cute (minority, superfluous) and disquieting (metaphysical, critical, and mutinous). We hate to love it and love to hate it. The contemporary mini has sex appeal. Even when multiplied, it remains one-off.

Taking into account the maximalist proportions of the CAPC to which the show responds, a unique and seemingly ‘scale-less’ display is arranged, and complemented by a ‘you see it, you want it’ bilingual mini catalogue (7 x 5 cm, 300 pages, colour), Editor Alexis Vaillant, contributions Bruce Hainley, Jennifer Higgie, David Musgrave, Aaron Schuster & Alexis Vaillant, co-edited by CAPC, Bordeaux & Sternberg Press, Berlin, New York.

BigMinis
At the CAPC - Museum of Modern Art of Bordeaux
gallery NEW FORMULA (ground floor) 

Other exhibitions
Robert Breer, through 27 February 2011

CAPC
Musée d'art contemporain / Museum of Contemporary Art of Bordeaux
Entrepôt Lainé. 7 rue Ferrère
33000 BORDEAUX - FRANCE

www.capc-bordeaux.fr