Ed Clark: Paint is the Subject @ Hauser & Wirth Zurich - Exhibition Curated by Tanya Barson

Ed Clark: Paint is the Subject

Hauser & Wirth Zurich

13 June – 13 September 2025

Ed Clark in his studio, early 2000s

© The Estate of Ed Clark

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Ed Clark in Paris, 1954

© The Estate of Ed Clark

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Ed Clark

Untitled, ca. 1968

Acrylic on shaped canvas

294 x 408.3 x 4.1 cm / 115 3/4 x 160 3/4 x 1 5/8 in

Photo: Fredrik Nilsen

© The Estate of Ed Clark

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Ed Clark

Untitled, 2002

Acrylic on canvas

170.2 x 239.1 cm / 67 x 94 1/8 in

Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

© The Estate of Ed Clark

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Limmatstrasse presents ‘Ed Clark. Paint is the Subject,’ the first solo exhibition in Switzerland dedicated to this pioneering American abstractionist. Curated by Tanya Barson in close collaboration with the artist’s estate, the exhibition brings together key works spanning seven decades, offering a comprehensive overview of Clark’s groundbreaking practice. The exhibition features a broad selection of his dynamic large-scale paintings and works on paper, as well as early works and an example of his use of the shaped canvas. The presentation is complemented by archival photographs and documents that provide biographical and historical context, tracing the evolution of his innovative approach and lasting impact on modern painting

Ed Clark remained under-acknowledged for much of his career, but he received late recognition in his lifetime, a recognition that continues to grow. A member of the New York School, Ed Clark contributed towards redefining abstraction in the 1950s with two characteristic features—the deployment of the shaped canvas, and his unconventional use of a household broom to create sweeping, gestural compositions—the show’s title coming from a quote by the artist indicating the centrality of his medium to his work. Stylistically, his work bridges the physicality and spontaneity of Abstract Expressionism with the structured clarity of hard-edged abstraction, cementing his significance in postwar painting.

Born in New Orleans in 1926 and educated in Chicago and Paris, he travelled widely throughout his career, each location, its light and palette, impacting his work. Ed Clark maintained close ties to Europe, living between New York and Paris from the 1960s onward. His aesthetic was shaped by the influence of European artists such as Nicolas de Staël and Pierre Soulages, while his artistic and intellectual circles included Joan Mitchell, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Beauford Delaney, Jack Whitten and James Baldwin, among others.

Ed Clark’s early work was figurative, exemplified in the Zurich exhibition by ‘Standing Woman at the Chair’ (1949–50), before shifting toward abstraction in the early 1950s. During his time in Paris, he explored abstract form. His painting ‘Untitled’ (1954) encapsulates this early period. Immersed in the French contemporary art scene, Ed Clark came to believe that the true essence of painting lies not in realistic representation, but in the expressive application of paint, explored for its own sake: ‘I began to believe […] that the real truth is in the stroke. For me, it is large, bold strokes that do not refer distinctly to seen nature. The paint is the subject. The motions of the strokes give the work life. This began to enter into my paintings in a very personal way.’

Back in New York, Ed Clark continued to innovate. In 1956, he began exploring shaped canvases and supports, which can be considered one of the earliest investigations within American abstract modernism, predating the shaped works of Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Al Loving and Sam Gilliam. He later experimented with oval canvases, first conceived during a stay at Joan Mitchell’s house in Vétheuil, France, in 1968. Works on view in Zurich such as ‘Untitled’ (1970) and ‘Silver Stripes’ (1972) reflect this development, the ellipse motif and the oval support in his work aimed at expanding the field of vision, enhancing the immersive qualities of the canvas.

Ed Clark

Untitled (Acrylic #1 from the series Louisiana), 1978

Acrylic on canvas

168.9 x 233.7 x 1.9 cm / 66 1/2 x 92 x 3/4 in

Photo: Matt Grubb

© The Estate of Ed Clark

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Clark’s use of the broom began in Paris and evolved significantly in New York. By the mid-1960s, he was laying his canvases on the floor and using large brooms to deliver sweeping horizontal strokes that captured speed and motion. His gestural language and ever greater emphasis on the brushstroke became central to his practice. A key highlight of the show is ‘Untitled (Acrylic #1 from the series Louisiana)’ (1978), where Ed Clark uses acrylics to capture the palette of the landscape of the Southern United States. Dividing the canvas into three sections—evoking earth, air, and water—he applied paint with broom, brush, and by hand, translating these environmental elements into abstract form. His choice of colors, ranging through pinks, blues, and beiges, deepens the specific sense of atmosphere evoking the landscape of his early childhood, and his return there to teach at Louisiana State University in the late 1970s.

Ed Clark

Untitled, ca. 1990s

Acrylic on canvas

139.1 x 179.1 cm / 54 3/4 x 70 1/2 in

Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

© The Estate of Ed Clark

Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth

As the 1980s progressed, Ed Clark began exploring a new compositional approach he termed his tubular paintings, first seen in the series of ‘Broken Rainbow’ works. These supplanted the structures of narrow horizontal lines he employed in the previous decade, with curved strokes that introduced a suggestion of rotation as in ‘Untitled’ (ca. 1990s). In later works such as ‘Untitled’ (2002), Ed Clark continues this exploration through broad, sweeping gestures and a looser, more fluid structure that became characteristic of his later style.

The Zurich exhibition provides a rare opportunity to experience the full scope of Clark’s practice, placing him in relation to diverse histories of abstraction and highlighting the enduring relevance of his work. It emphasizes how for Ed Clark abstract art represented a greater truth than any realist depiction of the world and that for him ‘paint is the subject.’

Several works by Ed Clark are also currently on view at the Centre Pompidou in Paris as part of the exhibition ‘Paris Noir: Artistic circulations and anti-colonial resistance, 1950 – 2000’ at the Centre Pompidou (19 March – 30 June 2025), which explores the presence of black artists in France. His inclusion highlights the important African American diaspora working in Paris and the long-standing influence of Europe on his practice, situating his work within broader transatlantic narratives.

HAUSER & WIRTH ZURICH

Limmatstrasse 270, 8005 Zurich

www.hauserwirth.com

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Artist Na Kim @ Nicola Vassel Gallery, NYC - "Memory Palace" Exhibition

Na Kim: Memory Palace

Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York

16 January - 22 February, 2025

 

NA KIM

Courtesy Na Kim and Nicola Vassel, New York

Nicola Vassell presents Na Kim: Memory Palace, an exhibition of new paintings by Na Kim that is the artist’s first solo presentation with the gallery. The exhibition features a group of portraits that show Kim situating the genre within the structure of seriality to produce a sustained reflection on the intersection of appearance with representation and physical fact with metaphoric meaning.

These new paintings signal the continued development of Kim’s project of serial portraiture that began in 2023. Grounded in a daily practice of painting that Na Kim considers meditative, she began to portray “imagined subjects” derived from a platonic ideal in her mind, one she pursued and discovered anew with each successive canvas. A commitment to repetition allowed Kim to begin seeing the differences between portraits in a heightened way, such that previously minor or incidental details then appeared to become evidence of new emotional and psychological landscapes.

Just as the philosophical scope of Kim’s portraiture has become more complex, so too has her painting become more lush and lyrical. Whereas earlier portraits were placed against solid backgrounds of nearly monochromatic color, Kim’s new paintings are more open and spacious, with loose, sweeping brush strokes left visible for viewers to see both as atmospheric and representational detail. Kim has likened her painting process to that of carving, in that she builds her figures up slowly in an intuitive way that sees each new mark responding to the one that preceded it. This way of working allows her to achieve a subtlety of effect, as facial expressions seem to hinge upon slight inflections of shadow, line and color, so that the interior world of a given subject might be legible, but only just so, ultimately leaving us to draw upon our own emotional or psychological experience.

Na Kim’s attention to setting and atmosphere in these paintings can at times verge into complete abstraction, only further complicating our ability to trust what we first see in these portraits. Facial or bodily details that would otherwise seem familiar and easily recognizable, such as a nose, eyebrow or mouth, are instead transfigured by paint and mark-making so that we see them as form before illusion. Whether seen individually or considered collectively, these portraits ask us to examine our assumptions about appearance and presentation both in a physical and spiritual sense, to wonder if what we see represents what is really there.

NA KIM Na (b.1986 Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Known for her mimetic portraits set against polychromatic backgrounds, Na Kim’s paintings depict figures but are conceptually abstract. Her imagined subjects, derivative yet unique, evoke both confrontational and intimate encounters. Kim’s practice centers neither accuracy nor narrative, but rather reflects a deeply meditative character study.

Solo exhibitions include Kim’s debut solo presentation at White Columns, New York (2023) and this show at Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York (2025). Group exhibitions include The Selves, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York (2024) and the White Columns Benefit Auction, New York (2023, 2024). Na Kim has shown work at a number of art fairs, including Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami (2024) and Independent Art Fair, New York (2024). In addition to her fine art practice, Na Kim currently works as the art director of The Paris Review and creative director of the publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Her designs have been named among The New York Times’ best book covers of the year for the past nine consecutive years.

NICOLA VASSEL

138 10th Avenue, New York, NY 10011

www.nicolavassell.com

Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits @ Denver Art Museum

Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits

Denver Art Museum

November 17, 2024 – May 11, 2025

DAWOUD BEY

A Young Man Resting on an Exercise Bike,

Amityville, NY, from the series Street Portraits, 1988 

Pigment print 

Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago 

© Dawoud Bey

DAWOUD BEY

A Couple in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY,

from the series Street Portraits, 1988 

Pigment print 

Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago 

© Dawoud Bey

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) presents Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits, featuring 37 portraits by celebrated photographer and 2017 MacArthur Fellow DAWOUD BEY (American, born 1953).

From 1988 to 1991, Dawoud Bey collaborated with Black Americans of all ages whom he met on the streets of various American cities. He asked a cross section of people in these communities to pose for him, creating a space of self-presentation and performance in their urban environments.

“We’re pleased to present the first standalone museum show of this important work,” said Eric Paddock, Curator of Photography for DAM. “Dawoud Bey’s Street Portraits mark a turning point where the deliberate, closely observed portraits he had been making with a handheld camera began to contain what he has called ‘the kind of lush physical description’ he wanted his pictures to convey—and that is a consistent part of all the work he has made since. The slower process of working with a camera on a tripod invited collaboration between the artist and his subjects, making each picture both an experiment and a discovery.”

Dawood Bey used a large format tripod-mounted camera and a unique positive/negative Polaroid film that created both an instant print and a reusable negative. Bey considers photography an ethical practice that requires collaboration between the artist and his subjects. To reciprocate with the people who posed for him, he gave each person a small black-and-white Polaroid print.

"This is the first standalone museum show of Bey’s Street Portraits," said Eric Paddock, Curator of Photography for the DAM. "Each picture is an experiment, a discovery that describes people and the places where they live. At the same time, these photos are attentive to the quality of light on a particular day and the way the artist orchestrates all those things through his camera. This was a transformational work that evolved through the 20 years of Dawoud’s signature photography."

The exhibition is organized by the community the photographs were made: Brooklyn; Washington, D.C.; Rochester; Amityville; and Harlem. Defying racial stereotypes, the resulting photographs reveal the Black subjects in all of their psychologically rich complexity, presenting themselves openly and intimately to the camera, the viewer, and the world.

DENVER ART MUSEUM

100 W. 14th Avenue Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204

denverartmuseum.org

ST-ART 2024, Strasbourg : Comité Artistique de la Foire d'Art Contemporain

ST-ART 2024, Strasbourg

Foire d'Art Contemporain

Le Comité Artistique

29 novembre - 1er décembre 2024

Dans la continuité du renouveau initié en 2023, le Comité Artistique des galeries s’étoffe avec l’arrivée de Stéphanie Pioda, historienne et critique d’art, qui rejoint Georges-Michel Kahn et Rémy Bucciali. Le Comité Artistique joue un rôle essentiel dans la création d’un environnement artistique renouvelé à chaque édition. Il étudie avec soin et sélectionne les propositions faites par les galeries, garantissant ainsi une expérience riche et variée pour les visiteurs. Chaque année, le comité artistique s’efforce notamment de mettre en lumière des talents émergents et des oeuvres novatrices.

Georges-Michel Kahn

© Nicolas Rosès

GEORGES-MICHEL KAHN

Collectionneur passionné et expert d’art abstrait des années 50/60, tant français qu’européen, Georges-Michel Kahn fonde en 1997 une galerie à Strasbourg, suivie d’un showroom à Paris en 2004. En 2006, il installe un espace à Ars en Ré, devenant sa vitrine principale à partir de 2019. Son engagement pour l’art se traduit par une programmation éclectique, mettant en lumière l’abstraction, l’art brut et singulier, ainsi que du mobilier design italien et nord-européen. Sa galerie accueille des oeuvres d’artistes emblématiques comme Ben, Ducorroy et Beuys. Il contribue également à la diffusion de l’art moderne et contemporain en éditant catalogues, multiples d’artistes et sérigraphies.

Rémy Bucciali

RÉMY BUCCIALI

Rémy Bucciali fonde en 1983 un atelier dédié à l’édition et à l’impression de gravures contemporaines, devenu rapidement un lieu majeur de création et de collaboration artistique. Il y accueille en résidence des artistes du monde entier, leur offrant un espace pour expérimenter diverses techniques d’impression et développer leur art. Sous le label Éditions Bucciali, il s’impose comme un acteur de premier plan dans le domaine de l’édition d’art en Europe, collaborant avec des artistes renommés et émergents, et contribuant à la diffusion de la gravure contemporaine à travers des expositions internationales et des publications de qualité, qui enrichissent le patrimoine artistique et soutiennent les pratiques innovantes en matière de gravure.

Stéphanie Pioda

© Gaston Piriou

STÉPHANIE PIODA

Historienne de l’art, journaliste, critique d’art et éditrice formée à l’Ecole du Louvre et à la Sorbonne, Stéphanie Pioda écrit sur le marché de l’art, l’art contemporain, l’archéologie et les métiers d’art. Après avoir longtemps collaboré au Journal des Arts, L’OEIL, Archéologia et Les Dossiers de l’Archéologie, elle écrit aujourd’hui pour Le Quotidien de l’art, La Gazette de Drouot et Beaux-Arts magazine. Elle coordonne également des hors-séries pour Beaux-Arts Éditions et a participé à plusieurs publications, dont des monographies sur Speedy Graphito et François Bard chez Somogy, Alberto Sorbelli. Je veux glisser une oeuvre à l’intérieur d’un individu aux éditions MF ou Vasarely Legacy chez In Fine Editions.

ST-ART, FOIRE D'ART CONTEMPORAIN, STRASBOURG

Parc des Expositions / Halls 2 & 3

Avenue Herrenschmidt, 67000 Strabourg

st-art.com

Bangkok Art Biennale 2024: Curators and Advisors - Biographies & Portraits

 BANGKOK ART BIENNALE 2024

Curators and Advisors

24 October 2024 - 25 February 2025

The Bangkok Art Biennale 2024's team includes 7 advisors and 5 curators.

BANGKOK ART BIENNALE 2024 CURATORS

Prof. Dr. Apinan Poshyananda

Chief Executive and Artistic Director, Bangkok Art Biennale

Dr. Apinan Poshyananda

Image courtesy of Bangkok Art Biennale

Professor Dr. Apinan Poshyananda was born in 1956. He received his Bachelor and Master Degree in Fine Arts from Edinburgh University, Scotland, and Doctor of Philosophy Degree in History of Art from Cornell University, USA. As an artist, he won three medals at the National Exhibition of Art, Thailand, and has held solo exhibitions at the Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Bhirasri Institute of Modern Art, and the National Gallery, Thailand. Between 1981-2002, Poshyananda taught at the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, and held the position of Director at The Art Centre of Academic Resources, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. He was awarded outstanding researcher from the National Research Council, Bangkok, and was a recipient of the Bellagio Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation. He served as the Director-General of the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture (2003-2009), Director-General of the Cultural Promotion Department (2010-2011), and the Permanent Secretary, the Ministry of Culture, Thailand (2014-2016). During his time at the Ministry, Poshyananda was the commissioner of the Thai Pavilion at the 50th, 51st, 52nd Venice Biennale (2003, 2005 and 2008). 

Apinan Poshyananda has curated works by Thai and international artists exhibitions across Asia, Europe, USA and Oceania including The 9th Sydney Biennale (1992); The 1st and 2nd Asia-Pacific Triennial (1993 and 1996, Australia), The 1st Johannesburg Biennale (1995); Contemporary Art in Asia: Traditions/Tensions (1996-1998, Grey Art Gallery, Queens Museum of Art, and Asia Society Galleries, New York, Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Western Australia Art Gallery, Perth, Taipei Fine Arts Museum); major retrospective show Montien Boonma: Temple of the Mind (2003, 2004, Asia Society and Museum, New York, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco and the National Gallery of Australia); Traces of Siamese Smile: Art + Faith + Politic + Love (2008, the inaugural exhibition of Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC)); Thai Transience (2013, Singapore Art Museum); Thailand Eye (2015, Saatchi Gallery, London and BACC); and most recently three editions of Bangkok Art Biennale (2018, 2020, 2022). Poshyananda is the author to several seminal books on Thai and Asian art including Modern Art in Thailand in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1992); Western-style Painting and Sculpture in the Royal Thai Court (1993); Behind Thai Smiles Selected Writings: 1991-2007 (2007); Playing with Slippery Lubricants Selected Writings: 1993-2004 (2010), among others.

He is a committee member of the Asian Art Council, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Research committee of the National Gallery Singapore; and Advisor to the President and CEO of Thai Beverage Plc. He was conferred Knight Grand Cordon (Special Class) of the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant, Thailand; Knight First Class of Royal Order of the Polar Star, Sweden; Knight, Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity, Italy and Officer of the French Arts and Letters Order, France.

Pojai Akratanakul

Curator, Bangkok Art Biennale 2024

Pojai Akratanakul

Photo courtesy of Bangkok Art Biennale

Pojai Akratanakul is a curator based in Bangkok, and was Assistant Curator for two editions of the Bangkok Art Biennale in 2020 and 2022. She holds an MA in Visual Arts Administration in Curatorial Concentration and Non-profit Management from New York University. Her research interests include the history and study of different models of art institutions in Thailand, and the development of the Thai art ecosystem.

Recent independent curatorial experience includes exhibitions Area 721,346 and Footnotes on Institution at Gallery VER (2023, 2019) and Almost Nature at 3RD Fl alternative space (2019). She is also a member of collective Charoen Contemporaries, with whom she curated exhibitions PostScripts, a site-responsive and public art project at Praisaneeyakarn (2018) and co-juried Early Years Project 4: Praxis Makes Perfect at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (2019). Prior to joining the Bangkok Art Biennale, Akratanakul had experience working in exhibitions and publications in Bangkok and New York City, as well as managing a private collection, The Petch Osathanugrah Collection.

She has been a guest lecturer on curatorial studies, art history, and issues in contemporary art at many institutions, including the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Faculty of Archeology and Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts at Silpakorn University, School of Fine and Applied Arts, Bangkok University, School of Architecture, Art, and Design, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, among others.

Brian Curtin

Curator, Bangkok Art Biennale 2024

Brian Curtin

Photo courtesy of Bangkok Art Biennale

Brian Curtin is an Irish-born art critic and educator. He was very active as a curator between 2007-18, mounting exhibitions internationally and managing the experimental venue H Project Space in Bangkok. Trained as an artist, BrianCurtin holds a Ph.D. from the University of Bristol, UK, and his writings have been published in Art Journal, Artforum, Craft Research, Frieze, Journal of Curatorial Studies, and Parachute, amongst others. His monograph Essential Desires: Contemporary Art in Thailand was published by Reaktion Books in 2021. Influenced by dialogues between queer theories, contemporary art, and critical inquiries into visual and material cultures, publications include studies of the art-historical marginalizing of ‘decoration’ and issues of national identity as a frame for recent art. His published profiles of artists include Paul Pfeiffer, Collier Schorr, Jakkai Siributr, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. In 2018 Brian led Uncommon Pursuits: A Temporary School for Emergent Curators in Southeast Asia at Sàn Art, a non-profit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. A regular consultant, commissions include Alphawood Foundation Chicago, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and De Gruyter publishers. Brian Curtin lectures on the International Programme in Communication Design (CommDe and CommMA) at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok where he has lived since 2000.

Akiko Miki

Curator, Bangkok Art Biennale 2024

Akiko Miki

Photo courtesy of  Bangkok Art Biennale

Former Chief and Senior curator, Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2000-2014), Co-director, Yokohama Triennale 2017 and Artistic Director of its 2011 edition among others. She has curated many international exhibitions including 1998 Taipei Biennial as well as served guest curator for number of large-scaled exhibitions of Japanese artists such as Nobuyoshi Araki, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Takashi Murakami at major museums in Asia and Europe including Barbican Art Gallery (London), Taipei Fine Art Museum, National Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Yokohama Museum of Art and Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art. She is also Director of Naoshima New Museum of Art (provisional) to be opened in 2025.

Paramaporn Sirikulchayanont

Curator, Bangkok Art Biennale 2024

Paramaporn Sirikulchayanont

Photo courtesy of  Bangkok Art Biennale

Paramaporn Sirikulchayanont (PhD) has extensive experience managing a nonprofit art institution as the Director of the Art Centre, Silpakorn University, for ten years between 2013 and 2023. Her background in the art and cultural management fields, together with her contemporary vision, has distinguishably turned the traditional image of the Art Centre, Silpakorn University, into an entire connecting point of contemporary art by focusing on building a standard curatorial and educational system with the aim to strengthen the significance of university’s art centre role in the art ecosystem. She is interested in creating contemporary art spaces, exhibitions and art projects that interrelate to humans, society, diverse cultures and various fields of knowledge. Apart from her extended background in organizing contemporary art exhibition projects, she has regularly been invited as a guest lecturer, an art and cultural juror, and an advisor for both state and private art and cultural projects. Sirikulchayanont is currently a full-time lecturer at the Department of Art Theory, Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts, Silpakorn University.

BANGKOK ART BIENNALE 2024 ADVISORS

Marina Abramović

Artist

Marina Abramović

Photo courtesy of Bangkok Art Biennale

Since the beginning of her career in Belgrade during the early 1970s, Marina Abramović has pioneered performance art, creating some of the form's most important early works. Exploring her physical and mental limits, she has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in her quest for emotional and spiritual transformation.

Marina Abramović was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale. In 2010, Marina Abramović had her first major U.S. retrospective and simultaneously performed for over 700 hours in The Artist is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Marina Abramović founded Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), a platform for immaterial and long durational work to create new possibilities for collaboration among thinkers of all fields.

Her most recent publication is Walk Through Walls: A Memoir, published by Crown Archetype on October 25, 2016. Her retrospective The Cleaner opened at Moderna Museet, Stockholm in February 2017 and has toured to seven additional European venues, ending at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia in 2019. In September 2020 the Bayerische Staatsoper presented the world premiere of 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, which will continue to tour to other venues. In 2023 she will present the solo exhibition After Life at the Royal Academy, and become the first female artist in the institution’s 250 year history to occupy the entire gallery space with her work.

Lito Camacho

Chairman, University of the Arts Singapore (UAS)

Lito Camacho

Photo courtesy of Bangkok Art Biennale

Lito Camacho is currently a Consultant for the Wealth Management Division of Credit Suisse, Chairman of SunLife of Canada (Philippines), and Board Member of STPI (Singapore). Lito was formerly Vice Chairman for Credit Suisse Asia Pacific. Lito joined Credit Suisse in March 2005 after a distinguished career in government and international banking. He was appointed Secretary of Finance for the Philippines in 2001, a position he held until November 2003. Prior to that, Lito was the Secretary of Energy for the Philippines. He was also Chairman of several government corporations and agencies.

Prior to joining the government, Lito Camacho was a Managing Director and Chief Country Officer for the Philippines at Deutsche Bank, AG in Manila. Before Deutsche Bank, Lito Camacho worked for Bankers Trust Company for over twenty years in New York, Japan, Hong Kong, Philippines and Singapore.

Lito Camacho is currently a Director of SymAsia Foundation (Singapore), a Founding Member of Asia Peace and Reconciliation Council (Thailand), a Member of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s International Advisory Panel (China) and a Senior Advisor/Board Member of a number of other companies in the region. He was previously a board member of the National Gallery Singapore (2013-June 2021), the National Heritage Board of Singapore (2007-2013) and Sun Life Malaysia Takaful Bhd (2013-2019) and Sun Life Malaysia Assurance Bhd (2013-2022). Lito was also formerly a member of the Securities Industry Council of Singapore (2010-2017), the Securities Commission of Malaysia’s International Advisory Group (2008-2010) and the ASEAN Capital Markets Forum’s Group of Experts (2008-2012), and the Chief Executive Officer of Credit Suisse Singapore (2007-2016).

Lito obtained his Bachelor's degree in Mathematics (cum laude) from De La Salle University in 1975. He received his MBA with concentration in Finance from Harvard University in 1979.  In 2017, Lito Camacho was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Business Administration from Thailand’s Eastern Asia University, and was a recipient of Singapore’s 2021 Public Service Medal (Pingat Bakti Masyarakat).

Kim Camacho

Art collector

Kim Camacho

Photo courtesy of Bangkok Art Biennale

Kim Camacho is a graduate of Harvard Business School, 1980 and an economics graduate, cum laude, from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, 1977. She trained in Seagrams Latin America in New York and worked for the National Development Company of the Philippines under the Minister of Trade and Industry. She then founded a fashion accessories business in 1984 before working briefly in property development. In 2001, she opened and ran the Sotheby's representative office in the Philippines.

She and her husband (banker and former Secretary of Energy and Secretary of Finance of the Philippines) Lito Camacho have been collecting art since 1981. Today, their collection has some of the most important works of one of the world's most popular artists, Yayoi Kusama. Their Gutai art collection is also well-known, having been started before Gutai was widely acclaimed in a Guggenheim New York retrospective. Both their Kusama and Gutai collections have been shown at the Ayala Museum. Their video art collection is considered to contain the largest private collection of digital video works of Japanese art collaborative, teamLab. Their collection also includes major works of American Abstract Expressionist, Alfonso Ossorio, and Filipino and Southeast Asian artworks. They regularly lend artworks to museums and art exhibitions around the world. She and Lito Camacho have 6 children, 2 of whom are artists- Bea, and Lorenzo. She now considers herself a full time art collector.

Mami Kataoka

Director of Mori Art Museum, Japan

Mami Kataoka

Photo Credit Ito Akinori

Kataoka Mami joined the Mori Art Museum in 2003, taking on the role of Director in 2020. She has also taken on the position of Director of the National Center for Art Research since April 2023.

Beyond Tokyo, Mami Kataoka has held positions at the Hayward Gallery in London, where from 2007 to 2009 she was the institution’s first International Curator; she has also acted as Co-Artistic Director for the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012), Artistic Director for the 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018) and Artistic Director for the Aichi Triennale 2022. Mami Kataoka served as a Board Member (2014-2022) and the President (2020-2022) of CIMAM [International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art].

Jean-Hubert Martin

Honorary director of the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou

Jean-Hubert Martin

Photo courtesy of Bangkok Art Biennale

Jean-Hubert Martin (born 1944 in Strasbourg) was curator at the Musée National d'Art Moderne Paris (1971-1982) and became then Director of the Kunsthalle Bern (1982-1985). During his directorship of the Musée National d‘Art Moderne Centre Pompidou (1987-1990), he curated the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre (1989), which for the first time showed the western avant-garde together with unknown artists from Africa, Asia and Oceania. Favoring a sensitive approach over knowledge, Jean-Hubert Martin strove to show art beyond historical and cultural categories first with the presentation of the collection at the Museum Kunstpalast in Dusseldorf in 2001. It was followed by several similar exhibitions in Paris in 2016 and in Moscow 2020. 

Qiu Zhijie

Artist, Curator, Writer, President of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts,

Professor at Central Academy of Fine Arts

Qui Zhijie

Photo courtesy of Bangkok Art Biennale

Born in 1969, in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, China, Qiu graduated in 1992 from the Printmaking Department of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art, CAA). He is the President of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts and a Central Academy of Fine Arts professor. As an artist, Qiu Zhijie is known for his calligraphy and ink painting, photography, video, installation, performance, and works of Technology and Art. 

As an art writer, Qiu Zhijie has published dozens of books including On Total Art, The Image and Post-Modernism, Give Me a Mask, The Limit of Freedom, Post-Photography Photography, Experimentalist, How to Become a Loser, How to Become Ignorant, The Spoiler, etc. His work's catalog includes Breaking Through the Ice, The Shape of Time, Archeology of Memory, etc. 

He held dozens of solo exhibitions in art museums both domestically and internationally and participated in hundreds of group exhibitions. He was also the curator of the first video art exhibition Phenomena / Image in China in 1996. He curated a series of “Post-sense Sensibility” exhibitions between 1999 and 2005 promoting the young generation of Chinese artists. In 2012 he was the chief curator of the 9th Shanghai Biennale “Reactivation”, in 2017 he was the chief curator of the Chinese Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale. He also curated and launched the International Children’s Poetry Beach Project.

Dr. Eugene Tan

Director, National Gallery Singapore & Singapore Art Museum

Eugene Tan

Photo Courtesy of Singapore Art Museum

Eugene Tan is the Director of the National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum. He received his PhD in Art History from the University of Manchester. He has curated numerous exhibitions including the inaugural Singapore Biennale in 2006 and the Singapore Pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Recent exhibitions he has curated at the National Gallery Singapore include: Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s-1990s (2019), Minimalism: Space, Light and Object (2018); Reframing Modernism: Painting from Southeast Asia, Europe and Beyond (2016); Between Dreams and Declarations: Art of Southeast Asia since the 19th Century and Siapa Nama Kamu? Art from Singapore since the 19th Century (2015). Other selected exhibitions include: Of Human Scale and Beyond: Experience and Transcendence (2012) at the Hong Kong Art Centre, as well as solo exhibitions by Danh Vo (2016), Lee Mingwei (2010) and Jompet (2010). He is co-author of the publication Contemporary Art in Singapore (2007) and has written widely for exhibition catalogues and art publications, including Art Asia Pacific, Art Review, Broadsheet, among others. He was formerly a member of the Board of Governance of CIMAM, the International Association of Contemporary Art Museums and serves on the Board of the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (MuHKA) in Belgium and the International Advisory Board of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan. He also lectures on Art History at the National University of Singapore.

BANGKOK ART BIENNALE

www.bkkartbiennale.com

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

Gisèle Vienne

This Causes Consciousness to Fracture

Haus am Waldsee, Berlin 

12 September 2024 – 12 January 2025

Gisèle Vienne 

Series PORTRAITS 45/63, 2024

Photo: Gisèle Vienne

 

Gisèle Vienne 

Series PORTRAITS 48/63, 2024

Photo: Gisèle Vienne 

Gisèle Vienne 

Series PORTRAITS 44/63, 2024

Photo: Gisèle Vienne

Gisèle Vienne 

Series PORTRAITS 42/63, 2024

Photo: Gisèle Vienne 

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

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

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

Installation view Gisèle Vienne 

TRAVAUX 2003–2021, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 2021

Photo: Martin Argyroglo

Installation view Gisèle Vienne 

TRAVAUX 2003–2021, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 2021

Photo: Martin Argyroglo

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

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

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

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

Curated by Anna Gritz

HAUS AM WALDSEE 

Argentinische Allee 30, 14163 Berlin

hausamwaldsee.de

Updated 23.01.2024

Alex Katz: Portraits and Landscapes @ Museum Brandhorst, Munich - Exhibition curated by Achim Hochdörfer with Lena Tilk

Alex Katz: Portraits and Landscapes  

Museum Brandhorst, Munich  

Through 16 February 2025 

ALEX KATZ, who celebrates his 97th birthday this year, is one of the most important representatives of contemporary painting. During his long career, which has now spanned more than 70 years, he has dedicated himself to depicting the here and now, which is why he has described his art as “painting in the present tense.”

Alex Katz has donated two paintings to Museum Brandhorst. An early work from 1958, showing the painter and sculptor George Ortman, and a recent, very personal double portrait of his wife Ada and his son Vincent. To mark this generous donation, Museum Brandhorst is presenting the exhibition “Alex Katz: Portraits and Landscapes,” which, in addition to the two new acquisitions, also presents the rich inventory of work by the artist held by the Brandhorst Collection. Following the major monographic exhibition Alex Katz in 2018-2019, the current show once again brings together major works from all his creative phases.

ALEX KATZ: PORTRAITS

In his portraits, Alex Katz depicts family members, acquaintances and artist friends – whether individually or in groups – with an almost simple monumentality. His flair for painterly surfaces stands in an exciting relationship to the formal language of film, fashion and advertising. This is one of the reasons why Alex Katz is also celebrated as a forerunner of Pop Art.

One of Alex Katz’s major works is “The Black Dress” (1960), in which he depicts his wife Ada six times, each time in an elegant black cocktail dress. The repetition of one and the same figure is reminiscent of a film strip, comparable to the serial character of Andy Warhol’s portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor and Jackie Kennedy, created a few years later.From an early stage, Katz found important allies and aesthetic inspiration among contemporary poets, musicians and dancers. Museum Brandhorst owns two iconic pictures of the choreographer Paul Taylor (1930–2018) and his Dance Company. Taylor stands before us in this 1959 portrait with a sense of challenging calm. His tense strength suggests that he could jump out of the picture at any moment and start dancing. As Alex Katz later recalled, “I had seen Paul dance for the first time shortly before we met... and thought his choreography was one of the most surprising things I had seen as an artist. Paul’s dancing seemed to be a real break with that of the previous generation: no expression, no content, no form, as he said, and with great technique and intelligence.”

ALEX KATZ: LANDSCAPES

Alex Katz celebrated his first successes in the New York art scene at the height of Abstract Expressionism. Yet he always remained committed to figurative painting. It was only late, in the mid-1980s, that he approached gestural abstraction in his landscapes and cityscapes. The branches, twigs and leaves in his paintings are reminiscent of the spontaneous gestures and ‘drip paintings’ of Jackson Pollock. Each individual brushstroke can be read figuratively and at the same time appears as an autonomous visual sign.

In some of these paintings, the light itself – whether direct, reflected, or diffuse – becomes the defining theme. Reflections in water and depictions in fog or at dusk often serve as a means of capturing the moods of different times of day.  “These are all very fleeting things, quickly over,” says Alex Katz. “I have captured twilight in landscapes that can only be seen for a quarter of an hour. That fascinates me because it’s real high-speed perception.”

ALEX KATZ: STUDIES

With their clear design and masterful technique, Alex Katz’s paintings convey the impression of great ease, as if they had come naturally into the world. However, their creation process is much more complex. Alex Katz’s large-format paintings on canvas usually develop from smaller oil studies that are created on prepared hardboard. For his landscapes, he usually sketches the same scenery at the same time in the same place on successive days and finally selects the one that seems most interesting to him in order to enlarge it to scale. Due to their sketch-like spontaneity, these studies have a special aesthetic appeal.

THE DONATIONS OF ALEX KATZ: “George Ortman” and “Ada and Vincent”

Even at the age of 96, Alex Katz is still an enormously productive artist, as the more recent of his two donations, “Ada and Vincent,” proves. There are 65 years between "Ada and Vincent" from 2023 and "George Ortman" from 1958. The donations bridge the gap between his early and late work and enable an examination of aesthetic and thematic leitmotifs over the course of his 70-year career. Both works provide insights into Alex Katz’s very personal family environment and are also contemporary documents of the social and artistic milieu in downtown New York in the 1950s. A juxtaposition of landscapes and portraits shows how virtuously and playfully Alex Katz navigates between improvised gestures and cool realism, traditional painting and the exploration of photography and film.

Alex Katz, who was born in 1927 and has since inspired generations of painters, is one of the most important artists in the Brandhorst Collection alongside Andy Warhol and Cy Twombly – both of whom were born in 1928. Anette and Udo Brandhorst were passionate admirers and supporters of Alex Katz from an early age. The artist’s generous donation is due not least to this close relationship.

Curated by Achim Hochdörfer with Lena Tilk.

MUSEUM BRANDHORST

Theresienstrasse 35A, 80333 München

www.museum-brandhorst.de

ALEX KATZ: PORTRAITS AND LANDSCAPES 

MUSEUM BRANDHORST, MUNICH - 22 MARCH 2024 - 16 FEBRUARY 2025

Hidden Faces: Covered Portraits of the Renaissance @ The Met Fifth Avenue, New York

Hidden Faces: Covered Portraits of the Renaissance

The Met Fifth Avenue, New York

April 2 – July 7, 2024

This is the first exhibition to examine an intriguing but largely unknown tradition of Renaissance painting: multisided portraits in which the sitter’s likeness was concealed by a hinged or sliding cover, within a box, or by a dual-faced format. The covers and reverses of these small, private portraits were adorned with puzzle-like emblems, epigrams, allegories, and mythologies that celebrated the sitter’s character, and they represent some of the most inventive and unique secular imagery of the Renaissance. The viewer decoded the meaning of the symbolic portrait before lifting, sliding, or turning the image over to unmask the face below.

The widespread development of these multifaceted objects in Italy and Northern Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries is  explored through approximately 60 double-sided and covered portraits from The Met collection and other American and European institutions, including major loans from the Ashmolean Museum, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, National Gallery of Art in Washington, and more. The presentation will reunite several portraits and their covers that had been split and made part of separate collections. Painted by artists such as Hans Memling, Lucas Cranach, Lorenzo Lotto, and Titian, the works range from portraits intended as portable propaganda to those designed to conceal a lover's identity. These varied three-dimensional, hand-held ensembles shed significant light on the intimate and personal nature of portraits designed as interactive objects.

Hidden Faces: Covered Portraits of the Renaissance is curated by Alison Manges Nogueira, Curator, Robert Lehman Collection at The Met. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press.

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

The Met Fifth Avenue

1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028

www.metmuseum.org

Exposition-Festival Utopi·e 2023 @ Magasins Généraux, Pantin

Exposition-Festival Utopi·e 2023

Magasins Généraux, Pantin

24 - 28 mai, 2023 

Elijah Ndoumbe

Let’s Look, Together, 2021

© Elijah Ndoumbe

Maïc Baxane

Pisseur·se 4, 2022

© Maïc Baxane

Nelson Bourrec Carter

Strange Bedfellows, 2023

© Nelson Bourrec Carter

Kianuë Tran Kiêu

Siffler la Nuit, 2022

© Kianuë Tran Kiêu. 

Photo © Sara Kheladi

Après avoir accueilli la première édition en mai 2022, les Magasins Généraux reçoivent la deuxième édition d’Utopi·e, prix artistique d’un nouveau genre dédié aux artistes LGBTQIA+. Cette semaine d’exposition et de festival vise à encourager et à visibiliser la scène artistique queer, et à faire appel à une approche de l’art attentive aux différences, engagée, diversifiée et inclusive.

Chaque année, Utopi·e organise un appel à candidatures destiné aux artistes LGBTQIA+ dont les pratiques artistiques explorent – autant dans le discours que dans la forme – leurs identités mouvantes, illustrent leurs rêves et leurs inspirations, sensibilisent aux discriminations sexuelles et de genre, bousculent les modèles hétéronormatifs et cisgenres, et surtout rejettent les injonctions à rentrer dans des cases.

Pour cette édition, le public est invité à découvrir le travail de 10 artistes sélectionné·e·x·s par un comité pluridisciplinaire et transgénérationnel, et à prendre part à une programmation mêlant conversations, ateliers, lectures, performances et DJ sets.

En plus de l’exposition de leur travail aux Magasins Généraux, les artistes lauréat·e·x·s ont accès en 2023 à :

• Une dotation financière de 1000 €

• Un cycle d’expositions en galerie pendant l’hiver 2023/2024 avec les galeries Balice Hertling, Praz Delavallade et sans titre à Paris

• Une résidence de deux semaines à la Maison Artagon dans le Loiret

• Une soirée de programmation à la galerie that’s what x said à Bruxelles

Les membres du comité de sélection de cette édition :

• Julie Crenn, docteure en histoire de l’art, critique d’art (AICA) et commissaire d’exposition indépendante

• Camille Kingué, membre de Contemporaines

• Clément Postec, conseiller artistique, commissaire d’exposition et cinéaste

• Adeline Rapon, artiste et photographe

• Emilie Renard, directrice de Bétonsalon

• H·Alix Sanyas (Mourrier), artiste et membre de la collective Bye Bye Binary et lauréat·e de la 1ère édition d’Utopi·e

" Les oeuvres des dix artistes exposé·e·x·s ont toutes comme point de départ des éléments biographiques, qu’il s’agisse de lutte, de témoignage, de revendication ou encore de rituel, elles nous offrent à voir une intimité. Chaque oeuvre nous plonge dans le vécu de l’artiste, nous fait découvrir son histoire mais aussi une partie de celle de la communauté LGBTQIA+. Cette exposition propose une cartographie de l’appartenance queer, résistante et poreuse " soulignent les deux co-fondatrices de l'événement, Myriama Idir et Agathe Pinet.

LES ARTISTES DE LA 2E ÉDITION

MAÏC BAXANE

NÉ·E EN 1984

Portrait de Maïc Baxane

Photo © Lucile Boiron

Maïc Baxane dessine et produit ses affiches- images sous forme de multiples aux couleurs franches, de visuels jouissifs qui placent les corps en leur coeur, bousculent et redéfinissent les représentations qui nous entourent, esquissant d’autres mythologies. Impliqué·e et partie prenante des communautés queer, son travail de design graphique et d’illustration participe à la création de messages et de signes pour nos luttes, nos revendications, nos imaginaires. C’est depuis une subjectivité queer et féministe aussi, qu’ell·e travaille l’autoportrait, outil d’exploration à de multiples fins.

NELSON BOURREC CARTER

NÉ EN 1988

Portrait de Nelson Bourrec Carter

Photo © Nelson Bourrec Carter

Nelson Bourrec Carter est un artiste et réalisateur franco-américain. Sa pratique qui lie film, photographie et installation, s’articule autour des liens tissés entre territoires fictionnés et paysages réels, et les questionnements identitaires qui leurs sont inhérents. Ses tropismes sont ceux de ses origines familiales, françaises et afro-américaines, de son identité queer, ainsi que des narrations qui ont forgé son regard sur cette triple culture. Ses images sont empreintes des grandes mythologies américaines, autant documentaires qu’hollywoodiennes, et chacune de ses pièces s’appuie sur ces ressources autant qu’elle en interroge la structure. Ses films ont été montrés dans des festivals tels qu’Entrevues Belfort ou Vila do Conde au Portugal, à la Cinémathèque française, mais également dans des centres d’arts comme le MAC VAL (Vitry-sur-Seine), le Jeu de Paume (Paris) ou le MoMA (New York).

AËLA MAÏ CABEL

NÉ·E EN 1995

Portrait d’Aëla Maï Cabel

Photo © Oriane Robaldo

Aëla Maï Cabel fonde sa pratique sur l’échange des savoir-faire et savoirs, travaillant notamment la céramique, la performance, l’édition, les ateliers de partage, la cueillette et le glanage. Son travail se compose d’un ensemble de pièces se présentant sous la forme d’installations. Si ce terme générique vient préciser des postures historiques dans l’histoire de l’art, iel se connecte ici tant aux savoirs ancestraux qu’aux économies du partage, lui donnant la possibilité ouverte (ou offerte) de faire advenir, à présent, un futur.

Iel nous invite à nous relier à des forces, celles de la nature ou de la cosmogonie, de travailler de plus près les notions d’autonomie et d’autogestion, de questionner les féminismes comme pensée écosophique et enfin d’aborder toutes matières (argile, textile, teinture, laine, bois) comme la zone sensible d’un territoire de rencontres, de trouvailles et d’enchantement.

AUDREY COUPPÉ DE KERMADEC

NÉ·E EN 1992

Portrait d’Audrey Couppé de Kermadec

Photo © Nanténé Traoré

Audrey Couppé de Kermadec est un·e journaliste, un·e écrivain·e, un·e artiste visuel·le et performeur·euse non-binaire et afrodecendant·e. Son travail explore des sujets allant des traumatismes de l’enfance à la santé mentale, en passant par les normes de genre et l’expérience d’être une personne noire touchée par le sexisme. Originaire de Guadeloupe et de Martinique, l’artiste antillais·e utilise son art comme un acte d’amour de soi et un lieu sûr pour montrer sa vulnérabilité. Ses oeuvres se veulent hybrides et mêlent du dessin digital, des textes personnels, des photographies argentiques et des pistes sonores oniriques pour tisser des collages intimes et politiques.

Extrait de biographie écrite par Claire Laporte, Centre d’art Ultra association

NAELLE DARIYA

NÉE EN 1987

Portrait de Naëlle Dariya

Photo © SMITH

Naelle Dariya est autrice, performeuse et comédienne. Après des études de lettres, elle suit une formation intensive à l’École du jeu et travaille régulièrement sous la direction d’Alexis Langlois, Paul B. Preciado et Yann Gonzalez dans des films résolument queers. Son expérience de vie est souvent motrice dans son processus d’écriture de récits d’autofictions. Ses créations, qui sont des critiques acerbes du cistème, abordent les thématiques de la reproduction sociale et de l’intersectionnalité. Elle use d’un humour incisif, où personne n’est épargné·e. Parallèlement, aux côtés de son ami river, cinéaste et militant, iels ont fondé le collectif SHEMALE TROUBLE qui promeut les cultures trans et queers dans le milieu de la nuit.

SIDO LANSARI

NÉ EN 1988

Portrait de Sido Lansari

Photo © Sido Lansari

Sido Lansari est un artiste pluridisciplinaire. Il est né et a grandi à Casablanca, au Maroc. Il a travaillé à la Biennale de la danse et la Biennale d’art contemporain de Lyon pendant ses études de communication culturelle. En 2014, il s’installe à Tanger et rejoint l’aventure de la Cinémathèque de Tanger dont il en est le directeur jusqu’en septembre 2022. Actuellement en post-diplôme art à l’École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon, il y développe un projet sur l’Ahzem, premier mouvement queer maghrébin en France. Sa pratique artistique s’articule autour de questions liées à l’identité, au genre et aux sexualités en explorant les angles morts de la mémoire, du point de vue de l’héritage linguistique, artisanal ou archivistique. À travers des médiums comme la broderie, la photographie et la vidéo, il interroge un récit collectif pour construire une réflexion et une mémoire individuelles.

En 2018, il est artiste résident à la Friche la Belle de Mai à Marseille. Il y développe Les Derniers paradis, son premier court-métrage, Grand Prix 2019 du Festival Chéries-Chéris à Paris. Il crée divine en 2020, fanzine participatif et pluridisciplinaire en ligne, qui favorise la contribution d’artistes d’univers multiples en leur offrant un espace d’expérimentation de la pratique artistique domestique dans un contexte de pandémie. Son travail a notamment été exposé en 2022 et 2023 à l’Institut du monde arabe dans le cadre de l’exposition « Habibi, les révolutions de l’amour ».

ELIJAH NDOUMBE

NÉ·E EN 1994

Portrait d’Elijah Ndoumbe

Photo © Muhammad Salah

Elijah Ndoumbe est artiste multimédia, tisseur·se de rêves et vit entre Paris-Marseille, Los Angeles et Dakar. Ses oeuvres, à la fois objets plastiques, photographiques, filmiques sont une mosaïque de récits, poétiques, sensoriels et empruntés à la réalité des trans de Turtle Island (USA), d’Afrique du Sud, et d’Ouest, elles sont un plaidoyer pour une justice et une liberté des genres.

Elijah Ndoumbe a été artiste en résidence à Black Rock Sénégal, artiste invité·e à la Biennale de Dakar - DAK’ART 2022 dans l’exposition collective « Black 40 Rock » organisée par Kehinde Wiley et aux Rencontres de Bamako - Biennale africaine de la photographie (2022- 2023) Iel fait partie du programme CPH:LAB (2022-2023). Iel développe actuellement un projet avec des artistes entre la France, le Sénégal et les États-Unis.

NO ANGER

NÉE EN 1990

Portrait de No Anger

Photo © Arsène Marquis

Chercheuse et artiste, No Anger tient le blog À mon geste défendant. En 2019, elle a obtenu un doctorat en science politique. Elle participe aux luttes féministes, queer et antivalidistes. Souhaitant exprimer la puissance de son corps loin des assignations validistes qu’elle subit au quotidien, No Anger se crée une nouvelle peau, par la danse et l’écriture. Son travail suit donc ces deux axes qui se mêlent parfois dans ses performances : elle écrit des textes qui accompagnent la danse, la complètent. Elle croit beaucoup en la possibilité de réinventer artistiquement son corps et sa sexualité.

JORDAN ROGER

NÉ EN 1996

Portrait de Jordan Roger

Photo © Agathe Flamant

Jordan Roger est diplômé de l’Ensa de Bourges en 2021. Il a volontairement barré son nom de famille à la suite de l’excommunication familiale qu’il a subi il y a quelques années par les témoins de Jéhovah. Dès lors, il voue un culte à sa propre colère. Ses oeuvres, toujours militantes, se dressent en réaction à l’hétéropatriarcat, aux inégalités de classes et questionnent plus généralement la religion, ses amours, ses icônes et la famille.

L’artiste utilise des codes connus de tous·tes pour les détourner de leur statut originellement conçu. Ses doigts d’honneurs se matérialisent dans un travail pluridisciplinaire qui se nourrit d’un champ lexical gay. Un château de princesses en flammes, une chorale de sirènes, une fausse page Wikipedia en céramique, un travesti dans une robe de mariée. Des doigts d’honneurs couleurs pastels recouverts de paillettes et affublés de phrases chocs espérant pouvoir endoctriner le plus de brebis possible.

KIANUË TRAN KIÊU

NÉ·E EN 1989

Portrait de Kianuë Tran Kiêu

Photo © Helio Pu

Kianuë Tran Kiêu est un·e artiste asiofuturiste non- binaire et transdisciplinaire. Son travail est traversé par trois grandes notions : le sanctuaire émotif, le mysticisme résilient et les luttes queer et antiracistes. Ses oeuvres se matérialisent dans un univers poétique et onirique, inspiré de ses imaginaires de repli. Elles soulignent l’importance de faire mémoire collective, de réclamer son héritage queer et d’être moteur de sa narration. L’artiste réfléchit la libération des corps queer et racisé·e·x·s de tout contrôle, la réappropriation d’une spiritualité trans décolonisée comme rite de résilience, ainsi que la sensibilité comme puissance de révolte, de résistance et d’autodétermination politique.

C’EST QUOI UTOPI·E ?

Soirée d’ouverture de la 1e édition d’Utopi·e

aux Magasins Généraux, 2022

Photo © Pierre-Ulysse Gorzkowski

Utopi·e est une association d’intérêt général qui agit en faveur de l’égalité des genres dans les arts visuels et vivants. Utopi·e souhaite visibiliser et défendre des artistes LGBTQIA+ engagé·e·x·s qui portent à travers leur travail des valeurs d’inclusion, de témoignages et de respect de la différence, et qui s’emparent des enjeux sociétaux. Par-delà la nécessité de soutenir les créations LGBTQIA+, Utopi·e est un appel à explorer d’autres champs dans la création actuelle.

Pour cela, Utopi·e met en place des rendez-vous où s’invitent des programmations artistiques et culturelles avec expositions, conférences, lectures, performances et fêtes. De cette manière, Utopi·e souhaite mettre en avant les voix LGBTQIA+ nouvelles et établies.

LES CO-FONDATRICES

Portrait de Myriama Idir et Agathe Pinet

Photo © Jeanne Lucas

Animées par une vision commune et engagée de participer à l’émancipation de schémas prédéfinis dans le monde de l’art, Agathe Pinet et Myriama Idir forment un duo complice et complémentaire.

Ayant suivi le même cursus en marché de l’art, elles s’entendent sur les sujets de résistance politique sociale et identitaire qui modifient les polarités du monde de l’art. Ce dialogue les amène à se questionner sur les relations et les rapports entretenus par les différents acteur·rice·x·s de ce secteur et à s’intéresser à la collaboration comme mode de production de projets.

Deux itinéraires différents qui combinent des expériences transdisciplinaires, et qui s’inscrivent avec les artistes, les chercheur·euse·x·s, curateur·ice·x·s dans une perspective de changement pour un art actuel plus fluide et essentiel au sein de notre société.

Site internet : prixutopie.com

Instagram : @prixutopie

Informations pratiques :

Soirée d’ouverture : mardi 23 mai de 18h à 23h

Exposition–festival du 24 au 28 mai 2023

Du mercredi au samedi de 14h à 19h,

le dimanche de 14h à 22h

Entrée libre & gratuite

MAGASINS GENERAUX

1 rue de l'Ancien Canal, 93500 Pantin

Toute la programmation est à retrouver sur magasinsgeneraux.com