re-title.com Features

QUAD, Derby

Gibson/ Martelli
White Island, 2014
Installation, Interactive Virtual Environment, Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset
Custom Interface, 5.1 Surround Audio (detail)
Courtesy of the Artists
 
 
GIBSON/MARTELLI
80° N
 
13 December 2014 to 8 February 2015
 
80° N is an exhibition by Gibson/Martelli featuring works drawing on personal and historical narratives in a search for the geographical North Pole
 
A SEASON OF ADVENTURE
Inspired by the spirit of discovery and celebrating the pioneers who break new ground through science and new technologies, with exhibitions, digital experimentation, talks, events, film screenings and educational activities that journey into the art of exploration.
 
QUAD presents a trilogy of works by artists Gibson/Martelli. 80° N is the result of a four year research project that centres on Arctic exploration. The 80° North parallel is the line of latitude where the Polar region begins. The Gibson/Martelli trilogy considers this navigational concept from three different perspectives:
 
In Search of Abandoned responds to a marker on the Google Maps for Spitsbergen that is labelled ‘Abandoned’. The artists sought to rediscover this location, both physically during a residency Martelli attended in Svalbard, and also through a computer generated virtual experience.
 
White Island draws on S. A. Andrée’s doomed Polar balloon expedition of 1897. Attempting to reach the Pole, Andrée’s balloon crashed on the ice near Kvitøya (White Island). The three expedition members perished, and their final campsite was only located in 1930. Consulting textual and photographic documentation left by the original expedition members, Gibson/Martelli built a computer generated world using height map data and game engine technology;
 
In Perfect Circle, a 100 year old Dutch sailing vessel, *Noorderlicht*, makes a 360° turn in an attempt to describe a perfect circle in the sea near the Monacobreen Glacier.
 
In its attention to the expansive frozen lands and seas of ice, the exhibition contemplates the overwhelming might of nature, its beauty and its vulnerability. In each project, the artists depart from classical representations of heroic voyages of discovery enabled by engineering mastery. Gibson/Martelli invite the viewer to observe the Arctic from a first-person perspective. Employing immersive techniques from virtual reality and video games, the viewer’s panoramic gaze is transformed by individual agency. In these spaces science & fiction merge, addressing the position of the self in relation to nature and technology - imagined & experienced views of place where invention and memory collide.
 
“Gibson and Martelli’s work pushes both the capacity of cutting edge visualization technology and our understanding of where contemporary art can take us.” - CAFKA Biennial Director Gordon Hatt, 2014
 
Ruth Gibson & Bruno Martelli see their practice as an ongoing investigation into simulacra and the sublime underpinned by the tradition of figure and landscape. They make environments and performances using print, video and computer games. Known as igloo from 1995 - 2010, their first work together won them a BAFTA nomination. They exhibit in galleries, theatres and festivals around the world including The Detroit Institute for Art, the Barbican, SIGGRAPH, ISEA, The Royal Opera House, Royal Festival Hall & 52nd Venice Biennale. Bruno lectures at AA School of Architecture, Slade & Goldsmiths College; while Ruth is Creative Fellow at the Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University’s School of Art & Design. Their work can be found in private and public collections including Sarah Meltzer Gallery, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art & the British Film Institute.
www.gibsonmartelli.com
 
80°N by Gibson/Martelli is produced in association with QUAD, supported by Arts Council England and CAFKA14 - with generous sponsorship from Christie Digital & WorldViz.
 
The exhibition 80°N is part of a Season of Adventure at QUAD which will include talks, events, films and workshops.
 
Gibson/ Martelli are QUAD Digital Fellows for 2014.
 

QUAD
Market Place
Cathedral Quarter
Derby DE1 3AS
United Kingdom
T: +44 01332 290606
 
QUAD
 
Read On... QUAD, Derby
 

Taka Ishii Gallery Photography/Film, Tokyo

Lina Scheynius
“Untitled (Diary)”, 2002
Gelatin silver print, image size: 40 x 60 cm, paper size: 50 x 70 cm
Courtesy of CHRISTOPHE GUYE GALERIE, Zurich
 
 
LINA SCHEYNIUS
“Exhibition 03”
 
December 13, 2014 - January 31, 2015
Opening reception: Saturday, Dec 13, 18:00 - 20:00
 
Taka Ishii Photography / Film will present “Exhibition 03”, a solo exhibition by Lina Scheynius from December 13 to January 31. This will be Scheynius’ first solo exhibition in Japan and it will include about 16 works.
 
Born in Vänersborg in southeast Sweden in 1981 and currently based in London, Lina Scheynius became a photographer after a career in modeling. After working as a model, a photographic subject and target of idealistic and conceptual projection as well as alteration, Scheynius began shooting photographs out of a desire to reconstruct the relationship between “the looker” and “the looked” and a continued interest in photographic expression, which candidly mediates that relation.
 
I picked up a lot from growing up in an environment where I had access to cameras and photographic books. My dad took loads of pictures of us, and watching the family slides with the projector was always amazingly fun for me. And after that I started modeling and saw how most professional fashion photographers work - and I learnt how I don’t want to work.
 
- Lina Scheynius, excerpted from http://www.linascheynius.com/faq.html
 
Scheynius primarily observes and shoots herself, her friends, and lovers, and her intimate moments with them. Her interest and compassion for her life and the people in it has been a consistent theme since she shot her first photographs with the camera her father gave her when she was 10 years old. She takes her camera everywhere, including her bed and bathroom to create fresh, diaristic photographs, which frankly capture both dark and radiant moments in her personal, everyday life. The resulting images belong within the lineage of autobiographical photographic practice. Her photographs at times expose her life nakedly, but her sincere perspective gives even her sexual images a sense of refinement. Her intimate relationship with her subjects allows her to capture their bodies and expressions in a uniquely beautiful light.
 
The fact is that I love taking photographs and I love telling stories that can be interpreted in millions of ways through the help of photographs. And as long as I love that I will just keep doing it and enjoying it.It is really as simple as that.
 
- Lina Scheynius, excerpted from interview by Arata Sasaki on HITSPAPER
 
As with Nobuyoshi Araki, whom she admires, Scheynius lives her life by engaging and shooting those around her. She began shooting photographs when she was only 10. Self-taught, she gained recognition for her work on Flickr and shot her first professional work, a portrait of Charlotte Rampling, for Dazed & Confused. Since then, she has contributed to many fashion magazines including Vogue and AnOther. As successor to the German photographer Jürgen Teller, she published a serialized photographic “column” in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit for one year. After showing works in American and European museums and festivals, such as the FOAM Museum in Amsterdam and DEICHTORHALLEN (House of Photography, Hamburg), she had her first solo exhibition at the Christophe Guye Gallery in Switzerland. She has also produced six acclaimed self-published, limited edition publications to date. A seventh volume will be published this winter.
 
In conjunction with the current exhibition, an exhibition focused on the works from her latest publication described above will be held at POST (2-10-3 1F, Ebisu-Minami, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo) where a book signing will take place as well. We sincerely hope that you will take this opportunity to view Scheynius’s work.
 
 
Taka Ishii Gallery Photography/Film
AXIS Building 2F, 5-17-1
Roppongi, Minato-ku
Tokyo 106-0032
Japan
T: +81 3-5646-6050
 
Taka Ishii Gallery Photography/Film
 
Read On... Taka Ishii Gallery Photography/Film, Tokyo
 

YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY, New York

Sebastião Salgado
Fortress of Solitude, Antarctica, 2005
Gelatin Silver Print
Courtesy of the artist and Yancy Richardson Gallery, New York
 
 
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO
Genesis
 
December 11 - January 24, 2015
Opening Reception, Thursday, December 11, 6-8pm
 
Yancey Richardson is pleased to present Genesis, an exhibition of works by Sebastião Salgado selected from the artist’s eight-year project photographing the natural world in its pristine, untouched state. Since 2004, Salgado has travelled to dozens of countries, including some of the most remote regions of the globe, to photograph land and marine wildlife, arctic, desert, and tropical landscapes, and indigenous peoples still living according to ancestral traditions. Genesis is also a clarion call raising public awareness about the fragility of the planet, and the immediate problems of environmental degradation and climate change.
 
A large-scale travelling museum exhibition of Genesis is currently on view at the International Center of Photography, New York, curated and designed by Lélia Wanick Salgado, who states: “Genesis is a quest for the world as it was, as it was formed, as it evolved, as it existed for millennia before modern life accelerated and began distancing us from the very essence of our being. It is testimony that our planet still harbors vast and remote regions where nature reigns in silent and pristine majesty.”
 
Genesis, Salgado’s third in a series of long-term global projects, can be viewed as a response to its predecessors Workers (1993) and Migrations (2000), which explored displaced populations and the relentless working conditions endured by men and women around the world. In Genesis, Salgado has chosen to focus on the pristine beauty of the earth and those living in harmony with it.
 
Sebastião Salgado was born in 1944 in the Brazilian mining state of Minas Gerais. Initially an economist with the World Bank, Salgado began his photographic career in Paris in 1973. He worked with the Sygma, Gamma, and Magnum Photos agencies until 1994, when he and his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado founded Amazonas Images, dedicated exclusively to his work. He has travelled to more than 100 countries for his photographic projects, resulting in many books including Autres Amériques and Sahel, l’homme en détresse (1986), An Uncertain Grace (1990), Terra (1997), Exodes (2000), Les Enfants de l’Exode (2000), and Africa (2007).
 
Travelling exhibitions of Salgado’s work have been, and continue to be, presented in institutions throughout the world, and his work is held in many museum collections including the Centre Pompidou, Chicago Art Institute, Museum of Modern Art, NY, The J. Paul Getty Museum and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, among others. A feature-length documentary about the artist, directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, May 2014, and is currently screening in theaters worldwide. Salgado has been awarded numerous prizes and has twice been named photographer of the year by the International Center of Photography. Salgado is a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States.
 
 
YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY
525 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011
T: 1 646-230-9610
 
YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY
 
Read On... YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY, New York

 

Galleria Lia Rumma, Naples | Milan

Ugo Mulas
L’operazione fotografica
Autoritratto per Lee Friedlander, 1971
 
 
UGO MULAS
The Sensitive Surface
 
curated by Tina Kukielski
in collaboration with Archivio Ugo Mulas
 
November 22, 2014 - February 14, 2015
 
Galleria Lia Rumma is pleased to announce the representation of Ugo Mulas, one of the most important twentieth century photographers.
 
Curated by the New York-based curator Tina Kukielski, in collaboration with the Archivio Mulas, a distinct bodies of works demonstrating the wide breadth of Mulas’s life and career will be on view simultaneously at both the Naples and Milan galleries.
 
By the time of his untimely death in 1973, Ugo Mulas was recognized as a master of portraiture, reportage, fashion and advertising photography. He photographed artists and artworks during one of the most dynamic periods in the history of art, the 1960s, when he portrayed the likes of Jasper Johns, Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp and countless members of the Italian avant-garde like Lucio Fontana. Lesser known is the work Mulas made at the end of the 1960s, work that explores the conceptualist potential of photography at that time. This exhibition features this robust period of experimentation centered in the artist’s studio dating from 1969-1973. Complimenting this late period in Mulas’s career are selections of the artist’s lesser-known color work and a few standout examples of the artist’s enlarged contact sheets, a motif that found recurrence in Mulas’s work following a seminal trip to New York City in 1964.
 
Collaborating with Bruno Munari and Luciano Caramel, Mulas co-organized Campo Urbano, an exhibition of performances and events that took place on the streets of Como in 1969. Recognizing the photograph as inherently performative in its own right, Mulas shot sequences of images askew and oblique at times that played with the unpredictable, ephemeral quality of the happenings. Often printed and enlarged directly from the contact sheets, Mulas’s Campo Urbano works subvert the narrative, chronological framing of the event to become something else entirely, another kind of art work or experience.
 
The contact sheet would be the readymade that Mulas would most frequently return to throughout his career. At the gallery in Naples, contact sheets including the rarely seen sequences of Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein, Pino Pascali and Andy Warhol will also be included alongside selections from Campo Urbano. Featured in Milan, will be the artist’s prelude to his best-known Verifications series, also on view upstairs. Known as the Verification proofs, these mostly black photographs printed directly from blank negatives and left uncropped challenge the language and temporality of the picture frame, opening up the photograph to something more than a simple record of a moment, time or place. In focusing on the machinery of picture-making, Mulas presents us with a compelling new face for art, as vivid today as it was at the time of first exposure.
 
In both galleries two rare documentary films will be screened: the Naples show will include a video regarding the project Campo Urbano, whereas a documentary shot by Nini Mulas with interviews by Rossana Rossanda to main New York based artists, will be visible in Milan.
 
 
Ugo Mulas (Pozzolengo, 1928 - Milan, 1973). Self-taught, his career developed in contact with the artistic and cultural scene in Milan in the early Fifties. After his debut in photojournalism (1954) Mulas rose rapidly to renown in Italy in various different fields of professional photography, publishing his work in magazines such as Settimo Giorno, Rivista Pirelli, Novitá, Domus, Vogue and Du. In that period he worked on a series of reportages in Europe with Giorgio Zampa for L’illustrazione italiana and in an artistic partnership with Giorgio Strehler for Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, a partnership that continued over the years. Mulas photographed the Venice Biennale exhibitions from 1954 to 1972 and worked in close contact with the artists. In that period the representation of the art world became the photographer’s main focus. Projects of note include the famous series on Alberto Burri (1963) and Lucio Fontana (1965) and his reportage in Spoleto for the “Sculture nella cittá” exhibition (1962), where he met the artists David Smith and Alexander Calder. The series dedicated to Eugenio Montale’s poetry collection Ossi di Seppia aIso dates to this period. After discovering Pop Art at the 1964 Biennale, Mulas decided to go to the United States (1964- 67), where he created his most important reportage, the book New York: The New Art Scene (1967). His encounters with Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, and his discovery of the photography of Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander, influenced his new work of the late 1960s,in which he moved away from traditional reportage.
 
Large formats, projections, solarisations and the use of the proof as an aesthetic device are elements that Mulas borrowed from the experimentation of Pop art and New Dada, and the practical business of photography. In the late Slxties he participated in the aesthetic and conceptual renewal of the neo-avantgarde movements, working on the catalogues (Amore Mio, 1970) and various document-books. This was the period of his reportage on the tenth anniversary of Nouveau Réalisme (Milan, 1970), his unpublished work Vitalitá del negativo (Rome, 1970) and at least five other books: Alik Cavaliere (1967), Campo urbano (1969), Calder (1971), Fausto Melotti: lo spazio inquieto (1971) and Fotografare l’arte (1973). Mulas was also involved in experimental work on theatre, working with the director Virginio Puecher for the sets of Wozzeck by Alban Berg and Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, both in 1969. The decline of the reportage format, superseded by television, led Mulas to profound rethinking of the historic function of photography, and these aesthetic and phenomenological reflections led to his portfolio on Marcel Duchamp (1972) and the project Archivio per Milano (1969-72). His Verifiche (1968-72) were aIso produced in this period: the series of 13 works encapsulates Mulas’ experience and his ongoing  dialogue with the art world. A pivotal work in contemporary photography, the Verifiche series was to be his last work, as the photographer fell seriously ilI. Mulas died on 2 March 1973, a month before the opening of a retrospective dedicated to his work at the University of Parma, and the publication of his book and final testament, La Fotografia.
 
 
Galleria Lia Rumma Naples
Via Vannella Gaetani, 12
80121 Napoli
Tel +39 081 19812354
 
Galleria Lia Rumma Milan
Via Stilicone, 19
20154 Milano
Tel. +39 02 29000101
 
Galleria Lia Rumma
 
Read On... Galleria Lia Rumma, Naples | Milan

 

Art Rotterdam | The fair to discover young art | 5 – 8 feb 2015

Welcome to Art Rotterdam
The fair to discover young art
5 - 8 February 2015
Location: Van Nellefabriek
 
The 16th edition of Art Rotterdam will inform you about the latest developments in visual art. With different views on young art in diverse exhibition concepts Art Rotterdam becomes more and more an alternative for the large international art fairs. Video art can be enjoyed in an open and interactive setting at Projections and the Mondriaan Fund once again shows the youngest talents in the spectacular warehouse of the former distribution centre of the Van Nellefabriek.
 
New this year is Intersections, a stage for artists initiatives and project spaces in the former  workshops of the Van Nellefabriek. Intersections presents installation, interactive, and performance art and the theme is the Dutch Flemish year. At the Van Nellefabriek terrain there are more inspiring exhibitions, like for example the nominees for the MK-Award, large sculptures by DordtYart and art for under € 1.500,- at We Like Art.
 
Participants Art Rotterdam
 
Main Section
 
acb Gallery [HU], AKINCI [NL], andriesse eyck galerie [NL], The approach [UK], ASPN [DE], Willem Baars Projects [NL], Base-Alpha Gallery [BE], Belenius/Nordenhake [SE], van den Berge [NL], Francis Boeske Projects [NL], Boetzelaer Nispen [NL], BORZO [NL], Ellen de Bruijne Projects [NL], Canvas International Art [NL], Kristof De Clercq gallery [BE], Cokkie Snoei [NL], Dürst Britt & Mayhew [NL], Edel Assanti [UK], Flatland Gallery [NL], G262 Sofie Van de Velde [BE], van Gelder [NL], Annet Gelink Gallery [NL], Annie Gentils Gallery [BE], Geukens & De Vil [BE], Grimm Gallery [NL], Jochen Hempel [DE], Gerhard Hofland [NL], Jeanine Hofland [NL], Majke Hüsstege [NL], Juliette Jongma [NL], Roger Katwijk [NL], Van Kranendonk [NL], kunstgaleriebonn [DE], Martin Kudlek [DE], Maurits van de Laar [NL], LhGWR [NL], Wouter van Leeuwen [NL], Wilfried Lentz [NL], Ron Mandos [NL], Mario Mazzoli [DE], Kunsthandel Meijer [NL], van der Mieden [BE], MISAKO & ROSEN [JP], Nouvelles Images [NL], Onrust [NL], Ornis A. Gallery [NL], Pablo’s Birthday [USA], Galerie Pennings [NL], PHOEBUS Rotterdam [NL], R & R Reutengalerie Amsterdam [NL], RAM [NL], Ramakers [NL], JOEY RAMONE [NL], Petra Rinck Galerie [DE], Gabriel Rolt [NL], David Risley Gallery [DK], Rotwand [CH], Barbara Seiler [CH], Slewe [NL], snap projects [FR], Stigter Van Doesburg [NL], tegenboschvanvreden [NL], Tenderpixel [UK], TORCH [NL], TRAPÉZ [HU], Upstream Gallery [NL], VILMA GOLD [UK], Vivid [NL], Kunstruimte Wagemans [NL], Van De Weghe [BE], Fons Welters [NL], West [NL], Western Exhibitions [USA], xpo gallery [FR], ZERP Galerie [NL], Galerie Zink [DE], Martin van Zomeren [NL]
 
New Art Section
 
All Together Now [NL], balzer art projects [CH], mariondecannière [BE], GALERIE CONRADI [DE], Cøpperfield gallery [UK], Jeanroch Dard [BE], Division of Labour [UK], D+T Project Gallery [BE], Grimmuseum [DE], Herrmann Germann Contemporary [CH], Rianne Groen [NL], Hopstreet Gallery [BE], Harlan Levey Projects [BE], Galerie Max Mayer [DE], Tatjana Pieters [BE], Berthold Pott [DE], Praterstraße Berlin [DE], South Kiosk [UK], Maria Stenfors [UK], Super Dakota [BE], Frank Taal [NL], WORKS|PROJECTS [UK], ZAK | BRANICKA [DE], Van Zijll Langhout [NL]
 
Projections
 
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz - Ellen de Bruijne Projects [NL] | Gonzalo Lebrija - Faggionato [UK] | Yael Bartana - Annet Gelink Gallery [NL] | Domenico Mangano - MAGAZZINO Arte Moderna [IT] | Hans Op de Beeck - Ron Mandos [NL] | Melanie Gilligan - Galerie Max Mayer [DE] | Cécile B. Evans - Barbara Seiler [CH] | Roos Theuws - Slewe [NL] | Nathaniel Mellors - Galerie Stigter van Doesburg [NL] | Sander Breure & Witte van Hulzen - tegenboschvanvreden [NL] | Renzo Martens - Fons Welters [NL] | Janis Rafa - Martin van Zomeren [NL]
 
Intersections
 
1646 [NL], A Tale of a Tub [NL], DASH [BE], EMERGENT [BE], Hole of the Fox [BE], Hotel Maria Kapel [NL], Lokaal 01 [BE], Komplot [BE], MAMA [NL], MER Paper Kunsthalle [BE] Meuze [NL], NEST [NL], NICC [BE], Nieuw Dakota [NL], Nieuwe Vide [NL], Rongwrong [NL], Stichting IK [NL], The Ridder [NL], Trendbeheer Present [NL]

 
Address Art Rotterdam
Van Nellefabriek
Van Nelleweg 1
3044 BC Rotterdam
The Netherlands
 
Opening hours
Thursday February 5: 11.00 - 19.00 hrs
Friday February 6: 11.00 - 21.00 hrs
Saturday February 7: 11.00 - 19.00 hrs
Sunday February 8: 11.00 - 19.00 hrs
 
Tickets
at the fair € 17,50
online € 13,50 [€ 4,- discount]
online combi ticket 2 days: € 20,- [can only be bought online]
 
Check for more information, tickets and special hoteloffer citizenM Rotterdam:
www.artrotterdam.com
www.artrotterdamweek.com

 

Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver: Help us build a unique art-dance commission

Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver:
Help us build a unique art-dance commission
 


John Wood and Paul Harrison
‘Bored Astronauts on the Moon’
production still, 2011
Courtesy the artists and Carroll/Fletcher Gallery, London.
 
The CAG and Ballet BC in association with the Art|Basel Crowdfunding Initiative are excited to announce a new project.
 
Selected by an independent jury for Art|Basel’s curated page on Kickstarter, we are commissioning visual artists John Wood and Paul Harrison to team with the renowned dancers of Ballet BC, to produce a collaborative cross-disciplinary performance combining the very best in both contemporary dance and visual art.
 
Be a part of this major art-dance collaboration BACK THE PROJECT HERE.
 
The funds will be used to bring the visual artists to Vancouver and to work with the dancers in an intensive development period during spring and fall 2015. The collaboration between CAG and Ballet BC recognizes the distinctive contribution each of us brings to the project, making the whole much bigger than the sum of its constituent parts. Our supporters are a major part of this, extending that partnership into a broader sense of sharing and building a real community involvement in this dynamic venture.
 
The cost of developing and producing such a commission can often be prohibitive despite the strength of idea and partners involved. While accessing of funds for the actual production and performances in 2016 provides many openings, the research phase is where we need help now. We need assistance in supporting the artists’ commissioning fees and expenses in order to get the project started.
 
The artists
 
Since Wood and Harrison’s first collaboration in 1993, their work has evolved from single shot ‘studies’ filmed against neutral backgrounds to longer pieces in which a sequence of actions unfold within constructed locations that have more implicit meaning and contribute to greater narrative complexity. Pieces maintain a strict internal logic, with the action directly related to the duration of the work. Inside this ‘logical world’ action is allowed to happen for no apparent reason, tensions build between the environment and its inhabitant, play is encouraged and the influences on the work are intentionally mixed.
 
Why should you support it?
 
This cross-disciplinary approach to contemporary culture signals an ambitious attempt to join together in the production of what will be a major new work, combining great opportunities for artists and audiences alike. This project will be a first for all involved, marking a significant and transformative partnership between each institution as well as an exciting and key opportunity for all artists. For Wood and Harrison, despite their work often being written about in relation to contemporary dance, it will be the first time they have ever worked toward a live performance.
 
 
www.contemporaryartgallery.ca
www.balletbc.com
www.harrisonandwood.com
www.carrollfletcher.com
 
Twitter/Instagram: @CAGvancouver
www.facebook.com/CAGvancouver
 
Spread the word about this exciting project, share this!
 
Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver
 
Contemporary Art Gallery, 555 Nelson Street, Vancouver, BC, V6B 6R5, Canada.
Tel 604 681 2700

 

Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid

Ángela de la Cruz
Tight (Light blue / Turquoise), 2014
Oil and acrylic on canvas
70 x 50 x 12 cm
Photo by: Joaquín Cortés
 
 
ÁNGELA DE LA CRUZ
Traspaso
 
Until 3 January, 2015
 
Ángela de la Cruz (La Coruña, Spain, 1965) presents her second solo exhibition, Traspaso, at the Helga de Alvear Gallery. De la Cruz is economical in her use of resources. She deploys the language of minimalism and concentrates on monochromes. The predominant colour in Traspaso is blue.
 
This artist deftly breaks the link between the wall and the painting, so that the gallery walls act as a support to lean her works against and the floor becomes the base for what might have been a painting but is presented to us as sculpture. Were it not for the meticulous finish of every one of her works, the way they are folded so perfectly and the order underlying their composition, we might think they were failed paintings, rejected and somewhat tortured.
 
The “Nothing” series consists of pictures reduced to the bare minimum, producing little spheres about to unfold. The “Roll” pieces are rolled-up canvases leaning against the wall, and the largest work, “Drop”, is marked by the tracks of the artist’s wheelchair. When Ángela de la Cruz decides to hang her works, it is as if they were dissatisfied with their role and were trying to dissociate themselves from the wooden frames that bound them.
 
As well as paintings that aspire to be sculptures, De la Cruz presents her “Throw” series, sculptures that aspire to be paintings. To be precise, they are monochrome skeuomorphs in aluminium of what looks like a folded cardboard box. In this series, trompe l’oeil comes into play, and what appears soft is in fact hard. This time, in her play of inversions, she really does hang on the wall what we are actually used to seeing on the floor: cardboard boxes.
 
 
Galería Helga de Alvear
Doctor Fourquet, 12
28012 Madrid
Spain
T: 0034 91 468 05 06
 
Galería Helga de Alvear
 
Read On... Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid
 

Galerie Alberta Pane, Paris

Luciana Lamothe
Exhibition view, “The Function of Form”, 2014
Galerie Alberta Pane, Paris
Copyright Takeshi Sugiura, Courtesy Galerie Alberta Pane
 
 
LUCIANA LAMOTHE
THE FUNCTION OF FORM
 
13 November 2014 - 17 January, 2015
 
Luciana Lamothe is an Argentine artist born in 1975 in Mercedes. She studied at the Prilidiano Pueyrredon National School in Buenos Aires. In 2013, she created an installation for MAMBA (Buenos Aires). She showed at the 11th Lyon Biennial “Une terrible beauté est née”, at De Appel Art Center in Amsterdam “Fluiten in het donker” and at MACRO in Rosario “Sabotaje” in 2011. She participated in “Arte in Loco” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2010 and represented Argentina at the 5th Berlin Biennial in 2005, where she created a site-specific work in front of the Palast der Republik, the former seat of the East German parliament that will be demolished, which explored the social implications of architectural memory and its erasure.
 
Lamothe’s work extends into sculpture, assemblage, and installation, and joins the aesthetics of vandalism to the legacy of conceptual artistic practice. Her work interrogates the dialectical relationships between construction and destruction, the social and the anti-social, and - possibly unintentionally - the revolutionary and the merely destructive. Lamothe’s interest in spaces and their constituent elements used to construct them also reveals a concern for materialism. She considers her visual art, and subsequent gateways, to be an attack of the excesses of consumerism and materialism in modern Argentinean society.
 
“I like to think any art created always possesses a quota of anarchism, mainly from the aesthetic point of view. What I do with my work is to carry out operations pertaining to an artistic conscience, for example to perforate something, to move things, to prevent an access or to cause exhaustion in residents by incessantly touching an electric doorbell, or to generate spectacular pandemonium. My operations are clandestine, without authorization; that is to say being outside the art institutions. This is what turns my work anarchist.” - LL
 
 
Galerie Alberta Pane
64 rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth
75003 Paris
France
T: +33 (0)1 43 06 58 72
 
Galerie Alberta Pane
 
Read On... Galerie Alberta Pane, Paris
 

Johnen Galerie, Berlin

MARTIN BOYCE
A Passageway for the Sky, 2014
painted aluminium, cement fondu, painted steel
90 x 116 x 47 cm - 35.4 x 45.7 x 18.5 in.
courtesy: Martin Boyce and Johnen Galerie, Berlin
photo: Jens Ziehe
 
 
MARTIN BOYCE
Stellar Remnants
 
28 November 2014 - 24 January 2015
 
Martin Boyce’s sculptures, photographs and installations are informed by his involvement with Modern art, architecture and design. Boyce compresses the gap between utopian ideals and the reality of Modern visions into dark and poetic images. In his works beauty and failure as well as protective interior and natural forces are collapsing into each other.
 
For the exhibition at Johnen Galerie, Martin Boyce has for the first time developed a sculpture based on the form of a fireplace. This ‘fireplace’ opens up to another space, giving the secure feeling of the ‘fireside room’ an ambivalent atmosphere, reminiscent of Surrealism. One of the references that come to mind is René Magritte’s painting ‘Time Transfixed (La Durée Poignardée)’, in which a steam locomotive emerges from the inside of a mantled chimney into a room. Furthermore, the fireplace is mounted higher than usual, which reminds us of the perspective trickery of Carlo Mollino’s fireplace at Casa Mollino in Turin, Italy.
 
Mobiles with rusted chains increase the described uncertainty in atmosphere through associations with trees, transience and the inescapability of natural processes. The works of Martin Boyce resemble melancholic poems, even more so as the titles and texts of the works echo this mood.
 
Martin Boyce (born 1967) lives and works in Glasgow, where he attended the Glasgow School of Art until 1990. In 2011 he was awarded the Turner Prize. Solo exhibitions of his works were shown at Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) Frankfurt (2002), Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2007), Scottish Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia (2009) and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2011), GB, to name a few.
 
In 2015 Martin Boyce will have solo exhibitions at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel and Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, USA.
 
 
Johnen Galerie
Marienstrasse 10
10117 Berlin
Germany
T: +49 30 27 58 30 30
 
Johnen Galerie Berlin
 
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Luis Campaña Gallery, Berlin

Stefan Kern
Bombette Baguette
Installation view
Luis Campaña, Berlin
 
 
STEFAN KERN
Bombette Baguette
 
Opening, 05.12.2014, 18-21h
6 December 2014 - 31 January, 2015
 
Stefan Kern, born 1966 in Hamburg, is known for his functional sculptures that invite people to sit down, to communicate or to play along. Although their themes are still recognizably oriented towards those of his teacher Franz West, their clear and distinct forms, monochrome colors and degree of perfection have, from the beginning, been owed to their implementation. Which is often accompanied by elaborate production processes that, not seldom, first needed to be developed.
 
Stefan Kern, as ever, lays great stress on the artisanal process that is very protracted and also potentially very uneconomical. For this reason he prefers to call himself a sculptor rather than an artist.
With the sculptures being shown at Galerie Luis Campaña, Stefan Kern has explored new paths without giving up his artistic principles. These, on the one hand, are based on starting out with objects that already exist and, on the other, recrafting them by hand.
 
He reworks, bends, hones and lacquers aluminum sheet metal into handbag sculptures that, in their formal makeup, imitate well-known designer pieces. Their abstract look does not claim to be an exact metal copy of the leather or synthetic-fabric models. They rather reconstruct the intention of the designs and render homage, among others, to their creators. These include, e.g., Issey Miyake’s Bao Bao bags collection, the “gun” shoulder bag from the House of Yves Saint Laurent, or the Moschino series inspired by the McDonald logo. They point to the relationship of the wearer to her handbag and the image it conveys. Comparable to art, fashion is always and ever an aesthetic phenomenon in which each form, each material, and each idea can become the medium. Brands draw on pop culture and are themselves raised to cult labels. The complex configuration of the images, along with the creative act, requires the calculated staging of advertising, or - transplanted to art - of exhibition management. This is not about the practical value of the bag/the art. The one as well as the other serve as free projection screens, charged with emotional and sensual qualities and longings. In addition, designer handbags now appear in limited editions and are thus converted into sought-after collection items.
 
The handbag is a very ambivalent object that not only conveys a certain image but, in the same way, is also a very private product in which practical as well as impractical items are toted around. Its contents are seen as a psychograph of the wearer, and scientific studies and statistics report that women spend 76 days of their life rummaging through their handbags.
 
We need only quote Elfriede Jelinek who wrote in her article on the fashion icon, Rudi Gernreich: “...talking about fashion means really uncovering the covert, that is, simultaneously considering it as a pose.”(1) A statement that can be taken with a grain of salt and can just as easily be assigned to handbags as to art.
 
Stefan Kern has up to now arranged his “bags” so that, from the ceiling, they hang freely in space. Visitors can stroll through their rows where they eventually become aware of the fact that these light-hearted, colorful and sparkling sculptures are hanging from hooks in a slashed-open and damaged state. A closer look reminds us more of disfigured scrap than of luxury items.
 
In times when the art trade is celebrated, the pieces thematize the questionability of market mechanisms that arouse dubious desires and rarely encompass any ethical dimensions. Social values are pushed aside, which especially describes the reality of the fashion industry and its ruthless exploitation of people, something casually taken for granted by us as consumers. And finally, Kern’s bag sculptures can also be understood as an allegory of merely skin-deep beauty.
 
The artist lives and works in Hamburg. Over the past years his works have been shown in solo exhibitions at the Akademie der Künste (2009), at Kunstverein Hamburg (2002) and at Portikus (2000).
Text: Vera Gliem
 
(1) Elfriede Jelinek, “Anstatt einer Ausstattung“ (on Rudi Gernreich), source:
http://gernreich.steirischerbst.at/pages/texte/jelinek.htm
 
 
Luis Campaña Gallery
Axel Springer Str. 43
10969 Berlin
Germany
T: +49 30 76216506
 
Luis Campaña Gallery
 
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