Artipedia - Arts News

Genre Visual Art Opening
Event Dowsing for Failure
Place 510 Fort St.
Date Friday, November 24
Time 8pm
Admission free

Open Space has a reputation for addressing unexpected topics. Dowsing for Failure is the latest in a series of projects that extend visual art practices. Curated and “dowsed” by Victoria-based artists and theorists Doug Jarvis and Ted Hiebert this exhibition promises to confound and enlighten.

Featuring photography, screen-based media and objects from an international line- up of artists, Dowsing includes work from Benjamin Bellas (Chicago), Nate Larson (Chicago), Gordon Lebredt (Toronto), Daniel Olson (Montreal), Mike Paget (Calgary), June Pak (Toronto) and Anthony Schrag (Glasgow, Scotland).

For more information please contact Open Space at 383-8833.

The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies
in America at Columbia University

invites you to the Opening Reception for
the Fall, 2006 Premio New York Exhibition

“The Trilogy: Drawings”
Paolo Chiasera

“13 Most Beautiful Avatars”
Eva and Franco Mattes (aka 0100101110101101.ORG)
(Online Exhibition sponsored by Rhizome.org and the New Museum of
Contemporary Art)

The Italian Academy
1161 Amsterdam Avenue just south of 118th Street
www.italianacademy.columbia.edu

For reservations, please contact wb2149@columbia.edu

Exhibition open to the public: November 30-December 19
9:30 am-4:30pm Monday-Friday

The Premio New York is sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, the Italian Academy
and the Italian Cultural Institute of New York

P R E S S R E L E A S E
The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University
and the Italian Cultural Institute of New York are pleased to present the

PREMIO NEW YORK Fall 2006 EXHIBITION

PAOLO CHIASERA
The Trilogy: Drawings

EVA and FRANCO MATTES (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG)
13 Most Beautiful Avatars

Opening: Thursday, November 30, 2006, 6-8pm at the Italian Academy
1161 Amsterdam Avenue (just south of 118th Street), New York, NY 10027
Subway #1 to 116th Street

The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia
University, together with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
(Directorate General for Cultural Promotion and Cooperation) and the
Italian Cultural Institute of New York, sponsor the Premio New York (New
York Prize), a residency program for emerging Italian artists. The
artists in residence for the fall semester of the Fifth Edition of the
Premio New York are Paolo Chiasera and Eva Mattes.

PAOLO CHIASERA presents “The Trilogy: Drawings” as part of his ongoing
video and multi-media project entitled “The Trilogy: Vincent, Cornelius,
Pieter” in which he explores the relationship between personal and
collective mythology. The show at the Italian Academy consists of works
in ink and gouache on paper, a “storyboard” for the larger project of
three videos in which the artist uses masks to investigate the
possibilities in being a contemporary artist. In three separate videos
Chiasera casts himself as the three renowned painters, Vincent Van Gogh,
Cornelius Escher and Pieter Brueghel, donning simple hand-crafted masks
and embarking on a mysterious quest. “Somewhere between conscious
attack of the mechanisms of the social and aesthetic induction of a
clearly ineffective form of mythology, and a blind faith in the myth as
a representation of contemporary history and power, is the ambiguity
that Chiasera strives for and which allows him - as an artist - both to
toy with contemporary myths and judge them at the same time.” (Andrea
Viliani, Curator, MAMbo Museo Arte Moderna Bologna). Paolo Chiasera has
exhibited extensively throughout Europe and is currently affiliated with
the Massimo Minini Gallery in Brescia, Italy. Chiasera’s works
incorporate traditional artist media such as painting and sculpture
within a performance and video format. His 2005 video “The Following
Days” records a hallucinatory performance of three persons encountering
the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini (as a 15-foot-high plaster
sculpture) in the countryside near Bologna.

EVA and FRANCO MATTES (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG) present “13 Most
Beautiful Avatars,” a portrait series at the Italian Academy and in an
online exhibit organized by Rhizome and co-presented by the New Museum
of Contemporary Art. Highlights of the online exhibition will be
projected in the Italian Academy’s Teatro during the opening reception.
The Matteses have been living in the virtual world, Second Life, for
over a year, exploring its terrain and interacting with its peculiar
inhabitants. The result of their “video-game flanerie” is a series of
portraits, entitled “13 Most Beautiful Avatars.” Not unlike Warhol’s
entourage of stars, captured in the “13 Most Beautiful Boys” and “13
Most Beautiful Women” portrait series, the Matteses’ “13 Most Beautiful
Avatars” captures the most visually dynamic and celebrated “stars” of
Second Life.

The portraits reflect Second Life aesthetics, featuring the bright
colors, “artificial” light, broad flat areas, 3D shapes, and surreal
perspectives that are typical of this virtual world. Overall, the series
draws on the technological developments which allow the creation of
alternate identities within simulated worlds. Despite the relative
newness of using video game-derived source materials, the avatars’ icons
recall questions common to earlier eras of portraiture, including the
cultural and psychological context of the images, and the relationships
between high art and subculture, between contemporary art and
“traditional” art forms, and between art and life itself.

Eva and Franco Mattes are known for their controversial artworks, such
as staging high-profile hoaxes and defeating the Nike Corporation in a
legal battle over a fake advertising campaign. Their works have been
shown worldwide including the Venice Biennale, Manifesta and Postmasters
Gallery, New York.

Concurrent with the show at the Italian Academy is an online exhibition
co-presented by the New Museum of Contemporary Art and Rhizome. The
exhibition, in Second Life’s increasingly popular Ars Virtua gallery,
mirrors the Italian Academy’s art gallery. The online show is open
November 15 - December 29, and is visible here:
http://rhizome.org/events/timeshares

The show will run from Nov. 30-Dec. 19, 2006,
Monday through Friday, 9:30 am to 4:30 pm.

WITHOUT EFFECT
Video Performance and Sound Art

November 25th, 2006
Doors: 8:30pm, Performance: 9:00pm (sharp)
Video In Studios / Satellite Video Exchange Society
604-872-8337 ext. 3, event@videoinstudios.com

Without Effect is an evening of video performance artists improvising with sound artists to create one-off cut up narrative. Moving away from the effects of eye candy demonstrated by most VJs this set of performers will present a new kind of cinema where the final edit simply sets on a valley of dissipated signals.

Featured performances include:

Jackson 2bears performing “Dead Injuns - Remix Warz” consisting of the live manipulation (remixing) of audio and video media using digitally encoded vinyl records and specially designed software. Inspired by the need to re-appropriate indigenous identity symbols; this performance explores issues of Native American stereotypes and racism in the media, film and popular culture.

Miriam Needoba remixing excerpts from her latest film “The Land of the Lotus Eaters”. She will be accompanied by Coin Gutter (Emma Hendrix and Graeme Scott) famous for their macrosonic dissection and cross disciplinary collaboration.

Kenny Roux and Jesse Scott mixing up their usual individual eclectic spirits into one bad ass surprise.

HANS HAACKE
for real
Works 1959 – 2006
An exhibition at two places:

November 17, 2006 – February 4, 2007
DEICHTORHALLEN HAMBURG
Deichtorstraße 1-2, D-20095 Hamburg
Tel. ++49 - 40 - 32 10 30
mail@deichtorhallen.de
http://www.deichtorhallen.de

November 18, 2006 – January 14, 2007
AKADEMIE DER KüNSTE, BERLIN
Pariser Platz 4, D-10117 Berlin
Tel. ++49 – 30 - 200 57-10 00
info@adk.de
http://www.adk.de

Deichtorhallen in Hamburg and Akademie der Künste in Berlin are presenting the most extensive exhibition so far of works by Hans Haacke and the first retrospective of the German-born artist in his homeland. The exhibition is organized in two locations, with 71 works from the artists own collection and several big international museums and lenders.

Since the early 60s, Hans Haacke has managed to keep his independence relative to institutions and is considered, especially by a younger generation of artists, as a moral authority. Internationally, time and again, he has produced spectacular political works. In 1993 his installation in the German pavilion at the Venice Biennial, together with Nam June Paik, was awarded the Golden Lion. And a few months ago, a commemorative permanent installation, honoring Rosa Luxemburg, has been completed in Berlin.

Since the beginning of the 1970s, the critical analysis and presentation of the political, economic, and institutional connections between the protagonists of the art market und museums, as well as of sponsors and mega collectors are at the core of a major part of Hans Haacke’s work. Another central aspect of his work is dedicated to ecological questions and to issues that matter outside the circumscribed spaces of institutions and have relevance in the public arena.

This joint exhibition includes, in both venues, installations, sculptures, photographs, paintings and text works from 1959 until today. The emphasis in Hamburg is on early works as well as on works, which deal with the economy, business and sponsoring. In Berlin, at the Pariser Platz, a politically and historically charged site, the Akademie der Künste presents works in which history and politics will play the dominant role.

Hans Haacke conceived new installations for both Hamburg and Berlin. “Innen/Außen: Spiegelfechterei” at Deichtorhallen brings the outside environment into the exhibition space, while “Kein schöner Land” at Akademie der Künste addresses xenophobia in Germany today.

Installation views of the Deichtorhallen Hamburg under: http://www.deichtorhallen.de
Installation views of the Akademie der Künste under: http://www.adk.de

Curators:
Robert Fleck (Deichtorhallen Hamburg), Matthias Flügge (Akademie der Künste, Berlin)

A catalogue of about 340 pages with contributions by Benjamin Buchloh, Rosalyn Deutsche, Walter Grasskamp, as well as numerous essays by Hans Haacke is published by Richter Verlag, Düsseldorf . (German/English)

The exhibition was funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Kunststiftung NRW.

Press Contacts
Akademie der Künste , Manfred Mayer
Tel. ++49 - 30 / 200 57 - 1510
presse@adk.de

Deichtorhallen Hamburg , Angelika Leu-Barthel
Tel. ++49 - 40 / 32 103 - 250,
presse@deichtorhallen.de

Alice Crawley: Sixty Years of Art-Making
December 1 2006 -January 14 2007
Opening reception December 3 at 2 pm

This retrospective exhibition features the sculpture of one of Niagara’s most influential artists. Crawley was a founding member of the Niagara Artists Company in St Catharines and has been a mentor for several generations of artists. Often initially inspired by mundane objects or occurrences, the works demonstrate her astounding ability to turn virtually any material or experience into a profound work of art.

Grimsby Public Art Gallery
18 Carnegie Ln., Grimsby, ON., L3M 1Y1
ph: 905-945-3246 fx: 905-945-1789
http://www.town.grimsby.on.ca

Bettina Sellmann makes paintings that function as metaphors for contemporary feelings of imprisonment in social conventions and psychological isolation. Utilizing old master portraits as inspiration, she focuses on the late 18th century as a climactic period of elaborate external facades that were at once romantic and artificial. She creates “see-through versions” of these historic paintings using watercolor on canvas in thin veil-like layers of pigment. Sellmann transforms these mysterious portraits to resemble people she knows or deeply relates to. By visually fusing the past and the present, she reveals both a continuity and metamorphosis of societal restrictions through time. The resulting images expose an inner vulnerability in the master works and their subjects.

Born in Munich, Germany, Bettina Sellmann received a Master degree from Staedelschule Frankfurt am Main and an MFA from Hunter College in New York. She lives and works in Brooklyn. This will be her third solo show with the gallery.

Derek Eller Gallery is located at 615 West 27th Street, between 11th and 12th Avenues. Hours are Tuesday - Saturday from 11am - 6pm. For further information or visuals, please contact the gallery at 212.206.6411 or visit www.derekeller.com.

Haraldur Jónsson: The Gap, the Wound
There are those who view art as being separated from reality and artists as the true exiles. However, in the case of Haraldur Jónsson’s artwork, one could make the opposite observation, viewing art as reality, or as the medium that brings about the only possible reflections of reality. Far from in exile, the artist is here and now, his perception being of a moonlike quality, stimulating the ebb and flow of the countless reflections of reality, as if reality itself gravitates towards this human attribute. Thereby, one would not wish to disregard the human condition. Reality is hard to grasp, in particular the one that can only be perceived from within, or the reality of inner experiences. One is separated from oneself on pretty much every significant front, ranging from emotions to belief. Language is known to express the desire for a different condition. It is in and by language where the war against separation is fought. On rare occasions, language succeeds, creating a dreamlike state of belonging where I know who I am, what I feel and how to live, as if at home within myself. More frequently, though, words shine through as injured attempts, creating the sturdy bridge within, forever separating one’s perception from the reality of all the most desired things. Still, without the failed attempts of language, without the building of the bridge, the ocean of lost opportunities could not be perceived, moving constantly beneath its surface. What we have is language. It is true. But there is always more to the gap between perception and reality than language can account for.

Far from being in exile from the desired reality, the artist draws the map from above and beneath the bridge, acknowledging the interplay between language and perception, allowing, as it were, for the gap to express itself. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy’. Was it Haraldur who said this? He might have. Being both a poet and an artist, the enterprise of the empty yet vital language is carefully drawn by the unspeakable force of his perception. In his artwork, the gap expresses itself in different forms and colors, often as fragile, fleeting glimpses of reality that cannot but be carried away, again and again, in the constantly moving ocean of the beautifully doomed opportunities. A little boy reading aloud in an alphabetical order the names of emotions; a person projecting the vast darkness inside onto a piece of crumpled, black paper; a set of drawings, framed under transparent film, hanged on a wall in the form of a French window, allowing us to view the inner landscape of emotions and their immediate effect as a form of hypersensitivity, or even a certain allergy.

‘Experience is not to be searched for in a dictionary. It falls out of the range of language.’ ‘The gap’, also in his own words, ‘is the wound’. If so, the bridge within that separates one’s perception from all the desired things might thus be washed with the ocean, the color of blood.
Birna Bjarnadóttir

Steingrímur Eyfjörð: Psychological Staging
The kind of information, story, or detail that might become the foundation for one of Eyfjörd’s projects may seem difficult to discern since it entirely depends on what event or factoid the artist’s mind has retained from the daily flood of events in the world. His gaze and attention fixes on texts or subjects as diverse as: the web of associations that can be spun from the image of a soil hut, the case of a girl who was forced to live in a henhouse and began to think she was a chicken, or a series of lonely men’s barroom descriptions of their ideal woman. Emerging from these real-life tales are artworks that explore national identity (the degree to which Icelanders deride their primitive origins), human behavior (a questioning of whether nature or culture most determines who we are), and the role of metaphor and idealization in relation to sexual difference. Still, however different the original sources or their translation into artworks may seem, they and Eyfjörd are fundamentally bound together by their probing of our collective unconscious, popular legend, and history alike. If this relentless questioning has lent a dark undertone to some of his projects, it remains that floating hearts, cute creatures, strange protuberances, religious figures, Nordic mythological characters, and Wagnerian heroes, are also everywhere present the artist’s comic strips, drawings, paintings, and sculptures. They make up a cosmos that mixes melancholy, playfulness, theatricality, and poetry in a way that is remarkably original and personal without being autobiographical in any strict or self-centered sense. Perhaps this is because Eyfjörd’s work often involves others in crucial ways. On several occasions the artist has consulted fortunetellers or mediums, friends or other artists and collected their impressions, narratives, memories, and predictions, which in turn constitute a structural element of the artwork. One recent example can be seen in a series of sculptures he composed in 2004 of plaster and lead covered in ceramic and positioned on pedestals (each glistening and awkward form is distinct yet looks like a cross between melting ice-cream and a ghoulish figurine).

Each of those sixteen pieces, or “pawns” as the artist refers to them, is an element of a larger ensemble, which also includes sixteen pendulous constructions (these look like constructivist mobiles gone wrong with a gangly mix of tape, wooden knobs, and drumsticks, with one mobile hanging above each pawn), sixteen glossy white depictions of the silhouette outlines of each of the suspended constructions, sixteen cartoon-like drawings grouping the elements in each set as if arranged in an exhibition space, and finally, sixteen individual titles and texts about each pawn written by another artist or friend who was asked to speak about what they thought they were looking at. These words—a title and an interpretation, which gave the works names like The Fool or Emotional Accident— “bring the artworks into existence” according to Eyfjörd (he thus extends Duchamp’s oft cited dictum that it is “the spectator who completes the work of art”). Look at the pawns and read what others have said about them and you will see that like Rorschach inkblots, the sculptures provoked the projections of each narrator’s own fear, anxiety, memory, desire. And perhaps therein lies the crux of Eyfjörd’s entire oeuvre: in his hands the work of art is a vehicle for the artist but also for the spectator (whether that spectator is in the exhibition space or sees the artwork in an earlier stage) to exorcise unconscious memories and give voice to unarticulated thoughts. As such, Eyfjörd’s body of work tells us that the art work is rarely a singular, completely finished thing; it is often a process, serially repeated, layered in its construction, and as much a product of materials as it is the product of the ideas and interpretation that it inspires.

An exerpt from A Projected History: On the Work of Steingrimur Eyfjördby Elena Filipovic
Steingrímur Eyfjörð. National Gallery of Iceland, 2006.

DESTINO

Pedro Isztin

espace Odyssée
Du 29 novembre 2006 au 18 février 2007
Vernissage le mercredi 29 novembre 2006
de 18h à 20h

Maison de la culture de Gatineau
855 boulevard de la Gappe
Gatineau J8T 8H9
www.maisondelaculture.ca
819.243.2325

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (detail), 1985, acrylic and spray paint on masonite panel

Oscar Oiwa, Carolee Schneemann, David Wojnarowicz, Martin Wong

Organized by Jason Murison

November 30 - December 23, 2006
Opening: Thursday, November 30, 6 - 8 pm

555 W. 25th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10001 Tel: 212-647-1044 email: info@ppowgallery.com www.ppowgallery.com

CHTO DELAT? WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
Platform founded in 2003 by Tsaplya and Glucklya, Nikolai Oleinikov, Kirill Shuvalov, Dmitry Vilensky (artists), Artem Magun, Oxana Timofeeva, Alexei Penzin (philosophers), David Riff, Alexander Skidan (writers). They live and work in Petersburg and Moscow

During 2006 and 2007, the Fondazione Teseco per l’Arte and the Teseco Group, with the collaboration of public agencies and other institutions, will provide a multiple project curated by Marco Scotini, on various topics regarding the city, with particular attention to the question of cultural policies linked to the territory.

The Teseco group cultural experience, planned and managed by the Foundation, has been applied to various issues and their effects, all across the board over the years, such as the social and cultural responsibility of today’s companies, the relationship between city center and suburbs, and the fundamental issue of cultural sustainability, with special emphasis on the processes and practice of art.

The “Cities from below” project is part of a process of reflection and production and it is conceived to focus a rich and complex research programme on the forms of contemporary urban change. Its programme is based on the conviction that the ‘city’ is today one of the major socio-political issues. Globalization and its effects show that cities -rather than States- are the strategic centres for economic interactions, immigration, ethno-cultural changes and the claims of civil society.

The goal of “Cities from below” is to be a prolonged event. With this goal in mind, there will be various recurrent meetings with the public, organised according to the function and level of participation and involvement. All people can participate.

The events will include a cycle of films on global urbanism, individual or collective territory analysis, project proposals through workshops, and projects for direct action in the city, through the media, forms of exposition, etc.

The topics will be developed through a series of activities, special events, and workshops, such as:

URBAN TOOLS - A set of four workshops will be held from 2006 to 2007 in different parts of the city and with different groups of participation.
The first two workshops will be held in 2006, from 13 to 18 November: Oda Projesi (Turkey), Chto Delat?/What Is To Be Done? (Russia).

The other workshops will be held in 2007: Flyingcity (South Korea) 5/11 March 2007, Huit Facettes (Senegal) April 2007

EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM - Review of film projections held for two days in December 6th and 7th 2006 at the Cinema Arsenale di Pisa. It is an extended representation of the forms of self-organization and self-governance of city districts on a global scale. It’s meant to be a ‘toolbox’ for citizens by testifying of instances of public action and urban policies.

atelier d’architecture autogérée (aaa) (France),a.titolo (Italy), Matei Bejenaru (Romania), Beth Bird (USA), Calin Dan (Romania), Paola Di Bello/Armin Linke (Italy), Marcelo Expósito (Spain), Huit Facettes (Senegal), Francesco Jodice (Italy),Raphael Lyon & Andres Ingoglia (USA), Marjetica Potrc (Slovenia), Oliver Ressler/Dario Azzellini (Austria), Mariette Schiltz (Luxemburg), Stalker/Osservatorio Nomade (Italy), Hito Steyerl (Germany)

Cineclub Arsenale vicolo Scaramucci 4, Pisa Italy
6th 7th December 2006

COMMON HOUSE - The spaces of Fondazione Teseco will turn into a workshop and a place for temporary representations imagined as a platform for the self-governance of the city of the future. The “Common House” is thought of as a kind of ‘merzbau’, that is, a “space in progress” that will begin to form in November and will be presented in its final form in May 2007.

Joseph Beuys (Germany), Maria Papadimitriou (Greece), Oliver Ressler (Austria),
Bert Theis (Luxemburg), Superflex (Denmark), Constant (Netherlands), Chto Delat?/What is to be done? (Russia), Luca Frei (Switzerland), Carlos Garaicoa (Cuba), Oda Projesi (Turkey), Flyingcity (South Korea), Post-Programmed City-Territory (Greece), Etcetera (Argentina), Ian Tweedy (USA), Huit Facettes (Senegal), Rainer Ganahl (Austria), Critical Art Ensemble (USA), Group Material

Laboratorio per l’Arte Contemporanea, Fondazione Teseco per l’Arte, Stabilimento Teseco, via Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti 12 Pisa Italy
From November 18, 2006 to September 28 2007.
Opening Saturday 18 November 2006 from 17:30
Monday – Friday, 14:30 – 18:00

THE COLLECTIVE WORK colloquium - At the end of February there will be a panel discussion on city control and change involving urban planners, philosophers and artists.

Panelists: Stefano Boeri (Italy), Paolo Virno (Italy), Brian Holmes (France), Oliver Ressler (Austria), Reporting System (Italy), Marcelo Expósito (Spain)

“XXL - Provincial Workshop for Contemporary Culture”
Supported by Regione Toscana, Provincia di Pisa, Porto Franco and TRA ART, Fondazione Mediateca Regionale Toscana and with Comune di Pisa, Cine Club Arsenale

The Foundation Teseco per l’Arte was born in 1998, when a vast amount of cultural activities, organized or sustained by the Teseco Group, consented a more specific definition in its form with more precise contents, addressing its patronage on an organic level. The Teseco Group is a leading environmental engineering company in th services sector. The Teseco Foundation for the Arts rises directly from the group’s mission, in the optics of a constant interpenetration between factory and culture, with goals such as the protection of the environment, vanguard experimentation and research for ways that consent a sustainable development. The Foundation develops these objectives from an ecological-natural plan toward a human one. In this way, it places itself as an important expansive element and communicates the objectives and functions of the Teseco Group, especially outside the limits of the industrial ambit.

The collection of contemporary art, continuously updated is installed in the interior of the working areas of the Teseco Group, in Ospedaletto, in the industrial zone of Pisa. The display rotates every six months with the intention of bringing the visual culture of the present in contact with the personnel of the factory. The offices are open to the public the first and third Tuesday of every month.

During the cultural involvement in the Laboratory of Contemporary Art the personnel finds completion within the establishment, conceived as a space of exhibition and as a meeting point between technique and different expressive modalities, some being video, computer art, theatre, dance, inaugurated July 2000.

For information FONDAZIONE TESECO PER L’ARTE
Stabilimento Teseco
via Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti 12 Pisa
winter 2006 - spring 2007

ph ++39 050 98 75 11 imariotti@teseco.it http://www.teseco.it/fondazione