Artipedia - Arts News

Lund Konsthall

Art of the Possible:
Miriam Bäckström
Ion Grigorescu
Arturas Raila
Raqs Media Collective
20 January – 18 March 2007

Lund Konsthall
Mårtenstorget 3
P O Box 2051, SE-220 02 Lund, Sweden
Phone:+46 46 355295
Fax: +46 46 184521
http://www.lundskonsthall.se

What is possible in art? Is anything impossible? What are the boundaries of art practice and how can they be stretched?

Art of the Possible is inspired by the philosopher Henri Bergson’s thought that ‘it is the real which makes itself possible, and not the possible which becomes real.’ The opposite, Bergson points out, would mean that our actions are not free.

The exhibition seizes this freedom: the freedom art needs to test itself and the world.

Ion Grigorescu (Romania, b 1945) is now being recognised as one of the most interesting European artists of his generation. The term self-reflection is a precise description of how he reworks and reformulates his multi-layered production of the 1970s: painting, drawing, photography, film, performance, text. Grounded is a new version of the retrospective installation of thirty-year-old photographs that he first put together for Salzburger Kunstverein in 2006. A generous selection of his films is also shown.

Miriam Bäckström (Sweden, b 1967) favours speculation as her working method. Her recent works are based on close collaborations with actors, artists and other intellectuals. The outcomes are presented in films, photographs and texts. With the initial idea of ‘creating a new artist, or at least the image of a new artist’, Miriam Bäckström has given the art student Kira Carpelan access to all her material, contacts and sources of funding. Kira Carpelan is creating Miriam Bäckström’s upcoming solo exhibition at Färgfabriken in Stockholm. Kira Carpelan, Miriam Bäckström’s own film about their one-year collaboration, is premiered here.

Raqs Media Collective (India). The members (Jeebesh Bagchi, b 1965, Monica Narula, b 1969, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, b 1968) have a background in documentary film and philosophy, and they also run the interdisciplinary research project Sarai in New Delhi. Raqs accepted the rather unusual commission to do an illustration of the ideas behind the exhibition, and have created the work investment % insurance, which discusses our attitudes towards possibilities and risks in moving images, sound and photographic posters. The text piece Please Do Not Touch the Work of Art is also shown.

Arturas Raila (Lithuania, b 1962) uses the notion of articulation to describe his uncompromising art practice. During the last ten years he has investigated different marginal groups (art professors, amateur poets, right-wing extremists, car enthusiasts) and tried to understand their thinking. He shows The Power of the Earth, a series of photographs of pre-Christian holy sites in Lithuania and people attempting to revive ancient religious systems. The work, first shown at Frankfurter Kunstverein in 2006, marks a new phase in his art; he is now focusing on the ‘perfect image’ as the sole bearer of content and meaning.

Curated by Anders Kreuger. Small catalogue available.

For more information go to: http://www.lundskonsthall.se

S.M.A.K.

Ricardo Brey
‘Universe’

October 7th 2006 – January 1st 2007

S.M.A.K.
Museum for Contemporary Art – Ghent, Belgium
Citadelpark
9000 Ghent
Belgium
http://www.smak.be

S.M.A.K. is for the first time showing ‘Universe’. This work by the Cuban artist Ricardo Brey consists of 1004 drawings, ranging from water colour and assemblage to photograph based images. In ‘Universe’, Brey has created his own mythological universe. In 99 showcases he unfolds a realm of evolutions and theories, animals and plants, natural elements and their symbolism.

This series is accompanied by a number of works that underpin his reflections on society, cultural diversity and the genesis of the world.

In parallel with the exhibition, this Universe has also published in a 500-page book.

Ricardo Brey (born 1955, Havana) explores how humans relate to nature, how cultures, religions and cultural identity interact and how his own Afro-Cuban origin comes in. Brey grew up in Havana, but moved to Ghent in 1991. He participated in international events such as Documenta in Kassel and Biennales of Sao Paulo, La Habana and Venice. His contribution to the Documenta IX in Kassel (1992) won him international renown.

Brey approaches spaces with total freedom and creates in them places of interaction that are just in the point of construction and destruction. At the moment, together with the “Universe”, S.M.A.K is presenting the installation that Brey has made for Documenta IX (1992). In this way the public begins its visit to the exhibition departing from an historical reference to the work of the artist.

‘Universe’ links heterogeneous subjects: evolution, various animal and plant species, religion, etc. As a whole, the work is a sort of encyclopaedia about fauna and flora, birds, fish, plants, etc., from the combined perspectives of aesthetics, ethics, religion… In ‘Universe’ Brey juxtaposes his individual (mystical) experience of time and images with the great mythological time. This allows him to reflect upon the confrontation of different worlds and traditions. His work bears witness to a great sense of empathy in the poetic faculties of images and objects. Throughout his realisation of Universe, various aspects that were already present in his work, (shapes, media, etc.) are combined with new ideas and recently developed approaches. This creates a resonance in which all the individual works are linked and contain within themselves the memory of other shapes, like an interminable giving and taking.

Together with the exhibition the book of the Universe has been published. The hard cover volume contends the 1004 drawings which are reproduced at the scale of 90%. In this way, the reproductions “slightly differ” from the real drawings—they are “not real reproductions”. Special attention is given to the choice of paper, the colour and the arrangement of the images.
This publication is issued by S.M.A.K. and MER. PaperKunsthalle and has been made possible with the support of the Flemish Community and the Cera-foundation.

Parallel to this presentation, S.M.A.K. also presents exhibitions by Peter Downsbrough, Agnes Varda, Philip Metten, Carlos Navarrete and Jan Christensen. We are also showing the exhibition ‘Lost & Found’ with work by Finish artists Tellervo Kalleinen, Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen and Mika Taanila.

For more information go to: http://www.smak.be

Situations

Research Fellowship in Commissioning Contemporary Art

For full details, visit http://www.situations.org.uk
Closing date for applications: 8 January 2007

Research Fellowship
c. £30,000

Situations at the University of the West of England, Bristol is seeking a full-time Research Fellow to join its expanding staff team. Situations is a research and commissioning programme dedicated to broadening notions of place and context in contemporary art. In association with Dartington College of Arts and ProjectBase in South-West England, Situations has been awarded a Great Western Research Fellowship grant to create a research alliance of international significance in visual arts commissioning.

The project acknowledges that whilst the commissioning of place-based contemporary art works is dominating the visual arts sector nationally and internationally, there has never been a comparative study of commissioning methods across different visual arts sectors from large-scale international exhibitions to urban regeneration programmes, from gallery off-site projects to commissioning agency models.

The Fellow will undertake an ambitious comparative study of commissioning methods across five international visual arts sectors and will make a substantial contribution to published research, working collaboratively with the Situations team and our two South-West partners to co-ordinate a programme of internationally-focused public events.
Based at the Bush House office in the centre of Bristol, this position will be instrumental in delivering this ground-breaking research project entitled ‘Locating the Producers’. The timescale of the project is spring 2007 to winter 2009. There is potential for the Research Fellowship to be renewed beyond 2009.

We are seeking a dynamic and creative individual with experience of commissioning and/or published research or criticism in commissioning and curating contemporary art. Training in qualitative research methods will be given, though experience of academic research at post-doctoral level is desirable. A thorough knowledge of contemporary curatorial discourse and an interest in issues of site and context specificity are essential.
Dependent on skills and experience, the expected starting salary will be c£30k on the Research Fellow grade.

Visit http://www.situations.org.uk for further details or telephone the UWE 24 hour answer-phone service on +44 117 328 2890 to request documents by post. Please quote reference R/10977/AM. Closing date for applications: 8 January 2007. Interviews will be held on Wednesday 31 January 2007 at Bush House, 72 Prince Street, Bristol, BS1 4HN, UK.

For more information go to: http://www.situations.org.uk

PORTIKUS

JOHN BALDESSARI
Eden: Adam and Eve (with Ear and Nose)
Plus Serpent.

Opening: February 9, 2007, 8 pm
Exhibition: February 10, 2007—March 18, 2007

Conversation with the press: February 9, 2007, 11 am
John Baldessari speaks at the Städelschule: February 10, 2007, 3 pm

PORTIKUS
Alte Brücke 2 Maininsel
60594 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Telephone 49 69 962 44 54-0 Fax 49 69 962 44 54-24
http://www.portikus.de

We are very pleased that John Baldessari has accepted our invitation, resulting in the present exhibition at the Portikus. Baldessari has been developing his own style in video works, collages, and photography and text montages since the early 1960s. Like many artists of his generation, he focused on deconstructing a modernist idea regarding the autonomy of art.

Eden: Adam and Eve (with Ear and Nose) Plus Serpent, a new project developed for Portikus, draws on earlier works which already used the motifs of ear and nose as pictorial elements. The sidewalls at the Portikus display magnified sections of a female and a male head. Like reliefs, the two eyes and ears emerge from and are recessed into the wall, respectively, treating them as sculptural and photographic elements at the same time. The front wall displays an oversized black-and-white photograph of a snake held up by a person.

The snake motifs has appeared in earlier works by Baldessari such as the nine-part Shape Derived from Subject (Snake): Used as a Framing Device to Produce New Photographs, 1981, where, as the title indicates, it served as a formal means in an experiment with framing. Only the serpentine line determined the selection of detail. One photograph from this series shows the same picture of a snake that now reappears at the Portikus as a complete motif.

In more than one way, the exhibition points toward the incompatibility of purity and temptation, as described also in the Christian myth of the Garden of Eden. Baldessari employs the universal symbolism inherent in his motifs as a means of visual invention.

John Baldessari (b. National City, 1931) lives and works in Santa Monica, CA. He is currently Professor of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles, and taught generations of Californian artists at the California Institute of Arts, Valencia until 1990. Most recently, he curated Ways of Seeing: John Baldessari Explores the Collection at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, and designed the display for Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images at the Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles.

Kindly supported by:

For more information go to: http://www.portikus.de

haudenschildGarage

Are Your enginesReady?

haudenschildGarage
t: 858.454.4158
f: 858.454.0614
http://www.haudenschildgarage.com

Wishing to provide a cultural platform that stands somewhere between a salon and an alternative space, the goal of the haudenschildGarage is to be a home away from home for cultural experimentation, play, and conversation. Whether residency, dialogue or artist’s commission, the hope is that through providing a permissive context for opinion and production, new ideas and visions will have an opportunity to take shape.

garageTalks
The garageTalks come in all shapes and sizes. Intimate exchanges, contradictory opinions across the room and continents, artists, curators, writers and friends share their bombastic shouts and whispered voices. All of this talk is accompanied by the surround sound of good food and drink.

Previous examples of garageTalks include Political Equator, a 3 day trans-border public event which included a film screening and panel; Asian Art Now, a panel and presentation by Mami Kataoka, senior curator at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo; and The Special Period: Cuban Culture in the 1990s featuring both a film screening and panel.

GARAGE PROJECTS
Highlighting ongoing relationships with other institutions and alternative art spaces, the haudenschildGarage most recently collaborated with the New Chinatown Barbershop. What resulted was the Graffiti Project - eight graffiti artists were invited to do a project in a private space in Los Angeles. Later this month, the haudenschildGarage will host a reception for Orchard in partnership with LACMA West’s Consider This… and Eat the Market.

SPARE PARTS
Spare Parts is a renewable cycle of projects commissioned and produced by Eloisa Haudenschild and Steve Fagin, 3 over a 3-year cycle that will encourage the juxtaposition of the crucial, the trivial, and the arcane. The projects may vary in form; one a book, still another an installation, and a third a musical extravaganza. The only rule of the cycle is, no trilogies allowed. These projects will take place both very far and close to home. Projects are under preliminary development in Shanghai/Hong Kong, New York, Russia, Caracas, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles and the Israeli-Lebanon frontier. Our inaugural collaboration is with Walid Raad and Eyal Weizman.

THE COLLECTION
Continuing their commitment to emerging artists worldwide, the Haudenschilds have collected internationally. The Latin American collection began in the early 1990s and continues through today due in part to their involvement with inSite, a network of contemporary art programs and commissioned projects within the border region of San Diego and Tijuana. This experience has helped to shape the collection as several inSite artists are represented as a result of the relationships formed.

During the late 1990s, the Haudenschilds began collecting and forming friendships with emerging Chinese contemporary artists. As part of an ongoing commitment to the artists, selections of photography and video from the collection formed the exhibition Zooming into Focus (2003-2005) which traveled to five cities within the United States, Mexico, China, and Singapore.

Marking many important milestones for this particular genre, it was the first exhibition of its kind in San Diego and Singapore, the first contemporary Chinese photography exhibition at the Centro Cultural Tijuana, the first time the Shanghai Art Museum exhibited a group show of Chinese video and photography as well as a collection of Chinese contemporary art from the United States, and the first retrospective exhibition of Chinese photography and video ever held at the National Art Museum of China (Beijing). Illustrating a commitment to education, the haudenschildGarage also coordinated garageTalks, artists’ residencies and two symposia in the United States and China.

WEBSITE & BLOG
For a full list of specific projects, artists and collaborations, please visit the newly launched website and blog, an open forum for exchange focusing on new projects, revolving dialogues, and the introduction of emerging artists.

For additional information, please contact Monica Jovanovich, Project Manager, monica@haudenschildgarage.com

For more information go to: http://www.haudenschildgarage.com

Texte zur Kunst

TEXTE ZUR KUNST

December 2006 / Issue No. 64
in cooperation with Diedrich Diederichsen
http://www.textezurkunst.de

out now / featuring an English section of the main contributions

PORNO

What does art want from porn? – between affects and abstractions / The effects of the index – unwritten histories of indie porn and indie pop / “Why not fuck different?” – the performative counter-strategies of Post Porn Politics / Alternative Porn – sexual aesthetics beyond obscenity? / Exploitation, again – porn, labor, internet / Why Porn now? – a survey on pornography

Reviews from Basel, Berlin, Bristol, Chicago, New York, Munich, Kassel, Dublin, Paris, Cologne, Columbus/Ohio, Munich, Los Angeles, London and Vienna

Exclusive new artists’ editions:
Thomas Hirschhorn, Mark Leckey, Michaela Meise

ENGLISH CONTENT

DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN
INDIE AT WAR WITH THE INDEX / On the relation between pornography and pop culture

FILLED VOIDS
A conversation on art and pornography with Heimo Zobernig by Sabeth Buchmann

TIM STÜTTGEN
TEN FRAGMENTS ON A CARTOGRAPHY OF POST-PORNOGRAPHIC POLITICS

FLORIAN CRAMER
SODOM BLOGGING "Alternative porn" and aesthetic sensibility

MANFRED HERMES
BLEAKHOUSE On new forms of pornographic abasement

EMILY SPEERS MEARS
NO DELAY / On the DVD compilation "Destricted"

All reviews orginally written in English can be found on our website
http://www.textezurkunst.de

Branden W. Joseph on John Miller at Metro Pictures, New York / Walead Beshty on Wolfgang Tillmans at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago / Nils Norman on Albert Oehlen at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London and the Arnolfini, Bristol

ARTISTS’ EDITIONS issue 64

THOMAS HIRSCHHORN
MARK LECKEY

YOUNG EDITION No. 5

MICHAELA MEISE

For additional information, orders or subscriptions please contact

TEXTE ZUR KUNST
TORSTR. 141
D-10119 BERLIN

TEL +49 (0)30 – 280 47 911
FAX +49 (0)30 – 280 47 912

editionen@textezurkunst.de
http://www.textezurkunst.de

For more information go to: http://www.textezurkunst.de

ZKM | Center for Art and Media

MindFrames. Media Study at Buffalo 1973 – 1990
December 16, 2006 through March 18, 2007

ZKM | Center for Art and Media
Lorenzstr. 19
76135 Karlsruhe, Germany
phone: +49(0)721/8100-1200
info@zkm.de
http://www.zkm.de

Participating Artists:
Gerald O’Grady, Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, James Blue, Tony Conrad, Steina, Woody Vasulka, Peter Weibel

The exhibition “MindFrames” celebrates a unique context, specifically a geographic and time-bound situation within which a mixture of brilliant avant-garde film makers and video artists, under the leadership of a media visionary, found themselves together in one place, where for the first time a department of media art was created within a university setting.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Department of Media Study at the State University of New York at Buffalo grew to become one of the most important media centers in the world. Under the direction of Gerald O’Grady, the teaching staff included the structuralist avant-garde film makers Hollis Frampton, Tony Conrad, and Paul Sharits; the documentary film maker James Blue; and the legendary video artists Steina and Woody Vasulka, as well as Peter Weibel.

“MindFrames” will offer the first comprehensive insight into this groundbreaking art of the 1970s and 1980s, which was so decisive for media art’s further development and whose style remains influential today. The entire horizon of aesthetic issues and solutions that came along with the introduction of the technical image into art becomes available based on the example of the represented artists and their individual positions. The teachings, ideas, and concepts of that time are made accessible via the studio laboratory conceived just for this exhibition, which makes it possible to study and experience the time-based art of the moving image in a novel fashion. Access is provided in the form of a digital archive, making it possible for artists to study numerous artistic productions, theoretical texts, letters, photographs, documents, etc.

The title “MindFrames” indicates that this was a time and a place for re-positioning and expanding the frame of reference for Media Art and pushing ahead the transformation from Film Art to discourse of the (visual) code. The exhibition teaches us to understand the art of media, and through that, media themselves.

Curated by Woody Vasulka and Peter Weibel with Thomas Thiel.

The results of the exhibition will be presented in an extensive scholarly publication that will be published by The MIT Press in 2007 in English. Numerous illustrations, source texts by the artists, previously unpublished interviews, essays, and other historical documents outline a comprehensive panorama of the pioneers of Media Art at the Department of Media Study, the State University of New York, Buffalo.
Editors: Woody Vasulka and Peter Weibel.

Opening hours:
Wed-Fri 10 am - 6 pm
Sat, Sun 11 am - 6 pm
Thur 11.01. / 08.02. / 08.03.: 10 am - 9 pm
Mon, Tue closed

Guided tours:
Sat 2 pm, Sun 4 pm

More information:
http://www.zkm.de/mindframes

Press contact
Irina Koutoudis
phone: +49(0)721/8100-1220
fax: +49(0)721/8100-1139
e-mail: presse@zkm.de

For more information go to: http://www.zkm.de/mindframes

Castellón County Council

CARLOS BUNGA WINS III INTERNATIONAL PAINTING PRIZE OF THE CASTELLÓN COUNTY COUNCIL 2006 (SPAIN)

The “expanded painting” contest
Artistic director: Paco Barragán

Shortlisted artists and winner exhibited until 21st January at
Museo de Bellas Artes de Castellón
Avenida Hermanos Bou
12003 Castellon
Spain

Carlos Bunga (Portugal) wins 3rd Castellón Painting Prize 2006 of 60.000 € (75.000 $ USA)

The Castellón County Council (Spain) is delighted to announce that the winner of the III International Painting Prize is Carlos Bunga from Portugal with the work Untitled (2006), 250×350cm, a site-specific installation with pressed cardboard, wrapping tape, and paint.

The winner was decided by this year’s jury, consisting of Franz Ackermann, artist, Barry Schwabsky, writer and art critic, Javier Panera, Director Domus Artium (DA2), Salamanca, Karen Wright, Editor at Large Modern Painters, and Wences Rambla, Professor of Esthetics at the University Jaume I, Castellón.

Due to the quality of the entrants the jury decided to confer an Honourable Mention on Nathan Carter (USA), Dominik Lejman (Poland), and Luis Vidal (Spain).

The jury decided to give the prize to Carlos Bunga because “the artist explores the limits of the support and the pictorial space in a concise, direct, and elegant manner. In Carlos Bunga’s work painting becomes a place where color, material (sometimes poor and ephemeral), space, action, and architecture meet; and the members of the jury thought this was perfectly appropriated for a prize dedicated to expanded painting”. Carlos Bunga is an artist born in Oporto, Portugal in 1976. He lives in and works in New York.

The Castellón County Council Prize of 60.000 euros (75.000 $ USA) was communicated to the artist by Miguel Angel Mulet, the Deputy for Culture of the Province of Castellón.

The Castellón County Council Painting Prize – http://www.dipcas.es/paintingprize.htm - experienced a dramatical increase from 210 entries and 35 countries in 2005 to 941 entries and 55 countries of the current edition of the prize. The jury stated they were “highly impressed by the quality and variety of entries”.

Artistic director Paco Barragán said “the initial and ongoing focus towards “expanded painting” has enabled this increase, making the contest more challenging each year. The relation and interaction of painting with photography, sculpture, installation, video, and the digital only acknowledges the strength and vitality of the medium.”

EXHIBITION SHORT LISTED ARTISTS AND WINNER
The work of the 22 artists selected by the jury for the final exhibition will be on display at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Castellón till 21st January 2007. The artists are Diana Cooper (USA), Dominik Lejman (Poland), Carlos Bunga (Portugal), Pedro Barbeito (USA), Roberto Coromina (Spain), Almir Surkovic (Bosnia/Switzerland), Monique van Genderen (Canada), Anat Shalev (Israel), Regine Schumann (Germany), Adam Ross (USA), Alex Campoy (Spain), Annabel Emson (UK), Kwangho Lee (Korea), Anibal Catalán (Mexico), Michael Hofstetter (Germany), Arancha Goyeneche (Spain), Ivelisse Jiménez (Puerto Rico), Nogah Engler (UK), Claude Temin-Vergez (France), Nathan Carter (USA), Luis Vidal (Spain), and Vargas Suárez-Universal (USA-Mexico).

The show will be at display at the Fundacion Astroc in Madrid in February-March 2007.

Spanish artist based in Berlin Pablo Alonso (Gijón, 1969) was the winner of the I Castellón Painting Prize. Melvin Martínez from Puerto Rico was the winner of the II Castellón Painting Prize.

For further information and display of selected works, please look into the Castellón County Council’s website

http://www.dipcas.es/paintingprize.htm (English)
http://www.dipcas.es/premiopintura.htm (Español)
email: targetyourart@yahoo.es

For more information go to: http://www.dipcas.es/paintingprize.htm

ARCO

Madrid, 15 – 19 February, 2007

ARCO’S 26th EDITION FEATURES NEW PROJECTS, WITH SOUTH KOREA AS ITS SPECIAL GUEST

The International Contemporary Art Fair, ARCO, will hold its twenty-sixth edition in Madrid from 15 – 19 February 2007, featuring a major selection of galleries and a fascinating exhibition programme. ARCO’07 will show the event’s special commitment to quality, featuring leading names on the international gallery scene, specialising in everything from the historic avant-garde movements to Modern and Contemporary Masters. Moreover, the presence of emerging artists will make up a new, unique section, called Projects. Lastly, a major contingent representing Asian art takes centre stage, with this year’s special guest, South Korea, showing new dimensions in art through an attractive selection of high-profile artists from this country.

A Look at Asian Art
With the participation of South Korea as this year’s special guest country, ARCO will, for the first time in its history, put the spotlight on the continent of Asia, featuring one of its emerging international art centres, with an exciting local scene. A pavilion designed by Jung-Hwa Kim, Director of Museums Korea in Seoul, and curated by Jeong Ah Shin, Chief Curator of Sungkok Art Museum and a professor at Dongguk University, will show a group of 15 South Korean artists, all represented by leading galleries from that country. These high-profile artists will present work created both in traditional media and incorporating the latest technology, and which even question traditional art. South Korea’s programme at ARCO will encompass painting, installations, video, electronic art, and a wide variety of themes and artistic intentions, ranging from aesthetic exploration to socially conscious themes. As is the case every year, this section will have its own parallel programme o
f exhibitions and cultural events around the Spanish capital which will round off the organisers’ vision of South Korean art and culture. These will be part of the South Korea Now cultural programme, to include events in other parts of Spain over the course of 2007.

The Art Fair
ARCO’07 will feature 255 art galleries—85 Spanish, and 170 international—from some 30 countries. The fair’s continual renovation is highlighted by the fact that many of these galleries, 54 in all, are first-time exhibitors at ARCO.

A Major New Emerging Art Section
ARCO’07 will feature a new space, PROJECTS, which will consolidate and continue the philosophy of ARCO’s established curated invitationals, aimed at presenting site-specific proposals selected by independent curators, with the aim of supporting the production of alternative work on the contemporary art scene. The selection of proposals which participate in PROJECTS was made by a team of independent curators and the ARCO Organising Committee.

Thirty of these proposals have been selected by Carol Lu , Chus Martínez, David Liss, Paola Santoscoy, Virginia Pérez Ratton, Fernando Cocchiarale, Moacir dos Anjos and Ricardo Resende, all hailing from different parts of Europe and America. Standouts here are the Brazilian galleries—11 in all—which three of the curators have focused on exclusively, and which will serve as a preview of Brazil’s stint as special guest in 2008. This group will be complemented by another 32 proposals selected by the ARCO Organising Committee, encompassing such media as painting and photography, along with an outstanding display of video, installations, and electronic art in more groundbreaking formats.

The Black Box
New technologies, audiovisuals, and electronic art will have their own showcase in THE BLACK BOX, now a veteran section which continues, year after year, to show the flag for electronic projects and experimental art, with the aim of firming up its niche within the market. The curators Carolina Grau and Marc-Olivier Wahle selected nine European galleries to participate in this year’s space. In 2007, the section will focus more strongly on professionalism, and will once again serve as the venue for the BEEP Awards, whilst giving a higher profile to the institutional facet of video collecting.

COLLECTORS PROGRAMME
The 26th edition of ARCO will also include the presence of prestigious contemporary art magazines from around the world. Moreover, public institutions and corporations will continue to play their part as major exhibitors and collectors at ARCO’07. The art fair will also take its first steps to reinforce its role as a sales showcase and as a point of encounter for the international contemporary art market, devoting special attention to private as well as institutional and corporate collectors. Approximately 200 collectors from around the world will arrive in Madrid as part of a revamped edition of the Guest Collectors programme. Exclusive pre-inaugural showings on Wednesday the 14th and Thursday the 15th of February aim to provide them with an ideal setting for seeing all of the work on display and making their acquisitions in a more elite, and totally professional, atmosphere. Corporate collecting will take on a new dimension this year; an example is the sponsorship of t
he automotive firm Hyundai, with the Berge Group, which be running the ARCO VIP Lounge. The group has a major contemporary art collection which will be on show there—and Hyundai is a South Korean brand, further raising the special guest country’s profile at ARCO’07.

For more information go to: http://www.arco.ifema.es

Prefix Photo

Prefix Photo magazine, issue 14, available now

Subscribe at http://www.prefix.ca and you could win an original colour photograph by Edward Burtynsky.

Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the release of issue 14 of Prefix Photo magazine. Addressing the theme of “time passages,” editor Scott McLeod has written: “ Time is both one of our most profound philosophical concepts and a prosaic, if pervasive, part of our daily lives. Contemporary artists prompt us to consider time in its various manifestations, be they profound or absurd.” The issue features essays on a host of photo, media and installation artists, including:

Heather Diack on Martha Rosler’s influential series Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful. Originally addressing the Vietnam War, this work has been given new meaning with her recent additions dealing with the current conflict in Iraq.

José Roca, Elizabeth Matheson and Keith Wallace with their varied perspectives on the 27th São Paulo Bienal.

Karen Love on Jim Breukelman’s ongoing series of “wild constructs,” which includes images of Biosphere 2 in Arizona, the façades of postwar houses in Vancouver, and taxidermy shops.

Other contributors include Lida Abdul, Lara Almarcegui, Roy Arden, Barbara Astman, Yael Bartana, Marilá Dardot, Adam Swica, and more.

Subscribe to Prefix Photo now and you could win an original print by Edward Burtynsky. This exceptional artist’s generous donation of a 28” x 24” limited-edition print of the shipyards of China, valued at $2,800 CA, affirms the important role that Prefix Photo continues to play as a venue for essays and portfolios on the work of emerging and renowned Canadian and international artists.

Prefix Photo is also available in fine bookstores and newsstands in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Singapore and China.

For their support of the launch held for issue 14, Prefix Photo gratefully acknowledges our Premier Sponsor Epson Canada and our Supporting Sponsors à la Carte Kitchen, C.J. Graphics, and Steam Whistle Brewing.

Prefix Photo is published twice annually, in May and November, by Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, a registered charitable organization. Prefix Photo gratefully acknowledges the support of our staff, volunteers and patrons, as well as the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council, the Ontario Media Development Corporation, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Magazine Fund.

For more information go to: http://www.prefix.ca