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Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin

The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection

Exhibition: Feb. 20 – Apr. 22, 2007

Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin
MLK at Congress
Austin, Texas 78701
http://www.blantonmuseum.org

THE GEOMETRY OF HOPE: LATIN AMERICAN ABSTRACT ART FROM
THE PATRICIA PHELPS DE CISNEROS COLLECTION
OPENS AT THE BLANTON MUSEUM FEBRUARY 20, 2007

On February 20, 2007, the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin opens a major exhibition comprising some 130 works of art from the acclaimed Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC). Together with its catalogue, The Geometry of Hope: Latin American Abstract Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection will provide the most comprehensive scholarly overview to date of Latin American Geometric Abstraction from the 1930s to the 1970s. The exhibition remains on view through April 22, 2007.

The Geometry of Hope, its publication, and related public programs—including a major international symposium—are initiatives of the Cisneros Graduate Research Seminar at The University of Texas at Austin, a multi-year scholarly collaboration between the New York- and Caracas-based CPPC and the Blanton. Generous funding for the exhibition and catalogue is provided by the Eugene McDermott Foundation and Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Moncrief. The catalogue is made possible by the support of the Fundación Cisneros.

The Geometry of Hope is organized by the Blanton. Project Director is Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Curator of Latin American Art at the museum. In the fall of 2007, a variation of the exhibition will be presented in New York City, in collaboration with the Grey Art Gallery, at New York University (NYU).

Exhibition

Organized chronologically, The Geometry of Hope focuses on key cities in the development of abstraction in the Americas: Montevideo (1930s), Buenos Aires (1940s), São Paulo (1950s), Rio de Janeiro (1950s–60s), Paris (1960s), and Caracas (1960s–70s). In tracing the development of ideas from one socio-geographic context to another, the exhibition challenges the view of Latin American art as a single phenomenon.

The exhibition includes work by approximately forty artists. Among them are Joaquín Torres-García, from Montevideo; Gyula Kosice and Tomás Maldonado, from Buenos Aires; Geraldo de Barros and Waldemar Cordeiro, from São Paulo; Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, from Rio de Janeiro; and Jesús Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez, from Paris and Caracas.

Publication

The Geometry of Hope is accompanied by a richly illustrated, 300-page, bilingual (English-Spanish) publication, published by the Blanton Museum of Art. This includes an introduction by Dr. Pérez-Barreiro, scholarly essays on each of the cities explored in the exhibition, and extended essays presenting new research on forty individual works of art.

Symposium and Public Programs

On February 17, 2007, The University of Texas and NYU present the first part of a major two-part symposium created on the occasion of the exhibition. Organized with the support of the Fundación Cisneros, this brings international scholars to Austin to discuss the work on view in the exhibition. In fall 2007, in conjunction with the New York presentation of the exhibition, NYU hosts the second part of the symposium. In addition, the two universities will organize diverse exhibition-related events aimed at engaging both scholars and a broad public.

Blanton Museum

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is one of the foremost university art museums in the country. The museum’s permanent collection of more than 17,000 works is recognized for its European Old Master paintings, an encyclopedic group of prints and drawings, and its comprehensive collection of American and Latin American art. The latter includes works by many artists not represented in other U.S. collections, and is particularly strong in Mexican graphics of the early twentieth century and post-1970 paintings and drawings.

Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros/Fundación Cisneros

The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros focuses on modern and contemporary art from Latin America, and includes as well Latin American landscapes from the seventeenth century to the present day and Venezuelan colonial art. The CPPC is the primary visual-arts program of the Fundación Cisneros, which initiates and supports innovative programs focusing on education and culture, frequently leveraging the resources of the Cisneros Group of Companies to reach ever-greater audiences. For additional information, please visit http://www.coleccioncisneros.org.

For further information please contact:

Jeanne Collins & Associates, LLC, New York City,
646-486-7050 or info@jcollinsassociates.com.

For more information go to: http://www.blantonmuseum.org

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt

OP ART
17 February – 20 May 2007

SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT
Römerberg
60311 Frankfurt, Germany
phone: (+49) 69 29 98 82-0
fax: (+49) 69 29 98 82-240
welcome@schirn.de
http://www.schirn.de

The emergence of Op art and kinetic art in the early 1960s evinced a strong interest in objectivity and in scientific experiment. Fascinated by the physical laws of light and optics, a whole generation of artists devoted themselves to exploring visual phenomena and principles of perception. Probing the possibilities of optical illusion, Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, François Morellet, Julio Le Parc, Gianni Colombo, and others deliberately aimed at producing visual irritations. In large-format paintings, objects, and environments, they caused more than the observer’s eye to move. Their works immerse their viewers in color, plunge them in the infinity of mirrors, or offer them a poetic play with light. The interaction between the work and the viewer fulfills itself in installations that not only entail physical effects in the form of afterimages, vibrating colors, or flickering light but affect the entire consciousness.

Op art plays with the viewer’s sensory premises. It is an art which deliberately demands too much of the eye. Overloading the human visual organ results in contrast effects, halations, suggestions of movement in space, simultaneous color effects turning black-and-white pictures into color images (where the viewer’s perception alone provides the color). The strategies of Op art prevent an adaptation of the eye and insert themselves between seeing and understanding. It makes us see things that are not even there and thus provides a “critique of consciousness.” A process of seeing that stabilizes itself and can never be perfect conveys the idea that pure seeing must remain an illusion. Speaking of “optical effects” describes the issue only superficially. The approach aims at an experience of the limits of perception that clearly goes beyond seeing, at becoming aware of one’s sensory and psychological apparatus – a process which not only includes the body but also comprises the i
ntellectual dimensions of reception.

In the mid-1960s, Op art flourished in both Europe and America with centers not merely in Western Europe and the USA but also in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Thus, Op art is one of the few movements in art with a global dissemination including the most diverse political and cultural contexts – a fact not least resulting from the universal character of its artistic means and furthered by a form of perception which, first of all, requires only little apart from an open eye. Op art does not seem to depend on preliminary knowledge and thus grants a spontaneous experience of the artworks presented.

The exhibition “Op Art” at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt offers a major survey of its most important positions without distinguishing between two-dimensional pictures and three-dimensional objects. The argument for exploring Op art and kinetic art together is primarily based on the observation that this art is something that cannot be pinned down. Only an overview of the various media can disclose the concept of a form of painting encompassing space, embracing the environment, and only establishing itself in between the picture and its viewer. Op art and kinetic art are interested in the idea of “pictures” which affect the viewer by combining mechanical and optical movements and not focusing on the existence of form or material. Distinct aspects overlap: the mechanical, actual movements, the optical movements resulting from changes of the viewer’s position, apparent movements due to perception effects such as a flickering between the lines, and, finally, perceptual movement
s through reverse effects in the picture. In addition, the different phenomena blend into each other. Frequently, the hybrid character of the movement’s form already springs from the immaterial nature of three-dimensional visual objects such as Jesús Rafael Soto’s “Vibration Structures” or Yaacov Agam’s “Tableaus transformables” – convertible pictures that the viewer is called upon to reconstruct with his or her hands.

The presentation centers on large-format pictures and extensive installations since visual effects of works that are aimed at integrating the viewer depend on size to a high degree. The hypnotic and pulsating effects increase when they occupy large parts of the visitor’s field of view; the artistic means employed by Bridget Riley, Richard Anuszkiewicz, or François Morellet certainly mark a peak in this respect. The dimensions that conquer the viewer’s entire optical field, as it were, sometimes turn into an overpowering strategy (a perceptive compulsion). The Op artists’ large-size paintings, environments, and installations not only set the observer’s eye in motion: the interaction between the work and the viewer – a central topos of contemporary art – culminates in installations that affect the whole being and not just produce physical effects in the form of unexpected afterimages, color vibrations, or flickering light. The interaction between picture and viewer unfol
ds the background for a significant new aesthetic approach: Op art replaces thinking in objects by thinking in spaces.

Installations such as Gianni Colombo’s “After Structures” (1964–67), Davide Boriani’s “Ambiente stroboscopico” (1967), or Julio Le Parc’s “Lumière en vibration” (1968) integrate the viewers and aim at a comprehensive intervention of their senses. Confusing one’s notion of the space and causing disorientation, Christian Megert’s impressive “Mirror Room,” realized for the “documenta 4” in 1968, makes the viewer feel as if tumbling into something bottomless. Carlos Cruz-Diez with his “Chromosaturation” (1965) or Otto Piene with his light spaces pursue a more contemplative dimension of spatial art and surprise the visitor with this form of art’s multiple possibilities and wide range of variations. The exhibition assembles a total of nine sensually spectacular environments, some of which will be on show for the first time since the 1960s.

LIST OF PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Yaacov Agam, Getulio Alviani, Giovanni Anceschi, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Marina Apollonio, Alberto Biasi, Hartmut Böhm, Davide Boriani, Martha Boto, Pol Bury, Gianni Colombo, Toni Costa, Franco Costalonga, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Bill Culbert, Dadamaino, Hugo Demarco, Gabriele Devecchi, Milan Dobe_, Günter Dohr, Angel Duarte, Günter Fruhtrunk, Horacio Garcia Rossi, Hermann Goepfert, Gerhard von Graevenitz, Franco Grignani, Gruppo MID, Gruppo N, Edoardo Landi, Wolfgang Ludwig, Adolf Luther, Heinz Mack, Enzo Mari, Almir Mavignier, Christian Megert, François Morellet, Julio Le Parc, Helga Philipp, Otto Piene, Bridget Riley, Paolo Scheggi, Nicolas Schöffer, Francisco Sobrino, Jesús Rafael Soto, Joël Stein, Zdenek Sykora, Luis Tomasello, Günther Uecker, Gregorio Vardanega, Grazia Varisco, Victor Vasarely, Ludwig Wilding, Jean-Pierre Yvaral, Walter Zehringer.

CATALOGUE: “Op Art”. Ed. by Martina Weinhart and Max Hollein. With a preface by Max Hollein and texts by Frances Follin, Claus Pias, Martina Weinhart. German/English edition, 320 pages, ca. 220 color illustrations, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, ISBN: 978-3-865660-206-0.

DIRECTOR: Max Hollein
CURATOR: Dr. Martina Weinhart
OPENING HOURS: Tue., Fri.–Sun. 10 a.m. –7 p.m., Wed. and Thur. 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
INFORMATION: http://www.schirn.de
PRESS CONTACT: Dorothea Apovnik, phone: (+49-69) 29 98 82-118, fax: (+49-69) 29 98 82-240, e-mail: dorothea.apovnik@schirn.de, http://www.schirn.de (texts and images for download under PRESS).

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

KW Institute for Contemporary Art

INTO ME / OUT OF ME

Exhibition extended until March 4, 2007

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststr. 69
D-10117 Berlin
Phone +49. 30. 2434 59. 0
Fax +49. 30. 2434 59. 99
http://www.kw-berlin.de

Due to the great success the exhibition Into Me / Out of Me at KW Institute for Contemporary Art has been extended until March 4, 2007.

Following its stay at KW, Into Me / Out of Me will be on view at MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma from end of April to end of September 2007.

Into Me / Out of Me is a group exhibition about the imagined, descriptive, and performative act of the passing into, through, and out of the human body. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach, Into Me / Out of Me is co-organized by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, a MoMA affiliate, New York. The exhibition received wide recognition when on view at P.S.1 from June 25 to September 25, 2006.

Spanning over forty years and featuring an international group of artists, Into Me / Out of Me employs a wide range of media. The exhibition highlights the literal and metaphorical ways that humans interact with each other, themselves, and material matter. The focus is on three primordial and radical relationships between the internal and the external: metabolism (eating, drinking, excreting…), reproduction (intercourse, birth…), and violence (shooting, impaling, perforation…). These complex vital exchanges are illuminated through mythological confrontations, ritualized practices, and self-explorations. The physicality, permeability and fragility of the body have been explored to represent the human condition in contemporary life and art over the past forty years.

The 137 international participating artists in the KW exhibition are Marina Abramovi_, Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Kenneth Anger, Janine Antoni, Nobuyoshi Araki, Knut Åsdam, Matthew Barney, Otmar Bauer, Lynda Benglis, Anna Berndtson, Joseph Beuys, Nayland Blake, Keith Boadwee, John Bock, Liz Bougatsos, Louise Bourgeois, Leigh Bowery, Robert Boyd, Stan Brakhage, Günter Brus, Chris Burden, Jeff Burton, Paolo Canevari, Patty Chang, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Judy Chicago, Larry Clark, Mat Collishaw, Martin Creed, Gregory Crewdson, Henry Darger, Wim Delvoye, Walter De Maria, Jen DeNike, Rineke Dijkstra, Nathalie Djurberg, Cheryl Donegan, Marcel Dzama, Keith Edmier, Nezaket Ekici, Elmgreen & Dragset, VALIE EXPORT, Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose, Andrea Fraser, Tom Friedman, Regina José Galindo, General Idea, Jean Genet, Gilbert & George, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Richard Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Thomas H
irschhorn, Damien Hirst, Carsten Höller, Jenny Holzer, Jonathan Horowitz, Peter Hujar, Mustafa Hulusi, Alfredo Jaar, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Kurt Kren, Elke Krystufek, Shigeko Kubota, Bruce LaBruce, Sigalit Landau, Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, Maria Lassnig, Manfred Leve, Lee Lozano, Teresa Margolles, Monica Majoli, Piero Manzoni, Robert Mapplethorpe, Gordon Matta-Clark, Paul McCarthy, Adam McEwen, Ryan McGinley, Alex McQuilkin, Ana Mendieta, John Miller, Frank Moore, James Morrison, Otto Mühl, Vik Muniz, Tracy Nakayama, Bruce Nauman, Trine Lise Nedreaas, Hermann Nitsch, Catherine Opie, Orlan, Tony Oursler, Gina Pane, Mike Parr, Raymond Pettibon, Jack Pierson, LA Raeven, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, Pipilotti Rist, Alexis Rockman, Ugo Rondinone, Aura Rosenberg, Aïda Ruilova, Fumie Sasabuchi, Christoph Schlingensief, Gundula Schulze El Dowy, Carolee Schneemann, Gregor Schneider, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Ann-Sofi Sidén, Santiago Sierra, Katharina Sieverding, Lorna Simpson, Barbara Smith, Kiki Smith, Smith/Stewart, Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, Tony Tasset, Paul Thek, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Ulay, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner, Hannah Wilke, Sue Williams, David Wojnarowicz, Chen Zhen, and Andrea Zittel.

A fully illustrated publication by KW and P.S.1 in German and English (approx. 300 pages, 250 color illustrations, 24 x 30 cm, paperback, design by Studio Signum) will be available by March 2007.

The exhibition Into Me / Out of Me is funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes/German Federal Cultural Foundation.

The realization of the project takes place with the friendly support of Dornbracht Culture Projects and the Friends of KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

Special thanks to Rosa and Gilberto Sandretto

Thanks to Celine and Heiner Bastian

Dates KW: November 26, 2006 – March 4, 2007
Opening hours KW: Tue – Sun noon to 7 pm, Thur noon to 9 pm

Dates MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma: end of April – end of September, 2007

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststr. 69
D-10117 Berlin
Phone +49. 30. 2434 59. 0
Fax +49. 30. 2434 59. 99

http://www.kw-berlin.de
http://www.ps1.org
http://www.macro.roma.museum

For more information go to: http://www.kw-berlin.de