Artipedia - Arts News

Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein

Monika Sosnowska, “Loop”
February 16 – May 6, 2007
Opening, February 15, 2007, 6.00pm
Curator: Adam Budak

Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
Städtle 32 P.O. Box 370
FL-9490 Vaduz
Tel: + 423 235 03 00
Fax: + 423 235 03 29
mail@kunstmuseum.li
http://www.kunstmuseum.li
Tu – Su 10am – 5pm
Th 10am – 8.00pm

The Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein in Vaduz is pleased to announce the opening of a first large-scale museum exhibition of Monika Sosnowska, entitled “Loop”.

In her installations that echo the formal language of constructivist avant-garde, minimal and conceptual tendencies of the 60s and the 70s as well as a heritage of modernist architecture, Monika Sosnowska constructs a physical and conceptual labyrinth, a post-narrative, inner world of spatiality, staged in a sequence of interventions that emphasize space’s virtualities and potentials. Here, in this complex and powerful investigation of a spatial perception, a particular surgery is being applied to a body of space and its cultural articulation, architecture. The space and its parameters: size, dimensions, scale, plans, topology are being altered, shifted and possibly confused and manipulated in order to generate a very unique, unusual experience of spatial habitat and to sharpen our perception of it, outside of a common reality and its habits. With her intimate geometry, Sosnowska experiments with our senses and emotions, making us aware of psychosomatic, hidden qualities of s
pace which in her highly performative installations are personified and animated. Between Kafkaesque oppression and a desire to liberate space, there is a sublime and uncanny spatial environment, rendered – sometimes very playfully - on the edge of dream-like imagery and an everyday familiar experience.

Sosnowska’s monumental architectural intervention, Loop, developed especially for the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein in a collaboration with one of the architects of the museum building, Christian Kerez - as a flexible but controlled space with its deconstructive drive and the rare processings of memory - is an attempt to confront modernist universalised patterns and to escape dimensions in a radical act of constructing a subjective space, a sensual, partly oneiric, mental shell of contemplation and desire. Welcome to a seance of a phenomenological spatio-therapy.

Monika Sosnowska was born in 1972 in Ryki, Poland. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, and currently she lives and works in Warsaw. Her recent exhibitions include shows at MoMA, New York, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Freud Museum Vienna, Serpentine Gallery London, De Appel in Amsterdam. Sosnowska participated in Manifesta 4 (Frankfurt), 8th Istanbul Biennale, Venice Biennale 2003. Monika Sosnowska will represent Poland at the forthcoming Biennale in Venice.

The catalogue, published on the occasion of the exhibition, contains text contributions by Will Bradley, Christian Kerez, Friedemann Malsch, Anthony Vidler, Jan Verwoert and Adam Budak as well as a rich visual material, including installation shots from the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein exhibition.

Monika Sosnowska’s “Loop” is accompanied by the programme of the following events:

Thursday, March 8, 2007, 6.00pm
“About Monika Sosnowska’s Loop”
Christian Kerez, architect, professor of architecture, ETH Zürich
Conversation

Thursday, March 15, 2007, 6.00pm
“Experiencing Architectural Spaces”
Konrad Wiesendanger, architect, Luzern
Lecture

Thursday, March 22, 2007, 6.00pm
“Last Year in Marienbad”, 1961, dir. Alain Resnais
Screening

Thursday, March 29, 2007, 6.00pm
“Spaces, Cinema, Feelings. About the Work of Monika Sosnowska”
Jan Verwoert, art critic and writer

Thursday, April 26, 2007, 6.00pm
“Loop”
Monika Sosnowska in conversation with Adam Budak, exhibition curator

For more information go to: http://www.kunstmuseum.li

CCCB

HAMMERSHØI AND DREYER
25 January - 1 May 2007

CCCB
Montalegre, 5. 08001 Barcelona
tel. +34 933 064 100
http://www.cccb.org

The CCCB presents the exhibition Hammershøi and Dreyer, bringing together for the first time the work of the two most universal Danish artists of all time: the painter Vilhelm Hammershøi and the filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer. The show is a co-production of the CCCB and Copenhagen’s Ordrupgaard.

This exhibition is the first time Hammershøi’s work has been shown in Spain, represented here by 36 essential pieces. To date, anthological shows of the Danish painter have only been presented in Paris, New York and Hamburg.

The artists

Vilhelm Hammershøi (Copenhagen, 1864 – 1916) was an artist who created his own personal style, independent of the trends of the time. His work is confined to a few pictorial themes: interiors of the places where he lived; a solitary woman, normally with her back turned to us, in a domestic setting; portraits of family and friends; monumental buildings in Copenhagen and London, and landscapes of the Danish island of Sealand. These motifs appear repeatedly in his paintings, creating an atmosphere of mystery with no apparent action, and this immobility is one of the keys to the fascination it exerts. Hammershøi’s range of colours is dominated by greys which, in his hand, acquire a strange depth. He was one of the painters who best knew how to express the tempo of solitude and the corporeal nature of light.

Carl Theodor Dreyer (Copenhagen, 1889 – 1968) directed films that refine the expressivity of light and shadow, and are characterized by an indefatigable quest for spiritual truths and beauty. In the course of 40 years, he filmed both silent and speaking films, including The President (Præsidenten, 1918), Michael (Mikaël, 1924), Master of the House (Du Skal Ære Din Hustru, 1925), The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, 1927), Vampyr (1932) and Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag, 1943). In 1955, Dreyer won first prize in the Venice Film Festival with the film The Word (Ordet). Today it is considered one of the ten best films in the history of the cinema.

The analogies

The exhibition presented by the CCCB aims firstly to publicize two very well known creators for the history of painting and film, though they are little known beyond Danish borders.

The second challenge is to show the strong visual and creative relations between the artists, and in their methods, their intimate understanding of art and their aesthetic similarities, such as:

- They share the conviction that the greatest dramatic intensity is found in interiors.

- Their treatment of the human figure, particularly the female form, refers o the contemplation and ecstasy of the characters and their personal dramas, and even contain the hint of death.

- The dominance of light in the scene is impeccable in both artists.

- The landscapes, charged with a very special atmosphere, and the exteriors perceived through sculptural figures, windows and doors closed on the interiors represented.

The exhibition

As pointed out by the exhibition curators, Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark, Annette Rosenvold Hvidt, Casper Tybjerg and Jordi Balló, Dreyer was probably “Hammershøi’s best and maybe his only true heir”. However, the challenge of the exhibition is not just to highlight the analogies between the painter and the filmmaker, but also to establish the explicit link between the bodies of work of the authors in a two-way relationship. The exhibition will help us to understand some of the creative forms of the filmmaker by means of a knowledge of the painter’s work, and to better understand the essence of the painter in the light of the films by Dreyer.

The exhibition comprises 36 works by Hammershøi and 12 audiovisuals showing excerpts from Dreyer’s films. The show begins with Dreyer, underlining the importance of light in his films. It continues with Hammershøi’s paintings, presented one by one to highlight the intimate relationship between the spectator and the work and to convey the central ideas of his painting: sobriety, silence and slowness.

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

The Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art Presents:
Lights, Camera, Action: ARTISTS’ FILMS FOR THE CINEMA

Schedule available on http://www.whitney.org.

WHITNEY MUSEUM
OF AMERICAN ART
945 MADISON AVENUE
1 (800) WHITNEY

Films by MARINA ABRAMOVIC, EIJA-LIISA AHTILA, CHANTAL AKERMAN, MATTHEW BARNEY, SAMUEL BECKETT, MARCO BRAMBILLA, LARRY CLARK, BRUCE CONNER, JOSEPH CORNELL, TACITA DEAN, DEXTER DALWOOD, TRACEY EMIN, ROBERT FRANK, JEAN-LUC GODARD, DOUGLAS GORDON, JOHAN GRIMONPREZ, REBECCA HORN, DEREK JARMAN, ISAAC JULIEN, JOHN LENNON, ALFRED LESLIE, SHARON LOCKHART, ROBERT LONGO, BABETTE MANGOLTE, CHRIS MARKER, ANTHONY McCALL, SHIRIN NESHAT, GASPAR NOÉ, YOKO ONO, RICHARD PRINCE, YVONNE RAINER, ED RUSCHA, DAVID SALLE, WILHELM SASNAL, JULIAN SCHNABEL, CINDY SHERMAN, LAURIE SIMMONS, SAM TAYLOR-WOOD, ANDREW TYNDALL, CLEMENS VON WEDEMEYER, MARK WALLINGER, and ANDY WARHOL

Since the invention of film, cinema has been an inspiration for artists, and moving image installations have become a major part of the fabric of contemporary art. In recent years, artists primarily known for their works in other media–sculpture, photography, drawing, painting–have also begun to produce films meant to be viewed on the cinema’s single screen.

The exhibition’s program ranges from classic early films by Samuel Beckett, and Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie; to key narrative works of the 1960s and 1970s by Babette Mangolte, Yvonne Rainer, and Andy Warhol; to rare screenings of films by artists who first came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s such as Robert Longo, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, and Cindy Sherman.

The show also features films by a generation of artists who emerged in the 1990s and pursued a dual approach, making both films specifically for the cinema, and installations using the moving image. These include Matthew Barney, Tacita Dean, Tracey Emin, Douglas Gordon, Johan Grimonprez, Sharon Lockhart, and Clemens von Wedemeyer. Also on view are works by a small group of independent filmmakers who have not only influenced artists moving into film but also explored the gallery context themselves: Chantal Ackerman, Jean-Luc Godard, Derek Jarman, Isaac Julien, and Chris Marker.

Lights, Camera, Action brings many of these films together for the first time, allowing us to see the variety of ways in which artists have interpreted the language of cinema and to appreciate the specific qualities of cinema that artists have passionately recognized, and made their own.

Schedule available on http://www.whitney.org.

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART
945 MADISON AVENUE
1 (800) WHITNEY

In association with Lights, Camera, Action: Artists’ Films for the Cinema, Mark Wallinger’s Sleeper will be presented in its New York premiere by Artprojx NY + Anthony Reynolds Gallery at the Anthology Film Archives (32 Second Avenue, at 2nd Street), February 22-24, with screenings at 10 pm each evening. For further information, visit http://www.artprojx.com or call David Gryn +447711127848.

The Whitney Museum is grateful to Barney Rossett/Evergreen Review for making Samuel Beckett’s Film available for this program.

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