Artipedia - Arts News

e v + a

OPEN e v + a 2007
A Sense of Place

CURATOR: KLAUS OTTMANN

March 29 - June 24, 2007
City-wide venues
Limerick, Ireland

For more information, please call e v + a at 353 (0) 61 318240 or 353 (0) 87 9477042 or visit http://www.eva.ie

"Where are we at all? and whenabouts in the name of space?"
—James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

OPEN e v + a 2007, Ireland’s pre-eminent annual exhibition of contemporary art, opens to the public on March 29th. Selected by New York-based independent curator Klaus Ottmann, the exhibition will present 32 artists from Ireland, Continental Europe, and the United States in traditional and nontraditional sites throughout Limerick that were chosen by the curator, which includes the Limerick City Gallery of Art, Belltable Art Centre, City Hall, the Hunt Museum, King John’s Castle, and St. Mary’s Cathedral, among others.

For art to be experienced or observed, it has to be emplaced — put in place, however temporarily. An national exhibition with an international character such as e v + a, which is rooted deeply in one place, one history, and one culture, yet embraces the right to diversity within its borders, must inevitably focus on the dialectic of emplacement and displacement. The Irish poet Seamus Heaney speaks of the "two often contradictory demands" under which Irish poets labor: "To be faithful to the collective historical experience and to be true to the recognitions of the emerging self." According to Heaney, the two ways in which a place is known — one is the lived and illiterate; the other, learned and literate — co-exist "in a conscious and unconscious tension" in the artistic sensibility. For two months, the city of Limerick will be the limit and the condition of all the art and related events, where the artistic sensibilities of those at home
and those displaced will co-exist in a conscious and unconscious tension.

Participating artists:

Shelley Corcoran (Ireland); Patrick Corcoran (Ireland); David Dunne (Ireland); Melissa Earley (Ireland); Barry Foley (Ireland); Eric Glavin (Ireland); Tony Gunning (Ireland); Amy Hauft (United States); Ashley Holmes (United Kingdom); Ronnie Hughes (Ireland); Eithna Joyce (Ireland); Jesper Just (Denmark); Orla Keeshan (Ireland); Joanne Lefrak (United States); Miriam Lohan (Ireland); Sean Lynch (Ireland); Vanessa Marsh (Ireland); Enrique Martínez Celaya (United States); Anthony McCall (United States); Conor McGarrigle (Ireland); Margot McLean (United States); Marie Louise O’Dwyer (Ireland); Eamon O’Kane (Ireland); Alix Pearlstein (United States); Christopher Reid (Ireland); Andrei Roiter (Russia/United States/Holland); Aura Rosenberg (United States); Matthew Schenning (United States); Wolfgang Staehle (United States/Germany); Siobhán Tattan (Ireland); Thorns Ltd. (Norway); and Suzannah Vaughan (Ireland).

About the Curator:
Klaus Ottmann, an independent curator and scholar based in New York, is the author of numerous articles, essays, and books on art and philosophy, including The Genius Decision: The Extraordinary and the Postmodern Condition; James Lee Byars: Life, Love, and Death, and The Essential Mark Rothko. Ottmann has curated over forty exhibitions, including Still Points of the Turning World, SITE Santa Fe’s Sixth International Biennial (2006); Life, Love, and Death: The Work of James Lee Byars, (Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 2004); and Wolfgang Laib: A Retrospective (Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., and traveling to 5 additional museums, 2002-04). He is currently writing a book on the philosophy of the French painter Yves Klein and preparing a traveling survey of paintings and sculptures by the American artist Jennifer Bartlett (2009-2010).

The e v + a story
A group of Limerick artists began e v + a in 1977 as a way of bringing their work as contemporary artists into mutual close encounters with audiences so that, together, sense and meaning could be made in and of the world all shared. More than two decades on e v + a is still an artist centred exhibition and has become the Republic of Ireland’s premier annual exhibition of contemporary art. It now offers a wide ranging program of events that integrate local, national, and international audiences in a communal celebration of contemporary art and culture. Previous e v + a curators include Katerina Gregos (2006), Dan Cameron (2005), Zdenka Badovinac (2004), Virginia Perez-Ratton (2003), Apinan Poshyananda (2003), Salah M. Hasan (2001), and Rosa Martinez (2000).

e v + a 2007 - Sponsors & Patrons

The successes of e v + a have depended firstly on all the participating artists. But success also depends on the patrons and sponsors who have in the past and continue to give generously financially or in kind. The e v + a organising committee is extremely grateful to all the e v + a sponsors and patrons, whose continued support is invaluable to the impact and influence of the exhibition.

The Arts Council, Limerick City Council, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Sisk, Failte Ireland, The Belltable Arts Centre, The Hunt Museum, The Bourn Vincent Gallery, St. Mary’s Cathedral, Philips Ireland, Clancy’s

Contact person for press or further information;

Paul O’Reilly; e v + a administrator,
Tel : 353 (0)61 318240 or 353 (0) 87 9477042
Email : info@eva.ie
Web site http://www.eva.ie

For more information go to: http://www.eva.ie

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Constructing a Poetic Universe:
The Diane and Bruce Halle Collection
of Latin American Art

March 11 – June 10, 2007

http://www.mfah.org

Works by some of the most significant modern and contemporary artists from Latin America are presented in Constructing a Poetic Universe: The Diane and Bruce Halle Collection of Latin American Art, opening March 11, 2007 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The exhibition, guest curated by Beverly Adams, curator of the Diane and Bruce Halle Collection, features nearly 60 works from 1945 to 2006. Among the major artists represented are Felix González-Torres, Victor Grippo, Arturo Herrera, Alfredo Jaar, Guillermo Kuitca, Jac Leirner, Ana Mendieta, Gabriel Orozco, Doris Salcedo, Melanie Smith, Javier Téllez, Tunga, Pablo Vargas Lugo. The exhibition will be on view through June 10, 2007 in the museum’s Audrey Jones Beck Building, 5601 Main Street.

Constructing a Poetic Universe: The Diane and Bruce Halle Collection of Latin American Art is a selection from one of the leading private collections dedicated to the art of this region. In 1996, the Halles began assembling works by artists who have made significant cultural contributions to modern and contemporary art. Considering the enormity and diversity of this field, the geographic demarcation of the Halle collection is necessarily flexible and inclusive— making no attempt to fix a culturally-determined idea of this particular region. It is imagined as an open space for interaction where one can follow any number of paths.

Not chronological, geographically-bound or thematic, Constructing a Poetic Universe focuses instead on provisional and improvisational relationships that surface in the Halle collection. The eccentric survey of a private collection encourages unexpected dialogues between works beyond the chronological, cultural and contextual. Affinities between works—visual, conceptual, ideological, historical, or forced by proximity—provoke both resonance and tension. The ever-expanding web of associations created by the works in the Halle collection has the ability to create new fictions, new universes of Borgesian dimensions.

Catalogue
A fully illustrated 288-page catalogue designed by Shiffman Design and distributed by Merrell Publishers accompanies the exhibition. The catalog is edited by Beverly Adams and features essays by Dr. Adams, Osvaldo Sánchez, and Gilbert Vicario, assistant curator of Latin American art at the MFAH, each addressing a specific topic related Latin American art and its reception. In addition, Juan Ledezma, Suely Rolnik, and Sônia Salzstein, provide focus essays on the work of Ana Mendieta, Tunga, and Mira Schendel respectively, key artists that have been collected in-depth by the Halle’s. An interview with Diane Halle by Mari Carmen Ramírez, the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at the MFAH is also featured in this publication.

Generous funding for this exhibition is provided by:
Stanford Financial Group

Latin American Art Department and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The mission of the Latin American Art Department and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) is to collect, exhibit, research, and educate audiences on the diverse artistic production of Latin Americans and Latinos, which includes artists from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, as well as from the United States.

General Information:
For information, the public may call 713-639-7300, or visit http://www.mfah.org
For information in Spanish, call 713-639-7379.

Media Information Only:
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston:
Frances Carter Stephens, Lynn Feuerbach, Dana Mattice, Megan Whitenton
713-639-7540; mfahpr@mfah.org

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

Frankfurter Kunstverein

Whenever It Starts It Is
The Right Time
Strategies for a discontinuous future
a collective exhibition

Hugo Canoilas: “Vota Octávio Pato”
March 23 – May 6, 2007

Jakob Kolding: New wall project for the Café im Kunstverein

Opening: Thursday, March 22, 7 pm

Frankfurter Kunstverein
Steinernes Haus am Römerberg
Markt 44
D-60311 Frankfurt am Main
Tel. +49 (0)69 219 314 0
Fax. +49 (0)69 219 314 11
post@fkv.de, http://www.fkv.de
Hours: Tue-Sun: 11 am–7 pm
Tours Thur: 6 pm, or by appointment

“Whenever It Starts It Is The Right Time – Strategies for a discontinuous future”
At the opening at 8 pm: performance by Sue Tompkins: “Elephants Galore”

Artists: Ibon Aranberri (E), Thomas Bayrle (D), Egle Budvytyte (LT), Raimond Chaves (COL), Marcelo Cidade (BRA), Simon Evans (UK), Luke Fowler (UK), Dora García (E), Anna Bella Geiger (BRA), Ryan Gander (UK), Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige (LBN), Lasse Schmidt Hansen (DK), David Hatcher (NZ), Martin Hoener (D), Maria Loboda (D/PL), Franz Mon (D), Adrian Piper (USA), Mathilde Rosier (F), Setareh Shahbazi (IRN), Martin Skauen (N), Sue Tompkins (UK), Mario García Torres (MEX), Gerhard Wittner (D)

Is imagination a useful notion for a new way to define the role of artistic practice and its connection to social research? The exhibition “Whenever It Starts It Is The Right Time – strategies for a discontinuous future” at Frankfurter Kunstverein departs from the notion of imagination as defined by the Greek philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997): imagination is a creative power intimately linked with the epistemic act; that is, with our capacity to postulate other realities, a faculty directed towards agency. In this way, this show is about the notion of ‘enacted imagination’ versus the old notion of utopia. The notion of the enacted imagination relates to the avant-garde project of the early 20th century – the question of how to relate art to life and how to imagine the world differently. Of course the project itself became problematic and ultimately failed in many ways – but it still provides a qualitative challenge to the modernist legacy that now has become simpl
y a question of aesthetics. The avant-garde tradition, insofar as it has a link to contemporary art, is a hermeneutic practice, one that talks about content and meaning at least as much as about form. The artists presented in “Whenever It Starts It Is The Right Time” are no longer – and that is possibly the only thesis of this project that can be proven right or wrong – concerned with escaping the category of art, but engaged in using the space that art and even the art institution can provide to constitute new spheres of thinking, feeling, reflecting and exchanging. All of the works in the exhibition have at least one trait in common: a will to re-establish a new relationship with some of the questions of modernity through the idea of enacted imagination, such as the vital belief in agency. Art production is a system of interpretation that is able to engage in endless points of departure, ‘soften up’ the bureaucratization of tradition and create new routes, new systems of reference.

As the Argentinean conceptual artist Alberto Greco (1935-1965) once stated, “an art work has meaning as long as it is made as a total adventure”. An exhibition should be conceived under the same premise.

A catalogue will be published in connection with the exhibition by Revolver Verlag, Frankfurt am Main. Contributions by Charles Esche, Brian Holmes, Raimundas Malasauskas and Chus Martínez. ISBN 978-3-86588-376-6.

Ten Reasons to be a Member, #12: Hugo Canoilas: “Vota Octávio Pato (Vote for Octávio Pato)”
For ‘10 reasons to be a member’, the Portuguese artist Hugo Canoilas has developed a new installation of mural paintings displayed within a specially constructed support structure. Canoilas came to establish a dialogue between abstraction and social realism and has slowly been trying to create bridges between the two by using the different languages of painting. The templates that serve Canoilas are not celebrated iconic Neorealist images, but are selected from an online archive of street paintings made in dedication to the Portuguese carnation revolution after 25 April 1974. Under the influence of the Portuguese Communist party, Neorealism emerged as an art of political and social intervention, not so much as an revitalisation of avant-garde strategies but rather as an ‘artistic duty’ from the people for the people.

Canoilas’ choice of paintings and their display bring the full meaning of social struggle into play. The presentation entitled “Vota Octávio Pato”, is, in part, paying homage to a leader of the carnation revolution, Octávio Pato, who plunged in clandestinity and suffered in prison, before playing a decisive role in the Portuguese liberation from the fascist Salazar regime.

Café im Kunstverein: New wall project by Jakob Kolding
“Cafe im Kunstverein” cannot be understood independently from the rest of the program and the spaces that constitute the Frankfurter Kunstverein as a space for the production and discussion of contemporary art. Architecture shapes the way we see and experience life, therefore it is important to consider what kind of place a café, a bar or a restaurant in an art institution is. Is it a mere annex or can it be integrated in the life of the institution?

After a complex but efficient intervention in the ‘Café im Kunstverein’ through the furniture designs by the Basque artists Xavier Salaberría and Gorka Eizaguirre, a new work specifically created for this site by the Danish artist Jakob Kolding is now being added to the project.

How can urban space be transformed into a real social space? How does urban planning affect our vision of the society we live in, and therefore affect our social behaviour? These are pivotal issues in Kolding’s work, as are questions of youth culture. DJs, graffiti, skateboarders, group identities defined by specific clothing codes as well as by football (like the image of the Liverpool player Kenny Dalglish in that Kolding has put on the wall in the corner opposite the counter) are constantly present as references.

“Whenever It Starts It Is The Right Time” is made possible by the support of:
American Center Foundation

And with kind support from:
Grupo Santander, British Council, Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Institut für Auslandbeziehungen, Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperación, Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior, Bureau des Arts Plastiques/CULTURESFRANCE – The Embassy of France

“Vota Octávio Pato” with kind support from:
Gulbenkian Foundation, Ministério da Cultura, Fundação Luso-Americana, Instituto das Artes, British Council

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