Artipedia - Arts News

Bonner Kunstverein and Kunstmuseum Bonn

JOHN BALDESSARI:
MUSIC

Curators:
Christina Végh (Bonner Kunstverein) and Dr. Stefan Gronert (Kunstmuseum Bonn)

12 May – 29 July, 2007

JOHN BALDESSARI (*1931, lives and works in Santa Monica, California) is doubtless one of the foremost American artists, whose work – since the 1960s and 1970s – has influenced young American, as well as European, artists. The list of the exhibitions of this multimedia artist is correspondingly long, but the way his work is reviewed still leaves countless questions open. The collaboration between Kunstmuseum Bonn and Bonner Kunstverein – under a common thematic banner – seeks therefore to uncover an (up to now) almost disregarded dimension of his approach: BALDESSARI’S artistic engagement with music.

This is the first time that the two Bonn institutions will collaborate on a project that they have developed in tandem. The two-part exhibition at both Bonn venues makes apparent the different goals and undertakings of their respective houses: while JOHN BALDESSARI is developing a thoroughly up-to-date 3D presentation for the Kunstverein, the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum will pursue his multimedia work from the 1970s to 2006, with a focus on its musical elements. Using the example of over 50 works (paintings, photographs, videos and mixed media) from international museum and private collections, the Kunstmuseum will make visually comprehensible the great variety of Baldessari’s pictorial vocabulary up to the present.

Meanwhile Baldessari has accepted the Kunstverein’s invitation as an opportunity to create an interactive installation for the first time. The (partial) deafness of a musician and composer was the occasion that sparked BALDESSARI’S questioning of the processes of, and capacities for, hearing. Titled BEETHOVEN`S TRUMPET; IN ONE EAR AND OUT THE SAME EAR there will be six interactive sculpture as well as 9 new works on the theme NOSES and EARS. In the six sculptures BEETHOVEN’S TRUMPET (WITH EAR) OPUS # 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135 Beethoven’s ear trumpet will play a central role.

These questions on processes of hearing will again be taken up in a different musical installation by LEIF INGE (*1970, lives in Oslo), an artist invited here for this occasion. INGE’S work 9 BEET STRETCH records Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and stretches it out to a 24-hour duration. On the one hand, the work is presented as an installation and, on the other, as a concert for which the Kunstverein will one time stay open for 24 hours.

This exhibition – custom-made for the Beethoven town Bonn – not only for the first time makes graphic the artistic significance of the theme of music, but also enables the visitor to review how far the complex relationship of text, sound and image in JOHN BALDESSARI’S works have developed from the late 1960s up to the present.

An extensive program has been planned around the exhibition, among which is the acoustic performance BEETHOVEN`S EAR in the exhibit rooms by the American avant-garde composer and award-winner of the Beethoven prize, PAULINE OLIVEROS (in cooperation with the Beethovenfest Bonn), an event organized around the film “Conceptual Paradise” by the Munich media artist, STEFAN RÖMER, video showings in cooperation with the Videonale e.V., as well as the presentation of up to now unknown film material from ALLAN KAPROW to BALDESSARI. In a two-day symposium, organized in tandem with the University of Bonn, the relevance of conceptual art in today’s world will be discussed. Here the way music and the visual arts became interwoven in the 1960s and at present will be the subject of debate from the perspective of art history, musicology, as well as from that of visual artists and musicians.

Press contact
Kunstmuseum Bonn: Dr. Stefan Gronert, Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 2,
53113 Bonn, Tel +49 228 7762-26, stefan.gronert@bonn.de
Bonner Kunstverein: Anna Dietz, Hochstadenring 22, 53119 Bonn,
Tel.+49 (0) 228 693936, a.dietz@bonner-kunstverein.de

For more information go to: http://bonner-kunstverein.de/

LUDWIG MUSEUM

MARCEL BREUER
DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE
An exhibition by Vitra Design Museum,
Weil am Rhein, Germany
4 May–2 September, 2007
Curators: Matthias Remmele, Krisztina Üveges

LUDWIG MUSEUM
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Address: PALACE OF ARTS . H-1095
Budapest Komor Marcell u. 1.
Phone: (36 1) 555 3444, 555 3457 . Fax: (36 1) 555 3458
E-mail: info@lumu.hu
Home page: http://www.lumu.hu
Open: Tuesday–Sunday: 10am–8pm
On the last Saturday of every month: 10am–10pm
Closed on Mondays

Born in Pécs, Hungary, Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) was one of the most influential designers and architects of twentieth century modernism. One of the raisons d’être of this large exhibition was the 100th anniversary of the birth of the artist. The exhibition has been travelling around the world since 2002. In Hungary, it is particularly important to shed light on Breuer’s oeuvre, up till now familiar mostly to professionals. The message of his œuvre, i.e. that architecture, preserving its traditions, must create a livable environment according to the needs of the people, is still valid in our time.

The Marcel Breuer retrospective created by Vitra Design Museum (Weil am Rhein) is the first to present his design work and the models of his most important buildings together.

In Europe, Breuer is primarily known as a designer while in America, as a teacher and architect. The exhibition aims at creating balance in the two different areas as well as introducing this great artist to the Hungarian audience. Furniture pieces, drawings, furniture catalogues and photographs of inner spaces designed by Breuer are collected to offer an overview of his design oeuvre. The exhibition presents almost all the results of his long career as a designer, organized chronologically, thematically and by material (wood, tubular steel, aluminium and plywood).

In the ‘Tubular Steel’ section many original pieces illustrate Breuer’s experimentation with the new functional possibilities of the material. Breuer’s pioneering decision of using tubular steel for his furniture designs was not commercially successful at start but it appealed to the European avant-garde. Artists as Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy and Alvar Aalto started furnishing their private homes and offices with Breuer’s pieces thus making his tubular steel furniture an icon of modernism.

The exhibition renders Breuer’s architectural activity in three categories: Houses, Spaces and Volumes. 12 models specifically fabricated for this exhibition present his buildings, as Breuer House I–II., Whitney Museum, the churches and others, exemplifying the four basic building types in his oeuvre. Sketches, floor plans and a huge number of photographs help to summarize the main creative elements and construction principles that characterize both his buildings and his furniture which is still being produced.

Related programmes
Guided tours in English

5 May, Saturday, 5 pm
10 May, Thursday, 7 pm
17 May, Thursday, 7 pm
24 May, Thursday, 7 pm
2 June, Saturday, 5 pm
14 June, Thursday, 7 pm
23 June, Saturday, 7 pm
28 June, Thursday, 7 pm
5 July, Thursday, 7 pm
8 July, Sunday, 5 pm

For more information go to: http://www.lumu.hu

Moderna Museet

Mamma Andersson
5 May – 5 August 2007

Moderna Museet
Stockholm Sweden
+46 8 5195 5200
info@modernamuseet.se
http://www.modernamuseet.se

Karin Mamma Andersson has gained international fame since her breakthrough as Sweden’s representative at the Venice Biennale in 2003, and after winning the prestigious Carnegie Art Award for painting in 2005. This summer’s exhibition at Moderna Museet presents her work to a wider audience.

The exhibition comprises some 50 paintings, with the emphasis on later works. This is her first retrospective arranged by Moderna Museet, and it will tour to Helsinki Taidehalli, Helsinki, and the Camden Arts Centre, London.

Karin Mamma Andersson’s paintings are based in a colouristic tradition with an idiosyncratic imagery sprung from dream, myth and art. “Her paintings are, first and foremost, about images – nothing more, and nothing less.” writes Kim Levin, American critic, in the extensive catalogue. She recalls her first encounter with Karin Mamma Andersson’s work “They hovered between the banal and the uncanny. Their disruptions of time and space, inversions of interior and exterior, and combinations of persistent memory and blank amnesia created a permeable membrane between life and art. Their self-referential use of the systems of modern representation, as well as the way the paintings just happened to be full of representations of artworks, stuck in my mind. They were weird, sure of themselves, and absolutely disaffected.”

Karin Mamma Andersson was born in Luleå in 1962 and has been living and working in Stockholm since attending the Royal University College of Fine Arts in 1986-93. She exhibits regularly at Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, the Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and David Zwirner, New York. Apart from Venice, she has participated in the biennials in Berlin (2006), Sydney (2006), and Carnegie International (2005), in addition to numerous international group exhibitions. Since 2004 she has been commissioned by the Nobel Committee to create the diplomas for the winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Mamma Andersson, the exhibition at Moderna Museet, is the artist’s most extensive exhibition to date. The catalogue includes essays by Ann-Sofi Noring, Kim Levin and Midori Matsui, poems by Thomas Tidholm and a conversation between Karin Mamma Andersson and the author and playwright Lars Norén.

Press contact: Paulina Sokolow, Press Officer, +46 8 5195 5279 or p.sokolow@modernamuseet.se

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