Artipedia - Arts News

Swiss Institute

Swiss Institute presents two e-flux publications
Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 6 - 9 pm.

Swiss Institute [SI]
495 Broadway 3rd Floor
New York NY 10012
T. 212.925.2035
F. 212.925.2040
http://www.swissinstitute.net / info@swissinstitute.net

SI New York, e-flux and JRP|Ringier are pleased to announce the New York book launch for a new publication, entitled The Best Surprise Is No Surprise and a second, bootleg edition of the The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By An Artist. The book launch will take place at the Swiss Institute, New York, on Wednesday, May 16, 2007, from 6 - 9 pm. Please join us for a conversation with Liam Gillick, Jens Hoffmann, Molly Nesbit and Anton Vidokle about these unusual publications.

Over the past several years, electronic communications have had a transformative effect on the public discourse on contemporary art by removing temporal and geographical barriers to the flow of information and, for the first time, putting local exhibition makers and institutions in contact with an international art public unmediated by the univocal perspective perpetuated by the few leading art journals.

The Best Surprise Is No Surprise covers a 7-year period beginning in 1999, and chronicles communiqués for exhibitions, publications, events and symposia chosen from the archive of electronic announcements originally distributed by e-flux, and selected both by the e-flux readers and by some of the most active international curators, artists, critics and art historians of our time, including:

Zdenka Badovinac, Ariane Beyn, Mircea Cantor, Binna Choi, Elena Filipovic, Liam Gillick, Jörg Heiser, Jennifer Higgie, Jens Hoffmann, Eungie Joo, Samuel Keller, Francesco Manacorda, Viktor Misiano, Naeem Mohaiemen, Jessica Morgan, Molly Nesbit, Ernesto Neto, Natasa Petresin, Brian Sholis, Nancy Spector, Christine Tohme, Barbara Vanderlinden, Octavio Zaya, and Tirdad Zolghadr.

The book, published by JRP|Ringier press, contains an essay by Daniel Birnbaum and an interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist with Anton Vidokle & Julieta Aranda.

BACK IN PRINT BY POPULAR DEMAND

The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By An Artist

After the opening of Documenta 11 several questions were posed to a group of international artists: What happens if artists take over and occupy territory usually reserved for curators? What happens if artists are asked to propose a concept for a large-scale group exhibition and take control over a prestigious exhibition such as Documenta? The responses to these questions, some in the form of full proposals or shorter comments, resulted in a publication, a web-based project and a conference titled The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By An Artist in 2003 and 2004.

Just before the opening of Docmenta 12 in Kassel this June, these questions and the responses are still at the center of the conversation about the role of large-scale international group exhibitions and the relationship between artists and curators.

Out of print for the last three years the The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By An Artist book is back and available again! Over 30 proposals will be back in print as a bootleg version of the original publication which will be launched on May 16th at the Swiss Institute in New York City.

Curated by Jens Hoffmann

Participants:
Marina Abramovic
Pawel Althamer
John Baldessari
Ricardo Basbaum
Laura Belem
Dara Birnbaum
Daniel Buren
AA Bronson
Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset
Morgan Fisher
Liam Gillick
Joseph Grigely
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Carl Michael von Hausswolff
Isabel Heimerdinger
Federico Herrero
Alfredo Jaar
Tim Lee
Ken Lum
Dorit Margreiter
John Miller
Jonathan Monk
Boris Ondreicka
Serkan Ozkaya
Florian Pumhosl
Martha Rosler
Julia Scher
Markus Schinwald
Tino Sehgal
Lawrence Weiner

http://www.e-flux.com/projects/next_doc/

JRP|Ringier
Letzigraben 134
CH-8047 Zürich
T. 41 (0) 43 311 27 50
F. 41 (0) 43 311 2751
http://www.jrp-ringier.com / info@jrp-ringier.com

e-flux
53 Ludlow Street
New York City
10002 USA
T./F. 212 619 3356
http://www.e-flux.com / liz@e-flux.com

For more information go to: http://www.swissinstitute.net/events/index.php

IRELAND AT VENICE 2007

Irish Pavilion at the 52nd International Art Exhibition -
La Biennale di Venezia
Istituto Provinciale per l’Infanzia “Santa Maria della Pietà”
Calle della Pietà, Castello, 30122 Venice (located between San Marco and the Arsenale)

June 7, 5pm: Official opening
June 7 – 9: Vernissage
10 June – 21 November 2007: exhibition open

http://www.irelandvenice.com

IRELAND AT VENICE 2007

Artist: Gerard Byrne

Commissioner: Mike Fitzpatrick

Gerard Byrne, Ireland’s solo representative in the 52nd Venice Biennale, is increasingly well known for his ambitious video installations and photographic projects. His use of documentary materials re-enacts and recalls key moments of the latter part of the 20th century, tapping into attitudes and conventions of our recent past.

Byrne’s art practice utilises video and photography to question the ways in which images are constructed, transmitted and mediated. His work examines the modes and conventions of image-making and analyses the mechanics of representation itself. Influenced by literature and theatre, Gerard Byrne’s work consistently references a range of sources, from popular magazines of the recent past to iconic modernist playwrights like Brecht, Beckett, and Sartre.

The project 1984 and Beyond (2005) features a discussion between twelve science-fiction writers that originally took place in 1963. Filmed in the Netherlands in the Kröller-Müller Museum at the Sonsbeek Pavilion (Rietveldt, 1965) and in ’s-Hertogenbosch at the Provinciehuis (Maaskant, 1959 -1971), 1984 gathers such characters as Arthur C. Clarke and Rod Serling, who occupy these quasi-Brutalist settings to ponder Life on Mars, artificial intelligence, and over-population. A conflation of scientific fact and extraordinary speculation, as Emily Pethick remarks, 1984 and Beyond is by no means a simple reconstruction of a document, but a collection of multiple narratives and parallel histories that lead tangentially outwards, forming connections between three time periods, 1963, 1984, and 2005.

In an extensive photographic project, A Country Road, A Tree. Evening (2006 – ongoing) Byrne takes as a starting point the famous stage directions that open Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Each photograph repeats the theatricality of this line, which effects a process of research that combines historical details of Beckett’s life with Byrne’s own conjecture.

Born in Dublin in 1969, Byrne studied in New York. He was awarded the prestigious PS1 studio award in 1997-8, graduated from the Whitney Independent Study Programme in 1999 and was a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn award in 2006. His work has received significant attention internationally in recent years, and has been presented recently at the Tate Triennial (2006), Istanbul Biennial (2003), the Whitney Museum of American Art (2003), New York, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2005) and MUMOK, Vienna (2006). Major solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2003), and the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2002) and forthcoming at the Kunstverein Düsseldorf. He lives and works in Dublin.

Culture Ireland, the organisation founded to promote Irish culture internationally joins together with the Arts Council of Ireland in this presentation of a significant body of work by Gerard Byrne, in a new venue in the Institute Santa Maria della Pietà. In 2007 for the first time both the Ireland and the Northern Ireland Pavilion, which features the work of Willie Doherty, are located in the same building.

Catalogue
Accompanying the exhibition will be a limited edition catalogue published in both English and German. This beautifully printed 144 page publication features contributions from Catherine Wood [Tate Curator of contemporary art/performance], Mark Godfrey [Slade School of Fine Art] and Lytle Shaw [New York University].

Main supporters
Culture Ireland, Arts Council of Ireland [An Chomhairle Ealaíon].

Supporting partners
Office of Public Works, Farmleigh Gallery, Murray O Laoire Architects, DHL Ireland, Limerick City Council, IADT, Green on Red Gallery, Carr Associates, Embassy of Ireland [Rome], British Council [Ireland], Lisson Gallery [London], Fingal County Council.

Catalogue partners
Charles H Scott Gallery [Vancouver], Farmleigh Gallery [Dublin], Green on Red Gallery [Dublin], Kunstverein fur die Hreinlande und Westfalen [Düsseldorf], Lisson Gallery [London], Model Arts and Niland Gallery [Sligo].

For more information

Mike Fitzpatrick
info@irelandvenice.com

Gerard Byrne is represented by Green On Red Gallery, Dublin and Lisson Gallery, London

http://www.irelandvenice.com

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

Stroom Den Haag

Toby Paterson ‘Generosity’

April 22 thru June 17, 2007
Opening hours: Wednesday thru Sunday 12-5 pm

Stroom Den Haag
Hogewal 1-9
2514 HA The Hague
The Netherlands

T +31-70 3658985
info@stroom.nl
http://www.stroom.nl

The exhibition ‘Generosity’ at Stroom Den Haag by the British artist Toby Paterson (1974, Glasgow) features new works exclusively. Toby Paterson (winner of the Beck’s Futures Award 2002) is generally viewed as one of today’s leading British artists. He is fascinated by modernism in the art of painting, sculpture and architecture, with special emphasis on its underlying ideology of the malleable society. In preparation for the exhibition and upon invitation by Stroom, Paterson visited The Hague for a number of times in 2006. During this intensive period of research and analysis specific sources of inspiration for him were the post-war redevelopment area of The Hague South West, the Black Madonna social housing block (designed by Carel Weeber), and the building of the Ministry of Finance. All three are in the midst of radical transformation.

For years Toby Paterson has explored the urban environment as an impassioned skateboarder, thus gradually developing his special way of looking at architecture and public space. In his work he usually focuses his attention on the often dilapidated modernist architecture which is gradually disappearing from the urban landscape as the result of subsequent planning and design developments. In his paintings, works on Perspex, sculptures and photographs he represents these architectural elements in such a tranquil, sophisticated and aesthetic manner that their inner beauty is regained. Implicitly the lost ideals are weighed and made visible again.

In 1995 Toby Paterson graduated with honours from the Glasgow School of Art. During his studies he spent one year as an exchange student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1993). In 2001 he designed a skateboardpark for the Royston Road area in Glasgow. His work has been shown a.o. at the ICA in London; TATE St. Ives; Tramway in Glasgow; the Barbican in London; the Henry Moore Foundation in Leeds; Modern Institute Glasgow; and CCA (Center for Contemporary Arts) in Glasgow. In 2005-2006 Paterson was part of the traveling exhibition ‘British Art Show 6’, organized every five years by the Hayward Gallery. He is currently working on a prestigious commission for the new headquarters of BBC Scotland in Glasgow.

The exhibition is made possible in part by: Mondriaan Foundation and Modern Institute Glasgow.

Stroom Den Haag focuses on the urban environment from the viewpoint of visual arts, architecture, urban development and design.

For more information go to: http://www.stroom.nl