Artipedia - Arts News

Ullens Center for Contemporary Art

Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing
http://www.ullens-center.org

Ullens Center for Contemporary Art seeks Head of Educational Programs and Head of Public Programs.

The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) aims to become China’s most comprehensive center for contemporary art, providing a platform for exhibitions, education and dialogue to further the development of contemporary art in China and abroad. We are currently recruiting for the following two positions: Head of Educational Programs and Head of Public Programs.

HEAD OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
Head of Educational Programs will develop and implement educational programs, including school and youth programs, on-site family and adult programs and classroom outreach activities that make full use of the museum’s resources to build lasting community engagement. Working in conjunction with the Public Programming and Curatorial Departments, as well as the Ullens Center library, the Head of Educational Programs will be responsible for ensuring that the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art fulfills its educational mission to the fullest extent possible, creating programs that connect a broad audience to contemporary art. Duties include working closely with teachers, students and administrators in Beijing schools and regional universities to create and deliver innovative programs that enrich community learning and expand institutional outreach; developing relevant resources and study packs for school projects; coordinating and/or providing teaching, lectures and guided tours; p
reparing support material for exhibitions. Administrative duties include managing departmental budget and overseeing departmental staff, interns and volunteers.

Qualifications:
Bachelor’s degree in education, museum education or related field required; master’s degree strongly preferred. Must have at least two years managerial experience in educational programming, preferably in a museum, cultural institution or educational setting. Fluency in Chinese (Mandarin) required. Successful candidates will have experience in staff and budget management; excellent organizational, interpersonal, public speaking and writing skills; knowledge of diverse learning styles; the ability to write clear, accurate and stimulating copy for exhibitions and educational materials/publications aimed at non-specialist audiences across a wide range of ages and abilities, and a strong interest in contemporary art.

HEAD OF PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Working with Artistic Director and the Curatorial Team, the Head of Public Programs will develop and implement a creative and dynamic international events program, taking responsibility for at least 20 events per year out of a total program of 30-50 events annually. These will include an academically-focused series of lectures, seminars, workshops and related events, targeted for a Chinese audience and presented at Beijing’s leading contemporary arts institution. Working with the Assistant Curator of Public Programs, s/he will take responsibility for budget, partner liaison, promotional material, logistics management, government approvals, program administration, receptions and functions, travel arrangements, maintenance of financial records and evaluation of each project. Expanding his or her existing network of art professionals, the Head of Public Programs will also identify and initiate partnerships with cultural organizations in China and abroad.

Qualifications:
Significant curatorial experience required. Must be familiar with the breadth of international contemporary culture and have an interest in the development of Chinese contemporary arts. Should have the ability to develop original thematic events; organize international forums and seminars; write materials for publications; undertake speaking engagements; and collaborate with other departments. Fluency in Chinese (Mandarin) required.

TO APPLY:
Please email a cover letter, resume, and two reference letters* by August 3, 2007 to Colin Chinnery: colin.chinnery@ullens-center.org

*Please provide full contact details for referees. To qualify as referee, he/she must be a person who you have worked with for at least one year.

For more information go to: http://www.ullens-center.org

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

ANNOUNCING DIRECT SERVICE FROM NEW YORK CITY TO
THE ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY–SATURDAYS
FREE BEER

http://www.aldrichart.org

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to announce that it will give free admission and a beer to those taking advantage of the roundtrip transportation available from New York City to the Museum on Saturdays. Take MetroNorth Harlem Line from Grand Central to Katonah; then the easy HART shuttle to the Museum.

Since 1964, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum has exhibited some of the most important and challenging contemporary artists, making it a must-see destination for artists, curators, collectors, or any one interested in the subject. The completion of the new building in 2004 and sculpture garden in 2005 improved the Museum’s ability to present the latest in contemporary art. The exhibitions this summer make full use of the state-of-the-art facility, including large outdoor sculpture, a video art collaboration, and two sound installations.

Now, The Aldrich has round-trip transportation available on Saturdays, allowing New Yorkers and tourists to have breakfast in New York and a beer in the Museum’s sculpture garden by noon. The shuttle will run every Saturday through October 31, 2007, and offer access to The Aldrich and all that Ridgefield has to offer. The Aldrich promises a great getaway for families, with fun and engaging programming on many weekends. The town of Ridgefield boasts great restaurants, boutiques, inns, a theater, history, hiking, and a wonderful downtown–all easily accessible by the shuttle or on foot.

Visit the Museum’s Web site, http://www.aldrichart.orgor call 203.438.4519 to find out more about the programming and exhibitions.

On view this summer are three exhibitions featured in The New York Times: Chris Doyle: 50,000 Beds, NEIL JENNEY: NORTH AMERICA, and Michael Somoroff: Illumination I; as well as David Abir: Tekrar; Arturo Herrera: Castles, Dwarfs, and Happychaps; Elana Herzog & Michael Schumacher: W(E)AVE; Mary Judge: Studies in Segmented Form; and Norm Magnusson: On This Site Stood.

Stop by the front desk upon arriving to claim the complimentary beer, wine, or soft drink.

Contact: Pamela Ruggio
Phone: 203.438.4519
pruggio@aldrichart.org

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, located at 258 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT, is renowned as a national leader for its presentation of outstanding new art, cultivation of emerging artists, and innovation in museum education. Regular Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 12 noon to 5 pm. For more information, please call 203.438.4519 or visit http://www.aldrichart.org.

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

Non-Objectif Sud Tulette (F)

Pas de soucis …
June 17, 2007 - September 23, 2007

NOS
Non-Objectif Sud
La Barraliere
Route de Visan
Tulette, France
T: +33 (0) 685 54 35 76
Saturdays and Sundays from 12 to 6 pm
andrewhuston@gmail.com
info@ccnoa.org

http://www.nonobjectifsud.com
http://www.ccnoa.org

Non-Objectif Sud (NOS), a new exhibition space in Tulette, France, is pleased to present the group exhibition Pas de soucis …. Non-Objectif Sud has come full circle this year as it embarks on its second annual summer exhibition. Still exploring its mission that is by no means dogmatic, NOS invites artists and curators to spend a few days together, collaborate, and install an exhibition. A barn adjoining La Barralière, a nineteenth-century farmhouse in the Drome provencale, provides the setting for the exhibition, as well as an alternative escape to the ongoing commodification of the art industry.

This year’s exhibition is curated by Petra Bungert, the director and founder of the Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art (CCNOA), an established art center based in Brussels for emerging and established artists working in contemporary, abstract art. Moreover, CCNOA disseminates a variety of international creative identities and, significantly, creates exchanges with selected art centers, such as NOS.

Pas de soucis …, French for ‘no worries, mate’, conveys the laissez-faire attitude conditional to the noonday heat of southern France. Such an environment may seem antithetical to the rigorous and disciplined art practice, yet one need only think of Paul Cézanne’s tireless gaze upon Mont Ste-Victoire–located not so far away–as he explored and developed a new visual language and human perception that would change the course of art and thus create a cool compatibility between summer nonchalance and artistic thought and exercise.

This year NOS and CCNOA present the work of 21 international artists — namely John Armleder, John Beech, Cedric Christie, Ward Denys, Clemens Hollerer, Andrew Huston, Renée Levi, Mathieu Mercier, Gerold Miller, Olivier Mosset, Benjamin Rivière, Perry Roberts, Gerwald Pockenschaub, Léopoldine Roux, Michal Skoda, Tilman & Wolfgang Glum, Emmanuelle Villard, Jan Maarten Voskuil, Dan Walsh, and Beat Zoderer, who explore the boundless territories of abstract, nonobjective, concrete, and conceptual art through a dialogue of form and color, working with an eclectic choice of materials, including industrial-based and found objects. By alternately fusing the abstract, the decorative, and the utilitarian, their works interact on the borders of painting, sculpture, installation, architecture, and video, while presenting a complex visual vocabulary, both playful and serious, and expressing the dynamic diversity and relevance of abstract art practice today. (Karo
le Vail)

The exhibition includes large site-specific outdoor installations, paintings, objects, multiples, audio and video works and is accompanied by a 24-pages full-color publication.

CCNOA receives support from the Flemish Authorities (B), the Flemish Community Commission of the Brussels-Capital Region (B) and the CCNOA Friends. The exhibition and publication received additional support from Alain Bilteryst N.V./S.A. (B), Anne Buckingham (B), Eleven Fine Art (UK), Eric Linard Editions (F), Galerie Frederic Desimpel (B), Gillis N.V./S.A. (B), the HISK Gent (B). We extend our special thanks to Joy and David Huston, the participating artists and their representatives as well as the artists and all those who supported the NOS 2007 fundraising event.

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

PARKETT vol. 79

PARKETT vol. 79: Jon Kessler, Marilyn Minter, Albert Oehlen

http://www.parkettart.com

Parkett ’s unparalleled explorations and investigations of important international contemporary artists by acclaimed writers and critics continue in vol. 78, featuring Jon Kessler, Marilyn Minter, and Albert Oehlen. Also in this issue, Herbert Lachmayer writes on Gelitin, Paul Bonaventura on Mark Wallinger, and Mark Godfrey on Spencer Finch. The special Insert is by Nate Lowman, and Cumulus texts are by Gabriela Rangel, and Marc-Olivier Wahler.

In the tinkered gadgetry of Jon Kessler’s retro sci-fi installations, among the analog programs crammed with vaguely familiar, pop-a-graphic detritus of all kinds, in the surveillance cameras and monitors he has installed within the work, we are likely so see our very own images. Meanwhile works from the past appear naked by comparison–exotic–crafted with the delicate touch of, say, a subversive, extremely skilled toy-smith. This time as a data-diver in an ecology of pure information, Kessler remains connected to the sculptural language of his past. All the while, his vista of devolving cyberstuff remains in a fluctuating, manic state of accumulation and make-shift composition. His Parkett edition, entitled "Habeas Corpus" shows a doll-sized detainee with hands cuffed, ears muffed, eyes shielded, and mouth masked. Crouching on his knees in an orange prisoner camp overall, the man’s silence and body language have a hauntingly realistic effect. With texts by Pamela
Lee, Lori Waxman, and Bruce Sterling

Marilyn Minter’s fetishistic, flawless pictures reveal a painter obsessed with the clear articulation of magnified sweat beads and pore-smeared glitter. In each successive lip-smacking painting, Minter sets out to perfect beauty’s disguise, affirming both her pleasure for an industry’s most tantalizing ads, but also for some of its vulgar mishaps: say, a drag queen’s eyelashes clumped together with too much mascara, or even her own mentally ill mother pulling out clumps of her own hair. Works that at first appear universally, if not fashionably stylish, wind up, along with freckles and pimples, a confession of Minter’s haunted infatuations, and impeccable… imperfections. Minter’s Parkett edition is a photograph from a recent shoot she did with one of our most celebrated present day pin-ups, Pamela Anderson. Minter’s photograph, with soapy bubbles floating in the foreground, peeks past the myth of this synthetic super femme, glimpsing a softer more private side of Pamela as sh
e washes her hair. With texts by Katy Siegel, Andrea Scott, and Cay Sophie Rabinowitz

Albert Oehlen’s collage-paintings, as one Parkett writer notes, "seem almost bored of their own shock-value." And yet this painter–one of the most significant German artists of the past twenty years–has a way of making boredom appear rigorous, if not delirious experiment. Bountiful are his extractions that often aggressively combine elements of collage with expressionistic painting birthing often surreal, grotesque, but humorous aberrations. In his works, claw-footed bathtubs, lamps, asses, cannons, gilded frames, palm trees share the stage with a host of computerized paint-box options ("spray paint") and his trade-mark muscular brushstrokes. Oehlen’s edition for Parkett is an etching that continues his mining of avant-garde sensibilities, particularly surrealism and automatism. Oehlen’s dizzying image takes the viewer through the ear of a three-eyed man with a waxed mustache. With texts by Glenn O’Brien, and John Kelsey

Parkett is a small museum and a large library on contemporary art. Its unparalleled, available backlist includes some forty titles, more than ninety monographic collaborations with leading international artists, whose work is explored in several in-depth articles by acclaimed writers and critics. Published in a high-quality design, it features 200 reproductions of which more than 100 are in color. The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the White Chapel Art Gallery in London have both presented major Parkett retrospectives.

For more details on the new Parkett, its content and artist editions, as well as for subscriptions and back issues, please go to http://www.parkettart.com

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

Tate Liverpool

Peter Blake: A Retrospective
29 June - 23 September 2007

Tate Liverpool
Albert Dock
Liverpool, L3 4BB

Curated by Christoph Grunenberg and Laurence Sillars

http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool

Peter Blake is often described as the godfather of Pop art. At the core of Blake’s work has been his fascination with the world of popular culture and entertainment, including music, film and sports. Blake’s pioneering images of the 1950s and 1960s, including On the Balcony (1955-57), Self-Portrait with Badges (1961), The Toy Shop (1962) and The Beatles (1963-68), are iconic not only within art history but as more popular recordings of the social preoccupations of that time. Yet as this exhibition shows, his work goes far beyond this. From his earliest work of the 1950s, Blake’s paintings and drawings have been fundamental to the traditions of figurative realism in this the UK and abroad. His engagement with the Victorian imagination, myth and folklore during the 1970s as a Ruralist continued his nostalgic pursuit of a dream world while introducing a new cast of characters and themes. Since the 1980s, a substantial body of work has developed out of an increasingly conceptual
and self-evaluative practice. Peter Blake: A Retrospective provides a comprehensive survey of his rich and diverse oeuvre from the late 1940s to the present concentrating on the media of painting, drawing and printmaking.

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue, the most comprehensive publication on the artist to date, with essays by Simon Faulkner, Christoph Grunenberg, Marco Livingstone and Laurence Sillars.

For more information go to: http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool

KVB Kölner Verkehrs-Betriebe AG

Artistic Competition of the KVB Kölner Verkehrs-Betriebe AG
Design of the new North-South Light Railway Cologne
(Nord-Süd Stadtbahn Köln)

Call for entries
Submission Deadline 31 July 2007

For further information please consult the section Kunst/Art at:
http://www.nord-sued-stadtbahn.de

contact: art@neumann-luz.de

The KVB Kölner Verkehrs-Betriebe AG (the public tranport company of the city of Cologne) have initiated an international art competition for the artistic design of eight stations - seven below and one above ground - of the new North-South Light Railway Cologne (Nord-Süd Stadtbahn Köln). -In two resolutions of the Cologne City Council on 14 November 2002 and 4 April 2006 the KVB, as awarding authority of this major underground railway project, were commissioned to organise the competition, which was launched on 18 May 2007 with the international call for submissions. National and international artists are to be involved in this multi-stage international art competition. Through the artistic design of the stations, the "city below" shall be made accessible for both Cologne’s inhabitants and its visitors as a new place of discovery which sensitises us for associating with art, and at the same time makes an important contribution to the discus
sion about topics of urban living, the "city before our eyes". The financial means for the competition, including the realisation of the art works, amount to 1.75 million euros.

Application procedures

The competition will be run in two phases with a preliminary application procedure. The preliminary application procedure is open to national and international artists who can prove themselves experienced with projects in public space in general, and with buildings and interiors in particular. With proof of no more than three already executed projects the entrants should illustrate the way in which their art conceives space as a unity, and explain the use of spatial references.

Out of the applicants of the preliminary application procedure, 27 artists or artist groups will be accepted for the first phase, to which further 13 artists have been separately and directly invited in the run-up to the competition, namely: Baren-brock + Osterwald (D), Guillaume Bijl (B), Ceal Floyer (NL), Doris Frohnapfel (D), Hans Haacke (USA), Stefan Hofmann (D), Peter Kogler (A), Thomas Schoenauer (D), Stefan Sous (D), Joëlle Tuerlinckx (B), Brigitta Weimer (D), Lawrence Weiner (USA), and Eusebius Wirdeier (D). In October 2007 these 40 artists or artist groups will be asked to develop a basic concept of their planned entry.

Starting in May 2008, the second phase will require ten selected artists re-spectively groups of artists to refine their ideas into tangible plans. Out of these ten proposals the competition jury will select the finalist, or even finalists, as it is in the jury’s power to recommend that the KVB commission one artist or artist group for each separate station, special construction or tunnel section. The winner or winners will be announced in April 2009. It is planned to display the proposals submitted for the second phase in an exhibition, for the benefit of an interested public and of the competing artists. The realisation of art works is scheduled to finish by the end of 2010.

Entrants to the preliminary, open phase must submit their documents by 31 July 2007.

Rules and information relating to the competition can be downloaded at:
http://www.nord-sued-stadtbahn.de

Queries can be addressed to Kathrin Luz at art@neumann-luz.de

For more information go to: http://www.nord-sued-stadtbahn.de

Wood Street Galleries

Michael Hardesty
"Feedback"
June 22 - September 15, 2007

Wood Street Galleries
601 Wood Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
(412) 471-5605

http://www.woodstreetgalleries.org

Wood Street Galleries, a project of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, has recently commissioned new work by artist Michael Hardesty, titled "Feedback" which will be featured in the new exhibition titled "Echo" opening at Wood Street Galleries, Friday, June 22, through Saturday, September 15, 2007. Also, on exhibit will be two installations by Michael Hardesty: "Offering" and "Was/Is."

"Michael Hardesty’s environments investigate the mysteries of perception, challenging our sense of our physical selves," writes curator Murray Horne, who had organized a show of Mr. Hardesty’s installations in 1991 as part of the Three Rivers Arts Festival. "The technological aspects of his work dissolve into sensual cues which elicit questions of where, what, why, and how, sometimes inducing a meditative reverie. In response to his work, we shift from the material to the metaphysical."

Michael Hardesty was born in 1952 in Louisville, Kentucky. His early study in art was in the academic forms of drawing and painting, rendering still lifes, figuration. "It taught me the fundamentals…how to ’see.’ For that, I’m eternally grateful," he says.

A graduate of Eastern Kentucky University, Hardesty has worked in painting, sculpture, ceramics, and printmaking. Hardesty furthered his studies from 1974 - 1975 at London’s Central School of Art and Design, receiving a diploma in printmaking.

"One has to marvel at Hardesty’s ability to grab and hold his audience for optimal effect using any technology within his grasp. Hardesty’s art is always the "What if…," an open-ended invitation into a universe where anything seems possible," writes Louis Zona, Executive Director of the Butler Institute of American Art.

The artist will give a public lecture, June 23rd at 1:00 p.m.

Contact: Veronica Corpuz, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
(412) 471-6082 / corpuz@pgharts.org

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

d.c.a

Out in the Sun
Summer in the art centres
1 June - 30 September 2007

d.c.a
association francaise de développement des centres d’art
32, rue Yves Toudic
F-75010 Paris
T: +33 1 42 39 31 07

http://www.dca-art.com

Being held for the first time between 1 June - 30 September 2007, "Out in the Sun/Summer in the Art Centres" is giving the public the chance to discover a host of exhibitions and art events all over France. Involving almost forty contemporary art centres, this summer festival is being coordinated by d.c.a the french association for the development of art centres, in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and Communications’ Visual Art Delegation.

"Out in the Sun / Summer in the art centres" is offering dozens of new exhibitions all over France, illustrating the richness and dynamism of contemporary creative work — tomorrow’s heritage — via the sheer variety of its artists and what they art presenting.

The programme is interspersed with encounters, talks, concerts and performances, all of them having some connection with the exhibitions. From north to south, from east to west — and in the capital — these are events not to be missed.

Initiated by d.c.a — now a hub for 37 art centres from 19 regions and 32 départements — "Out in the Sun" highlights the way the network now covers the whole of the country.

For over thirty years the contemporary art centres have been venues for artistic experiment and creation, while actively contributing to the circulation of contemporary art and increasing public awareness to the latest on the art scene. Each year they draw hundreds of thousands of visitors.

A book/magazine will be published in December 2007 to keep the memory of those events alive.

It will be a richly illustrated X ray of the art centres, also recapitulating the major events of the summer programming.

Download the detailed programming on:
http://www.dca-art.com
http://www.culture.fr

Also available in May, a brochure recapitulating the whole programming including a map of the French art centres.

Contact presse
Christelle de Bernède
Anne Samson Communications
21 rue Léon Jost
F-75017 Paris
T : +33 1 40 36 84 35
christelle.debernede@annesamson.com

Contact coordination
Muriel Enjalran, coordinatrice
d.c.a / association francaise de développement des centres d’art
32, rue Yves Toudic
F-75010 Paris
T: +33 1 42 39 31 07
m.enjalran@dca-art.com
http://www.dca-art.com

Out in the Sun Summer in the art centres:

Centre d’Art le LAIT / Laboratoire Artistique International du Tarn (81-Albi et Castres), Crac Alsace / Centre Rhénan d’art contemporain (68-Altkirch), Centre d’art de l’Yonne (89-Auxerre), Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Centre d’art contemporain-Centre culturel de rencontre (56-Bignan), CAC Brétigny, Centre d’art contemporain de Brétigny (91-Brétigny-sur-Orge), Centre artistique et culturel du Domaine départemental de Chamarande (91-Chamarande), Centre d’art contemporain la Chapelle du Geneteil, le Carré, scène nationale (53-Château-Gontier), Cneai - Centre National de l’Estampe et de l’Art Imprimé (78-Chatou), Centre d’art contemporain La Synagogue de Delme (57-Delme), Le consortium (21- Dijon), Magasin- Centre National d’Art Contemporain (38-Grenoble), Wharf, Centre d’art contemporain (14-Hérouville Saint-Clair), Le Parvis, Centre d’art contemporain (65-Ibos), Le crédac / centre d’art contemporain
d’ivry (94-Ivry-sur-Seine), Cirva (13-Marseille), Abbaye Saint-André, centre d’art contemporain (19-Meymac), Le 10neuf, Centre régional d’art contemporain de Montbéliard (25-Montbéliard), Espace de l’art concret (06-Mouans-Sartoux), Centre National d’Art Contemporain de la Villa Arson (06-Nice), La Galerie, Centre d’art contemporain (93-Noisy-le-Sec), Jeu de Paume (75-Paris), Palais de Tokyo (75-Paris), Le Plateau / Frac Ile-de-France (75-Paris), Centre Photographique d’Ile-de-France (77-Pontault-Combault), Parc Saint-Léger / Centre d’art contemporain de Pougues-Les-Eaux (58-Pougues-Les-Eaux), Le Quartier / Centre d’art contemporain (29-Quimper), La Criée / Centre d’art contemporain (35-Rennes), Espace Croisé (59-Roubaix), Le Grand Café / Centre d’art contemporain (44-Saint-Nazaire), Centre régional d’art contemporain Languedoc-Roussillon (34-Sète), Le Creux de l’Enfer (63-Thiers), Les Abattoirs (31-Toulouse), CCC / Centre de création contemporaine (37-Tours), Passages, Centre d’art contemporain (10-Troyes), Centre International d’Art et du Paysage de l’ile de Vassivière (87-Vassivière), Institut d’art contemporain (69-Villeurbanne).

For more information go to: http://www.dca-art.com

Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona

A THEATRE WITHOUT THEATRE
Until 11 September 2007

Curators: Bernard Blistène and Yann Chateigné, with the collaboration of Pedro G. Romero.
Co produced by: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and Museo Berardo in Lisbon

Museu d’Art
Contemporani de Barcelona
Placa dels Angels, 1
08001 Barcelona

http://www.macba.es/controller.php

A Theatre Without Theatre, which opens on 24 May at the MACBA, explores the metaphors in which the influences of the theatre model made themselves felt in the arts of our times throughout the 20th century. This exhibition brings together more than 800 works, including paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings, photographs, videos, manuscripts and various other types of documents.

The exhibition reflects on the condition of the subject in contemporary society and on the links between the ‘experience of the senses’ and ‘action’. At the same time, it considers the dramatic roots of art as a constituent element of western modernity: from Vsevolod Meyerhold to Oskar Schlemmer, from Antonin Artaud to Judith Malina and Julian Beck (founders of the Living Theatre company), from Samuel Beckett to Tadeusz Kantor, the theatre has been a wellspring of ideas and theories that have been absorbed by art, becoming models of the aesthetic and spatial relationship. Art could, to a certain extent, be ‘the other stage’ of dramatic practice.

A wide range of approaches to the notion of drama and the points of convergence between an ‘archaic’ art and aesthetic innovation and the break with the past are presented in various fields of research in this exhibition, which reveals the artists and the themes common to both the theatre and art. The exhibition is not structured to show a pattern of evolution over time but instead centres on various core areas of analysis in which the genealogies and influences from the early 20th century are set out.

The theatre stage is a space isolated from the real world and hence is fictitious (though not false). It is perhaps this separation — the distance between the actor and the audience member — that enables the theatre to serve as a critical model as regards the ‘apparent’ and to use its full weight to facilitate the circulation of ideas. The 20th century was a period when the theatre got caught up in a process of transformation that eventually came to affect the roots of western culture as a whole and art in particular.

From the mid-1960s onwards, the notion of theatricality was a prominent element in contemporary art criticism. Minimalism was initially regarded as harmful and thought likely to destroy art as it had been known till then. Michael Fried, the American critic, railed against it in his famous essay Art and Objecthood (1967) on the grounds that it proposed a relationship between the work and the spectator that could lead the space of the artwork to absorb the viewer. The artists of the generation immediately after Minimalism appropriated the theatre model in order to create a core from which the foundations underpinning the contemporary could extend outwards. These foundations were the simultaneity of action and perception in the arts and the constant swapping of roles between actors and audience.

In the early 20th century, Dada, Futurism and Constructivism clearly expressed the close bond between aesthetic renewal and the theatre model. Cabaret, music hall, soirées or social gatherings, declamation and reading became modes of presenting active art for many artists after 1916. Playwrights such as Antonin Artaud and Samuel Beckett have been regarded as the true founders of artistic approaches and practices that go beyond the mere quotation.

A THEATRE WITHOUT THEATRE begins with the confrontation between the invention of Minimalism –with works by Carl André, Robert Morris and Donald Judd– and its rejection and refutation by the following generation -Dan Graham, Bruce Naumann, Marcel Broodthaers, James Coleman and Michelangelo Pistoletto-. In the works of these latter artists, it is possible to see the importance of the text and the ’set’ and to appreciate the need for a new attitude on the part of the audience, which is sometimes directly addressed and always questioned during the act of perception.

A THEATRE WITHOUT THEATRE is complemented by the research of Pedro G. Romero into the relationship between art and the theatre model in Spain: works by Federico García Lorca, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Helios Gómez, Antonio Miralda, the Teatro Estudio Lebrijano Company and Ocaña, among others, are featured in the various sections of the exhibition.

For more information go to: http://www.macba.es/controller.php

Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art

FLASH CUBE
July 5 - September 30, 2007

Gerard Byrne, David Claerbout, Thomas Demand, Jonas Dahlberg, Geert Goiris, Andreas Gursky, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Klaas Hoek, Candida Hofer, Jan Kaila, Sanggil Kim, Koo Jeong A, Aglaia Konrad, Yoon-jean Lee, Armin Linke, Hermann Pitz, Thomas Ruff, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Haegue Yang, JeongMee Yoon, Mieke Van de Voort and Jeff Wall.

Curator: Henk Slager
Coordinator: Hyesoo Woo

Since its acceptance as a form of art around the 1930s, photography has been forced as no other artistic medium to justify its medium-specific qualities. Particularly, the Greenbergian heydays of Modernism have produced such pressing urge for justification. At that moment around the end of the 1930s, painting had surpassed by far its interest in the subject of perspectivist illusion. As a consequence, painting entirely concentrated on the qualities of the two-dimensional surface implying a passion for painterly components such as planes, colors, and lines. From that time onwards, the artistic working field of perspectivist painting would be remediated by photography as an artistic medium.

However, in the artistic practice of our day, which, in line with New York-based theorist Rosalind Krauss could be said to be determined by a post-medium condition, the photographic image can no longer be viewed as a mere aesthetic registration of a situation in the real world. Rather, the topical photographic image demands the investigation of how the photograph as an imaginary medium produces diverse forms of realities and worlds which are still based on its perspectivist capacities. Such researching attitude requires a critical reevaluation - either through other media or through the history of the photographic medium - of the photographic medium as such. Subsequently, the medium-specific qualities of the photographic image have been deconstructed effecting a turn to captivating forms of spatial investigations.

Indeed one could argue that a critical attitude towards framing, centristic, and perspectivist styles of photography produced a novel generation of photographers fascinated by spatial environments and architectonic constellations. That fascination is connected with interesting, topical forms of photographic criticism on functionalist ways of thought parallel to perspectivist-based photography and on the subdivision of a 3D world into transparent, comprehensible, and instrumental entities.

The exhibition Flash Cube will chart a series of such spatial research strategies implicating a diversity of artistic points of departure such as fluid inner space, open urban space and installative space. The various photographic strategies will be mutually confronted in a transformative way in the exhibition’s methodology of mounting (floorplan) - underscored by Rem Koolhaas’ unique non-perspectivist display system of Leeum’s exhibition space - so that both spatial reflection and spatial experience can occur in dynamic and invigorating ways.

Paneldiscussion: Mapping Photographic Space: Thomas Demand, Jan Kaila, Sanggil Kim, Aglaia Konrad, Henk Slager, July 5, 1.00-5.00 p.m.

Opening: July 4, 6.00 p.m.

Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art
747-18, Hanam-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Korea 140-893
http://www.leeum.org

Flash Cube was also made possible by Samsung Electronics, Cyworld, Asiana Airlines and the Mondriaan Foundation.

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