Artipedia - Arts News

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

BOMB Magazine

BOMB Magazine’s 100th issue available now!

BOMB Magazine
80 Hanson Place, Suite 703
Brooklyn NY 11217
718.636.9100

http://www.bombsite.com

For 26 years running, BOMB has published over 750 interviews between artists–that’s 1500 visual artists, writers, musicians, directors, architects, and actors who comprise an ongoing dialogue about the arts. A simple idea of complex proportions because it has changed the nature of cultural discourse.

"BOMB’s interviews refer to the culture in its fluid and formative state, and in this way contribute to its direction. In and through them the culture encounters itself… the task that BOMB has preempted on behalf of the culture is to help it find its bearing though understanding those who are helping it change."

Le Musée de Sérignan

Uncertain States of America —
American Art in the 3rd Millennium
23 June - 23 September 2007

Le Musée de Sérignan
146 avenue de la Plage
34410 Sérignan
France

http://www.ville-serignan.fr

The exhibition "Uncertain States of America – American Art in the 3rd Millennium" is currently on view at Le Musée de Sérignan. The exhibition has been travelling for almost two years, and will go to Prague and Beijing after Sérignan. The curators for the exhibition are Daniel Birnbaum, Gunnar B. Kvaran and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

‘Uncertain States of America — American Art in the 3rd Millennium’ presents a wide spectre of young, American artists who work in a number of different media. The curators crisscrossed the US for two years to search for new artists, and explain the curatorial process as both challenging and rewarding: "The exhibition […] presents but a small fraction of the challenging and sometimes disturbing works that we came across during this intense period of research. […] Clearly we want this exhibition to reflect the variety of expressions and heterogeneity of the artistic landscape, but in the end the intensity and indisputable quality of the works remain our key criteria."

The show, described by the curators as floating archipelagos rather than a rock solid continent, has been well received by international press. Roberta Smith from the New York Times points to the fact that this is an American show put together by Europeans, and therefore presents an interesting outside view of the American art scene, whereas Tom Morton from Frieze states that "the best works had a conviction [..] that felt appropriate to our new century".

The exhibition is organized by the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art and was initially presented there in autumn, 2005. Since Oslo, the exhibition has been developing and growing into a number of international museums and institutions:

CCS Bard, New York, 24 June - 10 September 2006
Serpentine Gallery, 9 September - 15 October 2006
Reykjavik Art Museum, 4 November 2006 - 21 January 2007
Moscow Biennial (special video version), 1 March - 1 April 2007
Herning Art Museum, 4 March - 30 June 2007
CCA Warsaw, 23 March - 7 May 2007
Le Musée de Sérignan, 23 June - 23 September 2007
Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, 5 December 2007 - 28 February 2008
Songzhuan Art Center, Beijing, spring 2008

Catalogue
The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art has made a catalogue for the exhibition with presentations of all the artists as well as essays by Daniel Birnbaum, Gunnar B. Kvaran, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Bettina Funcke, John Kelsey, Gean Moreno, Frances Stark, Jan Tumlir, Elisa Turner. Special projects: Brooklyn Rail, e-flux video rental, McSweeney, North Drive Press, Quiet Industries, WhiteWalls. The catalogue can be ordered at: info@fearnleys.no http://www.afmuseet.no

Reader
Sternberg Press has published a reader as an addition to the exhibition, edited by Noah Horowitz and Brian Sholis. You can order the Reader directly from the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art info@fearnleys.no, or from Sternberg Press mail@sternberg-press.com

For more information go to: http://www.ville-serignan.fr