Artipedia - Arts News

ART MATTERS

ART MATTERS RE-EMERGES AND
CROSSES INTERNATIONAL BORDERS WITH
GRANTS AWARDED TO 23 ARTISTS

http://www.artmattersfoundation.org

Art Matters, the innovative nonprofit foundation, is pleased to announce its re-emergence after a ten-year hiatus. Building on its important history of funding and advocacy for the visual arts, the organization hopes to once again serve as a catalyst for dialogue, debate and impact in the arts community and beyond. Responding to needs expressed by artists across the country, the foundation’s first initiative this May awarded $150,000 in grants to individual artists for projects that foster collaborations and communications across international borders (see list of grants below.) A second round of grants will be awarded this fall, and a third in spring 2008.

Art Matters invited over 100 artists, curators, and art professionals from a range of geographic locations to nominate U.S. artists involved in international collaboration. All visual media were eligible including film, video, digital arts, performance, installation, and site-specific work for which funds can be used for travel, research, and the execution of projects to be completed within the year. The artists are traveling to the Middle East, South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe; some will complete projects in progress, some will realize new work. "Artists are our most useful ambassadors," said Art Matters’ chairperson Laura Donnelley. "Art speaks to matters that link us as humans. People see only our military and our movies; we all need reminders that our creativity is bigger, truer, and more powerful."

Since its founding in 1985, Art Matters has supported the arts community in timely ways with grants to visionary artists and to small arts organizations, and advocacy on behalf of artists on critical issues such as AIDS, the culture wars, censorship, and funding. The foundation also produced the first mail order catalogue of artists’ multiples to raise money for fellowships.

Art Matters’ mission remains to support artistic experimentation and the importance of the arts in the world at large. The current emphasis to foster opportunities for direct exposure and interaction between artists and cultures around the world responds to several factors: the desire of many artists to engage with others abroad, the need to represent America internationally by creative means, and diminished support for U.S. artists who want to work outside the country.

Art Matters has been revived by board chair, philanthropist Laura Donnelly and its founding board comprised of artists and art professionals in diverse areas of the visual, media, and performing arts - Mary Beebe, Cee Scott Brown, Laura Donnelley, Linda Earle, Gai Gherardi, Alexander Gray, David Mendoza, Laurence Miller, Lowery Stokes Sims, Marianne Weems, Philip Yenawine, and Bruce Yonemoto. According to Philip Yenawine, "Our small size is one of our strengths. It keeps us open to change and responsive in ways that larger bureaucratic organizations cannot be. We are continuously experimenting and evolving to provide the right structure to enable artists to transform consciousness and inform audiences in new ways. We hope to inspire other grant makers and individuals to create innovative opportunities to support artists and further timely dialogue."

ARTIST GRANTEE LIST
23 Grants ranging in the amounts of $3,000 - $10,000

Radcliffe Bailey
Painting.
Virginia - Ontario, Canada

Sanford Biggers
Film and Video
Jakarta

Daniel Bozhkov
Site Specific Work
Bulgaria

Ignacio Gonzalez-Lang
Performance
Arizona-Mexico border

Suheir Hammad
Performance
Palestine

Sharon Hayes
Performance
Paris and London

Wayne Hodge
Film and Video
Berlin

Bryan Jackson
Film and Video
Tokyo

Shaun El C. Leonardo
Performance
Mexico

Pavol Liska
Performance
Netherlands

Katt Lissard
Performance
Lesotho, Southern Africa

Charles McGill
Performance
Harlem, N.Y. and Hanoi, Vietnam.

Kori Newkirk
Installation
Dakar, Senegal

Clifford Owens
Site Specific Work
Ecuador

Deirdre Portnoy
Photography
South Africa and Mali.

Jackie Salloum
Site Specific Work
Palestine

Peggy Shaw (Split Britches Company)
Performance
Argentina

Cauleen Smith
Film and Video
Nigeria

The Speculative Archive (David Thorne and Julia Meltzer)
Film and Video
Syria

Temporary Services
Installation
Ljubljana

Allison Wiese
Site Specific Work
Mexico City

Jenifer Wofford
Site Specific Work
Philippines

Saya Woolfalk
Installation
Japan

For a more expanded history and information on Art Matters, visit
http://www.artmattersfoundation.org

Media Contact:
Maureen Sullivan
917.846.4477
media@artmattersfoundation.org

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

Afterall

Afterall Issue 15
Spring/Summer 2007

Afterall is a journal of contemporary art published in London and Los Angeles. Each issue focuses on artists whose work we find compelling, alongside texts on artworks, exhibitions and critical issues that are particularly significant today.

http://www.afterall.org

Afterall Issue 15

Essays:
Dieter Roelstraete on ‘catastrophilia’
Pablo Lafuente on Contemporary Arab Representations
Lars Bang Larsen in conversation with Suely Rolnik

Artists:
Jennifer Bornstein by Rachel Baum and Shepherd Steiner
Richard Hawkins by Dominic Eichler and Michael Ned Holte
Sanja Ivekovic by Natasa Ilic & Dejan Krsic and Katy Deepwell

Events, Works, Exhibitions:
Lane Relyea on Wolfgang Tillmans
Elena Filipovic on the Martha Rosler Library
Joshua Decter on General Idea’s AIDS Project
Charles Esche on Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s Riddles of the Sphinx

We are pleased to announce the publication of Afterall issue 15.

The current issue began with a general discussion of feminist art practice, and led to a debate around related themes — the complexities of presenting socio-political situations and artistic practice within a different time and context, and the variety of strategies that artists develop as means to self-representation. We chose to focus on Jennifer Bornstein, Richard Hawkins and Sanja Ivekovic as three examples of contrasting but complementary positions in relation to these questions. These artists’ perspectives are presented side-by-side with studies of single artworks — such as Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s Riddles of the Sphinx, the Martha Rosler Library and General Idea’s AIDS Project. We have also included texts considering general issues of representation, like Dieter Roelstraete’s discussion of the fascination with catastrophe, as well as essays on exhibition practice, such as Lane Relyea’s analysis of Wolfgang Tillmans’s use of installation techniques, Lars Bang L
arsen’s conversation with Suely Rolnik about her curatorial approach to the work of Lygia Clark and Pablo Lafuente’s enquiry into Catherine David’s Contemporary Arab Representations. These texts, we hope, offer a variety of ways to consider art in relation to issues of representation - of women, of political subjects and of art and the artists themselves.

Issue 15 is now available in bookshops across Europe, North America and worldwide.

For more information on Afterall or to subscribe, visit our website http://www.afterall.org

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

Hungarian Pavilion

Andreas Fogarasi: Kultur und Freizeit

Hungarian Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale
10 June - 21 November 2007

Commissioner: Dr Zsolt Petrányi
Curator: Katalin Timár
Artist: Andreas Fogarasi
Catalogue/book edited by: Katalin Timár

the book
Edited by Katalin Timár
Published on the occasion of the
Hungarian participation at 52nd Venice Biennale

http://www.biennale07.hu

The project ‘Kultur und Freizeit’ consists of a series of single channel videos, all showing the present state of cultural centres in contemporary Budapest, projected in separate black boxes which both physically and structurally include the spectators. At first, these black boxes seem to be minimalistic sculptural objects. Yet, as we move along them, their structure gets revealed and they look as much sophisticated micro-cinemas as simple wooden props.

These short videos are not straightforward documentaries since they don’t aim at providing the visitors with a comprehensive, anthropological survey of the current situation of these buildings. Rather, they function as signifiers for a contemporary split between mass culture and popular cultures, and their respective institutional frameworks, as opposed to high culture and its locations. This is emphasized by the particular use of the camera movement, the subjective points of view, and the athmospheric quality of the images that trust in the narrative qualities of the architecture itself.

In Hungary, the phenomenon and the proliferation of cultural centres belong to the past political era in which one of the state’s fundamental missions was the democratization of culture. The origins of this endeavour date back not only to André Malraux and French cultural policy of the 1950s, but also to the 19th century tradition of the workers’ club. In this respect, Fogarasi’s project has a geographic and political relevance that goes well beyond the Hungarian capital.

Andreas Fogarasi was born in 1977 in Vienna to Hungarian parents. He has studied art and architecture in Vienna and is co-editor of "dérive — magazine for urban studies". He has held solo exhibitions (among others) at Grazer Kunstverein (2005), Georg Kargl Gallery, Vienna (2006), and Studio Gallery, Budapest (2002) and has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Models for Tomorrow at European Kunsthalle, Cologne (2007); Re-Modern at Künstlerhaus, Vienna (2005); Konstruktion und Situation at Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2003); GNS — Global Navigation System at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2003), and Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt (2002).

Accompanying the exhibition is a book published in English. This 176 page publication features contributions from Jochen Becker, Sergio Bologna, Anthony Davies with Stephan Dillemuth and Jakob Jakobsen, Péter György, Zsolt K. Horváth, Barbara Steiner, is edited by Katalin Timár, and published by the Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König Köln.
ISBN 978-3-86560-287-9

For further information:
http://www.biennale07.hu

Contact:
Biennale Office
Mucsarnok / Kunsthalle, Budapest
Júlia Gáspár
Phone: +36 30340 78 49
Fax: +36 1 363 63 35
biennaleoffice@mucsarnok.hu

For more information go to: http://www.biennale07.hu

Lewis Glucksman Gallery

Ai Weiwei:
Monumental Junkyard
until 7 October 2007

Lewis Glucksman Gallery
University College Cork
Cork, Republic of Ireland
T: +353 21 490 1844
F: +353 21 490 1823
info@glucksman.org

http://www.glucksman.org

Monumental Junkyard

The Lewis Glucksman Gallery in Cork, Ireland, presents a new outdoor installation by the artist Ai Weiwei. The installation Monumental Junkyard has been commissioned and produced in collaboration with Swiss collector Dr. Uli Sigg on the occasion of the exhibition The Year of the Golden Pig: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection.

The installation has been designed to resemble a junkyard of building material that is typically evident in the suburbs of Chinese megacities, dumped outside the Lewis Glucksman Gallery. The piled materials are in fact 56 domestic doors reproduced in Chinese marble — a material that is resonant with the lofty projections of Renaissance sculpture, as well as with kitsch interior décor. The reproduction of wasted domestic doors in marble responds to issues of regeneration and historical-preservation, material and symbolic value, and the ambiguity of contexts as part of affluent consumerist society.

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (born 1957, lives and works in Beijing) is one of the China’s most influential contemporary artists. He also works as a curator, publisher, architect, and commentator on contemporary art and culture. In the late 1970s, he was a member of ‘The Stars’, a group of largely self-taught artists in Beijing who challenged the official communist mandate and helped set a new horizon of possibilities for contemporary art in China.

After moving to the USA in 1981, Ai Weiwei returned to China in 1993, where he started on a series of ambitious and provocative works: photographs, installations and sculptures using found objects and ancient relics. Influenced by the approaches of Dada, Duchamp, and Warhol, Ai Weiwei has created works which both incorporate and de-stabilise traditional aspects of Chinese culture.

Ai Weiwei’s works respond to China’s rich artistic heritage by reconfiguring objects such as Ming and Qing dynasty furniture and porcelain, Han dynasty urns and Neolithic vases.

He is one of the most eminent artists of his generation and his work has been shown extensively in the United States, Belgium, Germany, France, Korea and Japan. His work was included in the First Guangzhou Triennial 2002, China, the 48th Venice Biennale 1999, Italy, and the 2006 Biennale of Sydney. At documenta 12, he currently presents Fairytale, a work in which he brought over 1001 Chinese people to the small city of Kassel. As well as his artistic projects, Ai Weiwei has also recently worked as a consultant to architects Herzog and de Meuron in their design of the new Beijing Olympic Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Exhibition The Year of the Golden Pig

The exhibition The Year of the Golden Pig presented a selection from the most important collection of contemporary Chinese art in the world. The exhibition was curated from the collection of Dr. Uli Sigg. The entire collection consists of more than 1,500 artworks across all artistic media. A former Swiss ambassador to China, Dr. Sigg has taken a leading interest in China and its culture since the late 1970s. Together with his wife Rita, he has been building a collection devoted exclusively to Chinese art since the mid-1990s, and can justly be regarded as the pioneer in this field.

A limited edition catalogue is available that documents the Glucksman exhibition, also featuring a conversation between Dr Uli Sigg and Glucksman Director Fiona Kearney.

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

Van Abbemuseum

BÜCHLER / MOGRABI / STARK
3 artists in Van Abbemuseum
12/05 - 02/09/2007

On 12 May, the exhibition trio Büchler / Mograbi / Stark opened in the Van Abbemuseum, where the work of three established artists is shown in their first institutional solo exhibitions. By exhibiting the diversity of works by Pavel Büchler (Czechoslovakia, 1952), Avi Mograbi (Israel, 1956) and Frances Stark (USA, 1967) side by side, an overview of the contemporary art scene today occurs.

Pavel Büchler
A key mode Büchler’s practice is the way he invests objects with storytelling, making the objects speak in a way that changes their effect on the spectator. He works with old technology, audio recording, light and the material and mental presence of texts but all with a focus on how we give things meanings that do not belong to them in the first place. Büchlers’s work evolves around two fundamental concerns: the leftovers of modernism and everyday materials. He uses icons of our recent cultural past from Kafka to Beckett to Warhol to distil and compress history and to give it new currency in the present. His question seems often to come down to a simple one: "How can I reconfigure this artwork so that it works right here and right now, in our world". His answer is usually spare, almost parsimonious in its use of material. Other work uses found material as its inspiration and is excessive, almost grandiose in scale.

Avi Mograbi
Avi Mograbi’s documentaries have been shown worldwide. He studied philosophy at the University of Tel Aviv and Art at the Ramat Hasharon Art Schoo, and has been working in and with film for many years. His films primarily show the military and political situation in Israel and as well as the region. In his documentaries he re-tells commonly known stories in a humorous way, with an often shocking effect, and leaves the audience with a feeling of ‘disbelief’. In his work Mograbi deliberately mixes fiction and real footage in a personal style, implying irony to make his films both dark and confusing. The filmic language he uses helps the audience comprehend the situations he addresses as well as his own position in this almost surreal political situation.

The Fall of Frances Stark
The American artist Frances Stark combines a visual art practice with writing. The numerous connections between literature and art determine her artistic position. The relationship between verbiage and image-making is a persistent theme explored in the work. The starting point of this exhibition is the publication of a book about her body of visual works, which is the counterpart of the book Collected Writings 1993-2003, which was published four years ago. Together they form a diptych, two parts that are simultaneously allied and separated. Stark examines the book and the exhibition as a discursive means; what is the difference between reading a text on the wall or in a book? And conversely, what does it mean for the tactile and detailed collage to find itself on the page?

Curators
Phillip van den Bossche curated The Fall of Frances Stark
Esra Sarigedik Öktem curated the solo exhibitions by Avi Mograbi and Pavel Büchler

Publications
The three exhibitions each have a publication:
Frances Stark: Collected Work ISBN 978-3-86560-263-3
Avi Mograbi: films and video works ISBN/EAN:9789086900800
Pavel Büchler: Absentmindedwindowgazing ISBN/EAN: 9789086900763

Exhibitions
The Fall of Frances Stark is a co-production. The exhibition will go on tour to FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon (September - December 2007) and Culturgest, Lison, 15/02 - 04/05/2008 (Opening 15/02/2008). The solo exhibition by Pavel Büchler is in collaboration with Kunsthalle Bern and Frankfurter Kunstverein.

Van Abbemuseum
BILDERDIJKLAAN 10
EINDHOVEN - THE NETHERLANDS
+31 [0]40 238 1000
info@vanabbemuseum.nl
http://www.vanabbemuseum.nl
TU - SU 11:00 - 17:00
TH 11.00 - 21:00

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

Kunstverein München

Wolfgang Tillmans
Beugung
2nd June - 2nd September 2007

Kunstverein München
Galeriestr. 4
80539 München

Opening Hours:
Tuesday - Friday: 12:00 - 19:00
Saturday & Sunday: 11:00 - 18:00

http://www.kunstverein-muenchen.de

Following his exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, Wolfgang Tillmans presents from the 2nd of June till the 2nd of September 2007 his solo exhibition ‘Beugung’, which has been developed in close collaboration with and for Kunstverein München.

Taking its starting point from works as ‘Sportflecken’ (1996), the monochrome series of photographs that has been developing since 1997 such as ‘Impossible Colour (Green)’ (1997), and video pieces as ‘Lights (Body)’ (2002), portraits such as ‘Anders pulling splinter from his foot’ (2004) and recent three dimensional pictures ‘Lighter’, the exhibition ‘Beugung’ attempts a focussed and comprehensive genealogy of the notion of surface in the work of Wolfgang Tillmans.

In 1988 the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote: ‘thinking means folding’. Deleuze referred hereby to — particularly, though not exclusively — to the aesthetics of baroque. According to Deleuze, folds contain a non-readable, a mental potential. Folds cover up structures instead of conclusively defining them — it is a game which always presupposes and establishes a human being as an imaginable creature. Images and situations are set in relation to each other, in order to constitute the visible and the readable and to alternately entwine them with each other. Everything created is the result of complex folds, each of which has to be understood simultaneously as endless, continuing and interconnected folds, unfolding and covering up — to thus integratively instead of oppositionally relate a human’s universal and individual perception and knowledge to each other. The baroque artist was still aware that the world is only ever put into perspective in small ways and partiall
y, rather than as a whole.

By consciously focussing on only one aspect in works of the past 15 years, the exhibition ‘Beugung’ reveals a close interrelation between singular and on first sight disparate groups of works. As a ‘vehicle of critical thought’, based on an active and participatory subject, Wolfgang Tillmans presents with ‘Beugung’ once again the world not as a static given but as something produced and hence changeable.

Parallel to the exhibition ‘Beugung’ at Kunstverein München Wolfgang Tillmans’ new artist book ‘manual’ is published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König.

Wolfgang Tillmans (*1968 Remscheid) has been living and working in London for 15 years; Turner Price (2000). 2006 solo exhibitions at PS1/MoMA and retrospectives at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC.

k.m Talks

Sunday, 03 June, 7 pm
Artist’s Talk:
Wolfgang Tillmans in conversation with
Dr. Christof Siemes (DIE ZEIT, Hamburg)

Tuesday, 12 June, 7 pm
Marte Eknaes (artist & member of staff ‘Between Bridges’/London):
Presentation of Wolfgang Tillmans’ exhibition space ‘Between Bridges’,
which in the last years has produced exhibitions by Charlotte Posenenske,
Josef Kramhöller, Sister Corita Kent and David Wojnarowicz.

Tuesday, 26 June, 9 pm
Screening:
Todd Haynes: ‘Safe’, USA 1995

Tuesday, 10 July, 9 pm
Screening:
David Wojnarowicz & Ben Neill: ‘ITSOFOMO’ (in the shadow of forward motion),
USA 1991/2004

Tuesday, 24 July, 7 pm
Jan Verwoert (Art Critic/Berlin):
‘The world itself is shining. On the work of Wolfgang Tillmans.’

Saturday, 28 July, 7 pm
‘Hommage to Jochen Klein’

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

sala rekalde

Sean Snyder
21 June to 2 September 2007

sala rekalde
Alameda Recalde, 30
Bilbao 48009 (Spain)

http://www.salarekalde.bizkaia.net

Sean Snyder’s exhibition at sala rekalde brings together a series of recent projects outlining his research based artistic practice.

Having worked with extensive case studies involving the ways ideology and the media shape architecture and urban planning, Snyder’s recent work has focused on the processes of the media, visual aspects of political representation and the actual mechanics of image production.

The projects presented in sala rekalde, focus on these recent developments in Snyder’s work. The exhibition outlines the artist’s methodology and use of archives, opening up source material to the viewer’s examination.

Works in the exhibition include:

Analepsis (2003-2004) is a video that works with the depiction of location in satellite television news broadcasts. The short sequences are comprised of re-establishing shots (reminders or updates on scene changes) used to visually orient viewers to the geographic location of a report. The footage, isolated from sound and narrative, is edited into a continuum according to camera techniques, exposing the cinematic language inherent in news coverage.

The Site (2004-2005) is a text and image based work that analyses various reports produced by governmental information services and western news media upon the capture of Saddam Hussein. Overlapping accounts and visual evidence produce similar, but inconsistent depictions of a restricted place and incident that no longer exists in reality. Questions of accessibility, timing and the relation of reporters to their subject bring into question the newsworthiness of the material.

Untitled, (Archive Iraq) (2003-2005) consists of thematically grouped amateur images produced by military forces and contractors excavated from digital file-sharing sites on the Internet. Exposing a layer of what would remain largely unseen pictures, overt representations of war and violence are excluded, focusing on the banal subjects of amateur photography. Presenting a perspective different from that of the embedded reporter, the selected subjects evoke notions of tourist, classical and criminal photography.

Casio, Seiko, Sheraton, Toyota, Mars (2004-2005) is a video essay that combines still images and video footage from amateur, governmental and photojournalistic sources with an essayist commentary. Exploring the conventions and ethics of photojournalism, the video outlines decades of foreign corporate involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Schema (Television) (2005-2007) is an ongoing project that questions television’s authoritativeness as a source of information. Working with categorical indexes of programming themes from satellite television, the video utilizes the potential of the remote control as a device of unpredictable montage. Using Dziga Vertov’s (with Rodchenko’s subtitles) silent newsreels (Kino Pravda) from the 1920s as a formal and editing model, the video emphasizes impossibility of attributing truthfulness to the moving image.

Optics.Compression.Propaganda (2006-2007) is the general subheading for a series of experiments working with image production and the role visual technologies play in the construction of ideology. The Carl Zeiss Archive serves as a conceptual framework for the project, illustrating the importance of optical devices in recent history.

Sean Snyder was born in Virginia Beach, USA in 1972. He lives and works in Berlin and Kiev. He has exhibited extensively with solo exhibitions at the Secession, Vienna, Portikus, Frankfurt, De Appel, Amsterdam, Neue Kunsthalle, St. Gallen, and Lisson Gallery, London.

To accompany the exhibition, sala rekalde will publish a book with essays by Magali Arriola, Olga Bryukhovetska and a conversation between Sean Snyder and Leire Vergara.

From June 21st to July 29th, the Abstract Cabinet of sala rekalde will be showing the group exhibition If you go, write me when you get there, within the framework of Periferiak07, a programme of activities with base in Bilbao.

This exhibition corresponds with the second part of an already begun workshop in the civic centre of San Francisco, Bilbao. Taking the practice of editing as the subject matter, this proposal adopts a mixed form of workshop and exhibition. The overall compilation will offer a spatial and conceptual framework in which public presentations and closed sessions can take place, and pooling videos, installations, photographs, drawings, publications and objects, offered by five artists and collectives: Discoteca Flaming Star, Karl Larsson/Frans Josef Petersson, Jon Mantzisidor, Peter Piller and Isidoro Valcárcel Medina.

Parallel with this exhibition, there will be a series of presentations, performances and conferences.

For further information please contact:
Constanza Erkoreka, Press Officer
Tel:(+34) 94 406 87 07
Fax: (+34) 94 406 87 54
salarekalde@bizkaia.net

For more information go to: http://www.salarekalde.bizkaia.net

LUDWIG MUSEUM

László Fehér
Retrospective exhibition
Works 1975-2007
22 June-16 September 2007

LUDWIG MUSEUM
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
PALACE OF ARTS
H-1095 Budapest Komor Marcell u. 1
Phone: (36 1) 555 3444, 555 3457
Fax: (36 1) 555 3458
info@lumu.hu

Opening: Thursday, 21 June 2007, 6.00 pm
Opened by Sándor Radnóti, aesthetician
Guided tour and press reception:
Tuesday, 19 June 2007, 4.00 pm

Curator: Katalin Néray

http://www.lumu.hu

László Fehér first came to attention in the late 1970s in the Studio exhibitions, and has been a prominent figure of Hungarian art for the last twenty-five years. After the radical social documentation of his early photorealistic period, he turned to family mythology. Through images of anxiety filtered through family photographs and childhood memories from the nineteen fifties, he found a more indirect format for conveying his message. It was then that he developed what has remained, if changing from time to time in colour and form, an unmistakeable individual style made up of bold framing, dynamic, often diagonal composition, few colours and a sensitive balance of contour-indicated forms and fine detail.

Fehér has had many exhibitions, but until now the only true retrospective exhibition was in December 1997, in the Liechtenstein Palace, Vienna.

The primary aim of this exhibition is to present the process underlying Fehér’s special iconography and method of imagery as it has developed over three decades.

The last time the Ludwig Museum held a Fehér exhibition was twelve years ago, in spring 1995 (in its old premises in the Buda Palace), entitled New Pictures. Since then, periods have followed one after the other, the dominant colours have changed, but the unchanging essence, the message, is an intricate relationship between the human figure and its surroundings: emotionally complex, often visually shocking, and at once harmonious and disharmonious. The basis is photography, whether old family photographs or the artist’s own snapshots. This is the starting point, a tool which the artist uses at will. Series drawn from each period build up to an integral whole held together by Fehér’s philosophy of art and life.

The Ludwig Museum sees the time as right for a presentation of the phases of Fehér’s work over the thirty years which have passed since 1975. It has selected paintings from many public and private collections and the artist’s own studio, and puts some new works on public display for the first time.

Alexandra publishers have produced a richly illustrated book on the occasion of the exhibition.

László Fehér was born in Székesfehérvár on 17 March 1953. He studied at the Hungarian College of Fine Arts between 1970 and 1976 under Lajos Szentiványi and Ignác Kokas. He was a Derkovits Scholar from 1978 to 1980, and won the Mihály Munkácsy Prize in 1993, the Kossuth Prize in 2000 and the Prima Award in 2006 (in the Hungarian Visual Arts Category). In 2007 he became the Hungarian Ambassador of Culture. He lives in Budapest and Tác.

Tuesday-Sunday: 10am-8pm
On the last Saturday of every month: 10am-10pm
Closed on Mondays
Press contact: Patrícia Piringer, PR Manager, tel: (36 1) 555 3468 or (36 30) 99 13 454
e-mail: patricia.piringer@lumu.hu

Events linked to the exhibition:

Saturday, 23 June, 5.00 pm - Is-Is randevú (discussion) Guests:
Painter László Fehér and philosopher Ágnes Heller
Thursday, 28 June, 6.00 pm: guided tour by painter László Fehér
Saturday, 15 September, 4.00 pm: guided tour by painter László Fehér

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

tank.tv

Fresh Moves
New Moving Images from the UK
A DVD of film and video art by tank.tv
ISBN: 978-0-9555181-0-2
Paperback 150 x 180 mm portrait

Fresh Moves
will be launched at the ICA, London
on the 28th June 2007 at 7pm.
Book now through the ICA box office.
http://www.ica.org.uk

For more information and to order Fresh Moves please see:
http://www.tank.tv/freshmoves.htm

The appearance of Fresh Moves is a unique event making artists’ moving images, some of which are rarely seen, available beyond the conventional context of art exhibitions and fleeting lives online. The project is the result of tank.tv’s continuous collaboration and exchange with artists, institutions and independent curators which has made it the inimitable platform for moving image practice that it is today.

Showcasing new moving image work since 2003, tank.tv presents its first DVD anthology. This collection contains 24 film and video pieces by 24 UK based artists, each around three minutes long, and reflects the creativity, innovation and wide variety of subject matter for which http://www.tank.tv has become known and respected. It also includes five new, specially commissioned interviews pieces between feted curators and artists.

Fresh Moves was compiled by a panel that included Hans Ulrich Obrist, director of the Serpentine Gallery, and Stuart Comer, curator of film and video at Tate Modern. Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller and infamous philosopher Slavoj Zizek both make an appearance in the series of interviews.

The DVD features recent work from some of the most important artists working in moving images today, such as Cerith Wyn Evans, Daria Martin, Runa Islam, Spartacus Chetwynd and Andrew Kötting, as well as emerging artists like Torsten Lauschmann, Anja M. Kirschner and David Blandy. Rather than a comprehensive overview, Fresh Moves aims to provide an anthology encompassing animation, fictional narrative, digital film, montage and installation-based film work. The works explore a wide variety of subjects - from politics to identity and aesthetic practices, all tempered with a healthy measure of humour - and so celebrate not just the artists featured, but the art of moving images as a whole.

"…this special project addresses the idea of carrying video and filmic work beyond the boundaries of contextually, or spatially, confined spaces pertaining to where a work can be seen. […] It furthers the investigation into how different modes of filmmaking evolve within the changing consciousness of the public media […] a sort of polyphony of voices, stories and philosophies. [The project] …produced an investigation into a new generation of artists working in the UK. […] Eric Hobsbawm, the great English historian speaks of the very necessary and urgent need for our hyper-paced culture to issue a ‘protest against forgetting’."
-Hans Ulrich Obrist

ARTISTS: David BLANDY, Ben CALLAWAY, Duncan CAMPBELL, Ergin CAVUSOGLU, Spartacus CHETWYND, Kate COOPER, Ann COURSE, Katy DOVE, Max HATTLER, Runa ISLAM, Kevin HEAVEY, Anja M. KIRSCHNER, Zineb SE DIRA, Andrew KÖTTING, Torsten LAUSCHMANN, Daria MARTIN, Alex HEIM, Ben RIVERS, Samuel STEVENS, Stephen SUTCLIFFE, Mark Aerial WALLER, Saskia OLDE WOLBERS, John WOOD & Paul HARRISON, Cerith WYN EVANS

INTERVIEWS: Steven EASTWOOD with Benjamin COOK, Jeremy DELLER with Chrissie ILES, Ryan GANDER with Hans Ulrich OBRIST, Laure PROUVOST with Michael CONNOR, Sophie FIENNES with Slavoj ZIZEK.

The compilation was selected by: Hans Ulrich Obrist (the Serpentine Gallery), Benjamin Cook and Mike Sperlinger (LUX), Stuart Comer (Tate Modern), Michelle Cotton (Independent curator, London), Rose Cupit (Film London) and Kathrin Becker (NBK, Berlin).

A project by: Laure Prouvost and Birgit Ludwig

Fresh Moves: New Moving Images From the UK
ISBN: 978-0-9555181-0-2
Paperback 150 x 180 mm portrait
300 pages / content printed on 81 colour pages
PAL DVD / Region 0 / running time 85 min
Published by Tank Form Ltd
Distributed by Thames & Hudson.

Interviews with artists and curators involved with Fresh Moves are on http://www.tank.tv until July 15th.

Generously funded by the National Lottery through the Arts Council, England.

For more information go to: http://www.tank.tv

Austrian Cultural Forum New York

21 POSITIONS

May 15 – August 25 | 2007
Gallery hours:
Monday – Saturday | 10 am – 6 pm

Austrian Cultural Forum New York
11 East 52nd Street
New York, NY 10022
212 319 5300
http://www.acfny.org

21 POSITIONS

Exhibition dates: May 15 – August 25 | 2007
Gallery hours: Monday – Saturday | 10 am – 6 pm

Bitter / Weber
Hubert Blanz
Heinz Cibulka and Magdalena Frey
Clegg & Guttmann
Lois Hechenblaikner
Judith Huemer
Harald Hund
Iris Klein
Markus Krottendorfer
Paul Albert Leitner
Michaela Moscouw
Rita Nowak
Lisl Ponger
Lois Renner
Markus Schinwald
Eva Schlegel
Ruth Schnell
Günther and Loredana Selichar
Manfred Willmann
Andrea Witzmann
Erwin Wurm

Curator: Christoph Thun-Hohenstein

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York is pleased to present 21 POSITIONS, an art photography show that will be on view through August 25. More than a mere assembly of 21 artistic positions, this exhibition is about looking at the 21st century from different angles. Rather than celebrating speed, ubiquity, and unlimited growth, the new state of the art is to make us reflect on what we are about to lose. Presenting 21 artistic positions of seeing others and ourselves, the show explores a number of core factors underlying the malaise and optimism of our young century: SURFACE AND ILLUSION (Eva Schlegel, Clegg & Guttmann, Michaela Moscouw); SEDUCTION (Lois Renner, Rita Nowak, Lois Hechenblaikner, Iris Klein); OBSESSION (Markus Schinwald, Erwin Wurm); LIKENESS AND DIFFERENCE (Magdalena Frey and Heinz Cibulka, Ruth Schnell, Paul Albert Leitner, Harald Hund); CHANGE, FAST AND SLOW (Hubert Blanz, Markus Krottendorfer, Günther and Loredana Selichar, Andrea Witzmann, Judith Hue
mer, Lisl Ponger, Bitter / Weber, Manfred Willmann). 21 POSITIONS is curated by Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, director of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.

The exhibition’s focus is on recent art photography from Austria. In contradistinction to the situation in Germany, the Austrian scene has not been marked by a dominant art photography school. While Viennese Actionism and the systematic exploration of the self were a determining influence for almost any Austrian artist, including those interested in photography, this pressure also created a stimulus to break free from the strong focus on the body. A broad range of artistic possibilities opened up, and younger artists from very different artistic backgrounds felt free to roam into less orthodox territories. 21 POSITIONS offers a glimpse into the variety of recent art photography in Austria without attempting to capture the entire spectrum. All the works included date from 2000 or thereafter, with the exception of the selection of 27 photographs from Manfred Willmann’s celebrated oeuvre Das Land. His photographic observations on the slow pace of change in the Austrian countrysi
de and the lives of those who stay and resist the temptation to move to the city make us reflect on memory and progress, a focus of ACF’s activities.

An exhibition catalogue, available for free, has been published in conjunction with the exhibition.

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Admission to all ACF exhibitions, concerts, and other events is free.
Gallery Hours: Monday through Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm.
The Austrian Cultural Forum is located at 11 East 52nd Street in Manhattan.
For additional information call 212 319 5300 or visit http://www.acfny.org

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