Artipedia - Arts News

Rohkunstbau

Rohkunstbau XIV
THREE COLOURS — WHITE
July 15 - August 26, 2007
Schloss Sacrow near Berlin

Venue: Schloss Sacrow, Krampnitzer Strasse, Potsdam-Sacrow
Opening: July 14, 3pm
Opening time: Saturday and
Sunday, 10am - 8pm

http://www.rohkunstbau.de

The Rohkunstbau XIV exhibition "THREE COLOURS — WHITE" has invited ten contemporary artists to explore the complex issue of "Equality". In an analogy to "Three Colours – Blue, White, Red", the film series by Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, the exhibition also highlights each artist’s personal perspective. Curator Mark Gisbourne has chosen the colour white as a leitmotif, not in a strictly formal or literary sense, but as a potential point of orientation. At the same time, in their explicit relationship to the location, the works reflect the key characteristic of Rohkunstbau exhibitions as developed by co-founder and artistic director Arvid Boellert.

The painting by Gerhard Richter (Germany) is a punctum, and can hence be understood, within the exhibition context, as both initiating this discourse and its primary point of reference. In Richter’s view, art is the most authentic form of reality. His response is always an image — and his grey works respond to indifference and the refusal to take a stand and actively shape life.

Candice Breitz (South Africa) describes mass media-speak as a double-edged sword, levelling but providing a globally functioning voice. Her installation in Sacrow centres on mirrors with well-known pop-song texts, creating a disturbing insight into the essential ambiguity of equality as located somewhere between universal good and triviality.

The photographic works by Thomas Demand (Germany) reflect current media reality. "Attempt" pictures an undetonated bomb planned by the German RAF terrorist group. The topic itself is unsettling and the sense of unease is heightened by Demand’s constructed space, eerily evoking a sterilised existence.

Gil Marco Shani (Israel) creates works of contrast, where the apparently simple linear images are sharply at odds with the violent acts depicted. The pictures stand as symbols of social upheavals that, in this closed emblematic style, have a deeply shocking impact.

In the World Premiere of his film installation, Julian Rosefeldt (Germany) combines the aesthetics of German Romanticism with current issues around national identity and the cliché of a dominant Leitkultur, projecting these concerns directly onto the palimpsest like the history of Schloss Sacrow.

The installation by Maria Chevska (UK) echoes with the resonance of Kafka’s aphorism "A cage went in search of a bird", and explores the mutual reciprocity of language and the visual world on a range of diverse levels, internal and external, private and public, that are locked into a desperate struggle for understanding.

Jaroslaw Flicinski (Poland) sees his work as forming a single integrated multimedia experience. His installation shows a stranger discovering his own personal access to one of Flicinski’s works by dancing in front it. At the same time, in the form of a video diary, Flicinski explores the origins of human existence.

Ola Kolehmainen (Finland) has already proclaimed that his great love is minimalism. Starting from large-scale photographs, usually of contemporary architecture, he then reduces the images to structures, and the grid, transforming the solidity of a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional plane.

In her installation, Ayse Erkmen (Turkey) creates a "seaweed curtain" to contextualize the central window of the palace, simultaneously obscuring and opening the view, dividing yet combining interior and park, facilitating a conscious awareness of these two elements, and creating a location where artificiality and nature, seriality and authenticity, the interior and exterior, meet and interrelate.

Thomas Rentmeister (Germany) presents the viewer with plies of white linen and other everyday objects, stacked to the ceiling. At first glance, the works appear imbued by a light but playful ironic humour. Yet one soon realises they harbour intricate, interwoven levels of meanings stretching far back into art history, back to Duchamp. Sugar cubes, cotton buds and tic tacs form a shopping list of whiteness, in a manner where pop art and minimalism meet.

Patron of THREE COLOURS — BLUE WHITE RED from 2006 - 2008:
José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission

Press Office: Bluhm PR, info@bluhmpr.de

The Rohkunstbau XIV exhibition is taking place at the invitation of Ars Sacrow e.V. in cooperation with the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg.

Rohkunstbau gratefully acknowledges support from the Federal Cultural Foundation, Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung, the federal state of Brandenburg, the Mittelbrandenburgische Sparkasse in Potsdam, and the Cision.

Organised by the Brandenburg Branch of the Foundation SPI.

For more information go to: http://www.rohkunstbau.de

Kabuso

Damien Hirst:
LIFE, DEATH AND LOVE
2 June - 9 Sept 2007
curated by Gunnar B. Kvaran, Hanne Beate Ueland and Grete Årbu

Kabuso
Hardangerfjordvegen 626
N-5610 Oystese
Norway
Ph. +47 56553900
post@kabuso.no

http://www.kabuso.no

In collaboration with Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, Kabuso arts centre presents a broad exhibition of work by Damien Hirst. In line with Damien Hirst’s ambitious art, this exhibition has a title that comprises truly large themes: life, death and love. Hirst himself has claimed that there are four important consorts in his life: art, love, religion and science. His artistic project is to seek connections — contrasts and dilemmas — between life and death, love and desire, machines and human beings, art and popular culture, beauty and gruesomeness, irony and seriousness, and religion and science. By staging juxtapositions of these themes, he creates a highly contrasting and explosive art that confronts the public in a way many find beyond the bounds of decency.

The works of Damien Hirst that form the basis of this exhibition, all of which are from the Astrup Fearnley Collection, reflect his artistic developments. And cumulatively, the installations, sculptures and paintings presented here offer an important overview of the main formalistic and thematic thoughts of the artist during the past decade.

About Kabuso arts centre

Kabuso is situated in the small village Oystese in Hardanger, Norway. The centre lies just next door to the Ingebrigt Vik Museum, which contains the collection of Ingebrigt Vik, one of the biggest Norwegian classical sculptors.

Kabuso also has a good chamber-music hall. Throughout the summer, we host classical matinee concerts, in collaboration with Edvard Grieg Museum Troldhaugen, as well as other concerts.

International visitors will also appreciate the magnificent nature of the area. From the arts centre you can view the Hardanger Fjord, snow capped mountains and Folgefonna - the local glacier.

You can find more information about Kabuso and the Hirst exhibition at http://www.kabuso.no

For more information go to: http://www.kabuso.no

Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

KISS KISS BANG BANG.
45 YEARS OF ART AND FEMINISM
07/06/11 - 07/09/09
Produced by the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum
Sponsored by the BBK FOUNDATION
Curated by Xabier Arakistain

BILBAO FINE ARTS MUSEUM
Museo Plaza, 2
48011 Bilbao (Bizkaia)
Spain
info@museobilbao.com

http://www.museobilbao.com

The exhibition "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. 45 years of Art and Feminism" brings together 69 works of 45 artists from diferent countries who have initiated and/or continue to produce what has been referred to as "Feminist Art". The show includes, five documentary videos specifically produced by 3 artists, one collective and one theoritian with the aim to contextualize the feminist artistic practice with the social, political and theoretical feminist movements.

THE EXHIBITION

From the late 1960s on, feminism had a major impact on the visual arts, both as regards the praxis of some women artists and the production of texts and essays describing the awkward position of Western women artists and their works in the pages of art history. From the mid-seventies, a series of publications on both sides of the Atlantic increasingly demonstrated the androcentric bias running through the art history officially taught in schools and universities, while critically examining notions like "genius", "artist" and "art work". What’s more, by compiling the works of those women artists influenced by feminism’s technical and political tenets, some of these publications have put together a body of works referred to as "feminist art", now considered the last avant-garde movement of the 20th century and the one to have most radically transformed the worlds of art.

As a reaction to the tradition predominating in official art history, which tends to isolate works and artists from their social and political contexts, the exhibition will give visitors the chance to establish a link between art practices and the political, social and intellectual practices of feminism. With this aim in mind and considering that from the Illustration feminism comes dragging some central subjects, that still today look forward for a definitive solution, the show is arranged according to five themes central to the feminist movement:

1.-the struggle for civil and political rights of women;
2.-the cultural construction of sex, gender and sexuality;
3.-the struggle to liberate women’s bodies;
4.-the specific condemnation of violence against women;
5.-the varied attempts to write a true history of the human species that does not exclude fifty per cent of the population.

Categorizing and grouping the artworks shown in this exhibition under "feminist art" is by no means an attempt to isolate them in some essentially non-art category or to separate them in some way from art history in general. In fact, it was feminism that actually redefined the terms of art in the late 20th century, by exposing everything from the cultural nature of gender to the politicization of the relationship between the public and private spheres and by exploring the nature of sexual difference or even by highlighting the specificity of bodies marked by gender, race, age and class. However, although we do not separate feminist art from art in general and it is true that the women artists situation has improved in the period analyzed, the fact is that women artists still face major prejudice and obstacles just because of their sex.

The title of the exhibition, KISS KISS BANG BANG, is conceived to highlight in a particularly graphic way the contradictions and misalignments between the stereotypes created about women in patriarchal cultures and the reality of a group that has fought unceasingly against such stereotypes. The point is to confront the traditional idea of femininity that sees women as the repose of the warrior, that objectivizes them sexually in culture (KISS KISS), with another reality of women as active, enterprising subjects tireless in the ongoing struggle to achieve status as first class citizens (BANG BANG).

ARTISTS

ANA MENDIETA
BARBARA KRUGER
CARMEN NAVARRETE
CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN
CARRIE MAE WEEMS
CATHERINE OPIE
CECILIA BARRIGA
CHICKS ON SPEED
CINDY SHERMAN
ELKE KRYSTUFEK
ERREAKZIOA
EULALIA VALLDOSERA
FAITH RINGGOLD
FATIMA TUGGAR
FEFA VILA NUÑEZ
GUERRILLA GIRLS
HANNAH WILKE
ITZIAR OKARIZ
JUDY CHICAGO
KIKI SMITH
MAITE GARBAYO
MARTHA ROSLER
MARY BETH EDELSON
MARY KELLY
MONICA SJÖÖ
NAN GOLDIN
NANCY SPERO
NICOLE EISENMAN
ORLAN
PAULA REGO
REGINA JOSE GALINDO
ROSEMARIE TROCKEL
SHIRIN NESHAT
SUE WILLIAMS
SUZANNE LACY & LESLIE LABOWITZ
TRACEY MOFFAT
ULRIKE ROSEMBACH
UTE META BAUER
VALLIE EXPORT
VNS MATRIX
YOKO ONO
ZOE LEONARD

THE CATALOGUE

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition includes essays by María Xosé Agra, Xabier Arakistain, Lourdes Méndez, Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock, Maura Reilly and Amelia Valcárcel.

FOR FURTHER IMFORMATION:
Bilbao Fine arts Museum
info@museobilbao.com
00(34) 944396060

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