Artipedia - Arts News

Radford University Art Museum

Lorenza Lucchi Basili
Vetro e verità
August 30 - November 16, 2007
Opening Reception August 30
Catalog forthcoming

Curated by Preston Thayer

Radford University Art Museum
Jefferson & Main
Radford VA 24142
USA
phone: (504) 831-5754

http://www.radford.edu/rumuseum

The Radford University Art Museum is proud to present this solo exhibition of Lorenza Lucchi Basili curated by the museum director, Preston Thayer.

Vetro e verità (Glass and truth) starts from a curatorial intuition — that of fostering dialogue between Lucchi Basili’s architecture-based photos and a series of mid-XX century glass objects produced in the Murano glass-making district — including landmark pieces designed by Carlo Scarpa. Lucchi Basili and the glass pieces literally share a common ground, namely the Veneto region, where the Murano district lies and where Lucchi Basili lives and works. The implied relationship is quite open-ended, however. Lucchi Basili’s research is focused on a non-representational approach to architecture, and in particular to architectural artifacts of symbolic value for the societies that built them. They are explored through the photographic means rigorously sticking to analogic techniques and avoiding any form of digital manipulation, to reveal unexpected layers of perception that are usually overlooked in our common everyday experience. The work of Lorenza Lucchi Basili provi
des us with a phenomenological core-drilling into some of the deep sources of human visual imagery and of their strong links to the Modernist shape grammars which, as in Jorge-Luis Borges’ Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, are inescapably colonizing reality, which is then not only inherently fictional, as demostrated by so many recent photographic research, but also inherently abstract.

In Lucchi Basili’s research, architectures of glass are a recurrent theme and a true source of phenomenological complexity. The interaction with the Murano pieces was therefore intentionally meant to provoke a systematic reflection on the issue. Lucchi Basili’s project for the Radford Art Museum delivers exactly that. Four different series have been chosen for the exhibition project, two of which already released and two shown here for the first time, each of which reflects a specific articulation (or, as Deleuze puts it, a specific folding) of a layer of perception. In Space fortynine, Chicago (the folding ‘glass reflects’), we try to convince ourselves that the forms that can be seen on the windows of a skyscraper in the Loop cannot be ‘real’, whereas they entirely are; they are the reality of something purportedly unreal (the reflex). In Space sixtyfive, Vancouver (’glass mimetizes’), we witness the actual disappearance of the glass surface which reveals the backbone of a
banking building in the city’s business district, which now emerges as a ghostly presence. In Space seventy, Prague (’glass bends’) we discover how flat glass panes may define a curved space that winds around the viewer. In Space seventythree, Prague (’glass transforms’), we see the glass surface turning itself into rock, wood, or gold under rapidly changing, unplanned light conditions. Each of these modes directly question our stipulations of perceptual reality, and our steady, possibly unintended effort to adhere to them to re-affirm well-known and reassuring identitarian coordinates.

After the exhibition opening, Lorenza Lucchi Basili will travel across Virginia for a short artist residence inquiring about the traces of the Palladian legacy in local architectures over various centuries such as Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello House in Charlottesville, as part of a project for the 500 years since Andrea Palladio’s birth, to be exhibited in Italy in 2008.

Lorenza Lucchi Basili has exhibited widely in the past few years in venues including Modern Art Gallery, Bologna; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; apexart, New York; Meno Parkas, Kaunas; Noass, Riga; Eyedrum, Atlanta; Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana; Fondation Electricitè de France, Paris; Viafarini, Milan; Belleza y Felicidad, Buenos Aires; Raid Projects, Los Angeles; European Photography, Reggio Emilia; Hallwalls at SoundLab, Buffalo; Fuori Uso, Pescara; New Media Scotland, Edinburgh; Zerynthia, Paliano. In october she will have a major solo exhibition at Oredaria, Rome, including a catalog published by Skira with a text by Mark Gisbourne. In november she will have a solo project in the Statements section of Paris Photo.

This exhibition is generously supported by Regione Veneto.

For more information go to: http:/www.radford.edu/~rumuseum

FLUXUS NETWORKS

FLUXUS EAST
September 27 to November 4, 2007,
Wed - Sun 2-7 pm
Opening: September 26, 7 pm

FLUXUS NETWORKS IN
CENTRAL EASTERN EUROPE
Künstlerhaus Bethanien
Mariannenplatz 2
D-10997 Berlin

Gábor Altorjay, Eric Andersen, Tamás St. Auby, Azorro, Robert Filliou, György Galántai, Geoffrey Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Tadeusz Kantor, Milan Knízák, Alison Knowles, Július Koller, Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Vytautas Landsbergis, George Maciunas, Jonas Mekas, Larry Miller, Ben Patterson, Mieko Shiomi, Slave Pianos, Endre Tót, Gábor Tóth, Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, Jirí Valoch, Ben Vautier, Branko Vucicevic, Emmett Williams

curator: Petra Stegmann, exhibition architecture: Andrea Pichl

Fluxus is well-known as an (anti-)artistic, international network with centres in the USA, Western Europe and Japan. But what about this "intermedia" art — art encompassing music, actions, poetry, objects and events — beyond the "Iron Curtain"? What echo did Fluxus find in the states of the former Eastern Bloc, and what parallel developments existed there?

As a "programme of action", Fluxus — according to its self-styled "chairman", the exiled Lithuanian George Maciunas in a letter supposedly to Nikita Chruscev — was predestined to bring about unity between the "concretist" artists of the world and the "concretist" society of the USSR. Maciunas planned Fluxus as a collective based on the model of the Russian LEF (Leftist Arts Front). But these plans — e. g. for a performance tour by the artists on the Trans-Siberian Railway –, developed with polished communist rhetoric in manifestos and letters, were to remain no more than a utopia.

After 1962, a different FLUXUS EAST developed through creative exchange between Fluxus artists and artists/musicians of the former Eastern Bloc, leading to events including Fluxus festivals in Vilnius (1966), Prague (1966), Budapest (1969), and Poznan (1977).

FLUXUS EAST represents a first stocktaking of the diverse Fluxus activities in the former Eastern Bloc; the exhibition shows parallel developments and artistic practices inspired by Fluxus, which are still adopted by some young artists today. Besides the "classic" Fluxus objects, the display will include photographs, films, correspondence, secret police files, interviews and recordings of music that document the presence of Fluxus in the former Eastern Bloc. As an interactive exhibition, FLUXUS EAST aims to facilitate a profound encounter with ideas, works and texts — some presented as facsimiles to permit intense study. It is possible to play at FLUX PING PONG, and visitors are also invited to explore the POIPOIDROME by Robert Filliou.

Performances by Eric Andersen, Geoffrey Hendricks, Milan Knízák, Alison Knowles, Larry Miller, Ben Patterson, Tamás St. Auby, Ben Vautier and others will take place at the
opening on September, 26th.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue (German/English, ca 250 pages, ca 200
images, hardcover).

The exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien and the catalogue are funded by the
German Federal Cultural Foundation.

From September 27-29, 2007 the conference FLUXUS. NETWORKS BETWEEN WEST AND EAST — a joint event of Künstlerhaus Bethanien and House of World Cultures — will take place at House of World Cultures and Art Forum Berlin. http://www.hkw.de/de/programm2007/new_york/veranstaltungen_14292/fluxus_14921/AlleVeranstaltungen.php

Further exhibition venues: Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius (November 30, 2007 - January 13, 2008), Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków (February 7 - March 30, 2008), Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest
(April 17 - June 1, 2008).

Network programme in Berlin:

Tschechisches Zentrum Czechpoint
Czech Action Art of the 1960s to the 1990s
Exhibition, September 14 - November 2, 2007

Collegium Hungaricum Berlin Portable Intelligence Increase Museum. Pop Art, Conceptual Art, and Actionism in Hungary during the 60s - 1956-1976 / The Near-East-European Criss-Cross (1956-1989)
Exhibition, September 26 - November 4, 2007

Polnisches Institut Berlin Galeria Akumulatory 2
Exhibition, September 28 - November 8, 2007

Art Forum Berlin Slave Pianos: Dissident Consonances
(The Flux-Labyrinth & the Iron Curtain at the Art Forum Berlin)
Concert, September 28, 2007

For more information about FLUXUS EAST contact: fluxus@bethanien.de or presse@bethanien.de

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

Aarhus Kunstbygning

Mischa Kuball
lightComplex
September 1 - November 11, 2007

Aarhus Kunstbygning —
Center for Contemporary Art
J.M. Mørks Gade 13
DK-8000 Aarhus C
4586206050
info@aarhuskb.dk

http://www.aarhuskunstbygning.dk

The Aarhus Art Building presents an extensive exhibition by the internationally renowned light and media artist Mischa Kuball. For more than twenty years Mischa Kuball has been working conceptually and artistically with light. One of the most transformable media types, artificial light can be placed anywhere. It can be shaped and turned on at will and is full of symbolic power, emotions and suggestion. In a unique way Mischa Kuball combines the aesthetic dimension of light with social and political statements. By means of the individual works Kuball raises questions about given physical spaces, dislocates the physical boundaries of these spaces and adds new spiritual dimensions to them.

Kuball will light up the whole of the Aarhus Art Building and present several extensive light installations and projections. While images, letters, numbers and light projections wander about the four exhibition halls of the Art Building the glass sections in the new basement floor will be staged and filled with coloured light, and at night the glass cube in the sculpture yard will present itself as a clearly visible red architectural lantern. Moreover the letters KUNST ("ART") over the entrance to the Aarhus Art Building will be supplemented by the letters HAL ("Hall"/"Center") in blinking neon so that from now on the inscription over the entrance will read KunstHal — in two different media and letter types. This will signify that the Aarhus Art Building with its long tradition as an exhibition venue has been through a major profile change and recently has become a member of The Danish Association of Art Centres — a small group of non-profit ar
t institutions that organize and present exhibitions but have no permanent collections of their own.

Since 2004 Mischa Kuball (b. 1959) has been a professor at the reputable Art Academy in Karlsruhe (Germany). Mischa Kuball has participated in several international solo and group exhibitions. In Denmark he presented the work public catharsis in connection with the European light exhibition LUX EUROPAE 2002 in Copenhagen. Moreover in 2005 he participated in Kunsthallen Brandts’ extensive theme exhibition Skyggespil (Shadow Play) arranged on the occasion of the bicentennial of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an extensive publication titled Mischa Kuball … in progress. Projects 1980-2007, published by the art publisher Hatje Cantz and sponsored by Kunststiftung NRW. In connection with the exhibition the Aarhus Art Building will present a number of concerts with new electronic music plus artist talks, workshops and lectures.

The exhibition is a part of an international collaboration and will also be presented in Pori, Hannover, Belgrade, Graz, Shanghai, Tokyo and Beijing, with changing or new works in each location.

lightComplex is sponsored by Max Bank, Bendixen Neon, Martin Professional Inc., Montana Furniture, NRGI, The Cultural Development Foundation (the Municipality of Aarhus), The Danish Arts Council’s Committee for International Visual Art, Knud Højgaard Foundation, Oticon Foundation A-Z Skilte+Solfilm, EL:CON Electric Installations Inc.,. For further information or press material, please contact Kathrine Bolt Rasmussen at +45 86 20 60 55 or send a mail to kb@aarhuskb.dk

For more information go to: http://www.aarhuskunstbygning.dk