Artipedia - Arts News

Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius

New Season Exhibitions:
Autumn 2007

CAC
Vokieciu g. 2, LT-01130 Vilnius
Lithuania
T: +370 5 262 3476
F: +370 5 262 3954
info@cac.lt

http://www.cac.lt

The reappraisal of feminism and feminist art has been a hot topic of 2007 in international academic, art, and publishing circles. The CAC is pleased to be lobbing into the discussion with its new season of exhibitions of art made by women:

Chicks On Speed: Shoe Fuck!
7 September - 28 October
Among Us: six Lithuanian women artists in their thirties
The Joy Is Not Mentioned: Egle Budvytyte, Goda Budvytyte, and Ieva Miseviciute
14 September - 28 October

Each of the exhibitions looks towards a different decade–the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s–for its conceptual impetus and considers its affects from a new millennial perspective. In their largest-scale gallery exhibition to date the all-girl band, performance ensemble and artist collective the Chicks On Speed reprise a number of strategies associated with art and music hailing from the 1970s and Punk. Punk was a movement and moment when women started rocking for themselves, incorporating explicit post-feminist political and performance strategies into their stage-personas, costuming, and stage-productions; high among them being raw sexuality, nudity, inflammatory language and sloganeering. It’s all on show in Shoe Fuck! including one of the symbols of late-capitalist women’s empowerment–a classic Chanel pump–being put to the test in the exhibition’s eponymous work. Part full-throttle commodity fetishism and part transgressive act the work, and the exhibition as a whole, questio
ns whether space for political activism/resistance exists for women in the age of consumerism.

Music is also to the fore in The Joy Is Not Mentioned the latest installment of the CAC’s ongoing ‘young Lithuanian artists’ series. The three artists ask "what if the 1980s never happened?" And their answer is; "no Hip-Hop and no street-culture" (that entered mass culture during the decade). Or at least a national pop-culture having difficulty coming to grips with one of the world’s dominant cultural and musical forms. This is the predicament of Lithuania–and of all the former soviet-states. To remedy the situation the artists will be re-staging the Hip-Hop and Street Dance 1980s in Vilnius for the duration of the exhibition. Two radio stations will be broadcasting special programs, and the artists, with the participation of members from the local street-culture community as well as trained dancers, will be turning up with boom-boxes, mics, and rolls of vinyl at street-corners and hang-out spots around the city. It’ll be the Bronx in the Baltic.

Among Us presents newly commissioned work by: Jurgita Remeikyte, Alma Skersyte, Irma Stanaityte, Laura Stasiulyte, Vilma Sileikiene and Kristina Inciuraite. The exhibition compares and contrasts coincidences and divergences in the artists’ practice, set against prescient developments in Lithuanian art and society since the 1990s. It was at the end of the decade marked by independence from the USSR (1991) that a higher number of women started entering the field of contemporary art; as part of a broader entrance of women into public life–including the fields of business and politics. The exhibition’s title, Among Us, was inspired by a series of discussions between the participating artists that identified the exhibition’s salient and shared concerns; collective historical memory and the recent transformations of Lithuanian identity. The artists analyze visual codes that have come from the past and question whether they are still recognizable, if they are still being exploited
or if they’ve already been forgotten? They study the influence of increasingly dynamic lifestyle on identity, and the collective unconscious in work that reflects upon their personal experience and environment.

Chicks on Speed will perform at the opening of their exhibition at 8.00pm on Friday 7 September
In association with The Joy Is Not Mentioned, dance floors will be formed on the streets of central Vilnius between 8.00pm-1.00am on Thursday 6 and Friday 7, September

Also at the CAC in autumn:
DIGITAL HERITAGE: Video Art in Germany >From 1963 to the Present, 12-21 October,
with a special lecture by Marcel Odenbach on Friday 19 October

Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas at the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 52nd International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia, until 21 November, see: http://www.villalituania.lt

For press information about CAC projects contact Renata Dubinskaite at: renata@cac.lt

For more information go to: http://www.cac.lt

frieze

frieze issue 109 out now

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as soon as they are published.

‘Robert Storr’s Venice Biennale was characterized by conscientiousness and fairness rather than provocation.’ Alex Farquharson

‘In the end documenta 12 did not carry the day; it did not commit itself to memory; it failed to spark the fundamental engine of aesthetic experience — curiosity. If this feels harsh, it is — but it’s not the art’s fault.’ Helen Molesworth

‘Sculpture Projects Muenster crucially has pace — a fluid rhythm to the way you encounter the works, played out through contrast in scale, medium and location.’ Polly Staple

In the September issue of frieze, eleven writers respond to the 52nd Venice Biennale, documenta 12 and Sculpture Projects Muenster 07, three of the most important exhibitions in the international art calendar. With contributions from Diedrich Diederichsen, Jennifer Doyle, Kodwo Eshun, Alex Farquharson, Jörg Heiser, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, Helen Molesworth, Olu Oguibe, Daniel Palmer, Polly Staple and Tirdad Zolghadr.

Brian Dillon reflects on the work of Susan Hiller, whose work over three decades has inhabited a space between knowledge and emotion, exploring histories of Modernism, photography and the occult, whilst Robert Enright talks to Canadian artist and filmmaker Stan Douglas on the occasion of his first major retrospective.

Illustrated with specially commissioned photographs by Nigel Shafran, Emily King visits the Milan studio of Achille Castiglioni, one of the most playful, inventive and audacious designers of the 20th century. Mexican artist Damián Ortega responds to the frieze questionnaire.

Plus Focus pieces on Dutch artist Gabriel Lester by Vivian Rehberg, British artist Emily Wardill by Melissa Gronlund, Mexican artist Mario Garcia Torres by Catrin Lorch and German artist Judith Hopf by Kirsty Bell.

In the front section, Director of the Venice Biennale, Robert Storr, enjoys his escape from the madding crowds, and Brian Dillon welcomes a resurgent wave of British nature writers. Tirdad Zolghadr writes in praise of the gimmick, and Martin Herbert investigates the politics behind the choice of artists for the national pavilions at the Venice Biennale.

Also, Jennifer Allen discovers how a guide to talking about books you haven’t read can help you talk about artworks you haven’t seen, and for our regular ‘Life in Film’ column, British artist Steve McQueen reflects on the movies that have influenced him. Plus reviews of the latest in books, events and music.

The back section includes reviews from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the UK and the USA, including ‘Il Tempo del Postino’, Frances Stark, Gordon Matta-Clark, Damien Hirst, ‘Airs de Paris’, ‘CAPE 07′, ‘If Everybody Had an Ocean’, Dash Snow, Banks Violette, ‘Memorial to the Iraq War’, ‘Between Two Deaths’, Colter Jacobsen, Keith Arnatt, Danh Vo, T. Kelly Mason & Diana Thater, ‘Stay Forever & Ever & Ever’, Michael Auder, ‘Museo de Reproducciones Fotográficas’, ‘Cult Fiction’, Josef Strau, Mitzi Pederson, Rachel Feinstein, Mamma Andersson, Carter and ‘Don’t Be Happy Do Be Worried’.

Subscribe at http://www.frieze.com to receive this issue and subsequent issues
as soon as they are published.

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

Wings Projects Art Space

For the Love of Country
Justin Richel

Curated by Sarah Schuster
Produced by Victoria Preston

August 31 - October 31, 2007
(Fri, Sat, Sun, 14.00 - 18.00 or by appointment)
Private View August 30 2007 19.00 - 21.00

Wings Projects Art Space
Ch. de la Moraine, 36
1162 St. Prex
Switzerland

http://www.wingsprojects.com

For the Love of Country, the first European solo show of American painter Justin Richel, explores early American history infused with a highly contemporary message.

The Historyseries focuses on early American presidents. Taking his moniker as "Father of the Nation" as a literal option, we follow George Washington as he goes about inseminating the architectural icons of colonial America. Lincoln appears in recognizable format as the face of the $5 bill, but the face has become that of a black man. Referring to Lincoln’s most famous act of abolishing slavery, Richel asks us to acknowledge that some 150 years later, America has yet to elect a black president.

Forgoing the portrayal of well-known figures, the Big Wigs series uses the qualities and symbols of historical portraiture to communicate the subjects’ importance. Acknowledging the role of the wig as an indicator of social and political status in early America, Richel proceeds to mock, and thus deconstruct, this icon, as we see wigs entangled with chairs, nested by birds, or dangerously enflamed. Whatever malady threatens their wigs, these gentleman never break pose, concerned only with the construction of their own image, and place in history.

In the Sweets series, temptation calls us in the form of tornadoes of swirling doughnuts, tsunamis of gumdrops and frostings, and cakes and cookies clamouring to reach the top of a sticky mountain. Even as the child in us prepares to plunge into all this gooey goodness, the adult-self begins to recoil. The term "conspicuous consumption" comes to mind, in a society where success is measured largely by one’s relative ability to consume.

Richel’s work forms a rich dialogue. Whilst his ideas are specific, he is careful to leave a generous depth of space for viewers to develop their own interpretations of the work, always offering
fresh new insight.

Note to the editors:

Sarah Schuster is an independent curator working in London.

Wings Projects Art Space is a not-for-profit gallery. It puts on exhibitions by international contemporary artists and invites young curators to produce shows. Visitors are always welcome.

A fully illustrated exhibition guide will be published.

London: For press images and further information, contact Sarah Schuster +44 7881 426 813 or sarahschuster@hotmail.co.uk

Switzerland and rest of the world: For press images and further information, contact Victoria Preston, +41 21 806 3819 or info@wingsprojects.com

Supported by Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine

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