Artipedia - Arts News

Animate Projects

Nijuman No Borei (200,000 Phantoms), Jean-Gabriel Périot

Animate Projects
Exploring the relationship between art and animation
http://www.animateprojects.org
http://www.myspace.com/animateprojects
info@animateprojects.org

Exploring the relationship between art and animation, and the place of animation and its concepts in contemporary art practice, UK based Animate Projects offers artists a unique space to create work, and develops initiatives that allows an international audience to engage with the work through broadcast, gallery, cinema, and online.

Animate Award
The second annual Animate Award was won this year by artist Jean-Gabriel Périot for his film Nijuman no Borei (200,000 Phantoms). The Award was presented at Encounters Festival on 24 November. The prize of 2,000 pounds is for a single-screen innovative work that experiments with form, technique and content. Jean-Gabriel recently won the Animate Projects co-sponsored Dick Arnall Award, at Aurora Festival, Norwich.

Animate Projects at Whitechapel, 29 November
Following their launch at Aurora Festival, the new Animate films are being screened at Whitechapel, London, along with a presentation by Jean-Gabriel Périot. http://www.whitechapel.org

AnimateTV on Channel 4, 2 December, midnight
Introduced by Tate Modern film curator, Stuart Comer, Animate TV features six extraordinary new films by artists and experimental filmmakers working with animation. Interviews with the artists offer a unique insight into the ideas, processes and challenges behind each film. The programme is scheduled for broadcast on Channel 4 at midnight on 2 December.

Semiconductor’s Magnetic Movie, vividly visualises invisible magnetic fields; The Life Size Zoetrope is a zoetrope made on a fairground ride; in End of the Street, Andy Martin collaborates with poet Ian McMillan; Flat Earth, is entirely constructed from images and blogs found on the web; comic character Francis subverts traditional animation; and Tongue of the Hidden gives us a glimpse into Middle Eastern culture.

Animate Commissions for 2008
The seven new AnimateTV commissions are characteristically diverse, astonishing and exciting and for the first time, we are commissioning two works for online premiere next spring on Channel 4’s new broadband channel, Fourmations.

With backgrounds ranging across the visual arts, experimental film, graphic design, animation, and ceramics, the commissioned artists are: Barnaby Barford, Suky Best, Stephen Irwin, Michael Aubtin Madadi, Emily Richardson, Tal Rosner and Christoph Steger.

Wilson. Wilson. Kubrick.
Artists Jane and Louise Wilson have been commissioned to create a new work in response to The Kubrick Archive. Commissioned in collaboration with The Kubrick Archive, University of the Arts London. Premiering online May 2008.

Four Minutes
In association with RSA Arts + Ecology, we are commissioning 4 x 60 second films for online that explore ecological themes. Premiering online May 2008.

Limited edition t-shirts
We have commissioned artists Run Wrake and AL + AL to each create a design for limited edition t-shirts. Only 100 of each design have been made and are available to purchase at http://www.myspace.com/animateprojects

The Animate Book: rethinking animation
Essays by Edwin Carels, Ian White, Angela Kingston, Gareth Evans and Dick Arnall. Mike Sperlinger interviews artists including AL + AL, Ann Course, Tim Macmillan and Inger Lise Hansen. Edited by Benjamin Cook and Gary Thomas. Published by LUX and available to buy at http://www.myspace.com/animateprojects

Individual Animate titles are distributed by LUX at http://www.lux.org.uk
Animate Projects is supported by Channel 4 and Arts Council England.

For more information, contact info@animateprojects.org
http://www.animateprojects.org will be launched in the new year

BECA gallery

New Orleans, LA – A new programme for emerging contemporary art has planted itself among the arts and cultural renewal of New Orleans, LA, a city which has historically been one of the most international of US cities. In the midst of the post-Katrina landscape BECA gallery is surfacing as a bridge by which emerging contemporary art flows between New Orleans and the larger contemporary art community abroad. The gallery is an 1100 square foot renovated warehouse space situated in the heart of the New Orleans arts district. It is located directly across the street from the Contemporary Arts Center and within close walking distance to the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. BECA gallery will host 12 exhibits each year. Six exhibits feature local emerging contemporary art and 6 exhibits feature international emerging contemporary art.

The gallery was founded by co-directors Melissa Roberts and Kurt Schlough as a place for both innovative local and international emerging contemporary art to grow and flourish in an environment that is accommodating to both artists and collectors. A unique component of the gallery program focuses on the introduction of innovative international contemporary art to the city of New Orleans and its surrounding region via physical exhibits as well as future virtual exhibits and exchange partnerships with other galleries and projects. The latter will serve both future local artist members as well as those artists exhibiting from abroad.

The theme of the gallery’s first international exhibition, opening February 9, 2008, is ‘Connection’ curated by Caroline Worthington, Curator of Art, York Museums Trust, York Art Gallery. She looks forward to her pioneering position and writes, “As BECA gallery’s first international curator, it seems to me that the theme of connections is an obvious choice to reflect the aspirations for their programme. Working from the UK, I’ll be weaving together those invisible threads that spin outwards from each of us, connecting you with each other as well as to BECA and me.”

A Global Call to Artists has been posted at http://becagallery.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/11/beca-gallery–1.html

Bielefelder Kunstverein

Brandon Lattu, Banqueting House, 2007
Copyright: the artist
Photo: Genevieve Hanson
Courtesy Leo Koenig Inc., New York, and the artist

BRANDON LATTU
Jenseits des Physisch Möglichen
Curated by Dr. Stefanie Heraeus
October 26, - December 23, 2007
Opening: Friday, October 26th at 7pm
Bielefelder Kunstverein
Museum Waldhof · Welle 61
33602 Bielefeld

http://www.bielefelder-kunstverein.de

The Bielefelder Kunstverein is pleased to hold the first survey of works by artist Brandon Lattu held in a European institution. Working in his adopted home of Los Angeles, Lattu has developed a broad body of work that contributes to the understanding of the state of representation today. Citing Fox-Talbot and Duchamp as primary influences he has developed a growing body of work that sits squarely between the characteristics of both photography and the readymade. Looking back to the gestures of direct selection and the provincial grounding of late nineteenth and early twentieth century art, the works in this exhibition utilize photography, sculpture, and video to explore issues of empiricism without generalizing the subject but by carefully specifying individual sites and by presenting multiple vantage points of each subject for the viewer.

A case in point is Banqueting House (2007), a sculpture made from photographing the complete interior of the famous Neo-Palladian building by Inigo Jones in London. Using these photographs, Lattu has digitally produced a form that is a hybrid between the double cube of the buildings’ great hall and the sphere of the cameras’ recording. This form was then wrapped with an image of the interior of the great hall, making the interior of the building the exterior of the sculpture, as well as presenting a model of Vitruvian architecture re-formed by the model of perspective of a camera.

The works Selected Products (2001) and Rejected Products (2002) display boxes of consumer goods presented as hollow, transparent carriers of commercial information, showing the gorgeous, overwhelming, and seductive mixture of branding and decoration used to differentiate the product inside from other competing versions. In these works, Lattu finds a means to counter quantitative stylistic evaluation through objectification of issues of taste.

Resisting the conformity of a serial practice, Lattu approaches each subject with a process suggested by its implicit characteristics. For example, Sand, Pt. Dume, Malibu, California, (2001) is a monochrome painting as well as a sort of photograph of an evocative location. Produced by spreading the sand evenly across a scanner and resulting in an image of twenty by twenty-four inches, the subject is presented in a reproduction of sand with the verisimilitude of pigment through the contemporary digital technology of scanning.

This exhibition is accompanied by the publication of Office Gray Case, an artist’s book showing the deconstruction of a work by the same title in the exhibition. This book is published by Leo Koenig Inc., New York and is distributed by Verlag Walther Koenig in Europe and D.A.P. throughout the rest of
the world.

BIOGRAPHY
Brandon Lattu was born in Athens, Georgia in 1970. He graduated with an MFA from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1998 and teaches art, photography, and digital imaging at the University of California at Riverside. Brandon Lattu is represented by Leo Koenig Inc., New York, Vacío 9, Madrid, and Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver. His work is in numerous museum and private collections.

In 2006 the Bielefelder Kunstverein showed photographic artists who experimented with different methods of image manipulation in analog photography in order to reveal the structure of a photographic image. Brandon Lattu - Jenseits des Physisch Möglichen continues our goal of exploring this developing medium in depth.

For more information contact: Claudia Turtenwald at kontakt@bielefelder-kunstverein.de

EFA Gallery

Are We There Yet?
Curated by Marco Antonini

November 30, 2007 through
February 2, 2008
Opening reception Friday,
November 30, 6-8 PM

Gallery is closed December 22 through January 2.

http://www.efa1.org

Stephane Couturier
Bill Dolson
Marco Evaristti
Cyprien Gallard
John Gerrard
Kazuhiko Kobayashi

EFA Gallery is pleased announce Are We There Yet? curated by Marco Antonini. The exhibition will be on view from November 30, 2007 through February 2, 2008. The gallery will be closed for winter holiday from December 22 through January 2.

Are We There Yet? focuses on works of art that reshape the notion of the natural landscape in an active way, somehow corrupting the integrity of our own idealizations of it. Redefined by direct actions upon its elements, envisioned through the use of technology, or used as a point of departure for daring conceptualizations, the natural landscape is followed and scrutinized in its continuous evolution of form and meaning.

“Are We There Yet?” the child’s obnoxious road-trip refrain, is a question/statement that implies a mix of excitement and inherent dissatisfaction with whatever place the parents might be driving to. Kids (…and artists?) are constantly expanding their knowledge of the natural world and raising the bar for future experiences. In short, they are perennially one step away from their own personal “frontier,” a place of learning as well as a physical threshold.

Are we all in need of a new frontier? All signs point to yes. We seem to be in constant need of expanding our boundaries, extending and streamlining the form and function of the natural landscape and adapting it to the speed, depth and quality of our daily life.

The outrageous, unsettling interventions of Bill Dolson, Marco Evaristti and Cyprien Gallard pave the way to an ephemeral, anti-monumental approach to Land-Art. Their unmediated approach flirts with vandalism to create statements: works of art that are concerned with the power, agency and the increasing responsibility of humankind for the environment. Our (now more than ever) radical ability and willingness to re-shape the sensible world as well as to “enhance” nature’s work is considered as a way to create new experiences, expectations and desires. Sharing a similar sensibility, the works of Stephane Couturier, John Gerrard, and Kazuhiko Kobayashi shift the focus from the landscape itself to our own personal perception and definition of it through the use of new forms of visualization and the definition of conceptually charged, unexpected point of views.

A special postcard suite will be published for this exhibition. Contact gallery@efa1.org for more information.

Marco Antonini was born in Pescara, Italy. He earned his MA in Art Administration from the University of Bologna. He moved to New York in 2003 and started to nurture a career in writing and curating on the side of several different day jobs. His project NACRE was the recipient of the Project for Emerging Curators (PEC) award of the ISE Foundation in New York. He is the curator of “The Shape of Things to Come”, one of four shows selected to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Artist Residency program, and the producer of “More than Nature”, a screening dedicated to Japanese video and animation trends commissioned by Japan Society, New York.

He works as Gallery Educator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and at PS1. A recipient of the Connors Fellowship at the City College of New York/ CUNY, he is currently studying to get an MA in Art History and Museum Studies. His articles, essays and interviews appear regularly on the pages of Contemporary and BMM. In the recent past, he has contributed to many international publications, including Flash Art, Arte & Critica, AroundPhotography, D and NYArts.

This show would have not be possible without the help and support of all the involved artists, the assistance of Cosmic Galerie (Paris), Ernst Hilger Gallery (Wien) and Laurence Miller Gallery
(New York).

This exhibition is presented by EFA Gallery, a program of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. EFA Gallery is supported in part by public funds from the New York Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. Private funding for the Gallery has been received from The Carnegie Corporation Inc., The Foundation for Contemporary Art, The Helen Keeler Burke Charitable Foundation, Peter C. Gould, Materials for the Arts, and many other generous individuals.

EFA Gallery is a multi-arts curatorial project space. Through the gallery, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts supports the creative work of independent curators. Curators build the framework in which we understand artists and the art they make. At their best, they redefine how we look at culture. The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts believes in the essential importance of art in a civil society, and that the value of the artist’s creative spirit is not limited by age, race, nationality or acceptance by others. http://www.efa1.org

EFA Gallery
EFA Studio Center
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10018
between 8th and 9th Avenues

Gallery Hours: Wed through Sat, 12-6 PM

For further information:
Elaine Tin Nyo, Director
T. 212-563-5855 x203, F. 212-563-1875
elaine@efa1.org

REDCAT

Choi Jeong Hwa, Believe It or Not, 2006. Installation view, Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul, courtesy the artist

TRUTH: CHOI JEONG-HWA
December 8, 2007 - February 3, 2008
Opening reception: Friday, December 7, 7 - 10pm
REDCAT
631 West 2nd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012 USA

http://www.redcat.org

As a visual artist and founder of Gaseum studio, Choi Jeong Hwa blurs the boundaries between art, graphic design, industrial design, and architecture. A contemporary of artists such as Bahc Yiso, Beom Kim and Lee Bul, Choi was part of a generation whose unique and varied practices gave rise to Seoul’s bourgeoning art scene in the 1990s. Trained in Korea during a period of rapid modernization and economic growth, the artist’s work acknowledges and internalizes the processes of consumption and the distribution of goods.

Choi Jeong Hwa’s residency at REDCAT will culminate in his first solo exhibition in the U.S. in which Choi will invite artists and craftspeople to install works alongside his own–challenging concepts of individual authorship and originality in art. Inspired by the chaotic vibe of local outdoor markets, his practice playfully interrogates the preciousness of art works in a rapidly-changing, consumer-frenzied culture. For a recent exhibition at the Ilmin Museum in Seoul, the artist stacked brightly-colored plastic baskets in an interlocking, brick-like fashion to form a floor to ceiling, undulating wall that ran the gallery’s perimeter. This monumental display of cheap plastic goods not only calls attention to the beauty of mechanical processes but also the absurd excess that reconsiders art’s privileged relationship to everyday objects and experience.

Choi’s ambitious and often boisterous installations are inspired by the informal economies of exchange. For REDCAT, Choi will radically transform the gallery space and the lounge/bar of REDCAT in order to collapse the rarefied space of art and the public space of everyday life. Part of the exhibition will function as a marketplace where goods are available for sale.

Born 1961 in Seoul, Korea, Choi received a BFA at the Hong Ik University in Seoul. He has been included in the 51st Venice Biennale, 2004 Liverpool Biennial, 2002 and 2006 Gwangju Biennales, 1998 São Paulo Bienal, as well as exhibitions at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Ilmin Museum, Seoul. Choi lives and works in Seoul.

Truth: Choi Jeong Hwa is made possible in part by the Nimoy Foundation.

Gallery hours: noon to 6pm or curtain, closed Mondays
Admission to the gallery is always free
Visit http://www.redcat.org or call +1.213.237.2800 for more information

Contemporary Art Society

Contemporary Art Society launches
Professional Development Programme

Create Connections. Create Networks. Create Opportunities.
http://www.contempart.org.uk

The role of the curator is changing. Keeping abreast of the prescient ideas in contemporary visual practice and theory is becoming more complex and time-consuming, but at the same time, more rewarding.

We are delighted to announce the launch of our new Professional Development Programme for curators in museums and galleries nationally, as well as independent curators and cultural practitioners across the UK. This new initiative forms a strand of our new National Programmes, through which we help collecting organisations across the country to extend their collections by purchasing and commissioning new work by contemporary artists.

Designed to provide international, national and inter-regional perspectives through a tailor-made programme for contemporary art and craft curators, events include studio visits, gallery trips, major exhibitions, international events and fairs, symposia and seminars, as well as social and
networking opportunities.

For a membership subscription by Direct Debit (plus VAT), the Contemporary Art Society will provide national, regional and international perspectives, encouraging independent thinking and group collaboration. Please note organisational membership costs the same as individual membership.

Subscribe now and join us at one of our forthcoming events.

Forthcoming events include:

Moving Image, London, February 2008
As more museums and galleries are interested in commissioning and collecting work in New Media, guidance about commissioning and acquiring, displaying and maintaining this form of work is becoming more urgent. This event is an opportunity to look at these areas more closely as we engage with a range of organisations that specialise in moving image. With visits to commissioning agencies such as Film and Video Umbrella and the studios of artists’ working with moving image, we will also examine the research possibilities available to curators at specialist film archives like the British Film Institute and talk to agencies and galleries that collaborate and commission video and film-based works.

Berlin Biennial, April 2008
Curated by Adam Szymczych and Elena Fillipovic, the latest Berlin biennial promises to continue its reputation as a major international art event that sets the latest trends in the art world. See the highlights of the opening events of the Biennial with the Contemporary Art Society curators. The trip will also include a selection of visits to off-site projects in galleries of the Mitte district, visits to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National Museums in Berlin), the collection of Bruno Brunnet at Contemporary Fine Art and visits to the studios of a selection of the artists involved in the Biennial.

Asia Triennial Manchester, May 2008
Don’t miss the UK’s first Asian Art Triennial, conceived by Shisha in partnership with Castlefield Gallery, Cornerhouse, Chinese Arts Centre, The International 3, Manchester Art Gallery and Manchester Metropolitan University. ATM08 “echoes Manchester’s strong political and social history, reflects new artistic practise, and seeks resonances between the city and Asia by exploring the notion of ‘protest’ — in its wildest sense”. During the event we will explore a variety of projects within the programme including newly commissioned work, residences, and venue-based exhibitions by artists from China, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. For many of the artists, it will be their UK debut.

Folkestone Sculpture Triennial and the Whitstable Biennial in Kent, June 2008
Join us for a visit to the Folkstone Sculpture Triennial and the Whitstable Biennial as they present a series of site-specific commissions in the coastal regions of Kent. This year’s projects at the Folkstone Triennial have been curated by Andrea Schleiker and will involve commissions by artists including Tracey Emin, Nathan Coley, Tacita Dean, Richard Wentworth and Richard Wilson. After spending a day viewing the sculptures at Folkstone we travel to Whitstable to view newly commissioned works for screen and performances by a number of emerging artists.

Commissions in response to our public collections, in London, July 2008
Explore the importance of public museum collections to contemporary artists in London. Talk to curators who have commissioned artists to create work in response to their collections. Details to follow in
January 2008.

North America tour (including the New Orleans Biennial), November 2008
2008 will see the launch of the biggest Biennial to reach America, be there with us to witness the events as they unfold on a curator-led tour of North America. The New Orleans Biennial “Prospect1″ has been curated by Dan Cameron and will take place in a variety of venues around the city from CAC (Contemporary Arts Center) and the New Orleans Museum of Art to industrial and outdoor spaces. The hope is that the Biennial will help the city recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and push it forward with arts and cultural renewal. After visiting the highlights of the Biennial we will tour a number of public and private collections in the surrounding area including Dallas Art Dealers Association and the Kenny Gross Collection in Texas.

Previous events include a trip to the Lyon Biennial in September 2007 and more recently the two-day event Economies of Scale in Newcastle and Sunderland in November 2007.

Contact
To subscribe or find out more about the programme please contact Lucy Bayley, National Programmes Coordinator on lucy@contempart.org.uk or call 020 7831 3221.

The Contemporary Art Society is the national, non-profit agency that supports contemporary artists through the promotion of collection and commissioning by individuals, public and private bodies across the UK.

Contemporary Art Society
11-15 Emerald Street
London WC1N 3QL
T +44 (0)20 7831 1243
F +44 (0)20 7831 1214
http://www.contempart.org.uk
Contemporary Art Society is a company limited by guarantee
Registered in England and Wales no 255486
Charity Registration no 208178

MAMbo-Museo d’Arte
Moderna di Bologna

MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna
photo: Raffaello Scatasta

4 solo shows: Adam Chodzko, Eva Marisaldi, Diego Perrone, Bojan Sarcevic
December 2, 2007 - February 3, 2008
MAMbo-Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna
Via Don Minzoni 14
40121 Bologna
Italia
info@mambo-bologna.org

http://www.mambo-bologna.org

On December 2, 2007 the MAMbo-Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna will inaugurate the first solo shows held in its new premises. The exhibitions of Adam Chodzko, Eva Marisaldi, Diego Perrone and Bojan Sarcevic will enable visitors to discover the museum building in which the artists will trace four parallel routes to explore its both physical and symbolic space. While Marisaldi and Perrone’s exhibitions underline the central role played by Italian contemporary artistic research in its programme, Chodzko and Sarcevic’s exhibitions bring to the MAMbo exhibition programme a reflection upon the role of the contemporary museum launched by MAMbo in the two years which preceded and accompanied the opening of its new headquarters, aiming to set up a lively comparison between the institutional activities and the practices of contemporary artists, critics and curators in the form of an ongoing series of projects, shows and books.

Adam Chodzko
M-path and Hole

Envisaged as “gateways”, “thresholds”, “passages” between different dimensions — past/present/future, reality/potentiality, documentary/fiction, public/private — Adam Chodzko’s works appear in fragmentary gestures spreading out from the exhibition site into the intangible sphere of our experiences, memories and intuitions. His interventions — installed both in the exhibition galleries and in the external area of the MAMbo premises — provide us with an opportunity to experience the museum as an entity moulded not only by its management but also by its outside, i.e. by the dynamic relationship between people and their reciprocal expectations. After being requested to enter the exhibition “in someone else’s shoes” (M-path, 2005-07), the visitor will encounter the video installation Hole (2007) which tells a legend set in the near future in which a local woman is bound to the museum by a hypothetical relationship fluctuating between complete identification and distrust. In gi
ving birth to a possible mythical background for the new museum, Chodzko contributes to the formation of its collective identity, discovering and revealing the institution’s history at the very moment in which he invents it. By means of a mysterious short-circuit the remnants of that myth will be already visible on the rear façade of the museum. In this way the artist brings to light the foundations of an event which, though hypothetically destined to come about in the future, is the catalyser of a more pervasive and flexible definition of reality and of its artistic representations.

Curated by Andrea Viliani. Catalogue: texts by Alex Farquharson, Lisa Le Feuvre, Andrea Viliani and a conversation between Adam Chodzko and Mark Godfrey.

Eva Marisaldi
Jumps

Eva Marisaldi is interested in exploring creative and cognitive processes that, by being “lateral” to active life, make imagination real, suggest different logical and linguistic systems, open up alternatives of meaning that challenge the usual way of thinking and emerge as surprising though plausible possibilities. By involving the public in the encounter, rather than the use of her environments, the artist traces routes of discovery as in a “gym of attention”. In her exhibition at MAMbo Marisaldi premieres an installation composed of three new works, which will be fully revealed to the visitor only at the moment he/she comes face to face with them. The journey through these three works is like a “surmountable” obstacle course that constantly questions us the reasons for tackling the next obstacle, for having “left home” with its intensely mediatized life to enter a museum. Wooden and decorated constructions resembling equestrian hurdles, but done on human scale, will be spr
ead out in the exhibition galleries to join an L-shaped plinth (like the Knight’s move in chess) and a small portable theatre for birthday parties installed at the end of that human-equestrian walkthrough. The show at MAMbo follows Marisaldi’s first show held at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna of Bologna in 1999.

Curated by Roberto Daolio. Catalogue: text by Roberto Daolio, interviews with the artist by Hans Ulrich Obrist and the computer programme ‘George’.

Diego Perrone
La mamma di Boccioni in ambulanza e la fusione della campana

Specifically conceived for the main gallery of the museum, the show by Diego Perrone comes to us as witness to a personal dimension within the public space of the museum. An invisible line — traced just by the sequence of three works placed on a ramp — runs up through the entire space. Taking no account of the pre-existing architecture of the museum these “three things in a line uphill” prompt the visitor to rethink his/her relationship to the exhibition space and suggest the possibility of remodelling forms and meanings autonomously. The Casting of the Bell (2007) is a translation into physical and spatial terms of the timely process of casting a bell. The video installation The First Daddy Spins around with His Own Shadow, the Mummy Bends Her Body Looking for a Form, the Second Daddy Hits the Ground with His Fits (2006) shows us three distinct forms in the very act of taking form before our eyes. Boccioni’s Mother in an Ambulance (2007) is an object existing in different
versions and without any single defined sculptural form, in which the face of the mother of Futurist painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni is superimposed on an image downloaded from Internet and reworked on computer, showing a simulated emergency in an ambulance. By giving new life to that material, the artist envisages a cross between colliding images, forms and times, refashioned by yielding to the possibilities suggested by the potentialities afforded by the appropriation of present-day multi-authored technologies and practices.

Curated by Charlotte Laubard with Andrea Viliani. Catalogue: texts by Luca Cerizza, Massimiliano Gioni and a conversation between Diego Perrone, Charlotte Laubard and Andrea Viliani.

The exhibition is a co-production with CAPC-musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux.

Bojan Sarcevic
Already Vanishing

Bojan Sarcevic explores open and ambiguous forms at the intersection between diverse modes of expression as well as between the various phases of the creative process and of our sensorial experience. To think of the cinema medium as a “sculpture” — as in this exhibition, which follows shows presented this year at the BQ gallery in Cologne and Le Crédac-Centre d’Art Contemporain in Ivry — means conferring to film a physical, concrete presence as to sculpture an ephemeral, impalpable consistence, highlighting the ‘liminal’ expressive possibilities of both film and sculpture. Sarcevic creates a progression marked by distinct pavilions — temporary and ethereal structures which are at the same time individual sculptural compositions, projection spaces and places which define the indissoluble relationship between the work and its architectural setting. In this disintegration of the dividing lines between different entities and media, the real space intersects reciprocally with
the metaphorical and two-dimensional space of the projected image. Matter, form and structure are transposed into a intangible and immaterial dimension, while the solidity of the architecture opens up to the dynamism of the image in motion, the skilfully measured changes of sound, colour, light. The transitory nature of this intervention has crept into the tangibility of the museum building, while a scenario vacillating between invention, sensation and reflection takes on form in the here and now of the white cube.

Curated by Andrea Viliani. Catalogue: texts by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, Marcus Steinweg and
Andrea Viliani.

Arx Portugal

Photo by: FG+SG

Arx Portugal launches website with new and improved format.
http://www.arx.pt

Sixteen years after the birth of the architecture office, ARX Portugal opens up its website in both Portuguese and English versions. It presents, under a totally renewed design (proj. R2), the essential information on the projects, awards, publications and participations in several initiatives related
to Architecture.

Founded in 1991 by Nuno Mateus and José Mateus, the collective of architects ARX very soon conquered a distinguished place in Portuguese architecture, at the same time it was gathering progressive international recognition. ARX’s architecture does not follow a fixed language or lexicon. In each new context the aim is to find the right “words” for a specific language. More than to look for similarities between each project and the previous one, it is in the exploration of each case’s particularities that the potential for discovery, for the creation of the new, resides. This approach opens up inevitably and obviously to a very broad field of research. Not having to work within a static set of presuppositions, the architects choose a more experimental path where they try out new concepts, born from whatever thrills them or holds their attention. When questioned about the nature of the architecture they make, they often quote the Brazilian poet and philosopher António Cícero:
“what matters is not so much to write something new. It is to write something that reading doesn’t age.”

Nuno Mateus (b. 1961) graduated in Architecture (1984) in the FAUTL (Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University of Lisbon. In 1987 he finished his “Master of Science in Architecture and Building Design”, at Columbia University, New York. He worked with, among others, Peter Eisenman in New York and with Daniel Libeskind in Berlin. He has been teaching in several Schools of Architecture and was, from 2004 to 2007, Head of the Architecture Department of the Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa (Autonomous University of Lisbon). Guest Professor at ESARQ-Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (ESARQ - International University of Catalonia) in 2005-7, he has been invited to constitute jury on several national and international awards.

José Mateus (b. 1963), graduated in Architecture (1986) in the FAUTL (Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University of Lisbon. He is vice-president of the South Regional Section of the Portuguese Architects Guild and was General Curator for the 1st Lisbon Architecture Triennial in 2007. He lectured in several Schools of Architecture and was guest lecturer, in 2005-2007, at the ESARQ - Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (International University of Catalonia), in Barcelona. Author and coordinator of the semi-annual magazine Linha (Architecture, Design and Landscape) of the weekly newspaper Expresso, he also authored and coordinated two seasons of the Tempo e Traço television series for Sic-Notícias, besides his regular participation on the radio (TSF), with the program Na Ordem do Dia. He has been invited, at home and abroad, to be jury member in many awards, from which we specially mention the Architecture Prize of São Paulo Biennial in 2003, and the EUROPAN- Sp
ain, in 2007.
Nuno and José Mateus gave lectures in several countries such as Portugal, Spain, USA, Hungary, UK, Brazil, Belgium, Italy and Japan.

ARX was already distinguished with several national and international awards, and its work is often mentioned in reputable international magazines such as A+U, Wallpaper, AV, Architectural Review, Space, 2G, A10, Techniques & Architecture, WA — World Architecture, or the Portuguese arq./a. In 2007, CTT-Correios de Portugal emitted a stamp depicting the Maritime Museum of Ílhavo, as part of a collection on Portuguese contemporary architecture. ARX’s work was also object of a monographic exhibition, “Realidade Real” (Real Reality), which opened the Centro Cultural de Belém Exhibition Centre (proj. Vittorio Gregotti), in June 1993. Since then, it’s work has been presented in several countries as part of collective or individual exhibitions.

Through this renewed website one can follow closely the work being done by this office, the only one selected from Siza Vieira’s homeland to feature in the July’s issue of Wallpaper article “101 of the world’s most exciting new architects”. http://www.arx.pt

Contacts:
Press: Bruno Gonçalves, arxportugal@arx.pt
Projects: Paulo Rocha, paulorocha@arx.pt
Phone: +351213918110

Frieze

The
Cartier
Award 2008: Call for applications
http://www.frieze.com

The Cartier Award for emerging artists living outside the UK is a major initiative by Frieze Projects, the curatorial programme of Frieze Art Fair, in collaboration with Gasworks and sponsored by Cartier. Artists are invited to propose a new work to be realised at Frieze Art Fair 2008 which will be produced under the auspices of Frieze Projects. Projects may take the form of site-specific installation; performance; film; video and print work.

The Cartier Award includes:
- 3 month residency at Gasworks from mid September to mid December 2008 including accommodation, per diems and travel expenses
- Project production costs of up to 10,000 pounds
- An artist’s fee of 1,000 pounds

The selection committee for 2008 is:
Neville Wakefield (Curator, Frieze Projects)
Hervé Chandès (Director, Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art)
Mia Jankowicz (Residency Curator, Gasworks)
Richard Wentworth (Artist)

The Cartier Award is open to non UK based artists within 5 years of graduating from an undergraduate or postgraduate degree.

Please visit http://www.frieze.com for more details and access to the online application form. The deadline for applications is Friday 7 January 2008.

Gasworks is a contemporary arts organisation in South London housing 12 artists’ studios and presenting a programme of exhibitions, residencies, international fellowships and educational projects.

Cartier has a long-standing relationship with contemporary art. Twenty two years ago the company established the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris — a unique example of corporate patronage for contemporary art.

Cartier is the Associate Sponsor of Frieze Art Fair supporting Frieze Projects and the Cartier Award.

Frieze
3-4 Hardwick Street, London, EC1R 4RB, UK
http://www.frieze.com

La maison rouge

Leonid Sokov, Staline and Monroe, 1991,
Courtesy Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow.

Sots Art
Political Art in Russia from
1972 to today
until January 20th 2008
la maison rouge
10 bd de la bastille
75012 Paris, france

http://www.lamaisonrouge.org

The exhibition Sots Art retraces the development of a movement which, from the early 1970s and in the wake of Socialist Realism, would stand out as the first original art movement in Russia since the 1920s avant-garde.

The term was coined in 1972 by two Moscow artists, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, as a take on Pop Art, “Sots” being a contraction of Socialism and Art.

Rather than the rejection and denunciation that motivated the first generation of Nonconformist artists, Sots Art follows a third way. It appropriates and subverts propaganda images and slogans to transform them into something that is both playful and grotesque. Through its irreverent use of symbols which, in their original context, were intended as a means of dominating the individual, Sots Art had a genuinely liberating effect on Soviet minds.

Following Komar and Melamid’s example, the term of Sots Art was then taken up by a group of artists which developed in the 1970s and 1980s around personalities such as Vagrich Bakhchanyan, Ilya Kabakov, Alexander Kosolapov, Leonid Sokov, Dimitri Prigov, Boris Orlov and the Nest Group. Sidelined from official exhibitions, they showed their work in their own homes which became venues for creation, exhibition and exchange for the Moscow avant-garde. This period is symbolised by the replica apartment at the entrance to the exhibition. Sots Art dominated plastic arts, architecture, design and film throughout the Perestroika years (1985-1991).

A wave of emigration in the second half of the 1970s took Sots Art beyond the USSR. Many artists moved to New York where they staged exhibitions and began to combine American and Soviet symbols.

Sots Art has proved to be a prolific trend not just within the Communist system but in societies which exert other forms of pressure, via the media and religion in particular. Russian art in the 2000s is a case in point, where comparable attitudes have emerged in the work of Oleg Kulik, the Blue Noses and the PG Group.

Curator of the exhibition: Andreï Erofeev
in partnership with the Tretiakov Gallery (Moscow) and the Foundation “Art Promotion Society” (Moscow) with the support of the Ekaterina Foundation (Moscow), the Novi Foundation (Moscow), ProLab (Moscow), Robert Vallois (Paris).

Opening days and times
Wednesday to Sunday 11am to 7pm
late-night Thursday until 9pm
closed December 25th, January 1st and May 1st

Press office: Claudine Colin Communication
5, rue Barbette — 75003 Paris
t: +33 1 42 72 60 01
contact: julie@claudinecolin.com