Artipedia - Arts News

MEGASTRUCTURE RELOADED

Visionary architecture and urban design of the sixties reflected by contemporary artists
by European Art Projects

6 April - 25 May 2008
Preview: 5 April 2008

MODEM - Space for Contemporary Music and Arts (former Kraftwerk Mitte), Koepenickerstr. 70

Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2,
Berlin

http://www.megastructure-reloaded.org

Architects and artists:
Archigram, Archizoom, Alan Boutwell, Günter Domenig & Eilfried Huth, Constant, Yona Friedman / Groupe d’Etudes d’Architecture Mobile, Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz, Superstudio, Jose Davila, Simon Dybbroe Moller, Ryan Gander, Franka Hoernschemeyer, Gordon Matta-Clark, Victor Nieuwenhuys & Maartje Seyferth, Tobias Putrih, Tomas Saraceno, Katrin Sigurdardottir, Tilman Wendland

curated by Sabrina van der Ley and Markus Richter / European Art Projects

In autumn 1964 the fifth edition of Archigram magazine, dedicated to the subject Metropolis, was released in London. Along with Archigram’s designs for Plug-in City, it showcased, among others, Constant Nieuwenhuys’ urban vision New Babylon and Yona Friedman’s La Ville Spatiale. These works now rank among the incunabula of the 1960s. Combining visionary architecture, pop culture, art and situationist rebellion, they became known far beyond the confines of urban planning. The designs still hold their fascination today, not least due to their unique aesthetic quality. Hence it is not surprising that individual plans or models were shown at Documenta and large museum exhibitions over the years.

Until now, however, there has been no exhibition dealing explicitly with the megastructuralists’ vision. MEGASTRUCTURE RELOADED seeks for the first time to show La Ville Spatiale, Plug-in City and New Babylon in context. Alongside Archigram, those represented will include Constant, Friedman and his comrades from the Groupe d’Études d’Architecture Mobile, such as Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz, as well as the radical Florentine groups Superstudio and Archizoom, whose designs at the end of the 1960s constituted an ironic response to the megastructuralists.

The exhibition will not be a documentary representation however; instead the megastructuralists are to be tested for their currency and relevance to the problems of contemporary urban design. The focus will be on the connection, so significant for these designs, between spatial structures and visual art, as well as on actual architectural and urban-design issues, while examining whether megastructures offer a feasible conceptual approach for the problems of fast-growing mega cities.

Thus, integral parts of the project will be a symposium with international scholars and a workshop with young architects, architectural students and researchers.

Moreover, the exhibition will prominently feature works and installations by visual artists Jose Davila (MX), Simon Dybbroe Moller (DK), Ryan Gander (GB), Franka Hoernschemeyer (DE), Gordon Matta-Clark (US); Victor Nieuwenhuys & Maartje Seyferth (NL), Tobias Putrih (SI/US), Tomas Saraceno (AR/DE), Katrin Sigurdardottir (IS/US) and Tilman Wendland (DE). Their subject specific installations will be developed directly for the exhibition and reflect the idea of megastructures as well as the structures of today’s megacities. Only Gordon Matta-Clark’s seminal work Conical Intersect from1975, an intervention at an old building facing the construction site of a rare example of an actually realised megastructure, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, is an already existing work, which will be integrated in
the exhibition.

MEGASTRUCTURE RELOADED continues the long-term research and exhibition project Utopia Revisited, which includes workshops, symposia, publications and exhibitions throughout Europe. The project started 2006 with the exhibition Ideal City - Invisible Cities encompassing works by 40 international artists in public places and several institutions in Zamosc, Poland and Potsdam, Germany. The project will be continued with the exhibitions Finis Terrae: The End of the World (curators: Sabrina van der Ley & Markus Richter) in 2009, Things to Come, focusing on visual arts and science fiction (curator: Doreet Harten) in 2010. Utopia Revisited will conclude with the exhibition Arcadia in 2011.

MEGASTRUCTURE RELOADED is funded by the Capital Culture Fond, Berlin

Additional support is kindly provided by the British Council, Berlin; Danish Arts Council, Center for Icelandic Art, Reykjavik; Ikea Stiftung, Hofheim-Wallau; The Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green; Mexican Embassy in Berlin/Office of Foreign Affairs of Mexico and the Mondriaan Stichting, Amsterdam.

Project Partners: Archigram Archives, London, Art Forum Berlin, Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin; Greige / Buero fuer Design, Berlin, MODEM – Space for Contemporary Music and Arts, Berlin, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and Weiss-Heiten Design, Berlin/ London/ Paris

For images and further information please view http://www.megastructure-reloaded.org or contact Anne Maier at European Art Projects, am@european-art-projects.eu Tel. +49.30.30 38 18 37.

http://www.megastructure-reloaded.org
http://www.modem-berlin.net/
http://www.bethanien.de/

Kunstmuseum Basel,
Museum für Gegenwartskunst

Avner Ben-Gal
Desecrator, 2005
Oil on canvas
150 x 180 cm

Avner Ben-Gal
18 January – 4 May 2008

Kunstmuseum Basel,
Museum für Gegenwartskunst
mit Emanuel Hoffmann-Stiftung
St. Alban-Rheinweg 60
CH-4010 Basel
Tel. 0041 (0) 61 206 62 62
Fax 0041 (0) 61 206 62 53
http://www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch

The work of Israeli painter and draftsman Avner Ben-Gal (b. 1966) shows barren land-scapes with burning houses and isolated figures. The implied narratives have nothing in common with the propagandistic images of the mass media which confront us from the Near East day after day. Instead they create a reality that interprets recent history within the framework of their own poetic and fantastical universe. At the same time, the grim undertones of these often mythologically or allegorically charged pictures engage in subtle reflection on the artist’s painterly means. Hence, the dreamlike scenarios literally escape observation, being obscured and sometimes even invisible under a monochrome veil of colour.

Because of his biography, Avner Ben-Gal’s work has often been brought into connection with current affairs in specific places, and interpreted as an apocalyptic vision. For the artist, history is not captured as an iconic distillation; instead, an atmospheric and emotional quality is set into the picture, as it emerges from the specific practice of painting. Underlying his pictures is the repressed and the already seen, which only in the process of painting can be unearthed and elaborated. New, never before seen images are not found in this way, but the entire complexity of visual representation makes itself visible.

Avner Ben-Gal has been represented in international solo and group exhibitions. The selection on view in this solo exhibition at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel will include some of his most recent paintings and drawings.

On the occasion of the exhibition there will be a catalogue published at Hatje Cantz with a contribution by Philipp Kaiser and a conversation between Yael Bergstein and Avner Ben-Gal; 152 pages, CHF 42.–.

Fokus: Olafur Eliasson
18 January – 13 July 2008
Recent acquisitions from the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel

Dublin City Gallery The
Hugh Lane

Julian Opie:
Walking on O’Connell Street
20 January - 8 November 2008

Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane
Charlemont House
Parnell Square North
Dublin 1
Ireland
t: + 353 1 2225550
info.hughlane@dublincity.ie
http://www.hughlane.ie

Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane is proud to open its centenary celebrations with Ireland’s first major public art installation of works by internationally renowned artist Julian Opie.

Curated by Barbara Dawson and entitled Julian Opie Walking on O’Connell Street the exhibition comprises of four animated LED screens placed on the central median of O’Connell Street and one outside the gallery on Parnell Square.

Julian Opie is widely recognised as one of the most pre-eminent artists working within the public realm today. Blurring the relations between artist and non-artist within our society, Opie’s images are elemental in appearance though amongst the most complex and sophisticated in contemporary art practice. They reveal to us that that culture is malleable, exciting, free, and all around us.

Challenging the traditional gallery relationship between art and its consumers, where the context alone demands concentration, intimacy, study and time, Julian Opie’s installation of works on Dublin’s O Connell Street allow everyone access, immediacy, and sophistication without the usual pomp of
public art.

Today we are surrounded by so much culture that it tends to become invisible and much of it is of little concern to the everyday lives of individuals. This debate alone is worth the initial risk and investment of placing art in the public realm. It makes for the kind of robust exchange of views that is the lifeblood of any democracy.

As a successful artist who exhibits internationally, Opie uses computers in art to present items of everyday life. His style was brought to a wider audience as part of the stage sets for Dublin based rock band U2, and their Vertigo world tour of 2005, where he showed another LED screen displaying an aimless walking man figure.

The O’ Connell Street installation features four life-size “walking” figures (Sara, Jack, Julian and Suzanne) and also a life size dancing figure (Sara) mounted on durable plinths and is one of the most ambitious public art project seen on the Irish nation’s iconic main street.

Julian Opie was born in London and raised in Oxford He is a graduate of Goldsmiths College (1979–82).His highly stylised work, involves the reduction of photographs (or short films) into figurative reproductions (created using computer software). In his portraiture, the human face is characterised by black outlines with flat areas of colour, and minimalised detail, to the extent that an eye can become just the black circle of the pupil, and sometimes a head is represented by a circle with a space where the neck would be. Opie has exhibited to acclaim all over the world and his work features heavily in collections including the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, Contemporary Art Society, Britain, Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt; ICA, Boston; Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Spain; Kunsthaus Zurich; Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Prato; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; National Portrait Gallery, London; The British Museum, London; The Calouste Gulbenkia
n Foundation, Portugal; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; The Tate Gallery, London; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Julian Opie is represented by Lisson Gallery, London.

Supported by the O’Connell Street IAP Community Gain Fund

Images for this exhibition are featured on Julian Opie’s website http://www.julianopie.com

For further information on the temporary exhibitions programme contact

Michael Dempsey
Head of Exhibitions

e: mdempsey.hughlane@dublincity.ie

t: +353 1 222 5552