Artipedia - Arts News

ARCO8

ARCO8
13th - 18th February 2008

The spotlight on Latin America with Brazil as its invited guest country provides a focus to the 27th International Contemporary Art Fair of Madrid, together with its new exhibition halls and reorganisation of its art programme

http://www.arco.ifema.es

Once again, in 2008 gallerists, collectors and art professionals from all over the world are coming together at ARCO8, the International Contemporary Art Fair. This year it is debuting new halls and revamping its contents. New ideas for a new layout designed by the architect Juan Herreros, add an extra attraction to this 27th ARCO, featuring Brazil as its invited guest country plus a top class selection of art from 295 galleries coming from 34 countries worldwide with over fifty noteworthy new incorporations. Out of the total number of participants, 224 galleries were selected by the Organising Committee for the General Programme, which now includes a new section for the most recent contemporary art (ARCO40). Meanwhile, a team of leading international curators made an interesting selection of proposals for Solo Projects and Expanded-Box and also for a new section called Performing ARCO, featuring live art for the first time in ARCO.

Following the commercial success of the last edition and its increased weight on the international art calendar, ARCO continues focusing the interest of the art market. In fact, the strong demand for participation this year materialised in more than 500 applications and finally in a selection in which the three great art markets—New York, London, Germany—are playing a major role alongside Brazil, one of the hottest centres of the art world and one of the countries drawing greatest attention and interest.

Around 300 international collectors are travelling to ARCO8, further empowering the fair as a major platform for the art market. These collectors are invited to the fair as part of its guest collectors programme, this year including major names in collecting from all over the world. With a noteworthy participation from Brazil, ARCO is expecting many European, Asian, North American and Latin American collectors, attracted to the fair by the high quality of the galleries and the buoyancy of the Spanish market.

The Spanish art market and Spanish collections are advancing positions in the art world, as confirmed by the 2005 EFF (Spanish Survey of Household Finances), published in December 2007 by the Banco de España [Bank of Spain]. The survey indicates that art is the third most popular investment option for Spaniards, just behind real estate property and financial products, with a one percent increase in investment in artworks and antiques, with investors making up 19.3% of the total. This was further confirmed by Artprice analysts, who now place Spain among the top 10 countries for contemporary
art auctions.

REDCAT

Ed Fella, Sketchbook # 42 (p. 60), 1996, 8-1/4 x 6”
Courtesy the artist.

REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/
CalArts Theater)

Two Lines Align: Drawings and Graphic Design by Ed Fella and Geoff McFetridge
Curated by Michael Worthington

Opening reception:
Wednesday, February 20, 6- 9pm
February 21 - April 6, 2008

http://www.redcat.org

Two Lines Align is an exhibition about the evolution of graphic design in the context of massive changes in our visual culture. As guest curator Michael Worthington notes in the catalogue essay, the exhibition explores “the shifts in the perceived cultural worth [of art and graphic design] over time…by placing Ed Fella’s and Geoff McFetridge’s design careers end to end to make one chronological line, one lineage. While Fella’s career reflects how graphic design has historically struggled to define itself in relationship to art, McFetridge follows a path wherein the integration of art and design is taken for granted.”

Representing two generations, Ed Fella (b. 1938) and Geoff McFetridge (b. 1971) have transformed and actively altered the relationship of graphic design to art. Their unorthodox and nontraditional practices, rooted in drawing and the hand-rendered, compel us to question our preconceptions of what graphic design has been, as well as what it might be.

AIGA Medal awardee Fella uses illustration, photography and graphic experimentation as vehicles for his philosophical musings on art, design, literature and typography. After practicing successfully as a commercial artist in Detroit for 30 years, Fella left the commercial world to pursue independent, self-initiated experimental projects proudly proclaiming himself an “exit-level designer.” The exhibition will survey Fella’s prolific practice, which includes the complete set of 130 do-it-yourself flyers (from the first in 1969—to the most recent produced for this exhibition), a selection from Fella’s 100 sketchbooks dating back to the 1960s that have never been exhibited before, and other personal and
commercial projects.

As a practitioner of what he describes as “the solitary arts,” McFetridge inverts the traditional client/designer relationship and produces work that is as much for his own gratification as for that of the client. His unique and influential practice has ranged from client-based projects that include designs for billboards, skateboards, t-shirts and other products for companies such as Nike, Patagonia and BE: Bicycle Company; music videos for The Whitest Boy Alive; and title sequences for films such as Sofia Coppola’s Virgin Suicides. McFetridge will present a new, site-specific installation for REDCAT, as well as drawings, posters, and products.

This exhibition is conceived and organized by Michael Worthington, an award-winning graphic designer and faculty member of CalArts’ School of Art. The exhibition is accompanied by a 240-page color catalogue designed by Worthington with texts by Worthington, Jamer Hunt and an interview with
the artists.

Fella received his MFA in Design from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1987 and received an honorary doctorate from CCS in Detroit in 1999. He has received the 1997 Chrysler Design Award and 2007 AIGA Medal. His work is in the collections of the National Design Museum, New York and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fella is currently on faculty at CalArts where he has been teaching since 1987. McFetridge received his MFA in Graphic Design at CalArts. His thesis project Chinatown won a distinctive merit award from ID magazine. While working as art director for Grand Royal Magazine (1995-1997), McFetridge founded his own design studio, Champion Graphics. He has had solo shows at galleries around the world including Parco Gallery, Tokyo; MU, Eindhoven; and Colette, Paris. His work is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Two Lines Align: Drawings and Graphic Design by Ed Fella and Geoff McFetridge is made possible in part by Everloving and Feal Mor. Additional support provided by CalArts Dean’s Fund and the Faculty Development Committee.

Special thanks to The Standard, the official hotel of REDCAT.

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

REDCAT
631 West 2nd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012 USA

Centre Pompidou

CENTRE POMPIDOU – ESPACE 315
The Anxious
Yael Bartana, Omer Fast, Rabih Mroué, Ahlam Shibli,
Akram Zaatari

Five artists under the pressure of war.

February 13th - May 19th 2008
Curator Joanna Mytkowska
Assisted by Anna Hiddleston

http://www.centrepompidou.fr

The exhibition The Anxious presents the works of five artists who share a sense of personal involvement in dealing with the subject of the war in the Middle East. They are artists of a younger generation able to translate the oppression of a conflict into an alternative language based on the critical analysis of its causes and background in a continual reflection upon the instruments of its representation.

As all generalisations and all attempts to build bridges between conflicting sides in the Middle East lack legitimacy, the personal viewpoint seems to be the best one. Hence the exhibition’s title, borrowed from the title of a novel by the Israeli-based Polish writer Leo Lipski, Niespokojni (The Anxious), where he describes the situation of artists on the eve of World War II, where their oversensitivity endows them with a premonition of the impending inferno.

The exhibition opens with a video projection by Yael Bartana (born in 1970 in Afula, Israel) installed in such a manner as to resemble an architectural but mobile frieze. Digitally manipulated monochromatic colours create the impression that the people moving across the mobile low relief are in military formation. The work can be construed as a metaphor of living in Israel where you simply cannot avoid references to tough political connotations and a militarised reality. In his 2007 installation The Casting, Omer Fast ((born in 1972 in Jerusalem, Israël) questions the impact of the televised spectacle of war. Carrying out a fictional or authentic casting for the most interesting war story, Fast conducts an interview with a US soldier who took part in operations in Iraq. We see the face of the artist and the spectacle’s participant on screen all the time, but we never learn whether we are watching an account of actual events or staged fiction. Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué (
born in 1967 in Beirut) shows a video work Three Posters (2003) in which he asks questions about the possibility of representing events as dramatic as a martyr’s suicidal death. Overlapping with the issue of representation are complex questions about the transformation of the fighters’ underlying ideology from left-wing to Islamic, and the role of politicians who send the martyrs to death.

Two works have been specially conceived for the show and produced by the Centre Pompidou. Ahlam Shibli (born in 1970 in Palestine) presents her recently completed photographic series shot at the village of Al-Shibli. The pictures speak not so much about violence as about weakness and entanglement. Finally Akram Zaatari (born in 1966 in Saida, Lebanon) shows a new film where an ex-Lebanese resistant fighter meticulously retrieves and mends his military gear with the help of a younger assistant. Once dressed in his uniform, he resumes the identity of a soldier, although an ageing soldier who no longer has a war to fight. The uniform has lost its weight upon his shoulders, it is made redundant and leads to the question of who is the man beneath its layers and what were
his motivations.

The Anxious – Five artists under the pressure of war
Ed. Anna Hiddleston and Françoise Bertaux
Collection Espace 315
Format 17 x 22 cm, 80 pp.
Bilingual French / English

ESPACE 315 – PROGRAM 2008
PRIX MARCEL DUCHAMP 2008 – TATIANA TROUVÉ
25 JUNE - 29 SEPTEMBER 2008
Curator : Jean-Pierre Bordaz
As Winner of the 2007 Marcel Duchamp Prize, Tatiana Trouvé, an emergent artist who works all around the world, will be showing in the Espace 315.

DAMIAN ORTEGA
AUTUMN 2008
Curator : Christine Macel
The internationally renown Mexican artist Damian Ortega is invited by Espace 315 for his first solo show in Paris.