Arthouse at the Jones Center

Photo: courtesy of Arthouse

Fritz Haeg:
Attack on the Front Lawn
January 26 - March 16, 2008

Arthouse at the Jones Center
700 Congress Ave
Austin, Texas

http://www.arthousetexas.org

Arthouse at the Jones Center proudly presents Fritz Haeg: Attack on the Front Lawn, January 26 - March 16, 2008 in conjunction with The Sundown Schoolhouse: How to Eat Austin and Edible Estates Regional Prototype Garden #5. This is the first major exhibition of Haeg’s work.

Fritz Haeg: Attack on the Front Lawn surveys recent ecological initiatives completed by the artist and architect known for his socially-responsive and community-oriented practice. Working at the intersection of art and social activism, Haeg engages audiences in collaborative encounters that often take place outside of the institutional confines of a museum or gallery. This exhibition brings together photographic and video documentation from Haeg’s ongoing Edible Estates project along with ephemeral items and site-specific elements created for Arthouse’s space that relate to gardening and sustainable food production in Austin. For the exhibition, Arthouse has been transformed into a community resource center, schoolhouse, working greenhouse, and finally, laboratory for artistic experimentation. This umbrella exhibition provides context for two related projects—the Sundown Schoolhouse and Edible Estates—that Haeg has developed for Austin.

The Sundown Schoolhouse is a non-traditional educational environment for design, literary, performing and visual arts. It was founded on the premise that artists, designers, performers and writers should be powerful and active agents in society, engaging in a dialogue extending to the outside world and which values public interaction, physical connectedness, and responsiveness to place. A large geodesic tent within Arthouse serves as the base site for How to Eat Austin, a weekly series of free workshops related to the cycle of food production, from composting and garden design to cooking and marketing the garden harvest.

Edible Estates Regional Prototype Garden #5 is an ongoing project to replace domestic front lawns with highly productive edible landscapes responsive to culture, climate, context and people. According to Haeg, Edible Estates is a “practical food producing initiative, place-responsive landscape design proposal, a scientific horticultural experiment, a conceptual land-art project, a defiant political statement, a community out-reach program and an act of radical gardening!” This project was initiated by Haeg on Independence Day, 2005, with the planting of the first regional prototype garden in Salina, Kansas (the geographic center of the United States). Regional Prototype Gardens have since been planted in California, New Jersey and London, England. Commissioned by Arthouse and with the help of community volunteers, Regional Prototype Garden #5 will be planted from March 14-16, 2008 and located at Sierra Ridge, a non-profit run low income housing community in Austin. Ultima
tely, regional prototype gardens will be established in nine cities.

About Fritz Haeg
Fritz Haeg works between his architecture and design practice Fritz Haeg Studio, the happenings and gatherings of Sundown Schoolhouse, the ecology initiatives of Gardenlab (including Edible Estates), and his role as an educator. He received his B.Arch from Carnegie Mellon University and has taught in architecture, design, and fine arts programs at CalArts, Art Center College of Design, Parsons, and the University of Southern California. He has produced projects and exhibited work at the Tate Modern, London; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, among other institutions. His new series of projects called Animal Estates will debut at the Whitney Biennial in March 2008. His first book, Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, is published by Metropolis Books and distributed by D.A.P.

This project is supported by Whole Foods Market.

All exhibitions and programs at Arthouse are free and open to the public.

For more information on Arthouse, please visit http://www.arthousetexas.org, or call (512) 453-5312.

ART FORUM BERLIN

ART FORUM BERLIN celebrates its 13th anniversary and for once takes place in
late October

Record results with excellent sales and a fantastic attendance of more than 44,000 visitors confirms once more ART FORUM BERLIN as Germany’s No. 1 fair for contemporary art.

In 2008 ART FORUM BERLIN celebrates its 13th anniversary and will for once be held in late autumn. For logistic reasons affecting the entire fairgrounds, Messe Berlin, the art fair’s organizer, had to change the dates of its most prestigious international fair. ART FORUM BERLIN, the catalyst of Berlin’s constantly growing and internationally expanding art scene will this year take place from 30 October (opening) until 3 November 2008.

Showcasing the most dynamic and captivating art of today, ART FORUM BERLIN offers its audience the latest works of celebrated international stars as well as an abundance of new talents.

ART FORUM BERLIN will again be set in the most beautiful art fair venue around, the spacious daylight halls 18 to 20 of the Berlin Fairgrounds. ART FORUM BERLIN 2008 offers ideal conditions with its trendsetting hallmarks: Extraordinary stand concepts, the now renowned AFB Talks, addressing questions of contemporary art and cultural politics. New this year, the Professional Monday will offer special featured programs with talks, conferences and reunions for art professionals from all over
the world.

ART FORUM BERLIN will feature again a special exhibition, this year curated by the up-and-coming German curator Hans-Jürgen Hafner. His exhibition Difference, what difference? will question the value and significance of art, and reflect its position and specific function in-between the frontiers of market and discourse. The exhibition will include works of some 35 artists on view at the special exhibition hall 11 directly adjacent to the alphabetical parcours in which 120 international galleries present a concise and engaging overview of their artists’ latest production.

Art lovers are invited to join special programs starting already in the evening of 29 October at Martin-Gropius-Bau featuring the last ten years of acquisitions of the German State Collection. The opening of ART FORUM BERLIN will be flanked by the opening nights of the blockbuster The Universe Klee. Paul Klee at Neue Nationalgalerie and the solo of Jeff Koons at the foyer of Neue Nationalgalerie. Further highlights of the late autumn in Berlin will be solo shows of Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys and Ayse Ermen at Hamburger Bahnhof and the group show Deconstructions of the Artists’ Myths’ with works from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection and others at the Rieck Hall’s, adjacent to the museum. The Intimate in Everyday’s Life, photographs from the collection of agnes b., Paris, will be shown at C/O Berlin Forum for Visual Dialogues. Additionally, this year’s schedule contains many attractions, exclusive openings, parties and special events. Deutsche Guggenheim will s
how the always spectacular Anish Kapoor and Akademie der Künste presents the intriguing group show Notation, furthermore Berlin’s Mois de la Photo (Month of Photography) will open during the fair.

All of this makes ART FORUM BERLIN 2008 an even more prominent and essential place to be in late autumn for collectors, curators and lovers of contemporary art.

ART FORUM BERLIN 2008
The International Fair for Contemporary Art
31 October - 3 November 2008
Opening: Thursday, 30 October 2008
http://www.art-forum-berlin.com

For further information please contact:

Anne Maier at ART FORUM BERLIN
Messedamm 22, DE - 14055 Berlin
Tel.: +49-30-30 38 18 36/-37, Fax: +49-30-30 38 18 38
E-Mail: maier@messe-berlin.de

Von der Heydt Kunsthalle Wuppertal-Barmen

Bettina Pousttchi
Parachute 03, 2006
photograph, 120 x 160 cm
courtesy Buchmann Galerie Berlin

Bettina Pousttchi, Reality Reset

Opening: November 11, 2007,
11:00 a.m.

Dates: November 11, 2007 -
February 24, 2008

Catalog: Buchhandlung Walther
König, Cologne

Bettina Pousttchi (b. 1971) works in a wide variety of media and is one of the most interesting German artists of the younger generation.

The Berlin-based artist alternates between photography, video, and sculptural elements.

Her work reflects the social, cultural, and sociopolitical conditions that determine and structure
the individual.

Bettina Pousttchi’s work has been shown recently in Idyll: Between Dream and Misapprehension at the Museum Domus Artium in Salamanca 2007 and the Sammlung Falckenberg Hamburg in 2006; The Youth of Today at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in 2006; and Day for Night—Peace Tower at the Whitney Biennial in 2006. In 2003 Bettina Pousttchi was represented at the Venice Biennale.

This survey exhibition, which the artist selected and designed herself, also includes new sculpture in the work Black Out, in which Bettina Pousttchi further develops the themes from her large-format photographic series Parachutes and Take Off.

It also includes the early video works Docu-Clip: The Katharina-Show (2000) and the trilogy Docu-Clip: To Good Neighbors (1999), another focus of her work for which Bettina Pousttchi became known
early on.

The Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König is publishing a catalog to accompany the exhibition, with essays by Barry Schwabsky, Jörg Heiser, Petra Löffler, Holger Liebs, Katrin Wittneven, Vanessa Joan Müller, Ilka Becker, Jon Wood and others. The catalog offers a comprehensive presentation of the artist’s diverse work.

For further information, please contact Dr. Beate Eickhoff, Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal, Turmhof 8, 42103 Wuppertal
T 0202-563 2722 / F 0202-563 8091 / E-mail: info.museum@stadt.wuppertal.de

Von der Heydt Kunsthalle Wuppertal-Barmen
Geschwister Scholl Platz 4-6 D – 42275 Wuppertal
Telephone 0202 – 563 6571 (während der Öffnungszeiten)
Hours: Tues.- Sun. 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.