Artipedia - Arts News

The Aldrich Contemporary
Art Museum

David Claerbout, The Bordeaux Piece, 2004
Courtesy of the artist and Yvon Lambert, Paris/New York
On View at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield, CT)

Opening at The Aldrich: Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture
Sunday, March 9, 2008; 3 to 5 pm, 2 pm Panel Discussion
Round-Trip Transportation from NYC Available
http://www.aldrichart.org/contact/mail/mailings/PtGHeBlast3.html

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main Street
Ridgefield, CT 06877
http://www.aldrichart.org

THE ALDRICH PRESENTS PAINTING THE GLASS HOUSE: ARTISTS REVISIT
MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture—curated by Jessica Hough and Mónica Ramírez-Montagut—will open at The Aldrich on Sunday, March 9, 2008.

The exhibition brings together two-dimensional works (including video) in various media by Alexander Apóstol, Daniel Arsham, Gordon Cheung, David Claerbout, Angela Dufresne, Mark Dziewulski, Christine Erhard, Cyprien Gaillard, Terence Gower, Angelina Gualdoni, Natasha Kissell, Luisa Lambri, Dorit Margreiter, Russell Nachman, Enoc Perez, and Lucy Williams—a collection that explores an interest among emerging artists in architecture of the modern period.

Modern architecture is generally identified with buildings by Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright, which represent a period driven by developments in technology, engineering, and the introduction of industrial materials such as iron, steel, concrete, and glass. Architects at this time engaged in a practice that not only incorporated structural innovations, but also encouraged social change.

The artists featured in the exhibition are interested not only in the potential of utopian ideas, but also the sense of a passing idealism that modern architecture now embodies. Hough comments, “The artists are less interested in the built structures themselves and what it might feel like to be inside one, and more interested in the philosophy and idealism they represent. The way in which the buildings signal a possibility of utopia is essential—a future that could have been. Sentimentality runs through much of the work.”

Ramírez-Montagut adds, “This melancholic remembrance comes at a time when great works of modern architecture are at risk due to neglect, deterioration, and demolition. Underlying all the artworks is a feeling of deep admiration for the architects who sought to elevate culture and bring it to the broad masses, yet their sense of failure is also prevalent; the artists’ knowledge of modern architecture’s crisis and demise tints their works with some kind of nostalgia.”

The Aldrich will host an Exhibition Reception on Sunday, March 9, 2008, from 3 to 5 pm. Prior to the opening there will be a 2 pm Panel Discussion: Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture, with curators Jessica Hough and Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, along with artists Daniel Arsham, Angela Dufresne, and Terence Gower. The reception is FREE for members. Refreshments will be served. Round-trip transportation from New York City is available; please call the Museum at 203.438.4519 for reservations. Please note that the bus will not arrive in time for the panel discussion. The reception and panel will take place at the Museum located at 258 Main Street, Ridgefield.

A book related to the exhibition is being co-published by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Mills College Art Museum, and Yale University Press, and is scheduled for a fall 2008 release.

Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture has been organized by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum with the Yale School of Architecture Gallery. Both The Aldrich and Yale will present a portion of the exhibition in their galleries. The exhibition will travel to Mills College Art Museum in California following its Connecticut debut. Exhibition dates: Yale School of Architecture Gallery (New Haven, CT): February 11 to May 9, 2008; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield, CT): March 9 to July 27, 2008; Mills College Art Museum (Oakland, CA): January 14 to March 22, 2009.

ALSO OPENING AT THE ALDRICH ON SUNDAY, MARCH 9, 2008:
Halsey Burgund: ROUND (on view through July 27, 2008); Gary Panter: Daydream Trap (on view through August 31, 2008); Ester Partegàs: The Invisible (on view through August 10, 2008).

ABOUT THE MUSEUM:
The Aldrich is one of the few non-collecting contemporary art museums in the United States. Founded on Ridgefield’s historic Main Street in 1964, the Museum enjoys the curatorial independence of an alternative space while maintaining the registrarial and art-handling standards of a national institution. Exhibitions feature work by emerging and mid-career artists, and education programs help adults and children to connect to today’s world through contemporary art. The Museum is located at 258 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT 06877. All exhibitions and programs are handicapped accessible. Regular Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 12:00 noon to 5:00 pm. For more information call 203.438.4519.

Contact: Pamela Ruggio
Phone: 203.438.4519
Email: pruggio@aldrichart.org

e v + a 2008

Ruth LeGear
tear drops in wonderscape
mixed media installation

OPEN / INVITED e v + a 2008

Too Early For Vacation

CURATOR: HOU HANRU

March 7 - May 25, 2008
City-wide venues in Limerick City, Ireland

http://www.eva.ie

OPEN / INVITED e v + a 2008, Ireland’s pre-eminent annual exhibition of contemporary art, opens to the public on March 7th in Limerick City. Selected by Hou Hanru the exhibition will present the work of 45 artists (28 OPEN and 17 INVITED) drawn from 17 countries of Continental Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Too Early For Vacation A short introduction by Hou Hanru

Conventionally, Ireland has been seen as an exotic, idyllic and even somehow a spiritual destination for a vacation… Limerick, a “remote” city situated in the Mid-West of the country, is certainly one of the most desired places on the tourist map. For the last decade, this city and the surrounding region, like the whole country itself, have entered a process of renaissance, thanks to their embracing of new technologies and their integration into the global economy. But, few have imagined that this rather small city can be a vibrant site of production of contemporary art.

However, for the last three decades, Limerick has been holding the most significant contemporary art event in Ireland. Over the years, e v+ a has become a major and unique international exhibition. Yet as an event it has remained persistently rooted in the local context, at once modest, intimate, ambitious and generous as it constantly negotiates global influences including the new ideas, projects and energies that have been brought in by artists and curators from different parts of the world.

The fundamental change in the nature of contemporary art from quasi-underground, activist and avant-garde activities in the 1970s when e v+ a was founded to becoming a part of the late-Capitalist and consumerist cultural establishment has actually launched an intellectual, ethic and even political challenge to the art world itself. Then, what’s the real social significance of contemporary art today? How can a firmly grass-rooted event like e v+ a still make sense in the age of globalisation, dominated by certain established but limited models of production, representation and consumption, and yet continue, as well, to engage itself in the transformation of local reality?

In this context, coming to work for, visit and appreciate e v+ a today needs an even more intimate and active engagement with the local reality, both physical and cultural, both personal and social… Certainly it involves travels from different parts of the world and contacts with various forms of creation. However, it’s by no means merely a simple vacation to be spent in this beautiful town of Ireland – a vacation has a double implication: holidays and vacating (escaping) from reality. Instead, it must be actions of engagement… Pressing issues related to the transformation of today’s globe such as border crossing, migration, travel, exchange with the ‘other’, cultural and geopolitical confrontation and dialogue, etc. are obviously the issues that occupy the centre of this kind of local-based intervention.

Welcome to Limerick. But, it’s too early for vacation… or - it’ll never be a vacation.

Participating artists:

INVITED e v+ a 2008 - Artists

Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla (USA/Cuba)
Chen Shaoxiong, Gimhongsok, Tsuyoshi Ozawa (China, Korea, Japan)
Chen Wenbo (China)
Allan de Souza (Kenya/UK/USA)
Latifa Echakhch (Morocco/FR)
Malaki Farrell (IRL/FR)
Seamus Farrell (IRL/FR)
Ni Haifeng (China/Netherlands)
Yang Jiechang (China/FR)
Ian Kiaer (UK)
Adrian Paci (Albania/Italy)
Taro Shinoda (Japan)
Shahzia Sikander (Pakistan/USA/Germany)
Hague Yang (Korea/Germany)

OPEN e v+ a 2008 - Artists

Alan Bulfin (IRL)
Mark Clare (IRL)
Martina Cleary (IRL)
Common Culture (UK) – Ian Brown, David Campbell, Mark Durden
Angela Darby & Robert Peters (NI)
Aideen Doran (NI)
James Gormley (IRL)
Ailbhe Greaney (IRL)
Fiona Hackett (IRL)
Henna-Rikka Halonen (Finland/UK)
James Hayes (IRL)
Catherine Hearne (IRL)
Nina Höchtl (Austria)
Emma Houlihan (IRL)
Sarah Hurl (IRL)
Ruth Le Gear (IRL)
Terry Markey (IRL)
Tricia McCarthy & Vertigo Smyth (IRL)
Mairéad McClean (UK)
Maeve McElligott (IRL)
Dara McGrath (IRL)
David O’Kane (IRL)
John Reardon (UK)

About the Curator

Hou Hanru, is a Paris – San Francisco based critic and curator. Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs and Chair of Exhibition Studies and Museology at San Francisco Art Institute.. Born in 1963 in China and moved to Paris in 1990s, he is an Advisor (professor) at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Visiting Professor at HISK, Hoger Instituut voor Shone Kunsten, Antwerp, Beligium, Member of Advisory Committee of De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam, French correspondent of “Flash Art International”. He was also a member of Global Advisory Committee of Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis

The e v + a story
A group of Limerick artists began e v + a in 1977 as a way of bringing their work as contemporary artists into mutual close encounters with audiences so that, together, sense and meaning could be made in and of the world all shared. More than three decades on e v + a is still an artist centered exhibition and has become the Republic of Ireland’s premier annual exhibition of contemporary art. Previous e v + a curators include Klaus Ottmann (2007), Katerina Gregos (2006), Dan Cameron (2005), Zdenka Badovinac (2004), Virginia Perez-Ratton (2003), Apinan Poshyananda (2003), Salah M. Hassan (2001), and Rosa Martinez (2000).

e v + a 2007 - Sponsors & Patrons
The Arts Council, Limerick City Council, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Sisk, Fáilte Ireland, The Belltable Arts Centre, The Hunt Museum, The Bourn Vincent Gallery, St. Mary’s Cathedral, Philips Ireland, Clancy Co. Ltd.

Contact person for press or further information;
Paul O’Reilly; e v + a administrator,
Tel : 353 (0)61 318240 or 353 (0) 87 9477042
Email : info@eva.ie
Web site http://www.eva.ie

Afterall

Afterall
Issue 17 is available now

Subscribe online at http://www.afterall.org

Afterall Issue 17
Spring 2008

Essays:
Marta Kuzma on whatever happened to sex in Scandinavia
Walead Beshty on the failure of the readymade

Artists
Lutz Bacher by Lia Gangitano and Anthony Huberman
Gerard Byrne by Bettina Funcke and Maria Muhle
Hans-Peter Feldmann by Ruth Horak and Dieter Roelstraete
Bjarne Melgaard by Ina Blom and Bart De Baere

Events, Works, Exhibitions:
David Bussel on Öyvind Fahlström’s Mao-Hope March
Annie Fletcher on art and feminism
Stephan Pascher on Michael Asher’s Münster caravan project

This issue begins with Marta Kuzma’s exploration of sexual liberation movements in the 1960s in Scandinavia and the United States. Her reflections on the contradictory outcomes of these initiatives, within both cultural and social contexts, open onto a broader discussion in the rest of the journal about the legacy of the revolutionary politics of the late 1960s and 70s.

Gerard Byrne’s reworkings of 1960s utopian visions and Lutz Bacher and Hans-Peter Feldmann’s ironic and humanist appropriations of extant imagery from that time offer distinct takes on what our relationship to that period and its political project is or perhaps should be. Along similar lines, Annie Fletcher’s discussion of recent curatorial approaches to feminist art practice, Stephan Pascher’s look at Michael Asher’s Münster caravan project and David Bussel’s reconsideration of Öyvind Fahlström’s 1966 Mao-Hope March show different possible ways of relating artworks to both their specific histories, often political, and today’s circumstances.

Elsewhere in the issue, the effects of history are considered by Walead Beshty in relation to the advent of the readymade. Beshty characterises this history as that of a trap from which several artists, including Paul McCarthy and Jason Rhoades, have attempted to escape. Apparently similar at first glance, Bjarne Melgaard’s work, thanks to its distinct sensibility and intensity, appears in this issue as both a complement and a point of contrast.

Afterall journal is co-published by Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London and the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, in association with MuHKA, Antwerp.

Afterall can be purchased in bookshops across the UK, Europe and America. Issue 18 will be published in June 2008.

For more information on Afterall or to subscribe, visit http://www.afterall.org