Artipedia - Arts News

Contemporary Art Society

ARTfutures 2008
6 - 12 March 2008
Bloomberg SPACE
50 Finsbury Square
London
EC2A 1HD

http://www.artfutures.org.uk
http://www.contempart.org.uk

ARTfutures 2008 is here!

Artfutures is a unique and un-missable event in the contemporary arts calendar. Each year, the Contemporary Art Society handpicks work by approximately 100 artists to form an exhibition of work for sale. Selected through a combination of exhaustive research including studio visits, ARTfutures offers a truly unrivalled opportunity to buy contemporary art, selected by the UK’s leading non-profit agency for independent advice on contemporary collecting.

The exhibition offers a snapshot of contemporary practice – showing work by artists who have recently graduated to those who have substantial reputations - and embracing the full spectrum of media. Independent curator Jeni Walwin, and artist Nicky Hirst lead the selection this year, inviting a number of distinguished artists to nominate other artists and to contribute work themselves has extended the boundaries of the show.

With prices ranging from 500 to 5000 pounds, approximately 100 artists will contribute around 1000 works, all created in the last two years. ARTfutures is therefore ideal for those in the market for contemporary art and the selectors, curators and specialists from the Contemporary Art Society will be on hand at all times for information and expert advice. ARTfutures will be held at Bloomberg SPACE, London EC2.

“We need artists that expose and exploit the mechanisms of wonder”
Nicky Hirst 2007

Artists confirmed so far:

Pio Abad, Jananne Al-Ani, Ed Allington, Salvatore Arancio, Charles Avery,
Alex Baker, Darren Banks, Beagles and Ramsay, Zadok Ben-David, Simon and Tom Bloor, Brass Art, G.L. Brierley, Matt Calderwood, Jacob Cartwright, Toby Christian, Declan Clarke, Ruth Claxton, Marcus Coates, Liz Collini, Susan Collis, Michael Craig-Martin, Andrew Cross, Simon Cunningham, Layla Curtis, Dexter Dalwood, Kaori Dan, Jeffrey Dennis, Sean Edwards, Giles Eldridge, Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat, Simon Faithfull, Peter Finnemore, Laura Ford, Matt Franks, Margarita Gluzberg, Rachel Goodyear, Tommy Grace, Mark Gubb, Nathalie Guinamard, Graham Gussin, Tim Head, Melanie Jackson, Jackson Webb, Tess Jaray, Juneau Projects, Anish Kapoor, David Kefford, Karin Khilberg and Reuben Henry, Penny Klepuszewska, Karen Knorr, Tim Knowles, Shay Kun, Rannva Kunoy, Langlands and Bell, Julia Langley, Leo, Rory Macbeth, Oswaldo Macia, Alastair Mackie, Sarah MacKillop, Matt & Ross, Jeff McMillan, Sarah Michael, Heather and Ivan Morison, Stephen Nelson, Harold Offeh, Eamon O’Kane, Julian Op
ie, Robert Orchardson, Uriel Orlow, Sally Osborn, Gyan Panchal, Andy Parker, Katie Paterson, Paul Mart, Ana Prada, Elizabeth Price, Kieren Reed, Clunie Reid, Magali Reus, Frances Richardson, Boo Ritson, Keith Roberts, Danny Rolph, Gideon Rubin, Zineb Sedira, DJ Simpson, Jane Simpson, Shaan Syed, Tatham and O’Sullivan, Roy Voss, Ben Washington,
Jen Wei Kuo, Bedwyr Williams, Keith Wilson, John Wood and Paul Harrison

For up-to-date list of participating artists visit http://www.artfutures.org.uk

ARTfutures relies upon the generosity of artists and support of dealers, who allow the Contemporary Art Society to take commission on sales, which generates funds for our charitable work, including purchasing contemporary art to gift to public collections across the UK. In doing so, we ensure contemporary art is accessible to the most diverse audience nationally and that the artists of our own times are represented in public collections, for the pleasure and inspiration of audiences tomorrow.

ARTfutures 2008
6 - 12 March 2008

Bloomberg SPACE
50 Finsbury Square
London
EC2A 1HD

Opening hours:
11am - 6pm daily
Except for Sunday and Monday 11am - 5pm
Late night opening Wed until 9pm
FREE ADMISSION

http://www.artfutures.org.uk
http://www.contempart.org.uk

T 0207 831 3222
E artfutures@contempart.org.uk

arteaméricas

Jose Benito, “no tendra titulo”, 2007,
madera, lapiz, papel filandes y cable de acero
55×160x23cm.
Courtesy of Galeria Via Margutta Arte Contemporaneo, Argentina

arteaméricas
Friday, March 28th -
Monday, March 31st

http://www.arteamericas.com

MERRILL LYNCH ARTEAMERICAS BRINGS THE BEST LATIN AMERICAN ART TO MIAMI

Merrill Lynch arteaméricas, the premier fair of art from Latin America, will be returning to Miami for the sixth year in a row. Starting on Friday, March 28th through Monday, March 31st, Merrill Lynch arteaméricas will showcase the latest trends in paintings, sculpture and multimedia from contemporary artists as well as renowned masters at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

In six short years, Merrill Lynch arteaméricas has become one of the world’s most important and most prestigious fairs of Latin American art. Seventy of the best galleries from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, the United States and Venezuela will be in attendance this year. With them, they will bring works by internationally celebrated artists, including Fernando Botero, Lygia Clark, Wifredo Lam, Armando Reverón, Jesús Soto, Rufino Tamayo and Joaquín Torres-García. Vanguard contemporary artists including José Bedía, Tony Bechara, José Pedro Costigliolo, Eduardo Chapela, Bastón Díaz, León Ferrari, Carmen Herrera, Kcho and Hugo Zapata will also be represented at the 2008 edition of Merrill
Lynch arteaméricas.

Participating galleries include:
Aldo de Sousa, Alvear Arte, Fundación Alfonso y Luz Castillo / Arte x Arte, Archimboldo, Del Infinito Arte, Dharma Galería, Fundación Leopoldo Torres Agüero, GM Espacio de Arte, Pabellón 4, Javier Balina, RO Galería , Van Eyck Galeria de Arte and Via Margutta Arte Contemporáneo, from Argentina; Fundación Es Art and Salar Galeria de Arte, from Bolivia; Alonso Arte, Galería El Museo and Galería Sextante, from Colombia; Galería Jacob Karpio, from Costa Rica; dpm Arte Contemporáneo, from Ecuador; Galería Fernando Pradilla and Joan Guaita, from Spain; Galerie Bourbon-Lally and Galerie Marassa, from Haití; Alfredo Ginocchio, Aqua Gallery, EDS Galería and Quetzalli, from México; Galería Arteconsult, Aleman & Grimberg, from Panamá; Artco Galería, Enlace and La Galería, from Perú; Alinka Arte Contemporáneo, Arawack, Arte Berri and Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery, from Dominican Republic; Galería Sur, from Uruguay; Artepuy, Galería Blasini, Galería Durban S
egnini, Galería Okyo and Juan Ruiz Galeria, from Venezuela.

Latin American art in the United States is widely represented by: Aldo Castillo Art Gallery, Chicago; PanAmerican Art Projects, Dallas; Alejandra von Hartz Fine Art, Amat Gallery, Arévalo Arte, ArtSpace / Virginia Miller, Beaux Arts, Cernuda Arte, Dot Fifty One, Hardcore Art Contemporary Space, Diana Lowenstein Fine Art, Durban Segnini Gallery, dpm Arte Contemporaneo, Latin Art Core, PanAmerican Art Projects, Praxis International Art, Sammer Gallery, Signature Art , The Americas Collection and Tresart, Miami; Cecilia de Torres LTD, Galería Solar, Latin Collector and Leon Tovar Gallery, New York; A. Cueto, Gómez Fine Art and Latitude Art Project, Puerto Rico; Ruiz-Healy Art, San Antonio; and Blue Morphos Gallery, West Palm Beach.

Prestigious art institutions
as Florida’s Arts Connection, Bass Museum of Art, CIFO/ Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Lowe Art Museum, MAM / Miami Art Museum and MOCA / Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Art Ft. Lauderdale, Rubell Family Collection, and the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum; Museo del Barrio from New York; MoLAA from California; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico; and Caracas’ Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros are all supporting the 2008 installation of Merrill Lynch arteaméricas in
Miami Beach.

Merrill Lynch arteaméricas is directed by Leslie Pantín serving as the fair’s President; Emilio Calleja as Vice President; and Diego Costa Peuser, publisher of Arte al Día Internacional and director of PINTA Art Fair in New York as Fair Director of arteaméricas. Visit Merrill Lynch arteaméricas online at http://www.arteamericas.com for more information.

Public Relations Director:
Liana Pérez, liana@artcircuits.com , 305.661.0511

Press Contacts:
Sara Bradford, sara@thinkbsg.com , 305.929.9710
Carolina Ledezma, contacto@artcircuits.com , 347.901.6641

frieze

frieze 113: Out Now

Additional exclusive content online at frieze.com

- Co-editor Jörg Heiser pits Marcel Duchamp against screen hero Rocky in a struggle over the American Dream and Jan Verwoert explores the history of gesture in art and politics. Rocky’s finer moments are relived on frieze.com.

- Peter York remembers the artistic and intellectual milieu of Roxy Music’s early days as explored in Michael Bracewell’s new book on the band.

- Curator James Rondeau surveys the career of Michael Asher, an artist who, for over 40 years, has critiqued the structures of major art insititutions.

- Christy Lange considers the work of Tehran-born photographer Shirana Shahbazi, whose photographs play with ideas of genre and cliché.

- Jenni Sorkin reflects on the work of Zoe Leonard, whose artistic coming-of-age in 1980s New York inspired her exploration of wonder and loss.

- Noemi Smolik discusses the actions and installations of Czech artist Jirí Kovanda, while artist Ján Mancuska talks to him about his pioneering work of the 1970s.

- Peter Doig talks about the ‘StudioFilmClub’ he runs in Trinidad with fellow artist Che Lovelace.

- Dan Fox responds to British artist Simon Martin’s films, paintings and sculptures.

- Director of the 2007 Venice Biennale, Robert Storr, berates his critics for choosing to ignore some essential facts.

- Matthew Brannon responds to the frieze questionnaire.

And

- Tirdad Zolghadr asks why we dare not speak the name of ‘class’, the perennial coversational icemaker.

Reviews include Lawrence Weiner at the Whitney, Valeska Soares in Sao Paulo and artist Steven Claydon’s first foray in curating in London, plus more from Australia, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA.

Exclusively online at frieze.com this month:

- New York base design critic Jennifer Kabat kicks off her regular design column.

- frieze editors engage online with readers in the Comment section

- Weekly reviews of exhibitions from around the world, including current shows from Yokohama, Paris, Rotterdam and New York.

- Listen to sample tracks from albums reviewed in the magazine’s regular music section.

Brandon Ballengée, Malamp UK, 2008

E.P.A. (Environmental Performance Actions)
Opening: Saturday March 15, 7-9pm
March 15 – May 3, 2008

Exit Art
(Exit Underground)
475 Tenth Avenue
A,C,E to 34th Street
212-966-7745

Exit Art is pleased to announce the opening of E.P.A. (Environmental Performance Actions), the first project of S.E.A, a large-scale program dealing with current environmental concerns and the way artists respond to them. E.P.A is a group exhibition surveying recent performance work from around the world that addresses current environmental crises. The exhibition will consist of videos, photographs, texts, related ephemera and a film program documenting recent performances. For this opening project we have invited Amy Lipton, co-curator, and Patricia Watts, co-curator and founder, of ecoartspace, a leading international environmental arts organization, to collaborate with Exit Art on the organization and presentation of this material.

Participating artistst include, Brandon Ballengée, Vaughn Bell/Sarah Kavage/Nicole Kistler, Mark Brest van Kempen, Carissa Carman/ Joanna Lake, Susanne Cockrell/Ted Purves, Xavier Cortada, Carrie Dashow/Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg, Erica Fielder, Ozzie Forbes, Futurefarmers, Aaron Gach, Fritz Haeg, Amy Howden-Chapman, Basia Irland, Scot Kaplan, Carolyn Lambert, Robin Lasser, Kathryn Miller, Miss Rockaway Armada, Matthew Moore, Eve Mosher, EcoArtTech: Cary Peppermint/ Christine Nadir, Andrea Polli and Joe Gimore with Dr. Patrick Market, Rapid Response (Cobb/Fend/Fischer/Meyer), James Reed and Social Sculpture Research Unit/Earth Agenda Projects, Austin Shull, Brooke Singer/Brian Rigney Hubbard, Anne-Katrin Spiess, Chris Sollars

Aperture

Aperture magazine

Spring 2008 in Aperture

To subscribe, visit http://www.aperture.org/magazine

The spring issue of Aperture (issue 190) features:

• Colour Before Color
Martin Parr discusses six important but overlooked European practitioners of color photography.

• The Shadow of the World: James Welling’s Cameraless and Abstract Photography
Abstraction and photograms have been a consistent part of Welling’s work. Noam M. Elcott traces these essential aspects.

• From Ecstasy to Agony: The Fashion Shoot in Cinema
David Campany considers the portrayal of the fashion photographer in films, from Funny Face
to Blow-Up.

• JH Engström: Looking for Presence
Martin Jaeggi on this Swedish photographer’s enigmatic photographs.

• Presence of Mind: The Photographs of Philip Jones Griffiths
Famed war photographer Griffiths discusses his shattering work in Vietnam and Cambodia.

• Muzi Quawson: Pull Back the Shade
A selection of images from this emerging photographer’s debut series.

• Of Other Times and Places
In the first of an ongoing series of articles, Fred Ritchin considers the “postphotographic” landscape.

• In a Lonely Place
Gregory Crewdson reflects upon the films, paintings, and photographs from which he draws inspiration, and shows a few new works of his own.

PLUS: Exhibition reviews from New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, and China. Book reviews of new titles by Bob Richardson and Boris Mikhailov.

The Showroom

Bianca Hester
projectprojects

5 March - 13 April 2008
[gallery closed 21 - 23 March]
Opening Tuesday 4 March
19.00 - 21.00 hrs
First Thursdays Late Night Opening 6 March until 20.30 hrs
Special weekend of activities
15 - 16 March

http://www.theshowroom.org

The Showroom is delighted to announce that it has invited Melbourne-based artist Bianca Hester to present her first solo show in London between March and April this year. In Australia, Hester is gaining a reputation for her collaborations and projects that collect activity around temporary structures, public situations and live events. Using a range of prosaic materials (such as plasticine, carpet and miscellaneous building supplies) she creates scattered installations of partial-objects and quasi-architectural constructions.

Hester has been in residence at The Showroom since January forming projectprojects, an evolving sculptural installation that has transformed the gallery into a base-camp for the generation and presentation of collaborations with a range of practitioners from Melbourne and London. projectprojects experiments with constructing situations that provide opportunities for the viewer to have a variety of different levels of engagement with the work. Hester approaches art as a ‘proliferating event’; a fragmentary, multi-layered and unfolding process that is context specific. For projectprojects she has plugged into the local knowledge and practices in Bethnal Green and as the project has developed, the installation has functioned as a setting for a series of events ranging from the planning of a raft to navigate Regent’s Canal to the recording of experimental performances on home-made
musical instruments.

Bianca Hester is a founding member of CLUBSproject Inc, Melbourne, an artists initiated project and has shown in group projects at ACCA and Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne and MCA, Sydney. In addition she has been awarded a number of residencies and prizes across Australasia. For more information see http://www.biancahester.net

As part of projectprojects a special weekend of activities has been planned for 15 and 16 March, including a panel discussion, plus an event culminating at Laburnum Boat Club. For further information please contact Natasha Tebbs at The Showroom on 020 8983 4115 or by email at natasha@theshowroom.org

The Showroom is financially assisted by Arts Council England, Moose Foundation for the Arts and the many members of the gallery’s Friends Scheme. Bianca Hester’s commission is supported by Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Victoria. Bianca Hester would like to thank Olivia Barrett, Phillipe Ciompi, Ari Dyball, Ella Gibbs, Kris Kimpe, Daniel van Cleemput, Jude Walton and Paeces whose participation has formed parts of projectprojects.

The Showroom
44 Bonner Road
London E2 9JS
T. +44 (0)20 8983 4115
E. tellmemore@theshowroom.org
W. http://www.theshowroom.org
F. +44 (0)20 8981 4112
Wednesday - Sunday 13.00 - 18.00 hrs

Pawnshop to file for bankruptcy
CLOSE OUT SALE
February 29th, 2008

PAWNSHOP
53 Ludlow street
New York, NY 10002

Pawnshop to file for bankruptcy

NEW YORK, February 24th 2008 —Troubled art project by Julieta Aranda, Liz Linden and Anton Vidokle, entitled Pawnshop, said yesterday it will close at the end of this month and file for bankruptcy protection, becoming the latest such lender to fall to the mounting mortgage and credit crises and general recession around the United States.



The artists said in an announcement that they have stopped accepting new submissions, and that talks are underway with potential buyers to leverage its artistic assets. Pawnshop said that it has been unable to complete a hoped-for deal for further financing with Manhattan-based Angelo, Lewis & Co.

Pawnshop said in its announcement, “We do not expect to be able to consummate the…transaction with Angelo, Lewis & Co. Furthermore, Pawnshop does not believe that it will be able to continue as a going concern.” Staff of Pawnshop and Angelo, Lewis & Co. did not return calls for comment.



Pawnshop, which has reduced its workforce in recent months, did not spell out the impact of the bankruptcy on the remaining employees.



But at least five people were seen leaving Pawnshop ’s office on Ludlow Street with boxes by early afternoon yesterday and three acknowledged that they had been laid off, although they would not give their names. Another person said there had been “a lot of tears” at the shop because “people love this place.” People said they would not give their names because Pawnshop had told them not to talk to the press.


Charles Seilinger, founder of Fast Easy Funding in Wheehawken, NJ, said there was little surprise in Pawnshop’s bankruptcy. “I was shocked that they hung on as long as they did,” Seilinger said. “They were only a small-time lender. With the current economic climate, nobody is willing to buy that art stuff.”

A former Pawnshop assistant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was taken aback by the bankruptcy filing. “I am surprised because it’s such a well-run art project,” said the former assistant, who worked at Pawnshop for several months before being laid off a few days ago. “They were not by any stretch of the imagination a project that took risks. That was evident in their artists line-up. But I’m not surprised that the market forces were bigger than they were. Unfortunately, they were not operating in a vacuum.”

Pawnshop ’s announcement, coming on the same day that President Bush announced the federal government’s plan to try to defuse the mortgage crisis, follows other lender companies around the country filing for bankruptcy, including the giant American Home Mortgage. American Home, one of the top 10 mortgage companies in the country, collapsed over the summer. 

The final day of Pawnshop ’s operation in New York — Friday, February 29th, dubbed Black Friday by industry insiders, is expected to feature a massive “going out of business” sale and a goodbye reception for patrons of the establishment. The precise hour of the reception has not been confirmed, but an ex-employee told us that she is “95% sure the shop will stay open real late on this last day, at least till 10PM and possibly even later.”

Unconfirmed rumors surrounding the closing in New York suggest that Aranda, Linden & Vidokle are trying to relocate Pawnshop to a more robust economic zone. Rotterdam and Beijing were named among several possible new locations. 

Pawnshop ’s controversy has recently appeared in the New York Times and the BBC world radio. 

At its peak, Pawnshop included works by: Lucas Ajemian, Ayreen Anastas, James Angus, Julieta Aranda, Artemio, Julie Ault, Fia Backström, Steven Baldi, Agnes Barley, Julien J. Bismuth, Bengala, Mike Bouchet, Ethan Breckenridge, Willie Brisco & Danna Wajda, Kadar Brock, AA Bronson/General Idea, François Bucher, Paul Chan, Jan Christensen, Heman Chong, COPYSHOP/Superflex, Keren Cytter, Marcelline Delbecq, Wilson Diaz, Nico Dockx, Christoph Draeger, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Jakup Ferri, Jean-Pascal Flavien, Claire Fontaine, Rene Gabri, Nikolas Gambaroff, Mario Garcia Torres, Jaime Gecker, Benjamin Gervis, Andrea Geyer, Simryn Gill, Liam Gillick, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Martha Rosler, Diango Hernández, Gregory Hilton, Ralf Homann, Karl Holmqvist, Sejla Kameric, Matt Keegan, Christoph Keller, Brandon Kennedy, Gabriel Kuri, Adriana Lara, Annika Larsson, Francine LeClercq, Gabriel Lester, Liz Linden, Esther Lu, Rodrigo Mallea Lira, Aleksandra Mir, Naeem Mohaiemen, Lucas Moran, C
arlos Motta, Sina Najafi, Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere, Olaf Nicolai, Ernesto Neto, Ylva Ogland, Yoshua Okon, Serge Onnen, Joe Pflieger, Lisi Raskin, Fay Ray, Martha Rosler, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Anri Sala, Eduardo Sarabia, Aaron Simonton, Matt Sheridan Smith, Michael Smith, Nedko Solakov, Kimsooja, Francesco Spampinato, Anna Stein, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Gabriela Vainsencher, Costa Vece, Anton Vidokle, Lawrence Weiner, Florian Wüst and Andrea Zittel.

Ernst Museum

Wim Delvoye
February 16 - March 23, 2008

Ernst Museum
Nagymezo u. 8..
H-1065Budapest
Phone: (36 1) 413 1310
Fax: (36 1) 321 6410
info@mucsarnok.hu
http://www.ernstmuzeum.hu

Ernst Museuem Budapest is pleased to present the solo show of Wim Delvoye open until March 23.

An event of LOW, the Dutch-Flemish Cultural Festival, Budapest 2008

Opening: Friday, 15 February 2008, 6 p.m.
Opening speech by: Dieter Roelstraete, curator of MuHKA, Antwerp

Whether you love it or hate it, you will have an opinion: Wim Delvoye, enfant terrible of the contemporary scene, makes art that will not go unnoticed. These provocative works, which make emphatic use of antagonisms, flout conventions and dogmas. His raw honesty and grotesque humour will make you laugh and wonder at the same time.

It is impossible not to notice a kinship with earlier Belgian art. His works resonate with Ensor’s scatological/obscene humour, Magritte’s austere absurdism, Broodthaers’ interest in the unspoken rules of the world of art. Delvoye’s art is a celebration of paradox, based as it is on the Belgian surrealist tradition, the practice of conjoining two different elements/ideas in the same work. The gas cylinders painted in the style of Delft porcelain; the teak wood concrete mixer with baroque ornamentation; painted glass windows with sex scenes; excavators in the style of gothic cathedrals: they all reference, in their peculiar manner, the history of art.

His creative methods extend from the simple drawing to real tattoos, from stuffed animals to bronze casts, from installation to live pigs, from lipstick marks to X-ray photos. If his works are often heavy, massive, they are always vibrant with playful ideas and an ironic overtone.

Beside the pigs tattooed with elaborately detailed Harley-Davidson and Walt Disney motifs, his probably best-known work is Cloaca (2000-2007), which he has prepared in eight versions. The large installation is a complex device that models human digestion. It has a mouth, a stomach, a duodenum and a pancreas, containers with enzymes, and a belt conveyor, which produces, when regularly fed, the end result,
i.e. excrement.

Born in 1965, Wim Delvoye lives and works in Gent. He earned international recognition with such high-profile exhibitions as the Venice Biennale in 1990 and 1999, and the Documenta 9 in 1992. Presented in Ernst Museum, the exhibition offers an overview of the Flemish artist’s work to date, where beside the tattooed pigs and the Gothic concrete mixer truck, an original, working Cloaca is expected to invite considerable media attention.

The exhibition was initiated by art historian Barnabás Bencsik.
Curator: Kati Simon, Mucsarnok / Kunsthalle, Budapest

The exhibition was made possible with the precious help of the Studio Wim Delvoye in Ghent
( info@cloaca.be ).

Special sponsor of the exhibition, caterer of Cloaca is: Két Szerecsen Cafe and Bistro in Budapest
( http://www.ketszerecsen.com ).

Supporters: Embassy of Belgium – Flemish Representation, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, National Cultural Fund of Hungary, Flemish Authorities, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands, Service Centre for International Cultural Activities / SICA, Hungarofest, Ministry of Education and Culture of Hungary, Két Szerecsen Cafe and Bistro

Media sponsors: Art-magazin, Színes RTV

For further information please contact:
Reka Csejdy at rcsejdy@mucsarnok.hu

The Hayward

Julian Rosefeldt, Clown (detail), 2005
3-screen film installation
Copyright: the artist 2007
Courtesy Arndt & Partner Berlin / Zurich and
Max Wigram Gallery London

LAUGHING IN A
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
25 January - 13 April 2008

The Hayward
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/visual-arts

In the first major UK gallery survey of its kind, Laughing in a Foreign Language explores the role of laughter and humour in contemporary art through the work of 30 international artists, including Jake and Dinos Chapman (UK); Ugo Rondinone (Switzerland); Makoto Aida (Japan); Doug Fishbone (US); John Bock (Germany); David Shrigley (UK); Jun Yang (China); Julian Rosefeldt (Germany); Olaf Breuning (Switzerland); Candice Breitz (South Africa), Matthew Griffin (Australia) and Marcus Coates (UK). Laughing in a Foreign Language, from 25 January – 13 April is the first exhibition curated by The Hayward’s new international Curator, Mami Kataoka.

In a time of increasing globalisation, the exhibition questions if humour can only be appreciated by people with similar cultural, political or historical backgrounds and memories, or whether it can act as a catalyst for understanding the unfamiliar. Bringing together 80 works including videos, photographs and interactive installations, many of which have not been shown in the UK before, the show investigates the whole spectrum of humour, from jokes, gags and slapstick to irony, wit and satire, as well as questioning what it means to share a sense of humour and what it is that makes an individual laugh.

Talks and Events:
MARCUS COATES
Spirit Caravan: mobile personal consulting
Saturday 1 March, 3pm-6pm

DOUG FISHBONE
An Evening with Doug Fishbone
Saturday 1 March, 6.30pm

GHAZEL: Home film screening
Friday 4 March, 7pm

ABOUT LAUGHTER, SERIOUSLY: LAUGHLAB
Tuesday 11 March, 7pm

JAKE CHAPMAN
Wednesday 26 March, 7pm

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/laughing

Also on at The Hayward:
Alexander Rodchenko: Revolution in Photography
7 February - 27 April 2008
Featuring some 120 original prints and photomontages, the exhibition traces the development of Rodchenko’s photography over two decades from 1923, a period when he created many classic works of Russian and world photography. The exhibition is organised by the Moscow House of Photography and curated by its Director Olga Sviblova. The Hayward’s presentation of this exhibition is made possible with the support of Roman Abramovich.

Talks:
RODCHENKO: REVOLUTIONARY AND ROMANTIC
Talk by David Elliot, cultural historian and curator
Friday 11 February, 7pm

RODCHENKO: THE LEGEND AND THE LEGACY
Talk by curator Olga Sviblova
Tuesday 15 April, 7pm

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/rodchenko

MartRovereto

Chen Zhen
Purification Room
2000
Oggetti trovati, argilla, muri, pavimento
350 x 800 x 600 cm
Ph. Ela Bialkowska
Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano-Beijing

Chen Zhen. The Body as Landscape
23rd February 2008 to 1st June 2008

Vincenzo Agnetti
23rd February 2008 to 1st June 2008
http://www.mart.trento.it

Chen Zhen. The Body as Landscape
Curated by Gerald Matt and Ilse Lafer
Co-produced by Mart and the Vienna Kunsthalle
MartRovereto, 23rd February 2008 to 1st June 2008

Vincenzo Agnetti
Curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, Giorgio Verzotti.
In collaboration with: Archivio Vincenzo Agnetti, Milano
MartRovereto, 23rd February - 1st June 2008

The Mart – Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto – will be showing “Chen Zhen. The Body as Landscape”, the first anthological selection to be hosted in Italy following the premature death of the Chinese artist Chen Zhen (Shanghai 1955 - Paris 2000)

Mart is also the first museum to present an anthological exhibition dedicated to Vincenzo Agnetti (Milan 1926-1981). Curated by Achille Bonito Oliva and Giorgio Verzotti, the exhibition is offered in collaboration with the Archivio Vincenzo Agnetti in Milan.

Both shows will be on display at MartRovereto from 23rd February 2008 to 1st June 2008

The Chen Zhen exhibition will present not only a rich selection of works and installations, produced from 1989 to 2000 and on loan from international museums and private collections, but also a section dedicated to unfinished projects, never before shown to the public.

Having grown up during the Cultural Revolution in China, Chen Zhen has lived and worked in Shanghai, New York and Paris. All his work goes beyond the borders commonly marked between Oriental and Western thinking, and even evades systematic classification on the basis of labels commonly associated with art movements.

Deliberately avoiding rigid membership of any group and consolidated expressive languages, Chen Zhen placed a striving for synthesis as the basis for his work, questioning himself, for instance, on the strength and universality of human desire to avoid wars in favour of peaceful mediation.

A protagonist in the most radical research in the field of the visual arts, Vincenzo Agnetti may be considered the leading Italian exponent of conceptual art, characterising at least a decade of international visual culture.

After a brief period of exploring informal art, in 1960 Agnetti embarked upon an intense activity as writer and theorist of contemporary art, supporting artists such as Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani, and such groups as the Azimuth, active in Milan in the early 1960s.

At the end of the decade, Agnetti continued his theoretical reflections on art, its role and languages, but shifting his attention to the actual production of art.

Agnetti’s works are proposals of a mental nature. Frequently, they involve a self-analysis based upon a comparison of image and word, aiming to verify the function of verbal and visual languages. The numerous invitations he received to international exhibitions like Documenta at Kassel, in 1972, and to various editions of the Venice Biennale, gave Agnetti a recognition that placed him at the same level as artists involved in the “deconstruction” of artistic languages, such as John Baldessari or Joseph Kosuth in the United States, or Daniel Buren and Victor Burgin, in Europe.

His premature death at the age of 55 prevented Agnetti from maturing the form of his art, which in the last years was returning to a manual approach, but modified by the use of photography.

The Mart’s exhibition constitutes the first step in a necessary critical re-examination of Agnetti’s work, which has hitherto been the object of only sporadic and incomplete studies.

The catalogue, featuring critical texts by Achille Bonito Oliva, Tommaso Trini, Giorgio Verzotti and Chiara Bertola, will be a particularly broad-ranging monograph and will document the entire corpus of Agnetti’s work, including works not on display.

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