Archive for March, 2008

Salvage — Eric Deis and Jeremy Isao Speier at Elissa Cristall Gallery

Monday, March 31st, 2008

DTES-EricDeis-Laundry-53x49.jpg
Eric Deis, “Laundry”, 46″ x 50″, Archival Pigment Print.

Eric Deis and Jeremy Isao Speier
“Salvage”
April 4 – 26, 2008
Elissa Cristall Gallery

Reception Friday April 4, 6 pm - 9 pm

VANCOUVER, BC — Elissa Cristall Gallery is pleased to present “Salvage” an exhibition featuring Vancouver artists Eric Deis and Jeremy Isao Speier. The exhibition will run from April 4 to 26, 2008.

Salvage is an exhibition of photography and kinetic sculpture by Vancouver artists Eric Deis and Jeremy Isao Speier. Through two distinct styles and media, these artists reconnect the discrete fragments of urban living to render an extraordinary view of the city’s unwritten histories. Deis’ large-scale photographs immerse the viewer into a vivid vista of colour and detail of urban life. Speier’s fragments extracted from urban life are rebuilt and re-contextualized in his dynamic sculptures.

Through contemporary landscape photography, Deis’ images critically examine how we relate to the place and time in which we live and the impact we as humans have on our environment. In “Laundry”, Deis captures the mental state of Vancouver’s Downtown East-side with an image of a four-storey alder tree conspicuously covered in articles of clothing.

Speier uses obsolete and self-made technology, narratives, images and visual models to transform manufactured objects into kinetic sculpture. Speier developed his new series of work using hand-made electronic circuits, a 556/Logic timer-chip (the brain) and a relay (magneto-switch), during his recent residency at the Western Front.

Eric Deis is an Adjunct Professor of Photography at Emily Carr Institute. He is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego (M.F.A.) and Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, Vancouver. His artwork has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, and Europe. He is a recipient of the 2007 Visual Art Development Award from the Vancouver Foundation.

Jeremy Isao Speier, a Japanese-Canadian, is a graduate of Emily Carr College of Art & Design. His work has been exhibited in Canada in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He is a three-time award recipient of the Filmmakers Assistance Program from the National Film Board of Canada.

Contact:
Elissa Cristall Gallery
2245 Granville Street
Vancouver BC
V6H 3G1
604.730.9611
http://www.cristallgallery.com

Kati Heck at Museum Het Domein

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Artipedia - Arts News
Museum Het Domein

Bonzenspeck und Prollgehabe, 2008

Kati Heck
Bonzenspeck und Prollgehabe
April 5 - June 15, 2008

Opening: Friday April 4, 17 h.

Museum Het Domein SITTARD
The Netherlands
Postbus 230
6130 AE Sittard
T.: ( 0031) 046 4513460
http://www.hetdomein.nl

First Solo museum exhibition contemporary art; paintings, installation, video
Bonzenspeck und Prollgehabe is the first solo museum exhibition of Kati Heck (Düsseldorf 1979). Kati Heck offers her comments on today’s society on monumental canvases, in installations, drawings and video work. With a no-holds-barred approach, the Antwerp-based artist subtly enshrines her observations in visual elements, compositions and art historical references. Often depicting herself or people she knows, Heck’s work is laden with burlesque-like imagery and challenges social and artistic conventions with drama and irony. With consummate ease and a childlike eye, Heck’s narrative, techniques and themes converge with a contained energy, producing confrontational paintings where formalism and fiction meet.

The T-time accompanying the Kati Heck exhibition is on Sunday May 18 at 12.30 pm.

At the same time you can visit in the ProjectRoom of the museum Reflexion, a genuine willingness to explore communication, a project from MIM (Made In Mirrors) with Els Beusen and Hiroaki Kanai.
(til May 12)

More information and images can be found in the press room on the museum’s home page at http://www.hetdomein.nl . Or contact us: Karin Adams or Lene ter Haar 0031 46 451 34 60; karin.adams@hetdomein.nl

Frieze issue 114 out now

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Artipedia - Arts News
Frieze

Frieze 114: Out Now
Additional exclusive content online at frieze.com

http://www.frieze.com

This month in an issue of frieze themed around artists and social reality.

Artist Collier Schorr edits the disturbing images of Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov.

Nancy Spector proposes that our ‘reality’-crazed culture – whether in US presidential politics or in the possible recreation of Lyon in Dubai – is increasingly intertwined with fiction.

Mark Nash reflects on documentary and fiction in the age of aesthetics.

Kirsty Bell discusses the possibilities of exile and representation in the work of Emily Jacir, an artist who travels between the USA and Palestine.

Polly Staple considers the films of Clemens von Wedemeyer, examining the ways in which social behaviour is defined by architectural spaces.

Jan Verwoert explores the social experiments of Artur Zmijewski, whose provocative videos reveal disquieting aspects of human nature.

In Life in Film, Hito Steyerl rues the rampant infantilization, banal game shows and cuteness cults from the 1980s, which accelerated the death of avant-garde film in Japan.

Dan Fox confronts the tribulations of the critic in State of the Art by asking whose conditions of production matter more – the critic’s, the artist’s or the reader’s?

And frieze considers the practices of Duncan Campbell, Hannah Rickards, Hany Armanious and Guido van der Werve in the regular artist Focus feature, with a further 25 exhibition reviews from countries including the UK, USA, Mexico, Mali, Australia, The Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Italy
and France.

Exclusively online at frieze.com
Berlin-based musician Nick Currie; (Momus) considers the future of online contemporary art coverage.
Design critic Jennifer Kabat looks at past icons of design commencing with Robert Rauschenberg’s artwork for the Talking Heads.
Oslo-based writer Tony F.Wilson gets a sense of deja vu from new albums from Autechre and Benga.
And,
Sean O’Toole begins a regular column reporting on South Africa’s contemporary art scene after the flourish of Johannesburg’s big art week.
Plus, online exhibition reviews from London, Bangkok, Paris, Yokohama and beyond.

………………
Subscribe to frieze now and save 40% off the cover price.
http://www.frieze.com

ART HK 08 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Artipedia - Arts News
ART HK 08

Li Wei, Mirror, Hong Kong, 2006
courtesy of 10 Chancery Lane Gallery and the artist

ART HK 08 – Hong Kong’s first international art fair in a decade
14 to 18 May (Preview 14 May)

http://www.hongkongartfair.com

Momentum is building for ART HK 08, Hong Kong’s first truly international art fair in a decade, which firmly establishes the city’s position as the centre of the art market in Asia. The inaugural fair is to be held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 14 - 18 May 2008. The organisers have now announced the full list of galleries from 19 countries confirmed to exhibit.

Magnus Renfrew, Fair Director says “We are delighted to have signed-up such a prestigious roster of galleries. The Fair has received an overwhelming global response which we see as recognition of the fact that China is now firmly positioned as the third largest art market in the world. Hong Kong, with its unique gateway status between East and West, provides the perfect location for a new major fixture on the international art calendar.”

Lehman Brothers, the global investment bank, is Lead Sponsor of the Fair.

Works for sale at ART HK 08 will range from blue chip work by well-known artists, to more accessible pieces by emerging artists. The Fair will also include a curated exhibition of new artistic talent from Hong Kong, a series of talks ‘Hong Kong Conversations’ organized the Asia Art Archive and guided tours throughout the event.

On the opening day of the Fair, there will be an invitation-only preview, and the opening night reception, Vernissage, will aid the Hong Kong Cancer Fund. A one day conference organised by Asia Art Archive and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, entitled ‘Shifting Sites: Cultural Desire and the Museum’ takes place on the 17 May addressing the role of the museum in today’s cities. Speakers include Sheena Wagstaff, Chief Curator, Tate Modern and Yuko Hasegawa, Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

For the gallery list and more information http://www.hongkongartfair.com

Fair Dates
Wednesday 14 May
Press/VIP Preview, 3-6pm (Invitation only)
Vernissage, 6-9pm (Invitation and pre-booked tickets only)

Thursday 15 - Sunday 18 May
General Opening, 11am to 7pm

Venue
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

Enquiries
info@hongkongartfair.com
Tel +852 2918 8793

Lead Sponsor:
Lehman Brothers

Tadashi Kawamata at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Artipedia - Arts News
Museum of Contemporary
Art Tokyo (MOT)

Tadashi Kawamata”Walkway”
(C)ANZAI

Tadashi Kawamata [Walkway]
9 February 2008 - 13 April 2008

Museum of Contemporary
Art Tokyo (MOT)
4-1-1, Miyoshi, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-0022 JAPAN
Tel: +81 (0)3 5245 4111
Fax: +81 (0)3 5124 1141
http://www.mot-art-museum.jp/english
The exhibition’s official site:
http://www.kawamata.mot-art-museum.jp

Viewers, through their own movement, produce an exhibition that never ends.
What do people look at, in what way?
If there were a wall, how would it affect the flow of people?
In a certain place, people collect, sit down, make discoveries. . . .

Tracing Kawamata’s journey of the past 30 years, from 1978 to 2008, we see that his career has been a continuing attempt to connect–and be a “walkway” –between art and the everyday.

To turn the art museum into a “walkway”–such will be the nature of Kawamata’s new project this time. A walkway is an intermediate territory or threshold, a detour between two places, or else a contact zone. The art museum–something usually perceived as a storehouse or display area. By perceiving it as a “walkway” on which people come and go, how will Kawamata alter its spaces, its functions?

With this keyword, “walkway,” as a lamp, viewers will survey the works he has created since his student days, including projects unfinished and yet to begin. As they come and go on this “walkway,” furthermore, they will observe people holding meetings, laboring, and engaging in dialogue, and may even find involvement in such activity. Tadashi Kawamata’s “Walkway” is the practice of reconstructing experiences related to everyday life. Working without beginning or end, he creates an autonomous place in order to work free from limitation by goals or norms.

The exhibition is curated by Fumihiko Sumitomo, SeniorCurator, MOT.

The concept book for this exhibition including photo documents of Kawamata’s projects, snapshot photos and sketches with surveyed biography and bibliography is published from Bijutsu
Shuppan-Sha, Ltd.

For further information please contact Reiko Noguchi, Press Office, Museum of Contemporary Art
Tokyo, Japan.

Email: r-noguchi@mot-art.jp Tel: +81 (0) 3-5245-1134 / Fax: +81 (0) 3-5245-1141,

Tadashi Kawamata [Walkway] was organized by: Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture – Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Under the patronage of : Embassy of France
In cooperation with: Hewlett-Packard Japan, Ltd.

Asier Mendizabal at MACBA

Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Artipedia - Arts News
Museu d’Art Contemporani
de Barcelona

Bigger than a cult, smaller than a mass (one, two backdrops), 2006
Copyright: Asier Mendizabal, 2008
Foto: Juanchi Pegoraro

ASIER MENDIZABAL

Exhibition dates: Until 18 May 2008
Curator: Peio Aguirre
Produced by: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)

Museu d’Art Contemporani
de Barcelona
Plaça dels Angels, 1
08001 Barcelona
http://www.macba.es

Asier Mendizabal (Ordizia, Gipuzkoa, 1973) is one of the Basque artists of the new generation who pays closest attention to the relations between form, discourse and ideology.

The exhibition at MACBA includes pieces done since 1999. This presentation is not intended to be a retrospective and is organised around a recontextualisation of pieces and fragments that have been shown in different places and situations, now in a new setting and a new order with an updated organic quality that highlights new associations and relations.

Mendizabal’s activity may be described as a critique of ideology from the staging of the structures that give it shape. To do so he does not hesitate to use the most suitable languages and tools for each occasion: sculpture, photography, video, film.

His way of looking at social structures leads him to sketch a map of ‘totality’ through the expanded fields of art, music, film, politics and theory.

There are two key strategies in his method. The first is a formalist or analytical investigation of the sign as signifier through graphic and sculptural manipulations that shows the ideology concealed in the form.

In this tendency Mendizabal uses material things that explicitly refer to ways of achieving popular forms and a certain urban do-it-yourself where the crystallisation of symbology in the forms of politics meets punk, rock or hardcore subcultures.

The second is a documentary treatment and a technique close to cinéma vérité and photographic documentary which portrays different expressions of folklore or representations of the landscape and the people.

In his activity there is also a will to combine manual work with immaterial or intellectual work and then link them to a politics of desire which could well be described by the phrase ‘love and politics’.

The exhibition at MACBA contains works from both tendencies united by a design device like a new functional element created as a mechanism that joins the parts to the whole.

In addition to this device, there is a new work developed for the occasion, whose history goes back to the early nineties in Bilbao, when the fall of the Berlin Wall (as a metaphor for the defeat of socialism) was followed by a public initiative to raise a monument to Marx and Lenin in the Otxarkoaga district with busts acquired from the dismantling of the communist block.

A catalogue with essays by Bartomeu Marí, the curator Peio Aguirre, critic Diedrich Diederichsen and musician Ian Svenonius, as well as extracts from the artist’s writings, has been published for
the occasion.

CCS Bard Spring Exhibitions April 13 - 27

Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Artipedia - Arts News
Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College

From left to right: Tacita Dean, Kodak, 2006, courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Loverboy), 1989, courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery and The Estate of Felix Gonzalez-Torres; Jen DeNike, Flag Girls, 2006, courtesy of Smith-Stewart Gallery, New York.

Spring Exhibitions in the CCS Galleries
April 13 – 27, 2008

Opening reception:
Sunday, April 13, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Center for Curatorial Studies and
Hessel Museum of Art
Bard College, PO Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000
845-758-7598
ccs@bard.edu
http://www.bard.edu/ccs

Another Time
Chen Chieh-jen, Tacita Dean, and Peter Hutton
The three films in Another Time are poetic visions of disappearing technology and industries. By slowing down the viewer’s experience of time, the films encourage reflection on the personal and collective loss connected to notions of linear history, progress, technological advancement and global economies.
Curated by Milena Hoegsberg

(loverboy), sleep, shatter, handheld bird
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rodney Graham, Barry Le Va, and Charles Ray
Four works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rodney Graham, Barry Le Va, and Charles Ray are brought together based on a series of affective relationships, emphasizing a central concern of both the art on view and the exhibition’s organizing premise: the charged space of encounter between materials, objects, bodies, or experiences, and the new meanings that come from their meeting.
Curated by Daniel Byers

Under the Influence
John Baldessari, Jen DeNike, Nancy Holt, Tim Jackson, Joan Jonas, David Jones, Jill Magid, Rachel Mason, Michele O’Marah, and Robert Smithson
In every relationship—be it lover, student, teacher, friend, colleague—there exists a tension, a psychological push-pull, a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) tug-of-war between dominance and submission. These frictions can surface under stress, but also amidst seemingly playful moments. Under the Influence considers what happens when this aspect of life enters the art-making process. Opening day performances by: Rachel Mason, snowboots, and Arctic Circle.
Curated by Anat Ebgi

Museum Hours:
Wednesday – Sunday, 1:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public.

Free transportation is available on a chartered bus that leaves from New York City for the opening reception. The bus returns to New York after the opening. For reservations, call 845.758.7598 or write ccs@bard.edu

For more information, call CCS Bard at 845.758.7598, write ccs@bard.edu , or visit http://www.bard.edu/ccs

Also on view: Second Thoughts
Hessel Museum of Art, March 16 – May 25

Second Thoughts presents exhibition as revision. Curated by 14 graduate students at the Center for Curatorial Studies, it is a direct response to Exhibitionism (October 20, 2007 – February 3, 2008), a series of autonomous and idiosyncratic micro-exhibitions that were curated by Matthew Higgs for each of the 16 galleries in the Hessel Museum of Art. By engaging amplification, erasure, extension, and redress, Second Thoughts seeks to alter the strategies utilized by Higgs in Exhibitionism to progressively revise the
entire exhibition.

French artist Marcelline Delbecq (b. 1977) contributes a new work for Second Thoughts that will interact with the preceding exhibition, Exhibitionism, thus incorporating the history of the site into the structure of her work. Additionally, New York–based artist Jaime Isenstein (b. 1975)—whose video work was recently brought into the Hessel Collection—will present a durational performance in the Museum (April 13, 1:00–4:00 p.m.) where she transforms herself into the arms and legs of a wingback chair.

Artists: Rita Ackermann, David Altmejd, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Laurie Anderson, Carl Andre, John Baldessari, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Robert Beck, John Bock, Alighiero e Boetti, Cosima von Bonin, Jonathan Borofsky, David Bunn, Gary Burnley, Scott Burton, John Cage, Paul Chan, Cecelia Condit, John Currin, Marcelline Delbecq, Donna Dennis, Carroll Dunham, Valie Export, Fischli and Weiss, Saul Fletcher, Isa Genzken, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Nancy Graves, Philip Guston, Rachel Harrison, Rachel Harrison, Matthew Higgs, Gary Hill, , Thomas Hirschhorn, Desiree Holman, Jamie Isenstein, Valerie Jaudon, Donald Judd, Martin Kippenberger, W. Imi Knoebel, Christopher Knowles, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Kushner, Carter Kustera, Sean Landers, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Louise Lawler, Sol LeWitt, Ardele Lister, Robert Longo, Kim MacConnel, Robert Mangold, Robert Mapplethorpe, Virgil Marti, Martina Mullaney, Allan McCollum, Shana Moulton, Dennis Oppenheim, Gabriel Orozco, Blinky Palermo, Jorge Pardo, A. R.
Penck, Adrian Piper, Seth Price, Robin Rhode, Tom Roda, Peter Saul, Ilene Segalove, Cindy Sherman, Ned Smyth, Rosemarie Trockel, Nicola Tyson, Kelley Walker, Joe Zucker

Curators: Mireille Bourgeois, Summer Guthery, Anaïs Lellouche, Christina Linden, Katerina Llanes, Gene McHugh, Fionn Meade, Kate Menconeri, Zeynep Öz, Marion Ritter, Bartholomew Ryan, Hajnalka Somogyi, Wendy Vogel, and Jess Wilcox

These exhibitions were made possible with support from the Rebecca and Martin Eisenberg Student Exhibition Fund, Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg, and the Patrons, Supporters and Friends of the Center for Curatorial Studies. Additional support provided by the Monique Beudert Award and the French Embassy in the US. Special thanks to the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Eugène Atget at Fotomuseum Winterthur

Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Artipedia - Arts News
Fotomuseum Winterthur

Eugène Atget
Porte d’Italie, 1912 (Zoniers) 13e.
Series: Paris pittoresque, 2nd series
Albumin print, 24 x 18 cm
Copyright: Bibliothèque nationale de France,
Estampes et Photographie

Eugène Atget
Paris c. 1900 (Retropective)
1 March to 25 May 2008

Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44+45
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zurich)
Switzerland
Phone: +41 52 234 10 60

http://www.fotomuseum.ch

Eugène Atget – Paris c. 1900 (Retrospective)

Eugène Atget (1857-1927) is one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. He became famous primarily through his views of the “old Paris”, which were coveted by collectors even during his lifetime, and which served numerous painters as sample prints for their work. For a long time known only to a small circle of historians, artists and museum curators, Atget worked tirelessly at capturing with his camera the part of old Paris that was in the process of disappearing: monuments, picturesque corners of the city and hidden courtyards, as well as window displays, shop signs and door knockers, street traders, prostitutes and fairground stalls – and, last but not least, the romantic landscapes of the Parc de Saint-Cloud in the environs of Paris. It was only shortly before his death that his unique status was recognised, and from the 1930s on he became a model and inexhaustible inspiration for photographers as different as Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, R
obert Doisneau, Bernd and Hilla Becher. Thus he had an enduring influence on 20th century photography. Atget, who was often referred to by the naïve painter Henri Rousseau as the “Rousseau of photography” owing to his affinity with the latter’s work, soon made his mark on Robert Desnos, Walter Benjamin and the surrealists.

This exhibition, compiled from work from the Bibliothèque nationale de France with the curators Sylvie Aubenas / Guillaume Le Gall on the occasion of the anniversary of Atget’s 150th birthday and the 80th anniversary of his death, presents an extensive synthesis of his work and lets the old Paris glide before us in wondrous pictures. The exhibition consists of around 350 works.

An exhibition by the Bibliothèque nationale de France – Galerie de photographie, with the support of Champagne Louis Roederer

Main sponsor of the exhibition: UBS AG
Additional support by the French Embassy in Switzerland.

Publication: Eugène Atget – Retrospektive. Published at Nicolai Verlag, Bibliothèque nationale de France and Berliner Festspiele. With texts by Sylvie Aubenas, Guillaume Le Gall, Laure Beaumont-Maillet, Clément Chéroux and Olivier Lugon. 288 pages, 284 Duplex illustrations, format 25 x 29,3 cm, hardcover with dust jacket.

Special guided tours through the Eugène Atget exhibition:
Personalities from different areas of cultural life will conduct guided tours through the Eugène Atget exhibition seen from their own personal perspectives on the following Sundays at 11:30 a.m.:
16 March: Peter Herzog, collector: Atget and his contemporaries
30 March: Hugo Loetscher, writer: Atget from a literary point of view
13 April: Stefan Zweifel, freelance author: Atget – a surrealist against his will
27 April: Martin Heller, cultural entrepreneur: Atget and the city
11 May: Ulrike Meyer Stump, lecturer Zurich University of the Arts: Atget’s reception
25 May: Alain Paviot, photo gallery owner, Paris: Les différentes manifestations d’Atget dans le marché

Still on display unil 12 October 2008 (Collection):
Jedermann Collection – Set 5 from the Fotomuseum Winterthur Collection
http://www.fotomuseum.ch/JEDERMANN-COLLECTION.289.0.html?&L=1

Symposium “Interface – Photography between Document and Concept”
Monday, 5 May 2008, 9.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.
More information on: http://www.fotomuseum.ch/EVENTS.30.0.html?&L=1

For further information please visit our website http://www.fotomuseum.ch

Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44+45
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zurich)
Switzerland

Phone: +41 52 234 10 60
Fax. +41 52 233 60 97
e-mail: fotomuseum@fotomuseum.ch
http://www.fotomuseum.ch

Opening hours: Tue – Sun 11am – 6pm, Wed 11am – 8pm, closed on Mondays

Claudia & Julia Müller, Philippe Decrauzat and Christopher Keller at Bonner Kunstverein

Friday, March 28th, 2008

Artipedia - Arts News
Bonner Kunstverein

Claudia & Julia Müller
Black Silhouette (Schafsmann), 2008
Pencil and Silhouette on Paper
Courtesy Galerie Peter Kilchmannn, Zuerich

CLAUDIA & JULIA MÜLLER:
Tut tut tut.

FOYER
PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT

KIOSK
CHRISTOPH KELLER:
BEYOND KIOSK

7 April - 1 June 2008

http://www.bonner-kunstverein.de

Sunday, 6 April 2008, 11 am opening
Reception: Thomas Grundmann, chairman
Greetings: Klaus Bucher, consul general of Switzerland
Introduction: Christina Végh, director

2 pm KIOSK: Introduction by CHRISTOPH KELLER on the project
BEYOND KIOSK and independent art publishing

CLAUDIA & JULIA MÜLLER:Tut tut tut.

In a world pervaded by fears and desires, the distinction between being and seeming is in the eye of the beholder. For their solo presentation at the Bonn Kunstverein, the artists CLAUDIA & JULIA MÜLLER (*1964, *1956, live in Basel) have designed rooms of illusion. Starting out with their graphic work, a dispositive unfolds, whose unstable semantic carriers are linked in a changeable narrative structure.

Similar to an ancestral portrait gallery, the sisters stage a series of flip-flop pictures that, designed as multiple wall collages, take in the room’s full height of six meters. The double portraits involve the viewer in a game of different, yet simultaneous contexts.

The coupling and the pictorial union of political figures, animal and man, freedom fighters, carnival merrymakers and figures from the contemporary media world call up an absurd, vanity-fair society. Shadow projections and masquerades, silhouettes and three-dimensional elements, doubling and inversion, all serve as a means of presenting outward illusion in its proper light. In between the wall collages, small-scale work series from the past five years alternate.

A collection of pictures and collages somewhere between (art) historical models, everyday media reality and science fiction serve as the basis. In the installation at the Bonner Kunstverein, the pictures merge into a complex narration of the story and the fear of our possible cultural molding in the
present-day world.

PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT

The mural that PHILIPPE DECRAUZAT (*1974, lives in Lausanne) has designed for the Bonner Kunstverein is assembled from alternating black and magenta-colored lines spanned across 20 meters. They are gradually inscribed in the wall’s white plane so that, after a pictorial crescendo, they just as gradually fade again.

The movement of the incoming visitor is absorbed by them and visually reinforced. The precision of the lines leads to a shimmery moiré effect that sets the stage for the theme of motion as the phenomenological process of perception.

The work exists in a series that DECRAUZAT has continued since 2000, whose starting point is a fascination with REM sleep (rapid eye movement) that commonly describes the dream phase in which the eyes move jerkily under closed lids. The work, under constant threat of disappearing via its flickering effects, allows after-images to arise: images seen without use of the eyes.

With his work that includes painting, film and sculpture, DECRAUZAT stands within the force field of artistic abstraction. He deploys, as his starting point, Russian Constructivism, OP Art or the geometrics of Minimalism in order to link them to pop culture, science fiction or cinematography.

CHRISTOPH KELLER: BEYOND KIOSK

BEYOND KIOSK, Modes of Multiplication. Independent Art Publishing today is an archive project of CHRISTOPH KELLER (book designer, editor, publisher, et al. Revolver, Christoph Keller Editions, JRP/Ringler), which was developed for the Bonner Kunstverein and ICA Philadelphia. The presentation is based on Keller’s comprehensive archive KIOSK on the theme of “Independent Art Publishing” that, over the past seven years, has toured the world and been exhibited in over 20 institutions.

From approx. 6,500 archive publications from over 450 publishers and magazine projects, approx. 500 of the most interesting publication models were chosen for BEYOND KIOSK. The selection criteria were, above all, the strategies, motivations, programs and profiles of the editors and publishers.

BONNER KUNSTVEREIN
Hochstadenring 22, 53119 Bonn, Germany
Tel. +49 228 693936, Fax +49 228 695589

Tue - Sun 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., Thu 11 a.m. - 7 p.m., closed on Mondays
ARTOTHEK Wed, Fri 2 - 5 p.m, Thu 2 - 7 p.m, Sat 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.
http://www.bonner-kunstverein.de

Ye Yongqing at the Hong Kong Arts Centre

Friday, March 28th, 2008

Artipedia - Arts News
Anna Ning Fine Art

“As Free as a Bird”
An exhibition of paintings by Ye Yongqing
5 - 19 April, 2008

Exhibition Venue: 4th & 5th Floors
Hong Kong Arts Centre
2 Harbour Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong

http://www.annaningfineart.com

Anna Ning Fine Art is delighted to announce its forthcoming solo exhibition of paintings by the renowned Chinese artist Ye Yongqing. The exhibition will be a retrospective of Ye Yongqing’s work from the past 30 years.

When Picasso wrote “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary”, he did not mean that art recorded a catalogue of events; rather that art was his way of expressing his feelings about life and the nature of life itself. Ye Yongqing (b. 1958), one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Chinese art, has a similar philosophy and approach to art and life.

From his childhood in Yunnan Province, Ye Yongqing’s art and life have been closely intertwined. He has consistently bucked trends and followed his own path, making him one of the most distinctive and individual Chinese artists of his time. Ye Yongqing was born in Kunming, Yunnan Province, in 1958 and graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Chongqing in 1982. During the 1980s, he joined the New Wave Arts movement, becoming a leading figure of the influential “Southwest Art Group” which also included such significant artists as Mao Xuhui, Zhou Chunya and Zhang Xiaogang. Today, as well as being an artist, Ye Yongqing is an Associate Professor at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, a well-known curator and exhibition organizer. He is also the founder of the Upriver Gallery and Self-Run Space in Chengdu and the Loft in Kunming.

Ye Yongqing is perhaps best known for his bird paintings, which he began in 2000. These are executed in a quirky style featuring scratched black lines using the traditional medium of Chinese brush and ink on rice paper. Some paintings are very large, and are achieved by using a projector to beam simple sketches of birds in the artist’s notebook onto canvas or paper. Then he traces the enlarged shapes using a thin brush to draw abstract lines. At first sight, one might say that Ye Yongqing’s birds look like childish scribbles, lacking in refined skill; yet on closer examination they turn out to be very delicate
and beautiful.

The leading art critic Li Xianting has described Ye Yongqing as “a poet with literary talent in his bones”. Ye Yongqing was influenced by Western masters, especially Cezanne, and later discovered the metaphysical painting of De Chirico and the surrealism of Dali. However, while other Chinese artists idolized the West and followed the path of “Political Pop”, Ye Yongqing rejected both Westernization and modernism, moving instead towards to a more inward-focused self-analysis.

In the 1990s, after traveling to the USA and Europe, he made collages that assembled images of trivial daily life – bird cages, light bulbs, pipes, cars, old photographs, caricatures – drawing them in the casual manner of Chinese literati artists. These paintings were divided into sections like a big cartoon describing his life with his own language and icons. He wrote, “I often see my life as like that of a migratory bird moving among several different cities, fragmented and with no fixed abode. I paint and put together my creations the same way.”

The bird has become Ye Yongqing’s personal form of symbolic expression, a reflection of his spirit and emotions. By using the medium of traditional Chinese brush and ink but with a detached sense of freedom from literati paintings, Ye Yongqing seems to revive his life and spirit in his bird paintings – as a painter as free as a bird.

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Anna Ning Fine Art
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Tel: 2521 3193
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