Artipedia - Arts News

Barbican Art Gallery

Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art
6 Mar - 18 May/08

Barbican Art Gallery
Silk Street
London
EC2Y 8DS
00 + 44 845 121 6826
http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery

Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art presents contemporary art works under the fictional rubric of a museum collection conceived by and designed for extraterrestrials. This ambitious, playful and irreverent exhibition features 115 artists and more than 175 works, primarily sculptures along with mixed media, video, photography and works on paper. Artists range from emerging to internationally recognised figures, including Joseph Beuys, Cai Guo-Qiang, Maurizio Cattelan, Jimmie Durham, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ryan Gander, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hiller, Damien Hirst, Brian Jungen, Dr. Lakra, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, John McCracken, Bruce Nauman, Mike Nelson, Cornelia Parker, Sigmar Polke, Ugo Rondinone, Daniel Spoerri, Haim Steinbach, Francis Upritchard, Jeffrey Vallance, Andy Warhol and Rebecca Warren.

This exhibition is partly inspired by the first chapter of Thierry de Duve’s Kant after Duchamp, in which an imaginary anthropologist from outer space sets out to inventory ‘all that is called art by humans’. Adopting a pseudo-anthropological approach, the Museum employs eccentric taxonomies and surprising juxtapositions. The fictitious and humorous Martian perspective opens up contemporary art to fresh interpretations and allows for its reassessment from an alien standpoint, thus mimicking the way that Western anthropologists historically interpreted non-Western cultures through foreign eyes. Looking at contemporary art as though from outer space offers the potential to make the familiar strange and to turn the dominant Euro-American art tradition into the ‘Other’.

Curated by Francesco Manacorda and Lydia Yee.

Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated publication, which takes the form of a volume of an encyclopaedia with an eccentric classification system. Including essays by the curators and a fictional account by acclaimed novelist Tom McCarthy.

First Thursdays
On the first Thursday of every month, Barbican Art Gallery is open until 10pm. Join us for late night openings with a difference. Enjoy a range of interplanetary talks, performances and discussions and make sure you visit the Martian bar for cosmic cocktails. Part of Time Out First Thursdays.

Films from Another Planet
To complement Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art landing in Barbican Art Gallery, we present a season of films from outer space to welcome our alien friends. Visit http://www.barbican.org.uk/film for
more information.

Close Encounters
Join a host of artists, speakers, commentators and curators for Close Encounter talks.

Visit http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery for more details on all the events.

Audioguide
A free Audioguide is available from http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery

The Barbican Centre is provided by the City of London Corporation.

Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art is made possible in part by American Center Foundation and The Henry Moore Foundation.

Museum Boijmans
Van Beuningen

Cathy Jacob named new head of the Presentations Sector at
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
http://www.boijmans.nl

The director of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has appointed Cathy Jacob as the head of the Presentations Sector with effect from 1 April 2008. This post is part of the Management Team. Cathy Jacob will succeed Rein Wolfs, who has taken up the post of artistic director at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany.

Cathy Jacob (Rotterdam, 1970) has gained considerable experience in managing major public projects at the Kunstgebouw – Stichting Kunst & Cultuur Zuid-Holland in Rijswijk, where she is currently head of the Department of Public Projects and Events and a member of the Management Team. In 2001 Cathy Jacob was responsible for the visual-arts programming for Rotterdam Cultural Capital as part of Bert van Meggelen’s team. She also built up experience of organising exhibitions at the Kunstgebouw and the CBKs in Leiden and Rotterdam.

In her new post Cathy Jacob will continue to develop the museum’s presentations and education policies and the museum’s programme at a high (inter)national level. As head of the Presentations Sector she will develop the exhibitions programme and the permanent displays together with this sector and the
museum’s curators.

Wang Guangyi, January 2008

88 Conversations

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 4, 2008

CONTACT: Erin Kornfeld, erin.kornfeld@googlemail.com or (917) 545-4299

NEW YORK — 88 Conversations is a collaborative series of works created by award-winning photographer Erin Kornfeld & writer Charlie Schultz that combines photography and poetry to create dynamic portraits of the contemporary Chinese art community.

On Friday March 21, 2008 from 4 p.m. till 8 p.m., in association with Asian Contemporary Art Week http://www.acaw.net/ACAW2008/acaw2008/> , Schultz and Kornfeld will host an open reception at their studio for a preview of 88 Conversations.

Winner of the 2006 Deloitte Commission http://www.npg.org.uk/live/photoprizedeloitte.asp> at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Erin Kornfeld joins the emerging writer Charles Schultz on a conversational journey from the streets of Queens to the hutongs of Beijing; from the cafes of Shanghai to the lake shore of Chicago.

In the last 15 months Kornfeld and Schultz met artists, curators, and scholars that propel the contemporary Chinese art movement in order to engage them in a conversation and make their photograph.

“The portraits pay homage to an artistic exchange of ideas where east meets west” says Kornfeld.

Some of the participants include: Wang Guangyi, Xu Bing, Li Xianting, Wenda Gu, Zhang Xiaotao, Zhang Dali, Shen Shaomin, Zhang Hongtu, Wang Qingsong, Yan Pei Ming, Yan Lei, Wu Hung, and seventy six more.

Kornfeld and Schultz will open their studio to the public March 18th - March 24th (1 p.m. - 6 p.m. daily). Please make an appointment to visit the studio.

Studio Location: 13-17 Laight St, Suite 26 (Between Varick & 6th Ave)
Easily accessible by 1 and ACE trains (Canal St. Station)

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La maison rouge

Copyright: Gregor Schneider

Gregor Schneider, süßer Duft
Pilar Albarracín, mortal cadencia
Marie Maillard, wall 0208

until May 18th 2008

la maison rouge
10 bd de la bastille
75012 Paris, france
http://www.lamaisonrouge.org

gregor Schneider, süßer Duft
From the age of 16, Gregor Schneider (born in Rheydt in 1969) has been transforming the interior of the home he inherited from his father in the small town of Rheydt, Germany. A work in progress until 2007, he has constantly added new rooms, separated others, removed mod-cons, and blocked up windows, adding fake ones in their place. The result is a labyrinthine structure which he has entitled Haus u r (House u r). Occasionally, visitors are invited to spend the night there and share his
personal space.

Architecture is again central to Gregor Schneider’s exhibition at la maison rouge for which he has created a specific installation. He invites visitors to follow a sweet fragrance (süßer Duft) that take them to the other side of the walls, leaving behind the white exhibition room for dark parallel spaces where they discover who inhabits them, who haunts them, and are confronted with their own fear of
the unknown.

Pilar Albarracin, mortal cadencia
Her Andalusian cultural heritage and status as a woman in Spanish society are central to the work of Pilar Albarracín (born in Seville in 1968, lives and works in Madrid).

Pilar Albarracín works with photography, sculpture and installation although performance remains her preferred medium. She plays the part of gypsy, peasant girl, prostitute, emigrant or housewife, producing a work which can, as Rosa Martínez writes, be interpreted as “a metaphor
for insubordination.”

For her first solo exhibition in France, Pilar Albarracín has chosen to show a large installation, Techo de Ofrendas, and a series of videos including La Cabra, Lunares and Prohibido el Cante. They combine the ardent emotion of flamenco with the ritual of the bullfight, sacrifice and death.

Marie Maillard, wall 0208
For her project in the patio at la maison rouge, Marie Maillard revisits the venue’s past incarnation as a factory built around a red house. A transitional space, visible before entering the exhibition rooms, this inner courtyard lets in the daylight while its red brick recalls the building’s former function. Marie Maillard has reproduced it, on a smaller scale, in a work that she places in the centre of the patio. This doubling-up, added to the inversion of materials (glass and brick), causes viewers to lose their bearings. The enclosed space is fragmented, opening up to a multitude of dimensions. Wall 0208 thus breaks down the strict separation between real and virtual, concrete and imaginary. Despite its small size, it forms a maze which the viewer can mentally trace, like a projection area, both intimate and inaccessible, secret and familiar. Fabien Danesi

opening days and times
Wednesday to Sunday 11am to 7pm
late-night Thursday until 9pm
closed December 25th, January 1st and May 1st

Press office: Claudine Colin Communication
5, rue Barbette – 75003 Paris
t: +33 1 42 72 60 01
contact: julie@claudinecolin.com