Artipedia - Arts News

Dublin City Gallery
The Hugh Lane

Unique Act
13 March - 25 May 2008

Frederic Matys Thursz, Sean Scully, Carmengloria Morales, Seán Shanahan and Ruth Root

Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane
Charlemont House
Parnell Square North
Dublin 1
t: + 353 1 2225550
info.hughlane@dublincity.ie
http://www.hughlane.ie

As part of its centenary celebrations, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane is delighted to present Unique Act, an exhibition of non-figurative painting with works by Frederic Matys Thursz, Sean Scully, Carmengloria Morales, Seán Shanahan and Ruth Root. The exhibition is a current evaluation of contemporary non-figurative painting, as presented by these artists who, through a common medium, address different concerns in their highly individualised practices.

The Hugh Lane began as a picture gallery celebrating painting’s central position in visual art. Since then there have been many evolutions in the practice of painting. No matter how often its demise has been heralded, the practice has continued to evolve and for many artists it is central to expressing
their concerns.

At a time when almost everything around us is mass-produced in factories, non-figurative paintings hold a very special position. Non-figurative art employs a language; like music, it is a dialogue involving the creator and audience. Frederic Matys Thursz, Sean Scully, Carmengloria Morales, Seán Shanahan and Ruth Root explore contemporary concerns through this language, demonstrating its breathtaking diversity. The five artists allow the viewer to evaluate how painting today is part of the world. The ensuing dialogue is rich, multilayered and complex. These works celebrate the limitless language of colour and form.

Unique Act celebrates the Gallery’s first centenary and has evolved out of Sean Scully’s generous gift of paintings to the collection in 2006.

An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition with a leading essay by the eminent art critic, writer and historian, David Carrier. The catalogue also includes texts by Giovanni Accame, Sue Hubbard, Gavin Morrison, Jasper Sharp and Lilly Wei.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS
WEDNESDAY 12th MARCH at 4pm

Today’s panel will be chaired by DECLAN LONG and includes SEAN SHANAHAN, RUTH ROOT, CARMENGLORIA MORALES, contributing artists to the current exhibition Unique Act and DAVID CARRIER, essayist for the exhibition catalogue. Unique Act is an evaluation of contemporary non-figurative painting, and today’s discussion will look at the role of abstract painting today.

THURSDAY 17th APRIL at 5pm

“Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?”
(Charles Baudelaire)

A discussion on painting in the context of contemporary art practice, including artists ROBERT ARMSTRONG, FERGUS FEEHILY, MARK JOYCE and NIAMH O’MALLEY and chaired by DECLAN LONG.These discussions have been organised by Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane in partnership with NCAD, are free and open to the public.

For further information on the temporary exhibitions programme contact Michael Dempsey
e: mdempsey.hughlane@dublincity.ie
t: +353 1 222 5552
or: logan.sisley@dublincity.ie
t: 00 353 1 222 5562

University of California,
Berkeley Art Museum and
Pacific Film Archive

Arrested protestor at the demonstration of artists, writers, and students, Place du Palais Royal, July 16, 1968; digital print from 35mm black-and-white negative; 25 3/8 x 19 3/4 in.; Hood Museum of Art, gift of the artist, 2006.90.31; photo courtesy of the artist.

Protest in Paris 1968:
Photographs by Serge Hambourg
March 12 - June 1, 2008

University of California,
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley CA 94720

http://bampfa.berkeley.edu

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) presents an exhibition documenting the student demonstrations that overtook Paris during the spring of 1968. A stunning representation of one of the most famous protest movements in modern history, this landmark series of photographs fits comfortably in Berkeley, another epicenter of the late ’60s student movement. Protest in Paris 1968: Photographs by Serge Hambourg opens March 12 and runs through
June 1, 2008.

The year 1968 was pivotal to the political, social, and cultural histories of the United States, France, and many other countries across the globe. The events in Paris that year were part of a decade that saw many protests. Documentary photography published in newspapers and magazines and shown on television played an especially important role in stimulating the ferment. Searing images from the Vietnam War era, such as the Kent State student kneeling next to a fallen protestor, or the picture of a screaming Vietnamese girl fleeing napalm, powerfully affected attitudes toward that conflict and the student protests against it.

Less familiar but similarly revealing documents of a famously turbulent moment are Serge Hambourg’s photographs of the protests against the conservative government of General Charles de Gaulle in Paris in 1968. During this year, Hambourg worked as a photojournalist for the weekly magazine Le nouvel observateur. Some of his images of the demonstrations were printed in the magazine; most of them, however, are being seen for the first time in this exhibition, organized by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

The protests had begun in March with students at Nanterre, a university in the suburbs outside Paris. By mid-May, the protests had grown into massive demonstrations that virtually shut down the economy for two weeks. Serge Hambourg first photographed the student leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit talking to a group at Nanterre University in early March, and followed the demonstrations and meetings as events heated up later in the spring and summer. In these photographs one can almost feel the groundswell of popular sentiment and the strong presence of the youthful student leaders in galvanizing the demonstrators. Hambourg also captured images of the backlash by de Gaulle supporters. The photographer’s keen eye and artistic sense are evident in these images, which represent events that still reverberate almost forty years later.

Serge Hambourg is an independent photographer who worked for Le nouvel observateur from 1966 through 1977. His photographs have been reproduced in books, magazines, and journals including Paris match, New York Magazine, Time, Vogue, Le monde, Art in America, and many others. They are in the collections of museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the New-York Historical Society; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; and the Hood Museum of Art. From 1977 through 1992, Hambourg lived in New York City; he now lives and works in Paris.

Credit Line
This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and was generously funded by the Parnassus Foundation, courtesy of Jane and Raphael Bernstein. Education programs in conjunction with the Berkeley presentation are supported by Daniel Bernstein and Claire Foerster.

University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley CA 94720
http://bampfa.berkeley.edu

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday to Sunday, 11 to 5.
Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Information:
t. (510) 642-0808
f. (510) 642-4889
TDD: (510) 642-8734

Press contact
Jonathan L. Knapp jlknapp@berkeley.edu

VOLTA

Courtesy by Hales Gallery, Booth E4, VOLTA NY 2008

VOLTA NY – New York
March 27th – March 30th, 2008

http://www.voltashow.com

VOLTA—the cutting-edge art fair that debuted in Basel —brings 53 international artists and 52 galleries to New York during The Armory Week for its inaugural solo invitational exhibition, VOLTA NY, held at an extraordinary location off 5th Avenue, immediately opposite the Empire State Building.

Continuing the original VOLTA mandate to create a tightly-focused, curated event that is a place for discovery and a showcase for current art production, VOLTA NY introduces a new format that features exclusively solo projects of notable international artists, conceived to complement the exciting program of art presented by The Armory Show and available in New York during Armory Week, March 2008.

A platform for challenging, often complimentary, sometimes competing ideas about contemporary art, VOLTA NY is an exhibition contained within the format of an art fair and aims to promote a deep exploration of its selected artists—who, in turn, are some of the world’s most innovative exponents of new trends in art. Organized as a curated exhibition under the title The Eye of the Beholder by the Directorial Team of art critics/curators Amanda Coulson (Executive Director) and Christian Viveros-Fauné (Curatorial Advisor), the show considers, among other themes, beauty and its opposite—that is, the twin polarities presented by criticality and aesthetics in contemporary art.

Embodied in the works of its participating artists—exponents as varied as video artist Peter Sarkisian and painter Ena Swansea and conceptualists William Pope.L and Vienna’s International Festival— VOLTA NY charts some of the most compelling directions in contemporary art today.

Highlights of VOLTA NY include a solo exhibition of the photographs of 2008 Whitney Biennial artist Melanie Schiff; a debut installation by kinetic sculptor David Ellis and his parallel live-in project at Chelsea’s Theory Store (38 Gansevoort Street); the first U.S. exhibition of the highly political work of Venice Biennale veteran and Kwangju Biennial Prize Winner Jota Castro; the inaugural U.S. exhibitions of the works of Czech sculptor Kristof Kintera, Mexican artist Jose Dávila and Japanese sculptor Takaaki Izumi; the New York debut of Romanian painter Serban Savu; a solo exhibition of new photographs by American artist Tracey Baran; an exhibition of the post-Katrina images of New Orleans by American Clay Ketter (in advance of his 2009 solo at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet); a solo exhibition of large-scale drawings by British artist Adam Dant; as well as a lobby mural and limited edition works by German painter Florian Merkel. With site specific pieces (such as Swiss a
rtist Nils Nova’s wallpaper room installation) and ambitious large-scale projects (like avant-garde composer Theodor Koehler’s live hourly orchestral performances that are part of Frankfurt-based, American artist Adrian Williams’ media performances), VOLTA NY will provide visitors with unusual, unexpected and innovative projects rarely seen in an art fair format.

The full list of VOLTA NY Artists and Exhibitors follows below:

Tracey Baran | Arratia, Beer | Berlin
Saul Becker | Sunday L.E.S. | New York
Jesse Bercowetz | Galerie Michael Janssen | Cologne/Berlin
Ronald de Bloeme Hamish Morrison Galerie | Berlin
Ian Burns | Spencer Brownstone Gallery | New York
Jota Castro | Elaine Levy Project | Brussels
Adam Dant | HALES Gallery | London
Jose Dávila | Travesía Cuatro | Madrid
Tyler Drosdeck | NEWMAN POPIASHVILI | New York
David Ellis | ROEBLING HALL | New York
David Ersser | SEVENTEEN | London
Peter Funch | V1 GALLERY | Copenhagen
Jacin Giordano| Galerie Baumet Sultana | Paris
Kevin Francis Gray | Goff + Rosenthal | New York/Berlin
International Festival | FRUIT & FLOWER DELI | New York
Takaaki Izumi | TARO NASU | Tokyo
Itamar Jobani | NOGA Gallery | Tel-Aviv
Clay Ketter | Bartha Contemporary | London
Khalif Kelly | Thierry Goldberg Projects | New York
Kristof Kintera | Jiri Svestka Gallery | Prague
Martin Klimas | COSAR HTM | Düsseldorf
Aishleen Lester | Riflemaker | London
Renée Levi | EVERGREENE | Geneva
Micah Lexier | Birch Libralato | Toronto
Jarbas Lopes | A GENTIL CARIOCA | Rio de Janeiro
Domingos Loureiro | Paulo Amaro | Lisbon
Rosaline Luduvico | Zink Galerie | Munich/Berlin/NY
Dietmar Lutz | ARQUEBUSE | Geneva
Corinne Marchetti | Galerie Laurent Godin | Paris
Cathy de Monchaux | FRED LTD. | London/Leipzig
Nils Nova | Kenworthy-Ball | Zurich
Niamh O’Malley | Green on Red Gallery | Dublin
Anna Oppermann | art agents gallery | Hamburg
Adriaan van der Ploeg | HAAS & FISCHER | Zurich
William Pope.L | Kenny Schachter/ROVE Projects | London
Julius Popp | Dogenhaus | Leipzig
Ricardo Rendón | Galería Enrique Guerrero | Mexico City
Werner Reiterer | Galerie Loevenbruck | Paris
Gideon Rubin | ROKEBY | London
Serban Savu | KONTAINER | Los Angeles
Pietro Sanguineti | Nusser & Baumgart Contemporary | Munich
Peter Sarkisian | I-20 | New York
Melanie Schiff | Kavi Gupta | Chicago/Leipzig
Michael Simpson | David Risley Gallery | London
Suzannah Sinclair | Samson Projects | Boston
Ken Solomon | Josée Bienvenu | New York
Johannes Spehr | Thomas Rehbein Galerie | Cologne
Ena Swansea | André Schlechtriem | New York
Gavin Tremlett | Wohnmaschine | Berlin
Sage Vaughn | galerie bertrand & gruner | Geneva
Muir Vidler | Kenny Schachter/ROVE Projects | London
Herbert Volkmann | Laden fuer Nichts | Leipzig
Adrian Williams | VOGES + PARTNER | Frankfurt

Aside from convenient public access by subway or taxi, visitors can reach VOLTA NY’s prime location just off 5th Avenue with shared shuttles directly between The Armory Show on Pier 94 and the VOLTA NY site opposite The Empire State Building on 34th street.

VOLTA was founded in 2005 by dealers Kavi Gupta (Chicago), Ulrich Voges (Frankfurt) and Friedrich Loock (Berlin). VOLTA4 will be held in Basel from June 2nd-June7th, 2008, at Ultra Brag, while VOLTA NY premieres in 2008 from March 27th-March 30th.
NY Fair Location and Office: 7 W.34th Street, New York, NY 10001, USA
Tel: +1.646.641.8732

VOLTA Production Office (Switzerland): Südquaistrasse, 55 CH- 4019, Basel
Tel.: +41.61.322.1270
Fax: +41.61.322.1269

Contact:

General Information:
Office
info@voltashow.com

Press Information:
European Media Contacts
Amanda Coulson – Executive Director
amanda@voltashow.com
Tel: + 49.69.9511.9622

Creixell Espilla-Gilart – Project Manager
espilla@voltashow.com
Tel: + 49.30.2243.7387

US Media Contact
Christian Viveros-Fauné – Curatorial Advisor
cvf@voltashow.com
Tel: + 1.646.641.8732