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.

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.

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