Artipedia - Arts News

BUCHAREST BIENNALE 3
May 23 - June 21, 2008

Being Here. Mapping the Contemporary

Curated by Jan-Erik Lundström &
Johan Sjöström

Directed by Razvan Ion &
Eugen Radescu

Opening: May 22, 2008

http://www.bucharestbiennale.org

As the capital of the second largest country among the new EU nations, Bucharest enjoys an eclectic urban landscape, in which architectural strata are combined, each of these bearing physical testimonies to historical moments.

The curators of this edition, Jan-Erik Lundström and Johan Sjöström, have chosen a topic of significant relevance to the contemporary world: “Being Here. Mapping the Contemporary”.

The theme of BB3 integrates the city in its curatorial project, proposing both a spatial, temporal and itinerant trajectory to the visitor, leading to the discovery of hidden geographies. Romania is the ideal place for exploring new cartographies within the contemporary world, whose configuration has undergone a dramatic change during the last 18 years, ever since the fall of the Berlin wall). The era of globalisation restructures old borders and creates new ones; Romania finds itself in the centre of these processes. The cultural, political and social changes, which take place before our eyes call to be explored, analysed and rendered in an artistic and discursive fashion that is able to exceed reality, by proposing a different vision of our world.

Despite being in a rather introductory stage, the Bucharest Biennale has already positioned itself internationally, and the third edition is expected to express the growing potential of this type of artistic encounter. BB3 questions cartography and proposes a remapping of contemporary art, by extending the art concept towards discursive manifestos with a socio-political impact.

The traditional, spatiotemporal framework is dismantled into pieces of a puzzle, demanding an active role on behalf of the public. Hence, the third edition of the Bucharest Biennale will in, a physical sense, carry the visitors through a series of locations spread out over the city, immersing them in a number of juxtaposed sites throughout the city. An artistic map overlaps the urban map. BB3 transforms space into an artistic field of action. Parallel events (public debates, performance projects, interventions in public spaces, lectures) will unfold around the main frame.

The conception of BB3 is process based, reflecting and commenting on the processes that take place on a global scale. Exploring the intercultural exchange and the participation on a local level within the dynamics of globalisation.

The curators of BB3 have selected 38 participants from 21 countries which will produce 44 projects to ilustrate the themefor the topic of the biennale:

Kristoffer Ardeña (ES/PH)
Lauri Astala (FI)
Milena Bonilla (CO)
Bureau D’Études (FR)
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil (FR)
Lukas Einsele (DE)
Buckminster Fuller (USA)
Atlas Linguarum Europae (EUR)
Eduard Freudmann & Can Gülcü & Lorenz Aggermann (A)
Lucia Ganieva (RU/NL)
Frances Goodman (ZA)
hackitectura.net (ES)
Mona Hatoum (PS/LB/GB)
Brian Holmes (FR/GB)
Ashley Hunt (USA)
Karlo-Andrei Ibarra (PR)
Johan Jarnestad (SE)
Emma Kay (GB)
Maria Lantz (SE)
Cezar Lazarescu (RO)
Philippe Rekacewicz/Le Monde Diplomatique (FR)
Dinu Li (GB/HN)
Armin Linke (IT)
Mikael Lundberg (SE)
Bertien van Manen (NL)
Adrian Matei (RO)
Christina McPhee (USA)
Randa Mirza (LB)
Oliver Musovik (MK)
Karina Nimmerfall (A)
Josh On (USA)
Yoko Ono (USA)
Lia Perjovschi (RO)
Arno Peters (DE)
Sabine Réthoré (FR)
Arjen Van Susteren (NL)
Jan Svenungsson (SE)
Adriana Varejão (BR)

Each of the locations chosen for the BB3 are justified by their history, socio-political involvement, but also by the topographical location: The Geology Museum, galleries Orizont and Simeza, shopping gallery Feeria and Pavilion Unicredit Center for Contemporary Art & Culture.

The publications of BB3 strive to delineate all the principles that we have used as orientation points, aiming for the typed object to bear witness to the artistic intervention, to be a theoretical, interdisciplinary reference point and a vehicle for dissemination of the expressed ideas.

Pavilion Magazine will dedicate a special two-volume issue to the Biennale: firstly, a textbook on the subject, including contributions by selected authors. Secondly, a documentation book, comprising the documentation from the BB3. Furthermore, a publication distributed free of charge and published in a single issue will include details on the main exhibition and parallel events, a map of the locations and texts of public interest. Also, in conjuction with BB3 Onestar Press Paris will publish three artist books.
For more details, the concept, and the parallel events please visit: www.bucharestbiennale.org

Proudly sponsored by PILSNER URQUELL

Produced by PAVILION, contemporary art & culture magazine.

Strategic Partner: Unicredit Tiriac Bank

Financial suporter: Absolut

Partners: BildMuseet, Update Adv, IFA, AFCN, Frame, Romanian Cultural Institute, Rumanska Kulturinstituet Stockholm, ADBK, Mondriaan foundation, Post Conceptual Art Practices, National Muzeum of Geology, UAP, German Embassy Bucharest, French Cultural Institute, British Council.

Media partners: Springerin, Mute, Framework, Cabinet, Hotnews.ro, Alternativ.ro,Tabu, ArtNowOnline.com, Sensiblu, Romania Libera, 22, Radio Guerrila, Cotidianul, Oops Media.

More details at: http://www.bucharestbiennale.org

CCA Wattis Institute for
Contemporary Arts

Andrea Bowers, Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Drawing–
Transvestite Smoking (detail), 2004
Collection of Charlotte and Bill Ford, New York

Amateurs
April 23 - August 9, 2008

CCA Wattis Institute for
Contemporary Arts
California College of the Arts
1111 Eighth Street
San Francisco CA 94107
T: 415.551.9210

http://www.wattis.org

Participating artists: Johanna Billing, Jennifer Bornstein, Andrea Bowers, Phil Collins, Jeremy Deller, Harrell Fletcher, Josh Greene, Cameron Jamie, Alan Kane, Long March Project, Yoshua Okon, Michele O’Marah, Hirsch Perlman, Jim Shaw, Simon Starling, Javier Téllez, Jeffrey Vallance, and Eric Wesley.

Curator: Ralph Rugoff

Amateurs surveys a terrain of artistic practice that departs from the hyperprofessionalization characterizing so much cultural production today. Whether working as amateurs in disciplines beyond the art world or collaborating with amateur practitioners, the artists featured in this exhibition refuse to let the experts have the last word. They are committed instead to a democratization of artistic production—one that often invites us, the viewers, to reflect upon our own roles and question our basic assumptions about authorship and expertise.

Bringing together work from the past 25 years, the exhibition explores the role of the amateur in investigating areas that are ignored by professional practitioners, and also in developing a modus operandi that departs from established technical, formal, and conceptual standards. Many of the featured artists celebrate amateur cultural practices for their “impurity”—their accidental or indifferent mixing of genres, aesthetics, and symbolic codes. They embrace “professional amateurism” (no matter how paradoxical it might sound) as a critical strategy and look askance at the narrow limits defining mainstream contemporary art.

Amateurs will be accompanied by a full-color catalog with essays by exhibition curator Ralph Rugoff and the scholar John Roberts.

About the CCA Wattis Institute
The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts was established in 1998 in San Francisco at California College of the Arts. It serves as a forum for the presentation and discussion of international contemporary art and curatorial practice. Through groundbreaking exhibitions, the Capp Street Project residency program, lectures, symposia, and publications, the Wattis Institute has become one of the leading art institutions in the United States and an active site for contemporary culture in the Bay Area.

Amateurs is made possible by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award.

Founding support for CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts programs has been provided by Phyllis C. Wattis and Judy and Bill Timken. Generous support provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, Ann Hatch and Paul Discoe, and the CCA Curator’s Forum.

CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts
Kent and Vicki Logan Galleries
California College of the Arts
1111 Eighth Street
San Francisco CA 94107

T: 415.551.9210
http://www.wattis.org

sala rekalde

CALYPSO
Artistic Learning Processes

Bizkaia Executive Council Grants for Artistic Creation 2005-2006

17 April to 22 June 2008

Curator: Haizea Barcenilla

http://www.salarekalde.bizkaia.net

The exhibition Calypso. Artistic Learning Processes draws together the most recent works produced by seven artists and collectives who received scholarships from the Executive Council of Bizkaia in its Awards for Artistic Creation call for 2005 and 2006: Elssie Ansareo, Alaitz Arenzana, David Cívico & recPLAY, Cristina Gutiérrez-Meurs, Amaia Lekerikabeaskoa, Jorge Rubio and
Mikel Rueda.

The works they are presenting display very different characteristics, but have the same common denominator: the award signalled the beginning of a creative process that is a continuous learning experience for each artist. This collective show lays special stress on the nature of the artistic process and on its meanings as a definitive part of contemporary artistic practice, the means of transmission being posed through artistic education.

With the different works and activities in the exhibition the intention is to represent this view of the artistic learning method as a process of emancipation and creation of a singular opinion, from which the conversations arise, another fundamental point within contemporary creation. Accordingly, the artist Chia-En Jao (Taichung, Taiwan, 1976) was invited to interconnect within the exhibition space. His presence is not supposed to create artificial bonds of union between the rest of the works, but simply to represent coexistence and communication between present practices without any need for mutual impositions. His installation Hermanos políticos / Brothers in Law shows the symbolic unions and separations between the cultural variety presented by the processes proper to each artist.

Videotheque

Whilst the exhibition is on show it will be possible to consult the videotheque, which contains approximately 60 videos, comprising work produced in educational contexts in various countries, in centres of higher education and during artists’ residencies. The videotheque aims to serve both as an example of current teaching and learning processes, and as a temporary database for emergent art in international academic contexts. Likewise, it provides a particular attraction in view of the demand for scholarships and residencies abroad.

Exhibition catalogue

The idea of education will have a strong presence in the catalogue, designed by Ales Landeta. It will include texts written by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson and the curator of the show herself, and the artists’ works will also be documented by the following authors: Stephanie Bertrand, Ilaria Gianni, Rían Lozano, Martí Manen, Kepa Sojo and Isusko Vivas. The photographs will be by Begoña Zubero.

Activities

As part of the exhibition, a series of activities will take place. On Thursday, 17 April, at 8:00pm a concert with songs from the soundtrack for the film Txakurkalea / Dogstreet; on Tuesday, 22 April, at 7:00pm a round table with Elssie Ansareo, Alaitz Arenzana, Cristina Gutiérrez-Meurs and Mikel Rueda, chaired by the curator of the show, Haizea Barcenilla; on Tuesday, 20 May, at 7:00pm, a projection of works by Alaitz Arenzana, David Cívico & recPLAY and Mikel Rueda; and on Tuesday, 27 May, at 7:00pm a projection of a selection of videos from the videotheque will take place.

From April 17th to May 21st, the Abstract Cabinet of sala rekalde will be showing a solo project by the Spanish artist Lara Almarcegui (Zaragoza, 1972), curated by Leire Vergara. Almarcegui spent the last year working on a new project that takes as its framework of reference the banks of the Bilbao river estuary and the constant processes of regeneration and transformation to which they have been subjected over the recent decades. The exhibition shows the artistic results that have been achieved within this context. The point of departure for this undertaking is related to other work in which the artist develops processes of investigation that cast an attentive eye upon empty lots or abandoned spaces in disuse which are either not contemplated at all from the town planning perspective or, on the other hand, are on their way to a possible future transformation. The result of these studies is presented in a publication format that Lara refers to as “wasteland guides”.

The Guide to the wastelands of the Bilbao river estuary, published on the occasion of this show, presents a selection of vacant lots taking in the two banks of the Nervión from the locality of Basauri to the mouth of the estuary in the Bay of Biscay. This guide to vacant lots along the Bilbao river estuary constitutes a journey through the city’s industrialisation, crisis and rationalisation.

For further information:
Constanza Erkoreka
Press Office
Tel. + 34 94 406 8707
Fax. + 34 94 406 8754
salarekalde@bizkaia.net

sala rekalde
Alameda de Recalde, 30
Bilbao 48009 (Spain)
http://www.salarekalde.bizkaia.net

Ícaro Zorbar, te extraño: los solistas (I Miss You: The Soloists), 2008; Courtesy the artist

THE CISNEROS FONTANALS ART FOUNDATION
PRESENTS NEW WORK BY RECIPIENTS OF THE 2008 GRANTS AND COMMISSIONS AWARDS IN ITS NEW EXHIBITION

Interrogating Systems: 2008 Grants and Commissions Exhibition

Miami, Florida – As we celebrate The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation’s five years of supporting emerging and mid-career artists from Latin America, CIFO presents Interrogating Systems, its 2008 Grants and Commissions Programs exhibition on view from April 25 to June 22 at CIFO Art Space. For the first time CIFO will present works by the award recipients of both programs in one single exhibition. The 10 emerging artists who were awarded grants are: Alejandro Almanza Pereda (Mexico), Johanna Calle (Colombia), Jonathan Harker (Ecuador/Panama), Mateo López (Colombia), Daniel Medina (Venezuela), Moris (Israel Meza Moreno) (Mexico), Amilcar Packer (Brazil), Luis Romero (Venezuela), Ícaro Zorbar (Colombia) and Francisco Valdés (Chile). The two mid career artists selected as recipients of the Commissions Award are Pablo Cardoso (Ecuador) and Federico Herrero (Costa Rica).

The exhibition is the culmination of a year-long process during which the Foundation’s international Advisory Committee and Board of the Directors identified the grant and commissions recipients, and the artists developed new work to share with audiences in Miami.

“This exhibition celebrates five years of CIFO’s commitment with contemporary artists in Latin America and our audiences in Miami for the creation of a new, open platform of participation, dialogue and production of cutting-edge art in the region,” said CIFO’s Chief Curator, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill.

Artists are nominated for the Grants Program by CIFO’s international Advisory Committee of leading artists, curators, and art professionals. The honorary committee invites submissions from emerging visual artists from Latin America who are working in various media and creating challenging and highly innovative work. CIFO’s selection committee announces the final winners after rigorous study of over 300 project proposals and the Board of Directors elects the final winners.

The diverse and complex themes in the exhibition are explored with experimental and exciting forms of drawing, installation, painting and video. The two mid-career Commission Program artists Pablo Cardoso and Federico Herrero present large scale painting installations; Cardoso on the ‘fictions’ related to representing landscape, and Herrero who proposes a dialectical exchange between the spheres of high art painting and popular painting as it is found in urban developments.

For the first time CIFO has invited two New World School of Arts students to collaborate with one of the award grant artists to complete a mural, an integral component of the installation.

As with all of CIFO’s Grants and Commissions Program exhibitions, the artists chosen do not respond to a curatorial structure. There is, nevertheless, a common practice of questioning, enquiry and transgression in all the artists participating in this show. Another remarkable element in common amongst these artists: the construction and deconstruction of a sort of cartography of the world, conceived from the perspective of a subjective and intimate experience; as political and comitted inhabitants of this same cartography. This practice may take the form of a subtle and complex contextual social critique such is the case of Johanna Calle, Jonathan Harker and Moris. While others like Federico Herrero, Mateo López, Amilcar Packer and Francisco Valdés examine and question established notions of normality and common sense. Pablo Cardoso, Daniel Medina and Luis Romero propose new forms of cartographies that embrace the paradoxes of representing reality. In addition Alejandro
Almanza Pereda and Ícaro Zorbar contemplate the precariousness and fragility of objects.

Now in their fifth year, CIFO’s Grants and Commissions programs provide critical funding and visibility for contemporary artists from Latin America, helping to broaden global appreciation of their work while challenging stereotypical notions of Latin American art. These programs and related exhibitions give artists from Latin America a new platform to show their work, and present them in the context of the international contemporary art community.

Related Exhibition Programming

Thursday, April 24, 2008
6-7 pm, A Cultural Spot Membership Launch and Gallery Walk with the Artists
7-10pm, Cocktail Reception (by invitation only)
RSVP: rsvp@cifo.org / 305-455-3338
Each invitation admits two

Thursday, May 1, 2008, 7 pm
A Zeitgeist: Perspectives in Contemporary Art from Latin America
Panel discussion exploring the directions of today’s art production in the region featuring contemporary art curators: Cecilia Brunson (Chile), Elvis Fuentes (Cuba), Maria Iovino (Colombia), Guillermo Santamarina (Mexico) and moderated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Chief Curator, CIFO

Saturday, May 10 and June 14, 2008, 7 pm
Wynwood Second Saturdays
CIFO Concert Series

Extended Exhibition Brochure
Visitors to the show are provided with a variety of educational materials, including a free, illustrated catalogue designed to provide information concerning the exhibition and its related programs and events.

The exhibition brochure, including an introduction by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and essay by Santiago Olmo is available in the admissions desk.

***LAUNCHING OF CIFO’S MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM***

BECOME A MEMBER ON THE SPOT!

In five years CIFO has become a dynamic institution promoting cultural exchange through its exhibitions and events. As we celebrate this anniversary, we invite you to support the ongoing success of one of South Florida’s most vibrant art foundations. Sign up in person at CIFO Art Space or visit our website: www.cifo.org. You can also contact us by phone at 305-455-3380, by fax at 305-455-3334 and via email at member@cifo.org. CIFO has planned many exciting events for this coming year so do join us and become “a cultural spot member”!

General Membership Benefits

· Free admission to CIFO Events

·Invitation to members-only exhibition previews

·Invitation to CIFO Brunch during Art Basel Miami Beach

·Complimentary access to CIFO’s comprehensive library of books, magazines and catalogues related to art from Latin America

· A complimentary set of CIFO’s Grants and Commissions exhibition catalogues

·10% discount on all CIFO publications

· 10% discount on admission to third party events hosted at CIFO

· Subscription to CIFO Members’ E-Newsletter

A Cultural Friend $100

General membership benefits for two for one year
A Cultural Founder $1,500

General membership benefits for two for one year
Ability to reserve admission tickets for CIFO events for up to four friends or family
Complimentary parking for CIFO events
20% discount on CIFO Art Space rental fee
Invitations to additional special events exclusively for Founders
Recognition on the Founder’s Wall at CIFO Art Space for one year
Opportunities to arrange tours of local art fairs

About CIFO

CIFO, the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, is a non-profit organization established in 2002 by Ella Fontanals-Cisneros and her family to foster cultural and educational exchange within the visual arts.

CIFO has three primary initiatives:
CIFO Art Space – a permanent venue for the presentation of engaging and provocative contemporary art exhibitions highlighting works from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, works by CIFO grantees and commissioned artists, and experimental, challenging art programs;
Grants and Commissions Programs supporting emerging and mid-career contemporary artists from Latin America; and
Foundation-initiated support for other arts and culture projects.

CIFO Art Space
1018 North Miami Avenue
Miami, FL 33136
Thursday - Sunday 10:00am - 4:00pm
www.cifo.org 305.455.3380

Dia Art Foundation

DIA ANNOUNCES NEW
WEB-BASED PROJECT BY ARTIST EZRA JOHNSON

Latest in Dia’s series of Artists’ Projects for the web launches April 17, 2008

http://www.diaart.org/johnson

Dia Art Foundation announces the launch of Wrestling with the Blob Beast, a web-based project by artist Ezra Johnson, the latest in Dia’s ongoing series of online artworks. The project can be seen beginning April 17 at http://www.diaart.org/johnson . An opening reception will be held at Dia on Thursday, April 17, 2008, from 6 to 8 pm on the fifth floor at 535 West 22nd Street, New
York City.

In Wrestling with the Blob Beast, Johnson presents a collection of sixteen animated screensavers. Derived from painting, they cover a wide field, ranging from formal studies where color is a primary concern, to quiet nature scenes like a campfire at night, to vignettes where figure and abstraction appear to be in active battle, as in several pieces where hands appear to wrestle with paint which morphs into a dog’s face and then reverts to paint strokes. While the wrestling pieces serve as humorous metaphors for the sometimes arduous endeavor of painting, others suggest a more serene relationship, such as Fly, in which a tiny painted airplane inches across a wet, painted sky.

Johnson uses digital technology to record and assemble his animations, yet his imagery retains a low-tech, painterly feel, with the paintstrokes providing unexpected physicality in a medium where motion is typically video or computer-generated animation. For the artist, paint is his primary focus, with the animation serving less as the end rather than another means of looking at painting.

The artists’ first well-known work, “What Visions Burn” from 2006, was a 22-minute dvd which mixed painting and cinema in an entertaining and self-referential heist film. The brief looping scenes which comprise the screensavers for Wrestling with the Blob Beast continue Johnson’s painterly exploration of cinematic conventions while using animation to look a new possibilities in painting.

Ezra Johnson
Ezra Johnson was born in 1975 in Wenatchee, Washington, and lives in Brooklyn. He received a BFA in painting from the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco in 2000 and completed an MFA in painting in 2006 at Hunter College in New York City. During his MFA studies, he participated in an exchange program with the Universitat der Kunst in Berlin. His work has been shown at numerous exhibitions including solo gallery shows in New York, Los Angeles, and Torino, Italy. His first solo museum show was at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2007.

Artists’ Projects for the Web
Dia initiated a series of web-based works in early 1995, becoming one of the first arts organizations to foster the use of the world wide web as an artistic and conceptual medium. Dia’s collection of web projects currently numbers twenty-seven. Previous projects include Wilfredo Prieto’s A Moment of Silence (2007); Maja Bajevic’s I Wish I was Born in a Hollywood Movie (2006); Dorothy Cross’s Foxglove: digitalis purpurea (2005); Ana Torfs’ Approximations/Contradictions (2004); Allen Ruppersberg’s The New Five Foot Shelf (2004); Glenn Ligon’s Annotations (2003); Shimabuku’s Moon Rabbit (2001); Stephen Vitiello’s Tetrasomia (2000); Diller + Scofidio’s Refresh (1998); and Komar and Melamid’s The Most Wanted Paintings (1995), among others. All may be visited at Dia’s website, http://www.diaart.org

Funding
Funding for this project has been provided the New York State Council on the Arts.

Dia Art Foundation
A nonprofit institution founded in 1974, Dia Art Foundation is internationally renowned for initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving art projects. Dia presents public programs and its permanent collection of works from the 1960s through the present at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries, in New York’s Hudson Valley. In the fall of 2007 Dia initiated a partnership with The Hispanic Society of America in which Dia presents commissions and projects by contemporary artists in the Hispanic Society’s galleries. Dia is actively engaged in a search for a permanent home for its New York City initiatives. Additionally, Dia maintains long-term, site-specific projects in the western United States, in New York City, and in Bridgehampton on Long Island. For additional public information, visit http://www.diaart.org

* * *
For additional information or materials please contact
Ashley Tickle, Dia Art Foundation, New York City, 212.293.5518 or atickle @ diaart.org