Artipedia - Arts News

Artes Mundi 3

Come give us a speech (detail) 2008 N S Harsha

N S Harsha wins
3rd Artes Mundi Prize
http://www.artesmundi.org

The prestigious 40,000 GBP Artes Mundi Prize has been awarded to Indian artist N S Harsha. At an award ceremony on 24 April 2008 at National Museum Cardiff, Jack Persekian, Chairman of the Judging Panel, fellow judge Xu Bing and Sir Robert Finch, Chairman of Liberty International and representing St David’s 2, Artes Mundi’s principal sponsor, presented Harsha with the award.

N. S. Harsha is a skilled story teller, combining details of everyday life in his native India with world events and images we have seen on the news. He has turned the Indian tradition of miniature painting into a form that enables him to mix the local with the universal. He uses it to draw our attention to the whimsical, the absurd as much as the tragic and to the internationally significant. He could be described as an artist / philosopher and without judgement, enables us to reflect on the world around us.

“The panel of judges acknowledged the work of all the artists and found coming to a decision extremely challenging” said Jack Persekian. “We based our decision on the artists’ work over the last 5-8 years and were particularly interested in work that added to our understanding of humanity and the
human condition.”

In awarding the prize to N S Harsha, the panel were impressed by the scope of his work and its range and variety of approach, from painting and installation to community activities. “Basing his work upon his locality, cultural traditions and the shifting world of today, Harsha engages and connects with an ever broadening public” said Persekian. The panel stressed the strength of the exhibition at National Museum Cardiff and admired the outstanding presentations by each of the shortlisted artists.

The members of the Artes Mundi 3 Prize Jury were Jack Persekian, Director of the Sharjah Biennale; the Chinese artist Xu Bing, winner of the first Artes Mundi Prize in 2004 and now vice president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; Tuula Arkio, freelance curator, writer and former General Director of the National Art Galleries, Helsinki; and David Alston, curator and Arts Director for the Arts Council of Wales.

The nine artists shortlisted for the Artes Mundi 3 Prize were Lida Abdul, Vasco Araújo, Mircea Cantor, Dalziel + Scullion, N.S. Harsha, Abdoulaye Konaté, Susan Norrie and
Rosângela Rennó.

Artes Mundi Wales International Visual Art Prize. Awarded every two years, the 40,000 GBP Artes Mundi Prize is the largest international art prize in the UK and one of the largest art prizes in the world. It recognises outstanding emerging artists from around the world who discuss the human condition. Xu Bing won the first Artes Mundi Prize in 2004 and Eija-Liisa Ahtila was awarded the second Prize in 2006.

Artes Mundi 3 exhibition runs to 8 June 2008 at National Museum Cardiff and features major works by the nine shortlisted artists.

Artes Mundi organises a two year programme of art, education and work in communities which culminates in the Artes Mundi Exhibition and Prize.

Artes Mundi 3
National Museum Cardiff
Cathays Park, Cardiff,
Wales, UK CF10 3NP

+44 (0)2920 397 951
Open 10am-5pm Tuesday to Sunday and Bank Holidays
Admission Free

Artes Mundi core supporters: Welsh Assembly Government, Cardiff Council, Arts Council of Wales, BBC Wales, National Museum Wales and The Derek Williams Trust.

Artes Mundi 3 principal sponsor: St David’s 2
Artes Mundi 3 major sponsors: Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management, Gerald Eve and Arts
& Business.

Media partners: Western Mail and Sky Arts

Contemporary Art
Museum St. Louis

JOHN ARMLEDER and
OLIVIER MOSSET

alongside

THE FRONT ROOM
Ei Arakawa, Alex Hubbard and Oscar Tuazon, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Jan Estep, Max Schumann, Vlatka Horvat and Eva Weinmayr, Ed Fella, Brent Green, Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, and Dexter Sinister,
co-operators.

May 9 - August 3, 2008

http://www.contemporarystl.org

MAIN GALLERIES / exhibitions with two artists
This spring, conceptual artists John Armleder and Olivier Mosset take over the galleries at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Strongly influential for a younger generation of artists working in the U.S. and in Europe, Armleder’s and Mosset’s work remains unfamiliar to a wider
American audience.

The inaugural show of the Contemporary’s new curatorial team signals a commitment to artist-centered exhibitions. Jointly conceived by the artists—who have been close for more than twenty years—the exhibition represents neither a curated two-person show nor two independent solo exhibitions. Instead, it proposes an active juxtaposition of parallel and opposite artistic approaches where artworks act as obstacles, and obstacles act as artworks. Armleder contributes new pour and pattern paintings, a site-specific fifty-foot wall-painting, an installation of Mylar Christmas trees, and strips of metallic vinyl. Mosset, in addition to a series of his infamous “circle paintings” from the late 1960s and early 1970s, presents a large-scale installation of several dozen Toblerones, large cardboard sculptures based on anti-tank structures used by the Swiss army.

John Armleder has produced thousands of sculptures, paintings, drawings, books, and performances, creating an art of impenetrable surfaces that collapses the unique into the generic, and vice-versa. Olivier Mosset, on the other hand, chooses to remain firmly committed to blankness, stripping art of any content, and pursuing a decelerated process, rejecting our conventional notions of progress and insatiable hunger for the new.

THE FRONT ROOM / short exhibitions by artists and others
Running alongside and in contrast with the Main Galleries, The Front Room operates at a different rhythm, with exhibitions lasting anywhere from a day to a few weeks. The Front Room is designed for more reactive, nimble, and experimental exhibitions that test the boundaries of conventional programming and echo the elasticity and simultaneity of contemporary culture. Rooted in a spirit of open and provisional improvisation, the gallery connects the work of a wide range of artists in a restless series of installations, screenings, performances, interventions, and other forms of presentation. By also offering a series of “carte blanches,” this new initiative creates a space of occupation, within the museum’s own walls, for artist-run spaces, cooperatives, artists, curators, and other independent voices from around the world.

The upcoming Front Room season features projects by:
Ei Arakawa (May 9 - 25), Alex Hubbard and Oscar Tuazon (May 27 - June , Gardar Eide Einarsson (June 10 - 22), Jan Estep (June 14 - 15), Max Schumann (June 24 - July 6), Vlatka Horvat and Eva Weinmayr (July 8 - 18), Ed Fella, with guest-curator Bruce Burton (July 19 - 25), Brent Green (July 26 - August 10), Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT (August 12 - 31); and Dexter Sinister, co-operators (ongoing).

John Armleder and Olivier Mosset is supported by Swiss Re; Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council; and Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation. The publication is supported by Zane Bennett Contemporary Art, Santa Fe. Special thanks to Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Zürich.

General support for the Contemporary’s exhibition program is generously provided by the Whitaker Foundation; William E. Weiss Foundation; Regional Arts Commission; Arts and Education Council; Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; Nancy Reynolds and Dwyer Brown; and members of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM ST. LOUIS
With a vision of presenting the most relevant and experimental developments in contemporary art and developing successful community partnerships, education programs and outreach initiatives, the Contemporary makes the arts available to wide and diverse audiences throughout the St. Louis metropolitan area. Founded as the Forum for Contemporary Art in 1980, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis re-opened with a new 25,000 square-foot building in 2003.

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
3750 Washington Boulevard
St. Louis, MO 63108
http://www.contemporarystl.org

ArtAsiaPacific no. 58
(May/June 2008)

http://www.aapmag.com

ArtAsiaPacific no. 58 keeps pace with the auction records, new institutions and grandiose personalities that continue to fascinate the art world in 2008, while stepping back to examine artists’ relationship with written language and text.

The May/June issue centers around three in-depth portraits of individual artists who employ text in their works. News and profiles editor HG Masters reflects on the innovative concoctions of Yoko Ono, the conceptual artist and early member of the global avant-garde collective Fluxus, who based her early performances and sculptures on simple written instructions collected in her 1964 book, Grapefruit. Following up on the themes in Ono’s oeuvre, Lauren Cornell, executive director of the new media organization Rhizome and adjunct curator at the New Museum in New York, analyzes the ecstatic Flash animations by the elusive Seoul-based duo Young Hae-Chang Heavy Industries. Features editor Andrew Maerkle takes a close look at Hong Kong artist Tsang Kin-wah’s neo-psychedelic, pinwheel
wallpaper patterns.

This issue also examines the tradition of text-based art from a broader cultural perspective in three regions. From Australia and New Zealand, George Alexander chronicles the tradition of text art starting with Rosalie Gascoigne’s works from 1970s and 1980s then clicks fast-forward to young artists Adam Cullen and Maria Cruz. Eric Wear of Hong Kong surveys contemporary calligraphy from China, moving from Red Emperor Mao Zedong to the late graffiti artist and self-proclaimed King of Kowloon, Tsang Tsou-Choi. Gregory Galligan explores Middle Eastern calligraphy in the expanded field, specifically through the work of Shirin Neshat, Ghada Amer, Emily Jacir, Shirazeh Houshiary and Walid Raad.

Continuing the issue’s art-meets-language theme in Profiles, Eliza Gluckman delves into Sharmini Pereira’s new artist-book publishing venture, Raking Leaves, which releases its first titles this year. Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces’ director Alexie Glass introduces the politically charged text-and-image collages of Malaysian artist Roslisham Ismail, aka Ise, for Projects in the Making.

Returning to the figures who continue to shape contemporary art, ArtAsiaPacific talks with independent curator Lance Fung about his penchant for collaborative experimentation to be displayed at June’s SITE Santa Fe biennial in New Mexico. ArtAsiaPacific also caught up with Frank Cohen in Manchester, England, and discussed his 30 years of collecting, most recently some fine works from China and India.

To round out the issue, Tibetan artist Tenzing Rigdol shares his intimate thoughts on Chinese painter Liu Xiaodong’s depictions of life in the troubled Himalayas. And Barbara Pollack discusses ideas of creativity and originality for The Point, gazing back to the theories of Columbia University professor Rosalind Krauss and leaping forward to encounters with the younger generation of wannabe artists at the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts in Chengdu.