Artipedia - Arts News

Museion

MUSEION Opening Exhibition
Peripheral vision and
collective body

24th May - 21st September 2008

http://www.museion.it

On 24th May 2008 Museion, museum of modern and contemporary art in Bolzano (South Tyrol, Italy) inaugurates its new building designed by the Berlin architects KSV Krüger Schuberth Vandreike and commissioned by the Autonomous Province of Bolzano.

The building corresponds to a redefinition of the entire Museion project: as an institution, Museion has been managed since 2006 by a foundation of which the Province of Bolzano and the Museion Association are part and, in 2007, Corinne Diserens was appointed as new director.

Museion derives its strength and driving force from its location, South Tyrol, a multicultural region with a strong European outlook, which this year will also be hosting the European Biennial for Contemporary Art Manifesta 7. Instead of a simple container of artworks, Museion will be an international laboratory for research with an interdisciplinary focus: this is the museum that is being born. Museion sets at the center of its development a strong activation of the collection that will live in a relationship with temporary exhibitions. It will also stimulate the collaboration with artists through production and
artists’ residencies.

Museion’s project is reflected in its architecture. The cubic form of the building is visually striking, with the transparent front facades offering a dialogue with the city. The physical and symbolical tie between the historical center and the new city is completed by the two parallel and oscillating curves of the bridge, an integral part of the project. The building’s interior spaces are fluid: the five levels of museum activity — exhibition and events areas, educational workshops, and library — aren’t rigidly separated from one another, but are intimately interconnected. Adjoining the museum is an atelier house to host artists. At night the museum will offer passers-by a stunning view when the facades will act as screens for the projection of artworks especially commissioned by Museion.

The opening show: ‘Peripheral vision and collective body’

The activation of the collection finds its full expression in the opening show “Peripheral vision and collective body.” The exhibition, conceived as an exceptional event for the opening, will gather numerous works from the collection, including new acquisitions and important long-term loans from private collectors, as well as loans from national and international museums.

Peripheral vision and collective body discusses the question of the collective bodies in contemporary visual art considering the tight relationship with architecture and performance (dance in particular). Looking at how recent artistic proposals have been informed by the American avant-gardes from the post WW II period which themselves had activated some experimentation from the German, Polish and Russian milieu of the early XX Century.

The exhibition will bring together a selection of works, including film, performance, documents and texts from Meyerhold to contemporary art, which will explore the creation and the use of ‘the collective body’ as a critical strategy to question the legacy of our recent history.

This path takes as a starting point the notion of “peripheral vision” as opposed to central vision, that is to say the ability to see objects and movement outside of the direct line of vision and explores diverse ways of challenging single vs public experiences of spaces.

‘Peripheral vision and collective body’ will run from 24 May to 21 September 2008. There will be an accompanying program of events, performances, films and talks. The exhibition catalogue will be co-published with Hatje Cantz in German, Italian and English editions.
More information: http://www.museion.it/#280&0&en

Opening hours
Daily 10am - 8pm
Thursdays 10am - 10pm

Press inquiries: press@museion.unibz.it

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Faces, 2007
Direction by Carlos Amorales, Mexican
Animation by Ivan Martinez Lopez
Music concept by Julián Lede
Digital animation after paper cutout plates
Duration; 11 minutes, 36 seconds
Courtesy Carlos Amorales and
Yvon Lambert Gallery New York/Paris

MUSEUM’S ‘LIVE CINEMA’ SERIES PRESENTS THE MULTIFACETED WORK OF CARLOS AMORALES
On view April 11 - July 13, 2008
in Galleries 178 and 179

Philadelphia Museum of Art
Benjamin Franklin Parkway
at 26th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19130
(215) 763-8100

http://www.philamuseum.org

Live Cinema/ Carlos Amorales: Four Animations, Five Drawings, and a Plague focuses on the work of Carlos Amorales, one of Mexico’s leading contemporary artists. This exhibition includes a selection of video animations in Gallery 179, along with a group of new drawings, and a cloud of black paper moths that swirl along a staircase and spread across the walls and ceiling of Gallery 178.

Born in 1970 in Mexico City, Amorales studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Rijksakademia in Amsterdam. Over the last decade the artist has developed a unique visual vocabulary in mediums ranging from drawing and animation to installation and performance. Four Animations, Five Drawings, and a Plague traces the development of Amorales’s “Liquid Archive,” a database of digital images that he uses in his work, whether alone and in collaborative projects. This selection underscores the role of the artist as critical filter and role in examining forms and their potential meaning. In his work, Amorales dissolves boundaries between his media: humans become animals and animals assume human forms, or a sinister hybrid of the two. Familiar images and objects are rendered mysterious and menacing in surreal visions that are influenced by gothic literature, mythological motifs, and Mexican popular culture. Black Cloud (2007), the installation accompanying the animations
and drawings takes the Liquid Archive into a three-dimensional realm. Selected Ghosts (composition) 01-05 (2008) is a series of paper collages that is shown for the first time. In these works the artist uses vector graphics to generate the outline of various images from his archive, capturing their silhouettes. Images of skulls, spiderwebs, birds, trees and the human form are repeated and transformed in the various compositions, as their outlines appear to merge and dissolve.

The selection of black and white single-channel animations reflects the artist’s fascination with hybrid imagery, including the crossbred wolf-human creature in the Manimal (2005) and the rapid-fire shapes and forms in Faces (2007). These films, along with the playful Rorschach Test Animation (2004), which presents a shifting series of inkblots against a white background, push figurative representation to its limits, in the process enabling the artist to develop his own abstract visual language.

Related event
Conversation with the artist
Carlos Amorales in dialogue with Adelina Vlas, exhibition curator
April 11, 2008 at 6:00 pm, Seminar Room
Free after Museum admission

About Live Cinema
Live Cinema is the title of a series of film and video programs at the Film and Video Gallery that explores the vast production of single channel video and film by a diverse group of local, national and international artists. In the last decade an ever-increasing number of contemporary artists have appropriated these media as an artistic outlet, in dialogue with the early video and Super 8 practices of the 1960s and the tradition of experimental filmmaking. Each installment of the Live Cinema series focuses on a specific aspect of this work, in order to both map and analyze this important aspect of contemporary art production. Programs are accompanied by a series of public lectures by the participating artists as well as a publication in which writers discuss the works exhibited.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is among the largest art museums in the United States, showcasing more than 2,000 years of exceptional human creativity in masterpieces of painting, sculpture, works on paper, decorative arts and architectural settings from Europe, Asia and the Americas. The striking neoclassical building stands on a nine-acre site above the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and houses more than 200 galleries. The Museum offers a wide variety of enriching activities, including programs for children and families, lectures, concerts and films.

For additional information, contact the Marketing and Public Relations Department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art at (215) 684-7860. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street. For general information, call (215) 763-8100, or visit the Museum’s website at http://www.philamuseum.org

Contact:
Norman Keyes, Director of Media Relations

Elisabeth Flynn, Senior Press Officer
(215) 684-7364
eflynn@philamuseum.org

Artists Featured (clockwise from top L) Tony Rosca, Joseph Fischer, Eric Edwards, Melissa Markowitz - Image Courtesy Of Albertini Arts Gallery

DECADENCE AND DECAY;
A Group Exhibition For The Marrow Minded

WHO:
Albertini Arts presents a group show featuring local artists: Eric Edwards, Fernando Ganas, Joseph Fischer, Kris Steffner, Laurie Vaughn, Melissa Markowitz and Tony Rosca.

WHAT:
Curated by resident artist Kris Steffner the group exhibition features various works which incorporate the human skeleton as subject.

Hidden but intrinsic to all living beings, the revealed skeleton has long been a subject of fascination often revealing itself in art, literature and philosophy. Exhibiting works range from classical to modern; while some focus on anatomy, others take a more humorous tone by poking fun at our ongoing obsession with our own beauty and mortality.

Highlights include: a collection of mixed medium paintings representing the artists inner struggle with the often paralyzing fear of what happens to ones art if your creativity ceases to flow, a group of mixed medium collages where the artist recycles found materials to create new images, a series of very intriguing mixed medium ceramic sculptures where the artist explores the theory that ‘ignorance is bliss’ as well as some graffiti style wearable art.

Active participants in The ‘Wynwood Art District Second Saturday Gallery Walk’ Albertini Arts host monthly cocktail receptions to allow patrons the opportunity to mingle with the featured artists & discuss their works. “Our primary goal as a gallery is to bring art to the public and make it more a part of daily life” states curator and resident artist Kris Steffner.

WHEN:
Opening reception Saturday, May 10th 2008 from 7-11pm, during ‘The Wynwood Art District Second Saturday Gallery Walk’, featuring live painting by Miami based graffiti artist Fernando Ganas and live jazz by Renee Fiallos & Mike Woods.

On view: May 10th - June 7th from 12-5pm Tuesday through Friday and 12-7pm on Saturdays.

WHERE:
Albertini Arts is located at 190 NW 36 Street in ‘The Wynwood Art District’ just south of ‘The Miami Design District’ and 2-blocks west of ‘The Midtown Mall’.

For more information call (305) 576-ART1, email AlbertiniArts@gmail.com or visit http://www.AlbertiniArts.com

Long March Space

Zhan Wang

‘Garden Utopia’ – Solo Exhibition
May 11 - May 21, 2008
National Art Museum of China, Beijing

‘Sculptural’ Intervention – Conference
May 12, 2008
Organized by Sculpture Research Center, Central Academy of Fine Arts

’86 Divinity Figures’ – New Project Initiation
May 13 - June 4, 2008
Long March Space, Beijing

“My approach is to marry together the two extremes of primitive, untamed nature and the artificial, which is manmade and, therefore, man-controlled. The highest aim we can seek to attain is the unity of Man and nature, to achieve goals without going against nature. Stainless steel, with its mirror-like surface, produces a direct and pure effect on the viewer. It is an illusion that is necessary for uplifting the spirit of mankind…It is important to express an idea precisely using physical materials. Man’s tendency to over-intellectualise often diverts attention away from physical matter. The spiritual inferences we derive from physical matter are frequently directed by social change. This is why I am interested in materials commonly used in modern life. Only when a material has been used in all possible permutations and for every kind of application, does its true significance become apparent.”
Zhan Wang

‘Garden Utopia’ at National Art Museum of China
“Garden Utopia” articulates the traditional perspective of a Chinese garden as a space for contemplation, a borderland between reality and fantasy to escape the trappings of the modern world and reconnect humanity with nature. It is this traditional aesthetic that Zhan Wang situates against a violently changing Chinese society, his works examining the tensions between landscape and industrialization, tradition and modernity. This exhibition will feature over 50 works by Zhan Wang, from his celebrated stainless steel ‘scholar rock’ monuments to the spectacular reflective steel installations of urban landscapes, Zhan Wang’s work will spectacularly transform the spaces of the National Art Museum of China.

Curator Fan Di’an
Co-curator Huang Du
Exhibition advisor Xie Suzhen
Co-organized by Long March Space
Opening reception: Saturday May 11, 2008 3pm – 6pm

‘Sculptural’ Intervention – Conference at Central Academy of Fine Arts
On the occasion of Zhan Wang’s solo exhibition “Garden Utopia” at the National Art Museum of China, artists, curators, critics and practitioners will engage in an open discussion on the relationship between traditional sculpture and contemporary art. Inviting leading Chinese and international art historians, curators, critics and artists, this symposium will question the public and social nature of contemporary art raised by Beuys’ “social sculpture” and the idea of “intervention”, to articulate new possibilities and definitions for “sculpture” as a medium that informs and engages other material explorations of the social condition.

This symposium is moderated by Fan Di’an, Director, National Art Museum of China and Lu Jie, Director, Long March Project. Presenters: Lisa Corrin, Lu Peng, Chia Chi Jason Wang, and
Zhu Qingsheng.

’86 Divinity Figures’ at Long March Space
86 Divinity Figures is a new month-long project by artist Zhan Wang. This series of performative accumulative acts, involving the creation and destruction of identical divinity figures, calls forth the artist’s investigation into his personal family history of 86 generations. Zhan Wang traces his lineage back to Zhan Jiqin, the sage of peace and harmony and his possibly mythic sibling, Zhan Zhi, known as the ‘saint thief’, both widely celebrated as divinity figures in Zhan Wang’s hometown in Shandong Province. Through the action of making and destroying, this project generates questions of renewal, ancestral lineage and the desire to break from the past, while always being constrained and re-incorporated by our genealogy.

Venue: Long March Space C
Initiation Ceremony: 4 pm, Tuesday May 13, 2008

National Art Museum of China
1 Wusi Dajie, East District, Beijing, China, 100010
9:00 am - 5 pm (No Entry after 4:00 p.m.)
http://www.namoc.org

Long March Space
4 Jiuxianqiao Rd (Factory 798), Beijing China 100015
Tues - Sun 11:00 am - 7:00 pm
http://www.longmarchspace.com

Central Academy of Fine Arts
No.8, Hua Jia Di Nan Jie, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China.
http://www.cafa.com.cn

Press contact:
Long March Space
Tel +86 10 6438 7107
Fax +86 10 6432 3834
press@longmarchspace.com