Artipedia - Arts News

Fondazione Zegna

Daniel Buren, Le banderuole colorate,
lavoro in situ, Trivero, 2007
Courtesy ALL’APERTO – Fondazione Zegna
Photo Luca Fregoso

DANIEL BUREN

A contemporary art project curated by
Andrea Zegna and Barbara Casavecchia

Opening 7th June 2008
Preview (invitation only) 29th May 2008

http://www.fondazionezegna.org/allaperto

With the debut of ALL’APERTO (OUTDOORS), the Fondazione Zegna, a non-profit-making institution that has been supporting projects in the cultural, social, medical and environmental sphere since 2000, is expanding its field of action by making a contribution to contemporary art as well.

The project, curated by Andrea Zegna and Barbara Casavecchia, is being launched at Trivero, a small town in the Italian province of Biella, close to the Alps. It wishes to open up new ways of seeing, and therefore living in this area, thus pursuing the spirit embraced by the industrialist Ermenegildo Zegna, who from the 1930s onwards carried out a series of developments aimed at bringing new vitality to the mountains and the people of the local community. Today Trivero is at the foot of a vast natural oasis, stretching for over 100 sq km, open free o charge to the public all year round.

ALL’APERTO is conceived as a continuum of site-specific projects with a reduced impact on the environment that attempts to focus on the concept of visibility. The artist invited to carry out its first phase is Daniel Buren (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1938). A Conceptual artist of worldwide fame, Buren has been staging public works, installations and exhibitions since the sixties that are based on an outil visuel (‘visual tool’) of disarming simplicity: a pattern – always the same – of vertical white stripes that are 8.7 cm wide and alternate with other colours. By applying this motif to all sorts of surfaces, he brings into question the relationship between the uniqueness of the work of art and its context, prompting the observer to pay new attention to a specific place; and consequently to its formal, social, and
economic conditions.

With Le banderuole colorate, lavoro in situ, 2007, Trivero (The Coloured Weather Vanes, Work in Situ, 2007, Trivero), Buren frames the perimeter of the panoramic terraces of the historic Lanificio (‘Wool Mill’) with a rainbow of 135 flags, fluctuating between green and blue in a recurring scheme of seven Pantone shades. It’s a ‘full dressing’ that performs the simple task of indicating the direction of the wind and recording the change in the seasons, as well as transforming an architecture that is deeply familiar to all the town’s inhabitants.

Daniel Buren’s installation will be on permanent display from May 29th 2008. The press preview will be followed by a public opening, on June 7th. On that occasion, the roofs of the Lanificio (usually closed) will be made accessible to the public, offering a stunning view of the mountains.

The artist selected for the next phase of ALL’APERTO, scheduled for 2009, is Alberto Garutti (Galbiate, Italy, 1948).

Under the patronage of the Municipality of Trivero, the Province of Biella and the Piedmont Region, ALL’APERTO is supported by an international Advisory Board whose members are Tom van Gestel (artistic manager, SKOR, Amsterdam), Salvatore Lacagnina (director of the Galleria Civica di Montevergini), Michelangelo Pistoletto (artist and founder of Cittadellarte, Biella) and Catia Riccaboni (Culture Department, Fondation de France).

Press office ALL’APERTO: Cristiana Rota, cristiana.rota@fastwebnet.it, +39 347 5258440

Press office Fondazione Zegna: Federico Amato, federico@amatos.it, +39 02 89077395;
Magda De Santis, magda.desantis@zegna.com, +39 02 422091

Futuro presente /
Present continuous

Lucy&JorgeOrta-Antarctic Village-No Borders
Courtesy Galleria Continua ‘08-Ela Bialkowska

The first international festival dedicated to contemporary art and its protagonists will take place in Faenza from 23 to 25 May.
http://www.festivalartecontemporanea.it

From 23 to 25 May, Faenza will be a meeting place for international contemporary art. The Festival of Contemporary Art will provide a unique opportunity to “view” art through the words of its protagonists, in order to understand its potential developments and answer the questions of the
general public.

No works of art will be on display, but more than 100 speakers from all over the world, including artists, curators, critics, representatives from museums, art spaces and art schools, as well as gallery managers, entrepreneurs, public administrators, editors and journalists will meet in Faenza.

The 3 days of the festival will contain more than 30 events, with discussions, round table meetings and forums focusing on contemporary art and its increasing contaminations with other creative sectors, as well as its relationships with society.

The event is promoted by the Municipality of Faenza and goodwill, as part of the project “Moto d’idee. Faenza verso il distretto culturale evoluto” (Faenza towards the system-wide
cultural district).

The underlying theme, which is also the title of the first edition, curated by the scientific committee made up of Carlos Basualdo, Pier Luigi Sacco and Angela Vettese, is “futuro presente / present continuous”, expressing the need to consider the future trends of contemporary art, which is constantly expanding and changing.

In the “To be made” talks, the focus will be on art itself, as told by the artists: Dan Graham interviewed by Germano Celant, Magdalena Campos – Pons by Michele Robecchi, Marjetica Potrc by Gabi Scardi, and Francesco Vezzoli by Massimiliano Gioni.

The festival will also focus on the artists of tomorrow. Gradisca, a special event where Alberto Garutti debates with a group of debutant artists, and the forum Art and Curatorial Schools. The Next Step, bringing together representatives from some of the most prestigious international art schools, including Robert Storr and Alexander Alberro, will provide a fresh view of what is up and coming in the new generations.

The current state of flux of museums in their manifold aspects - their role in the art system, their dialogue with the local context, their dialectics with the art market, and so on – will be dealt with in detail through forums involving some of the key figures of the current international scene, such as Iwona Blazwick, the director of the Whitechapel, which is due to start an extensive enlargement project in 2009.

Substantial attention will also be paid to cultural centres where artistic production intersects with other disciplines, giving life to new forms of creative production. Many of them are emerging all over the world as the result of the transformation of industrial buildings, in connection with processes of urban and regional renewal that follow the dynamics of the system-wide cultural district: creative dismissions, as they have been termed by goodwill in its pioneering, extensive survey of current practices and models in the international context.

The discussions that make up the contaminations series will reflect on the dialogue between contemporary art and proximate fields such as architecture, design and fashion, through the voice of protagonists of the calibre of internationally acclaimed fashion designer Antonio Marras, and chef Massimo Bottura. A special discussion will take place between Stefano Boeri, Oliviero Toscani and Renato Soru, the president of Sardinia Region that is currently undertaking a massive program of artistic and architectural renewal, focusing on the relationship between art, architecture and
regional development.

Last but not least, the festival will also provide an opportunity for people working in the sector and enthusiasts, to find out about upcoming events in the international cultural calendar: from the biennial exhibition Manifesta 2008, to be held in Italy for the first time, to the second Bienal del Fin del Mundo, which, starting in the city of Ushuaia, in the Argentine province of the Tierra del Fuego, will invite artists to consider how “another world is possible at the end of the world”.

Promoted by
Municipality of Faenza
Moto d’idee - Faenza verso il distretto culturale evoluto
goodwill

With the patronage of
Commissione Europea
Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri
Ministero degli Affari Esteri
Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali
Regione Emilia Romagna
Provincia di Ravenna
GAI – Giovani Artisti Italiani
Goethe Institute - Mailand

With the support of
Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali
Parc

partners
Banca di Romagna
Costruzioni Edili Bertozzini
Gruppo Hera
Byblos
Electa
Gas
Gruppo Teseco – Fondazione Teseco per L’arte
Pirelli & C. Real Estate SpA

In collaboration with
Acax, Bucharest
AMACI
ANGAMC
CAIC, Vilnius
Polish Institute of Rome
Scope Art Fair, Miami, New York, London, Basel
Start
Trans Europe Halles
University IUAV of Venice
University UIAH, Helsinki
uqbar, Berlin
Viafarini, Milan

Scientific committee
Carlos Basualdo, Pier Luigi Sacco, Angela Vettese

Organisation and communication
goodwill

For further information:

Santa Nastro, press office
sn@good-will.it
+393295794324
+39051220080
http://www.festivalartecontemporanea.it
http://www.good-will.it

Portikus

Haegue Yang
Siblings and Twins
May 17 - June 29, 2008

Opening:
May 16, 2008, 8 pm
Press conversation:
May 16, 2008, 11 am

http://www.portikus.de

Haegue Yang (born 1971 in Seoul) is showing a new installation at the Portikus entitled Siblings and Twins. The work is composed of two parts that are connected by substantial metaphorical parallels yet formally distinct. Yang’s current works are based on subjectively selected aspects from the lives of a variety of historical characters. In the case of Siblings and Twins, shown at the Portikus, these are the fighter for Korea’s freedom Kim San and the French author Marguerite Duras. The specific interest is here primarily in the transfer of subjectively felt intensities that underlie the public perception of these characters and the circumstances of their lives into an abstract form.

With this exhibition, the Portikus is part of a serial project Yang has designed for this year; the project calls for further installations—pursuing the same substantive idea, but with different characters and their abstract translations—to be installed in a number of international exhibition spaces, including the Hamburg Kunstverein; Cubitt Gallery, London; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Gallery Red Cat, Los Angeles; and Sala Rekalde, Bilbao.

Haegue Yang’s artistic approach is marked by a particular interest in the language of abstraction, and in particular in how the rhetoric of formal abstraction might make it possible to relate abstractly conceived complex facts about the world in a self-supporting language. Using everyday materials and objects such as blinds, metal structures, light bulbs, perforated metal sheets, and spotlights as formal means, Yang creates an exhibition situation in which the visitor is called upon to face—both physically and intellectually—the plurality of possible interpretations. Yang’s subjective reading treats the histories the exhibition engages—focusing on two pairs of characters, Kim San–Nym Wales and Marguerite Duras–Robert Antelme—as comparable in that both lives are marked by an intense struggle with one’s own fate and an unconditional devotion, to the point of self-sacrifice, to one’s political ideals and the belief in them. This reading contemplates and unite
s the lives of two individuals as subjects under a single universal and collective aspect. Their specifics may vary, yet the universal quality expressed by Haegue Yang in her installations through the use of abstract forms can be understood as a quest for and assertion of a subjective truth. At stake is here less a precise biographical narration than a rhetorical visualization, universal and yet subjective, of certain intensive states and aspects immanent to the
“real” histories.

The real histories on which the installations are based might be told in the following way: Red Mountainous Broken Labyrinth tells the story of the fighter for Korea’s freedom Kim San, who participated in the underground campaign from China against the Japanese occupation of Korea between 1905 and 1938, and his biographer, the American journalist Nym Wales. Over the course of a number of years, the two met a number of times in life-threatening circumstances. Later on, Nym Wales’ indefatigable exertions helped make Kim San an icon among the many nameless participants in the fight for Korea’s freedom. With its labyrinthine structure, the installation Red Mountainous Broken Labyrinth represents an encounter between two people without whom a chapter of Korean history would have been lost to oblivion. The second installation, 5, Rue Saint-Benoît, points toward Marguerite Duras’s apartment in Paris at the same address, which served as a hub and meeting-point and witnessed
important events both political and private. Duras lived there with her husband, Robert Antelme, with whom she worked in the Résistance. Antelme, however, was arrested and deported to Dachau. After his liberation, in 1945, he was taken back to the Rue Saint-Benoît and nursed back to health. The installation 5, Rue Saint-Benoît shows a number of objects whose measurements correspond to those of objects one finds in the kitchens and bathrooms of apartments—in this case, the artist’s own—such as a kitchen table, a water heater, a shower stall, or a stove. The work thus examines the apartment as a site of the political struggle for survival.

Lecture by Haegue Yang
May 14, 2008, 7 pm
at Städelschule Academy Frankfurt
Dürerstr. 10, D-60596 Frankfurt am Main

Portikus
Director: Daniel Birnbaum
Curator: Melanie Ohnemus

Cabinet

Cabinet magazine issue 29,
with a special section on “Sloth,” available now

For a full table of contents, see
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/29/

Subscribe online at
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/shop/index.php?cPath=31

Buy the current issue at http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/shop/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=78

Items of interest for balkers, Bartlebys, benchwarmers, and boondogglers:

- Dan Rosenberg on busy idleness
- Marina van Zuylen on the intellectual history of lassitude
- Christopher Turner on vasectomania and other cures for sloth
- A history of the recline of civilization
- Sina Najafi interviews Pierre Saint-Amand on the loafers of the Enlightenment
- At long last, a CliffsNotes for Cabinet!

And ample additional material for dawdlers, deadbeats, derelicts, dodgers, and do-nothings:

- Mark Morris on gingerbread houses
- Joshua Foer on time without clocks
- Carolyn de la Peña on Gustav Zander’s Stairmaster prototypes
- San Keller’s artist project, set in a Rome sunglass shop
- Brian Dillon on the water cure
- Emily Roysdon opines on opal
- Margaret Wertheim interviews Kenneth Libbrecht on snowflake formation
- Alexander R. Galloway and McKenzie Wark play a Guy Debord game
- Frances Richard and Emilie Clark discuss the lives of women natural historians

And a special pull-out poster by Dan Perjovschi

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Cabinet is published by Immaterial Incorporated, a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization. Cabinet receives generous support from the Orphiflamme Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Flora Family Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Katchadourian Foundation, the Danielson Foundation, and Two Trees Management.