Artipedia - Arts News

The Fruitmarket Gallery

Lucy Skaer, Cell #1 (with rules and exceptions), 2005
Watercolour on paper, 150 x 140cm
Courtesy the artist and collection of UBS, UK

Lucy Skaer
17 May - 9 July

The Fruitmarket Gallery
45 Market Street
Edinburgh
EH1 1DF
P +44 (0) 131 225 2383
F +44 (0) 131 220 3130
info@fruitmarket.co.uk
http://www.fruitmarket.co.uk

The first opportunity to see a major solo exhibition of work by Lucy Skaer, one of Scotland’s most promising young artists, whose large-scale drawings, sculpture and films are beginning to bring her international acclaim. This exhibition features work newly commissioned by The Fruitmarket Gallery, shown in the context of Skaer’s practice as it has developed since 2001.

Skaer makes drawings, sculptures and films, often combining them in installations of all three. Her work has its origin in found images – photographs from newspapers and books, pictures sourced from the internet, paintings and sculptures by other artists – which Skaer works and reworks, transforming them while retaining a sense of their original meaning and physical form.

This exhibition is the most substantial presentation of Skaer’s work to date, and offers a chance to assess the development of her practice. Drawings dating from 2001 to 2008 are shown alongside the film Flash in the Metropolitan, 2006 (made in collaboration with Rosalind Nashashibi) and the installation Leonora, made for an exhibition in Zurich and not yet seen in this country. Two major new installations complete the exhibition. One takes the form of a cluster of three huge drawings, dominating the space of the upper gallery. The other is a new sculptural work, which takes inspiration from the medieval imagery of the Danse Macabre or Dance of Death.

Lucy Skaer has spoken about wanting her work to operate as ‘a portal into a space beyond comprehension’, about ‘playing around with what can and can’t be represented, making a seemingly easy jumping-off point into something beyond the system being used to represent it’. Often beautiful, always formally and conceptually intriguing, her work makes its meaning with a compelling force.

New Commission supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

Notes to editors

1. Lucy Skaer was born in Cambridge in 1975 and trained in the Environmental Art Department of the Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 1997. She was one of the six artists who represented Scotland at the 2007 Venice Biennale.

2. This exhibition is accompanied by a substantial publication, the first major book on Skaer’s work. It features essays by Fiona Bradley, (The Fruitmarket Gallery), Lizzie Carey-Thomas (Tate), Isla Leaver-Yap (ICA) and Stacy Baldrick (The Fruitmarket Gallery).

3. The Fruitmarket Gallery is a not-for-profit organisation and a Scottish Charity (registration number SC005576), programming national, international and touring exhibitions by leading artists and emerging talent. The Gallery is ‘Foundation Funded’ by the Scottish Arts Council for up to 70% of its running costs and must fundraise to support its world-class exhibitions, education and publishing programmes.

The Fruitmarket Gallery is a company limited by guarantee, registered in Scotland No. 87888 and registered as a Scottish Charity No. SC 005576. VAT No. 398 2504 21. Registered Office: 45 Market Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1DF

Talks and Events

All talks and events are free, but numbers are limited.
To book phone + 44 (0)131 226 8181 or email bookshop@fruitmarket.co.uk

Before Pollock: Abstraction as Meaning in Celtic and Pictish art
Wednesday 28 May 2008, 6.30pm. Free
Heather Pulliam, Lecturer in History of Art, University of Edinburgh, examines aesthetic links between artworks such as the Book of Kells and the abstract expressionist work of Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman.

The Corpse in Contemporary Art
Wednesday 11 June 2008, 6.30pm. Free
Tiffany Jenkins from the Institute of Ideas will explore the role of the corpse and body parts in the work of Lucy Skaer, Christine Borland, and Teresa Margolis.

Artist’s Talk: Lucy Skaer
Wednesday 18 June 2008, 6.30pm. Free
Lucy Skaer in conversation with Fiona Bradley, Director, The Fruitmarket Gallery.

Louise Welsh
The Tyrant’s Reach
Wednesday 25 June 2008, 6.30pm. Free
Louise Welsh, bestselling author of The Cutting Room and Tamburlaine Must Die, explores Nosferatu, Bluebeard, Byronic heroes and trapped women in relation to Lucy Skaer’s work.

The Museum of Modern Art,
New York

Focus:
Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko
Painting & Sculpture Galleries, 4th floor
Ongoing

The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019
(212) 708-9400

http://www.moma.org

EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS FROM MoMA’S COLLECTION EXPLORES THE WORK OF AD REINHARDT AND MARK ROTHKO

Focus: Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko presents five paintings by Ad Reinhardt and six by Mark Rothko—two artists rarely exhibited side by side—in a continuation of the Museum’s ongoing Focus series, which provides an opportunity for in-depth and cross-disciplinary presentations of notable aspects of MoMA’s collection. This installation focuses specifically on the fertile years between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, the period in which each artist identified the style and format that would engage him for the rest of his career.

Reinhardt and Rothko’s ideas about form and color challenged and reconsidered European artistic traditions and philosophies, giving rise to a unique American sensibility in art, particularly in painting. While their Abstract Expressionist colleagues relied on grand, expressive gestures and brushwork, Reinhardt and Rothko both pursued subtleties of a radical nature in color and form. These large-scale works are all-encompassing and seek to sustain the viewer’s attention through physical sensations and changing visual perceptions.

The exhibition is organized by Elizabeth Reede, Assistant Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art.

During the early 1950s Reinhardt (American, 1913 - 1967) utilized the planar surface of the canvas as a support for his experiments with and studies of monochrome palettes, in blue, red, and, black. By mid-decade, he had committed to an increasingly nocturnal palette of layered, almost indistinguishable colors laid adjacent to one another in a vertical rectilinear format. Those experiments are represented by the paintings Number 107 (1950), Abstract Painting (Blue) (1952), and Abstract Painting, Red (1952). His exploration of color and symmetry eventually led to the quietly ordered sub-patterns and homogeneous surfaces of his five-foot-square black paintings, such as Abstract Painting (1963).

Like Reinhardt, Rothko (American, 1903 -1970) had a profound interest in internal compositional organization. In the late 1940s, Rothko began his decades-long exploration of a compositional structure in which soft-edged forms floated atop one another within oversized, color-saturated canvases that seem to envelop the viewer. These gaseous forms, often in vibrant colors, were intentionally placed in order to pulsate optically. Works on view in the exhibition include No. 16 (Red, Brown, and Black) (1958), No.37/No.19 (Slate Blue and Brown on Plum) (1958), and Red and Orange (1955).

This exhibition, part of an ongoing series highlighting noteworthy aspects of the Museum’s collection, is made possible by BNP Paribas.

For press information, please contact Kim Donica at 212-708-9752 or kim_donica@moma.org

Image above: Ad Reinhardt. Abstract Painting. 1957. Oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art. Purchase. Copyright: 2008 Estate of Ad Reinhardt/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Mark Rothko. No. 5/No. 22. 1950. Oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art. Gift of the artist. Copyright: 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Bárbara Wagner, Untitled, from the series Brasilia Teimosa, 2005, Durst print between perspex and aluminium, cm 50 x 75, courtesy: e x t r a s p a z i o, Rome

e x t r a s p a z i o presents the first Italian exhibition by the young Brazilian photographer Barbara Wagner (born Brasilia, 1980). The artist will be showing the photographic series Brasília Teimosa (2005-06) which was recently hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London.
The photographs were taken in 2005 and 2006 in the suburbs of Recife, on Brasília Teimosa beach, where shanty town dwellers gather on Sundays with their friends and families.
Barbara Wagner’s shots distance themselves from a documentary style, although she asks her subjects to strike a pose for the camera and uses a flash to emphasise the studio experience. Reality and artifice are intertwined: the artist catches in her subjects the poses and the pop language of tv fictions and commercial music. Her photographs are “lies that dare to tell the truth”.

Sound ambience by DJ Dolores, aka Helder Aragào (Recife)
Catalogue available

From May 22 to July 24
monday-friday 15.30-19.30

Barbara Wagner was born in Brasília in 1980; lives and works in Recife. She studied journalism and photography and currently works as a freelance photographer. For the Brasília Teimosa photographic series she received a grant from the Foundation for the historical and artistic heritage of the state of Pernambuco.
Solo exhibitions: Brasília Teimosa, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, 2008; Brasília Teimosa, Caixa Cultural, Brasília, 2008 / Rio de Janeiro, 2007-2008 / São Paulo, 2007; Brasília Teimosa, Malakoff Tower, Recife, 2006.

Introductory text by Giuliano Sergio:
“My first Barbara Wagner photo was sent from Brazil by a friend. It shows a family at the seaside, shot against the background of a blue sky: the expressions and glances of the group throw down a mischievous challenge, all flaunting irreverent poses that are accentuated by bright colours and the light of the flashbulb. My first impression was ambiguous, as if that family, in putting on a show, were actually revealing themselves to my eyes. I subsequently discovered that all Barbara Wagner’s photographs create the same subtle play made up of provocation and self-irony.
The series is part of a documentary work about Brasília Teimosa, a poor quarter in Recife which since the 1950’s has opposed various attempts at evacuation by the municipality.
Recent upgrading of the area has transformed the beach into a new meeting place for the working classes from all over the city. In the artist’s images the seafront becomes a stage on which the people of Recife put themselves on show in a ritual that celebrates a day off amid sounds, drinks and beach umbrellas. Looking at the photos we want to meet Fábio, Eliana, old João and the others on the beach at Buraco de Veia, to run into those faces and hear that music, to rediscover the alchemy created between photographer and bathers. Barbara Wagner tells how her experience in advertising and photojournalism provided her with the key to build up a new documentary approach. The limitless and ingenuous hedonism of Brasília Teimosa folk reveals a sensuality normally extraneous to photographic works of this kind. The artist uses advertising language as a tool for documentation, neutralising by excess any reference to the collective imagination of the mass media. The shots thus man!
age to
penetrate a truer reality, unveiling a vitality often neglected in the anonymity of contemporary society. This willingness on Barbara’s part induces men and women to step on stage before her lens: the pose becomes an occasion for a collective and self-ironic performance, a pretend television frame in which the bathers display and exorcise the stereotypes of their own collective imagination. Hence that unusual “naturalness” of the subjects, that fun challenge which, far beyond the myths offered by mass culture, reveals the character of a community”.
- Giuliano Sergio -
(Art critic and historian, he has curated exhibitions and collaborated with institutions such as the MAXXI and the National Graphics Institute in Rome. He teaches History of Photography and Videoart at the University of Paris VII)

e x t r a s p a z i o
via San Francesco di Sales 16/a
I - 00165 Roma
tel / fax +39 06 68210655
info@extraspazio.it
www.extraspazio.it

State Museum of
Contemporary Art

STATE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
THE COSTAKIS COLLECTION
(THESSALONIKI-GREECE)

Exhibition “Lost Vanguard Found:
A Synthesis of Architecture and Art in Russia (1915-1935)”
May 9th - September 28th 2008
Moni Lazariston, S.M.C.A.

http://www.greekstatemuseum.com

Collaborators:
Schusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow
Thessaloniki Museum of Photography
Richard Pare, Photographer
In the framework of the parallel programme of the Photobiennale/ 20th Photography Meeting 2008

CURATING-EDITING
Maria Tsantsanoglou (director of the S.M.C.A.), David Sarkisyan (director of the Schusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow) and Hercules Papaioannou (curator of the T.M.P.)
Assistant Curator: Angeliki Charistou
Website: http://www.greekstatemuseum.com

Constructivism made its appearance in the early 1920’s and is the last major movement within the Russian avant-garde. Derived from the Latin word “constructio” which means construction, underlines the beginning of the artistic installation and is connected with the name of the profound artists Vladimir Tatlin, who created his so-called counter-relief works between 1914 and 1917. The use of industrial materials and the insistence on pure texture (pure material) were the main elements in the creation of works which seemed to be introducing an art of functional value. Thus, the constructivist artists’ designs lie beyond the conventional borders of the canvas and they reach out applications within the urban natural environment, related to the architects’ and mechanics’ experimentations. The exhibition under the title “Lost Vanguard Found: A Synthesis of Architecture and Art in Russia (1915-1935)” is a proof to the above mentioned and is hosted at the premises of th
e State Museum of Contemporary Art from May 9th until September 28th. The exhibition is a production of the S.M.C.A. - Costakis Collection with the collaboration of the Schusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow and the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography. The exhibition is presented as part of the parallel programme of the Photobiennale/ 20th Photography Meeting 2008

The Director of the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Maria Tsantsanoglou -who is the co-curator along with David Sarkisyan (Director of the Moscow State Museum of Architecture) and Hercules Papaioannou (curator of the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography) noted: “The exhibition presents for the first time in Greece the history and reception of Russian constructivist architecture as well as the correlation of painting and architecture through the prism of new visual aesthetics, aiming at its application to architecture. Thus, the artists’ drawings fit organically in their natural urban environment. The first part of the exhibition “Lost” consists of documentary material from the Moscow State Museum of Architecture. In the second part of the exhibition under the tile “Vanguard”, representative works of the Costakis Collection are shown with emphasis on the constructivist movement. While, in the third part with the title “Found”, the famous photographer Richard Pa
re is bringing into light whatever has been survived nowadays from the Russian architecture avant-garde through his 81 photographs. Thus, the exhibition is the result of a very essential scientific research which has been conducted from three different sources: the Schusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow recorded a unique documentary archive, the photographer Richard Pare travelled through the ex Soviet Union and recorded with his camera the recent conditions of the buildings creating a unique archive which rises issues on the way in which we ought to deal with the contemporary monuments. From its part, the State Museum of Contemporary Art records and presents for the first time all the material from the Costakis Collection, which consists mostly of small drawings which state the relation between the artistic innovative creation and the architectural avant-garde.”

LIST OF ARTISTS
Alexei V. BABICHEV, Varvara D. BUBNOVA, Karel IOGANSON, Ivan V. KLIUN, Gustav G. KLUCIS, Boris D. KOROLEV, Ivan A. KUDRIASHEV, Nikolai A. LADOVSKY, EL LISSITZKY, Konstantin K. MEDUNETSKII, Solomon B. NIKRITIN, Liubov S. POPOVA, Ivan A. PUNI, Aleksandr M. RODCHENKO, Vladimir A. STENBERG, Nikolai M. SUETIN, Nikolai M. TARABUKIN, Vladimir E. TATLIN, Konstantin A. VIALOV, UNOVIS – MALEVICH CIRCLE

LIST OF ARCHITECTS
Pavel F. ALESHIN, LE CORBUSIER, Mark D. FELGER, Moizei Ya. GINZBURG, Ilya A. GOLOSOV, Boris M. IOFAN, David M. KOGAN, Nikolai Ya. KOLLI, Samuil M. KRAVETZ, Ignatyi F. MILINIS, Iosif A. MEERZON, Konstantin S. MELNIKOV, Erich MENDELSOHN, Semen S. PEN, Sergei S. SERAFIMOV, Aleksei V. SHCHUSEV, Nikolai A. SHEKHONIN, Vladimir G. SHUKHOV, Aleksandr, Leonid, Viktor A. VESNIN, Ivan V. ZHOLTOVSKII

INFO
HELLENIC MINISTRY OF CULTURE
STATE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
21 Kolokotroni, 56430, Thessaloniki, Greece,
T: +30 2310 589140-1 & 3, F: +30 2310 600123, info@greekstatemuseum.com

Parallel events
Educational programmes
Screenings, Guided tours
Access Programme “Touching art” for visitors with visual impairments

S.M.C.A. Press Office
Yiota Sotiropoulou
mobile. +30 6972336261 T: +30 2310 589152, F: +30 2310 589210
press@greekstatemuseum.com