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WANÅS 2008

Emily Prince, American Servicemen and Women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan (but not including the wounded, nor the Iraqis nor the Afghanis), 2004-, 4,302 pencil drawings on paper, 10,2 x 7,6 cm each. Courtesy The Saatchi Gallery, London. Photo: Anders Norrsell

WANÅS 2008: LOSS
May 18 - October 19

http://www.wanas.se

In an era defined by a significant interest in the past, subjects such as historiography, collective memory and the passing of time permeate contemporary artistic expression. The group exhibition Loss includes photography, installations, sculptures and video works by seventeen artists actively engaged in investigating these topics. The works on display follow three main lines of inquiry: works that constitute innovative alternatives to the Western world’s traditional concepts of monuments, works that comment on existing memorials, and works that, in a broader sense, refer to our memory processes.

Participating artists are: Lida Abdul, Christian Boltanski, Jon Brunberg, Matthew Buckingham, Ann Böttcher, Sophie Calle, Mona Hatoum, Emily Jacir, Regina José Galindo, Alejandra Lundén, Deimantas Narkevicius, Zoran Naskovski, Emily Prince, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Sissel Tolaas and Kara Walker. Jon Brunberg, Ann Böttcher, Alejandra Lundén, Emily Prince and Esther Shalev-Gerz are exhibiting new or significantly updated works. This is the first time that Regina José Galindo and Emily Prince exhibit in Sweden.

Curators: Elna Svenle and Marika Wachtmeister

The exhibition catalogue includes texts by Ph.D. Max Liljefors, Lund University, Professor Marita Sturken, New York University, Elna Svenle, Marika Wachtmeister, and the author Per Wästberg.

On September 26, 2008, the Wanås Foundation hosts a seminar on the aesthetics and interpretation of contemporary memorials. Participants: Ph.D. Patrick Amsellem, Associate Curator of Photography at the Brooklyn Museum, Max Liljefors, Marita Sturken, and James E. Young, Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The seminar is open to the public. Register by email to pedagogik@wanas.se by September 5, 2008.

THE WANÅS FOUNDATION
Box 67, SE-289 21 Knislinge, Sweden
Tel +46 44-660 71/661 58
e-post@wanas.se
http://www.wanas.se

Open: May 18 - September 7, 11am - 5pm, all days except Monday
September 8 - October 19, Saturday and Sunday, 11am - 5pm

Austrian Cultural Forum
New York

Martin Maximilian Michl & Markus Iser: Zine (2006)
still from DVD video,1:02 minutes
Courtesy the artists

Bread And Soccer:
In the Arena of Art
May 28 - September 13 | 2008

Austrian Cultural Forum New York
11 East 52nd Street
New York, NY 10022
212 319 5300
Gallery hours:
Monday - Saturday | 10 am - 6 pm

http://www.acfny.org

Bread And Soccer: In the Arena of Art

Exhibition dates: May 28 - September 13 | 2008
Gallery hours: Monday - Saturday | 10 am - 6 pm

Gustavo Artigas
Roderick Buchanan
Julius Deutschbauer/TONSPURvienna
Thomas Feuerstein
Pia Lindman
Nives Widauer
Martin Maximilian Michel & Markus Iser
Klaus Pobitzer
Serge Spitzer
Spencer Tunick
Monika Wührer

Curators: Trevor Smith and Jürgen Weishäupl
Commissioner and Producer: Andreas Stadler
Exhibition Coordinator: Elisabeth Haider
Exhibition Assistance: Natascha Boojar, Catharina Coreth, Stephanie Pereira, Maria Simma,
Susanne Zöhrer

The exhibition is generously supported by Austrian Airlines, Duggal, Ottakringer, Red Bull New York, RZB Finance, Settepani, Zumtobel Staff
Supporting Institutions Federal Ministery of Education, Arts and Culture; 2008 - Österreich am Ball

Bread and Soccer: In the Arena of Art

Throughout much of the world, soccer has long been more than just a sport. It is a cultural phenomenon, an arena in which local rivalries and national dramas have been played out long before satellite broadcasting made it possible for games to be beamed around the world and experienced simultaneously by hundreds of millions of viewers. Even as professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey attract bigger audiences in the United States, there is nothing that compares with soccer as the global game.

In June 2008, Austria and Switzerland play host to the European championship soccer tournament UEFA Euro 2008™, a sporting spectacle that to Europe and in many other parts of the world is more important than America’s Superbowl. On this occasion, the Austrian Culture Forum has commissioned an exhibition Bread and Soccer: in the arena of art that explores not only the magical flowing rhythm of the game itself but the unique energy and identity that soccer fans have brought to the sport. Eleven artists (like the eleven players on a soccer team) present works that suggest ways in which the cult of spectatorship meets the culture of participation.

The nationalistic and cultural aspects of the sport are explored in Gustavo Artigas’ Rules of the Game. He documents a sporting event that he sponsored which consisted of two Mexican soccer teams and two American basketball teams, playing against one another, simultaneously, on the same court. Klaus Pobitzer (born 1971, lives and works in Vienna) presents a graphic installation in homage to women’s soccer teams.

Bread and Soccer is an exhibition that looks at art, soccer and mass spectacle from the place where the amateur and the professional intermingle. Monika Wührer (lives and works in New York) will conduct a series of foosball tournaments as a contact point between professional soccer players, exhibition visitors, and fans. Over the last fifteen years, Roderick Buchanan (born 1965, lives and works in Glasgow) has produced an extraordinary range of works exploring the culture of spectatorship and participation, particularly in relation to the game of soccer. He will premiere a new video commissioned for this exhibition entitled Wrong Time, Wrong Place. Martin Maximilian Michl and Markus Iser born 1977 and 1975, live and work in Salzburg) have produced a stunning viral video wherein people in the streets re-enact Zinedine Zidane’s famous headbutt in the final of the last soccer world cup.

Fascination and mastery, participation and belonging blend in heady and hallucinatory ways that blur distinctions between the individual and the mass. Thomas Feuerstein (born 1968, lives and works in Vienna) is a philosopher and visual artist who is producing a computer generated installation in which large crowd scenes are animated and abstracted through new computer techniques. Pia Lindman (born 1965, lives and works in New York) layers multiple exposures of sports stadiums to produce haunting meditations contrasting the monumental structure of the stadiums to the fluctuating density and movement of the audience. Spencer Tunick (born 1967, lives and works in New York) is producing a new video based on a recent project in Ernst Happel soccer stadium in Vienna. Nives Widauer (born 1965, lives and works in Vienna) provides an alternative soundtrack to the singing of the national anthems that precede each game. Julius Deutschbauer/TONSPURvienna presents an Insult Arena, a site-
specific sound installation which recreates the insults hurled by fans at the
opposing team.

A final highlight is Serge Spitzer’s (born 1951, lives and works in New York) remarkable sculpture, Global Culture (Red) 2004-05, a robotic table that magically keeps a soccer ball balanced on its surface, even as the table tilts and swivels in all directions, drawing attention back to the simple physical and artistic wonder that is at the core of the beautiful game.

Film screenings

ELEVEN MINUTES: MAY 30, 2008, 6 pm | 11 short films
FRANKREICH WIR KOMMEN: JUNE 11, 2008, 6 pm | JUNE 18, 8 pm | by Michael Glawogger 1999
ONE DAY IN EUROPE: JUNE 11, 2008, 8 pm | JUNE 19, 6 pm | by Hannes Stöhr 2005
ESCAPE TO VICTORY: JUNE 12, 2008, 6 pm | JUNE 19, 8 pm | by John Huston 1981
OFFSIDE: JUNE 12, 2008, 8 pm | JUNE 18, 6 pm | by Jafar Panahi 2006

Foosball tournaments with Monika Wührer and the New York Red Bulls

June 10, 2008: 7 - 10 pm
July 15, 2008: 7 - 10 pm
September 4, 2008: 7 - 10 pm

Fondazione Querini Stampalia

Maria Morganti
Diario cromatico / Colour Diary

Mariateresa Sartori
Il suono della lingua / The Sound of Language

Curated by
Chiara Bertola

http://www.querinistampalia.it

Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice
25 May - 14 September 2008

Opening
Saturday 24 May 2008 at 6 p.m.

Maria Morganti’s Diario cromatico and Mariateresa Sartori’s Il suono della lingua continue the Conservare il futuro project promoted by the Querini Stampalia Foundation and the Veneto Regional Government and centred on the relationship between ancient and contemporary art, between a past to be safeguarded and a future to be planned.

Diario cromatico
by Maria Morganti

Here are annotations written by the artist over the span of two years, from the summer of 2006 to the winter of 2008, after observing various paintings in the Foundation’s museum: she “experienced” the colours and then transferred them, as soon as she arrived in the studio, onto canvas. This is Maria Morganti’s project: simple yet rigorous and intense.

The artist has substituted five works, which had originally been placed over the doors of the museum, with five monochromes of the same size, painted to harmonise with the antique pictures. Each painting has its starting point in her constant frequentation of the rooms in the gallery, after which, each time, she took memories of a certain colour back with her to her studio.

This process can be seen at the upper edge of each canvas where the “history” of these layers is recorded by being coagulated into slender stripes of colour: the colour diary, the accumulation
of experience.

The artist has also kept a parallel diary in which to note down, from time to time, all the sources of inspiration for her “painting from memory”. A dialogue between her and the colour which is offered to the viewers in order to involve them in the creative process.

As an appendix to the project is a series of photographs taken by Morganti in her studio and which portray, always from the same view point, the various layers of colour as they are built up; furthermore there is a series of silk-screens, experimental works created together with Fiorenzo Fallani. These show another, more chemical and contemporary, aspect of the colour resulting from her experiences in the Querini Stampalia.

Il suono della lingua
by Mariateresa Sartori

Each work by Mariateresa Sartori is an analytical passage aimed at breaking down the rigid boundaries which man has established for limiting knowledge and expression.

The project created for the Foundation inquires into the expressive possibilities of language from the point of view of rhythm, melody, and sonority. By leaving unchanged the typical ways of using a library, within the dictionary room with its open shelves the artist has placed books with earphones that allow the visitor/reader the experience of reading in their own language a significant poem, but one made unrecognisable from a semantic point of view because of the altered order of the consonants while the intonation and the metrical scansion is kept the same: the result is something completely incomprehensible but absurdly familiar.

The same method is used to re-elaborate poetry in eleven of the most widely spoken languages in the world by intervening on particularly representative poems from each of the chosen tongues.

The visitors are invited to see another room, this work both provokes and requires an intimate relationship with the listeners, who stand in the centre of a darkened space, concentrated and ready to listen as they would be for the reading of a poem. The sounds of language, detached from their semantic weight and revealed in their essence as sound, are in a way subtracted from time and space. The artist allows us to go back through hearing to something primary and forgotten: the pure and ancient sound of words.

Promoted by
Fondazione Querini Stampalia
Veneto Regional Government (an initiative financed in accordance with article 45 of the law 1/2004 for regional help for contemporary art)

With the support of
Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venice

Exhibition period
from 25 May to 14 September 2008

Opening hours
From Tuesday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Sunday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Closed Monday

Catalogues
Edizioni Gli Ori, Prato

The programs of Fondazione Querini Stampalia are supported by
Comune di Venezia and Fondazione di Venezia

For information
Fondazione Querini Stampalia
Santa Maria Formosa,
Castello 5252, 30122 Venice
tel +39 041 2711411 fax +39 041 2711445
http://www.querinistampalia.it

Press office
phone +39 041 2711441
fax +39 041 2711445
e-mail: ufficiostampa@querinistampalia.org

www.el-drac.es - paperworks - valleys - jo pellenz

El-DRAC has gained the international artist for an indoor installation in Cervera del Maestre (Spain). From 26 July, Jo Pellenz will show his PAPERWORKS titled „Valles“ (valleys) in the Ermita de San Sebastian, near the Casa del Dragon. By this, Pellenz continues his series of large room installations that he started in Cologne in 2000. He is especially inspired by the Moresque flair of the village on top of a hill at the Costa del Azahar. „To open up such a place for art is fun and challenge at the same time“, says the artist.

The Ermita de San Sebastian is located in the old part of the village Cervera del Maestre in the province of Castellon. The restoration of the medieval building was completed in the middle of last year and it is now again open to the public.

This hermitage, unique in its way of construction in the whole Valencia region, reminds one of a Romanesque church building. Based on a square-shaped ground plan, the interior is divided into three naves by two series of arches. These arches rest on octagonal, irregular shaped pillars. The Ermita de San Sebastian is a historically important space for art installations in the landscape of the Maestrazgo.

Together with this installation, the series of art exhibitions “Amigos europeos en el Arte” will be continued in the Casa del Dragon, this time presenting artists from Spain, Germany, Italy, Rumania and Turkey.

“By this we are taking a step further towards our goal to point out the cultural potential of this region”, says Juan Petry, curator and organiser of the Casa del Dragon. “The Ermita is a special historic place, a place of grief and of hope at the same time. PAPERWORKS refers to this history and as well points into the future, into our European future.”

Opening : Saturday, 26 July 2008 – 7.30 p.m. (exhibition)
Opening: Saturday, 26 July 2008 – 8 p.m. (installation)

Exhibition: from 27 July to 10 August 2008
Saturdays from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Sundays and public holidays from 10 a.m to 2 p.m.

Finissage : Sunday, 10 August 2008 - 6 p.m.

More Infos: http://www.el-drac.es/