Artipedia - Arts News

Pinta 2008

Fernando Bryce
2007, Series of 89 drawings
Ink on paper

A Close-Up of Latin American Art Will Capture New York’s
Look Again

November 13th - 16th, 2008

Metropolitan Pavilion and
Altman Building

http://www.pintaart.com

Manhattan will welcome this Latin-American art fair for second year in a row. Fifty galleries of the United States, Europe and Latin America will display the finest selection of Modern and Contemporary artworks by artists of the region

Artistic diversity and creative vitality of Latin America will pulse through Manhattan when PINTA, the Latin American Fair for Modern and Contemporary Art, comes back to the city this coming fall for second year. From November 13th to 16th, the Metropolitan Pavilion and Altman Building will embrace the finest selection of artworks that represents the many ways that artists of this region have approached the visual arts.

PINTA 2008 will honor one of the most prolific artists of our times, Peruvian Fernando Bryce. Born in Lima in 1965, Bryce is member of South-American art elite who has pierced the consciousness of the world community. His drawings are reflections of the collective history of Latin America, an impression he fosters through his reproduction of various forms of printed media. Some of his conceptual artworks have been included in permanent collections in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York and the Tate Gallery in London. During the official launching of Pinta on November 12th at The Americas Society (680 Park Avenue), Bryce will discuss recent trends in Latin American art.

Last year, this event was acclaimed by art media and collectors for its stylish layout. “Pinta is a big event in a small package,” wrote Holland Cotter, an art critic for The New York Times. Moreover, its astonishing selection exceeded the scope of other art fairs. This year, Pinta will extend its capacity while preserving its distinctive layout and level of quality to attract collectors and an audience interested in the artistic overview of the region.

Fifty galleries from the United States, Europe and Latin America will display works by their artists to provide an exceptional close up of modern and contemporary art with emphasis on abstract, concrete, new concrete, kinetic and conceptual trends.

Alberto Sendros, Buenos Aires | Alejandra von Hartz Fine Arts, Miami | Aina Nowack Gallery, Spain | Alfredo Ginocchio Arte Internacional, Mexico | Appetite, Buenos Aires & New York | Arevalo Arte - Galeria, Miami | Arte x Arte, Buenos Aires | Barbara Thumm, Berlin | Bolsa de Arte, Porto Alegre | Cecilia de Torres LTD, New York | Dabbah Torrejon, Buenos Aires | Distrito Cu4tro, Madrid | Durban Segnini Gallery, Caracas & Miami | EDS, Mexico DF | Emma Molina, Monterrey | Forum, Lima | Galeria 356, San Juan | GC Estudio de Arte, Buenos Aires | Hardcore Art Contemporary Space, Miami | Henrique Faria Fine Art, New York | Hosfelt Gallery, New York & San Francisco | Isabel Aninat, Santiago | Josee Bienvenu, New York | Jorge Mara La Ruche, Buenos Aires | Kunsthaus, San Miguel de Allende & Miami | Latincollector, New York | Leon Tovar, New York | Lyle O. Reitzel, Dominican Republic & Miami | Magnan Emrich Contemporary, New York | Mary Anne Martin, New York | Nara Roesler, Sao Paulo |
Nohra Haime, New York | PanAmerican Art Projects, Dallas & Miami | Poligrafa, Madrid | Praxis International Art, New York | Raquel Arnaud, Sao Paulo | RJ Fine Arts, Connecticut | Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires | Sammer Gallery, Miami | Tresart, Miami | Van Eyck, Buenos Aires.

Pinta is directed by Diego Costa Peuser, Alejandro Zaia and Mauro Herlitzka. The opening will be November 13th, at 6:00 p.m. Information for expositors, visitors and media is available on its new Web site: http://www.pintaart.com

Fotomuseum Winterthur

Sergey Bratkov
Mickey Mouse from the series “Juvenile Detention”, 2001
Lambda print, 120 x 90 cm
Courtesy Regina Gallery, Moscow
Copyright: Sergey Bratkov

Sergey Bratkov
Glory Days
7 June to 24 August 2008

Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44+45
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zurich)
Switzerland
Phone: +41 52 234 10 60

http://www.fotomuseum.ch

Sergey Bratkov – Glory Days

Five years on from our retrospective exhibition of Ukrainian artist Boris Mikhailov (in 2003) the Fotomuseum Winterthur now presents another leading Russian-Ukrainian artist of the next generation: Sergey Bratkov. The exhibition includes some 130 works, giving a deep insight into Bratkov’s photographic oeuvre since 1990. Socially critical, politically motivated and yet with a lyrical edge, his photographs are a direct and at times unsparing portrayal of everyday life since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The bulk of Sergey Bratkov’s work was created during those years of unbridled confusion at the loss of a previously stable world order, and the promise of a better, freer, more individualized future. The wild, even lurid, photographs, picture cycles and videos, verging at times on the limits of good taste, form the expressive core of his prodigious and extensive output. Bratkov works in the media of photography and video, whereby it is not so much the camera itself that stakes out the communicative framework as Bratkov’s own insatiable curiosity about the individuals he encounters, with whom he engages both personally and with an eye for their social conditions.

Following an exceptionally productive period around 2000/2001, in which he created such important cycles of portraits as Kids or Soldiers, Fighters Without Rules, Secretaries, and the Army Girls, Bratkov has more recently concentrated primarily on panoramic photography. In contrast to his portraits, which are based on a more or less open agreement between photographer and sitter, the horizontal scanning of the outside world in the My Moscow cycle (2003), appears like a documentary construct, a panopticum of unhierarchically juxtaposed social and historical phenomena.

Bratkov, who was born in 1960 in the Ukrainian industrial city of Kharkov, lays bare the obsolete ideological clichés of the Soviet era and the newfound muscle-flexing capitalist drive of the east in scenes that occasionally evoke a strident theatre of the new reality. His documentary portraits of steelworkers (Steelworkers, 2003), homeless children (Glue Sniffers, 2000), or women who want to start a family (Princess, 1996) cite the hallmarks of nationalistic socialism by ostensibly classifying individuals in stereotype images. But what Sergey Bratkov seeks in his portraiture is not the conformity of the group, behind which the individual might be able to hide. Instead, his photographs launch a provocative jibe at post-Soviet society by deliberately flouting aesthetic and moral taboos. By heightening the scenes he observes with irony and subjectivity, Sergey Bratkov invents a new form of Socialist Realism in his photographs, unmasking critical socialism as fictitious and ide
ologically defunct. The exhibition is curated by Thomas Seelig.

Main sponsor: Vontobel Foundation
Additional support by the Stiftung Art Progressive

Publication: Sergey Bratkov – Glory Days / Heldenzeiten (in English/German), published by Verlag Scheidegger&Spiess, Zurich. With texts by Boris Buden, Bart de Baere, Thomas Seelig, and an interview with Sergey Bratkov by Mikhail Ryklin and Anna Alchuk. 192 pages, 91 colour and b/w illustrations, format 20.5×26.5 cm, Hardcover.

Biography: Sergey Bratkov, born 1960 in Kharkov, Ukraine, has been living in Moscow since 2000. Together with Boris Mikhailov and Sergey Solonsky he formed the Fast Reaction Group from 1994–1997. In 2002 he took part in the 25th San Paolo Biennale, São Paolo. Last year, he was represented in the Ukrainian pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. His solo exhibitions include Faust and Margherita, Center for Contemporary Art, Kiev, 2003; S.M.A.K., Ghent, 2005; Part of my Life, Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2006; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, 2007. Sergey Bratkov is represented by Regina Gallery, Moscow.

Also opening on 7th June 2008:
HANS VAN DER MEER – EUROPEAN FIELDS.
The Landscape of Lower League Football
http://www.fotomuseum.ch/HANS-VAN-DER-MEER.21.0.html?&L=1

Still on display unil 12 October 2008 (Collection):
JEDERMANN COLLECTION – Set 5 from the Fotomuseum Winterthur Collection
http://www.fotomuseum.ch/JEDERMANN-COLLECTION.289.0.html?&L=1

For further information please visit our website http://www.fotomuseum.ch

Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44+45
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zurich)
Switzerland

Phone: +41 52 234 10 60
Fax. +41 52 233 60 97
e-mail: fotomuseum@fotomuseum.ch
http://www.fotomuseum.ch

Opening hours: Tue – Sun 11am – 6pm, Wed 11am – 8pm, closed on Mondays

Gasworks

Dissident Sunset, 2007
Gail Pickering
Video still

Gail Pickering
12 June 2008 - 27 July 2008

Preview: 11 June 2008
Open Wednesday - Sunday, 12-6pm

http://www.gasworks.org.uk

Gasworks presents a solo exhibition by Gail Pickering, featuring two recent video works, Dissident Sunset (2007) and Hungary! And Other Economies (2006), installed specifically for the space and shown in their entirety for the first time in the UK.

Pickering has become known for her ambitious performance works which have included a six-week durational performance by a bodybuilder at Matt’s Gallery, London in 2004, and a series of evolving performances as part of Here We Dance at Tate Modern earlier this year. Her collaborative work with both amateur and professional actors proposes a form of ‘scripting’ which brings together historical and contemporary references through an intertextual playfulness. The resulting scenarios switch between imposing tableaux and performing autonomy, raising questions about the nature of political and social ritual. In recent years, Pickering has extended her interest in performance to include video, which is the focus of this exhibition.

In Hungary! Pickering takes a group of hired porn actors from Marseille to the Marquis de Sade’s chateau in the Luberon (South of France), a ruin now owned by fashion mogul Pierre Cardin, to enact scenes from German playwright Peter Weiss’ seminal 1963 play Marat/Sade. Dressed in counterfeit retro-futuristic designs of Cardin, the actors shift between being themselves and their assigned characters, repeatedly taking turns to stage an encounter between the philosophies of the Marquis de Sade and Jean-Paul Marat.

The journey begins in Marseille in an ordinary minibus adorned with vinyl lettering reading “Pierre Cardin”. Whilst on this journey the actors improvise crude interpretations of the script, incorporating their own experiences of working with porn films. On site the women act out some of the play’s most political lines, offering a startling contrast to the preceding and following scenes and thus reflecting on the lateral associations found throughout the film. The actors eventually revert back to playing themselves, the men showing off their virility by doing push ups on a hot tarmac road. While the script of Weiss’ Marat/Sade draws together historical moments from both pre- and post-revolutionary France, Pickering initiates further encounters whereby the radical thinking of de Sade and Marat meets the erotised play of the porn actors in Sade’s former chateau, now site of a Cardin-sponsored
theatre festival.

The second work in the exhibition, Dissident Sunset, engages with more recent histories of radical action and social rituals. A series of archival photographs from 20th Century dissident groups are re-staged for camera to form a playful, choreographed assemblage. Filmed in close-up within a sculptural set comprising of large cardboard props on wheels, these tableaux become embedded in the film to form a series of events in which Pickering seemingly entombs a group of actors. Similar to the process in Hungary! the actors work from specific historical references and a loose narrative with which to improvise dialogue. Their ensuing discussion increasingly reflects their distance to the political material proposed to them and they emerge as a troupe of sham anarchists. As the surrounding architectural structures start to collapse and disintegrate, they instinctively regress to self-consciously performing a ritualistic, almost carnivalesque dance for each other.

Gail Pickering lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions, performances and screenings include: Here We Dance, Tate Modern, London (2008); Neither Either Nor Or, Kunstverein Stuttgart (2008); New Work UK: The Sensible Stage, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2008); Hungary! and Other Economies, Galerie Jousse Entreprise, Paris (2007) and PraDAL, Matt’s Gallery, London (2004).

EVENTS

Tuesday 17 June, 7 - 9pm
Screening of excerpts from films and documentaries reflecting on Gail Pickering’s practice. Followed by a discussion with the artist and Ian White, Adjunct Film Curator, Whitechapel Art Gallery.
At Gasworks, free.

Thursday 26 June, 7pm
Gail Pickering presents a new performance commissioned by South London Gallery
( http://www.southlondongallery.org ) as a part of One or Two Things.
At South London Gallery, doors open 6.30pm, free, booking recommended.

Dissident Sunset was funded by Arts Council England, London with the support of Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network. Hungary! And Other Economies was supported by Triangle France, Marseille.

This exhibition has been made possible by funding from the Elephant Trust and Arts Council England.

A limited edition publication with a commissioned text by Ian White will be available at Gasworks
free of charge.

For press information and images, please contact Amy Croft at press@gasworks.org.uk

Gasworks
155 Vauxhall Street
London SE11 5RH
+44 (0)20 7587 5202
info@gasworks.org.uk
http://www.gasworks.org.uk