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Gastbeitrag | 19.02.10
The Metamorphosis of Nature
by R A Suri
The photography of Hiroyuki Togashi appears as a contemplative approach within a purist pursuit of the depiction of still nature and an environmentally bound spirituality. Adhering exclusively to black and white imagery and filmic processes, his presence in contemporary photography strikes one as a nostalgic return or perhaps as an aversion of digital technology’s affirmative role in the process of capturing the moment. Viewing the popularity of new technological advent in the realm of photography as being rather facile, the young artist has chosen a rather resilient stance and captured the entirety of his works with a traditional lense and an increasing mastery of paper processes in their realization.
Beitrag »The Metamorphosis of Nature« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 18.02.10
For Screenplay:
by R A Suri
Shanghai based artist, Cao Menqqin, offers a peripheral and atmospheric depiction of situations, fragmented visual moments, in his inter-disciplinary collage which constitutes the work, “For Screenplay”. The protagonist adopts an intimate voice in the simple account of the impetus of his voyage which illustrates an artist’s insecurities, technical fascinations and echoes the nomadic wanderings which are to form the content of a new work in progress.
Beitrag »For Screenplay:« weiterlesen ...
Charlotte Lindenberg | 16.02.10
Saatchi Reloaded
Ausgelöst durch einen Beitrag von Markus Wirthmann war in diesem Blog im November und Dezember des vergangenen Jahres eine kurze Debatte über eine Kunst-Talentshow der BBC entstanden.
Da sie auf dem Festland weder im Fernsehen noch auf kontinentalen Servern zu genießen war, dauerte es bis Jahresende, bis ich das Phänomen vor Ort bestaunen konnte.
Da eine Infektionsgefahr nach wie vor nicht ausgeschlossen werden kann, hier also nachträglich aber vorsorglich ein letztes Wort zu Saatchi sdS.
Beitrag »Saatchi Reloaded« weiterlesen ...
Charlotte Lindenberg | 03.10.09
What Crisis?
On the cultural and educational policy, the economic situation of exhibition spaces and art criticism.
Beitrag »What Crisis?« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 23.04.09
The Übermensch And The Deep Storage Project
Wolf-Guenter Thiel on Christian Hornsleth´s Deep Storage Project
Please click here for a Chinese version of this text >>
In December 2009 an iron sculpture measuring 5x5x5 meter will be placed in the Pacific Ocean in the 11.000 meter deep Marianer Trench, 200 miles off Guam Island between Japan and the Philippines.
The sculpture will contain 5000 blood drops and hair samples collected from people visiting Deep Storage events 30 locations around the world.
Deep Storage Project Shanghai
Stageback Gallery, Wednesday 6th May
Deep Storage Project Beijing
798 SPACE, Dashanzi Art District, Friday 8th May
Deep Storage Project Hamburg
BN24 Galerie, 2nd - 26th April
Deep Storage Project Lausanne
Galerie de Grancy, Thursday 28th May
What does it mean when artists begin to define themselves by collecting objects, rather than creating them? Artists simulate scientific research by exhibiting things they have gathered, categorized, documented, counted, archived, stacked and stored by analogical thinking as Michel Foucault puts it.
Others are documenting, counting, and archiving aspects of their lives and making objects that record these processes. Kristian von Hornsleth plays on this idea and deconstructs it by mystification of the act of archiving as well as the way of storing the archives. The idea is to create a story like Homers Illiade and make people part of a story which people may tell in the future to understand our times from a future perspective. Hornsleth claims the position of an artist as an "Übermensch".
Beitrag »The Übermensch And The Deep Storage Project« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 09.04.09
Sandra Kunz/Sandra Kunz
by R A Suri
The series, ¨Sandra Kunz¨, evolves from a creative principle of identification and multiplicity. The artist, Sandra Kunz undertook the initiative to develop a photographic series which would context themes of personal identity, indicate the absurdity and alienation involved in the registrations of names and titles and act as a frontier for visual experimentation.
Beitrag »Sandra Kunz/Sandra Kunz« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 25.03.09
One Meter Seventy Three
by R A Suri
Wang Tiande
One Meter Seventy Three
Contrasts Gallery, Shanghai
The conceptual exhibition, One Meter Seventy Three, staged at the Contrasts Gallery, Shanghai, revealed a coy polarization of environmental, historical and symbolic themes pertinent to the experience of contemporary China by the hands of Wang Tiande.
The title is an echo of the exact physical height of the artist, and a caustic reference to three mountains (the Chinese title with the character «Shan-Mountain» - sounding like «San-Three» is key to the tongue-in-cheek reference) which bear fruit in the exhibition. The title also denotes Wang Tiande’s attention and challenge to questions of standardization, demographic averages and common denominational typology. Occidental and Oriental physical status and the rudiments of scientific measure & qualification are set in paradox with internationalism and its’ impact on the psyche. He measures himself first in light of this quizical introduction to further conceptual works which lie beyond the entrance to the exhibition.
Beitrag »One Meter Seventy Three« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 15.03.09
The Conceptual Nature of Liang Shao ji
by R A Suri
Amongst the first & foremost conceptual artists to have emerged from within the P.R.C., Liang Shao Ji continues with an avid exploration of themes derived from humanity and nature. Six years earlier, the celebrated conceptual artist decided to retreat from the noise of the urban sphere for the near monastic solitude afforded him by the peaceful atmosphere of the Tiantai mountains equally birthplace to distinct schools of indigenous Buddhist and Daoist practice.
Beitrag »The Conceptual Nature of Liang Shao ji« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 11.03.09
The Surreal Landscape of Yang Yong Liang
by R A Suri
Contemporary photography remains perhaps the least well represented form and medium amongst conceptual artistic practice in the mainland at present. Well over a decade earlier, the works of emergent conceptual photographers such as Hong Lei, perhaps the most acclaimed artist of his generation of photographic artists, this ground began to break and a new frontier open in the vocabulary of the younger generation. Unfortunately, very few avoided the pitfalls of copy-ism and mimetic works, conveying messages altogether too similar to those of the West, rather than embracing the evolution of an intrinsic, Oriental expression which would both reflect the modern era and the experience of Chinese culture in an age of radical transition.
Beitrag »The Surreal Landscape of Yang Yong Liang« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 11.03.09
Interview with Yang Yong Liang
by R A Suri
Sroll down for the text in Chinese language.
RS The aesthetic quality of your work is quite prominent. Having known a traditional education in the arts yet embracing new technology both in content and form, what conflicts arose?
YY Concerning this question, for me, I am truly living in the contradictory environment. From my young age I was trained by Chinese traditional education, making me keep deep love for traditional culture in heart. And then I accepted western aesthetics and philosophy education. I may say the conflict impacted by this two definitely different education exist objectively, and even will be more obvious under Chinese present environment.
Beitrag »Interview with Yang Yong Liang« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 06.03.09
Ink Games
by R A Suri
Ink Games
Retrospective Exhibition of Dai Guangyu
IFA Gallery, Shanghai
The recent retrospective exhibition of the seminal Chinese performance artist, Dai Guang yu, proved to the one of the foremost events of the winter season in the sphere of contemporary fine art in the Shanghai area. The Chengdu native, known as a core figure for the subversive 86’ movement, has not failed in his incessant pursuit of the question of the instance of performance, versatility and innovations which shatter form, in whatever direction.
Beitrag »Ink Games« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 02.03.09
Geiles Globales Gesicht
Guest Contribution by R A Suri
The artist Susanne Junker, has embraced themes of gender identification, the objectivization of women & mediatic perversion of feminine sexuality in her work. While the inherent violence and suppression of women in contemporary media, as a self-engendering dichotomy within an industry predominantly male, are far from original themes in contemporary photography, the debased and intimate self-portraiture of the artist denotes an ironic, grotesque treatment of the subject.
Beitrag »Geiles Globales Gesicht« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 27.02.09
Xing Si
Guest Contribution by R A Suri
Xing Si
Yip Lap Wing
Fei Contemporary Art Centre, Shanghai
The entire premises of the newly relocated Fei Art Center Shanghai, were subject to a ten day creation period which culminated as “Xing Si”, an experimental installation work by the German based Hong Kong artist Yip Lap Wing.
Yip Lap Wing is noted for his unusual attention to perspective and visual creations which encompass diverse medium in exploration of themes of trans-culturalism, historicity and subversion of media imagery in works which prove to be volatile and ambiguous in a simultaneity of contrastive references, sensory perception and the demarcation of human experience at a peripheral level.
Beitrag »Xing Si« weiterlesen ...
Charlotte Lindenberg | 24.02.09
Mushrooms of Cologne
Oh no - not again.
This sigh, which acompanies the history of mankind, came to my mind when I first saw the title of an exhibition in Cologne, Germany, announcing “Beat Poets, Hippies, Funk, Minimal Art. San Francisco 1955-1968”.
Maybe you, the gentle reader, are more attentive than I was and already recognized what I ignored, namly the date “1955”. I however just winced at the sight of the calamitous figure “1968”, which has been haunting me since I started to learn about politics, music and literature of an epoch usually summerized by the token “1968”. Since that period I know that focusing on the date 1968 is a common misunderstanding – at best. Actually 1968 is “the year after” – after all. After all which had been true and authentic. Even after the funeral of the hippie movement, which had been burried ritually in the summer of 1967, when the San Francisco community realized that a sell-off of all what was known as counter culture had begun.
Beitrag »Mushrooms of Cologne« weiterlesen ...
Charlotte Lindenberg | 21.02.09
The Medium is not the only Message
Until April 19th the Center for Art and Media (www.zkm.de) in Karlsruhe, Germany, will be hosting “Medium Religion” - an exhibition on religion´s appearance in the media.
Contagious
Did you notice the epidemic spreading of the exclamation “Oh my God!”, which is yelled through TV broadcasts and playgrounds worldwide? Previously decent citizens were to confine themselves to “oh my gosh” or “Jee”, if you like. But days are gone when restraint was exercised as far as religion was concerned. Nowadays religious issues are omnipresent. So what has happened to mankind? Where do they all come from, those ardent fighters for truths and values? And this doesn´t mean the ones with firearms but as well those with fiery voices, quivering with emotion. Once again: Has their number increased? The Karlsruhe answer is: not really. The devout representants of (almost) all creeds result from the same source as the mad and maddening outcry “oh my God” does: from the media. As well as language disorders infect one TV series after another before echoing from every Central European corner, so called religious issues trickle from each and every satellite. Briefly speaking: not the amount of believers has increased but their visibility.
Curated by philosopher and media theorist Boris Groys and ZKM´s director Peter Weibel a great number of video screens and installations show religion´s past and present forms of dissemination.
Beitrag »The Medium is not the only Message« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 07.02.09
A lasting value: Vandel #2
von Marc LeBlanc
Vandel #2
Patrick Alt, Max Brand, André Butzer, Matthias Eckardt, Daniel Herleth, Marik Lechner, Jannis Marwitz, Christian Rothmaler, Philipp Schwalb, Henning Straßburger, Ulrich Wulff, Christoph Wüstenhagen
December 2008
TÄT, Berlin
André Butzer
Usually I go to openings just to the see the work. I don´t care necessarily who will be there, and frankly, I don´t want to stay that long; I may enjoy the paintings, but feeling awkward and generally unwanted in every other regard is no way to spend an evening. It´s one of contemporary art´s most common problems; how does a gallerist, a curator, an exhibitor of whatever kind, negotiate the whole of an exhibition - art and audience?
Beitrag »A lasting value: Vandel #2« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 02.02.09
"The Red Flag Flies" alters "film" beyond recognition
Guest contribution: Cui Zien about a film by Zhou Hongxiang.
Please read on for an english language version.
Beitrag »"The Red Flag Flies" alters "film" beyond recognition« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 02.02.09
The Quixotism of Christophe Demaitre
Guest Contribution by R A Suri
In question of the artistic direction assumed by Christophe Demaitre, one faces a dilemma. The paradox of photographic imagery derived from a near nomadic lifestyle and whose content appears near centrically oriented to the urban experience and consequent alienation of humanity, and that of a process orientation wherein the artist shatters formalistic boundaries and discards pre-deliberation amidst the chaos of creation. His attention to material and adaptation imbue the oeuvre with a Neo-Dadaist spirit & serve to engage the viewer as he confronts facile dichotomies and roles attributed to documentary and lyrical, poetical photography. The artist enacts a random survey of scenes captured by the lens while wandering the streets of whatever city or anonymous street, individuals are obscured by an abstraction engendered in the process of emulsifying canvas and the subsequent, spontaneous layers of paint which arise in his final touches of creation.
Beitrag »The Quixotism of Christophe Demaitre« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 25.01.09
The Art of Tan Xun
Guest Contribution by R A Suri
In consideration of the artistic trajectory of Tan Xun, one needs address the emergent artists generation and exceptional range within the medium. Given the historical didactics of art education in post-revolutionary China (wherein the axis and mode of sculptural form lay within the confines of Western figurative creations or early Soviet constructivism) to bear witness of Tan Xun’s work demarcates not only a universal embrace of the art yet an extension beyond formal considerations.
Beitrag »The Art of Tan Xun« weiterlesen ...
Charlotte Lindenberg | 22.12.08
Creating Awareness instead of Emotions
Martha Rosler
Location Location Location
Portikus, Frankfurt am Main
12.7. – 14.9.08
Creating Awareness instead of Emotions
So what? Is there anybody who would not prefer awareness compared to emotions? The answer is: Yes. Almost everybody. Finally the better part of current art draws heavily on feelings, sensation, the heart – you name it.
Martha Rosler´s last show in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is about the past and present of a Central European city. Largely free from the intention to divide history in culprits and victims Rosler does not venture to participate in a debate which continues for over half a century by now, hinging on notions of guilt and shame. Instead she concentrates on the immediate situation with a kind of X-ray vision, looking intensely at the very place she shares with the audience, thereby penetrating the layers of history. This way Rosler makes past and presence available simultaneoulsy.
Beitrag »Creating Awareness instead of Emotions« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 05.07.08
Berlin Past it’s Zenith …
… Next Stop Brussels?
by Melinda Deitch
BERLIN (AP) – Adam Tarrigon once loved going out for dinner and drinks in Berlin, feeling far wealthier in the German capital than he did at home in the United States. With the dollar now worth about 20 percent less than when he first arrived in 2005, the 30-year-old freelance artist has a leaner lifestyle.
“I used to be able to brag that Berlin was really affordable but now my rent actually works out on par with Washington and New York. It’s pretty terrible,” said Tarrigon, whose income is almost exclusively in the devaluing currency. “I do everything to try to spend fewer euros now and am looking for a place in Brussels, there’s more value for your money there.” Not only weak dollar is hurting many of the Americans who live in Berlin, many come for the art scene; which for only those lucky few, can support themselves with their earnings.
Standort-Bashing der besonderen Art: Carlier Gebauer tauschte seine Galerieräume einfach mit einem Computergroßhändler. Seine ehemaligen Nachbarn an der Jannowitzbrücke freuen sich wohl nur bedingt über die neue Einkaufsmöglichkeit. Foto: von hundert
Beitrag »Berlin Past it’s Zenith …« weiterlesen ...
Redaktion | 28.03.07
Ein Protestbrief an den kroatischen Kultusminister
Der in Zagreb und Berlin lebende Künstler David Maljkovic war eingeladen, auf der diesjährigen Biennale di Venezia die Republik Kroatien zu vertreten. Über die Qualität der Arbeiten des Künstlers kann man ja durchaus geteilter Meinung sein, manche Leute finden sie eher belanglos. Aber: Im Februar wurden zur Entscheidung, Arbeiten von Maljkovic für Venedig auszuwählen, noch ganz stolz klingende Mitteilungen verbreitet: »The Republic of Croatia is proud to present David Maljkovic’s Lost Memories from These Days at this year’s Biennale di Venezia, selected by Zeljko Kipke, organised by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka and curated by Branko Franceschi.« Nun wurde der Künstler ausgeladen. Warum? Eine richtig klare Antwort darauf gibt es wohl nicht ... Kunst-Blog dokumentiert einen Protestbrief an den kroatischen Kultusminister Božo Biškupić.
Beitrag »Ein Protestbrief an den kroatischen Kultusminister« weiterlesen ...
Sue Hubbard | 18.01.07
Bad Art for Bad People
Jake and Dinos Chapman
Bad Art for Bad People
Liverpool Tate
Until 4th March
Like Laurel and Hardy, Flanagan and Alan, Gilbert and George, the artists Jake and Dinos Chapman have realised that being part of a duo is a good career move. The audience get two for the price of one and there is always someone around to act as a foil. The self-appointed bad boys of British art, they came to prominence as part of the notorious YBA generation. Now they have produced Bad Art for Bad People and the more they shock us, like pigs wallowing in their own muck, the happier they are. “We are sore-eyed scopophilliac oxymorons….our discourse offers a benevolent contingency of concepts, a discourse of end-of-sale remnants, a rationalistic hotbed of sober categories…” belligerently declares a mud spattered manifesto plastered on the gallery wall. But what are they really up to with their infantile penile-nosed manikins and their obsessive scenarios of death camp horror made from myriads of tiny plastic bodies like those used by small boys for air fix models?
Beitrag »Bad Art for Bad People« weiterlesen ...
Sue Hubbard | 17.01.07
Towards a New Utopia?
PUBLIC SMOG
A project by Amy Balkin curated by students of the
MA Curating Contemporary Art course at the Royal College of Art,
in collaboration with Peer
Peer, London
November 2006
The 4th November was the Saturday before the UN Climate Talks (COP 12/ MOP 2) in Nairobi (6th-17th November). There were demonstrations demanding urgent action on climate change all around the globe. Those taking part believe that only coordinated international action can avert the massive threat posed by climate change and that the failure of world leaders to act - especially the US under George Bush who failed to sign the Kyoto Protocol agreement - is threatening the very existence of life on earth.
Can art do anything to change the mindset of politicians or entrepreneurs who seem to care more about the status quo and making big bucks than carbon emissions? Or does it merely provide an impotent side show producing sanctimonious truisms for a middle-class audience not prepared to change their lifestyles? It’s one thing to nod approvingly at a work in the Tate, quite another to forgo that cheap airfare. To look at art seriously means a willingness to be changed but such epiphanies tend to be personal. Is Jerry Saltz, critic of the Village Voice, right when he says “Art can opine about hierarchy and demagogy, it can be a critic of the state of the world and the human condition. It can ask political questions… however it cannot …turn back global warming; it cannot change the world except incrementally and by osmosis.”?
Beitrag »Towards a New Utopia?« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 14.09.06
Die Unhintergehbarkeit der Buchhaltung - 1. Fünftausend
von Manuel Bonik
An english version of this text is available at zg Berlin
Es gibt ein Loch in Brandenburg.Es heißt Berlin.
Wir leben mit und drin. (1) IRA SCHNEIDER
Verbunden mit dem Kunst-Boom der (Londoner und) Berliner 90er Jahre wurde Künstler zum Traumberuf, zeitweise war Künstler Berufswunsch Nr.1 unter deutschen Abiturienten (2). Die Akademie-Professoren des deutschen (jetzt in Abwicklung sich befindenden) Meisterklassen-Systems hatten nichts dagegen: die erhöhte Nachfrage war gut für ihr Geschäft. Und offensichtlich war die Situation von Studenten an einer Akademie introvertiert und isoliert genug, um ihnen das Gefühl zu geben und die Attitüde auszubilden, etwas je Einmaliges zu sein, etwas, auf das die Welt nur gewartet haben wird, wenn er/sie dereinst die Hallen der Akademie verläßt. Nicht aber nahmen sie wahr, wie sehr der Beruf des Künstlers eben die Exklusivität, die er durchaus einmal besessen haben mag, verloren hatte und, Berlin-katalysiert, zu einem Stereotyp geworden war. Das wird einem vielleicht erst mit dreißig ff. klar: dass man sich so individuell dünken kann, wie man will, und doch machen ein paar tausend Menschen der aktuellen 8.000.000.000 etwas, das dem eigenen Schaffen verflixt ähnlich ist. In Berlin leben nach offiziellen Schätzungen zur Stunde fünftausend professionelle (3) Künstler, hinzu kommen die, die’s noch werden wollen, und eine Dunkelziffer, und die nicht-professionellen, und dort draußen gibt’s noch viele viele weitere Tausende, und alle alle wollen sie Aufmerksamkeit, denn sie sind ja sowas von einmalig... – Will sagen: Die Galerien und Museen warten nicht ausgerechnet auf dich, und die Worte, die dein Tun, im Rahmen der vagen Sprache der Kunst, ziemlich genau beschreiben, sind schon so oft bemüht worden. Und die Galerien selbst sind ein Klischee geworden im Berlin dieser Tage, nächste Woche eröffnen wieder drei.
Beitrag »Die Unhintergehbarkeit der Buchhaltung - 1. Fünftausend« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 02.08.06
HAVE YOU EVER DONE ANYTHING RIGHT?
Willoughby Sharp interviews Serkan Özkaya
Willoughby Sharp: Start and say "I am" to the camera, and "I´m from Istanbul" and stuff and "I´m in Berlin for my show."
Serkan Özkaya: Yeah, I´m Serkan Özkaya. Do you want me to talk about this piece here?
W.S. First start again, and introduce yourself. No one knows who you are or where you´re from or where we are. This would be in the very beginning of the tape.
Serkan Ozkaya vs. Willoughby Sharp
S.O. O.K, right. Let me introduce myself: Serkan Özkaya, from Istanbul originally, now in Berlin for a short period of time, and what you see here is this outside of the building which is called Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien, which is the place I have my studio and a room, and the show inside, where there is a gallery as well. The building was built as a monastery first.
Beitrag »HAVE YOU EVER DONE ANYTHING RIGHT?« weiterlesen ...
Sue Hubbard | 25.06.06
Kandinsky
The Path to Abstraction
Tate Modern, London
22nd June – 1st October 2006
There’s a tendency to think of Modernism as principally reflecting the rapid technological changes that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century exemplified by Futurist images of fast cars or the model for Tatlin’s famous unbuilt tower. But there was another strand. One that responded to the breakdown of conventional religion and the social and political upheavals that were taking place across the western world (including Russia) and looked to art (and some might say to psychoanalysis and quasi-religious cults such as Theosophy and spiritualism) to give meaning to contemporary existence in a way that Christianity had once done.
Beitrag »Kandinsky« weiterlesen ...
Sue Hubbard | 23.06.06
Howard Hodgkin
Tate Britain, London
14th June – 10th September 2006
Of all Baudelaire´s poems it is Correspondences, originally published in 1857 in Les Fleurs du Mal, that speaks most articulately of what he considered to be the task of the modern painter. It is a poem that particularly illuminates the work of Howard Hodgkin.
Beitrag »Howard Hodgkin« weiterlesen ...
Sue Hubbard | 18.06.06
Around the World in 80 Days
ICA, London
and
The South London Gallery
24. 5. - 16. 7. 2006
Remember the image of David Niven trying to circumnavigate the world in a hot air balloon? Inspired by Thomas Cook´s first guided world tour, Jules Verne´s novel Around the World in 80 Days, written in 1872, on which the film staring Niven was based, pinpoints a moment in history when the modern globalised world was beginning to take shape.
Beitrag »Around the World in 80 Days« weiterlesen ...
Sue Hubbard | 16.06.06
Gary Hume - Cave Paintings
White Cube, London
26.05.06 - 01.07.06
I have a confession to make. I´ve never much liked Gary Hume´s paintings. Bold, ambitious and in-your-face they´ve always felt with their insistent reflective surfaces, to my mind, just too cocky by half. They were so very 80s. His early hospital door paintings with their puns on minimalism versus the real world, his "portraits" of celebrities such as Kate Moss and Tony Blackburn executed in shiny household paint, seemed, like the Thatcher´s Britain that had spawned them, to be all about surface rather than depth. With their brittle hard-edged colours and penchant for the tropes of popular culture they became emblematic of a certain artistic laddism. To look at Gary Hume´s dead-pan paintings was to sense that self-expression, doubt and vulnerability had been excised from the contemporary painterly lexicon.
Beitrag »Gary Hume - Cave Paintings« weiterlesen ...
Sue Hubbard | 29.08.05
A Ribbon around a Bomb
Frida Kahlo
Tate Modern, London
Until 9 October
Self-Portrait with Monkey 1938
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo NY
Bequest of A. Conger Goodyear, 1966.
© Banco de México and INBAL, Mexico, 2005
The personal is political. Thus went the credo of the 60s and 70s feminist movement. Feminists argued that sexual difference was produced through the interconnection of social practice and institution. The destabilising of traditional gender roles which saw women primarily as carers and mothers - financially disempowered, dependent domestic angels - was also part of the matrix that identified white male patriarchy as the root of both colonialism and world poverty. To explore the history of women in culture and art was to reveal how history itself was written; to expose it prejudices, its assumptions, its stubborn silences. Such investigations did not simply make visible the role of women in society but held up a mirror to the way society itself was constructed. Women, along with the poor, were its silent, disenfranchised victims. Neither group had a voice, neither had the power to determine the way their destinies unfolded. Women, before the age of contraception, were enslaved by their bodies to years of childbearing, miscarriages and abortions; the poor were enslaved to their landlords and bosses.
Beitrag »A Ribbon around a Bomb« weiterlesen ...
Sue Hubbard | 09.08.05
The Triumph of Painting - Part II
The Saatchi Gallery
County Hall, London SE1
Until 30th October
Dirk Skreber
It Rocks Us So Hard Ho Ho Ho 3 2002
image: www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk
Contemporary critics, art historians and artists alike must often seem to those outside the art world, when talking about painting, like family members gathered around the bed of a terminally ill relative discussing them as if they had already kicked the bucket, when, in fact, they are still breathing, albeit on a life support machine. The debate about the death and the viability of painting has been going on ever since the advent of photography and seems set to keep us all occupied for several decades to come. But if painting is in its death throes, its making a hell of a racket and refusing to go quietly. For down on the South Bank at the Saatchi Gallery, just when everyone had got used to dead sharks and things in formaldehyde there is another painting show. The Triumph of Painting Part II which follows on from the recent Part I. You have to hand it to Saatchi. Whatever you think about him he keeps us all on our toes, for who would have thought that he would have moved so seamlessly from Britart flippancy to German angst. Suddenly deep and meaningful is back.
Beitrag »The Triumph of Painting - Part II« weiterlesen ...
Sue Hubbard | 09.08.05
The Art of Tracey Emin
Edited by Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend
Thames and Hudson
ISBN 0-500-28385-0
She’s come a long way, has "Mad Tracey from Margate”, the girl with ‘big tits’, who bunked off school, shagged older men behind the beach huts, had an abortion or two and famously walked out of a TV interview drunk. Not only does she make mucky beds for the Tate, turn up at all the best private views dressed to kill in Vivienne Westwood, have a posh house round the corner from Gilbert and George, appear on the cover of every glossy magazine but she has even been guest editor of the Guardian weekend colour section. Now a clutch of critics and academics has written a book of essays about her, The Art of Tracey Emin. Soon there will be a course in some university department in “Tracy Studies” and her transformation into cultural ‘icon’ will be complete. Madonna watch out!
Beitrag »The Art of Tracey Emin« weiterlesen ...
Gastbeitrag | 01.08.05
Between Lead and Gold
by Mark Gisbourne
Mark Raidpere - Isolator
The Venice Biennale - Estonia
Palazzo Malipiero
12.06.2005 - 06.11.2005
Passport Photo
Lead Sign
The biochemistry of human life and desire, and therefore the seat and cause of human emotions, owes a great deal to the analogous condition and complex traditions of the alchemical imagination. However, this analogy does not intend to valorise the implausible practice of alchemy, but rather in the familiar sense of alchemical thinking creating a personal secret knowledge that both confers and develops an uncertain hermeneutic confusion as to what is being said or expressed.(1) It is analogous to that which we might call our daily struggle to grasp and communicate with the incommunicable dwelling within ourselves: the mysterious and inexplicable mutations of our human feelings and how we might begin to translate them. For in some ways those feelings we direct towards ourselves, as well as to others, always remain - to some non-definable extent - in a state of estranged incommunicado. And, so it is with all human life, its secret feelings and emotions, since there are thoughts thought but unspoken, and imagined feelings of the transmutable mind that are still somehow not (or, at least not yet) easily realisable through the tongue of transference.(2)
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Marco Venezio | 09.06.05
La Biennale di Venezia - 51. Biennale von Venedig
Aktualisierungen finden Sie am Ende des Artikels
Tino Sehgal im deutschen Pavillon
"At the moment the notion of ’political art‘ seems to be experiencing increasing relevance, a notion, which in my view is as obsolete as it is tautological. Of course there are artists who are explicitly politically motivated and others who are not. But neither intention changes the fact that artistic production - like all acts - is always political and critical as well as affirmative towards something in being a performative re-affirmation of, or deviation from, certain existing circumstances. My question would rather be what is the specific ’something‘ a certain work of art is critical towards, what structures is it affirming and what does this position imply politically. Considering my personal point of view, (most) object related work a priori affirms structures that I am politically sceptic of, since it mirrors, is involved in and thus promotes the historically prevalent mode of economic production, the transformation of material.
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Anette Dekker | 04.05.05
what’s in a name
The synaesthesia of sound, smell, image and light has become a prominent feature in our day-to-day life. When we walk into shops and cafes or stroll along the street, our various senses are under constant assault. People get overwhelmed with musical beats accompanied by flickering lights and video and digital imagery, all of them trying to keep up with the music. These happenings come together in the club scene where the sounds merge with light, images, smoke, and even smell. After the popularity of the Disc Jockey (DJ), the Video Jockey (VJ) entered the club scene in the late 1980s. The term VJ was popularised in the beginning and mid-‘80s by television broadcaster MTV. A few years before, the end of the 70s, the term was introduced by the crew of the Peppermint Lounge, a popular dance club in New York. The performers wanted to distance themselves from the stuffy video artists that were part of the art- and cultural scene in New York.
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