Berlinde de Bruyckere is representing Belgium at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2013. De Bruyckere has conceived a site-specific installation for the Belgian Pavilion that is set in a very dark environment. Berlinde de Bruyckere is known for her scuptures that explore life and death. For her sculpture that reminds of a wounded tree or bones, she invited the writer J.M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003 nobel prize for Literature, to serve as a curator and artistic collaborator. The collaboration follows a joint project from 2012, when De Bruyckere and Coetzee published the book ‘Allen Vlees (All Flesh)’, combining her images with his writings.

Berlinde de Bruyckere: Kreupelhout – Cripplewood / Belgian Pavilion, 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2013. Venice, Italy, Professional Preview, May 30, 2013.

PS: See also: Berlinde de Bruyckere at Galleria Continua, Beijing.

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Berlinde de Bruyckere is representing Belgium at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2013. De Bruyckere has conceived a site-specific installation for the Belgian Pavilion that is set in a very dark environment. Berlinde de Bruyckere is known for her scuptures that explore life and death. For her sculpture that reminds [...]

Gabrielle Ammann Gallery has been participating in Design Miami Basel already for the eighth time. This year, Gabrielle Ammann’s booth at the fair featured selected works by Ron Arad, Emmanuel Babled, Florian Borkenhagen, Nucleo, Satyendra Pakhalé, Rolf Sachs (who will have a major museum exhibition at MAK Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Cologne in 2014) and Danful Yang. In this video, Gabrielle Ammann talks about the beginnings of the fair and her program this year. We also had the chance to meet with the designers Satyendra Pakhalé and Piergiorgio Robino (Nucleo), who talk about their work.

Gabrielle Ammann Gallery at Design Miami Basel 2013. Interview with Gabrielle Ammann, Satyendra Pakhalé, and Piergiorgio Robino (Nucleo). June 2013.

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Gabrielle Ammann Gallery has been participating in Design Miami Basel already for the eighth time. This year, Gabrielle Ammann’s booth at the fair featured selected works by Ron Arad, Emmanuel Babled, Florian Borkenhagen, Nucleo, Satyendra Pakhalé, Rolf Sachs (who will have a major museum exhibition at MAK Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Cologne in 2014) [...]

Russia is participating in the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia with Russian artist Vadim Zakharov’s exhibition Danaë, curated by Udo Kittelmann. Vadim Zakharov’s show focuses on the ancient Greek myth of Danaë, the mother of Perseus by Zeus. The myth of Zeus and Danaë has inspired many works of art, including the picture by Rembrand which was damaged in 1985 by a madman who threw sulphuric acid onto the canvas. Vadim Zakharov gives the mythological theme of Danaë an updated interpretation. Curator Udo Kittelmann says: “The Greek myth of the impregnation of Danaë is subjected to numerous readings: a falling shower of gold makes reference to the seduction of Danaë as an allegory for human desire and greed, but also to the corrupting influence of money. Through his artistic staging, Zakharov allows this ancient myth to find a contemporary temporal dimension. Philosophical, sexual, psychological, and cultural fragments become concentrated into a theater-like overall composition throughout the Pavilion rooms. The project has sculptural and pictorial elements and invites active participation by visitors to guarantee the flow of material goods (coins, peanuts, rose petals, people) as an ongoing process.”

Vadim Zakharov. Danaë / Russian Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Professional Preview, May 30, 2013.

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Russia is participating in the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia with Russian artist Vadim Zakharov’s exhibition Danaë, curated by Udo Kittelmann. Vadim Zakharov’s show focuses on the ancient Greek myth of Danaë, the mother of Perseus by Zeus. The myth of Zeus and Danaë has inspired many works of art, including [...]

Warning: For their presentations at this year’s Venice Art Biennale, France and Germany swapped their pavilions, so please watch the signage if you visit the show! I think that this is a fantastic idea. Imagine France is Germany, Europe is Asia, and she is he, and dogs are cats, and everything is everything. There is also some very good reason that the German pavilion features works Ai Weiwei, Romuald Karmakar, Santu Mofokeng, Dayanita Singh, but damn, I guess you just want to see Ai Weiwei’s stools, so here they are: Bang!

Peace!
Didier Benoit

Ai Weiwei: Bang / German Pavilion at French Pavilion / Venice Art Biennale 2013. Venice (Italy), Professional Preview, May 31, 2013.

PS: More info and photos at Designboom.

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Photo set:

Lyrics:
John Lennon: Imagine:

Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky

Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace … (yuhuuuuhh)

You may say I am a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world … (yuhuuuh)

You may say I am a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Warning: For their presentations at this year’s Venice Art Biennale, France and Germany swapped their pavilions, so please watch the signage if you visit the show! I think that this is a fantastic idea. Imagine France is Germany, Europe is Asia, and she is he, and dogs are cats, and everything is everything. There is [...]

One of the highlights of Art Basel is the Unlimited sector, the exhibition platform for large-scale installations, sculptures, paintings, video projections and live performances. This year, Art Unlimited is curated by New York-based curator Gianni Jetzer. This video provides you with a tour through the exhibition that features works by the artists Thomas Schütte, Noriyuki Haraguchi, Meschac Gaba, Wolfgang Laib, Justin Matherly, Lygia Clark, Amalia Pica, Ai Weiwei, Oscar Tuazon, Liu Wei, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Oscar Murillo, Walid Raad, Lionel Estève, Carl Andre, He An, Karla Black, Rob Pruitt, Aaron Curry, Shakuntala Kulkarni, Michel Majerus, Peter Buggenhout, Chen Zhen, David Altmejd, Michael Joo, Nobuo Sekine, Roni Horn, Antony Gormley, Piotr Uklanski, Atelier Van Lieshout, Chiharu Shiota, Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe, and others.

Art Basel 2013 – Art Unlimited. Basel, Switzerland, June 11, 2013.

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One of the highlights of Art Basel is the Unlimited sector, the exhibition platform for large-scale installations, sculptures, paintings, video projections and live performances. This year, Art Unlimited is curated by New York-based curator Gianni Jetzer. This video provides you with a tour through the exhibition that features works by the artists Thomas Schütte, Noriyuki [...]

The New York-based artist Sarah Sze is known for her complex sculptures and site-specific installations made of everyday objects such as tea bags, water bottles, and electric fans. Her works manipulate the space, be it a gallery, domestic interior or public space. This year she represents the United States of America at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy. Her exhibition Triple Point features installations inside and outside the Pavilion building. Much of Sarah Sze’s solo show evolved on-site over a three-month installation period. For Triple Point, the artist uses elements from the urban landscape of Venice such as photographs of stone, leaves from the Giardini, tickets from the Vaporetto. This video provides you with a walkthrough of the exhibition in the Biennale’s Giardini.

Sarah Sze: Triple Point. U.S. Pavilion at Venice Art Biennale 2013. Venice, Italy, May 30, 2013.

PS: See also: Sarah Sze: Still Life With Landscape (Model for a Habitat) / The High Line, New York and Sarah Sze. Installation at Mudam Luxembourg.

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Photo set:

Text from the exhibition website:

Since the 1990s, Sarah Sze has developed a sculptural aesthetic that transforms space through radical shifts in scale, colonizing peripheral spaces, engaging with the history of a building, and altering the viewer’s perception and experience of architecture through large scale, site-specific interventions.

Triple Point brings together many of the ideas that Sze has developed during her practice. Central to the exhibition is the notion of the “compass” and the desire to locate ourselves in a disorienting world. Each of the rooms of the United States Pavilion functions as an experimental site, in which objects attempt to become instruments or assemblages that seek to measure or model the universe. The aspiration to model complexity—and the impossibility of that undertaking—is a key theme in Triple Point.

In thermodynamics, “triple point” designates a singular combination of temperature and pressure at which all three phases of a substance (gas, liquid, and solid) can exist in perfect equilibrium. Triangulation—the measurement of distance from three ordinal points—is also used to specify a unique position in space. Sze’s work references both these ideas—the fragility of equilibrium and the constant ambition to create stability and location.

Sze approached the Pavilion as a site of live observation and experimentation; much of the exhibition evolved on-site over a three-month installation period. Elements from the urban landscape of Venice—photographs of stone, leaves from the Giardini, tickets from the vaporetto—were collected to serve the growth of these installations. Small fragments of the sculptures were dispersed throughout shops and roofs around via Garibaldi, to be discovered by chance within the fabric of daily life. The exhibition inhabits the building and city, navigating its rooms, coalescing into systems, and ultimately degenerating into remnants—in an effort to inscribe a very fragile personal order upon a disordered universe.

The New York-based artist Sarah Sze is known for her complex sculptures and site-specific installations made of everyday objects such as tea bags, water bottles, and electric fans. Her works manipulate the space, be it a gallery, domestic interior or public space. This year she represents the United States of America at the 55th International [...]

Maurizio Cattelan is one of the most controversial artists of our time. The Italian artist is known for his satirical sculptures such as La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour), depicting the Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite, or HIM, depicting Hitler kneeling in prayer in a courtyard in the former Warsaw Ghetto.

His current exhibition at Fondation Beyeler in Riehen (Basel, Switzerland) presents five taxidermied horses that go with their heads through the wall of the museum. The exhibition is curated by Sam Keller and Associate Curator Michiko Kono.

Maurizio Cattelan. Kaputt. Fondation Beyeler, Riehen (Switzerland). Opening reception, June 8, 2013.

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Maurizio Cattelan is one of the most controversial artists of our time. The Italian artist is known for his satirical sculptures such as La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour), depicting the Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite, or HIM, depicting Hitler kneeling in prayer in a courtyard in the former Warsaw Ghetto. [...]

In time for the Art Biennale in Venice, HangarBicocca in Milan, Italy, opened a huge show with works by Mike Kelley. The exhibition is titled Eternity is a Long Time and highlights the oeuvre of the late American artist (Detroit, 1954 – Los Angeles, 2012) with a selection of major works. The exhibition is curated by Emi Fontana and Andrea Lissoni. In this video, Emi Fontana, an Italian curator who lives in Los Angeles and worked closely with Mike Kelley during the last fifteen years of his life, provides us with a short introduction to the exhibition. Vicente Todolí, Artistic Advisor at HangarBicocca, talks about his concept for the exhibition space.

The exhibition is titled “Eternity is a Long Time” and features installations, videos and sculptures mainly realized from 2000 to 2006. Cultural aspects and autobiographical memories are a major part of Mike Kelley’s work. Among the works on display are “Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #1 (A Domestic Scene)”, “Runway for Interactive DJ Event”, and “John Glenn Memorial Detroit River Reclamation Project (Including the Local Culture Pictorial Guide, 1968-1972, Wayne/Westland Eagle)”. The exhibition runs until September 8, 2013.

HangarBicocca is a space devoted to the production, exhibition and promotion of contemporary art. It’s a brainchild of the company Pirelli and located in a redeveloped industrial complex in Milan, Italy, formerly owned by Ansaldo-Breda.

Mike Kelley: Eternity is a Long Time / HangarBicocca, Milan (Italy). Interview with Emi Fontana and Vicente Todolí. Press event, June 3, 2013.

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In time for the Art Biennale in Venice, HangarBicocca in Milan, Italy, opened a huge show with works by Mike Kelley. The exhibition is titled Eternity is a Long Time and highlights the oeuvre of the late American artist (Detroit, 1954 – Los Angeles, 2012) with a selection of major works. The exhibition is curated [...]

Canadian artist Geoffrey Farmer’s work became known to a larger audience with his participation in Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, in 2012, where he presented the work Leaves of Grass, a large-scale collage installation with cutouts from issues of Life magazines (1935-85). In Switzerland, Geoffrey Farmers work art was first shown when he contributed to the project The Garden of Forking Paths, which was initiated by the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art.

Now he’s back with a solo exhibition produced especially for the Migros Museum, titled Let’s Make the Water Turn Black. The show borrows its title from a 1968 composition by Frank Zappa. The exhibition presents an improvised chronology of the American musician by an arrangement of choreographed kinetic sculptures on a stage.

Geoffrey Farmer was born in Vancouver in 1967. In 2011, he participated in the 12th Istanbul Biennial. His work has been on display in numerous solo shows at REDCAT, Los Angeles, the Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York (both 2011), and other venues, as well as the Witte de With, Rotterdam, and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (both 2008). Geoffrey Farmer lives and works in Vancouver.

Geoffrey Farmer: Let’s Make the Water Turn Black / Migros Museum of Contemporary Art. Opening reception, May 22, 2013.

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Full-length video with an excerpt of the introduction by Heike Munder (Director, Migros Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst) (16:17 min.):

Photo set:

Canadian artist Geoffrey Farmer’s work became known to a larger audience with his participation in Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, in 2012, where he presented the work Leaves of Grass, a large-scale collage installation with cutouts from issues of Life magazines (1935-85). In Switzerland, Geoffrey Farmers work art was first shown when he contributed to [...]

Faena Arts Center in Buenos Aires currently presents the complete trilogy of their series The Liminal Space by Russian art collective AES+F. The first video of the Liminal Space Trilogy, entitled Last Riot, was shown first at the 2007 Venice Biennale where AES+F represented Russia. The work shows a future world described by a succession of digitized images of snowy mountains, desolated beaches, neon dragons that land on oil rigs, Aircrafts that crash without producing flames and young people exerting violence upon each other, without apparent consequences. The second video in the series The Feast of Trimalchio was first shown at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 and in the 17th Sydney Biennale in 2010. Finally, AES+F created Allegoria Sacra, the third part of the trilogy that refers to Purgatory, while the two previous alluded to Heaven and Hell. It was shown for the first time in the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow as a special project of the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art.

AES+F is a Russian art collective is formed by: Arzamasova Tatiana (1955), Lev Evzovich (1958), Evgeny Svyatsky (1957) and Vladimir Fridkes (1956). The group started to work in 1987 as AES and consisted of the first three artists. Photographer Vladimir Fridkes joined them in 1995 and the name of the group changed definitively to AES+F. The artists live and work in Moscow. Their work primarily consists of computer manipulated large scale photography and videos developed for multiple channel projection. During their career they also worked on drawing, painting and sculpture.

The exhibition AES+F: The Liminal Space Trilogy at Faena Arts Center in Buenos Aires runs until June 2013.

AES+F: The Liminal Space Trilogy / Faena Arts Center, Buenos Aires. Video by Luciana Zothner, Milos Deretich, Roberto Rey, Angel Sánchez.

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Faena Arts Center in Buenos Aires currently presents the complete trilogy of their series The Liminal Space by Russian art collective AES+F. The first video of the Liminal Space Trilogy, entitled Last Riot, was shown first at the 2007 Venice Biennale where AES+F represented Russia. The work shows a future world described by a succession [...]

The Encyclopedic Palace (Il Palazzo Enciclopedico) is the title of the Venice Biennale’s 55th International Art Exhibition that runs from June 1st to November 24th, 2013. The event takes place in Venice (Italy) at the Giardini and at the Arsenale, as well as in various venues of the city. The main exhibition is curated by Massimiliano Gioni. The title The Encyclopedic Palace (Il Palazzo Enciclopedico) refers to a project by Italo-American self-taught artist Marino Auriti who in 1955 filed a design with the US Patent office depicting his Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace), an imaginary museum that was meant to house all worldly knowledge. Although Marino Auriti’s plan was never carried out, “the dream of universal, all-embracing knowledge crops up throughout history, as one that eccentrics like Auriti share with many other artists, writers, scientists, and prophets who have tried – often in vain – to fashion an image of the world that will capture its infinite variety and richness.” (Massimiliano Gioni).

Thus, the main exhibition in the Biennale’s Giardini and Arsenale brings together the work of artists such as Carl Gustav Jung, Rudolf Steiner, Oliver Croy and Oliver Elser, Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Eva Kotátková, Diego Perrone, and Imran Qureshi at the Central Pavilion in the Giardini, and Marino Auriti, Yüksel Arslan, Hans Josephsohn, Phyllida Barlow, Steve McQueen, Danh Vo, R. Crumb, Pawel Althamer, Miroslaw Balka, George Condo, Paul McCarthy, Wade Guyton, Dieter Roth, and many others at the Arsenale.

This video provides you with at walkthrough of the exhibition at the Central Pavilion. More videos covering the Biennale will be available soon.

Venice Art Biennale 2013: The Encyclopedic Palace / Padiglione Centrale, Giardini. Venice (Italy), May 29, 2013.

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The Encyclopedic Palace (Il Palazzo Enciclopedico) is the title of the Venice Biennale’s 55th International Art Exhibition that runs from June 1st to November 24th, 2013. The event takes place in Venice (Italy) at the Giardini and at the Arsenale, as well as in various venues of the city. The main exhibition is curated by [...]

For his current exhibition at Kurimanzutto Gallery in Mexico City, artist Gabriel Orozco decided to work with river stones. Orozco is a passionate collector of things. This time he decided to collect something that nature prepared over many, many years and re-use it and give it a new meaning. The exhibition runs until June 15, 2013.

Upcoming solo exhibition of Gabriel Orozco include Kunsthaus Bregenz (July 7 – October 6, 2013) and Edinburgh Art Festival Exhibition, Fruit Market Gallery (August 1 – October 20, 2013).

Gabriel Orozco at Kurimanzutto, Mexico City. Opening, April 13, 2013. Video by Diego García Sotomoro.

For more videos on Gabriel Orozco, such as Gabriel Orozco’s Retrospective at Kunstmuseum Basel, visit our archive.

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Excerpt from the press release:

The artist—always watchful—comes across the stones. Ordinary river stones; but, it should be noted, of an inter- esting size: not your typical pebble that fits in the palm of your hand, but stones similar in size—also because of their oval form—to a football.
It is highly unlikely that the idea of how they would be later intervene emerged clearly in that first moment, but there is something in the objects (their colours, their drawings, their size) that replenishes the creative impulse; that is to say, that places the artist one more time at the beginning of something. For Orozco, this is how the process starts: based on a hypothesis that defines a provisional working course. That is why the work is always the how it could be, not the how it should be.
The stone, in any case, is a variation of a theme to which this artist constantly comes back to in his work: the circle—and all its derivatives: the sphere, the balloon, the ball, the disc, the wheel, the planet, the orbit. It is there, at the centre of the circle, where Orozco likes to pinpoint the beginning of things; a beginning that aims in all direc- tions—unlike the immovable unidirectionality of the straight line. And that is why in his work we find oranges, tires, soccer balls, billiard balls, sand balls, melons and all kinds of objects close to the sphere: potatoes, watermelons, mixiotes1, seeds, hands that are the heart. Because they are bodies that speak of what the circle speaks: of mobil- ity, of cycles, of game, of fullness, of rotation, etc.
This stones are made to be touched: that is why the drawings are not superimposed, they penetrate the stone. Although, well-regarded, a cleft is actually nothing but a space that occupies a place in matter. But occupies it conversely to graphite: here the void is not the organic form that is left free from drawing, it is the gap itself that produces the drawing. So, it is not about just a void, but a void where there used to be something: more stone. But that which diminishes the original materiality is precisely that which increases the sense of the work (it stops being a stone to become a sculpture). You might say, an exchange of substances. The less stone the more sculp- ture, the stone collaborates here becoming a drawing itself.
Nevertheless, the dialog between two sculpting forms stays intact: that of nature, which makes the stone go from a rough and jagged rock to a polished cobblestone; and that of the artist, who, as we have already stated, is the one that cuts (literally, with a sharp diamond tip).

For his current exhibition at Kurimanzutto Gallery in Mexico City, artist Gabriel Orozco decided to work with river stones. Orozco is a passionate collector of things. This time he decided to collect something that nature prepared over many, many years and re-use it and give it a new meaning. The exhibition runs until June 15, [...]

Max Ernst is considered as one of Modern Art’s most versatile artists. Max Ernst started out as Dadaist in Cologne, then moved to Paris to become one of the leading Surrealist artists. After his emigration to the USA and his return to war-devastated Europe he was finally rediscovered as one of the most fascinating artists of the 20th Century. The comprehensive retrospective Max Ernst at Fondation Beyeler features more than 160 paintings, collages, drawings, sculptures and prints, including major works that can only be seen together in this exhibition in Riehen, Switzerland. Among the highlights of the exhibition are the works La Vierge corrigeant l’enfant Jésus devant trois témoins: André Breton, Paul Èluard et le peintre (1926); Au premier mot limpide (1923), L’habillement de l’épousée / de la mariée (1940); and L’ange du foyer (Le triomphe du surréalisme) (1937). The show runs until September 8, 2013.

Max Ernst Retrospective at Fondation Beyeler, Riehen (Basel, Switzerland). Vernissage, May 25, 2013.

PS: Bespoke hat with chili by Piers Atkinson for Karolina ;–)

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Max Ernst is considered as one of Modern Art’s most versatile artists. Max Ernst started out as Dadaist in Cologne, then moved to Paris to become one of the leading Surrealist artists. After his emigration to the USA and his return to war-devastated Europe he was finally rediscovered as one of the most fascinating artists [...]

Hauser & Wirth’s entire spring program in New York City is devoted to the artist Paul McCarthy. At Hauser & Wirth’s venue at 69th Street, the gallery presents Paul McCarthy: Life Cast, featuring platinum silicone life casts of the artist and Elyse Poppers, one of the key performers in his most recent projects Rebel Dabble Babble and WS. The exhibition runs until July 26, 2013.

Paul McCarthy: Life Cast / Hauser & Wirth New York 69th Street. Press preview, May 10, 2013. Video by Shimon Azulay.

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Excerpt from the press release:

‘Paul McCarthy: Life Cast’

Also opening to the public on 10 May at Hauser & Wirth’s townhouse on 69th Street, ‘Paul McCarthy: Life Cast’ (on view through 26 July) showcases highly developed themes and narratives coursing through and connecting different areas of McCarthy’s vast and complex practice. Here those themes are revealed through platinum silicone life casts – bravura replicas of the artist and Elyse Poppers, one of the key performers in his most recent projects ‘Rebel Dabble Babble’ and ‘WS’.

‘Horizontal’ (2013) is a haunting depiction of the artist in uncanny full-scale replica, naked and prone in the gallery’s skylit ground floor south room. ‘Horizontal’ is a recent ‘repetition-variation’ of the 2005 work ‘Paul Dreaming, Vertical, Horizontal’, in which the artist’s own body was molded standing upright. Defined by gravity’s pull, that earlier sculpture was half-clothed and subtly distorted, its belly and penis distended outward. While ‘Paul Dreaming’ elicits thoughts of death, it also suggests that the artist is very much alive and a bit of a bearded buffoon in socks and shirt, but no pants. ‘Horizontal’ presents an altogether different avatar and, in the artist’s words, ‘makes no bones about the fact this is someone dead, without the mask of a clown or the possibility of sleep and dreaming’. Cast with McCarthy in a prone position, this morgue-like caricature strikes a subversive note in which absurdity and pathos echo one another.

‘Horizontal’ was presaged by one of McCarthy’s earliest exhibited works, the hollow metal ‘Dead H’ (1968), also on view in ‘Paul McCarthy: Life Cast’. ‘Dead H’ – at first glance a Minimalist sculpture in the then-prevailing style – slyly mimics a dead body (and, coincidentally, a toppled twin of the first letter in Los Angeles’ famous Hollywood sign).

An ironic comment upon vanitas and the ambitions and fables of art and culture, McCarthy’s ‘Dead H’ is a fallen hero. Forty-five years later, the artist’s study of the body as a vehicle for liberation and exploitation continues full force. Works on view at 69th Street also include ‘Rubber Jacket Horizontal, Rubber H’, a poignant fragment from the life casting activities of the past year that captures a sunken and hollow portion of the artist’s own torso.

‘Paul McCarthy: Life Cast’ also presents four female figures of uncanny verisimilitude. All are life casts of Elyse Poppers achieved through a series of painstaking processes at the leading edge of special effects technology. ‘T.G. Awake’ (T.G. is an acronym for ‘That Girl’ and refers to another feminine icon, aspiring actress namesake of a hit 1960s situation comedy) is comprised of three life-sized casts of the actress in similar sitting positions, with her legs spread open to varying degrees and eyes cast in different directions. Together these static variations reference the magical effect by which a series of still images can be joined together to become film. ‘T.G. Awake’ found its origins in drawings that McCarthy made of his wife Karen in the 1960s and relates to the first White Snow pencil drawings of 2009. The sculpture ‘T.G. Asleep’ presents the same woman prone, her body curved and hands cupped, a counterpoint to the dead figure of ‘Horizontal’.

The exhibition also includes ‘That Girl’, a four-channel video installation based in the process by which ‘T.G. Awake’ and ‘T.G. Asleep’ were achieved. Capturing the molding process, the model’s live movement studies, and the documentation of these through deliberately positioned cameras, this work brings viewers into the action through which the sculptures on view were made. ‘Life casting liberates the literal through a kind of unifying monotone,’ McCarthy has said. ‘It creates a different representation of the original thing that lets me explore where reality and abstraction intersect’.

Hauser & Wirth’s entire spring program in New York City is devoted to the artist Paul McCarthy. At Hauser & Wirth’s venue at 69th Street, the gallery presents Paul McCarthy: Life Cast, featuring platinum silicone life casts of the artist and Elyse Poppers, one of the key performers in his most recent projects Rebel Dabble [...]

Bilder der Berührung (Images of Contingence) at the gallery Zak Branicka in Berlin presents works by Valie Export that deal with expressions of physical contact and its implications. The title of the show is derived from Valie Export’s installation work Fragmente der Bilder einer Berührung (Fragments of Images of Contingence) of 1994, in which light bulbs are rhythmically immersed into cylinders filled with milk, used oil, or water. This major work of the exhibition is complemented by video works and drawings, and various photographs and archive material that documents Valie Exports long-standing artistic career. In this video, Asia Zak walks us through the exhibition. The show runs until June 15, 2013.

Valie Export: Images of Contingence (Bilder der Berührung) / Zak Branicka, Berlin. Interview with Asia Zak. April 28, 2013. Video by Frantisek Zachoval.

PS: Watch also:

• VALIE EXPORT / Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert Gallery, New York
• VALIE EXPORT / Charim Galerie, Vienna / Art Cologne 2006

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Excerpt from the press release:

ŻAK | BRANICKA is delighted to present Bilder der Berührung [Images of Contingence], an exhibition of works by VALIE EXPORT to be shown during the Gallery Weekend Berlin 2013. The exhibition highlights the artist’s groundbreaking expressions of physical contact and its implications in various media, including installation, drawing, photography, film and archival materials. The title of the exhibition is rooted in VALIE EXPORT’s installation work Fragmente der Bilder einer Berührung [Fragments of Images of Contingence] of 1994, in which pole- and wire-hung light bulbs are rhythmically immersed into cylinders filled with milk, used oil, or water. These liquids are fundamental sources of our existence. At the same time, their physical fusion with electricity implies a life-threatening danger—a contradictory, yet also mutually conditioned state of joining and repelling. The rhythmic movement in this work is repeated in a second installation of the exhibition, Die un-endliche/-ähnliche Melodie der Stränge [The un-ending/-ique melody of cords] of 1998, a recording of a threadless sewing machine and its sound.

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Contingency, liminality, and sensual experience likewise permeate the artist’s video works as themes, a selection of which will also be shown, including one of her most famous works, TAPP- und TASTKINO [TOUCH CINEMA] (the Munich performance of 1969). During this performance, the artist wore an aluminium box around her naked chest, allowing passersby to enter her miniature cinema as visitors with their hands. “To see the film, that is, in this case, to touch and feel it, the viewer (user) has to guide his hands through the entrance into the screening hall. With this, the curtain, previously only raised for the eyes, is now finally raised for both hands. The tactile reception takes a stand against the deception of voyeurism. For, as long as the citizen satisfies himself with the reproduced copy of sexual freedom, the state remains spared from the sexual revolution”, EXPORT states. In its confrontation and appropriation of the male gaze, this iconic performance has become a symbol of feminist art.

The motif of touch reappears in VALIE EXPORT’s series of drawings dating from the beginning of the 1970s. Depicting hands that protect or caress, hands that suffer, and hands that create suffering, these works, as all others, configure an iconographic index of the human body, and particularly a woman’s body; the individual parts of which inscribe and are inscribed with meaning. Its capacity for “touch” is most telling: It is testimony not only to sensuality, intimacy, and carnality, but also to aggression and violence. As EXPORT says: “For me, contingence is how and where you perceive borders, and how and where and when borders explode.”

Aside from the aforementioned works, various photographs and display cases showing archive material and documentation from EXPORT’s long-standing artistic career (specifically compiled for the exhibition VALIE EXPORT – Archive at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2011) will complement the exhibition.

Bilder der Berührung (Images of Contingence) at the gallery Zak Branicka in Berlin presents works by Valie Export that deal with expressions of physical contact and its implications. The title of the show is derived from Valie Export’s installation work Fragmente der Bilder einer Berührung (Fragments of Images of Contingence) of 1994, in which light [...]

This video provides you with a walk through Frieze New York Art Fair 2013, the second edition of the fair on Randall’s Island.

Frieze New York art fair 2013, Randall’s Island, New York, May 10, 2013. Video by Shimon Azulay.

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This video provides you with a walk through Frieze New York Art Fair 2013, the second edition of the fair on Randall’s Island. Frieze New York art fair 2013, Randall’s Island, New York, May 10, 2013. Video by Shimon Azulay. Right-click (Mac: ctrl-click) this link to download Quicktime video file. On YouTube:

Pulse is another art fair that chose to run concurrently to Frieze New York instead of Armory Show. Among the galleries participating in the fair at the Metropolitan Pavilion are Ethan Cohen (New York), Stefan Roepke (Cologne), Tokyo Gallery + BATP (Tokyo), z2o Galleria Sara Zanin (Rome). This video provides you with a walkthrough of the fair.

Pulse New York, The Metropolitan Pavilion, New York, May 9, 2013. Video by Shimon Azulay.

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> On YouTube:

Pulse is another art fair that chose to run concurrently to Frieze New York instead of Armory Show. Among the galleries participating in the fair at the Metropolitan Pavilion are Ethan Cohen (New York), Stefan Roepke (Cologne), Tokyo Gallery + BATP (Tokyo), z2o Galleria Sara Zanin (Rome). This video provides you with a walkthrough of [...]

Out now: VernissageTV PDF-magazine No. 24, May 2013.

In this issue we look back at selected exhibitions, such as Markus Müller’s solo show at Nicolas Krupp in Basel, Ohad Meromi at Gallery Diet in Miami, Keith Farquhar at New Jerseyy in Basel, Sverre Bjertnes’ collaborative exhibition at White Columns New York, and Jon Kessler’s immersive installation at the Swiss Institute in New York.
For Magazine No. 24 we have also produced exclusive “video portraits” of nine of Jean Tinguely’s kinetic works that will be accessible only for a limited time. These video portraits are accompanying the photo series shot on the occasion of Tinguely@Tinguely, the large-scale retrospective at Museum Tinguely in Basel.
Another exclusive contribution is The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Los Angeles-based light and space artist Susan Kaiser Vogel’s presentation of artist Mollie McKinley, including a conversation between Susan Kaiser Vogel and Mollie McKinley.
Finally, there are three architecture related photo series: We have a look at Herzog & de Meuron’s new halls for Messe Basel, Hilario Candela’s abandoned Miami Marine Stadium, and Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay.

Click image or this link to download the magazine (55 MB) or hit the jump to view the magazine in Issuu Reader, and get the links to the related videos.

All issues are available in our Magazine section.

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Related Articles:

• Herzog & de Meuron Architects: Messe Basel New Hall
• Jon Kessler: The Web / Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York
• Natalie Kovacs Curates “In Conversation” With Lita Albuquerque and Mollie McKinley at Spring/Break Art Show 2013
• Markus Müller at Nicolas Krupp Contemporary Art, Basel
• Ohad Meromi: The Working Day / Gallery Diet, Miami
• Keith Farquhar: Abstract Printings at New Jerseyy, Basel
• Tinguely@Tinguely. A New Look at Jean Tinguely's Work. Retrospective at Museum Tinguely, Basel

Out now: VernissageTV PDF-magazine No. 24, May 2013. In this issue we look back at selected exhibitions, such as Markus Müller’s solo show at Nicolas Krupp in Basel, Ohad Meromi at Gallery Diet in Miami, Keith Farquhar at New Jerseyy in Basel, Sverre Bjertnes’ collaborative exhibition at White Columns New York, and Jon Kessler’s immersive [...]

In Chicago, Queer Thoughts Gallery presents And Then, the first solo presentation in America by Japan-based artist Kaoru Arima. Arima was born in 1969 in Aichi, Japan. The artist has exhibited extensively in Japan at venues including Misako and Rosen (Tokyo), and was included in the group exhibition The Age of Micropop: The Next Generation of Japanese Artists at The Art Tower Mito (Mito). Arima has shown internationally with Galerie Dennis Kimmerich (Düsseldorf), in group shows at Galerie Catherine Bastide (Brussels), Bortolami (New York), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh) and Shane Campbell Gallery, Lincoln Park (Chicago).

For the solo show And Then, Kaoru Arima presents new paintings on canvas and works on paper. For Arima, the works represent a formal development from his continued series of drawings on whited-out newspapers.

Kaoru Arima: And Then. Solo exhibition at Queer Thoughts Gallery, Chicago. Opening reception, May 3, 2013. Video by Francisco Cordero-Oceguera.

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In Chicago, Queer Thoughts Gallery presents And Then, the first solo presentation in America by Japan-based artist Kaoru Arima. Arima was born in 1969 in Aichi, Japan. The artist has exhibited extensively in Japan at venues including Misako and Rosen (Tokyo), and was included in the group exhibition The Age of Micropop: The Next Generation [...]

Kapoor in Berlin is the first comprehensive exhibition of Anish Kapoor in Berlin. The Indian-born British sculptor Anish Kapoor is known for his spectacular sculptures and installations, such as the Cloud Gate in Millennium Park, Chicago. For his exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau he uses the whole ground floor of the building, including the atrium. In this video, Anish Kapoor talks about the concept of the show and specific works, such as the huge kinetic installation in the atrium of the Martin-Gropius-Bau.

Kapoor in Berlin. Anish Kapoor solo exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (Germany). Interview with Anish Kapoor. Berlin, Germany, May 17, 2013. Video by Frantisek Zachoval.

PS: For more videos on Anish Kapoor, visit our archive.

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Kapoor in Berlin is currently the most comprehensive exhibition of one of the world’s most important contemporary artist. At the Martin-Gropius-Bau art lovers can see more than 70 works from the 1980s to the present. The exhibition mainly presents works that have been shown in major exhibitions such as Documenta and La Biennale di Venezia. For Kapoor in Berlin, the artist has produced a new version of his work Descent into Limbo (1992),which was one of the highlights of documenta IX. The viewer can also see Kapoor’s gleaming high-grade steel mirrors. The central installation of the show is the piece Symphony for a Beloved Sun.

In this interview, Anish Kapoor explains how he worked with the exhibition space with its specific architectural style and its own history. He talks about the importance of the original installation of the Leviathan, which was created for the Grand Palais in Paris in 2011, and the monumental installation in the atrium of the Martin-Gropius-Bau: Symphony for a Beloved Sun.



Selected solo exhibitions of Anish Kapoor include: ‘Objects’, Seoul: Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (2012); ‘Anish Kapoor: Flashback’, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester (2011); ‘Monumenta’, Grand Palais, Paris (2011); ‘Anish Kapoor’, Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan (2011); ‘Anish Kapoor: Delhi / Mumbai’, National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi and Mehboob Studios, Mumbai (2010); ‘Turning the World Upside Down’, Kensington Gardens, London (2010); ‘Anish Kapoor’, Museo Guggenheim de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo, Bilbao (2010); ‘Anish Kapoor’, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, MIMA, Middlesbrough (2010); ‘Turning the World Upside Down’, Kensington Gardens, London (2010); ‘Anish Kapoor: Shooting into the Corner’, MAK Museum, Vienna (2010); ‘Drawings’, Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2009); ‘Memory’ Guggenheim, New York (2009); ‘Place/No Place: Anish Kapoor in Architecture’, Royal Institute of British Architects, London (2008); ‘Anish Kapoor’, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2007); ‘Anish Kapoor, Sky Mirror’ Rockefeller Centre, New York (2006); ‘Anish Kapoor Japanese Mirrors’, Scai The Bathhouse, Tokyo (2005); ‘My Red Homeland’, KUB, Kunsthaus Bregenz (2003); ‘Marsyas’, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London (2002-03); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (1993); Mala Galerija, Moderna Galerija Ljubljana, Museum of Modern Art, Slovenia (1994); ‘Anish Kapoor, XLIV Biennale di Venezia’, British Pavilion, Venice (1990).

Kapoor in Berlin is the first comprehensive exhibition of Anish Kapoor in Berlin. The Indian-born British sculptor Anish Kapoor is known for his spectacular sculptures and installations, such as the Cloud Gate in Millennium Park, Chicago. For his exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau he uses the whole ground floor of the building, including the atrium. In this [...]