Tag: News

NEW YORK, NY.- Marc Jancou Contemporary presents Meredith James’ first solo show in New York, Espalier. Meredith James’ videos and sculptures engage architectural space and sequential narrative through a series of inversions and perceptual events. Shot in an abandoned subway station, Six uses simple in-camera techniques to recast the spatial and temporal coordinates of the experience of a passing train. Not unlike early experiments in film, James’ work tends to lay bare its mechanism, preferring to acknowledge the perceptual shifts even as they occur. Carefully structured time lags are distributed between moments of recognition within the narrative structure of a video or the spatial arrangement of sculptural elements. James’ use of unconventional viewing apparatuses compounds the experience; videos are rear-projected inside homemade TVs

HONG KONG.- Christie’s announces its Spring sale of Southeast Asian Modern and Contemporary Art will take place on 30 May at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. Featuring over 130 quality works spanning the history and geography in the Southeast Asian region, the sale brings together modern masterpieces of undisputed provenance and some of the most sought-after contemporary artworks. The category’s modern masters and contemporary stars continue to be represented by works of the highest quality in the sale which is valued in excess of HK$22 million (US$2.8 million). Against the backdrop of a swift recovery in the contemporary art market worldwide, this season’s selection of contemporary Southeast Asian art continues to lead the market in diversity and depth, presenting collectors with superb examples of works by the best

BRUSSELS.- Contemporary Art has painted itself into a corner. The old Avant Garde’s demand for constant renewal can no longer compete with the market demand for fresh blood, novelty and the dictates of fashion. The classic art historical concept of Movements and Manifestos have been superceded by seasons and sensations. Artists are as a result no longer judged by their historical resilience but according to their most recent auction sale. A young unknown Indian or Chinese painter can now be “ranked” higher than Duchamp or Manzoni according to the ubiquitous top 100 lists that proliferate in Art Magazines polluting the space between the advertising and advertorial. The reality of the contemporary art market demand is that artists have neither the time nor the opportunity for real structural renewal, nor the space for philosophical growth and development. Instead of interrogating history or killing their idols, artists

LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- Socrates Sculpture Park presents Cityscape: Surveying the Urban Biotope, on Sunday May 2, 2010, from 2-6pm. Curated by Alyson Baker and Marichris Ty, the show will explore the presence of nature in the fabric of urban life. Cityscape includes eleven new works by artists: Saul Becker, George Boorujy, William Cordova, David Kennedy Cutler, Lillian Gerson, Janelle Iglesias, Katherine McLeod, Ester Partegàs, Zena Verda Pesta, Christine Howard Sandoval, and Mark Lawrence Stafford. The introduction or invasion of plants and animals in the cityscape symbolizes a broad scope of conditions and dynamics – from far reaching social, political, economic and aesthetic issues to an individual’s relationship with their immediate surroundings. Nature’s presence in the urban environment can take many forms: green roofs, community gardens, city parks

LONDON.- Fascinating photographs of London Women’s Pub Outings in Battersea and Clapham taken by Scottish photographer Grace Robertson in the 1950s are being sold at Bonhams, New Bond Street, as part of its sale of Photographs on 20 May 2010. The four images follow a group of women on a series of pub outings laughing, dancing, forming a conga line and going on a theme park ride. Robertson commented on the experience of photographing these women: “I can’t recall ever having been present at a more high-spirited gathering of like-minded people who, for a few hours, gave themselves utterly to the enjoyment of the moment.” The photographs, which were printed in the British photojournalism publication Picture Post, are expected to fetch £500 – 800 each. The sale features 18 important examples of mid-20th century photojournalism in total, including works by Thurston Hopkins such as La Dolce Vita, Knightsbridge,

DENVER, CO.- Building on the approach the Denver Art Museum (DAM) pioneered in 1925, when it became the first American museum to collect Native American objects as art rather than artifacts, this summer the museum will begin the renovation and complete reinstallation of its American Indian and Northwest Coast art galleries to place an expanded focus on individual artists, their creations, and inspirations. Today the DAM holds one of the nation’s most comprehensive collections of American Indian art, including 18,000 artworks ranging from prehistoric to contemporary, displayed in a 23,000 square foot gallery on the third level of the North Building. The American Indian presentation initially installed in 1988 will be open to the public through June 13, and will reopen with new interactive, artist-centric displays in early 2011. The transformed galleries will host approximately 600 artworks

BERLIN.- Jo Baer was a key figure among the celebrated protagonists of Minimalist painting in New York in the 1960s and first half of the ’70s. It was during that period when she executed her series of different-sized squares as well as vertical and horizontal rectangles in the hard-edge style, works she later expanded into multipartite arrangements as diptychs and triptychs. The most prominent feature of her paintings of that era is her composition of white or grey central areas encircled by a very thin band of colour which in turn is surrounded by a considerably thicker band of black. In these works it was important to not consider the black paint as a frame and the white as the centre. Both white and black were the frames for the colour – black functioning to enclose it on one side and white on the other, white pushing colour far enough apart to work as it

PARIS (AP).- Israeli artist Avigdor Arikha, who learned the power of art as a boy during the Holocaust when he sketched scenes from a concentration camp onto salvaged scraps of paper, has died in Paris. He was 81. Romanian-born Arikha, a painter, draftsman and printmaker, went on to become one of Israel’s most important contemporary artists, imbuing his portraits and scenes of daily life — a red umbrella against a wall, an overflowing bookshelf, a jumble of bottles in a cabinet — with enigmatic, disconcerting beauty. “He had an exceptional gift for capturing something deep in people and expressing their mystery,” French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said. Arikha died of complications of cancer on Thursday at his home in Paris, where he spent most of his adult life, said Janis Gardner Cecil, sales director for the Marlborough

RICHMOND, VA.- Visitors coming to the new James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Wing at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts will see spectacular art and activities inside even before they reach the entrance, thanks to an enormous expanse of glass on VMFA’s Boulevard façade. The main window, 70 feet by 40 feet, and other large expanses of glass will let natural light pour into the heart of the museum by day and provide a welcoming beacon from the outside at night. VMFA Director Alex Nyerges urges all Virginians to see the expanded museum. “Everything about it is bigger, brighter and more welcoming. Our new McGlothlin Wing gives us a thrilling and glamorous stage from which to welcome visitors and to display more of our global collection and present important special exhibitions,” he says. The expanded museum includes double the space for major traveling exhibitions and increases total space for VMFA’s

BERLIN.- Haunch of Venison Berlin presents ‘Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun?’ a two person exhibition by American artist Michael Joo (b.1966) and British artist Damien Hirst (b.1965). The exhibition opens on 1 May and continues through 14 August 2010. ‘Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun?’ is a unique collaboration between the two artists, who met in Cologne in 1991 and have remained close friends since that time. Engaged in a continuous, twenty-year discourse about their individual artistic practices, this marks the first time Joo and Hirst have worked together to realise a full-scale joint exhibition. ‘Have You Ever Really Looked at the Sun? ‘will feature new, especially conceived sculptures and installations, as well as seminal paintings and sculptures from Joo and Hirst. Since gaining international attention after showing in the exhibition ‘Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away’ at the Serpentine Gallery in London i