Archive: Issue No. 137, January 2009

EUROPE

16.01.09 Vulindlela Nyoni at artSPACE, Berlin

09.12.08 Nicholas Hlobo at the Tate Modern
23.11.08 Urban Reflections, Santu Mofokeng in Edinburgh
27.11.08 Ângela Ferreira at La Criée, France

24.09.08 'Short Stories in Contemporary Photography', Tillim in Zürich

THE AMERICAS

19.11.08 Guy Tillim in New York
16.12.08 Marlene Dumas at Kyle Kauffman, New York
06.01.09 Jonel Scholtz at Agora Gallery, Chelsea, New York
13.01.09 Deborah Poynton in Savannah, Georgia

01.11.08 Breitz, Kentridge, Mthethwa, and Rhode at Prospect.1 New Orleans
05.11.08 'Cancelled Without Prejudice', Ismail Farouk in Los Angeles
22.11.08 Liquid Identities Video Art and Architecture in Brooklyn

20.09.08 'Beyond the Familiar' photography in Massachusetts
14.11.08 'Transnational Convergences in African Digital Art'

7.09.08 Mikhael Subotzky at The Museum of Modern Art

Vulindlela Nyoni at artSPACE, Berlin

artSPACE berlin presents 'Form>FUNKTION', an exhibition by Vulindlela Nyoni. In this series of prints Nyoni explores his fascination with the understated simplicity and banality of objects that he encounters.

In many cases, the function of these objects determines their form, but within these works, the forms resonate for other reasons. Rather than focus on a particular event or grand narrative, Nyoni takes glimpses of possible occurrences, meetings and juxtapositions that may or may not resonate with one another. He does this in the hope of inducing dialogue in the quiet spaces of the mind of the viewer, and physical format of the artwork itself. It is in these intimate conversations that the artist's search for meaning/context begins.

Opens: January 16
Closes: February 14

 

Nicholas Hlobo at the Tate Modern

Nicholas Hlobo's 'Uhambo' marks the Joburg-based young artist's debut solo in the UK, at the Tate Modern no less.

In this exhibition Hlobo intricately stitches together a massive organic form that appears to have invaded the gallery. This new commission, together with a series of works on paper, is layered with bodily references, sexual innuendo and Xhosa fable.

Opens: December 9
Closes: March 1

 

Urban Reflections, Santu Mofokeng in Edinburgh

'Urban Reflections', an exhibition curated by Kirsten Lloyd and Christine Nippe, presents five different artistic positions which reveal a range of contemporary responses to the idea of the city.

The development of industrialised modernity in the 18th and 19th centuries brought a fascination with new technologies, speed and progress. Population explosions resulted in new types of urban environments while advances in optics and chemistry gave birth to photography and film. Since then the lens and the city have been bound together in artists' imaginations as they attempt to represent, comment upon and re-imagine their everyday environments through documentary, avant-garde experimental approaches, photomontage and film.

Drawing references from pop culture, urban studies, literature, and the documentary genre, each of the five exhibiting artists seeks to explore a different facet of contemporary urban realities. A concern with the fragmentation of perception runs through the works: images are overlaid, spaces and emotions are distorted. In these places there are no fixed horizons; boundaries between imagination and reality are blurred, everything reflects and nothing is truly transparent.

Exhibiting artists are Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Germany; Dan Graham, USA; Sabine Hornig, Germany; Santu Mofokeng, South Africa; and Rhona Warwick, Scotland.

Opens: November 23
Closes: March 22, 2009

 

Ângela Ferreira, 'Hard Rain Show' at La Criée, France

'Hard Rain Show' is Mozambican born Ângela Ferreira's first solo exhibition in France. On show at La Criée is Maison Tropicale, created in 2007 for the Portuguese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. This work is inspired by the history of a failed modernist housing project by the French designer Jean Prouvé, designed in the late 1940s for the then French colonies of Niger and Congo.

Two other works are presented at the Ecole des Beaux-arts in Rennes. In For Mozambique (Model No.2 of a Screen-Orator-Kiosk celebrating a post-independence Utopia), 2008, Ferreira focuses on the historical momentum of the recently independent Mozambique in 1975, linking it to the history of the modernist utopia of Russian constructivism.

Ferreira's third major installation in Rennes, entitled Zip Zap Circus School, opens up a discursive space between what is considered typically European and African architecture by connecting two never built projects: a Mies van der Rohe 1913 bourgeois villa in Holland and a project, designed in the 1990s, by the Mozambican architect Pancho Guedes for a Circus School in Cape Town.

The exhibition is curated Jürgen Bock.

Opens: November 27
Closes: February 1

 

Short Stories in Contemporary Photography, Guy Tillim in Zürich

'Short Stories in Contemporary Photography' presents various approaches by international artists to the strategy of contemporary photographic storytelling, and thus becomes a space of very distinct narratives.

In literature, the short story is a concise fictional narrative often perceived as an ideal form for modern storytelling. One can see parallels between the short story and contemporary photography in which distinct narrative possibilities emerge: documentary photography, in which a story is condensed visually; staged photography, in which a plot is developed as in the theatre; video stills that condense a complex story in a single image; and photography mixed with different media that distorts or transforms into a new storytelling form.

Contributors to this exhibition include Harry Gruyaert, Bertien van Manen, Aernout Mik, Erwin Olaf, Eric Stitzel, Guy Tillim and Erwin Wurm

Opens: September 24
Closes: April 1, 2009

 

Zones of Conflict, Guy Tillim in New York

Pratt Manhattan Gallery presents 'Zones of Conflict', an exhibition that assembles key examples of photographic and video-based artworks that focus on contemporary war, particularly in the Middle East.

The exhibition includes multiple artistic approaches, including those that document experiences of conflict that fall below the radar of the mass media. The exhibition explores work by contemporary artists who have challenged and recalculated documentary conventions in critical and creative ways, such as by blurring the boundaries between truth and fiction, giving expression to traumatic situations, and raising discord to the surface of representational structures. The result is not only a displacement of photography's erstwhile mission as the objective and neutral transmission of fact, but also an imaginative recalibration of the documentary mode in order to generate new models of 'truth'.

The exhibition, guest-curated by T. J. Demos, features work by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad (Iraq), Sam Durant (USA), Andrea Geyer (Germany) and Simon J. Ortiz (Acoma Nation, USA), Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Lebanon), Thomas Hirschhorn (Switzerland), Emily Jacir (Palestine), Lamia Joreige (Lebanon), An-My Le (USA), Walid Raad (Lebanon/USA), Ahlam Shibli (Palestine), Sean Snyder (USA), Hito Steyerl (Germany), and Guy Tillim (South Africa).

The exhibition is the second in a series of three at Pratt Manhattan Gallery that will focus on politics and media.

Opens: November 19, 2008
Closes: February 7

 

Marlene Dumas at Kyle Kauffman, New York

The Kyle Kauffman Gallery launches the new year and its new space with an exhibition by Marlene Dumas.

The newly renovated and larger space will house an exhibit of the most comprehensive survey of Dumas' prints and editioned works to date. It runs concurrently with Dumas' retrospective of paintings and drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, 'Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave', running from December 14, 2008 to February 16, 2009.

On view at Kyle Kauffman are over half of the editions the artist has produced so far. The works range from her earliest prints dating from the early 80s to her most recent 2007 work The Fog of War, a set of four images and one accompanying text, the latest in a series of images of heads and bodies commenting on the nature of death, loss, identity and war.

Opens: December 16, 2008
Closes: February 28

 

Jonel Scholtz at Agora Gallery, Chelsea, New York

South African painter Jonel Scholtz presents 'Figuratively Speaking' at Agora Gallery in Chelsea, New York.

The artist's work depicts domestic scenes in hues conveying intensely subjective interior spaces. Her works - dominated by reds, browns and yellows - depict intimate rooms and worn furnishings that seem to emerge from some eternal dream of rural tranquility.

Scholtz's warm interior scenes always include a frame of some sort, often doors and windows, occasionally picture frames. This recurring theme calls attention to rites of passage and socialisation (many paintings include young children) and the gendered organisation of space - the homes in Scholtz's works are distinctly feminine, with women and young girls often gazing out windows and through doorways.

Scholtz lives on a farm in the North West province with her husband and daughter.

Opens: January 6
Closes: Januuary 27

 

Everything Matters, Deborah Poynton in Savannah, Georgia

Deborah Poynton's paintings will be on view for her first solo exhibitions in North America at the Pei Ling Chan Gallery in Savannah, Georgia., and the ACA Gallery of SCAD in Atlanta.

'Everything Matters' ties a selection of Poynton's most recent paintings together to exercise these physical and relational connections within her complex tableaux. A gallery talk will take place February 13 at 5pm as well as a reception which will take place February 13 from 6 - 8pm as part of the Savannah gallery hop. The exhibition, gallery talk and reception are free and open to the public.

Opens: January 13
Closes: February 13

 

Breitz, Kentridge, Mthethwa, and Rhode at Prospect.1 New Orlean

Prospect.1 New Orleans, the largest biennial of international contemporary art ever organised in the US, launched in New Orleans on November 1, 2008.

Produced by US Biennial, Inc., Prospect.1 is directed by curator Dan Cameron, Director of Visual Arts at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in New Orleans. Conceived of in the tradition of the great international biennials, such as the Venice Biennale and São Paolo Biennial, Prospect.1 showcases new artistic practices, as well as an array of programmes which will benefit the local community. Over the course of its 11-week run, the biennial will draw attention, creative energy, and economic activity to the City of New Orleans, an historic regional artistic centre, and the struggling Gulf Region.

Prospect.1 New Orleans was conceptualised to reinvigorate the city following the human, civic, and economic devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The primary goal of the biennial exhibition is to redevelop the city as a cultural destination where the visual arts are celebrated and can once again thrive. New Orleans was the first US city to host a recurring international art exhibition, beginning in 1887 with the Exhibition of the Art Association of New Orleans.

In this tradition, Prospect.1 will provide the public with work by 81 local, national, and international artists, hailing from more than 30 countries, who have been selected to participate in the inaugural edition of the biennial. Their works will be shown in some 25 museums, art centres, warehouses, and public spaces throughout the city, for a combined total of more than 100 000 square feet of exhibition space.

Exhibiting artists include South Africans Candice Breitz, William Kentridge, Zwelethu Mthethwa and Robin Rhode alongside the likes of Janine Antoni, Alexandre Arrechea, Luis Cruz Azaceta, John Barnes Jr, Sanford Biggers, Willie Birch, Monica Bonvicini, Cao Fei, Adam Cvijanovic, Skylar Fein, Tony Fitzpatrick, Gajin_Fujita, Rico Gatson, Nari Ward, Xu Bing, Haegue Yang, Superflex and Fiona Tan.

Opens: November 1
Closes: January 18

 

Cancelled Without Prejudice, Ismail Farouk in Los Angeles

The MAK Urban Future Initiative (UFI), Los Angeles, presents a survey of the work of artist and urban geographer and UFI fellow Ismail Farouk. Through video, photography and performance, Farouk documents patterns of spatial injustice and explores a variety of interventions aimed at producing a more just urban landscape.

Farouk's work examines the contradictions of mainstream urban development in Johannesburg and Los Angeles, revealing a common narrative unfolding in both cities: the privatisation of public space and the criminalisation of poverty.

'Cancelled Without Prejudice' includes a selection of video installations that illustrate Farouk's varied approach to circumventing the mechanisms of injustice, including a series of surveillance videos documenting police corruption and abuse of undocumented migrants in Johannesburg. Farouk's video and photography bear witness to similar patterns of injustice in Los Angeles, particularly in Skid Row.

'Cancelled Without Prejudice' is the second part of 'Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions', a three-part exhibition featuring the work of Katie Grinnan, Ismail Farouk and Dorit Margreiter.

Opens: November 5
Closes: January 4

 

Liquid Identities Video Art and Architecture in Brooklyn

Micro Museum, an independent arts space in Brooklyn, New York, presents two new shows: 'Metaphoric Sunrise/Sunset' and 'Liquid Cities - Video Art & Architecture'. The latter is the second instalment of an exhibition curated by Luca Curci and features South African video artist and painter Alison Williams alongside approximately 40 others including Stefano Fanara, Italy; Tamara Erde, Israel; Achilleas Kentonis & Maria Papacharalambous, Cyprus; Renata Szulczynska, Poland; Ane Fabricius Christiansen, Denmark; Verika Kovacevska, UK and Gregory Steel, USA amongst others.

Opens: November 22
Closes: February 21, 2009

 

Beyond the Familiar, photography in Massachusetts

'Beyond The Familiar: Photography And The Construction Of Community' is one of a four part programme at Williams College Museum of Art which focuses on the role of photography and film as it reflects, and potentially constructs, cultural identity.

The exhibition brings together 10 photography projects from around the world that span the history of the medium. These projects portray individuals from distinct cultural, economic, and professional groups.

Each of these artists has defined a group - whether by race, class, occupation, or neighborhood - and depicted individuals in a manner that moves beyond portraiture. Instead, each artist explores personal identity in the larger context of social groups.

Artists included in the exhibition are Felice Beato and Peter Henry Emerson from the 19th century; Edward Curtis, August Sander, and Aaron Siskind from the first half of the 20th century; Robert Frank, Barbara Norfleet and David Goldblatt from the second half of the 20th, and recent work by Tina Barney and Zwelethu Mthethwa.

Opens: September 20
Closes: March 8, 2009

 

Transnational Convergences in African Digital Art in Canada

Curated by Dr. Sheila Petty, 'Transnational Convergences in African Digital Art' challenges the perception that Africa appears to epitomise 'the postcolony itself' as 'defined by a sense of crisis' spurred on by failing economies and the ravages of war.

Far from being totally estranged from, or subsumed by, the forces of globalisation, there exist African-driven solutions to some of the challenges facing the continent. These unfold in a transnational context where art and culture are driven by, and transform or surmount, such barriers to advancement.

Included on this exhibition are digital artists Ingrid Mwangi and Robert Hutter, a collective from Kenya and Germany, who have created Cryptic, a Traveler's Diary, 2007 which questions how journey and intersecting histories affect identity. Berni Searle's Home and Away, 2003, explores large scale digital photography of her body to interrogate the notion of home and its effects on black South Africans.

Opens: November 14
Closes: January 18

 

Mikhael Subotzky at The Museum of Modern Art

'New Photography', The Museum of Modern Art's annual showcase of significant recent work in photography, this year features Josephine Meckseper and South African, Mikhael Subotzky. Subotzky's work is an expression of his experience of post-apartheid South Africa's social condition. By placing himself in an extraordinarily wide range of social situations, he allows his own experiences to formulate a vision of the social world around him.

Subotzky's most recent body of photographic work, 'Beaufort West (2006-2008)', portrays a transit town in which, according to the artist, many of the obscured social dynamics that scar South Africa seem to converge and reveal themselves. The photographer was drawn to this subject by the local jail, situated in the centre of the town, within a traffic circle on the main highway between Johannesburg and Cape Town. His images of the town's various populations - inmates, outcasts, families, residents, bureaucrats and passersby - present a unique vision of South Africa's strained post-apartheid condition.

To coincide with Subotzky's first North American exhibition, 'Beaufort West' is being published by Chris Boot Ltd, London.

Opens: September 10
Closes: January 5 2009