Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Gregor Schneider "Dead House u r"




The recent horrorshow news coming from Amstetten, Austria (which is between Linz and Vienna) reminded me of Gregor Schneider's "Dead House u r" that was installed in 2001 in the German Pavilion, Venice Biennale and had won a Golden Lion Prize.
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Funny story: When I saw that installation, I marveled at the braveness of the German Pavilion to exhibit, what I thought, was a re-creation of the Anne Frank house.

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His claustrophobic construction contained secret passages and stairways, sex-slave dungeons, futile doorways and abandoned trash that hinted at a sinister nature of its possible inhabitants.

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Quite chilling. Photos courtesy http://www.portikus.de/

Monday, April 28, 2008

Olafur Eliasson



Danish artist Olafur Eliasson plans to create four roaring, misty waterfalls,

up to 40 meters high, in the East River this summer. One site is under the Brooklyn Bridge.
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Known for his installations that re-create natural phenomena such as sunshine, rainbows and rain, Eliasson's projects are highly sought after.
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Read here for a terrific and intelligent interview:

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Mobile Art Pavilion for Chanel by Zaha Hadid Architects


Recent deadlines kept me from blogging for over a week. Then I read about the Mobile Art Pavilion for Chanel by Zaha Hadid Architects and felt the urge to blog.
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It's a museum that travels. It was in Hong Kong last month and will next go to Tokyo. Made from fiber-reinforced plastic on a steel support, the pavilion is highly experimental and innovative.
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It features the artwork from 20 contemporary artists who are inspired by Chanel. The artists include Nobuyoshi Araki, Yang Fudong, Yoko Ono, Lee Bul, Michael Lin, Tabaimo, Subodh Gupta, Y.Z. Kami, Soju Tao, Sophie Calle, Loris Cecchini, Wim Delvoye, Leandro Erlich, Sylvie Fleury, Pierre & Gilles, Stephen Shore, Blue Noses, David Levinthal and Stephan Crasneanscki.
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Photo courtesy of http://www.dezeen.com/2008/03/13/chanel-contemporary-art-container-by-zaha-hadid/ More details about the architectural design here.
For further info about the concept and technical details: http://www.chanel-mobileart.com

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Short quiz: all in a name

Today, for fun, let's have a short quiz.

Guess who the artist is. I will just mention the artist's birth name.

1.Vostanik Manoog Adoyan
2. Samuel Rosenstock

That was a short quiz.

Check your answers on David Cotner's recent newsletter from http://www.hertz-lion.com.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Yokohama Triennale 2008

I love images as much as you do, but sorry I don't have a photo to post.
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Here's info from the Yokohama Triennale press release via the newsletter from e-flux.com. This is one of the Asian exhibitions on the Art Compass 2008. Will there be score cards to rate which is the most exciting/banal/relevant/shocking/entertaining/costly biennale? Or perhaps a treasure hunt, i.e. find a drunken artist at the opening to talk to, etc.
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YOKOHAMA TRIENNALE 2008“TIME CREVASSE”13 September - 30 November 2008http://yokohamatriennale.jp
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Artistic Director:Tsutomu Mizusawa (Chief Curator, The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama)
Curators: Daniel Birnbaum (Rector of the Städelschule Art Academy and Director of the Portikus, Frankfurt am Main); Hu Fang (Artistic Director of the Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou); Akiko Miyake (Program Director, Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) Kitakyushu); Hans Ulrich Obrist (Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects, The Serpentine Gallery, London); Beatrix Ruf (Director, Kunsthalle Zürich).
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Yokohama Triennale, Japan’s largest international exhibition of contemporary art, is proud to make further announcements to present Yokohama Triennale 2008, its 3rd exhibition taking place from September 13th to November 30th. Established in 2001, the Yokohama Triennale has become a forum for new cultural production in the contemporary art scene. Featuring works by some 70 artists from approximately 30 countries and set in the cosmopolitan port city of Yokohama, Japan, this year’s exhibition aims to reaffirm the boundless energy that art affords us. The exhibition will greatly take advantage of Yokohama’s social and geographical characteristics as well as the unique spaces of the venues to display an incredible array of works by various international artists, many of which incorporate performance-like elements that bring out the physicality of their creations. Symposiums, workshops, and various other opportunities for interaction and exchange will be held in conjunction with the exhibition, providing further points of encounter for people, art, and the host city.Yokohama Triennale 2008 aims to tie in with the Sydney, Shanghai, Gwangju, and Singapore biennales, all of which will be held around the same time as the Yokohama Triennale.
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Under the banner Art Compass 2008, plans are under way for a worldwide publicity campaign and Grand Tour program encompassing all of these international exhibitions.Says Director Tsutomu Mizusawa on the theme “Time Crevasse”:“Art shakes up our everyday perceptions. It gives us glimpses of the ‘abyss’ we normally fail to notice, or perhaps pretend not to notice. It can horrify us, give us courage, console us, or provide us with what we need to face life. Art arises when we confront that abyss squarely and, by waiting attentively at the edges of ‘time crevasses,’ we scrupulously register various forms of mutual differentiation - individual or social differences, differences of nationality, gender, generation, ethnicity, religion, and so on-including the particular circumstances in which we ourselves are currently situated. Art has the power to dispel the temptation to let ourselves fall into such crevasses. It is also an act of bridging those gaps so that people can communicate and interact through them.”
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As the Yokohama Triennale 2008 prepares to kick off this autumn, it will offer an opportunity for honest reevaluation and reaffirmation of art’s essential value and power today and in the future. This forum for artistic expression will be maintained not only for the sake of mere novelty to be consumed like information, but rather so that, by confronting and accepting the myriad ‘crevasses’ etched in their histories, people can work toward achieving a better mutual understanding of a deep and far-reaching kind.
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Venues: Central and Waterfront Sites in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan- Shinko Pier Exhibition Hall- Red Brick Warehouse No.1- NYK Waterfront Warehouse (BankART Studio NYK)and others
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Organizers- The Japan Foundation - City of Yokohama - NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) - Asahi Shimbun - The Organizing Committee for the Yokohama Triennale ContactE-mail: PR@yokohamatriennale.jpYokohama Triennale Officec/o The Japan Foundation Ark Mori Bldg 20F 1-12-32 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-6021, Japan

Friday, April 4, 2008

Sydney Biennale 2008

Sorry, no image for today. I want to post the info for every upcoming biennial/biennale in Asia this fall that composes Art Compass 2008. Here's the press release announcing the Sydney Biennale. I like how it connects the past to the present. For further info see http://www.bos2008.com/page/media_releases.html
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Revolutions – Forms That Turn, which runs from 18 June – 7 September, is an experimental curatorial project aiming to create a constellation of historical and contemporary artworks. These explore the impulse to revolt, the etymology of ‘Revolutions’ (re-volvere), as well as the gap between associations with the first part of the exhibition title (‘revolutions’) and the second (‘forms that turn’).
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Under the artistic direction of international curator, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the artists, thinkers, filmmakers and writers who will participate in the 16th edition of the Biennale of Sydney celebrate, investigate and re-think the concept of ‘revolution’. The project explores the relationship and gap between ‘revolutionary art’ and ‘art for the revolution’; the space between formal experimentation and artistic intent – the impulse to revolt in both art and life.
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Artists whose practice emerged in the 1960s and 1970s will prepare new works for exhibition alongside seminal artworks by early twentieth century revolutionary artists such as Aleksandr Rodchenko and Kasimir Malevich.
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The exhibition will also feature major new projects by William Kentridge and Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, as well as new works by younger artists such as Qiu Anxiong, Gerard Byrne, Pierre Huyghe, Renata Lucas, Susan Philipsz and Michael Rakowitz.
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This edition of the Biennale of Sydney will also include more works by Australian artists than any previous one, including Vernon Ah Kee, Destiny Deacon, Simryn Gill, Shaun Gladwell, Rosemary Laing, Tracey Moffatt, TV Moore, Mike Parr, Stuart Ringholt, Julie Rrap and theweathergroup_U.