CURA.

Image Acquisition Methods. Tomas Downes

cura. magazine — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:01:05 +0000

(Installation View, Image Acquisition Methods)

Tomas Downes’ solo show at Limoncello is the result of the artist’s research on images. The works on display are built around found images, which are then re-photographed, re-processed, re-documented, thus creating different layers of obscurity and removal from the starting point. For doing this Tomas Downes uses an extensive range of materials, from lambda print to Perspex filters, from aluminum and steel to found objects. Every element, together with the sequence of decisions and processes by which the artist orchestrates his production, contribute to the building of meaning. The resulting pieces are not just a sum of ingredients, but define new spaces on image production. The artist accepts studio accidents, fabricator misunderstandings and other fortuitous events, integrating them into his own open practice. The installation in the gallery space seem to underline the idea of multiplication of perspectives, creating a labyrinth of panels with a strong architectural identity. In the darkness and flatness of his works, Tomas Downes shows the viewer his personal “image acquisition method”: a synthesis of attention, distraction, understanding and oblivion.

Until June 15, 2013

(Installation View, Image Acquisition Methods)

(I.A.M.2.c, 2013)

(I.A.M.1.a, 2013)

(Untitled, 2013)

Senza Titolo. Jonathan Monk

cura. magazine — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:40:17 +0000

(The Void, 2013)

For his exhibition Senza Titolo at Lisson Gallery Milan, Jonathan Monk focuses his interest on Greco-Roman art, drawing inspiration from the Italian artistic landscape and tradition. Monk, whose research revolves around the themes of appropriation, revisiting, reworking and adaptation, has had his head sculpted and cast, a little larger than life-size, in Jesmonite polished to resemble marble: five identical busts, called Senza Titolo, imperiously placed on high plinths, explicitly recall Roman statuary with their solemn expressions and stylized hair. The figure of the artist is apparently exalted and idealized like that of the emperors of the past. Then Monk decided to complete the works by inviting different artists of the Arte Povera movement to break his nose: Kounellis, Calzolari, Prini and Zorio all agreed to deface a bust. Zorio even added a small gob of yellow modeling clay to the broken nose. Through this process of delegated destruction and intervention, the works acquire their own identity: the originality of the pieces lies in the ambiguous and complex space between the original and the copy, the idea and the objecthood.
The show also includes two sculptures, also referring to classical art: Covered Motorbike, 2013, is the largest bronze sculpture Monk has ever made. The bike is absent, hidden beneath a tarpaulin, thus becoming an inert object. This peculiar monument is accompanied by The Void, 2013, a marble plaque of the back of a Piaggio Ape, a typical wheeled truck here elevated at the level of an artistic subject.

Until July 19, 2013

(Senza Titolo II, 2012)

(Senza Titolo VI, 2012)

(Covered Motorbike, 2013)

(Installation view. Lisson Gallery, Milan)

All images: © the artist; Courtesy, Lisson Gallery, London

CURA.BASEMENT – RECKLESS PROJECT No.2

cura. magazine — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:08:12 +0000

MAY 20—JULY 5, 2013

RECKLESS PROJECT NO.2
CHINESE WHISPERS

Chinese Whispers is a project on role reversal, loss of control and chaos. At the end of a process, which lasted about a month and started with an invitation by the five curators to an interlocutor, the show includes, in the current last stage, more than forty artists, curators, musicians, poets and collectives from over ten different countries. The exhibition will take place at cura.basement space on May 20th. It is the result of a layering of suggestions that step by step had inspired a variety of works, traces and interventions, summarizing a reflection on the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, and on the dynamics of building a visual, aesthetic, conceptual imaginary extended to an entire community.

A group show on the loss of control / A reckless project conceived by cura.

(curators)
Andrea Baccin, Luca Francesconi, Ilaria Gianni, Ilaria Marotta, Costanza Paissan

(with)
Riccardo Benassi, David Bernstein, Marco Bongiorni, Ethan Breckenridge, Cristian Chironi, Taylan Cihan, Jonas Delaborde, Tomaso De Luca, Gabriele De Santis, Gregory Edwards, Anna Franceschini, Liam Gillick, Tyron Grillo, MacGregor Harp, Silvia Hell, Irina Kholodnaya, Jean-Baptiste Lenglet, Domenico Antonio Mancini, Shimon Minamikawa, Matthieu Palud, Andrés Ramirez, Billy Rennekamp, Lisa Sanditz, Sigrid Sandström, Angelo Sarleti, Trevor Shimizu, Rita Sobral Campos, Christopher Stark, Lisa Tan, Elena Tavecchia, The Ister, Alice Tomaselli, Ricardo Valentim, Elise Vandewalle, Roger van Voorhees, Chiara Vecchiarelli, Olav Westphalen, Jocko Weyland.

(The Ister)

(Tomaso De Luca)

(Gabriele De Santis + David Bernstein)

(Billy Rennekamp)

(Luca Francesconi)

(installation view)

(Fortune Cookies)

(installation view)

(Matthieu Palud)

(Anna Franceschini)

(installation view)

(Roger Van Voorhees)

(Trevor Shimizu)

(Jean-Baptiste Lenglet)

(Angelo Sarleti)

(MacGregor Harp)

(Riccardo Benassi)

(Andres Ramirez)

(Olav Westphalen)

(Shimon Minamikawa)

(Marco Bongiorni)

(installation view)

(Chiara Vecchiarelli)

(Irina Kholodnaya)

(installation view)

(at)
CURA.BASEMENT
via nicola ricciotti 4 — 00195 rome (IT)

One After One

cura. magazine — Sun, 19 May 2013 15:25:53 +0000

(Installation view)

The group show One After One at Vilma Gold presents a series of works by Eloise Hawser, Lena Henke, Adriana Lara, Marlie Mul, Lucie Stahl, and Gili Tal. The project is conceived as a continuation of the 2011 show at the gallery titled The Great White Way Goes Black, which included the artists Trisha Baga, Anne Craven, Helene Huneke, Michaela Eichwald, Hannah Sawtel, Julie Wachtel. While the previous show was focused on the artists’ subjectivity and awareness and presented works ehre there was sometging practical/sensorial, the new installment looks at today’s branded experience of everyday life and at the idea of commercial styling and display. The works on view seem to move on from Pop language and objects, sythetising, absorbing and re-formatting the objects of our everyday life. Appropriation and intimacy are thus the constant elements of different processes and visual languages.
As David Joselit wrote in 2012 on Texte zur Kunst, “The very purpose of styling is to manipulate and transform the status quo. Styling is the creature of fashion and consumerism not because it is inherently corrupt, but simply because consumerism requires creativity and perpetual change, and that is what styling does- it is dynamic rather than inert.”

All images courtesy Vilma Gold, London

Until June 1, 2013

Der Pappenheimer. John Bock

cura. magazine — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:56:28 +0000

(Unzone/Eierloch, 2012)

The multifaceted work of John Bock is on exhibition at Kunstverein in Hamburg, with the title Der Pappenheimer. The first floor of the building has been transformed into a total work of art, combining different aspects of the German artist’s research.
The show presents, among the others, the works in the format of lecture performance, started in 1997 and which continue to shape the artist’s research today. One of the first, in 1992, entitled Wie werde ich berühmt? (How do I become famous?), explores the role of the artist, one’s own and social expectations and possible requirements and excessive demands. Talking about this aspect of his own research, John Bock said: “I began with theoretical, mathematical lectures, and I had no desire at all to be actionist. You just slide into things, create a costume, build an object and then you say to yourself: Well, the white wall won’t do anymore – so you make a stage set, then a stage – and it is one thing after another.” This series of works unites Dada and absurd theater, the grotesque with self-irony and always directly involve the audience.
On view at the Kunstverein are also richer and more complex performative environments and videos, combined within a single narrative and installative system.

Until June 30, 2013

(Unzone/Eierloch, 2012)

(Zweierlei/Eigen, 2012)

(Zezziminnegesang, 2006)

Anne Hardy

cura. magazine — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:14:10 +0000

(Shelf, 2013)

Notations, Script and Shelf: these are the titles of the three photographs by Anne Hardy on view at Maureen Paley in the frame of the artist’s third solo exhibition at the gallery. The images are the development of the research Anne Hardy presented in her recent solo project at the Secession in Vienna. “I want to make photographs that create something other than pure reality”, declares the UK artist. Her works are photographs of life-size sets built using a variety of materials often found in the street or in second-hand shops. Human activity is present, through the traces of the passage of people in apparently abandoned spaces. Rich in detail, each installation is then portrayed in a single photograph, which remains as the only result of the process, as the sets are dismantled afterwards.
Theatrical spaces or complex illusions created by mirrors showing what is hidden to the camera always address the viewer’s imagination, telling stories and defining narrative universes. The photographs seem to create a world of meaning, that has to be interpreted and read by the spectator, by a dilated practice of perception. “The process is very sculptural, and material. Each place comes into being through a kind of tussle with the materials, and the camera creates an arena for this to happen in. I bring a place into being, imaginatively and physically by using the suggestive qualities of the various materials and objects that I work with.”
In the upstairs space of the gallery, Anne Hardy has built a structure of two interconnected rooms, intended as a sculptural continuation that has grown out of her recent residency at the Camden Arts Centre. For the first time, the artist allows the viewer to enter an actual space of her making, without destroying it after the photographic act. In this way her artistic process and working methods expand in a new dimension.

Until May 26, 2013

All images: Copyright the artist. Courtesy Maureen Paley, London

(Anne Hardy, exhibition view, Maureen Paley, London 2013)

(Notations, 2012)

(Script, 2012)

(Configuration, 2013)

(Two Joined Fields – Field (/\) and Field (decagon), 2013)

If a body meet a body. Julieta Aranda

cura. magazine — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:37:58 +0000

(Acéphale, 2013)

Julieta Aranda’s solo show at Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce revolves around an intentionally wrong title. If a body meet a body is a quotation from JD Salinger’s renowned novel The Catcher in the Rye: its protagonist, wondering about his own future and destiny, changes the strophe of an eighteenth century poem, transforming the verse “if a body meet a body” in “if a body catch a body.”
Julieta Aranda’s reserach investigates on the idea of time and on the social structure of our daily life. Her projects often reflect on economical relations in the art context, and around themes as information, activism, participation and collaboration. For her show in Genoa, she insists on the importance of the relationship with the body, from which unlimited possibilities can spring. Some of the works on display in the museum’s spaces have been created especially for the occasion and are a reflection on the dangerous dichotomy between manual and intellectual work in the era of new economy and ‘semiocapitalism’ (an example is the installation A few horrifying moments of lucidity, 2013).
Inspired by some of the works in Villa Croce’s collection (by Guido Galletti, Guido Micheletti e Savina Morra), the artist creates an ideal community of heads, separated from their body and their physicality. In parallel a group of hands is placed on the floor (Rolling on some stunning ground, 2013). Head and hand, body and thought permeate the exhibition and appear as the polarities of a state of separation, disharmony, independence.

Until June 30, 2013

(Installation view, Julieta Aranda. If a body meet a body)

Boy with Bucket. Andrea Kvas

cura. magazine — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:16:22 +0000

Boy with Bucket is the suggestive title of Andrea Kvas’ first solo exhibition in Germany, hosted at Chert. When reading it, a large series of paintings from the past comes to mind, crossing various aesthetic traditions and historical moments. Kvas’ research, conducted in recent years through an impressive group of works, questions the nature of painting practice, interrogating the structure of this medium in its relationship with form, volume, colour etc. If a reference to the pictorial tradition exists, it is completely absorbed in the artist’s specific, personal language.
In this new series of works Kvas either removes the support or make it become part of the piece itself. He builds a strong relation with the material using pigments for structuring and penetrating every part of the polyurethane foam which constitutes the works. Full blocks of colour are thus created: tones and nuances are determined both by the relationship between the material and the pigment and by the volumetric treatment of the surface, subject to deterioration and to a spontaneous reaction to the artistic process. The canvases are treated in the same way, with layers of colour penetrating the inner fibres of the cotton, folded and rolled in different ways, assuming almost sculptural qualities in the space.
There is no preferential way of viewing these pieces. Since there is no linear front, back or base, they can be moved, turned and placed in different positions.
Untitled, abstract, informal and purely physical, Kvas’ work produces perplexing questions around the themes of perception, of vision, of experience. This tension can only be released by removing our pre-conceptions, to enjoy the works, their materiality and inner poetic nature.

Until May 18, 2013

All images: Andrea Kvas, exhibition views, ‘Boy with bucket’, 2013, Chert, Berlin. Courtesy the artist and Chert, Berlin

Medium Earth. The Otolith Group

cura. magazine — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:08:55 +0000

The collective The Otolith Group (founded in 2002 by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun) is exhibiting at REDCAT the result of extensive research conducted in preparation for a future film project. Medium Earth, which consists of a series of visual and audio notes on the seismic nature of the region around Los Angeles, and more largely of Californian area, proposes itself as a record of this particular landscape in its dual relationship with its geological past and expected future.
Part prequel and part premonition, Medium Earth is a work caught within its own imminent future. The film is like a notebook for a new cycle of production by London-based artistic collective: it listens to California deserts, translates the writing of its stones, and deciphers the calligraphies of its expansion cracks. By doing this it appears as an audiovisual essay on the millennial time of geology and the infrastructural unconscious of California. Commissioned by REDCAT and accompanied by a series of public programs on the geopoetic practices of prediction and premonition (titled Body Tremors), it is the first work produced by The Otolith Group within an American context.

Until June 16, 2013

(Medium Earth, 2013)

All images: installation view, REDCAT, Los Angeles. Photo: Scott Groller.

Falke Pisano. The Body in Crisis

cura. magazine — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:35:33 +0000

The Body in Crisis is an ongoing investigation, begun in 2011, on the human body at historical moments of crisis. The Dutch artists Falke Pisano now presents at The Showroom the artistic results of this research: sculpture, video, print, drawing and installation work are brought together in the most significant presentation of her work in the UK to date.
The exhibition revolves around the work Structure For Repetition (not Representation) (2011-ongoing): a large-scale wooden and fabric structure, which is both a sculpture and a display architecture for images and text. Two video works explore “bodies in conditions of hunger, poverty, war and exclusion”. Archival visual material and texts illustrate structures that have been used to present and represent the body at different historical moments.
The human body is investigated in the frame of six different places and historical moments. Each situation has its specificities and marks a change on the perception and experience of the body. The research interescts with themes related to housing, architecture, medicine, gender, art and economics. Pergamon 199; Amsterdam 1571; Paris 1793; Mons 1915; Paris 1974; Houston 1984. The artist conceptually and visually moves from the Roman theory of the four ‘humors’, to the shift from feudalism to industrialisation, to the experience of shellshock in the First World War, to the privatisation of prison labour.

Until June 15, 2013

(The Body in Crisis – Structure for Repetition (not representation), 2011)

(The Body in Crisis – Disorder of Composition, 2012)