CURA.

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)

Empire State

cura. magazine — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:00:29 +0000

(Nate Lowman, (TBT), 2012)

Twenty-five artists of different generations, active in the New York area, appear together in the exhibition Empire State, curated by Alex Gartenfeld and Norman Rosenthal at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. The works on display (by Michele Abeles, Uri Aran, Darren Bader, Antoine Catala, Moyra Davey, Keith Edmier, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Dan Graham, Renée Green, Wade Guyton, Shadi Habib Allah, Jeff Koons, Nate Lowman, Danny McDonald, Bjarne Melgaard, John Miller, Takeshi Murata, Virginia Overton, Joyce Pensato, Adrian Piper, Rob Pruitt, R. H. Quaytman, Tabor Robak, Julian Schnabel, Ryan Sullivan) represent different interpretations of the urban space. The artists re-imagine the city where they live and work, by meditating on the city as a means of distributing power. It comes at a crucial time, when people are anxiously reassessing the political, cultural and economic role of the United States in world affairs. Here, contemporary art is a tool to reflect on the media pervasive in today’s cities.
The title Empire State, which immediately recalls the urban landscape of New York, also refers to Empire, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt’s treatise on global, American-led capitalism, and Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’s 2009 boosterish song, “Empire State of Mind”. The artists in the exhibition are grounded in institutional critique and studies of media and economics, but above all, they engage technology and abstraction to present new models of subjectivity.

Until July 21, 2013

(LaToya Ruby Fraizer, Houston & Lafayette New York City (Braddock PA Levi Billboard), 2010. Courtesy of the artist)

(Keith Edmier, Penn Station, 2013. Courtesy Petzel Gallery, New York)

(LaToya Ruby Fraizer, U.P.M.C. Braddock Hospital and Holland Avenue Parking Lot, 2011. Courtesy of the artist)

(Nate Lowman, (TBT), 2012)

(Julian Schnabel, And there was somebody wiping his tears with his flag I, 2012. Courtesy Julian Schnabel Studio)

Can’t Hear My Eyes

cura. magazine — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:06:34 +0000

(Exhibition view)

Elena Bajo, Michiel Ceulers, Lydia Gifford, Marie Lund, Magali Reus, and Artie Vierkant are the artists whose varied works are presented in the group show Cant’ Hear My Eyes, curated by Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk at NoguerasBlanchard galleries in Barcelona and Madrid. The exhibition, conceived within the context of the NoguerasBlanchard Curatorial Open Call 2013, shows a number of works with sculptural and painterly connotations and properties. It focuses on the viewer’s position and his centrality in the relationship between the space, the exhibition and the artworks. The project thus emphasizes the tactile, sensual and material qualities of the act of making and of perception. The artworks’ surfaces become the space and the field for a new understanding of art. The material identity of the works is put at the centre of the relational process with artistic creation and reveals unexpected aspects of the artists’ researches and languages. As the curators writes, “It does so in order to test the potential of the work of art in the key of current tendencies within our information culture. The given fact that we have grown more and more accustomed to hard facts as based on transparent, ascertainable (‘checkable’) and ‘democratic’ sources of information and modes of communication; and the surge for clear–cut definitions to indicate the parts that surround us, has lead to, one could argue, an incongruity between works of art and the way we generally organise and conceive of our lives.”

Until May 18, 2013

All images: Photographs by Roberto Ruiz. Courtesy of NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona / Madrid

(Exhibition view, from left to right: Lydia Gifford, Elena Bajo, Lydia Gifford)

(Exhibition view, from left to right: Lydia Gifford, Michiel Ceulers, Artie Vierkant)

(Michiel Ceulers, Spirit Paintings, 2012–2013, courtesy of Schau Ort, Zürich)

(Artie Vierkant, Objects that are louder when placed on other objects, placed on other objects (Possible Object), 2013, courtesy of the artist)

(Marie Lund, Stills, 2013, courtesy Laura Bartlett Gallery, London)

(Exhibition view, from left to right: Elena Bajo, Lydia Gifford)

(Lydia Gifford, Lock, 2012, courtesy Laura Bartlett Gallery, London)

Evgeny Antufiev (at) Collezione Maramotti

cura. magazine — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:16:01 +0000

The young Siberian-born artist Evgeny Antufiev has set up his project Twelve, wood, dolphin, knife, bowl, mask, crystal, bones and marble – fusion. Exploring materials during his residency in Reggio Emilia. Collezione Maramotti presents the results of this work, based on the juxtaposition of objects and materials apparently unrelated to each other, deliberately transformed by the artist into the ingredients of some sort of alchemical process. The exhibition opens the door to another dimension, where the creative act takes on a ritual character and the work is the bearer of an archetypical energy.

UNTIL JULY 31

Sick Saliva. David Douard

cura. magazine — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:58:46 +0000

(Installation view, Sick Saliva. Valentin, Paris)

David Douard’s solo exhibition at Valentin, titled Sick Saliva, is the materialization of a world of fiction. Its childish and almost insane atmosphere is generated by the free, apparently casual, combination of two-dimensional works and three-dimensional installations where texts, sounds and natural elements create the “unassimilated bodies” of a “community of the sick”. The artist defines an original ecosystem, where the biological and the technological coexist. Bodies and machines become the interchangeable elements of a society which is both real and virtual, digital and material, primitive and futuristic. David Douard activates mechanisms of visual and formal hybridization: his sculptures and objects always present a dual identity, suspended between anthropomorphism and virtuality. The viewer is thus conducted into a world which is at the same time recognizable and unknown: he can find references to move in this precarious environment but he can also fall in the doubt and uncertainty of unfamiliar images.
“All that exist behind the walls of discipline, behind the screens of knowledge, behind the silent noise of cyber networks, all of this underground activity – David Douard turns into material for a fictional world. Sick Saliva develops like a commercial environment boasting of the merits of this insurrection against the good manners of the natural laws and promoting the reputation of this new anthropology” (Clara Guislain).

Until May 11, 2013

(Installation view, Sick Saliva. Valentin, Paris)