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Attending preview opening for the Friends of Kunstverein München, k.m., a wonderful exhibition ” Serving Compressed Energy with Vacuum” by Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven, first exhibition by the newly arrived  director of Kunsteverein, Chris Fitzpatrick. Next, a lovely coctail reception at the Espace Louis Vuitton  of “Be the first of your friends”, the first monographic show of the  American artist Cory Arcangel.

Curated by Chris Fitzpatrick and van Kerckhoven, this expansive exhibition will be the artist’s most comprehensive presentation to date, with 178 works produced between 1975 and 2015. Many of these are being exhibited for the first time, installed in an interwoven and anti-chronological configuration to show Van Kerckhoven’s practice as an interminable continuum of forms and ideas. 

16 mm film. animation, drawing, graphics, installation, paintings, sculpture, silkscreen, sound, text, and video works are densely installed throughout Kunstverein four walls.

k.m preview opening, photos@AN

Espace Louis Vuitton  “Be the first of your friends”, the first monographic show of the American artist Cory Arcangel.

Cory Arcangel is an artist who works in a variety of different mediums, including drawing, print, video, performance, and video game modifications. Often using appropriation, he creatively re-uses existing physical and digital materials to create works that oftentimes explore the relationship between technology and culture. Best known for his interest in video games and his highly digital aesthetic, Arcangel established himself through his work manipulating classic video games, altering their programming to distill fragments of their iconic imagery. Interested more generally in pop culture and pop culture nostalgia, Arcangel has taken as his subject other new media forms, including YouTube and blogs, using them to create works that explore their role in our cultural landscape. (http://www.artspace.com/cory_arcangel

 Anja Kaehny, director of the Espace, Munich and Cory Arcangel, photo@vk

Cory Arcangel, Diddy / Lakes, 2013
1920 x 1080 H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 looped digital file (from​lossless Quicktime Animation master), media player, 70” flatscreen, armature, various cables, 200 x 93 x 28 cm

Collector Alain Servais on Insider Trading in the Art Market, “Blood-Sucking Leeches,” and Why We’re Now Just the Fashion Industry (May 23, 2015) on Artcangel.

Let’s say you put yourself in the year 2150, and you’re looking at your history books. What happened in the 2000s? I would say a few things. Religious war and the advent of the Internet throughout our lives—it’s like the invention of the electric light or the telegraph—and Internet 2.0, which is the social layer of Facebook and Twitter and all the rest. It is obvious that this is what will be remembered of today. So if there are artists who are creating interesting, questioning works that are talking about this evolution… and it’s not about doing geeky things, it’s not about doing gadgets. It’s about looking around, and looking around again.

Like Cory Arcangel’s early works that remove Mario from Super Mario Brothers and just leave the landscape of the clouds. They’re expressing something about looking at reality in another way—that’s why they’re works of art.