ART | VK | Page 14

January 14, 2014

Munich;Haus der Kunst; Lecture “In the Concreteness of Abstraction: Modernism and Modernization in Postwar India” by Atreyee Gupta

LECTURE 14.01.14, 7 pm

I attended an amazing lecture by Atreyee Gupta, Goethe-Institut Postdoctoral Fellow (Berkeley/München)

“Situating art at the intersections of postwar scientific developments and the modernizing aspirations of a new nation-state, this talk examines the emergence of an inter-mediatic aesthetics of abstraction in 1950s and 1960s India….

“…Attending to trans-continental exchanges made possible through the artists’ interlocutions with figures such as Le Corbusier, Lucien Hervé, and Clement Greenberg, the talk seeks to foreground the ways in which postwar modernism in the post-colony intersected with the trajectories of modernism in Western Europe and North America but also significantly complicated its universalizing claims.”….

….Atreyee Gupta’s research centers on questions of postwar modernism and the politics of inhabitation, corporeality, and sensoriality, the intersections between modern art and processes of modernization in post-colonial contexts, institutional histories of modernisms, and aesthetics as a form of postwar global cultural capital.

more here at HdK site

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January 10, 2014

Munich; Haus der kunst;revisit ‘So Much I Want to Say: From Annemiek to Mother Courage’ — Goetz Collection at Haus der Kunst

exhibition 19.04.13-12.1.14

photo: courtesy Goetz collection, Andrea Bowers, ‘Letter to an army of Three’,2005

The title of this fifth presentation of works from the Goetz Collection at Haus der Kunst is borrowed from an early video work by Mona Hatoum from 1983. It is based on the material of a performance: While Mona Hatoum’s voice repeatedly says, “So Much I Want to Say”, images depict a woman’s face being obscured by men’s hands.

… Works by female artists constitute nearly half of the pieces in Ingvild Goetz’s collection of media art. These works represent and illustrate the key stages of the feminist discourse and feminist film theory since the 1970s. With works by Chantal Akerman, Andrea Bowers, Rineke Dijkstra, Cheryl Donegan, Mona Hatoum, Lucy McKenzie & Paulina Olowska, Tracey Moffatt, Ulrike Ottinger, Ryan Trecartin, and Rosemarie Trockel.

So Much I Want to say – Goetz Collection at Haus der Kunst” is open daily from 25.12.13 thru 30.12.13 and from 01.01.14 thru 06.01.14; hours 10 am – 8 pm, Thursdays until 10 pm.

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January 4, 2014

Munich: revisit Pinakothek der Modern, exhibition ‘Alfred Flechtheim, art dealer of the avant-garde’

24.10.2013-26.01.2014

Alfred Flechtheim at the Léger exhibition, Berlin 1922Photo: Atelier Lily Baruch © The Royal Library Copenhagen

The gallery owner Alfred Flechtheim (1878-1937) was a major protagonist in the art scene at the beginning of the 20th century. His commitment to the ‘Rheinische Expressionisten’ group of artists, the French avant-garde and German Modernism, and his support of great artists such as Max Beckmann, George Grosz and Paul Klee, made him internationally famous even during his lifetime. The National Socialist regime, however, changed his life and that of his family drastically. Flechtheim had to leave Germany in October 1933. As an art dealer of Jewish extraction he was publicly slandered and, by 1935, had closed his galleries in Düsseldorf and Berlin and transferred the artworks he still possessed abroad, mostly to London, where he died in 1937 at the age of 59 as the result of an accident. His wife, Bertha, committed suicide in 1941 in the face of her imminent deportation. The remaining works of art in the flat in Berlin were confiscated.

The exceptional influence Alfred Flechtheim exerted as an art dealer representing artists defamed by the Nazis, the abrupt break in his biography and the feeling of loss this brought about, as well as the tragic fate of his family, are all reasons for this project being dedicated to his life and work. In addition, the database generated website http://www.alfredflechteim.com provides details about the works and their respective provenance, as well as background information on 234 items now found in a total of 15 different museum collections taking part in this project.

….works by Max Beckmann, Juan Gris, Paul Klee, Karl Hofer, Ernst Barlach, at Pinakothek der Moderne may be seen with info point and iPad-terminals.

more at Pinakothek der Moderne

and

Alfred Flechtheim site

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January 3, 2014

Munich, revisit Villa Stuck “In the Temple of the Self The Artist’s Residence as a Total Work of Art – Europe and America 1800-1948”

21.11.2013-2.3.2014

curated by Margot Th. Brandlhuber

Museum Villa Stuck

On November 21st, the museum Villa Stuck opened _as an anniversary project – the exhibition »In the Temple of the Self: The Artist’s Residence as a Total Work of Art.« An exemplary artist’s residence, the Stuck villa is not just the supreme expression of »artist prince« Franz von Stuck’s life-as-total-work-of-art, but also his most splendid artwork. It is the culmination of his aspirations for a unification of all the arts…..

….The exhibition presents both famous existing artist’s residences and projects that, though nowadays lost, destroyed and forgotten, were uniquely important in their time and continue to exude a fascinating aura to this very day. Selected works by the artists that are closely linked to their residences, as well as photographs, drawings and models, convey vivid impressions of the blending of art and life and the harmony of the arts that is reflected in the historical term of the gesamtkunstwerk as it was understood by Richard Wagner…..”

Among the artist’s residences included are the John Soane’s Museum in London, the Red House of William Morris in Bexleyheath, the Tiffany House of Louis Comfort Tiffany in New York City, Mortimer Menpes’s residence in London, the villa of Fernand Khnopff in Brussels, Kurt Schwitters’s MERZbau in Hanover, the house of Konstantin Melnikov in Moscow, Theo van Doesburg’s maison in Meudon-Val-Fleury near Paris and the residence of Max Ernst in Sedona, Arizona.

more here

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January 2, 2014

Munich: Lenbachhaus (STÄDTISCHE GALERIE IM LENBACHHAUS UND KUNSTBAU MÜNCHEN) revisit “Gerhard Richter “Atlas Mikromega”

at Kunstbau

10.23.2013-2.9.2014

richter_micromega_presse17_quer

photo: courtesy of Lenbachhaus (published photo)

“The title MICROMEGA (Greek for smalllarge) is meant to express this salient aspect of the ATLAS as a work of art. It refers to Voltaire’s “Micromégas: A Philosophical History,” a short story published in 1752 that speculates about the relative dimensions of reality.”

…In the early 1960s, Gerhard Richter starts collecting for his ATLAS thousands of photographs, newspaper clippings, sketches, and collages, which he groups based on formal criteria as well as content. He then consolidates several—sometimes dozens—of the resulting plates into blocks of imagery.

more here

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January 1, 2014

Kochel am See, Bavaria,Franz Marc Museum, “1913: Pictures before the Apocalypse”

13.10.2013-19.1.2014

1913: Pictures before the Apocalypse

“The work of Franz Marc and many of his contemporaries before World War I is marked by a foreboding of the catastrophe ahead. In retrospect, numerous indications of the impending apocalypse can be detected. From a contemporary point of view, this period was however also influenced by events that do not seem to have any connection with the war…..”

Ludwig Meidner, Straße bei Nacht II, 1913 August Macke, Vor dem Hutladen, 1913

more here

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December 27, 2013

Vienna ; visit Mumok (museum moderner kunst stiftung ludwig), Marge Monko “how to wear red”

Marge Monko “How to Wear Red” curated by Rainer Fuchs

25.10.2013-02.02.2014

At the center of Marge Monko’s (b.1976 n Tallinn-video and photo works lies an examination of social developments in a post-socialist context. Marge Monko is the winner of the 2012 Henkel Art Award. Monko traces the changes in gender -based role models that were inserted into Estonian culture by neoliberalism after the end of the Soviet era. In How to Wear Red she portrays a society undergoing change and refers to the connections between the communist past and present day identify models. The artist also exhibits a similar critical awareness of communist legacy history in her photo work about the Soviet monument in Vienna’s Schwarzenberplatz.

In some of her works Marge Monko links questions of the reality of gender specific hierarchies with ethnic conflicts. One of the works that I enjoyed was the two part video work , Forum (2010) …

Here, the two subjects overlap and is especially pronounced in the form of underprivileged Russian textile workers; they have been multiply marginalized, not only as women and as part of an ethnic minority but also as symbols of a former occupier.. In this work, the title of the work refers to a television debate which took place in 2009; in it political and trade union representatives discussed a new labor law in the context of the economic crisis. In the final outcome it was the Russian women workers who suffered most. While the original discussion was carried out exclusively by men, Marge Monko has the unemployed Russian women take over their roles. They read the original statements but add their own critical commentaries. In this way those who had no opportunity to speak for themselves at the time can now make their voice heard – a reference to Bertolt Brecht’s worker’s theater.

see more images here

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December 27, 2013

Vienna: Leopold Museum, focus on the master pieces of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt

photos: courtesy of Leopold museum (published photos)

A lovely morning on dec 27ht to see the collection of Egon Schiele consists of 188 works on paper and 41 paintings )

see more here

and the collection Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt once said about himself:
“I can paint and draw. There is no self-portrait of myself. I am not interested in my own person – more in other people, females. […] I paint day by day from morning to night – figurative paintings and landscapes, less often portraits. Already when I should write a simple letter I get frightened like due to imminent seasickness. Those who want to know more about me shall observingly regard my paintings, and try to realize who I am and what I want.“

see more here

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December 27, 2013

Vienna; visit Mumok, (museum moderner kunst Stiftung ludwig wien) “…and Materials and Money and Crisis”

photos @ VK

8.11.2013-2.2.2-2014 “…and Materials and Money and Crisis” curated by New York-based curator Richard Birkett.

“…this exhibition looks toward the works of artists who conceptualize unexpected ways in which the constellation of ‘materials’, ‘money’ and ‘crisis’ hang together. The works exhibited here move beyond representational conventions, their distinctive formal and material qualities reflecting internal and external schemata of production and regulation. They work through their own material constitution to capture technical supports and organizational systems in ways that enact breakdowns and intensify internal contradictions in the idealized circulatory system of exchange. As capital flows through a financial system composed of pure media, in which the materiality of price is emancipated from any even illusory reference to physical property, and Materials and Money and Crisis ask how aspects of materialization within art might be read as a response to crises in the process of valorization. Artist in the exhibition: Terry Atkinson, Maria Eichhorn, Melanie Gilligan, Gareth James, Sam Lewitt, Henrik Olessen, Pratchaya Phinthong, R.H.Quaytman, Lucy Raven, Cheney Thompson,Emily Wardill.

more here

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December 27, 2013

Vienna_ Kunsthalle Wien at Museumsquartier_ “Salon der Angst” exhibition

6.9.2013-12.1.2014

Gerard Byrne, 1984 and Beyond, 2005-2007 (Still aus der 1. Szene/still from scene 1), © Gerard Byrne, Courtesy Gerard Byrne und/and Lisson Gallery, London

curators: Nicholaus Schaufhausen (director of Kunsthalle) and Catherine Hug

“Fear and anxiety are familiar to all. Salon der Angst at the Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier will not only focus on generalised feelings of insecurity and threat, but also on how culture shapes both individual and collective experiences of fear and fearful events. Depictions of fear, terror, and the distraught are well-tread in art history, but also characterize a younger generation’s artistic practice that responds to a contemporary society rife with new and specific fears and insecurities.

The exhibition Salon der Angst explores the artistic confrontation with the fears of our time across a broad affective and socio-political spectrum. Fear is here understood as a response to those aspects of the present that we do not know how to deal with it. The artists in this exhibition address these fears in terms of a history of ideas, but also their specific psychological manifestations. The preoccupation with fear and anxiety in art therefore turns out to be an exacting look at the treatment (and production) through the media of a human emotion at once both familiar and elusive.

Participating artists: Nel Aerts, Özlem Altin, Kader Attia, Gerard Byrne, Los Carpinteros, James Ensor, Ieva Epnere, Harun Farocki, Marina Faust, Didier Faustino, Peter Fischli / David Weiss, Rainer Ganahl, Agnès Geoffray, Thomas Hirschhorn, Iraqi Children’s Art Exchange, Cameron Jamie, Jesse Jones, Dorota Jurczak, Ferdinand van Kessel, Bouchra Khalili, Eva Kotátková, Nicolas Kozakis / Raoul Vaneigem, Alfred Kubin, Erik van Lieshout, Jen Liu, Marko Lulić, Fabian Marti, Florin Mitroi, Marcel Odenbach, Jane Ostermann-Petersen, Francis Picabia, Willem de Rooij, Allan Sekula, Zin Taylor, Noam Toran, Kerry Tribe, Peter Wächtler, Jeff Wall, Mark Wallinger, Gillian Wearing, Tobias Zielony.”

@kunsthalle’s press release

kunsthalle Wien website

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Category: ART