From painting to digital technologies to crowdsourcing, over the last few decades the means of making artworks have become more extraordinary and diverse. Yet we rarely consider the implications of how art is made
Category Archive: art
With an emphasis on the ‘now’ and the most recent exhibitions, this book examines the variety and richness of curating practices today, from public commissions by Art Angel to experimental projects such as the ‘Ghetto Biennale’ in Haiti or the Rhizome digital archive
The piece is made of Exxon, Shell, BP, and Mobil oil cans, but overnight, the local gallery staff had them secretly changed to Petronas labels. Though this violates the contract, I decided to keep the piece in the show because of the strange situation this tampering creates–a nationally owned oil company rushing to put its logo on a piece of art that is highly critical of the oil industry and what it appropriates and extracts
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Over the past 45 years, the members of the collective have been documenting the industrial communities living along the river Tyne, the fishermen, the shipbuilders, the people working in the coal and steel industry, but also their families, the unemployed and the marginalized communities. The result is a vast archive of photos and films that present both both artistic and historical value
The Age of Collage is a striking documentation of today’s continued appetite for destructive construction. Showcasing outstanding current artwork and artists, the book also takes an insightful behind-the-scenes look at those working with this interdisciplinary and cross-media approach
Verlag für moderne Kunst has launched a collection of art audio CDs. I’m coveting the Jake and Dinos Chapman, the David Lynch one and crying my eyes out because the Jonathan Meese is in german only (although i did enjoy listening to the audio snippet in which he talks about stuff that are metabolisch and pornografisch.)
The one i had to have right here right now is the audio CD of conversation excerpts with Jeremy Deller
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By reinventing an obsolete low-tech sound wave generator in this all-digital age, Bzzz ! serves as a commentary on the history of technology and a tribute to unprocessed, unsampled analog sound : in a word, the raw sound of electricity
Geraud Soulhiol’s extraordinary drawings portray existing football stadium that are not only crumbling but have also been colonized by more traditional icons of architectures such as cathedrals, local monuments, skyscrapers designed by starchitects, fortresses, factories, etc
Felice Varini named the work he made for the Cardiff Bay “Three ellispes for three locks” but everyone there calls it “The Barrage Circles.”
Like most of Varini’s works, this one is an anamorphosis, a distorted projection or perspective requiring you to occupy a precise vantage point to reconstitute the image. The most famous example of anamorphic perspective in art is the skull in Hans Holbein painting, The Ambassadors
Images from a video portraying a bizarre creature that owns two heads, one of them floating on a long long neck
Making and using software can be experimental, humorous and aesthetically rich.
The international exhibition Funware deals with this Fun-factor in software development, and the many ways in which artists have run off with it in past and present
Form+Code discusses the role of software in visual design, art, and architecture. It hopes to generate interest in creating visual and spatial form with software across diverse fields by focusing on the history, theory, and practice of software in the art
In the exhibition JULIE NORD – XENOGLOSSY we are invited into a strange home, where nothing looks as usual. Doll-like girls with shiny, almond eyes, bunches of flowers and cute little animals tempt us to take a closer look at the pictures. It all looks enchanting, but a closer look at them confronts us with an abundance of grotesque hybrid creatures, sculls and meat-eating plant
The Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts has invited about a hundred artists to question society’s growing desire for control, surveillance, and regulation. A worrying tendency which leaves space for accident, irrationality, for the unexpected and the absurd
Among Daisy Ginsberg’s latest activities are a residency at SymbioticA, a collaboration with James King and Cambridge University’s iGEM 2009 grand-prizewinning team and then there’s Synthetic Aesthetics. The project investigates shared territory between design and synthetic biology, invites exchange of existing skills and approaches, and enables the development of new forms of craft and collaboration
In a series of symbiotic encounters and parasitic relationships, the solo presentations are often interrupted by incongruous presences or perturbed by unusual juxtapositions: drawings by Kara Walker surround a tomb by Urs Fischer; Maurizio Cattelan’s homeless man kneels down in front of Kiki Smith’s Bat Woman; Robert Gober’s haunted rooms incorporate Gregor Schneider’s architectural fragments, etc.
Nathalie Djurberg makes candy-coloured plasticine puppets who have have orgies, who torture each other and suffer alien, abusive relationships. Djurberg, who won the Silver Lion award for best young artist at the Biennale, was the super star of Venice. I went to see her video installation 3 times and the room was always jam-packed with people drooling over her animations and taking photos of her monstruous flowers as if their lives depended on it. Not that i acted any differently
Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón has opened a very very good exhibition a few days ago. ‘FEEDFORWARD – The Angel of History’ addresses the current moment in history where the wreckage of political conflict and economic inequality is piling up, while globalized forces–largely enabled by the “progress” of digital information technologies–inexorably feed us forward. I’ll write about it in details in the near future but i’d like to share with you straight away one of the most interesting artworks i’ve discovered there
I doubt there are many galleries like heliumcowboy. First there’s that name. Charming and puzzling. Not even an interview with the gallery director has helped me uncover its origin. Then of course there’s the artists the space represents. Since its opening in 2003, heliumcowboy has been showcasing artists ‘who are capable of pushing boundaries, are a little underground and whose aesthetic is the forecast of art’
With this project, Hans E. Thorsen wishes to explore how the reconstruction of another artists work can be worked into ones own production and how the public artwork will transform inside the white cube, with its many corners and structures.
Ever since i found about his tattoos on the pin-ups and luchadores appearing in vintage Mexican magazines, i was in love Dr Lakra. The tattoo artist lives in Mexico. A couple of weeks ago i was in Mexico too and there was a solo show of Dr Lakra at the kurimanzutto gallery. I felt like the happiest person in the world. Now, in retrospect, i feel that i’d been happier had i not forgotten in a taxi my lovely camera with all the images i had taken at the exhibition
The exhibition wishes to reflect upon the concept and meaning of ‘work’ in our present society. The artworks selected deal with issues such as flexibility, mobility, motivation, significance, and the work-life balance
The artworks question in some way or another the existence of ghosts, they explore the integration of new media and technologies in spiritualist contexts, make visible or perceptible the invisible and trace the political implications as well as the aesthetics of such contemporary trans-communication phenomena
In fast and witty episodes, Filmmaker Ben Lewis meets some of the most discussed contemporary artists and challenges their work with the kind of provoking questions you can expect from someone who recently penned an article titled ‘Who Put the Con on Contemporary Art?’
The guide offers a concise, up-to-date- and insightful presentation of European museums, art institutions, galleries, art fairs, biennials, and works of art in public space. It focuses on giving both the knowledgeable insider and the casual novice a brief and easy-to-use synopsis of European art highlights that are musts on the itinerary of anyone interested in contemporary art
A speedy glimpse of the exhibition Green Platform which is running until July 19 at the Strozzina cultural center in Florence so that you know what to do if you’re in Tuscany this week
One year after the Brussels’ exhibition Holy Fire. Art of the Digital Age, Yves Bernard from iMAL and Domenico Quaranta curate a show that, once again, puts a magnifying lens on the new media art pieces that have found their place on the art market
I’ve never had any interest in football (that’s soccer for you, American friendz.) Never ever. I come from a country that never won any championship (and if they ever did, well… i still don’t care), i find men in shorts a rather pathetic affair and i just don’t get sport on tv anyway. There’s been just one exception to this until last week and it was Eric Cantona, his sardines, his iced tea commercials
Castellon’s Contemporary Art Space has recently opened a delightful exhibition that re-invents architectural space through the most intangible strategies: mist, light, colour and sound
The online channel covers in a very professional and surprisingly fast and elegant way the opening receptions (vernissages) of exhibitions and events and i’m grateful to them for that. I profess an intense dislike for vernissages where people seemed to be more passionate about tepid wine and showing off their mere presence at an art event than about the artworks on show…. but that doesn’t mean i’m not curious about vernissages
The first monography is the one of a painter who portrays contemporary life through cables, joysticks, feet and routers. The second book is a delightfully designed bible of a font which was highly popular in the Middle Ages and then got to bear the stigma of being associated with nazi propaganda
How about talking money for a change? Rhizome, Turbulence and Art Fag City have given us a lot throughout 2008. Now is the time to give a little back
There is No Road consists of a range of artists’ projects that record or evoke a series of actual or imaginary journeys, either through the local landscape of Asturias, or through a comparably remote and mountainous terrain
Mudam is Luxembourg’s very own and very classy museum of modern and contemporary art. I’ve been following their always exciting and bold programme for a couple of years and was very eager to see it but then you need a rock solid motive to spend a day in Luxembourg. The other day i woke up and decided that MUDAM would be mine
Shoot an Iraqi is equally pertinent reading for those who seek insight into the current conflict in Iraq, and for those fascinated by interactive art technologies and the ever-expanding world of online gaming
Paulistas much chagrined by the pauperism of this year’s São Paulo Biennial pointed me to its Off version. The Parlela is a selection of artists who invite us to reflect on the influence of space in their respective works. Although the selection stretches over several continents, most of the pieces are by Brazilian artists
Domesticated jungle meets contemporary art. If the Xanadu of art existed it would be this place. Or at least something disturbingly similar.
The U.S. are all over the newspapers because of the upcoming presidential elections. Yet, most of us know very little of the art and culture of the area that lies between the East Coast and the West Coast. And what we think we might know of it is often just a bunch of cliches. The aim of the exhibition is to offer a more subtle picture of the ‘Heartland’ but it is also to questions traditional definitions of cultural centers and peripheries
The exhibition ‘Artur Żmijewski: The Social Studio’ reflects the artist’s conviction that in order for art to regain its value in society, it has to expose societal conflict and disclose the conditions in which social antagonisms are cultivated and maintained by the powers that be
A sculpture garden of everyday objects deprogrammed of their original function, embedded with new intelligence and transformed into surrealist and surprising readymades.