Archizines exhibition at SpazioFMGperl’Architettura, Milano
on view until 23 February, 2012
all images © WFW

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ARCHIZINES is a touring exhibition and ongoing research project which celebrate and promote the alternative and independent architectural publishing from around the world. Spanning photocopied pamphlets to print-on-demand newsletters, as well as beautiful magazines, the exhibition enables to discover and to read each magazine in situ, while video interviews with their creators are also there to help guide the visitor through each publication’s world and concept.

From 27 January to 23 February, the exhibition travels to SpazioFMGperl’Architettura in Milan, showcasing 60 titles from 20 different countries.

At the finissage tomorrow on 23rd February at 19:30, SpazioFMGperl’Architettura and Domus are hosting Archizines Live –  a lecture to explore the changing nature of architecture publishing in the digital age with ELIAS REDSTONE (curator of Archizines), LUCA MOLINARI (critic and curator SpazioFMGperl’Architetura) and JOSEPH GRIMA (director of Domus magazine), along with other Italian and foreign guests, at 121 + LIBRARY EXTEMPORANEA, Via Savona 17/5.

For those of you who can’t make it either because you are too far away or you didn’t get a slot, an accompanying catalogue has been published by Bedford Press!

SensualObjects by CHRIS TIMMS

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SensualObjects is an abstract animation by CHRIS TIMMS that examines contemporary art by use of purely artificial imagery. SensualObjects is made of synthetic geographical forms, where relations and changes of shapes, patterns, colors, geometries and motions become the narrative and the protagonists!

SensualObjects is also a tumblr filled with soft colors, glossy, organic gifs!

CHRIS TIMMS (b.1984) studied at the National College of Art and Design and the AKI University, Netherlands. He is a founding member of the Good Hatchery in Offaly, he undertook M.O.O.N., a public project hosted by The Black Mariah, C.I.T Crawford, and the Cork Artists Collective during a residency in The Guesthouse, Cork. More recently he has featured his work at  Super Art Modern Museum (SPAMM), a virtual museum that opened its door a few months ago.

The Sequel, 2011
Bronze, Courtesy of Laura Bartlett Gallery, London

exhibition view at Kunsthalle Mulhouse, February 2012
photo © WFW

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The objects created by Danish artist MARIE LUND are conceived like processes or evolutive forms which frame a number of temporal and material concerns. These sculptures, whose surfaces have been systematically reworked, altering their initial shapes to the point of a certain abstraction, looks at the permanence and transformation of objects; the way materials are modified by human or how they are weathered by time.

‘The Sequel’ (see above) is a bronze cast of mould of a previous sculpture by the artist, a figure of a bird carved into. Here, bronze, the most weighty and eternal of materials, depicts a shell with its core missing, a bird that has flown. ‘The Sequel’ has captured nothing but the silhouette; it is a sculpture of an absent sculpture.

Additionally MARIE LUND and NINA BEIER have been producing work collaboratively since 2004 while also pursuing their own individual practices. Together they use a range of media including photography, video, performance and sculpture.

And good news: MARIE LUND‘s work is currently part of the exhibition ‘L’Entre-Deux: Des Savoirs Bouleversés‘ at Kunsthalle Mulhouse until 29 April, 2012

LA Look, January 2010
Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, US

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LA Look, December 2009
South La Cienega Blvd, Inglewood, CA, US

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LA Look, March 2010
Santa Ana Fwy, Route 101, Downtown Los Angeles, CA, US

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LA Look, February 2010
Mildred E.Mathias Botanical Garden, UCLA, Westwood, CA, US

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LA Look, February 2010
Mildred E.Mathias Botanical Garden, UCLA, Westwood, CA, US

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LA Look, March 2010
Los Angeles River, Glendale, CA, US

all images © NICCOLÒ MORGAN GANDOLFI

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Born in Washington, DC in 1983,  NICCOLÒ MORGAN GANDOLFI studied visual art in Milan and Venice. After having completed his doctorate with a photographic project titled Aesthetics of Survival in 2009, he spent one year in Los Angeles City, where he portrayed a kind of spontaneous nature that fragments the city’s rigid structure. The result is a series of images that have to reckon with the essence and mythology of the city, with an architecture made up of empty spaces and with fiction.

These images have to deal with the city’s multiple dimensions, keeping in mind that there are always two ways to photograph Los Angeles: one way, and it’s opposite. – ALESSANDRA PRANDIN

NICCOLÒ MORGAN GANDOLFI lives and works between Bologna and Los Angeles.

(Untitled), 2012

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(Untitled) detail, 2012
courtesy of THOMAS KOENIG

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Swiss artist THOMAS KOENIG weaves sculptural installations developped from an intuitive process of playing with anything that catches his eye and triggers a sculptural response; having the right shape, color or volume. As a result, his working materials and subject matter are to be found everywhere; his aim is to divert materials from their prescribed functions, inventing ways of making these things improper again and thus, inhabiting a new reality.

THOMAS mainly works with sculpture although he also realizes performances, drawings and paintings, which are often incorporated in his installations.

And good news: THOMAS KOENIG is currently having a new solo exhibition entitled NEVER TRUST A MAN WITH NO CELLPHONE at Aad Galerie, Geneva until February 25, 2012. Stay tuned!

from the series Replaying the mistake of a broken hammer, 2011
polish steel rod subjected to an interrupted process of tempering, 6 cm x 130 cm
installation view at Liste Basel, 2011

Beginning with the first thing that comes to mind, 2011
photograms on photographic color paper using the gently burning spores of the mossplant Lycopdium
installation view at Fluxia Milano, 2011

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from the series Lycopodiumprints, 2011
photograms on photographic color paper using the gently burning spores of the mossplant Lycopdium

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from the series Lycopodiumprints, 2011
photograms on photographic color paper using the gently burning spores of the mossplant Lycopdium

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from the series Lycopodiumprints, 2011
photograms on photographic color paper using the gently burning spores of the mossplant Lycopdium

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Launching Rocket Never Gets Old, 2012
installation view at Camden Arts Centre

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Launching Rocket Never Gets Old, 2012
installation view at Camden Arts Centre

all images courtesy RAPHAEL HEFTI

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The relationship of object to image is not my point of departure. I’m interested more broadly in the properties of materials. Museum glass originally is designed as an invisible object, almost a non-object that you aren’t supposed to notice. By adding several layers of this ant-reflective coating the original malfunction of the material is reversed. The coating breaks the light, which then appears as colour, depending on the ambient light. Some of them are transparent, some of them are very opaque. What does one see when the work is in front of the window? I’m exploring how the works are interacting with the qualities of the space they’re in. – RAPHAEL HEFTI in conversation with PHYLLIDA BARLOW, December 2011

Swiss artist RAPHAEL HEFTI has been using photography as a starting point to explore his wider curiosity about the history of materials and sites of scientific discovery. His practice implicates a kind of alchemy, whether he be forming steel poles as fragile as glass, growing mushrooms in the dark room or illuminating entire mountainsides. Coming from a technical background with a keen interest in how things are made and what things can do, HEFTI sets-up scientific experiments which challenge industrial fabricators and ultimately divert objects from their original state.

HEFTI completed his MA at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2011 and his recent solo exhibitions include 327 Different Sounds at Coalmine Galerie, Winterthur, Switzerland and Beginning with the first thing that comes to mind at Fluxia, Milan (both 2010).

And good news: HEFTI‘s new solo exhibition entitled Launching Rockets Never Gets Old is currently on view at Camden Arts Centre in London through March 18th, 2012.

detail of a prototype by RONAN & ERWAN BOUROULLEC
from the exhibition Album at Vitra Design Museum Gallery, Weil Am Rhein (Germany)
photo © WFW

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Album, the first solo exhibtion devoted to the work of RONAN and ERWAN BOUROULLEC stopped at Vitra Design Museum last week. The exhibition (which will run until June 3rd 2012) presents a panorama of their activity through a trove of inspirational and preparatory drawings, sketches, and prototypes.

Album, which first made its debut at l’Arc En Rêve Centre d’Architecture in Bordeaux in 2011, highlights a part of design that most people are never faced with – the laborious and sometimes tedious creative process, full of doubts and crumpled up paper.

➝ RONAN and ERWAN BOUROULLEC – Album at the Vitra Design Museum Gallery, Weil am Rhein, Germany, until June 3rd 2012

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all images © NICOLAS PARTY

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With painting as his main activity, NICOLAS PARTY works with the theme of very simple, everyday objects that magically come to life onto different surfaces – paper, canvas, walls and objects. Hailed as painter, illustrator, and graffiti artist, the praxis of Swiss artist NICOLAS PARTY is an earnest investigation into painting techniques and art historical sources.

These objects tend to lose all the connotations of meaning, displaying themselves in a surprising way, revealing their specific, mysterious nature as objects: immobile, defined by precise forms, volumes and colors that enter into relationships with other objects and their limitless background pattern.

PARTY’s solo exhibitions include, ’Still Life, Gold and Peeling Paint‘, Remap 3, Athens, 2011; ’Charlotte‘ (in collaboration with STEPHANE DEVIDAL), Doll, Lausanne, 2011; ‘Elephants at the Woodmill‘, The Woodmill, London, 2011; ‘Elephants, spoons and sausage rolls’, Le Rez de Chaussee, Glasgow, 2010; and ‘New Work Scotland’ Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, 2010. Also in 2010 he collaborated with JOANNE TATHAM and TOM O’SULLIVAN on the screen-printed publication, ‘DUST’. Born in Switzerland in 1980, he now lives and works in Glasgow.

And good news: NICOLAS PARTY will have a solo exhibition at Gregor Staiger Galerie in Zürich this spring (14 April – 26 May 2012). Additionally his first monograph has been released last year by The Modern Institute.

Nos Années Sauvages, 2009

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We are coming through in waves, 2009

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Do not gentle into that good night, 2009

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Epilation porcine au service de l’art, 2008

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It is actually a matter of posology, 2009

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Tell Barbara that it is gold, 2009

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Don’t play with art, it’s food, 2008

all drawings © KIM SEOB BONINSEGNI

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KIM SEOB BONINSEGNI (born in Seoul in 1974) has engaged, in the past decade, in a complex practice that does not distinguish between art production, curating, writing, and publishing. Additionally he uses a wide range of mediums to crystallize a network of objects, shapes, and images in which he connects the language, the power of the market, the consumption with his personal history.

I like to focus on his ink-on-paper comic-like drawings, a sophisticated mash-up of global pop-culture with disturbing, ironic and ambiguous captions:

Kim is not opposing the system in general through heavy attacks with raw sounds or obscene imagery. It is not an opposition against the political or cultural or social establishment. (..) It is an opposition against the meaningless of new visuals, even if they are successfully sold out. – by WOLF GÜNTER THIEL

KIM SEOB BONINSEGNI is represented by Guy Bärtschi Gallery in Geneva and KARMA International in Zurich.

He lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland.

all images © ARI MARCOPOULOS
All the artworks in this story were presented in a show entitled DJED at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery (September- October 2011)

Right now there is a thrill of getting right into the creative bowels of a studio; a voyeuristic insight that will lead you to places gravitating towards the world of raw, un-styled visual story-telling (a far cry from the polish of conventional editorial shoots). So, thanks to ARI MARCOPOULOS, the Amsterdam-born photographer took pictures of his atelier visit of the iconic artist MATTHEW BARNEY in his studio in Long Island City (New York) a year ago. At the time, BARNEY was preparing his exhibition entitled DJED at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, a show based on myths from ancient Egypt:

Matthew Barney’s studio is located along the East River, in an industrial part of Long Island City. He and his assistants dug a hole in the floor of his studio, jackhammering the concrete. Matthew wanted to build an Egyptian death chamber below his studio in order to film in it. But while they were digging, it became clear that the water table was too high, making it impossible to create an underground space. In addition to the water, there was oil and a terrible smell. It seemed wiser to close the hole.

The flooding in the photograph occurred during Hurricane Irene. Together with the artist Keith Edmier, I’d spent the night at Matthew’s place, where we waited for the storm to pass. The storm didn’t live up to the hype on the news. The next morning, though, we went to check the studio and saw that it was flooded, which was slightly traumatic. He lost a few things, but not many. We canoed around in the studio, surveying the situation. - by ARI MARCOPOULOS

Make sure to catch the entire series published in the last issue of Purple Magazine !

Sketches for Overpopulation—Clothes, 2000
From a series of 30 drawings, pencil and watercolour on paper, 40.5 × 30 cm
Kunstmuseum Basel, Kupferstichkabinett, 2003

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Seven things you need to know about RÓZA EL-HASSAN:

1. born in Budapest, of Hungarian and Syrian Origin,
2. she has been since the mid-1990s, one of Hungary’s most prominent contemporary artists
3. her work includes drawings, sculptures, objects, installations, performances and videos as well as curatorial and social projects
4. in 1993, she was invited to participate in the Aperto section at the Venice Biennale, where she designed the Hungarian pavilion in 1997
5. her work reflects an ongoing quest for her own identity as well as the scene of a critical engagement of fundamental questions about artistic autonomy, political relevance, and aesthetic aspirations
6. after a retrospective of her work at Műcsarnok Kunsthalle (Budapest) in 2006
7. the Kupferstichkabinett (Department of Prints and Drawings) of the Kunstmuseum Basel presents a first survey of her graphic work entitled In Between Drawings and Objects, on view from 11 February to 20 May, 2012

Regiopark – Studiolo Furniture, LORENZO BERNET and YANNIC JORAY
exhibition views at Kunsthalle Palazzo, Liestal (Switzerland)
on view until 18 March, 2012
all images © WFW

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Regiopark – Studiolo Furniture is the first institutional solo show by Swiss artists LORENZO BERNET and YANNIC JORAY. Together they have created a series of furniture for the alternative space STUDIOLO. Opened last year in the Zürich suburbs at the former atelier of sculptor MARIANNE OLSON, STUDIOLO aims to confront artistic production with it‘s reception.

Featuring works blurring the line between sculpture, installation and design, their collaboration questions the singularity of the unique art object, and what individual creativity, ways of exchange and conveyance can make possible. Exploiting the possibilities but also conditions of design and production, BERNET and JORAY have created a series of elements that can be used to adapt the space to the events Studiolo will host, while all contributing to the creation of one large installation which is currently on view at the Kunsthalle Palazzo.

Regiopark – Studiolo Furniture is currently on view at Kunsthalle Palazzo, Liestal (Switzerland) until 18 March 2012, then the furniture will be used at Studiolo, Zürich.

The Catch, 2011
Acrylic, plastic net on canvas 130 x 90 cm

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The Catch, 2011
Acrylic, plastic net on canvas 140 x 100 cm

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The Catch, 2011
Acrylic, plastic net on canvas 160 x 115 cm

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The Catch, 2011
Acrylic, plastic net on canvas, 140 x 100 cm

all images courtesy the artist, and Laura Bartlett Gallery, London
from the exhibition Rest On Your Belly In The Mud, April-May 2011

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SIMON DYBBROE MØLLER works in a wild array of media including installation, collage, sculpture and video. His works are linked and questioned by means of diverse references to art, design, architecture, literature and music. He is interested in the failures and peripheries of recent art history and he combines individual fragments in order to construct new references or to underscore forgotten protagonists and byways.

SIMON DYBBROE MØLLER (born 1976 in Aarhus, Danemark) lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Hello at Fondazione Giuliani, Rome (2011), O at Francesca Minini, Milan (2011), The Nightmare of Reason at C1, Kunsthalle Göppingen (2011), Rest On Your Belly In The Mud at Laura Bartlett Gallery, London (2011) and Flotsam and Jetsam at Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2011).

Ryan, Tucson, AZ
photo by JIM GOLDBERG

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Last year, Magnum photographer JIM GOLDBERG took part in a road trip throughout the American southwest along with five fellow Magnum photographers. From May 12 to May 26 2011, PAOLO PELLEGRIN, SUSAN MEISELAS, ALEC SOTH, MIKHAEL SUBOTZKY, JIM GOLDBERG and GINGER STRAND went from San Antonio (Texas) to Oakland, in California for a project entitled Postcards From America.

1750 miles.

By means of photographs, notes and collected objects, they documented their experience including solo investigations of topics such as gun culture or sex trafficking and improvised collaborations between the photographers. This experimental project is presented in a numbered box that includes a book, a selection of bumper stickers, a newspaper, two fold-outs, three cards, a poster and five zines (available here).

The second Postcards From America project is scheduled to begin this April in Rochester, New York. Stay tuned!

Week, 2012 (by CEVDET EREK)
mono sound, 3 min, sound system, 1 folded horn, 2×3-way loudspeaker, 30 band graphic equalizer, amplifiers, crossover, white molton, aluminium, truss system, wood. exhibition view at Kunsthalle Basel, 13 January to 4 March, 2012
photo © WFW

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HANNAH WEINBERGER, Grand Opening Soundtrack, 5 min.

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When You Leave, Walk Out Backwards, So I’ll Think You’re Walking In, 2012 (by HANNAH WEINBERGER), exhibition view at Kunsthalle Basel

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Poster When You Leave, Walk Out Backwards, So I’ll Think You’re Walking In
photo © WFW

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Right now, the Kunsthalle Basel is showing two solo shows - When You Leave, Walk Out Backwards, So I’ll Think You’re Walking In by HANNAH WEINBERGER and Week by CEVDET EREK - which deal with ephemeral formats such as live sound and performance. Both are immersive experiences where music and sound fill the exhibition space and their visual impact derives solely from the arrangement of loudspeakers while curtains installed alongside the walls assure the absorption of echoes.

One of the artist presented is CEVDET EREK (see above), a Turkish artist who studied architecture at Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in Istanbul and who has also been involved since early on in Istanbul’s music scene.

His installation, entitled Week (2012), features a totemic column of a sound-systemis located in the centre of the space. The beat (samples of acoustical drum sound) is stripped bare and functions as a diagram; rather than aural seduction taking control over the visitor’s body and soul, it is used as a simple, almost graphical representation, the minimum of sound. The sound of the piece is composed as an aural “grid” made of seven beats based on the unnatural and human-made division of the week, and its inner units – seven days. These seven days are played in several different versions combined in one loop, in EREK’s Week. Make sure to watch an excerpt here!

Swiss artist HANNAH WEINBERGER has produced twenty-two hours of sound for the installation. Eleven loops are played on the eleven channels the artist installed in the galleries and, given their varying lengths the result is a spatial layout of sound, constantly shifting through the exhibition spaces. The Grand Opening Soundtrack (above) devised as an invitation to the opening offers a foretaste of the various loops in the show.

When You Leave, Walk Out Backwards, So I’ll Think You’re Walking In by HANNAH WEINBERGER is on view until March 18th, 2012 while Week by CEVDET EREK finishes on Sunday March 4th, 2012. This is not to be missed!

from the series Holden, 2011

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from the series Les Battements, 2011

from the series Holden, 2011

from the series Les Battements, 2011

from the series Les Battements, 2011

Spiner, 2009
steel, wire, cloth, plaster, wood glue, filler, paint, glitter

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NOW I DO CHARITY, HUMANOSOROUS, BAUMARKT BIBLE SONGS OF PRAISE

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Grand Stands, exhibition view, Die kleine Improvisation
at POLNISCHE KUNST HEUTE, Stadsgalerie Kiel, June 2010

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Tuberous Hubris,2010, from the series GRAND STANDS
steel, clay, gloss paint, plaster, 184 x 140 x 49cm

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Too Heavy for a Joke, 2011,  oak, brass, steel, 20 x 20 x 188 cm
That’s how they’re harvested, 2009, steel, rigid foam, resin, filler, MDF
That’s how it’s delivered, 2009, wood, steel, rigid foam, resin, filler, matt paint

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—–exhibition view at Zak Branica Gallery (Berlin), Gleaning the Gloss, 2009

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THIS IS MY SONG, DON’T SING ALONG

all images courtesy the artist, and their respective gallery

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Subtly and with ease, KASIA FUDAKOWSKI creates objects, sculptures and installations which are like characters transforming the gallery into a great forest of delicious and sinuous forms that while invoking surrealist associations, at the same time recall abstractly figurative forms in the midst of identifiable gesture.

KASIA FUDAKOWSKI (1985) studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University, England. She presented her first solo show at Zak Branicka, Berlin in 2009. Last year, she participated in “Villa Tokyo”, with Chert gallery and “Comedy Club, Säule für Arfika”, curated by MICHA BONK, in Curvystrasse, Berlin. KASIA FUDAKOWSKI lives and works in Berlin.

I really suggest you to pay a visit to KASIA‘s tumblr
http://scattercushion.tumblr.com/ where each scultpure, when clicked, has a corresponding video link. Surprising!

sketch by REE MORTON, 1974
from the book The Mating Habits o f Lines,
Sketchbooks and Notebooks of Ree Morton (2000)

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In the late 1960s REE MORTON abandoned a secure middle-class existence as a nurse, wife and mother of three in order to pursue artmaking and created a remarkable body of work in less than a decade, before dying in a car accident in 1977, at the age of forty-one.

Spontaneous, personal and direct, she used words and sentences, situations and topographies and transformed these into playful installations drawings, paintings or objects:  She was one of the artists who gave us permission to take the specific events of our lives and directly transmute them into art. There is a ritual quality to her work that makes it appear as if she were creating memorials to certain experiences, and to the people and places she loved. - CAROL DIEHL

The Mating Habits of Lines – Sketchbooks and Notebooks of Ree Morton (2000) - an outstanding publication about the written material the artist left behind - is a must for long time fans or those fresh into her work!

from my studio
Oslo, 2010

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Untitled (ABMB Navy), 2011
Leatherette on wooden stretcher, wooden frame

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Untitled (Documentation is everything # 04), 2008

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heavenly hiirani tiger lily
at freddy knox projectspace, 2009

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Untitled #25, 2010
polymer clay  3 x 3 cm

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Untitled #22, 2010
polymer clay  2.5 x 2cm

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Untitled #50, 2010
polymer clay  2.5 x 2.5cm

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Untitled #57, 2010
polymer clay  3 x 2.5cm

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Untitled #60, 2010
polymer clay  3.5 x 4.5cm

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Melbourne-based artist MATT HINKLEY creates tiny polymer clay sculptures, held out from the wall on long pins, which confound the eye in their meticulous patterns and rhythmical textures. He also applies his distinct, highly refined hand renderings to materials including newspapers, graph paper and found objects.

HINKLEY completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Queensland College of the Arts in Brisbane in 2000 and has exhibited across such spaces as the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art @ Mirka at Torlano, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Artspace, Sydney and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. In 2009 he exhibited at Frieze Art Fair in London through Neon Parc.

And good news if you are living in Auckland, New Zealand, you have a few days (til January 28th,2012) to view these tiny sculptures in the group show Big Refrigerator at Hopkinson Cundy