all images © PAUL ROUSTEAU

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PAUL ROUSTEAU is a French photographer whose radiant, often mysterious images show us a world in which dreams become real, and reality a dream. Intimate personal stories become part of history, and merge to form something completely new.

ROUSTEAU is constantly putting the photographic medium to the test and is able to create a visual language where documentary photography, coincidence, experiment and interventions are closely linked.

Born in 1986, graduated from CEPV Vevey in Switzerland in 2010, he has worked for clients as Die Zeit, Vice and Art Press among others.

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➝Talk & Screening: Each One, Teach One - Theory Tuesdays at Corner College Zurich. British filmmaker IAN WOOLDRIDGE has put together a selection of artists’ films and videos whereby male performers take on a drag persona

Corner College, Kochstrasse 1, Zürich, 8pm

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WEDNESDAY, MAY 22

Opening: Let’s Make the Water Turn Black at Migros Museum in Zürich is the first solo exhibition in Switzerland of GEOFFREY FARMER. For this occasion he presents an improvised chronology of the American musician. Choreographed sculptures on a stage coalesce into a multifaceted and atmospheric work that unfolds over the course of the day.

Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Limmatstrasse 270, 8005 Zurich, 6 -8 pm

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THURSDAY, MAY 23

➝Opening: The Mediterranean Dog, a group exhibition curated by ELISE LAMMER  that presents newly commissioned and existing works by PAULINE BEAUDEMONT & ADAM BAINBRIDGE, VITTORIO BRODMANN, KRIS LEMSALU, ADRIEN MISSIKA, AUDE PARISET & JULIETTE BONNEVIOT, MARTYN REYNOLDS AND MAX RUF

Cole, 19 Goulston St, London E1 7TP

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➝Opening: Go Mo Ni Ma Da, an exhibition devoted to artist DANH VO at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris

Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 11 avenue du Président Wilson, 6-9 pm

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➝Talk: organized in conjunction with his current exhibition Communitas at the Stedelijk, AERNOUT MIK will discuss – with curator LEONTINE COELEWIJ- about the exhibition as well as the development of his recent work. In addition, MIK will present some fragments of his work that have not been exhibited before.

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Teijin Auditorium, 8-9.45 pm

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FRIDAY, MAY 24

➝Opening: Some End of Things at Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, a group exhibition which explores the dynamics of contemporary art production with works by MICHAELA EICHWALD, DAVID HAMMONS, JUDITH HOPF, FABIAN MARTI, ARIANE MÜLLER, JEWYO RHII, NORA SCHULTZ and ANICKA YI

Museum für Gegenwartskunst, St. Alban-Rheinweg 60, 4010 Basel, 6.30 pm

➝Opening: JOGGING presents Soon, an exhibition at the Still House in New York, after party music provided by Slava

The Still House, 481 Van Brunt Street, #9D, Brooklyn, NY , 6 – 9:00 pm.

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SATURDAY, MAY 25

➝ Last days to see: THOM HOLMES at Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland.

Kunsthalle Bern, Helvetiaplatz 1,Bern, saturday/ sunday: 10 am to 6 pm

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SUNDAY, MAY 26

➝Opening: the Palazzo Peckham, a brand new satellite project during the 55th Venice Biennale, situated in the Castello between the Giardini (6 mins walk) the Arsenale (7 mins walk) and easily accessible on foot from the Via Garibaldi!

with works by DORA BUDOR, ROB CHAVASSE, CINDIE CHEUNG, JOE HAMILTON, PELES EMPIRE, AMY PETRA WOODWARD, JON RAFMAN PRODUCED BY AMERICAN MEDIUM, SAMARA SCOTT, VIKTOR TIMOFEEV and SIMON WERNER.

Castello 270, Venezia, Italy

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sculptural work by German artist THOMAS KRATZ
seen at galleria collicaligreggi in Catania, Sicily
on Saturday, May 18, 2013
image © wfw

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Lick Gin (Situations) is running through September 29, 2013

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Fish Scale, Véritable Hollandais (Version I), 2012
photogram, c-print, 106,5 x 86,5 cm

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Fish Scale, Véritable Hollandais (version 7, 6, 8 & 4), 2012
unique photograms, 106.5 x 86.5 cm

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Fish Scale, Véritable Hollandais (Version VI), 2012
photogram, c-print, 106,5 x 86,5 cm

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Art for the Public (Twilight), 2009
two silver gelatin fiber-based prints

Art for the Public (Tilted Arc), 2009
silver gelatin fiber-based prints, 104.1 x 64.8 cm

Art for the Public (Sphere for Plaza Fountain), 2009
two silver gelatin fiber-based prints, 94.6 x 76.8 cm

Art for the Public (-), 2009
silver gelatin fiber-based prints, -

Art for the Public (Elegy to the Spanish Republic N0. 116), 2009
silver gelatin fiber-based print, 29.5 x 35 inches

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Passage of the moon over two hours, Arcachon, France, ca. 1870s/July 27, 2012., 2012, silver toned photograph, exposed to moonlight, unique in a series, 44 x 54 cm

Passage of the moon over two hours, Arcachon, France, ca. 1870s/August 11, 2012., 2012, silver toned photograph, exposed to moonlight, unique in a series, 44 x 54 cm

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Billowing. As we were driving up to Norfolk yesterday I saw the Enfield fire; where a Sony distribution centre set ablaze by rioters was just pouring out smoke over the motorway. The sheer amount of smoke was quite surprising, and today smoke was still covering the motorway. I feel such despair at people who have taken to looting; so angry at the destruction people can cause, 2011/2012, (Version II)
unique photograph, 95 x 118 cm

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installation view from Equivalents at Harris Lieberman New York, 2012

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Billowing. As we were driving up to Norfolk yesterday I saw the Enfield fire; where a Sony distribution centre set ablaze by rioters was just pouring out smoke over the motorway. The sheer amount of smoke was quite surprising, and today smoke was still covering the motorway. I feel such despair at people who have taken to looting; so angry at the destruction people can cause. 2011/2012. (Version V), 2012
unique photograph, 95 x 118 cm

A Monstrous Column Of Roaring Flame. Star Oil Co. Loucke No. 3 On Fire Since Aug. 7 1913. Most Disastrous Fire in Caddo Oil Field And Largest Single Well Fire In History Of U.S. Of A. Daily Loss of Oil Estimated At 30.000 Barrels. 1913/2012 (Version VII), 2012

Burning of the Imperial Refinery, Oil City PA, 1846/2011 (Smoke II), 2011
unique photograms, exposed and solarized with fire, 40.6×50.8 cm

Burning of the Imperial Refinery, Oil City PA, 1846/2011 (Smoke I), 2011
unique photograms, exposed and solarized with fire, 40.6×50.8 cm

Man holding large camera photographing a cataclysmic event, possibly a volcano erupting, 1908/2012 (titled Version IV)

silver gelatin b/w photograph on bromide paper, exposed and solarized by fire light, 83.5 x 100.5 cm

Man holding large camera photographing a cataclysmic event, possibly a volcano erupting, 1908/2012 (titled Version II)
silver gelatin b/w photograph on bromide paper, exposed and solarized by fire light, 83.5 x 100.5 cm

all images courtesy the artist

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For many years, the work of American artist LISA OPPENHEIM has articulated a materialist stance; rather than taking pictures of things in the world, she usually researchs or looks for images and objects that point to something larger and then develops strategies and techniques - mixing and matching photgraphy’s steps – in an attempt to explain the medium’s magic without diminishing it and to propose an alternative interpretation of our visual culture.

I am interested in exploring what remains unseen or underappreciated in visual culture yet structures what it is possible to see. My interest lies in damaged negatives from early 20th century reportage, the personal photographs posted on Flickr by soldiers serving in Iraq, the constellation above the location of a news photograph, as well as the meaning inherent in supposedly innocuous products like crayons and alphabet charts. - LISA OPPENHEIM

As a result, the final form depends on the original material and ranges from 16mm film installations to slide shows, photographs and photograms (pictures created without a camera, using a technique as old as photography itself), as well as prints and drawings. Beyond that, her work reveals fundamental questions of how we deal with the history of photography, as well as the visualisation of knowledge, of the relationship between documentation and abstraction, together with the technical conditions of the medium, not least the role of perception.

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Good news:

• Billowing, her first artist book,  has been released in April 2013 and is available through Motto distribution and Argobooks
• her work is part of the ICP Triennal 2013 at the International Center of Photography in New York, on view from May 17 to September 8, 2013
• she will be feature in the MoMA exhibition New Photography 2013, on view from September 14, 2013–January 5, 2014 at MoMA, New York

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Bay of Pigs, 2012
sequence of digital files, black and white, sound, 45 min.(excerpt: 3.56), loop

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WILLIAM E. JONES is an artist and experimental filmmaker known for using as raw material, the nearly inexhaustible reservoir of images that can be found in film archives, on Internet, TV and DVD.

Working across prints, films and installations, JONES’ ambition is to “unsettle or subvert unthinking and habitual ways of seeing”: older narrative structures are unraveled to create new stories, images are recontextualized to produce new meaning, and different edits of the film footage are used to highlight new political or emotional significances. His sources range from vintage 1960s footage of police investigations to imagery from the US National Archives as well as legal data, pop music, and personal memories.

‘Bay of Pigs’ (2012) sees black and white footage from the failed US invasion of Cuba in 1961, taken from the Cuban documentary Girón (1974) mirrored along a horizontal line that divides the works frame equally into two halves, one section then mirrored left to right to create a kaleidoscopic effect. (…) The films disorientating soundtrack is taken from a numbers radio station, which broadcast coded messages in numerical strings – adding to the confusion, these stations are yet to be officially acknowledged politically. Taking cuts from the Cuban film (which mixes documentary with reconstructions, and has an inherently Cuban perspective) JONES puts emphasis on the disorientating nature of war, for those involved in combat and those deciphering its meaning at home. - STEVEN CAIRNS

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Good news:

• His work is currently on view at The Modern Institute, Glasgow until May 25, 2013
• On May 19th 2013 MACK will be publishing Imitation of Christ by WILLIAM E. JONES to coincide with an exhibition of the same title opening at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles

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Circle Circle, 2007
2-channel video projection
10:00 looped, color, sound
dancer AUBRE HILL
courtesy of the artist

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Through a repertoire of precise, repeated moves and slow gestures, American multimedia artist KELLY NIPPER stages arresting environments that investigate themes of space, time, weather, emotion, moving body, and how experience is measured and counted. The result takes the form of photographs, videos, installations and now live performances, revealing a crisp minimalism and abstraction.

I was interested in sculpture early on, but later gravitated toward photography, video, and installation. The movement from one to the other had to do with making, marking, or carving space and time. In graduate school at CalArts, I used photographs of people in my installations. I think I was afraid to work with real people in live performance. With a camera, there’s always a barrier, a distance between the subject and the person behind the camera, whereas performance requires a lot of direct, hands-on work. I am more of the observer type and prefer to keep a distance. Once I left school, I started incorporating live performers into my installations, and it took me about eight years or so to understand on a practical level what that meant. There are now a lot of people involved in each of my pieces, but I still have to be able to get the distance of an observer to make the work happen. - KELLY NIPPER in conversation with ROSELEE GOLDBERG, November 2008

Circle Circle (2007) demonstrates the central importance of simple scenography and the performative basic movement that achieve a trancelike effect over viewers in KELLY NIPPER‘s work . This video is part of a larger series of works where she examines the hurricane as a form of unmeasured movement that forms elementally, circles out from the eye, and develops and changes over time. The two-channel video presents a projection of a dancer seen from behind, whose hips move at varying speeds in circular rotation analogous to the movement of a hurricane in formation.

And good news: from 5 April to 16 June 2013, the Kunsthaus Zürich presents the solo exhibition Black Forest by KELLY NIPPER.

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still from the video 20Hz*, a SEMICONDUCTOR work by RUTH JARMAN and JOE GERHARDT
as part of their solo exhibition Let There Be Light at House of Electronic Arts, Basel**
seen on Sunday, May 12, 2013
image © wfw

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*watch the video here
**on view till June 30, 2013 (with special opening hours during Art Basel)

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view from Black Forest (2013), an exhibition by American artist KELLY NIPPER at Kunsthaus Zürich
seen on Friday, May 10, 2013
image © wfw

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this exhibition is on view until June 16, 2013

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Tiny Sausages, 2012
archival pigment inks on cotton and silk

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Beet Pallet, 2012
archival pigment inks on cotton and silk

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Invisible Sausages, 2012 
archival pigment inks on cotton and silk, 31.6 x 50.8 cm

Rainbow Botchalism, 2012 
archival pigment inks on cotton and silk, 31.6 x 44.5 cm

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Still Life 7, 2011
archival pigment inks on silk with cotton backing

Still Life 5, 2011
archival pigment inks on silk with cotton backing

Still Life 8, 2011
archival pigment inks on silk with cotton backing

Grinder Gears, 2012
archival pigment inks on cotton and silk

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shape sweat: detox vision,  2013
installation at The Vanity, Los Angeles, March-April 2013

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Leakage Industries: Clear Conduit, 2012
Leakage Industries: Strainer, 2012
exhibition view at SculptureCenter, New York, 2012

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Leakage Industries: Clear Conduit, 2012 
gelled emollient, unglazed ceramic, usb cable with gender changers, flash drive, hardware, 101.6 x 81.3 x 121.9 cm

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Leakage Industries: Clear Conduit (detail), 2012 
gelled emollient, unglazed ceramic, usb cable with gender changers, flash drive, hardware

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Silodka, 2010
fiber react dye on silk, muslin

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Leakage Industries: Soft Screw, 2012 
galvanized steel, glazed ceramic, gelled emollient, auger worm, silk gauze, hardware, 94 x 152.4 x 30.48 cm 

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Leakage Industries: Soft Screw (detail), 2012 
galvanized steel, glazed ceramic, gelled emollient, auger worm, silk gauze, hardware 

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Seasoned, 2011
archival pigment inks on silk

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Independent, exhibition view at 47 Canal, New York, March 2013

Untitled, 2012
Ceramic, combination release buckle straps

all images courtesy the artist

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ALISA BAREMBOYM is an American artist based in New York who draws her source from domesticity and the handling of objects that are affiliated to this environment. Blurring the line between photography and other mediums such as sculpture and painting, she creates hybrid objects that investigate, appropriate, and extend critical aspects of materiality, process, abstraction, and pictorial ideas.

Framing a limitless pattern is a way to underline the artifice of the image and it’s relationship to the way reality and depictions of reality interact. There is always an element of translation or conversion that exists in my work and also exists in the basic act of making something. Through the lens of photography, I am framing the subject in a way that is always a translation of what it actually is. The photograph is then transferred to a print on silk which is another translation. I am propelled by the idea that images further extend the shelf life of a consumable thing, but ultimately for a finite amount of time. – ALISA BAREMBOYM in conversation with MICHAEL BILSBOROUGH

ALISA BAREMBOYM was born in Russia in 1982 and received an MFA from Bard in 2010. Her work has been exhibited at 179 Canal, NY; White Columns, NY; Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, Russia; Andrew Kreps, NY; and Participant Inc., NY. In the past year she was included in shows at Showroom, NY, Toomer Labzda, NY, Regina Gallery London, UK and Jason Alexander, NY.

And good news: her work is currently part of the group exhibition Untitled (Hybrid) at Robert Miller Gallery, New York (April 19 – June 1, 2013). She will also be part of EXPO 1: New York at MoMA PS1 from May 12 to September 2, 2013.

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Highly Liquid, exhibition view at Galerie Fons Welters, March- April 2013
photography by GERT JAN VAN ROOIJ

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Parking (Window), 2013
polyester resin, pigments, clear PVC
57 x 50 x 49 cm, photography by GERT JAN VAN ROOIJ

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Parking (Disc), 2013
polyester resin, pigments, clear PVC, vinyl sticker, powder coated steel, powder coated Aluminum, rubber stop-end, Men’s Health magazine cover, Car magazine cover, 57 x 142 x 49 cm

Parking (Service), 2013
polyester resin, pigments, powder coated Aluminum, powder coated steel, rubber stop-end, perforated foam, polyester webbing, 57 x 95 x 48.5 cm

Parking (Spine), 2013
polyester resin, pigments, powder coated copper, powder coated Aluminum, rubber stop-end, 57 x 182 x 49 cm

photography by GERT JAN VAN ROOIJ

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Parking (Disc), 2013
polyester resin, pigments, clear PVC, vinyl sticker, powder coated steel, powder coated Aluminum, rubber stop-end, Men’s Health magazine cover, Car magazine cover, 57 x 142 x 49 cm
photography by GERT JAN VAN ROOIJ

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A Line Up (IIII), 2012
CNC’d and brushed aluminium, powder coated aluminium, cast and mirror polished 
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from the exhibition Hands Down at unosolo project room, Milan, 2012

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One in a Million, 2006
coconut, quartz crystals, edition of 3, 8 x 18 x 11cm

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Spill, 2009
silicone rubber

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Lift, 2009
aluminium, fibreglass, polyester resin

Sheet Section (Countershading), 2009
polyester resin, pigments, MDF

Sheet Section (Saturation), 2009
polyester resin, MDF

Sheet Section (Saturation), 2010
polyester resin, pigments, MDF

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Back on the Level, 2011
jesmonite, silicone rubber, pigments

installation view at The Approach, London, 2011-2012

Circulation (Increase), 2011
jesmonite, silicone rubber, pigments, machine cut aluminium

Noise (Window Grey) & Noise (Ultramarine Blue), 2012
aluminium, spray paint, 119 x 92 x 0.5cm

all images courtesy the artist

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MAGALI REUS uses common materials such as glass, plastic and aluminium to create complex constellations of works which include sculptures, installations and videos.

REUS‘ pieces defy categorization, straddling the line between recognizable and unrecognizable, finished and unfinished, intuitive and conscious, organic and synthetic. Nevertheless the result is invariably carefully constructed, abstractly composed and assumes forms issuing from reality.

The individual elements are being left as they are, the composition doesn‘t lead into a defined direction, no intrusiveness of meaning is restricting the viewer, instead they rather open up questions and atmospheres. Particularly in REUS‘ work one can comprehend the most famous quote, that the work is created through the viewer. REUS provides the materials.

MAGALI REUS (b. 1981 Den Haag) lives and works in London and Amsterdam. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Highly Liquid’ at Galerie Fons Welters Amsterdam, ‘Hands Down’ at unosolo project room Milan, ‘ON’ at The Approach London, ‘Background’ at La Salle de Bains, Lyon, ‘Some Surplus’ at Plan B in Amsterdam and ‘Playstation: A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun’ at Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam.

Good news: you still have a few days to view Out of Empty, a solo exhibition by MAGALI REUS at Albert Baronian Gallery in Brussels. Additionally she is part of the group show Can’t Hear My Eyes at Nogueras Blanchard, Madrid ( on view till May 18, 2013).

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Studies Into the Past (oil on wood, 23.5 x 28.3 cm, 2010) by French artist LAURENT GRASSO who is having a great solo exhibition entitled Disasters & Miracles at Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz/Basel (until June 30, 2013)
seen on Sunday, May 5, 2013
image © wfw

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Neolithic Memory Stick (2012-2013), an installation by German artist MANUEL GRAF
from his solo exhibition Commercials, Mosques & Ceramics at Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz/Basel
seen on Sunday, May 5, 2013
image © wfw

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 this exhibition is on view till June 30, 2013

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view from the installation The Best Effort (sound recording, office desk, telephone / 2013) by the Cuban artist ADRIAN MELIS
as part of his solo exhibition entitled The Value of Absence at Kunsthalle Basel*
seen on Wednesday, May 1, 2013
image © wfw

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on view until May 26,2013

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illustration for NOVEMBRE magazine issue 7

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illustration for NOVEMBRE magazine issue 7

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illustration for NOVEMBRE magazine issue 7

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 untitled, march 2013

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illustration for NOVEMBRE magazine issue 7

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illustration for NOVEMBRE magazine issue 7

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illustration for NOVEMBRE magazine issue 7

all illustrations © MARLEN KELLER

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MARLEN KELLER works as a visual artist within an interdisciplinary field combining her knowledge from fashion design, illustration and photography. She lives between London and Basel (Switzerland) where she studied at University Of Applied Sciences And Arts (Institut Fashion-Design) and where she graduated in 2012.

In her collections, MARLEN is utilizing all kind of opposites to create intensity and at the same time a balance between them. She creates worlds for the audience that can only be left again when the persons wearing her clothes have passed by. Portrait shots of personalities whose outward appearance reveals as much about their inside as the beholder projects on them were the initial position for her design. The surface of the fabric, however, is MARLEN KELLER‘s guiding idea regarding materials. She dies, etches and processes her fabrics until they have the desired look. – Not Just A Label

Her imagery, like a multitude of twisted universes, is typical of KELLER‘s vision, merging disciplines and using all kind of elements and techniques, accidents and contradictions with an extraordinary approach to three-dimensionality.

It’s all about the beauty of fragility, surface, pieces, illusions, visions and opposites to make my work more intense. Proportions and structures are very central in my work as a fashion designer, but also as an illustrator. My pieces and pictures develop between organized structures and intuition. – MARLEN KELLER in conversation with FILEP MOTWARY

Good news: MARLEN KELLER‘s work is featured in the last issue (#7) of Novembre Magazine !

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I    KNOW SIMPLY THAT THE SKY WILL LAST LONGER THAN    I , 2013
video, excerpt 2:21 (52:20)
courtesy PIERRE DEBUSSCHERE

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I am still overwhelmed by the impressions of this year’s festival of fashion & photography at Villa Noailles in Hyères, and particularly with the imagery of PIERRE DEBUSSCHERE.

If you are not familiar with his work, the belgian artist succeeds in bringing to life a fascinating and independent world that pushes the boundaries between video and photography, art direction and performance, fashion and fine art.

His last work entitled I   KNOW SIMPLY THAT THE SKY WILL LAST LONGER THAN   I  - and created especially for the 28th Hyères international fashion and photography festival at the Villa Noailles – is a comprehensive project which comprises a book, a touring exhibition and a website.  The exhibition features a series of original photographs as well as an important video piece, both investigating themes in the beauty context, the impact of music as inspiration and a precise exploration of emotional constraint.

There are plenty of interpretations possible for this project – I want to leave it open for the viewer, but I can tell you a bit about inspiration. Music is a big inspiration for all my projects, I always start with music so I   KNOW SIMPLY THAT THE SKY WILL LAST LONGER THAN   I is also a way to reference and acknowledge that. You could see this project as my first pop album in a way, sharing different emotions. Music always takes you to a certain place in your mind and I tried to harness that feeling. There is also the classical Flemish painter influence, Umberto Ecco and ugliness.

The body is a conductor of emotions and messages, passing through the face. I didn’t want clothes to get in the way. We ask more than usual of our models, pushing them further and further as you can see in the full version of the film, which is 52 minute long. I really wanted to work with models I knew and had a relationship with but also totally new faces that for me had great expression. The cast gave us a lot. - PIERRE DEBUSSCHERE for Dazed Digital

Either way, DEBUSSCHERE relies on instinct to evolve an uncanny visual path that is powerful, primal and unique and that leaves plenty of room for the viewer to bring their emotions and own stories to the table.

PIERRE DEBUSSCHERE is the online artistic director at Raf Simons and has shot editorials and numerous fashion films for magazines such as Vogue Homme Japan and V magazine, as well as being a regular contributor to Dazed & Confused.

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view from the exhibition L. 12. 12 by French photographer CHARLES FRÉGER
seen at the Villa Noailles in Hyères (France) during the 28th international festival of fashion & photography
on Saturday, 27 April, 2013
image © wfw

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detail from the installation A screen to the brain* designed by ALEXANDRE DE BETAK for FELIPE OLIVEIRA BAPTISTA, portuguese designer/creative director of Lacoste and jury president for the fashion competition 2013
presented during the 28th international festival of fashion & photography, Hyères
seen on Saturday, 27 April, 2013
image © wfw

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*FELIPE OLIVEIRA BAPTISTA will invest the The MUDE (Museum of design & fashion) in Lisbon from September 2013 until January 2014.

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 ndlr: if you scroll down the page with the trackpad or the mouse, you stop the video, rather use the scrollbar!

You are the only one, Über den Dilettantismus, Halle 14, Leipzig
© LAURE PROUVOST

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exhibition view from Farfromwords, at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, 2013
© LAURE PROUVOST. photography: STEPHEN WHITE

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Ideally this sign would take you in its arms, 2010
oil, collage and varnish on wooden panel, 25 x 29 cm
image courtesy of LAURE PROUVOST & MOTINTERNATIONAL

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all these things think link, at Flattime House London, 2010

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Idealy this room would be 5 times bigger, 2010
oil, collage and varnish on wooden panel, 25 x 29 cm
image courtesy of LAURE PROUVOST & MOTINTERNATIONAL

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IT, HEAT, HIT, 2010 
0.26 mins exerpt of 6 mins (surround sound)
© LAURE PROUVOST

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A splash of red paint in your face, 2010
oil, collage and varnish on wooden panel, 25 x 29 cm
image courtesy of LAURE PROUVOST & MOTINTERNATIONAL

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installation views and detail from:
Why does Gregor never rings? shut your lips, somewhere under that bridge lies the hole truth…
(THE WANDERER SEQUENCE 5) at MOTINTERNATIONAL, 2012
images courtesy of LAURE PROUVOST & MOTINTERNATIONAL, London

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detail from The Artist, installation , 2010
image courtesy of LAURE PROUVOST

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Before, before. Before it was, the title sequence, spinning before next, a squid,
installation view at MOTINTERNATIONAL London, 2011
images courtesy of LAURE PROUVOST & MOTINTERNATIONAL, London

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Ideally these vegetables would fly into the sky, 2011
oil, collage and varnish on wooden panel, 25 x 29 cm
image courtesy of LAURE PROUVOST & MOTINTERNATIONAL

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LAURE PROUVOST is a French artist now based in London whose work includes film, performance and installation. Using humor and irreverence, her projects reveal stories and fictions which are loosely themed around the notion of gaps in language, translation, experience, or with ideas around space.

Words for me are very visually powerful, because with words people create their own vision.  I am just hinting and suggesting possibilities, the audience is making its own image in its head.  It is also about misunderstanding, misinterpreting, miscommunicating – words also suggesting failure and other senses.

Good news: she is one of four artists shortlisted for the Turner Prize this year. It includes artists TINO SEHGAL, DAVID SHRIGLEY, LYNETTE YIADOM-BOAKYE and LAURE PROUVOST. The winner will be announced on December 2, 2013.

Meanwhile her work is currently part of the exhibition Schwitters in Britain at Tate Britain, London until May 12, 2013.

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installation view from Still Life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours,
at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, 2013

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installation view from Still Life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours,
at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, 2013

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installation view from Still Life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours,
at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, 2013

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installation view from Still Life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours,
at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, 2013

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installation view from Still Life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours,
at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, 2013

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installation view from Still Life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours,
at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, 2013

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installation view from Still Life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours,
at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, 2013

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installation view from Still Life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours,
at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, 2013

all images courtesy The Modern Institute, Glasgow

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If you happen to be in Glasgow over the next few weeks, make sure to catch Still Life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours by Swiss artist NICOLAS PARTY at the Modern Institute. Bringing together wall drawings, spray-painted murals, intimate paintings, and watercolour works, the show reveals the roots of PARTY‘S painterly practice and constructed worlds.

‘Still life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours’ presents the form of a theatre stage; the wall mural acts as the backdrop within which the play unfolds. Each still life painting depicts a scene in this play. The surface of the canvas is the stage and each object represents a character within the story. This Tableau vivant can only be successful if all the fundamental aspects of the language of painting are put to use. This formal discourse, as dictated by the traditional remit of painting, allows PARTY to develop an exchange between painting’s position within art history and this theatricality of representation.

Despite adopting classical aspects of exhibition history, the result is not an exhibition but an installation; a play that offers objects a space on stage. – LAURA EDBROOK

Of course, these images don’t do justice to the exhibition: Still life oil paintings and Landscape watercolours runs until 8 May 2013 at the Modern Institute in Glasgow, United Kingdom.

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a glimpse into the new production facility for Vitrashop designed by Japanese architectural firm SANAA (SEJIMA and NISHIZAWA and Associates)
seen on Friday, April 19, 2013, on the Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein
image © wfw

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view from the exhibition Hotel Abisso with:
CIAO N°4 (Nero), 2012 by Swiss artist VALENTIN CARRON
and a series of drawings by GRISÉLIDIS RÉAL (1929 – 2005)
seen at Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneva
on Thursday April 18, 2013
image © wfw

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work by Dutch artist RUCHAMA NOORDA,
seen during the group exhibition Civic Virtue at W139 in Amsterdam
on Tuesday, April 9, 2013
image © wfw

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Rump, 2013
Beouf Stroganoff photographed by Enrique Macias
C-Print, Aluminum frame
Courtesy Galerie Kamm, Berlin

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Männer und Moral, exhibition view at Objectifs Exhibitions, Antwerp
photo: ISABELLE ARTHUIS

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Shoulder, 2013
Labskaus photographed by NICK ASH
C-Print, Aluminum frame
Courtesy Galerie Kamm, Berlin 

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Man 2011, 2011
Mannequin, motor, clothes, smartphone, sound
Courtesy Francesca Minini, Milan
photo: ISABELLE ARTHUIS

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Man 2011, 2011
Mannequin, motor, clothes, smartphone, sound
Courtesy Francesca Minini, Milan
photo: ISABELLE ARTHUIS

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Männer und Moral, exhibition view at Objectifs Exhibitions, Antwerp
photo: ISABELLE ARTHUIS 

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Cabbage Heads & Pillars (Ensemble Cast), 2013
Cabbage, work uniforms, tools, plinths
Courtesy Galerie Kamm, Berlin
photo: ISABELLE ARTHUIS

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Cabbage Heads & Pillars (Ensemble Cast), 2013
Cabbage, work uniforms, tools, plinths
Courtesy Galerie Kamm, Berlin
photo: ISABELLE ARTHUIS

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Cabbage Heads & Pillars (Ensemble Cast), 2013
Cabbage, work uniforms, tools, plinths
Courtesy Galerie Kamm, Berlin
photo: ISABELLE ARTHUIS

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Cabbage Heads & Pillars (Ensemble Cast), 2013
Cabbage, work uniforms, tools, plinths
Courtesy Galerie Kamm, Berlin
photo: ISABELLE ARTHUIS

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Cabbage Heads & Pillars (Ensemble Cast), 2013
Cabbage, work uniforms, tools, plinths
Courtesy Galerie Kamm, Berlin
photo: ISABELLE ARTHUIS

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Sometimes I like to torture myself with drooling over worthwhile exhibitions in places where I am not, like Männer und Moral, a show at Objectif Exhibitions in Antwerp, which features Danish artist SIMON DYBBROE MØLLER.

Working across a broad body of medias and techniques including drawings, photographs, sculptures, videos, interventions and installations,  SIMON DYBBROE MØLLER’s work deals with common concepts such as destruction, decay, disappearance, boredom, failure, gravity, hierarchy, time, perspective or movement among others. With his vivid taste for wit and formal exactitude, the artist sets all manner of references, quotations and re-creations in an unfamiliar setting.

Each disparate work appears as a player in a complex orchestration that is MØLLER’s practice: a loud discussion that mixes, mirrors, flips and tilts the relationships between sight and thought, the random and the staged.

Good news: Männer und Moral—a solo exhibition by SIMON DYBBROE MØLLER— is currently on view at Objectif Exhibitions in Antwerp until 4 May, 2013.

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SIMON DYBBROE MØLLER (b. 1976 Aarhus, Denmark; lives in Berlin) studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1999 to 2001; and at theStädelschule Academy of Fine Art, Frankfurt, until 2005. Dybbroe Møller has presented his work in solo exhibitions at Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen (2013); Hyundai Gallery, Seoul (2012); Francesca Minini, Milan (2011); Fondazione Giuliani, Rome (2011); C1 Kunsthalle Göppingen (2011); UMMA projects, Ann Arbor, Michigan (2010); and Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt / Main (2009); among others. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) (2013); Zamek Castle, Poznan (2012); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011); Extra City, Antwerp (2011); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2010); as well as in biennials, including the 6th Nordic Biennial for Contemporary Art, Moss, Norway (2011); and the Turin Triennial, Italy (2008).

installation view from Macho Amore at Federico Vavassori, Milan
april 2013, image courtesy of Federico Vavassori, Milan
photo: ALESSANDRO ZAMBIANCHI

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installation view from Macho Amore at Federico Vavassori, Milan
april 2013, image courtesy of Federico Vavassori, Milan
photo: ALESSANDRO ZAMBIANCHI

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installation view from Macho Amore at Federico Vavassori, Milan
april 2013, image courtesy of Federico Vavassori, Milan
photo: ALESSANDRO ZAMBIANCHI

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Sad Eis, 2012
resin and painting, 147 x 60 x 60 cm (each)
exhibition view at Meessen de Clercq, Brussels, 2012

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La Fin, 2012
one tabletop and four ice cream parlor bar tables
exhibition view at Meessen de Clercq, Brussels, 2012

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exhibition view LA Love, 2008

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exhibition view LA Love, 2008 

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ANDREAS + NICO, 2008

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Kant Elegant Kalifornia, 2010 

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Schaak show & Grandmasters Worldchampions, 2012
installation view at  S.M.A.K., Gent, 2012

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Kiss Kuss, 2012
carpets of different colours: grey anthracite, beige, eggshell white

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all images from the book and exhibition Internationalismus
installation views at Kunstverein Heilbronn, 2010

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detail from Macho Amore at Federico Vavassori, Milan
april 2013, image courtesy of Federico Vavassori, Milan
photo: ALESSANDRO ZAMBIANCHI

all images courtesy the artist

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Born in Frankfurt am Main, SARAH ORTMEYER studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. Her practice is based on her research and interest in the history, often building on overlooked connections between cultural and political issues. ORTMEYER‘s assemblages trade on a wealth of familiar assumptions regarding beauty, authorship and the art object encounter.

Many of the themes in ORTMEYER’s work draw from the her keen interest in — and uncanny understanding of — cultural, human, and political interrelations, whether contemporary or historic, highbrow or lowbrow, academic or pop. Years of working on her PhD about chess have taken her on a world library tour de force (Mexico City, New York, Reykjavík ,Vienna) and have equipped her with a scientific rigor that is rare among contemporary artists. But rather than taking a purely analytical approach, Ortmeyer marries her scholarly inclinations with an inquisitive and sometimes biting naïveté, allowing her to effortlessly break down the most complex intricacies of the human psyche in what may otherwise seem benign or platitudinous contexts. And in all her ongoing quest to discover deeper universal truths, she never compromises her unapologetic passion for beauty…and for love. -FELIX BURRICHTER, editor and creative director of PIN–UP

And good news: Macho Amore is running until April 17 at Federico Vavassori in Milan, Italy

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MARTIN SOTO CLIMENT 
for Zona Maco Mexiko City, April 2013
presented by Karma International

all images courtesy the artist and Karma International, Zürich

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In the context of the 10th edition of Zona Maco Mexico Arte Contemporaneo, taking place between April 10-14, New Proposals comes up as a new section curated by Swiss art historian and curator MIRJAM VARADINIS who selected twenty-two international galleries with the aim of showing solo presentations by artists under 35. Part of this new section, the Zurich-based gallery Karma International is presenting the work of MARTIN SOTO CLIMENT.

For the past ten or so years, Mexico City based artist MARTIN SOTO CLIMENT has made a successful career of repurposing, recontextualizing, juxtaposing and altering found objects in new constellations as sculptures or installations.

Here SOTO CLIMENT has chosen to work with large inner tubes, spraying them, bending them or assembling them. The tubes themselves are in constant tension with both the constraints they have been subjected to and their own skins, but this tension is not static. Over time, the tubes change their shape, resisting and accommodating the stresses imposed on them. Characterised by a powerful vein of energy, vitality and instinct, these sculpures, covered with paint, erase all existing realities and define their own unique embodied identities.

➝ The 10th edition of Zona Maco Mexico Arte Contemporaneo is running through Sunday April 14, 2013 in Mexico City.

➝➝ Additionally, MARTIN SOTO CLIMENT and curator CHRIS SHARP unveiled a few days ago their latest venture: a one-room project space entitled Lulu in Mexico City.

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 *The artists and galleries are selected on the basis of a proposed solo presentation. A special focus and priority are given to artists either living and working in Latin America or dealing with issues related to the area. Participation in this section is determined through an open application and subsequent acceptance from its curator. The stands in this section are of 20 sq. m.

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My friends at MJ GALERIE, a new art space in Geneva dedicated to digital culture, kickstart a fundraising campaign to raise much-needed funds that will keep the project sustainable throughout the upcoming year,

check one of the many rewards here, and show your love here!

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one of the ten pussies shot and groomed by FEE ROMERO
and published in TISSUE MAGAZINE #3, February 2013
image © wfw

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Hulk Feel Lonely Inside, 2009
numbered poster (limited edition 500 ex.), 60 x 40 cm
photo : Atelier de numérisation – Ville de Lausanne 
© Daniel Johnston, courtesy Arts Factory [galerie nomade]

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I Love you Danny, 2010
felt-pen on paper, 21,5 x 28 cm
photo : Atelier de numérisation – Ville de Lausanne
© Daniel Johnston, courtesy  Arts Factory [galerie nomade]

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all images courtesy DANIEL JOHNSTON

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The first ever presentation in Switzerland of DANIEL JOHNSTON’s graphic work provides a broad insight into an artistic life that is shaped by bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

DANIEL JOHNSTON, born in 1961 in Sacramento (California), has been writing and recording music for more than twenty-five years, generating an ever-growing international cult audience. His legend began in the 1980s, when he arrived in Austin, Texas, with a travelling fair and stuck around, hoping to make it as a cartoonist before deciding to become a musician.

However he never ceases to draw and his artwork appears in galleries throughout the world and was featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial.

The drawings, for the most part compulsively produced, are in felt and ball-point pens. They describe strange playlets: for instance, the staging of JOHNSTON’s childhood comic book heroes like “Captain America,” “Hulk,” “Casper the Ghost.” These mythical figures of popular American culture wage a pitiless battle against the forces of Evil incarnated by Satan in person, or by buxom temptresses determined to distract them from the straight and narrow. Lending support to these heroes are figures of JOHNSTON‘s own invention: the frog of innocence “Jeremiah” and the trepanned boxer “Joe” are two of his main alter egos. The world he depicts is all black and white: obsessively and endlessly, it abounds with allusions to Christianity, history and folk tales, all of which JOHNSTON diverts and reclaims to his own ends. Hence, his drawings are extensions of themes intimately linked to his own daily life: they flaunt the ongoing battles he himself must carry out against his own demons.

➝ The exhibition Welcome To My World ! Daniel Johnston is currently on view at Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, on view until June 30, 2013 (this exhibition was first mounted at the Lieu Unique (national center for contemporary arts and music) in Nantes, in spring 2012).

➝➝ I highly recommend to watch The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005) by JEFF FEUERZEIG, a documentary about JOHNSTON‘s life and art.

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all images and videos courtesy MARK TITCHNER

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Bold, philosophical, radical, subversive: the art of Britisth artist MARK TITCHNER explores the tensions between the different belief systems that inform our society, be they religious, scientific or political.

I only started using my own texts relatively recently. My interest initially was how, by separating the voice of the author from the text, one changed its interpretation. That is, one removes the hierarchy of authorship that tells us that we should interpret a philosopher’s words differently from a pop lyric, even if the actual text is quite similar. I would look for texts with a certain kind of philosophical bent but that used very simple and direct language. You could say it was a process of creating an equivalence, and this was echoed in a coherent graphic style that I developed amongst those works. It’s actually a little sad because in a way, these are my most popular works. People say to me: “Oh, I really like that text, it inspired me to…”, when actually the whole project had to do with the lack of meaning, about reflecting on a situation where the array of possibilities replaces a depth of engagement. I was reflecting on my own lack of belief—be it moral, spiritual, or political. - MARK TITCHNER in conversation with AMELIA ISHMAEL

Working in a wide range of media including digital print, wall drawing, video, sculpture and installation, he describes his work as a dialogue about how we process thoughts and ideas and a good part of it references music lyrics, corporate creeds, philosophical treatises and political manifestos. MARK presents these ‘words’ in the forms of trade union banners, billboard posters, optical illusions, psychedelic posters, which in themselves possess a slick advertising aesthetic.

I’m very much interested in the idea of the manifesto or the exegesis, the moment of lucid understanding, and the inherent problems of how one can give concrete form to this kind of transcendent rapture. This is why I tend to use imperative language in my works; I want to make it clear that what is being communicated is vital and truthful. This is in fact a tactic that is designed to draw attention to the way that a certain type of language is used in certain situations. In that sense, I am more interested in the delivery of text/language than in what is actually being said. My interest is really in power relations and manipulation. - MARK TITCHNER in conversation with AMELIA ISHMAEL

A London based artist, TITCHNER was a Turner Prize nominee in 2006, was showcased at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and has had solo exhibitions at the notable Peres Projects (Berlin), BALTIC (Gateshead), and Vilma Gold (London).

And good news:  A Naiad, a major new public art work by MARK TITCHNER, will be on view at Bristol’s M Shed from 13 April, 2013.

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ps. sorry for the pity quality of the videos above

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The Garments May Vary, 2013
featuring garments made by NADINE GEOPFERT
video courtesy SANNA HELENA BERGER

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A few days ago London-based photographer and Tourist Magazine editor, SANNA HELENA BERGER, released The Garments May Vary, a video featuring the graduate collection of Berlin-based textile designer NADINE GOEPFERT.

NADINE‘s work is based on research and conceptual thinking and explore the wide field of eventuality by creating open situations, where coincidence is a welcome guest and forms the basis for textile designs and art installations. With an eye on detail and an interest in traditional textile techniques and craftsmanship, she constantly experiments with the diverse aspects of the materiality and the structure of textiles.

With this work as well as other projects (whether it collage, photo, or video), SANNA HELENA BERGER forgoes digitized perfection and moody nihilism to capture intimate moments in the lives of her models, family and friends. The result is raw, simple and intuitive breaking through the conventions of fashion photography.

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da fermacarte, 1968
200 x 200 cm each image
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from the catalogue for When Attitudes Become Form—Live In Your Head, curated by HARALD SZEEMANN for the Kunsthalle Bern, March 22-April 27, 1969
courtesy the artist

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Creative action must join hands with reality in every one of its aspects – climate, the people and things that stand around it - EMILIO PRINI

EMILIO PRINI (b.1943) is one of the protagonist of the Arte Povera movement from the beginning. He participated in all of the most important international exhibitions between 1967 and 1971 including When Attitude Becomes Form held in Bern in 1969 and curated by HARALD SZEEMANN.

For this famous exhibition, he presented Da Fermacarte (1968), two large images in which the process of photography is revealed: a photograph illustrates the connection between organic – the artist’s body – and inorganic – the lead. Both these elements are subjected to the force of gravity.

After that he never ceased to explore the nature of experience and perception, and the relationship between reality and reproduction by means of light, photography, sound and written texts.

His work was part of the group shows ‘Arte Povera’ - Neues Museum Weimar, and Kunstmuseum Basel (2012) – ‘Italics: Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution 1968–2008’ - MCA, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2009) and Palazzo Grassi, Venice, (2008) – ‘Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972’ – Tate Modern, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, (2001-2002). PRINI participated to Documenta X (1997) and had an important solo exhibition entitled ‘Fermi in dogana’ at the Ancienne Douane in Strasbourg in 1995.

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installation view of Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley
at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, March 2013
courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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installation view of Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley
at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, March 2013
courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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installation view of Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley
at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, March 2013
courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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Ginamarie and Annamarie in the TV room, 2012
digital c-print, courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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installation view of Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley
at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, March 2013
courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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LOL, 2012
digital c-print, courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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installation view of Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley
at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, March 2013
courtesy Jonathan Viner, London

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Mostly known for his contributions to fashion magazines such as Vogue Paris and Dazed & Confused, as well as his many fashion campaigns, ranging from Carven to Opening Ceremony, American photographer MAX FARAGO recently opened his new solo exhibition at Jonathan Viner Gallery in London, which is just as strange and unusual.

Shot in Los Angeles, this new work portrays nuances between reality and fantasy, narrating the underlying drives of LA’ cultural environment, in an world fabricating desires and expectations.

The photos of ‘Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley’ look real, feel fake, feel real, look fake. How they look and how they feel are the realest things about them. They document ambiguous incidents in semi-staged narratives, with sort-of actors and sort-of models sort-of acting and sort-of modelling. They are about family and friendship and youth and age and sex and death. – Jonathan Viner Gallery

The result is extremely well constructed and blurs the line between art and commerce, but that is true of so much photography today, especially in fashion, where almost any image could pass for an ad, while ads can be indistinguishable from conceptual art. This exhibition proves to be disconcerting, captivating, and curious in equal measure.

Inspired by real life and partly by fake life, MAX’s photographs mockument a world which, although semi-staged, feels intensely real and overfamiliar. Through a process of assemblage, these images create a sense of coherence, tension and complicity, and reveal new meanings. – ELOISE MORAN

And good news: Look Like Barbie, Smoke Like Marley is currently on view at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London until April 13, 2013

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TAUBA AUERBACH‘s necklace*
shot at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels
on Wednesday, March 20, 2013
image © wfw

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*of course TAUBA has the fingers of a fairy, this necklace is her own creation!

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Tetrachromat, exhibition view at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels
on Wednesday, March 20, 2013
image © wfw

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Untitled (Fold), 2011
Acrylic on canvas / Wooden stretcher
182.9 x 137.2 cm
courtesy the artist and Standard, Oslo

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Untitled (Fold), 2011
exhibition view at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, March 2013
image © wfw

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Corner IV, 2011
Woven canvas on wooden stretcher
152.4 x 114.3 cm
courtesy the artist and Standard, Oslo

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RGB Colorspace Atlas Volume 1, 2 & 3, 2011
exhibition view at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, March 2013
image © wfw

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Shadow Weave (Interlock, image), 2011
Woven canvas on wooden stretcher
152.4 x 114.3 cm
courtesy the artist

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exhibition view at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, March 2013
image © wfw

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If you are in Brussels these days, don’t miss this audacious exhibition of TAUBA AUERBACH’s prolific production of paintings, book sculptures and weaving works at the Wiels Contemporary Art Centre.

Entitled Tetrachromat*, this exhibition features a series of her early and recent works exploring patterns, pushing the boundaries of structures, depicting the three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional surface, and weaving constant conversation between abstraction and representation.

From the trompe l’oeil crumpled canvasses (Fold ) to rhythmically complex sculptural objects, TAUBA is questioning notion of perception and representation through her love of craftsmanship as well as her passion for mathematical, alphabetical and geometric systems.

I think I always make work about logic in some way. Taking things that are assumed to be linear and making them double back on themselves or knotting them up…posing questions to myself about the way I was taught to think and reason. Posing questions about the structure of a question. For a long time, language was sort of the medium I was using to try these things out, but now I’m working almost entirely abstractly. There is less opportunity to take this work literally, and I think that shifts the locus of inquiry onto the viewer in a good way - TAUBA AUERBACH in conversation with ANDREA HYDE

With deep reverence for craftsmanship, fine-tuned aesthetic intuition and an admirably broad curiosity about the world and the universe, the former commercial sign writer seemingly works with left and right brains tightly fused. ‘Tetrachromat’ is an audacious display whose beauty remains somehow inexplicable. – AMELIA GROOM

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MAX SNOW

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DAN MONICK

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MICHAEL WILLIS

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CHRIS TAYLOR & CLEON PETERSON

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ANDREW POGANY

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all images from Iconograph #2, 2013
published by Them Thangs Edition
80 pages, offset printed, edition of 750
dedicated to the memory of JUSTIN VAN HOY
image © wfw

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Just like the blog, the magazine – which looks like a large zine – features an eccentric collection of visual pieces and written works that explore ‘the contemporary use of Ritualistic Iconography’, a theme that sounds very specific but really it can be a lot of things. We have rituals and symbols everywhere around us every minute of our lives:

Systems of symbols and pictures that are constituted in a certain ordered and determined relationship to the form, content, and intention of presentation are believed to be among the most important means of knowing and expressing religious facts. Such systems also contribute to the maintenance and strengthening of the relationships between man and the realm of the sacred or holy (the transcendent, spiritual dimension). The symbol is, in effect, the mediator, presence, and real (or intelligible) representation of the holy in certain conventional and standardized forms. - JUSTIN BLYTH

For this issue, thirty-two international artists including MAX SNOW, JULIEN LANGENDORFF, JOEL EVEY, CLEON PETERSON are involved. If that sounds like a good colour combination to you, you can pick your copy through Them Thangs Editions.

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 exhibition view at Fumetto, March 2013

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from Emerit (2012)

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exhibition view at Fumetto, March 2013

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from Trommelfels (2011)

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from Trommelfels (2011)

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from Trommelfels (2011)

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from Trommelfels (2011)

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from Trommelfels (2011)

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Suzamakato, 2010, pencil and crayon on paper
tableau of six, 90 x 84 cm

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from Emerit (2012)
image courtesy MARIJPOL

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from Emerit (2012)

Emerit by MARIJPOL
installation views and drawings details at Fumetto, Luzern, March 2013
all images © wfw (unless otherwise stated)

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It’s that time of year again: A new edition of Fumetto, the International Comix-Festival in Luzern just started last weekend. As every year, Fumetto is presenting both national & international comic artists from the avant-garde and independent scene, including American artist ROBERT CRUMB, ANKE FEUCHTENBERGER from Germany, WARD ZWART (Belgium), and OLIVIER SCHRAUWEN (Belgium) among others.

The exhibition Emerit which showcases the work of German artist MARIJPOL is part of the most comprehensive exhibitions of the Festival. Featuring mural drawing, installation, ‘découpage’ and original works from her first book entitled Trommelfels (avant-Verlag 2011) and her brand new publication Emerit (avant-Verlag 2012),  MARIJPOL offers a playful and authentic insight into her surreal mythological comics.

The 30-year-old artist’s graphic work contains an abundance of absurd fantastic details that are truly refreshing in their ingenuity. Suspicious scientific experiments, protozoans and a lonely misanthrope with a head split by discord: all of them stand before the same oracle.

MARIJPOL lives and work in Hamburg, Germany where she is also doing other things with her hands besides drawing.

And good news: Fumetto is running through March 24, 2013 (make sure to check out the programme for the autograph sessions and the conferences).

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series of drawings by ANOUSHKA MATUS
presented during Fumetto* in Neubad, an old swimming pool which is now used as a creative hub for the city of Luzern
seen on Saturday, March 16, 2013
image © wfw

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*Fumetto is running through March 24, 2013

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ceramic sculptures by Swiss artist ADRIEN CHEVALLEY
seen at Plattform 13, Zürich
on Wednesday, March 13, 2013
image © wfw

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Evian Disease, 2012 by HELEN MARTEN
animation by ADAM SINCLAIR
digital 3D animation, 28 minutes, 46 seconds
courtesy the artist

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For those not familiar with HELEN MARTEN, she is a British artist based in London who graduated from the Ruskin School of Fine Art at Oxford University in 2008 and has since had several solo exhibitions, the most recent at Chisenhale Gallery in London (November 2012 – January 2013).

Evian Disease was especially created for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and presented during the Season II – Imagine the Imaginary (September 2012 -February 2013).

MARTEN explores the relation between our modern lifestyle and the organic environment we are living in. To this end, the spectator is lead to an internal journey of a collusion of shape, texture, colour, and sound narrated by 6 different voices; who state through a realistic description of a modern apartment, a cartoon model-less fashion show or an animated hand holding a cigarette to name a few- how humans perpetually protect themselves from nature with superficial artefact. - DELPHINE DESANE for Garage Magazine 

More generally, HELEN MARTEN‘s wide-ranging work, which includes installations, sculptures, and videos, is characterized by a burlesque questioning of ownership and dishonesty in materials, the relationship of object to artefact, and of package to product. The whole mixed with a viral use of iconic images, domestic objects, signs and popular references.

My list of materials could run for pages, ranging from spaghetti and foliage to silk-screened leather, tequila, and bent rebar. It’s pornographically tactile; there is so much saturation in the skin of it because the surfaces have traces of touch invested in them. The list is madly indulgent—an engorged yet stylized stuffing of substance. Because the majority of objects are recognizable, they have a weirdly slippery, slightly uncanny status that activates a process of slippage or breakdown: Things are continually folding in and around themselves. There’s a lot of density, but at the same time I hope the work possesses a kind of lightness; there are recognizable outlines and things we can index or name. There is a universal hook as each substance is translatable: pasta, keys, chairs—all things that add up to images with related functionalities, histories, or social temperatures. - HELEN MARTEN

Extensions (Elaboration No. 1), 2012
gelatin silverprint; 164.5 x 123 cm

Night Work, 2009
218 x 154cm & 80 x 165 x 40cm
matt gelatin silver print, steel, black acrylic glass

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Lake Erie from the Northwest, 2010
gelatin Silver print, 114 x 166cm

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installation view, P.A.N.O.R.A.M.A.
Office Baroque Gallery, Antwerp, 2010

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Lake Erie, 2010
MDF and steel, 91 x 30 x 73 cm

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The Great Lakes, 2010
linoleum (Laponia and Dark Bistre)
exhibition view at Office Baroque, Antwerp

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Suite (No. 1), 2007
31 x 38.3cm, matt, fibre-based gelatin silver print

Suite (No. I1), 2007
31×38.3cm, matt, fibre-based gelatin silver print

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Figure (Part VIII), 2008
selenium toned matt gelatin silver print, green acrylic glass
approx.170x107cm

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Figure (Part V), 2008
selenium toned matt gelatin silver print, brown acrylic glass
approx.120x107cm

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Figure (Part III), 2008
selenium toned matt gelatin silver print, green acrylic glass
approx. 340 x107cm

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Brocken (I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII), 2009
black american walnut, brass, steel
installation view at Fundação Leal Rios, Lisboa

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KORREKTUR (NNW; WNW; SW; SSH; SE; ENE; NE), 2010
B/W archival inkjet on Hahnemühle photo rag 310gsm paper, archival inks, pale, yellow acrylic glass; 109x130cm (print size)
installation view at Fundação Leal Rios, Lisboa

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Given, (or One to One), 2012/13
black & wellness Green linoleum (Template of interior floorplan of Duchamp’s last work, Étant Donnés : 1° la chute d’eau / 2° le gaz
d’éclairage)
installation view at Fundação Leal Rios, Lisboa

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Steppe, 2008
iron, black acrylic glass, steel rods
57x147x6cm

Trap (II), 2010
Archival Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag bright white 310GSM, 109cm x 135cm

installation view at Fundação Leal Rios, Lisboa

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Trough Box, 2010
oak, black glass, unique
130 x 18 x 18 and 132 x 20 x 20 cm

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Glen Herbert Gold, 2009
black American walnut, brass, green acrylic glass
147 x 57.2 x 62cm

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The Appearances of Penguins (Berlin Zoo), 2007
hand printed gloss fiber based gelatin silver print, 25 x 31,5 cm

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AUX (I) (Passive Voice), 2013
gelatin silver print, green Plexiglas

all images courtesy the artist (unless otherwise stated)

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After having deeply experimented with darkroom printing, British artist BECKY BEASLEY developed an interest in forms and use of language in relation to the photographs. For over ten years, her photographs and sculptures emphasize the complex relationship between these media and their subject matters.

BEASLEY mostly shoots her own sculptures, assemblages, and staged events and habitually conducts extensive research before setting her camera in a particular location.

These objects and photographs, as mute and minimal as they often appear, unexpectedly open onto literary worlds. Originating not only from fictional sources, but also in the objects and experiences of the everyday, the works are often imaginary abstractions, which nevertheless retain their original human dimensions. The earlier photographs are concerned with the body, typically dens and hiding places, structures which have been simply constructed out of found materials. Whether rigid or flexible, these shroud-like wrappings each propose, with a clear economy of means, the provisional transformation of two-dimensional materials and surfaces into volumes. - BECKY BEASLEY, 2011

Things are extended, questioned, designed, fabricated, photographed. The end result is a mystery environment  – weaving photography, sculpture, literature and personal references.

And good news: her work is currently on view at Spike Island, Bristol until March 31, 2013 and at Lisa Cooley Gallery in New York until March 17, 2013.

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a glimpse into Whatever Gets You Through The Night, 
a limited edition (only 50) posterzine created by MARC ZENHÄUSERN
featuring the work of ten different artists including BENOÎT BODHUIN, FABIAN UNTERNÄHRER, and OF THE HOLY BLOOD among others
more info here

image © wfw

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exhibition view from Artist’s Artist at Centre PasquArt in Bienne/Biel with the work by DAN GRAHAM, Anamorphic Surfaces (2007-2008), two-way mirror glass and perforated stainless steel, 230 x 460 x 460 cm

and by Swiss artist JEAN-FREDERIC SCHNYDER (in the background), Coucher de soleil sur le lac de Zug, 1-163 (1996), oil on wood, 21 x 30 cm

seen on Wednesday, March 6, 2013
image © wfw

Carlatides II, 1986
installation view at Centre PasquArt, Bienne, March 2013
image © wfw

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Carlatides II (detail), 1986
installation view at Centre PasquArt, Bienne, March 2013
image © wfw

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Carlatides II (detail), 1986
installation view at Centre PasquArt, Bienne, March 2013
image © wfw

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Fragment am Horizont (detail), 1999
plexiglas, Lifochrome, wood console

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Fragment am Horizont, 1999
plexiglas, Lifochrome, wood console

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Bruits de Surface, 1995
video projection on glasses filled with milk

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selected works from the series Zeichen der Veränderung (signs of change), 2001/02
silver dye-bleach process, 167 x 129 cm

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Dans le cadre des histoires… le reflet, 1997
black/white and ilfochrome photographs, 6 parts in metal frames
each: 96 x 258 cm

Dans le cadre des histoires… des chemins des oliviers, 1999
black/white and ilfochrome photographs, 6 parts in metal frames
each: 115 x 305 cm

Dans le cadre des histoires… d’Alcantara, 1997
ilfochrome photographs, 4 parts in metal frames
each: 120 x 210 cm

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both: La nuit des Temps, 1999
1185, 190 x 118 cm & 1070, 190 x 107 cm
photograph, white wax

all images courtesy the artist

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SILVIE DEFRAOUI is both a Swiss pionner of videos/multimedia art and an incredibly productive artist. Basically what you see above represents 0.1% of her work she created from 1975 with her husband CHERIF until his death in 1994.

From the end of 1970, they created their first video projects after having experimented with slide projections and Super 8 videos. Quite quickly they became known for projecting found imagery or personal documents onto a lot of surfaces and objects. Since then, they never stopped working on projects that involve the perceptual, narrative, and poetic possibilities by using technological arrangements to physically render the slippery nature of an individual perception and memory.

SILVIE DEFRAOUI continues to work with the couple’s long-term project which they called Archive du Futur (Future Archives), an evolving archive that contains their entire artistic output.

Good news: the work of SILVIE and CHERIF DEFRAOUI is currently part of the exhibition Artist’s Artist at Centre PasquArt in Bienne/Biel, Switzerland until April 7, 2013

Break my body, hold my bones, 2009

exhibition view at Le Spot, Le Havre, 2009

Happy house II, 2012
polystyrene, wood, rope, tape, painting, serreflex, gunny 250 x 100 x 15 cm
production La Salle de Bains, Lyon

Campagne/ Campagnes, exhibition view at Cortex Athletico, Bordeaux, 2013

A fist is fast and Jimmie’s cast Hang me, 2010
wood, polystyrene beam, basket ball ring, piano wires, painting, 250 x 60 x 30 cm

Hang Wire, 2010
piano keys, crossbar, curtains, pebbledash, painting, 200x250x350

Move on over here, slow it down, 2010
ropes, painting, coating, bars, parquet, partitions, railway crossbeam, ondobitume

Starving in the belly of a whale, 2009
Pine staircase, venetian blind strips, nylon security straps, paint, 300 x 400 x 145 cm

all images courtesy of STEPHANIE CHERPIN (unless otherwise stated)

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The works of French artist STEPHANIE CHERPIN inhabit space in a dramatic way by manipulating modest materials, textures, scales and subtle colors. Her works depart from wastelands, construction materials, post-industrial landscape and other undefined areas to offer a sculptural encounters between humans, technology, nature, the parallel experience of time and the spontaneous impulses that some places generate and embody.

Assembling her sculptures quickly and intuitively, they become distant memories of objects fusing creation and destruction rather than faithful constructions. Furthermore her installations actively engage viewers by drawing them among, and around obstacles in much the same way that the city does on a daily basis.

Her sculptures create tension, show their teeth, they deliberately obstruct the passage and trip us up, take over a space like weeds that one can never quite eradicate, they spill over and provoke, and in this sense evoke a multitude of parallels with grunge culture. - PAUL BERNARD

And good news: STEPHANIE CHERPIN‘s first monograph has just been released by Les Presses du Réel, more info here

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D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie, February – March 2013

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D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie, February – March 2013
installation view at Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013

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D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie, February – March 2013
installation view at Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013

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K log 2, Separating Wheat from Chaff #1, 2013
Marble, digital picture frame, material from portfolio, inkjet on clear adhesive vinyl, 43.2 x 63.5 x 2.5 cm

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D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie, February – March 2013
installation view at Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013

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installation view at Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013
all: tempered glass, hardware, inkjet on perforated vinyl, 153.7 x 241.3 x 38.1 cm

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installation view at Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013
all: tempered glass, hardware, inkjet on perforated vinyl, 153.7 x 241.3 x 38.1 cm

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D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie, February – March 2013
installation view at Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013

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The Intern as Phantom Limb (Back view.) 2013
Tempered glass, hardware, inkjet on perforated vinyl, drain hair, rapid prototype:scanned seaweed – Chelsea market, 158.8 x 246.4 x 38.1 cm

all images courtesy BEN SCHUMACHER

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I grew up in a rural area of Ontario, only seeing sculpture in magazine or on the internet. My first sculpture was actually made to be photographed, and then destroyed. After this I worked on sculpture that could be seen from one vantage point based on architectural restriction, so that the experience was similar to looking at a photograph. Many of my current sculptures are freestanding screens. (…) Digital printing on the screen inverts the implied silence of the material. The digital prints on screen become a surface used to further propel the documentation of a previous works, as well as an additive surface that allows flattened views of adjacent works in the room. – BEN SCHUMACHER in conversation with BOB NICKAS, Mousse Magazine 2012

Through images and sculptural installations, BEN SCHUMACHER explores the interstices of object and image along with diverse ways to conceptualize and present art, both in-situ and online. Clearly preoccupied with controlling the conditions in which his works are viewed (he also customizes the image documentation of all his sculptural output), he is also interested in the capacity of those conditions to challenge the authority of the images.

A few days ago, SCHUMACHER opened D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie, an exhibition at New York’s Bortolami gallery. The show includes architectural models, marble sculptures of cable management racks; lights made from reconfigured Ikea fixtures wrapped in handmade leather sleeves; a series of free-standing glass sculptures with three-dimensional composite prints and vinyl imagery; small figurative paintings; still packaged Ikea shelves set in plexi boxes with inserted rapid prototypes; functioning tablet screens set into marble slabs.

Additionally he collaborated with New York based architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro. An employee from the firm will work in the gallery for the duration of the show, restoring early models from competitions and realized projects. At the office of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, SCHUMACHER installed several works available to the public through images.

Both ‘presentations’ follow BEN SCHUMACHER‘s long-standing interest in the problematics of representation, image production and dissemination. All these different media feed off, reinforce, and disrupt one another, fashioning a composite landscape that reverberates with echoes and citations.

➝ D S + R and the bar at the Orangerie  is currently on view at Bortolami, New York and is running through March 30, 2013.

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Hobby, 2012 (wood, metal, jeans, foam, clay objects) and Standard Type, 2012 (inkjet print, handmade wood frames)
both by JAN KIEFER and part of his solo exhibition entitled Guaud*
at Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz (CH)
seen on Sunday, February 24, 2013
image © wfw

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 * on view until March 31, 2013

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installation view from “NO; NO;                                    H” by TOBIAS MADISON
as seen on Friday, February 22, 2013 at Kunsthalle Zürich
image © wfw

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this exhibition is running through March 23, 2013

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Moon, detail of video still, 2007

Untitled, 2012, digital C Print, dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist; Gavin Brown’s enterprise, NY; Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin

The Donut Gang, video still 2009

Untitled, 2012
Color pencil, chalkboard paint and inkjet print on paper
Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

photo: URI ARAN

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Goodnight Ned, 2011
Graphite, pen, ink jet print and spray paint, on archival paper
Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise

Curiouser and Curiouser: Uri Aran at Gavin Brown’s, 2012

Untitled, cereal box, sheet metal, polyurethane, wood stain, glue & chocolate, 2006-2012

Untitled, detail from “by foot, by car, by bus”, 2012, mixed media
Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York

Dogs and Cats, 2008, coconut, cup and saucer, trim, acrylic

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Untitled, 2010, computer drawing-ink jet print on paper

Untitled (Horse Drawing), 2010, courtesy of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Mother’s Tankstation

Untitled, 2010, book, glass, pencil eraser, and cookies

Untitled Drawing (for The Ascent of Man), 2009, computer drawing and mixed media on paper

Untitled (Bus), 2008 (detail), mixed media, dimensions variable

Untitled Drawing (for The Ascent of Man), 2009, computer drawing and inkjet on paper

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installation views at Kunsthalle Zürich
images © Stefan Altenburger Photography Zurich, 2013

Untitled, 2010, Inkjet print and pencil on paper

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I mean orange, installation views at Studiolo, June – July 2012
in collaboration with ELIZABETH NEEL

all images courtesy the artist

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Born in Israel and based in New York, URI ARAN works in different mediums, such as sculpture, drawing, and video, to investigate the relationship between particular material forms and narratives.

His installations often feature seemingly chaotic arrangements of found objects installed on tabletops. Appropriated images and familiar everyday objects – including, for example, eggs, bottle openers, passport photos, sawdust, Swiss army knives, cookies and pizza boxes – are humble objects that find their way into ARAN’s work: things that are part of a language of our shared experience of the world.

However absurd and surreal situations take place at a regular pace; collections of images, portraits next to animal pictures, plastic grapes, pizza boxes and wet cardboards, revealing that eventually the initial chaos is ordered into a multitude of meanings.

Good news: Kunsthalle Zürich is currently presenting here, here and here, the first comprehensive solo institutional exhibition by URI ARAN. The exhibition is on view until March 24, 2013.

Courtesy MIKE GOLDY

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That singular moment of synthesis- the artificial shutter release, where trend, product and lifestyle are conflated into singular representations- seems to go on and repeat forever; narratives expand, overlap, collapse and switch places. - MIKE GOLDBY

Toronto based artist and curator MIKE GOLDBY examines, through staged photographs, videos and sculptural installations, social network structures and how their image-making strategies are co-opted as vehicles for personal branding. GOLDBY considers the liminal space behind the lens and before the screen expanding in this way the experience involved in contemporary identity-construction and representation strategies that often go unspoken in today’s post-Internet conditions.

Jardin d’Hiver, 2013
plants, bamboo, concrete, rope, glass, metal, synthetic resin
installation view at Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland, February 2013
image © wfw

Jardin d’Hiver, 2013 (detail)
plants, bamboo, concrete, rope, glass, metal, synthetic resin
image © wfw

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Jardin d’Hiver, 2013 (detail)
plants, bamboo, concrete, rope, glass, metal, synthetic resin
image © wfw -

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Jardin d’Hiver, 2013 (detail)
plants, bamboo, concrete, rope, glass, metal, synthetic resin
image © wfw

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Jardin d’Hiver, 2013 (detail)
plants, bamboo, concrete, rope, glass, metal, synthetic resin
image © wfw

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Brazilian Gardens, 2013
photography, dia-show, glass, metall

Golden Horizon, 2013
glass, metall

installation view at Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland, February 2013
image © wfw

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Tropical Darkness, 2013 courtesy ADRIEN MISSIKA -

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In his first institutional solo exhibition – entitled A Walk In The Park – in the german part of Switzerland, ADRIEN MISSIKA orchestrated a landscape of plants, mirrored panels, projections, prints and architectures, arranged according to his very personal rules by which imagination and research, fact and fiction, reflected on each other and brought about a certain ambiguity, fascinating viewers and challenging them to question their own view of the world. Many references leapt out in this group of works – from Brazilian landscape architect and artist ROBERTO BURLE MARX* (1909-1994) to modernist architecture with its glass and steel constructions – but MISSIKA’s precision and reflection made things breathe in a way that was clearly his own.

My work is image-centered. It evolves as a permanent investigation through representation of the border between fiction and reality. I investigate the very classical field of landscape representation as compared to how humans shape landscape: through architecture. In between, you have archeology and geology. These are my interests in terms of content; I then apply these interests to a sort of image historiography. I build links and set up formal experiments. I focus in particular on collective memory (media history, societal values, etc.) and its influence on personal feelings or recognition processes (déjà vu). - ADRIEN MISSIKA for Kaleidoscope

The installation Brazilian Gardens (2013) offered a series of photographs of plants and gardens. They are shown on a display system of sculptural elements in the form of metal panels. MISSIKA has adapted this form of presentation from a system used in the botanical department of the Indian Museum in Calcutta.

Upstairs, in the skylight room of the Kunsthaus, Jardin d’Hiver (2013) comprised three bamboo towers supporting flower containers made of synthetic resin, six mirrored window panes, five flower beds and seven species of plants. For this installation, ADRIEN MISSIKA has transported BURLE MARX*’s codes of garden design into the museum space. For the construction of the bamboo towers, he is using the Asian knot technique of scaffolding, expanding the architectural space into a vertical dimension. This formal element is often used in compacted city planning as well as utopian concepts of vertical gardens and green cities. Further reminiscences to architecture are made with discarded, mirrored window panes from a modernist building, forming the horizon of the exhibition space. 

The process is different for almost every one of my projects. I build up rules for a work and apply them programmatically. On principle, I do not reveal the secrets of all steps in my process. I think my work should be autonomous at a certain level. It should speak for itself. I like the fact that it has several levels of reading and multiple points of entry. As a spectator, when I visit a show by an artist I really don᾽t know, I like the freshness of discovering this work with no established universe. Then I like to read what is proposed and confront my initial feelings and ideas. In the same way, I only reveal my process as a second layer, in a different temporality than that original observation. - ADRIEN MISSIKA for Kaleidoscope

ADRIEN MISSIKA successfully conferred sculptural qualities – a sense of physical density and formal panache – to each of the elements in this exhibition. Using photography and installation, he collected the elements of a landscape and confronted the visitor with a weird version of our own -artificial – sceneries.

What the artist invites us to look at is perhaps how the world as it is presented to us related to the world that our consciouness reconstructs. In this relationship, there is a form of infinite explorations of ‘the landscape as a states of mind**‘. – DENIS PERNET

➝ A Walk In The Park is currently on view at Kunsthaus Glarus and is running through May 5, 2013 -

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*Apart from numerous designs for public and private gardens and squares, such as the promenade in Copacabana or several public gardens in Brasilia and Sao Paulo BURLE MARX also designed six patios for the UNESCO building and sketched the terraces of the Centre Pompidou in Paris (not realized). He is seen as the founder of modern garden architecture, and worked often with the architects LUCIO COSTA, LE CORBUSIER and OSCAR NIEMEYER. His gardens are characterised by curved organic forms, creating the overall impression of an abstract painting. In Brazil, BURLE MARX used native plants. A total of 33 species were named after him. He cultivated the tropical plants that he collected on his expeditions and then used them for his gardens. The use of native plants was an innovation in Brazil at the time – until then Brazilian gardens had followed the European model, and European plants were used, gestures of cultural colonialism, but also exotic symbols in the tropical context.

**‘every landscape is a state of mind’- HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL, Fragments d’un journal intime (Paris: 1884)

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One Cubic Foot of California (2011) by ROBERT KINMONT
soil, Douglas pine wood, plywood, shovel, broom, drawing pencil

seen on the occasion of his solo exhibition at Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland
on Saturday, February 16, 2013
image © wfw

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view from the installation Full Participation (2012) by New Zealand-born SIMON DENNY for the group exhibition entitled SIMULCAST*
at Kunsthalle Palazzo in Liestal, Switzerland
seen on Friday, February 15, 2013
image © wfw

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*SIMULCAST features also the work of RICO SCAGLIOLA / MICHAEL MEIER along with STAN DOUGLAS and is running through March 10, 2013

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Globe, dye-sublimation print on polyester, 130cm x 195cm, 2013

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installation view at Future Gallery, Berlin, January – March 2013

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Bananaz, print on vertical blinds, 326cm x 242cm, 2013

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The Comfort Zone, HD video, 04:19, 2013

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Mia and Sunset, framed archival pigment prints on paper, 59.4cm x 42cm, 2013 

all images courtesy of OVAL OFFICE and Future Gallery, Berlin

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 (pronounced OVAL OFFICE) is a project by MIKKO GAESTEL and JAAKKO PALLASVUO, both individual artists in their own right. For their debut solo exhibition at Future Gallery in Berlin, they are showing an experimental approach, with works structured loosely around everyday rituals or cast from the curious ephemera collected from personal experiences. The whole is presented in the form of video and photography, equally pervaded by surreality, eeriness and absurdity.

Their work reminds me of what PAUL VIRILIO calls ‘Picnolepsy‘, a medical condition that, nonetheless, tells us about perception and time:

Suddenly, before me, new objects appeared, bizarre figures cut out, notched, a set of articulations has become suddenly visible and these observed objects were no longer banal, whatever, insignificant; they were on the contrary, diversified in the extreme. They were everywhere, all space, all the world was filled with new forms. They were nested in the hollows of the least forms. It was like an unknown vegetation that grew around me. Industrial objects without value provoked the appearance of objects temporarily given a great complexity. The position of things triggered new exotic forms, forms that escaped us despite their evidence. Accustomed as we are to trivial geometries, we perceive perfectly the circle, the sphere, the cube or the square, we perceive infinitely less well intervals, the interstices between things, between people. - PAUL VIRILIO, L’Horizon Négatif

Good news: OVAL OFFICE   is currently on view at Future Gallery in Berlin until March 2, 2013

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Homonynes II (green), 2012
coloured plaster

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Homonynes II (violet), 2012
Homonynes II (green), 2012
Homonynes II (brown), 2012
coloured plaster

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Homonymes II (brown splash), 2012
coloured plaster, private collection, London

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Homonymes II (yellow splash), 2012
coloured plaster

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Portrait I, 2012
installation view, Frac Aquitaine Bordeaux, 2012
photo: JEAN-CHRISTOPHER GARCIA

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Homonymes, 2010 (detail)

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Homonymes, 2010 (detail)

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Homonymes II,III & IV, 2010
plaster, installation view at Balice Hertling, March-May 2010

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installation view from Un’Espressione Geografica
at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino 2011
plaster, acrylic paint on paper

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installation view at Espace d’art 1m3, February-March 2011
image courtesy of 1m3, Lausanne

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work for the group show the exhibition le vertige de la moraine, strate III
at Espace d’art 1m3, Lausanne, July 2011
image courtesy of 1m3, Lausanne

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God Box N°1, 2 & 3, 2013
installation view at Kunsthalle Bern, February 2013
image: wfw

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God Box N°2, 2013 (detail)
installation view at Kunsthalle Bern, February 2013
image: wfw

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Ornaments N°1, 2 & 3, 2012-2013
mirror, wire
installation view at Kunsthalle Bern, February 2013
image: wfw

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Reproductions N°2, 3 & 4, 2010
wall painting, spray
installation view at Kunsthalle Bern, February 2013
image: wfw

all works courtesy ISABELLE CORNARO, Balice Hertling Paris & Francesca Pia Zürich (unless stated otherwise)

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Six questions by FABRICE STROUN to French artist ISABELLE CORNARO on the occasion of her new solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern:

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FABRICE STROUN: At Kunsthalle Bern, you will exhibit two sets of cast works, one horizontal the other vertical, which are collectively titled ‘Homonymes’. Most of the objects you are using to make these casts seem to come from a defunct era; old-fashioned tchotchkes found in someone’s attic or at the flea market.

ISABELLE CORNARO: They do indeed come from flea markets, which I visit without any pleasure. I dislike the slightly pornographic relationship to objects, half-sentimental, half-lecherous, that these kinds of places generate. The objects I select are domestic, decorative baubles (vases with ‘Oriental’ motifs, cheap glassware, Christmas decorations, etc.), outdated tools (rubber stamps, metronomes, old camera lenses, etc.), my own worn-out working tools (small varnished plinths, bits of bubble wrap, plaster, glass sheets, slides, etc.) as well as objects linked to money (coins, bills, poker chips, piggy banks, etc.) or to pageantry (perfume bottles, jewels, medals, lipsticks, etc.). There are rarely any direct human representations, only abstract, vegetable, animal and mineral motifs. All these objects are the product of semi-industrial labor (since none or very few of them are actually hand-made) and they articulate the values of a social class– which happens to be, most of the time, my own.

FS: Is this a way of bringing to the fore an autobiographical dimension in your work?

IC: No, not in this sense. It’s just that, having grown up with them, these objects are familiar. I know them intimately. The very first objects I ever used to make art are jewels that belonged to my mother. Not only did I have them at my fingertips, but I had also seen them in old photographs that date to a time when my parents were living in a former French colony. The jewels were made with local gold and diamonds, the very natural resources that got the French there in the first place. Today, the majority of the objects I work with would be copies of copies of precisely such jewels: surrogates.

FS: The use of this ideologically charged, depleted decorative aesthetic demarcates a semantic field that is very much your own. Your work seems relatively impervious to avant-garde citations or to the globalised pop culture so many of your contemporaries draw on.

IC: I find it difficult to work with pop culture because, in my opinion, it is already overflowing with meaning. Most importantly, pop tends to generate a positive, sentimental relationship to culture that I find unproductive. I prefer working with objects that make me ill at ease. This unsympathetic relationship to my source material creates a tension that I much prefer.

FS: Do you consider these casts as ‘models’ of something, or some process, or should we regard them more as ‘allegories’? And if so, allegories of what?

IC: I like the trope of an allegory since it describes an abstract relationship to the world and often calls for the use of figures. The cast object relates to two distinct fields of likeness: to the real objects that were used to make the casts, and to the abstract categories they represent.

FS: Are you talking about aesthetic categories of representation or art-historical ones, which relate more to technique?

IC: The categories I refer to are empirically defined, most often while observing different objects lying around my studio at a given time. For the horizontal Homonymes, for example, I identified three distinct families of objects: naturalistic objects (even when streamlined), ‘in the shape of’ a duck, a flower; etc., objects carved with decorative motifs, repeated and stylized, and objects sporting geometrical form– even if impure– that brought to mind a notion of abstraction. In other words, my categories were Naturalism, Stylization and Abstraction. A fourth cast was then made with all the ‘leftovers’.

FS: Once you have defined an ensemble of objects, what formal or processual principle presides over their assembly?

IC: It really depends on the series I am working on. As far as the ‘Homonymes’ are concerned, they are not so much composed as simply piled up. The absence of composition allows me to put aside my subjectivity, or at least my ‘sensibility’. This allows me to move from formal (or stylistic) to more categorical considerations. Here, the piles were thought of as ‘heaps’, following a functional rather than an aesthetic logic. By that I mean that spacing had to be sufficient for the technician to make the casts, with various heights so as to reveal the maximum detail, etc. One thing that really matters to me is that the cast is molded in a single take. It is a solidifying, a change of material state– meaning that all the objects used become a single mass; ‘drawn’ shapes, emerging from a formless block of matter. An important point of reference for me are 16th-century Mannerist grottos, where animals and flowers are sculpted in a mass that remains partly formless, or, rather, keeps its initial natural shapes. There are also other grottos where the entire stone is sculpted, including the parts that are supposed to be formless; ‘natural’ matter. The material and the manner in which it is used projects an image of reification, i.e. of death – the passage from a living, animated body to that of an object, that is to say, of a corpse.

➝ ISABELLE CORNARO‘s first monographic exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern is running through March 24, 2013.

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all images:
installation views and works from Haus der Braut at VI, VII, Oslo
courtesy of VI, VII, Oslo

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I’m gnawing the pencil, rearranging the desk, perspiring, perspiring, and at some point I realise I need to be more relaxed, permeable even; things are very close at hand; fey little office doodles, shop fronts, stickers I collected as child. In flow of my work, they’re extracted ready-mades. There is another aspect, it involves specialist processes and manufacturing techniques, searching these out is like making a kind of pilgrimage. You end up on the periphery of cities, in the bleaker of industrial estates, the companies around are called Velopex and Proformer and they don’t care a bit about you. -ELOISE HAWSER for ( n d ks )

Born in 1985 in London, ELOISE HAWSER received a BFA from Oxford University just before moving to Frankfurt where she studied at the Städelschule in TOBIAS REHBERGER‘s class.

Her sculptural practice is deeply concerned with the way things are made, and draws on a wide range of references, materials and processes that make up our industrial environment. For her current exhibition at VI, VII, Oslo entitled Haus der Braut (House of Brides), the works have evolved from a larger piece of sculpture, a detached roller door, pulled straight out of the high street: I had a kind of fantasy to turn it into a crude metallic sea, the interlocking slats are wave- like and rhythmic. Then there is a rosette helix pattern that she has extracted from the profile of roller door slats and that is rearticulated in several works, including silkscreen prints and a textile created on an industrial loom.

Intrigue to learn how roller doors are constructed reveal that each unit is composed of interlocking slats with scroll-like details that appear to be crafted and articulated by hand in an otherwise industrial process of production, lending them personal character that complicates their universality, and evokes physical and cultural intimacies between maker and object.

(…) The relations suggested by roller doors, between industrial forms with handmade touches, and an economy form of protection are at the crux of several new works by HAWSER that consider skins, industrial seduction and display, as well as legal and domestic terms of intimacy, physical constitutions, and the antiquated term ‘husband, ’ in relation to sculpture.

➝ Haus der Braut by ELOISE HAWSER is running through March 1, 2013 at VI, VII, Oslo

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from the series Absence…, 40×50 cm, 2013

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from the series Absence…, 40×50 cm, 2013

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from the series Absence…, 40×50 cm, 2013

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Transfert, 40 x 50 cm, 2012

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from the series Oh Danger Divin, 40×50 cm, 2012

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from the series Oh Danger Divin, 40×50 cm, 2012

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Blogueuse de mode, 50×40 cm, 2012

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Zone Balnéaire, 50×40 cm, 2012

all drawings © ROXANE LUMERET

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Get lost in ROXANE LUMERET‘s beautifully illustrated microcosms filled with rich colors, brilliant patterns, and a touch of slightly twisted sense of humour. Incredibly captivating, her drawings are vast and complex detailing everything from the apocalypse to the mundanities of everyday life.

ROXANE LUMERET studied Illustration at Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg. Her illustrations have been featured in the likes of Nyctalope Magazine, Article 11 and Tandem Publications. Additionally she founded an independent publishing house called Faucon Verger in 2011 and is part of the collective Dessins des Fesses. She has exhibited her work for the first time at Salon de Montrouge in 2012.

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Forms and Lovers, 2013
installation view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Courtesy the artist, © NORA RUPP, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

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Forms and Lovers, 2013
installation view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Courtesy the artist, © NORA RUPP, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

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Forms and Lovers, 2013
installation view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Courtesy the artist, © NORA RUPP, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

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Forms and Lovers, 2013
installation view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Courtesy the artist, © NORA RUPP, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

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Forms and Lovers, 2013
installation view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Courtesy the artist, © NORA RUPP, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

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Forms and Lovers, 2013
installation view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Courtesy the artist, © NORA RUPP, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

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Forms and Lovers, solo exhibition by CHRISTOPHER FÜLLEMANN
at  Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
from 26 January – 3 March 2013
poster by EMMANUEL CRIVELLI & CEDRIC RACCIO

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Forms and Lovers is CHRISTOPHER FÜLLEMANN‘s first solo exhibition at Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne. The Swiss artist, now based in California, transformed the first three rooms of the museum by installing both sensational and grotesque sculptures made of materials such as wax, Sagex, latex, foam and other synthetic materials.

Assimilating forms from the everyday such as seats, handles, and hooks, his works eschew minimalist reserve in favor of bold colors, sensual lines, and lyrical references to the human body. Additionally he likes to exploit the performative elements of sculpture: in the current exhibition, CHRISTOPHER FÜLLEMANN activates, through a brilliantly orchestrated spatial arrangement of his works, performative and self-reflective modes of perception in the viewers. His forms also appear to always be on the verge of being transformed into something else to further change their appearance.

The anthropomorphic appearance of my works, as much by their form as by their dimension, results from a desire to see these three-dimensional collages like performers. I hope that my sculptures produce a feeling of energy that can transcend their visual perception. - CHRISTOPHER FÜLLEMANN

Good news: Forms and Lovers, is currently on view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne until 3 March 2013

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Curator ASIAH PAYNE
into the solo exhibition of THOMAS KOENIG at Skopia, Geneva*
on Thursday, 31 January, 2013
image © wfw

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* the exhibition is running through February 16, 2013

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Mixed Ceramics n° 11 (2012, porcelain, stoneware, earthenware) by DANIEL DEWAR and GREGORY GICQUEL
as viewed at Graff Mourgue d’Algue, Geneva*
on Thursday, 31 January, 2013
image © wfw

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*on view until February 14, 2013

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The Family (2007) by Swiss artist MAI-THU PERRET
at the booth FMAC & FCAC (Fonds d’art contemporain de la Ville et du Canton de Genève) at the second edition of Art Genève
seen on Thursday, 31 January, 2013
image © wfw

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Une Mission Ephémère (One Ephemeral Mission), 1993
9 minutes, 35 mm color, music by BERNARD PARMEGIANI
co- Production : aaa  - La Sept/Arte – CNC

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Une Mission Ephémère is a 1993 animation directed by Polish animator PIOTR KAMLER with music composed by BERNARD PARMEGIANI. This was PIOTR KAMLER‘s final work from nine other short animations which combined techniques of animation, stop-motion, and early CGI and created during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1990s. The film won Best Animation at major animation festivals including Marly Le Roy in 1994, Annecy 1993, Banff (Canada) 1993 and Zagreb in 1994.

PIOTR KAMLER was born in Warsaw in 1936. He is a graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art. In 1959 he went to Paris to continue his art studies. It was there that he came into contact with Research Department at ORTF (directed by PIERRE SCHAEFFER) and began to collaborate with “concrete” musicians such as IANNIS XENAKIS on experimental shorts (musical abstract films and “fables”). The ORTF Research Department which was later taken over by INA, was a hothouse for talent, enabling diverse artists to carry out a large number of bold and innovative personal projects.

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found via 

Dramaticule, 2013
clay sand, photographic paper backdrops, fragments of clay pots
installation at T293, Rome, January 23 – March 2, 2013, photo: ROBERTO APA

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I mentioned SONIA KACEM before, but I’m bound to be mentioning her again since I like her work so much, so I am really excited that a new solo exhibition opened in Rome last week, in the new outpost of T293 gallery.

On the occasion of her first solo show at T293 the Swiss-Tunisian artist SONIA KACEM presents a site-specific installation in several volumes, evoking the fundamental issues related to sculpture and more specifically those of the dematerialization and the decomposition of classical forms.

Composed of clay sand, photographic paper backdrops and fragments of clay pots, the installation spreads along the lines to the vanishing point of the long corridor of the gallery. The mounds of dirt break up upon the flows of air and the passage of the audience, resembling a deserted plain; the “baroque” drape sags as gravity exerts its force; some sculptures made of photographic paper wither in a darkening process.

➝ Dramaticule is running through March 2, 2013.

Palm Trees, Corpus Christi #1, 2011

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Palm Trees, Corpus Christi #2, 2011

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Footnotes: Frontier (2009), 2011

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The Park: Dog (2010), 2012

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Footnotes: Kate (2011), 2011

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Footnotes: Unknown, Jackson (2009), 2011

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The Park: Palm Trees Accident #1, 2012

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The Park: Speak Your Truth, 2010

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Palm Trees, Corpus Christi #3, 2011

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Bag, 2010

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The Park: Footnotes, 2012
pick up, Austin, 2009

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Foonotes: Josh (2009), 2011

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The Park: Palm Trees Accident #3, 2012

all images © SYLVAIN COUZINET-JACQUES

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Last weekend I came across the work of SYLVAIN COUZINET-JACQUES during the portfolio viewing entitled Plat(t)form which takes place every year during three days at Fotomuseum in Winterthur.

SYLVAIN COUZINET-JACQUES is a french photographer who questions digital photography and photographic representation since 2010. His research focuses on the perception, atmosphere, texture, suggestion and (re)-construction of an image. The result is almost all in gradations of black and white, and the subject matter often consists of ambiguous recordings of city views, urban landscapes, spaces, objects and bodies.

The photographs have a snapshot-like, ephemeral quality, while each image builds a very subjective vision of reality in which objects, matter and representation are melted. Furthermore his use of extreme lightening and darkening makes for an atmosphere of uncertainty and indeterminacy, sometimes even evolving into the realm of complete abstraction.

Good news: his work is currently on view at Galerie Mad in Marseille until 2 February, 2013. Additionally he will be part of the Salon de Montrouge from 16 May to 12 June, 2013.

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videos from the fantastic immersive video installation entitled Double Extension Beauty Tubes (2008-2010) by RICO SCAGLIOLA & MICHAEL MEIER
as part of the exhibition Young People, Set 9 from the Collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur*
seen on Saturday January 26 at Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Scagliola/Meier

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* this exhibition is running through February 10, 2013

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detail from MANDLA REUTER‘s solo exhibition* at Kunsthalle Basel,
explored on Tuesday, January 22, 2013
image © wfw

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* the exhibition is running through March 10, 2013

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Formage de Tête, 2011
aluminium, silicon, stainless steel, lacquer, cast iron
installation view at Venice Biennale, 2011

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Formage de tête (Capot seul), 2011
aluminium, silicon, stainless steel, lacquer, cast iron

Waste Basket (bin for rejected ideas), 2009
wire mesh and rubber
115.01 cm x 59.99 cm x 62.99 cm

Formage de tête, installation view, Galerie Daniel Buchholz 2011

NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN by GIOVANNI HÄNNINEN, 2011

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Fluffing the Pillows A (Mooring, Gurneys, Silos), 2012
casted painted aluminium, fabric, rubber, pleather, hemp rope, chromed pole
dimensions installed variable
installation view at Galerie Buchholz Köln, 2012

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Fluffing the Pillows A (Mooring, Gurneys, Silos), 2012
installation view at Galerie Buchholz Köln, 2012

Advertising Format, 2009
blown glass, silicon, gallery light fitting and label

Pubic Region, 2009
mixed media installation
courtesy of the artist and Studio Voltaire, London
photo: ANDY KEATE

Class Reunion, 2008
installation view Contemporary Art Gallery
photo: SCOTT MASSEY

Class Reunion, 2008
Heins Schürmann Collection, Herzogenrath
photograph: RAPHAEL HEFTI

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Butcher, Barber, Angler & others 2009 (detail)
mixed media installation
Courtesy of the artist and Studio Voltaire, London
© 2010 Nairy Baghramian, photograph: ANDY KEATE

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Installation views from RETAINER, 2013
on view at SculptureCenter, New York
photos: JASON MANDELLA

all images courtesy the artist

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The SculptureCenter in New York just opened a few days ago the first exhibition in a major public institution in the US by NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN. An excuse to discover the work of the Berlin-based artist known for her sculptural installations and photographs.

NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN employs interior design, literature, and art-historical debates around minimalism to comment on materiality, manufacture, and display. Her work examines political and social systems of power, encompassing questions of context, institutional framing, and the production and reception of contemporary art. For her, exhibition spaces are conceptual structures as much as they are habitable buildings. Their historically determined design and layout become both reference and structure of the work.

She was born in Isfahan, Iran in 1971, and has lived and worked in Berlin since 1985. Baghramian’s recent exhibitions include a solo show at the Vancouver Art Gallery, a two-person show with PHYLLIDA BARLOW at Serpentine Gallery in London, and solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Kunstverein Aachen, and Kunstverein Nürnberg. Her work has been featured in several major international exhibitions including Sculpture Project Münster (2007), the Berlin Biennial (2008), Illuminations at the 54th Venice Biennial (2011), the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (2011) and Temporary Stedelijk 2, Stedelijk Museum(2011). BAGHRAMIAN was awarded the 2012 Hector Kunstpreis, which included an artist publication and an exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim.

And good news: the exhibition RETAINER (images above) by NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN is running through March 25, 2013 at SculptureCenter in New York.

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Mit angewinkelten Beinen, performance and installation, 2012
exhibition views at Kunstmuseum Olten, september-november 2012
all image courtesy the artist and kunstmuseum Olten
photos: STEFAN ROHNER

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For her exhibition entitled Mit angewinkelten Beinen (with squatting legs) at Kunstmuseum Olten in Switzerland a few months ago, KATJA SCHENKER developed a new site specific performance/installation and a show of her work.

KATJA SCHENKER is best known for her performances which cleverly combined physical strength, material and physical forces in a live situation. This new work is no exception: after having covered the exhibition space (which comprised two floors) with a multitude of plastic bags, the floors have been flooded with a mixture of concrete and clay balls. Materials merged and consolidated.

This sea of concrete provided a perfect introduction for her performance where she transported sponges soaked with red, orange and yellow ink from the first floor to the second floor of the kunstmuseum, and thus leaving traces on this soft and moving lunar landscape.

The result had a strong experiential character which emphasizes the artist’s preoccupation with the body and performance – along with her continued interest in material exploration.

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Le Dévaloir launched a few days ago their online archive…an opportunity to tell you how much I love this swiss bimonthly fanzine  – the vision, the incredible artworks, the interviews and the perspective on printed matter
image © wfw

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exhibition view from A Matter of Time and Space at W139 in Amsterdam
with the work of DANIELA BERSHAN, MONICA TORMELL and BAS DE BOER (see above) along with MATTHIJS BOSMAN, NEW SCULPTURE DEPARTMENT (KEES BOEVE, LORENZO QUINTANILLA, MARC BARREDA), and ANNE VERHOIJSEN
as viewed on Sunday 6 January, 2013
image © wfw

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design for silkscreen sweatshirts for Monopol, January 2013

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design for silkscreen sweatshirts for Monopol, January 2013

all images courtesy MARTIN EDER

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I don’t know what’s provocative about my work. I’m painting things that are absolutely ordinary, like a naked human or a house pet. Where’s the problem? What’s provocative about these things? If I were painting a bunch of hanged people, people wouldn’t be interested. But a pet, yes a pet, is apparently provocative. – MARTIN EDER for I Love You Magazine

Born in 1968 in Augsburg, the German artist, musician and photographer MARTIN EDER is a lapsed Conceptualist who enjoys working with his hands alternating layers of sincerity, irony and fantasy. At first glance, his works look provocative but the more you see of them, the more they seem to relate to normality, to life around us in all its ambiguity, its inscrutable differences in value, its heterogeneity and simplicity. All this is formed around the chimeras of his imagination, and this makes his work strangely fascinating.

He has a feel for the space between photography, thrift-store painting, pinup-girl posters and old-school punk nihilism. And he’s a great technician. But combining images of racy young things with cute animals is blatant to the point of banality and gives you little more than tinsel to think about. (This was done far better 20 years ago by painter WALTER ROBINSON.) Mostly, EDER‘s work is so gaudy and brazen that it brings to mind disavowed German neo-Expressionists like HELMUT MIDDENDORF and RAINER FETTING. – JERRY SALTZ via artnet

Make sure to watch this great interview of MARTIN EDER in his Berlin studio thanks to Gestalten! Additionally the current issue (january) of Monopol Magazine is dedicated to MARTIN EDER.

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all images © FACUNDO PIRES

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Buenos Aires-based photographer FACUNDO PIRES explores the mechanics, limits, and intricacies of photography in order to create vibrant visual experiments filled with eerily familiar typologies of colors, shapes, and subjects. His practice embraces digital and analogue, ready-made and photography, photoshop and failing machinery.

Some of my images consist in the photographic record of public space intervention, likely displayed on abandoned, torn apart places I would not see again (and hence I’ll miss any eventual public reception to it). Other times I work right away with broken printers, with their heads overloading ink in the reprinting of several images superimposed; random-work failed machinery standing as a counterpoint to the surgical perfection of digital devices. Intendedly I leave some photographs outdoors for several days, then I look back on them; the exposure of the materials to weather phenomena as time goes by in an uncontrolled environment challenges and my creation skill and thrills my ideas of control over my own production. – FACUNDO PIRES for Triangulation

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Heavy Hand, exhibition view at Standard Oslo, January 2013
headrest, synthetic leather, aluminium, plastic and granite

image courtesy Standard Oslo

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For her second solo exhibition at STANDARD (OSLO) which just opened last week, Danish artist NINA BEIER has continued her sculptural explorations with a series of totem-like sculptures using headrests from chairs or car seats and granite.

She frequently joins together every day objects and materials in an inseparable union/installation that questions hierarchies of display and value, content and frame, and the implicit contradictions in process, practice and presentation.

BEIER’s works don’t just invert the interrelations between objects as representatives of different cultural classifications and their corresponding values, rather they create an oscillation between the two and an undecidability that renders the relationship itself central.

➝ Heavy Hand is currently on view at Standard, Oslo and is running through February 16, 2013.

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Browns In Full Colour, 2012
exhibition view at Jonathan Viner, London

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Sebums (a,b,c,d), 2012
Annodised aluminium, vacuum-formed plastic

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Soho Fats, 2012
polystyrene, aluminum, powdercoated steel and fixings, 240 x 122 x 12 cm
exhibition view at Jonathan Viner Gallery, London

Public Material, 2011
vacuum-formed plastic, public amenity panelling, alumium and neoprene foam

Stiff Peaks, 2009
Back to the Drawing Board (Stiff Peaks)
Vacuum formed plastic, stainless steel, rock salt and chopping boards

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from Hotel Palenque (2012) at GalleriesGoldstein, London

Public Work 1, 2009
Stainless Steel and clear vinyl, 62 x 165 x 16 cm

Soleil Pourri, 2013
Hand blown glass, shellaced aluminum frame, 75 x 56 cm

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Salts , 2012
vacuum formed plastic, powder coated aluminium, neoprene foam and machine screws, 100 x 70 x 20 cm
Vanille , exhibition view at Galerie Chez Valentin, Paris, January-March 2012

all images courtesy the artist and their respetive galleries

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Born in France NICOLAS DESHAYES graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2009. Since then, he never ceases to explore the capacities of painting, playfully toying with the medium’s surface using selected materials - such as stainless steel and PVC – and industrial processes.

His practice occupies the liminal space between two-and-three dimensionality, between pictures and objects and convey a sophisticated research on minimalism encompassing elements drawn from the history of painting, as well as from visual culture at large.

I create hybrid sculptures that gather multiple familiar cultural and stylistic references in a way that leads to a strange sense of hyper-materiality.

And good news: NICOLAS DESHAYES‘ work can be seen in The Glass Show at Jonathan Viner in London until 16 February, 2013.

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Simple Present #131 (Madrid), 2007

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Simple Present #495 (London), 2010

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Simple Present #514 (Mumbai), 2011

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Simple Present #512 (Mumbai), 2011

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Simple Present #209 (Cape Town), 2008

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Simple Present #489 (Shanghai), 2010

all images © BERT DANCKAERT

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Simple Present is an ongoing series started in 2006 by Belgian photographer BERT DANCKAERT. For this series he traveled to big cities, preferably megacities, throughout the world in order to document what he calls the ‘heedless space in a global context‘.

From a formal perspective, colors, geometric shapes, and spatial relationships, each image offers a different meaning and interpretation of the elements that surround us and plunges the viewer into the matter of diverse surfaces, patterns and orders within the ordinary space. This work reminds us of the work of certain abstract painters.

The bizarre cityscapes of BERT DANCKAERT deal with the same paradox of abstractive simplicity and a complexity of meaning and metaphor. DANCKAERTs still lives breathe a superficial flavour, a strangeness that is found in the familiar. Coincidental installations of sidewalks, walls and street furniture refer more to minimalist art than to conventions of street photography. In these absurd scenarios a recognizable, all too banal reality appears stage-set, props and trompe-l’oeil included, while the actors are absent. – INGE HENNEMAN, curator of the Antwerp Photo Museum

And good news: Simple Present by BERT DANCKAERT will be on view at Stieglitz 19, Antwerp from 26 January (opening 26 January) to 3 March 2013

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Christmas Tree, 2010-2012
all images © GABRIEL MAURON

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Yesterday an exhibition of swiss photographer GABRIEL MAURON opened up at Galerie Ruine in Geneva.

Entitled Christmas Tree, the show features a series of pictures of fallen Christmas trees lying on the sidewalk as you can see through the beginning of the new year in every streets or vacant lots. The trees had been stripped of ornaments and lay there sadly like dead soldiers after losing a battle. A week before they were kind of heroes.

The exhibition Christmas Tree continues until the 12th of January at the Galerie Ruine in Geneva (Monday-Friday: 18h-20h30, Saturday: 11h-18h00).
  

detail from End on Mouth, 2007 by YAEL DAVIDS
designed by MEVIS & VAN DEURSEN
as viewed at Kunsthalle Basel, October 2011
image © wfw

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We survived 2012 alright,
let’s start 2013,
wild kisses,

sophie

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Morgenlied (Morning Song), an exhibition by LATIFA ECHAKHCH and DAVID MALJKOVIĆ, installation view at Kunsthalle Basel, April 2012
image © wfw

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Another significant exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel for 2012: Morgenlied (Morning Song), an exhibition, by LATIFA ECHAKHCH and DAVID MALJKOVIĆ, named after the title of a poem by JOHANN WOLGANG VON GOETHE from 1773.

LATIFA ECHAKHCH presented a new site-specific work consisting of a monumental painting executed in black ink on the skylight of the exhibition space. Croatian artist DAVID MALJKOVIĆ employed a reduced formal vocabulary of Modernism in a specially built display structure which served as a frame for several works.

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Untitled, 2012
Plexiglas, asbestos stone
for the Project Room #10 at Crac Alsace Altkirch, June 2012
image © wfw

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In June 2012, I discovered the brilliant work of French artist CAPUCINE VANDEBROUCK at Crac Alsace Altkirch (France) where she presented her sculptural pieces using the inherent qualities of construction and raw materials.

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all images from the series Wasteland by MYR MURATET, 2010-ongoing
exhibition view at Granges Verdan Bienne/Biel, September 2012
image © wfw

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During the whole month of September, the 16th Biel Festival of Photography and its 23 exhibitions offered new reflections on contemporary photography in the age of new media. For this occasion, French photographer MYR MURATET - previously featured on wfw – presented his series Wasteland (2010-ongoing).

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Charlotte, an exhibition by STEPHANE DEVIDAL and NICOLAS PARTY
at Espace Doll in Lausanne, October 2011
image © wfw

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We can always do with some more works by Swiss artists STEPHANE DEVIDAL and NICOLAS PARTY to finish the year, especially when it involves tattoo designs and straight patterns.

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Aftermath 2, 2011 by ALISON WILDING
crystacal, wood ash and cast resin balloons, 28.5 x 38 x 16.5 cm
as viewed at Art Basel 43, Halle 2.0, booth NewArtCentre, June 2012
image © wfw

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This year, as any year, the 43rd edition of Art Basel and its attendent parties, events, and satellite fairs— gave the art world an eyeful. For those of you who couldn’t make it to Switzerland, there are plenty of photos from the fairs via the wfw flickr or the art basel diary.

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MICHAEL RIEDEL, Kunste Zur Text
exhibition view at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, July 2012
image © wfw

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Thanks to a bloggers meeting organized by the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, I had the opportunity this summer to view Kunste Zur Text, the first retrospective of German artist MICHAEL RIEDEL at the Schirn Kunsthalle as well.

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performance by ADALINE ANOBILE,
during the opening of Allotopies I, II & III by Swiss artist RUDY DECELIERE,
in the abbey church of Bellelay, Switzerland, June 2012
image © wfw

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Every summer, the abbey church of Bellelay in Switzerland receives a major art exhibition. For this year’s edition, swiss artist RUDY DECELIERE created an amazing sound installation composed essentially of silvery seed heads of Annual Honesty hanging by 1122 copper threads. For this occasion Swiss dancer ADALINE ANOBILE presented a performance which explored visual perception, architectural acoustics, and narrative with the help of a large piece of white paper.

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ARA! ARA!, 2012 by TOBIAS MADISON and EMANUEL ROSSETTI
59 x 40 x 19 cm, mixed media
for the exhibition TCCA at Kunsthalle Bern, October 2012
image © wfw

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TOBIAS MADISON and EMANUEL ROSSETTI teamed up with friends (such as CALLA HENKEL, MAX PITEGOFF, MELANIE MERMOD or SERGEI TCHEREPNIN among others) for the exhibition entitled ‘TCCA, NEW THEATER 2012-2013, APN Research, autoslides #1-3, shindisi home videos, the deleted scene, a fanzine as a museum /a museum as a fanzine, cut-out bin / apnegative, sci-fi sounds from the alienated kitchen, OOO &&& LLL, hc r 1′ shown at Kunsthalle Bern this autumn.

detail from Wall of Masques (2012), enamelled ceramics
image © wfw

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For The Eternal Detour cycle summer sequence 2012 (June-September 2012) at MAMCO Geneva, French artist SYLVIE AUVRAY presented her most recent work which included masks, sculptures, paintings and drawings.

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Love Letters III, acrylic on canvas, 2011 and Love Letters IV, acrylic on canvas, 2011
costumes for the dance piece Love Letters in Ancient Brick, 2011 (by LIGIA DIAS)

exhibition view at Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, September 2011
image © wfw

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Winner of the “Zurich Art Prize” 2011, swiss artist MAI-THU PERRET presented on this occasion a solo exhibition entitled I dream of the code of the west at Haus Konstruktiv in Zürich which ran from August to September 2011.

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Sous le vent, 2012
bureau sacha von der potter, in collaboration with CELIA SOZET
exhibition view at Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, September 2012
image © wfw

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It’s vacation time!
And for the break, I put together a little selection of photos that have never been published. All along the week, you’ll get to see some pretty cool stuff I saw this year!

Tokyo Santa by PAUL MCCCARTHY, 1996
performance photograph, courtesy: the artist
photo: MITSURU TANASHI

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Dear Internets,

I wish you a wonderful holiday filled with love, delicious food and great art,
Oh, and I just wanted to tell you a big bright thank you for another year of support, insight, and readership,

Merry Christmas and a wild 2013!

KISS KISS KISS

Sophie

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Untitled, 1994
oil on cardboard, courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London

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all images: installation views THEA DJORDJADZE – our full at Malmö Konsthall 2012
photo: HELENE TORESDOTTER

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I mentioned THEA DJORDJADZE before, and I am bound to be mentioning her again since her new solo exhibition opened at Malmö Konsthall in Sweden a few weeks ago.

Entitled Our Full, the show expands on DJORDJADZE signature style of creating sculpture, blurring the lines of the medium and merging with installation. Like for her previous works, a few sparse elements of sculpture, painting, and architecture are connected to form a rudimentary space that is determined by a concentrated pictorial logic and by references to the modernist language.

And good news: the exhibition will continue to Kunstverein Lingen Kunsthalle, Germany and Mudam Luxembourg. Meanwhile, Our Full is currently on view at Malmö Konsthall until January 27, 2013.

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all images © FANNY SCHLICHTER

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French photographer FANNY SCHLICHTER has recently updated her website, and it is full of gems like these. With a combination of nature, women’s bodies and still lifes, she’s able to come up with beautiful photographs that will leave you wanting more, spend some time here and her tumblr too!

Untitled, 2011, headlights, 45x 30 x 15 cm
image: AURELIEN MOLE, Courtesy Galerie Alain Guthar

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exhibition views at MAMCO, Geneva, 2006

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Untitled, 2012, McDonald boxes, rebar, 75 x 60 x 38 cm
exhibition view at Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris, october – december 2012
La fiancée du pirate #2, 2012, exhaust pipe, plastic
La fiancée du pirate #2, 2012,  exhaust pipe, plastic
exhibition view at Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris, october – december 2012

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Untitled, 2011, play shed, exhaust pipe, 300 x 260 x 144 cm
image: LAURENT LECAT – Galerie Edouard Manet, Gennevilliers, Courtesy Galerie Alain Gutharc

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Rendez-vous !, 2008, phone boxes and melted containers

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Ondulox, 2007, ondulines, exhaust pipe, clothes, film étirable, wood
Ondulox, 2007
Ultime caillou, 2009, stacks of polypropylene, rubbish, 60 x 130 x 140 cm
image: LAURENT LECAT – Galerie Edouard Manet, Gennevilliers, Courtesy Galerie Alain Gutharc
La Crouuute #1, 2010, polystyrene, 146 x 140 x 35 cm, image: LAURENT LECAT – Galerie Edouard Manet, Gennevilliers, Courtesy Galerie Alain Gutharc
exhibition view at CAC Passages, April-June 2012,  image: LAURENT LECAT – Galerie Edouard Manet, Gennevilliers, Courtesy Galerie Alain Gutharc
exhibition view from Prequel at MAMCO, Geneva (17 october 2012 – 20 january 2013)
image: ILMARI KALKKINEN

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In ANITA MOLINERO’s Prequel, a wonderful new exhibition now on view at MAMCO in Geneva, the french artist revisits a group of works which plunges us into scenery with sci-fi tones and its astonishingly mutant, monstrous but always fictitious materials.

When working with materials such as plastic, I sometimes feel that I am creating fossils for the future - ANITA MOLINERO

Her sculpture are abundant, theatrical, unexpected, absurd, puzzling and humorous, some make you exult, others lead you onto the wrong path. With industrially produced materials like metal, plastic or rubber that she melts and deforms, ANITA MOLINERO creates sculptures that seem to come from a different reality. Weird plastic objects in an indefinable form lie on the floor or hang on the ceiling and confront the viewer with everyday rubbish such as post-apocalyptic rests with an element of gesture and humanness within them. All of her works seem to represent a deep insight into a personal space as well as to form a statement on a collective knowledge.

The metaphor of hysteria structures my sculpture and strikes me as much more creative, for it not only transcends but also dispossesses the self, rather than taking stock of it and cultivating it, as the metaphor of neurosis does.

And good news: Prequel is on view from october 17, 2012 until january 20, 2013, at MAMCO, in Geneva

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a glimpse into the last issue – entitled Lemon Appeal – of IRÈNE, an erotic fanzine created in 2011 by GENEVIÈVE ELIARD, ESTHÈLE GIRARDET AND LUCIE SANTAMANS, three young French women based in London

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We Can All Agree (1997), sound installation (music: Nirvana ‘Lithium’ and Bikini Kill ‘Feels Blind’) and wall painting by American artist EDY FERGUSON
as viewed at Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva on Friday December 14, 2012
image © wfw

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Edy Ferguson. Selected Works. 1990 – Present is on view until February 3, 2013 at CAC Geneva

An ABC Film, 2010, 21 min

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For the short film An ABC Film (2010), French artist ELÉONORE SAINTAGNAN spent one month a few years ago in the Regional Natural Park of Ballons des Vosges where she met the inhabitants of several villages and travelled all over the spectacular landscape in the Alsace region of France.

This film – like the rest of her work – is difficult to classify although she’s using the tools and the figures of contemporary documentary cinema. She rather creates assemblages somewhere between reality and fiction, documents and experimentations, and in which she collects portraits of people from unnoticed communities, exploring random regions and picking atypical ways of life.

And good news:  An ABC Film (2010) by ELÉONORE SAINTAGNAN is currently part of the exhibition Trois Fois Rien at Centre Calouste Gulbenkian, Paris until 15 december 2012.

ELÉONORE SAINTAGNAN, born in Paris in 1979, currently lives and works in Brussels.Her work has been exhibited and shown in several art centers and institutions, including at the Palais de Tokyo, at the Wiels Museum, in the Cinema of the Centre Pompidou, at the Beaux Arts Museum of Tourcoing, and for the « Salon de Montrouge » where she received the Curator Prize for the young artists european biennale. Her films were selected, for example, at the International Short films Festival of Clermont-Ferrand and Coté Court Pantin, at Hors Pistes festival and Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, and FIDLab Marseille 2012.

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Optical Poem, 1938, 07:09
, color
by OSKAR FISCHINGER
music: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by FRANZ LISZT

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In a couple of days, a major exhibition on the work of OSKAR FISCHINGER (1900-1967) will open at EYE, Film Institute Netherlands in Amsterdam.

OSKAR FISCHINGER was indeed an avant-garde filmmaker, emerging from the Absolute film movement in Berlin in the 1920s, who explored time, animated motion and music through more than fifty films and animations.

Entitled Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967): Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction, the exhibition features his earliest experiments and inventions, his most important films and many original never previously exhibited animation drawings. This is supplemented by paintings, notated music scores and documents. Additionally the exhibition includes Raumlichtkunst (ca. 1926/ 2012), Center for Visual Music’s new restoration* and recreation of FISCHINGER multiple projector performances of the 1920s, presented as a three-screen installation.

The exhibition opens on Saturday 15 December and will run through March 17th 2013!

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*you can help with the preservation and digitization of OSKAR FISCHINGER’s films, more infos here

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© LARS TUNBJÖRK

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LARS TUNBJÖRK‘s photographs are impossible to pull away from. While his subjects range from his native country’s suburban landscapes, to portraits of office spaces and political coverages of U.S. elections, his pictures always reveal a fresh and striking way of looking at the world.

Especially in my older work, I was looking for strange, absurd situations, going on endless tours to festivals, campgrounds, and shopping centers. If I found an interesting place, I could stand there for hours, waiting. I often get asked if my pictures are staged. They are not, but I always try to be very visible as a photographer, and I don’t know how much I influence a situation, just by having a camera. – LARS TUNBJÖRK in conversation with MARIA LOKKE

And good news: you still have a few days (until 15 december 2012) to view Vinter by Swedish photographer LARS TUNBJÖRK at Swedish Photography in Berlin. Also, look out for a new book entitled L.A Office which will be released by MACK in January 2013.

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Wallpaper (Hommage to John Allen), 2012 by VALENTINA STIEGER
shown as part of the exhibition No Man Is An Island at Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel
on view until January 7, 2013
image © wfw

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Ostende (after James Ensor), 2011 by swiss artist DENIS SAVARY
as viewed on Friday, December 7, 2012 at Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland
image © wfw

all videos: BlackBerry Paintings, 2010-2012 (ongoing)
© MILTOS MANETAS

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MILTOS MANETAS is a greek painter, digital artist and theorist currently based in Rome. A pioneer of internet and videogame art, MANETAS is the founder of Neen, an Internet-based art movement, introduced in May 2000 at the Gagosian Gallery in NYC. Through his electronicOrphanage platform, he has put together projects such as the WhitneyBiennial.com (2002) and the first Internet Pavilion of the Venice Biennial (PadiglioneInternet, 2009).

MANETAS is currently working on a series of invisible paintings (Blackberry Paintings) that challenges the concept of reality using one of today’s most widespread means of communication: a smartphone.

There is a fundamental error in painting-in every school of painting- that has existed until today: we are always painting on a plane that’s different from the plane of reality. We either paint on a canvas or some other support that is positioned in parallel or in front of the world, we never paint over reality itself, we never paint reality.

That was to change for me after I had a recent accident in 2010, when I went down 40 meters from the top of a rock on my back with a little tree, finally saving my life. After a month of immobility in the hospital, I returned to that same place where I had the accident and I rent a little house there. Waiting to recover completely, I had my colors and canvasses brought there but I couldn’t paint: regular painting just didn’t seamed a good idea anymore. Finally, one day that I took a brush and without any color on it, I started “painting” over the landscape. I felt that I was making an invisible painting. A few days after my “discovery”, I keeping my Blackberry on my left head, I start filming whatever it was that I was painting. A Blackberry and a brush was now all that I needed for a studio. That’s how the BLACKBERRY PAINTINGS were born and from that moment, I decide to continue my life by painting it at the same time. – MILTOS MANETAS for Purple

And good news: MILTOS MANETAS. After Blackberry Paintings is currently on view at Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Rome until December 30, 2012

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