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text from the solo exhibition of SAÂDANE AFIF entitled La-bàs
seen at Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland
on Sunday, November 16, 2014
image © wfw

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l’âge d’or, exhibition view at salts, Birsfelden / October-December 2014
photography: GUNNAR MEIER

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This is a view from the first solo exhibition of PAULINE BEAUDEMONT presented currently at salts in Birsfelden (Basel).

Entitled l’âge d’or, the show is centered around a video called ‘If you put a roof…‘ (2012) which features a dancehall queen performing some repeated movements in The Maison Blanche, the first house of Le Corbusier built for his parents in 1912 in his home town in Switzerland. This piece – as well as the new works especially created for salts – is made up of fragments in which elements of baroque, humor, sensuality and insolence are interwoven. The whole installation witnesses a profound investigation of modernism in popular culture.

Be sure to catch the show in person before it closes on December 8, 2014. You can also watch the video online here.

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You use the term “secret” but “each secret has an emitter and a receiver, meaning someone who the secret is meant for but who mustn’t know it.” Who is the receiver in this case? Who do you let in on the secret and whom do you exclude?

The person whom I never deceive and who is my partner in crime is the curator; unless the piece is about them like my recent ‘jung28’ (Festival des Urbaines, 2013). As for whom the pieces are meant for, they’re obviously for the audience. But not necessarily the immediate audience since they’re not always aware of all the elements of the piece right as it’s happening. I’m thinking more of the later audience, the ones who think about the situation in a flashback through viewer accounts and my own comments. For example, the people who are reading this interview. Being able to identify the covert operation, whether it’s in the moment or later on, is sort of the reward for the intrepid viewer. To figure it out, you need to listen, read, do some research. It takes time. And that’s exactly why I don’t record my pieces. Objects, including pictures and videos, are the baits that usually prevent people from being able to access the idea.

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FLORENCE JUNG is a French artist based in Switzerland whose work blurs the line between constructs and accidents, rather than to say reality and fiction. Her work is difficult to define in fact: she primarily constructs situations which are mediated through the best medium she found to grab the complexity, and which is often performance. Her pieces are like narrative with consequences; narratives which encourage the viewer to question preconceived ideas of certainty and truth.

You can find the entire interview in french between FLORENCE JUNG and curator / art critic SOPHIE LAPALU via http://sophielapalu.blogspot.ch/

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1982, 2014
found objects, polystyrene

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exhibition view at Kunsthaus Glarus, November 2014

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detail from Wall Paintings, 2014
plain plywood sheets, cement, metal, ceramic, engobe, enamel

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exhibition view at Kunsthaus Glarus, November 2014

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detail from Turbo Craft, 2014
printer, acrylic, wood

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Wall Paintings, 2014
plain plywood sheets, cement, metal, ceramic, engobe, enamel

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detail from Schnitzeljagd, 2014
ceramic, engobe, enamel

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exhibition view at Kunsthaus Glarus, November 2014

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Old Future, 2014
ceramic, engobe, enamel

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detail from Old Future, 2014
ceramic, engobe, enamel

all images © wfw

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The Kunsthaus of Glarus is currently presenting Coupé-Décalé, a solo exhibition for BASTIEN AUBRY and DIMITRI BROQUARD, two Swiss artists who started to work together in 2002 as graphic designers and who have slightly developed exuberant sculptures mixing high art and history with popular culture, creating a unique discourse between past and present.

The exhibition reflects the diversity of their artistic practice, in which painting, craft, design, and architecture intertwine in a dynamic relationship. The duo transforms the space of the Kunsthaus into a synthesis of contrasting visual forms and modes of presentation. The show is anchored by two installations. On the first floor, a series of cast-off CD shelves placed on fake stone plinths dominate the space creating a dazzling juxtaposition of past decorative forms. These share the room with a series of collages (using photoshop and scissors) presented on built-in exhibition walls covered with rough outdoor plaster.

The upper floor presents a large installation of plain plywood sheets treated with a rough plaster coating. The walls as well as the wood sheets supports constellations of ceramic forms with sometimes distinct morphologies, while some are rather abstract and clumsy.

After studying graphic design at visual arts school in Biel, BASTIEN AUBRY and DIMITRI BROQUARD worked together as FLAG design office. In the field of fine arts they have had several solo and group shows since 2008, including exhibitions in the Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2008), the Swiss Institute, New York (2012).

➝ Coupé-Décalé is on view at the Kunsthaus Glarus until November 23, 2014

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all images © RITA LINO

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Portuguese photographer RITA LINO explores, through a series of photographs and videos, the possibilities of her body with an uninhibited sexuality and a playful, stylized shamelessness.

But as always, things are not quite so simple or direct. While LINO’s photographs use overly blunt imagery, they repeatedly conceal their messages: identity is always a mask — necessarily strange and ambiguous; her work constructs a self that is mutable and elusive. At times, she looks directly at the camera, daring and defying the audience to return her gaze; other times, she turns and looks away, blindfolding or covering her eyes. Whether concealed or conspicuous, RITA LINO asserts that no exposure fully reveals her.

More than mere snapshots, her work touches on voyeurism, loneliness, the manipulative power of the camera, and the urge to connect with others, through, within, and apart from technology and the media.

→ http://www.ritalino.com/

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image courtesy AUDREY WOLLEN

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AUDREY WOLLEN is a Los Angeles-based artist who has developed a body of work through instagram entitled the Sad Girl Theory.  She explained to BENJAMIN BARRON for i-D that the ‘Sad Girl Theory proposes that the internalised suffering women experience should be categorised as an act of protest. We have historicised gestures of externalisation and violence, because they already fit into our standards of masculinity, and therefore, power. But there is an entire lineage of women who consciously disrupted the status quo through enacting their own sorrow. I think that a sad girl’s self destruction, no matter how silent or commonplace, is a strategy for subverting those systems, for making the implicit violence visceral and visible, for implicating us all in her devastation. ‘

Make sure to read the entire interview here or to follow her work on instagram.

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click here to view more Instagram photos, captured on my recent trip to Iceland

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both: Untitled (1985, manila rope, linen, slate)
by Icelandic artist RAGNA RÓBERTSDÓTTIR
seen in the group exhibition Synthesis
presented at the Reykjavik Art Museum
seen on Monday, November 3, 2014
image © wfw

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Synthesis is on view until January 18, 2015

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view from the exhibition Girl Culture,
a solo exhibition by American photographer LAUREN GREENFIELD
seen at the Reykjavik Museum of Photography
on Monday, November 3, 2014
image © wfw

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this exhibiton is on view until January 11, 2015

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I am obviously late to the game since CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS‘s first retrospective at MoMA closed last week but I really recommend to read this conversation between the American artist and  DAVID ANDREW TASMAN together with CATHERINE TAFT.

After its presentation at MoMA, the exhibition travels to Whitechapel Gallery, London in 2015. Note also that the exhibition was accompanied by a publication which seems to be really interesting. Meanwhile you can read the entire conversation via http://dismagazine.com/discussion/69719/christopher-williams-the-19th-draft/.

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The Dawn, 2014
polystyrene, fibre glass, acrylic paint, acrylic resin
138.5 x 76.5 x 51.5 cm. (54.5 x 30.1 x 20.3 in.)

image courtesy of the artist and Eva Presenhuber, Zürich

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This is The Dawn (2014), a sculpture by Swiss artist VALENTIN CARRON which is currently making small waves in the art pond. Presented at the FIAC last month, the sculpture has been highly inspired by l’Aube (1977), a sculpture by Italian artist FRANCESCO MARINO DI TEANA (1920-2012) presented in the public space of Neuchâtel.

His meticulous version is not a forgery, nor is it an homage. But VALENTIN CARRON‘s piece is very interesting for all the questions that rise from it about visual illusion, originality, authorship, the interior structures of art and image culture, and the limitations of any history of art wedded to the image.

Nothing comes from nothing. Someone, somewhere, is doubtless repeating CARRON. The cycle is endless. However the swiss artist seems to get involved in a legal dispute, à suivre!

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source: rts

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Jardin N°19, installation view at Springsteen Gallery, Baltimore

October-November 2014

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Jardin N°19, installation view at Springsteen Gallery, Baltimore

October-November 2014

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ERIKA CERUZZI, City (four-ten), 2014
vinyl, embroidery, dyed canvas 2014

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ERIKA CERUZZI, Denise (detail), 2014  

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ALEX ITO, In Denial of Falling (fair-weather friends), 2014
aluminum, stainless steel, glass, digital vinyl print, digital fabric print, resin, ceramic, moss, wood, and plaster 2014

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ALEX ITO, In Denial of Falling (fair-weather friends), 2014
aluminum, stainless steel, glass, digital vinyl print, digital fabric print, resin, ceramic, moss, wood, and plaster 2014

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ALEX ITO, In Denial of Falling (fair-weather friends), 2014
aluminum, stainless steel, glass, digital vinyl print, digital fabric print, resin, ceramic, moss, wood, and plaster 2014

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Jardin N°19, installation view at Springsteen Gallery, Baltimore

October-November 2014

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ALEX ITO, There is Always an Excuse, 2014
UV curable ink and metal etch on aluminum panel 2014

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ALEX ITO, Think of Me Fondly (touching myself at work), 2014
aluminum, stainless steel, glass, digital vinyl print, digital fabric print, resin, wood, and plaster 2014

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ALEX ITO, Think of Me Fondly (touching myself at work), 2014
aluminum, stainless steel, glass, digital vinyl print, digital fabric print, resin, wood, and plaster 2014

all images courtesy of the artists and Springsteen Gallery, Baltimore

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Jardin n°19, an exhibition of ALEX ITO and ERIKA CERUZZI, captures the tensions between a natural environment that bears the mark of social and economic structures and synthetic material culture. CERUZZI’s hanging horizontal rail system that navigates through the space has a visceral presence, and her unique embroidery works echo the basic assumptions of the artist’s creative path. In contrast, ITO displays his concerns in two sculptures and a series of wall works, all engaged with the existence of the photographic image in a dematerialized format.

There is a graceful synchronicity between these two artists’ work: according to the press release, at a singular point in CERUZZI’s structure, a vertical pole drops to meet with one of ITO’s floor sculptures which acts as a stage for his objects; taking the form of a planter filled with artificially produced floral elements. The peculiar, tortuous growth of the plant towards the square floor sculpture traps the viewer between sculpture and decoration, technological objectivity and human hand, present and idealized representation.

ERIKA CERUZZI (b. 1990) is a New York based artist who has recently relocated to Baltimore, MD. She received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2012. Her recent solo show, m, i, n, e, at Interstate Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, opened in March 2014.  She will participate in the The Still House Group residency program in 2015.

ALEX ITO (b.1991) is an American artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Ito received his BFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 2013, with a double minor in Art History and Cultural Studies. Recent solo and two-person projects include Rod Barton Gallery, London, UK (2014), The Home Tao Tsiao, Art in General, NY (2014); Think of Me Fondly, Water McBeer Gallery (2014); Single Image (with Brendan Lynch), Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA (2014) and Victory, The Still House Group, Redhook, NY (2013). 

→ Jardin n°19 by ALEX ITO and ERIKA CERUZZI is on view at Springsteen Gallery in Baltimore until November 28, 2014

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view from the solo exhibition of Iranian-born artist SHIRANA SHAHBAZI
presented at Kunsthalle Bern
seen on Saturday, October 25, 2014
image © wfw

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Monstera is on view until December 7, 2014

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Sediment Sampling (2014, unfired clay, water) by KARIN LEHMANN
seen at Kunst Raum Riehen in the  group exhibition Narrativ / Performativ*
on Friday, October 24, 2014
image © wfw

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*running through November 9, 2014

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video still from Hustle in Hand, 2014
HD video, color, sound, 10’20’’
courtesy SHAHRYAR NASHAT; Rodeo Gallery, Istanbul; Silberkuppe, Berlin, Museen Dahlem

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This is a still from a recent video (click on the still to watch it) by the Berlin-based artist SHAHRYAR NASHAT (b.1975), called Hustle in Hand (2014). This video is the base of his current installation presented at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris at the moment.

‘Hustle in Hand’ (2014) revolves around secret negotiations carried out between two characters, only their torsos visible in the frame. Money, food, appearances, consumption: the viewer is pulled into a round of transactions, like a rumination on our society in which art occupies a coveted position. The film’s rhythm is suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a green polyhedron that, once licked by one of the mysterious protagonists, becomes golden yellow, a magical event accompanied by an intense swelling of violin music*.

➝SHAHRYAR NASHAT, Lauréat du Prix Lafayette 2013, is on view at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris until November 23, 2014

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*from the Palais de Tokyo’s press release

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I highly recommend to read Further Materials towards a theory of the hot babe, an essay by artist and writer HANNAH BLACK, that she calls a performance text and in which she describes the intangibility that characterizes the hot babe.

Further Materials towards a theory of the hot babe has been released on The New Inquiry in July 2013, read the entire text via http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/further-materials-toward-a-theory-of-the-hot-babe/

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