all images: Hybrid Opera, 2013
from the group exhibition Tabula
presented during Les Urbaines, Lausanne, December 2013
© wfw

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LAETITIA BECH and JEREMY PININGRE are two French artists who work together on a special project called Hybrid Opera, a non-hierarchical, multi-disciplinary work that gives them the opportunity to bring together all the individual activities that embody their work such as music, fashion, and art.

Each exhibition represents a different act in the opera that mixes history, subculture, intimacy and personal mythology, a cosmology in which symbols and images are densely layered and interconnected. The result is a series of immersive installations where the viewer is always placed at centre stage.

For Les Urbaines (a 3-day festival in Lausanne), LAETITIA BECH and JEREMY PININGRE presented an installation that feels at once rainbowy and post-apocalyptic. The space takes us for a moment in the fantastic and dark imagery in which teens show off their roles and their uncertain identities. Essentially the music progresses to a state where it is monotonous and repetitive. You don’t really know when the sound will end or when it started. Finally the performers appear to be missing, but various scattered assemblages and found objects provide this semi-functional space with its missing performers. Broken paintings, cigarettes and t-shirts form a somewhat surreal tableau which seems about to be set in motion.

For further information visit:

http://jeremypiningre.com/
http://laetitiabech.com/
http://kryptworld.com/

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MUEN KUEY (IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME)
exhibition view at Clearing, Brussels, June-July 2013

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trailer for MUEN KUEY (IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME)
presented at Clearing, Brussels, 2013

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MUEN KUEY (IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME)
exhibition view at Clearing, Brussels, June-July 2013

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installation view at Fiac Art Fair, 2013
each painting : Untitled (body painting), 2013, acrylic on denim, inkjet print, canvas, stretcher bars and 100 dvd’s, 86 x 64 in / 218 x 162 cm
each pillow :  Untitled, 2013, denim, foam, 66 x 66 in / 167 x 167 cm
courtesy of the artist and C L E A R I N G, New York, Brussels

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installation view at Fiac Art Fair, 2013
each painting : Untitled (body painting), 2013, acrylic on denim, inkjet print, canvas, stretcher bars and 100 dvd’s, 86 x 64 in / 218 x 162 cm
each pillow :  Untitled, 2013, denim, foam, 66 x 66 in / 167 x 167 cm
courtesy of the artist and C L E A R I N G, New York, Brussels

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installation view at Fiac Art Fair, 2013
each painting : Untitled (body painting), 2013, acrylic on denim, inkjet print, canvas, stretcher bars and 100 dvd’s, 86 x 64 in / 218 x 162 cm
each pillow :  Untitled, 2013, denim, foam, 66 x 66 in / 167 x 167 cm
courtesy of the artist and C L E A R I N G, New York, Brussels

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Painting with History in a room filled with men with funny names, 2013

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from the performative installation 2011 (open studio), 2011

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2012-2555
music performed by: JAKI DOYKA, JASON BARTELL, DJ NIRE FEAT.KRIT, VARACHIT NITIBHON and SABA AHMED
contributions from GABRIEL SUGRUE, TANABOON YANTAPANIT, CHAVIT SERIWATHANOPHAS

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Untitled (History painting), 2013
denim, bleach, laser print, fire, stretcher bars
86 x 64 inches (218 x 162 cm)

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KORAKRIT ARUNANONDCHAI by #ffffff Walls
installation 2011, 2011

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all images: Untitled (History painting), 2013
denim, bleach, laser print, fire, stretcher bars
86 x 64 inches (218 x 162 cm)

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image © #ffffff Walls

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KORAKRIT ARUNANONDCHAI by #ffffff Walls

all images courtesy of the artist (unless otherwise stated)

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This piece of denim, don’t you think it looks kinda like our planet from outer space?” – KORAKRIT ARUNANONDCHAI (1986) was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand. He is currently based in New York where he works quite often collaboratively. His work evades forms of production that could be ascribed to, or referred back to a single subject. But the essential quality underlying the artist’s work is difficult to pin down, vacillating between constructed and formless, authentic and absurd.

My practice is a way for me to understand the world in its complexity. At the present time, I exist in between two distinctive cultures: the one in my homeland, Thailand, and the one in the United States, where I currently live. Each comes with its own predicaments, and each influences my painting, installation and performance work.

For the past three years of my life I have been making large-scale installations that render different aspects of my life into relationship with one another. The first installation in the series, Diagram.Korakrit.2010 is an allegorical sculpture to my relationship with painting then. Open Studio 2011 is an attempt to re-draw a new narrative context for my artist persona. 2012-2555 is a funeral for my artist persona and an autobiographical film that connects my development as an artist to my grandparents lives in Thailand. The series continues.

I believe that the answer to many of the important questions surrounding my existence—such as my relationship to modernism, capitalism, audience and responsibility—can be found within the in-between space of my art practice. My work sets up two entities for me to make actions that highlight the membrane in between them—framing the context of the work as the synthesis of the two.

I have been doing two types of shows: the gallery installations and the pieces for institutions. All the content of the show has another life online. I am trying to make work for both audiences, the one in Thailand who won’t get to see the show and the one in New York that will get to see the show. But I want the work to be experienced differently.

If you go to the website it’s confusing to understand what the show really is. Online there is a flattening of information where everything is equal but, for example, when you go to the show, the whole show is filled with smoke and you can’t feel that. I consider the whole gallery as an installation.

There is this weird thing that me being Thai and living in America adds a culture value to my work almost immediately, and at the same time me, being in Thailand as an artist but being “approved” by the West, that gives validity to this action and this symbol. Even though I am trying to develop very democratic skills related to everyone, like the use of denim, bleach, fire…– KORAKRIT ARUNANONDCHAI in conversation with DAVID GARCIA CASADO

View more works via www.korakrit.com

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paintings by LINUS BILL & ADRIEN HORNI
seen at Les Urbaines, Lausanne
on Friday, December 6, 2013
image © wfw

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WFW is a contributor for the tumblr Natural Fair, an editorial project initiated by the Swiss blog Think Thank on the occasion of the Post Digital Cultures Symposium that took place last week in Lausanne. Please have a look naturalfair.tumblr.com!

image: Dutch artist MARLIE MUL during her talk Second Hand Smoke
on Friday, December 6, 2013 © wfw

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Five continents, three oceans, 2013, cardboard, epoxy resin, 50 x 40 x 24 cm

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Surfaces for the mind to rest or sink into, 2009
perspex, water, sump oil, printer ink, each 45 x 25 cm Ø

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Clean Cold Fire, installation view at BolteLang, Zürich, 2013
© Vanessa Billy, courtesy BolteLang, Zürich

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Clean Cold Fire, installation view at BolteLang, Zürich, 2013
© Vanessa Billy, courtesy BolteLang, Zürich

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One, two, three, 2011, cement, paper, aluminium, plate, mud

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Oil Spill on sand V, 2013
sump oil, coloured paper, 100 x 70 cm

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Clear as mud, 2013, vase, water, mud, light bulb, wire, dimensions variable
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Awash, 2011
Refresh refresh, 2013, Ed. of 3 + 1 AP, aluminium, ∅16 x 12.5 cm
Set, 2013, Lambda print mounted on aluminium, 100 x 75 cm

 

 

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Bright ideas in mud, 2013
glass, used lightbulbs, mud, water, 68.5 x ∅16 cm
Crack on, 2013, steel, strap, 300 x 15 cm
Sugar, 2013, polyester resin, 50 x 37 x 3 cm

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Same World, 2011

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Sit, wait, converse, 2009
natural stone, concrete, water, plastic bag

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To the Shore, 2011, rock, plastic bag, steel, 35 x 70 x 60 cm
Three Times a Day, exhibition view at Kunsthaus Baselland, 2011
Grounds I, 2011 (Detail)

all images courtesy of the artist (unless otherwise stated)

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VANESSA BILLY is a Swiss artist whose work includes collages, sculptures and installations and revolves around themes like cycles of life, circulation, transfer, environmental issues, displacing, reuse of found materials, the explorations with the material, its respective functionality and reaction to other materials.

Her work is realized out of commonplace objects that the artist present as such or after modifying them through simple actions, an economy of means that characterizes the artistic language of VANESSA BILLY. By assembling words, images and objects in a kind of ephemeral DIY version of high minimalism, her work achieves a nonchalant awkwardness and a proud nudity that bring together space, weight, and materiality in ways that impose a constant state of tension.

VANESSA BILLY (born 1978 in Geneva) has had solo exhibitions at Sommer & Kohl, Berlin (2013); Piano Nobile, Geneva, (2013); Frame, Frieze Art Fair, New York, with BolteLang (2012); unosolo project room, Milan (2011); Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz (2011); Project Space, The Photographer’s Gallery, London (2009), and has been part of numerous group exhibitions, such La Jeunesse est un Art, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau (2012); Art and the City, Zurich (2012); Manufacture, Centre Pasqu’Art, Biel (2012); Keep floors and passages clear, White Columns, New York (2011); Young people visit our ruins and see nothing but style, curated by FormContent, GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin (2009); Frieze Sculpture Park, curated by David Thorp, London (2009); Boule to Braid, curated by Richard Wentworth, Lisson Gallery, London (2009); Timewarp, curated by Felicity Lunn, CRAC Alsace, Altkirch (2009). In 2014 she will have a solo show at Limoncello, London (UK).

➝ Clean Cold Fire is on view at BolteLang, Zurich until December 21, 2013

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The Voidist, 2013

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Top Down, 2013

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A Record, 2013

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Lady, 2013

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Four Ferries 1, 2013

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Brooks Brother, 2013

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Harry Rag, 2013

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Four Ferries 2, 2013

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The Blade, 2013

all images: from Curtains
courtesy of the artist and Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York

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EILEEN QUINLAN is best known for making photographs which explore photography itself. Through a restrained, precise practice based on analogue studio techniques, she produces highly abstract surfaces through the simple manipulation of colour and light. Employing photographic methods and ideas of the historic avant-garde, such as those used by the Surrealists and the Constructivists, as well as design and graphic elements from advertising and stock photography, she plays with the conventions of reproduction and display.

Her most recent series, sampled here, alternates between a passive modality of production – allowing the development process itself to degrade the negative’s surface – and active intervention, attacking the surface of the film with steel wool. Corrosion and abrasion alternately conceal and disrupt the images in these works, which take as their subjects varied visual motifs that have rarely appeared in her previous work: new portraits and rephotographed snapshots of the same figures from years prior; a close-up of a crocheted doily; printed stripes and hash patterns; imageless negatives, in which the process of decay itself forms an accidental composition; and a rephotographed reproduction of Gutai artist Saburo Murakami’s 1955 Laceration of Paper performance. For ‘Curtains’, the black-and-white gelatin silver prints are exposed: unframed, pinned directly onto the wall, and uniform in size. There are twenty-four works in total, as the hours of the day; an apt number for an artist who stages the accumulation of damage and the chemical event as temporal indices within a medium that purports to arrest the passage of time.

Demonstrating that the prints are yielded from a negative—that they are prints and not paintings, drawings, or photograms—is important to me. And I do struggle with my orientation toward the image. I enjoy working with photographic objects as units that can be arranged in a space. The image itself isn’t always important. Through it I can begin to unravel how images are transmitted. Though sometimes I prefer to engage with a single image as a picture, emphasizing less the way it manifests and circulates and more the way it’s perceived visually, perceptually, historically, as media. I go back and forth. – EILEEN QUINLAN in conversation with WALEAD BESHTY for Bomb Magazine, September 2009

Good news: Curtains is currently on view at Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York till December 15, 2013. Additionally she is part of the New Photography 2013 exhibition at MoMA, NY.

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Buffalin (1996, household gloss on canvas, 2.5 x 5.1 cm) by DAMIEN HIRST
from the book Relics published by Skira (2013) on the occasion of HIRST’s first retrospective exhibition in Doha, Qatar
image © wfw

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Relics is currently on view at Al Riwaq Doha, Qatar and is running through January 22, 2014

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Interaction between two spaces, 2013
rubber ball, wooden board. Dimensions variable

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exhibition view of Reference Points at Meessen De Clercq, Brussels (2013)

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exhibition view of Reference Points at Meessen De Clercq, Brussels (2013)

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Ball, 2013
rubber and felt, 11 x 10 x 4,5 cm

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Nothing comes from nothing?, 2013
book, 16 x 10 cm

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Nothing comes from nothing?, 2013
video projection HD, 6’45” B/W , silent

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Partial View (detail), 2013
stone, plastic, glass 153 x 50 x 50 cm

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Partial Views, 2012-2013

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Geometrization of the word, 2013
print on Hahnemüle paper 51 x 41,6 cm (framed)

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Partial Views, 2012-2013

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Damnatio memoriae, 2013
series of ten prints on cotton paper, 80 x 65 cm (each)

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Layers of Meaning, 2012
projection of digital collages made ​​from photographic documentation of different art exhibitions found on the Internet. Dimensions variable

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 Espacio de contingencia, 2012

 all images courtesy the artist (unless stated otherwise)

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In his multidimensional work, NICOLÁS LAMAS offers 
set of objects and installations that questions notions of order and chaos, nature and culture, primitive and civilized. His interventions weirdly if elegantly mix rocks, books, sounds, images and references that become actors of an ideological and metaphysical battleground.

Offering the visitor a generous space for his or her own thoughts, the artist combines three-dimensional works and spatial explorations that affect the comprehension of space and its representation as well as the construction of information and its transmission.

My work derives from the interest and mistrust in constructed perceptions, which are considered to belong to a “natural order” and constantly build our notion of truth through a systematized knowledge. Most of my questioning focuses on examining the models associated with scientific research and the constant pursuit of order, measure, and control of the laws that govern the perceptible world. Through different guidelines, I analyze the relationship established between knowledge and power, and how that bond ideologically determines the way we perceive, interpret, and interact with our environment. I am interested in the search for the gaps and cracks generated in specific relations between representation systems and the notion of an objective and indisputable reality. In order to exemplify the perceived inconsistencies, I carefully manipulate images, texts, sounds and other elements that are associated with capturing,  interpreting and transmitting information. Through this, I attempt to somehow put into evidence relativity, malleability, and the level of indetermination in all of which we attempt to comprehend by trying to search for an objective and definite truth. – statement by NICOLÁS LAMAS from his website

NICOLÁS LAMAS (b. Lima, 1980) currently lives and works in Gent, Belgium. He studied at the School of Fine Arts of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and at the School of Fine Arts of the Universitat of Barcelona, where he obtained his degree in 2005. He has participated in various group shows in Peru and abroad.

Good news: Reference Points is currently on view at Meessen de Clercq, Brussels and is running through December 7, 2013.

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THOUSAND ISLANDS THOUSAND LAWS, 2013
live simulation, infinite duration

video courtesy the artist

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IAN CHENG, whose work I’ve mentioned before, is now presenting the exhibition BABY FEAT. BALI at Standard (Oslo), Norway as well as the video THOUSAND ISLANDS THOUSAND LAWS (2013) at the 12th Lyon Biennial, Lyon, France.

Working with choreographers and motion capture technicians, CHENG creates lived and invented experiences. ‘Thousand Islands Thousand Laws’ guides the viewer through an imagined swamp compelling you to explore its constantly mutating surroundings.  This is a story with no end- it is powered by code that is constantly being rewritten generating an ever changing image. A totally engrossing and perplexing viewing experience. – The Hepworth Wakefield

➝ BABY FEAT.BALI is on view until December 7, 2013 at Standard (Oslo). The 12th Lyon Biennial is running through January 5, 2014.

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SAMSON GUYOMARD
artist and party organizer at his studio and exhibition at La Placette, Lausanne
november 2013
images © wfw

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Here is a whole new section on WFW. It’s called ‘studio visit’, and – as its name suggests – it features studios and spaces of doers in Switzerland, I really hope you like it!

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Last week I went to visit the studio of SAMSON GUYOMARD, a French artist based in Lausanne who works broadly across a range of fields that reach from design, to installations and music projects.

SAMSON GUYOMARD appears as if he doesn’t think much of rules and that he just spontaneously adapts his ideas with a minimum of parameters and elements. Since a few years, his work is concerned with craftsmanship and an interest in making objects that have an aesthetic force. And yet he doesn’t collapse into pure aestheticism, functionality, and decoration, but rather insist on balancing skill with concept to create contemporary sculpture that is relevant.

For his stoneware works, who are currently on view at La Placette* in Lausanne, he explores the use of repetition and variation, using and manipulating simple forms to create sculptural objects that hesitate between the familiar and the odd.

To find out more about SAMSON GUYOMARD, check out his website.

*Earth, Wind and Fire on view at La Placette, Lausanne

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detail from the exhibition Bob Nickas Library*, a collaboration between BOB NICKAS, FREDI FISCHLI and NIELS OLSEN
presented at the Gebert Stiftung für Kultur, Pavillon Alte Fabrik, Rapperswil
on Sunday, November 10, 2013
image © wfw

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*more images soon on novembremagazine.com

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a glimpse into SAMSON GUYOMARD‘s studio
in Romanel near Lausanne, Switzerland
viewed on Monday, November 11, 2013
image © wfw

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➝ more about this studio visit and the new section on wfw next week !

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Untitled (lignes), 2011
digital photographs

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Lignes, 2011

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Faille, 2013
graphite on paper smoothed on wood, 180 x 180 cm

preliminary drawing for Faille, 2013
graphite and graphite’s powder, 40 x 40 cm

Untitled, 2013,
graphite on paper smoothed on wood, (8x) 210 x 65 cm

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Ruptures, graduation show at ENSBA Paris, May 2013

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Untitled (fracture), 2012, 6’50”

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Fracture, 2012
graphite on wall (29,7 x 21 cm), sound installation

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Untitled (en allegro), 2013
564 screenshots

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Untitled, 2013
graphite on paper smoothed on wood , 80 x 80 cm and video, 20′

all images courtesy MATHIEU BONARDET

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MATHIEU BONARDET is a French artist who takes the basic ingredients of drawing-a mark-making implement, an agent to move it, a surface and the time elapsed during the process-and intensifies them to a thrilling degree. With sticks of graphite, he performs series of repeated, varied movements engaging his entire body over predetermined periods of time, or until certain numbers of strokes, cycles or rotations are completed. The drawings that result are strikingly beautiful traces of his actions, resonant with the meditative and physically demanding processes that produced them.

Whether he is working within the frame of a sheet of paper, on the wall, or on the stage, MATHIEU BONARDET delights in the play between structure and improvisation, between repetition and invention, and between choice and chance.

➝ www.mathieubonardet.com

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nine views from LOOKING FOR/THROUGH/WITH/AMONGST/BEYOND/AROUND CONTENT by PAUL BAILEY for Probe, November 2013
all images © Probe

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Probe is an exhibition space in Arnhem (The Netherlands) created in 2008 by SUZE MAY SHO. The particularity is that Probe is a model space: it measures a somewhat six cubic meters and has been thought like a lab where you can experiment radical exhibition concepts. Therefore the exhibitions only exist in the form of documentation, which comprises exclusively 9 different perspectives enabling the spectator to wander around the space and thus to visit the exhibition.

Probe is an exhibition space with walls no higher then 1,10m and a surface of 6m2. It’s a test lab, an artistic skinner box. Its small and practical dimensions enables artists to create works on scale, that are unthinkable in real life. The artist is omnipotent: the architecture of the space is flexible and wholly subservient to the exhibition: walls can be extended, doors can be removed, a floor made of glass, mirrors or wood, even the lighting situation can be fully controlled. Albeit a physical space, Probe is only accessible on the internet. The registration of the exhibition is the exhibition.

For the 22nd project, Probe invited PAUL BAILEY, an Irish graphic designer, researcher and lecturer, who meticulously crafted a series of wood structures and prints.

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Kunsthalle Roveredo‘s publication
released on the occasion of the KR’s exhibition*
presented at MJ Gallery, Geneva
image © wfw

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*this exhibition is on view until November 28, 2013, more images on novembremagazine.com

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