Alfredo Jaar. "Muxima," 2006. Film still courtesy of the artist.

In this week’s first roundup of 2012, Louise Bourgeois’s art kicks off the new year in Qatar, Alfredo Jaar shows his love for African music and more.

• Alfredo Jaar presents Muxima, a film dedicated to the Angolan people and a direct result of the artist’s love for African music. The film is Jaar’s first and takes the form of five interpretations of local folk songs that have been edited into ten cantos covering the history of Angola. The film can be seen in Gallery 186 at The Art Institute of Chicago until April 15.

• Louise Bourgeois‘s art will kick off 2012 at the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA).  Louise Bourgeois: Conscious and Unconscious, the retrospective which is the first in the Gulf by the late American artist, will be held from January 20 to June 1 at the QMA Gallery in Katara.

• Mark Dion will create an on-site installation for the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  This work will respond to the bridge as an icon, historic structure, and conceptual inspiration; objects will be fabricated to appear as though recovered from a deep sea wreck.  International Orange will open on Memorial Day weekend, May 26–28, as part of the kickoff to the 75th anniversary and will remain on view to the public free of charge through October 2012.

• James Turrell and Bruce Nauman have work on view in Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.  The artists each make the visitor’s experience of light and other sensory phenomena under specific conditions the focus of their work. The show includes an immersive environment by Nauman and a light piece from Turrell’s Wedgework series.  This exhibition closes January 22.

• Kalup Linzy, Keltie Ferris, and Andrea Zittel contributed to Modern Painters magazine’s survey of 100 artists to watch.  The list is broad, international, and distinguished by the variety of approaches represented.

• Walton Ford is featured in Whitewall magazine’s Winter issue.  An excerpt from the Ford studio visit can be read online now.

• Next month a Cindy Sherman retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NYC will showcase more than 180 photographs that trace the artist’s career from the mid 1970s to the present. Highlighted in the exhibition are in-depth presentations of her key series, including Untitled Film Stills (1977–80); her ornate history portraits (1989–90); and her larger-than-life society portraits (2008) that address the experience and representation of aging in the context of contemporary obsessions with youth and status.  The show will be on view February 26–June 11.

• In-Sight Evening: Doris Salcedo, a lecture by curator Mary Schneider Enriquez will examine the evolution of Doris Salcedo’s oeuvre since the 1980s, placing her chair, Untitled (2004–5), within the context of her constructed sculptures and installations, which are informed by sociopolitical circumstances in Colombia and beyond.  The talk will also consider Salcedo’s work in the broader context of contemporary sculpture.  The event will take place February 15, at 6pm.

Do Ho Suh. "Fallen Star (sketch)," 2011. Courtesy the artist and The Stuart Collection, University of California, San Diego.

In this week’s roundup Do Ho Suh addresses displacement and “home,” Bruce Nauman finds inspiration in Native America, Jason Schwartzman celebrates John Baldessari, and more.

• Do Ho Suh‘s Fallen Star is under construction at The Stuart Collection, University of California San Diego.  Fallen Star takes the form of a small house that has been picked up by some mysterious force, (perhaps a tornado) and “landed” on a building, seven stories up.  A roof garden is part of Suh’s design and will be a place with panoramic views for small groups to gather.  This can be seen as a “home” for the vast numbers of students who have left their homes to come to this huge institution, the university, which has nothing even resembling a home. A video detailing the installation process was commissioned by The Stuart Collection:

• Alfredo Jaar is one of a several participating artists whose works are on view in Being American at the School of Visual Arts’ Visual Arts Gallery (NYC).  The exhibition surveys responses by visual artists to some of the most pressing social issues in America today: from recent environmental catastrophes to the pervading effects of the economic crisis; from the long shadow of 9/11 and two overseas wars to the homefront debates surrounding religious tolerance, gay marriage, capital punishment and firearms possession.  This show closes December 21.

• Allora & Calzadilla’s third solo show, Vieques Videos 2003-2011, is on view at the Lisson Gallery in London. The artists contributed to the visual culture of this campaign with a long-term, multi-sited project entitled Landmark, which is informed by the following questions: “How is land differentiated from other land by the way it is marked? Who decides what is worth preserving and what should be destroyed? What are strategies for reclaiming marked land? How does one articulate an ethics and politics of land use?”  This show can be seen through January 14, 2012.

• Bruce Nauman‘s Setting a Good Corner (Allegory and Metaphor), is part of a collection of modern works that are paired with Apache, Arapaho, Hopi, and Sioux art.  Native American Kindred Spirits: Native American Influences on 20th Century Art at Peter Blum Soho (NYC) focuses on a single subject: how modern artists found inspiration in the American landscape and Native American arts and crafts.  This work is on view through January 14, 2012.

• Drawings, an exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery (Paris) introduces two new series of work by Richard Serra, July and Rifts. This is Serra’s first major drawing exhibition in Paris since 1995 and “provides a space, a place for me to go to where I can concentrate on an activity that is satisfying in and of itself,” says the artist.  This work is on view until January 7, 2012.

• John Baldessari is celebrated by actor Jason Schwartzman in this video produced for Pacific Standard Time at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA):

• Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and the Tangerine was screened on Tuesday December 4 at Cornell University’s Willard Straight Theatre (Ithaca, NY).This documentary features extensive footage of Louise Bourgeois and was directed by art historian Amei Wallach and art documentarian Marian Cajori. It captures Bourgeois, a lifelong feminist, constructing some of her most influential installations.

• Krzysztof Wodiczko‘s works are currently on view at WORK (London).  The gallery is currently showing Krzysztof Wodiczko: The Abolition of War, an exhibition that invites the public to reconsider their understanding of the impact of war on veterans who have fought (or worked as medics) in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The two featured projects, The Flame and War Veteran Vehicle, bring into focus the post-traumatic condition experienced by returning soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. Both are based on a set of interviews conducted by the artist with anonymous war veterans and their families.  This show is on view until January 14, 2012.

• Keltie Ferris was interviewed for Metro Pulse during her artist-in-residence and exhibition at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.  The exhibition is on view until December 9.

• Maya Lin spoke to a packed audience on October 24, 2011 in Mies’ S. R. Crown Hall, home of the Illinois Institute of Technology‘s College of Architecture. Lin spoke about environmental conservation and her ambitious landscape artworks. Check out this video for the full lecture.

• Paul McCarthy is currently exhibiting in London’s St James’s Park and at two Hauser & Wirth galleries. In a video posted by The Guardian, Adrian Searle discusses The King, an installation that pokes fun at ideas of self-aggrandisement and debunks the myth of the male artist as hero.

Mike Kelley and Michael Smith. "A Voyage of Growth and Discovery." Installation view: Sculpture Center, Long Island, New York, 2009.

In this week’s roundup Mike Kelly navigates the Burning Man, Mark Dion reimagines the humanities, Krzysztof Wodiczko interviews anonymous war veterans, and more.

• Mike Kelley and longtime friend Michael Smith collaborated on A Voyage of Growth and Discovery at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead Quays, UK).  The installation features “man-child Baby IKKI,” a character developed by Smith who navigates the infamous Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. IKKI negotiates the primal elements of fire, water, earth and wind. A six-channel video installation replaying IKKI’s “voyage” is enveloped by a fantasy environment evoking that of the festival. This work is on view through January 15.

• Mark Dion has a new site-specific installation at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities (Ann Arbor).  For Waiting for the Extraordinary Dion took Michigan Chief Justice Augustus Woodward’s 1817 categories for human knowledge and invented 13 visual symbols crafted through the U-M Duderstadt Center’s high-tech three-dimensional rapid imaging technology laboratory to illustrate each category.  This exhibition will continue through November 5.

• Ann Hamilton was one of ten artists selected to receive an Anonymous Was A Woman grant on October 17. The “no strings” grant of $25,000 enables women over the age of 45 to continue to grow and pursue their work. The awards are synonymous with important recognition in artists’ personal and artistic development.  The grant’s name refers to a line in Virginia Wolf’s A Room of One’s Own. As the name implies, the nominators and those associated with the program are unnamed.

• Alfredo Jaar will be featured in Oregon College of Art and Craft’s (OCAC) inaugural lecture series, Connection: Intersecting Tradition and Innovation.  His lecture, “It is Difficult,” provides a framework for considering the complexity of current social and cultural issues around the world.  The Alfredo Jaar Connection lecture takes place on November 14 from 7:00–8:30pm at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland. The event is free and open to the public.

• Bruce Nauman, Paul McCarthy, John Baldesssari, William Wegman and several other artists have work on view in State of Mind: New California Art 1970, the current show at the Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach). The exhibition includes Nauman’s never before exhibited Yellow Room, McCarthy’s May 1, 1971, and Baldessari’s California Map Piece.  For the latter piece the artist drove the length of the state to carve letters forming the word California into the actual environment to replicate what was pictured on a map.  The show closes January 22.

• Krzysztof Wodiczko has a new show called The Abolition of War at the Work Gallery (London). The two projects featured in this exhibition, The Flame and War Veteran Vehicle, bring into focus the post-traumatic condition experienced by returning soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. Both projects are based on a set of interviews conducted by the artist with anonymous war veterans and their families, which reveal the difficulties of re-integration and the impossibility of re-connecting with their previous lives.  This show is on view until January 14.

• Cai Guo-Qiang was commissioned to create monumental gunpowder drawings by Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Ad Doha, Qatar for a solo exhibition opening in December.  Guo-Qiang is collaborating with local volunteers to produce a series of drawings rendered by igniting gunpowder.  The entire process is open for public viewing from October 22 – October 26 at Al Riwaq, the special exhibitions hall located next to the Museum of Islamic Art.
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Cai Guo-Qiang, Fallen Blossoms: Explosion Project (2009), Philadelphia Art since the Mid-20th Century, Room 410. Photo courtesy the artist and Phaidon.

In this week’s roundup Yinka Shonibare MBE discusses post-Colonial Britain, John Baldessari talks about graffiti and street art, Barbara Kruger explores the game of chess, works by Barry McGee and Fred Wilson are at the center of controversies, and more.

• Yinka Shonibare MBE will talk about the history and cultural legacy of post-colonial Britain this week at The Human Rights Action Centre (London).  This is part of Inviva’s Significant Voices program.  The event will take place Wednesday, October 19, 6:30pm.

• Cai Guo-Qiang‘s work is part of The Art Museum, a unique collection of the world’s important and influential art works, curated by a team of over 100 global art experts, from Phaidon houses – in one place.  This imaginary museum is actually a book.

• Barbara Kruger is exhibiting work at The World Chess Hall of Fame, a cultural venue that showcases art, history, science and sports through the lens of chess.  Untitled (Do you feel comfortable losing?) is one of several pieces that demonstrate an integration of chess that goes beyond the visual, incorporating elements of play or strategy that invite the viewer to reflect on the game’s intricate operations.  This show on view until February 12, 2012.

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Collier Schorr, "Anonymous Cowboy," 2008. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery.

In this week’s roundup, Collier Schorr’s and Matthew Barney’s mixed signals, Carrie Mae Weems and Rashid Johnson bridge divides, several upcoming events, and more.

• Collier Schorr and Matthew Barney have work featured in Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports at the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh).  The exhibition deals with the subject of the male athlete and features 17 artists, including Schorr and Barney.  Featured works emphasize the many ways masculinity is performed and socially constructed.  This show closes August 7.

• Carrie Mae Weems brings Slow Fade to Black to DownStreet Art (North Adams, MA).  The show takes a critical look at the historical drama by staging and presenting several narratives works that play across the historical divide. The work consists of two new video projections and rarely seen photographs, including stills, paintings, and projections with sound designed with the assistance of composer Gregory Wanamaker.  The show will run through September 25.

• Rashid Johnson is featured in the New York Observer.  After Post-Black: Rashid Johnson’s Baadasssss Song examines the artist’s practice, style and representation of contemporary Black life in America.  This October, Johnson’s work will be on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), as part of 30 Americans that will run October 1 – February 12, 2012.

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Margaret Kilgallen, "Untitled," c. 2000. Courtesy Ratio 3.

In this week’s roundup, Margaret Kilgallen summer selections, Mark Dion in the Netherlands, Kiki Smith in conversation, Laurie Simmons, virtually, and much more.

• Margaret Kilgallen: Summer / Selections is now on view at Ratio 3 (San Francisco).  This includes works on paper and paintings on canvas, some never before seen. The work emphasizes Margaret Kilgallen’s resourcefulness and economy of materials and features the artist’s iconic motifs such as leaves, trees, topography, and female figures, This exhibition closes August 5.

• Alfredo Jaar and Krysztof Wodiczko have work in Galerie Lelong’s (NYC) Interventions in the Landscape, a collective exhibition of photos and films exploring the landscape as a medium for social discourse.  As an activation of an array of sites charged with social and political connotations, these artists give voice to the terrain, allowing it to enter into an exchange with the subject and viewer.  The exhibition will run until August 5.

• The Bronx Museum (NYC), a friend of Art21, presents Taking AIM: 30-Year Anniversary Exhibition. The Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program has helped to demystify the often opaque professional practices of the art world for artists at the beginning of their careers and has introduced their work to the public.  The exhibition features sculptures, works on paper, video installations, photographs, and other works by 72 participants in AIM 2011.  The show closes on September 5.

• Mark Dion is among 100 international artists whose work has been selected for viewing in the Deichtorhallen (Netherlands).  The works show the many different layers of two private contemporary art collections as well as the various unknown aspects of them.  The exhibition will run until August 21.

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"Tate Modern: Tomorrow Is Another Day (After the Economic Crisis)" installation produced by Not An Alternative for the Tate Modern’s 10th anniversary show “No Soul for Sale: A Festival of Independents.” The work implicated corporate sponsor, Morgan Stanley, for its role in the economic crisis. The piece was accompanied by an essay situating the work art historically as in intervention on participatory art, while simultaneously linking it to other local campaigns targeting Tate sponsorship. May 14-16, 2010 Photo by Not An Alternative.

I encountered the art group Not An Alternative for the first time about a month ago in Corona, Queens, where Tania Bruguera (featured last month in 5 Questions) had assembled a panel on “useful art.” What immediately impressed me was the group’s ability to articulate its ongoing project, which aims both to create new spaces for cultural production and to question the ways that various participatory structures (social media, election processes, relational aesthetics) exclude certain subjects and amplify social and economic inequalities by means of participation.

Through their highly engaged work, work that functions somewhere between political activism, social service, and institutional critique, Not An Alternative confront the limits of what political theorist Jodi Dean has called, after a variety of critical theoretical debates, “communicative capitalism.” In a time of communicative capitalism, our political and social participation is increasingly exploited by the use of new media. Not An Alternative foregrounds this fact, presenting ways of navigating a relatively new digital landscape in which values once cherished by the militant left and avant-garde alike–participation, reflexivity, interactivity–have become corporate watchwords for how neoliberalism manages consent in a networked age.

Networked for some, but obviously not for all. Not An Alternative’s work is also crucial in the ways that it foregrounds exclusion, offering ways to visualize the limits of participation in a society in which obviously one’s ability to participate is largely determined by social and economic privilege. As Not An Alternative said during their presentation in Corona, referring to their collaboration with a homeless advocacy group in the Bronx (discussed below), they recognize the important of “desubjectifying” themselves, where to draw attention to their efforts may work against the causes of the community groups with whom they choose to work.

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Collier Schorr, Andrej Pejic cover for Dossier magazine, 2011.

In this week’s roundup, Collier Schorr’s cover photo buzz, Ida Applebroog’s art talk, Kara Walker’s giddy embrace, Alfredo Jaar’s Marxist table, and more.

• Collier Schorr‘s black-and-white photo of the androgynous model Andrej Pejic makes the cover of Dossier magazine’s April issue #7.

• Barbara Kruger and Carrie Mae Weems are part of a group exhibition entitled Unsettled: Photography and Politics in Contemporary Art.  This Philadelphia Museum of Art show presents work by artists who used photography to address some of the most salient political and social issues of the late 1970s through the early 1990s, including feminism, racism, the AIDS crisis, and gay activism.  The exhibition closes in summer 2011.

• Ida Applebroog discusses her work on occasion of her exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London, Savile Row.  The show closes on April 30.

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Lisa Freiman. Photograph by Adam Ames.

“When I first came here, people said, ‘Why are you going to Indianapolis?’ I said, ‘I’m going to Indianapolis because it’s a huge opportunity.’ They answered, ‘What huge opportunity? There’s no contemporary art scene in Indianapolis.’ I said, ‘That’s the opportunity.’ Why go to a place where everything is done when you can go to a place and make something happen? The challenge of creating something that mattered here- both in terms of the community and in terms of the national and international arts community- was crucial and invigorating.” (David Lindquist, “A conversation with Lisa Freiman: 2010 a big year for IMA’s curator of contemporary art.” Metromix Indianapolis, Nov. 17, 2010)

The Visiting Artists Program’s (VAP) second speaker of our Spring season, Lisa Freiman, is actually an arts administrator, and is probably best known as the pioneering Senior Curator and Chair of Contemporary Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA).

She’s also received a lot of attention for her role in helping to spearhead and curate the sculpture park 100 Acres. Free and open to the public all day every day, 100 Acres is located in what was formerly an unused quarry, in a flood plane, behind the IMA. Freiman’s vision transformed it into one of the largest museum art parks in the country. Her unique approach involved commissioning eight contemporary artists to create temporary, site responsive works, pioneering a model that involves retiring works as weather conditions and the stress of visitors speed their decline. Several collaborative artists workshops and groups, such as Atelier Van Lieshout, Type A and Los Carpinteros are featured, along with artists that Art21 has also documented, including Alfredo Jaar and Andrea Zittel.

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Arturo Herrera, "Peter," 2010. Mixed media on paper. Photo courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

With Inspire Your Heart With Art Day in mind, this week’s roundup finds the New Museum rethinking contemporary art through several Art21 artists’ works, Arturo Herrera exploring abstraction in two exhibitions, Gabriel Orozco boomeranging, and more.

• Several Art21 artists are featured in New Museum’s Rethinking Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education including Mark Bradford, Cao Fei, Margaret Kilgallen, An-My Lê, Barry McGee, Julie Mehretu, and Kara Walker.  This publication provides accessible and practical tools for teachers while offering new art, essays, and content to account for transitions and changes in both the fields of art and education.

• Rethinking Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education will also host a related discussion on contemporary art and education featuring Kara Walker, among a few others.  A reception for the book, participating artists, and contributors immediately follows the discussion.  The event will take place on February 24, 7:00 pm.

• Arturo Herrera has work currently on view at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (NYC).  His self-titled exhibition features new works on paper and large scale wall paintings that explore fragmentations as a mode for abstraction.  The show will be on view until March 5.

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