Catherine Sullivan in BOMB Magazine
In a BOMB Magazine web exclusive, Season 4 artist Catherine Sullivan (pictured top right) and choreographer Meg Stuart discuss mining the history of the avant-garde tradition and emotional overflow in ensemble-based work. BOMB’s Summer 2008 print issue will include the full-length conversation.
The magazine’s online art section, which currently archives 1,206 articles and interviews, features numerous Art21 artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Andrea Zittel (both Season 1), Gabriel Orozco, Paul Pfeiffer, Kara Walker (all Season 2), Arturo Herrera (Season 3), and Pierre Huyghe (Season 4).
Berliner Salon: Gallery Weekend Redux
The Berlin art world is still recovering from last weekend’s gallery marathon, which witnessed an unprecedented number of events in what can only be described as the city’s most strategic p.r. ploy since Mayor Klaus Wowereit inadvertently labeled Berlin “poor but sexy” and, in doing so, accidentally created his Hauptstadt’s unofficial slogan. Well, Berlin seems to be losing its poor status, while remaining as sexy as ever, with new (and often extravagant) spaces opening en masse and major patrons opening their collections to the public now more than ever before.
Last weekend saw the opening of Loock, a beautiful new space run by Friedrich Loock, the founder of Wohnmaschine, which exhibits Alec Soth and other internationally renowned artists. In addition, Carlier Gebauer inaugurated their new space, a massive venue that boasts 800 square meters and has major solo exhibitions planned in upcoming months for artists such as Paul Graham, Janaina Tschäpe, Ryan Trecartin and Art:21 Season 2 artist Paul Pfeiffer. The new gallery will feature a “media room,” essentially a movie theater, which will also be used for lectures and workshops “to develop an intensive communication program with an emphasis on the gallery’s focus on installation pieces working with video and film,” according to the press release.
Among the private collections that were open last weekend was the Sammlung Boros, an amazing selection of artworks, many by local art stars like Anselm Reyle and Olafur Eliasson, housed in a converted bunker that behaves like a concrete contemporary art labyrinth full of neon light and surprising sculptural installations. Adding to the weekend’s intense art itinerary, Italian collector Mariano Pichler opened a curated exhibition entitled Leftovers, which featured works by Maurizio Cattelan, Steven Parrino, Zilvinas Kempinas and Art:21 Season 2 artist Gabriel Orozco. The exhibition only ran for the duration of Gallery Weekend, but Pichler’s decision to bring his collection to Berlin proves that despite this city’s penchant for poverty, it still knows how to attract money, if only for the weekend. Schoenes Wochenende.
Orozco Revelation
One of the most interesting documentaries I have ever seen about Gabriel Orozco (Season 2) - and which was a total revelation into his work - is the Mexican production directed by Juan Carlos Martin in 2002. Excellent soundtrack and music too by Manuel Rocha Iturbide and the trance band Tosca Tango. I first saw it at INPUT’s (International Public TV) 2003 edition in Aarhus, Denmark, when it was presented in a session entitled “Artsy Fartsy?” dedicated to art documentaries. The documentary followed Orozco around the world while working in different projects and art pieces and allowed for a tremendously personal insight into the artist’s thoughts, creative process, and day-to-day life. We meet his friends, we see him drinking a beer and taking a nap in a hammock by a Mexican beach, we mingle in openings with him and see how he picks up trash from New York streets for his readymade installations. Orozco talks to us (the camera) and we wonder to what point his artistic vision influenced the filmmaker in his way of shaping the 82’ piece that keeps us stuck to the screen all along. It was specially interesting to discuss with the filmmaker the larger role of audiovisual production when tackling the theme of art or specific artists’ biographies. Fascinating questions about captivating audiences through sometimes intellectually challenging art arose in discussions with J. C. Martin and the other film directors during the session, as well as the format and shape art documentaries end up taking depending on the creative impulses and dictates of the artists themselves. Definitely worth looking into…
Art21 artists in “TRANSactions” in Atlanta
TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, a group show which opened on March 15 at the High Museum in Atlanta features work from three Art21 artists. Alfredo Jaar, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle (both Season 4), and Gabriel Orozco (Season 2) have contributed work to this exhibition which explores the boundaries of cultural identity while celebrating universal themes. The show contains work from artists in eight countries, and surveys the rich variety of methods and concerns of contemporary Latinos, dispelling the myth that they are a homogeneous cultural group.
You can find the press release for this traveling show here.
Photography on Photography at The Met
Last September, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a new gallery on the second floor dedicated exclusively to contemporary photographs. The second exhibition in this space, Photography on Photography: Reflections on the Medium Since 1960, opens to the public today.
This exhibition, organized by Doug Eklund, Assistant Curator in the Met’s Department of Photographs, includes Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3), Sherrie Levine, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Prince, Thomas Ruff, Vito Acconci, Kota Ezawa, Moyra Davey, Mary Wyse, and others. Malcolm Daniel, Curator in charge of the Department says, “This new selection [from the permanent collection] takes a narrower focus, showing how photographs since Conceptual Art have reflected on the medium itself in their work. With many more works by younger artists, the installation also provides more of a snapshot of where photography is at the moment.” Photography on Photography is on view through October 19, 2008.
Photographs began to enter the Met’s collection as early as 1928. Today their photography collection alone includes more than 20,000 works. A quick search through the Met’s online collection database returns names familiar to Art21 such as Ann Hamilton, William Wegman (both Season 1), Gabriel Orozco (Season 2), Robert Adams, and Laurie Simmons (both Season 4). Learn more about the Met’s photography department and its collection here.
Gabriel Orozco speaks January 30 at MoMA (sold out)
Tomorrow at 6:30pm, Glenn Lowry, Director of the Museum of Modern Art will moderate a talk with Art21-featured artist Gabriel Orozco (Season 2). Orozco’s sculptures, photographs, drawings, installations, and videos weave the everyday with the philosophical; he explores how meaning is made from chance encounters and found objects. Works by the artist are currently on view in MoMA’s current exhibition, New Perspectives in Latin American Art, 1930‚Äì2006: Selections from a Decade of Acquisitions.
The event is sold out but perhaps you may have some luck with getting a ticket at the door.
Gabriel Orozco at Dallas Museum of Art
The Dallas Museum of Art presently hosts an installation by Season 2 artist Gabriel Orozco. Gabriel Orozco: Inner Circles of the Wall premieres one of his sculptural installations from 1999. Orozco, who uses multiple media including installation, photography, video and sculpture, has a keen interest in geometry. The exhibition highlights the circle motif that recurs throughout the artist’s work in both literal and compositional forms.
Orozco is known for blurring the boundaries between the conceptual and the formal, suggesting complex systems and ideas that re-imagine everyday objects and images. He has been extremely influential on a younger generation of artists in Mexico and internationally.
For the Dallas installation, Orozco had masons cut a plaster wall in his Paris gallery into numerous parts. He then drew precise graphite circles that just touch the irregular edges of these pieces, and then placed the pieces on the gallery floor and against the walls. Inner Circles of the Wall suggests the here and now of bare matter, as well as the beauty of the infinite realms of a perfect and perfectly logical geometry.
