Cindy Sherman-inspired cover, GARAGE magazine. Photo: Patrick Demarchelier.

In this week’s roundup, models don Cindy Sherman masks, Carrie Mae Weems’s retrospective moves to Portland, Laurie Anderson presents new multimedia work, and more.

• Cindy Sherman was the inspiration for GARAGE magazine‘s fourth issue, based on the theme of mutability of modern identity. Photographer Patrick Demarchelier shot a group of models wearing masks of Sherman’s face that were created via www.thatsmyface.com.

• Carrie Mae Weems‘s 30-year retrospective, Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video, is on view at the Portland Art Museum (Oregon). The exhibition features some of the artist’s most groundbreaking work. At the opening lecture, Weems reflected on some of the major themes in her work, including an overarching commitment to promote justice as it relates to issues of race, gender, and class.

• Laurie Anderson’s Landfall: Scenes from My New Novel premiered at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, in collaboration with the equally venerated Kronos Quartet. An interview with Anderson about this new work can be found here.

• Mel Chin is one of nine artists in residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art (Charlotte, NC). Visitors can meet him at Open Studio Saturdays on February 23 and March 9. Chin’s residency with the Center ends March 26.

• Diana Al-Hadid will speak in the Pruyne Lecture Hall at Amherst College (Massachusetts) on February 21 at 4:30pm. Supported by the Rapaport Lecture in Contemporary Art Fund, the fund was established to provide support for an annual lecture by an artist, art writer, or art critic on some aspect of contemporary art. Al-Hadid’s lecture is free and open to the public.

• Kimsooja will represent South Korean at the 55th Biennale. The artist will work with curator Kim Seung-duk, director of international projects at France’s Le Consortium, to turn the pavilion itself into a work of art based on bottari, a recurring concept in Kimsooja’s work. According to GalleristNY (via Artinfo.com), “The artist’s concept of bottari as a self-contained world will be reflected in the transformation of the pavilion’s space–not physically with glass, metal, or wood, but with nonmaterial elements such as sound, light, and color.”

Ai Weiwei. “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads,” 2012. Photo courtesy the artist. © 2012 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

In this week’s roundup Ai Weiwei’s Chinese zodiac heads, Erin Shirreff’s light works, Laurie Anderson’s book collection and more.

• Ai Weiwei‘s first U.S. retrospective is on view at the Hirschhorn Museum (D.C.). Ai Weiwei: According to What? occupies the museum’s entire second level and part of the third with installations, sculpture, photography and video and audio works. A catalog featuring his most significant works since 2000 can be downloaded here. The show closes February 24, 2013.

• Ai Weiwei‘s outdoor sculpture Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads is on view at the Hirschhorn. The installation, which features twelve bronze animal heads representing the signs of the Chinese zodiac, each of which stand approximately ten feet high, will be displayed around the perimeter of the fountain in the Museum’s central plaza. This work is on view through February 24, 2013.

• Erin Shirreff: Available Light is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Canada, on view at Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston). The show is an investigation of how light and form unites Erin Shirreff‘s approach to different media. The show is on view until January 27, 2013.

• To Beauty: A Tribute to Mike Kelley, an exhibition featuring the late Mike Kelley‘s work, is on view at the Frost Art Museum (Miami). The pieces are mostly from a local collection and gives visitors a chance to study some of the more subtle art in the artist’s spectrum. The exhibition runs through February 24, 2013.

• Trenton Doyle Hancock was interviewed by ARTINFO about his “radical autobiography” and …And Then It All Came Back To Me on view at the James Cohan Gallery (NYC). The show closes December 22.

• Collected Stories: Books by Laurie Anderson, now on view at the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), samples Laurie Anderson‘s collection of publications, ranging from a 1971 wordless picture book about a mysterious package to a more recent illustrated dream journal. This exhibition closes February 3, 2013.

• Kimsooja and John Baldessari have works on view in Now Here is also Nowhere, Part I at the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle). The show is billed as a survey of how “artists continually question and destabilize the nature of the art object.” The exhibition closes January 6, 2013.

• Alfredo Jaar talked to ARTINFO UK about site-specificity, thinking versus making, and his plans for his first stay in Algiers as part of the artist residency in Algiers (aria) pilot residency program.

• Rashid Johnson was interviewed by the BBC’s Alastair Sooke as the artist put the finishing touches on his recent show at the South London Gallery. The video can be viewed here.

• Cai Guo-Qiang staged an explosion event in celebration of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery’s 25th anniversary.

Kerry James Marshall. "If They Come," 2012. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

In this week’s roundup Bruce Nauman explores the phenomenon of the face in video art, Laylah Ali questions society’s conventions in her notes, Rashid Johnson examines black identity, Andrea Zittel addresses visual and functional objects, and more.

• Bruce Nauman‘s work is on view in Faces: The Phenomenon of Face in Videoart at Galerie Rudolfinum (Prague). The exhibition presents 18 works, which are split approximately fifty-fifty between those featuring the creator and ones that turn the camera on others. The show traces video’s development from early experiments by the medium’s pioneers to performance and installation. This show runs through September 19.

• Laylah Ali: Note Drawings is on view at the Walter J. Manninen Center for the Arts, Endicott College (Beverly, MA). In this exhibition Laylah Ali uses text and images, i.e. her notes that include random thoughts, overheard conversations, and snippets from newspapers and radio. Ambiguous characters dressed in masks, wigs, and costumes confuse rather than clarify sexual and racial identities. This exhibition closes October 12.

• Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks is on view at the Miami Art Museum. Rashid Johnson explores the complexities and contradictions of black identity in a practice that is rooted in his individual experience. Incorporating commonplace objects from his childhood in a process he describes as “hijacking the domestic,” the artist transforms everyday materials such as wood into conceptually loaded and visually compelling works. The exhibition closes November 4.

• Vija Celmins, Elizabeth Murray and several others are featured in Contemporary Prints by American Women: A Selection from the Gift of Martha and Jim Sweeny at the Museum of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg, FL). The show includes more than 60 prints by American women artists, made after 1950, which have recently become part of the Museum’s collection. The exhibition closes February 2, 2013.

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Kara Walker. "Exodus of Confederates from Atlanta," 2005. Courtesy of Kara Walker and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

In this week’s roundup Kara Walker sources work from Harper’s, Cindy Sherman arrives in San Francisco, several artists address political and aesthetic urgency in Minneapolis, and more.

• Kara Walker‘s series Works from Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) is featured in the July 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine. The series, which was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art last spring, consists of fifteen lithographs and prints created using enlargements of woodcut prints from the book. Four images, all named after their source images’ captions, are featured: Exodus of Confederates from Atlanta, Cotton Hoards in Southern Swamp, Occupation of Alexandria, and Pack-Mules in the Mountains.

• Robert Adams and An-My Lê are on the shortlist for Prix Pictet. This international photography competition seeks to promote sustainability, and this year’s theme is power. Portfolios tackle subjects such as Lê’s training maneuvers at a Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center. This work will be part of an exhibition set to open at Saatchi Gallery (London) following the award announcement on October 9.

• Cindy Sherman opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In the exhibition Cindy Sherman draws from many sources and she has produced series of works – consistently untitled – known by nicknames such as “head shots,” “clowns,” “centerfolds” and “society pictures.” In the process, she has taken the artifice of photography to new levels of scale, complexity and intensity. The show closes October 8.

Alfredo Jaar. "An Aesthetics of Resistance," 1992. Image courtesy the artist and Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst.

In this week’s roundup, simultaneous exhibitions by Alfredo Jaar and Jeff Koons, a Martha Colburn talk, Josiah McElheny explores the cosmos, Elizabeth Murray in an iPad app for kids and more.

• Alfredo Jaar‘s art is at the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (Berlin) and subdivided into six groups of works, simultaneously at three institutions. Alfredo Jaar: The way it is. An Aesthetics of Resistance offers a retrospective survey of Jaar’s production spanning nearly four decades. It gives insights into the political themes of the works by the artist and elucidates critical methods of archiving, research and intervention employed by him. The exhibition runs through August 19.

• Martha Colburn will participate in two events at Electronic Arts Intermix (NYC) on Tuesday, June 26. Colburn will screen and speak about a selection of recent films that explore war, conquest, faith, and history as well as early and rarely seen found-film and animation experiments, music video projects, performance documents, and a 2011 animated PSA on fracture mining (fracking) in New York State.

• Bruce Nauman‘s Days had its UK premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. This is a sound installation consisting of a continuous stream of seven voices reciting the days of the week in random order. Fourteen flat panel speakers are set up with one voice emanating from each pair as the visitor passes between them. The work invokes both the banality and the profundity of the passing of each day and invites reflection on how we measure, differentiate and commemorate time. The show closes September 16.

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Laurie Anderson and Phillip Glass. Concert for Japan 2011. Image courtesy of the Japan Society.

In this week’s roundup, Laurie Anderson performs for Japan aid, Maya Lin is honored, several artists are keeping it real in London, work by An-My Lê and Richard Serra soon to come at The Met, and much more.

• Laurie Anderson and several others will perform at a Japan Society concert to benefit the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund.  Concert for Japan will be a 12-hour marathon event on Saturday, April 9, in New York City to benefit organizations that directly help people affected by the earthquake and tsunamis that struck Japan.

• Maya Lin is the winner of an architecture medal presented by The University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.  The Thomas Jefferson Medals recognize the achievements of those who excel in areas in which Jefferson did significant work.

• Do Ho Suh, Kimsooja, and Mark Bradford are part of a group of artists whose work is included in The Spirituality of Place at the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Gutstein Gallery.  The show focuses on artists working in a variety of media who explore the sense, spirit and memory of place and reinterpret it poetically through their art.  This exhibition closes on April 17.

• Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois, Mike Kelley, Julie Mehretu, Arturo Herrera, Gabriel Orozco and other artists are part Keeping it Real: An Exhibition in 4 Acts: Act 4: Material Intelligence at Whitechapel Gallery (London).  These artists use existing images as a material in their work, including cuttings from newspapers or using common technologies such as desktop scanners, they heighten the physicality of their chosen images by cropping, distorting and layering them.  The exhibition is on view from March 18 – May 22.

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Allan McCollum, "The Dog from Pompei," 1991. Courtesy Friedrich Petzel Gallery.

In this week’s roundup: An-My Lê captures the American armed forces, Allora & Calzadilla explore physical and temporal displacement, Julie Mehretu examines the metaphysical aspects of art, and more!

"The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists," 2010. Edited by Mary Jane Jacob and Michelle Grabner. University of Chicago Press, 2010. Cover illustration: Rodney Graham, "The Gifted Amateur, November 10th, 1962" (detail), 2007. Courtesy the artist, Donald Young Gallery, Chicago; the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada; the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Chicago Press. Design by Matt Avery.

The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists is the kind of book an artist would eat up in a single sitting. It is about the STUDIO — the spaces of artists. Edited by Mary Jane Jacob, executive director of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Michelle Grabner, artist, writer, and founder/director of The Suburban artist-run project space in Oak Park, Illinois. In its own words:

The Studio Reader pulls back the curtain from the art world to reveal the real activities behind artistic production. What does it mean to be in the studio? What is the space of the studio in the artist’s practice? How do studios help artists envision their agency and, beyond that, their own lives? This forward-thinking anthology features an all-star array of contributors, ranging from Svetlana Alpers, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Storr to Daniel Buren, Carolee Schneemann, and Buzz Spector, each of whom locates the studio both spatially and conceptually—at the center of an art world that careens across institutions, markets, and disciplines. A companion for anyone engaged with the spectacular sites of art at its making, The Studio Reader reconsiders this crucial space as an actual way of being that illuminates our understanding of both artists and the world they inhabit.

This book dissects the notion of the studio space and takes you on a journey of discovery. If you’re an artist, when you are done with it, you’ll feel the urge to get up and put it to work by re-orienting yourself in your familiar surroundings. If you’re a curator, a critic, or someone who indulges him/herself in studio visits regularly, The Studio Reader will inform your visits both physically and intellectually.

It is a useful tool that got me thinking quite a bit about the kind of artists’ studio visits I do here, as well as my about own studio space in Athens and the way I utilize it. In 2009, Inside the Artist’s Studio set out to discover where some of today’s art is being made. A book like The Studio Reader takes us forward on our quest.

So I have The Studio Reader in hand, back in a familiar place which almost feels like home – the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and specifically the Summer Studio residency program at the Sullivan Galleries, where I’ve been an artist-in-residence for the past two months working on a research-writing project.

The Summer Studio occupies a vast, open 20,000 sq. ft. space on the 7^th floor of the Carson Pirie Scott building in downtown Chicago. The truth is that it is not the work itself that activates the Summer Studio, nor the “stuff” that fill up the space, but it is the intellectual wealth each of us brings into this communal setting. And that became evident as I studio-visited my peers throughout this two-month period. Artists do have a creative aura that’s manifested in physical space, and the space one inhabits is determined by one’s own creative ambitions or limitations. So how much room does an artist’s creative energy take and how does a residency program achieve creative balance within such a space? Well, that’s the challenge at hand.

Assistant Curator of the Sullivan Galleries Kate Zeller tells us more about the program and the way in which the studio boundaries at the Summer Studio were being pushed all summer long. In addition, she discusses the Process in Product: Work from Summer Studio exhibition (August 28 – October 2), best described as an open invitation for rethinking the “studio” in its entirety.

It is my pleasure to end the summer in the company of Mary Jane Jacob, Michelle Grabner, and Kate Zeller.

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Episode #114: With her video Sewing into Walking as a backdrop, Kimsooja tells a story about mending traditional Korean bed covers and realizing that art can be drawn out of everyday activities.

Kimsooja’s videos and installations blur the boundaries between aesthetics and transcendent experience through their use of repetitive actions, meditative practices, and serial forms. In many pieces, everyday actions—such as sewing or doing laundry—become two- and three-dimensional or performative activities. In videos that feature her in various personas (Needle Woman, Beggar Woman, Homeless Woman), she leads us to reflect on the human condition, offering open-ended perspectives through which she presents and questions reality.

Kimsooja is featured in the Season 5 (2009) episode Systems of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Download-to-own the full episode from iTunes.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Richard Numeroff. Sound: Merce Williams. Editor: Lizzie Donahue & Paulo Padilha. Artwork Courtesy: Kimsooja.

Howdy y’all.  First a little news from Art21 production HQ.  After a successful shoot in London (expect an Exclusive on Season 5 artist Yinka Shonibare’s just-unveiled Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle work, installed on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, soon), we’re completely battle stations for a shoot that’s totally new for us and a little scary for me – a talk with Art21 artists Laurie Simmons and Oliver Herring, moderated by Robert MacNeil (of MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour fame) that will be streamed LIVE at 8PM on Wednesday June 23, 2010.  That’s right, LIVE.  A first for any Art21 production.  And that’s the scary part.  Three cameras and roll-in video, a big old switcher and soundboard, lotsa cables, a ten-person crew, and yours truly will be directing.  Please pass along any suggestions for calming my nerves and please check out the cool mini-site that Art21 web guru Jonathan Munar has built for the event, The Present Perfect with Art21.  There’s some new Oliver- and Laurie-related videos and a great opportunity for users to submit their own Oliver Herring-inspired dance video; select submissions may be screened and streamed at the event!

Mendocino, CA. Photo: Nick Ravich

In other news, I just got back from a really, really nice time representing Art21 at the 2010 Mendocino Film Festival in crushingly beautiful Mendocino, CA.  Contrary to usual festival practice, the programmers at Mendocino, lead by Pat Ferrero, paired individual Season 5 segments – as opposed to full hour episodes — with other related-documentary and narrative pieces.  Our Jeff Koons segment screened with The Great Contemporary Art Bubble (2009); Kimsooja with the 2010 Peabody Award-winning doc on contemporary origami Between the Folds; Julie Mehretu with the extremely charming 2009 Oscar documentary short winning Rabbit a la Berlin.  Probably the most entertaining, certainly the most clashing pairing was the Koons.  The Great Contemporary Art Bubble is an unashamed piece of arts muckraking in the Michael Moore vein:  a funny, snarky, easily-offended, at times breathtakingly unfair introduction and tour of the contemporary art market, led by British critic Ben Lewis.  It very effectively picks off certain high-profile contemporary art sales – visually presenting them as deck of cards, a not so subtle gambling metaphor – to construct a narrative of the aughts art market’s rise.  And Jeff Koons is of course name-checked.

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