Weekly Roundup

Paul Pfeiffer, "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (28)", 2007. Fujiflex digital. Chromogenic print 48 x 60 in. Courtesy of the artist and The Project, New York.

Sports, the human body and Gap t-shirts come together in this MLK day weekly roundup:

• Sports and masculinity are central themes of Hard Targets, an exhibition at Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts. Via the press release, “Hard Targets seeks to revise and complicate our time-honored stereotypes of male athletes and athleticism (as aggressive, heterosexual, hyper-competitive, and remote) by presenting alternative, possibly more democratic, interpretations of subjects frequently revealed to us only in authorized and frankly commercial images.” Works by Art21 artists Paul Pfeiffer, Matthew Barney, Collier Schorr (all Season 2), Mark Bradford (Season 4), and  Jeff Koons (Season 5), are included in the show. Originally organized by Independent Curators International, another version of Hard Targets was presented by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2008/2009. The Wexner Center exhibition runs January 30 – April 11.

• Always After (The Glass House), a film by Season 4 artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, will begin showing at the Art Institute of Chicago on January 21. The film (created between 2000 and 2006) is the fifth installment in a series of works meditating on the career of Mies van der Roe. The film was shot on location at van der Rohe’s old hangout, the IIT campus in Chicago and, according to the Art Institute, “obliquely documents the 2005 ceremonial dedication of the building’s renovation during which [van der Roe's] own grandson broke the windows with a sledgehammer.” Always After is currently being screened at Mass MoCA in conjunction with Manglano-Ovalle’s installation Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With. The film will show at the Art Institute of Chicago through May 31.

• In October 2009, Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery opened the exhibition Vortexhibition Polyphonica, kicking off a year-long initiative to explore and display their collection in new ways. Henry curators selected objects to act as conceptual “hubs” around which larger themes were established and other objects revolved. This month, the exhibition was reshuffled by the Henry’s Chief Curator Elizabeth Brown. Works by Art21 artists Ann Hamilton, James Turrell, Richard Serra (all Season 1), Collier Schorr (Season 2), Jenny Holzer (Season 4), John Baldessari, and Cindy Sherman (both Season 5) are on view. According to the Seattle Times, this is the first Henry show to draw on the museum’s entire collection since their exhibition 150 Works of Art in 2005. Vortexhibition Polyphonica continues through March 2011.

• Carrie Mae Weems (Season 5) is included in The Human Touch: Selections from the RBC Wealth Management Art Collection at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. The title refers to both the ability of the figure to reflect the human condition and to the facility of artists to depict it. The exhibition explores images of the human figure and what they reveal or conceal about a person’s experiences, identity, or character. Works by Frank Big Bear, Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, José Bedia, Lesley Dill, Jim Dine, Till Freiwald, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jaune Quick-To-See Smith are also on view. The Human Touch continues through April 18.

• Season 4 artist Lari Pittman is one of 65 artists selected to participate in The 185th Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art at the National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts. This multimedia “biennial invitational” features artists from across the United States such as Ghada Amer, Petah Coyne, Dana Schutz, Robert Yasuda, Chris Martin, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Nina Yankowitz, Barkley L. Hendricks, Cildo Meireles, Anna Lambrini Moisiadis,  Elise Engler, and Janet Ballweg. The 185th Annual runs February 17 – June 8.

• The Gap has partnered with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) on a new set of artist t-shirts. The project is part of the museum’s 75th anniversary celebration. Season 1 artists Kerry James Marshall and Barry McGee have each contributed one of the eight graphic designs. SLAMXHYPE has the scoop.

• William Kentridge (Season 5) is featured in The New Yorker (Note: only subscribers can access the entire article online). According to writer Calvin Tomkins, an exhibition of the artist’s work will open on February 24 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. And a Kentridge-directed-and-designed production of The Nose, a rarely performed opera by Dmitri Shostakovich, will première at the Metropolitan Opera on March 5.

• Library of Water, a 2007 project by Roni Horn (Season 3), is discussed in the December/January issue of the Brooklyn Rail.

• Demons, Yarns & Tales: Tapestries by Contemporary Artists, a group exhibition at James Cohan Gallery featuring works by Shazia Sikander (Season 1) and Kara Walker (Season 2), is reviewed by ArtKrush.

• Ida Applebroog (Season 3), whose exhibition Monalisa opens tomorrow at Hauser & Wirth in New York, is featured in the New York Times.

Weekly Roundup

Kara Walker, "A Warm Summer Evening in 1863", 2008. Wool tapestry with hand cut felt silhouette figure, 5' 9" x 8' 2". Edition of 5. ©Kara Walker. Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery, Banners of Persuasion, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

This week in Art21 artist news we have two tapestry makers, a silk archway, the master of Cremaster, an artist who likes to do laundry, a magical sound installation, environmental issues, creative explosions, and more.

• Opening January 8 at James Cohen Gallery, Demons, Yarns & Tales features hand-woven tapestries created by thirteen contemporary artists: Kara Walker (Season 2), Shahzia Sikander (Season 1), avaf, Peter Blake, Gary Hume, Jaime Gili, Francesca Lowe, Beatriz Milhazes, Paul Noble, Grayson Perry, Fred Tomaselli, Gavin Turk, and Julie Verhoeven. The exhibition was created by the London-based art organization, Banners of Persuasion, who commissioned each artist to design a tapestry, a medium foreign to his or her usual practice. Walker’s A Warm Summer Evening in 1863 uses an image published in Harpers Magazine during the American Civil War, captioned “The Destruction of the Coloured Orphan Asylum on 5th Avenue.” A black silhouette of a lynched female figure hangs in front of this scene. The exhibition will be on view through February 13.

• Renaissance Unframed, an exhibition at Carolina Nitsch Project Room in New York, consists of twenty-five encaustic drawings on muslin and two companion bronze sculptures by Season 3 artist Richard Tuttle. Tuttle’s drawings “explore fabric as a medium to receive color and as a tool to direct its movement” and the bronze works “represent the antithesis of the fabric on the wall.” The fabric pieces are rotated every 2 weeks with only five works being shown at a time. The exhibition is on view through January 9.

• On January 13, Season 2 artist Matthew Barney will speak at the Detroit Institute of Arts and discuss his newest project Khu, a performance and film loosely based on Norman Mailer’s 1983 novel, Ancient Evenings. Barney updates Mailer’s plot from an ancient Egyptian narrative to a present day account of reincarnation and rebirth set in an American landscape. Each chapter will be set in a different city and correspond to the seven stages of the soul’s departure from the body according to Egyptian mythology. The first chapter was performed in Los Angeles in 2007. The latest chapter takes place in Detroit. Barney’s lecture begins at 7pm; a (free) pass is required and can be obtained here.

• Through January 17, work by Season 1 artist Kerry James Marshall is on view at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art in the exhibition Heartland. The show features site-specific installations and performances as well as drawing, photography, and video by artists and collaboratives working in, and in response to, Detroit, Kansas City, and other cities and rural communities across the region. Also included in the exhibition are artists Carnal Torpor, Compass Group, Cody Critcheloe, Jeremiah Day, Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop, Design 99, Scott Hocking, Greely Myatt, Marjetica Potrč, Julika Rudelius, Artur Silva, Deb Sokolow, and Whoop Dee Doo.

• Gate (2005) by Season 2 artist Do-Ho Suh is now on view in the Los Angles County Museum of Art’s Korean art galleries. Made of translucent silk, the piece is a full-size rendering of one of the gates to the artist’s childhood home in Seoul. Suh’s father, the artist and scholar Suh Se-Ok, built the house based on the design of traditional Korean architecture of the 1880s.

• Rethink: Contemporary Art & Climate Change (part of the official culture program for the United Nations Climate Change Conference) is a collaboration of the National Gallery of Denmark, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, and Moesgård Museum. The exhibition includes more than 25 artists spread across the four venues. Each space is dedicated to a different theme: Relations, The Implicit, Kakotopia, and Information, respectively. At the Nat’l Gallery of Denmark, A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear, a 2008 film by duo Allora & Calzadilla (Season 4) presents viewers with three scenes: gently flowing images of a lush river landscape, a dilapidated interior in an abandoned house, and footage of a young man who drums rhythmically on the slats of a Venetian blind. The piece, shot in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Delta, draws attention to the remaining wreckage of Hurricane Katrina. A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear is on view through April 5. (Note: each theme/venue closes on a different day; check the website for more information.)

• Season 2 artist Maya Lin unveiled her new video, Unchopping a Tree, in Copenhagen last week. This is the latest iteration of Lin’s larger and last memorial project, What is Missing? The video addresses deforestation prevention and sustainable reforestation to reduce carbon emissions and protect endangered species and habitats — watch it here.

• In Roberta Smith’s review of Days and Giorni by Bruce Nauman (Season 1) — two sound installations on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art — she writes: “Each piece consists of 14 recordings of seven people reciting the days of the week. Their voices are broadcast from 14 wafer-thin white speakers, around 23 inches square, arranged in seven facing pairs, one for each person’s voice. Each speaker is simply clipped to two wires strung tautly from floor to ceiling. It’s like paintings by Robert Ryman hanging on Fred Sandback’s string sculptures, and the effect is magical. Read more here.

• “A countdown began two minutes out. 90 seconds. One minute. 50 seconds. 40. 30. And so on. And then: fireworks! And then: fire! The blossom burned, glowing orange against the museum and the now dusky sky, and dark smoke billowed into the air. The crowd oohed and aahed.” Click here to read more about the recent “explosion events” by Season 3 artist Cai Guo-Qiang (as reported by Kris Wilton of Artinfo.com).

• Congratulations to Art21 artists Vija Celmins (Season 2), and Judy Pfaff (Season 4) who have been granted the United States Artists annual award for $50k.

• Season 4 artist Jenny Holzer has shared her morning routine, favorite household chore, travel rituals, and more with Times Magazine. Read her witty profile here.

• More on the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition of works by Gabriel Orozco (Season 2): Man of the World, The New Yorker; Pic of the Day: Gabriel Orozco’s Home Run, Flavorwire; and Gabriel Orozco: The Art of the Readymade, WNYC.

Weekly Roundup

James Turrell, "Ganzfeld Piece (Modell)", 2008. Courtesy of Kunstmuseum-Wolfsburg © James Turrell. Photo: Zooey Braun

• A new installation by James Turrell (Season 1) — a light-filled space in the tradition of his Ganzfeld Pieces — will open at the Wolfsburg Art Museum in Germany on October 24. The Wolfsburg Ganzfeld Piece is the largest installation ever implemented by the artist in a museum, measuring 700 square meters, and comprising two rooms (Viewing Space and Sensing Space) that merge into each other. The exhibition runs through April 5.

• A video and sound installation by Paul Pfeiffer (Season 2) is also on view in Germany at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum. Titled The Saints, the piece is based on original film and audio material from the 1966 Football World Cup, “the most important sporting event in postwar European history.” Continues through March 28.

• The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has announced six finalists for the 2010 Hugo Boss Prize, including Season 5 artist Cao Fei. Read more about the prize in the New York Times.

• Zig Zag, a group exhibition at Sperone Westwater, features works created between the late 1960s and early 1970s. Taking its title from a 1966 sculpture by Alighiero e Boetti, the show spotlights the activities of a generation of American and European artists whose work reflects a similar rejection of traditional aesthetics in favor of new forms and process. Sculpture by Bruce Nauman; and a selection of black-and-white photographs by William Wegman (both Season 1) are included. Runs through October 31.

• Through December 30, The Kreeger Museum in Washington, D.C. is exhibiting work by the South African artist William Kentridge (Season 5) and Russian artist, Oleg Kudryashov. Kentridge and Kudryashov: Against the Grain consists of 40 to 50 objects drawn from D.C. area collectors.

• I Am Also Not My Own Enemy, an exhibition of new work by Season 1 artist Shahzia Sikander opens at Pilar Corrias Gallery in London on October 16. Sikander’s latest video Bending the Barrels (2009); a large-scale multimedia work consisting of text upon a pictorial surface; and a selection of paintings and drawings form the show. On view through November 21.

• According to The Art Newspaper, Whitechapel Gallery in London will devote the next series of displays in its Collections Gallery to works from the Dimitris Daskalopoulos Collection. Artists in the collection, which consists of over four hundred works, include Matthew Barney, and Louise Bourgeois (both Season 2).

• Season 5 artist John Baldessari has written a piece for the travel section of The Guardian. This list of the artist’s favorite spots in his hometown of Los Angeles begins with hidden gems in area museums. Read the article here.

Weekly Roundup

Sally Mann, "Hephaestus" (2008), Gelatin silver print. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

• Proud Flesh is up through October 31 at Gagosian Gallery.  Sally Mann’s (Season 1) new body of work focuses on a photographic study of her husband, taken over a period of six years. Proud Flesh “suggests a profoundly trusting relationship between woman and man, artist and model that has produced a full range of impressions – erotic, brutally frank, disarmingly tender, and more.”

• Sally Mann is also in the group exhibition Hide & Seek: Picturing Childhood at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, which opens this Saturday.  The show focuses on photographs of children “as collective memories of childhood itself—a phase of life to which we can never return.”  This long history represented in Hide & Seek also includes images by Lewis Carroll, Gertrude Käsebier, Lewis Hine, Helen Levitt, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Emmet Gowin, Wendy Ewald, Sage Sohier, Julie Blackmon and Gloria Baker Feinstein. Through Feb. 21, 2010.

• The 10th Biennale of Lyon opened last week and includes projects by over 50 artists, including Art21’s Oliver Herring (Season 3) and Barry McGee (Season 1). Themed The Spectacle of the Everyday, this year’s situationist version is curated by Hou Hanru. Through January 3, 2010.

• James Turrell’s solo show Large Holograms is up now through October 17 at Pace Wildenstein Gallery.  Fifteen unique large-scale works by the Season 1 artist explore the phenomenon of light itself, letting it become the object while capturing it’s normally fleeting qualities.

• The Guardian UK website has a great section called the Guide to Drawing in its Art and Design pages. Here’s a nice little slideshow of graphite portrait drawings by Shahzia Sikander (Season 1), and a few notes on how Jeff Koons (Season 5) articulates his ideas through draughtsmanship.

• The big 20th anniversary exhibition of the beloved Armory Center for the Arts opened this past weekend with Inside/Out.  The venerable teaching institution in Pasadena has been around since 1947, but has been programming dynamic exhibitions only in the last twenty years since moving to its current location in an old National Guard building. The anniversary show’s lineup includes artists such as Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman (Season 1), Daniel Buren, Betye Saar, and Barry McGee.  Through December 31.

• This Saturday, September 26 at 3pm, Stanford-based ecologist Gretchen Daily and artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Season 4) will share their ideas about value, ownership, biodiversity, the art world, and political economies of participation in the Conversation series at the Berkley Museum of Art. The talk is part of the Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet exhibition currently up at the museum.  Artists in Human/Nature visited remote, fragile places in the world and present their responses. Other participants include Mark Dion (Season 4), Diana Thater, Xu Bing, Dario Robleto, and Ann Hamilton (Season 1).  The show ends this Saturday, September 26.

Weekly Roundup

Shahzia Sikander, "Blood Lines," 2009. Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins.

• Tonight at the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Fine Arts, Season 3 artist Krzysztof Wodiczko will engage in a discussion with Teddy Cruz and Marjetica Potrč about their socially engaged projects as part of the series Participation and Friction: Rethinking Art and Architecture as Public Culture.

• Congratulations to Season 4 artist Ursula von Rydingsvard, recipient of the DeCordova Museum’s 2008 Rappaport Prize.

• A little follow-up on that Hiroshi Sugimoto image of the Boden Sea at Uttwil that adorns the new U2 album cover.  Read more about the Season 3 artist’s barter with Bono.

• At Mary Boone Gallery, dealer Javier Perez curates an exhibition of three of his favorite artists: Mike Kelley (Season 3), Terence Koh, and Jeff Koons.  The show opened April 4 and runs through May 16.

• Shazia Sikander’s (Season 1) solo exhibition Stalemate opened last week at Sikemma Jenkins, and features two video works and a series of drawings and paintings entitled Mapping the End of Something.

• At Circleculture Gallery in Berlin, scenes from the skateboarding, graffiti, and punk underground intersect in a three-person show of works by Barry McGee (Season 1), Ed Templeton, and Raymond Pettibon (Season 2). The exhibition opens April 10.

Sikander Trifecta (incl. talk tonight at Cooper-Hewitt)

In New York City? Don’t miss Season 1 artist Shahzia Sikander’s related activities around town, including an artist’s talk tonight.

Her curatorial exhibition, Shahzia Sikander Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection is currently on view at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and will run through September 7th.  To view the exhibition brochure click here.

In conjunction with Shahzia Sikander Selects, Cooper-Hewitt will be hosting a conversation between the artist and MoMA Director Glenn Lowry tonight. For more information or to buy tickets, visit the museum’s events page.

Finally, Sikander’s new exhibition, Stalemate at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., opens April 3 and will be up through May 2, 2009.

This Week’s Roundup

Alfredo Jaar, "The Sound of Silence", 2006. Installation with wood, aluminum, fluorescent lights, strobe lights and video projection. Software design by Ravi Rajan. Installation view at Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne, Switzerland, 2007.

What’s happening now:

• The Sound of Silence, an exhibition of works by Alfredo Jaar (Season 4), is on view at Galerie Lelong in New York through May 2. Visitors are invited to enter an enclosed aluminum structure that presents an 8-minute silent film. Read more about the exhibition here.
• Read Quinn Latimer’s interview with Season 3 artist Ellen Gallagher for Modern Painters. Gallagher’s first exhibition in London is on view at South London Gallery through May 2.
• Her Memory, an exhibition of recent works by Season 2 artist Kiki Smith, is on view at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona through May 24.
• Roni Horn’s first major museum show in the U.K. is on view at Tate Modern through May 25. Watch a webcast of the Season 3 artist in conversation with curator James Lingwood; art historian Briony Fer; and Tate Curator Mark Godfrey here.
• Through June 1, two new videos by Allora & Calzadilla (Season 4) are on view at the Museum Haus Esters Krefeld in Germany.
• Andrea Zittel and Shahzia Sikander (both Season 1) are included in Fashioning Felt at Cooper-Hewitt, a survey of more than 70 contemporary objects made of the material. The exhibition is on view through September 7.
• Ann Hamilton (Season 1) has collaborated with the Los Angeles-based workshop Gemini G.E.L. to produced new works, including three 3-dimensional objects and twenty-five prints. A reception with artist and a book signing will be held on March 19 from 6 to 8pm.

Sikander Curates at Cooper-Hewitt

Shahzia Sikander, "Untitled" (2005). Courtesy Sikemma Jenkins Gallery.

Season 1 artist Shahzia Sikander will serve as the ninth guest curator of the Selects exhibition series at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.  Past Selects guest curators have included artist Yinka Shonibare and designers Hella Jongerius, IDEO, and the Campana Brothers.

Mining the permanent collection, Sikander will interpret the holdings and produce an installation of selected works in the museum’s Nancy and Edwin Marks Gallery.  The exhibition, opening tomorrow and running through September 7, will also include an original new piece created by the MacArthur Fellow that was inspired by the collection.

Psychedelic at SECCA

There is a very interesting film and video exhibition currently up at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Pyschedelic presents animations that are less about products of altered consciousness and more a rediscovery of one’s state of mind. Revisiting the visionary history of the psychedelic experience, the program explores “contemporary applications of a model often dismissed as a drug-induced relic of the 1960s. Using ‘trippy’ aesthetics as a point of both reference and departure, the works in Psychedelic employ fluid imagery and hypnotic color to consider familiar objects, truths and faces in an unfamiliar way.”

The four artists in the show are Carlos Amorales, Jeremy Blake, Louis Cameron and Shahzia Sikander (Season 1).

The exhibition runs through January 4, 2009. For a full program schedule, visit the SECCA website.

Shahzia Sikander Awarded Creative Arts Fellowship

The Rockefeller Foundation earlier this week held a ceremony at the Langham Hotel in London to honor the 2008 recipients for its inaugural Bellagio Center Creative Arts Fellowship. The three are Mona Hatoum, Kofi Setordji, and Shahzia Sikander (Season 1).

The award includes 12000 euros and a three-month residency with private apartment and studio on the idyllic grounds of the Bellagio Center, adjacent to Lake Como. The fellows were selected by a distinguished advisory panel of curators, artists, and scholars from around the world.

According to Judith Rosen, the foundation’s president, “the fellowships serve a dual mission: they help groundbreaking artists reach their full potential and they enable the arts to inspire our shared creativity and imagination. There is a deep and timeless connection between cultural advances and social progress. This new program will help strengthen both.”