Mark Bradford’s Help Us
On view now at the Carnegie International’s Life on Mars exhibition is Mark Bradford’s (Season 4) rooftop installation Help Us, a white stone sculpture that is theoretically visible from Google Earth.
The 55th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art runs through January 11, 2009 and recognizes the work of forty emerging and established artists, including Art:21’s Vija Celmins (Season 2), Barry McGee and Mike Kelley (both Season 1).
Eleanor Antin installation at the Armory Show
Those who are planning to see the Armory Show in New York this weekend (March 27- 30) will want to check out the Eleanor Antin (Season 2) solo exhibition at booth 557. Ronald Feldman Fine Arts has devoted its entire booth to exhibiting an Antin installation from the mid-eighties, Loves of a Ballerina—a mock movie theater entrance. Ronald Feldman had a solo show of works by Eleanor Antin earlier this year, and you can find out more information about both here.
Prospect.1 New Orleans Coming in November
Slated as the largest biennial of international contemporary art ever organized in the United States, Prospect.1 New Orleans will open November 1, 2008 and run through January 18, 2009. Founding director and chief curator of this new biennial, Dan Cameron (former Senior Curator of the New Museum and recently appointed Director of Visual Arts of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in New Orleans) was inspired to organize an exhibition in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The recently announced list of 75+ artists from around the globe includes Art21 artists Allora & Calzadilla, Mark Bradford (both Season 4), Cai Guo-Qiang, Arturo Herrera (both Season 3), Janine Antoni, and Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2).
Calling for a total of 100,000 square feet of exhibition space, Prospect.1 New Orleans will be divided among several buildings in various historic New Orleans neighborhoods, including the Warehouse District, the Bywater, French Quarter, the Marigny, and the Treme. A number of existing institutions and halls - CAC, New Orleans Museum of Art, and Ogden Museum of Southern Art - will be used, along with converted warehouses, commercial structures and other public spaces and found sites throughout the city.
How will Prospect.1 New Orleans help the damaged city? “[It] will contribute to the cultural rebuilding of New Orleans by creating an entirely new narrative about the city, its architecture, and its history. By re-branding the city as a place where the visual arts can thrive, the long-term aim of Prospect.1 New Orleans is to create an entirely new category of cultural tourism for the city, and to broaden its image overall.”
While the Prospect.1 website is good for answers to logistical questions, and briefly addresses the terms “global art” and “biennial,” what is perhaps most important here (as demonstrated in the above excerpt) is attention to the city’s predicament and progress-Prospect.1 tells us the state of things in New Orleans.
For further information and updates, please go to the Prospect.1 New Orleans website.
Whitney Biennial Model Tees
The Whitney Museum has collaborated with the Gap on a series of t-shirts designed by past Whitney Biennial artists, including Art21 artists Cai Guo-Qiang, Barbara Kruger (her design is pictured above), Kerry James Marshall, and Kiki Smith. There are thirteen in all, and the prominent remainder includes Ashley Bickerton, Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, Hanna Liden, Glenn Ligon, Marilyn Minter, Kenny Scharf, Sarah Sze, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
The t-shirts will be available at select Gap stores and online beginning May 15. In the meantime, with the opening of the 2008 Whitney Biennial last week, they can also be found in advance at the museum gift store.
Juergen Teller at Lehmann Maupin
The Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York City is currently presenting an exhibition by photographer Juergen Teller. The exhibition follows the installation Reflection by Season 2 Art21 artist Do-Ho Suh, which was on view into the start of this month. Teller’s work is exhibited in the gallery’s 540 West 26th Street space and includes the his recent body of work, Ukraine. The work was commissioned, along with four other artists, by the PinchukArtCentre for the Venice Biennale 2007.
The works included investigate modern Ukraine through the lens of the fashion and luxury industries. The artist used the country as a setting for a W Magazine fashion photo shoot, depicting inviting young girls and excessive wealth. The works divert viewers from the economic reality of the land and places that attention on the artist’s perception of a country obsessed with capitalism and new growth.
Teller was born in Germany, and has lived and worked in London for the past 20 years.
Bruce Nauman selected for 2009 Venice Biennale
Season 1 artist Bruce Nauman, a pioneer of Post Minimalist video and performance art, will represent the United States at the 2009 Venice Biennale. The Philadelphia Museum of Art was chosen as the commissioner for the 2009 United States Pavilion. Carlos Basualdo, its curator of contemporary art, and Michael R. Taylor, its curator of modern art, will organize the Nauman exhibition. After the museum acquired one of Mr. Nauman’s early neon works - “The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths” (1967) - the curators began considering Mr. Nauman’s career and proposed an exhibition of his work for the 2009 Venice Biennale.
Read the New York Times announcement here.
Art Newspaper interview: “Nancy Spero? still angry in her 80s”
London’s The Art Newspaper recently published an interview with Season 4 artist Nancy Spero. The interview points out the important role that political, activist, and feminist activities play in Spero’s life and artwork, an artist “who has often been more acclaimed in Europe…than in her native country, where she remains almost a cult figure.”
In this interview, Spero, who is included in the 52th Venice Biennale (June 10 - November 21, 2007) with her installation Maypole: Take No Prisoners, explains the influence of the American political situation on her current and past body of work.
Read the entire interview here.
Time for Turkey: Allora & Calzadilla at Istanbul Biennial
The collaborative artist team of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, better known simply as Allora & Calzadilla, and featured in Paradox, from the upcoming fourth season of Art in the Twenty-First Century, are among the 100 artists from more than 35 countries participating in the 10th International Istanbul Biennial.
Curated by Hou Hanru, and titled Not Only Possible But Also Necessary: Optimism in the Age of Global War, the 10th International Istanbul Biennial pretends not to be a conventional thematic exhibition; rather, it emphasizes artistic production based on collective intelligence and the living process of negotiating with physical sites. The focus is on urban issues and architectural reality as a means of exposing different cultural contexts and artistic visions regarding the complex and diverse forms of modernity.
The 10th International Istanbul Biennial runs from September 8 to November 4, 2007.
