Barbara Kruger, "Between" installation, 2010. Photo credit: Guild Hall.

This week in the roundup … Barbara Kruger gets a celebration started, Cao Fei has her eyes on a prize, Cai Guo-Qiang goes in with a bang, Raymond Pettibon is into OFF!, Maya Lin dedicates her Confluence, Laurie Anderson opens BAM and much more!

• Barbara Kruger presents Plenty at Guild Hall through October 11. A special preview on August 13 celebrates the exhibition.  “Barbara Kruger is one of the most important artists of this century. Her work is exciting and challenging. I have wanted to work with her since I first became Curator of Guild Hall in 1990 and am delighted that the opportunity finally arrived for our schedules to coincide and work together on this amazing exhibition,” said Christina Mossaides Strassfield, Museum Director and Chief Curator.

• The Guggenheim Museum and Hugo Boss announced the artists short-listed for The Hugo Boss Prize 2010, which will be awarded on November 4, followed by a solo exhibition for the winning artist in 2011. One of the Prize nominees, Cao Fei also had her work in the 17th Biennale of Sydney, and she was nominated for the Future Generation Art Prize 2010.

• Cai Guo-Qian has been invited by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to make Odyssey that will adorn a new Arts of China Gallery on October 17. “Cai Quo-Qiang is a master of the poetic on a grand scale,” director of the MFA Houston Peter C. Marzio said in a statement. He added that he believes Cai’s project will foster a “dialogue between artworks from different time periods within the galleries.” Continue reading »

Nancy Spero, 2003. Photo: Abe Frajndlich. Courtesy Galerie Lelong.

This week’s roundup is dedicated to the ladies:

• On Sunday, April 18, a public commemoration will be held for Season 4 artist Nancy Spero (1926-2009) in Cooper Union’s Great Hall. Spero was a pioneer of feminist art. She is remembered for work that, among other things, made unapologetic statements against the pervasive abuse of power, Western privilege, and male dominance. Spero lived and worked in New York, where she passed away last October. (See Marc Mayer’s post, In Memoriam: Nancy Spero.) Speakers at her commemoration will include Kiki Smith (Season 2), Jon Bird, Benjamin Buchloh, Donna De Salvo, Christopher Lyon, Bartomeu Marí, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Robert Storr, Nora York, and others. The service begins at 3pm.

• On April 16, Season 2 artist Maya Lin will lecture at the Sleeping Lady Chapel Theater in Washington. The event is held in conjunction with Lin’s ongoing Confluence Project, a multi-site artwork that memorializes the Lewis and Clark expedition, highlights the tremendous changes it brought to the Pacific Northwest, and encourages action to create a future that preserves and protects the area’s natural and cultural resources. One of the seven sites in the project, the basalt sculpture “Story Circles,” will be dedicated April 17 in Pasco. Other sites are at Chief Timothy Park, Celilo Park, the Sandy River Delta, Fort Vancouver, Ridgefield and Cape Disappointment. Lin’s lecture begins at 7pm.

• David Weinberg Gallery will present Chicago’s first solo exhibition of works by Season 4 artist Judy Pfaff. Pfaffʼs current body of work, contained in deep shadowbox titanium frames, consists of various assemblage materials from her studio, monoprint paperwork, and a combination of hand painting and drawing. According to the gallery, “Pfaff is clearly inspired by the fields outside her studio at the foot of the Catskill Mountains…One will [also] find her reverence for oriental calligraphy, Japanese scrolls and eastern philosophy…” The exhibition runs April 16-May 29.

• Works by Elizabeth Murray (Season 2), Carroll Dunham, Philip Guston, and Peter Saul are on view in iconoGRAPHIC at Mary Ryan Gallery in New York. The exhibition connects the work of these artist’s through their individual use of cartoon-like and/or political narratives. Via the press release, “These artists use exaggeration of recognizable forms, the symbolic meanings of color, and altered scale as the components of a new language; a visual vocabulary that transcends generations.” iconoGRAPHIC closes May 8.

• Through May 1, Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston is exhibiting works by Season 1 artist Louise Bourgeois. Tufts Daily says, “…Experiencing this exhibition is more like a meditative practice of active contemplation, in which viewers read a story between the works, rather than anything close to the shock and awe generally associated with Bourgeois’ most celebrated art.”

• Opening April 16, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) celebrates its new commitment to contemporary art with Until Now: Collecting the New (1960–2010). The exhibition is organized around general themes and includes more than 75 works of art by artists who have “altered the direction of art over the past five decades, and in some cases challenged our basic conceptions about art.” Kara Walker (Season 2), and Cindy Sherman (Season 5) are include in the show. Until Now mixes objects from the museum’s collection with works borrowed from artists, collectors, and galleries. Selected works will be scattered throughout the museum and juxtaposed with the MIA’s encyclopedic holdings. Until Now closes August 1.

• Season 5 artist Carrie Mae Weems currently has work on view in the Sheldon Museum of Art’s biannual invitational exhibition, Shrew’d: The Smart and Sassy Survey of American Women Artists, as well as in their concurrent exhibition Better Half, Better Twelfth: Women Artists in the Collection, a rehanging of the museum’s permanent collection. Weems recently visited the Sheldon (located in Nebraska) and sat down for an interview with L. Kent Wolgamott of the Journal Star — read it here.

• In the April issue of Brooklyn Rail, Season 4 artist Ursula von Rydingsvard talks to editors Irving Sandler and John Yau about her life and work. In the interview von Rydingsvard says, “One of my nightmares would be to have my brain clamped to a final look or a final image, it would be torturous. I think it’s the wandering through the possibilities and the record of that wandering. I have a feeling that this is one of the reasons why the large pieces have more possibilities for me … I like the idea of a piece having a rich history of coming upon it every day for a month, for three months, for five months. And a record of that history, a record of the pencil marks, a record of the sweat of the hands, of the grinder, of the saw, and in that layered, recorded history is a part of the visual richness of the piece.”

• “Barbara Kruger is not just an artist who understands the manipulative power of seductive images when combined with a few pointed words. She uses them to hold a mirror to our entire culture — a hotbed of passive aggression if ever one was,” writes art journalist Linda Yablonsky for the New York Times. Click here to read more of what Yablonsky had to say about the Season 1 artist and her multichannel installation, The Globe Shrinks, now on view at the Chelsea location of Mary Boone Gallery in New York.

Rachel Moore at her studio/office in Thessaloniki, Greece

Rachel Moore is an American artist and currently a Fulbright Fellow at the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece. She holds a BFA from Alfred University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Rachel is a co-founder of Spoke, an exhibition space in Chicago, IL.

Her work explores the complexity of relationships within cultures and subcultures, as well as within both built and natura; environments, as affected by human activity. Rachel is a charismatic and a highly creative individual who feels content and at peace with her career choices and it shows every time she looks at you straight in the eyes. Her Lucullian appetite is the force behind this inquiring artist. She  paved her way by initially looking at Mona Hatoum’s, Kiki Smith’s and Bill Viola’s work. Only before graduate school did her interests shift from visual arts to architecture, design, and public and community art. Samuel Mockbee and the generous nature of his work have played a catalytic role in her development as an artist.

On the occasion of this interview, I met with Rachel at the Achilleion Café on Nikis Boulevard in Thessaloniki to discuss her work and the Fulbright experience. Read on to find out how she gets it all done.

Georgia Kotretsos: Is it possible to juggle a studio practice, curatorial projects, community projects, Spoke, and a family without ever dropping the ball? How do you do it?

Rachel Moore: I seem to function best when I’m working on many different projects simultaneously. It keeps me focused, interested, and challenged. I’ve tried to concentrate on one thing for a time, but it never happens that way. I end up adding things.

This past summer was a great example. I was finishing up the first year at Spoke, getting ready for a solo show at Traver Gallery, about to move to Greece on a Fulbright Scholarship, and I had a baby in the middle of it all. What allowed me to breathe was becoming a mother and prioritizing that time. I joke that I’m finally learning how to say no. Moving to Greece with a two-and-a-half month-old wasn’t something I questioned. It was the perfect opportunity at this point our lives. My husband, James Knittle (who’s also an artist), is able to be with her here in Greece while I work. I think that’s how we can do it. I work mostly from home, apart from daily meetings with other art professionals. I’ve had to cut some things for this year, like administrative duties with Spoke, and I’m spending less time making studio work. I do continue to draw, write, and take photographs, but my work here is focused on organizing an exhibition. Having a Fulbright is an amazing opportunity that’s allowed me to have a family and continue to work without skipping a beat.

Continue reading »

John Feodorov, "Fairy Tale", (detail), 2007. Mixed media on paper, 30 x 50 in. Courtesy Valise Gallery.

Sparkling Nepalese paper, race and civil rights, a northern island, circular botanics, fluorescent lights, a ton of vinyl records, and a few reviews in today’s roundup:

• Season 1 artist John Feodorov is included in the two-person exhibition De-Natured at Valise Gallery, an artist-run collective on the island of Vashon, Washington. Feodorov (based in Seattle) and Lauren Atkinson (of Whidbey Island) were students of Valise member Beverly Naidus over twenty years ago when they were undergraduate art students at California State University Long Beach. Their work in De-Natured addresses “our complex relationship with nature and the conflicting sensations many of us feel in its presence.” Feodorov explains his work: “Several years ago, I visited the Anasazi ruins at Chaco Canyon, near my family’s land in New Mexico. This was during the much-hyped Harmonic Convergence when people were gathering at numerous traditional sacred sites around the world. Along the inside perimeter of one of the large kivas, a throng of tie-dyed spiritual enthusiasts formed a circle while sitting in lotus position. At the axis, they had erected a plastic totem pole, an object possessing no significance to the native peoples of the Southwest. Their act, while well intentioned, seemed more like an act of spiritual desperation than of re-connection. It is this kind of sincere yet misguided event that interests me as an artist.” De-Natured closes March 31.

• On March 16, The Getty Center will screen Legacy: Black and White in America, a documentary that premiered on PBS that explores the legacy of the civil rights movement and looks at the lives of African Americans today through conversations with figures in business, politics, academia, the media, and the arts. Following the screening, cultural commentator Lawrence Weschler will lead a discussion about the legacy of race and civil rights in contemporary art and museum practice. Kerry James Marshall (Season 1), who is featured in the video, will be part of that conversation. The event begins at 6pm. Click here for more information.

• La Saison the F[euml]tes (The Season of Celebrations) — a site-specific installation of flowers, plants and trees by Season 4 artist Pierre Huyghe — opens March 17 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reine Sofia in the Palacio de Cristal. For this project, Huyghe will place different plants associated with various holiday periods in a circle, each one of them characteristic of a specific time of year. The arrangement is to be read as a clock with the different seasons marked by the diversity of flora — roses, violets, chrysanthemums, palm trees, plum trees, jasmine, bamboo, and firs. La Saison the F[euml]tes closes May 31.

• On March 30, Kiki Smith (Season 2) will speak at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (PAFA) along with the curators of Philagrafika 2010, an exhibition that celebrates printmaking in contemporary art. Smith’s work is included in the core exhibition of Philagrafika, The Graphic Unconscious, simultaneously on view at PAFA, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Galleries at Moore College of Art & Design, the Temple Gallery at Tyler School of Art, and The Print Center. Using fragile sheets of Nepalese paper, Kiki Smith installed two walls of PAFA’s gallery with an array of small and large-scale works. Smith will discuss the major themes in this work and her ongoing interest in printmaking techniques and processes. The event begins at 6pm.

• Through May 16, works by Laurie Anderson (Season 1) and Raymond Pettibon (Season 2) are on view in Vinyl at La Maison Rouge in Paris. The exhibition of close to 800 albums, tapes, CDs, specialist magazines, reference books, catalogues and artworks is drawn from the collection of British collector, publisher and curator Guy Schraenen. Vinyl shows LPs from “an acoustic and visual angle” to illustrate how artists from the 1920s through today have experimented with language and sound. Visitors can listen to every record in the collection at a specially-designed deck.

• Martin Puryear Prints, an exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum, surveys a decade of the Season 2 artist’s printmaking. Puryear’s prints are inspired by various interests that are also visible in his well-known sculptures — furniture, basketry and his international travels. Curator of Prints, Kristin Spangenberg, says, “Puryear has created a body of printed works that extract the essence of minimalist abstraction with an appreciation of natural forms and ordinary objects.” The exhibition continues through June 13.

• Colorforms, a long-term exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, explores color and abstract form in artworks from the Hirshhorn’s collection that date from 1949 to the present. Milk Run (1996), a fluorescent-light installation by Season 1 artist James Turrell, is on view alongside works by Paul Sharits, Fred Sandback, Mark Rothko, Anish Kapoor, and Wolfgang Laib through winter 2011.

• The traveling survey exhibition of works by Season 4 artist Jenny Holzer has made its way to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in the UK. Read recent reviews of the show from Laura Cumming of The Observer; Adrian Searle of The Guardian; and Jonathan Brown of The Independent.

• Read what critics for Bloomberg and the New York Times are saying about The Nose, produced by William Kentridge (Season 5) for the Metropolitan Opera. The performance continues through March 25.