#Berlin Sewing Salon

[mercurygray]

Hi Merc! May I request “grey sky” and “memories” for resistance!Joan in the BoB MotA crossover please? Thank you 💕 — @floydmtalbert

I had a little too much fun with this. Thanks for letting me borrow Lou - I hope I did okay! Paris, early 1944, Atelier de Warrenne.

The street outside was quiet, for a Friday.

Joan looked out the window of her office, arms crossed over her chest, and considered the view outside, gray cobbles under gray skies. There'd been a time once when it would have been hard to see the cobblestones - but a lot had changed in four years, and if the empty streets were only the smallest change, it also seemed like the most ominous. The question of where they had gone would not have a happy answer.

She shivered and considered reaching for another sweater, or one of her furs. It was always cold up here now, with fuel rationed, but somehow putting on another layer felt like an admission of defeat. And she was not defeated yet - not by a long chalk, even if the streets were empty and her clients were all speaking in raptures of Berlin. It was not over, and too much depended on that. Downstairs in her salon an officer was helping himself to champagne while he waited for her to emerge so he might ply her with compliments and take her to dinner. Upstairs in her attic another officer was waiting with baited breath until the man downstairs left, and it was rather tenuous whether he would get dinner at all, and that was what was going to make all of this worth it.

It was hard to remember the woman she'd been four years ago - was she still the same now, as she had been then, even after so much change? Some days she didn't feel like it. And yet the sign on the outside of the building was still the same, the labels in her dresses still the same script and scroll, the suggestion of an oriflamme. Maison de Warrenne.

Not quite French enough for the French, not quite American enough for the Americans, and altogether too much of everything for the Germans - except Hauptmann Havermeyer, who like so many of his colleagues wanted a special souvenir from Paris. She would be quite a prize - her uncle the general, her society connections, the strength of her name and her designs. One more beautiful thing to carry back to Germany - assuming that she was deemed worthy of the honor, of course, when all this was over. Perhaps she'd only be the pleasure of a moment. Both possibilities were within consideration, and she didn't have any stars in her eyes about it - unlike some of her cutters and seamstresses, who'd gotten a little heady in those early days over gray uniforms and promises of chocolate. One of the gossip sheets being circulated by the increasingly underground press had written scathingly that this Joan would not be coming to save France, and after six months of being ferried around in his handsome black Mercedes someone had slashed collaborateur in black paint across the doors of her apartment.

Joan's smile brightened a little, thinking about that. Louise and her little English friend had done a good job with that - the right amount of rushed vitriol, letters smashed together in haste, the abandoned paintbrush, like they'd been forced to flee. The silent judgement of her neighbors was worth something, where her reputation was concerned. And Kurt had been so solicitous after that, fretting over her like she'd been wounded, and not the paintwork- did she need guards, better shutters, a watchman?

No one needed to know that it had been carefully planned - the long-ago meetings with her shop steward and her sewing room mistress and one of the chief operators of the Deuxieme Bureau. I am a target of interest - and too high up to simply disappear. They want me for the propaganda value of it - the woman who once dressed as Marianne for her uncle's victory parade. Make me one of your villains, and I'll give you every scrap I can. I have trucks, drivers, warehouses, contacts. We can move things, move people. There will be too many bodies coming in and out of the studio to make an exhaustive study.

And here they all were. The designer in her lofty atelier was a traitor- and hiding behind her were half a dozen people working tirelessly to protect France.

Her stomach rumbled, and she thought again of the man upstairs in the attic. She'd been working late last night when Louise had smuggled him in, the two of them trying to be quiet on the back stairs. "Louise?"

Her assistant's face had been difficult to read, emerging from the stairwell. "We're alone," Joan offered. "I sent the others home."

Louise had nodded, and, with a little trepidation, pulled her companion forward into the workroom - an airman, with a man's greatcoat pulled hastily around his own flying jacket. American - he had that look. "This is Madame," she said, gesturing tersely to Joan and speaking in English. "She is doing you a great favor letting you stay here."

He nodded and had touched his head, reaching for a hat he was no longer wearing. "Many thanks, ma'am. I'm Captain Robert R -"

"Your manners are a great credit to you, Captain, but with respect, it will be better if I don't know your name," Joan said, cutting him off quickly, her English feeling rusty on her tongue. "I really shouldn't have seen you at all." She turned her attention back to Louise. "He'll need clothes, I'm sure."

"And papers," Louise confirmed. "The network is working on it."

"I'm very grateful, ma'am," the airman added.

"As am I to you, Captain," Joan replied. He must have been rather handsome, in peacetime, though at the moment it was hard to see - he was in need of a shave and his mustache required trimming, but it was still evident, behind those things, the shape of his jaw and the way his hair curled. His eyes were also a rather fantastic shade of blue - the kind of eyes a woman would notice in a crowd, be entranced by, remember. "And Louise? Be very careful about the suit - something that doesn't bring out his eyes."

Louise nodded, and continued chivvying him up the stairs, leaving Joan to wonder, with a small smile, whether her assistant had made the same distinction about Captain Robert's eyes. She hadn't stopped holding the man's hand, while they'd been standing there - a nervous habit, or something more?

She took another breath and finally reached for the fur stole - her own, not the one Kurt had gifted her. A costume, like the suit Louise would find for the airman, a way to play pretend. His battle was over - but hers continued, and she would continue with it.

[smithlibrary]

At the height of the Holocaust twenty-five young inmates of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp--mainly Jewish women and girls--were selected to design, cut, and sew beautiful fashions for elite Nazi women in a dedicated salon. It was work that they hoped would spare them from the gas chambers. This fashion workshop--called the Upper Tailoring Studio--was established by Hedwig Höss, the camp commandant's wife, and patronized by the wives of SS guards and officers. Here, the dressmakers produced high-quality garments for SS social functions in Auschwitz, and for ladies from Nazi Berlin's upper crust.

Drawing on diverse sources--including interviews with the last surviving seamstress--The Dressmakers of Auschwitz follows the fates of these brave women. Their bonds of family and friendship not only helped them endure persecution, but also to play their part in camp resistance. Weaving the dressmakers' remarkable experiences within the context of Nazi policies for plunder and exploitation, historian Lucy Adlington exposes the greed, cruelty, and hypocrisy of the Third Reich and offers a fresh look at a little-known chapter of World War II and the Holocaust.

Call Number: 940.531 ADL

Also available in: ebook

[caveartfair]

The Women of Dada, from Hannah Höch to Beatrice Wood

“Dada doubts everything,” wrote the poet-performer and Dada founding member Tristan Tzara in 1920. Born in a Zürich nightclub in 1916 as an all-out mutiny against World War I and the social and political climate that fueled it, Dada remains one of the most anarchistic cultural movements of all time.

But while Dada had no problem questioning authority, meaning, reality, and everything else related to what they saw as a bourgeois Western world, its practitioners rarely, if ever, cast doubt on conventional gender roles and behaviors. Even if the social conservatism that yielded such inequality was disdained, women were the second sex.

For a long time, women who identified with Dada as visual artists, poets, or performers (or often all three) drew more attention as caretakers, muses, or lovers than collaborators or independent artists. One of the rare mentions Dada legend Hannah Höch received in her male peers’ accounts of the era was reportedly a nod to her talent at providing sandwiches, beer, and coffee during tough times.

But more recently, as art historians and curators have shined a brighter light on this electrifying period of creative rebellion, it has become clear that women were active artmaking participants in Dada’s spaces, from cafes and salons to specialty magazines and exhibitions. Here are eight female artists who made vital contributions to the movement.

Hannah Höch

B. 1889, Gotha, Germany

D. 1978, Berlin

Da-Dandy, 1919. Hannah Höch Private Collection, Berlin

Für ein Fest gemacht (Made for a Party) , 1936. Hannah Höch Whitechapel Gallery

An early pioneer of photomontage and mass-media appropriation, Höch was a cornerstone of the most political branch of the Dada movement, the one that developed in Berlin. Formed after World War I, Berlin’s Dada group had a direct target—the Weimar Republic and its leaders—and Höch, like her Berlin colleagues John Heartfield, George Grosz, and Raoul Hausmann (her lover, for a period), mined newspaper and magazine imagery for political satire.

But the fiercely feminist Höch also used art to draw attention to women’s issues, like birth control and suffrage. Hoch had studied graphic arts and design before going to work in publishing, where she made sewing patterns for women’s magazines. The ads she encountered in print fueled her rebellion against the commercial construction of femininity. (It’s easy to detect Höch’s use of appropriation in the work of Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, and other artists of the Pictures Generation.)

Hoch exhibited at the subversive International Dada Art Fair in Berlin in 1920. That year, she also penned a short story, “The Painter,” in which she takes aim at male chauvinism: The tale portrays a husband who descends into a personal crisis when his wife requests that he does the dishes four times in four years.

Suzanne Duchamp

B. 1889, Blainville-Crevon, France

D. 1963, Paris

Untitled (Beach Scene), ca. 1930. Suzanne Duchamp Francis M. Naumann Fine Art

Duchamp had to not only carve out her own identity as a female Dada artist working in Paris during the war, but also shake the “sister of Marcel Duchamp” label that still pursues her to this day. The small trove of delicate paintings and drawings she left behind shows her serious and early devotion to Dada experimentation.

After studying art at the École des Beaux-Arts, Duchamp worked as a nurse during the war while her brother ditched Europe for New York. In 1916, the artist Jean Crotti, who had collaborated with Marcel in America (and who Suzanne would marry) returned to Paris with tales of the wild, avant-garde art coming out of the New York branch of Dada. Energized by the news, Suzanne began making drawings that juxtaposed text with machine imagery, a popular Dada trope.

While her work doesn’t possess the clear feminist impulses of some of her Dada sisters, she did address gender inequality in a 1916 collage, Un et une menacés (A Menaced Male and Female), whose opposing mechanical parts read as a couple destined never to connect. She didn’t gain the same notoriety as other members of the Dada cohort in Paris, but she was taken seriously enough to exhibit with them at the Salon des Indípendants in 1920, the first Dada exhibition in the French city, which was organized after the arrival there of André Breton, Tristan Zara, and Francis Picabia.

Sophie Taeuber-Arp

B. 1889, Davos, Switzerland

D. 1943, Zürich

Komposition mit Kreisen, 1934-1938. Sophie Taeuber-Arp Keitelman Gallery

Construction dynamique, 1942. Sophie Taeuber-Arp Galerie Zlotowski

Taeuber-Arp studied textile design and taught in a design school in Zürich, and she’s best remembered for the abstract oil paintings, watercolors, embroideries, and sculpture she made during the war. But as an exceptionally multi-talented dancer and innovator of performance art, she was integral to the development of Dada in the Swiss city.

In Zurich, Dada was particularly collaborative and performance-oriented, centering around the infamous Cabaret Voltaire and the Galerie Dada, where the resistance, including artists and writers drawn to Switzerland for its neutrality, came to witness and participate in highly creative live action. The native Swiss Taeuber-Arp was a core performer, having studied dance with one of Zürich’s most prestigious choreographers, and her “abstract dances,” as they were called, were like nothing the public had seen before. She also collaborated with her artist-poet husband Jean Arp to make bizarre costumes and elaborate marionettes for the shows.

Beatrice Wood

B. 1893, San Francisco

D. 1998, Ojai, CA

Beatrice Wood, Is My Hat on Straight?, 1969. Courtesy of Francis M. Naumann Fine Art.

Beatrice Wood,Un peut d’eau dans du savon, ca. 1980. Courtesy of Francis M. Naumann Fine Art.

Soon after the San Francisco-born Wood met Marcel Duchamp through composer Edgard Varèse, she flippantly suggested to the artist that anyone could “do modern art.” He told her to go home and do it, and that’s exactly what she did.

Wood’s socialite parents had sent her to Paris years earlier to study painting and drawing, in a fruitless attempt to satisfy her rebellious streak, and she had developed a keen set of artistic skills. So she returned to Duchamp with a drawing—a vaguely representational image suggesting the suffocation of marriage. Duchamp was impressed, and the two became friends. He encouraged her to present two paintings at the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, in 1917. There, she shocked visitors by showing Un peut (peu) d’eau dans du savon, a painting of a female nude with a heart-shaped bar of soap placed strategically between the legs.

Around the same time, Duchamp and Wood, along with writer Henri-Pierre Roché, founded The Blind Man, a short-lived Dada magazine that published art and text by anyone who was anyone in New York’s cutting-edge art scene. Wood sculpted as well, and later made her mark as an important California studio potter. She is still sometimes remembered for her love triangle with Duchamp and Roché, which inspired the 1962 film Jules et Jim.

Clara Tice

B. 1888, Elmira, NY

D. 1973, Queens, NY

Clara Tice, Nude Woman Feeding Horse. Courtesy of the artist.

A young Tice catapulted to Greenwich Village stardom when the morality police—the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice— raided a café in 1915 in search of her erotic drawings. The well-publicized event secured her status as a downtown curiosity and drew the attention of some of the city’s edgier editors. But there’s no doubt that Tice would have made a name for herself even without that publicity boost.

Her drawings and etchings of women—stylish soft porn rendered with an economy of detail—became quickly sought-after (and enraged some critics), and she set off on a successful career as an artist and illustrator, drawing for magazines like Vanity Fair, illustrating books, and showing her work on the walls of downtown’s most fashionable garrets. She also had a fashion-forward style all her own and became known as the “Queen of Greenwich Village.” Some say she invented the bob hairstyle.

Thumbing her nose at bourgeois social mores, she fell in with the Dada crowd at the home of Walter and Louise Arensberg—major Dada collectors, patrons, and intellectuals who held salons at their 67th Street home. While her work had its sassy commercial appeal, it also appeared in the Dada journal The Blind Man and in the first exhibition of the avant-garde Society of Independent Artists.

Ella Bergmann-Michel

B. 1896, Paderborn, Germany

D. 1971, Eppstein, Germany

Zwei Eliptische Formen, 1932. Ella Bergmann-Michel Annely Juda Fine Art

After studying art in Weimar and developing a relationship with the artist Robert Michel, who would become her husband and part-time collaborator, Bergmann-Michel was associated with the Bauhaus for a short time before moving on to more Dada-inflected endeavors. The couple hosted Dada meetings and worked on photo collages at their home in Vockenhausen, near Frankfurt.

In Bergmann-Michel’s abstract, constructivist drawings, geometric components become vaguely dystopian, precarious mechanisms that suggest a metaphor for civilization gone awry. She might be all but forgotten if Man Ray, Duchamp, and Katherine S. Dreier hadn’t included her and Michel’s work in the Société Anonyme, the organization they founded in 1920 to show avant-garde European art in America.

Bergmann-Michel went on to make documentaries in the 1930s. Her artwork was especially scarce until the discovery, in the 1980s, of a trove of drawings likely hidden from the Nazis in a mill where she and Michel had lived in 1920.

Mina Loy

B. 1882, London

D. 1966, Aspen, CO

Mina Loy, Lamps photographs by Charmet, Jean-Loup Photos Presse Paris, ca.1920.  Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.

Mina Loy, Lamps photographs by Charmet, Jean-Loup Photos Presse Paris, ca.1920.  Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.

The British-born Loy was a regular at Gertrude Stein’s salons in Paris, and dabbled in Futurism while living in Florence before moving to New York in 1916. When she arrived in the States, she was already known in literary circles, not only for her 1914 “Feminist Manifesto,” in which she called on women everywhere to break with social conventions and live sexually liberated lives, but for her poetry, whose praises were sung by T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.

Fashionable, frisky, and brainy, she fit right in with the happening bohemian scene that Duchamp belonged to. Her shockingly frank poetry—erotic, personal, and uninhibited when it came to bodily functions—appeared in vanguard literary magazines like The Blind Man, Others, and Rogue, but Loy also painted, drew, acted, and had an unusual affinity for lampshades. She depicted them, dressed as one at a costume ball, and later started a business selling them in Paris, backed by Peggy Guggenheim.

Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

B. 1874, Swinemünde, Germany (now Świnoujście, Poland)

D. 1927, Paris

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhovento, God, 1917. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Fusing art and life was one of the guiding principles of Dada, and von Freytag-Loringhoven did it with flair. A German-born fixture of New York’s downtown scene in the late 1910s and early ’20s, the fearless and eccentric Baroness made assemblage art and collages, and wrote poetry, as well as modeling and performing. But she might have been most famous for her bizarre getups. On any given day, she might have been wearing a soup-can bra or a hat decorated with dangling spoons or feathers—like a sort of streetwise flapper gone mad. Or she might have been semi-nude, a crime for which she was arrested multiple times.  

Although extravagant in style, von Freytag-Loringhoven lived like a pauper, having received her royal title from her marriage (her third) to the penniless Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven, who joined the war in Europe and never returned. But her close circle of New York artists and intellectuals—Duchamp, William Carlos Williams, and Djuna Barnes—ensured a rich cultural life.

She wrote poems about Duchamp, painted an amusing interpretive portrait of him, and some have even conjectured that it was Freytag-Loringhoven herself who came up with the idea of Duchamp’s famous urinal, and sent it to him signed R. Mutt.

—Meredith Mendelsohn

Header images, from left: Portrait of Hannah Hoech, 1973, by Will/ullstein bild via Getty Images; Portrait of Beatrice Wood, circa 1990, by Nancy R. Schiff/Getty Images; Portrait of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhovento via Flickr.

from Artsy News

[notorioustina]

Makeup

I hope the above picture gives you a glimpse of how this post is going to go.

Germany is a predominately white country, which is no secret, the secret is, if you’re not white, good luck finding hair and makeup products.

Growing up in the United States I never struggled with finding products for dark skin girls. There have been a couple of occasions where a certain store didn’t have the right foundation color or edge control that I needed, but all I had to do was drive to another store and it was easily accessible.

To my surprise, Germany is the exact opposite.

Yes, I had been to Germany before moving here this past January, but it was only for a summer, so I didn’t need to re-stock on any hair and makeup products. Now that I live here, I’ve found that finding makeup in my color and the correct products for my hair have been one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced. I understand the market for makeup is tailored for people with fairer skin, but in no way does that make it okay to not have ANY products for people of color in most stores. I went to four different makeup stores in four different neighborhoods and took these pictures. There aren’t even any shades of foundation for mixed people, let alone dark skin people.

‘Cause everyone’s skin color fits within a couple shades of beige, right??! WRONG!

I know what some of you may be thinking “not everyone wears makeup, it’s not that big of a deal, you can order some online.” But it is a big deal. Imagine being a native black German and having to travel to more diverse cities like Paris or London to find products that fit your complexion. It shouldn’t be like this. My good friend Subah and I are currently planning a trip to London to get the makeup we normally find in the US.

The only solution I’ve found besides going to London is ordering products online. Seems simple enough, right? No, not at all. Makeup products online are more expensive and there is an extra cost for shipping internationally.

Thankfully, I live in Berlin, which is a melting pot of diversity, so we have more stores with a wide range of foundation colors than cities like Flensburg, (where Subah lives.) Mac cosmetics is the only option I have for finding makeup in Berlin, so I will, of course, be a loyal customer.

I don’t want to scare any people of color from not coming to Germany, just know finding certain products can be challenging.

Hair

If you didn’t already know, melanin rich queens, aka my black sisters, are incredibly versatile with our hair.

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The above pictures are just a couple of styles I’ve had over the past two years.

I don’t like changing my hair up that much, but the possibilities are endless. There’s box braids, Bantu knots, wigs, sew-ins, faux locks, etc. We can do so much because of our hair texture and it’s very unfortunate that the supplies needed are not readily available. Once again, the fact that I live in Berlin makes it a little bit easier to find people to do my hair and the products I need.

Here are my top three favorite African salons in Berlin!

Afro Lydia Hair Salon

Ashanti fur Afro Hair & Beauty

M-Chantal Afro Hairdresser

Before I moved here, I was terrified I wouldn’t find anyone to do my hair, (because I can’t do my own), but for my black queens out there, just know it is possible to find the products and stylists we need.

Hair and makeup for my melanin rich queens in Germany Makeup I hope the above picture gives you a glimpse of how this post is going to go.

[inspirationofluciescandale]

MATTER MATTERS

Fabio Lattanzi Antinori | Jonny Niesche | Leonardo Ulian | Jonathan Vivacqua curated by Claudia Contu

THE FLAT – Massimo Carasi

22 february 2017 – 13 may 2017

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The Flat – Massimo Carasi is pleased to present “Matter Matters” group show. “The shapes, the unity, projection, order and color are specific, aggressive and powerful.”

Donald Judd, Specific Objects, 1965

In 1965, Donald Judd was writing for ArtsYearBook the text titled “Specific Objects”, in which he outlined the new born American Minimalist movement, claiming that painting and sculpting were significant media already, that made the arts’ dilution in a communicative context superflous. Even if considering them minimalists would be an error, we can look at Fabrizio Lattanzi Antinori, Jonny Niesche, Leonardo Ulian and Jonathan Vivacqua as heirs of this vision, based on interdependence between matter and form.

Matter Matters is an exhibition that sets during Miart and Salone del Mobile, and so presents the works of four artists, that come from different contexts (Lattanzi Antinori, Ulian and Vivacqua are from Italy, but the first two live in London, while Jonny Niesche is Australian), but are associated by a precise, however original, consideration on forms and materials they use. By using particularly matter, and so surfaces, the artists converse, each one with a well distinct voice, creating a choir of particularly scathing, aesthetically exemplary works, where often the materials matter, flaunting themselves and their qualities.

We are in front of a continuous exercise of presence and removal, and this is the most fascinating part of these artworks. It’s undeniable that the removal stimulates, in a previous or later fraction of time, an ideal sense of filling, that sometimes becomes real. Like Plato claimed, everything is a copy of an intellectual, purely immaterial, concept, to which we tend to grasp for all our existence. And like Paul Klee rightfully added, centuries later: “Art does not reproduce what is visible, but makes visible what always isn’t.” It’s fascinating to observe how form, artistically or not, always hides a creator’s authentic mystery, a part of his intimate universe, accessible only to the few. Like me writing right now, I bring to you a message filtered by days and days of sensibility shaped on certain ideas. Like you reading this text, you could understand certain passages of it, maybe more than others. In the same way, the Artists that you’ll find in this exhibition, or in the next ones, will have a certain “ME” that you’ll be able to understand, or maybe not. It could sound obvious – and it is – , but I’ll restate it because we tend to forget to conceive artworks other than what they physically represent: just try for a moment to think what is the meaning of a lead sheet sewed to another. Sewing is one of the most lightweighted activities, conceptually and rethinically. I am thinking to my mother, who asks me to help her putting a string through the needle. In Ulian’s artworks this need relies with one of the hardest, unreliable – as lead is cancinogenic – media, which is bent on a bidimensional surface and put contrast with another material: sand . And maybe the connection with that sand used by the Tibetan Monks is explained as a sort of exorcism of lead’s malignity. If we think about all the hard work behind an artwork, we can realize the ritual connection between the Tibetan Monks and Mandalas: maybe Ulian, in creating his “canvases”, tries to cure something or maybe he tries to enter an ideal dimension. At this point, the image composed by the sand becomes even more interesting: a reference to the electrical components that always intrigued the artist, that are also pieces of a system nearly perfect, to us human beings.

Duchamp’s work taught me to be wary of dualistic juxtapositions made in other exhibitions, so “easy” and abused: but here I am, presenting an exhibit based on them. It must be that, thinking about it, they have been always present: from Hellenic Chiasmus to Goethe’s Theory of the Colour; maybe it’s right that they continue to be present. Also the studio is a fundamental piece of the interiority of who creates, the alchemic laboratory of the invisible made visible. Funnily enough, the only studio I possibly could have seen, during the creation of the exhibit – because of geographical distance – was Jonathan Vivacqua’s studio, in Erba: a big room in a construction building. From its windows, one could see Brianza’s mountains. Blue skies and abundant green were the colours I found in some of the artist’s still in the making art pieces. In this room rubber tubes were installed, with also Styrofoam sheets and steel construction structures, which I kind of liked. It must have been because of the contrast between nature and artificial that, in that moment, I felt more powerful than ever. Like in Ettore Spalletti’s painting-scultures, Vivacqua’s artworks suggest a potential vertigo and engulfment, a background extension that creates a spiral. Here, the space, invisible, becomes part of the artwork, visible.

Same goes for Fabio Lattanzi Antinori, working conceptually on a very strong subject for our times: Finance and Numbers. How many times are we suspicious of the virtuality of numbers – I’m personally obsessed – and the tangible effects they create. The artist uses data packages from the main organizations in finance, and converts them in sound impulses reproduced by a singing voice: there is a saying from where I’m from “paper sings”, and in this case, the paper used by Lattanzi Antinori in his works, does it, making something beautiful from something that isn’t necessarily beautiful, carrying on the tradition of artists and intellectuals that underline the virtuous relationship between mathematics and beauty. Nowadays, in the XXI century, we talk about it more than ever, and we have to continue doing so, since art, created in this way, contributes being a mirror of our present, so digital but attached to harmony. Negative recoils accompanies us like a continuous low, because this is the nature of things. You have the choice of where to put the border between these two opposites.

Talking about singing, a song I really can’t get out of my head is City of Stars, that came out this winter in La La Land. In my mind, I have Ryan Gosling humming “City of Stars, are you shining just for me?”, referring to Los Angeles, which has in that moment an artificial sky, where colours blend, from pink to blue. I found the same blending of colours in some of Jonny Niesche’s canvases, and I thought of how Sydney’s sunsets mustn’t be so different from the ones in Los Angeles. The artworks have an enviable aesthetic, which comes from the simplicity of a metal structure that meets a spray coloured synthetic fabric. The colour gradients remind me of the beautiful images that our screen savers offer, but it’s the horizontal line in “Undersong”, which defines a space and invites our eyes to look past it, that makes me wonder. Niesche’s artwork has been inspired by “Pool with two figures” made by David Hockney. I had a chance to see it, at the Tate Museum, huge and stunning, and an article from Tommaso Trini, wrote in 1969 on the subject of “Earthworks” and “Land Art” jumped to my mind: “Imagination conquers Earth”.

Still in this day and age, the secret ingredient that allows us to evaluate an artwork is the same: finding a tangible and unique imagination, and if the works of these four artists answer in a unique and specific way, it’s the distinctiveness of their materials to make them communicate in this surprising way. Voile, next to steel, lead, paper and sound: everything comes together, in a way I didn’t imagine possible. Donald Judd considered the communicative and narrative context, in his times, irrelevant: I think it’s essential, also when the artist doesn’t start from a narrative research, but takes advantage of form, materials and physical and tangible presence.

Last note on my obsession with numbers: on March 22nd, 1969 “When Attitudes Become Form. Live in Your Head”, curated by Harald Szeemann, was opening at the Kunsthalle Bern. It featured artworks by 69 artists, in which we find Joseph Beuys, Richard Long, Emilio Prini, Mario Merz, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Micheal Heizer, Lawrence Weiner, Walter de Maria, Jannis Kounellis. It’s not my intention to assimilate my work to one of the greatest art wise, which is Szeemann, neither I want to compare Matter Matters to Attitudes, but I always loved coincidences, and I like to think that this is a great date to inaugurate our exhibition, and a good omen for everybody involved in this project.

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Fabio Lattanzi Antinori (Roma, 1971): lives and works in London. After his studies at Goldsmiths University, he exposed his works in London, Wien, Milano, Trento, Shenzen and New York, where in 2012 he attended a summer school organized by MoMa PS1 by Marina Abramovic. He held conferences in universities and academies like Goldsmiths University, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute of Chongqing, University of New York and MoCa in Shanghai. His artworks are kept in many collections, such as Victoria&Albert Museum in London, Museo Civico di Villa Lagarina in Rovereto and Museo Civico Crespina in Pisa.

Jonny Niesche (Sydney, 1972): he participated in many collective exhibits, and he has galleries and public spaces dedicated to him in Wien, Sydney and Melbourne. This occasion at The Flat – Massimo Carisi, is the first one in which he exposes his artworks in Italy. This year he was awarded the Australian Council Grant, and he is present in public and private collections, particularly Australian and American ones, like National Gallery of Victoria, M.O.N.A. in Hobart and ARTBANK AU.

Leonardo Ulian (Gorizia, 1974): he is one the artists of The Flat – Massimo Carisi’s gallery. In addition to Exposing often in the gallery, he counts many personal exhibitions in London, Berlin and Pula (Croatia), and many collective exhibits in France, Estonia, USA, Tibet and Spain; in private galleries such as Zabludowitz Collection in London, or in public ones like Toile de Jouy Museum, Tartu Art Museum and Villa Florio in Udine. Thanks to his artworks he won the Owen Rowley Award in 2009 and participates to a number of exhibitions around Europe and America.

Jonathan Vivacqua (Erba, 1986): lives and works in Milan. He took part to a residency program at the Carlo Zauli Museum of Faenza in 2015, and has exposed in a number of occasions mainly on Italian territory. Among his collectives, he exposed his artworks in South Korea, Milano, Cagliari and Torino. He recently contributed in “The habit of a foreign sky”, curated by Ginevra Bria, in Futurdome, and has exposed in collective galleries such as Arrivada Gallery and Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Lissone.

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#gallery-0-4 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 100%; } #gallery-0-4 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

“MATTER MATTERS” Group Show at THE FLAT– Massimo Carasi MATTER MATTERS Fabio Lattanzi Antinori | Jonny Niesche | Leonardo Ulian | Jonathan Vivacqua curated by Claudia Contu…

[honeylulu]

  I hate sewing. It’s one of those necessary evils that needs to be done every now and again, especially if you own a lot of vintage clothing and are a burlesque performer, like myself. I just lack the patience, though I wish I could sew my own clothes, it would save me thousands. I would probably be writing this from the Bahamas!!

But then again, if I was stationed in the Bahamas I would be missing all the fun to be had in Berlin, especially around Christmas time. Which brings me to last week, when I attended the launch workshop of the newly established Berlin Sewing Salon.

The BSS is the brainchild of Mariya Ivanova, an expat living in Berlin. Mariya is an expert in Costume and Dressmaking with lots of experience working and teaching in London. The concept of the Berlin Sewing Salon is to learn new sewing skills in a relaxed and fun atmosphere. Classes are suitable for both beginners and more advanced students, and are taught in English. The workshops cover hand stitching, repairs, alterations, pattern making, embroidery and so on. I thought this concept would be interesting for vintage loving people, so I decided to give it a try.

Mariya, the creator of the Berlin Sewing Salon

(FYI: Stitch and bitch is a phrase that’s been used to describe social knitting groups since the 1940s)

The first class was ‘Make your own Christmas decorations’. What better way to get festive than making my own from scratch (since I can’t seem to locate my stash of Xmas deco), have a bit of Lebkuchen and meet new people? That’s my kind of Sunday!

The Berlin Sewing Salon is homed at Holz Kohlen Koks, an indie art gallery in Neukölln. The place was easy to reach (off the Karl Marx Strasse near Hermannplatz) and was very welcoming, with its wood burning stove, a table full of colourful sewing materials and wood covered walls.

Holz Kohlen Koks on Reuterstr.

The atmosphere was super relaxed, Christmas swing was playing and I was offered a glass of wine and some festive treats. Very soon we all got chatting and started our class. First we got to choose the fabric and some templates to cut (all materials were provided). Then the teacher demonstrated two different kinds of stitches, a basic one and a more advanced one. If I had to do this at home by myself, I would have probably cleaned my whole flat just to avoid the sewing – that’s what I do when I’m daunted by a task, don’t ask me why – but in a social setting and with two hours at hand, I just got on with it without stress. I actually really enjoyed it!

So in less than one hour I made my first beautiful wonky star and learnt a few tips on how to sew straight – that’s not my forte – plus interfacing, fraying and stuffing! Mariya was at hand to advise everyone and we all checked in on our progress. I was then ready to tackle a felt heart using the blanket stitching. Honestly I thought I wouldn’t have the patience to do it, but actually I found it easier than the plain stitch and soon finished my second decoration. I have to say I am proud of my creations!

Concentrating hard!

The two hours flew by really quickly, and I found the whole afternoon rather therapeutic. I really really like the concept of sewing in company, and with a teacher showing you some new things. It makes sewing a relaxing pleasure rather than an annoying task. At 10 Euro when booked in advance the class is a bargain; and it is extremely rewarding. I can’t wait for the upcoming classes in the next few months!

Ongoing regular classes start in January 2016 at:

Holz Kohlen Koks, Reuterstrasse 82, 12053 Berlin

Please check Berlin Vintage Salon for detailed info about upcoming dates.

Keep up to date with vintage news! Subscribe to our newsletter we promise we won’t spam you!

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We attended the newly launched Berlin Sewing Salon for some vintage inspired festive crafts

I hate sewing. It’s one of those necessary evils that needs to be done every now and again, especially if you own a lot of…

We attended the newly launched Berlin Sewing Salon for some vintage inspired festive crafts I hate sewing. It's one of those necessary evils that needs to be done every now and again, especially if you own a lot of…

[luciamvicente]

  I hate sewing. It’s one of those necessary evils that needs to be done every now and again, especially if you own a lot of vintage clothing and are a burlesque performer, like myself. I just lack the patience, though I wish I could sew my own clothes, it would save me thousands. I would probably be writing this from the Bahamas!!

But then again, if I was stationed in the Bahamas I would be missing all the fun to be had in Berlin, especially around Christmas time. Which brings me to last week, when I attended the launch workshop of the newly established Berlin Sewing Salon.

The BSS is the brainchild of Mariya Ivanova, an expat living in Berlin. Mariya is an expert in Costume and Dressmaking with lots of experience working and teaching in London. The concept of the Berlin Sewing Salon is to learn new sewing skills in a relaxed and fun atmosphere. Classes are suitable for both beginners and more advanced students, and are taught in English. The workshops cover hand stitching, repairs, alterations, pattern making, embroidery and so on. I thought this concept would be interesting for vintage loving people, so I decided to give it a try.

Mariya, the creator of the Berlin Sewing Salon

(FYI: Stitch and bitch is a phrase that’s been used to describe social knitting groups since the 1940s)

The first class was ‘Make your own Christmas decorations’. What better way to get festive than making my own from scratch (since I can’t seem to locate my stash of Xmas deco), have a bit of Lebkuchen and meet new people? That’s my kind of Sunday!

The Berlin Sewing Salon is homed at Holz Kohlen Koks, an indie art gallery in Neukölln. The place was easy to reach (off the Karl Marx Strasse near Hermannplatz) and was very welcoming, with its wood burning stove, a table full of colourful sewing materials and wood covered walls.

Holz Kohlen Koks on Reuterstr.

The atmosphere was super relaxed, Christmas swing was playing and I was offered a glass of wine and some festive treats. Very soon we all got chatting and started our class. First we got to choose the fabric and some templates to cut (all materials were provided). Then the teacher demonstrated two different kinds of stitches, a basic one and a more advanced one. If I had to do this at home by myself, I would have probably cleaned my whole flat just to avoid the sewing – that’s what I do when I’m daunted by a task, don’t ask me why – but in a social setting and with two hours at hand, I just got on with it without stress. I actually really enjoyed it!

So in less than one hour I made my first beautiful wonky star and learnt a few tips on how to sew straight – that’s not my forte – plus interfacing, fraying and stuffing! Mariya was at hand to advise everyone and we all checked in on our progress. I was then ready to tackle a felt heart using the blanket stitching. Honestly I thought I wouldn’t have the patience to do it, but actually I found it easier than the plain stitch and soon finished my second decoration. I have to say I am proud of my creations!

Concentrating hard!

The two hours flew by really quickly, and I found the whole afternoon rather therapeutic. I really really like the concept of sewing in company, and with a teacher showing you some new things. It makes sewing a relaxing pleasure rather than an annoying task. At 10 Euro when booked in advance the class is a bargain; and it is extremely rewarding. I can’t wait for the upcoming classes in the next few months!

Ongoing regular classes start in January 2016 at:

Holz Kohlen Koks, Reuterstrasse 82, 12053 Berlin

Please check Berlin Vintage Salon for detailed info about upcoming dates.

Keep up to date with vintage news! Subscribe to our newsletter we promise we won’t spam you!

#gallery-0-10 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-10 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-0-10 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-10 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

We attended the newly launched Berlin Sewing Salon for some vintage inspired festive crafts I hate sewing. It's one of those necessary evils that needs to be done every now and again, especially if you own a lot of…