#Kadist Collection

[teleclub]

Jean Claracq, View from an apartment (2017) This painting from the KADIST collection, depicts 18-year-old Joland Novaj, sourced from Instagram, as he stares at his cereal bowl with an open computer displaying his own Instagram account, alongside a copy of John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” with a XV century illumination.

[kadistcollections]

Charles Gaines, Shadows V, Set 3, 1980

[gagosiangallery]

Rudolf Polanszky at Gagosian Basel

September 7, 2020

RUDOLF POLANSZKY Hypotetic Opening reception: Tuesday, September 15, 12–8pm September 15–November 28, 2020 Rheinsprung 1, Basel __________ Gagosian is pleased to present Hypotetic, an exhibition of new and recent paintings and sculptures by Rudolf Polanszky. This will be his first exhibition in Switzerland, and his second with the gallery. A key player in the Vienna art scene, Polanszky creates cerebral yet tactile works that embrace chance occurrence. In the early 1990s, Polanszky began examining the formal potential of sculpture and mixed-media painting with the series Reconstructions (1991–). To make these richly textured works, he uses salvaged industrial materials such as acrylic glass, aluminum, mirrored foil, resin, silicone, and wire, recombining them into purely aesthetic forms divorced from their original uses and contexts. Inspired by his father’s profession as a jazz musician, Polanszky’s process of “ad hoc synthesis” produces compositions that oscillate between concrete objects and symbols of subjective perception. In this exhibition, Polanszky continues to evolve the Reconstructions by introducing copper foil into his material repertoire. Interspersed between fields of white corrugated cardboard and silvery aluminum, these gently creased, gleaming metal sheets add an entirely new tonal and textural dimension to the surface of each painting. Also on view are sculptures where Polanszky translates the rough-hewn edges of these repurposed materials into three dimensions. In two large freestanding sculptures, he shapes segments of flexible ribbed aluminum tubing into gently curving forms, while in a suite of smaller tabletop works, he deftly manipulates angular strips of metal and acrylic glass into dynamic abstractions.

Polanszky’s handling of material is intuitive and improvisational; he often leaves the raw components outdoors, letting the natural elements help determine the work’s final form. Yet the works in Hypotetic also reveal his acute consideration of the properties, idiosyncrasies, and possibilities of these materials. In Polanszky’s hands, industrial fragments are synthesized into shimmering tableaux that transcend their mundane origins. Rudolf Polanszky was born in 1951 in Vienna, where he lives and works. Collections include the Rubell Museum, Miami; The Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach, FL; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; Werkstadt Graz, Austria; Landessammlungen Niederösterreich, St. Pölten, Austria; Museum Liaunig, Neuhaus, Austria; Sammlung SpallArt, Salzburg, Austria; and Belvedere Museum, Vienna. Exhibitions include Translinear Structures, Zeit Kunst Niederösterreich, Krems an der Donau, Austria (2015); Paradox Transformations, Museo Madre, Naples, Italy (2015–16); and Eidola, Secession, Vienna (2018). _____ Rudolf Polanszky, Reconstructions / Choros, 2020, aluminum, copper foil, mirrored foil, resin, silicone, cardboard, acrylic glass, pigment, and acrylic on wood, in artist’s frame, 61 1/2 × 68 1/4 inches (156.1 × 173.2 cm) © Rudolf Polanszky. Photo: Jorit Aust

[sgough13]

Tauba Auerbach at KADIST from KADIST on Vimeo.

On the occasion of publishing A Partial Taxonomy of Linear Ornament — Both Established and Original — Organized by Shape, Symmetry, Dimension, Iteration and Projection— Including Extrude the Extrusion and Ornament as Entheogen, Tauba Auerbach discusses a range of topics, from topology to gesture, Traditional Chinese Medicine, architecture and (a)symmetry. The project of this book began at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Watson Library, where the artist was asked to pull books from the collection to share with visitors in a public presentation. After naturally selecting titles on long-running interests such as architectural ornament, textiles, and color models, Auerbach realized a need to organize her collection of ornament drawings to make sense of relationships between the various shapes. A corresponding set of connections between the artist’s scientific interests emerged alongside of it. Taxonomy has been showing up as a work-in-progress in various exhibitions ever since, and is finally complete. The lecture is accompanied by a related, five-day installation in the Kadist office, which introduces a series of large-scale prints and a collaborative project between Auerbach and David Reinfurt — an inductive screensaver.

[the-wee-sensitive-listener]

Week 8, speaker talk notes Hong-Kai Wang

Her work explores ‘listening’ as a conceptual tool to explore social relations and the (re)construction of cultural memory in marginal spaces. She engages in a collaborative and process-driven approach to production. Hong Kai Wang’s work uses video, installation,  performance, workshop and text.  Her practice is informed by the tensions between identities, language, hierarchal knowledge in other words discourses.  

She speaks about her art work ‘Music while we work’ and comments this involved her assembling a group of retired workers from a Taiwanese sugar refinery.  She collaborated with these workers via the means of sound recording.  They returned to the factory listened, remembered, felt, and created intimidate sonic portrait of their workplace.

 

Hong-Kai Wang introduces her next art piece

Clair-audience 

06 JUL 2016 Events , San Francisco 

 

Hong-Kai Wang piece ‘Clair-audience’ was a co-production by KADIST and The Lab.

This art work is a performative listening piece, where the session comes out of a conversation among local thinkers and practitioners.  They were collected to speculate about “black ghosts”.  Black ghosts refers to the unrecorded movements of migration across the Pacific Ocean–from Taiwan to California­–listened to and facilitated by Lee and Trammell.  

The session consists of Lee and Trammell’s composition of conjuring of the spaces and of forgetting.  It symbolically referred to forgotten bodies that existed prior to this performance piece, existed during and beyond the recording.  

The audiences are invited to actively listen for the voices beyond times and space.  The performers reinact these spaces and bodies through rhythms, beats, words, and movements.

 

Next is Hong-Kai Wang - Conceptual Biography of Chris Mann, (Liquid Architecture)

She chooses a mode that departs from one’s desire to construct a biography of an artist’s life of singularity.  Instead she uses a collaborative entry point from the site of group conversation and with encounters with others.  Thus incorporating the element of something greater than the individual and a political space where relations and contradictions occur.  

 LIQUID ARCHITECTURE is an Australian organisation for artists working with sound. LA investigates the sounds themselves, but also the ideas communicated about, and the meaning of, sound and listening.

Her next reference is FEEDBACK Ep. 32 | Marina Rosenfeld w/ Hong-Kai Wang. Feedback is a twice-weekly, livestreamed series of conversations between Yarn/Wire and guests. It features deep dives into past collaborations, inside tips on performance, and more. Feedback is live every Tuesday and Thursday at 3pm ET. This episode features Marina Rosenfeld and host Hong-Kai Wang, to talk about Marina's pieces "my body" and death star." 

Next we hear :

Hakka is minority population – why did the residents agree to build this reservoir – she recorded sound of village, the sound of the villager’s and sound from archive, the mobilising of an island against corporate interests, a recording of a collective dissent movement and space. She spoke about the collaborative and decision making process in the construction of this work.

from which a script was produced:

She then transformed this into using this space and script for a performance - a collaboration with a local artist. She commented the choreography was created in this space and shaped by the fact they couldn’t hear each other when they were one meter apart, we decided we needed to be close.  The space was bought this reservoir for a possible shortage of water.  She points out that it was purchased and constructed for a futuristic anxiety.

The question she keeps asking how it can not break. Quiver or shaking  If landscape is a territory how does one situate oneself in the place.  How does one navigate  one's position?

 

Repetitions in the script 

Next project all on loop and not syncronised and the Audience need to move around to hear it nice idea!

Very strong windy sea port when they speak their dialect each sentence the is strongly affected by wind.  IT IS A Poetic conjuring of the wind

Hong-Kai Wang questions in this project how does one anchor one’s positionality within geography that is borderless and comfortless.  

 

Well one is mindful of one’s self talk, one’s identity!

 

She comments that one’s positionality is not simply affected by geography it is international and most definitely always present within one’s mind, embodiment.

She speaks about memory beyond words as an embodiment.

 

Then she asks “How did I record the wind if covid prevented me?”

She employed a sound engineer in the geographical location.  

 

Lots of interesting sound art work I enjoyed the variety

[sorrynoroomsavailable]

Нікіта Кадан, учасник резиденції Вибачте Номерів немає у серпні та жовтні, 2022 року

Я працюю, за великим рахунком, з питанням, як жити в спільному світі, пам'ятаючи речі по-різному. Політики пам'яті, війни пам'ятей, спільний простір та співіснування в ньому різноспрямованих комеморативних практик - це коло моїх тем.  Зараз, в час, коли можливість власне "жити" поставлена під питання, написання історії пришвидчується, а кожне ідеологічно обумовлене історичне протиріччя екзаменує жива пам'ять. І тепер мені йдеться про той парадоксальний об'єкт, який є одночасно музейним експонатом, речовим доказом та втіленням спроможності до рефлексії у крайньому, межовому стані.

Нікіта Кадан народився у Києві у 1982 році. У 2007 закінчив Національну Академію образотворчого мистецтва та архітектури в Києві. Автор інсталяцій, скульптур, живописних та графічних робіт. Член групи художників Р.Е.П. та кураторського й активістського об'єднання Худрада. Куратор низки виставок сучасного мистецта, а також повоєнного радянського мистецтва та українського модернізму 1910-30х рр.. Живе та працює у Києві. Роботи художника були експон��вані у Kunsthaus (Ц��рих), Castello di Rivoli (Турні), BOZAR (Брюссель), Collection Lambert (Авіньйон), Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst (Ляйпціґ), Palazzo Reale (Мілан), Deutsches Historisches Museum (Берлін), а також на Busan biennale 2019 (Пусан), Istanbul biennale 2015 (Стамбул), Бієнале "Київська школа" у 2015 (Київ). Представляв Україну на Венеційській бієнале у 2015 році. Нагороди: Премія ім. Тараса Шевченка, 2022; Премія Казимира Малевича, 2016; Future Generation Prize (special prize), 2014; PinchukArtCentre Prize (main prize), 2011. Роботи художника знаходяться в публічних колекціях: Pinakothek der Moderne (Мюнхен); M HKA (Музей сучасного мистецтва у Антверпені); mumok (Музей сучасного мистецтва Фундації Людвіга у Відні); Центр Помпіду (Париж); Музей Сучасного Мистецтва міста Париж у Palais de Tokyo; MSN - Музей Сучасного Мистецтва у Варшаві; Національний Художній Музей України (Київ); Одеський художній музей; Галерея Арсенал (Бялисток); Музей Воєнної Історії (Музей Бундесверу), Дрезден; Kontakt Collection - ERSTE Schtiftung (Відень);  Thyssen Bornemisza Foundation (Відень); Kadist Foundation (Париж); Collection Telecom (Берлін); Колекція Міністерства закордонних справ Королівства Бельгія

Резиденція Нікіти Кадана стала можливою завдяки підтримці: The beaux-arts Academy in Paris

У партнерстві з Центром досліджень візуальної культури

(eng)

Nikita Kadan, participant of the residency Sorry, No Rooms Available in August and October, 2022

I work, by and large, with the question of how to live in a common world, remembering things differently. Politics of memory, wars of memory, common space and the coexistence of diverse commemorative practices in it are the circle of my topics. Now, at a time when the possibility of actually "living" is put into question, the writing of history is accelerated, and every ideologically conditioned historical contradiction is examined by living memory. And now I am talking about that paradoxical object, which is both a museum exhibit, physical evidence and the embodiment of the ability to reflect in an extreme, borderline state.

Nikita Kadan was born in Kyiv in 1982. In 2007, he graduated in the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv. The author of installations, sculptures, paintings and graphic works. Member of the group of artists R.E.P. and curatorial and activist association Khudrad. Curator of a number of exhibitions of contemporary art, as well as post-war Soviet art and Ukrainian modernism of the 1910s-30s. Lives and works in Kyiv. The artist's works were exhibited at Kunsthaus (Zurich), Castello di Rivoli (Tournai), BOZAR (Brussels), Collection Lambert (Avignon), Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst (Leipzig), Palazzo Reale (Milan), Deutsches Historisches Museum (Berlin), and also at Busan biennale 2019 (Busan), Istanbul biennale 2015 (Istanbul), Biennale "Kyiv School" in 2015 (Kyiv). Represented Ukraine at the Venice Biennale in 2015. Awards: Prize named after Taras Shevchenko, 2022; Kazimir Malevich Award, 2016; Future Generation Prize (special prize), 2014; PinchukArtCentre Prize (main prize), 2011. The artist's works are in public collections: Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich); M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp); mumok (Ludwig Foundation Museum of Contemporary Art in Vienna); Center Pompidou (Paris); Museum of Contemporary Art of the city of Paris in the Palais de Tokyo; MSN - Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; National Art Museum of Ukraine (Kyiv); Odessa Art Museum; Arsenal Gallery (Bialystok); Museum of Military History (Bundeswehr Museum), Dresden; Kontakt Collection - ERSTE Schtiftung (Vienna); Thyssen Bornemisza Foundation (Vienna); Kadist Foundation (Paris); Collection Telecom (Berlin); Collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Belgium

Nikita Kadan's residency was made possible thanks to the support of: The beaux-arts Academy in Paris

In partnership with the Visual Culture Research Center

[constanzahuertasoto-blog]

Iluminismo/ Enlightenment.

Exposición individual. Marlon de Azambuja. 18 diciembre 2021 - 15 enero 2022. /////// Individual show. Marlon de Azambuja. 18 December 2021 - 15 January 2022.

“Iluminismo” es un proyecto expositivo en el que se presenta un gesto espacial/experimental muy simple: una sola línea, que atraviesa tres planos distintos de pared pero se mantiene en una misma altura y nivel. Una línea de fuego, generada a partir de cientos de velas, apoyadas sobre una pequeña baldosa que bordea el espacio. Las imágenes generadas, imposibles de prever con exactitud, son la sombra hecha materia, el otro lado de una luz que por un instante se presenta en el espacio.

Este proyecto, al que Marlon de Azambuja ha bautizado con muchos nombres a lo largo del tiempo, empieza en el año 2000, cuando todavía ensayaba sus primeros pasos como artista. Es la primera vez (a pesar de que, según él, siempre ha deseado probarlo) que la línea ocupa todo el espacio. La disposición potencia la idea de paisaje en el horizonte. Un ensayo libre de certezas, planteado desde la experimentación. Mediante a esta intervención, Azambuja busca provocar un encuentro entre personas que simplemente coinciden en un momento y un lugar, y así suscitar una conversación cuyo eco continúe proyectándose en el futuro, paralelo a la voluntad del artista de seguir repitiendo este gesto.

Marlon de Azambuja (Canoas, 1978). Estudió en el Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Edilson Viriato en Curitiba, Brasil y desde 2005 vive y trabaja en Madrid.

El aplaudido trabajo de Marlon de Azambuja se ha podido ver en numerosas exposiciones tanto individuales como colectivas en espacios públicos y privados, y se encuentra presente en colecciones de distintos países. Destacan sus muestras individuales en las galerías Instituto de Visión, Revólver o Luisa Strina o en la Kadist Art Foundation (San Francisco), Museo Patio Herreriano (Valladolid), MEIAC (Badajoz) o en Abierto X Obras en Matadero (Madrid).

Su obra figura en colecciones como las del Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Paraná, la Fundación Helga de Alvear, el CA2M, el CGAC, el CAAM de Las Palmas, la Nomas Foundation en Roma, la Fundación María Cristina Masaveu o el Ministerio de Cultura, entre otras. Ubicación: Picnic. C/ Divino Vallés 23, 28045. Madrid. Comisaria: Constanza Huerta de Soto. Artista: Marlon de Azambuja. /////// “Enlightenment” is an exhibition project in which a very simple spatial/experimental gesture is presented: a single line, which crosses three different wall planes but remains at the same height and level. A line made of fire, generated from hundreds of candles, resting on a small tile that borders the space. The images generated, impossible to predict exactly, are the shadow made matter, the other side of a light that appears for an instant in the exhibition space. This project, which Marlon de Azambuja has given many names over time, begins in the year 2000, when he was giving his first steps as an artist. It is the first time (despite the fact that, according to him, he has always wanted to try it) that the line occupies the entire space. The layout enhances the idea of ​​landscape on the horizon. A test free of certainties, born from experimentation. Through this intervention, Azambuja seeks to provoke an encounter between people who simply coincide in a moment and a place, and thus provoke a conversation whose echo continues to be projected into the future, parallel to the artist's will to continue repeating this gesture.  Marlon de Azambuja (Canoes, 1978). He studied at the Edilson Viriato Contemporary Art Center in Curitiba, Brazil and since 2005 lives and works in Madrid. The acclaimed work of Marlon de Azambuja has been seen in numerous individual and collective exhibitions in public and private spaces, and is present in collections in different countries. His individual exhibitions stand out in the Instituto de Visión, Revólver or Luisa Strina galleries or in the Kadist Art Foundation (San Francisco), Museo Patio Herreriano (Valladolid), MEIAC (Badajoz) or in Abierto X Obras in Matadero (Madrid). His work appears in collections such as those of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Paraná, the Helga de Alvear Foundation, the CA2M, the CGAC, the CAAM of Las Palmas, the Nomas Foundation in Rome, the María Cristina Masaveu Foundation or the Ministry of Culture, among other. Curator: Constanza Huerta de Soto. Artist: Marlon de Azambuja. Venue: Picnic. C/ Divino Vallés 23, 28045. Madrid. Curator: Constanza Huerta de Soto. Artist: Marlon de Azambuja.

[ozgeersoy]

Pink as a Cabbage / Green as an Onion / Blue as an Orange

The below text was commissioned by KADIST Paris for the publication produced in conjunction with Aslı Çavuşoğlu’s exhibition Pink as a Cabbage / Green as an Onion / Blue as an Orange, October 7, 2020–January 24, 2021. The PDF of the publication is available here.

Pink as a Cabbage / Green as an Onion / Blue as an Orange begins by questioning how the social uprisings in the last decade have shaped the way we reimagine sites of everyday resistance. It is through such events that many of us have realized the potential that everyday acts have in undermining power. For me, one of the most important lessons from the Gezi Park protests came through the creation of a small, provisional garden within the park. It revealed that an oppositional act can be as direct as planting seeds for a temporary garden—a site for collective and continuous care. For Aslı Çavuşoğlu, this was a time when she came to learn that “planting heirloom seeds can constitute a political act.” [1]

Following the protests in 2013, Çavuşoğlu and I, along with many others, witnessed several people acting on these lessons. Some created urban guerilla gardens to reclaim neglected land. Some joined the efforts to preserve the centuries-old historical urban gardens facing the threat of urban redevelopment. Others established ecological farming initiatives in rural Turkey, furthering the number of existing models that have been advocating for sustainable and community-supported agriculture. This exhibition draws on more than a dozen of these initiatives, both new and old, which propose forms of resistance through kinship, solidarity, and collective dreams. It presents an installation with natural fabrics and dyes to introduce a mapping exercise about their stories.

Çavuşoğlu often uses color as a storytelling device. For Red/Red (2015), she followed the story of an almost extinct pigment made of dried and ground Ararat cochineal, an endangered insect species native to the geography around the border between present day Turkey and Armenia, which remains closed due to political and territorial disputes. In Red/Red, her canvas is composed of handmade papers that have been traditionally used for manuscript illustrations. For The Place of Stone (2018), she investigated the story of lapis lazuli and introduced fragments of how this deep, celestial blue gemstone has been extracted and exported from Afghan mines for centuries. For this work, she built a wall of fresco panels that have traditionally featured this pigment and explored what the color has come to symbolize– ranging from royalty and religious piety to political unity– as it traveled across geographies.

In Pink as a Cabbage / Green as an Onion / Blue as an Orange, Çavuşoğlu employs a similar artistic strategy as she dyes natural fabrics with fruits, vegetables, and plants cultivated by the farming initiatives she has been in touch with. Yet, rather than formulating the history of a particular color, here the artist thinks through color bringing together the various stories and models these farming initiatives have offered.

The work takes the form of an installation with fifteen fabric rolls of different sizes, textures, patterns, and rhythmic surfaces with muted, earthy colors—each corresponding to a unique initiative. Take the example of a 6-meter roll with various tones of yellow, green, and brown, created by blackberries and barberries collected by a small-scale farming initiative near the capital city. [2] A seed stitch embroidery on cotton fabric features short dashes that resemble scattered seeds, hinting at wide, nearby rice fields that are no longer. The patterns in the ikat [3] weaving borrow their shape from farmers’ forehead wrinkles, suggesting signs of resilience. In another fragment, numerous lines that flow like a river seem to be pinched by two invisible fingers, evoking a sense of control, possibly pointing at the continued resistance against the state-controlled hydropower plants in the region. In the installation, it is the tension between the abstract and the representational that allows performative readings across these stories.

In contrast to the previous works mentioned above, this installation favors a flexible structure that adapts to its host sites, including two storefronts, one in Paris and another in Istanbul. [4] Some of these fabric rolls grow out of the wall, extending towards the center of the exhibition space, while others move along adjacent walls, mimicking the architectural elements of the site they inhabit. The display evokes the setting of bazaar-like stalls, forming a temporary gathering with provisional and deployable structures. It generates a site of exchange for the viewer and this group of small-scale producers who resist the usual model of economic growth and imagine a change in social values, production patterns, and support structures.

A riff on a poem by Surrealist writer Paul Éluard, the last part of the exhibition title suggests that imagination is a critical part of future-building. In a time when the pandemic is making the unfolding crisis of agricultural production and distribution even more visible—with farmers destroying a year’s harvest of vegetables despite an increase in demand for food—, Çavuşoğlu’s work reminds us about the pathologies of the existing, industrial, and heavily marketized food systems. The exhibition positions small-scale farming initiatives not only as sites of everyday resistance, but also as value systems that will play a central role for future politics.

[1] Aslı Çavuşoğlu, conversation with the Author, July 11, 2020.

[2] TADYA (Tahtacıörencik Village Ecological Living Collective) is one of the farming initiatives Çavuşoğlu has been in contact with. Established in 2014, it consists of a group of villagers and facilitators in the Tahtacıörencik Village of the Güdül district in Ankara. They define themselves as a solidarity-based collective that practices agriculture with traditional methods.

[3] Ikat is a method of creating patterns in fabric by tie-dyeing the yarn before weaving.

[4] The exhibition is presented at the same time at KADIST Paris and at EK BİÇ YE İÇ in Istanbul.Started in 2014, EK BİÇ YE İÇ is a social enterprise that runs urban farms, farm-to-table eateries, and educational workshops in Istanbul. The initiative focuses on food to start conversations on local production, sustainable consumption, and ethical decision-making.

[eucanthos]

Young-hae Chang - Heavy Industries

The Last Day of Betty Nkomo

Seoul-based artist Young-hae Chang is the CEO of YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES (YHCHI) a collective known for their online and installation video work that questions contemporary social and cultural conditions using black and white text and music.

“Like us, you might have first seen the work of YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES online in the early 2000s just as digital animation was finding its footing. They were an early and fast sensation in those days of rapid and unfettered experimentation on the web, garnering tens of thousands of visitors to their site www.yhchang.com. Known for a different kind of hyper-text, their videos are set to upbeat music synched to a succession of bursting and cascading phrases across the screen. They are at home in language, yet as artists they are also careful not to say too much. And although they are widely recognized, the identities behind YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES remain elusive, found only in fragments of interviews and reviews. No photography, please. As the story goes, Young-hae Chang is Korean and was studying at the University of Paris, where she met Marc Voge, an American poet. Driven by the shared pursuit of art their paths and hearts collided in the City of Light, eventually landing them in Seoul, a one-time agrarian backwater city turned global icon of manufacturing and technology. It was in Seoul that they would establish YOUNG-HAE CHANG[…]”

Excerpt From: Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries. “Pacific Limn.” Kadist Art Foundation, 2013. iBooks.

https://itunes.apple.com/gr/book/pacific-limn/id704641078?mt=11

[kadistcollections]

Ian Wallace, Study for my Heroes in the Street (Stan), 1986

[gagosiangallery]

Opening tomorrow—Rudolf Polanszky at Gagosian Paris

January 15, 2020

RUDOLF POLANSZKY

Opening reception: Saturday, January 16, 12–5pm January 16–April 24, 2021 4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris __________ Freedom is a chimera in a sense, but this illusion is realized as far as is possible in art. I can do something, and you can say, “No, don’t do that, that’s wrong,” but I’ll do it anyway. —Rudolf Polanszky Gagosian is pleased to present new and recent paintings and sculptures by Rudolf Polanszky. This is the first exhibition of the artist’s work at Gagosian in Paris. A key figure in the Vienna art scene, Polanszky creates cerebral yet tactile works that embrace chance occurrence. From the early 1990s, he began experimenting in mixed-media painting with the series Reconstructions (1991–). To make these subtle compositions, he uses salvaged industrial materials such as acrylic glass, aluminum, mirrored foil, resin, silicone, and wire, decontextualizing them from their original uses and recombining them into aesthetic forms. Polanszky’s process of “ad hoc synthesis” produces works that oscillate between material constructions and symbols of subjective perception. In this exhibition, the Reconstructions newly incorporate copper foil. Interspersed between fields of white corrugated cardboard and silvery aluminum, these gleaming, gently creased metal sheets add an entirely new tonal and textural dimension to the surface of each painting. In some compositions, Polanszky combines copper with silver or deep purplish mirrored foil, recalling the rippling, reflective surfaces of the Bright Mirrors and Dark Mirrors—two paired subseries of the Reconstructions first seen in his exhibition at Gagosian New York last year.

Also on view are two recent sculptures in which Polanszky makes use of the rough-hewn edges of the same repurposed objects, manipulating strips of metal and acrylic glass into curved forms and dynamic abstractions. Polanszky’s handling of material is intuitive and improvisational; he often leaves the individual components of his works outdoors, letting the natural elements help determine his constructions’ final surfaces and forms. Yet these works also reveal his acute consideration of the properties and possibilities of materials. In Polanszky’s hands, industrial fragments are transformed into shimmering arrangements that transcend their mundane origins. Rudolf Polanszky was born in 1951 in Vienna, where he lives and works. Collections include the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; Werkstadt Graz, Austria; Landessammlungen Niederösterreich, St. Pölten, Austria; Museum Liaunig, Neuhaus, Austria; Sammlung SpallArt, Salzburg, Austria; and Belvedere Museum, Vienna; Rubell Museum, Miami; and Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach, FL. Exhibitions include Translinear Structures, Zeit Kunst Niederösterreich, Krems an der Donau, Austria (2015); Paradox Transformations, Museo Madre, Naples, Italy (2015–16); and Eidola, Secession, Vienna (2018). _____ Rudolf Polanszky, Reconstructions / Choros / Ecliptics, 2020, copper foil, aluminum, resin, silicone, acrylic glass, mirrored foil, and acrylic on wood, in artist’s frame, 59 3/4 × 59 1/2 inches (151.6 × 150.9 cm) © Rudolf Polanszky. Photo: Jorit Aust

[adornoshut]

Kadist Video Library

Kadist Video Library (KVL) is an online platform designed to facilitate public access to video artworks by artists represented in the KADIST collection.

https://kadist.org/kvl/

(thanks Tommaso)

[porcileorg]

On the group show ‘Greater Than the Sum’ @ Jahn und Jahn, Munich (2019-10-24 – 2019-12-14)

Participating artists: Kerstin Brätsch, Michaela Eichwald, Helen Marten, Sarah Ortmeyer, Laure Prouvost 

Author: Magda Wisniowska - Munich, November, 2019.

Citing Synergy I am guilty as much as the next person of name-dropping philosopher’s names in discussions about art. So, while I have a lot of sympathy for how the curators choose to frame the exhibition “Greater than the Sum” at Jahn und Jahn, I also wonder at their reference to Aristotle’s claim, “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

In their press release they write,

Each artistic position shown in this group exhibition appears unique, original, and complex. Through their combination, the works solidify into a new formation, encouraging a re-examination of the whole. Borrowing from Aristotle’s claim that “The whole is more than the sum of its parts”, Greater than the sum reveals new synergies [click link]. 

The lack of further context makes this reference to the concept of synergy difficult to place. Very simply, why Aristotle? And why now, when the concept’s heyday was the interwar period of the psychological theory of Gestalt? At the time, research into synergy had a bearing on an art history rooted in the psychology of art, but this was tied to the pursuit of naturalistic representation that art has long since abandoned. Maybe it is precisely this troubled history that makes the reference to synergy interesting, but it also makes the exhibition easy to dismiss as a collection of moderately successful artists from whom the gallery can profit. Or more generously, perhaps it gives the viewer a rare opportunity to focus on the work outside of an established discursive frame.  What kind of “new synergies” does the exhibition reveal?

Fragments Without a Whole The first work to see when you enter is by the award winning English artist, Helen Marten. A face the same colour as your desk is like many of her sculptures, a tightly controlled collection of odd objects, some familiar, some personal and some downright bizarre. A small and much too narrow whitish desk stands assertively yet precariously, its extravagant base kept from wobbling by a number of folded bits and pieces, far more than necessary. There are a few things on the desk and many more in the wastepaper laundry bin close by. One of a series, this work was shown for the first time to mark the opening of the Kunsthalle Zürich, in the exhibition “Almost the Exact Shape of Florida”, 2012. A later version was shown at the Chisenhale in 2013, launching the artist’s career and leading to her Turner prize nomination in 2016. At these earlier exhibitions the work was always part of a larger installation, standing behind the totemic One for a bin, one for a bench, but even in its current much reduced form, Marten’s aim of rendering linguistic operations physical through displacement, rearrangement and juxtaposition is very much apparent. On Marten’s “highly wrought” work, Guardian critic Adrian Searle wrote that you cannot “tell the detail from the main event” [click link], nonetheless I cannot help thinking that her arrangement of details is such that it never quite forms an entire whole.

Deferral of the Whole Behind Marten’s work is a painted collage by German artist, Michaela Eichwald Memory-Klinik-Notluke-Persönlichkeitsschale. Again, the piece is an older one, shown previously in 2012 at the Mathew gallery in Berlin. Aiming to resist the perceived exploitation of subjectivity by the neoliberal social media, this earlier exhibition was organised around the idea of the personal that refused to be subsumed under the category of personality. Certainly, the personal has a complicated history in this particular painting, one fragment previously part of a different collage, No drink No talk Just beautiful, in turn first a drawing on an invite for a show by a friend of the artist, Gunar Wardenbach. The idea of the fragment is important to the work, but once again, this fragment is of an imperfect and incomplete kind, where formation into a whole is continually deferred.

A Lost Whole? On the other wall and in the other room are paintings and objects by the Vienna-based Sarah Ortmeyer. Ortmeyer is relatively well known in Munich, having had a large show at the local Kunstverein only last year. The work she presents at Jahn und Jahn is similar to that she had shown earlier, a couple of her chessboard paintings and ostrich egg objects from the previous exhibition. In the paintings a checkerboard obscures an image of the sky; the eggs act as anthropomorphically stylised chess pieces. But where her investigation into the game’s principles and its gender attributions made sense in the large space of the Kunstverein, here, in smaller rooms and separated into two by a dividing wall, it gets lost. Like a chess game it very much needs all sixteen pieces in order to begin play.

Undermining of the Whole New York-based Kerstin Brätsch also had a large exhibition in Munich recently, at the Brandhorst in 2017. The piece she shows here is again familiar from that exhibition - one of the large scale paper pieces utilising marbling technique framed by neon tubes - but this time, the work is given (no pun intended) space to shine. Covering one whole wall at the end of the room, it has an altar-like quality, lending credence to its reference to the Hawaiian snow goddess Poli’ahu and her three sisters. Red eyes rimmed by vivid green really do seem to acquire a preternatural glow, demonstrating the truth of Beau Rutland’s observation for ArtForum, that the “proliferation of voices” characteristic of her work, can in some cases be a burden [click link]. In the Brandhorst, the work was presented as one of a series and had to compete for our attention, not just within the series, but with the stain glass works Brätsch made in collaboration with Urs Rickenbach. The more formal type of work on paper was also distributed throughout the museum, making it easier to compare the artist’s particular kind of mark making - its billowy formations, rainbow striations and sharp awkward angles - from one body of work to the next. Surrounded as it was in the Brandhorst by such abundance of collocations, precursors, models, genres and disciplines, it is easy to understand Daniela Stöppel’s claim, that the work both exemplifies the kind of contemporary art that belated brings traditional aura-laden painting into an expanded field, as well as disrupting this narrative [click link]. At Jahn und Jahn however, the work’s elusive materiality comes to the fore. Just as with the stain-glass pieces, where work’s physicality is undermined by its transparency, here the surface is rendered fragile, the resulting layer of ink as much a product of the chemical make-up of each pigment or the wave patterns in the liquid, as it is of the artist (and her collaborator’s) hand. It has a presence yet threatens to dissolve right before our eyes.

Wholly Confused French Laure Provoust is another Turner prize winner known for her video, installation and performance work. Like Ortmeyer and Brätsch she had already shown in Munich, having the exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in 2016. She also famously represented France at this year’s Venice Biennale with her complex transformation of the French pavilion space. She is therefore perhaps the best-known artist of the five. Which makes the gallery’s choice of work very curious because it is so uncharacteristic - not a video but a painting-type work, not part of an installation, but a stand-alone. You Could Hear this Image (2017) is a tapestry first shown as part of a group in the exhibition “LOOKING AT YOU, LOOKING AT US” at Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, itself a reference to a previous exhibition and collaboration, “The Aube’s cure Parle Ment” at the Kadist Foundation in 2017. The tapestry belongs to a complex narrative highlighting the notion of obscurity, its construct explored during the latter show. At the Obadia exhibition, metal men and metal women, stick figures with LCD screen heads far too big for their bodies, would greet you and invite you to walk around a central platform - the tapestries, as the artist states, “sewn by grandma,” decorate the walls so that you can contemplate parle ment’s affairs [click link]. Yet without knowing all of this, one is left with a woven, grey negative image of a trumpet player, uncertain of whether to view it conceptually or formally, a fragment or part of a whole.

[contemporaryartdaily]

Week in Review: August 20, 2017

Welcome to Week in Review, our Sunday round-up of the last seven days of activity here at Contemporary Art Daily. Please subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, follow us on Tumblr, follow us on Instagram, and become a fan on Facebook.

We would like to thank our annual sponsor NADA, the definitive non-profit arts organization dedicated to the cultivation, support, and advancement of new voices in contemporary art.

We’d also like to thank our sponsor X-TRA, a quarterly contemporary art journal edited by a collective of artists and writers.

Please take a look at our selections from this year’s Venice Biennale, as well as our larger archive of the event, if you haven’t already. We’ll begin publishing our selections from Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017 next week.

Be sure to keep up with everything happening on our Office Notebook.

This week’s featured exhibitions:

Julien Ceccaldi at LOMEX

Marisa Merz at Hammer Museum

Nicola Tyson at Sadie Coles

Robert Adams at Thomas Zander

Alvin Baltrop at Daniel Buchholz

Hans-Peter Feldmann, Elad Lassry at Francesca Pia

“What We Know that We Don’t Know” at Kadist

Alivia Zivich at MOCAD

David Hartt at Thomas Schulte

“From the Collection – Verlust der Mitte” at S.M.A.K.

Have an excellent week.

Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.

[shemakesnoisefestival]

MARY HELENA CLARK + SOFIA BOHDANOWICZ + CAULEEN SMITH + KATHRYN ELKIN + BEATRICE GIBSON  

The Glass Note, de Mary Helena Clark. Estados Unidos, 2018. 9’. VOSE (Estreno en Madrid)

A través de una narración no lineal, la obra propone un collage de sonidos, imágenes y texto que reflexiona sobre la vinculación entre lo sonoro y lo táctil en relación con lo cinematográfico. El título hace referencia precisamente a estos dos sentidos a través del acto de generar una nota musical cuando se roza el borde de una copa con líquido.

Mary Helena Clark es una artista norteamericana que trabaja con películas, vídeos e instalaciones. Su obra utiliza el lenguaje del collage para explorar estados disociativos a través del cine, haciendo que converjan temas y estilos dispares que evocan una lógica o un código externos. Por medio de las convenciones de la narrativa, del lenguaje y del género, sus películas exploran las subjetividades cambiantes y los límites de la cámara subjetiva. Sus trabajos se han exhibido en centros como Whitney Museum of American Art, Museo Tamayo de México, Kadist Art Foundation, Anthology Film Archive o en festivales como Toronto, Róterdam, Nueva York, Courtisane o Ann Arbor.

Veslemøy's Song, de Sofia Bohdanowicz. Canadá, 2018. 8’. VOSE (Estreno en Madrid)

Película filmada en blanco y negro y 16 mm procesado a mano, en la que una joven estudiante, Audrey Benac, tras conocer que su abuelo era violinista, comienza a profundizar en la historia que hay detrás y descubre la figura de Kathleen Parlow, una celebrada violinista que fue mentora de su abuelo. La investigación le lleva a los archivos de la Biblioteca Pública de Nueva York en busca de una rara grabación producida en 1909 y titulada Veslemøy´s Song.

Sofia Bohdanowicz es cineasta canadiense con base en Toronto. Pese a su juventud ya posee una reconocida trayectoria cinematográfica, con varios cortometrajes y dos largometrajes, que han sido presentados y premiados en festivales tan prestigiosos como Locarno, Berlinale, New York Film Festival, BFI Londres, TIFF, BAFICI o Viennale.

Sojourner, de Cauleen Smith. Estados Unidos, 2018. 22’. VOSE (Estreno en España)

La obra toma su nombre en homenaje a Sojourner Truth, mujer que nació bajo la esclavitud y que escapó de sus amos en 1826. Abolicionista y activista por los derechos de la mujer fue la primera mujer negra en ganar un juicio contra un hombre blanco. A través de su legado y del de otras mujeres como Rebecca Jackson, Alice Coltrane y las militantes del Combahee River Collective, Smith reimagina en la película el mítico Museo de Arte del Desierto al Aire Libre de Joshua Tree, diseñado por Noah Purifoy, como un espacio radical para la utopía feminista. Allí un grupo de mujeres se reúnen para reinterpretar la icónica fotografía que Billy Ray realizó a un grupo de chicos para la revista Life en 1966, tras los disturbios de Watts.

Cauleen Smith es cineasta, artista multimedia y docente estadounidense nacida en 1967. Se licenció en cine por The San Francisco State University y en la actualidad imparte clases en la prestigiosa escuela CalArts (Los Ángeles). Su obra abarca desde encuentros afrofuturistas hasta investigaciones sobre los traumas en la diáspora africana incidiendo en los problemas a los que se enfrentan las mujeres negras en la actualidad. Materializa su trabajo tanto en películas como en dibujos e instalaciones. Entre sus películas encontramos títulos como Drylongso (1998), H-E-L-L-O (2014) o Sojourner (2018), que han sido presentados en prestigiosos festivales internacionales como Sundance, South by Southwest, BFI Londres o Róterdam.

Queen, de Kathryn Elkin. Reino Unido, 2019. 12’48”. VOSE (Estreno en España)

Cómo afronta la maternidad una artista cuya obra gira en torno al yo. Realizada durante su propio embarazo y lo primeros meses de vida de su hijo, Kathryn Elkin se plantea si este proceso puede o debe formar parte de la representación. En la obra se combina lo autobiográfico con la cultura pop, los amigos, una bolera, un estudio de grabación, la transformación de un cuerpo y el cuestionamiento del ego a través de la memoria colectiva y las diferentes voces de una comunidad artística. Todo presentado con importantes dosis de improvisación y buen humor en torno a los procesos del trabajo creativo.

Kathryn Elkin, artista nacida en Belfast y formada en The Glasgow School of Art (2005), se graduó en el Goldsmiths College (2012). En 2014 participó en el proyecto “Artistas en el archivo de la BBC”. Desde 2016 ha expuesto en centros como la Tate Modern, el ICA - Institute of Contemporary Arts de Londres o la Transmission Gallery y ha participado en festivales como Visions du Reel, Nueva York Film Festival o Courtisane.

I hope I´m loud when I´m dead, de Beatrice Gibson. Reino Unido, 2018. 20’. VOSE (Estreno en Madrid)

Obra que funde arte y vida como las dos caras de la misma moneda. Imágenes temblorosas grabadas con teléfonos móviles, de protestas y represiones obtenidas de internet, conviven con los poemas de CAConrad y Eileen Myles, acompañados de la música de la pionera de la experimentación sonora, Pauline Oliveros, y la propia Beatrice hablando y bailando con su hijo, como símbolo del futuro, en el que quienes lo habiten entenderán la visión que teníamos del mundo a través del arte que les habremos dejado, de ahí ese “Espero ser ruidoso cuando esté muerto” del título.

Beatrice Gibson, artista visual nacida en Reino Unido en 1978, es licenciada en Filosofía por la Universidad de Mánchester y doctora en Cultura Visual por la escuela Goldsmiths Center for Research Architecture de Londres. Con sus trabajos en cine y vídeo ha conseguido importantes reconocimientos a nivel internacional: dos veces ganadora del Tiger Award en Róterdam (2009 y 2013) y premiada en Art Bassel 2015. En la primera edición de she makes noise proyectamos su película The Tiger’s Mind.

[collectivedynamics]

Text for Arc Advisory: “The Rise of the Private Art Museum: Curating a Private Collection”

Published in Arc Advisory, 11 March 2017

Flanked between two Eileen Gray chairs, Cy Twombly’s 1982 Naxos triptych is displayed. On the adjacent wall, Rudolf Stingel’s aluminium covered Celotex insulation board (Untitled, 2002) is juxtaposed against a Jean-Michel Frank minimalist shagreen cabinet. The pieces carry an underlying intellectual rigor that helped redefine 20th  century design, as well as Contemporary art. 

While the artworks here are exhibited outside the museological sphere, they are still intrinsically linked to it as their history ensures that they are firmly anchored within the art canon. It is precisely this deeply interlaced relationship between the museum and the private collection that drew me to pursue a career in this field and establish AIB Art Advisory, an independent art advisory firm that offers expert investment advice and curatorial services to private and corporate clients.

Negotiating the unique rapport between the public and private sphere, the curator vacillates between these two worlds. Acting as a gatekeeper of sorts, he/she is charged with creating and managing ties between the institution and the individual. Needless to say, there is a claustrophobically tight circularity between these two facets of the art world; hence, the profession relies heavily on one’s ability to dip in and out of both pools. Arguably this could trigger a discord when it comes to curating the private collection with the public trust.

Today, private art collections are increasingly trying to permeate the educational realm, a realm previously dominated by museums and galleries. For instance, French Moroccan private collectors, Eli Michel and Karen Ruimy, established The Marrakech Museum of Photography and Visual Arts in 2013 to house and display their extensive collection of fine art photography. Open to the general public, the curatorial program sought to further our knowledge and understanding of post-war photography. Furthermore, foundations, such as The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, are now providing new collectors with opportunities to exhibit their work more publicly. Similarly, Beatrix Ruf, Director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, founded ‘Pool’, an initiative to curate exhibitions at Luma Westbau in the Löwenbräu Art Complex with artworks owned by Maja Hoffmann and Michael Ringier. In Ruf’s own words: “‘Pool’ does not interpret private collections as merely the representation of individual preferences, but rather as a contemporary document.”

This trend is echoed in the number of startups that are cropping up promising to connect collectors with institutions worldwide. Namely, Vastari raised a significant round of funding while tooting the tag line: “the exhibition connection”. Bernadine Brocker, Vastari Group’s CEO says: “The future of art and technology is a fully integrated experience where collectors, museums and experts can connect, curate, tour their shows and define best practices within international relationships.”

Deviating from the conventional curatorial structure, private art collections are remolding the public’s relationship with art. While this undoubtedly broadens our exposure to great oeuvres and deepens our knowledge of the art canon, curators need to be mindful of their responsibility when bridging the gap between public and private establishments, and managing diverging interests. This conflict, intrinsic to the art world, can be perceived when private collectors and foundations choose to employ curatorial labor. Thus, custodians of public museums often simultaneously curate private collections. While their shadow role could be justified as donor cultivation, it still raises some ethical concerns. The Trussardi Foundation, The Kadist Art Foundation, as well as the wealth management firm Northern Trust, all count amongst their advisors esteemed museum directors and chief curators, namely Massimiliano Gioni (Associate Director and Director of Exhibitions at the New Museum), Jens Hoffman (Director of Special Exhibitions and Public Programs at the Jewish Museum New York), Larry Rinder (Director of Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), Hou Hanru (Artistic Director of the MAXXI in Rome) and Michael Darling (Chief Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago).

In an article written for ArtSlant, art writer Ryan Wong posits: “Within the art world, museums still set the standard for critical debate, the resuscitation and reexamination of artistic legacies, and scholarly research within the art world: their exhibitions are the most consistently reviewed, they command the largest spaces, and they attract the most visitors. But they no longer have a monopoly on that work.” The borders surrounding these two once distinct spheres – the institution and the private art collection – are beginning to erode. Hence, collecting has transitioned away from a manifestation of personal taste into a new realm; it is now a curatorial project. This relatively new phenomenon will shape our understanding of history and ultimately redefine the art canon.