Opening on Saturday, September 11th, Rob Pruitt’s exhibition “Pattern and Degradation” takes inspiration from the Amish tradition of Rumspringa, a period during which Amish adolescents are given the chance to temporarily explore the outside world before choosing to either return to their community, or leave it forever.
In Pruitt’s interpretation he is forever living a “Permanent Rumspringa” and filling an entire city block with the exploits. The exhibition will in fact occupy the entirety of GBE’s galleries, as well as the neighboring gallery Maccarone, Inc.
For Pruitt, this is the position of the artist: an human indifferent to convention and with every avenue open to him. In “Pattern and Degradation”, the artist will debut several new bodies of greatly varied work, trying everything before it is too late.

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One Night Stand is the admittedly catchy title of a cycle of performances that elapse for the time of one night and are to be enjoyed on that night only. After the first installment, tomorrow the second event – curated by Myriam Laplante – will take the space of the Roman Fondazione Volume!, with actions by Kurt Johannessen (Norway), Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia-Germany), Roi Vaara (Finland) and Herma Auguste Wittstock (Germany). 

 To say that Gwangju is the most unlikely place for the arty circus to land in it’s an understatement. Albeit its emotional and founding role in the shaping of modern democratic Korea, the city itself looks exceptionally unattractive, boasting a rather depressing landscape of endless apartment blocks and dull mid-rise commercial buildings. Yet this is the seat of the oldest and arguably most important among the ever growing Asian biennales, so a number of determined art world inhabitants, actually, landed here yesterday – against all odds, last but not least an annoying typhoon that cannibalized national news broadcasts, and apparently put several VIP special flights in jeopardy. Not such a tragedy if you happen to travel by bus. Once inside the exhibition halls though – again, not the easiest thing if you happen not to speak Korean and to be in need of directions – it was all forgotten. For the show, “1000 Lives”, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, is huge, very dense, and very long to browse, enjoy, and digest. Indeed, the already enormous main Biennale Hall wasn’t large enough, and the show took parts of 3 other adjacent venues. “1000 Lives” seems heavily centered on the reproduced image, above all the human portraits (and self-portraits: Cuoghi, Roth, Sherman, plus numerous Chinese artists, among others) as tools of representation, powerful and poetic forces, and in last instance, testaments for the political, social and cultural lives lived by the modern man in different times and contexts. Banalizing: art as personal freedom of expression and expression of personal freedom. Countless photographs, serial-like kind of works (Fischli and Weiss, Philip-Lorca di Corcia, plus numerous Chinese artists, among others) punctuate the kilometers of walls. Videos, almost all artists’ personal accounts of political stances or obscure yet pleasant old and exotic works, are skilfully disseminated along the route, so that after spending more than six hours in the show, you feel remarkably not so overloaded. Most striking is the presence of lots of old forgotten heroes, vintage modern being very much a trend these days, that here gives true moments of delight (Katsushiro Yamaguchi, Hermann Glockner), mixed with slightly disconcerting ones (two rooms installed in a faux archive fashion, filled with thousands photos of teddy bears, a glorious, charmingly obsessive installation indeed, but at first sight very memorabilia). In spite of everything a very well built exhibition, for sure. If you are in North-East Asia, you’ve got no excuses not to check yourself. 

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The 14th International Sculpture Biennale of Carrara is pleased to annunce the next Vanessa Beecroft performance, VBmarmi.carrara (special project): on 4th September the marble of the ancient Studi Nicoli, in Carrara, will encounter the live sensuality of Vanessa Beecroft’s models.