In his work, Cyprien Gaillard repeatedly explores the absurd aspects of dystopic architectures and their remaining ruins through such strategies as dilapidation, destruction, demolition, preservation, conservation and reconstruction of architecture. In doing so he always departs from the process itself. For his exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin Cyprien Gaillard has created a new, large-scale piece, which – whilst departing from a prototype of the monument – completes itself in the process.

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“YOUR NAME HERE”, Jonathan Monk’s seventh exhibition at Casey Kaplan, resurrects drawings and photographs from Monk’s time in southern California alongside new sculptural works in neon, marble, fabric and leather, that are interspersed with the second installment of a project that has been three years in the making, the “Rew-Shay Hood Project”, 2008-2011.

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Maximilian Zentz Zlomovitz’s second show at Mary Mary presents a series of new collage works, paintings and sculptural pieces. For this exhibition, Zlomovitz has focused on the foundation of painting and drawing within his practice, allowing the viewer to appreciate more specifically the use of form, material, collage and gesture within the work.

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Click on see more for an interview with the artist

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The ghostly artworks of Karsten Födinger sneak into a space in order to disturb it. The discrete nature of the works – shards of plaster and bits of concrete forgotten on the floor – conveys a subtle analysis of the space all the while instilling an eerie feeling, as if it was left unfinished.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija first exhibition in New York - Pad Thai – was over 20 years ago. Since that point Tiravanija has consistently defied expectations of the form, and status of the work of art. He has upended cultural conventions of audience and its role, challenged ideas of the utility in the art object, and revealed the boundaries between art and life to be illusion.

Tiravanija changed the paradigm of art making twenty years ago and that change began with the challenge and simple temptation of food. He released the pungent aromas of spices and fish sauce into the white cube, made a crack in our perceived freedom to reveal a new liberty of open and unending possibilities. The sensual and messy reality of food preparation and consumption were literally displayed before us.  In one spoonful he swept away notions of the timeless masterpiece and the instant cultural artifact. In its place he proposed a new exhibit, and a new artifact: Ourselves, in each other’s company, eating. This was a cultural displacement that put an uncomfortable and thrilling frame around chopping, frying, stirring, slurping and doing the dishes. It exploded our ideas of sculpture to include even our digestive tract. With this meal, and their remains, Tiravanija reintroduced us to time – and our fundamental relationship with it that today we would prefer to forget. In all his works since Tiravanija has focused our attention back to time. Real time. Lived time. He has shoehorned its inevitability back into our cultural language.

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Hardness can be deceiving. Despite its reputation for intransigence, concrete is a uniquely subtle, delicate material. The surface of any motorway flyover, housing block or city pavement reveals a spectrum of patinas through which it absorbs and reflects its surroundings. Metal fixings soak rusty stains into their concrete bases; shoes and rubber tyres apply patient layers of dirt and oil onto walkways and roads, and rainwater causes streaks of discolouration (or sometimes just colouration) to develop across walls.

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Now in its third year, PA/PER VIEW Art book fair will present 33 of the globe’s leading artist book publishers. This convergence of reputable and exciting initiatives will take place in the mezzanine of Wiels from 6pm Thursday 31st March until 6pm Sunday 3rd April 2011. Leave your laptop behind and come and browse amongst the finest titles of these consistent players of the printed word and image.

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When Stephen Willats developed the West London Social Resource Project in 1972 its socially engaged, community-based participation was unlike any artwork made previously – door step discussions with different social groups in the suburbs of a capital city; information leaflets and window posters to signal involvement to neighbours; participants providing answers to questions concerning their homes and their neighbourhoods; completed question sheets collected and pinned up in public libraries – the participation of a large group of people normally excluded from “high” art and their engagement, opinions, and values being placed at the centre of the project was a truly radical shift in art practice.

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THE BELL SHOW at Lüttgenmeijer, Berlin
Jason Dodge, Ruth Ewan, Hadley + Maxwell, Lothar Hempel, Carsten Holler, Karl Holmqvist

THE GONG SHOW at Micky Schubert, Berlin
Pierre Bismuth, Marco Bruzzone, Karl Holmqvist, Annika Larsson, Mark Soo, Zin Taylor, Wolfgang Tillmans

Two exhibition curated by Dieter Roelstrate

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In the early 1990s Rudolf Stingel started his inquiry into the relationship between painting and space by developing a series of installations that covered the walls and floors of exhibition spaces with monochrome or black and white carpets, transforming the architecture into a painting. Moving from abstraction into self-reflection, Stingel created his first self-portraits (2005-2006), executed in a gray-scale palette to match black and white photos. He depicted himself in a melancholy state, a mid-life crisis, and once as a much younger man dressed in an army uniform. In the current exhibition, curated by Francesco Bonami, he works again from a photograph of himself as a young man, fresh-faced, wearing a casual v-neck sweater…

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Freedom of speech is one of the key issues in the current public debate and one that is becoming increasingly contested, given the steady erosion of civil liberties in many countries today. Denmark has always been at the forefront of the public debate on issues in relation to freedom of speech, but it has also suffered the so-called “trauma of free speech”.

The exhibition Speech Matters aims to provoke a considered debate and to complicate the issue of freedom of speech, highlighting the intricacies, ambiguities and grey areas inherent to the subject, and emphasizing the fact that freedom of speech cannot be exercised or applied in any programmatic or strictly proscribed manner. Finally, the exhibition also touches on the essence of visual artistic practice, which fundamentally entails conditions of freedom of expression. Eighteen artists from ten countries have been invited to participate. The majority will be producing new work for the exhibition.

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Rosa Barba (*1972 in Agrigent, Italy; lives in Berlin) is currently one of the most notable artists of her generation worldwide working in the area of film. From March 12 to May 22, Barba is presenting an extensive selection of films, installations, and sculptural orchestrations at the Kunstverein Braunschweig.

Rosa Barba The Long Road, 2010. Installation view from the Tate Gallery of Modern Art. Courtesy: the artist, carlier | gebauer, Berlin and Gió Marconi, Milan Photo: Tate Photography

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Those who may think of African art as displays of naïf canvases or dark, intimidating masks by unknown craftsmen may be disappointed this time.
The idea of Africa itself has shifted and widened into a multifaceted realm that spans a wide range of disciplines, a psychic and physical space within the contemporary world. The main aim of this show, co-curated by Lowery Stokes Sims, MAD’s Charles Bronfman International Curator, and Leslie King-Hammond, Founding Director of the Center for Race and Culture at MICA, is to present a broad spectrum of African art, design, fashion, crafts and architecture, and challenge the conventional notions of a singular African aesthetic or identity. Featuring the works of over 100 artists who live and work in Africa, Europe, Asia, the United States and the Caribbean, it reveals unexpected standpoints, ranging from the fascination of Japanese youth for Black culture in the 1990s, to the most recent developments in African-American architecture and design, with an eye on the hair wars, cross-pollination in the fashion world between Missoni and the African continent, the quilters’ collective, Afrikea, and the artworks of Kehinde Wiley, Yinka Shonibare and Romuald Hazoumé, among many others.
When you come out of the museum and start going around Columbus Circle, the idea that Africa is not just a continent or a defined and univocal entity, but a Global Project, may be spinning in your mind.

(Elena Tavecchia)

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Renato Leotta’s solo exhibition “Belvedere” – organized with the collaboration of Alessandra Ferlito and Beniamino Foschini – follows a hyperlink between process and landscape. Simulation of a walk into a Baroque villa, track four different escape routes and multiple alternatives for understanding the message and the process definition. The four routes are: the complex set of ruins seen through the architecture and botany, the geopolitical nature of a place, the ambiguity and epic, and finally the conditions of familiarity that can be found in the landscape. The exhibition consists of a single installation and a film in 16mm, the work presented is part of a project dedicated to the landscape, created in 2010 by Renato Leotta between Turin and souther Italy.

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INAUGURATION SHOW Martin Erik Andersen, Nina Beier, Andy Boot, Judith Hopf, Jacob Dahl Jürgensen, Thomas Kratz, Marie Lund, Benoît Maire, Mandla Reuter

Until April 2, 2011

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Works by artists from different generations are in dialogue with each other in the fourth presentation of the series “partoftheprocess” at Galleria Zero…, Milan. In the wait for something to come, there is a feeling of temporal suspension in the first room which is juxtaposed by works where the passing of time is a fundamental element of their formal aspect.

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“Shadowboxing” brings together projects by four artists, Mariana Castillo Deball, Sean Dockray, Marysia Lewandowska and Wendelien van Oldenborgh, in an exhibition developed in collaboration with the graduating students of the Royal College of Art’s Curating Contemporary Art MA. Using different strategies – from tinkering to direct confrontation – each of these artists considers how the media and institutions that control our behaviour and ideology can be disrupted. At the heart of the project stands the question: How can one challenge forces that have become so internalised that they are indistinguishable from one’s own shadow?

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