Exhibitions / MOUSSE CONTEMPORARY ART MAGAZINE

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Marie Lund “End On” at Christian Andersen, Copenhagen

April 29~2012

9 March 2012
Regents Studios, London

Dear Gallerist,

I hope this letter finds you well and that the works Marie has sent to you have arrived in good spirits. They left the studio we share on Tuesday to travel in a van for a couple of days before residing temporarily at your gallery. The objects can be considered as common objects or at least that is how they behaved in our studio, when they were ‘hanging out’ in the corner, sometimes silently, sometimes frantic. As I was observing them from behind my desk I saw the group growing, their positions altering, and their features developing. I saw them hinting at certain functions but then resisting to fulfil these aims. A couple of them received a glass front, two-dimensionally positioned as if they only wanted me to know them from the spot I was watching them. But then to make the trip to you they changed. Some got filled with non-art material, one was rolled up and another one placed in a box which was slightly too small.

“Prima Materia” at Gladstone Gallery, Brussels

April 28~2012

“Prima Materia” is a group exhibition featuring works in ceramic by nine contemporary artists including Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Cameron Jamie, Liz Larner, Andrew Lord, William O’Brien, Sterling Ruby, Rosemarie Trockel, Paloma Varga Weisz, and Andro Wekua. While these artists’ practices encompass a diverse range of media from drawing and installation to film and video, each incorporates clay in distinct ways that reveal not only the multitude of formal and conceptual possibilities of the medium, but also the broader, constructive processes through which forms emerge.

Jason Dungan “Pacific” at the International Project Space, Birmingham

April 27~2012

International Project Space presents a solo exhibition by Jason Dungan (b. 1978, Houston, Texas, USA), his first in a public institution in the UK.

Pacific gathers together a number of works produced over the last year alongside two new works produced for the exhibition. Central to the show is an installation comprising a standard theatre lamp illuminating a suspended tree branch, which casts a shadow within a screen-like frame onto the opposite wall. This simple, almost tautological, projection set-up stages a moment of what Dungan refers to as ‘accidental cinema’ whereby any surface might momentarily become a projection screen by means of incidental light and shadow. Dungan’s installation acts as a constant within the dynamic of works in the exhibition, functioning as a structural device against which various image mediations are played out. It also articulates an interest in the shift between the space of the street and the studio or gallery and how the construction of a cinematic space distends the incidental moment into one of dramatic significance.

Nick Oberthaler at Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna

April 26~2012

Nick Oberthaler {…}

at Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna

until May 5, 2012

Michael Dean “Government” at The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

April 25~2012

Michael Dean’s (b. Newcastle 1977) sculptures are either the perfect size to be carried or quote their surrounding architecture where they are then to be found lurking, propped against gallery walls. Made from cast concrete, the surfaces are veined and ridged, offering invitations to be touched. Tactility is an essential sculptural quality for Dean – he wishes us to first ‘touch with the eyes, and then allow ourselves to touch with the hand’.

Government quotes from and transforms the Institute’s galleries. The concrete floor has been covered with a thick, wool, wall-to-wall carpet, becoming something to touch, with the new surface changing the visual and sonic experience of the spaces. Instead of standing, the Institute’s Information Assistants sit on the floor. The door handles at the entrance to the galleries have been recast as four forearm-sized sculptures, titled ‘Yes (working title)’ and ‘No (working title)’. These flat, grey, concrete bodies leave themselves no choice but to touched, their patina changing as the raw, unsealed surfaces pick up the traces of each person’s hand.

Urs Fischer “Madame Fisscher” at Palazzo Grassi, Venice

April 24~2012

Bringing together over 30 worksspread over 2,000 square metres, Urs Fischer’s monographic exhibition unfoldsthroughout the atrium and first floor of Palazzo Grassi. The works selected come from several international collections, including the artist’s own and, of course, that of the François Pinault Foundation. Together, they present the artist’s career from the late ‘90s to today, including new productions shown here for the first time as well as works created in collaboration with Georg Herold—one of Fischer’s former professors—and a sculptural project installed in the public space of the city, organized in collaboration with students from the Venice Academy of Fine Arts.

This exhibition presents an overview of the career and the philosophical foundations of an artist widely considered one of the most important contemporary sculptors. The unique quality of this artist’s work stems from the way in which he seizes ordinary objects (Fischer’s favourite working material) and transforms their meaning through the use of highly diverse techniques and materials, in an approach that often resembles that of collage.

Kees Goudzwaard at Cardi Black Box, Milan

April 22~2012

Kees Goudzwaard’s work is easily recognizable. This is a consequence of the production process of the work, as Kees Goudzwaard commences by creating a collage of cut out square and rectangular pieces of coloured paper, acetate and transparent foil, which he composes in more or less regular grids by fixing them with paper masking-tape. This process is slow and complex, and develops gradually as it implies numerous decisions and a lot of looking and waiting until the artist finds he has achieved the desired composition and atmosphere.

Ciprian Muresan and Sterling Ruby at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève

April 21~2012

Artistic and literary works are the starting point for the work of Ciprian Muresan (*1977, Dej, Romania), who appropriates them for a reflective project that intersects with the recent history of Romania and other Eastern European countries and, more generally, ponders the realities of the contemporary world.
For his first solo exhibition in Switzerland, Ciprian Muresan presents two new pieces: an installation, “Recycled Playground”, from which the exhibition takes its title and its tone, and a companion video creation. A selection of other significant works is also presented. Juggling humour and critique, the artist highlights the structures and processes of all forms of power.

“The Stuff That Matters” at Raven Row, London

April 18~2012

Raven Row presents the first exhibition of the collection of historic textiles assembled by Seth Siegelaub over the past thirty years for the Center for Social Research on Old Textiles (CSROT). The exhibition features over 200 items from a collection currently comprising around 650. It includes woven and printed textiles, embroideries and costume, ranging from fifth-century Coptic to Pre-Columbian Peruvian textiles, late medieval Asian and Islamic textiles, and Renaissance to eighteenth-century European silks and velvets. Barkcloth (tapa) and headdresses from the Pacific region (especially Papua New Guinea) and Africa are also on display.

Pamela Rosenkranz at Miguel Abreu, New York

April 15~2012

As the world submits more and more to the abstractions of capital, the interconnectivity of digital
networks, and the promises of the experience economy, the body responds by lying down.
—Alex Kitnick

“Because They Try to Bore Holes” is Pamela Rosenkranz’s first solo exhibition at Miguel Abreu Gallery. The show features new works that “take the form of paintings and sculptures, but do not themselves begin with these terms.”1 Framed works produced with repurposed materials, such as adhesive mount hand-applied to blank Ilford photo paper, or various soft drink liquids mixed with Ralph Lauren latex paint covering inkjet printed paper, are installed alongside sculptures made of hand-warped acrylic glass sheets and Ikea furniture parts boxed in their original cardboard packaging, itself painted in decorative shades of white. Throughout the exhibition, Rosenkranz confronts painting and sculpture’s traditional address to human-scale, alienating its convention through her material treatment of the objects at hand.

“Mengele’s Skull” at Portikus, Frankfurt am Main

April 14~2012

The exhibition “Mengele’s Skull” is structured around a specially commissioned book of the same title co-authored by Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman. Artist and filmmaker Hito Steyerl has been commissioned to respond to the proposition laid out in this book. Next to major new works by Hito Steyerl, this exhibition presents documentary and source materials.

The publication Mengele’s Skull discusses the forensic identification of the remains of infamous Nazi-doctor Joseph Mengele after his exhumation in 1985. The forensic investigation and identification of Mengele’s remains marks a transition. From now on, the “era of the witness”, centered around human testimony and trauma, gradually gives way to an “era of forensics”, in which things – such as bones – act as the witnesses of past events. How do bones act as witnesses? What role do technologies such as 3D scans and biomedical data play in the making of forensic evidence? And what is the role and politics of images?

Natalie Czech “I have nothing to say. Only to show.” at Ludlow 38, New York

April 13~2012

Czech’s photography explores the visual possibilities of poetry, deepening the dialogue between the written word and visual art. “I have nothing to say. Only to show.” includes two series by the artist.

For A small bouquet by Frank O’Hara, Czech invited seven writers to interweave new texts with a picture poem by American poet Frank O’Hara. O’Hara’s calligram, simultaneously both poem and image, serves as the static visual structure around which each new text is arranged. Czech photographs each page, “retrieving” the disguised calligram by circling each of its words with oil pastel. Through this interplay of appearance and disappearance, Czech emphasizes the form of the calligram, as well as her own approach: one can never see the image and read the text at the same time.

Gelitin “the voulez vous chaud” at Galerie Perrotin, Paris

April 12~2012

“the voulez vous chaud” at Galerie Perrotin features a series of fresh new Gelatin paintings.

Joyful, bold, avant-garde paintings.
Voulez vous frais fraise de Père Lachaise
Voulez vouz ça-va, ça vient
Voulez vous la merde c’est moi
Voulez vous manger à l’œil
Voulez vous oh la la
Voulez vous la mère du maire est mon frère
Voulez vous début du duvet
Voulez vous descendez à la cave
Voulez vous métro – boulot – dodo

Like in their installations and this list of titles, Gelatin is not afraid of switching styles. From realistic to monochrome, from gracious art to everything, from everything to minimal and back again.

The richness of their artistic language is humorous, provocative, challenging, charming, sometimes illuminating, but never boring.

Sam Griffin “Looking Busy” at Gallery Vela, London

April 10~2012

There is something of the night about Sam Griffin’s latest exhibition at Gallery Vela. The show’s title, Looking Busy, belies the chilly emptiness of the installation. Brushed aluminium and faux marble surfaces deflect light and advertise cleanliness and perfection, of body and mind. But there are no bodies to be seen, apart from the omni-presence of two Rubin Vases, MHT (2012) and RWR (2012), whose negative shapes iterate the facial profiles of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the engineers of free market capitalism and the chummy harbingers of neo-liberalism. The 360 degree portraits take a moment to register, but when the ghostly figures materialise, a sudden and inescapable dread sets in.

Tom Burr “deep wood drive” at Bortolami, New York

April 9~2012

In “deep wood drive” Burr continues his visual exploration of the physical and psychological dimension of objects, and the fantasies we project upon their surfaces. Integral to the exhibition are works from the new series of “Clouds,” which are wooden wall panels covered with woolen blankets meticulously arranged and pinned to convey states of comfort and discomfort, order and disarray. These works are shown alongside floor-bound sculptural works that engage notions of containment, biography, and protectionism in the context of public view. The title of the exhibition refers to a childhood location where Burr grew up, where particular instances of trauma and ecstasy were played out, remembered, and then restaged at various moments in the development of his work. This exhibition refers back to that childhood moment, but also to subsequent stages of it’s reimagining, with several of the works are being conscious re-visitations of earlier themes, brought together with the “Clouds.”

Jacopo Miliani and Gabriele De Santis at Frutta Gallery, Rome

April 8~2012

The solo show of Jacopo Miliani existed in the same space and time as Gabriele De Santis’ solo show.

Horizontally, vertically, diagonally, you see two things at once; two solo shows, by two separate artists. But, this is not about double vision, you don’t see one artist mimic and blur the other. They don’t share the same research, they don’t use the same materials, they don’t listen to the same music, they are not the same age and they don’t live in the same city. They don’t even have the same hair color.

Henning Bohl “Namenloses Grauen” at Casey Kaplan, New York

April 6~2012

For the last few months these pictures have been my monsters of the week. They form the consequences of the decisions I have taken and these consequences have an afterlife of consequences, which I have had to face. So, I accepted the fate that these fictions of mine have become truth – and more – actual materializations; that I have, from the depth of my windowless studio, unleashed another artwork upon a world already crowded with others.

These pictures are not about painting. They are also not about being monochrome, despite the fact that some of them are monochrome paintings. The ones that are painted, I painted as my own assistant for economical reasons but also out of interest. You can, if you have the taste for it, look out for an artist “touch” but it was merely a paint job: I p.. painted those p.. pictures because there was no other way. These pictures are about the reasons why they are what they are. The moment I decided to consider those reasons, they consumed the entire process and formed a net of logical steps and necessities that created a path, which I followed.

Julia Feyrer “Alternatives and Opportunities” at Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver

April 5~2012

The first solo exhibition by Julia Feyrer at Catriona Jeffries features works in 16mm film, sound, sculpture and daguerreotype. Three distinct bodies of work are shown, including The Artist’s Studio, Little pitchers have big ears and Dailies. These works consider the camera, the microphone, and the clock, respectively, as apparatuses or devices with which to measure and structure perception. Feyrer’s recent works present these metaphorical objects in relation to the human body as a receptor.

Within The Artist’s Studio (2012) Feyrer has continued her interest in the alchemic production of daguerreotypes as a scientific procedure of image making and the site of the studio as a stage in which art objects confront their isolation and loneliness as rarefied artifacts withdrawn from the world. Feyrer began the work by staging a sculptural tableau as a recreation of a daguerreotype taken by Louis Daguerre in 1836 of an ‘artist’s studio’, which was in fact not a document of a working artist’s studio, but rather was staged by Daguerre himself. Feyrer’s tableau becomes inhabited and unhinged in a 16mm film and series of three sequenced daguerreotypes. The film’s unsynchronized voice-over text is a subtle intervention on Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘Codex Urbinas’- a treatise on the material differences of the classical studio of a painter and of a sculptor.

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