Philippe Parreno to transform the entire Haus Der Kunst with fully driven AI exhibition. →

Philippe Parreno | FAD News

Philippe Parreno, My Room Is Another Fish Bowl, 2018, Helium–filled Mylar balloons, adhesive foil , air columns, Variable dimensions . Exhibition view : Philippe Parreno, Gropius Bau,Berlin (2018). Courtesy the artist; Pilar Corrias, London; Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul. Photo © Andrea Rossetti

By Mark Westall

As part of a groundbreaking new collaboration with Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, Haus der Kunst, Munich’s global centre for contemporary art, will present a major exhibition by the internationally acclaimed French artist, Philippe Parreno, a multi-media, multi-sensory installation on a giant scale that will take over the entire gallery spaces from the end of November 2024.

Philippe Parreno has revolutionised the experience of museums. The exhibition will encompass Parreno’s key works and early works from the 1990s in multiple media ranging from video and sound to sculpture and drawing, created in collaboration with graphic designers, photographers, musicians, linguists, sound specialists, and actors, among others.

Throughout the exhibition, voices will play a fundamental role in bringing the building of Haus der Kunst to life. The Mittelhalle and Ostgalerie will become a resonating organism of light and sounds, featuring installations, films, new works and collaborations with peer artists.

Read More Here.

'Made by Hand/Born Digital' exhibition explores art that confounds an analog v. digital divide →

Pae White | ArtDaily

Pae White, Phosphenes 1, 2011, ink and clay on wood, 17.75 x 17.75 inches, 45.1 x 45.1 cm.

By ArtDaily

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s (SBMA) exhibition Made by Hand/Born Digital features 12 artworks and 9 artists who use brushes, AI, paint, 3D printers, scissors, magazines printed on paper, digital looms, potter’s wheels, Photoshop, and Apple Photo. By continuing to craft ceramics, paintings, and textiles by hand and also using the latest digital tools, many of the artists in the exhibition blur a distinction between the handmade and digital. Collectively, these artists remind us that computers are tools—exquisitely complicated but still tools—made by and for humans.

They allow artists to work faster, experiment before committing precious time and materials, toss the dice of chance to see what AI might conjure, or easily produce minutely wrought labor-intensive details. Their art demonstrates that silicon-based intelligence and our carbon-based mammalian brains can and do work together as well as suggesting an alternative to inevitable digitization of everything. With a mixture of recent museum acquisitions and loans of artworks by Alex Heilbron, Taha Heydari, Yassi Mazandi, Justin Mortimer, Analia Saban, Ena Swansea, Sarah Rosalena, Joey Watson, and Pae White, this exhibition shows that the traditional mediums—painting, ceramics, and weaving—can incorporate the methods offered by digital technologies to erode a clean distinction between the digital and handmade. Perhaps, the biggest lesson is to ignore hype about the latest transformational gadget or app and, instead, pay attention to what artists are really doing with technology and see how they channel cutting edge tools to deal with the age-old struggle of giving concrete visual form to ideas and pictures inside their minds.

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A Thailand Unified at Its Third National Biennial →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | FRIEZE Magazine

Portrait of Rirkrit Tiravanija. Courtesy of Rirkrit Tiravanija.

By Vipash Purichanont

Assembled by an all-Thai curatorial team, the third Thailand Biennale brilliantly exhibits the rich cultural milieu of the country’s Golden Triangle, near Laos and Myanmar

Titled ‘The Open World’, the third edition of the Thailand Biennale is held in the northern province of Chiang Rai. Assembled by an all-Thai curatorial team, the government-supported biennial is led by artistic directors Rirkrit Tiravanija and Gridthiya Gaweewong in tandem with co-curators Angkrit Ajchariyasophon and Manuporn Luengaram.

Read The Article Here.

Ann Veronica Janssens - L'Aire d'un Souffle →

Ann Veronica Janssens | The Artist’s Parliament

Ann Veronica Janssens and Michel François, L'Aire d'un Souffle, argex concrete and aluminum, approximate dimensions 2030 x 640 x 430 cm. Photo credit: Isabelle Arthuis.

The sculpture L’Aire d’un Souffle (‘The space of a breath’) is the work of two artists. This piece of art takes the form of a completely openwork visual barrier, meaning that we are able to see through and beyond its porous boundary. This grid, through which we can observe the surrounding urban landscape, forms a kind of insurmountable obstacle, a border that can be interpreted in different ways. We can only cross it with our eyes, which are symbolically confronted with the sight of a blast, the origin of which is also open to interpretation.

This grid is perched on a territory of its own; a raised platform separate from the ground of the Esplanade, which invites the public to step up onto it and thus alter their perspective. Our attention is also drawn to this floor that supports and prolongs the grid, as its horizontal grid-like pattern is suddenly interrupted by a long narrow gap. This defined area becomes a space in itself, a field of action in which the public can move around, experiment and interact.

The Office of the Commissioner for Europe and International Organizations and the European Parliament have launched an exhibition project showcasing contemporary artists of the countries holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union.

This project will start during the Belgian presidency in January 2024 and continue in July 2024 with the Hungarian presidency.

Read More Here.

50 Paintings →

Judy Ledgerwood | The Brooklyn Rail

Installation view: 50 Paintings, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, 2023-24. Courtesy of the Milwaukee Art Museum.

By Saul Ostrow

Given my interest in painting, I found myself going to Milwaukee to see an exhibition that promised to be taking the pulse of contemporary American painting—all the works in it had been made in the last five years. A show of fifty paintings by fifty different painters who the curators claimed were defining the field of contemporary painting seemed a bold move, amidst the general confusion that has been generated by AI, market manipulation, auction house publicity, critical pronouncements, and a general cultural malaise that has lingered since the 1990s. How could any critic resist such a challenge; what could an exhibition indexed to the simple subject of “Painting,” offer? Whatever the curators’ intentions, 50 Paintings seemed to be a brave attempt to bring some discernment to a confused situation.

Read More Here.

Notes on the Gallery as Military Hangar →

Fiona Banner | ArtReview

Fiona Banner, Harrier and Jaguar, 2010, installation view for Tate Britain Duveens Commission. Photo: Sam Drake, Tate Photography. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Frith Street Gallery, London and 1301PE, Los Angeles

By Nathalie Olah

A reencounter with the work of Fiona Banner prompts a reassessment of art institutions as political fields of hegemonic control

A few months ago, I was stood in the main hall of the Tate Britain in London talking to the artist Fiona Banner. It felt significant. My favourite use of that space had been an installation created by Banner over a decade earlier, in which she had hung a Sea Harrier from the ceiling and parked a Sepecat Jaguar on the gallery floor – two RAF planes that had been recently decommissioned. The installation was titled Harrier and Jaguar (2010) and at the time I remember reading that Banner, who is best known for her vast wordscapes comprising hand-typed or written sentiments, believed the objects represented the ‘opposite of language’.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija at MoMA PS1 →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | SPIKE Art Magazine

Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2017 (fear eats the soul) (white flag), 2017. Installation view, MoMA PS1, New York, 2023. All images courtesy: MoMA PS1, New York. Photos: Kyle Knodell

By Aodhan Madden

Transcending relational aesthetics, a New York retrospective catalogues the artist’s troubling of Western objecthood and the commodification of “Tiravanija” in a globalized art world.

I was born in neither the right place nor the right time to eat pad thai in a New York gallery. “A LOT OF PEOPLE,” Rirkrit Tiravanija’s first major institutional retrospective, reminds me that this only makes things more interesting. Bringing together four decades of work, from his early “spirit house” sculptures to his more recent text-based works, the exhibition complicates any simple rendering of Tiravanija as a “relational” artist, maintaining a critical tension between ambivalence and anachronism.

Read More Here.

Judy Ledgerwood on the Modern Art Notes Podcast →

Judy Ledgerwood | Modern Art Notes Podcast

By Tyler Green

Listen Here

Episode No. 640 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Judy Ledgerwood and curator Lisa Volpe. 

Ledgerwood is included within “50 Paintings” at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition features paintings made in the last five years by 50 artists from around the world.  It was curated by Margaret Andera and Michelle Grabner and is on view through June 23. Ledgerwood is also on view in “Disguise the Limit: John Yau’s Collaborations” at the University of Kentucky Art Museum in Lexington through June 1.

Ever since the 1980s, Ledgerwood’s paintings have engaged transatlantic histories related to abstraction and decoration from a distinctive feminist point-of-view. Her work is in the collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the MCA Chicago.  

Volpe is the curator of “Robert Frank and Todd Webb: Across America, 1955”, which opens at the Addison Gallery of American Art this weekend. It will remain on view through July 31. The exhibition presents work the famed Frank and the less-well-known Webb made as they traveled the United States on Guggenheim fellowships in 1955. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the MFAH in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $25-47.

Frank and Webb images are at Episode No. 630.

Instagram: Judy Ledgerwood, Lisa Volpe, Tyler Green.

Air date: February 8, 2024.

Biennale Arte 2024 | Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere →

SUPERFLEX | La Biennale di Venezia

The 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, will open to the public from Saturday April 20 to Sunday November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Adriano Pedrosa and organised by La Biennale di Venezia. The pre-opening will take place on April 17, 18 and 19; the awards ceremony and inauguration will be held on 20 April 2024.

Since 2021, La Biennale di Venezia launched a plan to reconsider all of its activities in light of recognized and consolidated principles of environmental sustainability. For the year 2024, the goal is to extend the achievement of “carbon neutrality” certification, which was obtained in 2023 for La Biennale’s scheduled activities: the 80th Venice International Film Festival, the Theatre, Music and Dance Festivals and, in particular, the 18th International Architecture Exhibition which was the first major Exhibition in this discipline to test in the field a tangible process for achieving carbon neutrality – while furthermore itself reflecting upon the themes of decolonisation and decarbonisation.

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Philippe Parreno appointed Artistic Director of the 2025 Okayama Art Summit →

Philippe Parreno | Okayama Art Summit

Portrait of Philippe Parreno. Photo © Ola Rindal

The Okayama Art Summit Executive Committee (Chairperson: Masao Omori, Mayor of Okayama) appointed Philippe Parreno as the Artistic Director for Okayama Art Summit 2025, the international contemporary art exhibition which is held every 3 years in Okayama City, Japan, at its General Meeting held on October 24, 2023.
In addition, Shimabuku has been appointed as the Artistic Translator by Parreno. Parreno emphasized the importance of the new role of an "Artistic Translator" who shares the sense of the exhibition concept, in order to connect it with others. He recognized Shimabuku's familiarity with the direction of the artistic world and their existing relationship.

Read More About The Summit Here

Rirkrit Tiravanija: Can Pad Thai Diplomacy Change the World?

Rirkrit Tiravanija | The New York Times

Rirkrit Tiravanija. untitled 1990 (pad thai). Ingredients for pad thai, utensils, electric woks, and a lot of people. Installation view, Rirkrit Tiravanija: A LOT OF PEOPLE, on view at MoMA PS1 from October 12, 2023 through March 4, 2024. Image courtesy MoMA PS1. Photo: Marissa Alper

By Travis Diehl

“Having been labeled as the cook of the art world,” Rirkrit Tiravanija said, “I think people come to see my work expecting to interact.” Indeed, they expect to eat.

The 62-year-old artist is easily the most influential of the loose cadre that rose to prominence in the early 1990s under the banner of “relational aesthetics” — a kind of installation- and performance-based conceptual work that makes spectators feel like participants. Tiravanija’s “untitled 1990 (pad Thai),” in which he cooked and served noodles in the back room of Paula Allen Gallery, is quintessential.

Read More Here.

Rirkrit Tiravanija with David Ross

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Brooklyn Rail

Portrait of Rirkrit Tiravanija, pencil on paper by Phong H. Bui.

By David Ross

When Rirkrit Tiravanija was invited to participate in the 1995 biennial, David Ross was serving as the museum’s director. Tiravanija’s contribution was aggressive. His installation featured a plywood hut equipped with electric guitars. Anyone could play. Tiravanija’s art is one of activation, of meaning accrued through participation. On the occasion of the Thai artist’s retrospective exhibition at PS1, Ross reconnected with Tiravanija. Over multiple conversations they discussed the evolving role of the artist, how Tiravanija adapts his work for museums while sustaining the life force it’s meant to cultivate, and the empowering role played by educators.

Read More Here.

Rirkrit Tiravanija : NO MORE REALITY →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Rosanna Albertini

Composite: Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled (no more reality), 2023, paint on newspaper mounted on linen, 96 x 981 inches, 243.8 x 2491.7 cm.

By Rosanna Albertini

No More Reality and my despair having lost the certainty about what words bring to us. What about thinking? Based on words? Not entirely, our primitive ancestors were thinking and acting before human language broke out from the brain.

Our whole body is a thinking machine: chemical conversation between cells, well organized behavior of organs : a musical score mysterious and impossible to decipher : there is no control on our body’s intelligence. AI is a technological dream. 

Read More Here

The 10 most memorable museum exhibitions of 2023 →

Uta Barth | The Los Angeles Times

Installation View: Uta Barth - Peripheral Vision (2023) at the Getty Center, Los Angeles, California. Photo courtesy of the Getty Center.

By Christopher Knight

Yes, the show formally opened during the busy end-of-year holiday season in 2022, but there was no museum list last year (those pandemic issues) and, since the show continued deep into February, I’m taking the liberty of claiming it for this year. Barth’s radiant, perceptually illuminating photographs are just too good not to accentuate.

Read the rest of the article here.

Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai 2023: The Open World

Rirkrit Tiravanija | e-flux

ArtBridge ChiangRai, Chiang Rai, Thailand, 2023. Photo courtesy of e-flux.

The Office of Contemporary Art and Culture (OCAC), Thailand Ministry of Culture, with the collaboration of The Provincial Government of Chiang Rai, on December 9 at 6pm. unveils the third installment of Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai 2023 at Chiang Rai International Art Museum (CIAM).

Rirkrit Tiravanija is curating the biennial.

More Information Here

Pick of the Week: Rirkrit Tiravanija →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | What’s on LA

Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2023 (no more reality (for pp), the news sun, august 16, 2020), 2023, paint on newspaper mounted on linen, 24 x 22 inches, 61 x 55.9 cm.

By Jody Zellen

Rirkrit Tiravanija is an artist whose work has employed unusual and diverse mediums: cooking, staged readings and platforms for socializing. The forms and formats of his installations and presentations are participatory and unconventional, often involving the sharing of meals. That is not to say that Tiravanija does not also make objects and drawings that can hang on a wall or fill a conventional gallery space. In 2020, he covered the walls of The Drawing Center in New York with over 200 demonstration drawings — black and white works on paper derived from photographs of demonstrations published in the International Herald Tribune. World events and the propagation of news has long been an interest of his and for this installation, No More Reality (For PP), he covers the gallery walls with pages of daily American newspapers (collected in 2020).

Read More Here

Writing Practice: On Literature →

Philippe Parreno | ArtReview

Installation view: Philippe Parreno - Marilyn (2012).

By Adam Thirlwell

I have this feeling that everyone dislikes literature. Not reading and not writing, both of those are practices that many people enjoy; but somehow when these two come together they form literature, and then everyone dislikes it. I wonder why this is. I know that I want so much from this word literature. I want it to do so much work, whereas it mainly seems to do no work at all. It sounds dour and demented in a way that art doesn’t. Art sounds bright and fizzing and susceptible to anything new. Literature doesn’t. Literature sounds reactionary.

Maybe the better word for what I want is just writing and I should abandon literature as a word. If you plug literature into some game of word association, what would first come into my head is a line by Paul Verlaine that ends his poem ‘Art poétique’ (1874), a poem in which he defines what he wants from poetry, which seems to be music and the refusal of meaning. And then, devastatingly, he concludes: Everything else is literature, which still seems irrefutable in its dismissiveness.

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Visual Art: Rirkrit Tiravanija - Pad thai for the people: forty years of shaking up the space of art. →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | 4Columns

Rirkrit Tiravanija: A LOT OF PEOPLE, installation view. Courtesy MoMA PS1. Photo: Kyle Knodell. Pictured: untitled 1990 (pad thai), 1990. Mixed media.

By Alex Kitnick

Rirkrit Tiravanija is probably best known as the artist who cooks curry and gives it away for free. And this is not untrue. In 1992 he served bowls of the Thai dish at 303 Gallery in New York—and he has done so, in various locations, any number of times since. While his work, at least from this description, sounds like something that would have to be invented if it didn’t already exist, the way Tiravanija changes the space of art—transforming museums and galleries into third places, more like coffee or barber shops than chilly white cubes—has not been as frequently noted.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Spirited Survey Serves Up Social Interaction and Pad Thai →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Art in America

Installation view of Rirkrit Tiravanija's untitled 1990 (pad thai), at MoMA PS1, 2023. Photo: Marissa Alper

By Francesca Aton

If you’ve ever stood in a line for a home-cooked meal at an art exhibition, you might be familiar with the work of Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, who foregrounds interactions between people and their surroundings. Over the years, Tiravanija has served up Turkish coffee, pad Thai, and tea—all of which can be experienced in his exhibition “A Lot of People” at MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York.

In constructing these scenarios, which he refers to as plays, Tiravanija invites museum-goers to participate and consider the ways we interact with one another. As human interaction (or safeguarding against it) came to the forefront during the pandemic, Tiravanija’s plays have only become more relevant. And if they are not enough to satisfy, the show also includes films, drawings, and works on paper.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Bracing MoMA PS1 Survey Is One of the Year’s Best Museum Shows →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | ARTnews

Rirkrit Tiravanija and Nico Dockx, untitled 2011 (erased Rirkrit Tiravanija demonstration drawing), 2011. Photo Fredrik Nilsen/Courtesy the artist and 1301PE, Los Angeles.

By Alex Greenberger

Rirkrit Tiravanija’s lively MoMA PS1 show, a strong candidate for the year’s finest New York museum exhibition, is a challenging experience. This is not because the art included is tough—although it does offer plenty of food for thought (and, in a few cases, for digestion, too)—but because the work on hand calls on viewers to do more than merely see it.

On at least three occasions, visitors are asked to lie down to experience the works. On two, they are given the opportunity to play music—including their own, made via guitars and a drum set, in one installation resembling a recording studio, minus a soundproofed wall. And, for one centrally placed artwork, visitors are even given the opportunity to perform a game of ping-pong; paddles, balls, and a table await players.

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