SUPERFLEX: European Union Mayotte at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

SUPERFLEX, European Union Mayotte (still), 2016. Two-channel video installation (color, sound), 9:42 minutes, 3:54 minutes. Courtesy the artist.

SUPERFLEX

European Union Mayotte

September 7 - December 30, 2018

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

3750 Washington Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63108

Founded in 1993 by Danish artists Jakob Fenger, Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, and Rasmus Nielsen, the collective SUPERFLEX challenges the role of the artist in contemporary society and explores the nature of globalization and systems of power through a diverse and complex practice. SUPERFLEX describe their works as “tools,” suggesting multiple areas of application and use. At CAM, the SUPERFLEX film installation European Union Mayotte reflects upon migration, the dream of another life, and the front border of the European Union. Mayotte, an island in the Indian Ocean north of Madagascar, is part of the Union of Comoros, one of the four Comoros Islands that were once part of a French Colony. Mayotte has maintained close cultural and political ties to France, and in 2014 was acknowledged as part of the EU, making it the Union’s outermost region.

The installation consists of two projections, one pictures a scene of a single boat in the ocean, sometimes with passengers visible, the other follows the production of a small fiberglass fishing boat on Anjouan, an island situated only 70 kilometers from Mayotte. In these small boats, people from Anjouan and the surrounding islands of the Comoros risk dangerous and illegal journeys in the hope of reaching Mayotte—in effect, the EU—journeys that have caused death by drowning for thousands of people.

SUPERFLEX: European Union Mayotte is organized for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator.

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The Brooklyn Rail: Diana Thater with Steven Pestana

Diana Thater, Blitz, 2008. Installation view, Diana Thater: Here is a text about the world. . ., David Zwirner, New York, 2008. © Diana Thater. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner.

I first met Diana Thater in June at the opening of the Watershed, the Boston Institute for Contemporary Art's cavernous new project space facing the Boston Harbor. The ICA launched the venue, once an industrial metal facility, with a career-spanning selection of Thater's work. It was my first opportunity to encounter these architecturally transformative video installations in person. Immersed in a luminous sweep of the color spectrum, Thater's meditative images of natural phenomena left a strong visceral impression. The following interview took place on the last day of July at her home studio in Pasadena, CA with Thater vibrantly reaching for video excerpts, books, slideshows, and ephemera to illustrate the conversation. . .

By Steven Pestana

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Fiona Connor at The Talbot Rice Gallery, The University of Edinburgh

Lucy Skaer with Fiona Connor, H.D., Will Holder, Nashashibi/Skaer and Hanneline Visnes

The Green Man

Talbot Rice Gallery
The University of Edinburgh, Old College, South Bridge, 
Edinburgh, EH8 9YL

27 July - 6 October, 2018

Lucy Skaer’s exhibition The Green Man is an exploration and reanimation of the desire to collect. Throughout her practice, Skaer mines and manipulates pre-existing imagery—from art, history, and from her own oeuvre and personal history—transforming and destabilizing relationships between materials and meanings. For this exhibition, Skaer has selected items from the collections of the University of Edinburgh and invited fellow artists to inhabit the galleries of Talbot Rice alongside her—Fiona Connor, H.D., Will Holder, Nashashibi/Skaer and Hanneline Visnes.

By calling the exhibition The Green Man, Lucy Skaer is likening the animation of collections, and the spontaneous generation of form in her artwork Sticks and Stones, to the symbol of renewal to be found in figures made of leaves and vines. Present in both pagan and Church imagery, the Green Man made a resurgence after the plague, when wilderness and weeds took over the arable land. From the anthropomorphic sculptures in her recent work La Chasse, to the evolution of materials and forms we find in Sticks and Stones, Lucy Skaer will be weaving the authority of natural materials and forms throughout the exhibition.

The Green Man will include new works commissioned by Talbot Rice Gallery for the exhibition, providing playful new ways for the collections of the University to speak to visitors.

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Art Daily: SUPERFLEX, Copenhagen Contemporary reopens its art center in a refurbished Welding Hall at Refshaleøen

SUPERFLEX

One Two Three Swing!

An orange line of swings weaves through SUPERFLEX´ large-scale installation One Two Three Swing! The swings are designed for three people to swing together and experience the potential of collaborative participation. 

Since the early 1990s, SUPERFLEX have created radically innovative works engaging with social issues. Right from the start, the artists’ collective has used its artistic practice to address social concerns and they actually refer to their projects as ‘tools’ capable of creating action and change. 

With the large-scale installation One Two Three Swing! SUPERFLEX address what they experience as an apparent social apathy, an inability to act in the face of political, environmental, and economic challenges in our times – and they do so by emphasising the revolutionary potential of collective human actions and experiences. 

In Hall 1, the audience can experience movement and the power of collective human action offered by the orange line of swings winding through the hall. Where swings are normally designed for individual use, SUPERFLEX´ swings are designed with three seats and the audience is encouraged to experience the energy of several people swinging collectively. 

In Hall 2, the state of apathy is represented by a large pendulum swinging widely across a carpet woven in the colours of Euro notes. The audience is invited to lie down and contemplate the fabric of economy and other forces governing our everyday lives, while literally reflecting on, while being reflected in, the mirror-like pendulum. 

One Two Three Swing! is both an aesthetic and a conceptual installation inviting the audience to immerse themselves in a work engaging with the power of play and the collaborative entities people are capable of creating together. Swinging together with others is a very different experience to swinging on your own. SUPERFLEX see the collective potential emerging when people swing together as a positive energy, symbolically capable of changing the course of the planet and the path we, as a society, are following. The joint experience offered by the work may trigger reflections on fundamental issues like democracy, influence, and common citizenship – in that sense, SUPERFLEX´ swings are more than just play. 

One Two Three Swing! was created in 2017 for the huge Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London where, in a recognition of their work, SUPERFLEX were selected as the recipients of the Hyundai Commission. 

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The Art Newspaper, SUPERFLEX: Copenhagen's new kunsthalle for 'huge site-specific art installations' opens in refurbished shipyard

SUPERFLEX

June 28 - December 30, 2018

Copenhagen Contemporary

Refshalevej 173A, 1432 Copenhagen K

Copenhagen's new kunsthalle for 'huge site-specific art installations' opens in refurbished shipyard.

Gallery's inaugural exhibitions go to Danish collective Superflex and US artist Doug Aitken.

A refurbished shipyard in Copenhagen is opening tomorrow (28 June) as a permanent exhibition hall, filling a gap in the Danish capital’s art scene. “We are very happy to open a space dedicated to huge site-specific art installations at an international level,” says Marie Nipper, Copenhagen Contemporary’s new director, who was appointed in April. She was formerly the interim artistic director of Tate Liverpool.

The gallery is on the Refshaleøen peninsula, a former industrial area that also houses the renowned restaurant Noma and is close to the city’s opera house. The inaugural shows at the 7,000 sq. m institution (with 4,500 sq. m of exhibition space) go to the Danish artist collective Superflex and the US artist Doug Aitken.

The Superflex exhibition was originally commissioned for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London, where it closed in April. “We will adapt it to our space and plan to have similar co-operations with international institutions in the future,” Nipper says. She anticipates the venue will draw 100,000 visitors and host around six exhibitions a year, of which two or three would run in parallel.

Copenhagen Contemporary, which is organised as a foundation, is mainly privately funded. Initiated by the Danish art collector Jens Faurschou, it launched an 18-month pilot programme at a temporary venue in June 2016. At the end of last year, it received around €4.5m from several Danish foundations to support its first three years at the new site. The municipality of Copenhagen has contributed €400,000 for 2018.

Faurschou is the vice-chairman of Copenhagen Contemporary’s board. While his international contacts as a former art dealer and one of the most important collectors in northern Europe will be very important for the foundation, it is Nipper who is in charge of programming.

by Clemens Bomsdorf

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Boston Globe: Diana Thater, The ICA has arrived in Eastie. Here's your first look inside.

Diana Thater

July 4 - October 8, 2018

ICA Boston, The Watershed

25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA 02210

Since the Institute of Contemporary Art moved to the Seaport District, in 2006, its director, Jill Medvedow, has gazed out her museum windows mulling over how to artistically engage Boston Harbor, and how to reach across the water to East Boston.

On July 4, the ICA will open a new exhibition space there, the Watershed, in Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina. Museum admission will include a water taxi across the harbor. Admission to the Watershed is free, regardless of whether you’ve visited the ICA. This year, it will be open through Oct. 8. In the future, exhibitions will be on view from May to October.

The 15,000-square-foot venue consists of a large gallery for immersive installations, a smaller one spotlighting the history of East Boston, and a gathering place for community and educational projects. The first installation features work by video artist Diana Thater.

Thater, whose art explores the natural world’s peril in the face of human enterprise, often makes site-specific art that grapples with unusual spaces. Her largest work here, “Delphine,” engages the architecture and ties right to the water.

The piece features four large video projections of dolphins swimming undersea. The images slide hypnotically over walls and floor, encompassing viewers. A magenta sun laced with blue glows on a video wall. It’s all purposely disorienting, confounding perceptions of space and time. But with Boston Harbor just out the back door, it’s also right at home.

by Cate McQuaid

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Additional Articles:

New York Times, In an East Boston Shipyard, a Fresh Idea for Art

WBUR, A First Look Inside the New ICA Watershed in East Boston

Boston Magazine, Here's a Look Inside the ICA's New East Boston Location, The Watershed

ART NEWS, ' An Important and Perfect Spot'

Ann Veronica Janssens: Albedo at Musée des Arts Contemporains de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles

Ann Veronica Janssens & Jean Glibert

Albedo

Musée des Arts Contemporains de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles

July 1 - October 21, 2018

Albedo, the MAC’s summer exhibition, came about through an invitation extended to the Belgian artists Ann Veronica Janssens and Jean Glibert to create a device that enables visitors to take part in an experience of an aesthetic nature without getting bogged down in the material objects of art. Freed from the works and habitual presentation accoutrements, the exhibition gives the two artists the chance to freely engage in a dialogue with the museum’s unembellished architecture and natural light, thus highlighting one of the specific features of the MAC’s: a space imbued with the architecture designed by Pierre Hebbelinck to resist, amongst other things, the architectural gesture laid down by Bruno Renard a century earlier, when he created the Grand-Hornu site. Designed in dialogue with Denis Gielen, the museum’s director, the exhibition will therefore be an opportunity to draw attention to the originality of the architecture, but also and not without a certain malice, to provoke it. To do this, Jean Glibert and Ann Veronica Janssens infuse it with their know-how in terms of light, colour and space, allowing their gestures to respond, complement and reflect one another like the albedo, the value corresponding to the reflective power of material.

To initiate this reflection, we first discover Glitter (created by Ann Veronica Janssens in 2015), a heap of coloured glitter scattered directly over the ground by a kick from the artist, interacting with the large, reflective varnished surface that Jean Glibert has attached to the wall. These presages of a conversation between painting and sculpture, colour and material, architecture and movement, herald the two large-scale “gestures” interposed by the artists further on in the exhibition. These are the immense coloured form, “a huge slat of colour”, which Jean Glibert introduced into the museum space first of all and which highlights some of the building’s specific features, such as the technical prowess of having created a ceiling spanning over  40 metres in length. Sensitively, this artist who presents himself as a “painter of buildings” nevertheless teaches us how to see the space in another way, orienting our view in its curious layers and hidden corners, whilst also modifying our perception through the precise addition of colour. This invitation to take a stroll, this pure coloured surface traverses the space, unconcerned by the walls which confine it, and thus takes possession of the expanse. Alongside this proposal are seven bicycles with engraved aluminium hubcaps, which Ann Veronica Janssens has placed at the public’s disposal. By using them, spectators will not only experience physically the air and the circulation of light in the engraved discs, but also Jean Glibert’s coloured fresco that is perceived at another rhythm.

Through their works which although similar, owing to their abstract qualities, nevertheless retain their specific characteristics, Ann Veronica Janssens and Jean Glibert assemble here the ideal conditions for a sensory and/or aesthetic experience to take place, which will perhaps make the public more alert to comparable events that arise in their everyday environments.

Calling for a sort of dematerialization of the exhibition principle in Albedo, the MAC’s has  brought together two artists whose practice tends to question or even pulverise space by investing it with their minimal interventions. In this way, they invite the museum and the public alike to free themselves from material, tyrannical objects, for the space of one summer, and devote themselves fully to the intimate, physical, aesthetic experience of a given space through colour and light.

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Charline von Heyl: Snake Eyes at Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Charline von Heyl

Snake Eyes

Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Deichtorstraße 1, 20095 Hamburg, Germany

22 June - 23 September, 2018

Deichtorhallen Hamburg are presenting an exhibition of the groundbreaking work of Charline von Heyl, organized through a partnership between Deichtorhallen Hamburg and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC in cooperation with the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle. The exhibition will focus on her art since 2005, with Deichtorhallen Hamburg displaying approximately 60 of her most striking works while the Hirshhorn Museum and Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens present more focused surveys, each of about 30 large-scale works. 

One of today’s most inventive painters, New York-based German artist Charline von Heyl (born in 1960) has received international acclaim for her cerebral, yet deeply visceral artworks that upend conventional assumptions about composition, beauty, narrative, design, and artistic subjectivity. Combining keen humor, a rigorous, process-based practice, and references to a broad array of sources including literature, pop culture, metaphysics and personal histories, von Heyl creates paintings that are neither figurative nor abstract, but instead present in her words "a new image that stands for itself as fact."

The dice thrown may show two ones: Snake Eyes, the title of the exhibition by Charline von Heyl. Yet the title also conjures up the rhythmic, meandering movement of a snake – a complex structure between abstract and evolved structures and a body silhouette revealing the intriguing use of associations in her work. Each of her pieces seems to be a complex creation between art history and contemporary visual worlds, timeless and yet in every detail an outcome of the present. A feeling of objectivity permeates von Heyl’s work as a kind of subversive text, creating a state of distance in all its lyrical and soulful condition. In this respect, the title of the exhibition indirectly refers to the artist’s eye as a highly specialized tool for observation, steadfast and unyielding, yet also playing with autonomous painting in poetic-satirical self-reflection.

Von Heyl’s intriguing images unfold in an intricate, unpredictable interaction of layers. Highly influential within today’s painting discourse, her works are to be found in some of the most relevant international collections such as the Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

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Wall Street International: Jessica Stockholder at the Contemporary Austin

Jessica Stockholder 

Relational Aesthetics

The Contemporary Austin

Jones Center

700 Congress Avenue, Austin, TX 78701

September 15, 2018 - January 13, 2019

This exhibition of the work of the Chicago-based artist Jessica Stockholder (American-Canadian, born 1959 in Seattle, Washington, and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia) spans both of The Contemporary Austin’s sites, with an indoor exhibition on the first floor of the downtown Jones Center on Congress Avenue and a new outdoor sculpture commission, Save on select landscape & outdoor lighting: Song to mind uncouples, 2018, at the entryway to Laguna Gloria.

Bringing painting into three-dimensional space, Stockholder blends an interest in site-specificity with color, form, and abstraction to yield meaning. Everyday objects become building materials alongside the surrounding architecture and environment. As the artist’s first solo presentation in Texas in over a decade, Jessica Stockholder: Relational Aesthetics includes a vibrant painted architectural installation, or “situation,” that doubles as a viewing platform and pedestal, newly created for the exhibition. A selection of new and recent sculptures, some of which incorporate discarded electronic elements, as well as a group of Stockholder’s Assists—hybrid assemblages that require an interchangeable, non-architectural support in order to stand up—are also on view.

Stockholder has invited the renowned First Nations sculptor, painter, and printmaker Robert Davidson (Haida, born 1946 in Hydaburg, Prince of Wales-Outer Ketchikan division, Alaska) to exhibit a selection of works within the Jones Center installation. Davidson’s Haida name is Guud San Glans, which means Eagle of the Dawn. He currently lives and works in White Rock near Vancouver and Massett in Haida Gwaii.

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HYPERALLERGIC: Diana Thater: LACMA Awards Grants to Four Artists Working on Innovative, Tech-Driven Projects

1301PE is proud to announce that Diana Thater is one of four recipients for this year's LACMA Art + Technology Lab grants.  

Many museums have been turning to technology to draw larger and younger audiences, devising various apps and interactive games.  But less explored, at least in the context of major encyclopedic museums, is the art itself that is currently engaging with technology.  

In 2013, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) formed the Art + Technology Lab with the aim of supporting artists who are exploring "emerging technologies". The idea stemmed from the museum's first Art and Technology program in 1967, which, four four years, "paired artists with technology companies in Southern California".  This time around the grant seems more geared toward nurturing artists' individual projects, providing monetary support (up to $50,000) and facilities to work in.  

Four artist were selected out of the 430 applications received: Tahir Hemphill, Jen Liu, Sarah Rara, & Diana Thater.

Diana Thater, a San Francisco-born, Los Angeles-based artist, is tackling that most enticing and terrifying of futuristic subjects: robots.  Through a video work titled "The Zeroth Law," Thater will reveal how "bio-inspired and biomimetic" robots "adapt the neurophysiology and behavior of their animal models." As Thater's recent exhibition at LACMA, The Sympathetic Imagination, illustrated, the artist has long been interested in animals and how they behave, producing videos that poetically show how bees speak and animals survive nuclear disasters. 

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Ann Veronica Janssens: Theaters and Cinemas with Bortolami Gallery's Artist/City Initiative

Ann Veronica Janssens

Theaters and Cinemas

Coinciding with Janssens's exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, featuring one of her iconic Fog Star works installed in the museum’s Neoclassical Spring House directly adjacent to the main museum building, Janssens will mount approximately 20 “silver screens” on the facades of theaters and cinemas across the city of Baltimore in the coming months.  At a range of different sizes—but always in the proportion of classic widescreen film—these “silver screens” refer to the impressive history of theaters and cinemas unique to Baltimore. Between 1900 and 1970, the city constructed a total of 235 theaters, far more than in most American cities. Some of these theaters are still open, others closed, and still others repurposed.

Janssens was drawn to the architectural typology of theaters and specifically cinemas in Baltimore for their symbolic value—at a fundamental level these buildings were conceived to perform just as her work does: transforming light into content. At the core of Janssens’s practice is a keen interest in light’s ability to dramatically alter one’s perception and experience. Coated in aluminum leaf, these “silver screens” also refer to Baltimore’s history in the silver industry.

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New York Times, Rirkrit Tiravanija, A Conceptual Artist Sets The New York Times on Fire

Rirkrit Tiravanija accepts T’s challenge to make something in less than an hour – and turns it into a fiery performance.

Tiravanija is known for turning everyday items — like newspapers, cooking utensils and even entire meals — into art, making him uniquely suited to “Make T Something,” the New York Times video series where people are invited to create something using only the supplies on hand.

Click here to view the performance.

Bangkok Post: Rirkrit Tiravanija, (Re)Collect: The Making of Our Art Collection

A new exhibition at National Gallery of Singapore chronicles its acquisition of artworks and the post-war evolution of Southeast Asian art.

Open for two-and-a-half years, the National Gallery Singapore's two permanent galleries are home to the world's largest institutional collection of Singaporean and Southeast Asian modern art -- 8,630 pieces to be exact.  Before that, custodianship belonged to National Museum Art Gallery (founded in 1976) and then to the Singapore Art Museum (founded in 1996).

"(Re)Collect", which runs until Aug 19, showcases more than 120 pieces of the artworks -- including major pieces by four master Thai artists -- to chronicle the gallery's journey and evolution from post-war Singapore until today.  It is also a chronicle of the progression of Southeast Asian art through the decades.

[This exhibition includes] Rirkrit Tiravanija's Untitled 2014-2015 (curry for the soul of the forgotten), a three-channel 47-minute video of villagers cooking a pot of curry while the curry pot mysteriously moves across each screen by itself.  In front of the projection is a bronze cast of the exact curry pot the villagers used to cook.

Rirkrith's artwork raises a lot of questions as we never see the locals eating the curry together.  This, and the bronze pot creates a distance that tends to happen when objects are displaced into a non-neutral space, much like an art gallery. 

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Diana Thater and Jack Goldstein: Pivotal: Highlights from the Collection

Pivotal: Highlights from the Collection

Orange County Museum of Art

850 San Clemente Dr
Newport Beach, CA 92660

On view through June 17th

OCMA has always championed artistic experimentation and innovation through a commitment to showing and collecting the work of dynamic and groundbreaking emerging artists. This installation will reveal how impactful OCMA has been in supporting the careers of some of the most influential artists from this region, often at pivotal moments in their careers.

This exhibition includes works by Diana Thater an Jack Goldstein.

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Jack Goldstein, Untitled, 1984, acrylic on canvas, OCMA Collection

Pae White: Small World at Galeria Elvira Gonzalez

Pae White

Small World

Galeria Elvira Gonzalez

Hermanos Alvarez Quintero, 1 28004 Madrid

6 June - 15 July, 2018

Galería Elvira González is pleased to announce Small World, the first solo exhibition of Pae White in Spain opening on June 6 at 7:00 pm.

The exhibition features a large installation made up of over 700 pop corn shaped pieces hanging from the ceiling on nylon strings, six panels on ceramic paper, 3 large-scale tapestries made in Belgium and various works that are hand-stitched on paper. 

Pae White is a multidisciplinary artist whose work embraces a variety of supports and materials, from porcelain, fluorescent lights and neon, paper, tapestries to large installations setting out in a format that can take over the space and using it as another element within the work. 

Her innate curiosity for design, architecture and handcrafts have led her to a constant research of production materials and shapes focused on the permanence of daily things. Pae White  links art with leisure, an aspect that is always present in her work. One of her main aims is to play with the viewer’s expectations who, coming up against the apparent simplicity of a daily object, is immersed in a complex plot of superimposed familiar elements, which forces a deeper reflection on the work. 

She is very much interested in the interpretation of the object, and this is also reflected in her production methods. When her work is produced by other manufacturers she does not review the final result until the installation of the work. “I am interested in the interpretation. Maybe something made in Lithuania does not end up being exactly the same as how I had imagined it. The piece is transformed into a kind of file or container of the work’s expression”. 

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Petra Cortright: Pale Coil Cold Angel at Nahmad Projects

Petra Cortright

Pale Coil Cold Angel

Nahmad Projects

2 Cork Street, London W1S 3LB

8 June - 20 July, 2018

Nahmad Projects will present a solo exhibition by Petra Cortright, opening on 8th June 2018. The exhibition will feature works in 2D, 3D, and video. The artist will present stone sculptures for the first time in the form of three works carved from white Carrara marble, and a six-metre wide quadriptych will be the largest painting by the artist to date. A video installation is the latest in her “painting video” series. Cortright is a twenty-first century painter using contemporary tools. The Los Angeles-based artist is a celebrated member of a diffuse group known as “post internet” artists, who explore the effect of digital culture on the development of fine art. After a series of critically acclaimed webcam performances distributed on YouTube, the artist consolidated her practice by using Adobe Photoshop to make paintings using brushes and images mined from internet search engines. Her use of platforms like Pinterest subverts traditionally gender normative content such as flowers and interiors, freeing this imagery into expansive digital landscapes. The title of the show is also drawn from search terms used online. A final painting is a captured still from a master file that could be modified endlessly, so while her two-dimensional objects are static, they suggest dynamic change in reference to their source.

“I’ve tried regular painting. I hated it,” Cortright said in a 2015 interview with ARTnews. “It’s really slow and I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world. You can’t copy and paste or undo.” Adobe software can mimic physical painting: virtual brushes can carry multiple colours at once, their hairs can be sized and shaped, and even the paint can vary its wetness. Each work in the show expands our definition of painting: the video animates the artist’s process of building a master file with her invisible digital hand; the sculptures are 2D digital brushstrokes extruded into 3D shapes, which the artist transfers into marble from their virtual existence.

Petra Cortright was born in Santa Barbara in 1986 and lives and works in Los Angeles. She studied at Parsons School for Design in New York City, and the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Selected solo exhibitions include: +”venus de milo” +turtles +sounds, City Gallery, Wellington (2017); RUNNING NEO-GEO GAMES UNDER MAME, Tristian Koenig, Melbourne (2017); quack doctor violet “saltwater fish”, 1301PE, Los Angeles (2017); DIE ROSE, Société, Berlin (2016); ORANGE BLOSSOM PRINCESS FUCKING BUTTERCUP, Carl Kostyal, London (2016); Zero-Day Darling, Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco (2016).

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BMORE ART: Ann Veronica Janssens's "Fog Star" at the Baltimore Museum

Ann Veronica Janssens’ Fog Star, which opened to the public last week, is a testimony to the potential appeal of a simple, interesting concept executed precisely and with restraint. In the BMA’s often-overlooked Spring House (a small, temple-like structure designed two centuries ago by Benjamin Henry Latrobe), Janssens has introduced a haze machine and mounted seven bright lights in a pattern on a wall at the far end. In a thin fog, seven beams of light thus coalesce into a star – or break down into a cacophony of swirling beams, depending on where you stand. The result at once delightful and subtle: a piece of eye candy that will please the selfie crowd, but also a coy meditation on space, light, and history.

Janssen, who was born in England in 1956 and is now based in Belgium, has worked with light for years, and has frequently spoken of her desire to prompt viewers to experience familiar surroundings in new ways. Fog Star combines these interests. From a distance, the piece is all flirtation and unresolved promise; partial glimpses of the light bulbs and the pinkish red interior seem calculated to attract attention, without revealing too much. Come closer, though, and the piece rewards you. As you approach the threshold of the spring house’s central door, the seven bulbs are suddenly all visible, and snap into a crisply distinct configuration: an ethereal heptagram, suspended in a mist.

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by Kerr Houston

Jack and the Jack Paintings: Jack Goldstein and Ron Terada at Art Gallery of Ontario

Jack Goldstein and Ron Terada

Jack and the Jack Paintings: Jack Goldstein and Ron Terada

Art Gallery of Ontario

317 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5T IG4

A new exhibition at the AGO pairs contemporary Canadian artists Ron Terada and Jack Goldstein, whose own artistic struggle has been a source of inspiration for Terada.

Based in California, Jack Goldstein was a performance and conceptual artist who came of age in the 1960s and ‘70s; he was part of The Pictures Generation, an influential group known for their use of mass media imagery. He studied at the famed California Institute of the Arts, or CalArts, and became a painter during the art boom of the early 1980s. After some success, however, he became increasingly marginalized and slowly disappeared from the art world. Although a revival of interest in his work began in 2000, Goldstein took his own life in 2003.

Vancouver-based artist Ron Terada has worked in sculpture, photography, video, sound and graphic design; the Jack series marks his return to painting after a decade of exploring these other media. Terada was inspired by Goldstein’s powerful 2003 tell-all memoir, Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia. Co-written with a colleague and published just before his death, Goldstein’s book speaks openly of the social dynamics at play in the art world at the time. Since 2011, Terada has meticulously created a series of Jack paintings corresponding closely to various chapters of the book, calling into question the tension between text and imagery, the dominance of painting in the art world, and the boundaries of authorial ownership.

The exhibition features 14 of Terada’s large-scale text-based paintings, shown for the first time. Terada’s final chapter, “New York Dealers and Collectors”, is on view with Goldstein’s sublime photorealistic image of a lightning storm. When compared, they address the different ways we read or respond to painting. 

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Project Angel Food: Angel Art Auction

Saturday, June 23, 2018 at Neuehouse, Hollywood

6121 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90028

1301PE is pleased to announce artists Kirsten Everberg and Rirkrit Tiravanija will both be contributing works to Angel Art, a contemporary art auction benefitting Project Angel Food.

Project Angel Food's mission is to feed and nourish the sick as they battle critical illness. Volunteers and staff cook and deliver nutritious meals, free of charge, to homes throughout Los Angeles County to alleviate hunger, prevent malnutrition and return their clients to health.

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Paddle 8 Auction 

Philippe Parreno at Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin

Philippe Parreno

Gropius Bau Berlin

Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin, Germany

25 May - 5 August, 2018

Berliner Festspiele / Immersion presents internationally renowned artist Philippe Parreno at Gropius Bau Berlin, for his first solo exhibition at a major cultural institution in Germany.

Philippe Parreno's solo exhibition at the Gropius Bau has various different modes of existence that will change over time.

Some works reappear in in a mutated form.  Both film, "Anywhen" (2017) and "The Crowd" (2018) have been entirely re-edited.  The flower wallpaper, previously seen as a background element on the set of Parreno's film "Marilyn" (2012), comes to the fore as an individual work covering a gallery wall.  Hundreds of drawings of fireflies flash on a large LED screen and then fade away, their lifespan governed by algorithms.  This is an automaton made out of many others.  

Disembodied, free-floating sensations and intensities will directly affect the bodies of the works themselves and those visiting the show.  In one room, three different wind vortexes guide the circulation of balloon fish on an elaborate path.  Live sounds, emanating from somewhere in or beyond the city leak inside the museum walls and spread from one room to another.  

You will notice some synchronicities. Sounds re-surface in the reflecting pool of the atrium as they are transduced into visual patterns of water lilies. Light changes in the galleries as automatic blinds rise and fall, following a rhythm governed by an unknown authority.  Another area is bathed in an eerie orange glow that evokes the fictional future of our fading sun.  

As we move through the exhibit, we begin to feel as though we have entered a dimension not organized according to our normal spatial coordinates.  This is an inner space, a purely mental landscape, a site animated by fuzzy logic.  

In an isolated booth there is a bioreactor consisting of a beaker in which microorganisms multiply, mutate, and adapt to their environment.  Connected to computers that orchestrate the events in the exhibition, these yeast cultures develop a memory - a collective intelligence - that learns the changing rhythms of the show and evolves to anticipate future variations.  As the micro-organisms continuously interact with each other, and with the contingent events taking place in the museum, their neural circuitry sets a complex non-deterministic, non-linear mise-en-scene in motion through a series of non-periodic cycles. 

Immersion | Berliner Festspiele 2018

In the programme Immersion, the Berliner Festspiele present artistic works which often occupy the grey zone between performance and exhibition.  The programme Immersion was made possible by an initiative of the German Federal Parliament and thanks to the support of the Federal Goverenment Commissioner for Culture and the Media.