Fiona Connor: A Man of Average Means at Human Resources Los Angeles

A Man of Average Means

Opening Reception: August 2nd 4-7pm with a performance by Dawn Kasper at 5:30PM

In 1978, frustrated by his country's inability to produce quality films, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il embarked on a plan to appropriate proven foreign resources.  With this intent he carried out the well-documented abduction of South Korean filmmaker Shin Sang Ok and his ex-wife, the actress Choi Eun Hee, independently of each other during visits to Hong Kong.

Approximately two years after the abductions, Kim held a celebratory banquet in which the two captives were presented as guests of honor.  Only then, upon seeing each other, did they become aware of their parallel circumstances.  This reunion, coupled with a rather heartfelt admission by Kim himself, revealed the true significance of his fantastic and aggressive gesture – the desire to find a poetic moment from within the perfectly constructed ideology he embodied.

Shin and Choi produced thirteen films in the following six years of their strange circumstance (during which they were remarried), until they escaped while attending a Viennese film festival. They would eventually migrate to Los Angeles, where Shin worked under the pseudonym, Simon Sheen.

A Man of Average Means is an exhibition featuring works by:

Peggy Ahwesh, Keren Benbenisty, Jakob Brugge, Fiona Connor, Dawn Kasper, Dawn Kinstel, Lucas Knipscher, Charles Mayton, Viola Yesiltac, Yoni Zonszein

Organized by Eric Kim and Thomas Torres Cordova

Gallery Hours: Wed-Sun, noon-6PM

Human Resources
410 Cottage Home St
Los Angeles CA, 90012

http://humanresourcesla.com/event-details/2015/7/25/080215-082315-a-man-of-average-means.html

Philippe Parreno artsy.net Review

Making Sense of Philippe Parreno in His Multifaceted Park Avenue Armory Exhibition

"The show is pretty optimistic," Philippe Parreno says, sitting in the dimly lit hallway of the Park Avenue Armory, where his first major U.S. exhibition "H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS" opened last week, occupying the building's 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall. "[My show at] Palais de Tokyo was a bit more dark. But maybe that's because I'm finishing dealing with cancer, so there's a bit of light coming back." Parreno laughs but there is an undertone of relief in the remark, one that carries through the show.

In the United States, the French artist is harder to pin down than most of his relational aesthetics counterparts. Tom Eccles, the show's "consulting curator" (Eccles was asked by the artist to join the project after it was commissioned by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Park Avenue Armory Artistic Director, Alex Poots), comments, "The wonderful world of Philippe Parreno is made up of many different parts. There isn't a signature style." However, "H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS" begins to make sense of the fragmented Parreno pieces most contemporary art lovers will likely have encountered—the glowing lights of one of his signature marquee pieces at the entrance of the Guggenheim during the 2008 exhibition "theanyspacewhatever"; or the flickering tubular lights seen throughout the Arsenale building in Okwui Enwezor's "All the World's Futures"; or the feature-length film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, made with Douglas Gordon, that followed every movement of the legendary French footballer through one match; or, with artist and friend Pierre Huyghe, the act of purchasing the rights to a manga character, who they named Ann Lee. The character has since appeared in the works not only of Parreno and Huyghe but also those of Tino Sehgal, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, François Curlet, Melik Ohanian, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, amongst other artists. 

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Fiona Connor 'On What Remains, Part One' at Lisa Cooley New York

Fiona Connor

On What Remains, Part One

Lisa Cooley, New York

June 26 - August 21, 2015


Lisa Cooley is pleased to present On What Remains, Part One, the first of a two part solo exhibition with the gallery by Fiona Connor. This is the artist's first solo exhibition in New York, following her Newspaper Reading Club, New York Poster Project presented in collaboration with Michala Paludan as an offsite project with Lisa Cooley in October 2014.

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Ana Prvački Review in Flaunt Magazine

Obscene, Lewd, Promiscuous, Shameless, Abandoned, Libertine, Libidinous, Licentious, X-Rated, Amorous, Bawdy, Carnal, Raw, Rousing, Earthy, Erogenous, Fervid, Filthy, Fleshly, Hot, Kinky, Lascivious, Lecherous, Raunchy, Salacious, Spicy, Stimulating, Titillating, Voluptuous, and Nice.

Ana Prvački's "Tent, Quartet, Bows and Elbows," opens on a string quartet performing energetically inside a small tent. As the four players inside the silken edifice perform, their flailing limbs are seen in outline, and the spectacle out of context—one that would be somber in any other circumstance—is laughable and evocative of kids fooling around at summer camp.

Prvački—a performance artist who was born in Serbia, and educated in Singapore and New York—has thought a lot about the intersection between the erotic and the humorous; her new solo show Porn Scores, at 1301PE Gallery, has a clear message, one that is too easily forgotten: art is fun, music is sexy, sex is funny. The show is primarily populated with sheets of classical scores interspersed with delicate illustrations of male and female reproductive organs.

On the subject of eroticism and humor, Prvački says, "For me, eroticism is very much connected to humor. It is a new kind of eroticism, something between sexy and slapstick."

Regarding the show's relationship with music: "Studies of music rooms in 17th and 18th century France and Italy show that young girls and women were encouraged to play an instrument but not too well, it was understood that a daily and in depth experience of music would be too carnal for proper young women."

When Prvački is asked what she thinks about summer camp, she (characteristically) after a good laugh responds, "I think both of my interests in camping and sexuality go well there." Later, over email, she adds, "Thinking about your question from the other day, I think summer is all about the bees!"

It's either a good or a very bad time to be an artist working in the explicit, depending on how you feel about infamy. June 7th marked the unveiling of Anish Kapoor's evocative sculptures at Versailles. One piece in particular raised public ire: "Dirty Corner," Kapoor, in an interview with Le JDD, called the installation, "A mysterious sculpture of rusted steel 10 meters high, weighing thousands of tons, stones and blocks all around. Again sexual [in] nature: [it represents] the vagina of the Queen who took power."

Prvački's use of the anatomical puts her in the same class as a few other artists, most of whom have not been well received—Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi was indicted twice last year for her provocative kayaks made from a 3-D printed mold of her vagina—but to Prvački the use of the actual genitalia is very important. When discussing this, she brought up the Met Gala this year, in which it was noted that numerous attendees were wearing "naked dresses" that exposed almost everything except for the pudenda. "I thought, 'what a strange thing, culturally. What does that mean? Does this mean that people are so afraid of the imagination, that they would rather go naked?' I don't know. I think we definitely need some cultural acupuncture. So, I'm hoping that the show does that in a way."

Prvački's work often deals with humanity and our customs. Her exhibition for dOCUMENTA Kassel in 2012, called Greeting Committee, consisted of three parts: a conversation and training on etiquette with D13 staff, a series of six PSAs shown in service areas and a key note lecture by Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah. When I asked if this came from her own personal experiences of living in so many different cultures (Communist Yugoslavia, Singapore, London, New York, Paris, Los Angeles) she says, "Part of my project was focused on the faux pas, on how the potential going wrong becomes an opportunity to connect with people through humor. Again, humor being that incredible opener."

At the end of "Tent, Quartet, Bows and Elbows," Prvački, a petite woman in a long, black dress walks into frame and unzips the tent, the performers pile out like clowns from a proverbial car, and she carefully zips it up again; just as the warm spring night folds around us foreshadowing the long hot summer to come.

Written by Amy Marie Slocum 

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Paul Winstanley on Architectural Digest Blog

Painter Paul Winstanley Captures Empty Artists' Studios on Canvas

 

 

British artist Paul Winstanley's "Art School" paintings, now on view at the Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery in Manhattan, take their inspiration from his own photographs of art-student studios left empty for the summer months.

 

Though imitative of photographs, these delicately realist works are full of painterly depth and texture. Plush grays and downy whites lend the scenes a soft, comfortable, well-worn feeling; the studios are empty and bare, monastic even, but never austere. Signs of craft and toil mark the floors, walls, tables, and chairs. In one piece, a bright orange surface—wall or canvas?—is so close it is almost menacing, an explosion of energy cutting off our view of the serene studio beyond.This tight cropping obscures depth and angles: Floors bleed into walls, art bleeds into floors, walls bleed into windows. Hazy summer light floods through grand windows and over partial walls. The spaces appear ethereal and dreamlike, ideal for thinking, imagining, and creating—and hard to leave behind, even for summer.

Through July 19 at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 534 West 24th Street, New York, Text by Alexa Lawrence

http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/daily/2015/06/paul-winstanley-mitchell-innes-and-nash

Ann Veronica Janssens in 'Belgian Geometric Abstraction' at L'Espace de l'Art Concret

Belgian Geometric Abstraction

L'Espace de l'Art Concret

June 28 - November 19 2015


Château de Mouans

F06370 Mouans-Sartoux

France


With: Marcel-Louis Baugniet, Gaston Bertrand, Pol Bury, Jo Delahaut, Marthe Donas, Francis Dusépulchre, Pierre-Louis Flouquet, Henri Gabriel, Paul Joostens, Walter Leblanc, Karel Maes, Jean-Pierre Maury, Jozef Peeters, Victor Servranckx, Michel Seuphor, Guy Vanderbranden, Georges Vantongerloo, Léon Wuidar, Ann Veronica Janssens, Bas Ketelaars, Pieter Vermeersch

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