LAUSANNE.-The Fondation de l'Hermitage is showing a prestigious collection of works by Paul Signac (1863-1935) from 29 January to 22 May. Almost 140 oil paintings, watercolours and drawings illustrate the prolific career of this neo-Impressionist master. This unique collection was assembled by a family with a passion for Signac’s art and constitutes one of the largest set of his works to be held in private hands. It offers a complete panorama of Signac’s artistic development, from his early Impressionist paintings through the heroic years of neo-Impressionism, the dazzle of Saint Tropez and flamboyant portrayals of Venice, Rotterdam and Constantinople to the late watercolours of the Ports of France series. The collection is also exceptional for the diversity of techniques on display, juxtaposing the Impressionist ardour of the studies from nature with the limpid polychromy ... More
Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), Composition, 1927-8. Bronze, 31.3 x 18.1 x 11.6 cm.
LONDON.-Luxembourg & Dayan presents Alberto Giacometti: In His Own Words (Sculptures 1925-1934). Focused on a series of sculptures from this crucial decade in Giacometti’s life, the exhibition provides a rare insight into the development of the artist’s practice, which led to the crystallization of the more familiar style that characterizes Giacometti’s later work. This exhibition will include over 18 sculptures from this period, many of which will be exhibited in the UK for the first time. The exhibition takes its cue from a letter that Alberto Giacometti wrote to his New York dealer and friend Pierre Matisse (1947) that accompanied a group of sculptures planned for an exhibition at Matisse’s New York gallery. “Here is the list of sculptures that I promised you” Giacometti wrote, “but I could not send it without explaining a certain succession of facts […] without which ... More
NEW YORK, NY.-Gagosian New York is presenting Buddha's Fingers (2014–15), one of the late Chris Burden's last works. Beginning with a series of startling actions in the early 1970s, Chris Burden challenged his own mental and physical limitations, as well as the boundaries of art and performance. Shut inside a locker for five days (Five Day Locker, 1971); shot in the arm (Shoot, 1971); and nailed through the palms of his hands to the roof of a car (Trans-fixed, 1974), he sought to reflect the violence that defined American politics, society, and media at the time. Burden soon channeled the daring spirit of these early performances into imposing technical feats that similarly explored challenges both individual and social. He used toys (figurines, train sets, ... More
3D scan of Cosmic Buddha highlighting hot spots and zones. Image courtesy Smithsonian’s Digitalization Program Office.
WASHINGTON, DC.- Through cutting-edge digital technology, previously hidden meanings of a masterpiece of ancient Chinese sculpture may now be accessed by museum visitors, students and scholars. A new interactive installation presents the original sixth-century work alongside the evolving methods used to study it—from rubbings and photographs to the technological possibilities of today. “Body of Devotion: The Cosmic Buddha in 3D” is on view in the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery January 30–December 2016. “The Cosmic Buddha,” an icon of the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art collection, has been 3-D imaged by the Smithsonian’s Digitization Program Office, which uses a variety of tools to record and share unique Smithsonian treasures. The exhibition includes the ancient sculpture itself, ink rubbings, a digital flat map of the ... More
Wooden face with inlaid eyes, originally part of a coffin, Third Intermediate Period, Dynasty 22 (945 - 715 BC). Possibly from excavations atAbydos. Courtesy Two Temple Place and Baghshaw Museum (Kirklees Council).
LONDON.-Two Temple Place reopened to the public with its fifth annual Winter Exhibition, Beyond Beauty: Transforming the Body in Ancient Egypt on 30th January 2016. This major new exhibition allows us to experience the ancient Egyptians at their most spectacular and at their most intimate, uncovering a civilisation fascinated by appearance and identity both in life and death. Rare surviving imagery on exquisite painted coffins, decorated funerary masks, delicate figurines and beautifully carved reliefs emphasise the importance of body image. Meanwhile jewellery, mirrors, hairpins, scent bottles and makeup provide an insight into some surprisingly familiar daily routines and the ever changing styles of the time. Through artefacts spanning over four millennia, from 3,500 B.C. to 400 A.D., the viewer is invited to ask why ... More
NEW YORK, NY.-Paul Kasmin Gallery is presenting Lost Downtown, the gallery’s first solo exhibition by acclaimed photographer Peter Hujar which is on view at 297 Tenth Avenue from January 28 to February 27, 2016. The exhibition, presented in collaboration with Pace/MacGill, features over twenty photographs of the late photographer’s portraits which offer a fascinating glimpse of New York City’s downtown scene during the 1970s-80s. Peter Hujar (1934-87) worked in photography’s classic genres: the nude and the portrait. His portraits evoke the same spirit and starkness as August Sander and Diane Arbus before him: clear, austere, and penetrating. He worked predominantly in black and white and with a medium format camera, and for most of his portraits he preferred the controlled environment of his studio or other indoor spaces, quietly working one-on-one with his sitter. Hujar was driven to capture ... More
Vanni Rossi (Italian, 1894-1973), Self-Portrait Smoking (1920). Oil on canvas. Collection of Robert Flynn Johnson.
ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.- Contemplating Character: Portrait Drawings & Oil Sketches from Jacques-Louis David to Lucian Freud is the most expansive exhibition of portraits ever presented at the Museum of Fine Arts. It opens on Saturday, February 13, and continues through Sunday, May 29. This fascinating exhibition features 152 rare portrait drawings and oil sketches from the late eighteenth into the twenty-first century, with most from the nineteenth. Artists from 15 countries are represented, with a large number from France and England. Lucian Freud, one of our time’s most provocative portrait painters and the grandson of the pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, once noted: “I’ve always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It’s people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.” The works are drawn from the remarkable ... More
Staff members at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, on the campus of Oberlin College, view works by contemporary European artist Judit Reigl. The exhibition, Judit Reigl: Body of Music, is the first retrospective of the artist’s work by a United States museum. Image: Selina Bartlett.
OBERLIN, OH.-The Allen Memorial Art Museum presents the first retrospective exhibition by a United States museum of the work of Judit Reigl, one of the foremost figures of European painting to emerge in the second half of the 20th century. From February 2 through May 29, 2016, Judit Reigl: Body of Music features paintings and works on paper from major public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Born in Hungary in 1923, Reigl escaped from behind the Iron Curtain in 1950 and arrived in Paris, where she first exhibited her work in 1954. She has maintained a home and studio outside the city since 1963 and, now in her nineties, continues ... More
VIENNA.- The Japanese photo magazine Provoke, which ran for three issues in 1968 and 1969, is regarded as a highlight of post-war photography. The Albertina, in the world’s first-ever exhibition on this topic, is taking a close look at this publication’s creators and its long genesis. The presentation encompasses a representative cross-section of Japanese photographic trends during the 1960s and 1970s. With around 200 objects, the exhibition Provoke unites works by Japan’s most influential photographers - including Daidō Moriyama, Yutaka Takanashi, Shōmei Tōmatsu, and Nobuyoshi Araki. Before the backdrop of the massive protest activities in Japan during this period, they created their images out of an awareness of being at a historical turning point between societal collapse and the search for a new Japanese identity. These works thus represent ... More
Matthew Kolodziej, Blaze, 2015. Acrylic on canvas, 38 x 31 inches.
CINCINNATI, OH.-Carl Solway Gallery presents a selection of recent paintings by Matthew Kolodziej. At first glance, his paintings appear to be dazzling, complex abstractions. Upon more careful observation, multi-layered fragments of architectural details emerge creating a sense of places in a state of change. The locations seem to be simultaneously under construction and demolition. The artist has titled the exhibition Patch Work. To quote Kolodziej, “ A patchwork is something made up of an incongruous variety of pieces. Patching connotes use, repair and replacement. … Architectural sites in flux provide the foundations for these paintings.” Kolodziej photographs industrial sites, and through a sophisticated process of computer manipulation, projection, tracing and paint application creates commanding images and surfaces that demand to be seen firsthand. To quote an essay by the painter and ... More
L’ènetènafionale, 2015. Wood, aluminum, brass, Xbox Kinect, electronics, starch, and French moon accent, 40 × 40 × 80 inches. Private Collection, Miami. Photograph by Tim Johnson, courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago.
FORT WORTH.- Glenn Kaino's work carefully balances formal and conceptual concerns as the artist combines an often unexpected hybrid of materials in order to best communicate an idea, history, or system that might be less effective with traditional art media. His installation Tank, 2014, for example, is composed of seven aquariums containing clusters of coral species thriving on clear resin replicas of military tanks that are submerged in the water. Tank signals life after violence, rebuilding, and the organic triumphing over the inanimate. Kaino's project also mirrors the United States' practice of discarding used military weapons in ocean beds for an ironically positive outcome in the aquatic ecosystem: the artillery actually encourages reefs to flourish in areas of the ocean where the coral ... More
Etienne Courtois Still Life With Plastic Bag, 2013 Chromogenic Print 86.6 x 106.6 cm (framed)34 1/8 x 42 in Ed #5
BRUSSELS.-Rodolphe Janssen gallery announce their new exhibition entitled Balls & Glory. Following visits of fifty-some artists studios in Belgium, the gallery presents works by nine very diverse and emerging artists. The title of the exhibition not only refers to the eponymous restaurant in Ghent where the idea was born during a lunch meeting in between studio visits. It also underlines the ambition of these nine artists as well as the purpose of the show, to put a spotlight on talented artists who haven’t yet had many opportunities to showcase their works. The aim of the exhibition is not to give an overview of the Belgian art scene; it is rather the result of ‘fieldwork’ in the art scene and a reflection of those things that caught the gallery's attention. One artist told them about another, and curators, journalists and collectors, at their turn, introduced them to new artists. Visiting artist studios is ... More
LONDON.-Victoria Miro announces The Secret Agent, a solo exhibition by the celebrated Canadian artist Stan Douglas, featuring the UK premiere of a new multi-screen film installation along with a series of large-scale photographs. Saturated with information, and yet rejecting easily consumable messages, these works place the viewer within the charged atmospheres and ambiguous political and social intricacies of 1970s Portugal and postwar Vancouver, respectively. Filmed on location in Lisbon with a cast of local actors, the feature-length The Secret Agent, 2015, restages the plot of Joseph Conrad’s novella – a story of espionage, double-crossing and murky political entanglement – within the aftermath of Portugal’s ‘carnation revolution,’ which overthrew Europe’s oldest dictatorship, ... More
Quote The art world can no more be corrupted than Don Juan could be seduced. Philip Toynbee
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Jumana Manna's first solo show in Sweden opens at Malmö Konsthall MALMO.-Malmö Konsthall presents Jumana Manna’s first solo show in Sweden. In her sculptures and moving-image works, the Berlin- and Jerusalem-based artist addresses issues such as nationalism, the construction of communities, and the body’s relation to specific histories of place. The centrepiece of her exhibition is the feature-length film, A magical substance flows into me (2015), which draws on the radio program Oriental Music, made in 1936-37 for the Palestine Broadcasting Service by the German-Jewish ethnomusicologist Robert Lachmann. To realise her film, Manna travelled across Palestine/Israel to meet the groups Lachmann had studied, playing his recordings and making new ones of her own. Her exchanges with Kurdish, Moroccan, and Yemenite Jews, Samaritans, members of urban and rural Palestinian communities, Bedouins, and Coptic Christians in their homes ... More
Exhibition of small sculptures and big ideas opens at Postmasters NEW YORK, NY.-Postmasters announces an exhibition of small sculptures and big ideas. The works in the show - made from porcelain (both sculpted and 3D printed), ceramics or bronze, as well as less traditional materials such as horse manure, pixels, and words - were created by 28 artists between 1980 and now, measure one inch to two feet, and aim to address concepts of love, religious mass suicide, bio-tech spores, vagrancy, identity, alchemy, economic equilibrium and digital artifacts, among others. This exhibition is my offering for you, the viewer, to rediscover small scale. If you are still at a loss of experience, rub the bronze nose for good luck on your way out. Artists have an ability to move monumental ideas through their art into our minds and souls. Personally, some of my most meaningful experiences include conversations with artists enveloped by the totality of their ... More
First exhibition in Germany by London-based artist duo BeckerHarrison on view at galerie hiltawsky BERLIN.- With 'Holy Shit', on view at galerie hiltawsky in Berlin presents the first exhibition in Germany by London-based artist duo BeckerHarrison. The show features 17 black & white photographs from their eponymous series, which was produced during Easter and Passover celebrations in Jerusalem. Their visual commentary on the coexistence of the three world religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is both subtle and ironic. Using Carolin Becker’s photographs like a canvas, painter and graffiti artist Simon Harrison integrates signs of a seemingly omnipresent military presence. Through skillful airbrushing techniques, he equips the depicted protagonists with weapons and other trappings. 'Holy Shit' thus visualizes the interplay of religion and violence that has prevailed in Jerusalem since the 1960s. The work 'Machine Gun Preachers' depicts a procession of Catholic priests ... More
Tonico Lemos' first exhibition in a public UK gallery opens at De La Warr Pavilion BEXHILL ON SEA.- In his first solo exhibition for a UK public gallery, Brazilian artist Tonico Lemos Auad presents a lyrical response to the natural environment and architecture of De La Warr Pavilion. Inspired by the sea, the coast and gardening, Auad draws together recent sculptural works with a new commission subtly exploring ideas around faith, resistance, mending and repairing, and the endeavour to overcome adversity. Auad disregards material value to create expressive, often transient forms using a wide range of materials, from the ephemeral and everyday to the precious and enduring. Notions of luck, traditional anecdotes, chance, and the supernatural pervade a practice that is also a darker exploration of existence, the brevity of life and nearness of death. At De La Warr Pavilion, Auad presents several recent works that are poetic yet playful ... More
Ancient Talmudic study principle reinterpreted by artist Jenny Odell in collaboration with Philip Buscemi SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Dialogue has always been an integral part of learning in traditional Jewish contexts. The Talmud states, “Just as in the case of iron, when one implement sharpens another, so too do two scholars sharpen each other.” The Contemporary Jewish Museum repurposes the centuries-old practice of havruta—the study of religious texts by people in pairs—for the contemporary art community. An ongoing exhibition series, In That Case: Havruta in Contemporary Art, brings individual Bay Area artists together with a scholar, scientist, writer, or other thinker of his or her choice for a ten-week fellowship in creativity. The resulting collaborations will be presented in The Museum’s Sala Webb Education Center, and visitors can also follow the collaborative process on The Museum’s blog (cjmvoices.blogspot.com), where artists will post reflections, thoughts, ... More
Krannert Art Museum exhibition explores perception of time through contemporary art CHAMPAIGN, ILL.- “Time / Image,” one of Krannert Art Museum’s spring exhibitions opening on Jan. 28, explores how time is perceived through contemporary art. The 11 artists featured in the exhibition look at time in ways other than as a linear progression. They ask questions about our understandings of historical narrative, how we see images of the past and present in relation to each other, and how time is represented and manipulated in various forms of artistic media. Their work shows different senses of temporal possibility, said Amy L. Powell, curator of the exhibition and curator of modern and contemporary art at the museum. The exhibition takes its name from a book by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who wrote about the change in the perception of time brought on by cinema and techniques such as editing and montage. Every work in “Time / Image” is cinematic ... More
Transborder: Fabien Castanier Gallery opens group exhibition CULVER CITY, CA.-Fabien Castanier Gallery presents Transborder: A Group Exhibition featuring the work of Rero (FR), Cyrcle (US), Jan Kaláb (CR), Ox (FR), Aníbal Vallejo (CO), and Andrey Zignnatto (BR). Rero curated the group exhibition, bringing together a collective of artists from different backgrounds, all working to create a discourse across boundaries. This exhibition centers around artists who challenge the idea of boundaries within art, both physical and ideological borders. Each artist presents new work for Transborder, examining the transitory elements of shape, color, form, and context within art making. The group exhibition takes a survey of how the language of both abstraction and figurative form can be conveyed throughout vastly different corners of the world. Across borders of both time and space, these artists have created connectivity and conversation ... More
'The Birth of a Nation' wins top prizes at Sundance LOS ANGELES, CA(AFP).- "The Birth of a Nation," a drama about a 19th century slave revolt in Virginia, swept top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday. The movie, acquired earlier this week by Fox Searchlight for a record-shattering $17.5 million, won the grand jury prize and the audience award at the prestigious festival held in Park City, Utah. The dual awards mark a major victory for filmmaker Nate Parker, who wrote and directed the movie about Nat Turner, who led a slave rebellion in 1831. It also comes at a time when Hollywood is under fire for its lack of diversity in the list of actors and filmmakers nominated for Oscars this year. "Thank you, Sundance, for creating a platform for us to grow, in spite of what the rest of Hollywood is doing," Parker, who is black, said as he accepted the grand jury prize for his film already being touted for a 2017 Oscar. The ... More
Bayern Munich's exhibition on Holocaust victims opens at Dachau BERLIN(AFP).- Bayern Munich's president Karl Hopfner has opened a touring exhibition at the former Dachau concentration camp dedicated to club members who became victims of the Holocaust under Nazi rule. The exhibition, titled "Idolised - Persecuted - Forgotten: Victims of National Socialism at FC Bayern Munich", tells the story of the 56 members who were deported or had to flee Germany during the Nazi era. Former club presidents Kurt Landauer, who was briefly imprisoned in the Dachau camp, near Munich, and Siegfried Herrmann, were amongst the victims of Nazi persecution for religious or political reasons. The exhibition at the Church of Reconciliation at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site is open until May 1. "It is important for us to take action, year after year, against forgetting (the victims)," said Bayern president Karl Hopfner at the exhibition. "The opening ... More
First nationally touring exhibition of American enameling in over 50 years revives the unsung art form LOS ANGELES, CA.-The Craft & Folk Art Museum presents Little Dreams in Glass and Metal: Enameling in America, 1920 to the Present, the first nationally traveling exhibition of enamel arts in more than 50 years. Enameling — the art of fusing glass to metal through a high temperature firing process — is an under-documented art form rich in history, technique, and visual opulence. The exhibition explores the history of enameling in this country over the past 100 years through objects ranging from cloisonné jewelry to large abstract wall panels. Little Dreams in Glass and Metal is on view from January 24 – May 8, 2016 and has been organized by the Los Angeles-based Enamel Arts Foundation. Taking its title from a phrase the artist Karl Drerup used to describe the extraordinary properties of enameling — “I appreciate knowing when someone derives joy from the long hours ... More
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image announces the world premiere of Daniel Crooks: Phantom Ride MELBOURNE.-The Australian Centre for the Moving Image and The Ian Potter Cultural Trust will present the world premiere of Phantom Ride, a brand new work by one of Australia’s leading moving image artists, Melbourne-based Daniel Crooks. Practising across a range of media including digital video, photography and installation, Crooks’ work plays with the notion of time, stretching and distorting reality while questioning our perception of it. Phantom Ride is the second Ian Potter Moving Image Commission (IPMIC), a ten-year, biennial program providing $100,000 for the creation of new works by mid-career Australian artist – and the most significant moving image commission in the country. Opening at ACMI on Tuesday 16 February 2016, Phantom Ride is a two-screen video work inspired by a history of cinema and the way in which trains have featured as an extension ... More
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