Cao Fei (b. 1978, Guangzhou, China) and The Propeller Group (founded 2006, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) have been announced as participating artists in the 2015 Venice Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor. Artforum reports: "['All the World's Futures'] consists of over 136 artists from fifty-three countries, and will feature a space for live programming in the Central Pavilion designed by David Adjaye called The Arena...The fifty-sixth edition of the Venice Biennale opens May 9 with previews beginning May 6, and runs through November 22." Congratulations to Cao Fei and The Propeller Group!
Artnet News Lists Huguette Caland as a Contemporary Artist to Watch
Artnet News has included Huguette Caland as one of their "10 Contemporary Artists to Watch: The Art Fair Edition." "A solo booth of Huguette Caland's recent works will be on display at The Armory Show [Booth 532]. The Lebanese artist first became known for her varied and sometimes abstract depictions of the female form. Her newer work drifts away from the body and the overtly sexual into a more abstract but culturally nuanced realm. The works that will be on display were influenced by the artist's California garden, as well as the textiles of her native Lebanon." The Armory Show will be on view from March 5 – 8, 2015.
Michael Rakowitz at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Michael Rakowitz has been selected to show a selection from his series The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist (Recovered, Missing, Stolen) at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW), in their exhibition From Ancient to Modern: Archaeology and Aesthetics. For the first time at ISAW, modern and contemporary art will be shown alongside ancient archaeological artifacts. The exhibition "examines the fascinating process through which archaeological objects are transformed from artifacts to artworks and, sometimes, to popular icons, as they move from the sites in which they were discovered, to mass media, to museum displays...It reveals the role of archaeologists, art historians, journalists, museum curators, and conservators in constructing identities for ancient artifacts that not only resonated with Western poplar and artistic culture, but that also positioned the finds as integral to the history of Western civilization." From Ancient to Modern: Archaeology and Aesthetics open February 12, 2015. Click here for the full press release.
THE PROPELLER GROUP PREMIERE FILM AT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM
The Propeller Group will show their successful Prospect.3 film The Living Need Light And The Dead Need Music at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The screening will be the film's European premiere, where it is in the running for the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films 2015.
Mounir Fatmi and Lucien Samaha donate works to UNICEF
Mounir Fatmi and Lucien Samaha have donated works to UNICEF for their SyriART Auction through Paddle8. The funds raised though SyriART will help UNICEF's work to save and change the lives of children who have been affected by the conflict in Syria. The UK government will match all UK public donations and successful bids to SyriART. The exhibition will be on view at Phillips, Berkeley Square until December 10; the online auction will be live until December 11 at www.paddle8.com/unicef.
Michael Rakowitz to give artist talk at SAIC
AARON HUGHES AND MICHAEL RAKOWITZ
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO CONSIDER SURVIVAL AS A PART OF OUR PRACTICE?
Tuesday, December 2, 5:00 p.m.
Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State St., 7th floor
School of the Art Institute Chicago
The Artists in Dialogue: 5:00 – 6:15 p.m.
Artists Aaron Hughes and Michael Rakowitz discuss their work together and apart in the midst of the Iraq War, its aftermath and continuations.
A Tea Performance will immediately follow the dialogue 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Space is limited to 20 participants. To attend, please RSVP to: bleahy@saic.edu.
When someone sits, sips, and reflects over a cup of tea, there is space to ask questions about one’s relationship to the world: a world that is filled with dehumanization, war, and destruction; a world that is filled with moments of beauty, love, and humanity. Hughes’s Tea Project is an ongoing dialogue that traverses a variety of these landscapes, from the tea sipped in a quaint coffee shop, to a cage in Guantanamo Bay, to a motor pool in Iraq; tea is not only a favored drink but a shared moment that transcends cultural divides and systems of oppression. That is not meant as a clichéd utopian statement, but as a reminder of a shared humanity that is so often overlooked.
Please come sit, reflect, share, and sip tea.
The Propeller Group featured in new Art Collectives book
The Propeller Group is featured in a new book by Francesco Spampinato titled Come Together: The Rise of Cooperative Art and Design, celebrating the shared endeavors of the art collaborative in the 21st century. Spampinato, joined by members of The Yes Men and Improv Everywhere, will be hosting a free talk and signing event for the book at The New York Public Library on Wednesday, December 3 from 6-8pm.
"Bright Prospects" at Prospect New Orleans
Huguette Caland, Tameka Norris, and The Propeller Group are all making waves at this year's Prospect New Orleans Biennial. Artforum's Linda Yablonsky writes, "I had just enough time to take in a bit of biennial artist Tameka Norris's four screen, feature-length film at May Gallery, an ambitious nonprofit founded by Keene Kopper, who has established residencies for visiting international artists as well as a vigorous publication and exhibition program. Shot in New Orleans, the film stars Norris as her stylish alter ego, Meka Jean."
Huguette Caland at New Orleans Museum of Art
Huguette Caland is currently on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art with selections from her 1970's works, as a part of Prospect 3 New Orleans.
Kemang Wa Lehulere is awarded Visual Artist SBYA
Kemang Wa Lehulere has been named by the National Arts Festival as the 2015 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art. "The Young Artist Awards were started in 1981 by the National Arts Festival to acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African artists who have displayed an outstanding talent in their artistic endeavours."
The Propeller Group gives artist talk at Prospect 3 New Orleans
The Propeller Group will be giving an artist lecture with Christopher Myers tonight at 5PM at UNO St. Claude Gallery, New Orleans. Their latest film, The Living Need Light, And The Dead Need Music, is on view at UNO St. Claude Gallery as part of a collaborative installation with Myers, for Prospect 3 New Orleans. "The film, which takes its title from a Vietnamese proverb, focuses on the ceremony of the funeral wake in Vietnam, where spiritual mediums, professional criers and musicians lead these multiple day mourning ceremonies into euphoric public events."
Dan Perjovschi opens solo exhibition in Norway
Dan Perjovschi has just opened a solo show, Freedom of Expression, at the Kunstall Trondheim in Trondheim, Norway. "The exhibition at Kunsthall Trondheim lends its title from the drawing Freedom of Expression, which has reappeared with variations in several of Perjovschi's wall drawing installations during the last ten years. Among the many reflections on the contemporary state of things and comments on social and political issues currently under debate, this topic remains increasingly urgent to highlight. A cornerstone for democracy, protected in our constitutions and the declarations of Human Rights, it is nevertheless constantly threatened, also by those who misuse it to advocate hatred and xenophobia. The reading of the words "From here – To here" is today not a given, but under debate, and for opposed reasons."
Michael Rakowitz on Creative Time Reports
Creative Time Reports: "For one week last year, the artist Michael Rakowitz operated an Iraqi Jewish restaurant out of the Dubai art space Traffic as part of the Moving Museum’s exhibition “TECTONIC.” The temporary kitchen, a rarity in the wake of the Jewish population’s mass exodus from Iraq during 1948–51, drew older visitors nostalgic for their pasts as well as younger diners attracted by its novelty. Elaborating on the themes of the project for this podcast, Michael Rakowitz sat down with two of his collaborators, the independent curator Regine Basha, who has chronicled Iraqi Jewish music with her archival project Tuning Baghdad, and the scholar Ella Habiba Shohat, author of several books in addition to the influential essay “Reflections of an Arab Jew.”
Asian Contemporary Art Week
Asian Contemporary Art Week (ACAW)
New York – October 22 – November 2, 2014!
As a member of Asian Contemporary Art Consortium, Lombard Freid Gallery is proud to participate in Asian Contemporary Art Week (ACAW) 2014.
ACAW is a dynamic platform that brings together major New York and Asia based art institutions, museums, and galleries to present cutting-edge exhibitions, innovative projects, and provocative dialogues on current topics.
FIELD MEETING – ACAW Signature Program
Sunday, October 26th & Monday, October 27th, hosted at Asia Society
In its ninth edition, ACAW introduces FIELD MEETING to highlight individual artistic practices, history and institution building in Asia. The two-day forum conceived as a studio visit on a communal scale, presents 35 artists and art professionals through a series of lecture-performances, talks, and discussions. Stephen Stapleton, co-founder of Edge of Arabia, will present in the program.
Lombard Freid Gallery will be participating in ACAW 2014 with the following events:
Cao Fei's La Town will have its final screenings on Saturday, October 25th.
Cao Fei will present as part of FIELD MEETING on Monday, October 27th, at 2:45 PM at the Asia Society.
The opening reception of Huguette Caland Early Works: 1970-85 will be Thursday, October 30, from 6-8 PM.
For more information about ACAW programs and a full schedule visit http://www.acaw.info/
Tameka Norris to collaborate with Saint Heron for Prospect 3
Saint Heron, Solange Knowles' record label, and Prospect 3 New Orleans are collaborating to produce "Amen Amen! The 17 Wards of Wonder," "a three-part event of multidisciplinary cultural and art experiences throughout the city of New Orleans, celebrating the city's unique regional history in music, art, and culture." Tameka Norris will be one of several artists creating an installation for the warehouse party "Ball Out Beaucoup" on October 26th. Tickets are available at saintheron.com.
Prospect.3 New Orleans to feature Huguette Caland
"Several [artists] (Huguette Caland, Ed Clark) are in the later years of their lives and careers, hinting that [curator Franklin] Sirmans is admirably more interested in exploring historical continuities and cross-generational influences than with the latest flashes-in-the-pan," writes Hyperallergic. P.3 will several Caland paintings from the 1970s at the New Orleans Museum of Art: "Huguette Caland's series of pacifying, surrealistic body landscapes were born of a moment of physical displacement during the construction of her studio in the 1970s. Having less room to work, Caland reduced the scale of her canvases and drew 'faces and places from the past' easily out of the reduced-scale wood panels upon which she worked. Exemplifying the playful and seductive nature of her oeuvre, these anthropomorphic landscapes exude the sensuality of the human form simplified to voluptuous hills peaked with unbridles expressivity."
Also on view as a part of P.3 are new works by Lombard Freid artists Tameka Norris, at May Gallery, and The Propeller Group, at UNO St. Claude Art Gallery.
Mounir Fatmi opens solo exhibition at Centre de Création Contemporaine, Tours, France
"Combining these literary evocations, Mounir Fatmi presents ten works, some of which, like Mehr Licht, are emblematic of his work. Over the course of the journey, the exhibition explores in particular the violence of history and civilization, which is expressed through the written word and the different languages, religious, political and literary." Walking on the Light will be open until January 18, 2015.
Cao Fei featured in The Brooklyn Rail
"I think every work is a self-portrait. But for me, I guess this piece is most closely related to my 2007 work, “i.Mirror.” You can find it on Youtube. It is about my character watching the world, asking why? Why is the world this way? It’s the perspective of someone at the end of their 20s, the end of their youth. Now I have some answers to how I understand the world. If “i.Mirror” showed the perspective of the end of youth, I think this film comes out of the perspective of motherhood. New motherhood." Cao Fei discusses her latest work, La Town, with Charles Shultz in this issue of The Brooklyn Rail (pencil portrait by Phong Bui).
Eko Nugroho in Gwangju Biennale, curated by Jessica Morgan
Burning Down the House, the 10th Gwangju Biennale, is currently on view in South Korea until November 9th. Eko Nugroho is exhibiting his fantastic trademark large-scale embroidery pieces. "Burning Down the House examines the potential of art as movement, by exploring the efforts made by contemporary artists to address personal and public issues through individual and collective engagement, as well as demonstrating how challenging these efforts and their impacts have become. Contrary to museums, with their often hegemonic cultural policies and interest in denoting legacies and traditions, the Biennale is a mobile and flexible event, which offers a spectrum of creative expressions that are immediate, contemporary and topical, making the proposed debate of art as movement fitting for the space of Gwangju – both geopolitically and as an institutional alternative."
Michael Rakowitz's "Every Weapon Is A Tool If You Hold It Right"
As part of EXPO Chicago's IN/SITU Outside program, Michael Rakowitz will display his project Every Weapon Is A Tool If You Hold It Right, a continuation of his studies in Iraqi cultural studies and traditions. "Every Weapon Is A Tool If You Hold It Right seeks to recuperate carp as surrogates for convenient ecological and geopolitical alliances from the past, now unwanted. building on his ongoing project Enemy Kitchen, artist Michael Rakowitz once again works in collaboration with the city's community of Iraqi émigrés and US veterans of the Iraq War. Together, they go on carp fishing excursions in Chicagoland's waters, led by World Champion angler Johnny Wilkins, preparing masgouf from the day's catch. The stakes supporting the fish while it cooks in the fire pit are fashioned from Iraqi and American bayonets. The gutting knife was forged by Saddam Hussein's personal sword maker."
