Month: November 2007

Andersens Contemporary are proud to present,
for the first time in Scandinavia Aurelia Selin.
We are looking forward to see you friday 23 November.
The Artist will be present

Andersen_s

peter lav PHOTO GALLERY proudly presents the exhibition:
 
Jakob Jensen
black hole bucket
22 November – 22 December 2007
 
PL Gallery

The elephant’s revenge groups a number of works produced in 2007, most of them realized ex-professo for this show. The series presented in this exhibition are developed as visual essays whose subject, widely understood, is the crisis within the social sphere in relation — or dispute — with the natural world.
 

Minerva Cuevas practice has always been accompanied and nurtured by her relation with social activism. Her work is characterized for integrating images appropriated and reconfigured via social context studies through different media. The distribution of information, employing techniques from the commercial publicity while transgressing their consuming persuasion purposes, public interventions and their documentation, the use of video and mural paintings, are mechanisms that this artist applies to conform complex projects that expand in time, and whose dissemination transcends the space and duration of the museum rooms.
 
The title of the exhibition The elephant’s revenge proceeds from one of the pieces presented, and makes reference to a fable narrated through a projection of XIX century slides in the manner of antique cartoons, in which the predictable course of a story that is leaded towards its moral, ends up dislocated.
  

Silent Spring, gets its name from a book by Rachel Carson published in 1962, which constituted a powerful tool in the banning of DDT in the US in 1972, while it was the main pesticide employed after the Second World War. In this piece, Minerva Cuevas uses three documentaries in video, realized on the sixties, in which several images about the utilization of pesticides are condensed from three different perspectives and temporalities. Zoo, is a collection of magic lanterns that project images in black and white which make reference to the imprisoning of animal species for scientific observation and entertainment purposes, motivated by the human desire of control over the natural and the social.

Among the pieces that are presented for the first time appears Canciones de orden y caos / Songs of Order and Chaos composed by an entomologic collection and a sound installation (derived from the study of insects) which gradually becomes harmonic. Sismógrafo horizontal para terremotos provocados/Horizontal Seismograph for Provoked Earthquakes y Numismática-Arqueología del capital/Numismatics-Archaeology of Capital arise from the research recently done by this artist in the Mexican South-East region, in search of ‘chapopote’ natural sites. The first work consists in a device for the representation of geologic movements, employing crafty technology: a sand pendulum that draws the pulse of the Earth. Seismographs capture the movements not only of the tectonic plates, but also of the oil fields; this means that their function is ‘to read’ the land but also to reveal it with aims of exploitation. Numismatics-Archaeology of Capital is a collection of coins used at ‘tiendas de raya’ from the henequen Haciendas in Yucatan, Chiapas, and Campeche in the milieu and outbreak of the Mexican Revolution (1880-1910). These coins served as a system of exchange exclusive of each Hacienda in order to acquire what was produced within it, then there was no mediation between working force and consume. At the same time the equivalences were out of all proportion: the peasants and their descendants were manipulated and enslaved because of their debts. These items collected by Minerva Cuevas give account of the history of slavery and natural resources exploitation in that region, and their current forms.
By recuperating a number of pre-industrial devices as mediums for representation, Cuevas remarks a decisive moment in human history, in which the understanding of the social sphere separated radically from the understanding of nature, and the concept of progress — as the organization and distribution of the material and spiritual goods — was supplanted by one of growth and expansion for their own sake, accompanied by their counterpart, extermination, which defines the violent relations of power and competition characteristic of our contemporary world. These works are an invitation to inquire on the pertinence of this conceptual opposition, in a moment in which our planet makes clear that we belong to a broader and more diverse whole, whose imbalances affects on each of its parts.

 

Minerva Cuevas (Mexico City, 1975)

Her most important solo shows are: Minerva Cuevas, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland (2008),  Phenomena, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2007); On Society, MC Kunst, Los Angeles (2007); Egalité 2007, Le Grand café – Centre d’art contemporain, France (2007); Reconstrucción, Casa del Lago, Mexico (2006); Schwarzfahrer Are My Heroes, DAAD, Berlin (2004); Dodgem, kurimanzutto, Mexico (2002); Mejor Vida Corp, Museo Tamayo, Mexico (2000). She has participated in several group shows, amongst them: Biennale de Lyon, France (2007); Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil (2006); Landings, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2007); The Exotic Journey Ends, kurimanzutto and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, Poland (2006); Not Impressed by Civilization, The Banff Centre, Canada (2005); Hardcore, Palais de Tokyo, France (2003); Bienal de Estambul, Turkey (2003); Dream Machines, Hayward Gallery, London (2000); Democracy!, Royal College of Art, London, (2000); Permanencia voluntaria, kurimanzutto y Cinemanía Plaza Loreto, Mexico (2000); Economía de mercado, kurimanzutto / Mercado Medellin, Mexico (1999). She is currently realizing a teaching residence at the Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatan, Merida.

Kurimanzutto

IMPERFECT UNION
Presented by Merry Karnowsky Gallery

Imperfect Union, the largest Los Angeles solo exhibit of new works by Shepard Fairey. This show displays a provocative collection of politically charged paintings, screen prints, stencils, album covers and mixed media pieces rich with metaphor, humor and seductive decorative elements. Imperfect Union is derived from the first line of the U.S. Constitution „We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union‰. For Shepard Fairey, critiquing the imperfect union, far from disparaging the United States, is a patriotic step toward shaping a more perfect union.

The exhibition is comprised of artworks which scrutinize the dynamics of the imperfect union such as the unholy union of government and big business and the dichotomy of symbols and methods associated with ideologies of the American Dream. Fairey‚s artwork comments on underpinnings of the capitalist machine and monolithic institutional authority critiquing those who support blind nationalism and war. Conversely, Fairey recognizes that most individuals would rather suffer than stand up for their beliefs as illuminatingly expressed in the Declaration of Independence with the statement “all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Fairey celebrates the role of counter culture, and independent individuals willing to question the cultural paradigm and advocate peace. Fairey employs the graphic language of the subjects he critiques or celebrates blending
Art Nouveau, hippie, currency and revolutionary propaganda styles. His works utilize bold iconography coupled with decorative elements and, upon closer inspection, reveal sophisticated layers of collage. The resulting pieces are both boldly aggressive and seductively subtle.

Obey



V1 Gallery presents:

Sleep And Repeat

A solo show @ Stephen Powers (US)

V1


Mogadishni

Perugi artecontemporanea pressent
Laurina Paperina: Brain Dead & IN THE B SIDE ROOM
Damiano Nava Closeness

Perugi artecontemporanea is proud to present twin solo shows by Laurina Paperina e Damiano Nava.

Brain Dead, is Laurina Paperina’s latest fairy story, seemingly harmless, but in truth made up of a corrosive and denigrating appropriation of the clichés of cartoons
The characters embody the moment where the media icon was attacked by the underlying creativity in an antagonistic way and spread by the “barbaric” army of street artists, home-made fanzines and the on-line community. The events acquire a rather “unseemly” tone and this is even more disturbing because the end of the story does not offer any kind of moral to suggest affirmation of common sense.
All of this is also a homage to Peter Jackson’s early films, masterpieces of DIY cinema, exemplary pieces for their courageous and radical refusal of any kind of dogmatic burden which stood in the way of the enthralling flow of the show.

Damiano Nava’s multi-piece photographic work Closely draws us into a situation where a highly charged sensuality is mingled with an air of playfulness- saucy, but at the same time embarrassed. It is a almost as if the heroes of Wolfgang Tillmans or Terry Richardson had suddenly blushed, irrevocably undermining their toughness. This very aspect expands their psychological complexity, bringing them close to us.

Perugiarte Contemporanea
Laurina Paperina

The Devils Staircase

November 22nd, 2007 – January 10th, 2008

Opening Reception
Thursday, November 22nd at 5-8 pm

bendixen contemporary art proudly presents The Devils Staircase. Featuring Lisbeth Bank (b. 1975), Stefan Rotvit (b.1975), Mr. Pind (b.1975) and Ferdinand Ahm Krag (b.1977).

At The Devils Staircase four young artists each present their own semi-science-fictional artworks:
Lisbeth Bank will be presenting a single large sculpture, where the spectator literally moves in and out a giant insect eye. Looking at – and through – pixeled dimensions Bank offers the spectator an opportunity to view the world from a totally different perspective.
Ferdinand Ahm Krag’s optical drawings thematically circles about architecture, flights into space, meditation and infinity. From humble drawing techniques he takes the spectator on a journey though vibrating surfaces of psychedelic intensity, almost musically scores and geometrically outlandish constructions.
Whereas Ahm Krags drawings seek their starting point in outer space, Stefan Rotvit’s drawings on the other hand explore the inner landscapes of the body. Creating a number of indefinable biomorphous figures, his drawings equally evokes thoughts of schizophrenic nightmare and strangely appealing beauty.
The artist Mr. Pind will present us with a large mirror construction in the shape of a brain. It’s a space, which you can enter, and functions as a kind of portrait of our consciousness. Walking inside the mirror construction, sound- and light effects will animate the spectator to ‘creativity’.

Bendixen

A RUPTURE IN THE COSMOS
(together at last)

PAINTINGS BY DAN TROCCHIO AND JOSEPH ARI (JK5)

NOV. 17th (sat.)
@ Saved Gallery #3 hope st. Brooklyn (hope @ roebling)

The universe is big.
There are reasons for everything.
This uniformity makes underlining matter freak out
and rip it up.

our life in the cosmos, is randy. it is where we run, and its order makes
us strong, although we get bored of such repetition, and we invite
great change to stir our blood. by our actions when we get the
adventure we are looking for, these situations in life we look for but cannot
institute by ourselves, our meetings in our life that we have with others that
raise our understanding of ourselves, invokes our true natures,
is what we are truly looking for. a rupture in the cosmos, where we meet the
unforseen and otherworlds and the great mirror when it matters to see ourselves.

Mama Tried

Asbæk