Last July, the Tate Modern opened its doors for a special exhibition that went beyond the set norms and techniques of exhibition planning. Meschac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art was a special project expanding twenty years of work across two continents, accumulated and exhibited in the rooms of the London museum. Composed of twelve different spaces, the large-scale exhibition was an outcome of Gaba’s investigation of the arts in African countries while questioning the often problematic affair between African art and the decision makers of the art dynamic and markets of the West.

Continuing some of these thematics, Gaba is currently presenting his latest body of work at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. As the title Exchange Market suggests, the content of the exhibition is distinguishably opinionated  regarding the global economic structures and the imbalance of labor against income for the vast majority of societies around the world. Hailing from Benin, Gaba has lived and worked in The Netherlands, and seizes on the issues surrounding the unfair distribution of wealth and the exploitation of the less privileged from a Non-Western point of view. This duality also ties to other oppositions such as First World versus Third World or Developed versus Underdeveloped, suggesting a breakdown of the separation between the powerful and the weak.

Downstairs at Bonakdar, Ten marketplace stands showcasing a wide range of symbolic objects  (hand tools, cotton balls, cacao beans, outdated or currently popular mobile phones) and banknotes from different countries attached onto umbrellas. Titled Bureau d’Exchange (Exchange Office), the ten-table installation presents devalued or still in use African currencies printed with multiple zeros, as well as certain Western banknotes with many fewer zeros. Reduced to sheets of paper hanging from the salvaged umbrellas, these banknotes make visually potent statements on the problematic connection between labor and income while discussing the disadvantaged political and economical structures around the globe, given no shade under these bare umbrellas.

Also on display on the first floor is a group of coin banks hung on the gallery walls. With their shapes inspired by famous bank logos or culturally potent figures, these banks do not serve for the common purpose of collecting money for charity or personal use; however they stand out as the silent emblems of a collectively desired utopian reality, ideally stemming from individual contributions.

The argument on collectiveness and global unity continues on the second floor where viewers are presented with four foosball tables, each made in Benin. Visually recalling the original Western pastime, the tables differ with their uncommon arrangements regarding the execution of the game. The soccer tables Gaba presents include players dressed in uniforms of different nations and players of markedly different races as opposed to generic and neutral players.

As components of a unitary operation, all connected to each other, players on these soccer tables stand out as the embodiments of current economical and social structures planned according to different goals and strategies. In one, for instance, a smiling, American flag-clad team is pitted against one bearing a uniform of pan-African identity.  The oppositions are striking.  From a more optimistic point of view, these players emphasize the artist’s statement on a utopian collective agenda that is solely accessible through a global awakening and realization.

Meschac Gaba: Exchange Market is on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery through June 7th, 2014.

— O.C. Yerebakan

Related Links:
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery [Exhibition Page]
Tate Modern [Exhibition Page]

Jay DeFeo, White Shadow (1972), via Osman Can Yerebakan

Jay DeFeo’s most seminal work in her career took eight years to be completed and weighs more than two thousand pounds. A monumental embodiment of extreme orientation to detail and experimentalism, this work of DeFeo has been the artist’s most recognized part of her oeuvre, but a year after her retrospective at The Whitney, the legacy of Jay DeFeo is growing in New York City, as Mitchell-Innes & Nash presents a body of fifty works spanning the years 1965-89.

Jay DeFeo, Tuxedo Junction (1965-74) via Osman Can Yerebakan (more…)

Ed Ruscha is featured in the Wall Street Journal’s recurring “My Favorite Things” feature, showcasing some of his most treasured artworks and possessions, among them a map of land owned by Gordon Matta-Clark in New York City, the head of a toy baseball player he was given by KAWS, and even a piece of cast-off plumbing pipe.  “I like the feel of corroded copper,” Ruscha says. (more…)

The Andy Warhol Museum has recruited a group of five musicians, including Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, Eleanor Friedberger, Television’s Tom Verlaine, Suicide’s Martin Rev and Dean Wareham of Galaxie 500, to score a selection of never-before seen Warhol films.  The performances will launch on Oct. 24 at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, before opening in New York at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House from Nov. 6-8. (more…)

San Francisco real estate mogul Luke Brugnara has been charged with mail fraud following the aborted purchase of $11 million in works by Willem de Kooning, Edgar Degas, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso.  Brugnara reportedly purchased the works from a New York dealer with the intent of opening a museum, but never paid for the artworks, claiming he had received them as a gift.  When the dealer accompanied the works to California for delivery, she was astonished to find that the address he had given was not inhabited.  “Brugnara instructed the delivery personnel to leave the crates in his garage. The art dealer had never before seen anyone request art of such value to be placed in a garage,” writes FBI special agent Jeremy Desor. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal takes an early look inside the New York home of Lousie Bourgeois, set to reopen next year as an art research center, exhibition space, and sculpture garden.  Filled with drawings and notes on the walls, yellowing paper and notes, the space is an indication of Bourgeois close affinity for working from home.  “It’s decrepit splendor,” says her longtime assistant Jerry Gorovoy.  (more…)

As Jeff Koons prepares to open his major retrospective at the Whitney next month, the artist will also be installing Split-Rocker, his cartoonish, monumental flower sculpture at Rockefeller Center on June 25th, two days before the show opens.  “We couldn’t do any topiary at the Whitney, because there wasn’t any space,” Koons told the New York Times. (more…)

Gardar Eide Einarsson and Oscar Tuazon, Liberator I (2014), via Team Gallery

Chez Perv, a group exhibition of work by Oscar Tuazon, Matias Faldbakken and Gardar Eide Einarsson is currently on view through June 1 at the Team Gallery in New York. Concrete slabs and immoveable duffle bags mark this show’s exploration of the hard edges and enormous weight of the physical world, deriving its title from a New York Post cover story on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sex scandal. Politically potent, heavily minimalist, and privileging the alienating, this group show brings the stillness of the physical world to the fore.

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Wolfgang Tillmans, Eastern Woodlands Room (2014), Photo: Anders Sune Berg Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York

The 8th edition of the Berlin Biennale has opened its doors, taking up space within the Haus am Waldsee and Museum Dahlem, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, as well as a number of satellite events, projects and talks spread across Berlin, running through the beginning of August.  Curated by Juan Gaitán, the exhibition this year features an explicit look at the nature of images in contemporary society, in their proliferation, reception and interpretation.

Tonel, Commerce (2014), Photo: Anders Sune Berg; Courtesy Tonel (more…)

MoMA PS1 has announced the line-up for its annual Warm-Up Series of concerts at the Museum.  Held each Sunday, highlights include performances by Pantha du Prince, Total Freedom, Dam Funk and Detroit Techno legend Kevin Saunderson.   (more…)

The Atlantic documents a conservation approach pioneered in the 1980’s by Raymond Lafontaine, using color and lighting theory to hide fading and prevent having to tamper with the surface of the work.  “In human color perception you have a light source, a surface, and a viewer, and the three interact,” says Jens Stenger, a conservation scientist who is using the technique to work on six murals by Mark Rothko at Harvard.  “If you can’t change the surface, you can change the light source to change the color.” (more…)

President François Hollande is set to inaugurate the first Pierre Soulages museum this week, established near the artist’s hometown in the South of France.  “One of the objectives of the museum is to present a variety of works but also a fluid aspect [of Soulages’s canon],” says historian and chief museum curator Benoit Decron says. “I’ll turn to a network of collectors and [will make] acquisitions backed by public and private bodies.”  (more…)

The Guardian reports on a dispute between Marina Abramovic, the Serpentine Gallery and a group of writers, curators and artists who claim that Marina Abramovic’s new performance at the Serpentine fails to acknowledge the work of Mary Ellen Carroll, another artist who has explored concepts of non-action and doing “nothing” as the core of her performance works.  “There are differences,” says art historian David Joselit . “I am not prepared to say Marina Abramović is involved in plagiarising or anything like that.  I just think there should be a conversation.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal notes an increased focus by novelists on the high-priced art market, setting artists and the auction market as the backdrop to their works.  “Art has become much more mainstream, maybe even more than reading,” Robin Desser, editorial director at Alfred A. Knopf, says. “You can’t get into the Degenerate Art show” at the Neue Galerie in New York.” (more…)

More than 100 conservators have volunteered to aid in the restoration of the Glasgow School of Art building destroyed by fire late last week, coming from across the UK and abroad to answer a call for help from the school.  “We have people offering to source freezers, drying facilities and secure storage for collections,” Alison Richmond of Conservation Organization Icon adding that some volunteers are familiar with the building and its collection. “We have this small army of expert helpers and are standing by.” (more…)

A group of professors, admitted students and alumni from the Cooper Union have filed a lawsuit against the school’s Board of Trustees, in an attempt to halt the charging of tuition against students next fall, and to force an investigation into how the board has handled the school’s finances over the past several years.  “The Board of Trustees has permitted the school to engage in numerous financial transactions that bear no reasonable relationship to the educational purposes of The Cooper Union,” the lawsuit alleges. (more…)

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has launched a new collection tactic, called “Rapid Response Collecting,” in which the gallery acquires objects and materials as they enter into the public consciousness.  One recent example is a pair of Primark jeans, an emblem of the international trade at the center of the Bangladeshi factory collapse last year.  “Much of the commentary in the media around the Rana Plaza disaster was about international labour laws, building control in Bangladesh and the responsibilities of global corporations and of consumers,” says Corinna Gardner, V&A curator of Rapid Response Collecting.  “But at its heart was a material thing: a pair of jeans that you can buy on any British high street.” (more…)

As Brazil prepares to host the World Cup this summer, Brazilian artists Os Gemeos have created a custom design for the plane used by the Brazilian team, featuring the pair’s signature style.  “Everyone has thought about walking on clouds. And this is only possible with a plane and faces painted on it,” says Otavio, one half of Os Gemeos. (more…)

Charles Saatchi will offer Tracey Emin’s iconic My Bed piece for sale this July at Christie’s in London.  The work, which Saatchi bought for £150,000 in 2000, is estimated to sell between £800,000 and £1.2m, a price which Emin  is “philosophical” about.  “It’s still my bed. I love it,” the artist says. (more…)

Jean-Michel Othoniel, Double Collier Autoporté Or (2014), all images courtesy Galerie Perrotin Hong Kong

On view at Galerie Perrotin, Hong Kong is a solo exhibition of sculptures by French contemporary artist Jean-Michel Othoniel. For the works, great hanging sculptures composed of glass that Othoniel made in collaboration with a Feng Shui Master. Seeking to create forms that originate in human life, the works seek to achieve a symbiosis with the space that they inhabit.

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The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the collection of Leslie Wexner, who has shifted from being a major collector of a number of blue-chip 20th Century artists to exclusively focusing on the work of Pablo Picasso.  “My feeling was, and still is, that when you look at Picasso, you realize that he was the true founder of modern and contemporary art,” Wexner says. (more…)

Bill Viola is profiled in The Guardian this week, following the opening of his new long-term installation, Martyrs at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, featuring videos of people engulfed in frames or hung upside down.   “These people are left for dead and don’t expect to live,” Viola says. “That’s all I’ll say.” (more…)

The Wall Street Journal looks at the recent movement of galleries into the Upper East Side, both by major players like Gagosian and smaller gallerists like Robert Blumenthal. “The Upper East Side is so unhip, it’s hip,” Blumenthal notes in the article. “Chelsea is a generation before me.” (more…)

A collection of 62 artworks, among them pieces by Van Gogh and Monet, have been donated to the National Gallery of Art from the estate of museum benefactor Paul Mellon, who passed away in 1999.  Of particular note is the Van Gogh piece Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves, created shortly after the artist cut off his ear, and suffered a break in his friendship with Paul Gauguin.  “It’s this very emotionally wrought period of time,” says curator Kimberly Jones. “I think this still life, of all the still lives, is the most Gauguin-like in terms of the pallete, the symbolism.  I can’t help but wonder, looking at this, if Paul Gauguin’s presence isn’t being very much felt in this painting.” (more…)