Thomas Hirschhorn, Flamme Èternelle (Installation View), via Flamme Eternelle Website

“I am interested in the ‘too much’, doing too much, giving too much, putting too much of an effort into something. Wastefulness as a tool or a weapon’ says Thomas Hirschhorn about his practice. The Swiss-born artist’s new exhibition, Flame Èternelle in Palais de Tokyo in Paris is the indisputable proof of this effort of presenting the ‘too much’.

Thomas Hirschhorn, Flamme Èternelle (Installation View), via Palais de Tokyo (more…)

Recently appointed Stedelijk Museum director Beatrix Ruf is interviewed in The Art Newspaper this week, discussing her vision for the museum, her previous work at Kunsthalle Zurich, and what she thinks arts institutions should be focusing on in the 21st Century.  “The big general question for us all is how museums should be made to function,” she says. “We are all looking into the meanings of heritage and the interplay between the caretaking of heritage and how to develop collecting further.” (more…)

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, L’Ètrange Cité (Strange City), via Art Observed

In 2010, Christian Boltanski spread piles of clothes reaching to fifty tons around the interior of Grand Palais. Three years before Boltanski, Anselm Kiefer brought in cement and metal along with dust and debris into this patriarchal symbol of French industrial awakening. Richard Serra, Daniel Buren and Anish Kapoor are among the other superstar artists who have marked their signatures in this historical building in response to France Ministry of Culture’s annual Monumenta project, which invites an artist to create a new body of work to be exhibited inside the impressive architecture of Grand Palais. On view through June 22nd is this year’s commission L’Ètrange Cité (Strange City) by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, arguably Russia’s most celebrated names in contemporary art.

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, L’Ètrange Cité (Strange City), via Art Observed (more…)

Ai Weiwei is set to launch a new project in Poland next month, consisting of three pits filled with broken crockery and covered over.  Installed in Brodno Sculpture Park, the hidden crockery are replicas of vases from a previous project made in 2005.  “In reaching out to the history of this precious object, Ai was interested in the fetishisation of certain artefacts and their complex history encapsulated in the colonial logistics of robbery and appropriation,” says park curator Sebastian Cichocki. (more…)

Guillermo Kuitca, Untitled (2013), all images courtesy Sperone Westwater

On view at Sperone Westwater in New York, NY is an exhibition of new works by Argentinean painter Guillermo Kuitca, featuring large scale works with a concept of fragmentation and fractured forms, including a painted, room-like structure visitors can pass freely in and out of. The exhibition will continue through June 21st, 2014.

Guillermo Kuitca, This Way (Installation View) (more…)

Over the past several days, Ai Weiwei has been posting and reposting images to his Instagram of both himself and supporters around the world, holding their legs up to mimic the aiming of a rifle.    The phenomenon has viewers puzzled, comparing it to a classic Chinese communist ballet, and other classic photo memes like “planking” in equal parts. (more…)

Iwan Wirth is interviewed in the Financial Times this week, discussing his gallery’s newest project space in Somerset, England, and his penchant for unique gallery environments.  “I like art that is less decorative and I like spaces that have some spikes,” he says. (more…)

David Shrigely is interviewed in the Financial Times this week, as he prepares to open his specially commissioned installation at Sketch Restaurant in London.  In the interview, Shrigley discusses his choices for the restaurant, and his education as an environmental artist in Glasgow.  “I really enjoyed art school but I didn’t do very well,” he says. “They all thought I wasn’t taking it seriously, but I was. They just didn’t think I was a very talented artist.” (more…)

The New York Times profiles Gertrude, a recently organized project that holds salons for the viewing and discussion of art.  Taking famed art its and Paris social lynchpin Gertrude Stein as its inspiration, the organization allows interested groups to gather for the appreciation and examination of art.  “If you do a high-level description of what the art world is, you have the commercial side of the art world, which is about selling art work, and then you have institutions on the other end of the spectrum, with education as the main goal,” said founder Kenneth Schlenker.  “What we want to offer is something in the middle that’s an educational experience and a social one.” (more…)

Frieze London has announced its “Projects” section for the 2014 edition of the fair in Regent’s Park.  Curated by Nicola Lees, the seven projects located both on-site and around London will include a “living stage” by Nick Mauss, where ballets will be performed each day, and a secret map of the fair routes by Sophia Al Maria, underlining conspiracies hidden throughout.  The presentations will also feature a reconstructed musical performance from the career of conceptual comedian Andy Kaufman, enacted by Jonathan Berger. (more…)

Yves Klein, Painting of fire (1961), via Art Observed

Skarstedt Gallery has joined the crowd in Chelsea this month, opening its  new W. 21st Street space with a selection of unorthodox paintings by Yves Klein and Andy Warhol, created using human urine, oxidized metallic paints, water and fire.  Spread among the high-ceilinged rooms of the new space, the show welcomes an intuitive look into the pair’s interests not only in non-art materials and processes, but particularly those closest to the human condition.

Andy Warhol, Oxidation Painting (diptych) (1978), via Skarstedt (more…)

Google has launched a new project, an online street art gallery of images provided by cultural organizations and Google’s Street View camera.  But with the company’s entry into the conversation on the documentation  of street art playing out against the criticisms Google has seen regarding privacy and surveillance, the move should offer interesting discussion points for open access to art online and in the streets.  “I’ve always used my street art to democratize art, so it would be philosophically inconsistent for me to protest art democratization through Google,” says Shepard Fairey. (more…)

Artist Mélanie Matranga has been awarded the first annual Frieze Artist Award, a new prize that welcomes emerging artists to create an ambitious work for the Frieze London fair.  Matranga’s work will feature a set of videos “that follow a young artistic couple as they negotiate ‘freedom, success and the proper functioning of a couple.’ The episodes will be filmed during the construction of Frieze London in Regent’s Park, including a purpose-built café, which Matranga has designed for use by visitors.” (more…)

Mika Rottenberg, Bowls Balls Souls Holes (Bingo) (Installation View), via Osman Can Yerebakan

Mika Rottenberg’s artistic practice has long focused on the production methods and social schemes of contemporary work, orchestrating structurally perfect and visually playful videos in which actresses specifically cast for their physical looks twist the notion of productivity. Using meticulously planned and often vague plots, Rottenberg contemplates on the “nature” of making things in her videos, usually installed along with the pieces used in the production of the video.

Mika Rottenberg, Tsss Tsss Tsss (2014), via Osman Can Yerebakan (more…)

A group of artists including Jeff Koons, Catherine Opie, and Carrie Mae Weems are contributing to the Water Tank Project this summer, a public art installation that will place various artists’ work on water tanks around New York.  “Water is our most challenged but taken-for-granted resource. It’s all around us but virtually invisible,” curatorial team member Neville Wakefield says. “By drawing attention to the water tanks, we hope to alert the world to the wastage of our most precious commodity.” (more…)

Marina Abramovic is interfviewed in the Wall Street Journal this week, in advance of the opening for her newest performance 512 Hours at the Serpentine this week.  In the article Abramovic discusses her latest work, her beliefs in performance and technique, and her longing to travel to space.  “I was at Necker Island with Richard Branson,” she says, “and I asked him: ‘Is it possible to pay just half a ticket so I can go to space and stay there, so I don’t need a return?’ He is still thinking about it.” (more…)

Art Basel has announced its selections for the Parcours section of the Swiss fair, installing public works by, Darren Bader, Pierre Bismuth, Ryan Gander, and more.  The show will consist of 15 site-specific projects installed around the city, and will also include Seth Price’s audio work 8-4 9-5 10-6 11-7, an eight-hour dance track meant played around Basel. (more…)

The colorful, shifting glasswork of Andrew Erdos

The annual festivities surrounding Bushwick Open Studios seem to get bigger each year, and 2014 was no exception, as the yearly summer art open wrapped its eighth year of open artist studios, new gallery shows, and a freshly inaugurated art fair in the heart of one of Brooklyn’s hotbeds for creative talent.

Seren Morey at 56 Bogart (more…)

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]

Mark Flood, Available Nasdaq Symbol (Installation View), via Art Observed

Few artists are prepared to plumb the depths and egoistic state of the art market, image culture and corporate personhood the way Mark Flood has for the past decades.  Time and again, the artist’s occasionally crass, bold-faced techniques and assemblages of mass-media signifiers toys with the spectacle of consumption, mocking both advertisements and political symbolism as bound up in a state of image-consumption.  It’s this dichotomy, writ large against the backdrop of the art market that defines his current show of work at Zach Feuer in New York. (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…)

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.

(more…)

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…)

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…)