Viewing articles from 2017/12

Pool of Plenty, Galerie de l’UQAM
Judith-Jasmin Pavilion, Room J-R120 1400 Berri Street, Montréal

Pool of Plenty: Michelle Bui

Beadgame

Pool of Plenty is an exhibition that brings together photographic work that transcends the decorative and ornamental language of advertising in a détournement that makes use of touch and smell to surpass mere visual spectacle. In this solo show, the artist engages with a rediscovery of objects, materials, food items and plants that make our environment.

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Pace Gallery, 510 West 25th Street, New York NY 10001

Elizabeth Murray: Painting in the ‘80s

Installation view of Elizabeth Murray: Painting in the '80s 510 West 25th Street, New York

In the 1980s a new generation of painters had broken through. The pieces were big, the personas even bigger. Names like Fischl, Salle, and Schnabel became not just salient, but sexy. While this landscape hardly embraced women participants, innovators like Elizabeth Murray, the subject of an excellent retrospective currently on display at Pace’s 25th St. location in Chelsea, transcended dismissal through persistence.

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Barbican Centre, Silk St, London EC2Y 8DS

John Akomfrah: Purple

John Akomfrah: Purple. The Curve, Barbican

Throughout the five movements and epilogue of ‘Purple’, which follow a loose narrative arc beginning at birth and ending with death, and simultaneously show technological progressions from steam engines to artificial intelligence, the screens loop disparate imagery together creating a lyrical essayism. Review by Stan Portus

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Galerie Fons Welters, Bloemstraat 140-C, 1016 LJ Amsterdam, Netherlands

Evelyn Taocheng Wang: Four Season of Women Tragedy

Four Season of Women Tragedy at Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam, installation view

Evelyn Taocheng Wang’s second solo show at Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam, flaunts references to Wang’s wardrobe of Agnès B. clothing, her background in traditional Chinese painting techniques, her daily life in Rotterdam and Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel 'To the Lighthouse' which Wang uses to draw comparisons between her life and the novel’s main character, Lily Briscoe, who questions her identity in relation to her parents and gendered conventions. Review by Helena Julian

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The Sunday Painter, 117-119 South Lambeth Road, London SW8 1XA

Beatriz Olabarrieta: The only way out is in

Beatriz Olabarrieta, The only way out is in, installation view, The Sunday Painter, 2017

In the first instance Beatriz Olabarrieta's artwork is crooked. Like an oversized yoga mat, 'Open relationship (almost failing red)' (2017) is placed askew of the demarcation grooves set by the floorboards. Only just slightly, which gives it a sense of the accidental. The temptation is to correct its placement, though of course the work remains untouched and introduces an exhibition teasingly just short of the definable and the ideal. Review by Jillian Knipe

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V-A-C Collection, Palazzo delle Zattere, Dorsoduro 1401, Venice

The Electric Comma: V-A-C Collection

Installation view, The Electric Comma

Taking its title from Shannon Ebner’s installation The Electric Comma, the exhibition focuses on shifts in language, perception and understanding in the age of artificial intelligence. Through varied practices and from different backgrounds, participating artists deal with the negotiations between the conscious mind and today’s pervasive learning machine, imagining pathways of exchange between human and nonhuman, ranging from the poetic and intuitive to the algorithmical and analytical.

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Turner Contemporary, Rendezvous, Margate CT9 1HG

Hans Arp: The Poetry of Forms

Installation view of Jean Arp: The Poetry of Forms at Turner Contemporary, Margate. 13 October 2017 - 14 January 2018.

In the first exhibition of Arp’s work in the UK since his death in 1966, Turner Contemporary exhibits a selective retrospective of the multi-linguist’s works and ideas spanning from early Dadaist pieces such as the poem ‘Kaspar ist tot’ to the sculpture, ‘Étoile’, a hollow melting star that marks his grave in Locarno. Review by Evie Ward

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Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Gogolevsky Blvd 10/2, Moscow, Russia

Image Diplomacy: Vladislav Shapovalov

Image Diplomacy

V-A-C Foundation presents Image Diplomacy, the fourth and final exhibition in the framework of the experimental programme Carte Blanche, in which the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA) invites art institutions to implement their own curatorial initiatives. Curated by V-A-C Foundation’s Anna Ilchenko, Image Diplomacy is the first solo exhibition for Milan based Russian artist Vladislav Shapovalov. The exhibition focuses on highlighting aspects of how the political vision of the mid-20th century was constructed also thanks to landmark exhibitions.

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Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Centre Square, Middlesbrough TS1 2AZ

Rethinking the Institution: What We Talk About When We Talk About Work

What We Talk About When We Talk About panel discussion at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art 2017

A recent panel discussion at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Rethinking the Institution: What We Talk About When We Talk About Work, saw four speakers discuss how institutions can better approach their position as a tool for local communities. Review by Celine Elliott

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Danielle Arnaud,123 Kennington Road London SE11 6SF

Louisa Fairclough: A Song Cycle for the Ruins of a Psychiatric Unit

Louisa Fairclough, A Rose, 2017.

Unnamed psychic catastrophe is a constant shadow in the work of Louisa Fairclough. Her third solo exhibition at Danielle Arnaud is close and claustrophobic: a shuttered room, a dead fireplace, where daylight plays weakly through small cracks. A web of cables litter the floor, threatening entanglement, disaster, the threshold of the machine. Review by Rowan Lear

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Edel Assanti, 74a Newman Street, London W1T 3DB

Yoshinori Niwa: That Language Sounds Like a Language

Yoshinori Niwa, That Language Sounds Like a Language, installation view, Edel Assanti

For Yoshinori Niwa's second solo show at Edel Assanti, the Japanese artist presents a series of video works and installations that shine a light on the complex relationship between countries, between governments and their citizens, and between objects and the past. Review by Bobby Jewell

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LADA

LADA Screens - Tehching Hsieh

‘Outside Again’ is a short documentary on Tehching Hsieh by Hugo Glendinning and Adrian Heathfield shot in Taipei and New York. It featured as part of ‘Doing Time’, Hsieh’s exhibition in the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2017.

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Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

Rachel Whiteread

Untitled (One Hundred Spaces), 1995, Resin, Various dimensions

Whiteread has stretched usual architectural proximity. This creates a large void between interior and exterior realms: expressing a psychological distance and complexity through space. Review by Matthew Turner

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Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60611, USA

Woman With A Camera

Skatepark

The exhibition Woman with a Camera presents a selection of 18 works from the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's collection, featuring work by established masters Marina Abramovic, Sophie Calle, Catherine Opie, Laurie Simmons, and Carrie Mae Weems, as well as emerging artists Anne Collier, Xaviera Simmons, and Mickalene Thomas. Together, the women use photography to explore central themes in contemporary photography: rendering the human figure, capturing public and private spaces, and commenting on our media-saturated culture. Other works from the gift will be incorporated into MCA exhibitions throughout the year.

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