LONGITUDES

Longitudes cuts across Latitudes’ projects and research with news, updates, and reportage.

Witte de With and Spring Workshop's 'Moderation(s)' publication 'End Note(s)' is out!

Thu, Mar 5 2015

'End Note(s)' published by Witte de With. Publication photos and design by Kristin Metho.

'End Note(s)' is finally out! The publication marks the conclusion of two years of residencies, discussions, editorial and exhibition projects within the framework of 'Moderation(s)', a multiform collaboration between Hong Kong's Spring Workshop and Rotterdam's Witte de With, steered by Singaporean artist and curator Heman Chong.

Latitudes participation took place in January 2013 with a month-long residency at Spring Workshop, Hong Kong, and with the production of "Incidents of Travel": an invitation extended to four Hong Kong-based artists – Nadim Abbas, Ho Sin Tung, Yuk King Tan, and Samson Young – to develop day-long tours, thus retelling the city and each participant’s artistic concerns through personal itineraries and waypoints.

As announced a few months ago, Latitudes has contributed to the publication with a visual essay documenting each of the artists' itineraries accompanying them with a revised and re-edited version of the May 2013 conversation with curator Christina Li (Moderation(s)' witness).

Section of the book (pp. 61–89) is dedicated to Latitudes' "Incidents of Travel". Here are the names of the artists and the locations visited during each of their tours.

Itinerary and photo-documentation of Nadim Abbas' tour on 19 January 2013.

(Above and below) Itinerary and photo-documentation of Yuk King Tan's tour on 24 January 2013.

Itinerary and photo-documentation of Ho Sin Tung's tour on 29 January 2013.

(Above and below) Itinerary and photo-documentation of Samson Young's tour, 7 February 2013.

A re-edited version of a conversation with curator Christina Li – Moderation(s)' witness – originally published on Witte de With's blog dedicated to the project.

Here's an excerpt of our conversation with Christina:

Christina Li: The artists' tours were meant for you both to converse privately with each selected artist while getting to know their practices and the city. Did the public aspect of the Nadim Abbas' tour and your experience of the commercial tours suggest a different perspective of how the format could function from your initial perception? How has this attempt challenged your thinking in mediating and presenting the immediate experience and documentation of these tours to a larger audience?

Latitudes: Although the commercial tours were taking place regularly by prior arrangement, we happened to be the only participants on each of the days [Feng Shui tour and Tour of the Devil's Peak]. We tried to keep the artist tours casual and inconspicuous and to respect the notion of hospitality and privacy in the same way that if we came to your house for dinner, you would not expect us to bring a group of strangers with us. In fact, the day with Yuk King Tan concluded with a household of Filipina domestic workers making food for us – women whose trust and friendship she had earned through her personal affiliations and the concerns of her art. In this case, it would obviously have been completely inappropriate and something of a human safari to bring along an audience.

Visiting Waterfall Bay with Nadim Abbas was part of the public tour on 19 January 2013. Photo: Trevor Yeung.

But we had no desire to make the days exclusive or private as if they were some kind of bespoke tourist service. Other people sometimes joined for parts of the days if the artist had suggested it, yet the main point of emphasis was our commitment to the tour in lieu of the typically brief studio visit and a situation in which the artist has had ownership of planning the whole day. If there would be definitely something like an audience present throughout (that might expect to be engaged or come and go) the dynamics and the logistics would have changed.

The artist tours were conceived from the point of view of research, and we have been reluctant to burden the artists or overload the format to the degree that they become durational artworks or somehow theatrical. We are not particularly focused on tidying up whatever their ontological status as art might be and likewise, we have deliberately not just invited artists whose work has a clear sympathy with performative, urban research or an obvious relation with sociability or place. We feel it is important that the format is quite malleable to the personality of each artist and that in the same way that you might browse a newspaper or share a car journey with somebody, the tours do not require a wider audience to legitimize them. In the same sense, they have not necessarily required documentation to make them valid. However, we have been increasingly interested in the idea of reportage or live broadcast in terms of the ‘making of’ or ‘artist at work’ genre, while at the same time being really wary about our own positions as protagonists and photographs that might seem like they belong in a travel magazine.

The tours in Mexico City took place for five consecutive days right after our arrival, so the way we shared the photographic material was more direct via our Facebook page at the end of each day. The exhibition at Casa del Lago opened only two days after we concluded the last tour, so we had to come up with a straightforward display form. For each tour, the photographer Eunice Adorno accompanied us and in the end, we projected a selection of 200 of her images as a slideshow and displayed a few of them printed on the wall alongside a large map of the city with pins locating the sites we visited. We also had printed itineraries, written by the artists, so anyone could later follow the routes themselves if they so desired.

Visiting the Espacio Escultórico at U.N.A.M. with Jerónimo Hagerman, one of the five tours around Mexico City in September 2012. Photo: Eunice Adorno.

In Hong Kong, we were using Twitter, Instagram, and Vine during the tours, so it was an experiment in documentation-on-the-fly and live journaling which was open to real-time responses. We also made a series of one-minute field recordings. The tweets were archived soon after alongside these recordings, as well as related Facebook posts. We also published blog posts about each of the tours which included many photographs (by us and others) alongside paragraphs from the artists’ itineraries. This might seem to highlight merely mundane technical aspects of the project but it also heightened our interest in further exploring the idea of the curatorial bandwidth beyond exhibition making, something we continued to investigate in following projects such as #OpenCurating.

'End Note(s)' Colophon:

Concept: Heman Chong
Editors: Defne Ayas, Mimi Brown, Heman Chong, Amira Gad, Samuel Saelemakers
Contributors: A Constructed World, Nadim Abbas, Defne Ayas, Oscar van den Boogaard, Mimi Brown, Heman Chong, Chris Fitzpatrick, Amira Gad, Travis Jeppesen, Latitudes, Christina Li, Guy Mannes-Abbott, Samuel Saelemakers, Aaron Schuster
Copy Editors: Janine Armin, Marnie Slater
Production: Amira Gad, Samuel Saelemakers, Heman Chong
Design: Kristin Metho
Printer: Koninglijke Van Gorcum
Publisher: Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art Rotterdam, the Netherlands
ISBN: 978-94-9143-529-4

RELATED CONTENT:

First week of the "Moderation(s)" residency at Spring Workshop, Hong Kong (17 January 2013)

Nadim Abbas' "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" public tour (19 January 2013)

"Temple and Feng Shui Tour", a guided walk around Hong Kong Island & Kowloon (22 January 2013)

Ho Sin Tung "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour (30 January 2013)

Yuk King Tan's "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour (3 February 2013)

Tour of Devil's Peak and the Museum of Coastal Defence (6 February 2013)

Samson Young's "Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong" tour (7 February 2013)

Latitudes' Open Day at Spring Workshop on 2 February 2013 (9 February 2013)

"Archive as Method: An Interview with Chantal Wong, Hammad Nasar and Lydia Ngai" of the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong. Concluding #OpenCurating interview (1 May 2013)

"Digression(s), Entry Point(s): An interview with Heman Chong", Singapore-based artist, curator, and writer. Eighth in the #OpenCurating research series. (4 April 2013)

Archive of social media posts related to "Incidents of Travel" tours and photo-documentation.

13 field recordings from 'Incidents of Travel: Hong Kong'

Witte de With opens the group show "The Part In The Story Where A Part Becomes A Part Of Something Else" on May 22, 2014 (21 April 2014)

Interview between Christina Li and Latitudes on 'Incidents of Travel' for Witte de With's 'Witness to Moderation(s)' blog (7 May 2013)

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This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and @LTTDS.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

2013, 2015, Christina Li, editorial, Heman Chong, Hong Kong, Incidents of Travel, interview, latitudes, Moderations, Publication, residency, Spring Workshop, Witte de With

Latitudes' re-designed website now online!

Wed, Feb 25 2015

Our website is finally up and running! Take a look at www.lttds.org

After months of re-editing, digging floppy disks and analogue archives, we're proud (and relieved!) to launch our newly designed website, same address as always: http://www.lttds.org

We have improved several things. Our home page now features a "cover story", a monthly focus on an artwork, artist, book, site or trip we've experienced in our recent past, accompanied by a short text. Our first cover story centers on Wilfredo Prieto's work "Grease, Soap, Banana" presented in 2007 in the group show "Extraordinary Rendition".

Below this section we highlight three recent projects which are refreshed with each visit.

Yes! Each page is more tablet and mobile-friendly, yet has an even wider format for your desktop.

Each of our project pages includes a sliding photo gallery complementing our flickr sets, and has clearer access to our social media networks – such as our twitter or facebook.

At the end of each project's text, we've added "Related Content": an expandable section linking to our blog posts.

The sidebar includes details of the locations, publication (if applicable) and project supporters; a calendar of events and biography of the artist (for solo shows).

Our project page now includes tags enabling you to dynamically filter our projects by 'year', 'exhibition', 'research', 'public realm', 'with publication', etc.

From here you can also check our Index, our Publications or download the pdf 'Projects Dossier' detailing a selection of our projects.

We have revised the 'About' page and placed an accordion listing our "Lectures", "Teaching", "Awards & Affiliations", "Juries", "Residencies", "Bibliography/Press" and "Research and Field Trips".

And last, but certainly not least, we continue to report from our blog on the development of our projects as well as on our field trips, news, shows, or books worth discussing.

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This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

10th anniversary, 2005, 2015, archive, blog, cover story, documentation, latitudes, online, Projects, report, website, Wilfredo Prieto

Interview with Nicholas Mangan in Mousse Magazine #47, February–March 2015

Wed, Feb 11 2015

The February–March 2015 issue of Mousse Magazine (#47) includes the interview 'What Lies Beneath' between Melbourne-based artist Nicholas Mangan (1979, Geelong) and Mariana Cánepa Luna of Latitudes.

Layout of the interview in English and Italian on the pages of Mousse Magazine.

The interview centers primarily on discussing the artists' methodologies through two of Mangan's recent works: 'A World Undone' – currently on view as part of Witte de With's show 'Art in The Age of...Energy' (23 January–3 May 2015) – and his film and sculptural work 'Nauru - Notes From A Cretaceous World' which will soon be featured as part of the New Museum's 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience curated by Lauren Cornell (Curator, 2015 Triennial, Digital Projects and Museum as Hub) and artist Ryan Trecartin.

Read the full review here. Following is an excerpt of the beginning of their conversation:

'Dowiyogo’s Ancient Coral Coffee Table', 2010. Courtesy of the artist, Sutton gallery Melbourne and Hopkinson Mossman Auckland.

MCL: Unearthing narratives embedded within matter has been at the very core of your practice for some time now. Your most recent sculptural and film works have inquired into natural materials, their transit and energy flow and how their transformation – be it human-induced or ecological – have a social, political and an economic dimension. I'm particularly thinking of your 2010 project 'Nauru: Notes from a Cretaceous World' – featured at the New Museum 2015 Triennial– which focuses on the story of the tiny Micronesian island Republic of Nauru and its financial collapse as a consequence of a century of corrosive colonial exploitation of its phosphate ore resources. Could you elaborate on how this notion of transformation is explored in your sculpture works (traditionally static) and films (moving image) and how you have come to interrelate the two in the spatial narrative of your installations?

NM: As transformation is a process occurring in time, the necessity to explore duration has led me to test moving image as a sculptural possibility, to express not only the temporality of the assemblage, but also the forces and drives that produce such aggregations. In the video ‘Nauru: Notes from a Cretaceous World', narration sits over found footage and material that I shot myself, providing an account of Nauru’s material history as shaped by anthropogenic forces. The narration attempts to draw out the various histories that are embedded in material forms. In more recent projects, such as ‘A World Undone’ (2012) and ‘Progress In Action’ (2013), I have attempted to produce an intensified intersection between moving image and sculpture, enabling the materials to narrate themselves.

'Nauru - Between A Rock and A Hard Place' installation view at Art Gallery Of New South whales 2009. Courtesy of the artist, Sutton gallery in Melbourne and Hopkinson Mossman in Auckland. Photo: Carley Wright.

'Mined over matter', 2012. C-print on cotton paper, 69 x 103cm.

Courtesy of the artist and LABOR Mexico.

'Matter over mined (for A World Undone)', 2012. C-print on cotton paper 69 x 103cm.

Courtesy of the artist and LABOR, Mexico.

'A World Undone', 2012 (video Stills). HD colour, silent, 12min continuous loop.

Courtesy of the artist and LABOR Mexico.

Mangan works with LABOR (México DF), Sutton Gallery (Melbourne) and Hopkinson Mossman (Auckland).

Related Content:

Visiting Curator Program, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 12 May–7 June 2014 (28 April 2014).

'Nice to Meet You – Erick Beltrán. Some Fundamental Postulates' by Max Andrews on Mousse Magazine #31 (30 November 2011)

Interview 'Free Forms' with Lauren Cornell part of Latitudes' 2012–13 long-term research #OpenCurating, released on April 2013 via Issuu.

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This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

2015, Ecology, interview, LABOR, Mariana Cánepa Luna, Melbourne, Mousse magazine, New Museum, Nicholas Mangan

Report from Bordeaux: Visit to CAPC/Musée d'Art Contemporain's shows of Franz Ehrard Walther and the group show "Ce qui ne sert pas s'oublie"

Tue, Jan 27 2015

Views of Franz Erhard Walther's show "Le Corps décide" from CAPC's mezzanine.

The exhibition 'Franz Erhard Walther: Le Corps décide' was initiated by WIELS Centre d’Art Contemporain, in Brussels – see a video of its iteration here – and has been co-produced together with CAPC musée d'art contemporain in Bordeaux, alongside The Franz Erhard Walther Foundation. The exhibition is accompanied by a beautiful publication that includes brightly colored pop up shapes that spread throughout the book.

From Wiels' website... "Franz Erhard Walther’s exhibition offers an in-depth look at an influential German artist whose pioneering work straddles minimalist sculpture, conceptual art, abstract painting, and performance all while positing fundamental questions about the conventional idea of the artwork as an immutable, obdurate pedestal or wall-bound thing. Bringing together pivotal works made between the 1950s and the present, this exhibition focuses on Walther’s ability to transform notions of object-hood and perception through drawings, paintings, fabric sculptures, participatory forms, language-based works, photographic documentation and archival material."

On the second floor, CAPC just opened 'Ce qui ne sert pas s’oublie' (What Cannot be Used is Forgotten) (22 January–3 May 2015) a group show curated by Mexico-based Colombian-born curator Catalina Lozano, that includes works by Mathieu K. Abonnenc, Sven Augustijnen, Mariana Castillo Deball, Sean Lynch, Pauline M’Barek, Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Uriel Orlow, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz and Jorge Satorre.

The exhibition "deals with the mutating statuses of objects in relation to the possible historical narratives, especially those related to colonial past an present and the layers of cultural, spiritual and identity production that stem from them. Objects carry a wealth of immaterial aspects in and around their materiality, constituted by means of the relations they form with others, both human and non-human... This exhibition seeks to understand how our relation to the material world entails endless processes of assimilation, acculturation, re-appropriation, ritualisation which in their complexity whiteness and embody the historical binds in which they are caught." [this and following quotations describing each work are taken from the exhibition leaflet].

The exhibition is accompanied by a French/Spanish publication (Les Presses du Réel, 2015) with contributions by Mathieu K. Abonnenc, Mariana Castillo Deball, Catalina Lozano, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz and Jorge Satorre.

Entrance to the group exhibition "Ce qui ne sert pas s'oublie".

The first room of the exhibition featured 'Killing Pots' (2013–14), a series of sculptural works by Jorge Satorre (1979, Mexico). Information about these pieces can be found in this extensive text by curator Caterina Riva.

Sean Lynch (1978, Ireland), 'A blog-by-blow account of stone-carving in Oxford', (2014) an installation composed of photographs, sculptures and a video projection "exploring the oeuvre of nineteenth-century stone-carvers John and James O’Shea, who carved monkeys, cats, owls and parrots on buildings in Oxford and Dublin."

Sean Lynch, 'A blog-by-blow account of stone-carving in Oxford' (2014).

(Left) 'Nocturne' (2015) a video by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (1972, Puerto Rico); (right) Mathieu K. Abonnenc (1977, French Guyana) 'Sas titre (des corps entassés'), (2012) and 'Names and surnames' (2012-13).

(Left) Sven Augustijnen (1970, Belgium) series of photographs 'L'Histoire Belge' (2007) "question the monumentality of Belgium's history and any optimistic relation to its past, including its colonial incursions in Africa"; (right) 'Nocturne' (2015) a video by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (1972, Puerto Rico) focusing on syncretic religions from the Caribbean, namely Haitian Vodou, characterised by the flexibility they show towards drastic change, be it geographical, social, material or natural".

(Detail of) Sven Augustijnen (1970, Belgium) series of photographs 'L'Histoire Belge' (2007).

General view of the exhibition. (Right wall) Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico (Community Museum of the Xico Valley), a community organisation founded in 1996 "entrusted with the safeguard and display of pre-colonial remains found by the neighbours of the locality over the past few decades."

(Above) Detail of Mariana Castillo Deball (1975, Mexico) "Le Problème de Molyneux" (2001) "addressing the immediacy of experiencing an object without seeing it and the subjective construction of its image".

Room with "Showcase" (2012), "Rope" (2013), "Trophy stands" (2011) and "Semiophores" (2013), all works by Pauline M'barek (1979, Germany).

(Above) Wendelien van Oldenborgh (1972, The Netherlands), "La Javaise" (2012). "Shot in the former Colonial Institute in Amsterdam, explores the links between colonialism and globalisation through the example of Vlisco, a Dutch firm producing textiles for the African market."

The show closes with two works produced in 2007 by Uriel Orlow (1973, Switzerland): "Lost Wax" and "A Very Fine Cast (110 Years)". The first deals with the production of brass-casting artefacts in Benin City, Nigeria, produced via this already out of use technique. The latter (below) is a series of 28 engravings displaying descriptions of artefacts from museum cataloguing systems, revealing the racist and colonial narratives that lie within the looted objects that are now part of European museum collections.

Related Content:

Report from the Amsterdam Art Weekend, 27–30 November 2014 (2 December 2014)
Report from London's Frieze week 2014 (27 October 2014)
Report from Madrid: Exhibitions during Apertura 2014 Gallery Weekend (15 September 2014)
Report from Glasgow: Lecture at The Common Guild and studio and gallery visits (4 December 2013)
Report from Paris: FIAC week, 21–28 October 2013 (5 November 2013)
Report from Athens: "AGORA", 4th Athens Biennale 2013 (4 November 2013)
Report from New York: Gramsci Monument, visiting critics at ISCP, Carol Bove at The High Line and galleries route (23 September 2013)

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This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
Work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

2015, Bordeaux, CAPC Bordeaux, Exhibition, Jorge Satorre, Mariana Castillo Deball, report, Sean Lynch, travel, Wendelien van Oldenborgh

Art and ecology exhibition and conference at Nottingham Contemporary

Thu, Jan 8 2015

Home page of Nottingham Contemporary.

Nottingham Contemporary continues their fantastic programme with an ambitious show centered on art and ecology. Ringing in the new year, 'Rights of Nature. Art and Ecology in the Americas' sets out expose how the "European idea of human mastery of the planet was imposed on the Americas. In contrast, new forms of resistance are inspired by, and linked to, indigenous cultures that see themselves as part of an ecological continuum. 'Rights of Nature ...' will deliver a strong focus on the Amazon, the Andes, the Arctic and the Gulf of Mexico and is curated by TJ Demos and Alex Farquharson (Artistic Director, Nottingham Contemporary) with Irene Aristizábal (Head of Exhibitions at Nottingham Contemporary).

One of the chosen press images for the exhibition is Minerva Cuevas' 2007 'Serie Hidrocarburos', which we selected back in 2008 for the cover of the catalogue of the exhibition 'Greenwashing. Environment: Promises, Perils and Perplexities' (29 February–18 May 2008) that we co-curated with Ilaria Bonacossa at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. In Turin, Cuevas' 2004 'Egalité' was displayed alongside another 'Rights of Nature' participant Amy Balkin who is also presenting her ongoing 'Public Smog' (2004–ongoing) project.

Front and back cover of the exhibition catalogue 'Greenwashing. Environment: Promises, Perils and Perplexities'.

The 'Rights of Nature ...' opening coincides with a promising day-long conference "drawing from lived and theoretical frameworks that de-privilege the human and recognize the agency of non-human entities", and will include presentations by participating artists Eduardo Abaroa, Minerva Cuevas, Subhankar Banerjee, Mabe Bethônico, Ursula Biemann and The Otolith Group as well as a performative intervention by Amy Balkin.

Section of the catalogue dedicated to Minerva Cuevas's 'Egalité' (2004).

Related Content:

Minerva Cuevas's 2012 'Incidents of Travel' tour around Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, Tepito and Lagunilla neighbourhoods, and the Torre Latinoamericana. Photos of this and the other four artist' tours here.

Where to find the publications edited by Latitudes? (22 April 2012)

Art&Co Nº1, 'El arte después de la ecología' por Max Andrews (23 January 2008)

'Greenwashing' in Artforum Critics’ Picks (18 April 2008)

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2015, Amy Balkin, conference, Ecology, Exhibition, Greenwashing, Minerva Cuevas, Nottingham

Latitudes nominators for the 2015 Aimia | AGO Photography Prize, Canada

Mon, Dec 29 2014

Installation view of 'Smoke' (2013), a work by the 2014 Aimia | AGO Photography Prize winner Lisa Oppenheim. Two-channel video installation, looped. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and The Approach, London.

Latitudes has been invited to be a nominator for the 2015 Aimia | AGO Photography Prize, Canada’s most significant award for contemporary photography, recognizing photographers from around the world whose work has exhibited potential over the preceding five years.

As one of the 15 nominators, we have been invited to submit 2 artists for inclusion on a long list of 27. On a second stage, a separate jury of three, led by Adelina Vlas the associate curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), will select a shortlist of four from the long list – to be announced 23 June. Exhibitions will be mounted at the AGO and online, and the public will be invited to cast a vote for their choice to win the $50,000 CAD prize. The awardee will be announced on December 1, 2015.

Established in 2007, Aimia | AGO Photography Prize is the first major art prize to allow the public to choose its winner. It has a total annual prize value of over $100,000, with $50,000 awarded to the winner, $5,000 awarded to each of the other shortlisted artists and $25,000 supporting a national scholarship program for students studying photography at select institutions across Canada. The remainder funds six-week residencies for the four shortlisted artists at institutions across Canada.

In 2014 the $50,000 CAD prize was awarded to New York-based artist Lisa Oppenheim. In addition to the cash prize Oppenheim received a fully funded residency in Canada in early 2015. Runners-up David Hartt (Canada); Elad Lassry (Israel/USA); and Nandipha Mntambo (South Africa) each also received a six-week residency as well as $5,000 to support their artistic practices.

More on the prize here.
Follow @aimiaAGOprize

Related content:

More on Latitudes' teaching, lecturing, jury duties, residencies, awards, etc.

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2015, Award, jury, latitudes, photography

David Jablonowski's "Hype Cycle" at Fons Welters, Amsterdam

Tue, Dec 16 2014

In his sculptural work, David Jablonowski skillfully juxtaposes a broad spectrum of man-made and mass-produced materials in order to reflect on timely topics such as the status of objects and the flow of data through the lens of technology. We had seen his work in group shows (see this blog post), but having the chance to see his solo presentation 'Hype Cycle' at Fons Welters was a very welcome addition to our Amsterdam Art Weekend visit.

Jablonowski's interest in the complexity of today's networks of information and its technologies is manifested in a series of sculptures clustered as glass totems ('Prediction Tower, Hype Cycle 1' 2 and 3, all from 2014) or simple low shelves à la mode of still lives ('No Market Left Waiting To Merge (Taipei)', 2014). He favors working with contrasting materials in texture and warmth (e.g. reflecting glass vs. wicker baskets) constantly moving between the analogue and the digital (e.g. offset printing plates vs. LED screens). His sculptural arrangements belie their minimal appearance by incorporating organic materials such as dry orange slices, spices, leaves or rice crackers, often tricking the eye as to what is real and what is a prop. He plays, for example with the veracity of immaterial financial data against the seeming-artificiality of actually-present indexed produce – such as ears of grain.

'Hype Cycle' incorporates some of the elements from his recent Art Cologne presentation 'Hello Prediction! / Data Mining' (2014). One of the most intriguing pieces is 'Industrial3d Display', a 4 metre-long work arranged on the floor composed of materials such as aluminum, dried rye, peppers, plexiglass, Samsung LED screens, plaster, dried leaves and acrylic. This piece, one that best sublimates his conceptual and sculptural efforts, elegantly alloys all his concerns around the evolution of media and obsolescence, layering found video footage on two flat screens, used offset printing sheets folded in their corners and reed baskets containing ears of wheat. Jablonowski's choice of wheat is significant as the cultivation of this cereal was one of the main factors in the emergence of city societies. It was easily grown and could be stored over long periods of time as well as serving as a construction material.

Another imposing piece is 'New Trade Routes, Trade Alert' (2014), featuring one of the stars of the show: an 18th Century wooden wagon. 'New Trade Routes...' appears to lance any uneasy nostalgia for mankind as a tool-maker. Although similar wagons are doubtless still used in many communities today, the proximity to modern and contemporary items such as consumer objects and the trapping of newer technology (LED panels, aluminum printing plates, reproduction Chinese dim sum, etc.) turns the wagon into a sort of time-traveled artifact. It is as if it has become hardly recognizable as technology for the many of us more familiar to interacting with a touch screen than a horse harness.

The show is underscored by many of the social, technological and economic changes we are witnessing today. A pointed example of this is the graphic printed on a transparent sheet (typically used for overhead projectors in pre-PowerPoint corporate and educational presentations) and included in one of Jablonowski's totems. The Hype Cycle is "a branded graphical tool developed and used by IT research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc. for representing the maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies." The curve shows, for example, that Predictive Analytics reached the "Plateau of Productivity" phase as of July 2013.

It is interesting to put Jablonowski's work in the light of the nearby exhibition at SMBA with film work by Zachary Formwalt, which focuses on the progressive abstraction and remoteness of financial trade, taking as a point of departure the 1903 H.P. Berlage's Amsterdam Stock and commodities Exchange in contrast to the 2013 OMA-designed Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

Both Jablonowski and Formwalt's approach resonates with our current research on artistic practice broadly inquiring on the circulation of raw materials, economic trade, information flows and technological obsolescence.

For better photo documentation of the show, check Fons Welters' website or Artsy.

David Jablonowski (1982) lives in Amsterdam and works with Fons Welters (Amsterdam), Lüttgenmeijer (Berlin), Max Wigram (London).

Related Content:

Report from Madrid: Apertura 2014 gallery and museums programme in tweets, 11–13 September (15 September 2014)

Report from London's Frieze week 2014 now on Storify (27 October 2014)

Report from the Amsterdam Art Weekend, 27–30 November 2014 now on Storify (2 December 2014)

"Esta puerta pide clavo" at Galerie Tatjana Pieters (22 June 2012)

Maaike Lauwaert write up of the exhibition on Artforum's Critics' Picks

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This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

2014, Amsterdam, David Jablonowski, Exhibition, Gallery Weekend, report, SMBA, Zachary Formwalt

Report: Amsterdam Art Weekend, 27–30 November 2014 now on Storify

Tue, Dec 2 2014

Amsterdam Art Weekend advertising.

Below the thread of tweets and Instagram posts we published during our trip, now archived on Wakelet:

Below some more photos that didn't make it to our live reporting posts:

View of De Appel's group show "When Elephants Come Marching In", through which guest curator Mark Kremer investigates "the ongoing influence that Psychedelia and Conceptualism still have in contemporary Western art".

We also visited the solo show of Dutch conceptual artist Marinus Boezem at Upstream Gallery. The show focused on "the significance of the artist’s physical presence and absence for the concept of his artworks" and included jewels like this 1969 "Piss Project" piece, which was too difficult to capture as it's a sequence of photographs, hence the photo taken from the catalogue available at the gallery.

On our last few hours, we paid a visit to Jeanine Hofland which had a group show with works by Andrea Kvas, Mohamed Namou, Alek O., Gino Saccone, Yonatan Vinitsky and Jessica Warboys revolving around the idea of painting without paintings.

And to end our Amsterdam Art Week, we went back to the Stedelijk Museum to see Marlene Dumas's retrospective properly as well as the exhibition 'How Far How Near. The World at the Stedeljk' curated by SMBA's Director Jelle Bouwhuis, which included a great film work by Godfried Donkor 'The Currency of Ntoma' on the symbolism and the financial value that textiles (Dutch Wax, batik, kente cloth and lace) have for women in Ghana.

View of the first room of 'How Far How Near. The World at the Stedeljk'.

Related posts:

Report from London's Frieze week 2014 (27 October 2014)
Report from Madrid: Exhibitions during Apertura 2014 Gallery Weekend (15 September 2014)
Report from Glasgow: Lecture at The Common Guild and studio and gallery visits (4 December 2013)
Report from Paris: FIAC week, 21–28 October 2013 (5 November 2013)
Report from Athens: "AGORA", 4th Athens Biennale 2013 (4 November 2013)
Report from New York: Gramcsi Monument, visiting critics at ISCP, Carol Bove at The High Line and galleries route (23 September 2013)
Report from Dublin and Derry-Londonderry: research trip to Ireland, 8–14 March 2013 (16 March 2013)
Report from Urdaibai: commission series 'Sense and Sustainability', Urdaibai Arte 2012 (22 July 2012)

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This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

2014, Amsterdam, art weekend, de Ateliers, Oude Kerk, Rijksakademie, Stedelijk museum, stedelijk museum bureau amsterdam

Seven social media archive albums

Mon, Nov 3 2014

Report from Frieze week: Frieze Art Fair, Frieze Masters and the whole other rest, 12–18 October 2014
https://wakelet.com/wake/6dfdd6cf-c369-44da-83ca-efaf651418e6

Report from Madrid: exhibitions during Apertura 2014 (11–13 September 2014)
https://wakelet.com/wake/4e7f7503-544c-4a8a-bde6-e1d5cb22b4a1

Visiting Curator Program, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 12 May–7 June 2014
https://wakelet.com/wake/c61aa3f1-b379-477a-b12d-8b6ff0bd9dfb
More on this residency here.

'Incidents of Travel', Hong Kong, 7 January–10 February 2013
https://wakelet.com/wake/b4893181-a74d-4553-8081-ef05e42a1d9d
More on this project and residency here.

'The Margins of the Factory', a show by Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum at ADN Platform, 25 January–30 April 2014
https://wakelet.com/wake/92c3f1af-424b-4605-8795-82897706f135
More on this exhibition here.

Report from Paris: FIAC 2013, 21–25 October 2013
https://wakelet.com/wake/0f57d98e-af1c-4d51-9c3a-8016b81eaab9

#OpenCurating research, June 2012–April 2013
https://wakelet.com/wake/7fac41d3-dc07-4335-98b4-5af3b6e2d8a2
More on this research project here.

Related content:

"When Does an Exhibition Begin and End?" symposium, National Library of Singapore, 14 May 2014

Lunchtime Art Forum and seminar with PhD candidates in Curatorial Practice, MADA | Monash Art Design & Architecture, Melbourne, 14 May 2014

'The Margins of the Factory' on Artforum's Critics' Picks

"Focus Interview: Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum", frieze, Issue 157, September 2013

–

This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

#OpenCurating, 2014, FIAC, Frieze, Gallery Weekend, Incidents of Travel, Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum, Melbourne, report, residency, Wakelet

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