Report from New York: Gramcsi Monument, visiting critics at ISCP, Carol Bove at The High Line and galleries route
Mon, Sep 23 2013
Visiting Thomas Hirschhorn's "Gramcsi Monument", a project produced by Dia Art Foundation at Forest Houses, in the south Bronx. Some recent articles on the project are available via Artfagcity's "How Do People Feel About the Gramsci Monument?" and a summary with more reviews via the Gallerist.
On the September 4 and 12 we were 'visiting critics' at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The first round included seven visits to the studios of Sofie Thorsen, Niko Luoma, Ramiro Chaves, Mojé Assefjah, Shigeyuki Kihara, Javier Barrios and Tobias Dostal. In the second round (12 visits), we visited Paulien Oltheten (participant in our 2009 project "Portscapes"), Henrjeta Mece, Deva Graf, Bernard Williams, Hugues Reip, Ruth Campau, Tricia Middleton, Savas Bovraz, Sasa Tkacenko, I-Chen Kuo, Mónica Ferreras and Petr Sprincl and collaborator Marie Hájková. A selection of images below.
Back in 2006, Max Andrews of Latitudes edited the publication and wrote the catalogue essay for an exhibition at Victoria Miro Gallery in London of Danish artist John Kørner, also a current resident at ISCP.
(Above) Studio visit with Danish-born, Vienna-based artist Sofie Thorsen.
(Above) Studio visit with Argentinian-born, Mexico City-based artist Ramiro Chaves.
(Above) Studio visit with Dutch artist Paulien Oltheten.
(Above) Studio visit with Kurdish-born Turkish-based artist Savas Bovraz, recipient of the 2013 Victor Fellowship of the
Hasselblad Foundation.
(Above) Studio visit with Chicago-based artist Bernard Williams.
(Above) Studio visit with Berlin-based artist Tobias Dostal, creator of this magic trick,
you'll be amazed!
(Above) Studio visit with Canadian artist Tricia Middleton.
On Friday 13, we visited a few Chelsea galleries, starting at 18th street with a bombastic show by Matthew Day Jackson show at Hauser Wirth. A concise review of the exhibition in this New Yorker article.
(Above) Ho Chi Minh City and Los Angeles-based collective The Propeller Group at Lombard Freid.
(Above) An overview of the 1960s–2000s work by the late John McCracken occupied David Zwirner's spaces.
(Above) Phil Collins at Tanya Bonakdar.
(Above) "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" a cross-generational group show with works by Ed Ruscha, Alex Israel, Alex Hubbard, Julie Becker, Lutz Bacher, and Rachel Harrison at Greene Naftali Gallery.
(Above) The always great Annette Kelm presents 2013 photographs at Andrew Kreps – on view until November 2nd.
(Above) Claudia Wieser's mirrors, ceramics, wooden sculptures, geometric prints at Marianne Boesky.
Barbara Gladstone Gallery showed Damián Ortega's 25 twisted steel sculptures which cast the alphabet with their shadows.
At Metro Pictures, David Maljkovic's show includes the animation "Afterform" – on view until October 19.
(Above) Wonderful photographic work by Leslie Hewitt at Sikkema Jenkins – on view until 5 October. Another short view of the exhibition on this New Yorker article.
(Above) Bortolami Gallery presented paintings by Morgan Fisher based on colour swatches from a prefab house company owned by artist father.
(Above and below) Pablo Helguera's "Librería Donceles" at Kent Fine Art
(210 11th Avenue, 2nd floor). "Librería Donceles" is an itinerant
bookstore of 10,000 used books in Spanish, of virtually every subject,
and the only Spanish-language used-book store in the city. On view until
8 November.
In the Lower East Side, Simon Preston presented one of the best shows in town centered around the new film 'Provenance' (2013) by Chicago-born artist Amy Siegel. The 40min. the film documents the interior of homes of avid collectors in New York, London, Belgium and Paris that have furnished their homes with 1950s tables, chairs, settees and desks originally conceived by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, for several buildings in Chandigarh, India. Go see it, ends 6 October.
This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos: Latitudes (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
'Primera necesidad: ¡libros!' librería temporal en RMS, El Espacio, Madrid
Sat, Apr 2 2011
Foto: Maria NietoPrimera necesidad: ¡libros!
2 abril – 8 julio 2011
Inauguración: sábado, 2 de abril, 12–15h.
Primera necesidad: ¡libros! es una librería temporal en la que tienen cabida proyectos editoriales vinculados al arte contemporáneo que por diversos motivos no se encuentran fácilmente en Madrid. Se presenta una selección de libros de editoriales independientes que plantean propuestas que buscan en el medio impreso otras estrategias y modos de hacer y juegan un papel fundamental en el desarrollo de la creación actual.
Editoriales y autopublicaciones incluidas: Afterall (Londres); Archive Books/Archive Journal (Berlín); Argobooks (Berlín); Nadia Barkate (Bilbao); Belleza Infinita (Bilbao); Bookworks (Londres); Braço de Ferro (Lisboa); Casco Projects (Utrech, Países Bajos); Coop (San Sebastián); Crani (Lladó, España); Cru (Figueras, España); Editions Matière (París); Entreascuas Editores (Madrid); Impress (Londres/Barcelona); Jap Sam Books (Heininjen, Países Bajos); Julia Montilla (Barcelona); Joan Morey (Barcelona); Kaleidoscope (Milán); La Más Bella (Madrid); Mathieu Copeland (Londres/París); Mousse Publishing (Milán); Carme Nogueira (Vigo, España); Paraguay Press (París); Peep-Hole (Milán); Pork Salad Press (Copenhague); Save As ...Publications (Barcelona); Script (Buenos Aires/Madrid); Sternberg Press (Nueva York/Berlín); UHF (Madrid), entre otras. (+ info...)
Bajo el título de 'Bibliofilia', críticos, comisarios o artistas, ofrecerán semanalmente una selección de libros. Colaboran: Javier Díaz Guardiola, Javier Duero, Bea Espejo, Javier Hontoria, Latitudes, Pablo Martínez, Momu & No Es, Agustín Pérez Rubio, Gloria Picazo, Manuel Segade (Bibliofilia #1, 2-8 Abril), Iker Seisdedos, Julia Spínola y Virginia Torrente.
Latitudes contribuirá a 'Bibliofilia' en su tercera semana (25–29 Abril 2011) añadiendo a la lista de publicaciones los doce volúmenes producidos por la Editorial Alias, el proyecto editorial del artista mexicano Damián Ortega.
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| Foto: Cortesía RMS La Asociación. |
Alias es una editorial independiente sin fines de lucro, que "tiene el propósito de difundir la obra y el pensamiento de autores particularmente significativos para el arte contemporáneo. Creaciones que, por razones y circunstancias difíciles de enumerar en este espacio, no han sido traducidas, impresas y difundidas en habla hispana; o bien, cuyas ediciones anteriores están descontinuadas o nunca han sido distribuidas en México." Entre sus publicaciones se encuentran 'Conversando con Marcel Duchamp', de Pierre Cabanne (2006); 'Mi libro es su libro. Selección de textos y obras traducidas', de Lawrence Weiner (2008); 'Rock, mi religión', de Dan Graham (2008); 'Robert Smithson. Selección de escritos', de Robert Smithson (2009) y 'Una página de chistes', de Ad Reinhardt (2010), entre otros.
Primera necesidad: ¡libros! ha sido organizada con motivo de Jugada a 3 bandas, una iniciativa que pretende dinamizar la escena del arte emergente madrileño en la que participan 14 galerías, 16 comisarios y 50 artistas.
Inauguración Jugada a 3 bandas: Sábado 2 Abril, 12-20:30h, varios espacios y galerías de Madrid. http://www.a3bandas.org
RMS, El Espacio
c/ Antonio Pirala 17, 28017 Madrid Ver mapa
T: +34 91 524 02 19Martes-Viernes 16:30 a 20:30h.
info@rms.com.es
www.rms.com.es
'THE LAST JOURNAL' AVAILABLE NOW! #8 issue of the 10 Latitudes-edited newspapers for 'The Last Newspaper' exhibition, New Museum
Wed, Nov 24 2010
Issue 8: 'The Last Journal'(READ IT ON ISSUU)
24 November 2010
Cover: Fernando Bryce, from the series L'Humanité (2009–2010)
Feature: 'L'Humanité', Yasmil Raymond on Fernando Bryce
Feature: 'Independent Gazette', Lorena Muñoz-Alonso reports from London on two newspaper-inspired exhibitions: 'The Independent' (Damián Ortega at The Curve, Barbican) and ‘Can Altay: The Church Street Partners' Gazette’, The Showroom. Plus Damián Ortega exchanges impressions with curator Alona Pardo on his show.
Media Habits: Ester Partegàs, TLN advertising department artist
Brazil Focus: 'The Imaginery Newspaper', Chris Dercon on Luciano Figueiredo & Ana Paula Cohen on 'Jornal 28b', the newspaper produced during the 28th Bienal de São Paulo.
Focus: 'Boetti e His Double', Christian Rattemeyer on TLN artist Alighiero e Boetti's Corriere Della Sera (1976)
The Next Newspaper (Profiling the organizations, projects, initiatives and individuals redefining ink-and-paper news): CROWD-SOURCING – SPOT.US / EMPHAS.IS
Exclusive interview: 'The Days of This Society...', Desiree B. Ramos interviews TLN artist Rirkrit Tiravanija
Focus: 'Paper view' Gwen Schwartz asked New Museum visitors about their experiences of TLN
Focus: 'What's CUP?' by Gwen Schwartz and Max Andrews
Picture Agent-Our singular picture agency: Adrià Julià
Focus: '29 Days Later', Sarah Wang on TLN work Untitled Green Screen Memory (2010) by Larry Johnson + 2009 California Fires by Collin Munn
Cartoon: 'The Woods' by Francesc Ruiz
Advertising Department: Ester Partegàs
Browse this and other newspapers on Latitudes' Youtube channel.
'THE DAYS OF THIS SOCIETY...' New Museum curatorial fellow Desiree B. Ramos meets ‘The Last Newspaper’ artist Rirkrit Tiravanija
Above and below: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled (the days of this society is numbered/September 15–October 12, 2008), 2010. Acrylic and newspaper on linen. 13 parts, all measuring 86 1/8 x 84 1/8 x 1 inch each. Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brownʼs enterprise.
There I am; it’s 5pm sharp, and I have just arrived at Gavin Brown’s newly-expanded Meatpacking District art gallery. I’m checking out the new space while I wait for Rirkrit, who suddenly pulls up around the back door with a few groceries; turns out he’s cooking a paella dinner for a few friends. We walk around the space for a few minutes and before heading towards the kitchen in the back of the gallery. There I see a few art handlers setting up pots, tables, and chairs for Rirkrit’s guests. “We don’t have much time, fire away,” he says, looking at the recorder and the paper I am holding in my hands. We sit on a wooden bench and start our conversation. I have met with Rirkrit several times, and besides being a great artist he is really down to earth and approachable. Every time I talk to him it is quite a busy scenario all around.
Desiree B. Ramos: How did you become an artist?
Rirkrit Tiravanija: By accident! I actually wanted to be a photojournalist and then mistakenly took some art history classes and became curious about art. I left the university from the history department, and I went to art school and I went to talk to the counsellor about the idea of studying art. So I had an appointment, I went to the meeting and I had to wait in this kind of lobby library. I was just standing there, looking around the shelf, and there was a book that stood out from the shelf from the Ontario College of Art, so I just pulled it out, took down the address and left. So it was kind of accidental.
DB: What was your first art piece?
RT: Umm, that’s a debate. It was actually an image that my father took of me; I made this plasticine sculpture on my ear, it was like an ear extension so that I looked like a Vulcan. So I would say that was my first sculpture.
DB: Do you still have it, or a record of it?RT: I have a picture that my father took, but I don’t have the actual plasticine. I guess I could always remake it.
DB: That would be fun...
RT: Yeah, that would be fun. Wow, you just gave me a new idea!
DB: What was your first political work?
RT: Well, it depends on what is political, you know, if personal is political. The first work I made in art school, officially made in art school, was about identity, about me being in the West and trying to figure out what that was. It was the first letter of the Thai alphabet drawn on cardboard, and then it had a Thai dictionary explanation with this alphabet in English. So in a way, that had a kind of cultural politics in it. I would say my work is always asking those kinds of personal political questions, I mean, about the self and about identity.
DB: What got you into cooking?
RT: It was the simplest thing I could do. I was working in Chicago on questions of, about, cultural artefacts. I worked on this conceptual work with the idea that these artefacts were displays, again, about identity also, and that they were missing; they were fragmented in a kind of gap, or there was a gap that I thought needed to be questioned.
DB: So it was natural for you to mix cooking with art?
RT: Exactly, because I was looking at pots, bowls and plates, and Buddha statues, and these were all objects of everyday use in my culture, so first I basically decided to just cook so that these things would always be in play and from that it became, well, it was always about the people. Of course, these are things that were used every day, which have been taken out of context, put onto display because they were valued in a different situation, and looked at through the Western eye as if they were somehow valuable in relation to the idea of culture. But for me, it was really about the life around the object.
DB: What’s your favorite thing to cook?
RT: I don’t have a favorite thing to cook.
DB: Nothing that gets you more into the act of cooking and engaging with people?
RT: It’s not so much about the cooking, not about the food or any particular dish; it’s about the act and then ... I think it’s always more communal to cook a big pot of curry than to make a piece of steak. But I actually just recently cooked a lot of steak for 2,000 people so I’m actually wrong, I could cook steak for a lot of people but, of course, it’s about the activity of cooking. When we made this kind of barbecue grill, Argentinean style, the asado, it’s a communal activity in itself. So, it was just a matter of scale. People normally do it with families but here we extended it so we could involve even more people at the same moment, so it became something else.
DB: Where do you get your ideas from? Are you inspired by something in specific or do they randomly come to you? Do you get them from looking at things, reading, or conversing with people?
RT: I think it’s all of that. It’s an ongoing process that I have and I think many artists have, which is like you’re always thinking, looking and everything that you experience becomes a question or a possibility. It’s a combination; I’m looking at certain things that I’m interested in but, on the other hand, I’m always very receptive to what is happening around me, and that becomes a trigger for other things.
DB: I’m wondering how you go on varying so much in terms of media when it comes to your work. Is it difficult to manoeuvre all these different types of expression, ranging from cooking to investigations about architecture...?
RT: I’m not interested in style, I’m interested in content and if all the elements make sense, they all have certain roots or they all certainly have a relation to each other. It could be an eight-hour video or a ten-hour cooking session, yet they all bring people to the same place.
DB: Do you consider your piece now on view in The Last Newspaper at the New Museum, Untitled (the days of this society are numbered/September 21, 2009), part of a series along with other text works you have recently produced?
RT: I consider them like signage, like stop signs, road signs. They form a series but they can make you pay attention to a certain place and a certain moment when you are confronted by them. I think about that layering of the newspaper, which is an activity I’m very interested in, and in the activity of information being gathered. There are just a lot of layers there for me, from the ads to the typeface of the newspaper itself. There’s a lot of coincidence – or accidents, or maybe even intentions – in the way that certain things get laid out on these pages. The sign makes you stop and pay attention to the other things happening behind it.
DB: Would you be able to explain further how that text, in particular, explores the social role of the artist?
RT: ‘The days of this society is numbered’ is attributed to the situation in 1968; obviously, at that time it was a provocation within the context of a manifestation against the society, or rather of society against a particular group of people, the institution, people in control. And I would say that, of course, those moments reoccur, those conditions can still exist.
DB: I’m sure everybody asks about the grammar…
RT: Yes, well, it’s a bad translation of French. The mistake makes people react.
DB: And the dates on the newspaper…
RT: Well some in the series do make a reference to, for example, the market crash of 2008, just at the end of George Bush’s presidency. It has all been commentary about the Bush years and certainly in conjunction with the market crash.
DB: What will we see from you in the near future? What are you working on now?
RT: I’m working on a film which will be about a retired Thai farmer in the countryside, and I hope that people will get to see it, or that it’s good enough for people to see it.