GALERIA SENTIMENTAL AT TENSTA KONSTHALL, SWEDEN

Galería Sentimental

Tensta Konsthall presents the Paris-based curatorial bureau
Toasting Agency and the exhibition Galería Sentimental, to open
on November 1st 2008 and run until February 15th 2009.

Featuring:
Diego Berruecos
Mariana Castillo Deball
Miguel Calderón
Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda
Daniel Guzman
Karl Holmqvist
Adriana Lara
Xavier Maria y Campos
Fabrizio Leon Mejia
Ricardo Nicolayevsky
Perros Negros
José Rojas
Michael Roy

Conceived somewhere between Europe and Mexico, Galería Sentimental
is a non-representative exhibition showing international artists
both Mexican and non-Mexican. Among other qualities, the works
share a certain self-irony and a chaotic multi-layering, something
they have in common with the country that serves as the backdrop
for this particular event, Mexico.

The focus of this exhibition is on how some contemporary artists,
thought of as explorers or tourists in society, navigate between
the anarchic signs, imagery and tales that a place like Mexico
keeps producing both nationally and internationally. It looks at
how this raw material can be appropriated both as an imaginary
and concrete ground from which to develop artistic practices and
agendas that extend beyond contextualized interpretation.

The artworks and interventions presented at Tensta Konsthall
tackle with various formats and disciplines, ranging from
exhibition design (with a specific intervention in the space
of Tensta Konsthall by architect and designer José Rojas),
sculpture (Adriana Lara), photojournalism (Diego Berruecos,
Fabrizio Leon Mejia) and anthropological research (Mariana
Castillo-Deball, Miguel Calderón).

The exhibition will also reconstitute excerpts of the ongoing
curatorial project initiated by Perros Negros, from which the
title of the exhibition is borrowed*. And in order to further
confront or entertain mythologies and fantasies, the exhibition
also includes works produced around the trope of Mexico by Europe
based artists Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda, Karl Holmqvist and
Michael Roy.

*Galería Sentimental is a project initiated by the Mexico City
production office Perros Negros at Galeria Comercial in San Juan,
Puerto Rico, in 2006.
http://www.perrosnegros.info

Tensta Konsthall
Taxingegränd 10
163 04 Spånga
Stockholm, Sweden
www.tenstakonsthall.se

NEW FRIENDS IN BRASILIA AT BAR BARULHO!

MUSEO NACIONAL, BRASILIA

FOREST OF TROPICAL COLUMNS AT EDIFICIO LOUVEIRA IN HIGIENOPOLIS IN SAO PAULO

Louveira Apartment Building
J. Vilanova Artigas, 1950
Praça Vilaboim, 144, Higienopolis, Sao Paulo

ERIKA VERZUTTI'S SUPER BEAUTIFUL 'PET CEMETERY' AT FORTES VILACA IN SAO PAULO

Fortes Vilaça is pleased to present the exhibition Pet Cemetery by Erika Verzutti. The show transforms the exhibition space into a graveless cemetery, in which twenty-two new animal-shaped sculptures are set atop pedestals or arranged on the floor. For Verzutti, the “cemetery” is a “pretext to exercise different styles, reflect on cultural representation and on the use of bronze, common to the arts and to gravestones.”

The artist has broken away from formal practice to reveal the structure of her artworks and incorporate accidents such as welds, scratches, splatters and paint runs. By recording the accidents in her creative process, the artist absorbs inabilities and peripheral happenings that would be neutralized by habit. Some of the sculptures shown, such as Egito [Egypt] and Marrakesh, are the unfolding of an investigation Verzutti began in 2006, when she started using fruits and vegetables as molds for casting metal. Here, the stability of the bronze is diminished by its combination with a variety of less-noble materials, including wool knitting, cold porcelain, stones and concrete. The artist also uses some of the objects employed during her creative process, such as brushes and easels.

For Verzutti, the diversity of materials allowed for the incorporation of artworks by other artists, giving rise to five collaborative works. Leda Catunda has constructed – with her soft painting – a lake for the bronze frog; Efrain Almeida has collaborated in Infante [Infant] with a baby chicken sculpted from wood; Tiago Carneiro da Cunha worked together with the artist to create a zombie chicken in ceramic; a sculpture by Alexandre da Cunha made of tin cans and concrete has been transformed into a support for the bronze Bull Head; and Tonico Lemos Auad has used graphite stones to create a head for the sculpture that represents a horse.

Still in 2008, the artist will be participating in the show Lives become Form, at MOT – Museum of Contemporary Art of Tokyo, curated by Yuko Hasegawa. Also in Japan she will be taking part in a residency of two months at Tokyo Wonder Site. In 2007, the first monograph on her work was released by Cobogó publishers.

Galpao Fortes Vilaca
Rua James Holland 71 | Barra Funda | 01138-000 São Paulo Brasil
T + 55 11 3392 3942 | F + 55 11 3392 5969
Terça a Sexta, 10h – 19h
Sábado, 10h – 17h
http://www.fortesvilaca.com.br

ISABELA MORA'S VERY ELEGANT PARTY FOR ART BASEL AT CLUB NACIONAL SAO PAULO

mirrors and screens



Isabella Mora and guest


Thiago Rocha Pitta


Carla Zaccagnini


Beatriz Lopez and Katy


Gisela Domshke and Marcelo Krasilcic


Andreas Angelidakis, Pablo Leon de la Barra (wearing Alexander Hercovitch) and Beatriz Lopez


former Art Basel director Samuel Keller


tropical chandeliers


pineapples and silver

JENS HOFFMANN'S 'THIS IS NOT A VOID' AT GALERIA LUISA STRINA IN SAO PAULO

gallery from outside, (it used to be black) painted white by Elmgreen and Dragset (they also painted the inside black)



David Lamelas, Limite de una proyeccion (Limit of a projection 1), 1967


Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, co-director of Athens Biennal, with Andreas Angelidakis, listening to Alexandre Da Cunha's sound piece


THIS IS NOT A VOID

25 October 2008 - 22 January 2009
Opening Reception
24 October September 7 – 10pm

Artur Barrio, Laura Belém, Arabella Campbell, Iván Yoan Capote, Alexandre da Cunha, Martin Creed, Guy Debord, Gino de Dominicis, Marcel Duchamp, Elmgreen Dragset, Robert Filliou, Claire Fontaine, Aurélien Froment, Ryan Gander, Mario Garcia Torres, Loris Gréaud, Jordan Kantor, Paul Kos, David Lamelas, Adriana Lara, Tonico Lemos Auad, Tim Lee, Jac Leirner, David Lieske, Mateo López, Renata Lucas, Kris Martin, Robert Morris, Roman Ondák, Fernando Ortega, Kirsten Pieroth, Marco Rountree, Tino Sehgal, Mark Soo, Jan Timme, Ian Wilson, Cerith Wyn Evans

Curated by Jens Hoffmann

This Is Not a Void is an exhibition without objects, it presents an empty gallery space filled with immaterial art works. Bringing together a large number of pieces by more than 30 international artists, the exhibition focuses on thematizing the notion of the void when creating a physically empty space "full" of artworks that are dematerialized, immaterial, or ephemeral, and therefore imperceptible.

In the visual arts, a frequent point of reference for the idea of the void is the series of black paintings begun by the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich in 1915. His black squares marked ground zero in the emerging modernist focus on pure form and color; their dark voids were full of potential for a more abstract and conceptual approach to art making. Following this important negation of the representational in painting came the negation of the object in space, marked by the arrival of Conceptual art in the late 1960s, which examined analytically not only the parameters of the artwork itself but also the environment and the structures in which it is created and presented. This is part of the art historical legacy that This Is Not a Void connects with.

This Is Not a Void is seeking to shift the parameters of display and perception. It asks a number of questions that go straight to the heart of our relationship with art: How do we approach a seemingly empty space that we are accustomed to seeing full of artworks, and how does this change the way we understand art production and exhibition making? This Is Not a Void forces us to move beyond ordinary modes of viewing and to experience art in a way that is perhaps more enhanced, more concentrated. Stripping away our obsession with the visible and avoiding any form of object based representation, it creates a temporary rupture that attempts to reestablish a lost connection between audience and artwork.

The exhibition is in large part a response to the 28th Bienal de São Paulo, which opens the same week. In the second-floor galleries of the Bienal pavilion, where the core of the biennial is usually located, there is nothing but an empty gallery space. This bold gesture is inspired by the idea of an empty space as a place of potential, a symbolic gesture of suspension. This Is Not a Void follows this line of thought by exhibiting art in the "empty" space rather then leaving it vacant and bare. Art can exist in an empty space and can create an experience of art that goes beyond the dictatorship of the object.


Galeria Luisa Strina
Rua Oscar Freire, 502
01426-00, São Paulo – SP
T: +55 11 3088 2471
info@ galerialuisastrina.com.br
http://www.galerialuisastrina.com.br

Gallery hours: Monday – Friday 10am – 7pm and Saturday 10am – 5pm.