Wednesday 30 September 2009

'POP LIFE' AT TATE MODERN: LESS POP, MORE FIZZ. LIFE IT AIN'T REAL FUNKY UNLESS ITS GOT THAT POP


Jeff Koons staring at his reflection in Rob Pruitt and Jack Early's reinstallation of their 1992 exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery in NY 'Red, Black, Green, Red, White and Blue' which at the time was considered racist and 'ended' Pruitt and Early's early career.



Warhol's wallpaper and silkscreen portraits of David Hockney and Grace Jones


Andy Warhol appearing in an episode of Love Boat


Jeff Koons testicles


Andrea Fraser having sex with a collector


Richard Prince's photo of Brooke Shields, in substitution of Prince's rephotographed and censored photo of Brooke Shields naked when she was a child


Meyer Vaisman's 'In the Vicinity of History', 1988, from Dakis Joannou collection, in the International with Monument/Neo-Geo room


recreation of Keith Haring's 1986 'Pop Shop'


Macho City/Fantastic Man's Charlie Porter djing at the bar

unfortunately (or fortunately!) not in the exhibition:

Matthieu Laurette's 'Andy Warhol's Death Certificate', silkscreen on canvas, 2007


Matthieu Laurette, Tate Away Art: 'David Hockney / Eduardo Paolozzi / Bridget Riley / Andy Warhol Ready to Hang (from the Ideological Shopping series)', 2006, courtesy Berezdivin collection


Matthieu Laurette, 'ART=CAPITAL=SPECTACLE', 2006

The great absence in the exhibition is Matthieu Laurette. If someone has been dealing with the relationship between art, market, celebrity and spectacle in a critical way during this decade it is Laurette, curiously he's not included in the exhibition or in the Tate collection (or Pinault's one!). Maybe this is due to the fact that he's not the boyfriend of one of the curators of the exhibition...

From Tate's Press Release:
"The exhibition is organized by Tate Modern and is co-curated by Jack Bankowsky, Artforum’s Editor at Large, Alison M. Gingeras, Chief Curator of the François Pinault Collection and Catherine Wood, Tate Modern Curator of Contemporary Art and Performance, assisted by Nicholas Cullinan, Curator, International Modern Art, Tate Modern."

Press Release forgot to inform us that Mrs. Gingeras is also girlfriend of artist Piotr Uklanski, also included in the exhibition.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/poplife/

Tuesday 29 September 2009

LONG LIVE LEON. AGUSTIN PEREZ RUBIO APPOINTED NEW DIRECTOR OF MUSAC



Agustín Pérez Rubio named new Director of MUSAC, León (Spain)

The Cultural Council of the government of the autonomous region of Castilla y León, Spain, announced yesterday that Agustín Pérez Rubio has been appointed Director of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC) in León, Spain. Pérez Rubio has been the Acting Director of MUSAC since January 2009 and its Chief Curator since 2003, prior to the inauguration of the museum in 2005. Pérez Rubio succeeds Rafael Doctor, who has led MUSAC since its opening.

The Selection Committee assigned to recommend the new director from among the candidates in an open international competition voted unanimously to appoint Pérez Rubio. The museum's workers and the art community at large have also responded enthusiastically to the nomination.

The appointment of Pérez Rubio emphasises MUSAC’s reputation as an up-to-date, challenging, and socially committed museum, devoted to the art and artists of the present. Pérez Rubio represents not only continuity in the museum’s programs and exhibitions but also growth. It signals a major commitment to ideas and theoretical research, dynamic education programs and cultural action, and a continuous collaboration with other institutions, experimental projects, and artists.

Pérez Rubio says that he “feels deeply honoured to be able to guide this ongoing project as it matures, helping to strengthen and develop its internal and external structures.” He wants the museum to be “a reference point for social, educational, and intellectual work, offering to its diverse audiences an engaging reflection on the artistic and social reality of this time of crisis, and to serve as a tool in connection with the critical role that the museum performs.” He hopes “to make sure that the different agents making up the social fabric feel themselves reflected, providing means for the expression of their own opinions and criticisms through contemporary art”.

AGUSTÍN PÉREZ RUBIO
Agustín Pérez Rubio has been Chief Curator of MUSAC since the inauguration of the museum in 2004, and has recently taken up the position of Acting Director at MUSAC. He has played a decisive role in shaping the trajectory and collection of the museum, and in the development of MUSAC into an internationally acclaimed institution. His knowledge of contemporary art of the last 25 years as well as his dedication and commitment to emergin g artists will be extremely relevant to his new position at MUSAC, as will his interests and ideas concerning the role and responsibilities of museums today. Although always based in Spain, Pérez Rubio has an extensive network of relationships with international art institutions, curators, artists, and scholars.

Born in Valencia in 1972, Pérez Rubio received his degree in Art History from the University of Valencia. He was the general coordinator of La Gallera, an exhibition space of the Comunitat Valenciana, from 1998 to 2002, and director of the Cultural Conferences on the Image for the Comunidad de Madrid from 2002 to 2004. He has curated important exhibitions, including Bad Boys, devoted to Spanish video artists, which took place in the context of the 50th Venice Biennale; Cruising Danubio (curated with Zsolt Petrany), for the Communidad de Madrid; and Tobias Rehberger at the Palacio de Cristal of the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid. But Pérez Rubio has developed his most relevant curatorial work at MUSAC, including acclaimed monographic exhibitions devoted to the works of artists such as Dora Garcia, Muntean & Rosemblum, Julie Mehretu, Sejima + Nishizawa/SANAA, Pierre Huyghe, Dave Muller, Ana Laura Aláez, Hedi Slimane, Terence Koh, and Ugo Rondinone. He has authored over a dozen art books and publications and contributed to various art journals and magazines, including NU. The Nordic Art Review (Sweden), Art Journal (Philadelhia), Tema Celeste (Milan), Le Journal des Arts (Paris), The Art Newspaper (London), and Spanish art publications such as Atlántica, Arte y Parte, Arco Noticias and Kalias.

http://musac.es

Monday 28 September 2009

PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED 2009!


view of the fair



Pablo Internacional Magazine
http://pablointernacionalmagazine.com/


Maria Ines and Pablo at Pablo stand


Florentino, hot visitor to the Pablo's stand



Cibelle and Cassia at Fur magazine
http://www.fur-uk.com/



Karol and Pavel at Dik Fagazine
http://www.dikfagazine.com/



Donald Urquhart's stand


Guerzoy Dogtas' Matt Magazine
http://www.mattmagazine.com/


UK's Anti Culture and Anti Immigration report by the Manifesto Club
http://www.manifestoclub.com/visitingartists


Can Altay's Ahali Journal


Francesco Pedraglio's Mock Quarterly
http://www.themock.co.uk/


Stephen Willats' Control magazine


Publish and Be Damned
Publish and Be Damned are pleased to announce the 6th annual self-publishing fair which will take place at Oxford House in Bethnal Green on Sunday 27 September from 3pm-8pm. Surveying a wide range of independent local, national and international publishers of magazines, fanzines, journals, diaries and periodicals, Publish and Be Damned celebrates publishing as a creative and critical space for presenting artists' work. As with previous years, the fair celebrates experimental approaches to making and distributing the work of artists, writers and musicians outside of the commercial mainstream. In addition we will have room dedicated to performances and talks throughout the afternoon.

This year's fair also marks some new initiatives for Publish and Be Damned. Our recent participation in Subvision in Hamburg as well as the London fair are opportunities for us to collect content for the new publication 'The Damned' which will be distributed to all PABD members. The membership scheme, which has also been implemented this year, enables the creation of a forum or network between members that encourages the exchange of publications and participation in PABD's events throughout the year. The funds received from the membership fees has also allowed us to hire a larger space than in previous years, enabling us to invite more participants as well as help fund the attendance of more international publishers.

Publish and Be Damned is taking place in conjunction with the Whitechapel Artists Bookfair, which will be held from Fri 25 - Sun 27

Participants at Publish and Be Damned 2009 include: 9 to 09 Stone Canyon Nocturne, 20x20, 23 Sticks: From Walden Pond to Hackney Baths, A3, Additions and Place, An Endless Supply, Argo Books, Attention Please: A Manifesto Club Album, Arty and Garageland, Bareface, Bart Wells Institute, Basso, Bedford Press, The Book of the Film, Brighten the Corners, Butch Top Fuck Anywhere, Chroma, Clod, Cluster Art Magazine, The Coelacanth Journal, Control, Copenhagen Free University, Copie de Voyage, Cowards/Carnivores, Dik Fagazine, Diplomacy in Reflex, Drawing on Sand, Duke Press, Eastside Projects, The Eel, An Endless Supply, Eye Lust Magazine, Errore zine, Eva Weinmayr, Hard Mag, IM Projects, Impulsive Random Platform, In Fluence Magazine, Infopool, The Institute of Social Hypocrisy, Institution of Rot Editions, Famicon Express, Fast Women & Slow Horses, Form Content - The Mock and Other Superstitions, Fun, Fur, Furniture Music, Gandt, Gym Class Magazine, Junior Asprin Records, Knights Move, Lubok, Making Do, Marbled Reams, Matt Magazine, Monika, mono.kultur, Monster Emporium Press , Morel Books, Morphica, Motto, Museum Paper, Mute Magazine, Nero, Noisegate, Occasional Papers, Orient Press, Oxid, Pablo Internacional, Paper for Emerging Architectural Research, Pen Pusher Magazine, Pensive Limpet, Performance, Michalis Pilcher, Pink Mince, Pigiarniq, Poppy Books , PowWow, Preston is My Paris, Provence, Provincial Forge, Proximity, Readymade, Salon fur Kunstbuch, Sara MacKillop, Soft, Spare Ribs, Spring Drum Press, Starship Magazine, Succulent L’egume, Supercream, Tough Crowd, Traumnovelle, Under/Current Magazine, (un)limited store, The Unready, Unrealised Projects, Donald Urquhart, Useless, Utterly Mindless Thrills, X Marks the Bökship

http://www.publishandbedamned.org/

Sunday 27 September 2009

CURATOR MARIA INES RODRIGUEZ VISITS LONDON



NO FREE TRADE WITHOUT FREE BORDERS

Curator Maria Ines Rodriguez visits London for the second time in the year. It's important to notice that she couldn't do this before because she is a Colombian national. Only until now, and with her new French passport, can she take the eurostar and cross the Pas-de-Calais.

"entre lo sublime y lo ridiculo, solo hay un paso, el paso de Calais."
(between the sublime and the ridiculous, there's only onle step, the step of Calais) from Sigmund Freud / Obras Completas de Sigmund Freud. Standard Edition. Ordenamiento de James Strachey / Volumen 15 (1915-16). Conferencias de introducción al psicoanálisis (Partes I y II) / Conferencias de introducción al psicoanálisis (1916-17 [1915-17]). / Parte II. El sueño. (1916 [1915-16]

Saturday 26 September 2009

ARTISTS SPACE NY RE-OPENS TODAY WITH STEFAN KALMAR AS NEW DIRECTOR AND EXHIBITION BY MARC CAMILLE CHAIMOWICZ


"Enough Tiranny Recalled, 1972 - 2009"
by Marc Camille Chaimowicz

September 29 - November 14, 2009
Artists Space Reopening September 26, 7 - 9 pm

Afterparty 8 – 1pm at “Biny”
dj lovely Jonjo, London (Durr, George & Dragon, Hot Boys Dancing Spot)
8 Thompson St corner Canal, 4min. walk, food & drink (pay bar)

Artists Space reopens on September 26, 2009 with "Enough Tiranny Recalled, 1972 – 2009," by Marc Camille Chaimowicz, his first institutional exhibition in the United States of America.

During the 1960s, Marc Camille Chaimowicz (born in postwar Paris) was one of the first artists in the UK to merge the realms of performance and installation art. In the early 1970s, Chaimowicz commented on an era predominantly defined by stark minimalism with an unabashed pursuit of the beautiful, establishing an art that was both playful and subtly seductive. Informed by French literary figures (Gide, Cocteau, Proust, and Gênet) as well as contemporary Marxist and early gender theory, Chaimowicz's beautiful and terrorizing post-pop scatter environments owe as much to glam rock, as it was a direct response to the political, and artistic dogmatism of its time.

"Enough Tiranny," conceived in 1972 (the founding year of Artists Space), was a proposal that aimed to bring about new models of collaboration and sociability, attempting to question the alienation between viewer, artist, and institution. Not unlike installations by his contemporaries, such as the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, Chaimowicz's works require a level of participation on behalf of the audience as well as the institution.

In the otherwise monochromatic environment of the early 1970's, Chaimowicz developed an artistic language that responded to the dogmatism of its time by taking both political and emotional dimensions into account. His work speaks to the basic units by which we trade private desires with social hopes: building the texture of a communal existence.

The remembering, the revisiting, and the recalling of works from different periods of Chaimowicz's life is integral to his way of working. "Enough Tiranny Recalled, 1972 -2009" demonstrates that "the future will, in all probability, fold itself into the past to better accommodate itself in the present." (Marc Camille Chaimowicz)

Artists Space is pleased to announce the appointment of Stefan Kalmár as executive director and curator as of June 2009. Over the past two months, the organization has seen rapid and fundamental change on all levels.

Marc Camille Chaimowicz lives and works in London and Burgundy. Recent one person exhibitions include: Vienna Secession (forthcoming); De Appel, Amsterdam; FRAC, Bordaux; Ann Zee, Ostende, Centre D'art Contemporain La Synagogue, Delme; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich, Norwich Gallery. Selected group exhibitions include the 5th Berlin Biennale and the Tate Triennial, London.

Stefan Kalmár (*1970) has held positions as Director of Kunstverein München (2005-2009), Director of Institute of Visual Culture, Cambridge UK (2000-2005), and Curator of Cubitt Gallery, London (1996-1999). He has curated numerous exhibitions, including "The Secret Public, The last days of the British Underground 1978-1988" co-curated with Michael Bracewell and "Oh Girl It is a Boy," co-curated with Henrik Oleson and The Archive of Stephan Willats co-curated with Emily Pethick. He has also worked with numerous artists on a range of projects including: a survey exhibition of the work of Allora & Calzadilla, the exhibition project "Beugung" with Wolfgang Tillmans, and the first European survey exhibitions of Hilary Lloyd and Duncan Campbell. Stefan Kalmár is the editor, together with Daniel Pies, of the forthcoming publication "Be Nice Share Everything Have Fun" (400 p; 4c Walther Koenig), which will discuss the curatorial approach during his directorship in Munich.

Artists Space would like to thank:

Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Cabinet, London

Charles Asprey, Esq., the British Council, and Cultural Services of the French Embassy for supporting this exhibition.

ifau & Jesko Fezer, Berlin & Common Room, NYC for developing the new architecture for Artists Space; Dominique Perret of Up-Rite Construction and his team, for realizing it.

Jonathan Caplan for his valuable advice.

Louise Bourgeois, whose generous contribution made the redesign possible.

Manuel Raeder, Berlin, for the design of Artists Space's new graphic identity.

Ed Halter & Thomas Beard of Light Industry, Brooklyn for working with us on curating the new film program for Artists Space in 2009/10.

Dexter Sinister (Stuart Bailey & David Reinfurt, LA and NYC) for co-organizing a series of seminars, lectures and presentations to take place throughout 2009/10.

Artists Space will be launching the series, "From the Archive of Artists Space", presentation of materials from the institution's 37 year history of over 700 exhibitions, performances, screenings, talks, and other events. The first iteration will feature floor plans from the institution's former locations as well as documentation of an architectural intervention by Michael Asher from 1988; curated by Jess Wilcox

Allora & Calzadilla, Ei Arakawa, Julie Ault, Lutz Bacher, Michael Bracewell, AA Bronson, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Cerith Wyn Evans, Matthew Higgs, Nicholas Mauss, Nils Norman, Ken Okiishi, Primary Information, Yvonne Rainer, Carissa Rodriguez, Jon Savage, Sean Snyder, Emily Sundblad, and Pier Luigi Tazzi for selecting the first titles to the new Artists Space library and bookshop.

Artists Space is funded, in part, by contributions from Louise Bourgeois Trust; Carnegie Corporation of New York; Cowles Charitable Trust; Credit Suisse; Herman Goldman Foundation; The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; The Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland; Luhring Augustine Gallery; Betty Parsons Foundation; Starry Night Fund of Tides Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; and the National Endowment for the Arts.

We thank our Members, Promoters, Benefactors, and Board for supporting Artists Space's program.

http://www.artistsspace.org/

Friday 25 September 2009

CATHERINE DAVID GETS HER EMAIL HACKED

From: Catherine David
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:28:54 +0000
To: Catherine David
Subject: urgent pls

I'm in England, and in need of your urgent assistance. Please send me ($2,000.00) to enable me to complete my activities here. I will reimburse you as soon as I return. Send it through Western Union or Money Gram with this information.
Receiver: Catherine David.
Location: 1 Churchill Place, London E14 5HP, United Kingdom.

With best regards,
Catherine.

-----------------------

Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:13:48 +0000
From: Pablo Leon de la Barra
Subject: Re: urgent pls
To: Catherine David

Dear Catherine,
I'm in London,
Let me know where you are and I'll take you the money with me in cash.
Abrazos
Pablo

Sent from my iPhone

-----------------------

From: Catherine David
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:19:43 +0000
To: pablo leon de la barra
Subject: RE: urgent pls

Pablo,
Please send it through Western Union. I'm urgently in need of it now.
Catherine.

-----------------------

Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:22:19 +0000
From: Pablo Leon de la Barra
Subject: Re: urgent pls
To: Catherine David

Hola Catherine,
Dime donde estas y voy a verte ahora para salvarte!
Abrazo fuerte
Pablo

Sent from my iPhone

-----------------------

From: Catherine David
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:42:03 +0000
To: pablo leon de la barra
Subject: Re : Re: urgent pls

Es un HACKER!
Perdi todos mis mensajes de los 10 ultimos anos

---- Envoyé avec BlackBerry® d'Orange ----

Thursday 24 September 2009

'CHRONOTOPES & DIORAMAS', DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ-FOERSTER AT THE HISPANIC SOCIETY IN NEW YORK





DIA PRESENTS CHRONOTOPES & DIORAMAS, A NEW PROJECT BY DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ-FOERSTER AT THE HISPANIC SOCIETY
Dia’s commission represents the artist’s first major solo exhibition in the United States

New York, NY- Dia Art Foundation is pleased to announce chronotopes & dioramas, a new project by Paris- and Rio de Janeiro based artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. For this site-specific project, the third in a series of contemporary art exhibitions commissioned by Dia for The Hispanic Society of America, Gonzalez-Foerster takes as her point of departure the Hispanic Society’s internationally renowned research library. On view September 23, 2009 through April 18, 2010, and organized by Dia curator at large Lynne Cooke, chronotopes & dioramas is Gonzalez-Foerster’s first major solo exhibition in the United States. There will be an opening reception on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 from 6-8pm.

For this project, Gonzalez-Foerster has chosen to treat a 3,700 square foot gallery located within the former Museum of the American Indian as an “annex” to the Society’s main library. (Recently renovated by Dia, this gallery is located in a traditional Beaux-Arts style building reopened to the public in 2008, after a 14-year closure.) Here, the artist will augment the library’s holdings of contemporary Iberian and Latin American literature with a selection of texts, both well-known and personally significant.

In the center of the gallery space, Gonzalez-Foerster will construct an approximately 40 foot wide, floor to ceiling structure containing three large-scale dioramas. Inspired by traditional natural history museum displays, the dioramas will depict three terrains - the tropics, the desert, and the North Atlantic. Traces of man-made interventions will be evident in each landscape, whose scenes will be rendered by a team of specialists from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Additionally, a variety of quotations and texts will be printed onto the exterior of the dioramas in a panoramic calligram and will be immediately visible upon entering the gallery.

Gonzalez-Foerster’s three topographies will each contain various forms of literature ranging across works by J.G. Ballard, Roberto Bolaño, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Delany, and Clarice Lispector. Books will be sited in the dioramas, like the flora and fauna specimens of natural history habitat displays, as if they were the ‘indigenous inhabitants’ of each terrain.

The “annex” will amplify the Society’s historical holdings with works that span the 20th century, offering narratives of fiction and diaspora that parallel the institution’s geographically based model of collecting.

Publication
chronotopes & dioramas will be accompanied by a softcover book which will explore the installation’s key themes through a selection of scholarly texts and full-color, documentary images. Developed in direct collaboration with Gonzalez-Foerster, the publication will be edited by Ms. Cooke and Karen Kelly, Dia’s director of publications and special programs. Among the contributors will be Spanish novelist and essayist Enrique Vila-Matas who will contribute a new text. Vila-Matas’ most recent book, Bartleby & Co will be incorporated into one of the dioramas.

Funding
Special thanks to the Hispanic Society of America. This program is generously supported by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; New York City Councilmember Robert Jackson; Etant donnés: The French-American Fund for Contemporary Art (a program of FACE); The Kadist Art Foundation; and Erica and Joseph Samuels. Beverages for the opening reception compliments of Brooklyn Brewery.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster was born in 1965 in Strasbourg, France. Among her recent solo exhibitions are projects for The Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London (2008); MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon (2008); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris / ARC, Paris (2007); Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich (2004); and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2002). Her work is currently on view in Making Worlds, The 53rd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, 2009. She also participated in Skulptur Projekte Münster (2007) and Documenta XI, Kassel (2002). She is the recipient of the 2002 Marcel Duchamp Award, Paris, the 1996–97 Mies van der Rohe Award, Krefeld, and the Villa Kujoyama, Kyoto artist residency in 1996-97. In November 2009, she will present in collaboration with composer Ari Benjamin-Meyers a new performance in New York City as part of PERFORMA 09. Gonzalez-Foerster lives and works in Paris and Rio de Janeiro.
http://www.dgf5.com/

The Hispanic Society of America
Founded in 1904, The Hispanic Society of America is dedicated to the presentation and study of Hispanic culture. The collection, which is unparalleled outside of the Iberian Peninsula, provides deep insight into the culture and art of Spain, as well as significant representation from Portugal and Latin America. Since 1908, the Society has been housed on Audubon Terrace, between 155 and 156 Streets in Manhattan, in the Beaux-Arts complex that includes buildings by architects Charles Pratt Huntington, Stanford White, and Cass Gilbert. Comprising both library and museum, the Society has a diverse collection of paintings, decorative arts, books, manuscripts, maps, prints, and photographs dating from the second millennium B.C. through the twentieth century, and is open to the public free of charge. For additional public information, visit www.hispanicsociety.org

Dia Art Foundation
A nonprofit institution founded in 1974, Dia Art Foundation is internationally renowned for initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving art projects. Dia presents public programs and its permanent collection of works from the 1960s through the present at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries. In the fall of 2007 Dia initiated a partnership with The Hispanic Society of America, where Dia presents commissions and projects by contemporary artists within the Society’s galleries while seeking a permanent home for these initiatives in New York City. Additionally, Dia maintains long-term, site-specific projects in the western United States, New York City, and Bridgehampton, Long Island. For additional public information, visit www.diaart.org

Wednesday 23 September 2009

'MODERNOLOGIES' AT MACBA, BARCELONA





Henrik Olesen, 'How do I make myself a body', 2008



Dorit Margreiter, modernist houses in LA for sale



Gordon Matta-Clark, 'Window Blow Out', 1976


Dan Graham and Robin Hurst, 'The Coorporate Atrium Garden', 1987


Angela Ferreira, 'Maison Tropicale', 2007-2009, on Jean Prouve's modular housing for colonial French Africa




Marion Von Osten, 'In the Dessert of Modernity, Colonial Planning and After', 2009, on modernist housing in Morocco


Stephen Willats



Martha Roesler, 'How do we know what home looks like?', 1993


David Maljkovic, 'Retired Form', 2008



Armando Andrade, sculptures from underdevelopment and 'Camion' slide show


Armando Andrade, Caetano Veloso's 'Disco-es-Cultura' esculpture protected by case


Dorit Margreiter, 'Zentrum' font, 2006




Florian Pumhosl, 'Modernology', 2007, display screens and exhibition case



Louise Lawler, art work captions of works belonging to the collections of SMAK, Gent and MoCA, San Diego



Gustav Metzger, 'Auto Destructive Art' manifesto and monument



Mathias Poledna, record covers from the Folkway label



Andrea Fraser, 'Soldadera', 1998/2001 - scenes from Olivier Debroise's 'Un banquete en Tetlapayac' on the filming of Eisenstein's 'Que Viva Mexico', and a copy of a 1931 letter from dealer Frances Paine to Mrs Rockefeller saying 'I'm sure that most Mexican Artists, would cease to be Reds (communists) if we could get them artistic recognition'


exhibition information 'forgotten' by the visitors


more modern than the moderns, Antoni Muntadas and friend


kneeling outside the temple of modernity: Henrik Olesen and Enrique Giner


Modernologies
Contemporary Artists Researching Modernity and Modernism
23 September 2009 until 17 January 2010
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona – MACBA

Curated by Sabine Breitwieser
Artists: Anna Artaker, Alice Creischer/Andreas Siekmann, Domènec, Katja Eydel, Ângela Ferreira, Andrea Fraser, Isa Genzken, Dan Graham and Robin Hurst, Tom Holert with Claudia Honecker, Marine Hugonnier, IRWIN, Runa Islam, Klub Zwei (Simone Bader/Jo Schmeiser), John Knight, Labor k3000 (Peter Spillmann/Michael Vögeli/Marion von Osten), Louise Lawler, David Maljkovic, Dorit Margreiter, Gordon‐Matta Clark, Gustav Metzger, Christian Philipp Müller, Henrik Olesen, Paulina Olowska, Falke Pisano, Mathias Poledna, Florian Pumhösl, Martha Rosler, Armando Andrade Tudela, Marion von Osten, Stephen Willats, Christopher Williams and many others in the activities programme...

What has prompted contemporary artists to investigate modernity and modernism over the course of the past decades? Modernologies sets out to explore artistic responses to modernity as a socio‐political movement aspiring to cultivate a universal language.

This project examines modernity as a promising socio-political movement which, basing itself on industrialization and technology, on the principles of human rights and democracy, on the right to self-determination, on the principle of education for all, on secularisation and Enlightenment philosophy, and above all on the underlying notion of progress and continual development, aspired to form a universal language. Hence, art no longer stood in a direct functional relationship to its former patrons, the Church and the aristocracy, but instead became committed to the ideology of autonomy. The arts were accordingly required to portray modern life not only in adequate forms but also with analogous contents as part of this movement, in order to reflect the utopian potential of modernity but also the destructive and regressive sides of revolution and upheaval. Modernism attempted to illustrate the experiences and ramifications of modernity in artistic forms – and in undertaking this project it was almost post-modern.

Such promises of a better and more beautiful world are juxtaposed with considerations problematizing the notion and category of modernity, defining a fundamental critique on its rhetoric and conditions. Western imperial projects, and especially the colonial expansion, had modernity not as a precondition but as constituent part of their essence according to Walter Mignolo forming its “hidden, darker side” of this “European narrative”. Jacques Rancière claims an “aesthetic regime of art” whose prevailing “indifference” goes back to the democratic principle of a radical demand for equality. Assertions come from Bruno Latour according to which we “have never been modern” because the strict dichotomy in the modern between nature and society was never surmounted.

It is evident that modernity is a popular topos for analyses and reflections of a largely controversial nature. Numerous theories have also been written about the beginning as well as the end of modernity, marking a radical change in all spheres of life. While early formulations of “modern life” can be recognised in Romanticism, primarily in its literature, it is the French Revolution and the first open display of a painting on the occasion of the public viewing of Marat’s murdered body in Paris that are considered as decisive events in the development of modernity in political as well as aesthetic contexts (T.J. Clark). The emergence of the totalitarian regimes in Europe, especially Germany under National Socialism and the Holocaust, mark the decline of the modern individually and societally as well as politically. The architecture theorist Charles Jencks established a date for the “death of modern architecture” at 3:32 p.m. on 15 July 1972, exact to the minute. At this moment the Pruitt-Igoe apartment buildings in St. Louis were being demolished; the expiration of the modern was thereby conceded so to speak, making literal room for “the language of post-modernity”. The non-synchrony and distinctions of the definition of the notion of modernity in terms of the modern era, of style, of society, as model of production in connection with what we have learned from the postcolonial studies lead us to agree to speak about “many modernities” since the last years.

In light of the return of reactionary thinking in society and politics, a renewed functionalization of art by the market strategists of global corporations which relegate economically disadvantaged countries to a pre-modern situation through their economic imperialism, and also the all-commanding role played by the art market today, it seems to be no accident that a younger generation of artists is dealing increasingly with the legacy and the promises of modernity and modernism, indeed with the failure of utopia and searching for possible actualizations, in its works.

The aim of the Modernologies exhibition is to achieve an account of the state of artistic research and to discuss selected contributions to the subject matter that appear central after two to three decades of an ever intensely blazing conflict about the legacy of modernity and modernism as regards form and content, and the (to some extent) solid criticism of this category and the contents that are linked to it. To this effect the project advocates neither a “new formalism” nor a “return to abstraction”. Neither is the focus per se on revealing “unknown modernisms” in countries whose protagonists have been assigned more marginalised roles in relation to this subject matter up to now; it is much more about a fundamental attack that challenges the conditions and constraints of modernity and modernism and will reveal new readings. What is the artists’ relationship to the promises and forms of modernity, and how can this historical era be reflected in artworks in a critical way or even undergo a re-evaluation? At the same time, the ambivalent situation of this exhibition, which paradoxically deals with a project that is associated more than almost any other with its failure, should not go unmentioned.

A publication of the same name is being released at the exhibition with numerous images and texts by Sabine Breitwieser, Cornelia Klinger and Walter Mignolo as well as the artists that will also be given voice through short interviews conducted by Sabine Breitwieser and Andrè Rottmann.

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