For Immediate Release: Robin Rhode: Catch Air at the Walker Center for the Arts

Robin Rhode
Catch Air, 2003
12 C-prints face-mounted with Plexiglas on aluminum panels
10 1/4 x 13 1/2 inches (26.04 x 34.29 cm) each panel


For Immediate Release

WEXNER CENTER FOR THE ARTS
ROBIN RHODE: CATCH AIR

April 2, 2009 – July 26, 2009
Opening Reception, Wednesday, April 1, 2009, 6:00 – 8:00 PM

Columbus, OH — Catch Air: Robin Rhode, organized by the Wexner Center and on view there April 2, 2009 – July 26, 2009, will be the South African artist's first substantial solo exhibition in the United States. The show will chart his development with about 20 key works from 1998 to the present. Rhode has developed a unique process that conflates two - and three-dimensional space with a combination of drawing, performance, photography, and film.

Comprised of three components, the exhibition will feature, in the main gallery space, a survey of his multi-panel photographic storyboards, animations, and films, as well as the U.S. premiere of the sculptural work Impis (2008), a lineup of riot police helmets, cast in glass with mirrored visors that confront the viewer at eye level. The second component will be a site-specific installation in the Wexner Center's lower lobby that will integrate actual objects with a life-sized drawing. The third and final component, visible only from outside, will be a projection of one of Rhode's performances onto a window adjacent to the entrance of the Wexner Center, literally bringing his work to the street.

In the form of deceptively playful narrative vignettes, Rhode considers a range of interrelated topics such as the history of segregation and racial discrimination in apartheid South Africa, urban poverty, and violence, as well as contemporary popular culture and media stereotypes. At the same time, he addresses modernist concerns with abstraction and illusionism, which have become more pronounced in recent years. Many of his vignettes visualize desire, which is made palpable by the inaccessibility of the drawn object (e.g., a bicycle, a car, or athletic prowess). When the drawing disintegrates into abstract form, or accumulates through repetition into enormous environments, the results can be startling.

Catharina Manchanda, senior curator at the Wexner Center who is organizing this exhibition, says, "Rhode's work complicates established assumptions about the art object and the artist as a subject. After seeing his work, you might not look at a Picasso, Magritte, or Duchamp in quite the same way as before. At the same time, you might read postcolonial theory somewhat differently."

Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin notes, "Robin Rhode has emerged in recent years as a compelling and wholly original talent who manages to meld the tropes of cinematic storyboarding and animation, street performance, and photography with a remarkably fluid drawing talent, informed by his personal experience of South Africa pre- and post-apartheid. We are honored to present his first solo exhibition at a U.S. museum."

An illustrated catalogue will accompany this show, featuring essays by Catharina Manchanda and Claire Tancons, and an interview with Rhode.

Born in South Africa in 1976, Rhode currently lives and works in Berlin. In addition to the solo exhibition at the Wexner Center, he is working on a stage set for a performance by pianist Leif Ove Andsnes for "Pictures Reframed" which will debut at the Lincoln Center in New York as part of their "New Visions" series in November 2009.

ROBIN RHODE: HYBRID SPACES
Thursday, April 2 | 4:30 PM
Wexner Center Film/Video Theater – Free
Robin Rhode will discuss his work with Hamza Walker, director of education and associate curator at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago; Claire Tancons, an independent curator who has been following Rhode's work closely since 2003 (and an essayist for the Rhode catalogue); and the Wexner Center's Catharina Manchanda, curator of the exhibition.

EXHIBITION SUPPORT
This exhibition was organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts.
Major support is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Accommodations are provided by The Blackwell Inn.
All exhibitions and related events also receive support from Corporate Annual Fund of the Wexner Center Foundation and Wexner Center members, as well as The Columbus Foundation, Nationwide Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council.

VISITOR INFORMATION
Robin Rhode: Catch Air is on view April 2 – July 26, 2009 at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 1871 N. High St. (at 15th Ave.) on the campus of The Ohio State University. Also on view during that time is William Forsythe: Transfigurations and COOP HIMMELB(L)AU: Beyond the Blue. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Wednesday and Sunday 11 am – 6 pm; Thursday–Saturday 11 am – 8 pm; closed Mondays. Walk-in Tours are held Thursdays at 5 and Saturdays at 1 (starting April 4). The opening party will be held Wednesday, April 1 from 5 to 8 pm. Admission to the galleries is $5; free for college students & 18 and under, and members; free Thursdays from 4 to 8 pm and the first Sunday of the month. More info: www.wexarts.org or 614.292.3535.

MEDIA CONTACTS
Karen Simonian at ksimonian@wexarts.org or 614.292.9923
Tim Fulton at tfulton@wexarts.org or 614.688.3261

Perry Rubenstein Gallery
527 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011
T 212.627.8000
F 212.627.6336
info@perryrubenstein.com
www.perryrubenstein.com

SOURCE: PRG

Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal FIRST FRIDAY: 04.03.09

This Montréal band could have written the original sound track for the movie version of your life. In Technicolor, with beautifully framed shots. Road movie atmosphere, of course. With a time for everything: close-ups, long shots, cutaway shots, love scenes, car chases and fight scenes, psychological tension, murderous looks, shot, reverse shot, cut.

Pawa Up First’s stage performance is accompanied by video projections in which the unfolding images seem to conjure up familiar faces, forgotten feelings, long-lost places and seasons past. In short, you’ll get a taste of movie music put through the blender with other ingredients that add a jazz, rock, hip hop and dub flavour. About to release its third album, PUF will introduce its latest compositions at the next Friday Nocturne.


The Musée’s capacity for the Nocturnes events is limited. The first to arrive will be admitted into the performance space; those arriving later in the evening will have the possibility of watching the show via video as well as visiting all the Musée’s exhibitions in an exclusive, nocturnal atmosphere.

Staff will be available in the exhibition spaces to answer questions.

No reservation is required.

First come, first served!

Admission with either regular Musée ticket or our new $10 Wired card.


Nocturnes Schedule:

5 pm to 9 pm: access to the Musée’s exhibitions featuring ambient sound track and bar service with original drinks concocted by Mixoart & Fluid Flair (cash only).

7 pm to 8 pm: musical performance in the Beverly Webster Rolph Hall, relayed by video to a screen outside the performance space.

www.mcam.org

PARIS HILTON: FANTASY AND SIMULACRUM BY IKÉ UDÉ

Since 2002, the Norwegian public has been familiar with IKé UDé’s work, when the artist participated in the group exhibition “A Doll’s House”, that involved a modern interpretation of Ibsen’s play. Yet the event “Paris Hilton: Fantasy and Simulacrum”, that recently opened at Oslo’s Stenersen Museum, will finally allow Oslo’s contemporary art fans to admire UDé’s first solo event.

The exhibition - that was first launched last year at New York’s Stux Gallery - is a sort of conversation between the artist’s alter ego, Visconti, and Paris Hilton. The result is a unique visual dialogue about popular culture and the construction of the Paris Hilton phenomenon, carried out through elaborate mixed media works. Provocative materials from gossip blogs, porn sites, wallpaper samples, photocopies, mirrors, film and fashion and lifestyle magazines, clash and combine with UDé’s fantasy and sense of humour providing a fresh perspective on a celebrity most people think they already know and forcing the visitor to question issues of fame and the aesthetics of cultural decay. “The result is pure magic,” Selene Wendt from the Stenersen Museum says, “whether or not one likes or admires Paris Hilton, she is truly fascinating from a sociological perspective. IKé’s intellectual and artistic investigation of Paris Hilton is as relevant and interesting today as Andy Warhol’s approach to the stars of his time. Those who understand the subtleties of the artist’s approach will be open to the infinite layers of meaning embedded in the work, including questions surrounding popular culture and the intricacies of who achieves stardom and why within our society.”

IKé UDé was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and moved to the States in the 1980s. The founder of the quarterly aRUDE Magazine, he is also the author of the impressive volume Style File: The World’s Most Elegantly Dressed published by Harper Collins, a compendium of the “Style File” and “Elements of Style” sections originally published in aRUDE. The book features over 50 interviews with pioneer stylemakers, such as John Galliano, André Leon Talley, Stephen Jones, Iris Apfel, Christian Louboutin and Dita Von Teese.

To read the rest of the article, click HERE.

SOURCE:DD

Lenny Kravitz=Photog?

These are some of the photographs that are featured in the upcoming Russian Vogue shot by international rockstar Lenny Kravitz. Do I smell a coffee table book in the future? If so, Lenny, I expect to see one asap!

P.S., the shot of Zoe is angelic!

Helen Levitt, New York City's Visual Poet Laureate, Has Died at the Age of 95

Helen Levitt, one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, who documented the drama of daily life on the streets of her native New York for over seven decades, died in her sleep at her home in Manhattan on Sunday, March 29. She was 95.

Miss Levitt had her first solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1943. Her photographs have since appeared in Edward Steichen's landmark 1955 show The Family of Man and in more recent exhibitions of great importance, including MoMA's Photography Until Now and the National Gallery of Art's On the Art of Fixing a Shadow in Washington, D.C., both celebrating the invention of photography. She has been the subject of retrospective exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the International Center of Photography, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

From the 1930s through the 1990s, Miss Levitt permitted the publication of only a few books of her photography, but beginning in 2001, she allowed powerHouse Books to publish four volumes of her work to great acclaim: Crosstown (2001); Here and There (2004); Slide Show (2005); and Helen Levitt (2008).

Miss Levitt's incomparable oeuvre includes seven decades of New York City street photography in black-and-white, as well as little-known color work showcased for the first time in Slide Show. Like Lartigue, Kertész, and Cartier-Bresson, Miss Levitt wielded her camera as a seamless extension of her eye, able to capture fleeting moments of life with unsurpassed lyricism and style. As Adam Gopnik remarked in his 2001 New Yorker feature on the artist, "Levitt's photographs, like her city, though occasionally they rise to beauty, are mostly too quick for it. Instead, they have the quality of frozen street-corner conversation: she went out, saw something wonderful, came home to tell you all about it, and then, frustrated said, 'You had to be there,' and you realize, looking at the picture, that you were."

John Szarkowski, former director of the photography department at The Museum of Modern Art, once observed, "At the peak of Helen's form, there was no one better."

SOURCE: PH

Lawrence B. Salander ~ NYC Art Gallery Owner ~ Painted As A Thief

NEW YORK (AP) - The owner of a now-closed Manhattan art gallery with a star-studded clientele was painted as a thief who stole $88 million from art owners, a bank and investors, including tennis great John McEnroe. Lawrence B. Salander used the money to try to corner the Renaissance art market and to support an extravagant lifestyle that included private jet travel, a lavish party for his wife at New York's Frick Collection museum, and the purchase and maintenance of his Manhattan town house and a 66-acre estate, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said.

Morgenthau said Salander defrauded a total of 26 victims in two primary ways:

In one, he sold artwork not owned by him and kept the money. The district attorney said Salander sometimes sold a piece of art owned by someone else several times.

"Why sell it just once when you can sell it three times?" Morgenthau said.

In the other, Morgenthau said, Salander lured investors into bogus or nonexistent "ghost" investment opportunities. He said this was the scheme Salander used to bilk McEnroe out of more than $2 million.

Morgenthau announced Thursday that a 100-count indictment names Salander and his Salander-O'Reilly Galleries LLC on charges that include grand larceny, securities fraud and forgery. Salander was arrested Thursday morning at his home in Millbrook, N.Y. He was arraigned in Manhattan's state Supreme Court and held on $1 million bail. Justice Michael Obus set April 8 as his next court date. Salander faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted of first-degree grand larceny.

Defense attorney Charles Ross said he expected Salander to make bail and be released by Friday. He said his client "pleaded not guilty to every charge and we're going to vigorously defend against every allegation in court." Slander has posted the $1 million bail bond, and has been released awaiting his next court date.

Prosecutor Micki Shulman said during arraignment that the investigation is continuing and that Salander's thefts could eventually total $100 million.

The gallery, established in 1976, had advertised works by artists ranging from 19th century master Gustave Courbet to Armenian-born American abstract expressionist Arshile Gorky to Robert De Niro Sr., the actor's late father. The criminal investigation began in October 2007 after allegations arose that the gallery was stealing its wealthy clients' art and money. Soon afterward, a state judge in Manhattan halted sales and ordered the gallery's contents seized.

That order left art owners and their lawyers clamoring for pieces that are still being held. Prosecutors said Thursday that 4,000 works from the gallery are in the custody of federal bankruptcy authorities in Poughkeepsie.The crimes charged in the indictment occurred between July 1994 and November 2007, Morgenthau said.

Shulman told Justice Michael Obus that in late 2006 into 2007, even as Salander's clients begged for their art and money, he was buying his wife $500,000 worth of jewelry, paying $150,000 for a family trip by private jet to Europe, and paying $67,000 for a family trip by private jet to California.

Morgenthau said the biggest loss was suffered by Renaissance Art Investors which paid Salander $42 million for 328 Renaissance period art works. He said the next biggest loss of $6.7 million was sustained by Earl Davis, son of artist Stuart Davis, whose 96 paintings were consigned to Salander for sale.

In McEnroe's case, Salander sold the tennis star a half-interest in an Arshile Gorky painting and said they would split profits when the painting was sold to someone else, Shulman said. McEnroe later learned the painting was on someone's wall, but Salander had not reported the sale or any profits to him, Shulman said. When McEnroe confronted Salander, the gallery owner gave him a half interest in another Gorky painting. McEnroe lost that painting after he gave it to Christies for an exhibit and the auction house refused to return it, Shulman said. She said officials there told him someone else had claimed the painting and put a lien on it.

McEnroe does not currently have a civil lawsuit pending against Salander, according to his lawyer, Philip R. Schatz. Of Salander's indictment, Schatz said, "I'm really not surprised."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. . By SAMUEL MAULL

Luke Murphy: Certainty Shelter

Luke Murphy
Certainty Shelter
April 2- May 3, 2009
Opening Reception: April 2, 6-9pm

We are proud to announce Luke Murphy's third solo show at CANADA. In one room with three large digital projections, a central pedestal holds three Geiger counters with their probes pointed at what appears, at first glance, to be an innocuous glass vase. That vessel however is made of Vaseline glass, also known as uranium glass, which glows with UV fluorescence. The glaze used on Vaseline glass is a mild beta emitter that naturally decays and releases fast-moving electrons and positrons. Each of the three Geiger Counters detect the charged particles and sends a unique signal to a computer, which responds by generating the speed, color, placement, and transitions in the three projections. Unlike work that uses random number sequences, which are not 100% random, Murphy harnesses uranium’s decay to create “perfect randomness”. The use of randomness, the aleatory (from the Latin to roll dice), and chance elements or sources has a long history in art. From the Lascaux cave drawin!! gs where the forms of the animals seem to result from the rock formations to Alexander Cozens and his “New Method” of random blots to Strindberg, the Surrealists, Duchamp and Cage, the relation of the artist to the random has moved from suggestion and inspiration to a kind of anti-esthetic. Murphy believes there are roughly three models of randomness as part of the artistic process: suggestion, inspiration, and subversion. Common to all however is that the random is a strategy to circumvent our normal controls and frames of reference. It is a cipher for nature itself both as a generative and as a destructive force, in other words, the sublime.

“The time between ticks of the Geiger counter is the wholly unknown that makes up the fabric of the universe. It is the emptiness and unknowability of the machine. The computer translates that sublime unpredictability into a new sublime of information by taking the truly random intervals and making them true random numbers. Confronting the fact that no tick interval can be predicted is like accepting the reality of a vacuum. It exposed the limits of language and imagination.”

CANADA
55 Chrystie Street
NY, NY 10002
212 925 4631

ART WORD OF THE DAY: CONSTRUCTIVISM

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural movement that originated in Russia from 1919 onward which rejected the idea of "art for art's sake" in favour of art as a practice directed towards social purposes. Constructivism as an active force lasted until around 1934, having a great deal of effect on developments in the art of the Weimar Republic and elsewhere, before being replaced by Socialist Realism. Its motifs have sporadically recurred in other art movements since.

Artists Associated with Constructivism:

* Ella Bergmann-Michel - (1896-1971)
* Max Bill, painter, sculptor and designer (1908-1994)
* Ilya Bolotowsky , painter and sculptor (1907-1981)
* Norman Carlberg, sculptor (1928 - )
* Carlos Catasse - (1944-Present)
* Srečko Kosovel - (1904-1926), Slovenian poet
* Theo Constanté - (1934-Present)
* Avgust Černigoj - (1898-1985)
* Burgoyne A. Diller - (1906 - 1965)
* Sergei Eisenstein- filmmaker (1898-1948)
* John Ernest - (1922-1994)
* Günter Fruhtrunk - (1923-1982)
* Naum Gabo - (1890-1977)
* Moisei Ginzburg, architect (1892-1946)
* Don Gummer - sculptor (1946-)
* Erwin Hauer - (1926- )
* Gustav Klutsis - (1895-1938)
* El Lissitzky - (1890-1941)
* Ivan Leonidov - architect (1902-1959)
* Verena Loewensberg - painter (1912-1986)
* Marcelle Cahn - painter (1895-1981)
* Richard Paul Lohse - painter and designer (1902-1988)
* Peter Lowe - (1938-)
* Louis Lozowick - (1892-1973)
* Camille Graeser - (1882-1980)
* Berthold Lubetkin - architect (1901-1990)
* Estuardo Maldonado - (1930-Present)
* Kenneth Martin - (1905-1984)
* Mary Martin - (1907 - 1969)
* Vsevolod Meyerhold - theatre director (1874-1940)
* Vladimir Mayakovsky - poet, painter, designer and playwright (1893-1930)
* Konstantin Melnikov - architect (1890-1974)
* Vadim Meller - (1884-1962)
* John McHale - (1922-1978)
* Josef Müller-Brockmann - graphic designer (1914-1996)
* Tomoyoshi Murayama - (1901-1977)
* Victor Pasmore - (1908-1998)
* Antoine Pevsner - (1886-1962)
* Lyubov Popova - (1889-1924)
* Aleksandr Rodchenko - (1891-1956)
* Oskar Schlemmer - (1888-1943)
* Kurt Schwitters - (1887-1948)
* Manuel Rendón Seminario - (1894-1982)
* Vladimir Shukhov - architect (1853-1939)
* Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg - poster designers and sculptors (1900-1933, 1899-1982)
* Varvara Stepanova - (1894-1958)
* Enrique Tábara - (1930-Present)
* Vladimir Tatlin - (1885-1953)
* Joaquin Torres Garcia - (1874-1949)
* Vasiliy Yermilov - (1894-1967)
* Thomas Ring - (1892-1983)
* Dziga Vertov - filmmaker (1896-1954)
* Alexander Vesnin - architect, painter and designer (1883-1957)
* Aníbal Villacís - (1927-Present)
* Oswaldo Viteri - (1931-Present)

SOURCE: Wikipedia

Artist of the Day: WILLI BAUMEISTER/"Mortaruru with Red Overhead"

Large egg-shaped blots of colour appear on the surface of this picture. Their relationship to each other - both formalistically and colouristically - is unclear, creating a disjointed feeling of tension and uneasiness. The small appendages are connected to the parent blocks with delicate, fragile lines that make them seem like mathematically induced organic growths.

Baumeister's early works were influenced by Fernand Leger and others, but he went on to develop a personal form of expression that has been termed 'abstract Surrealism'. He was pretty much concerned with the philosophy of art, believing that freely imagined forms could provide images relationg to the deepest, primitive roots of humanity - ideas which he set out in his 1947 book Das Unbekannte in der Kunst ('The Unknown in Art'). His paintings are not entirely subjectless, but are intended as representation of 'other' realities.

SOURCE: The Art Book

Takashi Murakami "inochi" Exhibition Preview

Based upon the 2002 movie by Shinohara Tetsuo, inochi, Murakami created five different dolls for the exhibition which opens on Friday, April 3, 2009 at the Kaikai KiKi Gallery.

Faculty Opening at Parsons The New School for Design, NY

Parsons Launches Search for Director and Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center

Position also serves as an Assistant Professor of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons


Parsons The New School for Design has announced that it is launching a search for a Director and Chief Curator to oversee exhibitions and public programs of the new Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and other venues on and off-campus. The director will also serve as an assistant professor in the School of Art and Design History and Theory.

Working with a full time staff of two and an advisory committee comprised of other Parsons faculty representatives and members of The New School staff, the director will be responsible for creating a dynamic, diverse and socially relevant schedule of exhibitions and public programs that integrate into the progressive academic culture that distinguishes Parsons from other academic institutions. Aiming to raise Parsons' visibility within the local, national, and international art and design communities, the director will work closely with members of Parsons academic community to envision exhibitions that serve as a platform for further intellectual and creative engagement with Parsons' core values, (i.e., a commitment to sustainability, urbanism, diversity, globalism, and art and design as agents for social change). Activities might include developing specific curricular links to courses offered across Parsons and The New School, cross-disciplinary conferences and lecture serie s, publications that use the exhibition as a starting point for deeper thematic investigations, etc.

The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School for Design combines learning and public program spaces with exhibition galleries to provide a dynamic presence for the university at the highly trafficked intersection of Fifth Avenue and 13th Street in Greenwich Village: an important new downtown destination for art and design programming. For information, visit:
http://www.newschool.edu/johnsondesigncenter

For a complete job description and to apply online please visit:
www.careers.newschool.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=51481

A letter of application relating experience and interests to the opportunities and requirements of the position together with Curriculum Vitae should be submitted online. It is required that you complete this online application form to be forwarded in the search process. Review of applications will begin immediately. The position will remain open until filled.

Application Deadline: April 10, 2009

Interviews begin: Spring 2009

Position Start Date: Spring/Summer 2009

Salary: Competitive

Parsons The New School for Design is committed to maintaining a diverse educational and creative community, a policy of equal opportunity in all its activities and programs, including employment and promotion. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, citizenship status, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, physical handicap, veteran or marital status.

RENTAL " The Happy Lion Marina Kappos: POLITICUS," March 28 - April 26

RENTAL presents The Happy Lion

Marina Kappos: Politicus

March 28 – April 26, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 28, 6-9 pm


RENTAL
120 EAST BROADWAY, 6TH FL NY NY 10002 T.212.608.6002
INFO@RENTAL-GALLERY.COM WWW.RENTAL-GALLERY.COM

Friday FLICK!

Enjoy your weekend!

Real Talk: 03.26.09

People were more interested in the phenomena than the art itself. This, combined with the growing interest in collecting art as an investment and the resultant boom in the art market, made it a difficult time for a young artist to remain sincere without becoming cynical. (during the 80s art boom).
:::Keith Haring:::

The Mississippi Museum of Art shows the French Master ~ Raoul Dufy

JACKSON, MS.- The Mississippi Museum of Art is further defining its role as both a conceptual arts venue and a key contributor to Mississippi’s economic development efforts with an astonishing exhibition of the varied and remarkable accomplishments of French master Raoul Dufy. Visitors to Raoul Dufy: A Celebration of Beauty through July 5, 2009, will see the extraordinary influence of the creative spirit as approachable, accessible, and inspiring.

Rendered by Dufy, these imaginative fabric designs were used by the leading dress designer of the day, Paul Poiret, to create dramatic capes, coats and dresses that galvanized the French fashion world of the early 20th century. Original gowns using Dufy fabrics and designed by French couturiers such as Mongi Guibane and Christian LaCroix will be featured and include garments inspired by some of Poiret’s creations.

His life’s work included remarkable achievements in both fine and applied art. During the years from roughly 1900 to his death in 1953, he created several thousand paintings, wood engravings, lithographs, etchings, watercolors and drawings, and illustrated some 50 literary works. He rendered more than 200 ceramic pieces, almost 50 tapestries and about 5000 fabric designs. His stage sets, murals and monumental decorations are still lauded among the most important of his time.

Visit The Mississippi Museum of Art at : http://www.msmuseumart.org/

SOURCE: AKN

"AVANT CAR GUARD"/WHATIFTHEWORLD/GALLERY/ 26MARCH09

VOLUME III
OPENING: THURSDAY 26 MARCH 18H30
CLOSES 25 APRIL 2009


AVANT CAR GUARD are a Johannesburg-based three member visual art collective, exhibiting and authoring as a singular artist. They are comprised of Zander Blom, Jan-Henri Booyens and Michael MacGarry, all individual artists in their own right. They have produced two publications on their work, titled Volume I and Volume II, and have exhibited at a national and international level for several years. Their production is based on a conceptual, self-reflexive and satirical approach to the art world – it's markets, practitioners and the process of creating itself, with production manifest across multidisciplinary means; through photography, sculpture, performance, multiples, installation and painting. This solo exhibition will be accompanied by the launch of their new monograph titled Volume III, More info >

WHATIFTHEWORLD / GALLERY
First Floor, 208 Albert Rd.
Woodstock 7925
Cape Town, South Africa
Viewing Hours:
Tues - Fri 10.00 - 16.30 / Sat 10.00 - 15.00
Closed Sunday + Monday

T: +27 (21) 448 1438
M: +27 84 414 4554
E: info@whatiftheworld.com

Architects reveal plans to redesign Paris

Today, French president Nicolas Sarkozy will receive the ten architects selected to create Le Grand Paris. Richard Rogers is one of them. Earlier this week, they each gave a 30-minute presentation of their visions (see it here). The task is herculean, the mission quasi-impossible, but the challenge absolutely irresistible for any ambitious architect.

For he or she knows that, as Paul Goldberger writes in the New York Times, "politics and architecture have always been inseparable in this city". And that "Parisians, with their long and deep commitment to the idea that the city is in the most profound sense a public place, feel that Paris is very much their own possession."

The most visited city in the world, here is a capital whose great talent has been to interweave the grandeur of its official buildings with the everyday charm of its many quartiers. Or as ex-Parisian and writer Adam Gopnik puts it in his book Paris to the Moon: "Paris marries both the voluptuous and the restricted. It is not the yeses but the noes of Paris, not the licences it offers love but the prohibitions it puts in its way that make it powerful. "

The challenge however is not to reshape Paris, but rather to extend its inherent beauty to its outskirts, les banlieues – a web of small villages, some terribly grand and chic (Neuilly, Versailles, Saint Mandé, Vincennes, Saint Germain-en-Laye), others modest and provincial-looking (Montreuil, Pantin, Malakoff, Montrouge, Saint Gervais) and others still, socially ravaged and architecturally dehumanised (La Courneuve, Clichy-sous-bois). And also to link them. But how do you bring together so many different styles and the city's "enormous disparity", as Richard Rogers calls it, into one Grand Paris – especially when the city is so clearly defined geographically by its gates, shadows of former fortifications, and now le périphérique, the circular road encasing Paris? The simple answer is: by being bold. But also by understanding the fabric of French society and its psyche.

The different sketches and 3D renditions of the ten projects make audacious and compelling viewing (see them here). Antoine Grumbach proposes to build the Greater Paris along the Seine right up to the harbour of Le Havre. He may have taken inspiration from Napoleon who once said: "Paris-Rouen-Le Havre: one single city with the Seine as its main road." Water is also an idea the Italians Bernardo Secchi and Paola Vigano have developed: their Paris is laid out as a "sponge" in which waterways are the new motorways. Christophe de Portzamparc proposes to build four "archipelagoes" and create the biggest European rail station in the north suburb of Aubervilliers. Yves Lion offers the vision of a Paris engulfed in forests and fields where every citizen would cultivate their own vegetable patch. Richard Rogers offers to cover up railway lines that dissect the city by placing huge green spaces and networks above them. In the most brutalist, Le Corbusier-esque project, the Dutch practice MVRDV imagines a tower-block in place of the Sorbonne and motorways cutting through the heart of Paris.

As a Parisian born and bred, I thought the most convincing presentation came from Parisian architect and sometime presidential candidate Roland Castro. He seems the only one to really understand the Parisian mentality, the importance of architecture and politics, grandeur and charm, poetry and citizenship. He not only suggests moving the Elysée Palace to the tough north-eastern suburbs, but also proposes to create new cultural landmarks and governmental buildings, together with a New York-style Central Park on the grim housing project of La Courneuve. The idea is to inject grandeur (as conveyed by the cultural and official institutions) and if possible, beauty, to Paris's many environs.

SOURCE: Guardian UK

'I AM BECAUSE WE ARE"/The powerhouse Arena

I Am Because We Are

Photographs by Kristen Ashburn
Foreword by Madonna

Preview the film at

www.iambecauseweare.com

Exhibition: March 27-April 27, 2009
The powerHouse Arena
37 Main Street, Brooklyn

For more information please call (718) 666-3049

For more information about the book visit: www.iambecausewearebook.com

I Am Because We Are is the companion volume to the acclaimed forthcoming documentary film directed by Nathan Rissman and written and produced by Madonna. This book of images by award-winning photojournalist Kristen Ashburn—culled from her work in Malawi and Africa over the past seven years as well as from her specially commissioned photographs for the film—provides an intimate look at the lives of eight Malawian children featured in the film and reveals the harsh reality of the AIDS pandemic throughout southern Africa.

The title is derived from the concept of “Ubuntu,” an idea in African spirituality that states that all of humanity is connected, that we cannot be ourselves without community, that an individual’s well-being is dependent upon the well-being of others.

These heart-wrenching stories are a call to action. In Malawi, a country of 13 million people, over one million are orphans. Looking into the hearts and minds of children who have endured unimaginable suffering, the book provides an unflinching view of life at the center of the global AIDS crisis. This is not just a story about orphans in Malawi, but about global responsibility and human interconnectedness.

I Am Because We Are includes a foreword by Madonna, an afterword by Ashburn, excerpts from interviews with Malawian children, their biographies, and extended captions. Author proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to the charitable organization Raising Malawi for their extensive work with orphans throughout Malawi.

Kristen Ashburn’s photographs and stories from the Middle East, Europe, and Africa have appeared in many publications worldwide. Her accolades include a 2007 Emmy Award nomination, two World Press Photo prizes, a Getty Foundation grant in 2006, Canon’s Female Photojournalist Award in 2004, and other honors. She began photographing the impact of AIDS in southern Africa in 2001, and since then has also produced stories on the war in Iraq, Jewish settlers and suicide bombers in Israel’s occupied territories, and the aftermath of the tsunami in Sri Lanka and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. In addition to her humanitarian photography, Ashburn is one of the directors of Through the Eyes of Children: The Rwanda Project, a charity that teaches photography to Rwandan orphans of the 1994 genocide and supports them through the sale of their images. Ashburn lives in New York City and is represented by Contact Press Images.

Preview the film at: www.iambecauseweare.com

Check out the I Am Because We Are Book website

McGee, Templeton, Pettibon At Circleculture Gallery Curated By Aaron Rose

BARRY McGEE / ED TEMPLETON / RAYMOND PETTIBON
Group Exhibition curated by Aaron Rose

OPENING: 9TH APRIL 2009, 7 PM
EXHIBITION: 10TH APRIL TO 30TH MAY 2009
TUESDAY TO SATURDAY, 2 PM – 6 PM

Circleculture Gallery
Gipsstrasse 11
10119 Berlin Mitte
www.circleculture-gallery.com

To view more images, click here.

SOURCE: HS

Sagmeister x Levi's 501 Art installation for American Rag

Seen exclusively at retailer American Rag and their locations in Los Angeles and Levi's home-base San Francisco, Sagmeister has created an exhibit following in the footsteps of partnerships with Shepard Fairey and Damien Hirst. The premise of the exhibition: the deconstruction of the jeans represents the same DNA that goes into every pair of 501s.

COMPLEX SIMPLICITY: Chris Milk/Kanye West for COMPLEX Magazine

Slated for a April 17th release date, check out a preview by clicking here.

Portfolio: REVELATION

Inspired by the gospel of the Book of Revelation, Fuse Gallery is featuring 20 pieces as part of a group installation. Erik Foss, who was raised a strict Catholic, curates this mix of artists to recreate the "darkest story in God's creation." For more information on this exhibition, go to fusegallerynyc.com.

SOURCE: Paper Magazine