Archive: Issue No. 126, February 2008

EUROPE

10.02.08 Mustafa Maluka at Galerie Mikael Anderson, Berlin
10.02.08 SAarts Emerging on 'Project(or)' at the Rotterdam Art Fair
10.02.08 'Biennale Cuvée' in Linz, Austria

13.01.08 '.ZA, young art from South Africa' in Siena
13.01.08 'Momentary Momentum', Animated Drawings at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge
13.01.08 Ed Young and Artemio at Hayward Project Space, London

02.12.07 Guy Tillim in Wolverhampton
02.12.07 South African Textile-related art at Kaunas Art Biennial, Lithuania

04.11.07 'I am not afraid: The Market Photo Workshop' in Austria

THE AMERICAS

10.02.08 'Regeneration' at Kyle Kauffman, New York
10.02.08 'Far From Home' at North Carolina Museum of Art
10.02.08 'Make Art/Stop Aids' at Fowler Museum, UCLA

13.01.08 William Kentridge at Philadelphia Museum of Art

02.12.07 'Tapping Currents: Contemporary African Art and the Diaspora' in Kansas City

04.11.07 William Kentridge and Robin Rhode at the San Diego Museum of Art
04.11.07 William Kentridge and Nathaniel Stern at International Print Center, New York
07.10.07 Inscribing Meaning at the Fowler Museum, Los Angeles

ASIA

10.02.08 'Scratches on the Face' in India

MIDDLE EAST

02.12.07 'Nicholas Hlobo at the Haifa Museum, Israel

ONLINE

10.02.08 'Crossing the Void II' at Ten Cubed Gallery, Second Life

Mustafa Maluka Galerie Mikael Anderson, Berlin

Mustafa Maluka will present his solo exhibition 'The Message' at Galerie Mikael Anderson in Berlin.

This new body of work presents more graffiti and hip-hop influenced portraiture. Maluka develops his portraits though several layers of colour, enabling the depicted persons to appear as characters with their own personality. His 'invented heroes' hint at personal stories, including those dealing with the formation of identity, a theme central to the artist's oeuvre.

Opens: February 1
Closes: March 8

 

SAarts Emerging on 'Project(or)' at the Rotterdam Art Fair

Artists from the collective online space SAartsEmerging.org will be exhibiting as part of 'Project(or)' a project running concurrently with the Rotterdam Art fair. Over five days, 28 progressive art spaces will host art, performances and art fair presentations by over 100 artists.

Speed Lectures and Presentations will be delivered daily between 7pm and 8pm by the participating artists' groups.

Other project spaces involved in 'Project(or)' include Fette's Gallery from Los Angeles, Artists Anonymous from Berlin, Liquidacion Total from Madrid, The Centre of Attention from London, KOP from Breda and TAG from The Hague.

Opens: February 6
Closes: February 10

 

'Biennale Cuvée' in Linz, Austria

The OK Centre in Linz presents a selection of art projects from the recent biennials in Venice, Sydney, Moscow, São Paulo, Taipei, Shanghai, Seoul, Sharjah, Gwangju and Mechelen.

The 45 projects on exhibition have been selected for their current aesthetic modes of expression, and emphasis has been placed on works that explicitly relate to the new media.

Amongst the exhibitors on 'Biennale Cuvée' are Candice Breitz, Meschac Gaba, Robin Rhode and Guy Tillim. Other artists include Lida Abdul, Narda Alvarado, Ruben Ramos Balsa, Patricia Bueno, Omer Fast, León Ferrari, Shaun Gladwell, Kui Huang, Shih-Chieh Huang, Sejla Kameric, Servet Koçyigit, Marko Mäetamm, Ronald Moran, Jacques Nimki, Raeda Saadeh, Vasan Sitthiket, Sanghee Song, Kazuna Taguchi, Ilya Trushevsky and Kuang-Yu Tsui.

Opens: February 28
Closes: April 27

 

'.ZA, young art from South Africa' in Siena

This exhibition, conceived by Lorenzo Fusi, is co-curated by five established South African artists: Marlene Dumas, Kendell Geers, Bernie Searle, Minnette Vári and Sue Williamson. Each was asked to put forward the work of artists not older than 35, still residing or mainly operating in South Africa. More than 20 works were thus gathered from as many artists, mostly little known or completely unknown to the Italian and European public.

The show represents a sort of passing on of the torch, as well as a tribute on the part of the better known artists to their younger colleagues, who are often penalised by their geographical isolation at the farthermost point of the African continent.

Selected artists include: Bridget Baker, Ismail Farouk, Simon Gush, Nicholas Hlobo, Nandipha Mntambo, Zanele Muholi, Ruth Sacks, Sean Slemon, Pippa Stalker, Doreen Southwood, Johan Thom, Nontsikelelo Veleko and James Webb.

The Italian/English catalogue, published by Silvana Editoriale, will include essays by all the curators.

Opens: February 2
Closes: May 4

 

'Momentary Momentum', Animated Drawings at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge

Robin Rhode will be exhibiting as part the group showcase 'Momentary Momentum' at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. The exhibition, co-curated by Ziba de Weck and Laurence Dreyfus, consists of two parts and will be presented as a series of special installations and films screened in the gallery. Emerging international artists will be featured alongside established names such as Kara Walker and David Shrigley.

The exhibition also includes programmes of short films brought together specially for the exhibition, including the work of Robert Breer, Susanne Jirkuff, Arthur de Pins, Georges Schwizgebel, Paul Bush/Lisa Milroy, Michael Dudok de Wit, Brent Green and Takashi Ishida. The line-up also includes an animated film by William Kentridge.

Part One features Christine Rebet (France), Tabaimo (Japan), Zilla Leutenegger (Switzerland), Robin Rhode (South Africa), Avish Khebrehzadeh (Iran) and an animated film by William Kentridge. Part Two includes a short animation David Shrigley, a black and white 'moving picture' by Kara Walker, an animation video installation by Francis Alÿs, The French collective Qubo Gas (Laura Henno, Jef Ablézot and Morgan Dimnet), Naoyuki Tsuji (Japan), and Jochen Kuhn (Germany).

Part One Opens: January 29
Closes: February 24

Part Two Opens: February 27
Closes: March 30

 

Ed Young and Artemio at Hayward Project Space, London

In the last of a series of exhibitions which showcases works by film artists, The Hayward Project Space presents South African artist Ed Young and Mexican artist Artemio, both of whom take clips from well known films and splice them together like a cinematic collage, often to comic effect.

Young will present It's Not Easy, a series of re-edited scenes from Superman films showing the hero wracked by the very un-super and familiar human emotions of anger, despair and self-doubt. The film plays to a soundtrack of the same title by American band Five for Fighting, whose song became an anthem in the US following the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

Artemio exhibits a number of short films including State of Emergency (which mixes Total Recall with other footage taken from American science fiction and apocalyptic movies) and Apoohcalypse Now (which takes Marlon Brando's infamous monologue from Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film and interprets it through children's character Winnie the Pooh.)

Opens: Jan 25
Closes: March 9

 

Guy Tillim in Wolverhampton

'Children in Conflict' is a group exhibition which draws together work by internationally renowned contemporary artists, looking at the ways in which children can become caught up in conflicts created by the adult world.

As part of this exhibition, in partnership with Christian Aid, war artist John Keane has been commissioned to produce a series of paintings about issues facing millions of young people in war-torn Angola. Guy Tillim, Simon Norfolk, Anthony Haughey and Emma Summers will also be exhibiting.

Opens: November 24
Closes: February 16

 

South African Textile-related art at Kaunas Art Biennial, Lithuania

'Skin - to - Skin', an exhibition curated by Fiona Kirkwood, is featured at this year's Kaunas Art Biennial, 'Textile '07' in Kaunas.

The show focuses on the diversity of work made by South African artists using textile-related concepts, techniques and materials. The title 'Skin - to - Skin' is used to describe not only art on the exhibit which deals with pigmentation and its political history in this country, but also other socio-economic and cultural matters such as scarification, animal pelts as signifiers and the relationships between sexual relations, HIV/Aids and skin.

The participating artists are Lynda Ballen, Tamlin Blake, Leora Farber, Karin Lijnes, Nkosinathi Khanyile, Fiona Kirkwood, Walter Oltmann, Langa Magwa, Jane Makhubele, Angeline Masuku and Yda Walt.

The show will travel to the Standard Bank Gallery in April.

Opens: November 30
Closes: March 2

 

'I am not afraid: The Market Photo Workshop' in Austria

Photographers Bonile Bam, Jodi Bieber, Lerato Maduna, Sabelo Mlangeni, Zanele Muholi and Nontsikelelo 'Lolo' Veleko will be exhibiting at Camera Austria in Graz at the end of this month. 'I'm not afraid: The Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg' showcases works by graduates and students of the school of photography founded by David Goldblatt in Johannesburg towards the end of the 80s.

This exhibition - accompanied by the 100th issue of Camera Austria International, in which it will be the main feature - presents a collection of viewpoints which directly confront such issues as violence, different sexual politics, and economic niche work.

Opens: November 30
Closes: March 2

Symposium: 10am - 6pm, December 1

 

'Regeneration' at Kyle Kauffman, New York

Kyle Kauffman Gallery opens in 2008 with a group show of contemporary South African art. The exhibition will include work by Jane Alexander, Wayne Barker, Willie Bester, Conrad Botes, Norman Catherine, Paul du Toit, Marlene Dumas, Humzah Goolam, Dan Halter, William Kentridge, Esther Mahlangu and Lolo Veleko.

'Regeneration' combines the work of emerging talent like Halter and Veleko with new work and new gallery acquisitions by established artists such as Alexander, Kentridge and Barker.

Opens: January 10
Closes: February 23

 

'Far From Home' at North Carolina Museum of Art

Starting in mid-February, North Carolina Museum of Art will host 'Far from Home', an exhibition which includes art that addresses the global displacement of people and populations as they relocate for economic, political, or other reasons. The exhibition features photography, paintings and sculpture by artists of diverse national and cultural origins.

'Far From Home' explores the various ways that displacement is manifested in creative expression, suggesting very personal transformations alongside the wider group dynamics of belonging and exclusion.Whether focused on the individual or larger community, works here stand in dialogue with the expansion of global networks as people relocate and circumscribe their experiences in new places while maintaining connections to homelands and heritage, however tenuous.

Featured artists include Ghada Amer, José Bedia, Lalla Essaydi, Maria Elena González, Seydou Keïta, Vik Muniz, Youssef Nabil and Lorna Simpson among others.

Opens: February 17
Closes: July 13

 

'Make Art/Stop Aids' at Fowler Museum, UCLA

'Make Art/Stop Aids', a travelling international exhibition debuting at the Fowler Museum at UCLA on February 23, shows how artists around the world have responded to HIV/Aids and how their work can raise awareness and inspire activism.

The exhibition, which includes artists from the Brazil, India, South Africa and the United States, presents more than 60 contemporary works, including paintings, sculptures, photographs, performance videos, posters, animated shorts, digital media and installations that engage these questions: What is Aids? Who lives, who dies? Why are condoms controversial? Are you afraid to touch? When was the last time you cried? Why a red ribbon? and, Are you ready to act?

South African artists featured on the show include David Goldblatt, Pieter Hugo, William Kentridge, Fiona Kirkwood, Brenton Maart, Churchill Madikida, Gideon Mendel, Zanele Muholi, Pennny Siopis and Clive Van den Berg.

Opens: February 23
Closes: June 15

 

William Kentridge at Philadelphia Museum of Art

On show at Philadelphia Museum of Art are William Kentridge's 11 large-scale tapestries from a series conceived and executed between 2001 and 2007. The series, which is on loan from public and private collections in Europe, South Africa and the US, will be accompanied by 23 additional works including etchings, bronze sculptures, drawings and an artist's book.

The exhibition, entitled 'Tapestries', runs in conjunction with a series of discussions and readings as part of 'Art and Social Transformation', a new programme at the Philadelphia Museum of Art devoted to the social and political dimensions of artmaking. Guests include Zakes Mda, (author of The Heart of Redness, Madonna of Excelsior and others) on February 8, and Ivan Vladislavic (author of Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked and others) on March 14. Both take place at 6pm in Gallery 176 and admission is free after Museum hours.

Opens: December 12
Closes: April 6

 

'Tapping Currents: Contemporary African Art and the Diaspora' in Kansas City

'Tapping Currents' presents a diverse range of contemporary work made by African artists and Diaspora to the Kansas City public.

The exhibition, which is on display at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, brings together artists working in traditional and new media to investigate themes such as colonialism and post-colonialism, slavery, trade, history, gender and identity. Humour and irony call attention to Western misperceptions of what is authentically African.

Featured on the show, amongst others, are Berni Searle, Churchill Madikida and Odili Donald Odita.

Opens: November 17
Closes: April 13

 

William Kentridge and Robin Rhode at the San Diego Museum of Art

The San Diego Museum of Art's new exhibition, 'Animated Painting', showcases contemporary artists who adapt traditional painting and drawing methods to the concepts and technologies of animation. Twenty moving-image works by 14 international contemporary artists are featured on the exhibition.

Highlights include William Kentridge's animated film Tide Table (2005); computer animated figures by Julian Opie displayed outside of the Museum; Jeremy Blake's digital video Sodium Fox (2005); and Sadie Benning's video projection of hand-made drawings, Play Pause (2006). Other participating artists are the Barnstormers, Sebastián Díaz Morales, Kota Ezawa, Ruth Gómez, Ann Lislegaard, Takeshi Murata, Serge Onnen, Wit Pimkanchanapong, Qiu Anxiong and Robin Rhode.

In conjunction with 'Animated Painting', SDMA is presenting a free four-part symposium titled 'Animation: From the Avant-Garde to Popular Culture'. The symposium takes place on Thursday, November 1, and Saturday, November 3, and includes panel discussions by leading art and animation scholars, presentations of artworks, and a screening of animation by Southern California artists.

The exhibition moves to Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT) in Tijuana, Mexico in 2008 and the Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, in 2009. Opens: October 13
Closes: January 13

Mexico
Opens: October 1 2008
Closes: December 31 2008

Iowa
Opens: February 6 2009
Closes: April 19 2009

 

William Kentridge and Nathaniel Stern at International Print Center, New York

International Print Center New York presents their Autumn 2007 season of 'New Prints' opening at the beginning of November. On exhibition are Willliam Kentridge and Nathaniel Stern alongside the likes of Jenny Holzer and Chuck Close.

Other artists on exhibition include: Eric Avery, Marieke Bolhuis, Maria de la Providencia Casanovas, Michele Oka Doner, Richard Dupont, Eduardo Fausti, Barnaby Furnas, Yuji Hiratsuka, Laurie Hogin, Tom Huck, Sarah Nicholls, Andrew Stein Raftery, Jaune Quick-to-see-Smith, Tom Spleth, Craig Taylor, Mary Temple and Nicola Tyson.

The exhibition travels to Columbia College in Chicago early next year.

Opens: November 1
Closes: December 19

Chicago
Opens: January 16
Closes: Feb 22

 

Inscribing Meaning at the Fowler Museum, Los Angeles

'Inscribing Meaning', opening in October at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, brings together works of art from a range of periods, regions, genres, and peoples in order to consider the interplay between African art and the communicative power of graphic systems, language, and the written word. More than 100 artworks are on display, including ancient Egyptian funerary arts; masks, sculpture, textiles, and adornment from across the continent; illuminated liturgical texts, as well as the work of contemporary artists Rachid Koraïchi, Ghada Amer, Berni Searle, Ike Ude, Victor Ekpuk, Sue Williamson, Kim Berman, Yinka Shonibare, Wosene Kosrof, amongst others.

Opens: Oct 14
Closes: Feb 17

 

'Scratches on the Face' in India

'Scratches on the Face', an exhibition taken from the collection of the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town is currently being hosted by the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai, where it moved from the NGMA in New Delhi. An underlying theme of the show is how multiple forces, both natural and political, have always conspired to create a situation of struggle, competition and survival in the sub-continent that has been hundreds of years, if not millennia, in the process.

An intention is to impress on each visitor an awareness of the antiquity and immense diversity of South African visual art, stretching back to the first evidence of human mark-making in the case of the Blombos Ochre (c.70,000 BCE) to the art of the present.

The theme of 'scratches' represents not only the literal mark-making of the artworks, but also the scars resulting from many years of survival and struggle in this country. It is an intention of the exhibition to extend and explore in both literal and metaphorical terms the human 'scratchings' on the face of the most geologically and anthropologically ancient of all subcontinents - South(ern) Africa. The ravages of high capitalism via the mining industry and the demarcation of the land into separate living areas under apartheid have all scarred the psyche of South Africa's people, and indelibly marked the very landscape itself.

Work on exhibit extends from the Blombos Ochre (to be shown in replica form) to the rock engravings and paintings to incised objects, etchings, prints, paintings, photographs, culminating in such new media works such as Thembinkosi Goniwe's Untitled (Plaster on Face).

Opens: January 10
Closes: February 3

 

Nicholas Hlobo, at the Haifa Museum, Israel

Nicholas Hlobo is currently exhibiting on the group exhibition 'Overcraft', the third in a trilogy of exhibitions curated by Tami Katz-Freiman at the Haifa Museum of Art.

'Overcraft' focuses on the sensory experience of excess and of multiple details. It will be the first exhibition in Israel to revolve around works by Israeli and international male artists who share an interest in labour-intensive forms of craft, which were until recently largely identified with women.

This exhibition includes works composed of fabric, paper, beads, threads, wallpaper and other decorative materials in a range of techniques, including embroidery, sewing, weaving, threading, knitting and paper cut-outs. 'Overcraft' examines the discourse on the decorative, the ornamental and the obsessive from the point of view of male artists.

The exhibition serves as a platform for discussing the changing value of concepts such as beauty and masculinity, and the relations between art and craft; it examines these issues in relation to post-feminist, queer and postcolonial theories, as well as in relation to the influence of the global economy.

Other participating artists include Ron Aloni , El Anatsui , assume vivid astro focus, Eliahou Eric Bokobza, Jonathan Callan, Nick Cave, Dave Cole, Tim Curtis, Aashraf Fawakhry, Tom Gallant, Uri Gershuni, Gil & Moti, Haim Maor, Ohad, Jonathan Shilo, Francesco Vezzoli and Guy Zagursky.

Opens: November 3
Closes: February 24

 

'Crossing the Void II' at Ten Cubed Gallery, Second Life

Artists Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern will be exhibiting Simulate Editions on 'Crossing the Void II' at Ten Cubed Gallery, a virtual gallery designed by New York architect Bennet Dunkley. Owned and curated by art critic Hayden Shaughnessy, the gallery has been designed so that it may be experienced in ways that a space could not be in the real world.

Kildall and Stern, whose work usually explores notions of performance and performativity, were asked to produce unique virtual artworks for sale in Second Life that mirror their real life prints. Simulate Editions is their response, where every 'print' is individually signed and numbered by hand, making each work 'technically unique'.

The works are copy- and modification-protected, but also come with a resize script, so that the new collector/owner - and only them - can grow or shrink their purchase so as to fit into their SL space.

Also taking part are Chris Ashley, Jon Coffelt and Claire Keating.

Opens: January 31 and February 1