C-L-E-A-R-I-N-G Opening with Marina Pinsky, Cooper Jacoby, and Sebastian Black
Fictionnalisme: une pièce à conviction at Jan Mot
Jacques André at Catherine Bastide
OFF Art Fair, Brussels
Fabrizio Cornelli at OFF
Frogtopia at Harlan Levey Projects
Merlin Carpenter at Dépendance
Do Easy Art’s selections from gallery openings in Brussels
WIELS, Brussels
Performa Founder and Curator RoseLee Goldberg giving a slideshow and short history of performance art.
NY’s Soho in the 70s - “Nobody from uptown dared to come down, Laurie Anderson had a piano in the hall as her doorbell. Whoever came had to play a tune.” Her rent for a 2,000 sq.ft studio was $200/month.
Mike Kelley Yearbook performance for a previous edition of Performa
Performa 11 Gala Jeff Koons bunny desert
Performa 11 Gala Beef with honey dripping from ceiling
Christian Jankowski’s “Rooftop Routine”, where dancers hoola-hooped on NY rooftops, an homage to Trisha Brown.
Marina Abramovic reinterpreting Joseph Beuys’ “How to explain art to a dead bunny” at the Guggenheim
Half Girl, Half Gun (With real shooting!)
EXPERIENZ #2 at Wiels in Brussels featured the theme of “Materializing the Social”. An exciting four-day marathon of performances by Davide Balula, Malena Beer, Olivier Beer, Hsia-Fei Chang, Giuseppe Chico & Barbara Matijevic, Antonio Contador, Guillaume Désanges, Carole Douillard, Ninar Esber, Esther Ferrer, Sergej Jensen, Liz Magic Laser, Estefania Peñafiel Loaiza, Dan Perjovschi and discussions with RoseLee Goldberg (PERFORMA), Marc & Josée Gensollen, Les Gens d’Uterpan, and Chantal Pontbriand.
On Saturday the 20th, we saw Guillaume Desange’s talk and accompanying slideshow “Child Play”. He led a class for young children (around pre-teen) that explored the history of performance. His students reinterpreted seminal pieces, from Chris Burden’s “Shoot Piece” to Marina Abramovic and Ulay’s collaborations to Yves Klein’s “The Void” to John Baldessari’s “I’m Making Art”. In their playful recreations, his students acted out our human instincts to be silly and inclination for conducting physical experiments. Who doesn’t agree that art is play - among the methods, returning to our eternal instincts or aspiring to find creative solutions? More than any theory, Desange’s young students imparted upon us a poignant distillation of art’s innate possibilities.
We were then treated to RoseLee Goldberg’s compacted 30-minute slideshow and history of performance art in New York - though, as she says, performance dates back to far beyond the second half of the 20th century - when requested, Leonardo Da Vinci would perform for Cosimo Medici at holiday feasts. Performa originated from frustration due to the lack of focus on performance art, a medium RoseLee felt was “always tacked on to the end of an exhibition”.
Following her slideshow was a talk (in French, unfortunately) by Marc and Josee Gensollen, two Marseilles-based collectors of immaterial and conceptual work - Tino Sehgal and Lawrence Weiner are among their favorite artists. A natural actor, Mr. Gensollen turned his back to us in the middle of his slideshow, bent over, started breathing loudly, turned around and yelled “WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS ABOUT???”
We journeyed to Art Brussels to bring back some technicolor highlights. Off-site activities ranged from a citywide gallery stroll to collectors opening their private homes to RoseLee Goldberg giving a 30-minute compacted history of performance art. More short write-ups and photo stories to come!
Last two pictures courtesy of Kristof Vrancken. All else copyright Do Easy Art.
Mat Larkin, Matches 4
Adam Payne, Piperine Organic 01-071
Haley Mellin, Untitled
Interview with Vivian Brodie of Y&S (Young and Starving), a new platform that connects young and unrepresented artists to new audiences outside of the traditional gallery system. In March of this year, they held a preview and auction at Christie’s in New York.
How did the idea for Young and Starving come about?
Y&S was initially started as a conversation over a series of dinners. The idea for a show and non-profit came much later. A friend suggested we do a show, and so we jumped on board, eager to put our conversations into an actual project. From that point forward it was studio visits, surfing the web and asking as many people as we could about young artists. Y&S really solidified with the collaboration with Christie’s, giving us a space and platform to show young artists.
Who are the founders and what did they see was missing or could be reinvented in the art marketplace?
Y&S was founded by Dylan Brant, Vivian Brodie, Tom Lee, and Emilia Rinaldini. We have also added Eliza Coven and Allan Jean-Baptise to our team since we founded Y&S. Some of the issues we saw that we wanted to change were transparency in the art world — which is why we did a documentary video with THAT NEW NEW (http://thatnewnew.net/productions/) of how Y&S operates and why we have all of our artists with bios and images on our website. The idea of relationships is also very important to Y&S. The audience that came to our show got to meet the artists and hear the artists speak about their own work and ask questions, which is very important to Y&S.
Are auction houses the main vendors for Y&S or are there projections to partner with other types of selling platforms (i.e. alternative or independent art spaces around the world)?
No, auction houses are not the main vendors for Y&S nor are sales the main goal. We are interested in showing young artists and if sales happen, they happen, and the proceeds go back to the artists; but more importantly, it is about creating a community and a dialogue. That being said, we are planning our next show for this upcoming fall which will be an independent Y&S show featuring more emerging, young artists.
Is Y&S a service mainly for the benefit of the artist or their audiences? (and where do curators, galleries, and critics function in respect to your system?)
Y&S is for both the artists and the audience. We are not a service geared toward collectors. As a non-profit, we aim to support young artists but also allow the public to see these artists and learn about the works. We have not dealt with any curators, galleries, or critics thus far and if we do, it will be to do what we all have in common — look at and discuss art.
Take a look artists Y&S has shown HERE.
Allessandro Pessoli
Rezi van Lankveld
Pierpaolo Campanini
Joe Bradley
“Drawing of US troops from Afghanistan”
Tal R
Luca Bertolo
Marco Neri
“Inevitable Figuration – A scene of painting today” selects a group of painters from 1960s to now. Presenting a late 20th-century historical view of painting beginning with Rene Magritte onwards, “Inevitable” shows how painting has been affected by the proliferation of imagery in recent decades. A myriad of witty solutions to spatial limitations and challenges of painting. Curated by Marco Bazzini and David Ferri. Works by Richard Aldrich, Mamma Andersson, Helene Appel, Michael Bauer, Luca Bertolo, Joe Bradley, Peter Linde Busk, Pierpaolo Campanini, William Daniels, Avner Ben-Gal, Thomas Helbig, Merlin James, Rezi van Lankveld, Katy Moran, Marco Neri, Alessandro Pessoli, Tal R, and Matthias Weischer.
Text by Yanyan Huang | Photography by Marco Annunziata
March 24 - July 8 2013 at the Pecci Center for Contemporary Art, Prato. Viale della Repubblica, 277
Urban Jackalope Project, 2011
Malocchio Vaticano, 2011
Malocchio Los Angeles, 2011
Copricapo, 2004-2007
Copricorpo, 2004-2007
Boitatà, 2013
La Merica’ video still, 2012
Zoè Gruni in her studio. Pictures courtesy of the artist and CCC Strozzina.
Q+A with artist Zoè Gruni. Brazil, 3/2013
What themes do you work with?
Memory - Identity - Fear
How does traveling to different countries influence your working process?
My artistic research is characterized by a strong interest for the human and anthropologic condition and this is inevitably linked to the territory. At the beginning of my career, to research my country’s stories and to dig into my own roots was natural. But for the last three years I have been a nomad in part by choice and by necessity, and this is reflected in my work. It fascinates me to see how symbols that are part of a local reality often end up linking us globally. I deeply believe in comparing commonalities between different cultures and in the possibility of common development.
Do you like to explore the traditions of your immediate environments or do you travel with an intent in mind?
My work is directly linked with my personal experience so I usually leave my mind open to receive suggestions during my trips. Performance helps me gain knowledge of humanity within its various territories and connect naturally with it. I build my images by searching through collective imagery and try to mix common stereotypes and symbols with my most intimate memories.
What is the biggest challenge to your way of working?
What I have in mind is that neckline between past and present; that crater where temporal interruption materializes and where the feeling of fear resides. In the past, living in similar places and situations allowed man to share doubts and fears with his fellow man. The collective dimension guaranteed a psychological and moral support that nowadays appears impossible, so clearly obstructed by an individualistic society. I believe it could be recovered through the art of a collective memory and should be a social and a political objective. It could be a chance to react to the fear that immobilizes us, an exorcism of sort. Mass-media constantly reports terrible news, sounds a constant threatening alarm, and I wonder if it’s really be a way to spread insecurity or to maintain matters under control.
What are the limitations and benefits of being a travelling artist?
Fight against the roots / Fight with the roots
Any advice for young artists?
My only advice is to let yourself go and seek to express what needs to be said, with force.
Nedko Solakov at Galeria Continua: “Paintings with No texts and I want back home (said the big frog)”, documentation of a frog’s journey from Sofia, Bulgaria to Shanghai, China by train.
Photos by Marco Annunziata
3/16 - 5/4/2013 | Via del Castello, 11 | San Gimignano, IT
Miltos Manetas’ studio near the Olympic Stadium. Rome, Italy
Cura is a magazine, publishing house, and project space founded by Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin. British artist Oliver Osborne shows his leafy paintings for cura’s inaugural show. Lovely art books are available for purchase in the reading room.
Photography by Marco Annunziata
cura basement | via Nicola Ricciotti, 4. Rome
Roundish and shiny, black porcelain glops rest contentedly on the floor in a corner of Galeria Continua. Aptly titled “Oil Spils”, these glops tie in the ancient Chinese porcelain craft with the realities of dependence on fossil fuels for globalization. Oil dependency seeps into every aspect of our life, from food and transportation to entertainment and culture. With its need to consume natural resources at almost all levels of production, art is no exception.
Clay dates as far back as the pressurized dead matter that rests under superficial layers of our earth’s crust. Both originating in raw material harvested from the earth, one now resembles the other.
From this illusory mutation emerges a mechanical disconnect from the earthly composition (porcelain clay, glaze) and its natural subject matter (concentrated dead plant material), pointing instead to the laborious efforts that goes into extracting and refining both kinds of material.
“Bubbles of Twenty Five” are 25 sky-blue porcelain balls that were created for Watson Island in Miami. Fabricated in the same ancient ceramic city of Jingdezhen as the oil glops and transported to the medieval of San Gimignano, these balls serve as a visual testament to art’s uncanny ability to traverse space and time at will. Having been transported thousands of miles from Beijing to San Gimignano to Miami, their near-uniformity and reflective enamel offer a physical manifestation of the parallel universe theory. Within each bubble exists a universe, its exterior reflecting other universes. Also brought to mind are children’s marble games, apropos to the sensation of worlds colliding.
Other pieces include “Stacked”, a scaffolding tower covered with bicycles - an homage to the once-reigning urban vehicle of choice, now long overthrown by cars; related is a thorough photo documentation of the changes taking place on Beijing’s Chang’an street akin to Ed Ruscha’s foldout Hollywood Blvd. Alone in a different room, long and twisted steel bars salvaged from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake lay side by side, their gentle warping reminiscent of seimic waves.
We can choose how to proceed on the continuum of change: we make monuments, we honor our dead, we weep for the past. As the creator of universe-containing bubbles and limitless architectural feats, he has the luxury of simultaneously being a passive viewer and engaged participant. Unbounded in scale or scope, Ai Wei Wei erects monuments to change itself.
Text by Yanyan Huang, Images courtesy of Galeria Continua
Ai Wei Wei at Galeria Continua
Via del Castello, 11. San Gimignano
Exhibition ended Feb 16 2013
