contemporary art blog
Carlos Amorales, Amsterdam, 2013. Video still. Courtesy the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City
Carlos Amorales
Germinal
21 March – 21 June 2013
at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City
This exhibition presents a new stage in the work of Carlos Amorales, which departs from the creation of a new language. It is originated in the condensation and fragmentation of the images part of his Liquid Archive.
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Marcel Dzama, The Queen’s Ghost Vanish’d From Our Sight, 2013. Ink, gouache, and graphite on piano paper (2 scrolls) Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner Gallery, NY/London
To underline Marcel Dzama’s current exhibition “Puppets, Pawns, and Prophets“ at David Zwirner in London until 11 May, M-KOS is posting once more its interview recorded with Dzama in 2011, when he visited Montreal for the screenings of his “A Game of Chess” (2011) and “Death Disco Dance” (2011) videos at POP festival. For this latest exhibition at Zwirner, Dzama shows new drawings, sculptures and videos that include “Death Disco Dance” as well as the more recent “Sister Squares” (2012), considered the sequel to his “A Game of Chess†video. In the following interview, although already one and a half years old, Dzama talks about how the making of Death Disco Dance, and the influence of Marcel Duchamp that is undoubtedly manifested in many of his work.
Continue reading “From the M-KOS archives: Marcel Dzama interview”
Hiraki Sawa, Lineament, 2012. Video still. Courtesy the artist and James Cohan Gallery, New York
Hiraki Sawa
Figment
22 March – 27 April 2013
at James Cohan Gallery, New York
Lineament (2012), the central installation, is an immersive video and sound piece originally commissioned by the Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo. This work is a continuation of Figment, a larger project initiated in 2009, from which this exhibition takes its name. Figment so far comprises three ambitious and increasingly surreal videos about the phenomenon of amnesia. The series takes its inspiration from, and is an ongoing means of processing, the sudden-onset and complete memory loss of one of the artist’s friends.
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Nathalie Quagliotto, Vous êtes ici / You are here, 2013. Photo by Nathalie Quagliotto.
The Labyrinth themed fifth edition of Art Souterrain indeed furnished a dazzle of art sceneries to mark seven kilometres underground pathways with over 120 artworks. Taking the topic to heart, many works denoted either a puzzling of the visual senses or forms of bewilderment within the self, between societies or geo-political conditions. Mélodie Prégent’s installation “Warren†(2013) combined adjacent mirrors and perspective photographs of empty corridors, stairways and tunnels to create illusions of endless passages. Loren Williams whimsically faked several tunnel entrances, not only to confuse or amuse the audience but also to suggest gateways to fantastic and imaginary worlds. Continue reading “Hit and miss treasure hunt in the labyrinth – Art Souterrain 2013”
Steve Roden, Striations, 2010–11. Two 16mm films with ink transferred to video, 6:00 min. (still). Courtesy the artist and Gallery 400
Observer Effect
18 January – 9 March 2013
at Gallery 400, Chicago
Artists: Jessica Hyatt, Steffani Jemison, Jochen Lempert, John O’Connor, Steve Roden, Jorinde Voigt
Curated by Carrie Gundersdorf and Lorelei Stewart
Across media and approaches, Observer Effect examines how artworks incorporate processes akin to the scientific method as a means to examine and understand specific phenomena that exist in the world. Each artist’s idiosyncratic approach of observing and understanding his/her distinct subject matter reveals the artist’s own subjectivity through this process, and discloses how each artist, the observer, is part of what is being observed.
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Heather Cassils, Becoming an Image, 2012. Photo documentation of performance. Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York. Photo by Heather Cassils and Eric Charles
Material Traces: Time and the Gesture in Contemporary Art
16 February – 13 April 2013
at Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Montréal
Opening: Saturday 16 February 2013, 15h00 – 17h00
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Performative event by Alicia Frankovich at 15h30
Curator: Amelia Jones
Artists: Francis Alÿs, Christopher Braddock, Heather Cassils, Juliana Cerqueira Leite, Andrew Dadson, Alexandre David, Paul Donald, Alicia Frankovich, Flutura and Besnik Haxhillari (The Two Gullivers), Mark Igloliorte, Tricia Middleton, Alex Monteith, Angel Vergara
Is art an object or a process? Is it “material” or “trace”? Shifts in art practice over the past 50 years, particularly in art world centers in Europe and the US, and more recently in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have profoundly challenged Enlightenment to modern conceptions of the work of art, in European aesthetics, defined as an object, more or less static in meaning and value over time. Material Traces presents work from the past fifteen years by artists from around the world which draws on the legacy of performative intermedial practices from the 1960s and 1970s to foreground the processes and materiality of making, whether in wood, paint, performance, video, or other media. Continue reading “Material Traces at Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Montréal”
Anahita Razmi, Arsenals, 2012. Installation view. Courtesy the artist and Carbon 12, Dubai
Anahita Razmi
Automatic Assembly Actions
14 January – 14 March 2013
at Carbon 12, Dubai
Many worlds collide in Razmi’s work: cultural spheres, semantic frameworks, art history, politics, and some of them together. Through appropriation of heritage, symbols, and even other artists ideas, contexts are redefined and concepts juxtaposed. Razmi attacks these systems directly, honestly and relentlessly. Free from conceptual restraints; any surplus is discarded until only the message itself remains.
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Francois Bucher, Forever Live: The Case of K. Gun, 2006. Video still. 17:51. Courtesy the artist and proyectos monclova, Mexico City
Fault Lines
6 December 2012 – 16 February 2013
at SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, Montréal
Artists: Yael Bartana, Bertolt Brecht, François Bucher, Sophie Castonguay, Angela Melitopoulos & Maurizio Lazzarato
Curated by Pip Day
The exhibition Fault Lines/ Lignes de faille presents work that focuses on the power of speech, particularly in relation to dominant institutional discourse. Peopled with characters who come up against mechanisms of control of all sorts, work in the exhibition explores territorial, judicial and psychoanalytical grey areas: potential productive zones where alternative modes of resistance and of subjectivity can be constructed.
Continue reading “Fault Lines at SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, Montréal”
Wang Yahui, from series of Leaf Holes, 2011. © 2012 Wang Yahui. Courtesy the artist and TKG+, Taipei and Beijing.
Wang Yahui
Near and Far
22 December 2012 – 8 February 2013
at TKG+, Taipei
Wang Yahui’s photographs, videos, and installations are firmly rooted in her close observation of the quotidian. Her works alter regular perceptions of one’s surroundings, rendering the common and the overlooked into explorations of one’s notions of the everyday, and as the artist notes, combining them into “new constellations†made visible through the interaction of the audience with each work.
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Thomas Demand, Pacific Sun, 2012. Production still © Thomas Demand/SODRAC (2012) Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York/Sprüth Magers, Berlin and London/Esther Schipper, Berlin
Thomas Demand
Animations
19 January – 12 May 2013
at DHC/ART, Montréal
Curator: John Zeppetelli
A philosophical commentator on the authenticity of the “real†and the slippages of memory, Thomas Demand is a well-known German photographer who began as a sculptor, but is now widely acclaimed for photographic and moving image works.
Demand’s work interlaces photography, architecture and sculpture. His method usually begins with an image culled from the media, which is meticulously re-fabricated, by hand, into a life-size, three-dimensional paper and cardboard sculpture, to ultimately end up as a photograph. The resulting images are both very recognizable and strangely out of reach. Crucial to the context are photography’s long-debated truth claims, and the photograph’s indexical quality.
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