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The Armory Show 2015

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Victoria Miro (London) Booth at the Armory Show 2015, Pier 94 Contemporary. Photo: M-KOS

Under the grim wind and snow of a lingering winter, The Armory Show nevertheless started with great excitement and fanfare, warming up the west shore of Manhattan along the Hudson River, set again on Piers 92 & 94 for a 17th year in a row. Armory’s 2015 program ran from 5 to 8 March, hosting 143 contemporary and 56 modern art galleries, stationed within 28 countries. Totalling 199 booths altogether, the fair in fact accepted a smaller number of exhibitors in comparison with 2014, which comprised 205 art spaces. This year’s leaner edition offered a well balanced agglomeration of first timers and returning galleries – some back from last year, others reappearing after a hiatus of five years or more, such as Andrew Kreps Gallery (New York), Carl Freedman Gallery (London), Galerie Lelong (NY/Paris) and galerie kamel mennour (Paris). Now in his third-year tenure, executive director Noah Horowitz’s attempts to revamp the once struggling art fair seems to have paid off – recapturing the interests of many leading galleries.
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Reynold Reynolds “Almost Six Pieces” at Dazibao, Montréal

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Reynold Reynolds “Almost Six Pieces” Exhibition View at Dazibao. Courtesy the artist and Dazibao, Montréal

REYNOLD REYNOLDS
ALMOST SIX PIECES

19 February – 18 April 2015
Dazibao, Montreal

Almost Six Pieces brings together, for the first time in Canada, five video installations by the American artist Reynold Reynolds. In a scrupulously controlled chaos, exacerbated by the abundance of references – historical, artistic, scientific, etc. – Reynolds somehow develops an aesthetic of “unease”. This unease is maintained by a persistent confusion between bluff and reality and is fed by unexpressed and unacknowledged torments. Without being apocalyptic or completely dystopian, the five works brought together here foretell a world bordering on disaster, making the very idea of progress the allegory of ruin.
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Opportunities: Open Call for the International Creator Residency Program 2015 at Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo

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Image courtesy of Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo. © TOKYO WONDER SITE

OPEN CALL FOR THE INTERNATIONAL CREATOR RESIDENCY PROGRAM 2015
at Tokyo Wonder Site

Deadline: 31 March 2015

Tokyo Wonder Site Residency program is the platform of creation and research for international creators in diverse fields of creation. Young emerging, middle standing, international leading
creators gather and explore their ideas in the heart of Tokyo, where global creative city with multi-layers of creativity from traditional culture to cutting edge technology. Tokyo Wonder Site Residency program has been organized by the partnership and collaboration with art centers and cultural institutions around the world since its establishment in 2006.

We intend to strengthen the network of creators from Asia. This open call program ‘International Creator Residency Program’ is for established and productive international creators in the field of Visual Art. We provide financial support to allow participants approximately three month work in residency culminating in a presentation and participating TWS art programs. Through this program, creators will expand their activities in Japan, and gain a jumping board to the international art scene. We are now calling for creators who can perform new creative activities during their programs at TWS Residency for three months.
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The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding/Decoding at The Power Plant, Toronto

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John Akomfrah, still from The Unfinished Conversation, 2012. Collection of the Tate: Jointly purchased by Tate and the British Council, 2013. Courtesy the artist; Smoking Dogs Films; and Caroll/Fletcher, London.

THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION:
ENCODING/DECODING

23 January – 18 May 2015
The Power Plant, Toronto

ARTISTS: Terry Adkins, John Akomfrah, Sven Augustijnen, Shelagh Keeley, Steve McQueen, and Zineb Sedira
CURATERS: Gaëtane Verna and Mark Sealy MBE

The Power Plant presents The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding/Decoding in partnership with Autograph ABP. The winter exhibition takes cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s (1932 – 2014) essay “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse” as its point of departure, exploring how meaning is constructed, how it is systematically distorted by audience reception and how it can be detached and drained of its original intent to produce specific or slanted narratives.
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Sophie Calle “For the Last and First Time”; Simon Starling “Metamorphology”; Allan Sekula & Noël Burch “The Forgotten Space” at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal

Sophie Calle, The Last Image. Blind with embroidery, 2010 (detail)
Simon Starling, Autoxylopyrocycloboros, 2006
Allan Sekula & Noël Burch, The Forgotten Space, 2010

Sophie Calle, The Last Image. Blind with embroidery, 2010 (detail) One color photograph under Plexiglas cover, one color photograph with metal frame, one text with metal frame © Adagp, Paris 2014. Courtesy Galerie Perrotin, Paula Cooper Gallery

Simon Starling, Autoxylopyrocycloboros, 2006. 38 color transparencies, Götschmann medium format slide projector, and flight case 4 minutes Projected dimensions variable Courtesy the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow

Container Ship Image from the film Allan Sekula & Noël Burch, The Forgotten Space, 2010 112 minutes Photo: Courtesy of Icarus Films

Sophie Calle, The Last Image. Blind with embroidery, 2010 (detail) thumbnailSimon Starling, Autoxylopyrocycloboros, 2006 thumbnailAllan Sekula & Noël Burch, The Forgotten Space, 2010 thumbnail
right

SOPHIE CALLE
For the Last and First Time
5 February – 10 May 2015

“I went to Istanbul. I spoke to blind people, most of whom had lost their sight suddenly. I asked them to describe the last thing they saw.”

French artist Sophie Calle , one of the most important artists of her generation, makes her debut at the MAC with For the Last and First Time. The exhibition, which reveals great artistic sensibility, consists of two recent projects: The Last Image (2010), a series of photographs accompanied by texts, and Voir la mer (2011), a series of digital films.

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Mathew Sawyer “Please Take All Your Rubbish With You” at Maria Stenfors, London

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Mathew Sawyer, FUCK YOU to the future (without me), 2014, C-Type Print, 103 x 70 cm. Courtesy the artist and Maria Stenfors, Lonodn

MATHEW SAWYER
Please Take All Your Rubbish With You

16 January – 21 February 2015
Maria Stenfors, London

I meet with friends
no one but me is aware
I’ve tied one of my shoelaces
tighter than the other
it’s barely noticeable
but at times all-consuming
I bury the words FUCK YOU
set in concrete
to be discovered at some unknown point in the future
how big is the invisible trap?
I stack pennies
37 precarious
one from each year I’ve been here
the newest the brightest
stupid music
I drink myself drunk as I walk
collecting feathers
in the morning a sculpture
please take all your rubbish with you
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Review: The Visual Semiotics of Discourses and Theories

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© Bernadette Corporation, Hell Frozen Over (2000), in the context of D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant/Actors, Networks, Theories (2014). With the collaboration of Electronic Arts Intermix. Photo : Sara A. Tremblay

D’un discours qui ne serait du semblant/Actors, Networks, Theories
25 September – 22 November 2014
Dazibao, Montréal

Text by Cécilia Bracmort

D’un discours qui ne serait du semblant/Actors, Networks, Theories (DDSSANT) denominated Vincent Bonin’s two-part exhibition, focusing primarily on the impact of French theory in contemporary art. The Montréal based independent curator took different aims for each section of his project, with a first show at Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery (14 November 2013 – 25 January 2014), looking at French thinkers’ influence on North-American artists and writers from the 1970s onwards. Sub-divided into five rooms, this first act confronted works of art with the very texts that inspiring their creation. Alternatively, Bonin’s second program installed at Dazibao (25 September – 22 November 2014), highlighted changes after this assimilation of theory in art became reflective of wider social and cultural developments. Here the Francophile curator adapted his project to Dazibao’s open space to thus enable a perceptible connection between the actors and theories within contemporary art networks. Although the presentation of theory as creative material might have intimidated some viewers – with exhibition constituents involving tightly messed networks of aesthetic and philosophical references – the task was not impossible according to Bonin: “it is not real obscurity, it’s just a lot of homework.” Continue reading “Review: The Visual Semiotics of Discourses and Theories”

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Opportunities: Call for Applications – International Fellowship Program for Art and Theory 2015–16, Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Innsbruck


David Rych shooting Déja-vu / Variations on Collectivity, Art and Revolution, short film, 2013. Photo: Tiroler Künstlerschaft.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
International Fellowship Program for Art and Theory 2015–16
Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen,
Innsbruck, Austria
buchsenhausen.at

Deadline: 30 January 2015 (Postmark)

Duration: One Semester during 2015-2016
(5 October 2015 – 14 February 2016 or 15 February 2016 – 26 June 2016)

The International Fellowship Program for Art and Theory has taken place in Büchsenhausen since spring 2003. The program is based on the idea of generating and maintaining a context for production and discussion, in which artists and theoreticians can connect and reflect on international art and societal discourses in relation to local topics and issues. At the same time, it offers an artistic laboratory of experimentation, where new artistic practices and strategies may be tried out.
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Review: BNLMTL 2014 – An Archeology of the Future

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Anton Vidokle and Pelin Tan, still from Episode 2, 2014 from 2084: A Science Fiction Show, 2012–2014. Three channel video installation. Each episode: 22 mins, total duration: 66 mins. Courtesy of the artists , produced by La Biennale de Montréal for BNL MTL 2014

BNLMTL 2014
L’avenir (looking forward)
22 October 2014 – 4 January 2015
Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
and other venues

Text by Miwa Kojima

After undergoing major transformations which involved merging with the Quebec Triennial, partnering with the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MACM) and recruiting Sylvie Fortin (former editor-in-chief of Atlanta-based art magazine Art Papers) as artistic director, the Biennale de Montreal (BNLMTL) opened its eighth edition between 22 October 2014 and 04 January 2015, under the title “L’avenir (looking forward)”. Fortin teamed up with MACM in-house curators Lesley Johnston and Mark Lancot in addition to guest curators Gregory Burke and Peggy Gale to invite over 50 individual artists and collectives from 22 different countries. Among this wider range of demography, some have critiqued the Biennale’s lack of diversity since a majority of these artists are now based in Canada, USA and Europe. Yet the numerous individual projects do confront local, national and global perspectives, to relate to current issues such as the global economy, climate change, technology, along with a myriad of other approaches to envisage the possible futures yet to come, in and out of western perspectives. M-KOS offers one last opportunity to review this Biennale for ourselves, now in its final days of exhibition.
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