Celebrating Latin American Art: PINTA Art Fair, 6 - 9 June, London.

PINTA, the Latin American Art Show opened on Monday 5 June at Earls Court Exhibition Centre. Presenting the very best in modern and contemporary Latin American art, the show follows last week's record sale of Latin American art at Sotheby's, New York. Launched in New York City in 2007, PINTA will bring to London over 50 galleries from the Americas and Europe Guillermo de Osma Galería and Distrito 4 from Madrid; Maddox Arts from London; Ruth Benzacar Galería de Arte from Buenos Aires; Lucia de la Puente from Peru, Galería Enrique Guerrero from Mexico, Galeria Nara Roesler from São Paulo, Aninat Isabel from Santiago, Chile and Durban Segnini and Sammer Gallery from Miami. We caught up with PINTA's chairman, Alejandro Zaia to chat about role of the fair in a global marketplace.

2011 marks PINTA’s second year in London and there’s already a lot of excitement around it. Can you tell me something about how the show started and its development over time?
PINTA LONDON was in our dreams from the very beginning. When we started our project in NY in 2007, we always had London as our second stop. The response we got last year was a fantastic start and has certainly encouraged us to do it again, and better.

PINTA showcases the best in contemporary Latin American art; what, for you, makes this form of art particularly special and distinctive from others?
PINTA showcases the best in contemporary but also in modern Latin American art. With so many fantastic art fairs on the calendar, it is difficult to say what is distinctive about PINTA. What I would say is that we love our art, all the management team at PINTA are also collectors and have a great passion for this. PINTA`s director, Diego Costa Peuser ran a Latin American art magazine for 30 years and our other director is an active member of the Latin American Committee at MoMA and Tate. As a region, we believe that we have a great background in art, strong artists, and yet perhaps a weak commercial system. This is the gap that we want to bridge, by trying to bring our artists into the two big world capitals, London and New York.

Can you identify any specific trends in current contemporary Latin American art and, if so, how are these reflected through the work on show at PINTA this year?
In established art, it's about the marvellous geometrical abstraction from the 1950s and 60s, and all the conceptual artists from the 1970s and 80s. This is what the museums and institutions are collecting these days. In contemporary art, our artists are operate in the same way as their contemporaries in Germany, Italy, the UK and so on. They have most of the same concerns, pains, wishes, fears, happy moments and motivations. Despite this, you find some themes subjects that are very much associated with the region: violence, inequality, and poverty. In other cases these are more abstract and those characteristics are less visible, but even these ones have some flavour of their own identity.

What do you anticipate will be some of the highlights of this year’s show?
The four solo shows with established artists (Regina Silveira, Waltercio Caldas, Felipe Ehrenberg and Eduardo Costa), and all the eleven emerging artists, curated by Pablo de la Barra. We are also excited about the Solo Projects section, which runs alongside the main show. This will feature the best of the best in the Latin American live art scene, with works from the 1970s and 80s displayed alongside new works. They are amazing.

Can you tell me more about the PINTA London Museums Acquisition Programme?
Absolutely. It's an initiative generated from Mauro Herlitzka, Institutional Director at PINTA. The programme invites selected museums interested in Latin American art to buy artworks from the fair by receiving special funds from PINTA which they must match or exceed in order to purchase the works. This year the programme will include Tate Modern, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art, and the MUSAC. The mechanism is very simple and to an extent, it has become part of the PINTA’s brand over the years. It's a win-win programme for everyone, the museums, the curators, the galleries, and the artists, and us!

As PINTA has really taken off here in the UK, what are your plans for the future and development of the show in London?
I could say: to be better, to be bigger, offer the best quality as possible to the visitors, get respect within the very competitive art world here, and continuing bringing this platform for our artists and their galleries. But – honestly- the only development that I can see in the near future is a very well deserved vacation with my wife and children, immediately after PINTA!

PINTA continues at Earls Court Exhibition Centre until 9 June.

pintaart.com

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoying reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary arts and culture you should read us in print too. In the spirit of celebration, Issue 41 includes a piece on Guggenheimn Bilbao where the Luminous Interval features internationally acclaimed artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith and Damien Hirst, ArtAngel's new commission at MIF, Bruce Nauman's retrospective at The Kunsthalle Mannheim and Cory Arcangel's Pro Tools at the Whitney in NYC. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Image:
José Miguel Pereñíguez
Coro, 2009
Courtesy of Galería Rafael Ortiz, Spain

Mark Leckey's Fusion of Technology and Theatricality: SEE, WE ASSEMBLE, Serpentine Gallery, London.

Review by Mallory Nanny, a candidate for the MA in Art History at Richmond the American International University in London

Turner Prize winner of 2008, Mark Leckey, currently hosts an exhibition entitled SEE, WE ASSEMBLE, at the Serpentine Gallery until 26 June. Upon entering the first gallery, we are introduced with the main objectives of the exhibition, products of Fiorucci, Henry Moore, and Samsung, as well as how each corresponds with the following stages of time: Past, Past and Present, and Future. Although the artist claims that the former subjects have impacted him in one way or another, he portrays a popular commodity of each in the tradition of advertising; thus bridging the gap between high culture and mass media almost immediately. Leckey incorporates sculpture, sound, film and performance equally throughout the exhibition to give the viewer a particularly unique visual and audio experience in postmodernist art.

Leckey conceptualises the past and present through his “performance” piece entitled Sound Systems, an on-going project since 2001. In the central space of the gallery, a tall bronze sculpture by Henry Moore faces a large stack of speakers, which appear to mimic the sculpture in terms of height and verticality. It seems as if Leckey has purported to match the present with the elegance of the past, as the arrangement of the erected sculptures assume an authoritative presence in the otherwise, empty gallery. The only other piece exhibited is a small poster that functions to inform visitors of the upcoming dates of performances, for the sound art changes week to week. The performance aspect of Sound Systems relies on the sound emanating from the speakers that aims to elicit a response from the Moore sculpture. The sound I experienced was irregular and menacing, reminiscent of the immense roar emitted by furnace/exhaust. It was however, very sporadic, often occurring in fifteen-minute intervals. Between the moments of vibratory clamor were low grumbles and humming that verified its animate existence. While occasionally unpleasant, the inclusion of sound, particularly in relation to the sculpture, achieves a theatrical presence that renders a true sense of chemistry in the communication between past and present.

While its status as a performance piece could be debated, Leckey’s final installation entitled GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction also exhibits aspects of theatricality. The temporary transformation of the gallery into a green screen not only provides a visual connection to the grassy fields of Kensington Gardens, but it also served as the backdrop in the production of the film that is exhibited here on two mounted flat screens. Located between them is the focal point of the work, the black Samsung “smart” refrigerator. Both the fridge and the Samsung name appear almost constantly throughout the film, whether seen against a natural landscape or viewed internally, in a scientifically-charged description that concerns its inner workings. The fridge not only stars in the video, it narrates it as well, in a muffled, robotic voice. The artist has reinvented the concept of the readymade by conveying its animate status in connection to the worldly, and out-of-worldly, environments. While Leckey’s elevation of the object to cult status may be interpreted as wildly propagandistic, it could conversely be interpreted as a commentary on technological advancements, particularly “smart” products which possess the abilities to think and function on their own in correspondence to the needs of its user. Thus not only do we become more dependent on these objects, but we form relationships with them as well. GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction may be understood as Leckey’s prediction of the future of technology in our lives, as well as its effects on the art world.

The installation that best represents the past is most likely an earlier piece from 1999 called Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, located in the gallery off the right of the entrance. The darkened interior contains a large set of speakers and a video projection that provides a look into the underground UK club scene from the 1970s to the early 1990s. Adding interest to the installation is the soundtrack, which Leckey produced using similar experimental techniques that were popular in the subculture portrayed in the film. There exists, however, a sinister quality in the combined experience of the soundtrack with the grainy quality of the film. Compared to the previously-discussed works which evoke technology, communication and theatricality as common postmodern themes, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore appears rather detached in the broader scope of the exhibition.

Mark Leckey SEE, WE ASSEMBLE continues until 26 June 2011.

serpentinegallery.org

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoying reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary arts and culture you should read us in print too. In the spirit of celebration, Issue 41 includes a piece on Guggenheimn Bilbao where the Luminous Interval features internationally acclaimed artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith and Damien Hirst, ArtAngel's new commission at MIF, Bruce Nauman's retrospective at The Kunsthalle Mannheim and Cory Arcangel's Pro Tools at the Whitney in NYC. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Image:
Mark Leckey
Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London
(19 May – 26 June 2011)
© 2011 Mark Blower

Clare Mitten, Cara Nahaul and Corinna Till: Jerwood Painting Fellowships, Jerwood Visual Arts, London.

Review by Laura Bushell

Jerwood Visual Arts’ support for painters has morphed over the years from an annual cash prize through to the group show format of Jerwood Contemporary Painters to the inauguration of the Jerwood Painting Fellowships this year. These awards afford three selected early career painters the time, funds, guidance and exposure to undertake some sustained professional progression, developing and contextualizing their practice under the guidance of a mentor before exhibiting their work. Jerwood have sought to address exactly what it is today’s upcoming painters need to progress, and the results are now on display. As such, this collection of works by the three graduates - Clare Mitten, Cara Nahaul and Corinna Till – does feel slightly disparate. Walking into the gallery we encounter three separate mini solo shows, each to be encountered each in their own right. This will obviously be coloured by the viewer’s familiarity (or lack thereof) with the artists’ work, deciding whether the work displayed is viewed as a product influenced by the Fellowship’s developmental aims or as a snapshot of an upcoming artist deemed outstanding enough to receive the award.

Cara Nahaul’s stripped back portraits of people hailing from her father’s homeland of India line the bright open space of the Jerwood foyer. There’s a recognizable image of Benazir Bhutto along with family portraits and a group of men lined up as if for a school photo. Each face is pared down to minimal strokes of pale thin layers of oils and contrasting inky darks for hair and eyes. Up close the edges look feathered, the planes of the face undefined, yet from afar they resolve into high-contrast visages with striking gazes all looking in on the viewer - flashes of warm orange in Nahaul’s otherwise subdued palette uniting them across the walls of the gallery. Although Nahaul’s decision-making when it comes to palette and paint application is distinctly subjective, the images themselves, or at least the sense that they came from photography, lend a documentary form to the works.

Clare Mitten takes recognizable mechanical forms – a watch, a car, a tank – and utilises painterly representation to process them into abstraction. Her paper and card maquettes ditch the slickness of their mechanical counterparts in favour of a characterful handmade cardboard construction and soft, dirty pastel hues. The form of these objects is then abstracted again into flat planes of colour; blown up and modified to create wall-sized collages that displace their source material into geometry whilst still retaining just enough formal resonance of their original. Less indexical to the real world than Nahaul’s paintings from photographs, Mitten’s collages deal with the notion of equivalence in the flattened representation of the painted paper surface. There’s no shading, texture or visible brush marks to be found here, it’s more about the shape of the painted plane and the interplay of colour.

Corinna Till’s painted representations of front gates don’t actually appear in the exhibition. Instead, the painted image is repositioned back into the site of its inspiration, held in place between the two gateposts by a person crouching behind it with only their fingertips giving them away. A photograph is taken and these are displayed, large scale and propped against the walls of her space. Nearby, a desk, complete with reading lamp, invites viewers to sit and flick through a sketchbook of ideas that eventually occupied those spaces between posts, inspired by the suburban architecture that divides public thoroughfares from private property, marking the threshold to a person’s territory. Thresholds, both metaphorically in her work and also stylistically between the media she uses, are mutable in Till’s work as she slides between the real and the represented material world.

The Jerwood Painting Fellowships exhibition is really a portrait in itself of three contemporary practitioners rather than a show on a theme. It radiates with ideas, some of which cross over between artists, others that don’t, and of course some which are stronger than others. Only time will tell what happens to these three after the award, as more painters fill the ranks of Fellowship graduates, and it’s an exciting prospect both for painters and those who enjoy looking at their work.

Jerwood Painting Fellowships is on display until 26 June.

jerwoodvisualarts.org

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoying reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary arts and culture you should read us in print too. In the spirit of celebration, Issue 41 includes a piece on Guggenheimn Bilbao where the Luminous Interval features internationally acclaimed artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith and Damien Hirst, ArtAngel's new commission at MIF, Bruce Nauman's retrospective at The Kunsthalle Mannheim and Cory Arcangel's Pro Tools at the Whitney in NYC. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Image:
Surrogate A, 2011 by Corinna Till

Re-examined Territories: the British Council present Mike Nelson, Venice Biennale

Venice is the biggest date in the art world diary and Mike Nelson’s installation, conceived and created in the British Pavilion is no different. Nelson has been working in Venice for a period of three months and the completed work was launched to the press on 1 June and will be open to the public for the duration of the exhibition from 4 June – 27 November.

Born in Loughborough in 1967, Nelson has already received considerable international acclaim for his meticulous installations and his work has been presented in major group and solo exhibitions throughout the world from the ICA (London), CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art (San Francisco) and at the Statens Museum for Kunst (Copenhagen). A recipient of Paul Hamlyn Award in 2001, Nelson has twice been short-listed for the Tuner Prize. One of his large-scale installations, The Coral Reef, originally convceived for Matt’s Gallery, London (2000), was acquired by Tate in 2008 and is currently on show as part of the Collection Displays at Tate Britain.

Nelson's large-scale sculptural installations immerse the viewer in an unfolding narrative which develops through a sequence of meticulously realised spatial structures. The weaving of fact and fiction are fundamental to Nelson’s practice, and his constructs are steeped in both literary and historic references, whilst drawing upon the geography and cultural context of their location. Throughout his career, Nelson has constantly returned to and re-examined territories within his own practice, and his new exhibition for the British Pavilion follows the success of his first major solo presentation in Venice in 2001, The Deliverance and the Patience, which was shown as part of the collateral programme at the 49th edition of the Biennale.

Nelson’s, I, Imposter takes as its starting point another of the artist’s key works from the past decade, Magazin: Büyük Valide Han, originally build for the 8th International Istanbul Biennial in 2003. By relocating and re-working this earlier installation for Venice, Nelson has both created a link between the two former great mercantile centres of the east-west/west-east axes, and drawn upon his own histories with the cities and their respective biennials.

Magazin: Büyük Valide Han was housed in a cell-like space within the vast complex of the Büyük Valide Han, a 17th century caravanserai situated in the Mercan area of Istanbul. It comprised a darkroom on split levels filled with black and white photographic images of the courtyards and dome structures of the exterior of the caravanserai in addition to the immediate surrounding area of the building. Nelson has referred to the work for Istanbul as being a parasitical installation that had lodged itself into a 17th century building. Based on the photographic memory of the earlier work, with I, Imposter, Nelson has not only rebuilt the original darkroom but sections of the caravanserai itself, so that now a building, from another time and place, exists inside the late 19th century British Pavilion in Venice.

The British Pavilion is open to the public until 27 November. Keep an eye on their Twitter for up-to-date information on queues and opening times: @BCVisualArts

venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org

Image:
Mike Nelson: To the Memory of HP Lovecraft 3 London, 2008.
Photograph by Steve White

The Viewer as Subject: Magical Consciousness, Arnolfini, Bristol.

Review by Regina Papachlimitzou

Magical Consciousness examines and negotiates philosopher Vilém Flusser’s postulation that the act of looking carries more intrinsic potential than the object being looked at. The exhibition, co-curated by artist Runa Islam, brings together an eclectic mix of media, gathering and juxtaposing works that take the act of looking as a starting point from which to explore the ramifications of Flusser’s philosophy.

On the ground floor gallery, two works investigating the relative significance of context in the process of engaging with an object are showcased side by side. The MacGuffin Library and Killed set off from opposite ends: the former extricating objects from a context in which they held positions of prevailing and absolute importance and presenting them as an unimpressive miscellany of defeated, lacklustre exhibits; the latter demonstrating the overwhelming obliteration of context by what is essentially an undeniable absence in its centre.

The MacGuffin Library comprises a number of MacGuffin objects – the MacGuffin, extensively utilised by filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, is an element in a film plot, often a prop, the attaining of which becomes of such importance to the protagonist as to drive his or her actions to an extent that does not necessarily correspond with the relative ‘value’ of the object itself. Despite the fact that The MacGuffin Library includes a synopsis of the story behind each object, outside their context the objects become as intriguing and inherently unknowable as museum exhibits; their fascination no longer derives from the role they sometime played in the original story they featured in, but rather inheres in the potential re-imagining of said story (or even the altogether different framework reinvented and ascribed to them) by the viewer, in the infinite possibilities of their reincarnation.

Killed displays a looping representation of a series of photographs in which a hole has been punched in the process of editorial censorship. The hole remains in the same place – the centre – of each photograph, but its size is amplified in sudden jolts: slowly at first, then with what appears as ever-increasing malevolence, the hole expands until it takes over almost the entire surface of the screen. Only the corners of the pictures remain in view, and as the film speeds up any likelihood of gleaning the subject of the pictures diminishes into impossibility. The viewer’s attention is forcedly drawn to the resounding absence that defies and frustrates any attempt at discovering meaning in the images presented.

On the second floor galleries, three conceptual works explore the medium of cinema and how it operates after the –seemingly – most important element, the visual, is removed. Recalling Frames, Vera Cruz, and Invisible Film demonstrate, to varying degrees, the potency of sound and words as the predominant means of communication. In Recalling Frames, the image of film grain is projected to the soundtrack of garbled, largely indistinct dialogue – the latter almost drowned out by the accompanying music and rendered all the more threatening for this reason; in Vera Cruz, speech and any other sound are engulfed by the constant sound of sea-waves, and the absence of image is accentuated by the presence of the subtitles at the bottom of the screen; in Invisible Film, an overhead projector projects the image of an old-style projector projecting outside the viewer’s frame of reference. On the outside of the gallery is mounted a screen, on which subtitles are showing (this time on the centre of the screen), accompanied by the shocking and loud soundtrack of screaming, gunshots and swearing.

The absence of the visual intensifies the viewer’s experience of the auditory and verbal, heightening the received information to exaggerated, threatening, almost monstrous proportions. At the same time, the viewer’s position as a subject, looking, peering into nothing is brought to the fore. By questioning the hierarchy that places the visual element at its highest level, the three works explore, to differing degrees, the notion that meaning is no longer elucidated or created through the process of interpretation, but rather in the process of seeing, in the dynamic space taken up by the experience of looking as opposed to the passive experience of taking in and deciphering. All three works demonstrate a preoccupation with current over-reliance (and near fixation) on the visual aspect of art and urge for a re-evaluation of its perceived necessity while denouncing its subjugation of other sensory pathways of communication.

Almeida’s work Inhabited Painting challenges the fleeting involvement of the female body in the creation of art, especially as typified in Yves Klein’s Anthropometries series. Klein’s use of nude female models covered in International Klein Blue as ‘living brushes’ is alluded to only to be refuted in Almeida’s work: the seven panels present a series of black and white pictures of the artist appearing to obliterate her own presence in the frame behind sweeping brushstrokes of blue paint. From the fifth panel onwards however, the artist is shown reasserting her presence, when first her hand, then her arm resurface from behind the blue, eventually pushing it aside. The abstract shapes of the female figure in Klein’s work are replaced by the playful but confident affirmation, in Almeida’s work, of the (female) artist’s centrality as a defining component of the pictorial space, both as the subject creating and as a subject portrayed. The female body reasserts itself as the wielding power controlling the brush, the creator rather than the tool implemented to create.

Alongside the artworks (of which The Collection of Impossible Subjects, Enigmatic Whistler and Klein Bottle Piñata are especially noteworthy), the exhibition showcases an Obsidian Mirror, an Aztec artefact on loan from the British Museum.

Magical Consciousness is on show until 3 July.

arnolfini.org.uk

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoying reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary arts and culture you should read us in print too. In the spirit of celebration, Issue 41 includes a piece on Guggenheimn Bilbao where the Luminous Interval features internationally acclaimed artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith and Damien Hirst, ArtAngel's new commission at MIF, Bruce Nauman's retrospective at The Kunsthalle Mannheim and Cory Arcangel's Pro Tools at the Whitney in NYC. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Richard Long/Giuseppe Penone, Haunch of Venison, London

Review by Emily Sack, a candidate for the MA in Art History at Richmond the American International University in London.

The tree of life, a family tree, the ‘Giving Tree’ – trees are a significant part of our everyday existence, but who really stops to look at them? Walking through any art museum, trees will be present in dozens of works, but what happens when they leave the background, no longer used as framing devices, and become the central image? Giuseppe Penone’s current exhibition at Haunch of Venison in London examines these questions by bringing focus, in a variety of media, to an overlooked aspect of our daily lives.

Working in photography, paper and pencil, wood, bronze, and graphite on canvas, Penone’s multi-media approach looks at the interaction between man and nature. In two similar works, Continuera a crescere tranne che in quel punto – radiografia (2010)(It will continue to grow except at this point – radiography) and Alpi Marittime – continuera a crescere tranne che in quell punto (1968-1978) (Maritime Alps – It will continue to grow except at this point), Penone places a steel cast of his own hand grasping the trunk of a small tree. He re-examines this same tree ten years later to find that the tree has grown around this foreign object, thereby adapting to its new situation. Trees are fascinating entities that simultaneously grow upwards, downwards and outwards, and the artist captures this in revisiting the same place over several years and examining the affect of man-made material on a natural growth process.

Through the above examples and other works, Penone demonstrates the resilience of nature despite human intervention. Though I am not sure it is meant to be an overtly environmentalist approach, the artist encourages visitors to question the relationship of humans with their surroundings in nature. In a stunning example of floor sculpture – Lo spazio della scultura – pelle di cedro (2001) (Space of sculpture – cedar skin) – Penone creates a grid of bark from a cedar tree; however, the material used is actually bronze, not real bark. The likeness is remarkable and it is difficult to believe that each element is much heavier and more rigid than it appears. In the middle of the grid of bark, one piece is elevated above the others by a contraption made of tree branches (though this too is also made of bronze). The appearance of weightlessness and malleability further compounds the paradox of materiality. Penone here calls attention to man’s ability to replicate nature; however, this skill is quite limited and complicated. The cedar skins in this piece look like bark, but it is impossible to make paper or firewood from it and it cannot produce oxygen for us to breathe.

Though the Giuseppe Penone exhibit is excellent on its own, Haunch of Venison presents his work in conjunction with an exhibition of works by Richard Long. The two exhibits work very well together because although the media utilized by each is quite different, both artists use the natural environment as their subject matter. In one of the central galleries atop a majestic staircase, Penone and Long each have a work displayed. Penone’s is entitled Spazio di Luce (2008) (Space of Light) and is composed of wood and vegetal resin. The solid monolith of wood is pierced in several locations by holes carved in the place of knots in the wood. This irregular pattern of negative space allows light to enter into the sculpture and also to compose faint spots of light in the shadow cast by the object. Here Penone is taking an element generally considered to be a flaw or blemish on the surface of the wood and makes it beautiful.

Long’s work in the same space is on a much larger scale. Stone Print Spiral of 2011 is a circular arrangment of stones that the artist extracted from a Danish River. The displacement of natural materials in both works within a gallery space allows the viewer to appreciate each for their inherent qualities instead of their place within the environment. Many of Long’s other works on display originate from the act of walking as an artwork and his methods of documenting this action. He utilizes a seemingly bizarre juxtaposition of earth art and conceptual/text based art. One of the central themes of his exhibit is that the man made is necessarily distinct from the natural, but that neither is superior or inferior.

It is rare for two artists’ exhibitions to flow together and complement each other so well, and this interaction between the Giuseppe Penone and Richard Long, especially in the shared space, provides a highly enjoyable and thought-provoking gallery experience.

Richard Long / Giuseppe Penone continues at Haunch of Venison, London until 20 Aug 2011.

haunchofvenison.com

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoying reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary arts and culture you should read us in print too. In the spirit of celebration, Issue 41 includes a piece on Guggenheimn Bilbao where the Luminous Interval features internationally acclaimed artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith and Damien Hirst, ArtAngel's new commission at MIF, Bruce Nauman's retrospective at The Kunsthalle Mannheim and Cory Arcangel's Pro Tools at the Whitney in NYC. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Image:
Giuseppe Penone
Copyright Giuseppe Penone
Courtesy of Haunch of Venison

Aesthetica: June/July Issue out Today

Inside the June/July issue

We’ve been very busy over the past few months. One of the biggest announcements to make is the launch of the inaugural Aesthetica Short Film Festival (ASFF), which is an international platform for independent short film. The first festival will take place later this year, and we’re very excited! In other news, as the summer season rolls in, there are so many invigorating exhibitions, releases and events for you to visit.

In art, we head to the Guggenheim Bilbao where the Luminous Interval from D. Daskalopoulos Collection features the works of over 30 internationally acclaimed artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith, Damien Hirst and Paul McCarthy. The show offers contemplation of some of the most powerful works of the past few decades. ArtAngel launches a new commission at MIF and we also look back at 20 years of their work.

Bruce Nauman turns 70 and to celebrate The Kunsthalle Mannheim is exhibiting a massive retrospective of this prolific artist’s career. The master of remix, Cory Arcangel opens his new show Pro Tools at the Whitney in New York City. We introduce the work of Jason Schembri with his Factory Girl series and present a visual glimpse of what’s on offer at this year’s PHotoEspaña.

In film, Golden Bear winner at the Berlin International Film Festival, Bal by Semih Kaplanoğlu, traces the past. We also have a preview of ASFF, giving you the heads up about the UK’s latest film festival. In music, French band, Underground Railroad, chats about their latest album and we examine how the Internet is changing radio. In theatre, Marina Abramović is back in the UK and discusses her latest production The Life and Death of Marina Abramović (with Willem Dafoe and music by Antony Hegarty from Antony and the Johnsons).

Finally, we celebrate the opening of The Hepworth Wakefield and speak with Simon Wallis, the gallery’s Director, about the UK’s newest public gallery. Enjoy!

Pick up a copy from one of our stockists or online from our shop.

A Knowledge of Things Familiar: David Beattie, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin.

James Merrigan is an artist and art writer based in Dublin.

David Beattie’s work has an element of alchemy about it, where banal objects or happenings are transmuted into metaphysical experiences. A previous incarnation of this trend of energy efficient alchemy by the artist was shown at Oonagh Young Gallery Dublin in 2009. The work entitled cloudmaker, consisted of a head height metal tripod; an upturned plastic water container, that was wedged into the apex of the tripod; and a portable hob with a hot plate, placed on the floor directly beneath the pierced cap of the upside down dripping water container. A cause and effect scenario was manufactured by the mixed media setup, when the slow drips of water from the container touched ground on the hot plate – evaporating into a cloud. This apparatus was in fact a reversal of the natural phenomenon of clouds making rain; here water was made into clouds. Beattie’s solo show at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin, entitled A Knowledge of Things Familiar, sets the premise for similar 'cause and effect' scenarios, but this time his focus is on sound, or more specifically “infrasound” (sound waves with frequencies below the lower limit of human audibility).

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios (TBG&S) is slap-bang in the middle of Dublin City. I use the adverb “slap-bang” to get across the idea of noise or noise pollution that is part of the sensory overload of the city. This element of noise is important in the context of 'receiving' Beattie’s subtle output at the gallery. In counterpoint to the city, the art gallery is usually a space of gaping absences and focused presences, where the viewer negotiates around an object to experience and ‘read’ what the artist has left for them; but also what the artist has perversely left out. It took two visits to TBG&S to account for this review of Beattie’s work at the gallery. On the first visit no high colour, acute sound, or moving image registered as a starting point, but observing other individuals in the gallery negotiating the objects highlights the fundamental experiential essense of the work from an anthropological perspective.

At one end of the gallery Beattie presents a setup of floor bound objects, which include a UV light, a microphone, a tape recorder, and sheet of corrugated steel tilted against a wall. It was interesting to observe other visitors and what they made of the composition of objects, one individual knelt down before the setup, picked up the microphone and announced "one two, one two." The invigilator was over in a flash to apologetically explain that was not the right procedure of interaction with the art work. W.T.J. Mitchell would call this a primal meeting with technology, such as shouting at the T.V.

The other work in the space invited a similar physical interaction by another individual; who got down on all fours beside a speaker box (that seemed to emit a low frequency sound), and put his ear up against the face of the speaker. It was only on my second visit to the gallery that it became clear that both of these episodes of physical interaction were blocking the ‘effect’ that Beattie had manufactured in the gallery.

Paul Valery once wrote of “the active presence of absent things," but on the second attempt to view Beattie’s work I didn’t have to strain so hard to experience these “active presences” amongst the formally intriguing objects. I continued where my first visit had been cut short, (the image of the fellow with his ear to the speaker still phantom-like in my memory). The low frequency sound emitting from the speaker was felt rather than heard. A couple of metres from the speaker a large square sheet of glass is vertically positioned on the floor, sandwiched between two concrete blocks. The sheet of glass is positioned at an angle that bounces and directs the sound from the speaker into a head height steel shelter, enough space for the viewer to walk into. Standing in the shelter I felt nauseous, as if the sound was held within the shelter. There is something of the farmyard about the shelter and the herding of the viewer to end up in the metal canopied pen.

I wrote of noise and the city earlier, this tangent hints at my personal assumption that you need optimum conditions to receive the frequencies that Beattie is outputting at TBG&S. Although formally fascinating, I can only assume what is happening in the first setup, between the UV light, the microphone, tape recorder and corrugated steel – I presume a similar thread of sound waves that end up vibrating the steel. In saying that, an explicit disclosure of the function of these apparatus would overshadow the effect that is caused, felt and seen in the gallery — the corrugated steel seems to shimmer? The definition of a phenomena is one of wonder and is usually verbally uncooperative. The accompanying literature does mention “at 18hz[hertz] the human eye is thought to resonate causing hallucinations in the form of shadows or ghost-like forms.” I am left with ghosts in my understanding, but I also remember the nauseous feeling that I experienced in the shelter. This fabricated shed by Beattie succeeds in blocking out the noise pollution of the city that unavoidably filters into the gallery, but also traps the 18hz sound wave that the artist is 'bouncing' off the functional props in the gallery. In this instance, Beattie is acting as the medium, and his message is received loud and clear.

David Beattie, A Knowledge of Things Familiar at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios Dublin, runs until June 30A , 2011.

templebargallery.com

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoying reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary arts and culture you should read us in print too. In the spirit of celebration, Issue 41 includes a piece on Guggenheimn Bilbao where the Luminous Interval features internationally acclaimed artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith and Damien Hirst, ArtAngel's new commission at MIF, Bruce Nauman's retrospective at The Kunsthalle Mannheim and Cory Arcangel's Pro Tools at the Whitney in NYC. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Image:
A Knowledge of Things Familiar
Courtesy the artist

Photographic Explorations of Identity: Guernsey Photography Festival: 1 - 30 June

Recognising the true potential of photography and following on from the success of the inaugural festival last year, The Guernsey Photography Festival presents exhibitions by Martin Parr, Richard Billingham, Samuel Fosso, Carolyn Drake, Francesco Giusti, Adam Patterson, Dana Popa, Nelli Palomäki and a retrospective by influential 1960s British documentary photographer Tony Ray-Jones. Opening today (1 June) and running until 30 June, the year’s festival explores the theme of Identity and features a range of interpretations from personal to social to political. From Francesco Giusti’s Congolese dandies in colourful suites, to Carolyn Drake’s compelling documentation of the changing landscapes and communities of Central Asia’s Paradise Rivers, and Samuel Fosso and Nelli Palomäki’s striking takes on classic portraits, notions of self and place are presented in diverse contexts.

With a programme that includes more than 20 exhibitions and over 30 fringe events, we’ve included a selection of exhibition highlights that this year’s GPF has to offer:

Martin Parr
Martin Parr will show work from his ongoing series Small World, which offers a biting satire on the homogenisation of worldwide tourism over the last three decades, through his larger than life observations of holidaymakers around the globe. This will be shown along with the work of one of his photographic inspirations, Tony Ray-Jones, whose black and white documentary photography surveyed the distinctive eccentricities of the British leisure classes of the 1960s with surreal humour, before his untimely death aged only 30.

Richard Billingham
Richard Billingham’s acclaimed and controversial portraits, Ray’s a Laugh, which depict an honest and searing account of his parents’ troubled home-life, will be presented together for the first time with new work portraying his own young family. Also shown will be a series of videos produced by the artist in the late 90s.

Samuel Fosso
Samuel Fosso, one of Africa’s most eminent photographers, will exhibit his African Spirits and Tati series of self-portraits. African Spirits presents the artist inhabiting various icons of black identity, from cultural leaders to the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, while the Tati series shows Fosso dressed up as fictionalised characters. Both reflect his ongoing experimentation with the techniques of portraiture and the self-empowerment and sense of beauty which their theatricality projects.

Carolyn Drake
The acclaimed American photographer presents Paradise Rivers, which follows the Amu and Syr Darya rivers of Central Asia from their source in the valleys of the Pamir and Tien Shan mountains, downstream across Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan to their dwindling ends, crossing into the lives of people and layers of history that they intersect along the way. Called the Rivers of Paradise in early Islamic writings, the rivers have sustained life for forty thousand years. When Moscow’s rule ended in 1991, five new Central Asian nations appeared, burdened with plunging economies, artificial borders, and a growing ecological crisis.

Francesco Giusti
Italian photographer Francesco Giusti presents his award-winning series, SAPE, colourful portraits of Congolese gentlemen dressed in brightly coloured, bespoke tailored suits. Each belongs to SAPE - the Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes – a membership who consider themselves artists and who are respected and admired by their local communities. Offering a touch of glamour to their humble environments, every weekend the members gather in bars and dancing halls to parade in the streets, in an expression of urban culture looking for new reference parameters and codes, such as non-violence and elegance.

Nelli Palomäki
Finnish photographer Nelli Palomäki conveys the magic of portraits from the past through her exploration of classic black-and-white portraiture. She will show recent works, which present children revealing behaviors mirroring the ones of adults.

Adam Patterson and Dana Popa
An exhibition of two emerging photographic talents, who each return to their respective homelands of Northern Ireland and Romania, in an exploration of place and identity following an extended absence. Most recently spending six weeks covering the Chilean miners rescue, Adam Patterson was given a special mention at this year’s World Press Photo awards for smuggling a camera to trapped Chilean miner Edison Pena, who photographed conditions while trapped underground.

Tim Andrews Project: Over the Hill
Following his diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease, Tim Andrews answered a small advert in Time Out and was photographed in the nude for a portrait project. Filled with a sense of creativity and liberation, Andrews has spent the last three years sitting for portraits by 128 photographers including Rankin and Harry Borden.

Jocelyn Allen
Jocelyn Allen is just 23 and completed her degree in 2010, the year in which she won the Guernsey Photography Festival competition. She was also selected as one of thirteen artists to represent the UK in the 2011 International Biennale of Young Artists of Europe and the Mediterranean. For the festival, Jocelyn Allen presents One Is Not Like The Other, a project commissioned by Guernsey Photography Festival, as part of her competition prize. Here, Jocelyn explores the theme of identity by looking at her closest relatives, whose clothes, mannerisms and poses she imitates and presents as sets of double portraits, i.e., herself and grandfather.

Guernsey Photography Festival: 1 – 30 June 2011
guernseyphotographyfestival.com

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoying reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary arts and culture you should read us in print too. In the spirit of celebration, Issue 41 includes a piece on Guggenheimn Bilbao where the Luminous Interval features internationally acclaimed artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith and Damien Hirst, ArtAngel's new commission at MIF, Bruce Nauman's retrospective at The Kunsthalle Mannheim and Cory Arcangel's Pro Tools at the Whitney in NYC. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Image:
Copyright Martin Parr, courtesy Magmum Photos

Thoughtless Gestures + Obsessive Beauty: Scotland + Venice present Karla Black, Venice Biennale

Taking place across a six-month period, from June to November, this year’s Biennale di Venezia seeks to understand the significance of art in a globalised world. In a contemporary artistic culture where the concept of anti-art has passed, the Biennale’s programme pays particular tribute to The Age of Enlightenment, the idealisation of reason and European scholarly practice that characterised it. Aiming to highlight the Biennale’s place in a globalised world, the Biennale welcomes new country participants, which include Andorra, Saudi Arabia, the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and Haiti.

As the world’s largest and most prestigious showcase for contemporary visual arts, Scotland + Venice present a solo presentation by Karla Black. Black (b.1972) lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. Her work has been shown in major museum and commercial gallery exhibitions in the UK and abroad. Recent solo exhibitions include Karla Black at Capitain Petzel, Berlin, Karla Black: Sculptures with paintings by Bet Low at Modern Art Oxford and Structure and Material at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield.

Curated by The Fruitmarket Gallery, 2011 Turner Prize nominee Karla Black presents an exhibition of new abstract sculptures that hover between energy and mass – pulverised, atomised, piled, layered, supported, suspended and spilling out onto the floor; a mass of colour and material that fills the 15th century Venetian Paazzo Pisano. These ‘almost objects’ have been intimately and painstakingly worked in situ by the artist into detailed aesthetic forms. While not exactly site-specific, these works have been made with their physical and conceptual context in mind. In this exhibition Black presents forms and compositions in Vaseline and marble dust, sugar paper and eye-shadow, soil, powder paint and plaster, polythene, cellophane and soap, in crumbling, peeling washes or dustings of high key mid-colours like peach, baby blue and pastel pink. Black describes these works as being caught between thoughtless gestures and seriously obsessive attempts at beauty.

As the fifth presentation from Scotland + Venice, a partnership between Creative Scotland, British Council Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland, Karla Black’s presentation builds upon the critical success of previous projects which have features artists including Turner Prize winner Simon Starling and nominees Cathy Wilkes, Jim Lambie and Lucy Skaer, and last year presented the first solo exhibition for Scotland at the Venice Biennale with the work of Martin Boyce.

Black’s forthcoming exhibitions include Turner Prize 2011 at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (21 October – 8 January 2012) and Georgia O’Keeffe/Karla Black at Kunsthalle Vienna (2013). For further information and visitor information visit scotlandandvenice.com

Aesthetica Magazine
We hope you enjoying reading the Aesthetica Blog, if you want to explore more of the best in contemporary arts and culture you should read us in print too. In the spirit of celebration, Issue 41 includes a piece on Guggenheimn Bilbao where the Luminous Interval features internationally acclaimed artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Kiki Smith and Damien Hirst, ArtAngel's new commission at MIF, Bruce Nauman's retrospective at The Kunsthalle Mannheim and Cory Arcangel's Pro Tools at the Whitney in NYC. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)1904 479 168. Even better, subscribe to Aesthetica and save 20%. Go on, enjoy!

Image:
Karla Black, Installation View, Palazzo Pisani (S.Marina) at the Venice Biennale, 2011
Courtesy the artist and Gallery Gisela Capitain.
Photo: Gautier Deblonde