Currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, The Reach of Realism brings together an international group of artists exploring the artistic traditions of Realism in an age of digital manipulation and staged reality. The exhibition features works by Uta Barth, Olaf Breuning, Tom Burr, Talia Chetrit, Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova, Phil Collins, Thomas Demand, Alex Hubbard, Matt Keegan, Ragnar Kjartansson, Elad Lassry, Lars Laumann, Adam McEwen, Wilhelm Sasnal, Xaviera Simmons, Martin Soto Climent, Wolfgang Tillmans, Sara VanDerBeek, Emily Wardill, Gillian Wearing, Judi Werthein, and Artur Zmijewski. The Reach of Realism is curated by MOCA Associate Curator Ruba Katrib.

The contemporary artists in The Reach of Realism use various strategies to address the increasing fusion between daily life and popular media. From 19th century painters who depicted everyday life during the industrial revolution, to the 1980s “pictures generation” of artists who criticized the media’s growing influence on society, artists have used realism as a political strategy. Today, it is widely understood that while images are effective in communicating ideas, they have lost some impact in communicating truths because of increased manipulation and outright fabrication. The artists in the exhibition convey the desire for authenticity in images while distrusting the ability of images to communicate an objective reality. By choosing to obstruct straightforward depictions and instead reveal poetic truths, these artists question whether the images they produce and the realities they portray can be meaningful. In creating semblances of reality, the artists are more interested in the inclusion of a detail or moment in a work that contains the potential for realism and not realism itself.

Images and text provided by the MOCA

Current exhibitions at: ZKM Karlsruhe. Actual artist: Wolfgang Tillmans – “Werke aus der Sammlung Boros” – Exhibition dates are 07.02. – 09.05.. Get more information about Wolfgang Tillmans – Museum or Gallery informations: Karlsruhe, ZKM by Wikipedia.org / Portal:Arts. Buy arts from Wolfgang Tillmans or find objects, articles or web-projects? Art online: Wolfgang Tillmans by adaweb.com | Biography – Textportrait from Wolfgang Tillmans by Wolfgang Tillmans. Articles and texts:

Textimages: Madonna (Ralph Ueltzhoeffer 2009)

Ralph Ueltzhoeffer: Textportraits.

EXHIBITION – artist: Wolfgang Tillmans, location: ZKM Karlsruhe, date: 07.02. – 09.05. / current exhibitions at: ZKM Karlsruhe 2009. Artistinformation and biography-text from: Wolfgang Tillmans ZKM Karlsruhe CATEGORY: art, modern art, projects: TEXTPORTRAITS Wolfgang Tillmans by Ralph Ueltzhoeffer and Laura May. More information about Wolfgang Tillmans Exhibition ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany.

New entries: actual 0

Madonna / Portrait (TEXTPORTRAIT).

textportraits by Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.

AKTUELLE AUSSTELLUNG: ZKM Karlsruhe; Künstler: Wolfgang Tillmans; Betitelung: Werke aus der Sammlung Boros – Zeitraum der Ausstellung: 07.02. – 09.05.. Kunstausstellungen (Deutschland) aktuell: ZKM Karlsruhe (2009). Weitere Informationen über: Wolfgang Tillmans: Biografie/Biography — | Galerieninformationen/Gallery: Wolfgang Tillmans — Weitere geplante Ausstellungen: ZKM Karlsruhe von Wolfgang Tillmans — Wolfgang Tillmans Kunstportal: Wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org). Mehr aktuelle Informationen über Wolfgang Tillmans ZKM Karlsruhe.

Beitragsforum Kunst & Kultur allgemein:

Textportrait: Madonna.

Textportraits – Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.

I recently saw If One Thing Matters – A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans at a film festival.

From Insideout.com: How many young art fags have picked up a book of Wolfgang Tillmans’ photography only to find their artistic perception forever changed?

*raises hand*

After the film, it started to rain but I got home and dry.

“Underneath Day’s azure eyes, Ocean’s nursling, Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite’s destined halls.”

Francis Upritchard’s ‘Yellow Dancer’ from ‘Save Yourself’, installation for the NZ Pavillion, Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, Venice Biennale, 2009

As the sun rose and the art-crowds flocked, the great palazzos threw open their doors this weekend marking the opening of Venice’s 53rd Biennale, curated by Daniel Burnbaum and open

for the next four summer months. This showcase of the world’s best and most diverse art talent is the modern treasure within not only the amazing crumling palazzos but also at the ‘Arsenale’, a grand industrial L-shaped sequence of double-height brick warehouses and at ‘Giardini’- a large open park scattered with rambling pavilions and outbuildings.

From the whimsical; Liam Gillick’s installation deliberately plays with the contrast between the pine-wood pristine kitchen-like structure inserted within the grandness of the recently restored German pavillion:

Liam Gillick’s ‘How Are You Going To Behave? A Kitchen Cat Speaks’ for the German Pavillion, Giardini, Venice Biennale, 2009

to Bruce Nauman’s installation wrapping both around and within the colonial look of the USA pavillion, there is a great spectrum of art on show, from the whimsical to the sober, from art establishment to newcomers.

Bruce Nauman’s ‘Topological Gardens’ for the USA Pavillion, Giardini, Venice Biennale, 2009

We first encountered Francis Upritchard at Kate MacGarry’s Vyner Street Gallery for the show ‘Feierabend‘ with Martino Gamper and Karl Fritsch.  ‘Save Yourself‘, Upritchard’s show representing New Zealand at the Biennale at Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana is both entrancing and unmissable.

Francis Upritchard’s ‘Save Yourself’ for the NZ Pavillion, Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, Venice Biennale, 2009

Entering the decayed splendour of the top floor rooms of the palace, you feel like you are aparty to something private, privileged to enter a kind of magical assembly. A bande of beautiful and intriguing miniature figures in a kaleidoscopic array of colours sit, dance around, lie back in ecstacy atop long grey formica tabletops which sail into the antique mirrors lining the walls.

A beautiful and tranquil-looking figure from Francis Upritchard’s installation ‘Save Yourself’ for NZ, Venice Biennale, 2009

The power of these colourful characters, made with intricate details, tiny hands and fingernails perfectly crafted, is that they permeate a feeling, from meditation, transcendance to personal bliss, we seem to be witnessing all of them in some state of subtle and personal peacefullness.

Lost in a state of personal bliss- detail of ‘Rested’ figure from Francis Upritchard’s installation ‘Save Yourself’ for NZ, Venice Biennale, 2009

The figures don’t look at us but turn their gazes inwards in some form of compelling transcendence, you can’t help feeling beckoned to join them.

Francis Upritchard explains the subject-matter of her work herself:

“…like dark ages craft adjusted and repainted by some futurist revolutionary caught in a wild dream.”

‘Richard’ from Francis Upritchard’s installation ‘Save Yourself’ for NZ, Venice Biennale, 2009

Amongst Wolfgang Tillmans’ works exhibited this year are beautiful single chroma-coloured photographs hung simply tacked onto the walls in deftly colour-coordinated clusters spanning the gallery corners.

Wolfgang Tillmans at the Venice Biennale, 2009

Also in rows behind Perspex vitrines folded, crumpled and scored chroma-coloured photogrphs form colourful sequences.

Wolfgang Tillmans at the Venice Biennale, 2009

What these photos were of it was impossible to know but you got the sense that you were looking at a detail of something that had been ‘photographed’ as opposed to just a randomly chosen block of colour and part if the enjoyment seemed in deciphering what these close-ups might come from. Your mind can’t help wondering what the image would be if you zoomed out to see the full picture.

Cildo Meireles in the Arsenale presents a series of chroma-coloured walk-through installation. Over a sequence of five rooms, you journey through orange, yellow, green to violet to blue, each room with an enticing doorway giving a sneak into the next saturated super-colour.

Cildo Meireles’ walk-in installation at ‘Making Worlds’, the Venice Biennale, 2009

The corner of each room at eye-level houses a monitor playing what seems to be a view of the corner behind the monitor, but as we move, the colour flicks to one discordant to that of the room, so orange on blue and yellow on green. As a development from his original ‘Red Shift’ installation from 1967-1984, where the red colour theme of the room is made of a myriad of found objects, all in the same hue of red, this work is like climbing into a techno-rainbow, boxed by Tadao Ando. Your mind can’t help responding to the super-saturated brightness of the colours; effective chroma-therapy for the jaded art traveller.

Our final stop away from the main trail of the Biennale was at the Punta della Dogana, the much anticipated second location of the Palazzo Grassi on the tip of the lagoon on the Grand Canal. Squeezing itself literally into every last inch of it’s triangular plot on the tip of the lagoon on the Grand Canal, Guiseppe Benomi’s 17th century Venetian Customs House has been transformed into a double-height shrine to the very best of contemporary art. ‘Mapping the Studio’ the current exhibition there curated by Francesco Bonami and Alison Gingeras sets the personal art collection of the French magnate Francois Pinault (the man behind the Gucci Group) against the waterside views of Venice. And it literally feels like you are walking through a collection of the best art in the world.

Amongst the amazingly colour-saturated glossy pictures of Piotr Uklanski and the classics such as Sherman and Koons, our favourite was the work of the relative newcomer Matthew Day-Jackson. A row of wax sculls along a series of shelves morph as they progress upwards through the colours of the rainbow from realistic skulls to gradually more hybridised faceted volumes.

Matthew Day-Jackson’s skull piece at the Punta della Dogana, Palazzo Grassi’s amazing new alternative space at the Venice Biennale, 2009

A duo of highly engineered polished cases with glass fronts and infinity mirror backgrounds display two hybrid-skeletons. Certain selected elements of the bone structures have been replaces such as the ribcage is now a series of polished brass coils. Unfortunately, photography of the collection was strictly forbidden (and strictly enforced!) so we were unable to picture this work. The work however, feels totally fresh and part of a new colourful movement of artists adding a metallic, psychedelic twist to classic celebration of the dark and macabre.

Haegue Yang’s ‘Symmetric Inequality’ installation inside the Korean pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2009

Bridging our step from colour to works on an interior scale is Haegue Yang’s ‘Symmetric Inequality’ installation inside the Korean pavilion at the Giardini. Made from a series of multi-coloured blinds constructed the pseudo open dwelling, part hut, part temple flutters in the breeze as the fans surrounding it sporadically turned on and off.

‘Ttéia 1, C’ by Brazilian artist Lygia Pape provides a dramatic introduction to the grand spaces of the Arsenale. Passing the threshold of heavy black curtains from the entrance, this, the first of the grand rooms to enter has been transformed into blackened midnight cathedral-like space.

Lygia Pape’s ”Ttéia 1, C’ for Brazil inside the Arsenale, Venice Biennale, 2009

Golden glowing shafts of light, in fact a series of strings of brass cords have been strung to form the outline of geometric shafts- empty boxes which allude to rays of light piercing from the ceiling diagonally to the floor. This is a work cleverly capturing volume and alluding to the spirit of what’s not there.

One of more quirky installations but one we loved was Chu Yun’s ‘Constellation’, also at the Arsenale. Described as ‘various household appliances divorced from their usual setting’, Yun has created a miasma of flashing, flickering twinkling lights from a landscape of objects whose LED lights flash on standby.

A modern-day cosmos of domestic white goods/ white Gods Chu Yun’s installation ‘Constellation’ at the Arsenale, Venice Biennale, 2009

To Scottish pavillion and Palazzo Pisani and the work of Dundee-based artist Martin Boyce and his installation ‘No Reflections’. Once on the second floor where the exhibition starts, you are led from the first doorway by a series of octagonal angular concrete steppes which Boyce has set in sequence from one side of the room to the other. Traversing this first space, the palazzo floor either side scattered with angular origami-like leaves cut from scored crispy-brown parchment, engages you physically and emotionally.

Details of Martin Boyce’s ‘No Reflections’ at Palazzo Pisane, Venice Biennale, 2009

The slightly slippery polished concrete platforms at slightly differing heights demand care to cross safely and it is impossible for the mind not to slip back to childhood thoughts of crossing stepping stones over a pond. It is this minimal yet moving subtlety that shines through all of Boyce’s work. A beautiful geometric lexicon tumbles down a wall spelling ‘PETRIFIED SONGS’. Boyce describes as his starting point for the exhibition as

‘the perfect collapse of architecture and nature’.

And finally, the work of Yoko Ono. Rather like one of pop’s royalty such as Iggy Pop performing at Glastonbury, Yoko Ono’s return to the Biennale this year for a series of performances was marked by her presentation with a Golden Lion at the inauguration this Sunday. Shivers of anticipation were sent through the art crowd this Saturday, when a fast ambling young art-student; a placard held in front of her declaring a performance by Yoko at 1pm. Fast becoming a new Pied Piper of Hamlyn, this girl attracted a band of followers unfortunately way beyond the capacity of the venue for the show. And we were amongst the swarm.

So, once outside the venue, two large monitors confronted us as well as the rather well-dressed Italian doormen. Speculation rose that Yoko was going to perform a remake of ‘Cut Piece’- her notorious work first performed in 1965 where members of the audience are asked to come up and one by one cut away pieces of Yoko’s clothing as she sits on a chair on a stage until she is completely exposed.

She said of the piece in 1964, how when the fabric around her breast was cut away how she felt vulnerable:

“I felt I had to cover my breasts at the moment of unbosoming”.

We wondered 50 years on from the original how the work would be changed? Not only with context of female body having changed so that nudity is now almost part of the media mainstream but it revealed that the thought of a woman of 76 revealing her body is still shocking.

We were informed on a loudspeaker ‘photography is allowed up to the point where Yoko breaks the chair- after which point it is strictly forbidden’. Outside we felt safe from that embargo though- our view on the screen clearly showing Yoko centre-stage. However, after a short performance where Yoko danced and snaked around a chair on stage to music, she picked up a hammer and attacked the chair and broke it to the floor. A pause. Yoko brought out a new chair. We all waited with baited breath. After an element of contemplation for the act ahead, Yoko moved a new chair onto the stage. But as we waited in anticipation of the performance, Yoko knowingly moved the chair just out of shot of the fixed camera’s view. Apart from the limited few inside the room, we were not able to see the details of what took place. Yoko, just like Chanel, realises the power that a woman has in what you conceal just as much as what you reveal.

Charles Ray’s ‘Boy with Frog’ ouside Venice’s stunning Punta della Dogana, Palazzo Grassi, Venice Biennale, 2009

Fittingly we concluded our trip, returning by sea with, Charles Ray’s “Boy With Frog”, standing on the further-most point of the island, like a modern Sirenetta (the Little Mermaid, frog in hand, bidding us goodbye.

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All images © Howard Sullivan, Your Studio, 2009

May 2009
EVERYWHERE. SEXUAL DIVERSITY POLICIES IN ART @ the Galician Center for Contemporary Art

Herm Liberation – Preview of my installation

More images of my installation at the CGAC here

14 May – 20 September 2009
Press Conference: 14 May, 12h / Opening: 20h

Curator: Juan Vicente Aliaga

Artists: Act-Up and Gran Fury, Tariq Alvi, Xoán Anleo / Uqui Permui, Alexander Apóstol, Kutlug Ataman, Ron Athey, Charles Atlas, Leigh Bowery, Kaucyla Brooke, Bruce La Bruce, Tom Burr, Cabello / Carceller, Loren Cameron, Giuseppe Campuzano, Luciano Castelli, Tee corinne, Juan Davila, Del LaGrace Volcano, Dias & Riedweg, George Dureau, Nicole Eisenman, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Pepe Esjpaliú, Fierce Pussy, Samuel Fosso, Annett Frick, Carmela García, Robert Gober, Roberto González-Fernández, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Nancy Grossman, Hervé Guibert, Sunil Gupta, Barbara Hammer, Keith Haring, Lyle Ashton Harris, David Hockney, Ins A Kromminga, Derek Jarman, Isaac Julien, Zoe Leonard, Lenilson, Renate Lorenz & Pauline Boudry, LSD (Fefa Vila), Monica Majoli, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jesús Martínez Oliva, Pepe Miralles, Donald Moffett, Ocaña, Marcel Odenbach, Elisabeth Ohlson, Henrik Olesen, Catherine Opie, Ulrike Ottinger, Pablo Pérez-Mínguez, Pierre & Gilles, Jack Pierson, Mark Raidpere, Catherine Saalfield, Tejal Sham, Ahlam Shibli, Jack Smith, Annie Sprinkle / Les Nichols, Wolfgang Tillmans, Herbert Tobias, Tom of Finland, Monika Treut, Video-Nou, Azucena Vieites, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, Yeguas del Apocalipsis, Akram Zaatari

The core of this exhibition rests upon the different representations of sexual diversity as a concept within Art. Through this embracing designation it is possible to witness images mainly on homosexuality, lesbianism and the sexualities and identifications usually gathered in the acronym LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer), it can also be completed with the one regarding intersexual people.

The aim is to delve into the production of ideas regarding this topic, emerging in artistic practices mainly since 1969 and carried up until today.

read more

A lot of people were upset when the Photographers Gallery moved from that sweet spot right next to Leicester Square tube and relocated round the back of Oxford Street, but I went there today and it’s not all that bad. The original space was a bit like a bungalow, whereas the new building is splayed out over three floors instead of one. First floor’s a gallery space, second floor’s a café/gallery space and shop, and then the third floor is another dedicated gallery space.

Photographers Gallery bookshop

The current exhibition’s called The Photographic Object. It’s based around the rather thin proviso that all works included showcase an attempt, by the artists, to transcend the two dimensional confines of standard photography, with a direct or implied move into three dimensional space. The two highlights in this exhibition are Gerhard Richter’s Overpainted Photographs, and Maurizio Anzeri’s stitched photographs. Both artists engage directly with the surface of the photograph by modifying the image in some way, and the results are aesthetically pleasing in both cases. The rest of the works are a curiously odd mix of relevant and strikingly irrelevant inclusions.

Priscilla, 1940-2008 by Maurizio Anzeri

Alina Szapocznikow takes pictures of globs of chewing gum she’s stuck places. Calling these masticated blobs ‘scultpures’, as she does, is a funny conceit to say the least. I can think of a thousand classrooms in England that have dozens of these ‘sculptures’ stuck underneath chairs and desks. Other works by Catherine Yass (not bad), Wolfgang Tillmans (bent bits of coloured paper), Andy Warhol (not sure what a few photos of men’s knobs have to do with bridging the 3 dimensional gap…oh wait), Walead Beshty, and a few others all hang coolly around the place, not meaning, signifying or especially vying for our attention (except for Warhol’s knobs, because they’re, well, knobs). I should say though that Vanessa Billy’s exhibit on the ground floor is interesting and worth a ganders.

So yeah I also trotted along to the Andreas Hoffer exhibition at Hauser and Wirth. Now I have to say that I’m a massive fan of the Hauser and Wirth gallery, they just seem to get it right every time, this being no exception. Whether you like Hoffer is neither here nor there really, as just walking about the space is sweet enough. So yeah, the work itself is a painting and sculpture mix, with more then a nod to outsider and comic book art.

Hoffer at Hauser and Wirth.

Andreas Hoffer

Lately I’ve been thinking that painting is going to make a massive comeback, not just because more people are doing it or anything, but because the painted surface and evidence of an applied hand may be more emotionally engaging, more of an empathetic object, in this digital day and age. Everyone’s going back to craft I swear. Anyways I’ll explore this a bit more in the future I think.

Peace.

Morgan Quaintance

I’m quite a simple man. Ask anyone. “That Jon,” they’ll say, “he’s quite a simple man.” Maybe that’s why I’m ambivalent about the latest exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery and why it’s taken me so long to get around to writing about it.

The Photographic Object is an exhibition that, I guess, it meant to make us think about what the purpose of a photograph is and to think about how ‘photography’ is created. I’ve mentioned elsewhere how a Gerhard Richter painting is more photographic than an entry for a photography prize – and Gerhard is here, albeit some more recent work splashing paint on tiny photographs. Wolfgang Tillmanns is here too, offering up large scale single colour prints. Then there are some close ups, a few artefacts and the image that’s on all the posters.

I did however enjoy the work of Alina Szapocznikow, which is basically sculpted chewing gum. It’s shot wonderfully in black and white and presented as straightforward, well-lit shots of sculpture. They are beautiful. Just don’t tell anyone that they’re gum.

But it didn’t feel that it hung together well. Maybe it needed a single voice to explore the subject rather than a few representations from so many people. Moments of inspiration are lost in the muddle.

I think I’ll go back and look over it again. It’s not bad at all. But it isn’t great. There is good stuff from Guy Tillim in the Print Sales section but that’s nothing to do with this exhibition. That said, they still do good coffee and it’s still the best place to see photography in London so get yourselves there.

I generally find still lifes to be the most appealing photographs. Some of the female photographers I admire, Laura Letinsky and Sharon Core, are champions of the still life. Both of these artists are directly referencing 17th/18th century still life painting in their work: Letinsky replicates the foreshortening and spatial feel of old still life paintings while Core’s latest works are recreations of Raphaelle Peale paintings.

I also enjoy the art of the “accidental still life”.  These are images that are seemingly candid shots, usually in someone’s home or of one’s personal effects,  but are more than likely arranged just as meticulously as the work of Letinsky and Core. One of the best still life creators of this nature is Wolfgang Tillmans. It is safe to say that any student of photography in the last 10 years is familiar with Tillmans’ work and style (most of us are guilty of replicating his shots as well as his salon style of arranging works). Tillmans not only makes ordinary objects into works of art but also personifies them as well. Magnificent.

Here are some images from these artists whose works are a continuing inspiration to me. All following images are property of the creating artists and are only being used for praise and reference purposes.

Laura Letinsky, From the Hardly More Than Ever series

Laura Letinsky, From the To Say It Isn’t So series

Letinsky’s latest work utilizes disposable products and is fairly monochromatic, a change from her pastel and painterly earlier works.

Sharon Core: Early American, Cut Melon (Raphaelle Peale), 2007

I tried finding one of Peale’s paintings online to see how close Core had matched. The only one I found was the following:

Raphaelle Peale, Still Life with Cake, 1822

Sharon Core: Early American, Still Life with Cake (Raphaelle Peale), 2008

Core doesn’t match the painting exactly, but her photograph adds a haunting amount of depth and clarity to the objects.  Astounding.

Wolfgang Tillmans, Stipped, 2003

Tillmans tends to personify clothing in his still lifes, perhaps because they are the outer skin of a person. These skins, or empty shells, always look defeated.

Wolfgang Tillmans, Still Lifes

I love how he can always manage to make things look happenstance even if they are not. And perhaps they really are. Either way, beautiful images abound.

MADRIDFOTO is a new photography fair which will be held in Madrid at the beginning of May. Following in the footsteps of events such as Paris Photo and Photo Miami, MadridFoto is the first international photography fair in Spain to focus on private, corporate and public collections.

Organized by a group of collectors and businessmen headed by Enrique de Polanco, and directed by the previous manager of Spain’s chief photography show PhotoEspaña, Giulietta Speranza, the newcomer MFoto strives to further illuminate the medium of photography in international art fair circles, as well as to secure a Spanish base for its specialised niche market.

The fair takes place from the 7th through to the 10th of May 2009, and is housed in hall 6 of the Feria de Madrid (IFEMA), designed by Andrés Jaque architects. The MADRIDFOTO advisory committee comprising of Rafael Doctor (art critic and founder of MUSAC), Alberto Martín (curator and art critic for Babelia), Lorena Martínez de Corral (freelance curator and director of Expoactual) and Giulietta Speranza (Art Director of the fair), has selected over 40 galleries to exhibit at the event, showing the artwork of some 230 international artists.

Artists, whose work will be on display, include: Alberto García Alix, Andres Serrano, Axel Hütte, Bleda Rosa, Candida Höfer, Cornelia Parker, Duane Michals, Edward Burtynsky, Erwin Olaf, Isabel Muñoz,Martin Parr, Mikko Sinervo, Paul Graham, Pierre Gonnord, Rineke Dijsktra, Sergey Bratkov, Stan Douglas, Wolfgang Tillmans…

Galleries include: Blanca Berlín Galería, Dolores de Sierra, Galería Carles Taché, Galería Oliva Arauna, Galerie Clairefontaine, Gallery TaiK, Photolounge.eu, Adhoc Galeria, Galería Juan Silió, Galería Hartmann…

For a full list of Exhibitors please see here.

MADRIDFOTO aims to become the meeting point for photography collectors worldwide, both private and institutional. As such the fair has sent out numerous invitations to well known collectors in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Holland and so on. A wealth of social activities and events have been organized to coincide with the fair, which, alongside all of Madrid’s landmarks and cultural hotspots, will leave the visitor with little else to wish for.

Things to do & places to see:

• Museo Nacional del Prado
• Museo Thyssen Bornemisza
• Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
• Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
• Fundación Juan March – currently showing an exhibition by the American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.
• Around the Plaza Mayor – Madrid’s “Plaza Mayor” (“Main Square”) is the heart of old capital of the Habsburg’s dynasty. A stroll around the Plaza will lead you to some of the finest Baroque churches and convents of Madrid as well as to picturesque corners and famous taverns.
• Royal Pantheon, Palace & Monastery of El Escorial - If “El Escorial” stood 60 kilometres NW from Rome, it would still be a mandatory landmark of that city. This huge ensemble in the “Sierra” of Madrid is one of the most impressive buildings of the Renaissance.
• Royal Palace of Madrid
• El Retiro Park – the ‘Lungs of Madrid’
• El Rastro – Madrid’s flea market, a picturesque place where all imaginable types of things are bought and sold.

For a full listing of Madrid exhibitions during the fair please see here.

Visitors Information:  Tickets: 12 € / For students / over 65’s 10 €

Address: Almirante 9, Hall 6, 28004 Madrid, Spain

Private View: 7/5/2009
from 12:00 – 21:00

Open to the public: 8/5/2009 – 10/5/2009
Friday to Saturday: From noon to 9 pm
Sunday: From 11 am. to 6 pm

www.artfairmagazine.com.

Foto: Isabel Muñoz

A primeira edição da MADRIDFOTO – feira internacional de novas galerias para a fotografia – será realizada de 7 a 10 de Maio. Concebida por Andrés Jaque, a feira exibirá obras de 47 galerias de 15 países somando mais de 230 artistas de todo o mundo. Entre eles: Alberto Garcia Alix, Chema Madoz, Cristina García Rodero, Duane Michals, Erwin Olaf, Isabel Muñoz, Martin Parr, Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe, entre outros.

MADRIDFOTO é uma iniciativa de um grupo de colecionadores e dirigida artisticamente por Giulietta Speranza.

Now, I do snapshot work as well with work that has spanned over 10 years. I was definitely influenced by Wolfgang Tillmans’ aesthetics and Nan Goldin’s sensibilities. But I like to think I add my own cultural edge to my work.

I still love my point-and-shoots cameras.
In fact, yesterday I purchased another little camera for $15… So I’ll probably do some more shooting as the weather gets nicer.

But Terry Richardson’s gotta be pissed that his long-time assistant is now making a name for himself… Doing the exact same kind of photography… I mean, if I were assisting for someone for 6 years, I’d probably expand beyond what I get to see every single day. But hey, I’m unemployed, sick, in therapy and broke. While Keiichi-san over here is being cupped by one of the biggest names in fashion.

Tom Ford always seemed kinda stiff to me even in those ass-baring W Magazine photos but here he looks pretty playful. And Keiichi is the stiff one in this scenario.

the evpatoria report: eighteen robins road 

wolfgang tillmans

Liz Deschenes, Left/Right, 2008; Courtesy Harris Lieberman, New York

Harris Lieberman

January 17 – February 28, 2009

Kodak and Fuji are shuttering plants. Ilford is discontinuing favorite paper stocks. And Polaroid film has gone the way of the dodo. So it is only inevitable that contemporary artists—not exclusively “photographers,” that second-class breed—have taken up these expiring media. Whether motivated by a sense of urgency, nostalgia, or some misplaced desire for purity in the face of an exclusively digital age, this is ostensibly the jumping off point for the exhibition A Twilight Art. But rather than this technological dialectic, the more satisfying critical lens may be the final two essays in LACMA’s Words Without Pictures project, organized by photography curator Charlotte Cotton. The essays by artist Walead Beshty and art historian George Baker (titled “Abstracting Photography” and “Photography and Abstraction,” respectively) are too much to go into here, but each is concerned with questions of photographic abstraction (more semiotic than formal) and social process. (The essays are archived as pdfs at Words Without Pictures)

Most notably the selection of artists and works marks a stark turn away from the cinematic, narrative photography of the past decade. Still, the curators seem inclined to avoid these linear developments, and the press release suggests a desire to look “across generations.” But other than the inclusion of early works by Allan McCollum and Barbara Kasten, it’s hard to find supporting evidence of this claim, as the show has three 25 year old works along with 30 other pieces made in the last five years. While the desire to curate an exhibitions exploring both synchronic and diachronic relations is a noble one, the idea could have been developed further. As it stands the exhibition seems poised between comparing contemporaneous works by artists of different generations and relating past and present modes of production. Wolfgang Tillmans is a worthy stand-in as leader of the pack, but the omission of James Welling is glaring. Kasten could easily have been substituted by Eileen Quinlian’s ubiquitous Smoke and Mirrors. Sigmar Polke may have a place here too.

Still, there is no shortage of opportunities on hand to consider the history of photographic production. A number of works transparently belie their debt to Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray. The inclusion of Amy Granat might have transcended such a comparison, as her recent photograms of quotidian objects were violently torn at the edges, forgoing any reference to the rectangular photographic frame and suggesting a limitless field of such exposures, from which the displayed object was arbitrarily chosen. On hand here, Matt Saunders’s silver gelatin print from a hand drawn negative starts with Gerhard Richter and goes in reverse. Like a sudsy windowpane awaiting the squeegy, it suggest early experiments with photography by Mel Bochner; the vertical band bisecting the canvas is a Barnett Newman-like zip, but also evokes the unexposed frame between individual negatives.

McCollum and Tauba Auerbach each made photographs enlarged off television screens, installed adjacent to one another here. While McCollum’s Perpetual Photo still carries a modicum of information that can suggest at form, Auerbach’s is pure surface static, something that will soon disappear from our airwaves when broadcast television goes completely digital. Ultimately the concerns of these two works are different, and any contiguity rises from their formal qualities. Conceptually McCollum’s contribution has more in common with Carter Mull’s work, presented immediately to the left of Auerbach’s. Both use processes of repeated re-photographing to the point of subsuming the original indexical function of the camera, creating images that are worn to illegibility.

Installation View; Left to right: Deschenes, Charlesworth, Charlesworth, Dybbroe Moeller, Pearson

Elsewhere nice curatorial sequences emerge, employing comparisons that are variously formal, material, structural, conceptual and content-driven. A row of works by Walead Beshty and Marcus Amm play off similar textures and surfaces as traces of chemical processes. Visual puns function almost syntactically as a stunning Liz Deschenes builds sound wave-like peaks from Left/Right, leading to a Sarah Charlesworth composition of colorful dishes (alluding to chemical processes in photographic developing) in the shape of an arrow, which points to another of her images of a cube in perspective; lastly, this resonates with four small folded photogram abstractions by Simon Dybbroe Møller that also hint at perspectival space in their square forms. Anthony Pearson’s contribution is a large vertical c-print showing striations of lens flare, enlarged to exclude all other content, and is placed on an otherwise awkward column dividing the large storefront windows at the front of the gallery. Though this viewer only saw the exhibition in the evening, one imagine it plays well when the south facing gallery is overtaken by bright winter sunshine.

A Twilight Art takes up a worthy mantle. Something is clearly beginning to coalesce in contemporary photographic practice and theory that might be better served by the additional research and resources available to a larger institutional. Some of the issues facing curators Lisa Oppenheim and Jessie Washburne-Harris may have to do with the limitations of working with consignments from other commercial galleries and the availability of work. The artists’s galleries may be less inclined to mete out superior works by their artists that they might (at least until recently) have been able to sell easily. Eponyanymous rightly brings up the point that for all the talk of renewed materiality, almost all the work on hand fits nicely into a frame. In other exhibitions a number of these artists use sculptures (Beshty, Pearson, Laura MacIntyre, Mull) or painting (Amm, Auerbach, Saunders) or video (Erika Vogt, Dybbroe Møller) as integrally related to their photographs, complimenting the materiality or production process of each format. This exhibition seems to lack the energy that such an expanded field could offer, as it never quite sates the desire for more impassioned discourse between works. Nonetheless, the artists are effectively united by their self-reflexive approach to the medium and concern for way in which photographic meaning is produced. With A Twilight Art, To Be Determined up now at Andrew Kreps, and previously Untitled (Vicarious) at Gagosian last fall, there is clearly ambivalence about the critical language of contemporary photography. With outlets like Words Without Pictures leading the way and promising exhibitions like A Twilight Art, expect good things to come.

We are racing to finalize our lease and get in all the paperwork for this apartment. We are all really excited about it. I am really hoping it all goes through smoothly. The landlord seems like a bit of a douchecunt, but we will hopefully not have to deal with him much. I am a little worried about the age of the building and the obviously need for renovating. It is also located a bit too close to the highway for my liking. However, that is compensated by its proximity to Atwater Market and the Lachine Canal. I feel like the place will be amazing in the summer.

I have been toying around with the idea of altering hiKITTEN!. I am not entirely sure if I am going to keep the layout or format the same. Part of me wants to keep it the way it is, but I would also like to have it centered around photography a bit more. I have been doing some research into Digital SLRs. The Canon EOS 50D seems like it would be a good fit for what I am interesting in doing. I am unsure about lenses however. I kind of feel like getting a zoom lens would be useless. I rarely use zoom features. I want a fixed lens that is a bit more professional. I was thinking about the 28mm or 35mm fixed lens. I would also love a seperate macro lens. I love macro photography. However, getting both a macro and a regular 35mm lens would put me back around $1000. I dont even have the money for the body at this point. Anyone want to buy me one? Kthnx!

I have added links to both Wolfgang Tillmans and William Eggleston’s websites on my blogroll. I am in love with Tillmans work, and have been pleasantly surprised by Eggleston’s as well. Both capture such rich, humanist photographs. I love how both play with humour, politics, culture, sexuality and the representations of the body.

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Inspire by Wolfgang Tillmans my latest work presents an honest interpretation on the theme of sexuality, visually erotic and dark and touching gay men’s subconscious desires and fantasy’s.
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EXHIBITION – artist: Wolfgang Tillmans, location: Nationalgalerie Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, date: 21.03. – 24.08. / current exhibitions at: Nationalgalerie Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin 2008. Artistinformation and biography-text from: Wolfgang Tillmans Nationalgalerie Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin CATEGORY: art, modern art, projects: TEXTPORTRAITS Wolfgang Tillmans by Ralph Ueltzhoeffer and Laura May. More information about Wolfgang Tillmans Exhibition Nationalgalerie Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, Germany.

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Kate Moss / Portrait (TEXTPORTRAIT).

textportraits by Ralph Ueltzhoeffer.