Art Knowledge News - Keeping You in Touch with the World of Art...

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• Hayward Gallery Presents the First UK Major Retrospective of Works by George Condo
• Photographer Annie Leibovitz Personal Exhibition at Russia's Pushkin Museum
• The Ellen Noël Art Museum Shows Joan Son's Stunning Paper Sculpture
• The Boca Raton Museum of Art Shows Southern Outsider Artists
• David LaChapelle portrait of Alexander McQueen and his 'Muse' Isabella Blow at National Portrait Gallery
• Enoc Perez Exhibition opens at Faggionato Fine Art in London
• FIAC 2011 Brings Modern & Contemporary Art to the Grand Palais in Paris
• First Street Gallery Presents Dana Saulnier's Night Paintings
• Paintings by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema Lead Sotheby's New York Sale of 19th Century European Paintings
• Museo del Prado opens Major Retrospective Devoted to the Work of Joaquín Sorolla
• Silences ~ by Marin Karmitz at Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MAMCS)
• The Boca Raton Museum of Art to show "The Magical World of M.C. Escher"
• Francis Alys Exhibits 300 Portraits of "Fabiola" at the Haus zum Kirschgarten
• Tate Modern to show Paul Gauguin from 'Money Man to Myth Maker'
• Antiques Dealers Fair of Fine Art and Antiques Coming to Leicestershire
• Atomic Afterimage
• MoMA presents Cézanne to Picasso: Paintings from the David & Peggy Rockefeller Collection
• Leading Russian & Eastern European Artists to Exhibit at Calvert 22
• Su-Mei Tse presents New Multi-Media Installation at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Hayward Gallery Presents the First UK Major Retrospective of Works by George Condo Posted: 14 Oct 2011 09:33 PM PDT London.- The Hayward Gallery is pleased to present "George Condo: Mental States" on view at the gallery from October 18th through January 8th 2012. This Hayward Gallery exhibition is the first major retrospective of the American artist George Condo. Since his emergence in New York's East Village in the early 1980s with his 'fake Old Master' canvases, George Condo has created one of the most adventurous, imaginative, and provocative bodies of work in contemporary art. George Condo: Mental States is the first major survey of paintings and sculptures from the past twenty-eight years of the artist's career. Organised by the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre and curated by Hayward Director, Ralph Rugoff, the exhibition premièred at New Museum, New York in January to critical acclaim, and is currently on show at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. The Hayward Gallery presentation will feature some 80 works, and includes nine of Condo's portraits of Her Majesty The Queen. Condo's approach to making art unsettlingly conjoins the beautiful and the grotesque, seriousness and outlandish wit. He has populated his canvases with an arresting parade of tragic-comic beings, which for all their oddness and outrageous humour and their caricatured features, are deeply immersed in the traditions of European and American painting. Focusing on his 'imaginary portraits', which conjure varied mental states with a mixture of absurdity and pathos, the exhibition also features portraits of historical subjects such as Jesus and the Madonna as well as Her Majesty Elizabeth II, exploring the breadth of Condo's artistic vision. Displayed in the upper galleries of the Hayward Gallery, "George Condo: Mental States" will be organised thematically and stylistically in 'chapters' developed in close collaboration with the artist. More than 30 paintings with a variety of styles and subjects are presented in a 'portrait wall' dramatically hung floor to ceiling in a salon style. Featuring a range of fantasy characters, these portraits often incorporate elements from masterpieces by artists including Velasquez and Goya. The characters are recognisable archetypes - butlers, businessmen, clergy and historical figures - familiar despite their humorously grotesque features.  Larger scale abstract works explore how Condo reimagines the work of modern Masters such as Pablo Picasso. The paintings are complemented by a series of nine sculptural heads including The Alcoholic (2002) all cast in gilded bronze. American artist George Condo was born in New Hampshire. He has occupied a prominent position in the art world for nearly three decades. Along with painters such as Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, Condo was instrumental in the influential East Village art scene during the 1980s.  Condo studied art history and music theory at the University of Massachusetts I Lowell. The first public exhibition of his work took place in New York City in 1981 and he has since exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe. His work is included in the collections of museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. George Condo also works across fashion, music and street culture. He has collaborated with Kanye West on the rapper's latest album cover design, as well as on a series of limited edition silk scarves (with design due M/M Paris). Last autumn, characters from Condo's paintings came to life during the catwalk show of New York fashion designer Adam Kimmel, during which the models wore masks designed by the artist. The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre, part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames, in central London, England. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Royal Festival Hall and the Queen Elizabeth Hall/Purcell Room) and also the Royal National Theatre and British Film Institute. The Hayward Gallery was built by Higgs and Hill and opened on 9 July 1968. Its massing and extensive use of exposed concrete construction are typical of Brutalist architecture. The initial concept was designed, with the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, as an addition to the Southbank Centre arts complex by team leader Norman Engleback, assisted by Ron Herron and Warren Chalk, two members of the later founded group Archigram, of the Department of Architecture and Civic Design of the Greater London Council. The Hayward hosts three/four major temporary modern or contemporary exhibitions each year and does not house any permanent collections. From 1968 to 1986, the gallery was managed by the Arts Council of Great Britain, but management then passed to Southbank Centre. The gallery is also the base of the Arts Council's National Touring Exhibitions programme, as it was, until 2002, of the Arts Council Collection. Unlike British galleries receiving state funding support, but in common with other temporary exhibitions at British galleries, the Hayward charges admission fees. The Hayward's exhibition policy embraces visual art from all periods, and past shows have included the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Edvard Munch and the French Impressionists. Recently the programme has tended to concentrate on surveys of contemporary art which complement the spaces and powerful concrete structure of the building, such as those of works by Dan Flavin and Antony Gormley. It has hosted two surveys of works from the Arts Council Collection: British Art 1940–1980 and How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art. Visit the Southbank Centre's website at ... http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk

Photographer Annie Leibovitz Personal Exhibition at Russia's Pushkin Museum Posted: 14 Oct 2011 07:38 PM PDT MOSCOW (REUTERS).- Photographer Annie Leibovitz paid homage to Russia's rich cultural past on Tuesday when she opened a 200-piece exhibit spanning 15 years of her professional and private life. Pictures of the births of the 62-year-old Leibovitz's three daughters were hung in Moscow's state Pushkin Museum next to her portraits of such famous personalities as Mick Jagger, Demi Moore and others for covers of Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Last month Leibovitz presented the exhibit at St Petersburg's 18th century State Hermitage Museum. The exhibit will be open to the public from October 12 to January 15, 2012.

The Ellen Noël Art Museum Shows Joan Son's Stunning Paper Sculpture Posted: 14 Oct 2011 07:23 PM PDT Odessa, TX.- The Ellen Noël Art Museum is proud to present "Beyond Paper Folding: The Art of Joan Son" on view at the museum November 13th. Joan Son, a celebrated paper and origami artist, focuses on the natural elements of water, earth and air. Son is known for her large-scale installations of origami butterflies and large kimono robes. In this exhibition the walls of the gallery are covered with butterflies and dramatic paper kimonos hanging from an eleven foot ceiling. In addition to these colorful and unique installations, the exhibition features sculptural and traditional artworks made throughout this Houston artist's career.

The Boca Raton Museum of Art Shows Southern Outsider Artists Posted: 14 Oct 2011 07:10 PM PDT Boca Raton, Florida.- The Boca Raton Museum of Art is proud to present "Outsider Visions: Self-Taught Southern Artists of the 20th Century" on view at the museum through January 8th 2012. Regarded as among the most intriguing areas within 20th-century art, the work of self-taught artists continues to elude categorization. Loosely characterized as work by artists without formal artistic training, the genre of self-taught art (sometimes called folk art or outsider art) covers a diverse array of artistic media, styles, and themes. The artists come from both rural and urban communities, and from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Among their subject matter: politics, social commentary, UFOs, daily life, sex, and personal obsessions.

David LaChapelle portrait of Alexander McQueen and his 'Muse' Isabella Blow at National Portrait Gallery Posted: 14 Oct 2011 07:09 PM PDT LONDON.- 'Burning Down the House', a portrait by David LaChapelle of the late Alexander McQueen and his 'muse' Isabella Blow has been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. This is the first portrait by LaChapelle to enter the Gallery's Collection and will be exhibited in the United Kingdom for the first time from Friday 14 October 2011. The double portrait of McQueen and Blow was originally published in the March 1997 'Swinging London' edition of Vanity Fair. Shot at Hedingham Castle in Essex on 1 December 1996, the photograph shows McQueen in the foreground brandishing a flaming torch, accompanied by a playful Blow, with the castle dramatically burning in the background. Both were dressed in McQueen, with Blow also sporting a Philip Treacy hat, and the article named them 'The Provocateurs'. At the time of the shoot McQueen was just 27 years old and had recently debuted his first couture collection for the House of Givenchy. Blow, 38 at the time of the shoot, was considered McQueen's muse.

Enoc Perez Exhibition opens at Faggionato Fine Art in London Posted: 14 Oct 2011 07:08 PM PDT LONDON.- Faggionato Fine Art presents Enoc Perez: Nudes, since 2009, Enoc Perez's nudes have undergone a transformation. This exhilarating new series takes his existing preoccupation with the classical subject of the nude - as reinterpreted through the grounding visual lexicon of pornography - and transcends it, to incorporate an expanded engagement with the idea of painting itself. In these and his previous studies of nudes, Perez paints transient images mined from amateur pornography, 'a wasteland of imagery', selecting fleeting visions that capture 'moments of grace', infused with love and desire, as he perceives them. On view from October 14th - November 18th.

FIAC 2011 Brings Modern & Contemporary Art to the Grand Palais in Paris Posted: 14 Oct 2011 07:07 PM PDT Paris.- The 38th edition of FIAC will take place from October 20th to October 23rd (with a private viewing on October 19th). FIAC 2011 will witness an important milestone in the history of the fair: the opening of exhibition spaces situated on the upper level of the Grand Palais will make it possible to house all exhibitors at FIAC 2011 within this historic monument. FIAC 2011 will be the first occasion to discover the majestic volumes of these exhibition galleries, closed for many decades and recently restored to their original proportions. The nave will house galleries specializing in modern, contemporary-modern and contemporary art. The upper galleries will likewise host galleries specializing in contemporary art, together with emerging tendencies. 168 galleries representing 21 countries will exhibit at FIAC 2011.

First Street Gallery Presents Dana Saulnier's Night Paintings Posted: 14 Oct 2011 07:06 PM PDT New York City.- First Street Gallery is proud to show "Dana Saulnier: Night Paintings", on view through October 29th.  Dana Saulnier was born in Boston and lives on a few acres of rural Ohio farmland where he tries to keep his eyes alert to the rhythms of time. An avid reader of history, philosophy, and the psychology of perception he tries to keep his mind open to thinking about our complex relation to passing time. He teaches art by seeking to introduce his students to their own creative relationship to life lived. Occasionally he writes about art making. Dana Saulnier received the BFA degree in Painting from the University of Cincinnati and the MFA degree in Painting from Cornell University. He has exhibited his work throughout the United States and in Europe. He has participated in over eighty-five exhibitions, including more than twenty-five solo exhibitions.

Paintings by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema Lead Sotheby's New York Sale of 19th Century European Paintings Posted: 14 Oct 2011 07:05 PM PDT New York City.- Sotheby's New York sale of 19th Century European Art on 4 November 2011 presents rare opportunities for collectors across diverse collecting categories. The sale is a showcase for the best of the eclectic artistic styles that flourished throughout the 19th century. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's "A Spring Festival (On the Road to the Temple of Ceres)", from The Forbes Collection, and "Education of the Children of Clovis (School of Vengeance, Training of Clotilde's Sons)", his most accomplished early work of a Merovingian subject, highlight the sale. Other masterpieces in the sale from the Victorian and Edwardian period include works by Edward Robert Hughes, John William Godward and Charles Burton Barber. Within the impressive range of six works in the sale by French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, "Ronde d'Amours; Lever du Soleil" is exceptional, as is "Mantes, les bords de la Seine au pied du pont". Important paintings by William Bouguereau from all periods of his career are also prominent features in this sale. Additional highlights of the November sale are Louis Béroud's "Les joies de l'inondation (dans la galerie Médici)", a fantastical depiction of an artist sitting in the Louvre and copying a painting from Peter Paul Rubens's Marie de' Medici cycle; "La Tireuse de Cartes (The Fortune Teller)", Jehan Georges Vibert's masterfully painted satirical portrait of two cardinals being entertained by a fortune teller in their opulent chambers; Jean-François Raffaëlli's "Princess Street, Edinburgh", a rare impression from the artist's time spent in Scotland while he visited his friend, Alexander Reid, the celebrated Scottish gallerist. Sporting art in the sale will be led by a group of seven works from Collection of Edward P. Evans, sold to benefit the Edward P. Evans Foundation and including John Frederick Herring Sr.'s "Preparing to Start for the Doncaster Gold Cup". Sotheby's was founded in London on March 11, 1744, when Samuel Baker auctioned "several Hundred scarce and valuable books" from the library of the Rt Hon Sir John Stanley for a few hundred pounds. The story of Sotheby's expansion beyond books to include the best in fine and decorative arts and jewellery is also the story of the global auction market, defined by extraordinary moments that continue to capture the world's attention. Since 1744, Sotheby's has distinguished itself as a leader in the auction world. Their auctions, conducted in the venerable salerooms in London and Paris, the museum-quality galleries of their headquarters in New York and the spirited environs of Hong Kong rivet audiences worldwide. Season after season, the depth and excellence of Sotheby's offerings have produced watershed, record-breaking sales. Sotheby's has been entrusted with the sale of many of the world's treasures, amongst them: Napoleon's St Helena library, the Duchess of Windsor's jewels, the Estate of Mrs Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, Rubens' Massacre of the Innocents, Pablo Picasso's Garçon à la Pipe, Francis Bacon's Triptych, 1976, The Grand Ducal Collections of Baden, the Qianlong Yellow-Ground Famille-Rose Double-Gourd Vase, the 5,000-year-old Guennol Lioness, Giacometti's L'Homme Qui Marche I, the Magna Carta, the first printing of the Declaration of Independence and The Martin Luther King Jr Collection. Sotheby's has long recognised that great works of art, as well as the collectors interested in consigning and acquiring them, inhabit the global sphere. They were the first international auction house to expand from London to New York in 1955, and the first to conduct sales in Hong Kong and the then–Soviet Union. Today they maintain 90 locations in 40 countries and they conduct 250 auctions each year in over 70 categories. In addition to their four principal salerooms, the company, recognising the potential in new markets, also conducts auctions in six other salerooms around the world, further expanding its global reach. Visit the auction house's website at ... http://www.sothebys.com

Museo del Prado opens Major Retrospective Devoted to the Work of Joaquín Sorolla Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:59 PM PDT MADRID.- The Museo del Prado is presenting the largest and most important retrospective ever to be devoted to the work of Joaquín Sorolla, the most internationally celebrated Spanish painter of the XIX century. The exhibition includes more than 100 paintings by the artist and will offer a comprehensive overview of his finest works, among them all of his great masterpieces. They include the group of panels entitled Visions of Spain, painted for the Hispanic Society of America and brought to Spain by Bancaja in 2007. On exhibition from 26 May through 6 September, 2009. This exceptional exhibition has benefited from the sponsorship of Bancaja, who in addition to their significant undertaking as organising body of the exhibition "Sorolla. Vision of Spain" that was shown to great acclaim in various Spanish cities, has now made a further contribution in the form of their collaboration with this major exhibition project at the Prado. The exhibition "Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923)" will offer the visiting public an outstanding opportunity to see more than 100 paintings by the great Valencian master in what will constitute the most comprehensive and ambitious survey of his finest works. Among the 102 paintings on display, loaned from museums and collections worldwide, will be all the masterpieces by Sorolla that brought him most fame. They include Return from Fishing (1894), loaned by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris; Sewing the Sail (1896), from the Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna di Ca'Pesaro in Venice; Sad Inheritance (1899), from the Bancaja Collection; Evening Sun (1903), from The Hispanic Society of America in New York, which is returning to Spain for the first time since it was sold to New York by the artist himself; The Photographer Christian Franzen (1903), from the Lorenzana Collection; Female Nude (1902), and The white Boat. Jávea (1905), both from a private collection. The exhibition will naturally also include important examples of Sorolla's work from the Prado's own collection, including And they still say Fish is expensive! (1894), and Boys on the Beach (1909), as well as a large number of paintings from the Museo Sorolla in Madrid, including The Horse's Bath (1909), Strolling along the Sea Shore (1909), and The Pink Gown (1916). The exhibition will also feature the dazzling group of fourteen monumental panels entitled Visions of Spain, painted by Sorolla for the Hispanic Society of America in New York. They have travelled for the first time in their history for exhibition in Spain through the agreement reached with Bancaja. The large number of works by Sorolla assembled at the Prado, all of which are considered masterpieces by experts on the artist, will make this exhibition unique and unrepeatable. Over the last few decades Sorolla has been the subject of study in the form of numerous exhibitions and other projects, but there has not been a major retrospective of this type since the one devoted to the artist in 1963 in the Casón del Buen Retiro, organised by the Ministry of Science and Education. In addition, the present exhibition, the first to be devoted to Sorolla by the Prado, emphasises the idea of interpreting him as the last great master within its collections. Sorolla will thus be seen to fall within the great tradition of the Spanish School through an exhibition of the same scale, importance and scholarly rigour as the others devoted to the leading names of Spanish art held at the Prado over the years, such as those on Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo, El Greco, Zurbarán and Goya. The layout of the exhibition The exhibition has a fundamentally chronological structure, organised into various sections that emphasise the importance of the various themes and subjects that Sorolla depicted at different periods in his career. For example, there will be a space dedicated to the paintings of social themes that brought the artist fame in the last decades of the 19th century. This is followed by a sizeable group of portraits and a nude that reveal the profound influence of Velázquez on his compositions during the early years of the 20th century. Another area will display his finest beach scenes, painted in 1908 and 1909. Due to their particular importance and large size, the fourteen panels of Visions of Spain painted for the Hispanic Society of America will fill an entire room of the four occupied by the exhibition. This spectacular group was the most complex and important decorative scheme of Sorolla's entire career and can also be seen as an epilogue and summary of his entire oeuvre. The exhibition ends with examples of his landscape paintings. Visit the Museo del Prado at : http://www.museodelprado.es/

Silences ~ by Marin Karmitz at Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MAMCS) Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:58 PM PDT STRASBOURG, FRANCE - Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Strasbourg, France  presents Silences, A statement by Marin Karmitz. "Throughout my career I have always been preoccupied with establishing bridges between what I was most familiar with, the cinema, and different disciplines, such as literature, music, painting, photography, sculpture and video" (interview with Marin Karmitz, Silences exhibition catalogue. As such and following in this spirit of de-compartmentalization, Strasbourg's Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art gave Marin Karmitz the opportunity to develop an exhibition project three years ago. Silences will be presented at MAMCS from April 18th to August 23rd 2009.

The Boca Raton Museum of Art to show "The Magical World of M.C. Escher" Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:57 PM PDT BOCA RATON, FL.-  The Boca Raton Museum of Art announces the presentation of the most comprehensive collection of Escher's most rare and important works in the new exhibition, "The Magical World of M.C. Escher", debuting January 20, 2010. Culled from the private inventory of long-time Escher collector, Rock J. Walker, this special exhibition will feature a mix of woodcuts along with original blocks and exceptionally rare preparatory drawings, sculpture, object d'art, correspondence and documents and original furnishings from his studio.

Francis Alys Exhibits 300 Portraits of "Fabiola" at the Haus zum Kirschgarten Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:56 PM PDT BASEL.- Created by the internationally acclaimed artist Francis Alÿs, Fabiola is an installation of over 300 portraits of a fourth-century Christian saint collected by the artist from flea markets and antique shops throughout Europe and the Americas. These seemingly identical portraits, including paintings, embroideries and miniatures are all copies of a lost original of Fabiola by the French nineteenth-century painter, Jean-Jacques Henner. The exhibition runs from 12 March until 28 August 2011 at the Haus zum Kirschgarten. A majority of the Fabiolas on display are anonymous with limited provenance, and many are in poor condition and unframed. Viewed together, the cohesiveness of the display rests not only in the fact that all the images are of the same subject, but that they all adhere to the same strict iconographic formula - Fabiola is depicted in profile with her head covered in a rich red veil.

Tate Modern to show Paul Gauguin from 'Money Man to Myth Maker' Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:55 PM PDT LONDON - He abandoned life as a stockbroker after the 1882 stock market crash and had an eye for self-promotion -- a major London exhibition on Paul Gauguin this autumn will aim to show the artist in a thoroughly modern light. More than 100 works by the celebrated French painter will be gathered from collections around the world for "Gauguin: Maker of Myth" at Tate Modern in what has already been billed by critics as the "event of the year" on the British art scene. Organizers unveiling the lineup and themes to be explored at the show, which will run from September 30-January 16, 2011, were bold in their claims for the first major British show dedicated to the artist in more than 50 years.

Antiques Dealers Fair of Fine Art and Antiques Coming to Leicestershire Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:54 PM PDT LEICESTERSHIRE, UK - A new addition to The Antiques Dealers Fair Limited's calendar is the Luxury Antiques Weekend at Stapleford Park, which takes place in the delightful surroundings of Stapleford Park Country House Hotel, Stapleford, near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire from Friday 17 until Sunday 19 September 2010. The look of the fair is stylish and welcoming with a clever mix of antiques spanning the Georgian and Regency periods alongside the more contemporary art.  Visitors can either indulge in a weekend or overnight stay and enjoy the comfort of one of their individually designed bedrooms and visit the fair at their leisure or just come for the day.

Atomic Afterimage Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:53 PM PDT BOSTON, MA - Atomic Afterimage: Cold War Imagery in Contemporary Art at the Boston University Art Gallery focuses on recent artistic re-interpretations of pictures from the era of aboveground nuclear testing (1945-1962) and new interpretations of weapons-test sites. Despite the politically charged subject matter, the artworks on view are less overtly critical than one might expect. Instead, the ten artists in the exhibition; including Michael Anastassiades, Bruce Conner, Anthony Dunne, Joy Garnett, Vincent Johnson, Michael Light, Robert Longo, Richard Misrach, Trevor Paglen, and Fiona Raby—uncover the role aesthetics played in cold-war politics by playing with these very aesthetics.

MoMA presents Cézanne to Picasso: Paintings from the David & Peggy Rockefeller Collection Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:52 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Cézanne to Picasso: Paintings from the David and Peggy Rockefeller Collection is an intimate installation that highlights a group of nine exceptional early modern European paintings that have been promised over the years to The Museum of Modern Art by David and Peggy Rockefeller. Mr. Rockefeller's association with MoMA began in his childhood when he often visited the galleries with his mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, who, along with Miss Lillie P. Bliss and Mrs. Cornelius J. Sullivan, founded the Museum in 1929. He has served the Museum with great distinction in many capacities, including two terms as Chairman of the Board of Trustees and in his present position as Honorary Chairman.

Leading Russian & Eastern European Artists to Exhibit at Calvert 22 Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:51 PM PDT LONDON.- Calvert22 will present Photo I, Photo You, the fourth exhibition at the contemporary art space in Shoreditch. Curated by Iara Boubnova, the exhibition will present works by leading Russian and Eastern European artists who invite the viewer to reconsider, revisit and rediscover what they think they know through a series of mixed media works. Exhibition on view from 28 January through 28 March, 2010.

Su-Mei Tse presents New Multi-Media Installation at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:50 PM PDT BOSTON, MA.- In 2007, Luxembourg- and Berlin-based visual artist Su Mei Tse lived at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, drawing inspiration from the museum's rich collection, its history, and the Dutch Room, where the empty frames remain as an ever-present reminder of loss and absence. This summer, the 2003 the Golden Lion award-winner returns to present a solo exhibition and new sound installation in Floating Memories, on view July 16th through October 18th, 2009. Programming during the run of exhibition includes artist and gallery talks, a book signing, and a musical performance featuring Su Mei Tse, contemporary visual artists Lee Mingwei and Cliff Evans, songwriter and performer Niko Hafkenscheid, gallery owner Peter Blum (Peter Blum Gallery, New York), curator Enrico Lunghi, Director of the Mudam Museum in Luxembourg, and Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art, Gardner Museum, will accompany the exhibition. "In art, Su-Mei Tse searches for and achieves complete harmony," says Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Gardner Museum and curator of the exhibition. "It is a painstaking relentless process of discovery and balance and an incredible privilege as a curator to follow and learn to understand it." "Since Su Mei's [2007] residency at the Gardner, I have been following her work, and have delighted in the unique forms she creates to express her ideas," says Anne Hawley, the Norma Jean Calderwood Director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. "Su Mei's artistry is always filled with invention." Su-Mei Tse first emerged on the international contemporary arts scene in 2003, winning critical acclaim and a Golden Lion award for Best National Participation at the 50th Venice Biennale for her first show, Air Conditioning, where she showed the work Echo for the first time. The daughter of a Chinese violinist and an English pianist, Su-Mei Tse's work as a visual artist is also informed by her background as a classically trained cellist. This part of her training has enabled her to take up music and sound, not as themes in her work, but as tools and languages to express her ideas. This is why her work often merges sound, images, and sculpture into a single poetic form. Her work also conveys a deep appreciation for craft and gesture. Tse's work has the pared-down aesthetic quality of minimalism with an emotional charge; her videos, sculpture, and sound installations in particular having been compared to haiku poetry for their elegant and spartan imagery. Tse moves frequently between different cultures in her work, occasionally diverting them and testing them against common clichés in order to pose the question: What might be a universal language? In Floating Memories, Tse presents a new installation merging sound, sculpture, and a video projection while reflecting on the passing of time, distant memory, absence, and longing. The artist has embedded a gold monochrome rug in an empty wooden frame, carved with the partially worn and faded pattern of the 17th century Italian silk damask that originally covered the walls in the Dutch Room (a reproduction of that same fabric now hangs on the walls to preserve the original from irreversible damaging light). Tse has paired this with an image flashback from her childhood of an endlessly revolving vinyl record, floating like a distant shimmering mirage. Rug, frame, and image are suspended in a poetic limbo by the incessantly scratching turntable sound of a revolving LP. "Tse's installation resonates within the Gardner collection particularly in the Dutch Room, where time has come to a standstill while a sense of absence, distant memory, and longing fades in and out of every empty frame," adds Cavalchini. On the exhibition title, she explains: "Floating Memories are distant memories that suddenly bubble up to the surface before us, only to recede again. But they are never quite forgotten." Su-Mei Tse has exhibited in New York at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and the Peter Blum Gallery; London at the Albion Gallery; Roskilde, Denmark at the Museet for Samtidskunst; Chicago at The Renaissance Society; Stockholm at the Moderna Museet; Seattle at the Seattle Art Museum; Athens at the Alpha Delta Gallery; Antwerp at the Tim Van Laere Gallery; Taiwan at MOCA Taipei; Amsterdam at the Foundation De Appel; Jerusalem at the Israel Museum; Paris at the Centre Culturel Suisse; and San Francisco at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. A major exhibition of her work was recently presented at Casino Luxembourg Forum d'Art Contemporain. This last spring, Tse presented the first major survey of her work in Asia at Art Tower Mito, Japan. In addition to the Gardner Museum, Tse has been an artist-in-residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge; and Acadia Summer Art Program, Bar Harbor, Maine. Tse was recently awarded the prestigious Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco Prize for Contemporary Art (May 2009). Her numerous honors and awards, in addition to this award and the Golden Lion award, also include the SRMedienkunstpreis given by the Saarlandischer Rudfunk as well as the Prix d'art Robert Schumann. In 2005, Tse became the first recipient of the Edward Steichen Award, earning a grant for a six-month artist's residency in New York City. Her work has been reviewed in national and international publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, ARTforum, Art in America, Art Asia Pacific, ARTnews, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Independent, ART (Germany), Art Press (France), iD-Magazine (Germany), Art it (Japan), and more. Tse was born in Luxembourg in 1973. She currently lives and works in Luxemburg and Berlin.

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 14 Oct 2011 06:49 PM PDT This is a new feature for the subscribers and visitors to Art Knowledge News (AKN), that will enable you to see "thumbnail descriptions" of the last ninety (90) articles and art images that we published. This will allow you to visit any article that you may have missed ; or re-visit any article or image of particular interest. Every day the article "thumbnail images" will change. For you to see the entire last ninety images just click : here . When opened that also will allow you to change the language from English to anyone of 54 other languages, by clicking your language choice on the upper left corner of our Home Page.  You can share any article we publish with the eleven (11) social websites we offer like Twitter, Flicker, Linkedin, Facebook, etc. by one click on the image shown at the end of each opened article.  Last, but not least, you can email or print any entire article by using an icon visible to the right side of an article's headline.

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