Jan Merta is considered a painter who has surpassed the limits of his time, his paintings are membranes between the volatility, flow, and fleetingness of time and the permanence of items and phenomena. He is interested in the relationship between the world of art and the outside world (70% artist, 30% tram driver), he considers the boundaries of art and the possibilities of its perception. The current exhibition at Museum Kampa presents a collection of paintings from a series of portraits, landscapes, and events, which have not been previously exhibited in Prague.
Image: Jan Merta. Female Liaison Officer, 2015-2018, acrylic on canvas, 115 x 105 cm Photo: Lukas Jasansky
With the exhibition project Now! Painting In Germany Today the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Museum Wiesbaden, the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz – Museum Gunzenhauser, have been engaged in an endeavor to determine the current status of the medium painting. The goal has been to present a valid cross section of the painting produced in Germany by young artists, while considering all the forms in which it appears. The Deichtorhallen Hamburg are very pleased, to present ¬ as the fourth venue ¬ a selection of 150 works from this ambitious exhibition project in the north of Germany.
Image: Toulu Hassani. Ohne Titel, 2019 Polymer plaster, iron powder and pigment 47 x 37 x 20 cm
Centro Botín in Santander, Spain, will present Anri Sala: AS YOU GO, a new exhibition by Albanian-born artist Anri Sala. The exhibition, curated by Benjamin Weil, Artistic Director of Centro Botín, will consist of three monumental installations occupying the entire second floor gallery, which reflect Sala’s enduring interest in the interplay between moving images, music, and architectural space. Anri Sala explores non-verbal forms of communication with innovative narrative techniques which he builds by means of the moving image, music, sound and the architecture of the exhibition space, creating a highly sensorial immersive experience for visitors.
Image: Installation view, Anri Sala at Centro Botín, 2019 Courtesy the artist Photo: Vicente Paredes.
Galerie Rudolfinum will open the exhibition Olympia (The real time disintegration into ruins of the Berlin Olympic stadium over the course of a thousand years) by David Claerbout. Olympia is a computer-generated replica of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, which finds itself in a time-space devoid of human intervention and entrusted to the cycles of nature. Following the original ‘ruinenwert’ theory, in which the stadium’s own decay has been pre-incorporated, Olympia invokes a cycle of creation to dissolution by the slow force of nature. Although the human element has been removed, it is re-introduced through the work’s synchronicity with our own life cycle. Olympia can be regarded as an attempt to measure biological duration against imaginary duration. By ‘biological duration’ we can understand the lifespan of a human being, and by ‘imaginary duration’ we can understand ideological time: the illusion to witness one thousand years.
Image: David Claerbout. Olympia (the real time disintegration into ruins of the Berlin Olympic stadium over the course of a thousand years), 2016, two channel real-time projection, color, silent, HD animation, 1000 years
Helene Appel | Palazzo de’ Toschi, Bologna
Jan 21 – Feb 23, 2020
Banca di Bologna is pleased to present Le realtà ordinarie (Ordinary Realities), curated by Davide Ferri, as one of the Main projects in ART CITY Bologna 2020 on the occasion of Arte Fiera. Le realtà ordinarie, which features paintings by twelve artists, has been conceived for the Banca di Bologna Hall in Palazzo de’ Toschi.
Image: Helene Appel. Sand, Steine, 2019 Acrylic, water colour on linen
The slide and audio installation Lapsus Exposure addresses communication, subjectivity, and the use of media. A key question concerns the significance of the chosen medium for our understanding of what we see. In his large slide projection, Irish artist James Coleman shows a studio situation that seems to be prepared for filming or fashion photography. The overlapping images of the slide show are accompanied by a multi-layered and intriguing voiceover. Gradually, various characters appear in the photographs, perhaps musicians in contemporary but somehow not quite up-to-date outfits, or production personnel. The relationship between past and present is raised by the non-linear narrative on the soundtrack, which is in the tradition of experiments with language in the style of James Joyce or Samuel Beckett. Complex relations between the protagonists are alluded to, with references to recorded and live performances, while allegories of analogue and digital photography are presented.
Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art is pleased to present its second international project, The Pure Necessity by David Claerbout. The starting point for Claerbout’s full-colour 2D animation is the 1967 Walt Disney classic film, The Jungle Book. The treasured Romanesque Chapel of San Bastiaun, in the village of Zuoz, Upper Engadin, Switzerland, provides a serene environment in which to view this intriguing work.
Image: David Claerbout. The Pure Necessity, 2016 Single-channel projection, 2D animation, stereo sound, 50 min. Courtesy of the artist
Goshka Macuga is part of the group exhibition The Assembled Human at Folkwang Museum, Essen. The show presents transcending media and epochs to explore the major societal issues and upheavals of the last 150 years. The Assembled Human presents art as a mirror of industrialisation, technologisation and digitisation. It provides a cultural-historical survey that encompasses key works of painting and graphic design, early experiments in photography, installations and films, along with recent works of Post-Internet Art.
CCA Andratx is pleased to present the new exhibition by the artist Helene Appel (DE, 1976) featuring a new body of works created during her residency at the CCA Studios earlier this year. Painting on a 1:1 scale, distinctive to the artist’s practice, the show comprises large life-like tree trunks, rendered in watercolour on heavy linen fabric. The trees are made using a new technique, where the objects are ‘cut-out’ from the canvas, forming three-dimensional silhouettes.
The Museum of Modern Art announces six long-term, site-specific contemporary artworks, on view in public spaces to celebrate MoMA’s opening on October 21, 2019. In Macuga’s commission, a monumental Jacquard tapestry installed in the Cullman Education and Research Building, the artist surrounds herself with images of over 100 works of art from MoMA’s collection and Archives, and her own work. This image evokes a photograph taken in 1954 of the French politician, publisher, and novelist André Malraux observing the layout of Le Musée imaginaire de la sculpture mondiale (The Imaginary Museum of World Sculpture). Malraux observed that museums “estrange the works they bring together from their original functions and . . . transform even portraits into ‘pictures.’” Inspired by time spent in MoMA’s Archives conducting research on the Museum’s collection and exhibition history, Macuga created her own layout of a book of an imaginary exhibition, Exhibition M. The work has been specifically produced for this space. The resulting tapestry frames the Museum and its collection as a living entity, open to reinterpretation and reevaluation.
Sensual surfaces seduce the eye, inviting the viewer to simply enjoy. Karin Kneffel paints canvasses that exert a magical attraction. Her realist painting draws the viewer into sophisticated visual worlds in which her skillful arrangement of formal ornaments and the interplay of colors blend into an optical fireworks display. However, the works retain a secretive aloofness, as if the perfect, inviting, yet sealed-off surface is deliberately preventing a closer look.
