Onufri 2012/2013

Hey again, readers.

When I was in Tirana, I was lucky enough to get a chance to see the recurring artshow the National Gallery of Albania (NGA) hosts every year. "Onufri" in its 19th edition was curated by the Italian Daniele Capra under his chosen theme "Perchance to Dream" - a verse from Hamlets famous soliloquy by Shakespeare.

Capra has chosen this title because, according to him, there is a noticeable correspondance between an anguished and confused Hamlet found in a difficult personal circumstance yet, regardless, finds strength to think philosophically about the world and its enigmas. According to Capra the Albanian artists challenge and defy the difficult everyday reality, managing to offer personal solutions.

It was set up like every current artshow. A big open room, white walls and sporadic placement of the artpieces. There were mixed media sculputures, videos, paintings, photographs, drawings... So basically everything you can wish for. The pieces were nice, although I couldn't really find the connection to the theme of the exhibition.

I really liked the photographs by Mariana Kostandini.

"Pa titul"

"Eve"

I didn't really know what to make of them though, and even after contemplating the photographs with the theme of the exhibition in mind I could only come up with this: I think the artist chose to show us how not to use a couch, which could correspond with the theme. It's funny and of course you can apply the "couch-theme" to a bigger scale where the couch could represent something else, like a government, an institution, anything really. But then again, I don't really know and I feel like I'm leaning far out the window here. But besides the difficulty of finding out what they mean, I found the photos aesthetically pleasing and humorous. Great compositions.

African Photographs

Magadi Magadi,

Like every time when I'm in Harare I have to visit the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ) at least once! This time I was really impressed with all the improvements in all the areas of the museum. But most of all, I was impressed with the really great exhibition on display.

It was a photograph-exposition with photographs from different southern african photographers from the 1950's to present time. Most of them were portraits, mostly in black and white. The pictures show the process of how the photographers as newly independent citizens percieve the new and modern world they live in.

The show was separated in three different time-eras, so the viewer could really see the progress not only in technique, but also how people percieved themselves differently and started to find their own identities.

Here are my two favorite photographs of the 1950s-1960s.

The first one is a portrait of "Belle devant l'afro-negro club" from 1965 by Jean Depara. Depara is an internationally known talent and a pioneer in depicting modern african life. In this picture of a beautiful young woman, it is shown that, for example, western fashion and even hair, in the 60s was part of everyday life in Kinshasa. Depara lived and worked in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo and captured its citizens and an Africa stripped of conventional social codes.

This portrait was taken by Ricardo Rangel, a photjournalist and photographer from Mozambique. "Doorkeeper at the Moulin Rouge" from 1970 shows, as many works by Rangel do, the fusion of the african/mozambican culture with its colonial ancestors, the Portuguese.

The second part of the exposition covered the timeperiod between the 1970s and 1990s. The photographs showed the aftermaths of the different revolutions, pacific or armed. Change was fragile and complicated, but very much fought for. While the northern part of Africa allready started to rebuild, the southern part still used photography as a method to raise awareness and to bring the movements foreward. 

This picture was taken by Jodi Bieber from South Africa in 1997. "Sunday School Nababeep Northern Cape". It was one of my favorite pictures in the entire exhibition. The children seemed so happy and fierce to show off their talent in a controled and safe environment. Bieber focused her early work on the place she grew up - South Africa. After over two decades of work she won the Premier World Press Photo of the Year Award 2011.

Lastly, the third part of the expo was focused on the 2000s. Photography isn't just a form of narration anymore, it has emancipated to an independent artform. Much like the people of Africa themselves. The struggle is over and after years of independence a new identity was finally found. 

Here you can see "Hloni" in 2006 and "Sibu I." in 2005, photographed by Nontskikelelo "Lolo" Veleko, from her series "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder". In that series she portrays young Southafricans on the street, much like the wester trend of street-style-photography. The portrayed people are strong and confident and are proud to show off their individual style. The new generation of a new Africa.

Not the Jeans...

Good Morning,

I think it‘s really important, especially for galeries, that they have an interesting display or poster or some sort of eyecatcher in their windows or doors. If you don‘t notice something special about a place, or don‘t even notice that it‘s a galery, the galery is doing something wrong.

So when I was walking through the city and I noticed these wonderful photographs in the window, I was instantly intrigued. Maybe also because the name next to the photo was a name I knew. 

But it wasn‘t a name I came across in my endeavors in art, but in my other field of study - social anthropology. 

The name Lévi-Strauss, for most people, means a famous brand of jeans-wear. But every anthropologist associates something else with that name. Claude Lévi-Strauss was a famous sociologist and ethnologist in the 20th century, who died recently in 2009 at the age of 101 years. 

In this lifetime he undertook many explorations, mostly to southern America. Brasil was frequently visited by Lévi-Strauss and his associates for research where he also took the photographs which were on display at the „Defacto la Gallery“- Galery. The title of the exposition was „Mondes Perdus“ and it displayed all pictures he took during a reserach trip where he tried to find out, how the technical progress and urbanisation influences and changes the life and agriculture of the indigenous farmers in Brasil. All the pictures were taken by a Leica camera and most of them are portraits of indigenous people living in the rainforest.

The photos were beautiful and very expressive, an effect that was enhanced through the black and white-styled pictures. My dad would have loved the exposition. Simple, expressive photos. 

Dark Art Paris 2012 in a Light Grand Palais

Hey Fun-Friends,

This year the Grand Palais was host to one of the most famous artshows in France and maybe the world. Art Paris was/is back in town!!

A place where the leading galleries and institutions display the current trends and the upandcoming new artists! What a marvel. Plus, the Grand Palais is just unbelievable in beauty of construction! Me and my enthusiastic friend managed to find a time where we both could make it so we ended up going two hours before it closed. That decision ended up to be very smart since almost everyone had gone home allready and the eveningsun flooded the entire glass-covered Palais.

The beauty of the setting wasn‘t displayed in the works though. The art was mostly very gloomy, dark and scary with a strong hint of voyeurism. At some point you even get turned into one yourself:

You felt observed and followed and the works were dark and frightening. There was a lot of deconstruction of images aswell and ugly materials like trash and old iron made into new pieces of art. If you really want to call them that.

There were some colorful and pop-arty works, which makes sense because neon-colors aren‘t only in style in fashion right now, but also in art, but there was always a certain edge to them. For example this galery who displays an artist who took violant themes, like guns and munition and turned them pretty.

But overall it was still a beautiful artfair with beautiful pieces and a strong fotorealism and sculpture trend.

Kunst '11 in Zurich

Hello artsy ones,

A little late I would still like to tell you, what I liked best about this year's contemporary art fair in Zurich, the "Kunst 11". Luckily me and my friend got the chance to view the fair on the pre-opening event, everything was still in place, all the important people were present to explain some stuff about their fields of expertise and some artists were present aswell, which I always love.

There was definitely a big focus on photograhic art, alot of photographs in their original states, but also a huge amount of edited pictures in every way possible. And of course there were some traditional pieces of art, paintings and sketches by long-established artist, modernist painters like Miro, Picasso, Klee and such. A trend also lay with quite excentric sculptures and light-installations. Those I can always appreciate, I especially found one piece by Christian Hardeg fascinating. Different coloured neon-light-pipes, which were fitted on a huge board. It looked, if you stood infront of it, as if you are standing on a bridge over a highway by night and thousands of cars are racing towards that bridge.

The thing that impressed me and my friend the most, though, was a young american artist. As we wandered through the different showcases of the galleries one picture caught our eye. It was a woman, a portrait on a red background.

As we came closer to the picture we saw the brilliance of this rather ordinary seeming portrait. It was not a painting as we thought, but a photograph! You can clearly see the hair and the eyes, but the rest of it seems painted. Alexa Meade, the artist, was there and explained to us, that she draws on people and objects, then takes a picture. I think that is an amazing merge between painting and photography and a real skill, to be able to do that. Of course, when I came home I googled this discovery! And I was fascinated... still am. Here some pictures:

As always, the visit payed off, we had a fun and fascinating night and some good glasses of wine. Success!