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.

Happy Belated Holidays! Have some turkey!

Hey festive ones,

I wish you all a very belated but still a very merry Christmas, a happy New Year, happy Hanukkah or whatever you choose to celebrate! Oh, and also happy Birthday to my dad who went with me to see what I am about to present to you.

And in the spirit of the holidays (that allready passed a while ago, I know) I think it only makes sense to dedicate this piece of art to those festive times I hope we all were able to enjoy!

We went to see a student art show in Tirana, Albania, and this piece caught my eye immediateley. It's called "Gjeli i arte" which means golden rooster in albanian. And the young artist's name is Flogert Kola and unfortunately I couldn't find any info on this yet unknown artist.

But I thought this piece was brilliant. It's simple, it's well made, it's humoristic and sarcastic. The material is, as you can see, carved styrofoam which is an incredibly cheap material, almost garbage since it's mostly used for packaging and gets thrown away after. So it's ironic that the artist chose to use this material to display something that gets valued so much particularly during the festive season. The main attraction on the dinnertable is the turkey - that's the tradition. But then again by painting it gold, the artist gives it back some value. It may be made of styrofoam but it's golden and therefore important again. And the pairing with the festive red tablecloth gives it an impression of being displayed in a most fancy way, in the most festive way possible. And it also leads me to believe that it is an installation and not just a sculpture.

As I said, great work! And happy belated Holidays again!

Tiles

How are you, dear reader?

This might be a rather unusual post, but nonetheless I really wanted to share this with you.

A couple of weeks ago I went to an exhibition. Wow, really? Yes. But it was not your usual art expo. No, it was a tile exhibition. I know, this breaks with the regular scheme of artreviews but it was an actual exhibition and to be honest, it was very interesting.

There were regular tiles, big tiles, huge tiles, tiny tiles, colorful tiles, ornamented tiles. So there were alot of differnet shapes, colors, materials and they were displayed like little pieces of art. So I wanted to give them the honor of not just being simple tiles for once, but to be viewed as little pieces of art.

Kolorful. Kute. Kolossal. Koons

Hello,

Jeff Koons at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel. Of course I had to go. And good thing I did. It was an amazing exhibition.

The works by Koons always succeed in rendering the visitor happy and light, entertained and yet feeling the extraordinary quality of the art displayed. As Koons said:

"My work is a support system for people to feel good about themselves."

And it's clear why. The installations are colorful, huge and are very cute, to say the least. Koons' motives are sweet, almost trivial. Little kittens hanging in socks, smiling bears waving at you, piles of cute barnyard animals... you get the idea.

But the most famous pieces by Koons might be the huge Balloonanimal-Installations. From the 100 kilogramm heavy monography I purchased about Koons I learned that he was always fascinated by airfilled objects. The lightness was something that intrigued him and inspired him to create several Balloon-objects in the series "Celebration". The pieces look like huge Balloonfigures modelled by streetclowns but are infact massive stainless steel sculptures, glazed in transparent paint. They seem light as a feather, but in reality they weigh several tons. 

Of course there were other works that fascinated me. Especially one piece caught my eye, it seemed like I had seen it before. It seemed like a baroque mirror, an lavish golden frame but an odd form. There was no clear surface but alot of curves and edges. Then I saw the outlines of a face. I had seen that face before. I read the description in the guide and there it was. The solution. The weirdly shaped golden mirror was actually shaped like Baby-Jesus from a famous Da Vinci Painting (I went to see it in Paris, go check out my post about St. Anne http://www.miumiupow.blogspot.ch/2012/08/african-photographs.html). Marvelous!! Note how the media corresponds with the theme. 

And as you know, I love these kinds of things, where artists quote other pieces of art and use them as inspiration. I find it fascinating!

Apart from the huge installations and sculptures, paintings and collages there were also pieces of Koons' early works in the tradition of the ready-made, introduced by Duchamp in the early 20th century. In the series "The New" Koons displays new, unused vacuum cleaners and shampoo polishers. Here again we detect Koons' fascination with air, airfilled objects and machines., he even calls them "breathing machines". The lifelessness which is bestowed on objects like these dissappears and they appear to have some kind of biological, living quality. 

Koons' equally spectacular and subtle works are repeatedly concerend with themes such as innocence, beauty, sexuality and happiness. These reflect his conception of an art that is accesible to every viewer.

African Pastels.

Evening,

So, I‘ve mentioned Stanley Sibanda allready. He is a new and exciting visual artist, based in Bulawayo. I had the chance to take a look at his studio, which is located in the studio-building the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo provides for young and newcoming artists. 

I always love to see where artists create their work, their environment, their view out of the window. 

Stanley Sibanda, 37, is married and has two children. In 2007 he decided to focus his life entirely on art and painting.

His work is similar to alot of other Zimbabwean artist. The themes he pics are mostly based on rural life scenes such as busstations, farming men and women but also landscapes and animalportraits, which are the common themes. I know it sounds a little touristy, but the way he paints is very different from the others. For some reason african artist or pictures with an african background always use vibrant glowing colors. The continent seems to have this image of an almost violent colorscheme, which is in fact only true at sundown, when the sun turns everything into a flaring red. Breathtaking, But most of the time, the countryside is dusty and almost colored in pastel tones.

Sibanda takes on this colorscheme of pastels and the feeling of dust and sand in the air and paints the most lovely pictures. Sure, it‘s still the same themes, but they feel much more realistic and honest and not as mainstream and as i said before, not touristy. I really hope Sibanda evolves over time and finds a way to cut loose from traditional imgarey and find a more individual way to express his extraordinary talent in painting. 

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.

Scrambled.

Good morning reader,

So, as you probably noticed, I haven't been keeping you updated very much lately. I and my interest for art have been traveling all over the place for the last month, even moving again!

I have some amazing posts prepared for you guys, they will soon be uploaded!

To not keep you hanging I'll share some city-surprises that I found on my routes. I did a streetart-post before, so you might know, that it is a passion of mine. I just think it's wonderful, if someone uses their surroundings not only as an inspiration, but also as a canvas. It makes you feel like suddenly your in a different world. A world someone else created and most of the time streetart accentuates things you wouldn't even notice.

So, to all of you out there. Keep your eyes open, you'll see your city through someone elses eyes for once.

Okay, here's stuff that caught my eye from four countries and five cities in a month.

On my last night in Paris I saw this brilliant paste-up/grafitti. And it was exactly what I felt like doing. Just draw a huge heart onto the most magnificent city in the entire world. 

(Maybe by Leo&Pipo...? Not sure.)

In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, I came across a to me formerly unknown artist who does beautiful work. As far as I understood Stanley Sibanda mostly paints rural scenes and landscapes with oil on canvans. I'll do a seperate post on him later, so I?m not going to spill all the beans.

Berlin, Kreuzberg. This huge astronaut-stencil is a real eyecatcher and you really wonder how someone did that. I mean, it's huge. And it's on a wall. Really high up there...  

Thun, Boardwalk. Don't let the pacmen get you. Amazing.

And back in Berne, finally. Not much changed, but I did discover a new decoration in a rather public space. This little dinosaur made me smile. Plus, also a political statement, because, you know, it's Berne, the capital. 

Marilyns Hand.

Grüezi Readers,

I have to confess, I was prejudiced. I went to the Centre Pompidou again, with visitors, and I dont know if I had a bad day or something, but I didn‘t really enjoy it. I know, I shouldn‘t or people in general shouldn‘t be snobby about art, but on this particular day I walked through the rooms and thought „this is art?“ „I could do that“ „why is this in here“ „this is a waste of space“.... You get the point.

And when I walked to this piece I thought it was a joke. Just random lines and squiggle-squaggles - and that was supposed to be art? I went to the description to find out who‘s responsible for this nonsense. 

And I was amazed!

It wasn‘t just random squigglings but someone, well not someone but Pierre Bismuth, actually had a pretty amazing idea! The artist and cameraman was born in France in 1963 and is also an awardwining screenwriter. This would explain the collaboration of painting and movies in his art.

The work is called „En suivant la main droite - de marilyn monroe dans 'some like it hot‘. And I guess you can imagine now what it is. Bismuth put a tracing paper on his tv-screen and followed for the length of the movie „some like it hot“ the right hand of the actress and icon Marilyn Monroe. What a funny idea.

So instead of calling out and idiot-wannabe-artist I got called out for being ignorant and snobby. Served me well, lesson learned.

Monumental MONUMENTA 2012

Art-Fans, 

So ever since I saw the beauty that is the Grand Palais at Art Paris, I kept my eyes wide open for more opportunities to visit the grand hall of the Palais. 

I had heard of the yearly Monumenta exhibition before. Since 2007 art-legends like Christian Boltanski or Richard Serra had been invited to create something special for the Grand Palais specifically.

This year Daniel Buren was asked and he accepted. He named his exhibition „Excentrique(s) Travail in situ“. I know, not much comes to mind with this titel, but I wanted to see it anyways. 

I was stunned!! Especially coming into the exhibition through this weird unusual entrance, I was not prepared for the amazingness that was infront of me. You come into this massive space of the Grand Palais through this tiny entrance and the whole room just opens up! And in the vast space Buren created a wonderful installation. On white and black iron pillars there were hundreds of multicolored round transparent foils in different sizes. As visitor you wandered under them, they were just about 3 meters high. It gave an even more asthounding impression of the actual overwhelming size of the Palais. And it also captured another very important feature of the huge hall - the light! 

Buren himself said, that even more beautiful than the Grand Palais and its architecture itself was the light in it. And that is what he intended to point out. He didn‘t want to create something that would not have anything to do with its surroundings but rather something that compliments it. So he decided to keep it quite simple and just find a way to make the people see and think about the hall itself through his installation. 

It definetely worked. As I was walking under the orange, yellow, green and blue transparents, feeling different under every color, all I really thought was how amazing the Grand Palais is. The architecture, the light, the athmosphere... it was wonderful! In the middle of the room were several mirrors on the floor on which you could walk on and see the huge dome of the Palais, which Buren changed a little for the Monumenta. 

And as I walked up on the balcony the view was magnificent aswell. From the balcony you got a view on the installation - before you had just walked under it, feeling like an ant in the grass. Now it seemed like you were seeing a beautiful colored pond with lots and lots of waterlilies. Then you walked down the other side and continued by being an ant again. 

It was truly one of the best exhibitions I ever saw. I managed to see it 4 times and I would have gone more, if I had had the time. Amazing. Well done, Daniel Buren!

That's quite Noble.

Hello Readers,

Once again, I would take some time and bring you closer to a rather contemporary artist I've grown fond of. His name is Paul Noble and I've come across his work, which is mainly drawing and sculpture back in Switzerland when I had a seminar about Hollands surrealist scene. Noble participated in an exhibition under a similar titel.

Noble is a british visual artist, born in 1963. He lives and works in London and allready had multiple shows all over the world. He's also represented in some galeries,  including the one here in Paris that I visited to see some of his works.

I was in particular interested in this piece, called "The Egg" for obvious reasons from 2004. It is huge and its pencil on jesmonite, a composite material used in fine arts.

It's covered with small sections which, at first sight appear quite cute, because it's mostly animal doing funny things, wearing funny clothes. Like these squares:

But then you look closer and see that the scenes are actually quite horrible. Like the one above the boxing moles, where a human gets shreddered in a mincer. With every look you see these cute animals doing horrible things to people. But only things, that people also do with/to animals. For example grind them up for meat and food or use them as guides, helpers, slaves... Like the fox using a man as, i guess, a seeing-eye-human. 

Noble touches ground with surrealism, is witty, portrays questions of everyday life and double standards in a funny way, that is also quite shocking if you bother to look twice. 

Olympia.

Hello Friends,

I must tell you, it is very fun to (sometimes) actually understand art. And to understand what a piece of art you've never seen before is referring to, critizing, meaning, saying etc.

So when I saw this piece at Pompidou I very much enjoyed it, because I knew something about it (which is sometimes hard with the things at Centre Pompidou - sorry)

Maybe you know the original masterpiece on which this quite funny artist is basing his wood and plastic sculpture on? Larry Rivers, an US-artist, created this piece in 1970 under the name of "I like Olympia in black". 

It's funny, because most artworks that quote another piece do not make it that obvious. Ok, I'll solve the mystery for you if you still don't know which piece was the inspiration for this. It was the very famous Edouard Manet, who painted the famous "Olympia" from 1863-65 (which currently hangs at Musée d'Orsay here in Paris).

As you can see now, Rivers clearly took Manets painting as basis for his own work. The woman, olympia has the same posture, the bed is the same, and also the servant. The great thing is, that he duplicated the entire thing he built in wood and turned the colors around - hence the title of Rivers' piece. Olympia isn't white anymore, shes's black and is now being served by a white maid. Even the cat in the right bottom corner had to switch colors. It is obviously a statement against the skincolor-bias between servants and employers, or the skincolor-bias in general.

A really witty example of turning something old in something contemporary in a new way! 

Come very close!

Oh hey there you are,

I just want to tell you about an artist I discovered for myself real quick. His name is Oscar Camilo de las Flores and he is a mexican artist born in 1974.

I saw his works in the Collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen which is on tour right now with their contemporary surrealistic drawings.

There were four independent works that made a series. They were drawn on paper with a regular pen and ink. The works range from 2008 to 2009.

So first of all here is how it looks from far away:

Then like this:

And now some details:

Obviously I took details of comics - because I love comics. But you can really see the skill and time the artist used to create these works. The detail, the finesse and the style is just incredible. You can really see the surrealistic tendencies since your automatic imagination gets triggered the moment you look at the drawings of de la Flores. The themes are linked to the history of his country, art history and modern societies problems. It's very dark and grottesque which fits perfectly to the trend of art right now whilst the works are in the surrealist tradition. Very interesting, this artist.