Levi van Veluw
21 May – 25 June 2011
Ron Mandos
Amsterdam
www.ronmandos.nl
Levi van Veluw is showcasing work from a series of new installations, photographs and videos in which he draws on his own childhood memories to thematically and narratively develop his own brand of self-portraiture. The artist has created 3 “rooms” covered with more then 30.000 wooden blocks, balls and slats respectively. Each “room” is executed as a life-size installation (4m x 2.5m x 2.5m) and is presented with photographs and videos
Clare Strand: Sleight
27 May – 2 July 2011
Brancolini Grimaldi
London
www.brancolinigrimaldi.com
For her first major solo exhibition in London, contemporary British photographer Clare Strand presents her two newest bodies of work at Brancolini Grimaldi’s recently launched space in Mayfair. Taking inspiration from a formal repertoire of forensic photography and instruction manuals, the conventions of signage, the secondary position of aesthetics in utilitarian photography, and the mechanics of spirit photography, Strand’s work treads the uncertain boundaries between the expected and the absurd. This show brings together Strand’s latest series, Ten Most Least Wanted and Skirts, both of which rely as much on the hidden as they do the immediately apparent.
Kara Walker: Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale
21 April – 4 June 2011
Lehmann Maupin Gallery
New York
www.lehmannmaupin.com
AND
Dust Jackets for the Niggerati- and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings submitted ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker
Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
New York
www.sikkemajenkinsco.com
This joint exhibition of new works by Kara Walker, across two galleries, presents three new video works, which draw on her own experience in the Mississippi Delta, “a region mythologized in song and popular culture but tragically depressing.” She explains, “I drove down to the Delta thinking about the terrors of Jim Crow and slavery, yet the silent indifference of the landscape and the economic stasis, lack of mobility, and the persistence of a racist memory in the area was what stuck.”
Peter Buggenhout
14 May–25 June 2011
Galerie Laurent Godin
Paris, France
www.laurentgodin.com
An important topic in the work of Peter Buggenhout is the transformation of industrial and organic waste into art. His approach hinges on the materials he uses including dust, horse hair, detritus, blood, cow stomachs and intestines – deliberately abject materials which set in motion a constant ambivalence between attraction and repulsion. The works on show here, whose materials produce an indeterminate and enigmatic form, are related the formless, which, according to Georges Bataille, “is not only an adjective having a given meaning but a term that serves to bring things down in the world.” Peter Buggenhout plays on this declassing so that his work circumvents categorization. He materializes waste to the point of giving it a form before subjecting it to a series of operations that lead to formlessness.
Goshka Macuga: It Broke from Within
Through August 14, 2011
Walker Art Center
Minneapolis, MN
www.walkerart.org
Combining the roles of researcher, historian and curator, Goshka Macuga explores ways in which modern and contemporary art forms and museums have engaged with evolving ideas of politics and community. For her first solo museum exhibition in the United States, the London-based Polish artist delves into the Walker’s past, foregrounding the institution’s early link to the lumber industry while considering the forest as a metaphor for American democracy and freedom. Within a physical space of her own design—inspired by a rendering of a “town square” lounge proposed for the Walker’s 2005 Herzog & de Meuron expansion—the artist has arranged elements from the institution’s collections and archives against a monumental new tapestry.
Florian Maier-Aichen
29 April – 25 June 2011
303 Gallery
New York
www.303gallery.com
With the works in this exhibition, Florian Maier-Aichen continues his practice of picking apart and expanding notions of photographic representation. Many works in the show rely on a fully hybrid model of image production; utilizing practices of photography, painting and drawing in equal measures has allowed the artist to explore the myth of image-making in pursuit of a new form of the ideal photographic document. In two images titled “Der Spaziergang,” Maier-Aichen uses the animation technique of drawing on transparent cells, which he then combines with watercolors before photographing them. Through subtle interventions and a shrewd utilization of the visual / conceptual crossover, the works push toward a simultaenous rejection and embrace of the confines of photographic reality, all the while celebrating the romance of image creation.
Cady Noland / Santiago Sierra
30 April – 29 July 2011
KOW BERLIN
Berlin
www.kow-berlin.info
This show brings together two artists who regard social violence not as a departure from social normality but as an expression of the normative form of rule and economic system we all implicitly support: capitalism and liberalism. In the 1980s, Noland provoked observers by denouncing the myth of the self-determination of US-Americans and their love of freedom as an imperialist gesture. Sierra was accused of criticizing the humiliating instruments of capitalist domination by merely mirroring them in his own artistic practice, effectively turning the victims of social violence into victims also of his art and inflicting a second humiliation on them. The exhibition hopes to show that Sierra as well as Noland hit a deeper neuralgic spot of social conditioning: a moralistic mask concealing social repression.
Roger Ballen: Skadukant
7 May – 28 August 2011
Museum Het Domein
Kapittelstraat 6, 6131 ER Sittard
The Netherlands
www.hetdomein.nl
Roger Ballen is one of the most important photographers of his generation. He has gained world fame with his penetrating photos recording the daily environment of these people on the margins of South African society. In his most recent photos, the human figure has become less central to the composition, and Ballen explores the darker depths of human existence—the ‘skadukant’ in Afrikaans. This exhibition features roughly 120 photos which, together, give a sense of the evolution of Ballen’s work from the beginning of the 1980s to today. There is a selection from his early documentary series, along with photos from the more recent series Outland, Shadow Chamber and Boarding House. In addition, the exhibition provides the first glimpses of Ballen’s most recent photo-series-in-progress in which birds are featured in all the photographs.
Yto Barrada: Riffs
15 April–19 June 2011
Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
Berlin
Riffs is the first large-scale exhibition in Germany of the work of Yto Barrada, whose photographs, films, publications, installations and sculptures engage with the peculiar situation of her hometown of Tangier, Morocco. With Yto Barrada, Deutsche Bank has elected a woman as “Artist of the Year” 2011 whose work has been closely involved with the political and social realities in North Africa for over a decade.
Paradise Lost
25 March–24 July 2011
İstanbul Modern
Meclis-i Mebusan Ave. Liman İşletmeleri
Sahası Antrepo No:4 Karaköy
İstanbul, Turkey
www.istanbulmodern.org
İstanbul Modern presents a new exhibition addressing the relationship between art, nature and technology. The exhibition consists of digital media and video works by 21 artists who take into consideration subjects related to nature and examine the impact of industry and technology on the environment. Curated by Paolo Colombo and Levent Çalıkoğlu, the exhibition features work by Doug Aitken, Francis Alÿs, Katerina Athanasopoulou, Jim Campell, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, DesertMed, Shaun Gladwell, Emre Hüner, Nina Katchadourian, Ali Kazma, Laleh Khorramian, Guy Maddin, Rivane Neuenschwander, Ulrike Ottinger, Tony Oursler, Qiu Anxiong, Pipilotti Rist, Charles Sandison, Kiki Smith, Bill Viola, and Pae White.
