CURRENT EXHIBITION

Contemporary art from around the world
Franck Scurti at Kunsthaus Baselland (St. Jakob-Strasse 170, 4132 Muttenz/Basel  ·  Switzerland) The work of Franck Scurti (born in 1965 in Lyon, lives and works in Paris) is characterized by everyday life. Aspects of the consumer world, of an international, urban lifestyle culture and the associated music scene have an influence on his works.  For this exhibition, Scurti shows the video “La Linea” (2002), for which he produced a new episode of the eponymous cartoon series in agreement with its creator, Osvaldo Cavandoli. The animated film consists in a single line from which the figure and its direct environment emerge. The series is characterized by the direct dialog between the cartoon figure and its creator, who reacts by gradually drawing and changing elements of the surroundings. For the background of his two-minute episode, Scurti used graphics from the business press showing rising and falling share prices and which he interprets as a kind of economic landscape. His version of the cartoon series addresses the interplay of artistic production, creativity and the market, comparing phenomena in business and art. The existence of the figure is set in direct relation to economic motives, with the artist and the art product literally pulling in the same direction.

Franck Scurti at Kunsthaus Baselland (St. Jakob-Strasse 170, 4132 Muttenz/Basel  ·  Switzerland)

The work of Franck Scurti (born in 1965 in Lyon, lives and works in Paris) is characterized by everyday life. Aspects of the consumer world, of an international, urban lifestyle culture and the associated music scene have an influence on his works.  For this exhibition, Scurti shows the video “La Linea” (2002), for which he produced a new episode of the eponymous cartoon series in agreement with its creator, Osvaldo Cavandoli. The animated film consists in a single line from which the figure and its direct environment emerge. The series is characterized by the direct dialog between the cartoon figure and its creator, who reacts by gradually drawing and changing elements of the surroundings. For the background of his two-minute episode, Scurti used graphics from the business press showing rising and falling share prices and which he interprets as a kind of economic landscape. His version of the cartoon series addresses the interplay of artistic production, creativity and the market, comparing phenomena in business and art. The existence of the figure is set in direct relation to economic motives, with the artist and the art product literally pulling in the same direction.

Henrik Olesen at Kunstmuseum Basel (Sankt Alban-Rheinweg 60, 4052 Basel, Switzerland).  The Museum of Contemporary Art presents an extensive survey of the oeuvre created by the artist Henrik Olesen (b. Denmark, 1967). The retrospective exhibition features a selection from his works of the past fifteen years, illustrating his conceptual strategy of deconstruction, manipulation, and appropriation in collages, demontages, and spatial interventions. Current and historic references from a variety of domains, including the history of art and culture, the natural sciences, and the legal realm, form the point of departure for his research into issues around social as well as economic systems of categorization. Olesen reconstructs what the public discussion has marginalized, effaced, or misrepresented: the history and biographies of homosexual identity.

Henrik Olesen at Kunstmuseum Basel (Sankt Alban-Rheinweg 60, 4052 Basel, Switzerland).

 The Museum of Contemporary Art presents an extensive survey of the oeuvre created by the artist Henrik Olesen (b. Denmark, 1967). The retrospective exhibition features a selection from his works of the past fifteen years, illustrating his conceptual strategy of deconstruction, manipulation, and appropriation in collages, demontages, and spatial interventions. Current and historic references from a variety of domains, including the history of art and culture, the natural sciences, and the legal realm, form the point of departure for his research into issues around social as well as economic systems of categorization.

Olesen reconstructs what the public discussion has marginalized, effaced, or misrepresented: the history and biographies of homosexual identity.

Swiss, July 2011

Current exhibitions from major galleries in Switzerland, July 2011

Jakub Julian Ziolkowski at Parasol unit (14 Wharf Road, London, UK, N1 7RW) Parasol unit dedicates a solo exhibition to the Polish artist Jakub Julian Ziolkowski. Ziolkowski’s paintings are a wild hallucinatory journey into his strange and often frightening universe. Skeletons battle soldiers in murky swamps; towers of eyeballs goggle cartoonishly; flesh peels wetly off bare bones. Ziolkowski has an unflinching attitude to the corporeal: the body takes centre stage, at once defiled and dissected.

Jakub Julian Ziolkowski at Parasol unit (14 Wharf Road, London, UK, N1 7RW)

Parasol unit dedicates a solo exhibition to the Polish artist Jakub Julian Ziolkowski. Ziolkowski’s paintings are a wild hallucinatory journey into his strange and often frightening universe. Skeletons battle soldiers in murky swamps; towers of eyeballs goggle cartoonishly; flesh peels wetly off bare bones. Ziolkowski has an unflinching attitude to the corporeal: the body takes centre stage, at once defiled and dissected.

Vincent Honoré, Head of the Collection at David Arts Foundation, (111 Great Titchfield Street, London, UK W1W 6RY). How do we inhabit an image? How can alternative knowledge and counter-memories be generated through the displacement, misplacement or condensation of collected imagery? The works in the exhibition explore the recreation and transposition of narrative structures, applied to systems of representation, image production and dissemination. The separation of roles between authors, actors, protagonists and observers in the images’ treatment, or manipulation, leave them as unanswered enigmas in which meaning is to be reinvented through the viewer’s active participation.  The exhibition is a project by Vincent Honoré. The works and installations have been especially produced for the exhibition.

Vincent Honoré, Head of the Collection at David Arts Foundation, (111 Great Titchfield Street, London, UK W1W 6RY).

How do we inhabit an image? How can alternative knowledge and counter-memories be generated through the displacement, misplacement or condensation of collected imagery? The works in the exhibition explore the recreation and transposition of narrative structures, applied to systems of representation, image production and dissemination. The separation of roles between authors, actors, protagonists and observers in the images’ treatment, or manipulation, leave them as unanswered enigmas in which meaning is to be reinvented through the viewer’s active participation. 

The exhibition is a project by Vincent Honoré. The works and installations have been especially produced for the exhibition.



Ai Weiwei at Lisson Gallery (52-54 Bell Street, London, UK, NW1 5DA) Widely considered to be one of the most significant cultural figures of his generation in China and internationally, Ai Weiwei successfully occupies multiple roles as a conceptual artist, architect, curator, designer, film-maker, publisher and activist.  Using a variety of formal languages with both traditional and innovative methods of production, Ai links the past with the present and explores the geopolitical, economic and cultural realities affecting the world with humour and compassion.

Ai Weiwei at Lisson Gallery (52-54 Bell Street, London, UK, NW1 5DA)

Widely considered to be one of the most significant cultural figures of his generation in China and internationally, Ai Weiwei successfully occupies multiple roles as a conceptual artist, architect, curator, designer, film-maker, publisher and activist. 

Using a variety of formal languages with both traditional and innovative methods of production, Ai links the past with the present and explores the geopolitical, economic and cultural realities affecting the world with humour and compassion.

Fred Sandback at Whitechapel Gallery (77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London, UK E1 7QX)  American artist Fred Sandback (1943–2003) uses the most modest materials to transform the white cube of the gallery into an exploration of line, plane and volume. The setting of Gallery 2 provides the stage for Sandback’s sculpture made from coloured yarn. Scaled to meet the dimensions of this cruciform room, lines of yarn are used, like three-dimensional drawings, to define planes and volumes with no mass. Using nothing but ‘air and edges’ he magically alters our experience of the space. In his words, ‘the inherent mysticism resides in persisting in wanting to make something as factual as possible and having it turn out just the other way… the realisation that the simplest and most comfortable of perceptions are shadows’. This installation, conceived with the Fred Sandback Estate, offers a unique spatial experience.

Fred Sandback at Whitechapel Gallery (77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London, UK E1 7QX) 

American artist Fred Sandback (1943–2003) uses the most modest materials to transform the white cube of the gallery into an exploration of line, plane and volume.

The setting of Gallery 2 provides the stage for Sandback’s sculpture made from coloured yarn. Scaled to meet the dimensions of this cruciform room, lines of yarn are used, like three-dimensional drawings, to define planes and volumes with no mass.

Using nothing but ‘air and edges’ he magically alters our experience of the space. In his words, ‘the inherent mysticism resides in persisting in wanting to make something as factual as possible and having it turn out just the other way… the realisation that the simplest and most comfortable of perceptions are shadows’. This installation, conceived with the Fred Sandback Estate, offers a unique spatial experience.

Ian Berry at Whitechapel Gallery (77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London, UK E1 7QX) In 1972 the Whitechapel Gallery commissioned British photographer Ian Berry, renowned for his coverage of conflict, to turn his lens to everyday life in east London. He captured the last members of a dwindling Jewish community and the arrival of new faces from the Caribbean and South Asia; slum clearances heralding brutal high-rise towers; pineapples appearing in a greengrocer’s window; and a cobbler meeting the demands of a growing youth culture with star-spangled platform heels. This is Whitechapel presents photographs and archive material from Berry’s momentous commission revealing the poverty, the acts of kindness and community and the political tensions that are still evident today. Alongside are films and publications produced in the 1970s by fi lmmakers and writers such asMaggie Pinhorn, Tunde Ikoli and the Basement Writers group and recent work by Chris Dorley-Brown.

Ian Berry at Whitechapel Gallery (77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London, UK E1 7QX)

In 1972 the Whitechapel Gallery commissioned British photographer Ian Berry, renowned for his coverage of conflict, to turn his lens to everyday life in east London. He captured the last members of a dwindling Jewish community and the arrival of new faces from the Caribbean and South Asia; slum clearances heralding brutal high-rise towers; pineapples appearing in a greengrocer’s window; and a cobbler meeting the demands of a growing youth culture with star-spangled platform heels.

This is Whitechapel presents photographs and archive material from Berry’s momentous commission revealing the poverty, the acts of kindness and community and the political tensions that are still evident today. Alongside are films and publications produced in the 1970s by fi lmmakers and writers such asMaggie Pinhorn, Tunde Ikoli and the Basement Writers group and recent work by Chris Dorley-Brown.

Anne Hardy at Camden Arts Centre (Arkwright Road, London, UK) Anne Hardy, best known for her large scale photographs of meticulously constructed interiors, will take up residency at Camden Arts Centre until July 1, 2011. Over a period of 3 months Hardy will build a new ‘set’ in the Artists’ Studio using everyday, found materials and drawing on memories from the studio’s past residencies and performances. Using her camera to capture and activate the structure Hardy will produce a new photograph and for the first time offer visitors the opportunity to experience the actual construction behind the lens.

Anne Hardy at Camden Arts Centre (Arkwright Road, London, UK)

Anne Hardy, best known for her large scale photographs of meticulously constructed interiors, will take up residency at Camden Arts Centre until July 1, 2011.

Over a period of 3 months Hardy will build a new ‘set’ in the Artists’ Studio using everyday, found materials and drawing on memories from the studio’s past residencies and performances. Using her camera to capture and activate the structure Hardy will produce a new photograph and for the first time offer visitors the opportunity to experience the actual construction behind the lens.

Mark Leckey at The Serpentine Gallery (Kensington Gardens, London, UK)  

The Serpentine Gallery presents a new exhibition conceived by Mark Leckey. In a multi-disciplinary practice that encompasses sculpture, sound, film and performance, Leckey explores the potential of the human imagination to appropriate and to animate a concept, an object or an environment. Drawing on his personal experiences as a London-based artist, who spent his formative years in the north of England, Leckey returns frequently to the themes of desire and transformation.

Leckey’s fascination with the affective power of images is another recurring theme. Meticulously sourced and reconfigured archival footage is a predominant feature of some of his best-known works. Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) is a seminal exploration of the history of underground dance culture in the UK from the mid- 1970s to the early 1990s. Through the brands of clothing they wear, the way they dance and the drugs they take, the clubbers depicted seek meta-morphosis to a state beyond the mundanity of their daily existence.