Category Archives: Sights

Bucket List, Sights

See: Sigmar Polke’s windows at Grossmüster, Zürich

Agate window by Sigmar Polke, 2009, Grossmuenster Cathedral, Zurich

Agate window by Sigmar Polke, 2009, Grossmuenster Cathedral, Zurich.

In 2006, Sigmar Polke won the invited competition to design church windows for the Grossmünster in Zürich. It has taken three years to complete this ambitious project. Seven windows in the western part of the nave consist of sliced agate, creating brightly luminous walls of stone. The five windows to the east depict five figures from the Old Testament in stained glass. They can be interpreted as precursors of Jesus and thus relate to the Christ child in the choir windows by Augusto Giacometti. Sigmar Polke has intertwined various axes and levels of time, ranging from geological and biblical times to Romanesque art and the present day.

—Press release from the Grossmünster website.

This one’s for the bucket list.

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Sights

see: nicholas elias’ the geometry of innocence

Nicolas Elias. The Geometry of Innocence, 2009. Acrylic sheets (Perspex). Sculpture by the Sea, Sydney.

Nicolas Elias. The Geometry of Innocence, 2009. Acrylic sheets (Perspex). Sculpture by the Sea, Sydney. Source: nicholaselias.com

Love the simplicity and scale of this work of public sculpture.

More photos of The Geometry of Innocence on the artist’s blog.

Part of Sculpture by the Sea, an exhibition series in Sydney.

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Sights

10/15-16: serpentine garden marathon

Three of my favorite things will be rolled into one this weekend: contemporary art, public space, and marathons! OK, there probably isn’t an actual 26.2 mile course to run, but still, this sounds really cool.

Garden Marathon [lots of pics at the link, including a nice bird’s eye view of the High Line]
15-16 October 2011
Serpentine Gallery
London

The Serpentine Gallery Garden Marathon is the sixth in the Gallery’s acclaimed Marathon series. This two-day event is an exploration of the concept of the garden. A product of the creative encounter between the man-made and the natural, between order and disorder, the garden can offer productive metaphors for the interactions between human life and time, care, thought or space.

The event is directly inspired by the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011, designed by Peter Zumthor. The encounter of architecture and garden creates a contemplative space that is both set within – and meditatively separated from – the wider surroundings of Kensington Gardens.

Participations will range from the fields of horticulture, design and architecture to explore the creation of gardens and their spatial, urban and scientific importance, through to works by artists and readings by poets and writers exploring the significance of the garden in our experience of the world.

Participants include:
Etel Adnan, Brian Aldiss, Maria Thereza Alves, Rosie Atkins, Yto Barrada and Sean Gullette, Gianfranco Baruchello, Gerry Bibby, Stefano Boeri, Andrea Branzi, John Brockman, Pablo Bronstein, Lizzie Carey-Thomas, Hélène Cixous, Emer Coleman, Pascal Cribier, Adam Curtis, David Deutsch, Elizabeth Diller, Jimmie Durham, Marcus du Sautoy, Brian Eno, Patrick Eyres, Hans-Peter Feldmann, FIELDCLUB, Sophie Fiennes, Adriaan Geuze, Jef Geys, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Dan Graham, Rodney Graham, Fritz Haeg with Denise Withers, Zarina Hashmi, Will Holder, Jennifer Jacquet, Charles Jencks, Koo Jeong-A, Alison Knowles and Meghan DellaCrosse, Pablo León de la Barra, Jonas Mekas and David Ellis, Catherine Mosbach, muf architecture/art, Christian Philipp Müller, Peter Murray-Rust, Silke Otto-Knapp, Mark Pagel, Philippe Parreno, Giuseppe Penone, Julia Peyton-Jones, Alice Rawsthorn, Carissa Rodriguez and Avena Gallagher, David Rowan, Peter Saville and Anna Blessmann, Rüdiger Schöttle, Richard Sennett, Bas Smets, Paul Smith, Something & Son, Susan Stenger, Corin Sworn, Wolfgang Tillmans, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Günther Vogt, Sophie von Cundale, Alex Waterman, Cerith Wyn Evans, Andrea Zanzotto and Qiu Zhijie.

As well as: The observer’s guide to the Serpentine Gallery Garden Marathon – compiled in one voice, in the field, by a pool: Paul Becker, Ian Evans, Will Holder, John D. Millar, Francesco Pedraglio, Heather Phillipson, Natasha Soobramienen, Cally Spooner, Nick Thurston and Luke Williams.

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Artists, Sights

10/18: The Nelson Manobar: lecture at SVA

I’ve chatted with these guys. They’re really funny and unpretentious. This should be a great talk.

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The Nelson Manobar
Tuesday, October 18, 7pmSVA Theatre
333 West 23 Street, NYCvisualandcriticalstudies.wordpress.com

Jimbo Blachly and Lytle Shaw, editors of The Chadwick Family Papers, discuss the Nelson Manobar, an occupiable scale model of Admiral Nelson’s HMS Victory that was long a fixture at Chadwick Manor. At once a theatrical stage set for recitations of Nelson’s death speech and a nautically-themed pub, the Manobar was thought lost until its recent rediscovery in a remote storage unit belonging to the Victoria and Albert Museum in Mumbai. The discussion includes the circumstances of the Manobar’s rediscovery, the saga of its passage back to the United States, and its singular place within the Chadwicks’ larger nautical collections. Gloria Kury, whose Periscope Publishing issued The Chadwick Family Papers: A Brief Public Glimpse, moderates the lecture; artist Steve Dibenedetto is a respondent. Presented by the BFA Visual & Critical Studies Department.The BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department at SVA is a multidisciplinary studio program designed to engage and challenge ambitious students in areas beyond a single medium of expression and creation. This dynamic course of study reflects our rapidly expanding visual culture and the increasing urgency to educate students about all aspects of visual experience. Visual & Critical Studies allows students an extraordinary opportunity to shape their own multi-dimensional art education through a guided combination of studio courses and academic offerings focusing on myriad forms and venues of contemporary visual life.
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Sights

See: Swiss Institute’s Under Destruction III

I enjoyed the first two parts of the Swiss Institute’s exhibition, Under Destruction I and II (read my review on Art Practical). Under Destruction III is just as great. It closes on Sunday. If you won’t get to see it, have a look at these images at the Swiss Institute’s site.

I loved Jonathan Schipper‘s To Dust (2009–2010). It’s two cement statues hung upside down from chains attached to a motor. The motor activates subtle oppositional movement, so that the statues slowly pulverize each other.

Alexander Gutke‘s The White Light of the Void is a 16 mm looped film, brilliantly displays a nearly-blank film routed on pulleys attached to adjacent wall in place of a looping device. (Check out his other work too.)

Ariel Schlessinger‘s exploding Bubble Machine was not in operation during my visit, but you can watch YouTube documentation of this crazy device.

In the side gallery, Eric Anderson’s Reading Room exhibition is well worth a visit too. Prints produced in collaboration with Cabaret Voltaire are lovely, messy original objects that would appeal to graphic designers and printmakers alike. Using a variety of media, such as some kind of large-LPI photo media like polymer plate, letterpress, tricksy things like inked up letterpress furniture, overinking, under-inking, and transparent inks, there is a lot to look at and respond to, in optical, material, and conceptual dimensions.

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I also stumbled across Matthew Brandt’s lovely decayed photographs at Hendershot Gallery. (In process, they seem not unlike Julie Perini’s Collaboration with The Earth film project). Click around Brandt’s site—lots of interesting uses of various media and photography (and I don’t mean printing on canvas). I especially like these Ed Ruscha-like Taste Tests.

 

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Community, News, Sights

Opening 6/16: Re-Covering @ Untitled Gallery (MCR), 6/17: AUDiNT @ Art in General (NYC)

OPENING THIS WEEK…

Creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 2011, glitter, neon and gel pen on vellum and paper, glitter foil on board, acetate, paper, ribbon, wood, 4.25 x 7 x 0.75 in / 11 x 18 x 2 cm

Creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 2011, glitter, neon and gel pen on vellum and paper, glitter foil on board, acetate, paper, ribbon, wood, 4.25 x 7 x 0.75 in / 11 x 18 x 2 cm

6/16: Preview for Re-Covering at Untitled Gallery, Manchester, UK
June 17–July 31
Preview: Thursday, June 16, 6-9pm

I re-designed the cover of Mihaly Csizkzentmihalyi’s Creativity—the form doubles as a creativity test—for this group show in Manchester, UK.

Curated by Mike Chavez-Dawson, Re-Covering is an exhibition of works by 40 local and international artists who redesign the cover of an influential book onto a reclaimed piece of oak from school libraries. Displayed on an installation of shelves, the works are standard paperback size (110mm x 178mm x 15mm).

Artists: David Shrigley, Billy Childish, Harry Hill, Magda Archer, Robert Casselton Clark, Laurence Lane, Mike Chavez-Dawson, Jane Chavez-Dawson, Monica Biagioli, Brian Reed, Lisa Slominski, Mr&Mrs, Andrew Bracey, Lee Machell, Paul Cordwell, Richard Healy, Nick Jordan, John Hyatt, Naomi Kashiwagi, Bren O’Callaghan & Mandy Tolley, Paul Stanley, Kai-Oi Jay Yung, David Alker, Ben Cove, Stratton Barrett & Peter Wankowicz, Cecilia Wee, Jake Geczy, Roisin Byrne, Christine Wong Yap, Ludovica Gioscia, Julie Hammonds & Kit Hammonds, Jason Minsky, Mark Haig & Sarah Perks, Ed Barton, Daniel Staincliffe, Margaret Cahill, Contents May Vary, Elizabeth Leeke, The Centre of Attention, Steve Hawley, Lee Campbell, The Confraternity of Neoflagellants & BABEL Working Group, Nicola Dale.

Concurrent programming includes The Reading, a multiple writers’ residency that will be projected live across multiple screens in Manchester including Cornerhouse, International Anthony Burgess Foundation, CUBE, Chinese Arts Centre, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery, and The Reading Room Collection, MMU Library.

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Opening 6/17: AUDiNT’s Dead Record Office @ Art in General, NYC
June 17–July 23

I helped out with the build in this immersive audio installation. Unfortunately I won’t be there for the opening (which is probably going to be Friday night, 6-8pm; double-check first!), but it is shaping up to be a really neat show. If you haven’t been to Art in General, go check them out! I think they have a great space and do really interesting shows, and it’s actually really easy to get there, just off Canal Street.

AUDiNT, short for “Audio Intelligence” is a collaborative, research team comprised of artists and scholars Steve Goodman, Toby Heys and Jon Cohrs. Their upcoming exhibition, Dead Record Office, explores the historical and fictitious relationship between sound and warfare.

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CLOSING TODAY, 6/12…
Procedural
MacArthur B Arthur, 4030 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Oakland, CA

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LOOKING FORWARD TO…

San Francisco

Through July 16
Stephanie Syjuco: Raiders!
Catherine Clark Gallery

Through July 30
Ranu Mukherjee: Absorption into the Nomadic and Luminous
Frey Norris Modern & Contemporary

Through June 26
Metric: Dana Hemenway and Anthony Ryan; Curated by Jessica Brier
Park Life Gallery

June 17–July 23
Opening Friday, June 17, 6-8pm
Chromaticism: Elijah Burgher, James Chronister, Richard Kent Howie, Cybele Lyle; Curated by Liz Wing
NOMA Gallery
[Super bummed to miss the last day of Ryan Thayer‘s gadget photograms]


Bay Area

June 18 to September 17
Zombie-Proof House
Anthony Discenza, HalfLifers (Torsten Z. Burns and Anthony Discenza), Suzanne Husky, Inka Hoots (Joshua Short and Joel Dean Stockdill), Packard Jennings, Robin Lasser and Adrienne Pao, Whitney Lynn, Julio Cesar Morales, Lucy Puls, and Carol Selter.
di Rosa, Napa, CA

Through July 1
Steven Barich: Zen with a Kickstand
bayVAN/Branch Gallery, 455 17th St. Suite 301, Oakland, CA

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Sights

See: KleinReid’s Luster Tiles

I couldn’t stop examining David Reid’s gold luster tile at La Mama La Galleria (in Mixed Messages, a Visual Aids show through July 3, including Leveller* by Amanda Curreri). Have a look at the Luster Tiles series.

The materials are baffling: it looks like a solid brass plaque from the side, but the front looks like a front-surface gold mirror with milk glass fused in, but the face is super smooth, in a continuous surface. It’s actually glazed porcelain, so I guess the sense of depth comes from the reflective gold next to the translucent white. It’s really neat, and surprisingly affordably priced. Put Showtime on my wish list!

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*A preceding cousin, I only realized lately, to my you&me/me&you pillow. As HWT put it recently, “I can’t tell if you’re influencing me or I’m influencing you!?”

 

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Sights

6/1: Headlands’ Benefit Art Auction

Being an Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2007–2009) was of my formative art community experiences. I’m happy to help support their programming by donating a work to their forthcoming auction.

Christine Wong Yap, Banner #6, 2011, photograph printed in color laser on acetate, holographic gift bag, 12 x 9 in.

Christine Wong Yap, Banner #6, 2011, photograph printed in color laser on acetate, holographic gift bag, 12 x 9 in.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Headlands Center for the Arts’ 2011 Benefit Art Auction

Herbst International
Exhibition Hall in the Presidio
385 Moraga Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94129
5:30 pm Preview Reception
6:30 General Admission

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