Alejandro Vidal

Alejandro Vidal at Kunstverein Medienturm, Graz , Austria, Season start September 2011

2011-08-31T16:28:00.000+02:00

Alejandro Vidal, A uncontrollable accumulation of unintended consequences
set of digital c-print, 30 x 40 cm each, 2011

HAUNTINGS – GHOST BOX MEDIA

Secret and uncanny presence in media, art and pop

EXHIBITION September 25th – December 17th 2011

Opening 24.9.2011, 11am

Artists:

Yto Barrada, BIT Bureau of Inverse Technology, Minerva Cuevas, Leif Elggren, Michael Esposito & Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, Harappian Night Recordings, Julian House, Mike Kelley / Scanner, Jakob Kolding, Claudia Larcher, Moon Wiring Club, Baron Mordant, The Otolith Group, Walid Raad, Dr. Konstantin Raudive, Markus Schinwald, Zineb Sedira, Alejandro Vidal, Apichatpong Weerasethakul

The open, electronic archives of our time radicalise this suspicion even further, as there is hardly a media artefact left that isn’t haunted by a ghost of the past.

What are the characteristics of this secret presence or uncanny absence in contemporary art? How is the facticity of the simulacrum, the “presence of a ghost” (Jacques Derrida) manifested?

What undead beings haunt an art whose main characteristic is its claim to contemporaneity? What “sinister resonances” (David Toop) are currently at work here?

Based on a small cross-section of a wide range of media, visitors can experience all the things that continue to pursue and haunt us in today’s art forms.

Curated by Thomas Edlinger and Christian Höller

HAUNTINGS – SONIC SPECTRES

Ghosts, shadows and revenants in today's music

CONCERT SERIES / 06.10-08.10.2011 / generalmusikdirektion

Artists:

Harappian Night Recordings, Demdike Stare, Leyland Kirby, Dopplereffekt, Vindicatrix, Shackleton

For around five years now, the expansive field of music between Sampledelica and Dub Noir has been operating under the name of “Hauntology”.

What these artists in this heterogeneous scene have in common is their work with ghostly echoes and vintage sounds from the past, sometimes interpreted as the projection of a lost future.

Characteristically, they have a penchant for paranormal (media) phenomena, invoking their uncanny closeness in many different ways.

In addition, they often play with effects of intimacy and distance and tap into pools of references from obscure film and television soundtracks.

An exploration of music aesthetics, that has long since cast off its retro label.

HAUNTINGS – CINEMA

Hölle Hamburg (Peter Ott / Ted Gaier, 2008)

FILMSCREENING / 10.10.2011 / Cinema Hotel Mariahilf

Agitprop as a revenant grown savage, revolt and voodoo or the invocation of a past in the service of a future that deserves this name.

Talk following with Ted Gaier & Thomas Edlinger

Kunstverein Medienturm

Josefigasse 1, 8020 Graz

http://www.medienturm.at

Tue–Sat, 10 a.m.–1 p.m., Wed–Fri 3–6 p.m.

Special opening hours 25.9.–16.10.2011, Mi-So 10.30 a.m.–6 p.m.

Press conference 23.9.2011, 12 a.m.

Now my garden is gone at Galería Joan Prats until mid September

2011-07-15T00:28:00.000+02:00

Now my garden is gone

artists

Aleksandra MIr

Perejaume

Carla Zaccagnini

Knut Asdam

Alejandro Vidal

GALERIA JOAN PRATS

Rambla de Caralunya, 54

08007 Barcelona Spain

www.galeriajoanprats.com

Alejandro Vidal, Paradise of exception, 2011, C-print 100 x 160 cm each

Alejandro Vidal, Paradise of exception, 2011, C-print, 100 x 160 cm each

Knut Asdam, Finally, 2006-2007, set of c-primt, 81 x 101 cm

Aleksandra Mir, The seduction of Galileo Galilei, 2011, C-Print, 124 x 186 cm

Perejaume, Les lletres i el dibuix, 2004, c-ptint, 185 x 144 cm

Carla Zaccagnini, E pur si muove, 2007, single channel DVD

Alejandro Vidal: Art/42/ Basel / Galeria Joan Prats: Hall 2.1 booth P6

2011-06-17T01:21:00.000+02:00

Alejandro Vidal , Paradise of exception, 2011,digital c-print, 100 x 160 cm

GALERIA JOAN PRATS
Art | 42 | Basel
Hall 2.1 Booth P6

Artists in Art | 42 | Basel

Knut Asdam
Erick Beltrán
Fernando Bryce
Cabello/Carceller
Carla Zaccagnini
Carles Congost
Enrique Martínez Celaya
Aleksandra Mir
Muntadas
Javier Peñafiel
Perejaume
Fernando Prats
Caio Reisewitz
Juliao Sarmento
Eulalia Valldosera
Alejandro Vidal
___________________________________________

More information: galeria@galeriajoanprats.com

Alejandro Vidal at IL CAOS in Venice, Italy Opening 3rd June

2011-05-16T16:29:00.002+02:00

IL CAOS_#3 conflicts

JUNE 3rd – JULY 17th 2011

Isola di San Servolo, Venezia

Opening Friday 3rd June at 19.30

ARTISTS

Gabriele Basilico (Milan, 1944), Raffaella Crispino (Naples, 1979), Regina Josè Galindo (Guatemala, 1974), Kaarina Kaikkonen (Iisalmi – Finland – 1952) Tigran Khachatryan (Yerevan – Armenia –, 1980), Piero Mottola (Caserta, 1967), Alejandro Vidal (Palma de Mallorca, 1972), Amir Yatziv (Karmiel – Israel‐, 1972).

Curated by Raffaele Gavarro

Information:

San Servolo Servizi in collaboration with the Province of Venice

Info: Tel. 041 2765001 – fax 041 2765402 –

www.sanservolo.provincia.venezia.it

IL CAOS is an exhibitory project promoted by Società San Servolo Servizi in collaboration with the Provincia di Venezia, carried out over the course of three years, with three exhibitions which each time consider themes essential to the life of our society: that of work in 2009, migration in 2010 and this year that of conflicts.

The trilogy is dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini and takes its title from the column which the poet wrote from the 6th of August, 1968, to the 24th January, 1974 in the weekly magazine “Tempo” and which followed an earlier theme which had been presented in the preceding column “Dialogues with Pasolini”, which the author and director had written for “Vie Nuove”. This represented a fundamental and complex moment both in the life of Paolini and Italian society. A profound crisis had begun with the new development of capitalism and the trauma of 1968 and Pasolini offered a deep and

illuminating opinion on the happenings of that time.

Naturally the nature of our times is much different, as are the events which mark it, but not withstanding this there are many similarities and analogous tensions which allow one to reflect on those pages and on those thoughts which Pasolini succinctly and bravely insisted on. For around twenty years now art has changed its approach to the world, choosing to concentrate on a comprehension of reality and of the reporting of the most complex and contradictory aspects of our society. Particularly in the last decade there has been a movement of its field of action from a more aesthetic dimension to a more ethical one, finding a new role and new function in our complex current environment. The trilogy Caos intends to be a witness to this state of art, confronting in an explicit manner social and ethical situations and themes, via the work of those artists who are working specifically in this field.

To support this condition, and also to demonstrate the differences with images of pure documentation or narration, each year we have presented a docu‐film, which has held the double function of opening a window directly onto reality , but also in order to mark the differences in terms of language and meaning with those of the works of the artists.

This year for the theme conflicts artists of International importance have been invited. From these artists an exhibition of extraordinary surprise and variations has been formed, which moves from Basilico’s photos of Beirut to Crispino’s strange images of the beaches of Tel Aviv, then to the powerful photos by Galindo and the spectacular installation by the Finnish artist Kaikkonen, continuing with the equally suggestive sound installation by Mottola. A journey which continues with the violence of the images by Vidal and the Armenian artist Khachatryan, ending with the surreal video work of a pretend battle (real war game) between a Nazi army and the Israeli army realized by Israeli artist Yatziv. There will also be a special and double homage to Fabio Mauri and through him to Pier Paolo Pasolini. The film “Intimità di Pasolini” of 2005 will be projected.

As a window on reality this year a short version of the particularly evocative docu‐film by Monica Maggioni “Ward 54” will be presented which tells the story of a ward in a military hospital in Washington D.C. ‐ Ward 54 – where ex‐marines are treated who have suffered mental disorders on return from missions.

With the exhibition a third catalogue will be published by Maretti Editore, which together with the preceding two will support the exhibitory experience of “IL CAOS

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AT QUAD, DERBY, UK

2011-05-05T17:06:00.002+02:00

ALL THAT FITS: THE AESTHETICS OF JOURNALISM

QUAD 28th May - 31st July 2011 - Opening - Friday 27th May 6:00pm – late

Curated by Alfredo Cramerotti & Simon Sheikh.

QUAD / Market Place, Cathedral Quarter / Derby

DE1 3AS UK

T +44 (0)1332 285430

www.derbyquad.co.uk

Alejandro Vidal. Somewhere in a great country, 2010, series of 20 c-print, 30 x 40 cm

ARTISTS

Sammy Baloji (DR Congo), Yael Bartana (Holland/Israel), Eric Baudelaire (France), Ursula Biemann (Switzerland), Ross Birrell (UK), Michael Blum (Canada/Israel), Broomberg and Chanarin (UK/South Africa), Abraham Cruzvillegas (Germany/Mexico), Anita Di Bianco (Germany/USA), Marcelo Exposito (Argentina/Spain), Douglas Fishbone (UK/USA), Zachary Formwalt (Holland/USA), Wynne Greenwood and K8 Hardy (USA), Tamar Guimaraes (Brazil/Denmark), Lamia Joreige (Lebanon), Graziela Kunsch (Brazil), Michael Takeo Magruder (UK/USA), Renzo Martens (Holland), Oliver Ressler (Austria), Katya Sander (Denmark), Slum-TV (Kenya), Hito Steyerl (Germany), Walid Raad/The Atlas Group (USA/Lebanon) and Alejandro Vidal (Spain).

Presenting seemingly incompatible components such as aesthetic experience and political activism; community events and private investigations, the exhibition All that Fits: The Aesthetics of Journalism provocatively advances the idea that art and journalism are not separate forms of communication, but rather two sides of a unique activity, the production and distribution of images and information. What the project brings to surface are the ways of communicating this nexus of imaging and informing, and the aesthetic principles used in such an ordering, in such acts of transmission. As aesthetic regimes, both journalism and artistic makes claims for the truth, albeit of a different kind. One is a coded system that speaks for the truth (or so it claims), the other a set of activities that questions itself at every step (or so it claims), thus making truth.

Whereas journalism provides a view on the world ‘out there,’ as it ‘really’ is, art often presents a view on the view, truth posited as acts of (self)reflection. All that Fits: The Aesthetics of Journalism will examine both as types of truth production, as systems of information that defines truth in terms of the visible: producing not only what can be seen, but also what can be imagined, and thus imaged. As such, the exhibition will revolve around the aesthetics of journalism, how images are produced and how they are produced to appear as truthful. Here, we start to get closer to the core of reality itself when we make our reality not a given, irreversible fact, but a possibility among many others.

Referring to the late work of Michel Foucault, the question of the truth-sayer will be examined: who can speak the truth, and does require certain types of speaking as well as certain subject positions? As single figures, both the reporter and the artist has throughout modernity been viewed as authentic voices and heroic figures. Simultaneously, they are constantly vilified as being complicit and corrupt. The artistic positions in the show generate a principal question: is it possible to work with aesthetics and informatics, to be both reflective and precise? To both employ documentary techniques and journalistic methods while remaining self-reflecting and critical on those means? Ultimately, the artist’s work here is not about delivering information but questioning it, reversing the tradition of both fields (art and journalism), to highlight both the aesthetic workings and trappings of reportage and the informational turn within current aesthetic production.

Artworks are presented in groups, juxtaposing different formats and approaches in dialogue with each other while each responding to the overall theme. This will take the form of a rotating display of works, figuring in different constellations that all revolve around the key questions of truth, images and information, while at the same time reflecting the rotation of the news cycle, albeit at a different, slowed down speed. This change of scenery and topicality will be made visible through changing exhibition design as well as the change of works according to three chapters: The Speaker, The Image and The Militant.

The Speaker (28th May-19th June 2011) concerns itself with a specific figure; the speaking subject or author, its figures of authority and figures of speech, as well as its framings of the real in terms of editorial processes and camera angles. How does this figure emerge through discourse, and what are its functions? What can be said and not said in order for a speaking subject to appear as real, as authentic, as authoritative and/or as truthful. What is implied in certain speech acts and subject positions, such as the figure of ‘the reporter’ and ‘the artist, as well as the ‘witness’ and the ‘source’?

The Image (22nd June-10th July 2011) examines how images are ideologically produced, through the framings and positionings of the above-mentioned categories, but also how counter-images can be created. Here, the very makings and politics of image production will be reflected, discussed and deconstructed, proposing an aesthetics of journalism and documentary as that which can get to the truth of the ideology of mass-media images, in opposition to their claim neutrality and pragmatism.

The Militant (13th-31st July 2011) continues the strand of counter-images and counter-information, but through the artistic employment of journalistic traits such as expose and research. However, the practices highlighted here often works instead of the media, and uncover what it does not, going where it does not go, and thus returns to some of reportage’s initial claims, that have been left behind in an increasingly commercial and corporate media industry.

A few views of the current exhibition at Travesia Cuatro in Madrid

2011-04-05T21:07:00.002+02:00

Alejandro Vidal 'Paradise of exception' 90 x 160 Cm each, digital c-print

Asier Mendizabal, Alejandro Vidal and Adrià Julià featured at The Guardian

2011-04-05T20:44:00.005+02:00

Artist of the week special:

Asier Mendizabal

Alejandro Vidal

Adrià Julià

In the third part of our series assessing the top
rising artists from the countries involved in
the Guardian's New Europe season, we look to Spain

- Skye Sherwin
- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 March 2011 17.24 BST
- larger | smaller

Alejandro Vidal's El tiempo del odio. Photograph: Galeria Joan Prats

Spain is perhaps not the easiest place to be a young artist. Madrid's

30-year-old art fairArco has grown into a major collector destination

in recent years, and the city remains a fairly conservative art centre,

focused on big names. In spite of mushrooming rent in Barcelona,

it's where the more innovative art projects are found. Yet there's a

long way to travel between small-scale independent spaces where

ledgling talents can show their work and major museums such as

Macba, with little to fill the distance in between. Moving onwards

and upwards is tricky, but not impossible, as these three have proved.

Asier Mendizabal is set to make a big international splash in 2011.

This summer, his work is included in art historian Bice Curiger's

flagship group show at the Venice Biennale and he's rounding off

the year with a solo outing at London's Raven Row. Born and raised

in the political hotbed of Basque country, Mendizabal tackles how

ideology is given form. Working in any number of mediums, from

film to silkscreens, engravings and sculpture, his interests range

from the ad hoc creations of grassroots movements to the intricate

stories that lie behind public sculpture. He takes a people's monument

to communist figureheads Marx and Lenin as the subject of the

photographic work Otxarkoaga (M-L). The monument was erected

in a working-class district of Bilbao using a statue salvaged from the

Russian embassy at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. A number

of his key works also test political potency with flags, like Not All That

Moves (Is Red), huge hanging standards in anarchist black and red.

With work centring on the often controlled nature of transgression,

Barcelona-basedAlejandro Vidal has earned a rep as the bad boy

of Spanish art.

His videos and photographs tend to tap into urban tribes and youth

subcultures, with a cavalcade of topless rock chicks, black leather,

grimy T-shirts and tattooed flesh. In one memorable photograph,

Invocation from 2007, a PVC-clad groin gyrates against a provocatively

angled police baton. What Vidal effectively gets at is limp, impotent

stereotypes: these are ritualised acts and poses struck, aped over and

over in music videos, band posters and magazines. For his New York

debut last year he extended this theme to frontline news. Exploring

media representations of terror, the video Firestorm wed images

of exploding fireworks with the sound of bombs. Meanwhile,

his photo series, A Song Before Sunset, staged a Latin American

form of political protest, the symbolic washing of a national flag

before government HQs.

Barcelona-born and now Los Angeles-based, Adrià Julià's work

explores fantasies of home and identity. Among his best-known film

and photography series is the wonderful La Villa Basque, which

turns a local Californian theme restaurant into a moving, provocative

meditation on the ties of culture. Set up by Basque country émigrés,

it's a rundown place, as Julià's shaky camerawork reveals, more a

suppository of memory than an eatery, with dusty Spanish knick

knacks and battered tabletops.

Julià presents its "stars", including a waiter who performs traditional

dance with oddball hip-hop inflections and a bored blonde waitress

in Basque costume, with the big movie glamour that Scorcese brings

to small-time hoods. The conflation of documentary and big screen

fiction is another theme, seen in an ongoing series of videos centring

on a forgotten film, Inchon. Through cast and crew interviews,

Julià has unearthed the bizarre story of this 1982 propaganda film

that used real footage of the Gwangju massacre in Korea for battle

scenes, with American soldiers stepping in as extras.

ESA COSA VERDE DE AHI FUERA

2011-03-20T18:07:00.005+01:00

Alejandro Vidal. Paradise of exception, 2011. 90 X 160 Cm, digital c.print

ESA COSA VERDE DE AHI FUERA
APRIL 2nd – MAY 28th 2011
Opening: APRIL 2nd, 12:00 – 20:30 pm
Travesia Cuatro / Madrid_Spain

ARTISTS: Carlos Irijalba (ES), Mateo López (COL), Enrique Radigales (ES)
and Alejandro Vidal (ES)
CURATED BY:José Castañal
Travesia Cuatro / San Mateo, 16 / 28004, Madrid_ Spain
T+34 913 100 098

galeria@travesiacuatro.com

www.travesiacuatro.com

A press release will follow soon

A VIDEO EXHIBITION IN LA HABANA , CUBA

2011-03-04T12:37:00.004+01:00

Alejandro Vidal One Second burns for a billion years, single channel DVD, 2007

These days in La Habana , Cuba, there’s an international video exhibition in two well known spaces like Galeria 23 y 12 and Centro Wifredo Lam.

It has a focus in spanish, cuban and swiss video along a latin american section.

Artist list is long enough with videos by Carles Congost, Marcelo Exposito & Nuria Villa, Alejandro Vidal, Txomin Badiola, Mabel Palacin, Perejaume, Avelino Sala, Joan Morey, Cristoph Draeger, Elodie Pong, Fernando Sanchez Castillo, Jordi Colomer ,Ximena Cuevas, Regina Jose Galindo and many others.

It is organized by Proyecto Circo and up until 12th March 2011.

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AT MOTION OF A NATION IN ROME

2011-03-03T00:23:00.005+01:00

Alejandro Vidal 'A song before sunset' 2009 , c-print, courtesy Artra and Play platform for film&video Motion of a Nation curated by Antonio Arevalo

March 18 2011 at 7.00 p.m.

The artists: Alexander Apostol, Alterazioni Video, Paolo Angelosanto, Marco Bernardi, Veronique Bellavista, Mauricio Bertinetti, Radovan Čerevka, Eleonora Chiesa, Donna Conlon, Bruna Esposito, Etcetera…(Federico Zukeferld & Loreto Garín Guzman), Lucie Fontaine, Regina Galindo & Karmadavis, Michele Giangrande, Diango Hernandez, Maria Rosa Jijon, Loredana Longo, Valentina Miorandi, Ronald Moran, Gian Marco Montesano, Carlos Motta, Moio & Sivelli, Ivan Navarro, Pier Stockolm, Laboratorio Saccardi, Paula Sunday, Costa Vece, Alejandro Vidal, Manuela Viera-Gallo.

Gallery V.M.21 Arte Contemporanea is glad to host the works of thirty international and Italian artists, carefully selected by Antonio Arévalo, with the purpose of presenting a crosscutting view of the artistic scene.

The leitmotiv of the project Motion of a Nation is not the representation of an image archive, but rather a daring journey in this broad and colorful setting, notably an introspective reading aimed at offering the key to recreate conditions, by which things could still be reinvented.

The location of the exhibition has not been selected randomly. I decide to use aprivate space as if it were public, in order to take distance from the art markets, and provide an opportunity to gather ideas and stories. By these words Antonio Arévalo’s explains intention of some cultural institutions, notably galleries, to go beyond self representation, and rather reinvent themselves through resistance, by articulating proposals and adapting aesthetic production to the present.

This show documents a unique path through one of the iconographical symbols par excellence, the flag. Motion of a Nation is hence a group of visual elements whose survival is mostly based on the value of symbols, by which history, its meaning and its distortions, can be narrated.

The first tricolor, raised during the French revolution, represents an absolute innovation.

In a contemporary multiethnic perspective, in which movement generates

crossbreeding , artists can manipulate their genetic code, change their homeland, or invent a new one, impact on imaginary and, aim to re-elaborate and combine diverse iconographies and national identities.

In this context artists from different nationalities and origin, tell their stories, the meaning and possibly the evils and distortions of an old symbol such as the flag. The do so using different media and techniques, from photography to drawing, to painting to digital imaging, from social networks to video making, intertwining high level knowledge with pop language, history and headline news, comics and poetry. The ensuing web of quotes and references, blurs the borders between sentimental biography an sociological analysis; between literary memory and technological experimentation in a surprising and often ironic provocative game.

Galleria V.M.21 artecontemporanea via della Vetrina, 21 – 00186 Roma

Opening: March 18, 2011, 19.00 For more information: VM21 artecontemporanea via della vetrina, 21 - Roma

Tel / Fax (39) 06.68891365 e-mail web info@vm21contemporanea.com www.vm21contemporanea.com

Hours: Mon-Fri 11:00 to 19:30 - Sat 16:30 to 19:30

2011 STARTS WITH EXCITING EXHIBITIONS: OPENING END OF JANUARY IN USA

2011-01-03T16:51:00.004+01:00

SEVENTH DREAM OF TEENAGE HEAVEN

JANUARY 27–MARCH 12, 2011

Produced by Bureau for Open Culture for Columbus College of Art & Design

60 Cleveland Avenue, Columbus, Ohio, USA

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 27, 6–8 p.m.

www.bureauforopenculture.org

Taking its title from the 1984 album of the same name by the British pop band Love and Rockets, the exhibition Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven explores the way life is charged with an underlying awareness of the passage of time marked by the physical, aural, and visual residues of our culture. Collective and individual memories of the past are embedded in materials, sounds, and sites, which often connect with personal experiences and defi ne entire epochs. The social relations and styles of recent generations are evident in the material culture of cassette tapes, vinyl, and Polaroids; the actions of dancing, surfi ng, skateboarding, and bicycling; and built environments, from neglected urban cores to safe suburban peripheries.

Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven refl ects upon these ideas within larger contexts of modernist and postmodernist theories related to past, present, and future. The exhibition will feature 42 works by 17 artists working in a wide range of media, including photography, video, painting, sculpture, social intervention, and sound installation.

The exhibition is organized, according to curator James Voorhies, along “a kind of sweet-to sour trajectory.” As viewers enter the fi rst gallery, they encounter I Am a Victim of This Song, a sung-and-screamed version of Chris Isaak’s 1989 hit single “Wicked Game” performed by the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist. This video, along with a photography installation by Timothy Nazzaro, photographs and a video by Cassandra Troyan, and a sound installation by Lara Kohl, set a slightly innocent, even optimistic, tone, evoking what viewers might readily conjure upon hearing the word “teenager.” As visitors proceed throughout the remaining fi ve galleries, the exhibition becomes increasingly dark and foreboding. Pushing Up the Power, a video by the Spanish artist Alejandro Vidal of a rave set against a melancholic soundtrack, and photographs of urban decay and abandon from the Cologne-based Joachim Brohm’s OHIO series, are installed in the fourth gallery and contribute to this tone. The exhibition concludes with a work by the British artist Mark Leckey, whose hypnotic video projection Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore is a bacchanalia of scenes of British teenagers dancing and partying from the 1970s through the early 1990s. As a look back at the evolution of popular clothes, habits, and actions, it is what one reviewer has called an “extended paean to the unadulterated bliss of nocturnal abandon.” Photographs from the work 1984 and Beyond by the Irish artist Gerard Byrne are also installed in the fi nal gallery. 1984 and Beyond comprises three single-channel videos and a series of 20 black-and-white photographs. The work is based on a 1963 conversation published in Playboy among 12 science fi ction writers who speculate on the incredible changes to come in the future—in 1984. Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven will feature the black-and-white photographs from this work taken by Byrne in 2005, which reveal how little the world has actually changed since 1963 and how disappointing the future has come to be. The participation of the American artist Mary Lum takes form only in the printed matter of the catalogue; her work is inspired by the modernist visions of Le Corbusier’s Color Keyboard, aswatch book he designed in 1931, then another version in 1959 as a commission for a wallpaper manufacturing company. Le Corbusier sought to unite the built environment, nature, and music. Lum has an astute and uncanny ability to interweave and connect disparate sights, colors, arrangements, and experiences that at fi rst seem merely residues of everyday life. She corrals and organizes them to give new insight into the haphazard and the overlooked.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Guy Ben-Ner, Joachim Brohm, Gerard Byrne, Malcolm Cochran, Peter Dayton, Ben Kinsley, Lara Kohl, Jeremy Kost, Mark Leckey, Mary Lum, Dennis McNulty, Timothy Nazzaro, Johannes Nyholm, Pipilotti Rist, Cassandra Troyan, Jeff rey Vallance, and Alejandro Vidal.

ABOUT CURATOR JAMES VOORHIES

James Voorhies is a curator, an art historian, and the director of Bureau for Open Culture. He has produced numerous exhibitions of international contemporary art and has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and Parsons The New School for Design. He is the director of exhibitions at Columbus College of Art & Design. Previously he served as deputy director at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and he has worked in curatorial departments at the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Voorhies has written essays for several exhibition catalogues, edited publications, and made academic contributions to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s online education resource, Timeline of Art History. He is currently a visiting faculty member at Bennington College in Vermont.

ABOUT BUREAU FOR OPEN CULTURE

Bureau for Open Culture is a curatorial and pedagogic institution for the contemporary arts. It works intentionally to reimagine the art exhibition as a discursive form of education that creates a kind of new public sphere or new institution. Exhibitions take shape as installations, screenings, informal talks, and performances and occur in parking lots, storefronts, libraries, industrial sites, country roads, gardens, and galleries. They respond to the issues of these situations, operating in real time. In doing so they generate platforms for learning and knowledge production that make ideas accessible, relevant, and inviting for diverse audiences. This model encourages overlaps of art, science, ecology, the built environment, philosophy, and design. To realize this work, Bureau for Open Culture initiates and cultivates collaborations with institutions such as Columbus College of Art & Design, MASS MoCA, Portland State University, and Bennington College.

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AND CARLA ZACCAGNINI AT GALERIA JOAN PRATS IN BARCELONA OPENING 16TH DECEMBER

2010-11-24T01:34:00.010+01:00

Galeria Joan Prats gathers for the first time the works of the artists Alejandro Vidal and Carla Zaccagnini.

In El accidente integral his second exhibition in the Gallery, we will see Alejandro Vidal’s most recent worksdisplayed along with Imposible pero necesariodeveloped by Carla Zaccagnini from the dialogue both artists initiated around their common worries and the different ways to approach the matters arisen in the exhibition.

Alejandro Vidal explores through his work the matters of conflict and relationships of power. The new representations and the mechanisms of control have been recurrent themes, being dealt with from diverse perspectives and multiple formal strategies.Firestorm, 2009, is a filmic composition that explores the globalization of the image of terror through shots of fireworks along with sounds of explosions from military conflicts. Likewise,Somewhere in a great country, 2010, a series of twenty photographs that depict politicalcelebrations involving pyrotechnic events that may seem subversive acts or sabotage. The photographs A step too far, 2009 and Falling from trees, 2009, place forms of political dissidence on the scene. Alejandro Vidal’s

recent work in this exhibition deals with uncertainty, insecurity and vulnerability, insinuating that the paths to subversion are more powerful when operating undetected.

Alejandro Vidal was born in Palma de Mallorca in 1972. He lives and works in Barcelona. He has exhibited his work in art centres such as Participant Inc, New York; Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland; Fundació La Caixa,Barcelona; Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei;MIS Sao Paulo; Da2, Salamanca; kling & Bang, Reikjavik; Mambo Bologna and Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland. He has participated in the Busan Bienale in Corea 2006. Among his future projects, Seventh dream of teenage heaven in Bureau for Open Culture, Columbus, USA, and the II Muestra de Videoarte in Havana, Cuba

stand out.

Carla Zaccagnini develops such diverse themes as the impossibility of translation, the partiality of museum’s perspective, the fallibility of perception or the limits of scientific knowledge among others, producing a multifaceted work that seeks to activate vision in the spectator and to disconcert viewer’s understanding.Imposible pero necesario is part of an assembly of works that investigate the unstable equilibrium between desire and the impossibility that go with the attempts on representation of an experience and can be seen crystallized (or guess latent) in their resulting form. In the case, two series on paper, frottage and lithograph, register the representation of explosions found in the relief of the Treptower Park, Berlin. By reproducing these images removed from their context, enhancing the geometry that condenses these shapeless events in almost iconic synthesis (though always variable), the artist manifests her interest on language as a possibility on the elaboration of meanings and at the same time as a exercise of power.

Carla Zaccagnini was born in Buenos Aires in 1973. She lives and works in São Paulo. From the late 90s she has been developing activities as art critic and curator in parallel to her artistic practice. She has participated in the 28° Bienal de São Paulo, 2008 and in La Bienal Fin del Mundo de Ushuaia, Argentina, 2007. She has exhibited in institutions such as MUSAC in Leon; LentSpace New York; Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães, Recife;

Museo de la Universidad de Antioquia, Medellin; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami; Paço das Artes, São Paulo; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; MALBA, Buenos Aires; Kunstverein Munich. Among others she has obtained the CIFO 2006 Grants Program.

The opening will be next 16th December at 7’30pm , save the date.

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AT LUST AND VICE IN BERN, OPENING SOON

2010-08-07T10:57:00.007+02:00

LUST AND VICE ; THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS , FROM DÜRER TO NAUMAN

OCTOBER 15 - FEBRUARY 20 2011

Zentrum Paul Klee / Kunstmuseum Bern / Switzerland

ARTISTS

Marina Abramovic / Michel Auder / Cecily Brown / Pieter d. Ä.Bruegel / Larry Clark / Mat Collishaw / George Condo / Martin Creed /Walter Dahn / Otto Dix / Nathalie Djurberg / Jiri Georg Dokoupil / Marlene Dumas / Albrecht Dürer / James Ensor /Peter Fischli & David Weiss / Kendell Geers / Gilbert & George / Nan Goldin / George Grosz / Andreas Gursky / Paul Klee / Gustav Klimt / Pierre Klossowski / Jeff Koons / Edvard Munch / Muntean & Rosenblum / Bruce Nauman / Emil Nolde /Sigmar Polke / Arnulf Rainer / Auguste Rodin / Thomas Ruff / Cindy Sherman / Yinka Shonibare / Paul Thek / Wolfgang Tillmans / Alejandro Vidal / Bill Viola / Jeff Wall / Andy Warhol / Gillian Wearing / Erwin Wurm among many others check my website soon for full details.

Curated by Fabienne Eggelhöfer (ZPK), Claudine Metzger (KMB), Samuel Vitali (KMB)

The Theme

The first person to refer to the Seven Deadly Sins was Pope St. Gregory I (ca. 540-604). He described seven states of the soul that destroy the relationship between God and man, as well as among men themselves. Theology has defined seven moral faults, or vices, that lead straight to the Deadly Sins:

Superbia: pride (hubris, vanity)

Avaritia: greed (avarice, covetousness)

Invidia: envy (enviousness, jealousy)

Ira: wrath (anger, rage, revenge, spite)

Luxuria: lust (lechery, fornication, bestiality, promiscuity, rape, incest)

Gula: gluttony (excessive desire for food, over-indulgence, over-consumption)

Acedia: sloth (apathy, laziness, joylessness, cowardice)

Despite the increasing secularisation of our society and the dwindling influence of Christian moral theology, the notion of deadly sins is still very much alive, as has been demonstrated by Hollywood films such as David Fincher's Seven (1996), and art such as Bruce Nauman's Seven Virtues/Seven Vices (various versions, 1983–1993). However, contemporary attitudes towards some of the sins are highly ambivalent, insofar as greed, envy and gluttony (in the guise of consumerism) have been driving the capitalist economic system, while lust in the guise of sexual promiscuity has lost its negative connotations among urban pleasure seekers. However, counter-currents can always be discerned. The greedy corporate world has been criticised for its cut-throat attitudes; the consumerism in our "disposable society" has come to be viewed as superficial and devoid of meaning. Conversely, new and socially inacceptable behaviour patterns have been attributed to traditional notions of vice. Drug-taking and addictive behaviour in general have been associated with gluttony, for example, and pedo¬philia and sexual exploitation with lust.

This ambivalence as regards notions of vice is reflected in contemporary art, which addresses not only the attractiveness of complete abandon and the breaking of taboos, but also the desire for moral guidance and the imposition of some rules in a world of virtually unlimited technological scope.

Various venues – e.g. the Centre Pompidou in 1996/97, the Museion Bozen in 2004, the Residenzgalerie Salzburg in 2008 – have dedicated exhibitions to the theme of sinning and the deadly sins. What is still missing, however, is a comprehensive and adequate documen¬tation of the subject from the Middle Ages to the Present. The gap is to be closed by the project initiated by Zentrum Paul Klee and Kunstmuseum Bern. The two locations intend to analyse the historic evolution of artistic representations of the deadly sins, ranging from Medieval allegories of vice, through Hieronymus Bosch's and Pieter Breugel's semi-realistic, semi-grotesque scenes and Netherlandish genre paintings, to the rediscovery of the subject in the years around 1900 by artists such as James Ensor, Alfred Kubin, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí and Otto Dix. Moreover, episodes from antique mythology and particularly from the Bible which, during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, have been singled out as quintessential examples for the Deadly Sins, shall illustrate the moralizing interpretation of history in those times. However, the show intends to highlight also contemporary art with its surprisingly urgent focus on the subjects of sin and vice, often with very explicit allusions to the traditional canon. Selected artists will be invited to create works especially for this occasion.

Structurally, the show involving the two institutions will present an introduction with cyclical representations, after which it will be divided into chapters dedicated to the individual sins. The sections of superbia, invidia, avaritia and ira will be shown in the Kunstmuseum, those of luxuria, gula and acedia in the Zentrum Paul Klee. The contrast of older and contemporary art will illustrate the transformations and continuities in the iconography of the deadly sins, thereby revealing how notions of vice have changed over time. The current relevance of the notion of sin, and how our culture has justified shifting views, are also to be explored.

Of course, the exhibition will be accompanied by a scholarly catalogue, featuring introductory texts by the curators of the exhibition and essays by Prof. Barbara Müller (University of Hamburg, Institute of History of Church and Dogmas) and Prof. Christine Göttler (University of Berne, Institute of History of Art). Moreover, a comprehensive programme of auxiliary events treating in particular the subject of the Deadly Sins in other arts (literature, cinema, theatre) will frame the exhibition.

It is the aim of this ambitious co-production to realise an exhibition whose impact will be felt far beyond its local area, attracting new audiences and evoking an enthusiastic response among existing ones. Last, but not least, one purpose of the project is to document the productive cooperation between the two museums, and to reveal the potential and synergies of the occasional, vibrant twinning of two of Berne's independent fine arts institutions.

INFORMATION;

Zentrum Paul Klee

Monument im Fruchtland 3

3000 Bern 31, Switzerland

Phone: + 41 (0)31 359 01 01

Fax: + 41 (0)31 359 01 02

E-mail: kontaktzpk.org

www.zpk.org

CATALOGUE: The catalogue will be published in German with texts, et al., by Fabienne Eggelhöfer, Matthias Frehner, Christine Göttler, Claudine Metzger, Monique Meyer, Barbara Müller, Gerhard Schulze, Juri Steiner, Samuel Vitali. Approx. 344 pages, 240 plates, Hatje Cantz Verlag.

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AT THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONEY IN LISBON

2010-06-18T00:41:00.005+02:00

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONEY

Opening June 22nd at 10pm

Alejandro Vidal, Alfredo Jaar, Carey Young, Carolina Caycedo, Cildo Meireles, Danica Phelps, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Joana Bastos, Liam Gillick, Lotte Lindner & Till Steinbrenner, Mads Lynnerup, Mariana Silva, Melanie Gilligan, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Michael Mandiberg, Nika Oblak & Primoz Novak, Raymond Pettibon, Regina José Galindo, Rita GT, Runo Lagomarsino, Ruth Ewan, Sara & André, Sparring Partners, Superflex, Triiibe, Xurban Collective + Alex Villar, Yonamine e Zanny Begg + Oliver Ressler

Curated by Miguel Amado

Museu da Cidade

Campo Grande, 245

1700 Lisboa, Portugal

www.museudacidade.pt

Through September 5

Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 1 pm and 2 pm to 6 pm

Lisbon City Council and Miguel Amado Projects are presenting the exhibition “The Philosophy of Money”, which opens on June 22 at 10 pm at the Pavilhão Branco of the Museu da Cidade in Lisbon. This exhibition brings together works by 28 artists who, in the light of the current financial crisis, examine money as the “God of the modern age”.

Lisbon, June 14 – The City Council of Lisbon and Miguel Amado Projects are presenting the exhibition “The Philosophy of Money”. This exhibition is inspired by the theses of German philosopher Georg Simmel in the book “The Philosophy of the Money”, published in 1900. The exhibition examines the capitalist system as a way of life in contemporary times, as well as the renewed critique one of its basis generated by the current financial crisis. The works that are presented in this exhibition, several of which were commissioned, explore money in its multiple symbolic facets – from means of exchange to icon – and address the present economic recession, illustrating art’s answers to such reality.

Simmel studied the psychological dimension of the monetarization of Western societies, considering money as the “God of the modern age”. For Simmel, the replacing of the traditional bonds existing between the individuals by money implied the depersonalization of social relations, the origin of the paradigm of the free initiative, one of the features of capitalism along with private property. This theoretical legacy characterizes, through a critical perspective, the vision of the world of the artists who are participating in this exhibition. Among other topics, the works on view redesign paper-currency, quote political manifestos and movements marked by the resistance to dominant thinking, question the predominance of the corporative ideology and ironize about the commodification of the artistic object.

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AND CARLES CONGOST NOW AT CIVIC ROOM IN LONDON

2010-06-14T02:10:00.007+02:00

Find press release info a few posts below or following this link www.civicroom.org.uk

ALEJANDRO VIDAL NEXT JUNE AT KUNSTPALAIS ERLANGEN

2010-03-30T23:13:00.002+02:00

GLÜCK happens

Curator: Claudia Emmert

Artists:

Lars Arrhenius & Daniel Westlund, Birgit Brenner, Mona Hatoum, Runa Islam, Christian Jankowski, Sejla Kameric, Katharina Karrenberg, Aleksandra Mir, Karina Nimmerfall, Peter Piller, Tobias Rehberger, Luzia Simons, Alejandro Vidal, Erwin Wurm, Paola Yacoub (Paola Yacoub & Michel Lasserre).

This will be the inaugural exhibition at the renovated Palais Stutterheim. It will be about"luck". It will be divided in two levels presenting different content and expressions of "luck", with all its facets and refractions.

The upper level shows the contents:

1. Fortunately, as a promise

2. Happiness as the meaning of life (life as a personal happiness project / as a private matter)

3. Fortunately, as a brief peak (as an island /) as a moment general aspects of this issue.

At the lower level:

1. Good luck as fragile

2. Luck as a capricious whore (Shakespeare, unexpected, ephemeral, ambiguous, deceptive, unfair, comprehensible only retrospectively)

3. Happiness than sex, drugs, ecstasy, provide (Happiness as an invention of the devil: Flaubert)

So there is a drama in the exhibition, which runs from generally accepted answers to difficult questions. The visitor is required to review the various aspects of happiness again and again - and refer individual position.

Kunstpalais

Palais Stutterheim

Marktplatz 1

91054 Erlangen

Deutschland

www.kunstpalais.de

More info to follow shortly

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AND CARLES CONGOST OPENING IN LONDON NEXT JUNE

2010-03-28T21:46:00.003+02:00

"You`ve got everything here and out there it's so dark" will open next 9th June at Civic Room, it is the first collaboration between Barcelona based artists Carles Congost and Alejandro Vidal, highlighting common areas that exist in their works and exploring their own interests and goals. Alejandro Vidal and Carles Congost explores in this exhibition issues of collective insecurity and the fear of the other. Thus the origins of fear ,the trivialization of pain, new representations and strategies of terror and its overexposure in the home environment, youth conflict with the first form of government, the family and mechanisms of control through the implementation of a state of fear have been recurrent themes in their recent work, being approached from very different perspectives and through multiple formal strategies.

Fear has become an essential tool for managing control from the firstcore, the family, to the highest elite of state politics. In any of these estates, it is necessary to present our inhabited spaces as a safe dignified place, in a situation of constant threat,there’s a menace that always comes from outside and therefore we can only avoid it or fight it. The culture of fear has help governments and those ruling the power to control the disorder. It’s done promoting the implementation of an ultra-protectionist system that justifies the deactivation of the civilliberties. These measures only create anxiety and a sense of loss in the individual. The new fears, some irrational, have led to increased patriotism and even dangerous military adventures anywhere in the world. Besides other works in the exhibition the installation "A Tale For Wild-Eyed Boys" (2010) will be the first joint effort between the artists, made specifically for this project. Through the manipulation of various publications and objects, Vidal and Congost built a sort of camp-shelter on the floor of the gallery, filled with references and symbolism, suggesting the existence of alternative communities, beyond the narrow confines imposed by the establishment, offering a survival exercise outside of the boundaries separating the “inside” the “outside” the “I” of the “other” in our society. In the installation we will find very personal referents that are animportant part of the vocabulary of both artists: self-defense manual,references to the dark world of sects and secret societies as well as allusions to music as a vehicle to build communities outside the family order. A place where monsters exist only so far as we are afraid of them.

Civic Room, 50 Acton mews, London E8 SEA UK info@civicroom.org.uk

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AT PARTICIPANT INC IN NEW YORK.

2010-02-09T17:59:00.004+01:00

ALEJANDRO VIDAL WHEN IT RAINS, ALL SHINES BLACK FEBRUARY 28 - APRIL 11 2010 Participant Inc / New York_USA Solo Exhibition Curated by Lia Gangitano Opening 28th February at 7pm From February 28 through April 11, 2010, PARTICIPANT INC is pleased to present WHEN IT RAINS, ALL SHINES BLACK, the first U.S. solo exhibition of Barcelona-based artist Alejandro Vidal. Known for his large-format photographs, videos, and installations that assert a post-cinematic aesthetic of conflict, as seen through a generational lens that distinguishes the obsolescence of transgression in societies obsessed with control, the exhibition will consist of new works in photography and video. Vidal’s Firestorm (5 min. video/sound) covertly announces the globalization of the image of terror. Images of fireworks, ripped from the net, burst to the sound of explosions from real, 'live’ conflicts. Conflicts of the analog age were generally specific in location and duration, but today's digital media release them into something of almost limitless scope, universal location, and endless loop. Real violence has evolved into a semiotic commodity, pointing the way to a new aesthetic of terror, a new condition of life characterized by personal and collective paranoia, routine disorder, mayhem, and imperceptibly but rapidly eroding civil liberties. “With the end of the classical form of war between sovereign states, it becomes clear that security finds its end in globalization: the idea of a new planetary order, which is, in truth, the worst of alldisorders. Because this condition requires constant reference to a state of exception, the measure of security works towards a growing depoliticization of society, irreconcilable with democracy.” (Giorgio Agamben, "On Security and Terror," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 20, 2001) Vidal’s new photographs are a loose re-staging of a common form of popular political dissent in Latin American countries, involving the symbolic washing of the national flag in front of government buildings. Shooting at night from a hermetically remote location, usually from inside a car and illuminated only by the glare of headlights, Vidal de-objectifies the original act through distancing strategies, insinuating a subtle yet threatening rupture. The location and actions appear inscrutable, foreboding a dystopic resistance or enacting a B-movie-esque ceremony of an imaginary secret society. The flags are unidentifiable, and the actors are theatrically styled to produce a “vernacular upheaval, insinuating those forms of cultural subversion that are more powerful for going undetected.” (Erica Papernik, Crime and Punishment, Tallinn Kunstihoone, 2006). Early of Vidal’s works brought together references to activism, early rave period, ‘80s cult movies, manuals of self-defense, and punk nihilism to analyze states of repressed aggression. It has been noted that, “Vidal seems to delight in a moment prior to the action, the moment of the preparative rituals of fighting, in gestures encoded in the heart of action films… He presents the factual literality of images in a neutral unaffected manner, tossing all this thuggish power around to shake us out of the social dream, wretched self-control, the worst form of repression, a law assumed without resistance.” (Amanda Cuesta, Not afraid of tears, Galeria Joan Prats 2008) Alejandro Vidal (Palma de Mallorca, Spain, 1972) lives and works inBarcelona. He has exhibited his work at numerous international museums and centers such as Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland; Fundació La Caixa, Barcelona; Palazzo delle Papesse, Sienna; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei; MIS, Sao Paulo; Da2, Salamanca; Kling & Bang, Reikjavik; and Mambo; Bologna. He took part in theBusan Biennial, South Korea, 2006. Recently he has exhibited at Galeria Joan Prats, Barcelona; Galleria ARTRA, Milan; Galeria Elba Benitez, Madrid; Galerie Thomas Schulte and Play Platform for Film and Video, Berlin; and Monitor ,Rome. Upcoming projects include Seven deadly sins at Zentrum Paul Klee/Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland , Repeat All in Caracas, Venezuela and Glûck at Kunstpalais Erlangen in Germay. PARTICIPANT INC's exhibitions are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. PARTICIPANT INC receives generous support from the Harriett Ames Charitable Trust; Bloomberg; The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston; Foundation 20 21; Peter Norton Family Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; an anonymous donor of the Community Foundation of Abilene; numerous individuals; and Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education. CO-ORGANIZED BY: SEACEX, Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior. SPECIAL THANKS TO: The Cooper Square Hotel, New York. INFORMATION: Participant Inc / 253 East Houston Street / New York, NY 10002 USA / T [1] 212 254 4334 www.participantinc.org

JAIME PITARCH OPENS AT MASS MOCA

2010-02-01T16:35:00.002+01:00

Barcelona based artist Jaime Pitarch is opening soon at MASS Moca in USA. In an everyday environment usually saturated with a relentless stream of images and stimuli, moments of visual quiet can take on unexpected power. InVisible will feature work by artists who explore the line between visibility and invisibility and, in so doing, invite viewers to participate in a deeper act of looking. The exhibition examines the demands and subtleties of the viewing experience from phenomenological, anatomical, and cognitive perspectives, and includes works that engage the immaterial and test perceptual limits. Drawing attention to what is often unnoticed at first sight, many of the works heighten viewers' awareness of inconspicuous details of the artists' materials or those of mundane objects, focusing on the negative spaces and interstitial moments in our surroundings that are often overlooked. Some of the works, pushed to the edge of legibility, disappear into the gallery space itself and blur the distinction between medium and ground. Several artists manipulate ephemeral phenomena, harnessing the potential of light and shadow, while still others use strategies of erasure and find the "something" in what might be otherwise described as "nothing." InVisible will bring together a selection of artists working in a variety of mediums. Artists include Uta Barth, Christian Capurro, Joanne Lefrak, Janet Passehl, Jaime Pitarch and Karin Sander. Curated by Katia Zavistovski, an intern from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, InVisible is part of the continuing series of MASS MoCA exhibitions presented in collaboration with the Clark Art Institute in support of MASS MoCA and the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art. The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute has been placing interns from its graduate program in the curatorial department at MASS MoCA since well before MASS MoCA opened its doors.

REPEAT ALL WILL OPEN IN CARACAS NEXT FEBRUARY

2010-01-15T00:12:00.013+01:00

REPEAT ALL - Feb 11. till April 4th | 2010

Alejandro Vidal, Alexander Apostol, Cao Guimaraes/Rivane Neuenschvander, Carlos Amorales, Democracia, Gisela Motta/Leandro Lima, Hassan Khan, Jaime Castro, John Bock, Mark Formanek, Muntean/Rosenblum, Pink Twins, Sanna Kanisto, Santiago Sierra, Sean Snyder, Solmaz Shahbazi.

curated by Sigismond de Vajay

Centro Cultural Chacao

Avenida Tamanaco, El Rosal

332 Caracas, Venezuela

REPEAT ALL is not only a traditional video art exhibit, but equally a type of passport that will take you through the last years as seen by selected representatives of the Toit du Monde association,contributors that have been busy taking the temperature of the panorama offered by globalized culture, a culture composed of various artists with whom links have been forged and strengthened. This is, therefore, a project that brings together a medium of creation and the relationships developed and maintained by the Toit du Monde association from 2002 till today. This new project represents a new chapter , a logical continuation of the research work following the publication of our 2002 book entitled "Toit du Monde". In addition, Repeat All is an itinerant exhibition, one that will travel though various southern countries after its presentation in Vevey in September 2006. Repeat All is not a show of premieres, neither within Europe or world-wide (thus the title), but one with the intention to collect for the public, a public who most likely has not had the opportunity to attend every biennale and international contemporary art fair over the course of the last several years, an overview of new video art installations.

Atelier Merveille

2009-11-12T23:21:00.006+01:00

This is a quick note to inform that Atelier Merveille has started officially to operate in the intriguing field of contemporary jewellery.

Under designer Anabelle Royo, this studio based in Barcelona offers a full catalogue of services and expert advice that will certainly will become a very powerful resource for jewellery companies, fashion designers and other players in this segment.

For a more detailed information you can visit www.ateliermerveille.com

Congratulations Saâdane

2009-10-26T12:50:00.001+01:00

French artist Saadane Afif is the winner of the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2009, which reaches its nine edition this year.

Afif was selected by the international jury composed of James Cottrell (collector, USA), Gilles Fuchs (President, ADIAF, France), Dakis Joannou (collector, Greece), Kasper König (Director, Museum Ludwig, Cologne), Charlotte Laubard (Director, CAPC Bordeaux), Jacqueline Matisse-Monnier (Artist, France, USA) and Alfred Pacquement (Director, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris).

The Prize is awarded annually by the Association pour la Diffusion Internationale de l'Art Francaise (ADIAF) and is regarded as the French equivalent of the Turner Prize and the Preis deer Nationalgalerie fur junge Kunst.

FESTA GRANDE! 3rd October NABA Milano

2009-10-01T02:36:00.005+02:00

FestaGrande! nelle intenzioni di Giacinto Di Pietrantonio e Marco Scotini vuole essere non una festa ma un puzzle di feste, le cui dinamiche sono demandate direttamente ad alcuni dei nomi più noti in particolare della scena artistica italiana: fotografi, performer, video maker, designer allestiranno, per una sera, una tra le piattaforme più caleidoscopiche e spettacolari.

Festa Mascherata

Dal guardaroba dei designer, escono pezzi firmati da alcuni autori storici del design italiano, fino alle declinazioni artistiche più impreviste del concetto di abito e di corpo: da indossare per mascherarsi, da riprodurre per diffondere un modello, da costruire per capirne il senso. Con Alessandro Guerriero, Andrea Branzi, Alessandro Mendini e poi Mario Airò, Stefano Arienti, Marcello Maloberti, Meschac Gaba.

Festa Mobile

Nuove azioni nate ad hoc e performance provenienti dalla recente produzione contemporanea. Come nella“festa” di Hemingway a Parigi, gli ambienti della Nuova Accademia si popolano di episodi performativi, musicali, rituali e di momenti di partecipazione collettiva. Con Enzo Umbaca, Luca Vitone, Vedovamazzei, e gli Zimmerfrei.

Festa Panoramica

All’interno di sale, decine di schermi delle postazioni informatiche mostrano in loop i progetti fotografici di importanti nomi della fotografia italiana contemporanea: le panoramiche compiute attraversano gli spazi, i luoghi e gli eventi degli abitanti del terzo millennio. Con Vincenzo Castella, Francesco Jodice e Armin Linke.

Festa Immaginaria

L’immaginario filmico, dal documentario al noir, dal biopic alla fantascienza, passando per lo storico ed il virtuale, ritorna nella produzione di decine di artisti presenti in questa sezione, inviati da una esclusiva selezione di gallerie italiane. Con Yuri Ancarani, Meris Angioletti, Olivo Barbieri, Dario Bellini e

Gianluca Codeghini, Cezary Bodzianowski, Gianluca e Massimiliano De Serio, Michael Fliri, Maria Friberg, Regina Jose Galindo, Nicola Gobbetto, Dimitri Kozaris, Deborah Ligorio, Claudia Losi, Ottonella Mocellin e Nicola Pellegrini, Margherita Morgantin, Yoshua Okon, Marina Paris, Gabriele Porta, Ruth Proctor, Mathew Sawyer, Allison Schulnik, Martin Soto Climent, Alessandra Spranzi, Giuseppe Stampone, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Bianco Valente, Eugenia Vanni, Nico Vascellari, Sergio Vega, Alejandro Vidal, Peter Wez, Adriano Nasuti Wood, Carlo Zanni, Tobias Zielony.

Festa Ferma

Complementare alla festa mobile, e nominalmente il suo ossimoro, si provvede qui a molti dei dispositivi utili al regolare svolgimento di una festa e alla formazione della sua atmosfera, in una logica di funzionalità creativa che si esprime attraverso piste da ballo, zone relax, chioschi, banconi da bar. Con Stefano Boccalini, Gruppo A12, Andrea Sala, Super (Buvoli, Previdi, Tuttofuoco).

FESTAGRANDE! è una serata ad inviti. Per partecipare è necessario richiedere l’invito via e-mail

Segreteria Organizzativa MiArt - Fiera Milano International, e-mail: miart@fmi.it - www.miart.it

_________________________________________________________________________________________

EXHIBITION VIEWS ALEJANDRO VIDAL AT GALLERIA ARTRA, MILANO.

2009-09-23T12:36:00.010+02:00

ALEJANDRO VIDAL OPENING AT ARTRA IN MILANO 21st SEPTEMBER

2009-08-26T23:52:00.014+02:00

ARTRA + PLAY_platform for film & video

ALEJANDRO VIDAL

Hell is a place where memory is dead

Curated by Marco Scotini

21 september – 24 october 2009

Monday, September 21st Galleria Artra and PLAY_platform for film & video inaugurate the exhibition of the Spanish artist Alejandro Vidal. With the exhibition Hell is a place where memory is dead Vidal is back again in Milan after his exhibition Un tiro a todos los diablos that in 2004, has made him known to the Italian public. With this exhibition Galleria Artra began a collaboration with PLAY that after years of activity in Berlin, is now based in Italy *.

Controversial for an aesthetic of violence, outrageous and stylish at the same time, Alejandro Vidal has produced in recent years, photographic series and videos that are now found in major international exhibitions. Rave and techno scenarios, the emotional punk-rock community, rituals of fight and self-defense, urban tribes with shaved heads and tattoos, black metal costumes and ambiguously sexual poses, are part of the visual spectrum of his work. A collection of fallen heroes comes to that challenge in a face to face with the viewer with hockey sticks in hand, leather gloves, guns, and swords between their teeth.

But if one believed to capture in these images fragments of life, reality or documents, it will be wrong. Everyone there is nothing but signs. Stereotypes rather than real characters. Codes of behavior rather than subversive actions. Nothing but rules instead of their transgression. Everything is carefully studied ,every detail is carefully calculated: pose, clothing, accessories, location, close-ups and out-of-focus. To Alejandro Vidal is a kind of theater within the theater. Manipulate only what has already been manipulated to reveal the artifice and bring the image to its limits. But the object of his research is not the "simulacrum" or, to put in Paul Virilio words, the media derealization of the experience as such.

The criticism of representation that Alejandro Vidal explores is not simply the commodification of information. What is new is that in recent years, terror has become a semiotic commodity. The quantity of images of terror and fear from which we are invested, so as to define a new aesthetic of violence, starting from 9 / 11, put the scene repeatedly in a dominant discourse that is functional under a political and military perspective. The development of a capitalist society of emergency and security - as the current one - based on the economy of information. Far from a speech on the innocence or an iconographic guilt, the "theater" of Vidal is pursuing a progressive disqualification of the image as such.

More than in his other works, the project presented at Artra, bring into the light signs that clearly reveal their abstract and convencional nature. Directly related to the contemporary decadence of modern democracy, the exhibition Hell is a place where memory is dead is focus on the relationship between the collapse of a sense of national belonging (as well as its language) and a claim and question mark about the rights for sovereignty of the state. A huge stinged Italian flag welcomes the audience into the first room and a series of photographs of a latin american popular protest ritual of hand washing a flag. In conclusion, the screening of a great fireworks display that is discovered to be a real bombardment.

Alejandro Vidal (Palma de Mallorca, Spain 1972) lives and works in Barcelona. He has exhibited his work at numerous internacional museums and centres such as Kunsthalle Winterthur in Switzerland, Fundació La Caixa in Barcelona, Palazzo delle Papesse, Sienna; Schrin Kunsthalle in Frankfurt ,The Museum of Contemporary Art of Taipei, MIS in Sao Paulo, Da2 in Salamanca, Kling & Bang in Reykiavik or Mambo in Bologna . He took part in the Biennial of Busan (South Korea) in 2006. Recently he has exhibited at Galeria Joan Prats in Barcelona, Elba Benitez in Madrid, Galerie Thomas Schulte and Play Platform for Film and Video in Berlin and Monitor in Rome. He is now preparing a solo exhibition at Participant Inc in New York among other upcoming projects.

* PLAY cease its activities in Berlin in 2008 with the exhibition of Alejandro Vidal "Dance like a fool, walk like a king." Play_platform for film & video is now active in Milan. Our collaborations with the Galleria Artra in Milan are dating from the time in Berlin.

Italian text ..

Lunedì 21 settembre la Galleria Artra e PLAY_platform for film &video inaugurano la mostra personale dell’artista spagnolo Alejandro Vidal. Con il progetto espositivo Hell is a place where memory is dead Vidal torna di nuovo presso gli spazi della galleria milanese dopo la mostra Un tiro a todos los diablos che, nel 2004, lo ha reso noto al pubblico italiano. Con questa mostra la galleria Artra inizia una collaborazione con PLAY che, dopo anni di attività a Berlino, ha ora sede a Lugano*.

Segnalatosi per una estetica della violenza, oltraggiosa e stilizzata allo stesso tempo, Alejandro Vidal ha prodotto in questi anni serie fotografiche e video che ora figurano nelle più importanti rassegne internazionali. Scenari rave e techno, comunità emotive punk-rock, rituali di lotta e di autodifesa, tribù urbane con teste rasate e tatuaggi, costumi black metal e pose ambiguamente sessuali, sono il campionario visivo del suo lavoro. Una collezione di eroi alla deriva che sfidano in un faccia a faccia lo spettatore con bastoni da hockey in mano, guanti di cuoio, pistole in pugno, stiletti tra i denti.

Ma se uno credesse di cogliere in queste immagini frammenti di vita, realtà e documenti si sbaglierebbe. Ognuno non vi trova altro che segni. Stereotipi in luogo di personaggi concreti. Codici comportamentali piuttosto che azioni sovversive. Set artificiali al posto di inquadrature “vere”. Nient’altro che regole invece che la loro trasgressione. Tutto è attentamente studiato, ogni dettaglio è meticolosamente calcolato: pose, abbigliamento, accessori, ambienti, close-up e fuori-fuoco. Quello di Alejandro Vidal è una sorta di teatro nel teatro. Si manipola solo ciò che è già stato manipolato per svelare l’artificio e ricondurre l’immagine ai suoi limiti. Ma l’oggetto della sua ricerca non è il “simulacro” o, per dirlo con Paul Virilio, la derealizzazione mediatica dell’esperienza come tale.

La critica della rappresentazione di Alejandro Vidal non è quella rivolta alla mercificazione dell’informazione, semplicemente. Il fatto nuovo è che negli ultimi anni il terrore è diventato una merce semiotica. La quantità di immagini del terrore e della paura da cui siamo investiti, così come la definizione di una nuova estetica della violenza, a partire dal 9/11, mettono in scena ripetutamente un discorso dominante che è funzionale all’apparato militare-visuale, allo sviluppo cioè di un capitalismo della società della sicurezza – come quello attuale - fondato sull’economia dell’informazione. Lontano da un discorso sulla innocenza o colpevolezza iconografica, il “teatro” di Vidal persegue una progressiva squalificazione dell’immagine come tale.

Più che in altri suoi lavori, nel progetto presentato da Artra, le opere mettono in scena dei segni che chiaramente rivelano la loro natura astratta e convenzionale. Direttamente connessa alla contemporanea decadenza della democrazia moderna, la mostra Hell is a place where memory is dead si focalizza sul rapporto tra il collasso del sentimento di appartenenza nazionale (così come dei suoi linguaggi) e la rivendicazione del diritto di sovranità dello Stato. Una enorme bandiera italiana che sta stingendo accoglie lo spettatore nella prima sala mentre una serie di immagini fotografiche rimettono in scena un recente rituale di protesta latinoamericano del lavaggio popolare della bandiera. A conclusione la proiezione di un grande spettacolo pirotecnico che si scopre essere un vero e proprio bombardamento.

* La galleria PLAY cessa la sua attività a Berlino nel 2008 con la mostra di Alejandro Vidal “Dance like a fool, walk like a king”. Ora come Play_platform for film & video è attiva a Milano. La collaborazione in più occasioni con la Galleria Artra di Milano risale fin dai tempi di Berlino.

ARTRA via Burlamacchi, 1 , 20135 MILANO, ITALY +39.02.5457373 info@artragallery.com

www.artragallery.com

www.twoogroup.com

HELL IS A PLACE WHERE MEMORY IS DEAD

2009-07-26T04:18:00.002+02:00

Next September in Milano, Italy.

More details soon at www.alejandro-vidal.com

ALEJANDRO VIDAL RECENT WORK AT ART BASEL 40 WITH GALERIA JOAN PRATS

2009-06-05T16:00:00.005+02:00

ART BASEL 40 / 10-14 June 2009

Galería Joan Prats, Barcelona

Artists at Art 40 Basel

Knut Åsdam, Erick Beltrán, Fernando Bryce, Cabello/Carceller, Hannah Collins, Carles Congost, Ferran García Sevilla, Luis Gordillo, Juande Jarillo, Fabian Marcaccio, Bernhard Martin, Aleksandra Mir, Antoni Muntadas, Javier Peñafiel, Perejaume, Caio Reisewitz, Julião Sarmento, José María Sicilia, Eulàlia Valldosera, Alejandro Vidal

Galería Joan Prats

Rambla de Catalunya 54

08007 Barcelona

Spain

www.galeriajoanprats.com

http://artbasel-online.com/index.php5?id=1187673&Action=showProduct

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AT MONITOR IN ROME; NEXT JUNE

2009-05-24T15:15:00.004+02:00

EMOTIONAL COMMUNITY / JUNE 24th 2009 - SEPTEMBER 2009

Monitor / Rome_Italy

ARTISTS: Francesco Arena / Jeremy Deller / Mike Kelley / Akram Zaatari / Gülsün Karamustafa / Alejandro Vidal / Extrastruggle | Extramücadele / Phelan Garrett and The Joy Division.

Belonging, sharing, tribe, community – key words that well describe the contemporary social spirit and that are strikingly in contrast with the sociological principles outlined by Gilles Lipovetsky in his essay Lère du vide, wherein he expounded that ours was a profoundly individualistic age.

The reality in which we exist is full of examples that demonstrate the propensity for preponderant and rhizomatic aggregation within different communities, particularly of a virtual kind where the web functions as a binding element in which the contemporary technocratic lifestyle appears to utterly dominate recreational social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Yaari or Plaxo, to name just a few, in which the exchange is chiefly of a ludic nature. At the same time there is also an abundance of sites for sharing knowledge or projects – Indymedia, Wikipedia or aNubi, for example – which exist alongside cultural and political networks where connective intelligence is transformed into “collective intelligence”, the latter being a form of spontaneous social exchange whose members cooperate and come together in the production of value that is external to any form of institutional mediation. This becomes a project area and a practice for multiplying intelligence from the moment there is an exchange of ideas, utopias and real life experiences.

In short, the dominant trend is towards building specific communities that express a sense of belonging for their members. In fact our subjectivity functions intermittently, following a pattern that is apparently contradictory – increasing global and virtual knowledge on the one hand whilst practising an elective form of selection on the other.

EMOTIONAL COMMUNITY aims to be a space of tentacular reflection on the processes of interaction, selection and sharing affiliations, a tribal perimeter space and affiliation zone that expresses itself both within the galaxy of immateriality and locations of culture – those places where the multiple belonging of individuals is regulated directly by the individuals themselves (music, art, literature, sport, publishing, events and student revolts, etc.) The connective research of the artists that have been selected follows a projective sensitivity through which the individual questions his or her subjectivity in relational terms with others, with those empathic tribes each individual refers to.

Curated by Teresa Macri

MONITOR / Palazzo Sforza Cesarini / Via Sforza Cesarini 43A-44 / 00186 Rome_Italy / T [39] 063 9378024

monitor@monitoronline.org

www.monitoronline.org

NEW SPACE FOR GALLERIA ARTRA IN MILANO

2009-05-11T01:13:00.005+02:00

These are a few images of the current exhibition at Galleria Artra new premises in Milano. Next September Artra ,in collabration with Play platform for film & video, will present 'Hell is a place where memory is dead' , a solo exhibition where I will bring together a selection of recent works including a world premiere of 'firestorm'

Artra

Via Francesco Burlamacchi, 1 (20135)

Milano, Italy +39 025457373 artragalleria@tin.it

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AND CARLES CONGOST AT .HBC IN BERLIN

2009-04-20T12:52:00.004+02:00

6 Rooms On View

a series of screening programmes curated by

JOSE CASTANAL

Alejandro Vidal

Carles Congost

AVI FELDMAN

Vdance Festival, Tel-Aviv Cinematheque

.HBC

Darcy Bartoletti

Martin Murphy

SOUVENIRS FROM EARTH

Kolkoz , Alicia Framis, Tom Sachs,Mike Kilo, Marcus Kreiss ,Chantal Michel ,Vincent Maugier ,Momoko Seto ,Matl Findel ,Jean Claude Ruggirello ,Ray Grouchenko

DAVID RIEDEL (Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden)

Thomas Straub

VLADO VELKO (Artnews.org )

Ulf Aminde

.HBC

DURATION: 01.05. – 08.05.2009//

OPENING: THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 7-10PM

AFTERSHOW PARTY 10PM//

OPENING HOURS: TUESDAY-SATURDAY 12.-7PM, THURSDAY UNTIL 9PM//

http://www.hbc-berlin.de/Current.html

SHADOWS WITHOUT WITNESSES, A NEW VIDEO.

2009-03-25T01:17:00.008+01:00

Alejandro Vidal

Shadows without witnesses (2009)

Single channel DVD , 4'20'', 16:9

AZIONI MOLTO SEMPLICI SENZA UNO SCOPO PRECISO AT GALLERIA ARTRA, MILANO

2009-03-22T21:33:00.008+01:00

VERY SIMPLE ACTIONS WITHOUT ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE

Curated by Viktor Misiano

Very Simple Actions without Any Particular Purpose is the title of an exhibition opened at the ARTRA gallery in Milan on Monday 30th March 2009. The show presents a wide cross section of artists who live and work in the geographical area that extends from North-East

Europe to Slovenia. The exhibition, curated by Viktor Misiano, reflects on the problem of human action, presenting its analytical aspect more than its narrative one.

“This exhibition was brought to life by a

desire to show the art of the former USSR and so called Eastern Block countries in the context of a general project. It issues from the assumption that despite the twenty years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Eastern Block despite the differences in social development that have arisen in the countries that were a part of its territories, it seems reasonable that their cultural and artistic consciousness be examined in a combined context. Additionally, this combined examination is further justified in the case of this decade we are going through rather than the previous one.

The previous decade – the first post-communist period – is often called a “transitional period”. After turning their back on the former state of things, all post-soviet countries have taken their own way towards the “new brave world”. Their past felt like burden – while some reasons were common,

each country had its individual motives for this feeling. And while they all gazed at a future with the vivid colors, each country formed its own notion about it and that notion was extremely abstract and had literally nothing to do with the present. Real life was unfolding in the present – in the dimension of “here and now”.

In “here and now” lay the lives of all those who had been affected by social misfortune: to survive under such extreme circumstances would be feasible only if someone took advantage of the last possibilities the present entailed.

In those years there were also the people who responded to the challenge of that era and devoted their lives to their personal success: their life, too, was in a transition into the dimension of “here and now” since it was not only survival but also personal success that depended on the ability to take advantage of circumstances.

The new decade in the entire post-communist area self-proclaimed an era of stabilization. This holds true for all post- communist countries (in one’s own way), but at the same time stabilization in each one of them is rather hypothetical and virtual, for similar reasons everywhere.

Nonetheless, today consciousness in post-soviet countries does not recognize itself in the “here-and-now” dimension. The future lost its unforeseeable quality and in order for one to find his way in reality he needed not only intuition but a far more elaborate system of analysis. Currently, the projects’ practice, as well as common reality,

assumes that we put ourselves along the temporal dimension, the dimension of history, in other words. Thus, throughout the once single country the period of amnesia has come to an end while retrieval of memory has occurred.

All these historic misfortunes, social and socio-

psychological developments gave rise to the exhibition of works of artists who live in Bishkek and Riga, Yerevan and Kiev, Moscow or Alma-Ata, Ljubljana and Prague. Returned past has caused these countries to face a clustered mosaic of unsolved problems the solution of which is justly and rightly to be achieved through dialogue – because the past is common. The congestion of this past and the extent of the problems that have drawn it out of oblivion are so far-reaching that the post-soviet exhibition project called “Progressive Nostalgia” was developed

in 2007 in four exhibitions in four separate exhibition venues: “Return of the Memory” in the KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn, “Progressive Nostalgia” in Centro d’ arte contemporanea in Prato (Italy), “Time of the Storytellers” in KIASMA museum in Helsinki and “On Geekdom” in Benaki Museum in Athens. So all of these exhibitions bringing together artists of the same geographical area concentrate on different subjects and solve different problems, yet all subjects and problems seem similar and are jointly understood by the various artists.

It is precisely such shared misfortunes and collective experience that hide behind this exhibition under the name “Very Simple Actions without Any

Particular Purpose”. The defense of the eccentricity that inspires the participating artists constitutes a clear-cut reaction to the ideology of stabilization prevalent in post-communist countries today.

Essentially, central power, following its establishment, has appropriated control over social dynamics: not only the political development, but also the communication market. Mass media, in combination with the industry of entertainment form the foundation of the new ideology and cultural policies.

This forms the economic basis for a new intelligentsia which, after bidding a cute farewell to the communist coyness and then to the chaos of the 90s, has adopted an attitude the philosopher Paolo Virno called cheerful resignation. In this context the artistic stage which had been downgraded during the transitional period showed a dynamic tendency – mainly with regard to its commercial and communicative essence, while the public space and the innovative function of art remained underneath the rubble of socialism. And because each tendency to increase economic means and infrastructures is regarded self-evidently and by a large majority as a commodity, another renowned philosopher called it the means without end (Giorgio Agamben).

An answer to this may be given through the programmatic and consistent imposition of means with clear and constructive intentions. Artists who follow this path restore the democratic meaning of communist transformations from the communist past, reshaping collective experience that ignored the concept of the omnipotence of money. Such artists feature in the exhibition “Progressive Nostalgia”. Within this framework an attempt to escape the vanity of mass-media is justified, while by means of a dethronement rhetoric one attempts to enter the innermost meaning of experiences past and present, to record them, to look over them, to stare at them in meditation and intensively. Such artists feature in the exhibition “Time of the Storytellers”.

Yet, each one of these positions has its own vulnerability: the clearer its objectives and the means for their achievement, the easier they are assimilated by the media mechanism and become part of the industry of culture. This is why today the triumphant ideology of stabilization causes an additional manifestation of opposition: indisputably straightforward means adopted in the name of objectives that are vague to the extent of utter incomprehensibility. If the prevailing situation of things insists on the communicational role of language (on a semantics level), art, in contrary, fosters an ambiguity of expression, a lack of motive for actions, an escape from unequivocal interpretation etc. Artists who tread upon this path feature in 2007 in the exhibition “On Geekdom” and now in “Very Simple Actions without Any Particular Purpose”.

There is nothing pioneering behind this strategy. It pre-existed in consciousness and was applied by many during the Soviet era. One of its creators in Moscow was Dmitry Prigov, and in Yerevan Hamlet Hovsepyan

and in Prague Jiri Kovanda. Still in the Soviet period Yuri Albert and Yuri Leiderman followed the same practice. However this experience also proved extremely popular among new generations that did not have time to form in the old regime. This experience was consciously or subconsciously implemented in exactly the same way in which the attempt to manipulate public opinion and the taste of corruption pass from the older power to the new one.

Therefore, one of the paradoxes of the current situation of post-communist history lies in the fact that every modern definition of the present inescapably presupposes a discussion of the past, every manifestation of self-determination in the present takes the form of a historic reflection.

For this reason, and since we can say that this is an exhibition about nostalgia, it is important to make clear that this is not about clinging tightly to the past at any cost, nor is it a reactive negation of the present and progress. The nostalgia of today is a form of contemplation on modern times, a way for someone to take a stance in the present and respond to the call of the future. This is an exhibition about progressive nostalgia”. (Viktor Misiano)

With this exhibition the ARTRA gallery continues its

investigation into artists operating in the ex-Communist bloc, which began in 2004 with "Revolution Reloaded” curated by Marco Scotini and Minhea Mircan, and was followed in 2007 with "OCTOBER, Exit Desire and Memory" curated by Marco Scotini and Andris Brinkmanis.

Artists invited:

Yuri Albert, Nikita Alekseev, Mher Azatyan, Babi Badalov, Pavel Braila, Sergei Bratkov, Ulan Djaparov, Hamlet Hovsepyan, Vadim Fishkin, Vadim Flyagin (Nuovi Tonti), Eva Kotatkova, Jiri Kovanda, Dominik Lang, Juozas Laivys, Yuri Leiderman, Dmitry Prigov (in

collaboration with Iraide Yusupov & Alexander Dolgiin), Koka Ramishvili, Stanislav Shuripa, Yelena&Viktor Vorobyev.

Special thanks

to:

FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims; Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin and Ljubljana; Galleria Impronte contemporary art, Milan; gb agency, Paris; Regina Gallery, Moscow; Tulips & Roses, Vilnius.

30th March – 24th May 2009

Open Tuesday to Saturday from 10.30 to 12.30 and from 15.00 to 19.00

ARTRA Via Burlamacchi 1, 20135 Milano tel. +39 025457373,

artragalleria@tin.it

FIRESTORM

2009-03-16T18:35:00.003+01:00

more info about Alejandro Vidal new video 'FireStorm' soon ... Above image : FireStorm , 2009, (video still) Single channel DVD

CARLES CONGOST AT MI VIDA, FROM HEAVEN TO HELL

2009-03-12T17:34:00.003+01:00

Mi Vida. From Heaven to Hell.

Life experiences in art from MUSAC Collection

Mücarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest

27/03/09 - 17/05/09

Curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio - Zsolt Petrányi

ALICIA FRAMIS, EMESE BENCZÚR, PIPILOTTI RIST, TABAIMO, JESPER JUST KIMSOOJA, CANDICE BREITZ, CARLES CONGOST, MUNTEAN / ROSEMBLUM, WOLFGANG TILLMANS, RYAN MCGUINLEY, MP & MP ROSADO, ENRIQUE MARTY, TRACEY MOFFAT, ANGEL MARCOS, MASSIMO VITALI, CARMELA GARCIA, ZHANG HUAN, FERNANDO RENES, MARCEL DZAMA, ALVARO OYARZUN, JOANA VASCONCELOS, ABIGAIL LAZKOZ, SHIRIN NESHAT, MARINA ABRAMOVIC, THOMAS HIRSCHHORN, LUC DELAHAYE, SIMEON SAIZ RUIZ, ANGEL DE LA RUBIA, CRISTINA GARCIA RODERO, FERNANDO SANCHEZ CASTILLO, ZWELETHU MTHETHWA, DORA GARCIA, JULIAN OPIE, MOTOIKO ODANI, JON MIKEL EUBA.

The biggest exhibition of MUSAC Collection shown up until today outside the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León will take place between March and May, 2009 at Mücsarnok Kunsthalle in Budapest. Under the title Mi Vida. From Heaven to Hell. Life experiences in art from MUSAC Collection, the show will exhibit a selection of works which stress the relations between art and life from different standpoints. More than forty artists will show their works in aproximately 2.500 square meters.

Life itself has always been the center point of artistic expression. Through different ages artists have reflected their experiences and opinions through their artworks. This character as a phenomena is the key to understanding art: the things we see are somehow related to the life we lead.

The exhibition Mi Vida shows contemporary pieces which underline this relation between art and life from different standpoints and interests. The works, which are all coming from MUSAC Collection in Leon, bring together two points of view, the hedonist and psychological nature of the everyday life with decisive factors such as geographical, historical and political circumstances under which confilcts and existencial problems are the center of life.

Our world is divided in two different extremes. In one of them the economical possibilities of the individual enable a career where quality and investment give the prospect of a future, while on the other half the present tense is the only reference point and every other factors are ephemeral or non-planable. These two contradictionary status often coexist in one geographical point of the globe, as they are note defined geographically, but they define the horizon of what we call human existence.

The show is constructed by different standpoints, as we believe that the aforementioned „extremes” are not isolated poles, we are inviting the visitor to a journey where the differences can be seen, as well as parallelisms and contradictions. This way, in the first rooms we aim to create a series of positive statements through works by Pipilotti Rist, as a paradox of a new Paradise, Kimsooja with her calm installation or Tabaimo with her human tatoo landscape. Also in this part of the exhibition the visitor will find „Brighten your mind”, the positive slogan by Emese Benczur, Jesper Just and his emotive exteriorization of the feelings, as well as Mother by Candice Breitz , not to forget the social project-piece by Alicia Framis.

Following this part of the exhibition, we find other rooms where staments become more ambigous and pain and pleasure engage in a conversation the same way they do in our daily life. Thus, hedonist aspects present in the pieces by Ángel Marcos or Massimo Vitali confront this vital landscape with political aspects in Zhan Huan’s works or Carmela Garcia’s ficctionalized female world. It is also interesting to observe institutions as the family and relationships: friends, partners, couples,etc. have a critical treatment in the works by Enrique Marty, Tracey Moffat, MP & MP Rosado, Muntean/Rosemblum and Ryan McGinley, together with more nostalgic works which reflect experience or the effects of time, as in the case of Carles Congost or Wolfgang Tillmans.

The following room will allow the spectator to contemplate the bizarre and absurd world of human obsessions, reflected with brutality and hilatrity by the drawings by Marcel Dzama, Fernado Renes or Alvaro Oyarzun. This way, in opposition to the first rooms, Mi Vida reaches a point where critical statements about the human condition, showing these aspects on a wide variety of media and contents. These are the rooms dedicated to violence or the fight for women’s rights, in the pieces by Joana Vasconcelos, Abigail Lazkoz, Shirin Neshat, Marina Abramovich and above all, the last big room of the show, where the piece UN Miniature by Thomas Hirschhorn will be displayed. Around this piece other works will be shown, which reflect the brutality of the war like Simeon Saiz Ruiz in his media- painting of Kosovo or the photografies by Ángel de la Rubia about Balcan war, not to forget the Irak images by Luc Delhaye. There will also be other works that show diverse political and social contexts within the past and the present by Fernando Sanchez Castillo, Zwelethu Mentewtua or Cristina Garcia Rodero.

This end of the exhibition, on the one hand gives Mi Vida the opportunity to show the most

agressive and brutal part of the human condition, but it also communicates a small reflect of hope, of help and friendship, because it is the moral and ethics of the artist which are mirrored through his/ her works. Therefore, at the end, all the angles and viewpoints create a whole. It is important to take into account that the works displayed in this exhibition communicate a message that rises above the particular facts the individual works are speaking about: the general moral values of humanity in which there are no differences and counterparts.

This way, Mi Vida is conceived not just as and exhibition of the works form a collection, nor as a show of individual pieces, but as a proposition, through an artistic discourse, of awareness about the world we live in, about the present and how we deal with it.

X OPENED IN NEW YORK

2009-03-08T01:16:00.006+01:00

X is a new not-for-profit initiative that will exist for one year and present exhibitions and programming in four phases.

During Spring, Summer and Fall 2009 and Winter 2010, the program at X will feature durational artist interventions, site-specific projects, in-depth historical exhibitions, one night performances, lectures and weekly events.

The first, opening on March the 7th brought together Mika Tajima on the ground floor, a selection of rare super-8mm films by Derek Jarman on the second, third and fourth floors, and on the roof it will be possible to enjoy Christian Holstad’s Light Chamber (Part 2), which has to be considered an extension of Leather Beach, a site-specific installation conceived by the artist in 2006 for an abandoned deli in New York Midtown, on 43rd Street, formerly known as Prince’s Deli.

On the curatorial side New York and Milan-based independent curator Cecilia Alemani will take care of everything, assisted by project curator Jenny Moore.

http://www.x-initiative.org

548 West 22nd Street

New York, NY

HOU HANRU TU CURATE NEXT LYON BIENNALE

2009-03-03T13:47:00.002+01:00

The Spectacle of the Everyday , the 10th edition of the Biennale de Lyon will be led by Hou Hanru, Curator, and Thierry Raspail, Artistic Director. This 10th edition, will run from 16 September 2009 to 3 January 2010. The professionals' days will be 14-15 September.

This position came open two weeks ago with the sudden resignation of Catherine David.

above image:

Alejandro Vidal 'Insense & black dust', 2009 , 125 x 185 cm, Lambda print

ALEJANDRO VIDAL , A NEW VIDEO IN PRODUCTION

2009-03-02T01:53:00.005+01:00

LA INVENCIBLE

2009-02-27T16:09:00.004+01:00

Alejandro Vidal

La invencible, 2009

Lambda print, 125 x 185 Cm

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AT CCCB IN BARCELONA , NEXT MARCH

2009-02-16T17:53:00.003+01:00

Pandeo

Proyecciones

7 de marzo, de 12 a 20h

8 y 14 de marzo, de 12 a 17h

CCCB Auditori , Barcelona.

Cuatro monográficos de los artistas visuales:

Annika Larsson, Rubén Santiago, Alejandro Vidal y Aggtelek

Comisario: Alex Brahim

En ingeniería, el pandeo es un fenómeno de inestabilidad elástica que puede darse en elementos comprimidos esbeltos y que se manifiesta por la aparición de desplazamientos importantes transversales a la dirección principal de compresión.

Este comisariado, producto de una historia de intercambio dialéctico y complicidad con La Porta, surge de la inquietud de recuperar productos visuales que, ajenos a las artes escénicas, suponen espacios de intersección temática y conceptual, a su vez puntos de fuga hacia nuevas aristas y dimensiones de la creatividad desde vectores compartidos.

Esta selección de videos propone un recorrido de flexión, torsión y retorsión en la manera de representar el cuerpo y su relación con el espacio-tiempo y los objetos, a partir del tempo narrativo y la formalización visual de las obras. Estos trabajos se sitúan en los alrededores semánticos del cuerpo, no indagan directa o deliberadamente en su construcción como foco temático, pero se apoyan en él como eje estructural compositivo, como herramienta dinamizadora.

Alex Brahim es comisario de arte y transita la gestión, producción, programación y comunicación culturales. Su trabajo enfatiza los códigos culturales y sus espacios críticos de negociación.

Annika Larsson

40-15 (1999), 13’30’’

Pink Ball, (2002), 16’

www.annikalarsson.com

A través de una alta tensión plena de poesía, Annika Larsson indaga sobre la construcción de la masculinidad, los estereotipos sociales y las estructuras de poder, haciendo del ralentizado tempo de sus vídeos un sugerente ejercicio de expansión semiótica que entremezcla morbidez, sensualidad y un aura de belleza.

Alejandro Vidal

You can't scratch that way without the record falling off, 2004, 4'40''

Tactical Disorder, 2006, 7'20''

Material Dust, 2006, 6'40''

One second burns for a billion years, 2007, 7'46''

An image lost in faded films, 2008, 6'46'' (première)

www.alejandro-vidal.com

Con una estética circunscrita a la cinematografía independiente y experimental llevada al terreno videográfico, Alejandro Vidal propone narraciones abiertas que conjugan espíritu urbano, rebeldía, sex-appeal, violencia y desolación, mientras nos guía por pequeños recorridos sentimentales plagados de sutiles referentes.

Rubén Santiago

Collective, 2005, 3'33''

Monogamy outdooors, 2005, 2'24''

Future, 2005, 3'03''

Statement #0 - Tirar la casa por la ventana, 2005, 2'33''

Daily, 2006, 2'41''

Stairs, 2008, 3'33'' (premiere)

www.ruben-santiago.com

Mediante acciones ejecutadas por él mismo o a través de registros simbólicos con objetos, Rubén Santiago habla de la condición del hombre, de su fragilidad y lo vulnerable de sus nexos consigo mismo y con el mundo, volcando con naturalidad una mirada irónica, directa y profunda, emotiva y cerebral, que pone en crisis el consenso colectivo con gestos simples que aluden a grandes verdades.

Aggtelek

Sin Título 19, 2006, 11'00''

Performing the Scenography, 2007, 14'40''

2º. Ensayo Escultórico, 2008, 8'22''

www.aggtelek.net

A medio camino entre la performance, la pintura, la escultura y la instalación, Aggtelek desarrollan una vertiginosa y expansiva visión del proceso creativo, donde el juego y la regeneración vertebran episodios de interacción en aceleradas secuencias, herederas por igual del cine mudo, el pop, el graffitti o el povera.

PIXAÇAO SAO PAULO .-

2009-02-03T16:01:00.005+01:00

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AT ARCO 09

2009-02-03T15:57:00.003+01:00

LOS TIEMPOS DE UN LUGAR

2009-01-14T16:43:00.004+01:00

Opening soon at CDAN in Huesca (Spain) an exhibition curated by Neus Miró that surely it's worth your time , check it.

With Robert Smithson, Stan Brakhage, Chris Welsby,James Benning,Tacita Dean,Patricia Dauder,Darren Almond,Beryl Korot and Melik Ohanian.

www.cdan.es

SAVE THE DATES FOR SAO PAULO

2008-12-17T18:48:00.004+01:00

Repeat all

January 25th > March 29th 2009

MIS (Museu da Imagem e do Som)

Av. Europa 158 Jardim Europa

01449-000 São Paulo SP Brasil

www.mis-sp.org.br

+55 11 2117 4777

With : Carlos Amorales (México), Alejandro Vidal (España), Hassan Khan (Egipto), Sanna Kannisto (Finlandia), PinkTwins (Finlandia), Mark Fronsek (Alemania), Cao Guimarães(Brasil), Santiago Sierra (España), John Bock (Alemania), El Perro (España), Muntean/Rosenblum (Austria/Israel), Sean Snyder (USA), Solmaz Shahbazi (Irán), Leandro lima/Gisela Motta (Brasil).

Organized by MIS, Toit du Monde & KBB

Curated by Sigismond de Vajay

ERICK BELTRAN 'CALCULUM SERIES' OPENS WEDNESDAY 17th AT GALERIA JOAN PRATS IN BARCELONA

2008-12-15T16:58:00.002+01:00

Mexican artist Erick Beltran will open a solo exhibition at Galeria Joan Prats in Barcelona.

It will be Beltran first solo exhibition in Spain. Next wednesday 17th December is the opening.

www.galeriajoanprats.com

TIME CODE EXHIBITION VIEWS AT MAMBO BOLOGNA

2008-12-04T18:25:00.005+01:00

Alejandro Vidal 'One second burns for a billion years ' 2007 single channel DVD

CAROLYN CHRISTOV BAKARGIEV ELECTED ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE DOCUMENTA 13

2008-12-03T15:00:00.002+01:00

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev has been elected the Artistic Director of the documenta 13, which is scheduled to take place from June 9th, 2012 to September 16th, 2012 in Kassel.

Bernd Leifeld, CEO of documenta und Museum Fridericianum Veranstaltungs-GmbH announced today (03.12.2008) that in an unanimous decision the Supervisory Board of documenta followed the proposal of the international finding committee.

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev works as a curator and writer in Rome, Turin and New York. She is currently the Chief Curator at the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art in Turin and was the Artistic Director for the 16th Sydney Biennale (2008). From 1999 to 2001 she was Senior Curator of Exhibitions at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center – a MoMA Affiliate. Previously, she organized exhibitions as an independent curator in different countries.

The Lord Mayor of Kassel, Bertram Hilgen, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the organisation, the Vice Chairman, State Minister Silke Lautenschläger, and Professor Kasper König, the speaker of the finding committee, presented the new Artistic Director in a press conference held at the documenta-Halle.State Minister Silke Lautenschläger promises fascinating perspectives on contemporary art by the appointment of Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, who has studied both literature and the history of art.

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is a real power woman who will, without a doubt, master the documenta challenge. "I am sure that this internationally renowned curator will give the documenta bright new impulses". The national and international significance of the art exhibition cannot be estimated highly enough.Lord Mayor, Bertram Hilgen stated that he is sure that with the announcement of Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev as the Artistic Director of documenta 13, the success story of the world wide most important art exhibition is being continued. “The international curator is also bringing an excellent reputation with her to Kassel next to her store of experience as curator and director of the Turin Castello di Rivoli, and indeed the documenta exhibitions will in years to come again have a charisma in the artistic world: "I am really looking forward to working with Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev which promises to be exciting!"At the same time the Lord Mayor thanks the international finding committee which suggested Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev after intensive consultation.

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AT VISION:A IN TOKYO

2008-11-12T14:18:00.002+01:00

If it happens you are in Tokyo next friday, I will present a 2004 video at Vision:a for the opening of Instituto Cervantes in Tokyo.

Instituto Cervantes Cervantes Bldg. 2-9 Rokuban-cho 102-0085 Chiyoda-ku Tokio JAPAN

MIQUEL BARCELÓ TO REPRESENT SPAIN IN VENICE 09

2008-11-10T01:29:00.003+01:00

It seems that the spanish representation for next Venice Biennale it's already decided. Miquel Barceló will have the honours. Again we should thank the spanish government for it's work towards the presence and support of young contemporary spanish artists abroad.

Certainly Barceló still might need this back up for his career, no? Or is it a tribute for his big contribution to spanish art ?

Soon the budget of his recent work in Geneve will be published. In this uncertain times we can be sure that it will be a super high amount of money, let's celebrate the economic chaos . In Spain we are experts in investing it this way. But it's not enough , in a generous country like ours we offer more to our artists!

I am not particularly against Barceló representing Spain. I don't care much about our national pavillion in Venice since it's usually dissapointing. I appreciate Barceló work but what I find kind of insulting is the way our government decides about Venice, the lack of rigour. Obviously it's very difficult to hope for a better future or change it. Now that Barceló has been selected, probably with good reasons , it's time to look for a curator to complete this pack. Rumours said that might be Enrique Juncosa with whom the artist has a long friendship relation.

More than casual is that the artist will have a museum exhibition in Venice same dates as the Biennale. It seems his dealer Bruno Bischofberger has done a good job to make it happen. I am now curious to see how our institutions will team for all these. Get ready! There's still room for a bigger cake.

It's like a joke how things happen and always very interesting how they dress them up to look great.

I am sure there's still people that believe in all this. I can't avoid being every day more skeptical about the dinamics of art.

SENSATIONAL FIX AT MUSEION, BOLZANO

2008-10-29T16:35:00.002+01:00

SONIC YOUTH etc. : SENSATIONAL FIX

10. October 2008 - 4. January 2009

MUSEION , Bolzano.

Curator: Roland Groenenboom

SONIC YOUTH etc. : SENSATIONAL FIX investigates the bonds between the historic band, which was formed in 1981, and artists, writers, filmmakers, designers, and other musicians. Sonic Youth’s multimedia works and those of the artists in the show reveal a possible alternative history of contemporary culture, with a critical discussion of the division between “high” and “popular” art, with topics such as youth rebellion, hunger, fashion and sex. The various sections revolve around a central area, which illustrates the band’s long history, with records, posters, T-shirts, instruments and photographs.

At the preview on 10 October, the members of the band (Thurston Moore: guitar/vocals; Kim Gordon: vocals/bass/guitar; Lee Ranaldo: guitar/vocals; Steve Shelley: drums) will be in Bolzano, and on 11 October they will be performing at a concert as part of the transart festival.

The first section of the exhibition explores the links between music and art in early-1980s New York. In those days, punk and atonal noise-rock inspired artists like Robert Longo, Richard Prince, Lee Ranaldo, and Kim Gordon to create music. Right from the outset, Sonic Youth successfully combined the rebellious approach of punk with experimental music and conceptual art. This section introduces the works of the following, amongst others: Vito Acconci, Dan Graham, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, John Miller, Christian Marclay, Tony Oursler, Richard Kern, Patti Smith, Jutta Koether and Rita Ackermann.

The exhibition also investigates their tour experiences: this section includes works that present the city suburbs, the desire to travel and the great open landscapes of the West, while its protagonists – beatniks, hitch-hikers and cowboys – tell their stories. The section also looks at the music and lyrics produced by members of the band. Artists on show include: William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, D.A. Levy, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, John Cage, Glenn Branca.

In the early 1980s, Sonic Youth started working on the West Coast, a physical and mental environment that was an important starting point for the artistic development of many artists in the late sixties. This part of the exhibition contrasts the tinsel glamour of Hollywood with the aggressiveness symbolised by the homicidal sect of the Manson family and Californian hardcore-punk. The period is illustrated in the works of Mike Kelley, Raymond Pettibon, Cameron Jamie and Kim Kordon.

The fourth section of the exhibition shows works by artists working outside the US art scene, such as Tacita Dean, Isa Genzken and Michael Morley.

The artist Dan Graham has specially designed a pavilion for the exhibition, in which visitors will be able to hear the band’s sound archives and other material, including recordings by the artist himself. The Museion library will be used for more in-depth studies and for listening to audio material by the band and independent record labels. Multimedia stations will let visitors watch films, video clips, and selected recordings of concerts and performances by Sonic Youth.

SONIC YOUTH etc.: SENSATIONAL FIX describes the band’s 30 years of transversal projects, retracing the stages of their formidable artistic career which has been inspired by the ideal of a world outside the mainstream of mass industrial culture. Produced by Museion in Bolzano in collaboration with LiFE, St Nazaire, the exhibition will be travelling to the Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, and the Konsthall Malmö in Sweden.

The catalogue, distributed by Verlag der Buchandlung Walther König and published by Museion and LiFE, will be available in German, Italian, French and English. Two 7-inch vinyl records are included in the publication. Each side has been created by a member of the band with unreleased material.

WE WERE INJECTING COLOURS INTO OUR OPEN VEINS

2008-10-28T01:03:00.002+01:00

Alejandro Vidal

We were injecting colours into our open veins, 2008

Lambda Print, 125 x 185 Cm

2nd ATHENS BIENNALE 2009 HEAVEN

2008-10-27T22:16:00.002+01:00

The 2nd Athens Biennale 2009 HEAVEN is designed as a multi-faceted contemporary art event, comprising of several exhibitions, actions, music and theatre performances, film screenings, symposia, etc, with the participation of more than 100 international artists.

The exhibitions and events of the biennale will unfold along the coastline of Palaio Faliro, in various buildings and public spaces.

Artistic directors XYZ (Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio, Augustine Zenakos) have invited an eclectic group of curators to contemplate the subject of Heaven. The multiple visual art and performative interventions in the public spaces will be curated by Dimitris Papaioannou and Zafos Xagoraris. Exhibitions, installations, public interventions, screening programmes, and symposia, will be curated by Nadja Argyropoulou, Diana Baldon,Christopher Marinos, Chus Martínez, and Cay Sophie Rabinowitz. The exhibition will be designed by architect and artist Andreas Angelidakis.

OPENING AT DA2 IN SALAMANCA FOR ROCK MY RELIGION

2008-10-12T01:19:00.009+02:00

Alejandro Vidal in Salamanca for Rock my Religion at DA2 José Castañal, Jen, Saâdane and Guillaume at the DA2 preview Saâdane Afif plays drums Guillaume, Saâdane, Alejandro, Borja and Roman on stage Roman Padín, Gloria Perez and Alejandro Vidal

SINGLE CHANNEL EXHIBITION VIEWS AT GALERIE THOMAS SCHULTE IN BERLIN

2008-09-23T00:50:00.006+02:00

Above some exhibition views of recently opened exhibition Single Channel at Galeríe Thomas Schulte in Berlin.

For more info about the show go to the Gallery website.

ALEJANDRO VIDAL AT ROCK MY RELIGION, DA2 _SALAMANCA, SPAIN

2008-09-18T15:38:00.005+02:00

CROSSROADS /ROCK MY RELIGION / October 10th 2008 – January 7th 2009

Interfaces between rock music and contemporary art

DA2 Domus Artium 02 /Salamanca_Spain

Artists:

Saadane Afif, Doug Aitken, Cory Arcangel, Kenneth Anger, John Baldessari, Mathew Barney, Joseph Beuys, Christa Biederbick, Marc Bijl, Dara Birnbaum, Peter Blake, Slater Bradley, Olaf Breuning, Janet Cardiff, Danny Clinch, Tony Cockes, Bruce Conner, Felix Curto, Bruce Davidson, Mike Kelley/Destroy All Monsters, Sean Dack, John DiStefano, Sam Durant, Jon Mikel Euba, William English, Robert Frank, Ugnius Gelguda, J. L. Godard, Douglas Gordon, Dan Graham, Rodney Graham, Bob Gruen, Andreas Gursky, Richard Hamilton, José Iges, Derek Jarman, Nam June Paik, Judith Barry&Richard Kern, Largen&Brea, David Lamelas, Mark Leckey,, Robert Longo, Gered Mankowitz, Christian Marclay, Jose Luis Martín Frías, Enrique Marty, Malcom Mclaren, Robert Mapplethorpe, Dave Allen&Jonathan Monk&Douglas Gordon, Ronald Nameth, Albert Oehlen, Yoko Ono, Tony Oursler, Pejac&TMori ,Jose Luis Pérez Quiroga, Jamie Reid, Raymond Pettibon, Robert Rauschenberg, Mick Rock, Mimmo Rotella, Jon Savage, Ira Schneider, Mark Seliger, Stephen Shore, Linder Sterling, Miguel Trillo, Gavin Turk, Alan Vega, Alejandro Vidal, Andy Warhol, Alfred Wertheimer, Vivienne Westwood, Ernst C. Whiters, David Wojnarovicz, Baron Wolman, X_PRZ.

Curated by: Javier Panera

Organizad by: EXPLORAFOTO. Festival internacional de fotografía de Castilla y León

Information:

DA2 _DOMUS ARTIUM 2002

Avenida de la Aldehuela s/n

37003 Salamanca, Spain

tel 34-923184916

fax 34-923183235

www.ciudaddecultura.org/da2

ALEXANDER PILIS WORKSHOP IN SAO PAULO 15th September

2008-09-12T01:28:00.008+02:00

Alexander Pilis is back in Brasil for some action including his participation at next 28º Bienal de Sao Paulo. I am sure it will be rewarding for those who attend Alex workshop in the following days.

apareça

desapareçam

comigo!

PILAR CORRIAS IS OPENING GALLERY IN LONDON NEXT MONTH

2008-09-10T16:40:00.002+02:00

Pilar Corrias, who has worked as a director at London's Lisson and Haunch of Venison galleries, is opening her own space in the West End this October.

Designed by Rem Koolhaas and his firm OMA, the 3,800-square-foot, two-floor space will contain exhibition galleries, offices, and storage and viewing areas, but will be convertible for each exhibition.

The inaugural show will be an exhibition of new work by French artist Philippe Parreno. Also underway are projects by Francis Alÿs and the Cephalopod Project, a collaboration between Parreno and Miguel Barceló.

SINCE WE LAST SPOKE ABOUT MONUMENTS

2008-09-07T18:03:00.004+02:00

Since we last spoke about monuments

STROOM DEN HAAG

14 September - 9 November 2008

Location: Hogewal 1-9

Opening: Saturday 13 September, 5 pm with introductory talk: Azra Aksamija, Mihnea Mircan, Tom Nicholson, Gon Zifroni / Metahaven 4 pm

Azra Aksamija (AT), Matthew Buckingham (US), Sam Durant (US), Office KGDVS (B), Hans van Houwelingen (NL), Irwin (SLO), Alon Levin (NL), Metahaven (NL), Ciprian Muresan (RO), Tom Nicholson (AU), Jonas Staal & Vincent van Gerven Oei (NL), Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor (RO).

Curator: Mihnea Mircan (RO).

They are revered and vandalized, communitarian emblems or collective Freudian slips, instruments for populism or weapons for political protest, deliberate distortions of history or elaborate demonstrations of our forgetfulness. The exhibition ‘Since we last spoke about monuments' engages the construction, destruction or reconstruction of monuments as ways of making sense of our recent past and ideological unrest. It exposes the monumental to complicated histories and lingering conflicts, to imagination and dissent. It asks, obliquely, whether the metaphors of political imbalance most cities display in their central squares could be replaced by nonuments (Gordon Matta-Clark) that stem from new forms of communality and marginality.

Mihnea Mircan (RO) curated the exhibition ‘Sublime Objects' and the 'Under Destruction' series of interventions at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest, Romania. He was the curator of 'Low-Budget Monuments', the Romanian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennial (2007). He contributes regularly to international publications. Thru December 2008 he is curator-in-residence at Kosmopolis Den Haag.

NEW START FOR KUNSTHALLE FRIDERICIANUM

2008-09-07T14:43:00.004+02:00

Rein Wolfs, previously in Rotterdam’s Boijmans has moved as a new director of the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel.

Season starts with the recently opened exhibition, “Deutsche Grammatick,” by Christoph Büchel. With the exhibition Deutsche Grammatik, Christoph Büchel deals with recent German history and current political and social structures in the country. In 1818 Jacob Grimm, at the time a librarian at the Kassel Fridericianum, wrote the first volume of his German Grammar; in 2008 the same title serves as a metaphor for an exhibition focusing on German culture. Christoph Büchel makes use of the 2,000-square-meter exhibition space of the Kunsthalle Fridericianum as well as the exterior area. With a comprehensive installation in which realities are reconstructed in a detailed, comprehensive spatiality, he addresses the situation in Germany and the meaning and function of the oldest museum building in continental Europe. In this framework the politica, Germany’s first political-party fair, takes place on September 6th and 7th.Following to Büchel solo exhibitions of Marc Bijl or Cyprien Gaillard will bring to Kassel new inputs.

above image: Christoph Büchel, 2007

LAWRENCE WEINER ' The crest of a wave' , BARCELONA, OCTOBER 8th

2008-09-04T21:38:00.003+02:00

After over two years of collaboration between Latitudes and New York artist Lawrence Weiner (1942, New York), the project ‘THE CREST OF A WAVE’ will be presented on 8 October at the Nivell Zero space at Fundació Suñol in October, coinciding with the beginning of the 2008–9 season. ‘THE CREST OF A WAVE’ is a four part project manifested as a distributed ephemeral sculpture, an installation, a sound work and an action – together each asks what might constitute a public sculpture. Weiner's new work triggers a chronicle of Spanish mercantile, maritime and equestrian power, textiles, trade and occupation.

Private view: Wednesday 8 October, 19.30h Exhibition: 'THE CREST OF A WAVE' by Lawrence Weiner Dates: 9 October–15 November 2008 Venue: Nivell Zero, Fundació Suñol Address: c/Rosselló, 24, 08008 Barcelona, SPAIN,www.fundaciosunol.org

PINOCHET BOYS BOOK LAUNCH IN CHILE

2008-09-01T18:00:00.004+02:00

My friend Miguel Conejeros is back in Chile to present a book about his old band Pinochet Boys. Designed by Yvonne Blanco Studio this book is a good document about those rebel days.

Under Pinochet rule there was no other option rather than fight the dictatorship and punk music was a good answer to it.

This book compiles lots of images and brings together a selection of texts written by those who directly lived those years of struggle and rock.

I think this book is now only on sale in Chile but let's hope it's not hard to find for those interested in the revolution.

Book launch is next 4th September in Chile.

NEW YOUNG TALENT

2008-09-01T17:44:00.005+02:00

Barcelona new art season kicks off very soon. It seems it will be quite a dull year for this city arts perspective.

Among the general boredom felt in town some new fresh talents will present his work at this upcoming exhibition.

My collegues Santiago Taccetti and Natalia Ibañez Lario will present some of his recent stuff.

I am certain his proposal will be vibrant and with a new energy flow. Since his solo exhibition at La Panaderia, in Mexico City, Taccetti has been present internationally exhibiting work in different media while Natalia is starting a promising career as a painter.