Intense Proximity: La Triennale 2012, Paris

From April 20th through August 26th, Paris will be hosting the thirds edition on La Trienalle, it will be curated by Okwui Enwezor, a Nigerian-born critic and poet, along with four young curators and just in time for the reopening of the Palais de Tokyo which will be the main venue of the event. .

La Triennale 2012 marks the reopening of all three floors of the Palais de Tokyo, which has been refurbished by architects Lacaton & Vassal. The triennale titled “Intense Proximity”  also reaches beyond the Palais de Tokyo through its collaborations with seven other institutions in Paris and the surrounding region.  It draws upon the fields of visual art, ethnography, anthropology, cinema, literature, music, and performance, and explores the connections between artistic practice and the writing of culture throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Follow Daily Art Picks page on Facebook to get more updates on the event.

Inspired by the great work of early to mid 20^th  century French ethnography figures such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss, Michel Leiris, and Marcel Griaule, La Triennale sets off on a journey to explore the nodes where art and ethnography converge in a renewal of fascination and estrangement. Fundamentally, the goal of the project is to shift from the idea of national space, as a constituted physical location, to a frontier space that constantly assumes new morphologies and new models of categorization (local, national, trans-national, geo-political, denational, pure, contaminated, etc.).

On April 7th, as a prelude to the public opening of La Triennale 2012, Rirkrit Tiravanija will transform the nave of the Grand Palais into an enormous, festive, twelve-hour banquet as he presents—for the first time in Paris—a large-scale edition of his ongoing artwork, Soup/No Soup. On Saturday, April 7th from noon until midnight, the Grand Palais will give free access for all to share and sample a soup prepared by the artist, Rirkrit Tiravanija and his team.

The curatorial team of La Triennale : Okwui Enwezor (centre), Abdellah Karroum, Émilie Renard, Mélanie Bouteloup, Claire Staebler (left to right). (Photo Alix Laveau, 2011, © La Triennale)

In case you are interested, below is a lengthy video of Okwui Enwezor, artistic director  and Claire Staebler, associate curator of La Triennale discussing the move from Grand Palais to Palais de Tokyo and what they want to achieve with it.

A Car Crash “As Slow As Possible”

For his most recent artwork,  Jonathan Schipper who had previously crashed two cars in slow motion,  has now made a white VW Golf hitting the wall of a shop painted entirely in white at the speed of 7mm per hour in a choreographed collision. So slowly you don’t really notice that anything is taking place, but the car will be eventually completely destroyed, “a dramatic inevitability that reflects our own mortality.”

Jonathan Schipper, “Slow Motion Car Crash”, 2012. (Photo from the artist’s website)

Jonathan Schipper’s  “Slow Motion Car Crash” is co-commissioned by Locus+ and AV Festival, a month long international festival of art, technology, music and film  across Newcastle, Gateshead, Middlesbrough and Sunderland whose theme this year is “As Slow As Possible”. Watch a time-lapse video of the first and third week of the installation below:

“Slow Motion Car Crash” is on view through March 31,2012 at 16 Saville Row, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8JE.

For more photos and videos, visit the project’s webpage at Locus+.

Meet Iranian Graffiti Artists

Today marks the first day of spring, celebrated as the Persian New year in Iran and a number of other countries. For this occasion I take you to the streets of Iran to meet Iranian street artists.

A1one

A1one a.k.a Tanha (which means alone in Persian) has been practicing graffiti since 2003 and is considered the pioneer of graffiti in Iran . Based in Tehran, he sometimes uses Persian calligraphy in his graffiti works, an interesting turn in the history of calligraphy in Iran, since he does it so magnificently. Peace, love and children are his recurring motifs.
A1one has exhibited his works on canvas in Tehran’s  galleries as well as numerous group shows around the world.

A1one – “Al-Haq”

A10ne – “Rainy Day for the Boy” روز بارانی برای پسرک

A1one – “Love” عشق

Below is  a video interview with A1one conducted by Respectmag in Paris (video in English with French subtitle). For a written interview with the artist by Zirzamin follow this link.

For more on A1one, visit his website, Facebook page and Flickr.

Icy and Sot

Icy and Sot are an street art duo and brothers from Tabriz, Iran. They started their Stencil works as early as 2006, depicting children, the elderly and calling for peace. The Brothers held exhibitions both in Iran and internationally.
Artinfo interviewed the artists over email, to read the interview follow this link.

Icy and Sot – Innocent Faces

Icy and Sot – Lego

Icy and Sot – Hope

For more on Icy and Sot, visit their website, Facebook page, Flickr and Vimeo channel.

Street art is young in Iran and the artists sometimes deviate from the international trends to find their own private/local vocabulary and the results is always exciting to follow. Discover more from Iranian Street art at the Flickr pool for Iranian Graffiti and Street Art.

Nafir – “Perisan Stencil”

Happy new year to those who celebrate Nowruz and a great spring to all.

For Love or for Money – TEFAF Art Symposium 2012

The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) is an annual art fair held in Maastricht, Netherlands. The fair is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year from 16th to 25th of March.  (Take a peek at Artinfo‘s selection of works from TEFAF and read NYT‘s review ).

During TEFAF an Art Symposium was held, the subject of which was the developments in the art market over the last 25 years. You can watch the video of the symposium below if you are interested in some professional insights from the art market.

The video is about two hours long and it starts with Dr. Clare McAndrew, tracking the progress of the market over the past 25 years, charting the main trends from the late 1980s to the present and then continues with Prof. Rachel Pownall’s talk on “Emotional Value and Art Investment” which has a lot in common with my  dissertation “Mood Effects on Bidding Behavior in Auctions” so if the subject is of your interest you can also download and read my dissertation from this link (PDF file). The talk is followed by Fabian Bocart’s discussion on the financial risks and rewards of investments in art (Which was Fiance 101 for art market, nothing new but interesting if you are new to this subject). The video continues to panel discussion with figures from different sectors of the art market and is concluded by Jan Dalley, Arts Editor Financial Times, Enjoy.

Steal Like an Artist

Are you struggling to unlock your creativity? I personally don’t think you can stimulate creativity by following a number of rules, but there are lots of people who seem to think it works. Austin Kleon‘s new book, Steal Like an Artist, offers advice of this nature to people in search of creativity. The cheat sheet is below:

Kleon writes in the introduction:

These are things I’ve learned over almost a decade of trying to figure out how to make art, but a funny thing happened when I started sharing them with others — I realized that they aren’t just for artists. They’re for everyone.

These ideas are for everyone who’s trying to inject some creativity into their life and their work. (That should describe all of us.)

You can also watch the trailer of the book in the video below or visit the website and for what it’s worth the book looks really nice, check out the Flickr set of the book for more photos.

The Avant/Garde Diaries Digital Magazine + Festivals

The Avant/Garde Diaries is a digital interview magazine that documents personal views on the avant-garde by inviting figures from the fields of art, design, fashion, music and film to talk about what they find to be cutting edge. For each article they ask contributors to introduce someone or something they consider to be ahead of time and explain why.

The Avant/Garde Diaries is visually pleasing to browse and extremely elegant (and it should be, as it is a project by Mercedes-Benz) and even though the interviewees do not blow your mind each time with their responses, I find it always nice to discover new artists.

Find out what visual artist David Terranova finds avant-garde in this Avant/Garde Diaries‘s post.
(Photo: David Terranova, screenshot from the video in the post)

The magazine also hosts festivals in metropolises around the world. Each event is curated by an expert from the creative industry, showcasing his or her personal view on avant-garde. For information on upcoming and past events check their website. Their next festival-night will be in Copenhagen On March 29th, Curated by painter Andreas Emenius, the event revolves around the motto “movement” in interdisciplinary installations, concerts and discussions. The Festival will be featuring ,among other participants, composer and musician Mikkel Hess who will give insight in his definition of “movement”. Check out the event’s page and watch the video invitation below.

MOVEMENT COPENHAGEN – Andreas Emenius invites from The Avant/Garde Diaries on Vimeo.

There is already a buzz about their next next festival which is to be held in Los Angeles. LA MoCA director Jeffrey Deitch and Mike D of The Beastie Boys are to collaborate for the festival “Transmission L.A.: AV Club”. Nothing about it on Avant/Garde Diaries website yet, but there is this article from The Wall Street Journal in which Mike D is quoted as saying he’s planning to avoid the “museum experience.” “I want a place where people can come and hang out. Not some button-up white walls gallery with people to match.”

UPDATE: Video Mike D from the Beastie Boys on Curating Transmission LA event in April.

Transmission LA: AV Club curated by Mike D from The Avant/Garde Diaries on Vimeo.

Evan Roth’s Propulsion Paintings

Evan Roth is an artist and researcher based in Paris who explores the intersection of free culture and popular culture, he is co-founder of the Graffiti Research Lab and the Free Art & Technology Lab, a web based, open source research and development lab. (Visiting the projects’ websites is recommended, I enjoyed them very much).

He has been living and making new work in Detroit for the last month, preparing the new series of his artworks called “Propulsion Paintings”  for a solo exhibition that opens this Wednesday at Eastern Michigan University: Welcome to Detroit Curated by Gregory Tom. (See videos below)

Video still from “Propulsion Painting: USA” , courtesy of Evan Roth

What: Welcome To Detroit, Works by Evan Roth

When:  14 October 2012 – ?

Where: Eastern Michigan University’s University Gallery
900 Oakwood Street, 2nd Floor
Ypsilanti, MI 48197

Hennessy Youngman Participates Any One Who Can Bring Their Art Work to the “Family Business” Gallery

The online art critic and satirist, Hennessy Youngman (who runs this Youtube channel) invites any one –and he means any one– who can bring their art down to Family Business in Chelsea, New York to participate in upcoming exhibition “ITSA SMALL, SMALL WORLD.” Watch the video call below.

Family Business is the latest side project for the two art-world figures Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni, the site opened up last month with an exhibition curated by veteran painter Marilyn Minter during which she asked Hennessy Youngman to contribute to the next exhibition. He then deferred the work to the Internet users, as he notes, as a way of “giving back to/and thanking the internet for supporting and watching my shit.”

In Hennessy Youngman’s own words he is accepting among other pieces “big ass paintings, little ass paintings, bullshit ass Instagram photos, embarrassing poems, and a piece of art your boyfriend made you because he was too cheap to get your a real gift.”

The exhibition opens at Family Business at 520 W 21st Street in Chelsea, New York on Tuesday, April 3rd, at 6pm through April 16th. Youngman will be on site accepting artwork between March 30 and April 1 from 10am to 7pm.

 

 

Gerhard Richter on Talking About Painting

“To talk about painting is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too, because you can only express in words what words are capable of expressing.”

Gerhard Ritcher, in the movie “Gerhard Richter Painting”

Gerhard Richter working on “Abstract Paining (901-2)”

Gerhard Richter Painting, The Movie

Gerhard Richter –considered one of the world’s greatest living painters and certainly among my favorite ones– is featured in the movie Gerhard Richter Painting directed by Corinna Belz.

The film is the follow up to a 2007 short  called “Gerhard Richter’s Window” by the same director. Belz spent three years as an observer in Richter’s Cologne studio capturing footage of the artist producing his abstract works. Read the director’s note here.

The movie is opening next week at Film Forum in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village but for now I found these two very beautiful trailers:

In the movie Gerhard Ritcher says that to talk about painting is pointless, check out my next post to find out why. (It just deserved its own post)