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Curated

Spring 2010 - Curated

LUMAS opened its doors in 2004 in Berlin. Now, six years later, 11 galleries exist worldwide promising to offer affordable and quality photographs and digital art. Positioning themselves amongst galleries that typically sell small editions of three to five pieces, large-format photographs for steep prices and the reproducible, or widely available poster art that is not signed or attributed to a single artist—LUMAS has found its niche. At LUMAS people find strictly limited editions of 100 pieces. In return everybody pays only five percent of what has to be paid in a traditional gallery. But people are still investing in A-list names like David Armstrong, Michel Comte, Wolfgang Joop, Edward Steichen, and Marcel Wanders.

Out of Context

Spring 2010 - Curated

David Merritt’s works have a subtle aesthetic and conceptual strength. He examines the relationship between the visual and the aural, particularly as they co-exist in language. The exhibition david merritt: sham at the Art Gallery of Hamilton features his drawings, rope sculptures, and video. Though these media offer diverse visual manifestations, Merritt’s theme is pervasive. He has been working with the semiotic concerns of language, meaning, and indexicality for several decades. His minimal and delicate aesthetic is highly memorable and consistent across media. Merritt derives the content of his “chart drawings” from databases of popular music.

A Collective Effort

Spring 2010 - Curated

Apart from scientific research, conservation, exhibitions, and art education, the collecting of works of art is one of the fundamental tasks of a museum. In many countries one sees cutbacks or at least a freezing of funding levels when it comes to state support of museums. In contrast, expenditure for the maintenance and operation of museums is on the rise, and particularly the cost of transport and insurance for artwork places a great strain on budgets. Filling the gap with funds from sponsors is a constrained option, especially in economically challenging times when companies are keeping a tight hold on their purse strings. Hence, museums have no means at hand for acquiring new works of art, which is precarious in both cultural policy and general socio-political terms.

Adoring Adornment

Spring 2010 - Curated

Although the word “ornament” is one of most important keywords of Postmodernism, it seems only a few critics or art historians in the field of contemporary art have tried to find new meanings for this word. Lately, however, there are some tendencies that can only be described as nothing but “ornament” in Japanese contemporary art. First, a work that designates ornament itself as the motif is to be conspicuous in the field of painting and graphic art. Atsuo Ogawa drew a complicated whorl with a single stroke, and he engraved beautiful images on six 60-centimeter square translucent soap blocks for this exhibition. The artist knows that translucent soaps are very fragile and its nature changes easily. But he spent three months in producing this work, because the works are a metaphor for time.

Who’s Watching?

Spring 2010 - Curated

In global surveillance society, the technologies and strategic alliances that constitute surveillance regimes are variously embraced and held suspect, loved and feared. Artistic practices have kept pace, scrutinizing the social, political, and aesthetic dimensions of surveillance. Tapping into current expressions of this phenomenon, Sorting Daemons: Art, Surveillance Regimes and Social Control has been developed in partnership with a multidisciplinary international research project, the New Transparency, based at Queen’s University.

The Innate Calling

Spring 2010 - Curated

The Dreamers celebrates the lives and outstanding work of eight distinguished Aboriginal artists who have contributed significantly to Australia’s cultural landscape through their creative endeavors. The exhibition is drawn exclusively from the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s collection, and includes artists from across the country, working in diverse mediums and styles.

An American Rally

Spring 2010 - Curated

The Whitney Biennial, 2010, takes over the Whitney Museum of American Art from February 25 through May 30. This is the 75th in the ongoing series of biennials and annuals presented by the Whitney since 1932, two years after the museum was founded. The 55 artists were selected by curator Francesco Bonami and associate curator Gary Carrion-Murayari. Experiencing life feels like inhaling fresh air. It’s not like you take a book, read a chapter, and you’ve gained this or that.

The Spirit Girls’ Siren Song

Spring 2010 - Curated

Marnie Weber: The Truth Speakers, The Sea of Silence is Simon Lee Gallery’s first solo show of Marnie Weber, an L.A.-based artist and musician. This multifaceted exhibition of film, sculpture, and collage immerses the viewer in the uncanny world of Weber’s imagination. The central focus of the show is the new film, The Sea of Silence, which marks the third chapter of the Spirit Girls films. In this modern-day fable the girls play out narratives of passion and transformation in their endeavor for spiritual enlightenment. Experiencing life feels like inhaling fresh air. It’s not like you take a book, read a chapter, and you’ve gained this or that.

Re-dressing Guggenheim

Spring 2010 - Curated

Since its opening in 1959, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim building has served as an inspiration for invention, challenging artists and architects to react to its eccentric, organic design. The central void of the rotunda has elicited many unique responses over the years, which have been manifested in both site-specific solo shows and memorable exhibition designs. For the building’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim Museum invited more than 200 artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in the space for the exhibition Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum.

Structure of the Malleable

Spring 2010 - Curated

Navedenga is an installation of the room-size sculpture Navedenga (1998) by Ernesto Neto (born 1964), one of the most influential Brazilian artists working today. Navedenga was acquired in 2007, and is on view for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art from January 22 to April 26. The installation is organized by Doryun Chong, associate curator, and Nora Lawrence, curatorial assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, the Museum of Modern Art. Since the late 1990s, Neto has been creating enveloping sculptural environments using translucent stretch fabric. Navedenga, an important early example from this ongoing body of work, is a large-scale sculpture constructed from Lycra fabric, Styrofoam, and sand....

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