Thursday, February 28, 2013

Getty's second Pacific Standard Time to focus on Latin America


The Getty says the second Pacific Standard Time will explore the artistic connections between Los Angeles and Latin America. "Our city has had deep roots in Latin America, making it a nexus  of cultural creativity between North and South." says Getty President and CEO Jim Cunro. Los Angeles and Latin America follows the first edition of Pacific Standard Time, which brought together dozens of museums to celebrate the historically under-recognised art of Southern California from 1945 to 1980.
Image: The first edition of Pacific Standard Time included an exhibition of Chicano performance and conceptual art group Asco at LACMA

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Billy Apple at Moeller Fine Art, NY


Billy Apple is represented in Howard Wise Gallery: Exploring the New at Moeller Fine Art, New York. The exhibition is a homage to pioneering galleist Howard Wise and features work by Apple, Christo, Nam June Paik, George Rickey and others.
Image: Billy Apple, Unidentified Fluorescent Object (UFO), 1967

After Hurricane Sandy: creating new social spaces and urban interventions at Rockaway Beach


The Museum of Modern Art is calling on its network of artists, architects and designers to help rebuild Rockaway Beach, which is struggling to recover after being hit by Hurricane Sandy. "We are asking artists, architects, designers and urban planners to present ideas for creating social spaces, new housing models, urban interventions and other ideas related to rebuilding and protecting the shoreline," says MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach.

Twenty five selected proposals will be presented publicly in the press, social media and on site in a series of presentations organised by MoMA in its temporary relief and cultural VW Dome 2 in Rockaway Beach during April.
Image: Post-Hurricane Sandy Rockaway Beach

Monday, February 25, 2013

This week at Starkwhite


 Martin Basher's exhibition enters its final week at Starkwhite. This link takes you to our press release and installation views.
Image: installation view of Martin Basher's current exhibition at Starkwhite

Sydney's new award for inspirational fugitive space


Architect Andrew Burns says his prize-winning entry in the inaugural Fugitive Structures architecture competition has an ambiguous presence between architecture and art object and transforms an ordinary rose apple hedge into a thing of beauty. He hopes his black box will become a sanctuary of quiet contemplation for visitors to Gene Sherman's Contemporary Art Foundation over the next six months.

Launched in Sydney by Sherman in partnership with BCN Architecture, the brief for the $10,000 prize was to create an inspiring architectural space on a 20 square meter courtyard site, with a three-metre height restriction - dimensions that allowed the temporary structure to slip under the radar of the local council. She came up with the idea for the award after visiting the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London's  Kensington Gardens. Each year the Serpentine commissions an architect to create a temporary pavilion in the grounds near the Gallery.
Image: Crescent House, Andrew Burns' prize-winning Fugitive Structures pavilion 

Ralph Hotere ONZ: 1931 - 2013



Image: Ralph Hotere, Black Painting (1964)

Friday, February 22, 2013

New book features unedited transcripts of interviews with Marcel Duchamp


A new book out next week offers unedited transcripts from Calvin Tompkins' interviews with Marcel Duchamp ahead of a major profile in The New Yorker that ran the following year. Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews (Badlands limited/DAP) comes out on the centenary of the first readymade Bicycle Wheel, and the debut of Nude Descending a Staircase at the inaugural Armory Show in New York. Read more...

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Future Generation Prize founder Victor Pinchuk pledges to give away half of his $4.2bn fortune


Victor Pinchuk, the art collector behind the Future Generation Prize, has joined the ranks of billionaires who have pledged to give away half their wealth in their lifetime or at their deaths. Launched in 2010 by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet in 2010, The Giving Pledge has attracted the support of 12 billionaires outside the US. Pinchuk has already supported a range of health and education causes in Ukraine and supports and funds a contemporary art gallery in a converted hotel in Kiev. He also plans to build a landmark museum in Ukraine within five years.
Image: Victor Pinchuk, founder of the Future Generation Art Prize

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Massimiliano Gioni on exhibition-making and the Venice Biennale


Massimiliano Gioni has a reputation for shifting perceptions of what an exhibition can be in the 21st century, an approach he plans to continue with the Venice Biennale. "Lately, people think that contemporary art is something to pass the time of the wealthy, or because everybody else is doing it  or because openings are cool or fashionable," he says. Gioni sees art not as the exclusive domain of the hip and the well-to-do, but as a kind of mental playground for the masses. "We need to remind ourselves that contemporary art is first of all a form of mental gymnastics in which we learn to co-exist with what we don't understand."  Read more...
Image: Massimiliano Gioni in Venice

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The VIllage Voice: how uptown money kills downtown art


Recently The Village Voice published a piece on the influence of big money on art today - how it affects the way art is made, understood and ultimately experienced. Read more...
Image: artwork by William Powhida from The Village Voice

Sunday, February 17, 2013

This week at Starkwhite


Martin Basher's exhibition continues at Starkwhite this week through to 2 March. This link takes you to our press release and installation views.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Being Harald Szeemann


The Getty Research Institute has released a video on legendary curator Harald Szeemann. You can view the video here.
Image: Harald Szeemann

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Construction begins on the world's first vertical forest


Construction is underway on Bosco Verticale, the twin tree-clad apartment buildings in Milan that will the be world's first ever vertical forest. In addition to adding an eye-catching feature, the buildings' 900 trees along with a variety of shrubs and plants, are meant to absorb CO2 and particles from Milan's notoriously dirty air, shield radiation, produce both humidity and oxygen, filter noise pollution and provide energy saving shade to each of the towers' apartment units. The buildings will also have wind and solar systems, along with greywater recycling systems to help irrigate the greenery on the buildings' cantilevered balconies, and a team of in-house horticulturalists to tend to the trees, the tallest of which will grow to a maximum height of 30 feet.
Image: architectural renderings of  Stefano Boeri's Bosco Verticale, Milan

Grant Stevens' Supermassive show at L.A. Louver


Grant Stevens' Supermassive is showing L.A. Louver to 23 February. You can read an Los Angeles Times review of his exhibition here.
Image: video still from Grant Stevens' Supermassive at LA Louver

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

AES+F on art-making in post-Pussy Riot Russia


On the eve of their exhibition at Melbourne's Anna Schwartz Gallery, AES+F spoke to the Sydney Morning Herald about art-making in post-Pussy Riot Russia. Read more...
Image: figure from AES+F's Angels-Demons series

Monday, February 11, 2013

This week at Starkwhite


Martin Basher's exhibition continues at Starkwhite this week through to 2 March. This link takes you to our press release and installation views.
Image: installation view of Martin Basher's current exhibition

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Year of the snake


This year the Chinese New Year falls on February 10 and Starkwhite celebrates the start of year of the snake with Shangahi-based artist Jin Jiangbo who is in Auckland to oversee the installation of an exhibition of interactive works, which opens on 7 March as part of the visual arts programme of the Auckland Festival of Arts.

Saturday, February 9, 2013

The missing action, a new performance by Alicia Frankovich


Alicia Frankovich presents a new performance tonight at Berlin's Galerie Michael Janssen. The missing action takes place between 18:00 and 20:00 at the opening of Assaf Gruber's exhibition Every Corner of the Soul.

Greg Burke picks up a new art gallery directorship in Canada


The Mendel Art Gallery and future Remai Art Gallery of Saskatchewan has announced the appointment of former Power Plant director Gregory Burke as director and chief executive. Read more...

Friday, February 8, 2013

Installation artist Kim Sooja to represent South Korea at the Venice Biennale


Despite earlier reports that South Korea would present a group show at this year's Venice Biennale, Kim Sooja will be the country's sole representative. Best known for her installation, video and performance work, the artist is a seasoned biennale performer - this is the fifth time she has participated in the Venice Biennale. Read more...
Image: from Kimsooja's Bottari Truck Migrateurs

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Martin Basher at Starkwhite


We opened our 2013 programme on Tuesday evening with an exhibition by New-York based artist Martin Basher, which runs to 2 March. This link takes you to our press release and installation views.
Image: Installation view of Martin Basher's current exhibition at Starkwhite

Haunch of Vension's unholy marriage to Christie's comes to an end


The auction house Christie's, which has owned Haunch of Venison since 200,7 has decided to close the gallery and stop resresenting artists. The gallery's headquarters in London will operate as a space for the auction house's private sales and the gallery in Fitzrovia, along with the New York branch in Chelsea, will close down at the end of their current exhibitions."Private sales at Christies' have been growing exponentially and that's where the focus should be," the gallery's international director told Bloomberg.

The news comes as no surpise to those in the art world who felt the marriage of an auction house and dealer gallery was an unholy alliance. Read more...

Monday, February 4, 2013

John Kaldor's latest project - "like a sculpture gallery where the sculptures go home at night"


John Kaldor, the art patron/collector renowned for bringing art superstars to Australia, believes his latest exhibition, 13 Rooms, will be "the most exciting exhibition of the decade." Described by Hans Ulrich Obrist as an exhibition like a sculpture gallery where all the sculptures go home at night, Kaldor Public Art Project #27 brings together 13 international artists and over 70 performers to present a group exhibition of living sculpture within 13 purpose-built room in Sydney's historic Pier 2/3. The exhibition builds on two prior iterations and continues the project of curators Hans Ulrich Obrist (co-director of London's Serpentine Gallery) and Klaus Biesenbach (director of MoMA PS1 in New York). You can see some of the works in the show in a Guardian review of 11 Rooms in Manchester. View video
Image: performance/installation by Xu Zhen, one of the artists in 13 Rooms which runs from 11-13 April 2013

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Australian galleries upbeat about Art Stage Singapore


Participating galleries from Australia rate the 2013 edition of Art Stage Singapore as a great success. Ursula Sullivan of Sydney's Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art says: Art Stage Singapore was brilliant this year. After 2012, we almost did not come back as it was a bit of a tragedy, but thankfully we did." Read more...
Image: Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art at Art Stage Singapore

Friday, February 1, 2013

FInalists for Asia's largest prize for contemporary art announced


The Sovereign Art Foundation has announced the thirty finalists for this year's Sovereign Asian Art Prize. Jae Hoon Lee is in the lineup of contenders for the US$30,000 prize to be judged by David Elliott, director of the 17 Biennale of Sydney; Emi Eu, director of Singapore Tyler Print Institute; Lars Nittve, director of M+, Hong Kong; Tim Marlow, director of White Cube and Philip Tinari, Director, Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing.
Image: Jae Hoon Lee, Becoming, (2002)