http://www.e-flux.com/ Established in January 1999 in New York, e-flux is an international network which reaches more then 50,000 visual art professionals on daily bases through its website, e-mail list and special projects. Its news digest – e-flux announcements – distributes information on some of the world's most important contemporary art exhibitions, publications and symposia. en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss e-flux info@e-flux.com info@e-flux.com http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5438 “My approach is to marry together the two extremes of primitive, untamed nature and the artificial, which is manmade and, therefore, man-controlled. The highest aim we can seek to attain is the unity of Man and nature, to achieve goals without going against nature. Stainless steel, with its mirror-like surface, produces a direct and pure effect on the viewer. It is an illusion that is necessary for uplifting the spirit of mankind…It is important to express an idea precisely using physical materials. Man’s tendency to over-intellectualise often diverts attention away from physical matter. The spiritual inferences we derive from physical matter are frequently directed by social change. This is why I am interested in materials commonly used in modern life. Only when a material has been used in all possible permutations and for every kind of application, does its true significance become apparent.” Zhan Wang Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5438 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5430 Hartware MedienKunstVerein May 10 - June 29, 2008 Wireless communication is, in this day and age, a given in all realms of society. Yet what manner of artistic potential is presented by the electromagnetic waves perpetually enveloping us today? And how might these influence our psyche? From 10 May through 29 June 2008 the Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund (HMKV) is presenting – in cooperation with the Ars Electronica, Linz (European Capital of Culture 2009) and with RIXC, Riga – the exhibition Waves – The Art of the Electromagnetic Society in the PHOENIX Halle Dortmund. Waves presents 30 (media) artworks that regard electromagnetic waves not only as carriers of information but moreover as artistic material. The exhibition treats electromagnetic waves as the medium connecting people, nature, and technology – giving rise today to entirely new electromagnetic landscapes. Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5430 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5429 The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation As we celebrate The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation’s five years of supporting emerging and mid-career artists from Latin America, CIFO presents Interrogating Systems, its 2008 Grants and Commissions Programs exhibition on view from April 25 to June 22 at CIFO Art Space. For the first time CIFO will present works by the award recipients of both programs in one single exhibition. The 10 emerging artists who were awarded grants are: Alejandro Almanza Pereda (Mexico), Johanna Calle (Colombia), Jonathan Harker (Ecuador/Panama), Mateo López (Colombia), Daniel Medina (Venezuela), Moris (Israel Meza Moreno) (Mexico), Amilcar Packer (Brazil), Luis Romero (Venezuela), Ícaro Zorbar (Colombia) and Francisco Valdés (Chile). The two mid career artists selected as recipients of the Commissions Award are Pablo Cardoso (Ecuador) and Federico Herrero (Costa Rica). Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5429 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5428 NEW BERLIN FESTIVAL: WOOLOO.ORG FESTIVAL FOR NEW MODES OF MOVING AND EXISTING NEW LIFE BERLIN is a contemporary art festival dedicated to new modes of moving and existing. Curated from the online art community WOOLOO.ORG, NEW LIFE BERLIN aims to connect the critical resources of a global network of artists with the physical geography of Berlin, as Europe’s pre-eminent centre for cultural production. NEW LIFE BERLIN is taking place in Berlin from June 1-15, 2008 in collaboration with BERLINAUT. Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5428 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5427 Espace d'Art Contemporain La Tôlerie May 6th to July 25th 2008 In the lineage of works by Elias Canetti, the motif of the crowd as an echo of the political notion of community can extend to the history of forms. Conceptually, the crowd results from the paradoxical formation of a "collective individuality," a physical gathering of units momentarily sharing a common goal. As a group capable of reaching the "innumerable," the crowd fascinates as much as it frightens through its physical monstrosity and immeasurable power. From a more formal point of view, the crowd's motif refers to the representation of a whole as a sum of specific elements, therefore to the idea of fractals. It also relates to the ornamental tradition of the grotesque, as a chaotic succession that gives a form of order to disorder. An investigation of the crowd, the mass, or the multitude cannot be made without considering the necessary counterpoint: absence, void, the isolated individual facing the world, and his/her relationship to otherness and the group. Therein lies the first stage in the constitution of a community. From this perspective, The Crowd (0-infinity) is constructed according to a continuous script that leads from the one to the multiple. Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5427 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5426 The prestigious 40,000 GBP Artes Mundi Prize has been awarded to Indian artist N S Harsha. At an award ceremony on 24 April 2008 at National Museum Cardiff, Jack Persekian, Chairman of the Judging Panel, fellow judge Xu Bing and Sir Robert Finch, Chairman of Liberty International and representing St David’s 2, Artes Mundi’s principal sponsor, presented Harsha with the award. N. S. Harsha is a skilled story teller, combining details of everyday life in his native India with world events and images we have seen on the news. He has turned the Indian tradition of miniature painting into a form that enables him to mix the local with the universal. He uses it to draw our attention to the whimsical, the absurd as much as the tragic and to the internationally significant. He could be described as an artist / philosopher and without judgement, enables us to reflect on the world around us. Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5426 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5425 Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis May 9 - August 3, 2008 MAIN GALLERIES / exhibitions with two artists This spring, conceptual artists John Armleder and Olivier Mosset take over the galleries at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Strongly influential for a younger generation of artists working in the U.S. and in Europe, Armleder’s and Mosset’s work remains unfamiliar to a wider American audience. The inaugural show of the Contemporary’s new curatorial team signals a commitment to artist-centered exhibitions. Jointly conceived by the artists—who have been close for more than twenty years—the exhibition represents neither a curated two-person show nor two independent solo exhibitions. Instead, it proposes an active juxtaposition of parallel and opposite artistic approaches where artworks act as obstacles, and obstacles act as artworks. Armleder contributes new pour and pattern paintings, a site-specific fifty-foot wall-painting, an installation of Mylar Christmas trees, and strips of metallic vinyl. Mosset, in addition to a series of his infamous “circle paintings” from the late 1960s and early 1970s, presents a large-scale installation of several dozen Toblerones, large cardboard sculptures based on anti-tank structures used by the Swiss army. Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5425 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5424 ArtAsiaPacific (May/June 2008) ArtAsiaPacific no. 58 keeps pace with the auction records, new institutions and grandiose personalities that continue to fascinate the art world in 2008, while stepping back to examine artists’ relationship with written language and text. The May/June issue centers around three in-depth portraits of individual artists who employ text in their works. News and profiles editor HG Masters reflects on the innovative concoctions of Yoko Ono, the conceptual artist and early member of the global avant-garde collective Fluxus, who based her early performances and sculptures on simple written instructions collected in her 1964 book, Grapefruit. Following up on the themes in Ono’s oeuvre, Lauren Cornell, executive director of the new media organization Rhizome and adjunct curator at the New Museum in New York, analyzes the ecstatic Flash animations by the elusive Seoul-based duo Young Hae-Chang Heavy Industries. Features editor Andrew Maerkle takes a close look at Hong Kong artist Tsang Kin-wah’s neo-psychedelic, pinwheel wallpaper patterns. Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5424 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5423 Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College May 11 - 25, 2008 Modernism: On and Off the Grid Martin Beck, VALIE EXPORT, Dan Graham, Dorit Margreiter, and Superstudio This exhibition brings together works by four artists and one architectural collective that repeat, revise, or reject a legacy of Modernist architecture and design, exploring form’s relationship to history, subjectivity, and social space. Curated by Niko Vicario Act Out Vito Acconci, Cheryl Donegan, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Sturtevant, and Hannah Wilke Act Out presents video works by artists who use their bodies, or others', to resist and repel. They emphasize the consequences and processes that occur when outside forces are integrated with those of the body, intentionally blurring distinctions between the personal and the performative. Curated by Tyler Emerson-Dorsch Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5423 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5422 MuHKA 23.05 - 17.08.08 Imogen Stidworthy explores the physical and social impact of the spoken word. She looks at how the use of language affects communication between people and the objects around them through her stratified installations centring on language and combining a variety of media such as film, video and audio. The artist makes language manifest in the space: she likens speaking to unrolling a carpet. Her work hinges upon questions like: What is language? What do we do with language? What does language do to us and to us in relation to others? Who or what is speaking? How is it, she wonders, that two people manage to understand one another - even in situations where no language is used - when something disturbs the connection between a thought and a word or between those people? Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5422 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5421 In February 2008, five artists and artist groups from all over the world were nominated in Cologne by an international group of experts for the fourth International Nam June Paik Award donated by the Kunststiftung NRW (Arts Foundation North-Rhine Westphalia), Düsseldorf. The works selected for the award will be exhibited in the permanent collection of traditional European fine art in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum Fondation Corboud in Cologne from 26th of September until 16th of November 2008. On October 16, 2008, the prize will be awarded by the president of the Kunststiftung NRW, Dr. Fritz Schaumann. Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5421 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5420 Frieze Art Fair is delighted to announce that the winner of The Cartier Award 2008 is Cuban artist, Wilfredo Prieto. Prieto, based in Barcelona, is a talented young conceptual artist whose works often take the form of site-specific installations. His winning proposal was chosen from over 400 applications submitted by artists across the world. The Cartier Award is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading art awards and forms an exciting and highly visible element of Cartier’s long-standing commitment to supporting contemporary art. It allows an emerging artist from outside the UK to realise a major project at Frieze Art Fair as part of the influential Frieze Projects programme curated by Neville Wakefield. Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5420 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5419 Project Arts Centre is pleased to present two new events – an exhibition and film by Jesse Jones, and the conference Arts Research: The State of Play, produced in collaboration with Ireland’s new Graduate School of Creative Arts Media. The Spectre and the Sphere Jesse Jones’ commissioned 16mm film, The Spectre and the Sphere, evokes the spectres of ideology and amplifies residual voices that haunt the cultural vessels of history. It examines how the spaces of our popular imagining such as the theatre and the cinema are also containers of historical and political impulses. The Spectre and the Sphere conjures up a particular moment in the early twentieth century through the use of cultural artefacts, imagining the various historical potentialities of the time, and how these residues may be present in our construction of the future. Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5419 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5417 Artissima 15 November 7 - 9, 2008 Artissima came to an end last November amid great acclaim from the media and the public. The Italian and international press talked about the fair in highly appreciative terms, describing it as an authentic breath of fresh air and innovation in the world of European art fairs. This success was fully borne out by the enthusiasm of collectors and gallery owners, who for the first time talked about Turin as the “ideal” place for business. Artissima has thus become a truly high-quality fair, concentrating on the works of young artists in a sophisticated cultural climate which is also relaxed and extremely pleasant. Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5417 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5416 Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona Until 15 June 2008 This monographic exhibition by Lothar Baumgarten, while not considering itself to be a retrospective, includes photographic works, sculpture, projection, wall drawings, books and film from the late 1960s to the present day—some of which is adapted in situ to the architectural conditions of the MACBA. Autofocus retina is the name of this presentation, but it is also the title of configuration consisting of four diamond shaped mirrors connoting the diafragma of a camera lens, its photographic eye. Chromatic and geometric compositions are set within the more singular places in the museum, where architectural space is understood as if it were a blank page. Imago Mundi (L'autre et L'ailleurs), (1988/2008), a piece which transforms the museum's glass facade into a prism and explores the pretension of photographic language to establish itself as a universal truth. Reflected and mirrored as a sundial on the museum interior, it is based on and reflects the Kodak printed-matter colour-separation chart Print your own colour patches. Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5416 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5415 The Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa of Venice and the Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea of Cinisello Balsamo – Milan present the first solo exhibition in Italy of the work of Victor Burgin curated by Filippo Maggia. The event constitutes an important contribution to the recognition and promotion in Italy of a key protagonist on the international arts scene. Victor Burgin, artist and respected theorist of the image both still and moving, was born in Sheffield, UK, in 1941. He became known on the international arts scene at the end of the '60s as one of the founding fathers of Conceptual art, working both with photography and the moving image in his film works. His work draws inspiration and shows the influence of great thinkers and philosophers such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Michael Foucalt and Roland Barthes. Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5415 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5418 Chisenhale Gallery Chisenhale Gallery is one of London’s most important centres for contemporary visual art, promoting national and international developments in visual culture through its ambitious commissioning of solo exhibitions and a newly established programme of public events. Chisenhale Gallery is dedicated to increasing access to the visual arts through its, artist-led, community and schools education programme. Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5418 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5414 Museum of Fine Arts Houston This May, an exhibition, a commemorative publication, and a benefit gala cap the 2007-08 anniversary year of the Core Program at the Glassell School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Over the past 25 years the Core program has become an internationally regarded platform, a destination for curators and critics seeking new talent, and a respected forum for artists, and critics to discuss, debate, and develop their work. Together, the events mark the program’s 25th anniversary and celebrate its ongoing commitment to the art community. The Core Program is headed by Joseph Havel, director of the Glassell School, and MFAH director Peter C. Marzio, who took the helm of the MFAH in 1982—the program’s founding year. Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5414 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5413 TATE ETC. At this time of year we can’t help but get excited by colour, splashing it all over our latest issue with Claire Daigle on Cy Twombly, who, as John Berger has written, “visualises with living colours the silent space that exists between and around worlds.” We have much to celebrate, with Twombly’s 80th birthday, and TATE ETC.’s own 4th anniversary, so we’ve added a sprinkling of gold, in the form of conversations on Gustav Klimt, and sensuous tales of heady trips East by Boetti, Polke and Edward Lear, chasing, “the strong second glow which comes in the East when the sun has sunk a few minutes.” Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5413 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5407 The Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts presents the exhibition Self-Storage from April 18 through May 18, 2008, at Metro Self Storage, 300 Treat Ave., San Francisco. Self-Storage investigates the cardboard box and its intrinsic relationship to the archive. It is inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Chronofile, Fuller’s attempt to chronicle his own life in systematic 15-minute intervals. For Self-Storage, a wide range of artists and archivists have been invited to explore various issues related to the standard architecture of the box: the revealing function of the box, the storage function of the box (with respect to both preservation and obliteration), and the legacy of the box in artist multiples and editions. Sun, 04 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5407 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5406 Moderna Museet, Stockholm 1 May - 7 September, 2008 In connection with Moderna Museet’s 50th Anniversary in 2008, three exhibitions will focus on cultural ‘hotspots’ around the world in the 60’s: Rio de Janeiro, Milan/Turin and Los Angeles. The idea is to explore the period when Moderna Museet was created from an international perspective, by featuring a representative selection of works of art, architecture, design, literature, film and music never before shown together in Sweden. Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, Time Place: Milan/Turin, 1958-1968 proposes a radically new perspective, intended to concentrate on issues developed by this environment, such as the monochrome, the zero degree of signs, and the tabula rasa of conceptual practice. It investigates a decisive moment in Italian art, focusing on these two cities as emblematic places of birth for a new identity. The exhibition explores the shift from Azimut to Arte povera, the Italian avant-garde that was recognized, already in the 1960s, by former Moderna Museet director Pontus Hultén, in a unique selection which gives a contemporary reflection of the period. Sun, 04 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5406 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5405 Networks have become the most powerful figure to describe our conception of the world: networks dominate the prevailing structures of cultural, economic and military power. Departing from sites of geopolitical conflict and social confrontation, the Networked Cultures project, an international platform of artists, architects, curators and theorists, aims to reconsider cultural transformations by examining the potentials and effects of networked spatial practices. From May 2008 Networked Cultures will connect locations across the globe for a series of public events, the Networked Cultures Dialogues, curated by Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer. These installation and discussion forums will follow four thematic strands: Network Creativity – Contested Spaces – Trading Places – Parallel Worlds. Sun, 04 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5405 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5412 The Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid From the 5th to the 14th of May 2008, the Rencontres Internationales will create during 10 days a space of discovery and reflection between new cinema and contemporary art, an extraordinary circulation in between different spots all around the city: at the Complejo El Águila, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, at the Instituto Cervantes, at the Auditorio del Ministerio de Cultura and at the Filmoteca Española. Sat, 03 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5412 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5404 Flash Art International Hosting the 7th edition of the international biennial Manifesta, which will take place in Trentino-South Tyrol, Italy represents one of the most appealing world destinations, thanks to its art history and its landscape. But what about contemporary art? Focus Italy seeks to answer this question through a survey on contemporary Italian art. Hans Ulrich Obrist and Carla Accardi “dig deep” into the past, from the Art Academy years in Sicily to the late ’50s in Rome and her relationship with Luciano Fabro, Giulio Paolini and Lucio Fontana. As one of the most representative Italian artists from the last generation, the work of Gino De Dominicis is mapped out in a text by Laura Cherubini, who gives an enlightening overview of the artist’s work. As an introduction to contemporary Italian art, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio’s text follows the main protagonists of the ’90s on a journey that starts from Rome and Turin and arrives in Milan. “Do you know why Italy is shaped like a boot?” Barbara Casavecchia discusses a selection of the most promising and talented artists from the younger generation who have been affected by a ‘nostalgic’ attitude towards their country. Sat, 03 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5404 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5403 Folkestone Triennial 14 June - 14 September 2008 Internationally acclaimed contemporary artists including Christian Boltanski, Tracey Emin, Mark Dion, Jeremy Deller, Tacita Dean and Mark Wallinger have been commissioned to create new works for the first Folkestone Triennial, Tales of Time and Space, which will open on 14 June and run until 14 September 2008. One of the most ambitious public art projects to be presented in the UK, the Triennial is a three-yearly exhibition of works which will be specially created for public spaces throughout Folkestone. The selected artists are David Batchelor, Christian Boltanski, Adam Chodzko, Nathan Coley, Tacita Dean, Jeremy Deller, Mark Dion, Tracey Emin, Ayse Erkmen, Sejla Kameric, Robert Kusmirowski, Langlands Bell, Kaffe Matthews, Ivan Heather Morison, Nils Norman with Gavin Wade mit Simon Tom Bloor, Susan Philipsz, Public Works, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Mark Wallinger, Richard Wentworth, Pae White and Richard Wilson. Sat, 03 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5403 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5402 Tensta Konsthall The boundary-defying and passionate visions that guide the work at Tensta Konsthall have drawn attention both nationally and internationally these past 10 years. The exhibition programming has focused on international contemporary art, and has mainly involved original in-house productions of exhibitions. Right now, Tensta Konsthall is showing DADALENIN, artist Rainer Ganahl's first major solo exhibition in Scandinavia. Sat, 03 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5402 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5410 Reading Room, the Asia Pacific’s newest peer-reviewed journal of contemporary art and culture, launches its second issue “Transcendental Pop”. This issue explores a paradox within contemporary art’s absorption of Pop, identifying a current shift in the infamous fascination with the everyday. While arguably, it is Warhol’s defence of surface, flatness and blankness that has been absorbed and referenced by subsequent generations of artists, these characteristic qualities have become embedded in art’s relationship to the real. “Transcendental Pop” examines how this narrow absorption of Pop’s surface has allowed a paradox to occur when artists reinvest surface with depth, the unknown and unquantifiable. Throughout the issue writers have variously explored this contradiction, something which has the potential to shift the art/life nexus as we know it. However, like their artistic subjects, these writers invariably create room for speculation, without leaving the ground as it were. Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5410 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5408 FRANKFURTER KUNSTVEREIN May 14 - May 21, 2008 Following two historical projects from the 1960s and 1970s - one by the artist Palle Nielsen (Denmark) and the other by a group of students from the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach around Thomas Bayrle, Wolfgang Schmidt, Linette Schönegge, Regina Henze and Karin Günther-Thoma - the Frankfurter Kunstverein will be transformed into a playground during one week in May. The idea, an initiative of Chus Martínez, Tobi Maier and Katja Schroeder, will be realized with the help of the artists Palle Nielsen, Thomas Bayrle and groups of students from Städelschule in Frankfurt and the art academy in Copenhagen, supported by their professors Nils Norman (Copenhagen) and Tobias Rehberger (Frankfurt). Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5408 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5401 Bonniers Konsthall April 30 - June 8, 2008 Tell a Friend is this year’s main presentation of emerging Swedish contemporary art at Bonniers Konsthall. The group exhibition, which runs from April 30 to June 8, introduces 28 Swedish artists. The governing principle for the selection of artists participating in Tell a Friend has been linking and networking. With Tell a Friend Bonniers Konsthall seizes upon our time’s most striking characteristic: the net’s opportunities for exchanging information, networking and sharing. The governing principle for the selection of artists participating in Tell a Friend has been linking and networking. Bonniers Konsthall invited people from its network to suggest artists from the emerging Swedish art scene. Artists, curators, designers, choreographers, writers – who in various ways have been involved in the activities at Bonniers Konsthall since the beginning in 2006 – submitted their choices. Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5401 http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5400 Kunsthalle Bern May 10th - July 27th 2008 Kunsthalle Bern is pleased to present Swing, a solo-show by Gerwald Rockenschaub (°1952, Vienna), renowned pioneer of the crossover of minimalism and pop, design and club culture. Surveying Gerwald Rockenschaub’s artistic career from its beginnings until today, one can clearly discern a tendency, stemming from painting, to refer to images and spaces. Rockenschaub’s oeuvre covers works that have gradually moved away from the oil paintings he produced in the early Eighties. With their emblematic aesthetic language and their clear colourfulness, these paintings sharply contrasted the neo-expressionist paintings prevailing at the time, and they steadily progressed towards spatial installations and paintings that make use of adhesive foil. The early works all represent half-abstract, peculiarly humorous shapes and objects that are reminiscent of pictograms, though neither legible nor interpretable; an alphabet devoid of semantic meaning and with a strongly associative content. For the artist, painting is “a form of representation and a kind of game, a possibility to convey artistic meaning in a stereotypical, model-like form”, the effect of which is significantly enhanced through the connection with the space that surrounds it. The connection between the artefact and its surroundings becomes ever more important and evolves into a complex reciprocal system. Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://e-flux.com/shows/view/5400