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The Strangeness of Beauty
Digital publication - winter/spring 2021
Read issues 1-7
The Strangeness of Beauty is an online project examining the notion of aesthetics in contemporary art. Curated by Ziba Ardalan, Founder, Artistic and Executive Director of Parasol unit, the project takes place on Parasol unit’s website and each week will bring a new issue of contributions from invited artists, writers, curators and art professionals responding to questions surrounding the phenomena of beauty and strangeness within contemporary art practice.
Contributors: Maria Thereza Alves / Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen / Aline Asmar d'Amman / Oliver Beer / Luca Berta and Francesca Giubilei / Aaron Cezar / Richard Deacon / Jimmie Durham / Cecilia Edefalk / Carlos Garaicoa / Thomas Hirschhorn / Katy Moran / Si On / Sam Samiee / Rayyane Tabet / Jakub Julian Ziółkowski
It is probably true to say that from the onset of their creative work, artists confront the concept of beauty and aesthetics, even though they may go against it later in their career. According to the philosopher Denis Dutton, beauty is far more than a passing thought or feeling, rather our response to it arises from deep within our mind—from our ancestral past. Within the development of contemporary art, we know that conceptualism, or the art of ideas, and its many ramifications increasingly became the overriding criteria in the work of artists during the second half of the twentieth century, and thus largely replaced the discourse on beauty. Later, political art reinforced such tendencies and beauty was relegated to being somewhat kitsch and peripheral.
This online series will include 12 issues and continues through March 24, 2021.
O Sole Mio
Printed publication - available April 2021
Parasol unit is delighted to announce the printed publication, O Sole Mio, available internationally from April 2021 and published by Parasol unit and Mousse Publishing.
The universal warmth and positive outlook as expressed in the lyrics and melody of the great Neapolitan song, "O Solo Mio," was the inspiration behind our online exhibition O Sole Mio last spring/summer 2020 in which we published responses to the song by emerging, mid-career, and established international contemporary artists, and the wider art community.
Presented weekly as a themed digital magazine, O Sole Mio included compelling images, film stills, newly created animations and films, together with essays by artists and art professionals, and an introduction to each issue by Parasol unit’s director/curator Ziba Ardalan. The various themes will continue to resonate beyond the Covid-19 pandemic as we delve into the human condition, and the fraught relationship between nature and technology, reality and illusion, hope and optimism.
The O Sole Mio project aimed to look beyond the global crisis and focus on the positive throughout this challenging period. Each contributor responded uniquely to the content of the song and their own personal association with it, what it represents to them, the memories it evokes, and how we might understand it within the context of our time.
Contributors: Adel Abdessemed / Mariolina Affatato / Darren Almond / Aline Asmar d’Amman / Alia Al-Senussi / Oliver Beer / Rana Begum / Luca Berta and Francesca Giubilei / Sonja Braas / Marco A. Castillo / Aaron Cezar / Julian Charrière / David Claerbout / Ludovica Colacino / Philippe Davet / Shezad Dawood / Layla Diba / Jerónimo Elespe / Ana Elisa Egreja / Adrian Esparza / Ana Gallardo / Ryan Gander / Kate Gilmore / Christopher P. Green / Paul Kneale / Shaun McDowell / Lisa Milroy / Robert Montgomery / Koushna Navabi / Navid Nuur / Si On / Dominic Palfreyman and Shiva Lynn Burgos / Oren Pinhassi / Lekha Poddar / Nathaniel Rackowe / Christine Rebet / Eugenio Re Rebaudengo / Alix Roché / Ismini Samanidou / Sam Samiee / Katrín Sigurðardóttir / Claudia Steinfels / Rayyane Tabet / Canan Tolon / Thanh Thi Tran / Sonny Sanjay Vadgama / Martina von Meyenburg / Richard Wentworth / Ruth Whaley / Jakub Julian Ziółkowski
For further information and visual material, please contact Kirsteen Cairns, Manager at Large: kirsteen@parasol-unit.org
