Posts

Showing posts from 2013

Venice Biennale 2015' new Director: Okwui Enwezor!!!

Image
Okwui Enwezor (© picture alliance/dpa) The news arrived from Venice only few days ago, the 4th of December: the board of Directors appointed Okwui Enwezor as the new Director of the Visual Arts Sector for the 56th Venice Biennale 2015. Congratulations to the Nigerian-born Curator!!! The Biennale will take place in Venice (Giardini and Arsenale) from the 9th of May to the 22nd of November 2015. Okwui Enzewor photographed by Oliver Mark Okwui Enwezor (Nigeria, 1963) is a curator, art critic, editor and writer, since 2011 he has been the Director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich. He was Artistic Director of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale in South Africa (1996-1998), of documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany (1998-2002), the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla in Spain (2005-2007), the 7th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea (2008) and the Triennal d’Art Contemporain of Paris at the Palais de Tokyo (2012). Triennal d’Art Contempo

...and the winner is Laure Prouvost!!

Image
I am delighted to share this amazing news: Laure Prouvost, French artist based in London, just won the 2013 Turner Prize. The announcement arrived from Derry-Londonderry (Northern Irland). French artist Laure Prouvost poses with her artwork titled Wantee. (Credit: AFP) As I posted before in this blog, the shortlisted artists were: Laure Prouvost, Tino Sehgal, David Shringley and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Laure Prouvost (left), Lynette Yiadom-Boake (right) and David Shrigley (centre) in Londonderry Prouvost' installation entitled Wantee is inspired by the artist Kurt Schwitters.  It is a story that mixes fiction and reality telling about a grandfather who was a conceptual artist friend with Schwitters.  The film is shown in a room arranged as for a tea party. In fact the title refers to Schwitters's girlfriend who was used to offering tea to visitors by asking "Want tea?". Laure Prouvost, Wantee 2013 Mixed media, video: 14 minutes Photo © Hydar

PhotoBook of the Year Award winner: Rosângela Rennó

Image
Paris Photo and Aperture Foundation, with the support of Amana, are announcing the winner of this year PhotoBook of the Year Award: Rosângela Rennó An interior spread from A01 [COD.19.1.1.43] — A27 [S | COD.23] , by Rosângela Rennó. Digital reproductions by Thiago Barros. Photographer: Rosângela Rennó Publisher: RR Edições, Rio de Janeiro Julien Frydman notes that this volume, “with its emphasis on disappearance, is a metaphor for photography as a whole.” To make this book, which is part of a trilogy, Rennó meticulously photographed the material found in twenty-seven boxes the majority of whose contents have been slowly and methodically stolen from the General Archive of the City of in Rio de Janeiro. The project focus in particular on the disappearance of the images of Augusto Malta and his sons, who worked for the city for over fifty years and whose original prints have recently risen in market value. Rennó’s images are of abandoned album covers

Paris Photo - PhotoBook of the Year 2013

PhotoBook of the Year Shortlist / Paris Photo—Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards 2013 from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo . Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards 2013 Video by Jason Bailey and Allison Kruger Pierce © Aperture 2013 Music: Is That You or Are You You? (Chris Zabriskie) / CC BY 3.0

1:54. London and its new Contemporary African Art Fair!

Image
We are only one week ahead before the opening of 1:54 , the first Contemporary African Art Fair to be held in London ( Somerset House ). Exhibitors list's include 17 international galleries with a focus on African and Africa related projects. Ransome Stanley, The Purpose, 2012 The name of the Fair refers to the 54 African countries. Fair Founder and Director is Touria El Glaoui, daughter of Moroccan artist Hassan El Glaoui. She is supported by an extraordinary team: Architect David Adjaye made the design and Koyo Kouoh is the Artistic Director. Otobong Nkanga FORUM PROGRAMME ANNOUNCEMENT With aim to foster an axis for ideas, exchange and debate, 1:54 Forum will act as the theoretical substructure to 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair. The programme curated by Koyo Kouoh (Artistic Director of 1:54 and Founder of Raw Material Company) will encompass keynote lectures, artist talks, panel discussions and associate film programme, traversing critical themes and

Imran Qureshi, artist of the year. First solo show in Rome.

Image
  A press conference with exhibition visit and an opening are not enough for this great show by Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi at the MACRO in Rome. Qureshi, won the Deutsche Bank' Artist of the Year 2013 award, the annual recognition for young artists particularly involved in social issues. Co-curated by Friedhelm Hütte (Global Head of Art at Deutsche Bank) and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi (Director of MACRO), the solo show opened in Rome the 25th of September after its opening exhibition, last April, in Berlin Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle.   Born in 1972 at Hyderabad in Pakistan, Qureshi now lives and works in Lahore where he also teaches miniature painting at the National College of Art. His work is a precious combination of past tradition and contemporary. He mixes together the ancient Mughal miniature painting (developed around the 16th and 17th century) with a contemporary approach and subjects.   Miniature painting as discipline came into the artist'

Flying books in New York's Café

Image
Tonight I was just captured by this amazing cafe' in New York. Designed by Front Studio Architects , here images of beautiful McNally Jackson Books Café .  The flying books and the 'printed pages' wall are a good way to look above in search of the next good book to read or the pleasure to find a sentence on the wall, just right for the day.    photos by Maggie Soladay Photography 52 Prince St. (b/t Lafayette and Mulberry) New York, NY 10012 212.274.1160

AxME

Image
I recently had a lucky opportunity to visit Ellen Gallagher's exhibition AxME at the Tate Modern in London, before its ending. It is a great show, the very first major retrospective in the UK of this American artist, displayed through eleven rooms. The title, AxME is referring to they way black native American were pronouncing 'ask me' and also to the 'Acme Corporation' a fictional company featuring in the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon.  Her artistic world is soaked in an American culture but experienced through a personal family perspective and origin. Being of a biracial ethnicity (the father was born in US but his family was from Cape Verde and her mother was Irish), her imagery goes from wigs advertisement in vintage African American magazines and African diaspora to oceanography, science fictions and writings of Gertrude Stein (American writer and poet). I saw Callagher's work for the first time in Santiago de Compostela at the opening sh

Looking at the sky in Rome

Image
I know it's extremely hot... I know you are planning a weekend at the beach... but please, please, please take some time off to pay a visit to the Brazilian Embassy in Rome (Piazza Navona). Artist Ernesto Neto is offering an exciting sensorial experience. The magnificent frescoes by baroque painter Pietro da Cortona (1596/7 - 1669), that are enhancing the vault of Galleria Cortona in Palazzo Pamphilj, are now closer than ever to the visitors. With his new installation, Olhando o  céu  (Looking at the sky), Neto is creating a pure dialogue between a contemporary artist, his audience and the past. Neto is offering the chance to lie down on a carrinhos (a wood structure with fabric and wheels), take a binoculars and start to admire Cortona's frescoes. A feeling of astonishment are pursued by both artists. As a spectator you will be more involved in the action of 'reading' with your eyes the stories of Aeneas from closer.  You will feel time stretching at