Gallery News
FRANCES GOODMAN IN BERN
Frances Goodman will participate in Lust and Vice: The 7 Deadly Sins from Dürer to Nauman at the Zentrum Paul Klee and Kunstmuseum Bern, opening on 15 October, and running until 20 February 2011. This comprehensive exhibition is devoted to the seven deadly sins, targeting fitting documentation of artistic preoccupation with this theme from medieval times to the present. The exhibition addresses the relevance of the notion of sin in contemporary society and how our culture justifies changes in values.
For more information Click here
William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible
William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible is the first film produced by Art21 for national television broadcast outside of the biennial Art in the Twenty-First Century series. The film is also Art21’s first feature to focus on a single artist. The film intimately documents Kentridge’s working processes in a wide variety of media – from drawing and paper cutouts, film and performance, to staging the Shostakovich opera The Nose for its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera.
The broadcast premiere of William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible takes place October 21 2010 at 10:00 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings).
For more Information click here
The documentary will be also be screened at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles on 14 September 2010 at 19h00.
For more information on the Hammer screening click here
Peekaboo – Current South Africa at Helsinki Art Museum
The Helsinki Museum is hosting Finland’s first major review of South African art. Titled Peekaboo Current South Africa , the exhibition considers the current period of transition as one of the most pressing themes for many South African artists. Goodman Gallery represented artists Hasan and Husain Essop, William Kentridge:, Johannes Segogela, Mikheal Subotzky, Nontsikelelo Veleko and Diane Victor all have work featured on the show.
" Peekaboo is not a comprehensive review of postapartheid art,” explains Erja Pusa, Chief Curator, Helsinki Art Museum. “Instead, it seeks to show what kind of content is important in South African art at this moment. For many of the artists, apartheid was part of their own life and its traces are still present today. This is not so very different from how the surrealists looked at and felt about the world after the horrors of the First World War, or the experiences of the horror of totalitarian ideologies that underpin the art of the German artist Georg Baselitz. The experience of history is subjective, and it is always seen against the backdrop of the present, one’s own life, environment and experiences, and so also in art.”
The exhibition will run until 16 January 2011.
Darkroom: Photography and New Media in South Africa since 1950
An exhibition that considers photography’s role in South Africa’s composite transformation opens at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 21 August 2010. Titled Darkroom: Photography and New Media in South Africa since 1950 the exhibition includes 18 artists who span four generations: fourteen are South African; four are from the England, the United States, and Germany, and either made South Africa their home or created significant bodies of work there. Featured Goodman Gallery represented artists are William Kentridge, Nontsikelelo Veleko and Sue Williamson.
The exhibitions eight sections highlight the ways that these artists have addressed South African culture from various perspectives, and their increased presence in the global art world since 1994. “The social and political transformation of South Africa is one of the most remarkable stories of the second half of the twentieth century,” says Alex Nyerges, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. “To engage with it directly through the eyes of those who experienced and documented the anguish, turmoil and elation of the period is both uplifting and thought-provoking.”
A preview for VMFA members is scheduled for August 20 from 6 to 9 p.m. On August 26, there will be a screening of the 2002 film “Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony” at 6 p.m. This award-winning documentary looks at the role of music in the struggle for freedom in South Africa. After the screening, producer JohnathanDorfman will discuss the film.
Darkroom: Photography and New Media in South Africa since 1950 will run until 24 October 2010.
Joel Andrianomearisoa at Sinopale
Joel Andrianomearisoa is participating in Sinopale, the 3rd Sinop Biennale in Turkey, opening on August 14. Andrianomearisoa will present an installation and a performance. The Biennale runs until 4 September 2010.
For more information click here
Iconic photograph by Jodi Bieber features on the cover of Time Magazine
The latest issue of US Time Magazine displays what has been referred to as its most iconic cover in decades. Goodman Gallery represented artist Jodi Bieber shot the photograph and the subject is an 18-year old woman named Aisha from Afghanistan. A beautiful, terrifying and defiant portrait, Aisha’s face – which was mutilated by her husband and his family – tells the story of both resilience and the shocking violence imposed on women living in Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan. Along side her image, the cover trigger contentiously questions and states “What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan”.
“The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight,” writes Aryn Baker in the cover article, “demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband’s house. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn’t run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Aisha’s brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose.”
The cover image has both moved and disturbed people all over the world and, despite its controversial approach, the cover article has sensitised readers to the conditions women suffer in parts of Afganistan. “I would rather confront readers with the Taliban’s treatment of women than ignore it,” explains Time Magazine managing editor Richard Stengel.
Bieber spent time in Afghanistan both documenting and speaking to women living there, capturing the conditions they endure. The portrait of Aisha has arrested the imagination of the international media and Bieber has thus far been interviewed by CNN, and Morning Joe TV, NBC, CBS as well as newspapers such as the Washington Post have reported on the cover feature.
Kathryn Smith at 2nd Moscow Biennale of Young Art
Kathryn Smith’s installation In Camera features in ‘Glob(E)scape’ for ‘Qui Vive?’, the 2nd Moscow Biennale of Young Art, curated by Dariya Pyrkina. The exhibition will take place for the duration of July 2010.
Disparate from the Moscow Biennale, the Biennale of Young Art was conceived as a festival oriented towards a particular generation. Focussed on young and emerging artists ‘Qui Vive?’ has been described as a laboratory of sorts and addresses the limited educational focus on contemporary art in Russia.
The Biennale includes 600 artists from 53 countries and 60 exhibitions at 40 locations. Although the theme is ‘Borders’, the artists were encouraged to interpret it freely and the show is conceptually far-reaching. Kathryn Smith is the only South African artist to partciapte in the event.
To read her Moscow diary on Artthrob Click Here
Kentridge to receive 26th Annual Kyoto Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Arts and Philosophy
The non-profit Inamori Foundation recently announced that William Kentridge will receive its 26th annual Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy. Kentridge was selected for his originality as an artist whose wide-ranging activities encompass drawing, animation, stage direction and writing.
As Japan’s highest private award for global achievement, the Kyoto Prize honors significant contributions to the betterment of society. Each Kyoto Prize laureate will be presented with a diploma, a 20-karat-gold Kyoto Prize medal, and a cash gift totaling 50 million yen (approximately US$550,000) during a week of ceremonies beginning November 9, 2010, in Kyoto. The laureates will reconvene in San Diego, Calif., April 4-6, 2011, for the tenth annual Kyoto Prize Symposium.
The non-profit Inamori Foundation was established in 1984 by Dr. Kazuo Inamori, founder and
chairman emeritus of Kyocera and KDDI Corporation. The Kyoto Prize was founded in 1985, in line with Dr. Inamori’s belief that a human being has no higher calling than to strive for the greater good of society, and that the future of humanity can be assured only when there is a balance between our scientific progress and our spiritual depth. An emblematic feature of the Kyoto Prize is that it is presented not only in recognition of outstanding achievements, but also in honour of the excellent personal characteristics that have shaped those achievements.
Other 2010 Kyoto Prize Laureates include Dr. Shinya Yamanaka for Advanced Technology and Dr. László Lovász for Basic Sciences.
In Context Walkabout with Orlando School Children
Grade 8 school children from Orlando, Soweto were taken on a walkabout of In Context at Arts on Main by Bronwyn Law-Viljoen and Kim Stern.
The incredibly responsive learners were not only exposed to the cultural production of artists from South Africa and various parts of the globe, but also got to take a little piece of the exhibition home with them. T-shirts designed by one of the most renowned artists in the United States – Jenny Holzer – were handed out to all the children to wear. The shirts boldly display truisms communicating notions of equality and freedom such as ‘REMEMBER YOU ALWAYS HAVE FREEDOM OF CHOICE’ and ‘RAISE BOYS AND GIRLS THE SAME WAY’.
Kentridge opens at Jeu de Paume and the Louvre in Paris
William Kentridge’s travelling show, Five Themes will run at Jeu de Paume – Place de la Concorde in Paris, France from 29 June 2010 – 05 September 2010
The exhibition features 40 works by Kentridge – including animated films, drawings, prints, theatre models, sculptures and books – and is curated by Mark Rosenthal, adjunct curator at the Norton Museum of Art, in collaboration with the artist. Five Themes brings visitors up to date with the South African artist’s work over the past decade, examining how his subject matter has evolved from the specific context of his homeland to more universal stories.
Events
Book signing with William Kentridge at Jeu de Paume bookstore
Tuesday 29 June, 6 pm
Conversation between William Kentridge and Denis Hirson, writer, in the auditorium
Tuesday 29 June, 7 pm
“Le temps, un processus de création chez William
Kentridge”: thematic tour by a Jeu de Paume lecturer
Tuesday 27 July, 7 pm
“Les événements politiques dans l’oeuvre de Bruno
Serralongue et William Kentridge”: thematic tour* by a Jeu de Paume lecturer
Tuesday 24 August, 7 pm
Scheduled to coincide with Five Themes at Jeu de Paume, drawings by Kentridge will be presented in the Salle d’Actualité of the Department of Graphic Arts in the Louvre, alongside a selection of drawings from the institution’s collections.
Ancient Egypt is a theme that first appeared in Kentridge’s work in 2004, in preparation for his staging of Mozart’s comic opera, The Magic Flute. The invitation extended by the Louvre provides an opportunity for the artist to re-explore the world of ancient Egypt, but also to delve into the Napoleonic campaigns of the late eighteenth century.
Titled Carnets d’Egypte (Egyptian Sketchbook), the exhibition will run from 1 July – 30 August 2010.
Kendell Geers in DOMINÓ CANÍBAL at Sala Verónicas
Kendell Geers’ participation in the exhibition project DOMINÓ CANÍBAL – staged solely in the 18th century convent church Sala Verónicas in Spain over a period of twelve months – will officially begin July 2010. The exhibition, which was facilitated by Proyecto Arte Contemporáneo (PAC) Murcia, entails each artist creating his/her work based on what was created by the preceding artist, either destroying it, appropriating or reinterpreting it. Using the game of dominos as a departure point, Mexican curator Cuauhtémoc Medina conceptualised the show to reflect on the migratory route of the game as well as its varied associations.
Medina explains that ‘the idea behind the project has to do with positing an alternative model for an art festival, different from biennials, museums and site-specific interventions, placing it in a territory of practical continuities and discontinuities between artists and creative displacements.’
The year-long exhibition began with the eerie mixed-media constructions of American sculptor, essayist and poet Jimmie Durham, which were then barbecued in the gardens of the Malecon by confrontational Spanish artist Cristina Lucas. The Bruce High Quality Foundation (BHQF) – a collective of anonymous New York based artists dedicated to an apparently dead sculptor – created a looping video driven by Chris Marker’s film Sans Soleil.
This July, Geers will take over Sala Verónicas and intervene the BHQF’s efforts as well as the remnants of previous works. Geers intends to recreate the spirit of Lady Godiva, who legendarily rode naked through the streets of Coventry, in England in a protest against the oppressive taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants. ‘The naked protest,’ Geers explains, ‘stands in stark contrast with the laws of decency and social etiquette, a transgression that has ever since been etched into the annals of urban legend and the imaginations of artists. As I have been invited to devour Jimmie Durham, Cristina Lucas and Bruce High Quality Foundation, I have in turn invited performance artist and collaborateur Ilse Ghekiere to invoke the spirit of Lady Godiva as a virus within my space as well as those that might in turn follow her.’
Geers will, in turn, be devoured by Tania Bruguera (September 24th), Rivane Neuenschwander (November 12th) and Francis Alÿs (December 17th).
EVENTS AT SALA VERÓNICAS
CONVERSATION
Cuauhtémoc Medina, Kendell Geers and Pedro Ortuño
7 July at 20h00
OPENING
8 July at 20h00
DIDACTIC TOURS
Saturdays 12h00, pre booking at 968 219 099
For more information click here
Kentridge's work forms part of the collection of the newly opened MAXXI in Rome
William Kentridge’s work may be seen in the permanent collection of the newly opened Museum of Art of the 21st Century – MAXXI in Rome. Designed by famed Architect Zaha Hadid, the building took over 10 years to complete, and the result is a light-filled labyrinth with what Hadid describes as concrete curves that ‘unwind like a ribbon in space’.
David Goldblatt / The Jewish Museum (New York)
David Goldblatt will exhibit at The Jewish Museum (New York), from 02 May 2010 through to 19 September 2010. An exhibition of approximately 150 photographs by Goldblatt that focus on South Africa’s human landscape in the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.
Borders at Johannesburg Art Gallery
Johannesburg Art Gallery is hosting a small-scale version of the 8th Bamako Encounters African Photographic Biennial, which took place in Mali the end of 2009. Curated by Michket Krifa and Laura Serani, the theme of the 2009 Biennial was Borders and the show tackled the consequence that borders on the African continent continue to carry. “In Africa,” the curators say, “more than anywhere else, borders are a major issue, whether they are artificial lines drawn up by men or natural barriers, they generally delineate spaces of political sovereignty.”
Goodman Gallery represented artists Kader Attia, Jodi Bieber and mounir fatmi all took part in the biennial in Mali and have work on the show at JAG. Attia’s series Square Rocks (2009) explore borders as a hindrance to a better life; rendering hope nothing more than unattainable chimera. Attia photographed the youths of Bab El-oued, a poor district in the Algiers where he spent his summer vacations growing up. This is where young people, Attia explains, go to “loiter, smoke cigarettes, fish, some engage in prostitution… but mainly, they spend hours sitting on those blocks, as though hypnotised, watching the comings and goings of the ships that link Algeria and Europe… This beach is the very last border separating them from that continent, and above all from their dreams of a better life.”
In Jodi Bieber’s Going Home series (2001) – which won the European Union prize for documentary photography – crossing borders is not merely a dream, but a necessity and, ultimately a fruitless and painful ordeal. Bieber documented the period after devastating floods in Mozambique in 2000. “At the same time in South Africa,” she explains, “Operation Crackdown was in progress. This was an ongoing initiative by the police services to eliminate the high level of crime in our country and part of their duties was to detain illegal immigrants… in Lindela a repatriation centre in Krugersdorp. From there illegal immigrants from neighbouring countries would board a train which would take them back to their country of origin.”
Fatmi’s video installation History of History confronts what happens to a political luminary when he is removed from the moment in history that established his legacy. David Hilliard – Chief of Staff for the Black Panther Party in the 1960s – is the focus of the video, which reveals what a man who contested a prevailing power system, rose up against racial and economic disparity becomes almost half a century later.
Borders runs at Johannesburg Art Gallery until 26 September 2010.
Ampersand at Daimler Contemporary
Willem Boshoff, Mikhael Subotzky, Nontsikelelo Veleko and Sue Williamson will participate in Ampersand, an exhibition of works by 16 South African and 13 international artists at Daimler Contemporary in Berlin. The show will juxtapose current performative, conceptual and abstract tendencies in contemporary South African art with selected works from the Daimler Art Collection. 11 June – 10 October 2010
Kader Attia at Gwangju Biennale
Kader Attia will participate in the 2010 Gwangju Biennale, which takes place from 3 September 2010 to 11 November 2010.
Titled 10,000 Lives, the Biennale will develop as a sprawling investigation of the relationships that bind people to images and images to people. With works by more than 100 artists, realised between 1901 and 2010, as well as several new commissions, the exhibition will be configured as a temporary museum in which both artworks and cultural artifacts are brought together to compose a idiosyncratic catalogue of figures and icons, faces and masks, idols and dolls.
William Kentridge / The Nose
In March 2010, William Kentridge will be the first South African to direct an opera at the Metropolitan in New York, one of the premiere performance spaces in the world. Kentridge’s bold choice for this prestigious occasion is the little known avant-garde Shostakovich opera, The Nose.
The invitation to direct The Nose follows Kentridge’s productions of Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’ Ulisse and Mozart’s The Magic Flute, both of which had seasons in South Africa. There has been considerable excitement in the global art community about this new production, and much interest in Kentridge’s experimental studio preparations. Kentridge’s designs, drawings, and projections add a powerful third dimension to this complex and enigmatic opera, Shostakovich’s interpretation of a short story by the great Russian writer and fabulist, Nikolai Gogol.
William Kentridge / What We See & What We Know
The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (MoMAK), is pleased to announce on the behalf of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT) and the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (Hiroshima MOCA) the upcoming exhibition, William Kentridge—What We See & What We Know: Thinking About History While Walking, and Thus the Drawings Began to Move…. The exhibition will open at MoMAK in September 2009, and will travel to MOMAT and Hiroshima MOCA in 2010.
William Kentridge—What We See & What We Know allows the viewer to trace Kentridge’s footsteps through a total of 19 films and film installations, 36 drawings, and 63 prints, from his earliest works in 1979 to his latest in 2008. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully bilingual exhibition catalogue (size A4, or 210×297 mm, 220 pages) with full color plates of all works exhibited, supplemented with texts written by the artist himself, as well as transcripts of the three lectures he delivered in Kyoto and Tokyo in September 2008. It also includes an introductory essay and expository texts by MoMAK chief curator Shinji Kohmoto; an academic essay by professor Jane Taylor; an expository text by Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art chief curator Yukie Kamiya; and detailed chronologies and a bibliography. It has been published by MoMAK with the goal of making this catalogue a suitable primary source of future studies of Kentridge’s work in Japan, and also to examine his latest activities in particular. What We See & What We Know is the first large-scale exhibition in Japan to introduce the full scope of the works and intellectual challenges of the exceptional artist William Kentridge, up to the present day. It is an enormous pleasure to present this exhibition, long-awaited by both Japanese audiences and the artist himself.
Exhibition dates :
The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (MoMAK)
04.09.2009–10.10.2009
http://www.momak.go.jp/
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT)
02.01.2010–14.02.2010
http://www.momat.go.jp/
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (Hiroshima MOCA)
13.03.2010–09.05.2010
http://www.hcmca.cf.city.hiroshima.jp/
William Kentridge / Five Themes / MOMA (New York)
William Kentridge: Five Themes, a comprehensive survey of the artist’s oeuvre curated by Mark Rosenthal, will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art (New York) from 24 February 24 through 17 May 2010.
This large-scale exhibition of the work of the internationally renowned South African artist William Kentridge (b. 1955) spans nearly three decades of his remarkably prolific career, with an emphasis on projects completed since 2000. Many of these have never before been publicly exhibited in the United States. Combining the political with the poetic, Kentridge’s work has made an indelible mark on contemporary art. Dealing with subjects as sobering as apartheid and colonialism, Kentridge often imbues his art with dreamy, lyrical undertones or comedic bits of self-deprecation, making his powerful messages both alluring and ambivalent. Perhaps best known for his stop-motion films of charcoal drawings, the artist also works in prints, collage, sculpture, and the performing arts—opera in particular. This exhibition explores five primary themes in Kentridge’s art through a comprehensive selection of his work from the 1980s to the present. Included are works related to the artist’s staging and design of Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Nose, which premieres at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in March 2010.
‘Five Themes’ has previously been on exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco), 14 March through to 31 May 2009, and at the Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach) from 7 November 2009 through to 17 January 2010.
Thomas Mulcaire / 'CUE' at the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada
Thomas Mulcaire’s work is currently being shown on the exhibition ‘CUE’ at the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada from 22 January–21 March 2010. He has been invited to exhibit on the exhibition ‘Weiss’ at the Temporaeres Museum at Schloss Untergroeningen in Stuttgart, Germany from 9 May–19 September 2010.
Kathryn Smith and Nontsikelelo Veleko / Istanbul, Athens, Marrakech, Palermo, Catania
Kathryn Smith and Nontsikelelo Veleko will participate in Istanbul, Athens, Marrakech, Palermo, Catania at the Riso Museo d’Arte Contemporanea della Sicilia, Palermo (a selection from the 3rd AiM International Biennale Marrakech curated by Abdellah Karroum). The exhibition opens in November 2010.