What’s Happening in the Artworld in Europe :: 2008 :: 2009
Guide to Current & Upcoming Museum Shows, Exhibits & Art Fairs
What’s hot in Europe
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ZURICH :: KUNSTHAUS ZÜRICH :: “L’esprit pop (Europop)” |
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MUNICH :: STÄDTISCHE GALERIE IM LENBACHHAUS :: Angela Bulloch
till May 18
The paradox of Angela Bulloch’s art is that while her works are difficult to apprehend perceptually, they depend on heightened sensory responses for their affective power. Her show at the Kunstbau, titled “The Space that Time Forgot,” consists of five new pieces, among them a projection of images of the earth onto a three-dimensional object; a computer-controlled LED installation mimicking a starry night sky; and an assemblage of structures evocative of modernist architecture but of indeterminate function. The works will respond to and influence one another both visually and acoustically, creating, in effect, a single, room-size installation. The exhibition is accompanies by a acatalogue that includes essays by curator Matthias Mühling and critic Diedrich Diederichsen.
PARIS :: CENTRE POMPIDOU :: Louise Bourgeois
Till June 02
“I don’t dream,” Louise Bourgeois once claimed. And although her images, ideas, and objects feel half-submerged in the unconscious, the artist describes her working method as more akin to operating “under a spell” than derived from any somnolent source. The Tate’s retrospective (the first in the UK since 1995), curated by Marie-Laure Bernadac, Frances Morris, and Jonas Storsve, brings together more than two hundred drawings, sculptures, installations, and fabric pieces from Bourgeois’s seven-decade-long career. The accompanying catalogue features the artist’s own multifaceted written work, as well as essays by Rosalind Krauss, Julia Kristeva, Linda Nochlin, and others. All you Bourgeois fans, pinch yourselves: This is no dream.
PARIS :: JEU DE PAUME :: Eija-Liisa Ahtila
Till March 30
Emerging in the 1990s—the decade when moving image–based art reached a kind of worldwide zenith—Eija-Liisa Ahtila earned unique respect for her emotionally charged films, videos, and photographs. The FInnish artist’s first retrospective in France will present four of her sculptures and some seventeen diptychs in addition to a selection of her “human dramas,” multiscreen films often set in claustrophobic interiors furnished with equally claustrophobic relationships. Using what she calls fragment-based storytelling, Ahtila exploits contemporary museumgoers’ itinerant viewing patterns in her looped, disrupted narratives. Her dark tales of psychological breakdown (The House, 2002), schizophrenia (Anne, Aki & God, 1998), and mourning (The Hour of Prayer, 2005) play out in a kind of modern-day Northern Gothic. A catalogue with essays by Elisabeth Bronfen and Régis Durand, who initiated the show, will feature an interview with the artist.
LONDON :: INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART (ICA) :: “Double Agent”
Till April 06
Despite the title, put aside thoughts of espionage. In the sense intended by the ICA’s Mark Sladen and guest curator Claire Bishop—who has written eloquently on participatory aeshetics for this magazine and elsewhere—”double agent” instead connotes “doubled agency.”
Reflecting the thematic hook of “art in which the artist uses other people as a medium,” this exhibition will be a roll call of key players: Pawel Althamer, Phil Collins, Dora García, Joe Scanlan, Barbara Visser, Artur Zmijewski, and theatrical firebrand Christoph Schlingensief—and behind them, a shadow squad of auxiliary producers.
Expect the most sociable of shows, then; but beyond foregrounding an increasingly decentered approach to artmaking, “Double Agent” will likely be a stringent look at the ethical responsibilities (and questions of representation) that arise when the artist refuses to go it alone.
LONDON :: TATE MODERN :: Juan Muñoz
Till April 27
Juan Muñoz, who died prematurely just a few weeks after his installation Double Bind opened in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2001, described his activity as that of a storyteller. Inspired by a deep curiosity about the world, his work too many forms—illusionist perspectives of patterned floors; chalk drawings of rooms and doorways; balconies providing a detached, but still engaged, viewpoint; statues of dwarfs, prompters to the play of life; sound works; performances; and, of course, those conversational groups of figures with laughing Chinese faces. The full range of his practice will be represented in this major show of more than ninety works, including several that have not been previously exhibited.
LIVERPOOL, UK :: TATE LIVERPOOL :: Niki de Saint Phalle
Till May 05
The chirpiest-seeming of feminist art stars, French artist Niki de Saint Phalle is not often associated with blood-thirst: “In 1961 I shot at: daddy, all men, small men, large men.” This 1987 statement regarding her early Nouveau Réaliste Shooting Paintings—symbolic executions of the male art establishment—is a window into a lesser-known side of de Saint Phalle’s work, which has been frequently identified with the grotesque friendliness and exuberance of her subsequent Nana sculptures. Attempting to revise preconceptions, this retrospective—spanning 1953 to the late 1990s—will focus on the darker, more brutal aspects of de Saint Phalle’s oeuvre in some 120 assemblages, paintings, sculptures, altars, and graphic works. WIll this approach afford new insights? For instance, that her overblown icons of female jouissance have always held a latent threat? The show’s catalogue features an essay by Barbara Rose, among others.
LIVERPOOL, UK :: TATE LIVERPOOL :: Gustav Klimt
May 30- August 31
To celebrate 2008 as European Capital of Culture Tate Liverpool is delighted to present the first comprehensive exhibition of Gustav Klimt’s work ever staged in the UK. The exhibition focuses on the life and art of one of the world’s most influential and revered artists. It will explore Klimt’s role as the founder and leader of the Viennese Secession, a progressive group of artists and artisans. The work and philosophy of the Secession embraced art, architecture, fashion, dazzling decorative objects and furniture in their search for identity.
Fine Art Fair s 2009
ArtBRUSSEL
April 24-29 2009
Last years visitors: 34,332 visitors: professionals, collectors and art lovers from home and abroad paid a visit to artbrussels. They all agree that the 2008 edition has been a great success! artbrussels offers a choice of 175 galleries, nominated in accordance with a rigorous quality-based selection procedure. The international selection committee places particular emphasis on the work of young creatives in contemporary art. The fair has an international profile of any other fair in Europe, with 80% of its participants coming from over 20 countries. artbrussels, first launched as a biennal in 1968.Compared to many other countries, the concentration of art collectors in Belgium is remarkable.
