Artworks by Lech Majewski http://www.lechmajewski.com

The Wapping Project is an old hydraulic power station constructed in 1890, situated in East London, converted in a culture venue as well as in an alternative restaurant serving a daily changing menu.
The so called Wapping Food is more than the typical café you can usually find alongside galleries, offering coffee and tea to the exhibition-goers and art passionate.
In fact the space is fundamental as an economical support for the gallery, considering that the venue doesn’t receive any government funding and that it was converted without the gain of any money lottery. On the side of those economical reasons, the restaurant has a crucial role in grabbing the attention of a large variety of audience, which may happen to be there without being aware of the intriguing artistic corner hidden in the back of the main room. The Wapping Project can be seen as an opportunity to show and demonstrate in a suggestive way the historical post-industrial setting nature of the East Thames.

The gallery became a cultural site for the showcasing of sculptures, installations, moving image works and screening video installations.
Moving Walls is a video installation by a renowned Polish poet, writer, artist and filmmaker called Lech Majewski. His artworks have been recently displayed in some of the world’s most famous art events such as the Venice Biennale.
This is the artists’ first solo performing in London, despite having an impressive track record which includes screenings at the Berlinale, Louvre and Whitechapel gallery and a recent solo show at New York’s MoMa.
The installation consists in transforming the walls of the hydraulic power station in a canvas projection of live paintings from the series Brueguel Suite, Blood of a poet, DiVinities and Dog Field. In the artworks taken from this unique digital tapestry is shown an interesting use of 3D effects composing a layer upon a later in terms of perspective, as well as the use of new CG technology to achieve a perfect representation of atmospheric phenomena.
Lech Majewski studied at the Krakov Academy of Fine Arts, he graduated in Poland from the National Film School based in Lòdz and in 2000 he became a voting member of the European Film Academy.

Boetti is popular for utilising industrial materials, in connection with Turin’s booming economy and with the geopolitical situation he was living. In the 70’s he set up the One Hotel, which was known to be a pleasant bungalow with a free will garden hosting hippies, Indian and Pakistani carpet traders. The artist viewed and represented the hotel as an artwork itself and he decided to mirror it by creating large embroideries depicting world maps, the most famous of the series are called Mappa.

In the terrace overlooking the Millenium Bridge and St Paul’s cathedral you will find a thin bronze man, holding in his right hand a hose up, so that water can gently land on his head and on his open-necked work suit. The head of the man is heated from the inside, to a temperature that make the drips and drizzle turn immediately to puffs of steam. This is the last work of Boetti, finished in 1993 just before he died of cancer, and it’s a self portrait named My Brain is Smoking.
The artwork shows to the viewer in a simple and direct way how thoughts are a priority over anything else. Boetti was a conceptual artist and, as the sculpture suggests, his head was relentlessly burning with new ideas, his mind was surrounded by airplanes, loaded up with creativity, flying in his own sky.

All images courtesy of the artist.

Sandra Mack Valencia is a New York-based artist originally from Medellin, Col0mbia. Her work has been recently featured in “The (S) Files 2011″, the sixth edition of El Museo del Barrio’s biennial which shows the most innovative, cutting-edge art created by Latino, Caribbean, and Latin American artists currently working in the greater New York area.

You are from Colombia and you currently live in New York City. What was like to be an artist at home and why did you leave?

To answer this question let me place things into the right context first. I was born and raised in Medellin, Colombia, and since a very young age I already knew I wanted to become an artist. My father was a very talented and disciplined painter. I watched him follow the same routine Monday through Friday from 1pm to 6pm, sitting in front of his canvases and working on new paintings all the time. He was a very traditional painter with little interest in the business side of art. All he got from his painting routine was exactly what he was asking for: the plain and simple joy of doing beautiful things -beautiful to his eyes and to his friend’s eyes. I attended art school during my teenage years, and got my Bachelor’s degree in Visual Art from La Universidad de Antioquia, a wonderful place where you had the luxury of sharing with a rare mixture of social classes. From the richest to the poorest, we were all the same once we were in the classroom.

Looking back, because of my young age, because of my personal history, because Medellin was the place where I started my career –a city with a narrow art scene, where selling art was a luxury left to the same names that controlled the art market. I was a very naïve artist in Colombia. I had this “ideal” concept of what an artist should be. From my perspective, art was pure and incorruptible. In a city where you had to live with violence every day, especially in the 80’s, art was there to purify, to bring hope, and to unify.

I moved to New York City in 2000. I felt the need to leave my beloved city because I had this need of seeing new people and new landscapes. My life in Medellin was on one side too comfortable, and on the other side, too scary. I was afraid I was getting numb from witnessing so much violence. I was truly afraid I would become insensitive. In my nuclear context, I did have a very comfortable life, and incredibly enough there is such thing as getting tired of being too comfortable.

Being an artist in New York has widened up my views about art. To start with, I have no idea what art or an artist “should be”. The art scene here is so broad and raw. You have the opportunity to experience a cultural richness that embraces you and overwhelms you at the same time. This is a fast-paced city and I love it! New York has also had an impact on the way I think of the art market. When I was in Colombia, making money from art was something I did not even consider. In New York it is something most artists pursue. Getting a gallery and selling work seems to be a major concern, and it is seen as part of the art practice. There is no shame in making a living out of art. We are artists, we live for art, and we deserve an income from our art practice as well.

One thing that has not changed is that I still believe Art is here to unify and to bring positive energy to our lives.

Woman seems to be a central theme of your work, often portrayed with elaborated dresses coming from the Spanish tradition yet extremely contemporary. Who are the women in your paintings?

The women in my paintings are usually my mother, myself, or any random photograph of a stranger who enchants me with a pose or a gesture. However, most of the times when I use images of people I know, or my own, they are just part of a composition. I look more for a gesture than a face. Even though my features appear in many of my drawings, I don’t recognize myself in them. My paintings are not portraits, so the bodies and faces I use are there to personify a universal feeling or concept rather than to portray an individual.. The only exception to this statement would be my work “Reina Madre” (above) which was inspired by my mother. I used her face and portrayed her as a very powerful and well-grounded queen -without forgetting her duster and cleaning gloves, of course. But even in this portrait, the idea of matriarchy precedes the interest of representing a particular individual.

I really don’t know how or when my work became so centered on using a woman character. I remember looking at a bunch of drawings in my studio and thinking…hmmm, this is very gender oriented. Then I realized it was only natural to have women so often in my paintings, considering that I did my kinder garden, basic school, high school and associates degree in exclusively women schools. That is a good 15 years in a row of my life surrounded only by women.

Quote: “It took me a few years to realize that besides political, social or moralizing work, it was also possible to make art with a strong aesthetic component, work that obeys impulses and sensations.” Could you explain that statement?

Sure, I received my Bachelor’s in Colombia from La Universidad de Antioquia, and finished my Master’s degree at Hunter College in New York. Both colleges are very competitive, have great reputation and follow high standards. However, art school has its own stigmas and stereotypes. If you ever saw the movie Art School Confidential or read the chapter about art education in the book Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton, you would have an idea of what we experience during art school.

I was pushed to come up with elaborated concepts and be “prepared” to defend my work in front of a class of eager art students, we were following our own paths and having our own ways of looking at the art world. I do believe art needs to have a reason to exist, but at some point I felt that whenever someone would define your work as being “beautiful” far from being a compliment, that was a negative statement. I do remember once I spoke up and told the class that I was doing B work, and to understand B as in beautiful, Yes, I was using the “B” word, and telling myself and my peers that beautiful was not synonym of weak.

If it were possible to catalog an action, an idea, or a literal piece of shit as art, then why to be so reluctant to accept beautiful forms that would follow an aesthetic necessity? I am not saying that art should not have a concept, but sometimes it comes from the concept, and sometimes it originates the concept. I guess what I am trying to say is that art is so indefinable and so extensive, that it allows and embraces many styles, ideas, ways, etc. There is no universal and sole truth when it comes to art. So yes, beautiful things can be art too.

What next?

Right now I am working in a project of a series of paintings to be exhibited in the St. Paul The Apostle Church in New York. This is a group exhibit that opens in September. I am very excited to be part of it, especially because of the location. Having contemporary art in a church seems out of place, but I see it as reuniting two old lovers. Also, as I had stated before, I believe that art brings us together. I can only smile when I think that my last solo show was in a sex shop, and now I will be showing in a church. That is the unifying power of art.

I am also working on a collaboration piece with London based artist Nicola Anthony as part of a project between tART, a New York-based collective of women artists, and The Fabelists, an international arts, performance and literature community. By the end of August, we will be exhibiting the results of this collaboration in London and New York.

More info on Sandra Mack on sandramackvalencia.com

Photos by Jessie Thatcher thatcherjessie.tumblr.com 

Jessie Thatcher is a photographer with a passion for abstraction and complexity. Her artworks are the result of a compounded deconstruction which aims at a re-photography that creates movements and possibilities. The artist studied in California (Sierra College, UC Berkeley and Mills College), where she still lives.

Viewing the images of the Close Series invites and fascinates depicting and guessing what it is. The artist explains: “As a viewer, I want to struggle at what I am seeing. ” Her work is not focused on minimalism, she struggles to recreate a mixture of photography and abstract art in order to stress a minimal-perfectionist quality.

All of the images differ slightly in tone, as a result of the elaborate process which is intended to achieve complexity. Jessie Thatcher uses a particular technique to produce her artworks: scan, print, grid, dissect, arrange, scan, dissect, photograph, print. “In this process, I don’t color correct and I allow the camera to pick up whatever discoloration occurs at the time; there is a great level of chance at play.” The artist leaves the control to the discoloration, until when she has to arrange the imagery. At this point she has to put her hands on it. But she is not looking for corrections. “My photographic work is kind of a revolt against the traditional approaches to photography. This series is similar in response to the post-modernists in the 80’s about what is original?  In this series, I wanted to achieve a complexity at viewing an image and reproducing an image and allowing whatever imperfections take place during this process.”

The artist wants to make the viewers integrate and blend the role of memory in their daily intake imagery. She is asking us to look at an image in more complex terms.

works by: Fra.biancoshock (anonimo)

photo by: Myst-R / Francesca Cavarretta

SORRY, THIS ARTIST DOES NOT EXIST: unconventional experiences

 “Biancoshock è un concetto lontano dall’essere un artista. Ancora più lontano dall’essere uno street artist.

Non leggo libri d’arte, non frequento mostre e non conosco critici: realizzo “esperienze” che si posizionano con orgoglio, e di diritto, aldilà dei comuni schemi artistici.

Le mie “esperienze” non sono tormentoni per autopromuovermi, non necessitano di lunghe descrizioni e NON sono opere d’arte: sono semplici occasioni di comunicazione e provocazione rivolte alle persone comuni; quelle che, prive di qualsiasi competenza artistica, hanno ancora la voglia di stupirsi ed emozionarsi davanti a qualcosa che è stato lasciato in strada per tutti”.

PRESENTAZIONE DELLA SERIE “PERFORMANCE”:

 A lavoro finito un artista analizza la propria opera affinché non vi siano imperfezioni, la critica e la osserva per ore e ore cercando di capire se è riuscito a trasmette le sensazioni desiderate.

Guardare una mia “esperienza” o analizzarne l’effetto visivo non mi ha mai regalato particolari emozioni o soddisfazioni: trovo decisamente più appagante viverla.

“Performance” è una forma di egoismo emotivo: è un’occasione in cui posso vivere a livello personale le “esperienze” che concepisco, entrandone a far parte ma senza esserne protagonista.

“Performance” è un istante in cui l’obiettivo non è più comunicare una sensazione che vivo, ma è vivere il momento stesso in cui si concretizza tale forma di comunicazione.

CRISIS FLAVOUR: 2012 – Milano

Business is business

MY FIRST CANVAS / MY LAST CANVAS: 2012 – Milano

Descrizione “My first canvas”: a future as a landscape painter.

Descrizione “My last canvas”: no future as a landscape painter.

Artworks by: Steven Claydon

Exhibition date: 4 February – 7 May

Steven Claydon is an artist known for his interest in the so called ‘passage of materials’. He aims to reproduce the idea of hybrid in objects, their oscillation between the past and the future.

He graduated at Chelsea School of Art & Design and Central St Martins School of Art & Design in London, where he still lives.

Culpable Earth is held in the public gallery of contemporary visual art firstsite in Colchester.

This exhibition is his first solo in the UK, and it features sculptures, paintings, print and videos.

The artist focuses on the process in which raw matter starts becoming artwork. This exhibition has an expressive title, that highlights the ‘culpability’ hidden in every object. He is representing the relation between the object and the time, something that is true and material and something that is fragmented and “untouchable”.

There is a reminiscence of classical history and a recall of old museums’ style in his artworks. The portraits and busts, the vessels and pots are mixing different cultures and point of views. Some new electronic equipment are combined with ancient technologies, while some digital installations presents traditional craft skills.

The sense of transformation is shown by primary colours and cubes. While exploring the process that goes from base matter to the artefact, Claydon uses atomic models and pixels to recall the point where “it all begins”.

Previously the artist saw his work held at at Salle de Bains, Lyon (2011); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2010) and White Columns, New York (2006).

During the exhibition Claydon will launch a new publication. His last book features illustrations and unpublished texts. It also reveal an exclusive interview between the artist and the artistic director of Tate St Ives, Martin Clark.

[UN]FORBIDDEN CITY: an underground exhibit made in China

Chang Lei, Country of Swamp, No. 1, 2010, 362 x 120 cm

Opened at MACRO (Rome) on January 25th [UN]FORBIDDEN CITY. The post-revolution of new Chinese art, original exhibit about latest underground trends in Chinese art. Curated by Simona Rossi and Dominique Lora, in collaboration with artists Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang, the display belongs to Vie della Seta (Silk Roads), the ongoing International Biennale of Culture organized in Rome by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Italian Ministry of Culture, dedicated to Middle and Far Easter countries.

Home to more than 1.3 billion people and second only to the United States in economic production and GDP, China is a giant growing up at a stunning pace. But who really knows it? And, above all, who and how really lives in there? Those were the questions which led contemporary MACRO TESTACCIO – in one of the most multicultural and young neighborhoods in Rome – to devote an exhibition to the unforbidden – and uncensored – side of such Superpower.

To be on show till March 4th are works by ten Chinese artists who variously belong to the underground culture born after the Tienanmen Square protests of 1989. Pieces of art recounting the story of a globalized contemporary China, facing enormous social contradictions and capable to devour its memory entirely, while developing furiously.

Scarcely known in their own homeland, where indeed they are often obstructed by the regime, these outsider artists like using the human body and experimenting hybrid forms of arts – such as photography, installation, performance, video art – to express their political and existential urges.

Maybe one of the most astounding artworks featured in the exhibit is the big photo titled Outer space – Project n. 7, transforming the geographic map of the Popular Republic of China into a claustrophobic honeycomb with no center, but just full of drifting common people. Such an impressive metaphor of our homogenized contemporary society was ideated in 2008 by the Gao Brothers, pseudonym of the two show’s co-curators, Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang. Famous all around the world, the Gao Brothers were blacklisted by regime, not allowed to leave the country for fourteen years as they signed in favor of the dissident Wei Jingsheng in 1989. As a result, they could not join the Venice Biennale in 2001, with their “The Utopia of Hugging for 20 Minutes”. A great performance – consisting in a mass embrace between strangers – which they finally staged in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo on January 27th.

Among the other artists on view at MACRO also Wu Xiaojun, with his installation I Want to say. A mix of recycled bins, hundreds of light bulbs and an obsessive soundtrack depicting the empty post-ideological era following the fall of Mao.

Simpler, but not less meaningful, the sperm stained sheets by Sun Ping titled Wet Dreams. Conceived in 1989, when he was still in army, the work “involved the collection of sheets stained with ejaculations (both my own and those of other soldiers)”, as a “metaphor of the spiritual apathy resulting from decades of political repression in China”, commented the artist.

Worthy of remark also the canvas The Country of Swamp by the rockstar, singer and writer Chang Lei, representing an elephant plunged into a dark disgusting marsh. “Xiang in Chinese means elephant.” – explained Chang Lei. “Due to its big size, no one can have a whole view of it with one look.” Furthermore “the extended meaning of ‘Xiang’ is ‘the origin of all things”, he added. A suggestive way to say that in overpopulated China on and on the Truth is being sucked by a swamp of falsity.

Bound by a common vision and sensitivity, most of the artists on view at MACRO moved to Beijing in the 90′s, creating a sort of city inside the city. It deals with the famous 798 District, an autarchic area born on a largely abandoned military electronics complex and inspired to the model of Bauhaus, today comparable to New York’s Greenwith Village or SoHo.

And it’s to that (Un)forbidden resilient China that Italian museum MACRO has decided to pay a tribute of, with a totally independent exhibit not supported by any Chinese authorities. A golden opportunity to discover a still unknown world, as seen by some finally uncensored points of view.

Gao Brothers, Outerspace, project n.7, 2008, photograph, 300 x 240 cm

Sun Ping, Wet Dream, Installation, 1989-1991, bed, sperm-stained bed sheets, mixed media, 200 x 150 cm, 150 x 130 cm

Xinmo Li, Lanscape on water 1, 2, 3, Opelia’s Dream, 2010, photograph, 100 x 150 cm.

artworks by:  Wallace Berman, Eleanor Antin, Maurizio Cattelan and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Exhibition date: 25 January 2012 – 25 March 2012

Opened the 25th of January at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) in London, IN NUMBERS­ is a survey exhibition of the serial publications produced by artists worldwide from 1955 to the present days.

Professional artists have always seized on the format of magazines and postcards as a site for a new experiment of design and production.

This is the first survey which aims to define a neglected art form that is only its own unique object and nothing else. Not a book. Not news items. Nor criticism or reproduction of previous artworks.

The exhibition features publications by young artists that are looking for an alternative to the marketplace.

It is difficult to exhibit the 60 artworks through the rise of the small press in the ’60s, to the so called “zine” (from fanzine a mash-up of fan and magazine. It is a self-published collection of text and/or images, usually distributed on a small scale and aimed at a relatively specific community. Zine Culture grew out of the Punk scene in the 1970s and hit its stride in the 1990s) of the ’80s and early ’90s.

IN NUMBERS maintains and proudly shows its snatchy, fragmentary attitude.

At the entrance the visitor follows the path made up of waist-height white box cabinets containing publications. From the self-publishing photomontages Semina by Wallace Berman’s through the rise of the small press in the ‘60s. Continues through Joe Brainard’s C Comics, Eleanor Antin’s  “100 Boots”, Robert Heinecken’s modified periodicals, Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Poor.Old.Tired.Horse, Fluxus, Art-Language, Raymond Pettibon’s Tripping Corpse. Then journals such as Maurizio Cattelan and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s ‘Permanent Food’, and Aleksandra Mir’s ‘Living & Loving’, which both represent contemporary uses of the serial publication.

Towards the end images of nudity, blood and a decapitated goose from Günter Brus’s ‘Die Schastrommel/Die Drossel’ are in contrast with the bright typography of Anna Banana’s ‘VILE Magazine’, with the same aim of distrusting conventions.

On Thursday the 8 of March at 6.30pm Fraser Muggeridge, director of its own graphic design company, will offer his perspective on this International exhibition.

The selection of publications for IN NUMBERS was made by Andrew Roth and Philip Aarons and previously shown at “X” in New York. It will last until the 18^th of March.