Art does heal: scientists say appreciating creative works can fight off disease →
Researchers from California University in Berkeley say studies show great nature and art boost the immune system
People visit the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Photo: Getty
The healing power of art and nature could be real after scientists discovered they boost your immune system.
Seeing such spine-tingling wonders as the Grand Canyon and Sistine Chapel or listening to Schubert's Ave Maria can fight off disease, say scientists.
Great nature and art boost the immune system by lowering levels of chemicals that cause inflammation that can trigger diabetes, heart attacks and other illnesses.
Monet's Water Lily Pond paintings
In two separate experiments on more than 200 young adults reported on a given day the extent to which they had experienced such positive emotions as amusement, awe, compassion, contentment, joy, love and pride.
Samples of gum and cheek tissue - known as oral mucosal transudate - taken that same day showed those who experienced more of these - in particular wonder and amazement - had the lowest levels of the cytokine Interleukin 6 which is a marker of inflammation.
Psychologist Dr. Dacher Keltner, of California University in Berkeley, said: "That awe, wonder and beauty promote healthier levels of cytokines suggests the things we do to experience these emotions - a walk in nature, losing oneself in music, beholding art - has a direct influence upon health and life expectancy."
Cytokines are chemicals necessary for herding cells to the body's battlegrounds to fight infection, disease and trauma but too many are linked with disorders like type-2 diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and even Alzheimer's.
Dr. Jennifer Stellar, of Toronto University who was at California University in Berkeley when she carried out the study, said: "Our findings demonstrate positive emotions are associated with the markers of good health."
It has long been established a healthy diet and lots of sleep and exercise bolster the body's defenses against physical and mental illnesses.
But the study published in Emotion is one of the first to look at the role of positive emotions in that arsenal.
In addition to autoimmune diseases elevated cytokines have been tied to depression.
One recent study found depressed patients had higher levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokine known as TNF-alpha than their non-depressed counterparts.
It is believed by signaling the brain to produce inflammatory molecules cytokines can block key hormones and neurotransmitters - such as serotonin and dopamine - that control moods, appetite, sleep and memory.
Dr. Stellar said: "Awe is associated with curiosity and a desire to explore which could counter inflammation where individuals typically withdraw from others in their environment."
As for which came first - the low cytokines or the positive feelings - it's "possible having lower cytokines makes people feel more positive emotions or the relationship is bi-directional."
Melting Ceramics By Livia Marin →
When dropping a ceramic plate or cup we've all braced for the familiar sound of impact as the object explodes into a multitude of sharp fragments on the kitchen floor. Artist Livia Marin imagines a wholly different demise for ceramic bowls, cups and tea pots in this series of work titled Nomad Patterns.
Inexplicably, each piece seems to melt onto a surface while strangely retaining its original printed pattern. The designs are actually a Willow Pattern motif, a pastiche of Chinese landscape decoration created by an English man in the 1790s “as if” it were Chinese. She adds via email that the objects “appear as staged somehow indeterminately between something that is about to collapse or has just been restored; between things that have been invested with the attention of care but also have the appearance of a ruin.” The 32 objects were on view at Eagle Gallery in London in 2012.
You can see much more over on her website, and learn more at Eagle Gallery. (via if magazine)
Laotian Artist Helps Redefine ‘Contemporary’ →
“Fishing, No. 2,” by Marisa Darasavath. The Laotian artist’s work typically depicts women performing everyday tasks. Credit Marisa Darasavath/M Gallery Singapore
VIENTIANE, Laos — Marisa Darasavath has made a name for herself as one of the foremost contemporary artists in her home country of Laos. But pay her a compliment about her work, and she reacts humbly, with a giggle or a self-deprecating drop of the head.
In 2013, Ms. Darasavath was one of two contemporary Laotian artists to be featured at the Singapore Biennale. She also participated in Japan’s Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale in 2009 and has had her works exhibited in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Bali. During 2011 she did a two-month residency in Singapore through M Gallery, which is based in Singapore but has an outpost in the Laotian capital, Vientiane.
In April, Ms. Darasavath will be the only Laotian artist represented in the show “Open Sea” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, France (until July 12), which is focused on highlighting art from Southeast Asia. It is the first time the artist has been shown outside Asia.
“She is considered one of Laos’s leading contemporary artists,” Michelle Ho, a curator at the Singapore Art Museum who focuses on Indo-China contemporary art, wrote in an email interview. “Marisa’s works are significant for how they present new ways of expanding representation, amidst the prevailing forms of Laotian realist painting.”
During a recent walk around M Gallery in Vientiane, Ms. Darasavath seemed genuinely embarrassed by compliments about her works — big, colorful, surrealistic paintings depicting Laotian women performing everyday tasks like grating coconuts and weaving.
Through a translator, she said she had always been interested in the female form. “I traveled a lot with my family across Laos and saw how women lived,” she said, clad in jeans, a blue shirt and a beaded bracelet. “Those things really influenced me and gave me the idea to combine the contours of human figures with the contours of nature. I also like to combine history with the present, to make it fun but also an interaction.”
Born in 1972 and raised in Vientiane, Ms. Darasavath said she was always passionate about art, including Japanese cartoons and drawing. She graduated in 2008 from Laos’s National Institute of Fine Arts, where, she admitted, she was not the most dedicated student.
“The teachers always reprimanded me for coming in late, daydreaming, hanging out with my friends,” she said with a giggle. “My family and friends have teased me about coming this far in my art when I did not do so well at school.”
It was by chance that Michael Chan, who owns M Gallery, happened upon her work in 2007; on a trip to learn more about the contemporary art scene in Laos, Mr. Chan was in a cafe that displayed a few of her pieces. Ms. Darasavath’s sister, the owner of the cafe, fell into conversation with Mr. Chan and encouraged him to meet the artist.
Ms. Darasavath with one of her works. "She has developed a language of her own," said Khairuddin Hori of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Credit Ginanne Brownell Mitic
Ms. Darasavath was hesitant at first, but the two hit it off and he asked to see more of her work. He took her on as an artist and she soon was being shown in Singapore and Laos, as well as in the 2008 traveling exhibition “Underlying” in the countries in the Mekong Region.
“The more I got to know her the more interested I was in how she expressed herself in the art world,” said Misouda Heuangsoukkhoun, who co-curated “Underlying” and was one of the curators of the 2013 Singapore Biennale.
“If you see her works on the Internet or in books, the paintings feel flat,” Ms. Heuangsoukkhoun said. “But if you see the works in person, you see she has her own imagination about the world and the people surrounding her.”
Ms. Darasavath, who considers Salvador Dalí to be something of an inspiration, said she followed her instincts when it came to art. “I am not a political artist; I do not have an agenda, like some other artists who want to pass on their feelings about politics and society through their art,” she said. “I want to be a free agent, to have free thoughts and not get caught up in agendas.”
In contrast to most other countries in Southeast Asia, politics and social commentary have not played a major role in contemporary art in Laos. “There is still a very strong sense of self-refrain and self-control,” said Khairuddin Hori, deputy programming director at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the co-curator of “Open Sea.” “There is a kind of fear instilled in them about trying to question power. So a lot of art is quite traditional, and the growth is a little bit stunted because of the political mood and years of indoctrination and control.”
And while artists from Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar have traveled across the globe and shown in international exhibitions, their peers in Laos, which was isolated for decades by its communist government, have not had the same kind of exposure. There is also not much of an art market to develop contemporary art practices in the country.
“In schools they are only taught things like painting and sculpture, with installation and video art just not taught,” said Ms. Heuangsoukkhoun, who also runs Vientiane’s Lao Gallery. “Those students then go on to become art teachers and that circle develops, so there is no contemporary art education. And because it is not taught, local audiences don’t understand what contemporary art is; we don’t have many galleries and no infrastructure for things like artistic residencies for international artists to come and work.”
Mr. Hori, of the Palais de Tokyo, agreed, adding that contemporary art meant something very different in a Laotian context.
“When I presented Marisa’s work, it was interesting because it resulted in a debate among the Singapore Biennale curators for over an hour about what is contemporary,” he said. “Some curators even stated her pieces look like something tourists would buy, but comparing her work with real tourist-type paintings, she has gone beyond what other artists are doing. She has developed a language of her own with a kind of sophistication and layering, so she is one of those who is progressive.”
Ms. Darasavath has continued to progress and develop as an artist. Though she said she was not interested in learning how the art market functions on a global scale, she praised Mr. Chan for giving her advice on how to develop and mature in her work. It is a struggle in Laos to survive as an artist, given the nascent contemporary art scene, with many artists giving up their pursuit of contemporary art, and painting and sculpting only what can be sold to tourists.
“Apart from Marisa, I cannot think of anyone who sticks it out and stays on as a full-time artist,” said Mr. Chan, whose gallery is focused on the promotion of contemporary Laotian art. “She really has put her heart and soul into it. Marisa is very contemporary to what Laos art is all about.”
NY Historic Home Commissions Contemporary Art by Yinka Shonibare →
Girl on Scooter, 2009. Mannequin, Dutch wax printed cotton, leather and fiberglass; Ann and Mel Schaffer Family Collection. © Yinka Shonibare. (Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/ Shanghai).
One of New York’s historic homes has taken the unusual step of commissioning a series of Contemporary art works for an upcoming exhibition to celebrate its 250th anniversary. In May, the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights will open “Colonial Arrangements,” by London-born, Lagos, Nigeria-raised textile artist Yinka Shonibare.
As part of the exhibition, Shonibare will create an apparition of the storied home’s most famous resident: Eliza Jumel (1775-1865). The widow of Aaron Burr, and at one point one of the richest woman in New York, Jumel was a colorful and polarizing figure with ties to Napoleon’s France. She lived mostly in lower Manhattan but the 160th Street residence, on a breezy hill with views of the Harlem and Hudson Rivers, was her summer home. George Washington also slept there, since the then-General headquartered the colonial army in the mansion in the fall of 1776.
The apparition, created using theatrical techniques of her time, will be installed in Morris-Jumel’s 18th and 19th century rooms along with sculptures of children in costume from a 2009 series by Shonibare. It’s a bit of a “get” for the institution as Shonibare, who often adds MBE to his name to denote Member of the British Empire, was a finalist for that nation’s prestigious Turner Prize in 2004.
He is represented in New York by James Cohan Gallery.
Morris-Jumel Mansion.
According to the Morris-Jumel, “Shonibare’s art explores identity, race, gender and the cross-pollination of cultures through the use of life-sized mannequins adorned in period costumes” crafted of Dutch wax fabric (a colorful, Indonesian textile introduced to Africa by British and Dutch merchants and colonizers).
The exhibition runs May 1 through August 31, 2015.
Sun, Sand and Art: Goa is Transforming into A Hub For Contemporary Art and Culture →
One of the many venues of the Goa Photo 2015 exhibition was the Reis Magos Fort (Photos: Express photo by Pavan Khengre)
In a few days from now, visitors at the Goa airport will be witness to a quiet makeover. Instead of the colourful ads reminding travellers that they have reached the land of sun and sand, there will be 4×8 ft black-and-white mounted photographs – a fisherman’s catch, paddy fields, a bustling market – that showcase the other, lesser-known Goa. It’s a sign of the vibrant and growing contemporary art and culture presence in the state.
Lush paddy fields flank the Aldano Road, about 25 km away from the town centre of Panjim. It leads to a sprawling heritage property. Near the pool in the villa, students try hard to get their angles and lighting right as they set up a cola can for a shoot. Guiding them is Shantanu Sheroy, a photographer known for his work in Bollywood and advertising. Sheroy, along with his wife, erstwhile actress Kimmy Katkar, and their son, relocated from Pune to Goa a year ago to set up The One School.
Gallery Gitanjali (Photos: Express photo by Pavan Khengre)
With labs full of the latest equipment, this is every budding photographer’s dream. Thirty-six students have enrolled from all over the country for a three-year degree course. “We have also just concluded a photography exhibition that saw The Telegraph, London, give us exclusive rights for 48 hours to post for their Instagram handle,” says Sheroy, as he shows us around. The school hosted the Goa International Photography Festival last month that saw about 5,000 visitors in two weeks. The Goa tourism department chose 41 frames shot by the students to be mounted on the walls of the Dabolim airport.
A few kilometres away, another experiment is slowly taking shape. An artist-in-residence facility has been set up by well-known performance artist Nikhil Chopra, who combines theatre, painting, live art, sculpture and photography in his shows. Like Sheroy, Chopra recently moved to Goa and set up the Heritage Studio that allows painters, writers, musicians, sculptors and theatre artists to live and work at the picturesque premises. Tucked away at the end of a narrow lane in Siolim, it is one of Goa’s best-kept secrets. “It’s barely four months old, but a stream of artistes have been working out of here. They recharge their creative juices or build up a new body of work,” says Kanchi Mehta, art historian, who curated a show for one of Goa’s best known art galleries, Sunaparanta, last December. Mehta, along with her artist husband, said goodbye to Mumbai a year-and-half ago and shifted to Goa to get away from “the city life, the rat race and the traffic”. She calls it the best decision of her life.
Photography students at The One School (Photos: Express photo by Pavan Khengre)
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One of the many venues of the Goa Photo 2015 exhibition was the Reis Magos Fort (Photos: Express photo by Pavan Khengre)
Written by Sunanda Mehta | New Delhi | Published on:March 15, 2015 1:00 am
In a few days from now, visitors at the Goa airport will be witness to a quiet makeover. Instead of the colourful ads reminding travellers that they have reached the land of sun and sand, there will be 4×8 ft black-and-white mounted photographs – a fisherman’s catch, paddy fields, a bustling market – that showcase the other, lesser-known Goa. It’s a sign of the vibrant and growing contemporary art and culture presence in the state.
Lush paddy fields flank the Aldano Road, about 25 km away from the town centre of Panjim. It leads to a sprawling heritage property. Near the pool in the villa, students try hard to get their angles and lighting right as they set up a cola can for a shoot. Guiding them is Shantanu Sheroy, a photographer known for his work in Bollywood and advertising. Sheroy, along with his wife, erstwhile actress Kimmy Katkar, and their son, relocated from Pune to Goa a year ago to set up The One School.
Gallery Gitanjali (Photos: Express photo by Pavan Khengre)
With labs full of the latest equipment, this is every budding photographer’s dream. Thirty-six students have enrolled from all over the country for a three-year degree course. “We have also just concluded a photography exhibition that saw The Telegraph, London, give us exclusive rights for 48 hours to post for their Instagram handle,” says Sheroy, as he shows us around. The school hosted the Goa International Photography Festival last month that saw about 5,000 visitors in two weeks. The Goa tourism department chose 41 frames shot by the students to be mounted on the walls of the Dabolim airport.
A few kilometres away, another experiment is slowly taking shape. An artist-in-residence facility has been set up by well-known performance artist Nikhil Chopra, who combines theatre, painting, live art, sculpture and photography in his shows. Like Sheroy, Chopra recently moved to Goa and set up the Heritage Studio that allows painters, writers, musicians, sculptors and theatre artists to live and work at the picturesque premises. Tucked away at the end of a narrow lane in Siolim, it is one of Goa’s best-kept secrets. “It’s barely four months old, but a stream of artistes have been working out of here. They recharge their creative juices or build up a new body of work,” says Kanchi Mehta, art historian, who curated a show for one of Goa’s best known art galleries, Sunaparanta, last December. Mehta, along with her artist husband, said goodbye to Mumbai a year-and-half ago and shifted to Goa to get away from “the city life, the rat race and the traffic”. She calls it the best decision of her life.
Photography students at The One School (Photos: Express photo by Pavan Khengre)
Chopra, Sheroy and Mehta are not the only recent imports to the beach state. They seem to be part of a larger silent movement that has seen creative people gravitate to the state, drawn to its natural beauty — from writer Amitav Ghosh and photographer Dayanita Singh to multi-disciplinary artist Tejal Shah and photographer Prashant Panjiar.
The metamorphosis from tourist to art hub has come about through a combination of local interest and an influx of creative minds. Leading the local brigade is Sunaparanta, the art gallery launched in 2009 by the Salgaoncar family.
Located in a beautiful heritage bungalow in Altinho, and currently hosting “Sensorium”, a festival of arts, literature and ideas that began in December, Sunaparanta has been a torchbearer for the art scene in Goa. Its current festival marks an interaction between photography and other creative mediums, and features the works of stalwarts such as Sooni Taraporevala and Dayanita Singh, as well as those of recently-selected Magnum photographer Sohrab Hura.
Goa also hosted the Goa Photo 2015 exhibition organised by Gallery Gitanjali, probably the most important name in art appreciation in the state today. The festival, which ended last week, was spread over a dozen venues all over the state and showcased the works of a bunch of local, national and international photographers. From the Old Secretariat building in Panjim to the bustling Kala Academy, from the breathtaking Reis Magos Fort (where Mario Miranda’s works are permanently exhibited) to Gallery Gitanjali, portraits explored the theme of “The Other”.
Artist Subodh Kerkar (Photos: Express photo by Pavan Khengre)
Behind it was Miriam Sukhija, a 35-year-old management professional who is a part of the Salgaoncar family. She says she has noticed a growing interest in art over the past couple of years. “For the longest time, all we had was the government-owned Kala Academy, which though very active, was far from adequate. One of the earliest galleries that started was the Flying Dutchman. Then we came up in 1994, followed by Sunaparanta and the Art Chamber. Now,
we have a host of small but niche galleries, a bunch of art festivals, several photo exhibitions and literary festivals. Finally, Goa is reclaiming its heritage,” says Sukhija.
What gives it an edge over Mumbai and Delhi? “In Mumbai, you are lost in the crowd and traffic. In Delhi, the distance and crowds put you off. Pune doesn’t have a big enough market, while Bangalore is going the Delhi way. Goa, on the other hand, has this international audience, a touch of the exotic and is an easygoing place. It has the best possible natural backdrop for photography and painting,” says Sheroy.
One of the most anticipated events this year is the launch of a private art space by artist Subodh Kerkar. He has decided to call it the Museum of Goa or MOG (it means “love” in Konkani). “Our first exhibition will be in November on the theme of the history of Goa,” says Kerkar. Located near Calangute, the art space will focus on contemporary art. “A change is happening, and it is high time it did. The best part is that all of this is happening without any help from the government,” says Kerkar.
Basking in the transformation of the land that produced art giants like FN Souza and VS Gaitonde, are not just artists, but also curators like Apurva Kulkarni. He has been working for three decades, but says that it’s only in the last five years that the money has started to flow. He attributes the change to the interest being taken by local art collectors like the Bandekars and Salgaoncars and the patronage they extend.
Photographer Prashant Panjiar, who directed “Sensorium” and is in the process of setting up his house in Goa, sees a change in the people moving to the state. “It’s not that Goa has never attracted artistes and musicians. But the difference is that earlier these people would come here looking for seclusion and shut themselves up in pursuit of their art. Now, the younger crop is coming here not just to settle down, but actively engage with the land, its people and change the way things work. That’s propelling the transformation,” he says. Sheroy says 70 per cent of his students are looking to stay back in Goa. “Where else would they get such a setting for their art?” he says.
Because of its popularity among international tourists, Goa has a captive audience for many cultural activities. Rudolf Ludwig and his Goan wife Yulanda Kammermein, who run the Art Chamber in the state, regularly get musicians from all over the world to perform.
Both bemused and pleased at the turn of events is architect Gerard D’Cunha, who restored the Reis Magos fort, and has been waiting for Goa to come into its own for many years now. “Goa has natural beauty, good connectivity, amicable people, and a much easier pace of life. Now we also have IFFI, theatre, music, photography. I think it was inevitable that Goa should have become a leading art centre. It’s just taken too much time,” he says.
TEFAF Maastricht Lures Collectors with Contemporary Art in a Sydney Picasso-curated Show →
"Night Fishing" at TEFAF 2015
Photo: Loraine Bodewes
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TEFAF, the grande dame of art fairs, opened its doors in Maastricht yesterday, welcoming throngs of well-heeled collectors. The mood on the floor was as cheery as the extravagant tulip displays that have become something of a TEFAF signature. (To gain some perspective about the mood, see World Art Market Passes €51 Billion Says 2015 TEFAF Art Market Report and 40 Percent of World Gallery Art Sales Made at Fairs and Other Key Findings in the TEFAF Art Market Report 2015.)
Until March 22, over 270 dealers are presenting their wares, running the gamut from antiquities to modern painting, via jewelry, furniture, and tribal art. TEFAF is a very grown-up affair. Many of the people who come to Maastricht have been coming for years. Most museum groups have made it a must on their fair dairy, whereby institutional curators are increasingly finding themselves in the role of art advisers.
“We take collectors here and we give them advice on what to acquire for themselves," the Rijksmuseum's Director of Collections Taco Dibbits told artnet News, “and maybe one day we will see these paintings or objects in the museum."
Buyers here aren't just collectors, they are true connoisseurs, and the quality on display reflects the high level expected by this demanding crowd.
Market Shifts towards Modern Art
Among the highlights this year are the extraordinary Liesborn Gospels, a book of prayers dating back to the 10th century presented by Les Enluminures ($6.5 million). At the booth of Manheim textile dealer Franz Bausback, there's a South German antique carpet collection featuring rare examples of oriental rugs from the 15th to the 17th century and collectively priced at €5 million ($5.3 million). The Maas Gallery came with a demure Devout Childhood of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary by the Pre-Raphaelite Charles Allston Collins, which is going for €2.5 million.
Crowning the lot is Vincent Van Gogh's landscape watercolor Le Moulin d'Alphonse Daudet à Fontvielle (1888), which comes with the healthy price tag of €10 million ($10.6 million) at the booth of London's Dickinson, right by the fair's grand entrance (see $10 Million Van Gogh Drawing To Be Unveiled at TEFAF Maastricht for the First Time in 100 Years; and for news about the New York branch of Dickinson, see Dickinson Gallery Wows with French Artist Claude Viallat.) Although more modest than the Moulin de la Galette (1887) oil painting the gallery brought last year, it is bound to provoke excitement, having not been seen on the market for a century (see TEFAF 2014: Sales Swift, Confidence High at the Mother of All Art Fairs).
The last example is indicative of a general trend. Although TEFAF is best known for its Old Masters dealers, the biggest money is actually in the modern market. And contemporary art might soon follow—or so the organizers hope.
This is very much in tune with the global art market as a whole. Gauguin recently commanded the highest price ever paid for an artwork when it was snapped up by Qatar Museums for $300 million (see Paul Gauguin Painting Sells for Record $300 Million to Qatar Museums in Private Sale). And, according to Dr Clare McAndrews's just-released TEFAF Art Market Report, the modern and contemporary market represents almost half (48 percent) of the global fine art auction market (see Clare McAndrew Explains How She Prepares the TEFAF Art Market Report).
"Night Fishing" Gathers Contemporary Giants
Clearly TEFAF won't be left out of the party. And with a modern section that has been going strong since 1991, it has now set its eyes the contemporary crew. In this edition, the fair launched a new section-cum-exhibition curated by Sydney Picasso. Night Fishing gathers eight artists: Georg Baselitz, presented by Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac; Tony Cragg (Buchmann Galerie), Cristina Iglesias (Galeria Elba Benitez), Wolfgang Laib (Konrad Fischer), Nam June Paik (Galerie Hans Mayer), Markus Raetz (Farideh Cadot Associés), Mark Manders (Zeno X Gallery), and Richard Deacon (Galerie Thomas Schulte).
“It's about the present, TEFAF should be and is about the present," Picasso told artnet News.
She picked the artists−the list is meant to lure collectors like fishermen's lamps attract fish at night, hence the section's title−and the pieces were chosen in conversation with the dealers, none of whom had exhibited at the fair before. The result is more than convincing. Within one fairly modest section of the fair, Picasso has managed to curate a show of large, in some instances monumental, pieces that wouldn't feel out of place in a museum. Somehow, the little white desks protruding from the walls hardly disrupt the experience. Institutional clients take note.
"Night Fishing" at TEFAF 2015
Photo: Loraine Bodewes
Laib's brass ships sailing in a sea of rice above small wax and granite houses, themselves surrounded by rice fields, is a particular standout. It elegantly converses with Richard Deacon's bundle of turned wood, Remember II (2012). New-media pioneer Paik's Diamond Sat (1998) and Venus (1990) nod to the electronic onslaught that he so presciently anticipated, while clay busts by Manders−who represented the Netherlands at the last Venice Biennale−look back, as if turning to the antiques presented only a few aisles away.
“The strength of Maastricht is the continuous nature of what's here," James Roundell, founding director of Dickinson and chairman of TEFAF's modern committee told artnet News. “We shouldn't seek to be a cutting-edge contemporary fair to rival Frieze or Art Basel but we should show the continuation of art."
It isn't the first time that the fair has tried to win over contemporary dealers, and several major galleries dipped their toes in TEFAF at one stage or another: the now-defunct Haunch of Venison in 2008, Hauser & Wirth in 2009, even Gagosian in 2013. They didn't come back.
TEFAF Dates Clash with Art Basel Hong Kong
This year, the fair has had to work extra hard as Art Basel Hong Kong's new dates clash with Maastricht (see Five Theories on Why Art Basel in Hong Kong Is Moving to March Next Year). While it's obvious why the mega fair might want to allow more time between its Chinese and Swiss editions, the decision to stage Hong Kong at the same time as Maastricht surprised many in the industry.
“They said they were not aware that TEFAF was precisely on this date, but we find that hard to believe," said Roundell, wryly.
"Night Fishing" at TEFAF 2015
Photo: Loraine Bodewes
It is hard to know whether Art Basel was so confident its collector base didn't overlap with TEFAF's—and that, should they have exhibitors in common, those would favor the alluring Chinese market—that it judged the Maastricht fair irrelevant, or whether that was a calculated move to stifle the competition.
In any case, the change of date left several dealers with an impossible fair calendar. Emmanuel Perrotin, who, as Picasso said, wanted to take part in Night Fishing, had to renounce for lack of personnel. Whether or not this also put off Lisson Gallery (see London's Lisson Gallery Is Coming to New York), Tony Cragg's main dealer, hasn't been confirmed–but it's not implausible.
While Roundell assured artnet News that a few dealers had chosen Maastricht over Hong Kong, a handful of troupers–Rossi & Rossi, Marlborough Fine Art, Ben Brown among them–are doing both.
“We're all trying to manage somehow, because it's really impossible to be at the two openings," said Fabio Rossi, whose offering ranges from an impressive gilded Vajradhara figure (primordial Buddha) to collages by the contemporary Tibetan artist Tenzing Rigdol. “So I chose to be here and my cousin is in Hong Kong."
Next year should be easier for dealers as the two giant fairs won't clash. But only time will tell if TEFAF's latest attempt to carve out a niche in the contemporary world is a winning ticket.
Ankara Hosts First int’l Contemporary Art Fair →
The Turkish capital is currently hosting its first-ever international contemporary art fair at the ATO Congresium International Convention and Exhibition Center, presenting work by 200 artists from Turkey and abroad.
Around 2,000 pieces ranging from paintings, sculptures and prints to photography and works of conceptual art are showcased in booths run by 70 art galleries at the five-day Art Ankara 2015 fair, which is set to wrap up on Sunday.
Spread over two halls of the Congresium on a 3,000-square-meter area, Art Ankara 2015 not only offers a platform for galleries and auction houses based in Ankara and İstanbul, but also three private art institutions from Turkey -- the İstanbul Museum of Graphic Arts (IMOGA); Ankara's Mustafa Ayaz Museum, founded by the veteran Turkish painter Ayaz; and the Knidos International Culture and Art Academy (UKKSA), based in the southwestern coastal town of Datça.
Galleries from Iran and Kyrgyzstan are also participating in the fair, where the Tehran-based Igreg Art Studio is presenting a comprehensive selection of work by 15 artists in its catalogue.
Put together by Atis Fairs, Art Ankara 2015 is held concurrently with Design Ankara 2015, which focuses on the latest trends in industrial design.
“There are numerous major institutions in Ankara that focus on contemporary art and offer education in that field,” ATİS Fairs executive Bilgin Aygül told Today's Zaman on the first day of the fair, which aims to highlight the efforts of those institutions on both a national and international level.
Indecent Intentions: Street Harassment and Contemporary Art →
Ashton Cooper uses Katrina Andry's latest exhibition at Staple Goods as a lens to explore how street harassment is being addressed in contemporary art and visual culture.
Installation view of Katrina Andry's "Indecent Intentions Leave Me Vulnerable and Voiceless" at Staple Goods, New Orleans. Photo by Katrina Andry.
In 1986, Adrian Piper began handing out small cards in bars when, after repeated rebuffs, individuals continued to make unwelcome advances. “Dear Friend,” they read. “I am not here to pick anyone up, or to be picked up. I am here alone because I want to be here, ALONE.”
Existing as both a work of art and as a practical defense, Piper’s cards foreshadow the types of actions many artists and activists have used since to combat such unwanted attention. While the term street harassment was barely in the general lexicon when Piper created My Calling (Card) #2 (for Bars and Discos), today it is common parlance. With the founding of organizations like Stop Street Harassment and Hollaback! in the past decade and an explosion of media attention around the term in the last year in particular, awareness of the peril of simply walking-while-female is arguably at an all time high. (See: Tatyana Fazlalizadeh’s Stop Telling Women to Smile wheat pastes; Hollaback!’s viral video “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman”—more on that later; or Jessica Williams’s catcalling segment on the Daily Show.)
But even while public conversation around the topic has increased dramatically, 30 years after Piper’s project, many women artists are still finding it necessary to use their practices to address a problem that shows no signs of subsiding.
“I work uptown where I can count how many times people are stopping me,” says New Orleans-based artist Katrina Andry, whose exhibition "Indecent Intentions Leave Me Vulnerable and Voiceless" is on view at Staple Goods through March 8. “It started to really get to me. Whether its harmless or not, the underlying motive of why they’re getting my attention is disingenuous.”
Andry’s experiences prompted her to create an installation that was targeted at catcallers. Bright walls and a grid of prints reflect the ludicrous notion that the streets are a “jungle” from which women can be hunted, Andry explains. In order to gain closer access to the five lushly rendered prints of high-heeled legs and naked breasts erupting from behind a jumble of bananas, viewers have to wade through what she calls “meaty” illustrations of vaginas hanging down from the ceiling.
Installation view of Katrina Andry's "Indecent Intentions Leave Me Vulnerable and Voiceless" at Staple Goods, New Orleans. Photo by Katrina Andry.
While this is Andry’s first project to tackle street harassment explicitly, she is using imagery typical to her practice, like the bananas, to reference a history of oppression. “Most of my prints are about how stereotypes perpetuated by whites negatively affect minorities. The objectification of black women’s bodies carries on today. Knowing that history—how you were objectified by the person who owned you and now you’re objectified by your own community—it does not feel good. No lesson was learned. Only the bad was passed on.”
Andry’s need to make art on the subject was also provoked by the feeling of voicelessness she references in the show’s title. “When you feel like someone is verbally harassing you, do you defend yourself?” she queries. “Do you tell them your story? Or why you think it’s not okay for them to yell at you? Is it worth it?” Andry’s questions are echoed again and again when women discuss the experience of being harassed on the street. That inability to act in the moment—the sense of futility and fear that a response will escalate an already unwanted interaction—is exactly why artmaking can be such an effective way to react to the experience—it allows the harassed to talk back from a position of safety and strength. Artmaking can be a way of “taking back the power that was being taken from me,” as filmmaker Maggie Hadleigh-West puts it in her 1998 film War Zone, which was recently screened as part of a series by the New Orleans Film Society.
Images from Mirabelle Jones' project I am not a cat, 2012. Courtesy www.MirabelleJones.com.
“This art is coming from a position of outrage, of wanting to say something or do something and being unable to do it in that moment,” explains Los Angeles-based artist and sexual assault and domestic violence advocate Mirabelle Jones who began handing out cards to catcallers (à la Piper) in her 2012 project I Am Not A Cat. Jones created the small purple cards, which read “call me” in a flirty script, as a tool not just for herself but for others struggling to deal with how to react to catcalling. When the offender calls the number, he or she is greeted by a voicemail message containing pre-recorded responses to catcallers that Jones collected from people affected by the issue. Like Andry’s installation, and much of the art I’ve come across on the topic, the project takes a didactic position, but also simultaneously functions as a unifier of those who have been harassed.
Importantly, Jones’s project made a point of including a wide swath of experiences, including those of men. “I identify as queer so I am always on the lookout for reducing a feminist dialogue to just women and not including trans folk in particular or minimizing dialogues for people of color,” Jones says. “How catcalling affects queers is something I’m very interested in. There’s not a lot of information yet and so much of the dialogue has been around cisgendered women.” Jones’ point is a vital one, lest we fail to recognize the necessity of broadening the discussion to acknowledge and validate the experiences of queer, male-identified, and trans people.
While it may be slow going, we are making important steps to move the conversation beyond privileging the experiences of white women—most recently evidenced in the public outcry against Hollaback!’s viral “10 Hours” video. When it became clear that most of the white men had been edited out, critics were quick to point out how the video thus recreated the historical stereotype of white victim, perpetrator of color, which (whether intentionally or not) vilified men of color and simultaneously marginalized the experiences of others experiencing harassment. Blair Dorosh-Walther’s film Out In The Night, which was released last summer, notably chronicles the experiences of the "New Jersey 4," black lesbians who were imprisoned after defending themselves against street harassment. And perhaps the most high profile project to focus on foregrounding the experiences of women of color is Tatyana Fazlalizadeh’s Stop Telling Women to Smile, which has featured non-white women’s portraits alongside captions that directly speak to would-be offenders, on walls throughout the world.
Image from Tatyana Fazlalizadeh’s ongoing project Stop Telling Women to Smile. Courtesy www.tlynnfaz.com.
“Street art, particularly Stop Telling Women to Smile, is effective in combating street harassment because it tackles it in the very environment that women experience this harassment—outdoors,” says Fazlalizadeh. “It forces women's stories into the public conversation in a more tangible way by taking the conversation from online and putting it in the streets.”
This ability to both reclaim public space and spark wide-reaching dialogue has made street art an appealing tool for both artists and non-artist activists. The Mannheim, Germany-based group Girl Gangs Against Street Harassment don’t consider themselves artists, but started using wheat pastes in the spring of 2014 to provoke conversation on the issue. “In Germany the discussion about street harassment is rather new,” explains group founder Tobi Funke.
The group has created life-size wheat pastes of women wielding axes, pipes, and bricks. (Their tactic also calls to mind artist Suyin Looui’s revenge fantasy video game Hey Baby from 2010 in which a female user could literally shoot down catcallers.) The style of the posters references 1970s exploitation films (see: Switchblade Sisters), but the image of the girl gang is also “a symbol of solidarity,” according to Funke. “The posters can give people affected by street harassment a voice—a “fuck you” to harassers or a “be safe, we're with you” to everyone else,” says Funke.
The Girl Gang images are available to download on the group’s website and, in less than a year, new iterations of the group have already popped up in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Kiel, and Graz, among other cities.
“Art has had a lot to do with the increase of discussion surrounding street harassment,” says Jones. “Making the problem visible is essential in order to recognize we aren’t dealing with a series of isolated incidents we are dealing with something society has engineered.”
Contemporary Artists Find Resonance in Old Folk Tradition →
"When you make a tweet and put an image with it, it has a lot more power," said British artist Bob and Roberta Smith. "That's been going on for centuries."
"Bob and Roberta Smith" is the art name of Patrick Brill, based in London. He is one of the artists in the Free Library of Philadelphia's exhibition "Word and Image: Contemporary Artists Connect to Fraktur."
Spread across the first and second floors of the Main Branch on the Parkway, the show accompanies the library's exhibition of historic fraktur in the third-floor floor rare book department, "Framing Fraktur."
Like most of the half-dozen artists in the show, Smith knew next to nothing of the Pennsylvania Dutch decorative tradition before he got a call from the curator, Judith Tannenbaum. He discovered an unrealized fraktur sensibility in his work.
In the 1980s, when Smith was living in New York City, he often traveled through the South to look for folk art. He liked the way some "outside" artists incorporate text in their work to communicate literally and directly with the viewer.
"That's what fraktur means to me. It is art made with a purpose, commemorating births, weddings, and deaths – and everybody in the process knows that purpose," said Smith. "In contemporary art that's a very rare thing."
The grand lobby of the library is lined with six large woodblock prints, made by brothers Gert and Uwe Tobias of Germany, of oversized abstractions of embroidery patterns. On the second floor, the exhibition starts with a bedframe headboard and footboard found on the streets of New York by Bob and Roberta Smith, on which he painted messages about the benefits of art.
The pieces in the show follow two basic premises related to fraktur: the pieces needed to incorporate text, and are related to a folk art tradition.
Philadelphia artist Anthony Campuzano, who also knew very little about fraktur beforehand, makes paintings and drawings based on language and stories, which he reworks until they become visual abstractions.
"I wasn't too familiar with it, but a lot of elements of fraktur are similar to elements I do," said Campuzano. "Making eyes move around the field, telling stories, repetition, and mark-making."
One of the artists who had some foreknowledge of fraktur is Canadian Marian Bantjes, who has a background in typesetting. The work "fraktur" comes from the German word for a typesetting font, wherein the letters appear to be fractured.
Bantjes made several pieces specifically for this show, turning the letter shapes and symbols of fracture into abstract design elements. She also included previously hand-drawn certificates that lend the show a bit of humor.
In one, a personal friend of Bantjes – a certified lawyer in Australia and England – had to go through a third certification process to practice law in Canada. Bantjes was dismayed when, upon completion, her friend received nothing celebratory from the certification board. So she invented a certificate to honor her friend, in roughly the shape of a lace doily.
Another piece is a highly decorative, hand-drawn copy of a spam email, wherein a man from Nigeria asks you to help him out of a jam with huge rewards, if you first give him your bank account information. It's the kind of message that has clogged your inbox a thousand times.
"But they all have this strangely antiquated way of speaking. It's almost Victorian English," said Bantjes. "This one reads: 'My dear, can we work together? With my humble fidelity and enthusiastic mind, I greet you." That is so not this century."
The Best Way to Collect Contemporary Art: Patiently and Passionately →
Scott Hess, “Soul” (2005), oil on canvas, 54 x 66 inches (courtesy of the artist)
When art and commerce mix, a certain level of mania is inevitable: it’s what you get when passion and pragmatism collide. In some ways, the situation hasn’t really changed since shady Medieval relic sellers hawked icons of saints to sharp-eyed bishops on the pilgrimage roads of Europe a thousand years ago: the making and marketing of art necessarily bring together people with disparate personalities and intentions.
The current market for contemporary art has its own distinctive insanity. The rise of social media has multiplied and supercharged the pressures and possibilities for everyone involved, and there is so much art and there are so many “somebodies” out there in the mix. Self-promotion by artists is rife, but also expected. Museums of contemporary art show the same works as leading galleries, galleries are giving way to art fairs, critics are increasingly irrelevant, everybody is a curator, and more and more “collectors” are actually dealers in sheep’s clothing. Everyone is on the make or on the take and most listen to the market when they should be looking. Short-term strategies abound and reputations come and go seemingly overnight.
Of course, that is only one side of the story. There have always been — and will always be — artists who remain hard at work in their studios, un-swayed by the vagaries of the market, and patient collectors who are motivated by passion more than profit.
The following tips are meant to lay out a comparatively sane and sober approach to collecting contemporary art. These ideas and principles come from my own background — I have worked for collectors and dealers over the years — and also from my artist friends. Taking some of these to heart may help guide your choices as you collect art and build a collection that reflects your personal vision and gives you lasting satisfaction. If that doesn’t sound exciting, keep this in mind: when the next kind of crazy takes the art market by storm, you may still love your collection.
Take a Year Off
Are you already a collector? Are you thinking of becoming one? Whatever your situation, step back from the market and take a year off. Don’t buy anything: there will still be plenty to look at next year. Use the time to socialize, study, and strategize.
Think 10 Years Ahead
When you are considering buying a work of art, ask yourself a theoretical question: “How will it look in ten years?” You will be amazed how powerful this question can be.
Pay Full Price
It is well known that many galleries will offer collectors a discount when asked. Don’t ask: pay full price and in short order you will be offered the best works first.
Make the Market, Don’t Follow It
The market is full of sheep. Rather than paying attention to what others are buying, follow your instincts and be ready for others to start talking about what you are buying. Take the money you are considering spending on the minor work of a well-known artist and buy five great works by others who are less well known. Artists will love you for this.
Work with Ethical, Experienced Dealers
Ask around, talk to dealers, and vet them carefully. Look for seasoned, reputable dealers who can draw on deep connections and substantial experience. Favor dealers who are connected with state, local, and/or national Art Dealer’s organizations. Find a dealer or dealer who shows work that lines up with your personal vision and passions, and be ready to work with them over time.
Cross dealers off your list if they suggest ways you can avoid state sales tax on your art purchases or offer to have an artist change the colors of a painting to match your drapes.
Refine Your Vision Over Time
A few years into collecting you will likely look back at a few early purchases and shake your head. Be ready to re-sell a few things, and, as you do so, the character of your collection will take shape. Collecting is a lifetime obsession.
Support Mid-Career Artists
Emerging artists come and go. Seek out mid-career artists and ask them, “What do you have in storage?” You will be amazed how much they may have and how glad they will be to show it to you.
Enjoy the Social Benefits of Collecting
Join collector’s circles at local art institutions, go to every possible opening, and invite artists, collectors, and dealers to your home. You’ll make some false friends — especially if you have some money — but you’ll make some real ones too and the conversations will teach you more than you can imagine.
Artists are the Best Advisors
Who can teach you the most about contemporary art? I say “artists.” As you add art to your collection make the artists you are patronizing your advisors. Whether on the phone, on Facebook, or at your soirees, listen to what artists say about other artists.
Commission Something
Consider commissioning works of art. It can be risky, but the results can be thrilling.
Don’t Buy It If You Can’t Hang Onto It
You are overbuying if you put money into works of art but know that you might honestly need the money back within the next few years. If you do this, you are thinking like a speculator or a dealer, not like a collector.
Be Impulsive
Go off the rails every now and then, discard all wisdom, and buy something on a sudden urge. It may turn out to be your best purchase ever.
Collect for Passion not for Profit
If you need to invest your money, try Vanguard’s no-load mutual funds. They are excellent.
Armory Roundup: Contemporary Artists Speak To The History Of Abstraction →
With each passing year a new art fair surreptitiously emerges on the New York scene. Come early March, collectors and dealers find their calendars completely filled, balancing the newer fairs like Independent, Scope, and Pulse, with the older stalwarts like the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) Art Show and the Armory Show at Piers 92 and 94 along the Hudson River.
This year the ADAA Art Show returns to the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan’s Upper East Side with a curated pairing of modern and contemporary greats as well as emerging talent. The 27th edition of the ADAA’s annual fair is perhaps a better place to spot emerging trends than the chaotic sprawl of the Armory Show piers, as dealers shrewdly juxtapose old and new artists to make their point. One of the big conversations across the 55,000 square foot drill hall is the legacy of geometric abstraction. The contemporary artist Mark Grotjahn is a good example, retooling and invigorating the work of masterful abstract painters like Leon Pol Smith and Kenneth Noland.
“Peacock” by Ken Price at Brooke Alexander Gallery
Brooke Alexander Gallery offers works by Ellsworth Kelly, Donald Judd, and Barnett Newman, under the umbrella of “Defining Artists of Composition, Color, and Form.” Highlights include Josef Albers painting “Homage to the Square: Zwischen Zwei Blau (Between Two Blues)” (1955) and Ken Price’s “Peacock” (1988) sculpture. There were also many examples of elegant geometric abstraction at the Washburn Gallery booth, which celebrated earlier, lesser known artists like the pioneering American abstract painter Alice Trumbull Mason. Pushing the bounds of the canvas, Maxwell Davidson Gallery featured an early experimental collage work by the Israeli artist Yaacov Agam, who would later be known for his lenticular Agamograph prints, but during the 1960s was exploring color and form.
“Homage to the Square: Zwischen Zwei Blau (Between Two Blues)” by Josef Albers at Brooke Alexander Gallery
The generational interplay between artists within painting is not the only highlight. The work of women artists is central to the show, a feat that the growing number of art fairs, biennials, and triennials have yet to achieve. Tibor de Nagy Gallery, CRG Gallery, and Galerie Lelong each mounted comprehensive surveys of women artists in their 90s, featuring the late painter Jane Freilicher, Saloua Raouda Choucair, and Etel Adnan respectively. This emphasis also extends to photography, with Janet Borden, Inc. presenting the first retrospective of Jan Groover’s work since her death three years ago.
The ADAA Art Show prides itself on its solo exhibitions, but this year’s thematic exhibitions were by no means an afterthought. Galerie St. Etienne celebrated their 75th anniversary, highlighting the gallery’s humanistic scope, from the folk art of Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses to the expressionist works of Egon Schiele. Jane Kallir, the current co-director and granddaughter of the gallery’s founder, Otto Kallir, was on hand, presenting the booth’s highlight piece, a 1932 portrait by Otto Dix.
“Jeune Fille Sophistiquée” by Constantin Brancusi at Paul Kasmin Gallery
Paul Kasmin Gallery’s booth also had a historical bent. Entitled “L’Impasse Ronsin,” the exhibition explores the fabled studios in the Montparnasse neighborhood of Paris, a site they deem to be “a crucible of postwar culture.” A number of important artists had studios in close proximity including Brancusi, Jean Tinguely, William Copley, and Max Ernst, making it one of the most formidable bohemian locales of Parisian history.
“Murio la Verdad” by Iván Navarro at Galerie Daniel Templon
Over at the Pier 94, geometric abstraction remained a through line among the Armory Show’s contemporary artists. Galerie Daniel Templon exhibited light sculptures by Chilean artist Iván Navarro, whose piece “Murio la Verdad” (2013) reimagines Albers’ “Homage to the Square” with neon and mirrors reflected into infinity. The appeal of Albers work is more than a fascination with form; their personal histories intersect in the realm of abstraction. Although Albers, a Jew, emigrated from Germany to escape the rise of Nazism, he never referred to his persecution in his work. Navarro, who grew up under Pinochet’s dictatorship, has not, until recently, politicized his work. The idea that abstraction could be a political act is clearly compelling for Navarro, who titled the sculpture after a Goya print from “The Disasters of War” series and embeds the title, which means “truth is dead,” into one of the neon squares.
“toylin” by Berta Fischer at James Fuentes LLC
Other artists crisscrossed the bounds of sculpture and painting with lively abstract works that steered clear of the irksome tide of Zombie Formalism. Galerie Kamel Mennour featured five large monochromatic works by the French conceptual artist Daniel Buren. The rectilinear pieces, produced in various decades, were echoed by Brien Bess’ six-channel video “370 Cover” (2015) at Cherry and Martin. Perhaps the most Instagrammed work, Berta Fischer’s vibrant amoeba-like plexiglass sculptures at James Fuentes LLC were clearly a crowd favorite. The pieces give off an exuberant, animated quality, rivaled only by Eddie Martinez’s two painterly works at Los Angeles’ Kohn Gallery. In stark contrast, the installation at Alexander and Bonin favored a minimalist approach. Titled “Turbulence (black)” (2014), Mona Hatoum’s piece is made of thousands of black opaque marbles arranged in a circle, evoking a bottomless pit when assembled en masse. All in all, the Armory Show piers are pulsing with artwork that reveals the steady draw of the abstract field. What attracts contemporary artists to these calm, structured forms? During a time marred by conflict, economic turbulence, and the degradation of the natural environment, there may be something comforting, even meditative, about a practice that eschews garish extravagance for formal restraint.
Sotheby’s Hosts An Evening Of Contemporary Art →
Sotheby’s generously featured some samples from its Contemporary Arts auction taking place in Doha recently at Sotheby’s auction house in New York City.
The seven pieces of selected works give a broad look at the innovative state of contemporary art. Brazilian artist Vik Muniz’s 2013 interpretation of Claude Monet’s “Nympheas” involves classic collage style composition, but with a focus on color and emulation while effectively balancing pop culture. One could easily get lost in this piece, noticing the little clippings from the news, the Internet, and magazine they identify with. It’s convincing and fits well in the context of personal involvment. Monir Farmanfarmaian’s 2007 “A New Spring” evokes this reflective composition of cut mirror and paint in the classic geometric tendencies the artist has clung to for so many years. It’s therapeutic through its gradient density and lightness.
Worth noting is Abdullah Qandeel’s “The Race”, a Basquiat inspired work with broad reckless paint strokes and exposed raw canvas. Qandeel has repeatedly exceeded auction estimates, often by ten of times the estimate. His works are large, statement pieces that beg for attention peripherally, but are rather clean and soothing upon study. That feeling is coming from the directional tendency through easily replicable patterns, evoking a landscape of sorts, despite a nonexistent horizon. The work zooms away from the viewer towards the top of the canvas, terminating in a truly Basquiat-esque crown symbol. The demand for this to-the-trade style art seems to be reaching a tipping point- speaking of works that are tactile without being sculpture; dimensional without being realistic. It feels off the cuff, in the moment and the definition of improvisation in art. But it doesn’t feel particularly unfinished either.
The Flickering of Japan’s Contemporary Art →
Nobuyuki Osaki's 'Water Drawing — Stardust' (2007-08)
Art used to be about what you could see, but now, thanks to a more “conceptual” approach, it is often about what cannot be seen. Except the artist still has to demonstrate in some way what it is that can’t be seen — in other words, to make it visible.
This is the paradox that underlies “Constellations: Practices for Unseen Connections/Discoveries,” the latest group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT). The declared intent of the exhibition is to “introduce experiments by artists who take various invisible points that exist scattered throughout the world and discover connections that link them, grasping these as new constellations.”
The connection with astrological so-called star signs is not some casual happenstance, but very much part of the concept. After all, constellations have for millennia evoked a sense of mystery and magic, something that much contemporary art could do well to emulate.
In all, seven artists have been chosen. The number is significant, because in ancient times, seven was the number of the Earth’s satellites visible to the naked eye, including the sun and the moon and the five planets.
You could, if you wish, play something of a parlor game by guessing which artist may represent which celestial body, although I am not quite sure the exhibition’s concept stretches that far. Also, there may be something of a clash between the astrological values accorded the planets in the East and those in the West. In Western astrology, Mercury is associated with the element of air, but in the East, as the kanji in its Japanese name suggests, it is associated with water.
The first artist we encounter, Nobuyuki Osaki is more associated with water than air. His “water paintings” are video installations of figurative arrangements of color that, laid on a watery surface, start to disintegrate as the pigments drift apart. These works seems to explore a dynamic opposite to the intent of the exhibitions. Instead of connections we see disconnections, as the temporary image is deconstructed by the irreverant nature of liquid.
The next artist we come to, Takayoshi Kitagawa, could be Jupiter, the planet that seems to observe the rest of the solar system with its unblinking eye. Kitagawa may have thought up his contribution while working as a museum security guard — something he actually did according to a reference in one of his video works. Given this background, it is no surprise that his section of the show relies heavily on video. It focuses on the various functional spaces of the museum and how they connect — the vital spaces that exist unseen behind any museum exhibition.
Following this rather mundane reminder that we are in a big building with doors, rooms and corridors, the work of Nobuhiro Shimura strikes a more magical note. Shimura, who participated in Roppongi Art Night in 2012, creates light installations. His “Dress” (2012) is a curtain of ribbons that breaks up a film of a sunset projected onto it. We only see shimmering light in the shadows. Simple but evocative, it ticks the exhibition’s checklist of showing the “unseen.”
His “Fountains” (2015) is even more effective. In a darkened room, pools of light well-up in dozens of wooden bath pails. The work references the large number of public baths that used to exist in the downtown area around the museum, but such over-subtle references are superfluous to the enjoyment of his art.
But just when this exhibition seems to get going, it immediately hits the brakes again. Next, we have to walk through a large, brightly lit space dedicated to the obsessive art of Saburo Ota. This centers around postage stamps, seeds and grains of rice in various aesthetically sterile assemblages. Rather than art, these seem to reflect an obsessive compulsive disorder — a vast image of Astro Boy is outlined in stamps, the positions of which also map the locations of the Tokyo post offices where they were bought. The only thing “unseen” here is the point of the works.
In an exhibition of uneven quality, a personal favorite is Takayuki Yamamoto’s “Facing the Unknown” (2012) — a rather ludicrous, but also touching, video of two young children listening to a physics professor explaining black holes. The intelligent but confused expression of the big sister and the mixed restlessness and passivity of the younger brother, along with the condescending and cajoling voice of the professor, create a work of charm and humor.
When they created their constellations from the stars of heaven, the ancients always had to leave a few awkward stars out of the grand design. With the hit or miss nature of this show, the MOT could have done likewise.