Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli’s latest media ploy has been to design a pop-up museum, open for 24 hours, in collaboration with Prada and AMO, Rem Koolhaas’ think tank in Paris’ Palais d’Iéna. The temporary event will welcome the public in to the traditionally historic building for a night of magic, like a Cinderella’s ball, before it is dismantled the next day.
The theatrical premiere is organized into three event spaces, historic, contemporary and the forgotten, the first being a showcase of Vezzoli’s works enclosed in neon-lit metal cages on the ground floor of the building. Vezzoli poses his portraits of Hollywood divas in the style of classical Greco-Roman sculptures on marble pedestals – the sculptures wear masks with Vezzoli’s mother’s eyes. With these works, Vezzoli continues his exploration of red-carpet rituals of celebrity and stardom that will be further exploited with a party staged in conjunction with the event, and which will be live streamed on the internet. Also, on Facebook, the artist intends to have an interactive game in which he frames people’s faces in classical composites.
Last year the Deste Foundation commissioned multimedia artist Doug Aitken to do a project for their summer annual event at the old ‘Slaughterhouse’ in the island of Hydra in Greece. Aitken’s site-specific performance and film entitled ‘Black Mirror’ is based on his ongoing series exploring ideas on migration.
It features Chloe Sevigny in a breathlessly paced journey across a montage of foreign lands traversed by planes, trains and vehicles through which her character remains mentally stationary, caught in the process of transitioning, but never completing the journey.
Rendering - Doug Aitken, Black Mirror, 2011, Artist Renderings. Copyright: Doug Aitken Inc.
Karen Knorr uses photography to explore the cultural traditions and power implied by the richness of palace architecture, the ornate interiors of English gentlemen’s clubs, of old mansions and grand museums. Sometimes animals are displayed in these settings in the manner of traditional portraiture of pets or domesticated animals, while in others their wildness is tamed or made exotic by bringing them into the context of elaborate human habitats.
In her first solo show in the US, “India Song” on view at Danziger gallery in New York, Knorr inserts animals digitally into the interiors of Indian Rajput and Mughal palaces and mausoleums in Rajasthani heritage sites, celebrating the myths and fables of Indian folklore from pre-photographic traditions such as the ancient Sanskrit book of the Pancha Tantra. In the exhibition she explores the role of animals and their representation in exotic, orientalist art and ancient bestiaries.
In her other series Fables (2004-2008) Knorr was inspired by tales from Ovid, Aesop La Fontaine and popular culture, Disney and Attenborough, placing the animals in heritage sites such as the Carnavalet Museum, the Museum of Hunt and Nature in Paris, Chambord Castle and the Conde Museum in Chantilly Castle. (more…)
‘Oops,’ someone might have said when the last tree came down on Easter Island. One day, while making really cool art, the islanders realized they’d chopped down too many trees. Without logs to roll their art down the hilltops, or fruit from the trees, without timber for fire, and with the topsoil eroded, there wasn’t arable land left for crops, or wood for building boats to catch fish. The birds stopped coming. They were too far for a rescue. And, since no one noticed, the islanders began to selectively eat each other to stay alive.
Artist's rendering of the Diller, Scofidio Renfro design for Broad's downtown museum. (Diller, Scofidio + Renfro)
Philanthropist Eli Broad and the Broad Art Foundation today unveiled the architectural plans for an art museum named The Broad that will be built in downtown Los Angeles. Designed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the three-story museum features a unique porous honeycomb “veil” that will house Eli Broad’s 2,000-piece contemporary art collections. The inaugural exhibition at the museum, when it opens in two years, will feature 200 of the most iconic works from the Broad Collections, In addition to the construction cost of the building which is estimated to be over $130 million, Eli Broad is funding the museum with a $200 million endowment which will be larger than LACMA and MOCA combined. The organic, fluid design of the structure is destined to become a landmark for LA, but the architects DS+R have also been busy in New York, and have quite a few projects in the pipeline.
Miami’s contemporary art museum, Miami Art Museum, contains a limited but engaging collection of modern art pieces – but with the new crowds descending upon Miami during Art Basel week and the growing scrutiny of the city’s art patrons – there was pressure to expand its collections into a new facility that will house world-class exhibitions and enhance Miami’s profile as an art destination.
The new Miami Art Museum, which will anchor the 29-acre Museum Park, will be designed by Herzog & de Meuron, and is scheduled to open to the public in 2013. The new site overlooking Biscayne Bay, at the edge of the beach, will create a new architectural icon for the city. During Miami Art Basel a huge fund-raising event was held at the Mandarin Oriental, Miami for the $131 million construction cost of the new museum. (more…)
Rob Pruitt has teamed up with writer-editor and art world veteran Glenn O’Brien to host the second annual Rob Pruitt’s 2010 Art Awards on December 8, 2010 at Webster Hall. Pruitt considers the event a performance-based artwork that parodies self-congratulatory Hollywood awards ceremonies, while relishing his own role as ringmaster and host. Other presenters will include critic Jerry Saltz (of the TV show Work of Art), Mary Heilmann, the 2009 “Artist of the Year,” Marina Abramovic, and John Currin among others.
The awards ceremony honours the stalwarts of the art world, who are mostly hand-picked by him, while benefitting the Guggenheim Foundation and the not-for-profit, White Columns. And this year, the Lifetime Achievement Awards is going to… Jonas Mekas and Martha Rosler, and The Artist-Educator Achievement Award, a new category, will be presented to Marilyn Minter.
Simon de Pury, turning law and reason on its head, in front of Maurizio Cattelan's Frank and Jaime, 2002. Edition of 3. Estimated at $1-1.5 million. Photo credit:Kisa Lala
Let the drum-rolls begin – Simon dePury, the market-savvy chairman of Phillips de Pury & Company, was at hand to christen the new Park Avenue location for the inaugural preview of the Part 1- Contemporary Art Evening Sale. The collection, entitled ‘Carte Blanche,’ curated by Phillipe Segalot, former international head of Christie’s Contemporary Art, is scheduled for auction November 8, 2010, with a low-estimate of $80,000,000.
Kate MccGwire, Slick, 2010, Magpie and crow feathers, mixed media and antique fire basket, 250 x 250 cms
All Visual Arts, an arts organization based in London’s Fitzrovia, showed an exhibition of works at Frieze around the tradition of Vanitas, and the theme of memento mori, with art containing symbols and reminders of death. Joe La Placa, one of the curators behind the show, explained, “the original Vanitas works were a response to the culture of conspicuous consumption in Holland in the 17th Century, and a reminder that you can make all the money you want, but you can’t take it with you…”
Jeff Koons, Hand on Breast, Courtesy of Luxembourg and Dayan Gallery
It has been twenty years since Jeff Koons’ show Made in Heaven opened at Sonnabend to busloads of cruising tourists – unleashing endless debate, was it art, was it porn, and did it successfully titillate…the mind?
Made in Heaven has come back down to earth, to the Upper East side gallery, Luxembourg and Dayan where it is celebrating its 20th anniversary incarnation, and remains if not new, surprisingly timeless. The gallery has released a catalogue of the works with an informative essay by Alison Gingeras in which she posits that Koons’ career can be dissected in terms of what came before and after the exhibition of these paintings, “with Made in Heaven he broke away from the aloof and ironic sphere of the art world ‘brat pack’ into a perilous zone of full exposure,” she says. Although Koons’ reputation for cheekiness was already established by such works as Michael Jackson and Bubbles, (1988), and his stainless steel Rabbit, (1986), he catapulted into celebrity after his collaboration with Illona Staller (better known by her porn-star moniker, Cicciolina) who was already at the time a championed porn-star member of parliament.
