SPREAD | ArtCulture » Art Basel Miami Beach

The Art of Warfare

KisaLala — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 23:06:01 +0000

By Kiša Lala

©AES-F From the series - Action Half Life

While a lot of contemporary art remains in a narcissistic bubble dedicated to its own self-reflexive trajectory, there’s art emerging from war zones and the Middle East that cuts through the abstractions to where it really bleeds.

Inspiration from real life in volatile regions of the ME can bring new meaning to what it feels to be a tortured artist. Iraqi artist Halim Al-Karim, defying Saddam’s compulsory military conscription during the first Gulf War, hid in the desert for 3 years in a hole in the ground, surviving from food brought to him by Bedouins. His experience gives him empathic power to express the anxieties of his subjects. Many of his prints depict veiled or gagged men and women, their identities masked or blurred, radiating mute terror.

Churchtank Type 8 mixed media assemblage 2010 © Kris Kuksi

Even artists who are apolitical in their work cannot but be affected by the increased proliferation of war imagery in the media, and subconscious mirroring of violence in the cyber-world. But veterans exposed to battlefield-trauma, suffering from PTSD, might feel more drawn to the emotive power of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Titus Andronicus or ancient Greek theater than the slick, contemporary dramatizations of televised warfare. The group, Theater of War, currently presents ancient Greek drama for military audiences believing that the classical plays were originally written about combat veterans, and that their communal story-telling, had therapeutic power.

The art collective AES+F began their Islamic project in 1996. Well before the September 11th strikes, they tapped into the western fear of Islam, exploring the idea of an Islamic jihad that would engulf western cities.

London - © AES/Islamic Project

Rome St Peters - © AES/Islamic Project

German-born English artist Karin Sabine Krommes‘ work explores the brutality of wartime aircraft design and the implied violence of machinery with cold, detailed precision. London-born Lebanese artist Zena el Khalil says of her own artwork, “I was born in war. Everything around me now is war. War has always been. I cannot remember a time when there was no war.” Her mixed media artwork feminizes military men, sexualizes and homoeroticizes objects of warfare, AK-47s, and diffuses their brutality with fluffy pink barbie doll imagery. The two women’s response to violence and war cannot be more differently expressed.

My First Diaper (My First Kiss) | 70x130 cm | mixed media | 2008 © Zena el Khalil

Untitled III Hand cut card & insects mounted in a found entomology drawer © Karin Sabine Krommes

Herzog & de Meuron Design New Beachside Miami Art Museum

KisaLala — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:58:42 +0000

By Kiša Lala

Rendering for MAM Museum Park Nightview

Miami Art Museum, Bay View

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.

Miami Art Museum-South Elevation View

Rendering for MAM and Musuem Park

The building will consist of several transparent levels with an overhanging canopy perforated to allow light with columns of lush vegetation to create a garden-veranda with many layers of tropical plants. The canopy will be a green roof that moderates the temperature of the building, similar in concept to Renzo Piano’s living roof for the California Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco.

Herzog & de Meuron, known for their Bird’s Nest stadium at the Beijing Olympics, were also enlisted in Miami for the new 1111 Lincoln Road, development in South Beach’s Lincoln Mall – the open architecture was described by Jacques Herzog as being “all muscle without cloth.” H de M’s designs are known for their simple geometrical forms which enclose smooth seamless interiors. An example of this architecture would be, my personal favourite, the Prada store in Tokyo.

PRADA Store Tokyo by Herzog & de Meuron, photographed by Iwan Baan.

Art & Commerce: The Scots Promote their Knitwear

KisaLala — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:40:42 +0000

By Kiša Lala

Ryan McGinley, Tilda Swinton, Neville Wakefield at Pringle of Scotland / Serpentine Gallery dinner closing the 195 Collaborations project, at the Webster, Miami. Photo Credit: David X Prutting

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in Pringle of Scotland

An unusual pairing during Art Basel Miami Beach was the jointly held event between Pringle of Scotland, the design house for Scottish woolies, and Serpentine Gallery, one of the most respected galleries in London.

The sponsorship of the arts is laudable when it’s of economic benefit to the artists, and here the alliance with art seems to be working also to the advantage of Pringle, increasing it’s corporate profile amongst art enthusiasts. Pringle’s sponsorship of artists in Scotland is ostensibly to promote Scottish craft and creativity, but its collaboration with the Serpentine is not only a strategic association that helps to legitimize a corporate brand but is also a smart economic venture for the Serpentine.

Ryan McGinley, Tilda Swinton at Pringle of Scotland / Serpentine Gallery at The Webster Photo Credit: David X Prutting

Pringle has worked with creatives such as photographer Ryan McGinley and Terry Jones (i-D). The 195 collaborations showcased in Miami at Webster’s showroom include designs by Turner Prize Winners Richard Wright and Douglas Gordon – and actress Tilda Swinton, Stephen Sutcliffe and jeweller Waris Ahluwalia – are some of the many other collaborators. The artists contributed on the classic Scottish designs and knits which are available in limited editions through the Gallery and Pringle. For those old enough to remember her in earlier career, Tilda (aka Matilda) Swinton, originally performed at the Serpentine in 1995 in collaboration with artist Cornelia Parker when she slept for 7 days, 8 hours a day in a tomb-like glass cabinet for the curious public.

Even the most diffused artistic collaborations have an effect on our choices and can impact the chain of manufacturing events – one possible consequence of this partnership could be that we buy more art from the Serpentine Gallery for their association with chic artists who design winter woolies for Pringle, who’d sell more cardigans allowing sheep to grow wool and live one more season before ending up as haggis.

Artist Douglas Gordon

Julia Peyton-Jones the director of the Serpentine Gallery in Pringle of Scotland's designed knitwear

Tilda Swinton wearing Ryan McGinley designed cardigan with Susan Sarandon at Pringle/Serpentine event - Photo Credit: David X Prutting

Tilda Swinton - portrait in Pringle

Emerging Art Fairs: Reinventing a Global Language with Art

KisaLala — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:56:35 +0000

By Kiša Lala

Art fairs, with their aggregation of art dealers forming a one-stop shopper’s marketplace for art, attract high-spending collectors, generate greater sales, and have to some extent replaced galleries with their increasing drawing power. Before the recent market collapse, the frenzied demand for new art had peaked with the proliferation of smaller, budding art fairs. Some as satellites to the major European events, the biennials, art festivals and fairs such as Basel, Venice, Documenta, catered to lesser known, emerging artists. Even more notable are the fairs that have sprouted in Asian countries and off the map destinations, creating alternate markets for art, challenging the existing western hegemony – such as the Shanghai Contemporary, Art Dubai, Art Summit New Delhi and SP-Arte in Sao Paulo.

Berlin based photographer, Gabriele Heidecker has been documenting this new trend for the last few years, as a follow-up to her already published volume Art Affairs, containing candid behind-the scenes images of such events as Art Basel Miami Beach, London’s Frieze, ARCO Madrid, FIAC Paris, Art Cologne, which serve as watering-holes for artists, dealers and high-rolling investors alike. Heidecker’s photos reveal the subtext of commerce under the carnival-like atmosphere of the fairs, making us wonder if the transformative value of art is subsumed by its monetization.

I met Gabriele Heidecker aptly enough, on a plane from India to the Emirates as she globe-trotted between art events in Kolkata to Art Dubai and Sharjah, which are emerging capitals in the nexus of new art in the Middle East. I asked Ms. Heidecker about her new book in progress.

What are some of the interesting new emerging art fairs you’ve been documenting for your new book?

All of the art fairs which I have attended since 2008 have unique atmospheres: Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair 2008, Art Dubai, India Art Summit New Delhi, Contemporary Istanbul 2009 and this year I’ve been to The Armory Show, Fresh Paint Tel Aviv, ART HK 10 Hong Kong. For example, Art Dubai is remarkable because of the attire of its visitors: the men wearing white robes and the ladies in black. The India Art Summit for the fresh, unprejudiced approach by its visitors. I’m looking forward to Art Moscow. Hopefully I shall be able to document the art fairs in Johannesburg, Seoul, Mexico City, and eventually Sao Paolo, Tokyo and Singapore, which are on my agenda for 2011.

What have you seen in these emerging fairs that are different to what is going on in the bigger fairs?
To mention a few differences, they are not as perfect as in our expectations of European Art Fairs and, the selection of works that are shown, are a result of different cultural conventions and understanding of what art is. The behaviour of the public is led by fresh curiosity and sometimes there is less of a distance between the viewer and the object of art. This has become particularly obvious at the east Asian Art fairs, for example at ART HK 10. But also they add a breath of fresh air to the usual bazaars of the art world – something very new may emerge from this confrontation between western logistics, style, understandings and – from my point of view, the unfinished, uncontrolled, regional but vivid state of these new art fairs. This may in turn lead to new horizons and greater opportunities for the more established art world and fairs in general, which are usually characterized by their exhaustive professionalism.

Will you be exhibiting the new images soon?
Yes in 2010/11, I intend to exhibit each of the “photo-portraits” in the respective cities where the photos have been taken – for example in Istanbul, the series on Contemporary Istanbul 09 will most probably be shown at the fair ground; in New Delhi and Hong Kong talks are underway with representatives of the Goethe Institute. Then there is an exhibition planned – including the publication of the next book, in Berlin with selections of all the art fairs including the European ones. My aim with these photo-portraits is to capture the special character of the individual art fairs as determined by the respective country’s culture and perception of art. I’m also interested in the people who set up these fairs as well as in the people who visit them and how they deal with this art-phenomenon.

Do you feel that we are tending towards a universal art, a global language transcending cultural conventions which will become a unifying force?
With art fairs appearing everywhere there seems to be a global aspect to this market – the phenomenon of the art bazaar can be compared to a global language. The art fair as an expression of western culture, as a benchmark for up-to-datedness and civilisation, and at the same time, as a type of implant, has been accepted and implemented worldwide – it is this phenomenon of the art scene which seems to me – to have a dimension of time on its own – and which I try to capture in the expanding moment.

Do you feel this will result in a homogenization of artistic influences – resulting in a singular codification of art history that will dampen future artistic expression?
To what extent and if at all this development will take place I dare not make any projections . . .

See Gabriele Heidecker in action on German TV.

The Armory Show , New York 2010, Leo König inc. New York, works Tony Matelli, Nicole Eisenmann, Ridley Howard © Gabriele Heidecker