Artist Mariko Mori’s Journey to Seven Light Bay is a digital project that transports visitors to Miyako Island in Okinawa, Japan, where Mori has installed the first part of her monumental earthwork ‘Primal Rhythm’. The installation consists of a sun pillar and the egg-shaped ‘Tida Dome’ that changes colour with tidal movements.

Inspired by the caves of Okinawa in Japan, the digitally rendered ‘Tida Dome’ is a hollow shell through which light enters as it floats in the bay, shifting colour from red at low tide to blue at high tide, with many gradations in between. Mori has chosen exact coordinates such that at the moment of winter solstice, the lengthening shadow of the ‘sun pillar’ will penetrate the actual moonstone, once it is physically installed in the bay, uniting the celestial with the terrestrial, the masculine with the feminine.

Sun Pillar Miyako Island in Okinawa, Japan © Mariko Mori

Mariko Mori - Tida Dome, Courtesy of Adobe Museum of Digital Media

Construction of the Sun Pillar Miyako Island in Okinawa, Japan © Mariko Mori

Mori intends the site of this symbolic work to be a place for future performances that will engage viewers to participate in the surrounding environment. This installation, like many of her earlier works, integrates art, technology and Buddhism, engages circadian patterns, and celebrates the primary rhythms of the universe, which urban life largely erases from our consciousness.

Mariko Mori, Série "Present" (détail), Times Square, New York, 1997

The art world often sidelines humanist works for their accessibility and for their campaigns of universal mantras, but Mori has a history of meshing modern technology with ancient practices in a way that engenders contemplation for our place in the natural world. Predating Lady Gaga by many years, her pod performances in Times Square and other landscapes around the world, engaged public awareness using grand spectacles. Her Lucite stone circles were inspired by earthworks of the Jomon period in Japan, drawing on the astronomical wisdoms of the ancients to create connections that transcend time and cultural differences.

The Japanese born artist, commutes between her homes in Tokyo and New York for her projects, and also heads a non-profit organization, the Faou Foundation with a mandate to create a series of site-specific earthworks across six continents to engage local communities and enhance public interactions with the natural environment.

Mariko Mori, Wave UFO, 1999-2002, Courtesy of Adobe Museum of Digital Media

Mariko Mori - Oneness, Courtesy of Adobe Museum of Digital Media

A virtual demo of the installation of the Tida Dome, entitled ‘Journey to Seven Light Bay’ can be viewed at Adobe Museum of Digital Media site.

Faou Foundation

Video Courtesy of Ministry of Culture

The Maharaja's Apartment, Udaipur City Palace, © Karen Knorr - Courtesy of Danziger Gallery NY

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.

The Private Audience, AAm Khas, Junha Mahal, Dungarpur © Karen Knorr - Courtesy of Danziger Gallery NY

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.

Salon Lilas, © Karen Knorr, Musée Carnavalet

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.

The Gatekeeper, Zanana, Samode Palace © Karen Knorr - Courtesy of Danziger Gallery NY

The Green Bedroom Louis XVl © Karen Knorr, Musée Carnavalet

Demarteau's Salon, © Karen Knorr, Musée Carnavalet

The Joy Of Ahimsa, Takhat Vilas, Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur © Karen Knorr, Courtesy of Danziger Gallery NY

Karen Knorr ‘India Song’ – Danziger Gallery, New York November 3 – December 23, 2011
More information Karen Knorr: http://www.karenknorr.com/photographs/fables/musee-carnavalet/

Nick Cave Soundsuits, Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery

Artist Nick Cave has been using his wearable Soundsuits in performances, collaborating with locals to create dynamic visual and aural sequences that are unlikely to be confused with the output of the other musician with the same name.

Nick Cave Soundsuits: Untitled, 2009 Digital c, print, Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery

Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth (travelling exhibition), Seattle Art Museum, Washington, March 10–June 5, 2011. Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery

Cave’s work resembles moving sound sculptures that appeal to both kids and adults cross-culturally. He brings his Soundsuits to different cities and hires locals to perform in them, engaging the community. Recently he collaborated on a video with Dr. Dre beats and Fendi for a fashion sequence.

Cave is comfortable in the melding of art and fashion being the director of the graduate fashion program at the Art Institute of Chicago. But Cave has said that his first Soundsuit was created as an emotional reaction to the Rodney King beating in 1992, when he decided to address his response through art, creating a suit out of twigs that he later discovered made sounds. Since then he has created suits from various discarded and scavenged materials that borrow from African, Carnivale and high fashion traditions.

Nick Cave: Speak Louder, 2011 buttons, wire, bugle beads, upholstery, and mannequin, Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery

Nick Cave Soundsuits, Soundsuit, 2011 dogwood twigs, wire, upholstery, and mannequin - Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery

For more information on where his Soundsuits will be traveling next visit: http://soundsuitshop.com/

Marilyn Minter, Cheshire (Wangechi) - 2011 enamel on metal - 60 x 96 inches (152.4 x 243.8 cm) , Courtesy of Salon 94 gallery

In Cheshire Minter does an extreme close-up of grinning teeth that would delight any dentist with a desire for detail. I asked Minter about her use of close-ups, which left no narrative clues as to gender, and she said she liked the implied mystery and the multi-readings this made possible.

Though not averse to snot, drool, sweat, and licking, Minter is not interested in gratuitously shocking the viewer. Instead she gleefully celebrates the many visceral oozings of effluvium that accompany our human package. Minter paints the messy issues of our lust and hunger, portraying simultaneously the erotic and the abject.

Marilyn Minter, Meltdown - 2011 enamel on 2 metal panels - 120 x 96 inches (304.8 x 243.8 cm) , Courtesy of Salon 94 gallery

Marilyn Minter Play Pen - 2011 Video - Courtesy of Salon 94 gallery

Marilyn Minter Glisterine - 2011 enamel on 2 metal panels - 84 x 120 inches (213.4 x 304.8 cm) - Courtesy of Salon 94 gallery

Interview with Marilyn Minter for SPREAD

Marilyn Minter’s exhibition is on view at Salon 94 Bowery, 243 Bowery New York, NY 10002 – Oct 28 – Dec 4

]]> http://www.spreadartculture.com/2011/11/29/a-mudbath-with-marilyn-minter/feed/ 0 http://www.spreadartculture.com/2011/11/18/the-mask-and-the-mirror/ http://www.spreadartculture.com/2011/11/18/the-mask-and-the-mirror/#comments Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:46:32 +0000 KisaLala http://www.spreadartculture.com/?p=9303

Becoming Van Leo A project by Negar Azimi and Karl Bassil, Arab image Foundation Self-portrait Cairo, Egypt, November 22, 1958 Collection Arab Image Foundation/ The American University in Cairo ©The American University in Cairo

A show of self-portraits curated by Shirin Neshat is on exhibit at the Leila Heller Gallery. Neshat began posing for her own camera in 1993 and this led to her series of photographs Women of Allah. Rather than a projection of her own persona, she styled herself after warrior women, drawing on the role Muslim women played in the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution.

Neshat says that her exploration into self-depiction was inspired by Frida Kahlo. “As a young art student in the mid 1980s, I remember developing an obsession with the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and her self-portraits. I was astonished by how her powerful paintings pulled the viewer in to her private world to witness the beauty and the horror she experienced in her personal life. Through the depiction of her own body and the use of visual metaphors, Frida Kahlo let loose her emotional and psychological anguish, her spiritual and moral orientation, and most importantly she revealed that art operates somewhere between the artist’s conscious and subconscious.”

Shirin Neshat Photographed by Stephan Würth for SPREAD 2010

In this exhibition Neshat brings together an eclectic mix of canonical western artists known for redefining the art of photographic self-portraiture like Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman and Matthew Barney, but also Iranian and Middle Eastern artists like Shahram Karimi and Youssef Nabil, and those who have developed more extensive fictional personae as a way of exploring the psyche.

Becoming Van Leo A project by Negar Azimi and Karl Bassil, Arab image Foundation Self-portrait Cairo, Egypt, February 18, 1944 Collection Arab Image Foundation/ The American University in Cairo ©The American University in Cairo

Iké Udé Sartorian Anarchy: untitled #4 2010 Pigment on satin paper Edition 3 of 3 Courtesy of the artist

Marina Abramović Portrait with Falcon 2010 Silver gelatin print Edition 5 of 25 3 APs © Marina Abramović

Paolo Canevari, Colosso 2001 Black and White print AP, edition of 3

The Mask & The Mirror, Curated by Shirin Neshat – November 3 – December 21, 2011
Leila Heller Gallery Chelsea: 568 West 25th Street New York, NY 10001

Maurizio Cattelan, Guggenheim Museum New York, 2011

Tragicomic poet-prankster Maurizio Cattelan has turned the Guggenheim’s rotunda into a hanging carousel of colorful characters, effigies, surrogates and stuffed dead things that dangle from their gallows in chaotic companionship. Cattelan has also announced his retirement and, in this final exhibition, his magnum opus, he unites ‘All’ his lively, eccentric offspring, staging the ultimate mass execution.

Nancy Spector, the chief curator of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, worked with Cattelan in putting the show together. I asked Spector if the artist’s use of taxidermy was to inspire empathy in his audience. “Absolutely, the animals are anthropomorphic and they are self-portraits and surrogates of him, they have a humanizing quality, if you think of Aesop’s fables – where there is usually a moral to the story – it is very much on that level.”

“Where does he get the animals from?” I asked, imagining him picking through the dead pigeons piling up in Venice’s Piazza San Marco.

Installation View - Maurizio Cattelan, Guggenheim Museum New York, 2011

Maurizio Cattelan, Guggenheim Museum New York, 2011

Maurizio Cattelan, Stephanie, 2003, Guggenheim Museum 2011

Maurizio Cattelan, Guggenheim Museum New York, 2011

“They all have certificates from the taxidermists that they died natural deaths,” said Spector, careful to defend the artist in advance, adding, “Or in the case of the pigeons, from a civic-level eradication program; so everything has been carefully documented and preserved. We do have the paperwork on everything if that may become a concern…”

“In Venice, where they have a huge pigeon population, Maurizio gets permission from the city if they are killing the pigeons, to [acquire them] for his artwork.”

Cattelan’s work has a heavy infusion of mea culpa, that include his suicidal squirrels and the homo-nuanced We – to his genuflecting and supplicant sculpture Him, depicting Hitler on his knees begging for forgiveness.

I asked Spector if she thought his Roman-Catholic upbringing had inspired any sense of anti-authority or had affected any anti religious sentiments.

“He just deals with his anxiety in being brought up with a religion that promotes a certain level of guilt, and Maurizio is very guilt prone – his mother was extremely religious and she was very ill during his entire childhood; she died of lymphatic cancer in his early twenties – during her disease, she became an inspirational religious person in her radio show, and his sister is also a nun – so it is something that is deeply personal; he has a respect for it, but at the same time there is also a healthy dose of a questioning of authority.”

The pope struck down by a meteorite above in La Nona Ora, Maurizio Cattelan, Guggenheim Museum New York, 2011

Maurizio Cattelan, Guggenheim Museum New York, 2011

Maurizio Cattelan, Guggenheim Museum New York, 2011

Spector also explained her involvement in engineering the show, beginning with a scale model to correctly identify weight distribution, and meeting all the safety requirements for works on loan to the museum.

Maurizio Cattelan, Guggenheim Museum New York, 2011

Maurizio Cattelan, Guggenheim Museum New York, 2011

Master manipulator, Erik Sanko Photographed by Bobby Fisher at His Studio, 2011 ©Bobby Fisher

Coming up post-Halloween is Erik Sanko’s pagan puppet premiere at BAM for Phantom Limb’s performance of 69°S.

The production dramatizes the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s harrowing 1914 trans-Antarctic expedition in which his vessel, the Endurance, was stranded amid freezing ice-floes for an entire winter only a few miles from the South Pole. 69°S is the latitude at which the intrepid arctic pioneers struck peril. The ensemble, led by Erik Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff, brings to life Shackleton’s adventure with elaborate hand carved marionettes in a series of tableaux vivants using music, film and photography to create a fantasy Antarctica.

Erik Sanko's marionettes. Photograph © Bobby Fisher, 2011

Erik Sanko. Photograph © Bobby Fisher, 2011

Erik Sanko's studio. Photograph © Bobby Fisher, 2011

An original score by Kronos Quartet and costumes designed by threeAsFour will set the stage for a magical tale of human generosity and collective sacrifice (Shackleton gave away his mittens and the last of his biscuits to save his fellow crewmen from starvation, while barely surviving himself with frostbitten fingers). The inspiring story is one of personal heroism triumphing over cataclysmic hardships.

Bobby Fisher’s captivating photographs for SPREAD are a behind-the-scenes revelation of the upcoming show at Erik Sanko’s Tribeca studio – a cabinet of curiosities, with a Gothic bestiary of taxidermy creatures and a coven of eerie, elegant marionettes that await resurrection through the hands of their lord.

Erik Sanko's marionettes. Photograph © Bobby Fisher, 2011

Erik Sanko. Photograph © Bobby Fisher, 2011

Sanko, a master manipulator of strings, is similarly musically inclined, having played with the Lounge Lizards, John Cale, Yoko Ono, and his own band, Skeleton Key. When he is not touring with his puppets for stage productions, he also performs more macabre marionette acts at the BOX in New York City.

For more information: BAM and Erik Sanko’s and Jessica Grindstaff’sPhantom Limb Company

© Martin Wittfooth - Pieta 2011, Oil on canvas 50 x 30 in / 127 x 76.2 cm

In his first solo show in New York entitled The Passions Martin Wittfooth’s explores martyrdom and sainthood using animals as subjects to symbolically represent acts of violent self-sacrifice and destruction practiced on the basis of ideological or institutionalized beliefs.

The series also obliquely references the suicide bombings, acts of self-immolation, blind devotion and religious fervor prevalent even in modern societies – as exemplified by Islamic jihad and followers of biblical Rapture – practices which appear absurdly arcane, parochial and even ridiculous when distanced and abstracted through the satirical lens of an anthropomorphized species.

Work from an earlier series, Angel 2009, 30 inches x 30 inches Oil on Panel © Martin Wittfooth

© Martin Wittfooth The Ecstasy 2011, Oil on canvas 36 x 36 in / 91.4 x 91.4 cm

The artist explains that The Passions offers a criticism of blind, destructive piety, and his style of representation references 17th and 18th c. Flemish masters and the Pieta in Bernini’s sculpture. His allegorical use of animals also alludes to the folk iconography in Aesop’s fables and the mythical portrayal of creatures in fantasy and folk lore. Their settings within the context of modern cities, also depicts ecological conflicts raised by human habitation, and the poisons and contamination this co-existence presents.

© Martin Wittfooth The New Suns, Oil on Linen 2010

Though the current exhibition lacks the visionary focus of some of his earlier work, the tension between the organic and the concrete is thematically replayed here. Wittfooth said in an earlier interview with SPREAD: “Animals are always interacting in man-made environments…potentially responding to man-made events, yet I feel that animals in contemporary context are really the victims or witnesses to what we are creating.”

© Martin Wittfooth - The Rapture 2011, Oil on canvas 36 x 48 in / 91.4 x 121.9 cm

© Martin Wittfooth - The Sacrifice 2011, Oil on canvas 64 x 50 in / 162.6 x 127 cm

© Martin Wittfooth - Domini Canis 2011, Oil on canvas 64 x 64 in / 162.5 x 162.5 cm

Martin Wittfooth “The Passions” October 13 – November 12, 2011
Lyons Wier Gallery 542 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011

Jake and Dinos Chapman - Detail from - One Day You Will No Longer Be Loved

Jake and Dinos Chapman recently showed at White Cube in London in their first ‘non-collaborative’ show, where each worked separately on works isolated in their studios bringing their art together in the final stage of the exhibition: much like the working method of ‘exquisite corpse’ – the Surrealist game where each contributor adds his part to a drawing without revealing his artistic input to the other.

Their interest in shocking their audiences with puerile and playful provocations against bourgeois culture is evident in their sticking genitals on childrens’ and adults’ bodies in inappropriate places: In an interview with curator Norman Rosenthal at 92Y, Jake Chapman said, “Victoria Miro [their gallerist at the time] was a lovely demure bourgeois woman… Our interest was stimulation…we learned that if we called a sculpture ‘fuckface,’ it attained value – you could hear Victoria on the phone talking to some collector saying, “Yes, I can do you a fuckface, or a two-faced cunt.” We were interested in how far we could affect, invade bourgeois language…”

© Jake & Dinos Chapman – God does not love you O.M.F.G., White Cube gallery

Artist Jake Chapman, © Kisa Lala

Jack & Dinos Chapman – The milk of human weakness, White Cube gallery

Jake Chapman, who seems more overtly cerebral than his brother, talked about Goya as one of his inspirations citing him as one of the first modern artists. “He invents this rapt internal torment.” But Chapman believed Goya’s work was protected by the institutionalized belief in the humanistic content of the work – “What we were interested in was that, you could also look at the work as having a libidinized content that exceeded the institutional claims made about it. On one hand, the work could be confused as being an indictment of atrocities, and yet if you look closely at the work – the concentration of areas of violence [and genital areas], seems to betray a certain kind of pleasure.”

By recreating each of the 83 scenes in Goya’s etchings and depicting them in pathetic little plastic tableux, the brothers changed the existential quality of the work, belittling the works’ magnitude by using childish toys, and reducing it to play.

Fucking Hell, By Jake and Dinos Chapman

The Chapman brothers obviously enjoy the controversy they provoke but remain incredibly articulate in defending themselves. Speaking to Will Self, Jake Chapman exulted about DMT: “Makes you feel like a shrinky-dink in the oven – all shrivelled up. It was the most intense drug experience I’ve ever had – you become completely subjectless, there’s no you any more. It’s terrifying.”

© Jake and Dinos Chapman - One Day You Will No Longer Be Loved - That it Should Come to This... 2010 Oil on Canvas

On their music video for PJ Harvey, Jake Chapman said to the Guardian, “This formula, which demands you provide eye candy for ear candy, isn’t one we want to follow. For us, when you’re making art the point is to intervene in the formula. We’ve made two videos. The first, for the Peth, was basically a camera disappearing up Rhys Ifans’s arse. The second, Black Hearted Love, for PJ Harvey and John Parish, featured Polly jumping up and down on a bouncy castle, which undermines the rules of what a pop video should be….Making a pop video is obviously different to making art. While the time pressure is greater, that’s alleviated by the resources. It’s the difference between building the Eiffel tower and the pyramids: it all depends on how many slaves you’ve got…”

More Information: http://www.jakeanddinoschapman.com/

Elizabeth Taylor Wearing a Chador at the Shah Cheragh Shrine, Shiraz , 1976: © Firooz Zahedi - Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

© Firooz Zahedi - Dressed as an Odalisque II, 1976, Printed 2011 C-print 48 x 36 in/ 121.9 x 91.4 cm, Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery

The muse of many artists, including Warhol, the late actress Elizabeth Taylor reveals a more candid side in an exhibit of photographs by Firooz Zahedi, in which she returns to the glamorous age of Cleopatra. A show with over 40 photographs from the actress’s travels to Iran in 1976, is on loan from LACMA, and can be seen at Leila Heller’s new downtown gallery till October 29th.

Firooz Zahedi had left Iran as a child, but together with Taylor, he returned to his country to photograph the culture made exotic once more through the lens of a visitor. Together they traveled to Persepolis, the once destroyed ancient Persian capital, to Shiraz, and to the tile-decked town of Isfahan, where Taylor, after visits to the bazaars, purchased the costumes for her transformation to an oriental odalisque.

Elizabeth Taylor in Persepolis with view of the Tent City in the background. © Firooz Zahedi Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

Before her death last March, Elizabeth Taylor said to her close friend Firooz, “Seeing these photographs brings back fond memories of my visit to Iran, a country blessed with a rich and colorful culture that dates back many centuries.” Zahedi, who now lives in Los Angeles, started his career in New York during the mid-1970s working with Andy Warhol and Interview.

Elizabeth Tayolor's BVLGARI Emerald Suite being auctioned at Christie's, New York

The BVLGARI Emerald Suite, a suite of emerald and diamond jewelry, were gifts from Richard Burton from 1962-1967. The necklace alone is estimated at $1,000,000 – 1,500,000. Elizabeth Taylor began her work against AIDS in the early 1980s and in October 1991, Taylor established The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF). A portion of the monies generated by exhibition admissions, events and select publications related to the sales will be donated to her AIDS Foundation.

© Firooz Zahedi, Dressed as an Odalisque I, 1976, printed 2011, Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery

Elizabeth Taylor at Tomb of Saadi - Shiraz © Firooz Zahedi Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

Elizabeth Taylor Seated in a Meditation Room - Shiraz © Firooz Zahedi Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

Elizabeth Taylor Smoking a hookah at the Tea House © Firooz Zahedi Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

Elizabeth Taylor in Chador at the Shah Chirag Shrine -Shiraz © Firooz Zahedi Courtesy Leila Heller Gallery, New York

More information:
Elizabeth Taylor Foundation
Christies Auction of Liz Taylor jewels
Leila Heller Gallery Chelsea: 568 West 25th Street New York City