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In London until tonight for the RCA show and a couple more exhibitions. Yesterday was Sunday. Barbican day to check out Radical Nature. Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969-2009. "Yawn! Do we really need to read about yet another exhibition around that theme?" will you ask. Yes! It is a great show. A bit on the spectacular side but really intelligent, i'll detail that later on this week. Not because i'm a big fan of suspense (i always pause thrillers and go online to see how it ends) but because i'm short on time. Here's a project i liked a lot:
Danish artist and environmentalist Tue Greenfort's series, Daimlerstrasse 38 (2001) lured foxes living in the industrial area in eastern Frankfurt with frankfurter sausages towards a hidden camera.
Greenfort made "traps" using garbage he found in the area. He put a camera inside. At the other end of the camera flex is the sausage. When a fox bit in the sausage, it activated the camera and made an auto-portrait of itself. One week later the animals had learned to eat the sausage without being photographed. |
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I love Antwerp. I think the Fashion Department at its Royal Academy is the best in the world, its art scene is never dull (the MoMu, Museum of Fashion, is currently showing that Paper Fashion exhibition i reviewed a few months ago), i like shopping there, people are friendly, plus there's a harbour and i have that thing about sailors.
As i wrote on Sunday, one of the reasons i visited Antwerp is that i had never seen the Museum of Photography. This is going to be one of my regular stops. The exhibitions i checked out last week are now closed but the upcoming ones look great. There's going to be Geert van Kesteren's Baghdad Calling/ Why Mister, Why? and Theatres of the Real. British photography today. They both open on June 19, 2009. There were 4 exhibitions last week. Two i liked a lot, one that was as ok as i expected and a last one i was not so much into. I already mentioned how much i admired the talent of Jimmy Kets. But my happiness didn't stop there. On the 4th floor of the museum, I fell head over heels in front of the six channel video installation, East of Que Village, of Yang Fudong.
The images of East of Que Village are miles away from the ones that the international press showed during their coverage of the Olympics last Summer. The film attempts to depict the sense of isolation and loss increasingly present in China's contemporary society as communities are scattered, traditional rural villages dissolved, and the fight for survival takes precedence. The imagery is of a desolate and hostile landscape, the host to a group of wild dogs fighting a merciless life-and-death struggle for survival, with only a sporadic presence of human life and social values.
The b&w video installation is mesmerizing rawboned dogs walk in the wind and get into fights, people inside their home are quietly performing routine activities, and the landscape is fiercely inhospitable.
But the pièce de résistance at the museum at the time was the solo exhibition of Erwin Olaf. His work is indeed bound to fascinate audiences. It talks of gender issues, sex, violence, body, entertainment, fashion, beauty, darkness, death. Some of his most provocative series were on display: Chessmen, Blacks, Mature, Fashion Victims, Royal Blood, Paradise 'the Club', Separation, Paradise Portraits, New York Times Couture, etc.
The photos that shocked me the most by far are part of the Mature series -not because i find them scandalous but because i can very well imagine me with that kind of body within a few years and i'm vain and time passes so fast. Women of a certain age (read, at least 70 years old) pose as Playboy pinups, with a bikini, bath foam, or their wobbly skin as only attire. Their identity is reduced to just a name and the first letter of their surname, they are Kate M., Cindy C., Anna Nicole S., Christy T., Claudia S., etc. There's something magnificently defiant in their attitude. Are they beautiful? Ridiculous? Inspiring? Outrageous? You are the judge.
Olaf's video and photos Le Dernier Cri gives another, almost blunter, view of what alternative beauty can be. The bourgeois, chic and polite protagonists wear elegant face adornment that are all the more frightful that we are use to associate this kind of flesh accessory with body mod-addicts. Video Le Dernier Cri: I'll end with my favourite series by Olaf: Separation. I don't need to comment on this one.
Small extract of Olaf's video Separation: You can see some images of the exhibition space on Jordan Hellemans Photography. |
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Found on sexblogs. |
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On Thursday, i went to Antwerp -damn! do i love that city- to see a couple of exhibitions. I'll come back with more words about my peregrinations in Antwerp later. In the meantime, i wanted to dedicate a post to a young photographer i discovered at the Museum of Photography. The show ends tomorrow, so close your laptop and take the train.
In 'Brightside' Jimmy Kets follows roaming individuals in their lonely search for happiness, satisfaction and a carefree existence. The journey leads to holiday paradises and fun fairs, from Disney Land to Las Vegas, via erotica exhibitions and zoos. Kets is the amused outsider. He gazes dreamily, but not without a message. He shows the small things that make us human. The footing and happiness we are all looking for. Our desires and insatiable lust.
There were many photos he took in the USA. But the series i liked the best were shot in Belgium.
I particularly like the Volkscafes series:
Jimmy Kets [°1979] is press photographer for "De Standaard" newspaper with an impressive blossoming career. He was awarded the Nikon Press Photo Award 2008 and, to coincide with the exhibition, the book "Brightside" about his work will be published by Ludion publishers. |
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I've stopped counting the number of emails i received about my latest flickr set titled AUTO. SUEÑO Y MATERIA [AUTO. DREAM AND MATERIAL] . Yes, my friends, it's an exhibition about cars. It's quite spectacular, it's overwhelming and you can visit it until September 21 at Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón, Spain. Over works 100 explore, each in their own way, the relationship between car culture and art creation in recent decades. 100 works that's a lot to write about so i'll start slowly with a first piece i saw at LABoral. A more detailed report will come soon(ish).
In 2005, Maider López bought advertising space in the press, he had leaflets distributed and posters glued on walls. His objective was to invite car drivers to come and create an artificial traffic jam on the slopes of the Aralar mountains in the North of Spain. On the 18th of September 2005, 160 cars (with approximately 425 people) joined the jam from 11am. until 3pm. The artist's team directed the traffic and documented the event.
The photographs document an absurd confrontation between the urban and the rural, an extravagant Waiting for Godot, which today resonates with an added layer of ecological threat.
All images courtesy Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial. |
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Hey! looks who's back from last month limbo! It's the ARCO post. A very concise one to share an artist or artwork i discovered at the Madrid Contemporary Art Fair. This one is Case Study Homes, a series of photographies by Peter Bialobrzeski whose work Neontigers i had briefly alluded to a couple of years ago. The project, that started in Manila then spread over Asia, attests men's desire to built themselves a place they can call home, even if that entails rummaging through garbage.
Also worth the trip: Jörg Colberg's interview with the photographer. |
