The always very stern and glum Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Turin is currently running a retrospective dedicated to Ugo Mulas. The focus is on the photographer's relationship with the art scene of his time. Portraits of key figures of pop art, from Leo Castelli to Roy Lichtenstein, coverage of the Venice Biennales from 1954 to 1972, art events, artists, curators and critics living in Italy and New York, etc. A selection:

Roy Lichtenstein, New York 1964

Roy Lichtenstein, New York 1964

Roy Lichtenstein with Leo Castelli in the Lichtenstein room. XXXIII Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d'Arte, 1966

James Rosenquist, New York 1964

Signora Scull, New York 1964

and of course...

Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol. New York, 1964

He's not part of the pop family but i couldn't resist hanging a Marcel to the walls:

Marcel Duchamp. New York, 1964-1965

More pictures this way! If you ever use any, please do not forget to mention the credits.
All Images courtesy GAM di Torino. The exhibition is on view until October 5, 2008.

Global Cities at the Tate Modern in London. It's a pocket version of an exhibition that was running last year at the Arsenale during Venice Architecture Biennale. Cities, architecture and society, curated by Richard Burdett, focused on the key factors facing large scale metropolitan areas around the world. Last year, some critics were unhappy with the show, saying that there were too many facts and figures and not enough architecture. I guess some might find that the Tate version of it lacks to much of a fine art aura. Whatever... i found the show engrossing.

The starting point is the fact that today more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. "The 21st century will be the first truly urban era, in which more than 75% of the world’s population will live in urban areas, much of it in mega-cities with more than 20 million inhabitants concentrated in the countries undergoing rapid development in Asia, Africa and South America. In the meantime, many Western and European cities are shrinking, or have been forced to re-invent themselves in order to adapt to a post-industrial condition."

Saõ Paulo: an apartment building for the wealthy overlooks a favela, ironically called Paraisópolis (Paradise city). Photo: Luiz Arthur Leirão Vieira (bigger caption)

The Turbine Hall which hosts the Global Cities exhibition is big but not quite as much as Venice's 300-metre long Corderie dell’Arsenale. That's probably one of the reasons why the London version is tinier, there's more focus on London obviously, less photographs by artists who portray urban sprawl, the London team also skipped a few cities --namely Barcelona, Berlin, Bogota, Caracas, Milan-Torino and New York-- which in some cases made perfect sense (who'd say that Milan and Turin provide the most exciting examples of urban life?) But if the London gig is not enough for you, there's still plenty of paper fun in the catalogues of the Venice Architecture Biennale (Amazon USA and UK)


View from the balcony apartment on the island Gezira over Zamalek, Cairo, by Heiner H. Schmitt Jr.

So we're left with Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo. Information and data are painted on the walls to demonstrate on these cities are being transformed in social, economic and cultural terms. Besides, each city is studied through five thematic lenses – speed, size, density, diversity and form.

Venice has polystyrene 3D graphic presentations to represent the density of the cities, London had wooden ones. The models compare the number of people living within the administrative boundaries of the cities, the highest the peak, the higher the density.

The Tate website is very informative and clear. I'm not going to repeat what's already there. Instead i'll just present and link to some of the photographers whose work is on show at the Tate for the way they engage in a sometimes spectacular way (for its beauty or creepiness) with urban phenomena.

Scott Peterman's Mexico City Ecataepec, 2006 (bigger)

There's quite a few images so the show proceeds over here!

The Nordic Pavilion hosts the work of artists from Finland, Norway and Sweden. This year, the focus is on the performative character of the exhibits. Starting right at the entrance with It would be nice to do something political by Toril Goksøyr and Camilla Martens, where a black man is cleaning non-stop the glass window of the pavilion throughout the biennial. An "ironic commentary on the correctness in acting politically as an artist."

Inside, the visitor becomes the performer. With his interactive dart board installation --I, the world, things, life, Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren invites the audience to grab plastic arrows and throw them at the black and yellow dartboard. By doing so, the public is constantly modifying the artist's work.

Helsinki-based artist Adel Abidin has set up a little travel agency ABIDIN TRAVELS that caters for those who'd fancy vacation trips to Baghdad.

You are greeted by a sarcastic animated commercial, advertising a special offer for a holiday in Baghdad. The video gives you all the information you need to make the most of your hols: the cars you can rent tend to be of the military types; museums are closed, but that doesn't really matter as most of their content was looted anyway; you're advised to carry around candles or a torch with extra batteries, for the times when electricity is unavailable; you are advised to stay at a hotel of the lowest possible quality (the posh ones are targeted by Fundamentalist Muslims, or the National Forces), etc.

If the adventure tempts you, a computer is at hand to book your fly (you can also do it online.)

In a darker tiny room, another video monitor shows real images of the life that Iraqis are living in Iraq. The sound is covered by the voice of an American woman welcoming visitors, and American soldiers singing and playing instruments in one of Saddam’s palaces during Fourth of July. There are also brochures and posters to take away with you.

Just outside the pavilion, Liberté, by Lars Ramberg, functions both as a piece of art and public toilets. 3 unisex and self-cleaning toilets coming from the streets of Paris were painted in red, white and blue with the inscriptions «Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité».

They didn't work when i was there but here's what is supposed to happen: Inside the toilets, three different radio programs broadcast historical speeches; Charles De Gaulle, King Haakon VII, Franklin Roosevelt, etc accompanied by national hymns from Norway, France and USA.

My images of the pavilion.

More Baghdad: Cherry Blossoms, Shadows From Another Place - Baghdad <> San Francisco, Baghdad in Brooklyn, What I Did Last Summer, Vantage, a game about war causalities.

Morrinho means 'little hill' in Portuguese and alludes to the shantytowns, or favela, located on the hills surrounding Rio de Janeiro.

In 1998, kids built up a miniature reproduction of their favela (Pereirão, perched above the upper class Laranjeiras neighbourhood) using bricks and other materials left-over from building their own house. The model covers 300 square meters, and is inhabited by scavenged toys (plastic cars, little figurines carrying AK-47s or a ball, etc.) which are used to re-create scenes of everyday life in a favela: from dance events to clashes between gang members.

(via)

Fame came to Morrinho in 2001 when filmmaker Fábio Gavião put together a documentary about the mini favela. Since then portions of the brick favela have traveled all over the world, the latest stop is at the Giardini of the Venice Biennale.

A Morrinho NGO has been created to contribute to the social and economical development of the region and surrounding area. The organisation is carrying out 3 projects: TV Morrinho, independent productions and contracted productions; Morrinho Turism, guided tours of the Morrinho model and exhibition Morrinho, showing a replica model in a smaller scale in other cities.

The NGO also plans to offer workshops to provide professional skills for the residence of the "Pereirão" community. These workshops focus on areas such as audiovisual, art education, Brazillian culture, Youth and Citizenship and others.

The favela reappears at the Arsenale in the work of photographer Paula Trope who documented the project together with the children of Morrinho. She made pin-hole cameras out of tin cans and handed them to the boys so that they could take pictures.

Bonus: a Morrinho video re-enacting a demonstration after a drug dealer is killed. With a stack of dominos playing the role of 4kg of cocaine. (via Daddy Types.)

My images on flickr.

Related: Modular favela structure.

This edition of the Venice Biennale confirmed once again that the Chinese do know what appeals to Westeners. Curator and critic Hou Hanru has invited female artists -Cao Fei, Yin Xiuzhen, Kan Xuan and Shen Yuan- to create site specific works in the spectacular petrol warehouse and in the Vergini Gardens.

Actually that warehouse is so spectacular that you almost forget about the artworks exhibited there. Yin Xiuzhen managed to compete with the space by hanging 100 missiles, each of them shaped like TV tower and wrapped in knitted fabric, above the petrol containers (in the original project, the huge containers were covered with textiles as well.) There is an unmissable contrast between the feminine, crafty and soft texture of the textile and the masculine (the most appropriate word is "phallic") shape of the TV towers-turned-weapons which perfectly befits the traces of war and blood that the visitor can detect in the former armory.

I briefly blogged two of the artist's previous works: International Flight, a seven-metre-long replica aeroplane, and the Portable Cities, a series which uses dirty clothes and discarded materials Xiuzhen finds in the cities she visits to create 3D models of those cities. For another of her previous works, Fashion Terrorism, she turned old pieces of clothing into soft replica of items which cannot be brought on planes (pistols, knives, axes, etc.). She then packed the items in her suitcase and traveled from Beijing to Germany, going through customs and security searches.

Fashion Terrorism

The most talked about work is Cao Fei's exploration of the online world (yawn!) Second Life. Let me just point to New World Notes where Wagner James Au had the artist talk about her project. And to a second interview of Cao Fei at Art Fag City.

Although the work wasn't part of the show, i can't resist posting another image and link to Cao's Cosplayer series.

Cosplayers: Golden Fighter

Kan Xuan's contribution to the pavilion are 2 video works, the first one is a fascinating animation of a Buddhist sculpture and the other stars a naked girl dancing on a pedestal in the back of a garden. Meanwhile Shen Yuan's giant bits of baby milk bottles and accessories are scattered all over the garden.

My images.

Just had a look at my posts on the Biennale di Venezia and realized that i have mostly highlighted some rather dark projects. However, the event is far from being uniformly bleak and depressing. Here's a first example: the pavilion of the Republic of Korea, one of the most successful crowd-pleasers.

The pavilion features the first solo show of Lee Hyungkoo whose work has been extensively blogged but as not many comments went beyond the "coolness factor" of the artist's work, the exhibition provided me with a good opportunity to have a better look at his images and sculptures.

Titled The Homo Species, the show presents two bodies of works: The Objectuals and Animatus.

Enlarging My Right Hand with Gauntlet 1 and Altering Facial Features with Device-H5

The Objectuals deals with the "undersized Asian men" - a stereotype which the artist had to face while studying in the USA. Using optical devices he visually magnifies a part of (for example his Helmets transform particular features of his face) or the entire body.

Detail of the HK LAB - CPR laboratory

Instead of displaying only pictures of the resulting transformations, the pavilion shows the various instruments either conveniently gathered and waiting to be used in a cold and brightly-lit clinic which might evoke a torture chamber or worn by a pseudo surgeon (Hyungkoo Lee himself either working in his "HK LAB - CPR" or walking in the empty Venice streets and sipping a coffee* through a built-in straw) in a video. Hyungkoo Lee proposes a provisional answer to the post-human issues, which encompass health and beauty, power and violence, sexuality and race, technology and simulation, with his own sharp and original interpretation.

In Animatus series, the artist blends Hollywood cartoons and archaeology by reconstructing the skeletons of famous characters. There are only two "fossils" of such skeletons (a tiny mouse and a big Felis Catus that represent Tom & Jerry) in the pavilion, the rest is a museum-like display of pseudo-archaeological tools, drawings and findings meticulously ordered to simulate a long, precise and scientific reconstruction of the bodies.

The work of Hyungkoo Lee is regarded as the result of performances since his own body is the starting point of his work. In this sense, the staged laboratory is a kind of mobile studio for his work. As his laboratory and performance in the exhibition reveals the bases of his work and at the same time shading illusions on the boundary between art and pseudo-science, he conjures up an ironical authenticity in a quasi-pseudo mode.

Weblogart has a video of the pavilion.

* i wonder how much he was charged for the coffee.

My pics from the Korean Pavilion.
Related: Venice Architecture Biennale: the Korean Pavilion.