Published June 7, 2008 by aanews
Published June 4, 2008 by aanews
his year, Maurizio Cattelan is continuing the Synagogue Stommeln Art Project with a new, site-specific installation conceived exclusively for the outstanding art space. The exhibition in the former synagogue in Pulheim-Stommeln northwest of Cologne is on view from June 1 to August 10, 2008.
Maurizio Cattelan’s sculptures and lifelike scenarios are opened to many different interpretations and straightly confront the viewer with their ambiguous meanings. Maurizio Cattelan’s works oscillate between absurd humor and existential tragedy and while laughs and tears overlap, reality reveals itself magnified from an unexpected point of view.
Maurizio Cattelan is a virtuoso and at the same time a perfidious storyteller: his narrations leave the viewer in the hope for a happy end always coupled with a diffused sense of fear and alarm for a disaster that is looming. Death in fact is one of the most frequently recurring motifs in Cattelan’s oeuvre — it is the dark foil against which things that are apparently jocular, humorous, and disrespectful reveal a deep and threateningly serious force, standing behind his work as much as in reality.
For the Synagogue Stommeln Art Project, the artist has created a work which unrolls in two parts transgressing the spatial boundaries of the original exhibition venue and discovering the old St. Martin’s Church, here used for the first time as a contemporary art exhibition space. Maurizio Cattelan’s installation is a complex narrative questioning the historical relations between religions, their boundaries and possibilities, and moreover about the universal feelings of guilt and hope.
In fact, the two sites are linked every year by the Easter procession in Stommeln that from the synagogue brings the faithful across the train tracks and to the Old Church.
An apparently peaceful scene awaits the viewer at the synagogue in which young and undefended plants grow out of old and used shoes: as always new life starts from solid roots, often unexpectedly. As in a do-it-yourself apocalypse, Maurizio Cattelan’s new work suggests a precarious future after the calamity, a surreal possibility for order after chaos. A monument in reverse, this is a sculpture of a missing and yet strongly present and moving human being, animated by a nomadic religiosity.
A modern crucifixion appears after a short walk at the old St. Martin’s Church: on the exterior of the historical building a female figure materializes to the right of the tower opposed to the Christine memorial. A famous legend tells that the Blessed Christine of Stommeln was a medieval mystic who was misunderstood and expelled by the village community but later venerated for her stigmata and healing powers.
Playing with history and future, and rewriting stories from the past, Cattelan’s work often places itself in the context of traditional images while enquiring original ways of understanding. His new work in Stommeln is in immediate proximity to the local legend, but also a cut and paste from the history of art, and places itself between the depictions of the Madonna, a crucifixion and an outstanding image of peace and passion. But Maurizio Cattelan’s figure even avoids eye contact: with her back to the viewer and tied into a box, the sculpture becomes a symbol for immolation and at the same time a hymn for salvation.
Maurizio Cattelan’s work for the Synagogue Stommeln stands in the tradition of the exhibition project initiated in 1991 in which internationally renowned artists examine the specific spatial and historical circumstances of the site in a very individual way. Past contributors have been Richard Serra, Rosemarie Trockel, and Santiago Sierra, among a host of others.
Maurizio Cattelan was born in Padua in 1960. Since the 1990s, the Italian artist has had exhibitions in some of the most important museums of contemporary art in the world, among which are the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in Milan, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Museum für Moderne Kunst and Portikus in Frankfurt, and most recently, the Kunsthaus Bregenz. Maurizio Cattelan has participated in five of the Venice Biennales and in numerous group exhibitions, such as the Skulpturenprojekt Münster, Manifesta, and the Whitney Biennial.
Synagogue Stommeln
Hauptstrasse, behind house no. 85, 50259 Pulheim-Stommeln
Opening hours: Thu–Sat 4:00–7:00 p.m., Sun 1:00–7:00 p.m.
Old St. Martin’s Church
Ingendorferstrasse, 50259 Pulheim-Stommeln, all day
Synagogue Stommeln. A Project of the City of Pulheim
With the kind support of the parish church of St. Martinus, Stommeln.
Funded by: Kultur- und Umweltstiftung der Kreissparkasse Köln
Photos by Werner J. Hannappel
Published May 26, 2008 by aanews
nestar press has teamed up with the Galerie Daviet-Thery in Paris (May 24th – July 25th 2008) to present the storied bookcase that Lawrence Weiner designed to hold their ever-expanding collection of artist’s books. Also on the walls are 4 of their many multiples (the veritable tip of the iceberg), by Heimo Zobernig, Robert Barry, Seth Price and Pierre Bismuth. Short phrases (Conversation Piece #1 by Richard Dailey) are attributed to each multiple and printed on the wall, as if the pieces had been given their voices. It’s an old joke that nothing hears so many foolish things said as a work of art on display, but onestar reverses that dictum and lets the works speak for themselves. Ever wonder what it might be like to be at a cocktail party with the Mona Lisa?
Published May 14, 2008 by aanews
aim Steinbach, of course, is a man of many shelves as well as one of the first artists to work with onestar press, so he seemed like a natural choice to design a display unit for us.
Still, we couldn’t be more delighted or surprised by the result – Haim’s always pitch-perfect sensibility has taken the universal Duchampian aesthetic to a whole new level. All of Haim’s preoccupations with framing, juxtaposition, history and our perception of time are brought to bear here in a way that fires up the brain cells while giving a good retinal twist to one of the 20th century’s greatest art icons – so wrap your mind as well as your eyes around Haim Steinbach’s “shelf” piece for onestar press. What artist’s book collection wouldn’t be honored to become a Steinbachian object?
Galvanized metal
Approx. 160 (Lengnt) x 102 cm (Height) x 55 cm (Depth)
8 copies + 2 artist’s proofs accompanied by a certificate signed and numbered
by the artist
Price upon request.
Contact onestarpress.com
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Published May 3, 2008 by aanews
Photos: Paolo Terzi, Modena
he Galleria Civica di Modena is proud to announce the exhibition of Heimo Zobernig (1958, Mauthen, Carinthia). This is the first one-man show in an Italian museum to be held by the Austrian artist, and it will open on 20th April at 12pm, in the exhibition space of Palazzina dei Giardini in corso Canalgrande, Modena. The Heimo Zobernig exhibition, curated by Cornelia Lauf, an independent curator and artist’s book editor, is organised and sponsored by the Galleria Civica di Modena and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena.
The Austrian artist, a reference point in the European arts scene, will present two projects in Modena: the installation of a “blue box” especially created for the exhibition spaces of the Palazzina dei Giardini, as well as the installation of two of his artist’s books.
Zobernig debuted as an artist working for the theatre and the performing arts. Ever since the mid-‘80s, Zobernig has been producing paintings and sculptures of an abstract geometric nature, aimed essentially at thematising the figurative language. The object-based character of his sculptures shows his personal sense of poetics aimed at reducing forms through the potential offered by abstraction. With almost scientific precision, Zobernig analyses the premises of artistic creation and carries forward his own critical analysis of the potential of figurative art through a range of expressive media.
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Published April 20, 2008 by aanews
uteur d’œuvres travaillées par l’absence, Jason Dodge ne pouvait nous offrir pour les évoquer un épais volume de ceux que l’on range aisément dans sa bibliothèque et dont le dos peut se voir de loin. Mais l’existence de ces œuvres passe aussi par les publications et dans ce cas chaque détail compte. Voici donc un objet attirant et fragile : 48 pages tenues ensemble par 4 agrafes et insérées dans une pochette qu’on pourrait croire trop grande pour elles. N’en faisant pas trop dans le pas assez, on peut dire qu’il tombe juste. Que nous dit-il ? je ne veux pas être un livre mais je ne peux m’empêcher d’y penser.
Les deux pages introductives sont pour moi les plus belles et les plus touchantes : deux vues (dont l’une en vignette égarée dans le bord droit d’une page presque vide) d’une cage renfermant 5 pigeons voyageurs. Entraînés à se rendre à une adresse à Merkelbeek (Pays-Bas), leur libération aujourd’hui les enverrait vers une maison qui n’existe plus parce que rasée et remplacée par une autre après la mort de son propriétaire. La note explicative ajoute que personne ne les y reconnaîtrait mais ne nous précise pas si ces volatiles ont davantage besoin d’être reconnus que de reconnaître. On peut aussi se demander s’ils ne resteraient pas suspendus devant le seuil d’une maison qui n’est plus. Le sentiment de l’inéluctable et la drôlerie triste de ce préambule donnent une certaine couleur à l’ouvrage.
Les oeuvres de Dodge, ni tout à fait conceptuelles, ni complètement poétiques, oscillant entre l’univers de l’histoire criminelle (une chouette embaumée contenant des pierres précieuses) et celui du conte de fées (une couverture dont la longueur de fil pourait monter jusqu’au ciel) sont belles en tant qu’indices de ce qui a eu ou pourrait avoir lieu, et à la condition de ne pas confondre ces indices avec des reliques ou des symptômes de frustration. Les cordes de violons ayant joué les duos pour violons de Bartok soit nous ramène à la musique de Bartok, soit portent le regret d’une interprétation à jamais inédite, soit encore restent despérément muettes pour ceux à qui ce nom ne dit rien. Par ailleurs, ces cordes qui n’ont joué qu’une fois nous donnent à réfléchir sur les mécanismes d’indexation de l’immatériel sur des valeurs affectives ou monétaires. A côté de ces axes de réflexion sans fin, l’ouvrage multiplie les signes de vie, depuis les allusions biographiques jusqu’aux essais et analyses, depuis les marques d’amitié jusqu’à la stricte description.
Jason Dodge, catalogue, avec ses minces colonnes de texte, ses petits caractères et ses photos et légendes voyageant plutôt librement à l’intérieur des pages, évoque une marge un peu agrandie, un hors-texte qui permettrait d’enraciner les pièces tout en faisant appel vers une multiplicité de hors-champs. Cette forme de minoration fait passer le culot consistant à se placer sous l’invocation de Novalis, de Voltaire ou de William Carlos Williams, et à répondre aux questions que lui (se) posent ses amis, sa tante ou ses parents. On retrouve là le mouvement propre du livre, lui-même reflet du travail de Dodge : présenter plutôt que représenter l’absence. La piste biographique, presque incongrue, serait en fait l’équivalent de la destination des pigeons du début. Nous, commentateurs, critiques, spectateurs, avons beau savoir que l’artiste-auteur est mort depuis longtemps, nous n’avons pas perdu l’automatisme qui consiste à aller le chercher là où il n’est pas.
Patrick Javault, Paris.
Published March 25, 2008 by aanews
Most people know me for my websites. My subjects range from clouds to blood, from hands to farts, from hills to dollars, from doors to fire. A friend of mine asked ‘what is your leading path?’I cannot answer that question yet. RR
Yes, Rafael Rozendaal is an artist internationally known for his animations available on the internet on the numerous websites he registred please note that RR is not a so called “net artist”. RR uses the internet as a complex and infinite tool to create his art. He is a an artist of his own time.
To understand the attitude of this man, born in 1980 in Amsterdam, ones has to make the effort to walk with him along the path of his system of references. From Star Wars to South Park via Magritte and Lichtenstein RR creates, with the tools he favors, a universe composed of many planets that interact with the freedom that qualifies being a great artist.
Recently RR decided to freeze some of his animations into a new series of oil paintings called “FROZEN”.
We all will live soon in a world surrounded with digital media in an immersive Internet. Digital reproduction is everywhere. Only the personal experience will remain unique.
Contrary to John Baldessari who destroyed his pre1966 paintings, in an act of cutting the roots with his past and the history of art, RR has the nerve to use the archaic medium of paint to propose an alternative to the immediacy, speed and instant availibility of the Internet.RR uses the medium of painting on canvas in order to create the special effect of being confronted by a work of art that cannot be reproduced unless it looses its specificity.
These paintings situate themselves at the exact opposite of the multiple experience of RR’s internet hosted animations and are their perfect counterpoint. (The internet experience of the viewer is also “unique” in its own fashion as the the artist has no control of the end user’s harware and situation parameters).
A friend of the artist reacted when RR emailed him some studio shots of the paintings being realized and asked: what type of prints are these? These paintings are not prints, they are meticulously crafted oil on canvases of images frozen from RR’s animations on the internet. For this first series of paintings the artist worked on “Frozen” frames of colorflip.com.
Try to see RR’s paintings, but in the mean time visit newrafael.com
CB
Check Rafael Rozendaal art at onestar press
Published March 15, 2008 by aanews
Photos by Lyndon Douglas
Check Hans Schabus’s art at onestar press here
Published February 25, 2008 by aanews
Published February 9, 2008 by aanews
Cattelan
Concept and editing: Maurizio Cattelan
Essay: Bice Curiger
English translation: Catherine Schelbert
Published February 2008
Format: 325 x 430 mm. 12,7 x 16,9 inches.
Forty-three loose pages in a printed cardboard box.
First edition of 1000 copies.
his publication conceived by Maurizio Cattelan is both a book and an artwork. Like Duchamp’s “Boîte-en-valise,” it is a survey of Cattelan’s work. The artist designed the loose pages to fit in a carboard box; the hand-illustrated text and images emphasize the character of an artist’s book. Bice Curiger, chief editor of “Parkett” and curator at Kunsthaus Zurich, has contributed a well-informed essay.
To order this book or check the press’s other projects please visit www.threestarbooks.com
