Step Inside a Bewitching Ranch House in Malibu

Jorge Pardo | Architectural Digest

Photography by Mark Seelen

By Mayer Rus

Despite the eye-rolling hauteur of the word Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art, it is the mot juste to describe what Pardo has wrought: a dizzying, kaleidoscopic fantasy interior in which the floors, walls, ceilings, and furnishings filigree into a single orgasmic organism, brought to life through the artist’s signature experiments with form, pattern, and color. There’s a primary bedroom suite at one end of the structure, two guest rooms at the other, a kitchen/dining zone, and a sunken living room, the latter two mediated by a floor-to-ceiling storage volume clad in quotidian prefab wood shingles that strike a dramatic contrast note amid all the calligraphic finery. “It’s really a simple building, but when you step inside it’s optically extreme,” Pardo says, describing the symphony of engraved, punctured, and otherwise manipulated walls, windows, doors, and furnishings, all fabricated using CNC computer-driven machining processes.

Read more here.

Uta Barth at 1301PE

Uta Barth | Artillery Magazine

Uta Barth, Untitled #7, 2024

By Jody Zellen

In these pieces, the emphasis is not on the individual picture, but on the myriad ways it can be transformed and what those transformations imply about the difference between what the eye sees and how the camera records. Barth goes beyond the act of looking by manipulating the visual cues (the passage of the sun and its shadow) by which we map our days: She draws our attention to the subjective nature of our own passage through time and space, contingent on our perception of it.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Latest Show in London Tackles Disillusionment and Political Polarization

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Observer Magazine

Courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias

By Elisa Carollo

For his latest exhibition, “A MILLION RABBIT HOLES,” on view at Pilar Corrias in London during Frieze Art Week, Tiravanija has created an immersive environment that captures the atmosphere of American politics in the run-up to the presidential election next month while also reflecting on the dangerous polarization spreading across countries facing shared geopolitical uncertainties. Ahead of the opening, Observer connected with the artist to discuss the themes that shaped the show and the evolving meaning of “relational art,” with its inherently political dimension.

Read more here.

The Art of Film

Diana Thater | Aesthetica Magazine

Diana Thater, Practical Effects, Installation view: LUMA Arles, France, 2024.

By Emma Jacob

Diana Thater (b.1962) has been a pioneering creator of film and art since the early 1990s. She is best known for her site-specific installations, such as Delphine (1999) and knots + surfaces (2001), which explore the relationship between humans and the natural world. Here, she approaches the idea of post-apocalyptic life through a poignant and wistful lens, following a primate-like robot that is the last being left on Earth. It is tasked with the upkeep of a garden filled with intricately sculpted topiary animals. Devoid of interaction, the colourful robot can only find companionship with the figures it cares for. This video is a strange and tragicomic vision of how the organic and inorganic worlds may collide and support one another in unexpected ways as the Earth shifts and changes due to human behaviour. 

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Fondation Beyeler’s 'What Time Is Heaven?' Show Is in Constant Transformation

Philippe Parreno | Hypebeast

Philippe Parreno, Membrane, 2023 and Fujiko Nakaya, Untitled, 2024. Installation view, Fondation Beyeler, 2024. Courtesy: the artists. Photo: Mark Niedermann

By Keith Estiler

Organized in collaboration with the LUMA Foundation and conceived by a team including Sam Keller, Mouna Mekouar, Isabela Mora, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Precious Okoyomon, Philippe Parreno, and Tino Sehgal, ‘What Time is Heaven?’ offers an evolving spectacle rather than a static collection that is now on view through August 11, 2024.

Read more here.

Rirkrit Tiravanija: ‘Food is an easy door to go through. It’s something we all do'

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Financial Times

Rirkrit Tiravanija opening for A LOT OF PEOPLE at MoMA PS1, 2023. Photo by Marissa Alper.

By Caroline Roux

“Food is an easy door to go through,” says the artist of his preferred medium of engagement. “It’s something we all do.” There will be no cooking here, but the influence of “Pad Thai” is all over the show. It is here in a series of woks that have been fetishised as art objets, while upstairs, in an area cordoned off with stacks of art books and catalogues, a man is making Turkish coffee on two electric rings. “It’s the opposite of an espresso,” says the barista, an Iranian drafted in from Luma’s catering staff. It is delicious, not strong but fruity and scented with just the right amount of rose water.

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Judy Ledgerwood: Sunny Redux at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago

Judy Ledgerwood | Tussle Magazine

Judy Ledgerwood, Sunny Redux at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL

By Pia Singh

A little over a year since ‘Sunny’ opened at Denny Gallery, New York, Rhona Hoffman presents an exquisite selection of Judy Ledgerwood’s large-scale paintings in Sunny Redux. It’s hard to write about Ledgerwood’s works in relationship to one another without getting caught up in formalist underpinnings of abstraction, interpretative language, or trying too hard to set out to contextualize the artists’ engrossment with color, form, and pattern. Initially, it was the intensity of play, how Ledgerwood teases both theory and history through the pleasurable (dare we say beautiful) translation of form and color, that felt like one possible route to entering the show. Yet, it felt like a disservice to the demand of the work, specifically at this time. 

 

How does one write about the rebellion of abstraction at a time of war? What bearings does language have on policy, and in turn, how does “art-speak” afford a degree of political impunity, dissuading both reader and writer from identifying the marks of imperial violence on our perception? Between the undeniable espousal of practice (as politic) and theory (of art), and accelerated consumption of images in mediated realities, what is revolutionary about the condition of slow-looking that a Ledgerwood demands? 

Read more here.

 

 

Philippe Parreno to transform the entire Haus Der Kunst with fully driven AI exhibition.

Philippe Parreno | FAD News

Philippe Parreno, My Room Is Another Fish Bowl, 2018, Helium–filled Mylar balloons, adhesive foil , air columns, Variable dimensions . Exhibition view : Philippe Parreno, Gropius Bau,Berlin (2018). Courtesy the artist; Pilar Corrias, London; Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul. Photo © Andrea Rossetti

By Mark Westall

As part of a groundbreaking new collaboration with Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, Haus der Kunst, Munich’s global centre for contemporary art, will present a major exhibition by the internationally acclaimed French artist, Philippe Parreno, a multi-media, multi-sensory installation on a giant scale that will take over the entire gallery spaces from the end of November 2024.

Philippe Parreno has revolutionised the experience of museums. The exhibition will encompass Parreno’s key works and early works from the 1990s in multiple media ranging from video and sound to sculpture and drawing, created in collaboration with graphic designers, photographers, musicians, linguists, sound specialists, and actors, among others.

Throughout the exhibition, voices will play a fundamental role in bringing the building of Haus der Kunst to life. The Mittelhalle and Ostgalerie will become a resonating organism of light and sounds, featuring installations, films, new works and collaborations with peer artists.

Read More Here.

'Made by Hand/Born Digital' exhibition explores art that confounds an analog v. digital divide

Pae White | ArtDaily

Pae White, Phosphenes 1, 2011, ink and clay on wood, 17.75 x 17.75 inches, 45.1 x 45.1 cm.

By ArtDaily

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s (SBMA) exhibition Made by Hand/Born Digital features 12 artworks and 9 artists who use brushes, AI, paint, 3D printers, scissors, magazines printed on paper, digital looms, potter’s wheels, Photoshop, and Apple Photo. By continuing to craft ceramics, paintings, and textiles by hand and also using the latest digital tools, many of the artists in the exhibition blur a distinction between the handmade and digital. Collectively, these artists remind us that computers are tools—exquisitely complicated but still tools—made by and for humans.

They allow artists to work faster, experiment before committing precious time and materials, toss the dice of chance to see what AI might conjure, or easily produce minutely wrought labor-intensive details. Their art demonstrates that silicon-based intelligence and our carbon-based mammalian brains can and do work together as well as suggesting an alternative to inevitable digitization of everything. With a mixture of recent museum acquisitions and loans of artworks by Alex Heilbron, Taha Heydari, Yassi Mazandi, Justin Mortimer, Analia Saban, Ena Swansea, Sarah Rosalena, Joey Watson, and Pae White, this exhibition shows that the traditional mediums—painting, ceramics, and weaving—can incorporate the methods offered by digital technologies to erode a clean distinction between the digital and handmade. Perhaps, the biggest lesson is to ignore hype about the latest transformational gadget or app and, instead, pay attention to what artists are really doing with technology and see how they channel cutting edge tools to deal with the age-old struggle of giving concrete visual form to ideas and pictures inside their minds.

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A Thailand Unified at Its Third National Biennial

Rirkrit Tiravanija | FRIEZE Magazine

Portrait of Rirkrit Tiravanija. Courtesy of Rirkrit Tiravanija.

By Vipash Purichanont

Assembled by an all-Thai curatorial team, the third Thailand Biennale brilliantly exhibits the rich cultural milieu of the country’s Golden Triangle, near Laos and Myanmar

Titled ‘The Open World’, the third edition of the Thailand Biennale is held in the northern province of Chiang Rai. Assembled by an all-Thai curatorial team, the government-supported biennial is led by artistic directors Rirkrit Tiravanija and Gridthiya Gaweewong in tandem with co-curators Angkrit Ajchariyasophon and Manuporn Luengaram.

Read The Article Here.

Ann Veronica Janssens - L'Aire d'un Souffle

Ann Veronica Janssens | The Artist’s Parliament

Ann Veronica Janssens and Michel François, L'Aire d'un Souffle, argex concrete and aluminum, approximate dimensions 2030 x 640 x 430 cm. Photo credit: Isabelle Arthuis.

The sculpture L’Aire d’un Souffle (‘The space of a breath’) is the work of two artists. This piece of art takes the form of a completely openwork visual barrier, meaning that we are able to see through and beyond its porous boundary. This grid, through which we can observe the surrounding urban landscape, forms a kind of insurmountable obstacle, a border that can be interpreted in different ways. We can only cross it with our eyes, which are symbolically confronted with the sight of a blast, the origin of which is also open to interpretation.

This grid is perched on a territory of its own; a raised platform separate from the ground of the Esplanade, which invites the public to step up onto it and thus alter their perspective. Our attention is also drawn to this floor that supports and prolongs the grid, as its horizontal grid-like pattern is suddenly interrupted by a long narrow gap. This defined area becomes a space in itself, a field of action in which the public can move around, experiment and interact.

The Office of the Commissioner for Europe and International Organizations and the European Parliament have launched an exhibition project showcasing contemporary artists of the countries holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union.

This project will start during the Belgian presidency in January 2024 and continue in July 2024 with the Hungarian presidency.

Read More Here.

50 Paintings

Judy Ledgerwood | The Brooklyn Rail

Installation view: 50 Paintings, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, 2023-24. Courtesy of the Milwaukee Art Museum.

By Saul Ostrow

Given my interest in painting, I found myself going to Milwaukee to see an exhibition that promised to be taking the pulse of contemporary American painting—all the works in it had been made in the last five years. A show of fifty paintings by fifty different painters who the curators claimed were defining the field of contemporary painting seemed a bold move, amidst the general confusion that has been generated by AI, market manipulation, auction house publicity, critical pronouncements, and a general cultural malaise that has lingered since the 1990s. How could any critic resist such a challenge; what could an exhibition indexed to the simple subject of “Painting,” offer? Whatever the curators’ intentions, 50 Paintings seemed to be a brave attempt to bring some discernment to a confused situation.

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Notes on the Gallery as Military Hangar

Fiona Banner | ArtReview

Fiona Banner, Harrier and Jaguar, 2010, installation view for Tate Britain Duveens Commission. Photo: Sam Drake, Tate Photography. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Frith Street Gallery, London and 1301PE, Los Angeles

By Nathalie Olah

A reencounter with the work of Fiona Banner prompts a reassessment of art institutions as political fields of hegemonic control

A few months ago, I was stood in the main hall of the Tate Britain in London talking to the artist Fiona Banner. It felt significant. My favourite use of that space had been an installation created by Banner over a decade earlier, in which she had hung a Sea Harrier from the ceiling and parked a Sepecat Jaguar on the gallery floor – two RAF planes that had been recently decommissioned. The installation was titled Harrier and Jaguar (2010) and at the time I remember reading that Banner, who is best known for her vast wordscapes comprising hand-typed or written sentiments, believed the objects represented the ‘opposite of language’.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija at MoMA PS1

Rirkrit Tiravanija | SPIKE Art Magazine

Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2017 (fear eats the soul) (white flag), 2017. Installation view, MoMA PS1, New York, 2023. All images courtesy: MoMA PS1, New York. Photos: Kyle Knodell

By Aodhan Madden

Transcending relational aesthetics, a New York retrospective catalogues the artist’s troubling of Western objecthood and the commodification of “Tiravanija” in a globalized art world.

I was born in neither the right place nor the right time to eat pad thai in a New York gallery. “A LOT OF PEOPLE,” Rirkrit Tiravanija’s first major institutional retrospective, reminds me that this only makes things more interesting. Bringing together four decades of work, from his early “spirit house” sculptures to his more recent text-based works, the exhibition complicates any simple rendering of Tiravanija as a “relational” artist, maintaining a critical tension between ambivalence and anachronism.

Read More Here.

Judy Ledgerwood on the Modern Art Notes Podcast

Judy Ledgerwood | Modern Art Notes Podcast

By Tyler Green

Listen Here

Episode No. 640 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Judy Ledgerwood and curator Lisa Volpe. 

Ledgerwood is included within “50 Paintings” at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition features paintings made in the last five years by 50 artists from around the world.  It was curated by Margaret Andera and Michelle Grabner and is on view through June 23. Ledgerwood is also on view in “Disguise the Limit: John Yau’s Collaborations” at the University of Kentucky Art Museum in Lexington through June 1.

Ever since the 1980s, Ledgerwood’s paintings have engaged transatlantic histories related to abstraction and decoration from a distinctive feminist point-of-view. Her work is in the collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the MCA Chicago.  

Volpe is the curator of “Robert Frank and Todd Webb: Across America, 1955”, which opens at the Addison Gallery of American Art this weekend. It will remain on view through July 31. The exhibition presents work the famed Frank and the less-well-known Webb made as they traveled the United States on Guggenheim fellowships in 1955. The excellent exhibition catalogue was published by the MFAH in association with Yale University Press. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for $25-47.

Frank and Webb images are at Episode No. 630.

Instagram: Judy Ledgerwood, Lisa Volpe, Tyler Green.

Air date: February 8, 2024.

Biennale Arte 2024 | Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere

SUPERFLEX | La Biennale di Venezia

The 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, will open to the public from Saturday April 20 to Sunday November 24, 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale; it will be curated by Adriano Pedrosa and organised by La Biennale di Venezia. The pre-opening will take place on April 17, 18 and 19; the awards ceremony and inauguration will be held on 20 April 2024.

Since 2021, La Biennale di Venezia launched a plan to reconsider all of its activities in light of recognized and consolidated principles of environmental sustainability. For the year 2024, the goal is to extend the achievement of “carbon neutrality” certification, which was obtained in 2023 for La Biennale’s scheduled activities: the 80th Venice International Film Festival, the Theatre, Music and Dance Festivals and, in particular, the 18th International Architecture Exhibition which was the first major Exhibition in this discipline to test in the field a tangible process for achieving carbon neutrality – while furthermore itself reflecting upon the themes of decolonisation and decarbonisation.

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Philippe Parreno appointed Artistic Director of the 2025 Okayama Art Summit

Philippe Parreno | Okayama Art Summit

Portrait of Philippe Parreno. Photo © Ola Rindal

The Okayama Art Summit Executive Committee (Chairperson: Masao Omori, Mayor of Okayama) appointed Philippe Parreno as the Artistic Director for Okayama Art Summit 2025, the international contemporary art exhibition which is held every 3 years in Okayama City, Japan, at its General Meeting held on October 24, 2023.
In addition, Shimabuku has been appointed as the Artistic Translator by Parreno. Parreno emphasized the importance of the new role of an "Artistic Translator" who shares the sense of the exhibition concept, in order to connect it with others. He recognized Shimabuku's familiarity with the direction of the artistic world and their existing relationship.

Read More About The Summit Here

Rirkrit Tiravanija: Can Pad Thai Diplomacy Change the World?

Rirkrit Tiravanija | The New York Times

Rirkrit Tiravanija. untitled 1990 (pad thai). Ingredients for pad thai, utensils, electric woks, and a lot of people. Installation view, Rirkrit Tiravanija: A LOT OF PEOPLE, on view at MoMA PS1 from October 12, 2023 through March 4, 2024. Image courtesy MoMA PS1. Photo: Marissa Alper

By Travis Diehl

“Having been labeled as the cook of the art world,” Rirkrit Tiravanija said, “I think people come to see my work expecting to interact.” Indeed, they expect to eat.

The 62-year-old artist is easily the most influential of the loose cadre that rose to prominence in the early 1990s under the banner of “relational aesthetics” — a kind of installation- and performance-based conceptual work that makes spectators feel like participants. Tiravanija’s “untitled 1990 (pad Thai),” in which he cooked and served noodles in the back room of Paula Allen Gallery, is quintessential.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija with David Ross

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Brooklyn Rail

Portrait of Rirkrit Tiravanija, pencil on paper by Phong H. Bui.

By David Ross

When Rirkrit Tiravanija was invited to participate in the 1995 biennial, David Ross was serving as the museum’s director. Tiravanija’s contribution was aggressive. His installation featured a plywood hut equipped with electric guitars. Anyone could play. Tiravanija’s art is one of activation, of meaning accrued through participation. On the occasion of the Thai artist’s retrospective exhibition at PS1, Ross reconnected with Tiravanija. Over multiple conversations they discussed the evolving role of the artist, how Tiravanija adapts his work for museums while sustaining the life force it’s meant to cultivate, and the empowering role played by educators.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija : NO MORE REALITY

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Rosanna Albertini

Composite: Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled (no more reality), 2023, paint on newspaper mounted on linen, 96 x 981 inches, 243.8 x 2491.7 cm.

By Rosanna Albertini

No More Reality and my despair having lost the certainty about what words bring to us. What about thinking? Based on words? Not entirely, our primitive ancestors were thinking and acting before human language broke out from the brain.

Our whole body is a thinking machine: chemical conversation between cells, well organized behavior of organs : a musical score mysterious and impossible to decipher : there is no control on our body’s intelligence. AI is a technological dream. 

Read More Here