According to French philosopher Michel Foucault, heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring yet disturbing what is outside. They are spaces that are somehow transgressive, or ‘other’: intense, contradictory, or transforming. Foucault provides examples: ships, cemeteries, prisons, gardens of antiquity, fairs, Turkish baths, and many more.

Within the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice offers a forty-meter-long exhibition space, where Peter Halley has created a sequence of varyingly thematized rooms that progress to a final vaulted sanctum. This videogame-like labyrinth unfolds from room to room, combining classical architectural elements such as fluted columns, cenotaphs, and a broken pediment, with wall-size digital prints, arrays of color-changing LEDs, and a large-scale laser-cut sculpture.

To further enrich the language of this narrative, Halley invited American artists Lauren Clay, R.M. Fisher, and Andrew Kuo to contribute to the installation. Working with digitally printed wall-to-wall murals, Lauren Clay and Andrew Kuo created separate chambers realizing their own individual visions. R.M. Fischer produced the totemic illuminated sculpture in the sanctum that culminates the installation. Additionally, Paris-based writer Elena Sorokina has contributed the original walls texts.

The exhibition Hurricane/Time/Image reroutes a new line of understanding around Francis Ruyter’s painting practice. Curated by Mohammad Salemy, it will consist of drawings, paintings and objects, dated from 1990–94 and 2015–19 as well as new display treatments including projections and reproductions of the archival source material. The project takes place at FRANZ JOSEFS KAI 3, an exhibition space programmed parallel to the Angewandte Innovation Lab, a program of the University of the Applied Arts in Vienna Austria. The project was inaugurated 10 April until 9 May.

Hurricane/Time/Image is meant to disrupt narratives of artistic, aesthetic and career developments as well as social conditions surrounding the production of art and subjectivity specific to Ruyter. It suggests that the chaotic force of technology is always at work throughout an artist’s oeuvre, rearranging the relationship of past, present and future into new constellations. Rather than using the recent works to make a new sense out of Ruyter’s earlier practice, it brings to light embedded concerns, themes and motifs which have been resonating in the artist’s practice since the early stages of his career.

Since 2009, Ruyter has been focusing his work on photographs he has found in the digital archive at the Library of Congress of Unated States, using the search keyword “machine”. This particular filtering of the archive highlights how the artist’s thoughts on machines have informed his oeuvre since his drawings and paintings from the early 1990s. While the older works signal the transformation of the analog media to digital and the persistence of older technologies of presentation and modeling embedded in digital technologies. On the other hand the newer works go even further by investigating the abstract, geometric and, essentially, inhuman essence of representation. The exhibition showcases Ruyter’s visionary outlook towards the connections between art and media technologies, insisting on the primary role of painting in meditating their similarities and differences.

The exhibition’s abstract indexing of the analog, the digital and the algorithmic, parallels an equally important transformation in the artist’s own life. Starting in 2016, Ruyter began a gender transition. In this respect, Ruyter’s work, past and present, can be considered a plea to set aside the question of human identity in order to understand the storm-like qualities of gender. Approached from this angle, the strongest thread binding the artist’s earlier works to his latest practice is the struggle to sequester the “natural” appearances of analog representation, from its inhuman, cybernetic reality. The exhibition deemphasizes human experience in favor of chaotic and cosmic shifts which are at the heart of the evolution of language, reason, and logic amongst animals, humans and machines alike.

Mohammad Salemy is a Berlin-based artist, critic and curator from Canada. He holds an MA in critical curatorial studies from the University of British Columbia. He has shown his works in Ashkal Alwan’s Home Works 7 (Beirut, 2015), Witte de With (Rotterdam, 2015) and Robot Love (Eindhoven, 2018). His writings have been published in e-flux journal, Flash Art, Third Rail, and Brooklyn Rail, Ocula and Spike. He has curated exhibitions at Tranzit Display (2016) in Prague. Salemy’s curatorial experiment “For Machine Use Only” was included in the 11th edition of Gwangju Biennale (2016). In 2018, Salemy cocurated Sofia Queer Forum with Patrick Schabus at the Sofia City Art Gallery’s Vaska Emanouilova branch.

 

The artist is presenting in the framework of the XIII edition of the Havana Biennial, Cuba. Her magnificent installation entitled “Natural Mechanics” (from April 12 to May 12).

 

Glenda León transforms small details into powerful questions about our existences. Her practice touches upon the sensible qualities of human life by focusing on seemingly minor things, which she turns into forceful echo chambers of the issues of our time. Through sensuous metaphors, the artist opens empathic fissures in our everyday experience, examining the relationships between the cosmos and all living beings.

Mecánica Natural articulates Glenda’s artistic strategy in a quintessential way, as it embodies a far- reaching vision in apparently petty objects. In the installation, the trees materialize as a familiar encounter, recurring multiple times across the space. Such familiarity makes the work appear open  to immediate reading, only then to unfold a thought-provoking maze of cross-references. On closer inspection, it becomes clear that we are not always gazing at the same kind of tree. This ancestral symbol of ecological life doubles here as victim and executioner: in a perplexing duality, we see one slashing a life-size car while the others lie as silent freeways for a myriad of miniature vehicles.

As our senses navigate this apocalyptic enigma, we become aware of the mechanics of our comprehension. By shifting between macro- and micro-scale, the artist has induced a glitch in our expectations, allowing us to observe the pre-constructed forms of interpretation that guide our thinking.

Here exposed is the tension between the potency of natural occurrences—the hurricanes, for instance, so familiar to Cuba— and humans’ constructed idea of nature. This friction, inherent in the title of the installation, opens a wound: if mechanics is an expression of human ingenuity and consequential¬¬ity, how can this coexist with nature and its alleged unpredictability? Are our constructed epistemologies of nature adequate to establish a well-articulated relationship with it?

The dead trees at the center of the installation guide the eye through their sumptuous curves. During this process, more questions arise: where are the toy-sized cars heading, like disciplined ants advancing in an orderly manner into the void? Is it the same direction in which we, as human societies, are rushing?

Ants thrive in eusocial communities with collective rules that shape their relationships with other living beings. By learning how to beneficially coexist with their environment, they develop vital collaborations with other forms of life. At the heart of this stands what Andean Indigenous communities nurture as vincularidad: the awareness that all living things are interconnected, that one’s well-being is deeply related to that of others. It is a form of ecological empathy crucial to all biotic systems.

Mecánica Natural is a memento of such interconnectedness, which in turn is central to Glenda León’s practice at large. It manifests in artworks such as Cada Respiro (2003), a video piece in which the gentle and simple act of breathing synchronizes the artist and the viewer with the universe, or Las Formas del Instante (2001), a photographic series where expended, imperfect soap bars stand as fragile monuments to the fleeting moments of everyday life.

While speaking of planetary ecology, Mecánica Natural also articulates an in-situ relationship with  the space in which it is presented, evoking the history of Nave Línea y 18, a tramway deposit fallen into disuse as transport on wheels gained prominence. Ultimately, the installation materializes the logic of ecological exploitation rooted at the center of our petro-neoliberalist societies. The wreckage is in front of us. But it is simply the mirror of our flawed conception of nature.

Ilaria Conti

Gino Rubert celebrates the publication of his new book named Sí, quiero edited by Lunwerg with texts and illustrations of Rubert.

Infancy is a plasterboard place where to learn laws and hierarchies. Until the desire comes and destroys everything.

 

Through disturbing, images and acid but a the same time sweet text, Gino Rubert stage an unusual and exciting portrait of sentimental relationships.

Sí, quiero is a song to life, love and the creation a journey to a universe of unpredictables and eccentric characters, which are fighting to survive to the tyranny of their passions.

The catalan artist will officially present his new publication “El Internacional (1984 – 1986): New York’s Archaeological Sandwich” at CaixaForum Barcelona on Wednesday, December 14th.

 

Miralda recieved the Artist’s award from La Caixa’s Fundación Arte y Mecenazgo in 2015. 20,000 € of the endowment has gone towards editing and publishing book, recently brought to light.

 

Just as this book is no ordinary one, the restaurant was nothing ordinary either. It was considered an experimental and innovative space, a fusion of gastronomy with performances, installations, and other artistic showings. El Internacional became an emblematic place of cosmopolitan life in New York in the 80’s. Not only was it able to restore the tapas concept in the city, something unknown in the United States culinary culture during that time; but it was also a meeting point to merge art with the rituals of food.

 

The “artist’s book” goes over the history of the restaurant and weaves through some of the most relevant moments that took place there, thanks to the testimonials shared by those who frequented the restaurant. Besides the recipes, menus, and memories, the book illustrates the urban history of a city that is constantly evolving, and the history and concept of El Internacional Tapas Bar & Restaurant, a social and artistic experiment that left an imprint in TriBeCa neighborhood in New York.

On its 25th anniversary, Amics del Liceu is preparing the edition of the “Temporada de l’Ópera”‘s book with illustrations by Jordi Bernadó. It is the first time that Amics del Liceu invited a photographer to particiar in this special project.

Amics del Liceu is a club that was born with the aim to support the activity of the Gran Teatre del Liceu and be a platform for dissemination of opera and music. The annual edition of “Temporada de l’Ópera” has collected national and international firms and works by artists of great prestige who have made illustrations especially for this project including other gallery artists such as Gino Rubert.

The photographs can be seen in the space of Galeria Senda after the official opening on September 26 2016 at 7:30pm.

Isabel Rocamora’s Imaging Faith centres on Faith, a film triptych which intimately observes the act of worship of the three monotheistic religions in Jerusalem. Set in the wilderness of the Holy Land – the historically significant landscapes of the Judean desert, far from the built and contested territories – an Orthodox Jew (Cohen descent), a Greek Orthodox Christian (Father, Church of Nativity) and a Sunni Muslim (Quran reader, Al Aqsa Mosque) perform their morning prayers. In time, their synchronous action reveals an uncanny similarity of inner state and gestural intention. Questioning segregation while celebrating difference, Faith contemplates issues of human belief, inviting reflection on one of the most tragic, world resonating conflicts that persist in this new century.

 

In the adjoining gallery a series of still images offer a window into Rocamora’s research in Jerusalem, culturally and politically contextualising the film triptych. A dedicated reading room provides a contemplative space in which six contemporary thinkers (historians, theologians and philosophers, including Gil Anidjar, Mark Cauchi, Victoria Rocamora and Simon Critchley) have been invited to curate passages from seminal texts in response to the themes of the exhibition.

 

Imaging Faith presents the UK premiere of this new body of work by the Edinburgh-based artist as well as the first exhibition of Rocamora’s work in Scotland.

 

After the jury’s deliberation among six finalists, Anna Malagrida received the award on January 20 of this year. In her project, Anna imagines the places “of Paris” as a scenic device in which, from their movement, the characters will become the actors, the reflections of the city mixed with the insides of cafe’s, the decoration; and the words united in the universe of chance, the text.

Through the “Carte Blanche” award, the PMU shows its compromise with contemporary photographic creation, giving carte blanche to the artists so they can take their vision into the universe of chance.

For the seventh edition, the PMU has launched an open call to any professional photographer or artist. The winner will get a prize of 20,000 euros for the realization of an unpublished project, a book from Filigranes publishing and an exhibition in the Photographic Gallery of the Centre Pompideu from September 28^th to October 17^th 2016.

The Photographic Gallery is an open space of the Centre Pompideu of free entrance and dedicated exclusively to photography. This new gallery of 200 m2 wants to open the richness of the photographic collection of the Centre Pompideu to the public, conformed by more than 40,000 pieces and more than 60,000 negatives.

“Anna Malagrida opens a window to a space that confronts the urban and the human and proposes a sensible interpretation of a social link form that unites behind the windows” Benoît Cornu, Communications Director of the PMU, president of the jury.