Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Edward Weston and Mabel Dodge Luhan Remember D. H. Lawrence and Selected Carmel-Taos Connections


This article is in essence a chapter of a book in progress on the familial relationships between the Schindler and Weston families, from their separate Chicago years through their bohemian social circles in Los Angeles and Carmel in the 1920s and 1930s. For now I plan to end the book in 1938 when Weston married Charis Wilson and built his home in Carmel Highlands and the Schindlers divorced and began living separate lives under the same roof in their iconic RMS-designed Kings Road House. My working title for the book is The Schindlers and the Westons: An Avant-Garde Friendship. Their fascinatingly interwoven lives and relationships remained avant-garde to the end. As always, I welcome your feedback on any of my pieces.

Text  by  John Crosse 

http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.gr/2011/12/edward-weston-and-d-h-lawrence.html


Taos Pueblo, R. M. Schindler photo, October 1915.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Reserve

Reserve, 2014
Wood, acrylic, canvas 
46 x 29 cm

Palindromes




John Latham, Still and Chew invitation. Image copyright The Estate of Barry Flanagan, courtesy Bridgeman Art Library.

Pataphysics provides a framework for dialogues between Barry Flanagan and John Latham. ’Pataphysics is defined by its inventor, Alfred Jarry, the Symbolist poet and writer, as ‘the science of imaginary solutions.’  It preoccupied Flanagan from the early 1960s before he enrolled on the Advanced Sculpture Course at St Martin’s School of Art in 1964, where he met John Latham who was at that time teaching in the painting department.

Establishing the common ground is not difficult and it is logical that Latham and Flanagan would have gravitated towards each other in order to discuss paradoxes and contradictions of making art. Discussions of monetary and aesthetic value lead to considering how these systems are determined by time. This includes questions of labour cost, how much is time worth and by whom this is measured. These  quantifications affect how we think – whether something is worthwhile or not worthwhile depends on criteria. Holding onto the concept of ‘not knowing’, of casting the yes/no and either/or paradigms aside, even if only temporarily as an impossible aim is hard. This is due to its slippery character as much as a self-conscious societal need for accountability. ’Pataphysics, is properly denoted with the apostrophe before the letter p, as if to close a previous speech mark and thus mark a metaphorical circularity, or to put it another way, an ending before a beginning. This circularity of intention is a primary characteristic of pataphysical thinking and which is frequently symbolised by the spiral form. The movement is similar to the palindrome, which is a paradoxical forward-backward relationship. This exhibition will illuminate their collaborative and shared concerns beginning with the notorious Still and Chew happening, when the formalist critic Clement Greenberg’s recently published collection of essays Art and Culture was systematically chewed to a pulp in 1966. Flanagan’s catch phrase ‘examine the facts’ provides a curatorial key.

Exhibition curated by Jo Melvin, Palindromes looks at ’pataphysics and transactions between Barry Flanagan and John Latham

2 April–17 May 2015
Flat Time House, London


Thursday, March 26, 2015

Installation with torn strips of linen



Marie Lieb, Installation with torn strips of linen, designed on the floor of the psychiatric hospital where she lived, Germany, c. 1894 Collection Prinzhorn, Heidelberg, Germany.
No detailed information about Marie Lieb’s life is known. She was hospitalized in the Heidelberg clinic in 1894 diagnosed with “periodic mania”. Only two photographs survive as evidence of her distinctive style. 

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

The Birth of the Robot


DirectorLen Lye
Production CompanyShell-Mex
ProducerLen Lye
ScriptC.H. David
PhotographyAlex Strasser
Colour Decor & ProductionHumphrey Jennings
Sound RecordingJack Ellitt


A puppet fantasy advertising Shell Lubrication oils. A man motoring in the desert dies and, with the help of Shell Mex oil, is reconstructed as the company's trademark robot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ovxMnvbD90&feature=youtu.be

Art In The Age Of…Energy and Raw Material


Nicholas Mangan, A World Undone, 2012 (video still)HD colour, silent, 12 min continuous loop

Witte de With kicks off its 25th anniversary with Art In The Age Of…, a three-part presentation series that investigates future vectors of art production in the 21st century, highlighting the circulation of art and its underlying economies rather than its territorial location, its spread and infectious expanse rather than its arrest within narrowly defined genealogies and media. These presentations focus on the role of raw materials, destruction, and computation within art’s creation and its dispersal. With the core question: how does the creation of art relate to the flow of energy, or to algorithms; which infrastructures will it be parasiting in the 21st century?
Art In The Age Of… is presented throughout 2015 with frameworks dedicated to Energy and Raw Material, Planetary Computation (22 May – 23 August 2015) and Asymmetrical Warfare(11 September 2015 – 3 January 2016) opening May 21 and September 10 respectively.
The first installment of Art In The Age Of… focuses on how forms of energy and raw material shape, or are narrated by, contemporary artistic practices. Since early times art objects have drifted with the motion and transformation of raw materials like wheat, minerals, and cotton. How does contemporary art relate to geothermal energy? To oil, gas, or alternative sources such as the sun? Could it even fly on rays of cosmic energy?
The installation Strobank by artist duo MAP Office examines wheat, its distribution and symbolic capital, alongside a history of the stock market’s trading pit. Nina Canell meditates upon the the loss of information and energy that occurs during processes of transference in her sculptural constellation of stumps and cross-sections of telecommunication and power cables, each becoming sentences cut-off mid-flow or instances of material forgetfulness. In Children of UnquietMikhail Karikis interweaves sound recordings of geothermal activity and industry in Larderello, Italy, with a cinematic and cultural history of Dante’s Inferno, whose vision of hell was inspired by that very location. Anton Vidokle’s This is Cosmos turns its eyes to the stars and charts the Cosmism movement in Russia and its disavowal of death through cosmic energy, positing the medium of film itself as an irradiation treatment. Through image and archive, Céline Condorelli addresses the relationship between Egypt’s cotton industry and its nationalization after Nasser’s revolution. Zircon, a 4,400-million-year-old mineral is excavated, dematerialized and reanimated in Nicholas Mangan’s A World Undone, whilst material is mapped to stock market fluctuations in Talk About the Weather. In Marlie Mulsculptural series Puddles, messy dark matter glistens and seeps, contaminated by human interaction.
The exhibition includes  Petrocultures, a section devoted to films, adverts and ephemera related to the development of the iconography of oil, curated by Natasha Hoare and  Sophie Rzepecky.  With thanks to Natasha Ginwala and Adam Kleinman.
Alongside artist presentations, a dedicated research blog has been founded.  This blog will track the development of Art in the Age of… Exhibitions for 2015 and acts as a visual reader accompanying artists work: http://artintheageof15.tumblr.com/
Art In The Age Of… Energy and Raw Material
23 January – 3 May 2015
Team: Defne Ayas, Natasha Hoare, Samuel Saelamakers.
participants
Canell, Nina 
Condorelli, Celine 
Karikis, Mikhail 
Mangan, Nicholas 
MAP Office 
Mul, Marlie 

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Beauty is the Method


Tribune Leading to the Ramp and Ramp Leading to the Tribune,2014. Wood, acrylic, book print

The exhibition showcases works by: Nikos Alexiou, Athanasios Argianas, Dimitris Baboulis, Dionisis Christophilogiannis, Chryssa, Vasso Gavaisse, Vassilis Gerodimos, Nick Ervinck, Dimitris Foutris, Chris Gianakos, Zoe Keramea, Kornelios Grammenos, Rowena Hughes, Hope, James Lane, Hiroshi MacDonald Mori, Giorgos Maraziotis, Eleanna Martinou, Dimitris Merantzas, Michael Michaeledes, Nina Papaconstantinou, Nikos Papadopoulos, Aemilia Papaphilippou, Joulia Strauss, Stefania Strouza, Thanassis Totsikas, and Kostis Velonis.
Curated by Sotirios Bahtsetzis



March 13 – April 30, 2015
ACG Art Gallery DEREE – The American College of Greece

Η ελάχιστη δομή


Οι εκδόσεις Κριτική σας προσκαλούν στην παρουσίαση του συλλογικού τόμου «Η ελάχιστη δομή».
Πέμπτη 12 Μαρτίου 2015 και ώρα 19.00 στο βιβλιοπωλείο Επί λέξει, Ακαδημίας 32, Αθήνα.

Ομιλητές:
Αποστόλης Αρτινός, Κωστής Βελώνης, Δήμητρα, Βογιατζάκη, Φοίβη Γιαννίση, Πάνος Δραγώνας, Ίρις Λυκουριώτη, Σταύρος Μαρτίνος, Χρήστος Παπούλιας, Βάσω Πλαβού, Γιώργος Τζιρτζιλάκης
Αρχιτεκτονική εγκατάσταση:
Γιώργος Παπαδήμας, Άσπα Σκορλέτου, Τζεβελέκου Χριστίνα
Εικαστική παρέμβαση:
Χριστίνα Σγουρομύτη

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Ακέφαλη γλυπτική και εθνική παρέκκλιση


Spider's Habitat

Spider's Habitat 9Whistle While you Work Series), 2014
 Wood,concrete, soil, dried grass, seeds, insect nests, 110 x 111 x 10 cm.