Tag Archives: exhibition

Zaha Hadid: Future Shock

14 Sep

Who dares wins: a Star-chitect Off between Zaha Hadid & Jean Nouvel in Paris. (Image by Zaha Hadid Architects)

There’s something funny in the forecourt of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. A sleek and slippery object that looks like a curvy space ship crossed with a piece of futuristic footwear has landed. It is in fact a mobile art pavilion, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. Commissioned by Chanel, which has donated the structure to the Institute, the pavilion was transported in shipping containers and toured several of the world’s fashion capitals, before coming to rest in Paris where it will be used as an additional exhibition space to showcase art by the Arabic world.

The pavilion is an interesting addition to the Institute which is already on the archi-tour hit list thanks to its own design pedigree – it was designed by Jean Nouvel in the 1980s and was one of President Mitterand’s Grand Travaux.

Islamic-inspired 'jealous windows' at Jean Nouvel's Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris (Image by HWL)

The pavilion’s first show is fittingly dedicated to Hadid, an Iraqi-born and educated architect, who has since trained and settled in London. Showcasing several of her current projects, with an emphasis on those in Middle Eastern countries, the exhibition seeks to demonstrate a synergy between Islamic influences (from traditional calligraphy to the intricate geometry of mosaics) and Hadid’s style that somehow melds two extremes: organic molecular and geometrical structures such as branching and cell repetition with the crazy artificiality of skyscrapers.

the geometry of skyscrapers: Zaha Hadid (Image by HWL)

As far as the exhibition goes it’s more of a taster than Hadid’s exhaustive (and exhausting) 2006 Guggenheim retrospective, the tone and content on offer is more promotional than analytical and there’s scant insight about the woman herself.

Interior of Hadid's Mobile Art Pavillion: we can confirm it looks better without people (Image by Zaha Hadid Architects)

For all that, it’s an interesting experience to see an exhibition of Hadid’s work in a pavilion that she also designed; the space and the objects certainly inform each other in a stimulating way, though the effect is a little bit like being in a showroom. Certainly, if I was Hadid I’d be bussing in the Saudi’s and those heads of nation states desperate for a new status building that will help put them on the map – if anything can convey the concept of ‘Hadid’ world, it’s this. Not that they need the business. (Aside: too bad they didn’t have Hadid’s cool kitchen unit.)

Is it a bird, a plane? Zaha Hadid's Mobile Art Pavilion, currently docked in Paris. (Image by Zaha Hadid Architects)

Twenty years ago Hadid was a brilliant and well-connected academic, dreaming up architecture that was virtually impossible to build; now it’s not. Standing there and looking at her work, gave me an insight to how visitors to the Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret’s Pavillion de l’Esprit Nouveau at the 1925 Exposition des Artes Decoratifs must have felt. I think they must have felt something along the lines of: ‘This is the future’ and ‘WTF?!’.

Dates: Zaha Hadid, Une Architecture runs until October 30, 2011. Information: Institut du Monde Arabe Tips: you must buy your ticket inside the institute, and if it’s your first visit, don’t forget to take the elevator to the top floor for a great view of Paris from the terrace.

Everyone's a critic: street art commentary on Zaha Hadid's CMA-CGM Tower in Marseilles (Image by HWL)

Tags: , , , , , , ,

In the Loop

5 Sep

Wooly ideas by NYC artist Olek via Keith Haring & Annie Leibovitz!

We just came across this fantastic little video about  New York-based yarn artist Olek. Having transformed herself from struggling creative to  (kn)IT girl on the NY street art scene, the Polish-born artist can finally indulge those crazy ideas she had years ago, but never got around to realising, such as crocheting an entire scene from a design by Keith Haring…(pictured). Here she is,  talking about hi-jinx stunts like giving the Wall St Bull a nice warm sweater and her recent show, “The Bad Artists Imitate, The Great Artists Steal“  at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in NYC.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

BYO Nikon: Arles, 2011

25 Aug

Shazam! The Real Story of Superheros by photographer Paulino Cardozo, on show in Arles 2011.

Home to Europe’s most high profile photographic expo, an impressive scattering of Roman ruins, and a goodly number of gastronomic haunts, UNESCO-heritage listed Arles packs a punch that belies its cartographic impact. And as the famed photography festival, Les Rencontres d’Arles 2011, reaches its final month, visitors can enjoy the show – dispersed in exhibition spaces across the city – minus the frenzy of the opening weeks and the crush of summer tourists.

This year’s show, which puts a spotlight on the work of Mexican photographers, also provided a timely reminder of the relationship and relevance of photography to political upheaval and revolution – from recently unearthed negatives (‘The Capa Suitcase’) of the Spanish Civil War by legendary photographers Robert Capa, Chim (aka David Seymour) and Gerda Taro to digital images taken at the recent Tunisian uprising that kicked-off the so-called Arab Spring.

Screen magic: film sequence by Gabriel Figueroa at Les Recontres d'Arles, 2011. (Image by HWL)

For us, the exhibition devoted to Gabriel Figueroa (1907-1997) was the surprise stand-out hit. Figueroa, a Mexican cinematographer to directors including John Ford, Luis Buñuel and John Huston may not be a photographer in the strictest sense but there is no denying his masterful eye. This multi-screened video installation in the atmospheric Eglise des Frères Prêcheurs church, features skilfully edited extracts of his career spanning 50 years of Mexican cinema.  Full credit must go to curator Alfonso Morales for his selection and treatment of Figueroa’s sumptuous and amazingly diverse images grouped thematically eg: religion, death, film noir. Shot largely in black and white these cinemagraphic-tasters are a treasure trove of Mexican imagery. Each film, composed from multiple sources, creates a surreal sort of narrative but seen en masse, odd couplings emerge – a grim and hairy Jesus suffering in the desert plays adjacent to an apparently frenzied cannibal king playing the drums. All up an apt love letter to the poetic weirdness of this dream-world we call film and a master of the trade.

Sebastião Salgado's oil fields in Kuwait, on display at Les Recontres d'Arles, 2011.

Another highlight was the rather unimaginatively titled if immaculately branded headliner show New York Times Magazine Photographs. Curated by its chief photo editor Kathy Ryan,  the exhibition encompasses an emotional rollercoaster of subject matter that included portraiture, reportage and fine art on topics ranging from the September 11 attacks and the current war in Afghanistan to Sebastião Salgado’s documentiation of Kuwait oil fields and Nan Goldin’s intimate portraits of James King, a  then 16-year-old super model.  The show also highlights the production process, a seemingly dry concept which proved surprisingly engaging in execution, encompassing editorial briefs, the photographer’s impressions and ambitions, writer/photographer working relationships and the hazards and challenges of the field, whether seducing celebrities or surviving as an embedded war photographer.

Wang Quinsong's The History of Monuments installed at Eglise Trinitaire, Arles 2011. (Image by HWL)

A roll of Kodak paper is 1.25 x 42 meters and Chinese artist Wang Quinsong used the whole 42 metre metres to create The History of Monuments that is impressively installed in the Eglise Trinitaire. Writing about the work on his website, Quinsong says: “Actually I don’t care about history. I am only interested in the extreme length of a photo. If there is a 100-meter-long photo paper, I will be able to put in a lot more “valuable” stuff and create a 100-meter long photo. The historical figures and contents in this photo work are not that important. …I put in some famous people recorded in the official history of many civilizations, and also some small potatoes in the unofficial history. There is a lot of rubbish as well as some useful daily goods.” Do stay to watch the short film documenting the creation process of its creation which included covering 200 nude photographic models entirely in mud.

Pineapples and epaulettes were included in the 'small potatoes of history'. Detail of Wang Quinsong's Monuments of History, Arles, 2011. (Image by HWL)

In the group show at Atelier Des Forges, we were touched by Maya Goded’s heartrending slide show Welcome to Lipstick, documenting small town prostitutes in the red light zone bordering Mexico and the US; and intrigued by her otherworldly series Land of Witches, detailing women, witchcraft and ritual in rural Mexico.

Beguiling: Land of Witches series by Mexican photographer Maya Goded, showing at Arles, 2011.

On an upbeat note, we loved Dulce Pinzon’s The Real Story of Superheros, (pictured top) a warm, humorous and touching testimony to Mexico’s unsung ‘champions’ who undertake difficult and often badly paid jobs in the US in order to support their family’s back home while helping to keep the US economy running. Finally, as you walk around town, keep your eyes peeled for evidence of photographer/street artist JR. Would-be participants for JR’s TED Prize-winning Use Art to Turn the World Inside Out project can queue to have their photos taken at the photo-booth in the Forge des Ateliers. In all, the annual Les Recontres d’Arles is a great excuse to pack a long lens and head to Provence. Stay tuned for our accommodation and eating tips – coming up next!

Information: Les Rencontres d’Arles 2011, open 10am–7 pm daily until September 18th, 2011.

Hotels We Love in Arles: see our story here.

Snap! Photography madness in Arles. (Image by HWL)

Tags: , , , , , ,

Blow up! Anish Kapoor in Paris

1 Jun

subterranean & visceral: interior of Anish Kapoor's Leviathan (Image: HWL)

British sculptor Anish Kapoor does ‘big’ very well, but his latest work Leviathan for the Monumenta exhibition in Paris shows what happens when you cross an artist with the concept of ‘humongous’. Held in the beautiful glass-roofed Grand Palais every two years, the ‘Monumenta’ exhibition is built around the idea of big is better. Every year they hand the keys – and 13,500 m² of exhibition space – to an artist and say: ‘Enjoy yourself.’

A balloon: from little things big things grow (Image: © Anish Kapoor/Monumenta)

Taking shape.... (Image: © Anish Kapoor/Monumenta)

In previous year’s we’ve been lucky enough to see German artist Anselm Kiefer who combined paintings with concrete-like bunkers and crumbling structures which gave the visitor a sense of crawling through a post-apocalyptic landscape, later we saw Richard Serra (video featuring our experience here). But Kapoor is the biggest bang of them all, he’s the explosion that had to happen, from here, people may do better, but I doubt they can do bigger.

Kapoor himself, describes the work in the Monumenta exhibition material as: “A single object, a single form, a single colour… My ambition is to create a space within a space that responds to the height and luminosity of the Nave at the Grand Palais. Visitors will be invited to walk inside the work, to immerse themselves in colour, and it will, I hope, be a contemplative and poetic experience.”

The big dream takes shape (Image: © Anish Kapoor/Monumenta)

The dream takes off! (Image: © Anish Kapoor/Monumenta)

The work, dedicated by Kapoor to missing Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, can also lay claim to the most fantastical piece of inflated PVC ever imagined. Technically speaking it combines the lines and strength of nautical engineering with the fancifulness of haute-couture millinery (not to mention the playful simplicity of a balloon). Intense, other worldly, playful, surreal, inaccessible yet encompassing, Kapoor has put on a show that somehow references a sea monster and the gates of hell, but could just as well apply to the womb of Mother Earth: mysterious, primal, wonderful, dangerous. Monumental.

The show, which also features evening talks and musical performances ends June 23 2011 – catch it if you can. A briliant excuse to head to Paris this spring. Practical info here.

Strange openings, Anish Kapoor's Leviathan, Monumenta 2011 (Image: HWL)

We were in two minds about running photos of the exterior, because we don’t want to spoil the surprise, but then I came across this shot by Yohanzerdoun on flickr, which hints at the weirdness to come without giving the whole story away, so I embedded from his photo stream – if you’d like to see more of his pics, click here.

Leviathan by Anish Kapoor, Paris (Image: © Yohan Zion Zerdoun)

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Basquiat: Still rocking at 50

10 Jan

The Museum of Modern Art in Paris is rarely over-run with visitors, but the Basquiat exhibition currently showing has Parisians braving the winter temperatures and queuing around the block. After a few unsuccessful attempts I rocked up early one morning and managed to see it for myself.

The paintings are great. It was wonderful to have an opportunity to see the work by an artist whose notoriety often overshadows his actual output. Over the galleries his key themes became apparent: the symbol of a crown, the placing/ replacing of African American heroes on a pedestal (eg: Cassius Clay), issues of slavery and race (including repetitive references to southern plantation staples like sugar and tobacco); and some unusual word play, like removing letters or vowels of words to create a kind of shorthand which would seem at home in a text message (eg: jazz great ‘Charlie Parker’ becomes ‘CPRKR’). OK, so, it’s not quite the Da Vinci Code, but cryptic all the same.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 71 other followers

%d bloggers like this: