21.12.11
11.12.11
ANISH KAPOOR | LEVIATHAN
Inside the belly of the beast
Anish Kapoor’s installation Leviathan opens at the Grand Palais in Paris
PARIS. Anish Kapoor today unveils his largest and most ambitious sculpture to date. Leviathan is a gigantic installation made from 18 tonnes of PVC, which fills the nave of the Grand Palais in Paris and encompasses 13,500 sq. m of space.
The huge biomorphic form consists of four connected orbs supported not by a steel skeleton but with air, which is pumped continuously into the structure.
Visitors to the Grand Palais will first use a revolving door to enter inside the belly of Kapoor’s beast. This is a vast, soaring chamber bathed in red light, which the artist says he hopes has a “cathedral-like quality”.
From here visitors exit to see Leviathan from the outside for the first time. “The exterior appears to bear no relation to the interior yet they co-exist simultaneously. That’s what the work is about,” says Kapoor.
Although the Indian-born British artist is not known for thinking small, he says the challenges of making Leviathan were unprecedented. The first was to cope with the light which floods through the Grand Palais’ glass ceilings. “The light is the killer. It’s almost brighter inside than it is outside. It crushes things. The thing is to try and reverse it.”
To do this, Kapoor chose “a very dark membrane” but he says he didn’t know what this would look like on a giant scale until the work was erected. “We only had one shot to get it right,” says Kapoor, adding that he and his crew took a week to install the work.
A known perfectionist, Kapoor says the work was designed down to the last millimetre. “The tailoring is perfect,” he says. “It has to be. Otherwise there would be wrinkles. There are no wrinkles,” he says adding that the computer design for Leviathan was done in England, the PVC was cut in Germany, it was stitched together in Italy and a Czech crew installed it in Paris.
Although Kapoor used the very latest technology to build Leviathan, he says his intention was to create a form that is “primal” in its appearance. “Part of my inspiration is Stanley Kubrick [the director whose films include ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’],” he says, adding that abstract art is able to find the “expressive force of primary forms”.
Commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture as their annual Monumenta exhibition, the sculpture cost €3m to manufacture.
Kapoor has dedicated Leviathan to the imprisoned artist Ai Weiwei who has not been seen or heard from since he was detained by Chinese authorities in early April. Describing Ai’s imprisonment as “barbaric”, Kapoor said he believes the art world should do more to campaign for his release. “Perhaps all museums and galleries should be closed for a day...some such campaign needs to form itself.”
Leviathan is on display at the Grand Palais until 23 June.
1.12.11
FRANCESCO BONAMI | MICHAEL WORKMAN
Michael Workman: Do you find affinities between your work and that of other curators? What are some of the issues that inform your current practice?
Francesco Bonami: I don’t know how much I am connected with the work of other curators. My practice has been less defined by the contemporary art field, I always try to address lifestyle and other issues outside of it. In that sense, these exhibitions have a broader range, so they are riskier and fail more often than a museum exhibition. I tend to expand a bit and break the boundaries between the different disciplines and that’s how I develop my curatorial vision.
MW: What disciplines do you borrow from?
FB: Anthropology, fashion design, architecture. These disciplines influence so much and are influenced so much by contemporary art that I think it is important to create a connection and a relationship between them.
MW: What have been your most successful attempts at making those connections?
FB: I think the exhibition I curated in Florence called ‘The Fourth Sex: Adolescent Extremes’ was quite a successful enterprise. I think that the ‘Universal Experience’ show has proven itself quite substantial. Those go a little outside the field. Also the 2003 Venice Biennale, which was not my own curatorial effort but the effort of many curators, was in its insult and failure quite paradoxically successful.
MW: This element of the chance encounter in your curatorial practice, why is that important to you?
FB: Because today the fields are completely interconnected. The artists themselves are crossing boundaries. It would be naïve to think that you could just think of contemporary art as its own isolated language. It’s important that you connect it with society, with culture, with the world at large.
MW: What are some of the most difficult problems of this approach?
FB: It has turned the curator, in time, into an author. I think that is very risky because it puts you into a different position than just an organiser of an exhibition. It has put the curator into the role of competitor with the artist because you are trying to create an autonomous entity that is the exhibition. That is the most difficult obstacle that you have. How do you maintain distance, but not so much that the exhibition has its own autonomy, and as a curator how far can you push your signature to make the show relevant?
MW: How do you accomplish that?
FB: I don’t know if I ever accomplish it. There is always this risk and this possibility. At times you should be the one to step back and let the artist and the project interact with each other. Maybe the curator should take a bit of a back seat.
MW: So you see this as kind of a third element. The project becomes a third element between the artist and the curator?
FB: You have an artist and you have the idea and you put them together, the result is the third entity which is the exhibition. It is mostly composed by the artist, but it is also created by the relationship between the artist and the team.
MW: Do you view the exhibition as a space of culture?
FB: I would agree with that.
MW: What kind of problems does this create? Doesn’t it conflict with an artist’s desire to create and maintain an autonomous zone?
FB: That is problematic. I think that the artist often wants to have their own bubble and they want that bubble translated in a different context that won’t be interfered with. That is the most difficult and interesting task a curator has, trying to create a dialogue with the artist that allows the artist to maintain their autonomy, their own identity and integrity, but at the same time be connected with the skeleton of the exhibition.
MW: Who are the artists out there right now that best represent this ability to juxtapose that sense of cultural intersection?
FB: I work a lot with Doug Aitken and Thomas Hirschhorn. Two artists of different contemporary realities, two different kinds of beast, but both reflect on the contemporary reality in a deep and complex way. Those are the two artists at the moment who I really respect for the way they look at reality and transform it.
MW: What about other curators?
FB: The younger generation of curators. I don’t like to name names, but there are many young curators who are coming along with their practice. I think that the younger curator has a little bit less of a desire to take chances or risk, but that is something they will eventually correct. If I see a flaw in the curatorial practice of younger people it is that there is an obsession with consensus. There is an obsession with trying to tailor the perfect exhibition.
MW: What are some of the most important philosophical concerns for you as a curator?
FB: I don’t have philosophical concerns. They build themselves up within the frame and the body of the exhibition. I don’t articulate those other things. I may have an intuition or interesting thought to follow, but I don’t have a philosophy of curating. I guess if I had one it would be to push the envelope and take risks, that’s what interests me. There is a concern with failing, but there is no fear of failing in my practice.
MW: Sort of a gambler’s philosophy. See how it turns out by making an attempt in different directions.
FB: When I take a direction, I take it and I follow it accepting the consequences.
MW: So you are now a Curator At Large at the MCA.
FB: I am also the artistic director of the three foundations in Italy. One is in the northeast near Trieste called the Villa Manin Centre for Contemporary Art. One is in the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo per L’Arte, Turin. One is in Florence, the Pitti Immagine. It is the organisation, a kind of laboratory, where we develop these exhibitions such as ‘The Fourth Sex’, that are more related to fashion and to general culture.
MW: A laboratory of those ideas. Is that why you are now at large, because you are moving towards those ideas?
FB: No, not really. I moved back to New York, I spent seven years in Chicago, and I decided I wanted to relocate back to New York. I started a practice here that would function very well even if I am not living here. Both the museum and myself thought that a different status would help clarify my practice better.
MW: Are you going to be putting more time into other curatorial work?
FB: No, no. It’s basically the same, just the wording of my title is different. Now I am allowed to stay and live in another city where before I had to live here.
MW: What was the reason for moving to New York?
FB: My family.
Francesco Bonami: I don’t know how much I am connected with the work of other curators. My practice has been less defined by the contemporary art field, I always try to address lifestyle and other issues outside of it. In that sense, these exhibitions have a broader range, so they are riskier and fail more often than a museum exhibition. I tend to expand a bit and break the boundaries between the different disciplines and that’s how I develop my curatorial vision.
MW: What disciplines do you borrow from?
FB: Anthropology, fashion design, architecture. These disciplines influence so much and are influenced so much by contemporary art that I think it is important to create a connection and a relationship between them.
MW: What have been your most successful attempts at making those connections?
FB: I think the exhibition I curated in Florence called ‘The Fourth Sex: Adolescent Extremes’ was quite a successful enterprise. I think that the ‘Universal Experience’ show has proven itself quite substantial. Those go a little outside the field. Also the 2003 Venice Biennale, which was not my own curatorial effort but the effort of many curators, was in its insult and failure quite paradoxically successful.
MW: This element of the chance encounter in your curatorial practice, why is that important to you?
FB: Because today the fields are completely interconnected. The artists themselves are crossing boundaries. It would be naïve to think that you could just think of contemporary art as its own isolated language. It’s important that you connect it with society, with culture, with the world at large.
MW: What are some of the most difficult problems of this approach?
FB: It has turned the curator, in time, into an author. I think that is very risky because it puts you into a different position than just an organiser of an exhibition. It has put the curator into the role of competitor with the artist because you are trying to create an autonomous entity that is the exhibition. That is the most difficult obstacle that you have. How do you maintain distance, but not so much that the exhibition has its own autonomy, and as a curator how far can you push your signature to make the show relevant?
MW: How do you accomplish that?
FB: I don’t know if I ever accomplish it. There is always this risk and this possibility. At times you should be the one to step back and let the artist and the project interact with each other. Maybe the curator should take a bit of a back seat.
MW: So you see this as kind of a third element. The project becomes a third element between the artist and the curator?
FB: You have an artist and you have the idea and you put them together, the result is the third entity which is the exhibition. It is mostly composed by the artist, but it is also created by the relationship between the artist and the team.
MW: Do you view the exhibition as a space of culture?
FB: I would agree with that.
MW: What kind of problems does this create? Doesn’t it conflict with an artist’s desire to create and maintain an autonomous zone?
FB: That is problematic. I think that the artist often wants to have their own bubble and they want that bubble translated in a different context that won’t be interfered with. That is the most difficult and interesting task a curator has, trying to create a dialogue with the artist that allows the artist to maintain their autonomy, their own identity and integrity, but at the same time be connected with the skeleton of the exhibition.
MW: Who are the artists out there right now that best represent this ability to juxtapose that sense of cultural intersection?
FB: I work a lot with Doug Aitken and Thomas Hirschhorn. Two artists of different contemporary realities, two different kinds of beast, but both reflect on the contemporary reality in a deep and complex way. Those are the two artists at the moment who I really respect for the way they look at reality and transform it.
MW: What about other curators?
FB: The younger generation of curators. I don’t like to name names, but there are many young curators who are coming along with their practice. I think that the younger curator has a little bit less of a desire to take chances or risk, but that is something they will eventually correct. If I see a flaw in the curatorial practice of younger people it is that there is an obsession with consensus. There is an obsession with trying to tailor the perfect exhibition.
MW: What are some of the most important philosophical concerns for you as a curator?
FB: I don’t have philosophical concerns. They build themselves up within the frame and the body of the exhibition. I don’t articulate those other things. I may have an intuition or interesting thought to follow, but I don’t have a philosophy of curating. I guess if I had one it would be to push the envelope and take risks, that’s what interests me. There is a concern with failing, but there is no fear of failing in my practice.
MW: Sort of a gambler’s philosophy. See how it turns out by making an attempt in different directions.
FB: When I take a direction, I take it and I follow it accepting the consequences.
MW: So you are now a Curator At Large at the MCA.
FB: I am also the artistic director of the three foundations in Italy. One is in the northeast near Trieste called the Villa Manin Centre for Contemporary Art. One is in the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo per L’Arte, Turin. One is in Florence, the Pitti Immagine. It is the organisation, a kind of laboratory, where we develop these exhibitions such as ‘The Fourth Sex’, that are more related to fashion and to general culture.
MW: A laboratory of those ideas. Is that why you are now at large, because you are moving towards those ideas?
FB: No, not really. I moved back to New York, I spent seven years in Chicago, and I decided I wanted to relocate back to New York. I started a practice here that would function very well even if I am not living here. Both the museum and myself thought that a different status would help clarify my practice better.
MW: Are you going to be putting more time into other curatorial work?
FB: No, no. It’s basically the same, just the wording of my title is different. Now I am allowed to stay and live in another city where before I had to live here.
MW: What was the reason for moving to New York?
FB: My family.
Michael Workman is a writer based in Chicago and Chief Editor of Bridge Magazine
30.11.11
CAROLYN CHRISTOV-BAKARGIEV | DOCUMENTA 13
Nommée directrice artistique de documenta 13, Carolyn Christov Bakargiev est actuellement conservateur en chef duCastello di Rivoli. Critique d’art, Elle vit entre Rome, Turin et New York. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev a travaillé sur les relations art et littérature et a d’abord oeuvré comme commissaire d’exposition indépendant ,et elle continue de concevoir, à travers le monde, des expositions qui marquent la scène artistique internationale. Ainsi, est-elle emblématique d’une nouvelle génération qui s’affirme aujourd’hui et enrichit sa pratique en transgressant les frontières traditionnelles entre critique et conservateur, commissaire indépendant et responsable d’institutions.
En 2004, elle a organisé au Musée d’Art Contemporain de Sydney une rétrospective majeure consacrée à William Kentridge présentant son œuvre dans toutes ses dimensions (peintures, sculptures, films…). Cette exposition permet également de mettre en relation le travail de l’artiste, avec l’histoire tourmentée de l’Afrique du Sud et des interrogations essentielles sur les incertitudes de la nature humaine. Auparavant, elle avait assuré en 2002 le commissariat de l’exposition Janet Cardif, un bilan de l’œuvre au Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal et été conservatrice au PS1, de New York entre 1999 et 2001. En 2005, elle était nommée co-commissaire de la premièretriennale de Turin.
.Si elle s’est donc beaucoup investi dans des expositions consacrées à un artiste, elle a également travaillé sur des projets thématiques, en particulier à la Villa Médicis où trois années durant (1998, 1999 et 2000), en compagnie de Laurence Bossé et de Hans Ulrich Obrist, elle a successivement présenté les volets d’une trilogie : La Ville, le Jardin, la Mémoire.
Membre du jury international de la Biennale de Venise, Carolyn Christov Bakargiev est également l’auteur de livres et d’articles, dont les ouvrages Arte Povera. (Phaidon. 1998) et Moderns, I Moderni. (Skira).
17.11.11
ALLORA & CALZADILLA | LISSON GALLERY
from lissongallery.com / press release
Lisson Gallery is pleased to present Allora & Calzadilla’s third solo show at the gallery ‘Vieques Videos 2003-2011’. Made over the course of a decade Returning a Sound (2004), Under Discussion (2005) and Half Mast/Full Mast (2010) are now shown here together for the first time. Each video addresses the complicated history of Vieques, an inhabited island of Puerto Rico that was used by the United States Navy as a bomb-testing range from 1941 until 2003. The Navy was forced to evacuate by a civil disobedience campaign waged by local residents, with supporters throughout the world. Allora & Calzadilla contributed to the visual culture of this campaign with a long-term, multi-sited project entitled ‘Landmark’, informed by the following questions: ‘How is land differentiated from other land by the way it is marked? Who decides what is worth preserving and what should be destroyed? What are strategies for reclaiming marked land? How does one articulate an ethics and politics of land use?’
In Vieques the future of the reclaimed land remains uncertain and largely insulated from democratic claims. Returning a Sound (2004) was made at the beginning of the process of demilitarisation, decontamination, and future development and at once celebrates a victory and registers its precariousness. The video addresses not only the landscape of Vieques, but also its soundscape, invoking the memory of the sonic violence of the bombing. It follows Homar, an activist, as he traverses the island on a moped with a trumpet welded to the muffler. The noise-reducing device is diverted from its original purpose: with every jolt of the road and spurt of the engine, the trumpet might summon up the siren of an ambulance, Luigi Russolo’s Futurist Intonarumori or experimental jazz. In his circuit Homar acoustically recapitulates areas of the island formerly exposed to ear-splitting detonations.
Scarred with bomb-craters and with its ecosystem contaminated, the former military land has been designated as a federal wildlife refuge. This designation entails further violence by marginalising the demands of island residents for decontamination and municipal management – the point of departure for Under Discussion (2005). An overturned conference table has been retrofitted with an engine and rudder grafted from a small fishing boat. A local activist uses the motorized table to lead viewers around the restricted area of the island, re-marking the antagonisms that haunt the picturesque coast and bearing witness to the memory of the Fisherman’s Movement, which initiated the first acts of civil disobedience against the ecological fall-out of the bombing. The hybrid device explores the absurd political inequalities of the situation: the table, a common trope for the non-violent resolution of conflict, is forcibly reliant on local navigation.
Half Mast\Full Mast (2010) draws attention to the unfinished political, economic, and ecological reconstruction of the island as inhabitants grapple with the legacy of military occupation. Departing from the noisy dynamism of the earlier videos, Half Mast\Full Mast adopts a slower, more meditative approach. Projected at life-size, the silent video is comprised of 19 partitions; each is split into two landscape views of various sites in Vieques, stacked on top of one another. The horizontal divide is then crossed by two poles, aligned as if a continuous object. In each partition a young man hoists himself up the pole from standing to a horizontal position, and with intenseexertion momentarily becomes an unofficial flag – before endurance gives way to gravity. The gesture functions to reframe specific sites around Vieques significant to the military occupation and subsequent struggles in terms of a deceptively simple semiotic convention: the flying of the flag at half-mast (a sign of mourning) or full- mast (‘normal’ conditions). In ‘becoming’ a flag, however unofficial, absurd or precarious, the performers short-circuit the flag’s symbolic relation between parts and wholes. In Half Mast\Full Mast, the individual body ‘literally’ stands in for the flag, obliterating it as an official place for the collective body of the nation.
Alternating in an unpredictable manner between upper and lower segments of the composition, the appearance sometimes celebrates or salutes a particular site (such as places related to the history of civil disobedience), while in others it indicates a sense of discontent, if not crisis (such as the luxury W hotel recently constructed in Vieques). In other instances, the gesture is ambivalent relative to the sites in question, suspended somewhere between disaster and progress, oblivion and memory, grief and hope – oscillations that rebound on a broader scale between all three Vieques videos.
Allora & Calzadilla
Vieques Videos 2003–2011
23 November 2011 – 14 January 2012
LISSONGALLERY.COM/#/EXHIBITIONS/2011-11-23_ALLORA-AND-CALZADILLA/
LISSONGALLERY.COM/#/ARTISTS/ALLORA-AND-CALZADILLA/EXHIBITIONS/
LISSONGALLERY.COM/#/ARTISTS/ALLORA-AND-CALZADILLA/
Lisson Gallery
52-54 Bell Street
London, NW1 5DA
T: + 44(0)20 7724 2739
F: + 44(0)20 7724 7124
LISSONGALLERY.COMAll iamges courtesy of LISSONGALLERY.COM
SELECTED / EXHIBITION / ALLORA & CALZADILLA / VIEQUES VIDEOS 2003/2011 @ LISSONGALLERY.COM
Lisson Gallery is pleased to present Allora & Calzadilla’s third solo show at the gallery ‘Vieques Videos 2003-2011’. Made over the course of a decade Returning a Sound (2004), Under Discussion (2005) and Half Mast/Full Mast (2010) are now shown here together for the first time. Each video addresses the complicated history of Vieques, an inhabited island of Puerto Rico that was used by the United States Navy as a bomb-testing range from 1941 until 2003. The Navy was forced to evacuate by a civil disobedience campaign waged by local residents, with supporters throughout the world. Allora & Calzadilla contributed to the visual culture of this campaign with a long-term, multi-sited project entitled ‘Landmark’, informed by the following questions: ‘How is land differentiated from other land by the way it is marked? Who decides what is worth preserving and what should be destroyed? What are strategies for reclaiming marked land? How does one articulate an ethics and politics of land use?’
In Vieques the future of the reclaimed land remains uncertain and largely insulated from democratic claims. Returning a Sound (2004) was made at the beginning of the process of demilitarisation, decontamination, and future development and at once celebrates a victory and registers its precariousness. The video addresses not only the landscape of Vieques, but also its soundscape, invoking the memory of the sonic violence of the bombing. It follows Homar, an activist, as he traverses the island on a moped with a trumpet welded to the muffler. The noise-reducing device is diverted from its original purpose: with every jolt of the road and spurt of the engine, the trumpet might summon up the siren of an ambulance, Luigi Russolo’s Futurist Intonarumori or experimental jazz. In his circuit Homar acoustically recapitulates areas of the island formerly exposed to ear-splitting detonations.
Scarred with bomb-craters and with its ecosystem contaminated, the former military land has been designated as a federal wildlife refuge. This designation entails further violence by marginalising the demands of island residents for decontamination and municipal management – the point of departure for Under Discussion (2005). An overturned conference table has been retrofitted with an engine and rudder grafted from a small fishing boat. A local activist uses the motorized table to lead viewers around the restricted area of the island, re-marking the antagonisms that haunt the picturesque coast and bearing witness to the memory of the Fisherman’s Movement, which initiated the first acts of civil disobedience against the ecological fall-out of the bombing. The hybrid device explores the absurd political inequalities of the situation: the table, a common trope for the non-violent resolution of conflict, is forcibly reliant on local navigation.
Half Mast\Full Mast (2010) draws attention to the unfinished political, economic, and ecological reconstruction of the island as inhabitants grapple with the legacy of military occupation. Departing from the noisy dynamism of the earlier videos, Half Mast\Full Mast adopts a slower, more meditative approach. Projected at life-size, the silent video is comprised of 19 partitions; each is split into two landscape views of various sites in Vieques, stacked on top of one another. The horizontal divide is then crossed by two poles, aligned as if a continuous object. In each partition a young man hoists himself up the pole from standing to a horizontal position, and with intenseexertion momentarily becomes an unofficial flag – before endurance gives way to gravity. The gesture functions to reframe specific sites around Vieques significant to the military occupation and subsequent struggles in terms of a deceptively simple semiotic convention: the flying of the flag at half-mast (a sign of mourning) or full- mast (‘normal’ conditions). In ‘becoming’ a flag, however unofficial, absurd or precarious, the performers short-circuit the flag’s symbolic relation between parts and wholes. In Half Mast\Full Mast, the individual body ‘literally’ stands in for the flag, obliterating it as an official place for the collective body of the nation.
Alternating in an unpredictable manner between upper and lower segments of the composition, the appearance sometimes celebrates or salutes a particular site (such as places related to the history of civil disobedience), while in others it indicates a sense of discontent, if not crisis (such as the luxury W hotel recently constructed in Vieques). In other instances, the gesture is ambivalent relative to the sites in question, suspended somewhere between disaster and progress, oblivion and memory, grief and hope – oscillations that rebound on a broader scale between all three Vieques videos.
Allora & Calzadilla
Vieques Videos 2003–2011
23 November 2011 – 14 January 2012
LISSONGALLERY.COM/#/EXHIBITIONS/2011-11-23_ALLORA-AND-CALZADILLA/
LISSONGALLERY.COM/#/ARTISTS/ALLORA-AND-CALZADILLA/EXHIBITIONS/
LISSONGALLERY.COM/#/ARTISTS/ALLORA-AND-CALZADILLA/
Lisson Gallery
52-54 Bell Street
London, NW1 5DA
T: + 44(0)20 7724 2739
F: + 44(0)20 7724 7124
LISSONGALLERY.COMAll iamges courtesy of LISSONGALLERY.COM
SELECTED / EXHIBITION / ALLORA & CALZADILLA / VIEQUES VIDEOS 2003/2011 @ LISSONGALLERY.COM
15.11.11
JOHN STEZAKER | ROSENWALD-WOLF
The moodiness of collage nearly overwhelms the show of work by John Stezaker at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery in his show The Nude and Landscape. But then the sharpness of Stezaker’s intelligence and eye pull it back from the brink, seducing with beauty, complexities, surprises and ideas.
17.10.11
LONDON ART AUCTION RESULT
Gerhard Richter, Kerze (Candle), 1982 (est. $9.3-13.9 million, realized $16.5 million). All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.
Christie’s Post War and Contemporary Art sale on Friday evening in London ended the week’s auction blitz with a bang. The sale followed Phillips and Sotheby’s auctions in the same category that both failed to beat low presale estimates. The Christie’s sale was comprised of 47 lots that brought in $60 million, just shy of the $62 million high estimate. Top honors went to the evening’s cover lot- Gerhard Richter‘s Kerze – which was expected to bring in as much as $13.9 million. The artistmade headlines earlier this month when he characterized the art market as “impossible to understand” and “daft” during the press launch of his retrospective currently on view at Tate Modern. If anything, his comments seemed to have whet the already healthy appetite for his work, as Kerze sold for $16.5 million and set a record for the artist at auction. The candle paintings, in which the artist depicts lighted candles in his signature photorealistic style, are the most sought after works in the painter’s oeuvre.
Christie’s Jussi Pylkkanen at the rostrum.
.
Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild, 1992 (est. $3.8-5.3 million, realized $5.7 million), via Christies.com
Richter also secured the second highest earning lot of the evening with Abstraktes Bild, which sold for $5.7 million against a high estimate of $5.3 million. The painting last sold at Christie’s New York in 2002 for $1.05 million.
Antony Gormley, Angel of the North (Life-Size Maquette), 1996 (est. $2.3- 3 million, realized $5.7 million)
Six other artist records were set. Bidders chased after Antony Gormley‘s life size maquette of Angel of the North, one of England’s most recognizable pieces of public art. The work is number five in an edition of five. The third maquette in the series sold at Sotheby’s London in July 2008 for $4.6 million.
Martin Kippenberger, Untitled, 1990 (est. $380,000-530,000, realized $2.1 million), via Christies.com
Damien Hirst, Judas Iscariot (The Twelve Disciples), 1994 (est. $760,000-1.1 million, realized $1.6 million)
Sculpture fared well at the evening sale. Martin Kippenberger‘s squiggly lamp post carried a high estimate of $530,000 and was knocked down at $2.1 million, reportedly to former head of Christie’s Contemporary art department Philippe Segalot. The piece was acquired directly from the artist by the selling party. A bull’s head in formaldehyde by Damien Hirst sold for $1.6 million against a high estimate of $1.1 million. Ron Mueck‘s hyper-real sculpture of a crouched man holding a sweater over his head sold for $947,000 against a high estimate of $900,000. The work carried a third party guarantee.
Ron Mueck, Man Under Cardigan, 1998 (est. $610,000-900,000, realized $947,000)
Ahmed Alsoudani, Baghdad I, 2008 ( est. $385,000-540,000, realized $1.1 million), via Christies.com
The artist record was also set for Iraqi-born Ahmed Alsoudani, whose work is currently on view in his homeland’s pavillion at the Venice Biennale. The painting on offer Friday evening was executed the year after Alsoudani graduated from Yale’s MFA program and carried a high estimate of $540,000. It fetched nearly twice that sum when it was hammered down at $1.1 million (with fees).
The results of the Christie’s sale proved that there is still energy in the market, despite fever-pitched concerns about the economy on both sides of the pond. All eyes are now on the next round of auctions next month in New York. Check back for a preview of the upcoming sales.
-J. Mizrachi
Related Links:
Christie’s Results [Christie's]
Christie’s Once Again Defies the Market, Pulling Off a $60 Million Triumph in Its London Contemporary Art Sale [Artinfo]
Richter $16.6 Million Record Leads Auction Boost to Art Market [Bloomberg]
Richter, Gormley records fall at Christie’s art sale [Reuters]
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artobserved.com
Christie’s Post War and Contemporary Art sale on Friday evening in London ended the week’s auction blitz with a bang. The sale followed Phillips and Sotheby’s auctions in the same category that both failed to beat low presale estimates. The Christie’s sale was comprised of 47 lots that brought in $60 million, just shy of the $62 million high estimate. Top honors went to the evening’s cover lot- Gerhard Richter‘s Kerze – which was expected to bring in as much as $13.9 million. The artistmade headlines earlier this month when he characterized the art market as “impossible to understand” and “daft” during the press launch of his retrospective currently on view at Tate Modern. If anything, his comments seemed to have whet the already healthy appetite for his work, as Kerze sold for $16.5 million and set a record for the artist at auction. The candle paintings, in which the artist depicts lighted candles in his signature photorealistic style, are the most sought after works in the painter’s oeuvre.
Christie’s Jussi Pylkkanen at the rostrum.
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Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild, 1992 (est. $3.8-5.3 million, realized $5.7 million), via Christies.com
Richter also secured the second highest earning lot of the evening with Abstraktes Bild, which sold for $5.7 million against a high estimate of $5.3 million. The painting last sold at Christie’s New York in 2002 for $1.05 million.
Antony Gormley, Angel of the North (Life-Size Maquette), 1996 (est. $2.3- 3 million, realized $5.7 million)
Six other artist records were set. Bidders chased after Antony Gormley‘s life size maquette of Angel of the North, one of England’s most recognizable pieces of public art. The work is number five in an edition of five. The third maquette in the series sold at Sotheby’s London in July 2008 for $4.6 million.
Martin Kippenberger, Untitled, 1990 (est. $380,000-530,000, realized $2.1 million), via Christies.com
Damien Hirst, Judas Iscariot (The Twelve Disciples), 1994 (est. $760,000-1.1 million, realized $1.6 million)
Sculpture fared well at the evening sale. Martin Kippenberger‘s squiggly lamp post carried a high estimate of $530,000 and was knocked down at $2.1 million, reportedly to former head of Christie’s Contemporary art department Philippe Segalot. The piece was acquired directly from the artist by the selling party. A bull’s head in formaldehyde by Damien Hirst sold for $1.6 million against a high estimate of $1.1 million. Ron Mueck‘s hyper-real sculpture of a crouched man holding a sweater over his head sold for $947,000 against a high estimate of $900,000. The work carried a third party guarantee.
Ron Mueck, Man Under Cardigan, 1998 (est. $610,000-900,000, realized $947,000)
Ahmed Alsoudani, Baghdad I, 2008 ( est. $385,000-540,000, realized $1.1 million), via Christies.com
The artist record was also set for Iraqi-born Ahmed Alsoudani, whose work is currently on view in his homeland’s pavillion at the Venice Biennale. The painting on offer Friday evening was executed the year after Alsoudani graduated from Yale’s MFA program and carried a high estimate of $540,000. It fetched nearly twice that sum when it was hammered down at $1.1 million (with fees).
The results of the Christie’s sale proved that there is still energy in the market, despite fever-pitched concerns about the economy on both sides of the pond. All eyes are now on the next round of auctions next month in New York. Check back for a preview of the upcoming sales.
-J. Mizrachi
Related Links:
Christie’s Results [Christie's]
Christie’s Once Again Defies the Market, Pulling Off a $60 Million Triumph in Its London Contemporary Art Sale [Artinfo]
Richter $16.6 Million Record Leads Auction Boost to Art Market [Bloomberg]
Richter, Gormley records fall at Christie’s art sale [Reuters]
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artobserved.com
14.10.11
ROMAN ONDAK | DEUTSCHE BANK'S ARTIST OF THE YEAR 2012
Roman Ondák with "Loop", Czech and Slovak Republic Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2009.
Photo: Fabrizio Giraldi.
Roman Ondák
Photo: Fabrizio Giraldi.
Roman Ondák
Deutsche Bank's Artist of the Year 2012
Roman Ondák is Deutsche Bank's "Artist of the Year" 2012. On the recommendation
of the Deutsche Bank Global Art Advisory Council, consisting of renowned curators
Okwui Enwezor, Hou Hanru, Udo Kittelmann and Nancy Spector and chaired by
Pierre de Weck, member of Deutsche Bank AG's Executive Committee, the bank
honors young artists who have already created an extraordinary oeuvre in which
works on paper or photography play an important role. The selection was announced
at the Frieze Art Fair, which is supported by Deutsche Bank as main sponsor.
Roman Ondák, who was born in 1966 in Bratislava, Slovakia, is among the most
exciting representatives of a young generation of conceptual artists. In 2012,
he will play an important role in Deutsche Bank's art program. The Deutsche Guggenheim
will present a major solo exhibition of his work that will subsequently travel to additional
international institutions. Accompanying the show are an extensive catalogue and an
exclusive artist's edition. In addition, the bank will acquire a selection of works on paper
for its collection. Following Wangechi Mutu in 2010 and Yto Barrada in 2011, with
Roman Ondák the Global Art Advisory Council chose an artist whose work emphasizes
the draft character and conceptual approach of this medium. "It will be exciting to see
how he will challenge the medium of drawing and the material of paper in the future,
" says Udo Kittelmann, Director of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, who nominated Ondák
for the award.
Indeed, with the simplest means Ondák creates an art that lends everyday experiences
and perceptions a philosophical, political, or sociocritical dimension. At the same time,
his interventions scrutinize the art world. When he represented Slovakia at the 2009
Venice Biennale, Ondák extended the landscaping in the exhibition park, the Giardini,
into the interior of the Slovakian Pavilion. Bushes, shrubs, and even the garden path
continued through the exhibition building, as though the structure did not exist.
The work dissolved boundaries between interior and exterior space and hence the
pavilion itself along with its function. Ondák's interventions play with our standards,
expectations, and perspectives. The lines of people that he staged in 2004 in front of
booths at the Frieze Art Fair in London take the relationship between supply and demand
to absurdity.
Although Ondák's reserved art is often recognizable only at second glance, his importance
in the art world is unmistakable. In 2011, he has had more international exhibitions than
ever before, including solo shows at the Kunsthaus Zürich and in Oxford, as well as
participation in the Venice Biennale.
More information at db-artmag.com.
ArtMag, Deutsche Bank's online art magazine, has reported on the international
art scene since 2002.
In addition to articles on and interviews with artists whose work is included in the
Deutsche Bank Collection and shown at Deutsche Guggenheim exhibitions, each
edition is devoted to a special topical subject.
Register here for your ArtMag newsletter and stay updated.
of the Deutsche Bank Global Art Advisory Council, consisting of renowned curators
Okwui Enwezor, Hou Hanru, Udo Kittelmann and Nancy Spector and chaired by
Pierre de Weck, member of Deutsche Bank AG's Executive Committee, the bank
honors young artists who have already created an extraordinary oeuvre in which
works on paper or photography play an important role. The selection was announced
at the Frieze Art Fair, which is supported by Deutsche Bank as main sponsor.
Roman Ondák, who was born in 1966 in Bratislava, Slovakia, is among the most
exciting representatives of a young generation of conceptual artists. In 2012,
he will play an important role in Deutsche Bank's art program. The Deutsche Guggenheim
will present a major solo exhibition of his work that will subsequently travel to additional
international institutions. Accompanying the show are an extensive catalogue and an
exclusive artist's edition. In addition, the bank will acquire a selection of works on paper
for its collection. Following Wangechi Mutu in 2010 and Yto Barrada in 2011, with
Roman Ondák the Global Art Advisory Council chose an artist whose work emphasizes
the draft character and conceptual approach of this medium. "It will be exciting to see
how he will challenge the medium of drawing and the material of paper in the future,
" says Udo Kittelmann, Director of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, who nominated Ondák
for the award.
Indeed, with the simplest means Ondák creates an art that lends everyday experiences
and perceptions a philosophical, political, or sociocritical dimension. At the same time,
his interventions scrutinize the art world. When he represented Slovakia at the 2009
Venice Biennale, Ondák extended the landscaping in the exhibition park, the Giardini,
into the interior of the Slovakian Pavilion. Bushes, shrubs, and even the garden path
continued through the exhibition building, as though the structure did not exist.
The work dissolved boundaries between interior and exterior space and hence the
pavilion itself along with its function. Ondák's interventions play with our standards,
expectations, and perspectives. The lines of people that he staged in 2004 in front of
booths at the Frieze Art Fair in London take the relationship between supply and demand
to absurdity.
Although Ondák's reserved art is often recognizable only at second glance, his importance
in the art world is unmistakable. In 2011, he has had more international exhibitions than
ever before, including solo shows at the Kunsthaus Zürich and in Oxford, as well as
participation in the Venice Biennale.
More information at db-artmag.com.
ArtMag, Deutsche Bank's online art magazine, has reported on the international
art scene since 2002.
In addition to articles on and interviews with artists whose work is included in the
Deutsche Bank Collection and shown at Deutsche Guggenheim exhibitions, each
edition is devoted to a special topical subject.
Register here for your ArtMag newsletter and stay updated.
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