DIET WIEGMAN | LIGHT SCULPTURES

Approach a sculpture by artist Diet Wiegman and you might be left scratching your head at this random assembly of trash and objects, but shine a light on this same pile of detritus and suddenly a perfectly formed shadow appears: the unmistakable form of Michael Jackson, Michelangelo’s David or even a faithful recreation of the Earth’s surface as it reflects off a metal tray. In no way limited to shadows, the the artists career which spans nearly 50 years (most of what you see above was created in the 1980s) has also involved ceramics, paint, and photography. Two other accomplished artists, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, have also created similar shadow sculptures, though most of these works by Wiegman appear to pre-date them a bit. You can see 38 light sculptures on his blog and read a bit more over onAlafoto. (via ignant)

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/

STANLEY KUBRICK | A RETROSPECTIVE

The filmmaker's first retrospective in the United States breaks with strict chronology 

and instead creates clusters of visual and informative "microclimates" within the 

exhibition hall — a different weather for each film. 

An art report by Katya Tylevich

At the entrance to the impressive Stanley Kubrick retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), a small sign announces the current efforts of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (co-presenting the show) to create "the world's foremost motion picture museum" — to be located next to LACMA, and designed by Renzo Piano and Zoltan Pali. The sign is there as if to whet the palate for Kubrick, the filmmaker's first retrospective in the United States, and to raise awareness and generous support for the museum endeavour. The announcement underscores the importance of film as art and the need for a place to "hang" it, especially in a place like Los Angeles. Because, come on, Los Angeles should already have a foremost motion picture museum. 

All this to say that I certainly hope we're past the point of having to defend film as an art form — though what better way to beat that dead horse than by looking back at the remarkable works of Kubrick? However, we may not be past the point of discovering new ways to present that art form within the static confines of white walls. Short of screening Kubrick's opuses in full, how can an exhibition do justice to the atmospheres, techniques and perhaps even neuroses created by a director, without deviating from the works in question, oversimplifying them or, God forbid, hyper-intellectualising?

Stanley Kubrick, installation view at the LACMA. Photo by Museum Associates/LACMA

Stanley Kubrick breaks with strict chronology and instead creates clusters of visual and informative "microclimates" within the exhibition hall — a different weather for each film discussed, as it were, with meaningful asides to present Kubrick's work as a photographer for Look magazine in the 40s and his research for two unrealised films, referred to as Napoleonand Aryan Papers. In doing so, the retrospective conveys quite well the "bodily" experience of immersing oneself in a world or point of view through film. At the same time, it provides a necessary cerebral lifejacket: just enough background text, comparison, and thematic cohesion to buoy the viewer from drowning in the various dramas on display.

Stanley Kubrick, installation view at the LACMA. Photo by Museum Associates/LACMA

Although the exhibition takes care to remain inviting to those uninitiated in the films of Kubrick, the show is, of course, most satisfying for those who come to it having seen at least some of his masterpieces. Half the fun is staring at familiar scenes in this unfamiliar context, wherein the heavy chewing has been taken care of already. Looking at a gorgeous scene fromBarry Lyndon (1975), for example, one need only turn an eye to the ready-to-think text outlining how the film "offers a stunning arrangement of symmetries and doublings, of intense colours and perfectly realized tableaux copied from eighteenth-century paintings by Joshua Reynolds, Johann Zoffany, William Hogarth, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Thomas Gainsborough, and George Stubbs." Visual examples are likewise provided by way of history and art books, flipped to just the right pages. Well, that's one less trip to Wikipedia! Other such nuggets matter-of-factly discuss the colour red in Kubrick's films, stating that he "developed a constellation of meanings and sensations surround the colour" and offering a very convincing palette of stills as example. The matter of fact tone and direct nature of such captions throughout the show do well to allow Kubrick's work to do most of the talking, and refrain from clashing with the artistic flourishes of the director or the personal reactions of the viewer.

Stanley Kubrick, installation view at the LACMA. Photo by Museum Associates/LACMA

The retrospective, which originated in Frankfurt's Deutsches Filmmuseum, has already been traveling Europe for years, and its arrival in Hollywood seems a no-brainer, albeit an exciting one eliciting long lines and positive reviews. Like flies in honey, people in attendance seem to clump most notably around projections of A Clockwork Orange (a looping segment of Alex slumped at the Korova Milk Bar) and Full Metal Jacket ("this is my rifle, this is my gun"…). The garland of humans around these projections, and others, underscores just how mesmerizing they are. But perhaps the most moving element of the exhibition is those pages ripped from various scripts, heavy as they are with Kubrick's notes, his handwriting, his changes, his thoughts. This might be as close as we can get to putting a frame around a process, or entering that limbo wherein internal thoughts and ideas hang out before they're edited and articulated and handed to the public in that final, irreversible step.

Stanley Kubrick, installation view at the LACMA. Photo by Museum Associates/LACMA

On the LACMA website there is a free app available for download, which allows for more in-depth, documentary-style discussion of Kubrick, his life and his works. Addressed in some detail is Kubrick's physical separation from Hollywood via a life in the UK, as well as the "myth" of Kubrick as an introverted genius… a separation of the director as he was from the director as he was imagined. After all, those who worked with Kubrick depict him as demanding, yes, a perfectionist, but certainly a warm and engaged human. Such depictions, discussed in the app but also running subtly throughout the exhibition by way of quotes, small facts, and many photographs of Kubrick on set, allow the auteur to play the role of human, even on a stage shared with his legendary work. 

Katya Tylevich

http://www.domusweb.it/en/art/stanley-kubrick-a-retrospective/

APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL | HANGAR BICOCCA

PRIMITIVE / Curated by Andrea Lissoni

08.03.2013 — 28.04.2013

The Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul presentsPrimitive, a project he started in 2009 and which is being shown in its entirety in a display specially designed for the spaces of HangarBicocca. In the almost total darkness of the Shed, the viewer is plunged into a magical, mysterious atmosphere conjured up by images that alternate light and dark, video clips and documentaries, narrative and absolute silence, reality and fiction, past and future.

The director's story starts out from Nabua, a village in the north of Thailand which was the target of tragic repression and attacks by the Thai army from the 1960s to the 1980s. Here its history is re-examined and re-imagined, involving the young people of the place – descendants of the erstwhile dissidents – with whom the artist lived and worked for some months in the summer of 2008. The climax of this shared experience is the creation of a spaceship – a jointly made work of art in which the exuberance of the kids is combined with the artist's visionary ideas. The term Primitive thus has a twofold meaning: on the one hand the primeval desire of humans to return to their origins and, on the other, with greater political overtones, the primitive state in which peoples are forced to live by governments and the establishment.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's works have no linear narrative structure but rather appear as documentaries that constantly slip into dream-world stories, shifting from long, detailed shots of a place or character to situations in a world of the surreal, like the abrupt manifestation of a ghost. These bizarre interactions partly reflect the lifestyle of rural Thailand, which is still based on ancient animistic beliefs, legends and superstitions, and on the lack of any clear-cut demarcation between the real and the spiritual world.

© Photo: Chai Siri

Apichatpong Weerasethakul was born in Bangkok (Thailand) in 1970. He grew up in Khon Kaen, where he studied Architecture, and later specialised in filmmaking at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. Now considered a cult director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul is the artist who has had the greatest influence on the youngest generation of independent filmmakers and visual artists. This is mainly due to his highly original style, which is based around tracking shots within the scene and on his visionary imagination, which takes him back to the ancestral legends of his land in order to reflect on the personal, political and social issues of modern-day Thailand.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul has been awarded many international honours, including the Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival in 2004 for Tropical Malady and the Palme d'Or for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives in 2010. That year his Syndromes and a Century was voted Best Film of the Decade at the famous The Best of the Decade: An Alternative Viewevent organised by the Cinemathèque of the Toronto International Film Festival, which each year involves top film-archive directors, critics, scholars and curators from around the world. Apichatpong Weerasethakul became the first artist to win the Fine Prize from the 55th Carnegie International and in 2012 he took part in dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel. His works have been shown in leading museums around the world, including the Haus der Kunst in Munich, the New Museum in New York and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. 

www.kickthemachine.com
www.animateprojects.

Primitive, 2009, by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Commissioned by Haus der Kunst, Munich with FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool and Animate Projects, London. Produced by Illuminations Films, London and Kick the Machine Films, Bangkok