FELIX GONZALES-TORRES | THREE GALLERIES

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled" (Chemo), 1991. Strands of beads and hanging device, dimensions vary with installation. © The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres at Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; Massimo De Carlo, Milan; and Hauser & Wirth, London May–June 2016 andrearosengallery.comhauserwirth.commassimodecarlo.comfelixgonzalez-torresfoundation.org A series of three exhibitions of the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres will open in conjunction at Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; Massimo De Carlo, Milan; and Hauser & Wirth, London in May 2016. Curated by artists Julie Ault and Roni Horn, each exhibition will focus on the dialogue between works within an essential form that Gonzalez-Torres created. In so doing, Ault and Horn hope to underline the specificity and magnitude within particular bodies of the artist's work. By engaging the range of decisions brought to bear in manifesting and installing selected Gonzalez-Torres works, works that require being made anew for each presentation, Ault and Horn underscore vital methods reflected throughout the artist's entire oeuvre. Opening: May 5 Andrea Rosen Gallery New York Opening: May 20 Massimo De Carlo Milan Opening: May 26 Hauser & Wirth London

OFCA CONTEMPORARY | MARCO CASSANI

Marco Cassani

VAPRICO  #152  ANTIDISCIPLINE

2015

Readymade, handmade weight, concrete, plastic pipe and stainless steel 100x100x18,5cm

INDISCIPLINATO | Solo Exhibition of Marco Cassani

OFCA International is very pleased to present ‘Indisciplinato’, Italian artist Marco Cassani’s first solo exhibition at  OFCA in Yogyakarta, Indonesia from 27 January – 28 February 2016 as part of its new program Prima Visione.

“Like Cerberus, the animal guarding the gates of the underworld in Greek mythology, Marco Cassani’s practice consists of three heads: his practice as artist, his role as Lucie Fontaine’s employee − regarding the unique program he developed at her Balinese branch Kayu − and, last but not least, his position as founder and CEO of VAPRICO (Value Prism Corporation), an art project organized like a venture that aims to highlight particularities of human being, collecting them in a form of intellectual multitude. Omni-tasking, schizophrenic and full of contradictions, this position brings a myriad of possibilities: Questioning not only the understanding what is means to be an artist today, it also triggers a larger discourse about the lack of distinction between labor and leisure (the very base of cultural production) while reaching its most paradoxical and therefore contemporary state only through positions similar to that of Cassani.

The desire to see reality and fiction continuously intertwining is another important aspect of Cassani’s practice. If his employment withLucie Fontaine can serve as an introduction, the real core of this position comes with VAPRICO, which is being developed by the artist since 2014. Within this territory, Cassani has created a series of objects − possibly classifiable as artworks, props, tools, products, or even still lifes − that are encapsulating labor or the possibility of such. Presented through a carefully orchestrated series of actions, including photo shootings echoing the studio of Brancusi currently reconstructed in front of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and a semi-fictitious newsletter, VAPRICO has the possibility of questioning once again the state of the arts, but this time within a context that is far from the comfort zone of conceptual art. In other words it is important to stress the fact that the artist has developed this project and his language within the context of Indonesia, a country whose dynamic and vibrant art scene is still rooted in a certain understanding and convention of what it means (or is supposed to mean) to be an artist today. Aware of this condition, his first exhibition at OFCA International in Yogyakarta becomes a conscious action that needs to be understood within the layers of Indonesian, and even deeper of Balinese society of which the artist is an expat. Is perhaps the artist standing at the gate, connecting a conceptual underworld or even more specifically his Italian heritage (Arte Povera) with a still considerably idyllic and pastoral land (Bali)? Are these three heads meant to vigil over the amount of complexity, which is characterizing the current state of reality? True or not, Cassani’s artistic practice opens up our imagination and makes us doubting the status quo.” [exhibition text by Nicola Trezzi, 2016]

Prima Visione is an ongoing art program of solo exhibitions, inspired by Indisciplinato, the first solo presentation of Italian, Bali-based artist Marco Cassani at OFCA International in Yogyakarta, Indonesia in 2016 as Prima Visione’s Edition #1.
Alongside its exhibition series Re-PLAY (2012-ongoing), OFCA International has developed Prima Visione to provide invited individual artists a way to baptize the specific result of their intense artistic research. Leaving the studio, the works enter a platform of semi-public visibility, presenting themselves as subject to dialogue and discourse. With its artist-founded background OFCA represents an environment, wishing to bridge the realm of creation with the realm of what is to come after, allowing the physical experience of the artworks and personal dialogue about them to be the first step in this encounter. [AH 2016]

Supported by Italian Institute of Culture, Jakarta

http://www.ofcainternational.com/news/

SOL LEWITT | CARDI GALLERY

Sol LeWitt, Incomplete Open Cube 8/5, 1974. Baked enamel aluminum, 105.4 x 105.4 x 105.4 cm.

Sol LeWitt January 27–April 15, 2016 Opening: Tuesday, January 26, 7pm Cardi Gallery Corso di Porta Nuova 38 20121 Milan Italy Hours: Monday–Friday 10am–7pm, Saturday by appointment T +39 02 45478189 F +39 02 45478120 mail@cardigallery.com www.cardigallery.com Facebook / Twitter / Instagram Cardi gallery in Milan is pleased to present Sol LeWitt. On display is a selection of 13 works from the '60s to the 2000s. Sol LeWitt (b.1928, Hartford, Connecticut; d. 2007, New York) is a leading figure of Minimalism and pioneer of conceptual art. Redefining art production by exploring ideas rather than conventional aesthetics, he distilled artto its essentials. Based on mental structures and concrete visual structures, his work was characterized by a constant spirit of inquiry, resulting in unquestionably and invariably original work. In his long artistic career, LeWitt managed to achieve a perfect balance between perceptual and conceptual quality, between the simplicity of geometric order and the search for beauty and intuitive creativity. LeWitt was pivotal in the creation of the new radical aesthetic of the 1960s that was a revolutionary contradiction to the Abstract Expressionism current in the 1950s and '60s New York school. He overturned the conventional rules of artistic practice and of the material production of artworks, dismissing, with his conceptual approach, notions of non-repeatability and of the importance of manual ability, attributing absolute priority to the idea: "The work is the manifestation of an idea. It is an idea and not an object." In LeWitt's view, his work was not essentially a manual practice but was first and foremost a question of producing a pure, platonic idea, which could then be handed over to someone else for material execution, provided his instructions and the intentions of his idea were respected. In 1967, after taking part in the show at the Jewish Museum in New York, he wrote "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art." "If the artist carried through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product," stated LeWitt. "All intervening steps, scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed work models, studies thoughts, conversations, are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product." (LeWitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," Artforum, Vol.5, no. 10, summer 1967, pp. 79–83). This "making an idea the work" has meant that the output of this magnificent American artist can now be found around the world—in leading museums, public buildings, private homes, foundations and even in remote universities. The first part of the masters' artistic production was Minimalist and pivoted around the geometric figure of the cube: in order to be able to activate and utilize "form" as a "means," LeWitt elected to work with basic shapes, such as cubes (whether solid, open or skeletal) and lines, that might function as modules, elements that are at once independent and interdependent, a visual lexicon always subject to LeWitt's artistic syntax and grammar. By the same token, LeWitt's "concepts" were generally quite simple ("ludicrously simple," in LeWitt's own estimation), consisting, for instance, of simple numeric progressions or sequences of colour combinations. The visible, tangible, results, however, the delicate lattices, the muscular installations, the mind-boggling and genre-breaching series of permutations, were not simple at all, but rather beautifully complex and complexly beautiful, delights for both the intellect and the eye, often achieving what Smithson referred to as "intersections with infinity." In 1968, LeWitt began to conceive sets of guidelines or simple diagrams for his two-dimensional works drawn directly on the wall, executed first in graphite, then in crayon, later in colored pencil and finally in chromatically rich washes of India ink, bright acrylic paint, and other materials. In the 1980s, in particular after a trip to Italy, LeWitt started using gouache, an opaque water-based paint, to produce free-flowing abstract works in contrasting colours. These represented a significant departure from the rest of his practice, as he created these works with his own hands. LeWitt's gouaches are often created in series based on a specific motif. The structural principle of LeWitt's artistic production is the ars combinatoria: cubes, circles, triangles, pyramids and lines, or, as in this case, rectangles and parallelograms are dismantled, reiterated and modulated according to standardized spatial proportions and combined in new ways. The artist reinvented the artistic process, playing on the variability and intermittency of the geometric structures that underpin Western notions of space. With this show Cardi gallery confirms once again its interest for historical artists, national or international. Press contact: Elena Bodecchi, elena@cardigallery.com

ZINGMAGAZINE #24

Behold: zingmagazine #24 www.zingmagazine.com In this issue, you will find showcased 19 curated sections following our tradition of publishing non-redactional curatorial projects. Among the disciplines/projects that will be explored in this issue: we put the "water" in "watercolor," paper in a deformed fashion, images (potentially) from an Ecuadorian embassy, exquisite benches in re-creation, eyes just eyes, yes drugs, mmmmm paintings, a tale of armor, four decades of amazingness—'50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, more drugs and few other options, colorfulness in various forms, & then more color, '70s crafting meets mid-century architecture, the best notebook, a postcard experiment, more mmmmm with MJ from the Caribbean, soul somehow, big rocks on big paintings, and well, Hermès, and the story of a man with a strange, sad, but groovy legacy... plus two books, a CD, and, oh yeah, a poster. And a dial... Twister style... so total bonus room. Alexis Rockman, "Bioluminescence" Géraldine Postel, "The Intimidation of a Blank Page" David Altmejd, [Untitled] Francis Cape, "Utopian Benches" Lisa Kereszi, "The More I Know About Women" Damien Hirst/Mary Barone, "Blue Monday" Joshua Abelow, "Fourteen Paintings" Simon Bill, "How a Man Schall Be Armyed" Harry Smith/Hayley Richardson, "A Strange Dream" Olav Westphalen, "A Junkie in the Forest Doing Things the Hard Way" Dike Blair, "Ash Ferlito, Steve Keister, Bobbie Oliver, Arlene Shechet" Brian Belott, "Bop the Orb" Connie Walsh, "Interior Facade" Michelle Andrade, "The Notebook Drawings" Lucie Fontaine, "Souvenir of an Exhibition" Lizzi Bougatsos, "Looking for M.J." Billy Jacobs/Alex Wolf, "7 Common Mistakes About the End of the World" Rainer Ganahl, "Hèrmes Marx" Alix Lambert, "Good-by Fat Larry" poster #10: The Almighty Playboys, curated by Brandon Johnson CD #10: Météo by Jeff Rian, curated by Giasco Bertoli book #9: Far From the Madding Crowd: Perspectives on the Life and Work of Dan Asher by Brandon Johnson book #10: Family Affair by The Family Schachter Look for issue #24 at your local bookstore/newsstand, or order direct here. About zingmagazine is a New York-based independent contemporary art publication established in 1995 by the artist Devon Dikeou. Featuring rotating curatorial projects by a mix of emerging and established artists, designers, architects, musicians, writers, and more, each curator creates a context of their choosing. Born out of the collaborative spirit, zingmagazine reaches for the crossing point, and it is from this "crossing" that the title is honed. Lack of parameters or limits is the impetus. Behold. zingmagazine is edited by devon dikeou and published by zing LLC, 83 Grand St., NYC

STEVE MCQUEEN | MARIAN GOODMAN

Steve McQueen, Remember Me (detail), 2016. Acrylic paint on 77 neon borosilicate tubes, 19 5/8 to 39 5/16 inches, 3/16 to 3/8 inch diameter. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery. Photo: Rebecca Fanuele.

Steve McQueen January 9–February 27, 2016 Galerie Marian Goodman 79 rue du Temple 75003 Paris France T +33 1 48 04 70 52 paris@mariangoodman.com mariangoodman.com "I want to put the public in a situation where everyone becomes acutely sensitive to themselves, to their body and respiration." Steve McQueen Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris is proud to announce an exhibition by Steve McQueen to launch the 2016 season. We present Ashes, his latest film installation, as well as several new works produced especially for this, his fifth exhibition at the gallery. Steve McQueen's latest projects comprise a wall installation formed of 77 dark blue neon lights, each a unique handwritten version of the phrase Remember Me, as well as two sculptural works, Broken Column and Moonlit. Ashes is an immersive work composed of two films projected simultaneously on either side of a free-hanging screen. First is a portrait of Ashes, a young man from Grenada from where the artist's family also originated. Cracking a mischievous smile and taunting the camera, Ashes is seated at the prow of a boat sailing the Caribbean Sea. The footage was captured during the production of another work, titled Caribs' Leap (2002). Shot live on Super 8 film by the renowned cinematographer Robby Müller, the images illustrate the documentary aspect of McQueen's work. Ashes's carefree demeanor and apparent freedom stand in contrast to the content of the second film projected on the other side of the screen and shot eight years later in a Grenada cemetery, in contrast to the idyllic postcard pictures of the Caribbean island. "Life and death have always lived side by side, in every aspect of life," said McQueen. "We live with ghosts in our everyday." The intensity of the piece is derived from the juxtaposition of the two projections (life and death, boundless space and enclosed space) linked by an off-screen voice. McQueen uses a monologue to pull together the threads of a story that are absent from the images. Employing this narrative device, each viewer is rendered a witness to the drama through the oral testimonies of Ashes’s friends. Born in London in 1969, Steve McQueen has said "I discovered filmmaking, and that was it, a eureka moment. I was 19 years old." In 1993, as he was about to graduate from Goldsmiths, University of London, he showed his first video, Bear, at the Royal College of Art in London. This first video revealed some of the themes that theartist continued to explore in the 1990s, such as the relationship of the body to space. His work was recognized in 1999 when he was awarded the Turner Prize. McQueen's work has been the subject of many museums around the world, including the National Portrait Gallery in London (2010), the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art in Tilburg (2009), the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1997). In 2009, he was selected to represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale. He participated in Documenta X (1997), Documenta XI (2002), and Documenta XII (2007). Most recently, his work was the subject of retrospective exhibitions, at the ArtInstitute of Chicago (2012) and at the Schaulager in Basel (2014). His last museum exhibition in France was in 2003 at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York will hold a new solo show of his work in spring 2016. Internationally renowned as a filmmaker, McQueen has directed three feature films: Hunger (2008), Shame(2011), and 12 Years a Slave (2014). He won the "camera d'or" award at the Cannes Film Festival for Hungerand the Oscar for the Best Motion Picture for 12 Years a Slave in 2014. For further press information, please contact Raphaële Coutant:  raphaele@mariangoodman.com / T +33 1 48 04 70 52 For all other enquiries, please contact paris@mariangoodman.com.

STEDELIJK MUSEUM | SET SIEGELAUB: CONCEPTUAL ART

Seth Siegelaub, 1969. Gelatin silver print, 20.3 x 25.4 cm. Courtesy Seth Siegelaub Papers.* Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art December 12, 2015–April 17, 2016 Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam Museumplein 10 Amsterdam The Netherlands www.stedelijk.nl

He was a gallerist, independent curator, publisher, researcher, archivist, collector, and bibliographer. Often billed the "father of Conceptual Art," Seth Siegelaub was—and remains—a seminal influence on curators, artists, and cultural thinkers. And now the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam presents the exhibition Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art, devoted to the life and work of this fascinating yet still elusive figure. Seth Siegelaub (New York, 1941–Basel, 2013) is best known for his decisive role in the emergence and establishment of Conceptual Art in the late 1960s. With revolutionary projects such as January 5–31, 1969, the Xerox Book, and July, August, September 1969, he set the blueprint for the presentation and dissemination of conceptual practices. In the process, he redefined the exhibition space, which could now be a book, a poster, an announcement—or reality at large, in keeping with his statement that "my gallery is the world now." Siegelaub's radical reassessment of the conditions of art resonated deeply with the iconoclastic views of his contemporaries Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Daniel Buren, Jan Dibbets, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, and others. But just as these artists were gaining wider recognition, Siegelaub settled in Paris, where he cultivated an interest in mass media from a leftwing perspective. In line with the political mood of the times, he eventually redirected his publishing activities to scholarly research and critical essays on communication. At the same time he pursued a lesser-known occupation as a collector of hand-woven textiles and bibliographer of books on the social history of textiles. During the last decade of his life, he regrouped all his projects under the banner of his Stichting Egress Foundation, but simultaneously threw himself headfirst into a new bibliographical endeavor on time and causality in physics. Acknowledging the unusual scope and essentially unclassifiable nature of Seth Siegelaub's manifold interests and activities, the exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum reveals to what extent his projects are underpinned by a deeper concern with printed matter and lists as a way of disseminating ideas. The survey also presents contributions by contemporary artists Mario Garcia Torres, who in a newly created video work The Causality of Hesitance (2015) reflects on Siegelaubs research on time and causality, and the interest of artists in the sixties for this subject, and Maria Eichhorn, who presents and updated version her work from the 1990s, around The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, a template contract drafted by Siegelaub in collaboration with the lawyer Robert Projansky in 1971. The exhibition and catalogue are curated by Leontine Coelewij (curator Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) and Sara Martinetti (independent curator, PhD candidate at École des hautes études en sciences sociales and researcher at Institut national d'histoire de l'art in Paris). Public program events include Close Readings on Seth Siegelaub (February 19–April 1) and a forum discussion on The Artist's Contract (March 13). Publications  The catalogue Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, design Irma Boom) gathers a series of specially commissioned essays by Sara Martinetti, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Jo Melvin, Leontine Coelewij, and Götz Langkau, and includes a conversation between Matilda McQuaid, Alan Kennedy, and Marja Bloem (Director of the Stichting Egress Foundation, former Curator at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and Siegelaub's longstanding partner) as well as an unpublished conversation between Siegelaub and the artist Robert Horvitz. In cooperation with Roma Publications, de Appel arts centre, and Stichting Egress Foundation, the Stedelijk Museum also publishes a facsimile edition of the Xerox Book from 1968, Siegelaub's famous book-as-exhibition. To be published at the beginning of 2016: "Better Read than Dead": The Seth Siegelaub Source Book, 1964–2013, by Stichting Egress Foundation and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König. Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art is produced in close collaboration with the Stichting Egress Foundation/Marja Bloem, Amsterdam. With thanks to the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam. The exhibition is made possible with the support of the Mondriaan Fund. *Seth Siegelaub, 1969. Gelatin silver print, 20.3 x 25.4 cm. Seth Siegelaub Papers. Gift of Seth Siegelaub and the Stichting Egress Foundation, Amsterdam, I.A.120.. © The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York (copyright unknown). Cat. no.: MA2178).© 2015. Photo: Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.

ROBERT SMITHSON | POP

Robert Smithson, Radio Cyclops, 1964. Plexiglas, steel and mirror on wood, 18 x 26 inches. Image © Holt-Smithson Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Courtesy James Cohan, New York.

Robert Smithson's "Pop" at James Cohan Gallery, New York November 21, 2015–January 17, 2016 Robert Smithson grew up collecting rocks, shells, and insects. He adored The American Museum of Natural History, about which he famously said: "There is nothing 'natural' about the Museum of Natural History. 'Nature' is simply another eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction."(1) An iconic figure in what we now know as "Land Art" or "Earthworks," he is best known for the conceptually radical distinction between site and non-site and the brilliant aesthetic repurposing of natural history, industrial decay, geology, cartography, photography ("art that is made out of casting a glance"[2]), entropy, erosion, gravity, the monumental, and the crystalline into tools and methods of conceptual and minimal art. Such works as Asphalt Rundown (1969), Spiral Jetty (1970), Partially Buried Woodshed (1970), and Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan (conceived in 1970 but realized some 30 years after his death by Minetta Brook in collaboration with the Whitney in 2005), have given him an ambiance of neutral colors and earthy hues, tones drawn from the layers of geological sedimentation and industrial waste from which he made his art. For this reason, you wouldn't be the only one who passed through the glass doors of James Cohan's handsome new gallery on the Lower East Side and wondered if someone had pumped laughing gas into your brain. "These are not by Robert Smithson," was a remark overheard amidst the eye-popping psychedelic colors of Smithson's "works on paper and sculptures" from 1962 to '64, "I just refuse to believe it." Not even the exhibition's title, "Pop," prepares one for the shocking psychedelic hues of burning chartreuse, hippie lavender, electric orange, lemon citrine, and bold aquamarine. One stands in marvel, taking in these rarely seen (although previously exhibited in various Smithson retrospectives) drawings, collages, and sculptures that offer little hint of Gravel Mirror with Cracks and Dust (1966), Nonsite—Essen Soil and Mirrors, or Mirror With Crushed Shells (both 1969). Take Untitled [Pink linoleum center] (1964), a hot pink, mottled-patterned laminate floor tile that sits proudly in the center of a 30 x 22 inch piece of paper, like a religious icon or illuminated manuscript, surrounded on all four sides by pencil drawings of winged big busted women, one on horseback, the other supine upon a psychedelic pink jagged lightning bolt. Archetypal homoerotic beefcake nudes expose their genitals proudly, one in classical contrapposto dressed only in biker boots and leather cap, another in hot pink booties, as he sits spread-eagled, penis and testicles prominently displayed, sucking on popsicles that appear to be made with the most toxic neon food coloring imaginable. The floating homoerotic gods produce a chuckle because they do not hang in the air on fluffy white clouds but rest on comic book renditions of dollops of dripping paint, sketched with pink and orange pencil. Out with the abstract expressionist drip and in with the blobby puddles of tears familiar from Roy Lichtenstein's Drowning Girl (1963), derived from DC comic illustrator Tony Abruzzo's "Run for Love!" (Secret Hearts no. 83, November 1962). In Untitled [Pencil write "less work for mother"/telephone cord spells "hello"/man on orange blob] (1963), the divine central image is a Day-Glo citron Op Art vertical square maze, while in Untitled [motel text] (1963) an abstract swirl made of chartreuse lava lamp-like blips outlined in pink fills the center, surrounded by more kitschy porno putti traced from underground pornography, popular male physique pictorials, and nudist magazines. Although the show title orients us to Pop Art, the sensibility of these works is better appreciated by leaving such art historical categories in one's back pocket, available for reference but not explanation. Imagine instead the young man as a mad modernist scientist-engineer constructing garish sci-fi contraptions ("sculptures") such asThe Machine Taking A Wife (1964) out of a girly pin up nude placed under magenta and green fields of Plexiglas, amplified with an actual rectifier tube,(3) or Honeymoon Machine (1964) where the nipples of the mechanical bride are hooked up to electric circuitry. But the gut laugh of it all is Untitled [Record player] (1962)—an open record player that is at once a poor man's Christian altar and kitsch Joseph Cornell box. An ornate pink and metallic plastic crucifixion, glued to the inside of the open lid, is surrounded by black-and-white photographs of celebrities—Warren Beatty, Ann-Margret, Annette Funicello, Elvis Presley—cut out of fan magazines, and plastic flowers. The "record" on the turntable is a white, pink, and green disk made of swirling streams of paint, propped on hay like an Easter Egg, topped with miniature rubber toy ducks. Here is "solid state hilarity" avant la lettre. The phrase appears in Smithson's first published essay—"Entropy and the New Monuments"(4)—in which he sets out to define the new monumentality he finds in the sculpture of his peers Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and the fourth dimensional explorations of the Park Place Group. Riffing on Buckminster Fuller's notion that for scientists the fourth dimension is "ha-ha," Smithson founds a theory of "Generalized Laughter" based on linking six crystal systems with a taxonomy of laughter: "the ordinary laugh is cubic or square (Isometric), the chuckle is a triangle or pyramid (Tetragonal), the giggle is a hexagon or rhomboid (Hexagonal), the titter is prismatic (Orthorhombic), the snicker is oblique (Monoclinic), the guffaw is asymmetric (Triclinic)." Regardless of whether one chuckles, giggles, titter, snickers, or guffaws, it is clear that "Pop" directs us to a material rarely associated with Smithson. As he puts it, "From here on in, we must not think of Laughter as a laughing matter, but rather as the 'matter-of-laughs.'" "Pop" is a welcome initiation into Smithson's delight with "the entropic verbalization" of just such matter. (1) Quoted on the first page of Jack Flam's "Introduction: Reading Robert Smithson" in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, edited by Jack Flam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), xiii. (2) Robert Smithson, John Perreault, "Nonsites in the News," New York 2, no. 8 (24 February 1969): 46. (3) Rectifier tubes transform voltage from AC to DC which one is inclined to associate with DC as in comics. (4) "Entropy and The New Monuments," (first published in the June 1966 issue of Artforum) in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, 21-22, in which Smithson also writes that "The order and disorder of the fourth dimension could be set between laughter and crystal as a device for unlimited speculation" and that "Laughter is in a sense a kind of entropic 'verbalization.'" Thyrza Nichols Goodeve is a writer living in New York. Currently she writes for The Brooklyn Rail.

MORGAN FISHER | PAST PRESENT, PRESENT PAST

Morgan Fisher, Ilford Selochrome 120 September 1954, 2014. Archival pigment print, 40.6 x 50.8 cm. Image courtesy of Maureen Paley, London.

Morgan Fisher's "Past Present, Present Past" at Maureen Paley, London November 24, 2014–January 25, 2015

Since Susan Sontag announced the demise of cinephilia in her prescient 1996 essay "The Decay of Cinema," discourses around the death of cinema have been widespread, fuelled in part by the replacement of celluloid by digital technology. Since our understanding of the world has been so influenced by movies—one irrevocably conditioning the other—cinema's apparent passing has caused pain, and trauma. By 2012 the digital takeover of film exhibition was complete. It had been threatened for almost a decade, but it was nevertheless shocking to see 35mm projectors evicted from projection booths across Western Europe and North America. Only a year earlier, British artist Tacita Dean had declared that UNESCO should recognize film as part of a universal cultural heritage, paying homage to it with her installation FILM (2011) at Tate Modern, London. The Austrian filmmaker Peter Kubelka labeled 2012 as film history's darkest year, and produced Monument Film—a work which is impossible to stage digitally—"as a call for patient defiance."(1) Whether working with film, painting, or photography, Los Angeles-based artist Morgan Fisher produces works that closely examine their medium. Best known for his 16mm films, which bring together industrial film practices and visual arts strategies, Fisher is a conceptual filmmaker who turns film into a form of research. In the aftermath of the digital takeover of cinema, "Past Present, Present Past," Fisher's first solo exhibition at Maureen Paley in London, provides a timely and poignant reflection on technological obsolescence and the death of analog film. This is most explicit in a series of 12 new photographs of unused boxes of still film from the 1950s, the decade when the artist's father introduced him to photography. Not only do most of these manufacturers no longer exist, but the expiration dates printed on the boxes are now long past. As Fisher writes in the exhibition notes, they are useless, "at least with respect to their original purpose, their uselessness underlined by the fact that photography on film as an amateur practice is essentially extinct." The photographs are displayed together with two older works: one of Fisher's early films, Production Footage(1971), and a video diptych, Red Boxing Gloves / Orange Kitchen Gloves, that was originally shot on Polavision in 1980. The double screen video projection of Red Boxing Gloves occupies the exhibition space downstairs. Upstairs, the twelve photographs—arranged symmetrically in rows of six—provide an anteroom for the custom-built cinema where Production Footage is screened on 16mm. In Production Footage, Fisher stages and documents an encounter between two models of 16mm cameras—a Mitchell and an Eclair—and the two modes of filmmaking that they represent: Hollywood and independent cinema. The film, modular in its composition, as are most of Fisher's films, consists of two shots of equal length. The first shows fellow filmmaker Thom Andersen loading a 200-foot roll of film into the Mitchell camera. The second, shot by Andersen on the film that we've just seen loaded, shows Fisher unloading a 200-foot roll from the Eclair. In many ways, this is a quintessential Fisher film. Similarly to Production Stills—shot the previous year, in 1970, but not included in this exhibition—it is a film that documents its own production. But here the artist does not resort to the mediation of photography. Rather, he documents the making of the film directly on the film itself. Production Footage operates in a mode of contrast and contradiction, between movement and stasis, color and black-and-white, and ultimately between two distinct and conflicting forms of cinema. Both the Mitchell and the Eclair were standard machines until not long ago, but here they appear as vintage objects from a distant past. So too does Polavision, the instant movie camera system developed by Polaroid, which became obsolete upon the arrival of the videocassette. In fact, it had already been discontinued by the time Fisher shot Red Boxing Gloves / Orange Kitchen Gloves. At first glance, Red Boxing Gloves / Orange Kitchen Gloves does not appear as traditional Fisher territory. Two pairs of hands caress two pairs of gloves, which in their odd sensuality become suggestive of male and female positions. The subject is complementarity, and the pairings that it implies: between color opposites (red gloves against green background; orange gloves against blue), between left and right projections (and left and right hands), and ultimately male and female attributes, the subject of the pendant pair being one that Fisher has continued to develop and explore in his painting. Fisher's films were made as reflections on their medium: film as a material form, as a set of technical procedures, or as an institution. He is neither a romantic nor a fetishist, but nostalgia is prominent in this exhibition. He says in the exhibition's press release, "I believed that photography and film as I found them in the 1950s would last forever." At a time when we can no longer be certain of what cinema is, Fisher's work reminds us of what it once was. (1) Peter Kubelka, quoted in Stefan Grissemann, "Frame By Frame: Peter Kubelka," Film Comment, Sep/Oct 2012, Vol. 48 Issue 5, 75. Accessed online January 22, 2015, http://filmcomment.com/article/peter-kubelka-frame-by-frame-antiphon-adebar-arnulf-rainer María Palacios Cruz is a curator based in London. She is the Deputy Director of LUX and a co-founder of The Visible Press.

CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARYART UJAZDOWSKI CASTLE

Anna Konik, Play back (of Irene), 2011. Video Installation, Atlas Sztuki Lodz. © Dominik Szwemberg.

Anna Konik  A Grain of Sand in the Pupil of the Eye. Video works 2000–2015 4 December 2015–14 February 2016 Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle Ul. Jazdów 2 Street Warsaw Poland Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 12–19h, Friday 12–21h T +48 22 628 12 71 73 csw@csw.art.pl www.csw.art.pl Facebook

The exhibition of Anna Konik summarizes an important stage in her artistic practice, above all with video. The artist combines the aesthetics of audio-visual media with the spatial form of an installation, in which the dynamic presence of the viewer gives the works a transformational dimension and personalizes its reception. Four video installations by Anna Konik are shown in the exhibition: In the same city, under the same sky...,Villa of the Enchanted, Play Back (of Irene), as well as Our Lady's Forever. Other works, such as Toys and Transparency will find their representation in the form of spatial models, sculptural props, and documentation. The context for these projects includes never seen before video footage, which complement them, serving as stage directions, but also the student works of Konik, her drawings and photographs. The specificity of Konik's artistic creativity has its core in the proces of introducing separate discourses into the video space, mainly sculptural, performative, film and scientific. Working with video allowed Konik to achieve richer and more comprehensive realization of topics that interest her as an artist, and the form of video installations allows for "sculpting space" during the final arrangement of the works in their place of presentation. Pivotal in her works is the "spatial montage," performed during the viewer's movements inside the space of the video installation. It is at this time, in the viewer's perception, when the individual process of combining visual structures, rhythm, sound, and text occurs. Man is at the heart of Anna Konik's research—almost all of her works are an "investigation" into the Other, which arise as a consequence of meeting people. Assuming the perspective of subjective experiences, the artist transfers them to the social dimension, and the recipient is confronted not only with an individual history, but also with the real problems of the contemporary world. For Anna Konik, art is a sensitive cognitive instrument, through which she communicates to recipients what for her was most significant in the work on successive realizations. The fringes of society prevail in the interests of Anna Konik. Most often these fringes consist of the alienated, the excluded, and the lonely. Konik maneuvers through them with the empathy of a careful observer. The opening video installation In the same city, under the same sky... is dedicated to the theme of refugees. This work in progress (2011–15) is presented for the the first time on such a large scale. In its current shape it consits of 35 film episodes produced in Stockholm, Białystok, Bucharest, Istanbul and Nantes. In ghettos and centers for refugees Anna found women touched by horror of armed conflicts and racial oppression from many countries: Chechnya, Ingushetia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria and Cameroon. 35 women told the artist their stories, which have been recaptured in front of the camera by Swedish, Polish, Romanian, Turkish and French women living in the centres of mentioned citites, who at the request of artist incorporated themselves in the role of refugees, giving them faces and voices. As part of the events accompanying the exhibition of Anna Konik  are a series of lectures, given by, amongst others, Professors Bernhard Waldenfels and Holk Cruse. Transdisciplinarity, the cooperation of specialists from various fields of contemporary culture is one of the main objectives of the activity of the prestigious Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, which is not only the content partner of the exhibition, but also from whom the artist received a scholarship in 2008/2009. The exhibition is accompanied by two publications: a Polish-English catalog, with texts by Waldemar Baraniewski, Holk Cruse, Judy Fudge, Marcin Giżycki, Patrick Harries, Ewa Gorządek, Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, and Bernhard Waldenfels as well as an English version of 35 histories of immigrants and refugees, told by the protagonist of the work In the same city, under the same sky..., with texts by Judy Fudge, Susanne Stich, and Anna Konik. Anna Konik 's work includes video installations, objects, video art, photography, and drawings. The artist lives and works in Berlin, Warsaw, and Dobrodzień. She studied in the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in the studios of Krzysztof M. Bednarski and Professor Grzegorz Kowalski, wherein she defended her thesis in 2000. In 2012, Konik received the title of Doctor of Arts at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts from the Faculty of Media Art and Stage Design. In 2009, she was nominated for two major awards for young Polish artists: the Deutsche Bank's Views award and the Polityka Passport award. In the same year, she was invited by Professor Horst Bredekamp, as the first visual artist, to became Rudolf Arnheim Associate Professor in the Art History Department, Humboldt University in Berlin.

FRI-ART | KUNSTHALLE FREIBURG

View of Film Implosion!, Fri Art Kunsthalle, Fribourg, Switzerland, 2015. © Max Reitmeier.

Film Implosion!  Experimental Cinema in Switzerland November 21, 2015–February 21, 2016 Fri Art, Kunsthalle Fribourg Petites-Rames 22 1700 Fribourg Switzerland www.fri-art.ch

Artists include ECART (John Armleder & al.), Robert Beavers, Jean-Luc Godard, Véronique Goël, Peter Liechti, Bernhard Luginbühl, Urs Lüthi, Gregory J. Markopoulos, Dieter Meier, Tony Morgan, Fredi Murer, Dieter Roth, Carole Roussopoulos, HHK Schoenherr, Daniel Spoerri, Peter Stämpfli, and many more Curated by François Bovier and Balthazar Lovay As the first exhibition dedicated to experimental Swiss cinema, Film Implosion! sheds light on a little known aspect of art history in Switzerland. It presents a wide panorama of genre practices within the medium of cinema more specifically, but also video work, from the 1960s to today. Through formal interventions directly on the celluloid, various in-situ installations, unconventional documentaries, and political, feminist, animated, and fiction films, all these artists challenged the traditional codes of cinema. The main exhibition space of the art center is transformed into a large black box in which about 30 films are screened in various sizes and formats, from 16mm reels to digital projections. In the midst of this immersive installation of image and sound, the viewer experiences this hidden part of history anew. A national-scale research For the past four years, and with the help of the SNF (Swiss National Fund), researchers François Bovier, Adeena Mey, Fred Truniger, and Thomas Schärer have been investigating experimental cinema in Switzerland. Stemming from this considerable excavating and mapping work is Fri Art's proposal for the first-ever exhibition on this subject. For the most part unseen, some 70 artworks, in digital or 16mm format and signed by artists ranging fromDieter Meier, Carole Roussopoulos, Dieter Roth, or Peter Stämpfli, will be shown. The exhibition will also include video works, installations, and para-filmic objects spanning 50 years of radical creativity. With its polymorphic and fragmented dynamic, the Swiss reality stands out in this field of creation. The displayed artists often started experimenting with filmmaking early on in their careers, only to pursue it elsewhere later on, whether it be the realms of contemporary art, documentary, or traditional narrative film. Experimental film in the Swiss sense can be considered as a "manner" of considering the creative process, rather than a genre linked to a specific medium. Reflecting this fragmented history, Film Implosion! extends from documentaries that have been conceived, filmed, and edited in an emancipated and experimental spirit, to works that belong to the contemporary art field. This retrospective features many major names from cinema—a number of artists who have dedicated their lives to manipulating the scope of filmic image, such as HHK Schoenherr, Eva et Guido Haas, Werner von Mutzenbecher, Hannes Schüpbach, and Urs Breitenstein. This mapping of Swiss art also reveals the works of international artists, like those of American-born Robert Beavers and Gregory J. Markopoulos, who settled in Switzerland, finding artistic synergy for their work there. An immersive experience at Fri Art  All of these individual creations communicate with one another in the laboratory that is the art center itself.Film Implosion! offers two types of readings that echo one another: following different investigative directions around the artwork with the historical and critical distance provided by research, and experiencing the unique atmosphere of the festive events of "expanded cinema" in the 1960s—a time when various films were often collectively projected during concerts or performances, far from the codes of classical "movie screening." The audience will be able to discover the multiple displays of these works and installations. Film Implosion!aims to outline the multiple discourses and viewpoints that surface from these filmic and para-filmic productions.