William Kentridge, "Sphinx," 2010
This Weekly Roundup features Kentridge’s Egyptian sketchbooks, Louise Bourgeois in The Surreal House, and Mike Kelley’s maiden voyage.
- Scheduled to coincide with the monographic retrospective devoted to the artist at the Jeu de Paume, drawings by William Kentridge will be presented in the Salle d’Actualité of the Department of Graphic Arts, alongside a selection of Egyptian drawings from the Louvre. The work will be on display until August 30.
- A current exhibition at the DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art features the work of Jenny Holzer that deals with the United States-led invasion of Iraq and “holds up language as a mirror to show them and us the consequences of how words are used and misused. This analysis may be too late in some ways, but also just in time to show how language, too, can become a weapon of mass destruction.” The show closes on November 14.
- The New Topographics photo exhibition at SFMOMA offers a chance to look back in time to gauge our psychological and social distance from what we see. This exhibition is a re-creation of a pivotal 1975 exhibition held at the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y. and includes the work of Robert Adams who was in the original show. The exhibition is on view until October 3.
- The Barbican Art Gallery presents The Surreal House which consists of a labyrinth of chambers, designed by acclaimed young architects Carmody Groarke and features work by a host of artists, architects and film makers including Louise Bourgeois. The show continues until September 12.
- The Pace Gallery presents Tim Hawkinson: One Man Band, featuring six works relating to the “visual and sensorial expression of sound, produced between 1993 and 2007.” Many of the works exhibited have not been seen in New York since the artist’s 2005 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition will be on view through July 30.
- LUSH LIFE, an exhibition based on Richard Price’s 2008 novel of the same name, takes place at nine Lower East Side galleries including Salon 94 which is presenting Paul Pfeiffer‘s Goethe’s Message to the New Negro through July 30th.
- The Singapore Tyler Print Institute presents Trenton Doyle Hancock: A Day Ahead A Head A Day from July 31 – Sept. 4. The show features Hancock’s works that are based on an “ongoing battle of the good ‘Mounds’ in their colorful world and the devilish skeletal ‘Vegans’ living in black and white. As one of the most distinctive American artists of his generation, his works conjure images of fearful beauty.”
- On September 25, Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead makes its maiden voyage from Midtown Detroit (on the grounds of MOCAD) to the “mother ship,” the original Kelley home in the suburbs. Mobile Homestead is the first installment of a major new work by Mike Kelley, as both a public sculpture and a private, personal architecture based on the artist’s hometown which primarily housed workers for the Big Three auto makers: Ford, Chrysler and General Motors.
- The Bass Museum of Art is exhibiting Human Rites, a new exhibition examining ritual through art. “From mundane human activities to sacred practices, from the past through the present, rites and rituals have been pervasive subjects in artistic practice.” The show includes works of art by Allan McCollum and Mark Dion.
- Art Works for Change is presenting The Nature of Cities at the Shanghai World Expo, which consists of 16 short videos from artists, animators and architects from around the world addressing the theme of urban biodiversity. “The exhibition illustrates the relationship between the urban and natural environments, proposing new ways forward that acknowledge the necessity of human habitats and the fragile state of our ecosystems.” and includes the work of Allora & Calzadilla and Cao Fei. The show closes on July 31.
- Skyspace by artist James Turrell is set to reopen following the re-engineering and remaking of the movable-roof component. Regular viewing hours — one hour before sunset on Fridays — are set to resume on July 30 at the Live Oak Friends Meeting House.
- The first museum survey of works by contemporary Los Angeles artist Mark Bradford has been extended through Oct.10 at the Wexner Center for the Arts. After its run at the center, the exhibit will travel to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Dallas Museum of Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
- Planet Green is featuring a Fast Forward video that highlights the artist Maya Lin who “looks to the environment for artistic inspiration.”
- On August 4, the Food for Thought Visiting Artist Lecture Series will present Mel Chin, a conceptual artist perhaps best known for his sculpture, which “often explores the importance of memory and collective identity.”