Andrea Zittel, "Indianapolis Island", 2010. via Indianapolis Museum of Art.org
In this week’s roundup you’ll find two island exhibitions, some curiosities of Monaco, a photographer who pushes buttons, and a group of artists who keep it real:
- Indianapolis Island, a floating habitat by Andrea Zittel (Season 1), was commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art for installation on the lake inside of 100 Acres, one of the largest museum art parks in the country, and the only one to feature the ongoing commission of site-specific artworks. Two students of the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis will live on the Island for six weeks. Michael Runge and Jessica Dunn, who will graduate from Herron next May, will move into the piece by June 20, the park’s opening day. Follow them as they chronicle their experience on the IMA blog “Give and Take.”
- Clasp, a solo exhibition of works by Zittel, is on view at Sadie Coles Gallery in London through July 31. Here’s an excerpt from the artist’s exhibition statement: “The works in this show present a study into the four dynamic modes of experience –pure (or what I call native) experience and the three methods of its representation: A representation of the experience (Factish Depiction); an idea of an experience (Ideological Resonator); and the result of an experience (Material Manifestation). In all of the works presented there is the common denominator of touch. Touch is the single mode through which we physically negotiate and impose our will on the world around us and on those who reside with in it. It is the prosthetic activity of our brains. In the case of this exhibition the strand is seen as the extension of this touch – as a ligament of will, control, and support.” Continue reading about Clasp.
- Mark Dion (Season 4) has created a piece for EMSCHERKUNST.2010, the biggest art project of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010. Scheduled to last 100 days, the project is staged on Emscher Island, which is in the process of being transformed from “a grim by-product of the industrial revolution” to the new Emscher Landschaftspark. It is currently the largest nature restoration project in the world. Forty artists have created 20 public works on the island, including a “singing” rock, a community garden, and an itinerant Punch-and-Judy puppet show. EMSCHERKUNST.2010 runs through September 5.
- Works by Louise Bourgeois (Season 1), Kiki Smith, Gabriel Orozco (both Season 2), Arturo Herrera, Mike Kelley (both Season 3), and Julie Mehretu (Season 5) are included in the Whitechapel Gallery exhibition Keeping it Real. The exhibition, which will be installed in four “acts,” explores the way that artists have used materials to look at the relationship between art and reality. The objects are drawn from the D. Daskalopoulos Collection based in Greece. Bourgeois and Smith are featured in Keeping it Real: Act 1: The Corporeal, which continues through September 2010. Kelley, Mehretu, Orozo and Herrera are included in successive installations, namely Act 2: Subversive Abstraction, and Act 4: Material Intelligence.
- Recent works by Season 3 artist Fred Wilson are on view at Mitterrand+Sanz in Zurich. The objects were selected by Paris-based curator Ami Barak who has helped to “transfigure” the artist’s language of institutional critique for the gallery space. Included in the display is Regina Atra (2006), a copy of a diadem made for the coronation of George IV, in this case, constructed of black diamonds; a bust representing Ota Benga, the Congolese pygmie who was exhibited in the Saint Louis World Expo of 1904, with a white scarf obscuring his ethnic identity label; and a series paintings of flags of African and African diaspora nations, stripped of color and reduced to their graphic forms. Fred Wilson closes July 24.
- From June 18 to September 19, works by Sally Mann (Season 1) will be on view at The Photographer’s Gallery in London. Mann’s first solo show in the U.K., it will include images from various series made throughout her career, such as Immediate Family (1984-94), Deep South (1996-98), and What Remains (2000-04). On the occasion of the exhibition, titled The Family and the Land, Blake Morrison of The Guardian talked to Mann about why she likes “pushing buttons.” Read Morrison’s article Sally Mann: The naked and the dead.
- Models, sculptures, photographs and videos by Season 5 artist Yinka Shonibare MBE are on view at Nouveau Musée National de Monaco through January 16, 2011. With this exhibition, Shonibare embarks on a new series entitled Looking up…™ Alongside Shonibare’s own works are recently restored works belonging to the artistic history of the Principality of Monaco, many presented for the first time. These include the Visconti Maquettothèque of the Monte-Carlo Opera (a collection of model set designs), the Bosio brothers’ sculptures and etchings, Eugène Frey decors, the Marquis du Périer de Mouriez’s collection of transparent paintings, religious boxes from the de Galéa Collection, and many other “artificialia” that evoke the cabinets of curiosities of the 17th and 18th centuries. Looking up…™ will be accompanied by a 180-page French/English full-color catalogue.