Barbara Kruger. Floor piece for the Pinakothek der Moderne, installation view. Photo: Nicole Wilhelms, Courtesy Sprüth Magers and the artist.
In this week’s roundup Barbara Kruger designs in Munich, Josiah McElheny reflects a mirage, Laurie Anderson joins the Occupy movement, Jeff Koons get under your skin, Lucas Blalock intervenes digitally, and much more.
- Barbara Kruger designed the 2011 EDITION 46 issue of the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin which, in the 46th week of each year, is in the hands of an international contemporary artist. The magazine was published on November 18 as a supplement. This project has given rise to a temporary work that the artist has designed especially for the floor of the rotunda in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich where visitors can walk around the work.
- Cai Guo-Qiang‘s solo exhibition Saraab, will soon open at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha. The work shows the artist’s connection to the Gulf through installations and a series of gunpowder drawings in which he incorporates elements from Islamic miniature paintings, decorative art, and textiles, as well as ancient maritime routes between the Arab world and his hometown of Quanzhou, China. On the opening day of the exhibition, the artist will create a large-scale daytime explosion event titled Black Ceremony that will be free to the public on a “first come, first served basis.” The main exhibition will be on view December 15, 2011 – May 26, 2012.
- Josiah McElheny‘s latest installation for The Bloomberg Commission: Josiah McElheny: The Past Was A Mirage I Had Left Far Behind is at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London) . McElheny has created seven huge mirrored sculptures, comprising screens that constantly play abstract films and distort, refract and multiply both the films and everything in the room. This work is on view until July 20, 2012.
- Lucas Blalock has a one-person exhibition, xyz, at Ramiken Crucible (NYC). The show features pictures that begins on film, shot with a 4×5 camera by the artist, and digital interventions follow. Blalock leaves these pictures unprotected from these overlapping strategies, which often contain procedures lifted from the technical production of commercial photography – the technology that was originally conceived of as invisible is put on stage to act among the intersecting possibilities of the mechanical, the procedural and the historical. This exhibition closes December 23.
- Laurie Anderson joins Occupy Musicians, a website that includes a list of hundreds of singers, guitarists, song writers and producers who put their names under the statement: We, the undersigned musicians and all who will join us, support Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement around the world.
- Yinka Shonibare, MBE‘s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle maquette has been selected for the third in a series of exhibitions featuring work from the Government Art Collection at the Whitechapel Gallery (London). The exhibition Travelling Light features an image of the work as the cover image for the catalogue that will accompany the exhibition. The exhibition runs from December 16, 2011 – February 26, 2012.
- Mark Bradford is featured in the publication Parkett edition 89. Christopher Bedford of the Wexner Center explores Mark Bradford’s shimmering grids, that to him evoke the live news footage shot by helicopters hovering over Los Angeles. Tate Modern curator Jessica Morgan elaborates on Bradford’s assorted paper trail, revealing a frantic ethos of pest control, cheap divorce, prison phone services, money wires and credit lines. The artist retells the ancient legend of King Arthur by submerging a switchblade rather than a sword in a solid rock.
- Do Ho Suh’s installation Cause & Effect has been commissioned for the Academic Instructional Center at Western Washington University (Bellingham, WA). Cause & Effect evokes a vicious tornado, a vast ceiling installation of densely hung strands that anchor thousands of figures clad in colors resembling a Doppler reading stacked atop one another. The work is an attempt to decipher the boundaries between a single identity and a larger group, and how the two conditions coexist. The first phase of the installation will be on view December 12 – 30 while the sculpture’s support structure is installed.
- Jeff Koons teamed up with Kiehl’s to raise money for the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children through a limited-edition holiday collection of the brand’s signature Creme de Corps body moisturizer. The label of the 2011 edition features an image of the artist’s Balloon Flower (Yellow) sculpture from his Celebration series against a fuchsia background. The flower, which was exhibited in Versailles from 2008 to 2009, holds a special significance for the artist.
- Carrie Mae Weems‘s 2012 exhibition at The Frist Center for the Visual Arts (Nashville) will receive $48,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts in support of Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video, opening Sept. 21, 2012, as well as production of the exhibition’s accompanying catalog. The exhibition will travel to the Portland (Oregon) Museum of Art: Feb–May 2013; to the Cleveland Museum of Art: June 30–Sept. 15, 2013; and to the Guggenheim Museum Oct. 18, 2013–Jan 19, 2014.
