Computer rendering for Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2012. Courtesy Cai Studio.
In this week’s roundup, Cai Guo-Qiang plans a close encounter, several artists’ works are best in show at AICA, Jenny Holzer and Kiki Smith are in Fashion Moda, Glenn Ligon’s work is reviewed, and much more.
- Cai Guo-Qiang is planning to have a close encounter of the third kind at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary. For the site-specific Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles the artist will set off three stages of explosions to kick-off a show that will continue on a theme he’s been long exploring: the possibility of life in outer space. This event will take place on April 7.
- Sarah Sze, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Lari Pittman, and Ai Weiwei and Glenn Ligon (upcoming Season 6 artists) will receive awards from the Art Critics’ Association (AICA). Sze’s Still Life with Landscape (Model for a Habitat) and Ai’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads won Best Project in a Public Space. Ursula von Rydingsvard: Sculpture 1991-2009 won Best Show in a Non-Profit Gallery or Space. Lari Pittman: New Paintings and Orangerie won Best Show in a Commercial Gallery Nationally. Glenn Ligon: AMERICA won Best Monographic Museum Show in New York. Awards will be presented at a ceremony at the Asia Society in NYC on April 2.
- Jenny Holzer and Kiki Smith among several other artists have work on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College (NY). The Fashion Moda Stores, 1982, Selections from Documenta 7 is an exhibition of approximately thirty small sculptures, wearable art, and ephemera that were made in multiples and sold in the Fashion Moda “stores” at Documenta 7, the modern and contemporary art exhibition held periodically in Kassel, Germany. The exhibition will be on view through May 6, 2012.
- William Kentridge: Five Themes explores the key themes of William Kentridge’s career from the 80s until today and is on view at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). The show includes the artist’s direction of The Magic Flute and the animated films he developed for a 2010 production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Nose at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. There are 60 works on display ranging from animations, drawings and prints to theatre models, sculptures and books. This exhibition closes May 27.
- Mel Chin‘s work is in Artifactual Realities at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art (Houston, TX). This exhibition takes society into account not simply as a reflection of the global community but also as an action site, that is, as an artifact of communal exchange. Chin and each of the 10 artists/photographers are concerned with issues of revolution, spirituality and memory. The show closes May 13.
- Glenn Ligon‘s AMERICA is now on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. This comprehensive, mid-career retrospective surveys 25 years of Ligon’s work, from his student days until the present. The exhibition features roughly 100 works, including paintings, prints, photography, drawings, and sculptural installations, as well as the artist’s recent, striking neon reliefs. The show closes June 3.
- Glenn Ligon‘s AMERICA was reviewed for FrontRow, a Dallas-based magazine. Ligon’s work is in dialogue with a canon of black literary and cultural heroes from the nineteenth century through Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights era, as well as with contemporary African-American artists, such as Martin Puryear.
- Raymond Pettibon: The Punk Years, 1978-86 features 200 examples of Raymond Pettibon‘s graphic output during those prolific, subversive years that preceded his career as a recognized artist. The exhibition features graphic, low-life vignettes that were reproduced in “zines” and on fliers, promotional posters, stickers and album covers for Los Angeles punk bands of the period – most notably his brother’s group, Black Flag. This work is on view at Boise State (Idaho) Visual Arts Center Gallery 1 through March 28.
- Fred Wilson‘s show at the Rena Bransten Gallery (San Francisco) includes works selected for their ability to challenge commonly-held beliefs and invoke notions of race politics. The artist re-assembles and re-frames objects to create new perspectives on slavery, the African Diaspora, and racial inequality. The exhibition raises questions and forces us to re-examine historical perspectives. This work is on view through March 21.
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jff-RRw1fOE]
- Yinka Shonibare MBE‘s work will be featured in Block Party at the National Craft Gallery (Kilkenny, Ireland). This exhibition reveals the contemporary applications and creative possibilities of pattern cutting. In Storytelling Shonibare presents a child mannequin, dressed in a historically accurate Victorian outfit crafted from African fabric to reference culture, race and history. This show will run March 31 – May 16.
- Ai Weiwei will reunite with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron to build a temporary construction that will be connected with the end of London’s Cultural Olympiad. The Serpentine Pavilion will feature a floating platform of a roof barely five feet off of the ground. The trio also plans to dig a few feet deep into the soil below so that visitors can walk beneath the roof, which will be supported by several columns, representing past pavilions as well as the current one.
- Kalup Linzy wrote And Then There Were Five… for The Huffington Post. In this article the artist ponders being featured in episodes from five different Web series this year.
- Barry McGee‘s interview A Conversation With Barry McGee, conducted by Samuel Borkson, is online at Dirty magazine. Borkson talks shop with McGee, discussing his OCD and ADD tendencies, his thoughts on contemporary art and his love of surfing.
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art also sat down with Barry McGee recently. The two-minute long interview explores the topic of creating art indoors.
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9r08sb9hwk]