Diana Al-Hadid. “Invisibabel,” 2009. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.
In this week’s roundup, Diana Al-Hadid explores art history, El Anatsui has his first solo exhibition in New York, Cai Guo-Qiang travels a solo show in Brazil, Charles Atlas presents two moving-image works, and more.
- Diana Al-Hadid opens this week at The Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina (Greensboro). The exhibition highlights Al-Hadid’s use of art historical references to examine sculptural and pictorial space. The work will be on view from February 9–May 5. The artist’s talk and opening reception takes place February 8 at 6pm.
- El Anatsui‘s first solo exhibition in a New York opens this week at the Brooklyn Museum. Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui features over 30 works in metal and wood that transform appropriated objects into site-specific sculptures. Anatsui converts found materials into new works that are at the intersection between sculpture and painting. The work combines aesthetic traditions from Ghana, Nigeria, and explores the global history of abstraction. The show runs February 8–August 4.
- Charles Atlas’ newly completed film, Exchange, will be screened at Electronic Arts Intermix (NYC). Atlas created this work from never-before-seen footage that he shot in 1978, that was only recently rediscovered by the Merce Cunningham Trust. It captures a performance by Cunningham and his company, with costumes and backdrop designed by Jasper Johns and music by David Tudor. The screening will take place February 7 at 6:30pm.
- Charles Atlas collaborated with Bloomberg SPACE and the South London Gallery to create a 360 degree video installation using original, manipulated and found footage from a variety of sources including the Bloomberg digital archives. Charles Atlas: Glacier consists of projected images that scroll across the large windows and walls of the gallery space to create an immersive environment. The show closes March 30.
- Alfred Jaar: Rwanda is on view at The Gund Gallery at Kenyon College (Gambier, Ohio). The show features “conceptually compelling and emotionally demanding selections” from the Jaar‘s decade-long exploration of the intersecting realities of the Tutsi-Hutu conflicts and Rwandan genocide of the 1990s. The exhibition runs through March 10.
- Cai Guo-Qiang‘s first solo exhibition in Brazil opens at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Brasília. Cai Guo-Qiang: Peasant da Vincis transforms the CCBB galleries into a playground filled with aircrafts and UFOs, submarines of various sizes, an aircraft carrier, and robots programmed to perform tasks such as painting and playing chess. The exhibition will also feature the artist’s signature gunpowder drawings. After Brasília (February 4–March 31, 2013), the show travels to São Paulo (April 20–June 22), and then to Rio de Janeiro (July 21–September 20).
- Marina Abramović and the Institute is a film by Derek Peck, featuring Marina Abramović. In the film, the artist discusses her plans for the Marina Abramović Foundation for the Preservation of Performance Art; her interest in Shamanism and how it relates to her art, love and death; and her 2010 exhibition The Artist is Present at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
- Laurie Simmons spoke to Vanity Fair about her daughter Lena Dunham’s early attempts at humor, the acting chops of her newly adopted dog, and watching the nude scenes in Girls.
- Mike Kelley was honored by Gagosian Gallery at the Los Angeles Art Book Fair, held at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary. The gallery presented a portrait of the artist in the form of a library. Its contents reflected cultural and intellectual interests and passions that each contributor to the project associates with the late artist.
- Pierre Huyghe gave a public talk at The Banff Centre (Canada) in August as part of The Retreat presented at dOCUMENTA 13. A video recording of the lecture follows.