Allora & Calzadilla. Apotomē (still), 2013. Super 16mm film transferred to HD video; 23 minutes and 9 seconds looped. Courtesy Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris.
Cai Guo-Qiang mounts iPads on the backs of tortoises, Allora & Calzadilla mix music with natural history, Kiki Smith exhibits a new bronze fountain, and more in this week’s roundup of ART21-featured artists.
- Cai Guo-Qiang’s exhibition Moving Ghost Town is at the Aspen Art Museum (Aspen, CO). In the show, three African Sulcata tortoises—Big Bertha, Gracie Pink Star, and Whale Wanderer—roam freely on natural turf. With iPads mounted to their backs, the tortoises feature video footage of three ghost towns in Colorado, “which were filmed by the creatures themselves.” The museum has designed a habitat to sustain their health and comfort. Closes October 5.
- Allora & Calzadilla’s video Apotomē (2013)—which focuses on the bone remains of two elephants and subsonic notes that only animals as large as elephants are able to hear—is showing at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater of REDCAT (Los Angeles, CA). A complementary live performance, in which the artists continue their investigation into biosemiotics and biomusicology, was presented in June. The video remains on view through August 24.
- Cindy Sherman’s self-portrait Untitled (2008), from her Society Portraits series, is part of Art Everywhere US, “the largest outdoor art show ever conceived.” The nearly sixty artworks that comprise the campaign can be seen on billboards from coast-to-coast throughout August. Watch a video about the project here.
- Kiki Smith has a solo show at Galleria Continua (San Gimignano, Italy). According to the organizers, Path explores the “relationship between the human being and nature, between the body and the world, between the natural kingdom and the spiritual one.” The exhibition features, among other objects, a new bronze fountain. Closes August 30.
- Pierre Huyghe, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy, and Yinka Shonibare MBE are in a group exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in Southbank Centre (London, UK). The Human Factor: The Figure in Contemporary Sculpture “brings together major works by 25 leading international artists who have fashioned new ways of using the human form.” Closes September 7.
- Julie Mehretu, Jenny Holzer, Laurie Simmons, Marina Abramović, John Baldessari, Yinka Shonibare MBE, and El Anatsui have all donated artwork or agreed to teach as part of Molly Logan and Elise Van Middelem’s School of Doodle, “a free online high school for imagination—for girls, by girls.” Read all about the project on Kickstarter.