The Centre for the Less Good Idea website. Screenshot, February 20, 2017.
William Kentridge has started an arts nonprofit dedicated to experimental projects. Called The Centre for the Less Good Idea, the Johannesburg-based organization will facilitate a series of performance-based installations March 1-5 of this year. “I want to start a small art centre, where people could do experimental art, productions, operas, things they wouldn’t get to do elsewhere,” the artist told The Financial Times in a September interview.
The name of the project stems from the artist’s fascination with what he calls the “less good idea.” “By which I mean the secondary idea,” Kentridge explained in the Guardian, “You start with one plan and then something better emerges from the periphery that would have been impossible without the first thought.”
In other news this week:
- Mark Bradford launched a new website for his upcoming exhibition, Tomorrow is Another Day, at this summer’s Venice Biennale.
- Artists El Anatsui, Yinka Shonibare, and Rashid Johnson all donated works to benefit the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, scheduled to open in September.
- And Laurie Anderson, Matthew Barney, Catherine Opie, William Kentridge, Trevor Paglen, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Yinka Shonibare were among the 200+ creative professionals who have signed on to the global art coalition “Hands Off Our Revolution.” The initiative asks artists of all media to “channel the anger, sadness, hope and empathy ignited by present affairs into their work, providing viewers, readers and listeners with models of revolt and visions of a harmonious, peaceful future.”
Events & exhibitions
Baltimore
- The Baltimore Museum of Art’s first exhibition of contemporary African art, Shifting Views, features work by Julie Mehretu and William Kentridge among others, and is on view through June 18. [Read a review in City Paper.]
Los Angeles
- Thursday, February 23 | 7-8:30pm—Alfredo Jaar will be giving a talk at the Getty titled “It is Difficult,” in conjunction with the exhibition Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media (December 20–April 30). The lecture’s title references a poem by William Carlos Williams: “It is difficult / to get the news / from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.”
- Thursday, February 23 | 6:30-8pm—Catherine Opie will discuss her life and work at the Annenberg Space for Photography as part of the Iris Nights Lecture Series.
San Jose
- Diana Al-Hadid’s Liquid City is opening on Friday at the San Jose Museum of Art, where it will remain on view through September 24.
Houston
- Diana Thater’s nine-monitor video installation Starry Messenger is opening on Friday, February 24 at Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts. The work pays tribute to Houston as a city at the forefront of space exploration, and will remain on view through February 2018.
Mexico City
- Gabriel Orozco’s current exhibition at kurimanzutto includes a fully-functioning convenience store, proposing a “game where logos and the rules of the market are set against each other.” [See installation photos in the LA Times.]
London
- Traumata: Bourgeois / Kusama pairs work by Louise Bourgeois and Yayoi Kusama and is opening Thursday at Sotheby’s S|2 gallery.
Frankfurt, Germany
- Primary Structures: Masterworks of Minimal Art is opening on Wednesday at MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main. Featuring artists Dan Flavin, Isa Genzken, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Mangold, Bruce Nauman, Robert Ryman, and Richard Serra, among others, the exhibition is on view through August 13.
Iceland
- This is the last week to see Joan Jonas’ Reanimation Detail, 2010 / 2012 at the National Gallery of Iceland. The exhibition closes this Sunday, February 26.
It’s impossible to include all the incredible exhibitions and art events happening this week in a single post. If there’s something you feel should have been included in today’s roundup, leave a comment below!