S.M.A.K.

Michael Buthe .Retrospective

.Rinus Van de Velde | Donogoo Tonka

Michael Buthe

At the start of his intensive career the artist took part in such major exhibitions as When Attitude became Form(1969) and Documenta V (1972). Buthe’s oeuvre initially showed traces of such modernist movements as Minimalism and Informalism. As from the early 1970s, the artist became fascinated by non-European cultures and regularly travelled to Morocco, the Middle East and Iran. Increasingly, his work started questioning the Western tradition and exuded the atmosphere of the social and societal utopias of the 1960s. Buthe saw art and life as an interwoven whole and took an open and uniting approach to change and diversity. His work presents a critical and imaginary response to the disappearance of spirituality and myth from Western society.

Michael Buthe created textile works, drawings, paintings, assemblage sculptures, photos, collages, diaries and films. The only two of his installations that have been preserved form focal points in this exhibition: Taufkapelle mit Papa und Mama (1984) and Die heilige Nacht der Jungfräulichkeit (1992). In 1984, Buthe mounted an extensive show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the forerunner of S.M.A.K. Taufkapelle mit Papa und Mamawas created for that exhibition and remains an important work in the museum’s collection to this day.

Michael Buthe | Retrospective has been organised in association with the Museum of Art Lucerne and Haus der Kunst, Munich. Initiative and concept: Heinz Stahlhut of the Museum of Art in Lucerne. With the support of Kunststiftung NRW.

Rinus Van de Velde (1983, Leuven, Belgium) draws himself as an actor in the biography of an imaginary artist. He builds up his life stories on the basis of found photos and photos of scenes he stages himself. In this context he assumes the identity of various characters.

The large, detailed images are accompanied by texts that establish a context. The drawings look virtuosic, direct, light and cool. But you soon discover the underlying layers: cutting irony, thorough research, visual intelligence, a free imagination and great sensitivity. Van de Velde draws in charcoal. This enables him to work fast and in a consistent style, and brings out the documentary archive nature of his work better. For the S.M.A.K., Van de Velde is making a new installation with drawings.

A catalogue will be published for each exhibition.

http://smak.be/en/exhibition/876

GALERIE GERERSDORFER
KEVIN A. RAUSCH
“never relaxed”
Vernissage: Mittwoch, 16. März 2016 | 19 Uhr
Zur Eröffnung spricht André Lindhorst
Kurator, ehem. Leiter der Kunsthalle Osnabrück
Ausstellung: 16. März – 23. April 2016
Währinger Str. 12 – 1090 Wien
http://www.gerersdorfer.at

Kevin A. Rausch “I need something new”2016
Mischtechnik auf Leinwand,  180 x 130 cm

Peres Projects, Berlin
Melike Kara
In Your Presence
Opening Saturday, 13. February 2016 | 6–8PM
February 13 – March 11, 2016
Karl-Marx-Allee 82, 10243 Berlin
http://peresprojects.com/exhibitions/melike-kara/

Face to face, he said, but the door does not seem to follow the advancements of your pressing body. Faces are not facts, nor are they facets, but rather acts of expression. With that in mind you relax, leaning your head and body against a brick wall, waiting for the next best thing to happen. From a glance you see the note ahead of you: Back Anytime Soon. Tick tock, tock tick, take note: time does not pass on equal terms to two distant bodies. To those who leave anybody so aimlessly pressed up against a wall waiting, today is not anytime soon, but rather any given day, sooner or later. Wer weiß, wann. Was weiss wer. Web wide world. Who will wait. Water washes water, with wasser, as well. Mix well,

but do not shake. Shhhhhh! Can you hear the ticking, or is the sound only circulating my own mind? Aimlessly placed bodies and their equally amputated parts can go numb in the long run. Knock knock! Who’s there? Any. Any who? Any time soon. In the unevenness of time, to the person it concerns his absence depends on the urgency of his business, not the advancements of your own pressing body. You might seem to have all the time in the world, but the world sure doesn’t. Listen; speaking of timezones, what one single item would you take to a remote island? Take your time before you answer, you can always leave a message on my phone later. Stranded, you will start to hate islands and all that they stand for. Waves washing the sand, redundant clocks running out of battery, rounded coconuts, and the deceiving milkiness of coconut water.

After all, it’s not milk, but water. Water washes waves with water, not milk. Meanwhile, can I charge my phone in your wall, I’m expecting an important call, from somebody, important. Ring ring! Who’s there? Some. Some who? Some body, important. A pressing body presses itself against another but only one of them seems to give in. As one body fails and falls to the ground, the other walks away, leaving behind nothing but footprints in the sand that could belong to anybody who owns a pair of feet. Waves washes away waves with water, wasser and well, alone, you remain, stranded, with your favourite item. You write a note from right to left and place it on top of the other: Be right back. Tick Tock! Who’s there? Not. Not who? Not anybody that you know. You sit down in silence, on an island, killing time, as if time had a body to break down. Stranded islands always seem so remote, and even more so in winter. In the absence of anything happening, all you recall is the story of an old nordic esoteric eccentric who died alone on a remote island after following a pure coconut diet. Day in and day out, he drank nothing but this milk-impersonating water.

Watching waves washing, water washing water, Wer weiß wann. When they then found him numb and lifeless they were unsure if it was the fatal fall of a coconut or his faddy diet that in the end killed him. Either way, it was an end. Speaking of, time is up. So, what is your favourite item, the one you would take to a remote island? The item of your choice is time, not because it rhymes, but because it seems as if you have all the time in the world, even though the world itself doesn’t. Shhhhhh! I can no longer hear the ticking, unless you tell me that it’s touching you too.

Hanne Lippard

l’étrangère
The Original Image
Private view: Thursday 10 March | 6.30-8.30pm
Mark Corfield-Moore
Luey Graves, Martin McGinn
Ausstellung: 11 March – 16 April 2016
44a Charlotte Road
London EC2A 3PD United Kingdom
http://letrangere.net/

l’étrangère is delighted to present The Original Image: a group exhibition featuring three artists who treat art historical sources as a flexible material to be re-interpreted, re-configured, and played with in the present.

The exhibition takes as its starting point the longstanding tension between art and image. While the canon of art history bears a heavy weight on artistic practice, images are permitted an unconfined circulation via the contemporary data streams that characterise our digital environment. Within this flux of extreme image-reproduction, how can artists address our state of cultural exhaustion? How can images from the past be transported to and questioned in the present? By the appropriating art history’s images, metaphors, symbols and archetypes, the works of The Original Image blur the boundaries between the original artwork and its many representations.

The work of British artist Martin McGinn addresses the complex relationship between contemporary painting and art history. In his works on canvas, the two-dimensional images of art history – pages from publications, photographs, posters and postcards – become tools with which McGinn questions their omnipresence. This focus on ephemeral reproductions exalts their status within the frame and ground of the canvas. Exhibition catalogues usually found on a coffee table for leisurely perusal become still lives in their own right, whilst printed reproductions of works by Goya, Picasso and Van Gogh become floating, scrunched-up sculptures. In other works, McGinn uses both real and painted pins and tape, which hold multiple images together in an illusory collage. This slippage between the illusion of depth and the flat reality of the canvas is key to McGinn’s undoing of the original image.

The work of Luey Graves also uses the medium of painting to collage together recurring motifs from art history. This bringing together of familiar fragments is intended to build alternative narratives to the canonical history of patriarchal representation. Like the floating movement of browser windows on a computer screen, Graves shifts these multiple planes into different formal compositions. Motifs of modernist sculpture, the caryatids of Ancient Greece and Etruscan Bronzes are contrasted with domestic activities, such as preparing vegetables or kneading dough. The rigid symbols of ‘high’ culture, which are brimming with objects and objectifications of female form, are playfully subverted by these household vignettes. Private and public are conflated in a poetic configuration within each intimate panel.

The photographs, drawings, and wall-based sculptures of Mark Corfield-Moore comparatively deny the viewer a stable narrative. By appropriating the styles, tastes and aesthetic orders of art historical movements, such as Rococo, Classicism, and the Baroque, Corfield-Moore fashions these sources into new, decorative configurations. From archival engravings of unrealised Rococo fountains to extravagant drawings of Venetian regatta boats, Corfield-Moore’s whimsical reference points from the past evidence the ubiquitous nature of categories such as leisure, pleasure, and play. For The Original Image, the artist has appropriated archival imagery of classical busts held at the British Museum, piped icing upon their surface and then re-photographed them. The juxtaposition of marble with a playful, sugary ornamentation, subverts these authoritative subjects and the weight of their individual histories. They become re-gendered; power and prestige falls to delicacy and fancy. For Corfield-Moore, the genuine article, or the original image, is but a starting point in a continuous chain of derivatives that he utilises as tools with which to construct a potentially infinite set of orders and formations.

Celebration! 125 Years – Anniversary Exhibition / Feste Feiern. 125 Jahre – Jubiläumsausstellung

La gallina ciega (Blind Man’s Buff) (1.3 MB)Francisco de Goya (1746 – 1828)
1788  canvas, 269 x 350 cm
© Photographic Archive, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

In 2016 the Kunsthistorisches Museum celebrates its 125th anniversary. To commemorate this birthday we are hosting an important special exhibition on celebrations and festivities with artworks from all our collections as well as major loans from national and international collections, among them Goya’s “La gallina ciega” from the Prado, and a designer outfit by Alexander McQueen from the V&A Museum in London.

Nocturnal Banquet (788 KB)Wolfgang Heimbach (Ovelgönne/Oldenburg c. 1613 – after 1678?) 1640 dated  copper, 62 x 114 cm  Picture Gallery © KHM-Museumsverband

The exhibition focuses on celebrations and how they evolved over time; it looks at various aspects of European festivities from the Renaissance until the French Revolution – at court, in towns and cities, and in the country. Festivities always mark a state of exception during which normal rules temporarily do not apply. The courtly banquet with its pomp and circumstance, which included dancing and music, forms the centre of the show; other sections feature out-of-doors celebrations to mark coronations, weddings or births but also staged during Carnival, church fairs or on market days.

FRANZ JOSEPH

ON THE OCCASION OF THE CENTENARY OF THE EMPEROR’S DEATH 1830-1916 IMPERIAL CARRIAGE MUSEUM VIENNA, SCHÖNBRUNN PALACE, HOFMOBILIENDEPOT. IMPERIAL FURNITURE COLLECTION AND SCHLOSS NIEDERWEIDEN Presented concurrently at four different venues, this major exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the death of Emperor Franz Joseph takes a critical look at the man who personified the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Each venue focuses on a different aspect and/or theme. At the Imperial Carriage Museum in Vienna displays of carriages and clothing will focus on how the image of the emperor was carefully staged in all its aspects, ranging from opulent pomp to an almost un-imperial modesty. Franz Joseph’s personal preference for frugality, which the monarch made no secret of, can be seen from several of the vehicles he used and contrasts starkly with the enormous sums expended on running the court stables or on his personal security when he was out driving

Franz Joseph (1.6 MB)vintage photograph, after 1900
© Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H.

Featuring original state coaches, magnificent trappings, exquisite gala dress and court liveries, this part of the Emperor Franz Joseph centenary exhibition will illustrate not only various ceremonial events such as state visits, celebrations of the imperial orders or the Corpus Christi procession but also how carriages were used in everyday activities. In addition, three major ceremonial events from the monarch’s long life will be focused on: his wedding to Elisabeth (1854), his coronation in Hungary (1867) and his funeral (1916). Many bystanders at the time felt they were witnessing not only the funeral of a long-serving monarch but the demise of an entire epoch.

FRANZ JOSEPH SONDERAUSSTELLUNG
Anlässlich des 100. Todestages von Kaiser Franz Joseph findet an 4 Standorten in Wien und Niederösterreich (Schloß Schönbrunn, Hofmobiliendepot ● Möbelmuseum Wien, Kaiserliche Wagenburg Wien und Schloss Niederweiden) eine Sonderausstellung statt, die sich kritisch mit der Person des Kaisers auseinandersetzt.

http://www.franzjoseph2016.at/

http://www.khm.at/en/visit/exhibition…

Internationale Gruppenausstellung mit / international group exhibition with Silvia Bigi, Ana Teresa Fernández, Adela Goldbard, Khaled Jarrar, Hubert Lobnig / Iris Andraschek, Diego Martinez, Chantal Peñalosa, Carlos Perez, Laura Rambelli, Calixto Ramirez, Alina Sokolova, Agata SZ

Ein Projekt von Oscar Sánchez / Gudrun Wallenböck

Ana Teresa Fernandez, borrando la frontera

https://www.facebook.com/events/1810632469164040/

Staatliche Kunsthalle
Baden-Baden
Gutes böses Geld.
Eine Bildgeschichte der Ökonomie
PK 3.3.2016 | 11 Uhr
Große Landesausstellung 2016
Ausstellung: 5.3. – 19.6.2016
Lichtentaler Allee 8 a
76530 Baden-Baden
http://www.kunsthalle-baden-baden.de/kunsthalle/

Alicija Kwade, Kohle (Union 666), bronze und Reingold 24 karat,
Edition 3, 77 Teile, je 5×6,8 x 17,3 cm, SØR Rusche Sammlung Oelde/Berlin

Künstler:
Dietisalvi di Speme, Lucas Cranach d. Ä., Dosso Dossi, Marinus van Reymerswaele, Bartholomaeus Bruyn d. Ä., Jan Wierix, Lucas van Valckenborch, Georg Flegel, Bartholomeus van Bassen, Pieter de Neyn, Theodoor Rombouts, Adriaen van Utrecht, Pieter Codde, Pietro della Vecchia, David Teniers d. J., Abraham Diepraem, Peeter van Bredael, Pieter van Anraedt, Giovanni Carlone, Johann Heiss, Edwaert Collier, Jan Verkolje, Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts, Johann Peter Hasenclever, Karl Wilhelm Hübner, Ludwig Knaus, Otto Edmund Günther, Ernst Henseler, Hans Richter, Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Yves Klein, Timm Ulrichs, Hanne Darboven, Maria Eichhorn, Cildo Meireles, Sylvie Fleury, Aernout Mik, Christin Lahr, Pratchaya Phinthong, Zachary Formwalt, Adriana Arroyo, Ioë Bsaffot

Anahita Razmi, Iranian Beauty, 2013, Videoloop + gerahmter Din A4 Ausdruck, Courtesy Anahita Razmi, Carbon 12 Gallery

Geld ist nicht ahistorisch – so lautet die grundlegende These der Großen Landesausstellung „Gutes böses Geld“. Im Frühjahr 2016 präsentiert die Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in Kooperation mit dem Casino Baden-Baden, dem Stadtmuseum Baden-Baden und dem Theater Baden-Baden eine 750 Jahre überblickende Bildgeschichte des Geldes. Hier wird gezeigt, wie Künstler Geld und den Umgang damit im Laufe der Jahrhunderte ins Bild gesetzt haben – ausgehend von einer frühen italienischen Darstellung aus Siena von 1286, über Fotografien aus dem New York der 1890er Jahre und endend mit zeitgenössischen Kunstwerken, die kurz vor oder während der jüngsten Finanzkrise entstanden sind.

Sylvie Fleury, ‘Ela 75K, Plumpity… Plump’, 2000, mixed media, 83 x 55 x 96 cm, Courtesy Sylvie Fleury, Mehdi Chouakri

Im Gegensatz zu der klassischen Lehrmeinung der ökonomischen Theorie, die einen über die Jahrhunderte gleichbleibenden Homo Oeconomicus postuliert, scheint die Bildgeschichte des Geldes etwas anderes zu lehren: es steht zu vermuten, dass sich diese Figur immer wieder neu erfunden hat.

Tatsächlich unterliegt die Darstellung von Geld einem beachtlichen Wandel. Im einen Jahrhundert dominieren beispielsweise die positiven und emanzipatorischen Effekte. So führte etwa der soziale Aufstieg von Handelsleuten zu wichtigen Personen des öffentlichen Lebens in den Niederlanden und in Süddeutschland dazu, dass sich diese mit den Insignien ihres neuen Reichtums zeigen durften. Im nächsten Jahrhundert jedoch kam eine neue Bildgattung auf: jetzt wurden Geldstücke in Verbindung mit Totenschädeln dargestellt und zu Vanitasbildern und moralischen Allegorien zusammengeführt.

Anahita Razmi, I´ve got it all (too), 2008, C-Print, 40 x 55 cm, Courtesy Anahita Razmi, Carbon 12 Gallery

Ein sehr konkretes Beispiel für den Wandel sozialer und gesellschaftlicher Normen zeigen zudem die unterschiedlichen Darstellungen von Armut. Für die niederländischen Genremaler des 17. Jahrhunderts ist sie ein quasi naturgegebener Zustand. Zwei Jahrhunderte später hat sich Armut dann zu einer politischen Klassenfrage gewandelt. So sind die Darstellungen der Düsseldorfer Malerschule deutlich von den Schriften Karl Marx’ im 19. Jahrhundert inspiriert.

Dorothea Lange, Migrant mother, 1936, Negativ Nitrat, 10 x 12,7 cm

Bis weit in das 20. Jahrhundert hinein gibt es fast keine Darstellungen, die Geld als solches thematisieren. Als alleiniges Bildsujet existiert das Zahlungsmittel kaum. Mit Andy Warhols großformatigen seriellen Darstellungen von Dollarscheinen ändert sich dies um 1962 schlagartig. Plötzlich ist allein das Zeigen von Geldscheinen als Gegenstand für sich ohne jeden gesellschaftlichen oder moralischen Kontext möglich. Das markiert in der langen Bildgeschichte des Geldes ein absolutes Novum.

Der Schlusspunkt des Ausstellungsparcours hat die Finanzkrise im Jahr 2008 im Visier. Exemplarisch für die Geldschwemme, die auch die Preise für Kunst in ungeahnte Höhen trieb, steht ein Werk von Alicija Kwade. Für “Kohle (Rekord)” hat die Künstlerin ein herkömmliches Kohlebrikett mit Blattgold umhüllt. Ein zentrales Bild für die Leichtfertigkeit, mit der Werte in den Jahren vor dem Platzen der Blase geschaffen und kurz darauf wieder verbrannt wurden.

Während Alicija Kwades Werk – neben anderen – in den imposanten historischen Räumen des Casino Baden-Baden gezeigt wird, ergänzt das Stadtmuseum Baden-Baden den Ausstellungs-Parcours durch einen speziellen Fokus auf das Brettspiel Monopoly, ergänzt um Fotografien aus den 1900er bis 1940er Jahren. Dass dieses ursprünglich als pädagogisches Instrument konzipiert wurde, um vor den Gefahren von Monopolen zu warnen, ist heute in sein Gegenteil verkehrt. Parallel zur Ausstellung zeigt das Theater Baden-Baden „Wirtschaftskomödie“ von Elfriede Jelinek (Premiere: 26.2.2016). Der Text ist eine Fortschreibung ihres Stücks „Kontrakte des Kaufmanns“, das in der großen Finanzkrise 2008 zum Stück der Stunde wurde. Atemlos, scharfsichtig, pointiert: Die Nobelpreisträgerin prangert darin die hemmungslose Gier des heutigen Finanzkapitalismus an.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/49309405740/