On Saturday, William Kentridge's new animated film Oh Believe in Another World will be screened as a visual accompaniment to Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich's 10th Symphony - performed by Michael Sanderling, conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra - at Vienna's Konzerthaus.
Read MoreEs muss Liebe sein (11.03.2023 - .01.21.2024): Kiki Smith vermacht ihre Werke der Graphischen Sammlung München, die ihrerseits die renommierte Künstlerin anlässlich ihres 70. Geburtstags mit einer Ausstellung würdigt. "From my heart" - und genau darum geht es in den ausgestellten Werken.
Seine Werke werden in der Ausstellung mit Objekten aus dem Bayerischen Nationalmuseum konfrontiert. [...] Da hängt ein zerknittertes beiges T-Shirt an einem einfachen Drahtbügel, wie man ihn in Wäschereien sieht - wie in der zentralen und ältesten Ausstellung im ersten Stock der Pinakothek der Moderne in München. Darauf ist ein Motiv in Grau aufgedruckt: ein menschliches Herz. Nicht das einfache symbolische Emoji-Herz, sondern die korrekte anatomische Zeichnung. Die Zeitangabe lautet "Anfang der 1980er Jahre".
Read MoreKentridge, now 68, remains a prolific drawer of political subject matter. His new exhibition "What Have They Done with All the Air?" (25 November - 20 January 2024, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town), includes portraits on green paper of a cohort of revolutionary Martinican intellectuals, notably Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon. The drawings are linked to a work-in-progress theatrical production The Great Yes, The Great No, about a historical ship journey from Marseille to Martinique. In March 1941, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, German anti-fascist novelist Anna Seghers, art historian John Rewald and the surrealist movement’s great impresario André Breton, all fleeing Nazi-occupied France, boarded a ship bound for Martinique. Kentridge has taken this historical anecdote and, as is his manner, wondrously amplified and distorted it.
Read MoreIn her new exhibition (‘I did not tell you what I saw, but only what I dreamt’ is on view at Amant, New York until 28 April 2024) Shilpa Gupta commemorates the verse of poets censured by governments through sculpture and installations."The most minimalist of Gupta’s works on this theme is A Liquid, the Mouth Froze (2018), a small cast-gunmetal sculpture of the inside of a mouth that arrests, even fossilizes, speech. A text displayed vertically beside the cast reads: ‘I was walking on the street. A car stopped, a few men stepped out, and pushed into my mouth a liquid. The mouth froze.’ The piece seems to embody the punishing trade-off poets have often had to make: freedom of expression bought at the precious cost of personal liberty or even life itself. In works old and new throughout the survey, Gupta elevates universal, humanistic desires that have insisted on finding ways to subvert and overspill state power.
Read More“I remember visiting the Rodin Museum in Paris when I was young. I saw Camille Claudel’s work there and knew a little about her story, which interested me. People think of Claudel as emoting a kind of psychology or mixing psychology with plastic material. Her sculpture was part of a new obsession with the personal rather than the civic. She was so great at turning the body inward. Our work, in some ways, comes out of that history.”
Read MoreEarly next year, an exhibition featuring over half a century’s work by Yoko Ono is set to debut at the Tate Modern, marking the largest ever exhibition on her life in the UK to date. Landing on February 15, 2024 and sticking around until September 1, Yoko Ono: Music Of The Mind promises to be a multi-platform look at the work of the world-renowned artist across the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Visitors can expect to see more than 200 pieces, across the forms of artwork, music, films, photography, installations, her engagement with her audience, and much more.
Read MoreThe Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota has achieved great acclaim for her large-scale art installation work that masterfully utilises everyday objects to breathe life into abstract concepts and human preoccupations such as life and death. Shiota explores these concepts through elements of the human body such as blood, which is a theme that continues in her latest offering, "Who am I Tomorrow?", exhibited at the former assembly hall in Kunstraum Dornbirn in Austria until November 12, 2023. The art installation is composed of over 5,000 red threads that hold a mesh of tubes up above audience members, causing them to appear as though red blood is flowing through them. [...] Beyond "Who am I Tomorrow?", the artist’s next project is her touring exhibition "The Soul Trembles", making its way to Shenzhen Museum in China (November 7, 2023 - January 14, 2024). "This touring exhibition started at the Mori Art Museum in 2019 and was the biggest show of my career. It presents 25 years of my artistic work, with many installations and shows, marking my path from kindergarten until now," says Shiota.
Read MoreShirin’s latest film, The Fury (2023), is a two-screen installation that retains the powerful black and white imagery used in her previous works. It’s a timely piece that coincides with the Woman, Life, Freedom movement that started in Iran in September 2022, following Mahsa Amini’s death after being held in police custody. The women of Iran have been harassed, assaulted and, often, arrested and tortured for their fight for freedom; in The Fury, Shirin addresses this question of liberation through choreography and dance. The stark monochrome contrasts in cinematography emphasise the visual tension between the military personnel and the female protagonist; between the oppressive gaze of the state apparatus and the female body, which contains in itself both pain and power.
Read More"Yoko Ono : The Music of the Mind" (15th February – 1st September 2024, Tate Modern) will celebrate Ono’s groundbreaking contributions to early conceptual and participatory art, music, and her passionate advocacy for world peace. Over seven decades, from the mid-1950s to today, the exhibition delves into her innovative work, spanning more than 200 pieces, including instruction-based art, installations, films, music, and photography. It will showcase her unique approach to language, art, and audience engagement, which remains relevant today.
Read More'How is it that all the countries tell their citizens they are the best?' Shilpa Gupta asks, quoting a line from Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. It's a question that relates to her practice. Divided into competing nationalities, how can we all share the same space and engage in dialogue? Over a cup of tea, Gupta shared motivations behind her work and how she hopes audiences will engage with her mini survey exhibition, I did not tell you what I saw, but only what I dreamt (21 October 2023–28 April 2024) at Amant, New York.
Read MoreHigh-profile artists and art patrons have banded together to support the UK nonprofit Freedom from Torture by donating works to an upcoming auction benefiting the organization. The organization, which supported more than 700 torture survivors from nearly 50 different countries in 2021, has raised more than £1 million ($1.2 million) via its biennial art auction since 2003 and hopes to raise more than £300,000 ($371,000) through this year’s edition. More than sixty artists, including Julian Opie, Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley and Kiki Smith, have contributed pieces to the sale.
Read MoreAt the heart of William Kentridge’s "Sibyl", which receives its Australian premiere this week (at Sydney Opera House, November 2 to November 4), lies the timeless human obsession with wanting to know what life has in store for us [...] Indead, this piece combines a film and chamber opera inspired by the myth of the Cumaean Sibyl, the priestess and prophet of the god Apollo’s oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony. The legendary South African visual artist, filmmaker and theatre director is fascinated by the dilemma that comes with lifting the veil on the future.
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