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E-flux Announcements : Landscapes of an Ongoing Past Urbane Künste Ruhr

The exhibition "Landscapes of an Ongoing Past" (Salt Warehouse, August 16–September 22, 2024) establishes a dialogue between a major work by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov and a younger generation of artists from former socialist Eastern Europe on the premises of Zollverein UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since 2001, The Palace of Projects by the Kabakovs has been installed in the Salzlager (salt warehouse) of the preserved coking plant and industrial processing complex, an impressive site of cultural heritage located in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia. The two-story, snail shell-like artwork, made of simple wood and linen, holds 61 proposals for a better future and is one of the Kabakovs’ largest permanent installations. In loose correspondence with it, existing as well as newly commissioned artworks by 17 artists explore traces of unrealized utopias, focus on questions of artisanal and industrial production, or reflect on the relationship between architecture and nature.

gabriela ancoAugust 5, 2024Ilya&Emilia Kabakov

The Free Press Journal : Silent Voice Of Dissent: Arts Role In Challenging Authority From Goya To Gupta (by Sonal Motla)

Standing before his unflattering portraits of Spanish royalty, I was struck by how Goya’s art transcended traditional representation to challenge authority and reveal deeper truths. [...] His portrayal exposes the vanity and moral decay of the royals, turning a conventional portrait into a powerful critique. This act of artistic rebellion was a courageous statement, urging viewers to confront uncomfortable truths about their leaders and the nature of power. [...] This courage to confront authority is mirrored in Shilpa Gupta’s recent installation, “Sound On: Untitled, 2023.” Exhibited at Amant Art Center as part of "I Did Not Tell You What I Saw, But Only What I Dreamt," Gupta’s kinetic installation uses reverse-wired microphones to create an immersive auditory experience. The installation features a rotating voice reciting the names and detention dates of poets who have faced imprisonment, exile, or execution, including the grim fate of fourth-century poet Imadaddin Nasimi. A solitary lightbulb and evocative soundscape underscore the humility and resilience of these censored voices.

gabriela ancoAugust 3, 2024Shilpa Gupta

Libération : Rétrospective Yoko Ono à la Tate Modern, haïkus d’éclat (by Claire Moulène)

With "Yoko Ono, Music of the Mind", the Tate (until September 1, 2024) devotes a luminous retrospective to the visual artist, a welcome spotlight on the work of this pioneer of performance art, long caricatured and reduced to her Beatles husband.

gabriela ancoAugust 3, 2024Yoko Ono

Observer : Rich Tapestries and Loose Ends: ‘Woven Histories’ Is Unwieldy in Its Comprehensiveness (by Katherine Schreiber)

This year seems to be, among other things, the year of the textile. The past six months have seen a plethora of fiber-centered shows at major museums, from “Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to an exhibition of women fiber artists at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. [...] But the most comprehensive—and often unwieldy—of these shows is “Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction,” a traveling exhibition that just closed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and is on its way to the National Gallery of Canada, after which it will be shown at the Museum of Modern Art. The show, which originated at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art last fall, aims to recenter fiber art in the story of modernism—to reweave textiles, so to speak, into the fabric of art history. Its central claim is that “abstraction, modernism’s primary visual language, has been entwined with textile materials, technologies, and issues since its inception.” [including works of Rosemarie Trockel].

gabriela ancoAugust 2, 2024Rosemarie Trockel

ArtasiaPacific : New Hong Kong-Wide Art Fair Reveals Galleries and Programs (by Camilla Alvarez-Chow)

Art021 Hong Kong will feature 73 galleries and projects from 13 countries and regions, spanning five sections. The Galleries sector will showcase established and emerging artists from 40 galleries at Phillips Asia’s headquarters in the West Kowloon Cultural District. [...] Art021 Hong Kong will host a solo exhibition by Iranian-born American artist Amir H. Fallah, presented by Los Angeles- and Shanghai-based Gallery All. Additionally, the noncommercial curatorial project “One Thousand and One Nights,” inspired by Middle Eastern folktales, will feature works by artists from Western Asia, including Tala Madani, Shilpa Gupta, Mandy El Sayegh, Alia Ahmad, and others.

gabriela ancoAugust 1, 2024Shilpa Gupta

Judith Benhamou Reports : The Kabakovs are still “Back in the U.S.S.R” with a diversion to Paris

In September 2025 the Centre Pompidou is due to close its doors for the next five years. [...] So before it’s too late, why not visit or revisit this French gem for a tour of the permanent collections of contemporary art. [...]The final episode of this feast of monumental installations is a new one. The Kabakovs, husband and wife duo Emilia (born in 1945) and Ilya (1933-2023), who created their artworks together, probably share one of the best known names in Russian contemporary art. They recently donated a series of five monumental works to the Centre Pompidou which, as usual, implicitly critique Russian totalitarian society, in this case from bygone days.

gabriela ancoJuly 30, 2024Ilya&Emilia Kabakov

The Art Newspaper : Le fil rouge de Chiharu Shiota à Aix-en-Provence (by Maud de La Forterie)

“Chiharu Shiota - Beyond Consciousness” is an exhibition presented from May 18 to October 6, 2024, at the Biennale d'Aix-en-Provence. Questions relating to life and death are delicately interwoven, and also permeate the volatile Collecting Feelings, a monumental work exhibited at the Chapelle de la Visitation, exceptionally open to the public for the occasion. It is presented as a majestic ex-voto: in a shower of red threads, hundreds of children's drawings and letters of gratitude seem to float in suspension. Introspection is the order of the day in this exceptional work, where connection becomes pure communion, celebrating the fragile privilege of existence.

gabriela ancoJuly 26, 2024Chiharu Shiota

Art daily : First major exhibition of Shilpa Gupta's work in the Midwest opens at The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art

Showcasing her expertise across various media, the exhibition of Shilpa Gupta ,"I did not tell you what I saw, but only what I dreamt" (MMOCA, June 28, 2024 – January 14, 2025), features her interactive sound installations, sculptures, photographs, and drawings. A conceptual artist, Gupta’s distinctive approach challenges viewers to reflect on how information shapes our perception of reality in today's global society. Guiding Gupta's art is her research into the power of language, examining how large-scale institutions and invisible structures adopt it to define and enforce societal norms. She also considers language as a tool of resistance, empowering individuals to create new possibilities and challenge existing power structures. She applies these insights to explore issues surrounding the enforcement of national borders, cultural and social identity, religious and ethnic persecution, and the limits of free speech.

gabriela ancoJuly 22, 2024Yoko Ono

The Union Leader : Yoko Ono honored with Edward MacDowell Medal (by Kathryn Marchocki)

Arts icon and activist Yoko Ono was awarded the 64th annual Edward MacDowell Medal on Sunday for her “ground-breaking, distinctively inventive, and enormously influential” career as an interdisciplinary artist over seven decades. “There has never been anyone like her; there has never been work like hers … She has rewarded eyes, provoked thought, inspired feminists, and defended migrants through works of a wide-ranging imagination. Enduringly fresh and pertinent, her uniquely powerful oeuvre speaks to our own times, so sorely needful of her leitmotif: Peace,” author and board Chairman Nell Painter told an estimated 1,100 guests at the MacDowell.

gabriela ancoJuly 22, 2024Yoko Ono

Artnet : Eureka: The Deep Symbolism Behind Gerhard Richter’s Candles (by Tim Brinkhof)

At a glance, Gerhard Richter’s images of candles look like blurred photographs. In truth, they are meticulously crafted paintings that manage to recreate the effect of a camera shooting its subject slightly out of focus. Richter’s candles hover between reality and illusion, objectivity and subjectivity, not unlike how the artist spent his youth in East Germany, wedged between capitalist Europe and communist Russia. [...] Candles have come to occupy an especially important place in Richter’s oeuvre, with fellow German artist and art historian Hubertus Butin going as far to say “no still-life motif has been such an object of fascination.” As Richter himself explained in a collection of writings, interviews, and letters: “Candles had always been an important symbol for [East Germany], as a silent protest against the regime… it was a strange feeling to see that a small picture of candles was turning into something completely different."

gabriela ancoJuly 21, 2024Gerhard Richter

Crash : The Great Yes, The Great No (by Alain Berland)

Two in one, that’s what the Aix-en-Provence Festival is offering this year. Twice the pleasure; "The Great Yes, The Great No" is a lot, but it’s good. Relocated to LUMA Arles (from July 07 to 10, 2024), the chamber opera created by William Kentridge takes advantage of the artist’s skills as a visual artist to offer not only a lyrical performance, but also a vast exhibition, all in two of the venues of the Parc des Ateliers in Arles. The exhibition, entitled Je n attends plus (I don’t wait any longer), features several variations on a powerful theme: the failure of twentieth-century utopias and the roles played by artists in this context.

gabriela ancoJuly 16, 2024William Kentridge

The Art Newspaper : Twenty years on from its founding, Luma Foundation shows itself to be at the top of its game in Arles (by Alexander Morrison)

Several of the Luma's shows have the feel of a blockbuster, but perhaps none more so than William Kentridge’s "Je n’attends plus" (I Am Not Waiting Any Longer). This exhibition is an accompaniment to the South African artist’s new opera, "The Great Yes, The Great No", debuted at Luma Arles earlier this month, which puts a fantastical twist on a true story: that of a voyage from nearby Marseilles to Martinique in 1941, taken by artists and thinkers—Wifredo Lam and André Breton among them—looking to escape the ravages of war. Kentridge’s reimagining places other avant-garde artists, such as Frida Kahlo, pioneers of the anti-colonial Négritude movement, such as Aimé Cesare and the Nardal sisters, and other important figures of the time on this journey—their faces appearing as cardboard masks. "I Am Not Waiting Any Longer" takes visitors to the heart of his process: there are research materials, such as photographs taken on the actual crossing; cardboard masks scattered across a wall; and intricate maquettes of the set.

gabriela ancoJuly 15, 2024William Kentridge

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