Sunday, March 30, 2014

Una Lorenzen

Una Lorenzen  is a filmmaker from Reykjavík. In 2009 she received an MFA in experimental animation from California Institute of the Arts. Una has created numerous musicvideos and shortfilms that have traveled widely to festivals. Screenings include ArtForum online, Tribeca Underground NY, Nordisk panorama, Tricky Women Festival Vienna, Independent Exposure tour, Fantasia Montreal and Nordic filmscreenings in Cannes and Japan. She has also created animations for Disney educational TV series and several documentaries. 
LINK Vimeo  LINK Una

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Daan den Houter

Overschilderschilderij 
(50cm x 60cm, oils, started May 24, 2002)


Daan den Houter invites artist to produce their own paintings on the same single canvas. Each individual work is on display for one week only in De Aanschouw, which is the only opportunity to view the painting. Subsequently, the canvas moves on to a new artist, who will add a new layer. LINK De Aanschouw  LINK Overschilderschilderij

Friday, March 28, 2014

VIVIANE SASSEN

UMBRA

From 8 March to 1 June 2014, the Nederlands Fotomuseum will present Viviane Sassen’s exceptional photographic project titled UMBRA. Sassen is one of the world’s leading photographers at this moment. Especially for the museum, she has made a new series of works that focus on the play of light and shadow that is so characteristic of her work. Sassen supplements this series with previously unseen images from her archives. UMBRA (Latin for shadow) is presented as one large spatial installation. Viviane Sassen is a photographic artist and fashion photographer, and first became known through her enthralling colour photos in which form and content balance at the edge of abstraction. In these photographs, effusive colours play a role equal in significance to that of the deep shadows that occasionally give mysterious contours to existing forms. The human figure, the body and the pose are major classical-artistic themes in her work. However, her play with realism and abstraction, which confuses our perception and leaves meanings open, is very modern. Sassen compels us to reflect on the realistic character of photography, which emphasizes the spectacular and poetic aspects of her work. LINK Nederlands Fotomuseum

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Circus Katoen

EX AEQUO


We are Sophie van der Vuurst de Vries and Willem Balduyck; we are Circus Katoen. Sophie grew up in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and started at the age of six at the youth circus Rotjeknor in Rotterdam. Willem Balduyck grew up in Lichtervelde (Belgium). At the age of 10 he started practicing circus and a little later he joined the circus atelier Woesh in Brugge. The two of us met at an international exchange program for youth circus in 2006 in Aurillac (France). Two years later we were accepted at the Circus Arts department of Codarts Rotterdam; the first bachelor of circus arts study programme in the Netherlands. Since that very moment, we have been working together and specializing in partner acrobatics. Individually, we are specialized in hand balancing (Sophie) and diabolo juggling (Willem). 
LINK Circus Katoen LINK EX AEQUO on Vimeo

Friday, March 21, 2014

Victor Man

Zephir  
@ Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle

With Zephir, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle presents Victor Man's first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. The Romanian painter, recently named Deutsche Bank's "Artist of the Year" 2014, is one of the world's most compelling contemporary artists. Born in Cluj in 1974, he is equally inspired by the ancient and the modern. In his work he concentrates on the development of an autonomous iconography in which frequent literary references intermingle with his own biography. Literature and art history, collective memory and personal experience are the elements woven together by the artist into a non-linear story where distinctions between present and past, fiction, imagination, and reality are abolished. These overlapping of points of reference run throughout all his works, where the fusion of gender, androgyny, or, more generally, the uncertainty of physiognomy and appearance form a recurrent theme that strengthens the image of an identity in perpetual movement and suggests how rich and mysterious the essence of things can be beyond their appearance. At once timeless and visionary, his paintings resist easy interpretation, but rather suggest alternative possibilities of recognition, remembrance, and seeing.

In addition to providing a survey of his works since 2006, Zephir includes a few paintings never previously presented to the public, as well as a stained-glass window created especially for the occasion of this exhibition. LINK Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle

Sunday, March 16, 2014

The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab

The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab is a toy lab set produced by Alfred Carlton Gilbert and sold between 1950 and 1951. A product catalogue describes it as follows: "Produces awe-inspiring sights! Enables you to actually SEE the paths of electrons and alpha particles traveling at speeds of more than 10,000 miles per SECOND! Electrons racing at fantastic velocities produce delicate, intricate paths of electrical condensation - beautiful to watch. Viewing Cloud Chamber action is closest man has come to watching the Atom! Assembly kit (Chamber can be put together in a few minutes) includes Dri-Electric Power Pack, Deionizer, Compression Bulb, Glass Viewing Chamber, Tubings, power leads, Stand and Legs." The set originally sold for $49.50 The lab was pulled from the shelves after less than a year due to concerns that children could ingest the radiation sources.  LINK orau

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Hernan Bas

@ Victoria Miro


Detroit-based artist Hernan Bas  explores the codes of dandyism and its subculture as a means to define sexual attraction.  His paintings are tinged with nihilist romanticism, born of literary intrigue and a passion for historical painting.  Intricate, frail, and sensuously delightful, Bas's paintings personify epic romance embracing both the decadence and nastiness of pleasure.  His works have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, among them the 2012 retrospective at the Kunstverein Hannover, Germany; the 2007 retrospective at the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, which presented a decade of the artist’s work and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in February 2008; and his inclusion in the Nordic Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, curated by Elmgreen & Dragset. The artist has been included in recent group exhibitions including Contemporary Magic: A Tarot Deck Art Project at the Andy Warhol Museum, and The Cry at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon (MUSAC). In March 2012, Bas had his second solo exhibition at Lehmann Maupin. The artist lives and works in Detroit, Michigan. LINK Victoria Miro

Friday, March 14, 2014

Tatsuro Kiuchi

Tatsuro Kiuchi was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1966. A biology major and graduate of International Christian University in Tokyo, he made the switch to an art career after graduating with distinction from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Tatsuro began illustrating children’s books with several publishers in the US and Japan, eventually branching out into editorial work for magazines, book jacket illustrations and advertising commissions. Tatsuro's first picture book The Lotus Seed (text by Sherry Garland / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) has sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide. He has also been commissioned by such clients as Royal Mail to design their Christmas Stamp Collection in 2006, and Starbucks for their Worldwide Holiday Promotion “Pass the Cheer” in 2007. He has been contributing a serial comic strip titled The Earthling, appearing regularly in a quarterly magazine. His work has been recognized by Communicatin Arts, American Illustration, Society of Illustrators (Gold and Silver medals), The Original Art, Society of Illustrators LA, Art Directors Club, 3x3, The Association of Illustrators Images, Design Week Award, Bologna Children's Book Fair. Tatsuro is a member of Tokyo Illustrators Society, and teaches illustration at Aoyamajuku. LINK tatsurokiuchi

Sunday, March 09, 2014

Arnold Schönberg

Schönberg & Kandinsky
Artistic Revolutionaries 
@ Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam


The exhibition Schönberg & Kandinsky. Artistic Revolutionaries zooms in on the turbulent first two decades of the twentieth century, which witnessed a revolution in the worlds of art and music. While the painter Wassily Kandinsky laid the foundations of abstract art, composer Arnold Schönberg developed a new tonal system in music. 
A concert of Schönberg's music in Munich in 1911 inspired Kandinsky to paint the near-abstract composition Impression III that same evening. This concert also led Kandinsky to invite Schönberg to participate in the first exhibition of the artists' group Der Blaue Reiter. 

Arnold Schönberg was a multifaceted artist. He taught himself violin at the age of nine and went on to become one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century. He was also a self-taught draughtsman and designer and, influenced by his friendship with the artist Richard Gerstl, created an extensive body of visual art that deserves to be better known. LINK jhm

Friday, March 07, 2014

Baracca (10 years)

new expo FUCK THE 80’S IT IS 2014 


With Yvo van der Vat focusing on sculptural
and video- art , and Ibrahim R. Ineke on
comic-book or comix-inspired art, Baracca 
combines the wildly divergent visions of two curators 
who are themselves working artists.
 Both deliberately choose to exhibit work that engages with
their own personal artistic practice, and to present 
this work in conjunction with their own, so as to better
emphasize the dialogue that exists between all art.
 United in an approach that celebrates the
temporary and the transient, through brief 
[one evening only] exhibitions, Baracca’s curatorial
intentions seek to confront apparent contraries, 
to bridge the gap between audiences and artists
 of different backgrounds. LINK Baracca

Saturday, March 01, 2014

Честита Баба Марта

The day of Baba Marta (Grandmother March) falls on the first of the month. On or before Baba Marta, Bulgarian people give each other martenitsa, or martenka, which are red and white tassles sold by vendors in shops and on the street or may be hand made. The colors of the martenitsa, whose symbolism comes from an old Bulgarian tale, represent blood and snow. Bulgarians are supposed to attach the martenitsa to their persons or clothing. LINK (Bulgarian)