334 SPRING 2021, LETTER FROM THE CITY 2, February 2021 by Kaspar Müller
It is 3:17 am as I start writing this column. I went to bed early, maybe a little after 10 pm. We were all in bed early: our daughter, with a flashlight-like projector (a late Christmas present), beamed images from space onto the ceiling and told us stories. Her younger brother fell asleep at some point, and so did my wife, and finally all of us. The delayed present, which also included a silky, flowered pajama, arrived as a big, wrapped package directly from Harrods London courtesy of her godfather. We didn’t see him in person, just like I haven’t seen my parents for Christmas, or any other relatives apart from our own small family. The generous gesture of an unnecessarily expensive and fancy package, perhaps an act of kind resistance, had a somewhat tragic note: the nicely wrapped gift in its trademark corporate green appeared like a ghostly ruin of a different time. Us, we didn’t even get around to sending him a present. Besides, it’s unclear where he is currently. Supposedly he’s in a mountain hut on the Swiss-Italian border. Read more onLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAK
There is maybe no one better and more hilarious than Jeanette Mundt at subjecting the image world to the logic of the painted support. At Société, her gymnasts twist into impossible motion, highlighting the temporally static character of paintings, unable to move in time (thank the lord!). On surfaces of red, white, and blue, which cite Kenneth Noland’s chevrons and targets, is a kind of parody that can only be called American. Because Mundt’s range is as technically wide as her subject matter. Four other works take leave from the stars and stripes palette, populated by dark figures, posed like those of Adam and Eve cast out of Eden, who trudge through yellows, oranges, and blacks, smeared like one of Richter’s abstract squeegee paintings. All of this serves as a very good way to hide Mundt’s technical prowess, which like Oehlen down the road, is harder to pull off than one thinks.LINEBREAK
Artworks by Petra Cortright, Jeremy Couillard and Keiken will be minted on Foundation on 10 May 2021, and open to bidding on 12 May 2021; joining a roster of leading artists previously commissioned by Daata including Eva Papamargariti, Takeshi Murata, Rachel Rossin, Jon Rafman, Yung Jake, and FlucT who have all sold works through Foundation.LINEBREAKDaata fully supports Ethereum’s move to Proof of Stake and in the meantime will offset double the estimated carbon emitted by our own blockchain activity via Offsetra.LINEBREAKThe three artworks have been co-commissioned by Daata and Art Fair Philippines, and will be streamed on daata.art from May 5, 2021.LINEBREAK
Kein Wunder, dass Bunny Rogers zum Shooting-Star der zeitgenössischen Kunst wurde: Die junge Amerikanerin beherrscht das Spiel der Identitäten. Und sie weiß, wie verletzlich und verlassen sich die Jugend fühlt. Read in German on museumsjournal.de.LINEBREAK
Wenn der Hamburger Bahnhof ab morgen wieder offen haben sollte, dann wartet dort eine Ausstellung auf Sie, die Ende Oktober nicht mal eine Woche lang fürs Publikum geöffnet war, bevor der Lockdown das Museum für Gegenwart schloss: “Bunny Rogers. Self Portrait as clone of Jeanne D’ Arc.” Listen in German on Radio Eins.LINEBREAK
L’artista svizzero espone nella galleria barese Spazio Nico: due giorni di apertura, prima del nuovo lockdown, e poi tutto trasferito in rete. Read more in Italian on Corriere del Mezzogiorno.LINEBREAK
The Shanghai-based artist conjures physical presence through a screenLINEBREAKFrom 24 March to 14 April 2021, ArtReview is screening three of Lu Yang’s moving-image works: Delusional Mandala (2015), Delusional Crime and Punishment (2016) and their most recently realised piece Delusional World (2020).LINEBREAK
It is 3:17 am as I start writing this column. I went to bed early, maybe a little after 10 pm. We were all in bed early: our daughter, with a flashlight-like projector (a late Christmas present), beamed images from space onto the ceiling and told us stories. Read more in Flash Art.LINEBREAK
Inspired equally by centuries-old Chinese culture and forward-reaching technologies, artist Lu Yang’s practice seeks common ground between vastly different ways of seeing the world. Read more on artnet news.LINEBREAK
The Berlin-based gallery Société now represents Darren Bader in collaboration with Andrew Kreps Gallery, Sadie Coles HQ, Galleria Franco Noero, and Blum & Poe. Read more on ART news.LINEBREAK
In the latest exhibition ‘MS AGONY’ by American artist Bunny Rogers, currently on view by appointment at Société Berlin, Rogers grapples with identity and addresses themes of sensitivity and vulnerability, friendship and community (online and IRL) and alienation and outsidership: all through the lens of her childhood. Read more on Berlin Art Link.LINEBREAK
So zum Beispiel bei Société in der Wielandstraße, wo bis Ende Januar die amerikanische Künstlerin Bunny Rogers ihre Ausstellung „MS Agony“ zeigt – in Räumen, die sich nahezu komplett durch das Schaufenster erfassen lassen. Read more on Der Tagesspiegel.LINEBREAK
We talked with Petra Cortright about leaving ruins around the internet, desktop wallpapers, and the various terminologies attached to her work. Read the full interview on superprojectsnyc.cargo.site.LINEBREAK
Long-term global partner of Art Basel, BMW, and the virtual and augmented reality company Acute Art are coming together this week to present the high octane and future forming artwork of digital artist Lu Yang. Read more on Highsnobiety.LINEBREAK
Gleich drei Varianten von Appropriation Art werden derzeit ausgestellt, angefangen bei der postmodernen Ikonoklastin schlechthin, Elaine Sturtevant. Read more on taz.LINEBREAK
Radical, historical and hysterical, her Instagram is a universe of technical images, like the wild, grotesque “Uterus Man” (2013) or the delirious “Lu Yang Delusional Mandala” (2015), featuring the artist as a post-gender humanoid who seems to achieve mortality through digital means. Where her installations are enveloping and exhilarating, her Instagram feed offers snippets of her manic and visionary work. Read now on The New York Times.LINEBREAK
Sturtevant (1924–2014) is an American artist whose iconic series Warhol Flowers (1970) is in full bloom at the gallery Société in Berlin. The small and dainty, variously colorful silkscreen works-on-canvas hang on the white walls like postage stamps. Yet the simple, clean hanging of the exhibition (which in my view is perfect) reveals nothing of the convolution the works involve. Maybe it would not do to mount an exhibition in an elaborate setting for a complex artist: These are the silkscreen series of Andy Warhol “by” Sturtevant. Read more on Talking About Art.LINEBREAK
Eine Künstlerin geht Mitte der 60er Jahre zu Andy Warhol und sagt: “Hey Andy, wie machst Du das mit deinen Bildern? Ich will das genauso machen!” Und Andy so: “Hier, nimm sie doch mit, kannste nachmachen.” Der Name der Künstlerin: Elaine Sturtevant. Listen in German on radio eins.LINEBREAK
Emblematic of the museum’s endeavor overall is gallery 209, a mini-exhibition titled “Search Engines” on the second floor, which houses art from 1970 to the present. Including works from the first two decades of the new millennium, it focuses on the historic 1998 launch of Google. It studies the way that artists have responded to the internet’s penetration into every aspect of our lives, not only with new-media works like Petra Cortright’s VVEBCAM (2007), which was created for YouTube and is on view at the museum for the first time, but also with handcrafted pieces that react to our new reality, such as Gabriel Kuri’s 2005 piece Untitled (Superama II), a woven, wall-hung work that reproduces a receipt from a Mexican department store. Read more on artnet news.LINEBREAK
