SOCIÉTÉ

Artist Seth Price talks with curator Michelle Kuo about Beeple, collage, finance risk culture, and where immaterial art is taking us in a material world.LINEBREAK

Purple. Lavender. Mauve? Depending on the angle you approach them from, the silver-plated frames Bunny Rogers uses for her prints can appear anything from light lilac to dark blue, almost black. In the continuation of her two-part show at THADDAEUS ROPAC (Salzburg) this confusion is enhanced by the limited lighting shining on the works, keeping the viewer in the center of the space in the dark – looking for the right amount of distance and closeness to keep. Started at SOCIÉTÉ (Berlin) last year and originally intended to overlap this January, the two exhibitions expand upon each other. For the second iteration of »Ms Agony«at Thaddaeus Ropac, the checkerboard purple-and-blue floor in Berlin has been exchanged for precisely painted lavender walls, stopping at the edges with a thin white fringe, about one centimeter from the floor and ceiling of the gallery spaces, as if frames themselves.LINEBREAK

FRIEZE: Lessons in Feminism from Fairy Tales – Marianna Simnett

FRIEZE: Lessons in Feminism from Fairy Tales – Marianna SimnettLINEBREAK

VALARNO POST: Anteprima di “Mehr Licht!” la mostra di arte contemporanea tutta dedicata alla luce e ai suoi significati – Kaspar Müller

VALARNO POST: Anteprima di “Mehr Licht!” la mostra di arte contemporanea tutta dedicata alla luce e ai suoi significati – Kaspar MüllerLINEBREAK

Filipino-American artist Trisha Baga is best known for installations that project film on top of other content to complex effect, running together digital, analogue and real. But I liked this, one of series of paintings composed, rather remarkably, of sesame seeds – suggesting both a material version of the pixelated images of the videos and the sand in a desert landscape. The view seems to be as surveyed – perhaps, given its fairly busy, the desert is a beach – by a shadowy foreground figure. I’m guessing it’s called sex as per Latin because that makes it six figures, not because there’s any sex to be spied on, but perhaps matters will develop. The whole may be a screen anyway, as some sort of dialogue box seems to be open – we’re back to the digital versus real.LINEBREAK

Die Leinwand für diese Videoprojektion ist gar keine, sondern ein Gemälde. Trisha Baga hat die K-Pop-Band BTS bei einem ihrer Auftritte porträtiert. Die ineinander gesunkenen und verschlungenen Körper scheinen in ihrem perfekten Bildaufbau ein klassisches Gemälde nachzustellen, doch die Choreographie zielt auf etwas Moderneres: das Nachempfinden einer DNA-Doppelhelix. Auf dieses Gemälde richtet Baga einen Projektor, überzieht es mit dem weißen Licht des Starbildschirms und mit Ansichten von Desktops und Computermenus, lässt mal den einen, dann den anderen Teil des Bildes hervorblitzen. Ein einzelner Keramikfuß vor dem Gemälde verortet die hybride Installation wieder in der realen Welt. Großartig, wie sich Baga im Zwischenraum zwischen Objekt und Virtualität einrichtet und uns über Sichtbarkeit, Selbstinszenierung und Identität nachdenken lässt.LINEBREAK

Parcours, in French, means Journey, and the Journey around and in the city of Basel at various sites designated for 12 art installations, was, even online, for me, meaningful and a constant reminder of the still-Pandemic world. Answering the question posed by Parcours’ title, “Can We Find Happiness Together Again?” Samuel Leuenberger, Director of Parcours, led the audience, in person and online, in a resounding Yes, Ja, Si, Oui!LINEBREAK

Übergroße Arbeiten wie das von Jean-Michel Basquiat oder “Body Clock” von Trisha Baga wurden in der Halle 1 unter dem Motto “Unlimited” gezeigt. Die Leinwand für diese Videoprojektion ist gar keine, sondern ein Gemälde. Dafür portätierte Trisha Baga die K-Pop-Band BTS bei einem ihrer Auftritte. Die ineinander verschlungenen Körper sind an den Bildaufbau eines klassischen Gemälde angelehnt, allerdings mit einem modernen Twist. Auf das Gemälde richtet die Künstlerin einen Projektor, überzieht es mit Ansichten von Desktops, Computermenüs oder beleuchtet alternierend den einen oder den anderen Teil des Bildes. Ein einzelner Keramikfuß vor dem Gemälde rechts außen bringt die Installation in die reale Welt zurück. Die großartige Arbeit stimmt uns über Sichtbarkeit, Selbstinszenierung und Identität, die sich on- und offline manifestiert, nachdenklich.LINEBREAK

Bunny Rogers (1990, Houston, Texas) en la exposición Ms Agony, aborda temas como la sensibilidad y la vulnerabilidad, la amistad y el concepto de comunidad (online y en la vida real, IRL) así como la alienación y la condición de outsider. Es la segunda parte de una primera iteración que tuvo lugar en Berlín a principios de año. La agonía se define como el período de transición entre la vida y la muerte, y se caracteriza por la subsistencia de algunas funciones vitales y desaparición de las intelectuales. Pero también implica el paso entre un estado y otro y, potencialmente, el nacimiento de algo nuevo.LINEBREAK

Thornton DialLINEBREAKWerke des afroamerikanischen Künstlers Thornton Dial (1928–2016) finden sich in bedeutenden Sammlungen der USA, wurden in Ausstellungen von New York bis New Orleans gefeiert. In Deutschland ist der Autodidakt nahezu unbekannt. Seine poetischen Assemblagen erinnern entfernt an Anselm Kiefer.LINEBREAKDoch Dials Themen waren weltlicher: männliche Vorherrschaft, Rassismus, Kriegstreiberei, Ökologie. In der Figur des Tigers fand er ein Sinnbild für den Kampf, sich nicht unterkriegen zu lassen, für die katzengleiche Fähigkeit, immer auf den Füßen zu landen. Die Galerie Société zeigt eine Retrospektive des Werks von Dial erstmals außerhalb Amerikas.LINEBREAK

Time travel is possible. All you need, at least according to Trisha Baga’s thirty-five-minute 3D video 1620, 2020, is an old onion and lemon, a few connecting wires, and a computer running on a chirruping dial-up modem. Such is the gizmo that, per the Filipino-American artist’s labyrinthine narrative here, transports a present-day experimental theater troupe, DNAUSA, back to the beginning of colonial American history—the landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620—in order to perform gene therapy on the country itself, opaquely repairing flaws in the “narrative DNA” encoded in the rock. The performers accomplish this by reenacting the vaunted landing and, from there, clad in Pilgrim garb and accompanied by a pantomime horse, moving forward in time to various moments (1774, 1834, and 1921 among them) when the rock is moved, broken, and, symbolically, causes the foundational American narrative to increasingly fragment and crumble.LINEBREAK

Unter dem Titel „RADICAL GAMING: Immersion Simulation Subversion“ zeigt das HeK-Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel vom 1. September bis zum 14. November 2021 eine Gruppenausstellung mit partizipativer Kunst, die sich „mit den Strukturen, Technologien und Ästhetiken einer globalen Spieleindustrie“ beschäftigt. Diese Kunst „nutzt moderne Technologien der Spieleprogrammierung, um Virtual- und Augmented-Reality-Erfahrungen, immersive Umgebungen, interaktive Geschichten und Multimedia-Installationen zu erschaffen“. Bei den Beispielen in dieser Ausstellung ist das Publikum eingeladen, „sich aktiv an der Verwirklichung des Werkes zu beteiligen, im Gegensatz zu anderen «Game Art» Arbeiten“, bei denen nur passives Zuschauen möglich ist. Kurator ist Boris Magrini. Mit künstlerischen Beiträgen von Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Leo Castañeda, Sara Culmann, Debbie Ding, Keiken, Lawrence Lek, Mikhail Maksimov, Cassie McQuater, Sahej Rahal, Nicole Ruggiero, Jacolby Satterwhite, Eddo Stern, Theo Triantafyllidis, Miyö Van Stenis, Lu Yang. https://www.hek.chLINEBREAK

For some time now, tense conditions have shaped our everyday lives. Whether its curfews, violence or the search for one’s own identity, we are constantly in the process of readjusting and getting our bearings. Artists respond to the vulnerability and confusion that lies in control, racial discrimination and exclusion. The uncertainty and instability that we experience every day is represented in their work.LINEBREAKThe new collection presentation will show contemporary artworks from Scharpff-Striebich’s private art collection confronted with twentieth-century works from the Staatsgalerie’s own collection. These works highlight the complex and contradictory nature of our society.LINEBREAK

Under the title Hope, Trisha Baga illuminated the Fridericianum on November 3, 2020, with a film produced especially for the occasion. In the following short interview, the artist, born in Venice, Florida, in 1985 and now living in New York, talks about her project Hope and gives an insight into her working process. The work is a reflection on the state of our world and, more specifically, a commentary on the U.S. presidential election that took place on the same date.LINEBREAK

New York-based artist Trisha Baga is known for her innovative video, performance, and ceramic work that gleans the margins of the digital and the logic of online browsing to create dreamy, layered narratives in physical space. Her third solo at Société will be her first exhibition focused primarily on painting. The paintings will be presented in conversation with her new film 1620, which provided the inspiration and imagery for several works in the exhibition. According to Baga, the film is “an impressionistic science fiction, which reframes Plymouth Rock as a source of narrative stem cells in the hands of genetic scientists studying deep-seated flaws in The American Drama.” Read more onLINEBREAK

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