WHAT DO YOU THINK OF JASPER JOHNS?

SERPENTINE PAVILLION GARDEN MARATHON AND FRIEZE SCULPTURE PARK

  

Fearing last weekend’s sit-out-on-the grass-glorious autumn weather to be the last before London’s long and gloomy descent into winter, I spent Saturday and Sunday taking in the art on offer in the capital’s Royal Parks. To coincide with the closing weekend of Swiss architect Peter Zumthor’s hortus conclusus-inspired summer pavilion, the Serpentine Gallery (Hyde Park) had programmed a two-day “Garden Marathon” event featuring talks and performances by an impressive multi-disciplinary roll-call, including theorist Helene Cixous, musician Brian Eno and mathematician Marcus de Sautoy.

Zumthor’s pavilion itself, black-clad and angular alongside the restrained neo-classicism of the gallery building had a singularly austere elegance. Passing through the darkness of the exterior passages, visitors emerged in a courtyard garden bathed in autumn sunlight. Whilst most of the central floral bed had bloomed earlier in the season, it was the pavilion’s structural elements that remained visually absorbing. Looking upwards, the brutal symmetry and absolute black of the matt walls formed a bold frame for the blue sky overhead. Paths were split cleanly into areas of light and shade. The medieval hortus conclusus, or closed garden (examples of which can still be seen in surviving monastic cloisters) was said to emphasise the relationship between earth and sky by this paradoxical severing. It was a place for withdrawal and contemplation: of the Edenic and the divine. Creating a space at once open and communal and intensely isolated, Zumthor’s pavilion, with its shady recesses, demands lingering and prompts observations of a more secular nature, on the incessant and ever modulating passage from light to dark, visibility to invisibility.

TARYN SIMON

Joseph Nyamwanda Jura Ondijo is a Kenian, superstitious healer, who has 9 wives, 32 children and 63 grandchildren. Latif Yahia declares to have acted as the body double of Uday Hussein. After taking Thalidomin, Dorothy Gallagher gave birth to disabled triplets. Shivdutt Yadav is alive, yet officially dead, because other Indian farmers are stealing his land. For her exhibition "A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters" Taryn Simon - a beautiful, 36-year old photographer from New York - researches tragic stories from all over the world. She collects portraits in front of neutral backgrounds, information about each individual and their "footnotes," which are items or pictures delivering further insights into their lives. These three categories are ordered in panels, and each panel-trio is ordered in chapters, making a total of 18 international stories. 

FRIEZE OPENINGS – EVENTS / HAPPENINGS / PERFORMANCES AT DAVID ROBERTS ART FOUNDATION

The Frieze week kicked off in London last night, which could only mean one thing: openings galore in the area surrounding the fair’s Regent’s Park venue. There was plenty to be seen, with Paul Morrison opening at Alison Jacques, Richard Tuttle at Modern Art and Charles Avery at Pilar Corrias amongst others. However, given the author’s current predilection for all things performative, the best part of the evening was spent in the packed-out basement of the David Roberts Art Foundation watching a series of performances programmed to (loosely) accompany the space’s current exhibition of the paintings of Miriam Cahn, an artists whose own work is steeped in the performative practices of 1960s and 70s feminism.

THINKING AT KOLUMBA

from top: Josef Wolf 'untitled'; Bernhard Leitner 'Raum Reflektion'; Jannis Kounellis 'Tragedia civile'; Krimhild Becker 'untitled'; Attila Kovacs 'Synthese 10' 

"Thinking" - the title of the current 1-year show at Kolumba in Cologne explores contemplative occupations and its symbols via contemporary and old Christian art. How does that work? There is a focus on artists' books, on drawings and specifically on paintings and sculptures depicting Madonna with the Child. In a great example (room 21) a medieval devotional image is juxtaposed to a contemporary sound installation - an amazing experience. In comparison, a rather sad example is shown in room 6, where geometrical paintings by Rune Mields from the 1980s are positioned opposed to a 17th Century Christian calendar.

Kolumba is always torn between dynamic contemporary art and the maintenance of the old and religious. Founded as a Christian art space in 1853, Cologne's Cardinal Meisner (a strictly conservative believer) supported a complete renewal of the building's architecture and its concept in the 1990's. Since two years now, Stefan Kraus is the new museum's director carrying the weight of always creating a balance between art, Catholicism and original Roman ruins. 

HIDDEN TREASURES: LEIGHTON HOUSE AND NOUR FESTIVAL

 

Tucked away on a leafy, unassuming Kensington street is the house of Frederic Leighton, late Victorian President of the Royal Academy of Arts and the only British artist ever to have been knighted. A skilled draughtsman and elegant portraitist, Leighton was a contemporary of the pre-Raphaelites and whilst professing to be of a very different school, works such as the iconic Flaming June (1895) illustrate why his name is most commonly associated with those of Millais and Rossetti. All three were included alongside works by Oscar Wilde and William Morris as part of the excellent show about the Aesthetic movement in Britain at the V&A last autumn. The focus of the V&A show was “art for art’s sake” mantra of this group of artists and critics for whom the pursuit of beauty and the desire to surround oneself with the aesthetically pleasing was valued above all else. Nowhere is this sensibility more evident than in spectacular, Alhambra-esque Arab Hall at Leighton’s former residence. An interior oasis of sumptuous, peacock-blue Persian tiles and intricate Arabic and Venetian glasswork, the hall features a central fountain that sits beneath a high, gilded dome designed especially by Leighton’s architect, George Aitchison. Leighton was widely travelled, thanks in large part to the great wealth of his physician father, and frequently visited North Africa and the Middle East. Here he amassed a large collection of ceramics – particularly tiles, textiles and woodwork, some of which are accommodated in the Arab Hall.

ARTIST WATCH: TOBIAS BUCKEL

 

The German artist Tobias Buckel (*1978), currently based in London and Nürnberg, is one of most interesting emerging painters that I have met in London. His relatively small, yet strong paintings are complex and thoughtful; and his use of forms and colour seems self-confident but also curious to me. Fascinating constructions meet an open heart - never disgusting, but always a bit disturbing - I could look at these paintings for hours! For more information on Tobias' work look at his website www.tobias-buckel.de or visit his upcoming group show "Wanderlust" in London, which is supported by DAAD and runs from the 1st to the 6th of October. Additionally you can also see his work at the "Jerwood Drawing Prize" exhibition in London, which runs until the 30th of October.

       

ON RICHARD HAMILTON

JUST WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES TODAY’S HOMES SO DIFFERENT, SO APPEALING? 1956

  

SWINGEING LONDON 67, 1967-68

The British artist Richard Hamilton, who died last week aged 89, was destined to go down in the annals of art history as the “father of Pop Art.” It was an epithet that he wore lightly, once claiming in an interview that: “I don't think I'm particularly proud of it but I am willing to accept that I do feel some responsibility” for this revolutionary aesthetic shift towards the popular, transient, expendable, mass produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous and big business.

His most famous image - Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? - was produced in 1956, as post-war Britain entered a boom era of mass production and consumption on a scale previously unseen. It is a dense and urgent homage to consumerism, sex, modern aspirations and classic glamour, which does not so much blend high and low, new and old cultural forms, as pile them on top of one-another, slap-dash, to effect a jarring, iconoclastic disintegration of cultural hierarchies. Hamilton, like his long-time friend and mentor Duchamp, was concerned with asking the big questions about art (sometimes seriously, reflexively; at other times sardonically, with an irreverent wink). What is it? Where is it? Who is the artist? Who decides? All are questions that continue to inform and motivate art production and criticism today.

LONDON: BYAM SHAW MA FINE ART DEGREE SHOW

13 international and diverse artists, producing paintings, drawings, photos, sculptures, videos and (sound-) installations, curated one of the best degree shows that I have seen so far in London. Professional and actually quite serious, these artists show lots of large scaled, elaborate and partly fascinating pieces. A click on the name of the artists should lead you to their websites.

LONDON: CHELSEA MA FINE ART DEGREE SHOW PART II

Jonathan Morgan

Tobias Buckel

Bernard Cella,  curated by Michele Drascek (MA Curating)

Anita Delaney

Rasmus Nilausen

Hyungwook Lee

Thomas Griffiths

Over 70 MA Fine Art graduates from Chelsea College of Art and Design are currently showing their degree show-pieces. Additionally, and just as interesting, the graduates from Ma Curating, Ma Graphic Design, Ma Interior Design and Ma Textile Design exhibit their final works. Clicking on the artist's name underneath each picture or video should lead you directly to their websites (in case they have one). You can still see the show until this Thursday evening. It can be quite confusing to run through the building trying to see everything, so I'd advice you to get a hold of a map and - absolutely worth it - a catalogue (5-10 GBP). If you should be interested, you'll find pictures from the opening in the previous artfridge post.

LONDON: CHELSEA MA FINE ART DEGREE SHOW OPENING

all photos by Lars Bjerre

These are some random photos from the private view at Chelsea's Ma Degree show last Friday. Details will follow in a second part. For now, this much is clear: Visit the exhibition if you have the time! It shows lots of high quality work from emerging international artists - and by the way a remarkable number of paintings, drawings and videos.

CHELSEA COLLEGE OF ART & DESIGN / MA DEGREE SHOW

from the 2nd to the 8th of September

Chelsea College of Art and Design, UAL 

16 John Islip Street (right next to Tate Britain)
SW1P 4JU, London

Open from:  Monday – Friday: 10am – 7pm