Tag Archives: Alfredo Jaar

TO FRANK WAGNER

Frank Wagner (1958–2016) introduced Berlin to Félix González-Torres, Cady Noland, Marlene Dumas, Alfredo Jaar, Barbara Kruger, and Nan Goldin, and in 1992 curated Close to the Knives—A Memoir of Disintegration: Ein Gedenkraum für David Wojnarowicz at KW.

For nearly four decades, Wagner was involved with RealismusStudio, a curatorial working group of Berlin’s neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK). The memorial show TIES, TALES, AND TRACES—DEDICATED TO FRANK WAGNER draws from a selection of artworks and documents from his estate—Wagner left over 10,000 books and catalogues and about 350 artworks—and includes talks, tours, and symposia conducted by his friends and colleagues.

TIES, TALES, AND TRACES—DEDICATED TO FRANK WAGNER

Through May 5.

KW Institute for Contemporary Art

Auguststrasse 69, Berlin.

From top: Frank Wagner at LOVE AIDS RIOT SEX, 2014, neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), Berlin, installation view photograph by Christin Lahr, artwork by Anna Charlotte Schmid, Gabor and Stefano III, Budapest, 2012, C-Print, courtesy the artist, the photographer, and nGbK; Wagner at the exhibition Félix González-Torres (1957–1996), RealismusStudio, 1996, photograph by Jürgen Henschel, courtesy KWWagner and AA Bronson, photograph by Alyssa DeLuccia, courtesy Visual AIDS.

ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH – DAY 3

Paris, LA began our third day at the international arts bonanza Art Basel Miami Beach at a groundbreaking for 10 Museum Park, the first residential project by famed architect Zaha Hadid in North America. The site of a former gas station, tucked between two gleaming new residential skyscrapers, 10 Museum Park will rise 60 stories above Biscayne Boulevard.

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The building features Hadid’s signature curves as part of an elaborate visible exoskeleton, lacing up towards the multistory aquatic center and lounge at the skyscraper’s crown. The groundbreaking ceremony was packed with Miami developers and admirers of Hadid, including the Mayor of Miami, who presented the architect with a key to the city. Reserved yet gracious, she expressed happiness in being able to complete such an ambitious project.

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Across the street lies the Peréz Museum of Art, whos beautiful new campus by Herzog & de Meuron was completed last year. The palm-lined courtyard features a geodesic dome by legendary architect and designer Buckminster Fuller. As part of their inaugural exhibition, the Peréz showed Global Positioning Systems, which demonstrated the international scope of its collection and the various geopolitical interests of contemporary artists. Rikrit Tirivanij, Dara Friedman, Alfredo Jaar, and Fred Wilson were particularly notable.

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Next Paris, LA ventured to Miami’s new design district, filled with gleaming designer stores and yet another Buckminster Fuller dome–this one the entrance to a block-sized parking structure. The de la Cruz Collection featured a number of impressively installed Aaron Curry sculptures and drawings and large works by Mark Bradford. The third floor held two notable pieces by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Dad) and Somewhere better than this place/Nowhere better than this place, around which small crowds of people clustered, listening to docents and taking mint candies or posters.

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Not far from the de la Cruz Collection, the Miami Institute of Contemporary Art featured a three-story lobby installation by Andra Ursuta, As I Lay Dying. The centerpiece was a disturbing clay figure, covered in wax–recalling a suicidal leap from the atrium’s third floor or a violent rape. On the museum’s upper floors, “psychiatrists” in white lab coats led visitors around Pedro Reyes’ Sanatorium, a series of rooms where participants were encouraged to divulge their secrets, relieve their stress, and share their life questions.

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At nearby Locust Projects, an installation by Daniel Arsham occupied the entire gallery floor. A huge circular pit dug into the floor was filled with crumbling casts of antiquated objects–boomboxes and walkmans, Super-8 and Polaroid cameras. It was quite literally a pit of obsolesence–echoed by the piece’s title, Welcome to the Future. The work was reminiscent of an indigenous burial pit, where pottery and other objects are ceremonially burned.

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Paris, LA finished tonight at the James Blake concert, hosted by the National YoungArts Foundation. A brilliant musical auteur from Britain, Blake’s music is soulful yet dystopian–velvet melodies often fracture into mechanical rhythms and deep bass “dub” sound. His hit single “Limit to Your Love” was the perfect way to end the day.

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ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH – DAY 1

This week, Paris, LA will be bringing you an exclusive look inside Art Basel, the world’s largest international art fair, which began today in Miami Beach and lasts until Sunday. In addition to the primary Art Basel fair, featuring 250 galleries from 31 countries as well as lecture and film series, more than ten independent art fairs take over the tropical beaches of South Florida and the museum spaces of metropolitan Miami.

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The week began with a press conference hosted by Director Marc Spiegler and Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine. The two introduced the fair’s sponsor, UBS Financial Services, and announced a number of revitalization initiatives in Miami, including the construction of a new convention center next year (to house future Art Basels) and the unveiling of a new Institute for Contemporary Art Miami, a controversial breakaway museum from Miami’s preexisting Museum of Contemporary Art.

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After the press conference, Paris, LA headed to the W Hotel South Beach for a private preview of a photographic series by Peter Lindberg, in conjunction with IWC Schaffhausen’s new watch collection. It wouldn’t be a major art fair without the inextricable collaboration of fine art, commercial advertising, and fashion. As the atmosphere and activity of Art Basel reveals, art is a commodity par excellence.

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At 11am, Art Basel Miami Beach officially threw open its doors to select collectors. The stalls were almost instantly swarming with eager collectors, though most fairgoers perused without significant scrutiny.

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Fondation Beyeler presented a collaborative performance by Marina Abramovic, part of the 14 Rooms series, which involved sleeping participants listening to soothing soundtracks while bundled on cots in a gallery. P.P.O.W. of New York presented a moving David Wonjarowicz retrospective, which displayed the artist’s multimedia sculptures and paintings next to his videos and photographs of the artist by friends Peter Hujar and Nan Goldin.

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Tornabuoni Art, Milan exhibited the light yellow drinking-straw wall sculptures of Francesca Pasquali next to deep blue and black paintings by iconic Italian artist Lucio Fontana. The booth was notably minimal in its primary color palette and white furniture to match its carpet and walls. Nearby, São Paolo’s Galeria Raquel Arnaud showed work by Carlos Zilio, influenced by quantum mechanics and metaphysical diagrams.

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Gladstone Gallery of New York and Brussels presented Cyprien Gaillard’s Cuban Wren, a massive steel excavator claw strung across with a bar of banded calcite, its iridescent mineral veins shining against the rusted machinery. The work recalled Gaillard’s work completed during his residency at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles last year, in which he used steel parts from Caterpillar excavators to mimic ancient sabertooths and refer to the constant construction in the Hammer’s neighborhood of Westwood. Gaillard’s was not the only work from the Hammer, as Los Angeles gallery Regen Projects exhibited site-specific work by Gabriel Kuri, sculptures that mimic the marble flooring of the museum’s second-floor smoking patio.

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Many galleries were awash with “blue chip” pieces. Marian Goodman Gallery of New York showed an impressive array: recent work by Jeff Wall, drawings and a video by William Kentridge, and mineral photographs by Tacita Dean. Next door, New York’s Cheim and Read showed a fleshy, pink Lynda Benglis wall sculpture and an unusually colorful Jenny Holzer ticker. London’s White Cube showed installations by Haim Steinbach, a lightbox by Alfredo Jaar, and documentation photographs of an early Marina Abramovic performance.

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After several hours of art viewing (tomorrow’s post will cover other Basel highlights), Paris, LA continued down Ocean Avenue to Untitled., the independent art far in a gleaming white tent on Miami Beach’s soft sandy shores. The crowd was much more casual and congenial. Several booths offered giveaway posters and tabloids, including Alfredo Jaar’s ingenious For Sale, Not For Sale (2014), a perfect addition to such a commercial setting.

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Zürcher Gallery of New York displayed calculators by Brian Belott that looked as if they had washed ashore, coated in barnacles and sandy pebbles. SIC, or Helsinki’s Initiatives for Individuality, displayed the detritus of a Monday night performance by Anastasia Ax: giant blocks of shredded paper, splattered with black paint, crumbling across the gallery floor. Ax has created “refugee camps” out of plaster and destroyed them in fits of rage, synced to live-performed noise music.

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Los Angeles had a definitive presence in the small fair. Culver City gallery Luis de Jesus showed Margie Livingston’s amusing (and ironically titled) Body of Work (2014) and a pair of beautiful digital prints by Kate Bonner. Veteran L.A. crafts artist Joel Otterson had a whimsical candelabra and ceramic vase exhibted in Maloney Fine Art’s booth.

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Stay tuned for Day 2 of Paris, LA’s trip to Art Basel Miami Beach.

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