Tag Archives: Massimiliano Gioni

GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE CURATORIAL ROUNDTABLE

As images from the civil rights era migrated in the American visual lexicon, some becoming icons… a shift also happened in the aesthetic understanding of what images do and how they function. American society has been saturated with images since the post-Second World War period, and artists growing up at that time were some of the first to turn a critical eye to the production of images and cast doubt on their narrative function…

Black artists understood that though Black people may be the subject of many images throughout U.S. history, those captured by and circulated within those images gave little or no consent. In addition, the Black body and its visual reception have been so predetermined by stereotype that their presentation may undermine even good intentions. — Naomi Beckwith*

To kick off the New Museum exhibition GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE—ART AND MOURNING IN AMERICA—the final show conceived by Okwui Enwezor—join Beckwith, Glenn Ligon, Mark Nash, and New Museum artistic director Massimiliano Gioni for a curatorial roundtable.

See link below to register for this online event.

GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE CURATORIAL ROUNDTABLE

New Museum

Tuesday, February 16.

4 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

See MEETING WORLDS—ON OKWUI ENWEZOR’S WORK, an online conversation featuring Ute Meta Bauer (the founding director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore), Franklin Sirmans (the director of the Pérez Art Museum in Miami), Terry Smith (a professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh), and Octavio Zaya, an independent art critic and curator. New Museum director Massimiliano Gioni moderated the January 21 talk.

*Naomi Beckwith, “My Soul Looks Back in Wonder,” in Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America (New York: New Museum; London: Phaidon, 2020), 182.

From top: Naomi Beckwith, photograph by Maria Ponce, courtesy of the photographer, Beckwith, and MCA Chicago; Glenn LigonA Small Band (2015) installation, New Museum, 2021, neon, paint, and metal support, image © Glenn Ligon, courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, Chantal Crousel, Paris, and the New Museum; Garrett Bradley, Alone (2017), still, single-channel 35mm film transferred to video, sound, black and white, image © Garrett Bradley, courtesy of the artist and the New Museum; Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America (2020), conceived by Okwui Enwezor, cover image courtesy and © New Museum and Phaidon; Mark Nash, image courtesy of Nash; Massimiliano Gioni, courtesy of Gioni and Alain Elkann.

ON ENWEZOR

We are just beginning to realize what the loss of Okwui Enwezor means for the world of art. Okwui’s curatorial vision was informed by his articulate opposition against hegemonic powers, social injustice, and the continued exclusion of people of color. He was certainly one of the most inspiring and rigorous forces in the field of curating, who seamlessly linked the exclusive contemporary art industry with world politics. Equally important, his absence is deeply felt by many of us on a personal level, by all of those whom he worked with over the past three decades, by those inspired by his charisma, his ambition, and the way he used his position of power to radically shift the status quo wherever he worked. — Ute Meta Bauer

As a preview to the upcoming New Museum exhibition GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE: ART AND MOURNING IN AMERICA—the final project conceived by Okwui Enwezor—join Bauer, Franklin Sirmans, Terry Smith, Octavio Zaya, and New Museum Artistic Director Massimiliano Gioni for a discussion on Enwezor’s curatorial vision and life’s work.

See link below to register for the online conversation.

MEETING WORLDS—ON OKWUI ENWEZOR’S WORK

New Museum

Thursday, January 21.

5 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

From top: Okwui Enwezor, artistic director of Documenta 11, in Kassel, Germany, 2002, photograph by Werner Maschmann, image courtesy and © Documenta Archiv, Kassel; The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, edited by Enwezor, cover image courtesy and © Prestel; Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, edited by Enwezor, Katy Siegel, and Ulrich Wilmes, cover image courtesy and © Prestel; Enwezor (left), Ute Meta Bauer, Octavio Zaya, and Mark Nash in Kassel, 2002, photograph by Maschmann, courtesy and © Documenta Archiv, Kassel; El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale, edited by Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, cover image courtesy and © Haus der Kunst, Munich; Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, cover image courtesy and © New Museum and Phaidon.

JORDAN CASTEEL — WITHIN REACH

JORDAN CASTEEL—WITHIN REACH—the exhibition catalog of the artist’s suspended solo show at the New Museum—is edited by Massimiliano Gioni, with a foreword by Lisa Phillips.

The volume includes texts by Dawoud Bey, Lauren Haynes, and Amanda Hunt, and features interviews by Thelma Golden and Gioni.

UPDATE: The New Museum reopens on Tuesday, September 15.

JORDAN CASTEEL—WITHIN REACH

Through January 3, 2021.

New Museum

235 Bowery, New York City.

Jordan Casteel, from top: Shirley (Spa Boutique2Go), 2018, oil on canvas, Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College; Medinilla, Wanda and Annelise, 2019, oil on canvas; Benyam, 2018, oil on canvas, Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg collection;; Serwaa and Amoakohene, 2019, oil on canvas; exhibition catalog cover image courtesy and © the artist and the New Museum; Cansuela, 2019, oil on canvas; Miles and Jojo, 2015, oil on canvas, Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection; Lourdes and Karina, 2019, oil on canvas; Joe and Mozel (Pompette Wines), 2017, oil on canvas, private collection; Jenna, 2019, oil on canvas. Images courtesy and © the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York.

HANS HAACKE IN CONVERSATION

I have always been sympathetic to so-called minimal art. That does not keep me from criticizing its determined aloofness, which, of course, was also one of its greatest strengths. As to the implied incompatibility between a political statement/information and a work of art, I don’t think there are generally accepted criteria for what constitutes a work of art. At least since Duchamp and the constructivists, this has been a moving target…

Contrary to popular belief, eagles are really not courageous birds; they are even afraid of bicycles, as [Marcel] Broodthaers wrote. Their power is due to projection. The same is true for art—and political power. They need the red carpet, the gold frame, the aura of the office/museum—the paraphernalia of a seeming immortality and divine origin… It is important that the Thatcher painting is an oil painting. Acrylic paint doesn’t have an aura… Another reason for making a painting was that I had been stamped a conceptualist, a photomontagist, that sort of thing. This was a way to mess up the labels…

It is true that I often play on the modes of the contemporary art world, and I try to make something that is accessible to a larger public, which does not care for the histrionics of the art world. As Douglas [Crimp] pointed out, it helps that these pieces do not have the look of hermetic “avant-garde” art…

Where the Left is sometimes unnecessarily vulnerable is in its tendency to make mechanical attributions of ideology. In that respect, it mirrors the Right. We should recognize that things need to be evaluated within their respective historical contexts. Taken out of context, they are likely to be misread and can play the opposite role from that of their original settings… If I had been too concerned about co-optation, I would probably not have been able to do the things I’ve done. It can have a paralyzing effect. I saw this with some colleagues and students in the ’60s and ’70s. They either stopped working altogether or went through tremendous personal crisis, from which some eventually emerged as cynical entrepreneurs. In either case, it amounted to a capitulation to the powers that be. It takes stamina and shrewdness to survive in this mess… We just have to reconcile ourselves to the historical contingency of things. Otherwise, we fall into the idealist trap of believing in universal meanings and values. Hans Haacke*

On the occasion of the New Museum exhibition HANS HAACKE—ALL CONNECTED—the artist’s first major institutional show in the United States since Hans Haacke—Unfinished Business (1986–1987), also at the New Museum—join Haacke and co-curators Massimiliano Gioni and Gary Carrion-Murayari for a public conversation.

HANS HAACKE IN CONVERSATION with MASSIMILIANO GIONI and GARY CARRION-MURAYARI

Thursday, October 24, at 7 pm.

New Museum Theater

235 Bowery, New York City

*Yve-Alain Bois, Douglas Crimp, and Rosalind Krauss, “A Conversation with Hans Haacke,” October 30 (Autumn 1984): 22–48; reprinted in October: The First Decade, 1976–1986, edited by Annette Michelson, Krauss, Crimp, and Joan Copjec (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 175–200.

Hans Haacke, from top: Condensation Cube, 1963–65, clear acrylic, distilled water, and climate in area of display; Untitled, acrylic and liquid; Taking Stock (unfinished), 1983–84, oil on canvas and gilded frame; Mobil, On the Right Track, 1980, screen print and collage of photographs; Hans Haacke, Volume I, cover image courtesy and © Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, Tate Gallery, London, and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; On Social Grease, 1975, photo-engraved magnesium plates mounted on aluminum plaque (detail); MoMA Poll, 1970, two transparent ballot boxes with automatic counters and color-coded ballots, Information, Museum of Modern Art, New York, installation view; Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971, 1971, 142 black-and-white photographs, 142 typewritten cards, two excerpts from city map, and six charts (detail); Oil Painting: Homage to Marcel Broodthaers, 1982, oil on canvas, gilded frame, bronze plaque, stanchions, red velvet rope, picture lamp, red carpet, and photomural, Documenta 7, Kassel, installation view; Large Water Level, 1964–65, Hans Haake—All Connected, New Museum installation view, 2019; Hans Haacke: All Connected, cover image courtesy and © the New Museum and Phaidon. Images courtesy and © the artist, Artists Rights Society, New York, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, and the New Museum.

NEW MUSEUM AT 40

The New Museum celebrates its 40th birthday with a book that includes texts by Lisa Phillips, Johanna Burton, Lauren Cornell, Massimiliano Gioni, Joseph Grima, Julia Kaganskiy, Ned Rifkin, Alicia Ritson, Lynne Tillman, and Brian Wallis.

 

40 YEARS NEW, available now.

newmuseumstore.org/new/40-years-new

NEW MUSEUM, 235 Bowery, New York City.

newmuseum.org

New 40 Years - Front | New Museum Store

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