Jahresgaben 2021 will be on view from December 9 – 23, 2021 at Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn.
“The group exhibition Sex Ecologies explores gender, sex, and sexuality in the context of ecology. The exhibition is founded in the belief that environmental and social justice go hand in hand. Through a transdisciplinary approach, the exhibition critiques understandings of nature, gender, sexuality, and race that attempt to objectify and naturalize them. For example, “laws against nature” used to criminalize queer sexuality, and in many places still do. These norms are justified through evolutionary narratives exclusively permitting heterosexual reproduction. Everything that does not fit this norm is considered unhealthy, polluted, or “degenerate.” These norms have proven detrimental to humans and to the thing we call nature alike.” Artists: Margrethe Pettersen, Alberta Whittle, Anna Tje,Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Ibrahim Fazlic, Jes Fan, Jessie Kleemann, Okwui Okpokwasili & Peter Born, Pedro Neves Marques
Curators: Stefanie Hessler, Katja Aglert, Carl Martin Faurby, Katrine Elise Pedersen, Kaja Waagen, Prerna Bishnoi
James T. Hong’s first solo exhibition in Europe, at Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, UK) opens tonight on December 3rd. The exhibition will be on view through February 13, 2022.
“This exhibition presents two films by Hong which feature animals. The Duck of Nature/The Duck of God (2010) was originally made as an educational video for Dutch schoolchildren, and imagines the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza as a mechanical duck, who is snubbed by other birds on the canals of Amsterdam. The scenario reflects Spinoza’s own experience, who was excommunicated by the Jewish community for his humanist beliefs.
The second film, De Anima (2021), is a two-channel video installation. The first channel, filmed in Taiwan, presents three points of view: the artist’s, that of the “enemy” virus (Covid-19), and a dog’s. The second channel, shot in India at the historical location where the Buddha gained enlightenment, reinterprets the first channel and represents the artist’s search for insight during the pandemic. In both elements, animals provide this insight with witty observations about human behaviour.”
Vivian Chui in Ocula: “Rather than forcing artists into rooms organised by subthemes, works correspond to one another in a free-flowing exchange that runs through the show.
Jes Fan’s glass sculptures Networks (for Rupture) and Networks (for Expansion) (both 2021), containing a strain of black mould known for its asexual reproduction, are placed besides Iris Touliatou’s Untitled (Still Not Over You) (2021), an abstract installation of flickering, near obsolete fluorescent light tubes collected from defunct offices in Greece.
Although addressing unrelated themes—respectively, sexual identity and the temporality of human infrastructures—the pairing appears materially harmonious, united visually by the shared use of tubular materials.
One of the show’s greatest strengths is the notable subtlety of works on display: a refreshing respite at a time when so many artists have embraced brash, overt political agendas within their practices.”
Opening today at Centre Pompidou-Metz in Paris: Toi et moi, on ne vit pas sur la même planète, a curated selection of works from the 2020 Taipei Biennial. Eighteen of James T. Hong’s storyboard series, “The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend”, are included in the exhibition.
The biennial, with the theme “You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet” was co-curated by French philosopher Bruno Latour and Paris-based independent curator Martin Guinard.
James T. Hong’s on-going series of storyboards centre on a speculative science-fiction film in which forces from China, the USA, and other nations engage in military conflict on the island of Taiwan. Hong’s choice of watercolor as a medium evokes histories tying together plein-air romanticism and the rise of militarism; the cult of sentiment and the cult of the dictator. Painted in collaboration with Yin-Ju Chen, these works often evoke a disarming sense of calm amidst depictions of total warfare.
Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork was recently featured in The Here and There Collective’s Instagram Live series. The Here and There Collective, founded by Steven Abrahram & Lisa Young, are an organization committed to connecting and uplifting contemporary artists, curators, and collectors from the AAPI/Asian diaspora.
View the Instagram Live below, with a walkthrough of Kiyomi Gork’s exhibition Olistostrome at Empty Gallery, with the artist’s commentary and context around the works.
“Soft Water Hard Stone,” the fifth New Museum Triennial, brings together works across mediums by forty artists internationally, including Jes Fan. It recognizes artists reimagining traditional models, materials, and techniques beyond established institutional paradigms. Their works exalt states of transformation, calling attention to the malleability of structures, porous and unstable surfaces, and the fluid and adaptable potential of both technological and organic media. The Triennial will be on view from 27 October, 2021 to 23 January, 2022.
Curators: Margot Norton, Allen and Lola Goldring Curator at The New Museum, and Jamillah James.
Tishan Hsu’s first solo exhibition with Miguel Abreu Gallery, skin-screen-grass, opens October 21st, on view until December 23. The exhibition is held at the gallery’s 88 Eldridge Street location.
“Over the last three years, with increasing focus and intensity, Tishan Hsu’s art has taken a turn towards exploring the vast possibilities of image production today, and how to introduce this all pervasive force into his work. With the steady development of ever more sophisticated image processing software, and quasi limitless access to photographic sources and electronic imagery afforded by new high resolution databases, Hsu’s palette has expanded exponentially to include a set of tools particularly well suited to engage with the concerns underlying his work since the beginning: How does the screen world affect cognition and our relation to our bodies? How can art channel omnipresent technological effects and reveal their immanent affective content? In other words, what kind of artistic forms might truthfully render this increasingly potent and palpable state of biomorphic affairs?”
“After a long summer of being closed for maintenance, Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum reopens with a new exhibition, The Principle of Hope. It is an exhibition that contemplates, envisions, summons and claims the “future.” By presenting the practices of Chinese and international artists and cultural practitioners, we demonstrate the future as a space full of potential, beckoning for the subjective individual, to confront the present with the courage and enthusiasm of a future-oriented outlook.” Participating artists: Francis Alÿs, Aram Bartholl & Nadja Buttendorf, Erick Beltrán, Chen Chen Yu, Chen Juanying, Karel Čapek, Carlomar Arcangel Daoana, Datong Dazhang, Péter Dobai, Fang Tianyu, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Norma Jeane, Pauline Julier & Nicolas Chapoulier, Pope. L, Lei Lei, Li Jiaqi, Feng Kehui, Mak Ying Tung 2, Pedro Neves Marques, Meng Jinghui, Nabuqi, Phil Patiris, Gabriel Tejedor, Xingfu Peifang, Wang Xiyan, Xper.Xr, The Yes Men, Liam Young, Goang-Ming Yuan, Gary Zhexi Zhang, Zhong Ming
Artistic directors: Carol Yinghua Lu, Luo Xiaoming
Curatorial team: Huang Wenlong, Liang Chouwa, Yin Shuai, Jerome Zhang, Scarly Zhou, Zhu Siyu
Empty Gallery is pleased to open a dual-presentation of sculptor Jes Fan and painter Henry Shum at the Focus section of Frieze London, booth H10, from October 13 through October 17.
Fan’s ongoing Diagrams sculpture series features partial body-molded pieces of aqua resin covered in patches of color alluding to medical depictions of the epidermis, overlaid with hand-blown glass globules. These works continue Fan’s inquiry into what forms belie the body part that determines the majority of differences in human skin colors, and suggests that living beings are not bound entirely by the form of the skin.
Shum presents new oil paintings created in his home/studio in Tai Po. Building on his exploration of allegory, symbolism and spirituality in his recent exhibition Vortices, Shum extends his unique approach of wielding oil paint in an ink-like fashion, rendering elements from spiritual and mythological imagery in translucent, dripping layers. Shum’s material experimentation and dynamic approach to a familiar medium results in surreal, large-scale compositions at once dream-like and restrained. The works of Shum and Fan involve the iterative layering of materials to dissolve unquestioned binaries, whether it be the collapsing of interior and exterior spaces in Shum’s paintings or the questioning of race and gender in Fan’s pieces.
Temporarily closed for installation Yutaka Matsuzawa: Vanishing in the Wilderness Opening 11 December, 6 – 8PM Curated by Alan Longino & Reiko Tomii
