Eliana Willis

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    in Exhibitions

    ‘Past. Present. OId Tools. New Tools’: Watch Video Artist Beryl Korot Rewrite Ancient Text With Digital Technology

    What does a 19th-century weaving loom have to do with computer programming? In the eyes—and practice—of artist Beryl Korot, the answer is: a lot. In fact, the pioneering video artist makes the case for the Jacquard loom, invented in 1804, as the earliest computer because of its ability to program patterns using punch cards. A show on view now at Manhattan’s Bitforms Gallery titled “Rethinking Threads” charts the artist’s artistic journey in making the connections between art and technology.
    The exhibition also references Korot’s earlier works, including her 2007 piece Babel: The Seven Minute Scroll. In an exclusive interview with Art21 filmed back in 2010, the artist discussed the work, which references the ancient text using contemporary technology.
    “I guess I always had the attitude towards technology that the more intimate you are with the tools that you get, the more you can tell your story,” Korot explained. “And so I decided to make a scroll, in a sense, on the computer based on the Tower of Babel story.” Using letters of the alphabet, pictograms, and her own visual language, the artist creates her own narrative while probing the history of communication.
    “For me as an artist, I’m interested, in a sense, in going beyond my personal expression to things that I’m personally drawn towards, that also tell my story,” the artist told Art21. “Which is my connectedness to other points in time. Past. Present. Old tools. New tools.”

    Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Extended Play, below. “Beryl Korot: Rethinking Threads” is on view at Bitforms Gallery through November 26, 2022.

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    This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of news-making artists. A new season of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series, like New York Close Up and Extended Play, and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.

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    in Exhibitions

    Nearly 100 Artist-Designed Globes Will Land in London’s Trafalgar Square This Weekend to Teach the Public About the History of Slavery in the U.K.

    This weekend, 96 artist-designed globes will be installed at the heart of London in Trafalgar Square, to raise awareness about the history of the transatlantic slave trade in the U.K., as part of the nationwide project, The World Reimagined.
    The public will be able to view the globes—designed by creatives including the project’s founding artist, Yinka Shonibare—from November 19–20, and then bid on them in an online auction held by Bonhams online only now from November 17 through November 25. Proceeds are going to The World Reimagined’s learning program, the artists, and the establishment of a grant-making program for racial justice projects and organization.
    “The core mission of The World Reimagined is to engage the public to learn about the impact of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans,” Ashley Shaw Scott Adjaye, artistic director of The World Reimagined, told Artnet News. “To have a public exhibition in Trafalgar Square, in the heart of the capital where so many people can interact with these glorious works, is incredibly exciting.”
    More than 100 globes were commissioned via an open call judged by Shaw Scott Adjaye, who is also head of global research at her husband’s architecture firm Adjaye Associates; artist Chris Ofili; Zoé Whitley, director of the Chisenhale Gallery; Matthew Smith, director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at UCL; and Renée Mussai, senior curator and head of curatorial and collections at Autograph, a London-based arts charity.
    A selection of globes which are going on view in Trafalgar Square. Photo: courtesy the World Reimagined.
    The sculptures were decorated by African diaspora artists from across the U.K., as well as a number from the Caribbean. Among those who contributed designs include Julianknxx, who has an exhibition at the Barbican Curve in 2023, Godfried Donkor, Phoebe Boswell, and Alison Turner. All of them have drawn on their personal experience with Britain’s history with slavery, and how it has impacted people of all backgrounds and races living in the U.K. today.
    “The World Reimagined is an important opportunity to reflect on the importance of our diversity and to shine a light on our collective stories that too often remain untold,” said the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. “We must remember the millions who suffered due to the Transatlantic slave trade and the impact this has had on generations of Black communities.”
    Godfried Donkor, Race. Photo: courtesy the World Reimagined.
    Many of the globes have already been shown in cities around the U.K. since August. Each has a QR code on its base that takes visitors to a website, where they can learn more about the issues and histories raised in the artwork.
    “This is a deeply powerful moment. We believe in an idea of patriotism that says we are strong and courageous enough to look at our shared past and present honestly, so we can create a better future—together,” said the project’s co-founder Michelle Gayle. “It’s not Black history—it’s all of our history.”
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    In Pictures: The Late Polish Artist Magdalena Abakanowicz’s Monumental Soft Sculptures Stun at Tate Modern

    Visitors to “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” at the Tate Modern in London will find themselves dwarfed as they move between vast, free-hanging structures that challenge our traditional notions of sculpture and textile art. 
    Their warmly colored, ragged surfaces have been achieved by weaving together organic materials like sisal plant, horsehair, and hemp rope into complex and ambiguous 3D fiber installations known as “Abakans.”
    “It is from fiber that all living organisms are built, the tissue of plants, leaves and ourselves,” Abakanowicz once said. “Our nerves, our genetic code, the canals of our veins, our muscles. We are fibrous structures.” 
    Audiences will learn how Abakanowicz started out making painted textiles in the 1950s and watch as her practice evolved over the 1960s and ’70s, when she transitioned to building suspended forms on a monumental scale.
    Their radical nature is all the more striking for the artist’s distance from many of the major hubs of the art world. Born in 1930, she grew up in the rural Polish countryside and later, during the war, her family became part of the resistance while she worked as a nurse’s aid at the remarkably young age of 14. Afterward, Abakanowicz became an artist under an oppressive Communist regime and struggled against the odds to build an internationally recognized career. 
    Abakanowicz is also known today for Agora, a crowded group of headless figures permanently installed in Chicago’s Grant Park, and War Games, large structures made from trees in the style of military equipment. One of the works from this latter series, Anasta (1989), is displayed in the exhibition alongside the Abakans.
    “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. See works in the show below.
    Installation view of “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern.
    Installation view of “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern.
    Installation view of “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern.
    Installation view of “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern.
    Installation view of “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern.
    Installation view of “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” is on show at Tate Modern until May 21, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tate Modern.
    Magdalena Abakanowicz, Brown Textile 21 (1963). Photo courtesy of Tate Modern; © Fundacja Marty Magdaleny Abakanowicz Kosmowskiej iJana Kosmowskiego, Warsaw.
    Photograph of Magdalena Abakanowicz at work in 1966. Photo: © Estate of Marek Holzman.

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    French Designer and Provocateur Michèle Lamy Is Unveiling a High-Art Skate Park in West Hollywood

    Carpenters Workshop Gallery is opening a high-art skatepark in West Hollywood tonight with “Turning Tricks” (November 17, 2022–January 14, 2023). The group show was organized by Michèle Lamy, the designer and provocateur (and wife of Rick Owns) behind the creative collectives LamyLand and OwensCorp.
    Five undisclosed pro skateboarders will be at tonight’s opening event to shred their boards on the show’s twelve skateable sculptures, created by pro skater Danny Minnick (the exhibition’s co-curator) alongside artists and designers Skyler DeYoung, Chris Benfield, and Lamy’s daughter Scarlett Rouge.
    Typically, these skaters would charge appearance fees, but they’re friends of Lamy, who maintains a rich cadre of collaborators, and always brings a posse to art openings. Rapper A$AP Rocky credits her with shaping his career.
    Lamy and Carpenters Workshop Gallery partner Loïc Le Gaillard are also friends. As the two talked recently, Lamy expressed a desire to push art’s existing limits, transcending mere objects to encapsulate an ephemeral but palpable vibe. Skating, and its community, came to mind.
    “I’m fighting for a new way of being,” she said in a statement. “I’m ready to imagine a new world.”
    Rouge at work, on site at Carpenters Workshop Gallery. Courtesy of the gallery.
    “I have always been about creating spaces for people and inviting artists to create, and this project is an extension of my world,” Lamy continued. “We are all on this ride together.”
    Even though skateboarding only gained mainstream appeal in the early 1990s, Los Angeles has been a hub for it since the 1950s. “No sport is more connected to Southern California than skateboarding,” the Los Angeles Times wrote late last year.
    L.A. residents emptied their pools during droughts. Some turned them into DIY skateparks. Last summer, the sport made its Olympic debut at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
    Still, lingering associations between skateboarding and pesky kids—or worse, crime—persist.
    Between the gallery and artists, everyone hopes that the communal energy of tonight’s “Turning Tricks” opening carries on well throughout the show’s run over the next two months, leaving a social memory as much a design one.
    To that end, they’ve filled out the gallery by fabricating full-on ramps, while reimagining trash cans and fire hydrants as objets d’art and replicating L.A.’s most iconic skating sites.
    An installation view of Danny Minnick, Skater shredding H-Street Office Ramp (2022). Courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
    In Sandpit, for instance, Rouge reanimated a legendary skating site off the Venice Beach boardwalk, once “a notorious intersection between graffiti and skating, with worldwide influence,” the work’s description explained. Legends like Henry Sanchez, Guy Mariano, and Eric Koston practiced there, until the city razed the site in 2000.
    Atelier OwensCorp built their own iteration of the Lockwood Elementary School, whose concrete playground remain a popular skating spot, using cinder blocks, asphalt, a chain-link fence, paint, and concrete. Minnick, meanwhile, honors skate and apparel company H-Street, founded in 1986 by pro skaters Tony Magnusson and Mike Ternasky, by recreating their notorious in-house quarterpipe from plywood, masonite, and steel.
    The artists also all painted, carved, and re-shaped a total of 65 skate decks from maplewood for collectors at the occasion. Every single one comes with its own print of relief oil-based ink on archival Arches cover paper.
    “The essence of skateboarding will be seen and heard for the first time through objects as they should be, without being considered a nuisance, an outlaw, or outsider activity,” Minnick mused in the release. “The exhibition brings the artist energy that has been such a big part of my life to a format for all to consider and enjoy.”
    “Turning Tricks” is on view at Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Los Angeles through January 14, 2023.
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    David Hockney Put a Personal Touch on the New Immersive Experience Based on His Work Coming to London

    The boom in immersive art shows has seen some of the world’s best-loved masterpieces reimagined on the largest scale, and toured to audiences worldwide. The focus so far has been on historical works, with artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Gustav Klimt and Frida Kahlo among the most popular subjects. 
    David Hockney may now be one of the first living artists to get the same treatment for a new show, “Bigger & Closer (not smaller and further away)” opening early next year in London. 
    Installation of David Hockney’s Gregory Swimming Los Angeles March 31st 1982 at “David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away),” an immersive art experience at Lightroom in King’s Cross, London. Photo: courtesy of Lightroom, ©David Hockney.
    Hockney has been able to take the reins and direct this new immersive journey, inviting visitors into some of his most renowned paintings, from the swimming pools he painted during his years in California to the vast canyons he captured in the American West.
    Photographs and polaroid collages will also be used to tell visitors about the artist’s life, transporting audiences between Yorkshire, where Hockney is from, to Los Angeles, where he moved to in the 1960s, and Normandy in southern France, where he now lives. 
    These insights and many more will stretch across six themed chapters, which are set against commentary from Hockney and a custom score by the American composer Nico Muhly.
    Installation of The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twentyeleven) (1998) at “David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away),” an immersive art experience at Lightroom in King’s Cross, London. Photo: courtesy of Lightroom; © David Hockney.
    “The world is very, very beautiful if you look at it, but most people don’t look very much,” Hockney muses in one voice-over. “They scan the ground in front of them so they can walk, they don’t really look at things incredibly well, with an intensity. I do.”
    Three years in the making, this mega production won’t be the first time Hockney has kept an eye on tech trends and adapted his painting practice to new media. He began using computer software to draw as early as the 1980s and, since 2009, he has regularly exhibited portraits, landscapes and still-lifes that were made on an iPad.
    David Hockney viewing the model box containing an immersive view of his work August 2021, Landscape with Shadows. Photo: Mark Grimmer, © David Hockney.
    The show will open in Lightroom, a new four-story exhibition space for immersive experiences in the creative district of Kings Cross, organized by the London Theatre Company and 59 Productions. “David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller and further away)” runs from January 25 to April 23, 2023 and tickets are now on sale at £25 ($30) for adults and £15 ($18) for students.
    London is also home to Frameless, another venue for experiential art forms that opened in Marble Arch in September. The arrival of Lightroom suggests that the immersive art craze shows no sign of disappearing, following major investment in this fast growing sector.
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    in Street Art

    A Mural by Reka in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    James Reka is a young contemporary Australian artist based in Berlin, Germany. His origins lie in the alleyways and train lines of Melbourne’s inner suburbs where he spent over a decade refining his now-emblematic aesthetic. His figurative work has come to represent the beginnings of a new style of street art: clean, unique and not necessarily on the street (much to his mother’s joy).Surrealist, abstracted creatures emerge from the depths of Reka’s mind, communicating through strong lines, dynamic movement and bold colours. These figures haunt the laneways over four continents, clambering up brick walls and giving the urban environment a literal fresh coat of paint. Their personalities mirror those of their often-decrepit metropolitan context, opening a dialogue between the viewer and their surroundings.The wall was made in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.See more images below and check back with us soon for more updates. More

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    in Street Art

    La güerita, 2022 by Ana Barriga in Plasencia, Spain

    Ana Barriga is a Spanish artist. She lives and works in Madrid. Her works attempt to balance reason and emotion, capturing the energy that arises from their intersection. Barriga tries to focus on the shared environment between artists and children, using elements such as children’s toys, colourful decorative objects and other items used in everyday life. Her approach to her subjects is filled with irony, humour and playfulness from which unpredictable and new situations that don’t fit the rules emerge.The eighteen meters high wall was painted in Plasencia, Spain.The project collaborated with Invasion Street Art Festival, Misterpiro and Jaime Urdiales.See more images below and check back with us soon for more updates.Invasion Street Art Festival. Foto: Andy Solé More

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    “A Famous Milanese Renaissance Girl, with Red Brushstrokes, Pixel and a Pointer” by Ozmo in Milan, Italy.

    Born in Pontedera, Italy Ozmo made his first steps in the comics world, but since early 90s he soon moved his focus on writing and painting. In short time his tag would have become one of the most famous and respected ones in the Italian graffiti scene. A special reportage dedicated to Ozmo on ‘Aelle’ – the most famous urban culture underground mag in Italy – will consacrate him as one of the leading figure in the national underground writing scene.Ozmo is now based in Paris. He returns to Milan, the adopted city that has welcomed him in the most decisive years of his artistic career, and he does so symbolically bringing home a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance art: The Lady with the Ermine of Leonardo da Vinci which has been in Poland for two centuries.To dominate the view of the Milanese architecture of Corso XXII Marzo, ready to attract and direct the gaze of passers-by, from now on there will be, in fact, A famous Milanese Renaissance girl, with red brushstrokes, pixel and a pointer, a monumental reinterpretation and recontextualization of the Leonardesca Lady, unchanged in its beauty and elegance of the fifteenth century, but enriched by the journey that, through the centuries, led her to be reborn under the gaze of an artist of today, to relive in the homage that Ozmo makes to the city and its history.It is precisely in Milan, in fact, that Leonardo da Vinci creates some of his most famous masterpieces, capable of changing Italian portraiture. In this context of research and innovation, of artistic and cultural ferment, his Lady with Ermine was born.The project continues the conceptual and aesthetic path undertaken many years ago, which holds together the link between the artist and the historical, historical-artistic and cultural Italian tradition, and his ever-living desire to actualize it.  A famous Milanese Renaissance girl, with red brushstrokes, pixels and a pointer, is enriched with new artistic elements and new points of reflection.With tools typical of the computer world, such as pixels and pointers, but made with brush and spraypaint, Ozmo conceals, highlights or changes elements of the original work, bringing it into contact with the current era and the languages recognized by today’s society. With a red sign that runs along the surface, Ozmo consolidates the link between the pictorial intervention and the architectural context, and harmoniously binds all the artistic elements, giving the city a new public work.The mural  has been realized with the support of the association Street is Culture and the social cooperative of EST – Enosteria sociale , which, in a public housing in the center of Milan, recovers people from difficult contexts, and  it does so by integrating itself in the environment through the art and work. It’s precisely his mission, to bring art where it is not usable, to give life to the collaboration with Ozmo. The realization of the work was curated by Annalisa Ferraro, with the collaboration of RiparTIAMO ApsTake a look at more images below and check back with us soon for more updates. More