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    in Exhibitions

    Artist Arthur Jafa Takes an Abstract Turn in His First New Film Since His Golden Lion-Winning Project for the Venice Biennale

    This weekend, a beloved New York art institution came back for one night in a big way. Up on 127th Street, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise reopened its doors for the first time since shuttering in summer 2020 to present the American debut of artist Arthur Jafa’s new film, AGHDRA (2021).
    Though the first floor offered its own excitements—Rirkrit Tiravanija cooked masses of paella for the crowd, followed by a party complete with several dance-offs between artists—the fourth floor of the space was where the magic really happened.
    At this stage in Jafa’s career, any new work is something of an event. This film is his first in three years and follows Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death (2016), which made him a sensation, and The White Album (2018), which won the Golden Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. It arrived in New York with little fanfare—and no advance press attention—via an Instagram post on Jafa’s page.
    AGHRDA (2021) significantly slows down the artist’s typical rapid-fire collaged imagery set to a maximal score, instead calling on viewers to lose themselves in one droning horizon. Unlike his previous work, its imagery is entirely computer-generated, not found.
    Jafa’s visual language may have shifted toward the abstract in this piece, but it’s also part of the same conversation he’s been having for years. This time around, he interrogates Afrofuturism as the very matter that creates Earth breaks down, while calling back to the transatlantic slave trade.
    A portion of the new film, then still in progress, was previewed at a MoMA PS1 event in January 2020, and the full version debuted at Jafa’s retrospective at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art this past spring. It is on view in New York until December 5.
    Arthur Jafa, AGHDRA (2021). Photo: Annie Armstrong.
    For a lengthy 85 minutes, AGHDRA will keep you staring directly at the sun. Computer-generated waves emulate the ocean turned black, the texture of which has alchemized into a material that looks like coal or cooled lava. The sun moves through both day and night in a toxic haze.
    The longer you watch, the more you feel your breath constrict. Eventually, the waves periodically rise to block out the sun—not quite providing relief from it, but rather instilling a feeling of dread. Earlier this year, Jafa foreshadowed AGHDRA‘s darker tone to the New York Times, saying, “I’m an undertaker. I don’t do the uplift thing.”
    The film is a notable evolution for Jafa, who has expressed discomfort with the way Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death, a found-media video collage about Black life, was so enthusiastically embraced by white audiences. (“People were getting this eight-minute epiphany,” he explained. “Even when people said, ‘Oh I cried,’ the very cynical part of my brain suspected some kind of arrested empathy with regard to the experience of Black folk.”)
    After the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a coalition of 15 museums looped the film on their websites for an entire weekend, its searing jump-cut clips of Black triumph and injustice flashing across screens in the homes of people around the world.
    Jafa’s follow up, the White Album, brought his raw Internet-surfing style to whiteness, juxtaposing clueless YouTube pundits, a sinister paramilitary type, and even his former dealer Gavin Brown.
    With AGHDRA, Jafa continues to resist easy consumption and easy answers. After 85 minutes of staring into Jafa’s sun, perhaps surface-level fans of his work will walk away with a new understanding of what he has to say. But it’s clear they are no longer, and may have never been, the artist’s primary audience.

    “Arthur Jafa: AGHDRA” is on view at 439 W 127th Street, New York, through December 5.
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    in Street Art

    “Open Your Eyes” by Javier Calleja at Nanzuka Underground in Tokyo, Japan

    On November 14th 2021 will be opening an exhibition of  new works at NANZUKA UNDERGROUND (Jingumae, Shibuya, Tokyo).  “Open Your Eyes” marks the artist’s third solo presentation in Japan following his 2018 show “Do Not Touch” (at the former gallery space of NANZUKA UNDERGROUND), and “No Art Here” held concurrently at the two venues of NANZUKA 2G and 3110NZ last year. Calleja’s works are filled with a diverse array of twists and interventions that bring surprise and humor to various events within daily life. Expressing a fondness for the works of René Magritte, the Malaga-based artist references the techniques of the surrealist master in the context of contemporary portraiture, depicting the present-day sitters through his characteristic appropriation of the “BIG EYE.” The changes in color and shifts in scene, as well as the relationship between the facial expressions of his subjects and the texts that accompany them, are aspects that the artist particularly pays close attention to in his work. Furthermore, the overall softness of the setting as well as the play with composition are emphasised further in this body of work, alluring the viewer’s eye towards the narratives suggested by the aforementioned key elements of the work. Continuously confronting life’s difficulties through his sharp-witted creativity and determined to perceive every aspect of life in a positive manner, the new works are becoming that much more relevant in the context of the ongoing global pandemic. Open Your Eyes can indeed be interpreted as a warning against the current state of our world that is becoming more closed and exclusive, and at the same time it is a phrase that appears to present each one of us with the incentive to recognize our own dignity. Highly approachable and could be described as “friendly words of wisdom,” Calleja’s works are permeated with a strong and warm sense of energy that brings encouragement in these difficult times. As we engage with his work and the sheer magnitude of their all-embracing nature, the artist hopes that the viewer becomes aware of their true self.  The exhibition consists entirely of new works. Along with two large three-dimensional works presented inside and outside the gallery, a selection of paintings on canvas and drawings will also be showcased on this occasion. Open Your Eyes will run until 26th of December 2021. More

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    in Exhibitions

    The Vatican Library Just Opened Its First Permanent Contemporary Art Gallery a Stone’s Throw From the Sistine Chapel

    A contemporary art exhibition has opened in a new dedicated gallery in the Vatican Apostolic Library, which is normally only accessible to scholars, and Pope Francis was on hand for its inauguration on November 5. Funded by the heirs of the American philanthropist Kirk Kerkorian, and organized by the Atlanta-based Sanctuary of Culture Foundation, the library’s first public exhibition space is meant to “support the culture of encounter,” according to librarian Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça.
    The inaugural show, titled “Tutti. Umanità in cammino” or “Everyone: Humanity on Its Way,” features work by Italian artist Pietro Ruffo inspired by the most recent papal encyclical, an open letter released to the Catholic clergy and laity that expresses the pope’s views on a particular aspect of church doctrine. The document, titled Fratelli Tutti and published last October, includes the pope’s thoughts on brotherhood and “social friendship”, based on the writings of Saint Francis of Assisi.
    Ruffo was commissioned to create a new work for the gallery, engaging with themes of migration and travel, according to a Vatican statement, “underlining the difficulties and the beauty of the encounter between people of different origins.” The installation The Clearest Way takes over the Vatican Library’s Sala Barberini, with Ruffo’s rolled botanical prints lining the 17th-century wooden bookcases, transforming the room “into a lush tropical forest,” according to the Catholic News Agency.

    De Mendonça said that the Vatican is seeking to strengthen its arts and culture programming through such opportunities of “history meeting the present.” And so, along with Ruffo’s work, the exhibition space includes manuscripts and geographical drawings from the Vatican Library, like a 20-foot-long 17th-century map of the Nile river by Ottoman explorer Evliya Çelebi and Chinese world maps dating to the 16th century.
    “The encounter with the immense patrimony of the Vatican Apostolic Library was for me a journey into knowledge, geography, and the history of humanity,” Ruffo told CNA, adding that “the dialogue between my research and the terrestrial and celestial maps of different eras and cultures outlines a humanity that is increasingly interconnected and responsible for the fragile relationship with its ecosystem.”
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    in Street Art

    “Natura Morta” by REKA in Bari, Italy

    Australian artist James Reka aka “REKA” & “Reka One” has recently finished a mural entitled “Natura Morta” / Still Life in San Paolo quarter of Bari, Italy. ‘Natura Morta’ is an abstract representation of a bowl of sliced fruit and floral elements. The 5-storey mural was invited to take part part of a larger mural project – QM SanPaolo, an urban museoformation project curated by Stefano S. Antonelli and Gianluca Marziani.“This mural marks a new direction in style and content for me, steering away from the figurative to pure abstraction. Looking forward to what is in the near future, Reka stated”James Reka stands as one of Australia’s most respected contemporary artists, having earn’t his place in the National Gallery of Australia’s permanent collection. While currently 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 and pioneering of a new style of street art in Australia as part of the Everfresh crew.Surrealist, abstracted characters emerge from the depths of Reka’s mind, communicating through strong lines, bold colours and post-cubist styling. Theses figures live in the homes and laneways of three continents, clambering up walls and enriching the urban environment with his iconic visual language.With influences in pop culture, cartooning and illustration, Reka’s studio style emerged from his early design practice, featuring striking lines and colour ways. Over time, the logos and symbols he created evolved into more structured, animated forms and evolved to new mediums: murals, photography, and most recently sculpture. More

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    in Street Art

    New Mural by PARBO in Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Lucas Lasnier, aka PARBO recently worked on a new mural in Chacarita, Buenos Aires, Argentina. This mural work arises from talks in the middle of the pandemic with Alejandro the Owner of the coffee sshop “La Nueva Esmeralda”, a classic neighborhood store outside the commercial area of the city.La Nueva Esmeralda coffee shop was on the verge of closing the business during the strict quarantines throughout 2020 in Argentina. Fortunately, thanks to the help of neighbors and customers , who are mostly neighborhood taxi drivers who have this place as their fixed stop.Somehow the quarantine hit us all, in my case, being a visual artist who has been working in public spaces for 20 years, I went from having an active activity in the street to having to articulate my activity strictly indoors in my atelier. Already in 2021 with some airs of change and certain movements in the field of culture with activities that were recovering, I proposed to Alejandro the idea of painting a work on the side of his store, a self-managed work that helps us to resume our activities generating movement and attraction in order to somehow return and break the inertia of the pause imposed by the pandemic” PARBO stated.This mural takes up the old spirit of the early days when we painted not for the applause or for the money, simply for the pleasure of finding an excuse to tell something new on a wall and that is linked to a very particular moment in the world. in which we are living.Lucas Lasnierwas born in Mar del Plata and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a graphic designer and visual artist, professions that develops as founder Director of  KidGaucho.He is a member of a generation of artists who have taken their talents in art and design environments beyond traditional galleries and commercial contexts. He threw paint on the street in 2001, experimenting first with letters and stencil graffiti. Being part of the pioneers in the local street art movement. Its performance is expressed in Buenos Aires and in different cities of Latin America and Europe.Stay tuned for more updates on PARBO and the international street art scene! More

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    in Street Art

    “Home Bodies” Solo Exhibition by Emma Stern at Carl Kostyál Gallery, Stockholm

    Carl Kostyál Gallery | Hospitalet, Stockholm proudly presents “Home Bodies”, New York-based artist Emma Stern’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and first show in Sweden. The exhibition will open on Thursday November 11th and will run until December 3rd. Preview: Thursday November 11th, 5-8 pm.Emma painted the series Home Bodies while living in London at the beginning of 2021. The country was under a strict and prolonged lockdown due to Covid-19 and Emma spent her days between the house and the studio. In this series of paintings, she explores the female body in typical housekeeping activities, questioning gender roles through the idiosyncratic, overly-sexualised poses of her cybers.Borrowing from the visual vocabulary of online niche subcultures such as fursonas, fandom and 3D erotica, Emma Stern plays with the quasi-pornographic representation of women in the virtual world, combining traditional painterly techniques such as monochromatic underpainting and chiaroscuro with virtual 3D programmes and modelling to create eerily anonymous, finely-worked ‘portraits’, reclaiming these man-made avatars for the female domain.“Stern comments on the consequences of biases and preferences, particularly within the male-dominated spheres of software and technology. She further inspects the effects of these biases through the female body as it would be seen in cyberspace. Her dreamlike aesthetic borrows from the visual lexicon of gaming culture, such as those seen in furries, fandom and various erotic 3D art message boards and creates arresting scenes that truly float in space.” Hypebeast, 2021“What my work is most critical of is the inherent inclination toward pornographic (or at least porn-adjacent) representations of women throughout cyberspace. As our virtual selves become ever-more inextricable from our physical selves, I’m interested in how the preferences of the programmers are imposed on virtual female bodies within the largely male-dominated arena of software and technology.” Emma Stern, Cool Hunting, 2019Emma Stern (b. 1992) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a BFA from Pratt Institute’s School of Painting.Recent solo shows include ‘Boy, It Feels Good To Be A Cowgirl’, Almine Rech, Paris (2021), ‘Revenge Body’, Carl Kostyál Gallery, London, ‘‘Slow Fade’, The Newsstand Project, Los Angeles (2020); ‘Works’, Jorge Andrew Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2017); ‘Tabs’, Stream Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2015). Stern has an upcoming solo show at Carl Kostyál, Stockholm in November 2021.Recent group shows include ‘Stockholm Sessions’, Carl Kostyál, Stockholm (2021); ‘Resting Point of Accommodation’, Almine Rech, Brussels (2021); ‘The Artist is Online’, Konig Gallery, Berlin (2021); ‘Friend Zone’, Half Gallery, New York (2021); ‘06’, PM/AM, London (2020); ‘Escapism’, Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York (2020) and ‘American Woman’, Allouche Benias Gallery, Athens, Greece (2020). More

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    in Street Art

    “Tursunay Ziawudun” by Mahn Kloix in Marseille, France

    Street artist Mahn Kloix recently worked on his latest mural in Marseille, France. Located on 200 meter sqaured wall of the telecoms operator Orange and now dominating the scene is a portrait of Tursunay Ziawudun, a Uyghur who testified on her ordeal in the “camps” Chinese.Suspended from his ropes, the artist put the finishing touches to his portrait on October 7, on the immense facade of this building, rue Félix-Pyat, in the heart of one of the poorest districts of the second largest city in France. . And he signed his work on October 8 with a simple stencil, “Tursunay Ziawudun, by Mahn Kloix”.No message beyond this name and face, which the artist painted from an image from a BBC documentary where this 43-year-old woman recounts the rapes she suffered in one of the “camps” set up by the Chinese regime in the western region of Xinjiang, first in 2017, then in 2018.Several human rights organizations have accused Beijing of interning at least one million Uyghurs in Xinjiang in “re-education camps”, subjecting some to forced labor. Amnesty International has denounced “crimes against humanity”.Beijing denies this figure and talks about “vocational training centers” to support employment and fight Muslim extremism in this province which had been affected by attacks attributed to Uyghurs.Under an almost transparent lace veil, the look is soft. With his hand on the cheek, Tursunay Ziawudun seems “looking to the future”: “One of my challenges”, Mahn Kloix explains to AFP, “it is to talk about negative things without falling into the negative, to always give an image of hope”. This woman’s journey has been “violent”, explains the 40-year-old artist, who spent two years in Beijing, when he was still a graphic designer and above all a long-haul traveler. It was through this BBC documentary that he discovered Tursunay Ziawudun’s ordeal. “It took me to the guts.”“This is perhaps the hardest scar to forget”, explains this Uyghur survivor, in her testimony, reviewing her three gang rapes: “I don’t even want those words to come out of my mouth anymore, (…) in fact their goal is to destroy us all”, she asserts, about the Chinese regime’s policy towards the Muslim community in Xinjiang.“My theme today is oppressed minorities”, he explains. On a wall in Marseille, he paints Nüdem Durak, a Kurdish singer imprisoned in Turkey. On a garage door, still in Marseille, it is Yulia Tsetkova, a Russian activist prosecuted for defending the rights of women and LGBT people. In Eauze (Gers), Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish environmental activist. In Paris, on the WALL (Modular, Urban, Reactive) of Oberkampf, a kiss is scandalous, that of Shaza and Jimena, two women who had to flee Dubai where homosexuality is punishable by death.With Tursunay Ziawudun, it is another resistance that he highlights. “Paint this portrait on the walls of the historic telephone operator in France, in the country of the motto Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the country which asserts itself as guarantor of human rights but which continues to trade with China, that makes perfect sense! “, he pleads with irony.Mahn Kloix originally began painting in urban spaces in New York City. Heavily influenced by the street art scene, Kloix’s contemporary fluid and free figuration is also expressed on canvas and paper. He pays tribute to young protesters in Istanbul, Tunisia, and Athens by conveying their similarities in his works. Their portraits are a leitmotif to highlight human and environmental struggles.Take a look below for more photos of “Tursunay Ziawudun”defaultdefaultdefaultdefaultdefaultdefaultdefaultPhoto credits: Fabrice Calmettes More

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    in Exhibitions

    Prospect New Orleans Made ‘a Million Compromises’ to Open. Here’s How Organizers Pulled It Off Without Compromising the Art

    Less than two months before the fifth edition of Prospect New Orleans was set to commence this past August, Hurricane Ida devastated the Louisiana city. The fate of the triennial—which was already postponed a year by the pandemic—was once again up in the air. 
    Looming over the dilemma was a kind of perverse irony. The show’s central theme is about how the cycles of the past shape the present, and Ida no doubt recalled another tropical storm, Hurricane Katrina, from which the inaugural Prospect triennial was born 13 years ago. And so organizers of this year’s event decided to push on, too. 
    “It became evident quite quickly that it was important for us to pursue the exhibition,” said Diana Nawi, who curated the show with Naima Keith. As with so many events canceled over the past year and a half, the city’s residents needed a “mark on the calendar.”  
    “What we’ve heard over and over again is how excited people are for Prospect to be open right now,” added Keith. 
    Diana Nawi and Naima J. Keith, the show’s curators. Courtesy of Prospect New Orleans.
    The first slate of Prospect’s 50-plus projects opened last month, with more to come over the following weeks, including new work by artists Dawoud Bey, Dineo Seshee Bopape, and Nari Ward. 
    The slowed rollout wasn’t ideal, but the landscape of New Orleans’s venues changed dramatically over the last year. It was one of the many concessions Keith and Nawi were forced to make as they battled an onslaught of logistical obstacles. Travel restrictions limited site and studio visit opportunities, while supply chain shortages challenged the production of certain artworks. The show’s catalogue, meanwhile, was delayed for months at a shipping port. 
    “A million compromises were made, but I don’t feel that the show was compromised in the slightest,” said Nawi. “It’s a stronger, better show for everything that has challenged it.”
    Most of the show’s participants evolved their contributions over the last year as well, some due to material considerations, others in the name of addressing the current political moment. 
    An installation of new work by Dawoud Bey Vistors on view in “Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow.” Photo: Jose Cotto.
    Glenn Ligon’s neon sculpture listing the names of toppled confederate statues has been updated with new entries, for instance, while new artworks by Willie Birch and Celeste Dupuy-Spencer reflect the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. (All three artists’ offerings will go on view at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art this week.)
    For her part, Adriana Corral, who had planned to erect an inverted gravestone made of bulletproof glass, decided to reallocate her commission funds, donating the majority to mutual aid in New Orleans. 
    “I think the show is a really moving testament to what people are thinking about, what is important here in New Orleans, and how that reflects out to the larger nation and world at this moment,” said Nawi. It’s critical, she went on, “to bring people here and see what culture means, what the stakes of culture are here.”
    “Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow” is on view now through January 23 at various locations in New Orleans. 
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