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    in Exhibitions

    Berlin’s Embattled Humboldt Forum Has Opened Its Doors at Last. Can It Persuade Its Critics to Give It a Chance?

    The highly anticipated—and highly criticized—Humboldt Forum will finally open its doors to the public in Berlin tomorrow after years of delays.
    The €680 million ($802 million) cultural institution will open with six shows this week, followed by a staggered rollout of further exhibitions in the fall and early next year.
    Since its originally planned opening in December was effectively canceled due to the pandemic, the building has stood empty, apart from the curators working inside. Patio chairs dotting the main courtyard did little to add warmth to the Franco Stella-designed building, which is both a plaster-cast ode to the Prussian palace that once stood on the site before World War II, and a hyper-modern structure of cold concrete.
    The opening of the more closely watched parts of the institution—the ethnological and Asian art collections—will open on September 22. Early next year, a temporary exhibition of the Berlin State Museums’ Benin bronze collection, one of the largest in the world, will open, and Germany has pledged to begin restitution that year to Nigeria. Further sections of those collections’ displays will open at the same time, including those related to South America, Islam, and southeast Asia.
    Exhibition view “terrible beauty” © Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss / Photo: Alexander Schippel
    Society and Nature
    For now, the first and second floors of the building will host large-scale public shows that address the intersection of society and nature. The building’s name comes from Alexander von Humboldt, a Prussian-era scientist and naturalist who is thought to have been one of the first to discuss human-induced climate change. (He was also complicit in colonial-era expeditions where he carried out his research.)
    Highlights of the Humboldt’s inaugural program include “Terrible Beauty: Elephant. Human. Ivory,” an exhibition that looks at the history of the ivory trade, and spans the millennia of human’s fascination with the animal part.
    “Ivory has a unique relationship with nature and culture,” said one of the show’s co-curators, Alberto Saviello. “It is a symbol of purity, wealth, and power, but also ruthless exploitation of nature and humans.” The show drives home the illicit industry’s global scale. Historical objects, like the first-known sculpture of mammoth, carved with mammoth tooth ivory, dates back 40,000 years, a delicately carved jewelry box from 16th-century Sri Lanka, and a crushed car from a failed elephant rescue mission are set within a blood-red space. In the entire exhibition, one can hear the labored breathing of a dying elephant.”
    Exhibition view “terrible beauty” © Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss / Photo: Alexander Schippel.
    After all the criticism around how objects arrived into the Humboldt’s collections, the exhibition remains slightly opaque on provenance. More often than not, details about the source of objects are not included in the show’s many instructional panels; instead, they’re tucked into red drawers that one needs to pull out to read.
    Despite its sturdy exterior, the Humboldt Forum lies on increasingly fragile ethical ground. In the more than 10 years since its plans were drawn up, awareness around Europe’s long history of illicit acquisitions has moved from academic backwaters into mainstream news headlines.
    One of the most engaging shows is the Humboldt Lab’s second-floor exhibition “After Nature,” which takes a novel and deconstructed approach to a scientific show about how climate change and species extinction is interrelated with democracy.
    Kulturprojekte Berlin and Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin. Photo: Alexander Schippel.
    Glass vitrines hang from a gridded metal track on the ceiling in rows. The interactive exhibition is a sort of wunderkammer of diverse items that reconsider the political ideologies inextricably entwined in scientific research. The show’s curator, Johanna Stapelfeldt, described it as an act of “ambivalent remembering.”
    Of course, even with the inaugural offering of ambitious exhibitions, the institution continues to draw discussions about whether it should even exist at all. The German Democratic Republic’s parliament, the Palast der Republik, stood in the same spot until 2006, when it was torn down to make way for what would become the Humboldt Forum. An exhibition in the cellar tries to offer some reconciliatory perspective by showing the many manifestations of the site from the relics that were found in the dig—conveying how the location has an even longer history than the Prussian era. Through its halls, small pieces of the Palast der Republik hang or appear on special displays. (A permanent video panorama by design bureau chezweitz tells the story of the location’s history more effectively.)
    “I don’t think anyone would have torn down the Palast der Republik today,” said Alfred Hagemann, head of the Humboldt’s “history of the site” department.
    It is indeed encouraging to finally see the museum’s intellectual prowess working in concert with the building, but how well it will all play out given the challenges that remain in public opinion is an open question.
    The Humboldt Forum in Berlin opens July 20.
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    in Exhibitions

    Nairy Baghramian’s New Marble Sculpture in the Berkshire Wilds Reflects on the Strength and Fragility of the Human Body—See It Here

    As we wrote last week, the Clark Institute’s outdoor show “Ground/work” is one of summer’s more exciting events, offering visitors the chance to engage with bold public artworks outdoors, at the institution’s sprawling Berkshires campus. 
    And one of the show’s most fun and resonant works is that of Iranian-German artist Nairy Baghramian, whose installation Knee and Elbow (2020) represents the feeling many of us in the last year can share. In the piece, two abstracted forms of two of the body’s primary joints—carved from marble and steel—face off and work together at the same time, suggesting the dual modes of strength and fragility that people around the world have had to endure throughout the pandemic.
    The blocks of marble are “heavily veined and pitted on their surface, suggesting, in the artist’s words, ‘possible collapse,’” according to the show’s notes. At the same time, their power—the ability of knees and elbows to hold the body up—is also emphasized through the work’s dynamic, humorous nature, suggesting themes of hope, possibility, and change. Furthermore, the artist sought to shift the joints from their usual orientation so they could “rest and recover from the stress and impact of daily use.” 
    The Clark also notes that Baghramian—who has long dealt with issues of vulnerability, power, and authority through her careful deconstructions of the human form—sought to build the artwork near the top of Stone Hill’s open meadow, to which visitors must hike. The sculpture’s vantage point, the show notes, “encourages viewers to find a moment of contemplation and pause as the panorama of the landscape unfolds below.”   
    See images of the work below.
    Nairy Baghramian’s “Knee and Elbow” (2020). Photo courtesy the Clark Institute.
    Nairy Baghramian’s “Knee and Elbow” (2020). Photo courtesy the Clark Institute.

    The artist on a site visit to the sculpture. Photo courtesy the Clark Institute.
    Behind the scenes into the making of the sculpture. Photo courtesy the Clark Institute.
    A portrait of the artist. Photo courtesy the Clark Institute.
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    in Street Art

    Clown Skateboards – Guest Art Project – Adam Neate

    Adam Neate, an old friend of Clown Skateboards and self-taught artist, is next up to bat in their Guest Art Project series. Neate’s boards are a reflection of the ‘family’ that is the skateboarding community. By celebrating gender fluidity in today’s society, the triptych proclaims that love and mutual support are far more important than gender.Putting this ethos into practice, this edition of Family will be pressed at the Far Skate Foundation, a charitable organisation which empowers young people through skateboarding, and will be hand screened by Clown’s master printer Tommy.An acclaimed British painter, conceptual artist and one of the world’s best-known street artists, Adam Neate began his career painting the streets, whilst also skating them.“Those years were my art school,” says Neate. “I learnt about colour and composition simply through practice. The critics were there every day…”Now based in São Paulo, Brazil, his work is displayed in collections around the world. A fearless painter, he has developed his own language of ‘Dimensional Painting’ where the viewer moves and changes the painting depending on their vantage point, to get the full multi-dimensional effect.‘Reconnecting with Adam on the Guest Art Project was always a priority for us. When he first delivered the new artwork for the boards, we were sold with not just the art, but also the message. Skateboarding is such a great support network and loving community and we think these boards truly reflect how open skateboarding is to all communities. It is just such a perfect fit for what we are about and what we are trying to achieve through ‘IN Action’.’ – Jeff Boardman, Clown Skateboards FounderThe Family sets will be the most complex hand-printed series in Clown’s history. Each set is made using 26 screens and hand-produced in a way that does justice to the original artwork. This will be a signed and numbered edition of only 35 sets.Adam’s Family is released on the 20th July at the Guest Art Project – www.clownskateboards.com/guest-art-projectwww.instagram.com/clown_skateboardswww.instagram.com/adam_neate More

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    in Street Art

    BodyWork – INSA

    BodyWork is a brand new collection from the UK-based artist INSA – the show opened recently at Oakland Gallery in the town’s Victoria Quarter and runs until Sunday September 5.Held in collaboration with New Brighton Street Art and Motobüro, the multi-space show features new original works including prints, paintings and sculptural pieces.At the centre of the show is a very rare 1968 Lincoln Continental MK3, Cartier Edition, which has been customised by the artist and automotive specialists Motobüro, who oversaw the restoration of the vintage car, which has taken more than six months to complete. Roughly 18 layers of candy paint, metal flake, pearlescent white, lacquer and countless hours sanding for the flawless paint job and then INSA together with sculptor Kristian Movahed created the boot piece transforming this car into a rolling art display.In addition to the Lincoln Continental, BodyWork also includes a Harris Magnum motorbike, treated with as much care and attention to detail as the car, hand-crafted wooden sculptures and light-boxes all featuring INSA’s trademark ‘graffiti fetish’ artwork.Explaining the work in the show, INSA said: “Maybe it’s lockdown or maybe it’s the fact I’ve mainly been working in the digital/public space for the last few years that for this exhibition I really wanted to make some physically tangible pieces. I wanted to enjoy the craft and hard work of making real things. To bring together my past commentary on identity, commodification and object fetishism with an appreciation of the material within it. Extracting the material from materialism. As simple as enjoying the wood of the surfboard or the metal of the car – the bodywork of physical labour.”Robert Jones, creative director of New Brighton Street Art added: “We are delighted to have been able to work with INSA on this important and significant show, which brings together some truly innovative and ground-breaking content. It not only cements our collaboration and relationship with one of the leading exponents of contemporary art, but also acknowledges New Brighton’s status as a credible and creative destination.”A graduate of Goldsmith’s, London, INSA established his art career more than 20 years ago as a graffiti writer. In 2004 he rejected the traditional graffiti style and began painting the instantly recognisable high heel shoe. Graffiti Fetish went on to appear on buildings around the world from LA to Lagos. It also appeared on luxury items including designer footwear, clothing and bespoke interiors.Always keen to push boundaries and innovate further, INSA has gained a huge following for his work globally, and which he has expanded through his recent experiments with social and digital media as well as product collaborations with brands including Nike. His work is held in the V&A permanent collection, and has also been presented at Tate Britain, London.www.instagram.com/insa_gramwww.oaklandgallery.co.ukwww.gif-iti.com More

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    in Exhibitions

    Get an Exclusive Look at the Totally Wacky NFTs Urs Fischer Is About to Sell Through Pace (And Do Your Best to Make Sense of Them)

    Next week, half a dozen newly minted NFTs by artist Urs Fischer will go on view in a digital exhibition hosted by Pace, another step in the gallery’s full-fledged commitment to crypto-art.  
    The show, presented in collaboration with the Loïc Gouzer-founded Fair Warning auction app and the digital market platform MakersPlace, will live on Pace’s website. 
    Each of Fisher’s NFTs features two quotidian objects floating in a blank white space like a trippy screensaver, constantly converging with one another to form Frankensteinian compound-sculptures: a broccoli stalk bisecting a green sponge, a showerhead merging with a red Nike shoe. Weird stuff. 
    The works belong to “CHAOS,” a larger series of 501 NFTs produced by the Swiss artist.
    For buyers, each piece comes with a reference rendering, access to the raw data behind the visuals, and instructions for how to exhibit it.
    “The individual objects selected for ‘CHAOS’ are engineered, cultured, or manufactured by humans and sourced from the physical world and transformed into a 3D digital model through 3D scanning,” the project’s website explains. They’ll be offered up for $50,000 a pop, according to the gallery. 
    The artist will offset the carbon emissions involved in the minting of each work through a partnership with the nonprofit Conservation International. 
    Urs Fischer, CHAOS #23 Splendor (2021). Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
    Fischer debuted “CHAOS” in April when he partnered with Pace to sell the first entry in the series, CHAOS #1 Human, which depicts a lighter colliding with an egg.
    The work sold through Fair Warning for $97,700. (The collaboration reportedly caused a rift between the artist and his longtime dealer, Gagosian.) Pace did not disclose the prices for the new NFTs.
    The first 500 “CHAOS” works will be unveiled over the course of several months. After that, a capstone 501st artwork, composed of all the objects in the pieces that came before it, will be minted. 
    Among mega-galleries, Pace has been perhaps the most ardent embracer of the crypto art wave. Earlier this month, the gallery announced that it would accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment for all artworks, physical or digital. And in September, it will launch its own dedicated platform for selling artists’ NFTs.
    See more examples from Fisher’s upcoming show below.
    Urs Fischer, CHAOS #20 Sashay (2021). Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
    Urs Fischer, CHAOS #22 Simulacrum (2021). Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
    Urs Fischer, CHAOS #24 Analysand (2021). Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
    Urs Fischer, CHAOS #25 Gratis (2021). Courtesy of Pace Gallery.
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    in Exhibitions

    The Golden Lion-Winning Climate Opera ‘Sea & Sun’ Is Going on a World Tour, Starting With Berlin and New York

    Lithuania’s Golden Lion-winning performance at the 2019 Venice Biennale, which drew snaking lines around the pavilion, is going on a world tour.
    Sun & Sea (Marina), a poignant live performance that sees opera singers and volunteers sing songs that address our delicate relationship to the planet, will travel to the U.S. after its showing in Berlin this weekend.
    The performance will premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music from September 15 to 26. (Tickets go on sale July 27.) After its New York run, the production will tour Arcadia Exhibitions in Philadelphia, the Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, ARTnews reported. (Dates beyond New York have yet to be confirmed.)
    The collaboration between Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytėm, struck a chord with the public as they looked down from a balcony to watch performers stretch out on an artificially sandy beach, bake in fake lights, and sing harmonies about their mundane existences, which the pavilion’s curator Lucia Pietroiusti described as “songs of worry and of boredom, songs of almost nothing.”
    Only slowly does the reality of climate change set in for the viewer, as a wealthy mother brags about seeing the “bleached, pallid whiteness” of the Great Barrier Reef and a young man complains that it did not snow on Christmas, and instead “felt like it could be Easter.”
    Co-Artistic Directors, Helen Turner and Pablo Wendel with their dog Coal in the Bauhaus swimming hall, which will be the location of the Sea & Sun performances in Berlin this weekend. © Lukas Korschan for The FACE.
    The performance is likely to resonate even more after the pandemic, a time when our anxieties about natural calamities reached a fever pitch and immersive performances were impossible to stage.
    The Berlin chapter, set to take place July 17 and July 18 at an abandoned Bauhaus swimming pool outside of Berlin, sold out in two days. (Walk-ins may be accommodated, organizers say, but there are no guarantees.)
    “It’s been two years in the making, and after four postponements, it’s completely surreal that its finally happening,” said Helen Turner, the director of E-Werk Luckenwalde, which is organizing the event. “The piece is powerful, especially in the location we have, an abandoned swimming hall, which speaks to ecological catastrophe and increasing feelings of fragility and vulnerability.”
    While 5,000 people normally would have been able to attend, social-distancing restrictions will limit that number to 1,500. Masks must be worn on site.
    The performance is well-suited to the E-Werk location—an arts center that doubles as an electrical power station, fueling both the surrounding area and its own art projects.
    But even with clean energy, the production is… quite the production. For just two days, it cost €130,000 (around $153,500) to get off the ground, according to Turner, and involved 60 performers and cultural workers (not to mention tons of sand, which was carted in from nearby). Organizers in Venice estimated the original version cost $3 a minute to stage.
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    in Street Art

    “CONVECTIVE MOTIONS” by Gola Hundun in Milan, Italy

    Italian artist Gola Hundun just recently finished his latest mural in Milan, Italy during  the INNESCHI Festival. The project is dedicated to the universal cyclic movement. The composition starts from a central element, identified as cosmic energy, a solar force that unravels centrifugally.Leaves are painted as if they were part of a fire explosion, following and growing the movement which consequently generates new ones, involving other celestial bodies, represented on the contiguous facades, symbolically returning towards the central sun in a perpetual cyclical movement. The three stars represent the three circles of the Celtic Triskele.The motion represented overcomes its two-dimensionality and becomes real, physical and tangible through the call of the avifauna, invited to take part in the universal movement through the installation of clay nests I realized with the citizens of Vimodrone according to the needs of the species of birds of the area indicated by LIPU Milano.The whole composition includes some endemic plants (useful for insects) and some grass, bushes, hornbeams, dogwoods, hazels, hawthorns and an English oak placed in axis with the tree painted on the wall. The tree of life represented is the same you can find into monotheistic or rather pagan religions. The two trees will be set in two movement: the painted one will be crystallized where as the real tree will grow up inexorably.The mural will be gradually hidden by the vegetation growing that will be set as a curtain – representing the time. The artwork can be put itself into the eternal cycle of life, hence it can not be defined as done, due to its vulnerability to the universal movement of existence.Gola Hundun’s work shows the relationship between human beings and the biosphere. This consideration combined with the conscious decision to live as a vegetarian since the age of 16, positions the artist and his work closer to both the animal and human spheres. He explores themes such as interspecies communication, shamanism, ecology, a return to the earth, vegetarianism, and spirituality.Check out below for more photos of “Convective Motions”. More

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    Alex Harsley Spent a Half Century Championing Other Photographers. Now, at 83, the Art World’s Gaze Has Finally Turned to Him

    Alex Harsley’s new exhibition, a survey of his more than six-decade photography career at Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works, is a big deal. In terms of scope, it’s likely the biggest of his life. And yet, the octogenarian artist isn’t exactly taking a victory lap. 
    “I’ve moved far beyond that stuff,” he says, referring to the retrospective nature of the show, which includes New York street photos, arty portraits, and experiments in video from the 1950s through to today. “I’m into a whole different area [in terms of] exhibiting now.”
    We‘re sitting inside the 4th Street Photo Gallery, a cramped storefront space in the East Village overstuffed with old cameras, darkroom gear, and prints—thousands of prints, all lining the walls and stacked in piles of indeterminate age (they might be load-bearing at this point). Harsley has occupied the space for 48 years. 
    “This,” he says, gesturing to the space around him, “this is like an installation.”
    Indeed, 4th Street is like a living, breathing artwork. What has historically been an exhibition space for up-and-coming photographers is, today, more like Harsley’s personal office or studio. At almost all waking hours of the day you can find him in there working—scanning slides, editing photos, hanging and rehanging his work. At 83, his days of roaming the streets of New York with a camera in hand are mostly over, but he has scores of archives still to work through. 
    “Alex is really unsentimental about his own work,” said Vivian Chui, Pioneer Works’s director of exhibitions who co-curated the show with Harsley’s daughter, Kendra Krueger. “He really just wants to make images. He’s not thinking about his legacy, he’s not thinking about where his work was. He’s always much more focused on where his work is going.”
    Alex Harsley, Nite Meetings. Courtesy of the artist.
    Harsley was born outside of Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1938, and grew up on a rural cotton farm. Only one or twice a month did he see a car or electricity, he recalled. That is, until age 10, when he moved with his mother to New York. 
    Following a stint in the army in his late teens, Harsley moved back to the city, bought his first camera, and learned his way around the darkroom while working as a staff photographer at the district attorney’s office. Then the young photographer was off: churning out 35mm pictures of New York’s faces and places; capturing activists, athletes, and musicians in action.
    In 1971—half a century ago this year—Harsley founded Minority Photographers Inc., an artist-run non-profit based in his apartment that showed the work of up-and-coming image-makers. Two years later came the group’s headquarters: a derelict street-level space offered by the city on the cheap, thanks to Minority Photographers’ 501c3 status. That was the birth of 4th Street Photo. It’s the same space Harsely’s sitting in today. 
    Alex Harsley, Playing In Chinatown (1970). Courtesy of the artist.
    So out of place in the now hyper-gentrified neighborhood is 4th Street that it’s easy to walk past the spot and not even see it, the way you would a travel agency or a phone booth or other neighborhood vestige. And yet, Harsley still gets his fair share of walk-ins coming to look at his work; many even buy it. During our interview, a mother dressed in athleisure came in to pick up a couple of prints for her college-age daughter, who had just moved to the neighborhood. I asked if they’d seen the show at Pioneer Works. They said they had no idea how to get to Brooklyn.  
    For Harsley, an artist largely ignored by museums and galleries in his career, passersby looking to purchase a piece of New York history are his clients. And he’s okay with that. “It’s not about me and my name,” he said. “It’s about the content. So I like to stay behind the [work].”
    But that’s not to say the photographer doesn’t have fans in the art world. If off-the-street visitors are one-half of Harsley’s collector base, then the other half is fellow artists, many of whom were affiliated at some point with 4th Street Photo or Minority Photographers.
    Alex Harsley, Cousins (1980). Courtesy of the artist.
    For generations of up-and-coming photographers in the 1970s through the turn of the century, 4th Street was a site of community, mentorship, and—perhaps most importantly—wall space. Among those who have shown in the gallery are Dawoud Bey, David Hammons, Eli Reed, and Andres Serrano, while others known to have frequented the space include Robert Frank, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Cynthia MacAdams. 
    Harsley, for his part, has stories about all of them—and he’d surely be happy to share them should you stop by. (Bey was a “serious hustler,” he said with admiration; Frank “sold his soul to the devil.”) But listen in and you may detect a latent tinge of bitterness, too. It’s the chip on the shoulder speaking: success never came to Harsley the way it did those heavyweights, even though he considered himself a mentor to many of them. 
    “When I started Minority Photographers, I had to leave myself behind. I worked very hard at helping other people become successful,” he said. “But in the course of all of that I had to sacrifice my own interests.”
    The mood hung heavy for a second, before Harsley lit it up with a joke: “If I had known I was going to be in the same place [50 years later], I would’ve said, ‘Let’s do something else!’” 
    Alex Harsley, Fashion Shoot (1972). Courtesy of the artist.
    “I don’t know if I believe that,” Chui said when I recalled this comment to her. It’s not that Harsley forfeited a great legacy in the name of 4th Street and Minority Photographers; those projects are his legacy. “The nonprofit and the gallery were so special,” she said, “it’s hard to imagine him having not done that.”
    “Alex Harsley: The First Light From Darkness” is on view now through August 22, 2021 at Pioneer Works.
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