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    in Exhibitions

    Abandoned for Decades, a Small and Ecologically Marvelous Island in Finland Is Home to the First-Ever Helsinki Biennial

    In his Pulitzer Prize-winning paean to the natural world, The Overstory, American novelist Richard Powers describes, in Proustian detail, the rich and wondrous stratum of a forest floor. It’s a vital feature of a forest’s ecosystem, with dead wood’s natural decay playing an essential role in maintaining its health and stability. Constantly at work in the moist shadows beneath the understory, the forest floor is bustling with energy, activity—and noise.
    What does the slow decomposition of organic matter sound like? Finnish artist Teemu Lehmsuruusu lets visitors to the inaugural edition of the Helsinki Biennial listen in on the life-giving hum of decay. His solar-powered artwork, House of Polypores (2021), picks up changes on the forest floor via a system of sensors and converts these movements, through organ pipes covered with self-grown mycelium bricks, into meditative drones.
    Like most of the works in the Biennial, the piece is installed on Vallisaari Island, a stunning location in the Helsinki archipelago that, though only a 15-minute ferry ride from the city center, has only recently opened to visitors. Entangled by the region’s geopolitics, it was used as a military fortification by the Swedes in the 19th century, then the Russians, and finally by the Finnish army. Abandoned since the 1990s and cleared by the Finnish Defense Force in 2008, the island has grown so rich and diverse in nature that some areas were deemed off-limits by the biennial in order to protect the organisms that inhabit it.
    Vallisaari, home to the Helsinki Biennial. Photo: Matti Pyykkö.
    “They’re very sensitive,” the biennial’s cocurator, Pirkko Siitari, told a group of journalists while pointing at a lake that has become a habitat to six different species of bats. “All works were developed with environmental concerns and local species in mind.”
    Titled “The Same Sea” to evoke the interconnectivity of all life on Earth, the first Helsinki Biennial opened to the public on June 12 after a pandemic-related one-year delay and with the tall aim of leading the way in responsible exhibition-making. In line with Helsinki’s 2035 carbon neutrality goal, an EcoCompass sustainability management system, developed by the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, has been in use by the biennial team since 2019. (The press trip, for which six journalists were flown in from England, Germany, Holland, and Spain, will be offset in accordance with its guidelines).
    In practical terms, this translates to curators Pirkko Siitari and Taru Tappola focusing on local productions and video installations to reduce shipping. Two large-scale sculptural works by Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade—Pars Pro Toto (2018), shown at the 57th Venice Biennale, and Big Be Hide (2019)—were transported to Vallisaari, but will join Helsinki’s public art collection with a permanent location on the mainland.
    Paweł Althamer, Seven Prisoners (2020). © Maija Toivanen HAM Helsinki Biennial 2021.
    Though abandoned, the island is not free of human activity. When invited to produce a work for the biennial, Paweł Althamer learned that inmates from the open prison on the adjacent island do maintenance work on Vallisaari. He cast six inmates to co-develop and star in the VR film Seven Prisoners (2020), with the seventh played by the artist himself. The result is a magical realist jailbreak adventure that brings the escapees closer to nature, their feminine sides, and themselves. The artwork’s second part is a “making-of” documentary providing insights into the working process, and is more an art-therapy session than strict storyboarding.
    With the biennial’s many open-air installations, the breathtaking and potentially transformative experience of meandering through the island’s lush nature is a well-thought-out curatorial device. It is all the more meaningful, then, to encounter works that illustrate the disastrous effects of global warming on the archipelago.
    Jaakko Niemelä’s installation Quay 6 (2021) consists of a bright red wooden platform. It is shaped like the stone quay it is poised over, supported by 20-foot-tall scaffolding to indicate where the sea level would be if Greenland’s northern ice sheet were to melt completely.
    Samnang Khvay, Preah Kunlong (The Way of the Spirit) (2016–17). © Maija Toivanen HAM Helsinki Biennial 2021.
    Elsewhere, artists mourn mankind’s lost connection with nature. The video installation Preah Kunlong (The Ay of the Spirit) (2016–17) by Samnang Khvay focuses on Cambodia’s indigenous Chong community and their rituals. Installed nearby, the work Here to Hear (2021) is the first artistic collaboration between Sámi dancers Birit and Katja Haarla and their mother, artist and activist Outi Pieski. Inside a cavernous former fortification, they invoke Sámi deities with bass-heavy electronica and traditional handicraft.
    Marked by its former military use, Vallisaari Island is dotted with bunkers and gunpowder cellars, which now house some of the biennial’s artworks. (There’s also a complex system of underground tunnels crisscrossing the island, which remains inaccessible for now.)
    The location’s history is engaged through a number of artworks that touch on soldiers’ experiences and PTSD. Hayoun Kwon’s poignant animation 489 Years (2016) is based on a South Korean soldier’s account of reconnaissance operations in the Demilitarized Zone between the South and the North. She recounts being saved from certain death by noticing the striking beauty of a flower growing out of a landmine he’d nearly detonated. It is estimated that it would take up to 489 years to clear the DMZ of its landmines.
    Hayoun Kwon, 489 Years (2016). © Maija Toivanen HAM Helsinki Biennial 2021.
    Elsewhere on the island, artworks are installed inside the abandoned standard-issue apartments of the Pilot’s House. A series of oil landscapes, still lifes, and a self-portrait in uniform by Topi Kautonen are hung on the walls of the unit in which he used to live when he served as the army’s meteorologist on the island, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and drew inspiration from its dramatic shorelines.
    Kautonen, who later worked as a museum guard, died in 2011. He never got to see his works return to the environment that had inspired them. If the biennial’s approach is any indication, the natural sceneries he had captured will remain protected.
    “The Helsinki Biennial: The Same Sea” is open through September 26, 2021.
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    in Street Art

    New wall by Case Maclaim in Breda, the Netherlands

    International street artist Case Maclaim has created a new wall in collaboration with Blind Walls Gallery in Breda, the Netherlands. The mural is a tribute to NAC supporter and clubicon Hein van Poppel, who volunteered for the local football club for many years.Most people will remember Van Poppel as ‘the man of the corner flags’, as he collected the corner flags after ever match and made a show of it. In the early eighties he realised a football court in his neighbourhood of Westeind where many tournaments were held through the years.Blind Walls Gallery was appointed the ultimate spot for this more: the wall right in front of the football court. Several elements in the mural refer to Hein, NAC and the sense of unity that arose after realising the football court.German mural artist Case Maclaim sketched a situation of a daughter resting on her father’s knees. The girl is exhausted after a day of playing, a reference to the football court. Case also incorporated the corner flags and the NAC-scarf Hein wore during his honorary match in 2013.Case Maclaim is a graffiti painter who relies on his highly developed talent to create pieces that combine brilliant photorealism with a strong note of surrealism.Andres Von Chrzanowski’s artworks transport a strong visual message of movement and unity through overlays of hands in different positions; this movement is not just meant to be the depiction of physical body movement, but also political, societal action. Throughout his oeuvre, Case is creating a subliminal language understood by all, and after all, a hand gesture can tell much more than words ever could.Check out below for more photos of the mural. Photo credits: Edwin Wiekens, Rosa Meininger More

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    in Street Art

    “Growing Wiser” by Telmo Miel in Aalborg, Denmark

    Dutch artistic duo Telmo Miel just finished their latest mural at the 7th edition of the “Out in the Open” festival. The mural entitled “Growing Wiser” is located at the school of Klostermarken in Aalborg, Denmark.“The painting depicts a girl, reading multiple books with as many hands as she needs to hold them. Some books have been read, and stacked on top; There wisdom is gathered, symbolized by the owl. Around the corner is another one behind the books she’s reading, as hidden new skills to obtain.”Telmo Miel is composed of Telmo Pieper and Miel Krutzmann. They are famous for making impressive murals and paintings characterized by hyper-realistic as well as abstract elements.Their work is characterized by its uniqueness, formed by the two different styles of the artists. The work of Miel is rather romantic with picturesque features whereas the work of Telmo is humorous and provocative. Their work also shows a mix of techniques, combining spray paint and paint to create photorealistic, surreal and abstract compositions. Both artists work separately and come together with the sketches to analyse what combinations can be made. The result shows a great sense of technique and style with great attention to perspective and details.Telmo Miel, together with other artists making murals right now at “Out in the Open 2021”, will be opening a group show in collaboration with KIRK Gallery on Saturday. More

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    in Exhibitions

    KAWS Wants His New 18-Foot-Tall Cartoon Couple at Rockefeller Center to Make You Feel Good—See Images Here

    Street art and collectibles sensation–turned art market darling KAWS (born Brian Donnelly) unveiled his latest work at New York’s Rockefeller Center this week: an 18-foot-tall bronze sculpture perched above the ice skating rink where the famed Christmas tree lives during the holidays.
    The piece, commissioned for the occasion, is titled SHARE, and features KAWS’s Mickey Mouse-like “Companion” character carrying a miniature “BFF” figure, a furry Elmo knockoff the artist first introduced in 2016. Both have the artist’s signature crossed-out eyes. The design was first introduced as a series of vinyl figurines in February 2020.
    When deciding what work to create for the public art exhibition, “I was thinking about what this area means to me,” Donnelly said at the sculpture’s unveiling. “The verticality of all the architecture and visiting Rockefeller Center as a kid and looking up and being overwhelmed, I wanted a sculpture that could relate to those feelings.”
    The artist KAWS unveils his new sculpture SHARE at Rockefeller Center in New York. The 18-foot-tall bronze figure features two of the artist’s iconic motifs, “COMPANION” and “BFF.” Photo by Diane Bondareff, courtesy of AP Images for Tishman Speyer.
    “KAWS has created a universal language for anyone who interacts with his instantly recognizable figures,” E. B. Kelly, Tishman Speyer’s managing director overseeing Rockefeller Center, said in a statement. “KAWS’s work subverts expectations while feeling both familiar and stylized.”
    Known for his cartoon aesthetic that draws on pop culture references from the Smurfs to the Simpsons, Donnelly is currently the subject of his first New York museum show, “KAWS: What Party,” on view at the Brooklyn Museum through September 5.
    “What motivates me? I think communication and having a dialogue with people and having opportunities to put my work into the world,” the artist said, describing his work as “optimistic, personal, [and] inviting.”
    In SHARE, the “Companion” is meant to represent a sense of sadness, fear, and isolation, while the smaller “BFF” doll it carries suggest the comfort that so many of us need.
    “With the city opening up again and up coming out of the last year that we did, I feel like it’s a really important time to have public art,” Donnelly added.
    See more photos of the work below.
    KAWS, SHARE at Rockefeller Center, New York. Photo by Diane Bondareff, courtesy of AP Images for Tishman Speyer.
    KAWS, SHARE at Rockefeller Center, New York. Photo by Diane Bondareff, courtesy of AP Images for Tishman Speyer.
    KAWS, SHARE at Rockefeller Center, New York. Photo by Diane Bondareff, courtesy of AP Images for Tishman Speyer.
    KAWS, SHARE at Rockefeller Center, New York. Photo courtesy of AP Images for Tishman Speyer.
    The artist Brian Donnelly, better known as KAWS, unveils his new sculpture SHARE at Rockefeller Center in New York. The 18-foot-tall bronze figure features two of the artist’s iconic motifs, “COMPANION” and “BFF.” Photo by Diane Bondareff, courtesy of AP Images for Tishman Speyer.
    “KAWS: SHARE” is on view at Rockefeller Center, 45 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, August 11–October 8, 2021.
    “KAWS: What Party” is on view at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, February 26–September 5, 2021.
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    in Exhibitions

    The Late Artist and Psychic Paulina Peavy Communed With a UFO to Create Her Work. A New Show Revives Her Otherworldly Legacy

    Many artists throughout history have claimed some sort of otherworldly inspiration (the muses, for instance). But the visionary American artist Paulina Peavy (1901–1999) may be one of the only to attribute her talents to communications with a U.F.O.—specifically one named Lacamo. 
    During Peavy’s lifetime, she enjoyed many early successes, including showing with Los Angeles’s Stendahl Gallery, studying with Hans Hoffman, and exhibiting work at the opening of the San Francisco Museum of Art—all before falling into art world obscurity.
    The new exhibition “Paulina Peavy: An Etherian Channeler,” on view at the Beyond Baroque art center in Venice Beach, is hoping to reintroduce Peavy as a powerful and one-of-a-kind creative force in the nascent southern California art scene of a century ago. 
    Paulina Peavy, Untitled (circa 1930s–1980s). Courtesy of Beyond Baroque and the Paulina Peavy Estate.
    The fascinating show, curated by Laura Whitcomb, marks the first exhibition of Peavy’s work on the West Coast in 75 years, and traces her myriad creations —paintings, films, drawings, intricate masks—from the 1930s into the 1980s. Various ephemera related to theosophy and astroculture are also on view in a series of vitrines, along with some of Peavy’s own writings, which detail the elaborate occultist belief systems that informed her work. 
    Even before UFOs got involved (and we’ll get to that later), Peavy’s story was one against the odds. She was born in Colorado to a miner father and a Swedish immigrant mother. In 1906, the family moved to Portland in a covered wagon following the Oregon Trail. Peavy’s mother would die tragically a few years later. In spite of the gender conventions of the time and her own humble origins, Peavy would attend Oregon State College (now Oregon State University), studying art with Farley Doty McLouth and Marjorie Baltzell. After winning fourth place in a national competition hosted by the Art Students League in New York, Peavy was accepted to the Chouinard Art Institute to study with Hans Hofmann. 
    Paulina Peavy holding masks. Photo by Sam Vandivert. Courtesy of Beyond Baroque.
    In the 1920s, Peavy began to play a pivotal role in the emerging West Coast art scene. She established the Paulina Peavy Gallery, which also functioned as a salon and school, hosting classes for the Los Angeles Art Students League. Like many other artists of the age, Peavy had interests in the supernatural and was loosely affiliated with the occultist art group the Group of Eight, as well as the Synchromists and a group of West Coast surrealists led by artist Lorser Feitelson.
    But her true moment of breakthrough came in 1932, when Peavy, by now the mother of two and in the midst of a divorce, attended a seance at the Santa Ana home of Ida L. Ewing, a pastor of the National Federation of Spiritual Science. During the seance, Peavy claimed to have encountered a discarnate entity she called Lacamo, which she later described as a “wondrous ovoid-shaped UFO.”  It was an event that would have a profound impact on Peavy and her work for the rest of her life—because Lacamo, she said, revealed great universal truths which she attempted to convey through her art. (She sometimes co-signed her works with Lacamo.) 
    Paulina Peavy, Untitled (circa 1980). Courtesy of Beyond Baroque and the Paulina Peavy Estate.
    At the core of these revelations was a complex cosmology consisting of 12,000-year cycles with 3,000-year seasons. The summer of these seasons harkened a kind of utopia in which human beings transcended the limits of their earthly bodies to become spirits, freed from their sexes and entering “one-gender perfection,” as well as a singular cosmic race. 
    She also looked to other artists for inspiration. Peavy was fascinated by the Mexican muralists, particularly José Clemente Orozco who also shared a deep interest in hermetic and indigenous traditions, particularly philosopher José Vasconcelos’s belief that a great cosmic race would be born out of the Americas (Peavy exhibited 30 of her paintings at the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939-40, where Diego Rivera exhibited mural work. She also painted a 14-foot mural titled The Eternal Supper, depicting a “Last Supper” filled with androgynous, racially ambiguous figures for the 1939 San Francisco Exposition.)
    In numerous drawings on view in the exhibition, one sees Peavy alluding to pyramidal shapes and the icon of the Pharaoh, an image that would remain central to her visual lexicon. Within her complex cosmology, the Egyptian era stood as paramount, but one can also see these forms as drawings from the Maya and Aztec lineages heralded by the muralists. 
    Paulina Peavy, Untitled (circa 1930s–1980s). Courtesy of Beyond Baroque and the Paulina Peavy Estate.
    Undoubtedly, the most striking part of the exhibition are Peavy’s paintings, in which androgynous faces appear against darkened foregrounds, veils and wisps of colors hauntingly hovering above. For Peavy, who didn’t title or date her works, these paintings were ongoing revelations, and many are the result of 50 years of experimentation. Starting in the 1930s, Peavy employed a signature technique of layering translucent colors, then later, in the 1970s and ‘80s, she often returned to these paintings adding abstract crystal shapes that she believed would make viewers’ more receptive to transcendence and Lacomo’s unearthly wisdom. 
    “She was instructed [by Lacomo] that her painting could change viewers’ neural pathways so that the viewer could become, over time, a receiver. In other words, the paintings were meant to increase neuroplasticity that would make viewers more psychic and more receptive as channelers themselves,” said Whitcomb. 
    Paulina Peavy, Ghazi Khan (circa 1950s). Courtesy of Beyond Baroque and the Paulina Peavy estate.
    Another fascinating portion of the exhibition includes a collection of intricately adorned masks that offer a window into Peavy’s practice as a channeler. As art objects, these many-layered masks, which she would wear while communicating with Lacamo, straddle both Surrealist objects and indigenous traditions. As with many women artists before her, Peavy also worked in costume design. In college, she had drawn Surrealist costumes for Oregon State’s newspaper. Later, in New York, she helped support herself by making costume designs for a fashion house. 
    Still, everything Peavy created was primarily intended to celebrate her belief system. “Paulina considered herself a philosopher and wrote a number of manuscripts, but most poignantly made films which could elucidate her cosmology,” said exhibition curator Laura Whitcomb. Yet, in her time, these beliefs cast Peavy out of the mainstream art world.
    “She has this incredible pedigree where she showed with Delphic Studios—Alma Reed’s gallery—and alongside Agnes Pelton. Peavy was articulate, intelligent, very well educated in the arts, but when she identified her discarnate entity Lacomo, in the aftermath of the war, when there was this fear and anxiety over the UFO phenomenon and the Roswell incident, everyone dropped her and thought she was absolutely crazy,” explained Whitcomb. “These were dangerous ideas to be affiliated with and could get you in a lot of trouble, even on an FBI list.”
    Peavy at work in her studio. Courtesy of Beyond Baroque.
    Peavy made her way henceforth by selling her work, not through galleries but through Albert Bender’s Space Review, one of the most important periodicals of UFO culture of the era, and showing work in astroculture conventions. “She became something of an astroculture celebrity,” said Whitcomb. “She realized the art world was very fearful.” 
    Now, times have changed and spiritualist women artists such as Hilma af Klint, Georgiana Houghton, and Agnes Pelton are widely celebrated. “In the lead up to the Second World War, many artists were experimenting with the occult—Artaud was casting spells against Hitler. And the past years have been very scary,” said Whitcomb. “I feel like recent interest in the occult had to do with creating a cosmic balance and then we’re reminded of artists’ roles as shamans.” 
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    in Street Art

    “CryptoPunk Pineapple 00001” & “Another Angel” by Ludo in Paris, France

    Parisian street artist have recently shared his new pieces located in the streets of Paris, France. This first mural entitled “CryptoPunk Pineapple 00001” which depicts a pixelated pineapple skull smoking a pipe. His next mural shows an other angel watching the charts in light of the pandemic.As one can see on the murals, Ludo’s work primarily focuses on the combination of nature and human technology. He is constantly active with works across Europe, using trademark monochromatic paste-ups with dripping green highlights. The use of green shades is used as a simple method to gain recognition. It is a well-known mix that Ludo uses to convey his artwork, designs, and messages.Check out below for more images of the Ludo’s new pieces. More

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    in Exhibitions

    Tomás Saraceno Convinced His New Art Gallery to Shorten Its Hours and Switch to Renewable Energy for His Debut Exhibition

    For Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno, air is not light matter. It carries symbolic and sociological weight, and is a major consideration in the suspended interactive web installations and landscapes he builds (which are in fact created and occupied by living spiders).
    Now, the artist is embarking on a new project with a new gallery. “We Do Not All Breathe the Same Air”—which will open on September 17 at Neugerriemschneider in Berlin and is spurred by the pandemic and the climate crisis—is dedicated to a more intimate aspect of air: breath.
    “We know exactly what the cure to [bad air quality] is,” Saraceno told Artnet News. “We know that if we stop burning fossil fuels, mortality rates will drop. Why were we able to respond so actively to the immediacy of the coronavirus, but can do nothing against a collective threat that is three times more deadly?”
    The show considers the inequalities inherent in the way oxygen flows around the earth: different parts of the world, namely the Global South, experience the pandemic and the climate crisis in a different and more extreme way the many Western nations. A 2018 work, Printed Matter(s), uses ink the artist made from black carbon pollution extracted from Mumbai’s air. His beloved spiderwebs will also feature in the show, but their webs are laced with pollution, changing their color. Another installation will render the air in the room, and all its particulate matter, visible.
    Tomás Saraceno. Particular Matter(s) (2021). Courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin © Tomás Saraceno. Photo: Tomás Saraceno studio.
    In keeping with Saraceno’s ongoing environmental concerns, the gallery will switch over to 100 percent renewable energy, and shift its hours to correspond with darkening days in October, so that less lighting will be needed during opening times.
    The exhibition is even more pertinent given the landmark report published this week, approved by 234 scientists from more than 60 nations, suggesting that the climate is in a more dire state than we even knew.
    “The capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal structures many of us are entrenched in throw up huge roadblocks to normalized problems, including climate change,” Saraceno said. “What could happen if the climate crisis was treated with the same sense of urgency as the pandemic?”
    Tomás Saraceno, Part icular Matter(s) (2021). Courtesy the artist Nnd neugerriemschneider, Berlin. © Tomás Saraceno
    The artist has been working to make his Berlin studio, a brick-built former factory, more sustainable by regenerating its grounds into a garden to feed his employees. He is also collecting rainwater from the roof and installing solar panels come September. The studio will also shift its working hours to accommodate darker winter days.
    “This last year has refined my approach, and challenged me towards new aspirations,” the artist said. “I have decided that a shift in my environment and reconnection with my first supporters will bring a positive influence to my work, though I remain grateful to fruitful past relationships and stay close with many artists there.” (The Spanish artist and his longtime dealer in Berlin, Esther Schipper, parted amicably in late 2019.)
    Tim Neuger of Neugerriemschneider, which will represent the gallery with Tanya Bonakdar in New York, described Saraceno as “an artist of radical imagination, visionary creativity, and extraordinary insight.”
    “Working with us, Saraceno is amongst many friends and peers, and having known him well since the beginning of his career, we couldn’t be happier for this opportunity to expand our relationship, and step forward together toward new horizons,” Neuger added.
    After the Berlin exhibition, Saraceno will continue on a similar research path for an upcoming exhibition at the Shed in New York planned for 2022. 
    “I was very much inspired and moved by the research of [U.S. author and medical ethicist] Harriet A. Washington on the uneven distribution of pollution along geopolitical and racial lines,” he said. “What is floating in the air today? What are we breathing in? And who has the capacity and possibility to breathe at all? These are important questions we can’t stop asking ourselves in the age of the anthropocene.”
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    in Street Art

    Banksy new street works in Gorleston, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

    Looks like Banksy is spending his summer holidays in the UK as a few pieces have just popped up in Gorleston, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft.As usual with the elusive British artist, he dropped a series of brilliant works which are sure to be enjoyed by the local vacationers.Could it be related that Great Yarmouth, Gorleston and Lowestoft are submitting a joint bid to become the next UK City of Culture in 2025?Expect to hear from Banksy confirming these works shortly. More