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    CDK Company Makes Moves Through a Contemporary Art Museum to Billie Eilish’s ‘Bittersuite’

    All images courtesy of CDK Company

    CDK Company Makes Moves Through a Contemporary Art Museum to Billie Eilish’s ‘Bittersuite’

    February 26, 2025

    ArtMusic

    Kate Mothes

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    Championing the next generation of dancers in The Netherlands, CDK Company (previously) has made a name for itself through large-scale interpretations of pop music involving numerous dancers in playful, themed outfits. For the group’s latest video, director and choreographer Sergio Reis and team took on Billie Eilish’s “Bittersuite” from her 2024 album Hit Me Hard and Soft.

    Set among paintings and installations in Museum Voorlinden, three dozen performers don pastel garments evocative of 1960s fashion, all wearing identical dark, bowl cut wigs.

    Whether moving through a gallery of paintings by Michaël Borremans, stationed inside a 4-meter-high Corten steel sculpture by Richard Serra, or synchronizing around the edge of Leandro Erlich’s “Swimming Pool,” CDK leads us on a vibrant, emotive journey through Eilish’s music and the museum’s art collection.

    Find more on CDK’s website and dance along to more videos on Reis’s YouTube channel.

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    A New Documentary Traces How a Faith Ringgold Mural at Rikers Island Helped Women Break Free

    Detail of “For the Women’s House” (1972). All images from ‘Paint Me a Road Out of Here’

    A New Documentary Traces How a Faith Ringgold Mural at Rikers Island Helped Women Break Free

    February 13, 2025

    ArtFilmHistorySocial Issues

    Grace Ebert

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    In 1971, Faith Ringgold (1930-2024) received her first public art commission. New York City offered the late artist a $3,000 grant to paint a mural at the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island. After going inside and speaking with those incarcerated in the notorious prison, Ringgold decided to base the work around a request from one of the women about what she hoped the piece would depict: “I want to see a road leading out of here.”

    In Ringgold’s characteristically bold palette, the resulting mural features more than a dozen figures, many of whom are employed in professions unavailable to women at the time. Vibrant and sliced into eight sections, “For the Women’s House” portrays doctors, bus drivers, basketball players, and the yet-to-be-realized vision of a woman as president. The large-scale work was a tribute to the deferred dreams of those who were locked up and a directive to reimagine the stereotypes put on incarcerated people.

    According to ArtNet, the artist continued her relationship with the detained women and returned to the facility each month to provide “courses in subjects ranging from mask-making and theater to career counseling and drug addiction prevention.”

    When Rikers Island transitioned to housing men in 1998, though, the Department of Corrections painted over the work, concealing it under a thick layer of white paint.

    A new documentary directed by Catherine Gund chronicles Ringgold’s fight to regain control over the mural as it tells a broader story about the injustices of the U.S. justice system. Paint Me a Road Out of Here, released by Aubin Pictures, features conversations with Ringgold before her death last year, along with artist Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, who has been commissioned to create a new work to replace “For the Women’s House.”

    The film comes at a time when more artists who were formerly incarcerated are gaining attention as they point out the dehumanization and cruelty at the heart of the prison system. Jesse Krimes, for example, interrogates the material conditions of life inside as he incorporates soap bars, playing cards, newspapers, and bedsheets into his practice. And at a similarly infamous facility, artist Moath al-Alwi sculpts ships from cardboard, dental floss, and threads from his prayer cap while detained at Guantánamo Bay.

    “For the Women’s House” (1972)

    While the film shares the story of Ringgold’s nearly lost mural—which was relocated in 2022—it also speaks to the power of community and connection through art and making, particularly in places where despair and degradation are rampant. “Art gives us permission to imagine a world beyond what currently exists,” one interviewee in the film says.

    Paint Me a Road Out of Here is currently screening at the Film Forum in New York. Keep an eye on Aubin Pictures’ website and Instagram for additional locations.

    The artist with the mural

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    Nøne Futbol Club’s ‘Hot Wheels’ Drive at the Dualities of Systems and Society

    Detail of “Work n°144 : Hot Wheels” from the series ‘Wheeling and dealing’ (2017), charred plane wood, 59 x 59 x 21 centimeters each. All images © ADAGP, Paris, 2025, courtesy of Nøne Futbol Club, shared with permission

    Nøne Futbol Club’s ‘Hot Wheels’ Drive at the Dualities of Systems and Society

    February 13, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    Combining sculpture and performative interventions, Nøne Futbol Club—sometimes referred to as Nonefutbolclub—expresses conceptual messages through ephemeral objects and time-based actions. The name is the alias of Colas Claisse, who co-founded the project as a collective but now works solo under the moniker. The initiative continues to delve into potent dichotomies like tragedy and humor, vulnerability and security, disruption and calm, and politics and fiction. 

    “Nøne Futbol Club’s work may sometimes make you smile, but it can also be serious,” says a statement. “It highlights the violence inherent in our world, where speed and productivity are seen as all-powerful.” The artist describes the project’s role as one that “takes hold of our immediate environment,” expressing social divides and examining socio-political issues with a spark of wry humor.

    Installation view of “Work n°144 : Hot Wheels” from the series ‘Wheeling and dealing’ (2017), charred plane wood, 59 x 59 x 21 centimeters each

    An ongoing series of sculptures assume the form of tires fashioned from wooden rings. Scorched with fire, the series Wheeling and dealing includes multimedia works all titled “Work nº144: Hot Wheels.” The pieces appear in the guise of Cooper or Pirelli racing tires, yet upon closer inspection, they reveal their surprising composition. Layered meanings emerge through the flames, which initially create, and in some cases destroy, the works.

    Each life-size wooden object is made from sliced tree trunks that have been carbonized, producing the rich, black texture and facets redolent of treads. “Since a tree does not grow from its core but from the periphery of its trunk, the cracks resulting from combustion are created concentrically,” the artist says, describing how the resulting patterns mimic brand new, rubber car tires.

    A double entendre in the sense that the sculptures refer to the American toy brand of the same name and the literal temperature of the pieces as they burn, the artist plays with perception by creating a material that pretends to be another.

    Nøne Futbol Club continues to revel in this subtle deception, trapping the spectator in the simulacrum: “Subjected to form but destroying function, Wheeling and dealing introduces the silent unease of a double game: real tire or wood? Voluntary combustion or fatal car accident?”

    Detail of “Work n°144 : Hot Wheels”

    The series also spawns drawings made from charcoal chipped off of the sculptures when handled. Video works, such as the half-hour piece included below, chronicle the tires’ destruction in atmospheric landscapes. Bespoke molds cast tire shapes in plaster, aluminum, and—coming full circle—rubber. And later pieces incorporate puddles of metal underneath the tires, symbolizing overheating as the rims melt and serve as a display pedestal. Literally and figuratively a loop, the pieces define the cyclical nature of much of Nøne Futbol Club’s practice.

    The artist describes his approach as a “systematic hijacking or reversal of the system,” tapping into the powerful symbolism of objects that are burned or smashed amidst revolt. “Faced with a sense of powerlessness, car vandals and rioters seek an accessible way to convey a radical message,” he says. “As the embodiment of a comfortable and cushioned system, the car is a perfect target.”

    Nøne Futbol Club is slated to show work at Iconoscope Gallery in May in Montpellier and at MacBar in September in Lyon. Find more on his website and Instagram.

    “Work nº144: Hot Wheels” from the series ‘Wheeling and dealing’ (2017), burnt wood on paper, 100 x 77 centimeters

    “Work n°144 : Hot Wheels” from the series ‘Wheeling and dealing’ (2017), charred plane wood, 59 x 59 x 21 centimeters each

    “Work n°144 : Hot Wheels” from the series ‘Wheeling and dealing’ (2017), charred plane wood, 59 x 59 x 21 centimeters

    “Work nº144: Hot Wheels” from the series ‘Wheeling and dealing’ (2017), burnt wood on paper, 100 x 77 centimeters

    Still from “Work nº144: Hot wheels (Dompcevrin I)” (2017), video, 18 minutes, 23 seconds

    “Work nº144: Hot Wheels” from the series ‘Wheeling and dealing’ (2017), burnt wood, 28 x 82 x 103 centimeters

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