Category: light art

09
Dic

YAYOI KUSAMA: INFINITY MIRROR ROOMS

Step into infinite space

Tate presents a rare chance to experience two of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms. These immersive installations will transport you into Kusama’s unique vision of endless reflections.

Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life is one of Kusama’s largest installations to date and was made for her 2012 retrospective at Tate Modern. It is shown alongside Chandelier of Grief, a room which creates the illusion of a boundless universe of rotating crystal chandeliers.

A small presentation of photographs – some on display for the first time – provides historical context for the global phenomenon that Kusama’s mirrored rooms have become today.

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama came to attention for her happenings in 1960s New York and a wide-ranging artistic practice that has encompassed installation, painting, sculpture, fashion design and literary writing. Since the 1970s she has lived in Tokyo, where she continues to work prolifically and to international acclaim.

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms is presented in The George Economou Gallery. This exhibition is in partnership with Bank of America.
Curated by Frances Morris, Director and Katy Wan, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern

TATE MODERN EXHIBITION
YAYOI KUSAMA: INFINITY MIRROR ROOMS
29 MARCH 2021 – 27 MARCH 2022

Image: Yayoi Kusama Chandelier of Grief 2016/2018 Tate Presented by a private collector, New York 2019 © YAYOI KUSAMA

31
Ago

Olafur Eliasson – Sometimes the river is the bridge

Originally scheduled to begin on March 20, Olafur Eliasson’s exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo opened on June 19. As neither the artist nor the staff of Studio Olafur Eliasson were able to come to Japan due to Covid-19, the exhibition, which involved the installation of 12 rooms of works including six rooms of new ones, was realized by communicating remotely.

The title of the exhibition, Sometimes the river is the bridge, suggests the possibility of bestowing form and function onto formless things—like invisible rivers that may appear to be bridges with a particular form and function, when viewed from a different, alternative perspective. Inspired by the theme of sustainability, this exhibition takes its point of departure from Eliasson’s interest in the environment, as reflected in how he has voiced his opinions at the United Nations as well as through projects like Little Sun (2012–) and Ice Watch (2014–). It is the result of a two-year dialogue with curator Yuko Hasegawa, partially in relation to the tsunami that occurred in the Tohoku region of Japan in 2011.

Eliasson, who is known for his work with water, fog, light, and other natural phenomena, deploys a unique artistic language that gives form to intangible and richly varied materials. In this exhibition, his specific intention was to shift the focus to the viewer’s ecological awareness: in other words, to imbue the perceptual experience with a different meaning or realization. What is unique here is not just the theme of the exhibition: the sustainability theme is also reflected in how it was produced. Consciousness of the carbon footprint associated with the act of staging the exhibition was manifested in how transportation was minimized by increasing the number of components that were locally produced, the choice of the means of transportation, and the use of renewable energy in the exhibition itself. Works were transported from Berlin to Tokyo not by air, but by train and boat via the Trans-Siberian Railway. 12 new drawings from a series called Memories from the critical zone (Germany–Poland–Russia–China–Japan, nos. 1–12) were automatically executed by a drawing machine as a result of the vibrations during the journey.

In addition, the light sculptures are powered by solar panels, while Sustainability Research Lab showcases the products of materials and designs that the studio has experimented with and developed, sometimes in collaboration with outside experts. The ecological and aesthetic ingenuity of the studio’s waste-based recycling processes are examined from multiple angles, becoming a statement about how the future should not just be waited for, but actively embraced and welcomed. As Eliasson himself says, “for me, all of these works articulate and express the future.”

The highlight of this exhibition is a new large-scale installation in the 20-meter long atrium space, called Sometimes the river is the bridge. A basin of water is placed in the center of the darkened space, while the reflections of twelve lights illuminating the surface of the water create various shadows on the circular screen wall above. The ripples caused by the gentle stirrings of the water surface take on a variety of forms, inviting the viewer to partake in a state of deep contemplation that resonates with these water ripples. This is not just an individual sensory experience, but also a medium for empathy with others who share the same space. Eliasson’s work takes into account the neo-materialist discursive nature of things: through the material structure of his work, he explores ways of creating a space of empathy that is accompanied by thought. In a certain sense, this particular work might be said to have achieved this goal.

In other works, such as photographs that capture the changes in Iceland’s glaciers over a period of 20 years, or documents of an intervention that causes a river to appear within a city, Eliasson deploys methods that promote awareness and knowledge production through form and space by understanding the structures external to our living spaces, such as architecture and landscapes, as elements of nature and climate. These methods are integrated into the theme of sustainability, welcoming many visitors as an exhibition that entails “feeling and thinking.”

Bilingual catalogue in Japanese and English, including photographs documenting new works, with a dialogue between Eliasson and Timothy Morton, a discussion by the Studio staff on sustainability, and an essay by Yuko Hasegawa on “Eliasson: The Artist who Listens to the Future.” (Film Art, Inc.)

Curator: Yuko Hasegawa

Organized by Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo operated by Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture / The Sankei Shimbun
Supported by Embassy of Iceland, Japan / Royal Danish Embassy
Sponsored by Kvadrat, Bloomberg L.P., JINS HOLDINGS Inc.
Grant from The Scandinavia-Japan Sasakawa Foundation, Obayashi Foundation

Olafur Eliasson
Sometimes the river is the bridge
June 9–September 27, 2020

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)
4-1-1 Miyoshi, Koto-ku
Tokyo 135-0022
Japan

www.mot-art-museum.jp

Image: View of Olafur Eliasson, Sometimes the river is the bridge, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2020. Photo: Kazuo Fukunaga. Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. © 2020 Olafur Eliasson

source: e-flux

03
Ago

Andrea Galvani – La sottigliezza delle cose elevate

La sottigliezza delle cose elevate is an immersive interdisciplinary project by Andrea Galvani, designed especially for the monumental space of Pavilion 9B at the Mattatoio in Rome.

Constructed in 1888-1891 by the celebrated architect Gioacchino Ersoch, the Mattatoio is considered one of the most important industrial landmarks in Rome. From 2002-2018, it was the second seat of the MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art, first known as MACRO Future and then MACRO Testaccio, with an expansive exhibition space of 6,000 sqm stretching across two pavilions. Today, under the direction of Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, the Mattatoio juxtaposes its iconic historical structure with some of the most ambitious, foreword-thinking and experimental exhibitions in the international contemporary art world.

What happens when magnetic fields migrate? When time loses unity, direction, and objectivity? What would happen if space suddenly folded in on itself, inverting its structure?
The rigorous research of Andrea Galvani (Verona 1973, lives and work in New York and Mexico City) coalesces around history’s biggest questions—investigations nurtured by social, educational, political, ideological, technological, and scientific transformations that continue to change the conditions of our daily lives, inescapably and oftentimes invisibly. La sottigliezza delle cose elevate [The Subtleties of Elevated Things] is an interdisciplinary project conceived as an open laboratory, an experiential environment in constant and continuous evolution. Through a series of architectural installations, actions, and performance specifically developed for Pavilion 9B of the Mattatoio, Galvani focuses our attention on the human need to measure, decipher, and understand the unknown, to give shape and direction to the abstract.

The title of this exhibition is adapted from the grimoire Shams al-Ma’arif wa Lata’if al-‘Awarif (كتاب شمس المعارف ولطائف العوارف), The Book of the Sun of Gnosis and the Subtleties of Elevated Things, written by Ahmad ibn ‘Ali al-Buni (أحمد البوني‎) before his death in 1225 CE. Shams al-Ma’arif is generally understood as the most influential text of its kind in the Arab world, opening with a series of complex magic squares that demonstrate hidden relationships between numbers and geometrical forms. It was written at a time when science, mathematics, and magic were intricately intertwined. For over 10,000 years, humans have looked out on the visible and intelligible world, constructing our intellectual inheritance through observation, calculation, and analyses of phenomena often described with equal parts logic and mysticism. Many of the greatest minds in the history of Western science were part of this legacy: Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler were avid astrologists; Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle were alchemists. In his groundbreaking Systema Naturae (first published 1735)Carl Linnaeus devoted a whole chapter to the taxonomic order of mythical creatures, like the hydra and the phoenix. For the great physician Paracelsus, mastering chemical as well as magical cures was crucial to understanding illness and wellness.

La sottigliezza delle cose elevate embodies this visionary, pioneering, transdisciplinary approach to scientific research and processes, while also embracing the emotional, spiritual, and metaphysical environment of the exhibition. In this show, the Mattatoio does not only contain an articulation and extension of scientific and mathematical languages that transform, expand, and illuminate architectural space, but also the physical, intellectual, and psychological effort behind the mathematical calculations that form the architecture of our collective knowledge.

Galvani’s La sottigliezza delle cose elevate [The Subtleties of Elevated Things] is conceived as an open laboratory, an experiential environment in constant and continuous evolution. The exhibition comes to life through a series of intensive on-site interventions and three-month performance that will gradually unfold over the entire duration of the show. Collaborating with the Departments of Physics, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Astrobiology, Molecular Medicine, Biochemical Science, and Electrical Engineering at the Sapienza University of Rome, as well as researchers at CERN and Virgo data analysis group, the artist brings the raw processes of scientific research, computation, and analysis to the center, exposing what is normally invisible to us. La sottigliezza delle cose elevate manifests Galvani’s ongoing commitment to honoring the power of human knowledge while simultaneously emphasizing its limits, circumscribing a perimeter of action that moves forward—able to appear and generate itself from its own impossibility.

La sottigliezza delle cose elevate by Andrea Galvani is the inaugural exhibition in Dispositivi sensibili [Sensitive Devices], a three-year program conceived by Angel Moya Garcia for Pavilion 9B of the Mattatoio, advancing projects by some of the most important international artists engaging performance in their work today.

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27
Lug

HYPERMAREMMA: Massimo Uberti – Spazio Amato

Spazio Amato, installazione permanente di Massimo Uberti apre la seconda edizione di Hypermaremma, la nuova galassia di arte contemporanea concepita per attivare il territorio della Maremma, nel sud della Toscana, attraverso mostre, dibattiti, esperienze sonore e interventi site specific elaborati da artisti invitati a relazionarsi con la storia dei luoghi.

L’edizione 2020 ha subìto una completa trasformazione per assecondare le linee guida della “nuova realtà”.  Per sostenere il territorio abbiamo lavorato per presentare un solo intervento site-specific in grado di entrare in pieno dialogo con il paesaggio della Maremma. Il progetto sarà visibile in uno spazio aperto accessibile dalla strada litoranea che costeggia il Lago di Burano dal 26 Luglio fino al 15 Settembre, tutti i giorni dalle 18 a mezzanotte passando in bicicletta, a piedi o in treno e in macchina per i più pigri. Cliccando a queste coordinate potrete individuare il punto esatto dove osservare l’installazione.

Il progetto è stato possibile grazie alla collaborazione con Terre di Sacra, oltre a Oasi WWF Lago di Burano, Regione Toscana e con il patrocinio del Comune di Capalbio. Un ringraziamento speciale allo sponsor tecnico RRUNA.

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02
Mar

ZERO IS INFINITY

Yayoi Kusama Museum is delighted to announce its first major group exhibition, ZERO IS INFINITY, ZERO and Yayoi Kusama, featuring Kusama’s activity in Europe during the 1960s, introducing ZERO’s art practices and also exploring their relationship with Kusama.

“ZERO” indicated in a narrow sense the name of the group formed by Mack and Piene in 1958 in Düsseldorf, Germany, with Günther Uecker later joining in 1961. However, by publishing the magazine ZERO and holding many exhibitions, ZERO’s activity began to involve many active artists, groups and movements from various places in Europe: Yves Klein from France, Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani from Italy, and Henk Peeters and Jan Schoonhoven, founding members of Dutch avant-garde group Nul from the Netherlands. Like the resetting of the European continent separated under World War II, ZERO has been a powerful motivation for transnational collaboration between avant-garde artists.

At the time, Yayoi Kusama was based in New York and participated in many exhibitions along with other leading artists of Pop art and Minimalism. While she received high acclaim from the New York art world, she regularly presented her art across Europe, in particular at exhibitions led by ZERO, attracting attention in the European art scene in the 1960s. Kusama’s first invitation to the European exhibitions was for Monochrome Painting (Monochrome Malerei), curated by Udo Kultermann, and held at Morsbroich Museum, Leverkusen in 1960. After participating in this international exhibition, Kusama started correspondence with ZERO artists such as Peeters. Kusama’s pursuit of “Infinity” through her art finds various similarities with artistic expressions in the works of ZERO artists: in their experiments with new materials such as mirror, repetitions of single motifs, pursuit of monochrome and their orientations towards environment art and performance.

In this context, ZERO IS INFINITY explores the transnational developments in Kusama’s and ZERO’s activities during the 1960s, by showcasing their works and documentation materials. The group show displays a work from Infinity Nets, Kusama’s monochrome painting series, a series shown in Europe for the first time at the above-mentioned exhibition in 1960. The newest work in her Infinity Mirror Rooms series, Longing for Infinite Heaven, as well as a reproduction of Christian Megert’s Mirror Wall (Spiegelwand) installation are also presented. Other highlights of the exhibition include another Kusama installation, Narcissus Garden,which was first presented in the 33rd Venice Biennale in 1966 with financial support from Lucio Fontana, who also exhibits an artwork from his signature series Spatial Concept (Concetto Spaziale) at this show.Continue Reading..

03
Feb

James Turrell – Passages of Light

My work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing. I’m also interested in the sense of presence of space; that is space where you feel a presence, almost an entity—that physical feeling and power that space can give. James Turrell

From November 22, 2019 to March 29, 2020,Museo Jumex presents a survey of the internationally acclaimed arti James Turrell (USA, b.1943). The exhibition features new works from Turrell’s most important series, spanning two floors of Museo Jumex’s galleries. Each installation is a carefully controlled environment in which light is formed and experienced.

Using light as his medium, saturated elds of color take on a physical presence. Through a scientific understanding of light’s affects and a singular artistic vision, Turrell creates wordless meditations on time and space that are as relevant today as they have been throughout human history. Extending beyond the physical spaces of a gallery or museum, the artist has created monumental structures that makes the skies and heavenly bodies seem tangible to the viewer.

Each body of work in the exhibition has been juxtaposed by a quotation from diverse sources that offer a poetic understanding of Turrell’s influences.

The first floor gallery presents Amesha Spentas one of James Turrell’s Ganzfeld installations that subsume the visitor in a field of color. As light modulates through a sequence of changing colors and effects, space transforms and dissolves around the viewer, the installation is designed to eliminate the viewer’s depth perception and provoke different ways of seeing.

On the second floor the exhibition continues with a selection of installations, prints, photographs, models and holograms that survey Turrell’s broad-ranging practice.

The exhibition is introduced by the First Light prints that capture the various forms made from light from Turrell’s Projection Pieces. A projection piece installation follows, marking one of the artists’ earliest experiments with using pure light as a medium to transform space. The Double Shallow Space (Atman) and Wedgework (Spenta Mainyu)installations date from the same period.

The exhibition continues with a selection of photographs and models that document Turrell’s Roden Crater project. Aerial views of the crater portray Turrell’s view of the crater from his percpective as an experienced pilot, an important influence on his understanding of light. The models allow visitors to envisage the point of view of looking out from Roden Crater’s chambers towards the sky. Further works include Turrell’s use of recent technology, including holograms, a natural medium for the artist to explore as light seems to take on a presence in space. The Curved Elliptical Glass(Gathas) installation is among Turrell’s most recent body of works, and its slow transformation of color has been likened by the artist to musical scores.

James Turrell: Passages of Light is organized by Kit Hammonds, Chief Curator, and Adriana Kuri Alamillo, Curatorial Assistant, Museo Jumex.

In order to preserve the intimate, meditative nature of James Turrell’s work, museum capacity will be limited during this exhibition. Please be aware that there may be delays for entry. Photography and video are not permitted within the exhibition.

JAMES TURRELL
James Turrell, considered one of the most important artist of the Southern California Light and Space movement, was born in Los Angeles in 1943 and attended Pomona College, where he studied art, art history, mathematics, perceptual psychology and astronomy. Turrell’s work has been widely acclaimed and exhibited since his first showing at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1967. His work has since been presented at major venues including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1976); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1980); the Israel Museum (1982); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1984); MAK, Vienna (1998–99); the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh (2002–03); and the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2009– 10); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2013) and was included in the54th Venice Biennale (2011).

MUSEO JUMEX
Museo Jumex is the Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo’s main platform. It opened its doors to the public in November 2013 as an institution devoted to contemporary art, whose aim was not only to serve a broad and diverse public, but also to become a laboratory for experimentation and innovation in the arts. Through its exhibitions and public programs, Museo Jumex aspires to become a relevant in institution in the field of art by producing and coproducing original exhibitions and research, and familiarizing audiences with the concepts and contexts that inform current art practice. Through the use of critical and pedagogical tools, the museum’s educational programs further the institution’s commitment to build links between contemporary art and the public.

ADMISSION
General admission / $50 MXN
Mexican citizens / $30 MXN
Free for: Children under 15 / Students* / Senior citizens* /Teachers**with valid ID
Sundays free

HOURS
Tuesday–Sunday / 10 AM–8 PM Monday / Closed

PRESS CONTACTS
Ruth Ovseyevitzruth@fundacionjumex.org +52 (55) 5395 2618–107
Maricruz Garrido maricruz@fundacionjumex.org +52 (55) 5395 2615–103

JAMES TURRELL: PASSAGES OF LIGHT
GALLERIES 1 & 2
NOV.22.2019–MAR.29.2020

MUSEO JUMEX
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA 303,
COLONIA GRANADA, 11520, MEXICO CITY

T.(55) 5395 2615 (55) 5395 2618
FUNDACIONJUMEX.ORG
Image: Gathas from series Curved Elliptical Glass, 2019. Museo Jumex, 2019. © James Turrell. Foto- Florian Holzherr