Lygia Pape at Serpentine Gallery

Lygia Pape
Magnetized Space
December 7, 2011 – February 19, 2012

The thread of Magnetized Space is the poem and book. The viewer’s participation in the work is a key element.
One of the main characteristics of the Neo Concrete movement is the sensitivity, expressiveness and subjectivity in the artwork. The subjectivity and experience of contact with the work by the viewer is a constant, and this interaction gives the work its sublime transformative sense.
Neo Concretism was most notably lead by Lygia Pape, Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, who idealized a new aesthetic thought that emerged in Brazil in the 50s. This attitude towards life saw art as a form of expression and incorporating viewers in the work becomes the fundamental element in their aesthetics. It came as a rupture to the Constructivist canon – the rigidity of the forms, of thought, which had its best example in Brasília conception and construction, in Brazil’s interior.
Pape’s poetic works transcends their semantic condition when transmitted to the body and subject. The Tteias are the ultimate expression of poetic space by the artist, where light becomes immaterial, intangible – Pape’s latest work captures emotions and sensations.
This is Lygia Pape’s (1927-2004) first major exhibition in the UK and brings together well-known and previously unseen works, spanning a multiplicity of mediums.
The exhibition is organised by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in collaboration with Projeto Lygia Pape and the Serpentine Gallery.

Photo: Lygia Pape, Roda dos Prazeres (Wheels of Pleasure), 2011. Installation view. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2011 © Projeto Lygia Pape and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

newsfromlondon201110

Photowalk on the trail along the Thames

between the O2 (Millennium Dome) and the Thames Barriers

Thames Trail - O2 Thames Barriers

From the 02 Arena (Millennium Dome) towards the Thames Barriers on an October sunday morning, under grey clouds.

A short video (03:11 mins) of the event, produced by Alexander Davies.
This event was funded by Grassroots Grants and Capital Community Foundation
More information at Viewfinder : Events

newsfromlondon201110

Together with greenish parks and watery rivers one other thing I do love from this white land is the liveliness sound coming from of its markets. Take for instance the trendy Portobello Road, the entertaining Camden Lock, the community Broadway Market, the exotic Brixton Market or event Brick Lane, Columbia Road, Spitalfields, and Convent Garden, and many others, which are just a small example of what I can find in London. With approximately 150 crafts and designer-maker stalls in a Grade 2 listing buildings surrounding the market, the covered Greenwich Market is another pearl that Greenwich offers me on a daily base (the market is open five days a week, from Wednesday to Sunday). Things such as rare antiques and collectables, art and crafts, fashion designers, unique gifts, food and housewares bring together local residents, people from other places and tourists to the South East side of London filling the town with life, an unique sound and vibrant energy.

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In the moment we start to frame something surrounding us the lines within it converge into the same point. Meeting somewhere along the way. Believing in illusions is one of the main characteristics of the human race. It is what you have been unconsciously aspiring for. In the Society of the Spectacle (1967), Guy Debord said, "The real consumer becomes a consumer of illusions. The commodity is this factually real illusion, and the spectacle is its general manifestation," you are traveling on the eternal illusion of becoming.

Photographs of books, china and clothes

I'm writing this because I'm going to take a group of leisurely photographers on a gallery visit. To Photofusion, in Brixton. Those images on show are competent and amiable but irrelevant to the field of ideas. Like all amateurs they would talk about the thing; while, on the other hand, I tend to talk about the idea. But that is another discussion for another time.

Although both photographers, Joachim Froese and Andre Penteado, are in mourning for someone who has died, their work, Archive and Dad's Suicide, respectively, is about a part of the whole that stops from being a part to become a whole in itself. Being the need for re-territorializing of the whole, by the first, greater. In other words, the lost of someone or something tend to be an extremely painful experience that has to be compensated by another extreme experience - normally I look for a pleasurable one! - while we are in the process of deep sorrow for someone or their death. For instance, just loose a bit of your body and you understand what I mean! However, for when the body is not able to regenerate itself we have created a prosthesis, to substitute what nature can't revive.

Both photographer have created a visual prosthesis to help them overcome the period of mourning. Technically elaborated constructed images of books, china and clothes. Shoots that refer to the potentialities of the camera and the possibilities arousing from controlling light in a two dimensional framework. The photographs shown at the exhibition emerge from here. The process of shooting, documenting, creating an archive has helped the photographers in the process of grieving. Helping the photographers to resuscitate. A very selfish act! But that is human nature. The idea is good, but the thing is in a void. It is just that, nothing more! Nothing was hanging from the photographs. As a work expressing someone view on something there was nothing more for us, the other mortals living in a communal society sharing feelings and thoughts, to read or get drunk from.

A Creature I Don't Know

I am not concerned with what you do think about. I was one of the few privileged that was at Laura Marling concert down in London tonight. Two thousand people stayed together in silence to listen to the 2011 Female Voice in a ten UK sold out tour to support the promotion of her new solo album A Creature I Don't Know. At first I've got misled to the somber pieces composed by Drake, words drawn by the works of William Blake and other of the kind, but these were more of the kind of the one I can only find in nature. Not a sea, sun and sand music, but more into the roots. Trawling for warmth along green valleys and streams of fresh water running down the hill. A timeless sensation! In a place where acoustic music has the ability to touch people, Marling's voice made me feel in love, holding in my arms the one who do love me. Like everything in life it is just about emotions with a clear-headed mind. Thank you very much. Hope you have had a good time. I know you did!

A.D. Coleman Talk at HotShoe Gallery - Dinosaur Bones: The End (and ends) of Photo Criticism

Dinosaur Bones: The End of Photo Criticism - A conversation and presentation with A. D. Coleman

Please join us on Tuesday, 8th November, from 6:30pm for Dinosaur Bones: The End (and ends) of Photo Criticism - A talk and panel discussion with American photography critic: A. D. Coleman, at HotShoe Gallery (29-31 Saffron Hill, London, EC1N 8SW Nearest Tube: Farringdon).

The noted American photography critic Allan Coleman will lead a discussion on the end of the photographic criticism. After Coleman’s presentation a panel discussion on Mr. Coleman’s presentation will include Coleman, Colin Finlay (Hotshoe Gallery Director ), and Roberto Muffoletto (VASA director).

Coleman has published reviews and critiques on photography since the late 1960s. Coleman has published more than 7 books and more than 2000 essays on photography and related subjects. His syndicated essays on mass media, new communication technologies, art, and photography have been featured in such periodicals as the New York Times, Village Voice, ARTnews, European Photography (Germany), Art Today (China) and most recently HotShoe (UK).

Mr. Coleman recently received the “life time achievement award” from the Royal Photographic Society (UK). In 1998 he was noted by American Photography as one of “the 100 most important people in photography” and in 2002 he received the Culture Prize of the German Photographic Society — the first critic of photography ever so honored.

The presentation and panel is a co-sponsored event by HotShoe Gallery, Viewfinder Photography Gallery, and VASA PROJECTS, an international online media center.

Date: 8 November 2011
Time: 18:30 – 20:00
Location: HotShoe Gallery, 29-31 Saffron Hill, London
Tickets are £6 - to be paid on the door.
To reserve a space email hotshoetickets@gmail.com
Space is limited so book ahead to avoid disappointment
Co-sponsored by: HotShoe Gallery, Viewfinder Photography Gallery, and VASA PROJECTS

Paris Photo 2011

Celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, Paris Photo 2011, held from 10 to 13 November, takes African photography as its special theme. After having paid tribute in earlier editions to Germany, the Netherlands, Mexico, Switzerland, Spain, the Scandinavian countries, Italy, Japan, the Middle East and Central Europe, this edition of Paris Photo turns the spotlight on to the photographers of Sub-Saharan Africa, from Bamako to Cape Town. «Paying tribute to the rich breadth and diversity of work produced by the continent’s creative talent in this field, from Bamako to Cape Town.» From amateur and professional photographers to photography enthusiasts and collectors, last year, Paris Photo 2010 attracted 38,000 visitors.

A total of 118 international galleries, representing 30 countries, have been selected to present the best of nineteenth-century, modern and contemporary photography. «Among this year’s participants, 69 galleries were also exhibitors in 2010», such as Anne de Villepoix (Paris), Bernard Quaritch (London), Bonni Benrubi (New York), Brancolini Grimaldi (London), Bruce Silverstein (New York), Camera Obscura (Paris), Galerie du jour agnès b. (Paris), La Fabrica Galeria (Madrid), Taro Nasu (Tokyo), VU’ (Paris) or Xippas (Paris); while this year, «a further 48 galleries are participating in the event for the first time this year, adding their unique contribution to the vitality, quality and variety of artists exhibited»: Baudoin Lebon (Paris); Camera Work (Berlin), Grafika la Estampa (Mexico City), Marian Goodman (Paris), Pace/MacGill (New-York), Springer & Winckler (Berlin) and The Third Gallery Aya (Osaka), between others.

Dates: 10th -13th November 2011
Opening: 9 Nov. 2011
Location: Grand Palais - Avenue Winston-Churchill - 75008 Paris

newsfromlondon201110

A Cabinet of Curiosities or Altered Curios is
"A collection of assorted pieces created from
a variety of unusual items alongside
natural materials, either in vintage glass
domes or wooden cases, which aim to
evoke curiosity and intrigue."

fotofever : photography art fair in Paris

Another photography fair arouse this time in Paris. The medium as a commercial value is growing interest by the raise of new class of collectors and general aficionados. According to the Press Release «for its 1st year, fotofever is presenting about thirty international galleries in a prestigious venue staged by the designer Stéphane Plassier», at Espace Pierre Cardin, a few steps away from the Grand Palais. The fair is focused on to contemporary photography, digital art and video. Not to be to pretentious, Cécile Schall, «the creator of this new event, instills into fotofever a spirit of discovery and independence that her grandfather - the photographer Roger Schall - would have called for.» So, the «key word for the event is discovery !» But, they didn't manage to discover the major and best international photography galleries, which be all at the near by Paris Photo (10-13 Nov. 2011). Here is a preview of some of the galleries present: 3e Rue Galerie, Artistocratic, Camara Oscura, CastanGalerie, Changing Role, Ego Gallery, Envie d’art, Espace Art 22, Galeria Rita Castellote, Galerie Antonio Nardone, Galerie Beckel Odille Boïcos, Galerie Charlot, Galerie François Giraudeau, Galerie Heine, Galerie Open, Galerie Pennings, Arps & Co Fine Arts, Guidi & Schoen, Hamburg Kennedy Photographs, Living with art, Wada Garou, Yokoi Fine Art, A. Galerie, and Little big Galerie.

fotofever Paris
Photography Art Fair
30 International Galleries
11-13 Nov. 2011 | Espace Pierre Cardin

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Sally MANN (1951- )

Emmet, Jessie and Virginia _ Candy Cigarette
1989 _ 1990

Sold for
US$8,000 _ US$32,000
Estimate
US$10,000-$15,000 _ US$12,000-$18,000

Yard Eggs _ Angel
1992 _ 1992

Sold for
US$4,000 _ US$7,500
Estimate
US$4,000-$6,000 _ US$8,000-$12,000

«Sally Mann was born in 1951 in Lexington, Virginia, where she continues to live and work. She received a BA from Hollins College in 1974, and an MA in writing from the same school in 1975. Her early series of photographs of her three children and husband resulted in a series called “Immediate Family” (...) Using damaged lenses and a camera that requires the artist to use her hand as a shutter, these photographs are marked by the scratches, light leaks, and shifts in focus that were part of the photographic process as it developed during the 19th century. [...pbs...]

Sally Mann «always remained close to her roots. She has photographed in the American South since the 1970s, producing series on portraiture, architecture, landscape and still life. She is perhaps best known for her intimate portraits of her family, her young children and her husband, and for her evocative and resonant landscape work in the American South (...) she blended still life with elements of portraiture. Between 1984 and 1994, she worked on the series, Immediate Family (1992), which focuses on her three children, who were then all aged under ten. While the series touches on ordinary moments in their daily lives – playing, sleeping, eating – it also speaks to larger themes such as death and cultural perceptions of sexuality. [...GG...]

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Julia Margaret CAMERON (1815-1879)

Julia Margaret Cameron, Mary Ryan, 1867.

Sold for US$6,000
Estimate US$3,000-$4,500

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Edward S. CURTIS (B. 1868-1952, American)

The Vanishing Race, Navaho, 1904; The Fisherman-Wishham, 1909; A Son of the Desert-Navaho, 1904; Two Whistles-Apsaroke, from The North American Indian, 1908; Selected Images, from The North American Indian, 1903, 1904, 1905 (2), 1907, 1925; Selected Images, from The North American Indian, 1903, 1928 (5)

Estimate US$2,000-7,000 (Bonhams, New York, California, Los Angeles and California, San Francisco, November 1st 2011, Lots 36-41)

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Edward S. CURTIS (B. 1868-1952, American)

Edward S. Curtis was a visual ethnographer most know for his photographs of the American West and of Native American people. In 1906, J. P. Morgan made him offer of US$75,000 to produce a series on the North American Indian. He then went to photograph the American Indian, registering and documenting their way of life. Curtis took more than 40 thousand photographic images from over 80 tribes before the traditional life that characterised them would had had eventually disappeared. Like any other photographer Curtis has been criticised by ethnologists for manipulating his images. It's photographs have been charged with misrepresenting Native American people and cultures by portraying them in the popular notions and stereotypes of the times.

Canyon del Muerto, 1906 (Estimate US$14,000-$18,000 . Sold for US$55,000); The North American Indian. Volumes XIII and XIV (with Canyon de Chelly. Photogravure on a white buff wove paper, 11 1/4x15 1/4 inches (28.6x38.7 cm.), with Curtis's copyright, the printer's name, title and plate number printed on recto. 1904; printed later) (Estimate US$3,000-$4,500 . Sold for US$3,200); White Robe (man on horse), circa 1910 (Unsold); Choice group of 38 large-format plates from The North American Indian (The plates in this group represent Portfolios 6, 12, 14 and 15. They include: 184, 202, 423, 473, 475-476, 478, 484-485, 488-489, 490-497, 499, 506, 510, 514-516, 517, 519-520, 522, 524, 526-527, 530, 532, 535-536, 540 and 543), 1911-1926 (Estimate US$6,000-$9,000 . Sold for US$9,500); Select group of approximately 180 small-format plates from The North American Indian, 1907-1930 (Estimate US$4,000-$6,000 . Sold for US$2,600).

Estimate US$3,000-18,000 (Swann Galleries, NY, October 18th 2011, Lots 39-43)

newsfromchristies201110

Post-War & Contemporary auctions held in London, this October, by the three main auction houses, has showed that there is significant activity in this segment of the market when works of quality are presented with realistic estimates.

Christie's Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening and Day Sale auction, at King Street, in London, on October 14th and 15th, totaled £47,485,225 (US$71,936,715 - including premium). The evening auctions of Post-War & Contemporary Art Auction and The Italian Sale realised a combined total of £55,630,000 / $87,672,880 / €63,473,83, the second highest total for an October sale in London. Whereas the Post-War & Contemporary Art day auction totaled £9,414,875 / $14,837,843.

With three lots on the top ten prices of the Evening Sale, the German visual artist Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) confirmed another market principle: a good exhibition helps to sell an artist, but a major retrospective helps even further - Tate Modern had opened Gerhard Richter: Panorama the week before (from 6 October 2011 to 8 January 2012). The first two lots with the highest price at the evening auction were Kerze (Candle) (1982, Lot 10) and Abstraktes Bild (1992, Lot 23), both by Richter. The first piece, bought by an anonymous for £10,457,250 (US$16,480,626 / ) (estimate £6,000,000 - 9,000,000) established a world record prices for the artist at auction; the second work achieved £3,625,250 (US$5,713,394 / €4,136,410) (estimate £3,500,000 - 3,500,000); while Abstraktes Bild (1988, Lot 1) went to a private European collector for £1,026,850 (US$1,618,316 / €1,171,636) (estimate £500,000 - 700,000).Angel of the North, a life-size maquette made in 1996 became a world record price for Antony Gormley (b. 1950) at auction: £3,401,250 (US$5,360,370 / €3,880,826) (estimate £1,500,000 - 2,000,000); while Martin Kippenberger's (1953-1997), Untitled (1990), which was bought for £1,329,250 (US$2,094,898 / €1,516,674) (400% higher than the minimum price estimate £250,000), achieved a world auction record for a sculpture by the artist.

On the Day Sale the “auction produced solid results and saw strong prices for a broad and international range of living international artists, as highlighted by the top 10 prices of the sale", said Carolyn Hodler and Edward Tang (Co-Heads of the Sale). If there were anywhere but desert. Thursday, a work by Ugo Rondinone (1963), which the artists executed in 2000, was sold for £505,250 (estimate £250,000 - 350,000).

Christie's London :
Post-War & Contemporary Art (Sale 7990 and 7991), Oct. 14 and 15 2011. Auction Result £65,044,875 (with the Italian Sale)
Post-War & Contemporary Art (Sale 7914 and 7873), Oct. 14 and 15 2010. Auction Result £45,253,137 (with the Italian Sale)
Post-War & Contemporary Art (Sale 7758 and 7756), Oct. 16 and 17 2009. Auction Result £20,523,725 (with the Italian Sale)
Post-War & Contemporary Art (Sale 7617 and 7619), Oct. 19 and 21 2008. Auction Result £49,115,350 (with the Italian Sale)
Post-War & Contemporary Art (Sale 7425 and 7487), Oct. 14 and 16 2007. Auction Result £58,719,475 (with the Italian Sale)

newsfromsothebys201110

Sotheby's London Contemporary Art Evening and Day Sale auction, on October 13th and 14th, totaled £24,532,950 (US$38,633,427 - including premium). The Contemporary Art Evening Sale totaled £17,809,000 (selling 79,2% by value and 76,6% by lot), from 47 lots offered; whereas the Day Sale totaled £6,732,950 (selling 72% by value and 69% by lot), from 184 lots on sale.

Top lots sold in the Evening Sale included Lucian Freud, Boy's Head that find a buyer willing to pay £3,177,250 (US$4,999,085) (estimate £3,000,000 - 4,000,000). From an important American Collection this oil on canvas (1952, 21.6x15.9cm) depicted Charlie Lumley, one of Freud's most immediately-recognisable subjects from this early period in his oeuvre. The painting broadcasts a quite remarkable psychological intensity that is archetypal of his pictorial analysis, "whereby the young sitter is subjected to the unyielding dissection of his gaze."
Bought for £1,721,250 (US$2,708,215) (with estimate £1,400,000 - 1,800,000), Miquel Barceló, Pluja Contracorrent (mixed media on canvas, 300x200cm), executed in 1991, is an archetypal of the large-scale paintings produced during the seminal early 1990s period. Unequivocally Pluja Contracorrent is the masterwork from this series. Inspired by the expedition on the River Niger, in 1991, "the depths of sensorial experience, art history, and culture past and present, are penetrated and fused into a paragon of breathtaking artistic expression."
For more than eight years in a private collection [Sale: Sotheby's New York, Contemporary Art, 13 May 2004, Lot 371], Jean-Michel Basquiat, Spike (acrylic and oilstick on canvas, 1984, 155x165cm) from 1984 "bears witness to the very year Basquiat reached full artistic maturity", when he was just twenty four yeas old. "With bared teeth and arms outstretched against a vast field of cadmium yellow," this archetypal "figure facing the viewer replete with commanding symbolic authority", went for £1,217,250 (US$1,915,221) (estimate £1,100,000 - 1,600,000) for a Private US collector.
A new record for the artist at auction was achieved by an Leon Kossoff's oil on board. Executed in 1985, A Street in Willesden (213.4x208.3cm), went for £690,850 (US$1,086,983) (estimate £350,000 - 450,000) to a private European collector.

Sotheby's London :
Contemporary Art (Sale L11024 and L11025), Oct. 13 and 14 2011. Auction Result £24,532,950
Contemporary Art (Sale L10024 and L10025), Oct. 15 and 16 2010. Auction Result £22,834,000
Contemporary Art Including Arab & Iranian Art (Sale L09624), Oct. 16 2009. Auction Result £12,757,125
Contemporary Art (Sale L08024 and L08026), Oct. 17 and 20 2008. Auction Result £29,132,050
Contemporary Art (Sale L07024 and L07026), Oct. 12 and 15 2007. Auction Result £51,052,525

newsfromphillipsdepury201110

Phillips de Pury & Company's London Contemporary Art Evening and Day Sale auction, on October 12th and 13th, totaled £11,896,563 (US$18,721,501 - including premium). The Contemporary Art Evening Sale totaled £8,249,950 (selling 75% by value and 66% by lot), whereas the Day Sale totaled £3,632,863 (selling 65% by value and 67% by lot).

The Evening Sale attracted more attention to young emerging contemporary artists, where two new world records were set. Jeff Koons's, Seal Walrus Trashcans (2003-09), was the top lot on sale. It was bought for £2,113,250 (US$3,319,916) (estimate £2,000,000-£3,000,000 / US$3,160,000-$4,740,000). Looking in to the Day Sale, George O’ Dell, London Phillips de Pury & Company Head of Contemporary Art, said "The Phillips de Pury & Company Day sale saw the establishment of new records for artists such as Seth Price, Klara Lidén, Rebecca Warren and Maria Nepomuceno alongside strong results throughout the sale for both young and established artists."

Artist World Records:
Anatoliy KRYVOLAP, Horse. Night, 2009 for £79,250 (US$124,343)
Ralf KASPERS, Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow, 2008 for £58,850 (US$92,336)
Tauba AUERBACH, CMY 5, 2008 for £49,250 (US$77,372)
Walead BESHTY, 20-inch Copper (FedEx® Large Kraft Box© 2005 FEDEX 330508) International Priority, Los Angeles–London trk#8685 8772 8040, date October 2–6, 2009. International Priority London–New York trk#863822956489, date November 18–20, 2009, International Priority New York–London trk#7952 0098 1790, date September 19–21, 2011, 2011 for £46,850 (US$73,601)
Seth PRICE, Gold Key (Blue 1), 2007 for £30,000 (US$47,070)
James RIELLY, Sensible Ways, 1996-1997 for £25,000 (US$39,225)
Klara LIDÉN, Untitled (Poster Painting), 2007 for £25,000 (US$39,225)
Rebecca WARREN, Agapé, 2002 for £25,000 (US$39,225) - this piece went unsold in Nov. 2010 (estimate US$30,000-$40,000)
Philippe DECRAUZAT, Atopia, 2007 for £22,500 (US$35,303)
Friedrich KUNATH, Untitled "All my favourite painters couldn't paint", 2010 for £16,250 (US$25,496)
Maria NEPOMUCENO, Untitled, 2001 for £15,000 (US$23,535)

Phillips de Pury London :
Contemporary Art (Sale UK010611 and UK010711), Oct. 12 and 13 2011. Auction Result £11,896,563
Contemporary Art (Sale UK010510 and UK010610), Oct. 13 and 14 2010. Auction Result £8,819,900
Contemporary Art (Sale UK010609 and UK010509), Oct. 17 2009. Auction Result £6,748,663
Contemporary Art (Sale UK010708 and UK010608), Oct. 18 2008. Auction Result £8,114,800
Contemporary Art (Sale UK010407), Oct. 13 2007. Auction Result £41,922,080 (w/ China Avant-Garde: The Farber Collection, The John L. Stewart Collection of Russian Contemporary Art and The Marino Golinelli Collection)

The Green Sneakers

The Green Sneakers
LONDON: Almost midnight on a week day, in the underground, on my way home, I find a young women crying. Ask her if a can take a photo of her sneakers! She say’s yes, and then poses for me! We both got off in the same station. She went right. I went the other way. No other conversation has happen apart from the one surrounding that short event!

A dialogue on the whole

The last show at The Mews Project Space has marked a particular moment in the space sill brief but prolific history. It is an epitome for a phase that has started two years ago by two artists and an art dealer. The exhibition, which was curate by Aldo Rinaldi and FIlipa Oliviera, as an affective sensorial event, marks a transition from an experimental dive into a new phase in the project that, maybe, would start to become interesting to see to be confronted with a more institutional approach.

Anyhow, more than a dialogue between Yonamine’s (1975, Angola) Dipoló and Charlotte Moth’s (1978, UK) Untitled slide projection, this is an exhibition about Whole, and having the whole completely full. Yonamine’s everyday imagery, from popular consumer goods from Angolan and African mythologies juxtaposing Western narrative, printed onto newspaper pages looks like it is a virus infecting the space; transforming a white box into a communication devise. While Moth’s enquire into “the physical context from which [objects] emerge, and are presented within”, accumulates in one single bright spot all the blackness surrounding it. But more importantly, is when I saw The Agony of Water, by William Cobbing (1974, UK). The video projection just transformed the exhibition concept brought by the works on the two first rooms. In this case, a woman takes out and put in clay around her naked body. Her form, in constant mutation, re-submerges through the life in her.

That is why this exhibition projects’ The Mews Project Space into a new paradigm at the contemporary art scene from London. Going from being a noisy generator powered space (in an alley behind the Whitechapel Art Gallery) in to becoming a space with its own distinctive heard voice. Without being overwritten by some sound caused by a generator feed by fuel fossil. The Gradiva Project serves as a testimony for a systemic recreation of new forms through the act. It incorporates, or, instead, opens a new addendum to the whole project, just make it to have more sense. The new ‘Common Room’ has helped to close the first intrinsic extension, developed by the two founding artists since 2009; it brings a new individual condition in to the whole through its completeness. As if a new beginning-continuation is emerging from now on.

newsfromlondon201110

friends and family are ... to be with

newsfromfrieze201110

newsfromfrieze201110

For the first time, since I started to visit and follow commercial playgrounds for art, did an art fair looked so in vain (in particularly this one); in spite of all the brigth and colorful art works filling stands and crowds of collectors, advisers, artists and other professionals bumping into each others along narrow but comfortable corridors. Frieze VIP preview, this afternoon, presented the usual head-shots: Norah and Norman Stone, Daria (“Dasha”) Zhukova or even Paula Rego were just some of the VIP amongst an international flux of art aficionados.

If there is a crisis, it definitely stayed outside the big white tent installed at Regent Park. Frieze this year was looking into the bright side of life. “We’re always a little tense at the start,” said also Akio Aoki of Vermelho (H6), although he was more encouraged when, by the middle of the afternoon, nine of the artworks brought from Brazil into London had found buyers.

Between 2001 and 2008, galleries tended to bring with them fresh art works, directly from the artist studio, to the most important international art fairs; since 2009, for those who follow the programme delivered by those international commercial spaces, it became more evident that many of the works on show at the fair tended to reflected a long-run bet done by the galleries throughout their annual schedule of exhibitions. Which is good for the artist, since galleries have to liaise more with them; focused more on building an artist career, on one level, and strengthening his or her work, on the other. While, to collectors, they start to see new and more thoughtful work.

The down side of it is in that it is true that «in a recession, more challenging work is harder to shift», and this fact was even more perceptible as I strolled from one stand to the next. Nothing catchy, visually memorable - as the works by Murakami, Hirst or Koons who have market a decade - but instead pieces that anyone could buy for the right price (for more info on prices please read The Art Newspaper Fair edition).

In a quick chat with Brazilian artist, Ernesto Neto, we both come to the same conclusion, that this year it was more into looking for forms rather than into content: brightly coloured and with curveous lines, artworks that reinforced the feeling that the art world exists in a cheerful and leading parallel universe.

LEFT: Wangechi Mutu, 'Venus Trap' (mixed media collage, 22.9x29.8cm), 2011 at Victoria Miro (G5); RIGHT: Christian Jankowski, 'Christian' (The Finest Art on Water), 2011 at Frieze Projects (P5).

newsfromlondon201110

The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean's «films act as portraits or depictions rather than conventional cinematic storytelling, capturing fleeting natural light or subtle shifts in movement. Her static camera positions and long takes allow events to unfold unhurriedly».

newsfromlondon201110

When going to exhibitions previews I always tend to meet someone that I know, being him/her a gallery director, a collector, an artist or just a friend who came along to meet me. I am deeply glad for that! I always have some champagne to drink, with the occasional caviar to go along, when we’re talking about a high-street gallery. Excellent! The artwork, valued at £100m or with other given market value is there, in the background, as a silent witness to all the fuzz and buzz. This is my life! This is the world I live in! There is always something missing more friendly, more tasty, more valuable than this, and I have difficulties in holding it.

newsfromchristies201110

Sally MANN (1951- )

Emmet, Jessie and Virginia _ Night-Blooming Cereus
1989 _ 1988

Sold for
US$15,000 _ US$22,500
Estimate
US$12,000-$18,000 _ US$15,000-$25,000

Christie's NY :
Photographs (Sale 2470), Oct. 6 2011. Auction Result US$4,811,625
Photographs (Sale 2395), Oct. 6 2010. Auction Result US$5,571,537
Photographs (Sale 2206), Oct. 8 2009. Auction Result US$2,664,225
Photographs (Sale 2106), Oct. 14 2008. Auction Result US$3,424,000
Photographs (Sale 1893), Oct. 18 2007. Auction Result US$6,532,825