The New Art Gallery Walsall

Kader Attia: Continuum of Repair: The Light of Jacobs Ladder

Kader Attia
Continuum of Repair: The Light of Jacobs Ladder
Whitechapel Art Gallery

Installation View

«French Algerian artist Kader Attia’s (b. 1970) immersive, multi-media installation gives us a glimpse of infinity. He revisits the story of Jacob’s Ladder describing the prophet’s vision of angels ascending from earth to heaven. A towering floor to ceiling structure fills the lofty spaces of the Gallery as a cabinet of curiosities, artefacts and books.

This new work of art is the result of Kader Attia’s engagement with a space steeped in history as the reading room of a former library. It looks at the idea of books and objects as receptacles of history, continuously carrying memories with them. The installation also maps the evolution of knowledge through the study of science, anthropology, politics and physics.

The installation is the latest chapter in Kader Attia’s research into the concept of repair, which he sees as an underlying principle of development and evolution in both culture and nature. As Attia says ‘the biggest illusion of the Human Mind is probably the one on which Man has built himself: the idea that he invents something, when all he does is repair.’

Kader Attia was born in Dugny, France and he has exhibited widely internationally including at art survey dOCUMENTA (13), 2012. This is his first UK exhibition.» [...]

In 2006 & 2009, the Slovakian artist Matej Kren built an octagonal building, the Book Cell, in the CAMJAP's lobby (Lisbon), creating a disorientation-symmetrical structure, made entirely from books, reflecting an enclosed multiplication of knowledge, history, research and trends.

Pamela Golden: Good Morning! Mister Williams

Pamela brings us five new large scale original works on paper that aren't what they look like they are. Two extremely blurred photo images (one from the past, found, another from the present, taken) printed, in black & white, on Hahnmühle paper. Those five works are painted over with Sumi watercolour and ink so the original technical light drawing disappears under the pleasurable greenish colours and human (natural) traces. Memory fading; persisting on time like immemorial splashes of colours. She reinforces the imagery and intelligently adds a new dimension to the imaginary embodied sensation, while reporting to what we recall from that particular moment in our past life. This set is complemented by nine small scale oil moving jewellery-paintings on printed photographs found on a flea market.

PS. Maria's like Syrah...

Li Xiaodong: Half Street

Li Xiaodong
Half Street
Lisson Gallery

Li Xiaodong, Egyptian Restaurant 8 (acrylic on paint, 40.5x50.5 cm), 2013 (detail)

Li Xiaodong's exhibition view

Li Xiaodong's exhibition view

Li Xiaodong's Diary 2013

«Liu Xiaodong (1963) is one of China’s foremost artists and a painter of international stature. Born in 1963 to factory worker parents in Jincheng, a town in northeastern China, he trained at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts where he now teaches as a professor. A pioneer of neo-realism, his work was integral in the transformation of Chinese contemporary art during the 1990s, radically diverging from the Socialist Realism that dominated artistic production during the Mao era. Politically and socially aware, Liu explores the human experience through his art, while expanding the possibilities of painting. Recent solo shows include: Today Art Museum, Beijing (2013); Kunsthaus Graz (2012); Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2006) and Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2006).» [PR]

Ken Okiishi: Gesture/Data

Ken Okiishi
Gesture/Data
Pilar Corrias

«Ken Okiishi takes up and troubles the vocabulary of the media that he uses. His works hover over and within the relationships between matter and memory, perception and action of a digitally networked culture. Using video, performance, and installation he creates moments when language and images begin to fall apart. As Okiishi subverts the material claims of the media, the glitches that occur illuminate spaces for the production of something other than what has already been.» [PR]