DAILY NEWS, VIEWS, REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS
CRITICS' PICKS, OPENINGS, YOUR VIDEOS, YOUR BLOGS

The work of the Chinese artist Chen Zhen, who died of leukemia in December 2000, features in the ongoing Ladonia Biennial. Ladonia, a nation founded by the Swedish artist and historian Lars Vilks in June 1996, claims a piece of land at a peninsula in southern Sweden as its territory. It is here that Vilks has created the site of the Ladonia Biennial. www.ladonia.net

For Performa 2009, the Italian collective Alterazioni Video and Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson presented Symphony n.1, a live and multimedia piece based on "joy, infinite profound joy". With the structure of a symphony it is a set of actions repeated in loops mixed chaos, synchronicity and digital found material on one hand, and the theatricality and endurance aspect of performance on the other.

Curated by Barbara Casavecchia and Caroline Corbetta. Co-presented by Performa and Performanc... read more...

NYArtBeat films the long line of artists waiting to show their work to the judges of Sarah Jessica Parker's art reality TV show. Bravo's casting for the show took places in many cities across the US and in July 2009, including New York where this film was made. In the series, 13 contestants will compete for a gallery exhibition, a cash prize and a sponsored national tour. No dates for transmission have been given yet.

In FLYP's short documentary, John Baldessari reflects upon decades of making art after receiving the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale 2009. To see more on John Baldessari, go to FLYP Media, and don't miss his major exhibition at Tate Modern, London, Until 10 January 2010.

FLYP met up with Yoko Ono at the Venice Biennale (where she received the Golden Lion) and in her Soho apartment to discuss her legacy in the realm of Conceptual art. To see more on Yoko Ono go to FLYP Media.

This film by artpopulus celebrates the work of Nancy Spero, who died on 18 October 2009. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and lived most of her life in New York City. She was married to and collaborated with artist Leon Golub. As both artist and activist, Spero's career spanned 50 years. Her work engages with contemporary political, social, and cultural concerns, and with the representation of women from prehistory to the present.

This wonderful short documentary on the conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner was made by hillmancurtis, inc, a film and web design firm in New York City.

The curators behind the first retrospective of Luc Tuymans in the US discuss his work and enduring influence on younger and emerging artists. The most comprehensive presentation of his work to date, the exhibition spans every phase of Tuymans' career and features more than 70 key paintings from 1978 to the present.

Luc Tuymans
September 17, 2009 - January 3, 2010
Wexner Center for the Arts
1871 N. High Street
Columbus, OH 43210
T: +1 614 292 3535

James Drake's 1996 film 'Tongue-Cut Sparrows' features the somber pageant of women hand-signaling a sign language to their men, inside an El Paso prison, while the women stood outside. Drake showed this video at the 2007 Venice Biennale, as part of the US pavilion curated by Robert Storr. In this film, in which he's interviewed by Ellen Berkovitch, he explains that he asked them to sign poetry for the video - some picked Lorca, and the title comes from a poem by Albuquerque poet Jimmy Santiago B... read more...

The Saatchi Gallery's Art & Music Magazine went along to film a performance by Patti Smith on Tuesday 13 October at Alison Jacques Gallery in London. Smith was in London to celebrate the opening of an exhibition of works by her friend Robert Mapplethorpe which is at the gallery until 21 November 2009.
www.alisonjacquesgallery.com

Profile of Oliver Beer, the winner of New Sensations 2009, an art prize for UK graduates organised by the Saatchi Gallery and Channel 4. The film is produced by Tenement films. New Sensations

The New Sensations 2009 exhibition is at the A Foundation, Rochelle School, Arnold Circus, Club Row, London E2 from 9-19 October.

Profile of Nick Goss, a finalist of New Sensations 2009, an art prize for UK graduates organised by the Saatchi Gallery and Channel 4. The film is produced by Tenement films. New Sensations

The New Sensations 2009 exhibition is at the A Foundation, Rochelle School, Arnold Circus, Club Row, London E2 from 9-19 October.

Profile of Andreas Blank, a finalist of New Sensations 2009, an art prize for UK graduates organised by the Saatchi Gallery and Channel 4. The film is produced by Tenement films. New Sensations

The New Sensations 2009 exhibition is at the A Foundation, Rochelle School, Arnold Circus, Club Row, London E2 from 9-19 October.

Profile of Regine Petersen, a finalist of New Sensations 2009, an art prize for UK graduates organised by the Saatchi Gallery and Channel 4. The film is produced by Tenement films. New Sensations

The New Sensations 2009 exhibition is at the A Foundation, Rochelle School, Arnold Circus, Club Row, London E2 from 9-19 October.

A new video by Matthew Ronay who has a solo show at Marc Foxx in LA until 17 October. Slightly tribal but undeniably totemic, the work in "is the shadow" cloaks heavy, theoretical propositions in the artist's characteristically rudimentary expressions. Here, ceremonial costumes, capes, masks and cairn-like sculptures speak to the esoteric rituals and symbolic actions.

Matthew Ronay
MARC FOXX
Through Oct 17, 2009
www.marcfoxx.com

Ellen Berkovitch met the Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller in Santa Fe to discuss his project 'It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq', commissioned by Creative Time, Three Museum Project and the New Museum. The project involved a three-week road trip with Deller travelling from New York to Los Angeles with two Iraq experts and a writer, stopping off at various cultural institutions along the way.

With thanks to Ellen Berkovitch and Adobeairstream.

Trevor Bell was born in Leeds in 1930 and studied at the College of Art there. In his twenties, working in West Cornwall, Bell made his reputation as a leading member of the younger generation of St Ives artists. In the early 1970s Bell became Professor for Master (Graduate) Painting at the Florida State University, staying there for over 20 years. Bell returned to Cornwall in the 1990s and continues to live and work there.

Artist Trevor Bell shows us his Cornish studio and talks candidly abo... read more...

The American artist Roxy Paine (b. 1966) has created a 130-foot-long by 45-foot-wide stainless-steel sculpture, 'Maelstrom' (2009), especially for the Museum's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. Watch video footage of the artist and his crew installing the work on the Roof Garden at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (on view until 25 October).

Video: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Thomas Ling
Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery

James Kalm endures sweltering heat, and summer ennui to bike to the center of Chelsea for this blockbuster show. The inequality of female representation within museum collections is an almost endemic refrain. Though not reconciling this state of affairs, The Female Gaze does provide examples of some of today's most influential and accomplished artists' work. From stalwarts of Post-War American art like Louise Bourgeois and Joan Mitchell, to the Essential Feminist works of Lynda Benglis, to the P... read more...

Shana Moulton creates evocatively oblique narratives in her video and performance works. Combining an unsettling, wry humor with a low-tech, Pop sensibility, Moulton plays a character whose interactions with the everyday world are both mundane and surreal, in a domestic sphere just slightly askew. As her protagonist navigates the enigmatic and possibly magical properties of her home decor, Moulton initiates relationships with objects and consumer products that are at once banal and uncanny.

S... read more...

Working across a broad range of media, Yayoi Kusama is perhaps best known for her compulsive repetition of a recurring vocabulary of forms – polka dots, or phallic tubers, for example – often rendered on bright yellow or red backgrounds.

In 'Gleaming Lights of the Souls' visitors are invited to enter a tardis-like chamber, whose small interior unfolds into a magical encounter with infinity. The small room is mirrored on all four sides, with a shallow pool of water on the floor. A changing... read more...

Shana Moulton creates evocatively oblique narratives in her video and performance works. Combining an unsettling, wry humor with a low-tech, Pop sensibility, Moulton plays a character whose interactions with the everyday world are both mundane and surreal, in a domestic sphere just slightly askew. As her protagonist navigates the enigmatic and possibly magical properties of her home decor, Moulton initiates relationships with objects and consumer products that are at once banal and uncanny.

S... read more...

"Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)"
-- Robert Rauschenberg, 1959

Elegy for Robert Rauschenberg is an homage to an artist who was my personal hero, and my nemesis, in my student years. He was my hero because of the infallibility of his touch, and the constancy of his ability to invent and re-invent the potency and power of visual art — to push the boundaries of what art could be. He was my nemesis because I saw him as pur... read more...

On February 2, 2007, Doug Aitken and PopRally presented an event which included a reception, musical performances by Cat Power and street drummers Ryan Donowho and Hishan Bharoocha, storytelling by Melissa Plaut, and other surprise guests. The event was held in conjunction with Doug Aitken: sleepwalkers.

For more information on PopRally, visit http://www.moma.org/poprally

CREDITS
Film Title: Doug Aitken Happening, The Museum of Modern Art 2007

Director: Jesse Reding Fleming

Executiv... read more...

This interview took place during Marlene Dumas' exhibition at MoMA, New York, the first of its scale to be mounted in the US and organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in association with The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition includes approximately 70 paintings and 35 drawings, providing a comprehensive examination of the work of one of the most thought-provoking and fascinating artists working today.

Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave
December 14, 2008-February 1... read more...

'Walking in My Mind' (until 6 September) explores the inner workings of the artist's imagination through immersive, large-scale installation art. Ten international artists transform the Hayward Gallery's indoor galleries and outdoor sculpture terraces into a series of gigantic sculptural environments, each of which represents an individual mindscape. Interior worlds of emotions, thoughts, memories and dreams collide with exterior reality, blurring the boundaries between inner and outer space.

... read more...

David Byrne introduces his new installation 'Playing the Building' which is at the Roundhouse in Camden, London NW1 until 31 August 2009.

Mexican artist Hector Zamorra follows up his Zeppelin installation at the 2009 Venice Biennale with a new project for the Ladonia Biennial called 'Flying Embassies'. Swedish artist and historian Lars Vilks founded Ladonia in 1996. Find out more at www.ladonia.net

Swedish artist and historian Lars Vilks, who founded Ladonia in 1996, has some fun with South Korean artist Haegue Yang's project made specially for the 2009 Ladonia Biennial.

Swedish artist and historian Lars Vilks, who founded Ladonia in 1996, takes some liberties with the work of Philippe Parreno 'on view' at the 2009 Ladonia Biennial.

Swedish artist and historian Lars Vilks, who founded Ladonia in 1996, has some fun with Richard Wentworth's project 'Untitled (Alarm)' at the Ladonia Biennial...

Ladonia, a nation founded by the Swedish artist and historian Lars Vilks in June 1996, claims a piece of land at a peninsula in southern Sweden as its territory. It is here that Vilks has created two enormous works of sculpture - Nimis is made out of wood, and Arx from concrete. It is also the site of the Ladonia Biennial. www.ladonia.net

Artist Miltos Manetas introduces the first Internet Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2009.
www.biennale.net, www.theinternetpavilion.com www.padiglioneinternet.com

Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, committed to commissioning and the production of unconventional contemporary art projects, is contributing two new provocative works to Fare Mondi // Making Worlds, the official exhibition of the 53rd Biennale di Venezia, curated by Daniel Birnbaum. No night No day, an abstract opera by Cerith Wyn Evans and Florian Hecker, was performed off site on three nights only (June 4- 6) at the Teatro Goldoni. Here, in an interview by Zone Vienna, the curator Francesca... read more...

A compilation of works by Dash Snow made by WarholBaby.

A short interview with the American artist Dash Snow who died in July 2009 from a heroin overdose. This is an excerpt from Daniel Joseph's "You Doing You" shot in the Bowery in summer 2005.

Liam Gillick is an unlikely choice for the German Pavilion in the Giardini. He has described himself as 'a European Socialist' and over the past two decades has developed a way of working characterised by an open yet critical orientation towards the social context of art. Interdisciplinarity, collaboration and a focus on production process are some of the other notable qualities of his work, which he discusses here.

During the filming of Ukraine's Got Talent, people in the auditorium were left in tears by this mesmerising performance by 'sand artist' Kseniya Gavrilova.

Richard Jackson works on the final canvas for his work 'wall painting' in the exhibition TARGET PRACTICE Painting under attack 1949-1978 at the Seattle Art Museum, until September 7, 2009. 'Target Practice' is an international, historical survey of the attacks that painting endured in the years following World War II. For the artists in the show, painting had become a trap, and they devised numerous ways to escape the conventions and break the traditions that had been passed down to them over hu... read more...

Artist Edward Fornieles boxes Charlie Ogilvie the ex-captain of the Oxford blues without fighting back.

Tate Modern's current show 'Stutter' encompasses a wide range of artistic practices that incorporate repetition and interruption in order to convey meaning, whether through language, gesture, sound or images. This documentary looks at at the work of international emerging artists and their interpretations of the connections between thought, language and art. It includes interviews with up and coming London artist Anna Barham and curator Vannessa Desclaux. The exhibition is on until 16 August.

Ragnar Kjartansson's (b. 1976, Reykjavík, Iceland) multifaceted artistic practice is rooted in a tradition of acting and performance, with an existential and absurdist sensibility. 'The End' features a tableau vivant of the artist and his model lasting for the entire six-months of the Biennale, along with a monumental video and music installation. Kjartansson has transformed the Palazzo Michiel dal Brusà into a makeshift studio for the Biennale, in which the artist paints the image of a young ... read more...

British artist Eloise Fornieles listens to her iPod and dances in fake blood.

Filmmaker Gerry Fox has been visiting Venice over the last three years to capture the rituals and pageantry that are still very much part of the city's life today. In this multi-screen film installation he shows us the various sides of Venice: the Regata Storica, with its flotilla of stunning Venetian boats and traditional costumes, the stately priestly procession of the Festa Della Madonna Della Salute, hidden empty waterways, the Rialto market, and the Biennale itself.

For more informatio... read more...

Last week an impassioned debate took place at the Saatchi Gallery as part of its Art Prize for Schools run in association with the Sunday Telegraph. On the panel were Turner Prize-winning artists Grayson Perry and Antony Gormley; philosopher Alain de Botton; design expert Stephen Bayley and Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of the children's charity Kids Company. The debate, which you can watch in full here, was chaired by Dame Joan Bakewell and presented by Intelligence Squared.

Director Isaac Julien and actor Tilda Swinton discuss the film DEREK at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. A unique collaboration between the British artist Isaac Julien and the film's narrator, Tilda Swinton, DEREK celebrates the life, vision and legacy of Derek Jarman. Revealing, frank and charismatic interview footage is combined with a moving collage of home-movie footage, film extracts, pop promos, rare on-set footage and current affairs footage from the 60s to the 80s.

A videoed Boxbot performance made by some of the participating artists during The Long Weekend at Tate Modern (May 2009). Boxbot is a collective built upon the idea of making robots from rubbish.

Co-curator of the New Zealand Pavilion Heather Galbraith discusses the work of Francis Upritchard whose installation 'Save Yourself' is on view at the Fondazione Claudio Buziol. This video is supplied by Creative New Zealand, and filmed by BlueBach Productions.

The American artist Pae White explains her work at the Venice Biennale 2009 and its connection with the central exhibition 'Making Worlds'.

The director of the 2009 Venice Biennale Daniel Birnbaum explains what's behind its central exhibition entitled 'Making Worlds'.