Exhibition documents, 2009

 

Language Barrier

May 22 – August 30, 2009

 

Centro Cultural Montehermoso

Fray Zacarías Martínez, 2

01001 Vitoria-Gasteiz

Spain

www.montehermoso.net

 

One of eight solo projects by: Ion Arregi, Marcelo Expósito, Aurélien Froment, Andre Guedes, Irene Kopelman, Nathaniel Mellors, Pia Rönicke, Lisa Tan.

 

Two projections each show the glass-encased entrance lobbies of two high-rise apartment buildings in Buenos Aires. One projection shows a tracking shot with a recurring mechanism that takes the viewer past the length of the lobby, repeatedly, as the position of a doorman changes with each successive pass. The second projection shows a stationary shot of the lobby, while the only movement is that of random traffic reflected in the glass facade. The work developed from long and regular walks around this affluent neighborhood at nighttime, interacting with the materiality of the buildings’—which is dominated by reflective surfaces of glass, mirror and polished marble, and interacting with the doormen sealed within.

 

The Transparency of Language by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti PDF (96 KB)

 

On the Beaten Path

May 15 - June 14, 2009

 

Jonas Dahlberg, Dominique Ghesquière, Jonathan Monk, Steven Parrino, Lisa Tan

Organized by Lisa Tan in connection with her residency at Frac Bourgogne.  The works in the exhibition are part of the institution's collection.

 

La Galerie, Talant

1 place Abbé Pierre

21240 Talant

France

www.frac-bourgogne.org

 

La Galerie a convié le Frac Bourgogne depuis 2008 à concevoir une exposition collective, qui initie une collaboration annuelle autour des artistes accueillis en Bourgogne dans le cadre des résidences Grand Est. La Galerie poursuit ainsi son programme d'expositions et de sensibilisation à l'art contemporain autour des démarches de jeunes artistes liés à l'activité artistique de la Bourgogne.

 

Le programme de résidences Grand Est a été initié en 2004 par les Fonds régionaux d'art contemporain des régions Alsace, Bourgogne, Champagne-Ardenne, Franche-Comté et Lorraine. Il a permis à 19 artistes de mener leur réflexion artistique dans une autre région que la leur. En 2009, le Frac Bourgogne a choisi d'étendre à l'international le principe des résidences et a accueilli l'artiste new-yorkaise Lisa Tan, en partenariat avec l'École Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Dijon. Pour cette exposition, l'artiste a été invitée à choisir un ensemble d'oeuvres dans la collection du Frac Bourgogne, en lien avec ses propres préoccupations artistiques. C'est donc une exposition collective, conçue par une artiste, et reflet de son propre univers, qui est proposée ici. Cette exposition est la seule de l'année de La Galerie qui soit une exposition collective. L'appréhension de l'espace des oeuvres et les relations qui s'établissent entre elles ouvrent une relation à l'architecture du lieu tout autant qu'une atmosphère singulières.

 

Le travail de Lisa Tan associe une forte dimension biographique à une réflexion sur la vie individuelle à travers des formes très liées à l'univers littéraire. À l'occasion de son séjour à Dijon, elle a lu le livre de Georges Bataille L'expérience intérieure et ses longues marches dans la ville l'ont conduite un jour devant un bar nommé le « Deep Inside ». De cette coïncidence de sens entre ces deux éléments de sa vie présente est née l'oeuvre qui est produite pour l'exposition de Talant. Lisa Tan a choisi de l'accompagner d'une vidéo de Jonas Dahlberg, One Way Street (2007), et d'oeuvres de Dominique Ghesquière, Journaux (2003), Steven Parrino, The No Title Painting (2003) et Jonathan Monk, My last Cigarette (1997).

 

Elle a choisi d'intituler cet ensemble On the Beaten Path qui pourrait être traduit en français par « battre le pavé ». Lisa Tan écrit à propos de son choix qu'elle a voulu rendre compte de la réalité de l'individu aujourd'hui, immergé dans un contexte fortement urbain, souvent source d'anxiété. En référence à Georges Bataille, qui explore les limites de l'individu, Lisa Tan s'intéresse à ce qui surgit, interrompt le cours des choses, transforme profondément l'individu.

 

L'ensemble des oeuvres souligne à la fois la profondeur et la dimension sombre à l'existence. De la même manière que Bataille s'attache à l'expérience de la porosité entre l'état intérieur de l'individu et l'extérieur, Lisa Tan explore le trouble de l'état intérieur au contact du monde. On pourrait citer la phrase de Nietzsche choisie par Bataille en exergue de son livre : « La nuit est aussi un soleil » (Zarathoustra).

 

House Call

February 22, 2009

 

Richard Aldrich, Leigh Ledare, Lisa Tan, with Amy Granat

 

Three's Company, New York

13 Allen Street

New York, NY 10002

 

"Located within roommates Alex Gartenfeld and Piper Marshall’s modestly sized Chinatown apartment, Three’s Company’s only two shows boast an outstanding lineup of artists. Richard Aldrich, Leigh Ledare, and Lisa Tan all exhibited in their first presentation, House Call, which was followed by an AIDS-3D solo exhibition. Three’s Company also offered me the most personal-yet-enjoyable experience I’ve possibly ever had in a contemporary art context: the pair showed Lisa Tan’s One Night Stand (Paris) in Marshall’s bedroom–a projector propped upon her bed with its image focused above her pillows. Tan’s black and white text-based video, recasting beautiful yet banal moments from a 24-hour trip to Paris, pairs perfectly with the intimate scene. Three’s Company next presents a celebrity-themed show of Asher Penn, also launching the artist’s book and PROVENCE magazine as one event October 5th." - Karen Archey, Art F City

 

Still / Moving / Still

March 29 - June 7, 2009

 

Robert Barry, Lothar Baumgarten, David Blamey, Marcel Broodthaers, Matthew Buckingham, David Bunn, Daniela Comani, Peter Downsbrough, Cerith Wyn Evans, Ceal Floyer, Andrea Geyer, Liam Gillick, Shumona Goel, Dan Graham, Tamar Guimaraes, Mischa Kuball, Hilary Lloyd, Mary Lucier, Anthony Mc Call, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Jonathan Monk, Dennis Oppenheim, Pablo Pijnappel, Wolfgang Plöger, Erik Schmidt, Billy Sullivan, Lisa Tan, Sofie Thorsen, Markus Wirthmann, Florian Zeyfang.

Curated by Marc Glöde

 

Cultuurcentrum Knokke-Heist

Knokke-Heist

Belgium

 

STILL / MOVING / STILL aims to initiate a debate on the history and contemporary status of slide projection. Slides are well known to a large number of people, particularly within family circles. Millions of people can recall watching slide presentations in private settings, typically holiday snapshots or family histories. Through the development of digital imagery and the digital "slideshow" on the computer, slide projection has since been in a rapid decline. Today we often look back on slide projections and the surviving images with a certain sense of nostalgia. Over the past twenty years, there has been considerable debate about the role of projected images in art institutions. 'The image' has been strongly influenced by experimental film, cinematographic installations, digital photography, and light boxes. Within this context, one medium has until now escaped the attention of theoretical inquiry, namely that of slide projection. It is the goal of this exhibition to change this situation, and to show how this medium always has been (and still is) a vital contributor to this ongoing discussion. The historic dimensions together with the resurrection of a contemporary following, makes this exhibition not only a stimulating exercise, but also a very necessary one. That an experience as this takes place in Knokke-Heist, which is a place that has played an important role in the history of the photographic and cinematic image, offers an extra dimension to this exhibition. The collaboration between the curator and Knokke-Heist was the occasion for a rarely seen dynamic in Europe with respect to a medium that has received little attention until now.

 

PRIVATE VIEW II

3 July 2009 - 31 July 2009

 

Katarina Burin, Damien Cadio, Nana Dix, Terry Haggerty, Daniel Robert Hunziker, Bjørn Melhus, Thomas Palme, Stefan Sandner, Matt Saunders, Felix Schramm, Lisa Tan, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra and Cornelius Völker

 

Andreas Grimm München

Türkenstrasse 11

D-80333 Munich

Germany

www.andreasgrimmgallery.com

 

ANDREAS GRIMM MUNCHEN is pleased to announce our annual summer group show PRIVATE VIEW II including works by Katarina Burin, Damien Cadio, Nana Dix, Terry Haggerty, Daniel Robert Hunziker, Bjørn Melhus, Thomas Palme, Stefan Sandner, Matt Saunders, Felix Schramm, Lisa Tan, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra and Cornelius Völker.

 

 

There Is No(w) Romanticism

May 29- July 11, 2009

 

Bas Jan Ader, Jean Baptiste Bernadet, Iñaki Bonillas, Patricia Dauder, Edith Dekyndt, Cyprien Gaillard, Amy Granat & Drew Heitzler, Barnaby Hosking, Marine Hugonnier, Sophie Nys & Philippe Van Snick, Paul Pouvreau, Lisa Tan, Stefan Tcherepnin, Pieter Vermeersch

Curated by Lilou Vidal

 

FDC Satellite

Galerie Les filles du calvaire

Boulevard Barthelemy, 20

1000 Brussels

Belgium

 

 

This project was born from an observation, the doggedness of a certain form of Romanticism (in its melancholic acceptance) in the contemporary and conceptual art of today. But doesn’t this doggedness come from the intrinsic foundation of our being, whose duality between reason and emotion creates melancholy? Have not the negation and denial of this natural inclination towards romanticism revitalised its very sense and existence?

 

Historically, Romanticism has been asserted as a rhetorical critic of an ideology based on the logic and material constraints of the period of industrialisation and beginning of mass society of the 19th century. It was a question of giving free rein to the spontaneous power of emotion versus the rationalism that dominated the period of Enlightenment to which the German political and literary movement of the second half of the 18th century – “Sturm und Drang”,1 the forerunner of Romanticism – was already opposed.

 

The definition of Romanticism proposed by Baudelaire in his text The Salon of 1846 covers the main basic principles: emotions, individualism, interiority, infinite, a fusion with nature becoming a reflection of the soul.2

Much later, minimal and conceptual art reacted against the mythical and so-called pretentious speech of the abstract expressionists, extolling a certain lyricism and the emotional strength of the spontaneity of the gesture, to mention but a few aspects.

 

That is when the ideas was born that art must be totally pure and detached from any affectation.

When Sol LeWitt wrote in Paragraphs on Conceptual Art in 1967:

“It is the objective of the artist who is concerned with Conceptual art to make his work mentally interesting to the Spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry..() The expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to Expressionist art is accustomed (...) would deter the viewer from perceiving this art”. But as Jorg Heiser 3 emphasises, why would a spectator not think that a work is mentally interesting and that he can be emotionally affected by it? In fact, it was two years later, in 1969, that LeWitt published a new pamphlet in his Sentence on Conceptual Art in the first issue of Art and Language, when he wrote: “Conceptual artists are mystics rather that rationalists” and “They leap to conclusions than logic cannot reach”.

 

The idea behind this was developed borrowing from the work of exposition Bas Jan Ader (1942-1975), who today is recognised as the key figure that incarnates these two tendencies that are diametrically opposed: Romantic and Conceptual.

 

Disappearing in mysterious circumstances in 1975 while crossing the Atlantic in a small motor boat – a voyage that corresponds with the 2nd part of a triptych that he had called “In Search of the Miraculous” – Bas Jan Ader studied in southern California at the end of the 1960s at a time when minimalism and conceptualism tended to eliminate any personality cult in the work in favour of a more objective and scientific approach.

Whereas in his methods Bas Jan Ader adopts the orthodoxy of concepts that feature a systematic approach in the treatment of his work (films, photographs, slide projections and installations that are very pure in form), his subjects include references, sometimes very banal, that engage a romantic sentimentality: flowers, tears, sunsets, etc. Bas Jan Ader was himself both the subject and object of his own productions.

 

He became a master of confronting art with the physical laws of gravity. Many of his pieces are based on the simple act of falling. In Fall 1 (Los Angeles) 1970, the artist is sitting balanced on a chair placed on the roof of a bungalow and lets himself fall. In Fall II, Amsterdam, 1970, he hurls himself headlong on a bicycle into a canal. Despite the humorous tone to be seen in pieces such as his videos, the act of falling engages a sense that is much more existential and dramatic, even self-destructive. With his final work, In Search of the Miraculous 1975, the notion of falling reached its paroxysm, we are forced to imagine this man, alone in the face of the immense ocean, allowing himself to be driven by the whims of an uncontrollable sea before making this final leap.

 

The disappearance of Bas Jan Ader is somewhat reminiscent of Donald Crowhurst, a copy of whose book, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst 4, was found in his locker at university a few months after his disappearance.  When a person disappears, there is always the hope that he might reappear again. As is the case with Crowhurst, we can imagine that Bas Jan Ader set up his own disappearance and is living another life somewhere else. Whether he disappeared dramatically at sea or merely disappeared from life, there is still this romantic idea of fleeing and escape.

 

The exhibition will present various aspects of this paradoxical relationship to be found in the work of Bas Jan Ader between Ratio and Pathos, Mental and Emotion, Humour and Drama. With regard to the method used, we can distinguish works produced from processes associated with the past, such as 8 mm or 16 mm films that many contemporary and conceptual artists have used, and the re-appropriation of photographic images or archival documents, texts, works on paper, photographs, fragments of memory, images of the absent, testimonials of a time that is no longer there... Sound works will also be on display for their conceptual and emotional potential.

 

As for the subject, we can identify various notions that are inherent to romanticism: the missing part, the trace, the affirmation or negation of the artist’s inner “me” or “I”, as well as picture references in their relationship with nature and the sublime. Some works also question the notion of the “romantic cliché”, the popular image made banal, which acquires a new strangeness by moving in a conceptual sphere.

 

- Lilou Vidal, April 2009

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1 Maximilian Klinger is, of course, one of the key authors of the movement with his play Sturm und Drang, although the term existed before the play was produced. In fact, it was Friedrich von Schiller (Brigands) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who were the main representatives of this movement.

 

2 “Romanticism is neither precisely in the choice of topics nor in exact truth, but in the way we feel them. They are sought from the outside, and yet only inside is it possible to find them..(...) We therefore, before all else, must come to know the aspects of the nature and situations of man that the artists of the past either disdained or did not know. He who says romanticism says modern art, – in other words intimacy, spirituality, colour, aspiration to the infinite, expressed by every means contained by the arts.” Charles Baudelaire, Le Salon de 1846, Chapitre II. Qu’est ce que le Romantisme ?

 

3 Jorg Heiser, Romantic Conceptualism, pp 136-137. Jorg Heiser through this exhibition that took place in the Kunsthalle at Nuremberg created a new name: “Romantic Conceptualism” (also known as conceptual romanticism) is a strand of conceptual art which seeks to place emotion and a sense of ‘the hand of the author’ over the cold intellectualism of most conceptual art. The movement has its roots in age old ideals of romanticism. It draws on aspects of magic realism and cynical realism. There was coindidentally an exhibition at the American Federation of the Arts curated by Jorg Heiser of Frieze magazine, which aimed to point towards a group of artists since the sixties who have an evident element of romanticism in a conceptual practice. Early forerunners of romantic conceptualism include Cornelia Parker, Bas Jan Ader, Sophie Calle, and Tacita Dean.

 

4 Donald Crowhurst (1932–1969) was a British businessman and amateur sailor who died while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race. Crowhurst had entered the race in hopes of winning a cash prize from the Sunday Times to aid his failing business. Instead, he encountered difficulty early in the voyage, and secretly abandoned the race while reporting false positions, in an attempt to appear to complete a circumnavigation without actually circling the world. Evidence found after his disappearance indicates that this attempt ended in insanity and suicide.

 

5 quote from the text of Les mots dans la peinture de Jean-Baptiste Bernadet by Devrim Bayar

 

6 The initial idea for the film came from a conversation between Olivier Mosset, Steven Parrino, Drew Heitzler and Amy Granat. Oliver Mosset found the project to put on a theatre play in front of the Centre Pompidou in Paris in a biography of Jean Genet. Genet’s idea consisted of replacing the object of the amorous quest of the young Werther by a motorcycle.

 

7 Claude Lorrain was the pseudonym of the French painter Claude Gellée (1600-1682). Gellée specialised in landscape drawings and paintings, and spent much of his life in Rome.The Claude Lorrain Mirror is a slightly convex mirror made of black glass that produces a reduced, upright and virtual image of the scene being observed by reflection in it. Much of the colour is washed out, thus allowing the artist to concentrate on the forms and perspective.