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YUKO MOHRI IN THE 14TH BIENNALE DE LYON

Moré Moré [Leaky]: The Falling Water Given #4-6, 2017

Moré Moré [Leaky]: The Falling Water Given #4-6, 2017

Yuko Mohri is participating in the 14th Biennale de Lyon on view through January 7, 2018. Floating Worlds curated by Emma Lavigne uses six trails to link the artworks on show at the macLYON to the ones on show at La Sucrière and the dôme, place Antonin Poncet: Archipelago of Sensation, Expanded Poetry, Ocean of Sound, Electric Body, Inner Cosmos and Endless Circulation. 

Yuko Mohri's installations are like autonomous ecosystems, made of disparate mechanical elements. Household utensils or other everyday objects reconfigured by the artist are combined with machine parts that she has picked up all over the world. The improvised design of these assemblages involves intangible energies such as magnetism, gravity, light, and temperature. She designs frameworks inspired by Marcel Duchamp works such as the Ready-madesThe Large Glass or Étant donné, then creates two-dimensional works based on water leaks that have sprung in various places. The artist then tries to connect the flows between them, judging the work to be finished when she has managed to control the leaks, thus allowing the water to circulate again.

Michael Rakowitz in "BUILDING/ENVIRONMENTS" at Smart Museum of Art

paraSITE, 1998

paraSITE, 1998

Michael Rakowitz's work "paraSITE," 1998 is part of the Building/Environments exhibition at the Smart Museum of Art through January 28, 2018. 

Presented in conjunction with the Chicago Architecture Biennial, this show explores the relationship between art and the built environment—the everyday structures we have built around us.

Building/Environments offers a significant reconfiguration of the Smart’s collection as well as our own interior environment, opening up new perspectives on beloved artists and art objects. It mixes approximately 100 works from across eras, cultures, and media to question the ways we occupy and perceive the built environment. The objects are loosely organized into three thematic sections that look at cities and urban spaces; household objects and domestic spaces; and utopian visions.  

Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Queen's University, Ontario

Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, The Golden USB, 2014-ongoing. multi-media installation.

Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, The Golden USB, 2014-ongoing. multi-media installation.

Through spoken-word audio, filmed performances and specimens, contents of the Trade Catalogue of Everything are revealed. Displayed as objects of appropriation and speculation, these are samples from a USB-ready “commercial” list addressed to extraterrestrial beings.

With reference to NASA’s 1977 Voyager Golden Record, The Golden USB (on view through December 3, 2017) captures land, water, air, plants, animals, and fragments of nature, along with human culture, industry, and invention. In considering the prospect of interstellar trade, Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens raise timely questions about the limits of commodification, including the ownership of the Earth and its life forms. This exhibition is curated by Sunny Kerr, Curator of Contemporary Art. 

The collaborative duo Ibghy and Lemmens is the inaugural Stonecroft Foundation Artist-in-Residence, hosted in collaboration with Queen’s Film and Media. The artists visited Kingston for research and production phases, beginning in mid-March. They have collected “entries” from a diverse group of artists, technicians, poets and scholars to create this new Canada-focused chapter of their ongoing project. In early September and mid-October, they will return to Kingston to elaborate on the exhibition’s themes.

A publication will follow the exhibition in winter 2018, reflecting Ibghy and Lemmens’s oeuvre to-date and feature essays by Lorna Brown and Sunny Kerr.

 

Mounir Fatmi in two pavilions for the 57th Venice Biennale

mounir-fatmi.-the-exile-pavilion-03.-courtesy-the-artist-and-lawrie-shabibi.jpg

Mounir Fatmi is currently exhibiting in two pavilions for the 57th Venice Biennale.
 

The Absence of Paths,  the first Tunisian Pavilion in Venice since 1958, uses performance and installation staged in different venues across Venice, as well as an interactive online platform theabsenceofpaths.com featuring text, video, audio, recipes, and photography, to generate further inquiry into issues surrounding human migration. For the exhibition, Mounir Fatmi presents a series of photos from The Exile Pavilion, a traveling project he launched in 2016 that inverts the established structures of temporary exhibitions, questioning ideas of nationhood, exile and various forms of displacement. Curated by Lina Lazaar and commissioned by The Presidency of the Tunisian Republic and the Tunisian Ministry of Cultural Affairs, The Absence of Paths collaborated with MOAS, the Migrant Offshore Aid Station, a charity that has helped approximately 35,000 people, mostly refugees escaping violence, persecution, and hardship. 

History is Not Mine, 2013, single-channel video with sound, 5 min. 

History is Not Mine, 2013, single-channel video with sound, 5 min. 

Fatmi's video, History Is Not Mine, 2013, will be exhibited in the NSK-State Pavilion, a unique, independent pavilion that aims to rethink what a contemporary state can be, offering an open form of citizenship which contrasts with that generated by spatially defined states. In the video, 'History is not mine', a man repeatedly strikes the keys of a typewriter with hammers, the red ribbon streaming across the white paper like a stream of blood against the otherwise black and white imagery. The noise and action become increasingly disturbing, at times violent, calling into question not only the difficulties of language and communication but the danger in not learning from history, which too often repeats itself, particularly when it comes to land, territory, and nationhood. NSK State in Time was founded by the artist collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) in 1992. NSK State Pavilion will take place at Ca'Tron, Iuav University, Santa Croce 1957/Calle del Forno 1960, from May 11-July 15, 2017.

James Clar's "DISTANT LIGHTS" opens at STRONGROOM

No Gravity, 2017 

No Gravity, 2017 

James Clar's Solo Exhibition "DISTANT LIGHTS" opens with a reception on September 30 from 5-8PM at a STRONGROOM pop-up gallery at 188 Grand Street in Newburgh, NY. James will give an artist talk starting at 5:30PM.

Clar’s work uses controlled light and sculptural light systems in order to analyze and observe the effects of media and technology on our perception of reality, time, and space. Using various forms of technology as his medium, he critiques their modifying effects on human behavior and ability to enhance or inhibit communication. 

For his Strongroom installation, James looks to the connection between the spiritual or otherworldly in relationship to our increasingly digital reality. The exhibition includes a central light piece that draws the viewer to a door leading nowhere, with shadows emanating from below. Titled “Nobody’s home,” it references a larger existential question of whether someone or something is “home”. With no tangible form to grasp, instead we are presented with a ghostly presence and a non-existent space. 

"DISTANT LIGHTS" will be open for public hours Sundays through October 22nd, 12-5 PM (October 1, 8, 15, 22).