Guangzhou

Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China

15.12.2017 – 8.3.2018

 

Simultaneous Eidos — Guangzhou Image Triennial 2017 will be held from December 15, 2017 to March 8, 2018 at Guangdong Museum of Art. The predecessor of Simultaneous Eidos — Guangzhou Image Triennial was Guangzhou International Photography Biennial Exhibition hosted by the Guangdong Museum of Art, which was one of the major international photography biennials in China. Its basic purpose is to uphold the humanistic standpoint with international horizon and sociology of images and participate and promote the development of contemporary photography and culture in China. Reviewing the past three photography biennials (in 2005, 2007 and 2009), each exhibition established a theme and academic orientation focused on the history of photographic photography in order to showcase contemporary photographic practices. At the same time, the passion of national art museums for photography research and collection is ignited.

 

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M+ Pavilion, West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong

13.10.2017 – 14.1.2018

 

M+, the highly anticipated museum of visual culture at Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, will exhibit selections from its exceptional ink art collection for the first time this fall. The Weight of Lightness: Ink Art at M+ will explore the pivotal role of ink art in global visual culture, offering fresh perspectives using cross-disciplinary and transnational approaches.

 

Featuring painting, calligraphy, installation, photography and moving image by 42 artists from Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, India, U.S., Spain, and others, the exhibition underlines M+’s interest in making existing boundaries more porous and in showing that ink art—endowed with the weight of traditions yet invigorated by the lightness of its material and the experimental vision of artists—possesses boundless potential.

 

Artists featured in the exhibition include Etel Adnan, Irene Chou, Chuang Che, Hidai Nankoku, Hsiao Chin, Hung Fai, Ishimoto Yasuhiro, Kan Tai-keung, Koon Wai Bong, Frog King Kwok, Lee Ufan, Leung Kui Ting, Li Huayi, Liang Quan, Richard Lin, Liu Kuo-sung, Lui Shou-kwan, Nick Mauss, Ni Youyu, Nam June Paik, Park Seo-Bo, Krishna Reddy, José María Sicilia, Tong Yang-Tze, Wucius Wong, Xu Bing, Yang Jiechang, and many others.

 

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Joan Ponç

We are pleased to present the exhibition dedicated to Joan Ponç and Joan Brossa, to be opened on Thursday, November 30rd, and where we will show works by two of the most significant artists in the recovery of avant-garde art in our country after the civil war, united by a creative and personal affinity from the late 40s to the early 50s and also linked to the history of Galeria Joan Prats, where they both would exhibit on several occasions.

 

In 1982, Joan Brossa showed for the first time in his exhibition at Galeria Joan Prats his object and visual poems, poems that he was making since 1954 and that were by then practically unknown by the public. Later, they would be shown in other exhibitions at the gallery in Barcelona (1989, 1995, 1997) and in New York (1989), and at the Basel Fair (1989). On the other hand, Joan Ponç began his collaboration with Galeria Joan Prats in 1978, with the exhibition Fons de l’ésser. He also exhibited in 1983, Nocturns, in 1987 with drawings from Pre-Dau Al Set period, in 1994 and 1996 with drawings from Suite Geomètrica and in 1980 at the FIAC art fair in Paris.

 

As Arnau Puig says in the text written for this exhibition, “A temperament and character of the dimensions of Brossa was almost destined to come across someone like Joan Ponç, who came down from the clouds”. This taste for magic, divination and the occult would be one of the points of union between the two artists, who met in 1946. That year they would publish together with Arnau Puig and Enric Tormo the only issue of the magazine “Algol”, which wanted to be a revulsive in front of immobilism and the loss of idealism of their contemporaries. They proposed a renewal of the look that is also visible in the monotypes that Ponç made to accompany the issues of the magazine and that moves away from the predominant naturalist figuration in Spanish art of the time.

 

In addition to this interest in new artistic forms, the works by Brossa and Ponç coincided thematically in a concern and criticism of society, along with an interest in popular culture, theatre and magic that we already pointed out. That’s why, in those years, collaborations between the two took place: the unpublished book Parafaragaramus (1948), two issues of the magazine “Dau Al Set” (January, 1949 and an unpublished one), the book Em va fer Joan Brossa (1951), where a portrait of Joan Brossa by Joan Ponç appears, considered the most direct and sincere portrait the poet has ever had. The Brossa-Ponç relationship was also reflected in the poems by Brossa alluding to Ponç and in several Ponç drawings: the Dibuixos podrits (1947) and the Metamorfosis (1947), the Joan Brossa-Joan Ponç suite (1947), the cover of the book Dragolí by Brossa (1950), or the gouache Brossa, Brossa (1950), that we show in this exhibition.

 

Brossa and Ponç were at the time two standard bearers of the aesthetic renovation, following the steps of J.V. Foix and Joan Miró. Brossa, who had met Miró in 1941 through the hat maker and patron Joan Prats, at J.V. Foix’s home, would introduce them Joan Ponç. “Dau Al Set” would help to restore bridges with the avant-garde of ADLAN, promoted by Joan Prats and Joaquim Gomis, and GATCPAC.

 

After this period of affinity and creativity, in 1953 Joan Ponç went to Brazil, and each artist continued his own journey. On his return to Catalonia, in 1962, Brossa was already very far from magic surrealism and was moving by an antipoetry linked to reality while doing plastic experiments of what would be his visual poetry. Their bond would be diluted. For Brossa, Ponç would always be linked to “Dau Al Set”.

 

This exhibition aims to show the trajectories of the two artists: a first part, with works from the period “Dau Al Set”, the moment of greatest affinity between Joan Brossa and Joan Ponç, and a second part of the exhibition, with later works, that allow to see their evolutions in the plastic field, and that they are reflected in the same way as in the Joan Brossa-Joan Ponç suite (1947).

 

Premios Alhambra

La Madraza Centro de Cultura Contemporánea UGR, Granada

22.11 – 18.12.2017

 

En ARCOmadrid 2017, en el mes de febrero, ya se presentó esta primera edición del Premio, así como las obras de los artistas escogidos, que ahora son exhibidas por primera vez después de la feria de arte contemporáneo.

 

Sólo se seleccionó a cinco artistas, que comenzaron a trabajar en sus obras inspirándose en la Alhambra. “Los artistas encuentran en recursos artesanales una nueva forma de lenguaje y lo vuelven contemporáneo”, ha señalado Alicia Ventura.

 

Más tarde, un jurado internacional de prestigio eligió la pieza ganadora, titulada Señas y sonidos del Palacio Rojo (leones/reyes/abencerrajes), de José Miguel Pereñíguez. Los visitantes podrán disfrutar de esta obra y de las otras cuatro escogidas: Lipogramas de Alegría y Piñero; Aljibe de Jacobo Castellano; Pétalo, hueso, aguja, huso de Miren Doiz; y Masa de infinita enormidad de Teresa Solar Abboud.

 

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Acacia

 Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, China

9.12.2017 – 23.2.2018

 

The large-scale exhibition of “Troposphere – Chinese and Brazilian Contemporary Art” is a dialogue on contemporary art between China and Brazil. The exhibition was organized by China Minsheng Bank and Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, co-organized by the Brazilian Embassy to China, CURRENTS Culture and Art Foundation, Beijing Minsheng Culture and Art Foundation, with the academic support of Brazil Cultural Center of Peking University.