SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin

Exhibition 23.3 – 6.5.2018

Opening 23.3. 2018, 7pm


Performance Annika Kahrs the lord loves changes, it‘s one of his greatest delusions, 2018 


24.3.2018, 9pm



 

With: Paolo Bottarelli, Raven Chacon, Tanka Fonta, Malak Helmy, Hassan Khan, Annika Kahrs, Pungwe (Robert Machiri and Memory Biwa), The Otolith Group (Anjalika Sagar, Kodwo Eshun), Barthélémy Toguo

 

We Have Delivered Ourselves from the Tonal. Of, with, towards, on Julius Eastman is an exhibition, a program of performances, concerts and lectures as well as an upcoming publication that deliberate around concepts beyond the predominantly Western musicological format of the tonal or harmonic. The project looks at the work of the African American composer, musician and performer Julius Eastman beyond the framework of what is today understood as minimalist music, within a larger, always gross and ever-growing understanding of it—i.e. conceptually and geo-contextually. Together with musicians, visual artists, researchers and archivers we aim to explore a non-linear genealogy of Eastman’s practice and his cultural, political and social weight while situating his work within a broader rhizomatic relation of musical epistemologies and practices.

 

For the project, new substantial artworks and musical pieces have been commissioned and will be world-premiered in Berlin. These include a filmic work and performance by Annika Kahrs.

 

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ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe

17.3 – 5.8.2018

 

The exhibition »DIA-LOGOS. Ramon Llull and the ars combinatoria« is dedicated to the outstanding Catalan-Majorcan philosopher, logician, and mystic Ramon Llull (c. 1232–c. 1316), whose life and work continue to fascinate a host of thinkers, artists, and scholars today.

 

The influence of his universal concepts and ideas can be found in many fields — literature, visual arts, music, philosophy, religion, and politics — and their effects are felt in contemporary disciplines such as information theory, informatics, and media technology.

 

In the exhibition this broad scope of Llull’s impact will be reflected in a many-layered network of references stretching from the thirteenth century into the present day. Besides the significance of Llullian combinatorics for generative and algorithmic principles to develop advanced media technologies, it is particularly highly topical questions concerning the transfer of knowledge and values that can be dealt with through unconditional readiness to enter into dialogue.

 

The exhibition is developed around two key areas, which are closely interwoven in a unique way: for one thing, Llull’s ideas exhibit elementary aspects of media archaeology and media philosophy, which render his work indispensable for contemporary discourses on media ecology and machine learning algorithms; for another, his universal, rational system of knowledge gives rise to an approach that is highly relevant today, which is implemented as a dialogue by productively engaging with the Other beyond the cultures and constraints of the three major monotheistic religions. The exhibition begins by exploring Llull’s system of knowledge, his ars combinatoria, and its enormous influence on formal logic and algorithmic theories — the basis upon which advanced networked media technologies are developed. The method developed by Llull is based on logical and calculatory operations, which he translated into diagrams and »thinking machines« on paper, is presented in the exhibition as a precursor of program languages and their algorithmic logic. The Llullian system of thinking is both a source of inspiration and a sounding board for many contemporary artists who engage with the mechanisms and effects of our environment that is interconnected by media technologies.

 

In addition, the exhibition seeks to show to what extent Llull’s grand endeavor of unifying the different areas of knowledge via a rational system of deduction and demonstration can lead to dialogue and ultimately to peace between the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the face of increasing radicalism, purportedly in the name of religion, and national isolationist tendencies, which respond to the global challenges of migration, integration, and social diversity by erecting barriers, Llull’s untiring attempts at universal dialogue are more topical than ever before. This makes him a source of inspiration for developing potential courses of action now and in the future.

 

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Bombas Gens Centre d’Art, València

14.3.2018 – 20.1.2019

 

ARTISTES: Bernd and Hilla Becher, Helen Levitt, Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, David Goldblatt, Luigi Ghirri, Victoria Civera, Elger Esser, Xavier Ribas, Muntadas, Francesca Woodman i Matt Mullican entre altres

COMISSARIAT: Nuria Enguita i Vicente Todolí

 

Aquesta exposició és la segona presentació pública de la col·lecció Per Amor a l’Art. En esta ocasió, hi ha els treballs de nombrosos artistes procedents de diferents països i èpoques per a plantejar un acostament a la construcció social de l’espai, a les formes en què representem, reproduïm, coneixem o habitem els llocs.

 

La mostra fa al·lusió a la possibilitat de fer visibles les relacions i els intercanvis que reprodueixen l’espai físic i social de manera quotidiana, així com el trànsit permanent del que és subjectiu al que és col·lectiu.

 

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Fundació Palau, Caldes d’Estrac, Barcelona

24.3 – 22.4.2018

 

 

El títol de la instal·lació prové de “La raïl de l’arbre és una roda”, paraules de Ramon Llull que apareixen en el llibre Començament de medicina. En paraules de Perejaume:

 

“La sintaxi de tota l’obra de Llull és veritablement forestal, tant per la figura repetida d’arbre amb que imatja i branca els diversos coneixements, com per la manera i la ufana amb què s’hi arboren tota mena de connexions i demostracions analògiques. Si hi ha dos elements constitutius en el sistema d’argumentació de l’Art, aquests són sens dubte: les derivacions, en branca i les combinacions en roda -figures giratòries, emmirallaments, cercles relacionals-.

 

Certament, l’Art s’arbra i roda, tota ella. Per això, la possibilitat de rodar-hi d’arrel resulta tan meravellosa com pràctica. Només així, la coreografia dels arbres, la claredat mecànica de les raons i el desconcert que tot plegat pugui suscitar, arriben a ajustar-se a una possible pretensió general de plantar tots els arbres en roda en tant que línies convergents o divergents d’una mateixa esfera”.

 

Unes paraules que deixen entreveure com la fusió d’imatge i música esdevé una mena de recitació meditativa que ens retrotreu a principis primordials de la nostra pròpia existència.

 

El projecte artístic de Perejaume ha contemplat des dels seus inicis un estret vincle amb la natura, viscut en i per la natura, amb el paisatge com a escenari i amb les “manifestacions arbòries”, com ell mateix les anomena, contemplades i presentades amb una gran diversitat, com per exemple, en el seu llibre de poemes “Obreda” (2003), en el qual també recull les seves reflexions continuades sobre la natura i més concretament sobre el bosc que l’envolta a la seva casa-taller del Montnegre.

 

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Galeria Joan Prats presents the exhibition Edicions II by Muntadas, which gathers a selection of serial works the artist has developed since 2003 up to the present day in different formats: publications, prints, videos, objects, installations and other graphic materials. This exhibition completes the work started in the exhibition Edicions, made at Galeria Joan Prats in 2003.

 

«The first time Muntadas talked to me about the exhibition Edicions II at the Galeria Joan Prats, he referred to it as an “exhibition of deltas”. I asked him to elaborate: “my projects are one, they are units. But these units diversify into huge quantities of postcards, there could be up to 100.000 postcards, and could even include 17 metal plaques distributed throughout the city in the form of signage, or a web page. So, the project finally appears as the sum of three collections of remains; that is of deltas” (…)

 

Editions allowed Muntadas to achieve a more porous and plural circulation by its multiplication and intervention capacities across diverse media and in different time frames. While his projects usually consist in one video, one installation, or one urban intervention, his publications are rarely made up of a single unique element (…)

 

A truly genuine notion of project has also emerged throughout Muntadas’ career. The artist tackles the project, on the one hand, as the logic behind a series of procedures, based on the repetition of processes and strategies and on the other, the project defines itself following the logic of a work in progress, generating moments of aperture. In this way, the notion of project, as Muntadas states, has allowed him to depart from a type of intuitive and immediate practice while helping him to structure flexible environments, open to unpredictability, developing platforms to work in the long run (…)

 

The editorial work and the publications is where Muntadas has experimented more precociously and with more intensity than in any other medium the collaborative methods that have ended up impregnating the whole of his work. Here is where one finds the deployment of strategies that catalyse translation no longer, as just a metaphor, so much as in particular a process of bidirectional exchange.»

 

Fragments of Oriol Fontdevila’s text Piscine Obliviousness. Amphibious editions, from the exhibition catalogue.

 

Muntadas, born in Barcelona and living in New York since 1971, was a pioneer of video and installation in the mid-seventies, and continued working with photography, video, installation, audio, and urban interventions. Iterations of his iconic projects, such as Between the Frames: The Forum (1983-1993), The Board Room (1985), and the on-going series On Translation (1995- …) and The Construction of Fear (2008- …) – have been exhibited in institutions and galleries of the USA, Latin America, Europe and the Mid-West. Muntadas participated in the Documenta’s 1977 and 1997 editions, the Whitney Biennial of 1991, the Bienal de São Paulo of 1983, the Bienal de La Habana of 2000, the Taipei Biennal of 2002, the Gwangju Biennale of 2004, the Instanbul Biennal of 2011, and the Paris’ La Triennale of 2012. In 2005, he represented Spain in the Venice Biennale, where he created an integral project about the architectonical evolution of the Biennale throughout its history. His works have been included in exhibitions at MACBA, Barcelona; Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City; Weserburg Museum, Bremen; Espacio Fundación Telefónica, Buenos Aires; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; and Estação Pinacoteca, São Paulo. Since 2011 he has been working on the project Asian Protocols, presented to the public for the first time at Total Museum of Seoul (2014), and for the second time at 3331 Arts Chiyoda of Tokyo (2016). The next step of the project will be its development in China.

 

A catalogue has been edited especially for the exhibition

La locura del ver, 2016-17

We present Phasma, the seventh exhibition by José María Sicilia in Galería Joan Prats, where we show his recent work, with abstract pieces that incorporate fabrics and embroidery and whose shapes come from sonograms.

 

The word that entitles the exhibition, Phasma, of Greek origin, designates the specters and apparitions and refers, as described by the artist, to “something that appears and disappears, a butterfly that goes by flapping its wings” and that “speaks of the light as a fold”.

 

In the exhibition, together with the Phasma series, started in Japan, we find the series of El Instante, collages made from drawings of the last ten years, and works from the series La Locura del ver. The creation process of this last series is linked to a sonographic technology that results from an experiment carried out by Thomas Young in 1801, which allowed for the detection of the wave nature of light through its diffraction across two networks successively distanced from a luminous source. This experiment serves as a starting point for a software that allows Sicilia to decompose the sound in order to create cartographies of lines and shapes, some drawings, painting, collage and embroidery compositions that result in the works of La Locura del ver.

 

This technology gives José María Sicilia a tool to reach a new depth. In this new development of his work we find everything that was already present in his previous artistic evolution: the strength of color, the movement of light, a fondness for the organic and the process of unification and opposition that, since the eighties, his painting have shown. His first production had a strong expressionist character and deepened in the monochrome of white. Later on, his career is marked by the discovery of wax as a material, by the appearance of flowers, beehives and also by photography. Sicilia is a restless creator who has based his work on the questioning of shape. He is an artist who interrogates, who does not accept molds and feels the need to break the formats, summoning the emotion of the spectator.

 

José María Sicilia (Madrid, 1954) lives and works in Madrid. He has recently exhibited in Museo Casa de la Moneda and Calcografía Nacional, Madrid (2017); Musée Delacroix, Paris (2015), Palacete del Embarcadero, Santander (2014); Matadero, Madrid and Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art (2013); Hospital de la Caridad, Sevilla (2012); Maison Erasme, Brussels and Amos Anderson Art Museum of Helsinki (2010); Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum (2008). His work is present in important public and private collections, among which stand: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; MOMA, New York; Fundació ‘la Caixa’, Barcelona; Colección Banco de España, Madrid; Collection Ville de Paris; MACBA, Barcelona; Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Torino; MNCARS, Madrid; Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Japan; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The New York Public Library, New York.