AI WEIWEI: LIFE CYCLE

(from Marciano gallery) September 28, 2018 – March 3, 2019Marciano Art Foundation is pleased to announce the third MAF Project in the Theater Gallery, a solo exhibition of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, on view from September 28, 2018 — March 3, 2019. This exhibition is Ai’s first major institutional exhibition in Los Angeles and will feature the new and unseen work Life Cycle (2018) – a sculptural response to the global refugee crisis. The exhibition will also present iconic installations Sunflower Seeds (2010) and Spouts (2015) within the Foundation’s Theater Gallery.

On view for the first time in the Black Box, Life Cycle (2018) references the artist’s 2017 monumental sculpture Law of the Journey, Ai’s response to the global refugee crisis, which used inflatable, black PVC rubber to depict the makeshift boats used to reach Europe. In this new iteration, Life Cycle depicts an inflatable boat through the technique used in traditional Chinese kite-making, exchanging the PVC rubber for bamboo.

Suspended around the boat installation are figures crafted from bamboo and silk. In 2015, Ai began creating these figures based on mythic creatures from the Shanhaijing, or Classic of Mountains and Seas. The classic Chinese text compiles mythic geography and myth; versions of the Shanhaijing have existed since the 4th century B.C. These works are crafted in Weifang, a Chinese city in Shandong province with a tradition of kite-making dating back to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).

Windows (2015), which hangs along the perimeter of the Black Box, draws from Chinese mythology, the tales and illustrations of the Shanhaijing, the history of 20^th-century art, and the life and works of the artist. The vignettes feature a dense mix of biographical, mythological, and art historical references to craft a contemporary story. Similar to chapters in a book, or acts in a play, the various scenes include the mythological creatures of the Shanhaijing alongside bamboo versions of Ai’s earlier works, such as Template and Bang, and homages to Marcel Duchamp and Jasper Johns. A central theme running through the ten vignettes is freedom of speech and Ai’s efforts in defending it. Motifs recurring in Ai’s practice—the bicycle, the alpaca, symbols of state surveillance and control—are repeated and multiplied.

This multifaceted installation is a continuation of Ai’s ongoing engagement with politics and social justice. It follows the release of his feature-length documentary, Human Flow (2017), which depicts the refugee crisis on film. In the artist’s op-ed for the Guardian in February 2018, he writes, “I was a child refugee. I know how it feels to live in a camp, robbed of my humanity. Refugees must be seen as an essential part of our shared humanity.”

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

(from website) David Kordansky Gallery is pleased to announce Chromospheres, its first exhibition by Fred Eversley. The show of new sculptures will open on January 12 and remain on view through March 2, 2019. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, January 12 from 6:00pm until 8:00pm.

Based in Venice Beach for five decades, Fred Eversley is a key figure in the development of contemporary art from Los Angeles during the postwar period. His work is the product of a pioneering vision attuned to enduring principles of energy, motion, space, gravity, time, light, and color, and synthesizes elements from several 20th-century art historical lineages with roots in Southern California–most notably the Light and Space movement, with which he has long been associated. Chromospheres will feature the latest examples of Eversley’s iconic Parabolic Lens sculptures, an ongoing typology that is the result of continuous experimentation over the course of five decades. Made using clear resin and commercial dyes, these objects generate complex and highly luminous optical events for their viewers, encapsulating the mechanics of sight and the action of physical and metaphysical energies.

After formative experiences as an aerospace engineer, Eversley began in the late 1960s to produce multicolor, multilayer cast polyester sculptures informed by his knowledge of technology, scientific principles, the properties of various materials and his ability to develop his own specialized tools to manipulate them. Spinning liquid resin and dyes in molds affixed to turntables fashioned from lathes, potter’s wheels, and repurposed industrial machinery, he produced sculptures that in turn initiated a focused yet open-ended body of work that continues to the present day.

By adjusting the saturation of his dyes or pigments, the thickness of each layer of poured resin, the amount of catalyst responsible for eventually hardening it, and the speed at which he spins the mold, Eversley creates the Parabolic Lenses, disc-like objects that contain a wide variety of chromatic effects and varying degrees of transparency. These features only fully emerge after each sculpture undergoes a long polishing process whose technical and physical demands far exceed those of the casting itself.

All works of this type are defined by the parabolic curvature, on one side, of a concave surface, which reflects the spaces in which they are installed and creates ever-changing spatial illusions. (Eversley has often remarked that the parabola is the only shape that focuses all forms of energy toward a single point.) As light interacts with the sculpture, the sharp surface edge refracts it like a prism, each of the curved layers of color comes into focus, and viewers are given a new, constantly shifting experience of discovery that depends on their angle of approach. The world around them is transformed within: flipped upside down, its proportions distorted, and suffused with rich color.

Eversley has described his Parabolic Lenses as kinetic sculptures, though the motion to which he refers is the movement of viewers’ bodies and the corresponding variations in their perceptions of light and reflection. The intentionality of composition that makes such movement possible and invites natural, often instant, engagement by the observer, distinguishes his work from many of the West Coast minimalists who have been his peers and neighbors over the last five decades. Though he has produced large-scale works for a variety of contexts, Eversley does not privilege monumentality or imposing forms. Rather, he calls attention to universal forces responsible for moving and arranging light and matter, ephemeral atmospheric effects (including the sun’s interactions with sky and sea), and the formal poetry created when ineffable workings of the eye and mind are given formal expression.

Eversley’s singularity of purpose nonetheless results in sculptures that demonstrate a wide range of compositional variation. This can perhaps be observed most readily in his use of color. The earliest Parabolic Lenses all contained the same order and combination of blue, amber, and violet; he achieved a range of effects by varying only the speed at which he spun his molds, as well as the proportions of resin and dye concentrations. While some of the works on view in Chromospheres shift the old color combination into new orders, others are radiant two- and three-color lenses that make use of the entire color spectrum. Also on view are monochromatic lenses so saturated or dark that they appear to be completely opaque mirrors. In its own way, each of these works demonstrates how Eversley reveals fundamental properties of energy by harnessing time, gravity and centrifugal force to create parabolic forms and distribute color and matter within them. As the artist points out, “The genesis of energy is central to the mystery of our existence as animate beings in an inanimate universe. The original and ultimate source of all energy on earth is the sun. My early sculptures were directly influenced by the solar energy source; my new works take this theme deeper and beyond to the colors of the stars, which we can not see, but only imagine.”

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

(from website) Celebrating today’s most significant creatives and leading contributors to the worlds of design and visual arts, the fair assembles 45 leading international galleries; prominent 20th-century and contemporary design dealers; a weekend of exciting programs; and 21POP, a special installation created by Stanlee Gatti.

FOG has become a focal point for the design and arts communities on the West Coast and further afield. The fair is synonymous with a uniquely pioneering spirit due to its bold hybrid approach and intimate presentation of art and design, dynamic programming on-site and its community-led mission to champion art and design in its historic Fort Mason setting. Building on FOG’s longstanding commitment to cultural institutions, the fair’s Preview Gala is honored to continue its crucial support of SFMOMA’s exhibitions and education programs. FOG represents a key moment in which the local and global community congregate to engage in critical dialogue, artistic exchanges and a shared passion for creative pursuits.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

“In recent years Ruby Neri has become increasingly recognized for her ceramic sculptures featuring figurative female forms. Almost always based on the centralizing idea of the vessel, these works are notable for the physicality of their construction and the intensity of their glazes, which are often applied using an airbrush. This exhibition will feature a group of some of the largest and most complex objects of this kind that Neri has made to date. 

Neri arrived at what has become a signature typology by synthesizing an idiosyncratic group of influences, including the Bay Area Figurative Movement, street art, ancient fertility figures, and more recent currents in ceramic-based contemporary art. The work is defined by its psychologically and sexually charged content and its bawdy feminism, with women engaged in what appear to be ritualistic power dynamics. Several of the new sculptures are composed of numerous figures that differ greatly in size. Smaller women are held, supported by, and wrapped around bigger ones, suggesting relationships in which one dominates the others. The ambiguity and playfulness of these tableaux add a layer of narrative richness to the works, especially because they are highly three-dimensional objects in which visual and sculptural information flows across every surface, front and back, under and over, inside and out.

This narrative quality draws attention to the qualities of the figures themselves, which all share certain basic characteristics. Blonde, with dramatically full lips, voluptuous bodies, and revealed genitalia, they can also be considered variations on a single character whose most prominent feature might in fact be her disarmingly frank facial expression. Enraptured, knowing, bemused, the gaze she returns to the viewer suggests that the complexity of her relationships–with her own interiority, the other versions of herself that surround her, the viewer, the materials from which she has been crafted, and the artist who made her–comes as no surprise.”

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

“While on assignment to document poverty in Brazil for Life magazine, American photographer Gordon Parks encountered one of the most important subjects of his career: Flávio da Silva. Parks featured the resourceful, ailing boy, who lived with his family in one of Rio’s working-class neighborhoods known as favelas, in his 1961 photo essay “Freedom’s Fearful Foe: Poverty.” His reportage resulted in donations from Life readers but also sparked controversy, particularly in Brazil, where the popular picture magazine O Cruzeiro issued a scathing condemnation of Life’s coverage.

This exhibition explores the celebrated photo essay, tracing the extraordinary chain of events it triggered and Parks’s representation of Flávio over several decades.

This exhibition has been organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, Canada, in collaboration with The Gordon Parks Foundation and Instituto Moreira Salles.” – per website

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

“Celebrating the photographers who have played a critical role in bringing hip-hop’s visual culture to the global stage, CONTACT HIGH: A Visual History of Hip-Hop is an inside look at the work of hip-hop photographers, as told through their most intimate diaries: their unedited contact sheets.

Curated by Vikki Tobak, based on the bestselling book of the same name, and with creative direction by Fab 5 Freddy, the photographic exhibition includes nearly 140 works from 60 photographers. Guests will also see over 75 original and unedited contact sheets—from Barron Claiborne’s iconic Notorious B.I.G. portraits and early images of Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, and Kanye West as they first took to the scene, to Janette Beckman’s defining photos of Salt-N-Pepa, and Jamel Shabazz and Gordon Parks documenting hip-hop culture—CONTACT HIGHallows visitors to look directly through the photographer’s lens and observe all of the pictures taken during these legendary photo shoots.

The exhibit also includes an exclusive new, documentary short film – produced by the Annenberg Foundation and Radical Media – featuring a selection of CONTACT HIGH’sphotographers at work and in conversation, including Barron Claiborne, Brian “B+” Cross, Eric Coleman, Estevan Oriol, Jorge Peniche, Jamel Shabazz, Janette Beckman, Joe Conzo, Jack McKain, Dana Scruggs, and Danny Clinch.

Rare videos, memorabilia, and music are included to complement the photographs, demonstrating how the documentation of a cultural phenomenon impacts politics, culture, and social movements around the world. And in a first for the Photo Space, visitors can enjoy Contact High Records, a pop-up record shop featuring rare vinyl spanning the history of hip-hop.”

CONTACT HIGH was created in partnership with United Photo Industries.

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

“Originated by The Broad, Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again is the largest exhibition to date of internationally acclaimed artist Shirin Neshat’s approximately 30-year career. Taking its title from a poem by Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, the exhibition (which presents over 230 photographs and eight immersive video installations works) offers a rare glimpse into the evolution of Neshat’s artistic journey as she explores topics of exile, displacement, and identity with beauty, dynamic formal invention, and poetic grace. Beginning with her early photograph series, Women of Allah, the exhibition also features iconic video works such as Rapture, Turbulent, and Passage, monumental photography installations including The Book of Kings and The Home of My Eyes, and Land of Dreams, a new, ambitious work encompassing a body of photographs and two videos that will make its global debut in the exhibition.

Throughout her career, Neshat has constructed poetic worlds in which women and men navigate narratives that mirror interior and political realities. Inside of and against these metaphoric worlds, Neshat studies the specifics of both individual and cultural gestures and poses, often assembling and interviewing real people who have lived through some of the most turbulent events of recent history, including the Green Movement in Iran and the Arab Spring in Egypt.

Neshat’s 2001 collaboration with composer Philip Glass, Passage, will act as a pivot in the exhibition from Neshat’s early, personal work made specifically about living outside of Iran during some of the most turbulent times in the country’s history to new bodies of work which reflect universally on seismic global political events such as 9/11, the Arab Spring, and the current xenophobia in the United States over immigration. Four galleries in the exhibition feature work never-before-seen in the United States, including a body of portraits made in Iran that Neshat has never shown publicly.” – per website

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

“In the Midi-Pyrénées region, nearly 80,000 people make a living from the aviation industry, the driving force behind the region’s economy:
manufacturers, sub-contractors, suppliers, design offices, service providers…

Between the first powered aircraft designed in secret in the town of Muret by Clément Ader, and the first flight in the skies of Blagnac of the A380, flagship of the European aviation industry, more than a century has passed.

To fly across the seas and the continents, first came the aircraft made by Latécoère and Dewoitine, then the Languedoc and the Armagnac.
At the end of the fifties Caravelle, the first French jetliner, proved to be a resounding success. Then in 1969 it was Concorde’s turn to take to the skies for the first time in Blagnac.

These aircraft were followed by the entire Airbus family, affirming Toulouse’s mission to fly higher, faster and farther.
This is also the story of the great pioneers of aviation.

Here, in the birthplace of global civil and military aviation, the Airbus Group laid the foundations of its head office in January 2014 and the commercial successes of Airbus and ATR boost the economy of the Midi-Pyrénées region.
For more than 30 years, the players and witnesses of this industrial, technical and human saga, as well as those who love aircraft and love to fly, have strived for this history to be forever remembered and shared. For the preservation of this historical heritage.

Aeroscopia, an aviation museum, addresses this expectation.

The foundation stone was laid on the 16th of June 2011.” – per website

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson

The Permanent Exhibition of Art of the Commanderie de Peyrassol

“Philippe Austruy wished to present works of art protected from badweather. In the beginning, he planned on building only a small chapel to put on display a work of Franck Stella that he particularly liked and which was stored in a small space in the winery. During a lunch, Diane and Bernar Venet suggested him to go further and create a permanent collection. This new artistic entity became an extension of Valerie Bach gallery « La Patinoire Royale », in Brussels.

In one piece, the permanent exhibition of Peyrassol is a vast room with natural lighting coming from the skylight. Its modern design was a real challenge: how to integrate modern architecture at a large scale without removing the intemporality of the historical buildings?

To solve the equation, the new space should not be perceived as a singular separated identity but needed to be designed as a covered space inside the path of the monumental sculpture, a giant hallway where people can wander inside, amid the vines. Constructed like a sculpture, the building breaks the code of classic architecture. There are no doors, no windows, no roof, inspired by the movement of Land Art.
On one side, you will find a monumental mural and on the other side a scree, typical of Peyrassol, these two walls are connected by a gigantic shape of weathering steel, above the ground, highlighting its shape by its horizontality.” – per website

– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson