Group Exhibition

[UN]NATURAL LIMITS – Austrian Cultural Forum New York

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Jan 23 – April 1, 2013

Austrian Cultural Forum New York 11 East 52nd Street – New York, NY 10022

Artists: Desire Machine Collective, Thomas Hirschhorn, Mathias Kessler, Superflex, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Lois Weinberger
Curated by Dieter Buchhart & Arnaud Gerspacher
Curatorial Advisor: Mathias Kessler

The new international group exhibition [UN]NATURAL LIMITS, which opened on January 22nd, gathers together different artistic reactions to the alienating effects of the unfettered global exploitation of resources, and offers insight into the denial and myopia of current political responses to what increasingly appears to be a perpetual crisis.
It focuses on the environmental relays sent back in response to our human activities (or failures to act), while giving voice to various groups, thinkers, and artists who seek to interrupt narcissistic and destructive self-involvements in society.

The exhibition, which was commissioned by the Austrian Cultural Forum’s director Andreas Stadler and curated by the Viennese-New York team of Dieter Buchhart and Arnaud Gerspacher, maintains a deep ambiguity towards the modernist legacies of endless expansion and selective prosperity, as our social and political systems slowly begin to confront the limits of growth and sustainability. Each artist or collective poses a challenge to the perceived limits that condition our understanding of the world: on the one hand, the limited prospect for action, compassion, and change, while on the other, the limitless drive for resources and capital in all its forms. A reversal is necessary: it is compassion that should be limitless.

The show will include an installation by Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn titled Resistance-Subjecter (2011), which was first shown as part of his Crystal of Resistance at the Venice Biennial 2011. The bodies of the eight mannequins have seemingly been infested and corroded by 1 million year-old crystals. We are left to guess whether the crystals were produced in the body and stand for a material resisting cultural, economic, social, ecological, and aesthetical habits, or whether the body was produced by the crystals, now hosting them in order to resist the jaded times we live in.

Austrian artist Lois Weinberger’s Invasion (2005/2011) also plays with the limits of the organic and inorganic. The installation consists of a group of mushrooms that climb, protrude, and seem to grow from the Austrian Cultural Forum’s gallery walls. The work is a striking confluence of nature and artificiality, though the limits between the natural and unnatural are not as clear as they may first appear: the walls themselves were once organic growths in a forest and the artificial lighting is itself produced by natural sources of energy.

Equally engaged in uncovering the often-arbitrary limits between ecology and the economic functioning of the urban landscape, Mierle Laderman Ukeles has been committed to interrogating the social role of art within these processes. Her Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! (1969) states that art should be concerned with maintaining life, its systems and environments. In her yearlong performance documented in Touch Sanitation Performance (1977-80), Ukeles shook hands with 8,500 sanitation employees, while sharing and documenting their stories, and thereby drawing attention to the ecological underbelly of New York City and its often socially stigmatized workers.

In Experience Climate Change As… (2009), the Danish collective Superflex advertises a series of hypnosis sessions offered in conjunction with international global climate change summits. The first one took place in 2009 at the UN Global Climate Summit in Copenhagen, and future events are planned through the year 2050. These hypnosis sessions allow participants to experience climate change as a specific animal, in a relatively playful gesture that nevertheless points to the serious relationship between the natural limits of global ecosystems and the seemingly limitless capacity of world powers to defer action due to realpolitik and economic reasons.

The rapacious capacity to excavate natural sites is documented by Mathias Kessler in his piece,Jarrells Cemetery, N37o53.96’ W81o34.71’. Eunice Mountain. West Virginia. (2012). The artist traveled to a commercial surface mining site in West Virginia to document the operation and the local stories mourning the lost landscape, the political situation, and the area’s history. Verbal accounts are audible to visitors outside the gallery, before they are confronted inside by a massive wallpaper depicting the carved out hillsides which appear overwhelmingly dry and diseased. In serious irony, the only remnant and survivor in an otherwise lifeless scene is a cemetery, now even more cut-off from the living.

Finally, [UN]NATURAL LIMITS includes a documentation of Periferry – An incomplete Balance Sheet (2013), a nomadic space for hybrid art practices mounted and maintained by Desire Machine Collective. Located on a ferry barge on the Brahmaputra River in India, this project provides a space for experimentation and new media approaches, public and community arts, which are relevant to immediate local concerns and aim at the empowerment of the community and reclaiming the public space, while at the same time connecting with the global.

For more information, visit acfny.org

Reposted from eflux newsletter

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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Bug Cinema USA – An ecological forest art project

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Bug Cinema’s work-in-progress is located in the Siuslaw Model Forest, from 25 June to 9 July

Bug Cinema is a new ecological forest art commission for the Whale Oil to Whole Foods summer eco-arts festival in Greene County (Hudson Valley), on the edge of the Catskill Mountains, upper New York State. The eco-arts festival consists of a large group exhibition, site specific artworks, and accompanying public events in June/July 2012. Manifest through a collaboration between Greene County Arts and the Cornell Agroforestry Centre, it is curated by eco-artist Christy Rupp and GCCA Catskill Gallery Director, Fawn Potash.

Bug Cinema is revealed to the forest as a portable ‘glow-lab’ ultraviolet solar light sculpture: a trans-disciplinary hybrid of art/entomology and functions as an integrated, collaborative inter-species ‘social-sculpture’ and biodiversity research project. Essentially, this sculpture embodies a distinctive minimalist aesthetic, playfully combined with a desire to facilitate the observation of moth species living in the forest. Bug Cinema transforms areas of the forest into a film/theatre-like staging of light and shadow, subsequently becoming a social space for moths, humans and other wildlife, through which the ‘performance of life’ is played out.

If you want to know more about the project, please visit http://bugcinemausa.wordpress.com

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

H20: The Art of Conservation

This post comes to you from Green Public Art

H20: The Art of Conservation

May 6 – November 12, 2011

at The Water Conservation Garden

12122 Cuyamaca College Drive West, El Cajon, CA 92019

This unique exhibition, curated by Green Public Art, offers San Diego homeowners an artistic alternative to incorporate water conservation into their own garden spaces. The exhibition challenges fourteen established and emerging San Diego artists to reflect on water conservation, to consider the natural context in which the artwork is being created and to explore working with recycled, re-purposed or non-traditional materials. This group exhibition, hosted by the San Diego Fine Art Society, will include art works that are an aesthetic manifestation of water conservation, providing another lens with which to view our role in Southern California’s efforts to act sustainably, conserve energy and preserve natural habitats.

ARTISTS scheduled to participate in the exhibition include: Dia Bassett, Bociek & Bociek, Lea de Wit, Rebecca Goodman, Matthew Hebert, Terri Hughes-Oelrich, Miki Iwasaki, Benjamin Lavender, Omar Lopez, Collective Magpie, Adam John Manley, Christopher Puzio, Fritize Urquhart and Ruth Wallen.

ABOUT THE WATER CONSERVATION GARDEN: The Water Conservation Garden has nearly five acres of displays that showcase water conservation through a series of beautiful themed gardens, such as a native plant garden and a vegetable garden, as well as how-to displays such as mulch and irrigation exhibits. Admission is free, and the Garden can be viewed on a self-guided tour, or through one of their programs. Located at 12122 Cuyamaca College Drive West, El Cajon, CA 92019.

ABOUT SAN DIEGO FINE ART SOCIETY: San Diego Fine Art Society (SDFAS) is strengthening the art pulse of the community through education and collaboration. By removing barriers and building bridges, SDFAS is helping San Diego reach its potential as a top arts destination in the country. Its mission is to strengthen the art pulse of the community through education and collaboration.

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Rebecca Ansert, founder of Green Public Art, is an art consultant who specializes in artist solicitation, artist selection, and public art project management for both private and public agencies. She is a graduate of the master’s degree program in Public Art Studies at the University of Southern California and has a unique interest in how art can demonstrate green processes or utilize green design theories and techniques in LEED certified buildings.

Green Public Art is a Los Angeles-based consultancy that was founded in 2009 in an effort to advance the conversation of public art’s role in green building. The consultancy specializes in public art project development and management, artist solicitation and selection, creative community involvement and knowledge of LEED building requirements. Green Public Art also works with emerging and mid-career studio artists to demystify the public art process. The consultancy acts as a resource for artists to receive one-on-one consultation before, during, and after applying for a public art project.
Go to Green Public Art

H20: The Art of Conservation – Green Public Art

H20: The Art of Conservation

May 6 – November 12, 2011

at The Water Conservation Garden

12122 Cuyamaca College Drive West, El Cajon, CA 92019

This unique exhibition, curated by Green Public Art, offers San Diego homeowners an artistic alternative to incorporate water conservation into their own garden spaces. The exhibition challenges fourteen established and emerging San Diego artists to reflect on water conservation, to consider the natural context in which the artwork is being created and to explore working with recycled, re-purposed or non-traditional materials. This group exhibition, hosted by the San Diego Fine Art Society, will include art works that are an aesthetic manifestation of water conservation, providing another lens with which to view our role in Southern California’s efforts to act sustainably, conserve energy and preserve natural habitats.

ARTISTS scheduled to participate in the exhibition include: Dia Bassett, Bociek & Bociek, Lea de Wit, Rebecca Goodman, Matthew Hebert, Terri Hughes-Oelrich, Miki Iwasaki, Benjamin Lavender, Omar Lopez, Collective Magpie, Adam John Manley, Christopher Puzio, Fritize Urquhart and Ruth Wallen.

ABOUT THE WATER CONSERVATION GARDEN: The Water Conservation Garden has nearly five acres of displays that showcase water conservation through a series of beautiful themed gardens, such as a native plant garden and a vegetable garden, as well as how-to displays such as mulch and irrigation exhibits. Admission is free, and the Garden can be viewed on a self-guided tour, or through one of their programs. Located at 12122 Cuyamaca College Drive West, El Cajon, CA 92019.

ABOUT SAN DIEGO FINE ART SOCIETY: San Diego Fine Art Society (SDFAS) is strengthening the art pulse of the community through education and collaboration. By removing barriers and building bridges, SDFAS is helping San Diego reach its potential as a top arts destination in the country. Its mission is to strengthen the art pulse of the community through education and collaboration.

GREEN PUBLIC ART