SAVE THE DATE: 9 April 2011, 5pm. Opening of the second part of 'Amikejo' with Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum, Laboratorio 987, MUSAC, León
Fri, Mar 25 2011
Photo: 'Amikejo' advert in Extra Babelia, El País, 19 March 2011'Amikejo' exhibition season:
Pennacchio Argentato: 29 January–3 April
Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum: 9 April–12 June
Uqbar Foundation: 25 June–11 September
Fermin Jiménez Landa & Lee Welch: 24 September–15 January 2012
Throughout 2011 Latitudes is the guest curator of the exhibition season at the Laboratorio 987, titled 'Amikejo'. The series is structured around relational and spatial twinning and presents the work of four collaborative couples, involving various modes of binomial friendships – couples in life, dedicated duos, intermittent work partners and new allies.
The series encompasses a further register of doubling prompted by the relation with a specific remote location: Amikejo. In 1908, the territory then known as Neutral Moresnet located between the Netherlands, Belgium and Prussia, proclaimed itself to be the world's first Esperanto state becoming 'Amikejo' ('place of great friendship' in Esperanto). The association of the exhibition series to 'Amikejo' not only implicates the spatial functions of the ‘neutral’ spaces of art and the special characteristics of museum project spaces, yet also establishes a similitude with the desire to institute a shared and effective means of communication, between participants and with the world.
The first exhibition presented a new production by the Neapolitan duo Pennacchio Argentato, which included a group of rough 'muscular' sculptures. Together with poster images of former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger and a structure of metal bars, the space evoked an unreceptive gymnasium in which an abstract body was called upon to perform and exhibit itself.
Above: Installation views exhibition 'Amikejo: Pennacchio Argentato' at Laboratorio 987.Courtesy the artists. Photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org
For the second chapter of the exhibition series, Rotterdam-based artists Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum present a project around the changing values of labour and property, examining alternative personal and political readings of common cultural heritage. As the artists have explained, “Klaas’s grandfather belonged to a generation for whom ‘free time’ should be spent doing something productive. When he retired, he had his former colleagues at the factory weld together a lathe for him, so that he could take up woodturning. In old age, he was able to augment his modest pension by selling the products of his hobby to the community that formed his social network at that time. When he died, he left his son a cigar box filled with magazine clippings, sketches and blueprints of different objects made by turning wood, with the idea that it might come in handy some day.”
Jaio and van Gorkum have taken the contents of this box as the point of departure for a conceptual and reflexive exploration of the notion of artistic production. During the previous year they have been tracing what is left of the legacy of Gorkum’s grandfather, Jos van Gorkum (1911–1996), locating almost eighty items in the homes of an extended network of family, friends and former neighbours across the Netherlands. A selection of around thirty of these handcrafted artefacts – including candlestick holders, bowls, lamp bases, stands for houseplants and gavels – have been borrowed from their owners to be displayed in the exhibition at MUSAC, and are shown alongside photographs of these objects in their original home environment. (+ info...)
MUSAC
Avenida de los Reyes Leoneses, 24
24008 León, SPAIN (MAP)
Latitudes publications available for consultation in MACBA's Library
Mon, Mar 21 2011
MACBA's Library now has a complete set of Latitudes' publications and exhibition catalogues available for consultation, these include: Portscapes (2009-10), Nothing or Something (2009), No Soul for Sale (2010), The Last Newspaper (2010) and United Alternative Energies (2011).
These complete the already included publications such as the exhibition catalogue 'Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities' (2008), the publication 'Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook' (2006) and Lawrence Weiner's small booklet and public pieces in the form of sugar packets (2008).
Biblioteca del MACBA
Plaça dels Àngels, 8
08001 Barcelona
T: +34 93 481 33 66
F: +34 93 412 46 02
biblioteca@macba.es
Monday-Thursday, 10am-7pm
Bank holidays, closed
http://www.macba.cat/en/library
Editing the forthcoming publication 'Lara Almarcegui. Projects 1995–2010'
Fri, Mar 18 2011
Mock up of the publication cover.
We are currently in the process of editing the first and most comprehensive monograph to date of Lara Almarcegui's work produced in the last fifteen years. Although Almarcegui has made many small format guidebooks as integral parts of her projects, this will be the first monograph presenting an overview of all of her artistic practice.
The main part of the publication is formed by detailed documentation of the artist’s works and publications companioned by new descriptive texts written by the editors. These are presented in the following sections: ‘Demolition’, ‘Excavation’, ‘Construction materials’, ‘Ruins’, ‘Wastelands’ (survey, access, and preservation).
Alongside an introductory essay by the editors, art critic, curator and art historian Cuauhtémoc Medina and the theorist and curator Lars Bang Larsen contribute texts. Medina presents a revised and updated version of a previously unpublished essay entitled ‘The beauty of open space: Lara Almarcegui and the freedom of the unplanned’. The essay involves an analysis of the ‘aesthetic tautology’ of the 17th-century English garden – ‘a field turned into a garden which is made to seem like a field’ – and develops a context for Almarcegui’s work through a partial history of man’s ‘perfection’ of nature, and more especially the concept of nature as coincidental with the origin of industrial modernity. Lars Bang Larsen offers an interpretation of a single work from the artist’s ‘Construction materials’ series: 'Construction materials, City of São Paulo' (2006). Based on a talk given by the author at the Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Space, New York, October 2009, Bang Larsen argues that “Almarcegui’s work equips us with the hubris to reconceive of the city and evaluate and re-organise it as a social space”.
The main part of the publication is formed by detailed documentation of the artist’s works and publications companioned by new descriptive texts written by the editors. These are presented in the following sections: ‘Demolition’, ‘Excavation’, ‘Construction materials’, ‘Ruins’, ‘Wastelands’ (survey, access, and preservation).
Alongside an introductory essay by the editors, art critic, curator and art historian Cuauhtémoc Medina and the theorist and curator Lars Bang Larsen contribute texts. Medina presents a revised and updated version of a previously unpublished essay entitled ‘The beauty of open space: Lara Almarcegui and the freedom of the unplanned’. The essay involves an analysis of the ‘aesthetic tautology’ of the 17th-century English garden – ‘a field turned into a garden which is made to seem like a field’ – and develops a context for Almarcegui’s work through a partial history of man’s ‘perfection’ of nature, and more especially the concept of nature as coincidental with the origin of industrial modernity. Lars Bang Larsen offers an interpretation of a single work from the artist’s ‘Construction materials’ series: 'Construction materials, City of São Paulo' (2006). Based on a talk given by the author at the Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Space, New York, October 2009, Bang Larsen argues that “Almarcegui’s work equips us with the hubris to reconceive of the city and evaluate and re-organise it as a social space”.
Coinciding with Almarcegui's solo show at TENT, Rotterdam, Latitudes' will host an in conversation with the Spanish-born Rotterdam-based artist and discuss the process of editing the monograph. During the event, Latitudes will also bring forward a selection of questions posed to curators, gallerist, artists, colleagues and collaborators of Almarcegui, giving an opportunity to revisit some of her projects produced since 1995.
Title: 'Lara Almarcegui: Projects 1995–2010'
Editor: Latitudes
Publish & Design: Archive Books, Berlin
Texts: Cuauhtémoc Medina, Lars Bang Larsen and Latitudes
224 pages, colour, 21 x 27.5 cm. Black-and-white and colour illustrations. Flexicover, English.
Print run: 2,500 copies
ISBN: 978-88-95702-05-6
Release date: Spring/Summer 2011
Cover price: € 35
Publication possible thanks to the support of the Fonds BKVB (Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture).
All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org
Exhibition views: 'Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes & des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne', until 16 April
Mon, Mar 14 2011
'EXPOSITION INTERNATIONALE DES ARTS DÉCORATIFS ET INDUSTRIELS MODERNES & DES ARTS ET TECHNIQUES DANS LA VIE MODERNE' With works by: Kasper AKHØJ, Martí ANSON, Maria LOBODA, Charlotte MOTH and Sarah ORTMEYER
25 February–16 April 2011
Meessen de Clercq, Rue de l’Abbaye 2a
B-1000 Brussels, Belgium
The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes & des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts & Art and Technology in Modern Life) presents projects by five contemporary visual artists which engage with specific instances of modernity as represented through industrial or domestic design. A world-famous tower, a street, a range of furniture, a modular display system, and textile patterns, have been metaphorically taken apart before being reconstituted, sometimes literally, through artistic practices and personal affiliations which incorporate historical research, travel, tribute and scenography, for example.
Running counter to the modernist spirit of rationality, clarity and empiricism, the artists’ often playful engagements deal with anecdotal, subjective, and frequently deliberately imprecise applications. Their projects engage with disciplines traditionally outside of the domain of the visual arts, and in doing so they invite a renegotiation of a design’s intended use, and an interest in the point at which apparent aesthetic surplus or redundancy modifies or reconstructs an object’s meaning or efficacy. The artists’ works furthermore operate with a heightened awareness or awkwardness of their being exhibited (and alongside a synthesized ‘period’ exhibition title taken from conjoining the names of the Paris Worlds’ Fairs from 1925 and 1937). Theatricality and commercial or museological display strategies are the restraints and releases, or the actual subject, of the artists’ articulations. (+ info...)
All photos: Philippe de Gobert
Publication release: 'Mataró Chauffeur Service', project by Martí Anson & Latitudes for 'No Soul for Sale', Tate Modern, London, May 2010
Fri, Mar 11 2011
Cover of the publication. Photo: Save As... Publications
Published by: Save As... Publications
Edited by: Latitudes
Texts by: Martí Anson and LatitudesGraphic Design: ferranElOtro Studio
Format: 21 x 15 cm / softcover with folded poster jacket / 62pp / offset, black-and-gold
Language: English, Spanish & Catalan
Price: EUR 16,00
Print-run: 500 copies
Date of Publication: February 2011
ISBN: 978-84-936956-9-9
Availability: La Central
The publication 'Mataró Chauffeur Service' gathers documentation of the collaboration with artist Martí Anson realised on the occasion of Latitudes' participation in the London edition of 'No Soul for Sale' (14–16 May 2010), for which the artist set up his own chauffeur company and drove the curatorial duo from Barcelona to Tate Modern's Turbine Hall and back. (+ info...)
"Martí Anson drove a car up from Spain and parked in the Tate to double as a screening room for Latitudes projects"
– Janine Armin, The New York Times
"An interactive art-taxi"
– Martin Coomer, Hotline
"Mr. Anson has designed the car and his chauffeur’s uniform."
– Carol Vogel, The New York Times
"La oficina curatorial Latitudes colaborará con el artista catalán Martí Anson … para trasladar su coche tuneado como un 'Spanish cab' hasta Londres y empleando la Sala de Turbinas como aparcamiento"
– Javier Díaz-Guardiola, ABC.es
"…ha fet el viatge en un espectacular model cedit per la marca BMW que el propi Anson ha redissenyat perquè recordés a l’estil original dels taxis de Mataró dels anys 60 (daurat i negre)"
– www.capgros.com
"Anson daba a pensar sobre el rol camaleónico del artista, y sobre el intercambio de servicios que se da entre diferentes agentes dentro de la industria del arte."
– Cristina Garrido, Diari de Tarragona
"Martí Anson ha hecho de chófer de una supuesta compañía de taxis (ha creado logo y tarjetas de visita) y cubierto por carretera-ferry el trayecto Barcelona-Londres en plena crisis por la nube volcánica (…) Lo suyo es ficción, pero recuerda que durante los días de bloqueo europeo por las cenizas del volcán islandés, había compañías de taxi que ofrecían el Barcelona-Londres por 4.700 euros."
– Emili J. Blasco, ABC blog
"Latitudes viene realizando un trabajo que ha logrado concitar el interés de la comunidad artística y el público a partir de proyectos que se instalan más allá de las fronteras de lo artístico … Una vez en Londres, el taxi y unas mesitas y sillas a modo de camping harán de stand en el que se podrán ver los proyectos que ha realizado la oficina así como proyecciones de video de artistas jóvenes"
– Javier Hontoria, El Cultural
Photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise)
Newsletter #31 - March/Marzo 2011
Tue, Mar 8 2011
FORTHCOMING IN APRIL 2011...
'Amikejo: Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum', Laboratorio 987, 2011 season guest curated by Latitudes, MUSAC, León. 9 April - 12 June 2011. Opening: 9 April
EXHIBITIONS CURRENTLY ON VIEW...
Guest curators of the Laboratorio 987 2011 season, MUSAC, León: inaugural exhibition 'Amikejo: Pennacchio Argentato', on view until 27 March 2011 – see installation views here.
'Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller: United Alternative Energies', Aarhus Art Building, Århus, Denmark, on view until 3 April 2011 – see installation views here.
'Exposition Internationale des Art Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes & des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne' showing works by Kasper Akhøj; Martí Anson; Maria Loboda; Charlotte Moth and Sarah Ortmeyer. Meessen De Clercq, Brussels, Belgium, on view until 16 April 2011 - see installation views here
Facebook page here
Twitter here
Flickr photosets here
Youtube Latitudes Channel
Previous newsletters here
Installing 'Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes & des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne' at Meessen De Clercq
Mon, Feb 21 2011
Opening: Thursday 24 February 2011, 6–9pm.
With works by Kasper Akhøj (1976, Copenhagen, Denmark. Lives in New York, US); Martí Anson (1967, Mataró, Spain. Lives there); Maria Loboda (1979, Kraków, Poland. Lives in London, UK); Charlotte Moth (1975, Carshalton, UK. Lives in Paris, France) and Sarah Ortmeyer (1980, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Lives there).
The Exposition International des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes & des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts & Art and Technology in Modern Life) presents projects by five contemporary visual artists which engage with specific instances of modernity as represented through industrial or domestic design. A world-famous tower, a street, a range of furniture, a modular display system, and textile patterns, have been metaphorically taken apart before being reconstituted, sometimes literally, through artistic practices and personal affiliations which incorporate historical research, travel, tribute and scenography, for example. (+ info...)
Meessen De Clerq
Abdijstraat 2a Rue de l'Abbaye
1000 Brussels, BELGIUM
Tuesday to Saturday 11am – 6pm
T: +32 (0) 2 644 34 54
E: info@meessendeclercq.be
W: www.meessendeclercq.be
Installation pictures: Latitudes | www.lttds.org
Installation views of 'Ibon Aranberri. Organogramme' exhibition at Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, until 15 May
Thu, Feb 10 2011
Schema of the exhibition display in the exhibition guide.(From the website) 'Organogramme is an exhibition by Ibon Aranberri that aims to sediment and confront various series of works made by the artist during the last decades together with others produced specifically for the occasion, and presented here as a unified whole.
(...) His oeuvre features aspects such as the relationship between nature and culture, the ideological projection upon the landscape, the configuration of the social, historicity, the local context and its economic and territorial dimensions, the peripheral condition as well as language and the modern project. The artist holds an interest in power structures and the mechanisms to build society. (...) The concept of the landscape as a setting of ideological projection, as a point of intersection between the natural object and the cultural subject, is an underlying issue in his work.' (+ info...)
Ibon Aranberri (Itziar, Guipuzkoa, in 1969) obtained a degree in Fine Arts from the Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, in 1994. In the mid-1990s he participated in the Arteleku workshops in San Sebastian and continued his studies at CCA-Kitakyushu, Japan. He was involved with the early stages of the consonni project in Bilbao in 2000. He took part in Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt in 2002. Recent notable exhibitions include On working with (Ir.T.no. 513), Iaspis project room, Stockholm, 2006; Documenta 12, Kassel, 2007; Integration, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, 2007; Disorder, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, 2008; 16th Sydney Biennial, Sidney, 2008; and Ibon Aranberri. Meseta Grammar, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos, 2010.
Curated by: Nuria Enguita Mayo
Organised by: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona
Dates and times: From 28 January to 15 May 2011. Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Closed Mondays.
All photos (except when noted otherwise): Latitudes | www.lttds.org
Curated by: Nuria Enguita Mayo
Organised by: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona
Dates and times: From 28 January to 15 May 2011. Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Closed Mondays.
All photos (except when noted otherwise): Latitudes | www.lttds.org
Newsletter #30 - February 2011
Tue, Feb 1 2011
IN FEBRUARY 2011...
Professional Encounters, 'Curating Emerging Artists', ARCOMadrid 2011, 18 February.
ALSO IN FEBRUARY 2011...
'Exposition Internationale des Art Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes & des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne' showing works by Kasper Akhøj; Martí Anson; Maria Loboda; Charlotte Moth and Sarah Ortmeyer. Meessen De Clercq, Brussels, Belgium, 25 February–16 April 2011. Opening: 24 February, 18-21h.
ONGOING EXHIBITIONS...
'Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller: United Alternative Energies', Aarhus Art Building, Århus, Denmark, on view until 3 April 2011 – see installation views here.
Curators of the Laboratorio 987 2011 season, MUSAC, León: inaugural exhibition 'Amikejo: Pennacchio Argentato', on view until 27 March 2011 – see installation views here.
Facebook page here
Twitter here
Flickr photosets here
Youtube Latitudes Channel
Previous newsletters here
Exhibition views of 'Amikejo: Pennacchio Argentato', Laboratorio 987, MUSAC, León, Spain 29 January – 27 March 2011
Sun, Jan 30 2011Amikejo (‘place of great friendship’ in Esperanto) is a series of four exhibitions taking place throughout 2011 at MUSAC’s Laboratorio 987 and structured around relational and spatial twinning. These artistic pairings involve various modes of binomial friendships – couples in life, dedicated duos, intermittent work partners, as well as new allies (+info...)
For the first of four exhibitions at the Laboratorio 987 neapolitan duo Pennacchio Argentato present a new installation based on expectations about performativity and interactivity in exhibition spaces. By transforming the exhibition space into an interior akin to an abstract fitness gymnasium, the duo frame their own activity as young artists alongside that of Amikejo by addressing the ideas of leisure and overproduction, a continuation to their recent research on apparent fakery, alternative economies and geometric abstraction.
A series of rough concrete ‘muscular’ sculptures, of dimensions that immediately relate to the human form. These seemingly promise engagement through, as the artists describe, they offer ‘different postures and gestures’ without leading to any specific mode of exercise. The unresponsive and non-receptive sculptures attempt to represent a kind of pleasure in suspenseful endurance or ‘abstract fatigue’, as the artists have termed it, a style which is set apart from acting and from making.
Alongside this seemingly inactive machinery, a companion sculpture focusses more specifically on body building. Images of former professional bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger proudly revealing his muscles prompts us to consider, within the context of an art space, a self-made aesthetics based on pose and theatricality.
Marisa Argentato (born Naples, Italy, 1977) & Pasquale Pennacchio (born Caserta, Italy, 1979). Live and work in Berlin and Naples). Solo exhibitions include: 'Five o’clock shadows', T293, Rome (2010); 'The New Boring', Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2010); 'Landings 4', Landings, Vestfossen, Norway (2010); 'Do It Just', Galerie Opdahl, Berlin (2009); 'Estate', T293, Naples (2007) and 'Blind Date', Viafarini, Milan (2002). Group exhibitions include: 'SI - Sindrome Italiana', Magasin, Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble, Grenoble (2010); 'Dude, where's my Career?', MMK Zollamt / Portikus, Frankfurt (2009); 'A long time ago, last night', Gallery Kortil, Rijeka, Croatia (2008); 'Aspen Project' (Part III), Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt am Main (2007); 'Cinema infinito / Neverending Cinema', Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea, Trento (2006).
MUSAC - Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León
Avenida de los Reyes Leoneses, 24 - 24008 León
www.musac.es
Tuesday– Friday: 10–15 / 17–20h; Saturday and Sunday: 11–15/ 17–21h; Mondays closed
Photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (unless credited otherwise)