Exhibitions

[niminy-piminy]

I am not a frequent concert visitor (my ears are rather deaf) but i am a regular exhibition goer since my early youth (my eyes are never satiated).
So (since we have our new popular "concerts" thread) i thought "exhibitions" thread is desperately needed too.
I am curious about what exhibitions SCFZ cinephiles attend???
And I am also curious if/what painting(s) is/are adorning your home???
As a start, i copy-paste a post about the last exhibition i attended (before the last (still ongoing) plague lock).
Usually, I make extensively snapshots (mimicking a Japanese tourist stereotype) not only at concerts but on exhibitions too so i will post several pics next days & weeks.

i wrote about Olga Karlíková (1923-2004) already in the "birds" thread on zeta BUT...
in early December 2020, prior to another (current) lockdown, i attended the exhibition of Olga's oeuvre (mostly dedicated to drawing bird singing).


i did a lot of pictures there (too many to post all of them).


the whole exhibition looked like this (bird chirping was played in the room).


alongside the exhibition, a quite thick and heavy book about Olga was published (i didn't start to read it yet).


besides, in the last year, part of my art hoarding collection became her graphics called LARKS (1998), No. 76/100.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/the_aut ... tml#p33465

Olga was (seems like) highly synesthetic.

[rischka]

since i live far from the city i don't get to many exhibitions but i did adore visiting museums in my childhood growing up near DC and still make an effort when visiting there. i have some poster memories in my home: rene magritte's the human condition, steinlen 'chat noir' advertisement, and a beautiful chinese landscape print from the sackler gallery

edit: it's the right half of the ming dynasty 'journey to shu'

[niminy-piminy]

The prospect of going to a museum/gallery is my main incentive to travel somewhere.

2020, September, Prague.
The exhibition called "Post-conceptual contraceptive".
Common exhibition of 3 local ladies.
Out of them, the most intriguing seemed to me Dana Sahánková (*1984).
http://sahankova.com/en_kresby-2012.html

Two highlights.



Two details.

[Silga]

I am not really well versed in art history and I'm not a frequent visitor to museums, especially here in Vilnius. But when I used to live in London, I loved going to Tate Modern. Visited great exhibits on Pop-Art, Fluxus (founded by Lithuanian George Maciunas) and various modern artists. Also, as I used to live close to Tate Britain, I would occasionally pop in to have a stroll among its beautiful halls.

One exhibition I'm very angry at myself for missing out was "Why Is It Hard to Love?" by Saskia Boddeke and Peter Greenaway here in Vilnius at MO Museum. It was scheduled to open in April last year, but due to pandemic, it only opened briefly during summer, in-between the two lockdowns.

https://www.sbpg-projects.com/why-is-it-hard-to-love

https://mo.lt/tinklarastis/en/irasai/an ... lithuania/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3CarOlWf8

The woman in the video is Boddeke and Greenaway daughter Pip Greenaway.

[sally]

ugh like rischka i live in a cultural desert. we used to have the national museum of photography film & tv nearby (it had VERY early photos, loads of louis le prince kit, beautifully thought out photography exhibitions, an annual film festival once patronised by james benning in the flesh! really interesting talks on various aspects of media - one i remember by geoff dyer where he opened quoting thomas bernhard and i fell quite in love) until they decided that 'national' in bradford was far too north and disgusting for cultured people to visit so it got cannibalised by the V&A and the one in bradford rebranded as a 'science' museum which is now filled with brightly coloured flashing things aimed exclusively at children and idiots. fuck you london.

i think the last actually proper thing i remember going to (i bought the accompanying literature) was natural selection by andy & peter holden in 2018

it was all about bird calls, nests and eggs, naturally

Natural selection showcased several multi-screen films, a selection of archival material, and Andy Holden’s own collection of found nests. The exhibition was split into two sections: ‘A Natural History of Nest Building’ and 'A Social History of Egg Collecting'. The former exposed the unscrupulous cuckoo; the artistry of the bowerbird; and the nest as an object in its own right. While the latter shed light on this practice in a changing legal landscape, and the resultant criminal operations after 1954, through a video work 'The Opposite of Time' and an installation titled ‘How the Artist Was Led to the Study of Nature’.

[niminy-piminy]

I was in London for a week (plus few days out of London).
The whole time was nice weather with not a single drop of rain — mostly the sun was shining, the grass was green and flowers in full bloom (in the mid of February!)
These are the galleries/museums i visited (will have to divide everything into more installments).
The only museum/gallery i left without a single snapshot was John Soane Museum — the best London place (as i already said elsewhere).
There, I was too enchanted & smitten that i forgot about my bad habit of hoarding snapshots (and besides i bought a book called "John Soane Museum: Complete Description" so i trusted the title — that i have all i need).

2019, February, Tate Britain, London.
First, i went (in TB) to see the (non-permanent) exhibition of Edward Burne-Jones.
I didn't make many snapshots (i was still rather shy, being new in the city).
However, i couldn't resist capturing this Cupid's arrow.
The Cupid's shot is usually depicted as something close to an application of the acupuncture needle (as something very delicate).
Thus to see such heavy weaponry capable of massive destruction was noteworthy.


Later, i returned to TB to see the permanent collection.
These are two random snapshots.
If i remember right, on the second pic are twin sisters who married on the same day, delivered their babies on the same day, etc., etc. (in sum, their lives were not devoid of synchronicity).



Next to the following painting was an announcement that at some specific time (in a short time from the moment i read it) someone will come to elaborate on the painting.
As far as i understand, the guy who came was not an employee of the TB (just some enthusiast collaborating with TB).
He delivered about 15-20 min long lecture at the spot to a few ppl who were around.
It was cool (i never encountered something like this in any other gallery home or abroad — i mean, this type of lecture focused on a single random painting, i.e. not a guided tour through the exposition).



In Turner's rooms, i was most interested in his unfinished paintings (left unfinished at the moment Turner died) and in paintings with various architectures.
The first pic is called "Norham Castle, Sunrise", second no clue.



In Blake's room, i paid most attention to the sculpture that is in a bigger size in front of the National Library and to a painting called "Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils".




to be continued — when i can't go to gallery/museum due to plague i will at least (as a substitute) revisit my past visits.

[niminy-piminy]

reading about the Bond films in the other thread reminds me i was in the past on the exhibition of Simon Taryn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taryn_Simon
she made an art project called "Birds of the West Indies"

Simon's "Birds of the West Indies" (2013–14) is a two-part body of work, whose title is taken from the definitive taxonomy of the same name by the American ornithologist James Bond. Ian Fleming, an active bird watcher, appropriated the author's name for his novels' lead character. He found it "flat and colourless," a fitting choice for a character intended to be "anonymous… a blunt instrument in the hands of the government." The first element of Simon's work is a photographic inventory of the women, weapons and vehicles of James Bond films made over the past fifty years. This visual database of interchangeable variables used in the production of fantasy examines the economic and emotional value generated by their repetition. In the second element of the work, Simon casts herself as the ornithologist James Bond, identifying, photographing, and classifying all the birds that appear within the 24 films of the James Bond franchise. Simon's discoveries often occupy a liminal space between reality and fiction; they are confined within the fictional space of the James Bond universe and yet wholly separate from it.

http://tarynsimon.com/works/botwi/#13
Birds of the West Indies (Part 2)
In the second component of her two-part body of work Birds of the West Indies, Simon casts herself as James Bond (1900–1989) the ornithologist, and identifies, photographs, and classifies all the birds that appear within the twenty-four films of the James Bond franchise. The appearance of many of the birds was unplanned and virtually undetected, operating as background noise for whatever set they happened to fly into. Simon ventured through every scene to discover those moments of chance. The result is a taxonomy not unlike the original Birds of the West Indies. Each bird is classified by the time code of its appearance, its location, and the year in which it flew. The taxonomy is organized by country: some locations correspond to nations we acknowledge on our maps, including Switzerland, Afghanistan, and North Korea, while others exist solely in the fictionalized rendering of James Bond’s missions, including Republic of Isthmus, San Monique, and SPECTRE Island. Simon’s ornithological discoveries occupy a liminal space—confined within the fiction of the James Bond universe and yet wholly separate from it. The birds flew freely in the background of the background, unnoticed or unrecognized until they were catalogued by Simon. Sometimes indecipherable specks hovering in the sky or perched on a building, these birds will never know, nor care, about their fame. In their new static form, the birds often resemble dust on a negative, a once common imperfection that has disappeared in the age of Photoshop. Other times, they are frozen in compositions reminiscent of genres from photographic history. Some appear as perfected and constructed still lifes while others have a snapshot quality. Many appear in an obscured, low-resolution form, as if they had been photographed by surveillance drones or hidden cameras. These visual variations are also affected by feature film’s evolution from 35 mm to high-resolution digital output. Simon’s taxonomy of 331 birds is a precise consideration of a new nature found in an alternate reality. Bird study skins, correspondence, awards, and personal effects of James Bond the ornithologist have been collected by Simon and are displayed in vitrines alongside the photographic works. These artifacts present remnants of the real-life James Bond in his parallel existence to the fictional spy who took his name.

not sure if i didn't post about it on Zeta before (as i did about Olga Karlíková) tho

[niminy-piminy]

2019, February, Tate Modern, London.
Pierre Bonnard... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bonnard

I recalled the exhibition recently while watching EARTH LIGHT for Cup.
Annie Girardot's character is eulogizing Bonnard.

Two random snapshots.



Two random (colorful) details.

[MrCarmady]

That was a nice exhibition, this one really struck me for some reason:

[sally]

one does feel sorry for artists working today, there are only so many bird angles to take...

another exhibition i really enjoyed was a massive one called british surrealism in context, which was an eyeopener, i knew we had roland penrose & anthony earnshaw etc, but so many women surrealists as well! google tells me this exhibition was way back in 2009, so i really need to get out more

also i've been to many exhibitions at the hepworth gallery (the stanley spencer one was lovely), but that's mainly because it's my favourite building and whatever is inside is just icing on a warm concrete cake...

[niminy-piminy]

hepworth gallery looks cool!
closest to "hepworth" (in terms of the name) i was in "hayward".
and my reasons to peek inside the gallery were also: 1. building, 2. exhibition.


in hayward, Diane Arbus was on display and i did only a single snapshot.


if plague terminates sooner than my lifetime and i will ever go to Berlin again i hope to visit Chipperfield's museum extension!
https://www.archdaily.com/921320/david- ... -in-berlin

[niminy-piminy]

My favorit as a kid was Mario Camerini Ulysses (1954) it's the best adaptation of the odyssey in my opinion.

i had a strange encounter with this film (at least i believe the film on the pics below is the one) while visiting (in March 2019) an exhibition dedicated to Hungarian action art.
i did plenty of snapshots there!
among many other artists, Károly Halász (1946-2016) was presented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1roly_Hal%C3%A1sz
Works with Television (Modulated Television, Private transmission, Pseudo-video)
Inspired by the writings and the works of László Moholy-Nagy, he started to experiment with photography and lightboxes, which led to the idea of TV object, a geometrical composition of two intersecting cuboids from steel, fixed on a television screen. This served as an arranging filter for television programs like the West Germany-Brazil soccer match in 1973, creating a hyperconstructed/deconstructed experience and chance-compositions, cached by the camera (e.g. Modulated Television II [1972], Modulated Television III [1973]). In Private Transmission (1974) he himself became the program, as he lived and slept in the empty shell of a TV for a day, while he created "Pseudo-videos" (1975) by replacing the TV screen with mirrors set at right angles to each other, which led to geometric self-portraits.

this is how TV set adjusted to watching peplum (or a soccer match) via the "geometric prism" (geometrically/abstractly censored) looks like.


and this is how "ulysses" looks if watched on such a TV set.




this is how a soccer match looks like.

Inspired by the writings and the works of László Moholy-Nagy, he started to experiment with photography and lightboxes, which led to the idea of TV object, a geometrical composition of two intersecting cuboids from steel, fixed on a television screen. This served as an arranging filter for television programs like the West Germany-Brazil soccer match in 1973, creating a hyperconstructed/deconstructed experience

moreover, this is how anyone's "private transmission" might look like.

In Private Transmission (1974) he himself became the program, as he lived and slept in the empty shell of a TV for a day,

fragmentary snippets of me are part of this still from "pseudo-video".
(yup, i like wearing anything striped.)

he created "Pseudo-videos" (1975) by replacing the TV screen with mirrors set at right angles to each other, which led to geometric self-portraits.

[sally]

look at all the fun stuff you get to go to/do. all that i've seen lately that might be art is some twisted sticks in the woods that might intentionally be a pig-deer (i cannot tell which, tho we do not have pigs here)

[niminy-piminy]

in my land, wild pigs are overpopulated at the moment.
as a result, if you are a licensed hunter and shoot them you get a monetary reward from the local Ministry of Agriculture.
it is probably not a way how to get dirty rich but it is enough to get some booze or drugs or whatever can make one happy.
one is supposed to present to the state officials pigs' tails (the proofs of successful hunting) and all the pigs' tails are then converted to local currency.
what is the exchange rate of a pig's tail vs. CZK i have no clue because i don't care if the pigs will take over this land.
with pigs in power, it can't be much worse than the current state of affairs.

[Otello Cagliostro]

My favorit as a kid was Mario Camerini Ulysses (1954) it's the best adaptation of the odyssey in my opinion.

i had a strange encounter with this film (at least i believe the film on the pics below is the one) while visiting (in March 2019) an exhibition dedicated to Hungarian action art.
i did plenty of snapshots there!
among many other artists, Károly Halász (1946-2016) was presented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1roly_Hal%C3%A1sz
Works with Television (Modulated Television, Private transmission, Pseudo-video)
Inspired by the writings and the works of László Moholy-Nagy, he started to experiment with photography and lightboxes, which led to the idea of TV object, a geometrical composition of two intersecting cuboids from steel, fixed on a television screen. This served as an arranging filter for television programs like the West Germany-Brazil soccer match in 1973, creating a hyperconstructed/deconstructed experience and chance-compositions, cached by the camera (e.g. Modulated Television II [1972], Modulated Television III [1973]). In Private Transmission (1974) he himself became the program, as he lived and slept in the empty shell of a TV for a day, while he created "Pseudo-videos" (1975) by replacing the TV screen with mirrors set at right angles to each other, which led to geometric self-portraits.

this is how TV set adjusted to watching peplum (or a soccer match) via the "geometric prism" (geometrically/abstractly censored) looks like.


and this is how "ulysses" looks if watched on such a TV set.




this is how a soccer match looks like.

Inspired by the writings and the works of László Moholy-Nagy, he started to experiment with photography and lightboxes, which led to the idea of TV object, a geometrical composition of two intersecting cuboids from steel, fixed on a television screen. This served as an arranging filter for television programs like the West Germany-Brazil soccer match in 1973, creating a hyperconstructed/deconstructed experience

moreover, this is how anyone's "private transmission" might look like.

In Private Transmission (1974) he himself became the program, as he lived and slept in the empty shell of a TV for a day,

fragmentary snippets of me are part of this still from "pseudo-video".
(yup, i like wearing anything striped.)

he created "Pseudo-videos" (1975) by replacing the TV screen with mirrors set at right angles to each other, which led to geometric self-portraits.

The version you saw is Franco Rossi Odissea (1969) haven't watched it but it looks good.

[sally]

speaking of zakopane i just remembered the best gallery i ever went to.

i'd been taken to auschwitz the previous day, which i didn't want to go to, and it was the worst experience of my life, worse than anything that has personally happened to me, an abomination, and then the jolly trip to the mountains (because gombrowicz, because witkacy) and i didn't want to be with anyone so went wandering around by myself and it was far too hot and i fell down some hidden concrete steps and hit my head and stumbled, bleeding, totally concussed, into the władysław hasior gallery and had revelation after revelation after revelation. i think at one point i was weeping in front of a portrait of europa made from broken cutlery. i was the only person in there the whole time apart from the lady who ran the place who i think was his widow, at least that's what i understood from me not speaking polish and she not speaking english, but she wouldn't take any money from me at all although i very strenuously tried to give her some because the place was amazing. i love love love things made from junk - it's almost icky (but the polish angle is much more neurosis than intimacy)

[niminy-piminy]

interesting!
i never heard of władysław hasior before.
he knows how to play with fire, i see.

[niminy-piminy]

Wyszywanie charakteru.
sewing (embroidering) the character (personality).

[Silga]

New, interesting exhibition opened when government allowed museums to re-open on the 20th of March.

A Difficult Age. Szapocznikow – Wajda – Wróblewski

“A Difficult Age. Szapocznikow – Wajda – Wróblewski” presents the work of Poland’s most prominent and widely acclaimed post-war artists: film director Andrzej Wajda (1926–2016), conceptual sculptor Alina Szapocznikow (1926–1973), and painter Andrzej Wróblewski (1927–1957). The exhibit’s main theme is an exploration of the adolescent experiences endured by these three artists – all born in the same period and all having lost a parent early in life – and the impact of these events on their work. The unprecedented scale of brutality committed during the Second World War left a profound mark on the lives of all three artists. The curator of the exhibition, the legendary Polish art historian and curator Anda Rottenberg, reveals how the same symbols and metaphors repeat themselves in different areas of art: painting, cinema, and sculpture.

https://mo.lt/en/ivykiai/a-difficult-ag ... roblewski/

I guess I'll wait a month till the crowds decrease, but it certainly looks like it's worth a visit.

[sally]

Wyszywanie charakteru.
sewing (embroidering) the character (personality).

well yes, there was the very literal, but i preferred



i read a book last year about the sense of smell (from all angles, cultural, historical, philosophical, geographical etc) and it was very interesting to approach the tyranny of vision through the more neglected senses. very disparaging to phallo-centric male visual-distancing freudian ideas, and it suggested that women were equally as fetishistic as men, but through touch (and smell) rather than the vision (of your mother visually not having a penis) there were arguments which is pointless to paraphrase here, but anyway

texture against the patriarchy! hooray for junk!

[sally]

I guess I'll wait a month till the crowds decrease, but it certainly looks like it's worth a visit.

it does look worth it! let us know if you go, and take pictures!

[niminy-piminy]

reminds me of the only tactile photo exhibition i ever visited.
it was the only time i could take all the photos exhibited in my hands.
the whole exhibition consisted of a little wooden box full of small size photographs and one could play with them like playing with a family photo album.
being able to hold the photos in hands makes a different experience than just looking at photos that hang on the wall and one is forbidden to touch them.

2019, November, Prague.
Tacita Dean, Loss.

https://fotografgallery.cz/en/tacita-dean/
Tacita Dean took photographs from the series ‘Czech Photos’ (1991/2002) as a student of the Slade School of Fine Art during her two-week stay in Prague in March 1991. They were not developed until several months later, and for the first time all 326 photographs were presented in 2002. As she says: “They are like the remains of Prague, which no longer exists, as a time capsule.” They show post-communist Prague in the stage of rebirth, search and chaos, an incomprehensible city that was beginning to slowly lose its dusty magic. Almost forgotten footage, shot on cheap Russian film, reveals a cross-section of the early post-communist era: broken sidewalks, urban still lifes, objects and elements of late communist and early capitalist architecture, as well as pictures and portraits of people complementing the author’s testimony on time and place. Pocket-size photographs will be presented in open wooden boxes installed directly in the library of the Fotograf Gallery, allowing people to gain intimate and personal access to them.

in this way the photos awaited the viewer/toucher.


i started to play with them.


silhouettes.


trees.


blurred.


fragments of ppl.


names, numbers.


stones.


ruins, outskirts.


urban abstractions.


obviously, my gazing instinct was still very prominent, but tactile involvement was not absent.
no wonder it was a photo exhibition conceived by a lady.
a male photographer could (probably) hardly get an idea to present his photos to the public this way.

[sally]

oh god jiri! ♥♥♥ i love tacita dean! the closest city art gallery to me (leeds) owns.....i adore it.....one of her works, and it was on display for all of about 5 mins before they moved it to storage damn them.

it is not super tactile, but it is mixed media so to speak (and SO close to film) - as well as junk i also have huge sympathy for mixing text into images, and maps and things seem so british really (peter greenaway's a walk through h was the first 'art' film i ever saw and is engraved on my soul)

BLIND PAN

Outside Gallery 4, where 'Mario Merz' is being shown, a set of drawings from 2004 titled 'Blind Pan (five monochrome landscapes)' are displayed. A found black and white photograph of an unidentified landscape is the backdrop for directions that map out a journey.

Written by hand by the artist, as if chalk on a blackboard, the filmic instructions narrate the journey of Oedipus and Antigone through the wilderness in a storyboard for an unmade film.

[Silga]

I guess I'll wait a month till the crowds decrease, but it certainly looks like it's worth a visit.

it does look worth it! let us know if you go, and take pictures!

I will! My mom called and said that she wants to go as well, so I guess we'll go together when she's fully vaccinated (not likely to happen in the next month though as the vaccination process moves very slowly here).

[niminy-piminy]

i like BLIND PAN!

[Silga]

i love tacita dean!

The last time I went to BFI London Film Festival back in 2015, I had an industry accreditation and went to a number of great events and talks.

One of them happened to involve Tacita Dean. It was a panel on the importance of showing film as film and its preservation. Dean was joined by Christopher Nolan and Alexander Horwath - Director of the Austrian Film Museum.

I took pics as well.

[flip]

the tacita dean lighthouse film (i think it might be 'disappearance at sea') is the best lighthouse film!

[niminy-piminy]

in case there are two more 10+ viewers, we can make a poll
(Tacita Dean) seen 11

[sally]

the tacita dean lighthouse film (i think it might be 'disappearance at sea') is the best lighthouse film!

i would love to sea that! is it online anywhere?

[niminy-piminy]

sea

"at sea" in res.