Displaying items by tag: installation

The 30th Turner prize will be contested by four artists who are almost impossible to pigeonhole, using techniques that include film, storytelling, installation and screenprinting.

The shortlist, announced on Tuesday at Tate Britain, is made up of Duncan Campbell, Ciara Phillips, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell.

All four are in a sense collagists, often using images and films they have physically discovered or found online. They also explore subjects that are more their parents' history than their own.

In 2011, when asked about the recently announced Dia:Beacon retrospective of his work, his first in North America in more than three decades, Carl Andre told Randy Kennedy of The New York Times that he had informed the Dia curators, “I can’t stop you from doing it, but don’t expect me to do anything to help.” As it turned out, this wasn’t true; according to Yasmil Raymond, the co-curator of the show, he cooperated plenty. “He had to endure our visits almost every month,” she said a few days before the show’s public opening, “and he came here three times to see the installation.”

The result of more than three years of hard work on the part of Raymond and Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles Philippe Vergne, “Carl Andre: Sculpture as Place, 1958-2010,” which will be on view until next March before traveling to other venues, stretches over six galleries and two floors.

Each year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York commissions an artist to create a site-specific installation for its rooftop, which features a garden cafe, martini bar and breathtaking views of Manhattan. The museum announced that it has tapped American conceptual artist, Dan Graham, to create this year’s exhibit, which will be on view from April 29 through November 2.

Graham, who is best known for his architectural environments and glass pavilions, will work with the Swiss landscape architect Günther Vogt for the commission. While officials say that Graham’s pavilion for the Met is still in development, it has been revealed that it will be made of steel, glass and hedgerows.

Graham, who began his career as the director of the John Daniels Gallery in New York, where he put on Sol LeWitt’s first one-man show, has been making his well-known pavilions since the 1980s.  

According to officials at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, on Sunday, February 16, a visitor smashed a vase from Ai Weiwei’s “Colored Vases” installation. The work, which is estimated to be worth $1 million, was destroyed by a local artist who was charged with criminal mischief and later released in lieu of bail. Maximo Caminero allegedly told a police officer that his act was a protest against the museum’s decision to exhibit only international art and its exclusion of local artists in its shows.

The Pérez Art Museum, which opened in December, released a statement saying, “As an art museum dedicated to celebrating modern and contemporary artists from within our community and around the world, we have the highest respect for freedom of expression, but this destructive act is vandalism and disrespectful to another artist and his work, to Pérez Art Museum Miami, and to our community."

Caminero claimed that he was inspired by one of Weiwei’s most famous works, “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,” a series of three photographs showing the contemporary Chinese artist dropping an ancient Chinese vase. Weiwei is no stranger to controversy and has openly criticized the Chinese government’s position on democracy and human rights.

The contemporary art institution MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts has embarked on a monumental collaboration with the Hall Art Foundation. The cornerstone of the partnership will be a comprehensive, long-term exhibition of sculpture and paintings by the German artist, Anselm Kiefer. The works will be housed in a 10,000-square-foot building, which was re-purposed by the Hall Art Foundation specifically for the Kiefer exhibition.

The show will include an 82-foot long, undulating wave-like sculpture made of cast concrete, exposed rebar, and lead; an installation containing over 20 beds made of lead with accompanying wall text and photographs; and a large-format commission created specifically for installation at MASS MoCA.

The Hall Art Foundation makes works of postwar and contemporary art from its collection and that of Andrew and Christine Hall available for the enjoyment and education of the public. Besides the new exhibition space at MASS MoCA, the Hall Art Foundation operates a contemporary art space in Reading, Vermont.

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN presents Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties, the largest exhibition to date to focus on the American sculptor’s early works. The exhibition brings together nearly 300 pieces spanning Oldenburg’s formative years and is divided by body of work including The Streets, which features a graffiti-inspired installation focused on the underbelly of urban life; The Store, which includes Oldenburg’s celebrated sculptures of food and everyday objects; and The Home, which is devoted to sculptures of large-scale domestic objects.

The Sixties was previously on view at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Many of the key works, including Shoestring Potatoes Spilling from a Bag (1966), Upside Down City (1962) and Geometric Mouse—Scale A (1969/1971) are from the Walker’s own collection. Sketches, snapshots, home movies and slide projections that give visitors a glimpse into the mind, heart and creative process of the profoundly unique artist accompany the show.

Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties will be on view at the Walker Art Center through January 12, 2014.

This August and September, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York will offer members an exclusive look at James Turrell’s major site-specific work Aten Reign. The popular installation will be showcased in Quiet Views, allowing visitors the chance to experience the luminous and immersive work in an intimate and meditative environment.

James Turrell, an American artist who is best known for his works that explore light and space, spent nearly six years planning the massive installation that has transformed the Guggenheim’s iconic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda. Quiet Views consists of four events taking place on the evenings of August 12, August 19, September 9, and September 23 and will include two sittings on each day. Only sixty people will be present at each hour-long sitting.

James Turrell was organized by the Guggenheim in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Richard Koshalek, the director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., announced his resignation on May 23, 2013 after three years with the institution. Koshalek’s decision was prompted by the Hirshhorn’s board of trustees’ failure to reach a consensus in regards to a plan to cover the museum’s courtyard with a temporary inflatable bubble, which has been continually stalled.

Koshalek made the announcement during a board meeting, which was centered on the bubble project. During the meeting, the 15 board members were unable to agree whether or not to continue fundraising for the project. Officials said that the bubble will remain under consideration even after Koshalek’s departure.

If created, the bubble would connect the inside and outside of the Hirshhorn and create additional space for installations and performances. Designed by Diller Scofidio & Renfro, the bubble is expected to cost over $12.5 million to create and install. Fundraising efforts have brought in about $7.8 million to date.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles is planning to open A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture in Southern California on June 2, 2013. Funded in part by the Getty Foundation, the show is now in jeopardy of being cancelled.

The Getty provided $445,000 for the exhibition, which is part of the Foundation’s new architecture series “Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.” An exploration of the last 25 years of Los Angeles architecture, A New Sculpturalism was suppose to feature works by Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Michael Maltzan, Barbara Bestor, and a number of young architects. A nearly 300-page exhibition catalogue, co-published by Rizzoli, has already been completed.

Guest curated by Christopher Mount, the former executive director of the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the show may not be fully installed by its opening date. The participating architects have grown wary of the show’s direction and how their works will be presented, which prompted Gehry to withdraw from the show altogether.

The expansive exhibition includes four purpose-built pavilions, which were commissioned from various emerging architecture firms in Los Angeles. There have been some preliminary talks about holding the show later this year.

The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. will unveil its first permanent installation in over 50 years. Founded by the art collector and critic Duncan Phillips (1886-1966) in 1921, the Phillips Collection is the United States’ first modern art museum.

The new addition to the institution is a room made entirely from beeswax titled Wax Room. The experimental piece is the work of Wolfgang Laib (b. 1950), a conceptual German artist who is well known for his sculptural works made from natural materials. Laib has been making his beeswax chambers for over 25 years using hundreds of pounds of melted beeswax to coat walls and ceilings. The otherworldly spaces he creates are warmly lit by single hanging light bulbs.

The Phillips Collection’s other permanent installation is its Rothko Room, which holds four paintings by the abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970). The intimate presentation of Rothko’s works was added as a permanent exhibit in 1960, six years before Duncan Phillips’ death. Phillips worked closely with Rothko, deciding which walls to hang each painting on and the kind of lighting and furniture that would best suit the room. The Phillips Collection was the first American museum to dedicate a space to Rothko’s work and it remains the only one designed in collaboration with the artist himself.

Laib’s progressive work is a welcomed addition to the Phillips Collection. While Phillips’ holdings consisted of many Impressionist paintings and other mainstream works, he also had a taste for the unconventional. Phillips was one of the earliest patrons of American modernists including John Marin (1870-1953) and Arthur Dove (1880-1946) and also harbored great admiration for Abstract Expressionism before it became a respected art movement.

Laib’s Wax Room will be unveiled on March 2, 2013.