Mark Maxwell’s installation, Positive Negative + -, draws on the experiments of Benjamin Franklin, inventor, man of Reason and one of the founding fathers of America. Housed within the east walk of the church of St. Bartholomew the Great, Postive Negative takes elements and influences from the space it occupies, and is composed of two sculptures and two video pieces.
Shows & Exhibitions : Fine Art & Fine Craft
The University of Essex Gallery presents a group exhibition of internationally acclaimed contemporary artists Richard Wentworth, Duane Michals, Jorge Macchi, Ivan Navarro, Chema Madoz, and the emerging artists Frode Fjerdingstad and Marcus Palmqvist . The show has been organised by a group of 5 up-and-coming curators on MA Gallery Studies and Critical Curating for the 21st Century course at the University of Essex.
Philadelphia Museum of Art hosts the first U.S. exhibition of tapestries by South African artist William Kentridge (born 1955), whose work, encompassing drawing, video, sculpture and theatre, has made him one of the most eloquent artistic voices to emerge in South Africa. In conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum presents a series of discussions and readings as part of Art and Social Transformation
Sots Art retraces the development of a movement which, from the early 1970s and in the wake of Socialist Realism, would stand out as the first original art movement in Russia since the 1920s avant-garde. The term was coined in 1972 by two Moscow artists, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, as a take on Pop Art, "Sots" being a contraction of Socialism and Art.
With artifacts, records, films, artworks, and reproductions documenting, remembering, and presenting wars both historical and contemporary, Apocalypse Now: The Theater of War examines the philosophical terrain of war. Featuring images and sounds related to war and the impact war has on the human mind, the exhibition is more than a simple illustration of war. Instead it describes war as a universal idea of human antagonism, a set of languages and iconographies embedded in our everyday lives and broader social consciousness.
Camden Arts Centre presents About 90 elements / TOD IM DSCHUNGEL, a new exhibition by Thomas Scheibitz including paintings, sculptures and large works on paper. German artist Scheibitz received international acclaim at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Using geometric shapes and symbols taken from personal memory and the media, he creates a vision of a future fast-paced consumer society.
French Kissin' in the USA is the first exhibition in the United States of the current emerging generation of French artists. It takes its title from a 1986 hit song by Blondie and presents the work of eighteen contemporary French artists which have not yet been widely received outside France. The French artistic force celebrated within this exhibition resonates well beyond Europe and has always served as an inspiration to the creative world.
The group exhibition Ben van Berkel & the Theatre of Immanence consists of an advanced installation designed by Städelschule professor of architecture Ben van Berkel together with Prof. Johan Bettum and Luis Etchegorry. The installation houses a series of works by artists and architects who have participated in the one-year long experimental project, entitled the Space of Communication, a project by the Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC).
The ‘contagious magic’ described famously by anthropologist James Frazer in his study of ‘savage’ societies is one example of the many forms of magic reliant upon supernatural agency which cultural historian Simon During contrasts with the secularized illusions of the theatrical conjuror in Modern Enchantments (Harvard 2002). In KALANAG, Jonathan Allen problematises clear distinctions between these different forms of magical enchantment in a photographic installation that focuses on Adolf Hitler's notorious 'minister of magic'.
Belfast Exposed presents Simon Roberts' Motherland, an exhibition of 26 photographic prints, accompanied by a publication of the same title published by Chris Boot, produced over the course of a year spent travelling across Russia. Roberts started in the Far East of that country, travelled through the Siberian provinces, up the Kola Peninsula and across Kaliningrad, before heading down to the Northern Caucasus, the Altai Mountains and along the Volga River.