Artcity21 - Blog

NEW YORK, NY – Leilah Weinraub is proud to announce the world premiere of her feature directorial debut SHAKEDOWN, at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, the Panorama presentation. SHAKEDOWN immerses the viewer in the urban lesbian strip club scene of early 2000s Los Angeles, depicting its protagonists’ performance of sexual freedom and self-determination with poignant intimacy. SHAKEDOWN will be featured in the 2018 edition of the Panorama presentation in the scope of Panorama Dokumente. A short cut of SHAKEDOWN was recently included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. Following the film’s world premiere, SHAKEDOWN will have its US premiere at the True / False Film Festival followed by a special presentation at CONVERSO, Milan on February 25 and MoMA PS1, New York on March 18.

A West-Coast cousin of the mostly-male New York ballroom scene, the subculture documented in SHAKEDOWN is propelled by female creators infamous in their own community, among them: Ronnie-Ron, Shakedown Productions creator and emcee; Mahogany, the legendary mother of the scene; Egypt, Shakdown’s star dancer; and Jazmyne, the Queen of Shakedown. The film functions as a legend where money is both myth and material in a vibrant world far from the mainstream. After attending Shakedown events as a 23-year-old, Weinraub began taping every Thursday and Friday night, shooting video of the dancers known as “Shakedown Angels.” Throughout the film, as Weinraub participates as both director and community member, questions arise about how to diagram the before and after of the club's utopic moment.

The Panorama program of The Berlin International Film Festival comprises new independent and arthouse films that have a unique artistic vision, the courage to be different, a desire for the unfamiliar, a profound historical awareness or pioneering personalities. Among the 20 films show in the Panorama Dokumente program, SHAKEDOWN will join 37 other world premiers, and 16 directorial debuts. The Panorama challenges its audience and has the confidence to explore new avenues. Press Conferences and public discussions enable the press and audiences to enter into a dialogue about the films with their directors, producers and actors. Since July 2017 the Panorama section has been headed by Paz Lázaro who curates the Panorama program together with Michael Stütz and Andreas Struck.

Katrin Westman, Snärjda best (2018) oil on canvas, 70 x 65 cm

Katrin Westman

Clamour

Galleri Andersson/Sandström is very pleased to present the second solo exhibition with the Swedish artist Katrin Westman.

Katrin Westman’s painting is full of power, sensualism and something that resembles rage.

It wraps itself inwards, folds around itself, flows, splashes and explodes in a driven orchestrated chaos. In many of her previous works, the paintings have stretched out of the wall, down on the floor into the room. In this exhibition she shows paintings on canvas, classically hung on the wall. However the artist's care to come at the viewer from different angels remains unchanged. She wants the observer to meet the works by beholding them as much with the body as the mind.

Westman describes her practice as follows: "In order to be in a constant movement between reality and fiction, I work with three-dimensional and flat surfaces, with sculpture in my mind and my hands in the colour."

Westman is interested in the boundless; that which is exaggerated and bombastic. In her artistry she has found inspiration from Baroque masters like Bernini and Rubens, which can be seen in the drama and dynamics of the paintings, in their texture and nerve. Westman's painting is conceptually paired with tangible sensuality and her colouristic palette derives from earthy colours, flirty seductive pastels and different tones of skin and flesh.

Communication, mixed media on watercolor paper, Antonio Pessoa 2007, could be seen as just another artwork by the artist, however the title leaves enough suggestions, loose ends, arrow keys to navigate related to the frequently asked questions, a dimension of legitimate curiosity where the public, local or worldwide, wishes to know more and more about an artist project, systematically updated, collecting a punctual interesting selection of information, the classic guide for art lovers, art collectors, art gallery managers, art curators and public in general, providing them with substantial lines to be and being kept informed about what's happening with Pessoa's life, career, work and events. Since 2003, Antonio Pessoa already living in Barcelona, Spain, the internet oviously came up and turned out to be another magical and powerful communication tool, providing the artist's closest collaborators with a rather interesting and direct way to tell the world about Pessoa's on- going events and all sort of valuable information concerning his artitic and even personal life. Antonio Pessoa at the beginning clearly not particularly interested, to say the least, in the internet scene, step by step became convinced of the wonderful communication stream of the cyberspace nowadays. If Antonio Pessoa wasn't after all destined to paint live, as it was his primary purpose at the very beginning of his career, at least now he could be in contact with a great amount of public, mainly in Google, as we all know the most consulted and popular search engine in the internet world so far. Therefore, from then on, Google, Yahoo and Msn indeed helped tominimize the time required to find information about Antonio Pessoa out and abouts. When this internet exploring firat experiences took place, Pessoa was going through a rather complicated and complex emotional period due to his personal life, to such an extent that at a certain given point he could hardly manage and handle his studio work on his traditional daily basis, actually slowing down his art production almost to a dangerous situation of total paralysis. For the first time in ten years, Antonio Pessoa was clearly showing signs of obvious lack of interest in art making, proportionally to the great action time golden years of his remarkable Romantic Period fine art performance. Nevertheless, the show had to go on, and despite the emotional whirlwind, Antonio Pessoa had to make a supreme effort and get rid of a great deal of inner contradictory forces in order to get back up on the road again and start from the scratch, one way or another, anything but surrendering to the evil powers of negative thinking up to cripple his fierce creative spirit. In order to star dealing effectively with the stressful rhythm of the big city and the contemporary art scene life, Antonio Pessoa definitely needed a nice warm bath of courage and at the same time an urgent immersion in the stimulating positive bubbles of daily art working time.

LONDON ART FAIR 2018

ANNOUNCE LIST OF EXHIBITORS AND

CURATED PROJECTS FOR 30TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

From 17 - 21 January 2018, London Art Fair will return for its 30th anniversary edition. Launching the international art calendar, the Fair offers exceptional modern and contemporary art from leading galleries around the world. Alongside this, it continues to provide insight into the evolving international market through specially curated spaces Art Projects and Photo50, presenting innovative developments in contemporary art and photographic practice.

London Art Fair 2018 invites collectors and visitors to discover work by artists from the 20th century to today, ranging from Modern British masters to exciting new talent. In celebration of their landmark 30th year, London Art Fair will feature a unique exhibition in partnership with Art UK. Bringing together thirty artworks from the nation’s public art collections, Art of the Nation: Five Artists Choose will recognise the extraordinary diversity and importance of the UK’s publicly-owned art. 

Meret Oppenheim, Profil und Ausrufzeichen, 1960

Meret Oppenheim

The mind is androgunous

Meret Oppenheim’s first exhibition at Karma International, Zurich consists of works on paper ranging from ink and pencil drawings to collages, watercolours, etchings and lithographs. The exhibition traces her entire oeuvre: from the 1930’s in Paris until the 1980’s in Carona, Ticino. As a medium, drawing is at the core of Oppenheim’s practice that was to manifest in an immediate and experimental approach. Today her surrealist paper work is an influential role model for a young generation of artists who regards her drawings as a foundation for conceptual practice. 

As a schoolgirl, Oppenheim famously wrote the equation “X=Hase” (X=rabbit) in her journal. Exhibiting her dislike for numbers, she simultaneously produced one of her first surrealist works of art. The sentence was later used in the publication "Le Surréalisme" and reproduced as the etching Das Schulheft, (1973). Oppenheim was an adept printmaker and drew extensively. Before her first painting in 1933, she had already created over 50 drawings. For Oppenheim, drawing allowed experimentation, quick notation, and an ease of mark making, which made it an ideal medium to access the subconscious and intuition – important elements of Oppenheim’s work. 

Born in in 1913 in Berlin, Oppenheim spent most of her youth in Switzerland. She was introduced to many artists at a young age – including Emmy Hennings, Hugo Ball and Hermann Hesse, as well as Irène Zurkinden who took her to Paris as a young woman. Inspired by her father’s interest in Carl Jung, Oppenheim began recording her dreams at the age of fourteen. A series of reoccurring themes are continuously present throughout her work including investigations into the subconscious, humor, her relationship to nature and the universe, in effortless changes of style and method. Living in Paris in the 1930s, Oppenheim met many influential artists of the time, and worked closely with the Surrealist group surrounding André Breton. She returned to Switzerland before the Second World War, which, for Oppenheim, can be seen as marking the beginning of a long artistic crisis. She continued to produce art, but destroyed many works or left them unfinished. According to Oppenheim this crisis did not stem from criticism or a misunderstanding of her work, but rather a feeling of artistic incapacitation – the weight of centuries of discrimination against women resting on her shoulders – leading to an inherent feeling of inferiority. In the 1950’s she broke away from those doubts and created an incredibly rich body of work up until her death in 1985. In Switzerland she acted as a lively and social figure who inspired many generations of artists. Her studio house in Carona was an important meeting point where artists from all over Switzerland gathered with her.