'Exercise'

Borusan Contemporary

Turkey, Istanbul

1 March -1 June 2014

Our congratulations to Steve McQueen and the whole cast and the crew of '12 Years a Slave' for winning Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards!

WIELS presents for the first time in Belgium an exhibition by Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari, who has emerged as one of the most prominent commentators on photography of the Middle East. Zaatari's practice is closely tied to the practice of collecting. Through books, photographic installations, and videos, Zaatari's visual studies reflects on the shifting nature of borders and the production and circulation of images in the political context of the region. Paralleling his long-term engagement with "the state of image making in situations of war", his work looks into notions of surveillance and expressions of masculinity, exploring the way different media apparatuses get employed in the service of power, resistance, and memory. This sensibility was formed in the course of living through fifteen years of war in Lebanon, watching it unfold and recording it as a teenager.

As co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation - an expanding collection of over 600,000 images - Zaatari is deeply invested in examining how photography served to shape notions of aesthetics, postures and social codes, therefore looking at the present through a wealth of past records of vernacular and studio photography from the Middle East. "I do not believe in the neutrality of the archive," Zaatari says. He has spent much of the last decade studying, indexing, and presenting the archive of Studio Sheherazade, established in 1953 by photographer Hashem el Madani in Saida, South Lebanon - Zaatari's city of origin - as a register of social relationships and of photographic practices.

Akram Zaatari, born in 1966 and author of more than 40 video works, lives and works in Beirut. Zaatari recently represented Lebanon in the 55th Venice Biennale and partook in dOCUMENTA XIII and Liverpool Biennial (2012), and Istanbul Biennial (2011). His work has been exhibited in and collected by museums all over the world, including at Tate, London; Bristol Museum, Bristol; Centre Pompidou, Paris; SFMOMA, San Francisco; MoMA, New York; Kunstverein, Munich; MUSAC, Léon; and Kunsternes Hus, Oslo.

Curator: Dirk Snauwaert

 Our congratulations to Steve McQueen, the cast and the crew of '12 Years a Slave' for winning Best Picture at this year's British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards.

 Our congratulations to Steve McQueen, the cast and the crew of '12 Years a Slave' for being awarded Best Film at this year's Golden Globes.

The 2013 edition of the Contemporary Art Festival celebrates an important moment for the biennial show. The main Brazilian event dedicated to the artistic production from the geopolitical South (Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe, South and Southeast Asia and Oceania) goes thirty. It is the only Brazilian international festival for contemporary art, with exhibitions, public activities, awards. As in previous editions, a major exhibition establishes a dialogue with the Southern circuit: besides the Southern Panoramas competitive show, this year the highlight is the three decades of experimentation and risk assumed by Videobrasil since 1983, brought together in the exhibition 30 Years.

"Autocontrucción" (auto-construction) is the term Abraham Cruzvillegas (born 1968) uses to describe his art, the roots of which lie in the improvised construction methods and techniques of his native Mexico City. In this first major survey of his artistic career to be presented in Europe it can be seen, how Cruzvillegas combines his dynamic sculptural language with natural materials and found objects, blurring the boundaries between art and craft and between industrial and manual production. For Cruzvillegas, the sculptural form is a process of change, action, solidarity, and transformation. Over the past decade, Cruzvillegas has created an impressive body of work that reflects his interest in the forms and matter surrounding Ajusco, a volcanic area south of the Mexican capital.

"Abraham Cruzvillegas: The Autoconstrucción Suites" is organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA, and presented by Haus der Kunst.

Major support for the exhibition is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support is generously provided by Nelly and Moisés Cosío Espinosa, the Rose Francis Foundation, Gabriela and Ramiro Garza, Eugenio Lopez, Leni and David Moore, Jr., Donna and Jim Pohlad, Mike and Elizabeth Sweeney, and Marge and Irv Weiser.

The exhibition at Haus der Kunst in Munich has been generously supported by Thomas Dane Gallery, London / Regen Projects, Los Angeles / Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris / kurimanzutto, Mexico City

L'ALMANACH 14
22 février - 1er juin 2014
MARVIN GAYE CHETWYND, TRISHA DONNELLY, ANTOINE ESPINASSEAU, RACHEL FEINSTEIN, RODNEY GRAHAM, SHEILA HICKS, DAVID HOMINAL, ALEX HUBBARD, JOHN McALLISTER, LAURE PROUVOST, CHARLES RAY, COLLIER SCHORR, EMILY SUNDBLAD, FREDERIK VÆRSLEV, KELLEY WALKER, JORDAN WOLFSON. 

JOHN McALLISTER (USA. Born 1973, lives in Los Angeles)

MARVIN GAYE CHETWYND (GB. Born 1973, lives in London)

FREDRIK VÆRSLEV (N. Born 1979, lives in Vestfossen)

COLLIER SCHORR (USA. Born 1963, lives in New York)

SHEILA HICKS (USA. Born 1934, lives in Paris)

ANTOINE ESPINASSEAU (F. Born  1986, lives in Paris)

JORDAN WOLFSON (USA. Born 1980, lives in New York)

DAVID HOMINAL (F. Born 1976, lives in Amsterdam)

TRISHA DONNELLY (USA. Born 1974, lives in New York)

CHARLES RAY (USA. Born 1953, lives in Los Angeles)

RODNEY GRAHAM (C. Born 1949, lives in Vancouver)

EMILY SUNDBLAD (SW. Born 1977, lives in New York)

RACHEL FEINSTEIN (USA. Born 1971, lives in New York)

ALEX HUBBARD (USA. Born 1975, lives in New York)

LAURE PROUVOST (F. Born 1978, lives in London)

KELLEY WALKER (USA. Born 1969, lives in New York)

Remerciements: 303 Gallery, New-York; Air de Paris, Paris; Cranford Collection, Londres; Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New-York; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich; James Fuentes Gallery, New-York; Lisson Gallery, Londres; Matthew Marks Gallery, New-York; Galerie Kamel Mennour, Paris; MOT International, Londres; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Sadie Coles HQ, Londres; Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New-York et tous les prêteurs.

The Linda Pace Foundation is proud to present a public artwork by Arturo Herrera titled Adam, a 2,500-square-foot wall painting located in downtown San Antonio.

The dramatic public artwork, which is more than 25 feet high and 98 feet wide, is the largest wall painting produced by the artist in the United States. Adam embraces and fulfills the Linda Pace Foundation's mission for the community to experience contemporary art in nontraditional settings.  

"This installation advances San Antonio's growing reputation as a cultural center for innovation and creativity," says Maura Reilly, executive director of the Linda Pace Foundation. "We are honored that Arturo tailored this design specifically for us. Having a public art display by an artist of his caliber positions Adam as one of the city's newest attractions. Adam will inspire local residents, tourists, and also bring art aficionados to our city."  

Herrera scouted San Antonio earlier this year looking for the consummate setting for Adam. He found the ideal spot in Main Plaza, a vibrant cultural hub for musicians, poets, artists, farmers markets and family activities.

"The inspiration for the wall painting Adam was about movement, the dynamism of abstraction, and  a soaring energetic field, like Spring, when everything awakens," Herrera said. "The title Adam brings several images to mind: An earthbound beginning; the first individual human; humankind. It is a powerful and yet open-ended title that can convey multiple readings to the audience. The color red that I chose for Adam was intentional as red is the color associated with heat, power, physical energy and celebration. Coincidently, red was Linda Pace's favorite color, both for its physical and spiritual qualities." 

The Linda Pace Foundation is funding the project and it will remain prominently displayed on the side of the Frost Bank Parking Garage at the northwest corner of Commerce Street and Main Avenue for three years, through December 2016.

Arturo Herrera was born in 1959 in Caracas, Venezuela. He received his BFA from the University of Tulsa in 1982 and his MFA from the University ofIllinois at Chicago in 1992. He lives and works in Berlin. Arturo Herrera has developed a multilayered body of work that includes collages, sculptures, photographs, cut felt pieces and wall works. Herrera uses a fragmented language-whose lingering references range from popular culture to art history-to decontextualize inherent narratives without eradicating the coded referentiality of the image. The resulting works shift in between the explicit and the implicit. A pliability of meaning is played out through the ambiguity of figurative and abstract forms. These forms do not enforce a specific message. Instead, they address the fragmentation and recomposition of mass-culture elements to explore the impact of the adulterated language of abstraction into the collective gaze.

The Linda Pace Foundation is committed to the charitable vision of its founder.  Guided by the donor's conviction that contemporary art is essential to a dynamic society, the Linda Pace Foundation fosters the creation, presentation, and understanding of innovative expression through contemporary art. Grants support the operation of Artpace, CHRISpark, the public exhibition of Pace's contemporary art collection, and the work of contemporary artists.

The Art Centre is pleased to present the first Canadian solo exhibition of works by Akram Zaatari, one of Lebanon's most respected contemporary artists. Zaatari's art practice involves unearthing, collecting and re-contextualizing a wide range of documents that confound notions of history while recognizing the ways in which these documents are uneasily situated as evidence of tense political and cultural conditions. The exhibition will juxtapose several video and photography projects that explore what Zaatari calls the "dynamics that govern the state of image-making in situations of war." In this exploration, Zaatari employs letter writing as a device, a mode of address and a research method to situate his works in a fractured political context while offering intimate and particular ways of knowing the event.

Born in Saida, Lebanon, in 1966, Akram Zaatari is an artist, curator and writer living in Beirut. He is one of the co-founders of the Arab Image Foundation (www.fai.org.lb) a non-profit organization whose mission is to collect, preserve and study photographs from the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab diaspora. His work has been featured in discourse-setting exhibitions such as Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany and the Sharjah Biennial, and was on view at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in New York from mid-May to September 2013. Zaatari also represented Lebanon at the Venice Biennale in 2013. His Canadian premiere immediately follows these two high-profile engagements.

This exhibition is curated by Victoria Moufawad-Paul . A publication with essays by the curator, Sylvie Fortin and Judith Rodenbeck accompanies the exhibition.

Victoria Moufawad-Paul

This exhibition is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council's program for Culturally Diverse Curatorial Projects, the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund and the Chancellor Dunning Trust Lecture, Queen's University.