The timing of the simultaneous Wade Guyton, Guyton\Walker, Kelley Walker presentation could not be better. All three have been acclaimed in major solo exhibitions at eminent institutions in recent years and the intellectual and critical reception of their works is unanimous in its praise of the three distinct positions.

This exhibition is their first joint appearance and is thus all the more excitedly awaited. In contrast to their earlier practice-and many see this alone as a minor sensation- in this show they will dispense with a segregation of the three artistic personae, which is otherwise strictly observed.

But why talk of three »persons« here at all? Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker have often exhibited together, yet until now they have seen to it that the duo's activities were ring-fenced from their individual careers. Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker, for instance, both exhibited in the That's the way we do itgroup exhibition at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2011, but it would never have entered their heads to exhibit as a duo in the same show. The artists have always thought of Guyton\Walker as a separate artist, not as a side project, and as such has different gallery representation from either Guyton or Walker.

Surprising at first perhaps, a convincing logic nevertheless underlies this separation. For it simultaneously displays, underpins, and calls into question the concept of authorship, the role of which is not to be underestimated in the work of Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker. This is closely connected with topics such as authenticity and the duplication of the autonomous artwork in the form of editions or other types of multiple production and distribution. What makes an artistic signature recognizable? How does a signature style come about? And how can the cult of genius often connected with such a style be avoided without automatically introducing the idea of the death of the author?

On the face of it, in relation to the works of Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker, these questions are vexing, for the socalled artist's individual hand is often modified in their works through the use of the computer. By means of unconventional production techniques, however, the two artists develop highly individual pictorial languages that combine allusions to commerce and advertising culture with liberal quotations from Modernist art-particularly pop art in this case-and which alternate between analog and digital media.

Both Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker make use of found signs and images, which they transfer to canvas or wood panels as ink-jet or screen prints or transform into sculptures and installations. Here too, in Guyton\Walker, we find motifs from high and low culture. Like Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker, Guyton\Walker work with different spatial levels and divergent references. But from this the duo often develops paintings, objects, and installations that play with an impression of provisionality, chaos, the unfinished. Images and forms migrate and mutate. A painting may become a can, a sheet of printed drywall or a table. And the table may become a mattress or even a painting again.

Three parallel solo exhibitions have been developed for the Kunsthaus Bregenz, presenting to a broad public a selection of Wade Guyton's well-known X and stripe pictures, as well as Kelley Walker's now legendary brick paintings and Rorschach works. All three artists will also be developing new works for the presentation.

The presentation will avoid strict segregation of the three producers in favor of an interplay designed to bring out their similarities and differences. This may of course also involve concentrating on certain groups of works or on one particular artist on a particular floor. The dynamic relation between concept and visuality is the common thread running through the entire exhibition. Above all, though, this deliberately fiery show values dialogue-not just between the three artists, but also with the public, whom it seduces in a way that is both intellectually and aesthetically entertaining.

This exhibition draws together the works of a generation of artists who seem to be surveying the ruins of history, and who could be described as "digital-age primitives" because of their relationship with the archives of the web, or their interest for fragments of the past and cultural scraps. Here, these change their status as ready-mades to become incriminating evidence…

With: Marwa Arsanios, Jules de Balincourt, Walead Beshty, Carol Bove, Isabelle Cornaro, Simon Fujiwara, Haris Epaminonda, Rebecca H. Quaytman, Rashid Johnson, Josephine Meckseper, David Noonan, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Clément Rodzielski, Slavs and Tatars, Meredyth Sparks. 

Paul Pfeiffer (born Honolulu, Hawaii, 1966) is an American sculptor, photographer and video artist. He has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2002), the Barbican Arts Centre, London (2003), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2003), among many other institutions worldwide. He participated in the Whitney Biennial in 2000 and was awarded the inaugural Bucksbaum Award. In 2001 he participated in the 49th Venice Biennale. He won the visual arts Alpert Award in 2009. He studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA Printmaking) and Hunter College, New York (MFA), and has lived and worked in New York since 1990. Pfeiffer is represented by Paula Cooper, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin and Thomas Dane, London.

An enticing glimpse of Arturo Herrera's Night Before Last/Chicago is visible to those entering the u.S. citizenship and Immigration Services (uScIS) building in chicago. The mural's tangled arabesques tumble out of sight as they proceed toward the atrium, sparking curiosity and conversation from visitors and employees who wish to decipher the artwork's meanings. In some areas, the swirling lines gather into evocative fragments of cartoon figures from the 1 3 disney animated feature film snow White and the seven Dwarfs. In other sections, the paint strokes loosen into vibrant abstractions, reminiscent of Jackson Pollock's famous action paintings. herrera seamlessly blends these two quintessential icons of American culture, along with myriad other references and influences, to create an artwork that resists easy definition and remains open to the unique perspectives and interpretations of individual viewers. 

As the district headquarters for the uScIS, the building receives visitors from all parts of the world daily. The universally recognizable cartoon imagery of Night Before Last/Chicago starts viewers out along familiar paths, allowing them to identify select forms: Snow white's hair tied with a bow, the bulbous shoes and caps of the seven dwarfs, the handle of a pickax, a candlestick, small tufts of grass, a fluttering bird, and many other details. but the longer one looks at herrera's collaged image, the more one discovers. Soon, new and more personal associations may begin to emerge. Attempts to interpret the mural's intricately layered shapes require creativity, imagination, and a willingness to engage new ideas. Such qualities are needed for any exploration, and are thematically relevant to the many visitors who arrive at the federal building in the midst of their journey toward a new life in a new country. 

Herrera-who was born in Venezuela-was once on such a journey. Following his university studies in the united States and periods abroad, he returned to chicago to pursue graduate education and eventually acquired u.S. citizenship. reflecting on his own experiences-which included many visits to buildings like this one- Herrera conceived Night Before Last/Chicago as an artwork that speaks to and energizes the broad range of people visiting the uScIS each day. 

Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas makes videos, paintings and sculptures. This screening of Autoconstrucción (2011) draws together his interests in society, class, sex and gender in a video capturing the intimate moments of a spectrum of couples in various locations in a South American city.

Please note that this screening contains adult material.

Often, creation and destruction are taken as polar opposites, elemental forces which are permanently in conflict. Rather than following this line of division between the two, the exhibition looks to examine more imaginative approaches, the ways in which creation and destruction might merge and cross over. The process of making something new can be as much about removal as it is about production - the ways in which ideas, images and perceptions have to be cleared away before anything useful can begin.

The works in the exhibition explore different aspects of the relationship between creation and destruction; they establish a thread between the two forces in order to produce something new. The very different approaches of each of the artists (using film, photography and sculpture) lead the spectator towards a more complex and nuanced view. The experience is designed to set a more fruitful dialogue between creation and destruction.

Anya Gallaccio explores the connections between decay, temporality and aesthetics. Preserve (Chateau) consists of 100 Gerberas which will slowly decay during the course of the exhibition, a paradox of the familiar creative process. The existence of Red and Green originates from the destruction of an earlier work, Red on Green, an installation of 10,000 roses laid on the gallery floor and left to decay.

Mark Lewis' film North Circular uses a single take to explore the ruins of a modernist office building in London; inside three boys play amidst chaotic remains. This representation of an abandoned building reflects on aspects of time and space and the subject evokes a sense of decay and ruination.

Rut Blees Luxemburg has produced a number of projects each of which investigate the significance of the modern project on the city. The works in the exhibition explore themes of destruction, decay, and erosion through a contrasting range of objects, materials and locations.

A bit of deconstruction preceded the installation process for Abraham Cruzvillegas: The Autoconstrucción Suites: Prior to the Mexico City-based artist's arrival, all the non-load-bearing walls in the Target and Friedman galleries-including the one separating the two spaces-have been removed. It's the first time since the Walker expansion opened in 2005 that the galleries have been opened up into one, creating a massive, 9,500 s.f. exhibition space. Cruzvillegas, who traveled to Minneapolis with his wife and daughter, has been on-site the past two weeks preparing the exhibition for Friday night's preview party and its public opening Saturday. Gene Pittman and Olga A Ivanova of the Walker photography department have been tracking the installation process, capturing the space as it changes and the artist as he works.

Minneapolis, January 10, 2013-The Walker Art Center will presentAbraham Cruzvillegas: The Autoconstrucción Suites, the first in-depth contextual exhibition of Abraham Cruzvillegas, one of the most important artists to come out of a burgeoning art scene in Mexico City. Informed by the sociopolitical contexts of Latin America, Cruzvillegas (b. 1968) has garnered much attention for his dynamic assemblage sculptures made of found objects. The exhibition will run from March 23 through September 22, 2013.

Since the 1990s, Cruzvillegas has developed a riveting body of work-including sculpture, installation, film/video, and theater-that derives from the social and economic realities of his hometown in Ajusco. While his work has been widely presented in Mexico and Europe, his exposure in the U.S. still remains limited. Organized by Walker Senior Curator for Visual Arts Clara Kim, this mid-career survey will focus on the last 10 years of his practice and will feature individual sculptures and expansive sculptural environments, as well as recent experiments in video, film, and performance. Following the Walker's presentation, the exhibition will embark on an international tour to the Haus der Kunst in Munich in early 2014 and the Jumex Foundation in Mexico City and Museo Amparo in Puebla who will jointly present the exhibition in Mexico in fall 2014.

Interested in what he calls autoconstrucción or "self-construction," Cruzvillegas roots his practice within the urban landscape of his childhood home, where structures are in a constant state of change as materials become available and as necessity dictates. The conceptual framework and ideology of his dynamic sculptural work begins here. While echoing art historical precedents (Duchampian transformation of everyday objects, arte povera's use of impoverished materials, and the uncanny compositions of assemblage), Cruzvillegas employs improvisation and alternate economic systems that privilege craft over art, the handmade over the manufactured, and processes that necessitate "making do" or learned, communal behavior. This point of departure becomes a model for a way of building out of scarcity and a metaphor for the construction of the artist's own identity.

Developed in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition will include an important body of sculptures first exhibited at the 2003 Venice Biennale, in a section titled Everyday Altered curated by Gabriel Orozco; a series of sculptural installations created during a six-year period of residencies; and more recent experiments that expand his thinking onautoconstrucción through film (developed with a film cooperative), video (in which the artist's parents narrate their own stories in the form of oral history), performance (collaborative musical and action-based theater), and a source material archive room. Shown together for the first time, the exhibition will illustrate Cruzvillegas's contributions, and motivations and influences that inform his thinking, as well as his commitment to social and political realities that shape everyday lives.

Steve McQueen (born London 1969) is one of the most significant contemporary British artists. The largest exhibition to date of this artist's work will provide a detailed insight into his complex and unusual oeuvre. Installations, photographs and film from every period of his artistic career will be shown.

Steve McQueen's early works are characterised by an experimental approach to cinematic history and the dynamic between black and white, particularly in the aesthetic of silent film, such as French avant garde film and American slapstick. Over the past ten years this aspect of his work has been joined by an exploration of the boundaries between the documentary and the narrative.

In 1999 Steve McQueen was awarded the Turner Prize. In 2008 he won the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival with the feature film 'Hunger'. In 2009 he represented the United Kingdom at the Venice Biennale and in 2011 he was invited to enter the Venice Film Festival's competition with his film 'Shame'.

The exhibition will be co-organised by Schaulager and The Art Institute of Chicago. Schaulager will publish a comprehensive catalogue to accompany the exhibition.

Today the Venice Biennale released the rather epic list (see below) of artists who will participated in curator Massimiliano Gioni's exhibition "The Encyclopedic Palace," which is slated to run from June 1 through November 24 and, despite its title, is dominated by the same American and European artists you'll encounter at most major international shows of contemporary art. "With works spanning over the past century alongside several new commissions," Gioni writes in his introduction, "and with over one hundred and fifty artists from more than thirty-seven countries, the exhibition is structured like a temporary museum that initiates an inquiry into the many ways in which images have been used to organize knowledge and shape our experience of the world."

The exhibition's title and theme were inspired by Italian-American artist Marino Auriti, who conceived of an encyclopedic museum of world culture in Washington, D.C. that would be 136 stories tall with a 16 block footprint, and called the "Palazzo Enciclopedico" (or "Encyclopedic Palace"). Though he spent years working on a model for the enormous structure in his home in rural Pennsylvania - and filed a patent application for it with the U.S. Patent office - Auriti's palace, as you may have guessed, was never built.

Gioni sees such "delusions of omniscience, shed light on the constant challenge of reconciling the self with the universe, the subjective with the collective, the specific with the general, the individual with the culture of her time." In our contemporary situation of sensory overload and data deluge, the curator considers "such attempts to structure knowledge into all-inclusive systems seem even more necessary and even more desperate."

The list of participating artists includes a who's-who of contemporary American heavyweights -Nauman, Condo, Sherman, McCarthy, de Maria, Guyton, Serra, Trecartin, and so on - a similarly comprehensive cross-section of major European artists - including Fischli & Weiss,Kjartansson, Sarah Lucas, Steve McQueen, and Sehgal - a select few from other regions - four artists each from Africa and South America, and nine from Asia (so much for being encyclopedic) - and historical artifacts like Haitian Vodou flags, Shaker gift drawings, and anonymous Tantric paintings. As GalleristNY notes, the number of artists in the exhibition who've recently shown at the New Museum - where Gioni is the associate director and a curator - is conspicuous, though not entirely surprising.

The full list is below:

Hilma af Klint

"The Encyclopedic Palace" runs June 1-November 24 at the Giardini and the Arsenale.