neljapäev, oktoober 24, 2013
The young technician. A male gaze at Arturs Bērziņš exhibition "Rodamība"
esmaspäev, oktoober 21, 2013
Critic in Psychoanalysis. Laura Kuusk's field of possibilities
reede, oktoober 11, 2013
Wolfgang Tillmans "Neue Welt", Les Rencontres d’Arles 2013 (01.07 - 22.09)
Yasmina Lahjij sends her personal favourites from Tillmans exhibition in Arles:
After having worked with abstract images for more than a decade, Wolfgang Tillmans’s new approach is starting to filter through the desire to look at the world as it is. Using for the first time a digital camera, he set out globetrotting, visiting among other places Jeddah, London, New York, Oslo, Papua New Guinea and Shanghai. Wanderingly, during these short trips the photographer gathered material for his new series titled Neu Welt presented this summer at the 44th edition of Les Rencontres d’Arles. Epic in several regards, the show is made up of large format prints pinned to the walls in a surprisingly orderly manner, which is rather exceptional for an artist notorious for his disorganized displays. Here, two particular aspects of Tillmans’s approach surface through the series: on one hand an interest in human interaction and a focus on certain trends of life. On the other hand a distinct exploration of photography as a pure writing of light is on display – through abstract leitmotifs. Apart from the nonrepresentational images titled ‘Silver’, the series depicts soft landscapes as well as seemingly banal observations of people, objects or architectural forms. Simultaneously, a sublimation of the mundane along with an eroticization of consumerism are testament to the artist’s particular gaze. This appealing commercialized aesthetic is pointing to our contemporary hyper-consuming society. Tillmans has a knack for discerning and reevaluating various ways of life; he ever so delicately observes the beauty of our excessive existence.
Anders on train, 2011, inkjet print on paper, clips, 207 x 138 cm.
Fruit Logistica, 2011, inkjet print on paper, clips, 207 x 138 cm.
Headlight (F), 2012, inkjet print on paper, clips, 207 x 138 cm.
Ignazu, 2010, inkjet print on paper, clips, 138 x 207 cm.
Jeddah Mall I, 2012, inkjet print on paper, clips, 207 x 138 cm.
Kilimanjaro II, 2012, inkjet print on paper, clips, 207 x 138 cm.
Lux, 2009, inkjet print on paper, clips, 161 x 242 cm.
Mundhöhle, 2012, inkjet print on paper, clips, 207 x 138 cm.
Nightfall, 2010, inkjet print on paper, clips, 207 x 138 cm.
Roy, 2009, inkjet print on paper, clips, 207 x 138 cm.
Sao Paulo, 2012, inkjet print on paper, clips, 138 x 207 cm.
Schlossgarten, 2011, inkjet print on paper mounted on aluminium in artist’s frame, 68 x 83 x 3 cm.
Shanghai night, 2009, inkjet print on paper, clips, 272 x 182 cm.
Sheep shadow, 2012, inkjet print on paper mounted on aluminium in artist’s frame, 57 x 70 x 3 cm.
Silver 82, 2011, c-type print mounted on Dibond in artist’s frame, 181 x 237 x 6 cm.
Spores, 2012, inkjet print on paper, clips, 242 x 161 cm.
Tower, 2009, inkjet print on paper, clips, 147 x 98 cm.
Tukan, 2010, inkjet print on paper, clips, 207 x 138 cm.
neljapäev, august 29, 2013
Artishok Leaks: Artishok in Art Criticism Online Helsinki
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| The face of Artishok February 5th 2013 |
„Everyhting that happens, happens when someone has a need for that to happen, so all in all our operational pattern is characterized by unstability, suprises, disjointedness, experimentation, constant changes – and by somehow still surviving it all,“ Maarin Mürk
How it all started?
Artishok was brought to life by Maarin Mürk and Margus Tamm in 2006 as an art blog to cover things that were happening in the contemporary art scene in Estonia, but also share inspiring art related stuff from all around the world. It was the time when art criticism was at its lowpoint – today already cited James Elkins`s 2008 book starts with a sentence: "Art criticism is in worldwide crisis." – so not only in Estonia were moods really pessimistic when it came to writing about art, its lack of strenth, ambition, and possibilities. In Estonia, the last art critic had been fired a few years earlier by one of the biggest daily newspapers.
However, 2006 also happened to be the high time of blogging, at least in Estonia common people were blogging about their lives and enjoying huge amounts of visitors on their sites. So there was suddenly this do-it-yourself media boom, publishing as such was suddenly very accessible, plus Estonia was building up a self-image as an e-land where Internet was concidered human rights.
Artishok started out on this self-publishing wave as a blog that was kept up by a couple of art and art history students who had extra energy in the evenings after their schools and day jobs to do regular blogging about what they had seen, offline or online, in Tallinn or while travelling places abroad. These people were inviting other people and these other people were inviting other people, so the art criticism section of Artishok pretty soon worked pretty well on crowd sourcing, on people who sent us their texts for publishing for free.
The good and bad sides of being budgetless
If you open Artishok.blogspot.com then what you see first is the motto that says: „Artishok is an experiment that explores the possibilities of art criticism independant from capital circulation and state institutions. Art criticism for art criticism. Jeunesse oblige. Everyone who feels like contributing, e-mail us artishok@gmail.com.“ So, yes, Artishok has never had nor applied for stable funding to keep the blog active, no state budget, no private capital, and – no flashing exhibition advertisements that we try to fight off on the right side panels of art criticism sites.
There are good and bad sides in being budgetless. The good side is it keeps the layout calm and clean and clearly opposed to the yellow media websites that are flagships of aggressive online media and marketing. The good side is also you can be more anarchistic in your content production, cause you are acting at your own risk, at your own responsibility. The bad side is you cannot really keep up regularity nor guarantee stable quality. The latter in turn has good and bad sides. The texts that have been published in Artishok throughout these 7 years have not always been edited nor translated - though we do have an English section for selected posts - they have been very different in length and quality, but they have also been free from the standards of a traditional newspaper art review that starts with the description of the exhibition, goes on with poetic connotations and a little touch of critique and usually ends with a suggestion to go and see yourself. Exhibition reviews in Artishok have sometimes been fully pictorial or fully problem-centered, sometimes they have come in the form of a radio broadcast or a TV show, and sometimes they have been written by fictional characters who do not act on any institutional loyalty and are therefore free to point out problems and call out for discussion.
Civic journalism and reliability?
So yes, Artishok could be labelled as the so called "civic journalism" or "we media" that does not hold claims for professionality in the strict sense. This kind of media is the kind that assumes the reader to be smart and active, as there is no guarantee for the quality of the information that the reader gets. But then again – perhaps there never is, just that "we media" is open and out about it, being directed to the audience that is aware of the internet jungle and ready to find its way there. As they say: „We media puts the reader on the driver`s seat“. I really think the habit to analyze info-feed is pretty essential when it comes to surviving the postindustrial info age.
What we could call the "civic journalism" is by the way quite lively in Estonia, a good example is Memokraat, a collective blog of a circle of civic society supporters who write sharply about politics and society and have become popular also among big media readers as the polemical or critical content is at times hard to find in the private owned daily media. The weakpoint of "we media" is that it doesn`t as if guarantee reliability, but then again, that might not necessarily be a weakness. As the most visited art related online sites like Arch Daily for architecture and Dezeen for design seem to have that reliability, but the result might be that they produce consumers of pop culture rather than critical readers.
Rhizome
However, Artishok is not only a blog for art criticism. The initial rhizome like logo of Artishok has become more and more of a prophecy of what we have come to do today when we are an open platform for different art and criticism related activities rather than an online art criticism site. There is the section of art criticism, there is the section of photo reportages that cooperates with artists who provide us with photo posts from exhibition openings, there is Artishok Records that gives out music made by art related people and organizes live music events, there is Artishok TV for low-fi audiovisual productions, and there is Artishok Radio for audio broadcasts and different event recordings (we would by the way be very happy to publish the recording of tonight`s event).
But besides that Artishok has also become more and more of a platform for raising questions about art writing. We have organized art criticism reading groups where everybody could join in to get their copy, read at home and later come and discuss together the latest publications on art criticism, be it James Elkins or Sven Lütticken, Frieze or October roundtables. Artishok has by the way organized similar roundtables on art criticism itself in Estonia by bringing together the artworld and media representatives.
And last but not least: since 2008 there is Artishok Biennale that is a travelling biennale of contemporary art and contemporary criticism. An exhibition format for 10 artists, 10 critics, and 10 very intsense exhibition days with a new show presenting one art project and ten reviews opening each morning. Saara Hacklin can tell you more about it as she was one of the participating critics in the III Artishok Biennale that took place in Tallinn in the autumn of 2012. Or you can check the biennale catalogue that comes out in a few weeks in Lulu and archives the whole project - it by the way contains one of my favourite texts about online art writing from last year which is International Art English by Alix Rule and David Levine.
Liisa Kaljula
laupäev, juuni 08, 2013
Interview with Mikkel Carl
On May 21st, Tallinn Tuesdays returned for a third edition of gallery nights. Organized by Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center, six Tallinn galleries participated with extended viewing hours and special events (check out more information from HERE). Liina Rajaveer did lengthy interview with Copenhagen-based Mikkel Carl, whose special installation “Brand New Paintings Caught in the Headlights of Parking Cars” were on view in front of the Vaal Gallery. Interview was originally made for Vaal Gallery home page and can be found from HERE; Artishok is happy to share it with our readers and add some more pictures of installation itself and of the event!As an introduction, could you shortly tell the story of yourself and art? How did you find your way from philosophy to artistic practice?
As a teenager I was obsessed with brands, even though most of my friends actually weren’t. In the eighties, coming from a Danish middleclass background you couldn’t really afford brand clothes, so it was a big thing to me when my uncle returning from a position in Thailand brought back embroidered Lacoste-crocodiles in bulk. I had my mother sew one on to my home knit sweater. I also remember being quite amazed when my math teacher told us that Japan exported pencils labelled “P.arker” instead of “Parker”. In my room the walls were covered not by rock star posters or autographed pictures of football players but with homemade Nike Air Jordan advertisements. Later, I went on to making my own “Levi’s” T-shirts using the textile pencils I got for my birthday. I still recall one that I was particularly proud of. Having learned this trick as a boy scout deciphering hidden messages I sprayed lemon juice on to the soles of my worn Timberland booths, walked across a piece of paper, and then gently heated it from below until the footprints appeared. These I traced on to the T-shirt adding the Levi’s brand and a text saying: “Rebels never go out of style, they just walk away”. Nevertheless, most of the time I just felt bad because my brand clothes weren’t genuine and because I sucked at freehand drawing. This feeling sort of stayed with me until I, many years later when I was studying philosophy, discovered appropriation art.
Much of your artwork is in a way dealing with ready-made or objet trouvé. This concept has been around already since Dada, for a century now; what is still interesting about it, what are the possibilities and limitations in this genre?
In the first year studying philosophy I read both Ursprung des Kunstwerkes by Martin Heidegger and T. W. Adorno’s Ästhetische Theorie, both dealing with the metaphysical and socio-political aspects of art. Popular at the time was also a notion of “aesthetic experience” not being limited to artworks per se but rather used in the attempt to conceptualize a general aesthetic dimension by drawing heavily on romantic philosophy and literary theory. Personally I found all of this a little too romantic, but then I started writing about the readymade strategy combining it with my interest in post-structuralism, which is the best excuse ever for not being original. My main concern was to trace a common productive force that cannot be conceptualized in and by itself, but only retrospective through the differences between the entities it has already created. The point is that it is not the things in themselves but the differentiating principle that is in a way “original”. Cut down to basics, in my opinion this is what Jacques Lacan calls ‘lack’ or ‘absence’, Michel Foucault names it ‘power’, Roland Barthes generalizes ‘writing’ as a sort of ‘reading’ (and vice versa), and Jacques Derrida even makes up this new word ’différance’.
This is heavy stuff I know, but it’s all very important should we be able to see the unrealized potential in the avant-garde’s use of readymades. Most often the avant-garde has been identified with the Hegelian ideal of overcoming the distinction between art and life. Most famous is Peter Bürgers Kritik der Avantgarde, in which he describes the neo-avant-garde of the fifties and sixties as simply the institutionalized version of the historical avant-garde thus making it all to clear how unsuccessful it’s attempt to repeal the category of the artwork really was. Personally, I regard this outspoken ambition as more of a rhetorical tool trying to create a movement towards something new. After all it was indeed a crucial moment in art history when everything no longer had to be created (almost) from nothing (pigment and media, clay and plaster, the raw marble block). The ready-made was a far more realistic way in which art and life can come together.
Inspired by Freud's concept of 'Nachträglichkeit', meaning ‘postponement’ or ‘delay’, as well as the aforementioned notion of 'différance' – a trace left without an original – Hal Foster even claims that the past never ends. Whatever happens later it will keep affecting what once happened. Had the neo avant-garde not taken up the strategies from Dada, Constructivism, Futurism and Surrealism, there would never have been a historical avant-garde. It was the repetition that created the original.
Theorizing the avant-garde in this way offers a peculiar mixture of linear and cyclic time, which means that as an artist you can keep creating new meaning even though everything has already been done several times over. But of course there’s also a downside to all of this. With any “negative” philosophy – be it Adorno’s ‘negative Dialektik’ or Derrida’s so-called deconstruction – the problem is that you stay fixed to whatever it is you’re trying to surpass. For sure this is less rewarding than the “positivity” and vitalism of say deleuzian thinking. I honestly admire anyone who is able to create a world of their own.
Installations involve objects arranged to create a certain space. Can your objects be removed from their installational context, in a way breaking the conception? How significant are the objects taken on their own (i.e. “The Invisible Hand” (2011))?
“The Invisible Hand” was not a very good show. I mean, I still like the works, but in constructing a conceptual unity that could be experienced in real time and space the exhibition definitely failed. I realized that as soon as everything was up and the show opened, and at that moment I promised myself that I would start trying to make exhibitions instead of objects.
Producing singular objects still works well for me with regard to group shows, because here the context is already a given. But when making a solo show, you yourself are responsible for the conceptual framework according to which people should discovered whatever is immediately present in the room. This is still really difficult for me. But the first time I got it just about right was with the show “New Paintings Caught in the Headlights of Parking Cars”.
Critics and art historians are often trying to analyse one's work according to some social or cultural principles. What would you yourself say about the main themes that interest you?
All I care about really is how to find ways to produce new meaning without succumbing to cliché. Which in itself is a cliché, so there you go. To me it seems the distinction that gave The Pictures Generation its name is more acute than ever. On the one hand we have what Duchamp called "retinal art"; something which the viewer perceives as a more or less successful expression of artistic intention and, by extension, certain thematic concerns that have found their way through a special media-specific aesthetics. Whether it’s painting, drawing, photography, sculpture or even installation art it is expected that a moment of truth will occur in the contemplation of the work. On the other hand reality being made up by pictures means that everything in this world, including the aforementioned artworks are always already mediated linguistically as well as perceptually through a variety of social, political, economic and historical structures. It’s these structures that art has an unique ability to visualize and on an experimental level fit together differently.
One could say that you're very much about semantics/semiotics, playing with the meanings of things.
Yes, it's all apples and oranges.
At the moment, new media is widely used in art, but what could be the new direction the field will look in?
Nowadays, small children try to ‘swipe’ on to the next page when holding a book and pretty soon 3D printers will have become an ordinary toy. And already new generations of artists have been growing up with advanced digital tools ready at hand plus unrestricted access to a large variety of network-based distribution platforms. The situation post-Internet urgently calls for the development of an adequate conceptual framework, but unfortunately this is not within the immediate analytical range of my own work (I got my first computer when I started university!). However, I recently curated a show in Malmö, Sweden called “Distinguished from the melee of user comments and Structurally misogynist chat rooms harboring rapid-fire trolls”. The exhibition did express a sensibility towards the changed conditions of production, distribution and reception in the digital age, which is something I strongly believe that also analogous objects are fully capable of.
When conceptual art in the sixties started to incorporate language as part of its imagery, it didn’t result in a dematerialization of art all together. And the same can be said about the ongoing digitization. This too is an identifiable materiality including yet another set of possibilities in terms of art production. Any number of digital strategies can be grafted on to analogue objects and vice versa.
Could you give us an insight to the installation project to be exhibited in front of Vaal Gallery on May 21? This concept was first presented in 2012, so whose initiative was it to reproduce the installation in Tallinn?
Earlier this year I spent a month in New York and there I met Karin Lansoo who is the director of the Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center. She very much liked my show “New Paintings Caught in the Headlight of Parking Cars”and so she asked me if I would be interested in creating something similar only this time as an outdoor installation. At first I said no, because to me the exhibition was very much related to the place it was shown – a former garage turned exhibition space as it regularly happens as part of the gentrification in major cities – and to the idea of the audience parking inside the gallery hereby physically becoming part of the installation. But giving it some thought I agreed to try it out. I let go of the fluorescent light part of the initial setup – the tubes are in fact designed for outdoor use and it isn’t much fun just putting them where they belong. So the idea now is that the paintings themselves will define five parking spots somewhat like the signs in otherwise public car parks saying “Private Parking” or simply just showing a license plate number.
The brand new paintings will go up on a wall just opposite the entrance, so when people park their car the headlights will be reflected casting a golden light upon the glass façade of Vaal Gallery. This is due to the fact that the paintings or perhaps rather the “paintings” consist solely of a golden reflective foil put on stretchers. These emergency blankets can be found in just about any first aid kit, but they are packed differently and they also vary quite a lot in terms of size and proportions. And now so do the paintings. Together they form a serial variation of different bodily conceptions, since normally these so-called anti-shock blankets are used to wrap around people injured in for instance a car accident. You hereby counter the enormous loss of body heat, which is a result of the shock and which in itself worsens the mental state the victim is in. What this means to me is that a physical everyday material under the right circumstances can actually have a profound physiological effect; sort of like art itself.
teisipäev, mai 28, 2013
Köler Prize 2013 Gala pildis / captured
24.05.2013 EKKM
Fotod / Photos: Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo
Kommenteeris / Comments: Maarin Mürk
Eesti kunstimaailma 50 halli varjundit / 50 Shades of Grey of Estonian Art World
Itsitavad nii, justkui nad teaksid midagi, mida teised ei tea...nagu näiteks võitjat?! / Giggling like they know something others don`t..like the winner?!
Alustab / Begins MC Anders Härm
Jälgi mängu / Keep an eye on a ball
Gala melus leidus hetk sisekaemuseks /Moment of looking inward in the midst of that dazzle
Aksessuaarivalikuid: klassikaline kiilaspea, rastadest küllusesarved ja õllepurgi avamis-naksudest müts / Daily wears of Estonian art world - classical baldhead, horns of plenty made out of dreads and hat made of beer can zips
Sotsialiseerumine... Tahaks näiteks teada, mida ütleb Andri Ksenofontov oma püstitõstetud näpuga Tõnis Saadojale...aga ilmselt me ei saa seda iialgi teada. Mis juhtus EKKMis, jääb EKKMi. / Socializing... Would like to know for example what an art critic Andri Ksenofontov is saying with his finger raised to the painter Tõnis Saadoja...but probably we will never know. What happened in EKKM, stays in EKKM.
Ainitised pilgud kontsentreeruvad lavale... / Fixedly gazing upon the stage, winner is about to be revealed...
Preemiasaaja väljakuulutamise ootuses käed juba toostiks tõstetud / Waiting to toast the Köler Prize winner
NÜÜD SEE JUHTUSKI - välja kuulutati kolmas Köler Prize võitja ja publikuauhinna saaja!!
NOW IT HAS HAPPENED - receiver of the third Köler Prize and public award announced!
Jou Johnsonid! / Yo, Johnsons!
Aga kes see on? Kesseon? KES SEE ON?
Jaanus Samma loomulikult.
Võitja.
2x.
But who is this? WHO IS THIS?
Jaanus Samma, of course.
The winner.
Double winner.
Rise of the Forgotten Sunrise
Eestlaslikult ekstaatiline kontserdipublik / Really Estonian way of enjoying the live
Gala kadumas öhe / Gala disappearing into the night
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