#Busan Biennale 2020

[longlistshort]

Closing today at Kasmin in NYC, is Shades of Daphne, curated by Stephanie Cristello. It is a “timely survey of painting, sculpture, installation, and film by a group of 11 international and intergenerational contemporary artists, many of whom have not previously exhibited in the United States.”

From the Kasmin gallery website-

Bringing together recent and historical works spanning over three decades from the 1990s to the present, the exhibition includes new commissions, site-specific performances and installations that respond to the architecture of the gallery space.

Celebrating the spirit of resistance and revolt, the exhibition takes the figure of Daphne—the Ancient Greek nymph who turned herself into a laurel tree to escape Apollo’s pursuit—as metaphor to explore work that engages with hybrid figures, metamorphoses, and suspended states of becoming. Highlighting deconstructed impressions of the body in relation to mythologies of transformation, the exhibition focuses on work that features remnants of presence even when the figure is absent—objects that hold the memories of living things. Acting as portals, thresholds, and containers of shifting states, each work also engages with architecture as a framework, both in reference to the body and to spaces constructed for both personal and collective ritual.

Information on Diana Al-Hadid’s sculpture, The Long Defeat, 2017-2023–

Diana Al-Hadid’s (b. 1981 Aleppo, Syria) sculpture takes the Flemish primitive painter Hans Memling’s Allegory of Chastity (c. 1475) as a starting point. The work pictures the bodice of a female figure, her head bowed, hands interlaced at the waist, surrounded by the mouth of a volcanic mountain. Al-Hadid’s first interpretation of the painting culminated in the monumental sculpture Citadel (2017–18), a hollowed silhouette of a woman framed by the base of an embankment whose porous mass extends like a root system toward the ground. Her face is vacant of features, delineated instead by two severe lines like one would find in the initial sketch of a portrait artist, that indicate her gaze remains lowered. Yet in contrast to the demure painting, the massive scale of the work allows for her downcast eyes to stare straight into those of the viewer below.

Information on Bianca Bondi’s installation, The Antechamber (Myths of descent and return), 2023-

An iteration of Bianca Bondi’s (b. 1986, South Africa) installation for Busan Biennale 2020, The Antechamber (Myths of descent and return), grew from a translation of Kim Hyesoon’s poem, “Tundra Swan.” As Bondi states: “salt is essential for life but too much brings death.” Taking inspiration from paintings such as Henri Gervex’s Rolla (1878) or John Everett Millais’s Ophelia (1851–52), we observe a clinical but feminine bedroom setting composed of a bed with a pond at its center, echoing a circular mirror above a dresser at the end of a pathway through the tundra. Salt surrounds the installation, representing both preservation and resurrection. A swan stands alone, symbolizing the force of art and poetry. This is the third chapter of the installation, following the Thailand Biennial in 2021.

[contemporaryartdaily]

Busan Biennale 2020

[skowhegan]

David Bailey (A ‘94) Busan Biennale 2020 Museum of Contemporary Art Busan 1191, Nakdongnam-ro, Saha-gu, Busan September 5 – November 8

[micaramel]

Artists: Lutz Bacher, Renée Green, Arthur Jafa, Josh Kline, Eric N. Mack, Cady Noland, Lorraine O’Grady, Sondra Perry, Cameron Rowland, Wu Tsang, Danh Vo

Venue: Watergate, Washington D.C.

Exhibition Title: Exodus

Date: October 26, 2019 – January 25, 2020

Curated By: Paul Pfeiffer

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of the artists and Bortolami, New York. Photos by Kristian Laudrup.

Press Release:

Bortolami is pleased to announce the seventh Artist/City project, Paul Pfeiffer/Washington, D.C. A group exhibition at the Watergate curated by Pfeiffer, Exodus brings together a selection of artworks – primarily found-object sculptures – to investigate the collapsed boundary between representation and reality that now defines everyday life. It includes works by Lutz Bacher, Renée Green, Arthur Jafa, Josh Kline, Eric N. Mack, Cady Noland, Lorraine O’Grady, Sondra Perry, Cameron Rowland, Wu Tsang and Danh Vo.

The show explores the question: How can an existing object be a mask? The artists in the exhibition draw materials from daily life, distilling them down through processes of selection, sampling, editing, and arranging. The resulting artworks take the form of everyday gestures and appearances, and yet their installation within the stripped-down setting of the white cube renders them alien. On first encounter, they appear like fragments of reality isolated and objectified through their enshrinement as art objects. They radiate a presence and pathos akin to that of living beings, or forensic clues from the scene of a crime. While their material presence may speak volumes, they also invoke their former context. They resist easy explanation, refusing to identify. Their uncanny status contradicts their seeming familiarity, so that in the end they become like mirrors, merely reflecting what we want to see. Which begs the question: who or what is behind the mirror? And what is their true purpose?

This game of seemingly simple appearances and hidden motives is nothing new, dating back at least to Duchamp’s ready-mades a hundred years ago. But then context is everything. What was once called trompe l’oeil, then appropriation, then simulacrum, then sampling, has proliferated exponentially along with handheld screens and social media, reaching into every aspect of public and private life, ubiquitous to the point that it no longer has a name. In the era of personal branding strategies, algorithmic pinpoint marketing, and other self-encapsulating feedback loops, the line between human personality and image machine has become indistinguishable.

Society today is a stadium, a circus, and a hall of mirrors. Everything can be turned into a widely distributed image, from the most prosaic customs and routines, to human and environmental tragedy, to political discourse, to intimate encounter. Violence nor pleasure are less real, but our state of war is mediated through images. If data-driven algorithms can interpret personal preference from clicks and eye movements, then customize a feed predicting our appetites as consumers, how then to discern free will from manufactured habit? If A.I. sets the ontological horizon beyond the limits of human perception, how can we be sure that the images we see are real and not a customized projection?

This is the ontological Exodus, the voyage we’re on as we navigate the perverse spaces and temporalities of global capitalism.. But while the technologies are new, the state of cognitive dissonance is not. The uncanny has been fundamental to human experience from the very beginning. In the current moment of sensory overload we are reminded that the Exodus was never simply a geographic journey, it was always ontological – a journey to liberate human consciousness – and has been ongoing for millennia.

To amplify the strategic selection of artworks in the exhibit, the choice of the Watergate Building as setting is meant to communicate strongly and wordlessly the urgent context of contemporary societal transformations to which this project responds.

Paul Pfeiffer (b. 1966 in Honolulu, HI) lives and works in New York. He has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MIT’s List Visual Arts Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, MUSAC León, Spain, the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. He was the subject of a retrospective at Sammlung Goetz in Munich, Germany. Pfeiffer’s works have also been included in international, large-scale exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, Biennale of Sydney, Busan Biennale, Cairo Biennale, and Whitney Biennial. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship and the Bucksbaum Award from the Whitney Museum.

Artist/City is Bortolami Gallery’s experimental programming initiative that pairs an artist with an American city. Taking place in unconventional settings for longer durations than the standard gallery exhibition, these site-responsive projects grant artists freedom to present their work according to their own creative vision. Previous projects include Daniel Buren/Miami, Eric Wesley/St. Louis, Tom Burr/New Haven and Barbara Kasten/Chicago. Ann Veronica Janssens/Baltimore is ongoing. Paul Pfeiffer/Washington, D.C was developed in conjunction with Denniston Hill’s thematic program for 2017-2022 (https://www.dennistonhill.org/exodus-and-the-ethics-of-uncertainty).

Link: “Exodus” at Watergate

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from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/2uQRgFI

[jaymes-ip]

8/30 - Theme/Topic Brainstorm

Theme/Topic Brainstorm

Masks 

Keep this as un-covid related as possible

As a barrier we put up

Metaphorically 

A fear of being seen and understood by others

Masking as a thing that autistic and other neurodivergent people do 

A fear of rejection 

Horror 

How it relates to being marginalized

Specifically for me in being queer

As a form of camp even

As part of our history

The ways in which people see us

Subversion 

Things that are scary are actually good and vice versa 

Taking power back

Maybe being a bit erotic

Monsters

A symbol of power, of fear

Taking back power but also being afraid of hurting the ones you love

Classical Greek

Minotaur 

Horror movie/literature 

Slashers 

Frankenstein 

Werewolves 

Vampires

The idea of being predatory comes up here

Divine

This is one I have to consider borrowing from since I don’t have any real connection to religion

Transformation of the body

What it takes for a body to be grotesque

Transformation

Of the body 

Of my own body specifically 

For transgender reasons 

As a representation of change 

Both positively and negatively 

Something that is always on my mind 

As a way to gain power back 

Get out of my own body and into something that can kill, something that has real power

Gender 

A huge part of my life as I am trans

And everyone’s life in general

Something I have a huge interest in anthropologically 

Body 

As a place for transformation

The self and the place that holds the self

Act of making

I want to do work that reflects the medium it’s in

That explores that medium 

That speaks to the act of making and about process 

Sex 

Eroticism especially

Even if this is a scary topic to cover for myself I’m always intrigued

Queerness

A huge and beautiful part of my life 

Being trans is a huge part of who I am and my experience 

Both with the world and my own body 

Being bi in the same way 

Both change the way I see other people and the way I see gender itself

Ursula K Leguin’s writing 

Her sci fi work is incredibly influential on me 

The way she writes the intersections between people and the way she writes the relationships between men and women is with and indescribable wholeness

Love 

Connection to other people 

How we connect 

What makes us disconnect

Abuse 

Trauma 

Extremely common

Abuse as it relates to love

Not mutually exclusive 

Something that makes loving harder

Something that a lot of us deal with 

How wonderful it is to love and be loved 

The feeling of serving other people 

Love not being transactional

Self 

It’s a core to all of my work, I don’t feel shy about my work being autobiographical, I feel it kind of has to be

Topics Derived From These Themes

The thing about deriving a topic is right now I don’t have a lot of wide reaching themes, or at least the ones I do either don’t have social implications, or if they do I have a lot of baggage with them because there is work I want to do that I’m getting caught up in. I’m starting from the point of what would be visually interesting as opposed to what the actual project is about. I think I need to start with what I’m interested in more broadly, I can pull from project ideas later, I won’t exhaust these topics any time soon. So let’s look through the list; what do I care about?

I care about the way that men and women are socialized to interact with each other

About how gender can be both an axis to understand each other, but often stands in the way of relating due to gendered socialization

Contexts: Western society, specifically America

I care about the ways that horror both demonizes and empowers the marginalized

Through a long and storied history

My focus would be on queer people

I care about what a gender anthropology can tell us about ourselves and others

Currently and in the past 

I care about the ways in which trans bodies are seen

Through a lens of transformation

And through a lens of mutilation and destruction

Killing the original owner

Most specifically trans men/trans masculine people

How we’re removed from our own bodies; our own pallbearer

I care about the ways in which trans bodies are seen under a variety of lenses and the dehumanizing and empowering effects it can have. 

Goals of exploring self, transformation, the act of making, and the mixture of many different mediums.

What do I want out of this project?

To do something physically large

Maybe imposing 

To combine a lot of the skills I have and mediums I enjoy

Printmaking 

Ceramics 

Illustration 

Comics and story telling

To do something personal

Honestly? To impress other people 

To have something actually finished instead of simply conceptual

Though I do want to explore medium and material as well

I want it to be understood

I want to be understood

Mediums list

Proficient 

Printmaking 

Relief: lino, woodblock

Drypoint 

Screenprinting

On paper and fabric

Drawing 

Digital

This is something I keep shying away from as a finished product but I’m exceptional at digital illustration, I should use that skill 

Charcoal 

Acrylics

Watercolor 

Ceramics

Mold making

Hand crafting

Writing

Comic making 

Explore 

Ceramics

Glazes 

Larger molds

Fabrics

Sewing 

Weaving 

Knitting/crocheting

Painting/drawing 

Pastels

Oil + chalk

Colored pencil 

Watercolor 

Fifteen Projects

I care about the ways in which trans bodies are seen under a variety of lenses and the dehumanizing and empowering effects it can have. 

Goals of exploring self, transformation, the act of making, and the mixture of many different mediums.

Becoming, Busan Biennale 2010. Yishay Garbasz

Photos, steel, makrolon, motor, light, wood, foil, cloth, 300cm width. 230cm high (Zoetrope)

http://yishay.com/index.php/2019/08/10/becoming/

Motive + Method: It’s about the ways in which trans bodies are portrayed and talked about, but also incorporates a multitude of processes and materials in a way I am interested

Becoming an Image, 2012-Present and The Resilience of the 20%: Monument Project, by Cassils

https://www.cassils.net/#projects 

Photos, 2000lb clay, performance, bronze casting

Motive + Method: their work is always highly charged and speaks to the perceived violence of trans people along with the ways in which they are seen. Their work is also extremely iterative and multimedia.

Both by Zackary DruckerThis Is What It Looks Like (To Go From One Thing to Everything)

Collaboration with Luke Gilford

Digital C-prints, dimensions variable

2013

Don’t Look at Me Like That

Collaboration with Manuel Vason

Duratrans on LED Lightbox

2010

https://www.zackarydrucker.com/photos 

Motive; the former lends itself to the surgical angle in which trans people are seen, the later to the hatred of being seen against your will

Andy Warhol's 1975 "Ladies & Gentlemen" series

Screen print and paint on canvas, size variable (~2x3’) https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/warhol-exhibit-explores-roles-gender-sexuality-his-life-art-n1236516

Motive + Method + Media; an outsider’s perspective (or at least a non-out trans person's perspective) on the trans body as well as Warhol as an artist who popularized a lot of printmaking and mixed media printmaking techniques. 

Gender Portraits, by Drew Riley, 2013-Present

Paint on canvas, size varies

https://www.genderportraits.com/paintings

Motive + Media; These are a twist on the traditional portraiture style and have a fun, bold way of portraying the subjects.

Eli Clare, by RIVA LEHRER

1997, acrylic on panel, 18" x 24"

Motive; Riva is an artist whose work focuses on the many different bodies that art stigmatized (often to the point of seeming monstrous).

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Peter Hujar), 1989.

Courtesy the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P·P·O·W, New York

https://elephant.art/how-david-wojnarowiczs-photographs-helped-me-overcome-my-grief-17052021/

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (One Day This Kid...)

1990

https://whitney.org/collection/works/16431

Motive + Method; unique ways in which queer bodies are portrayed, especially around violence and death as well as the combination of words and visuals.

FRANCIS BACON, 1909 - 1992. STUDY FOR PORTRAIT OF JOHN EDWARDS

signed, titled and dated 1986 on the reverse

oil, pastel and aerosol paint on canvas

198 by 147.5 cm. 78 by 58 in.

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/evening-sale-london/francis-bacon-study-for-portrait-of-john-edwards

Motive + Media; the way the body is portrayed in such an odd and uncomfortable way as well as the way the paint has been layered and manipulated.

Lorenza Böttner, “Untitled” (1982), black and white photography, size variable

https://hyperallergic.com/494092/lorenza-bottner-requiem-for-the-norm/

Motive; portrayals of otherized bodies

Lorenza Böttner, “Untitled” (1986), pastel crayon on paper

Motive + Material; contrast with the other piece

Juliana Huxtable, Untitled in the Rage (Nibiru Cataclysm)

Date 2015

Medium Inkjet print

Dimensions 40 x 30 inches (101.6 x 76.2 cm)

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/juliana-huxtable

https://www.hungertv.com/editorial/the-future-juliana-huxtable/ 

Motive + Method; This is one example of a long series of portraits along a similar theme. Her work is very iterative

Catherine Opie, Self-Portrait/Pervert, chromogenic print, 1994.Catherine Opie, Self-Portrait/Nursing, chromogenic print, 31 inches, 2004

https://arthistoryteachingresources.org/lessons/queer-art-1960s-to-the-present/

https://art21.org/artist/catherine-opie/

Miss D'vine I, 2007, Zanele Muholi South African, b. 1972

Chromogenic print

30 1/10 × 30 1/10 in

76.5 × 76.5 cm

Edition ⅗

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/zanele-muholi-miss-dvine-i

Motive; an intersection between identities. A uniquely Black African look at queerness.

Ndlunkulu, 2021

Beads glued on plywood Work

30 3/10 × 23 2/5 in

77 × 59.5 cm

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/zanele-muholi-ndlunkulu

Motive + Method; taking photos and turning into a beaded piece

    Re-branding My Love, Njideka Akunyili Crosby

2011

Charcoal, acrylic, collage and Xerox transfers on paper

5.5 ft.× 4.5 ft.

http://www.njidekaakunyilicrosby.com/work/re-branding-my-love

Material + Method; multimedia collage and layered printmaking work revolving around the body

Roberto LugoWhitney Houston / Shirley Chisholm Urn, 2017

Method + Material; his work is intensely narrative even within single pieces and combines printmaking and ceramic techniques

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-20-artists-shaping-future-ceramics

Yun Hee LeeThe Castle Of The Spider's Web, 2017

ATELIER AKI

Method + Material; narrative ceramic piece that are non-sequential

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-20-artists-shaping-future-ceramics

Title: OriginsArtist: David Spriggs

Location: Collection Pierre Miron, Montreal

Date: 2018

Size: Each artwork 53 x 186 x 28 cm / 21 x 73 x 11 inches

https://davidspriggs.art/portfolio/origins/ 

Materials: Painted layered transparencies in display case

Method + Material; layering is a method I’m interested in using to create both depth and a sense of time

Nick Cave, 2012 Soundsuit

made from buttons, wire, bugle beads, wood and upholstery, ~6’

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/15/t-magazine/nick-cave-artist.html

Motive + Method; transformations of the body + collage

Frida Kahlo Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair 1940

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78333

Motive

Critical Question

Material:

How can I combine illustration, printmaking, and ceramics in a way that represents the diversity of the queer experience?

How can the materiality of the peice reflect the subject of the piece itself?

Method:

How can narrative and iteration be used as a reflection of the self?

How can layering be used to show the multiple ways in which trans people are seen?

Motive:

How can I combine both positive and negative depictions of trans people in a way that is empowering to queer viewers?

Finalized

How can layering and narrative be used to combine both positive and negative depictions of trans people in a way that is empowering to queer viewers?

Three Projects Brainstorm

Brainstorm

Aging

Me and/or other trans people as we age

Transformation comic 

Huge multi media piece that uses layering to show the monstrous and the divine

Follows a narrative 

Possibly a linear progression of time

Me growing up

Someone growing up

A transition

Has words

Either in the piece or at least following a written poem

Potentially the name and subtitle of piece could be this poem

Rot to growth

Progression of someone rotting and dying in their original form only to flourish

Plant symbolism

Reverse surgical portraits

Turning the idea of mutilation around

Unwanted body parts are portrayed as rotting flesh, removing them is freeing

Porcelain dolls

An idyllic ceramic doll of a female child cracks/is degraded in a series to reveal a grow man trapped inside

I would want this to be a progression from less to more from fake to real

Lovers

A trans man and a trans woman

Potentially a variety of t4t couples

A series of prints/illustrations of couples

Potentially based on some of the imagery from Running Up That Hill

Dissolving 

Becoming real

Becoming abstract 

Accompanying the images 2 large nesting dolls

Equal amount of pink and blue parts

The same shapes

Best case is they fit together like lovers 

The outside could be a different/more distinctly human shape

The inner layers could be lighter and lighter in color

Viewers are encouraged to move them around together, mixing the different colored pieces

Whether this is a top and bottom pieces or just one larger body-shaped piece

Bestial

Series of trans people as any animal/mythical creature/monster of their choosing

Half man half beast would be best 

Great time to practice character design

These could be in a variety of forms and styles

Depending on what people are looking for and how they see themselves

Main purpose is to show the dichotomy between how other see us and how we see ourselves

And the power we can take back through monstrosity

Project 1

Transformation: Large scale multimedia comic (combining multiple forms of printmaking, photography, illustration, and potentially ceramics) following a narrative growing up/transition with layered transparencies representing the different ways trans people are perceived.

Project 2

Rot and Growth: A multimedia portrait series that begins with interviewing the subjects of each portrait. Each portrait comes in two parts: the first before transition/surgery and after. The before portrait represents unwanted body parts as rotting and grotesque, reminiscent of the “mutilation” language used against us; the after shows what transition is actually like: joyous, life bringing. Transition does not have to be a physical thing in this case, but a realization and acceptance of the body.

Project 3

Bestial: Starting with interviews, this multimedia portrait series reflects the way trans people are demonized and allows for the subjects to take back their power by embodying the monsters they are seen as. Each subject picks an animal/mythical creature/monster to be combined with and the interview guides the medium the portrait is created in. 

[habkorea]

(Online Display)Busan Biennale scrambles to put on a show in pandemic times

(Online Display)Busan Biennale scrambles to put on a show in pandemic times

When the second wave of COVID-19 infections hit South Korea in late August, forcing people to suspend many of their daily activities, the Busan Biennale‘s organizing committee went into crisis mode.

With the government announcing that strict social distancing rules would remain nationwide until Sept. 20, the Busan Biennale 2020 —…

[philmax2018]

Marnie Weber brings whimsical world to Busan

Artist Marnie Weber is known for her fantastical creations combining performance, video, sculpture, music, costume and collage and blurring the boundary between reality and fantasy. The Los Angeles-based artist unravels her latest tale “Song of the Sea Witch” at the Busan Biennale 2020, interpreting the city's costal nature with her fanciful imagination. from Korea Times News https://ift.tt/32pI5u9 via IFTTTDiigo Blogger Tumblr Evernote

[micaramel]

Artist: Yona Lee

Venue: Fine Arts, Sydney

Date: September 7 – October 17, 2020

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of the artist and Fine Arts, Sydney 

Press Release:

Fine Arts, Sydney is presenting a solo exhibition of new work by Yona Lee.

Yona Lee makes sculptural objects and installations that combine elaborate linear structures of stainless steel tubing with everyday objects of urban and domestic spaces.

For this exhibition at the gallery in Sydney, Yona Lee has made eight new individual wall-based sculptures composed of welded stainless steel in combination with elements including lamps, mops, bus handles, and table tops.

A new large-scale sculptural commission by Yona Lee will be exhibited for the 2020 Busan Biennale, Busan, South Korea, and her work is concurrently the subject of a solo exhibition at Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand. Yona Lee’s work has recently been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand; Te Tuhi, Auckland, New Zealand; and Westspace, Melbourne, Australia. Her work has recently featured in thematic exhibitions including the 15th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France (2019); and Changwon Sculpture Biennale, Seoul, South Korea (2016).

Yona Lee was born in 1986 in Busan, South Korea. She lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand, and completed MFA at Auckland University Elam School of Fine Arts in 2010. She undertook residencies at SeMA Nanji and Geumcheon Art Space, Seoul, South Korea in 2016, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand in 2020, and will be resident at Cité internationale des arts, Paris, France, in 2021.

This is Yona Lee’s first solo gallery exhibition with Fine Arts, Sydney.

Link: Yona Lee at Fine Arts, Sydney

The post Yona Lee at Fine Arts, Sydney first appeared on Contemporary Art Daily.

from Contemporary Art Daily https://bit.ly/2RdH5TC

[micaramel]

Artist: Dane Mitchell

Venue: Mossman, Wellington

Exhibition Title: Meanwhere

Date: May 15 – June 21, 2020

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Hopkinson Mossman, Wellington

Press Release:

Mossman is pleased to present Meanwhere, a solo exhibition of new work by Dane Mitchell. For Meanwhere, Mitchell presents five large-scale, high-gloss digital c-type photographic prints that cascade down the gallery walls to touch the floor. At first sight they appear like auric fields, impressions of geological stratification, or perhaps ghostly aberrations caught on film (all contexts the artist has used as material in earlier works), yet conversely the photographic medium is employed here for its empirical quality. The artist presents us with an actuality: a direct scan of the entry/exit points of several building doorways. Tilted and enlarged to a scale overbearing to the body, they appear like doorways or portals, or perhaps stand-ins for psychological thresholds. Countless invisible transitions happen across these ordinary doorway spaces in a day, typically without contemplation. At each physical threshold Mitchell has placed a flat-bed scanner across the doorway, the prints document this direct encounter. The specifics of these thresholds are not evident – what they might separate, or connect, and why they have been selected, whether incidental or symbolic. What is clear is the subtle divergence in each image, they are capturing not just the hardware of the doorway, but also invisible fragments of light, dust, and darkness, revealing concealed cosmologies. These doorways are repositories for incidental marks (gouges, scratches, scrapes, dents) borne from the impact of foot traffic across time. Doorways in our current context bare silent witness to the significant impact of imperceptible forces, particularly the risk of contamination between bodies. Mitchell’s longstanding interest in the viewing body as an unpredictable force – as a subjective element within a supposedly objective system – but also as a potential contaminant is evident here. While the prints are palpably mysterious objects, their textures uncertain (or defamiliarised), they are also a concrete reminder of how bodies have been temporarily de-mobilised. Thresholds (of experience, perception and knowability) have played an ongoing role in Mitchell’s work. He has often mined the potential for a sixth sense — that intuitive faculty that produces an awareness not rationally explicable — to make visible invisible systems constantly at play around us. Imperceivable thresholds and unseeable phenomena (lists of disappeared things transmitted on radio waves; microscopic dust particles cultured into painterly surfaces; scent sculptures infiltrating the body; physical traces of occult practices) are wrangled by Mitchell into tangible forms and presented as sculptural objects and images. Dane Mitchell (1976, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland) was Aotearoa New Zealand’s representative for the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. He has presented solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally in Germany, France, Brazil, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Australia, United States and New Zealand. He has participated in a number of biennales, including Biennale of Sydney 2016, Australia; Gwangju Biennale 2012, South Korea; Liverpool Biennial 2012, United Kingdom; Singapore Biennale 2011; Ljubljana Biennale 2011, Slovenia; Busan Biennale 2010, South Korea and the Tarrawara Biennial 2008, Australia. Recent exhibitions include: Iris, Iris, Iris, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland, and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2017/2018); OTIUM #3, Institut d’art Contemporain, Lyon (2018); Thailand Biennale, Karbi; Play Kortrijk, Belgium (2018); Communicating Vessels, Galeria Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków (2017); Occulture: The Dark Arts, City Gallery, Wellington (2017); Aeromancy, Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland (2017); Biennale of Sydney: The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed, Sydney (2016); Art and the City: Zuricher Kunst festival, Zurich (2016). Link: Dane Mitchell at Mossman

from Contemporary Art Daily https://bit.ly/2B2Lrba