camminando + exhibition | January 25

The first snow of 2013 in a extremely quite and deserted Central Park

Wolfang Laib's installation made of Pollen from Hazelnut, MoMA, second floor atrium

Images from "9+1 Ways of Being Political" at MoMa

"Specific Collisions" at Marianne Boesky Gallery

Total walk lenght: 8km, 435 calories burned

publications | On the Road, Down by the Water

 

Axes Mundi is a twenty-first century travel series of interactive/multimedia ebooks, guiding one to discover the poetry of places. Integrating geospatial data with artwork and journals, Axes Mundi amalgamates information with photography and artworks, reminding us that, travel, like life, “is a journey, not a destination."

On the Road, Down by the Water, the first guide of Axes Mundi, narrates a 2400 kilometer loop starting in Manhattan and crossing the border to Canada. It is inspired by the bodies of water encountered and how nature and manmade places are shaped by water, presenting views of American life from the road. It brings out the beauty in a part of our continent which saw its heyday many decades (or even centuries) ago; the old industrial northeast, from the steel mills of Pennsylvania to the great Erie Canal in New York to the Canadian towns and infrastructure of the early eighteen hundreds.

Interactive maps with diagrams, video and photo sequences, recreate the itinerary. Discover mainstream and lesser known destinations during this water inspired journey: Bethlehem, Fallingwater, Ohiopyle, Pittsburgh, Lake Erie, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Lake Ontario, Thousand Islands, Saint Lawrence River, Rideau Canal and Erie Canal.

 

To purchase or download a free chapter scan or click  on 

Vernissages | 'Dieter Roth. Björn Roth' at Hauser & Wirth

Martin Creed lobby/staircase installation

Yesterday 'Dieter Roth. Bjorn Roth' opened as the inaugural exhibition of Hauser & Wirth, 18th Street.  The site specific installation recreates several works from the oeuvre of the late artist Dieter Roth (1930-1998), constructed by the artist's son Björn Roth, assisted by his sons Oddur and Einar, seamlessly exhibition the work of three generations. Roth's work was surely involving many media, materials, scales and processes —including painting, sculpture, video, performance and even chocolate and sugar.

Sugar and chocolate

Exhibitions | A January Afternoon at the MoMA

In a January dark evening looking at art can always bring comfort. This visit to the MoMA was to me particularly inspiring; often looking at artwork already seen many other times seam to bring new meaning and discoveries. Or perhaps it was only mood...

Eiko & Koma installation greetings the museum visitors in the lobby

The iconic Andy Warhol "Campbell Soup"

Edvard Munch: The Scream

The Scream (Der Schrei der Natur, The Scream of Nature) is the 1895 The pastel-on-board version among the most celebrated and recognized images in art history, will be on view at The Museum of Modern Art for a period of six months. Of the four versions of The Scream made by Munch between 1893 and 1910, this p from 1895 is the only one remaining in private hands; the three other versions are in the collections of museums in Norway. The 1895 pastel-on-board version of the painting is lent by Norwegian businessman and collector Petter Olsen; it was purchased at Sotheby's for a record US$120 million at an auction in May 2012.

     And finally, in the adjacent room I was able to look at some of my favorite paintings from the late nineteenth - early twentieth century MoMA collection, spanning from geometric abstraction to surrealism and metaphysical art.

"The Starry Night"  by  Vincent Van Gogh (1889)

Henry Matisse, "Dance (I)", 1909

Giorgio de Chirico "The Seer", 1914-15

Giorgio de Chirico, "Gare Montparnasse (The Melancholy of Departure)", 1914

 

 

René Magritte  "The False Mirror", 1928

Tokyo: 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde  is another remarkable exhibition combining different media and scales, from painting and sculpture to lighting, architectural and urban design.

But definitely the most inspiring exhibition for me was Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925. The title is quite descriptive: collaborations between artists, working in many different media and theme, in the early nineteenth century; I found quite extraordinary how the exhibition was highlighting the intersections and networked discourses emerging from many different creative approaches —explained graphically by he diagram in the MoMA exhibition website This exhibition links many works in abstraction to include many different media: paintings, drawings, books, sculptures, films, photographs, sound poems, atonal music, and expressionist dance..

Martin Luther King Day, January 21

From the speech Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on August 28, 1963, ar the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom:

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

vernissages | Chelsea, January 17

 Song Dong "Doing Nothing" at Pace Gallery

"How to Tell the Future from the Past" at Haunch of Venison

 "Game II" at Leila Heller Gallery

Don Bachardy at Cheim & Read

"How to Tell the Future from the Past" at Haunch of Venison