Barcelona Art Guide- May

The top Gallery and Museum shows that you don't want to miss this Spring if you are visiting Barcelona.


I.
Exhibition title: World Press Photo 2017
Artist: various
Venue: CCCB Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
Dates: Until 5 June, 2017

View the entire collection of winning images from the 60th World Press Photo Contest. They were selected from 80,408 images made by 5,034 photographers from 126 different countries.

II.
Exhibition title: Zoòtrop
Artist: Frederic Amat
Venue: La Pedrera, Casa Mila
Dates: Until 16 July 2017


Frederic Amat (Barcelona, 1952) is one of the leading figures in the contemporary Catalan art scene. His open concept of art has led him to incorporate numerous languages into his artistic practice, including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation art, performance, book illustration, videos, theatre set design and interventions in architectural spaces. 

III.
Exhibition title: Building bridges, not walls
Artist: Manolo Millares,
Venue: Mayoral Gallery
Dates: until 25 July 2017


Concentrating on Manolo Millares’s notorious maturity period (1957-1972), this is the first major exhibition devoted to this artist in a private gallery and provides a unique opportunity to contemplate an ensemble of seventeen of Millares’s arpilleras(burlap paintings).

- by Angel Granero

London Art Guide - May

May will be all about Heathrow and City airports with the Berlin Gallery Weekend, Frieze New York and the Venice Biennale. Yet, and always, London keeps on amazing me with a wide range of exhibitions to run to! 

I.
Exhibition title:  You Are Looking at Something That Never Occurred
Artists: Lucas Blalock, Anne Collier, Sara Cwynar, Natalie Czech, Andreas Gursky, Elad Lassry, Richard Prince, Thomas Ruff, Cindy Sherman, Erin Shirref, Wolfgang Tillmans, Sara VanDerBeek, Jeff Wall, Christopher Williams
Venue: Zabludowicz Collection
Date: Until July 9, 2017

We think we know what photography is and feels like with our constant upload of Instagram images. Well, be ready to be challenged, explore new manual photographic processes and rethink what an image is and stands for. 

Lucas Blalock

II.
Exhibition title: Ornamental Hysteria
Artist: Ashley Bickerton
Venue: Newport Street Gallery
Dates: Until 20th August

The American artist Ashley Bickerton is getting a major show at Damien Hirst's Newport Street Gallery. It's completely mad and a little madness is always welcomed. Hello colours, joys and tragedies! 

Detail of Ashley Bickerton's Red Scooter (2009)

III.
Exhibition title: A World View
Artist: John Latham
Venue: Serpentine Gallery  
Dates: Until May 21, 2017

John Latham was radical and believed that artists had an important role to pay in society (him and his wife set up the Artists Placement Group which placed artists and art within government offices). It's meaningful and relevant, go and see it! 

Header Image: Installation shot of the current exhibition at the Zabludowicz Collection, You Are Looking at Something That Never Occurred.

- by Marine Tanguy

New York Art Guide - May

I. 
Exhibition title: Solo show
Artist: Felix Gonzalez Torres
Venue: David Zwirner Gallery
Dates: Until June 24, 2017

Felix Gonzalez-Torres is one of my favorite artist and definitely the most significant artist to emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 
In his minimalistic language and conceptual rigor, Gonzales was able to extract a rear observation about life, death and love through a constant dialogue between the private and public. Torres works gently travels through intimacy to politics, sweetness and tragedy, generosity and lost. 
Gonzalez-Torres died of AIDS-related illness in 1996, 5 years after his partner, Ross Laycock died of the same Disease. Many of his works reflect on the years living with HIV.
His billboard work, "Untitled", 1995 shows a photographic imagery of birds in the sky and is also displayed on multiple outdoor public billboards throughout New York City and can be found in the following locations: Hunts Point Ave. north of Longfellow Ave., The Bronx; Atlantic Ave. & Classon Ave, Brooklyn; 9th Ave. & 37th St., Manhattan; Broadway & W. 184th St., Manhattan; Woodside Ave. & 63rd St., Queens; and Richmond Terrace & York Ave., Staten Island.

Felix Gonzalez Torres Billabord work showing around new York these days

Exhibition title: Sound Talisman
Artist: Lisa Alvarado
Venue: Bridget Donahue Gallery
Dates: Until May 21, 2017

For her first solo show in new York, the Chicago based artist takes a form of a visual and sonic assemblage combining painting installation and a site specific sound piece.
Since 2010, Alvarado is creating paintings that function as moveable sets that follow her music band, ‘Natural Information Society’. For Alvarado and the Natural Information Society, the paintings serves as Mandalas to allow the audience to focus their gaze amidst waves of sound.  The exhibition includes an ambient soundtrack during regular hours as well as live music performances happening on May 8th and May 10th at 7:30pm.

Exhibition view of Lisa Alvarado at Bridget Donahue Gallery
 

Exhibition: Living Modern
Artist: Georgia O’keeffe
Venue: Brooklyn Museum 
Dates: Until July 23, 2017

Best Known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, O'Keeffe has been recognized as the "Mother of American modernism”. 
Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern is the first show focusing on the artist’s wardrobe to explore a wider understanding of her identity and artistic values. 
This retrospective takes a new look at how the renowned modernist artist proclaimed her progressive, independent lifestyle through a self-crafted public persona—and how they are expressed in all aspects of her life. 

Header Image: Torres Billabord - a constant dialogue between the private and public

- by Maya Yadid

Shanghai Interview: Not deep. Dope - Tianzhou Chen

Ever since I've moved to Shanghai, the question of whether I live in a cool place has been bothering me. Shanghai is messy and vibrant. its taxi drivers have the worst manners in the world, and you can still find yourself stuck in an elevator with a dude who smokes and offering you a cigi, exactly when you come back home from a sweaty workout.

But is it cool? I couldn't be confident about saying Yes. 
However, had you visited Shanghai during its last fashion week, you'd have gotten a pretty clear answer- the party has moved here and we’re all having rice for dinner. Offsite radical venues, underground parties, experimental presentations and bad-ass hip hop artists rule the scene. It wasn’t just about fashion. It was about energy.
 

I sat down to talk to Tianzhou Chen, one of the most promising Chinese artist of his generation exhibited in Palais the Tokyo in 2015 and since then building his reputation in the global art scene.  Chen’s work transforms symbolism of buddhism to cutting edge aesthetic of the rave scene, drugs, violent kitsch, provocative gang-creatures and other after school activities we all like. He recently launched Asian Dope Boys, an experimental platform that functions as a proximity of Chen’s artistic work, under which he curates dope parties, nihilist music events and a radical fashion collection.

We talked about beer, money, art collectors, fashion and the definition of cool. Was too fun, and too long. Here is a recap.

Pic: Hadas Zucker

Hadas Zucker (HZ): Let’s start with a cliche.- where does your fashion inspiration comee from? how does it relate to your artwork?

Tianzhou Chen (TC): Well, it doesn’t really. My inspiration for the fashion line is pretty random. it’s not meaningful, it's just clothes, I love it. I make a lot of complex meaningful art works, so for me it’s great just to make something fun. If anything, it might be influenced by music, which has a huge impact on my visual world, alternative, experimental hip hop is something I listen to on a daily basis.

HZ: This is why you launched A.D.B? 

TC: Yes, exactly. we named it after a Japanese girls band called A.K.B 48. we started doing parties, inviting D.J’s and performers we discovered and who had never been to china, for example most recently Karma She. I use my art career to support the A.D.B experimental adventures.

HZ: Your fashion presentation was in a dark, smoky basement hall, part of Labelhood an alternative fashion venue. A mix of maximalist aesthetics, super dense energy, experimental costumes and a gang of radical Chinese kids. How do you feel about this new youth culture ?

TC: I thinks it’s great, I feel that thanks to social media this new generation is much more connected to what happens globally. They have more knowledge on what happens out there, but the performance scene is still quite young here, and not very mature. For me it is at least, they still really sounds the same, missing something special and outstanding like Zebra Ktaz which we just brought to SFHW.

HZ: You use a lot of grotesque textures and prints, deconstructed shapes, hyper saturated colors, and symbolism both in fashion and you art work, what is your take on bad taste ?

TC: I’m not trying to be bad taste, it is just that i have a very different sense of what is wearable or fashionable. I don't like to think of the market, though fashion is commercial. I think in Europe it will be understood better and we are now working on distributing there.

Pic: Ka Xiaoxi

HZ: Do you care who wears you clothes?

TC: Yes. I want good looking people to wear my clothes. And cool ones.

HZ: Is it the same for your art work? do you care who buys it?

TC: Yhe, of course, i want cool collectors to have my work, but it could also sometimes end up in a crappy hotel, in that case, haha you just don’t tell anyone about it.

HZ: what is your daily routine?

TC: I’m not one of this hard working artists, I’m not working every day. I drink everyday. Mostly beer.

Header Image: Pic- Ka Xiaoxi

‏Shanghai Art Guide - May

‏I.
Exhibition Title: Reconfiguration
‏Artist: Patty chang
‏Venue: Bank Mabsociety gallery
‏Dates: May 13- July 2, 2017

Patty Chang's early video works have depicted a horrifying, yet comforting experiences of fear, passion and conflict. Eating an onion while french kissing your parents, or uniting with an eel crawling under her button down shirt, are just two of the provocative and poetic expressions of Freudian anxieties we all kinda share. This has made her one of the “most consistently exciting artist of her time”. The current show is a lecture/performance based on the artist’s travels along the South-North Water Diversion Project, from its beginning at Danjiankou to the final reservoir in the outskirts of Beijing.

II.
‏Exhibition Title: Solo show
‏Artist: Julian Opie
‏Venue: Fosun foundation
‏Dates: Until June 10, 2017

Cause if there is a blockbuster in town you gotta go see it!

‏III.
Exhibition title: Where the end starts
‏Artist: Kwas
‏Venue: Yuz Museum
‏Dates: Until August 13, 2017

Kwas does everything that is hype from graffiti to illustration to Popart to f*ckng collaborating with Uniqlo. Can’t get more commercial than that, and Shanghai seems to be the perfect fit for it!
‏(oh don't forget to catch a DJ set at a speakeasy place after, and instagram all of it under "#hipsters don't die, they just get too predictable")