English
Français
Deutsch
Italiano
Español
Illuminazioni: the 54th Venice Biennale
With all the contradictions of contemporary art, a biennial involves nothing more than a business opportunity for networking where galleries compete for being the agents of any artist. Let it be said without hesitation: contemporary art is doing nothing for helping the current situation that pervades culture. May the word be read in capital letters: CRISIS. Although a significant part of the contemporary world wants to march in favor of gender equality, the fall of walls, the marginalized population and the problems between bordering countries, which are often reflected on numerous installations, videos and performances, not much happens. And it is better not to mention the residency programs that cost a fortune. What they generate are artists who enter to a cultural market, sometimes without being aware of it. Thus, they do not have a significant impact on the society. But before crisis pervaded us and before art came to an end, the Venice Biennale started around 1895, as an exhibition of international Avant-Garde, characterized by its interdisciplinary nature. For more than 100 years, it has been one of the most renowned cultural institutions in the world, which is constantly promoting new artistic trends, positioning important contemporary artists and organizing different events. Among the many events that The Venice Biennale host are the Film Festival, the Architecture Biennale, the Contemporary Music Biennale, the Theater Biennale and the Dance Biennale, comprising all the artistic fields. This year, the Venice Biennale is accessible to the public from the 4th of June until the 27th of November at the Gardini and Arsenale pavilions, as in other locations around Venice. This year, the...
The Alcazaba in Málaga
Nietzsche said in his characteristic and incomparable emphatically style, while using all the power of hyperbole , as it corresponds to an artist, to give dramatic force to the idea that for his friends and loved ones he did not want happiness and a life free of hazards risks, pain and suffering, but quite the contrary. Because he wanted that his loved one to live to the last drop of their life, so that they would get drunk with its most delicate and inspiring perfumes, and this was only possible by visiting the dangerous side of things. Only the long-suffering are able to experience and recognize true pleasure, only he who knows what disease is, is able to understand the greatness of becoming and its infinite game of opposites, that is, to appreciate life on what really mattes, the victory of its ineffable entire musical and bountiful abundance. He often illustrated this concept with the example of his walks in the mountains, Once while he was “six thousand feet above men and time,”he had a revelation of the eternal return generated by Zarathustra and much of the most exciting, seductive and powerful inspiration of his awesome work appeared there. Mountain walks are tough and tiresome, the body is exposed to dangers and hardships, the weather is not always our ally, and the rigors of climbing can often lead to despair, but only by putting this aside we are able to reach the summit and then from the top, it gives us a wonderful and clear view that we strongly, deeply and, delicately value, precisely because to get there we...
The abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the oldest church in Paris
The Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés is considered the oldest church in Paris. Located in District 6,a graceful neighborhood full of cafes, art galleries and luxury shops. It was a very intellectually and prestigious area at the time of existentialism when cafes were frequented by intellectuals such as Sartre and Beauvoir. Located on the left bank of the seine river at the outskirts of early medieval Paris, a location prone to flooding at the time of its construction, the Abbey had to be placed in the middle of the prairie or “pres” in French, hence the name. Founded in the sixth century by the Merovingian king Childebert I. In 542, at war with Spain, the king withdrew the siege on the city of Zaragoza when he learned that its inhabitants had seeked protection from San Vicente Martir. In gratitude, the bishop of Zaragoza gave the Merovingian saint´s robe, and Childibert on his return to Paris built the Santa Cruz Cathedral in order to house the relic and lay conserve kings tombs. After the Benedictine monastery was erected It is believed that that was when it took its current name from the bishop of Paris, Monsignor Germain. In the ninth century, the church was looted and burned to the ground at least four times by the Normans, leaving only the columns in the clerestory. It was rebuilt and enlarged in the 12th century by Pope Alexander III. The Romanesque bell tower of the entrance was built as a solid buttress to support the weight of large bells, and is one of the oldest that are still standing in France. The French...
Dcode Festival in Madrid
And after a gap of some years, the DCode Festival will be held again on at the University Complutense of Madrid. With an innovative approach, this appointment is waiting for you on the 24th and 25th of June to enjoy music and art. If you like and follow this groove, you should attend the avant-garde music DCode Festival to be held in Madrid on 24th and 25th of June. This year DCode returns with new vigor after several years of absence, thanks to an agreement with the Complutense University of Madrid signed with promoter Live Nation to deliver this proposal that is a tradition among lovers of art and music. The proposal that inspires DCode is part of a new philosophy: to create a mixed space where music and art are to meet new and renowned artists to display and share their artworks. Concerts will be held at the Cantarranas Sports Complex behind the School of Information Sciences at the Complutense University. The exhibition Art Barte will be open from June 10 at the Centro de Arte C. Art Barte is an innovative exhibition that integrates the audience with the artists through the exchange. The artworks in the exhibition are not sold for money, but they are exchanged by means of barter, so attendees must have previously thought well what to offer for an artwork. Bids will be made at the end of the exhibition and the artists may accept or reject offers of goods and services the viewers may make. An innovation is that viewers don’t know the names of the creators of the artworks until the end...
Encyclopedia of Istanbul
Few places in the world have given us so much literature throughout time as Istanbul, the ancient capital of Byzantium. Of all the books that inspired the city, perhaps the most unique is the huge project of writing an encyclopedia of Istanbul, the first encyclopedia of the world on a city, conceived in 1944 by the Turkish writer and city lover Re?at Koçu Ekrem (1905-1975). It was a massive project which combined in an unforgettable way literature and history through a seductive mix of strange stories, interesting facts, accurate information and almanac material, creating a wonderful tapestry in which he emphasized the image of a city that invited you into a journey of fantasy and longing. Koçu spent his entire childhood witnessing the gradual disintegration of the Ottoman state and the condemnation of Turkey to poverty of which it would take decades to recover from. This painful decline of the city probably conditioned the melancholy and bitter tone of his writings although if he thought that Istanbul was the only thing that consoled him from feeling defeated in life. In the encyclopedia, there is a sensual tour of homoeroticism where visual recreation of the beauty of the bodies of the young boys that roam the streets is present. Memorable episodes were collected as the feat of the balancing acrobat that due to the the celebrations of the circumcision of Prince Mustafa in the eighteenth century crossed the Golden Horn on a wire stretched between the masts of two ships. Or stories like the creation of a cemetery of executioners in the meadows of Karyagdi as they were not being...
Pierre Huyghe at CaixaForum – Barcelona
CaixaForum – Barcelona has a special program for summer: From the 17th of June until the 14th of August, the exhibition Streamside Day Follies (2003) by Pierre Huyghe. Huyghe is one of the most important French video and film artists. His works are inspired in enigmas that lead the spectators to imagine certain evocative images, from which he approaches to the cinema structure. In his work Streamside Day Follies (2003), Huyghe discusses the relationship between cinema and reality, transforming fiction into a potential reality that is the consequence of a visual architecture invented by the artist. His purpose is to explore the emergence and construction of different forms of tradition and its relation with some ritualistic social expressions in the contemporary culture. This work shows images of the construction process of Streamside Knolls, an American housing complex, as well as the party that took place during its inauguration. It’s a metaphor or a reality of the modern methods for the construction of a community, including all rituals that are involved in the process. Pierre Huyghe was born in 1962 in Paris, France. He studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The development of his interesting career has led him to exhibit his works at the best museums in the world. His favorite topics are madness, leisure, adventure and the celebration of creation. One of his artistic obsessions is the cinema as a generator and transformer element of memory. Perhaps his most interesting work in the field of cinema is the video based on the bank robbery that appears in the movie Dog Day Afternoon (1975)...Mitte barcelona
MITTE is an artistic space, a café, a pop-up window, all this forms MITTE-Barcelona, a lively space open to curious people.
İhsan Kemal Karaburçak at the Pera Museum in Istanbul
Until the 3rd of June, the Istanbul Pera Museum is exhibiting the highly original work of Turkish painter ?hsan Kemal Karaburçak. The show, which is called Retrospectives of Isham, brings together the best of the artist´s work from between 1968-1970. The exhibition, commissioned by historian and advisor to the Istanbul Pera Museum, Semra Germaner, is a compilation of pieces from private and public collections, presenting a complete body of Karaburçak´s work, which was supressed for years due to its alienation from the art elites and cultures of Turkey. In association with the retrospective, the Museum has edited a brilliant catalogue, written by Akoyunlu Ersoz Begur and Primavera Tania, which has an interesting cardboard cover design, and colour illustrations. Texts are in English and Turkish. ?hsan Kemal Karaburçak was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1898. His entrance into painting came about in 1930, when he enrolled in the Paris École Universelle. His work in the telegraph and post services enabled him to organise his life around painting, converting a small room in his home into a studio. Throughout his development in painting, Karaburçak remained distant from the key art movements of the 20th century – despite the fact that his work demonstrated surrealist and naif styles, and was often evocative of Picasso, with the artist himself as having been inspired by Cezanne, and the precision of Matisse. Karaburçak made portraits in oil on canvas, using strong, defined brushstrokes – such as in Otoporte (1944). Imagery included morse code and geometric elements, whilst his more ´naif´ work of landscapes and small city scenes were more simplistic, and colourful. His independence and...
Lygia Pape at the Reina Sofia in Madrid
Until the 12th of September, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid is showing the work of Brazilian artist Lygia Pape. The exhibition was organised in association with the Lygia Pape Project, and was commissioned by Manuel Borja Villel and Teresa Velásquez. The show comprises 250 works, which include paintings, reliefs, xylographs, cinematography, poems, texts, and performance pieces as shown though photography. One of the most interesting, and exclusive parts of the collection is the series of experimental cinema that Pape made. Lygia Pape was born in New Friburg, Brazil, in 1927. Her name figures amongst the greats of Brazilian art, standing out for her mastery with the plastic arts, and an aesthetic devotion to devising new languages with which to transform the normal order. She was a key participant in the formation in the Frente art movement, led by Iván Serpa, which went public around 1954, with an exhibition in Rio de Janeiro. The group was formed by alumni of Serpa, and various artists which included Lygia Pape and Ligia Clark, who debated the influences of abstraction and the idea of concrete art in opposition to modern, figurative and nationalistic painting. In 1959, Pape separated from the Frente group, and joined the group which would revise concretism, and found “neo-contretism,” developing a new art manifesto which would breathe new life into contemporary Brazilian art. Neo-concretism was born as an opponent to the rationalism of concretism, and denied the validity of scientific attitudes in art, approaching instead the problem of expression and seeking to incorporate new dimensions, and languages for a non-figurative art which engaged the spectator in order to...
