SOCIÉTÉ

Bunny Rogers (1990, Houston, Texas) en la exposición Ms Agony, aborda temas como la sensibilidad y la vulnerabilidad, la amistad y el concepto de comunidad (online y en la vida real, IRL) así como la alienación y la condición de outsider. Es la segunda parte de una primera iteración que tuvo lugar en Berlín a principios de año. La agonía se define como el período de transición entre la vida y la muerte, y se caracteriza por la subsistencia de algunas funciones vitales y desaparición de las intelectuales. Pero también implica el paso entre un estado y otro y, potencialmente, el nacimiento de algo nuevo.LINEBREAK

Thornton DialLINEBREAKWerke des afroamerikanischen Künstlers Thornton Dial (1928–2016) finden sich in bedeutenden Sammlungen der USA, wurden in Ausstellungen von New York bis New Orleans gefeiert. In Deutschland ist der Autodidakt nahezu unbekannt. Seine poetischen Assemblagen erinnern entfernt an Anselm Kiefer.LINEBREAKDoch Dials Themen waren weltlicher: männliche Vorherrschaft, Rassismus, Kriegstreiberei, Ökologie. In der Figur des Tigers fand er ein Sinnbild für den Kampf, sich nicht unterkriegen zu lassen, für die katzengleiche Fähigkeit, immer auf den Füßen zu landen. Die Galerie Société zeigt eine Retrospektive des Werks von Dial erstmals außerhalb Amerikas.LINEBREAK

Time travel is possible. All you need, at least according to Trisha Baga’s thirty-five-minute 3D video 1620, 2020, is an old onion and lemon, a few connecting wires, and a computer running on a chirruping dial-up modem. Such is the gizmo that, per the Filipino-American artist’s labyrinthine narrative here, transports a present-day experimental theater troupe, DNAUSA, back to the beginning of colonial American history—the landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620—in order to perform gene therapy on the country itself, opaquely repairing flaws in the “narrative DNA” encoded in the rock. The performers accomplish this by reenacting the vaunted landing and, from there, clad in Pilgrim garb and accompanied by a pantomime horse, moving forward in time to various moments (1774, 1834, and 1921 among them) when the rock is moved, broken, and, symbolically, causes the foundational American narrative to increasingly fragment and crumble.LINEBREAK

Unter dem Titel „RADICAL GAMING: Immersion Simulation Subversion“ zeigt das HeK-Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel vom 1. September bis zum 14. November 2021 eine Gruppenausstellung mit partizipativer Kunst, die sich „mit den Strukturen, Technologien und Ästhetiken einer globalen Spieleindustrie“ beschäftigt. Diese Kunst „nutzt moderne Technologien der Spieleprogrammierung, um Virtual- und Augmented-Reality-Erfahrungen, immersive Umgebungen, interaktive Geschichten und Multimedia-Installationen zu erschaffen“. Bei den Beispielen in dieser Ausstellung ist das Publikum eingeladen, „sich aktiv an der Verwirklichung des Werkes zu beteiligen, im Gegensatz zu anderen «Game Art» Arbeiten“, bei denen nur passives Zuschauen möglich ist. Kurator ist Boris Magrini. Mit künstlerischen Beiträgen von Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Leo Castañeda, Sara Culmann, Debbie Ding, Keiken, Lawrence Lek, Mikhail Maksimov, Cassie McQuater, Sahej Rahal, Nicole Ruggiero, Jacolby Satterwhite, Eddo Stern, Theo Triantafyllidis, Miyö Van Stenis, Lu Yang. https://www.hek.chLINEBREAK

For some time now, tense conditions have shaped our everyday lives. Whether its curfews, violence or the search for one’s own identity, we are constantly in the process of readjusting and getting our bearings. Artists respond to the vulnerability and confusion that lies in control, racial discrimination and exclusion. The uncertainty and instability that we experience every day is represented in their work.LINEBREAKThe new collection presentation will show contemporary artworks from Scharpff-Striebich’s private art collection confronted with twentieth-century works from the Staatsgalerie’s own collection. These works highlight the complex and contradictory nature of our society.LINEBREAK

Under the title Hope, Trisha Baga illuminated the Fridericianum on November 3, 2020, with a film produced especially for the occasion. In the following short interview, the artist, born in Venice, Florida, in 1985 and now living in New York, talks about her project Hope and gives an insight into her working process. The work is a reflection on the state of our world and, more specifically, a commentary on the U.S. presidential election that took place on the same date.LINEBREAK

New York-based artist Trisha Baga is known for her innovative video, performance, and ceramic work that gleans the margins of the digital and the logic of online browsing to create dreamy, layered narratives in physical space. Her third solo at Société will be her first exhibition focused primarily on painting. The paintings will be presented in conversation with her new film 1620, which provided the inspiration and imagery for several works in the exhibition. According to Baga, the film is “an impressionistic science fiction, which reframes Plymouth Rock as a source of narrative stem cells in the hands of genetic scientists studying deep-seated flaws in The American Drama.” Read more onLINEBREAK

334 SPRING 2021, LETTER FROM THE CITY 2, February 2021 by Kaspar Müller

It is 3:17 am as I start writing this column. I went to bed early, maybe a little after 10 pm. We were all in bed early: our daughter, with a flashlight-like projector (a late Christmas present), beamed images from space onto the ceiling and told us stories. Her younger brother fell asleep at some point, and so did my wife, and finally all of us. The delayed present, which also included a silky, flowered pajama, arrived as a big, wrapped package directly from Harrods London courtesy of her godfather. We didn’t see him in person, just like I haven’t seen my parents for Christmas, or any other relatives apart from our own small family. The generous gesture of an unnecessarily expensive and fancy package, perhaps an act of kind resistance, had a somewhat tragic note: the nicely wrapped gift in its trademark corporate green appeared like a ghostly ruin of a different time. Us, we didn’t even get around to sending him a present. Besides, it’s unclear where he is currently. Supposedly he’s in a mountain hut on the Swiss-Italian border. Read more onLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAK

There is maybe no one better and more hilarious than Jeanette Mundt at subjecting the image world to the logic of the painted support. At Société, her gymnasts twist into impossible motion, highlighting the temporally static character of paintings, unable to move in time (thank the lord!). On surfaces of red, white, and blue, which cite Kenneth Noland’s chevrons and targets, is a kind of parody that can only be called American. Because Mundt’s range is as technically wide as her subject matter. Four other works take leave from the stars and stripes palette, populated by dark figures, posed like those of Adam and Eve cast out of Eden, who trudge through yellows, oranges, and blacks, smeared like one of Richter’s abstract squeegee paintings. All of this serves as a very good way to hide Mundt’s technical prowess, which like Oehlen down the road, is harder to pull off than one thinks.LINEBREAK

Artworks by Petra Cortright, Jeremy Couillard and Keiken will be minted on Foundation on 10  May  2021, and open to bidding on 12  May  2021; joining a roster of leading artists previously commissioned by Daata including Eva Papamargariti, Takeshi Murata, Rachel Rossin, Jon Rafman, Yung Jake, and FlucT who have all sold works through Foundation.LINEBREAKDaata fully supports Ethereum’s move to Proof of Stake and in the meantime will offset double the estimated carbon emitted by our own blockchain activity via Offsetra.LINEBREAKThe three artworks have been co-commissioned by Daata and Art Fair Philippines, and will be streamed on daata.art from May 5, 2021.LINEBREAK

Kein Wunder, dass Bunny Rogers zum Shooting-Star der zeitgenössischen Kunst wurde: Die junge Amerikanerin beherrscht das Spiel der Identitäten. Und sie weiß, wie verletzlich und verlassen sich die Jugend fühlt. Read in German on museumsjournal.de.LINEBREAK

Wenn der Hamburger Bahnhof ab morgen wieder offen haben sollte, dann wartet dort eine Ausstellung auf Sie, die Ende Oktober nicht mal eine Woche lang fürs Publikum geöffnet war, bevor der Lockdown das Museum für Gegenwart schloss: “Bunny Rogers. Self Portrait as clone of Jeanne D’ Arc.” Listen in German on Radio Eins.LINEBREAK

L’artista svizzero espone nella galleria barese Spazio Nico: due giorni di apertura, prima del nuovo lockdown, e poi tutto trasferito in rete. Read more in Italian on Corriere del Mezzogiorno.LINEBREAK

The Shanghai-based artist conjures physical presence through a screenLINEBREAKFrom 24 March to 14 April 2021, ArtReview is screening three of Lu Yang’s moving-image works: Delusional Mandala (2015), Delusional Crime and Punishment (2016) and their most recently realised piece Delusional World (2020).LINEBREAK

It is 3:17 am as I start writing this column. I went to bed early, maybe a little after 10 pm. We were all in bed early: our daughter, with a flashlight-like projector (a late Christmas present), beamed images from space onto the ceiling and told us stories. Read more in Flash Art.LINEBREAK

Inspired equally by centuries-old Chinese culture and forward-reaching technologies, artist Lu Yang’s practice seeks common ground between vastly different ways of seeing the world. Read more on artnet news.LINEBREAK

The Berlin-based gallery Société now represents Darren Bader in collaboration with Andrew Kreps Gallery, Sadie Coles HQ, Galleria Franco Noero, and Blum & Poe. Read more on ART news.LINEBREAK

In the latest exhibition ‘MS AGONY’ by American artist Bunny Rogers, currently on view by appointment at Société Berlin, Rogers grapples with identity and addresses themes of sensitivity and vulnerability, friendship and community (online and IRL) and alienation and outsidership: all through the lens of her childhood. Read more on Berlin Art Link.LINEBREAK