November’s Picks
Kasmin Gallery: a rooftop sculpture garden
Chelsea District, New York, United States
New York’s Kasmin Gallery inaugurated in October its fourth exhibition space. Located in the city’s Chelsea neighborhood (509 West 27th Street) and designed by Markus Dochantschi from StudioMDA, it combines a traditional exhibition space and a rooftop sculpture garden visible from the High Line. This unique rooftop garden will host three exhibitions per year and currently features bronze sculptures by Joel Shapiro. The minimalist American artist’s work on sculpture wavers between figuration and abstraction thanks to the use of simple geometric shapes. Time seems to have stopped, his sculptures suspended in their dynamics, off-balanced and yet soaring to the skies.
Tony Cragg : outdoor Sculptures
Ehrenhof, Düsseldorf, Germany
Through February 10th, 2019
Since September, several monumental works by British artist Tony Cragg have been installed in the courtyard of the Ehrenhof, an architectural ensemble of Düsseldorf museums. Since 1978, Cragg has been living and working in Wuppertal, Germany, where he opened his foundation, a huge contemporary sculpture park: Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden.
The sculptures presented in the Ehrenhof courtyard display his research on compression and expansion: pillars that combine swirling shapes and conglomeration of materials. These abstract shapes are sometimes evocative of human figures or profiles, while the accumulation of layers look like natural rock formations (ventifacts, stalagmites) or vegetal elements. Tony Cragg’s work is articulated around the exploration of materials, to which his sculptures often give movement.
Alexander Calder: Radical inventor
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada
Through February 24th, 2019
Alexander Calder’s second largest stabile, Trois disques (1967), symbol of humanity’s technical progress and work, is currently on view in Montreal. “Alexander Calder: radical inventor” is the first large retrospective to be dedicated to the artist in Canada. The exhibition curated by Montreal Museum of Fine Arts will then travel to other institutions (including the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia). With some 150 works and documents, including some that have rarely or never been displayed and others specifically renovated for the exhibition, “Alexander Calder: radical inventor” illustrates the diversity of Calder’s visual work – paintings, wire sculptures, stabiles, mobiles, jewelry, etc. – and the exceptionally innovative character of his works and artistic approach. Every day, at 2pm, a museum technician sets Calder’s mobiles in motion.
Glass Tea House Mondrian, Hiroshi Sugimito et Tomoyuki Sakakida
Château de Versailles, France
Through February 17th, 2019
Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto (born 1948) is the 2018 guest of the Château de Versailles for its 11th contemporary art exhibition. Hiroshi Sugimoto is a multidisciplinary artist, and in several spaces of the Domaine du Trianon, he displays installations that create a dialogue between past and present.
At the center of the Bassin du Plat Fond, Sugimoto reinstalls his Glass Tea House Mondrian, his very first architectural work, previously displayed at the Venice Architecture Biennale. This glass cube, inspired by 16th century Japanese tea master Sen no Rikyû’s principles, is entirely transparent. Here Sugimoto, whose works are often articulated around duality, plays with interior and exterior, mystery and spectacle, lightness and gravity, water and earth, tradition and modernity. Elevated to the status of art, the Japanese tea ceremony takes place in front of a public observing the ceremony through glass walls, from outside, while only two people are allowed inside with the tea master.
Thaïland Biennale
Krabi Province, Thailand
Through February 28th, 2019
The very first contemporary art biennale to be held in Thailand will be inaugurated at the beginning of November 2018. For this first edition, the organizers have chosen the Krabi Province, on the south-western coast of the country, and have favored outdoor works for this gorgeous landscape: long beaches, luxurious islands, cliffs and mountains. Curator of the biennale Jiang Jiehong creates an outdoor itinerary called “Edge of the Wonderland”, referring to western literary culture as well as to Asian myths. On the beach, artist Wang Wei installed a predominantly blue mosaic that represents the Ocean water and waves; No Sunrise No Sunset, born of a collaboration between Kamin Lertchaiprasert and architect Suriya Umpansiriratana, is a construction perched on the edge of a cliff and which surface reflects, in the surrounding landscape, a sculpture representing Yai Sa, a legendary figure who awaits the return of her loved one; Giuseppe Penone offers an installation of stone and trees (Alberi e Pietre), in the line of his first experimentations of 1969.
