Atelier Nord is pleased to present Pia MYrvoLD’s exhibition WANDS at Atelier Nord ANX. The exhibition encompasses a series of five smart sculptures (known as WANDS), accompanied by multiple projections of the video STRIPEFIELDS which encompasses pulsating, vertical stripes of colour.

Each WAND is made of a large number of custom-made parts in a diverse mix of textures and materials, enabling each sculpture to maintain a unique mode of expression and responses to the interactions of visitors. Sensors monitor proximity, the density of surrounding mass and touch. When visitors encounter the WANDS they can affect these distinct and mysterious objects through movement and touch – coordinating between man and machine.

Arthur C. Clarke’s third law famously states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. With the WANDS project MyrvoLD aims to capture and revive the classical fairy tale and mythical ethos of the magic wand through the use of interactive media and robotics, accessing the potential of the unexplained or mystical – popular themes in contemporary literature, games and virtual worlds. Media allowing access to modes of experience that were previously confined to fantasy.

Pia MYrvoLD -

Der Freiburger Künstler, international als Pionier und Größe elektronischer Kunst bekannt und gerade mit dem Kubus-Kunstpreis des Kunstmuseums Stuttgart ausgezeichnet, ist zur Eröffnung anwesend.
Zur Einführung spricht Dr. Claudia Gross (Kunsthistorikerin Kaiserslautern).

Wer erinnert sich nicht gerne an die Begegnung mit Kunstwerken von Peter Vogel, an die überraschenden und ebenso beglückenden Klang- und Lichtreaktionen auf das eigene Verhalten? Unvergesslich, wie fasziniert man versucht, das rätselhafte Spiel zwischen Betrachter und Kunstobjekt zu ergründen!
Mit ihrem klaren Formaufbau, dem Schaltpläne zugrunde liegen und mit all ihren elektronischen Bauteilen entfalten seine filigranen Skulpturen eine ganz eigene besondere Schönheit.

Peter Vogel -

The solo exhibition combines works from the 1990s with new production the exhibition plays with the way groups develop their ideas in cohesion and tension with the individual. It addresses time in relation to production and the development of creative communities.
On this occasion the new monograph, 'From nineteen ninety A to nineteen ninety D', published by JRP|Ringier, will be launched.

The title of the exhibition refers to Ludwik Fleck and Mary Douglas’s investigation of the way a thought style links group members via their shared ideas, how they communicate and the methods they employ. These ideas affect the art’s subjectivity and are reflected in a series of new text works.
A central work in the exhibition, 'A broadcast from 1887 on the Subject of our Time', was originally produced in 1996 and involved a "broadcast" directed towards a utopian community. The content of the broadcast is taken from Edward Bellamy’s book Looking Backward (1887) - which includes an account of a radio broadcast before the invention of the medium.
Also included in the exhibition is a deployment of the work, 'When Do We Need More Tractors? Five Plans, 1999' - a work where certain specific actions are outlined by the artist for others to fulfill. This work is combined with a new series of Discussion Platforms and a series of short films produced by the artist over the last two years.

Liam Gillick -

Maureen Paley is pleased to present the 2nd solo exhibition at the gallery by New York-based artist Thomas Eggerer. 

Thomas Eggerer was born in 1963 and studied at the Art Academy in Munich, Germany before moving to the US in the mid 90s where he eventually became a member of the artist collective Group Material. By the late 1990s his focus returned to painting and he has been exhibiting this work extensively over the last fifteen years. 

Using a pictorial language between abstraction and figuration, Thomas Eggerer’s paintings are inhabited by anonymous figures that are absorbed in degrees of action or exchange. They are observed from an elevated perspective and choreographed into arenas of colour. Forms of currency such as money, cigarettes or cans of beer are held and gestured towards, suggesting modes of social transaction with intent.

The work 'evokes a contemporary condition of internal splitting or dis-location' as discussed by David Joselit in his essay Time Zones published in Artforum in January 2014. He identifies Eggerer's application of paint using processes of sketching, stuttering, dripping and staining that make his subjects appear at once dismantled and stitched together. 

Thomas Eggerer’s work has been selected by Ralph Rugoff to be included in the 13th Biennale de Lyon, 'La Vie Moderne', that opens this September 10.
He will participate at 'Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age', Museum Brandhorst, Munich, November 11, 2015 - April 2016. 

Thomas Eggerer -

Since 1992, Shi Yong (*1963 Shanghai) works and practice - experimental, rational and pioneering - largely influenced the art scene.
Let All Potential Be Internally Resolved Using Beautiful Form will present for the first time a site-specific installation, developed around the notions of space, material and language. Through 'erasure' and 'language' he will bring narrative vocabulary into 'reality': The kind of reality that can only be presented as a form of Abstract art. According to the words of the artist: 'I like to decompose narration by embedding a certain vocabulary, within a narrative context, until it becomes another language.' Using this concept of 'erasure' he reveals a covered or deliberately artificial reality.

In his new show, Shi Yong wants to tell us something but doesn’t want us to know what it is. There is a line of text cutting through all the highly formalized forms in the exhibition space, but the artist has made it into a secret by striking it through with a thick metal line, rendering the words indecipherable. All that remains are the abstract and disjointed arms and legs of Chinese characters whose bodies have been obliterated. So, maybe Shi Yong doesn’t want to tell us something and only wants us to know that he has something to say – but not to us. But if not to us, the only witnesses to this artwork, then to whom? (Text by Colin Chinnery)

Yong SHI -

Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery will be hosting an exciting exhibition of ground-breaking work by American artist, Jeff Koons (* 1955), widely regarded as one of the most important, influential, popular, and controversial artists of our time. ARTIST ROOMS: Jeff Koons will be the first time Koons' work has been shown in East Anglia and is the only chance to see Koons' work in the UK in 2015.
This landmark exhibition will showcase Koons' remarkable career from 1981 – 2003 and will include significant examples from each of the series created during this period.

Throughout his career Koons has pioneered new and imaginative ways of using everyday objects in his work. By combining popular culture with art historical references, and deploying hand crafted techniques with industrial manufacturing, he has tested what an artist can be within a time of ubiquitous celebrity culture. Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp are obvious antecedents to Koons' artistic practice, but his frank and unashamedly iconic works are distinctively his own, tackling head on the vital questions of art.

The works on display are taken from ARTIST ROOMS, an inspirational collection of modern and contemporary art acquired for the nation by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland through the generosity of Anthony d'Offay with additional support from funders, including the Art Fund.

Jeff Koons -
Curator Harriet Loffler -

Keita Miyazaki, a young Japanese artist, works on creating sculpture series and installations which evoke a sense of the post-apocalyptic. He is an artist exploring the supposedly polar notions of orderliness and fantasy. His installations select materials for their capacity to suggest ambiguity: traditional like metal, light and fragile like paper, invisible like sound. These juxtaposing techniques avoid concrete description, instead suspending forms in a state of uncertainty.

For Miyazaki, the car is a symbol of global capitalism that represents the tenets of modernity such as industrial progress and mass production. Meanwhile, the scrap metals used in his works evoke a sense of destruction in the mind of the audience. To contrast with machinery, colourful flowers made of paper and felt bloom from the car parts. The botanical elements represent rebirth and the continuation of life. The auditory element also plays a crucial role in his works, as the collected sounds of city life come out from speakers concealed in the flowers and expand the territory of the post-apocalyptic world. Installing a variety of sculptures in the two galleries, Miyazaki explores the relationship between the audience and the sculptures by depicting a complexity of visual and audio illusions in a space where reality and fantasy converge and stimulate the audience’s imagination into envisaging a future world.

Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

Keita Miyazaki -

Der Pionier der digitalen Kunst zeigt Arbeiten aus den Jahren 2013 bis 2015.

Seit 1968 arbeitet er mit Computer und Programmiersprache und entwickelt Algorithmen, um seine Ideen zum Thema „Kubus“ visuell umzusetzen. Vom 3-dimensionalen Würfel bis zum vieldimensionalen Hyperwürfel erscheint dieser geometrische Körper bei Mohr in neu generierten Zeichensystemen.
Zu sehen in leuchtender Farbigkeit oder in Schwarz-Weiß, als Bildschirm-Arbeit, als Zeichnung oder als Malerei. Dabei bleiben Bezüge zur Musik dem Künstler (in jungen Jahren auch Jazz-Saxophonist) stets wichtig und ihre Strukturen erkennbar inspirierend.

Zur Eröffnung um 18 Uhr spricht Dr. Lida von Mengden (Kuratorin).

Manfred Mohr -

For over three decades Marilyn Minter has produced lush paintings, photographs, and videos that vividly manifest our culture’s complex and contradictory emotions around the feminine body and beauty. Her unique works—from the oversized paintings of makeup-laden lips and eyes to soiled designer shoes—bring into sharp, critical focus the power of desire. As an artist Minter has always made seductive visual statements that demand our attention while never shirking her equally crucial roles as provocateur, critic, and humorist.

Minter’s work is not merely a mirror of our culture, and this exhibition provides, for the first time, a critical evaluation of her practice as an astute interpretation of our deepest impulses, compulsions, and fantasies.

25 paintings made between 1976 and 2013, three video works, and several photographs that show Minter’s work in depth.

Co-produced with Museum of Contemporary Art Denver

Marilyn Minter -
Curator Elissa Auther - Bill Arning -

This series is titled after the Italian term Pentimento. This phrase, which is used to describe layerings, additions or changes to a work of art, allows multitudinous readings, different layers as one descends through White’s palimpsest of forms and colours. However pentimento can also be translated as repentance, which suggests atonement or remorse. In 2009, White immigrated to France after being awarded a studio at La Cite Internationale Des Arts. Is Pentimento, then, a form of atonement for having left his native country, a gift from afar to compensate for his departure from Australia?

Rather than Australian indigenous art, White is more accustomed to comparisons with the abstractionists of the New York School of the 1950s, Kurt Schwitters or Robert Rauchenberg’s Combines. The artist himself suggests the French affichistes artist Jacques Villegle who created magical collages via torn metro and street posters, creating poetical compositions that embraced elements of the alphabet, photography and design. It is not difficult to see Villegle’s influence on White.

Although distinctly painterly, one can see the suggestions of torn edges, of strange depths as though other narratives reside beneath the immediate surface. Like the hidden Egyptian hieroglyphs obscured by palimpsests of ‘new’ information, White creates a world of textures, his own secret histories which allow hours of contemplation, translation and interpretation.

Words by Ashley Crawford, Melbourne 2015

Anthony White -