Edward Gordon Craig/ " El espacio como espectáculo"

If you are in Madrid, this is the opportunity to be in this event, personally , is the type of venue you must see! La Casa Encendida hosts an exhibition on the stage designer and theatre director, Edward Gordon Craig. The exhibition "El espacio como espectáculo" ("Edward Gordon Craig. Space as Spectacle") offers an insight into the life and work of this actor, stage designer and theatre director from the early 20th century. Craig's conception of scenic space played a decisive influence on the modern vision of theatre and helped to shape the work of numerous contemporary directors and designers, such as Joseph Svoboda, Jannis Kokos and Gilles Aillaud.

Curated by Aurora Herrera Gómez, the exhibition takes a retrospective look at theatrical space based on Gordon Craig's work. As an actor and theatre director, he published several texts, including "The Art of the Theatre", a seminal text for the renewal of 20th-century theatre.He also created stage sets, designed costumes and invented the term "scenic space", diametrically opposed to the illusionist theatre of previous centuries in which the text was all important. Using cubes, stairs, segments and other staging devices, he developed new spatial solutions that enabled the stage to evolve towards a symbolist aesthetic.


The drawings, sketches and construction and chromatic designs on display in the exhibition all shed light on the scenographer's creative process.

"Edward Gordon Craig. El espacio como espectáculo" has been organised with the special collaboration of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and in association with other institutions such as the British Institute of Florence, the Gabinetto G. P. Vieusseux in Florence, the Österreichisches Theater Museum in Vienna, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and Paul Reeves and the UCLA Library Department of Special Collections in Los Angeles

The exhibition:

- explores "scenic space", a term coined by the author in direct contrast to traditional stage productions based first and foremost on the text. 

Craig's proposal derives from the confluence of the two phenomena: text and space.
The exhibition has several goals:
  *  To provide spectators with an insight into the little-known actor, stage designer and theatre director, Edward Gordon Craig.
* To unravel the varied and abundant influences that both nourished and impacted on his thinking.
* To analyse the theatre from the spatial perspective. Gordon Craig conceived stage design as a laboratory of architectures, folding screens, prisms, stairs and segments, achieving maximum expression through minimal, extremely simplified architecture.

The comprise of 200 works are in summary the native and chosen universe of Edward Gordon Craig, stairs - states of mind I, II, III and IV: a spatial laboratory, the window and the reticle, space and light, movement and Hamlet.

Edward Gordon Craig believed that these elements should form a unified whole to formalise the art of theatre. His work is open to interpretation and brimming with suggestions. Only through the incorporation of visual and sound elements can a written work become theatre in its fullest sense.

Don´t Miss it. 

Exhibition: "Edward Gordon Craig. El espacio como espectáculo"
Dates: November 20, 2009 - January 7, 2010
Place: Halls B, C, D and E
Open Monday to Sunday from 10 am to 21.45 pm
La Casa Encendida
Ronda de Valencia 2, Madrid
Free Admission

Edward Gordon Craig/ " El espacio como espectáculo"

NADA POST # 1 : 5 ROOMS BY JN

  5 ROOMS 

Jasper Niens

 
Doors give entrance to spaces and as such they have a practical function. They also form the connection between two spaces, between inside and outside (sometimes literally, sometimes inside in one space and outside in the other) and thus other meanings appear, in particular those of a ritual nature: going from one space to another can also be interpreted metaphorically as a rite de passage, as a transition between two stages of life, an element in the search for knowledge and finding fulfilment.

Jasper Niens' work 5 ROOMS, which was specially created for Nada Miami (previous works by his hand were for instance shown at the Haags Gemeentemuseum and on the Art Forum Berlin 09), provides the observer with the opportunity – using several doors – to enter four different spaces that are all connected to at least one other space. These spaces are all empty; there is nothing to be seen. Usually spaces have a function, but these spaces are consciously functionless and every passage, every rite de passage, seems to lead from nothing to nowhere. There is no obligatory or preferable walking route, nothing is fixed. When going from one space to another, we expect to find something over there, and at an art fair that could for instance be one or more works of art, but there is no response to that expectation. That conjures up the idea that the architecture itself could be the work of art and that is partly true. 

I would say that the ar chitecture, including the doors, creates the conditions for a work of art, and that the actual work is partly brought about due to the contributions of the visitor (as in fact every work of art only becomes a work of art when it is communicated, when there is an observer). Then the meaning shifts and the experience of the spaces and the behaviour of the visitor in the whole become the actual complete work. 

. To that extent, this work is also a statement about its own context and environment, with which it holds an ambivalent relationship. There where almost 'everything' is shown, 'nothing' – the emptiness – takes on a polemic meaning: he who wants to see everything cannot concentrate on anything properly and mainly experiences sensory confusion, mitigated by cognitive recognition and reassurance. 

In that sense, Niens' work is confrontational and that applies to his complete oeuvre, which addresses and questions the daily conventions of experiences and behaviour in ever changing ways, so that it becomes obvious that what we consider to be a given, is in effect not necessarily a matter of course.

NADA POST # 1 : 5 ROOMS BY JN

BARE | SKIN SAFE CONDUCTIVE INK

Bare is a conductive ink that is applied directly onto the skin allowing the creation of custom electronic circuitry.  This innovative material allows users to interact with electronics through gesture, movement, and touch. Bare can be applied with a brush, stamp or spray and is non-toxic and temporary. Application areas include dance, music, computer interfaces, communication and medical devices.Bare is an intuitive and non-invasive technology which will allow users to bridge the gap between electronics and the body.

BARE | SKIN SAFE CONDUCTIVE INK

Gimpe Fills | Hannah Maybank

" In my beginning is my end…….In my end is my beginning." T.S.Eliot East Coker Hannah Maybank is well-known for pushing the boundaries of painting as a two-dimensional discipline through her transformation of the flat painterly surface into one that ripples, splinters, overlaps, and protrudes. In this new body of work she combines the three-dimensionality of her sculptural surfaces with the conventions of historical landscape painting and illusory perspective. It has long been suggested that if a painting is created in such a way as to draw attention to its own method of construction, the visible method of creation undermines the success of illusory representation. The material presence of paint and its method of application creates tension between the painting's own reality and the representational scene depicted on its surface. Calling attention to their own material fragmentation, Maybank's works deny the possibility of painterly deception. However in new works such as The Invitation and Mirrored Oaks, she has turned to the illusory possibilities of painting. Pathways lead our eyes from the foreground of the painting, through clusters of trees towards a horizon. Embracing the conventions of the landscape genre, Maybank finds herself in a better position to rupture its pretence. Maybank's paintings have an otherworldly quality about them, employing recurring motifs such as trees and flowers.  The works begin as a series of fluid, almost calligraphic ink drawings. The tree silhouettes can be found repeated and resized throughout Maybank's canvases to create divisions and protrusions across the monochromatic field. This repetition de-familiarises consensual conceptions of the landscape while re-affirming her longstanding relationship with the cycles within life, echoing the processes of life, growth and decay as well as the life cycle of the painting. These paintings offer a position where certain information is sought and given slowly; through content, composition and process, paintings grow and die, are built up and then fall apart. They are an invitation into an illusion, an invitation into their making and an invitation into the cycle of things. Hannah Maybank was born in Stafford in 1974 and graduated from the Royal College of Art MA Painting course in 1999. This is Hannah Maybank's third solo exhibition at Gimpel Fils. This year her work has been exhibited at ArtSway's New Forest Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. In 2008, Maybank had a major solo show at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, and was artist in residence at ArtSway in the New Forest, Hampshire in the winter of 2007. Her residency at ArtSway culminated in a solo show there in spring 2008. She lives and works in London.

Gimpe Fills | Hannah Maybank

OUR FAVOURITE EDIBLE DESIGN PROJECT / POSH

OUR FAVOURITE EDIBLE DESIGN PROJECT / POSH

The Pigmy Deer Network & Las Bellas Artes Present : Honesty | Eyelevel Gallery Brooklyn, NY.

Factoría de Santos and Eyelevel BQE invites you to the opening reception of “HONESTY”, an exhibition featuring honest art by artists: Dan Funderburgh, Vena2, Ciler, Bang Buro, Dr. Morbito, Monica Ruzansky, Gabriela Alva Cal y Mayor, Tomas Tisch, Gabriela Artigas, Luisa Gloria Mota-Velasco and Tom Smith. The opening reception will take place on Friday December 11 from 6 to 9pm at Eyelevel Gallery, located at 364 Leonard Street Brooklyn, NY.
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Factoría de Santos y Eyelevel BQE te invitamos a la inauguración de la exhibición “Honesty” que se llevará acabo el Viernes 11 de Diciembre de 2009 en la galería Eyelevel BQE en Brooklyn, NY. La muestra expone piezas honestas de los artistas: Vena2, Ciler, Bang Buro, Dr. Morbito, Dan Funderburgh, Monica Rusanzky, Gabriela Alva Cal y Mayor, Tomas Tisch, Gabriela Artigas, Luisa Gloria Mota-Velasco y Tom Smith.


FACEBOOK EVENT

The Pigmy Deer Network & Las Bellas Artes Present : Honesty | Eyelevel Gallery Brooklyn, NY.

Downtown : Daily Life , Casual Moments / Monterrey, MX

Production - El Narval elnarval.org
Director / Editor - David Brossig
Camera - Samuel Catherine

Downtown : Daily Life , Casual Moments / Monterrey, MX

Spazialismo

Spazialismo, a group exhibition that examines Lucio Fontana's concepts in the 1940s and 50s about how we consider structures of space in the modern,yet natural, world.

The exhibit is also intended to serve as a vehicle for contemporary review of
Spatialist texts - such as "Manifesto Blanco" (1946), "Movinetto Spazialle"(1948), "Manifesto tecnico
della Spazialismo" (1951) and the enthusiastic "Television Manifesto" (1952).

In 1946 Fontana founded the Academia Altamira in Buenos Aries.

An avant-garde art school, its aim
was to promote the idea that a new art was necessary to reflect the modern world as revealed by
science. Aligned with the Baroque tradition of depicting dynamic spaces of plastic movement,
Fontana's ideas were also concerned with phenomenology and continued dimensional discovery of
Nature, of which man is a part.
Gathering the voices of five contemporary artists - Mel Bochner, R. Luke DuBois, Michael Joaquin
Grey, Yael Kanarek and Matthew Ritchie - the exhibition focuses on expanded representations of
space and dynamic movement. Also included will be photographic documentation of Fontana's 1951
illuminated arabesque for La Triennale di Milano - an early use of neon installation in an arts context.
The triumph of film... is a definitive evidence of the direction that the spirit has taken toward the
dynamic. In praise of this transformation in the nature of man, we abandon the use of the known
forms of art and move toward development of an art based upon the unity of space and time.
Movement - the property of evolution and development - is the basic condition of matter. Matter
exists in movement and in no other form; its development is eternal. The simultaneous
development of the phenomena of color and sound are what integrate the new art. The
subconscious - which houses all of the images perceived by intelligence - adopts the essence
and the form of these images and accepts notions that give form to the nature of man. The
subconscious shapes, completes, and transforms the individual. It gives him the orientation that
he received from the world and that the individual adopts when necessary. Society tends to
suppress the separation of these two forces in order to unite them into a single and greater form;
modern science bases itself upon the progressive unification of its branches. This new state of
consciousness gives rise to an integral art in which being functions and manifests itself in its
totality.

-excerpted from "Technical Manifesto of Spatialism" by Lucio Fontana on the occasion

of an international meeting on Dimensions held at the IXth Milan Triennale in 1951

For images and more information on the exhibition please visit:

www.bitforms.com

Spazialismo

The Magnificent Seven: Capp Street Project: Abraham Cruzvillegas

Over the past semester Cruzvillegas and students in the Graduate Program in Fine Arts have been investigating concepts of need and scarcity in relation to object making. Their starting point was the customization and transformation of found materials into bicycles and other functional vehicles. Discussing the forms the vehicles might take, options ranged from a delirious machine to a popcorn vehicle, an art-making trailer, a happy machine, a mirror-reflecting vehicle, a festival-on-the-go machine, a mobile sound system, a half-man half-vehicle, a music vehicle, an elements wagon, a bike raft, and a bird surrey.

The themes inspiring these forms included memories, community, imagination, motion, happiness, celebration, environment, work, speed, energy, and fun. The students also aimed to address issues specific to the Bay Area such as pollution, community, economics, and politics. They visited numerous scrap yards, then collected and recycled parts from old bikes with other found objects and junk to create three vehicles, which will be presented in the nave and paraded in front of CCA's SF campus. On view in the Nave / November 15–29 CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts / San Francisco, California, E.U.A.

Lead sponsorship for the Capp Street Project artist residency of Abraham Cruzvillegas is provided by the Nimoy Foundation. Special thanks to Monica Manzutto & Jose Kuri for supporting the participation of Abraham Cruzvillegas in The Magnificent Seven program.

The Magnificent Seven: Capp Street Project: Abraham Cruzvillegas

Edible Design | Posh Cupcakes

In México, creatives from every discipline are emerging. Art,cinema, fashion, editorial, graphic, music, edible. Yes. Edible Design is one of the territories conquered by Mexicans.

Mirtha de la Garza, is conquering it all. She is the definition of THE mexican "culturator " of the moment. This entrepreneur , with studies in Graphic Design, Architecture, and a master degree from one of the most prestigious Barcelona´s University : Politénica de Catalunya, one day decided to start a delicious trend, the POSH CULTURE : cupcakes, packed in specially designed BOX, wrapped in pink ribbons: a true fashion collectors item. That´s not all, POSH Cupcakes appearance in NYLON magazine and Urban Outfitters BLOG thrilled us.

Mirtha is part ( since august 2008) of The First Mexican Talent Stock crew created The Pigmy Deer Network: a virtual social net made in México, in aims of creating and connecting creatives and publish their work worldwide.

POSH, is the official brand of this collective, and this year, started a program in social aid and fund raising: CUPCAKES WITH A CAUSE. We are taking part of it , too.

" Mirtha "Posh" is not only a friend and creative advisor for us in the enterprise, she is also a strategy designer and a model entrepreneur , is a must for us to keep her close and support her project . It´s an honor to have her as Member of The Pigmy Deer Network Stock. She´s gold. "
Eva Guerra Lujan, Founder of The Pigmy Deer Network.

WE SIMPLE LOVE POSH.

Edible Design | Posh Cupcakes

Plans d'évasion | Of Sculpture and Clusters

The fact that the meaning of a sculpture or installation is transformed or changed according to the constellation in which it is combined with other sculptures in a certain space, is irrefutable.

For Michel François however this is the basis for a body of work that has been arranged, transformed and developed for more than twenty-five years. “Plans d’évasion” is the first retrospective study of this exchangeability which is anything but ambiguous. The exhibition in S.M.A.K. originates in Michel François’ ambitious plan to take the time and space necessary to develop a project around "Faux Jumeaux", and over a period of more than a year. In concrete, each time this involved the changing constellations of two artists who conceived a work separately and simultaneously, but when we compared them they showed a striking number of similarities. We could describe this as a prelude to what followed, the launching of a mode of thought that generated “Plans d’évasion”. Over the last twenty-five years Michel François has built up a comprehensive body of work that is arranged in a number of thematic clusters. In it one sculpture or different variations of one sculpture can be a part of various clusters.



The underlying idea is the variable ‘meaning’ of each sculpture depending on its confrontation with other sculptures in accordance with the space in which it is displayed and the way in which it relates to this space. François’ work consists of snapshots within a process of stratification in which individual works acts as elements of language. These are nomadic building blocks which create new associations in ever-changing relationships. What is important within this first retrospective exhibition is the study of the constant evolution of these clusters, the way in which recent sculptures acquire their place in this and how these clusters can be presented in their multiplicity.François’ work has already been presented in various exhibitions such as the Biennale of Sao Paulo in 1994, Documenta in 1992 and in the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2002. For the first time S.M.A.K. will be presenting a fairly comprehensive retrospective – or if you prefer, prospective – exhibition in which we can see photographic, video and sculptural work in relation to heterogeneous material from everyday life and elements the artist has collected on his many travels and encounters.



Curated by Philippe Van Cauteren & Guillaume Désanges

Plans d'évasion | Of Sculpture and Clusters

Index | Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation

Index is an independent art space owned and run by Index - The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation. It is a site for art production and distribution, a place where artistic and audience related experiments are carried out. Their focus is directed towards contemporary art and curatorial practice with the aim of providing a ground for creativity in a wider sense of the word. Index do not represent single artists, but the gallery has throughout the years had an indisputable importance in promoting the art of young Swedish and international, renowned established artists in a sympathetic, non-hierarchical relationship.

The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation presents


Between the Images. Imaginable Experiences for Future Memories
Felix Vogel

How can the photographic image be a place for dialogue and conflict between the positions of the artists and dominating political, historical and aesthetical structures? In what way can we discuss the image in terms of agency – as an act or intervention? How can the image act and function in a time when many visual strategies have been disarmed or canonized? With these questions as a starting point, the project Between the Images presented works in which artists explicitly use or relate to the photographic image to highlight or renegotiate political, social or aesthetic conventions.

The project Between the Images, of which this book is partly documentation and partly continuation, was presented in Stockholm 2008 within the frame of Xposeptember, a biannual art event focusing on photographic image. Some of the discussions which arose from the works in the exhibitions, and in the related programme, are in this publication allowed to expand and develop in the form of new essays and contributions by the project's participants.Black Audio Film Collective: Twilight City, 1989
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Chantal Akerman: Down There (Là-bas). 2006

A major influence for the project has been the legacy of an essayistic approach in moving images. The subjective perspective and the associative narrative often used by filmmakers in this tradition could be seen as a way of negotiating the dominant structures from an aesthetical as well as a political viewpoint. Using the essay as a point of departure the project also wanted to put forward some related methods used in order to discuss political and social structures.

Felix Vogel is a researcher and curator based in Berlin and Konstanz. Most recently, he was appointed curator of the 4. Bucharest Biennale in 2010.

The Between the Images publication has been made possible with support from the abovementioned institutions and in co-production with the Romanian Cultural Institute of Stockholm and Iaspis.

Box 222 33
S-10422 Stockholm, Sweden
http://www.xposeptember.se

Index | Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation