Opening today:Wednesday 16 May

General Opening:

Back for its fifth year, ART HK 12 will take place 17-20 May 2012, preview 16 May, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC). This year, ART HK 12 will showcase the very best in contemporary art from 266 galleries representing 39 International territories. Widely acknowledged as an important platform for networking in the international art community, ART HK brings together leading collectors, curators, artists and galleries from across Asia and the rest of the world.

The Fair is accompanied by an exciting VIP program of events showcasing the best that Hong Kong has to offer culturally as well as socially, and an extensive talks program featuring a world class line-up of speakers. Collectors are drawn by an opportunity to discover a quality and geographical diversity of art not presented anywhere else.

New enthusiasts will gain from the education opportunities offered, and learn first-hand from art world professionals. ART HK is the only Fair in Asia bringing together such an exceptional scope of work, and as dynamic a gathering of people.

ART HK 12 is produced in collaboration with Art Basel.

www.hongkongartfair.com

Collectors are now in front of a life time chance to acquire works by Mira Schendel all in one place. Over 10 galleries are displaying her works during Sp-Arte 2012. Such as:

MIRA SCHENDEL

May 9, 2012

São Paulo’s 8th annual art fair is taking place May 9-13, with a new framework and a variety of innovative projects. As the first fair of its nature in Brazil, SP-Arte has at its core the pursuit for cutting edge programming. This drive has brought up the number of participating galleries to 110, 27 of which are international. The fair now spans three floors and encompasses more than 15,000 m2.

One of the novelties of this edition is Laboratório Curatorial, a natural next step for SP-Arte, which has always had an educational impulse nurtured by founder and director Fernanda Feitosa. The project was conceived by distinguished curator Adriano Pedrosa. Young curators were invited to submit tentative exhibition projects, using the fair as their collection. Pedrosa and Inhotim curator, Rodrigo Moura, selected four curators out of the applicant pool, who will then mount their exhibits at SP-Arte as well as visit Documenta 13. “It is our responsibility as supporters of the art world to create mechanisms that cultivate professionals, and that will build a greater number of professionals in the community, ” celebrates Feitosa.

SP-Arte also organized Diálogos, conversations between Adriano Pedrosa and collectors, gallerists, and curators. Além da Biblioteca, a fascinating show curated by Ana Luiza Fonseca on the works of artist’s books will also be on view at SP-Arte.

Visitors who purchase a ticket to the fair will receive free entry to three local museums: Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM), Museu da Imagem e do Som (MIS) and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo valid May 10-13.

For additional programming and updated information including book signings and special hotel rates during the fair please visit our website, www.sp-arte.com

Location:
Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, Ibirapuera Park,
São Paulo, Brazil

Email: info@sp-arte.com
Website: www.sp-arte.com
Tel: 55.11.3094.2820

In Glasgow, the word “miracle” sends the art scene into a collective cringe.

Courtesy of Folkert de Jong and Aatjan Renders

“Infinite Silence,” a work by Folkert de Jong at the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art.

Artists recoil, lamenting that it diminishes their hard work through more than two decades. Gallerists and curators suggest that it misses the point. “Everyone has pretty much taken offense,” said Francis McKee, the director of the Centre for Contemporary Arts, while conceding that the Swiss curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist had only the best of intentions when he coined the term “The Glasgow Miracle” in 1996 to describe one of Europe’s most dynamic artistic hotspots.

Mr. McKee now heads a new research project with the artist Ross Sinclair to chart how Glasgow developed its patchwork of conceptual art, ephemeral galleries and independent experiments. The project is timely, as changes to arts funding and licensing laws have left Glasgow’s artistic community unsure of its future. Until May 5, the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art is packaging the ever-changing scene into an international attraction.

Among the top events this year are Karla Black’s new sculptures at the Gallery of Modern Art, a public project by Jeremy Deller on Glasgow Green, and an interactive sound installation by the experimental pop band and arts collective Found, with the former Arab Strap member Aidan Moffat. The Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh Museum has a new installation by the Dutch artist Folkert de Jong, inspired by the school’s architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife.

“The ‘miracle’ was how this gutsy kind of city — post-industrial, pretty disadvantaged, with high unemployment and lots of health issues — should become a major center for the visual arts,” Seona Reid, the director of the Glasgow School of Art, said peering across the road at the construction site for the school’s new building, designed by Steven Holl and due to open in 2013.

The Glasgow School of Art has been an epicenter, producing several winners and nominees for the Turner Prize through its Master of Fine Arts and Environmental Art programs — among them Douglas Gordon, whose late 1980s and early 1990s generation is most commonly associated with the “miracle.”

“The artists coming through today are being as successful, though they are not yet at the stage of winning the Turner,” Ms. Reid said. “It shows that it didn’t begin and end, but has continuity.” Many of the school’s illustrious alumni have returned to lecture.

Outside the school, Glasgow’s art community has grown in a precarious ecology of neglect and initiative. A permissive city council has encouraged impromptu exhibitions and pop-up galleries, happily making empty storefronts and other spaces available. The Scottish Arts Council, now remodeled as Creative Scotland, has given numerous grants to individual artists and projects.

As Creative Scotland moves toward “strategic commissioning,” a top-down prioritizing of specific activities, artists fear it could cut the funding pool that helped propel the early careers of Douglas Gordon and, more recently, the Turner-winning Martin Boyce and the nominee Karla Black, who represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale last year. Consultations about the funding plans are under way.

With the Glasgow city council looking to manage its real estate, securing space for independent exhibitions now implies more red tape and cost. “The informal relationship between artists and council no longer exists. In the past year and a half, the financial requirements and accountability have superseded that. It has become more difficult,” said David Watt, the director of the Glasgow Sculpture Studios, an institution that is home to some of the city’s best-known artists.

A proposed change to Scottish licensing laws has riled the city’s art scene, threatening to force organizers of even the smallest events to obtain costly and cumbersome entertainment licenses. More than 14,000 people have signed a petition against the measure and the city council voted unanimously to suspend the law for six months and assess its consequences.

“They understand that their relationship, as a city, is now based on Glasgow’s arts and music scene. It’s their future industry,” Mr. McKee said.

In the partly regenerated Merchant City, frustrated Glasgow School of Art graduates who had nowhere to exhibit their work opened the Transmission Gallery in 1983 and it has changed little since.

“Once you leave art school, you can feel a bit isolated or disconnected — so it’s important, in terms of community,” said Kari Robertson, a recent GSA graduate and Transmission council member. “I called it ‘home’ the other day,” added Claire Shallcross, another member.

Transmission has retained its independent ethos and remains run by committee, staging group exhibitions by its members, as well as commissioning and curating shows by Scottish and international artists.

The Glasgow Sculpture Studios, meanwhile, is finding its first permanent home in a former whisky and mushroom factory in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood. Builders have raced to complete a gallery in time for the Glasgow International Festival.

Founded as an artists’ cooperative in 1988, the Sculpture Studios today provides workspace to several major artists, among them David Shrigley, Nathan Coley and Claire Barclay. It will share the seven-floor, 7,000-square-meter, or 75,000-square-foot, building with start-up businesses and the Glasgow School of Art, which is installing a masters degree program on the third floor.

The Sculpture Studios has also spawned one of the city’s successful arts micro-economies, with visiting artists subcontracting each other to help out on projects.

“We often joke that there’s £1 circulating in our building, and we don’t know who has it anymore,” said Mr. Watt. “It helps artists who are in their early careers.”

Every year, the scene comes together for the Glasgow International Festival. Since 2004, the festival has organized events, funded one-off happenings and offered to include independent projects in its guide. “If we were just trying to tell everybody what to do, it would fall flat. It’s only remotely feasible because there is a sense of common purpose,” said Katrina Brown, director of the festival.

The city’s galleries and artists have geared up for the festival. The Modern Institute has opened a new project space in a former glassworks, showing art by Michael Wilkinson.

The Market Gallery, a key artist-run space in the East End, is staging a lending project at the Mitchell Library, allowing people to borrow a work of art for up to three days. Of the 60 art works available, 12 were created specifically for the project.

“It has been vehemently independent,” said Ms. Brown of Glasgow’s art scene, “but there is a kind of growing up. There are more mature artists and organizations, it’s more established. It’s not about historical narratives: What happens next could be more exciting.”

September 18, 2011–January 9, 2012

This is the first major museum exhibition devoted to the full scope of the career of Willem de Kooning, widely considered to be among the most important and prolific artists of the 20th century. The exhibition, which will only be seen at MoMA, presents an unparalleled opportunity to study the artist’s development over nearly seven decades, beginning with his early academic works, made in Holland before he moved to the United States in 1926, and concluding with his final, sparely abstract paintings of the late 1980s. Bringing together nearly 200 works from public and private collections, the exhibition will occupy the Museum’s entire sixth-floor gallery space, totaling approximately 17,000 square feet.

Two Figures in a Landscape | 1967 Oil on canvas 70 x 6′ 8″  - Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Representing nearly every type of work de Kooning made, in both technique and subject matter, this retrospective includes paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints. Among these are the artist’s most famous, landmark paintings—among them Pink Angels (1945), Excavation (1950), and the celebrated third Woman series (1950–53)—plus in-depth presentations of all his most important series, ranging from his figurative paintings of the early 1940s to the breakthrough black-and-white compositions of 1948–49, and from the urban abstractions of the mid 1950s to the artist’s return to figuration in the 1960s, and the large gestural abstractions of the following decade. Also included is de Kooning’s famous yet largely unseen theatrical backdrop, the 17-foot-square Labyrinth (1946).

Woman II - 1952 Oil on canvas 59 x 43″ (149.9 x 109.3 cm) The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller

Methods & Materials

Organized by John Elderfield, Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture.

This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis.

Major support is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Additional generous funding is provided by Anne and Kenneth Griffin, Sid R. Bass, Steven A. and Alexandra M. Cohen Foundation, Inc., Donald L. Bryant, Jr., The Dubin Family, Glenstone, Robert B. Menschel, Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker, Jerry I. Speyer and Katherine G. Farley, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, Gary and Karen Winnick, and Peter G. Peterson.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Sofia Speaking | August 26, 2011, Friday

Another movie with a stunning set is Match Point. Luxury interior design and Artpieces from the beginning to the end makes this Woody Allen movie a must see for art lovers. Besides the suspenseful Hitchcock like plot, I also loved that the Tate Modern, and the Saatchi Gallery were both important settings of the movie.

The setup of the plot is familiar, almost old-fashioned, so it’s entirely appropriate that the style of the movie fall right in line. Much like Altman’s Gosford Park was a throwback to an earlier age of whodunit film, so Match Point recalls the simple, character-driven elegance of fifties noir. Sometimes familiarity breeds disinterest, but here it feels — mostly — like a welcome presence. It’s the enduring quality of a story told well.

That story is something of an extension of pretty much everything Allen has done. He’s a dab hand with the fish-out-of-water scenario, but here he takes it a bit further; the fish has climbed out of the water and is beginning to evolve legs and lungs, and finding that he rather likes a life with gravity. Chris’ ambition is shielded in a remarkably comfortable skin, despite the social disparity between his youth and his manhood. When his ambitions begin to crystallize in marriage, employment, and luxurious living, his mild obsession needs a new direction, and finds it in Nola, the fish wearing stilts to pretend it has legs.