February Art Guide - Jerusalem

Recommendations of what to see in the Jerusalem art scene this month by our local guide, Jenna Romano. Discover even more on a private tour.

I.

Exhibition: Form the Light, And Create Darkness
Artist: Israel Rabinovitz
Venue: Jerusalem Artists’ House
Dates: February 3 - April 7 2018

I have not yet been, but for anyone who is living in or visiting Israel, I think it’s important to learn about and challenge the ethos of Israeli Zionist culture. Using raw materials - ‘souvenirs’ made from olive wood, ancient loca fragments, rusty relics, etc. - Rabinovitz introduces questions about locale and localism, about the symbolic meanings of real and fabricated archaeology and about the validity of Israeli rituals in social and cultural contexts.  

IMAGE Israel Rabinovitz, "No Title", 2013, mixed media. 

II.

Exhibition: Feminine Aggressiveness: A Work in Progress
Artist: Lecture by Shir Aloni Arari
Venue: Art Cube Artists Studios
Date: February 12,  2018. 

There is what seems to be a perennial dissonance between the words ‘female’ and ‘empowered’. Often looked upon as unnatural, females who exhibit external aggressiveness are perceived as extreme and ‘masculine’ - but there is a trending reformulation of the complex representations of female empowerment. This lecture will look at examples from pop culture and contemporary art, touching of questions of gender power relations, maternal ambivalence, education and initiation, aggressive and creative impulses.

 IMAGE: South, Sharon Polianke, etching on metal plate.

III.

Exhibition: On The Corner of HaNeviim and Shivtei Israel
Artist: Sharon Polianke
Venue: Jerusalem Print Workshop
Dates: On view until February 28, 2018.

This exhibition is really an ode to the art of printmaking. Sharon Polianke, a masterful printmaker currently living in Tel Aviv, turns the print workshop into a map and archaeological site that pays tribute to the location of the gallery itself. Using a variety of printing techniques, Polianke exhibits work that evoke themes of history and memory, but also allude the the techniques themselves and the artists own love for the medium - ultimately linking the collective and historical with the mental and the personal. 

IMAGE Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Theatrical release poster, by Reynold Brown

Take an art tour in Jerusalem to discover more!
 

February Art Guide - Vienna

Recommendations of what to see in the Vienna art scene this month by our local guide, Itai Margula. Discover even more on a private tour.

I.

Exhibition: GÜNTER BRUS Unrest after the Storm
Artist: Günter Brus
Venue:  Belvedere 21 Haus
Dates: February 2nd to August 11th, 2018

Belvedere 21 holds a retrospective exhibition of the Austrian artist Günter Brus on the occasion of his 80 years anniversary. Curated by Harald Krejci, the comprehensive show sheds light on the different stages of his artistic career. If in his early work, Günter Brus used the body as the basis for the painterly process, in his later performances and actions the body served as the screen onto which he projected his critique of society. Probably his most recognizable work “Wiener Spaziergang” from 1965 - a high point also in the Wiener Aktionismus history as well – will always remain a landmark in the Viennese consciousness. 

Photo: Ludwig Hoffenreich © Günter Brus

II.

Exhbition: From the inside to the outside
Artists: Carola Dertnig, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Martha Wilson, Kristin Oppenheim, 
Markus Schinwald
Venue: Galerie Crone Wien
Dates: January 17th to March 3rd, 2018 

Galerie Crone opened its second location in Vienna in the fall of 2015. The current show featuring prominent Austrian and international artists brings together artists who deal with the body as a means of expression, platform, or tool of their artistic creation. Categories such as age or gender are questioned as well as beauty ideals or social conventions. Martha Wilson’s work ‘Makeover: Melania (2017)’ for example, makes use of the digital image altering techniques, which not only allow her face to be transformed in that of Melania Trum within seconds, but also points out to the erasure of age through contemporary post production techniques.

Photo: Ashley Hans Scheirl © Ernst Herold 2016

III.

Exhibition: Guy Mees. The weather is quiet, cool and soft
Artists: Guy Mees
Venue: Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz
Dates: February 1st to April 29th, 2018

Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz dedicates its first exhibition of the year to Guy Mees (1935–2003), a leading figure of the Belgian avant-garde, in the first exhibition in Austria to focus exclusively on his work. A member of the “New Flemish School” he was in touch with an international network of artists affiliated with the neoavant-garde from Europe, Japan, and North and South America. The exhibition curated by Lilou Vidal features different phases in Mees’ career to shed light on his intuitive and conceptual approach from the beginning of the 1960s to his last works from the 2000s. The selected works allow an overview of his ideas of mutability, fragility, and the expansion of pictorial space into real space.

Photo: Exhibition View © Jorit Aust

Take a tour in Vienna to discover more! 
 

February Art Guide - Warsaw

Recommendations of what to see in the Warsaw art scene this month by our local guide, Zuzanna Zasacka. Discover even more on a private tour.

I.

Exhibition: Sarkis. Angel Rainbow
Artist: Sarkis
Venue: Zacheta Gallery
Dates: Until February 18th, 2018

An exhibition of one of the most important classics of the 20th and 21st century art. Born Sarkis Zabunyan, in 1938 in Istanbul, Sarkis is an Armenian conceptual artist. He studied painting and design at the Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul, and since the 1960s has lived and worked in Paris. He was one of a dozen young artists invited by the curator and art critic Harald Szeemann to participate in the exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (Works — Concepts — Processes — Situations — Information), at the Kunsthalle Bern (1969), which presented a new vision of contemporary art.
In his work, Sarkis metaphorically touches on the most important problems of today’s world. He is fascinated by both contemporary visual culture and the richness of tradition and history of non-European cultures, which have been excluded or marginalised for years. The basic elements in the structure of his works and ideas are constituted by the concepts of memory and identity. In Zachęta, in collaboration with people working locally at the exhibition, the artist has built and manipulated three important elements of his work: light, word, and context of place. This Zachęta exhibition will present 21 sentences, selected by our team and hand-written in Polish by Zachętas employees, then made into neon signs. 

Sarkis_Angel Rainbow_exhibition view_Zachęta_photo by Marek Krzyżanek

II.

Exhibition: Rachel Poignant. Generations
Artist: Rachel Poignant
Venue:  Xavery Dunikowski Musuem of Sculpture „Królikarnia“
Dates: Until February 18th, 2018

The sculptures of Rachel Poignant, though abstract and unique, resemble forms we know: shells, stones, cookies or the avant-garde works of the constructivists. They are anachronistic—they do not seem to belong to the time in which they originated, reaching both the remembered past as well as the imagined future. They are reminiscent of remnants of 20th century modernism extracted from the ruins of our world by archaeologists of the civilizations that will come after us. 
What connects Rachel Poignant (b. 1986) to Poland is her teacher and mentor, Anka Ptaszkowska. Ptaszkowska, an eminent curator and art critic, works only with outstanding artists. She was the initiator of many unconventional artistic events, which connected the Polish art world with Western Europe. Also this time, Ptaszkowska, convinced of the extraordinary talent of Rachel Poignant, has initiated a Polish-French collaboration.

Rachel Poignant

III.

Exhibition: Gallery of Polish Design
Venue: National Museum in Warsaw 

This time I will exceptionally recommend the permanent exhibition, but freshly open. The NMW has something special in store to mark the end of 2017. Polish applied arts will be on permanent display in the Gallery of Polish Design, showcasing the most important pieces from the early 20th century up to the present day.

The Nataiona Museum’s new permanent gallery shows the numerous approaches to design prevalent throughout the various decades and artistic circles – from the Zakopane milieu, Krakow Workshops, “Ład” Artists’ Cooperative and modernists in the “Praesens” group, through the post-war reconstruction period, Social Realism, the Polish thaw and post-1956 modernism – when Polish applied arts developed with the greatest dynamism – to the finest examples of contemporary design. A separate mention will be given to aspects of industrial design, design for children and ethnographic design.

Gallery of Polish Design

Take an art tour in Warsaw to discover more!

February Art Guide - New York

Recommendations of what to see in the New York art scene this month by our local guide, Maya Yadid. Discover even more on a private tour.

I.

Exhibition: Ebecho Muslimova
Artist: Ebecho Muslimova
Venue: Magenta Plains
Dates: Through February 11th, 2018

Ebecho Muslimova is a New York-based artist who’s making strikingly graphic paintings and drawings spotlighting an alter ego named “Fatebe”, Muslimova’s a grinning, portly figure minimally rendered in sweeping black lines. Fatebe finds herself in various impossible situations like a genie inside a jar of coins and gagged by a stack of quarters, or poised as Narcissus over a pool of still water while folded into the angles of a laundry drying rack. Using minimalist, black and white graphic lines, Muslimova uses the female body as a malleable, expressive form to do with roasting shame and anxiety on a spit, every curve glistening. 

II.

Exhibition: Layota Rubi Frazier
Artist: Layota Rubi Frazier
Venue: Gavin Brown Enterprise
Dates: Through February 24th, 2018

Gavin Brown Enterprise in Harlem is showing a solo exhibition of artist and photographer, LaToya Ruby Frazier. Through photography, video, and performance Frazier explores social justice and cultural changes in America. In Frazier's own words: "Through photographs, videos, and text I use my artwork as a platform to advocate for others, the oppressed, the disenfranchised. When I encounter an individual or family facing inequality I create visibility through images and story-telling to expose the violation of their human rights." 3 bodies of work are presented in this show, Including Frazier's best-known body of work, The Notion of Family (2001-2014), which is an exploration into her family, her hometown, and her own experiences through landscape and portraiture in the deindustrialized steel town of Braddock, PA. 

III.

Exhibition: William Eggleston
Artist: William Eggleston
Venue: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Dates: February 14th until May 28th, 2018 

“Los Alamos,” the most famous body of work by William Eggleston will be on view at the Met. “Los Alamos,” which was created over a nine-year period, documents Eggleston’s journeys through the American South and West using color film for the first time in the history of fine art. 

The exhibition includes color studies made during numerous road trips with his friends Walter Hopps and Dennis Hopper—to New Mexico, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and elsewhere, as well as photographs of the social and physical landscape of the Mississippi delta region, which remains the artist’s home.

Take a tour in New York to discover more!

London Art Guide - February

Recommendations of what to see in the London art scene this month by our local guide, Marine Tanguy. Discover even more on a private tour.

I.

Exhibition: Monochrome
Artists: Various Artists
Venue: The National Gallery
Dates: Until February 18th, 2018 

It's the last few weeks of the exhibition but it's god damn worth it! All my favourite artists are there, Rembrandt to Richter in simple nuances of black and white. Major highlight for the monochrome room of Olafur Eliasson. 

II.

Exhibition: Andreas Gursky
Artist: Andreas Gursky
Venue: The Hayward Gallery
Dates: Until April 22nd, 2018

It's a double celebration: the re-opening of the contemporary landmark Hayward Gallery and the retrospective of Andreas Gursky. It will make you feel small but hey, that's a good thing. 

III.

Event: Art Dinner Talk 'The Voice of a Generation' by MTArt
Dates: 21st February at the Albert's Club 

This full discussion will engage with the most exciting artists of our generation: how they innovate, which thinking do they challenge and why they are so exciting to get to know. 

Take a tour in London to discover more!