EXPOSURE

2008 Annual PRC Juried Exhibition
May 23 to July 2, 2008

Guest Juror Lesley A. Martin
Publisher Aperture Foundation Book Program

EXPOSURE features 14 selected artists of photography and related media whose themes include conflict, community, commerce, work and family.

Benjamin Lowy
From Iraq Perspectives, 2005-present

Robert Knight
Eli & Ben (#2), Chestnut Hill, MA 2006
From Dwellings

Martine Fougeron
From Tête-á-Tête I

NEW YORK PHOTO FESTIVAL

The Future of Contemporary Photography
Curated by Martin Parr, Lesley A. Martin, Tim Barber and Kathy Ryan

DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York
May 14 to 18, 2008


Photograph Jonathan Smith


Exhibtion map

Visit New York Photo Awards

ART REVIEW | Cai Guo-Qiang @ Guggenheim

Exploding Globally

By Jon Bakos

Cai Guo-Qiang’s I Want to Believe, currently at the Guggenheim in New York, provides for compelling answers to many of the uncertainties of art production today. By combining concepts of eastern philosophy, childhood-like wonders of communism, and pure pyrotechnic mastery Cai has enveloped the interior of the Guggenheim in a sweeping fashion. GM cars hang from floor to ceiling in the atrium, there are massive installations with pieces as wide ranging from an ancient Chinese ship hull, to a piece entitled “Head On” which involves ninety-nine life-size wolf sculptures that climb around one rotunda of the museum before crashing into a Plexiglas wall. Even more remarkable is Cai’s signature work as a “gunpowder artist,” in which the artist applies the pure energy of explosives on canvas and site-specific installations (which are displayed in the show via video)

What is truly spectacular about the show once you get beyond the sublime use of the space is the consistency in which it is applied. The pieces are loaded with the social commentary of traditional Chinese folklore and heroes such as Genghis Khan. At the same time the works delve into more latent issues of Chinese identity such as the last fifty years of communist China, Mao Zedong, and the Cultural Revolution. Cai’s own beginning in art took place during the shaping of the Cultural Revolution in which he began to study Chinese landscape painting and calligraphy as a boy. He remembers his father during that time owning a bookstore, in which he secretly gave Cai copies of “Death of a Salesman” and “Waiting for Godot” when most western books had been banned.

As a global artist, Cai is most effective when gunpowder is involved. The use of explosive material mirrors the idea of terror both in contemporary times and also historically in ancient China involving the spectacle of fireworks. War and power are constantly circling throughout the exhibition but Cai addresses them directly in two pieces that involve gunpowder. The first piece The Century with Mushroom Clouds: project for the 20th Century, is presented at four sites (a nuclear test site in Nevada, Michel Heizer’s Double Negative, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and lower Manhattan) where Cai recreates the iconic symbol of a mushroom cloud. The second uses the Great Wall of China in a way that once again specifically addresses the land-art movement of the nineteen-seventies. The method he employs by detonating charges in the ground extending ten thousand meters from one end of the wall comments on growing global presence of China on world affairs.

Inopportune: Stage One, 2004
Guggenheim exhibit I Want to Believe, 2008

The work as a whole takes a lot to develop from vision to reality, as it is largely the product of biennials, and grants. One of the successes of the exhibition is that the work is being presented during an increasingly commodifiable period in the art market. For much of the work to be fully realized Cai must employ technicians and trades people in order to produce works that are mostly specifically created for museums and site-specific experiments. That is not to say however that the gunpowder drawings are not as successful due to being more traditional, they are some of the best the show has to offer. In totality, Cai is part of a trend that comments on the politics of society without being totally restrained by it. That notion is comforting, when much in the world is so unsettling.

Jon Bakos will be a senior BFA candidate at the Art Institute of Boston this coming fall. Jon’s astute critical thoughts on contemporary art are reflected in his writings and discussions, which he shares on his website www.jonbakos.com. His work has been chosen for the second year to be included in TAKINGIN Best of AIB Photography.

Two Chinas: Chen Qiulin and Yun-Fei Ji

WORCESTER ART MUSEUM

Through September 21, 2008

Chen Qiulin, Bei Fu (Farewell Poem), 2003
Still from color video, 9 minutes, Stoddard Acquisition Fund, 2007

This exhibition considers the rapidly changing conditions in China through the lens of new acquisitions created by two young Chinese artists, Chen Qiulin (b. 1975) and Yun-Fei Ji (b. 1963). Both artists have responded to the altered landscapes and human displacement caused by flooding, which is a result of China’s Three Gorges Dam project. Chen Qiulin uses video in Bie Fu (Farewell Poem), from 2003, to revisit her childhood memories and China’s past amidst the rubble of Wanzhou, her hometown and one of the cities flooded by the dam project. In Yun-Fei Ji’s monumental scroll-like painting, Below the 143 Meter Mark, from 2006, allusions to classical landscape painting are transformed by grim contemporary details – houses and hillsides crumbling, a ghost town littered with abandoned bundles and bicycles.
(Excerpt from press release)

ABELARDO MORELL/ Bernard Toale Gallery

PICTURES in PICTURES

Bernard Toale Gallery
Boston

May 14 to June 28, 2008

Santa Maria della Salute with Scaffolding in Palazzo Bedroom, 2007

TAKING IN @ AIB University Hall Gallery

The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University presents

TAKINGIN The Best of AIB Photography

Juried exhibit of The Art Insitute of Boston’s best contemporary photography. The 2008 TakingIn jurors were Kristen Dodge, Co-Director of the Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Jim Fitts, Director of the PRC, Arlette Kayafas of Gallery Kayafas and Rania Matar, photographer.

Book Release and Reception May 15, 6pm

University Hall Gallery
Porter Square, Cambridge
May 15 to June 15, 2008


Paul Yem, Untitled, 2008