art

after Turner

art, recent work, time-out

HHW. after Turner, “Shade and Darkness — the Evening of the Deluge”; graphite pencil on paper

The complexity of  JMW Turner’s work is stunning and miraculous. Yesterday, I spent some hours with a couple of them, pencil in hand.
It was the next-to-last day of the Turner/Monet/Twombly exhibition at Moderna Museet (Stockholm); queuing started before opening, and hundreds of people filled the exhibition space. Yet the atmosphere was relaxed, friendly – the museum guards attentive in a quiet, kind way; the public taking turns in looking closer or from a distance at the paintings, giving each other time and talking softly under their voices; and the murmur had a warm tint to it. Several times, I heard dialogue develop between strangers, and also got involved myself.

This is just how it should be. Turner’s painting doesn’t give itself away instantly. There is always more to see. Composition is often powerful, compelling, and works at first sight. Then, if you stay with the images, they deepen and evolve on different levels; figuratively, choreographically, materially, spiritually.

HHW. after Turner, ” ‘Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) – the Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis'”; graphite pencil on paper

Green Year 2012. It’s now.

art, recent work

flow #1; photo by HHW.

ART LAB gnesta’s first thematical year has begun. Our Green Year 2012 will bring about a plenty of changes, meetings and events – all focused on the healing of humankind’s relationship with our home planet. Here’s just a few:

January: Mongolian sculptor Ganbat Logiiraz moves in to live and work within the Brewery.
February: ART LAB gnesta will participate at Supermarket Art Fair, Stockholm.
March: ART LAB gnesta’s pedagogical program (powered by Skapande Skola) launches three projects for schoolchildren; the Island Project, the Catwalk and Imagine Farm – all of them fusing sustainable thinking with creativity.
April: Ganbat moves out of the exhibition space, but his dwelling – a traditional Mongolian ger (yurt) – stays with ART LAB gnesta to provide a living space for future Artists in Residence.
May: yurt will be raised on the shore of Lake Frösjön as first Artist in Residence arrives.
June: Art and Agricultural Collective Kultivator will return, bringing their exhibition Imagine Farm (based on the pedagogical project).
July: floating islands from the Island Project will enhance conditions for aquatic flora and fauna in Lake Frösjön. Collaboration with international BERAS* implementation project aims at adapting the Diet for a Clean Baltic to local situation.
August: open air exhibition Art in the Green Box will be staged by Niklas Zander and Gnesta Konsthall (powered by ART LAB gnesta).
September: time to recollect and look forward – Harvest Festival and LAB Conference 2012.
October: the Brewery’s main exhibition space will host the Tree, exhibition by Swedish artist Gustav Broms.
November: ART LAB gnesta hopes to set forth a Green Culture Map in cooperation with the municipality along with local producers, enterprises, institutions and individuals.
December: ART LAB gnesta’s research program Green Materials is expected to present its first results.

Through the whole year, we will develop our facilities as a production platform and a stage for talks, performances and publications.
Welcome to visit. Welcome to follow us:

http://artlabgnesta.se/about.html

https://www.facebook.com/artlabgnesta

* Baltic Ecological Recycling Agriculture and Society
http://www.beras.eu/

and life goes on

art, recent work, time-out

Lighting the kitchen fire when dawn is yet to come.
Paying bills and answering mails while grey morning light edges into the room. An hour later, the dog and I are running free, bare-headed under a silvery November sky.
Memorizing the atmosphere and colours of the day, identifying the corresponding pigments; translating visual perception into materiality. Bringing it into the studio.

To kindle the fire inside. Another small step, and the path unfolds.

Afterwards, a pause and something to eat before it’s time to reach out again. There is no lack of work here.
At ART LAB gnesta, we realize that we’re into something even greater than we understood at the outset; re-inventing art as our social method.

To all friends in Ukraine: there are stories yet untold, and relations to develop. I hope to come back to you, from this new platform. For now, just this memory from Lviv, October 2011.
I hope to be back some day.


Lviv International Airport, October 2011; photo HHW.

[semicolon]

art, recent work

Life sometimes makes sudden turns. During the last month, I have experienced such a turn; an unexpected opening into a new landscape.

Joining the executive board of ART LAB gnesta has brought about an abundance of new tasks. In the calendar, it becomes visible as a number of meetings. In reality, it means a series of encounters – always interesting, and often strongly positive – with new partners and associates; artist colleagues, curators and people belonging to the art world, yes… but equally important: the local politicians, officeholders, administrators, managers, teachers and professionals in many fields.
ART LAB gnesta emphatically places itself in a physical and social environment, with the aim to maintain artistic awareness and focus alike, in a condition of interdependence.


From the Grand Opening of ART LAB gnesta; photos by Nils Völker

Now, this comes in addition to my coordinating commission in the Nomadic University.
Concretely, it has delayed the processing of NUrope XIII, which I can only regret. More important, perhaps: it has positively altered the prerequisites. During the past weeks, I keep coming back to a ‘from sounds to things’ feeling.
The Nomadic University is a unique fusing of a professional network and a learning process, investigating contemporary European identity-making.
ART LAB gnesta is a setting where the experiences and insights gained in this process will work sense.

For the NUrope XIII oasis in Kiev and Lviv, I will come back with some more documentations and reflections. To follow ART LAB gnesta, just visit us on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/artlabgnesta


ART LAB gnesta opening

art, beauty, recent work, time-out

From Kiev and Lviv back to Swedish countryside; last week was the opening week for ART LAB gnesta. Recently being appointed a board member of this artist-run space, I plunged head-on into five intense days of preparations, press meetings, art management conference, opening party and network meetings.
Here’s one of the absolute highlights – Nils Völker’s sculpture Thirty Six… air, light, technique and peace.

NUrope XIII, Kiev and Lviv (IV)

art, time-out

Last day in Kiev: in the morning Sergiy Trymbach, Head of the Filmmakers’ Union of Ukraine, received the Nomadic University at the National Cinema House. The building, in itself retaining a distinct scent of Sovietic atmosphere, made a very convenient backdrop for the screening of two ‘Ukrainian classics’ by film director Aleksandr Dovzhenko. His films Zemlya (Earth) and Zvenyhora were made in 1928 and 1930 – the years preceding the great famines, provoked by Stalin in order to break down resistance against collectivization in Ukraine. Zemlya deals with the issue of ‘Blut und Boden’, by telling the story of a young Bolshevik hero who gets killed by the desperate class enemy, only to be mourned and reborn among the victorious Soviet people. Despite its aim to promote the Party’s political purposes, the film evoked criticism because of its religious symbolism. Today, it may obviously still appeal to a conception of national identity related to the earth, and of Nature as a constant beyond social changes… Here three clips:
Zemlya (1)
Zemlya (2)
Zemlya (3)

After this thought-provoking reminder of lingering history, we had a very different experience bordering on the same theme. Writer Stanislaw Tsalik took us on a guided city walk along the boulevards, parks and palaces of the 19th and 20th centuries; sites and memorials built for rich merchants and – later – for the Soviet nomenklatura. We followed the path of Bulgakov’s alter ego Alexei Turbin in his long run in the novel “The White Guard”, to end up at the Kreschatyk where demonstrations pro and contra Yulia Tymoshenko on trial went on…

The evening continued with an impressive counterpart of  the morning programme. At Babuin, we met with contemporary Ukrainian filmmakers to attend a screening session of  short films, manifesting various approaches to our  recurring topic of history/histories and identity-making. Those films shall speak for themselves – just have a look, or more:

Cross (Maryna Vroda’s 2011 Palme d’Or award winner. This is but a short trailer – bad technical quality and superfluous commentaries but gives an idea of the atmosphere)
Tram No 9 Goes On  (clay animation by Stepan Koval, 2002)
Against the Sun (part 1) (by Valentin Vasyanovich, 2004 – don’t miss this one! )
Against the Sun (part 2)
Wayfarers (by Ihor Strembitsky, Palme d’Or for short film 2005)

***

From Lviv, we bring other valuable memories (from the Business School, the open marketplace, the art galleries, the cultural mapping project at the Jewish centre, and more)… All of those experiences will stay with me. Here, just a last few glimpses from Lviv International Airport (very soon to be replaced by brand new facilities).

P1000976 (kopia 2)

NUrope XIII, Kyiv and Lviv (III)

art, recent work, time-out

“We staged a situation where students met with a number of different teachers… our hidden agenda was to break the bonds between one single professor and his disciples”
“Ukraine is archaeo-modern; it cannot be post-modern, because it never had modernity.”
“If there exists corporate sponsorship for art? You must understand – in Ukraine, we’re not talking about companies, we’re talking about names.”
“There isn’t corruption within the system. Corruption is the system.”

… a few fragments of our Kyiv talks, some free-floating words from people involved in art and culture.
Nevertheless, and given the difficulties these words may imply, the achievements presented to us are striking; the experimental theatre play, the short films, the bilingual (Ukrainian/Russian) magazine… We have been touched, laughing, stunned and impressed more times than I could tell these days, and above all: although we are strangers in this country, we have felt at home.

“Kyiv is not a city, it is a magic place.”

NUrope XIII, Kiev and Lviv (II)

art, recent work, time-out

Kiev; a city of 4 million inhabitants, seemingly planned and built by giants. Boulevards and large open squares, immense residential blocks along the highways, the majestic river spanned by huge bridges and a mass of gold-plated onion-cupola churches.
The Nomadic University’s thirteenth session opened here, yesterday morning – an ongoing happening, where seriousness intertwines with jouissance and sheer absurdity at times.
Gathered from six or seven different countries, we are meeting with all kinds of actors in art and culture: the theatre people who reconnect to a tradition erased by Stalin, the courageous young art activists, the slightly older international art scene professionals… the social psychologist who – arriving on motorbike from Moscow – makes the diagnosis of contemporary Ukraine while having tea and jam on the verandah of Mikhail Bulgakov… the Conseillère de Cooperation et d’Action Culturelle of the French embassy who gives us a foreigner’s view – très au courant – on what’s on… and not to forget, with Mykola the opera singer…
(to be continued)

Bulgakov family house, salon on first floor – no photographing allowed, but I tell you the verandah was an even better place to hang out.