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Within the framework of the exhibition David Lamelas Far, America, opening next July, the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC), in Santiago de Compostela (ES), published the re-edition and translation into Spanish and Galician of a historical work by David Lamelas –his book Publication (1970). Publication is a key work of Conceptual art representative of the introduction of oral and written language in the context of the visual arts, as well as of "artist's books" created at that time, which played a fundamental role in the so-called "dematerialization" of the artwork.
This re-edition happens exactly fifty years after its first print in London, and integrates a series of proposals from artists and critics such as Robert Barry, Daniel Buren, Ian Wilson and Lucy Lippard, together with the previously unpublished contribution by Marcel Broodthaers.

Jan Mot is participating in Art Basel Online Viewing Room: Pioneers with the presentation Seth Siegelaub: How is Art History Made? focusing on works by trailblazing artists who have been part of Seth Siegelaub’s projects: Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Rosemarie Castoro, Hanne Darboven, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Joseph Kosuth, David Lamelas, Lawrence Weiner and Ian Wilson. The VIP opening starts on 24/03 at 2pm (CET) and will be followed by public days 25/03-27/03.

Image above: Joseph Kosuth, Titled (A.A.I.A.I.) (white), 1967.

Newspaper no. 126 is now online.

In early December 2020 the gallery launched a public campaign to save a major public work by David Lamelas, Quand le ciel bas et lourd (1992) situated in the park of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Due to a mistake in the planning of a new entrance for the museum that is currently under renovation, it had become unavoidable to move the work.  Last summer the Flemish authorities regrettably withdrew their initial support to rebuild the piece on the same site and the existence of the work is now seriously threatened. Demolition of the piece is scheduled for March 22. 

A first letter by Lamelas from September 2020 sent to Jan Jambon, Flemish minister of Culture, asking him to revert his decision remained unanswered. Therefor the gallery decided to launch a campaign asking people to co-sign the artist’s letter. By the time the letter was resent to the minister (December 16) 840 artists, curators, museum directors, critics, gallerists and art lovers from Belgium and all over the world had signed it.

Please click here to read the letter to Jan Jambon, the list of co-signatories, the reaction from Bart De Baere, director of the M HKA who owns the piece, the reaction from the gallery and artist to De Baere’s response as well as a growing list of press articles and general information on the work.

If you wish to show your support we still invite you to sign and your name will be added to the list. We will continue to update our website with any new developments.

Watch Practicing Sustainability, a conversation between Tino Sehgal, Marcela Sabino & Caitlin Southwick organised by Next Museum on Feb. 25th, 2021. Thinking about the museum of the future, sustainability certainly plays a big part. The awareness is present, but what can museums actually do to act sustainably? Should the quality of art be evaluated according to the criterion of environmental compatibility? What are the risks and chances of using emerging technologies in arts and culture with regard to climate change? 

Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee (BE) will be launching a brand new edition by Tris Vonna-Michell entitled No more racing in circles – just pacing within lines of a rectangle, produced as part of the ongoing project Solitude during Printed Matter' Virtual Art Book Fair starting Feb. 24th. This audiotape box set  is both a reflection on the impact of performing several narrations during a concentrated timespan and a selective representation and interpretation of the sound aspects in Tris Vonna-Michell’s artistic practice. The edition is conceived as a numbered box set with 4 audiotapes and liner notes by Jan Verwoert. Commissioned by Frans Masereel Centrum, in collaboration with Mount Analogue.

On this occasion besides the world premiere of the new edition, a new video work by Tris Vonna-Michell contextualising his participation in Solitude, as well as individual practice, will be launched on YouTube. 

Today, February 18th, 2021 at 5pm (CET) Rineke Dijkstra will receive the Johannes Vermeer Award 2020, the Dutch state prize for the arts. The ceremony will be live-streamed on youtube. According to the jury chaired by Andrée van Es, Rineke Dijkstra makes a major contribution to the international prestige of Dutch visual arts with her work. The jury calls her portrait photographs and video installations unique in the world. In its summary, the jury says the following: “This work is for eternity. Few artists have been given the talent to create these types of images.”

(image: Rineke Dijkstra, Arden and Miran, London, February 16, 2020, 2020, inkjet print, 135 x 103,5 cm (image), 159 x 127 cm (frame), edition of 10)

The film by Manon de Boer An Experiment in Leisure (2016 -  2019) is available for online viewing in the context of the inauguration of Artica Writings 2021, which is a curated series of texts aiming to influence critical thinking around our oceans and the urgent issues related to ocean health, knowledge and policy. In An Experiment in Leisure excerpts of texts by psychoanalyst Marion Milner (1900-1998) on themes such as concentration, the body, repetition and daydreaming are combined with meditative shots of artists' working spaces and Norwegian coast. 

Newspaper no. 125, January 2021 is now online.

Printed Matter, Inc. is organising a conversation on the book Seth Siegelaub Better Read Than Dead. Writings and Interviews 1964–2013 with co-editors Lauren van Haaften-Schick, Marja Bloem and Jo Melvin, along with artist James Hoff. This event will take place online on January 15th, at 5pm EST. Registration via the Printed Matter, Inc. website required.

Over 800 people co-signed David Lamelas' letter to the Flemish Minister of Culture Jan Jambon regarding the removal of the work Quand le ciel bas et lourd. The letter including the list of all co-signatories was resent to Jan Jambon today, asking him for a positive reconsideration of this dossier.
Click here to learn more about this initiative as well as to read the open letter by the director of M HKA Bart De Baere published on December 11th in reaction to our appeal as well as our reply to it (both to be found after the list of the co-signatories).

Jan Mot announces participation in Galleries Curate: RHE

In the first days of the Covid-19 pandemic, an informal group of contemporary galleries from around the world came together to discuss how to navigate through the new challenges of the global crisis as it affected our artists, staff and businesses. As an expression of this unity we initiated GALLERIES CURATE.
GALLERIES CURATE: RHE (RHE from Greek for that which flows) is the first chapter of this collaboration, an exhibition and website themed around a universal and, we hope, unifying subject: water. RHE’s first project will launch on January 4th, 2021, with an online presentation of works by Francis Alÿs, Giovanni Anselmo, and Latifa Echakhch, extending the exhibition A buoy if not a beacon. Continuing in stages through May 2021, additional projects will be added by participating galleries each month. 
Following the inaugural exhibition GALLERIES CURATE plan to invite new participants and add further curated chapters to a global conversation of thematic relationships between galleries, artists, and their audiences.

The exhibition Beethoven moves at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna for which Tino Sehgal created a new work entitled This joy reopened to the public on December 7th.

Due to the ongoing renovation of the KMSK involving a new access to the museum, plans had been developed to move it slightly to the corner of the park surrounding the museum. Unfortunately the Flemish government withdrew its initial proposal that was accepted by the artist and now no longer wants to rebuild the work. A letter by Lamelas asking Jan Jambon, Flemish minister of Culture, to reconsider his decision has remained unanswered. We are therefor launching a public campaign inviting everyone to co-sign the original letter with the artist in the hope the work can be saved from destruction. Please click here.

On December 2nd at 8pm Andrea Büttner and Mason Leaver-Yap (KW Berlin) will have an online conversation on Büttner's newly published book Shame (Koening Books, 2020).

From shaming and shamefulness to shame-avoidance and shamelessness, the experience of shame influences our social behaviours, decision-making abilities, and desires. Shame determines what we show and what we hide. And yet, as an emotion that begs for its own concealment, what is the structure and appearance of shame? How does shame interact with the realm of the visible, and where does it surface in visual culture? 

Registration required via reservation@kw-berlin.de.

Tris Vonna-Michell participates in Solitude, an initiative of the Frans Masereel Centrum that commissions six new artistic projects, based on an alternative politics of experiencing art. Deliberately offline, each individual project offers an inspiring context to rethink the connection between art, the bodily and the social, and our mental faculties. Learning from the first half of 2020, and acknowledging our insatiable intellectual hunger, six artists are invited to develop a new work, which people can acquire physically and experience at home – as opposite to from home. In doing so, Solitude strengthens existing artistic practices that ask themselves where to for art, while providing at the same time multiple opportunities to cope with the enduring (self)confinement, without flattening out art. What space is left if seclusion – whether or not chosen by ourselves – is the only option? Other participating artists are Andrea Éva Győri, Taus Makhacheva, Amy Sillman, Nora Turato and Patrick Van Caeckenbergh.

The gallery became member of the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC). The GCC is a non-profit organisation founded by a voluntary group of London-based gallerists and professionals working in the arts as an attempt to develop a meaningful and industry-specific response to the growing climate crisis and to facilitate a greener and more sustainable commercial art world. The aim is to provide guidelines and the necessary resources so that we can collectively reduce our carbon footprint by 50% over the next ten years (in line with the Paris agreement), as well as promoting near zero-waste practices.

The book Joachim Koester. Bringing Something Back (2019) was awarded the Årets vakreste Bøker / The Year’s Most Beautiful Books of 2020 by Grafill, the Norwegian Organisation For Visual Communication.

The book which was produced on the occasion of Joachim Koester's solo exhibitions at the Camden Arts Center and Bergen Kunsthall centres on a series of “meditation tapes”. The “tapes” explored the various twilight zones between waking and sleeping, and what can be brought back from such semi-darkened mental states in an exhibition context.
A visual essay, compiled by art historian, writer and curator Yann Chateigné, runs through the book and combines Koester’s own works with a selection of archival pictures that visually extends the discourse of the “tapes”, texts and artworks. Furthermore it features an interview with an interview between Yann Chateigné and Joachim Koester.

Authors: Yann Chateigné, Joachim Koester, Jelena Martinovic, David Toop
Editors: Mai Lahn-Johannessen, Steinar Sekkingstad
Design: Petri Henriksson / Blank Blank
Publisher: Walther Koenig
Softback, 166 pages, illustrated in colour and b&w, 200mm x 125mm

As a consequence of the new lockdown measures in Belgium, the gallery will be closed from 2 November till 14 December. Today you can still visit the exhibition 'A buoy if not a beacon' with works by Francis Alÿs, Giovanni Anselmo and Latifa Echakhch. 
The exhibition will be extended till 16 January. 

Newspaper No. 124, October 2020 is now online.

Sandlines, the story of history directed by Francis Alÿs has been selected for the International Competition of the 7th Porto/Post/Doc: Film & Media Festival, that will take place from November 20th to 29th, 2020. 

Saturday, October 3, 2020, from 7pm to 2am, Nuit Blanche is organised by the city of Paris, a contemporary creation in all its forms in public spaces, prestigious monuments and buildings that are little known or inaccessible in normal times. On this occasion, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster will take over the peristyle of the Palais Galliera with a sound installation entitled Promenade. The installation invades the peristyle of the Palais Galliera and offers the spectator a very special immersion, in a sound jungle, under a tropical rain. This ephemeral work is part of the Nuit Blanche's Right Bank journey that weaves its way from the Petit Palais - Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris to the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, crossing the sound limbo, virtual wasps and temples of love in the gardens of the Champs-Élysées or New France, to the Palais Galliera and the esplanade and basin of the Palais de Tokyo.

Newspaper No. 123, August 2020 is now online. 

Newspaper No. 122, May 2020 is now online.