Dennis Kardon, Illusions of Security, 2005. Oil on linen; 24 x 36 in (61 x 91.4 cm). Courtesy the artist, Massimo De Carlo, and South Etna Montauk.

More than ever, art provides nourishment as a muse, challenges existing restrictions and encourages dialogue among global citizens. Here are highlights of a few exhibits, which speak directly and indirectly to our history as well as our current times:

Painting Is Painting’s Favorite Food: Art History as Muse

Glenn Brown; God Speed to a Great Astronaut (2007); Oil on panel; 63 7/8 x 48 in (162.2 x 121.9 cm); Private Collection, Courtesy South Etna Montauk

Painting Is Painting’s Favorite Food: Art History as Muse, the debut presentation at South Etna Montauk in the Village of Montauk on the East End of Long Island. Curated by Alison M. Gingeras, this exhibition explores the various ways artists deploy art history as their central muse. The show includes works by Derrick Adams, Glenn Brown, Scott Covert, John Currin, Jesse Edwards, Hadi Fallahpisheh, Rachel Feinstein, Luis Flores, Doreen Garner, Clarity Haynes, Lyle Ashton Harris, Jane Kaplowitz, Karen Kilimnik, Dennis Kardon, Chris Oh, Borna Sammak, Peter Saul, Sally Saul, Betty Tomkins, Piotr Uklanski and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Painting Is Painting’s Favorite Food reveals a range of strategies deployed by artists metabolizing the past in their work. In the vein of radical revision, Betty Tompkins layers contemporary feminist ire onto an already gendered Old Master image. Explicit art historical quotation can be seen in the reprisal of a Manet still life that serves as the basis for Dennis Kardon’s canvas Illusions of Security, and in the more direct appropriation-homage of Sam McKinniss’s lovingly repainted still life d’aprés Fantin Latour.

Chris Oh painstakingly reproduces Joos van Cleve’s Virgin and Child (ca. 1525) on a bouquet of faux fruit, creating an uncanny transposition of Primitive Flemish painting with plastic kitsch. With incredible virtuosity, Glenn Brown subjects Fragonard’s The Toilet of Venus (c. 1760) to a process of strange metamorphosis, resizing, reshaping and morphing the original source image and transforming the palette into otherworldly hues of green, blue, and purple.

The exhibit opened on July 16, 2020, and is on view to the public Tuesday through Sunday from 11-6 p.m. and by appointment. Social distancing will be observed in accordance with guidelines recommended to ensure the health and safety of staff and visitors.

FUORI: 2020 Art Quadriennale (La Quadriennale di Roma)

Cinzia Ruggeri, Stivali Italia, 1986. Photo credits Rebecca Fanuele
Courtesy Archivio Cinzia Ruggeri, Galleria Federico Vavassori Milan, Campoli Presti, London Paris

The next edition of the Art Quadriennale, titled FUORI, will be open to the public from October 29, 2020, to January 17, 2021, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. The Art Quadrienniale is the main exhibition dedicated to Italian contemporary art. The exhibit takes place every 4 years and is a highly anticipated event for art professionals and the public.

The 2020 Art Quadriennale in Rome, curated by Sarah Cosulich and Stefano Collicelli Cagol, will propose a new image of Italian contemporary art at an international level. The title, FUORI is emblematic of the perspective proposed by the curators.

FUORI is an invitation to think outside the box, to take an eccentric—off centered—stance, to adopt an oblique look based on a mutual relationship with otherness. Along with challenging  viewers in multiple ways, the exhibit addresses a primary need to get out of the physical and mental restrictions, which we have all experienced in this complex year of 2020.

For the 2020 Art Quadriennale in Rome, the curators have selected 43 artists, presented through monographic rooms and new works, with the aim of outlining an alternative way of reading Italian contemporary art from the 1960s to the present day.

Manifesta 13 Le Tiers Program: Dialogue With Citizens of Marseille

Image: Stine Marie Jacobsen, Group Think © Stine Marie Jacobsen/ Manifesta

Proposed by the Education and Mediation team of Manifesta 13Le Tiers Programme (The Third Program) is a mediation initiative placing the central curatorial program in dialogue with the citizens of Marseille. The program is made up of a set of interrelated research and practice-based projects born from encounters with a variety of local actors, ranging from inhabitants to artists, that delve into the histories and present realities of the city. Going beyond institutional categories, disciplinary divisions, Le Tiers Programme brings together projects that are educational, curatorial, research-based, artistic and accessible to everyone.

At the core of the program is the notion of voicing the unheard, including multiple histories and unrepresented narratives of the city’s common heritage, giving an insight into Marseille’s contemporary identity and the complexities of its roots. It studies remarkable histories of local resilience and community cooperation across the city. It investigates “universal” cultural canons, in which many do not recognize themselves. The program exercises new forms of community care and citizenship education and extends the notion of mediation as an instrument for decentralizing knowledge production.

Le Tiers Programme has its own temporality in relation to the central curatorial program, launching nearly 1 year before the opening of all three programs of the biennial on August 28, 2020. The program will conclude after the biennial closes its doors on November 29, 2020.

 

 

By Andrea Hammer

Andrea Karen Hammer is the founder, director and owner of Artsphoria Publishing, Media Group & Shop (https://www.artsphoria.org): Artsphoria International Magazine (https://www.artsphoria.com); Artsphoria Movie Reviews & Film Forum (https://www.artsphoria.us); Artsphoria: Arts, Business & Technology Center (https://www.artsphoria.biz); Artsphoria Event Advertising & Reporting (https://www.artsphoria.info); Artsphoria: Food for the Soul (https://artsphoria.live); Artsphoria Animation & Imagination World (https://www.artsphoria.net) and Artsphoria Shop (https://www.artsphoriashop.com). She is a freelance writer who has published articles in international publications.

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