Alpine Constructs
Recommended article from the current issue of Aesthetica.

New Swiss Architecture provides the perfect vehicle for stunning architectural photography.
An assessment of architecture from the past decade set against an Alpine backdrop
of mountain peaks and lakes, the book surveys a new generation of architectural
practitioners inspired by illustrious studios such as Herzog & de Meuron. The volume
offers a detail-orientated appraisal of inventive structures and their novel take on
traditional Swiss materials and techniques, combined with an experimental approach to
proportion and volume. It also serves to showcase rarely seen designs, many of which
have been constructed with remote landscapes in mind. The featured architects are set
on establishing an inimitable identity in the world of Swiss structural design, and it is this
aim for elegance and individuality that surfaces in the title’s striking imagery. New Swiss
Architecture is out now, published by Thames & Hudson. www.thamesandhudson.com

Issue 67: October/November - Out Now

The October / November issue of Aesthetica focuses on the nature of change, either forced or natural. We also take a look at the spaces we inhabit, and how they affect our lives. Looking for America opens as part of Diffusion in Cardiff this autumn, bringing with it a timely reassessment of “the American Dream”, a phrase that has been bandied about and discussed to death. The current reappraisal looks at the work of contemporary photographers in the context of this ideology and, furthermore, how it relates to changes globally. Erwin Olaf opens two shows in the autumn, which both concentrate on the grey area between authenticity and artifice. For almost 30 years he joined personal and universal narratives. 

On photography, we’ve pushed the boat out for this issue. There are features such as Alpine Constructs, which brings you a taste of alpine living, while Australian fine artist Lilli Waters addresses the state of play for modern women. Guillaume Lechat offers vitality and playfulness through a unique blend of documentary and fashion imagery. Mark Havens finds beauty in decay through remnants of mid-20th century Americana. Canadian photographer Greg Girard documents change across the world, while our cover photographers, René & Radka, evoke a complex discourse through visual storytelling.

View Official ASFF 2015 Trailer

We are delighted to announce the programme for the BAFTA Qualifying Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2015, one of the UK’s most exciting cinematic events. Plus, save 20% on tickets with our Early Bird offer valid until 19 October.

Join us from 5 to 8 November in York, UK, as we celebrate the festival’s 5th anniversary, with 300 outstanding short films, guest programmes, networking sessions and special events. Transforming the city’s most iconic locations through cinema, the festival invites audiences to create their own unique viewing experience and discover works by established and emerging filmmakers.

Top 5 Highlights:

• See short films from around the world, spanning 11 genres
• Explore beautiful and historic York through 15 iconic venues
• Join sessions with Channel 4, Rankin Film, Warp and many more
• Celebrate 5 years of ASFF with special screenings and lively panels
• Experience cinema from guest countries, Cuba, Brazil and China

To book tickets, visit ww.asff.co.uk/tickets and enter EARLYBIRD at the checkout.

2.The Other Art Fair

The Other Art Fair returns for a special 10th edition from 15-18 October to the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. Discover art from 130 of the best undiscovered artists from across the globe, with pieces starting from just £50, and take part in a dedicated programme of exciting events that will run alongside this special edition of the fair. Venture to the backstage of The Other Art Fair and into the secret Green Room, where Rebecca Mason’s Neon Health Service Department of Light Therapy and her Confessional Consultants invite you to take off your mask and unburden yourself with a helping hand from the Green Fairy. Prepare to reveal your innermost secrets…

Visitors have the opportunity to purchase signed limited edition prints and posters created by Tracey Emin exclusively for the fair. Photo 21 will spotlight 21 of the best emerging photographic artists from across the globe, whilst the fair’s London First section will showcase the work of 20 artists who have never previously exhibited in London. Hosted by leading design agency Protein, the fair’s free Forum will take the shape of a TED-style talk and social club, spotlighting cultural revolutionaries and their ideas on the rapidly evolving art world. Encounters Film Festival presents a highlight collection of the 2015 award-winning short films and animations. Marvel at the talent from the best of emerging and established filmmakers across the world. 

For more information visit theotherartfair.com. To claim 50% off tickets to The Other Art Fair, enter code ‘Aesthetica’ here.

To book tickets, visit otherartfair.seetickets.com/event/the-other-art-fair/the-old-truman-brewery/900897

1. FOTO/INDUSTRIA Biennale, Bologna

MAST Foundation, Bologna, and venues across the city
2 October - 1 November

The second edition of FOTO/INDUSTRIA Biennale in Bologna invites artists to explore the world of work in all its aspects with a particular focus on the industrial production chain from conception to recycling. Organised by the MAST Foundation in collaboration with the Bologna Municipality, under the artistic direction of François Hébel, the biennale hosts 14 contemporary exhibitions dedicated to industrial photography, enterprise and work. Taking place in a series of prominent locations across the historic city of Bologna, and featuring two large-scale shows at the MAST Foundation curated by Urs Stahel, this year’s biennale celebrates industrial traditions on a local, national and international scale. From historic palaces and Baroque chapels to museums and gallery spaces, this event, “unique in its genre for its capacity to seize glimpses and impressions of the world of labour and production” as remarked on by Hébel, showcases today’s most talented photographers in some of the city’s most innovative and ordinarily concealed spaces. Drawing from all corners of the photographic world, FOTO/INDUSTRIA compiles an extensive survey of work by widely renowned photographers, reporters, portraitists, corporate photographers and young professionals. The line-up for 2015 includes David LaChapelle’s latest series Landscape at Pinacoteca Nazionale, which uses hand-crafted scale models to explore the infrastructure of oil production and distribution; Edward Burtynsky’s documentation of the gritty underside of industrial landscapes in Manufactured Landscapes at Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande; and Hong Hao’s colourful representations of modern consumption in My Things, Bottom at MAMbo

www.fotoindustria.it

Image Credit:
Edward Burtynsky, Open mine of Super Pit n.1, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, 2007. Copyright of the artist, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto / Howard Greenberg Gallery and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York.

2. Dan Flavin: Barriers and Corridors

David Zwirner, New York
Until 24 October

David Zwirner, New York, draws together a selection of Dan Flavin’s “corner”, “barrier” and “corridor” works from the late 1960s and early 1970s. On view is a notable two-part “barrier” in yellow and green dedicated to the artist’s wife, untitled (to Sonja), 1969, which was first shown as Flavin’s contribution to the group exhibition Spaces at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1969-70. Flavin’s installation comprised rectangular units of coloured fluorescent tubes that formed two interior barriers from the corners of the entrance wall to the far end of the room. Also featured is a rare barrier that shines white fluorescent light into an empty room while rendering it inaccessible: untitled (to Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein on not seeing anyone in the room), 1968, which has not been exhibited since 1970. The title is a reference to a 1961 painting by Roy Lichtenstein: I can see the whole room!…And there’s nobody in it! A “corridor” in yellow and pink fluorescent light from 1972-75, untitled (to Barry, Mike, Chuck and Leonard), is also presented.  It divides an architectural passageway into two mutually inaccessible, obstructed fields of colour and light, playing on the viewers’ cognitive and physical perception of distinctly coloured, opposite ends of the same space. Other works demonstrate the artist’s lesser-known use of circular light fixtures: untitled (to a man, George McGovern) 1 and 2, both from 1972, succinctly illuminate the corners of a given space with wall mounted triangular constructions of cool and warm white circular lamps

www.davidzwirner.com

Image Credit:
Dan Flavin, untitled (to Barry, Mike, Chuck and Leonard), 1972-1975. © 2015 Stephen Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

3. Diffusion: Cardiff International Festival of Photography

Ffotogallery, Cardiff, and venues across the city
1-31 October

Diffusion 2015’s chosen theme is Looking for America, a cross-disciplinary investigation of the status and meaning of the “American Dream” in relation to experience in Wales, contemporary America and the rest of the world. Taking place in venues across Cardiff and beyond, the festival sees a month long programme of exhibitions, interventions, screenings, performances, events and celebrations in both physical and virtual spaces and places. The festival will use both traditional and new media to create a strong visual presence across existing venues and found spaces. Festival highlights include And Now It’s Dark, an exhibition of American night photography featuring three important contemporary American photographers – Jeff Brouws, Todd Hido and Will Steacy. Welsh photographer Jack Latham‘s A Pink Flamingo takes us on a journey along the Oregon Trail – a route that has become part of American history and embedded itself in the dreams of those looking for something better on the horizon of somewhere else. The festival will also explore links between Wales and the Caribbean. The work arising from artist Julian Germain’s commission for the Hidden Presence project will be premiered at Diffusion 2015. The Caravan Gallery will present their national touring Pride of Place Project, which includes their mobile exhibition venue, at the festival in order to look for America in Cardiff. Having built a wide base of partnerships in Wales and internationally, Diffusion is about bringing new international art to Wales whilst showcasing Welsh talent.

www.diffusionfestival.org

Image Credit:
Will Steacy, Satellite Dish, Detroit, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and Diffusion Festival

Artists’ Directory

The Aesthetica Artists’ Directory is a global network of artists engaging with the professional art world. In print, online and in digital, we have created a forum for discussion and interactivity where artists, galleries, collectors, critics, curators and enthusiasts can meet and discover the best in emerging art from around the world.

View the Artists' Directory at www.aestheticamagazine.com/directory
or for information visit www.aestheticamagazine.com/directory/about

Review of Josh Kline: Freedom at Modern Art Oxford

Upon entering Freedom, the visitor is first greeted by the smell of sugar mixed with congealing pig’s blood. This is not an exhibition designed to hold the viewer’s hand: the windows are boarded up and the walls are lined with doughnuts constructed from various materials, including dollar bills, bullets and razor blades encased in crystal resin. The artist rarely discusses his work, insisting that the art speaks for itself, and that it does: the “police as pigs” allusion is not an especially difficult conclusion to draw from the doughnut display, although perhaps this is the cause of the show’s triumph. A common criticism of contemporary art is that it is impermeable, elitist and obscure, whereas Kline’s intended meaning is unashamedly plain. Entering a small alcove, a film is being shown on a loop; the faces of politicians responsible for the Iraq War: Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair et al, are superimposed onto actors who are weeping and begging forgiveness. The effect is uncomfortable and infuriating.

On entering the second room, the viewer is received by four imposing six-foot mannequins, garbed in police attire and topped with Telletuby heads.  Videos are projected on parallel walls, one of a modified version of Barack Obama’s inaugural speech, criticising political capriciousness and profiteering. The other, Patriot Acts is an amalgam of heroic American imagery, drawn from the logo for the American National Security Agency, designed to provoke the very opposite of patriotism. The Telletuby’s bellies are complete with tablets each playing Privacy, a video in which police officers read aloud from scripts drawn from the social media accounts of political activists. The entire environment, complete with surveillance trees hung with credit cards for leaves is of a disturbing dystopia. Though the semantics of the exhibition are distinctly American, the clarity of their symbolism is both disconcerting and revealing to the point of ill-advised political self-righteousness.

However, though many of the exhibition’s connotations are mirrored in our society, others pose a slightly greater challenge for the UK audience, the show having first been exhibited in New Museum, New York, earlier this year as part of Surround Audience, the museum’s third triennial exhibition showcasing young artists in dialogue with the future of culture. The interior of the menacing Telletubyland is modelled on Zuccotti Park; formerly Liberty Plaza Park, undoubtedly one of the motivations for the show’s name, occupied by protesters during the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations of 2011. Though images such as the camp in Manhattan’s financial district may not be second nature to us, the principles of the movement were certainly felt and copied abroad, as was the universal disgust towards economic corruption, inequality and greed. Although the exhibition is not obviously terrifying, the conclusions that it leaps to do inspire pause for horrifying thought. Kline’s superimpositions; Condoleeza Rice’s teary apologies and toddler’s TV characters fixed onto special forces uniforms, represent the televisual manipulations with which the contemporary audience is unendingly mollycoddled, or at least that is the artist’s intention.

Whilst the show might be criticised for its scaremongering agenda, of which the media which Kline derogates is equally guilty, this is an art practice which is unforgiving, thought provoking and necessary, especially for a generation of people entering the current politico-economic purgatory. As Kline’s own artist statement reads: “Reared in this anti-privacy crèche and raised on a diet of poverty media fermented from aphasic dreams, the world’s newest voters remain hopeful seekers. If the ballot box fails them, they go viral.” The practice of political critique is sorely absent from contemporary art, but perhaps it is safe to assume that the fashion for formalist installation might be losing its relevance, and being replaced instead with an art that addresses life as it is being lived at the present, which as Kline demonstrates, is no walk in the park.

Josh Kline: Freedom at Modern Art Oxford until 18 October 2015. For more information, visit www.modernartoxford.org.uk.

Laura Catsellis

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Image Credit:
Josef Koudelka, Romania, 1968, copy 1980, The Art Institute of Chicago, donated by Sandy and Robin Stuart, © Josef Koudelka / Magnum Photos.

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