Highlights 2011

"A Perimeter for a room" (One thing to another)

Daniel Buren

Lisson Gallery

2011

Dear you!

Another year is soon over, it has been as exiting as exhausting. London has become my new beloved home... and at the moment I think I will never move from here... but, that is all relative, I guess.

There have been quite many Artistic highlights and rather difficult to bring it down to 10.

But bellow is another indication of a great year in art.

1. Tracey Emin proving she is the IT girl!

2. The most memorable opening ever: Ai Weiwei at the Lisson Gallery.

3. Tony Cragg's incredible sculptures at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

4. Having a chance to visit the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

5. Grayson Perry at the British Museum. 

6. The wonderful Women Make Sculpture exhibit at the Pangolin Gallery.

7. Visiting Notre Dame du Haut, the amazing Le Corbusier chapel. 

8. Anish Kapoor's "Leviathan" at the Grand Palais in Paris.

9. Chantal Joffe at my favorite Gallery in London,Victoria Miro.

10. The beauty of The Alhambra of Granada, Part 1, 2, 3.

Artwork of the year:

"The Hours" By Christian Marclay, as part of the "British Art Show 7" exhibit at the Hayward Gallery.

"In the days of the comet".

In two days I will be flying off to the Dolomites, where there will be little Art (unfortunately) but lots of skiing and reading. I look forward to some days of contemplation before 2012 begins with a Big Bang. I am already thrilled to start the New Year with classes at Christie's and Sotheby's, studying Art Law and History.

Wishing you all the best during the Holidays! 

With Christmas and New Year Love

Kristin

...it's incredibly sexy trying to base an economy on Poetry!

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Gallerists But Were Afraid to Ask

Andrea Bellini

This is a quick and enjoyable book about Galleries opened after 1980, where Andrea Bellini questions 51 Gallerists about their likes, dislikes, struggles and successes. 

The Galleries are from all over the world, from Bejing to Mexico city. Not only city galleries are represented here but Galleries that has chosen to open in small towns as well, like the Tucci Russo Studio Per L'Arte Contemporanea at the foot of the mountains in Torre Pellice (one hour away from Turin).

The questions are quite simple and the answers can be quite similar, but it is fun to hear how they opened  up their Galleries and how they run it, a lot of them says by intuition!

I especially enjoyed reading that none of them regret opening their galleries, even though it can be rough at times.

With my "secret" little wish of opening my own Gallery one day I was reading the answers like a sponge.

"Contemporary art is a sort of mental gymnastic"

   -Daniele Balice (Balichertling, Paris)

"The "Job" comes in many forms, many species - like flowers or insects."

   -Gavin Brown (Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York)

"Sehen, verstehen, lieben (see, know, desire)" 

  -Helga de Alvear (Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid)

"I am very influenced by my vivid intuition in general, so it has led to many smaller and greater successes and mistakes."

  -Jean-Claude Freymond-Guth (Freymond-Guth & Co Fine Arts, Zurich)

"We tend to be interested in art that arrives slowly and lasts for a long time."

  -Lisa Panting and Malin Ståhl (Hollybush Gardens, London)

"The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths"

  -Bruce Nauman (referred to by Georg Kargl, Galerie Georg Kargl, Vienna)

"As a gallerist, you are not only selling contemporary art, you are selling an opinion."

  -Johann Koenig (Joann Koenig, Berlin)

"- we're talking about Art and Poetry, and it's incredibly sexy trying to base an economy on Poetry."

  -Franco Noero (Galleria Franco Noero, Turin)

"Art really is for everyone"

  -Nicole Timonier (Evergreene, Geneva)

With Weekend Love

Kristin

Wild Beast

Nymphe et satyre, 1908-1909

Henri Matisse

The Hermitage

In the previous Ladies-in-waiting room of the Winter Palace hangs one of the worlds greatest collection of Matisse paintings. Unfortunately shining in fluorescent surgery light, but still breathtaking.

His colorful paintings and his exasperating strokes started a new direction in Art named "Les Fauves" which means "Wild Beast". It seems quite funny to be named a wild beast painter when he paints quite harmonious domestic objects at times, but then comes this intense other side of him with works like Nymph et Satyre and the Nu, which makes it all be intensified in a furiously amusing way.  

Marocain en vert debout (Le rifain debout). 1913

Standing Moroccan in Green (Standing Riffian)

Zorah Debout, 1912

Zorah Standing

To why this great collection made it's way to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg one has to connect the dots back to the collector Sergei Schcukin who commissioned work from Matisse. Schcukin collected impressionist and post-impressionist work to decorate his palatial home in Moscow. Shchukin was quite ahead of his time since this was seen as quite unpopular Art. When Lenin came to power his collection was taken away and his mansion turned into a state museum. Schcukin fled to Paris where he died. In later times his collection have been divided between the Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

Portrait de la famille du peintre, 1911

Family Portrait

Nature morte d'Espagne. 1910

Spanish Still Life

Nature morte de Seville. 1910

Seville Still Life

Vase d'iris. 1912

Vases of Irises

Le Chambre rouge (Harmonie rouge). 1908

The Red Room (Harmony in Red)

Nu (Noir et or). 1908

Nude (Black and Gold)

Danse. 1910

(This is the second version of the "Danse" the first version is at MoMA in NY.) 

These two large legendary paintings face each other playfully in the same room, you come to think of how wonderful it is that they have not been divided, how powerful it is to have them become one.

Musique. 1910

I see his paintings as quite joyful so hopefully the can color your day vibrantly as well:)

With Love

Kristin

Winter Palace

The Hermitage

St. Petersburg

The Hermitage is filled with a History and a past that could cover thousands of books and make many great films. The dream of visiting it has come through. 

Looking like a Russian I was repeatedly spoken to as a Russian, pretending I was a Russian only lasted until I had words on my tongue, but it made me somehow feel more connected, especially while drinking apple vodka... 

Going to St. Petersburg means having a chance to spend a day at the Hermitage until the night has to be lit up, and also going to the Opera, were we watched the "Figaro" at the Mariinsky Theatre.

The Winter Palace was originally the home of the Tsar and the Hermitage was were they entertained. Empress Catherine II was and avid collector and bought up collections she invited guests to see.

Now you can walk through both the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, walking in through an unassuming entrance from the Winter Palace to great spectacles.

I will show you here some images from the buildings and then next time introduce to you the great Matisse collection that has been acquired later.

The Jordan Staircase

Ceiling Jordan staircase

War Gallery Room

The Golden Drawing room

Not many words of information written here, but letting the images save the day.

Time is of the essence these days...

With Love 

Kristin

Conversador

O conversador, 2005

 ©Vermelho Gallery

Cinthia Marcelle

Galeria Vermelho

Sao Paulo

I had planned to write about Citnhia Marcelle right after the Frieze festival where I discovered her at the booth of Vermelho Gallery. I had been talking to the gallerist Jan Fjeld for a long time about Marcelle's work before we introduced ourselves with laughter... realizing we had been conversing in English when we both have such obvious Norwegian names. Jan sent me the link to these images a while later and I finally have time to show them to you.

Cinthia Marcelle who lives and work in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, is something between an instigator of performance art, filmmaker and photographer. Her projects involves the city, nature, people and animals, our interactions knowingly and unknowingly with what surround us.

The way she covers the horse in "O conversador" and the man in "Gigante debras" makes them be connected to nature in a humorous but also thoughtful way, I find them quite poetic.

 ©Vermelho Gallery

GEOGRAFIA [GEOGRAPHY] of the series Unus Mundus sculpture | 2004 | Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brasil | 256 hose arms and 128 y-connections 128 hose arms lead to a lake. Initially, there is a faucet which takes water to one arm, which connects in Y in regular intervals of time, following a geometric progression. There are then 256 arms, all visible as a group, working simultaneously, forming a sort of delta, proposing geographic accidents at that place. How many hoses are connected right now?

(Vermelho Gallery)

 ©Vermelho Gallery

With her environmentally loaded images she questions how our reality will look like in the future, when nature has no space to be free of human intrusion.

Impacto Ambienta (Environmental impact), 2007

©Vermelho Gallery

O Sabio, 2009

 ©Vermelho Gallery

Marcello reflects on social behavior and structures, her work is daringly political, showing pungent poetic messages. Which makes it a good reason for why she won the 2010 Main Prize of the Future Generation.

Gigante Detras (Back Giant),  (fabric on heads), 2006

©Vermelho 

 While I will have to wait to see more of her work, the New Yorkers have a chance to go to Gallery Lelong from the 14th of December, where Chintia Marcelle's art will be part of a group show.

I though, will be flying to St. Petersburg for the weekend (my first time), and I can't wait to share with you my impressions from The Hermitage.

With Weekend Adventure Love

Kristin

Panorama

Ema (Nude on a staircase) (Ema, Akt auf einer Treppe)

1966

Gerhard Richter

Tate Modern

Gerhard Richter will be one of the artists that represents the time we live in. His name will never be forgotten in our history of art, as the retrospective at the Tate Modern proves to us. It takes us chronologically through his life as a painter. As beautiful as that might sound, I think that after having seen Richter's work quite many times at different locations, I found myself feeling that something was missing. I walked through the exhibition a bit restless, having a hard time taking in the impressions. Realizing, after a while that I found the chronological placement of his work disruptive. Since he is working with so many different styles, I think this could have been a great opportunity to show the paintings that sort of related to each other collectively. As an example; I wish that the Hyper- realistic paintings would hang together, the paintings of his daughter, of his wives and the nature paintings. Instead the rooms fluctated between the abstract to the realistic in an interruptive way. 

Betty

1988

Except, for the Cage Paintings that was on view earlier this year as well (in a different location at the Tate) and the Baader Meinhof paintings.

Maybe that is why the series in Room 9 "18 October 1977" hit me the hardest this time around. Although Richter did not express sympathy for the group's politic's he spoke about his sorrow for their fates, and that their ideologies had led to their deaths, the Tate writes.

"The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader Meinhof group, was active in the late 1960's and 1970's. Connected to other radical movements emerging throughout Europe after 1968, its members were in part motivated by the perception that a number of former Nazis continued to hold positions of power. Increasingly violent terrorist activities were followed by the leaders' arrests and trials as well as failed plots by breakaway groups to free them."

Youth Portrait (Jugendbildnis)

1988

Confrontation 3 (Gegenuberstellung 3)

1988

The groups suicides after their capture has been questioned, could it possibly have been a state-organized killing? The photos are dark, mysterious and poetic, but not in any way glamorizing their deaths.

Hanged (Erhangte)

1988

Dead (Tote) 

1988

Although I have my hesitations about the placement of the paintings, it is still one of the best exhibits in London at the moment, so if you do have a chance to she the retrospective of this legendary artist, please do. "Panorama" continues until the 8th of January 2012.

With Love 

Kristin