Usually, when we think about painting, we think of a picture on a canvas hanging on a wall.

From Cambridge Dictionary:

Painting

noun UK ​ /ˈpeɪn.tɪŋ/ US ​ /ˈpeɪn.t̬ɪŋ/

A2 [ C or U ] a picture made using paint:

The walls are covered in oil paintings.

an exhibition of 19th-century French painting

A2 [ U ] the skill or activity of making a picture or putting paint on a wall:

We were taught painting and drawing at art college.

When we bought the house, we had to do a lot of painting and redecorating.

(available on https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/painting)

Wikipedia offers a definition which allows a more open interpretation of the medium:

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, colour or other medium to a solid surface (support base). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used. The final work is also called a painting.

(available on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painting)

Yet artists have transformed such a traditional medium, and the understanding we have of it, by changing its appearance to better express the idea behind their work.

A powerful example of this transformation is the exhibition “Violent Amnesia” by the Colombian artist Oscar Murillo (Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, until 23^rd June) where his landmark black canvases are both amassed on the floor and hung from metal poles. The colour’s palette is erased and welcomes only black pigment. Such a halt inevitably recalls in the viewer’s mind despair and grief, and anything we knew about the-picture-hanging-on-the-wall vanished in a sea of darkness and uncertainty.

Murillo has been shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2019 (the exhibition will open to the public on September 28^th at Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent) and “Violent Amnesia” is one of the shows which informed the jury selecting this year nominees – Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo, and Tai Shani – offering, then, a cultural excuse for a day outside London!

To say goodbye to this damp Winter, Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, and White Cube London galleries have opened some sparkling solo exhibitions. The trio presented Walter De Maria, Martin Creed, and Miroslaw Balka respectively. These bewitching artists, with their distinct use of space and engagement with the public, guide the visitors in an absorbing (sometimes even funny) experience of their works. However, the galleries allow different levels of interaction between audience and exhibits. In fact, while the artists take over the whole exhibition spaces, the visitor experience is determined by what the galleries concede. Then, are Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, and White Cube acknowledging full authorship to the artists they showcase?

The first show of the triangle is “Toast” by the social artist Martin Creed (30^th November 2018 – 9^th February 2018) at Hauser & Wirth. The exhibition showcased drawing, painting, sculpture, tapestry, video and live performance presenting the eclectic production which distinguishes Creed’s vast output. Interestingly, the display changed during the opening hours. Indeed, two technicians regularly popped in the exhibition space to install/deinstall two paintings, “Work no 3113, Threes Flowers Seas please” (2018) and “Work no 2980, Broccoli on Fire on Water with Gun and Wind and Sun” (2018), whose absence made space to project a series of ten short videos including “Work no 3093, Difficult Thoughts” (2018). Besides, the exhibition included a performer, Linda Hirst, who, throughout the exhibition, sang new music written by the artist in 2018. As the cherry on the cake, on the last day of the show, H&W invited the artist for a closing performance of a selection of his songs playfully accompanied by Hirst and a choir of girls in colourful jumpers and winter hats. How Creed took over the gallery was astonishing. During the performance, Hirst sang and walked through the gallery arriving next to the gallery Assistants’ desk who, upon her arrival, started to hum becoming a choir themselves! Thus, Creed, not only managed to organise the display of his show (how often do you see an exhibition which changes the exhibits during opening hours?) but also incorporated into the show the Gallery Technicians and Assistants.

The second visit was of “Idea to Action to Object” by Walter De Maria (24^th January – 23^rd March 2019) at Gagosian. The show includes over forty never-before-seen drawings and several related sculptures from the artist’s late career. The works on paper record De Maria interest in psychology which he often used to instruct the reader/observer to do and see the surrounding in a specific way. Unique in De Maria’s works is the constant invitation of the public to interact with his objects. An example is “Satisfaction Box” (1961), a wooden pedestal with a box and a stone ball in which the artist engraved the instructions for the visitor to bring the ball, put it in the box, wait until satisfied, and place it back. Unfortunately, as soon as you approach the work and move your hand towards the ball, a frightening guard in formal guise block you from touching the work. Is this reflecting De Maria’s will? Or is this a misinterpretation Gagosian deliberately enacts to prevent the works, which are of course on sale, from potential damages? This impediment prevents the audience from experiencing the artist’s work fully. Here De Maria’s authorship is clearly compromised by the intention of the gallery to preserve his work in favour of its sale.

The last of this Spring’s first token was “Random Access Memory” by Miroslaw Balka (25^th January – 9^th March 2019) at White Cube. For his show, the Polish artist – whose practice is defined by the use of bare everyday materials – created a new installation in which heated metal walls hide the exhibition space (of both ground and lower floors) from the visitor sight.  While we stand in front of the barriers, these cut out the gallery space. These same fences become a catalyst which stirs up in the visitor’s mind a blend of domestic traumas and collective histories. How many memories of when we had been trapped or stopped by physical and invisible barriers can we recall while standing in front to Balka’s walls? Bringing the installation to the current political debates, this immediately becomes a reference of geographic borders, cultural division, undergoing projects like the US border that Trump is advocating and Brexit with its uncertainty. The installation is the symbol of what separates people from one another for gender, race, nation, politics, and religion. With this show, White Cube savvily gave up to the use of its exhibition space to allow Balka freedom of expression with such a strong yet severe installation.

Thus, these three blue-chip galleries by presenting three socially oriented shows by three bold artists declare their commitment to the faithful presentation of the artworks they host in their beautiful white spaces. Whereas Gagosian puts a guard to watch over the safety and integrity of De Maria’s sculptural works preventing the visitor from interaction, White Cube allows Balka total freedom to use the space at his own will. However, the epitome was reached by Hauser & Wirth that not only granted Creed full and free use of the gallery space but also licensed him to include the gallery staff in the show. By offering the gallerygoers three distinct experiences, these exhibitions provide a glimpse to the relational boundaries between the business faced galleries and the artist they represent.

As stated by Jennifer Higgie in her article Right Here, Right Now. What is art’s responsibility in the time in which we live (published in Frieze Magazine No. 196, June-July 2018) “a groundswell of countless activist groups across the world are grappling with everything from racial, sexual and gender politics, to gun control and the environment, to animal and human rights and more.”

But how firm is the grip that these groups have on the public? To understand the process of how our mind assimilates and de-codes new issues and topics and subsequently allows us to formulate an opinion, I am going to describe how I began to acknowledge black culture voice by visiting shows in NY, Berlin, and London between the end of 2017 and now.

In October 2017, I watched for the first time a work by the LA-based artist Arthur Jafa. The video was the monumental Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death (2016), a collage of found footage and iconic events of black culture in America put together in a dance of images accompanied by Ultralight Bean by Kanye West. The screening was set up inside a darkish camping tent on the rooftop at 180 the Strand offering to the public a 360-degree experience. In America, this film was already popular thanks to its premiere at Gavin Brown Enterprise in Harlem, NYC, which duly opened just after Donald Trump was elected in November 2016.

When I watched Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death, I just thought that it was a very cool video about black culture but, after that experience, its remembrance was buried in my consciousness. This stayed secluded in a dark corner of my memory until last March, when I watched another of Jafa’s films, Apex. This one was screened at his touring solo-show, A Series of Utterly Improbable, yet Extraordinary Renditions (firstly opened at Serpentine Galleries which I missed!), at Julia Stoschek Collection in Berlin (open until 25^th November 2018). Apex is again a collection of found images – typical of Jafa’s style – which tells the story, events, joy, and redemption, of black Americans.

https://youtu.be/QI-CPs4laIY

Since this second experience, something clicked in my mind, and I started (maybe very late) to spot and acknowledge that there is a consistent calendar of shows and events popping up worldwide to reach the attention of the broader white public and speak out with black stories, culture, and politics.

Then once I was back in London, between July and August 2018 came the turn of the young British black artist Gaika at Somerset House Studios who presented System, a new sound and video installation. This new production comes from the artist residency that Gaika did at SH studios and investigates the history of Sound System culture, its origins from Jamaica, and Notting Hill Carnival in a dancing footage spread in multiple screens hanging in a jungle-like urban wreckage installation.

Concurrent to Gaika’s installation, was Evan Ifekoya: Ritual without belief at Gasworks (5 July-2 September 2018), a six-hour sound work and installation which the artist describes as “a black queer algorithm across generations, locations and political affiliations.” The new piece was designed and built together with a group of London-based peers (black, homosexual, female/ non-binary folk) during a series of workshops leading up to the exhibition. Upon entrance, an ocean covers the floor and the visitor could be seated on acoustic panels piled in the middle of the main room and listen to a series of vocal samples spanning theory, conversations, and intimate thoughts. Crucial to the show is an installation of black, white, and orange helium balloons that references The Loft, a club that revolutionised the gay-disco scene in downtown Manhattan during the 1970s.

For how it regards the London art scene, Gaika’s historical installation and the new commission by Evan Ifekoya, which gave voice to the underrepresented group of black GLBT people, preluded the Black History Month – October – which continued the wave of events investigating, presenting, and representing black art, culture, traditions, and also racial and political issues.

Included in the BHM calendar was “African Soldier” by John Akomfrah at IWM London, a new multimedia installation to remember the millions of Africans who fought as soldiers or served as porters during the First World War. Also included in the October calendar, “Autonomous Morris” by British-Caribbean artist Zak Ove’ was presented to the public at Smithson Plaza, (on display until February 2019). The new sculpture is a futuristic yet retro, cross-cultural totemic mask (the largest by the artist to date) of a motorised ‘Macco,’ a person who involves themselves in other people’s business for gossip and posterity.

Now that November has arrived, at 180 the Strand (London), as part of the group exhibition Strange Days (until 9^th December), we can enjoy the watching of Kahlil Joseph Fly Paper (2017). The piece is a black & white video which brings us in Harlem to tell the story of African Americans, Jazz, and family memories through photographic references of the work of Roy DeCarava (1919-2009), a photographer known for his shots of jazz musicians and life in Harlem who Joseph admires.

In the guise of a guinea pig, it took me more than a year of show visits to acknowledge and appreciate the constant flux of events focusing on black culture popping up not only in London but also all around the world. For sure, these experiences are making me more responsive and sensitive to specific topics and aspects of black culture. However, it seems to me that my attention derives from the repetition of the experience which subsequently led me to crave further research. Therefore, if repetition is an effective way to get people to acknowledge facts, culture, and history of a specific demographic of society, we must agree that it requires time and fluidity in the space. Given this starting point, it is clear that perseverance and a worldwide voice are critical features for reaching attention amongst people and, hopefully, obtaining results towards a world change.

 

Dear readers,

I am currently working on my new essay, a journey into black visual culture and as we experience it screened in London, Berlin, and New York. Here are some departure hints:

“I see black people’s lives in epic, mythic terms, and in a simpler level, I want you to look up at these things that are happening to black people, not down –  the way you would stare at the sun.” Arthur Jafa interviewed by Jace Clayton, “As Brilliant as the Sun” (2018) published in Frieze no193, p160-164.

“I tried to make something that speaks about what it is happening now […] The experience of the carnival will never die because is part of the people as is integrity expressing what people want.” Gaika in conversation with Ash Sarkar (15th August 2018) at Somerset House Studios available at https://player.fm/series/somerset-house-studios/ep-3-gaika-in-conversation-with-ash-sarkar

Stay tuned!

“The You in Us” by Ourahmane at Chisenhale Gallery London

26 January – 25 March 2018

This year, Chisenhale Gallery in London began its public program with the new commission and exhibition by the London and Oran-based artist Lydia Ourahmane (1992), The You in Us, which included installation, sculpture, and a sound work. The visitor entered the exhibition space by pushing two memorably heavy doors, coated black with sulfur, conceived by the artist for public interaction via pushing and touching. As the doors were continuously pushed to enter and exit the space, the blackened surface slowly returned to its original silver. The weight of the doors served to introduce the audience to the gravity of the themes present within the show. The gradual reversion of the metal back to its shiny silver, by the continuous and repetitive human interaction, could be a metaphor of how persistence and human coalition leads to the obtainment of a result.

Once inside, the space was filled by a sound work, Paradis (2018), amplified from underneath a temporary wooden floor which, through intermittent waves, invited the visitors to wander within the show. In the corner opposite the silver doors, there were two more works, Droit de Sang (Blood Right), a cabinet displaying civil documents belonging to the artist’s grandfather, Tayeb Ourahmane. Between 1945 and 1962, Ourahmane resisted the French military service and played an active role during the Algerian fight for independence from France.  Next to the cabinet was In the Absence of Our Mothers (begun in 2015), two identical golden teeth made out of a chain Ourahmane bought in the Medina market (Algeria) during her research on illegal immigration. While one of the teeth was displayed within the show installed on a pin, the other, having been implanted in Ourahmane’s mouth, was documented with an x-ray plate.

 

 

Through durational research on social and political issues, Ourahmane investigates individuals’ experiences to document past and present facts. A long-term research informed by her condition of living between Algeria and the UK. The two countries are indeed very different. Algeria is characterized by government corruption, continuous and violent conflicts between parties, unemployment, and immigration. The UK is a much wealthier and democratic country and represents the destination of the many people leaving Algeria every day. For this show, the artist focused on these differences by exploring the meaning of geographic and political borders on people’s lives.

 

The sound installation, Paradis, is a collection of records Ourahmane made while she was in Algeria conducting her research. These are sound tests made with a body-shaker, a device which transforms surfaces into speakers by turning low sounds into vibrations. After having gathered all the records together, Ourahmane collaborated with various friends and musicians in organizing the sounds appositely for the exhibition space at Chisenhale Gallery to confer to the final piece a tridimensional aspect. While the vibrations are amplified from different speakers located underneath the floor, silences in between the records give the rhythm to the overall composition.  Hence, a sonic yet a spatial piece in which the visitors become part of the show by wandering within the space and freely lingering in the room in the attempt to catch the origin of the sound, pausing and waiting for the waves to reach the ears. As mentioned during her interview for the Art Newspaper (published on February 1, 2018) the experience of Paradis reflects the idea of representing the condition of “waiting for something to happen,” which Ourahmane describes as being common amongst young Algerians who, she explains, talk about leaving their country all the time.

 

In the corner opposite Doors, there were two other works installed in the wall. Droit de Song (Blood Right), showcasing Tayeb Ourahmane’s military records and French passport tracing his service in the army, and In the Absence of Our Mothers the work based on the two gold teeth. There was a wall text that narrated the artist’s grandfather traumatic military conscription as one of the best snipers in the armed force and his subsequent resistance and activism in the fight for the independence of his country, Algeria, at the time under the French colonization. The second part of the text described how the artist came to possess the gold she used to cast the two teeth. In 1945, Tayeb Ourahmane pulled out all of his teeth to escape the enrolment in the French army – the only way to achieve this goal was to be physically unfit for the service -. In 2015, Lydia Ourahmane, while on an expedition for her research on illegal immigration, bought a gold chain from an abusive merchant in Medina Market, who told her the chain belonged to his mother. The chain cost was the equivalent of €300, at the time, the price to embark on one of the boats illegally sailing from Algeria to Spain. In both contexts, teeth cover an essential role in tracking and determining the course of events. Ourahmane’s conceptual use of teeth as objects tells us the facts which established and still inform the story of Algerian people, of all soldiers facing terror, and immigrants living on the borders of two countries.

 

 

 

 

By setting up a minimal display, Ourahmane powerfully introduced to the public the global issue of immigration departing from Algerian historical facts by presenting everyday objects to tell the history of her country. It is indeed by using everyday objects like civil documents, teeth, and the x-ray plate, that Ourahmane documents history departing from individual experiences and investigates human identity and battles for rights and independence. A show that at first seemed almost empty soon revealed to be extraordinarily dense in meaning starting a communication with the public on social and political ideas which elicited further thinking behind the blackened silver doors.

The Boros Collection is a Private art collection which possesses a very special exhibition space in Berlin, an overground bunker built during the WWII which, since then, has been used as a fruit storage (in particular bananas that at the time were a tropical and exotic luxury in the city) and, during the 90s, as one of the hardest techno venues in Europe – “The Bunker”. In 2008, after a massive renovation of the building, the Boros Collection opened its first show, opening its doors to the public. Visits to the exhibitions are organised through guided tours (booking is required) and every four years the exhibition is renewed, showcasing new artists and new works, many of those are site-specific.

When I arrived at the Bunker, the entrance was hard to find. In fact, there is neither a sign nor plate on any of the black doors demarking the imponent concrete building. Eventually, I entered the building through the only door which seemed not to be locked and, from there, I wandered to a second door, again with no signs! After pulling this second door, I finally found the way to the reception. Now, everything looks like a standard exhibition venue with white walls and staff wearing black suits. For safety reasons, when the tour starts, you are not allowed to move around the space freely and you ought to stay with the group. The Bunker has 5 levels and, between 2016 and 2017, was renewed again to welcome the current display running until 2021. The exhibits include paintings, sculptures, installations, and video works. The only work which produces a sound (or better a noise) is a black train station departure board whose vanes flip randomly without showing any letter or number by the Belgian artist Kris Martin. Apart from this piece, which we encounter at the very beginning of our tour, no other sound is present within the show.

Each level is divided symmetrically into a squared plan, while, the crisscrossing stairs have been kept as they were made initially. These are mostly lit by a weak red beam which leads to a sensation of danger recalling evacuation procedures during emergencies. All around, everything is made of concrete with no windows and no exit indications. Thus, you find yourself in a mazy hive feeling lost for the whole duration of the visit. A kind of unsettling yet claustrophobic experience.

As it is happening for various museums around the world – such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Spain) and the Hanoi Museum in Hanoi (Vietnam), just to mention a couple – here the exhibition venue is much more intriguing and compelling than the exhibition itself. Indeed, while the Bunker has been converted into an exhibition venue, it also serves the function of hyper-safe storage for the artworks. Thus, a display yet a storage where the public encounters the exhibits seating or hanging within the space in a condition which mixes private (storage) and public (exhibition) leaving the visitors with a sense of inadequacy. This feeling is further reinforced by the fact that the exhibition venue was originally conceived as an armoured place… a bunker indeed which, in this case, has been converted into a place to protect objects rather than people.

In its peculiar and uncomfortable way, the Boros Collection is providing the public with an intense experience of the artworks on show.